Hong Kong: Economy will pick up growth: FS Financial Secretary Paul Chan said that the economy would pick up growth this year during a luncheon at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. At the WEF Annual Meeting yesterday, Mr Chan participated in the Special Address delivered by State Council Vice Premier Liu He. He then attended the Davos-Caixin CEO Luncheon and delivered a speech on Unleashing the Full Potential of Asia: Scenarios and Opportunities. Mr Chan pointed out that Hong Kong is quickly returning to normalcy from the pandemic, and as the Mainland has speeded up its opening, the economy this year will pick up growth. With the advantages of one country, two systems and the firm support of the country, Hong Kong is the only place where the China advantages and the international advantages converge. In many different areas such as financial services and innovation and technology, Hong Kong plays the role of connecting the Mainland and the world, thereby actively contributing to the prosperity and sustained development of Asia. Mr Chan also had a breakfast meeting with the senior management of financial institutions in Europe and Japan, during which he elaborated on Hong Kong's latest developments, systemic strengths and bright prospects. The Financial Secretary also met Lenovo Chairman Yang Yuanqing, as well as Envision Group Chief Executive Officer Zhang Lei. Mr Chan explained the prevailing economic situation and opportunities, and Hong Kong's latest policies in innovation and technology as well as attracting strategic enterprises and talent. Mr Chan also met the Bloomberg Chairman Peter Grauer, explaining in detail Hong Kong's new opportunities at a new phase of development. Additionally, Mr Chan attended a dinner reception hosted by WEF Founder & Executive Chairman Prof Klaus Schwab. This story has been published on: 2023-01-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Xi extends condolences to Nepali president over plane crash Xinhua) 08:04, January 18, 2023 BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday sent a message of condolence to Nepali President Bidya Devi Bhandari over a plane crash in the country. In his message, Xi said that upon learning of the plane crash in Nepal, which caused heavy casualties, he would like to express deep condolences over the fatalities and offer sincere sympathies to the bereaved families on behalf of the Chinese government and people. Also on Monday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a message of condolence to Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. Due to the Azerbaijani siege, 19 children, separated from their parents and family for more than a month, returned home to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Tuesday via the Goris-Stepanakert road. Artsakh Human Rights Defender (ombudsman) Gegham Stepanyan wrote about this on Facebook. He added as follows: The children were accompanied from Goris to Stepanakert by the Russian peacekeeping troops. The car was stopped by Azerbaijanis in the area under Shushi-Karin Tak in the cordoned-off part of the road, where the Azerbaijani government agents pretending to be "eco-activists" and the journalists serving them are stationed. Then, 10-15 Azerbaijanis with face masks on, cameras in hand, and in civilian clothes approached the car. Some of them rushed into the vehicle and filmed the children in the car. As a result of the provocative actions of the Azerbaijanis, there was a commotion in the car, and consequently, one of the children fainted. Due to actions undertaken by Russian peacekeepers, the Azerbaijanis were removed from the car, and the vehicle continued its journey. Then, while passing through the blocked section of the road, Azerbaijanis demonstratively shouted in the direction of the vehicles transporting the children. This impudent behavior of the agents of the Azerbaijani government is an arbitrary and illegal interference in the private life and psychological integrity of children. It is an illegal encroachment on their integrity and reputation. These criminal actions completely reveal their true goals and desires. The ethnic hatred of Azerbaijanis towards Armenians knows no boundaries, targeting even minor children. This provocative and criminal action once again proves the fact that the road is blocked and the impossibility of safe travel on it, even when accompanied by Russian peacekeeping troops. MFA: Shushi is Artsakhs integral part in territorial, cultural, economic, historical aspects Bankrupt FTX may resume work: It has recovered $7.3 billion in assets Charles Michel explains his activeness in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations normalization process Armenia PM to Bujar Osmani: This visit is good opportunity to get familiarized with complicated situation South Korea bans its citizens from traveling to Armenia-Azerbaijan border region What kind of photos does the world's most expensive camera phone Xiaomi 13 Ultra take? Karabakh President convenes working consultation, security challenges discussed OSCE Chairman-in-Office: I am here to find out if there is possibility to build bridges between Yerevan and Baku Armenia PM chief of staff: Azerbaijanis are already in Yerevan, we have ensured their safety Chairman-in-Office: OSCE toolkit provides mechanisms to assist peace process between Armenians and Azerbaijanis Osmani: We are ready for any efforts to achieve positive dynamics between Azerbaijan and Armenia Armenia FM: Replacing army with guards on Azerbaijan border should be part of final settlement Armenia MFA: Rumors about OSCE Minsk Group activities termination are greatly exaggerated 168.am: Who is the Azerbaijani already rendered ineffective in Armenia? What does he say in video? Armenia village youth tell how they caught Azerbaijani Armenia Investigative Committee issues statement on murder of security guard, 56, in Syunik Province Azerbaijani who crossed border into Armenia is caught by locals, found in Achanan village territory 2nd Azerbaijan soldier found, detained in Armenia Armenian health minister: Wounded soldier in critical condition due to Azerbaijan provocation has stabilized Which Armenia company is put on US sanctions list? Astrophotographer captures 100,000 km high 'plasma waterfall' on Sun Kev Orkian speaks about latest Azerbaijan military aggression against Armenia Premier: Armenia ready for reopening of transport links, delimitation of borders Pashinyan: We are ready to withdraw troops to safe distance along Armenia-Azerbaijan 1991 border Armenia to have trade attache in Germany Azerbaijan MFA accuses France foreign ministry of smear campaign and unfair position Armenia PM: It failed to deploy border guards without escalation of tension Newly elected Armenia ombudsperson announces her priority objective in this capacity Armenia deputy PM, US Deputy Secretary of Treasury acknowledge high level of cooperation between both countries NHL: Stanley Cup playoff participants are decided Newspaper: Karabakh soldiers who showed necessary resistance to Azerbaijan military are rewarded Armenia FM, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office tete-a-tete kicks off (PHOTOS) Armenia deputy PM, USAID official discuss opportunities for deepening cooperation Mher Grigoryan, Todd Robinson exchange views on ongoing democratic reforms in Armenia Europa League: Matches of the day Champions League: Real beat Chelsea, Milan defeat Napoli (PHOTOS, VIDEOS) Armenia FM to Derek Hogan: Provocation near Tegh village was another manifestation of Azerbaijan aggressive policy shamshyan.com: Murder in Armenias Syunik Province, 6 gunshot wounds found on body of security guard, 57 US State Department on Armenias Tegh village incident: Use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable MFA: France deeply concerned about violence that took place near Tegh village of Armenia Legal entity from Armenia on list of those subject to US export restrictions Russia MOD: 4 ceasefire violations recorded in Karabakh The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max will not get the much-discussed new technology EU monitoring mission in Armenia not present in the area when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia National Security Service Border Guard Troops commander dismissed Armenia MOD: Tegh village incident that led to undesirable consequences was due to deployment adjustment Mayor of Frances Lyon expresses unconditional support to people of Karabakh Pashinyan: Armenian side had recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan Criminal proceedings launched into Armenia soldiers being killed, wounded by Azerbaijan near Tegh village Chairman-in-Office: OSCE supports continuation of Armenia-Azerbaijan direct contacts MFA: Russia asked Armenia to explain information about participating in joint military exercises with NATO Zakharova does not disclose details of Russian, Turkish FMs talks on Armenia-Turkey relations Annual Investment Meeting 2023 to explore the role of digital technology in designing future cities Russia MFA spox: CSTO mission deployment details can be talked about when Armenia is ready Zakharova: Russia favors complete unblocking of Lachin corridor Elon Musk plans to develop his own AI project to integrate into Twitter Russia MFA: Other players engagement will lead to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations destabilization EU calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to intensify border delimitation talks, until then to respect 1991 line Russia MFA spox: Yerevan, Baku accepted proposal to hold another bilateral talks Pallone: This is another senseless provocation from Azerbaijani forces against Armenia Zakharova: Russia Border Guard Service, army took measures to de-escalate situation near Armenias Tegh village Update on WhatsApp: one account can now be used on four devices simultaneously Armenian Liana Shahinyan, 45, wins MyDream Miss International America beauty pageant (PHOTOS) Armenia deputy defense minister on possible Azerbaijan provocations again: Nothing can be ruled out Armenia MP: Azerbaijanis demanded not to do engineering work, our soldiers responded, battle started from that Marukyan: This is continuation of attacks carried out against Armenia in May and November 2021, in September 2022 About 100 killed in airstrikes in rural Myanmar Criminal proceedings to be launched against Armenia opposition MP Mher Sahakyan Armenia MP: Army corps commander was there, talks were to be held but Azerbaijan resorted to provocation Mher Grigoryan, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State discuss security issues in Armenia, region Japanese company plans to organize artificial meteor showers on demand: How? Parliament observes minute of silence in memory of Armenia soldiers who died yesterday Serj Tankian calls for sanctions against Azerbaijan, President Aliyev Newspaper: How Europe reacts to yesterday's provocation by Azerbaijanis? Anahit Manasyan is elected Armenia ombudsperson Armenia MOD: No significant ceasefire violations by Azerbaijan recorded at night Henrikh Mkhitaryan: We fought hard and we helped each other MOD: 3 of wounded Armenia soldiers in satisfactory condition, other 3 in moderate, severe, critical condition Champions League: Inter, with Mkhitaryan, beat Benfica, Man City defeat Bayern (PHOTOS, VIDEOS) RA MOD announces names of soldiers killed by Azerbaijani Armed Forces As of 10:15 p.m., the situation on the frontline is relatively stable. RA Ministry of Defense The destruction of Artsakh and Syunik is a key issue for Turkey and Azerbaijan. David Babayan Suren Papikyan interrupts his working visit and returns to Armenia Azerbaijans provocation is another encroachment on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia. MFA Azerbaijan MOD publicizes data on own losses during latest Baku provocation A mockup of new iPhone 15 Pro design shown on video for the first time Russia MOD: 2 ceasefire violations recorded in Karabakh The reason for Azerbaijan's aggression is not being sanctioned by the international community. Edmon Marukyan Four Armenian soldiers killed, six wounded because of Azerbaijani provocation. MOD Video shows how Azerbaijani soldiers approach and open fire at Armenian soldiers Apple's 10 most powerful devices. The latest iPhones are not at the top ones at all Armenia National Assembly cancels special session Legislature deputy speaker on Azerbaijani infiltration into Armenia: Not case where accountability is implied Azerbaijanis opened fire in direction of Sotk Woman suing doctor at Houston Methodist for trying to cover up operating on the wrong foot Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan army continues provocation, uses mortars Azerbaijani shooting resumes in direction of Armenias Tegh village Haykakan Zhamanak: Armenia Special Army Corps commander wounded in skirmish What professions could disappear because of AI-powered ChatGPT? MOD: Armenian side has casualties and wounded, according to preliminary data The political repression by the regime of Lukashenko has reached an unprecedented level, said EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell. That was the reaction of the head of the European diplomacy to the trial, begun in absentia in Belarus against Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Pavel Latushka and other members of the Coordinating Council of the Belarusian opposition. Borrell recalled that today in Belarus there are more than 1,440 political prisoners. According to him, the regime, applying repressive laws, violates the rights and freedoms of Belarusians, as well as international obligations of Belarus. The EU condemns this brutal repression and politically motivated courts aimed at silencing any independent voices, said Josep Borrell. On January 17th one of the leaders of Belarusian opposition Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who declared herself the president of the country after the disputable elections of the head of the state in August 2020, started her trial in absentia in Minsk. Along with Tsikhanouskaya, opposition activists Pavel Latushka, Maria Moroz, Olga Kovalkova and Sergei Dylevski were summoned to court as defendants. All the defendants are charged with conspiracy to seize power unconstitutionally. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called the trial in absentia a farce and revenge on the part of Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko. "This is a personal revenge on Lukashenko and his henchmen, but not only on me, but also on other people who oppose him," said the politician. MFA: Shushi is Artsakhs integral part in territorial, cultural, economic, historical aspects Charles Michel explains his activeness in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations normalization process Armenia PM to Bujar Osmani: This visit is good opportunity to get familiarized with complicated situation South Korea bans its citizens from traveling to Armenia-Azerbaijan border region Karabakh President convenes working consultation, security challenges discussed OSCE Chairman-in-Office: I am here to find out if there is possibility to build bridges between Yerevan and Baku Armenia PM chief of staff: Azerbaijanis are already in Yerevan, we have ensured their safety Chairman-in-Office: OSCE toolkit provides mechanisms to assist peace process between Armenians and Azerbaijanis Osmani: We are ready for any efforts to achieve positive dynamics between Azerbaijan and Armenia Armenia FM: Replacing army with guards on Azerbaijan border should be part of final settlement Armenia MFA: Rumors about OSCE Minsk Group activities termination are greatly exaggerated 168.am: Who is the Azerbaijani already rendered ineffective in Armenia? What does he say in video? Armenia village youth tell how they caught Azerbaijani Armenia Investigative Committee issues statement on murder of security guard, 56, in Syunik Province Azerbaijani who crossed border into Armenia is caught by locals, found in Achanan village territory 2nd Azerbaijan soldier found, detained in Armenia Armenian health minister: Wounded soldier in critical condition due to Azerbaijan provocation has stabilized Which Armenia company is put on US sanctions list? Premier: Armenia ready for reopening of transport links, delimitation of borders Pashinyan: We are ready to withdraw troops to safe distance along Armenia-Azerbaijan 1991 border Armenia to have trade attache in Germany Azerbaijan MFA accuses France foreign ministry of smear campaign and unfair position Armenia PM: It failed to deploy border guards without escalation of tension Newly elected Armenia ombudsperson announces her priority objective in this capacity Armenia deputy PM, US Deputy Secretary of Treasury acknowledge high level of cooperation between both countries Newspaper: Karabakh soldiers who showed necessary resistance to Azerbaijan military are rewarded Armenia FM, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office tete-a-tete kicks off (PHOTOS) Armenia deputy PM, USAID official discuss opportunities for deepening cooperation Mher Grigoryan, Todd Robinson exchange views on ongoing democratic reforms in Armenia Armenia FM to Derek Hogan: Provocation near Tegh village was another manifestation of Azerbaijan aggressive policy shamshyan.com: Murder in Armenias Syunik Province, 6 gunshot wounds found on body of security guard, 57 US State Department on Armenias Tegh village incident: Use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable MFA: France deeply concerned about violence that took place near Tegh village of Armenia Legal entity from Armenia on list of those subject to US export restrictions Russia MOD: 4 ceasefire violations recorded in Karabakh EU monitoring mission in Armenia not present in the area when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia National Security Service Border Guard Troops commander dismissed Armenia MOD: Tegh village incident that led to undesirable consequences was due to deployment adjustment Mayor of Frances Lyon expresses unconditional support to people of Karabakh Pashinyan: Armenian side had recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan Criminal proceedings launched into Armenia soldiers being killed, wounded by Azerbaijan near Tegh village Chairman-in-Office: OSCE supports continuation of Armenia-Azerbaijan direct contacts MFA: Russia asked Armenia to explain information about participating in joint military exercises with NATO Zakharova does not disclose details of Russian, Turkish FMs talks on Armenia-Turkey relations Russia MFA spox: CSTO mission deployment details can be talked about when Armenia is ready Zakharova: Russia favors complete unblocking of Lachin corridor Russia MFA: Other players engagement will lead to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations destabilization EU calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to intensify border delimitation talks, until then to respect 1991 line Russia MFA spox: Yerevan, Baku accepted proposal to hold another bilateral talks Pallone: This is another senseless provocation from Azerbaijani forces against Armenia Zakharova: Russia Border Guard Service, army took measures to de-escalate situation near Armenias Tegh village Armenia deputy defense minister on possible Azerbaijan provocations again: Nothing can be ruled out Armenia MP: Azerbaijanis demanded not to do engineering work, our soldiers responded, battle started from that Marukyan: This is continuation of attacks carried out against Armenia in May and November 2021, in September 2022 About 100 killed in airstrikes in rural Myanmar Criminal proceedings to be launched against Armenia opposition MP Mher Sahakyan Armenia MP: Army corps commander was there, talks were to be held but Azerbaijan resorted to provocation Mher Grigoryan, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State discuss security issues in Armenia, region Parliament observes minute of silence in memory of Armenia soldiers who died yesterday Newspaper: How Europe reacts to yesterday's provocation by Azerbaijanis? Anahit Manasyan is elected Armenia ombudsperson Armenia MOD: No significant ceasefire violations by Azerbaijan recorded at night MOD: 3 of wounded Armenia soldiers in satisfactory condition, other 3 in moderate, severe, critical condition RA MOD announces names of soldiers killed by Azerbaijani Armed Forces As of 10:15 p.m., the situation on the frontline is relatively stable. RA Ministry of Defense The destruction of Artsakh and Syunik is a key issue for Turkey and Azerbaijan. David Babayan Suren Papikyan interrupts his working visit and returns to Armenia Azerbaijans provocation is another encroachment on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia. MFA Azerbaijan MOD publicizes data on own losses during latest Baku provocation Russia MOD: 2 ceasefire violations recorded in Karabakh The reason for Azerbaijan's aggression is not being sanctioned by the international community. Edmon Marukyan Four Armenian soldiers killed, six wounded because of Azerbaijani provocation. MOD Video shows how Azerbaijani soldiers approach and open fire at Armenian soldiers Armenia National Assembly cancels special session Legislature deputy speaker on Azerbaijani infiltration into Armenia: Not case where accountability is implied Azerbaijanis opened fire in direction of Sotk Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan army continues provocation, uses mortars Azerbaijani shooting resumes in direction of Armenias Tegh village Haykakan Zhamanak: Armenia Special Army Corps commander wounded in skirmish MOD: Armenian side has casualties and wounded, according to preliminary data Shots fired at Tegh village area, Armenia has casualty Armenia parliament vice-speaker: Turkey border shall be open for 3rd countries citizens at summers beginning Armenia lawmaker: Azerbaijan has violated mutual understanding on Karabakh issue Sargis Khandanyan: Armenia does not play football on CSTO issue Armenia Prosecutor General submits petition to parliament for consent to prosecute opposition MP Ruling force MP: Before sending mission, CSTO must record Armenia territorys occupation Photo traps of Armenias Khosrov Forest State Reserve capture grizzly bear again Peskov calls information about Egypt president's covert shipment of rockets to Russia sensational lie The Washington Post: Egypt planned to secretly send up to 40,000 rockets to Russia, leaked US document says Earthquake hits Iran-Turkey border zone, also felt in Armenia Sharm El Sheikh-Yerevan flight that landed in Turkey arrives in Armenia capital Bortnikov: Terrorists want to destabilize the situation in Caucasus 15 more people from Karabakh transferred to Armenia medical centers, 10 patients return Russia airspace to be closed for flights to Europe until 2029, Eurocontrol announces Armenia defense minister visits NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (PHOTOS) North Korea leader announces strengthening of war deterrence forces AraratBank provides support to 100 children from underprivileged families Foreign Affairs: External threat may force Iran to enter into open conflict on Armenias side Foreigners make about 400 real estate sales transactions in Armenia in February Russia emergency service: UAV falls in Belgorod city airport territory on Monday Along the lines of his visit to Estonia, Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan had a working lunch with Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, the President's Office informs Armenian News-NEWS.am. Khachaturyan welcomed the statements of the Estonian foreign ministry regarding the ongoing Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin corridor that links Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to Armenia, and thanked Estonia for its clear position on the issue. For his part, FM Reinsalu emphasized that Estonia is deeply interested in establishing stable peace in the South Caucasus. Also, he emphasized that Estonia fully supports the decision to deploy a permanent EU monitoring mission along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. During the conversation, both the further promotion of Armenian-Estonian cooperation and the effective use of the EU's Eastern Partnership platform were addressed. Reflecting on the current situation and problems in the South Caucasus, President Khachaturyan stressed that Armenia has adopted the approach of achieving stable and lasting peace in the region and establishing neighborly relations with its neighbors. In response, the FM of Estonia expressed his country's readiness to invest all possible efforts towards assisting in the peaceful settlement of existing problems in the region. Also, he welcomed the readiness of the Armenian side to normalize relations with Turkey without preconditions. Despite the fact that Russia and Armenia are allies, despite the fact that this mission is completely ready, the Armenian side prefers to make an arrangement with the European Union (EU) in order to deploy a civilian monitoring mission on the border with Azerbaijan on a long-term basis. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced this during a press conference Wednesday. "We have difficulties related to the situation in Armenia. When our Armenian friends were pushing the issue of the need for a CSTO mission on the border with Azerbaijan, to ensure some stability there. And during the summit in Yerevan, we reached an agreement on the document regarding the parameters of this mission. But it failed to be adopted because the Armenian colleagues began to insist that Azerbaijan should be strongly condemned in that document. We explained that if it is about condemnation, rhetoric, expressing positions, then everyone is free to do what they want here. But if we want to send a CSTO mission, then this is not necessarily conditioned by some external signs, some statementsand moreover, harsh. We are still willing to send a CSTO mission to the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, despite the fact that we are allies, despite the fact that this mission is completely ready, the Armenian side prefers to make an arrangement with the European Union in order to deploy a civilian monitoring mission thereon a long-term basis. Well, this is, in fact, the right of Armenia. But we must not forget that its about the border with Azerbaijan, and probably, if this mission is deployed without Azerbaijan's consent, it may be ineffective. Instead of strengthening confidence on the border, it can create additional tension," the Russian FM said. It's not that the peace agenda is nirvana, there are threats there too, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Wednesday. He explained that the peace agenda is not a document, it is a way of thinking and a certain view of the problems. "Who said that resistance to the peace agenda implies a struggle, and who said that the struggle is between us and others? This fight, first of all, is between us," Pashinyan added. He assured that no one is alien to emotion and historical memory. "Any concern of every citizen of Armenia is our concern. This is the characteristic of a government elected by the people. Sometimes we fall from one extreme to the other, pitting these agendas against each other. Contrary to the popular notion in Armenia, the truth is not one, it is many. We must choose the truth which we want to be ours," the PM said. Iran and Russia have reached an agreement to build the Rasht-Astara railway within 3 years. Iran's Deputy Minister of Transportation and Urban Development Shahriar Afandizadeh called the Rasht-Astara railroad the most important project in the country, Mehr reported. He added that the project completes the 162-kilometer north-south corridor from Bandar Abbas to Rasht and from Rasht to Astara and connects Iran with Russia and Northern Europe through Azerbaijan. Afandizadeh said that talks have been held with the Russian government in recent months to develop transit between the two countries. Pointing to the trilateral memorandum between Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan, he said that provisions for the construction and operation of the railway project are stipulated in 16 articles, which include determining the type of line design, including the width of rail lines. It is expected that with the investment of the Russians, the railroad project will be completed within 3 years, which is one year less than projected. According to the contract, Iranian contractors will fully implement the infrastructure of the railway line. On Wednesday, special assistant to Russian President Igor Levitin and his accompanying delegation as well as Iranian officials will visit the Resht-Astara railway line. In 2022 the trade turnover was impressive, said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Parliament on Wednesday. He explained that when Georgia's prime minister visited Armenia in 2019, the goal was to bring the trade turnover to $1 billion, and today the sides have approached or surpassed that figure. According to the PM, more electricity was exported to Georgia last year than in the previous 10 years combined. Pashinyan added that the high growth has its own problems, as the pace must be maintained, otherwise there will be a regression. "There are political, economic and warm human relations between Armenia and Georgia. We need to make these relations institutional. The fact that Armenian citizens can cross the border of Georgia with ID cards is an economic, political and cultural factor. It will contribute to the development of relations," he added. He called the most important indicator of the Armenian-Georgian relations the fact that since last year, the intergovernmental commission of economic cooperation is headed by the Prime Ministers of the two countries. "We are discussing the issue of expanding and improving the quality of teaching the Georgian language in Armenia and the Armenian language in Georgia," Nikol Pashinyan added. He also announced plans to discuss the issue of mutual recognition of work record. A resolution on the humanitarian consequences of the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh has been submitted to the European Parliament, calling on the Azerbaijani authorities to ensure the freedom and safety of movement through the Lachin corridor. The document is to be debated today, January 18, with a vote scheduled for tomorrow. Taking into account that the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia has been blocked since 12 December 2022, disrupting access to basic goods and services for tens of thousands of Armenians living there and preventing residents of Nagorno-Karabakh from leaving the region, the European Parliament condemns the actions of the Azerbaijani government and calls on Azerbaijani authorities to ensure freedom and security of movement through the corridor, including by air, in line with the Trilateral Statement of 9 November 2020. MEPs also urge Azerbaijan to refrain from actions aimed at undermining the functioning of the transport and energy connection between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in the future. The European Parliament also insists that the relevant UN agencies and international NGOs have unimpeded access to Nagorno-Karabakh to assess the situation and provide humanitarian assistance, particularly for the delivery of food and medicine, given the difficult medical situation and the risk of starvation. The deputies call on Azerbaijan to act in such a way as to ensure that the strategic road of the Lachin corridor remains open and no protests can deprive the people of Nagorno-Karabakh of their rights to access basic services and goods and to freedom of movement, regardless of whether the protesters have real environmental problems or other grievances. In the resolution, parliamentarians also call on EU and member state missions in both countries to increase support for the work of human rights defenders and, if necessary, to facilitate emergency visas and temporary asylum in EU member states. The MPs call on all parties, including the EU, to support civil society activities in promoting dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in order to establish mutual trust and conditions for long-term peace in the region as soon as possible; underlines the need for a comprehensive peace agreement that must provide firm guarantees for the rights and security of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh; calls on the EU to play a more active role in promoting and de-escalating the situation in the Lachin corridor; instructs its President to forward this resolution to the EU. The authors of the resolution are MEPs Viola von CramonTaubadel, Michele Rivasi, Sarah Wiener, Ignazio Corrao, Hannah Neumann, Ana Miranda, Rosa D'Amato, Francisco Guerreiro, Jordi Sole, Marketa Gregorova, Tineke Strik. The tragedy associated with the events in Ukraine began in 2014 and began with the anti-constitutional, anti-state armed coup in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War, residents of the besieged Leningrad and representatives of public patriotic associations. "As we know, this required us to provide assistance to the Crimeans. Then came the events in Donbass. And, in fact, full-scale hostilities in the Donbass have not stopped since 2014 - with the use of heavy equipment, artillery, tanks and aircraft. All this has been going on. Everything we are doing today, including the special military operation, is, as I have said many times, an attempt to stop this war. That's the point of our operation. And to protect our people who live there, in those territories. These are our historical territories. As I said before, after the break up of the Soviet Union... I will not give an assessment now, this is not the time or place, but at any rate Russia has reconciled itself to this event, despite the fact that these are our historical territories, Russian, but we have reconciled ourselves historically. Nevertheless, we couldn't help reacting to what started happening there after the coup d'etat, when they started, in fact, exterminating people who live in these territories just for the fact that they consider themselves connected to Russian culture, to the Russian language and to the traditions of their people and their ancestors. We have been patient for a long time, we tried to come to an agreement for a long time. As it turns out now, they were just leading us around by the nose, deceiving us. Well, it is not the first time this has happened to us. Nevertheless, we did our best to resolve the situation peacefully. It has now become obvious that this was by definition impossible, just that the enemy was preparing to take this whole conflict into a sharp and heated phase. I repeat, there was nothing left for us to do but what we are doing now," he said. The European Parliament called on the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately unblock the Lachin corridor and withdraw troops from Armenia, the European Parliament said in a resolution. The document says that the European Parliament welcomes the enhanced engagement of the EU with the South Caucasus countries, in particular the rapid deployment of an EU monitoring mission to the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan to monitor the situation in the region, to build confidence and help restore peace and security. It notes the importance of reducing Russian influence in the region by strengthening the EU presence, and in this regard MEPs call on the European Council to expand the number of deployed experts and increase the capacity of the mission. In addition, the European Parliament strongly condemns the latest Azerbaijani military aggression on 12 September 2022 on the sovereign territory of Armenia, which constitutes a violation of the ceasefire and has serious consequences for the peace process; is also concerned about alleged war crimes and inhuman treatment committed by the Azerbaijani armed forces against Armenian prisoners of war and civilians; Strongly condemns Azerbaijan's illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor in violation of the trilateral statement of 9 November 2020, as it threatens to provoke a deliberate humanitarian crisis for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh; Demands that the Azerbaijani authorities immediately restore freedom of movement in the Lachin corridor; Recalls that only diplomatic means will bring a just and lasting response to the conflict that will benefit the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan; Convinced that a lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan cannot be achieved by military means, but needs a comprehensive political settlement in accordance with international law, including the principles enshrined in the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, as well as the 2009 OSCE Minsk Group Basic Principles on Territorial Integrity, Self-Determination and Non-Violence; Supports the initiative of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to convene and mediate bilateral meetings between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Brussels and encourages the work of the EU Special Representative on the ground; Considers that the EU can play the role of an honest broker to prevent further escalation and achieve lasting peace; Urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to participate fully in drafting a comprehensive peace treaty; Reiterates that such a treaty must address all root causes of the conflict, including the rights and security of the Armenian population living in Nagorno-Karabakh, the return of displaced persons and refugees to their homes under the supervision of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; Calls for full implementation of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with Armenia and stresses the need to continue negotiations on the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement between the EU and Azerbaijan; Insists that any deepening of EU relations with Azerbaijan should remain contingent on the country's substantial progress in respect for human rights, the rule of law, democracy and fundamental freedoms. The ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor is deeply disturbing, said member of the European Parliament Robert Hajsel at the discussions on the humanitarian consequences of the blockade of Artsakh. He called on Azerbaijan to take all measures to ensure the free movement of people and humanitarian goods along the corridor. "The humanitarian situation in the region is already aggravated by a disruption of the gas supplies, and can soon be transferred into a humanitarian catastrophe. Around 100 to 20,000 people dont have access to essential goods and services such as medication and food and fuel," he said. "We have to strongly condemn the blockage of the Lachin Corridor and urge Azerbaijan authority, and peacekeeping forces to deploy in the region to respect and implement statements from 2020 and two ensure that access is open," he added. His colleague Martina Michels called on the EU to reject double standards. "People are freezing and hungry in Nagorno-Karabakh. And they need an air bridge back...The EU should stop double standards," she said. MEP Klemen Groselj believes that the blockade of the Lachin corridor has geopolitical implications for the stability and security of the South Caucasus. According to him, Azerbaijani aggression against the sovereign territory of Armenia combined with the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh follows the situations we have seen in the past in the Balkan wars, as well as in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He noted that Azerbaijan, in violation of the UN charter, is preventing any possibility of a comprehensive peace agreement that should guarantee the security rights of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. "This is why Azerbaijan must immediately reopen the corridor to enable freedom of movement, ensure access to essential goods and services, release all the POWs, and fully withdraw its armed forces from Armenia's sovereign territory," the politician said. "At the same time, the international community should negotiate a replacement of Russian peacekeepers with international peacekeepers under the UN mandate", he added. MEP Emmanuel Fragkos noted that there are three options for Armenians in Artsakh: they can renounce their identity, leave Artsakh or face the same fate as the Armenians did in Turkey in 1915. "The saving of the Armenians by an air bridge is the very least that we should be doing by the end of this week," he noted. MEP Marketa Gregorova recalled that according to its obligations, Azerbaijan is obligated to ensure that the corridor remains open. "I insisted Azerbaijan refrains from undermining the current defunctioning and allowing for the unhindered movement of goods and civilians," she said. According to MEP Fabio Massimo Castaldo, although the guns are still silent in Nagorno-Karabakh, the war is far from over. "We are now witnessing one of the worst sides of the war - the blockade of the corridor," he noted. He said an EU monitoring mission should have a mandate for a mission to Lachin to verify what is happening on the ground. "we must be proactive so that the population receives the necessary humanitarian supplies. If the Baku regime refuses access, we must impose strong sanctions against those responsible for these atrocities," he said. In conclusion, EU Commissioner Adina-Ioana Valean assured that the EU is closely monitoring developments in the Lachin corridor since early December 2022. "In a statement issued on 13 December, the EU called on the Azerbaijani authorities to insure freedom and security of movement along the corridor in line with commitments deriving from the trilateral statement of 8 November 2020. Restrictions to search for freedom of movement are causing significant distress among the local population. They are increasingly alarmed about the negative humanitarian impact resulting from the lack of food, medicine, and other essential goods and medical services in addition to regular disruptions to energy supplies and telecommunications," she noted. She recalled that the EU had allocated 3.6 million euros for humanitarian purposes in 2022. "The program focuses on two areas for its intervention: economic, and security, which includes programs to provide concept, affected people with material and financial support to have them meet there by basic needs," she said. "The current situation is not sustainable and creates tension, contrary to the much-needed confidence-building effort," she said. Hraparak daily of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: A source close to Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] authorities gave some details of the recent events. In conversations with the ruling majority, President Arayik Harutyunyan has repeatedly said that a new situation has been formed in Artsakh in recent months, and the balance of political forces and the composition of the government do not reflect the prevailing moods in Artsakh and do not express the people's point of view, so there is a need to form a new government and parliament, which is possible to do through new elections. Harutyunyan himself assured again that he is not going to run in the elections and believes that new, young people should run and form the [new Artsakh] authorities. But the thing is that at this moment [minister of state] Ruben Vardanyan also cannot run in the snap elections, and as a result of the resignations, it would turn out that both Arayik Harutyunyan and Ruben Vardanyan would have to leave [office], which, by the way, has become the idee fixe of the Azerbaijani side, as they believe that Vardanyan is the representative of Russia in Artsakh. At first, the leaders of Artsakh thought that they would be able to organize new elections and defuse the situation. But after the NA [(National Assembly)] president's statement, the topic was expanded, and other peoplethe former presidents of Artsakh, the RA, and most importantly, the Russian authoritiesbegan to interfere in the process. The most decisive, according to our source, was the signal that came from the RF [(Russian Federation)]: the Artsakh authorities were told that the [Russian] peacekeepers [in Artsakh] could not ensure the peaceful and safe course of the elections, so they urge [the Artsakh authorities] to refrain from such a step, after which a step back was made. Our source assured that there is no disagreement between Arayik Harutyunyan and Ruben Vardanyan. And the latter works with great enthusiasm and faith, cherishing hope that his work will yield results. Conspiracy theories have been with us for thousands of years. And these premises continue to flourish as people latch on to new ones and they thrive over the internet. One of the latest comes to us courtesy of a young woman on TikTok with the handle @momillenial_, who claims in a series of videos that the Roman Empire never existed but was created by the Spanish Inquisition. She does not believe that Romans created the Roman alphabet. Never mind the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the aqueducts. Academics have taken her to task saying that there is plenty of evidence that the Roman Empire stood from 27 B.C. to 476 A.D. This does not surprise Joseph Uscinski, professor of political science at the University of Miami and well-known expert on conspiracy theories. There are a lot of conspiracy theories like this one even though it seems strange, said Uscinski. There is a conspiracy theory saying that there were no Dark Ages, and there is another one that says we evolved from mermaids. Many conspiracy theories question human history and special political events, he noted. The internet and social media also has allowed conspiracy theories to reach large audiences and become the fodder of worldwide conversations. In his research, Uscinski polled 2,000 people nationwide in 2021 and came up with the most believed conspiracy theories. They are explained in the following list. JFK Assassination About 55 percent of those surveyed believe that the killing of former President John F. Kennedy was not carried out by one person. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, during a campaign visit. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the killing. Two days after Oswalds arrest, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby on live television. Many believe that the death was part of a government conspiracy to do away with the popular president. UFOs Approximately 50 percent of the people polled believe that the government is keeping information from the public that prove that Unidentified Flying Objects are aliens, and that these aliens have visited the earth. In the past few years, alien conspiracy theories have received a lot of mainstream news coverage in the United Statesadding fuel to the theory, Uscinski said. Genetically modified food Forty percent of those canvassed think that the dangers of genetically modified food are hidden from the public. This theory says the government (or someone else) is altering the food for some ulterior motive, perhaps to sell unsafe food or to purposely poison people. FDA Roughly 35 percent of the those polled believe that the Food and Drug Administration is deliberately preventing the use of natural cures for cancer and other diseases because of pressures from big drug companies. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Forty three percent of those surveyed think that senator and former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was killed as part of a large government conspiracy. And 33 percent of them believe that the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was also an act of complicity. Kennedy was killed on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California, during an event celebrating his victory after primary elections. He was seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. president. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel. A 40-year-old escaped fugitive, James Earl Ray, confessed to the killing and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Followers of conspiracy theories come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ethnicities, explained Uscinski. They tend to make less money and be less educated, he said. But that does not mean that highly educated people and those with money do not believe in them. Conducting brisk business at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his team inked MoUs worth around Rs 88,500 crore for various projects with a potential to create over 56,000 jobs, officials said on Tuesday. Industry Minister Uday Samant, who is part of the CM's entourage, said that in the first two days, the state government has signed agreements with several major global conglomerates and investors. Present at the ceremonies were top officials like Harshdeep Kamble, Vipin Sharma, T. Krishna, Shreya Eren, Ashish Nawade and others. The prospective investors include USA's New Era Cleantech Solution's Rs 20,000 crore coal gasification project (15,000 jobs) and Israel's Rajuri Steels and Alloys subsidiary's Rs 600 crore steel plant (1,000 jobs), both in Chandrapur. MoUs were also signed with two UK companies -- Varad Ferro Alloys will set up a Rs 1,520 crore steel project in Gadchiroli (2,000 jobs) and Rcube/Ark Data's investment for a Rs 12,000 crore plant in Pune (1,200 jobs) -- besides Portugal's Elite Plast AutoSystems proposing to start a Rs 400 crore plastic automotive project in Pune (2,000 jobs). Another big one will be GoGoRo Engineering and Badway Engineering's Rs 20,000 crore investment projects with employment potential of 30,000 across the state. Others include Mahindra Electric Vehicle Automobile Ltd's investment of Rs 10,000 crore in Pune (3,000 jobs), Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephones's Rs 20,414 crore across the state (1,525 jobs). These were preceded by proposals from Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Orenda India (Rs 16,000 crore), ICP Investments/Indus Capitals (Rs 16,000 crore), Greenko Energy Projects Pvt Ltd of Telangana (Rs 12,000 crore), Nipro Pharma Packaging India Pvt Ltd of Pune (Rs 1,650 crore) and Rukhi Agro Foods of Thane (Rs 250 crore). Shiv Sena (UBT) chief spokesperson and MP Sanjay Raut said that if all these investments are indeed coming, it will be good for the state. "However, let's wait till the investments actually come and jobs are really created before we comment," said a skeptical Raut, who had on Monday urged Shinde to visit Gujarat and get back projects of Maharashtra which had shifted there in 2022. The MoUs pertain to greenfield projects like data centres, pharmaceuticals, logistics, chemicals, automobiles, electric vehicles, renewable energy and ESDM. Among the most industrialised states in India, Maharashtra contributes 15 per cent to the national GDP and 16 per cent of the country's industrial output. The services sector accounts for much of the state's economy, up to 62 per cent of the state GDP, followed by the manufacturing sector which contributes 20 per cent through major industries including automobiles, engineering, textiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, petrochemicals, food processing and IT/ITeS. --IANS qn/arm ( 455 Words) 2023-01-17-22:38:03 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Tuesday modified its December 2019 order and allowed an increase in air traffic in Agra city. Counsel, representing the Airports Authority of India (AAI), submitted before a bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul that the court had allowed it to build an additional terminal and funds have been sanctioned for the project. Citing an inflow of tourists from all over the world to visit Taj Mahal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and others monuments, counsel contended that increasing the air traffic at the airport is the "need of the hour". Advocate A.D.N. Rao, assisting the court as an amicus curiae, said the AAI's application is for modification of the earlier order of the apex court. After hearing arguments, the top court noted that the required study has been conducted and also concurrence of the Centre as well as the state has been obtained. It emphasised that permissions, which include environmental clearance, are required to be obtained as it modified its earlier order. The top court had allowed the AAI to construct an additional terminal at the existing airport in Agra but added a rider that the authority and the Central government would not grant any permission to increase the traffic at the Agra air field until further orders. In December 2019, Centre's counsel had informed the apex court that the government would conduct a study to examine the number of tourists who utilise the airport and their increase over the years. The apex court has been monitoring efforts to protect the Taj Mahal. --IANS ss/vd ( 274 Words) 2023-01-17-22:50:03 (IANS) Aviation regulator Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked the airlines to formulate a policy on carrying pets on flights and prominently display it on their websites for better understanding of the passengers. According to the regulator, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has not yet issued any guidelines with regard to carrying pets in passenger compartments. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US has permitted its airlines to have their own respective policies for carriage of pets in the cabin. The aviation safety regulators worldwide have not issued any specific policy for carriage of pets inside the cabin and they have allowed their airlines to develop respective procedures for the same, said a senior official. "Similarly, in exercise of the powers conferred under Rule 24C of Aircraft Rules, 1937, DGCA has permitted the airlines to carry by air to, from and within India, animals, birds, and reptiles in an aircraft subject to the observance of the general conditions as specified in AIC 9 of 1985," the DGCA said. It is further clarified that within the ambit of the said rules, airlines are permitted to formulate their own procedures for carriage of pets or live animals in the cabin as the final responsibility of safety of flight is with the pilot-in-command of the flight, said the DGCA. "All airlines are advised to formulate and prominently display on their website the policy on carriage of pets for better understanding of the passengers," the official said. In a recent instance, an airline did not allow the pet of a family inside a flight in Bengaluru. As per the airline, the commander of the flight was not fully satisfied with the cage and the muzzle of the pet, which is why he could not allow it to be carried in the cabin. As per the airline, the laid down policy for carriage of pets on domestic flights clearly mentions that pet carriage is subject to the approval of the commander of the flight. --IANS kvm/arm ( 348 Words) 2023-01-17-22:54:02 (IANS) Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 18 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Urbanrise (an Alliance Group company), South India's Largest Real Estate Developer, today announced that the company has welcomed Actor Trisha Krishnan, as its Brand Ambassador. The announcement of partnering with Trisha acts in sync with the brand's effort to communicate its vision of delivering innovative and best-in-class residential projects to its customers, taking into account the perfect fit of the brand values and consonance between the actor and Urbanrise. Commenting on the announcement Manoj Namburu, Chairman and Managing Director of Urbanrise & Alliance Group, said, "Donning many strong roles in the Indian cinema such as Kundaivai in Ponniyin Selvan Trisha has always been well-liked and appreciated by millions in South India, and enjoys a solid connection with the common man. Trisha has always been known for being extremely friendly, down to earth, warm, and helping person and that synergizes with our brand's 'customer first philosophy'. Being a trusted and credible name in the industry, this partnership with Trisha will enable us to reach consumers across spectrums and reinforce our brand's mission of offering our customers superior quality projects with the best amenities." Speaking on the association, Trisha Krishnan said, "I am extremely happy to be part of the Urbanrise family as their brand ambassador. Having set many benchmarks in the realty sector, Urbanrise has carved a niche for itself and has become a household brand in South India. Through this partnership, I am happy to bridge Urbanrise's endeavor to offer consumers the best of homes and transform their home-buying dream into reality." The company has planned an innovative 360-degree campaign across multiple channels. The marketing campaign includes print advertisements, intriguing series of Television commercials, and Digital campaigns featuring Trisha. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India) The contractual employee has been identified as Sumit, a data entry operator. The Police said he was arrested for espionage activities in lieu of money and for providing classified data to foreign countries. The espionage network involved in leaking sensitive information related to Finance Ministry was busted by Delhi Police Crime Branch. During his cursory search, one mobile phone which was being used by him for sharing secret information related to the Ministry of Finance was recovered from his possession. Delhi Police Crime Branch registered a case vide FIR No. 17/23 on Tuesday under Official Secrets Act. (ANI) Fans love to lay their eyes on their favorite filmstars time and again on the silven screen and television. However, an overdose of the same films every week on television could be a killjoy and might even drive fans to the proverbial edge. On Wednesday, a letter went viral in which a viewer asked a private television channel to stop the airing of Amitabh Bachchan-starrer family drama 'Sooryavansham' (1999), which is screened almost every Sunday. While diehard Amitabh Bachchan fans might not be amused over the letter, the sender did not hold back when it came to expressing his views clearly and unambiguously in Hindi. The letter read, "Courtesy of your channel, me and my family now know Heera Thakur (characted played by the Big B in the film) and his family (Radha, Gauri) like we know our own kin. We can recite all the dialogues by heart. I want ask how many more times will you (the channel) air this film? How many times have they planned to screen this movie again? Who will bear responsibility if such repeated screenings of the same movie affects my mental peace and sanity? I humbly request you to redress my grievance on priority." The sender did not disclose any personal details and simply called himself 'Sooryavansham-pirit' (tormented by Sooryavansham). The letter was posted to the Mumbai office of the private channel with a query, which the sender said he hoped to receuve a reply to under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The letter. which went viral on social media, also drew comments from netizens aplenty. "Do you have the same question?" wrote a netizen. Another one quipped, "Don't waste gajar ka halwa on them who deserve Sooryavansham wali kheer." Another Twitterati wrote," I've never seen anything more on repeat than Sooryavansham ." Apart from Amitabh Bachchan, the mouth featured Southern belle Soundrya, Jaysudha, Anupam Kher, and Kader Khan, among others. (ANI) Shah Rukh Khan, who is gearing up for his upcoming action thriller 'Pathaan', revealed his 32-year-long dream of being an action hero on the big screen in the latest video. In a 'Pathaan conversations with Shah Rukh Khan' video released by the producers, Yash Raj Films, SRK said, "I came to the film industry 32 years ago to be an action hero but I missed the boat because they made me a romantic hero instead. I've only wanted to be an action hero. I mean I love DDLJ and I love Rahul and Raj and all these good sweet boys but I always thought I was an action hero, so for me it is it's my dream come true." About his character in 'Pathaan', the superstar revealed, "Pathaan is an easy guy, doing lot of tough things and I think he's naughty, he's tough but doesn't wear it on his sleeve. He's trusting. He's honest and I think he very single-mindedly thinks of India as his mother." SRK is paired opposite Deepika Padukone in 'Pathaan'. He and Deepika are one of the biggest on-screen pairings in the history of Indian cinema and have worked in films like 'Om Shanti Om', 'Chennai Express' and 'Happy New Year'. About Deepika and her impact in the film, Shah Rukh said, "You need someone of the stature of Deepika to be able to pull off a song sequence like Besharam Rang and then you know, to be able to do action, where she takes a guy and pulls him right over herself and beats him, she's tough enough to do that too. That kind of a combination could have only been achieved with someone like Deepika. It's a quite a layered character for an action film heroine so to say." Recently, the trailer of Pathaan' was showcased on the grand Burj Khalifa in Dubai. 'Pathaan' is part of Aditya Chopra's ambitious spy universe. The film also stars Dimple Kapadia and Ashutosh Rana in pivotal roles. It will hit the theatres on January 25, 2023. (ANI) India's Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday lauded the efforts of life sciences organisations during the Covid-19 pandemic in a Round Table on R&D and Innovation Opportunities in Life Sciences Sector at Davos. He also underlined India's role in driving better health outcomes across the world, being a large and reliable supplier of aiordable and high-quality drugs. While reiterating India's strong and growing life sciences ecosystem and its proud moniker of "the pharmacy of the world", he stated that India provided about 60 per cent of global vaccine supplies and 20-22 per cent of generic exports and further supported the global battle against the Covid-19 pandemic by providing essential drugs to about 185 countries. Giving an elaborate account of developed ecosystem of pharma sector including bio-pharmaceuticals and biosimilars and developing ecosystem for sunrise medical devices sector and growing Indian traditional medicines sector, he expressed confidence that the intervention of the government through production-linked incentive schemes will give the desired boost in the domestic manufacturing to make the country a global champion of reliable supplier of quality medicines and medical devices. Mandaviya shared three major focus areas of government that will make the country a global destination for R&D in pharma and medtech sector in 2047 - strengthening the regulatory framework that facilitates innovation and research in product development and expanding the traditional regulatory objectives of safety and quality; incentivising investments (both government and private) in innovation through a mix of fiscal and non-fiscal measures, thereby matching risks with remunerative financing options; and creating a facilitatory ecosystem designed to support innovation and cross-sectoral research as a strong institutional foundation for sustainable growth in the sector such as robust industry-academia linkages, collaborating across institutions and sectors and building innovation infrastructure. He remarked that the commitment to Universal Healthcare and the attention to schemes such as Ayushman Bharat - Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) and Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) etc., will create the required demand to indigenously develop cutting-edge products and technologies. He cited the view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that focus on innovation and research in pharma and medtech sector is very critical for Atma Nirbhar Bharat. He requested the Indian pharma-medtech firms to move out of their comfort zone and adopt innovation as a driving feature of their development strategies. He stated that the industry, academic institutions, and the government should work in tandem to create an ecosystem for innovation in both sectors in order for India to become a leader in drug discovery and innovative medical devices. Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla lauded the Indian government's extensive response in delivering reforms in the Indian healthcare ecosystem. "We must highlight and market the different initiatives and reforms, including different investment promotion schemes such as production-linked incentives on forums such as World Economic Forum at Davos," he said. --IANS avr/vd ( 486 Words) 2023-01-18-22:14:04 (IANS) The chapter of regular tiff between the Governor's House and the state secretariat in West Bengal, which was rampant during the tenure of the previous constitutional head of the state and the current Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankhar, seems to be over now. After a meeting between the new Governor C.V. Ananda Bose and the vice chancellors of all the state universities on Tuesday, which was also attended by the state Education Minister Bratya Basu, the common message that came from both the Governor's House and the state secretariat is that both sides will now work together for the development of the education sector. After the meeting, the Governor told mediapersons, "We all discussed issues in an extremely positive and encouraging ambience. The spirit of the discussion was how to open new avenues of education for the next generation, so that they can carry forward the rich academic heritage of the state. Education is the most powerful medium for changing the society. There will be a new Bengal which will lead the country and the world, spirited by what Rabindranath Tagore had said -- 'where the mind is without fear and the head is held high'." Basu, on his part, repeatedly addressed the Governor as "Chancellor", dropping a hint that the state government might re-amend the previous bill amended during Dhankhar's regime, making the Chief Minister the Chancellor of all state universities by replacing the Governor. However, when asked by the mediapersons, Basu did not give a direct reply on this count. "Tuesday's meeting was with the Chancellor, and not the Governor. As regards to the bill, that matter will be discussed in the Assembly," Basu said. He also said that the days of confrontation (with the Governor) are over now. "I profusely thank the Chancellor for giving us a patient hearing. The steam of the past completely evaporated today. We had an excellent meeting followed by an excellent lunch. It was decided that the Governor's House, state education department and the vice chancellors will work in a coordinated manner for the development of the state's education sector," the minister said. --IANS src/arm ( 369 Words) 2023-01-17-19:46:03 (IANS) The BJP's Tamil Nadu unit is in a crisis with several old warhorses in the party up in arms against state President K. Annamalai, while the Brahmin lobby, which has been extending its support to the party, is unhappy at his actions including his arrogant behaviour towards party cadres and even senior leaders. While Annamalai has gained support from the masses due to his several high-profile programmes, there is all round dissatisfaction against the functioning style of the former IPS officer who had quit his police job and jumped into the state BJP. Sources in the BJP told IANS that Annamalai and former state president and Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, L. Murugan don't see eye to eye. Murugan is a seasoned politician and has reached the BJP higher echelons through his work from the ABVP days. Murugan, as state President of the BJP, had given the party a semblance of respect by taking out the 'Vel Murugan' programmes across the state is not happy with the functioning style of Annamalai. While Annamalai is enjoying the support and blessings of the BJP's General Secretary, Organisation, B.L. Santhosh, the senior leaders of the party in the state are not throwing their weight behind him. His move for a Tamil Dravidian model for the BJP state unit was not accepted well by the upper castes who have been the traditional support base for the saffron party. Talking to IANS, a senior state BJP leader, who did not want to be named, said: "The BJP cannot shy of its roots and if the party is converted into a Dravidian model, it means that we are drifting away from the core ideology and this cannot be accepted." He also said that Annamalai was very arrogant and was behaving with even senior leaders who had built the party from scratch in an arrogant manner. This has also not gone down well with many party leaders. Another major factor is the RSS which is the support base for the BJP in any state as the ideological powerhouse of the party. In Tamil Nadu, a major number of RSS Karyakartas or office bearers are from the Brahmin community and the move to totally antagonise the Brahmins has not gone down well with the RSS also. The recent outbursts of actor-turned-politician Gayatri Raghuram, who was a state office bearer of the party, against Annamalai have not also gone down well with the senior leaders. She had alleged that women are not safe in Tamil Nadu BJP under Annamalai. The exit of Tiruchi Suriya, son of the powerful DMK leader and Member of Parliament, Tiruchi Siva, from the BJP is not also accepted by the party's senior leaders. Tiruchi Suriya was brought to the BJP by Annamalai but after a series of issues, he quit the party. The senior leaders are of the belief that the exit of Tiruchi Suriya and Gayathri Raghuram from the BJP has dealt a major blow to the party among the public. With the AIADMK fractured after the expulsion of O. Panneerselvam and other senior leaders, the BJP had a golden opportunity to occupy the main opposition space. However, a senior BJP leader told IANS that "the BJP has lost the opportunity to be the main opposition as the party in itself is divided in the state. This was a golden opportunity for the BJP to enter into the mainstream of Tamil Nadu politics but seems to have squandered the chance." --IANS aal/vd ( 595 Words) 2023-01-17-20:44:01 (IANS) The Delhi High Court on Tuesday adjourned, to January 30, the hearing of JNU student Sharjeel Imam's two different pleas seeking regular bail and interim bail in connection with a 2020 riots case involving allegations of sedition. A division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh was dealing with a petition seeking interim bail in a case where he was charged under Section 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code. Counsel for Imam said that he has been granted bail in another case where sedition charges were present. However, the court said that as the pleas are based on same FIR, they will have to hear them together as same issues cannot be agitated more than once. The bench said: "Two of your appeals (against denial of regular bail and interim bail by trial court) are pending for the same FIR. We will hear them together; you can't agitate same issue more than once. It can't be heard like this." Imam's counsel informed the court that his regular bail plea is scheduled for hearing in April and he has sought interim bail until the Suprene Court decides the constitutional validity of offence of sedition. The court observed that the apex court has not ordered the release of all those charged with sedition. Morever, Imam, in this case has been been charged with not just sedition but more offences, it noted. "The end result of both (pleas) is the same. You can't have it both ways. We have two bail applications before us today. We can't hear you today and then later. We will hear you together. Nowhere has Supreme Court said that you have to be enlarged on bail," the court said. Imam's counsel also made a point that his client's plea regarding the framing of charges in the matter is also pending. The court listed the matter for hearing on January 30 instead of April. --IANS spr/vd ( 332 Words) 2023-01-17-20:50:02 (IANS) BJP MP from Bengaluru South and national president of the party's Yuva Morcha, Tejasvi Surya, has come under the lens after IndiGo released a statement on Tuesday, claiming that a passenger had opened the emergency exit of its Chennai-Tiruchirapalli flight on December 10, 2022. While the airline didn't name the passenger, it said the incident occurred on IndiGo flight ATR 72-600, which was scheduled to depart from Chennai to Tiruchirapalli at 10.05 a.m. but was delayed by two hours due to the act. However, a passenger who was on the same flight has claimed that it was Tejasvi Surya who had opened the emergency exit, stating that the BJP MP was seated near the emergency exit and after the cabin crew explained the emergency rules, he pulled it open. This led to deplaning of all the passengers, and after two hours of waiting, the flight took off. The passenger said that the chief of BJP's Tamil Nadu unit, K. Annamalai, was also on the flight along with Surya. He said that Surya later travelled on the same flight, but he was removed from the seat near the emergency exit. B.T. Arasukumar, a former BJP leader and currently the spokesman of the DMK, who was also on the same flight, told IANS that he had seen both Surya and Annamalai on the flight, but did not know if the MP had opened the emergency exit. The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has commenced an inquiry into the matter. However, when contacted by IANS, the DGCA official declined to comment on the matter. When contacted, Surya's office informed IANS that a statement will be released soon in this regard. --IANS aal/arm ( 294 Words) 2023-01-17-20:50:04 (IANS) A Delhi court has granted anticipatory bail to a man accused of raping a woman and forcing her to undergo two abortions after her claims were disproved in court. The woman had alleged thar she was raped twice and her foetus was aborted twice by the accused after the ring ceremony. Counsel for accused Mangesh Kumar, Sanjiv Malik told the court that the woma was hiding her first marriage, whose divorce case was pending in Saket court. He argued that his client had got married with the womam and that was not a ring ceremony. "She didn't disclose about her first marriage and pedency of her divorce proceedings. In January 2021, she even celebrated her birthday at Kumar's house. She has not mentioned any specific details regarding the place where her forced abortion was got done. She also dishonestly and fraudulently concealed information about the IVF treatment. She, along with Kumar, went for IVF treatment, since they wanted a child. It shows that they were married. If the accused and the complainant did not intend to live like a couple, why the complainant would go with the accused for IVF Center?" he asked. The court noted that woman was hiding the treatment at IVF centre and on documents, she was mentioned as wife of Kumar. It also held that the contention of the woman's counsel that after her first abortion, she was fraudulently taken to the IVF centre on the false pretext of treatment, was not believable. There were also two dates of her ring ceremony which was not possible. "The complainant also failed to tell the name of the clinic or hospital where her two abortion were done. Also why there would be two engagement ceremonies," the court noted whole granting bail. On June 6, 2020, Mangesh Kumar, who works in a government hospital, met the woman through a matrimonial website, and told her that his wife died in 2018. The woman, in her statement, had said that she had refused to marry Kumar as her divorce case was pending and she had two kids from her earlier marriage. "But Kumar kept on insisting. Once he took me to Vasant Vihar at the house of his younger sister. I told his family that my divorce case was pending. At this his sister told me that she was an SI in Delhi Police and nothing will happen. In August 2020, my family met Kumar's family and his sister asked us to perform ring ceremony on which I agreed. In January 2021, the accused took me to his sister's house and offered me juice laced with sedative. I fell unconscious and when I regained conscious and Kumar sexually assaulted me," the woman had alleged. The woman had also alleged that she got pregnant and her pregnancy was aborted by the accused. On her complaint, a case of rape was lodged against Mangesh Kumar at the Chankyapuri Police station. (Atul Krishan can be approached at atul.k@ians.in) --IANS atk/vd ( 516 Words) 2023-01-17-21:26:03 (IANS) The Aam Aadmi Party's Karnataka unit on Tuesday charged the state's ruling BJP with "not having the guts" to take action in corruption issues like its governments did. AAP leader Brijesh Kalappa said Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai does not have the guts to take action against corrupt people, like the Aam Aadmi Party governments. Though the State Contractors' Association has flagging the 40 per cent commission racket of the BJP government and MLAs, the government has remained silent without conducting any investigation, he said. Addressing a press conference at the party's state office, Kalappa said: "State Contractors' Association President Kempanna held a press conference and exposed the corruption of Chitradurga's BJP MLA G.H. Thippareddy. "It has been revealed that Thippareddy had received a commission of Rs 90 lakh from contractor Manjunath. Kempanna, who has been consistently fighting against 40 per cent corruption, had also complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "But the BJP's governments at both central and state, have not conducted even a small investigation into this matter. Why is Narendra Modi, who used to mock former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for being silent, not speaking about the 40 per cent commission corruption of the state's BJP government?" Kalappa questioned. "Vijay Singla, Health Minister in the AAP government in Punjab, was accused of receiving 1 per cent commission. The AAP government immediately sacked him and ordered a probe. "The police immediately arrested him. However, in Karnataka, no action has been taken against the MLAs and ministers despite continuous allegations against them," he said. Kalappa asked why in the run-up to the elections, was the BJP government copying the AAP government's schemes related to education and health and not copying the anti-corruption stand? "The BJP leaders are trying to cover up the illegality by asking for evidence for the allegations made by Kempanna. How can there be evidence for such irregularities that happen at night instead of day time?" he said. "If the corruption is curbed on the lines of the Aam Aadmi Party, a huge amount of money will be saved. With this, free schemes can be implemented. The Aam Aadmi Party governments in Delhi and Punjab have proved this. Corrupt parties like the Congress and the BJP can only promise free schemes but they can't implement them," Kalappa claimed. --IANS mka/vd ( 400 Words) 2023-01-17-22:34:02 (IANS) AAP MLA Cruz Silva had asked whether the state government has any plan to reconstruct the historical sites destroyed by the Portuguese. In reply, Dessai said, "The government has plans to reconstruct some of the temples destroyed during the Portuguese rule." The reply also stated that 19 representations have been received from the public on the appeal issued by the archaeology department regarding historical sites destroyed by Portuguese rulers or during the Portuguese rule in Goa. Earlier also, the state government had announced plans to restore and beautify the monuments having historical importance. According to sources, a survey of all the archaeological remains and antiquities is presently underway. --IANS sbk/arm ( 160 Words) 2023-01-17-22:34:03 (IANS) Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Tuesday said that his government would not allow any constitutional crisis caused due to the civil society being adamant on not participating in the forthcoming Assembly election in the event that the Naga political issue remained unresolved. The solution to the much expected Naga political issue depends on the negotiating parties and the legislators and common people can only put pressure for an early solution, Rio, who is also the top leader of the ruling Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) told the media on the side line of a programme. The Chief Minister, who is likely to leave for New Delhi on Wednesday, welcomed the joint statement of the NSCN-IM and Naga National Political Groups (NNPG) declaring "unconditional commitment" to collaborate for the resolution of Naga political issues with the Central government. "Everyone wants a solution to the Naga issue. The solution depends on the negotiating parties and not the common people ... People can put pressure. All the 60 members of the Assembly are acting as facilitators and continuing their pressure too," Rio said. Besides the Naga political issue, the influential Eastern Nagaland People's Organisation (ENPO) remained firm to boycott the elections if their demand for a separate state -- of 'Frontier Nagaland' -- was not met before polls. Despite the Nagaland government's repeated appeal, the powerful Naga group remained firm to boycott the Assembly elections. Claiming that the six districts -- Mon, Tuensang, Kiphire, Longleng, Noklak and Shamator -- have been neglected for years, the ENPO has been demanding a separate state since 2010. On the state government's appeal to ENPO to reconsider its decision to boycott the state election to press for its separate state demand, Rio hoped that they would respond in a "positive manner". The Centre has been holding separate negotiations with dominant Naga outfit NSCN-IM since 1997 and the NNPG, comprising at least seven groups, since 2017. A Framework Agreement was signed with NSCN-IM in 2015 and Agreed Position with NNPGs in 2017. The stalemate continued as the NSCN-IM remained firm on its demand for a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas. --IANS sc/vd ( 366 Words) 2023-01-17-22:40:02 (IANS) The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought the Centre and the city government's response in six weeks on a plea challenging Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) act of allegedly making use of public money for Ganesh Chaturthi festival promotion by violating laws and also seeking de-recognition of the party. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other ministers should be removed from their positions due to their "deliberate breach" of the Constitution and the Representation of People Act, according to advocate-petitioner Manohar Lal Sharma. In the argument, it was claimed that the city government organised a Ganesh Chaturthi event on September 10, 2021, which was aired on TV channels, and that the state is prohibited from promoting religious celebrations under the Supreme Court's enunciation of the Constitution. It stated that because India is a secular nation, no government can be seen engaging in religious activities while using public's money. A division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said: "The September 20, 2021 order of this court reveals that the respondents counsel were granted time to file replies. Respondents no. 1 and 2 (Centre and city government) have not filed their replies. They are granted six weeks time to do the needful." However, the Election Commission has filed its counter-affidavit according to the HC's September 20, 2021, order. Earlier, representing the city government, lawyer Rahul Mehra had said that it was a "totally motivated and mischievous" petition filed in a form of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that needs to be dismissed with heavy costs. The Chief Minister requested the media to cover the celebration for individuals who could participate in it from their homes since the city government had forbidden the setting up of pandals to minimise congestion during the Covid-19 outbreak, Mehra had stated. According to the petition, Sections 408 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code are invoked by using public money for promotion or funding of religious work or trusts by the state. --IANS spr/vd ( 351 Words) 2023-01-17-23:14:02 (IANS) The Indian Army will soon be equipped with AK-203 assault rifles to be manufactured in India using the latest technology. India will produce six lakh AK 203 assault rifles with the help of Russia over the next 10 years. After being stuck for many years due to several issues, the production of AK-203 assault rifle has started in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. Being light in nature, the AK 203 assault rifles are equipped with state-of-the-art technology that makes it excellent in all-weather conditions. The assault rifle can fire 700 rounds in a minute. According to experts, the range of this rifle is from 500 to 800 metres. Its one magazine has the capacity of 30 rounds. The weight of the AK 203 assault rifle is 3.8 kg and the length is 705 mm (stock folded). After the commencement of production, 5,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles will be supplied to the Army by March. Under the second installment, 70,000 AK 203 rifles will be given to the Army in the next 32 months. Under this scheme, 100 per cent indigenous version of AK 203 assault rifle is to be produced in India under the Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited in Amethi. There is also a plan to increase the production and facilities in the future. --IANS gcb-avr/arm ( 228 Words) 2023-01-17-23:14:03 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Tuesday said a child adopted by a government servant's widow after his death would not be entitled for family pension. A bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and B.V. Nagarathna noted that a child is born to the deceased government servant after his death has to be contrasted with a case where a child is adopted by the widow of a government servant after his death. "The former category of heirs are covered under the definition of family since such a child would be a posthumous child of the deceased government servant. The entitlement of such a posthumous child is wholly distinct from a child being adopted subsequent to the demise of the government servant by the surviving spouse," the bench said in its judgment. The bench upheld the Bombay High Court order passed in November 2015, which held that under the Rule 54 (14) (b) of the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972 (CCS (Pension) Rules), the adopted child would not be entitled for the family pension. The top court said: "It is necessary that the scope of the benefit of family pension be restricted only to sons or daughters legally adopted by the government servant, during his/her lifetime. The definition of 'family' is narrowly worded under the CCS (Pension) Rules, in the specific context of the entitlement to 'family pension' and in relation to the government servant." It added, "therefore, the word 'adoption' in Rule 54(14)(b)(ii) of the CCS (Pension) Rules, in the context of grant of family pension, must be restricted to an adoption made by a government servant during his/her lifetime and must not be extended to a case of adoption made by a surviving spouse of the government servant after his/her death". The top court said that the deceased government servant would have had no relationship with the adopted child which would have been adopted subsequent to his demise, as opposed to a posthumous child. The top court dismissed the appeal filed by adopted son Shriram Shridhar Chimurka. Chimurkar was serving as a superintendent in the National Sample Survey Organisation at Nagpur. He retired on attaining superannuation in 1993. As he died issueless in 1994, his wife adopted the appellant in April 1996. The adopted son claimed a family pension payable to the family of the deceased government employee, from the Centre, which was rejected by the government. --IANS ss/vd ( 417 Words) 2023-01-17-23:26:03 (IANS) The RJD on Tuesday sent a show cause notice to Bihar MLA Sudhakar Singh for his remarks against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. "As per the instructions of the National President, this show cause notice is being issued to you. It has come to their notice that once again you have violated the decorum of coalition rules. It was unanimously passed in the RJD National Convention that only the respected National President of the party or the honourable Deputy Chief Minister Mr Tejashwi Yadav is authorized to talk about the issues of the alliance and the top leadership of the involved parties," said the show cause notice by the National Head General Secretary of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. The notice further read that Sudhakar Singh's alleged remarks can strengthen the forces against the ruling coalition government in Bihar. "You have consistently violated this resolution. Your statements continuously strengthen those forces who want to end the advocacy of justice, harmony and equality by trampling on the Constitution. Your objectionable statements are hurting a large section of the country, state and RJD," it said. The party has further sought an explanation from the Bihar MLA under the Rule-22 of Section-33 of Rashtriya Janata Dal's constitution within 15 days as to why strict disciplinary action should not be taken against him. Former Agriculture Minister Sudhakar Singh had described Nitish Kumar as "Shikhandi", a character in the Mahabharat. Singh slammed Nitish over the illicit liquor and alleged that there is a "home delivery" service of the liquor underway in the state. "Everyone knows that illicit liquor is done by home delivery in Bihar. If this can be done, can't the state government do home delivery of fertilizers to the farmers?" he said while addressing a gathering. Earlier, Tejashwi Yadav had said on Sudhakar that if someone talks like this while being in the Grand Alliance, it means that he supports the policies of the BJP. On October 2 last year, Bihar agriculture minister Sudhakar Singh submitted his resignation to the government. Sudhakar resigned over 'injustice' to the farmers of the state. Taking a dig at Sudhakar Singh's resignation, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said that the second wicket of the 'Mahagathbandhan' has fallen within two months. The allusion was to Singh's resignation which came about a month after another RJD minister Kartikeya Singh resigned from the Cabinet. (ANI) Hours after Bharatiya Janata Party MP Pradeep Kumar Singh remarked on Bihar's politics claiming that it too would witness Maharashtra-like-political events, the state's Chief Minister Nitish Kumar exuded confidence in the people and underlined that he has been "working" here for past 17 years. "Let them say whatever they want. What can we do if somebody wants to speak? In Bihar, people elect their government and we simply work. I have been working here for the last 17 years," CM Nitish Kumar said. Later, Nitish Kumar's Deputy, Tejashwi Yadav, also attacked the BJP and said that their 'strategy would not work in Bihar'. "BJP's Maharashtra strategy did not work in Bihar before and neither will it work now. When it did not work then how will it work now?," Tejashwi Yadav said. The remarks above of Bihar's leaders at the top position have come at the backdrop of Pradeep Kumar Singh's claim that the ruling Janata Dal (United) (JDU) MLAs and MPs in Bihar were in touch with the BJP. "JDU's MPs and MLAs are in touch with the BJP. Political events like Maharashtra will unfold in Bihar anytime soon," the MP from Araria said on Tuesday. The Araria MP claimed all JDU leaders, with the exception of the party's patron and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, were ready to join hands with the BJP. The BJP MP further said, "Our doors are open for everyone except Nitish Kumar. Very soon, a situation like Maharashtra would unfold in Bihar. JDU leaders are ready to jump ship and link their lot with the BJP." "I am disclosing inside information and saying this with full confidence. Wait for a while. A game very similar to Maharashtra will play out in Bihar," he added. Drawing further parallels between the two states, the BJP MP said the people of Bihar had lost faith in the JDU-RJD ruling coalition just as the people of Maharashtra were disillusioned with the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance of the Congress, NCP and the Shiv Sena. "The people of Maharshtra lost their trust in the Shiv Sena. On similar lines, no MLA or MP will stay with Nitish Kumar. They will desert Nitish Kumar and join the BJP and other parties," he said. Claiming that Nitish played with the people's mandate, which was for a JDU-BJP coalition, Kumar said, "Nitish Kumar will be left all alone. All MLAs and MPs are tired of him. Nitish-ji does not listen to any of his MLAs or MPs. Bihar lacks law and order. The people are aware of the situation in Bihar. Crimes, including robbery and abductions, are on the rise." "No MP or MLA would accept Tejashwi (Yadav) as the chief minister of Bihar. The JDU will be finished in the coming days. They will be history," the BJP MP further claimed. Last year in Maharashtra, a huge political crisis took place which followed the bulk desertion of rebel Shiv Sena MLAs and eventually resulted in the demise of the Uddhav-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. (ANI) According to the police, the deceased was taken to the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital Emergency Room (Sion Hospital) where he was declared "brought dead". The Dharavi Police has registered a case under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) [Punishment for murder] and the search of the accused persons is currently underway. More details are awaited. (ANI) Days after the Delhi Police arrested two terrorists planning to attack the national capital, the investigators in the case found that both terrorists have been in direct contact with the four terrorists. The investigators in the case have found that Naushad Ali, and his associate Jagjit alias Jagga who were arrested on Thursday for allegedly planning targeted killings, were in direct contact with four terrorists -- Nazeer Bhat, Nasir Khan and Nazeer Khan of Harkat-ul Ansar, and Nadeem of Hijbul Mujahiddin. Other than these, the duo was also in touch with gangsters-- Sunil Rathi, Neeraj Bawana, Irfan Chhenu, Hashim Baba, Ible Hasan and Imran Pehelwan, the police found. Earlier, the Delhi police had conducted a crackdown on the gangster-terrorists module following which the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had also registered cases against these gangsters under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). As per the investigators, the history of Naushad and Jagjit Singh also suggested a connivance between them [the aforesaid gangsters] and cross-border terror groups. According to the sources, in November 1996, Naushad shot dead one Abdullah Sherwani of Assam for 2.25 Kg of RDX and Rs 11.5 lakh, the investigation into the history of these two men revealed. The investigators told ANI that the RDX and money recovered from Sherwani were stolen by him from one Nadeem, a close associate of Ali and an active member of the terror module Harkat-ul Ansar. In this case, both Naushad Ali and Nadeem were booked for murder and under the explosive act. One more accused Bilal Siddiqui, from Kashmir, was also involved in the RDX supply, who was later arrested. The police have found that Ali had committed his first murder in 1991, wherein he stabbed one Jitender Dabla in the Jahangirpuri area to establish his supremacy in the area. It was later, when he was sent to jail, that he established contacts with Pakistani terrorist Asfaq alias Arif of Lashkar-e Toiba, and Nadeem of Harkat-ul- Ansar, the police said. Police have also found that when in jail, he [Naushad] came in close contact with one Asfaq alias Arif, a Pakistani terrorist, sentenced to death in the Red Fort Shootout case. It was Asfaq who later introduced him with Sohail, another Pakistani LeT terrorist who was transferred from a Kashmir Jail, the cops have found. Talking about Jagjit, police said in Nov 2018, he along with his friend Ravinder Singh alias Happy hired an Innova Crysta Car from Rudrapur after taking a number through the internet and booking the car to Allahabad. "They shot dead the cab driver dead and in the last week of November 2018, he went to the house of his brother-in-law at Ainokot in Gurdaspur, Punjab. This was when both Jagjit Singh and Ravinder Singh were arrested following an encounter with the police at Jhankaiya in Udham Singh Nagar," said a senior police officer. He further said that Jagjit came in contact with Bambiha Gang when he was lodged in Haldwani Jail in a murder case. Later in April 2022, he came out on 20 days parole but was attacked by criminals affiliated with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang in Gadarpur, Uttarakhand. Jagjit Singh then jumped parole and hid in Amritsar. It was also in Haldwani Jail when JAgjit Singh came in contact with Shamsher Singh alias Shera Kehlo, his brother Happy Kehlo and others belonging to the Arsh Dalla gang. For providing financial and legal assistance to gang members of Arsh Dalla, Jagjit Singh contacted the former's known associate Manpreet alias Manna of Ludhiana, who in turn introduced him with Arsh Dalla, the investigators have found. (ANI) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday restrained the CBI from proceeding with the order of Lokpal directing an investigation against the officials of MCD and other departments for allowing unauthorised construction in South Delhi and other areas. The order of Lokpal was challenged by the MCD. Justice Prathiba M Singh said, "Considering the issue raised by the petitioner, issue notice to the respondents, short affidavit be filed within 4 weeks and rejoinder within two weeks." "The CBI shall not proceed with the impugned order of the Lokpal," justice Singh said. However, the court said that there would be no interdiction on the inquiry related to unauthorised construction in South Delhi and other parts of Delhi. This is only the prima facie view and shall not have any bearing on the merit of the case, the court said. The matter has been listed on April 25 for further hearing. The High Court noted the contention of senior advocate Sandeep Sethi appearing for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that before directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to initiate investigation against the public servants of MCD, the Lokpal required the prior permission of the Delhi Government. The high court also noted that there was not any inquiry conducted by the CVC or the Lokpal in the matter. The CVC was merely asked to obtain report from the vigilance department of the MCD in relation to unauthorised construction. On the other hand advocate Apoorv Kurup appearing for the Lokpal submitted that before the investigation, notice was issued and reply was filed. Being unsatisfied with the reply, the order for investigation was issued. The civic body has challenged the direction of the Lokpal for CBI investigation against the officer of civic body. The high court on December 23 refused to stay the order of the Lokpal of India directing a CBI investigation against MCD officials. The Lokpal ordered the CBI investigation on the basis of a complaint against alleged illegal and unauthorised constructions in Delhi. During the hearing senior advocate Sandeep Sethi appearing for the petitioner submitted that the body like MCD, which is partially funded by the state government, its consent has to be taken. The bench earlier had said, "The Lokpal consists of three members with a retired high court judge... Once the Lokpal has considered the matter, there are some reasons. I have to hear them.. If you make out a case on the next date, I will stay the proceedings." The counsel for MCD had argued that nobody would be able to do their work if CBI investigation is ordered in a case such as the present one and by the same logic, an investigation should also be ordered against the police for crime in Delhi. While expressing its concern, the court had said, "MCD can't be equated with Delhi police. Its engineers are a problem. Unauthorised construction, encroachment, everything takes place. Something has to be done." The Lokpal initiated the proceedings on a complaint filed by Vikram Singh Saini, a former General Secretary of Samajwadi Yuvjan Sabha. He lodged a complaint in December 2021 and alleged that certain "illegal constructions" in South Delhi were because of their (Engineers) conduct. On the other hand, MCD had refuted the allegations and its petition claimed that the complainant filed a "frivolous, baseless and vague complaint" to the Lokpal. There are no allegations of corrupt activities. The petition stated that the Lokpal passed a "blanket order" on the basis of an "incoherent and general complaint" with respect to illegal constructions in South Delhi in 2020-21. The petition said the data depicts a "steady decline" in unauthorised constructions in the south zone and the officials have been discharging their duties effectively. "This fact is also evident from the data from the year 2018. It shows that out of 1,141 properties booked, 606 were demolished, 223 were sealed, prosecution in 326 and letter in all such properties were duly issued," the petition said. The MCD has contended that the order passed by the Lokpal violated the principles of natural justice as the investigation was ordered against MCD officials who were not party before it. (ANI) The incident happened on Tuesday morning when Bangladeshi smugglers tried to enter India illegally, the BSF said. "Brave CT Ram Pratap Tetarwal @BSF_SouthBengal got severe injuries on the line of duty while fighting with smugglers in the bordering area of Distt Nadia(WB)," the BSF-SouthBengal tweeted. Further details are awaited. (ANI) The central government filed a counter-affidavit in the Supreme Court justifying its eighth successive ban on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) as an 'unlawful association'. The Centre told the SC that 'any organisation that has the objective of establishing Islamic rule in India cannot be permitted to exist.' They should not be allowed to be perpetuated in our secular society, the Centre further added. The Centre has filed an affidavit pertaining to a petition challenging the ban on SIMI. The affidavit was considered on Wednesday by a bench led by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, which is seized of a petition filed by a former SIMI member challenging the 2019 ban order of a tribunal constituted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The Centre, in its affidavit, submitted alleged, "SIMI objectives are contrary to the country's laws as the organisation aims to mobilize students and youth in the propagation of Islam and obtain support for 'Jehaad.' It emphasised that despite being banned over a number of years, SIMI through various front organizations continued to indulge in unlawful activities, therefore, a new ban had been issued. "Despite being banned since September 27, 2001, except for a brief period in between, the SIMI activists are associating, meeting, conspiring, acquiring arms and ammunitions, and indulging in activities which are disruptive in character and capable of threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India," stated the Centre in its affidavit. Adding further, the Centre maintained that SIMI activists are in regular touch with the associates and masters of SIMI based in other countries and the actions are capable of disrupting peace and communal harmony in the country. "Their stated objectives are contrary to the laws of our country. Especially their object of establishing Islamic rule in India can, under no circumstances, be permitted to subsist," the Centre said. Stressing that SIMI continues to exist despite the continuous prescription since 2001, the government pointed out that the latest order of a five-year ban in 2019 was necessitated in view of the group carrying on its unlawful activities through more than three dozen front organisations, which had regrouped across several states under different names. "There are over three dozen other front organizations through which SIMI is being continued. These front organizations help SIMI in various activities including collection of funds, circulation of literature, regrouping of cadres, etc." The Centre urged the SC to dismiss the petition challenging the Centre's decision to ban SIMI as an "Unlawful Association." During the hearing, the petitioner's counsel sought time to file a rejoinder on Centre's affidavit on the ground that it has examined the counter. The counsel appearing for Centre also sought adjournment. The court adjourned the matter on the request made by both counsels. (ANI) Fugitive underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim's gang member Salim Qureshi's family entered Pakistan illegally three times since 2013 via United Arab Emirates to attend Chhota Shakeel's functions, a National Investigation Agency chargesheet has revealed. In the chargesheet filed in a Mumbai Court, the NIA recorded the statement of Qureshi's wife Sazia Mohammad Salim Qureshi who lives in the city, in a terror funding case. Making a sensational claim, Sazia Qureshi said that they were allowed entry and exit to and from Pakistan's Karachi Airport without the stamp of their arrival or departure on their passports. The NIA, which is probing D-company's syndicate and terror funding, has come to know during interrogation that Karachi airport is under the control of D-company. Stamps are not put on the passports of those who come to the Karachi Airport for striking business deals with Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel and his family members or D-Company, the NIA probe revealed. They are received from the VIP lounge inside Karachi airport and directly taken to Dawood Ibrahim or Chhota Shakeel's house. The dominance of D-company at Karachi airport can be gauged from the fact that when the people who came to meet return, they are sent directly to Dubai or Gulf countries without immigration clearance. In this way, there is no inkling of anyone meeting Dawood Ibrahim or Chhota Shakeel or reaching Pakistan at the international level, the probe revealed. The NIA, engaged in the investigation of terror funding, got information about this route during the interrogation of the brother-in-law of Chhota Shakeel and the wife of the arrested accused Salim Qureshi alias Salim Fruit. In her statement, Sazia said that she along with her two sons Zaid (22), Salik (13) and daughter Farza (19), travelled illegally to Pakistan thrice (once in 2013, and twice in 2014) to attend engagement and marriage ceremonies of fugitive gangster Chhota Shakeel's daughters. She said that Salim attended only one out of the three functions and Shakeel was present in all of them. Sazia had travelled to Karachi in 2013 along with her children to attend Shakeel's daughter Zoya's engagement. Salim did not attend this function. Shakeel was also present during the event, the NIA said. She went to Pakistan again on March 24, 2014, with her children illegally to attend Shakeel's younger daughter Anam's engagement in Karachi. "We were taken out of Karachi Airport without stamp by some person who was sent from Chhota Shakeel and went to Shakeel's house to attend the engagement ceremony. We stayed at Shakeel's house in Karachi for 5-6 days. Then some person sent from Chhota Shakeel, arranged a ticket for UAE, we entered Karachi Airport without a stamp. I along with my children went to UAE. After that we came to India," she said in her statement to the NIA. Sazia further said that she returned to Pakistan again on September 18, 2014. Salim accompanied her besides the children during this visit. They had visited to attend Chhota Shakeel's elder daughter Zoya's marriage in Karachi. They stayed at Shakeel's house in Karachi after which they returned to India via UAE. The NIA chargesheet revealed that Sazia had got married in 1999 to Salim who was a friend of her brother Shahid. "I did love marriage with him with the consent of our family. At that time Salim was aware that my sister Nazma Shakil Sheikh is the wife of Chhota Shakeel," she told NIA. She shifted to Dubai with Salim and Zaid in 2000 and stayed at Dehra. In 2006, Salim was deported to India. "After reaching India Salim was arrested by Mumbai Police Crime Branch. Hence, I along with my children returned to India. Salim was in Arthur Road Jail till 2010. During Salim's jail custody, I was in India only. When Salim was released from Jail, we went for Umrah (Saudi Arabia) along with family," she said. Sazia's sister Nasra stays in Uttar Pradesh and Asif Qureshi is her husband. They both attended Shakeel's younger daughter Anam's engagement in Karachi. Sazia had visited Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Mauritius, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Maldives as part of her foreign visits. (ANI) Two terror suspects arrested recently by Delhi Police for allegedly planning targeted killings in India were in direct contact with at least four persons who have links with Pakistan-based terror organisation Harkat-ul Ansar and Hizbul Mujahideen, investigators have found. According to the Delhi Police, both Naushad Ali and his associate Jagjit Singh alias Jagga arrested last Thursday, were in touch with Nazeer Bhat, Nasir Khan and Nazeer Khan of the Harkat-ul Ansar outfit and Nadeem from the Hizbul Mujahideen, which has been designated as a terror outfit in India and Canada. The revelations come days ahead of the Republic Day celebrations in Delhi where security has been heightened for the event. The duo were also in touch with certain gangsters namely Sunil Rathi, Neeraj Bawana, Irfan Chhenu, Hashim Baba, Ible Hasan and Imran Pehelwan, police have found. The two arrested terrorists were tasked to carry out targeted attacks on "right-wing Hindu leaders," Delhi Police had said. Delhi police have previously too, conducted a crackdown on the gangster-terrorists module after which NIA had also registered cases against gangsters under the UAPA. The gangsters against whom UAPA has been slapped include Lawrence Bishnoi, Goldi Brar, Vikram Brar, Neeraj Bawania, Tillu Tajpuria, Sukhpreet and Dilpreet and others. Investigators say that probe into the history of Naushad Ali and Jagjit Singh suggests a connivance between gangsters and cross-border terror groups. According to sources, in November 1996, Naushad had shot dead one Abdullah Sherwani of Assam for 2.25 Kg of RDX and Rs 11.5 lakh, a police investigation into the history of the two men revealed. Investigators have told ANI that the RDX and money recovered from Sherwani, were stolen by him from one Nadeem, a close associate of Naushad and an active member of Pakistan based terror module Harkat-ul Ansar. In this case, both Naushad Ali and Nadeem were booked on charges of murder and under the Explosive Act. One more accused Bilal Siddiqui, from Kashmir, who was involved in the RDX supply was later arrested. Police have found that Naushad had committed his first murder in the year 1991, in which he stabbed one Jitender Dabla in Jahangirpuri area to establish his supremacy in the area. It was later, when he was sent to jail, that he established contacts with Pakistani terrorist Asfaq alias Arif of Lashkar-e Toiba, and Nadeem of Harkat-ul- Ansar, police said. Police have also found that while serving time in jail, he had came in close contact with one Ashfaq alias Aarif, a Pakistani terrorist, sentenced to death in the Delhi Red Fort shootout case. It was Ashfaq who later introduced Naushad to Sohail, another Pakistani LeT terrorist who was transferred from a Kashmir Jail. Talking about Jagjit, police said in November 2018, he along with his friend Ravinder Singh alias Happy had hired a car via the Internet from Uttarakhand's Rudrapur booked it till Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. "They shot dead the cab driver and in the last week of November 2018 he went to the house of his brother-in-law at Ainokot in Gurdaspur, Punjab. This was when both Jagjit Singh and Ravinder Singh were arrested following an encounter with the police at Jhankaiya in Udham Singh Nagar," said a senior police officer. Jagjit, police said, came in contact with Bambiha Gang when he was lodged in Uttarakhand's Haldwani Jail in a murder case. Later, in April 2022 he was released on 20 days parole but was attacked by criminals affiliated with Lawrence Bishnoi gang in Gadarpur, Uttarakhand. Jagjit then jumped parole and hid himself in Amritsar. It was also in Haldwani Jail when Singh came in contact with Shamsher Singh alias Shera Kehlo, his brother Happy Kehlo and others of Arsh Dalla Gang. For providing financial and legal assistance to gang members of Arsh Dalla, Jagjit Singh contacted Dalla's known associate Manpreet alias Manna of Ludhiana, who inturn introduced him to Arsh Dalla, the investigators have found. (ANI) Tribals continued their protest at the border of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh for the 15th day on Wednesday against the construction of a bridge on the Indravati river which, they say, would benefit the mining companies, but harm the environment and affect the interests of local inhabitants. Government officials feel that tribals would end their protests once the benefits of the bridge are explained to them. Additional Collector of Bhamragarh, Shubham Gupta said the bridge would bring connectivity between Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh over the Indravati river which acts as a natural border between Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. But members of tribal communities of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are camping on the state border for the last two weeks to protest against the construction of a bridge across the Indravati river. They say, "With no basic facilities here, this will facilitate loot of Jal-Jungle-Zameen." The tribals are staging a dharna on the exposed bed of the Indravati river which acts as the natural boundary between Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. Activists and agitators fear that the bridge will only benefit corporates and will destroy the local environment and ecosystem. Activist Lalsu Nogoti said," The protesters feel the bridge will help mining projects and huge companies that seek to profit from the exploitation of local natural resources." "People from 20-25 villages from Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra are here. There are no basic facilities here even after 75 years of independence. Such bridges are only to facilitate the loot of 'Jal-Jungle-Zameen'. The protest began on Jan 4. We intend to protest indefinitely," said Lalsu Nogoti, tribal leaderHowever, government officials are optimistic that the tribals will take back the agitation once the benefits are explained. Additional Collector of Bhamragarh, Shubham Gupta said, "As far as I know, it's being built in the Chhattisgarh area. With this people on the Maha-Chhattisgarh border won't face difficulty in commuting. I don't think halting the construction is right. We'll talk to people and emphasise why the bridge is important." Gupta said, "This bridge will connect both the states. All the tribals of Maharashtra who are participating in this protest will be explained to them about the importance of the bridge, after which their opposition will end." (ANI) The video surfaced on social media on Tuesday where a couple was seen making indecent gestures. Police took prompt action and detained the man in the viral video, the girl turned out to be a minor. Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (ADCP) Central Lucknow Rajesh Srivastava told ANI on Wednesday, "A video came to light, yesterday, showing a man & a minor girl sitting on a scooter in an inappropriate manner, under Hazratganj Police station area in Lucknow." "Case has been filed under IPC sec 294, 279 and the 23-year-old, Vicky Sharma, who was driving the scooter has been detained and his scooter has been seized" the ADCP added. The case was registered for spreading obscenity in a public place. the police said, adding that the accused youth is said to hail from a rural environment while the girl accompanying him turned out to be a minor. (ANI) After completing 44 glorious years of service to the nation, IL 38 aircraft of the Indian Navy will be flying over the Kartvya Path for the first and last time on Republic Day this year. The Republic Day fly-past will comprise 45 Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft, one from the Indian Navy and four helicopters from the Indian Army, said Wing Commander Indranil Nandi. Among the different formations by the IAF officers, Bheem formation will be new this year. It will be comprised of 40 deg Pitch-UP and SU-30 streaming fuel by three aircraft. There will be a total of 13 formations like arrow, abreast, arrowhead, diamond and others by aircraft like Mig-29, Rafale, Jaguar, SU-30 etc, he said. IL 38SD aircraft of the Indian Navy was decommissioned on January 17, 2022, after completing 44 glorious years of service to the nation. The aircraft was commissioned into the Indian Navy in 1977 and remained a formidable air asset throughout its service life. The IL 38 was an all-weather aircraft with long endurance and substantial operating range. The proceedings of the Republic Day Parade at Kartavyapath will commence with the unfurling of the National Flag and presenting of the Rashtriya Salute to the President of India. The President would be assisted in the unfurling of the National Flag by Fit Lt Komal Rani. The air warriors participating in the Republic Day parade have been selected through a stringent process from across the Air Force. The contingent undergoes an intensive practice session every day starting in the early hours of the day. The Contingent will consist of four Officers and 144 air warriors marching in a Box formation of 12 Rows and 12 Columns. The Contingent will be led by Sqn Ldr Sindhu Reddy with three supernumerary officers Flt Lt Ayush Agarwal, Flt Lt Tanuj Mailk and Fit Lt Pradhan Nikhil. The IAF has won the Best Marching Contingent trophy in the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2020. The award of the Best Marching Contingent in the popular choice category in 2022 was also won by the IAF. The marching tunes for the contingent will be played by the Air Force Band contingent consisting of 72 musicians and three drum majors. The band would be led by Warrant Ashok Kumar who has the distinction of participating in the RD Parade Airforce band contingent for the past 28 years and leading the contingent for the past 16 years. The famous martial tune, 'Sound Barrier' composed by MWO JA George VSM and Ladakoo composed by Fit Lt L S Rupachandra would be played on "Quick March' while the IAF contingent marches past the Hon'ble President. The Band would also play other martial tunes like Astronaut, Vijay Bharat, Space Flight, Vayu Shakti, Benihal, Saare Jahaan Se Achha, Northern Border, Tiger Hill and Nidar Yodha. The theme of the IAF Tableau is "Indian Air Force: Power Beyond Boundaries". (ANI) GDP reaches new level as Chinese economy embarks on new journey of hope Xinhua) 08:09, January 18, 2023 *China's economy grew 3 percent year on year to a record high of 121.0207 trillion yuan (about 18 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022. Compared with major economies across the world, the growth rate is relatively fast. *The economy is bound to recover as the fundamentals of the Chinese economy -- its strong resilience, enormous potential, great vitality and long-term sustainability -- remain unchanged. *Shoring up confidence is crucial for economic recovery. In 2023, the worsening global economic situation needs China's steady growth as a stabilizer. BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's economy posted steady growth in 2022 despite pressures including epidemic resurgences and a complicated external environment, with its gross domestic product (GDP) reaching a new level. The economy grew 3 percent year on year to a record high of 121.0207 trillion yuan (about 18 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday. Workers are on duty at the construction site of the Huafu mega bridge at the Sichuan-Chongqing section of the Chongqing-Kunming high-speed railway in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Nov. 28, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao) This marks a new and higher level in terms of economic aggregate, after the Chinese economy topped the thresholds of 100 trillion yuan and 110 trillion yuan in 2020 and 2021, respectively -- maintaining its position well as the world's second-largest economy, Kang Yi, head of the NBS, told a press conference. But this is "still a small step forward," Kang said. The country needs to more than double the current per capita GDP of about 12,700 U.S. dollars to reach its goal that its per capita GDP will be on par with that of mid-level developed countries in 2035. Compared with major economies across the world, however, the 3-percent growth rate is relatively fast, he said, attributing the economy's rebound from stronger-than-expected shocks to the timely support of pro-growth policies. OVERCOMING CHALLENGES When asked to comment on the overall performance of the Chinese economy in 2022, Dominik Peschel, head of the Economics Unit of the Asian Development Bank Resident Mission in China, noted several headwinds the country had to deal with, including COVID-19, a property market downturn and softening export growth. To stabilize economic growth, the Chinese government mobilized additional funds for infrastructure investment and gradually loosened monetary policy. Infrastructure investment supported economic growth, as did solid growth in manufacturing investment. As a result, industry grew faster than services, while household consumption was weak, he noted. In breakdown, China's industrial output went up 3.6 percent year on year in 2022, while fixed-asset investment rose 5.1 percent year on year. Retail sales contracted 0.2 percent year on year in 2022. A total of 12.06 million new urban jobs were created last year, exceeding the annual target of 11 million. The Chinese people became more affluent in 2022, with per capita disposable income reaching 36,883 yuan, up 5 percent year on year in nominal terms. China's consumer prices posted a mild growth of 2 percent in 2022, in sharp contrast to the global spike. Tourists visit Nanqiang Street in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Oct. 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) So far, China has built the world's largest and most technologically advanced network infrastructure, and the industrial Internet has been widely integrated into 45 national economic categories. Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that innovation has been a bright spot in China's economy in recent years, despite headwinds due to COVID-19. New energy and digital industries have helped stabilize overall economic development. "The national economy continued to develop despite downward pressure, economic output reached a higher level, employment levels and prices were generally stable, people's lives had been continuously improved, new achievements were secured in high-quality development, while overall economic and social development was stable and healthy," said Kang. HOPES AHEAD When asked about China's economic outlook in 2023, Kang said the economy is bound to recover as the fundamentals of the Chinese economy -- its strong resilience, enormous potential, great vitality and long-term sustainability -- remained unchanged. Robots conduct welding work at the workshop of an automobile manufacturing factory in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Jan. 14, 2023. (Photo by Zhang Jingang/Xinhua) Citing a solid material foundation, vast market potential, strengthened new drivers of growth, the release of dividends of reform and opening-up, as well as rich experience in macro regulation, Kang said the Chinese economy is certain to see an overall improvement this year. Given the country's optimized epidemic response, Kang believed that consumption will revive this year. Final consumption contributed 32.8 percent to the GDP expansion in 2022. As for the property industry, Kang said it will have less drag on the economy in 2023 than in 2022. There is still room for China's property sector to grow, as the country's urbanization rate reached 65.22 percent in 2022 -- still much lower than the 80 percent found in developed countries, he said, while also pledging measures to support the demand of urban residents for home ownership and improved housing conditions. However, Kang also warned of possible risks in 2023, as the foundation of domestic economic recovery is not yet solid, while the domestic triple pressures of demand contraction, supply shock and weakening expectations, are still concerns. China will make economic stability its top priority and pursue progress, while ensuring stability this year, he said. "Shoring up confidence is crucial for economic recovery. In 2023, the worsening global economic situation needs China's steady growth as a stabilizer," Zhang Yansheng noted. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Odisha police arrested a narcotics drug supplier absconding for two years in Ganjam district of Odisha on Tuesday, as per an official release. The accused was arrested on January 15 by a Special Cell supervised by ACP Attar Singh near Tehsil Office, Digapahandi. The 29-year-old drug supplier, Badakulu Ludu aka Sushant was reportedly absconding from Delhi in the case of supplying Ganja. Delhi Police announced Rs 50,000 cash reward against him. "Accused was absconding in a case of drug trafficking registered at Police Station Crime Branch, Delhi in the year 2021. Proceedings to declare him Proclaimed Offender were going on in the trial court of Delhi. The arrested had a reward of Rs 50,000 from Delhi Police for any information leading to his arrest," read the press release. According to the release, the drug supplier was involved in supplying Ganja in Delhi/NCR for the last five years. "There was also information that the accused was still indulging in the supply of narcotic drugs from Odisha to various parts of the country including Delhi/NCR," as per the official release. Multiple teams were sent to different areas of Odisha to track the movements of the fugitive. After efforts of more than three months, information was received by the Special Cell team about the location of the accused in the Digapahandi area, which eventually led to his arrest on January 15. "During the interrogation of Badakulu Ludu, it has been revealed that he is the kingpin of the inter-state narcotics drug cartel," reads the press release. Further investigation to identify and arrest the remaining members of the drug syndicate is in progress. (ANI) The Supreme Court cautioned courts and adjudicating authorities against using free online sources like Wikipedia for legal dispute resolution. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Vikram Nath said online sources such as Wikipedia are based on a crowd-sourced and user generated editing model that is not completely dependable and can promote misleading information. It acknowledged the utility of the platforms that provide free access to knowledge across the globe, however, said that court, adjudicating authorities should endeavour to persuade counsels to depend upon sources that are more authentic and reliable than Wikipedia. The remarks of the apex court came after noting that in the case before it, the Commissioner of Customs (Appeal) and the Mumbai Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) had relied on Wikipedia to support their findings. "We say so for the reason that these sources, despite being a treasure trove of knowledge, are based on a crowd sourced and user generated editing model that is not completely dependable in terms of academic veracity and can promote misleading information as has been noted by this court on previous occasions also. The courts and adjudicating authorities should rather make an endeavour to persuade the counsels to place reliance on more reliable and authentic sources," the bench said on Tuesday. (ANI) Union Civil Aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday said the emergency exit door of an IndiGo flight last year was opened by "mistake" and BJP MP Tejasvi Surya has already apologised for it. "It is important to look at the facts. The (emergency) door was opened by him by mistake when the flight was on the ground and after all checks, the flight was allowed to take off. He also apologised for the mistake. All protocols were followed and DGCA has investigated the matter. It was found all protocols were followed and pressurisation was also checked," Scindia told reporters. It is alleged that Tejasvi Surya accidentally opened the emergency exit of a flight from Chennai to Tiruchirapalli at the Chennai airport during the boarding process in December last year. DGCA said on Tuesday that a passenger on IndiGo 6E 7339 flight from Chennai to Tiruchirappalli opened the emergency door on December 10 last year and it had taken due note of the incident and ordered a probe. IndiGo also said the passenger accidentally opened the emergency exit door and apologised for the action. "A passenger travelling on Flight 6E 7339 from Chennai to Tiruchirapalli on Dec 10 accidentally opened emergency exit during boarding process. Passenger apologised for the action. As per SOPs, aircraft underwent mandatory engineering checks which led to delay departure," IndiGo statement said. A senior DGCA official told ANI that the incident was duly reported. "The passenger apparently opened the RH emergency exit door by mistake while the aircraft was still on the ground. The crew moved in swiftly and all appropriate action to restore airworthiness such as reinstalling the door, pressurisation check was carried out before the flight was cleared for departure. No safety protocol was compromised with," the official said. Opposition parties have targeted Tejasvi Surya over the incident. (ANI) Giving some positive news for the sinking town of Joshimath, Disaster Management Secretary Ranjit Kumar Sinha on Wednesday said that the water discharge in the town has reduced to 100 litres per minute (LPM) from 540 LPM. Addressing the media about the works being done related to relief and rescue, permanent/temporary rehabilitation after the land subsidence and landslides in the Joshimath town area, Shina said, "The water discharge in Joshimath presently reduced to 100 LPM from 540 LPM. This is positive news." He informed that Uttarakhand Chief Secretary Sukhbir Singh Sandhu has urged the directors and scientists of various technical institutes working in Joshimath to study the affected area on an immediate basis and make the study report available at the earliest. "Landslide study in Joshimath should be done in a time-bound manner. Various technical institutes should also share their study reports with each other. Along with clarity in the study reports, the solution should also be discussed," he said. Secretary of Disaster Management informed that in the temporarily identified relief camps, there are a total of 615 rooms in Joshimath with a capacity of 2190 people and 491 rooms in Pipalkoti with a capacity of 2205 people. "Till now cracks have been noticed in 849 buildings. The survey work is in progress," Sinha added. He informed that one area or ward has been declared unsafe in Gandhinagar, two in Singhdhar, five in Manoharbagh and seven in Sunil. "Building 181 is located in an unsafe area. 258 families have been temporarily displaced in view of security. The number of displaced family members is 865," he added. Additional Secretary Disaster Management, Director Uttarakhand Landslide Management and Mitigation Institute, Director Wadia Institute, Director IIRS Dehradun, Director NIH and Director IITR were present at the press conference. Hundreds of residents were shifted to relief centres in safe places after cracks appeared at several homes in Joshimath, suggesting subsidence. The Uttarakhand government has already announced relief packages worth crores for the affected families of Joshimath. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said that the relief package has been released for nearly 3,000 families affected by gradual land subsidence in the Himalayan state. The Chief Minister also announced that Rs 50,000 have been given by the state disaster authority to each family as a non-adjustable one-time special grant for the transportation of goods and immediate needs of their buildings. (ANI) A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been moved in Delhi High Court praying for calling for the records of funds sanctioned in January 2019 to the Delhi government by the Central government for the sterilization of monkeys and the manner in which such fund has been utilized. The plea stated that the New Delhi region has seen an alarming infestation of the simian population and a consecutive increase in the cases of monkey bites. The plea also seeks directions to Delhi Government and NDMC to set up a committee that may, apart from senior bureaucrats and wildlife experts, also comprise of members of the Bar who have worked extensively for animal rights, to ensure the implementation of directions which have earlier been passed by the High Court to curb the monkey menace in the national capital and particularly the New Delhi region. The plea moved by practising advocate Shashwat Bhardwaj alleged that the serious issues regarding the menace of monkeys have been completely mismanaged by the authorities and the authorities kept only dilly-dallying instead of implementing reproductive control techniques within time. The Delhi High Court earlier had passed a Judgement and issued certain directions while dealing with the issue of monkey menace in Delhi, these directions have shockingly, still not been effectively implemented, stated plea. Monkeys are usually seen, amidst screams of surprise from unsuspecting passers-by, roaming around the centres of power in the national capital. The New Delhi region which comprises of not only the Supreme Court of India and this High Court but also residences of senior bureaucrats, judges and cabinet ministers and also important religious places such as the Hanuman temple at Connaught Places are visited everyday by all strata of society including the most powerful people as well as the most common citizens alike, read the plea. (ANI) Congratulating JP Nadda on the extension of his tenure as party national president, BJP Himachal Pradesh in-charge Avinash Rai Khanna on Wednesday said the organization has become stronger under the party president's leadership. "The organization of the Bharatiya Janata Party has become stronger under the leadership of JP Nadda. The way BJP has reached the booth level across the country is historic in itself. Last year, elections were held in seven states out of which BJP won five, including a huge victory in Gujarat," Khanna said. He said that in West Bengal too, BJP won 77 seats from 3 seats earlier. This was possible only because of the coordination between the government and the national organization. It shows the synergy between Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and JP Nadda. The BJP leader from JP Nadda's home State said that Nadda's extension as BJP chief is historical for Himachal Pradesh too. "After LK Advani and Amit Shah, JP Nadda is such a BJP leader who became the national president for two consecutive terms. This is also a historic moment for Himachal," he said. Avinash Khanna said that with JP Nadda at the helm, the party was strengthened at booth level. "BJP contested 120 elections under the leadership of JP Nadda and won 73 out of them. BJP managed to strengthen 1.30 lakh booths under his leadership," he added. According to BJP leader, JP Nadda's re-election as party chief will bring results in their favour in the upcoming State Assembly elections in nine states and in the general elections of 2024. "Now 400 days are left and the BJP is moving towards the Lok Sabha elections. To form a government in 2024, the BJP is going to reach the youths, of the age group of 18 to 25 years, and will explain to the new generation the difference between governance and misgovernance on the ground," he said. "Elections are to be held in nine states this year, in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Telangana, Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram. If the election of Jammu and Kashmir is also held this year, it will be the tenth state. We hope that the BJP under the leadership of JP Nadda will do well in these elections," Khanna added. JP Nadda's tenure was extended on Tuesday at the two-day-long National Executive Meeting of the BJP in the national capital. According to sources, the proposal for Nadda's extension was made by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and was agreed upon unanimously by the members of the National Executive. JP Nadda assumed the presidency of the party in June 2019. (ANI) Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami inspected the tableau of Uttarakhand state selected for the Republic Day 2023 parade at the National Theater in New Delhi on Wednesday. The Chief Minister gave instructions regarding the tableau that the tableau should be made of high quality, in which a glimpse of the art and culture of the state of Uttarakhand can be seen in the Republic Day Parade. Jageshwar Dham, Corbett National Park and Uttarakhand's famous Aipan art are being shown in the tableau of Uttarakhand in the Republic Day Parade this year. 'Manaskhand' is mentioned in Skanda Purana from the present Kumaon region. The state government is identifying the mythological temples of the Kumaon region in the form of Manaskhand Temple Malamission like the Chardham Yatra to be held in the Garhwal division and is developing infrastructure facilities as per the requirement. With this, domestic and foreign tourists will also be introduced to the region's rich mythological and cultural heritage, due to which employment opportunities will also be created in the tourism sector in the state. Local Commissioner, Ajay Mishra, Team Leader/Joint Director of Uttarakhand Tableau K.S.Chauhan, Officer on Special Duty, National Theater Camp, Ravi Pandey, Team Leader of Gujarat Tableau Pankaj Modi were present on occasion. Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has been invited by India as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations in January. Ausaf Sayeed, secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs said Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as chief guest for the Republic Day and the invitation was warmly received. "This is indeed a momentous occasion in our bilateral relations with Egypt when our two countries are celebrating 75 years of diplomatic relations. I was told that When we became independent on the 15th of August, 1947 it was three days later on the 18th of August that the relations, formal relations were established which goes on to say the importance which we attach to our relationship with Egypt," Ausaf Sayeed, secretary (Consular, Passport & Visa and Overseas Indian Affairs) MEA said on Monday. (ANI) Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday extended greetings to the people of Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh, who participated in the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Kangra's Malot amid the cold wave. In a letter to the people of the Himalayan State, Congress MP said, "Today, the Bharat Jodo Yatra travelled through Himachal Pradesh for a short distance. I was very keen to spend time in the state, although we have been only able to walk for a short while. In the middle of a cold wave, thousands of people travelled from all parts of the state to walk with us, support us and bless us." He said that he is grateful to the people for their wonderful response to the foot march. "I am most grateful to the people of Himachal for their wonderful response. I am also fortunate that in the Devbhoomi, I was able to obtain the blessings of Lord Shiva at the ancient Kathgarh temple," Rahul Gandhi said. The Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Congress leader and MP Rahul Gandhi which entered Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday resumed from Manser in Kangra district before heading towards its last leg in Kashmir. Congress leaders Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Mukesh Agnihotri and Pratibha Singh joined the Yatra in the Indora area of Kangra district. In a letter to the people, Rahul said, "As I walked with the people of Himachal Pradesh, I learnt many things from them. Himachaliyat defines the peaceful, diverse and inclusive culture of the state - the same message which the Yatra carries. This warm spirit of Himachaliyat is an antidote not just to the cold, but also to the hatred and division in today's climate. People from all sections of life - women, youth, public servants, ex-servicemen - walked with the Yatra, and shared their aspirations and struggles. Recent events also teach us the importance of respecting the environment while meeting the aspirations of the people in an ecologically sensitive state like Himachal." Thanking the people of the State for voting the Congress to power, Gandhi said, "In the recent elections, the people of Himachal Pradesh reposed their trust in the Congress, for which I am grateful. The new government has already begun work, by reinstating the old pension scheme for government employees, and is developing a scheme to transfer Rs 1,500 to women in each household. "The path ahead will be challenging, especially due to the previous BJP government, which has betrayed people and left the treasury empty. I am confident that the new government will rise to the challenge and meet the aspirations of each section of society," he added. "As the Yatra enters its final stretch, I will fondly remember the brief time I spent in Himachal Pradesh and the love and affection which I have been fortunate to receive from its people. I look forward to returning soon," the letter read further. Earlier in the day, while addressing the gathering at Manser, Rahul Gandhi said that the Bharat Jodo Yatra was aimed at uniting the nation against the communal and divisive forces to give a strong reply to the nefarious designs of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the RSS. Rahul Gandhi said that he has received a tremendous response from the general public during this Yatra and has also learnt a lot from the people of 'Bharat'. At the request of the Himachal leadership, he has made a few changes in his Yatra's route so that he could also cover Himachal Pradesh on his way to Kashmir. Later, Rahul Gandhi, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Deputy CM Mukesh Agnihotri, State Congress President Pratibha Singh, and other dignitaries visited the historic Shiva Temple at Kathgarh and paid obeisance. This 24-kilometre Yatra starting from Manser Toll Plaza converged at Malout Village in the Indora area of Kangra district. The Himachal leg of the foot march concluded on the same day at Malot on the border of Punjab's Pathankot. Notably, the Bharat Jodo Yatra will enter Jammu and Kashmir on January 19. J-K Congress in-charge of Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rajni Patil on Tuesday said that NC leaders Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, along with Sanjay Raut, MY Tarigami, and Mehbooba Mufti would join the yatra at different locations. (ANI) The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday, held its fifth domestic roadshow in Hyderabad, in the run-up to the Global Investors Summit, 2023, which is slated to be held in Lucknow next month, informed the government on Wednesday. "Continuing its highly successful series of roadshows under the guidance of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the run-up to the Global Investors Summit, 2023, to be held in Lucknow next month, Team Yogi led by Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak held its fifth domestic roadshow in Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana on Wednesday, in which 19 Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) worth Rs 25,000 crore were signed. The 19 projects will create employment opportunities, directly or indirectly, for 32,000 youths of Uttar Pradesh," the release stated. At the same time, many other investors expressed their desire to invest thousands of crores. These investors will finalize their investment during their participation in the GIS 2023. The UP team also included Cabinet Minister Baby Rani Maurya, Ministers of State Arun Kumar Saxena, and Dayashankar Mishra and Advisor to Chief Minister GN Singh. Prior to the roadshow, Business to Government (B2G) meetings were held throughout the day during which more than two dozen investors from Hyderabad gathered information from the delegation of Uttar Pradesh about investment opportunities in UP as well as reliefs and exemptions available under the new policies of CM Yogi. Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak said: "UP has an old relationship with Hyderabad. In 1916, Nizam had given one lakh rupees for the establishment of BHU. That's why we have come here to maintain this relationship with both the states and invite investors. The response received here was encouraging. While Telangana has developed a lot in the industrial sector, UP is also going through a phase of change. The reforms and changes that have taken place in UP are safe and promising for investors. We welcome investors from Telangana to UP." Finally, 19 MoUs were signed with the investors of which 12 were worth Rs 100 crore or more whereas, 6 were worth Rs 1000 crore or more. The highest value of the deals signed on the occasion was with Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd worth Rs 15,500 crore, the release stated. As per the release, Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited signed an MoU for the investment of Rs 15,500 crore in 4 categories. The first investment of Rs 10,000 crore will be in the field of infrastructure while Rs 2,000 crore will be spent on developing a complete Pharma City. Apart from this, the company will invest Rs 1500 crore in the field of medical infrastructure, under which medical equipment will be manufactured and Rs 2000 crore in the field of EV manufacturing. With this investment, more than 10,000 direct and indirect employment opportunities will be created. The release further informed that Hyderabad's Pulses Healthcare Group has also signed an MoU to invest Rs 2000 crore in the state. The investment will start with Rs 500 crore and will be increased to Rs 2,000 crore in the next three years in the publication of medical journals. The company has published more than 1400 medical journals. It not only translates English but also other international languages into Hindi. The company is interested to open an office of his company in Greater Noida or Varanasi. The officials have assured them of the availability of land if needed. Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG) Pvt. Ltd. also signed an MoU worth Rs 1500 crore for investment in the medical field. In the field of the realty sector, Vasai Realty Pvt. Ltd, which has been working for years in Hyderabad, signed a deal of Rs 1200 crore whereas Fourth Partner Energy Pvt. Ltd. Inked an MoU worth Rs 1200 crore with the government in the field of energy. Similarly, Triveni Renewables also agreed to sign an MoU for investing Rs 1,200 crore in the energy sector while NSL Sugars Ltd. Will invest Rs 500 crore in the sugar sector in the state, the release stated. Sudhakar PVC Products Pvt. Ltd. Meela Jaidev, director, signed an MoU worth Rs 125 crore for setting up a manufacturing unit in the state. The company will require 25 acres of land for the manufacturing unit and Team Yogihas assured the company to provide land in Allahabad or Chitrakoot region. Apart from this, a Hyderabad-based start-up InstaShield has also signed an MoU worth Rs 20 crore for setting up a manufacturing unit in the state. Shrikant Pilarisetty, the CEO, of Evolence Telecom Systems, signed an MoU worth Rs 10 crore to provide IT solutions at affordable rates, while Uday Shankar Payyeti, Vice President, of Palmten Inc, also signed an MoU worth Rs 10 crore for IoT. On the other hand, Canada-based company Colliers has expressed its desire to invest Rs 300 crore for the construction of an industrial park in the state, the release further stated. (ANI) The Delhi High court on Wednesday issued notice to the CBI on the plea of the Investigation Officer (IO) of the case of custodial death of the Unnao rape victim's father. The Investigating Officer has sought an extension of two weeks of interim bail granted on medical grounds. Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma issued notice to the CBI and listed the matter on January 20 for further hearing. The High court on December 23, 2022, granted interim bail to Kamta Prasad Singh on medical grounds. He was directed to surrender on January 23. Kamta Prasad has moved a plea through advocate Akhand Pratap Singh seeking an extension of interim bail granted earlier. Earlier, He sought 4 weeks of Interim bail on medical grounds for treatment of his ailments. It was submitted by the counsels that the petitioner is more than 60 years of age and suffering from jaundice and other various old age-related ailments. He also has a history of contracting jaundice thrice in jail and splenomegaly. It was submitted that due to inadequate medical facilities in the jail hospital and lack of specialist doctors, the Appellant is not being meted out with proper diagnosis and prognosis. A jail-visiting doctor only visits once a week and he is not qualified to diagnose the problem the Appellant is facing. It was also submitted that the Appellant was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court in the month of April 2019 and was on bail till August 2019. During the aforementioned period, there was not a single allegation against the Appellant by anyone regarding violation of any of the terms and conditions of the said bail order. Rohini jail authorities had also filed the medical report of the applicant stating that he has been provided adequate treatment. Kamta Prasad was awarded 10 years of imprisonment. He has served more than five years of his punishment. The petition stated that his appeal against the conviction pending before the High Court. (ANI) Delhi Police on Wednesday said that it has busted an interstate illegal arms trafficking racket and apprehended three people with illegal firearms and ammunition from capital's Vasant Kunj area. The three accused have been identified as Jafar Ali Khan (User), Dinesh alias Chhanga (Supplier), and Harender (Source). The police recovered a total of 12 pistols, and 15 live cartridges from the accused. "The AATS launched a drive against illegal firearm users and traffickers in South West District and concerted efforts were being made to identify such members of the syndicate," as per an official statement from police. According to police officials, manual surveillance was mounted to develop the information and secret sources were also deployed to gather more information in this regard on January 10 information was received about Jafar Ali Khan having illegal firearms and ammunition. Accordingly, a raiding party was formed and a trap was laid near Mahipalpur Bypass road, Vasant Kunj, Delhi. At about 6 pm, Jafar Ali Khan came to the place of information and was surrounded and overpowered by the team with an illicit semi-automatic pistol of 32 bores loaded with 3 live cartridges, stated an official statement from the police. The police registered a case under the 25 Arms Act at Vasant Kunj North Police Station. "During interrogation, accused Jafar disclosed that he had procured the recovered firearm and ammunition from one supplier Dinesh alias Chhanga. Based on the interrogation, the supplier Dinesh alias Chhanga was also apprehended from Khair, Aligarh, UP and from his possession 2 more illicit pistols. 32 bore were recovered and accordingly he was arrested and interrogated at length," informed police officials. Police officials further informed that on sustained interrogation, accused Dinesh disclosed one habitual criminal namely Harender Kumar as a source of the illegal firearms and ammunition. Thereafter the team AATS worked relentlessly and succeeded in arresting the said Harender Kumar, who is a prominent arms dealer and was previously arrested in Delhi with the huge recovery of illegal pistols. Police further apprehended accused Harender with a cache of arms and ammunition. Police recovered nine illegal pistols and 12 live cartridges from Harender's possession. He disclosed that he had procured the consignment of recovered pistols and cartridges from a notorious arms manufacturer of Dhar in MP and further disclosed that he has been indulging in the supply of illegal firearms and ammunition in Delhi NCR, Haryana and UP West for the last 5 years, informed police officials. All the accused persons have been taken into police custody and remanded, and 12 pistols and 15 live cartridges were recovered. Further details are awaited. (ANI) Identified as Masad, the accused who came by flight IX 434 was intercepted at the green channel and was taken for examination, the customs press release said. The accused was found with four gold capsules in compound form weighing 906 grams concealed in his body which were recovered by the customs officials and seized. The accused, a native of Malappuram was then arrested by the officials. Further investigations are underway. Earlier on January 13, Cochin International Airport intercepted a male passenger and seized gold worth Rs 14 lakhs concealed inside his body. The accused identified as Muhammad was also a native of the Malappuram district in Kerala and was intercepted by customs officials after walking suspiciously. It was revealed that he had concealed 281.88 grams of gold worth Rs 14 lakh inside stitched cavity of jeans pants, as confirmed by the officials. (ANI) The 41st session of the Network Planning Group (NPG) was held on Wednesday in the national capital, which saw active participation of the senior officials from key member ministries and departments, informed a press release. "The Network Planning Group (NPG) held its 41st session in New Delhi today. Chaired by the Special Secretary of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the meeting saw an active participation of senior officials from key member ministries/departments including, DoT, MoEF&CC, M/o Railways, MoPSW, MoCA, M/o Power, Niti Aayog, MoRTH and MoPNG," the release stated. As per the release, the meeting saw deliberations on a Four-Lane Accessed Controlled Greenfield Highway as part of the Nagpur-Vijaywada corridor and new rail connectivity projects connecting Barejadi Nandej to Sanand in Gujarat, and Barbil, Barsuan and Nayagrah in Odisha. The senior officials from the MoRTH shared that the Four-Lane Accessed Controlled Greenfield Highway, covering a distance of 306 kms, will connect Mancherial to Vijayawada. The proposed project will improve connectivity to 21 economic nodes such as Mega Food Parks, Fishing Seafood Clusters, Pharma and Medical Clusters, SEZs and Textile Clusters across the 11 districts and more than 27 social nodes across 3 States. The proposed alignment of the highway is also estimated to increase the average speed from 40 kmph to 80 kmph, and reduce travel time from 17 hours to 8 hours. It is also expected to create 11.9 crore employment opportunities after completion, the release stated. During the deliberations of the Barejadi Nandej to Sanand railway project, it was observed by the NPG that the Ahmedabad Station had been one of the busiest stations on the Western Railway Corridor for freight movement between the Viramgam-Sabaramati-Ahmedabad-Geratpur sections. Therefore, to achieve overall operational efficiency, the construction of a 4th line connecting was felt essential. The senior officials from the M/o Railways shared that this 4th Line would feature two new stations in Barejadi Nandej to Sanand and detour all freight trains to this route while bypassing the Ahmedabad section. The connectivity to economic nodes in the proposed alignment will help in increasing freight transportation of cement and chemicals which are largely produced in this part of the country, the release stated. During the meeting, senior officials from the M/o Railways shared that the proposed Barbil-Barsuan-Nayagarh Railway line, covering a distance of 181 kms, will connect major iron mines in the region and boost trade in steel plans of Eastern India. The proposed alignment will see 15 new stations being built in the vicinity of major mining sights such as Sundergarh and Keonjhar. With connectivity to major rail networks such as Tata, Dhamra, and Bokaro and eastern ports such as Vishakapatnam and Paradip, it is estimated that the project will see an increase in about 37 per cent traffic in the first 5 years itself, the release added. All three projects were evaluated by the NPG and recommended for implementation with certain suggestions to address last-mile connectivity and achieve the right multimodal logistics share. These include intermodal infrastructure, the creation of multi-modal logistics park facilities and other terminal infrastructure related to railways and roadways. (ANI) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted searches at multiple locations in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai in relation to a money laundering case against Vihaan Direct Selling India Private Limited, the agency said on Wednesday. Vihaan Direct Selling India Private Limited is the master franchisee company of Qnet Ltd in India. During the searches, the ED froze 36 bank accounts relating to various companies/individuals/proprietorships connected with the case, with amounts involving more than Rs 90 crore. The central agency initiated a money Laundering investigation on the basis of an FIR against Qnet Ltd., Vijay Eswaran, Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Pvt. Ltd. and other companies and individuals registered by EOW, Mumbai. The ED said its investigation has revealed that Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt. Ltd used various shell companies, and dummy proprietorships for routing funds received from a huge number of innocent investors. Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt. Ltd allegedly duped a huge number of innocent investors in India by investing their hard-earned money in Ponzi schemes in the guise of direct selling business. Various investors were duped of their hard-earned money in the guise of huge profits without informing them of the nature of business and the details of the utilisation of their invested money, the agency said. According to the FIR registered by Mumbai Police, the total estimated proceeds of crime is about Rs. 400 crore. However, during the course of the investigation, it was observed that more than Rs 2,000 crore was routed by way of opening various shell companies by these entities, the agency said. The searches were conducted in 5 locations in Mumbai, 2 locations in Bengaluru, and 2 down south, in Chennai. Various incriminating documents and digital devices were seized, the ED said, adding that 36 bank accounts amounting to more than Rs 90 crore, and belonging to various companies connected with the case were also frozen. (ANI) The Delhi High Court granted interim relief to Pawan Hans Ltd against an order passed by the Delhi VAT Tribunal confirming a demand of VAT amounting to approx. Rs 176 crores on account of chartering of helicopters. The bench of Justice Vibhu Bhakru and Justice Amit Mahajan in a recent order passed last week ordered that respondents shall not take any coercive steps for recovery of the demand as upheld by the impugned order After issuing notice to respondents, the bench posted the matter for March 16, 2023, for a final hearing. Tarun Gulati, Senior Advocate with Rajat Bose, Ankit Sachdeva, Shohini Bhattacharya and Kumar Sambhav Advocates appeared for Pawan Hans Ltd in the matter Tarun Gulati, senior counsel appearing for the appellant submitted in the Delhi High Court that the helicopters continue to be in possession and control of the appellant. The pilots manning the said aircraft are under the rolls of the appellant. Further, the maintenance of the helicopters is also done by the appellant. Senior Advocate Gulati further submitted that the appellant was registered with the Service Tax Authority for rendering the service of "Supply of Tangible Goods for Use Services". And, has duly paid the Service Tax as chargeable under the Finance Act, 1994. He also submitted that the impugned order is palpably erroneous. "Notwithstanding the same, if it is held that there has been a transfer of right to use the aircraft, the appellant would not be liable to pay any Service Tax as both the taxes are mutually exclusive," he added. The appellant (Pawan Hans Limited) recently filed the present appeal in Delhi High Court against an order passed by the Appellate Tribunal, Value Added Tax, Delhi. The appellant stated that it is in the business of chartering helicopters and has entered into agreements with various State Government and public sector entities for hiring its helicopters. According to the VAT authorities, the agreements entail the transfer of the right to use and therefore, the consideration would be taxable under the Delhi Value Added Tax Act, 2004. Accordingly, the commissioner of Trade and Taxes raised the demand for a sum of Rs 175,99,76,819 for the relevant period (the year 2006 to 2010) and the impugned order has confirmed the demand. (ANI) Uttarakhand education minister Dhan Singh Rawat said that the state government has made arrangements for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's interaction with school students during the "Pariksha pe Charcha" program on January 27. Uttarakhand education minister Dhan Singh Rawat on Wednesday announced that prime minister Narendra Modi will interact with students through "Pariksha pe Charcha" program on January 27. The program will be organised in Talkatora stadium in Delhi where students, teachers and parents of the students from class 9 to 12 will be addressed by PM Modi via video conferencing, as stated by Rawat in a press conference. Commenting on the preparations of the program, Rawat said that necessary arrangements are being made in all the schools to conduct the program smoothly. Taking to Twitter, Rawat said, "Gave a press conference regarding preparations for prime minister's "Pariksha pe Charcha" and the painting competition." The students of government schools, government-aided schools and private schools will be participating in the program. Rawat also stated that two students from Uttarakhand have been nominated for dialogue with the prime minister in the program. The education minister also informed that the governor and the chief minister of the state will also participate in the 'Pariksha Pe Charcha' program. "Ministers, MPs, MLAs, Padma awardees of the state, dignitaries associated with education, art and culture and public representatives of municipal corporations, municipalities and town panchayats will also join this program from different areas of the state," he said. This program will run in 65,464 government, non-government and private schools of the state. Rawat also said that in view of the wide publicity of the program in the state, art and painting competition related to the theme of "Pariksha pe Charcha" will be held in schools located in 95 development blocks and 8 municipal corporations of the state from January 20 to 23. "More than 10 lakh students of more than 5,500 government and non-government schools of Uttarakhand will participate in this program. A painting competition is also scheduled to be held across the state from January 20 to 23," Rawat tweeted. (ANI) Amid the row over the so-called "Azad Kashmir" question in West Bengal Class 10 test paper, Trinamool Congress leader Tapas Roy on Wednesday said the Mamata Banerjee government is always against separatist movements while alleged Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of encouraging separatism. "BJP is in the habit of making allegations, our party in the leadership of Mamata Banerjee is always against separatist movements. It is BJP that encourages separatism in Cooch Behar and Darjeeling. They should not talk anything about TMC," Roy told ANI. A political row has erupted after a picture of a Class 10 practice test paper directing students to mark the so-called "Azad Kashmir" on map went viral. Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir is dubbed as Azad Kashmir in Pakistan. The image of the test paper was shared on social media by various BJP leaders including state president Sukanta Majumdar and national vice president Dilip Ghosh accusing the Mamata Banerjee government of trying to "create anti-India mentality" among the young minds. The practice tests paper books are published by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE). Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar alleged that the question setter is "inspiring terrorism" and sought an immediate end to the sale of the book. "The paper setter is anti-national. He is inspiring terrorism. This is shameful. The West Bengal Education Minister should write to him and this test paper cell should be shut immediately. I will apprise the Union Education Ministry about this and cognizance would be taken of it," Sarkar told ANI. Dilip Ghosh slammed the TMC government calling it a supporter of "separatist forces". He alleged that the state government has been turning West Bengal into a "hotspot" for extremists. Taking to Twitter, Ghosh said, "Paschim Banga Madhya Shiksha Parshad is not only corrupt or they have just sold jobs, now the Mamata government is also nurturing many pro-Pakistani people and they are the ones who want to convert Kashmir, an integral part of India, into Azad Kashmir. Such ideas can only be propagated by extremists and there is no doubt that Paschim Banga has become a hotspot for extremists." "The Mamata government is a supporter of the separatist forces. Check the Marked Section of the History Question Paper on page 132 in Madhyamik Test Paper 2023. Students have been asked to identify the part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as Azad Kashmir," Ghosh said. The BJP national vice president further accused the Mamata Banerjee government of "trying to create anti-India mentality". "This state government is not only supporting militants but also trying to create an anti-India mentality among young students. TMC means Corruption, Lies and Terrorism," added Ghosh. West Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar slammed the Mamata Banerjee government over the issue and termed it as the "worst kind of appeasement". He questioned the TMC government whether it is promoting "secessionism". "Breaking India forces have penetrated deep into the education system of West Bengal. The mention of "Azad Kashmir" in a test paper is worrisome. Is the State Government promoting secessionism? Their intent is malafide. Shame," tweeted Majumdar. "Students have been asked to mark the Azad Kashmir in WB Madhyamik exam paper. Does the CM Mamata Banerjee endorse such views? This is the worst kind of appeasement by the TMC government. This is condemnable. Strict action should be taken against the people who did this," he tweeted. Meanwhile, the national spokesperson of the Trinamool Congress Riju Dutta termed the paper an "individual mistake" and said that the state government has initiated strict action into the matter. (ANI) In a step to empower women living in the far-flung areas of Kashmir, the government has started an initiative to provide skill-based training under UMEED NRLM (National Rural Livelihood Mission) scheme in J-K's Rajouri district. Under the initiative, the women are receiving training by working under Self Help Groups (SGH) in the Rajouri district for creating handicrafts like boxes, pen holders, tea coasters, baskets, purses, etc with Chir Pine tree remains. Local women, who have found means of livelihood, are overjoyed by receiving the training. "We got this training in March 2020 under the NRLM scheme. This training is helping towards our upliftment. We are now making things from waste and earning a good amount of money. The demand for our products is also increasing," said Reeta, a trainee. Another trainee said that at first, they found the idea of this training bizarre as the remains of the Chir Pine tree is unusable, but are now they are earning a good amount of money by making the handicrafts out of them. "Over the period of a year, we managed to earn Rs 50,000. We thank the government for providing us with the training," Anuradha Bala said. "We are planning to further train women to provide them a means of livelihood," she added. The SGHs under the NRLM scheme are running different types of self-employment units in the state like making slippers, dairy products, handicrafts, goat farming, vegetable production, tailoring, cold drink agency, medical shop and cosmetics. The basic idea of this scheme is to reduce poverty among the rural population of Kashmir. The SGHs are also providing them with benefits of basic social security schemes of the government like the opening of bank accounts, Aadhar, insurance, Ayushman Bharat card, e-SHRAM card, Atal pension Yojana and others. (ANI) Amid the heavy backlash faced by the Congress government in Rajasthan over the paper leak case, All India Congress Commitee (AICC) national secretary and Rajasthan Seed Corporation Chairman Dheeraj Gurjar on Wednesday said that the perpetrators, involved in the paper leak were sacked immediately. Rajasthan Congress leader said that the Gehlot government is determined that the culprits who leaked the paper will not be spared. "Those whose names surfaced in the paper leak case were sacked with immediate effect," Dheeraj said here. The paper leak has been a trouble for the Congress-led government in Rajasthan with its own party leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot demanding a strict probe into the matter. Questioning the paper leak of recruitment exams in Rajasthan, Pilot said in a press interaction on Monday said, "I am saddened and in anguish when I get to know of such incidents. Repeated paper leaks compromise the future of the youth. It doesn't matter who the criminal is, a strict investigation should be conducted to stop such recurring paper leaks." Reacting to the paper leak further, Dheeraj Gurjar told ANI that those persons, involved in the paper leak will be behind bars and their assets will be auctioned. "Not only did the Gehlot government bulldoze the houses of the mafia, but also made a strict law that the person who indulges in paper leaking will go behind the bars and the property of the culprits will also be auctioned," he said. The Congress leader further alleged that there were more cases of paper leaks in the State during the Bharatiya Janata Party regime. Why the BJP is raising questions against the Congress government? Most papers were leaked in the state during the previous BJP government. Be it the REET exam in 2018 or the paper leak of the constable recruitment exam in 2017, the BJP government neither accepted it nor took any action," Dheeraj Gurjar said. "The Ashok Gehlot government of Rajasthan suspended Jaroli, the chairman of the Board of Secondary Education, with immediate effect when the issue of the paper leak came to the fore. BJP used bulldozers to spread communalism, but the Gehlot government used bulldozers against the mafias who leaked the papers," he added. The Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) paper leak case has been a tool for the opposition BJP to attack the government, with Bharatiya Janata Party MP Kirodi Lal Meena accusing some Rajasthan legislators of their involvement in the paper leak case. (ANI) The third meeting of the Steering Committee of Ken-Betwa Link Project (SC-KBLP) was held here on Wednesday. Held at Vigyan Bhawan in the national capital, the meeting was attended by representatives of both the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and officials of various Central Ministries and Niti Aayog. The meeting was chaired by Secretary, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti. An official of the Ministry of Jal Shakti said the Ken-Betwa link project is critical for the water security and socio-economic development of Bundelkhand region. "We have the responsibility of implementing this project in a time-bound manner using state of art technologies and know-how duly taking care of the Resettlement & Rehabilitation (R&R) of the project-affected people and conservation of the region, particularly the landscape dependent species of Panna Tiger Reserve," a Ministry official said. During the meeting, deliberations were held on various agenda items covering follow-up actions on decisions taken during the second meeting, work plan for the year 2023-24, engagement of Project Management Consultancy, land acquisition and Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) of affected villages, the establishment of offices of Ken-Betwa Link Project Authority, implementation of integrated landscape management plan prepared by Wildlife Institute of India for Greater Panna, financial powers of KBLPA and reimbursement to state on expenditure. It was intimated to the committee that orders for the transfer about 5,480 hectare non-forest government land of Panna and Chhattarpur district of Madhya Pradesh have been issued by the state government for transfer to PTR for compensatory afforestation. In addition to this, two wildlife sanctuaries namely Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary and Rani Durgawati Wildlife Sanctuary of Madhya Pradesh and Ranipur Wildlife Sanctuary of UP have been approved by the state government for bringing them under project Tiger, said the Ministry of Jal Shakti. A proposal for Constituting a committee to monitor the implementation of the R&R plan in transparent and time-bound manner was finalized during the meeting. A Greater Panna Landscape council is also being constituted for implementation of the Landscape Management Plan (LMP) and Environment Management Plan (EMP) of the project. (ANI) Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh on Monday wrote a letter to the Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, demanding security for party functionaries and the AAP office in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Referring to the attack on the Aam Aadmi Party's Kashmir office on January 1, Sanjay Singh in his letter said that AAP leaders remain under constant threat while moving in their respective areas. "I would like to inform you that Aam Aadmi Party Kashmir office has been attacked by some unidentified people on January 1, 2023, at around 6 pm. Our leaders also remain in constant threat while they move in their respective areas," Sanjay Singh said in the letter adding that no action was taken by officials despite informing them. "We have written time and again to the Election Commission as well as the local District Superintendents to ensure basic required security to our key position holders but this had no result. With this letter, we are mentioning a lot of killings are going around, please consider this letter as an early warning and please don't blame us later if some mishap occurs to our leaders... that we didn't inform you well in advance," the letter read further. "I would like to request you to provide security to the party's provincial in charge and district presidents," Singh said in the letter. (ANI) Meanwhile, former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who joined BJP also met the BJP national president in the presence of Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday. Notably, JP Nadda's term as the national president of the BJP has been extended till June 2024, said Union Home Minister Amit Shah at the National Executive Meeting on Tuesday. Addressing a press conference, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said, "I am confident that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and (JP) Nadda-ji, the BJP will win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections by an even bigger majority. Modi-ji will return to lead the country as the Prime Minister." According to sources, the proposal for Naddda's extension was mooted by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and was agreed upon unanimously by the members of the National Executive. JP Nadda, after his tenure was extended as the national president of the BJP, wrote a heartfelt note to the party workers and sought their blessings ahead of the general elections in 2024. "It is with a deep sense of honour and gratitude that I accept the renewed responsibility of continuing the National President of BJP till June 2024, conferred upon me through your unanimous resolution passed in the 'National Executive Meeting' held in New Delhi on January 16-17, 2023," JP Nadda said in the note. JP Nadda assumed the presidency of the party in June 2019. (ANI) Puri, who is also an accused in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper and Moser Baer bank-related cases is currently on regular bail in these two alleged scams. Special Judge, Rouse Avuene court, Vikas Dhull granted him bail on a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh and a surety of like amount. The court noted that Puri was not arrested during the investigation and said no purpose will be served by sending him to custody at this stage. On December 23, the court had issued summons against Puri while taking cognisance of a supplementary charge sheet in the case. Special Public Prosecutor, Enforcement Directorate, Nitesh Rana opposed Puri's bail plea claiming that if he is released, he may flee from justice and may also influence the witnesses and tamper evidence. Based on the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) case dated May 17, 2021, against the Managing Directors, Presidents, and Vice Presidents of various companies for criminal conspiracy, cheating, and criminal misconduct, the ED initiated a money laundering investigation in the fertiliser scam. It had alleged illegal commission from overseas suppliers through a complex web of fake commercial transactions through multiple entities registered outside India (controlled by the accused persons) to camouflage the fraudulent transactions as genuine. --IANS spr/vd ( 250 Words) 2023-01-18-19:42:03 (IANS) The police in its official statement said, on the night of Tuesday around 11.15 pm, an accident took place near gate number 1 of the IIT Delhi in which two persons namely Ashraf Nawaz Khan (30) and Ankur Shukla (29) were allegedly hit by a car while they were crossing the nearby road. Both of the victims were pursuing PhD from IIT, the police said adding that one of the victims of the fatal accident, Ashraf Nawaz Khan succumbed to his injuries while another person Ankur Shukla is currently undergoing treatment at the Max Hospital, Saket. According to the police, Shukla sustained a fracture on his leg. The police in its statement said that both the PhD aspirants had gone to a restaurant in the SDA market opposite their campus [IIT Delhi], and while they were crossing the road, a car from the Nehru Place side hit them. The case was found abandoned at some distance in the accidental condition. Notbaly, the police have identified the person driving the car as Avihant Sherawat, 31, from the Mahipalpur area. Further interrogation in the matter is underway. (ANI) In the state, Nadda is scheduled to address a public meeting in the Nadia district and will also visit the ISCKON temple today. After his arrival to the state, the BJP national president-- whose tenure has been recently extended-- showed the sign of victory. JP Nadda's term as the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been extended till June 2024, informed Union Home Minister Amit Shah at the national executive meeting on Tuesday. The decision was taken at the National Executive Meeting of the BJP here in the national capital. According to sources, the proposal for Naddda's extension was mooted by the Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and was agreed upon unanimously by the members of the National Executive. Meanwhile, it is pertinent to mention that Nadda's visit to West Bengal coincides with that of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, who will address a meeting at Shaheed Minar ground in Kolkata on January 23, the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Mohan Bhagwat will participate in a program of the organization on the occasion of the 126th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on January 23, where the Sangh chief can give an important message on sensitive issues like amended citizenship law, and birth control bill. Preparations for this meeting are going on in full swing. According to Sangh sources, Mohan Bhagwat will talk about Netaji's ideology, and vision, and how he fought for the freedom of the country. Thousands of volunteers from across the state will participate in the program. They say that Bhagwat is expected to arrive in Calcutta on January 18. (ANI) The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) wrote to Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud on Wednesday, raising the issue of non-hearing of two matters pertaining to the "lives and livelihood" of its members. Senior advocate and SCBA President Vikas Singh, in the letter, said the two matters are concerning the " the lives and livelihood of the members of the SCBA and non-hearing of these matters is a serious concern". "We are now getting a feeling that the SCBA, since it has never resorted to strike in its history, is not being given its due importance. Given this unfair treatment, we hope and trust that a situation will not be created to force us to resort to some dignified way of protest," he said. In the letter, Singh said he is expressing the aspirations of the Bar which only wants to be treated like any other litigant without being accorded any priority. One of the matters is a plea filed by the Bar body seeking a direction to the Ministry of Urban Development to grant permission for conversion of 1.33 acres allotted to the apex court near ITO as chamber blocks for lawyers. The letter added, "The SCBA being an equal stakeholder in the institution of justice dispensation cannot be construed as stranger in asserting the listing and hearing of a matter related to welfare of its members, in ordinary course. However, by declining the request made by the SCBA for hearing of the matters, the SCBA is being treated worse than an ordinary litigant". The other case is connected with the urgent repair of 'Supreme Towers', constructed for the SCBA Multi-State Group Housing Society Ltd in Noida, where over 700 lawyers reside with their families. --IANS ss/vd ( 304 Words) 2023-01-18-21:54:04 (IANS) There may be greater public health risks associated with the ultraviolet nail polish drying equipment used to cure gel manicures than previously realised. These ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting devices were studied by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, who discovered that using them causes cancer-causing mutations and cell death in human cells. The devices are a common fixture in nail salons, and generally use a particular spectrum of UV light (340-395nm) to cure the chemicals used in gel manicures. While tanning beds use a different spectrum of UV light (280-400nm) that studies have conclusively proven to be carcinogenic, the spectrum used in the nail dryers has not been well studied. "If you look at the way these devices are presented, they are marketed as safe, with nothing to be concerned about," said Ludmil Alexandrov, a professor of bioengineering as well as cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego, and corresponding author of the study published Jan. 17 in Nature Communications. "But to the best of our knowledge, no one has actually studied these devices and how they affect human cells at the molecular and cellular levels until now." Using three different cell lines- adult human skin keratinocytes, human foreskin fibroblasts, and mouse embryonic fibroblasts- the researchers found that the use of these UV emitting devices for just one 20-minute session leds to between 20 and 30 percent cell death, while three consecutive 20-minute exposures caused between 65 and 70 percent of the exposed cells to die. Exposure to the UV light also caused mitochondrial and DNA damage in the remaining cells and resulted in mutations with patterns that can be observed in skin cancer in humans. "We saw multiple things: first, we saw that DNA gets damaged," said Alexandrov. " We also saw that some of the DNA damage does not get repaired over time, and it does lead to mutations after every exposure with a UV-nail polish dryer. Lastly, we saw that exposure may cause mitochondrial dysfunction, which may also result in additional mutations. We looked at patients with skin cancers, and we see the exact same patterns of mutations in these patients that were seen in the irradiated cells." The researchers caution that, while the results show the harmful effects of the repeated use of these devices on human cells, a long-term epidemiological study would be required before stating conclusively that using these machines leads to an increased risk of skin cancers. However, the results of the study were clear: the chronic use of these nail polish drying machines is damaging to human cells. Maria Zhivagui, a postdoctoral scholar in the Alexandrov Lab and first author of the study, used to be a fan of gel manicures herself, but has sworn off the technique after seeing the results. "When I was doing my PhD, I started hearing about gel manicures, which last longer than normal polish. I was interested in trying out gel nail polish, particularly in the setting of working in an experimental lab where I frequently put gloves on and off, to maintain a presentable appearance," said Zhivagui. "So I started using gel manicures periodically for several years. Once I saw the effect of radiation emitted by the gel polish drying device on cell death and that it actually mutates cells even after just one 20-minute session, I was surprised. I found this to be very alarming, and decided to stop using it." Studying their effect on human cells The idea to study these particular devices came to Alexandrov in a dentist's office, of all places. As he waited to be seen, he read a magazine article about a young beauty pageant contestant who was diagnosed with a rare form of skin cancer on her finger. "I thought that was odd, so we began looking into it, and noticed a number of reports in medical journals saying that people who get gel manicures very frequently- like pageant contestants and estheticians- are reporting cases of very rare cancers in the fingers, suggesting that this may be something that causes this type of cancer," said Alexandrov. "And what we saw was that there was zero molecular understanding of what these devices were doing to human cells." To conduct the study, Zhivagui exposed the three cell types to two different conditions: acute exposure and chronic exposure to the UV light device. Under acute exposure, Petri dishes containing one of the cell types were placed in one of these UV curing machines for a 20-minute session. They were then taken out for an hour to repair or return to their steady state, and then given one more 20-minute exposure. Under chronic exposure, the cells were placed under the machine for 20 minutes a day for three days. Cell death, damage and DNA mutations were seen under both conditions, with an elevation of reactive oxygen species molecules- known to cause DNA damage and mutations- and mitochondrial dysfunction in the cells. Genomic profiling revealed higher levels of somatic mutations in the irradiated cells, with patterns of mutations ubiquitously present in melanoma patients. Is the risk worth the reward? This data in human cells, coupled with a number of prior reports of cancers in people who get gel manicures very frequently, paint a picture of a purely cosmetic procedure that is riskier than previously believed. But is getting a gel manicure once a year really cause for concern, or should only those who get this done on a very regular basis be worried? Further studies are needed to quantify any increased risk of cancer and at what frequency of use, but with plenty of alternatives to this cosmetic procedure, the risk may not be worth it to some consumers. "Our experimental results and the prior evidence strongly suggest that radiation emitted by UV-nail polish dryers may cause cancers of the hand and that UV-nail polish dryers, similar to tanning beds, may increase the risk of early-onset skin cancer," they write. "Nevertheless, future large-scale epidemiological studies are warranted to accurately quantify the risk for skin cancer of the hand in people regularly using UV-nail polish dryers. It is likely that such studies will take at least a decade to complete and to subsequently inform the general public." (ANI) Specialized synapses in our sensory organs enable us to walk, dance, and tilt our heads without experiencing vertigo or losing our balance. These synapses process messages more quickly than any other part of the human body. A small team of neuroscientists, physicists, and engineers from various institutions made a discovery that took more than 15 years to develop. By unlocking the synapses' mechanism, they opened the door for future research that could lead to better treatments for vertigo and balance disorders, which affect up to one in three Americans over the age of 40. The new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes the workings of "vestibular hair cell-calyx synapses," which are found in organs of the innermost ear that sense head position and movements in different directions. "Nobody fully understood how this synapse can be so fast, but we have shed light on the mystery," said Rob Raphael, a Rice University bioengineer who co-authored the study with the University of Chicago's Ruth Anne Eatock, the University of Illinois Chicago's Anna Lysakowski, current Rice graduate student Aravind Chenrayan Govindaraju and former Rice graduate student Imran Quraishi, now an assistant professor at Yale University. Synapses are biological junctions where neurons can relay information to one another and other parts of the body. The human body contains hundreds of trillions of synapses, and almost all of them share information via quantal transmission, a form of chemical signaling via neurotransmitters that requires at least 0.5 milliseconds to send information across a synapse. Prior experiments had shown a faster, "nonquantal" form of transmission occurs in vestibular hair cell-calyx synapses, the points where motion-sensing vestibular hair cells meet afferent neurons that connect directly to the brain. The new research explains how these synapses operate so quickly. In each, a signal-receiving neuron surrounds the end of its partner hair cell with a large cuplike structure called a calyx. The calyx and hair cell remain separated by a tiny gap, or cleft, measuring just a few billionths of a meter. "The vestibular calyx is a wonder of nature," Lysakowski said. "Its large cup-shaped structure is the only one of its kind in the entire nervous system. Structure and function are intimately related, and nature obviously devoted a great deal of energy to produce this structure. We've been trying to figure out its special purpose for a long time." From the ion channels expressed in hair cells and their associated calyces, the authors created the first computational model capable of quantitatively describing the nonquantal transmission of signals across this nanoscale gap. Simulating nonquantal transmission allowed the team to investigate what happens throughout the synaptic cleft, which is more extensive in vestibular synapses than other synapses. "The mechanism turns out to be quite subtle, with dynamic interactions giving rise to fast and slow forms of nonquantal transmission," Raphael said. "To understand all this, we made a biophysical model of the synapse based on its detailed anatomy and physiology." The model simulates the voltage response of the calyx to mechanical and electrical stimuli, tracking the flow of potassium ions through low-voltage-activated ion channels from pre-synaptic hair cells to the post-synaptic calyx. Raphael said the model accurately predicted changes in potassium in the synaptic cleft, providing key new insights about changes in electrical potential that are responsible for the fast component of nonquantal transmission; explained how nonquantal transmission alone could trigger action potentials in the post-synaptic neuron; and showed how both fast and slow transmission depend on the close and extensive cup formed by the calyx on the hair cell. Eatock said, "The key capability was the ability to predict the potassium level and electrical potential at every location within the cleft. This allowed the team to illustrate that the size and speed of nonquantal transmission depend on the novel structure of the calyx. The study demonstrates the power of engineering approaches to elucidate fundamental biological mechanisms, one of the important but sometimes overlooked goals of bioengineering research." Quraishi began constructing the model and collaborating with Eatock in the mid-2000s when he was a graduate student in Raphael's research group and she was on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, just a few blocks from Rice in Houston's Texas Medical Center. His first version of the model captured important features of the synapse, but he said gaps in "our knowledge of the specific potassium channels and other components that make up the model was too limited to claim it was entirely accurate." Since then, Eatock, Lysakowski and others discovered ion channels in the calyx that transformed scientists' understanding of how ionic currents flow across hair cell and calyx membranes. Qurashi said, "The unfinished work had weighed on me," and he was both relieved and excited when Govindaraju, a Ph.D. student in applied physics, joined Raphael's lab and resumed work on the model in 2018. "By the time I started on the project, more data supported nonquantal transmission," Govindaraju said. "But the mechanism, especially that of fast transmission, was unclear. Building the model has given us a better understanding of the interplay and purpose of different ion channels, the calyx structure and dynamic changes in potassium and electric potential in the synaptic cleft." Raphael said, "One of my very first grants was to develop a model of ion transport in the inner ear. It is always satisfying to achieve a unified mathematical model of a complex physiological process. For the past 30 years -- since the original observation of nonquantal transmission -- scientists have wondered, 'Why is this synapse so fast?' and, 'Is the transmission speed related to the unique calyx structure?' We have provided answers to both questions." He said the link between the structure and function of the calyx "is an example of how evolution drives morphological specialization. A compelling argument can be made that once animals emerged from the sea and began to move on land, swing in trees and fly, there were increased demands on the vestibular system to rapidly inform the brain about the position of the head in space. And at this point the calyx appeared." Raphael said the model opens the door for a deeper exploration of information processing in vestibular synapses, including research into the unique interactions between quantal and nonquantal transmission. He said the model could also be a powerful tool for researchers who study electrical transmission in other parts of the nervous system, and he hopes it will aid those who design vestibular implants, neuroprosthetic devices that can restore function to those who have lost their balance. (ANI) The wife of a 51-year-old Sikh man, who was shot dead when intruders broke into his Mill Woods house in Canada on New Year, has said that she needs swift justice for her husband. Barinder Singh, who hails from Punjab and had moved to Edmonton in 2019 along with family, was asleep when intruders broke into his house at Mill Woods Road and started firing, the Global News reported. Police responded to a disturbance around 2.45 a.m., and arrived at the complex in the Pollard Meadows neighbourhood to find an injured 51-year-old man lying in a pool of blood. "It's all like a nightmare for us," a shattered Jasjeet Kaur, wife of Singh, told Global News. Singh was taken to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The autopsy revealed that he died from gunshot wounds and the medical examiner said that the manner of death was a homicide. "We need justice. I just want to know who did this. I need to know. Whya Why my family was the target? And it was not just him -- it was the whole family," Jasjeet Kaur told the Canadian news channel. "I want the culprits. I want to know the reason why it happened." A GoFundMe page set up for Singh described him as an "honest, family man who worked hard to provide for his family". "(He was) a devoted son, a good brother and a caring father -- he kept us going through good times and tough times. Through his work, he supported my grandparents in Punjab, while providing for us in Delhi, India," the page quoted his two daughters as saying. Police said it is still working to establish a motive for this violent crime. So far, the homicide unit has found a burnt-out white Dodge Ram truck in the nearby Laurel neighbourhood, which they think is connected to the crime. They are looking for home security and dashcam footage in the area where the burned-out truck was located. --IANS mi/vd ( 349 Words) 2023-01-17-19:30:02 (IANS) US lawmakers along bi-partisan lines had a ritzy luncheon meeting with some 50 of the top CEOs of global companies at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in private at Davos in Switzerland. Democrats Joe Manchin, Chris Coons and Krysten Sinema, Independent and Republican Brian Kemp, Georgia governor, were among those at the luncheon. Dozens of top businessmen met with the Democrats from West Virginia, Delaware, Arizona and Republican from Georgia. Media reports streaming in here from Davos said that Coons, Manchin, Sinema and Kemp are among the US-based officials scheduled to participate in panel sessions at this year's conference. These private events on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum often serve as meet-and-greets between CEOs, billionaires and government officials. Coons and Manchin each separately addressed the gathering of corporate leaders at the lunch, said an attendee, who declined to be identified speaking about a private gathering, reports said. Coons's discussions focused on U.S. aid being given to Ukraine following Russia's invasion while Manchin, who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called for American energy independence. Congress passed $40 billion in additional aid for Ukraine last year. The private lunch was held at the Hotel Schatzalp, which is primarily accessible by riding a funicular, or tram, up the property, those with knowledge of the gathering said. A participant said the gathering took place at the hotel's Belle Epoque restaurant, with salmon and a beef dish served to the participants, reports said. The business leaders came from a wide variety of backgrounds, including the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Antonio Neri, Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, and the heads of a variety of non-governmental organisations, among others, one of the participants said. Coons told CNBC on the sidelines that members of the congressional delegation were heading to the lunch "with about 50 CEOs". He didn't say which executives were scheduled to attend. A Hewlett Packard Enterprise representative confirmed Neri's attendance. --IANS ash/arm ( 348 Words) 2023-01-17-23:18:03 (IANS) Semiconductor chips have gained huge importance in the global economy. The United States, the leading chip manufacturer and China which is desperately trying to conquer the chip market, are trying to overtake each other although the US seems to have an advantage, reported Inside Over. The semiconductor chip market which is currently 500 billion dollars (USD) is expected to double by 2030. So whoever controls or dominates the semiconductor market's supply chain will be a future superpower. The report further states that China wants to own the technology to make chips which is still a US domain. That is why the US trying to control this technology flow to China, according to the report by Federico Giuliani for Inside Over. The flow of semiconductor chip technology to China will ultimately be used by China for military strength, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Super Computers. Giuliani's report from Inside Over further says that China has been exponentially investing to increase its production capacity of these microchips and gain technology for production. Against this, the US in October last year declared rules for total export controls over the chips. This made it impossible to sell chips or chip-making equipment and software containing US technology to China. It also prohibits American citizens and permanent residents from supporting Chinese companies that produce or develop these semiconductor chips, the report said. Prior to this, the US Department of Commerce, on August 9, 2022 introduced the USD 50 billion CHIPS and Science Act 2022 to strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry, as a part of USD 280 billion capital for research and advanced technological manufacturing. Giuliani's report further said that following restrictions by the US, Apple revoked its deal of buying Semiconductor chips from China's Yangtze Memory Corp (YMTC). Further, the US is also seeking support from its allies to stop China's market capture. In December 2022 Washington discussed with Japan and the Netherlands how to stop the export of chip-related equipment to China, according to the Inside Over report. A Dutch company Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASML) has a monopoly on key advanced chip-making tools. The US has been working on preventing ASML from exporting chip-making devices to China. The report further claims that it will take China a decade to reach ASML's expertise in the field. China in this scenario does not have many options to deal with the US' restrictions in the semiconductor chip market, because if it decides to revoke its goods and services from the international market then the move will backfire in an already struggling Chinese economy. (ANI) The founder and CEO of Rappler, a news site, Ressa was cleared of four cases which could have landed her 34 years in prison. A veteran journalist, she was a former CNN bureau chief. "Today, facts win, truth wins, justice wins," CNN quoted the Nobel laureate as saying on Wednesday outside the court in Manila upon being freed. "These charges were politically motivated," as she called them "a brazen abuse of power and meant to stop journalists from doing their jobs." Notably, she was held guilty of four counts of tax violations filed in 2018 by former President Rodrigo Duterte's government, an official from the Court of Tax Appeals confirmed to CNN, and was under numerous legal battles in recent years. Ressa's news organisation, Rappler which remains operational, is fighting the Securities and Exchange Commission's order to close it. She and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to protect freedom of expression in the Philippines. Rappler, which Ressa founded in 2012, rose to prominence for its unflinching coverage of Duterte and his brutal "war on drugs." Dmitry Muratov, a Russian journalist and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions. The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in Asia for journalists. It was ranked 147th out of 180 countries in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index. (ANI) Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday informed the parliament that talks with India and China on debt restructuring are successful. "We are continuing discussions in that regard and I am pleased to announce to this House that the discussions are currently successful," read Sri Lankan President Media Division press release. Notably, Sri Lanka is awaiting the International Monetary Fund bailout to relieve the worst ever economic crisis the country is going through. The announcement comes in the wake of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's visit to the island nation who will be visiting Maldives and Sri Lanka from January 18-20. Regarding Sri Lanka's tour, the ministry stated that Jaishankar's visit will follow his earlier trips to the bankrupt country in January 2021 and March 2022. Sri Lanka is a close friend and neighbour, and India has stood with the people of Sri Lanka at all times. "During the visit, EAM will call on President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena and also hold discussions with Minister of Foreign Affairs MUM Ali Sabry on the entire gamut of close India-Sri Lanka partnership and steps to strengthen it in all spheres," the statement stated. Wickremesinghe further invited the opposition to join hands through a new political system to provide relief to the people and free them from oppression. Despite the difficult economic background in the country, the President emphasized that the government is working to provide relief to the people, adding that he will take steps to allocate Rs. 30-40 billion for medicines this year. The President said that due to the prudent agricultural policies of the government, the country has seen a bountiful paddy harvest and the government has commenced a program to provide two million low-income families with 10 kilograms of rice per month over a period of two months, added the release. Responding to allegations that the government is overspending on the Independence celebrations, the President pointed out that it is an investment for the future. In the 25 years leading up to the 100th anniversary of independence, several new institutions and laws will be introduced for the reform program needed by the country. Wickremesinghe said he intended to allocate Rs 30-40 billion this year for medicines. "The Health Ministry and the Treasury will somehow join hands and carry out these matters. It will take some time to order these medicines. Even we don't like to see shortcomings at our hospitals, nor to see people dying due to the lack of medicines. Therefore, we have taken steps to allocate the necessary funds for the provision of medicines," he said. Regarding the shortage of food and fertilizers in the island nation, he said, "We expected that there would be a shortage of food this year as well. But somehow we provided the required fertilizer to the farmers. " He also divulged a plan to provide 02 million low-income families with 10kg of rice per month during March and April. "I would be happier if we could give them more. As we celebrate our 75th Independence, we will not allow our people to starve. We will invest the funds required to feed them," said the Lankan President. (ANI) At the outset of the first Health Working Group meeting taking place in Kerala under India's G20 Presidency, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar on Wednesday called health an integral part of G20 agenda and said that New Delhi's chairmanship will aim to build on the efforts and proposals laid down by previous health working groups and G20 leaders. The MoS also stated during her address that G20 countries have consistently worked to promote coordinated efforts among its members to achieve good and equitable health for all. "During the once-in-a-century crisis of the pandemic, G20 countries consistently worked for promoting coordinated efforts among its members to achieve good & equitable health for all. Health is an integral part of G20 agenda," MoS Pawar said during the address at the first G20 Health Working Group meeting in Kerala on Wednesday. She added further that health became an integral part of the G20 agenda with the establishment of the health working group under the German presidency in 2017 and G20 countries that exhibited commitment to mitigating health emergencies. "Health became an integral part of the G20 agenda with the establishment of the health working group under the german presidency in 2017 and G20 countries have exhibited a long-standing commitment to mitigating health emergencies ever since the inception of the health working group in 2017," she said. We know now that pandemic prevention, preparedness and response require diverse, multistakeholder and multisectoral coordination under the leadership of PM Modi, the minister added. Bharati Pravin Pawar also stated that India's presidency will aim to build on previous health working groups' and G20 leaders' efforts and proposals, such as strengthening our healthcare systems and prioritising one health. The first Health Working Group meeting under G20 India Presidency is held from January 18-20 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. In a significant milestone, India assumed the presidency of the G20 on December 1, 2022. India is currently part of the G20 Troika comprising Indonesia, India and Brazil, marking the first time that the troika is consisting of three developing and emerging economies. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Health Track of the G20 India Presidency will comprise four Health Working Group (HWG) Meetings and one Health Ministerial Meeting (HMM). The meetings will be held in different locations across the country including Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Goa, Hyderabad (Telangana) and Gandhinagar (Gujarat), highlighting India's rich and diverse cultures. (ANI) Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra arrived in Bhutan's Paro on Wednesday to co-chair the 4th India-Bhutan Development Cooperation talks and hold bilateral consultations with the Bhutanese counterpart. The Foreign Secretary is on an official visit to Bhutan from January 18-20, the Indian Embassy in Thimphu said in a statement while taking to Twitter. "Welcomed Foreign Secretary @AmbVMKwatra on his arrival at Paro, for an official visit to Bhutan from 18-20 January. He will hold bilateral consultations with Foreign Secretary of Bhutan Aum Pema Choden and co-chair the 4th India-Bhutan Development Cooperation Talks," the official Twitter handle of India in Bhutan tweeted. The Foreign Secretary will also call on the Bhutanese leadership during the visit. "Foreign Secretary Kwatra will also call on the Bhutanese leadership during the visit. The visit is in keeping with the tradition of regular high-level exchanges between, and will provide an opportunity to the two sides to discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties," the Indian Embassy in Thimphu wrote on Twitter. The basic framework of India-Bhutan bilateral relations was the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation signed in 1949 between the two countries. It called for peace between the two nations and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. The Treaty was revised in 2007. The diplomatic relations were established in 1968 with the establishment of a special office of India in Thimphu. There are a number of institutional and diplomatic mechanisms between India and Bhutan in areas such as security, border management, trade, transit, economic, hydro-power, development cooperation, water resources etc. Bhutan shares its border with four Indian states - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim with a length of 699 km and serves as a buffer between India and China. The trade between the two countries is governed by the India-Bhutan Trade and Transit Agreement of 1972. India is Bhutan's largest trading partner. India has constructed three Hydroelectric Projects (HEPs) in Bhutan: Chukha HEP, Kurichhu HEP, and Tala HEP, operational and exporting surplus power to India. (ANI) The MoS will meet UAE ministers and a broad cross-section of the Indian community in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Emirates of the UAE, according to an official statement by the Ministry of External Affairs. The minister will also engage with Indian businesspersons, professionals, teachers and students. MOS will also interact with Indian blue-collar workers and social leaders in the UAE. India and UAE have continued to maintain close coordination in the spirit of their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. This year will be special for both India and UAE as they have taken over their respective presidencies of G20 and COP28, the official release said. Earlier, in December 2022, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar paid a visit to UAE while UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited India in November 2022. UAE Foreign Minister also participated in a G20-related session of the Voice of Global South Summit hosted by India on January 13. (ANI) The first out of the four Health Working Group Meetings under India's G20 presidency was held on Wednesday at Thiruvananthapuram, according to a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release. The event was attended by Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar and Union Minister of State for External Affairs, S V Muraleedharan, it said. "Pandemic Policy must be a defining part of our Health Policy as any health crisis today leads to an economic crisis due to the multisectoral nature of our inter-connected world. Learnings from the pandemic must form the agenda for our preparedness and response together. We need to diversify our capabilities and ensure that collectively, we preserve ourselves in the face of any health crisis", Pawar said at the event. The Health Track of the G20 India Presidency comprises Health Working Group (JWG) meetings and one Health Ministerial Meeting (HMM). The other three meetings will be held in Goa, Hyderabad (Telangana) and Gandhinagar (Gujarat), highlighting India's rich and diverse cultures. Pawar, in her address related to the Pandemic preparedness also noted that preparedness and response require "diverse multi-sectoral, multi-agency coordinated efforts." She also stressed that there is a need to strengthen and empower communities so that they become resilient for future health emergencies. She also noted that "COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic. The learnings must form the agenda for our preparedness and response together. We need to diversify our capabilities and ensure that collectively, we preserve ourselves in the face of any health crisis". She also emphasized that it is important to build a resilient health system and invest in lifesaving vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. In the same event, Muraleedharan noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for "One Earth, One Family, One Future" is a pro-planet approach, one that is in harmony with nature for an increasingly globalized world, according to the same PIB press release. He further stressed that the delegates "need to align our agenda for preparedness and response together to be able to effectively meet any health emergencies". The country should be prepared to collectively meet any health challenges in the future, he stated. Further, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan highlighted India's aim to achieve convergence in discussions across various multilateral fora engaged in health cooperation, as chair of the G20 Presidency. Indonesia's and Brazil's Troika members of the G20 appreciated India's presidency for setting up the three health priorities. They stated that the pandemic has given an opportunity to strengthen health systems and the need today is to "accelerate our efforts to ensure universal health coverage." (ANI) The last two 'Saroops' of the Guru Granth Sahib have arrived from Afghanistan's Kabul in Delhi on Wednesday, and will now be taken to a Gurudwara. Three people have arrived from Kabul with the last 2 Saroops of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the process of bringing back the symbols of faith and heritage associated with Sikhism is going on continuously. As a result, the last two versions of Guru Granth Sahib were brought to Delhi. Speaking to ANI, on this occasion, Manjeet Singh GK, the JAGO-Jag Aasra Guru Ott and the former president of DSGPC said that all religious heritage is being brought back in view of the prevailing situation in Afghanistan after the coming of Taliban rule. "These last two versions of Guru Granth Sahib were left there. We had tried to bring them earlier also. But, at that time Taliban had stopped it in view of technical aspects," he added. The Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee has borne all the expenses of bringing them from there and if anyone wants to come further, the committee will continue to cooperate. Manjeet Singh further said, "After the intervention of the Government of India and talks between the two governments, today it has become possible that we have been able to bring back both the formats." President of Indian World Forum, Puneet Singh Chandhok told ANI, a non-scheduled Kam Air flight, organised by Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee Amritsar is to arrive in Delhi from Kabul today. Last 2 Saroops of Sri Guru Granth Sahib onboard with 3 members of Afghan Sikh community" He thanked the Government of Afghanistan and the Government of India for facilitating the smooth passage and protocol for the transfer of Sri Guru Granth Sahib as per its sanctity. (ANI) As India holds the Presidency of the G20 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country, as other member nations, will play a decisive role in maintaining global peace and development, said a senior commentator from Saudi Arabia during his visit to India. "India as a member of the G20, they have a role just like any other member of the G20, every guest that's going to be attending the G20. It goes to show that conflict is, unfortunately, continuing to happen, but how they are going to tackle that as a unit as members of G20 and members of the world goes to show that Terrorism is an unfortunate thing that every nation is facing besides hunger, famine and conflicts," senior Saudi commentator Sulliman Alzehaifi told ANI. "As we see the conflicts in certain areas around the world from time to time, but how the nations come together and how they understand and deal with each other with respect and continuation in growth in all sectors - health, education, trade, business and tourism," he added. Sulliman Alzehaifi said he was looking forward to India hosting over 200 G20 meetings across the country for he believed it was an opportune moment for the country to showcase its diverse and rich culture. "We had discussions during this visit, and it's my first visit, that there are a lot of initiatives for every region of India, every state, every part of it for the G20 to come and visit. So, it goes to show that they are not including only specific cities and not including any specific regions, but including any and all. It goes to show that they want to develop the nation as a whole just like Saudi Arabia," said Sulliman. Fascinated with India's economic growth, Sulliman said both India and Saudi Arabia have ambitious future plans for growth. "You guys want to believe 2047-48, you have a very ambitious plan, because, of course, 1.6 billion is a huge population and it takes time to build on that. Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing with vision 2030," he said. A nation deeply committed to democracy and multilateralism, India's G20 Presidency has been deemed by many as a watershed moment in its history for it seeks to play an important role in achieving global peace and prosperity through pragmatic solutions. The country aims to accomplish these objectives in line with its philosophy of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' or the 'World is One Family'. Sulliman, who visited many historical places in New Delhi, said India and Saudi Arabia have strong cultural bonding. He said Saudi-India for the first time, the cultural bonding can go much deeper than people expect in terms of food, culture and even languages. "We visited many historical places and we saw Arabic calligraphy. Arabs need to realise that they have been here for many years and vice versa. The Silk Road connected India to the Middle East and to Europe. From the historical times there are bonds and mutual understanding with one another," said the Saudi commentator. Saudi Arabia has a large Indian diaspora, which acts as the country's brand ambassador in the Arab World. Sulliman believes that India and Saudi Arabia have strong cultural and business ties. "Many people do not realise that a lot of things in the Middle-East are from India in terms of spices, in terms of culture and even here also the languages, etc. Once you understand a region or a country, to better understand them and how to deal with them in all sectors, you have to understand their culture and their languages and what's a better way to do that than visiting India. "You can read about it, you can talk to people in a cafe, you can see videos but it doesn't do any justice. For me, I did all of that, I did my research, I asked many people as to where to go, what to see and what to eat and they said all of that is worthless if you don't visit. So, when I came to visit it, it's much more than I expected," he said. (ANI) Director of US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) Enoh T Ebong on Wednesday revealed that the Indian portfolio, which consists of approximately 200 activities in energy transportation and digital infrastructure, has the potential to unlock USD 37 billion in financing. "In our estimation, the portfolio itself, approximately 200 activities across sectors that I talked about, including energy transportation and digital infrastructure, has the potential to unlock USD 37 billion in the financing," USTDA director Ebong said. Further elaborated on the figure she quoted, the USTDA director said, "The estimate that I gave about what our portfolio can unlock totally focussed on India and the (USD 37 billion) financing can come from a whole range of players. We prepare projects that can be financed by the private sector, public sector, and multilateral banks. We want to make sure that these projects get implemented. So, making sure that financiers have the confidence in the projects through having them properly prepared is where we put the focus on and we are very excited about the strength of the portfolio."Responding to a query about USTDA's position on India's green hydrogen push, she said the USTDA was interested in collaborations with India in harnessing the new technology. "I've heard so much about the plans that the country has, a mission and a task with respect to green hydrogen and we are very interested in exploring collaboration in this new technology. We are focused on preparing and helping to bring in technologies, including new ones, to the point where they can do finance," Ebong added. On the functioning of the USTDA, the director said, "Our mission is to advance sustainable infrastructure in emerging economies around the globe in collaboration with US industry. For 30 years, we have partnered with India's private sector, state governments and federal government to contribute to the development of infrastructure projects that they have identified as their priorities." "USTDA provides grant funding for feasibility studies technical assistance, and pilot projects. USTDA also funds partnership-building activities between government and private stakeholders to support our shared goals," she added. Also, on Wednesday, Ebong announced that the USTDA has launched a new partnership with eight state governments of India, as part of which there will be an inter-state clean energy procurement programme where an agency will fund and train public procurement officials with the ultimate goal of implementing clean energy projects that are of the highest quality and give people in India the best value for their money. The eight states with which the USTDA has announced a partnership are Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. "This focus on states is important because a great deal of infrastructure development is taking place at the state level," she said. Ebong also said the USTDA has also announced feasibility study funding that will enable agile networks to expand broadband connectivity to more than 30 million underserved people in rural and Per-urban communities in 16 Indian states. On future areas of collaboration, the USTDA director brought up the aviation cooperation programme, which includes airport master planning or air traffic management, saying, "I think using satellite and new navigation, new navigation technologies, as well as passenger safety and security and screening of baggage." On the Indo-Pacific economic framework, she added, "We at USTDA are very delighted and even excited with the launch of Indo-Pacific economic framework because it's an agency that focuses on infrastructure development. It is completely consistent with what we do and all of our work." Later in her address, she brought up her visit to Gujarat's Gandhi Ashram which she called inspiring, especially as it coincided with the Martin Luther King Day. "I was honoured to visit the Gandhi Ashram on the US holiday of Martin Luther King Day. It was an incredibly meaningful opportunity to be at that place on Martin Luther King Day. King referred to Gandhi as his guiding light, which was very inspiring," Ebong noted. (ANI) India handed over two Sea Ambulances to Maldives on Wednesday that were procured under the Indian Grant Assistance scheme. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid attended the handover ceremony held at Noonu Manadhoo today. A number of significant Memorandums of Understanding were exchanged between Maldives and India in various fields, as part of Jaishankar's visit to Male. "During the ceremony, both Foreign Minister Shahid and External Affairs Minister Dr. Jaishankar also witnessed the handover of two sea ambulances from the Government of India to the Ministry of Defence of Maldives which was a project carried out under the High Impact Community Development Project Scheme," the Maldives government said in a statement. As part of the close cooperation between India and Maldives under the Indian Grant Assistance scheme, Maldives's Defence Ministry has procured two Sea Ambulances. A total of 6.2 million Rufiyaa was allocated to the Maldives for the procurement of Sea Ambulances. The scope of the project is to procure two new Sea Ambulances to strengthen the healthcare delivery system in the Maldives. It will also help with the inter-island travels of patients in emergency. The Maldives government thanked the Indian government for the Sea Ambulances. Jaishankar is on a visit to Male to see the signing of agreements related to the bilateral development cooperation, ground-breaking/inauguration/handing-over. At today's ceremony, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ahmed Khaleel and Indian High Commissioner Munu Mahawar exchanged the Memorandum of Understanding between Maldives and India for additional grant assistance of 100 million Rufiyaa for the High Impact Community Development Project scheme. External Affairs Minister said that all Indian projects in the country adhere to the tenet of the Indian development cooperation approach which lays emphasis on transparency, and competitive pricing. "Needless to say, all these projects adhere to the basic tenet of the Indian development cooperation approach which is the emphasis on transparency, full participation, ownership of the host country and competitive pricing," he said. (ANI) India and Oman held the eighth strategic dialogue which focused on counter-terrorism initiatives, including ways to combat with the expansion of terrorist propaganda and misuse of emerging technologies, sources said on Wednesday. The discussion took place during the visit of the Secretary General of the National Security Council (NSC) of the Sultanate of Oman, Major General Idris Abdulrahman Al-Kindi, to India. "During the dialogue, both sides reaffirmed their commitment to the close strategic partnership between India and Oman and highlighted the high priority accorded by the leadership of both countries to further enhance their bilateral strategic ties based on trust and mutual respect," the sources said. Major General Idris Abdulrahman Al-Kindi is in India from January 16-19 for the eighth India-Oman Strategic Dialogue. This is his first visit after his appointment as the Secretary General of the NSC of Oman. Sources said that Al-Kindi also called on National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval. During the strategic dialogue, discussions were held on a wide range of issues of mutual interest, including bilateral strategic and security cooperation, defence and regional security. Both sides reiterated the importance of preserving maritime safety and security in the region. "Both sides condemned in the strongest terms all forms and manifestations of terrorism and underscored the need to work collectively to fight this menace," sources said. Both sides discussed that the expansion of terrorist propaganda, misuse of new and emerging technologies, arms and drugs trafficking and abuse of cyberspace for recruitment, fundraising and disinformation have serious security implications for the region and, therefore, a collective and coordinated response is essential. According to sources, both sides reiterated the importance of the Strategic Dialogue as an important mechanism of bilateral cooperation between India and Oman. They agreed to hold the next round of the Strategic Dialogue in Oman in 2024. The last Strategic Dialogue was held in Muscat in January 2020. (ANI) Pakistan authorities must immediately and unconditionally release journalist Shahid Aslam and allow the media to freely and independently report on military officials, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. On January 13, Federal Investigation Agency officers in Lahore arrested Aslam, a special correspondent for the privately owned broadcaster BOL News, according to news reports and a statement by the Pakistan Press Foundation, a local press freedom group. Authorities accused Aslam of involvement in a November 19, 2022, article in the independent news website FactFocus that used leaked tax data to report assets of former Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa and his family, sources said. In a statement, the CPJ said FactFocus editor Ahmad Noorani told them via a messaging app that Aslam had no involvement in that article. On Monday, an Islamabad court ordered Aslam to be transferred to jail while he awaits trial, according to Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema, who is familiar with the case and spoke with CPJ via messaging app. CPJ was unable to determine what charges have been filed against Aslam. "The arrest of reporter Shahid Aslam underscores the dangerous environment for journalists in Pakistan," said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ's Asia program coordinator, adding. "Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Aslam and respect his right to privacy and the confidentiality of his sources as guaranteed under the country's journalist safety law." During his detention, FIA officers pressured Aslam to disclose the password to his laptop, which he refused, according to the news reports and the statement of the Pakistan Press Foundation. The country's Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Bill, 2021, includes provisions safeguarding journalists' right to privacy and the confidentiality of their sources. The CPJ claimed it had emailed the Federal Investigation Agency for a comment, but did not receive any response. The media watchdog said it was unable to immediately find contact information for Bajwa, adding that it has repeatedly documented attacks on Pakistani journalists who have been critical of the country's military. (ANI) Publishers and booksellers on Monday said the import of books has stopped and the sale of books in Kabul has reduced dramatically, TOLO News reported, adding that the drop in sales comes amid the closure of schools and universities for women and girls under the Taliban regime. Publishers and booksellers have stated that they have stopped importing books from other nations due to a lack of market and hundreds of books on politics, economics and society have remained unsold for months, the report claimed. Aqeel Noori, a bookseller, said she had not imported books in two years as the sales were down. Ahmad Zai, another bookseller, said 80 per cent of his customers were girls and schools and universities have been closed for them, as per the news report. "Sadly, we haven't imported books in nearly two years due to lack of sales. The market is extremely down," TOLO News quoted Aqeel Noori, another bookseller, as saying. Publishers and booksellers added that they used to import over 100,000 books from Iran and Pakistan every six months, the news report stated further, adding that the number has reduced to zero now. In December, the Taliban ordered the suspension of higher education for females in Afghanistan. The Publishers Union of Kabul, too, confirmed that the sale of books has dropped since the closure of educational institutions for women and girls, the TOLO News report said. Mohammad Akbar Azimi, chairman, Joy-e-Shir Booksellers and Publishers Union, said sales have decreased significantly. "Our sales have dropped significantly as compared to previous years. The primary reason is that schools and universities are closed for girls," TOLO News quoted Mohammad Akbar Azimi as saying. Ruhollah, a student, said students cannot afford to purchase books as essential expenses are going up and the country's economy is hurtling downhill. "The financial situation of citizens is declining. It has reached a point where students cannot afford to buy books anymore," TOLO News quoted Ruhollah as saying. "With less money, it is difficult to buy a book, even if it costs 100 Afghanis," TOLO News quoted Mohammad Qadir, another student, as saying. (ANI) Afghanistan Ambassador to India Farid Mamumdzay has called the suppression of women's rights in Afghanistan by the Taliban 'unfortunate', adding that he hopes that the Taliban would reconsider and revisit their policies and allow Afghan women the right to education and work. "It's very unfortunate to see the kind of treatment given by the Taliban to the Afghan women in the past few months, in particular. Afghan women had been a great story of success. They had been part of the social-economic growth in the country in the past 20 years. In seeing those gains being erased, and those liberties being taken away from them is really tragic. We hope that Taliban would reconsider and revisit their policies and would allow Afghan girls, Afghan women to both education and work," said the Afghan envoy in an exclusive interview with ANI. Calling the recent news of the Taliban allowing some women to work in NGOs encouraging, the envoy hopes that Afghan girls would be going to schools too, soon. "There's been some encouraging news since yesterday. Taliban now allowing Afghan women to work back in NGOs is a very positive development. We hope that they would also allow Afghan girls to go to school in the coming weeks and they would be given the human and legal Islamic right to do things whether it is getting an education or continuing with the employment," he added. Hailing India's humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, the envoy said that India's aid came at a very critical time, but at the same time the country needs more help in form of development and humanitarian assistance. "India has supported Afghanistan in a very difficult time We are grateful for India's generous contribution by giving us 40,000 metric tonnes of Wheat, by giving us more than 30 metric tonnes of life-saving medicine and half a million covid vaccines. India's support came at a very critical time, but at the same time Afghanistan require more assistance, more development aid, more humanitarian Aid", said the envoy. "The country is going through a very difficult humanitarian crisis at the moment. Our appeal, to the Indian government, is for more support. We do require more food assistance, winter shelter, and medicine at least for the coming few months. The aid is reaching the targeted communities through the UN agencies. So, the support is distributed through the right channels by very accountable entities, through very transparent and accountable manner and I hope that support will continue in the weeks ahead," he added. Responding to the question of when we can expect full diplomatic relations restoration between the two countries after the Taliban take over, the envoy stressed the fact that "the Indian government would be in the right position to answer the question." He added that "as long as Taliban do not embrace an inclusive system of governance, as long as they keep their government limited to Taliban alone, it will be very difficult to win credibility at home, and unless they have no credibility at home, there is going to be very little chances to have any legitimacy from any functioning or real democratic country in the world." "The world has made it clear to the Taliban to allow an inclusive, government, inclusive political system, where they would be represented from all across the country. ...We hope that the sooner Taliban decide the better of Afghanistan, the better that would be for the country," added the Afghan envoy. Speaking about the trade relationship between India and Afghanistan, the enjoy said that it is an area where we have seen the least interruption and hoped that trade between the two countries would continue. "Trade is one area where we have seen very least interruption over the past 12 months. There has been regular trade between India and Afghanistan as compared to the previous year. The level of trade remains the same as it was a few years ago. There's been an export of 120,000 metric tons of dry fruits from Afghanistan to India, and the level of trade remains the same," the envoy said. He hoped that the trade would continue which will benefit, common traders in both countries and that trade would continue uninterrupted. Stressing the difficult economic situation in the country, the envoy highlighted that there has been a dramatic drop in the first few months, but then with the support of the International Community, the exchange rate was stabilized. "We are facing a difficult economic situation. The currency has devalued by a reasonable percentage from around 80-81 to almost 88-89 or 90 against 1 dollar. So, there has been a drop in the value of the Afghan currency in the first few months. But then with the support of the International Community, the exchange rate was stabilized," said the envoy. "Generally, the level of unemployment is high, prices of basic commodities have increased in the past six twelve months and more and more people are taking the resources to safe, places or countries, where they think their resources and assets would be safe. So, we are faced with a difficult economic situation. There is very little investment and very little foreign funding. The economy is faced with a difficult situation. And unless there is political stability, there is political clarity on the future of Afghan polity, there's going to be a difficult economic situation," he added. The envoy regretted the recent reports of the Taliban's atrocities where it publically flogged nine convicted of robbery and Sodomy in Ahmad Shahi Stadium in Kandahar and said that procedures should have taken place before implementing such orders which have sent shock waves around the world. "This sent shock waves across the region and across the world. There was a legal and judicial system in place for the past two decades. The demand of the Afghan people has always been that legal procedures should have been followed, the right course of Justice should have taken place, and such treatment of these people could have been avoided and more proper and thorough proceedings should have taken place," said the envoy. Talking further on the recent tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the envoy said that "It's unfortunate to see the relationship going to that low where a country that has been the victim of terrorism for so many years has been blamed for something where ordinary Afghan had no doings in it." Earlier this month, tensions between Islamabad and Kabul peaked when Pakistan threatened to attack the TTP hideouts inside the territory of Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban administration further rejected Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah's remarks pertaining to the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) hideouts in Afghanistan, calling them "provocative" and "baseless". "Those claims have been categorically rejected by the Taliban authorities and it's hard to see such statements from such senior political figures in Pakistan. I think a more reasonable and responsible approach would be required from a neighbouring country to treat its neighbour with the required level of dignity and respect" the envoy said in response to this. On being asked if the world will give the Taliban recognition, the envoy said that "they need to make the right and reasonable decisions, act as responsible rulers of Afghanistan and the legitimacy at home first and then that would pave the way for winning International diplomatic recognition". "In order to win recognition or earn recognition, you need to earn legitimacy at home. The Afghan people and the Afghan public have not yet given legitimacy to the Taliban. More than half of the Afghan population has been denied their rights to education, and employment," he said. Mamumdzay asked why Afghan citizens are still leaving Afghanistan in big numbers. "Why is that happening? Why are so many people leaving Afghanistan? It's because of the way the political, the economic Security Condition are there in the country. Taliban are responsible for it. They need to make the right and reasonable decisions and act as responsible rulers of Afghanistan and the legitimacy at home first and then that would pave the way for winning International diplomatic recognition. Unless they earn legitimacy at home, it would be very difficult to get recognition from many countries," said the envoy. Expressing his optimism of democracy prevailing in Afghanistan one day, the envoy said that the Afghan people are resilient and they will be able to overcome challenges. "The Afghan people are resilient people. They've been able to overcome many such challenges. I think we still have a chance that we would be able to resolve our differences in the months and years ahead and they would be a peaceful prosperous Afghanistan as part of the international community living in peace and harmony both in the region and providing their assurance to the wider world," said the envoy. Speaking about the relationship between India and Afghanistan, the envoy said that the two countries "have had an excellent relationship with India" which has always stood by the Afghan people. "I have no doubt that this relationship would strengthen in the years and decades ahead, we always have a soft heart for Indians, for India. Afghans admire Indo-Afghan friendship, and I hope that Spirit would continue," the envoy added. (ANI) Discussions were centred around strengthening cooperation in the education sector with a focus on democratising innovation, driving entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for the youth. "Union Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan today met a delegation of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, led by Ms Amanda Kwek, First Secretary, Singapore High Commission," Ministry of Education said in a statement. "They discussed strengthening cooperation in the education sector with a focus on democratising innovation, driving entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for the youth," the statement added. Pradhan said India and Singapore are natural allies with strong relations in education and skill development sectors. "During the meeting, Shri Pradhan said that India and Singapore are natural allies with strong relations in education and skill development sectors," the ministry was further quoted as saying in the statement. He added that India looks forward to enhancing cooperation with the participation of academia and the industry. (ANI) After completing the successful visit to Kenya, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who is leading an Indian Parliamentary Delegation (IPD), reached Tanzania's city Dar es Salaam on the second leg of East Africa visit on Wednesday. Taking to Twitter, Birla said, "Arrived at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with the IPD. Humbled by the warm welcome at the airport. Will hold several bilaterals with the dignitaries of Tanzania & looking forward to productive engagement in the direction of strengthening relations between two Parliaments and countries." Birla and the members of the IPD were received at the airport by officials of the Tanzanian government and the Indian High Commission in Tanzania. During his visit, Birla held discussions with the Speaker of the Parliament of Tanzania Tulia Ackson. At the outset, Birla thanked Ackson for the traditional and warm welcome accorded to the Indian Delegation. "Held fruitful discussions with Speaker of National Assembly of Tanzania Tulia Ackson and Speaker of Parliament of Zanzibar Zubair Ali Maulid. The interaction was enriching and covered key segments of our relationship," he added. Lok Sabha Speaker added that he stressed that Indian Parliament supports the mutual exchange of parliamentary delegations, as he urged the formation of Parliamentary Friendship Groups and people-to-people contacts to increase the affinity between our two countries and Parliaments. Speaking on the occasion, Birla emphasised that India and Tanzania have traditionally had close and friendly relations. He added that the shared values, the legacy of struggle against colonialism and the strong desire for the progress and prosperity of their people have defined the relationship between the two countries. Birla expressed joy that India has always been a reliable partner in Tanzania's development journey. Weighing in on the traditionally close, friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries, Birla said the present relations should be expanded to new avenues of innovation and technology. Presently, India is the fifth largest economy with the potential to grow further and Tanzania is the most important economy in the African continent. The partnership of India and Tanzania on the economic front will fuel growth in both countries, added Birla. Referring to the setting up of the IIT in Tanzania, Birla noted that it is a matter of pride that the first IIT, outside India, is being set up in Tanzania. This will help in the development of the human resource of Tanzania, added Birla. Besides, a technological park which is being conceptualised will add to the growth of the engine of Tanzania, mentioned Birla. Referring to the defence ties between the two countries, Birla said it is a matter of satisfaction that the defence partnership between India and Tanzania has augmented over a period of time and he expressed hope that this will be further strengthened. On India's G20 Presidency, Birla noted that India will make efforts to put forth the concerns of developing countries and the global south at the summit. Referring to contributions of the Indian diaspora, Birla said that people of Indian roots in Tanzania are playing an important role in the development of the country. The Lok Sabha Speaker suggested that regular exchange of dialogue and visits of dignitaries at the higher level will further strengthen the ties between the two countries. He informed that on the sidelines of G20, the Indian Parliament will also organise the P20 conference of the Speakers of the Parliaments of the G20 countries this year. Birla added that India being the world's largest democracy, will try to effectively resolve global issues through this platform. Expressing happiness that after 50 years a parliamentary delegation from India was visiting Tanzania under his leadership, Birla said such high-level visits strengthen political and parliamentary relations. He added that the Indian Parliament supports the mutual exchange of parliamentary delegations and continuity of visits. Birla observed that such steps not only increase the affinity between the two countries and the Parliaments but also encourage people-to-people contact and cooperation. The Lok Sabha stressed the need to explore the possibility of setting up an India-Tanzania Parliamentary Friendship Group to strengthen parliamentary diplomacy. He added that such a forum will help share each other's experiences and perspectives, resulting in further strengthening of bilateral relations and opening up new opportunities for cooperation. Capacity building of Members and Officers of Tanzania legislature through PRIDE, Lok Sabha Secretariat was also discussed. Later on, Birla met with the Zanzibar House of Representatives, Zubeir Ali Maulid and said that both countries have an age-old relationship going back centuries. He added that Indian traders have been visiting Zanzibar for centuries. Birla also said that over the centuries many Indians settled in Zanzibar, leading to the development of friendly relations between the two countries. Birla also recalled that in the year 1974, India became the first country to open a consulate in Zanzibar leading to several high-level political visits between India and Zanzibar. Zubeir Ali Maulid invited Birla to visit Zanzibar. Birla and the visiting Parliamentary delegation to Tanzania paid tributes to the fallen Indian soldiers during the First World War at Commonwealth War Cemetery at Dar Es Salaam. (ANI) Tibetans-in-exile condemned China's mass DNA collection in Tibet and said that the multinational companies are equally responsible as they send their technologies which help Beijing in collecting data. While speaking with ANI, Tenzin Lekshay, spokesperson of the Tibetan government-in-exile said, "This is very disturbing to hear about the mass collection of DNA including of children forcibly inside Tibet. There are several reports coming out about the mass collection of DNA without the consent of Tibetan people. We feel the essence of collecting the database the DNA samples are mostly for their own surveillance purposes so this is a violation of human rights. So we condemn this mass collection of DNA samples and the world must see what's going on in Tibet." Meanwhile, Dolma Tsering, deputy speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile said that China is collecting DNA data since 2015 to make the surveillance more stringent. "China has been collecting DNA without consent from the people since 2015 and this has been published in the HRW publication also and they warned the world to be careful about this. But the Chinese bully we all know. Whatever the world doesn't do they are busy doing it. It's a system to make surveillance more stringent. Whatever China do is for a bad purpose. It's to hamper Human rights violations," Tsering said. "Therefore, I would say that it is not only China who is wrong in that, all the multi-national companies who are supplying technologies for DNA testing, So they are equally responsible. China's intention is to make Tibetan people more frustrated, and then their dream is to comply with whatever dictates they do. Even the Self-immolation is because of this," she added. President of the Tibetan youth Congress Gompo Dhondup said that they are concerned with the mass collection of DNA. He urged the international community to interfere and stop China from this illegal activity inside Tibet. The US-based company Thermo Fisher Scientific is providing equipment for DNA collection and that company is equally responsible for the inhuman acts in Tibet. According to the survey from Citizen Lab, the atrocities against ethnic minorities in Tibet have skyrocketed. The reports revealed that between June 2016 and July 2022, the police in Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) may have collected between 919,282 and 1,206,962 DNA samples which represents one-quarter (25.1 per cent) and one-third (32.9 per cent) of Tibet's total population (3.6 million). The mass testing drives not only targeted men but also women and children in the name of ensuring social stability, however, there is very little evidence that this programme is aimed at countering criminal activity, the European Times reported. (ANI) The Gambia's Vice President Badara Alieu Joof has died of 'short illness' in India, President Adama Barrow said on Wednesday. Taking to Twitter, Barrow said, "Fellow #Gambians, it is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing away of my #VicePresident, His Excellency, Badara Alieu Joof. The sad event took place in India after a short illness. May Allah grant him Jannahtul Firdawsi." The vice president earlier served as the education minister from 2017 to 2022 and then last year, he became the Vice President of the country. Earlier, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar expressed his condolences on the Gambian Vice President's death. Taking to Twitter, Jaishankar said, "Deeply grieved to learn about the passing away of Vice President of the Gambia Badara A. Joof, who was undergoing treatment in India. Ministry of External Affairs will render all necessary assistance to the Gambian authorities." According to Al Jazeera, the vice president had left Gambia about three weeks ago to seek medical treatment and had not been seen in public for months before the trip. It said further that Joof was the fourth deputy to serve under Barrow since he became the President in 2016 against former strongman Yahya Jammeh and was sworn-in the following year. The late vice president previously worked in the Gambian civil service and later in the World Bank as an Education Specialist for West and Central Africa, transmitting his experience there to his time as minister of higher education, research, science and technology. (ANI) With the meteoric rise in China's Covid cases in recent weeks and a dearth of Covid data emanating from the country, questions have been raised about the actual numbers of cases in relation to official Chinese figures presented to the world. On Saturday, China announced that nearly 60,000 Covid-19 deaths were reported since the country lifted its strict "Zero Covid Policy" on December 7, last year. However, these figures contradict a research report published by the National School of Development of Peking University that said that 900 million people, or 64 per cent of the total population in China, had been infected as of January 11, Asia Times reported. 60,000 figure was only 7 per cent of the number of normal deaths in China, given that 10.14 million people died in mainland China in 2021, according to a Guangdong-based writer. The writer said the figure could not explain why funeral services in major cities had been so numerous as to strain facilities since mid-December. The number of Covid deaths in China may have reached 584,000 so far and could reach 1.7 million by the end of April, Asia Times reported citing UK-based health data firm Airfinity. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week spoke with Minister Ma Xiaowei, director of China's National Health Commission about the COVID-19 situation in the country and sought deeper cooperation on the origins of the pandemic. "Spoke with Minister Ma Xiaowei about the #COVID19 situation in #China. I appreciated the release of detailed information, which we request they continue to share. Asked for the sharing of further sequences and cooperation on understanding the virus origins," WHO chief tweeted. The phone call came on the same day as China announced that nearly 60,000 Covid-19 deaths were reported since the country lifted its strict "Zero Covid Policy", state media outlet Global Times reported. On the call on Saturday, Tedros reiterated the importance of China's deeper cooperation and transparency on understanding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in carrying out the recommendations detailed in the report of the Strategic Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens. In a statement posted on its website, WHO said Chinese officials provided information to WHO on a range of topics, including outpatient clinics, hospitalizations, patients requiring emergency treatment and critical care, and hospital deaths related to COVID-19 infection. The WHO requested that this type of detailed information continue to be shared with them. Additionally, they noted the efforts by Chinese authorities to scale up clinical care for its population at all levels, including critical care. The UN health agency said it would continue to work with China, providing technical advice and support and analysing the situation. (ANI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on Wednesday joined in the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hanimaadhoo international airport project. "Joined President @ibusolih and his ministers and local leaders at the ground-breaking ceremony of Hanimaadhoo International Airport Development Project," tweeted Jaishankar. Speaking at the ceremony, Jaishankar said, "For us, the redevelopment of Hanimaadhoo International Airport is first and foremost. This project will bridge the gap between the people of Northern Maldives and the rest of the world and bring our people together. And India is privileged to be with the Maldives for its implementation." "I am truly delighted to be part of today's historic ceremony for the ground-breaking Hanimaadhoo International Airport Development Project. I bring to all of you the warm greetings and best wishes of India's leadership, especially, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and of 1.3 billion plus Indians," he added. Jaishankar further said that the physical proximity of Northern atolls with India makes us even better appreciate the deep-rooted, long-standing and close linkages between our peoples and our countries. Speaking about the importance India attaches to the Maldives, he said, "During the visit of PM Modi in June 2019, he spoke about the unique natural closeness of our countries and remarked that Neighbourhood First is our priority and in the neighbourhood Maldives is the priority." He also explained India's G20 theme during its Presidency, he said, "Better connectivity is a prerequisite for greater prosperity with this rationale greater connectivity finds resonance in our theme for G20 Presidency - One Earth, One Family, One Future." Jaishankar said that India's endeavour is to share its experiences, learnings and models as a possible template for others, particularly in the developing world and to promote a universal sense of oneness through enhancing connectivity. This project is the largest infrastructure investment in the Northern Maldives that will open up new international operations from Hanimaadhoo. It will enable direct travel from the Northern atolls for business, medical and other purposes and further intensify people-to-people exchanges. "This project will have a truly transformative impact on the economy of the Northern Maldives, it will help spur entrepreneurship, growth and employment opportunities, encourage tourism development and strengthen allied sectors, including fisheries and logistics which are critical for the balanced growth of this region," said Jaishankar. "This project is also a great example of the vision of decentralization of the Govt of Maldives. In India too, we lay emphasis on inclusive and equitable development," he added. Talking about the India-Maldives partnership, he said, "India's partnership with the Maldives is based on our genuine desire to work together for each other's welfare and interest. It is a partnership that has enabled us to swiftly and effectively respond to challenges as we saw recently during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a partnership that has enabled us to deliver results and bring about tangible benefits to our people in accordance with their wishes, aspirations and priorities." He said that the rising number of Indian tourists in Maldives is a reflection of deepening ties and outcomes of focus on infrastructure and connectivity, especially under the Modi Government. "Signing of contract for the expansion of MIFCO facility will also be a major milestone that will augment livelihood opportunities. Our focus on capacity development has also been seen in the training programs which have benefited more than 900 Maldivian officials last year alone," said Jaishankar. He conveyed a strong message that India is a committed partner in Maldives' journey of progress and transformation. "India- Maldives relations are at an all-time high ever since @ibusolih took over as the President of the island nation in November 2018. His #Indiafirst policy is in tune with India's #NeighbourhoodFirst Policy. Both are maritime neighbours & key partners in the #IOR," tweeted Jaishankar. Maldivian President Solih also lauded the relationship between the two countries at the ceremony. He said, "The relationship between India and Maldives is based on traditionally intertwined trade, culture and personal contact. Our relationship has remained unhindered through time. Over the last 4 years, India has become our largest economic partner contributing to the socio-economic development of the nation." Speaking about the importance of Hanimaadhoo international airport for the Northern Maldives, he said, "This is a very momentous occasion for the people of Thiladhummathi as they are witnessing their long dream of a modern and state of art international airport becoming a reality." He also thanked PM Modi for the assistance provided by India for the development of Hanimaadhoo international airport. "My Govt and I acknowledge with deep appreciation the continued assistance provided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his govt and the friendly people of India to the people of Maldives," said Solih. Meanwhile, thanking Jaishankar, he said, "- It is a great honour and privilege for us that the External Affairs Minister of India, S Jaishankar is joining us on this joyous occasion. Your presence here the demonstration of the close bond between India and Maldives. May this friendship continue to flourish in the years to come." Parliament Speaker and President of the main-ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), Mohamed Nasheed also tweeted, "Very pleased to see an old friend @DrSJaishankar back in Maldives to break ground on the new Hanimaadhoo international airport. It's a great project that will transform the North. Sorry I couldn't join you today. @HCIMaldives." In response, Jaishankar tweeted, "Thank you for your warm words. A memorable function this evening in Hanimadhoo. Appreciate your continued support for #IndiaMaldives partnership." Jaishankar is on a three-day visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka to further expand bilateral engagement with the two key maritime neighbours of India. (ANI) An 11-year-old girl was killed in a drive-by shooting as she walked home from a convenience store with a gallon of milk, according to the mayor of Syracuse, New York. We have a mother up at the hospital right now who just lost her 11-year-old daughter and youre going to have a school full of children tomorrow without their classmate because she walked a block up the street for some milk for her family, Mayor Ben Walsh said in a statement Jan. 16, the night of the shooting. Its senseless and its just brutal. The girl was shot just before 7:45 p.m. by a person police say was firing shots at a 19-year-old man, Syracuse Police Chief Joe Cecile told Syracuse.com. Police believe the 19-year-old was the intended target. The man was also struck, and both he and the girl were taken to a local hospital, the outlet reported. The girl was pronounced dead, and the 19-year-old is expected to survive, according to the outlet. Authorities later identified the girl as Brexialee Torres-Ortiz, according to The New York Times. Photographs from the scene of the shooting showed a gallon of milk spilled on its side, the outlet reported. My niece had a whole life she was just starting to live, her aunt, Nelly Nel, wrote on Facebook. She only went to get milk at the store and never made it back. Torres-Ortiz was a fifth-grade class president at a STEM middle school, where she was in the high honors program, Cnycentral.com reported. She also loved to dance, according to the outlet. A teacher at the school wrote on Facebook that he felt for his students who were mourning Torres-Ortiz at such a young age. We remember her smile, her energy, and most of all how much she loved her school friends, wrote Stephen White, who is identified as a physical education teacher on his profile. Another teacher wrote on Facebook that she was an amazing student and was only starting to discover who she was. She was sassy but sweet, wrote India Jenkins. And loved by many. She didnt deserve this fate. Story continues Authorities are still searching for the shooter, and Cecile has asked members of the public for help submitting tips and sharing any information they have about the shooting, according to The New York Times. The Syracuse Police Department did not respond to a request for information from McClatchy News. 12-year-old is hit and killed while running to catch school bus, Georgia coroner says Student shot in head and chest while waiting for bus outside high school, Ohio cops say 17-year-old dies after going into cardiac arrest, school says. How is this happening? As of 14:00, rescue workers have reported that 17 people, including four children, were killed in the helicopter crash in Brovary. Source: Mariana Reva, spokesperson for National Police during the national joint 24/7 newscast; State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES) Details: Rescue workers, police and local government continue to provide contradictory information. Quote from the SES: "As of 14:00, 17 people have been found dead, including four children and nine people who were on board the helicopter. A total of 25 people have been injured (including 11 children) and have now been hospitalised (the information is being confirmed). As of 12:30, the police reported that 16 people have been killed, including three children." Quote from Mariana Reva: "Currently, according to the information that has been confirmed at this time, 16 people have been killed due to this helicopter crash, including three children. In addition, 25 people are in medical facilities, being provided with qualified assistance. 10 of them are injured. Several people are in serious condition in intensive care". Details: Currently, investigators from the National Police, Security Service and State Bureau of Investigation are continuing to work at the scene of the tragedy. The police are doing door-to-door rounds, interviewing witnesses. The law enforcement officers urge witnesses of the flight of the State Emergency Services helicopter to contact them and provide evidence. Background: On the morning of 18 January, a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten in Brovary in Kyiv Oblast, causing a fire to break out. A helicopter crash in Brovary, Kyiv Oblast, has killed the top leadership of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs: Denys Monastyrskyi, Minister of Internal Affairs, Yevhen Yenin , First Deputy Interior Minister, and Yurii Lubkovych , State Secretary of the Interior Ministry are among those killed. A total of 18 fatalities, including 3 children , have been reported. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Head of the Presidents Office, has said that the helicopter crash in Brovary, Kyiv Oblast, occurred during the flight by Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi to one of Ukraines hotspots where fighting is ongoing. Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! [Source] Two people were killed and another person was critically injured during a shooting inside a Chinese takeout restaurant in the neighborhood of Southwest Philadelphia. The three customers were picking up food at Shangri-La restaurant on the 5400 block of Chester Avenue when two shooters fired at least 16 shots shortly before 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Police responded to the scene and found the three victims lying on the ground bleeding in the customer waiting area of the restaurant. All three victims were suffering from gunshots, all were laying on the floor in the customer takeout area, all three victims were unresponsive, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said, according to NBC Philadelphia. More from NextShark: Millions of Filipinos visit cemeteries for All Saints Day The victims a 43-year-old woman, a 20-year-old man and a 19-year-old man were rushed to the hospital. The woman, who was shot in the shoulder, and the younger man, who was shot multiple times throughout his body, were later pronounced dead. The 20-year-old victim was left in extremely critical condition. He remains unconscious and is not expected to make it, according to Fox News. Police believe the motive behind the shooting might be narcotics, citing prior criminal records of the two male victims, who were half-brothers. More from NextShark: Long-awaited UN report on human rights abuses in Xinjiang triggers fiery Beijing response According to police, all three victims lived within a block of the Chinese restaurant at 54th St. and Chester Avenue. The last known address we have for all three of these victims, they all live within one block from this Chinese takeout where the shooting took place. So they all live very, very close by, Small stated. Surveillance cameras captured two suspects fleeing the scene southbound on 54th St. More from NextShark: Vancouver couple pleads guilty to anti-Asian attack on coffee shop manager despite claiming incident was staged According to Small, one shooter wore a gray hooded sweatshirt while the other shooter wore a puffy coat. Story continues Since the beginning of 2023, at least 17 homicides have been reported in the city, according to police data. Philadelphia police are reportedly implementing new plans in an effort to reduce gun violence in the city. Related stories: More from NextShark: 98-Year-Old Asian American WWII Veteran Awarded the Congressional Gold Medal A Des Moines man who went on a shooting rampage through Pleasant Hill eight years ago won't get a new trial after an Iowa appellate court reversed a lower court's ruling last week. Pete Polson, now 40, was convicted of attempted murder, assault, willful injury and intimidation, as well as several drug offenses, stemming from the Nov. 17, 2014, string of three shootings that left two men seriously injured and barely missed a third. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison, with a mandatory minimum of 27 before he is eligible for parole. Polson blamed the shootings on a drug-induced mental breakdown, and his attorney argued at trial that he was intoxicated to the point of "a mental disability" that caused him to begin shooting strangers from his car and to black out about the experience. From 2015:Pleasant Hill victim to shooter: 'I hope you go to hell' Although an appellate court found the evidence Polson was the shooter to be "overwhelming," it allowed him to bring a separate postconviction relief action in the district court on whether he'd received adequate legal representation from his attorney. The postconviction court ruled that he had not, and that Polson's attorney erred in failing to present an expert at trial who could testify to the effects of methamphetamine intoxication. Polson, the court found, deserved a new trial. Pleasant Hill Police investigate an early morning shooting on Monday, Nov. 17, 2014 This time prosecutors appealed, and last week the appellate court ruled in their favor. Polson's attorney had no need to provide a meth expert, the court ruled, because his defense argued he was not under the influence of methamphetamine at all. According to court filings, the shootings came after a weekend-long methamphetamine bender in which Polson and an acquaintance repeatedly injected themselves with the drug. At trial, though, Polson testified something was wrong with the final dose he injected, just before midnight on Nov. 16, and that it didn't "taste" like methamphetamine. Hours later, Polson began shooting strangers as he drove through Pleasant Hill, but testified the last thing he remembered before his arrest was that wrong-feeling drug injection the night before. Story continues From 2014:33 minutes: Gunshots, fear and a quick arrest As Polson's attorney later explained to the postconviction court, his trial strategy was to argue that it was some other substance he had unknowingly injected that caused his blackout and subsequent rampage. Among other evidence was testimony from the officers who arrested Polson, who said he did not show any of the characteristic jitters of someone high on meth. Nonetheless, the postconviction court ruled Polson's attorney had erred in failing to call an expert on meth. Last week's ruling reverses that finding, as the appellate court held that such an expert would not have bolstered his defense. The court noted that not only was Polson's trial strategy a reasonable one, but that arguably it had worked: Polson was convicted of only one of the three attempted murder charges brought against him. Previously:Pleasant Hill shooting suspect 'very familiar' to officers Although Polson did find a methamphetamine expert who testified at his postconviction hearing that she had "no doubt" he was experiencing a "methamphetamine-induced psychosis," such an expert would not have helped him at trial, the appellate court found, since it conflicted with his primary theory of defense, and with the testimony of officers and his own testimony suggesting he was not under the influence of meth at the time of the shootings. The decision means that Polson's trial conviction will stand and no new trial will be ordered. Al Smith, Polson's appellate attorney, said he and his client believe the appellate court is incorrect, and intend to petition the Iowa Supreme Court to further review the case. William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Pleasant Hill spree shooter denied new trial by Iowa Court of Appeals Pennsylvania State Police are looking for individuals who stole a truck tractor from a Jackson Township repair shop Friday. Officials said the theft occurred around 11:35 p.m. Jan. 13 at the Owl Creek Truck Repair. The truck, a maroon 2005 Peterbilt truck tractor, is valued at $45,000. "Video surveillance captured the incident and depicts a white in color, 2002-2006 Sprinter van with a sliding door window and black wheels approach from the East," police said in a release Tuesday morning. "A passenger exited the van and approached the tractor trailer combination." The individual disconnected the trailer and entered truck. He then followed the van east on Route 422. Lebanon shooting:Lebanon police ask for help after 39-year-old male shot near Monument Park Tuesday night Garage break-in:State police searching for individuals who broke into East Hanover Twp garage on Christmas Eve Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact the Pennsylvania State Police at 717-865-2194 or Crime Stoppers at 717-270-9800. This investigation is ongoing. Please check back with the Lebanon Daily News for updates. Matthew Toth is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at mtoth@ldnews.com or on Twitter at @DAMattToth This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: $45,000 truck tractor stolen from Jackson Township Friday, police say police car frire truck Getty Images A 73-year-old woman died after her car caught fire and the doors would not unlock, police said. Mary Frahm was known as a "groundbreaker for the Downs Syndrome community" in her community. Frahm had just dropped off her son, who has Down's syndrome, at work when her car malfunctioned. A 73-year-old woman in Dunn, Wisconsin, died last month after her vehicle caught fire and the doors would not unlock, trapping her inside. Mary Frahm was returning home from dropping off her son at work when her 2009 Dodge Journey started acting strange on December 9, the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier reported. The windshield wipers started on their own, the speedometer began moving, and the lights of her dashboard flashed as the SUV started to lose power, the outlet reported. A Dane County Sheriff's Office report said that Frahm called her fiance to let him know that her car was "acting up," according to the outlet. The police said that Frahm's car had occasional electrical problems over the course of the four years that she owned it, but this time she said that she could not unlock the doors or roll down the windows, even with her key fob, the outlet reported. Frahm called her fiance a second time to tell him that smoke had begun coming out of her dashboard while he was on his way to her and she called police shortly after, the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier reported. But the car was engulfed in flames by the time first responders arrived, the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier reported. The Dane County Sheriff's Office did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Tuesday. A representative for Stellantis, the company that develops and manufactures Dodge vehicles, said the company is "not aware of any similar cases" in a statement provided to Insider. "We extend our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of Ms. Frahm," the company said in the statement. Frahm's fiance told police that she took exceptional care of her car, but a police investigation revealed that the car had a TIPM, or Totally Integrated Power Module, a part that some older Chrysler models have that can cause them to malfunction. The TIPM has been the focus of a class action lawsuit against the company, according to the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier. Story continues Chrysler was sued in 2014 by customers who said the company misled them about the TIPM defect and the suit was settled after the company issued recalls on some Dodge Durangos and Jeep Grand Cherokees, according to Newsweek. Frahm's vehicle was not included in the recall, according to the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier. Frahm's son, who she dropped off at work before her car caught fire, is in his 50s and has Down's syndrome, the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier reported. Frahm was well known within her community as a "groundbreaker for Down syndrome in the Madison area," her sister told the outlet. Read the original article on Insider Choreograph / iStock.com Gone are the days when you had to run to the bank or wade though a phone menu to do simple tasks like get your account balance and deposit, withdraw and transfer money. Banks provide these services and more online and through their apps, and they continually expand their offerings. Experts: Heres How Much You Should Have in Your Checking Account Find Out: Do You Really Need To Keep Your Emergency Fund Separate From Your Savings Account? At this point, nearly everything you can do in person at a branch can be accomplished in the comfort of your own home, said Timothy Day, vice president of digital experiences at Navy Federal Credit Union. This isnt to say branches are unimportant sometimes there is no substitute for the help and support of a live person but consumers have a seemingly endless number of digital tools at their fingertips. Not only can you deposit checks and pay bills with your phone, but you can also monitor your credit, create a budget, build your savings, choose investments and even buy a car using some banks online tools and apps. A study from the American Bankers Association found a major shift in the way people interacted with their banks during the pandemic. Prior to COVID, 33% of bank customers used apps on phones or mobile devices as their top option for managing their bank account, 24% used online banking on their computer the most, and 21% most frequently conducted their transactions in person at a bank branch. The trend toward digital banking has continued post-pandemic, with some consumers ready to give up branches entirely. A PYMNTS survey published in June 2022 found that nearly half of consumers are very or extremely interested in digital-only banking. The mobile apps and online tools that power digital banking provide convenience, and they can also help you keep track of how you spend your money and assess your progress towards your financial goals. People like the idea of accessing their finances at anytime, anywhere, which also allows them to monitor their spending more frequently, said Barry Baird, TD Banks head of payments capability and delivery. Story continues With that said, here are eight surprising things you can do without going into a bank branch, and how these tools and resources can help with your financial goals. Deposit Checks With Your Phone This wont surprise some people, but its one of the easiest ways to avoid having to go into a bank branch. This functionality has been around at some banks for a while, but it became even more popular when branches were closed during COVID. Using the mobile app is by far the most popular way that our members deposit checks because of the speed and convenience, said Day. You can deposit a check at many banks by taking a picture of the check with your smartphone or tablet. At Bank of America, which has offered mobile check deposit for several years, just open the app, sign the check and specify for deposit only. Then take a picture of the front and back of the check and upload it on the app, select the account to receive the deposit, and enter the amount. Youll receive a receipt confirming the deposit right away. Receive Alerts About Account Activity You can receive alerts for a variety of activities in your account, which can help you stay on top of your finances, track your spending and avoid missing deadlines. These tools can also improve the security of your accounts by giving you you a heads up about suspicious activity. Members can opt in to receive notifications of upcoming bills, debit and credit card transactions, deposits, withdrawals, and balances via SMS, email or push notifications, said Day. Its a great way to enhance account security and track spending and can be managed from mobile or online. Monitor Your Credit Score Some banks offer customers a credit score monitoring service. Primary cardholders on Bank of America credit card accounts can receive their credit score each month and up to two key factors affecting their score, as well as information about strategies for improving their score. Bank of Americas virtual assistant, Erica, can show them their score in the mobile app. Chases Credit Journey credit monitoring service updates scores weekly and sends alerts if there are changes in your credit report that can affect your score. The service is free, and you dont have to be a Chase customer to sign up. Take Our Poll: What Do You Plan To Use Your Tax Refund For? Keep Track of Autopay Bills and Get Alerts About Increases Signing up to have some of your regular bills paid automatically from your bank account or credit card can save time and help you avoid missing deadlines. However, its also easy to lose track of what youre paying and how much, and those monthly bills and subscriptions can add up quickly. Some banks tools make it easy to track and monitor your autopay accounts. For example, Bank of Americas virtual assistant can help you monitor recurring charges and increases, letting you know when an automatic payment is higher than usual. If you do have a lot of autopay bills, it can be time-consuming and complicated to notify all of the companies if your card number changes. Keeping track of online subscriptions and updating them if your card is lost, stolen or replaced can be a huge hassle, says Day. Our Card on File tool lets members easily link their Navy Federal debit and credit cards to popular online merchants. Members can quickly swap out cards for a new, existing or reissued card to ensure they are using the best choice for them when paying subscriptions or making online purchases. Monitor Your Budget Several banks have tools to help you monitor your spending and keep on top of your budget not just listing your transactions, but also categorizing them so you can spot areas where you may want to cut back. Through the TD mobile app, customers see exactly where their money is going, ultimately helping them practice better spending and savings habits, said Baird. Chases app can show you a customized view of your annual spending, broken out by merchant category. Bank of Americas app can provide weekly updates on monthly spending. Bank of America also offers its Life Plan tool through its mobile app, which can help you set and track your financial goals based on your financial priorities, break the goals down into attainable milestones and see your daily progress. You can also receive personalized guidance and recommendations, and even schedule in-person or virtual one-on-one appointments with Bank of Americas financial professionals. Save More Money Many banks not only make it easy to pay bills automatically through their apps, but they also offer tools to help you save more money. Our smart savings tools users have saved twice as much as non-users, said Anand Talwar, head of deposits and president of Ally Invest Group at Ally Bank, which offers several goal-based tools to help customers focus on building their savings. Allys buckets tool lets you divvy up your savings into 10 different savings priorities within a single account, with no fee or account minimum, and you can set goals and timelines for funding each bucket. The tool can help you visualize savings goals and progress toward them at any time. Since the money is all in one account, rather than keeping smaller balances in several accounts, it can be easier to keep track of where you stand, and you may earn more interest. Ally also offers a boosters tool that automates recurring transfers into your account and distributes the money across the savings-goal buckets you choose. Additionally, its round ups tool turns spare change into savings by rounding up transactions to the nearest dollar. When more than $5 is accrued, its transferred to your designated savings account. With Chases autosave tool, you can create repeating transfers from your checking account to your savings account, or from a linked account at another financial institution. The tool makes it easy to designate a goal, determine how much and how often to transfer the money and track your progress. The tool can even help you with the math when setting your goal for example, calculating how much to set as an emergency fund goal based on your expenses. Transfer Money to Other People Most bank apps also make it easy to transfer money to other people without writing a check. The use of Zelle and digital wallets like Apple or Google Pay has become a growing trend throughout the pandemic, said Baird. As digital transformation progresses, we expect a continued shift away from cash and towards electronic/digital payments. If a customer doesnt want to use cash, they can safely and securely use other payment services, like debit and credit cards or person-to-person payments like Zelle via TD Banks online service, to send or transfer money at their convenience. Many banks make it easy to send money through Zelle to people using their mobile number or e-mail address. Buy a Car Banks are expanding the services available to customers online, and Navy Federal members can even buy a car online. Over the past year-plus, the automotive industry has experienced some dramatic changes. None may be more notable than the shift to online car buying, said Joe Pendergast, vice president of consumer lending for Navy Federal Credit Union. Manufacturers, car-buying services, and financial institutions have created online and mobile tools for consumers to complete the entire process of researching, buying, financing and insuring their vehicles online and through a one-stop-shop online portal. For example, in partnership with TrueCar, Navy Federal launched its online car buying service where members can search for the car they want and see what others paid for it, get a real price online (including incentives, dealer discounts and fees), apply for a Navy Federal loan and connect with a dealer to test drive and buy, said Pendergast. More From GOBankingRates Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting of this article. This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 8 Surprising Things You Can Do Without Going Into a Bank RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein announced a bid for governor in 2024 on Wednesday, with the Democrat pledging to focus on public education, economic advancement and equality, and to provide a sharp contrast with a potential Republican opponent. Well build a better and brighter North Carolina by standing up for whats right, fighting to fix whats wrong and doing right by every single North Carolinian, no matter who you are, Stein said in a video released by his campaign. Stein, the state's top law enforcement officer since being first elected in 2016, was always considered a likely candidate to attempt to succeed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited from seeking reelection. Cooper was attorney general for four terms, and Stein served under him for several years as head of the Department of Justice's consumer protection division. Steins early announcement 14 months before primary elections could make others think twice before entering the Democratic field. He unveiled what his campaign called 150 endorsements from current and former officials, from former four-term Gov. Jim Hunt to nearly all Democrats in the legislature, as well as ex-Supreme Court justices, big-city mayors and members of Congress. Cooper stopped short of an endorsement in a separate statement Wednesday, and said he's focused now on his final two years as governor. But he said Stein has been an excellent Attorney General for North Carolina. Figuring prominently in the campaign video is Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has said its extremely likely that hell enter the gubernatorial race, too. The video included snippets of Robinsons speeches for which hes been criticized, in particular for some about sex education in schools that critics say disparaged LGBTQ people. In one segment, Robinson calls abortion a scourge that needs to be run out of this land. Robinson wants to tell you who you can marry, when youll be pregnant and who you should hate, Stein said. Im running for governor because I believe in a very different North Carolina, one rooted in our shared values of freedom, justice and opportunity for everyone. Story continues Robinson campaign adviser Conrad Pogorzelski said in a written statement that it should be clear that Stein is scared of a primary and that he hopes to avoid one by creating the narrative that it is him against Robinson. State Treasurer Dale Folwell, a Republican, has also been considering a gubernatorial run. Stein has been a prolific fundraiser, and had $3.4 million in his attorney general campaign coffers at the end of June. But he narrowly won both of his general elections in 2016 and 2020 by less than 25,000 votes in a state that, save for gubernatorial contests, has been leaning slightly rightward. The 56-year-old Stein is the son of civil rights attorney Adam Stein and grew up in Chapel Hill. He went to Dartmouth College and later Harvard University, where he received a law degree. He was campaign manager for John Edwards in his successful U.S. Senate bid in 1998. Stein also served in the state Senate, representing a Wake County district, before running for attorney general. As AG, Stein has been known for his involvement in a national opioid settlement and for a landmark legal settlement that forced electronic cigarette giant Juul Labs Inc. to pay $40 million to North Carolina and take more action to prevent underage use and sales. Stein has co-led a task force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice initiated by the governor and is a strong abortion-rights supporter. But the attorney general at times has taken criticism from left-leaning advocates, saying he has fallen short on protecting civil rights, particularly within the criminal justice system. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University not related to the governor, said Steins early entry in the race was strategically smart and could freeze out other Democrats considering bids. But his lifetime spent largely in urban centers diverges from the paths of victorious Democratic governors of the past 50 years who came from or lived in small towns or rural areas, from where they attracted needed electoral support, according to Cooper. "He appears to play to Democratic strengths, but its hard for me to understand how he would open up the map for Democrats, Cooper said. Stein had what he called a minor stroke last spring that prompted doctors to remove a small blood clot. There have been no signs of lingering effects. The AG also has a pending legal fight with the Wake County district attorney over her office's probe and potential prosecution of Stein and his aides for a 2020 campaign ad through a little-used state law. Stein's campaign sued last summer to overturn the law. An appeals court is weighing whether to block enforcement while the lawsuit goes to trial. The Air Force is temporarily moving fighter jets from Germany to Okinawa, Japan, after the Pentagon announced it was pulling older F-15 Eagles from Kadena Air Base in an attempt to bring more modern aircraft to the Pacific. F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, arrived at Kadena on Monday, even as the installation continues to slowly return its fleet of F-15C/D fighters to the United States. The decision to move the fighter jets out of Europe comes as Russia's war in Ukraine continues. Read Next: Air Force Returns Land Used for Apollo Program to State of Hawaii David Ochmanek, a senior international and defense researcher at the nonprofit Rand Corp., told Military.com in an interview Tuesday that moving the F-16s out of Germany shouldnt meaningfully diminish the Air Force's presence around Ukraine. "Although F-16s are going from Europe to Kadena, it doesn't mean there will be less U.S. combat airpower deployed in Europe," Ochmanek said. "The Air Force has been rotationally deploying squadrons to Europe since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and I think that's likely to continue for quite some time." Last week in a meeting with Japan's ministers for foreign affairs and defense, the Pentagon and State Department announced a renewed alliance with the country; the U.S. and Japanese officials also reiterated their fears about China's military expansion in the Pacific. Those announcements didnt include a specific change to U.S. forces stationed in Japan, and Mondays announcement from the Air Force described the repositioning as part of the Pentagons broader Asia strategy. "As the F-16s begin operations, they too will integrate their unique strengths to help Team Kadena deter and, if necessary, prevail over acts of aggression that threaten peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific," the Air Force said Monday in a press release. There have been notable recent provocations by China. On Dec. 21, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command issued a statement admonishing a Chinese fighter jet's "unsafe maneuver during an intercept" of an Air Force RC-135 Combat Sent aircraft in international airspace. Story continues In August, China launched missile strikes near Taiwan during a military exercise shortly after a visit by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "The Ministers concurred that China's foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order to its benefit and to employ China's growing political, economic, military, and technological power to that end," the Pentagon said in a statement after last week's meeting. "This behavior is of serious concern to the Alliance and the entire international community, and represents the greatest strategic challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond." Republican lawmakers publicly blasted the Pentagon's decision to replace the permanent F-15 fleets in Japan with rotational aircraft, namely F-16 and F-22 fighters sent for limited duration deployments, arguing it was not a wise move as tensions rise with China. In November, Republican lawmakers -- led by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida -- asked the Pentagon to provide a briefing "articulating specific steps to replace the deterrent value and combat capability of any assets removed from the Indo-Pacific region, as well as the administration's plan to establish a force posture in the Indo-Pacific that would be resilient to a [Chinese] attack and capable of deterring an invasion of Taiwan." That same month, F-22 Raptors assigned to the 3rd Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, were moved to Japan shortly after Kadena announced it was removing its fleet of F-15s, many of which are upward of 30 years old. "Modernizing our capabilities in the Indo-Pacific theater remains a top priority for the U.S.," the base said in an October press release. "This transition to more capable aircraft at Kadena exemplifies our continued commitment to enhancing our posture and building on the strong foundation of our Alliance with Japan." Ochmanek told Military.com that the F-16s and F-22s are a "net gain in modernization" for Kadena. But he said arguments over which type of manned aircraft to send to the base ignore some of the larger problems, such as defending installations in Japan from Chinese missile attacks. "Whether you've got an F-16 or F-15 or F-22 sitting at Kadena, they're all vulnerable to attack by Chinese missiles," Ochmanek said. "Arguments about the details of what manned aircraft are where, to me, are less interesting than how they're going to evolve the overall posture not just to Kadena but in the region." The 52nd Fighter Wing did not detail how many F-16s were moved from Germany to Japan. "We are excited to be here supporting our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region," Lt. Col. Shaun Loomis, 480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron commander, said in Monday's press release. "We look forward to training and operating in this uniquely complex and strategically vital region." -- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly. Related: GOP Lawmakers Sound Alarm over Pulling F-15s from Japan By Rajesh Kumar Singh CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. airlines on the back of strong financial results remain upbeat about travel demand, even as economists and analysts say the risk of an economic recession has gone up. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings on resilient consumer demand, while American Airlines lifted its profit outlook. Carriers are enjoying the strongest travel demand since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, boosted by reopening of closed borders, a strong U.S. dollar and rising corporate travel. While recession fears have sparked concerns about consumer spending, airline executives say travel demand is not likely to wane any time soon. They also point to staffing and aircraft shortages across the industry, which are expected to persist and limit capacity growth, underpinning pricing power carriers currently enjoy. "The supply-demand dynamics are different than they've ever been in my career," United Chief Executive Scott Kirby said on a call to discuss fourth-quarter results released on Tuesday. "I realize there's a lot of investor skepticism on that, but every data point keeps demonstrating it over and over again." United forecast at least a quadrupling in profit for 2023, while Delta expects to nearly double its full-year earnings. Booming demand has helped airlines mitigate higher fuel and labor costs through ticket price increases. Any slowdown in consumer spending would make it harder for carriers to hit their forecast targets. Goldman Sachs called United's outlook "optimistic", while Jefferies said it faces a "steep ramp" in hitting its full-year profit goal. United shares were down 3.8%, while the NYSE Arca Airline index was off 1%. Airline executives are downplaying the risk of a demand slowdown, saying the urge to travel remains strong and that the relationship between passenger revenue and the broader economy is returning to pre-pandemic trend. Story continues United estimates domestic passenger revenue previously accounted for about 0.5% of the country's gross domestic product. It expects the trend to be restored this year, resulting in 15% higher revenue for the industry. Delta sees consumers spending $30 billion on travel in 2023. "We know... the public wants to travel in outsized amounts," Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said on Friday. The first quarter, after the holiday travel season, tends to be the weakest for the industry. But Delta last week said advanced bookings for each month of the current quarter is "significantly" ahead both in passenger revenue and volume versus 2019. Demand for flights to Europe is also robust and expected to generate record spring and summer revenue, it said. United called its spring and summer bookings "really strong." But the sharp rebound in demand has exposed the fragility of the aviation system. The Federal Aviation Administration had to halt flights nationwide last week due to a systems outage, just weeks after an operational meltdown at Southwest Airlines left thousands stranded. United CEO Kirby said the industry needs higher staffing, including 10% more pilots, and 5% more aircraft to operate at pre-pandemic capacity. "Our industry has been changed profoundly by the pandemic and you can't run your airline like it's 2019 or you will fail," he said. (Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Peter Henderson, Aurora Ellis and Bill Berkrot) A 36-year-old man has been arrested and charged with kidnapping and raping a woman after police say he lured her into his van outside a downtown Gainesville bar. Andrew Myers, from Hunstville, Alabama, remains in custody at the Alachua County Jail after being arrested by Gainesville police early Tuesday morning. His arrest report states that he was drinking around 1 a.m. at Lillian's Music Store, located at 112 SE 1st St., before he approached a woman, possibly drugged her and brought her to his van where he sexually battered her. The victim told police that she met Myers inside the bar and that he bought her a drink. The victim's friend told police that Myers made several unsuccessful advances toward the women and that he followed them around the bar that night. When the friend was using the bathroom, Myers entered it and brought the victim another drink, according to the report.Before the witness was done using the restroom, Myers and her friend had exited the restroom. The witness said her friend appeared intoxicated, despite only having her typical three to four drinks. Golf club for sale:Gainesville Country Club listing says property great for hotels, apartments and retail More:Florida sports association panel recommends making menstrual cycle questions mandatory The victim told police that she remembers having blurry vision and the defendant carrying her outside before blacking out. She said she woke up face down and naked inside his van, which had a twin mattress inside, while being held down and "forcibly" penetrated by Myers, the report said. Her tank top and overshirt were found in his vehicle. The friend used tracking on her friend's phone, leading her to Myer's van that was parked roughly 200 feet away from the venue along Southeast Second Avenue. When the friend confronted him, Myers acknowledged the victim was inside the back of his van. The friend grabbed some of the victim's clothing and then got into a verbal altercation with Myers after the victim said that she was raped. Story continues The victim told police that she unsuccessfully attempted to thwart her attacker before blacking out again, the report said. She only regained consciousness when her friend found her. The women told police that Myers fled the scene in his vehicle. The friend, who said she also feared being kidnapped and assaulted, took pictures of the van and license plate. Myers, who police say is a transient, was later found in Melrose with his vehicle. Police say he met with detectives voluntarily at the Gainesville Police Department. He asked for a lawyer while being placed under arrest. Myers appeared before a judge Wednesday and has a standing no contact order with the victim. No bond information was listed in court records as of Wednesday afternoon. This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Alabama man, Andrew Myers, accused of rape outside Gainesville bar An Athens-Clarke County man has been indicted for his alleged involvement in a deadly, allegedly gang-related shooting that killed a 19-year-old Athens man. According to Superior Court of Clarke County documents, Jeffery Rice, 26, is an alleged member of the Red Tape Gang and is facing a felony murder charge for the death of Alijah Nelson, 19, who was killed on October 21, 2022 in an Athens shooting. Rice also faces multiple counts of violation of the street gang terrorism and prevention act, aggravated assault, weapons offenses, and other charges. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] With our new Gang Prosecution Unit, we are using all resources at our disposal to disrupt the growing gang networks that are terrorizing our communities and putting people at risk, said Attorney General Chris Carr. This latest indictment is the result of our strong partnership with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, as we work together to ensure that those who engage in violent crime are held accountable for their actions. All Georgians deserve to be safe, and we will continue fighting to root out gang activity wherever it occurs. TRENDING STORIES: Since the Attorney Generals gang prosecution unit was created on July 1, 2022, it has indicted 50 alleged gang members across Georgia, 11 of those in Clarke County. According to a release by Carr, the Red Tape Gang is a local hybrid gang with ties to major national Bloods, including Sex Money Murder and the Rollin 20s. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] IN OTHER NEWS: By Ted Hesson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Groups of Americans will be able to directly sponsor refugees for resettlement in the United States under a new program announced on Thursday, a major shift that could bolster admissions and reduce government costs. Under the U.S. State Department program, which will be called the Welcome Corps, groups of at least five people will be expected to raise a minimum of $2,275 per sponsored refugee to support them with housing and other basic needs for the first three months they are in the country. The sponsor groups, open to U.S. citizens or permanent residents, will also be required to pass background checks and create a support plan, according to a related website. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the sponsorship program "the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement" since the start of the U.S. program in 1980, saying religious groups, veterans, businesses and universities, among others, could participate. The program will aim to find 10,000 U.S. sponsors for 5,000 refugees in fiscal year 2023, which ends on Sept. 30, as each group could support multiple arrivals, the State Department said. Reuters first reported the launch of the program on Wednesday. The individual sponsorship program for refugees - similar to a model used in Canada - is part of a broader effort by U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, to provide opportunities for Americans to support foreigners seeking protection. The administration sees the new model as a way to generate more support for refugees, after Republican former President Donald Trump portrayed them as a security threat and slashed admissions, which have yet to fully rebound. Biden has faced pressure from Republicans over his approach to border security, with a record number of migrants attempting to cross illegally from Mexico. But the Welcome Corps is unlikely to have any near-term effect on the border, as refugees enter through a long application process from abroad, often from conflict zones. Story continues To address the rising numbers of arriving migrants, Biden has turned to other forms of sponsorship. Earlier this month, the administration rolled out a humanitarian entry program that allows up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter via "parole" if they have U.S. sponsors and travel by air. The administration also used parole to admit Afghans and Ukrainians fleeing those nations and piloted sponsor programs to support them. The Welcome Corps program will bring in refugees through the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program, which takes referrals from the United Nations and U.S. embassies. Biden set a cap of 125,000 refugee admissions this fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2022, but only 6,750 arrived from October-December, according to program data, a pace that would have them falling far below the annual goal. While the government has struggled to boost arrivals to pre-Trump levels, Julieta Valls Noyes, a top State Department official, said some 20,000 refugee interviews have been conducted abroad in the past three months and that she expects they could arrive later this year. Refugees currently entering the United States are assisted by nine U.S. resettlement agencies that rely on government funding. Some of the agencies are working as part of a consortium of groups that will support the Welcome Corps. During the first six months of the new initiative, the State Department will connect sponsors with refugees whose cases are already approved, the department said. At some point in mid-2023, U.S. sponsors will be able to refer refugee cases to the department for possible resettlement. Robert Law, a former Trump immigration official now with the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, said Congress should ensure refugees are adequately vetted and that sponsors are actually covering costs. Sponsors can raise above and beyond the minimum amount if they are able. "Privatization of refugee resettlement in theory takes U.S. taxpayers off the hook," he said. "But proper guardrails are needed to ensure sponsors are thoroughly vetted and have sufficient means to financially support the refugee." (Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg Rosalba O'Brien, Howard Goller and Diane Craft) George Santos. Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), the freshman lawmaker who has faced calls to resign since it was revealed he lied about his education and work history, received two committee assignments on Tuesday. He will be seated on the House Small Business and Science, Space, and Technology Committees. Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), chair of the Small Business Committee, told NBC News that he doesn't "agree with what [Santos] said, did, and all. I don't agree with any of that, OK? It's wrong. But at the same time, he's on the committee, we're gonna have rules to follow. He does represent about a million people in New York and a lot of main street issues." Santos made multiple false claims while on the campaign trail, including saying he graduated from Baruch College, worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and was Jewish. After The New York Times reported on his fibs, more people came forward to share the lies Santos told them, including that he was a volleyball star at Baruch College, started a nonprofit animal rescue that saved 2,400 dogs and 280 cats, and owned 13 properties. The Nassau County Republican Party, as well as some GOP lawmakers, have urged Santos to resign, and federal and local prosecutors are investigating Santos' financial dealings and whether his lies were part of any crimes. The GOP Steering Committee makes committee assignments, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who leads the group, said the decision to give Santos two seats was made with others, not on his own. The Republicans have a narrow majority, and Santos voted for McCarthy during all 15 speaker votes. You may also like What is Blue Monday? See the 2000-year-old rune archeologists just discovered in Norway Why are people angry about the new monument honoring MLK and Coretta Scott King's love story? The US Senates two most controversial Democrats appeared eager to taunt their partys left flank as they appeared in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum this week. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin appeared onstage for a panel discussion at the gathering and shared a moment that seemed almost scripted and engineered to anger progressives in their party who have accused them of clinging to archaic Senate procedures in order to block legislation dealing with voting rights and other serious issues. At one point, the West Virginia Democrat turned to his newly independent Arizona colleague (who has said she will still caucus with Democrats) and asked, seemingly unprompted: "We still don't agree on getting rid of the filibuster, correct?" "That's correct," Ms Sinema responded, as the two high-fived. It was a strange interaction that nonetheless had the intended effect on Twitter, riling up left-leaning accounts who derided the two for their attendance of the annual gatherings ritzy dinners and galas. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, surrounded by the super rich, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin agree that they wont end the filibuster. Then they high-five. Both have used their position to hurt working people, and the planet, and make their rich friends richer. pic.twitter.com/MOteq9RRYg More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) January 17, 2023 Ms Sinema in particular has been the target of ridicule from the left given her past history as a progressive activist and member of the Green Party, not to mention the fact that unlike Mr Manchin she hails from a solidly purple state with two Democratic senators which Joe Biden won in 2020. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchinsurrounded by billionaire CEOs in Davosshare a high five after agreeing that they wont reform the Senate filibuster, tweeted Sawyer Hackett, a senior adviser to former Housing Secretary Julian Castro. She still hasnt held a town hall for her constituents. Story continues Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchinsurrounded by billionaire CEOs in Davosshare a high five after agreeing that they wont reform the Senate filibuster. She still hasnt held a town hall for her constituents. pic.twitter.com/HC7LhqijwW Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 17, 2023 Kyrsten Sinema hasnt held a town hall in Arizona for years. Instead, she flies to Switzerland for a town hall with the rich and powerful. Not a Joke! wrote Ruben Gallego, a member of the US House who has publicly mused about challenging Ms Sinema for her seat in Arizona. Kyrsten Sinema hasnt held a town hall in Arizona for years. Instead, she flies to Switzerland for a town hall with the rich and powerful. Not a Joke! I haven't made a decision on running, but I'm one step closer today. If you're with me, chip in here:https://t.co/kF1jVO0rxg Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) January 17, 2023 And MSNBCs Chris Hayes wrote: I've heard from wealthy donors that Sinema is at her most comfortable and gregarious around rich donors and you can really see it here! I've heard from wealthy donors that Sinema is at her most comfortable and gregarious around rich donors and you can really see it here! https://t.co/LJUjAVZmZa Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 17, 2023 The two were not the only US senators to appear at Davos this week. Delawares Chris Coons, another centrist Democrat, was also in attendance as were several members of the US House, according to news reports. Georgias Gov Brian Kemp, thought to be potentially considering national ambitions after going up against a candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump and winning in his primary last year, was also spotted. A group called Replace Sinema, organised by progressives to mobilise support for a challenge to her Senate seat, derided the senator in a statement to Common Dreams. "Sinema has always been and will always be all about Sinema. She doesn't care who her policies hurt. She doesn't care that she stood in the way of voting rights and abortion rights, as long as she got the headlines she wanted," Sacha Haworth told the news outlet. "Now, she's on stage in Switzerland, in front of an audience of billionaires and Wall Street CEOs, bragging about her obstruction and giving high-fives. It's no wonder she's so unpopular among Arizonans of every political stripe." Arizona State Prison Complex Perryville is one of 13 prison facilities operated by the Arizona Department of Corrections. Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes have condemned inducing the labor of pregnant prisoners against their will, after the incarcerated womens claims were published by The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network.. Three women incarcerated at the Perryville prison in Buckeye told The Republic they were induced before their due dates, not because of specific medical conditions, but for scheduling reasons that would protect the prison system from potential liability. NaphCare, the company contracted to provide health care services inside Arizona's prisons, said it "absolutely" has no policy of forcing induced labor and insists that the decision rests "solely" with the pregnant woman. The company has repeatedly denied allegations that it has forced women in its care to deliver babies against their will. But the denials have not tamped down outrage by Arizona politicians and medical experts. Hobbs called inducing birth in women in corrections facilities without consent wrong and inhumane." The choice of when and how to give birth is deeply personal and that does not change just because someone is incarcerated, Hobbs said. The reproductive rights of all women must and will be safeguarded and respected. Hobbs said she is committed to looking into the policy and finding one that protects pregnant women in the care of ADCRR." Mayes said her office would work with Hobbs to ensure this barbaric treatment of incarcerated pregnant women does not continue moving forward. State Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, who successfully advocated for a policy change guaranteeing free, unlimited feminine hygiene products at Perryville, pledged to introduce legislation protecting the autonomy of incarcerated medical patients. She called forced induction horrendous and cruel. I just delivered my first child almost a year ago, Salman said. If I had had that choice taken away from me, I would have been absolutely devastated. Salman was also the original sponsor of what became Arizonas version of the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act. The law provides some safeguards for pregnant people in state prisons, and prohibits shackling of pregnant prisoners, but it does not specify an incarcerated persons right to make decisions regarding the conditions of her labor. Story continues Outside of prisons, consensual induced labor is common. Doctors and patients often agree to induce labor when the health of the mother or baby could be otherwise compromised. Studies show that by 2018, one in four pregnancies in the United States ended with induced labor. It is the lack of patients' choice that concerns medical experts. Dr. Katherine Glaser is an OB-GYN and sits on the Board of Directors of the Arizona Medical Association. She said the AMA is opposed to the forced induction of labor, and any physicians participating in such a procedure should stop. The right of patients to make informed decisions about their own health care is central to the patient-physician relationship, she said. Especially if you're talking about incarcerated persons who have literally lost their freedom you want to be sure that you are respecting their autonomy related to their medical care. Glaser said informed consent was a core principle of medical ethics. Dr. Shakira Henderson, president of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, says the decision to induce labor needs to come from a shared decision-making process. These women have a right to make choices that meet their individual needs, Henderson said. And those choices should be made in consultation with a health care provider, not to serve at the convenience of the correctional staff. Related information: Arizona inducing the labor of pregnant prisoners against their will More women come forward Since publishing the original investigation, more women have contacted The Republic with similar claims of forced inductions in Arizona prisons. Kasandra Burnside said she was taken to the hospital on three occasions to have her labor induced against her will. I believe they wanted me to rush and have my child because we were seen as a liability in their eyes, not two lives that matter, she said. Burnside said at the first two hospital visits on Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, she voiced her opposition to induction. I was informed it causes harder labor, Burnside said. I explained I was very scared and said I was being made to be induced. Both times, Burnside said the doctor at the hospital told her she was in good health and sent her back without having done the procedure. Burnside says a correctional officer at Perryville then threatened to shackle her and keep her in restraints during the birth if she refused to be induced again. Such treatment of pregnant women is explicitly prohibited by state law. I started crying because I didnt understand why they were being so unreasonable to me, Burnside said. I had a really bad breakdown and was carrying a lot of stress and hopelessness and feeling so out of control. Burnside said the threat worked, and she relented. They were trying to intimidate me so that I would shut up and go have the baby at the convenience of the prison, Burnside said. It was very demeaning. She was taken back to the hospital and induced on Dec. 8. After what she described as a tough labor, she gave birth a day later on Dec. 9. Excerpts of Burnsides medical records obtained by The Republic show she was at the hospital for scheduled inductions on Dec. 4 and Dec. 8. This was very heart-wrenching for me, Burnside said. I was left feeling very unsafe and vulnerable. She said those feelings were exacerbated when she was only given 48 hours to be with her child, even though state law mandates that an incarcerated mother have 72 hours with their newborn. A spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Corrections said that Burnside "was not eligible for the 72-hour baby bonding due to health reasons." Upon her return to Perryville, Burnside said she was kept in a dirty cell in the reception unit of the prison and not allowed to shower for four days. Health care: Federal judge orders health care reforms for Arizona prisons I sat bleeding without pads for hours at a time after having an 8-pound child and being stitched up, she said. She said the experience has left her with lasting psychological damage. This has caused a lot of stress, fear, anxiety and postpartum depression, Burside said. And I am so worried for future incarcerated women as well. Prison health care contractor denies claims Arizonas current prison health care provider, Alabama-based NaphCare, has repeatedly denied that its staff forced inductions. Centurion, the previous prison health care contractor, did not respond to questions about the women who claim their labor was induced against their will during that companys tenure in Arizona. NaphCare took over health care operations at state prisons in Arizona on Oct. 1, with a five-year contract that is projected to generate $10 million in profits annually. Since that time, a NaphCare spokesperson said one incarcerated patient was induced per hospital specialists orders as a maternal-fetal safety precaution due to a pre-existing condition. There are currently six pregnant patients in Arizona prisons, according to NaphCare. When presented with the initial allegations, a NaphCare spokesperson said, Any decision to induce is solely the patients choice. In response to the allegation from Burnside, a spokesperson said NaphCare absolutely does not have a policy to induce labor." "Although we do not have authority over hospital specialists, we can ensure that NaphCare physicians at Perryville clearly explain to each patient that the choice to induce labor is ultimately the patients," the spokesperson said. "The decision is made under the advisement of community hospital specialists, not NaphCare physicians. "We ensure that all care given by NaphCare providers at the Perryville facility addresses the unique needs of women who are pregnant," the spokesperson continued, "including providing family planning, prenatal care, and postpartum care while incarcerated." After finding Arizona's prison health care system unconstitutional, a federal judge recently ordered a set of reform measures to improve conditions for incarcerated people. Have a news tip on Arizona prisons? Reach the reporter at jjenkins@arizonarepublic.com or at 812-243-5582. Follow him on Twitter @JimmyJenkins. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Arizona Governor, AG, condemn induced labor of pregnant prisoners A movie theater security guard has been arrested after being accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old, the Ocala Police Department said Wednesday. On Jan. 15, police said they found out about a sexual battery incident that occurred the night before at the Hollywood 16 movie theater. According to a release, the girl went to a movie with her friends, and a friends grandfather refused to offer the victim a ride home. The teen tried to call her mom, who had dropped her off, but did not hear from her. Read: Sheriff: Search crews recover body in pond near Kissimmee Investigators said a theater security guard, Augusta Williams, 31, offered to watch the girl until she could get a ride home. Read: Tonight: Volusia County school fair helps inform families and students Williams took the victim to an empty theater room and led her behind a curtain, where he raped her, police said. Ocala Police said the victim did not want to have sex but was afraid of Williams since he had a gun. She had told Williams to stop, but he did not. Read: Two central Florida counties receive $17 million for land conservation The police department said they had exited the theater, where the victims mother had shown up to take her home, after realizing her daughter had been trying to contact her. After further investigation, Ocala Police arrested Williams, who is currently at the Marion County Jail. 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. RICHMOND, Va. Lawyers for a U.S. Army lieutenant who sued two Virginia police officers for mistreatment during a 2020 traffic stop say they will ask for a new trial after a jury sided with their client but awarded him far less than the $1.5 million he was requesting. A federal jury in Richmond, Virginia, found officers Joseph Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker acted improperly in the stop of Lt. Caron Nazario. But, the jury ordered Gutierrez to pay $2,685 in damages to compensate Nazario for the injuries he suffered in the Dec. 5, 2020 nighttime stop and did not award punitive damages. The jury ordered Crocker to pay $1,000 in punitive damages. In regard to the charge of illegally searching Nazario's vehicle, the jury declined to award any damages. Late Tuesday, Tom Roberts, one of Nazario's attorneys, told The Progress-Index, part of the USA TODAY Network, that the legal team planned to ask for a new trial, citing Federal Rule 59 which allows a judge to set aside a verdict if he or she is of the opinion "that the verdict is against the clear weight of the evidence, or is based upon evidence which is false or will result in a miscarriage of justice." WINDSOR POLICE CHIEF: No apology owed for pepper-spraying Black and Latino Army officer in Virginia, police chief says 'WHAT'S GOING ON?': Virginia cops pepper-sprayed Black and Latino Army officer who had hands raised during traffic stop, video shows Roberts said the verdict created "open season on citizens in Virginia and across the country" and that the type of behavior the officers demonstrated would be acceptable. "It is a sad day," Roberts said. "Citizens will not rest assured that scenes like this are not repeated with impunity." Nazario was returned home to Petersburg, Virginia, from an assignment in Hampton Roads when Crocker attempted to stop him for not having a rear license plate on U.S. Route 460 in Windsor, Virginia, about 50 miles east of Petersburg. Nazario claimed he drove about a mile with Crocker behind him to a convenience store where it was well-lighted and safer for everyone to stop. Story continues Video from the officers' body cameras showed Gutierrez, who came to the store on assistance, drew his gun on Nazario, who is of Black and Hispanic descent, and ordered him out of the vehicle. As Nazario was asking why he was being stopped, Gutierrez repeatedly pepper-sprayed him and threatened to hit him with a stun gun if he did not cooperate, Five months after the stop, Nazario and his lawyers filed suit in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, against the officers. The case was later transferred to the court in Richmond. Nazario has developed anxiety, depression and PTSD, according to his lawsuit. A psychologist also found that Nazariosuffers from race-based trauma associated with violent police encounters, which can exacerbate injuries in ways that do not commonly affect the white populations. An internal investigation by the town of Windsor resulted in Guttierez being fired and Crocker reprimanded. The town police chief held a news conference after the suit was filed acknowledging that errors were made during the stop but he refused to apologize to Nazario for what happened. In the request for the new trial, Roberts said they will focus on the "gatekeeping function" of the court in weighing testimony by their defense experts that they said added credence to Nazario's claim that the trauma from the stop affected his mental health. Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on Twitter at @BAtkinson_PI. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Jury awards Army soldier less than $4K after violent police stop A former Chatham University employee has been charged for allegedly misusing more then $33,000 in university funds. Alden D. Watters Jr., 55, was charged by the Allegheny County District Attorneys Office with 11 counts of forgery, theft by unlawful taking, receiving stolen property and access device fraud for issuing fraudulent checks while he was director of student accounts at the university. Watters issued 11 checks payable to Ana Cuevas, who was not affiliated with Chatham University in any way, according to a report. The total of the checks amounted to $33,211. According to the criminal report, Watters identified Cuevas as his domestic partner. An arrest warrant has been issued for Watters and Cuevas, according to the report. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as information becomes available. TRENDING NOW: 2 dead after apparent murder-suicide in Wilkins Township Family of man who died helping shooting victim at local Walmart suing off-duty officer, township Family of man killed in hit-and-run on Pittsburghs South Shore pleads for driver to come forward VIDEO: Local man, son killed in eastern Pennsylvania crash DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts A Miami-Dade police officer was arrested Monday after being accused of pointing a gun against her ex-boyfriends head, detectives say. Laquandra Luster, 32, was charged with aggravated assault with a firearm and battery, according to court records. A judge ordered Luster to stay away from her ex. Assigned to the Northside District, Luster has been with the department for three years, Detective Angel Rodriguez told the Miami Herald. She was relieved of duty with pay pending a criminal investigation and was released from jail on a $1,500 bond. On Sunday evening, Luster and her former boyfriend were arguing about personal issues in their home, where they live with their child, when she pulled out a semi-automatic firearm, police say. Luster then held the gun in her right hand, pushing and striking her ex in the head, face and chest area, according to a police report. She walked away from her ex-boyfriend but returned shortly after, grabbing a video device from the TV stand, police say. She smashed it against the ground until it was destroyed. Her ex-boyfriend, who recorded a video of the escalating argument, told police he feared for his life. He didnt have visible injuries but complained of pain in his head. Lusters first formal court appearance is set for Feb. 15. An art collector in Pennsylvania spent about $118,000 on centuries-old woodblocks but received fakes, a lawsuit says. Now, the sellers in Hawaii are facing charges of fraud and money laundering. Earl Marshawn Washington, 60, and his wife, Zsanett Nagy, 31, of Honolulu, are accused of selling counterfeit art online and illegally concealing the proceeds, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said in a Tuesday, Jan. 17, news release. McClatchy News could not find an attorney for the defendants. The couple claimed to sell historical woodblocks and woodblock prints from the 15th to early 20th centuries, prosecutors said. Traditionally, woodblocks and prints are made by engraving a design into the surface of a block, an indictment filed Jan. 4 said. The uncarved wood remains and can be inked then printed onto paper or other materials. Washington sold these types of woodblock art pieces on eBay from 2013 to 2016, prosecutors said. During this time, a physician and art collector in York, Pennsylvania, bought 130 woodblocks for $118,810 from Washington. The pieces were advertised as rare and original printing blocks from the 16th and 17th centuries from a family inheritance and estate, prosecutors said. However, several dozen woodblocks were from the 1950s, the indictment said. The age of the other items is not specified. Washington began selling counterfeits with Nagy in 2018, prosecutors said. Another person in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, bought a 1934 woodblock print from the couple. Around the same time, however, Nagy purchased printing ink and other art supplies, the indictment said. Two art collectors in France purchased 16th century woodblocks from Washington and Nagy, then resold these items to a museum buyer in Germany, prosecutors said. The French collectors paid about $84,350 for the items. After each sale, Nagy received the payments to her PayPal account, transferred this money to her bank account and then withdrew the money in cash, court documents said. The couple did this to disguise the moneys source. Story continues Washington, however, admitted to one of the French collectors that he hand engraved the woodblocks which were not authentic, prosecutors said. He promised to repay the money and send more woodblocks he had carved to mimic historical artifacts, court documents said. Washington and Nagy face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering, prosecutors said in the news release. Washington is facing additional charges of bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. 3,000-year-old sword thought to be fake for 90 years. Its real, Illinois museum says Stolen Van Gogh disappeared 6 years ago; now its at Michigan art gallery, lawsuit says Museum visitor pockets part of $70,000 art piece and walks out, Oklahoma cops say Jerel Stanfield, whose 2017 murder trial ended in a hung jury, is being retried again by the Fresno County District Attorneys Office. But his defense attorney said Tuesday he has proof his client wasnt even there. In his opening statement to the jury, Kevin Little said prosecutors have little-to-no physical evidence connecting Stanfield, 34, to the March 31, 2013 murder of William Simpson, 23. Stanfields accused of gunning down Simpson while he, his girlfriend and her 3-year-old child slept in a car outside of an apartment of Simpsons relative in central Fresno. Police said both men are members of rival gangs: Simpson, a Dog Pound member and Stanfield a part of the Strother Boys. At the time, both gangs were feuding with on another. Stanfield is accused by police of spotting Simpson that night at 4140 N. Clark Street and then shooting him multiple times with a .40 caliber handgun. Little. his attorney, said that isnt possible. Jerel Stanfield did not shoot and kill William Simpson, he wasnt even there, Little said. We know that because we live in the age of cell phones. Among the evidence police recovered from Stanfields vehicle, after being chased by police and crashing, was his cell phone. Data pulled from Stanfields phone show that at the time of the shooting, 3:10 a.m., he wasnt in the area. He was at his mothers house in the Shaw and Blackstone area, Little said. Also, a transcript from the 911 call made by Simpsons girlfriend, Lajeana Ramsey, immediately after the shooting made no mention of Stanfield. Ramsey initially told police she saw the shooter, the defense says. She spoke with multiple officers and she did not mention Stanfield, Little said. It wasnt until a week later that she gave a statement where she indicated the person who shot Mr. Simpson was Mr. Stanfield. Little suggested Ramsey had an incentive to cooperate with police, saying they gave her $21,000 to relocate to avoid possible gang retaliation. Story continues Additionally, Little said there was no gunshot residue on Stanfields hands or any fingerprints on the gun. Little also questions the results of ballistics tests from the gun involved in the killing. Prosecutors say witness was terrified Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Gularte, who prosecuted Stanfield in the 2017 case, said Ramsey is a key witness in the case and had every reason not to identify Stanfield right away. She was terrified of retaliation, she was terrified of anything to happening, Gularte said. She refused to give a statement to detectives. It took several interviews with Detective Andre Benson for her to feel comfortable about telling police what she saw. Once she did, she identified Stanfield not only as Simpsons killer but also as the man who threatened the two of them about a week prior while shopping on Blackstone Avenue. Stanfield was arrested several hours after the shooting when an undercover detective spotted his black SUV. He followed Stanfield while also calling for backup. Police turned their lights and sirens on, but Stanfield did not pull over. At one point, one of the officers hit Stanfields vehicle, sending it into a tree, Gularte said. According to the prosecution, Stanfield got out of the car and ran from police. Gulare said police yelled at him to stop and show his hands, but he refused. Police were aware Stanfield was a suspect in a homicide case and that he may have a gun. Two officers fired their weapons, striking Stanfield in the head and shoulder, Gularte said. As he lay on the ground, police tried to put handcuffs on the defendant but he continued to struggle with officers, according to the prosecution. Once the handcuffs were on, one of the officers searched him for any weapons and found a .40 caliber Glock pistol. Little said there is still a question about where that gun came from. You will hear conflicting testimony about what he was in possession of when he was shot, LIttle said. There were tons of people who were watching the incident and a number of them will tell you Mr. Stanfield did not have a weapon or was seen running with a weapon and there wasnt one on the ground. The trial continues Wednesday in Dept. 72. By Lewis Jackson SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia confirmed on Wednesday it would buy 40 Black Hawk military helicopters from the United States for an estimated A$2.8 billion ($1.96 billion), finalising a sale signed off by the U.S. State Department last August. The Lockheed Martin Corp UH-60M Black Hawks will replace the Army's fleet of MRH-90 Taipan choppers, which have been plagued for years by maintenance issues. Delivery of the new helicopters will begin this year. "We've just not got the flying hours out of the Taipan that we would need," Defence Minister Richard Marles told ABC news on Wednesday. "We're confident that we can get that from the Black Hawks. It's a platform we're familiar with." Australia has been boosting its defense spending over the past few years as China looks to step up its presence in the Indo-Pacific region. A 2021 decision to ditch French-made submarines for nuclear submarines to be built by the United States and Britain sparked a bitter diplomatic dispute with France. Marles said he had spoken with his French counterpart several times and was confident the U.S. helicopter deal "won't interrupt" the renewed relationship with France. The Taipans are made by Airbus, partly owned by France. Australian industry will be involved in logistics, warehousing, engineering as well as the helicopter's global supply chain, said the Defence Department in a statement. ($1 = 1.4316 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Michael Perry) Bank of America experienced delays in online transactions conducted via Zelle for much of the day Wednesday, but those problems were resolved by the afternoon, the bank said. On outage tracker DownDetector.com, irate customers reported missing funds and unexpected negative balances due to problems with the digital payment network. Zelle transactions made between January 14th and January 17th may be delayed in occurring and posting to accounts as requested, the Charlotte-based bank said in an online notice, displayed when customers log into their bank accounts on Wednesday. Transfers will be completed and will appear in your account activity and balances as soon as possible. We apologize for any delay or inconvenience. Bank of America declined to say what caused the outage, when asked by The Charlotte Observer. The initial delay surprised account holders, many of whom took to Twitter and other social media to air their grievances. Some said the delay had caused their bank account to slip into the red. So cool how @BankofAmerica magically disappeared a large Zelle transaction that HAD ALREADY POSTED and I had used to pay bills, one user posted. Now Im extremely in debt in my checking and I cant get ahold (sic) of them. Unbelievable. Zelle users frustrated with delays Customer reports of outages at Bank of America spiked on Wednesday morning, according to Down Detector. I woke up this morning to a negative balance. There is no way to speak to a customer service agent, one user commented on the site. This problem needs to be fixed immediately so (I) can have access to my funds! Another user wrote that shed seen transferred funds disappear after using them to pay bills. She now has those funds back. (But) unfortunately 3 payments that went out yesterday after Zelle was in there (Car Payment, Car Insurance and Cell phone/Internet) all have been returned, the user wrote. This is not good. Now I have to call all these places and explain. Story continues Zelle is a peer-to-peer payment network similar to PayPal or Venmo that lets users send money from their online accounts to people at different banks. What is Zelle? Zelle is a peer-to-peer payment network similar to PayPal or Venmo. It allows users to digitally send money from their account to users at different banks. Created in 2017, the network is operated by Early Warning Services LLC, a company co-owned by seven banks: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Truist, U.S. Bank, PNC and Capital One. But many other banks use Zelle a total of more than 1,700. Zelle is now the countrys most widely used money transfer service, with more than double Venmos payment volumes, MarketWatch reported in October. Unlike Venmo, CashApp or other similar services, Zelle transfers money instantaneously from bank account to bank account with no entity in between. Zelle controversies and problems The payment service also has been the subject of heightened scrutiny over the last several months, with legal advocates and lawmakers pointing to growing rates of fraud on the app. In a Senate banking committee hearing in September, Sen. Elizabeth Warren chided bank executives for not responding to her request for data on the number of fraudulent Zelle transactions reported. Fraud and scam problems with Zelle payments? Heres what to know. You built the system, you profit from every transaction on the system and you tell people that it is safe. But when someone is defrauded, you claim thats the customers problem, the Massachusetts Democrat told the CEOs of Americas largest banks during the hearing. Warren has continued her criticism of Zelle, tweeting as recently as Tuesday that she would continue to press banks on the issue. Zelle is a money-making bonanza for sophisticated scammers and fraudsters, the senator wrote. The big banks that own and operate the platform have a lot more work to do to make victims whole and protect consumers from future harm so Im going to stay on it. Zelle is a money-making bonanza for sophisticated scammers and fraudsters. The big banks that own and operate the platform have a lot more work to do to make victims whole and protect consumers from future harmso Im going to stay on it.https://t.co/WEvTTaVEu4 Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 17, 2023 In November, Bank of America was the subject of a federal lawsuit claiming it marketed Zelle services as easy, safe and secure in large part because it was backed by banks. Instead, the suit argued, Zelle comes with a high risk of fraud for consumers and little chance of being paid back by the bank if customers get scammed. Capital One and TD Bank have faced similar legal challenges regarding their use of the payment network. Both suits said the banks marketed Zelle as safe without sufficiently warning customers about fraud risks. And late last year, The New York Times reported that the banks behind Zelle had prepared a major rule change in 2023 that would compensate more customers who fall victim to scams. That would reverse the current policy which often sticks account holders with such losses, the Times reported. Bank of America To Buy MBNA For $35 Billion People use ATMs at a Bank of America branch in New York City. Credit - Mario TamaGetty Images On Wednesday morning, Bank of America customers began reporting issues with payments processed through the money transfer service Zelle, which led to money disappearing from their accounts. Many customers took to Twitter to express their outrage as they began to notice the missing funds. One user tweeted, I almost lost my mind when I saw $2,000 was missing from my account. Another said, So cool how @BankofAmerica magically disappeared a large Zelle transaction that HAD ALREADY POSTED and I had used to pay bills. Now Im extremely in debt in my checking and I cant get ahold of them. Unbelievable. Zelle is a money transfer service that works with U.S. banks to move funds directly from one bank account to another. Zelle transfers are quick and freemaking the service a popular alternative to credit card transactions that can take a few days to hit users accounts and often require fees and bank transfers. However, the service has been under fire by government officials for being an easy facilitator for fraud and theft. Zelle does not offer any protection for payments made through their serviceswhich means that theres no safeguard for customers if a transaction goes wrong. The website downdetector.com reported over 1,000 outage reports for Bank of America by 10:30 a.m. EST Wednesday, coupled with a similar spike in Zelle outage reports. If you have Bank of America, Zelle is having an outage issue that's caused transfers over the last few days to disappear. They're working on it and it should be fixed today. Hopefully this helps you find out earlier than I did and without the heart attack it gave me first-thing. Zaximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (@YepItsZak) January 18, 2023 Over a customer support social media account, Zelle redirected users to Bank of America, saying, The Zelle App & Network are up & running. We are aware of an issue that is impacting Bank Of America customers when sending & receiving payments. We recommend contacting Bank of Americas customer support team for additional updates. Story continues Bank of America told TIME that, as of 3:00 p.m. EST Wednesday, the issue was resolved and customers were receiving their funds back. The Charlotte Observer reported that customers received a notice when they logged into their online bank accounts on Wednesday, saying that transactions were not missing, but delayed. More from TIME Zelle transactions made between January 14th and January 17th may be delayed in occurring and posting to accounts as requested, the notice said. Transfers will be completed and will appear in your account activity and balances as soon as possible. Zelle provided a statement to TIME on Thursday reading: We understand that a Zelle Network financial institution may have experienced issues processing some of their customers Zelle transactions, which has now been resolved. This issue was not the result of any issues with the Zelle Network. So, I woke up to find hella Zelle deposits missing from my Bank of America account. When I called customer service they said due to extenuating circumstances we cannot take your call and the phone hung up. GNCordova (@GNCordova) January 18, 2023 In 2020, Bank of America customers reported another major glitch, with accounts showing inaccurate balances of as little as $0. The company acknowledged the issue, saying at the time that any inaccuracies did not impact their actual funds. Some clients may currently see an inaccurate account balance in online or mobile banking. There is no impact to their accounts and their information remains secure, Bank of America said. Global payment service ACI Worldwide reported last year that fraud loss in the United States from Authorized Push Paymentsscams that trick victims into willingly making large bank transfers to fraudstersis expected to rise to $3 billion in 2026. In a report issued last fall, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said four banks provided data reporting over 190,000 cases of fraudulent transactions on Zelle involving over $213 million of payments in 2021 and the first half of 2022. In the majority of the cases, the report noted, individuals were not repaid the amount they were defrauded. Warren called out both services on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, writing @BankofAmerica and @Zelle are apparently failing customers again, with money somehow disappearing from accounts. This should be fixed immediately and customers should be compensated. Ive called out serious fraud issues on Zelle and this is their latest failure. Bank of America told its customers they might experience issues with some of their Zelle transactions this week. In a message through its app Wednesday, the Charlotte-based bank said Zelle transactions made between Jan. 14 and Jan. 17 may be delayed in occurring and posting to accounts as requested. Transfers will be completed and will appear in your account activity and balances as soon as possible, the message reads. We apologize for any delay or inconvenience. ALSO READ: Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan talks strategy for reducing headcount Many customers took to Twitter to complain about the issues, with several saying they had money missing from their bank accounts Wednesday. Channel 9s Dan Matics heard from several people who experienced the same problems. Some customers said the error pushed their bank accounts into the negative. One customer who didnt want to go on camera said shes a tattoo artist and relies on Zelle for her business. She said she was missing thousands of dollars that she received through Zelle, and said she and others felt betrayed. Raquel Carpio and her family rely on the service. Especially for a community like me and for Latinos, we rely on Zelle to send money to our friends and money to communities in other countries, she said. Carpio said she called Bank of America and waited an hour on hold with no help. ALSO READ: Charlotte-based Bank of America to pay federal fine of $225M Its extremely frustrating because I never expect that. Bank of America is a big big bank, she said. Thankfully they just took $100 from my accountbut those one hundred dollars are very very important to me. Seven banks, including Bank of America, use Zelle. Its promoted as a fast and free way to send money to friends and family. But the blunder Wednesday even has consumer advocates scratching their heads. A spokesperson for Bank of America told Channel 9 at about 4 p.m. Wednesday that the problem has been resolved and that any issues people experienced with their bank balance that day should be gone. The spokesperson didnt immediately have information on how many customers were impacted or what caused the issue. This is a developing story. Check back for updates. (WATCH BELOW: Charlottes biggest banks work out plan for customers scammed by Zelle) BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will allow German-made tanks to be sent to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia if the United States agrees to send its own tanks, a German government source told Reuters. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stressed the stipulation several times in recent days behind closed doors, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Western allies will meet at a U.S. air base in Germany on Friday to offer more weapons for Ukraine. Attention is focused in particular on Germany, which has veto power over any decision to send its Leopard tanks, fielded by NATO-allied armies across Europe and widely seen as the most suitable for Ukraine. Polish President Andrzej Duda told attendees at an economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday that he was afraid Russia was preparing a new offensive in Ukraine within months and it was therefore crucial to provide additional support to the Kyiv government with modern tanks and missiles. Poland and Finland have already said they will send Leopard tanks if Germany approves them. Berlin says a decision will be the first item on the agenda of Boris Pistorius, Germany's new defence minister. Pistorius will host U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday. The United States has committed roughly $24 billion to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian forces. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said President Joe Biden's administration is next expected to approve Stryker armored vehicles for Ukraine but is not poised to send its own tanks, including the M1 Abrams. This week, Britain raised the pressure on Berlin by becoming the first Western country to send Western tanks, pledging a squadron of its Challengers, but the Leopards are seen as the best choice to supply Ukraine with a large-scale tank force. The Wall Street Journal, citing senior German officials, first reported Berlin's condition on tanks earlier on Wednesday. The publications Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Bild also had a similar reports. (Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; writing by Tom Sims; editing by Sabine Wollrab and Grant McCool) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Wednesday with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and the two discussed steps to restart bilateral talks with Azerbaijan, the U.S. State Department said. "The Secretary expressed deep concern for the worsening humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting from the blockage of the Lachin corridor," the State Department said in a statement. Tensions have spiraled between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the blockade of the only road giving direct access to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia in recent weeks. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is appalled by Iran's execution of Alireza Akbari, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, vowing that Tehran's abuses in its crackdown of widespread demonstrations will not go unpunished. "We were appalled by the execution of Mr. Akbari just as we've been appalled by everything we've been seeing on the streets of Iran over the last months since these protests began: mass arrests, sham trials, the executions, the use of sexual violence as a tool for protests' suppression," Blinken said at a news conference. "These abuses will not go without consequence. Together with many other countries, we've been moving forward with a variety of unilateral actions, multilateral measures, using U.N. mechanisms, to try to hold Iran to account," he added. Akbari, 61, a British-Iranian national who once served as Tehran's deputy defence minister, was handed a death sentence on charges of spying for Britain. London has said the charges against him were politically motivated. It repeatedly called for his release. Following the execution, it imposed sanctions on Iran's Prosecutor General The execution drew widespread condemnation and looks set to further worsen Iran's long-strained relations with the West, which have deteriorated since talks to revive its 2015 nuclear deal hit deadlock and after Tehran unleashed a deadly crackdown on protesters last year. At the same news conference, British foreign minister James Cleverly said the United Kingdom would not limit itself to the response that it had already announced, although he declined to detail what more it might do. (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; Editing by Bradley Perrett) Several infantry groups of the Russian military have tried to bypass the stronghold of the Ukrainian defenders near Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast. The border guards stopped their manoeuvre and killed the occupiers. Source: State Border Guard Service of Ukraine Quote: "To stop the manoeuvre of the Russian occupying forces, our fighters imposed a firing contact on the occupiers and called for support. The enemy was forced to refuse to bypass the border and tried to capture the positions of the border unit." Details: The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine specified that the hostile forces' movement was halted by border guards and mortar and artillery crews of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The battle lasted for about two hours; during this period of time the occupiers lost 12 people in the unsuccessful attack; 5 were killed and 7 were wounded. Background: On 16 January, the Ukrainian border guards killed a platoon of Russian invaders in the battle for Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast. Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! The Henry County Board of Commissioners honored Atlanta Braves center fielder and Stockbridge native Michael Harris II with a proclamation. Harris, 21, was called up to the Braves on May 28 and went on to play 114 games during the regular season, ranking first in batting average, RBI, home runs and doubles among National League rookies who qualified. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] He quickly dazzled with his arm speed and flashy glove on defense with catches en route to winning the National League Rookie of the Year Award. Commissioners honored him for his great rookie season with his family in attendance. RELATED STORIES: Harris grew up in DeKalb and Henry counties and became a star for Stockbridge High School. The Braves drafted Harris out of high school with the No. 98 pick of the 2019 MLB draft. Earlier this week, Harris was the grand marshal in Henry Countys Martin Luther King Jr. parade. On Aug. 16, 2022, Harris signed an eight-year, $72 million contract extension that will keep him home in Georgia for the long term. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] Brian Walshe, of Cohasset, faces a Quincy Court judge charged with impeding the investigation into his wife Ana' disappearance from their home Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool Prosecutors say Brian Walshe made Google searches about dead bodies after his wife was last seen. The searches were made on his son's iPad, prosecutors say. Brian Walshe has been charged with murder in connection to his missing wife, Ana Walshe. Brian Walshe Googled "can baking soda make a body smell good" and "can you identify a body with broken teeth" in the days after his wife was last seen on January 1, prosecutors alleged in a Quincy, Massachusetts, courthouse Wednesday morning. The 47-year-old has been charged with murder in connection to his missing wife, Ana Walshe, 39, who was last seen on January 1 and reported missing by her job on January 4. While Ana's body has still not been found, prosecutors reeled off a long list of information to a judge on Wednesday that leads them to believe Brian "dismembered and discarded her body." Prosecutors said that starting January 1, Walshe made at least 20 Google searches, inquiring about dead bodies and how to dispose of them. According to prosecutors, the searches were made on his son's iPad from January 1 to January 3. Prosecutors said searches included "10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to," "how to clean blood from wooden floor," "what is the rate of decomposition of a body in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods," and "can you be charged with murder without a body." Prosecutors read a list of the Google searches allegedly made in court Wednesday. From January 1 to January 3, prosecutors allege Walshe searched the following: January 1 How long before a body starts to smell How to stop a body from decomposing How to embalm a body 10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to How long for someone to be missing to inherit Can you throw away body parts What does formaldehyde do How long does DNA last Can identification be made on partial remains Dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body How to clean blood from wooden floor What happens when you put body parts in ammonia Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them Story continues January 2 Hacksaw best tool to dismember Can you be charged with murder without a body Can you identify a body with broken teeth January 3 What happens to hair on a dead body What is the rate of decomposition of a body in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods Can baking soda make a body smell good And prosecutors alleged he searched "What's the best state to divorce for a man" on December 27 before his wife's disappearance. Prosecutors said Brian Walshe didn't formally report his wife missing until police showed up at the family's rented home in Cohasset on January 4 to conduct a welfare check, after her Washington, DC-based employer said she didn't show up for work. At the time, police observed a Volvo in the driveway, with the seats down in the back, covered in a plastic liner. Walshe told investigators that he last saw his wife the morning of January 1, when she took an Uber or a Lyft to the airport to travel to DC for work. But prosecutors said no Ubers or Lyfts came to the house in the time frame Walshe mentioned. Prosecutors also detailed Walshe's movements in the days after New Year's Day, when he visited several stores to buy cleaning supplies, rugs, and towels. Prosecutors said Walshe was observed on surveillance footage disposing of trash bags at his mother's apartment complex and at another apartment complex in Abbington. While the trash at the later was incinerated by the time police could search it, they found several bloodied items in trash bags recovered from Walshe's mother's apartment complex, prosecutors said. Some of the items were also tested and found to contain both Brian and Ana Walshe's DNA, prosecutors said. Walshe was already in police custody when they issued an arrest warrant on Tuesday, accusing him of killing Ana Walshe. Walshe was previously arrested on January 8 on a charge of misleading police. After his second arraignment on Wednesday, the judge ordered Walshe held without bail. Read the original article on Insider Bloody clothing, rags and sharp tools were among the items investigators found while searching for Ana Walshe, a Massachusetts woman whose husband Googled how to dispose of and dismember a body before she was reported missing, a prosecutor said Wednesday. The bloody items were recovered last week in 10 trash bags that Brian Walshe, 47, discarded over several days while he was searching online for tips on handling a dead body, according to Norfolk First Assistant District Attorney Lynn M. Beland. Can you be charged with murder without a body? Can you identify a body with broken teeth? Beland read out in court, listing two of the questions Walshe allegedly Googled and requesting that Walshe be held without bail for his wifes murder. WATCH: Prosecutors go through the long list of Google searches allegedly made by Brian Walshe while using his son's iPad the morning he claimed his wife, Ana Walshe, was last seen, and beyond. pic.twitter.com/KNelzWhzvk 7News Boston WHDH (@7News) January 18, 2023 Prosecutors say that Walshes initial internet searches took place on the morning of Jan. 1, which is the day he told police in Cohasset, Massachusetts, that he last saw the mother of his three young kids. Walshe, who was initially arrested for allegedly impeding authorities search for his 39-year-old wife, stood emotionless as Beland described his alleged internet search history and the items recovered from dumpsters that coincided with his phones location history. How long before a body starts to smell? How to stop a body from decomposing? How to embalm a body? were some of the questions Beland read to the court. Walshe also allegedly searched how quickly a body in a plastic bag decomposes compared to one left out in the woods and asked: How long for someone to be missing to inherit? Story continues Rather than divorce, it is believed that Brian Walshe dismembered Ana Walsh and discarded her body, said Beland, who said that he Googled Whats the best state to divorce for a man? on Dec. 27. Brian Walshe, center, listens during his arraignment Wednesday in Quincy, Massachussetts, on a charge of murdering his wife, Ana Walshe. Brian Walshe, center, listens during his arraignment Wednesday in Quincy, Massachussetts, on a charge of murdering his wife, Ana Walshe. Beland recited the trash bags contents in court, saying investigators found items they believe belonged to Ana Walshe, along with cleaning supplies and sharp tools, in dumpsters outside various apartment buildings that investigators tracked down using Brian Walshes phone. The items were bloody, and tests showed that they contained DNA belonging to both Ana and Brian Walshe, Beland said. These items included bloody slippers, a Tyvek suit with boot covers, a Prada purse, a COVID-19 vaccination card listed as belonging to Ana Walshe and a piece of a necklace that she had been seen wearing in photos. There were also bloody towels, rags, a hack saw, a hatchet and cutting shears. Investigators also found a pair of stained boots described as the same pair the missing woman was last seen in, Beland said. Beland also read out a timeline of Brian Walshes alleged activities in the days after Jan. 1, saying he went to a Home Goods store on Jan. 2, where he purchased three rugs. He also allegedly bought $450 worth of cleaning supplies at a Home Depot, including mops, tape, buckets, a hatchet and a Tyvek suit with boot covers. Investigators reported seeing Walshes vehicle parked at his home with its seats down and a plastic cover over them. This cover was later removed. When questioned, Walshe allegedly said that he threw it away. Later, chemists analyzed the car and detected blood inside, said Beland. Not all of the bags Walshe was filmed throwing away were recovered, including one that he appeared to struggle to lift into a dumpster. Some of the discarded bags were sent to waste treatment facilities where they were destroyed before investigators could locate them, Beland explained. Walshe is being held without bail. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and his attorney has not responded to requests for comment. Related... QUINCY, Mass. (AP) The husband of a Massachusetts woman who has been missing since New Years Day went online to look up ways to dismember and dispose of a body, and clothes and other items belonging to the woman with her DNA were found at a trash processing facility, a prosecutor said at his arraignment Wednesday on murder and other charges. Not guilty pleas were entered on behalf of Brian Walshe, 47, and he was held without bail in Quincy District Court. He did not speak except to tell the judge he understood the charges. Walshe was already in custody and being held on $500,000 bail after pleading not guilty to misleading investigators searching for Ana Walshe, whose body has not been found. His attorney, Tracy Miner, did not contest bail but in the past has said her client has cooperated with investigators. The prosecutor also said in court that someone fitting Brian Walshes description was seen on surveillance video disposing of what appeared to be heavy trash bags. Ana Walshe, 39, was reportedly last seen leaving their home in the affluent coastal community of Cohasset south of Boston in the early morning hours of Jan. 1, purportedly to take a ride-hailing vehicle to Logan International Airport for a flight to Washington, authorities said. But police have found no indication that she either took a vehicle or boarded any flight out of Logan recently. She was reported missing Jan. 4 by her employer in Washington, where the couple has a home and to which she often commutes during the week for work at a real estate company, authorities said. Authorities have searched the familys home, a wooded area near the home, a trash processing facility in Peabody north of Boston, and a condo complex where Walshes mother lives. The couples three young children are in state custody. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Any new tribunal to judge Russia's invasion of Ukraine must have enough international backing to credibly prosecute the highest political and military leaders in Moscow, the European Union's top justice official said. The 27-nation EU is considering setting up an international tribunal to rule on Russia's aggression against Ukraine nearly a year ago, on Feb.24, 2022. "As regards accountability for the crime of aggression in particular, currently, Russian leaders cannot be held accountable... before any international jurisdiction," said European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders. The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) has the powers to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide but Reynders said it could not mete out justice on Russian decision makers and the top military brass for attacking Ukraine. German foreign minister this week called for the establishment of such a dedicated international tribunal and Reynders said it needed the broadest backing to be effective. "The fact that the crime of aggression can, by definition, only be committed by the highest political and military leadership brings us to the issue of personal and functional immunities," he told the European Parliament on Tuesday evening. "A possible tribunal set up to prosecute the crime of aggression would need... to have a sufficiently international character to relinquish immunities in a legitimate way, and to act on behalf of the international community." Reynders said Ukraine's prosecutor general has so far registered more than 60,000 reports related to crimes committed during the war. Russia's attacks on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, including energy facilities, have been described as possible war crimes by the United Nations and the ICC has also opened an investigation into that. Moscow, which says it is conducting a "special military operation" in Ukraine, has denied targeting civilians or committing other war crimes. Story continues While the complex legal and political negotiations go on, Reynders suggested to first set up an international prosecution body that would investigate and store evidence for the future. The Netherlands has said it was willing to host any new, U.N.-backed tribunal to try Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while London hosts in March an international conference to support the ICC in its investigations of alleged war crimes in Ukraine. (Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Angus MacSwan) By Ismail Shakil OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada summoned Russia's ambassador on Wednesday over an attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro that killed at least 45 people, including several children, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said. Officials summoned ambassador Oleg Stepanov to "make clear we do not accept the sheer brutality of Russia's recent attacks against civilians in Dnipro," Joly told reporters in Toronto. Stepanov later said his discussions at the meeting focused on a "predictable line of overall Western propaganda" and that Moscow's differences with Canada left little room for diplomacy. The attack on an apartment building in Dnipro on Saturday was the deadliest for civilians since the start of a three-month Russian missile bombardment campaign. Ukraine says the building was struck by a Russian Kh-22 missile. The Kremlin has said its wave of missile strikes on Saturday did not target residential buildings. Canada, like other Western nations, has slapped broad sanctions on Russia over its invasion in Ukraine, and Joly said Ottawa would continue to hold Moscow accountable. Earlier on Wednesday, Canada announced the supply of 200 Senator armoured personnel carriers as part of its military assistance to Ukraine. "We will continue to suffocate the Russian regime with coordinated sanctions and we will continue to counter Russian lies with facts," Joly said, speaking alongside British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. Cleverly echoed his Canadian counterpart's comments about continued support for Ukraine. He was in Toronto after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday in Washington. The Canadian and British militaries are also training new Ukrainian recruits in Britain, and Joly said more Canadian experts would soon be joining the British government's information cell to fight against what she described as Russian disinformation. Stepanov, speaking to Russian reporters by telephone, said Russia and Canada had "very deep differences concerning Ukraine. In essence we again parted with no agreement in our assessments. "By basing everything not only on a pro-Ukrainian but also a strident anti-Russian line, they are amplifying the extent of the current confrontation and leaving no opportunity for further diplomatic work," Tass news agency quoted him as saying. (Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer and Ron Popeski; Editing by Chris Reese, Bradley Perrett and Himani Sarkar) Positive outlook for Chinese economy in 2023: New Development Bank VP Xinhua) 08:14, January 18, 2023 Workers are busy at a workshop producing new-energy electric sweepers in Fanchang Economic Development Zone in Wuhu, east China's Anhui province, Jan. 12, 2023.(Photo by Xiao Benxiang/Xinhua) Maasdorp expects robust growth of the Chinese economy driven by consumption in the second half of this year, despite a possible "bumpy period" in the first two quarters. DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese economy is heading for strong growth in 2023, Vice President of the New Development Bank (NDB) Leslie Maasdorp said at the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. Maasdorp said in an interview with Xinhua that China's recent decision to lift COVID-19 restrictions will drive economic growth, which in turn will have a snowball effect on other aspects of the economy such as consumption. Although he predicted a "bumpy period" in the first quarter of this year, and potentially in the second, there are strong expectations for robust growth driven by consumption in the second half of the year. Trucks transport containers at the international container terminal of Taizhou Port in Taizhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Tang Dehong/Xinhua) China's optimization of COVID policies "will have a very positive impact both for China and for the world economy," Maasdorp said. Many banks have already predicted that Chinese growth for 2023 will be much higher than originally projected. Growing consumption and increased investor confidence will lead to a consumption rebound and stronger economic growth, Maasdorp said. With an economy of about 18 trillion U.S. dollars, China has an important role to play in the recovery of the global economy, he added. China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 3 percent year-on-year to a record high of 121.0207 trillion yuan (18 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday. Vehicles run on Jianguo Road in Chaoyang District of Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 3, 2023.(Xinhua/Ju Huanzong) As the second-largest economy in the world, Chinese growth also drives global growth. "A recovery in Chinese consumption will have a very positive spin-off for the global economy," Maasdorp said. Growth areas in China include tourism and green industries, he said. "China is one of the largest investors in green energy, solar energy, wind energy, in battery storage. Those are high-growth sectors. And with new increased investment in those sectors, it will also contribute very positively to global growth." "Everybody recognizes that China has a very important role to play in the climate agenda," he said. Many economists have expressed hope that once Chinese companies resume manufacturing at pre-pandemic levels, trade flows will be stimulated and supply chains restored. People visit the 20th Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition at the China Import and Export Fair Complex in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Dec. 30, 2022. (Xinhua/Lu Hanxin) China also has a critical role to play in boosting multilateral cooperation, Maasdorp said. "Without multilateral cooperation, you cannot really deal with challenges that are cross-national ... I believe that the one positive lesson we can learn from COVID is that we are interconnected," he said. China's successful eradication of absolute poverty is "one of the biggest achievements of humanity," Maasdorp added. The NDB, headquartered in Shanghai, is a lender established by the BRICS group of emerging nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in 2015. It aims to become a global development bank, mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) WASHINGTON The founder of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested early Wednesday in Miami in connection with a vast money laundering operation, accused of transmitting more than $700 million in illicit funds in the past four years. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian national, oversaw a major "high-tech financial hub that catered to known crooks," including cybercriminals and drug dealers seeking to process dirty money. Today the Department of Justice dealt a significant blow to the cryptocrime ecosystem, Monaco said. "Bitzlato facilitated the transmission of hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit funds, fueling darknet marketplaces and laundering the proceeds of ransomware attacks," Monaco said. Darknet: Darknet drug operation nets 150 suspects, $32 million in cash, 4 million lethal fentanyl doses Hackers beware: Justice Department doubles down on efforts to thwart global cybercrime Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks to The Associated Press during an interview at the Department of Justice in Washington on Nov. 2, 2021. Two suspected hackers accused of ransomware attacks resulting in 5,000 infections have been arrested as part of a global cybercrime crackdown, according to an announcement Monday by Europol. Federal officials declined to say why Legkodymov, who has been living in Shenzhen, China, was in Florida and how he was taken into custody, except to indicate he was running the business from Miami last year and early this year. A Friday detention hearing has been set for Legkodymov who remains in federal custody and faces transfer to the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn where the case was brought. Monaco said Bitzlato had served as a financial partner for the darknet marketplace known as Hydra, which was shuttered by U.S. and German authorities last year. "Hydra and Bitzlato formed a high-tech axis of cryptocrime," Monaco said, adding that the darknet pushed money linked to drug transactions, stolen financial information and hacking operations to accounts at Bitzlato. Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty to fraud At the time Legkodymov was taken into custody, the deputy attorney general said federal authorities and international partners engaged in related enforcement actions, including the seizure of Bitzlato's servers. Story continues Federal officials said Legkodymov and other Bitzlato managers were aware that the exchange's accounts "were rife with illicit activity and that many of its users were registered under others identities." SBF released on $250M bond: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried released on massive $250 million bond On May 29, 2019, according to court documents, Legkodymov used the exchange's internal chat system to message a colleague, saying Bitzlatos users were known to be crooks." While Bitzlato claimed not to do business with U.S., customers, federal authorities said the exchange did the opposite: advising U.S.-based clients that they could transfer funds from U.S. financial institutions. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan Federal Court after his arraignment and bail hearings on Dec. 22. Legkodymov is charged with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. The Bitzlato case is separate from last month's arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, accused of misappropriating billions of dollars in customer funds in one of the largest fraud schemes in U.S. history. While Monaco did not address the FTX fraud case Wednesday, she suggested that law enforcement scrutiny would be applied equally to suspected offenders like Bankman-Fried who was extradited last month after being arrested in the Bahamas. "Whether you break our laws from China or Europe or abuse our financial system from a tropical island you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom," the deputy attorney general said. Bank-Fried was released on a $250 million bond following his first appearance in federal court last month. SBF's political donations: Sam Bankman-Fried's political donations totaled millions. FTX could sue to recover them. Dig deeper This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Crypto exchange Bitzlato founder arrested in $700M laundering scheme The FBI building in Washington, DC. Celal Gunes/Getty Images The following is an excerpt from "Spyfail" by James Bamford. A spying suspect in the FBI may be largely responsible for unraveling the CIA's Chinese spy network. Bamford is the best-selling author of "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets." The FBI's website carries a stark warning. "The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China," it says, "are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States. Confronting this threat is the FBI's top counterintelligence priority." Perhaps far worse is the threat to the lives of scores of courageous Chinese agents who have volunteered to spy for the US within their own country. Over the past decade, more than a dozen agents recruited by the CIA have been killed or imprisoned. It now turns out that it was a Chinese spying suspect within the FBI's counterintelligence division who may have been largely responsible. This person is said to have gone undetected with his activities for upward of two decades, until his quiet arrest in 2020. In a Hawaiian jail, he has a little-known case wrapped in layers of secrecy as he awaits trail. In James Bamford's new book, "Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence," he peels back many of those hidden layers. THE RENDEZVOUS "Spyfail" by James Bamford. Twelve Books In the spring of 2001, Chinese intelligence was on a very big roll. On April 1, a Navy EP-3 electronic spy plane, operated by the National Security Agency and on patrol along the Chinese coast, was forced to make an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island. After evacuating the crew, Chinese intelligence agents went to work extracting some of the agency's most secret espionage and cryptologic equipment, along with piles of documents classified above top secret. An enormous windfall, the hardware, software, and documents gave Chinese intelligence critical insight into the NSA's targets in their country, and the methods used to spy on them. And less than a week earlier, Chinese intelligence came upon another intelligence bonanza when two former CIA clandestine officers, one born in Shanghai and the other in Hong Kong, agreed to change sides. Story continues At the time, four years after the handover from Britain to China, much of Hong Kong remained a world of neon and noise. But now a great many of the tourists haggling over Rolex watches, checking into the Peninsula, and packing Lan Kwai Fong and other nightlife districts had a decidedly Mandarin accent. "Five years ago, everyone looked down on you if you spoke Mandarin," said a Beijing executive living in Hong Kong. "Now, they know we're the big bosses with the money." Despite predictions that the former colony would turn into a gray vista of hunched workers and nameless noodle shops, travelers from mainland China had become the principal source of visitors to Hong Kong. They were even spending more per capita than their American and Japanese counterparts. And March 2001 was an especially busy time. As soon as the Hong Kong Arts Festival ended, the Hong Kong International Film Festival began. Deep in the shadows, the city had also become a major crossroads for Eastern and Western spies. "Hong Kong is a place where foreign intelligence agencies conduct a lot of activity," admitted Li Gang, the deputy director of Beijing's Liaison Office in the city. As the arts crowd checked out of their rooms and the film fans checked in, two former American spies quietly slipped into another hotel for a discreet rendezvous with their Chinese counterparts. They were brothers who had both worked as clandestine CIA officers in China, and now they were about to switch sides. Alexander Yuk Ching Ma and his older brother David were both veterans of the CIA's clandestine operations division. David was born in Shanghai in 1935, a time of smoky jazz clubs, bustling casinos, and opium dens. The Pudong District, on the eastern bank of the Huangpu River, became the country's major financial hub, and decades later it would also become its high-tech eavesdropping hub. In 1961, at the age of twenty-six, David moved to Los Angeles, became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and six years later joined the CIA in an entry-level capacity, possibly as a translator. But in the late 1960s the United States was in the middle of its desperate war with North Vietnam, which was aided by China. As a result, a throng of new recruits were continuously making their way to Camp Perry, known as "The Farm," the CIA's boot camp for spies, near Williamsburg, Virginia. The problem was, nearly all had the physical appearance of cheering fans at a Notre Dame football game. Few would blend into a crowd on a street in Asia. Also, very few spoke Chinese or Vietnamese, especially with any fluency. That was good for David, and in 1971 he was promoted to the officer ranks within the CIA's clandestine service. Entrusted with the identities of many of the agency's human sources in China and elsewhere, as well as its system of covert communications (known as "covcom"), he spent years in the Far East. People do Tai Chi exercises in Hong Kong's Happy Valley district in February 2001. Dustin Shum/South China Morning Post via Getty Images In 1983, David resigned after it was determined that he was inappropriately using his government position to assist Chinese nationals in obtaining entry into the United States. But months before, as if taking his place, his thirty-year-old brother Alex had joined up and also became a clandestine officer. He was born in Hong Kong and, like David, lived for a time in Shanghai. Both also graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Following extensive training at The Farm, he was also provided with the identities of the agency's networks of spies, the various covcom details, and was sent to the Far East. Seven years later he left the agency, and around 1995 he moved to China, there oddly being no restrictions on former spies moving to their target nations. Therefore, little is known about his activities there. David, however, ran into serious legal and financial trouble. In 1998, while living in Los Angeles, he pled guilty to two counts of defrauding a lending institution. In December he began serving a five-month sentence at Taft Correctional Institution, a low-security federal prison near Bakersfield, California, followed by five years of probation and $145,623 in restitution money he didn't have. Then in 2000, his brother Alex returned from China, telling Customs and Border Protection officers that he was an "importer and exporter" and was carrying $9,000 in U.S. currency. Not long after, both brothers turned up in Shanghai. For three days, beginning on March 24, 2001, Alex and David allegedly met secretly in a hotel room with at least five officials from China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and passed on highly classified information. According to government charges, details included the covers used by CIA officers and CIA activities in China; cryptographic information used in classified and sensitive CIA communications and reports; information concerning CIA officer identities as well as those of CIA human assets in China; the CIA's use of operational tradecraft; and CIA secure communications practices that is, covcom details. The brothers were then handed $50,000 in cash. Afterward, as laid out in the indictment, both Alex and David returned to California, but they kept in touch with their handlers. Alex eventually agreed to become a mole for China's intelligence service within the FBI, and on the day after Christmas 2002, he applied for the position of special agent. By then, however, he was about forty-nine years old and was informed that he was over the age limit. But in 2004 he was nevertheless hired as a Chinese translator since he spoke several Chinese dialects. In many ways, this was an even better position for a spy since he would have access to a very broad range of information, including intercepted Chinese conversations. The day before he started his new job, he called a suspected accomplice, possibly David, to give him the good news that he would now be working full-time for "the other side." By then the FBI was reeling from another extremely damaging, and extremely embarrassing, counterintelligence disaster involving China. In 2003 it was discovered that the bureau's key U.S.-based China asset, Katrina Leung, was, like Alex, a double agent working for China. Worse, she was simultaneously sleeping with two of the FBI's top China agents. Among them was her longtime handler, through whom she had been passing false information for more than a decade, information that often was quickly passed on to the White House. Assigned to the Honolulu FBI office, Alex and his wife moved into a $600,000 condominium on Hawaii Kai Drive, a short walk to the ocean on the southeastern corner of Oahu. Strongly built, with a broad natural grin, Alex wore squarish glasses above puffy cheeks that seemed to glow when he smiled, which was often. Over at least the next six years and possibly much longer, he took over the role of FBI mole where Robert Hanssen, who spied for Russia for more than two decades, left off, except for a different spymaster. It was as though no lessons had ever been learned by the bureau. The method was simple. Attracting no suspicion, Ma would gather up piles of highly secret materials and simply walk out the door with them, just as Hanssen had done for decades. Some he photographed with a digital camera, others he downloaded from his computer onto a flash drive, while still others he copied onto CD-ROM discs. Some dealt with guided missiles and weapon systems, and others revealed the identity of confidential sources, putting their lives at risk. FBI agents remove evidence from Robert Hanssen's home in Vienna, Virginia, on February 20, 2001. Alex Wong/Newsmakers In addition, Ma had extensive knowledge of the CIA's highly secret covcom techniques by which CIA officers communicated with their sources. Every few months, once he had accumulated a load of secrets, he would call his handlers. They would then book him a hotel room in Shanghai, pick him up at the airport, and take him into town, where he would hand over his secrets and be debriefed by agents of the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB). The SSSB was the regional office of the Ministry of State Security, China's equivalent of both the CIA and FBI. Headquartered in Beijing at Xiyuan (Western Garden), next to the vast ensemble of lakes, gardens, and palaces of the Summer Palace, its logo still displays the hammer and sickle of the Communist Party. At the time, it was run by Minister of State Security Xu Yongyue, a stern-faced senior party official from Zhenping County, the jade capital of China, in the province of Henan. And in charge of the SSSB was Cai Xumin, who received a very significant promotion to vice minister of the MSS in 2004, likely due to his recruitment of Ma. Following the rendezvous and document drops in Shanghai, Ma would simply fly back to Honolulu. At one point a curious U.S. customs official pulled him aside for a secondary search and discovered he was carrying $20,000 in cash and a shiny new set of golf clubs. But no questions were raised, no actions were taken, and later that day Ma sent an email to his SSSB handler with an attachment containing additional classified information. Other money paid to him by the MSS was regularly deposited in a bank account in Hong Kong. David Ma also secretly remained in the loop. Living in Arcadia, a wealthy Los Angeles bedroom community, he established himself as a consultant on immigration rights for the many Asian immigrants in the nearby communities, such as Alhambra and Monterey Park. Familiar with their needs and fluent in various Chinese dialects, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai, and Chaozhou, he opened several businesses. They included the Chinese American Civil Rights Organization and AsiAmerica Immigration & Consultancy, Inc. Ironically, in 2005 he was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article about Chinese espionage. As China's economy continued to boom, he said, he could understand the temptation of some Chinese Americans who wanted to do business there to help the government any way they could. "I'm not saying all of them are spies," he said. "But for some of them it is outright greed because they need to do business with [the Chinese government]. It's just like barter or exchange." Because of his businesses, David became very well known within the Chinese communities in Los Angeles, which was ideal for the SSSB and MSS. Critical for them was discovering community members who had become confidential informants on China for the CIA and FBI. In February 2006, Alex Ma, China's mole in the FBI, sent David photos he received from his handlers of five suspected human sources. Accompanying the pictures was a photo of five dogs sitting on a park bench, which was a coded way of asking him to supply the identity of the sources. Shortly thereafter, David sent Alex an email identifying two of the informants. And a memory card belonging to Alex had pictures of the five sources along with a list of five names. Shanghai's Pudong district in August 2006. Athanasios Gioumpasis/Getty Images A few months later, Alex arranged for his wife, Amy Ma, who was also born in Hong Kong, to fly to Shanghai to meet with his handlers and to deliver an encrypted laptop computer to them. An email message soon came back thanking him for sending his wife and delivering "the present." Over the years, without suspicion, Alex continued to fly back and forth to Shanghai every few months with stashes of secrets. And in June 2008, his handler phoned him to say that his "company" would have a lot of work orders in the coming year. In May 2010, a few months after another clandestine rendezvous to hand over documents to his handler, Alex received a phone call from an MSS officer apologizing for not seeing him during a recent visit to China and extending an invitation to meet in Shanghai in the future. He also asked Alex to get in touch with David and see if he would be willing to discuss their "business venture." About the same time, the MSS was also bringing on board another veteran CIA clandestine officer, one who had just reapplied to the agency, possibly to become a mole. Known as Zhen Cheng Li in China, he was Jerry Chun Shing Lee to his colleagues at Langley. Born in Hong Kong like Alex, Lee grew up in Hawaii and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. At seventeen, in 1982, he joined the U.S. Army, serving for four years but remaining in the reserves. A few years later he enrolled at Hawaii Pacific University, graduating in 1992 with a degree in international business management. A year later he earned a master's degree in human resource management and shortly thereafter joined the CIA as a case officer in the clandestine service. Over the following fourteen years, he was dispatched on numerous overseas assignments, including to China, where he, like Alex and David Ma, had access to the agency's clandestine networks, both human and covcom. By July 2007, Lee had become frustrated by his lack of advancement at the CIA. "He was quite critical about the organization and his time there; the fact that he didn't get credit, he didn't get promoted, he didn't get the assignments he deserved," said one of his associates. As a result, Lee resigned and moved to Hong Kong, taking a job with Japan Tobacco International (JTI). Employing about forty thousand people around the world, the company sells 120 brands of cigarettes, including both Camel and Winston outside the United States. But a key problem for the company was tobacco smugglers and counterfeiters. Asian crime syndicates were exporting tons of counterfeit cigarettes out of China with the help of corrupt officials. To combat the syndicates, the company had established a Brand Integrity Unit under a veteran CIA officer, David Reynolds, who had worked at the agency from 1988 to 2002. Afterward he was assigned as a U.S. consular officer in Guangzhou for two years. Lee claimed that his last job at the CIA was the agency's official liaison in Beijing to Chinese intelligence, the MSS, and he was hired by Reynolds. Now, with an office on the forty-second floor of Tower 1 in Times Square, the city's flashy, upscale shopping and restaurant complex at Causeway Bay, Lee could see all of Hong Kong spread out below him. But adjusting to private industry was difficult and he soon ran into problems. Company officials began to suspect that he was alerting corrupt Chinese officials about the firm's investigations and the pending raids and arrests by law enforcement. "Several of the shipments of counterfeits purchased as part of the investigations were seized by the Chinese authorities or simply disappeared, and one of our contract investigators was arrested and imprisoned in China," said a manager. All evidence pointed toward Lee, and as a result, executives at JTI alerted the FBI, but apparently no action was ever taken. Lee was finally fired in mid- 2009, and soon afterward a Chinese official warned the company that he was not only continuing to share information with MSS officers, but was also actively working with them. And once again JTI officials passed the information to the FBI. "I certainly reported it to the appropriate authorities," said a company supervisor. It was good information, but once again it seemed to go nowhere within the bureau. At about the same time, Lee hooked up with a potential business partner, Barry Cheung Kam-lun, a former Hong Kong police officer who, Lee knew, had close ties to the MSS. And on April 26 the two traveled across the Hong Kong border to neighboring Shenzhen for a private dinner with MSS officers. Shenzhen, China. Liao Xun/Getty Images It was time for the official pitch. After excusing Barry, the intelligence officers and Lee reached an agreement that he would begin passing secrets to them and act as their spy. In exchange, they handed him a briefcase full of cash, $100,000, along with an agreement to take care of him "for life." It would be the first of hundreds of thousands of dollars he would receive, and within a few weeks he began receiving his taskings, key among them apparently becoming a mole in the CIA, as Alex Ma had done in the FBI. That same month, he applied for reemployment with the CIA. But given his less than illustrious career and departure from the agency, it went nowhere. Instead, possibly as a cover, Lee and Barry Cheung Kam-lun established their own company, FTM International, to enter the "Big Tobacco" wars and conduct their own brand integrity investigations. After investing nearly $400,000, they set up shop in the down-market Wan Chai area, renting space in Dannies House. Unlike JTI's soaring skyscraper in Times Square, Lee's new office was in a tired thirteen-story orange high-rise with battered air-conditioning units stuck out the windows like giant steel bird feeders. But two years later, fed up with Hong Kong and having run out of secrets to sell, Lee decided to move his family back to Virginia, where he had been offered a potential job by the CIA. It had been secretly created to lure him back to the United States, and in August 2012, during a three-day stopover in Hawaii, agents conducted a black bag job on his hotel room. What they found was damning. Inside a small, clear plastic travel pack was a forty-nine-page datebook and a twenty-one-page address book, both of which contained top secret handwritten operational notes from his CIA days. Most critically, they included the true names of secret human sources as well as the dates and operational locations of the meetings. Another clandestine search was conducted on his hotel room in Fairfax, Virginia, soon after he arrived, and the information remained in his possession. But inexplicably, rather than Lee being arrested, the decision was made to simply question him repeatedly over the following year. Finally, after the fifth interview in June 2013, with the questions becoming more and more revealing of what the bureau knew, Lee fled with his family back to China-controlled Hong Kong. Once more he was out of reach, and once more the FBI had bungled it. Over the next few years, Lee did security work for the cosmetics company Estee Lauder and the auction house Christie's. Then in January 2018, apparently believing the danger had blown over, he boarded a Cathay Pacific flight to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was a serious mistake. His name had been flagged on the airline's manifest and he was arrested as soon as he landed. After first vowing to fight the espionage charges, in May 2019 he agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to nineteen years in prison. Around the same time, the FBI finally discovered the Chinese mole who had bored his way into the organization sixteen years earlier. In August 2020, an agent posing as an MSS officer approached Alex Ma in Honolulu and snared him in a sting operation. To convince Ma of his bona fides, he showed him a video of the meeting between him, David, and the SSSB agents at the time they signed on as spies in 2001. The pretend MSS officer then offered Ma $2,000 in cash as a "small token" of appreciation for Ma's assistance to China. Ma offered to continue working for the MSS and stated that he wanted "the motherland" to succeed. Shortly afterward he was arrested on charges of espionage and is currently awaiting trial. With regard to David, then eighty-five years old, the decision was made not to arrest him due to his advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease. James Bamford, a winner of the National Magazine Award for reporting, is the best-selling author of "The Puzzle Palace," "Body of Secrets," and other books on intelligence. His most recent book, from which this excerpt was taken, is "Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence," released on January 17. Excerpted from "Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence." 2022 James Bamford and reprinted by permission from Twelve Books/Hachette Book Group. Read the original article on Business Insider [Source] Before you read: Marvel movies will finally be screened in Chinese cinemas again after almost four years. On Tuesday, Marvel announced on Weibo that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will premiere on Feb. 7 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on Feb. 17 in China. The last Marvel film that was screened in Chinese theaters was Avengers: Endgame in 2019. More from NextShark: Chinese woman cons friend out of $287,000 as revenge for her friend's mom's insulting comment Since then, several movies from the American media franchise have been banned from China, including Black Widow, Eternals, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Given that the Chinese film market is reportedly the second largest in the world after the U.S., Chinas ban on these films has cost Disney millions of dollars in losses over the past few years. For example, Spider-Man: No Way Home lost a potential $170 million to $340 million in sales from China. More from NextShark: 'My Bae won a Golden Globe': Jamie Lee Curtis goes viral for cheering on Michelle Yeoh Despite the years-long ban, China has never officially stated why the latest Marvel movies following Avengers: Endgame have not been approved for screening in its theaters. Several fans, however, have speculated a multitude of reasons, such as the presence of LGBTQ-plus characters in movies like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder, as well as symbols of U.S. patriotism like the Statue of Liberty in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Story continues Related stories: More from NextShark: Shang Juncheng, 17, becomes first Chinese man to win match at Australian Open Enjoy this content? Read more from NextShark! 'Don't insult Japan!': Miss Universe 2021 Japan's national costume is all wrong according to netizens China appears to have loosened its restrictions on the release of Walt Disney Co.'s Marvel movies in the world's most populous country and its second-largest box office market. The Black Panther sequel, "Wakanda Forever," and the new "Ant-Man" installment, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," will open in Chinese theaters on Feb. 7 and Feb. 17, respectively, Disney-owned Marvel Studios said through its Weibo social media account in China. The thawing marks the first Marvel Studios superhero movies to be released in China since 2019. Deadline first reported the news. The releases should be a boost to Disney and the Chinese market. Hollywood has been struggling with releases in China for several years as the pandemic slowed the rollout of blockbuster movies by film studios. Political tensions have led China, which tightly controls what movies are allowed to screen in the nation's theaters, to limit U.S. imports in recent years. Improvements in local filmmaking also started to squeeze out competition from U.S. movies as audiences gravitated to domestic fare, with the support of Beijing. However, China continues to prove it can drive huge box-office receipts for U.S movies. So far, "Avatar: The Way of Water," from Disney's 20th Century Studios, has collected $215 million from that country alone, according to data provider Comscore. "That may have opened the door for Disney to have their Marvel films released there," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. "It's a vitally important marketplace; it used to be that you had to have China to be a global success." "Wakanda Forever" was released in many countries, including the U.S., in November. The Ryan Coogler film has grossed $837 million in worldwide ticket sales. The third "Ant-Man" feature, which stars Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, is set for release in the U.S. next month. Marvel films like "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and "Black Widow" had no China release. Sony Pictures and Marvel's "Spider-Man: No Way Home" was also blocked from entering China. Story continues Other U.S. features released in China during the last year include Universal Pictures' "Jurassic World: Dominion" and "Minions: The Rise of Gru." Times staff writer Stephanie Yang contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Shocking images show inside Kensington Takeaway in Liverpool. (Reach) Shocking photos show inside a Chinese takeaway that was forced to shut down immediately as it posed an "imminent risk to health. Kensington Takeaway in Liverpool was fined 6,000 and ordered to close its doors when environmental health officers discovered a mouse infestation and inadequate pest control measures in August 2021. There were mouse droppings throughout the premises, including on food preparation equipment and food packaging. Liverpool City Council said there was a lack of regular and effective cleaning protocols, resulting in a build-up of food debris and grease, with several holes discovered that gave rodents access. The Chinese takeaway was fined 6,000. (Reach) The conditions were so unhygienic the business was closed immediately. (Reach) Kensington Takeaway director Mr Keihan Nikseresht Somehsaraei admitted 20 breaches of food safety hygiene regulations at Liverpool Magistrates Court on 22 December. He was fined 5,200, plus costs of 750 and 190 victim surcharge. The takeaway had been forced to close immediately following an inspection because of an "imminent risk to health." Mice are known carriers of zoonoses (diseases transmissible from animals to humans), including; Salmonella, Campylobacter and Listeria and Hantavirus which can cause serious illness, especially to vulnerable people such as children, the elderly, immunocompromised and pregnant women. After the forced closure was ordered, remedial works were undertaken and the takeaway was permitted to re-open. There was also a lack of regular and effective cleaning protocols. (Reach) But another inspection took place in March last year and mouse droppings were again evident, The council said regular cleaning was not taking place and there were still some gaps and holes acting as entry points for mice. The premises were closed to the public once again while improvement works took place and reopened in April following another assessment. Kensington Takeaway is no longer operational. The premises are now under the management of a new food business operator. In sentencing, District Judge Boswell said the conditions posed a serious risk to the health of the customer and common sense tells you that the premises were unacceptable. Story continues Kensington Takeaway has permanently shut (Reach) Following the case, Mayor of Liverpool Joanne Anderson said: This case shows a shocking disregard for peoples health and the terrible state of the takeaway could have resulted in many customers becoming extremely unwell. Its a significant fine and highlights just how seriously we take these sorts of offences. It is unacceptable to operate a business in this manner and we simply wont tolerate it. She added: This case sends out a strong message to food outlets across the city - dont be complacent. Our team doesnt just carry out one-off visits, they will come back to inspect any premises to check the appropriate standards are being maintained, and if theyre not, action will be taken. Bishops of the Church of England said Wednesday they will continue to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, reaffirming that holy matrimony is between one man and one woman for life. The announcement comes after a six-year period of listening, learning and discernment on issues related to sexuality, relationships and marriage. Under the proposals, which will be discussed in detail next month during the churchs national assembly, bishops urge all congregations to welcome same-sex couples unreservedly and joyfully. Described by church officials as a historic plan, the proposals will let same-sex couples come to church to give thanks for their civil marriage or civil partnership and to receive Gods blessings. However, they would still not be able to get married in a Church of England church, according to a news release. The Church of England is the head of the international Anglican Communion, a worldwide family of churches in more than 160 different countries. In November 2020, a group of bishops began the process of discernment and decision-making about a way forward for the church, which took place last year. At the time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, acknowledged and apologized for the huge damage and hurt the churchs stance on LGBTQ issues had brought to its queer and trans members. On Wednesday, Welby said hes aware what we are proposing today will appear to go too far for some and not nearly far enough for others, but it is my hope that what we have agreed will be received in a spirit of generosity, seeking the common good. Bishops said they will also issue a formal apology to LGBTQ people later this week for the rejection, exclusion and hostility they have faced in churches. Both personally and on behalf of my fellow bishops I would like to express our deep sorrow and grief at the way LGBTQI+ people and those they love have been treated by the Church which, most of all, ought to recognize everyone as precious and created in the image of God, said Cottrell. Same-sex marriages have been legal in England for nearly 10 years. An elaborate 10-piece drum kit stolen from the sanctuary of a Florida church was recovered in the most unexpected of places, when deputies searched a homeless camp, according to the Volusia County Sheriffs Office. It was there they found the Pearl drum set had been reassembled for playing in the woods, the sheriffs office said in a Jan. 15 news release. The pastor of New Destiny Community Church of DeLand recently discovered the church was burglarized, and a $1,500 drum set was missing, the sheriffs office said. With knowledge of a homeless camp in the woods nearby, deputies made contact with the occupants of the camp and found the drums in a tent where (a man) was sleeping. The 22-year-old tenant of the structure said the drums had been at the camp for a week, while he held them for someone else, officials said. However, he later admitted to the burglary during questioning, officials said. Investigators did not reveal what the man intended to do with the drums, including whether he had been playing them. An affidavit revealed a deputy discovered the drum kit after following an extension cord that led from the church to a space heater in the homeless camp. The drum set was found covered with a tarp, just inside the door of a ramshackle structure built of pressed board, sheets of plastic and old carpeting for a floor, photos show. Investigators suspect another person was involved in the church burglary, but a second arrest has yet to be made, officials said. The homeless man has been charged with burglary of an unoccupied structure, grand theft, carrying a concealed weapon and possession of paraphernalia, officials said. Bond was set at $6,000, jail records show. New Destiny Community Church discovered the burglary Jan. 15, and reported the drum kit had last been seen Jan. 8, a report states. The church is in a rural area outside of northwest DeLand, about 40 miles north of Orlando. The drums were carried out of the woods and returned to the church, the sheriffs office said. Story continues Surprised household finds intruder in home at 6 am and fights back, Florida cops say Intoxicated man throws beer on 5-month-old, leading to assault charge, Florida cops say Video shows vicious unprovoked attack on woman outside Best Buy, Florida cops say A Cleveland man has been indicted in relation to the death of a woman who grew up in Medina and was missing for four days last year before her body was found inside an abandoned home in Cleveland's Slavic Village. Anastasia Hamilton, 25, grew up in Medina but had been living in Cleveland. Authorities said a security camera last spotted Hamilton with a man in the Terminal Tower parking garage at 10:15 p.m. May 21. Authorities at the time said that her car was still in the garage and it appeared she was with the man under "suspicious" circumstances. Her body was found May 25. Beacon Journal reporting partner News 5 Cleveland said Hamilton was found on a couch inside the abandoned house in the 3600 block of East 54th Street, with lacerations and abrasions to her head and torso. According to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, Hamilton's cause of death was "acute intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl, fluorofentanyl and gabapentin." Her death was ruled an accident. According to the indictment, filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on Dec. 28, Kenneth Banville, 33, of Cleveland caused Hamiltons death, which was the proximate result of Kenneth Banville committing or attempting to commit the felony offense of Corrupting another with drugs/Aggravated Trafficking in Drugs/Possessing Criminal Tools/Drug Possession/Permitting drug abuse. Body of Anastasia Hamilton found:Body of Anastasia Hamilton, former Medina resident, found in Cleveland's Slavic Village Banville was indicted on 16 charges: involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony; gross abuse of a corpse, a fifth-degree felony; tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony; corrupting another with drugs, a second-degree felony (the substance is listed as fentanyl); two counts of trafficking, both fourth-degree felonies; three counts of trafficking, all fifth-degree felonies; permitting drug abuse, a fifth-degree felony; possessing criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony (the tools are listed as a digital scale and drug press); two counts of having weapons under disability, both third-degree felonies; and three counts of drug possession, all fifth-degree felonies. Story continues In July, Banville was charged with gross abuse of a corpse, a fifth-degree felony, and tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, in relation to Hamiltons case. Also in July, he was charged with escape, a third-degree felony. Banville, who is currently in jail on a $100,000 bond, has a pretrial set in his ongoing cases at 9 a.m. Jan. 25. His assigned attorney is Tom Shaughnessy. Who was Anastasia Hamilton? Anastasia Hamilton, 25, of Cleveland, who was originally from Medina, was last seen May 21, 2022. Her body was found May 25, 2022 in a vacant house in Cleveland. Hamiltons mother, Melissa Romanello, told News 5 Cleveland that her daughter worked at K&D Properties in Terminal Tower and suspected she parked her car there for the free parking, since she was an employee. She said she talked to her daughter the night she was last seen via text, and nothing seemed unusual. Romanello later learned her daughter sent texts to friends early the next day, around 1 a.m., that said "she didnt feel well, her head was pounding, she was hungry and wanted to go home." Romanello told News 5 Cleveland that her daughter was a loving and generous daughter, sister and friend. She had dreams of going back to school, becoming a real estate agent and was thriving at her job at K&D Properties. This past year she was living her very, very best life, Romanello told the Cleveland station. Anastasia Hamilton:Missing woman last seen in Cleveland parking garage has ties to Medina County Past drug-related charges for Kenneth Banville Banville has several prior drug-related charges in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. All of the information below comes from court records. In 2021, he was indicted on several charges of drug possession and trafficking, along with charges of possessing criminal tools, having weapons while under disability and identity fraud. In 2019, he pleaded guilty to a first-degree felony trafficking offense, a third-degree felony trafficking offense, a third-degree felony charge of having weapons while under disability and a fifth-degree felony charge of possessing criminal tools. He was ordered to forfeit to the state a 9mm handgun, $3,993, five cell phones, packing materials, a grinder and ammunition. The 2019 and 2021 cases remain open. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to a fifth-degree felony charge of attempted trafficking and a fifth-degree felony charge of possession of criminal tools. He was ordered to forfeit to the state a digital scale and $80. He was sentenced to six months on both counts, running concurrently, at the Lorain Correctional Institution. He was released three months later and placed on one year of community control. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor charge of attempted drug possession and was sentenced to two years of community control, which he violated later that year. He tested positive for fentanyl. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree felony charge of corrupting another with drugs. He was sentenced to six months in the Lorain Correctional Institution, but a month later, he was released and placed on one year of community control. He violated his community control twice in 2013. He was ordered to nine months of inpatient treatment at the Ed Keating Center. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree felony trafficking charge with a schoolyard specification, with a requirement that he forfeit to the state $3,365. He was sentenced to one year of community control. He violated community control twice in that case, both times in 2010. He was sentenced to six months in the Lorain Correctional Institution. Also in 2009, he pleaded guilty to two fifth-degree felony trafficking charges and was sentenced to one year of community control, with the requirement to successfully complete an in-patient treatment program. Two months later, he tested positive for drugs, violating his community control, and he was ordered to be placed in Oriana House for the longest term possible. Contact Beacon Journal reporter Emily Mills at emills@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter @EmilyMills818. This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Kenneth Banville indicted in relation to death of Anastasia Hamilton After tearful press conferences from both sides of the medically assisted aid-in-dying debate in Hartford on Wednesday, the Connecticut General Assembly Public Health Committee voted to continue drafts of a bill that would legalize the practice in Connecticut. Advocates argue that the aid-in-dying expands patient autonomy, offering the terminally ill an option to end their life with dignity and without suffering. Opponents fear that it will open the doors to misuse and lead to unnecessary death in an overburdened health care system. Connecticut legislators have introduced aid-in-dying bills 15 times since 1995. Last session, a proposal died in limbo in the Senate Judiciary Committee after receiving a favorable vote from the Public Health Committee. Public Health Committee Chair Sen. Saud Anwar said that the bill would allow terminally ill patients with six-month life expectancy to choose to end their life by taking a lethal medication. Two physicians must verify the patients prognosis. Additionally, the patient would need to be deemed of sound mind, and be able to ingest the medication on their own, among other provisions. Medically assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, New Mexico and Washington D.C. Tim Appleton, the senior campaign director of the Compassion and Choices Action Network, said roughly 20% of Americans have access to an aid-in-dying care option and that 75% of Connecticut residents want one. A patient that lives in Middletown, Connecticut, does not have the same options as the same patient might have if they lived in Middletown, New Jersey, and thats just not right, Appleton said. Zip codes should not define the end of life journeys of people who are faced with the most important decision theyll ever make in their life. Opponents argue that the unintended consequences of such legislation are already occurring in states where medically assisted aid-in-dying is legal. Story continues In February 2022, Dr. Jennifer Guadiani, a Denver physician who is licensed to practice in 32 states, including Connecticut, wrote about her experiences assisting anorexia nervosa patients with obtaining lethal aid-in-dying medication in the Journal of Eating Disorders. In the paper, Guadiani argued that terminally ill anorexia nervosa patients deserve the same attendant care and rights as all other patients with terminal illness, up to and including medical aid in dying in jurisdictions where such care is legal. The revelation sparked controversy among the psychiatric community and prompted a response from the Compassion and Choices Chief Legal Advocacy Officer Kevin Diaz, who said the medical aid-in-dying law does not and was never intended to apply to a person whose only diagnosis is anorexia nervosa. Assisted suicide cannot and will not stay limited to a select population, said Cathy Ludlum, a disabilities rights advocate and staunch opponent of medically assisted suicide. Ludlum said the eventual elimination of safeguards and expansion of medically assisted suicide is inevitable once legislation legalizes the practice. She called the proposed bill bad medicine, bad public policy, and bad for people. Supporters often say, Each person is just one bad death away from becoming a proponent. I say, If you had to fight for preventative care, aggressive treatment, and sometimes for your life in the health care system the way we do, you would likely join us on the opposing side, Ludlum said. The push for assisted suicide is not about pain, its about loss. Its about fear of disability. Kira Philips disagrees. Her mother, Clare Marie Philips, suffered debilitating back and pelvis pain during a three-year battle with multiple myeloma, which took away her ability to stand and compacted her spine, shrinking her height by more than five inches in less than 12 months. On June 3rd, 2021, my mom crawled out in the early hours of the morning to our backyard shed and shot herself, Philips said through tears. Its unfathomable still that she was capable of even doing something like this given who she was as a person, being a gentle and kind, compassionate soul. My dad her husband of over 40 years had to find her that morning. He will have that image in his head for the rest of his life. Philips said that if her mother had access to aid-in-dying medication, her family would have avoided the trauma and violence. Many other advocates spoke of watching loved ones suffer unimaginable pain before their passing. Jill Hammerberg recalled holding her husband, Mark Fey, during his death from prostate cancer in 2012. Hammerberg said her husband made unearthly sounds as [he] fought for breath and crawled on our bed in search of relief on that final night. She described the experience as a nightmare. If Mark had had access to medical aid in dying, he wouldve chosen to use it on a sunny Friday when we were all together. We wouldve been wearing our Red Sox caps singing, Hey Jude, followed by a Guinness toast. Instead, we carry the collective burden of the indignity of his prolonged pain etched in our hearts forever, Hammerberg said. Opponents argue that such stories dont demonstrate a need for medically assisted suicide but rather more training, preparation and education on the realities of home hospice and palliative care. Ranking member of the Public Health Committee Sen. Heather Somers introduced an end-of-life care bill that would impose new training requirements for physicians, permit nurses to perform offer certain care, and expand insurance reimbursements. It would also allow patients who previously terminated hospice service to return to such care. Sommers said she is open to negotiating to make improvements to the medically assisted suicide bill, but she does not believe she would ever vote in favor of the legislation. She highlighted concerns over competency evaluations and the distribution of lethal medications, saying that doses should be taken in a controlled clinical environment with a clinician present and that the doctor prescribing the medication needs to have had a relationship with the patient for a substantial period of time. Sommers also said that in cases of medically-assisted suicide, the cause of death should not be written as the terminal disease. She said that such measures would make this bill more controlled than it is now. No one wants to see their loved ones suffer. I think we can all attest to that, Sommers said. Rather than focusing on trying to make this terrible bill a little less terrible, lets focus on end-of-life care in our hospital system. Lets improve hospice, lets improve palliative care. Theres a lot of issues there that can be fixed. The bill would need a public hearing in the public health committee to advance before consideration for a vote before the full House and Senate. If you are considering suicide, or need help with mental health issues, dialing 988 will connect you with a local crisis center that provides free and confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Alison Cross can be reached at across@courant.com Constance Marten, Mark Gordon (pictured) and their child were last seen on 5 January (GMP) A man missing with his partner and their newborn baby has been revealed to be a convicted rapist who served 20 years in prison. Mark Gordon went missing with aristocrats daughter Constance Marten and their newborn baby on 5 January, after leaving their broken-down vehicle on the M61 near Bolton. Gordon, 48, was jailed in the late 1980s in the US after raping and assaulting a woman in her early 20s when he was 14 years-old. The state of Florida convicted him when he was 16 and he served a 20-year sentence before being deported back to the UK in 2010. Police are appealing to the public to help find the family, who they said could be anywhere in the UK. The baby is believed to have been one to two days old at the time the family disappeared. Key Points Mark Gordon spent 20 years in US jail for rape Couple know how to avoid authorities, say police 17:05 , Liam James Police investigating the disappearance of Constance Marten, Mark Gordon and their newborn baby said the couple appears to know how to evade authorities, making the search harder. Officers believe they could be anywhere in the UK and are appealing to the public to come forward with any information that may help find them. Investigators said it is unusual for hotels to accept cash payments and appealed to staff at hotels or hostels where the couple may stay to come forward. Newborn hasnt been seen by doctor in weeks, say police in latest appeal 16:36 , Liam James Police have stressed that Constance Marten and Mark Gordons newborn child has not been seen by a doctor in weeks, as officer issued their latest appeal for the missing family. Metropolitan Polices Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, who is leading the investigation, said: It has now almost been two weeks since Mark and Constances car broke down on the M61 near Bolton and they have been on the move all that time with a newborn baby. As far as we are aware, neither Constance nor the baby have received medical attention since it was born. Our priority is to ensure the baby, and indeed both Constance and Mark, are safe and well. Story continues Once again, I appeal directly to you Constance and Mark. Please do the right thing for your baby and get in touch with us so that we know that you are all doing okay. DS Basford said the couple were last seen more than one week ago in East Ham in the London Borough of Newham. Constance Marten and partner have cash to live on, say police 16:13 , Liam James Constance Marten and Mark Gordon have a substantial amount of cash, allowing them to live off-grid, police have said. The aristocrats daughter, the convicted rapist and their baby had no luggage with them after most of their belongings were destroyed in a car fire, and are using cash to pay for taxis and places to stay. The couple are understood to have lived an isolated life since meeting in 2016, with then-drama student Ms Marten cutting off ties with family and friends. Last September, they began moving around the country, renting AirBnBs for brief periods before going missing after abandoning their car on 5 January. Constance Marten and Mark Gordon sighted outside of East Ham station at around 11.45am on Saturday 7 January (Metropolitan Police) Man missing with aristocrats daughter and their newborn is convicted rapist 15:54 , Liam James The partner of a mother missing with a newborn baby is a convicted rapist who served 20 years in prison (Thomas Kingsley writes). Mark Gordon and aristocrats daughter Constance Marten went missing with their newborn baby on 5 January, when they left their broken-down vehicle on the M61 near Bolton. The Metropolitan Police has released a fresh appeal in the high risk search as officers fear the trio could be anywhere in the UK. Man missing with aristocrats daughter and newborn is convicted rapist The United States Coast Guard and Hawaii firefighters this week continued to search for a fisherman who disappeared after his friend said he hooked a large fish and fell overboard a boat in Hawaii. Mark Knittle, a Hawaii resident, disappeared early Sunday while fishing off Honaunau , Hawaii. The USCG and Hawaii County Fire Department officials began searching for Knittle after his friend reported him missing. Here's what we know so far about the missing person case: Who is Mark Knittle? Knittle is 65-year-old and from Captain Cook located in the District of South Kona on the Island of Hawaii. Police described him as 5 feet 10 inches tall, 185 pounds, with curly brown hair with a white mustache and beard. He was last seen wearing dark shorts and a dark shirt. Hawaii Island police have launched a missing person investigation after a 65-year-old man went overboard while fishing on a boat off Honaunau on January 15, 2023. The @USCG and Hawaii County Fire Dept. are currently searching for a 65 year-old fisherman last seen wearing dark shorts and a dark shirt, Jan. 15, off Honaunau, Big Island. Anyone with information is requested to contact Sector Honolulu at 808-842-2600. pic.twitter.com/T6rE5VEwqX USCG Hawaii Pacific (@USCGHawaiiPac) January 17, 2023 Where did he disappear? The Hawaii Police Department reported Knittle went overboard early Sunday roughly 4 miles off the coast after he hooked a tuna. A friend of Knittle's told police that about 5 a.m. on Sunday the pair were fishing near the C buoy, four miles outside of the Honaunau Boat Ramp, when Knittle hooked an ahi. Two killed by polar bear: Polar bear chases residents in Alaska town, kills woman and boy before being shot, officials say The friend heard Knittle say, the fish is huge, then saw Knittle go overboard into the water. Knittle was seen on the surface and disappeared within seconds. The friend attempted to jump in after Knittle but could not see him anywhere, police said. Story continues How long will they search? The Coast Guard was using a cutter and aircraft and firefighters were using a boat to search the waters off Honaunau, on the Big Islands west coast, Deputy Fire Chief Eric Moller told NBC. Crews said the would search for Knittle until sundown Tuesday. Microsoft announces layoffs: Microsoft to lay off 10,000 employees starting Wednesday; roughly 5% of workforce affected Moller told the outlet that if Knittle, was not found, authorities "will determine next steps." Neither the Coast Guard or police immediately responded to USA TODAY on Wednesday to say whether the search had resumed. Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Search on for missing Hawaii fisherman who hooked tuna, went overboard By Antonio Bronic and Daria Sito-Sucic ZAGREB (Reuters) - The Croatian government and businesses are at loggerheads as traders dismiss measures aimed at battling price hikes after the introduction of the euro by blaming inflation. Costs rose as soon as Croatia replaced its kuna currency with the euro on Jan. 1, as traders rounded up prices in the new currency. It prompted the government to take measures against traders on Jan. 5, warning them it would introduce fines, cancel energy subsidies or raise taxes unless they returned prices back to pre-euro levels. The traders' association has dismissed the government's accusations, saying its members are not raising prices to make profit but rather due to the rising cost of raw materials and energy. Croatia, with annual inflation recorded at 10.8%, reported one of the highest inflation rates in the EU last year. Martin Evacic of the trade sector of the Croatian Association of Employers has said prices went up only on a small number of products. "Prices in 2022 rose by 15% to 20%. They certainly did not rise during the conversion period," Evacic told Croatian media this month. I don't think this is a war between the government and traders, this is the pressure by the government and its need to do something to halt inflation," he said. However Igor Vujovic, the president of the Croatian consumers' association, said consumers were facing prices rising by 5% to 20% a day, depending on the product. "Prices are getting wild," he added. Neighbouring Slovenia, which was the first among eastern EU members to introduce the euro in 2007, also reported an increased inflation of 7%-8% after joining the euro zone but managed to lower it within three months. After two weeks of increased controls, Croatian inspectors found that about 40% of businesses had unjustifiably hiked the prices and fined them 234,000 euros. The fine for companies is 26,000 euros and up to 1,090 euros for individual traders. Story continues "Raising prices, overshadowing the introduction of the euro and contributing to inflation, it's an unfair practice and will not be allowed," Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Friday. He said a number of traders had brought their prices down from the end of December. Konzum and Lidl, the two leading food retail chains in Croatia, said in separate statements they had not raised prices after Jan. 1. However, with consumers struggling with the cost of living, shoppers have also seen the difference. "I have noticed the rise in food prices," said Zagreb resident Domagoj Bregant while shopping at the capital's food market. "This is a problem because food is really expensive relative to my current salary." Some opposition leaders have criticised the government for introducing the euro at a time of high inflation and the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, while not reforming its economy enough. The government has long advocated the advantages of using the euro, saying it would strengthen the economy, improve the investment climate and make Croatia more resistant to external shocks. (Additional reporting and writing by Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; Editing by Vin Shahrestani) Crypto markets teetered on the edge of panic Wednesday, prepared for the worst after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a mysterious, upcoming press conference concerning a major international cryptocurrency action. Bitcoin fell some 4.6% within minutes, ETH shed 5% in the same period. Crypto Twitter whipped itself into an anxious frenzy, speculating as to whether another FTX-style implosion of a critical market player was imminent. And then, a few minutes later, the dust settled: Bitzlato? Whats Bitzlato? Mid-day Wednesday, federal prosecutors proudly announced criminal charges against Bitzlato, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange. The exchanges founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov, apparently known by the nickname Gandalf, was arrested last night in Miami. Authorities say he failed to establish anti-money laundering requirements for Bitzlato, which allegedly processed some $700 million in illicit funds over the course of its history, primarily in the form of transactions related to dark web marketplace Hydra. If convicted of operating an illegal money transmitting business, Legkodymov faces a maximum sentence of 5 years. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco proudly touted the arrest as a significant blow to the cryptocrime ecosystem, and the elimination of a key member of a so-called crypto crime axis. Few in crypto had ever heard of the company. Bitzlato, relative to the size of most major crypto exchanges, is minuscule. According to analytics firm Arkham, the Chinese exchange at its peak held no more than $6 million in funds. Bitzlato tagged wallets have $11k in them. At peak they had $6M. https://t.co/CF7yjYfEIS pic.twitter.com/JHEtAFuPfB Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 18, 2023 Upon revelation of the contents of the DOJs announcement, many in the crypto community took to Twitter to lambast the agency for unnecessarily provoking market hysteria. Story continues Huge opportunity emerging for exchanges to capture all that massive Bitzlato volume now. Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) January 18, 2023 If I had $1 for every Bitzlato meme posted in the past 30 mins, I would have more money than Bitzlato db (@tier10k) January 18, 2023 Though most of Twitter laughed off the underwhelming reveal, some may have found it less amusing. Prior to the DOJs announcement, many speculated that the agency would announce charges against Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange. Federal prosecutors have been investigating the company for four years; Binance was deeply entangled in the collapse of rival firm FTX, and recently admitted to some unorthodox business practices. In the minutes preceding the DOJs press conference, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, went so far as to tweet a cryptic message implying he was preparing for fake news or attacks on his company. 4 CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 18, 2023 Will try to keep 2023 simple. Spend more time on less things. Do's and Don'ts. 1. Education 2. Compliance 3. Product & Service 4. Ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc. In the future, would appreciate if you can link to this post when I tweet "4". CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 2, 2023 Perhaps due to these worrying signals, net outflows from Binance hit $60 million in the last hour, according to analytics firm Nansen. BTC and ETH, meanwhile, have both recovered about half of their losses incurred earlier today at the height of market panic. BTC has climbed back to $20,923 at writing, according to CoinGecko; ETH has recovered to $1,546. A Dallas Fire-Rescue employee was arrested Tuesday on a child pornography charge, according to a statement from the fire department. Jesse McFall, a driver engineer for the department, was arrested by the Dallas Police Department and faces a third-degree felony charge of possession of child pornography, according to the news release. He was bonded out of jail Wednesday morning, according to records obtained by WFAA-TV. McFall has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, according to Dallas-Fire Rescue officials. He has been with the fire department since October 2011. The Joseph McDowell Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution American History essay award winners were announced on Jan. 13 at Champion Hills Club. From left to right are Aislean Esquivel (eight grade) Classical Scholars, Alivia Chen (seventh grade) Hendersonville Middle School, Scotty Keplinger (fifth grade) Bruce Drysdale Elementary School and Laura Lee Jordan, Joseph McDowell Chapter American History Essay Chair. HENDERSONVILLE - The Joseph McDowell Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution presented three American History awards during the Jan. 12 meeting at Champion Hills Clubhouse. Each student received a bronze medal, a $25 check and a certificate for their winning essay. The students also received a signed map of Western North Carolina by internationally-recognized cartographer, Jim Mitchum, according to a DAR news release. The winners were Scotty Keplinger (fifth grade) from Bruce Drysdale, Alivia Chen (seventh grade) from Hendersonville Middle School, and Aislean L. Esquivel (eighth grade) from Classical Scholars. The topic for this contest was Delegate to Second Continental Congress. The winners had to research the colonies, discover the delegates of their chosen colony and learn the issues of the day. Each student chose a delegate and wrote an engaging narrative essay in first person, the release said. Keplinger wrote his essay as a younger George Washington, serving as a delegate at the Second Continental Congress. "George is secretly glad to have bested a rival for the position, John Hancock. Scotty shows the feisty side of our Commander in Chief," DAR judges said in the release. Chen spoke as a husband writing a letter home to his wife where he comments on his feelings and pleasure in signing the Declaration of Independence and approving George Washington as head of the Continental Army. Her delegate is a quiet person, but a leader behind the scenes, judges said. Esquivel speaks as delegate Joseph Hewes, who was conflicted on voting for remaining loyal to the King or fighting for independence. He carefully examines the facts and takes the side of independence, and dedicates himself so completely that his health fails, judges said in the release. For more than 80 years the Joseph McDowell Chapter has sponsored the American History Essay Contest for students in grades 5-8 in Henderson County. This article originally appeared on Hendersonville Times-News: Local DAR names American History essay award winners By Maha El Dahan DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Wednesday progress was being made towards ending the Yemen conflict, in which Riyadh leads a military coalition, but more work was needed, including reinstating a truce and transitioning to a permanent ceasefire. A U.N.-brokered truce deal first agreed last April, and which expired in October, has brought the longest period of relative calm in the eight-year war pitting the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group. "The conflict is only going to end through a political settlement and that needs to be the focus, and I can say that we are making progress but there's still work to be done," Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "What we need now is ...to find a way to get that truce reinstated ... (and) transition that into a permanent ceasefire," he said. "Is that going to happen? It's not clear right now, there are significant obstacles in the way". Riyadh backs Yemen's recognised government, which was ousted by the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014, and has been trying to extricate itself from a costly war that has killed tens of thousands of people, created a dire humanitarian crisis and been a source of tension with the United States. Saudi Arabia and the Houthis last year resumed direct talks facilitated by Oman following the initial truce. Riyadh is seeking to build ties with the group, which is the de facto authority in North Yemen and controls large swaths of Yemen's border with the kingdom. The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran. Hans Grundberg, the United Nations envoy for Yemen who has been pushing for an extended and expanded truce, has stressed the need for an inclusive and comprehensive approach in order to reach a sustainable political solution. Story continues Speaking on the same panel in Davos, Grundberg said mistrust among the parties remained and it would not be easy to end the war. "But serious steps have been taken lately and that is something that we all need to build on," the envoy said. "We are in a moment where there is understanding on how the conflict needs to end. There will always be differences on how and what and the details will have to be negotiated." (Reporting by Maha El Dahan; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Gareth Jones and Paul Simao) DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The author who first envisioned the metaverse 30 years ago sat down on Wednesday with a top executive from the company investing billions in building it and agreed there were formidable hurdles to bringing it to the masses. Neal Stephenson, who coined the term in his 1992 novel "Snowcrash", and Chris Cox, the chief product officer at Meta, laid out an array of engineering breakthroughs needed to allow millions of people to move seamlessly through immersive virtual worlds displayed on head-mounted devices. "We're in the very early version, the Xerox PARC era," said Cox at a World Economic Forum panel, referring to the company that developed the mouse and other fundamental computer technologies 50 years ago. "We've got a ways to go," said Stephenson, who as well as writing science fiction has worked for technology companies including rocket maker Blue Origin. "It's really just in the last couple of years that everything has come together." Cox, whose company is spending billions of dollars developing software and hardware for the metaverse, said one of the biggest problems is the trade-off between speed and graphics quality. Virtual environments such as a comedy club, for example, need to support large numbers of user avatars to engagingly simulate the real-world atmospherics of chatter and laughter. But updating those avatars in synchronicity with the movements of their operators limits the processing power available for high-quality graphics. "We're trying to figure out if comedy can work," he said. A DECADE TO PAY OFF Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he expected his metaverse investments to take around a decade to pay off. By that time, Cox says people will be able to take a walk with friends and family in virtual worlds as readily as they now make video or voice calls. Meta racked up losses of $9.44 billion at its Reality Labs metaverse unit from January to September last year and is expected to see that number grow significantly in 2023. Story continues That has hammered its shares and contributed to its decision to cut 11,000 jobs. The ability to move fluidly between experiences in different virtual worlds while retaining clothes and other items associated with an avatar is an issue Stephenson is trying to address through a company he has founded to develop blockchain applications. He said a key question was whether the metaverse was going to be a decentralized technology built from the bottom up or one created top-down by a single company. "A more open metaverse is better," HP Chief Executive Enrique Lores said on the panel. "If someone controls the full metaverse the ability for others to add value is much smaller." (Reporting by Richard Baum; Editing by Alex Richardson) DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called on business leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos to follow the principles outlined by an expert group to make "credible", accountable net-zero pledges. The United Nations and standard setter the International Organization for Standardization launched the guidelines in November to become a reference text and help organisations come up with solid plans, avoiding slogans, hype and obfuscation. While companies are increasingly pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions to as close as possible to zero, the benchmarks and criteria they use "are often dubious or murky", the U.N. chief told the Davos delegates. "It leaves the door wide open to greenwashing," he said, referring to unsubstantiated claims by some firms that their products are ecologically friendly. He urged the participants: "Put forward credible and transparent transition plans on how to achieve net-zero and submit those plans before the end of this year." "The transition to net-zero must be grounded in real emissions cuts and not rely on carbon credits and shadow markets," he said. The green energy transition of world powers has been one of the central themes at the forum in Davos, where the European Union said it would mobilise state aid to keep firms from relocating to the United States as part of its Green Deal industrial plan. Guterres said meaningful engagement on climate, trade and technology between the United States and China - at loggerheads over issues ranging from trade to human rights - was essential to prevent confrontation. "We risk what I have called a Great Fracture the decoupling of the world's two largest economies," he said. "This is the last thing we need." In comments about global preparedness for another pandemic, Guterres said the world had failed to learn the lessons from COVID-19. "We are nowhere near ready for pandemics to come," he said. (Reporting by Reuters Davos team; Writing Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber; Editing by Alison Williams) A Dearborn suspect was indicted Wednesday by a grand jury on federal charges in connection with an antisemitic attack last month at Michigan's oldest Jewish congregation as new details emerged in court about his activity at a gun store the day of the incident. Hassan Yehia Chokr, 35, who is accused of targeting children and parents at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township, was arraigned Tuesday in Oakland County Circuit Court before Judge Jacob James Cunningham and will face a pretrial hearing on April 4. He remains in Oakland County Jail on a $1 million bond in a case that has drawn national attention as an example of the upswing in antisemitic attacks. In addition to facing two counts of ethnic intimidation brought by Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, Chokr also faces a separate criminal case in Wayne County on a previous charge involving an assault. And he now faces a federal indictment, accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm and lying on a federal firearms form when he sought to buy a shotgun, a rifle and a semiautomatic pistol at a Dearborn gun store after he drove to the Oakland County synagogue, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Dawn Ison announced Wednesday. The store, Dearborn Outdoors, was a federal firearms licensee that blocked him from buying guns after a background check. "In seeking to make the purchases, Chokr filled out a federal firearms form," the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement Wednesday. "On that form, Chokr made three false statements, any one of which would prohibit him from possessing a firearm. First, he falsely claimed that he had not been previously convicted of a felony. Second, Chokr falsely claimed that there were no felony charges currently pending against him. Finally, he falsely claimed that he had never been committed to a mental institution." All three were lies, Ison said, because Chokr had a 2017 felony conviction of stealing with a financial transaction device such as credit cards, faces an assault charge in Wayne County and was granted in 2021 a petition by a state court for mental health treatment. Story continues The U.S. Attorney's office charged Chokr last month and a grand jury indicted him Wednesday. Federal prosecutors gave new details Thursday in court filings about the gun charges, saying Chokr made inflammatory remarks while trying to purchase weapons on Dec. 2. The U.S. Attorney's Office also produced several new images from what appears to be a store surveillance video of Chokr holding guns inside the Dearborn gun store; they show him trying out several weapons, including a Mac-10 machine gun, 12-gauge shotgun and AK47-style assault rifle. Hassan Chokr, 35, of Dearborn, is seen trying out a shotgun and AK47-style assault rifle at Dearborn Outdoors, a gun store in Dearborn, on December 2, 2022. Prosecutors said he visited the store to attempt to buy guns after he drove that morning to a synagogue in Bloomfield Township, yelling at Jewish children and parents. He has been charged by both county and federal prosecutors. "Chokr threatened 'Yall are gonna die' at a Jewish synagogue," prosecutors said in a brief filed Jan. 12 by Assistant U.S. Attorney Frances Lee Carlson, deputy chief of the public corruption and civil rights unit of the U.S. Attorneys Office. "After that, he went to a gun store to purchase firearms that he said would be used for 'Gods wrath' and 'to even the score.'" Chokr was "attempting to illegally purchase firearms so that he could possess and use them" and was "making false statements regarding his eligibility to do so," Carlson wrote. "This was after he spent the morning terrorizing employees, children, and parents at a Jewish synagogue in Bloomfield Hills, by spewing racist and antisemitic threats and yelling, 'You all are going to die!' and Youre going to pay!'" The three weapons that Chokr tried to buy were: a Landor Arms, 12-gauge shotgun; a Glock, 9mm semiautomatic pistol; and a Del-ton, 5.56mm rifle, prosecutors said. "Fortunately, Chokr was denied the purchase after a background check," said the government's brief. "This enraged Chokr who threatened to break into the store and 'get his guns.' He also posted a picture of the denial slip on social media with the words, 'Time to bust out the drywall. Ouzzie time.'" Chokr also was heard in the gun store saying: It aint a fair fight out here. Im going to even the score. Im going even the playing field real soon brothers, real soon. A police report from Bloomfield Township filed in the federal case also provided new details. More:Judge says Dearborn man's targeting of synagogue 'bone-chilling,' sends case to trial More:Video shows suspect yelling at kids at Bloomfield Township synagogue, hurling racial slurs "While reviewing the videos (filmed by Chokr), detectives observed Hassan with a firearm which he couldn't lawfully possess," the report said. "Hassan pointed the firearm out the window and began making threats. Dearborn PD began documenting the incident." Police then took him to a mental health center in Detroit. "When Hassan left his home this morning, he was placed into protective custody based on the Wayne County Mental Order," the report said. "He was transported to Team Wellness in Detroit for treatment and a 72-hour hold. Dearborn detectives were able to obtain a search warrant for Hassan's home to determine if he was in possession of any firearms. During the search, detectives located an Airsoft gun but no firearms." Police said earlier that day at about 9 a.m., Chokr had driven to Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township as parents were dropping their toddlers off at a preschool that's associated with the historic synagogue established in the 19th century. Chokr made derogatory remarks toward the synagogue, calling it the "Mother of the devil," Carlson wrote in the federal court filing. He also made bigoted remarks about Jewish people and Black people, repeatedly hurling racial slurs at two Black employees trying to protect the synagogue as he drove outside it screaming. Chokr filmed himself as he was driving at the center and uploaded the video to Instagram. He can be seen and heard yelling at children and parents as they walked and carried them to the preschool. Hassan Chokr, 35, of Dearborn, is seen trying out guns at Dearborn Outdoors, a gun store in Dearborn, on December 2, 2022. Prosecutors said he visited the store to attempt to buy guns after he drove that morning to a synagogue in Bloomfield Township, yelling at Jewish children and parents. He's been charged by both county and federal prosecutors. "Toward the end, it was uncontrolled, seething rage that quite frankly, would make anyone shudder with bone-chilling fear," Judge Kimberly Small of 48th District Court in Bloomfield Township said earlier this month before binding him over for trial to Oakland County Circuit Court. At previous hearings, Chokr mooned a Detroit judge and yelled antisemitic slurs at a Bloomfield Township judge. Chokr's attorney and a family member said that he suffers from mental health problems and needs assistance rather than being in jail. They also said that while some of his words were improper, he has a constitutional right to free speech. The Bloomfield Township police report filed in the federal case describes an officers' interview with a brother of Chokr, Hussein Chokr. "Hassan has been diagnosed with a mental condition, but Hussein is unsure which condition," the police report said of its interview with the brother. "Hassan has been prescribed medications but does not take them regularly. Hassan will act normal for a while and then become frantic and manic. Sometimes Hassan will let his emotions rage, and no one will be able to control him." His brother also said that Chokr was a constitutional auditor, describing people who sometimes film themselves getting into confrontations with law enforcement to illustrate their constitutional rights. "All the charges that are on him are false charges," Hussein Chokr told the Free Press. Chokr's attorney, Nabih Ayad, argued for Chokr's release from jail in the federal case, saying he is willing to have him turn "in his passport, seeking mental health treatment, being in the custody of his brother, and being on a GPS tether and not be allowed near any religious institutions or gun shops." Hassan Chokr, 35, of Dearborn, is seen trying out an AK47-style assault rifle at Dearborn Outdoors, a gun store in Dearborn, on Dec. 2, 2022. Prosecutors said he visited the store to attempt to buy guns after he drove that morning to a synagogue in Bloomfield Township, yelling slurs at Jewish children and parents. He's been charged by both county and federal prosecutors in the antisemitic incident that has drawn national attention. Ayad also challenged prosecutors on their claim that Chokr was in possession of a firearm. The prosecutors "are trying to have their cake and eat it, too," Ayad wrote in his brief filed on Jan. 11. "If (Chokr) possessed a firearm, then why not charge Defendant with acquisition as opposed to attempted acquisition. ... The only explanation is that the government cannot get a conviction." Prosecutors responded in their brief, saying that Chokr "had actual physical possession of and control over six different firearms for almost four minutes." The court filings also show that the FBI helped police in their investigation, taking possession of Chokr's cellphone at one point. Chokr's criminal history was detailed in the police report. Some of the cases included: an order in 2021 that prohibited him from buying a pistol; pleading guilty that same year in a misdemeanor case involving cruelty to animals; pleading nolo contendere (no contest) in 2013 in a misdemeanor assault case in 19th District Court in Dearborn; and pleading guilty in 2017 to felony stealing with a financial transaction device, which often refers to credit cards, debit cards or gift cards. On the federal charges, Chokr faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of either offense, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Contact Niraj Warikoo:nwarikoo@freepress.com or Twitter @nwarikoo This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Hassan Yehia Chokr arraigned for anti-Semitic attack charges Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley for the first time met with his Ukrainian counterpart in person on Tuesday, traveling to an undisclosed site in Poland near the Ukrainian border. Well share how the meeting happened and what was discussed. Plus: Details on the Patriot missile system training Ukrainian troops have begun in Oklahoma, and experts weigh in on Russias military leadership changeup in its war against Ukraine. This is Defense & National Security, your guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. For The Hill, Im Ellen Mitchell. Subscribe here. Close Thank you for signing up! Subscribe to more newsletters here The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Defense and National Security newsletter US, Ukraine military chiefs meet near Polish border Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley on Tuesday met for a few hours with Ukraines chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, after taking a car from a Polish base to an unnamed location near the Ukrainian border, the Pentagon confirmed. The discussion: The two discussed the unprovoked and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and exchanged perspectives and assessments, Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, said in a statement. The Chairman reaffirmed unwavering support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity. Zaluzhnyi also announced the meeting on Twitter, writing that he extended his gratitude for the unwavering support & assistance provided by [the United States] & allies to [Ukraine] and outlined the urgent needs of the [Armed Forces of Ukraine] which will accelerate our Victory. The significance: The two generals get-together marks a symbolic show of support as Washington and the international community ramp up the delivery of lethal aid to Kyiv. The West as of late has pledged Patriot missile defense systems, tanks and other new weapons to the embattled country as it struggles to regain control of territory taken by Russian forces in the east and deal with a near-constant barrage of Kremlin drone and missile strikes. Story continues Timing: The meeting also comes as the war nears the end of its first year, with Russian forces, along with thousands of private Wagner Group contractors, appearing to dig in for the long haul. Moscow on Tuesday also announced an effort to grow its military to 1.5 million troops over the next several years. Butler told reporters traveling with Milley that the two generals thought it was important to meet face-to-face, according to The Associated Press. The setup: Butler added that after it became clear Zaluzhnyi would not be able to travel to Brussels later this week for a meeting of NATO and other defense chiefs, he and Milley made alternate plans to meet in Poland. The group traveling to the meeting was kept small just Milley and six of his senior staffers with the conversation focused on new U.S. training of Ukrainian forces in Germany as well as to gather Zaluzhnyis concerns to then relay the information to other military leaders at the NATO meeting. Up next: Milley now plans to travel to Brussels, where he will participate in high-level NATO meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by a gathering of the Ukraine Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. Read the full story here Ukrainian troops begin Patriot missile training in US Ukrainian troops have arrived at Fort Sill, Okla., and started training on the Patriot missile system, the Pentagons top spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. Training has begun that training will last for several months and train upwards of 90 to 100 Ukrainians on use of the Patriot missile system, press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters. The location: Fort Sill home to the Fires Center of Excellence and Patriot training for U.S. troops and forces from other countries a day earlier announced that the Ukrainian troops had arrived at the Army base. The same instructors who teach U.S., allied and partner nations will conduct the Ukrainian training, and these classes will not detract from the ongoing training missions at Fort Sill, according to a statement from the base. Speed up: Ryder last week said that training on the advanced long-range air defense system is expected to take several months. Patriot instruction typically takes up to a year, but defense officials are aiming to speed up the timeline for the Ukrainians. Training elsewhere: The start of Patriot training in Oklahoma coincides with the kickoff of an expanded U.S. training program for Ukrainian troops in Germany. Read that story here EXPERTS SEE DESPERATION IN PUTINS WAR LEADERSHIP SHUFFLE Russian President Vladimir Putins flailing decision this month to name a new leader for his invasion of Ukraine reflects a growing sense of desperation for the Kremlin, U.S. experts say. The appointment of Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the former chief of Russias general staff, as overall commander of the countrys so-called special military operation has global watchers increasingly dubious of Putins wartime strategy following a series of embarrassing battlefield losses since summer. A coming escalation?: But the switch-up, which included the demotion of Gen. Sergey Surovikin, head of the invasion since October, could also indicate a coming escalation of Russias brutal war tactics. My sense is that Putin is flailing because hes not getting what he wants, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told The Hill. His military is failing. Hes trying to shake things up in order to get a better outcome, and thats not the problem. His military is not capable of doing what he wants for all kinds of institutional, historical, corruption, competence reasons, and shaking up the command structure, I dont think it is going to get him what he wants. Read the rest here ON TAP FOR TOMORROW Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will travel to Germany ahead of Fridays meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville will speak in person at an Association of the U.S. Army Coffee Series event at 6:30 a.m. The Center for Strategic and International Studies will discuss ocean security challenges at 9 a.m. The Hudson Institute will host a virtual discussion on Enhancing Cybersecurity, Information Security, and Industrial Security as the Foundation for Japans Defense Transformation, at 10 a.m. The Navy Memorial will hold a virtual talk with Navy Chief of Chaplains Rear Adm. Gregory Todd at 1 p.m. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law will host a discussion on Secret War: Unauthorized Combat and Legal Loopholes, at 3 p.m. The Institute of World Politics will hold a seminar on Foreign Leaders Analysis: A Profile of Xi Jinping, at 5 p.m. WHAT WERE READING OP-EDS IN THE HILL US-China war game shows need for victory if deterrence fails How the war in Ukraine could end sooner than expected Thats it for today! Check out The Hills Defense and National Security pages for the latest coverage. See you tomorrow! For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Delaware State University students took to campus Wednesday afternoon as hundreds protested in front of the public safety building, calling for change within the Delaware State University Police Department. Students flooded a campus street, claiming experiences of excessive force from campus police officers, slow response times and lack of response to student calls. The complaints included claims that many sexual assaults have gone unreported for fears they will not be taken seriously. "We're just trying to bring awareness to student rights," said one freshman in attendance, Micaih Lloyd. "Not all students feel safe on campus." "We're supposed to be at a place where we feel loved, where we feel at home," Lloyd added. "Administration needs to make a change." Delaware State University students took to their own Dover campus to protest Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. Over 200 students gathered in front of the public safety building, calling for change within the Delaware State University Police Department. Director of News Services Carlos Holmes stressed that all students have a right to free speech, and some university officials watched the afternoon demonstration themselves. This included Police Chief Bobby Cummings, who spoke to students gathered in front of his department. Bottom line is, students have expressed serious concerns about this, Holmes said. And the university is listening. How DSU is responding President Tony Allen plans to meet formally with student organizers to gather more perspectives on these concerns, Holmes said. Every sexual assault reported to campus police is investigated, he added. From August 2022 to the day before this protest, Jan. 17, the universitys public crime log shows seven reports of rape on campus. Each case is marked as pending. Chief Cummings told students even one assault report is too many. Students hold up signs against sexual assault at a protest at Delaware State University on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. "Its never acceptable," Cummings said. "But we investigate every incident." One hurdle, he said, is trying to get information from witnesses. Cummings encouraged anyone with information on these cases to speak with campus police. His comments were met with shouts from students, matching choruses of Less conversation and more action. Students also said campus police have been slow in responding to incidents, and when they arrive, nothing results from reports. Story continues Photos:Angry DSU students speak out during anti-sexual assault protest Calls for action, answers Delyah Fleury said she often feels afraid walking across campus at night, and the sophomore hopes a protest will bring more accountability. I hope to see some changes and better safety measures, Fleury said. They need to be truthful if the Police Department is understaffed. And if it is, they need to do something about it. Delaware State University freshman Naomi Rivers of Ellendale attends a protest wearing red paint on her face because she said it's symbolic of the helplessness she feels on the university's campus, in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual assault on campus this school year on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. Communication needs to be improved, too, she said, between students, police and administrators. When something happens, you just get a text message. Theres no big announcement, no meetings. We need to know what we can do to protect ourselves, Fleury said. Theres nobody we can go to. Who do we call? She said resident advisers are helpful, but theyre not MMA fighters. We need people who are trained to protect us. Senior Morghan Walker of Baltimore said it was important for her to attend the protest to show solidarity against sexual assault because she's had friends who say they experienced it. Walker feels safe half of the time at DSU, she added. But recently, she said, she began carrying a stun gun because the claims of sexual assault have become more frequent lately. While she stands with sexual assault victims, Walker said she wishes victims would provide more context about their claims because the term "sexual assault" sometimes gets misconstrued. Amid allegations of sexual assault on campus this year, a campus police officer attends a protest at Delaware State University on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. "Sexual assault is not always rape. Sexual harassment is not always rape. It could've been a grope, a touch, or it could've been something that someone said," Walker explained. Students also demanded action from administrators and student government leaders. Many asked for details about what the administration is going to do to respond to reports of sexual assault and to improve safety. The university is ready to make any adjustments necessary, Holmes told Delaware Online/The News Journal. We just need to have more discussions. What's been happening at DSU? Martin Luther King Jr. Student Center sits on Delaware State University's main campus in Dover on Nov. 17, 2022. The protest comes as the Dover institution just celebrated enrollment milestones. Delaware State University marked a 40% expansion in the last decade by fall 2022, welcoming the largest class of 1,700 freshmen and more than 6,200 total students for the first time in its 131 years. DSU also shared a No. 2 ranking among public schools and No. 8 ranking among all Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the country that fall vying among other institutions of higher education established before the Civil Rights Act aiming to foster African American students. MORE TO READ:Colleges are shrinking. But HBCUs like Delaware State are riding a wave of their own Background:Delaware State promised a 'candid response' to a September shooting. Here's what we know. Delaware State University students took to their own Dover campus to protest Wednesday afternoon, Jan. 18, 2023. Over 200 students gathered in front of the public safety building, calling for change within the Delaware State University Police Department. This growth followed the acquisition of Wesley College in 2021, expanding its campus footprint into downtown Dover, growing its student body and degree programs. But public safety concerns were sparked late last year as well when a shooting on campus left four people injured in September. University officials released little information from the shooting, as Delaware Online previously reported, leaving parents and students frustrated. Wednesday's student protest began to disperse after over two hours of demonstration. Kelly Powers is a reporter on the How We Live team covering race, culture and identity for the USA TODAY Network's Atlantic Region. Contact Powers at kepowers@gannett.com. This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware State students call out university police in campus protest Maria Bosque-Blanco will be the new Miami-Dade County School Board member, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday night. Bosque-Blanco, 48, a guidance counselor at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, an all-girls Catholic school thats part of the Archdiocese of Miami schools, will replace Lubby Navarro, the former vice chairperson, who stepped down Dec. 30 to comply with a new law that went into effect New Years Eve that barred elected officials from lobbying. Navarro, who had been on the board since 2015, is a registered lobbyist for the South Broward Hospital District, which includes the Memorial Healthcare System hospitals in south Broward. She earned $220,501 in her lobbying job in 2022, tallying her salary and bonus, according to Memorial. The annual salary for a Miami-Dade School Board member is $46,773. Bosque-Blanco, an alumna of Miami Dade College and Barry University, serves on the Board of Trustees at Miami Dade College, one of the largest colleges in the country. Roberto Alonso, elected in November to represent District 4 on the School Board, also serves on the MDC board. DeSantis appointed Alonso to the MDC board in 2020 and endorsed him in his run for the School Board. READ MORE: Two DeSantis-backed Miami school board candidates win, one edging out a longtime incumbent Bosque-Blancos appointment comes on the eve of the School Boards first meeting of the calendar year, where the board is expected to vote on a new vice chair. After the new board was sworn in following the Nov. 8 election, Navarro was elected vice chair in a 5-4 vote. Chairperson Mari Tere Rojas was elected in a 9-0 vote. READ MORE: Miami-Dade School Board elects new chair, vice chair aligned with DeSantis, GOP This is the second time the governor has appointed a Miami-Dade School Board member in the past few months. Former Miami-Dade School Board Vice Chair Lubby Navarro, who stepped down Dec. 30. In November, on the eve of the official swearing-in ceremony of four newly elected board members, the governor announced Dan Espino would replace outgoing board member Christi Fraga, who stepped down from her seat to successfully run for Doral mayor. Story continues Like Espino, Bosque-Blanco will serve the remaining two years of Navarros term. Bosque-Blancos appointment is the latest effort by the governor to influence school boards across the state. CAST YOUR VOTE: Who are your heroes at Miami-Dade and Broward schools? Nominate them here DeSantis allies on South Florida school boards In Miami-Dade County, two other DeSantis allies joined the School Board this year: Alonso and Monica Colucci. The governor endorsed both in the August primary and November general election. Alonso, a businessman, ran in the seat vacated by former longtime School Board chair Perla Tabares Hantman, who did not seek reelection. Colucci, a district teacher, defeated longtime incumbent Marta Perez in a tight race for the District 8 seat. The other two elected to the board were incumbents Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, who represents District 2, and Rojas, the board chair, who represents District 6. In total, more than 30 school board candidates DeSantis endorsed won their elections. READ MORE: DeSantis endorsed 30 school board candidates across Florida. They did very well In Broward County, DeSantis in December appointed Daniel Foganholi to the School Boards District 1 seat to replace Rodney Rod Velez, whom voters elected Nov. 8 but who cant hold office because of his former criminal conviction. Foganholi, who led the effort to fire Broward Superintendent Vickie Cartwright in November, will be sworn in Wednesday to the Broward School Board. Foganholi first sat on the Broward School Board from April to November, after DeSantis tapped him to fill the District 5 seat, vacated by board member Rosalind Osgood back in March. She stepped down to run successfully for the Florida Senate. Foganholi could not run for the District 5 seat in the November election as he did not live in the district. (Appointees dont have to live in the district, but those elected do.) READ MORE: Broward School Board rescinds superintendents firing by DeSantis appointees Last August, the governor appointed four new members to the Broward School Board as well, when he suspended four sitting members following a controversial grand jury report. Only one of those appointees remains, Torey Alston, who represents District 2. At one point, the five-member majority installed by DeSantis fired the superintendent, only to have the newly elected board rescind that firing in December. Cartwright is now on a 90-day probationary period. READ MORE: Broward School Board rescinds superintendents firing by DeSantis appointees An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Our Lady of Lourdes Academy was a private school. Its a parochial school connected to the Archdiocese of Miami. Miami Herald staff reporter Jimena Tavel contributed to this story. DeSantis weighed in on the classified documents revelations regarding Biden and Trump. He accused the Biden administration of a double standard. "They are acting like it's not a big deal," DeSantis said about the Biden administration. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida came close to defending former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, when he accused the Biden administration of having a double standard on classified documents. The governor was weighing in on the story dominating headlines for the last week, which has slowly revealed that President Joe Biden held classified documents at his post-vice presidential office and home. Trump, meanwhile, kept hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. The latest Biden situation has posed a political headache for the White House. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," DeSantis said in response to a reporter's question about the documents. "You can't have two different sets of rules based on your political party." The governor also noted a CBS "60 Minutes" interview Biden conducted in September, in which the president called his predecessor "irresponsible" after a staged photo from the Justice Department showed folders of the document Trump held at Mar-a-Lago, clearly labeled "top secret." "He said that it was incredibly reckless to have classified he said all this stuff on '60 Minutes,'" DeSantis said about Biden. "Now you find out he had them stashed behind his Corvette at his house that Hunter had access to, which is definitely a security risk in my book." The governor, who was speaking in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, was raising an attack line similar to many Republicans in Congress, who say that Biden's son, Hunter, could have accessed the classified documents. "It just shows you what some of these folks do," DeSantis said. "They had all this stuff to say, and now they are acting like it's not a big deal." DeSantis, who frequently attacks Biden, did not say "Trump" by name, but it was clear from the context that he was comparing the two situations. Story continues It's possible DeSantis and Trump will face off for the GOP White House nomination in 2024 to go up against Biden, though Trump is the only one who has made a run official. Trump, 76, who endorsed DeSantis in 2018, has attacked the governor for dodging questions about the 2024 nomination contest, and nicknamed him "Ron DeSanctimonious." DeSantis, 44, has not responded directly to the attacks, even when prodded by the press, though he has been differentiating himself on policy and touting his record win in Florida on Election Day when many national Republicans Trump backed performed poorly. The White House did not immediately respond to Insider's inquiry seeking a response to the governor's comments. Later, during the White House press briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly refused to comment on the documents situation, telling reporters to make inquiries with the Department of Justice or the White House counsel's office. She reiterated past comments, saying the president takes classified documents "very seriously" and was unaware he had them. "His team is fully cooperating," she said. Based on the limited information the White House has released so far, the investigations into Trump and Biden's mishandling of documents have notable differences, though improperly handling such documents is considered a serious matter that's potentially damaging to national security. According to court records, Trump resisted turning over hundreds of documents, which led to a subpoena, and then to the FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago to recover them. In contrast, Biden's team has said that aides immediately called the National Archives when they discovered the documents. Trump previously downplayed his keeping of documents, saying that other former presidents such as Barack Obama had done the same. The National Archives disputed Trump's claims, countering that Obama sent the documents to a federal government center, sorted through them, then sent some materials to Obama's presidential library. The defense of each case has also varied depending on political party. When more information came out about top-secret documents Trump held at Mar-a-Lago, many congressional Republicans were caught flat-footed over how to respond as details of the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago unfolded. Some downplayed the investigation while others accused Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department and rallied around the former president. Trump is facing a criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith related to his hoarding of classified materials. Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to review Biden's case, while US House Republicans also are launching investigations. This story has been updated following the White House press conference on January 18. Read the original article on Business Insider Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Wednesday swung at President Biden over the recent discovery of classified Obama-era documents in the presidents home and an old office. DeSantis, seen by many Republicans as a potential presidential rival to Biden in 2024, echoed calls of hypocrisy from others in his party who compared the incident to classified documents the FBI seized last year from former President Trump. They had all this stuff to say. Now theyre acting like this is something like its not a big deal. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. You cant have two different sets of rules based on your political party, DeSantis said at a press conference, prompting applause from the audience. The Florida governor chided Biden for remarks in a 60 Minutes interview last year in which the president criticized Trump for holding on to the materials after his time in office, which goes against the Presidential Records Act requirements. Now you find out he had [documents] stashed behind his Corvette at his house, DeSantis said. Ron DeSantis Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Jan. 3, 2023, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File) Bidens legal team found a handful of classified documents at a Washington office hed previously used and later uncovered more documents in the garage of his Delaware home. DeSantis highlighted that the presidents son Hunter Biden could have had access to the house, which is definitely a security risk in my book. Hunter Biden has been a key focus in Republican plans to investigate the Biden family and their business dealings with their new control of the House. The Florida governor is among a number of top GOP figures who are accusing the federal government of treating Biden and Trump with a double standard when it comes to their respective classified documents cases. Last year, the FBI seized hundreds of classified materials from Trumps Mar-a-Lago home and club in Florida after the former president resisted requests from the Archives to turn over the documents. Story continues Bidens team has emphasized that his attorneys notified the Archives immediately upon discovering the documents in Bidens office and home, and the White House has accused the GOP of hypocrisy in turn for slamming Biden while ignoring Trumps offenses. The White House Office of Counsel reported the first missing documents to the Archives on Nov. 2, before the midterm election. The first news report on the found documents came months later, on Jan. 16. The new House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), has kickstarted an inquiry into Bidens document handling, but hasnt initiated any probe of Trumps same actions. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed a special counsel to look into the discovery of classified documents in Trumps possession, has also appointed a special counsel to look into the Biden document discovery. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Disney, Apple, Google and other companies mandating that employees spend most or all of their work hours in offices claim working remotely stifles innovation. Innovation isnt always a planned activity, Apple chief executive Tim Cook told one interviewer. Its bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea that you just had. And you really need to be together to do that. Is this true? Research from McKinsey, the global management consultant firm, points to a different conclusion. Over more than two years of global pandemic, the company found a record number of new patents across 150 global patent filing authorities. Moreover, global venture capital more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, increasing 111%. McKinsey suggests thats because innovative companies developed new ways of connecting remote workers to build and sustain the cross-functional ties necessary for innovation, widening the pools of minds that could generate new ideas. Research from Deloitte similarly shows that adapting the innovation process to remote settings is the key to boosting innovation for teams that work remotely or on a hybrid schedule that includes office and remote work. Opinion My experience helping 21 organizations transition to hybrid and remote work demonstrates that innovation in this context is eminently doable. But it requires adopting practices that address the lack of spontaneous interactions that breed innovation. An excellent technique to replace innovation-breeding hallway conversations on hybrid and remote teams involves collaboration software such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. A company can set up a specific channel on the software to facilitate the creativity, spontaneity and collaboration that fuel serendipitous innovation and then incentivize employees to use the channel. In the case of a late-stage software startup that used Microsoft Teams, for example, groups of six to eight people set up a team-specific channel for members to share innovative ideas relevant to their work. Likewise, larger business units established channels for ideas applicable to a whole unit. Anyone who had an idea was encouraged to share it on the pertinent channel. Story continues We encouraged everyone to pay attention to notifications in that channel. If they found a new post relevant, they would respond with additional thoughts and build on the idea. Responses would snowball, and good ideas would lead to brainstorming sessions and other next steps. This approach combines a native virtual format with peoples natural motivation to contribute, collaborate and get credit. The initial poster and subsequent contributors arent motivated simply to advance the team or business unit, even though that is of course one of their goals. The initial poster is motivated by the possibility of sharing an idea that might be recognized as sufficiently innovative, practical and useful to implement. The contributors, in turn, are motivated by the natural desire to give advice thats visible to and useful for others within their team, unit or organization. Six months after the intervention, the software company reported a boost in innovation across the board, with the channels devoted to innovation breeding a number of novel projects. If a startup with 400 employees could adopt these techniques, so can Apple and Google. Unfortunately, however, companies like Apple and Google have adopted a traditionalist perspective about innovation that ironically hinders that process. The future belongs to companies that can make the best use of human resources around the globe while minimizing time wasted in rush-hour commutes. Doing so requires adopting new and proven practices suited to hybrid and remote work instead of remaining stuck in the past. Gleb Tsipursky is the chief executive of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and the author of Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. Volodymyr Zelenskyy Read also: Number of deaths in Russian missile strike on Dnipro building grows to 40 (UPDATED) According to the president, the attack killed 45 people, including six children, and left 79 injured. Small children and civilians are Russias enemies, said Zelenskyy. Clearly, this happened because Russia has become an enemy of humankind. The president also praised First Lady Olena Zelenskas speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in which she called on the international community to hold Russian war criminals accountable for their actions in Ukraine. Read also: Rescue operation ends at building in Dnipro stuck by Russian missile The world hears Ukraine in Davos they know what Russia did in Dnipro, what (these) terrorists are doing to Kherson, Kharkiv, to our Donbas, and our other territories, to which Russia has brought death. Were lobbying for increased pressure on the terrorist state, Zelenskyy added. Earlier on Jan. 17, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast governor Valentin Reznichenko said that the Russian Kh-22 anti-ship hypersonic missile killed 45 people in the Jan. 14 strike at an apartment complex in Dnipro. The attack destroyed 72 and damaged 230 apartments. Ukraines existing air defenses cannot counter this particular missile type. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine Venture capital investment matters to the Central Texas economy because it allows businesses both startups and later-stage companies to create jobs. But with economic uncertainty looming, the question arises: What level of investment dollars will we see flow into Austin in 2023, and how will that affect the area's startup ecosystem? First, the good signs Despite an overall slowdown in U.S. venture capital funding last year, Austin startups actually fared pretty well, scoring the second-highest amount of dollars in local history. Austin-based early stage companies raised $5 billion in funding in 2022, which is down slightly from the record-setting $5.4 billion that startups received in 2021, according to a new report by the Austin Chamber of Commerce and Opportunity Austin, in partnership with startup analytics firm Dealroom.co. The Austin region is home to a vibrant tech ecosystem, with a large cohort of rising stars and more than 25 unicorns (companies with a $1 billion-plus valuation) born across the region, said Roland Pena, senior vice president for global technology and innovation for the Austin chamber and Opportunity Austin. Those numbers would seem to paint a good picture heading into 2023, but with the national economy on shaky footing, many venture capital investors are likely to be even more cautious than usual in the coming days. Despite an overall slowdown in U.S. venture capital funding last year, Austin startups scored the second highest amount of dollars in history. Founders may face more challenges in 2023, with inflation, a rocky stock market and the threat of a recession. More:Austin sees drop in venture capital dollars as worries about economy grow Trying to avoid risk While investors have "plenty of dry powder," investors will likely remain risk-averse due to apprehension over a possible recession, Pena said. "In just the first 10 days of 2023, weve seen fewer deals, which reflects a trend that is continuing from the last two months of 2022," he said. "This will make it more challenging for startups to raise capital." David Steakley of Texas HALO Fund which has backed a number of Austin startups, including motorcycle rental platform Riders Share shared a similar sentiment. Even though investors have plenty of cash to invest, the current economic landscape has many sitting on the sidelines, he said. Story continues "They're saying, 'We're conserving our cash to help defend our most promising companies, and we're resigned to the fact that some of our companies are not going to make it,'" Steakley said. That also means some early-stage companies trying to raise money for the first time aren't going to find it as easy to do so. "It's going to be a harsh winter for a lot of companies. If you need to raise funds now and you don't have it lined up, you are in danger," Steakley said. Steakley said he expects an economic downturn this year, and that will have ripple effects. "A recession will probably mean that the performance of the stock market is poor in 2023, and, oddly, while it really shouldn't be, VC activity is seemingly pretty correlated with the stock market these days." More:Elon Musk's Boring Co. raises a giant pile of cash. What might it do with it? Icon, an Austin-based construction startup focused on 3D-printing technology, is working on 100-houses that will be part of a master-planned community in Georgetown called Wolf Ranch by Hillwood. The company said the community would be the first large-scale 3D-printed housing development in the United States. Still reasons for optimism Despite those concerns, both Steakley and Pena say they think the Austin area is positioned to ride out the challenging times better than most regional U.S. economies. "It is important to note that Central Texas has a much more robust economy since the last recession in 2007," Pena said. "Weve become more diversified, and our startup ecosystem has become more resilient with the rise of new industry sectors and strategic assets (such as) investors, capital, innovation, and talent." Steakley said he also is optimistic about what the future holds for several industries, including business-to-business software, where Austin has a deep base of talent and history of success. "Texas VCs that I am familiar with are strongly focused on (business-to-business) software companies, and I don't see that changing any time soon," he said. "These kinds of companies are well positioned to maintain their revenues even in the face of a recession because they typically enter into long-term contracts with their customers, and, absent the customer literally going out of business, customers may not really have the option to stop using software that's absolutely critical to their operations. " He also sees promise in startups developing Internet of Things technology. IoT is an industry term that refers to noncomputing devices, such as appliances, that are connected to the internet. "IoT companies had a pretty tough ride during the pandemic because of supply chain issues, especially supply of computer chips. But those problems are easing, and these kinds of offerings appeal to customers who are trying to cut costs," he said. There is also opportunity in life science startups, Steakley said. "These companies also had a tough pandemic, because it was virtually impossible to make progress on clinical trials. So, I think there's more timely and well valued life science deals right now than there would normally be." More:Will pain in tech, housing industries slow Austin's economy in 2023? Big deals, growing valuations Here are some additional takeaways from the chamber's report on venture capital funding: Austin-based startups are now worth more than $128 billion, an all-time high, with a diversified group of industry sectors receiving 321 funding rounds in 2022. The sectors leading the way in 2022 were transportation and real estate startups, with each raising $1.8 billion in capital. The report provides some historical insights as well: Over the past five years, startups in four industry sectors have led the way in total venture capital investments. They are health with 13.1%, property tech with 12.5%, financial tech with 12% and transportation with 12%. About $1.7 billion, or a third of the 2022 total, was raised across five large deals. The largest recipient by far was the Boring Company, Elon Musk's tunneling and infrastructure operation. In April, the company raised a whopping $675 million, which is the biggest round ever raised by a company based in the Austin metro area. The Boring Co.'s headquarters is in Pflugerville. Rounding out the top five 2022 deals were renewable energy company EnergyX, which received a $450 million funding commitment; parking tech firm FlashParking, which took in $250 million; 3D-printer homebuilder Icon Technology, which raised $185 million, and telehealth startup Wheel, which brought in $150 million. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Will dollars keep pouring in for Austin startups in 2023? What we know If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission. While Donald Trump was President of the United States unprecedented moments were reportedly happening behind closed doors that could have had global implications. Thats what a new afterword in author Michael Schmidts book, Donald Trump v. the United States, is alleging: Donald Trump tossed around the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and blaming it on another country. Its shocking to even type out these words it takes very little common sense to understand that this is a very bad idea. More from SheKnows The publication, which is coming out in paperback on Tuesday, focuses in on John Kellys time in the White House as Donald Trumps chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019. He had to deal with the former presidents challenges to the communist leaders threats of military action. Donald Trump nicknamed Kim Rocket Man and had no problem casually throwing out that he was willing to totally destroy North Korea in September 2017. Donald Trump might not have as many Republican allies to support him as he thought. https://t.co/zhv6ChArIt SheKnows (@SheKnows) January 4, 2023 Things continued to get worse, according to an excerpt obtained by NBC News, as Donald Trump escalated his threats via Twitter. What scared Kelly even more than the tweets was the fact that behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Trump continued to talk as if he wanted to go to war. He cavalierly discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea, saying that if he took such an action, the administration could blame someone else for it to absolve itself of responsibility, the excerpt reads. Story continues Click here to read the full article. Kelly reportedly responded, Itd be tough to not have the finger pointed at us. It took bringing in military experts and explaining the balance of power, which requires congressional approval to launch a military attack on North Korea, for Donald Trump to understand how the executive branch worked. The former president was baffled and annoyed by the entire process and the mention of the loss of innocent lives apparently had no impact on him. Buy: Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President $20 If that didnt scare senior aides, Donald Trumps lack of discretion was also a major issue. He would repeatedly talk on unclassified phones, with friends and confidants outside the government, about how he wanted to use military force against North Korea even though the risk of North Korean intelligence finding out was high. It was Kelly who had to remind Trump that he could not share classified information with his friends. Kelly eventually got the situation down from a boil to a simmer by dialing into Donald Trumps narcissism. He told the former president that he would be seen as the greatest salesman in the world if he tried to form a diplomatic relationship with Kim instead of continuing an antagonistic war of words. It was that move that saved the United States from what could have been the start of a deadly global battle. Before you go, click here for more Trump family tell-all books. Launch Gallery: See Donald Trump, Ivana Trump, & More of the Trump Family in This Photo Album Best of SheKnows Sign up for SheKnows' Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. HONG KONG (Reuters) -If China wants to reverse a decline in population, more should be done to help families raise their children, according to Wei Chao, a 31-year-old mother of twin girls living in Shanghai, and many more parents interviewed by Reuters held the same view. "Nowadays many people do not want to have children if they can't provide a good education for them," Wei told Reuters on Wednesday as she sat in a park with her husband and daughters. "When we have good income, of course we would be able to invest more in our children." The government has already rolled out measures to encourage people to have more babies, including through tax deductions, longer maternity leave and housing subsidies, but so far they have done little to reverse the long-term trend. China's statistics bureau released a report a day earlier that showed the population fell for the first time since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine. With more than 1.41 billion people, China still has the world's largest population. But the drop of roughly 850,000 in 2022 alarmed demographers and analysts who foresaw problems ahead for the economy if the trend continues, though the head of the statistics bureau said "overall labour supply still exceeds demand". Sky-high education costs and dimming economic prospects have put many Chinese off having more than one child or even having any at all, despite the government scrapping its one-child policy in 2015. Many Chinese who were born during the two decades after the policy was imposed in 1980 are particularly put off having children as they are already solely responsible for their parents and grandparents without the help of siblings. "People born in the 1980s or 1990s are not as keen to have children as our parents generation," said Ding Ding, the 37-year-old father of a three-year-old girl. "Our parents think if they have more children, they can get more care when they grow old. But the younger generation don't think the same anymore, they have a different mentality. They think raising one child is already very tiring." Story continues Chinas stringent zero-COVID policies that were in place for three years have caused further damage to the countrys demographic outlook, population experts said. China is one of the most expensive places to raise a child, beaten only by South Korea, according to the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research. In a study published last year, the think tank compared the cost of raising a child to the age of 18 years relative to the multiples of GDP per capita for different countries. In Australia it was 2.08 times, 2.24 times in France, 2.91 times in Sweden, 3.64 times in Germany, and 4.11 times in the US. By comparison, north Asian countries were the costliest, with Japan 4.26 times, China 6.9 times and South Korea 7.79 times. They were also ranked far lower for gender equality by the World Economic Forum versus countries such as Finland and Norway where birth rates were rising. A key root cause of low birth rates is gender inequality, demographers said. The governments in South Korea and Japan have also introduced measures aimed at encouraging people to have children, but there is still plenty of resistance to starting a family. The biggest reason is people don't seem to be able to afford the cost or time spent giving birth and raising children, Yu Hyun-su, a 23-year-old South Korean college student, told Reuters in Seoul. India may have already overtaken China to become the world's most populous nation. U.N. experts predicted last year that India would have a population of 1.412 billion in 2022, and had been expecting the South Asian nation to overtake China this year. On the streets of the Indian capital, some people felt that the government needed to take steps to tame the population growth, though it is already slowing. "They should bring out some rules and regulations," said New Delhi resident Azhar Khan. When the countrys population is in control, then only we can develop further. (Reporting by Xihao Jiang in Shanghai, Daewoung Kim in Seoul and Sunil Kataria in New Delhi; Writing by Farah Master; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) Jan. 17A Bakersfield gang member was sentenced Tuesday to three years, 10 months in prison for possessing a firearm as a felon, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of California. Duwayne Payton, 26, is a documented and active member of the East Side Crips gang in Bakersfield and was found with a stolen Glock Model-17 9 mm handgun, a news release said. Payton cannot have firearms because of prior felony convictions such as first-degree burglary in 2014 and vehicle theft, the news release added. The Bakersfield Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosion investigated this case. By Divya Chowdhury and Lisa Pauline Mattackal DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development expects a record loss in 2022, primarily due to losses from its portfolio holdings in Russia and Belarus, EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso said on Wednesday. The bank had around $1 billion in its Russia and Belarus-focused portfolio before the war in Ukraine, which is now "fully provisioned", Renaud-Basso said, adding that in comparison, broader market conditions and non-performing loans had a limited impact on EBRD's holdings. "We are expecting a record loss, following a record profit from the year before," she said in an interview with the Reuters Global Markets Forum on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. The bank earlier reported record investments in 2022 of about 13.1 billion euros ($14.1 billion), and expects to continue investments targeted around food and energy security, Renaud-Basso said. EBRD, which operates across roughly 40 economies in the world, hopes to increase investments in the Middle East and Africa in 2023, particularly in Egypt. It may make record investments in Tunisia. Renaud-Basso reiterated the bank's commitment to send 3 billion euros to Ukraine by the end of this year, particularly to help rebuild infrastructure. That would mean an expected deployment of around 1.3 billion euros in 2023, following last year's disbursement of 1.7 billion euros. She also expects the bank's expansion in sub-Saharan Africa and Iraq, postponed due to the war in Ukraine, to be back on the agenda for 2023. ($1 = 0.9265 euro) (Reporting by Divya Chowdhury in Davos and Lisa Mattackal and Nishara Pathikkal in Bengaluru; Editing by Paul Simao) Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against the man accused of fatally shooting 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019. Authorities say Patrick Crusius drove across the state before opening fire with an assault-style rifle on Aug. 3, 2019, at the El Paso Walmart Supercenter, which is located near the U.S.-Mexico border. He faces federal charges including 23 counts of hate crime resulting in death and 23 counts of use of a firearm to commit murder. Crusius has pleaded not guilty, and his attorney indicated in previous court filings that he has been diagnosed with severe, lifelong neurological and mental disabilities. A federal trial is scheduled for early next year. Crusius also faces state capital murder charges and could face the death penalty in that case. The federal indictment alleges Crusius prior to the shooting drafted a document titled The Inconvenient Truth that claimed of a Hispanic invasion of Texas and indicated the shooting was in response to cultural and ethnic replacement. Crusius was indicted in federal court in February 2020, but the proceedings were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in July 2020 after a 23rd victim died in the hospital months after the shooting. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - A Colombian suspect in the murder of a Paraguayan prosecutor last year was arrested in El Salvador and will be handed over to Colombian authorities, El Salvador's government said on Wednesday. Margaret Chacon is accused of being involved in the assassination of Paraguayan organized crime prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, who was shot dead on May 10 last year on the island of Baru near Cartagena, Colombia, while on honeymoon. Chacon arrived in El Salvador on May 26 and has since traveled to several Latin American countries, returning regularly to the capital of San Salvador, Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro said. Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Chacon on Monday. She will be handed over to Colombian authorities later on Wednesday, Villatoro said. Officials also arrested a Salvadoran national accused of helping Chacon hide in the country. Colombian investigators, with support from the United States and Paraguay, are seeking to establish who masterminded the murder, which could be a transnational criminal organization, according to preliminary findings. Two other people authorities say are suspected of planning, paying and hiring Pecci's murderers were captured in Colombia on Sunday. Four others accused of involvement in the murder were jailed in June. (Reporting by Nelson Renteria, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien) By Andrew Hay (Reuters) -Election conspiracy theories drove a defeated Republican candidate in New Mexico with a criminal past to hire gunmen to attack homes of Democratic legislators, marking a dangerous new level of U.S. political violence, officials said. Solomon Pena, 39, was denied bail on Wednesday in his first court hearing on charges he masterminded and took part in four drive-by shootings since Dec. 4 aimed at wounding or killing Democratic officials in Albuquerque, according to police. Pena allegedly orchestrated the attacks, in which no one was hurt, after he lost a November state House of Representatives race and then visited homes of officials to dispute his 47-percentage-point defeat in a safe Democratic seat. Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, lead prosecutor on the case, said Pena took political "garbage" off social media sites and acted upon it. "He got into this election denial stuff, and when you take rhetoric, extreme political rhetoric, unfortunately, the next step, often lately has become violence," Bregman said by phone, adding that he would soon file formal charges in the case. In early December Pena pulled up to the home of then-county commissioner Debbie O'Malley in his sporty Audi A5 and handed her documents from websites falsely claiming elections were rigged nationwide, she said. Days later her home was hit with around a dozen bullets, and witnesses reported a black Audi matching Pena's speeding away, a police criminal complaint said. O'Malley said Pena was driven by a narrative, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, that violence was justified in response to rigged elections. "One wonders if he just ran for office so that he could cry foul and be seen as a victim of election rigging," said O'Malley by email. Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer representing Pena, said charges against her client were "merely accusations." "Mr Pena is presumed innocent," she said in an email. Story continues The string of shootings follows other recent acts of politically motivated violence, including the attack in San Francisco on the husband of then-House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the New Mexico shooting set a precedent with an aspiring politician named as the suspected mastermind. Senior members of New Mexico's Republican party spoke out against political violence, and the Republican National Hispanic Assembly was among Pena supporters who expressed regret at backing the political novice. The Hispanic advocacy group said it had believed the former U.S. Navy medic and political science graduate had left crime behind after serving seven years in prison for leading a burglary ring. "Despite our best intentions and candidate vetting protocols we bet on the wrong horse, the group said in a statement. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the attacks reinforced President Joe Biden's message that national leaders must reject violence as a political tool. "We urge leaders in both parties to reject lies and conspiracies, Jean-Pierre told reporters. (Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; additional reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Bill Berkrot and Leslie Adler) (Getty Images) The head of the UKs top food watchdog has compared bringing cake into the office to passive smoking, and advised employees against it. Professor Susan Jebb, chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency, also lamented that the advertising of junk food is undermining peoples free will. She said while it is a choice to eat sweet treats, people can help each other by providing a supportive environment. She told The Times: We all like to think were rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time, and we undervalue the impact of the environment. If nobody brought cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub. With smoking, after a very long time we have got to a place where we understand that individuals have to make some effort but that wecan make their efforts more successful by having a supportive environment. We still dont feel like that about food. The newspaper reported that Professor Jebb insisted restrictions on advertising junk food were not about the nanny state but would instead tackle what she described as a complete market failure where sweet goods take precedence over vegetables. The businesses with the most money have the biggest influence on peoples behaviour. Thats not fairweve ended up with a complete market failure, because what you get advertised is chocolate and not cauliflower, she said. Her advice has already sparked a debate on Good Morning Britain, with host Ed Balls calling the suggstion ridiculous. To prove a point, he gladly accepted a flapjack made by ITV cameraman Mark. Additional reporting by Press Association How do we empower a generation of entrepreneurs and create opportunities in low-income neighborhoods? As part of its In Solidarity initiative, Mastercard has partnered with the ThinkWatts Foundation to provide a comprehensive financial literacy program called the ThinkWatts Business Builder to hundreds of small business owners in Los Angeles. Over the last year, many participating small businesses have experienced gaining access to capital, growing their income and scaling their products as a result of what they have learned through the program. Blavity spoke with speaker, activist, rapper and founder of the ThinkWatts Foundation, Stix, who shared his vision behind the organization and what he hopes to achieve through partnering with Mastercard. Tell us what inspired you to start the ThinkWatts Foundation. Stix: Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to help people. Even though I didnt have a lot of money and my mother was a single parent raising three kids, the little lunch money I would get would be shared with someone who didnt have any. In 2019, I saw how many macro issues there were to solve and address. I had a few relationships with different brands and corporate entities, so I wondered how I could leverage those relationships to help those in need. I wanted to help empower, educate and give back to others. Thats what inspired the ThinkWatts Foundation. If we address financial insecurities and food insecurities, I dont think there would be any low income neighborhoods in the nation. How did you first get involved with Mastercard? Stix: A friend of mine at one of my climate justice partners referred the ThinkWatts Foundation to Mastercard and after a few conversations, we realized we were really aligned with wanting to help small businesses, especially in underserved communities. Our first collaboration was a community breakfast and I invited 30-40 small businesses from Watts, California to meet with Mastercard executives. They spoke to the business owners about their needs and identified resources they would need to have positive outcomes as they grew their businesses. It was so successful that we started talking about how we could bring Mastercards Digital Doors program to Los Angeles. From that, we created the Business Builder program fueled by the Digital Doors small business curriculum. Story continues We are now into Cohort 2 of the Business Builder Program. Cohort 1 graduated about 25 businesses this past April and an additional 60 businesses on December 16th. Seeing the transformations of these small businesses have been incredible. For example, the Business Builder program provided a business with an updated Square mobile system to make itemized sales and tracking transactions easier, which helped increase sales by 78%. What are a few of your goals in this partnership with Mastercard? Stix: The goal is in a 12-month cycle, to help anywhere from 200 to 500 businesses receive the tools, education and support they need to strive. A lot of small businesses in low income communities dont know anything about accounting, profit and loss statements, how to get access to capital, cybersecurity, social media marketing, taxes and more. The goal is to empower small businesses to achieve true success, even as simply as setting them up with Square readers to safely and securely accept online payments. This partnership sounds like a great addition to the movement, but we know the work is not done. Whats next? Stix: We are launching a Watts Card through Yiftee, which will be a closed loop community card for small businesses in their system. Building facilities where we could produce this curriculum year round, focusing primarily on empowering small businesses and teaching facilities. The goal is to scale nationwide, not just Los Angeles, but also New York in 2023, Chicago, Houston, and other cities where there are individuals who need the information and resources to thrive. Whats one piece of advice you have for others who want to create this kind of impact and help their own communities flourish? Stix: In the words of Nike, just do it. For me, I dont think doing the work is difficult. Mentally telling yourself to do the work is difficult. We didnt start off doing everything all at once. It started off with giving away turkeys, then turkeys and toys, then financial literacy programs. But the best advice I can give is to just start. Every human being is going through something, so its just about identifying what touches you. This editorial is brought to you in partnership with Mastercard. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. poses for a portrait circa 1967. (Martin Mills / Getty Images) For the record: 8:58 a.m. Jan. 19, 2023: An earlier version of this essay incorrectly said the author spoke at an event at Ebenezer Baptist Church two years ago. It happened three years ago. To become beloved, too often Black folks first have to die. And too often, even that isnt enough. At this time of year , I wonder how America would celebrate one man in particular today had he lived. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 94 last Sunday had an assassins bullet not taken his life in Memphis, Tenn., and I cannot help but think how many people would still be denigrating him were he alive today. It doesnt take much conjecture to visualize this. I still remember the fierce opposition to the very idea of an MLK Day, including from the man who eventually made it official. President Reagan had been an opponent of an official King holiday before eventually signing it into law in 1983. And though many regard King as a kind of American saint, only 55% of respondents to a poll taken this month said that Kings birthday should be a federal holiday. Only 39% of Republicans said yes, with nearly as many of them saying they were against it. Honoring someone with a holiday has never ensured that people will like them. After all, we still have a Columbus Day. However, in King's case, his posthumous popularity has turned his holiday into a celebration of things he wasn't, by people intent on reshaping his legacy to their own liking. This is why the King holiday, typically a day of rest for many, now primarily makes me tired. I mean that with respect, and in one specific respect. Like clockwork, innumerable journalists and scholars feel an obligation not merely to celebrate King, but also to remind everyone who King actually was. Every year, we see articles that tell you how to properly cook your Thanksgiving turkey or find the right Christmas tree. The MLK Day version of that is stop appropriating a mans legacy for your own agendas. Ive written my share . Story continues Elected officials and talking heads, primarily on the political right, keep trying to conscript a revolutionary whose murder resulted from the very racism they propagate. Countering this is necessary, but exhausting. It recalls what the late Toni Morrison so wisely said: The very serious function of racism is distraction. However, its also taxing to listen to and see the folks who like to post the MLK quotes this week and keep living their incurious lives the next. King was anti-capitalist, anti-poverty, anti-imperialist, anti-oligarchy. But we keep hearing a few select quotes cited by people with agendas counter to his. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character does not mean that we shouldnt reckon with the racism in Americas past and present. Thats essentially what Republicans like Marsha Blackburn have claimed. Shortly after introducing a resolution in 2021 condemning critical race theory in K-12 schools where it is hardly taught, but arguably should be the senior U.S. senator from Tennessee argued that what she mislabels as CRT is encouraging our children to be ashamed of the color of their skin. Considering my experiences with racism in scholastic environments, I see that word our doing a lot of work. Blackburn still wants to forbid what is essentially any teaching and learning about Americas actual history. Her website features an action plan to accomplish this, but didnt stop her from tweeting this on Monday morning: Today, we remember a man committed to the vision that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. The Rev. Bernice King, Martins youngest daughter and the chief executive of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, checked Blackburn later that day, writing, My fathers vision was that we eradicate racism, militarism & poverty. Deconstructing systems that deny equity in access, safety & opportunity does not = judging white people for being white. Bernice King helped me spend her fathers birthday productively three years ago when she invited me to share a stage with an assortment of speakers and deliver remarks at her fathers church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta (where Sen. Raphael Warnock remains the pastor). At this years edition of the same assembly, prior to her response to Blackburn, she lamented on Monday the comfortable and convenient reshaping of Martins legacy. A prophetic word calls for an inconvenience because it challenges us to change our hearts, our minds and our behavior, she said. Dr. King, the inconvenient King, puts some demands on us to change our ways. In that vein, Ive realized that when I celebrate Kings holiday, I shouldnt merely focus upon the ignorance of others. I have to worry first about my own. Thanks to our changing world, there is always much to learn even by revisiting what Ive already read and seen already. Both Martin and his daughter have been bulwarks against a rising tide of benightedness, so personal education and edification have felt like a fitting tribute. I do this because I, too, received an insufficient education concerning the civil rights movement and Kings life. It has been nearly 40 years since I last saw my seventh-grade U.S. history book, a thick volume with a giant bald eagle on the front cover, but I may never forget one page in particular. It was the only one that I recall mentioning the Civil Rights Movement. To my recollection, the page only reserved a little less than one of its two columns and only mentioned one movement leader: Martin Luther King Jr. The late reverend is one of the most important human beings that ever lived, but he could not encapsulate decades fighting for Black dignity, equity, and survival. You only needed one hand and another thumb to count all the Black schoolchildren in my private schools grade, and depending upon the class, I was at times the only one in the room. And this was the book that was going to help us learn about America? Even at 12 years old, I could recognize how ludicrous that was. The Rev. Bernice King speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta at an annual service held to honor the life of her father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images) Thats largely because I had parents and other family members who took an active role in supplementing my education about my people. At home, at church and in my community, I received an education in Black history that my schools were either unable or unwilling to provide. I doubt my classmates could say the same, no matter their color. And while the dangers of bigotry forced me and my fellow students of color to learn how to navigate around and amongst whiteness from the time we could walk, were our white classmates pressured to become similarly fluent in our cultures and our experiences? I have a healthy skepticism about that, as well. Whatever learning Americans are doing about Black life remains largely remedial. Our struggle for civil rights back in 2020 after the deaths of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery hasnt held the news cycle, and legislators have responded with a flood of bills that would suppress protest and dissent. Im not just talking about the unearthing of Confederate statues and monuments, though who is talking much about that anymore? Even after the Jan. 6 seditionists mounted an ipso facto response, the momentum toward Black equity has slowed considerably. Additionally, the continued white dominance in storytelling industries (including both Hollywood and journalism ), nonwhite, nonmale and nonhetero experiences in the mainstream remain largely relegated to being niche. America fails, still, to embrace the common humanity that we share and which King sought to underscore. That was at the forefront of my mind because on Monday, I revisited Kings final book, written the year before his assassination. " Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? " feels timely even 56 years later, given the increasing conspicuousness both of bigotry in America and the violence it animates. Only a few pages in, youll find this passage : Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans. I hope everyone reading this takes that to heart, because it isnt just white people who have been poorly educated about Black folks. We all have. Bigotries emerge not merely out of ignorance, but from an accompanying lack of curiosity and courage. Nothing nurtures that ignorance and cowardice quite like comfort. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. In this article we are going to estimate the intrinsic value of DMG MORI AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT (ETR:GIL) by taking the forecast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today's value. Our analysis will employ the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Models like these may appear beyond the comprehension of a lay person, but they're fairly easy to follow. Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model. View our latest analysis for DMG MORI Step By Step Through The Calculation We're using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company's growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have a stable growth rate. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Seeing as no analyst estimates of free cash flow are available to us, we have extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the company's last reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, and so the sum of these future cash flows is then discounted to today's value: 10-year free cash flow (FCF) estimate 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 Levered FCF (, Millions) 203.0m 207.3m 210.4m 212.7m 214.2m 215.4m 216.2m 216.8m 217.2m 217.6m Growth Rate Estimate Source Est @ 3.01% Est @ 2.12% Est @ 1.49% Est @ 1.05% Est @ 0.75% Est @ 0.53% Est @ 0.38% Est @ 0.28% Est @ 0.20% Est @ 0.15% Present Value (, Millions) Discounted @ 6.0% 191 184 176 168 160 151 143 136 128 121 ("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = 1.6b Story continues After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the initial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield of 0.03%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 6.0%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2032 (1 + g) (r g) = 218m (1 + 0.03%) (6.0% 0.03%) = 3.6b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= 3.6b ( 1 + 6.0%)10= 2.0b The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is 3.6b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Compared to the current share price of 41.9, the company appears about fair value at a 7.5% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Remember though, that this is just an approximate valuation, and like any complex formula - garbage in, garbage out. dcf Important Assumptions We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at DMG MORI as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 6.0%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.001. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Looking Ahead: Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn't be the only metric you look at when researching a company. It's not possible to obtain a foolproof valuation with a DCF model. Instead the best use for a DCF model is to test certain assumptions and theories to see if they would lead to the company being undervalued or overvalued. For example, changes in the company's cost of equity or the risk free rate can significantly impact the valuation. For DMG MORI, there are three additional aspects you should explore: Risks: Take risks, for example - DMG MORI has 1 warning sign we think you should be aware of. Other High Quality Alternatives: Do you like a good all-rounder? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! Other Environmentally-Friendly Companies: Concerned about the environment and think consumers will buy eco-friendly products more and more? Browse through our interactive list of companies that are thinking about a greener future to discover some stocks you may not have thought of! PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every German stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here. 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. Join A Paid User Research Session Youll receive a US$30 Amazon Gift card for 1 hour of your time while helping us build better investing tools for the individual investors like yourself. Sign up here LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union's drug regulator has not identified any safety signals in the region related to U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech's updated COVID-19 shot, the agency said on Wednesday. On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said that a safety monitoring system had flagged that the shot could possibly be linked to a type of brain stroke in older adults, according to preliminary data. "EMA can confirm that to date no such signal has been identified in the EU. EMA will continue to evaluate all available data to determine whether emerging safety information could point to a similar signal in the EU," the agency told Reuters in response to a question. Pfizer and BioNTech said in a statement on Friday that they were aware of limited reports of ischemic strokes in people 65 and older following vaccination with their updated shot. Pfizer further noted that neither the companies nor the CDC and FDA had observed similar findings across other monitoring systems and said there was no evidence to suggest an association with the use of the companies' COVID-19 vaccines. The EMA said it was aware of the U.S. announcement, in which the FDA and CDC also said they had not found signs of a link to stroke in other monitoring databases. "EMA will continue to evaluate all available data to determine whether emerging safety information could point to a similar signal in the EU," its statement read. (Reporting by Maggie Fick; Editing by Kirsten Donovan) BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Parliament called on Wednesday for the EU to list Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation, blaming the powerful force for the repression of protesters and the supply of drones to Russia. Ties between the European Union (EU) member states and Tehran have deteriorated in recent months as efforts to revive nuclear talks have stalled. Tehran has detained several European nationals and the bloc has become increasingly critical of a continuing violent crackdown on protesters, including executions. Widespread anti-government demonstrations erupted in Iran in September after the death of young Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for allegedly flouting the strict dress code imposed on women. In a text backed by an overwhelming majority of lawmakers, the European Parliament condemned "the brutal crackdown by Iran, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on the demonstrations after the death of Mahsa Amini, following her violent arrest, abuse and ill-treatment by Iran's 'morality police'". The text called for the EU and its member states to include the IRGC on the bloc's terrorist list "in the light of its terrorist activity, the repression of protesters and its supplying of drones to Russia". The European Parliament has no power to compel the EU to add the IRGC to its list. But the text - contained in an amendment to a resolution, proposed by Polish conservative lawmaker Anna Fotyga - represented a clear political message to Tehran. Designating the IRGC as a terrorist group would mean that it would be considered a criminal offence by the EU to belong to it, and any of its assets in the bloc would be frozen. It would also not be able to receive funds from EU citizens or businesses. A total of 598 members of the parliament voted in favour of the amendment, while nine voted against and 31 abstained. Brussels is discussing a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran and diplomatic sources have said members of the IRGC will be added to the EU's sanctions list next week. But some member states have called for the bloc to go further and classify the IRGC as a whole as a terrorist organisation. Britain is expected to make such a decision in the coming weeks. (Reporting by Andrew Gray; Editing by Alexandra Hudson) Members of the European Parliament have called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany to hand over the immediate deployment of modern weapons and an air defence system to Ukraine. This is stated in the 2022 annual report on the implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy approved on Wednesday. The MEPs also called for the immediate deployment of modern weapons and air defence systems in Ukraine. They emphasise that Ukraine defends its territorial integrity within internationally recognised borders and urgently needs military aid and heavy weapons to win the war. "The EU and its member states should increase military, political and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and strengthen their defences against Russian threats to European security. The EU's response to Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine is being closely watched by autocracies around the world and will have a significant impact on their behaviour in the international arena", MEPs stated. Earlier on Wednesday, Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, said that he supported the idea of providing Ukraine with tanks and other necessary types of weapons. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, said that the partner countries should hand over Western battle tanks to Ukraine. Additionally, last week Poland expressed readiness to provide Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks, but in a coalition of partners. This week, Britain was the first to announce the transfer of its Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! Olaf Scholz Read also: No credible rationale for Berlin to refuse to give tanks to Ukraine, FM Kuleba says The appeal to Berlin was included in the parliaments annual EU defense policy review, which was adopted with 459 to 93 votes, while 85 MEPs abstained. MEPs have called to immediately deploy next-generation air defense systems, and urged Scholz to deliver Leopard-2 main battle tanks to Ukraine without further delay. Ukraine is defending its territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders and urgently needs military aid and heavy weaponry to win the war, the document reads. Read also: Germanys Scholz says weapons deliveries to Ukraine must be coordinated with allies On Jan. 20, defense ministers of pro-Ukraine international coalition will discuss Kyivs armament needs at the eight Ramstein meeting named after the U.S. Ramstein Air Force base in Germany, where the first such gathering took place in 2022. Read also: Ukraine aiming for promises of supplies of powerful weapons at next Ramstein meeting The United States is preparing another package of security assistance to Ukraine, which will include Stryker armored vehicles and GLSDB rockets but no Abrams tanks, Politico reported on Jan. 18, citing U.S. officials. Read also: US plans to provide Ukraine with Stryker armored vehicles and GLSDB rockets On Jan. 17, Reuters reported that at Davos, Germany's partners increased pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to allow the transfer of Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda was the first to announce the transfer of 14 Leopard tanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On Jan. 16, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed that the UK would transfer 14 Challenger-2 tanks to Ukraine. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine Law enforcement officals continue their investigation at the scene of a shooting that killed six people in Goshen. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times) For the record: 4:31 p.m. Jan. 18, 2023: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of one of the victims as Elyssa Parraz. The 16-year-olds name is Alissa. Six people were killed Monday in what local officials have called a targeted attack in the small Tulare County town of Goshen, leaving family members including a 10-month-old baby and a 72-year-old grandmother dead. The massacre has been described as particularly brutal for the execution-style killings of the baby, his teen mother and her grandmother, but much is still unknown about the attack. No one has been arrested. Tulare County Supervisor Eddie Valero, who represents the town, called the deaths everyones worst nightmare." "These senseless acts of violence, especially with infants, children and young adults, have no place in our communities," he said. Here's a breakdown of what The Times has confirmed from local officials, court documents and interviews. Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux speaks during a news conference in Visalia on Tuesday. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) What do we know about the attack? The massacre occurred around 3:30 a.m. in and around the family's residence in Goshen, near Visalia. Deputies first found the bodies of the 16-year-old girl and her 10-month-old baby outside the home along the street, officials said. It was clear that the young mother had tried to run away with her baby in her arms, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said. Forensic evidence later showed she had been caught before she could escape, and she and her child were shot in the head from above, execution style. Deputies then found the door to the main house forced open and one person dead in the doorway. The grandmother was found dead, also shot in the head, apparently while asleep in her bed. Another victim was found dead in the threshold of the door to a trailer near the house. Six total were killed, many of whom were related. Boudreaux called the attack targeted not a random act of violence though he declined to name the intended target or a possible motive. Was a cartel involved? The involvement of a drug cartel is still not confirmed, but sheriff's officials say it's a possibility. Story continues Hours after deputies responded to the gruesome scene Monday, Boudreaux characterized the massacre as a targeted attack by an unspecified drug cartel. But the following day at a news conference, the sheriff clarified his comments about such involvement. Im not saying this is a cartel, he said. But also be clear, I am not eliminating that possibility. He said because of how the six were killed shot in the head or in places a shooter would know a quick death would follow it was likely a "high-level gang-style execution or cartel-style execution," or possibly related to both gangs and cartels. He did not name a specific gang or cartel. Authorities remove the body of one of the victims on Monday. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Were there any survivors? Three people were at the family compound during the attack and were not fatally shot, Boudreaux said. He did not identify the survivors but said they are providing a great deal of information" to investigators. One of the survivors hid in the main house by lying on the floor of a room, with his feet against the door, while two other survivors were in a nearby trailer, which the shooters never entered, the sheriff said. Who are the victims? Here are the names and ages of those killed, according to the Tulare County Sheriff's Office: Nycholas Parraz, 10 months Alissa Parraz, 16 years Marcos Parraz, 19 Jennifer Analla, 50 Eladio Parraz Jr., 52 Rosa Parraz, 72 The Sheriff's Office initially released an incorrect spelling of Alissa Parraz's name, as well as the wrong ages for her and her son. Rosa Parraz was Alissa and Marcos Parraz's grandmother, according to sheriff's spokesperson Teresa Douglass. Eladio Parraz Jr. was an uncle to Alissa and Eladio. Analla was a girlfriend of one of the survivors, the sheriff said. A poster of the victims of the Goshen homicides is displayed at Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux's news conference Tuesday in Visalia. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) The sheriff also noted that the property where the massacre occurred was a known home to our department for gang activity, but noted that not everyone at the house was involved in illegal activity, especially not all of the victims. According to local court records, deputies had found ammunition, guns, marijuana and methamphetamine at the home Jan. 3 after a parole compliance check on a family member. During that visit, Eladio Parraz Jr. admitted to being part of a gang tied to the Mexican Mafia prison gang, according to court records. He was arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing ammunition as a convicted felon and posted bail a few days later. Gino Hernandez, who lives nearby, said the extended Parraz family lives in multiple houses on the street where the massacre occurred. He said he'd known them for years and considered them friends. "As far as I know, they were good people," neighbor Gino Hernandez said about the six people slain in Goshen. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) "As far as I know, they were good people," the 72-year-old said. "It's a terrible thing." He said he had worked with Eladio Parraz Sr. in the agricultural fields that span the rural landscape. Through Parraz Sr., Hernandez said he got to know much of the family over the decades, but they weren't particularly close. What do we know about the suspects? Authorities are searching for at least two suspects who they believe carried out the killings. Boudreaux said there could have been another person involved, perhaps as a getaway driver, but that is supposition at this point. Deputies arrived at the compound just seven minutes after the first 911 call, but the shooters were long gone by then. Officials on Tuesday announced a $10,000 reward for information that would help move the investigation forward and also asked for any video from nearby residences or businesses that may have captured anything suspicious early Monday. How is the community coping? Many in Goshen have been on edge since news of the massacre broke. People here are worried about their safety, Hernandez said. Were all worried. Ive never see this here. He said he wasnt aware of gang activity in the area and remembered shootings years ago. Theres been a little bit of drive-bys and stuff, but not like this, Hernandez said. The little baby, thats what the hardest part is. Im still feeling it, you know? Times staff photographer Genaro Molina contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. A former Ada County Sheriffs Office employee was arrested and charged with nine felonies for allegedly sexually abusing two minors. Gerald Fairbanks, 63, who was an Ada County detention deputy, was charged with seven counts of lewd conduct with a child under 16 years old and two counts of sexual abuse with a minor, according to online court records. Ada County Sheriffs Office spokesperson Patrick Orr told the Idaho Statesman by email that Fairbanks worked for the department for nearly 20 years, starting in 1992 and leaving in 2011. Detention deputies are part of the jail services bureau. Orr declined to comment on why Fairbanks left the department. A motion to reduce bond, filed by Fairbanks attorney, said he retired early because he had a neck injury. The charges were first reported by the Idaho Press. It appears the charges stem from two separate periods, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Statesman. The children, who are identified by their initials, were both younger than 13 during the alleged abuse, the complaint said. One of the charges against Fairbanks alleged that sometime between 2008 and 2021 he did cause or have sexual contact with one of the minors, who was between the ages of 9 and 12, by rubbing, groping or touching the childs breasts, nipples and/or butt, according to the complaint. From 2014 to 2018, Fairbanks is accused of causing or having sexual contact with the other child by rubbing the childs thighs. Fairbanks is in the Elmore County Jail in Mountain Home on a $500,000 bond, according to online court and jail records. Its unclear why hes being housed there rather than at the Ada County Jail. Boise-based private attorney Jon Cox, who is representing Fairbanks, stated in the motion to reduce bail that Fairbanks cant afford to post and that hes diabetic and needs insulin twice a day which the motion alleges hes not being provided while in custody. The three-page motion filed on Jan. 5 was denied five days later. It said Fairbanks has no prior criminal history, is married with two adult sons, has no firearms in his house and is willing to abide by any conditions that the Court places on him. Fairbanks is expected to appear in court at 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 30, according to online court records. Migrants seeking asylum in the United States line up for food at a makeshift encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, near the U.S.-Mexico border, on Dec. 29, 2022. (Reuters/Daniel Becerril) The increasing influx of migrants to the U.S. border with Mexico is causing enforcement fatigue in Central and South American transit countries, according to Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol documents obtained by Yahoo News, and almost all will not be able to handle an expected surge should Title 42 restrictions be lifted in the coming months. Multiple countries in Central and South America reported having limited resources and are requesting assistance from the United States as well as international partners to support migrants already in country, stating they are unable to provide migrants with basic social service requirements, states a December DHS assessment. It is based largely on State Department communiques from countries that migrants pass through on their way to the U.S., where they camp as they await policy changes, or where they are removed to if they are denied entry into the U.S. Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama are facing limitations on capacity at migrant shelters, with some countries having to shutter shelters due to lack of funding, the DHS report states. The assessment notes that these countries are unable to handle the increase of migrants heading to the U.S. that is expected if and when Title 42 restrictions are lifted. There are at least 35,200 migrants in northern Mexican border cities waiting to cross into the United States once Title 42 concludes, states a Dec. 31 CBP internal report obtained by Yahoo News. Central and South American transit countries also face changing legislative actions that have reduced or eliminated their ability to detain or repatriate individuals who have entered their country without proper documentation effectively creating an avenue for continued migration towards the United States, the DHS report says. This Dec. 15 assessment was produced by the departments Intelligence Enterprises Migration Indicators and Warnings Cell Migrant Fusion Cell, and is based on State Department cables provided to CBP and DHS on the impact of the end of Title 42 in each central and South American transit country. A copy of this report was obtained by Yahoo News. Story continues Young migrants from Guatemala traveling without adults walk toward a border patrol transport vehicle after being smuggled across the Rio Grande river from Mexico into Roma, Texas, on Nov. 8, 2022. (Reuters/Adrees Latif) Used by the Trump administration during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic to stem the flow of migrants into the U.S., Title 42 is a clause of the Public Health Services Law that allows the government to block the entry and deport individuals from other countries during a public health emergency. During the first two years in office, President Biden allowed Title 42 expulsions to continue, but has since sought to wind down the policy. Title 42 has been used to expel 2.4 million migrants along the Southwest border, according to the DHS report, of which 1.4 million were Mexican nationals. In early December, 19 Republican-led states sued the Biden administration to try to keep Title 42 in place past a scheduled end date of Dec. 21. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in February, but has opted not to block the policy in the meantime. The expectation of both parties in the case is that rescinding the policy will result in a dramatic spike in the number of migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. Those fears are echoed in the government documents obtained by Yahoo News. As the public health order is scheduled to terminate on 21 December, CBP anticipates an increase in the number of migrants encountered along the SWBabove the already high levels we currently experience. This initial surge will likely be comprised of migrants who are currently waiting in Northern Mexico, the DHS report states. On Jan. 5, the White House and DHS announced new enforcement policies that the administration hopes will reduce the number of migrants heading to the U.S. ahead of the lifting of Title 42 restrictions. The new policies include the launch of an app, CBP One, which allows migrants, thousands of whom are currently camped out on the Mexican side of the border, to book an appointment with CBP at the border in advance of their arrival. The U.S. also announced it would use expedited removal authority to more quickly expel migrants waiting for a court date after crossing into the U.S. It also granted expanded parole for migrants from three countries. Mexico agreed to accept 30,000 migrants per month from four nations if they are not accepted into the U.S. A migrant from Venezuela at a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, uses his phone to access the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) CBP ONE application, to request an appointment at a land port of entry to the U.S., on Jan.12. (Reuters/Jose Luis Gonzalez) The Biden administrations expanded parole announcement prompted concerns for authorities and confusion in migrants, according to an internal CBP report dated Jan. 11, a copy of which was also obtained by Yahoo News. Officials in Baja California and Sonora, Mexico, voiced concern about managing daily returns of approximately 200 migrants with nationalities not eligible for expanded parole. Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 5, Mexicos Migration National Institute apprehended an average of 2,795 irregular migrants a day, with only 114 being repatriated back to their country of origin. The U.S., Mexico and Canada are also working on a one-stop-shop website where migrants can see which countrys asylum or other immigration programs they may be eligible for. The U.S. is planning on several outreach campaigns targeting potential migrants, two officials said. DHS and CBP did not respond to multiple requests from Yahoo News for comment. Alan Bersin, a former Homeland Security official who served during the Obama administration and was nicknamed the "border czar, suggested that enforcement fatigue in Mexico and other Central American countries would have little impact on the Biden administration's newest border initiatives. The key and its a promising one to the Biden proposals is their objective to reduce activity at the Southwest Border Line," Bersin told Yahoo News in an email. "By creating legal pathways into the United States through an asylum and parole application process based away from the border, the new policies aim to impact the migrant/smuggler incentive calculation significantly and decrease the number of people who simply show up at the border line seeking relief." An estimated 2,000 Venezuelan migrants continue to wait for Title 42 exceptions at the encampment along the Rio Grande River in Matamoros, Mexico, hoping for the opportunity to enter the U.S., according to a CBP Indications and Warnings Daily report produced by CBPs Office of Intelligence and dated Jan. 11. Tensions over migrant center closures elsewhere in Mexico helped lead to riots at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance in Tapachula on Jan 3. Other CBP documents note that the number of assaults against border patrol agents in El Paso, Texas, doubled from 2021 to 2022. Asylum seekers in Matamoros wait in line to put their name on a list to get called when it is their turn to seek asylum in the U.S., on Dec. 22, 2022. This was the day after Title 42 had been expected to be lifted. (Veronica G. Cardenas/AFP via Getty Images) The December DHS assessment, which is not public, also offers new details on what the South and Central American countries on the migrants' route are telling the U.S. government. Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala said they are at capacity, lack funding or otherwise cannot handle the increase of migrants headed to the U.S. anticipated when Title 42 is lifted. CBP documents, also obtained by Yahoo News, provide further detail, including a severe lack of staffing for vast areas of terrain on the Mexican side of the border. Only 11 agents from Mexicos immigration agency, for instance, are deployed along the entire border with Arizona, one CBP document says. Other recent DHS and CBP internal documents obtained by Yahoo News shed light on some of the issues being faced by countries on the route to the U.S. The Costa Rican government is reportedly overwhelmed by the migration surge as well as the related health, education, and security costs, and they emphasize the need for increased burden sharing by the international community, according to U.S. government reporting, the Dec. 15 DHS assessment states. In late July, 2022, the government of Panama notified the U.S. that it will begin limiting long-term detention for known or suspected terrorists and other special interest migrants, citing lack of funding and overcrowding and lack of specific justifications for prolonged detention. Panama also notified the U.S. that detaining migrants costs between $55 and $65 per day. Should Title 42 be lifted, the subsequent flood of people is likely to result in much higher expenses, too. Mexicos immigration authority installed 234 checkpoints in southern Mexico, which has led to an increase in apprehensions. But even now, with Title 42 still in place, only a small percentage of those detained end up being sent back to their home country. The Government of Mexico has expressed concern regarding its limited capacity to apprehend, detain, and/or shelter the current levels of irregular migrants and asylum-seekers with officials in Nuevo Laredo stating they are unprepared for a surge once the United States rescinds Title 42, according to U.S. government reporting. Caitlin Dickson contributed reporting Family members of a California public defender who died during a romantic getaway to Mexico do not believe his death was an accident as Mexican officials have previously claimed. Elliot Blair was celebrating his first wedding anniversary when he died Saturday outside his hotel room at Las Rocas Resort and Spa in Rosarito Beach, CBS Los Angeles reported. The circumstances surrounding his sudden death remain mostly unknown, and authorities in Mexico have released few details in the case. Blairs family said theyve received almost no information from local authorities or officials since he died, according to a statement from his familys lawyer, David Scarsone. So far, their only point of contact has been a liaison to the coroners office, who indicated that the cause of death was severe head trauma and that the case had been forwarded to the district attorneys office to conduct a possible homicide investigation, according to Scarsone. The attorney generals office said In a statement to The Orange County Register that Blairs death appeared to have been the result of an unfortunate accident from a fall by the now deceased from a third-story floor. Blairs loved ones do not believe this is what occurred. The family, which has extensive legal training in criminal law, wholeheartedly believes based on their initial investigation, that Elliot was the victim of a brutal crime, Scarsone added. A toxicology report has not been completed, according to the statement. Blairs family said they also plan to carry out an independent investigation with a private investigator and a forensic pathologist Fans have shared their hilarious reactions to Netflixs newest dating show, Perfect Match, which features some of the networks beloved reality stars. The dating show will be bringing Netflixs most eligible singles back for a new spin at romance where theyll play by their own rules, as noted by the teaser trailer. The stars were all brought to one villa in an attempt for each to find their right match. Netflix says the most compatible couples will play matchmaker as they break other couples up and send them on dates with different contestants, The programs 23 contestants hail from eight different reality shows: Love Is Blind, The Ultimatum, Too Hot To Handle, The Circle, The Mole, Selling Tampa, Sexy Beasts, and, Twentysomethings: Austin. Some of the singles on the program include Love Is Blind season three star Bartise Bowden, Love Is Blind season two star Shayne Jensen, and Love Is Blind season one star Damian Powers. Lauren LC Chamblin and Diamond Jack from season one of the dating series will also be on Perfect Match. The new series will also feature Joey Sasso from season one of The Circle, Francesca Fargo from season one of Too Hot To Handle, and Zay Wilson from The Ultimatum. Chloe Veitch, who was on both The Circle and Too Hot To Handle, is also a part of Netflixs new series. In the comments of the teaser trailer on YouTube, fans have expressed their excitement over the series and its cast. They took the worst people from Love Is Blind and the best people from The Circle, one wrote. Im curious to see what they planned for them. Finally now this is the Netflix crossover Ive been waiting for, another wrote. About time Netflix did this. They have a deep enough bench of reality people on their own to do Bachelor in Paradise or The Challenge type shows, a third said. Use what you got. Other fans made jokes about Netflix bringing so many different reality stars together. Netflix reality shows universe: NRSU, one wrote, while another said: Netflix is creating their own version of The Avengers. Story continues Fans continued the bit in the comments of the trailer on Fragos TikTok account. Most ambitious crossover since [Avengers]:Infinity War, one wrote, while another added: This is like the grown up version of Disney Channel games The first episodes of Perfect Match will premiere on Netflix on 14 February and each episode will be an-hour long. The program will be hosted by Nick Lachey, who also hosts Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum. Tyre Deandre Nichols, 29, sits by a fire. Nichols died Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, three days after a confrontation with Memphis Police officers during a traffic stop. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is looking into the death. Federal investigators said Wednesday a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of a 29-year-old man who passed away three days after being stopped by Memphis Police. The Unites States Attorney's Office, in conjunction with the FBI Memphis Field Office and Department of Justice announced the investigation into the officers involved in the traffic stop that sent Tyre Nichols of Memphis to the hospital in critical condition. Nichols died Jan. 10, three days after he was hospitalized following a traffic stop with Memphis Police. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was called in by the Shelby County District Attorney's Office to investigate the death. According to police, officers from the Memphis Police Department pulled over Nichols, who has no criminal record, around 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 7 for a traffic violation. After what police described as two "confrontations," Nichols was arrested and "complained of a shortness of breath." He was taken to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition. The officers involved with the stop were placed on leave and an internal investigation was opened by the city and the police department. The outcome of that investigation is not yet known, but Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn "CJ" Davis and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said "administrative action" was imminent. Keyana Dixon, Tyre Nichols older sister, cries as she speaks about the pain her family is feeling in the wake of her brothers death on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. Nichols died January 10 after a traffic stop with the Memphis Police Department. Family members of Nichols said he suffered a number of injuries, including brain swelling and kidney failure. He was hooked up to a dialysis machine prior to his death. An image of Nichols shared with the public shortly after his death put a finer point on his described injuries. In the image, Nichols is intubated. His face was disfigured from a combination of significant welts. His nose was nearly bent into an s shape. Blood was seen on his intubation tube and on his hospital sheets. The response form public officials including Strickland, Davis, and Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy has been to urge patience among the public as an internal investigation plays out. Story continues Family and members of the public have demanded transparency, including the immediate release of any footage recorded during the traffic stop. That footage could be publicly available as soon as the end of the week, following the completion of the city's internal investigation, Davis and Strickland announced Tuesday. Their announcement came minutes before a memorial service for Nichols took place. The call for footage has collided with a precedent; former District Attorney General Amy Weirich rarely authorized the release of footage from fatal and non-fatal use of force incidents with Memphis police since body-worn cameras were fully deployed to officers in 2016. When Martavious Banks was shot several times by Memphis police following an attempted traffic stop in 2018, the public did not view footage of the arrest until 2020 long after the disciplinary measures were levied against the involved officers, some of whom turned off their body cameras prior to the shooting. : Rodney Wells, Tyre Nichols stepfather, stands and listens to chants from activists outside of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. Nichols died January 10 after a traffic stop with the Memphis Police Department. Though Mulroy has not signaled a change of procedure or policy is imminent under his tenure as district attorney. City officials said the footage would be released after the family has a chance to view the video. They did not specify a date when the release would take place. The Memphis Police Association declined to comment Wednesday on the announcement, citing the ongoing investigation. The City of Memphis and MPD said they both plan to "fully cooperate with these agencies and provide them with what is needed to conduct their investigation. Family has also demanded that all officers involved be charged with "murder one," Nichols' step father Rodney Wells said at the memorial service. Nichols was remembered by friends and family as someone who would "light up the room" when he walked in. Angelina Paxton, a long-time friend of Nichols, called the way he died "a dark way" for someone who had "this much light." "All I can say is may God find forgiveness for [the officers] because I don't think I can," she said. Lucas Finton is a news reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton. Micaela Watts is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal covering issues tied to access and equity. She can be reached at micaela.watts@commercialappeal.com. This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: FBI opens civil rights investigation into death of Tyre Nichols Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images) The Federal Election Commission has decided to throw out a baseless GOP complaint accusing Google of unfairly sending Republican campaign emails to users Gmail spam more often than Democratic emails for alleged political gain. It turns outas anyone with an email can attestRepublican campaign emails actually generally just read like annoying spam! In its complaint filed to the FEC, the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, and National Republican Congressional Committee claimed Gmail marked Republican emails as spam much more often than emails from Democrats and that, crucially, that supposed discrepancy amounted to a form of campaign contributions from Google to Democrats. Now, in a letter to Google first reported on by The Wall Street Journal, the FEC says it found no evidence of Google engaging in prohibited contributions. Any unequal results in the spam labelling, the letter notes, were inadvertent and not politically motivated. Read more Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution the FEC said according to the Journal. The FEC told Gizmodo it could not comment on enforcement matters. The Commissions bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda told Gizmodo. Well continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, theyre important to protecting peoples inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous messages. Republicans pushing the Google political contribution narrative have cited several research papers and studies as evidence to prove their conspiratorial thesis. One of those supposed smoking guns, a March 22 study from researchers at North Carolina State University, found Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right as spam compared to candidates from the left. When interviewed by The Washington Post, however, the authors of that very same study rejected Republicans reading of their work and accused lawmakers of cherry picking results. Story continues Regardless of the literal breakdown of spam labeled content, the FEC said the Republcians arguments were basically pointless because Google had demonstrated its spam filters are used to keep out malware, phishing attacks and scams, in order to protect its business, and not for political purposes. In other words, while its entirely possible Gmail may filter Republican campaign emails as spam at higher rates than Democratic ones, its probably doing so because the algorithm interprets them as annoying, potentially harmful spam. And as anyone whos had the unfortunate pleasure of clicking open a raging, all caps Trump campaign email knows all too well, theres good reason to confuse these messages with more traditional junk emails. The RNC did not immediately respond to Gizmodos request for comment, however in a statement provided to The Journal, spokesperson Nathan Brand appeared unconvinced by the FECs decision. Google cannot explain away how theyve overwhelmingly and systematically diverted Republican emails to voters spam folders while letting Democrat emails through, Brand said, Ironically, Google, the supposed GOP email censors, has already launched a pilot program intended in large part to assuage Republicans concerns, whether theyre valid or not. In a 4-1 vote last year, the FEC approved an advisory opinion on a Google proposal that would keep Republicans campaign email blasts out of users spam folders. Despite all its incessant whining of bias, large Republican groups, including the RNC, reportedly chose not to join the program. The FEC dismissal marks a rough start for Republicans who are poised to spend a decent chunk of their newly won political power hammering in tired accusations of tech bias directed against conservatives. Within days of selecting a speaker, House Republicans formed a new investigative panel, called the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which they say could force major tech platforms like Meta and Twitter fork over copies of emails, memos, and other communications it had with the White House as part of an effort to reveal perceived collusion. More from Gizmodo Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. The Justice Department is finalizing tighter regulations on guns with accessories known as stabilizing braces, a gun-control action touted by President Joe Biden after the devices were used in mass shootings in recent years. ALSO READ: Western NC county puts AR-15s in all schools to beef up security The rule, formalized on Jan. 13, was one of several steps Biden announced in April 2021 after a man using one killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. A stabilizing brace was also used in a shooting in Dayton, Ohio, that left nine people dead in 2019. The new rule will treat guns with the accessories like short-barreled rifles, a weapon that is like a sawed-off shotgun and has been heavily regulated since the 1930s. Pistol-stabilizing braces transform a handgun into a weapon with a similarly dangerous combination of being powerful and easy to conceal, said Attorney General Merrick Garland. Todays rule makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles, Garland said. Simply put, this rule enhances public safety, said Steven Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Thats a lot of firearms in common use, said Mark Erikson, with Grassroots North Carolina. He told Channel 9 the move is not right and could cause constitutional issues. The rule has gotten pushback from Republicans and gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association, which pointed out they were originally designed for disabled veterans. The Second Amendment Foundation said it would challenge the rule in a lawsuit already filed over arm braces. Gunowners who have already bought the gun accessory have called Hyatt Coin and Gun off Wilkson Boulevard in west Charlotte wondering what they should do. Owner Larry Hyatt has pistol-stabilizing braces on his shelves, but he said hes no longer selling them for the time being. Story continues You cannot sell something to your customer that they might not be able to own a week later, Hyatt said. The group Everytown for Gun Safety cheered the ATFs move, saying gunmakers had exploited loopholes in the law to make firearms more deadly. The rule is expected to go into effect next week. Once it takes effect, anyone who has a gun with an arm-stabilizing brace will need to register the weapon with the federal government. Officials estimated about 3 million stabilizing braces are currently in circulation in the U.S. VIDEO: Woman shoots, kills man who fired rifle into crowd during party in West Virginia The Associated Press contributed to this report. A gavel and the scales of justice pictured with a laptop. The Commerce Department announced Wednesday that it is launching an investigation into how widespread data collection and corporate surveillance pose an outsized risk to marginalized groups. Everyone in America deserves strong privacy protections, said Alan Davidson, assistant secretary of commerce at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in a press release. This is especially important for marginalized communities, where the consequences of privacy invasions can be more starkly felt. Read more The NTIA, a wing of the Commerce Department, issued a request for comment, calling on experts and the public to share testimony about how the collection, sharing, and use of data can exacerbate structural inequalities. The NTIA says it will issue a report on its findings at an unspecified date. Critics of the tech industry have warned that the detrimental effects of the data economy are a particular threat to people of color, the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized or undeserved groups. Data collection and sharing creates the risk of new digital discrimination replicating previous forms of profiling, redlining and exclusion, said Davidson. We are concerned about how these practices can hinder economic and social opportunities, from housing and jobs to health and safety. The last decade of tech coverage gives us a cornucopia of dystopian examples. For instance, just after the Supreme Court struck down abortion protections, a Gizmodo investigation found as many as 32 data brokers selling lists of pregnant people, data that law enforcement officers are often well within their rights to purchase. In 2021, a right wing Catholic blog used advertising data collected by the ad industry to out a priest as a gay man. The priest resigned soon after. Story continues Facebook, everyones favorite privacy pariah, offers too many stories along these lines to choose from. One of the social networks lowest moments came when the Department of Housing and Urban Development charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act for an advertising system that promoted discrimination. Facebooks ad clients were able to use demographic factors like like race, religion, sex, and disability to hide housing and job ads from certain people. Facebooks settlement with the Justice Department included not only a financial penalty but design changes to correct the problem. While Meta, Facebooks parent company, says its rolled out new technology to address the problems created by its existing technology, research repeatedly shows that data discrimination problems persist. A recent study showed that Facebook identifies the race, gender, and other demographic factors in the photos advertisers use in their ads, and that the companys systems use that information to determine who sees the ad. Black people were less likely to see ads for jobs if the ad features a photo of a white person, for example. And as the NTIA points out, the free floating personal information scattered across the internet has made identity theft an ever present threat, one that can be a particular burden to low-income people and families because of the time and financial cost involved in remediating its consequences. The new investigation lines up with President Bidens toughening stance on technology policy. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, the President called on Congress to come together and pass legislation to reign in big tech. Like many Americans, Im concerned about how some in the industry collect, share and exploit our most personal data, deepen extremism and polarization in our country, tilt our economys playing field, violate the civil rights of women and minorities, and even put our children at risk, Biden said. The Commerce Department cited his op-ed in its press release announcing the preliminary probe. The new investigation comes after three listening sessions with experts exploring the tech industrys ties to privacy issues, equity, and civil rights. The NTIA says it will roll comments into a new report on datas effect on inequity and discrimination. The administration will provide guidance on how resources can be used to better address these issues, and make suggestions for new policies. More from Gizmodo Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. The Ohio Department of Insurance is urging Ohioans to review their insurance protections as a part of Januarys Financial Wellness Month. >> Ohio state legislators to propose common sense bill for financial transparency at colleges The department released tips to consider when reviewing insurance policies. Completing an insurance review and evaluating different insurance products presents opportunities to potentially lower your insurance expenses while also making sure you have insurance coverage that aligns with your financial protection needs, Ohio Department of Insurance director Judith L. French said. The department gave the following thoughts to consider: Homeowners Insurance Your choice of coverage limits, deductible amounts, and endorsements impacts how much you pay. Major home improvements may impact your property value and insurance amount to properly insure your home. Report them to your agent. Flood insurance is typically not included in standard homeowners and renters policies and has to be purchased separately. Auto Insurance Review your deductible amounts for comprehensive and collision coverages. Raising or lowering this amount can affect your premium. If your liability insurance, which pays for injury or damage you cause, is too low you may be legally exposed for any damages above your liability limits. If you are driving less, let your agent know. It could lower your premium amount. Health Insurance Check your insurers provider lists to be certain your doctors, specialists, and hospitals are still covered by your policy. Make note of co-pays and co-insurance amounts for in-network and out-of-network providers to be prepared for possible out-of-pocket costs. After receiving Explanation of Benefits information following medical care, verify if your insurance benefits were correctly applied to your in-network and out-of-network deductible and your out-of-pocket maximum costs. Life Insurance Evaluate the different types of life insurance. Changes in the areas of marriage, divorce, children, loans, employment, or retirement may mean life insurance alterations. Certain life events can be a reason to increase or decrease benefits, adjust certain policy features such as insured riders or interest-bearing options, and to update beneficiaries. Review your annual statement to verify if your current premium meets or exceeds the policys costs. Your annual statement also provides information on your outstanding loan amounts. This may affect your cash value or death benefit and interest credited to the policys cash value. Story continues Finally, the department encouraged residents to carefully read your insurance policies and consider engaging an insurance agent in your review, a spokesperson said. And dont forget to inquire about discounts for bundling insurance products with the same company, being a good driver, long-time customer, senior citizen, and/or a member of the military. Consumers with insurance questions can contact the Ohio Department of Insurance at 800-686-1526 and consumer.services@insurance.ohio.gov. DAVOS, Switzerland The European Union should consider legislation to recognize decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) that govern Web3 applications, Finlands communications minister said during a panel at this year's World Economic Forum. The move could prevent having to alter thousands of laws or countries undercutting each other in the race to attract innovative business, Timo Harakka said. There are a lot of new players and actors in the Web3 world not reflected very well in existing legislation, he said. Take a DAO for instance: Where does legislation stand? Harakka told CoinDesk new centralized laws could prevent a shattering of Europes legal codes but that the European Commission, responsible for proposing new EU laws, had its eye on other matters. Harakka said that "thinking on a multinational level is needed to avoid harmful regulatory competition among the blocs 27 members, and prevent having to individually alter thousands of different laws regulating different kinds of contracts. The approach is reminiscent of the EUs Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation, which will create a uniform standard for each country if it is adopted. Read more: European Union Postpones MiCA Vote to April We are relying on the European Commission to be the initiator and are eagerly looking forward to its work, he told CoinDesk but said he was in the dark about whether it will be covered by a forthcoming policy paper on the metaverse, due in the spring. In DAOs its a different logic to regulating corporations with named officers in charge, Harakka told CoinDesk. Whos responsible for transgressions? Europe had been obsessed with other issues like how to control privacy online, he said, but added that remarkable and groundbreaking legislation will usher in the way to Web3 a nod to recent and ongoing EU initiatives such as laws on online privacy, information flows and online market dominance. Story continues But so far, he added, Im not sure weve seen a lot of thinking on Web3. Regulators across the world are struggling with how to classify and regulate decentralized initiatives such as financial applications in which there's no central lender. Some have argued decentralization is a myth, as in practice there's always someone in control; in the U.K., the Law Commission of England and Wales has published a consultation on how to deal with issues of structure, governance and taxation. While some policymakers have argued it may be too early to get set rules for decentralized finance and largely left the topic out of the EUs landmark MiCA law Harakka argued its time to start at least thinking about a philosophical approach to the issue. It took two decades for the bloc to figure out how to regulate online data flows, he noted, and regulating smart contracts could take a while as well. Olena Zelenska and Prince Alois According to Zelenska, she thanked Prince Alois for the steps the Principality of Liechtenstein was taking to help Ukraine punish Russia for war crimes. Read also: Helicopter crash in Brovary leaves 14 dead, including Ukrainian interior minister and his deputy (UPDATED) Last May, the Government of the Principality made a decision to allocate CHF 200,000 to support the efforts of the international community to prosecute the perpetrators of crimes committed in Ukraine, Zelenska said. And recently (the Government) approved the allocation of an additional CHF 250,000 to support projects for documenting war crimes in Ukraine. Zelenska noted she had also thanked the Principality of Liechtenstein for its adherence to the principles of international law, as well as for its active position in the UN General Assembly regarding the establishment of a special tribunal to bring those involved to justice for these crimes. We will be grateful for further promotion of this initiative, she wrote. Read also: Putin may announce second mobilization wave in Russia, or declare war, says ISW Before the meeting with Prince Alois, Zelenska, together with the Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, chairman of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia in the United States, Borys Gudziak, held the Ukraine is You discussion panel in the Ukraine House in Davos. @ /Telegram The agenda included the issue of how to further encourage the world to support Ukraine. They also visited the exhibition dedicated to the liberated city of Kherson. Ukraine is now fighting physically, but the whole world is also fighting morally, Zelenska said. Read also: First Lady Zelenska shares quotes of children's letters to Saint Nicholas We all need this victory. If the whole world is tired and you can take a break, imagine what will happen if Ukrainians get tired. We are also tired, both morally and physically. We have no right to stop, and we very much hope that you will also feel this emotion. The whole civilized world has already helped so much that if you stop, it will mean that all previous help was in vain. Its impossible to stop extinguishing the fire when half of the building is burning. Its impossible to stop in the middle. It's either nothing or everything. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine Cuba isnt the type of destination where you wing it simply because there is lots to prep for beforehand. This includes knowledge of what to pack. Besides having your Cuban Tourist Visa and any other documents you may need depending on your passport/country requirements, youll be busier than ever before you get on the plane. One thing we can say confidently is that Cuba is always worth it. Most travelers cant resist a trip to the vibrant capital, Havana. Many describe Havana as feeling like a completely different world. The political and economic struggles cannot and shouldnt be ignored when traveling to Cuba and for many travelers. Five minutes in Cuba will be enough to notice the poverty that is prevalent in the country. Still, we recommend visiting, supporting local Cubans, and enjoying the simpler yet lively vibe of the country. Without painting a fairytale image of what is a tough country for Cubans, we admit Cuba is worthwhile. The warmth, the music, and the history are what keep people visiting. Black travelers also enjoy seeing Afro-Cuban culture up close when visiting this part of the Caribbean. Find out exactly what to pack for your first trip to Cuba. Read on to see our top recommendations to enjoy this Caribbean island. Related: Cuban Rum Declared Cultural Heritage By UNESCO But first, what you DONT need to pack for a trip to Cuba First things first, there are a few things to note about traveling to Cuba. What you wont need to pack is a bunch of credit cards as youll likely use cash during your trip. However, remember that you will probably have to purchase your internet in Cuba using ETESCA. The main store in Old Havana allows you to purchase your internet using a card only, so it may come in handy in this respect. Cuba is also not the best location for a workcation, so best to leave the work laptop at home. If you do bring electronics with you, remember the limit is two phones, laptops, and cameras per traveler. You can also forget about bringing drones into Cuba, as they is not permitted. It is recommended to bring evidence of travel insurance and photocopies of any travel documents too. Now, on to the list: Story continues Make up bag Courtesy of Amazon Traveling to Cuba means bringing absolutely everything you may need because things youre used to at home may not be available in the country. With this in mind, pack a make-up bag that has several compartments and ways to organize your items. Basic over-the-counter medicine is not readily available everywhere in Cuba so a make-up bag can serve as storage for much more; it even includes a jewelry box. We recommend this make-up bag that comes with LED lights to ensure that your vacation looks are perfect. Travel exercise waist bag Courtesy of Amazon When youre on vacation, it is so easy to fall off your fitness routines, especially in a place like Cuba where time itself seems to stop. However you like to keep fit, we recommend bringing portable equipment with you to help you along. Whether resistance bands or running shoes or something as simple as a waist bag to motivate you for morning runs. This WATERFLY bag is unisex and ideal for running and hiking. There is nothing like a jog along the iconic Malecon Habanero. LifeStraw Courtesy of Amazon You know how it goes; ordering drinks without ice and acute insecurity about brushing your teeth with tap water. This is certainly how it feels on your first trip to Cuba trying to avoid getting sick. We recommend this LifeStraw water bottle which has an in-built filter to protect against 99.9% of bacteria. Its a lightweight bottle that is long-lasting and your purchase has a social impact on safe drinking water for a child across the world. Reading book Getty Images Traveling to Cuba means not having constant or reliable access to Wi-Fi. It makes sense to take advantage of that lack of connectivity by going back to basics and enjoying a good book on the beach. Varadero beach in Cuba might just be the best place in the world to be without internet, by the way. We have a long list of books that you should add to your reading list. Check them out here. Moisturizing face mask Courtesy of Amazon The high levels of heat and humidity in Cuba mean you need to take a closer look at your skincare routine while traveling. We 100% recommend bringing your favorite skincare products but we also recommend something extra moisturizing. The air and general stifled heat can call for some serious detoxing. This Plantifique clay mask packs in all the detoxifying goodness youll need. Packing cubes to accommodate your Cuban shopping Courtesy of Amazon Lets face it, youre going to want to come home with several new treats including Cuban cigars and bottles of rum. We recommend packing cubes to help make the journey home much smoother. These packing cubes will allow you to fit everything in stress-free so you can keep your clothes and items un-spoiled. Check out the Travelpro Crew Versapack packing cubes here. Disclaimer: Our editors love finding you the best products and offers! If you purchase something by clicking on one of the affiliate links on our website, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Related: Delta To Resume Cuba Service in 2023 Superintendent Addison Davis made no excuses for why Hillsborough County school district teachers have yet to get their share of the states $800 million allocation for raises. The district has worked diligently to come up with a plan to pay educators more while staying within our financial bounds, Davis told the State Board of Education on Wednesday. His administration meets regularly with union leaders, Davis added, but they havent reached an agreement. They had an impasse hearing recently, and anticipate a recommended order by mid-February. The union is the bargaining agent, Davis told the board, which was meeting in Fernandina Beach. They are the ones we have to go through to negotiate salary packages. Superintendents from seven other school districts shared similar stories with the board, which had summoned them to explain their lateness in getting dollars into teachers pockets, as chairperson Tom Grady put it. Leaders from districts as large as Broward and as small as Gadsden spoke of how their offers did not pass union muster. Thats why they did not meet the Oct. 1 deadline to submit an approved salary distribution plan to the state. Sounds like blackmail to me, Grady said after hearing Volusia County Superintendent Carmen Balgobin detail how her districts teachers union declined to negotiate the state salary increase allocation separately from other contract issues. He and other board members contended there must be a way for them to put some teeth behind the Oct. 1 deadline, perhaps by setting rules more strictly enforcing the requirements. Grady asked whether districts could give raises to non-union members while the union members wait for bargaining to conclude. Board member Esther Byrd said it felt like the solution lies in getting the decision about raises out of the hands of the teachers unions. She suggested allowing independent hearing officers to allocate the money if districts cant get it done, and also called on parents to lean on teachers to accept deals offered by their districts. Story continues The more we can involve the public in this conversation, the more we can put pressure on people to act and act quickly, Byrd said, adding that she hoped lawmakers would hear the boards discussion and do something to curtail unions power. Teacher union leaders took issue with the boards perspective, which they viewed as part of a larger attack on their organizations. What the State Board should be focused on is, what are we doing to get teachers into our schools? said Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar, noting the rate of vacant teaching positions in the state has gone up nearly 200% over five years. Instead of maligning teachers and their representatives, they should be working with us to solve this problem. Spar argued that veteran teachers see the states salary plan as favoring entry level pay, and theyre not willing to settle with earning a small amount more than a first-year educator and below what had been advertised on salary schedules years ago. Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association President Rob Kriete said thats the reason why his district is at impasse. Its to get what teachers have already accrued and get paid accordingly, he said. We vehemently disagree with the idea that we are the problem. Spar pointed out that the vast majority of school districts have successfully completed their negotiations and paid the raises. That fact wasnt lost on State Board member Joe York, who recommended that the board bring in some of those superintendents and union leaders to hear how they could meet the expectations. I would focus on the progress there, and how they have been able to be successful, York said. Board member Monesia Brown said districts need to take the issue more seriously, too. She noted the weeks it is taking Flagler County schools to get from negotiated deal to boosting paychecks. This is worthy of additional investment in time to make this happen, Brown said. St. Johns County Superintendent Tim Forson, who has made similar presentations to the board in the past, said this is the last place I want to be, explaining why he couldnt reach a pay plan in time. He and others might get another chance, though. The board said it intended to ask leaders of districts that still dont have a plan to return in a couple more months. Sign up for the Gradebook newsletter! Every Thursday, get the latest updates on whats happening in Tampa Bay area schools from Times education reporter Jeffrey S. Solochek. Click here to sign up. PHILADELPHIA (AP) Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov cited his Russian Orthodox religion as the reason he did not participate in pregame warmups when the team wore Pride-themed jerseys and used sticks wrapped in rainbow Pride tape. The 26-year-old Provorov didn't take part in the pregame skate with his teammates before their game against Anaheim on Tuesday night, when the Flyers celebrated their annual Pride night in celebration and support of the LGBTQ community. He played nearly 23 minutes in Philadelphia's 5-2 victory. I respect everybody's choices, Provorov said after the game. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion. That's all I'm going to say. Provorov declined to answer follow-up questions about his decision. Flyers coach John Tortorella said Provorov was true to himself and to his religion. Its one thing I respect about Provy, hes always true to himself, Tortorella said. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, the leader of Russias dominant religious group, sent a strong signal last March justifying his countrys invasion of Ukraine describing the conflict as part of a struggle against sin and pressure from liberal foreigners to hold gay parades as the price of admission to their ranks. Even though Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine in part as a defense of the Moscow-oriented Orthodox church, leaders of both Ukrainian Orthodox factions are fiercely denouncing the Russian invasion, as is Ukraines significant Catholic minority. The jerseys and sticks were being auctioned off by the Flyers following the game, with proceeds going to the team's charity and its efforts to grow the game of hockey in diverse communities. The Flyers also hosted a pregame skate for local LGBTQ youth. Flyers players James van Riemsdyk and Scott Laughton have been staunch supporters of the community and launched a program in support of local LGBTQ youth in the greater Philadelphia area. Story continues Laughton and van Riemsdyk met after the game with about 50 people in the LGBTQ community. Laughton said overall the Flyers had a great, great night that brings a lot of awareness. Laughton said there would be more conversations ahead with Provorov, who moved from Russia to the United States as a teenager. He signed a six-year, $40.5 million contract before the 2019 season and won the Barry Ashbee Trophy as the Flyers outstanding defenseman in his rookie season, the youngest Philadelphia player to receive the honor. I don't hold anything against anyone, Laughton said. It's nothing like that. It was an awesome night and I'm very happy we got a win on a night like this. All-Star forward Kevin Hayes, who had a hat trick in the game, said it's not for me to answer when asked how he felt about Provorov's decision. The Wells Fargo Center was decorated Tuesday night in rainbow hues representing the LGBTQ community through special pride-themed arena LEDs, decor and rainbow-themed team merchandise. The Philadelphia Flyers organization is committed to inclusivity and is proud to support the LGBTQ+ community," the team said in a statement after the game. "Many of our players are active in their support of local LGBTQ+ organizations, and we were proud to host our annual Pride Night again this year. The Flyers will continue to be strong advocates for inclusivity and the LGBTQ+ community. The NHL also champions the You Can Play Project, which aims to ensure equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation. The NHL has never had an openly gay active player. You Can Play co-founder Brian Kitts said in a statement on Twitter that religion and support for fans and teammates aren't mutually exclusive. The Flyers have been among the first and most consistent teams in sports supporting LGBTQ+ inclusion, Kitts said. There is still work to be done to change hearts and minds and the You Can Play Team looks forward to continuing our efforts. ___ AP NHL: www.apnews.com/hub/NHL and www.twitter.com/AP_Sports Three for-profit colleges appealed to block a settlement that would cancel more than $6 billion in student loans for 200,000 borrowers who applied for a debt discharge because they believed their schools misled them or engaged in other misconduct. The settlement, which involved over 100 schools, resolved a class-action lawsuit filed by lead plaintiff, Theresa Sweet, against Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of Education under the Trump administration, after DeVos systematically denied these borrower defense applications in form denials. American National University, Everglades College Inc., and Lincoln Educational Services Corp. filed the notice to appeal the settlement that was announced in June and approved by the Education Department in November. The appeal marks yet another impediment for students who were saddled with debt because of what borrower advocates called predatory lending practices by for-profit colleges. "This appeal demonstrates just how desperate these schools are to deny justice for borrowers, and we will not stop fighting until students get the relief they deserve, Eileen Connor, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, said in a statement. The courts decision granting approval of this settlement is clear and unequivocal, and we are confident the 9th Circuit will agree with Judge Alsup that these claims are without merit. The Project on Predatory Student Lending (PPSL) and the Housing & Economic Rights Advocates (HERA) represented the plaintiffs. Credit: Getty Images Settlement terms Student loan borrowers can apply for a so-called "borrower defense to loan repayment" often shortened to borrower defense if they believe their school deceived them or engaged in some other misconduct that ran afoul of state laws, according to the Education Department. The remedy is the dismissal of some or all of federal student loans. Under the settlement, about 200,000 of the class-action borrowers who applied for borrower defense and whose school is on the settlement list are entitled to automatic relief that includes full loan cancelation, refunds of amounts paid, and credit repair, according to the Project for Predatory Student Lending. Story continues American National University, Everglades College, and Lincoln Educational Services (Lincoln Technical Institute) are on that settlement list of schools. They are asking for a stay pending appeal to prevent any borrowers from getting relief until the appeal is decided. "Plaintiffs' position is that unless the court agrees to issue a stay, the appeals will not block automatic relief (or any other settlement relief)," according to PPSL attorneys. "However, the effective date of the settlement will be delayed until after the Jan. 26 status hearing, so no relief will be issued until after that date." The appeal, if successful, would block the automatic discharge for those 200,000 borrowers. A second group of class members whose school isnt on the list representing about 64,000 borrowers will get decisions on their [borrower defense] applications within rolling deadlines, based on how long their application has been pending, according to a PPSL June press release. If they dont get an approval after the initial review, they can revise and resubmit their applications. If the Education Department fails to meet any deadlines, the class member will automatically get full settlement relief, the release stated. For borrowers unsure whether they are a class member, check the Project for Predatory Student Lendings website for class members. Ronda is a personal finance senior reporter for Yahoo Finance and attorney with experience in law, insurance, education, and government. Follow her on Twitter @writesronda Read the latest personal finance trends and news from Yahoo Finance. Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Flipboard, and LinkedIn. By Emilio Parodi and Alvise Armellini MILAN (Reuters) -The tax consultant of a former EU lawmaker at the centre of a cash-for-influence corruption scandal at the European Parliament has been arrested in Italy, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The scandal, the biggest to rock EU politics in decades, hinges on suspicions that Qatar and Morocco bribed politicians, parliamentary assistants and NGOs to influence decisions of the EU assembly. Qatar reiterated that it had no involvement in the EU corruption scandal. Morocco complained of "judicial harassment" after the graft probe. Monica Rossana Bellini, who worked for former centre-left parliamentarian Pier Antonio Panzeri, was arrested by the Guardia di Finanza tax police in Milan, after a request from Belgium through a European warrant. She faces charges of criminal association, corruption and money laundering. According to the European arrest order, summarised to Reuters by a second source, the accountant is suspected of setting up companies to launder alleged corruption money. Her two lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. Later Wednesday, a judge of the Milan appeals court validated the arrest and granted Bellini house arrest, a judicial source said. Towards the end of the month there will be a hearing at the appeals court to decide whether to hand her over to the Belgian authorities. Panzeri, who was arrested in Brussels in December and charged with three others, including Greek EU lawmaker Eva Kaili, has agreed to cooperate with investigations in exchange for a reduced sentence, a Belgian prosecutor said on Tuesday. His sentence will include one year of prison time and four years of a suspended jail term, a fine and the confiscation of all assets acquired, estimated at 1 million euros ($1.08 million), the prosecutor's spokesperson, Eric Van Duyse, told Reuters. Panzeri served as a member of the European Parliament from 2004-2019. After leaving the EU chamber he set up a Brussels-based NGO called Fight Impunity, which is accused of taking the illegal payments from Qatar and Morocco. Story continues Last month, Italian authorities put under house arrest other members of the Panzeri household wanted by Belgian authorities, namely his wife Maria Dolores Colleoni and daughter Silvia. They have denied any wrongdoing. On Monday, a court cleared Silvia Panzeri's extradition to Belgium, while Colleoni has appealed against her transfer to Brussels before Italy's highest court, which is expected to rule on Jan. 31. (Reporting by Emilio Parodi, writing by Alvise Armellini and Emilio ParodiEditing by Keith Weir and Nick Macfie) FORT PIERCE If you saw something, say something. Thats the plea of the St. Lucie County Sherriffs Office, Fort Pierce Police Department and City Commission one day after eight people were shot, and one killed, at Ilous Ellis Park following a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. The incident is believed to be the result of a gang dispute, according to the Sheriffs Office. The tragedy left a 29-year-old woman dead and four others either trampled or hit by a car while fleeing the chaos, according to St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Brian Hester. Breaking news: Woman dies after being shot at MLK Day car show in Fort Pierce, sheriff confirms Tragedy aftermath: Focus on gun violence and better dialog with police among local leaders, community activists priorities Witnesses: 'Scary' scene left 8 shot at MLK Day event in Fort Pierce Those hurt trying to flee the event that attracted more than 1,000 people sustained non life-threatening injuries, Hester said. The other seven who were shot are expected to recover, he said. A day of greatness was yesterday, and it turned into a situation of horror for our beautiful city and also for our citizens, Fort Pierce Police Chief Diane Hobley-Burney told city commissioners Tuesday. We want our citizens to know that we're fighting for the answers and we're fighting to bring justice to the people that were victimized by this. Hester urged the public to come forward with information that could lead to arrests while also reassuring the community that the Sheriffs Office could protect witnesses who speak up. Those with details about the mass shooting are encouraged to call 772-462-3230 or Treasure Coast Crime Stoppers, 800-273-8477. We always talk about how we want to change. We want our community to be greater than what it is, City Manager Nick Mimms said. Then our community has to step up right now and we have to come together and identify the folks that perpetrated this crime. Story continues Hoping to encourage more witnesses to come forward, Commissioner Michael Broderick asked if the city could add to the $5,000 reward offered by the Florida Sheriffs Association for information leading to arrests. Hobley-Burney said Treasure Coast Crime Stoppers is the agency responsible for offering rewards so the Police Department is not accused of trying to pay someone off. Broderick proposed asking local businesses to chip in to boost the reward if the city does not. Ensuring mental-health resources, such as counseling, are provided to children and adults traumatized by the shooting was another priority commissioners highlighted Tuesday. Victim advocates have been sent into St. Lucie public schools, Hobley-Burney said. Mimms and commissioners Arnold Gaines and Johnson Jr. attended the event. They described it as the end of a great week of festivities honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Many kids were seen with smiles across their faces, said Broderick, who attended a nearby parade with other elected officials before the shooting occurred. The people who shot that day, they knew children were there. They knew there were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters there, Hobley-Burney said "They saw it all and they didn't care. And what I'm saying is that sometimes we as a people have to take back our neighborhood and say, 'Enough is enough.' This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: MLK Day mass shooting: Fort Pierce asks public to help identify gunmen Jan. 17SHINNSTON, W.Va. Tyson Spencer and Cam Lynch combined for 34 points, and Frankfort dominated Clay County from the onset to win 59-28 on Monday at Lincoln High School. Frankfort opened to a 15-5 lead after one, extending it to 31-13 by halftime and 50-23 after three. Spencer scored a game-high 18 points, closely followed by Lynch's 16. Jeremiah Babo and Jake Layton chipped in seven and six points, respectively. The Falcons sunk six 3-pointers to Clay's two Lynch hit three treys, Spencer drilled two and Jake Layton buried one. Clay County was led by Landon Williams, who scored nine points. Micah Osborne added seven. Frankfort hosts Petersburg (4-5) on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Crypto companies in France would have to seek authorization from regulators to operate if they are not already registered with the countrys financial regulator by Jan. 1, 2024, under plans adopted by lawmakers at the National Assembly on Tuesday. The plans offer more leeway than the Senate, which proposed in December to offer a cutoff date of October 2023, in a bid to stop crypto companies abusing new European Union rules known as the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation. I propose to take the date of January 1, 2024, to let new entrants have a little more time to ask for their authorization, which is complicated, as well as offering more time to the Financial Markets Authority to process applications, said Daniel Labaronne, who is holding the pen on the new legislation on behalf of the Assemblys Finance Committee. Without the amendment proposed by Labaronne, there would be a risk of having operators just registering to benefit from the grandfather clause set out under MiCA, which means they wouldnt have to gain a full license until around March 2026, Labaronne told the committee. The committee adopted his proposal, which must now be approved by the Assembly next week and negotiated with the Senate. The Senates Herve Maurey proposed tightening the law following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. Existing French law allows companies to undergo the lighter process of registering, rather than seeking authorization, which requires a fuller series of checks on financial resources and business conduct. While many companies, including Binance and Societe Generale, have registered, none have so far been authorized. The French crypto industry has reacted with concern to the proposals, arguing they could damage Frances goal of becoming a crypto hub. Read more: Crypto Industry Hopes Turn to French Legislators as Regulators Back Mandatory License Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.com told creditors on Tuesday that it lost around US$415 million worth of cryptocurrencies to hacks since it filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11. See related article: Bankrupt FTX exchange has recovered US$5 bln worth of liquid assets, lawyers say Fast facts About US$323 million was stolen by an unauthorized third party from FTXs international exchange, and US$90 million had been siphoned from FTX US, the company explained in a report to creditors. Another US$2 million was hacked out of Alameda Research, the brokerage arm of the Bahamas-based exchange. The hacked amount is part of US$5.5 billion of liquid assets FTX identified for recovery, consisting of US$1.7 billion in cash, US$3.5 billion in cryptocurrencies including FTX Token (FTT) and US$300 million worth of liquid securities. A few days after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, new FTX CEO John Ray announced that the exchange was hacked and lost more than US$372 million. On Nov. 11, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., sending shockwaves through the industry after revelations of lacking disclosure surrounding liquidity and misappropriation of client funds. FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of eight charges including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to fraud charges earlier this month. FTX advisors are mulling a clawback of US$2.1 billion Binance received in BUSD and FTT as it sold its stake in FTX in Q3, 2021. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao recently said that the company will remain stable even after a US$2.1 billion payback. The bankrupt exchange owes about US$3.1 billion to its 50 largest creditors, according to its bankruptcy filing in November. FTX also revealed that it has more than 100,000 creditors. See related article: FTX alleged hacker is moving funds to dodge authorities: analysts Authorities have apprehended a second teenage suspect in last months fatal shooting of a St. Paul man at the Mall of America in Bloomington, police say. Lavon Semaj Longstreet, 17, was arrested around noon Tuesday by U.S. marshals in Decatur, Ga., where he has been staying since the day after 19-year-old Johntae Raymon Hudson was gunned down at Nordstrom on Dec. 23, Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said during a late afternoon news conference. Longstreet and 18-year-old Taeshawn Adams-Wright, who was arrested on Dec. 24, both face murder charges in Hudsons death. Also arrested Tuesday, in Golden Valley, was Longstreets mother, 39-year-old Erica McMillian, who allegedly drove her son to Georgia to help him evade capture, as well as two Georgia residents, who police say were sheltering Longstreet, according to Hodges. I said anybody that helps him is going to get locked up, Hodges said. Your son killed somebody and you drive him to Georgia. You cannot drive some somebody who murdered somebody out of state, even if its your son. Longstreet remains jailed in Dekalb County, Ga., pending extradition proceedings, Hodges said. He did not explain how authorities tracked Longstreet to Georgia. Minnesota authorities have said they plan to prosecute him as an adult. The fatal shooting, which prompted an hourlong lockdown at the crowded mall during the busy holiday shopping season, began with an argument between two groups of young men in the Nordstrom department store, police say. The nature of the argument hasnt been publicly disclosed by investigators. Longstreet and Adams-Wright are accused of chasing Hudson through the store with semiautomatic handguns and shooting him eight times as he lay on the floor returning fire, charges say. Adams-Wright was arrested the next day, along with two juveniles who have been charged with second-degree riot in connection with the shooting. At the time of his arrest, Adams-Wright had an active warrant related to an alleged second-degree assault in Stearns County, Minn. Story continues Shell casings recovered near Hudsons body were matched to those found at shooting scenes in St. Paul and Minneapolis over the last year and a half, Hodges said. Hudsons death was the malls first firearm homicide since it opened in 1992, according to Hodges. However, it was the latest in a string of incidents that have prompted officials to implement tighter security measures at the mall, the nations largest. In August, gunfire erupted at the mall following a confrontation in the Nike store. No one was injured in that incident, and five people were charged. A few weeks later, a man armed with a rifle robbed the Lids apparel store. A shooting in December 2021 on New Years Eve left two people injured during an altercation in a public area of the mall. Frederick Melo contributed to this report. Related Articles Jan. 17The Gainesville City school board on Tuesday released its 2023-24 school year calendar. Here are the dates you need to know. The school year will begin Aug. 9, 2023, and end May 20, 2024. Open house and ninth grade orientation Aug. 3-4, 2023. Holidays There are a total of 25 holidays. * Sept. 4, 2023 * Oct. 9-10, 2023 * Thanksgiving: Nov. 20-24, 2023 * Christmas: Dec. 18, 2023 Jan. 1, 2024 * Jan. 15, 2024 * Spring break: April 1-5, 2024 * May 27, 2024 Early release, grades 6-12 * Dec. 14-15, 2023 * May 21-22, 2024 Staff planning and professional development * Aug. 1-2, 2023 * Aug. 7, 2023 * Oct. 11, 2023 * Jan. 2, 2024 * Feb. 19, 2024 * March 11, 2024 * May 23-24, 2024 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give away $8.3 billion in 2023 and expects to hit $9 billion by 2026, it announced Tuesday. In an annual letter, CEO Mark Suzman waxed philosophical about the charitys massive $70 billion endowment. This puts us in the privileged position of being able to give away more money than any other philanthropy, he wrote. It also raises an important question we hear often: Does our spending, along with the doors that it opens, give us too much power and influence? The foundation has expanded its board and listened to members requests for transparency, he continued. He said the United Nations goals for alleviating poverty, improving public health and other aspirations guide the foundations efforts. We try to use our tools, our skills, our resources, sometimes our technical skills, sometimes our voice in advocacy to help advance and drive those forward, Suzman stated. With News Wire Services A former acquaintance of Congressman George Santos appeared on CNN on Tuesday and delivered the latest round of seemingly unending allegations of dishonesty piling up around the freshman Republican from New York. The interview between Gregory Morey-Parker and CNNs Anderson Cooper comes as members of Mr Santoss party are already calling for him to resign, while Democrats including Ritchie Torres are speculating openly in the press that Mr Santos will end up in legal trouble and be forced out of office. The surreal exchange Tuesday evening resulted in Mr Morey-Parker alleging that Mr Santos had operated GoFundMe campaigns as part of a charity for sick pets. His role in the project is unclear; he has at times said he ran the group and later said he only did outreach for them. At one point, Mr Morey-Parker alleged that the now-congressman had cheated one homeless pet owner out of thousands of dollars in donations, a charge Mr Santos has denied. He also claimed that the Republican representative would use a false last name on some campaigns in an effort to pass off as Jewish, which Mr Morey-Parker explained was part of a scheme to entice Jewish Americans to donate to the campaigns. Why did he say he had two names then? Well, he used zebrosky for his gofundme. He would say oh, well the Jews will give more if you're a Jew. So that is the name he used for his gofundmes pic.twitter.com/mMDTbvqS9y Acyn (@Acyn) January 18, 2023 If true, it would be a clearly antisemitic assumption by Mr Santos, who has already been caught lying about his supposed Jewish ancestry. The congressman has previously stated that his maternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust when geneology records indicate they were actually born and lived entirely in Brazil. The Independent has reached out to Mr Santoss office for comment about this claim. Mr Morey-Parker would go on to claim that the congressman stole a scarf from him and wore it at a Stop the Steal-themed rally in Washington DC ahead of January 6. A stolen scarf to a steal-the-election rally, Mr Morey-Parker told CNN. You have to love the irony. And the audacity, quite frankly. Mr Santos has vowed to remain in office for the duration of his two-year term, which began this month. He is known to be under investigation for his past history of false statements by both federal and local authorities; he also faces the potential for an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. David Becker A former roommate of Rep. George Santos (R-NY) said the truth-averse congressman took on a Jewish-sounding alias for online fundraisers because, according to Santos, the Jews will give more if youre a Jew. On the same day that the freshman congressman was rewarded with two committee assignments, despite a countless array of lies and fabrications, his one-time acquaintance Gregory Morey-Parker appeared on CNN to give some personal insight into Santos history of deception. Morey-Parker, whod previously described Santos delusions of grandeur to CNN, told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday evening that he knew the New York representative as Anthony Devolder when the two lived together for a few months. He then revealed that besides Devolder, a name Santos had used elsewhere, the newly minted GOP lawmaker would also refer to himself as Anthony Zabrovsky. He used Zabrovsky for his Friends of Pets United, his GoFundMe, Morey-Parker noted, referencing an animal charity that Santos claimed he ran years ago. He would say, Oh, well, the Jews will give more if youre a Jew, Morey-Parker continued. So that is the name he used for his GoFundMes. It was first reported last month that Santos had utilized the Anthony Zabrovsky alias for his various online fundraisers. Cooper asked what type of fundraisers he would have at that time, prompting Morey-Parker to bring up the fake pet charitys activities before pointing out a recent report of Santos scamming a military veteran out of $3,000 that was supposed to go towards a life-saving surgery for the vets beloved service dog. The 47-year-old veteran said Santos disappeared after the GoFundMe reached its fundraising goal, preventing the surgery from ever happening. After the dog died a year later, the veteran claimed he had to panhandle to pay for the dogs euthanasia and cremation. Santos has denied accusations that he kept the money for himself. Morey-Parker also reiterated to Cooper his claim that Santos stole his Burberry scarf and wore it at a Stop the Steal rally a day before the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Story continues A stolen scarf to a steal-the-election rally, Morey-Parker exclaimed. You have to love the irony. And the audacity, quite frankly. The web of lies surrounding Santos has only grown since The New York Times reported last month that he had made up much of his resume and biography ahead of his electoral victory. While Santos is currently under investigation over his shady campaign finances, and he has fibbed about everything from his college volleyball career to COVID to his mothers 9/11-related death, his fabrications about his Jewish ancestry have earned him harsh bipartisan criticism. After identifying as a proud American Jew whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, Santos would later insist he never claimed to be Jewish and instead meant he was Jew-ish after various media outlets found no evidence of Jewish lineage or heritage in his family. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now. Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now. The Telegraph The precise veracity of the large cache of intelligence documents that have apparently been leaked from the Pentagon might be open to question, but there can be little doubt about the negative impact that they are having on Ukraines war effort. Even if the release of the documents turns out to be part of a clever disinformation campaign by the Kremlins cyber-trolls, it could nevertheless prompt Ukraines high command to rethink its long-planned counteroffensive against Russian forces. A Georgia State Patrol trooper was shot and the protester who shot him was killed by return fire during a raid at the site of a proposed Atlanta Police Department training facility on Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Officials said the trooper was shot in his pelvic area and was wearing a bulletproof vest during the incident. He underwent surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and is now stable, according to GSP officials. GBI Director Mike Register said several agencies raided near the proposed facility site Wednesday morning to clear the area of protesters who have been occupying the property for months. As law enforcement moved in, officers found a man inside a tent in the woods. The GBI released a photo of the tent where the suspect was found. Officers gave verbal commands to the man to come out, but he did not comply. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, he then shot a Georgia State Patrol Trooper. Thats when officers returned fire in self-defense, according to the GBI. The shooter died at the scene. Channel 2 Action News is working to confirm the shooters identity. The troopers identity is not being released due to safety concerns after threats of retaliation from protesters were made on social media. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] On Wednesday morning, a Channel 2 Action News photographer was at the scene where officers swarmed the area with guns drawn and trained in the woods. The proposed facility would take up an 85-acre plot off Key Road in the largest urban forest in metro Atlanta. Protesters who say they are defending what they call the Atlanta Forest have occupied the land for months in makeshift camps. Protesters have said they opposed the creation of the police training facility, which they call Cop City. Register said building the training center is great for the city, but he supports the right to protest even though he feels protesters have gone over the line several times. Story continues Theyre endangering the community and the citizens in this area, Register said. TRENDING STORIES: Protesters disagreed with how the GBI described this incident, telling Channel 2s Tom Jones that the protest was peaceful. Last month, protestors had to be forcibly removed from trees in the area of the proposed facility. Last year, protesters threw a molotov cocktail at police during an earlier attempt to get them to leave the property. On Wednesday night, a small group of supporters gathered for a vigil in Little Five Points to remember the person who was killed. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] Glossier has reformulated its Balm Dotcom Jessica Tyler/Business Insider Glossier reformulated Balm Dotcom, a star product, and fans are voicing their frustration. Some fans say the lip balm no longer works as well and are accusing the company of ignoring its customers. Glossier has gone through several changes over the past year, including a new CEO and a deal with Sephora. Millennial beauty brand Glossier is changing the ingredients of one of its oldest and most-loved products and discontinuing a popular flavor, rankling customers who say Glossier "ruined" a star product. The company announced earlier this month that it's launching a "well-deserved upgrade" to Balm Dotcom, a $12 lip balm that was one of the brand's four original products when it debuted back in 2014. The reformulated balm, or BDC as fans call it, will have a redesigned applicator tip and a "new clinically-tested hydrating, vegan formula," Glossier wrote in an Instagram post. In addition, Glossier is discontinuing the cherry-flavored balm, a popular flavor that had a sheer, red tint. While many fans of the brand are looking forward to the new applicator it allows the balm to be applied without using your fingers others are already disappointed by the formulation change and the removal of the cherry flavor. Glossier said the new formula wouldn't officially launch until February, but customers have already started receiving the new balm, and many of them have taken to Reddit and Instagram to complain that the changes have made the product less moisturizing and less effective. "Kind of frustrating to me that Glossier is advertising the new balm as improved and more hydrating when it is quite literally the opposite and dried my lips," a customer wrote on the Glossier subreddit. "A tube of the old formula used to last me forever, but my tube of the new lasted less than a month due to having to constantly reapply." Representatives for Glossier did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. But Emily Trillaud, Glossier's director of packaging and product development, told Retail Dive via email that the company has swapped out petrolatum for castor jelly, a vegetable-based ingredient. Story continues "Petrolatum is a really commonly used cosmetic-conditioning ingredient, and while there is nothing unsafe about this raw material, it is a by-product of the petroleum industry and is non-renewable," Trillaud wrote. "This important change helps our new formula deliver clinical hydration to lips in a buttery, never greasy texture." The brand has also removed lanolin, a wax that comes from sheep's wool, and replaced beeswax with a lab-made, synthetic version, changes that make the product vegan. But fans argue that the new product doesn't live up to Glossier's standards and that the brand isn't listening to its customers. "Why would you alienate all the BDC fans?" one customer wrote on Instagram. "I can't believe another holy grail product bites the dust. . Just make a vegan lip balm and call it something else but leave the OG alone!!!!" Many of Glossier's products were created based on customer feedback. The company dubbed its brand strategy "born from content; fueled by community,' and, in the past, the Glossier research and design team invited loyal fans to its offices to solicit feedback, according to the New York Times. But the 8-year-old beauty brand has experienced a challenging few years that included a round of layoffs and slowing sales. Founder Emily Weiss stepped down as CEO last May and was replaced by retail veteran Kyle Leahy, who had served as the brand's chief commercial officer. Soon after, the company announced that it would start selling its products at Sephora in early 2023, the direct-to-consumer brand's first retail partnership. Read the original article on Business Insider It was only a matter of time until Google launched its own location tracker, similar to Apple's AirTags, Samsung's SmartTag, and of course, Tile. According to the developer (and well-sourced leaker) Kuba Wojciechowski, Google's Nest team is developing a tracker codenamed "Grogu." It'll reportedly include an onboard speaker, as well as support for Bluetooth Low Energy and ultra-wideband (UWB). Wojciechowski found evidence of the tracker when he noticed that Google added support for locator tags in the developer hub for Fast Pair, the Android feature that lets you quickly connect Bluetooth devices. While there aren't any specific details at this point, we can expect Google's tracker to work like the competition (attach it to whatever you like, and keep tabs on its location with your phone). It's also unclear if Google can replicate Apple's admittedly slick AirTag experience. Wojciechowski says that the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro both shipped with UWB modules, which would allow them to direct you to nearby objects acccurately. But he notes that Google's "finder" network won't require UWB BLE should be enough. I have recently found references that show that Google's working on support for locator tags in Fast Pair - see the linked thread for more info. https://t.co/8tvlWaHQpv Now it turns out Google's working on a first party tracker too! Kuba Wojciechowski (@Za_Raczke) January 16, 2023 While Google can't guarantee that every Android phone will ship with UWB, Wojciechowski says Google is working with chipset makers to help them support Fast Pair. That means we could see third-party trackers rounding out the location network, something it's hard to imagine Apple ever allowing. As for availability, Wojciechowski didn't find any specific timing, but he notes that it could be announced at I/O this year. That makes sense, as Google is already far behind the location tracking competition. Rep. Lauren Boebert walks to the House chamber during efforts to elect a speaker on Capitol Hill in Washington, on January 5, 2023. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File GOP Freedom Caucus members initially held out on voting for Kevin McCarthy for House speaker. Many have now received key appointments, including Lauren Boebert on the Oversight Committee. McCarthy reportedly flipped members of the group by pledging committee seats for ultraconservatives. Members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus have benefited from holding back on supporting Rep. Kevin McCarthy's bid for House Speaker, with members, including Rep. Lauren Boebert, now receiving roles on key committees. Boebert and several other Freedom Caucus Republicans have been given seats on the House Oversight Committee, the main oversight body in the House of Representatives. The committee will lead any investigations that Republicans launch into President Joe Biden and his administration. Boebert has regularly criticized Biden, both questioning his competence and suggesting that his family are a "crime family." Reps. Byron Donalds, Paul Gosar, and Scott Perry, other members of the Freedom Caucus, were also put on the committee, Axios reported. Members of the Freedom Caucus, which include vocal Trump supporters and 2020 election deniers, repeatedly refused to support McCarthy in his bid for House speaker. It took 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to eventually get the support he required. Boebert never voted for him, even in the final ballot, when she was one of six holdouts. McCarthy's bid to become the House speaker earlier this month was one of the most drawn out votes for the position in history. Most of the holdouts were members of the Freedom Caucus, with many of those flipping to vote for McCarthy in later ballots only after he agreed to key demands. The New York Times reported in January that among the concessions McCarthy agreed to was granting ultraconservative members of the party approval over a third of the seats on the Rules Committee, which controls which legislation reaches the House floor. Rep. Andy Bigs, a caucus member who didn't vote for McCarthy, and Rep. Dan Bishop, a caucus member who eventually gave his support, have kept their roles on the House Judiciary Committe, NBC News reported. Story continues Meanwhile, Rep. Josh Brecheen, who voted for McCarthy on the 12th ballot, was given a seat on the Homeland Security Committee, while Reps. Mike Cloud and Andrew Clyde, who both eventually voted for McCarthy, have been given seats on the House Appropriations Committee. Caucus member Marjorie Taylor Greene, who supported McCarthy throughout the process, was given a seat on the Homeland Security and Oversight Committees, and pledged on Tuesday to investigate Biden. It is still not clear how much power McCarthy had to concede to finally get the role he has long coveted, Insider's Taiyler Simone Mitchell reported earlier this month. Republicans won control of the House in the November midterms, but only by a slim majority, meaning that internal disagreements could limit their chance of pushing ahead with stated goals, including launching investigations into the Biden administration. Republicans have 222 seats in the House, compared with 213 for the Democrats. Read the original article on Business Insider PROVIDENCE In his second primetime State of the State address, Gov. Dan McKee on Tuesday named housing affordability, better schools and tax relief as the cornerstones of his agenda for addressing some of the biggest problems bedeviling Rhode Islanders along with potholes. "Rhode Island has momentum I never get tired of saying that," Democrat McKee told his audience of state luminaries, packed elbow-to-elbow into the House chamber. "But what Im most excited about even more than the progress weve made is the potential thats still out there for us to reach," he said in an advance text of his speech. Speaking in a folksy tone that at one point included a "fictional story" said to have been told by a Hall of Fame basketball coach and fable about a painter always waiting for the "perfect" sunrise, McKee made few big promises to the progressive left. The exception: "Common-sense gun safety legislation": "Send a bill to my desk that bans the sale of assault-style weapons. Im ready to sign that bill into law." (This promise drew a standing ovation from legislative Democrats.) A few other highlights: RI Gov. Dan McKee waves to some of his invited guest as he delivers his state of the state address in the House chambers on Jan 17, 2023. On tax relief, he promised several cutbacks, including a cut in Rhode Island's 7% sales tax, something he termed "long-overdue relief." On education, McKee a fervent charter-school advocate during his reign as the mayor of Cumberland promised to seek a major increase in state aid for Rhode Island's traditional public schools, and not just the troubled Providence school system that the state took over in 2019. With details to come in the 2023-24 budget he will propose to lawmakers on Thursday, McKee promised to seek a $57-million state aid boost for schools, plus $4 million for a longtime McKee favorite: "out-of-school learning programs," which hark back to one of his proudest efforts as a mayor, though it is not yet fully clear what this money would fund. McKee also used his much-anticipated annual speech to talk about potholes. Story continues "Potholes are a problem, and we all know that they exist," he said at one point. "Thats why Im putting on my former municipal leader hat and proposing that we launch a new matching grant program to help our cities and towns repair local roads." On McKee's centerpiece proposal, House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi said: "I think the overall majority of members on both sides of the aisle in both chambers support a reduction in the sales tax act...You asked me why it didn't get a rousing round of support. Like I said, I think people were probably expecting, in my opinion, a bigger reduction than .15 percent." Delivering the GOP response, Sen. Jessica de la Cruz agreed, but went further. With a $610-million surplus, she called for an immediate reduction in the 7% sales tax to 5%, along with a direct refund to taxpayers. She also reiterated the oft-heard GOP talking point: school choice. "Whether it's transforming to an all-public charter school district, expanding existing charter schools, or creating Educational Savings Accounts for private school enrollment, there are solutions," she said. Gov. Dan McKee enters the House chamber to deliver his State of the State address Tuesday night. A closer look at what McKee had to say to state dignitaries and a television audience on Tuesday night: TAXES In his speech, McKee outlined around $100 million worth of tax cuts he plans to propose in his 2023-24 budget. The headline proposal is a 0.15-percentage-point cut in the state sales tax rate that would save customers a potential $35 million the first year. The cut would lower Rhode Island's sales tax rate from 7% tied with Mississippi, Tennessee and Indiana for the second highest rate in the nation to 6.85%. That rate would still be higher than the 6.25% Massachusetts rate McKee has said he aspires to and that Rhode Island can achieve "if we continue to have discipline in our budgets." Freshman state Sen. Victoria Gu listens to Gov. Dan McKee's State of the State address with other representatives Tuesday night. Two of the tax cuts highlighted in McKee's speech seem ripped from the 2022 campaign, when rising gasoline and energy prices dominated political ads from coast to coast. Despite the fact that Rhode Island is set to lose out on $40 million a year through the court-ordered end of truck tolls, McKee is proposing to forgo a scheduled 3-cent-per-gallon increase in the state gas tax. Freezing the gas tax at its current rate will save drivers and cost state coffers an estimated $25 million per year, he said. He also wants to offer Rhode Island utility ratepayers including residential and business customers $35 million in gross receipts tax rebates on their energy bills this year. "Rhode Islanders are still dealing with rising prices at the grocery store, on utility bills and at the gas pump," he said. "Gas prices are falling but not fast enough." Shekarchi was unconvinced about the wisdom of the proposed gas tax freeze, telling reporters: "It is tough to do a 3% freeze when we're losing truck tolls at the same time." Gov. Dan McKee waves to familiar faces in the upper balcony of the House as he parades out with others after his State of the State address Tuesday night. EDUCATION McKee laid out several problems he promised to tackle, including the after-effects of the pandemic. For example: "Overall public-school enrollment has declined by about 5,700 students" since the onset of the pandemic. Instead of reducing aid to the communities that lost students, he said, "the state budget [for the last three years] has held communities harmless for student enrollment changes during the pandemic." That means it continued to pay the schools as if the missing students were still there. If the state went back to the regular funding formula, McKee said R.I.'s public schools would lose approximately $30 million. Siding with Senate leaders, McKee said: "It is time for us to make a targeted modification to the funding formula... to improve outcomes and support students with greater needs." The state aid formula currently disburses close to $950 million to the cities and towns. McKee promised to seek an additional $57 million for "K-12 education," $4 million for his "out-of-school learning programs" and to "fully fund our multilingual learners and high-cost special education (students)." Within the first 100 days of his first four-year term, McKee promised: "We will be outlining a plan to reach Massachusetts education levels by 2030." HOUSING McKee devoted a large part of his speech to housing affordability, saying: "Our economic future depends on creating room for population growth and upon providing cost-accessible homes to our workforce." But he did not spell out any specific goals beyond "building a capable Department of Housing" with a new director yet to be named, getting about $90 million in already available construction dollars into the hands of developers and funneling more money into efforts to set the homeless "on a pathway to housing." "Lets work together to set and over time, achieve meaningful but realistic goals for housing production and affordability," McKee said. "I know we can do it and we will. I dont believe there is one community in our state that doesnt want to see this happen." At McKee's request, lawmakers included $250 million in federal pandemic aid on housing programs in this year's budget. Much of it remains unspent, and his first secretary of housing resigned last week. He is expected to name a replacement shortly. A return to normal? The speech marked a post-pandemic return to a packed House chamber and shout-outs to special guests. McKee opened the speech welcoming Afghan refugee Amin Faqiry, a combat interpreter who with the help of Jonathan Dator, a volunteer who works at Providence College, was able to come to the United States in 2021 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. "To Jonathan and Amir who are both with us here tonight on behalf of the State of Rhode Island, I want to thank you for being an example of the best of our state," he said. This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: McKee State of the State promises sales tax cut, school aid increase Kathy Hochul Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Judge Hector LaSalle, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's (D) pick to lead the state Court of Appeals, suffered an ignominious and potentially fatal setback on Wednesday after the state Senate Judiciary Committee voted against his nomination 10-9. It was a historic defeat for both the jurist and the governor, who expended significant political capital on his behalf. By the end of his hearing before the committee, LaSalle had earned only two unconditional votes of approval from the committee members, seven votes to pass him through to a full senate vote without recommendation, and 10 votes against his nomination entirely. LaSalle's nomination had been fiercely opposed by many state Democratic lawmakers and progressives since Hochul named him as her pick to succeed now-retired Chief Judge Janet DiFiore in late December. Critics pointed to his previous rulings against labor unions, and an opinion denying constitutional protections against discrimination for potential jurors based on their skin color, with a cadre of law professors decrying what they caled his "activist conservative jurisprudence" that would "take our State's law in the wrong direction" in a blistering letter to the governor against LaSalle's nomination. Speaking at Wednesday's hearing, committee chair and LaSalle opponent Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal pushed back against Hochul's previous claims that her nominee could serve as a counterbalance to the conservative Supreme Court of the United States, stating simply "the stakes are just too high." Touting his nomination as a potentially historic moment for the man who would, if confirmed, become the state's "first Latino chief judge," Gov. Hochul tapped a number of high-profile party surrogates to make the case for her nominee, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who spoke on LaSalle's behalf at a rally earlier this week. Hispanic Federation Board Chair Manuel Chinea and former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito also threw their weight behind LaSalle's nomination, with the latter stressing that "representation does matter," during an event hosted by the Latinos For LaSalle political group, of which Mark-Viverito is a member alongside longtime political consultant Luis Miranda Jr., father of Broadway megastar Lin Manuel Miranda. Story continues While the committee's rejection of LaSalle's nomination has been taken by some in the state Senate as the final say in his prospect to become chief judge ("What happens in committees matter," Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters the week before Wednesday's vote) Hochul has indicated she is prepared to sue, on the belief that LaSalle is constitutionally entitled to a full Senate floor vote. You may also like Why are people angry about the new monument honoring MLK and Coretta Scott King's love story? Fugees rapper says he will subpoena Obama and Trump to testify on his behalf See the 2000-year-old rune archeologists just discovered in Norway (iStock/The Independent) When a routine Air Canada flight came in to land at San Francisco on a July evening in 2017, it missed a lethal disaster by just 13 feet. Unaware that one of the airport's runways was closed, the pilot exhausted after 19 hours awake had attempted to land on a taxiway on which four other planes were lined up awaiting liftoff. Had he not noticed his error and pulled up in time, the crash could have been more deadly than the 1977 Tenerife Airport disaster, in which two Boeing 747s collided on a foggy runway, killing 583 people. Technically, the pilot had been warned about the closure of the runway. But the warning had been buried on page eight of a 27-page briefing written in all capital letters in a bizarre, Byzantine code via the US government's Notice To Air Missions (NOTAM) system, a widely resented institution with some components 30 years old. This incident illustrates just how much the developed world depends on fragile, outdated or just plain janky software systems that run our critical infrastructure behind the scenes from air travel to water treatment plans to postal services. The dangers of that situation were underlined last week when NOTAM spectacularly imploded, depriving pilots of vital information about potential hazards along their routes and consequently cancelling or delaying nearly 12,000 flights. Nor was it the first such glitch. Over Christmas, the US air carrier Southwest Airlines suffered a multi-day meltdown that union leaders blamed partly on unwieldy software that collapsed under the weight of historic winter storms. Outdated or inadequate software has also been blamed for an attempted cyber-attack on a water treatment plant in Florida in 2021, and road deaths due to defective electronic throttle systems in Toyota cars. "These aren't just teaching moments, these are entire university curriculum moments that need to be studied, examined and addressed," says Henry Harteveldt, president of the Atmosphere Research Group consultancy, referring to the problems with NOTAM and Southwest. Story continues "This does expose some of the vulnerabilities, and of course the biggest vulnerability everybody fears is a cyber-attack. What really concerns me is: do any of these events illustrate weaknesses within the systems that could be used to cause an absolutely catastrophic, almost doomsday-like scenario?" Devastating effects on human life In 2011, the prolific Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowiz declared that "software is eating the world". A decade and change later, the world has been thoroughly digested. Now, as then, every major infrastructure service depends on software, and most depend on a complex network of interlocking systems, any one of which can go wrong. The tech industry has a plethora of piquant terms for the problems that can afflict large coding projects: "spaghetti code", "software rot", or "dependency hell", to name just a few. One of the most dangerous for large institutions is "technical debt", meaning the cost paid tomorrow for coding decisions taken yesterday. Organisations with heavy technical debt can be trapped in reliance upon ageing software that is no longer fit for its purpose, yet without the resources or, more commonly, the determination by senior managers to fix it. "Technical debt often goes hidden, but there is no doubt it is having an impact on the reliability and quality of critical national infrastructure," says Junade Ali, a British computer scientist and expert on technical debt who has worked on the UK's road signalling network and Google and Apple's Covid exposure notification system. "Unmanaged technical debt can have devastating effects on human life, from miscarriages of justice to death. [It] also reduces the agility of a business by slowing its ability to test new features in the real world, get user feedback and iterate rapidly... "As software is becoming increasingly complex and more of the world is dependent on software, the challenge is ever-growing." Consider, for instance, a computer accounting system called Horizon built for the British Post Office at the cost of around 700m in taxpayer money. Between 1991 and 2015, 918 employees were successfully prosecuted for supposed financial discrepancies recorded by the system, in some cases reportedly leading to bankruptcy, divorce and even suicide. As early as the year 2000, however, there were allegations that Horizon was riddled with errors. A series of external reviews and court judgements backed that up, and today many of the prosecutions have been overturned or their targets paid compensation. Another case of allegedly deadly code involved Toyota, which was forced to recall cars and settle a string of lawsuits after claims that its throttle software caused sudden and unintended acceleration that may have led to as many as 89 deaths and 57 injuries. In 2013, a jury in Oklahoma found it had shown "reckless disregard" for public safety, although Toyota settled that too without admitting responsibility. Michael Barr, a software testing expert who undertook a confidential review of one Toyota throttle system, testified that it had multiple problems that could have caused a 2007 crash. In a later presentation, he said Toyota software had suffered from spaghetti code (which means just what it sounds like) and a lack of proper safety systems that could detect and prevent errors as they occurred. Other cases cited by Barr include a computer glitch in a US Army Patriot missile launcher during the first Gulf War in 1991 that caused it to ignore an incoming Iraqi missile leading to 28 deaths and 100 injuries and errors that caused a radiotherapy machine in the 1980s to give out lethal overdoses of radiation. That is not to mention the numerous occasions on which an inappropriate reliance on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets has caused crucial systems to break down, including at the bank JP Morgan Chase and at Britain's public health agency during the Covid-19 pandemic. Accidental errors can also make these systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks, especially in an age when state-sponsored professional hacking groups prowl the internet while winning attack strategies are bought and sold on the dark web. "Much of the critical infrastructure that we rely on today was established long before the appropriate software or even the concept of cybersecurity came along," says John Fokker, head of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Trellix. "Often based on legacy operating systems that were set up decades ago, these organisations are using software that is rarely updated if at all. A successful attack could have a potentially devastating impact." How US air travel imploded this Christmas It's not clear exactly what the root cause of last week's NOTAM outage was. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which maintains the system, has said there is "no evidence" of a cyber-attack, instead blaming an engineer contractor who allegedly damaged a key data file by failing to follow procedures. If so, the FAA has questions to answer about how one mistake was enough to disrupt the whole system to the extent that officials were forced to reboot everything to get it up and running. What we do know is that the system has long been criticised for its obtuseness and fragility. The current iteration is a patchwork of older and newer software layers that must interact with each other, and prior to the outage it was not due to be upgraded for at least six years. In fact, according to OpsGroup, a pugnacious grassroots association of air industry professionals, NOTAM still uses a text encoding format that dates back to 1924, designed for telegraph machines and incapable of displaying lowercase letters. That is part of the reason why NOTAM messages are written in a nigh-on inscrutable sigils such as: "A0290/21 NOTAMN. Q) VHHK/QNMAU/IV/NBO/AE/000/999/2219N11355E005. A) VHHH. B) 2105252130 C) 2105252329. E) SIU MO TO DVOR/DME 'SMT' 114.80 MHZ/CH95X NOT AVBL DUE MAINT." Update 6: We are continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage. Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. (1/2) The FAA (@FAANews) January 11, 2023 Worse, everyone from Ops Group to the then head of the US national Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) agrees that NOTAM in theory reserved for essential updates about genuine hazards is utterly clogged with superfluous or irrelevant notices, making it easy to miss actually important information. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which is attempting to reform NOTAM, has said that around 20 per cent of the active notices are older than 90 days. In Albania, there is reportedly an active NOTAM from the year 2000 offering advice to pilots about the Millennium Bug. OpsGroup has also documented examples of dueling NOTAMs issued by the governments of Turkey and Greece, disputing each other's right to issue NOTAMs relating to territory rights claimed by both nations. One former airline pilot has even claimed that on the day that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing 298 people, there was a cryptic but critical NOTAM issued for that area, which might have averted disaster if it had been clearer. No wonder NTSB head Robert Sumwalt said in a 2018 hearing that NOTAMS "are just a bunch of garbage that nobody pays any attention to". This years NOTAM failure is now being investigated by Congress. Breaking: more than 120 House lawmakers led by @RepSamGraves @RepRickLarsen send letter to @SecretaryPete calling @FAANews computer outage Wednesday completely unacceptable and promising vigorous oversight pic.twitter.com/URx8Z2auD7 davidshepardson (@davidshepardson) January 13, 2023 Other air travel technologies have also suffered outages in the last few years. An air traffic control system called ERAM has failed seven times since 2014, most recently on 2 January this year. In 2021, a private sector reservation system called SABRE suffered an outage too. Then there is the Southwest meltdown, which the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) has blamed partly on a custom-built automated crew scheduling system called SkySolver. Southwest's "point to point" flight network depends on a complex dance of planes and staff moving from city to city, being in the right place at the right time for their next assignment. When one flight is delayed or cancelled, SkySolver reportedly finds a way to resolve the problem and reassigns planes and staff as needed. But SWAPA says that it can only handle up to 200 to 300 scheduling changes at a time, meaning it was completely overwhelmed when freezing weather blanketed much of the US, driving the number of individual pilot reassignments as high as 600 per hour. Amid the chaos, SWAPA claims, SkySolver repeatedly created solutions that simply did not work in practice, and did not take into account the quickly evolving situation. The group says only 15 per cent of SkySolver solutions between 20 December and 29 December were actually flown, with 85 per cent made obsolete before they could fly. Staff were left stranded in hotels while they waited for new assignments, invisible to the software system and unable to get through to the human schedulers at a call centre who were manually trying to fix the mess. "We have crews stuck, and scheduling doesnt know where they are," SWAPA head Casey Murray told The Wall Street Journal. SWAPA also says this led planes and crew being flown from city to city purely to put them in the right position, even though there were actually enough staff available to legally take passengers. Because the scheduling system did not know where these employees were, and they could not reach the scheduling team, they could not be reassigned, and the planes flew empty. To add insult to injury, the group's data shows more than 500 incidents where these "position ferries" were flown on the same routes where passenger flights were cancelled. In response to questions from The Independent, a spokesperson for Southwest said that it has been spending roughly $1bn on IT upgrades and maintenance each year. He said the company replaced its reservations system in 2017, its technical operations record system in 2021, and its "human capital management system" in 2022. Although Southwest chief executive Bob Jordan has apologised and accepted responsibility for the incident, he downplayed the role of software, telling The New York Times: "Theres been confusion over 'well, your technology failed.' The technology did not fail; it worked as designed. Our processes worked as designed; they just were all hit by overwhelming volume." He added that in 2022, eight new versions of SkySolver were released. Hackers are probing Americas water treatment system In February 2021, a water treatment plant worker in Florida noticed his mouse cursor dancing around the screen on its own. Before his eyes, the cursor opened up various programmes that controlled the water treatment process and boosted the level of sodium hydroxide a poisonous substance commonly known as lye, which is used in drain cleaner and in small amounts to remove metals from drinking water to 100 times its normal level. The sabotage was swiftly reversed, and the plant had physical safety systems that would have stopped lye-rich water from being piped into anyone's home. Yet the incident illustrated how America's roughly 50,000 community water systems, often run by local governments and without their own dedicated cybersecurity staff, could be tempting targets for hackers. This was far from the first or the only incident. Between 2019 and 2021, cyber-attacks struck water and wastewater institutions in California, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, Kansas and beyond, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Another study found 25 incidents reported by US water utilities in 2015 alone, noting that there may be others never reported. CISA also warned that water treatment plants "commonly use outdated control system devices or firmware versions, which expose [them] to publicly accessible and remotely executable vulnerabilities." Outdated software was certainly to blame in the Florida case, where investigators found multiple off-site computers running old versions of Microsoft Windows, sharing a single password to access a remote access programme that had been replaced about six months beforehand but never actually removed. As CISA's then head Chris Krebs wrote, Unfortunately, that water treatment facility is the rule rather than the exception." Trellix, the cybersecurity firm, says its research has found that many critical infrastructure institutions are "extremely vulnerable to attack" because they do not follow cybersecurity best practices such as keeping software up to date. "Given the FAA outage last week, it is clear that outdated security systems and siloed legacy architectures are no longer fit for purpose," says John Fokker. "A successful attack could have a potentially devastating impact. It could halt operations which could have a far-reaching and widescale effect not only on the organisation itself, but staff members, customers, and even on society as a whole." Why do software glitches go unfixed? In many of these cases, there were ample warnings. OpsGroup and ICAO have been lobbying to fix NOTAM for years, while the FAA has long been working to modernise the system. Meanwhile, SWAPA has referred to SkySolver as "a house of cards", claiming that Southwest has ignored its entreaties about numerous and ever-increasing meltdowns". So why do technical debt and other software hang-ups persist? For water systems, the problem is simple: thousands of small institutions run by often under-funded local governments, usually sharing their IT staff with other departments. "When an organisation is struggling to make payroll and to keep systems on a generation of technology created in the last decade, even the basics in cybersecurity often are out of reach," wrote Krebs in 2021. CISA also noted: "[Water] facilities are inconsistently resourced municipal systems not all of which have the resources to employ consistently high cybersecurity standards... [they] tend to allocate resources to physical infrastructure in need of replacement or repair (eg pipes) rather than It infrastructure." Harteveldt says there is a similar problem in the aviation industry, which suffers from an unusual combination of heavy tech dependence and poor tech investment. "When you talk to an airline CEO about an investment, they will tell you they'd rather buy an airplane, because they know that's what makes them money rather than take half the money an airplane would cost and invest it in IT, [which[] could take years to start showing a return." Ironically, he argues, the industry launched essentially the first e-commerce business back in the 1960s when it created a computerised nationwide booking system. Today, however, its high costs and low profit margins mean companies tend to invest around one to two percentage points less of their annual revenue in IT than other sectors. For the FAA and other state agencies, there are the traditional problems of taxpayer funding: budgets being used as a political football, bureaucratic inertia and, in the US, a persistent legislative gridlock that has left the FAA still run by a temporary acting administrator, with no permanent chief confirmed by Congress. "If you are a hotshot IT professional and you want to work in an environment where you have state of the art technology, and leadership that appreciates the importance of technology, you probably are not going to seek out a career either at the FAA or at an airline," says Harteveldt. Junade Ali's research has also found basic problems shared across various sectors. "I spent much of the early part of my career successfully dealing with egregious levels of technical debt. I'm afraid the road to addressing it requires persistence and the success rate for most is low," he says. Building genuinely resilient software let alone unwinding past technical debt is often slow, complex and expensive work, requiring serious investment, commitment from leadership and specialised practices such as building automated tests to catch errors and monitor software while it is running. "Estimates vary, but most research converges on the statistic that only one-third of digital transformation efforts ultimately end up being successful," he concludes. For the air industry, Harteveldt is optimistic, saying: "I think the Southwest event, along frankly with the NOTAM event, will be a catalyst for a lot of airlines, not just in the US but around the world... if the outcome of this is a recognition by airline leadership that they need to do a much better job of investing in technology than they have, then ultimately these catastrophes will not have occurred in vain." If not, Harteveldt fears the consequences. "The FAA collapse is alarming because it illustrates the fragility of the FAA's systems, and air travel in the US is mission critical to how our country functions," he says. "Imagine if an air traffic controller was giving incorrect information because someone had hacked the tower system, giving approval to one aircraft to do one thing and another aircraft to do something else, and it resulted in a collision... I think this is the thing that everybody who works with aviation technology fears most." A suspect has been arrested for the shooting death of a Bronx man last year, police said Tuesday. Baroney Lewis, 45, was nabbed Tuesday for the Oct. 22 murder of Russell Scott Wells, 62, according to cops. Lewis fired off a gun at Wells on E. 219th St. near Barnes Ave. in Williamsbridge around 5:10 a.m. that day, police said. The victim was shot in the head over a drug-related argument, they added. Medics rushed the mortally wounded man to Jacobi Medical Center, but he could not be saved. Lewis was arrested Tuesday and charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. The gunman has arrests in the city dating back to 1999, including for criminal possession of a weapon. His arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending Tuesday evening. A Charleston man was arrested on multiple charges, including attempted murder, after he opened fire on law enforcement officers Tuesday, according to the West Columbia Police Department. In addition to the attempted murder charge, 34-year-old Russell Saylor was charged with discharging a firearm into a vehicle, two counts of discharging a firearm into a dwelling, three counts of malicious injury to personal property, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, police said Wednesday in a news release. Saylor shot at officers during a six-hour standoff at a hotel in Lexington County, according to the release. Saylor was shot in the lower body and was injured by a police dog when he was taken into custody, police said. The incident at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel at 110 McSwain Drive, near the Sunset Boulevard exit on Interstate 26, began at about 1 p.m., when police responded to a domestic violence call, according to the release. Officers on the scene spoke with the female involved and continued to the fifth floor to contact Saylor, police said. Saylor shut the door on the officers and told them that he was going to shoot them, according to the release. Officers trained in crisis negotiations also responded to the scene and tried to de-escalate the situation, but Saylor opened fire and shot through the door and inside the room, police said. As the barricade standoff continued, Saylor broke through his window to the hotel room overlooking Sunset Boulevard and began firing at approaching law enforcement officers, that included members of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, as well as police, according to the release. SLED agents returned fire at Saylor, police said. During the standoff, a police drone as well as SLEDs robots were used for a better view of what was happening in the hotel room, and West Columbia officers took Saylor into custody after making entry at approximately 7:20 p.m., according to the release. Story continues Police did not say if any officers were hurt, but no other injuries were reported. Saylor was taken to the Lexington County Detention Center and is scheduled to have a bond hearing Wednesday afternoon, police said. Information about what happened during the domestic violence incident was not available. In addition to SLED, police said other agencies that assisted during the incident included the Lexington County Sheriffs Department, Lexington Medical Center Police Department, Cayce Police Department, West Columbia Fire Department, South Carolina Highway Patrol, and the Lexington County EMS. Matt Rourke/Pool via REUTERS Following last months arrest of quadruple-murder suspect and criminology scholar Bryan Kohberger, police searched his campus apartment at Washington State University for clues. There, investigators collected evidence that ranged from creepy to mundane: a black surgical glove; a vacuum cleaner bag; roughly a dozen strands of hair, both human and animal; receipts from Marshalls and Walmart; a sample collected from a dark red spot found inside; cuttings from an uncased pillow [with a] reddish/brown stain; and a mattress cover bearing multiple stains. Thats according to a newly unsealed search warrant affidavit, which was made public on Wednesday and provided to The Daily Beast by the Whitman County, Washington Superior Court clerk. Along with those items, cops seized an Amazon Fire TV stick and a computer tower, which the affidavit says detectives planned to search for [a]ny images, whether digital or on paper or any other format, showing victims Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kemodle, 20; or Madison Mogen, 21; along with surviving roommates Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, both 19. All six were students at the University of Idaho in Moscow, a small town roughly 10 miles across the state line from the WSU campus in Pullman, where Kohberger was pursuing a PhD. The Steptoe Village apartments at Washington State University, where Bryan Kohberger lived. Young Kwak/Reuters Inside the residence where the four were stabbed to death, police found a significant amount of blood from the victims including spatter and castoff (blood stain pattern resulting from blood drops released from an object due to its motion), which the affidavit says makes it likely that this evidence was transferred to Kohbergers person, clothing, or shoes. Cops were also interested in whether or not Kohberger had pictures of the house where the gruesome killings occurred, and/or the surrounding neighborhood. The affidavit, which describes the Idaho case as a now notorious and much publicized murder/burglary, says the warrants were served because a suspect in the crimes resided and worked here during the time of the murders, referring to Kohberger. A second warrant sought permission to search office number 12 in WSU's Wilson-Short Hall, which Kohberger shared with two fellow students. Story continues No items seized, the warrant return for Kohbergers office states. The Moscow, Idaho residence where four young college students were killed. Lindsey Wasson/Reuters Among the things police were searching for among Kohbergers belongings in apartment G201 were blood, human tissue, knives, sheaths, or other sharp tools, including any dagger, dirk, or sword, along with any associated receipts, trace evidence such as DNA, dark clothing and masks, fingerprints, hair whether human or animal/dog, and shoes with 16 diamond pattern sole. There was a dog, which was not harmed during the fatal attack, living in the Moscow house. Investigators also found a shoeprint at the crime scene which was similar to the pattern of a Vans type shoe sole, according to an earlier probable cause statement from detectives in Idaho, which is a capital punishment state. Prof. Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD detective sergeant who now teaches at New York Citys John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Daily Beast that he sees the hair strands found in Kohbergers apartment to potentially be among the most damning pieces of evidence collected. Remember, this is from his apartment and not from the school office, Giacalone said Wednesday. If those hairs come back to any of the victims, and/or the dog, I dont think there is any way his lawyer can explain that away. Cops seized hair and other evidence from apartment 201, where Kohberger lived. Young Kwak/Reuters It remains unclear if any of the victims were in any way familiar with Kohberger, who was arrested Dec. 30 at his parents home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, some 2,500 miles from Moscow. Kohbergers father flew out to drive back to the East Coast with his son, making the trip in the same white Hyundai Elantra seen in security video released by authorities after the grisly slayingsbut with a set of new license plates, which Kohberger received five days after the murders. The murders took place Nov. 13 sometime between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m., Idaho detectives said in a probable cause affidavit filed earlier this month. Police say they found a knife sheath at the crime scene, and matched a DNA sample from the sheaths snap to Kohbergers own DNA, which investigators recovered from the trash outside his parents house. Kohbergers phone pinged off cell towers near the victims residence on at least twelve occasions prior to their deaths, the affidavit states. The murder weapon has not yet been located; cops say they believe a fixed-blade knife was used. A list of what cops say they seized from Kohbergers Pullman, Washington apartment. Whitman County Superior Court Kohberger, who one former teacher recently described as brilliant, earlier this year graduated from a masters program in criminal justice at DeSales University, a Catholic school in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. At DeSales, he studied under famed forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, who wrote such books as How to Catch a Killer, The Psychology of Death Investigations, and The Mind of a Murderer. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now. Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now. On Dec. 18, Kyiv resident Tetiana Venhlinska was without power at home for 10 hours straight. The blackout was imposed following another large-scale missile strike in a series of Russian attacks on Ukraines energy infrastructure. For most Kyiv residents, the long power outage was likely a mere annoying inconvenience. But for Tetiana Venhlinskas mother, 75-year-old lung cancer patient Yeva Venhlinska, it was a life-and-death situation. Yeva Venhlinska was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in 2017. For the last three years, her life has depended on a stationary oxygen concentrator running non-stop to provide oxygen flow. During blackouts, she uses portable versions of the device. But hours into the unexpectedly long power outage on Dec. 18, she only had around 30-40 minutes of battery left, according to her daughter. Thats when Tetiana Venhlinska called a costly private medical company that took her mother to life-saving hospice. Yeva Venhlinska's blood oxygen level had fallen to a critical 80% (95-100% is considered healthy) by the time she was connected to an oxygen device in the ambulance. "That helped save her life," Tetiana Venhlinska says. "Otherwise, she would have just suffocated." There were over 2.7 million people with disabilities in Ukraine as of June 2021, according to the State Statistics Service. That numbler includes nearly 164,000 children. Russia's repeated attacks on energy infrastructure across Ukraine, which have killed dozens of people and caused electricity, water, and heating cut-offs, have made Yeva Venhlinska's life and the lives of millions of other people with disabilities and those who rely on special medical equipment, harder than ever. "It affects them a lot," says Serhiy Rashchenko, the head of a rehabilitation center in Odesa whose son uses a wheelchair. Rashchenko says that with no power, it has become more challenging for people with disabilities to take care of themselves, prepare food, exercise, and even leave the house since elevators cant function without electricity. Story continues "It's difficult not only physically but morally to withstand this pressure," Rashchenko says. "When no one can help you, and you sit at home with no power, no water, nothing. I see suicidal thoughts all around," he adds. Oxygen for mother Tetiana Venhlinska says they had short power cuts at home at the early stage of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24. They lasted from 30 minutes to two hours, she says. Back then, Venhlinska raised money to purchase a car battery that kept her mothers oxygen concentrator running for about two hours without electricity, in an attempt to prepare for "short-term emergencies." Aware of their situation, a local charity also donated a portable oxygen concentrator to the family. Working at minimum capacity, the portable concentrator can run for nearly seven hours, Venhlinska says. But the amount of oxygen her mother needs can drain the battery in just three, she adds. Since Russia began targeting Ukraines energy system with missiles and drones in October, frequent lasting blackouts have become a real challenge for the family. "The last three months have been a constant stress to us," Venhlinska says. "It is impossible to predict how long the blackout will last, whether it will be four, seven, or nine hours." "Each time, we tried to save as much (oxygen) as possible because we don't know when the power will be back on." Getting less oxygen also seriously affects her mother's overall health. "Imagine that you don't have enough oxygen. You try not to breathe," Venhlinska says. "She gets exhausted," she goes on. "(She) tries not to move much, freezes, and just waits (for the power to be back on)." The night of Dec. 18 was the longest amount of time Venhlinska did not have electricity at home. It was two days after Russia unleashed its seventh large-scale attack on energy infrastructure across Ukraine. The strike "significantly" increased electricity shortage in the system, which was substantial even before that, the state grid operator Ukrenergo said at the time. For Yeva Venhlinska, it was life-threatening. Her daughter called the ambulance when the portable oxygen concentrator was already working at the lowest capacity, and had only 40 minutes until the battery ran out. Medical workers had to carry her down from the seventh floor of their apartment building since the elevator was not running. "I paid for the private ambulance and private hospice that was ready to receive us in the middle of the night," she says. Yeva Venhlinska photographed in a hospice in Kyiv in early January of 2023. Russia's repeated attacks on energy infrastructure across Ukraine have brought many difficulties to the life of Venhlinska, who needs a stationary oxygen concentrator running non-stop to provide oxygen flow. (Tetiana Venhlinska) According to Venhlinska, state-run hospices "accept people only by appointment," have long queues of patients waiting to get in, and their wards are already full of those "who need pain relief, who are in agony." If the lengthy blackouts caused by Russian attacks continue, Venhlinska says she doesn't know what to do. "Constant power cuts were very exhausting and painful for my mother. It was torture," she says. Five times harder The everyday well-being of Rashchenko's son Mykhailo depends not only on the three people taking care of him but on the uninterrupted power supply at his home as well. Back in 2015, then-16-year-old Mykhailo got into a road accident that led to multiple injuries, including nine bone fractures, that put him in a coma. His father says Mykhailos brain injury severely affected his health. Since then, Mykhailo has used a wheelchair and has needed constant care. Rashchenko says his son can't chew on his own, so the food they make for Mykhailo needs to be ground in a mixer. Physical exercises that involve special exercise machines twice a day are "critical" for his health, says Rashchenko. Though it was tough, Rashchenko says the family managed to organize their lives so that Mykhailo ould get the care that he needs. Russia's fifth large-scale missile attack across Ukraine on Nov. 23, which damaged critical infrastructure and caused blackouts in much of the country and even neighboring Moldova, interrupted the Rashchenko familys routine. Following the attack, they did not have power for 70 hours straight, Rashchenko says. "My parents live near the hospital, and they have power all the time," he says. "So I had to go to their place to prepare food (for Mykhailo) and go back home." Since Mykhailos exercise machines require electricity to work, the family had to simulate exercising by stimulating his muscles with their hands, which was not really effective," Rashchenko says. During that time, Rashchenko says they could not bathe Mykhailo normally, since the water supply requires electricity. They also could not take him outside for a breath of fresh air since the elevator wasnt working. Rashchenko who works with people with disabilities every day and whose rehabilitation center currently helps nearly 100 people in Odesa says that those people with disabilities who have no one to take care of them should consider finding a way to flee abroad, at least for some time until Russian attacks on Ukraines energy infrastructure are over. "It's always been hard, but now it's five times harder," he says. Charging hearing aids The four-year-old son of Kyiv Oblast resident Anna Sytnyk lost his hearing following a severe Covid-19 infection in 2020. Without hearing aids, he can barely hear anything now. "A blackout is the worst thing that can happen to us because hearing aids need to be charged daily," Sytnyk says. The devices that the little Roman uses for hearing can work for up to 12 hours. "We take him to the kindergarten at 8 a.m., and he hears everything until 8 p.m. thanks to hearing aids," says Sytnyk. "Then they need to be charged." Due to the illnesses that Roman endured as a little child, he also needs to use an electronic nebulizer for inhalation whenever he gets a cold and starts coughing, his mother says. Roman, the four-year-old son of Kyiv Oblast resident Anna Sytnyk uses a nebulizer at a gas station near their home in late November of 2022. Following Russias Nov. 23 mass missile attack targeting Ukraines energy infrastructure, the family did not have power at home for 68 hours. Sytnyk had to travel to a gas station multiple times for her son to have inhalations and to charge his hearing aids. (Anna Sytnyk) Three days after Russia unleashed another missile strike on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure on Nov. 23, six million people were still facing electricity shortages, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sytnyks family was among them. She says they did not have power for 68 hours straight. Back then, the family did not have a power generator and was unable to heat the house with two little children in it, not to mention prepare food and charge Roman's hearing aids. At that time, Roman also had a cough and needed to use his nebulizer to relieve the symptoms. "You can not even imagine how difficult it was," Sytnyk says. "We could never believe that in the 21st century, such a thing could happen. That we can be simply cut off from the world," she says. Luckily, a gas station nearby that had power came to the familys rescue. There, Sytnyk says, Roman was able to use his nebulizer. She also left the expensive hearing aids at the gas station to charge for up to six hours so that her son could use them at kindergarten the next day. Sytnyk says the gas station employees treated her nicely, understanding the difficulty of the familys situation. She says that even when crowded, people at the gas station always let her and Roman use a plug socket to turn the nebulizer on. Despite all the difficulties her family went through in the past months, Sytnyk says she "would rather stay without power for 100 or 200 hours" than have anything to do with Russia. "Anything other than to pay in Russian rubles and to be with Russia," she adds. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note from the author: Hi! Daria Shulzhenko here. I wrote this piece for you. Ever since the first day of Russia's all-out war, I have been working almost non-stop to tell the stories of those affected by Russias brutal aggression. By telling all those painful stories, we are helping to keep the world informed about the reality of Russias war against Ukraine. By becoming the Kyiv Independent's patron, you can help us continue telling the world the truth about this war. Travel market to rebound during Spring Festival holiday season Xinhua) 08:26, January 18, 2023 A girl gives a high-five to her grandfather who came to pick her up at the Kunming Changshui International Airport in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Jan. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Jiang Wenyao) SHANGHAI, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- China is expected to see a Spring Festival holiday with the largest number of travellers in three years, with soaring domestic tourism and recovering outbound tourism, data from online travel platforms show. As people head home for family reunions, trans-provincial travel is on the rise during the Spring Festival holiday season. Many people have also planned to make long-distance trips, which have become much easier and more convenient after China downgraded its management of COVID-19. Data from Trip.com Group showed that long-distance travel orders during the Spring Festival holiday accounted for 70 percent of the holiday's total travel orders of the company, up 72 percent year on year. Tourists prefer to enjoy warmth and sunshine in the country's south or embrace ice and snow in the north. According to the online tourism platform TravelGo, tourist destinations like Xishuangbanna, Sanya and Xiamen in the country's south and Changbai Mountains in northeastern Jilin Province are among the most popular during the holiday. Short-distance travel, more preferred during the pandemic, continues to be popular among tourists during this Spring Festival holiday. As people return to their hometowns, short-distance tours to scenic spots around small cities are gaining popularity. Likewise, outbound travel is receiving increasing attention on various travel platforms, as the country's adjusted COVID-19 response has lifted restrictions on overseas trips and promoted cross-border personnel exchanges. Data from Trip.com Group showed that the demand for flight tickets to Macao during the Spring Festival holiday grew by 97 percent from last holiday, and that for hotels by 57 percent. The number of orders for flight tickets from the mainland to Hong Kong increased over 31-fold year on year. According to Lvmama, a domestic online travel agency, many tourists still have a wait-and-see approach for outbound travel during the Spring Festival due to limited flights and high travel costs. As more people are expected to travel abroad later this year, travel operators and investment institutions will shore up confidence in the recovery of the sector, said Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Vice President Harris will deliver remarks in Florida on Sunday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, aiming to put the spotlight back on abortion rights following last summers ruling that struck down the precedent set by Roe. Harris will travel to Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year signed into law a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, to highlight the administrations efforts to protect reproductive rights and abortion access. The Vice President will push for national legislation to protect reproductive rights, and she will draw contrast between the Republicans extreme approach to reproductive health and that of the Biden-Harris Administration, a White House official said of Harriss planned remarks. The decision to pick Florida was due to it being at the forefront of the fight for reproductive care, senior administration officials said. Harris plans to push back on legislation in Congress the restricts abortion access, efforts by some Republicans to pass a national abortion ban, and efforts in states to embrace extreme restrictions on abortions, officials said. The speech will also focus on executive actions from the administration to defend reproductive rights. The vice president has taken a leading role in the Biden administration in pushing back on the Supreme Courts decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, and her speech will be the main way the White House notes the anniversary of the original ruling. Harris, the first woman to serve as vice president, has met with health care providers, state and local legislators and activists numerous times in the seven months since Roe was overturned to voice support for abortion access and reproductive health. The Supreme Court ruling largely kicked the issue back to the states, though some conservatives have argued there should be federal legislation establishing a minimum cutoff for abortions. The White House and Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed for Congress to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade. Story continues But with control of Congress split, any federal legislation is unlikely to pass during this Congress. House Republicans, as one of their first votes with a new majority, passed two anti-abortion bills: One condemning attacks on anti-abortion facilities, including crisis pregnancy centers, and one to impose penalties if a doctor refused to care for an infant born alive after an attempted abortion. Administration officials vowed to continue fighting to ensure access to abortion. Along with Harris remarks, President Biden will issue a statement and presidential proclamation on Sunday to mark the anniversary the law was passed. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will also travel to Minnesota where he will visit a Planned Parenthood. He will also Wisconsin where he will hold an event with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.). Officials said his visit is to highlight differences between Minnesota, which is taking steps to protect access to abortion, and Wisconsin, which has allowed for government interference in deeply personal medical decisions. Updated 6:08 p.m. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. As Hartford restaurant owner Joan Facey went to the podium to address the crowd, she said she was specifically speaking to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Metropolitan District Commission Chairman William A. DiBella and Executive Director Scott Jellison. She was one of many local business owners and residents who wanted to make their voices heard about the flooding and sewage backup issues that are impacting them, both financially and emotionally. And when the flood came, the water came, and this sewer backed up, it came up the flat roof. The water [went] down, the sewer went up, and came down to the building, Facey said. It ruined my building. I have a restaurant sitting there [with] equipment that I cannot use. Its $8,000 just to sanitize the place and repair just for that. Due to a car accident, Facey is unable to work. She asked Blumenthal how she can get the $8,000 to repair and sanitize the restaurant, asking him, where is her justice? Community Activist Bridgitte Prince said during a press conference at the American Legion at 2121 Main St. that she and representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency out of Boston would be touring privately to review residents ongoing claims of flooding and sewage backups. She said that the EPA representatives were not available to comment publicly, as they were not authorized to speak to the crowd publicly, especially with press and politicians present. Residents and activists contacted the agency due to ongoing incidents of flooding and sewage backups in Hartfords North End and concerns that lack of action is tied to the location in the city. Residents said they feel unheard by some elected officials and the Metropolitan District Commission. Prince said that, in her opinion, the citys flooding issue is a akin to a New Orleans Ninth Ward district catastrophe waiting to happen. Youve got pipes, busted sewage pipes that are centuries old and its not being repaired. Youve got residents that live in the North End from Blue Hills Avenue all the way down to Windsor Street, [who] have human waste flowing through their basements. They dont know whose human waste it is, because its been that long since its been fixed, she said. Story continues She said that these issues are not things that the Black community should have to endure. You just cant have money and fix the structures on the perimeters of the Capital city. But the only time you want to show up in this district, the only time you want to show up at this forum and be sitting at the table [is] when its time for votes, but you dont do anything with this situation, she said. Max Qutari, local business owner of Star Hardware at 2995 Main St, said that his business has been flooded at least four times. He said that every time he reaches out to MDC, the answer he receives is that it is too complicated for them and that the water cannot be mixed with the river, which leads to water not being able to go out. Our business gets completely destroyed when we get floodedThat means our neighborhood, our businesses, and more importantly, our houses get backed up with sewage and we are supposed to be OK with it. Thats just not kosherpeople higher up have to find a way to get some answers. Weve been living like this[in] our businesses, we walk in sewage cleanup, we cannot get flood insurance [for] this, he said. Blumenthal thanked the residents and business owners for sharing their stories and said that anyone hearing the stories cannot help being outraged and angry about what they have lived through. It isnt just one storm, one flood or one sewer to back up. It is many, many of them. I cant speak for the EPA. [They are] part of the executive branch. They report to President Biden. I dont appoint the head of the EPA, we control the purse strings in the United States Congress, and as a delegation. I am sure that we will go to work to make sure that the EPA takes an interest. He also said that he will also make sure that the MDC, state Department of Energy, Environmental Protection and others come together, as they need to hear and see what the residents have experienced. It is about justice. I dont have a magic solution today. But Im certainly going to continue listeningI can pledge to you that were gonna take back this information. At the end of the day, this is an issue of environmental justice, he said. Blumenthal also said that the Congress recently passed the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, which is more than $1 trillion for the whole country, the first of its kind that they have passed. He said that fixing the sewage and flooding issues is the kind of endeavor that should be supported, as it involves environmental protection, public health, communities and their fabric and strength, and ultimately, justice. Im gonna make sure that Hartford gets its fair share, and the North End of Hartford is taken into account, he said. In response to the residents stories, DiBella said that the MDC has spent $2 billion for the last five to 10 years on separating the sewers. Unfortunately, the way that it goes down is, its a question of the river and everything else in the environmental issue is DEEP and we have programs to deal with. Its a dollars and cents thing. We dont have a system in this country thats been built for the stormin 2021, where we got a 200-year storm, a 100-year storm and a 50-year storm in the same week, he said. He said that the button line is that the system is only built for a 10-year storm. About where the MDC is with separating the sewers in Hartford and the North End, DiBella said that they are in the process, as they have done it in the North and South End of the city, and are starting the process in Blue Hills. The big problem is weve got to get to an outflow, which is Park RiverThe city and MDC are doing a study on that. But were moving forward on the separation system, but its not a 10 -year or five-year program. The integrated plan is going to run out probably almost 20 years or 25 years. We cant spend that much money in that short of time, he said. DiBella also said that even if the MDC were to receive funding from the federal government, it could not be done any faster. No, we dont get a lot of money. Were not getting money from the federal government. Thats one of the issues. Were getting money from the MDC customers and from DEEP. Weve spent $1.7 billion of ratepayers money in this project and weve spent $800 million. So $1.7 billion from MDCs customers and $800 million for the state. Its significantly low, he said. Harvard University Medical School is withdrawing from U.S. News & World Reports annual rankings of top medical schools in the country based on philosophical issues with the list. Dean George Daley said in a message to members of the medical school community on Tuesday that he recognizes the issues educational leaders have had with the methodology that the rankings use to evaluate schools, but the decision is based on the principled belief that rankings cannot meaningfully reflect the high aspirations for educational excellence, graduate preparedness, and compassionate and equitable patient care that we strive to foster in our medical education programs. He said rankings create perverse incentives for academic institutions to report misleading or inaccurate data, set policies designed to raise their rankings instead of other objectives and divert financial aid toward high-performing students instead of those with a financial need. Ultimately, the suitability of any particular medical school for any given student is too complex, nuanced, and individualized to be served by a rigid ranked list, no matter the methodology, Daley said. The decision comes as U.S. News & World Report has faced criticism from several academic institutions, including Harvard Law School, over its system of ranking universities programs. Harvard and Yales law schools both announced in November that they would end their participation in the rankings. They attacked the rankings methodology, noting that it includes how much debt students have, and said it disincentivizes providing need-based financial aid. A few other law schools have joined them in withdrawing from the rankings. U.S. News said earlier this month that it will make changes to how it ranks law schools, including placing less emphasis on peer assessment reviews and more on schools offering fellowships to students pursuing public service. U.S. News Executive Chairman and CEO Eric Gertler has said the rankings are intended to help students make the best decision for where to attend law school. Story continues But Daley said his priority is not to receive a top ranking but to focus on the quality and richness of the educational experience at the medical school, encouraging personal growth and lifelong learning. He said the bold and courageous moves from the dean of Harvards law school and peer law schools led him to take this action in ending the medical schools participation in the rankings. He said the school will continue to publicly share key information about itself on its admissions website in the interest of transparency and accountability. He noted that applicants can compare schools data in a raw, unweighted form on the Association of American Medical Colleges website. We trust these resources will prove valuable for students as they make thoughtful and meaningful decisions about which medical school is the best fit for them, Daley said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. MERIDIAN TWP. - A Haslett assisted living facility has been ordered to pay more than $15,000 in back wages and damages to six employees after failing to pay healthcare workers in accordance with federal overtime laws. Safe Haven Assisted Living LLC didnt pay workers when their responsibilities carried over into meal breaks or standard breaks, according to an investigation from the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. The judgment comes after a review from the department which found that the facility and Tamesha Porter, owner of Safe Haven, violated overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act through these practices. An employee of Safe Haven who answered the phone at the facility Wednesday declined to give their name or comment. Porter did not immediately respond to an email. The company will also pay a civil penalty of $3,618. The department found that Safe Haven began the practice in August 2020, shortly after Porter purchased the facility. The investigation also found that a facility manager marked employees time cards in an effort to pay them for their work fully, but determined that Porter ignored these marks. The judgment was issued on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan by Judge Jane Beckering. Safe Haven Assisted Living in Haslett didnt pay workers when their responsibilities carried over into meal breaks or standard breaks, according to an investigation from the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. Despite knowing her obligation to pay employees who missed their meal breaks to provide patient care and overcome staffing shortages, the owner of Safe Haven Assisting Living of Haslett chose to ignore the law and the reminders of a facility manager, said Mary ORourke, Wage and Hour Division Grand Rapids district director. Caregivers who deliver essential services to help people unable to care for themselves are among our nations lowest paid workers, and these workers depend upon on every dollar earned to support themselves and their families she said. ORourke also encouraged other workers to contact the Department if theyre not being paid their full wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nursing assistant income averaged $32,090 in 2021, or about $15.43 per hour. Story continues Safe Haven has four other locations in the mid-Michigan area, according to the company's website. Those locations include Okemos, Mason, Three Rivers and Hastings, although those locations were not included in the judgment. Contact Sheldon Krause at skrause@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @sheldonjkrause. This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Haslett assisted living center ordered to pay $15K in back wages, damages Frisbie Memorial Hospital names Megan Gray, DNP, RN, Chief Nursing Officer Megan Gray ROCHESTER Frisbie Memorial Hospital has named Megan Gray, DNP, RN, as its new chief nursing officer. Megan joined HCA Healthcare in 2015 and has served as associate chief nursing officer at Portsmouth Regional Hospital since July 2021. Megan has proven to be a compassionate and committed leader since joining HCA Healthcare and were confident that shes going to be a great fit here at Frisbie, said Tim Jones, chief executive officer at Frisbie Memorial Hospital. Her experience at the bedside, in leading teams, and at the operations level will be invaluable to us, and were excited to have her join the team. Megan brings to the role nearly two decades of nursing experience bedside, education, and leadership. Prior to joining HCA Healthcare, she worked at Seacoast-area hospitals in various nursing and supervisory roles. She also served as an assistant clinical and adjunct nursing professor for the University of New Hampshire Nursing Department for 10 years. During her tenure at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Megan has been part of several initiatives and growth projects including: implementation of the new education model across the New Hampshire market; awarded Comprehensive Stroke Center designation along with the Neurosciences team which she oversaw; helped launch the Stroke and Brain Aneurysm clinic; Neurohospitalist program; and the expansion of the Intensive Care Unit, Cardiac Surgery Stepdown Unit, and Progressive Care Neuro Trauma Unit. She earned her Bachelors in Nursing from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.; a Masters Degree in Nursing - FNP track and a Doctorate of Nursing from University of New Hampshire. Megan serves on the academic advisory councils for UNH, Great Bay Community College, and Franklin Pierce University. In 2022, she was elected to the New Hampshire Nurses Association board of directors for a two-year term. This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Health care professionals: Names to Know Chelsea and Cole DeBoer's HGTV series "Down Home Fab" premiered on Monday. HGTV Former "Teen Mom 2" stars Chelsea and Cole DeBoer have a new show on HGTV, "Down Home Fab." Insider spoke to the pair about how to make homes pretty but functional for families. They advised against all-white interiors but said you don't have to sacrifice the aesthetic for kids. It's no secret that having children changes everything about your life, including your home. Not only will you probably need more space, but the way you use the space you do have will change particularly as your children start accumulating toys. And if you're drawn to a minimalist, all-white aesthetic, it can feel intimidating to figure out how to make your home work for your whole family. Insider spoke to Chelsea DeBoer (nee Houska) and Cole DeBoer ahead of the premiere of their HGTV series, "Down Home Fab," about how to balance family function and design preferences when decorating a home. The series spotlights Chelsea and Cole renovating houses in their home city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The DeBoers are renovating homes in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for their series. HGTV "It's hard because I love the way a super clean, modern home looks, but it's not practical," Chelsea said. "At least for our family where we have four little kids and animals." When your space is actually lived in, it's likely it will get dirty easily or end up not looking how you imagined it to be when you designed it. "I think that almost sterile, modern look isn't very practical," she added. "Is it aesthetically pleasing? Yes. Could we have that in our home? No." "You have to understand and accept your kids live here too, so you have to make it work for them," Cole said. But the DeBoers also told Insider that while an all-white space might not work when kids are in the picture, you don't have to completely give up your decor preferences because of them. For instance, Chelsea and Cole recommend prioritizing storage when you have children, but that storage doesn't have to be out of place in your home. "There are toys everywhere, but we try to keep cute, big baskets that they can put their toys in that still look really nice out and about," Chelsea gave as an example. "I don't need to have hot-pink toy bins all over the place." Story continues In addition, as they documented in the premiere of "Down Home Fab," Cole built a custom playhouse for their kids in their playroom, complete with a slide. But rather than making it a bold color, the DeBoers instead chose to make the play home look like a miniature version of their black house which their kids loved. "Some people get caught up in feeling like they have to do these bright colors, but kids don't give a crap," Chelsea said. "They're gonna play in it either way, so I might as well like to look at it." The couple fell in love with renovation after working on their own home. HGTV Viewers might be familiar with the DeBoers from their tenure on "Teen Mom 2." Chelsea appeared on the MTV reality series for over a decade. She first appeared on the show's sister series, "16 and Pregnant," when she gave birth to her daughter Aubree in 2009, as People reported. Cole began appearing on the series in 2014 when he and Chelsea started dating, and they tied the knot in 2016, according to US Weekly. They have three children together: Watson, 5; Layne, 4; and Walker, 1. Chelsea and Cole told Insider they fell in love with home renovating as they built their own house in Sioux Falls. "We had a blast throughout the whole entire process," Cole said. "Everyone warned us beforehand, 'Hopefully you guys have a strong marriage, because building a house can be very stressful.' We found it the complete opposite." "So then we're like, 'How can we continue doing this?'" Chelsea said, which led them to "Down Home Fab." "We felt like this was the perfect opportunity to work with other people and help them." "We enjoy the process so much, so we want to make it an enjoyable process for other people," she added. "Down Home Fab" premiered on HGTV and Discovery+ on Monday. Read the original article on Insider [Source] Before you read: Man wanted for shoving Asian woman in unprovoked attack near NYCs Herald Square A New York man has been arrested and charged for attacking an Asian woman near Herald Square in Manhattan on New Years Eve. Christopher McCormack, 55, was arrested on Sunday at a veterans homeless shelter in Queens and has been charged with third-degree assault as a hate crime and second-degree aggravated harassment, the District Attorneys Office said. More from NextShark: Chinese ambassador calls on Chinese Americans to improve China-US relations: 'No egg stays unbroken when the nest is overturned' Thanks to the tips from the public & the tireless work of our @NYPDDetectives, a 56-year-old man was arrested and charged for this incident. https://t.co/2R1Bh6zw7f NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) January 15, 2023 More from NextShark: Oldest Chinese restaurant in Japan shuts down after 138 years The incident occurred near 6th Ave. and W. 33rd St. at around 3:15 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2022, when McCormack approached the 56-year-old unnamed victim from behind and shoved her to the ground. Stupid Asian b*tch, do you want another one? McCormack reportedly told her. New York police said he attacked the victim without any prior conversation or provocation and escaped in an unknown direction. McCormack reportedly has no prior arrests and has been living at the Queens homeless shelter. More from NextShark: Workers flood the streets of Seoul wearing 'Squid Game' attire to protest for better working conditions The victim suffered a minor injury but refused medical attention at the scene. Related stories: Yellow caution tape is wrapped around the iron railing where a car crashed early Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023 at Arlington Park in Hopewell. Police said the two occupants of the vehicle were shot prior to the wreck and died at the scene. HOPEWELL January is just past its halfway mark, and the city is already one-third of the way to its homicide total for all of 2022 A man and woman died early Wednesday morning after they were shot multiple times during what police believe was a rolling gun battle through an east Hopewell neighborhood. The victims have been identified as Robert Lewis Bryant Jr., 33, and Jessica Lynn Collins, 35, both of Hopewell. The incident happened around 2 a.m. at Arlington Park in the 2700 block of Courthouse Road. Police Chief A.J. Starke said residents in that area called police dispatch about shots being fired. When officers arrived on the scene, Starke said, they found the victims in a car that had crashed into an iron railing on steps leading into the park. Doorbell cameras in the neighborhood captured the sounds of rapid multiple gunfire. One house near the park was hit by at least a dozen bullets from the exchange. Emergency personnel attempted to resuscitate both victims, but they were pronounced dead at the scene. Starke said his department was still investigating and did not say if there was any proof the two victims may have fired at their pursuers. No motive or suspect descriptions were available. Starke said investigators were combing the area looking for any home surveillance videos or witnesses to the crime. Kierra Baker, who lives across the street from the park, told The Progress-Index she heard some noises around 2 a.m. "and my dog was going off." "All I heard was 'boomp, boomp, boomp,'" Baker said, stomping her foot for emphasis. "And I was about to go out because I thought someone was knocking at my door at 2 o'clock in the morning. Then I hear these 'boomp, boomp, boomps,' you know, they were continuing, and I realized they are some guns, apparently some big guns." At Baker's house, the bedrooms of her and her two daughters are on the side facing the park. Once she realized those were gunshots, she said she dropped to the floor and hollered for her daughters to do the same. Story continues "Everybody basically stayed on the ground until the bullets stopped," Baker recalled, still visibly shaken hours later. The killings are Hopewell's second and third of the year. That's one more than two years ago and one-third of the city's nine reported homicides last year. Eleven days ago, a 17-year-old teenager was killed at a trailer park on Oaklawn Boulevard. Police arrested a Richmond man and a Petersburg man in connection with that incident. "It's very disturbing," Starke said of the overnight shooting. "It's disturbing that we have individuals on our streets that would have no regard for safety of innocent lives. It happened in a residential neighborhood. There were families home asleep ... and to have this type of activity where live rounds are being fired in the street is just totally unacceptable." Arlington Park, located at the intersection of Courthouse Road and Liberty Avenue in Hopewell, was the scene of a double-murder early Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. The city still is reeling from the Dec. 30, 2022 shooting death of eight-year-old P'aris Mi-Unique Angel Moore. She was gunned down as she played in the front yard of a relative's residence on Freeman Street, not far from the scene of Wednesday's shooting. Authorities believe the child was the victim of an apparent drive-by shooting. Starke said Wednesday morning that leads are continuing to come in from citizens for that investigation. The homicides occur as Hopewell is getting ready to take part in the Group Violence Intervention/Operation Ceasefire program. GVI/Ceasefire is nationwide initiative where attempts are made to identify and counsel groups known for criminal activity and reminding them they will be prosecuted if they refuse the intervention and continue to break the law. More:Hopewell starts process to bring 'Group Violence Intervention' to town as soon as June More:Delegate, senator want to see 'proven' anti-violence initiative come to Hopewell Hopewell City Council has a meeting called for Thursday night to further discuss its participation in the program. Arlington Park, which is owned by the Hopewell Parks & Recreation Department, is often a gathering place for neighborhood events such as July 4 events. Eighteen months ago, one of those Independence Day events was rocked by violence when a man was shot to death after a fight broke out at the park. Baker,a Maryland native who has lived across from Arlington Park most of her time in Hopewell, remembered that fateful day. Ever since, she said, she has become more cognizant of criminal activity around her neighborhood. "It's starting to be absolutely crime-ridden," she said. " You never know what's going on unless you're a person in the street. "Occurrences like this, they literally come out of nowhere," Baker continued. "And I just think that is really sad because a lot of people that's getting hit just like that innocent little girl; she didn't do anything to anybody." When asked if Wednesday's shooting has made her want to move, Baker did not hesitate in her answer. "If I could afford to, I'd be gone by tomorrow," she said. "I'd be gone by the end of today, actually." Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on Twitter at @BAtkinson_PI. This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Hopewell's second, third murder victims killed in rolling gun battle Recently obtained 911 calls illustrate the harrowing scene that bystanders experienced as they watched a house fire on Sharp Road critically injure a woman and kill a dog Saturday morning. >> PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Woman remains in critical condition after house fire in Riverside News Center 7 previously reported that crews were called out to the 5600 block of Sharp Road at around 10:10 a.m. after receiving reports of a house fire, Riverside Fire Chief Dan Stitzel stated. Four 911 calls were made during the incident by bystanders reporting smoke and flames emanating from the building. One of the calls informed of a possible person and dog still inside the burning building. I think there might be someone in the house still and the house is about to blow up from the huge fire, a female 911 caller told dispatch. The bedroom is on fire... Its coming out the windows. I think theres a dog inside too, a male speaker said on the same call. I kind of heard like barking, but I dont know if its the neighbors house. Firefighters found a female in the kitchen and a deceased dog during their search, Stitzel informed. It does appear that she might have been attempting to get out of the house. The woman was transported to Miami Valley Hospital after suffering critical injuries, the victims family told fire officials. The fire and smoke caused extensive damage to the homes interior, Stitzel stated. Riverside Fire is investigating the cause of the fire. A man tried hiring a killer, who was really an undercover FBI agent, to murder his wife and her new boyfriend, federal prosecutors said. Mohammed Chowdhury, 46, of Boston told undercover agents, acting as the hired killer and their associates, that he wanted them to rob and beat the pair so authorities wouldnt suspect him, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Massachusetts. Now Chowdhury faces a murder-for-hire charge after his arrest on Jan. 17, the office announced in a Jan. 18 news release. The FBI arrested Chowdhury immediately after he gave one undercover agent, who he thought was an associate, a down payment of $500 for the murders on Jan. 17, court documents show. In a subsequent interview with the FBI, Chowdhury admitted he was paying to punish his wife and her boyfriend and initially denied that his plans for punishment entailed murder, according to an affidavit. McClatchy News contacted Chowdhurys attorney for comment on Jan. 18 and didnt immediately receive a response. More on the case The FBI was alerted to Chowdhury by an individual described as a confidential source in charging documents. Initially, Chowdhury had already paid someone to kill his wife but that person stole his money and never did so, the source told the FBI, according to the affidavit. Afterward, Chowdhury told the source that he needed the murder done as soon as possible and was willing to rob a store to get money for his plan, the affidavit states. By late November, the FBI used an undercover agent to act as a contract killer and message Chowdhury after getting his phone number from their source, according to investigators. Chowdhury is accused of telling this agent that his wife causes issues and wont let him see their children, the affidavit says. Throughout December and January, Chowdhury met with undercover agents to solicit their help in killing his wife and the boyfriend she had left him for, according to prosecutors. Story continues On one occasion, he asked the group so how we gonna disappear his, uh, body? and made it clear that he wanted no evidence left behind, prosecutors said. Then, he gave them photos of his wife and her boyfriend, told them where they lived and what their work schedules were like, according to the release. When one agent said the job would cost $10,000 per murder, Chowdhury is accused of saying, I thought it was going to be cheaper, the affidavit says. He then agreed to pay $4,000 for each killing and $500 as a down payment, prosecutors said. On Jan. 17, Chowdhury met with two undercover agents in a parking lot in Dorchester, handed over the $500 and was arrested on the spot, the affidavit says. While being interviewed by the FBI, Chowdhury said that he was a good person under mental stress and that his wife had caused him pain and ruined his life, according to the affidavit. When an agent said he should just tell the truth, Chowdhury admitted the $500 was a down payment in connection with his murder-for-hire plot, investigators said. If convicted on the murder-for-hire charge, Chowdhury could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, according to prosecutors. Man caught with water gun full of poison was on way to kill ex-wife in Texas, feds say Supervisor had employee shot to death after exposing underpaid workers, feds say Son had father killed at McDonalds drive-thru to take over family business, feds say Recent agreements between Tehran and Moscow on an oil-gas swap is another sign of Russias turn towards Asian oil and gas markets and closer relations between the two countries in light of Russias war in Ukraine. If these agreements are finalized, Iran will import 20 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Russia annually. Since Iran and Russia do not have a common land border, gas must be swapped from two routes, namely Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. BACKGROUND: Since most of Irans oil and gas sources and refineries are in the south, hydrocarbons must be transferred to Irans northern and densely populated provinces through pipelines, a process inducing costs as well as energy losses. For various reasons, Iran is not exploiting oil and gas resources in the Caspian Sea. Under these circumstances, the swap of oil and gas from Russia, Central Asia and the South Caucasus allows Iran to increase the supply of oil and gas to the north during the cold autumn and winter seasons, while freeing up the equivalent capacity for export from Irans southern ports in the Persian Gulf. Based on this logic, during the presidency of Seyed Mohammad Khatami (1997- 2005), Iran engaged in a project known as the Caspian Sea Republics Oil Swap, allowing swaps of crude oil with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, while Iran's oil from the south was delivered for export. This process was discontinued when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in August 2005, although Iran has been able to swap gas to Nakhichevan, the landlocked exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan, under a 25-year agreement starting in 2005. After Hassan Rouhani became Irans president in August 2013 and while the nuclear sanctions were still in place, Iran and Russia agreed on an oil-for-goods swap worth US$ 1.5 billion in 2014. The agreement allowed Russia to buy up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day in exchange for Russian equipment and goods. This oil contract, with an estimated value of US$ 18 billion per year, was practically forgotten with the nuclear agreement between Iran and the 5+1 countries (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015 as Iran was able to restore part of its oil export capacity and faced fewer challenges to receiving financial resources from exports. Yet oil and gas swaps have been reactualized in Irans energy policy, in light of the sanctions imposed on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. IMPLICATIONS: Due to Western sanctions against Russia, an important part of Russia's oil and gas exports have been diverted to Asian customers, including China, India and Iran. If the agreements are finalized, Iran will import 20 bcm of gas from Russia annually. Since Iran and Russia do not have a common land border, they will need to swap oil and gas from two routes, namely Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in Central Asia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. According to Irans Ministry of Petroleum, it has been agreed that the equivalent of 6 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas per day will soon be swapped from Russia to be exported from southern Iran in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Iran will buy 9 mcm of Russian gas through Azerbaijan. The U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in May 2018, President Donald Trumps policy of maximum pressure against Iran and the imposition of extensive sanctions, along with the uncertain prospect of nuclear negotiations to revive the JCPOA, have reintroduced severe restrictions on Irans oil and gas production and export. Simultaneously, Western sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine and Russias turn towards the Asian oil and gas markets have made swapping oil and gas with Iran an attractive prospect for Moscow. Thus, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Gazprom signed a historic US$ 40 billion deal for joint investment in oil and gas projects on July 2022. In the continuation of this process, during a meeting in Moscow with Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, talks are underway with Iran on plans for oil and gas swap deals as the two countries eye closer cooperation to counter the foreign sanctions against their energy exports. Views in Iran differ regarding the oil and gas swap with Russia. Defenders and supporters believe that by buying this gas with Russian discounts and using it in the northern provinces, Iran can export its gas directly from extraction sites in the south at a higher price to neighbors such as Pakistan, Oman, Iraq and Turkey, instead of transferring it to the north. Mohammad Sadeq Jokar, head of the International Energy Studies Institute in Tehran, believes that this is a key opportunity for the Islamic Republic to receive this gas via the most operational route from Turkmenistan. By reversing the Central Asia Center gas pipeline system that used to connect Turkmenistans gas to Russia, Iran can use the capacity of 30 to 50 bcm of its transfer from Turkmenistan, of which only 5.5 bcm is currently active. Iran also has two pipelines that can deliver gas from Turkmenistan with a final capacity of 20 bcm. On the other hand, opponents and critics believe that the significant reduction in prices of Russian oil and gas has actually attracted Irans traditional customers, especially China and India. The same development is visible in the steel sector, as Russia has won part of Irans steel export market by offering lower prices. Thus, if negotiations to revive the JCPOA are concluded and Iran is allowed to increase its oil and gas exports, Iran will in practice have lost an important part of its export market. According to Gholam Hossein Hassantash, energy expert and former director of the Center for International Energy Studies in Tehran, the gas swap with Russia has no logic or economic justification. Iran consumes an average of 800 to 900 mcm of gas daily, and there is a shortage of 55 mcm per day in winter. Therefore, 20 bcm of gas imported from Russia is not a large volume. The cooperation of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan in the Iran-Russia oil and gas swap project is key to its feasibility. Despite the sanctions against Russia and Iran, it is currently possible for third countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus to engage with the planned swaps. U.S. sanctions against Iran during Joe Bidens administration do not have the intensity of maximum pressure as was the case under Trump. Therefore, only if the negotiation process to revive the JCPOA fails in such a way that Irans nuclear case once again falls under the seventh chapter of the UN Charter, we can expect the suspension of Azerbaijans, Kazakhstans and Turkmenistans cooperation in the oil and gas swaps. CONCLUSIONS: Before its full invasion of Ukraine, Russia exported five million barrels of crude oil and 2.8 million barrels of condensates, gas liquids and petroleum products daily. This is equivalent to seven percent of the worlds energy market. However, 65 percent of Russias oil and gas exports went to Europe and the U.S., and Asian markets did not constitute a significant share of Russias energy market. For example, India received only three percent of its oil imports from Russia in 2021, while China, the worlds largest oil importer, received only 15 percent from Russia. This situation has changed significantly during the war in Ukraine and the massive Western sanctions against Russia. The surplus of Russian hydrocarbon resources has reached 270 mcm of gas, 2 million barrels of oil and 1 million barrels of petroleum products per day. In these circumstances, attractive Russian oil discounts have induced India and China to increase oil imports from Russia. Indias oil purchases from Russia more than doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year, while Russia became Chinas top oil supplier. The recent agreements between Tehran and Moscow on oil and gas swaps is another sign of Russias turn towards the Asian oil and gas markets as well as closer relations between Russia and Iran as an effect of the war. The agreements are all the more important since unlike China and India, Iran is not an importer of oil and gas; it ranks second in the world in terms of natural gas reserves and fourth in proven crude oil reserves. Indeed, sanctions against the two states are seemingly the most important factor in Tehrans and Moscows decision to swap oil and gas. Previous experiences, including oil and food swaps before the JCPOA, have shown that if one of the parties is relieved of sanctions and can access export markets, oil and gas swap agreements lose their logic and economic justification. Should the current sanctions regimes change, the agreements between Tehran and Moscow could face a similar fate. Vali Kaleji is Ph.D. in Regional Studies, Central Asia and Caucasian Studies, in Tehran, Iran. He has published numerous analytical articles on Eurasian issues at the Jamestown Foundations Eurasia Daily Monitor, the American Foreign Policy Councils Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, The Middle East Institute and the Valdai Club. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . 'Impracticable for the state': GOP lawmakers in Wyoming just proposed a ban on EV sales, phase-out by 2035 here are 3 big oil stocks to revisit Sales of electric vehicles have been booming in the U.S. As people become more aware of the impact of burning fossil fuels on the environment, many states including New York and California are planning to phase out gas and diesel-powered cars. Don't miss Over 65% of Americans don't shop around for a better car insurance deal and that could be costing you $500 a month 'Hold onto your money': Jeff Bezos says you might want to rethink buying a 'new automobile, refrigerator, or whatever' here are 3 better recession-proof buys UBS says 61% of millionaire collectors allocate up to 30% of their overall portfolio to this exclusive asset class But not Wyoming. A group of the states lawmakers proposed legislation that would end the sale of new EVs in Wyoming by 2035. Wyoming's vast stretches of highway, coupled with a lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, make the widespread use of electric vehicles impracticable for the state, the bill reads. The expansion of electric vehicle charging stations in Wyoming and throughout the country necessary to support more electric vehicles will require massive amounts of new power generation in order to sustain the misadventure of electric vehicles. Moreover, the proposed legislation points out that the oil and gas industry has created countless jobs in Wyoming and phasing out new EV sales will ensure the stability of the industry. To be sure, despite the increasing focus on ESG investing, traditional energy is far from dead. The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE) which provides exposure to oil and gas companies is actually up 39% in the last 12 months, in stark contrast to the S&P 500s double-digit decline in the same period. Moreover, Wall Street sees further upside in quite a few companies engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. Heres a look at three of them. Shell Headquartered in London, Shell (NYSE:SHEL) is a multinational energy giant with operations in more than 70 countries. It produces around 3.2 barrels of oil equivalent per day, has an interest in 10 refineries, and sold 64.2 million tons of liquefied natural gas in 2021. Story continues Its a staple for global investors, too. Shell is listed on the London Stock Exchange, Euronext Amsterdam, and the New York Stock Exchange. The companys NYSE-listed shares are up 17% over the past year. Piper Sandler analyst Ryan Todd sees an opportunity in the oil and gas supermajor. The analyst has an overweight rating on Shell and a price target of $70. Considering that Shell trades at around $59.50 per share today, Todds new price target implies a potential upside of 18%. READ MORE: 4 simple ways to protect your money against white-hot inflation (without being a stock market genius) Chevron Chevron (NYSE:CVX) is another oil and gas supermajor thats benefiting from the commodity boom. For Q3, the company reported earnings of $11.2 billion, which represented an 84% increase from the same period last year. Sales and other operating revenues totaled $64 billion for the quarter, up 49% year over year. Last January, Chevrons board approved a 6% increase to the quarterly dividend rate to $1.42 per share. That gives the company an annual dividend yield of 3.1%. The stock has enjoyed a nice rally too, climbing 40% in the last 12 months. Earlier this month, Barclays analyst Jeanine Wai reiterated an overweight rating on Chevron while raising the price target from $196 to $212. That implies a potential upside of 17% from the current levels. Exxon Mobil Commanding a market cap of over $460 billion, Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) is bigger than Shell and Chevron. The company also boasts the strongest stock price performance among the three Exxon shares are up 55% over the past year. Its not hard to see why investors like the stock: the oil-producing giant gushes profits and cash flow in this commodity price environment. In the first nine months of 2022, Exxon earned $43.0 billion in profits, a huge increase from the $14.2 billion in the year-ago period. Free cash flow totaled $49.8 billion for the first nine months, compared to $22.9 billion in the same period last year. Solid financials allow the company to return cash to investors. Exxon pays quarterly dividends of 91 cents per share, translating to an annual yield of 3.2%. Jefferies analyst Lloyd Byrne has a buy rating on Exxon and a price target of $133 around 17% above where the stock sits today. What to read next Here's the golden secret to making your retirement fund as secure as Fort Knox You could be the landlord of Walmart, Whole Foods and Kroger (and collect fat grocery store-anchored income on a quarterly basis) Americans are paying nearly 40% more on home insurance compared to 12 years ago here's how to spend less on peace of mind This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. By Devjyot Ghoshal and Uditha Jayasinghe COLOMBO (Reuters) -India has told the International Monetary Fund that it strongly supports Sri Lanka's debt restructuring plan as the island nation seeks a $2.9 billion loan from the global lender, according to a letter seen by Reuters. "We hereby confirm our strong support for Sri Lanka's prospective (loan) program and commit to supporting Sri Lanka with financing/debt relief consistent with restoring Sri Lanka's public debt sustainability," Indian finance ministry official Rajat Kumar Mishra told the IMF chief in a letter dated Jan. 16. Sri Lanka requires the backing of China and India - its biggest bilateral lenders - to reach a final agreement with the IMF on the $2.9 billion loan that is essential to help the country emerge from its worst financial crisis in seven decades. "The financing/debt relief provided by Export-Import Bank of India will be consistent with restoring debt sustainability under the IMF-supported program," the official said. Sri Lanka has to secure prior financing assurances from creditors, put its heavy debt burden on a sustainable path and boost public revenue before the global lender will disburse the funds, the IMF has said. The island nation is confident of finalising support from the IMF in the first quarter of 2023. Sri Lanka owes India around $1 billion that will come under the debt restructuring plan, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this week. New Delhi separately provided Sri Lanka with about $4 billion in rapid assistance between January and July last year, including credit lines, a currency swap arrangement and deferred import payments. Sri Lanka owed Chinese lenders $7.4 billion - nearly a fifth of its public external debt - by the end of last year, according to calculations by the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI). (Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Uditha Jayasinghe, writing by Tanvi Mehta; Editing by Krishna N. Das) The Iowa Attorney General's office ruled Wednesday that the Des Moines police officers who shot and killed a 16-year-old boy at a southside apartment complex Dec. 26 "acted with legal justification." The office, led by newly elected Attorney General Brenna Bird, based its ruling on interviews with the three officers who fired at the boy and another officer, as well as other witnesses, and a review of the officers' body cam video. Officers Noah Bollinger, Zachary Duitscher and Thomas Garcia have been on leave since the shooting. What happened during the confrontation with DMPD? The report said Bollinger and Garcia were dispatched to the complex after 911 operators received a call from the boy's stepfather saying that the teen, identified in the report by his initials, T.J., had pulled a handgun on him. It said the officers arrived at the apartment complex at 400 E. McKinley Ave at 12:30 a.m., found that the boy was in his grandmother's apartment, near his parents' apartment, and went inside. It said they were joined by Duitscher and a fourth officer, Nicholas Howard, who entered by breaking through a rear glass door, and negotiated with the boy for a total of 4 minutes, 20 seconds. They pleaded along with family members more than 70 times for him to put down the gun and end the situation peacefully, but he did not comply, it said. The boy, the report said, told the officers that his brother had just died and that "I want to be with my brother" and "I am going to die." His brother, Brandon Michael Tukes, 23, had been fatally shot Nov. 5 in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona, according to police there. The report said the boy told the officers he would keep the gun, and raised it above his waist three times during the confrontation. It said the officers would have been justified in opening fire during any of those movements. The boy's grandmother and a friend of T.J. were in the room when the boy started raising his gun again toward Duitscher and Howard, the report said. At that point, Duitscher, Bollinger and Garcia, who were as close as 3 feet from the boy, shot him 14 times, wounding him in the chest, abdomen and head. The report said the head wounds apparently occurred as the boy fell, and that he did not fire his gun, nor did the fourth officer, Howard. Story continues The officers attempted life-saving measures and took the boy to a hospital, where he died. Attorney general: 'They were forced to act' The report, which relied on an investigation by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said the grandmother was "understandably shocked and upset since she observed her grandson get shot and killed." But in an interview with investigators, it said, she said nothing "that contradicts the officers or is inconsistent with any evidence of other statements taken during the investigation." The friend of T.J., when interviewed, claimed to have no memory of the events and gave a false name, the report said. It concluded that the officers had acted legally and are not liable for any criminal charges in relation to the shooting. It said that all four officers had their body cameras switched on and that there appeared to be no missing video. "T.J. put in motion the circumstances that brought about his death. Despite the intense efforts of the (officers) involved T.J provided them no choice but to shoot in order to defend themselves and others," the report said. It said Bollinger knew T.J. from a previous personal contact, and at one point asked him to put down the gun so they could talk, but that "all efforts by law enforcement had no apparent effect on T.J.," who "never provided any indication that he would disarm himself." It added that the officers "showed great restraint" in not firing sooner. Every day, Iowa law enforcement officers put themselves in harm's way to keep us safe, not always knowing what will happen next, Bird said in a news release. In this particular case, four Des Moines police officers entered the scene knowing a perpetrator was armed. After refusing to comply with the officers requests to put the weapon down, they were forced to act, protecting themselves and those around them. A member of T.J.'s family said they will issue a statement in the coming days "and we believe he deserves justice as some info released is not true and some has been left out." Officers remain on leave during internal investigation Des Moines police spokesperson Sgt. Paul Parizek said the department is conducting an "internal policy review" of the shooting. He said the officers will remain on leave until the review is complete. Parizek said he expects the review to be completed soon, as the department needs only to review the same evidence as the Attorney General's Office to ensure the officers did not violate any policies. "Tragic event for all involved, and the AGs ruling is certainly no cause to celebrate. However, those officers should be commended for their courage and restraint," Parizek wrote in a message to the Des Moines Register. In response to a Register request for the body camera video, he said the department will soon release a "transparency video," which includes some of the footage. The Register is requesting the complete video from all four officers' cameras. Parizek said all three of the officers who fired at T.J., who are each five-year veterans of the force, had completed city-mandated de-escalation training. The report said that in the initial call, T.J's stepfather said the boy was "on the run" after being sent to Woodward Academy by a Polk County judge for a reason it didn't specify. It said he had left the state residential treatment facility for troubled boys ages 12 to 18 without authorization and made his way home. Woodward Executive Director Shawn Hollenkamp, reached Wednesday night, declined to comment, citing patient privacy laws. T.J.'s funeral was held Saturday. Francesca Block is a breaking news reporter at the Des Moines Register. Reach her at FBlock@registermedia.com or on Twitter at @francescablock3. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Des Moines officers justified in killing armed teen, Iowa AG says Tehran An Iranian man has been jailed for more than eight years after decapitating his wife and displaying her head in public in a case that shocked the country, the judiciary said Wednesday. Mona Heidari, 17, was killed in February 2022 by her husband and brother-in-law in Ahvaz, the capital of the southwestern province of Khuzestan. Video that emerged later of her smiling husband parading her decapitated head in the street sparked an outpouring of grief and outrage in the Islamic republic. Sajjad Heidarnava was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for murder and eight months for assault, judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi told reporters. A file photo shows two Iranian women walking down a street in Shiraz, Iran, covered from head to toe in traditional chador garments as required under the Islamic republic's strict interpretation of Islamic law. / Credit: iStock/Getty The family of Heidari had pardoned the killer rather than demanding qesas Iran's Islamic law of retribution. "The accused has no right to protest against the verdict and the decision is final," the spokesman said. "The second defendant in the case, Heidar Heidarnava, was sentenced to 45 months in prison for complicity in intentional homicide," he added. At the time of the murder, media outlets in Iran said Heidari had been married at the age of 12 and was the mother of a three-year-old son when she was killed. After the crime, human rights defenders called for changes to the law to protect women against domestic violence and to increase the minimum age of marriage for girls, currently set at 13. Iran has been rocked by protests that erupted after the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country's dress code for women. At least four people have been executed for their alleged involvement in those protests, which Iran's government calls "riots." Almost 20 more are facing possible death sentences. According to data gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center organization, Iran was second only to China in 2021 for using state-sanctioned execution as a punishment for crimes. Iran executed more than 314 people that year, according to the center. Story continues Ana Walshe's disappearance: A timeline of events Actress Aisha Tyler on reviving her role on fan-favorite TV show "Criminal Minds: Evolution" Frida's CEO on how to handle the less glamorous moments of parenthood JERUSALEM (AP) Israels Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must fire a key ally from the countrys new Cabinet, presenting the Israeli leader with a potential coalition crisis and deepening a rift over the power of the courts. Ten of 11 judges on the high court found that Aryeh Deri, the influential head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party who has served repeatedly in Netanyahus previous governments, is disqualified from serving as a minister after he was convicted last year for tax offenses and placed on probation as part of a plea deal. Deri has pledged not to quit and met after the ruling with Netanyahu. Most of the judges on the panel decided that this appointment suffers from extreme unreasonability, and therefore the prime minister must remove Deri from his position, the court said in a statement. Deri was defiant. Im glad court ruled as it did. Let the people see and judge, he said, declining specifics. "When they close the door on us, well get in through the window. When they close the window, well break through the ceiling. The much-anticipated ruling comes as Israel is being roiled by a dispute over sweeping changes to the countrys legal system. One such proposal under consideration is the elimination of the court's reasonability test when reviewing government decisions. Critics say the various changes at issue would place too much power in the hands of the government and weaken the Supreme Court. Proponents say they would correct a power imbalance between the executive and judicial branches. Netanyahu will now have to decide whether he abides by the court ruling and fires his key ally, Deri or takes the dispute with the judicial system up a notch and defies it. A spokesman for Netanyahu had no immediate comment. But the leaders of the parties in the ruling coalition decried the ruling as a slap at voters after the Nov. 1 election. In a statement, they vowed to act in any legal way that is available to us and without delay to correct the injustice and the severe damage caused to the democratic choice and the sovereignty of the people." Story continues Dr. Amir Fuchs, senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, said Netanyahu is unlikely to ignore the ruling because then hed be in contempt of court and there is no appealing a Supreme Court decision. I am sure that he will abide by the ruling. It doesnt mean that he will respect the ruling, Fuchs said. What will probably happen is that they will do very quick legislation that will enable him to appoint Deri again. Its not clear whether the proposed legal changes, including a plan to allow lawmakers to overrule Supreme Court decisions, could retroactively be applied to Deris case. Critics said such a move would bend the rules to accommodate a convict and could encourage corruption among politicians. The ruling carries potentially troublesome consequences for Netanyahus coalition. Some Shas members have urged Netanyahu to find a solution that would grant Deri the title they say he deserves as head of a mid-sized party. Otherwise, the party could bolt the coalition, which would shrink Netanyahus 64-seat majority by 11 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Yakov Margi, a Shas Cabinet minister, told Kan public radio that, if Aryeh Deri isnt in the government, there isnt a government. In a move that was seen as crucial to bringing the governing coalition together, Israeli legislators last month changed a law that prohibited a convict on probation from being a Cabinet minister. That cleared the way for Deri to join the government but prompted the Supreme Court challenge. Deri is currently serving half a term as the minister of health and interior affairs. He was set to become finance minister in the second half of the term and he is also deputy prime minister. Likud and its ultra-Orthodox and far-right partners captured a majority of seats in the Knesset, or parliament, in Nov. 1 elections, and formed a government that has made changing the legal system a centerpiece of its agenda. Public opinion polls have shown most Israelis oppose Deri serving as a government minister. Still, the Deri ruling is only expected to deepen the divide over the legal overhaul. It will be seen by both camps as an affirmation of their views: either that the courts, in determining who can be a Cabinet minister, have too much power, or that judicial oversight can hold back legislators from questionable laws. Today its clear that the court, which is not elected, is not interested in compromises and wants limitless control over elected officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a statement. Reform now! Opposition leader Yair Lapid said that if Deri is not fired, Israel will enter an unprecedented constitutional crisis and it will no longer be a democracy and will not be a law-abiding state. In a sign of the charged atmosphere, a Shas member of parliament said before the ruling that if the Supreme Court barred Deri, the justices were shooting themselves in the head. Deri was sentenced to three years in prison for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in 2000 during a stint as interior minister in the 1990s. He served 22 months in prison but made a political comeback and retook the reins of Shas in 2013. TOKYO (AP) A Japanese court on Wednesday found three former utility company executives not guilty of negligence over the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and the subsequent deaths of more than 40 elderly residents during their forced evacuation. The Tokyo High Court ruling upheld a 2019 lower court decision that also acquitted the three former top officials of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, saying that a tsunami of the size that hit the plant was unforeseeable and the executives could not be held negligent. The case is the only criminal trial related to the nuclear accident, in which a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami hit the plant, knocking out its cooling systems and causing three reactors to melt. A large amount of radiation was released into surrounding communities and the sea, causing tens of thousands of residents to lose their homes, jobs and community ties. The court said ex-TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 82, and two other former executives were not guilty of causing the deaths of 44 elderly patients whose already waning health deteriorated during or after forced evacuations from a local hospital and a nursing home. The acquittal disappointed and angered dozens of Fukushima residents and their supporters who attended the ruling or rallied outside the court. Im enraged by the judges who reached the decision without fully investigating the case, Fukushima resident Ruiko Muto told reporters, noting that the judges did not even visit the plant. Its unacceptable to many of the relatives of the victims and others who were affected by the disaster. The executives were accused of failing to anticipate the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on March 11, 2011, and of failing to take measures that might have saved the plant. The tsunami was as high as 17 meters (56 feet) at some locations. Katsumata and his co-defendants former vice presidents Sakae Muto, 72, and Ichiro Takekuro, 76 consistently pleaded not guilty and maintained that predicting the tsunami was impossible. Story continues The defendants had been charged by a civil prosecution panel. During their trials, prosecutors demanded five-year prison sentences for each executive, arguing that TEPCO could have prevented the disaster had the plant installed sufficient safety measures such as increasing the water tightness of the reactors before the tsunami, based on a long-term tsunami assessment provided by experts. But the court dismissed their argument as an afterthought and said the tsunami prediction was not reliable information. Shozaburo Ishida, who headed the prosecution, said the ruling neglected the significance of long-term tsunami assessment data. He said the prosecution plans to study the ruling and consider appealing to the Supreme Court. It's like saying there is nothing they can do to prevent another major accident. It's so irresponsible," said Yuichi Kaido, a lawyer representing the Fukushima residents. He said the attitude toward safety seen in the ruling could add to risks just as Japan pushes for greater use of nuclear energy. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government recently adopted a plan to maximize the number of working reactors by accelerating restarts and prolonging their operational lifespan, while developing next-generation reactors to replace those set for decommissioning, to ensure a stable energy supply and meet targets for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. Wednesday's ruling follows a series of divisive court decisions in civil lawsuits. A ruling last July said the disaster could have been prevented if TEPCO had taken better safety measures and ordered top executives to pay more than 13 trillion yen ($99 billion). The Supreme Court in June, however, said the disaster was unforeseeable and dismissed compensation demands by thousands of residents. It acknowledged, however, that experts' tsunami predictions were credible. Prosecutors have said TEPCO was conducting a tsunami safety review following a 2007 earthquake in Niigata in northern Japan that damaged another TEPCO plant, and that the three former executives regularly participated in the process. In March 2008, a TEPCO subsidiary projected that a tsunami as high as 15.7 meters (47 feet) could hit Fukushima, prompting the company to consider building seawalls, but the executives allegedly delayed the idea to avoid additional spending. Government and parliamentary investigations have said TEPCOs lack of a safety culture and weak risk management, including an underestimation of tsunami risks, led to the disaster. They said TEPCO colluded with regulators to disregard tsunami protection measures. TEPCO has said it could have been more proactive with safety measures, but that it could not have anticipated the massive tsunami that crippled the plant. Yoshiko Furukawa, a 59-year-old evacuee from Tomioka, a town about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the plant, said, A big question that sits in the bottom of my stomach is, do I have to suffer because I lived there and was it my fault? No, then whose responsibility is it?" Jennifer Lopez says she just missed being part of an iconic awards show moment. The Hustlers star told E! News in a recent interview that she was originally slated for one of the onstage kisses Madonna shared with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. I was filming a movie in Canada, and we had met me, [Madonna] and Britney to do it at her home, and then I just couldnt get off the film, Lopez told the celebrity news outlet. So, we couldnt do it. They got Christina Aguilera, I think, to do it, and I didnt wind up doing it. Lopez didnt name the film she was working on, but her 2004 movies Jersey Girl and Shall We Dance were filming in Canada around that time. At New York Citys Radio City Music Hall, meanwhile, a different kind of performance took center stage on Aug. 28, 2003. Spears and Aguilera first took the stage to perform Madonnas Like a Virgin, and then the Queen of Pop joined them for her song Hollywood. Before Missy Elliott came out to perform Work It, the trio took a beat for Madonna to kiss Spears and then Aguilera. Shock value gets more and more extreme or whatever, Aguilera reportedly told Apple Musics Zane Lowe in 2020. But honestly, at the time, yeah, I never thought anything of it. It was like, OK, its two girls kissing. It wasnt shocking back then. Its not shocking now, to me. Jennifer Lopez said she was originally in talks to perform with Britney Spears and Madonna over Christina Aguilera. Jennifer Lopez said she was originally in talks to perform with Britney Spears and Madonna over Christina Aguilera. What did surprise Aguilera was the frenzy Spears and Madonnas kiss had garnered over her own. MTV cut from the stage to the crowd after Spears kiss to get her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlakes reaction thus failing to broadcast Aguileras smooch with Madonna. And you know why they cut it? Aguilera told Andy Cohen in 2018 during an interview on his SiriusXM Radio Andy show. They cut away to get Justins reaction. I saw the newspaper the next day and it was like, Oh well, I guess I got left out of that one. Story continues Meanwhile, Spears fielded incessant questions about the kiss for the rest of the year. She reportedly told CNN that September that she didnt know it was going to be that long and everything, she doesnt go home and have orgies, and that she never kissed a woman before. Spears added at the time that she probably would not do it again unless it was with Madonna which she did during her wedding ceremony to Sam Asghari last year. As for Lopez, who recently tied the knot herself, its all gravy. I love Madonna, Lopez told E! News. Im a huge fan. I always have been. Related... A Lawrence man who called a Kansas congressman in June stating this is a threat to your life questioned that same congressman in federal court Wednesday about his reaction to the voicemail and whether he would listen if a constituent told him they were a messenger from God. Defendant Chase Neill began representing himself Wednesday in a federal trial over allegations he threatened to murder U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Republican who represents eastern Kansas, including part of Wyandotte County. Last year, U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter ruled Neill was competent to follow court proceedings and stand trial following a psychological evaluation. However, an earlier order from a magistrate judge raised serious concerns about Neills mental health. Those concerns included what his mother described as changed behavior following a head injury within the last five years. On Wednesday morning, Teeter granted Neills motion to represent himself but warned him it was a bad idea. Later that day, LaTurner took the stand as a witness for the prosecution at the trial at the federal courthouse in Topeka. Prosecutors played a voicemail in court Wednesday that Neill allegedly left LaTurner on June 6 of last year. In the voicemail, Neill declared he is the son of God, the Messiah and Ephraim. After making claims about conversations around witchcraft in Congress, Neill said on the voicemail that he was making a death threat against LaTurner and every other member of Congress. I will kill you but the insurance will say it is an act of God and that it is covered by the freedom of speech, the voicemail said. In his testimony, LaTurner detailed security upgrades in his Topeka office following Neills voicemail, securing police protection at his home and his worry for his family in the aftermath. This threat was so clear that it made me nervous for my staff, he said. The second-term congressman remained composed as Neill, the man accused of threatening him, then cross-examined him about how he interpreted the voicemail. Story continues Neill referenced passages from the Bible and asked LaTurner whether it had occurred to him that the references to himself as the son of God and the killing coming by an act of God indicated to him that he was delivering a message in the voicemail. I thought it meant something more nefarious, that there would be an attempt to kill me but it wouldnt be detectable, LaTurner said. He said the references to being the Messiah seemed unreasonable and nonsensical. In a series of questions, Neill asked LaTurner if he was familiar with Old Testament doctrine in the Bible in which prophets spoke for God in the first person and whether he would listen if a constituent told LaTurner he was a religious heir sent to deliver a message. LaTurner drew a line between acceptable constituent communication and violent threat. He told Neill his office would listen to constituents, but that it becomes a different matter when death threats are involved. I thought the whole voicemail was unreasonable, especially the death threats part, LaTurner said when Neill asked whether he found the claim in the voicemail that he was Ephraim unreasonable. LaTurner was the final witness for the prosecution. Neill began making a case in his own defense Wednesday afternoon and the trial is scheduled to wrap up Thursday. Before Neill began representing himself, his public defenders argued in opening statements Tuesday that Neill never represented a true threat to LaTurner and that his weapons are meteors and plagues. The case comes amid a growing number of threats against elected officials including an attack last year on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosis husband. In November of 2021, a Missouri man was sentenced to two and half years in prison for threatening to kill Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat. On the stand, LaTurner said Neills voicemail was the second death threat he had received since joining Congress. Shortly after his election in 2020, LaTurner said, an anonymous letter with a death threat was sent to his home. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The ACLU is mounting a major new effort to overturn Kansas death penalty, arguing its racially discriminatory and that, because of a landmark state Supreme Court decision upholding abortion rights, officials must clear a high legal bar to show capital sentences are constitutional. The Sedgwick County murder case against Kyle Young, who is accused of a double killing in downtown Wichita on Jan. 2, 2020, has become ground zero in the death penalty abolition push. The American Civil Liberties Union has quietly filed an extensive legal briefing in the case, with numerous expert reports, attacking capital punishment as violating the Kansas Constitution. Henderson Hill, senior counsel at the ACLUs capital punishment project, said Kansans have a healthy skepticism of government that should extend to the death penalty. Government acts no larger than when it chooses to take the life of a citizen, Hill said in an interview. And when we have our doubts about whether government can deliver mail, educate its children, feed the hungry Why should Kansas have confidence that its administration of the death penalty is constitutional? The ACLU says that when the Kansas Supreme Court in 2019 found that the state constitution protects abortion, a decision called Hodes, the justices set a strict scrutiny standard for laws that infringe on fundamental rights. The ACLU argues this high bar means Kansas has the burden of proof to demonstrate why the death penalty shouldnt be thrown out. For the very same reasons liberty applies to reproductive rights, life should apply to the death penalty, Hill said. Black jurors in Kansas, especially Black women, are disproportionately likely to be excluded from juries weighing whether to impose the death penalty, the ACLU claims. How Kansas conducts death penalty trials biases jurors toward imposing death sentences, the organization argues, and the death penalty violates the state constitutions protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Story continues The ACLUs involvement in the Young case is part of a set of legal challenges nationwide over how juries are selected in death penalty cases. The ACLU has also launched litigation in North Carolina and Florida, arguing death penalty jury selection in those states is racially discriminatory. Far from severing its historical ties to racial violence and terror, the death penalty continues to perpetuate racial discrimination. Racial bias drives jury selection, the use of discretion by prosecutors and police, and the imposition of jury verdicts, Bria Nelson, an attorney with the ACLU of Kansas, wrote in a legal briefing filed in October. Sedgwick County District Court Judge Jeffrey Goering has scheduled a hearing over the death penalty challenge for Feb. 6. Youngs trial, which was scheduled to begin Feb. 7, has been continued until October 2023. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, a Republican, has urged Goering not to take up the issue because Young hasnt yet been convicted, let alone sentenced to death. Even so, Bennett wrote in a December filing, the issues raised have all been litigated and resolved by existing case law. Nine currently sentenced to death The legal fight over the death penalty playing out in Youngs case comes as the U.S. Supreme Court this month declined to hear appeals from Jonathan and Reginald Carr, brothers who killed four people in Wichita in December 2000. Kansas hasnt executed anyone since the state reinstated the death penalty in the 1990s. The last Kansas execution was carried out in 1965. For comparison, Missouri has regularly executed inmates since 1989, with two in 2022. Oklahoma has also regularly carried out executions since the early 1990s. Kansas is one of 24 states with the death penalty, but as of 2019 was among 11 states that hadnt conducted an execution in more than a decade, according to the Pew Research Center. Periodic attempts to repeal the death penalty have faltered in the Legislature. Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat who began her second term this month, said during her campaign she supports repeal. Rep. Mark Schreiber, an Emporia Republican, has twice introduced legislation seeking to abolish the death penalty but his bills have never made it through the committee process. He said Friday he plans to meet with advocates to determine whether or not to file a bill this year. He was unsure how court challenges to the death penalty would impact legislative efforts. I dont think its been a high priority, as long as Ive been in the Legislature, to move it, said Schreiber, who voiced concern about the possibility of executing an innocent person. I think theres beginning to get more interest in something like that to pass, its just a matter of getting it through the committee process and up to the floor and getting it passed there. Its not one I ever expected would move real quickly. Nine men currently have death sentences in Kansas, with seven having finished direct appeals. The latest effort to overturn the death penalty holds the potential to create years of additional litigation, especially if the challenge eventually reaches the Kansas Supreme Court. Nearly a year ago, the Kansas Supreme Court in two opinions affirmed the death penalty sentences of the Carr brothers. The court rejected arguments that the death penalty was unconstitutional and that errors at trial should void the death sentences. The decisions capped years of litigation over the Carr brothers. The Kansas Supreme Court overturned their death sentences in 2014, but the U.S. Supreme Court later overruled that ruling. The Kansas Supreme Courts 2014 decision led to a backlash and an unsuccessful campaign to oust the justices who had been involved in the opinion. Kansas Supreme Court Justice Dan Biles asks Attorney General Derek Schmidt a question during arguments. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the Hodes decision itself doesnt mean the death penalty violates the state constitution. The courts majority opinion said that the Kansas Constitution acknowledges a persons inalienable right to life, but that right is not absolute or nonforfeitable. In those decisions, the states high court rejected a facial challenge to how Kansas seats a jury to weigh whether to impose a death sentence. In other words, the court ruled the process itself wasnt unconstitutional as written. But the ACLU in Youngs case is now challenging the process as it is actually practiced. As applied, death qualification systematically excludes Black and female jurors, biases jurors against the defendant, and produces a jury disproportionately prone to conviction and death, Nelsons October filing says. Racial discrimination claimed The ACLU has filed several expert reports to bolster its argument. A survey of 600 jury-eligible adults in Sedgwick County in late December 2021 and January 2022 found that Black and white jury-eligible residents had significantly different views of the death penalty. Sixty-three percent of white respondents supported the death penalty, compared to 44% of Black respondents. The survey was conducted by a public opinion firm for Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California-Irvine, who produced an expert report that the ACLU has filed in Youngs case. The survey asked respondents the same kind of questions that a judge would ask when seating a jury qualified to impose the death penalty a process called death qualification. Lynch wrote that death qualification has the potential to disproportionately exclude Black jury-eligible citizens, especially impacting Black women. The results also indicate that the death qualification process will result in a jury pool that is significantly and substantially more supportive of the death penalty than is the broader jury-eligible population in the county, Lynch wrote. The ACLU also cites a report by Jeffrey Fagan, a professor of law and epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, who studied capital murder cases in Sedgwick County between 1994 and 2020. Fagan found that prosecutors were more likely to seek the death penalty in cases where victims were white or women, and overwhelmingly more likely in cases with white female victims. Additionally, Black or Hispanic defendants who kill white victims are significantly more likely to be charged with capital crimes and death-noticed compared to other death-eligible cases, according to Fagan. A statewide review of murder prosecutions between 1994 and 2021 by Frank Baumgartner, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, found that while the vast majority of homicide victims in Kansas were men, most death penalty cases involved female victims. At the same time, individuals who murdered Black men have avoided the death penalty. Though Black men account for roughly a third of all Kansas homicide victims, this State has never imposed the death penalty for the murder of a Black man, Baumgartner wrote. According to documents posted on the ACLUs website, some of the expert reports appear to have been originally prepared for the Sedgwick County case against Cornell McNeal, a Wichita man convicted of a 2014 capital murder. Bennett didnt seek the death penalty for McNeal, who in August was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The ACLUs filing also cites reporting by The Wichita Eagle to argue that Black capital defendants face discrimination from the moment police begin investigating until the moment the jury sentences them to die, and at every step in between. The Eagle reported in March on racist text messages between Wichita police officers. Three officers were suspended in the wake of the reporting. An investigation found 13 Wichita police officers, three Sedgwick County sheriffs deputies and two Wichita firefighters had sent and received inappropriate text messages. The three police officers who were suspended included a Black officer who sent a racist George Floyd meme during protests in 2020, a white officer who sent the meme to others, and a third white officer who identified with the Three Percenters, an anti-government militia group connected to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bennett, the Sedgwick County district attorney, has argued in response to the ACLU that the judge shouldnt allow Young, through the ACLU, to call witnesses on the death penalty since the trial hasnt even begun. And he has suggested the ACLUs experts are promoting an extreme viewpoint. The supportive documentation filed in support of defendants motion calls into question not merely the death penalty but the American criminal justice system at large, Bennett wrote. According to these experts, even well-meaning efforts have proven ineffective to correct an underfunded criminal justice system built on a centuries-old foundation of racism, given what the defense experts describe as racist prosecutors, a racist media, ineffectual judges, and racist jurors incapable of following the courts instructions, Bennett wrote. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett questions a witness during a preliminary hearing for Cornell McNeal on October 1, 2015. Hill, the ACLU lawyer focused on capital punishment, said the arguments that the ACLU is making that the jury selection process for death penalty cases is discriminatory only underscore the need for a decision before Youngs trial. Part of our claim and part of the evidence is this process distorts the compilation of the jury, Hill said. You get jurors that are much more conviction-prone, you get jurors that are much more death-prone. The Stars Katie Bernard and The Wichita Eagles Chance Swaim contributed reporting KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) A former researcher who was accused of hiding work he did in China while employed by the University of Kansas, was sentenced Wednesday to time served by a federal judge who said his action did not warrant a prison sentence. Feng Franklin Tao was originally convicted in April on four counts, including three counts of wire fraud. But U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in September threw out the wire fraud convictions and let the false statement conviction stand. Tao did not disclose on a form he filled out for Kansas in 2019 that he was named to a Chinese talent program, the Changjiang Professorship. He traveled to China to set up a laboratory and recruit staff for Fuzhou University, while telling Kansas officials that he was in Germany. Federal prosecutors argued that Tao defrauded the University of Kansas, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation by lying about work he was doing for Fuzhou University in China. The university and the federal agencies, which awarded Tao grants for research projects, contended his actions cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. In announcing the sentence, Robinson said prosecutors had presented no evidence during the trial that Tao received any money for his work in China, which is required for a wire fraud conviction. She said when the trial started, she expected to hear evidence that Tao's deceptions caused financial loss and that he shared important research with Chinese officials at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and the three institutions. Rather, the evidence showed that Tao continued fulfilling his duties to the University of Kansas while in China by working 70-hour weeks and pushing his students at Kansas to do the same. And she noted he was doing fundamental research that is freely shared across the scientific community. This is not an espionage case ... If it was, they presented absolutely no evidence that was going on," Robinson said. Believe me, if that was what was going on, it would have been a much different sentence today. Story continues Tao's attorney, Peter Zeidenberg, said he will appeal Tao's remaining conviction. Dr. Tao is immensely relieved that Judge Robinson agreed that a sentence of time-served was appropriate, Zeidenberg said. We were also gratified to hear the judge say, once again, that neither the government nor KU was defrauded or harmed, and that Dr. Tao did all of the work required of him to the complete satisfaction of these entities. Tao served a week in prison after his arrest in 2018 and has worn an electronic monitoring while having his travel restricted since then. His attorneys said the case destroyed his reputation, his familys financial stability and his distinguished career. Tao declined to speak during the hearing or afterward as he gathered with supporters outside the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas. But his wife, Hong Peng, said she was grateful for the support their family received during the lengthy case. This prosecution has destroyed Franklin's life, she said. He wants his reputation back. This has turned our lives upside down. Prosecutor Adam Barry said in court Wednesday that Tao's actions warranted a prison sentence because the institutions lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in research money due to his deception. He said a sentence also would provide a deterrent for other researchers who consider not being honest and transparent about their research activities. The U.S. Attorneys Office in Kansas declined to comment. Tao no longer works for the University of Kansas, a school spokeswoman said Friday. Robinson said Tao will not be confined to his home during his supervised release and will not have to wear an ankle monitor, noting that he had no prior criminal record and has not violated the terms of his confinement since his arrest. She did not impose a fine. The case against Tao was part of the U.S. Justice Departments China Initiative, a program started in 2018 to crack down on efforts to transfer original ideas and intellectual property from U.S. universities to Chinese government institutions. The department ended the program amid public criticism and several failed prosecutions. Gisela Perez Kusakawa, executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, said Tao's case raised concerns among Asian American researchers that they would be targeted, particularly in an era of increasing bias against them. She said the disclosure form that Tao was convicted of filling out improperly is vague and that there should be a system to allow researchers to fix such mistakes, rather than subjecting them to federal prosecution. We want the public to know that Asian American scientists are contributing to this country, Kusakawa said. They are the very people this county needs right now for the research to continue to advance. Tao was born in China and moved to the U.S. in 2002. He earned his doctorate's degree from Princeton University and worked at the University of California-Berkeley and Notre Dame before August 2014, when he was hired as a tenured associate professor at the University of Kansas Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis. The center conducts research on sustainable technology to conserve natural resources and energy. ___ This story has been corrected to show Tao was arrested in 2019, not 2018, and to show the prosecutor is called Adam Barry, not Berry. Kentucky police found a dead body inside a vehicle Wednesday after the driver of the vehicle led troopers on a multi-county pursuit on I-75, according to Kentucky State Police. The chase began shortly after 10 a.m. in Madison County near mile-marker 83 when state police troopers attempted to pull over someone who was driving carelessly, according to Trooper Scottie Pennington. The driver did pull over but took off in the southbound lanes of I-75 when troopers approached the vehicle. The chase went through multiple counties and the suspect hit two state police cruisers, according to Pennington. No troopers were hurt during the chase. The pursuit ended in Laurel County near mile-marker 46 and the driver was detained. After the chase, investigators located a dead body in the back of the vehicle, according to Pennington. The victim was a female. The cause, manner and location of the womans death is under investigation, Pennington said. The body will undergo an autopsy. As this investigation continues, hopefully well find that information out, Pennington said. Pennington didnt release any information about the suspect other than that hes a man from Florida. As of 2 p.m. the suspect was being interviewed by state police investigators and charges are pending, according to Pennington. Police planned to have multiple lanes of I-75 southbound blocked off while the investigation unfolds. Pennington said it would probably be later Wednesday evening when the interstate fully reopens, and to expect delays in that area until then. I apologize to the citizens, Pennington said. This is a crime scene. This is a pursuit and a crime scene. The Kentucky State Police, along with the other agencies that were involved, were trying to put a puzzle together. Heads up if traveling toward Laurel Co: I-75S is shutdown at Exit 49 until further notice due to Police investigation/activity between the 49 and 48 MM's. All southbound traffic diverted to Exit 49 to US-25S. pic.twitter.com/d9YRQOrrs6 lexwrecks (@lexwrecks) January 18, 2023 Shortly before 3 p.m. the Lexington Traffic Management Center reported that the interstate has fully reopened. ChatGPT, a AI chat bot, is trained with data that's been reviewed by outsourced workers to detect problematic content. Getty Images A firm cut ties with OpenAI over concerns around working with potentially illegal content for AI-training purposes, Time reports. Kenyan workers were reportedly paid up to $2 an hour to label explicit content used to train ChatGPT. Employees told Time they were exposed to descriptions of bestiality and fan-fiction involving rape. For months, San Francisco-based AI firm Sama worked with OpenAI, the company behind the buzzy conversational AI ChatGPT, to identity and label sensitive images and text data that is later used to train ChatGPT so it can spit out impressive responses free of toxicity, Time reported in an investigation. But in February of 2022, Sama ended its partnership with OpenAI after it discovered that OpenAI allegedly requested and received 1,400 images worth of potentially illegal content that included child sexual abuse, bestiality, rape, and other forms of violence for an AI-training project unrelated to ChatGPT, according to internal documents Time reviewed. OpenAI confirmed that it used Kenyan workers to help build out a tool that tags problematic content, according to a statement to Time. Essentially, in order to train AI to recognize and remove horrific content, a labeled database of horrific content was required, and that's part of what Sama's contractors were tasked with working on. Under Sama's contracts, data labelers were outsourced from Kenya and were tasked to label text in their respective teams such as sexual abuse, hate speech, and violence, according to internal documents Time obtained. Depending on their seniority and productivity levels, employees were paid between $1.32 to $2 an hour to scour through troves of graphic content, according to four Sama employees that spoke to Time under anonymity. OpenAI and Sama did not respond to Insider's request for comment ahead of publication. "Our mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, and we work hard to build safe and useful AI systems that limit bias and harmful content," OpenAI said in a Time statement. "Classifying and filtering harmful [text and images] is a necessary step in minimizing the amount of violent and sexual content included in training data and creating tools that can detect harmful content." Story continues Still, the nature of the work has caused severe distress for some data labelers, according to the report. One employee called his work "torture" after he was assigned to read an excerpt about a man engaging in a sexual act with a dog with a child present an experience so traumatic that it gave him recurring visions, he told Time. In rare occasions, some data labelers said they weren't provided with clear guidelines on how to categorize the content they review, Time reports. One was reportedly tasked with reading a raunchy story where Batman's sidekick, Robin, gets raped, and wasn't sure whether to label it as sexual violence because Robin ended up reciprocating sexual acts. Sama told Time that it provides one-on-one mental health counseling and wellness programs for employees to de-stress. Contract workers have longed complained of the mental toll of ridding tech systems of toxic content The Time investigation's findings come as many companies that have adapted AI technology to improve their services and business processes continue to outsource low-wage employees in content moderation work from outside the US, with some contractors reporting negative impacts to their physical or mental health. Companies like Amazon, for example, have hired video reviewers in India and Costa Rica to watch thousands of videos, resulting in physical ailments like headaches and eye pain, the Verge reported. In 2019, after some Facebook contractors said they suffered from PTSD from moderation work, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the reports of the complaints "a little overdramatic." Almost a year after the fallout with OpenAI, Sama which has also offered data labelling services to Google and Microsoft told Time that it will be putting an end to all work dealing with graphic content by March of 2023, including a $3.9 million contract with Facebook. "After numerous discussions with our global team, Sama made the strategic decision to exit all [natural language processing and content moderation work to focus on computer vision data annotation solutions," Sama said in its statement." Read the original article on Business Insider A man linked by DNA to a pair of sex assault killings in Westchester and the Bronx in the early 2000s has now pleaded guilty in both cases after admitting Wednesday that he killed a Yonkers woman in 2005. Christopher Gonzalez, in wheelchair, as he pleads guilty to second-degree murder in the 2005 strangulation killing of Angel Serbay, Westchester County Court, Jan. 18, 2023 Christopher Gonzalez, 41, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Angel Serbay, a 25-year-old mother whose body was discovered wrapped in a blanket along the Sprain Brook Parkway in Greenburgh on Sept. 3, 2005. Gonzalez acknowledged strangling Serbay when acting state Supreme Court Justice Robert Neary asked him how he killed her. But he said he couldn't remember the specifics of where he left her body, only that it was on a highway. New York State Police investigate the scene on the side of the northbound Sprain Brook Parkway in Greenburgh on Sept. 3, 2005 where Angel Serbays body was found. Gonzalez last month pleaded guilty in the Bronx to the Dec. 2, 2000, killing of Dora Almontaser, a 19-year-old who was strangled with a phone cord while housesitting at her uncle's apartment. After Serbay's death, DNA evidence found on her body matched evidence from Almontaser's case, making it likely the same man killed both women. New York State police investigators and Bronx homicide detectives teamed up on the investigation but it took another decade for them to crack the case. Angel Serbay was strangled and her body was discovered dumped along the Sprain Brook Parkway on Sept. 3, 2005. When the effort was renewed by a task force in 2016, Bronx detectives re-submitted to a national database a fingerprint found on the phone at the Almontaser murder scene. It matched Gonzalez, whose fingerprints were on file because he had not paid a fine following his arrest in a 2005 forged license case in the Bronx . Retired Bronx homicide Detective Malcolm Reiman recalled Wednesday the jolt the fingerprint match gave the investigation. "It was incredible, it gave us the name we were looking for," said Reiman, who attended the court hearing with state police Investigators Eugene Donnelly and Ryan Kruikshank. "But that was just the beginning. We had to build a homicide case." Crime:DNA links man to 2005 killing of Yonkers woman Angel Serbay: DA Crime:Suspect in Yonkers slaying arrested in Florida Investigators learned that Gonzalez had lived near Almontaser in the Bronx at the time she was killed and later in Yonkers Nodine Hill neighborhood, where Serbay had been staying in 2005. Story continues They believe he met Almontaser on New York Donut, an early online dating chatline. When they interviewed other women who met him there, they learned he had been abusive before and that he often liked to take dates to pool halls. There was a pool hall on the ground floor of the home where Almontaser was killed. On Nov. 7, 2017, Gonzalez was arrested in Florida. He had been living with his wife in Naples and was working at Toys 'R Us. Members of the task force were there and had him under surveillance. They had alerted Collier County sheriff's deputies that Gonzalez did not have a valid license and should be picked up if seen driving. He was surprised to find investigators from New York back at the station. "He didn't expect to be talking about murders," Donnelly said. But Reiman said he made no admissions regarding the killings. "He's not stupid; he's very intelligent, charming," he said. "He did deny numerous things though that were undeniable." The investigators recalled Gonzalez being very careful not to touch anything, in case he might leave his DNA behind. But they got that after obtaining a warrant and the match to the two homicides followed. Gonzalez was indicted in the Bronx and Westchester on felony charges, including first-degree murder. Five years later he reached a plea deal with prosecutors in both counties that allowed him to plead guilty to second-degree murder in each case. He has been promised a prison term of 20 years to life to cover both killings. He could have faced 50 years to life if convicted of both killings. Acting state Supreme Court Justice Robert Neary scheduled the Westchester sentencing for Feb. 24. Gonzalez will be sentenced in the Bronx on Feb. 3. Serbay was a troubled young adult hanging with a tough crowd and had a record of minor arrests for drugs. She had a 5-year-old son whom she had asked her mother, Susan, to care for until she got her life back on track. A year after her death, her mother pleaded for the public's help in finding Serbay's killer, calling her a good person but a "lost soul" trying to find her way. She couldn't be in court on Wednesday but a close friend of Angel Serbay's, Teresa Lopez, was there, as she has been for most of Gonzalez' appearances. Lopez met Serbay when they were in junior high and became immediate friends. She would accompany Serbay and her grandmother each weekend when Serbay competed in bowling tournaments. They lost touch for a few years but reconnected when both were young mothers two decades ago. Lopez said she was actually stuck in traffic on the Sprain Brook Parkway on Sept. 3, 2005, not knowing it was because police were there investigating the death of her friend. She returned to the shoulder frequently after that day to think about her friend and wonder who could have killed her. Once she had the answer she just wanted justice for her friend. "They never gave up. They did a great job," she said, pointing to the investigators and Assistant District Attorney Nadine Nagler in the courthouse hallway. And today we got justice." She said it was fitting that Gonzalez was caught because a fingerprint he left behind. "That's God's miracles," she said. "God works in mysterious ways and that was (Gonzalez's) judgement day. I believe in karma. You can't get away with things forever." This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Christopher Gonzalez pleads guilty to killing Angel Serbay of Yonkers Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos by video on Wednesday (AFP via Getty Images) In the days leading up to the war in Ukraine there was still flickering hope that negotiations could work out and that peace would prevail in the gathering darkness. However, interior minister Denys Monastyrsky had little doubt Vladimir Putin was determined to invade. To demonstrate the extent of Moscows military build-up on the border, he took a group of journalists to the Donbas. In the town of Novoluhanske, we came under sustained fire. You see, they did this without provocation, he exclaimed as we took cover. This is what the people around here have to live with every day. The Russians are creating false stories and carrying out this kind of bombing, they are creating excuses for war. Two Ukrainian soldiers Anton Sydorov, 35, the father of three daughters, and 34-year-old Denys Kononenko, the father of a young son were killed by howitzer and mortar rounds that day. Five days later, Russian troops rolled into Ukraine. Mr Monastyrsky became one of the key leaders in the defence of Kyiv. His ministry, in charge of security, national guard, police and emergency services played a crucial role in those early days of resistance, and continued to do so as the conflict unfolded across the country. Mr Monastyrsky later went on to head investigations into atrocities carried out against civilians, while also liaising on prisoner exchanges including the release of 200 Ukrainians captured at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol. He also became a familiar figure to the public with his regular updates on casualty figures. His death, along with six of his senior officials, in Wednesdays Kyiv helicopter crash is a grave blow to the countrys war efforts, as it prepares for the next phase of the campaign with an expected escalation in combat. The 42-year-old minister is the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the beginning of the conflict and one of President Volodymyr Zelenskys closest and most long-term confidantes. Those killed alongside him included his deputy, Yevhen Yenin, and state secretary Yurii Lubkovich, who ran the department. Story continues At least a dozen people were killed in the crash, including children, as the aircraft came down near a nursery outside the capital. Ukraines security service SBU said it was investigating several possible reasons behind the crash including technical faults, breach of flight safety rules as well as sabotage. The helicopter was flying low, as is the practice with such flights in order to avoid anti-aircraft missiles. Ukraines police chief Ihor Klymenko, who has taken over as interior minister, said the aircraft belonged to the emergency services. Other officials said it was a French Super Puma. There is nothing yet to indicate the crash was anything other than an accident. But in the febrile atmosphere of war there have been rumours and speculation on social media of plots and of explosives on board. There have been other cases in the recent past of senior security officials killed in air accidents at a time of conflict. In 1994, an RAF Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, killing 25 senior British intelligence experts deployed in Northern Ireland including personnel from MI5, the army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary as well as two Special Forces pilots. TAMPA, FL - NOVEMBER 08: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis celebrate his victory over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Charlie Crist during an election night watch party at the Tampa Convention Center on November 8, 2022 in Tampa, Florida. DeSantis was the projected winner by a double-digit lead. Octavio Jones/Getty Images Governor Larry Hogan told CNN that Governor Ron DeSantis lacks broad appeal. Hogan said DeSantis was "too focused on the base." Hogan also told CNN that he was still unsure whether or not he would run for president. Outgoing Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said that Governor Ron DeSantis does a great job of "capturing attention" among his Republican base but hasn't done enough to reach out to swing voters. "I mean, he's done a really good job of getting on Fox News, and he's capturing a lot of attention, but he certainly hasn't done it the way Charlie Baker and Phil Scott and I have," Hogan told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday. Hogan, a Republican who left office on Wednesday, told Tapper that if he wants to run for president he would have to figure out a way to capture voters in the middle. "I just think that he is focused on the base and he's, he's doing pretty well with the base," Hogan told Tapper, "but he's gonna have to figure out a way if he wants to have a political future beyond Florida to appeal to a broader audience." The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 17, 2023 Tapper then asked Hogan about whether or not he would run for president. "I'm concerned about the country but I don't know," Hogan replied. Although DeSantis has not announced a candidacy for president in 2024, his name has appeared over and over again as a potential challenger to former President Donald Trump, who announced he was running for re-election in November. On Monday, Trump responded to the rumors of a DeSantis run, telling the conservative podcast "The Water Cooler" that if the governor were to run for president he would "handle that the way I handle things." A representative for DeSantis did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider Sergey Lavrov The Russian diplomat said Zelenskyy was putting forward "some absolutely ridiculous initiatives." Read also: At security forum, Zelenskyy invites countries to participate in his 10-point plan to stop Russias war "A ten-point plan with everything you can think of: food security, energy security, biological security, withdrawal of Russian troops from everywhere, repentance of the Russian Federation, tribunal, condemnation, and so on," Lavrov said. Negotiations with Zelenskyy on his initiatives are out of the question. In response, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said that Lavrov had once again articulated Moscow's real intentions. Read also: Russia refuses to negotiate on Zelenskyys "peace formula, claims Lavrov "Moscow is categorically not interested in peace, he wrote on Facebook. Public maneuvers by representatives of the Russian regime about readiness for negotiations, a truce for Christmas, and expectations for real proposals from the West are just a smokescreen to prepare for another Russian terrorist attack on Ukraine." Nikolenko said the good news is that Kyivs partners have long since stopped paying attention to what the Russian Foreign Ministry says. He added that Ukraine has received broad international support for President Zelenskyy's peace formula. Read also: UN peace formula summit to take place in New York on Feb. 24, says Ukrainian diplomat "This is a comprehensive ten-point document, the implementation of which will help restore peace on Ukrainian soil and create safeguards to prevent the recurrence of Russian aggression in the future," the statement said. Whether someone in the Kremlin likes it or not, Russia will have to fulfill the peace formula. The spokesman said that in order to speed up this process, the Foreign Ministry team headed by Dmytro Kuleba will continue to work to provide the Ukrainian defense forces with all the necessary international assistance, including: tanks missile and air defense systems, long-range missiles, ammunition, training of the Ukrainian military, finances. Story continues Read also: Ukraine may get to pre-war lines if more weapons provided, says Ukraines army commander "Ukraine will win and Russia will lose. Anything else is out of the question," Nikolenko wrote. At the G20 summit in November, President Zelenskyy presented a ten-point formula for peace, which includes the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for aggression, and security guarantees for Ukraine. The Kremlin is yet to offer any peace proposals, formulas or plans. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine Its been 22 years since the murder of Tara Baker, but her mother, Virginia, still grieves as if it was today. On Wednesday, the Baker family as well as the family of another cold case murder victim and Georgia lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to take over or assist in reopening these cases. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] The bill would also create a cold case database and allow families to get death certificates even if the case hasnt been solved. Channel 2s Richard Elliot was with families who lost loved ones on Wednesday as the bill was introduced. TRENDING STORIES: Tara Baker, who was a law student at the University of Georgia, died in 2021 after someone broke into her off-campus apartment, killed her and then set the house on fire to cover up the murder. Since then, Elliot has visited with the Bakers at Taras gravesite, and when they brought flowers to UGAs arch [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] When Tara was killed, I thought I was going to die, but I was given very good advice to not let the monster that took Tara to take the mother from the other children, Virginia Baker said. Virginia Baker prays for the day her daughters murder is finally solved. It wont bring her back, but it will give us some answers, Baker said. And we need answers after this long. We need answers, too. State Senator Randy Robertson is a retired sheriffs deputy and one of the bills sponsors. We feel our lives are the failure if we dont bring every family that suffers from a crime justice, Robertson said. With this legislation, were taking another step forward in doing that.. The other family at the State Capitol Wednesday was the family of Rhonda Coleman, who was murdered 33 years ago in Hazelhurst. Her mother said that Thursday would have been her 51st birthday. Jan. 17The shocking arrest this week of Solomon Pena, an unsuccessful Republican state House candidate accused of orchestrating drive-by shootings at politicians' homes, clouded the first day of the legislative session Tuesday and prompted some lawmakers to question whether the violence will deter people from running for office. "That's a possibility," said Sen. Linda Lopez, an Albuquerque Democrat whose home was targeted in one of the attacks. Three bullets passed through a bedroom where her 10-year-old daughter was sleeping early Jan. 3. She was relieved when she learned police had arrested a suspect and one of his alleged accomplices. Lopez said she wants to run again in two years, but the recent gunshots so close to her daughter have led her to ponder the price of public service. If the shooter had aimed just two inches farther to one side, the bullets would have gone into her son's bedroom, she said, and "that would have been a different story." "Is it worth me putting my family at risk because I vote a certain way, I espouse certain ideals?" Lopez asked in an interview Tuesday in her office at the state Capitol. Her daughter could be heard singing in an adjoining room. She will have a conversation with her young daughter and adult son about whether she should run before the next Senate election cycle in 2024, Lopez said: "It's still a family decision." Pena, who lost his bid in November for the House District 14 seat against Democratic state Rep. Miguel Garcia, is suspected of paying three other men to help him carry out drive-by shootings at the Albuquerque homes of two Bernalillo County commissioners and two state lawmakers, including Lopez, between Dec. 4 and Jan. 3. Shootings near the offices of two other politicians have not been tied to Pena's alleged conspiracy, Albuquerque police have said. Pena was booked Monday night into the Metropolitan Detention Center and is scheduled for an initial court appearance Wednesday on 15 charges. Story continues No one was injured in the shootings, but a criminal complaint alleges Pena's behavior became more aggressive as the incidents continued, and he is suspected of intending to cause harm. Concerns about what police have described as a politically motivated conspiracy emerged on both sides of the aisle at the Roundhouse. "Who wouldn't be deterred from running for office?" said Sen. Craig Brandt, R-Rio Rancho. When he first heard of the shootings, Brandt said in a Tuesday afternoon news conference, "I made sure my own firearm was close at hand." Democratic state Rep. Tara Lujan of Santa Fe, standing with to her 9-year-old daughter, Olive, appeared close to tears as she considered not just the Albuquerque shootings but also the threats of violence in schools. The allegations against Pena have strengthened her resolve to remain in the Legislature, Lujan said. "Hell yes, I'm going to put myself in this place of service," she said. Gabriel R. Sanchez, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, said threats of violence against public officials, including kidnapping plots, have increased in recent years. He wrote in an email "violence directed at elected officials definitely can impact the desire for New Mexicans to want to run for office. New Mexico is not unique unfortunately to this rise of violence, with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Michigan's governor [Gretchen Whitmer] also being targets of violence. "All of these examples may make New Mexicans considering public office think twice about doing so, especially if they feel this puts their families in harm's way," Sanchez wrote. Sen. Bobby Gonzales, D-Ranchos de Taos, said potential candidates might have to "think of what is best for their families" when it comes time to decide whether to run. "It's a new era of how we have to work," he said. "We have to be aware of our setting and environment at all times." Rep. Greg Nibert, R-Roswell, recalled someone shooting a window of his home about 15 years ago, when he was a county commissioner. He said the incident was "unsettling." But, he added, "You can't live your life in fear." Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, said she intends to keep serving as a public official. The violent incidents might prevent some people from seeking an elected office, she said, but "if you are dedicated and trying to make a difference, you will step up and make a difference." Lopez, who has served more than 25 years in the Legislature, said she has fielded threats before, but none had ever resulted in the violence that struck her home until earlier this month. She noted many Republicans in the House and Senate reached out to her after the shooting to offer support but also said divisions fueled by GOP members like Pena a Trump supporter who attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, D.C. are "something the Republican Party needs to figure out how to get under control." She believes such hate-fueled political divisions could pose a real threat to democracy. "The rhetoric is so vile," she said. The shooting has "opened new doors ... [and] new eyes for me," Lopez said when asked if she would stay in public office in the longer term. She added, "I haven't figured it out yet." Lebanon City Police are looking for information about a shooting in the 700 block of Lehman Street on Tuesday evening. Police were dispatched to the area near Monument Park around 5:30 for a report of a male with a gunshot wound, acting police chief Captain Bret Fischer said in a press release. Upon arrival, police spoke with a 39-year-old victim who had a single gunshot wound to the leg. "The victim reported that he became involved in an argument between two other persons while walking in the park," officials said in the release. One of the people involved shot the 39-year-old male during the argument. The victim was transported to the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, but police said his injuries were not life threatening. Officials have not released the name of the victim. The circumstances of the shooting are still under investigation. Police do not believe this is a random act of gun violence, according to their release. Met-Ed Shooting:South Lebanon Twp Police searching for residents who fired at the Med-Ed building Garage Burglary:State police searching for individuals who broke into East Hanover Twp garage on Christmas Eve Anyone with information about this shooting is asked to contact the Lebanon City Police Department at 717-272-6611 or Crime Stoppers at 717-270-9800. This investigation is ongoing. Please check back with the Lebanon Daily News for updates. Matthew Toth is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at mtoth@ldnews.com or on Twitter at @DAMattToth This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: 39-year-old male shot near Monument Park Tuesday Evening, police say The Christmas Eve that was the beginning of the end of my fathers life began with our familys typical organized chaos of the holidays. My parents were getting ready to drop off some cards to their friends. I was about to leave their house with my then 3-year-old son, Alexander, to head to the grocery store to buy a few more ingredients for dinner. It was the first Christmas my son understood the holiday. For weeks, like many children, he prepared for Santa Claus to visit. We wrote his letter to the North Pole, prepared his Christmas list and organized a tray of cookies for Saint Nick, and carrots for the reindeer. My son was particularly concerned that Rudolph would be hungry. Alexander watched cartoons while I got ready. Suddenly, there was a loud crash. It sounded as though a car went through the front door of my parents countryside New Jersey home. My father taught me so much in his lifetime. But I learned even more from his death (Courtesy Diana Falzone) Papa! my toddler screamed. My mother almost simultaneously cried out, Bob, Bob, oh my God! I turned down the hallway to see my father lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. His neck was twisted. Blood was rushing from his face. Shaking, I grabbed my phone, barely able to dial 911. I spoke to the dispatcher while my mom cradled my father on the foyer floor, asking him to stay with us. His blood soaking her sweater. My son hid in the pantry closet. My dad regained consciousness briefly and said, Im fine. Youre making a big deal out of nothing. This was typical of my dad. Stoic and stubborn. He was the son of a Ukrainian immigrant mother and an Italian-American father. He grew up in a tenement apartment in New York City. My dad liked to tell me how they ate mustard sandwiches when money was tight. He epitomized the American dream to me, successfully working his way up the corporate ladder with his natural business savvy and charismatic personality. One afternoon when I was in high school, my dad was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table with his glasses slightly pulled down on the bridge of his nose. I pulled up a chair across from him. He asked me, Do you know the difference between you and your brother? I shrugged. My dad said, The difference is you will have to work triply as hard to achieve the same or less as him. Thats why its imperative you focus on your goals. Pretty is a dime a dozen. Youre not a princess. Hard work, preparedness and morals matter. You need to be able to provide for yourself and not depend on anyone else. Story continues My father taught me so much in his lifetime. But I learned even more from his death (Courtesy Diana Falzone) After what felt like both a flash and an eternity, the police and EMTs arrived, along with my parents neighbor, a firefighter. My dad dozed in and out of a waking state, continuing to mumble the fuss was unnecessary. They put my fathers neck in a brace and placed him onto a stretcher. I followed the EMTs as they wheeled my father out of my childhood home, the home my father loved, the home my father raised me in. I kept telling him, Im here with you, Dad. Im here. It will be OK. There was a chill in the air. The sun had set. The winter sky was starless and black; only the lights of the ambulance lit the driveway as it began to rain. I worried my father would be cold. I went back inside to get his coat. I asked the police officer to wrap it around him. The ambulance drove off. My moms friends took her to the hospital. I stayed with my son. My boy, who only moments ago was overjoyed for Santa and Christmas, looked shell-shocked. My heart felt smashed. As a parent, I want to protect my child from pain, and my son adores his grandfather, his Papa. I asked Alexander if he was scared. He replied, Mommy, I hid in the closet. I wasnt scared. Grandpa George was with me. Perplexed, I said, Grandpa George was with you? Alexander said, He told me not to be scared. Grandpa George was my maternal grandfather. He died when I was 9 years old. To this day, I still cannot make logical sense of that moment. Logic aside, I am grateful that my child was brought comfort during a harrowing time. The house was empty. The warmth of the holiday seemed to drain from its ivory-painted walls even though the Christmas tree lights glistened. It felt bleak. Dismal. Lonely. My childhood house was a home because of the love my parents infused into it. Now, at this moment, it was just Alexander and me. I placed the tray for Santa on the seating area in front of the fireplace in hopes of salvaging some Christmas spirit for the sake of my son. My father taught me so much in his lifetime. But I learned even more from his death (Courtesy Diana Falzone) My phone rang. Dad broke his neck, my mom said. Its bad. Theyre going to do surgery. On Christmas Eve 2021, my beloved father became a quadriplegic. He broke his C3-C5 (cervical vertebrae) in his neck, which left him 99.9% dependent. He could speak; however, he had no movement from the neck down. This was a crushing prognosis, especially for a man who used a handheld mower to mow his three-acre lawn, and washed his cars and mine by hand. When I would visit, he would take one look at my car, and before I could utter a word, he would be filling up a bucket of soap. He took great pride in doing things for himself, and more importantly, for his family. He took care of us. When I was 33, I was given the dual diagnosis of endometriosis and infertility. My doctor told me the likelihood of having children was not in my favor and short of impossible without medical assistance like in vitro fertilization (IVF). I underwent surgery for my endometriosis and recovered at my parents home. One night in particular the sadness washed over me like a tidal wave. I lay in bed propped up with pillows, crying alone. Each time I inhaled, jabs of pain radiated from where my incisions were. My dad heard me, and came into the room. He sat at the edge of my bed. Diana, I know this is hard, he said. We have been through hard things before. Being a mother does not define you. You define you. If you want to try to become a mom, you have my support. You go after it with all of your might. If it works, then it was meant to be. If it doesnt, then you know you did everything in your power to try. As I wiped my tears, my father gently hugged me, mindful of my post-surgical wounds. My dad had a way of making me feel like everything would be all right. His words gave me solace and empowered me to pursue my journey to become a mother. Two years later, I welcomed my son. After my fathers accident, he endured weeks of painful physical rehabilitation therapies. On a frigid morning in late January, my mom and I entered his hospital room to find the most stunning, vibrant vase of pink, purple and red flowers with a card addressed to Lucia, my mom. My dad smiled. They are for you, he said, looking at my mom lovingly. My parents were married for nearly 51 years. Her birthday was a few days away. I havent missed one birthday yet, and Im not about to, my dad told her. He had dictated the card to my brother, who wrote it for him. My mom rushed to my father, embracing him as they cried together. It was beautiful to witness pure, unconditional love not only enduring, but strengthening through sickness and health. My father taught me so much in his lifetime. But I learned even more from his death (Courtesy Diana Falzone) When it became apparent that the rehabilitation and medical therapies were not working, we made the decision to bring my dad home. My mom and I prepared the house for his arrival. I bought one of his favorite ice creams, strawberry cheesecake, and a brand of red wine he liked. He always joked that wine was good for the blood. Having him home was bittersweet. He had returned to us, although not in the way we ever imagined or hoped for. He was bedridden. He required assistance 24/7. Thankfully, we had an incredible hospice nurse to help us care for him. My father was only home for about a week when he asked to speak with me alone at his bedside. Diana, I do not want to live like this. This is not living. Im a mound of flesh. Im dying, he said. Are you afraid to die? I asked. No. I have lived a full life. A life I am proud of. I worry about leaving you behind, Mom, Alexander, our family. I do not want to leave you any of you. I know there is a better place, though. Im sure of it. My father was not a religious man, per se. Nonetheless, he believed in God. He told me he saw his deceased mom, father, brother and our family pets that had died years earlier. He told me that they were waiting for him. He spoke of a light. He was certain of an afterlife, and this gave him great peace. I, however, was not as confident of a life without my dad in it. Im not sure Ill be able to handle raising Alexander without you. You have been his role model like you are mine, I said, unsuccessfully attempting to hold back tears. He was so strong, and I wanted to pay him the same courtesy. You are your fathers daughter. I taught you, and you will continue to teach him. Ill be with you. My father then gave me a list of instructions. He asked me to call the funeral parlor to prepare for him. He ordered the details of his death, down to the orange-and-pink paisley tie and navy blue suit he wanted to wear. Then he whispered, Three days. Three days? Three days what, Dad? He calmly and knowingly replied, Three days. I followed his requests down to the letter. The next day my dad faded into a coma. I sat by his side talking and singing to him. The hospice nurse informed me that people can hear even in a comatose state. My father had a gorgeous singing voice, like Mario Alonso meets Frank Sinatra. He was an operatic crooner. When I was a kid, we would go to an Italian restaurant that had a live band. Without fail, my dad would get up on the microphone and sing, to my utter embarrassment and secret adoration. I never told him, but I loved when he performed. He passed his passion of singing to me. We would sing together at local theater groups, and gather around our family piano especially during Christmas to sing carols. It was our thing. Three days after he told me to contact the funeral parlor, my father passed away peacefully at home. I was there. My father, who helped bring me into this world, gave me the great honor of helping him leave it. Im grateful for the lessons he taught me while he lived. Im forever transformed by the lessons he taught me through his dying that life is finite. We are here to learn and evolve through our experiences on this Earth, and each day is precious but not promised. Ultimately, life is about the people whose lives you touch, and the people who touch yours. My dads DNA runs through my veins, his wise words etched into my heart and the blueprint of his spirit in my soul. I am my fathers daughter. This article was originally published on TODAY.com Lexington police are asking for the publics help in locating the suspect in a shooting on Gerald Drive Tuesday morning. Lexington police said Grmyko Chenault, 30, is wanted on a warrant for second-degree assault in connection with the shooting, which occurred outside a residence on the 1700 block of Gerald Drive. Police said they were dispatched to a local hospital at 7:09 a.m. after the man arrived with a gunshot wound that was not considered life threatening. They determined that the shooting had happened on Gerald Drive and identified Chenault as the suspect. Police said in a news release Tuesday evening that Chenault should be considered armed and dangerous. Anyone who locates him should call law enforcement, they said. Police asked that anyone with information about where Chenault might be call them at (859) 258-3600. Anonymous tips can be submitted to Bluegrass Crime Stoppers by calling (859) 253-2020, visiting Bluegrasscrimestoppers.com, or going through the P3 Tips app at P3tips.com. Lexington police said Grmyko Chenault is wanted in connection with a Jan. 17 shooting on Gerald Drive. Lexington police said a man was arrested after a woman was injured in a shooting on the 1700 block of Gerald Drive Saturday night. Shannon Washington, 24, was at the scene when police arrived. He was charged with first-degree assault in connection with the shooting, police said. By John Irish DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Lithuania's foreign minister said on Wednesday he was confident that main battle tanks would be delivered to Ukraine but the West still needed to do more to ensure Kyiv won the war against Russia. "I'm confident because this is what I'm hearing here, talking with other leaders. There is momentum," Gabrielius Landsbergis told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. After Britain announced it would send Challenger tanks to Ukraine, there was less argument for others not to, he said. Western allies will be gathering on Friday at the U.S. air base at Ramstein in Germany to pledge more weapons for Ukraine. Attention is focused in particular on Germany, which has veto power over any decision to send its Leopard tanks, which are fielded by armies across Europe and widely seen as the most suitable for Ukraine. Berlin says a decision on the tanks will be the first item on the agenda of new defence minister Boris Pistorius. Landsbergis, whose country is one of Kyiv's staunchest allies, said a meeting in Estonia ahead of the Ramstein gathering aimed to coordinate support efforts, but that in his eyes the West could not sit on their laurels. "I think that if we are serious about Ukraine winning at the end we will be sending many more types of weaponry than we are sending now," he said. "We could do it right now, but we will be waiting for some other imaginary red lines to be crossed because this is the modus operandi we are choosing." Britain, which broke the Western taboo on sending main battle tanks over the weekend by promising a squadron of its Challengers, has called on Germany to approve the Leopards. Poland and Finland have already said they would be ready to send Leopards if Berlin allows it. (This story has refiled to add text to the headline) (Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Angus MacSwan) DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) The Latest on the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland: Colombia President Gustavo Petro described U.S.-led efforts to fight drug trafficking as an absolute failure during a panel with Latin American political leaders at the World Economic Forum gathering. Speaking Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, Petro called for strategies to reduce consumption that focus on education, prevention and treatment for those with addiction. He says that thousands of people, most of them Black, have gone to prison in the United States, and up to a million have died in Latin America." He added that if we cannot have a debate on the United States failed drug policy, we will have serious problems. Petros administration is trying to make peace deals with rebel groups within Colombia and other criminal organizations involved in the drug trade. He said global changes in drug policy will be required to pacify Colombia as well as policies that bring economic development to isolated regions within the South American nation, where many people make a living from the drug trade. ___ KEY DEVELOPMENTS: Zelenskyy urges West to speed up flow of weapons to Ukraine Putin foe Bill Browder slams jacked-up fee to attend Davos World Food Program postpones, not averts Somali famine Elon Musk apparently wasn't on the Davos guest list Follow APs coverage of the World Economic Forum meeting at https://apnews.com/hub/world-economic-forum ___ Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has received an honorary Citizen of Kyiv medal from Mayor Vitali Klitschko on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Johnson has been hailed as a hero by many Ukrainians for his and Britains support for their country after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered forces to invade Ukraine nearly a year ago. At the Ukraine House on Wednesday, Klitschko said Johnson is one of us before draping the medal around the former British leaders neck. Story continues Johnson said hed received an invitation to visit Kyiv a beautiful, beautiful city from Klitschko and traveled there while Britains foreign minister. I realized then that if Putin was ever so mad as to invade Ukraine, that Ukrainians would fight and that they would win. And that is what is going to happen, Johnson said to a cheering crowd. He added that the only thing that allies have got to do now is to continue our support for Ukraine with tanks, with planes, with whatever it takes, with financial resources until Ukraine wins. ___ Bill Browder, a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has criticized the World Economic Forum on social media for jacking up his entrance fee to the annual meeting in Davos that he has attended for the last 27 years. Browder told The Associated Press on Wednesday that it was wasteful to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a ticket and he thought organizers of the elite gathering in the Swiss Alps didnt want him around. The former fund manager says he has set aside his commercial activities and devotes all of his time to getting justice for his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was killed in Russian police custody in 2009, and other victims of human rights abuses. Forum spokesman Yann Zopf says Browder had participated previously as CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and that he was very welcome to re-engage with the Forums work. Zopf said told the AP that partnerships with businesses contribute to our ability to invite activists and civil society figures who tend to have considerably less resources. ___ NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says Ukraines Western backers this week will discuss ways to supply heavier and more advanced weapons to help it fight Russia. The so-called Ukraine Contact Group will gather at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. It consists of about 50 top defense officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who work to coordinate military contributions to Ukraine. Stoltenberg said Wednesday during a session at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that the main message there will be: more support, more advanced support, heavier weapons and more modern weapons. He says, This is a fight for our values, this is a fight for democracy and we just have to prove that democracy wins over tyranny and oppression. NATOs leader says supplying Ukraine with more equipment long term will help force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. Stoltenberg warned that it is very dangerous to underestimate Russia and said weapons they are the way to peace but must come quickly. ___ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Western supplies of weapons must outpace Russias attacks and urged the world to move faster in its decision-making because tragedies are outpacing life; the tyranny is outpacing democracy. In a video address Wednesday to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, Zelenskyy stood and asked for a moment of silence for victims of a helicopter crash in Ukraine, who included his interior minister. While a cause is not yet known, he said that every individual, every death is a result of war. He says that the world needs to react quicker to challenges like global security, climate change and hunger, saying theres a time crisis. He says that Russia started the war, and the world needed days to react with the first sanctions, with the time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill. He said the world must not hesitate: The supplying of Ukraine with air defense systems must outpace Russias vast missile attacks. The supplies of Western tanks must outpace another invasion of Russian tanks. Asked about engaging with Russia, Zelenskyy said they will have to recognize their own mistakes, they will have to recognize Ukrainian statutes and they will have to really respect our territorial integrity. ___ German Chancellor Olaf Scholz highlighted his countrys and others financial and military support to Ukraine and said that we will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary. In a speech Wednesday to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, he pointed to efforts by Berlin and others to kick off a long-term rebuilding process for Ukraine but said that in order for the war to end, Russias aggression must fail. He listed some of the equipment Germany has pledged to provide including air-defense systems and most recently armored personnel carriers, marking a profound turning point in German foreign and security policy. But he didnt make any new pledges. Germany faces mounting pressure to supply Leopard 2 battle tanks or at least to authorize allies to deliver their own stocks of the German-made vehicles. When asked about sending tanks to Ukraine, Scholz reiterated that Germany was one of the top suppliers of military equipment to the war-torn country, just behind the U.S. and Britain. ___ Frances junior minister for European Affairs says Europe has lost competitiveness versus the U.S. due to sharply higher energy costs and U.S. support for domestic renewables. Laurence Boone said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that Europe needs a big bang to catch up in moving to renewable and secure energy supplies. She added that the bloc needs to be a lot more radical and proactive in response to this challenge. Boone said on a panel about European energy that higher prices after Russia shut off most natural gas over the war in Ukraine, along with the Inflation Reduction Act, were a wake-up call for the European Union. She said the IRA could have an effect in just two or three months because it works through tax credits, while European measures can take years to go through. European industries that use a lot of energy such as makers of glass, steel and fertilizer are facing costs that make production unprofitable in some cases and are raising the possibility that such producers will move to places where energy is more affordable such as the U.S. and China. Boone said a Europe-wide approach was needed instead of financially stronger countries handing out state aid because the continents economy was so interconnected. She says that its not enough to increase state aid in one country if we dont do it for everyone, otherwise we will have disruption of supply chains. ___ Young climate activists including Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate will discuss speeding up the energy transition with the head of the International Energy Agency at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland. The Paris-based IEA says Executive Director Fatih Birol and the young activists will discuss Thursday whether governments and businesses are responding adequately to the climate crisis, the state of the clean energy transition, widespread calls to end new investments in fossil fuels, and what needs to be done to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It comes after Thunberg and other protesters were carried awa y Tuesday from the edge of an open coal pit mine in western Germany where they demonstrated against the destruction of a village to make way for the mines expansion. The German government reached a deal with energy company RWE last year allowing it to destroy the village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038. Environmentalists say bulldozing Luetzerath will result in vast greenhouse gas emissions. Thunberg told The Associated Press on Saturday that in the global fight against climate change, what everyone does matters. The Swedish activist added that and if one of the largest polluters, like Germany, and one of the biggest historical emitters of CO2 is doing something like this, then of course it affects more or less everyone especially those most bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. ___ German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is celebrating his countrys newfound independence from Russian energy sources and says its energy supply for this winter is secure. In a speech Wednesday to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, Scholz noted that Germany has opened its first two liquefied gas terminals within months and a third is close to completion. He said that shows Germany can be flexible, we can be unbureaucratic, and we can be fast. Russia, which once supplied more than half of Germanys natural gas, hasnt delivered any since the end of August. Scholz said that within a few months, Germany made itself completely independent from Russian gas, Russian oil and Russian coal. Scholz says our energy supply for this winter is secure thanks to well-filled storage facilities, thanks to improved energy efficiency, thanks to remarkable solidarity within Europe, and thanks to the readiness of our companies and of millions of citizens to save energy. The German leader also defended Berlins program of to 200 billion euros ($216 billion) in subsidies to ease the strain of high gas, electricity and heating prices, which has met with some concern elsewhere in Europe. He said it is both forceful and proportionate. ___ Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has slammed the influence of oil and gas interests at the annual U.N. climate conference. In impassioned remarks at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, Gore called for the COP climate talks to make supermajority decisions rather than requiring unanimous agreement as oil-rich states frustrate the process. Gore said Wednesday during a session on climate action leadership that we cannot let the oil companies and gas companies and petrostates tell us what is permissible. In the last COP, we were not allowed to even discuss scaling down oil and gas. He expressed concerns of the appearance of the conflict of interest of having the head of oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. Sultan al-Jaber as the next COP president. Gore asked: Are we going to be able to discuss scaling down oil and gas in the next COP or (are we) putting the oil industry in charge of the COP? He asserted that weve just decided to not even disguise fossil fuel presence at COP anymore. Gore added that fossil fuel industries were also responsible for stifling pro-climate legislation in the U.S. and elsewhere. But he noted some instances of positive climate action around the world in the last year, including the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and elections in Brazil and Australia that ushered in governments with stronger climate ambitions. ___ Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska says in many areas of the war-torn country, people are only getting a few hours of electricity a day and those near the front are completely cut off from energy infrastructure. She said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that her foundation is working to provide warmth and light to people who are often living in half-destroyed homes in areas occupied by Russian forces. Russian missiles have targeted energy systems for months, and Zelenska also says our enemy has been destroying our health care infrastructure. She says the foundation is working to rebuild medical facilities and provide laptops to teachers, with two-thirds of Ukraines children studying remotely as schools face shelling. After a helicopter crash in Ukraine killed the countrys interior minister and several others, Zelenska said she didnt have the strength to express my emotions right now. When asked about whether there is global fatigue in supporting Ukraine nearly a year into the war, she said that seems like an exaggeration. She added: Imagine what this day will be like when the Ukrainians are fatigued. I wouldnt want to see it. I dont think it would be good for Ukraine or the world. ___ The head of the United Nations isnt optimistic that Russias war in Ukraine could end soon. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that I do not see the end of the war in the immediate future. He pointed to deep historical differences between Russia and Ukraine that will make it more difficult to find a solution based on international law and that respects territorial integrity. Guterres added that I dont think that we have a chance to promote or to mediate a serious negotiation to achieve peace in the short term. In the meantime, he said private-sector cooperation is needed to keep Ukrainian and Russian food and fertilizer exports flowing. Both countries are major suppliers of wheat, barley and other food to developing nations where many people are struggling with hunger. A U.N.-brokered deal allows agricultural supplies Russia is also a top global exporter of fertilizer to leave the Black Sea region. Guterres says the insurance sector has helped support the movement of vessels from Ukraine and Russia, and we need other private sectors actors to engage, such as the banking sector, the traders and the shippers. Some companies fear running afoul of Western sanctions by facilitating shipments from Russia, though allies have said penalties dont apply to food and fertilizer. ___ The Dutch environment minister says the Netherlands wants to sell 2 million electric cars by 2030 from 2030 onwards only electric cars allowed. Vivianne Heijnen spoke Wednesday during a panel session about the electric decade at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland. The forum says that by 2030, clean power capacity must increase by three times what it is today and by nine times by 2050. The organization also has found that energy consumption must be increasingly based on electricity and should increase to 50% by 2050 from 20% now. Heijnen says the Netherlands has one charging station for every four cars. She says we are thinking of smart solutions to some challenges when it comes to the entire power system. Talking about the challenges to achieving these clean energy and electrification goals, Jakob Stausholm, CEO of mining corporation Rio Tinto Plc said, Its not that easy to get green energy at scale. We are fooling ourselves on the timeline it is going to take time. ___ The head of the United Nations says the world is in a sorry state because of myriad interlinked challenges including climate change and Russias war in Ukraine. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that the struggles are piling up like cars in a chain reaction crash. Guterres said the widest levels of geopolitical division and mistrust in generations are undermining efforts to tackle global problems, which also include widening inequality, a cost-of-living crisis sparked by soaring inflation and an energy crunch, lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and more. He singled out climate change as an existential challenge, saying a global commitment to limit the Earths temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is nearly going up in smoke. Guterres referenced a recent study that found scientists at Exxon Mobil made remarkably accurate predictions about the effects of climate change as far back as the 1970s, even as the company publicly doubted that warming was real. He said, Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie. ___ Japans minister of trade and industry says the worlds third-largest economy needs more innovation and younger leadership. Minister of Economy Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura said, Japans economy has long been run by a bunch of old men. Speaking in a panel Wednesday at the World Economic Forums gathering in Davos, Switzerland, he said, We need to change this drastically, because we need diverse ideas to bring about innovation in the new era. You shouldnt make decisions with only old men who have spent a long time in the same company. Despite trade tensions between Beijing and Washington and other trading partners, Nishimura said its unrealistic to cut off economic ties with China, so a complete decoupling is not possible, but we need to manage the risks and cooperate with like-minded nations. ___ Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska dabbed teary eyes before attending a World Economic Forum session in Davos, Switzerland, as she heard the news that a helicopter carrying Ukraines interior minister and other officials crashed in Ukraine. Forum President Borge Brende requested 15 seconds of silence Wednesday to honor the 18 people killed in the crash, including Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi and other officials, before the opening the session. Zelenska said it was another very sad day today. New losses. She told those attending the session: I think you understand my emotions. Perhaps theyre a little bit out of place in the political and economic dialogue, but I am sure that just as the war has changed the whole world, it has also changed all of our dialogue. We can also change this negative situation for the better. Her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is scheduled to speak via video later in the day as the Ukrainian delegation pushes for more weapons from international allies. Speaking shortly before Zelenskyy is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is facing pressure to send tanks to Ukraine. BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday dismissed 13 more military officers who were assigned to the National Security Advisor's office that is responsible for the president's security. The decision follows the removal of 40 military officers on Tuesday from the Alvorada presidential residence, as Lula expressed his distrust in the military for failing to act against supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro who stormed government buildings on Jan. 8. The leftist president questioned how he could trust the military personnel with his personal security after what had happened. Government officials said Lula's security would now be placed in the hands of the Federal Police force. Lula had previously said he suspected that there was collusion by "people in the Armed Forces" with the insurrection in which several thousand Bolsonaro supporters invaded and ransacked the Congress building, the Planalto presidential offices and the Supreme Court. The demonstrators were protesting Bolsonaro's loss in the October elections and calling for a military coup to oust Lula and restore the far-right populist leader. The violence recalled the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. (Reporting by Eduardo Simoes and Lisandra Paraguasu, editing by Anthony Boadle, Alexandra Hudson and Alistair Bell) By Paul Sandle and John Revill LONDON/ZURICH (Reuters) - Burberry said it was optimistic consumers in China would start spending again and Richemont saw a rebound there before the holiday, helping offset three years of upheaval from the government's strict COVID-19 lockdowns and soaring infections. Britain's Burberry, famous for its iconic Mackintosh-style coats, said it was seeing "very promising" signs of recovery in China as COVID-19 restrictions eased and a spike in the virus that caused a sharp slowdown in growth before Christmas started to recede. "We're very positive about the early signs and confident in the long-term opportunity" in China, said Chief Financial Officer Julie Brown. She cautioned though the timing and pace of recovery would likely remain unpredictable. Richemont, whose brands include Cartier jewellery and Swiss watches IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, said it had experienced a strong retail recovery recently in China. Following the peak of the recent COVID wave in major cities, "stores have reopened and traffic has come back, and we are experiencing a strong retail rebound pre-Chinese New Year", a Richemont spokesperson said. Its shares were up 1.4%, after hitting their highest in a year while Burberry rose 2.5% to their best level since January 2020 at 1238 GMT. Luxury rivals LVMH, Europe's most valuable listed company worth about 400 billion euros ($433.12 billion), Gucci-owner Kering and Swatch are due to report their figures in the coming weeks. "The Chinese may embrace the same YOLO (you only live once) attitude western consumers have adopted, and they will be able to travel again and find cheaper prices in Europe," said Bernstein analyst Luca Solca. "This will create a growth relay, where Chinese consumers take the luxury-spend growth torch from western consumers, as these moderate their spend growth, sobering up from the past pandemic euphoria." Story continues The luxury industry has in recent quarters benefitted from a strong rebound in regions outside of China, fuelled by pent-up demand from shoppers drawing on savings during lockdowns in their regions. The resumption of travel has also fuelled growth, with Americans flocking to Europe in particular, taking advantage of the dollar's strength to splash out on luxury goods. The European luxury sector is among the largest expected winners as China loosens COVID-19 restrictions that kept shoppers out of stores for months. CHINA PAIN But it's been a tough few years. Luxury spending by Chinese nationals had dipped from 33% of the global personal luxury goods market in 2019 to as little as 17% last year, according to estimates from Bain. There's likely to be a strong rebound from Chinese consumers, after sales decelerated in the third quarter, as they were able to save money during the lockdowns, said Jean-Philippe Bertschy, analyst with Vontobel. Wednesday's numbers highlighted the pain inflicted by China's lockdowns and sudden exit from its zero-COVID policy, which has spurred a surge of infections in the world's second-largest economy. Richemont missed market estimates after sales in China plunged by a quarter, as customer traffic dwindled and staff were not available, leading to a reduction of boutique hours, or temporary closures of sales points, the company said. China accounts for about a fifth of the group's sales according to Zuercher Kantonalbank estimates. Burberry's like-for-like sales growth slowed sharply to 1% in the quarter to end-December after a 23% fall in mainland China, its biggest market before the pandemic, largely offset higher spending by U.S. tourists and locals in Europe. Mainland China is currently 25% of Burberry sales, down from about 40% pre-pandemic. ($1 = 0.9235 euros) (This Jan. 18 story has been corrected in the first and the fifth paragraph to show that Richemont did not give a projection for its performance) (Reporting by John Revill, Paul Sandle and Mimosa Spencer; writing by Mimosa Spencer. Editing by Josephine Mason and Sharon Singleton) George Santos walking down the street in Washington with his head down. Long Island Rep. George Santos has been hounded for lies about his background, but a recent report and alleged texts from Santos claim to show he stole back funds for a sick dogs cancer treatment. Santos has called it all lies. Guess whos going to be one of the congresspeople making lasting decisions about science and technology in the U.S.? Why, its none other than George Santos, the Queens-based Long Island representative who has admitted to outright making up whole swathes of his backstory and resume. On Tuesday, House leadership gave the first-term congressman two assignments on the Small Business and Science Space, and Technology Committees. Sources with knowledge of the Republican Steering Committees decisions told multiple outlets including The New York Times that Santos originally wanted a seat on the Financial Services or Foreign Affairs committees, but he was rebuffed. Read more Its not too uncommon for congresspeople to not get their requested seats, especially for newly-minted representatives. Still, Republican leadership is treating Santos as any other congressman despite his admitting to lying about his background. Though he campaigned on his past experience at major banks and firms such as Goldman Sachs, a Times investigation from December showed he never actually worked at any of those firms. Instead of working at those firms around 2011, Santos was employed as a bilingual customer service rep for Dish Network. Hes also been caught up in multiple other fibs about his religious background, with claims hes not Jewish as his campaign literature emphasized, but Jew-ish. Former astronaut Scott Kelly came out swinging on Wednesday, sarcastically congratulating the recently elected congressman on his time spent walking the surface of the moon. Story continues Awesome to have former NASA astronaut and moon walker, Representative George Santos @Santos4Congress on the House Science Space and Technology Committee. To infinity and beyond! https://t.co/yjetzAwLl2 Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) January 17, 2023 Veteran Alleges Santos Stole Money Meant for a Sick Dog Theres so much to parse through with Santos admitted fabrications, but one of the most recent allegations is also one of the most damning. The December Times investigation noted that Santos had lied about his supposed animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, which he claimed was a nonprofit he founded shortly after his time at Goldman Sa I mean Dish Network. The report noted the organization was not listed by the Internal Revenue Service or any other public nonprofit database. On Tuesday, Jacqueline Sweet of the Oyster Bay-centered Patch reported that disabled veteran Richard Osthoff had reached out to Santos through the supposed Friends of Pets organization to set up a now-deleted GoFundMe for his dog Sapphire, who at the time was reportedly diagnosed with a life-threatening stomach tumor. Santos was using the name Anthony Devolder. Santos former roommate Gregory Morey-Parker told CNN that the congressman had assumed the name in the past, and its made up of his middle name and mothers maiden name. The Internet Archive does not show any hits for the GoFundMe campaign, though Patch included Facebook posts from the time showing multiple people, including Osthoff and Santos former FOPU Facebook page, linking to the campaign. Osthoff told Patch that he worked with retired police Sgt. and fellow vet Michael Boll who helped contact Santos to set up the GoFundMe back in 2016. The campaign raised $3,000, but when the vet took Sapphire to a veterinarian suggested by Santos, he was told their office could not operate on the tumor. Santos then allegedly kept the $3,000 and cut off communications with Osthoff shortly after the campaign ended. Boll told Patch Santos was uncooperative on the phone, and told the pair he would use the funds to help other animals. Osthoff told Patch that Sapphire died early in 2017. Sweet included apparent screenshots of texts between Santos and Osthoff, where the now-Congressman claimed Sapphire was not a candidate for surgery, even though another veterinary office said differently. He also claimed his organization was audited like any other [nonprofit] 501c3 In a text sent to Semafor, Santos called the whole story about the GoFundMe Fake and claimed he didnt even know who these people were. Nassau County Republican leadership has already denounced the newly-minted congressman and called on him to resign. Santos himself has proclaimed on Twitter I will not resign! Congressional Republican leadership, on the other hand, have been much more mum about Santos outright lies. When asked about Santos, Rep. Roger Williamsthe chair of the small business committeetold CNN I dont condone what he said, what hes done. I dont think anybody does. Thats not my role. He was elected. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who barely managed to maintain his party leadership role after capitulating to far-right party members, has publicly said he would not push Santos to resign. Federal prosecutors, in the meanwhile, are reportedly investigating Santos over potential campaign finance violations. More from Gizmodo Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Arizona's state prison complex in Florence handles executions for the state. Governor Katie Hobbs announced Tuesday she has picked a deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections to take over Arizonas troubled prison system. Ryan Thornell will become Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections on Jan. 30. According to Hobbs' office, Ryan Thornell has worked in corrections for more than 18 years. "During his time in Maine, Dr. Thornell has led significant initiatives that re-envision traditional policies and approaches to incarceration, reforming a wide variety of adult corrections areas, challenging the status quo and implementing 21st century, normalized corrections practices," a spokesperson for Hobbs said in an email. The Governor's Office said Thornell has a masters degree in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati, and a doctorate in political science from the University of South Dakota. Thornell will have his work cut out for him. A federal judge recently found Arizonas prison health care system and conditions of confinement to be unconstitutional, and ordered a set stringent guidelines that Thornells new administration will have to meet. Thornell will face enormous challenges left behind by his predecessors that have been decades in the making. He follows the disastrous tenures of former corrections directors David Shinn and Charles Ryan. Ryan retired in 2019 after a corrections officer leaked videos to the press showing failed security systems had led to unsafe conditions in state prisons. While Shinn was brought in from the federal prison system to be a changemaker, he was widely seen as merely a caretaker. Continued security issues, historically low staffing numbers, and endless claims of civil rights violations mired Shinns time as director. Related:Arizona changed how it sells prisoners to companies. The state raked in millions, but workers were neglected Thornell will take over a much larger prison system with many more employees and incarcerated people to oversee. Story continues The Maine Department of Corrections has an annual budget of around $200 million, while the Arizona Department of Corrections is more than seven times larger at more than $1.5 billion annually. There are more than 1,200 employees of the Maine prison system, at seven facilities housing just 1,800 prisoners. Arizona's prisons, by comparison employ 10,000 people in 10 state-run facilities, housing 24,000 prisoners. ADOC also contracts with several private prisons that house an additional 10,000 incarcerated people. Five Arizona state prisons each have a higher population than the total population of the Maine prison system. ACLU of Maine Chief Counsel Zach Heiden said his team have litigated cases against the Maine Department of Corrections concerning a variety of topics over several decades, including the use of solitary confinement. "We have not had a total meeting of the minds about solitary confinement," Heiden said, "though we have been able to reach a consensus on a number of important principles: that solitary confinement should be limited, that people should have, to the greatest extent possible, access to services while they're being isolated, and that people need to have regular evaluations for their mental health, while they're being isolated." U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver recently mandated the Arizona Department of Corrections develop a staffing plan of custody positions at every state prison, and capped the amount of time prisoners can be held in isolation, after prisoners sued over the extensive use of solitary confinement. Heiden said Maine prisons have struggled with keeping people locked up and isolated for too long under conditions that were too punitive. "We've worked to try and convince the department to change that," Heiden said, "and Deputy Commissioner Thornell has been open to the those arguments." Heiden said Thornell has also been "a really a productive collaborator" around access to medication for people with substance use disorder, particularly opioid use disorder. "My observation is that he is committed to helping make sure that people leave prison healthier than they are when they arrive," Heiden said. "That's something very important to us at the ACLU, and I hope that he has success with that in Arizona." Have a news tip on Arizona prisons? Reach the reporter at jjenkins@arizonarepublic.com or at 812-243-5582. Follow him on Twitter @JimmyJenkins. Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Hobbs appoints Maine official to lead department of corrections Jeremy Jerome Kendrick Jr. has been locked inside the Bibb County jail for more than four years. He was 17 when he was arrested and charged with murdering two convenience store clerks. Unable to post bond, he waited behind bars for more than 46 months before going on trial in July. The trial ended in a mistrial after jurors couldnt come to a unanimous decision. Kendrick is still waiting for a new trial. He is not alone at the Oglethorpe Street lockup, the largest county jail in the region: 87 accused killers reside there, awaiting their day in court. That day may not come for some time. There was only one murder trial in 2020, according to the Bibb County district attorneys office, six in 2021 and eight last year. The numbers exemplify a snowballing issue in Bibb County: delayed criminal trials and the impact of those delays on the defendants, attorneys, judges and others enmeshed in the local criminal justice system. The wheels of justice turn slowly Transport restraints are removed from Jeremy Kendrick Jr. in a Bibb County Superior courtroom during his murder trial Thursday afternoon. Kendrick Jr. is charged in the holdups and killings of the clerks, who were slain a week apart in August 2018. The Bibb County jail on Oglethorpe Street can hold a maximum of 966 people. In recent years, its barely had enough room. Major Eric Woodford has been the administrator of corrections for the Bibb County Sheriffs Office for nearly two years. He said a delay in criminal trials was already looking likely as early as 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic damaged the system in an unprecedented way. Everything went to a standstill, but the criminals didnt stop, Woodford said. The increase of intake continued but we have the same number of employees. Trials stopped while inmate numbers ballooned, driving the jail closer to that capacity of 966 than ever. Even though the hundreds of inmates are not all awaiting a murder trial like Kendrick, every inmate is waiting for some form of adjudication. Even though a crime has been committed, its still a process that needs to happen. Everyone is due that process, Woodford said. But when you go into this extended period of time, it makes it appear [to the defendant] that theres no hope. They think, When will I get my day to stand before the judge? Story continues Floyd Buford, a prominent defense attorney in Macon who has been practicing since 1985, is defending Kendrick. Its been really hard on him, Buford said of Kendricks long wait. You saw his family in there [during his first trial], 20 or 30 people every day. Its extremely hard on them. Hes been there for over four years. No catching up on cases Judge Howard Z. Simms in a photo from 2014. As Kendrick and others accused of murder wait for trials, many within the system worry about catching up. Macons crime rate doesnt help. Woodford referenced Macons 2022 homicides, which shattered prior yearly records for the county. The 70 homicides in 2022 set a new all-time high, topping 2021s total of 54. Howard Z. Simms is a former district attorney and has been a superior court judge since 2010. He told the Telegraph it will be difficult to catch up with trials due to the crime rate. Frankly, we cant try people as fast as they kill one another, Simms said. The last time I did the math, its somewhere close to 1.3 to 1.4 homicides per week [last] year. It takes two seconds to kill somebody, it takes a long time to try them. Other crimes that require trial also stack up, making it harder to prioritize murder trials. We have murder trials into next summer that doesnt even account for the child molestation, the armed robberies, the rapes and all the other [trials] that have to be dropped, Simms said. A crowded local jail doesnt only impact the lives of inmates. Woodford and his employees at the jail have a tougher, more dangerous job to do. At that point, everything becomes a challenge, Woodford said. And when the people are violent outside, theyre going to be violent inside. It makes things more dangerous. With employees busier, it is also harder to hire new workers to help stem the impact of increased capacity. Training takes too long, and by the time people arrive Woodford needs more. Buford also lamented the price of many inmates long-term stays on Oglethorpe Street. These people who cant get a bond in a reasonable time, theyre sitting in jail. And taxpayers are feeding them, he said. The costs add up for inmates as well, from jail fees to public defender application fees to phone call fees. Lingering effects Anita Reynolds Howard, Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney, discusses the backlog of criminal cases Macon courts will have to adjudicate over the next several years. Simms became a judge in 2010. After a decade of trying cases, the justice system he serves was altered by the COVID-19 pandemic just as Macons violence peaked. We were held up for 14 months; we opened back up, we had trouble getting jurors in, Simms said. Then we shut down again. In a year-and-a-half, a lot of things can happen. Things changed in that time, and were still dealing with the effects. The pandemic made it harder to fit people in one room for a trial, squeezing an already tight Bibb County courthouse for all the space it had. Simms also said jurors are less likely to come to court, a duty that can seem like even more of a hassle as people work from home more often or try to avoid crowded public spaces. Kendrick was going to be tried in May of 2021, but three jurors didnt show up. Even people who routinely testified in court as expert witnesses had problems. One of the things people might not realize is that when you open back up after a hiatus like that, you still have the same finite pool of expert witnesses that everyone is trying to pull from, Simms said. With expert witnesses like forensic scientists and cellular tracking analysts in high demand, theres not enough expertise to go around. Bibb County District Attorney Anita Howard said other witnesses are reluctant to testify. When the cases are delayed this long, these people move on with their lives, she said. When a witness to a crime has to wait for years, they dont always want to come back [to court]. The rare trial that does secure witnesses is a high priority for all involved. Attorneys are often needed in multiple places in short stretches of time, as rescheduling a trial could mean more delays. Defense attorneys like me, we go around other circuits and try different cases, Buford said. I was in Cherokee County (in October) and saw 150 cases on the calendar there. Attorney shortages are a statewide issue. The Georgia Public Defenders Council has faced the same shortage recently, according to reports from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Low pay is one explanation for the limited number of public defenders, with lawyers unable to secure the resources needed to defend clients. All of these obstacles, from shortages of attorneys to a lack of courtrooms, make the already delayed process move at a snails pace, placing even more strain on the system and the people in it. Buford has been Kendricks lawyer for about two years. Thats only about half the time its taken Kendrick to get a trial, but Buford estimated hed seen no less than four different prosecuting attorneys on the case nonetheless. What are the solutions? Just pumping more money into the system wont solve the issue, Simms said, as money cant create more people. He highlighted the lack of courtroom space. A solution would be to have more space, since theres not enough room, he said. Now, the county is building those two courtrooms out by the mall. If we could get senior judges, retired judges, we could get them to try cases. Those courtrooms at the Macon Mall were approved by Bibb County commissioners in April. They have not yet been built. Howard, the district attorney, said scheduling trials further in advance would speed things up and make people more likely to show up. Simms already has trials booked through the middle of this year. Buford, the defense attorney, suggested more cooperation between prosecuting and defense attorneys to avoid certain trials altogether. Whatever the solution, the problem persists. The people in Macons jail have a constitutional right to speedy trials. Victims deserve justice. Families deserve resolution. Witnesses deserve to be able to move on with their lives. But the problem isnt going away, and it seems that each solution comes with its own set of challenges. Money to better pay attorneys can be hard to come by. Scheduling falls through, even if its far in advance. Successful case negotiations can never be guaranteed. Even the judges Simms suggested bringing in would be in high demand. But, he said, it would be a beginning. President Donald Trump is greeted by Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, as the president arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2020, at National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md., Saturday Feb. 29, 2020. Jacquelyn Martin/AP An anonymous accuser claimed Matt Schlapp and his wife defamed him, per a lawsuit filed Friday. The accuser came forward with allegations of sexual battery against Schlapp to the media. In one text purportedly sent by Schlapp's wife, she calls the accuser a "troubled individual." Following public allegations of groping against GOP organizer Matt Schlapp, the unnamed accuser who came forward also accused Schlapp and those around him of trying to defame his character. The complaint filed Tuesday and reviewed by Insider accuses Schlapp of sexual battery and he and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, of defamation and conspiracy against the accuser. The accuser is seeking $6.85 million as well as punitive damages, for legal costs as well as for suffering "embarrassment, humiliation, distress, and reputational harm." The accuser, a former Herschel Walker campaign staff member who first approached The Daily Beast with his claims of sexual battery, said that in October of last year, Schlapp made unwanted advances while they were drinking at a bar and later fondled his genitals as he drove Schlapp home. The accuser, a man in his late 30s, chose to stay anonymous, according to the complaint, claiming that the Schlapps "are well known, and in some quarters revered, amongst a portion of the population that has demonstrated a proclivity for threatening violence against those with whom they disagree." Schlapp, a former advisor for Donald Trump, and his wife, a former White House strategic communications director for Trump, are both prominent figures in GOP circles. Schlapp is the chairman of the American Conservative Union and organizer of the Conservative Political Action Conference. Following the public release of the news in January, the lawsuit states that Schlapp and his wife "began a campaign to impugn Mr. Doe's character." An example of this is provided in a screenshot message, purportedly sent by Schlapp's wife to a neighborhood group chat on January 7, which states that the accuser is a "troubled individual" who had been fired from multiple jobs "including one firing for lying and lying on his resume." The lawsuit denies these claims. Story continues The lawsuit also alleges that Schlapp worked with other individuals to spread false information about the accuser's character. Charlie Spies, a lawyer for Schlapp, denied the allegations and said in a statement to Insider that Schlapp and his family were "suffering unbearable pain and stress." Spies did not verify the veracity of the message said to have been sent by Schlapp's wife. A lawyer for the unnamed accuser did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. January 17, 2023: This story's headline has been updated to clarify that the claims about Mercedes Schlapp's text messages were separate from the defamation claims in the lawsuit. Read the original article on Business Insider A man was arrested after police said he shot and killed another man in Pitcairn in early January. Nekye Smith, 20, was shot at around 4 p.m. on Jan. 2 in the 400 block of Robinson Street in Pitcairn. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. PREVIOUS COVERAGE >> Pitcairn man shot and killed Monday identified According to Allegheny County police, 21-year-old Daniel Kelly was found to be responsible for the shooting. Kelly was arrested in Pittsburghs South Side at around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. Kelly is charged with criminal homicide and firearm violations. He will be taken to the Allegheny County Jail for processing. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: Man killed in officer-involved shooting in Greene County Duquesne University professor killed in apparent murder-suicide in Wilkins Township Family of man who died helping shooting victim at local Walmart suing off-duty officer, township VIDEO: Local man, son killed in eastern Pennsylvania crash DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts Kevin De Bruyne is available to face Spurs (Bradley Collyer/PA) (PA Wire) Kevin De Bruyne is available for Manchester Citys Premier League clash with Tottenham on Thursday after missing a training session for personal reasons this week. The Belgium playmaker was conspicuous by his absence when a TV company filmed some of Citys preparations for the clash at the Etihad Stadium but manager Pep Guardiola has confirmed there was no serious issue. He had a personal issue and could not train but today he is back, the City boss said on Wednesday. Centre-backs John Stones and Ruben Dias could also be available after recent injury lay-offs. Guardiola says De Bruyne is back in training after missing a session for personal reasons this week and will play v Spurs. Stones & Dias also in contention #MCFC pic.twitter.com/CYIiEk6G4X Andy Hampson (@andyhampson) January 18, 2023 Speaking at his pre-match press conference, Guardiola said: They are back. They have trained really well in the last two sessions, both. They are in contention. We are going to train this afternoon and see who is going to play. City are hoping to bounce back after their frustrating loss to Manchester United in last Saturdays derby at Old Trafford. Guardiola said: Its over. Its past. We are not going to change anything now, so the focus is Tottenham. Two minutes later, in the dressing room, that was my message to the team. A man has been charged in the kidnapping of a mall manager from 29 years ago, California prosecutors said. Thomas John Loguidice, 65, is accused of kidnapping a 21-year-old manager at knifepoint at Oakridge Mall in San Jose as she tried to open a store on Jan. 13, 1994, a news release from the Santa Clara County District Attorneys Office said. Loguidice forced the woman into the storage room, where he put her on the ground, bound her wrists, and tied her to a pipe, the Jan. 17, 2023, release said. He stole some cash from the showroom register before returning to sexually assault the restrained woman and fleeing, prosecutors said. The San Jose Police Department exhausted several leads, and the case eventually went cold, prosecutors said. Decades later, the district attorneys cold case unit found that DNA collected from the 1994 crime scene matched an offender profile in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), prosecutors said. The profile belonged to Loguidice, who was in the system after being convicted of the sexual abuse of a child in 2012, prosecutors said. Hes serving a 40-year prison sentence. Loguidice was indicted on Dec. 14 on a charge of kidnapping with the intent to commit robbery, prosecutors said. The grand jury also found the crime involved the use of a deadly weapon, the threat of great bodily harm, and a high degree of callousness, prosecutors said. Loguidice was not charged with sexual assault, however, as the statute of limitations for that crime expired in 2000, prosecutors said. He has yet to be assigned a public defender, according to an email to McClatchy News from the district attorneys office. Loguidice is expected to appear in court on Jan. 18, prosecutors said. He faces life in prison on top of the sentence he is currently serving, according to the release. School counselor sexually assaulted student, CA cops say. Decades later, hes arrested Womans disappearance went unsolved for 38 years. Handwritten note leads to an arrest Bradenton man now arrested in 2 cold case killings of rival gang members, sheriff says TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) A man on trial for threatening to kill U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner cross-examined the Kansas Republican on Wednesday in federal court, with the congressman rejecting the defendant's suggestions that he was conveying a message from God. LaTurner was the last prosecution witness in the trial of Chase Neill, 32, from the northeastern Kansas city of Lawrence. Prosecutors contend that Neill, who is representing himself in court, became fixated on LaTurner and then made his threat in a June 5 phone message left after hours at LaTurners office in Topeka. The trial came amid what authorities say is a sharp rise in threats against the nations lawmakers over the past two years. LaTurner testified that he beefed up the security at his Topeka office and home in response to Neills message because he worried about the safety of his family and staff. Neill suggested Wednesday during his cross-examination of prosecution witnesses that he believes he is a religious heir whose message to LaTurner followed a tradition of Old Testament prophets following a duty of speaking for God and doing it as if they were God themselves. In questioning LaTurner, Neill asked whether it was reasonable for Neill to identify himself in his voicemail as the son of God. I thought the whole voicemail was unreasonable, especially the death threat parts, LaTurner replied. Before presiding U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter allowed Neill to take over his own defense Wednesday, federal public defenders argued that Neill is harmless because he expected God to send "meteors and plagues to punish LaTurner and government officials across the Earth. The public defenders also said Neill never tried to get close to LaTurner and after Neill left the message, local authorities did not arrest him or send him to a mental health hospital or ward. In the June voicemail message, Neill said he had contacted LaTurners office before about whether Congress was pursuing issues involving witchcraft, divination, wizards and creatures. Story continues Threats against members of Congress have increased since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In October, an intruder severely beat former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosis husband with a hammer in their San Francisco home. Local school board members and election workers across the nation also have endured harassment and threats. Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this week arrested a former Republican legislative candidate over a series of shootings targeting elected Democratic officials homes or offices, though none were injured. Neill acknowledges that he left the voicemail message in June telling LaTurner, I am saying that I will kill you, but argues that his use of the phrase act of God in the same message means he was forwarding a message from God, not himself. While LaTurner testified that he thought Neill was using some ridiculous talk," he focused on the death threat. He received an anonymous written threat in the mailbox at his Topeka home early in 2021, when he first entered Congress. As for the act of God phrase, LaTurner told Neill: "I thought it meant something more nefarious, that there would be an attempt to kill me and it wouldn't be detectable. Neill's questioning of LaTurner was bizarrely low-key, with the clean-shaven LaTurner sitting at the witness stand in a dark suit and the bearded Neill at the lawyers' podium wearing khaki pants, a blue jacket and a dress shirt without a tie. Neill had a Bible with him at the podium. His cross-examination of LaTurner ended abruptly after an objection from prosecutors to a question to the congressman, Do you believe that God has a right to punish people? A U.S. magistrate judge said in an August order refusing to release Neill from custody that Neill had suffered a head injury four or five years ago characterized as a head fracture. But Teeter concluded during a hearing last month that Neill was capable of following what was going on in court and assisting his lawyers, making him mentally competent to stand trial. Twice within the past week, Neill asked to represent himself, withdrawing one request before his federal court jury was selected Tuesday. He said Wednesday in court that he has been portrayed as a false Christ, damaging his reputation. Teeter granted the second request, finding it was his right to to represent himself and he could do so competently, despite his lack of legal training as a high school graduate with some college education. The judge warned Neill repeatedly Wednesday that she thought it unwise for him to represent himself, but he was adamant. ___ Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna Jan. 17The Free Press MANKATO A Lake Crystal man recently petitioned to plead guilty in a case involving criminal sexual misconduct with a minor. Nickalus Charles Eldridge, 35, formerly listed as living in Mankato, would face convictions for felony fourth-degree criminal sexual misconduct and felony threats of violence in Blue Earth County District Court. Fourth-degree sexual misconduct indicates sexual contact occurred between a person who was 14 to 15 years old and a person more than three years older, or with a person in a current or recent position of authority over the minor. A criminal complaint stated the investigation into Eldridge began when child protection services received a report about him Sept. 9. A girl reportedly accused him of inappropriately touching her while she was sleeping. Investigators said she also received threatening messages from him afterward. When police contacted him, they reported him saying to come get him if they had evidence against him. Police issued a warrant against him, leading to his arrest and formal charges being filed against him in October. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28. Follow Brian Arola @BrianArola A man shot his former friend over $5,000 then rushed him to a hospital, Florida officials said. The injured man later was pronounced dead, sparking a homicide investigation, according to Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez and news reports. Now, the man accused in the Jan. 16 shooting is charged with murder. Online jail records dont list an attorney for the man, identified as 41-year-old Gany Narimanovich Djurabayev. The sheriffs office told WESH it responded at about 8:30 p.m to reports of shots fired on Arisha Drive in the Kissimmee area. At the scene roughly 20 miles southwest of Orlando, deputies reported finding possible blood. Officials believe the man had been shot during a dispute over a $5,000 down payment, Lopez said in video from a Jan. 17 news conference. It was determined that the victim and the suspect were involved in an argument outside of a residence in Osceola County, Lopez said. The fight turned physical at one point the victim punching the suspect. The suspect went to his vehicle, retrieved a firearm and shot him. Officials said Djurabayev drove the man hes accused of shooting to the hospital. He was identified as Bekzod Nishonboev. The two men who are both from the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan were one-time friends and neighbors, officials said. Deputies said the incident was isolated and ask anyone with information to call them at 407-348-2222, WOFL reported. The Osceola County Sheriffs Office didnt immediately respond to McClatchy News requests for additional information on Jan. 18. Inmate planned to use stimulus check to pay hitman to kill Florida judge, feds say Mom arrested in California nearly 20 years after daughters death in Florida, cops say A man disappeared into the ocean after he was thrown from an inflatable raft when it flipped, Oregon authorities said. Witnesses told deputies they saw the man at Netarts Bay walking along the shoreline carrying only the raft and two oars, according to a Jan. 17 Facebook post from the Tillamook County Sheriffs Office. He then paddled out into the fast-moving outgoing current, and the raft quickly headed toward the mouth of the bay, the sheriffs office said. The raft flipped, throwing the man, who disappeared underwater, according to the sheriffs office. Members of the Netarts-Oceanside Fire Districts rescue team recovered the raft in the rough breakers, but the man could not be located, TCSO Marine Deputy Dennis Greiner said, according to the post. With 10 to 12 foot waves at approximately 3 seconds, crews were working in difficult conditions, feverishly searching for the individual, the Netarts-Oceanside Fire District said in a Facebook post. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter also searched the area, but the man was not found, Greiner said, according to the post. Unfortunately this rescue attempt turned into a body recovery as grabbing the victim was not possible, the Netarts-Oceanside Fire District said. An investigation is ongoing, the sheriffs office said. Netarts Bay is about 75 miles northwest of Salem. Man thrown from raft after hitting rapids dies, Maine officials say Divers recover body of rafter who went missing on Lake Lanier in May, GA officials say Man tells friend this fish is huge, then he vanishes overboard, Hawaii cops say A man has revealed the lengths he went to to protest his companys dress code after his manager complained about women wearing yoga pants to work. The 31-year-old man, who goes by the username u/GingerlyForged on Reddit, reflected on the series of events in a recent post to the subreddit r/MaliciousCompliance, where he revealed that he also began wearing yoga pants in solidarity with his coworkers. In the post, the man, who described himself as a bit of a clown but very good at following rules while doing so, recalled how hed been working at a popular convenience store when a new manager was appointed, who he said seemed eager to flex her authority. According to the OP [original poster], in an effort to prove her authority, the manager began to take issue with the way employees were dressing, with the man revealing that his then-boss had posted the uniform portion of the handbook in the breakroom and started complaining about peoples attire. However, he said the managers biggest issue was with female employees wearing yoga pants. The complaints from the manager prompted the man to read through the dress code outlined in the handbook, which he said stated that yoga pants were allowed as long as the ankles flared. According to the individual, he also realised that there was no gender designation for these articles, which he said inspired him to purchase his own yoga pants to wear to work in protest of the treatment of his coworkers. Cue malicious compliance, I and a friend went to Walmart after work and bought a couple pairs of flared yoga pants, he recalled, adding that he then began wearing them almost every day he worked, and especially if his manager was working. The outfit reportedly infuriated the mans manager, who he said he often heard protesting his pants. I would regularly hear her protests and even saw her go to the AGM and GM, he wrote. Their response was always: I cant say anything, hes in dress code. Story continues According to the man, after a month, his manager eventually requested a transfer. Speaking to BoredPanda about his protest, the man reflected on the importance of using ones privilege to help others. Just because an issue doesnt affect you doesnt mean you cant participate in fighting it, he said. As for how his coworkers felt about his fashion choice, the OP told BoredPanda that they loved it and asked that he wear the pants long after the manager left, a request he said he occasionally obliged. On Reddit, where the post has been upvoted more than 34,000 times since it was shared on Monday, users have applauded the man for his handling of the situation. Not only were you MC [maliciously compliant] with the boss, but you were protecting your coworkers, all with one fashion faux pas. Good for you, one person jokingly commented. Another user said: The hero we need, to which the man replied: Not a hero, just a man in really tight pants. Youre the real MVP and I bet you looked fabulous, someone else said. Others praised the story as being the perfect example of malicious compliance, with one person describing it as completely malicious and yet, not cruel. My favourite kind, they added. In response to another user, who said they always enjoy stories of men MCing dress codes, OP reiterated the importance of using privilege to help others. Sometimes its up to us to show management how asinine their rules are, he wrote. Let women work in comfort. In September 2021, two high school students tested their theory that their school dress code was sexist by wearing similar outfits. The teenagers, who documented the experiment on TikTok, seemingly proved their hypothesis after teachers only disciplined the female student for breaking dress code. Jan. 18WEST HARTFORD A Manchester man with 21 outstanding felony theft warrants in two states was arrested Saturday at Westfarms Mall, police say. Dezmond A. Bonds, 31, of Manchester was taken into custody after West Hartford police were notified of a vehicle wanted in connection with "numerous crimes" earlier that day and in months prior parked in the lower level parking lot of Macy's at the mall. Police watched the vehicle until Bonds exited the mall with Rondell Jackson, 36, of Middletown and arrested both men. Officers say they seized $1,900 in suspected counterfeit money, along with prepaid debit cards and $1,700 of items that they say was purchased with fraudulent currency. Both men were charged with first-degree forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery, and fourth-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit larceny. Bonds also was charged with interfering with an officer as he led police on a short foot chase before being caught. In making the arrest, police found that Bonds had 21 outstanding arrest warrants in Connecticut and Massachusetts, from towns including East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, South Windsor, and Vernon. He is being held in lieu of bond totaling $100,000 and is to appear in Hartford Superior Court on Feb. 3. Rondell was released on $25,000 bond and is to appear in Hartford. Joseph covers Manchester and Bolton for the Journal Inquirer. NEW YORK Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants to pause the publication of a tell-all book about his offices investigation into Donald Trump to make sure nothing confidential is spilled on its pages. Braggs office claims the author, Mark Pomerantz a veteran white-collar lawyer who blamed the DA when he quit the team investigating the ex-president shirked a legal obligation to get permission to pen People vs. Donald Trump. Mr. Pomerantz has neither sought nor received approval to make disclosures relating to ongoing matters at the DAs Office, and this Office has not reviewed any drafts or excerpts of his manuscript, the DAs lawyer Leslie Dubeck wrote Wednesday to attorneys for publisher Simon & Schuster, Paramount and Pomerantz. (Because) Mr. Pomerantz has been separated from the DAs Office for nearly a year, he is not capable of making any assessment of whether the disclosures he intends to disseminate in this publication could prejudice the probe, Dubeck wrote. The DA asked the publisher to halt its release until prosecutors could conduct a pre-publication review to ensure the contents didnt violate secrecy laws or jeopardize his ongoing investigation into Trump. Braggs lawyer said details in the book Pomerantz gathered as a public servant but didnt get permission to disclose equated to unlawfully converting confidential government information for his personal advantage. In announcing the books Feb. 7 release, Simon & Schuster described it as a fascinating inside account of the attempt to prosecute Trump, by Pomerantz, who resigned in protest when Manhattans district attorney refused to act. The DA copied the city Conflicts of Interest Board and the Department of Investigation on the letter. I am confident that all of my actions with respect to the Trump investigation, including the writing of my forthcoming book, are consistent with my legal and ethical obligations, Pomerantz said Wednesday. Story continues Pomerantz left high-powered law firm Paul, Weiss in early 2021, when he was hired by Braggs predecessor Cy Vance Jr. to oversee his extensive investigation into Trump. He quit in February 2022 along with special prosecutor Carey Dunne when Bragg declined to bring an indictment against Trump based on the evidence the team gathered, despite Vance giving his blessing before he left office. Pomerantz prosecuted former Gambino crime family boss John Junior Gotti and other mobsters in the 1990s. He held the prestigious post of head of the Southern District of New Yorks criminal division from 1997 to 1999. In his leaked resignation letter and a podcast interview, Pomerantz made no secret about his feelings about Braggs decision. He described the new DAs hesitancy to bring charges against Trump as misguided. In December Braggs won a conviction against the Trump Organization on tax fraud charges, resulting in $1.6 million in fines. The companys chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to five months in jail last week for tax dodging. On the heels of the companys conviction, the DA has appeared to sharpen his focus on Trump. The former presidents lawyer and fixer was questioned by Braggs office on Tuesday. Prior to that, Cohen had no contact with the office since Pomerantzs departure. Representatives for Simon & Schuster and Paramount did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., talks with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., in the House chamber as the House meets for the third day to elect a speaker on Jan. 5, 2023. AP Photo/Alex Brandon Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene dismissed Rep. Matt Gaetz after he praised her for her committee spots. Greene swiped at Gaetz over his role in the House speaker battle. Greene called herself "the leading MAGA voice in Congress." Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday rejected praise from fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz for her new committee assignments and instead criticized him over the days-long House speaker battle to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. Gaetz commended Greene after she landed seats on the Homeland Security Committee and Oversight Committee, having previously been stripped of serving on congressional panels two years ago over her past inflammatory statements and promotion of conspiracy theories. "She's going to do amazing work for the people on these key committees she has EARNED," Gaetz tweeted Wednesday. He then quoted a line from a blog post that read, Greene is "back on committee assignments now that Republicans have retaken the House and the Rep. Gaetz-led revolt has put some steel in McCarthy's spine." But Greene dismissed Gaetz's congratulations and instead thanked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for placing her on the committees she requested. She also slammed Gaetz over the House speaker vote. He was among 20 House Republicans who repeatedly voted against electing McCarthy for the top post when the 118th Congress kicked off on January 3. The process dragged over four days and took 15 ballots until McCarthy won the gavel. "Too bad we're weeks behind after you spent a week only getting MTV from 5 to 1," Greene responded to Gaetz on Twitter, referencing negotiations that took place during the speaker battle about a rule that would allow one lawmaker rather than five to initiate a vote to oust the speaker, otherwise known as a "motion to vacate." Greene, a second-term Georgia Republican, went on to declare herself "the leading MAGA voice in Congress." "I look forward to committees," she tweeted on Wednesday. In the last Congress, House Democrats, joined by 11 House Republicans, voted to remove Greene from her committee posts. Story continues Gaetz quickly replied to Greene's tweet, writing "we got a few other things," but lowering the the motion to vacate threshold was "totally worth it!" He also continued to applaud Greene. "We the People will be in better hands with MTG holding the corrupt Biden Admin accountable via committee service. I'm so here for it," Gaetz wrote. Still, Greene fired back at Gaetz. "The rules package did not change at all from Jan 1st to Jan 6th, except MTV went from 5 to 1," she wrote on Twitter. "Literally anyone can read them online and see that. All substantial negotiations happened in conference & 5 families meetings before the 15 ballots starting on Jan 3rd." Besides the motion-to-vacate rule, McCarthy made additional concessions to win over the 20 GOP holdouts during the speaker battle, including that some lawmakers of the far-right faction were reportedly promised key committee spots. Gaetz ultimately voted "present" on the final speaker ballot. Greene became a high-profile McCarthy ally during the speaker vote, rallying behind him in a rare break from members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, including Gaetz. But Greene and Gaetz have often worked on the same side of issues, for example, appearing publicly together at news conferences on Capitol Hill, discussing matters ranging from the January 6, 2021 riot to Ukraine aid. Yet despite their division on the speaker vote, Greene and Gaetz were seen seated next to each other and laughing together in the House chamber that week. Spokespeople for Greene and Gaetz did not immediately return Insider's requests for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider Brian Walshe, husband of missing Massachusetts woman Ana Walshe, stands during his arraignment in Quincy District Court in Quincy, Massachusetts, on Monday. Brian Walshe, the husband of a Massachusetts woman who went missing early on Jan. 1, searched from his sons iPad 10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to, how long for someone to be missing to inherit, how long before a body starts to smell, and how to stop a body from decomposing, among other searches, local prosecutors revealed on Wednesday. The evidence was presented in court shortly after prosecutors issued a murder warrant for Walshe in the death of his wife, Ana. Walshe allegedly made these searches within minutes of the time he told Cohasset police that he last saw Ana alive. Additional searches he made on Jan. 1 include, can you throw away body parts, how long does DNA last, can identification be made on partial remains, dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body, how to clean blood from wooden floor, and what happens when you put body parts in ammonia? Read more The following day, on Jan. 2, Walshes searches included hacksaw best tool to dismember, can you be charged with murder without a body, and can you identify a body with broken teeth, prosecutors said. They claim that the day after Anas disappearance, Walshe purchased nearly $500 in goods from Home Depot, including cleaning supplies, mops, and tape. On Monday, authorities said that police found blood and a bloody knife in the basement of the Walshes home. Walshe was arrested earlier this month, when he was charged with misleading the investigation into his wifes disappearance. Hes now charged with moving Anas body or remains and is accused of assaulting and beating Ana with intent to murder her, according to the criminal complaint. He pleaded not guilty in Quincy District Court on Wednesday. In a 2014 police report filed with Metropolitan Police in Washington, D.C., Ana said that Walshe had threatened to kill her over the phone. An agency spokesperson confirmed the police report to NBC News this week, and told NBC that no charges were filed against Walshe at the time because Ana ultimately refused to cooperate with law enforcement. The case was closed, and the following year, Walshe and Anna were married. They had three young sons, who are now between the ages of 2 and 6. Story continues Ana was last seen in her home early on Jan. 1 before taking a ride-share from her home to Bostons Logan International Airport for an apparent work emergency. Police havent been able to confirm which car service she took, but did confirm that she had booked plane tickets from Boston to D.C. for Jan. 3. Walshes defense attorney, Tracy Miner, claimed in a statement in court on Wednesday that prosecutors dont have a strong case against Walshe. In my experience, where, as here, the prosecution leaks so-called evidence to the press before they provide it to me, their case isnt that strong, Miner said. She continued: It is easy to charge a crime and even easier to say a person committed that crime. It is a much more difficult thing to prove it, which we will see if the prosecution can do. Reuters reported that Walshe was also involved in a wire fraud case in 2021, though he faced no prison time, and before that, he was written out of his late fathers will, because friends and family accused him of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his fathers money. Anas disappearance and Walshes suspected involvement in her death come amid a recent, disturbing rash of domestic violence and murder-suicide cases involving men killing their female partners and their kids for trying to leave them. The killingsin Utah, North Carolina, and Michiganhappened over the course of a week earlier this month. More from Jezebel Sign up for Jezebel's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Paramount Plus has edited the marketing material for its show Mayor of Kingstown to remove facial wounds from its star Jeremy Renners face. The change comes as Renner recovers from blunt chest trauma and orthopaedic injuries incurred when he was run over by a snow plough near his home in Nevada on New Years Day. In the artwork used to advertise the thriller series second season, Renners character Mike McLusky originally appeared with cuts across his face. However, the updated artwork now shows a much cleaner-faced Renner, The Hollywood Reporter first reported. Its good of the network, co-creator Hugh Dillon told the publication, adding of that everybody is sensitive to Jeremy. The Independent has reached out to Paramount+ for additional comment. Jeremy Renner in the new Mayor of Kingstown season two poster (left) beside a previous version (Paramount+) The actor tweeted Tuesday that he was now at home with his family, after a stint in intensive care. Replying to the official Mayor Of Kingstown Twitter accounts season two announcement, Renner said: Outside my brain fog in recovery, I was very excited to watch episode 201 with my family at home. The news of Renners return home came amid reports that his friends feared his recovery may take years. The actors close friends reportedly told RadarOnline that it could be two years before the actor is fully back to normal. Doctors tend to space out operations to allow time for the bodys natural healing process to kick in, and thats the case here, the source said. However, his sister Kym told People that the family were so thrilled with his progress. If anyone knows Jeremy, he is a fighter and doesnt mess around, she said. He is crushing all the progress goals. We couldnt feel more positive about the road ahead. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday called on special counsels at the Department of Justice to treat former President Trump and President Biden equally as they investigate their possession of classified documents at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort and Bidens Washington office and home in Delaware. McConnell has feuded with Trump over that past two years, but McConnell nevertheless stuck up for the former Republican president, warning federal prosecutors to apply the same set of standards to both investigations. I think the important thing with regard to documents is that both these guys ought to be treated exactly the same way. Exactly the same way. And so I think the attorney general probably did the right thing by having two special counsels, McConnell told Terry Meiners on Kentuckys NewsRadio 840 WHAS. Whats good for one candidate for president ought to be good for another one, the Senate GOP leader added. Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed Robert Hur, the former U.S. attorney for District of Maryland, to serve as special counsel handling the investigation of classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and at a garage at Bidens home in Wilmington, Del. Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith in November to oversee the Justice Departments investigations of Trump, including his possession of more than 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has accused the Justice Department of acting out of political motivation, calling its investigation of him rigged and dismissing Smith as a political hit man. Republicans including Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) called on Garland last week to appoint a special counsel to investigate Bidens possession of classified documents, arguing the failure to do so would be tantamount to setting a double standard for the former president and sitting president. Story continues Senate Democrats have largely stayed quiet on the subject of Bidens possession of classified documents, something the president himself said he was not aware of before they were discovered late last year and reported to the Justice Department. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) has called for his panel to receive a briefing on the documents kept at Bidens office and residence. Judy Kurtz contributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexicos president said Wednesday his government will consider a plea by imprisoned drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman to be returned to Mexico, presumably to serve out his sentence. Guzman, 64, was sentenced to life behind bars in the United States for a drug conspiracy that spread murder and mayhem for more than two decades. Guzman has lived in poor conditions in prison since his 2019 conviction, said Jose Refugio Rodriguez, a Mexican lawyer who claims to represent him. Rodriguez told local media that Guzman hasn't had adequate access to sunlight, visits, good food or medical care. The Mexican Embassy in Washington said in its Twitter account that it had received an email from Rodriguez about the issue and had turned it over to Mexico's Foreign relations Department. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said we will review it, adding: You always have to keep the door open when it comes to human rights. The U.S. and Mexico have a prison transfer agreement that allows inmates convicted in one country to serve out their sentence in their home country under certain circumstances. But given Guzman's crimes, his sentence and the risks he purportedly still poses, many doubt the agreement would apply in his case. MEXICO CITY (AP) Authorities in western Mexico said Wednesday they have launched a search for two community activists who went missing after their bullet-ridden vehicle was found on a rural roadway. The two had been active in fighting a massive iron ore mine in the town of Aquila. Inhabitants have long complained the massive open-pit mine caused pollution and drew violence to the area, while offering little benefit to residents. The town of Aquila is located in area of the western state of Michoacan, which long been disputed between drug cartels. The two disappeared Sunday night on the border between Michoacan and the neighboring state of Colima. Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramirez said Wednesday that authorities in both states had mounted searches for lawyer Ricardo Lagunes and schoolteacher Antonio Diaz. We hope to find these two people alive, Ramirez said. Prosecutors in both states are searching. The U.N. human rights office called on authorities to do more to protect activists. The disappearance of these two (rights) defenders is a terrible and alarming thing, according to a statement by Guillermo Fernandez-Maldonado, the Mexico representative of the U.N. rights office. He said one of the two had been granted government protection, which did not prevent his disappearance. It was not clear which of the men had supposedly been receiving protection. Diaz was a leader in the largely Indigenous community of Aquila, while Lagunes had long been involved in defending communities in several states in land and development disputes. The Aquila mine did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the past, the area's rich iron ore deposits have drawn the interest of competing drug cartels, which have either extorted money from the mining community, or become directly engaged in the ore trade. Michoacan has long been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Jalisco cartel and the Viagras cartel, as well as local gangs. Solomon Pena, a former Republican candidate for New Mexico state House who is accused of masterminding multiple shootings at the homes of Democratic lawmakers after he lost his race is facing multiple criminal charges ahead of his first scheduled court appearance. No one was hurt in any of the shootings. Pena, was arrested Monday on four counts each of shooting at a dwelling or occupied building, shooting at or from a motor vehicle and conspiracy to commit a felony, along with one count each of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful criminal solicitation. He was also charged with one felony count of "receipt, transportation or possession of a firearm or destructive device by certain persons." Mugshot of Solomon Pena. / Credit: Metropolitan Detention Center Pena, who is in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque, orchestrated a number of shootings at the homes of four Democratic lawmakers in Albuquerque since early December, according to Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina. Pena hired four accomplices to fire bullets into the homes of two state legislators and two county commissioners, Medina told reporters in a news conference Monday. Another suspect was taken into custody on Jan. 9, but it's unclear whether that person is an accomplice in the case. Police said that Pena falsely claimed that his own race, which he lost in a landslide in November to incumbent Democratic state Rep. Miguel P. Garcia, was "rigged." Mayor Tim Keller called Pena, who ran on a "Make America Great Again" platform, a "right wing radical" and "election denier," as well as "someone who did the worst imaginable thing you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn to violence." Adriann Barboa, one of the elected officials who police said was targeted by Pena and his accomplices, said that Pena had confronted her at her home shortly after the election. As the commissioner of Bernillo County, she was involved in the process of certifying election votes. Barboa told CBS News Tuesday that Pena told her not to certify the election. Story continues "He said, 'I want results now,' and he was definitely aggressive," Barboa said. Later in December, Barboa was returning home from Christmas shopping when she found evidence of gunfire. "My home was shot right through my front door, four times, out my back window, right through my living room and kitchen, right where I had been playing, only hours before, with my brand-new grandbaby," Barboa said. No one was harmed in the shooting at Barboa's home, or at any other crime scene. In one case, a state legislator's 10-year-old daughter was awoken by bullet debris dropping onto her bed, but she was not physically harmed. According to a police report, Pena was unhappy with these outcomes, and asked his accomplices "to shoot lower into the houses and to do so earlier in the evening ... when targets would be less likely (to) be lying down." State House Speaker Javier Martinez, another official who police said was targeted in the shootings, said that the events of the past month reminded him of violence in his birth country of Mexico. "(Mexico) is a place where politics and journalism can actually get you killed," Martinez said. "I would have never thought that could be the case in my own country, here." Husband of missing woman Ana Walshe arraigned on murder charge Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen meets Chinese economic officials in Switzerland Trump, DeSantis and the potential 2024 Republican presidential campaign The Miami-Dade County School Board welcomed a new representative to its nine-member board and also elected a new vice chair two positions that were held by former member Lubby Navarro, who stepped down last month. Maria Bosque-Blanco, 48, a guidance counselor at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, an all-girl, Archdiocesan of Miami high school in southwest Miami-Dade, was appointed Tuesday evening by Gov. Ron DeSantis to represent District 7 for the remaining two years of Navarros term. She was sworn in Wednesday morning. READ MORE: DeSantis appoints a Lourdes Academy staffer to the Miami-Dade School Board Later, during the regular board meeting, Daniel Espino, a DeSantis appointee who just joined the board in November, was elected in a 5-4 vote as vice chair. Espino voted for himself, as did Chairperson Mari Tere Rojas and the three other DeSantis allies on the board, Bosque-Blanco, Roberto Alonso, who nominated Espino, and Monica Colucci. Steve Gallon III, Lucia Baez-Geller and Luisa Santos voted for Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, who voted for herself. Gallon nominated Bendross-Mindingall. As the most senior member on the board, Gallon argued the board would benefit from Bendross-Mindingall as a leader with institutional knowledge as it navigates a very rapid and unanticipated transition in leadership. She has been on the board since 2010. READ MORE: Miami-Dade School Board elects new chair, vice chair aligned with DeSantis, GOP A fourth DeSantis ally on the board The moves are the latest changes that welcomed three new DeSantis allies to the board before the end of the year and a leadership election in November that all but guaranteed a conservative lean on the board. In August, Alonso, a businessman, was elected to the District 4 seat vacated by longtime chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman, who did not seek reelection. In the same Aug. 23 election, Colucci, a district teacher, defeated longtime incumbent Marta Perez for the District 8 seat. DeSantis backed both candidates. Story continues READ MORE: Two DeSantis-backed Miami school board candidates win, one edging out a longtime incumbent The third, Espino, a local attorney and former Miami Springs city councilman, came onto the board in November. DeSantis tapped him in November to fill Christi Fragas District 5 seat after she successfully ran for Doral Mayor. READ MORE: DeSantis has another opportunity to shape the Miami-Dade School Board. Will it matter? Bosque-Blanco is the fourth member to be either appointed or endorsed by DeSantis, further solidifying his influence on the historically non-partisan board. During her acceptance speech Wednesday, after thanking the governor and Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez for entrusting me with this responsibility, Bosque-Blanco reiterated common phrases often espoused by conservatives, such as the need for more parents rights in schools. (In November, Nunez ceremoniously swore in Alonso and Colucci before the official ceremony.) Maria Bosque-Blanco, the new Miami-Dade School Board member that Gov. DeSantis appointed on Tuesday, stands for the Pledge of Allegiance before her swearing-in ceremony at the Miami-Dade School Board headquarters on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. Parents rights tilt, echoing DeSantis Having dedicated my professional career to the field of education, I believe all children have a right to feel safe, loved and educated, while preserving the parents rights to be the primary educators in the home, she said from the podium. As a teacher, psychologist and guidance counselor, she added, It has always been clear to me that a strong collaboration between home and school is the most effective in maximizing the students potential and overall well being. Bosque-Blanco, an alumna of Miami Dade College and Barry University, serves on the Board of Trustees at Miami Dade College. Alonso also serves on the MDC board. DeSantis appointed Alonso to that board in 2020. Alonso and Colucci campaigned on platforms that echoed DeSantis education agenda, which calls for more parents rights and endorses a back-to-basics education model that focuses on core subjects such as reading, writing, math and civics. And Espino, during his acceptance speech in November, argued theres never been a more critical time for parents to play a central role in their childs education. CAST YOUR VOTE: Who are your heroes at Miami-Dade and Broward schools? Nominate them here Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella - Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg Microsoft is to cut 10,000 jobs in the face of a global economic downturn, with chief executive Satya Nadella saying the technology giant cannot defy gravity. The layoffs represent just under 5pc of Microsofts global headcount and mean the company joins a growing cohort of big tech companies making deep job cuts. Industry data shows that technology companies laid off more than 150,000 people last year. Mr Nadella said the cuts were difficult, but necessary as the economy slowed and demand for tech products cooled. He added the tech industry was unforgiving to anyone who doesnt adapt. Every one of us and every team across the company must raise the bar, he wrote in a memo to staff. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos ahead of the announcement, Mr Nadella said the company needed to react to the gloomy economic situation. Mr Nadella said: At the end of the day, all of us are governed by what is happening in the world. Because no one can defy gravity, and the gravity here is inflation-adjusted economic growth. All [across] the world it's been pretty weak. Microsoft said it would take a $1.2bn charge to pay severance packages and reorganise its devices division. The company added around 75,000 staff between 2020 and 2022 as technology companies across the industry invested heavily in anticipation of continued growth. Microsoft in particular benefitted from booming interest in its Office products and Teams video calling app as companies switched to working from home during the pandemic. However, the move to hybrid working, or a return to the office altogether, has curtailed this momentum. Shares in Microsoft have fallen by around 20pc over the past 12 months, although the decline has not been as sharp as the losses at its rivals such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. The so-called GAMMA companies Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Apple have now let go of 39,000 staff between them over the last 12 months. Only Google and Apple have yet to confirm widespread layoffs. On Wednesday, Amazon began informing around 18,000 staff from different divisions that they would lose their jobs. The cuts are expected to fall most heavily on its hardware division, its stores team and its human resources functions. In November, Facebook owner Meta said it would cut 11,000 roles as its bet on transforming the social network into a metaverse company fails to pay off. Other tech giants have made cutbacks. Salesforce said it would cut 8,000 staff earlier this month, while Twitter has laid off more than half of its 7,500 staff since Elon Musk's takeover in October. Dan Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, said Microsoft had needed to cut sooner rather than later in non-strategic areas with a softer backdrop now on the horizon. (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., which is eliminating 10,000 jobs and trimming some of its hardware lineup, will reduce its HoloLens goggles business as it scales back work on a headset for the US Army that Congress declined to fund this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg The software maker will take a $1.2 billion charge in the second fiscal quarter related to the overall job cuts and changes to our hardware portfolio, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said Wednesday in a memo. Some of those changes relate to the HoloLens goggle and the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, being designed for the Army, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are confidential. Workforce reductions began Wednesday in Microsofts mixed-reality group, which makes HoloLens and IVAS, said one of the people. Microsoft plans to complete the entire 10,000 layoffs by the end of March. The company declined to comment on the actions affecting the HoloLens group. Microsoft wont be getting more orders for its combat goggles anytime soon after Congress earlier this month rejected the US Armys request for $400 million to buy as many as 6,900 of them in the current fiscal year. The rejection of the request, in the $1.75 trillion government funding bill approved in December, reflects concern over field tests of the goggles, which are adapted from Microsofts HoloLens headsets. The tests disclosed mission-affecting physical impairments, including headaches, eyestrain and nausea. Its the latest setback for the companys troubled HoloLens project, which was unveiled with much fanfare and enthusiasm in 2015 but has struggled to find customers. The Army deal, initially announced in 2018, by 2021 was set to run five years, with the option of five more years, and a maximum value of almost $22 billion. Instead, the project has been beset by delays related to the product and federal funding. The goggles are taking longer to get up and running and the project may never reach the hoped for total value, one of the people said. Story continues Insider reported earlier this month that the executive in charge of the Army goggles project was leaving Microsoft. Last year, Alex Kipman, the executive overseeing HoloLens, exited after being accused of inappropriate behavior toward female employees at Microsoft by current and former workers in an Insider report. Kipman had been the public face of the initiative and after his departure it was split into software and hardware groups under executives who people said at the time were much less committed to the device. The future of HoloLens also raised questions about Microsofts strategy for the metaverse. That plan involved software like avatars for the Teams chat and conferencing application, which was released in a private preview in October. Other companies, like Meta Platforms Inc., have run into delays and issues with their metaverse plans. And Apple Inc. still plans to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, but is postponing an important follow-up product lightweight augmented reality glasses due to technical issues, Bloomberg reported. (Updates with details on army contract, executive turnover beginning in sixth paragraph.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Microsoft is reportedly planning to announce the slashing of thousands of roles at the company this week, joining the wave of mass layoffs at tech giants including Amazon, Meta, and Twitter. About five per cent of Microsofts existing workforce may be laid off, which could mean over 10,000 jobs cut at the company. according to Sky News. Bloomberg also reported that a large number of layoffs announced in Microsofts engineering divisions on Wednesday, significantly larger than the one per cent cut to its workforce the company underwent last year. In an interview with CNBC earlier this year, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella said the tech industry should brace itself for two more years of struggle before seeing growth again. Mr Nadella said Microsoft wasnt immune to the global changes, including real recession in several parts of the world. The current challenges faced by the tech industry are caused by the cool down of the demand that was previously spurred by the Covdi-19 pandemic, he said. We did have a lot of acceleration during the pandemic, and theres some amount of normalisation of that demand. And on top of it, there is a real recession in some parts of the world, the Microsoft chief added. It remains unclear how many positions at the company from different parts of the world, including the UK, are likely to be affected in the looming layoffs. Microsoft did not immediately respond to The Independents request for comment. As of June 30 last year, the company had about 221,000 full-time employees, including 122,000 in the US and 99,000 in other parts of the world. The looming mass layoff also comes a week ahead of Microsofts planned quarterly earnings report that would inform the companys investors more on its financial performance. The tech giants shares have dropped neatly a quarter in the past year, and changed very little at $240.35 at close time in New York on Tuesday. The layoff also comes following job cuts at several tech giants, including Amazon which cut over 18,000 jobs earlier this month citing an uncertain economy. Story continues Amazons announcement came after massive layoffs at other Big Tech companies including Twitter, Facebook parent company Meta and other Silicon Valley firms. Earlier this month, Salesforce and Vimeo also announced they were laying off employees. Entering 2023, Salesforce said it is cutting about 10 per cent of its workforce representing about 8,000 jobs and closing some of its offices, while Vimeo said it would reduce staff numbers by 11 per cent. More than 180,000 employees in over 1,100 tech companies have been laid off since 2022, according to the website layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry. The rules governing where -- and, in many cases, if -- military members and their spouses pay state income taxes are changing thanks to a new law signed early this year. The Veterans Auto and Education Improvement Act of 2022, which became law Jan. 5, makes amendments to the tax residency rules in the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a law that gives financial and legal protections to troops and their families. Tax experts I consulted agree that how and when the new law is implemented by both states and the IRS is unclear. They even declined to speculate on the record about what the impact of the law might be. But according to the text of the law itself, one thing is clear: Changes are here, and they could mean thousands of dollars more, or less, in taxes for military families. The new law opens the door to service members and their spouses to pick the state in which they pay income taxes from three options: the legal residence or domicile of the service member; the legal residence or domicile of the spouse; or the current permanent duty station of the service member. It also expands to spouses a residency protection already offered to service members that allows them to remain tied to a former legal residency, even if they no longer physically live there. The change could effectively mean that if the service member and spouse are ever stationed in a state that has low income tax rates or no state income tax they can continue to claim that state as their legal residency after moving away, so long as they met legal residency requirements while living there. An important caveat: Always consult with a tax professional or tax attorney before deciding how and where to file your taxes. What the New Law Says About State Taxes and Military Section 18 of that new law includes: "A spouse of a servicemember shall neither lose nor acquire a residence or domicile for purposes of taxation with respect to the person, personal property, or income of the spouse by reason of being absent or present in any tax jurisdiction of the United States solely to be with the servicemember in compliance with the servicemember's military orders." Story continues And: "For any taxable year of the marriage, a servicemember and the spouse of such servicemember may elect to use for purposes of taxation, regardless of the date on which the marriage of the servicemember and the spouse occurred, any of the following: (A) The residence or domicile of the servicemember. (B) The residence or domicile of the spouse. (C) The permanent duty station of the servicemember." What Makes a Place a Legal "Residence or Domicile?" To understand the implications of this law, it's important to first understand how a location becomes a legal "residence or domicile." According to tax attorney and military spouse Candice McPhillips, "domicile" is where you've established official connections to a place, through actions like owning property, registering your car, holding a driver's license and registering to vote. A residency, on the other hand, is where you physically live. Different states have different rules as to what actions prove domicile. What the Previous Law Said About Military Residency and Income Taxes In the past, service members paid income taxes on their military pay to their state of legal residence. If that state had no income taxes, the service member didn't pay any. Under those rules, military spouses could pay income taxes in the state where they physically resided, or choose to "borrow" the service member's state of legal residence for taxes. But those rules created a lot of confusion, since a variety of different state and federal laws dictated when a military spouse could retain a previous state of legal residency after relocating on military orders. For example, a previous version of the law said that for a military spouse to keep their old state of legal residence "for purposes of taxation" when they moved, that state of residency being retained by the spouse had to be the same state of residency as the active-duty service member. Yet just what actions constitute "legal residence" is a state issue, and the old federal law only offered minimal guidance and protection. For example, some states require that the spouse claim residence in the same state as the service member, while others don't have that restriction. The result was confusion, inconsistency and a lot of unintentional rule-breaking. What the New Law Says About Military Residency and Income Taxes While tax professionals are still waiting for more official clarification on how the new law will work, it seems to do two sweeping things. First, it says that both service members and spouses "shall neither lose nor acquire a residence or domicile for purposes of taxation." That means that if you are a legal resident of a state, you can keep your legal residence "for purposes of taxation," if you move to a new state due to military orders. That rule previously only existed for service members. The change means that, for example, a spouse who establishes residency in Washington state -- through registering to vote, voting in an election, holding a driver's license or owning property -- can keep that Washington state residency for tax purposes even after moving elsewhere as part of a PCS. But the second change is more sweeping. Under the new law, both the service member and the spouse can elect to pay taxes in either the service member's state of legal residence, the military spouse's state of legal residence, or the place where the service member is located on PCS orders. This opens all kinds of options. For example, both the spouse and the service member could easily choose to retain their residency in an income tax-free or low income tax state. A spouse who PCSes to a higher income tax state could instead choose from either their previous legal residency or their spouse's previous legal residency and file there. But there are a variety of questions floating around this new change that have yet to be clarified. For example, the law does not indicate the tax year for which the change is effective. Can service members and their spouses use these new options for their 2022 tax returns? What if they've been deployed and haven't filed 2021 yet? The law also seems to create the possibility that the military spouse and service member can elect to file their income taxes in different locations. Will the military spouse and the service member be required to file their taxes in the same state, or can they pick and choose as suits them? And will taxpayers be able to switch the states in which they file year to year? Issues that Weren't Addressed in the Change but Maybe Should Have Been As long as Congress was going to the effort of improving this section of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), I wish they'd cleaned it up a bit more. Here are a few issues that remain unresolved: The SCRA says that military members can use their state of legal residence for taxation of their "military income," but spouses may use their state of legal residence for taxation of all their income. That means that a military spouse who drives for Uber Eats at their duty station can attribute that income to their state of legal residence. But if a military member drives for Uber Eats at their duty station, they need to attribute that income to the state where they are stationed and doing the driving for Uber Eats. That creates a situation where the service member needs to file in two states, but the military spouse is only filing in one. Because the law clearly states that the spouse residency protections are tied to them being physically with the service member "in compliance with the servicemember's military orders," a military spouse who is geographically separated from their active-duty service member loses the residency protections of the law. This means a spouse will lose their legal residence protection if, for example, they want to stay in Maryland for a kid to finish high school while their service member moves ahead to Texas. It remains difficult to show a state that you are a legal resident. Driver's licenses, vehicle registration and other actions typically show that you mean to make a state your legal residence -- but none of these proof methods are protected by federal laws. That's problematic when a state asks you to prove you're a resident elsewhere, but doesn't necessarily accept the other state's standard as acceptable. In fact, the new change will likely make this even more problematic. That brings me to my last point of advice. Be Consistent About Your State of Legal Residence Wherever you maintain your state of legal residence, one thing remains constant: You need to be clear and consistent in your actions. To the greatest extent possible, maintain all your legal ties and documentation in that one state. While there is no single indicator of intent, many actions contribute to proving that you're a legal resident. But one of the biggest indicators of state of legal residence is where you file taxes. If you're jumping to different states from year to year, you could make it even more unclear. For example, don't get a local driver's license because it's easier than renewing in your home state. But do get a local driver's license if state law requires it. Don't sign an affidavit that you are a local area resident, because it saves you a few hundred bucks on your property taxes. Strive to stick to your one state in all your actions, whenever possible. If you change your legal residency to a state with simpler or no state income tax filing, change everything -- and work to keep it that way. That way, when State X says, "Prove you're a resident of State Y," you can show them your driver's license, vehicle registration, wills, tax returns and voter registration card. And, again, always consult with a tax professional or attorney before making major decisions that could have a long-term impact. In a move leaders say is focused on a commitment to the health and well-being of their patients, the group representing over 10,000 Minnesota doctors and doctors in training is advocating to decriminalize simple possession of illicit drugs. Members of the Minnesota Medical Associations board of trustees voted in December to approve the policy proposal, which calls for: The removal of criminal penalties for the possession of a small quantity of illicit drug for personal use and/or the possession of drug paraphernalia The creation of administrative panels that can render treatment referrals and civil penalties to offenders of simple possession An increased investment in statewide harm reduction and medication for opioid use disorder programs The release of individuals incarcerated for simple possession from detention settings The expungement of criminal records for simple possession Minnesota Medical Association (MMA) members say they believe the proposal is the first of its kind to be approved by a medical association in the United States. The move made sense for MMA, said Dr. Will Nicholson, a family physician at St. Johns Hospital in Maplewood and the associations president. MMA a nonprofit professional association that represents Minnesota physicians, residents, and medical students is focused on promoting the health of the patients its members serve, and Nicholson explained that the organization holds up its values and commitment to patient care by advocating for decriminalization. While most physicians do not support the legalization of illicit substances like marijuana, Nicholson said many do support decriminalization, because research has shown that putting people in jail for drug possession only exacerbates existing health-equity gaps. There arent many people who work harder than physicians to help stem the tide of drug abuse in our state, he said. It is very important that we are doing the right thing for our patients. Story continues Because he and his colleagues at MMA believe that criminalizing the use of addictive substances has a disproportionately negative impact on communities of color far-reaching impacts that can affect everything from voting rights to access to addiction treatment to home ownership to family stability Nicholson believes that a public stand in support of decriminalization was in line with the founding medical ethic of first, do no harm. The way physicians look at any health care challenge is we try to apply the highest possible ethical standards to get the best outcomes for our patients, he said. The science on this topic is pretty clear: Criminalizing addiction and addictive behavior doesnt get the best outcome for the patient. The more we look at it, the more we see it doesnt get the best outcome for society, either. Dr. Ryan Kelly is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School in internal medicine, pediatrics and addiction medicine and a member of the MMA working group that presented the policy proposal. He said that his support for decriminalization is rooted in his history of working with individuals struggling with substance use disorder combined with a professional commitment to supporting his patients health. I believe that criminalization is bad for ones health, Kelly said. The whole role of a medical provider is to improve health. That is not only promoting individual health but also community health. A survey of members showed overwhelming support for decriminalization among those who participated, and the board later approved the policy proposal. Kelly said he hopes to see the approach catch on nationwide.Members of other state medical associations have voiced interest, Kelly said. Other groups are working to advocate on similar lines at the state level. I think more people are starting to organize on this, he said. It could have been easy for the MMA to avoid controversy and take a more neutral stance on the issue, Nicholson said, but he and other members believe that neutrality is no longer an option. And when influential people face serious issues and talk about them openly, they help society inch toward progress, he said. The MMA is choosing to take this issue on, Nicholson said. We are not sitting this out. Thats the thing Im most proud of. Physicians in the state are stepping up. We are going to take this on with Minnesota, with Minnesotans. We are going to be part of this debate, part of this solution. By taking a more public, advocacy-focused position, he said, the MMA sends a clear message about the kind of medicine they hope to practice. That, to me, is the most important thing, Nicholson said. We are here day-in, day-out, doing the work, trying to advocate for the best things for patients based on science and ethics. Equal levels of abuse, unequal repercussions While substance use disorder occurs across all ethnic and racial lines, Nicholson and Kelly both believe that unequal and punitive enforcement of drug possession laws has only expanded gaps that already existed in American society. People of color are far more likely to do jail time for drug possession, Nicholson said. Individuals charged with felony possession lose their voting rights, cannot be hired for certain jobs, cannot serve on a jury, or qualify for some social benefits or public housing. These limitations harm not only the person convicted of drug possession but also their family members. These cascading impacts negatively affect individuals overall health, Nicholson said. He believes that physicians cannot ignore this larger impact and are compelled to take action. Nicholson said while doctors are aware of the negative effects drugs have and would not encourage their patients to use illegal substances, he and his colleagues also believe that a punitive approach doesnt work. Decriminalization is a more fair-minded and equitable approach to dealing with this crisis, he said. There are so many other factors that go into this issue, Nicholson said. It is hard to communicate to people that they should not do drugs but we should also not criminalize it if they do drugs. To us thats a medical challenge we accept and we are going to bring the best science, the best technology and the best resources to bear. Because felony drug convictions can block access to drug treatment, Kelly said that decriminalization could free up access for a greater number of people, therefore broadening the potential number of people who could benefit from addiction and recovery care. Decriminalization is the best way to give people a chance at recovery, he said. If you have a criminal record, it makes it almost impossible to get help. Jeremiah Gardner, Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation director of communications and public affairs, said that decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs as Minnesota did years ago with marijuana can offer the opportunity to divert more resources to helping people overcome addiction rather than punishing them. But he said it is important to make those reinvestments with care, with the aim of making sure those seeking recovery are able to access help. At the same time, Gardner said, for the sake of young people especially, I dont think we want to normalize illicit drug use, so parameters limiting or forbidding public use would be important to look at as well. Whatever happens going forward, Nicholson said it is important that people not cast blame on patients with substance use disorder. A more objective, assistance-centered perspective is in line with decriminalization, he explained and could help more people get access to the life-saving help they so desperately need. Physicians, Nicholson said, dont judge patients. Our desire is never to get anyone in trouble for anything. We are in our patients corner. Every health care dollar is precious and we want to make sure that every life that is affected by drug addiction gets the most effective care with the recourses available. Decriminalization vs. legalization One of the reasons the concept of decriminalization is controversial, Nicholson believes, is because people tend to confuse it with legalization. It is easy to get the two morphed together, he said. I think it is really worth the discussion. Legalizing illegal substances that are not good for your body is not something that physicians are going to support, ever. But, he added, We just believe that the tool of using criminal penalties to manage addictive behavior does not appear to be effective. Decriminalization, he explained, levels the playing field and creates more judgment-free opportunities for physicians to provide the best evidence-based care. Its the same as if we were looking at diabetes care. We can keep on doing the stuff weve done in the past but if the evidence comes out and says there is a better way to treat patients, well do that. Thats where we are at with this problem. With Democrats now in charge of the state Legislature, legalization of recreational marijuana in Minnesota is all but assured, Nicholson said. While he and many of his colleagues continue to disapprove of the proposal, they are committed to providing addiction care without barriers for everyone in the state. As you know, we as an association have been involved in the discussion about medical cannabis, he said. If you are going to legalize, we need to learn from our past mistakes with alcohol and tobacco. It is our right and our passion is to make sure that we are a state where people who have drug-abuse challenges get the best possible care anywhere in the country. The addiction crisis can feel overwhelming, Nicholson said. There are times when it seems like an unsolvable problem, so it is important to sign on to any possible solution even when it comes in the form of a policy proposal or legislative stance. Any action is better than no action, he believes: Every doctor has gut-wrenching experiences with chemical dependency. We all want to help fix it. It is going to take work, and were saying as a group that were willing to take the next step. This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: MMA votes to support decriminalization of illicit drugs (Bloomberg) -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged members of his ruling party to reach out to Muslims and other religious minorities, a rare move to tone down sectarian tensions as he prepares to host the Group of 20 summit later this year. Most Read from Bloomberg The leader told senior members of his Bharatiya Janata Party that nobody should be excluded, regardless of whether they vote for us or not, said Syed Zafar Islam, a party spokesman, in a phone interview. Modis comments Tuesday, were made at a two-day meeting of the partys national executive committee in New Delhi to discuss general elections due next year, where he is hoping for a third straight victory. A slew of state ballots are also due later this year. The Indian prime minister has sought to present the country as a force of unity as it takes on the G-20 presidency. However, the South Asian nation has seen rising anti-Muslim sentiment as Modi and the BJP have pushed ahead with their Hindu nationalist agenda since first coming to power in 2014. Since his re-election in 2019, Modi revoked Article 370 of the constitution that granted special autonomous status to Indias only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, and approved a citizenship law that discriminates based on religion. He has also pushed for a national citizens registry in the northeastern state of Assam and laid the foundation stone for the construction of a Hindu temple at a site where a 16th century mosque was razed. We follow the principle that every citizen is equal and should be treated as such, said Islam. With that, PM Modi has stated that no one, including Muslims, should be left out. Story continues Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Two and a half weeks after a York County jury acquitted her former boyfriend in the murder of her 2-year-old son, Leah Mullinix pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to a charge of child endangerment in Dante Mullinixs death. Mullinix, 26, entered whats called an open plea to the single charge, a third-degree felony, and faces a maximum sentence of seven years in state prison. Dante Mullinix died Sept. 6, 2018, after being abused and neglected for much of his short life. He was 2. Mullinix did not describe her actions in court, instead answering questions from York County Common Pleas Court Judge Amber Kraft with simple yes or no answers. When asked whether, between Aug. 28, 2018, and Sept. 6, 2018, the date her son died, she knowingly endangered (her sons) welfare and violated her duty to care for him, she answered yes. After entering the plea, she left the courtroom, and the courthouse, accompanied by sheriffs deputies, for her own protection. Members of her family, including her sister who has crusaded for justice for Dante, and her former boyfriend, Tyree Bowie, were present in court when she entered her plea. Previously:Jurors find Tyree Bowie not guilty of all charges in death of 2-year-old Dante Mullinix His mother's testimony: Mother of killed toddler finishes 20-plus hour testimony, Bowie mother and nurse testify Dante's life:This poor kid was doomed from the beginning:' The tragic life and death of Dante Mullinix Mullinixs sister, Sarah Mullinix, Dantes aunt who was trying to get custody of her nephew at the time of his death, said, At least shes owning up to it, well, part of it. Bowies attorney, Farley Holt, suggested that the abuse that led to Dantes death had been inflicted by Mullinix and that the case was about Leah, that she should have been charged with more serious offenses, including assault and attempted homicide. Holt also alleged that testimony during Bowies trial indicated that another one of her former boyfriends, Hector Holiday Rivera, should have faced charges in the case, that Mullinix told Bowie about Riveras abuse of the boy, which included giving the child herpes. Rivera, an alleged member of the Latin Kings gang, has not been charged in the case and is believed to have gone to Florida after Dantes death, Sarah Mullinix said. Story continues Shes still blaming others, Holt said. This poor kid still isnt going to get justice. Leah Mullinix had been charged with endangering children in connection to the death of her son Dante Mullinix who died in September 2018 from a traumatic brain injury. She pleaded guilty to the charge Tuesday. Bowie, 41, was charged with first- and third-degree murder and child endangerment right after Dante died in September 2018. He maintained his innocence and was acquitted on Dec. 30, 2022, after a four-week-long trial. During the trial, Bowie testified that Dante choked on a Teddy Graham cookie in his car the night of Sept. 6 and he took him to York Hospital, where he'd taken his mother earlier that evening after she complained of having a migraine. Medical evidence showed that Dante died as a result of a traumatic brain injury. Holt asserted that Mullinix created the migraine to give herself an alibi, that she had withheld medication from her son and that had caused injuries that may have contributed to his death. Video surveillance from the York Hospital emergency department showed Mullinix sitting under a bright light, even though darkened areas were available, and using her phone as she sat there. Emergency room physicians discovered serious bruises all over Dantes body, injuries on top of bruises that doctors had witnessed during the childs previous visits to the hospital. Mullinix testified during Bowies trial, spending 20-plus hours over three days on the witness stand. Holt said jurors told him after the trial that they had made up their minds after his cross examination of Mullinix. Mullinix, he said, neglected Dante and he asserted that she caused the bruises that were on his body Sept. 6. He also pointed to testimony that showed that she failed to seek medical treatment for her son after he contracted a painful genital infection. After entering her plea, Mullinix left the courthouse without commenting. Her attorney, Joshua Neiderhiser, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Kraft ordered a pre-sentence investigation and scheduled sentencing for April 20. Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com. This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Leah Mullinix pleads guilty to child endangerment in her son's death Massachusetts prosecutors on Tuesday issued a murder warrant for Brian Walshe in the death of his wife, Ana Walshe, who disappeared from a wealthy Boston suburb around New Years Day. Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey announced the charge, but did not disclose details on what led investigators to the decision. Brian Walshe was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of misleading the investigation and remains in police custody. He pleaded not guilty plea to misleading investigators and is expected to be arraigned Wednesday on the murder charge. His attorney, Tracy Miner, declined to comment on the murder warrant Tuesday. Ana Walshe. (via Cohasset Police) Additional details of the investigation and the evidence in support of those charges are likely to be presented at arraignment but will not be disclosed at this time, Morrissey said. Ana Walshe was last seen in her home early Jan. 1 before she took a ride-share from her Cohasset home to Bostons Logan Airport, police in the suburb previously said. She was simultaneously reported missing by her husband and employer three days later. Its unclear who provided the details of her last known location, when she was allegedly leaving for a work emergency. Her cellphone has been turned off since the beginning of the year, police said, and she has not left an electronic footprint since her disappearance. The day after her disappearance, Brian Walshe allegedly purchased $450 of goods that included cleaning supplies, mops and tape from a nearby Home Depot, prosecutors said last week. Authorities also said they found blood and a damaged blood-stained knife in the Walshes home basement. Police said Jan. 6 that investigators were not able to independently confirm Ana Walshe got into or even booked a car service on New Years Day. She did, however, have a flight booked for Jan. 3 from Boston to Washington, D.C., police said. Metropolitan police in D.C. were unable to find her, police said. Story continues Authorities have not disclosed who offered the details of her leaving her home for the airport, stating only that it was a family member. Brian Walshe was sleeping at the time she allegedly left the house, which was around 4 a.m. Cohasset police conducted a two-day ground search of the area around her home in conjunction with state police, NBC Boston reported. Ana Walshes friend, Evan Turell, told the news station that it was completely unlike her to go a day without contacting her husband and children. This is honestly just really mind-boggling, and gut-wrenching, Turell said. Theres no words. Before Ana and Brian were married, she accused him of threatening to kill her in 2014, according to a report filed with D.C. police. The report didnt identify him, but an agency spokesperson confirmed he was the person accused of threatening Ana Walshe over the phone. The case was closed after a lack of cooperation from the victim and no charges were filed, the spokesperson said. Brian Walshe was also previously involved in a federal wire fraud case, pleading guilty to three counts in 2021, Reuters reported. He stole Andy Warhol paintings from a college roommate, then commissioned forgeries of them. Court documents show that Brian Walshe was ordered to forfeit $225,000, but does not yet appear to have been sentenced to any prison time in that case. In 2018, after Brian Walshes father died, he was involved in a bitter probate battle over his fathers oceanside home in Hull, Massachusetts, NBC Boston reported. Image: Brian Walshe, of Cohasset, Mass., faces a Quincy Court judge charged with impeding the investigation into his wife Ana' disappearance from their home, on Jan. 9, 2023. (Greg Derr / The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool) Family and friends testified in the case that he was written out of the will and was accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his fathers money. Fred Pescatore, a friend of Brian Walshes father, said in a sworn affidavit that he saw Brian Walshe attempt to smuggle antiquities out of China while on a trip together. When Brian was confronted, he picked up a stanchion and literally attempted to kill four or five guards that had come to talk to him about his crime, the affidavit said. Brian is not only a sociopath but also a very angry and physically violent person. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. This article was originally published on TODAY.com By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -A New York state Senate panel on Wednesday rejected Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul's nominee to become the state's chief judge after some lawmakers and advocacy groups expressed concerns he was too conservative for the job. The Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 against sending the nomination of Hector LaSalle, the presiding justice of a Brooklyn-based state appeals court, to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. Seven of those senators voted to send the nomination to the Senate floor "without recommendation," meaning they neither supported nor opposed LaSalle. The vote sets up a potential legal battle between Senate leadership and Hochul, who has said she could sue to force a confirmation vote. In a statement after the vote, Hochul said she believed the state constitution requires a confirmation vote by the full Senate. "While this was a thorough hearing, it was not a fair one because the outcome was predetermined," Hochul said. LaSalle faced sharp questions from Democratic senators during a five-hour confirmation hearing about his decisions that they said show a bias toward prosecutors, employers and an anti-abortion group. "This isnt going to be a roast, but it isnt going to be your bar mitzvah either," Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Brad Hoylman, a Democrat from Manhattan, told LaSalle. LaSalle, 54, said his critics have mischaracterized his record and that in those cases he was merely applying the law and existing court precedent. The person they describe, I do not recognize, the Long Islander said. LaSalle said that as a Puerto Rican from a working-class background, he understood the need for the legal system to protect marginalized communities. If confirmed, LaSalle would be New York's first Latino chief judge. He said he supports a woman's right to make reproductive choices, workers' ability to unionize and the constitutional rights of people accused of crimes. Story continues Hochul chose LaSalle last month from a list of seven candidates, several of whom have more liberal records and were supported by progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups. LaSalle was a prosecutor for 15 years before becoming a judge in 2008. New York's chief judge heads the seven-member Court of Appeals, which has the final say in interpreting state laws, and oversees the state court system. While Democrats have a strong hold on state government, the Court of Appeals has leaned conservative since former Chief Judge Janet DiFiore joined in 2016. DiFiore stepped down last year. Hoylman said during the hearing that a thorough vetting of LaSalle was necessary amid the rightward shift of the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts under Republican then-President Donald Trump. Republicans on the committee defended LaSalle and suggested that some Democrats came out against his nomination to score political points. You do not come across as a right-wing conservative nut, said Senator Andrew Lanza, a Republican from the New York City borough of Staten Island. The Judiciary Committee has only voted down a governor's candidate for a Court of Appeals seat one other time, but in that case the Senate still confirmed the nominee. (Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis) Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proclaimed that 95% of Texans pay higher taxes than Californians. But is that true? Some Sacramento Bee sleuthing concludes that, well, Newsoms statement cannot be independently verified. Asked to provide a source for the assertion, Newsoms office cited a 2018 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal-leaning group. But the groups spokesman, Jon Whiten, told The Bee We do not compute a specific percentage of Californians who pay less/more tax than Texans. It did laud California as having the nations fairest tax system. Newsom made his point at his budget news conference Tuesday. Our tax rates, again, are lower than the state of Texas, the governor said. I just want to remind everybody out there, 95% of Texans pay higher taxes than Californians. Newsom noted that while the states tax rates on the very wealthy are among the nations highest, not everybody lives in that rarified world. Less income, less tax The ITEP report found California had the nations most equitable tax system, and it cited Texas as the second most unfair, after Washington. The study found that many low- and middle-income families pay lower taxes under Californias moderately progressive tax system than they would under the highly regressive systems used to fund public services in Texas and the other more conservative states. The states tax system is relatively progressive, ITEP said, because of its graduated income tax rates, its additional tax on income over $1 million, and limits on tax breaks for upper-income taxpayers. ITEP found that the top 1% of income earners in Texas paid an average of 3.1% in state and local taxes as a share of income. The top 1% in California paid 12.4%. For the 40% of the highest earning people those making $56,000 or more in Texas and $62,100 in California the rates are higher in California, ITEP found. ITEP has not updated the 4-year-old study, but Whiten said the studys findings should generally hold, as neither state has enacted fundamental tax reform since it was published. Story continues The crux of ITEPs finding is that while Californias overall tax collections are higher than in Texas, the drastically different ways in which those two states raise revenue mean lower tax bills for many California families with moderate incomes. California vs. Texas Other studies have found that Californians on average pay more tax than Texans, though Whiten said those statewide averages largely reflect Californias higher taxes on affluent households. California had the nations ninth highest tax burden, while Texas ranked 34th in a 2022 survey by WalletHub, a financial services site. It compared property taxes, individual income taxes and sales and excise taxes, as a share of total personal income in the state. In another study, the Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning Washington-based research group, compared taxes paid by an individual with a $100,000 income in Texas and California suburbs. The Texan paid $6,335 no income tax, $5,027 in property tax and $1,620 in sales tax. The Californian paid $11,946, which included $5,844 in income tax, $5,073 in property tax and $1,029 in sales tax. Texas is a much lower tax state than California, an experience that holds true for most taxpayers at different points along the income spectrum, said Jared Walczak, the foundations vice president of state projects. Unlike the ITEP study, the Tax Foundation analysis did not take into account various smaller taxes or the effects of major taxes paid by businesses. The big difference between the two states is that Texas has no state income tax. California does, and its top rate is the highest state rate in the nation. The two states have roughly comparable sales taxes. Texas property tax rates are about twice as high as Californias, though Texas homes tend to cost less on average. Experts note that individual tax comparisons are always difficult. A persons tax liability depends on several variables, including whether they own a home, their salary, how much fuel they use when driving, and so on. In addition, tax laws tend to be complex. Its important to understand that the two states have vastly different economic profiles and tax systems, said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center. Texas is very dependent on natural resources and services, and it relies mostly on property, sales and natural resource-related taxes. So, the states revenues dont tend to increase as quickly or as much as Californias doing periods of economic growth, Hoene said, but they also dont decline as quickly or as much during periods of economic downturn. Natural resource-reliant states also tend to experience economic cycles differently. And, said Ray Perryman, a Waco, Texas-based economist, his state has prospected from huge gains in oil and gas taxes and royalties. The state has seen record levels of production in both as well as very high prices, he said. The state also has large sums of money from the various stimulus programs, which has not yet been spent. A newspaper obituary that offered a glowing tribute to the Utah man accused of fatally shooting seven members of his family in a murder-suicide has been deleted, the paper's apologetic publisher said Tuesday. Michael Haight, 42, fatally shot his wife, Tausha Haight, 40; his mother-in-law, Gail Earl, 78; and the couples five children, ages 4 to 17, before he died by suicide this month, police have said. Tausha and Michael Haight. (via Facebook) But a since-deleted obituary in The Spectrum painted a laudatory picture of Michael Haight without mention of the Jan. 4 murder-suicide. The piece, which was not written by a staff member at the newspaper, said that Haight excelled at everything he did and that he viewed every one of his children as truly a cherished miracle. Obituaries may be written and submitted by funeral homes, as was the case here, The Spectrums owner, Gannett, said in a statement. The Spectrum removed the obituary due to the circumstances and sincerely regrets any distress this may have caused. A woman who picked up the phone at Southern Utah Mortuary confirmed that the funeral home handled services for Michael Haight. She declined to discuss what involvement the business had in writing the obituary. None of the obituary comments mention the victims. pic.twitter.com/nOLmMd1tWN Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) January 14, 2023 Anti-gun violence advocate Shannon Watts posted the obit over the weekend and flagged it for her 587,000 Twitter followers. Watts said Tuesday she was stunned to read the praise for Haight. "I was shocked that this man's obituary had a picture of him and said complimentary things about him and did not mention that his survivors did not include his wife and children because he killed them," Watts said. "It really whitewashed who he is. He's a murderer, allegedly." This article was originally published on NBCNews.com AMES, Iowa (AP) Jaren Holmes scored 21 points and No. 12 Iowa State defeated No. 7 Texas 78-67 on Tuesday night. Holmes hit seven of 13 shots, including two 3-pointers, and Gabe Kalscheur added 16 points. We earned this, Holmes said. We deserve this, because of our daily habits. Caleb Grill contributed 17 and Osun Osunniyi finished with 11 points and seven rebounds for the Cyclones (14-3, 5-1 Big 12). There is a rugged toughness to how we do it, Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said. But there is a togetherness and a unity that are at a really, really special level with this group. Texas (15-3, 4-2) was undone by a second-half scoring drought that lasted nearly 4 1/2 minutes. Iowa State responded with an 8-0 run to seize control. The Longhorns went 9 1/2 without making a shot from the floor. They made plays down the stretch, Texas interim coach Rodney Terry said. T.J. had his team ready to play today. Just a highly competitive game in the Big 12. A 3-pointer from Grill gave the Cyclones a 64-55 lead with 6:01 to play. Christian Bishop led Texas with 12 points. The Longhorns' Tyrese Hunter scored 10 points - all in the first half - in his return to Ames, after transferring from Iowa State. Hunter was greeted with boos and an occasional obscene chant from the student section. He responded with six quick points, matching his scoring mark from his previous three games. We're Texas. We get everybody's big game, Terry said. We looked at it like 'you know what, it's another opportunity to compete at the highest level.' (Hunter) attacked it the same way. The Longhorns went on to build a 29-18 lead, before Iowa State answered with a 10-0 run, sparked by 3-pointers from Kalscheur and Grill. Texas went the final 7:28 of the first half without a field goal, but only trailed 36-35. The first 10 minutes, they were the aggressor, Otzelberger said. That last 30 minutes, how we competed defensively, is the club we are and who we need to be for 40 minutes. Story continues BIG PICTURE Iowa State moved into a three-way tie atop the Big 12 standings with Tuesday's win. The finish came about 30 minutes after Kansas' 83-82 overtime loss at Kansas State, handing the Jayhawks their first conference loss. UP NEXT Texas plays at West Virginia on Saturday night. Iowa State visits Oklahoma State on Saturday. ___ AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Officials in Nepal said on Wednesday there was no chance of finding any survivors of the country's deadliest plane crash in 30 years, but workers will continue to search for the remains of the last missing passenger. Rescue teams used drones and rappelled down deep gorges on Tuesday to sift through the charred remains of the Yeti Airlines ATR 72 turboprop, which was carrying 72 people when it crashed near the tourist city of Pokhara on Sunday morning. "There is no possibility of finding any survivor. We have collected 71 bodies so far. The search for the last one will continue," Tek Bahadur K.C., a top district official in Pokhara, said on Wednesday. Identifying bodies and accounting for all 72 people has been difficult because of the state of the remains, said Ajay K.C, a police official at the rescue site. "Until the hospital tests show all 72 bodies, well continue to search for the last person," Ajay K.C said. Search teams found 68 bodies on the day of the crash, and two more were recovered on Monday before the search was called off. One more body had been recovered as of late Tuesday afternoon, officials said. Teams had diverted the flow of a nearby river to look for bodies, said Gurudutt Ghimire, another official who is part of search operations. "There is nothing left there. But the search will continue," Ghimire said. On Monday, searchers found the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the flight, both in good condition, a discovery that is likely to help investigators determine what caused the crash. Because Nepal does not have facilities to read the so called black boxes, the devices will be sent wherever the manufacturer recommends. (Reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar. Editing by Gerry Doyle) Photo of library door Signage on the Englewood librarys entrance indicate that the branch is temporarily closedhowever the posted notices dont reveal the reason why. For the second time in less than one month, a Colorado public library branch has temporarily closed because of methamphetamine contamination, as first reported by The Associated Press. Englewood Public Library shuttered on January 11, after testing results revealed levels of methamphetamine residues exceeding state thresholds in the bathrooms and other areas of the library and attached civic center, the City of Englewood wrote in a news release. Read more Before the library can fully re-open, the city will have to pay for remediation services. Companies focused on such work exist throughout the country, mostly for the purpose of cleaning up former meth labs. And essentially, thats how the library will be treated. In Englewood, the state and countys health requirements mandate that remediation involved removing all contaminated surfaces, walls, HVAC ductwork, and exhaust fans in an extensive renovation process. And Englewood isnt alone. Boulders central library branch was closed between December 20, 2022 and January 9 following its own troubling test of its bathroom exhaust vents, which revealed levels of meth contamination well above state thresholds, according to a City of Boulder press statement. Though most of the Boulder library has reopened, the bathrooms remain closed for ongoing remediation. The Boulder library opted to conduct testing after staff reported at least two instances of patrons smoking meth in the bathrooms in November and December 2022. Englewood opted to conduct testing following the Boulder results. Though it may sound alarming that methamphetamine was detected in such public places as libraries, its unclear what, if any, negative health impacts limited exposure to meth residues or secondhand smoke has, according to the National Institutes of Health. Story continues Methamphetamine is a powerful, addicting stimulant which can be ingested via smoking, snorting, injection, or pill. But, researchers dont yet know whether people breathing in secondhand methamphetamine smoke can get high or have other health effects, says NIHs National Institute on Drug Abuse. However, what is known is that people can test positive for methamphetamine after exposure to secondhand smoke, the institute adds. In two incidents, staff at the Boulder library branch were evacuated and cleared for potential meth exposure after feeling ill, the city reported. So, seemingly, none of the staff had detectable levels of methamphetamine in their systems following those incidents. There is no clear scientific standard for identifying an unhealthy level of secondary meth exposure, wrote City of Boulder officials in a December 30, 2022 public health notice. Research does show, however, that health risks are more significant after prolonged exposure to high levels of contamination, especially for infants, young children, and people with existing health conditions. Past studies of children who grow up around meth manufacturing have documented harms and health risks, including secondary exposure to both toxic precursor chemicals and meth itself. Yet almost all existing research of secondhand meth exposure is limited to these home settings, where exposure intensity would be much higher than in a library where a few people have smoked. Meth contamination in public space, where exposures are typically infrequent and short in duration, does not present significant health risks in most cases, says one Boulder County notice. The places where health risks are higher are generally private residences where meth has been manufactured or used over long periods of time, it continues. Neither the Boulder nor Englewood libraries specified the exact concentrations of meth contamination detected in their statements. However, the state thresholds for follow-up assessment and required remediation are 0.2 micrograms per hundred square centimeters and 0.5 micrograms/100cm2. Further, its also unclear how old the detected residues are. In an FAQ section on its website, the City of Englewood wrote that, the tests show contamination, but there is not a way to determine if the contaminated residue found is recent or has been present for a longer period. Gizmodo reached out to both cities with further questions, and did not immediately receive a response. Methamphetamine use rose 43% nationwide between 2015 and 2019, according to NIH data. Over the same period, overdose deaths from stimulants other than cocaine tripled. In Boulder County, Colorado, theres been a dramatic increase in the number of methamphetamine-affected properties, over the past 6 years, according to the municipalitysignaling a rise in meth manufacture and use there as well. More from Gizmodo Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Mark Watson, Oak Ridge's city manager for more than 12 years, has announced his plans to retire. He made the surprise announcement at the end of Tuesday night's Oak Ridge City Council work session in the Municipal Building Courtroom. Watson said he'll retire on May 5 and the next day he and his wife, Jenna, plan to attend the graduation ceremony for their daughter Hilary, who will receive an master's degree from Oklahoma State University. Spending more time with his family is one of the reasons the 68-year-old gave after the meeting for his decision to retire. He looks forward to that and sleep, he joked. Mark Watson Watson said he will be wrapping up 47 years of public service when he retires. He's served as city manager in eight cities in four states: Arizona, Montana, Texas and Tennessee. He started his job as city manager in Oak Ridge in August 2010. Jenna and Mark Watson plan to remain in Oak Ridge after he retires. Council members said there will be a national search for a new city manager. Council member Jim Dodson pointed out that Deputy City Manager Jack Suggs can step into the role if there's a time gap between Watson's retirement and the hiring of a new manager. Asked if he'd apply for the city manager job, Suggs - the city's longtime electric department director - said he would need to think about that before making that decision. As reported in The Oak Ridger at the time, Watson was the top pick of 82 candidates for the job. He served as city manager in Yuma, Arizona, before taking the job in Oak Ridge. He replaced Jim O'Connor who resigned in January 2010 to become city manager of Winchester, Virginia. The Oak Ridger's News Editor Donna Smith covers Oak Ridge area news. Email her at dsmith@oakridger.com and follow her on Twitter@ridgernewsed. Support The Oak Ridger by subscribing Offers available at https://subscribe.oakridger.com/offers. This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Oak Ridge city manager Mark Watson retiring after more than 12 years A Senate Democrat and a House Republican from Ohio are asking the Biden administration to grant immigration relief to Mauritanian nationals in the United States, some of whom are at risk of being pressed into slavery if repatriated. Ohios Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and Rep. Mike Carey (R) on Wednesday wrote President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking them to include U.S.-based Mauritanians in either the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) programs. The United States must send a clear message that our nation condemns slavery and will not return people to conditions where they may be enslaved or denied citizenship rights through an immediate designation of TPS or DED for Mauritanians living in the United States, they wrote. Both TPS and DED are humanitarian immigration programs. The Department of Homeland Security can designate for TPS a country undergoing natural or man-made disasters, granting its U.S.-based citizens work permits and deferral from deportation. A DED designation is issued by the president as part of his foreign policy powers, essentially banning the repatriation of people to a certain country. A DED designation can also grant work permits to citizens of the targeted country. By granting TPS to Mauritanians, the U.S. government would save the lives of hundreds of Black people, like my nephew Mamadou, who escaped slavery and persecution, said Maryam Sy, an organizer with the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. It is time for Mauritania to stop being a country where Black people are persecuted because of the color of their skin; a country where Blacks are considered inferior people. Mauritania, a former French colony that in many ways has been a poster child for flawed decolonization in Africa, is ruled by an Arab minority that has historically enslaved a larger Black ethnic group, enforcing apartheid-like oppression. In their letter, the Ohio lawmakers noted that nearly half of the Mauritanian diaspora in the United States lives in the Buckeye State. Story continues Currently, there are an estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians residing in the United States. More than 3,000 foreign-born Mauritanians live in Ohio, with the largest diaspora settling in Cincinnati and central Ohio, they wrote. They also noted that slavery remains commonplace in the country, which technically made the practice illegal in 1981 and was the last country in the world to criminalize slavery in 2007, and again in 2015. Despite recent efforts to combat human trafficking, slavery continues in both rural and urban settings. In addition, Black Mauritanians reportedly face significant discrimination, forced displacement, and exclusion from full citizenship rights, Carey and Brown wrote. While the Trump administration cut some trade benefits to Mauritania over the issue of slavery, deportations to the country rose despite the risks and remain high under Biden, according to the lawmakers. Under the Trump administration, there was an increase in the number of Mauritanians being deported; unfortunately, deportations have continued. We encourage the administration to implement safeguards to combat the disproportionate challenges Black migrants encounter resettling in the United States, they wrote. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 98 Mauritanians were repatriated in 2018, 41 in 2019 and 25 in 2020. Mauritanias abolition of slavery is rarely enforced, and a form of anti-Black hereditary chattel slavery similar to the institutionalized slavery of the antebellum United States remains in place, according to a 2021 report published by the Arab Reform Initiative. But the lawmakers wrote that anti-Black racism in Mauritania is institutionalized beyond slavery, both in acts of political oppression against Black Mauritanians who are returned to their country and in apartheid-like conditions for other Black ethnic groups who are not traditionally enslaved. Beyond enslavement, Afro-Mauritanians or Black Mauritanians forcibly returned to their country face the threat of suffering human rights abuses including arrest, torture, and detention without due process, the lawmakers wrote. Officials regularly target journalists and anti-slavery activists, though cases of state imprisonment and violent assault of anti-slavery activists and Afro-Mauritanian or Black Mauritanians activists have decreased under President Ghazouani, Brown and Carey wrote. Detainees have been waterboarded, forced to eat sand, beaten with electric cables, burned with hot knives, and more, wrote the lawmakers. The bipartisan letter focusing on Mauritania comes as the country takes center stage regionally, hosting the third African Conference for Peace, and just days after dignitaries from across the Arab world descended on the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, chosen as the capital of culture in the Islamic world for 2023. The Ohio lawmakers touched on Mauritanias foreign relations in their letter, accusing the country of rendering some of its repatriated citizens stateless by agreeing to take deportees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but withholding full identification papers. As of 2018, the Mauritanian government was issuing one-time passes for deportees entry back into the country, called laissez-passers. These passes leave the individual stateless with no recognition of their citizenship or their right to reside or work in the country. This effectively removes their right to move freely and denies any opportunity to obtain identity documents, increasing their vulnerability to human trafficking and other forms of exploitation, wrote the lawmakers. Brown and Carey added that TPS and DED beneficiaries contribute more than $3.6 billion a year in state, federal and local taxes, and that a TPS or DED designation for Mauritania would send a global message. The ongoing human rights violations, including slavery and human trafficking, occurring in Mauritania warrant a designation of either TPS or DED. The appropriate designation would send a clear message of condemnation and protect those seeking refuge in the United States, they wrote. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. State legislators are expected to introduce the Higher Education Return on Investment Act that will allegedly provide more financial transparency to incoming college students. >> MORE: DOE proposes student loan safety net that would transform income-driven repayment plans State Representatives Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon) and Jim Thomas (R-Jackson Township) are expected to introduce the legislation in an effort to better clarify financial expectations for students before they begin their futures, an Ohio House of Representatives spokesperson stated. My hope with this bill is to give proper information to our students to empower them as they start their careers, Thomas said. Its crucial that we give our college students the tools to be successful, both as students and beyond. The bill will reportedly mandate all state colleges and universities in Ohio to provide a one page disclosure form notifying students of: Tuition, room & board costs, special fees, mandatory fees; Grants, scholarships, loans, work-study funds, and how or if they can be lost; Expected monthly loan payment; Salary range at graduation for 25-75% of graduates, with the information most tailored to applicant; and Salary range 5 years out for 25-75% of similar graduates, with the information most tailored to applicant. We are thrilled to begin our legislative journey with this fiscally sound and common sense bill, Mathews added. Official: Quality of life in Tibet improves 08:38, January 18, 2023 By Daqiong and Palden Nyima in Lhasa ( Chinadaily.com.cn Police officers in Dromo county of the Tibet autonomous region help local farmers with their autumn harvest. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Border residents in the Tibet autonomous region have a better quality of life thanks to a series of government policies in recent years, regional authorities said. "In the past five years, we have made efforts to protect our sacred motherland and build a happy life for border residents, and we have made new achievements in border prosperity, border defense consolidation and improving the livelihoods of border residents," Yan Jinhai, chairman of the regional government, said in delivering the work report at the regional People's Congress. In 2022, the region launched 18 kinds of preferential policies to improve housing quality for border residents, and the construction of four urban townships was launched, Yan said. Primary school students read in a village library set up by border police officers in Dromo county of the Tibet autonomous region. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Between 2018 and 2022, the region built 624 well-off villages in border areas. The population of border residents grew by 10.5 percent. And the highway mileage of border areas saw nearly fourfold growth. Tashi Drolma, a border resident in Yumai township, which sits at the southern foot of the Himalayas, operates a teahouse and grocery shop in her home and brought in family income of more than 90,000 yuan ($13,000) in 2022, Tibet Daily reported. "The various changes in our lives are what well-off means. I hope people will visit my hometown," Tibet Daily quoted Tashi Drolma as saying. Police officers in Dromo county of the Tibet autonomous region help local farmers learn the law. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Basang Dawa, another resident of Yumai, who works at a pig farm, said he learned the skill of feeding pigs in recent years, and now he enjoys a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan. "Now we have a better quality of life, and I will continue to cherish the work of pig feeding," he said. Yan said the region will now work to optimize the policies involved with paying subsidies to border residents and patrollers. "In 2023, we will work on facilitating oxygen supplies to border counties and townships at altitudes above 3,500 meters," Yan said. (Web editor: Cai Hairuo, Liang Jun) An entangled humpback whale one that was barely able to swim from being tangled in hundreds of feet of rope has been set free. On Sunday, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) was alerted to a whale in distress, towing gear off Broughton Archipelago Marine Provincial Park. Paul Cottrell, a marine mammal coordinator with DFO, says a team quickly headed out to find the whale and was able to put a satellite tag on the animal. It had over 400 feet of rope and buoy that it was trailing, says Cottrell. On Monday morning, the team headed out again and found the whale just off Port Hardy, near the airport. The animal was exhausted, it was with the gear and it was trumpet blowing. You could tell it was in severe distress, he tells Glacier Media. Cottrell and a team from DFO were on a rescue vehicle and support vehicle to try and rescue the mammal. This poor animal had multiple wraps around the tailstock and then had the line going up through the mouth, so it was hogtied, he says. DFO is investigating and believes the gear was recreational prawn gear, not commercial gear. "This animal was probably foraging and he got this gear through his mouth and then became entangled. So it's all accidental, says Cottrell. He adds the whale was unable to swim. We were able to get in and the goal was to get all of the gear off, always, because even if you leave on a little bit of gear, [it] can still kill the animal. After much effort, they were able to get the animal loose. You could tell it had a burst of energy, he says. We did follow it for another half an hour and just watched the animal and its whole behaviour and energy level changed dramatically. DFO is optimistic the whale will recover. Cottrell notes it did have some injuries on the tailstock from the entanglement. He says the success of this rescue was aided by someone calling the DFO reporting line (1-800-465-4336) right when they spotted the whale. People walk next to their cars queuing to cross the border into Kazakhstan on September 27, 2022. AP Russians will no longer be able to stay in Kazakhstan indefinitely, Reuters said. It's ending a program allowing Russians to remain indefinitely if they renew their visas every 90 days. Thousands fled to the Central Asian country after Russia invaded Ukraine, many evading conscription. Kazakhstan is ending a program which is expected to make it more difficult for Russians fleeing conscription and the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to stay in the Central Asian country indefinitely. Under the new rules, people from Russia and other neighboring nations will no longer be able to reset the 90-day period for visa-free stay by leaving then coming straight back. More than 100,000 Russians, many of them men fleeing conscription to fight in Ukraine, fled to Kazakhstan, according to reports. The nation shares a large border with Russia and Russian is widely spoken there. The move signals that the Kazakh government is seeking a tighter grip over immigration, with the surge in entries from Russian contributing to soaring inflation, Reuters reported. Many Russians have used Kazakhstan as a staging post to move on to other countries, and the rule change means that those who remain will have to apply for a residency visa and meet its criteria. The government in Kazakhstan has refused to back Russia's invasion of Ukraine, straining ties with the Kremlin. Many Russians have also fled to countries in Europe, where some have claimed asylum, and places including Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Russia said in October that its initial draft of 300,000 men to fight in Ukraine was complete, with no more planned. Ukraine has alleged that another wave is coming, though its prediction that this would begin on January 15 did not come true. Read the original article on Business Insider Your mundane local suburban branch of the Big 4 banks might as well have a smokestack on its roof. (Chuck Burton / Associated Press ) As the world warms, expect a lot more heat aimed at global banks, in particular at the biggest American ones. Thats because theyve allowed themselves to become the ultimate and most powerful enablers of the fossil fuel industry and because, in recent weeks, some of their peers in the rest of the world have begun to move in the right direction. Its easy to see that Exxon has been on the wrong side of the climate equation, but you have to dig deeper to see why JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Citi share a similar responsibility. Basically, its because the money in their charge your money if youre a customer is lent to the oil and gas industry, and because these banks, with assets of about $10 trillion, use their underwriting capabilities to issue corporate debt to these companies. Sustainability and energy-finance scholars in the United Kingdom and Ireland calculate that 90% of new capital for fossil fuel companies derives from debt finance bank loans and bond issuances. And banks have that money to lend thanks in part to the support of our government of all of us. All banks rely on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., for instance, a guarantee backed by the American taxpayer that their depositors money is safe up to $250,000. But heres where the carbon math gets interesting. Crunching numbers from a 2021 report calculating bank-financed emissions, it works out that $62,500 in one of the big American banks could produce as much carbon (about 8 tons) as all the heating, driving, flying, cooling and cooking an average American does in six months. Your bank account because it is used to expand pipelines, frack wells and the like could represent the heaviest part of your climate footprint. And of course, its not just individuals: American corporations with billions in their corporate coffers deposit and invest those monies in ways that finance emissions and add to their carbon footprint. Story continues When you get right down to it, your mundane local suburban branch of the Big 4 banks might as well have a smokestack on its roof. Yes, they also invest in wind and solar (and boast about it endlessly in their ads). But that doesnt negate the damage that comes from expanding the size of the fossil fuel empire. And this year weve seen that the biggest banks, because of their fossil fuel investments, are deeply entwined with Putins Russia. According to LINGO, the Leave It In the Ground Initiative, they provide nearly half the capital for the massive Russian oil and gas projects that climate scientists call carbon bombs, projects whose revenue pays for the real bombs falling on Kyiv. Is all this inevitable? No. Because one of us is the founder of a bank trying to align with societys most important needs, we know that finance, while seemingly boring and unimportant, is both powerful and dangerous. There are many financial service providers that behave responsibly: local banks, credit unions and the like that are focused close to home, not off in the oil fields of the Siberian Arctic. Money, liquidity, credit these can be forces for good empowering people to avoid existential peril and to realize important dreams. But even the banks focused on making money globally could easily get out of the climate destruction business. Environmentalists aren't asking for much: only that banks stop lending for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. In December, Europes biggest bank HSBC, with $3 trillion in assets pledged to do that, announcing it would cease lending for the development of new oil and gas fields, in line with the recommendations of the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The French banking giant Credit Agricole took similar steps earlier in the year. If these European banking giants can do it, so can Chase and Citi, Wells Fargo and BofA. Remember, these are the very same banks that enjoy the prerogatives the American people bestow on them by insuring their deposits. And these money center banks having grown too big to fail because they present a risk to the whole banking system if they do get especially cheap money from the Federal Reserve. In March, across the country, people will be protesting outside the branches of these behemoths, demanding an end to their support for fossil fuel expansion. As long as banking is supported by tax dollars, thats the minimum we should ask. If society supports the banks, the banks should be supporting society. Kat Taylor is the board chair, co-founder and former CEO of Beneficial State Bank. Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act, an organizer of the March bank protest. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. The decision-maker for the Green Bay Packers believes quarterback Jordan Love is ready to play right now, and hes confident in Loves ability despite the uncertainties that come with an inexperienced player at the position. While Aaron Rodgers is now deciding his football future after a disappointing 2022 season, Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst was effusive in his belief that Love is ready. I definitely think hes ready to play. I think he feels that way. Hes chomping at the bit, Gutekunst said. At the same time, were going to do the best thing for the Green Bay Packers and what gives us the best chance to win moving forward. Love, the teams first-round pick in 2020, has played in 10 games and been on the field for 157 total snaps during his first three NFL seasons. In 2022, Loves most extensive play-time came after Rodgers went down with a rib injury in Philadelphia. He led the Packers to 10 points over two drives, including a touchdown pass to Christian Watson. We really like the development of where Jordan is. I think hes ready to play. I think thats his next step in his development, Gutekunst said. The Packers stuck with Rodgers as a starter despite a 4-8 start. The team wasnt mathematically eliminated until the final game of the regular season, so starting Love never became an option, even if Gutekunst and the Packers felt good about his ability in a starting role down the stretch. If Jordan would have had to play significant time, we felt really good about that, Gutekunst said. But its like any quarterback in the National Football League, when they havent done it, you go into that with some unknowns. They have to handle a lot of different things, see a lot of different things before they can get to a point where they can win games in this league. Gutekunst compared a future transition to Love to the move from Brett Favre to Rodgers back in 2008. Even in hypothetical change, there is always uncertainty. Story continues We are very excited about Jordan and where hes at, theres no doubt about that, Gutekunst said. But Jordans never played a 16-, 17-game season and gone through all that stuff. Gutekunst said he could envision both Love and Rodgers being on the roster in 2023, and the team is still deciding on the fifth-year option, which would keep Love under contract in Green Bay through 2024. The Packers appear to be in a position where a future Hall of Famer is still believed to be the best option in terms of winning games right now, but the developing first-round pick is ready to play and needs to play. This situation adds another complex layer to an intriguing offseason in Green bay. Story originally appeared on Packers Wire Phoenix police Phoenix police issued a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of 44-year-old Turrail Demone Lightfoot, who police have identified as the suspect in an August 2022 shooting that killed one woman and injured another. According to a tweet shared Wednesday from Phoenix police, Lightfoot is being sought in the Aug. 25 murder of Latoya Davis, 37, that took place at the intersection of 25th and Adams streets. Davis and the other woman, Alicia Crosby, 35, were taken to a hospital by ambulance following the shooting. Davis was pronounced dead shortly after. Police said Lightfoot fled to Lincoln, Nebraska, the day after shooting the two victims. A warrant was issued for Lightfoot's arrest on alleged charges of homicide and aggravated assault, according to the Phoenix police tweet. Charges against Lightfoot were submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in October 2022 and Lightfoot has remained an outstanding suspect since, according to Phoenix police Sgt. Melissa Soliz. Lightfoot was described as a 6 ft, 175-pound Black man with black hair and brown eyes in a news release from Phoenix police. Additional information regarding the shooting or how police linked Lightfoot to the incident was not disclosed by police as it remained under investigation, according to Sgt. Soliz. Info Wanted On 8/25/22 around 9:20 p.m. suspect Turrail Lightfoot shot victims, Latoya Davis and Alicia Crosby, near 25th St/Adams. He has fled to Lincoln, NB. He is wanted for 1st degree murder and aggravated assault. Contact @SilentwitnessAZ at 480-WITNESS with any info. pic.twitter.com/wxQrwA5pb3 Phoenix Police (@PhoenixPolice) January 18, 2023 Phoenix police are now encouraging the public to aid in the search offering a $2,000 reward for information, saying "it pays to fight crime" in the Wednesday morning tweet. The public is encouraged to contact Silent Witness Arizona at 480-WITNESS or 480-TESTIGO for Spanish speakers. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix police identify suspect in fatal shooting, offer $2K reward Rodney Wells (center) stands beside a poster showing stepson Tyre Nichols, who died in the custody of police in Memphis, Tennessee. Rodney Wells (center) stands beside a poster showing stepson Tyre Nichols, who died in the custody of police in Memphis, Tennessee. The family of a young Black man who died in the custody of Memphis, Tennessee, police is outraged and looking for answers starting with the release of body camera footage that may help explain what happened to 29-year-old Tyre Nichols during a routine traffic stop this month. Nichols family and local activists planned a series of protests over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend in Memphis, the same city where the civil rights leader was slain over 50 years ago. They demanded the release of the full bodycam footage and revealed a shocking photograph of Nichols in a hospital bed following his arrest but before his death. In the picture, he appears to have suffered serious injuries, with the family describing him as unrecognizable. Nichols, a FedEx worker who enjoyed skateboarding and photography, died three days after a Jan. 7 traffic stop for reckless driving. Its not entirely clear what ensued before Nichols ended up in an ambulance. Officers said that he ran from the stop but gave vague information about what occurred while they gave chase. A confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled the scene on foot, police said in a Jan. 8 statement, adding that another confrontation occurred before Nichols was arrested. His family said Nichols was pepper-sprayed, tased and beaten by several officers during the stop. Nichols complained that he was experiencing shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene, police said. He was taken to a hospital and died on Jan. 10. Officials have not disclosed a cause of death, but Nichols family said he suffered from cardiac arrest and kidney failure. HuffPost made several attempts to reach Memphis police but did not receive a response. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is now looking into what happened, while the officers involved have been relieved of duty pending the outcome of the probe. Story continues The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it would also investigate Nichols death. The United States Attorneys Office, in coordination with the FBI Memphis Field Office and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, has opened a civil rights investigation, said Kevin G. Ritz, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, in a statement. Nichols death is just the latest in a string of high-profile incidents that have roiled the city. In 2018, police fatally shot Martavious Banks during a traffic stop, with an officers body-worn camera not operating. Three years earlier, police also fatally shot Darrius Stewart, who was unarmed and fleeing an officer after a stop. Not one of the officers involved in the deaths of Banks or Stewart was charged in Memphis, even though police found Jamarcus Jeames, an ex-officer, in violation of department policy and a former Memphis district attorney recommended that ex-officer Connor Schilling be indicted by a grand jury. Since Nichols arrest and death, his family has held four demonstrations and a memorial service in his honor. Activists have also confronted public officials, including the citys mayor. On Saturday, Hunter Demster, an activist and organizer in Memphis, obtained the image of Nichols in a hospital bed. In the photo, which is reprinted in this story, his face appeared to be disfigured, with bruises and swollen eyes. Family members of Nichols gather for a demonstration outside of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis following his death in police custody. Family members of Nichols gather for a demonstration outside of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis following his death in police custody. The family protested with the graphic photo outside the Memphis Police Department, demanding justice and accountability. While Mayor Jim Strickland was holding Memphis annual Luminary Awards on Monday, protesters disrupted the event to demand immediate answers and transparency around Nichols death. Amber Sherman, an organizer with a Black Lives Matter chapter in Memphis, approached Strickland and asked when the city was going to release more information about the fatal incident. Mayor Strickland, do you have anything to say? Do you have anything to say about Tyre Nichols being murdered by MPD? Sherman asked. It is a very sad situation, Strickland responded. Sherman then asked if the mayor would join activists in calling for the release of the footage. Strickland told Sherman that his office is working on that right now, but when she questioned how long it would take, Strickland replied, I dont know. Sherman argued that the release of the footage should be a priority because police keep murdering people here. No, they dont keep murdering people here, Strickland replied, again calling Nichols case a sad situation. (Since the beginning of December, four other people have been shot by Memphis police, with three of them dying. Nichols was the first person to die in police custody this year.) Nichols family said an officer initially told them not to travel to the hospital where he was being treated, according to Sherman, who is also the president of the Shelby County Young Democrats. We are not just going to stop. Where is the footage? They are not releasing anything, Sherman said. He was very afraid and running because they were regular-looking people. Just as Black people here, someone pulling me over in an unmarked vehicle I would be scared too. On Tuesday, Allison Fouche, a spokesperson for Stricklands office, told HuffPost that the city plans to release bodycam footage from the incident next week, after an internal investigation is completed and officials give the family an opportunity to see the video first. Stricklands office and the citys police chief, Cerelyn C.J. Davis, followed up with a statement Tuesday afternoon after the disruption of the Luminary Awards event. Nichols is shown in a hospital bed shortly before his death. Nichols is shown in a hospital bed shortly before his death. We understand and agree that transparency around the events surrounding the death of Mr. Tyre Nichols is critically important, especially the release of the video footage, the statement said. It added that city officials plan to meet with Ben Crump, who is representing Nichols family. Shelby Countys newly elected district attorney, Steve Mulroy, also released a statement Tuesday, saying that his office is committed to transparency and understands the reasonable request from the public to view the footage. Were working with the appropriate agencies to determine how quickly we can release the video, and will do so as soon as we can, the statement said. UPDATE 1/18/23: According to Pittsburgh police, Michael Aiello has been found and is safe. __________ ORIGINAL STORY: Pittsburgh police are asking for the publics help to find a missing and endangered man. According to police, 66-year-old Michael Aiello was last seen at around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday near South 9th Street and East Carson Street. Police said he was wearing an olive green jacket, navy dress pants, a navy ball cap and black dress shoes. If you have information on Aiellos whereabouts, call 911. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: Lisa Marie Presley death: What happens to Graceland? 13-year-old shot and killed, allegedly by another 13-year-old, identified 1 transported to hospital after train versus pedestrian incident in Fayette County VIDEO: 1 injured in Washington County house fire DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - El Paso Walmart shooting suspect Patrick Crusius pleads not guilty during his arraignment on Oct. 10, 2019, in El Paso, Texas. Federal prosecutors disclosed Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, that they will not seek the death penalty for Crusius, who is accused of fatally shooting nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a West Texas Walmart in 2019. (Briana Sanchez / El Paso Times via AP, Pool, File) Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for a man accused of fatally shooting nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a West Texas Walmart in 2019. The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed the decision not to pursue capital punishment against Patrick Crusius in a one-sentence notice filed with the federal court in El Paso on Tuesday. Crusius, 24, is accused of targeting Mexicans during the Aug. 3 massacre that left dozens wounded and killed 23 people. The Dallas-area native is charged with federal hate crimes and firearms violations, as well as capital murder in state court, and has pleaded not guilty. Federal prosecutors did not explain in their court filing why they won't to seek the death penalty for Crusius, although he could still face execution if convicted in state court. The decision not to pursue the death penalty in Crusius case could be a defining moment for the Justice Department, which has sent mixed signals on policies regarding the federal death penalty that President Joe Biden pledged to abolish during his presidential campaign. Biden is the first president to openly oppose the death penalty and his election raised the hopes of abolition advocates, who have since been frustrated by a lack of clarity on how the administration might end federal executions or whether thats the objective. The decision comes weeks after Jaime Esparza, the former district attorney in El Paso, took over as U.S. attorney for West Texas. Esparza said when he was district attorney that he would pursue the death penalty in Crusius' case. A spokesman for Esparza's office referred questions to the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., where another spokesman declined to comment. Crusius surrendered to police after the attack, saying, Im the shooter, and that he was targeting Mexicans, according to an arrest warrant. Prosecutors have said he published a screed online shortly before the shooting that said it was in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. Lawyers for Cruisus did not immediately respond to requests for comment. His case is set for trial in federal court in January 2024. Although the federal and state cases have progressed along parallel tracks, it is now unclear when Crusius might face trial on state charges. The district attorney who had been leading the state case, Yvonne Rosales, resigned in November over accusations of incompetence involving hundreds of cases in El Paso and slowing down the case against Crusius. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month appointed a new district attorney to restore confidence in the local criminal justice system. Federal prosecutors are still pursuing the death penalty in the case against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of using a truck in 2017 to mow down pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path by the Hudson River. Saipovs federal capital trial began last week. The decision to seek death in Saipovs case came under Trump, who during his last six months in office oversaw a historic spree of 13 federal executions. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on carrying out federal executions in 2021, but he allowed U.S. prosecutors to continue to seek the death penalty against Saipov while the department reviews Trump era death penalty procedures. Brady Tkachuk scored 25 seconds into overtime, and the Ottawa Senators beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-4 on Wednesday night. Alex DeBrincat, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson and Shane Pinto also scored for Ottawa (20-21-3), which went 4 for 9 on the power play. Tkachuk also had three assists, and Cam Talbot stopped 16 shots. Evgeni Malkin had a goal and two assists for Pittsburgh (22-15-7), and Sidney Crosby had three assists. Jason Zucker, Mark Friedman and Rickard Rakell also scored, and Casey DeSmith made 35 saves. Tied 3-3 in the third period, the Senators scored their fourth power-play goal at 10:58 when Pinto beat DeSmith with a wrist shot. Rakell replied with a power-play goal of his own at 12:33. It was his 16th of the season. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: Man killed in officer-involved shooting in Greene County Duquesne University professor killed in apparent murder-suicide in Wilkins Township Family of man who died helping shooting victim at local Walmart suing off-duty officer, township VIDEO: Local man, son killed in eastern Pennsylvania crash DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts Two Colorado pizza workers were fired by their boss shortly after speaking to federal investigators about their job, officials said. Now a complaint has been filed against the owner of ZdN Inc., Shawna Bingham, who also operates Blackjack Pizza & Salads franchise in Firestone, accusing her of intimidating and retaliating against her employees, the U.S. Department of Labor said in a Jan. 17 news release. Bingham is accused of telling a worker she was appalled the department was investigating her restaurant for what she believed was about her pay practice, the news release said. A federal investigator had come to the restaurant to investigate the potential issue. During that visit, the owner called in two off-duty workers, who were then interviewed by the investigator, the release said. Later in the day, Bingham fired the two employees, officials said in the release. Bingham was then accused of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act for intimidating and retaliating against her workers. A U.S. Department of Labor investigation found the employers illegally terminated two workers who allegedly submitted a complaint and participated in a departmental investigation, both of which are protected activities, said Regional Solicitor John Rainwater in Denver. Firestone is about 30 miles north of Denver. Woman reports co-worker exposing himself to her and NC company fires her, feds say Boss joked about shooting Black people, and worker who complained was fired, feds say School bans BLM apparel but not the Confederate flag, Georgia students say in lawsuit The National Police of Ukraine gave an updated number of casualties in the helicopter crash that occurred in Brovary, a city just east of Kyiv, on the morning of Jan. 18, refuting previous reports with higher numbers. According to police, 16 people, including three children, were killed. The incident injured 25 people, including 10 children. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the President's Office, said shortly after that 30 people were injured, including 12 children. The crash of the State Emergency Service helicopter killed all nine people that were onboard. They were six employees of the Interior Ministry, including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, his deputy Yevhen Yenin, the ministry's secretary Yuriy Lubkovych, and three emergency service personnel. The group was heading to a "hot spot" of Russia's war, according to the President's Office. A man is accused of stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death at a convenience store in Kings Mountain on Tuesday, police said. Kings Mountain officers were called around 7:45 p.m. that day to a Silver Express convenience store at 501 East King Street. When they arrived, officers found a woman, Ashley Erin Scoggins, 34, who had been stabbed. ALSO READ: Husband, wife, dead in double-shooting during domestic situation, Cleveland County sheriff says Scoggins was taken to the hospital where she died a short time later, police said. Investigators identified the womans ex-boyfriend, 37-year-old Timothy Prescott Parson, as the suspect in the case. Police said Parson assaulted her inside the store before leaving the parking lot in a dark gray Nissan Sentra with North Carolina plate JFT-4361. On Thursday, Parson was arrested during a traffic stop near Dixon School Road and Interstate 85, according to the Kings Mountain Police Department. A passenger, identified as 42-year-old Tracey Marie Harris, was also arrested for obstruction of justice. Mugshot werent immediately made available for either Parson or Harris. Parson is accused of stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death at a convenience store in Kings Mountain on Tuesday, police said. Parson was last seen driving the same Nissan that left the parking lot after the crime. Parson appeared in court Friday, the Shelby Star reported. He was given no bond, as well as a $50,000 bond for assault on a female. The bond for Harris was raised to $75,000. The Shelby Star reported Parson cried in court the whole time. Said hed rather see her dead than with anybody else Channel 9s Ken Lemon talked to Scoggins grandmother, who said Scoggins was a mother of two. She said Parson is the father to the youngest child, her 3-year-old daughter. She said they all lived in Gastonia until Scoggins took the kids and left in 2021, telling a judge she was abused. Lemon learned Scoggins had been separated from Parson for a year and half, and just last month, she told a judge he followed her and threatened to kill her. Tim, you need to give yourself up. You know what you did, her grandmother said, crying. Story continues Scoggins grandmother, Nancy Costner, said Scoggins was taking a cousin to the hospital in Kings Mountain when she stopped at the convenience store to get a drink. Minutes later, security cameras captured Parson inside. Scoggins family believes he followed her there. Costner said Parson had grown more threatening more recently. ALSO READ: 18-year-old killed in shooting at east Charlotte apartment complex, CMPD says He said he would rather see her dead than with anybody else, Costner said. Costner showed Lemon video from her Ring doorbell camera. She said it shows Parson just last month trying to get inside to get to Scoggins. He shattered her windshield with a brick in that video before he walked off. I feel like I have to look over my shoulder, Costner said. Scoggins documented that incident last month in an order of protection. The order also lists another incident, where she said he grabbed her by the head and told her he would kill her. She said he followed her when she drove off and then bumped into her car, trying to force her off the road. Her family thinks he continued trying to track her movements, and on Tuesday night, made good on his threats. Her 11-year-old son is heartbroken. They havent told her 3-year-old daughter. Thats going to be the hard part, said Scoggins aunt, Renee Costner. I mean, how do you tell a 3-year-old that her mommys not going to come home? Before he was arrested, they worried Parson might go back to their home, and so they hoped he gave up and turned himself in. Store clerk recalls the moments before the stabbing A clerk at the store described the chilling encounter to Lemon. He said the suspect stabbed Scoggins in the chest near the heart and casually walked out, like nothing had happened. Lemon said the clerk still had a shocked expression on his face when they spoke. The clerk said Parson stabbed her so casually, no one realized exactly what was happening. He told Lemon what he heard Parson say to Scoggins. Its not over yet but its fixing to be. Thats what he said, the clerk said. He said he and another clerk pushed the panic button a couple of minutes before the stabbing, and police arrived just after Parson left. (WATCH BELOW: Man stabbed to death in Alexander County home; girlfriend charged, deputies say) A man in jail for allegedly shooting at a mail carrier in Pittsburgh earlier this month has been charged with shooting at multiple people along a busy roadway that same day. Police say Martinel Humphries, 28, shot at multiple people along McKnight Road in Ross Township on Jan. 5, hitting a man and several cars. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: 1 person shot, another injured after shooting along busy McKnight Road This happened shortly after Humphries allegedly shot at a postal carrier in Perry North. The mail carrier was not hit by gunfire. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Man arrested, charged for allegedly shooting at postal carrier in Pittsburgh Humphries was arrested for that shooting, and police said at the time they were investigating if the two incidents were related. According to court documents, witness testimony, video surveillance and shell casings at the scene tied Humphries to the McKnight Road shootings. According to Ross Township police, Humphries was parked on a side street overlooking McKnight, giving him the high ground. Police said five different people were shot at on McKnight Road. Humphries didnt know any of the targets. Two of the victims were standing outside of their cars when they were shot at. One was hit and is recovering from his injuries. Humphries is being charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and firearms violations. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: 2 dead after apparent murder-suicide in Wilkins Township Family of man who died helping shooting victim at local Walmart suing off-duty officer, township Family of man killed in hit-and-run on Pittsburghs South Shore pleads for driver to come forward VIDEO: Local man, son killed in eastern Pennsylvania crash DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) A driver who led police on a chase in suburban St. Louis was shot and killed by officers after pointing a gun at them, police said. The shooting happened about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday on Interstate 70 in Wentzville, Missouri. Police said officers with a crime reduction task force made up of several St. Charles County departments tried to pull over a pickup truck in O'Fallon, Missouri, because the license plate didn't match the vehicle. The driver didn't stop. A few minutes later in Wentzville, police used spike strips to stop the truck, which went through a grass median and came to a stop, police said. The man who was driving and a female passenger got out and ran, police said. "As they fled on foot, the driver pointed a firearm at the direction of the officers as he was crossing West Pearce Boulevard," Wentzville Sgt. Jacob Schmidt said during a news conference. Two officers with the St. Charles County Regional Crime Reduction Task Force officers shot the man, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. The female passenger was not injured and was taken into custody, according to police. They said the driver's gun was found at the scene. The officers involved in the shooting, who work for city police departments in St. Charles and St. Peters, were not hurt. Authorities have released no details about the man killed or the officers. A police spokeswoman said Wednesday that more information would be released later but didn't specify when. Jan. 18A 36-year-old homeless man was robbed at gunpoint in downtown Honolulu Tuesday, Honolulu police said. The robbery occurred in the 1300 block of Nuuanu Avenue at about 9:55 p.m. Police said a male threatened the victim with what appeared to be a handgun and took his bag containing personal items. No injuries were reported. Police have opened a first-degree robbery investigation. There are no arrests as of this morning. Photo: The Canadian Press Technicians survey the scene at a propane distribution company in St-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Que., Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. Police announced late Monday they had found the remains of three people missing since last Thursday's explosion. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes The investigation into the causes of a fatal blast at a propane company north of Montreal could be long and complex, police said Tuesday after three bodies were found at the site. Officials are dealing with a "vast" scene complicated by snow, hazardous materials and objects that were projected far from the scene, provincial police spokeswoman Eloise Cossette said. "Its a very large scene with piles of debris, so we need to be very careful," Cossette said. Police announced late Monday they had found the remains of three people missing since last Thursday's explosion at Propane Lafortune, in St-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Que., about 50 kilometres north of Montreal. The remains are believed to belong to workers associated with the company, and they have been taken to a lab to be formally identified. The local fire department received calls Thursday morning about an explosion and fire at Propane Lafortune, but the risk of further explosions forced firefighters to retreat. They were only able to bring the blaze under control in the evening. The propane company later said the missing people included two employees and a subcontractor. Five days after the explosion, investigators were "still looking for answers" about what caused the blast, Cossette said. She said there were several types of fuel at the scene, including propane, gasoline, diesel and heating oil. Searchers had to shovel snow from the scene before they could sift through piles of debris, Cossette said, adding that the force of the blast scattered evidence far away and burned some of it. "It's long-term, meticulous work," she said. The police major crimes unit has also been conducting an off-site investigation that includes speaking with a number of witnesses. Cossette declined to say if police suspect any crimes had been committed, but she said the investigation includes taking legal steps, such as obtaining warrants. Gregory Patience, a professor of chemical engineering at Polytechnique Montreal, says such explosions are very rare in Canada, though not unheard of. As examples, he referenced a natural gas explosion in Mississauga, Ont., that damaged dozens of homes in 2016, as well as the Lac-Megantic rail disaster of 2013, in which 47 people were killed when an oil-laden train derailed and exploded in the downtown core. For an explosion to occur, he said, it takes three things: fuel, oxidation (generally air), and an ignition source to set it off, such as a spark, cigarette, or even static electricity. While he said he doesn't know the specifics of what happened in St-Roch-de-l'Achigan, he said the most likely scenario is a that there was some kind of fuel or gas leak that ignited. "There's no other way it would have happened that I can think of," he said. Patience said Canada has a very strict certification process for companies that handle hazardous materials, adding that operators must review and update their procedures regularly. He considers such facilities to be safe, he said, noting that such fuels are used in a large percentage of North American homes with no issues. He said it will likely take time to know what happened north of Montreal because the investigation will involve looking at vast amounts of highly technical data and examining all the possibilities of what could have gone wrong. Cossette said several other organizations are also investigating the fire and explosion, including the coroner's office, the province's workplace health and safety commission and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. The Miami Twp. Police Department is asking for the public help in their investigation into a recent hit-and-run crash. The incident happened in the parking lot of the Speedway on W. Alex Bell Road. The vehicle allegedly hit a person in the parking lot, police said in a social media post. >> Woman allegedly punched by officer in video treated for concussion, lawyer says Police described the suspect as a man in his early 20s with long braids and a thin goatee. The suspect was driving a gold sedan, which police said could possibly be a gold Acura. The car may have a license plate cover and butterfly sticker on the back window, police noted. Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Knight at (937)-531-4066. Weve reached out to Miami Twp. Police to pin down when this crash happened, as well as if the person hit was injured. Well update this as we learn more. Pope Francis in Nairobi, Kenya, during his first papal visit to the African continent in 2015. Nichole Sobecki/Getty Images During his planned visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan in February 2023, Pope Francis intends to be in dialogue with African Catholics but also to listen to political leaders and young Africans. This visit comes at a defining moment in what is regarded as a fairly progressive papacy. Pope Francis has convened a worldwide consultation on the future of the Catholic church. This consultation, called a synodal process, began in 2021 and will conclude in 2024. It is the most ambitious dialogue ever undertaken on bringing changes in Catholic beliefs and practices since the Second Vatican Councils reforms in 1965. It is exciting for reform-minded Catholics, but distressing for conservative Catholics. The ongoing synodal process has exposed the fault lines in modern Catholicism on the issues of women, celibacy, sexuality, marriage, clericalism and hierarchism. How Pope Francis who marks a decade of his papacy this year manages these increasingly divisive issues will, in my judgement, largely define his legacy. My research has focused on how African Catholics can bring about a consensus approach in managing these contested issues. The big questions for me are how another papal visit to Africa at this point will address the challenges and opportunities that Africans are identifying through the synodal process and how this plays into the state of Catholicism in Africa. The influence of African Catholicism The Catholic church is witnessing its fastest growth in Africa (recent statistics show 2.1% growth between 2019 and 2020). Out of a global population of 1.36 billion Catholics, 236 million are African (20% of the total). African Catholics are not simply growing in number. They are reinventing and reinterpreting Christianity. They are infusing it with new language and spiritual vibrancy through unique ways of worshipping God. Given its expansion, the Catholic church in Africa is well placed to be a central driver of social, political and spiritual life. In many settings, the church provides a community of hope where the fabric of society is weak because of war, humanitarian disasters and disease. Story continues The DRC, for instance, has the highest number of Catholic health facilities in Africa at 2,185. It is followed by Kenya with 1,092 and Nigeria with 524 facilities. Additionally, bishops have mobilised peaceful protests against violence in the DRC and Nigeria. Another major feature of Catholicism on the continent is that it is witnessing a youth bulge. Central to Pope Francis advocacy for Africa is his appeal that churches, religious groups and governments show solidarity with young people. He calls them the church of now. The pope expressed this most recently in November 2022 during a synodal consultation with African youth. He denounced the exploitation of Africa by external forces and its destruction by wars, ideologies of violence and policies that rob young people of their future. Why DRC and South Sudan? Pope Francis comes to Africa as part of the synodal consultation. He takes the message of a humble and merciful church to some of the most challenging parts of Africa: the DRC and South Sudan. These two countries illustrate the impact of neo-liberal capitalism and the effects of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Together, they have unleashed the most destructive economic, social and political upheaval in modern African history. Read more: Conflict in the DRC: 5 articles that explain what's gone wrong Pope Francis is coming to listen especially to the poor, to young people and to women who have been violated in conflicts. He also hopes to address the hidden wounds of clerical sexual abuse in the church. Pope Francis will see how war, dictatorship and ecological disasters have denied ordinary people access to land, labour and lodging. These are the three Ls he proposes as vital in giving agency to the poor. Some opposition Pope Francis will no doubt receive a warm welcome during his visit. Most African Catholics embrace his message of a poor and merciful church because it speaks to their challenges. But there are many African Catholics, particularly high-ranking church leaders, who are yet to embrace this reform agenda. The previous two popes encouraged a centralising tendency, which promoted unquestioning loyalty to Rome by African bishops. As a result, these bishops resisted attempts by African theologians to modernise and Africanise Catholic beliefs and practices to meet local needs and circumstances. This has led to some African bishops being uncomfortable with Pope Francis progressive agenda on liberation theology, openness to gay Catholics, condemnation of clerical privilege and power, and inclusion of women in mainstream leadership. Rather than being a strong church that looks like Africa, some of the Catholic dioceses on the continent have embraced medieval traditions like Roman rituals and Latin that alienate ordinary African Catholics, especially young people. Africas future role Pope Francis has often spoken of giving Africa a voice in the church and in the world. Many African Catholics wonder how this will happen when, for the first time in more than 30 years, there is just one African holding an important executive function at the Vatican. This is Archbishop Protase Rugambwa of Tanzania, the secretary of the Dicastery for the Evangelization of Peoples, a department at the Vaticans central offices. Many African Catholics hope that Pope Francis will announce some African appointments to the Vatican during his February 2023 visit. They also are hoping he will create a pontifical commission for Africa, similar to the Latin American commission created in 1958. This will be a significant way of giving African Catholics a voice in the church of Rome. Pope Francis hasnt fully recovered from the health challenges that led to the cancellation of the trip last July. But he is making this trip because he believes that Africa matters. Through the sessions that the pope will conduct with Africans, especially young people, its hoped that the Catholic church in Africa can help address the causes of war and suffering in the DRC and South Sudan, and the obstacles to reforming the church in Africa. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Like this article? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. It was written by: Stan Chu Ilo, DePaul University. Read more: Stan Chu Ilo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Porn star Ron Jeremy was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in Los Angeles on rape and other sex charges involving 21 women, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said on Tuesday. Jeremy, 69, pleaded not guilty in August 2021 to more than 30 counts of sexual assault, including 12 of rape, in the Los Angeles area over a 23-year period. He has been in prison since his arrest in June 2020. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Harris said in a hearing that he had determined, based on reports from prosecutors and Jeremy's defense, that the actor suffered from "incurable neurocognitive decline," according to the Associated Press. Attorney Stuart Goldfarb, who represents Jeremy, had told the court in March 2022 that his client had been unable to recognize him when he visited him in a holding cell before a court hearing. Goldfarb did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters on Tuesday. A hearing on whether to place Jeremy in a state hospital will be held on Feb. 7, the district attorney's office said. Jeremy was among the biggest names in the adult film industry, appearing in more than 2,000 movies starting in the 1970s. In August 2020, Jeremy wrote on Twitter: "I can't wait to prove my innocence in court! Thank you to everyone for all the support." The counts against Jeremy included 12 of forcible rape, seven of forcible oral copulation, six of sexual battery, and two of penetration while the victim was asleep or unconscious, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. The alleged offenses took place at night clubs and bars in the Los Angeles area, during a photo shoot, and at Jeremy's home, the District Attorney's office said. (Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Christian Schmollinger) Presto toilet paper is so popular, it practically has its own fan club. (Photo: Getty) Im really picky about the type of toilet paper I use, and with good reason. A few years ago, I was actually injured by scratchy toilet paper and had to see a doctor over it. So now I buy the fluffiest stuff I can find, even though its not always the cheapest. I like to save money, though, so when I noticed that Amazon has a best-selling brand of inexpensive toilet paper that people rave about in the reviews, I decided it was worth a try. Its called Presto, and it has more than 123,000 (!) reviews from verified customers with an average rating of 4.7 out of five stars kind of amazing for TP. 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Spend $50 or more on eligible products to get the discounted price. Save $3 when spend $50+ on select items $14 at Amazon My toilet paper epiphany was caused by my husband deciding to save some money and bringing home a cheap variety that was made of who-knows-what. After a few uses, I developed puffiness and a burning sensation down there that got so bad I had to seek medical attention. I didnt know at the time that toilet paper could actually injure you, butit did. And it wasnt fun. It turned out that the cheap TP had given me micro-cuts down there, which were causing my symptoms. My doctor recommended that I stop using the scratchy toilet paper immediately, treat the area with a cream and invest in better bathroom tissue going forward. I read some of the thousands of reviews on Amazon and decided to give Presto a chance. Now I'm as big a believer as its raving reviewers. 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Check these out: Storage and organization Joyoldelf Sock Drawer Organizer Divider (2-Pack) $12 $15 Save $3 with coupon See at Amazon Budding Joy 90L Large Storage Bags 6-pack $28 $45 Save $17 with coupon See at Amazon HomeHacks 3-Pack Clothes Storage $12 $17 Save $5 See at Amazon HomeHacks 2-Pack Large Laundry Basket $20 $25 Save $5 See at Amazon Auto Hotor Car Trash Can with Lid and Storage Pockets $10 $25 Save $15 See at Amazon Cindro Phone Holder for Car $11 $19 Save $8 See at Amazon Qifutan Phone Mount for Car Vent $10 $17 Save $7 with coupon See at Amazon K Knodel Car Trunk Organizer With Lid $22 $33 Save $11 See at Amazon Vacuums Mamnv Robot Vacuum and Mop $177 $620 Save $443 See at Amazon Whall Cordless Vacuum Cleaner $120 $500 Save $380 with coupon See at Amazon Inse Corded Vacuum Cleaner $60 $300 Save $240 See at Amazon Kitchen Henckels Statement Razor-Sharp 15-Piece White Handle Knife Set $150 $345 Save $195 See at Amazon Seropy Roll Up Dish Drying Rack $9 $13 Save $4 See at Amazon Prestee Stemless Plastic Champagne Flutes (24 pack) $18 $35 Save $17 with code Copied! Code: 15YAHOOFLUTE Copied! Code: 15YAHOOFLUTE See at Amazon Lodge Pre-Seasoned 9" Skillet $18 $31 Save $13 See at Amazon Ninja AF101 Air Fryer $100 $130 Save $30 See at Amazon Home Royal Gourmet CD1824A Charcoal Grill $111 $240 Save $129 See at Amazon Bedsure Queen Comforter Duvet Insert $29 $42 Save $13 with coupon See at Amazon Barossa Design Plastic Clear Shower Liner Clear $8 $17 Save $9 See at Amazon Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty Reports of an imminent reconciliation meeting between King Charles and Prince Harry have been greatly exaggerated, a friend of Charles has told The Daily Beast. Despite the fact that Charles has made it clear that, as courtiers are always at pains to insist, he loves both his sons the idea that Charles is going to sit down for a cup of Earl Grey with Meghan and Harry before the coronation, as suggested in reports this weekend, has friends of the king and queen doubtfully shaking their heads. Its wishful thinking, one friend of the couple told The Daily Beast. Trust of Harry by the royal institution after the devastating allegations in Spare is at approximately zero, not helped by the implicit threats he has made to release more material Harry said in an interview with the Telegraph that he could have written two booksand the fact that confidential meetings were detailed in his memoir. All Prince Harrys Memoir Revelations Spare No One, Including Himself Indeed the book opens with a detailed account of a secret meeting with Charles and William, called by Harry, in a graveyard, after the Duke of Edinburghs funeral. Its hard to see how Charles could attend a private meeting with his youngest son (or indeed write to or even call him) without assuming notes were being takenand might well later be served up to the public in a sequel to the best-selling book. While most informed observers still generally expect Harry and Meghan to receive an invite to the coronation, there is considerable doubt, to put it mildly, about the chances of a pre-coronation sit-down. The speculation about a reconciliation meeting was triggered by an article in The Sunday Times this weekend by the respected and well-informed royal correspondent Roya Nikkhah. Nikkhah, citing a royal source, who has the Kings ear and who knows the Sussexes well said the source believed a reconciliation meeting would take place before the coronation on Saturday, May 6. Story continues Its going to take flexibility on all sides, but it can be done, its fixableIt needs Harry over here, in the room with the king and Prince of Wales, a couple of other family members, some of his people he trusts who always had his back, so he doesnt think hes being ambushed. Someone like Elf [Ed Lane Fox, Harrys former private secretary] and Christopher [Lord Geidt, the late Queens former private secretary who advised the Sussexes]. Both sides need to hold their hands up and admit we didnt get everything right, and we got a lot wrong, and we have to say to him we understand the pain youve been through. The king can do it. Headline writers may have been less cautious, but Nikkhah herself studiously avoided saying that such a meeting was actually being planned, and added that other parties in the palace were advocating the exactly opposite strategy, namely a least said, soonest mended approach. She also pointed out that William is burning with anger over Harrys book, suggesting it would be a stretch to see Harry and William meet up for a chat, although the same source pushed back against that interpretation, saying they believed William would indeed sit down with Harry if it was in the interests of the nation. The story in The Sunday Times was fascinating to seasoned observers not so much because what the source suggested may (or may not) come to pass, but because it shows clear evidence of factionalism in the court of King Charles. There is, we must assume, a voluble group within the palace who want Charles to seek peace with Harry. Derided as palace wets by GB News presenter Dan Wootton, the theme was also taken up by author Tom Bower, who said that at a recent dinner party Charles had expressed a reluctance to confront and admonish Harry. (Both Wootton and Bower are relentless critics of Harry and Meghan.) Bower urged him to act more harshly. Charles is unlikely to do so; confronting Harry and escalating the row might please Bower, but it would delight the publishers of Harrys book. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (L), Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (2nd L), Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (3rd L), Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (3rd R), Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (2nd R) and Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (R) depart Westminster Abbey after attending the annual Commonwealth Service in London on March 9, 2020. PHIL HARRIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images The sense that warring parties in the palace might be flying kites was reinforced by a story in the Sun which sought to slap down The Sunday Times story about a reconciliation meeting, with a source saying: There has been no conversations or contact. And a source told The Daily Beasts Clive Irving: Silence is the only course open to them, and it has been effective so far, in that now, at last, at least over here, the story is subsiding. The king is genuinely fond of his son, and wishes to keep the door open for him. By not responding he does not fuel the argument. Irvings source captures accurately the Royalists understanding of the mood at the palace (Charles office declined to comment for this article, as did Harrys) where, The Daily Beast understands, the original decision to say nothing and not engage with the Sussexes, is being seen as having been borne out by events to be correct. If anything, the do-nothing position is hardening. Its not hard to see why when the other options are so unpalatable: setting up a peace summit with Harry or aggressively cutting him out of the family by, for example, stripping him of his titles, could both easily serve to oxygenate the inferno rather than smother it. Much better to just keep on keeping on, runs the thinking of many. As one insider told The Daily Beast last week, its about letting actions speak louder than words. Public support for Meghan and Harry appears mixed. The memoir has been a runaway bestselleron Tuesday it was announced as the UKs fastest-selling nonfiction book. However, in polling, support for Harry has plummeted while support for Charles and Camilla has taken only a very minor knock, according to YouGov. Harry and Meghans numbers are slipping across the board and incredibly, over-65s in the U.K. now have a lower opinion of Harry than they do of Prince Andrew. Harry may want an apology, but there is no indication that Charles is feeling under any pressure to provide one. But Harry has now painted himself into a corner by suggesting he wont come to the coronation without an apology. He probably shouldnt hold his breath. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now. Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now. LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) Protesters ended blockades Wednesday that had largely isolated the rich Santa Cruz region from the rest of Bolivia for more than 15 days, but leaders said the roadblocks could resume to press demands that the goverment free the regions governor. Gov. Luis Fernando Camacho, who is widely considered leader of opposition to Bolivias left-leaning national government, was detained late last year on terrorism charges related to previous demonstrations. It has been decided to lift the blockades, said Jose Ernesto Serrate, head of rural areas for the Civic Committee for Santa Cruz. We dont discard that we will return with our measures in the future. Leaders of the Civic Committee persuaded rural groups to lift the highway blockages pending a large town hall Jan. 25 at which participants will vote on how to continue with protests demanding the release of Camacho. Camacho, who placed third in Bolivias 2020 presidential election, is in a maximum security prison outside La Paz after a judge ordered he be held for four months while prosecutors pursue their investigation against him. There was uncertainty among leaders of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz about whether all blockades had been lifted Wednesday morning, a reflection of the frustration that leaders in rural areas felt at being asked to lift the roadblocks while Camacho remained imprisoned. It was a very difficult meeting, said Rosario Flores, a leader in the Civic Committe who took part in the meeting with leaders from the rural areas. The pressure from everybody was very strong. Those carrying out the blockades didnt want to lift them, she said. There wasnt a lot of consensus but we were able to achieve it by promising that on the day of the town hall we will make more definitive decisions. Bolivian state television said a few small blockades remained in place but the main ones had been lifted and buses were leaving normally from the Santa Cruz station. Story continues There are no blockades but were still in a state of emergency, Serrate told local media on Wednesday afternoon. Roadblocks went up in Santa Cruz, the eastern region that is Bolivias economic engine and farming hub, shortly after Camacho was detained Dec. 28. He is held on charges stemming from protests that led to the 2019 resignation of then-President Evo Morales. Moraless party, which has since returned to power, accuses Camacho of orchestrating the protests and calls them a coup. The unrest resulted in 37 deaths. Camacho and his supporters dispute the coup label, saying the 2019 protests were a legitimate response to elections that the Organization of American States said were marred by fraud and designed to keep Morales in power. Shortly after Camachos detention a series of nightly protests also erupted in the city of Santa Cruz, a bastion of the opposition. Demonstrators clashed with police and several people were injured and several public buildings set on fire. The administration of President Luis Arce has accused the protesters of fomenting violence. The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said it was keeping a close eye on the protests and condemned all types of violence. The regions top rights watchdog said in a news release that it emphatically rejects the accusations of excessive use of force by security forces as well as the violent actions committed by organized groups within the framework of the protests of the last few days. ___ Politi reported from Lima, Peru. The trial of three men accused of killing Florida rapper XXXTentacion during an attempted robbery in 2018 is expected to begin in a matter of days. Jury selection is ongoing, but the trial will likely start next week, a spokesperson for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit of Florida told the Miami Herald. It should wrap up by March. Heres what to know about the long-awaited trial. The accused suspects Michael Boatwright, Dedrick Williams and Trayvon Newsome are facing charges of first-degree murder and armed robbery in the killing of the Pompano Beach artist, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy. On Jan. 9, Judge Michael Usan denied a motion to try the defendants separately. READ MORE: Minute by minute, how cops tracked the four suspects in rapper XXXTentacions murder The four men indicted in the robbery and murder of XXXTentacion, from left: Dedrick Williams, Trayvon Newsome, Robert Allen and Michael Boatwright. In August, Robert Allen, the fourth suspect, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed robbery with a firearm. The 26-year-old faces up to life in prison when hes sentenced in February. Allen is expected to testify against his alleged conspirators at the upcoming trial. The robbery and shooting XXXTentacion was shot to death on June 18, 2018, as he was leaving the RIVA Motorsports dealership in Deerfield Beach. A dark-colored SUV blocked his BMW, police say, and two gunmen hopped out robbing the rapper and firing a spray of bullets. The two gunmen were identified as Boatwright, 27, and Newsome, 24, according to court documents. Williams, 26, is accused of being the getaway driver. READ MORE: Orange sandals and a black mask led to XXXTentacion murder suspects arrest According to a search warrant, Williams admitted to Broward homicide detectives that he and the other men went to RIVA Motorsports, but said he had no idea they were planning to rob and shoot XXXTentacion. READ MORE: Rapper XXXTentacion had $50,000. Four men have been indicted for killing him to get it. The focus of the robbery, police say, was a Louis Vuitton bag with $50,000 inside. The rapper had withdrawn the sum out of his account at a Bank of America branch in stacks of $100 bills. Story continues The rappers rise to fame XXXTentacion came into the public eye in 2017 with his single Look At Me!, which was posted to the music website SoundCloud. On Twitter, he later accused Canadian hip-hop star Drake of copying a portion of his song. Drake denied the South Florida rappers claims, but XXXTentacion launched a series of tirades against him on Twitter and in interviews. READ MORE: Drake, other rappers listed as potential witnesses in XXXTentacion Florida murder case Their ongoing beef was the reason the internet swirled with wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories linking Drake to XXXTentacions killing. A 46-year-old registered sex offender was arrested after being accused of sending obscene material and trying to pick up a 14-year-old in an online sting, California deputies said. This month, San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department took part in an undercover chat room operation, according to a news release. James Wessley Rankin, of St. Louis, responded to an anonymous chat room website under the name Lonely Nerd and started a conversation with a detective pretending to be a 14-year-old, according to a Jan. 13 news release by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. Deputies said Rankin sent obscene material and began making plans to pick the teen up from her home. Rankin was listed on Missouris sex offender registry after he was found guilty of first-degree statutory rape, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office. He was sentenced to five years in prison in March 2021. During his arrest, Rankin was living at a transition house in St. Louis and had recently been released from prison, officials said. He was allowed to go to work during the day. The man was actively engaged in an online conversation with the undercover detective when he was arrested, deputies said. Rankin was arrested on multiple charges including sending harmful matter to seduce minors, online enticement and arranging to meet a minor for the purpose of committing a sex crime, according to KTLA. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call 909-890-4904. Teacher arrested in sex sting involving teen, OR cops say. There may be more victims Man convicted of child sex crime went on the run and became teacher in Mexico, feds say Teacher accused of sending lewd texts to minor exposed in TikTok, California cops say 84 child victims, including an 11-year-old, rescued in sex trafficking sting, FBI says Photo: STEFAN LABB?/GLACIER MEDIA Alan Andrews, climate director of Ecojustice, speaks outside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver. Lawyers from the environmental law firm represented the Sierra Club BC in its case challenging the B.C. government's emissions reporting. The province did not break its own climate change accountability laws, ruled a B.C. Supreme Court judge in a decision released Tuesday. In a request for judicial review, heard at a Vancouver Supreme Court in October 2022, lawyers for Sierra Club BC argued that the governments latest report on how it would achieve its emission reduction targets didnt go far enough, and essentially amounted to a vague plan to make a plan. We are pleased with the court's ruling, said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. B.C. has some of the strongest climate accountability measures in Canada, ensuring credibility and transparency. The case turned on a key piece of legislation known as the Climate Accountability Act, which is meant to provide transparency around the government's emission reduction targets. Lawyers for the Sierra Club said they were disappointed by the ruling, but buoyed by the fact that the judge affirmed the government can be taken to court over its climate transparency laws. The B.C. Climate Change Accountability Act was brought in with great fanfare by the government because it was supposed to put an end to this long history of missed targets by ensuring greater accountability and transparency around climate and it clearly hasn't done that, Alan Andrews, Ecojustice's climate director, said. It isnt fit for purpose. 'Nothing nefarious going on here,' says government lawyer In 2021, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy released plans to reduce emissions in the province to 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030. It said the province would achieve that goal through two climate plans: CleanBC would get the province 40 per cent of the way there, and Roadmap to 2030 would make up the difference. But lawyers for the Sierra Club argued the province has failed to do the same for its emission reduction targets in 2025, 2040 and 2050. As Sierra Club lawyer Andhra Azevedo put it to Justice Jasvinder Basran in October 2022, Essentially, theyre saying, trust us. Sierra Club lawyers also claimed the B.C. government has failed to spell out how it will reach its 2030 emission reduction targets in the oil and gas sector, leading to a plan that undermines the intent to hit separate sectoral targets and makes it impossible to gauge what the minister is doing to reduce emissions, Azevedo told the court. She pointed to big fossil fuel projects like LNG Canada, slated to be the largest natural gas project in the province once it comes online in 2025, and which could account for up to 30 per cent of the provinces emissions by 2050. Decisions made now can lock in emissions, and will not just impact the ability to reach the 2030 target, but also those longer-term targets, Azevedo told the court. Without detailed reporting requirements, Azevedo said British Columbians would be left in the dark about whether the province is about to miss another target. In response, B.C. Ministry of Justice lawyer David Cowie cast the call for a detailed accounting of how the government would meet its targets as a technical requirement better argued on the floor of the legislature than in a courtroom. The government lawyer said emission reduction targets and the plans to achieve them are tabled in the legislature, making the climate policy inherently political, and not something that should be argued before a judge. Ultimately, submitted Cowie, the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy is not legally required to give a detailed account on how B.C. would hit its 2025, 2040 and 2050 targets and that omitting such details was within the minister's "reasonable discretion." There's nothing nefarious going on here, Cowie told the court in October. Better data could help reach emission targets, but not legally required, rules judge In his ruling, Basran found challenges to the act can be heard in a court of law, but that the ministry has no legal requirement to provide the kind of detailed emission reduction plans Sierra Club BCs lawyers called for. The Climate Accountability Act, wrote Basran, only requires detailed reporting on greenhouse gas emissions for the current year and two subsequent years. Basran added information contained in the Roadmap shows progress made towards B.C.'s 2030 target, specifically, that based on currently enacted initiatives, this target, like all previously established targets, will probably not be met. If the minister wanted to publicly release information on progress toward its 2040 and 2050 targets as the Sierra Club requested he would have to provide quantitative data on how the province anticipates it will reduce its emissions, wrote the judge. Such information may help B.C. meet its emission reduction goals and finally break the province out of its consistent history of missing its targets, said Basran. But that type of reporting is simply not required, he added. Andrews said the lawyers at Ecojustice stand by their interpretation of the act. He said they are considering the judgment carefully and will decide over the next 30 days whether they will appeal the decision. In the meantime, he called on Premier David Eby to strengthen the legislation so that it does what it was originally intended to do: to provide that transparency and accountability so that British Columbians can know whether B.C. is on track to meet its climate targets, and if not, hold government's feet to the fire. Regardless of whether we as lawyers think this information is required under law, British Columbians deserve that information, Andrews added. They have a right to know whether their government has a plan to reach these climate targets that they have set for themselves. From the cost of tuition to the course requirements, incoming students consider a lot of different factors when picking a college that is right for them. But that information isnt always clear or even accurate in some cases. Now a new watchdog report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is calling on the U.S. Department of Education to improve how it investigates and penalizes misleading colleges and universities. Education has not completed written procedures for investigating colleges and has not updated its written procedures for imposing penalties for substantial misrepresentation, the report said. Having complete and updated written procedures will help Education investigate the highest-risk colleges and impose appropriate penalties on those the agency finds to have engaged in substantial misrepresentation. Students we spoke with said information on cost especially can determine how a student prepares financially and getting wrong information can have long-lasting consequences. I feel like they can be more transparent, said Howard University student Sydney Kates. What youre thinking youre going to pay is right here and then you realize oh wait thats a lot more money than I thought. I dont have that kind of money. I didnt apply for this scholarship because I didnt think I needed to. Students and parents deserve to be told the truth about college programs and the Department of Education needs to be held accountable for telling that truth to students, said Melissa Emrey-Arras, a Director in the Education, Workforce and Income Security Team for GAO. The report points to concerns about colleges being misleading about things like the nature of their educational programs and the employability of their graduates. It said the Department of Education imposed penalties on 13 colleges for substantial misrepresentation in FY 2016-2021. If students are lied to, they may not be able to graduate from their programs, said Emrey-Arras. They may have trouble getting a job and they may have trouble paying back their student loans. Story continues In response to the report, the Department of Education agreed with the recommended changes and said it is working on updating and revising its policies for investigating and penalizing misleading colleges. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW To find a multi-bagger stock, what are the underlying trends we should look for in a business? Firstly, we'll want to see a proven return on capital employed (ROCE) that is increasing, and secondly, an expanding base of capital employed. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. With that in mind, the ROCE of London Security (LON:LSC) looks decent, right now, so lets see what the trend of returns can tell us. Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE) For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on London Security is: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) (Total Assets - Current Liabilities) 0.17 = UK26m (UK186m - UK35m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022). Thus, London Security has an ROCE of 17%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Machinery industry average of 11% it's much better. Check out our latest analysis for London Security roce Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for London Security's ROCE against it's prior returns. If you want to delve into the historical earnings, revenue and cash flow of London Security, check out these free graphs here. What Can We Tell From London Security's ROCE Trend? While the current returns on capital are decent, they haven't changed much. The company has consistently earned 17% for the last five years, and the capital employed within the business has risen 38% in that time. 17% is a pretty standard return, and it provides some comfort knowing that London Security has consistently earned this amount. Stable returns in this ballpark can be unexciting, but if they can be maintained over the long run, they often provide nice rewards to shareholders. Story continues In Conclusion... In the end, London Security has proven its ability to adequately reinvest capital at good rates of return. And since the stock has risen strongly over the last five years, it appears the market might expect this trend to continue. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research. London Security does have some risks though, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for London Security that you might be interested in. While London Security isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets. 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. Join A Paid User Research Session Youll receive a US$30 Amazon Gift card for 1 hour of your time while helping us build better investing tools for the individual investors like yourself. Sign up here Igor Russak/Reuters A Russian journalist went undercover as a wannabe recruit for the notorious Wagner Group and was seemingly accepted by the private army after little to no questioning about his background. The independent outlet The Insider reports that journalists got the idea to call Wagners hotline after the group started hanging up recruiting posters at bus stops and security companies. One such poster, purportedly hung up in Krasnoyarsk, urged wannabe Wagner recruits to test their spirit by signing a contract. Bizarrely, the poster claimed all recruits would be required to answer three questions upon joining: Would you rather get stabbed in the eye by a fork or fucked in the butt?, and, Would you rather get butt-fucked or sell your mother? The last question asked prospective candidates if theyd prefer to eat soap from the table or bread from the latrine. An unnamed Wagner recruiter was quoted telling the Insider the prison-style questions are nonsense and there is no such requirement to join the group. But he said newbies would likely see prisoners serving in the groups ranks, even though they wont cross paths with them. Asked by the reporter if he was allowed to bring other guys along to a Wagner headquarters in the Krasnodar region, the recruiter didnt skip a beat when answering matter-of-factly: Make sure they havent been sentenced for such crimes as terrorism, extremism, kidnapping and rape. He made no mention of murder. A juvenile record, the recruiter said, was fine, along with men struggling with substance abuse. Sometimes they come in with a certificate from the narcologist that they are registered alcoholics. Such things are forgiven, but guys like that need to pass lie detector, the recruiter was quoted saying. Putins Chef Threatens Traitors With Sledgehammer in Batshit Outburst Among other things, the recruiter said funeral costs would be covered, though he couldnt cite an exact amount, and that payment would be about $3,500 a month on a six-month contract. Recruits are then sent on to the battlefield after two or three weeks of training, he said. Story continues He told the supposed recruit that there might be an opportunity for you to serve as a sniper since he had gone shooting with his father sometimes in the past. Look, you'll need your passport. If you have a military ID, take it, if not, dont. Passport, health insurance and a certificate from the narcologist and psychiatrist, that you are not registered with them. Next, you'll need to delete all social media accounts and messengers to avoid information leaks, the recruiter said. He also stressed that the shadow army operates freely of Russias Defense Ministry, noting: We have our own awards, but we dont count on ones from the ministry, because we are not part of the Defense Ministry. The purported phone call comes as Wagner has reportedly stepped up recruiting efforts in recent weeks, with human rights groups sounding the alarm over female prison inmates joining the group and political prisoners in Chechnya being pressured to join. The group has reportedly suffered staggering losses recently in Ukraine, particularly among prison inmates tossed onto the frontline. Out of 270 inmates recruited from one penal colony in the Republic of Bashkortostan, only 30 people are still alive, according to the Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPu. Just this week, a media outlet under the control of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin reported on funeral services for a Tanzanian national who came to Russia to study but wound up on the battlefield after Wagner scooped him up from jail. Tarimo Nemes Raymond died in Bakhmut, RIA-FAN reported, while defending the interests of the Russian Federation, despite being a foreign national. Hes not the first foreign citizen to be ensnared by the mercenary group. Zambian authorities expressed outrage back in November when a 23-year-old engineering student from that country was killed fighting with Wagner in Ukraine, having also been plucked from behind bars. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now. Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow had yet to see any serious proposals for peace in Ukraine and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's suggestions were absurd. Lavrov said Moscow stood ready to discuss the conflict with Western countries and to respond to any serious proposals, but that any talks needed to address Russia's wider security concerns. Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Lavrov called again for NATO to remove its "military infrastructure" from Ukraine and other countries close to Russia's borders. "There can be no talk of negotiations with Zelenskiy," Lavrov said, describing the Ukrainian leader's 10-point plan unveiled last November as consisting of "completely absurd initiatives". "As for the prospects for negotiations between Russia and the West on the Ukrainian issue, we will be ready to respond to any serious proposals. (But) we don't see any serious proposals yet. We will be ready to consider them and decide," Lavrov said. Lavrov said statements by Western governments that they would not discuss anything about Ukraine without Kyiv's involvement were "all nonsense", because the West was actually taking the decisions. (Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey) Authorities in Miami arrested the majority owner and founder of a global cryptocurrency exchange Tuesday evening after he allegedly helped process more than $700 million in illicit funds, according to the Justice Department. Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian national who resides in China, was charged with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business, Bitzlato Ltd. He is expected to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The DOJ stated that Bitzlato Ltd. is a Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange that had had minimal identification requirements, ultimately resulting in an environment where criminal proceeds could occur. Users did not have to take photos of themselves or provide a passport for self-identification. The company frequently did transactions with its counterpart, Hydra Market, a large dark net marketplace. Hydra Market was shut down in April 2022 after it was accused of selling drugs, hacking services and personal information. The DOJ also accused the company and Legkodymov of failing to provide anti-money laundering safeguards enabled criminals to profit off wrongdoing, including drug trafficking and ransomware. Todays actions send the clear message: whether you break our laws from China or Europe or abuse our financial system from a tropical island you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom, said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. Legkodymov and Bitzlatos other managers allegedly were aware that the companys accounts were rife with illicit activity, according to the DOJ. If convicted, Legkodymov faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. It's unclear if Legkodymov retained a lawyer. Washington The founder and senior executive of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested on Tuesday in Miami and charged with directing the company to knowingly transmit funds derived from cybercrimes and other illicit activity, Justice Department officials announced Wednesday. Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national living in China, is accused of using Bitzlato to create a safe financial haven for criminals, requiring little identifying information for its customers and allowing transactions to go virtually untraced and shielded from investigators. According to prosecutors, the company even allowed users to submit fake registrant information to avoid detection. Investigators said that anonymity attracted drug and cyber criminals looking to exchange their illicit money to Legkodymov and his company. Announcing the arrest, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Bitzlato's illegal transactions amounted to more than $700 million in direct and indirect exchanges between 2018 and 2022. The company's executives, including Legkodymov, allegedly communicated about the drug dealers and other criminals using their platform to hide their profits, investigators said, and even identified some of the proceeds transmitted through their portals as "dirty money." The year-long investigation into Legkodymov's allegedly criminal conduct was the result of coordination between federal prosecutors, the U.S. Treasury Department, and French law enforcement officials, Monaco said Wednesday, and culminated in the seizure of Bitzlato's servers across Europe and cryptocurrency. The exchange also faces further regulatory actions by the U.S. Treasury Department, officials said, as it is suspected of being linked to Russian-affiliated ransomware groups. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo speaks alongside from left, Brian C. Turner, FBI associate deputy director, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr., and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, while announcing international enforcement action against cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato and the arrest of the company's founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov, during a news conference at the Justice Department, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023, in Washington. / Credit: Nathan Howard / AP Bitzlato's fall marked the second and final takedown of what Monaco referred to as the "high-tech axis of crypto crime," an alleged partnership between the crypto exchange and Hydra, the world's largest and longest-running darknet market. In April, the Justice Department seized that platform, which officials said accounted for an estimated 80% of all darknet market-related cryptocurrency transactions since 2015 worth $5.2 billion. Using cryptocurrency, users of Hydra mainly in Russian-speaking countries bought and sold illegal drugs, stolen financial information and fraudulent identification documents, prosecutors alleged. Much of the money used to facilitate these illegal transactions, Monaco said Wednesday, was held in Bitzlato's servers. "Today marks the elimination of the Hydra-Bitzlato cryptocrime axis," Monaco said, "Coordinated operations like this against Bitzlatousing all tools and designed for maximum impactare the linchpins of international success against cybercrime." According to the criminal complaint that was unsealed Wednesday in the Eastern District of New York, Bitzlato did business with customers in the U.S. and its employees advised users that they could transfer funds to American banks. Legkodymov allegedly led the exchange as its senior executive and majority owners from Miami since 2023. He faces a maximum of 5 years in prison if convicted, but federal authorities on Wednesday stressed that the investigation is ongoing and additional charges could follow. In announcing the charges and arrest, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite, who oversees the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said the international work marked an important step in the federal government's work to combat illegal activity across the cryptocurrency ecosystem. "We are just getting started," Polite added. Veteran knocks over knife-wielding man at Walmart Dow Jones experiences rapid drop following release of December retail sales report NASA debuts plans for new experimental environmentally friendly airplane Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian Prime Minister, has announced that workers are setting up fortifications along the lines of defence and captured territories of Ukraine around the clock. Source: "RIA Novosti, a Russian propaganda outlet Quote: "The construction of fortifications on defence lines is in progress. The work is carried out day and night at high speed." Details: At the same time, Mishustin complained about unfavourable conditions in which the workers carried out the activity. Among the conditions are unfavourable weather, combat activity, and the mined surroundings. Nevertheless, says Mishustin, it is necessary "to create the conditions for the placement of military units as soon as possible". The premier also mentioned the necessity of daily replenishment of military equipment so that Russian forces have everything they need to wage war. Background: In November 2022, Viachieslav Gladkov, governor of Belgorod Oblast, announced that a defensive "cut line" was being built in the area and that preparations for a potential "attack" from the Ukrainian side were underway. Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! (Reuters) -Russia's National Wealth Fund shrank to $148.4 billion as of Jan. 1, down $38.1 billion in a month, as the government took out cash to plug its budget deficit, data showed on Wednesday. The ministry said it had spent 2.41 trillion roubles ($35.1 billion) from the NWF, a rainy day fund that accumulates oil revenues, to cover the deficit in December. Along with heavy state borrowing at domestic debt auctions, the NWF - which was originally intended to support the pension system - has become the main source of financing for the budget deficit since Russia invaded Ukraine last year and was hit by waves of unprecedented Western sanctions. The government also drew on it last year to prop up struggling state companies including Russian Railways and the airline Aeroflot. Analysts have said Russia's attempts to plug its budget deficit by selling foreign currency reserves could lead to a vicious circle that pushes the rouble higher and further reduces the Kremlin's crucial export revenues from oil and gas. The size of the NWF at Jan. 1 was equivalent to 7.8% of Gross Domestic Product, the finance ministry said. But only $87.2 billion, or 4.6% of GDP, was in liquid assets. At Feb. 1 last year, three weeks before the invasion, the total fund stood at $174.9 billion, or 10.2% of projected GDP. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last week that Russia recorded a budget deficit of 2.3% of GDP last year, having targeted a surplus of 1% before the start of the war. According to the budget law, the finance ministry can spend another 4.2 trillion roubles, currently worth around $61 billion, over the next two years to plug the deficit. As a result, according to the ministry, NWF liquid funds in accounts with the central bank could fall to 2.3 trillion roubles or 1.4% of GDP by the end of 2024, which the Accounts Chamber said would be the lowest ratio for 20 years. In a further indication of pressure on the budget, finance ministry data showed that tax revenues from imports, which are subject to duties and value-added tax, fell by 20% or almost 1 trillion roubles in 2022. Imports plummeted last year as a result of Western sanctions and an exodus of Western firms from Russia, though they began to recover in the second half of the year. ($1 = 68.6950 roubles) (Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey) Photo: The Canadian Press A construction worker who identifies as having Mayan and Black heritage has been awarded $2,500 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal for racial slurs he faced while on the job. Raul Martinez Johnson was working for Whitewater Concrete, a Coquitlam concrete forming company, in 2019 when he was called a monkey and an ape in Spanish by a co-worker, according to evidence provided in a recent tribunal decision posted online. Originally from Honduras, Martinez Johnson was a carpenter working with a team on a high-rise building. He told the tribunal that a colleague called him a mono or simio (monkey or ape) at work instead of calling him by his name comments that made him feel "little" and "like a dog," and also contravened the BC Human Rights Code. Evidence provided by co-workers, and substantiated by an interpreter, agreed that the terms were used as an insult, not as a joke or simply to indicate Martinez Johnson was "careless." In the decision, tribunal member Amber Prince said calling a person a monkey or an ape is often a way to "dehumanize" them. "Calling a Black person a monkey or an ape resorts to and reinforces the stereotype that Black people are subhuman and not equal to others," Prince states. "This stereotype is especially harmful because it has been exploited by Europeans for centuries to justify colonial rule over people deemed as 'primitive,' less 'civilized,' and therefore less human. "This a stereotype that has functioned as a rationale for Black slavery and the seizure of Indigenous land," she wrote. Prince stated that while Martinez Johnson was an "active participant in much of the conflict," stemming over disagreements on how to do the job, there was no exchange of racial slurs and that comments directed toward him had a "particular harmful impact." "I accept his evidence that being called a monkey and an ape made him feel embarrassed, mocked and disrespected. The slurs were an inherent affront to his dignity and intersecting identities," the tribunal decision states. Whitewater and Nicholas Pacheco are jointly responsible for paying compensation plus interest to Martinez Johnson for the racial slurs. However, the tribunal dismissed Martinez Johnson's claim that the company failed to take action on his complaints and that he was "constructively dismissed" when he quit his job. Information provided during the hearing showed the company responded to Martinez Johnson's original complaints about racial slurs in September, during a meeting in which grievances were aired, and later conducted an investigation following a further dispute. On Nov.4, a supervisor was called to a heated argument on the 18th floor of a high-rise building, in which Martinez Johnson claimed he was assaulted when "one of the guys" put their hands on his chest. "All of the witnesses, except Mr. Martinez Johnson, confirmed that yelling took place but no physical touching," the tribunal states. A supervisor offered to separate the workers, and have Martinez Johnson work on another project; however, he left the job site. Whitewater held an investigation and reviewed its bullying and harassment policy with staff, but Martinez Johnson had left the company by then. Still, the tribunal said the company properly followed up the complaints and "took reasonable steps to ensure that Mr. Martinez Johnson could return to a safe and non-discriminatory workplace." Russian Severodvinsk-class submarine Kazan at its home base in Severomorsk in June 2021. Lev Fedoseyev\TASS via Getty Images US military leaders have warned that Russia's Severodvinsk-class subs are operating near US coasts. Severodvinsk-class subs have a mix of stealth and striking power that worries US and NATO navies. Events in Ukraine appear to validate Russia's ambitions, and NATO's concerns, about those subs. A year of renewed fighting in Ukraine has depleted and embarrassed Russia's air, ground, and naval forces, but one component of Russia's otherwise struggling military its submarines still worries US commanders. Submarines are a relative bright spot in Russia's recent naval modernization efforts, especially the Severodvinsk-class subs that US officials say are hard to detect and capable of striking important targets in Europe and the US. Despite the high-profile loss of the guided-missile destroyer Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet flagship, in April, Russia's navy remains "largely intact" and continues "to do what we've always seen" it do, Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, said at an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event on January 11. "But they have more advanced capabilities with their Severodvinsk SSGN. There are three of those out there now and they'll be building more," Studeman said, using an acronym referring to nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines. Russia plans to build nine Severodvinsk-class subs, which it calls the Yasen class, and may add more in the future. Those subs are "very, very advanced," have "multi-mission capabilities," and are increasingly active, Studeman said. Sailors aboard Russian submarine Severodvinsk during basic training in the Murmansk Region in March 2018. Lev Fedoseyev\TASS via Getty Images "They have started doing patrols in the Atlantic, holding the United States at risk in some of their patrol areas, and they recently moved one into the Pacific," Studeman added. "So there'll be a dual-flank challenge for the United States in trying to track and hold accountable where those submarines are and what they're doing." Studeman's comments echoed those of US Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of US Northern Command and NORAD, who in October warned about the increasing presence of Severodvinsk-class subs off of US coasts. Story continues "What has been an episodic threat to the homeland, typically in the fall and through the winter timeframe, will become a persistent, proximate threat," VanHerck said at the Association of the US Army Conference on October 11. VanHerck has said in the past that Severodvinsk-class subs are a top concern, describing them as "on par with" US submarines. Those subs' increasing activity in the Atlantic and the Pacific means they "will be a persistent, proximate threat capable of carrying a significant number of land-attack cruise missiles that can threaten our homeland today," VanHerck said. 'Right out of the Russian playbook' The Russian submarine K-560 Severodvinsk. Russian Ministry of Defense Construction of the first Severodvinsk-class sub, also called Severodvinsk, began in 1993. It entered service in late 2013. The second and third subs, Kazan and Novosibirsk, have since entered service and the fourth, Krasnoyarsk, is undergoing sea trials. In addition to nuclear propulsion, Severodvinsk-class subs have advanced quieting technology and are built with low-magnetic steel, making them harder to detect. They are armed with torpedoes as well as anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles that can be fired vertically. The subs built after Severodvinsk are similarly armed but have a number of upgrades, including new quieting technology and a quieter nuclear reactor. The ability to attack targets on land with cruise missiles is a relatively new one for Russian submarines. They demonstrated it in the mid-2010s by firing Kalibr cruise missiles at ISIS targets in Syria, surprising some US officials. Those capabilities have inspired admiration and worry among Western officials. Their main concern is Severodvinsk-class subs could lurk off their coasts and attack vital infrastructure, such as ports and airfields needed for resupply and reinforcement, with cruise missiles. A Russian Alligator-class landing ship burning and partially sunk in the city of Berdyansk after a Ukrainian attack on March 24. Maxar Technologies via Getty Images In the "threatening period" immediately before a conflict, Russia would deploy much of its naval power closer to its shores, but in the "far seas," including most of the Atlantic Ocean, Moscow would make "much more limited use of nuclear-powered submarines" because it lacks the resources to operate them there effectively, according to Michael Petersen, director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College. "When it comes to long-range precision-strike warfare, Russia's logistics and sustainment and striking power decrease with distance," Petersen said during a presentation in August. But some developments in Ukraine appear to validate Russia's ambitions and NATO's concerns. Petersen said Russian reports suggest that Kalibr missiles have "proven their worth" to Russian commanders, who have been "relying heavily" on them to strike important targets. A Ukrainian attack on Russian forces also appears to have bolstered Russian thinking about what Petersen called "targeting maritime resupply at the pier" a scenario for which NATO navies have renewed their training. In March, a Ukrainian missile struck a Russian landing ship docked in Berdyansk. Ukraine had used intelligence about the ship's location to "strike that vessel, that single vessel, with a precision-strike munition," Petersen said. "That is exactly right out of the Russian playbook, and that is something I think that the Russians, in a sort of weird and perverse way, were able to learn as something that they can use to their advantage in the future." Read the original article on Business Insider Get this Samsung Bespoke vacuum we love for as much as 33% off right now. Recommendations are independently chosen by Revieweds editors. Purchases you make through our links may earn us and our publishing partners a commission. Keeping a tidy house isn't always easybut with a powerful Samsung vacuum, housework is a breeze. Whether you want to give your floors a deep clean in anticipation for Spring cleaning or simply keep up with the smattering of crumbs in your kitchen and dining room, the Samsung Bespoke Jet can help. The best part? The Reviewed-approved vacuum is on mega sale today at Samsung. From $601.76 at Samsung Originally listed at $899.99, the Samsung Bespoke Jet can be yours today for as little as $601.76 for the Woody Green coloran impressive $298.23 markdown. 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If your New Years resolution was to clean up around the house and keep things tidy, this vacuum is the perfect choice for you. Story continues However, like with most deals thatll save you hundreds, the Bespoke Jet likely wont be available for this low price forever. Head to Samsung and grab the top-of-the-line cordless cleaner before its too late. From $601.76 at Samsung The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews and more. Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time. This article originally appeared on Reviewed: Samsung deal: Save 33% on the Reviewed-approved Bespoke Jet vacuum The same day her parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley, reported to prison, Savannah Chrisley showed her support for them. The 25-year-old posted a photo of her mom, beaming, with a caption. "Will forever fight for this smile," Savannah Chrisley wrote along with a heart emoji. "I love you mama." The Chrisley Knows Best stars were found guilty of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to defraud the United States in June. In November, Todd Chrisley was sentenced to 12 years in prison; Julie Chrisley was given a seven-year sentence. Chrisley Knows Best, which followed the real estate famous couple and their children, aired on the USA Network from 2014 to 2022. Since the couples sentencing, the show has been canceled along with its spinoffs, per Deadline. The USA Network is owned by NBCUniversal, TODAYs parent company. Savannah Chrisley's Instagram story Jan. 17, the day her parents began their prison sentences. (@savannahchrisley via Instagram) Days before Julie Chrisley reported to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Lexington in Kentucky to begin her 7 year sentence, her daughter shared a message for her 50th birthday, pledging, once again, to "fight" for her. I know this isnt the birthday we had imagined but Ill make it up to you," Savannah Chrisley wrote, later writing, "I will continue to fight the good fight until were all home together." The reality star has opened up about how her parents' legal struggles would impact her. On an episode of her her Unlocked podcast recorded before their sentencing, Savannah Chrisley said that she was likely going to take custody of her younger brother, Grayson Chrisley, and niece, Chloe Chrisley. Savannah Chrisley described the impending loss of her parents as a kind of mourning. It doesnt matter how old you get, you still want your mom and dad for things, she said. The best way I can describe it is grieving the loss of parents who are still alive, which is a really weird thought process and feeling." Todd Chrisley has two children from a previous marriage, Kyle Chrisley and Lindsie Chrisley. He and Julie Chrisley share three children. As TODAY previously reported, the couple also raised their granddaughter Chloe Chrisley due to Kyle Chrisleys issues with substance abuse, as he confirmed on the episode of Chrisley Confessions." Story continues Todd Chrisley said last week on his podcast "Chrisley Confessions" that this experience has brought his family closer together. Our enemies, certainly when they set out to do this they did not count on it drawing our family closer together. They didnt count on it driving my children closer to the Lord, he said. This article was originally published on TODAY.com Savannah Chrisley with parents Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley in 2017. Jeff Kravitz/ACMA2017/Getty Images Savannah Chrisley criticized Jen Shah's prison sentence on her podcast, "Unlocked." Shah's prison sentence is shorter than that of her parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley. "Put the cases side-by-side, and it makes no sense it just doesn't," Savannah Chrisley said. Savannah Chrisley doesn't understand why Jen Shah received a shorter prison sentence than her parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley, for their crimes. During Tuesday's pre-recorded episode of her podcast "Unlocked," Savannah Chrisley criticized the logic around Shah's six-and-a-half-year sentence, which is less than the 19 years her parents collectively received. "Put the cases side-by-side, and it makes no sense it just doesn't," Savannah Chrisley said during the podcast. For Savannah Chrisley, Shah's case seemed more egregious, because there were "victims" as a result of her telemarketing scheme, which scammed elderly people out of their money. Chrisley's parents, meanwhile, were convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud, having used loans to help pay for their lavish lifestyle and hide money from the IRS. "There were hundreds of victims who were elderly, and people that provided statements that lost their homes, threatened to end their lives," Chrisley said. "There were so many different things, and she got six-and-a-half years. Make that make sense!" Shah, who was sentenced earlier this year, must surrender herself to prison on February 17. When "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" star is eventually released, she will be subject to five additional years of supervision. The Chrisleys, meanwhile, have reported to their assigned prisons, with Todd set to serve 12 years at the FPC Pensacola minimum security prison in Pensacola, Florida, while Julie serves her seven-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The Chrisleys are best known for their reality show "Chrisley Knows Best," which debuted in 2014, portraying them as a wealthy Southern family with deep-seated Christian values. The series spawned the spin-off "Growing Up Chrisley," starring Chase and Savannah Chrisley, in 2019. Both shows were canceled amid Todd and Julie's conviction. Story continues During her "Unlocked" podcast, Savannah continued to insist on her parents' innocence. "You have someone who has not admitted to guilt and who will stand firm in that," Savannah said of her parents. "We're standing by our truth that it is 'not guilty.' There are no victims." Read the original article on Insider File. Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden addresses attendees through video link at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon on 4 November 2019 (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) Edward Snowden brutally shot down Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as she tried to agree with him on media lies on Twitter. Mr Snowden tweeted on Tuesday: I used to believe that while the media does make mistakes from time to time, most things you read in the news could be relied on. He continued: Nothing robs you of that innocence like becoming yourself the subject of news. When they write on what you know, errors and lies are clear. This was in reference to a news item that had, according to Mr Snowden, falsely claimed that I lived in a KGB safehouse. They even know which floor Im on! What a scoop! He added: The problem? Its a lie. I dont cooperate with spies or live in a safe house, much less next to the UK embassy! Ms Taylor Greene appeared to agree with him on media lies but Mr Snowden was brutal in his rebuke. The Republican quote tweeted him, mentioning I totally and completely relate and agree with this. The media has lied and still repeatedly lies about me too. Freedom of press is not freedom to lie". In response, Mr Snowden wrote: I actually disagree. I hate being lied about, sure, but thats not only the right of every journalist, its the right of every person. You cant make it a crime to lie without making the government, the cops, and the courts the arbiters of truth. He signed off, saying: Id rather suffer the lies. I actually disagree. I hate being lied about, sure, but that's not only the right of every journalist, it's the right of every person. You can't make it a crime to lie without making the government, the cops, and the courts the arbiters of truth. I'd rather suffer the lies. Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 17, 2023 Ms Taylor Greene [and Paul Gosar of Arizona] have been given committee assignments for the new Congress after they were kicked out of their committees by Democrats and some Republicans. The House GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday agreed to place Ms Taylor Greene on the House Homeland Security Committee, it was reported. Photo: Glacier Media North Vancouver RCMP have arrested a West Vancouver woman on allegations she defrauded her employer of $80,000. Between June and September 2021, the woman was working for a local business, according to a release from the RCMP. While the owner was out of town, police say the employee, who is in her 30s, was using the companys point of sale terminal to process several large bogus refunds, directing the money to her own credit card. When the boss returned, he discovered the missing finances and called police. After getting court orders to access financial records and collecting evidence, North Vancouver RCMP members arrested the woman on Sunday. They will soon be asking the Crown to lay a charge of fraud over $5,000, said Const. Mansoor Sahak, North Vancouver RCMP spokesperson. Sahak could not say what the local business was, but he said the incident underscores the importance of keeping a close eye on the books and being ready to report anything suspicious. Reducing frauds in North Vancouver is a priority for the community. We have specialized units who use advanced investigative techniques to target these offences, and just as this situation demonstrates, we rely on the community to call us when they feel something is not right. Sahak said. Jan. 18A bill that has passed the West Virginia Senate and is headed to the House would set guidelines related to so-called "critical race theory" in public schools. Senate Bill 130, the Anti-Racism Act of 2023 and co-sponsored by Sen. Chandler Swope, R-6th District, lists concepts to which teachers or administrators cannot be compelled to "affirm, adopt or adhere to." Those concepts include: One race is inherently, morally, or intellectually superior to another race. An individual, by virtue of the individual's race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual's race. An individual's moral character is determined by the individual's race. An individual, by virtue of the individual's race, bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race. However, the bill also stipulates that "discussion, examination or debate regarding race and its impact on historic or current events, including the causes of those current or historic events," are not prohibited. The bill also emphasizes the right of freedom of speech. Any student, parent or employee may also file a complaint if they believe the act has been violated. and all complaints filed must be documented and reported to the school principal and then to the county superintendent and state superintendent. Swope said the bill is meant to continue the battle against racism. "In my lifetime, great progress has been made to reduce racial prejudice and reduce racism," he said. "Teaching that race and equity goals where race is the primary criteria for all relationships is empirically racist and will reverse decades of progress in eliminating racism from our society." The Anti-Racism Act of 2023 passed the Senate 30-2 with two members absent and is now in the House Education Committee. Story continues According to Reuters, "critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to studying U.S. policies and institutions that is most often taught in law schools. Its foundations date back to the 1970s, when law professors ... began exploring how race and racism have shaped American law and society. The theory rests on the premise that racial bias intentional or not is baked into U.S. laws and institutions." It then became a political issue during the last several years, based on the fear that the theory, which educators say is not taught in public schools, would, for example, include criticism of all caucasian Americans based on historical events like slavery. Under the proposed Senate bill, all significant historical events will continue to be taught, but no criticism or blame assigned or generalized to anyone based on race. Since 2020, legislation on race education has popped up across the country. A total of 35 states, including West Virginia and Virginia, so far have signed into law or proposed legislation banning or restricting the teaching of critical race theory, according to ABC News. Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com A dog urinates on a wall with a picture of Putin. Serbia, April 2, 2022 Read also: Serbia wont recognize results of fake referendums in Ukraine We said from the beginning that we cannot support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Vucic said in an interview with Bloomberg on Jan. 18. For us Crimea is Ukraine, Donbass is Ukraine it will remain so. Vucic suggested that the worst is yet to come in Russia's war against Ukraine. The president added that he hadnt spoken with Putin for many months. He stressed that his government doesn't always agree with Moscows foreign policy. We arent always happy with some of their positions, the president added. Read also: Kosovo PM blames Putin for inflaming Serbia tensions due to failures in Ukraine, report says We traditionally have good relations, but this doesnt mean that we support every single decision or most of the decisions that come from the Kremlin. At the same time, Vucic said he was grateful to Russia for its support of Serbia regarding Kosovo, citing it as the reason why Serbia cannot support economic sanctions against Moscow. Read also: Serbia clamps down on sanction-dodging schemes Vucic is also convinced that the citizens of Serbia will support the country's movement to the west. I know that the EU is our path; there is no other way, he concluded. Read also: Ukraines FM calls on EU, G7 to slap more sanctions on Russia Serbia is seeking to join the EU and has been criticized by foreign diplomats for refusing to impose sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Read also: German company will be unable to supply Ukraine with Leopard tanks until next year At the same time, Serbia didnt recognize the results of Russian pseudo-referendums in the partially occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. Earlier media reports suggested the German government demanded Vucic to decide on his geopolitical course: either its joining the EU or rapprochement with Russia. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine HONG KONG (Reuters) - Shares of Tencent Holdings, the world's largest gaming company, and smaller rival NetEase Inc rose on Wednesday after China's video games regulator granted the first gaming licences in 2023, further easing an industry crackdown. Tencent's shares rose as much as 1.7% in early trade before paring gains, while NetEase's stock jumped as much as 5.8% to its highest in more than four months. The granting of publishing licences to 88 online games on Tuesday is the latest sign that a regulatory clampdown that began in August 2021 and took a heavy toll on the world's largest gaming market is ending. Unlike in most other countries, video games need approval from regulators before release in China. The crackdown was aimed at purging content the government did not approve of, with companies asked to delete content that was violent, deemed to celebrate wealth or foster the worship of celebrities. Last month, China's move to grant publishing licences to 44 foreign games for domestic release was the strongest signal that the clampdown was ending. Regulators resumed issuing gaming licences to homegrown games last April, and the approval of foreign games was seen as the last regulatory curb to be removed. (Reporting By Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Jamie Freed) A look at the effort to defend Old Station from the Dixie Fire on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. Shasta County and nine other entities announced Tuesday that theyd reached a collective $24 million settlement with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for damages caused by the 2021 Dixie Fire. News of the wildfire settlement came as PG&E, the nations largest utility company, heads to court on Wednesday in a trial related to the 2020 Zogg Fire that killed four people in southwestern Shasta County. The Dixie Fire, which started July 13, 2021, burned about 963,309 acres in Shasta along with Plumas, Lassen, Butte and Tehama counties. Besides the five counties, entities included in the settlement are the city of Susanville, Plumas District Hospital, Chester Public Utility District, Honey Lake Valley Recreation Authority and Herlong Public Utility District.The $24 million is being allocated in accordance with the amount of damage the fire caused, the statement on Monday from Shasta County said. Funds related to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) assistance are also included in the settlement, according to the statement. The counties and other public entities came together to recover these significant funds to reimburse public and natural resources lost in the fire, said Shasta County Counsel Rubin Cruse, Jr. Holding PG&E accountable is increasingly important as utility-caused wildfires continue to ravage the state and region. Civil legal damages attributed to the Zogg Fire in the lawsuit include public and natural resource damages, staff and labor time, damages to pavement and roads and lost revenue. PG&E denied liability in the 2021 blaze and said it reached the settlement to avoid further litigation. Pacific Gas and Electric crews respond to the Zogg Fire along Placer Road on Monday, Sept. 28, 2020. PG&E still faces Zogg Fire lawsuit California officials are seeking reimbursement of nearly $33 million in costs related to the 2020 Zogg Fire, which destroyed 207 buildings and charred 56,338 acres in Shasta and Tehama counties. PG&E is facing criminal charges on findings that a gray pine tree that fell on a PG&E electrical lines along Zogg Mine Road sparked the fire on a windy, hot day in September 2020. In 2021, PG&E was charged with involuntary manslaughter and other crimes after prosecutors said the utility firm's equipment was the wildfire's cause. Story continues More:Cal Fire sues PG&E to recover costs of fighting Shasta County's Zogg Fire While the electricity had been shut off in some other areas in the county in an effort to prevent fires being started by trees and limbs being blown by the wind into electrical lines, the power remained on in the area where the Zogg Fire began. PG&E said in 2021 that it had accepted state fire investigators determination as to the cause of the blaze, but also said that failing to prevent the fire was not a crime. According to the lawsuit, PG&E identified but failed to take out a gray pine tree that was slated for removal in 2018. The utility says the tree was subsequently cleared to stay. Four people died in the Zogg Fire. Three of the victims died while trying to outrun the fire; they were found inside or near their vehicles. A fourth victim died at a hospital. Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett has said that since a corporation cant go to jail were talking fines, fees, the ability for the court to order remedial and corrective measures. One of our primary functions here is to hold them responsible. If the utility company is convicted of involuntary manslaughter, the punishment could be a fine for each person killed in the Zogg Fire. More:UPDATE: Zogg Fire caused by tree touching PG&E lines, Cal Fire investigation finds More:PG&E charged with involuntary manslaughter in Zogg Fire that killed 4 people last year The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has calculated down to the penny its suppression, accounting, investigation, administrative and collection costs related to the fire, according to the lawsuit filed in Shasta County Superior Court. The state also asks for attorney's fees, expert fees and "pre-judgement interest." The total charge to PG&E comes to $32,903,164.51, according to the suit, filed by the California Attorney General's Office. A preliminary hearing in the case is set to occur on Jan. 18, the DA's Office said. Michele Chandler covers criminal justice issues for the Redding Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. Follow her on Twitter at @MChandler_RS, call her at 530-338-7753 or email her at michele.chandler@redding.com. Please support our entire newsroom's commitment to public service journalism by subscribing today. This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Shasta reaches settlement in Dixie Fire, heads to court over Zogg Fire San Bernardino County Sheriffs detectives are conducting two in-custody deaths, including one at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto that involved a Victorville resident. Two San Bernardino County inmates died while in custody within a week apart, according to sheriffs officials. Here's what detectives say happened. On Friday, deputies arrested John Aceves, 53, on suspicion of attempted robbery and booked him into the Adelanto facility. Three days later, the Victorville man was found unconscious in his cell. Deputies performed CPR until jail medical staff and paramedics arrived. Despite life-saving measures, Aceves died, sheriffs officials said. Investigators with the Sheriff's Specialized Investigations Division are investigating Aceves' dead. An autopsy will be performed by the Sheriff-Coroners Office to determine the cause of death. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Detective Daniel Berumen at 909-890-4904. West Valley Detention Center On Friday, the Specialized Investigations Division responded to the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga regarding the death of Jason Michael Noriega. Investigators learned that on Jan. 9, Noriega was arrested by Rancho Cucamonga Sheriffs Station deputies on suspicion that he made criminal threats. Following his arrest, Noriega was taken to a local hospital for a possible overdose. The following day, Noriega was discharged from the hospital and booked into the detention center. He was taken back to the hospital and discharged for the second time on Friday. When Noriega arrived back at the detention facility he was unconscious, sheriff's officials said. He was given medical aid, but died at the detention center. The Sheriff-Coroners Office will release his cause of death following an autopsy. Anyone with information about this case is asked to contact Detective Brandon Becker with the Specialized Investigations Division at 909-890-4904. Callers can remain anonymous by contacting We-Tip at 800-78CRIME or wetip.com. This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Sheriff's detectives investigate 2 in-custody deaths in 1 week He was 6, in his first-grade class in Newport News, Virginia. He pointed a handgun at his teacher, police say, and then he pulled the trigger. And across the nation, people ... didn't quite know how to react. Even in a country where gun violence is sadly commonplace, the story of a small boy with a gun is reverberating in a big way. There has been finger-pointing. Confusion. Floundering for answers. Mass grappling with deeply uncomfortable feelings. And questions: How could something like this possibly happen? Where in the national consciousness do we put it? It is almost impossible to wrap our minds around the fact that a 6-year-old first-grader brought a loaded handgun to school and shot a teacher, Mayor Phillip Jones said that day, Jan. 6. However, this is exactly what our community is grappling with today. Its not just his community, though, and it wasnt just that day. This is a country full of people who know exactly what they think about everything, and say so. Yet many are throwing their hands up at this. In a land awash in hot takes, its a head-scratcher. A heart-scratcher, even. I never thought elementary students being the shooter was a possibility we would ever see, says Kendra Newton, a first-grade teacher in Florida. That may be because it sits outside what people are accustomed to. Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, believes the case hits differently in part because it violates societys expectations for both school shootings (of which there were two others elsewhere in the country that day) and childhood itself. Sadly, we have schemas, we have rubrics, we have archetypes for school shootings in this country. We have a sort of script for these things, said Talarico, who has studied how people remember indirectly experienced events. Using the phrase school shooting as a shorthand leads us to develop that story in our heads, and when the facts of the case are so different ... that is what is surprising. Story continues Americans typically view childhood as an encapsulation of the best of our society and values, Talarico says innocence, fun, joy, love. Anything that challenges that deep-seated view unearths complicated questions about the culture and community in which a child is being raised whether it be local culture and community or the entire nation. Thats some hard self-reflection, she says. That is why the story is resonating with people. Americans are left struggling with a scenario that doesnt fit into any bucket. But as jarring as that may feel, theres a danger in trying to force the incident into a familiar framework, says Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center. She believes Americans have become so stuck in a place of punishment that they have lost the ability to have conversations outside those boundaries. By labeling the shooting with the loaded word intentional, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew is inviting people to view it as a criminal act, Levick asserts. That is ludicrous. It is absurd. It is utterly inconsistent with science and what we know about human development and child development, she says. Lets own that. This was not a criminal act. Levick would like law enforcement to acknowledge that this is not our lane, as it did more than two decades ago in one of the few cases from the recent past that bears some resemblance to the Virginia shooting. When a 6-year-old boy shot and killed a classmate in Michigan in 2000, Genesee County Prosecuting Attorney Arthur Busch didn't go after the boy, but after those who provided access to the gun. In an interview last week, Busch said hes been surprised by the repeated use of intentional by Newport News police. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard when I heard the police say it was intentional, he said. We dont call it intentional when its a 6-year-old. ... Hes not old enough to have intent. Busch, who later became a defense attorney and retired in 2018, remembers visiting the boy at a group home and squeezing into a child-sized chair to chat. The boy proudly showed him pictures he had colored and his favorite toys. A smile revealed two missing front teeth, and they talked about the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny. He was excited because he knew he was going to get candy, Busch said. It was quite clear that he was not hatching any diabolical plots. He was just a typical little kid. He was a baby, pretty much. Busch remembers being dumbfounded when notified of the 2000 shooting. I just couldnt wrap my head around that, he said. But he knew immediately he wouldnt bring any charges. The only thing to do with that boy is get him out of that situation, find the best place for him, Busch said. This kid had probably never seen love in his life. We needed to wrap our arms around him as a community, and love and protect him. The Virginia case is sure to stir debate about gun control and school safety. But Moira ONeill, who led New Hampshires Office of the Child Advocate for five years, says anyone feeling shaken by the incident can take a few simple steps. She says an abundance of research shows that the best way to support child development and promote resilience is to offer children a sense of belonging. In short: Don't let your shock paralyze you. Take steps to value children in your own community. This is not a big commitment. This is simply knowing the kids, knowing their names, and giving the impression if they need help they can ask, she said. If neighbors choose to settle with being shocked, without thinking through ways they can contribute to child well-being and safety, they are sending the message that the children are not valued. Whether all the reflection around the Virginia shooting leads to change remains to be seen. Talarico, whose work includes studying the memory-laden language that often surrounds big events, says imperatives like Never Forget dont always lead to sweeping action particularly when it comes to guns. Never Forget," she says, "hasnt effectively translated to Never Again. ___ Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report. U.S.-based cryptocurrency bank Silvergate Capital Corp., which saw clients withdraw more than US$8 billion late last year, on Tuesday reported a US$1 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2022, a slump it attributed to a crisis of confidence in the sector resulting from several large bankruptcies. See related article: Silvergate cuts 40% of staff after covering US$8.1B withdrawals in FTX collapse Fast facts California-based Silvergate posted a loss of US$949 million for all of 2022, compared with net income of US$75.5 million in 2021. The shares fell 2.9% to $12.94 in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The stock has lost almost 90% of its value over the past 12 months. While we are taking decisive actions to navigate the current environment, our mission has not changed, Alan Lane, Silvergates chief executive, said in a statement. We believe in the digital asset industry, and we remain focused on providing value-added services for our core institutional customers. To that end, we are committed to maintaining a highly liquid balance sheet with a strong capital position. Silvergate laid off 40% of its staff, or 200 employees, in early January after the collapse of Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX.com. That failure and others, as well as the subsequent slump in crypto prices, prompted mass withdrawals of more than US$8 billion from Silvergate. This forced the bank to sell debt at a loss of US$718 million to cover the withdrawals, the Wall Street Journal reported. The run on the bank led investor Cathie Woods ARK Fintech Innovation exchange-traded fund to sell 99% of its shares in Silvergate shortly after, leaving the fund with fewer than 4,000 shares in the bank. Coinbase Global Inc., the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, is also predicted to announce lower earnings. The company is expected to release its figures on Feb. 23, though it hasnt given an official date. It said last week it would cut 950 jobs, or roughly 20% of its workforce, and shut down several riskier projects to weather downturns in the crypto market. See related article: Crypto market pain will continue but still bullish on Bitcoin lending: Silvergate Most Republican House members from New York are ready to see GOP Rep. George Santos leave less than two weeks after he took office, with six saying he should resign for a string of campaign lies exposed after his election. That contingent consists of every other GOP rookie from the state who joined Congress this month, two of whom represent Long Island with Santos. Each issued statements saying it would be impossible for him to serve after losing the trust of his colleagues and constituents with flagrant deceptions about his work experience, education and more. "With the extent and severity of the allegations against him, his inability to take full responsibility for his conduct, and the numerous investigations underway, I believe he is unable to fulfill his duties and should resign, said Rep. Mike Lawler, a freshman representing Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess. Stay in the conversation on politics: Sign up for the OnPolitics newsletter U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) waits for the start of the 118th Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 3, 2023, in Washington, DC. Rep. Marc Molinaro, a fellow Hudson Valley Republican with a district stretching west to Ithaca, said: "George Santos's dishonesty has eroded his ability to represent his neighbors and serve in Congress. I don't see how he can continue. He should resign." Previously: Defiant George Santos vows to serve out term; McCarthy declines to act amid GOP pressure Neither their blunt statements nor a chorus of earlier repudiations by Nassau County Republicans in Santos' district have persuaded the embattled 34-year-old congressman to surrender his seat. He has vowed to serve out his two-year term in a Democratic-leaning district that includes part of the North Shore of Long Island and a piece of Queens. State and federal prosecutors are said to be investigating Santos' fabrications and handling of campaign funds to see if he broke any laws. Democrats have formally asked the House Ethics Committee which consists of four members from each party to launch its own inquiry. If Santos doesn't resign, he could be removed from office only if two-thirds of House members vote to expel him. Story continues Among the colleagues urging him to resign is New York's Republican chairman, Nick Langworthy, elected to Congress in November to represent a district in Western New York and the Southern Tier. Its clear that he cannot be an effective representative and it would be in the best interest of the taxpayers to have new leadership," Langworthy said. The other New Yorkers calling for Santos' resignation are Reps. Nick LaLota and Anthony D'Esposito of Long Island and Rep. Brandon Williams, who represents a Central New York district that includes the cities of Syracuse and Utica. LaLota also urged the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission to freeze Santos' campaign account - if it contains any money. Local prosecutors: Nassau County district attorney to investigate GOP Rep.-elect George Santos for 'stunning' lies "The evidence that Congressman Santos fraudulently induced contributions is overwhelming and the ability to make his contributors at least partially whole should be preserved," LaLota wrote on Facebook. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican starting her second term in Congress, condemned Santos' behavior and questioned his ability to serve, but she said through her spokeswoman that she wouldn't call for his resignation unless he committed a crime. "Until the five bodies investigating identify criminal wrongdoing, the calls for his resignation must come from his constituents and they are," Malliotakis spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre told the USA TODAY Network by email. "One thing is for sure, this has become a distraction for the members who have work to do. Three other House Republicans from New York Elise Stefanik, Claudia Tenney and Andrew Garbarino didn't respond to requests for comment on Santos. Stefanik is chairwoman of the House Republican conference and the third-ranking party leader below Speaker Kevin McCarthy. 'A fraudulent candidacy': Former House Speaker Paul Ryan calls on George Santos to resign Santos made up almost his entire biography during his two congressional runs, including his claims that he attended the elite Horace Mann School, graduated from Baruch College, worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and was Jewish and the grandson of Holocaust survivors. After The New York Times exposed his deceptions, he admitted he didn't graduate from any college but defended his career claims as embellishments rather than lies. Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: George Santos should resign for lies, six NY GOP Congressmen say Photo: pixabay Some of the worlds strictest anti-tobacco laws are now in Mexico after the country issued a total ban on smoking in public. The General Law for Tobacco Control reform, which came into effect on Jan. 15, also bans tobacco advertising and displaying tobacco products for sale. Mexico had already in 2008 banned smoking in bars, restaurants and workplaces although anyone who has traveled to the country over the past decade knows those rules are sparsely enforced. Restrictions on the indoor use of vapes and e-cigarettes are also being tightened, but details are not clear. Mexico fully banned the sale of e-cigarettes last year. The new laws mean smokers can only smoke in homes and specific and separated smoking areas. Beaches, parks, public streets and everywhere else is off limits. Tourists who smoke could face fines of between $65 and $400 CAD for lighting up in public, according to Reuters. Refusing to cooperate with the ban can land you in jail for 36 hours. Some are concerned about how hard the ban will be to enforce, or that corrupt police officers could use it to force bribes. (Reuters) -Southwest Airlines Co's pilot union has called for a strike authorization vote, weeks after a tech meltdown at the carrier left tens of thousands of passengers stranded across the United States. The airline said the proposed vote will not affect operations and is "not an indication of an impending work stoppage." As major U.S. airlines scramble to capitalize on booming consumer demand and with the industry returning to profitability, pilots at all major U.S. carriers have been demanding higher wages and a better work-life balance. "It is not a decision we have taken lightly, but given the trajectory of our current leadership group, we have little faith in the stability and future of our airline," Capt. Casey Murray, president of Southwest Airlines Pilot Association (SWAPA), said in a statement. The strike authorization vote will take place beginning May 1 and will be counted at the end of that month, said SWAPA, which represents more than 10,000 pilots. "We will continue to follow the process outlined in the Railway Labor Act and work, under the assistance of the National Mediation Board, toward reaching an agreement," said Adam Carlisle, vice president of Labor Relations at Southwest Airlines. "The union's potential vote does not hinder our ongoing efforts at the negotiating table. We are scheduled to resume mediation on Jan. 24." Southwest pilots have been locked in talks over a new contract with the airline for nearly three years. Delta Air Lines Inc offered a 34% cumulative pay increase last month to its pilots over three years in a new contract after the Atlanta-based carrier's pilots voted overwhelmingly in October to authorize a strike. Pilots have termed Delta's offer as a benchmark for other contracts. (Reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber, Shinjini Ganguli and Devika Syamnath) I spent more than 30 nights staying in rentals across six countries in Southeast Asia last year. I learned how save money, book efficiently, and receive perks whenever I booked. Tools like Google Street View unexpectedly helped me to choose the right rentals when traveling. Over the course of my time as a travel reporter for Insider, I have spent more than 30 nights staying in rentals across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea. The author at the cheapest hostel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Marielle Descalsota/Insider I've been covering regional travel for Insider for a year, which has meant spending a lot of time in rentals. I've spent nights in luxury resorts in Indonesia, hostels in Singapore and Thailand, a campervan Airbnb in the Philippines, and a shipping container hotel in Malaysia. When I first started making reservations for these rentals, it felt daunting I was unfamiliar with the locations and there weren't many reliable reviews online. But after testing out dozens of accommodations, I've learned how to choose the right accommodation, book efficiently, and save money. Here are seven of my top tips for travelers. 1. Read recent reviews on websites like TripAdvisor and look up vlogs to get a realistic picture of what the rental is like. The view of Genting Highlands from Amber Court. Marielle Descalsota/Insider Travel writers and bloggers can have good tips, but I think it's more helpful to find out what the average person experienced during their stay. Google Reviews and TripAdvisor have both proven to be good places to gut-check the reality of hostels, hotels, and resorts. I suggest filtering reviews to show the most recent ones. If you're staying in an Airbnb or somewhere unique like a glamping tent, vlogs on YouTube and TikTok might be useful. Photos online, especially those posted by the rental's management, can be deceiving, so do your research and look at as many reviews as possible before booking. 2. Look up the rental on Google Street View before you book. Street view around the cabin I stayed at in Mae Rim, Thailand. Google Maps Whenever I travel to remote locations, I take to Google Maps and find satellite views of the rental to see its condition. Story continues I also walk virtually around the neighboring streets of the rental to see what the atmosphere is like, and if I need to make special transport arrangements in case it's located up a mountain or in a rural village. 3. If something about the online listing seems off, give them a call before you book. Wood and Mountain Cabin, Mae Rim, Thailand. Marielle Descalsota/Insider Southeast Asia is known for its unique rentals but they can sometimes be sketchy. Several videos on TikTok have shown tourists mistakenly booking abandoned resorts in places like Bali. I've stayed in remote rentals including a rural mountain cabin in Thailand and a "haunted" hotel in Malaysia. I was initially skeptical of these rentals, so as an additional precaution, I called reservations before booking to make sure the place is still up and running. I also asked for extra information like recent photos of the rental, instructions on how to get there, and who to contact in case I got lost along the way. 4. Avoid listings where guests complain about being "scammed" or you may find yourself paying an additional fee in person. Negative reviews on Google Hotels. Screenshoot/Google Reviews Look out for the words "scammer" and "overcharge" in reviews when doing your research you might just be asked to pay extra upon arrival. During a trip to a budget hotel in Malaysia, I was asked to pay an additional 80 ringgit (around $18.50) upon arrival, despite have already prepaid online. If you're backpacking and are closely watching your budget, it may be best to avoid these rentals altogether despite the cheap advertised rates. 5. Call in advance to request early or late check-in or anything else, really. Inside Garden Pod at Gardens by the Bay. Marielle Descalsota/Insider I have found that most boutique rentals are willing to take special requests like early check-in or late check-out as long as the request is made in advance. The only exception to this are hostels and budget motels, where there is a strict hourly rate. In that case, your best move will be to check if there's a discounted rate for early check-in. 6. Be patient when trying to snag deals sometimes it's worth refreshing the page a couple times to get a lower price. Villa Samadhi's Sarang room. Marielle Descalsota/Insider Flash deals and prices can appear on booking sites without prior notice, so I typically refresh the booking page several times before making my payment. For example, I booked a room with a private plunge pool in a luxury resort in Singapore for under $400 on a third-party website. Although the price listed was closer to $600, a flash sale netted me a substantial discount. 7. If you can, travel in the off-season. The street in Bangkok's Chinatown in July. Marielle Descalsota/Insider If you're traveling in Southeast Asia where the weather is hot and humid all year round, it might be worth making your booking during the monsoon season, when it's likely to a bit rain more. So long as you're not booking a rental in a flood or landslide-prone area, it's perfectly fine to book during a less busy season not only will you save money on accommodation, but tourist attractions are also likely to be less crowded. Read the original article on Insider (Independent) Spotify has launched an attack on Apple over what it says are abuses of its powerful platform. The streaming service joined with seven other companies in similar businesses such as publishing to demand that European regulators clamp down on Apple. It demanded meaningful regulatory action against Apples long-standing anti-competitive practices in Europe in an open letter written to Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition. It also pointed to an ongoing campaign, named Time To Play Fair, that it has used to target Apple and others for years. Spotify and Apple have long been at odds over what the former says is anti-competitive behaviour by the latter. Its complaints relate to a number of policies, including the money it takes from subscriptions made on the iPhone and the rules in its App Store. Almost four years ago, Spotify filed a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission because Apples anti-competitive behavior was stifling innovation and harming developers and consumers across Europe and around the world, Spotify wrote on its website. Since then, little has changed. Apple has been enabled by the lack of decisive action by regulators, who continue to move hesitantly, even in the face of a groundswell of support. The clock is ticking. Its time for regulators to address the ever-growing chorus of complaints against Apple, a critical step in stopping Apples continued abuses of its powerful platform. The accompanying letter is signed by Daniel Ek, Spotifys founder and chief executive, as well as the leaders of Basecamp, Deezer, Proton and Schibsted. It is also supported by business associations that represent companies within the media and publishing industries: the European Publishers Council, France Digital, and News Media Europe. In 2019, when Spotify first began its public attacks on Apple in earnest, Apple said that the company was looking to benefit from the App Store ecosystem without contributing to it. It also attacked Spotify for distributing music while making ever-smaller contributions to the artists, musicians and songwriters who create it. Story continues Spotify itself has been subject to repeated criticism over the power it has to decide payments to artists, and the relatively small size of those revenues. Last month, for instance, musician Ben Frost announced that he had taken his music off the platform in part because Spotifys appalling royalty rates are the worst of the worst. In one of the greatest marketing ploys since the health benefits of smoking, Spotify has convinced millions of listeners that use of their platform is supporting artists, he said then. It is not. Tlingit & Haida President Richard Chalyee Eesh Peterson (right) is shown on January 10, 2023 at the signing of the deed to put the Tribe's first parcel of land into federal trust status. (Courtesy photo) One week after the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska signed the official deed to put its first parcel of land into federal trust, the state of Alaska has sued the federal government in an effort to nullify the land transfer. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in an Alaskan federal court, the state challenged a Department of Interior decision to accept the parcel of land in downtown Juneau into trust on behalf of the Tribe and to proclaim the land a reservation. The state claims that the decision by Interior Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland limits the states sovereign jurisdiction and undermines key terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settle Act, known as ANCSA. The complaint alleges that the federal governments decision to take the land into trust jeopardizes the States rights to tax and to enforce land use, natural resource management, environmental, and public safety regulations on that trust land. The state asks the court to declare Ineriors actions as arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with the law. The state also seeks to have the court cancel the decision to take the land into trust and prohibit the DOI calling it a reservation. As well, the state asks the court to enjoin the DOI from accepting or considering other requests to have lands in Alaska taken into trust. We believe that this issue of tribal lands was settled with the passage of ANCSA in 1971, and that has been the law of the land for more than 50 years. If we are wrong, then the Court needs to clarify it, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy said in a statement. The purpose of the case is to receive unambiguous legal clarity for the State, local governments, the tribes and all Alaskans, on the question of placing Native land into federal trust for the tribes. Tlingit and Haida President Richard Chalyee Eesh Peterson voiced his disappointment with the states legal action in an interview with a local newspaper, the Juneau Empire. Story continues Its mean-spirited and its an assault on many of the mutual efforts and goodwill that have in recent years defined state and tribal relations in Alaska its incredibly disappointing, he told the Empire. The legal setback for the Tribe comes just a week after Peterson signed the deed at the BIAs regional office in Anchorage on January 10, calling it a great day for our Tribe, self-determination, and all tribes in Alaska and saying the Tribe had crossed the finish line in the land-into-trust process that started more than 15 years ago. This is a developing story. About the Author: "Native News Online is one of the most-read publications covering Indian Country and the news that matters to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other Indigenous people. Reach out to us at editor@nativenewsonline.net. " Contact: news@nativenewsonline.net On Tuesday, family members of mass shooting victims called on legislators in Olympia to ban the sale of assault weapons. AR-15-style weapons have been used in several mass shootings, including at a Las Vegas concert in 2017, where Carrie Parsons was among 58 people killed. No one was targeted that night. They were all mowed down. None of them stood a chance, said her mother, Anne-Marie Parsons. Our family has to live forever with the knowledge that she was killed, shot in the back while she was running for her life. An assault weapon rifle was also used by the school shooter in Parkland, Florida, who killed Robert Schentrups sister, Carmen. As I know all too well, assault weapons are the weapons of choice for mass shooters, Schentrup said. Schentrup testified in support of a state bill to ban manufacturing, distributing and selling assault weapons. The term assault weapon is a manufactured term to garner fear, Aoibheann Cline of the National Rifle Association told lawmakers. It would ban the shotgun I use every fall for duck hunting with my dad. The NRA calls the AR-15 the countrys most popular self-defense rifle. This dangerously takes away the personal protection option of choice thats best for women, said Pierce County resident Jane Milhans. This is the seventh year the legislature has considered banning the sale of assault weapons. The bill allows exceptions for dealers selling to the military and law enforcement and for people who inherit an assault weapon. A student has been charged for allegedly assaulting a school employee in Fairfield Township. Anthony Jenkins, 15, of Bolivar, was placed in the Westmoreland County Jail, unable to post $200,000 bond, after state police in Greensburg say he assaulted a 32-year-old male employee with an extension cord, according to a report. Troopers were called to the Outside In School along Fort Palmer Road Monday evening for a report of an assault in progress. Troopers said Jenkins struck, bit, elbowed punched and head-butted a youth supervisor before striking him with an extension cord/power strip, and wrapping it around his neck, strangling him with it. Jenkins resisting arrest, according to troopers. He is facing multiple charges, including aggravated assault, simple assault, strangulation, disorderly conduct, possessing an instrument of crime, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and harassment. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for later this month. The Outside In School is a private, non-profit in Westmoreland County that provides residential treatment programs for males. According to their website, they also offer outpatient services, like substance abuse programs and family therapy. Channel 11 has reached out to the school for comment. TRENDING NOW: 2 dead after apparent murder-suicide in Wilkins Township Family of man who died helping shooting victim at local Walmart suing off-duty officer, township Family of man killed in hit-and-run on Pittsburghs South Shore pleads for driver to come forward VIDEO: Local man, son killed in eastern Pennsylvania crash DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in "Stranger Things." Netflix Finn Wolfhard said he was "fine" with Millie Bobby Brown calling him a "lousy kisser." Brown agreed during a lie-detector test that her "Stranger Things" costar wasn't a good kisser. Wolfhard said that he "headbutted" Brown during the kiss, noting that he was 12 years old. Finn Wolfhard said that he was ultimately "fine" with his "Stranger Things" costar Millie Bobby Brown calling him a "lousy kisser," after they both had their first kiss on set while filming the show with each other. In November, Brown appeared in Vanity Fair's lie-detector YouTube series, answering questions about "Stranger Things" and her personal life. During the interview, and while hooked up to a lie-detector machine, Brown confirmed that she thought Wolfhard was a "lousy kisser," and that he hadn't improved since their first kiss on the show. In a clip from "The Drew Barrymore Show," released ahead of the episode on Thursday, Wolfhard finally reacted to Brown's appraisal of his skills. "You know what? I was fine with it," Wolfhard said. "My first, like, on-screen kiss was with Millie, and so, but I didn't know how to like approach that in any way," he continued. "There was no, just was, like, 'You're gonna do this thing, and at the end of the take you're gonna kiss her.' And then so I just, like, kinda just, like, almost like headbutted her." The Drew Barrymore Show (@DrewBarrymoreTV) January 12, 2023 Wolfhard and Brown have starred in "Stranger Things" as Mike Wheeler and Eleven since the series premiered on Netflix in 2016, when they were 13 and 12, respectively. Their first kiss on the show was during that first season, and when they spoke about the kiss on a 2016 episode of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," Brown said that they kept it "young and juvenile." Ultimately, Wolfhard told Barrymore on "The Drew Barrymore Show" that he "probably would have done the same thing" even if he hadn't been on a television set at the time. "I was 12, so," Wolfhard said. Read the original article on Insider Re. UBC regrets handling of Turpel-Lafond, as she loses honour at another university (Castanet. Jan. 17) There are two ways to get ahead in Canadabe the best in your field or pretend. Self-identify as indigenous and move the needle in your favour. This is a great injustice to every Indigenous person. These pretendians are cheats. They know they are not Indigenous but pretend to be to advance their careers. Living for a time in Saskatchewan, I heard about (former judge and former UBC law professor Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond) as a judge. At one hearing, she broke into tears while hearing the plight of the perpetrator. Was that an act to solidify her presence as a Cree? Hopefully not. We need to tighten up a lot of self-identification so real Indigenous people can truly claim their rightful place instead of pretendians. Robert Hepting, Kelowna Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent letters to nearly 20 advocacy groups regarding student-debt relief. She wants to know how the lawsuits blocking the relief are affecting the groups' members. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments to the cases on February 28. Elizabeth Warren wants to know how conservative efforts to block student-loan forgiveness are affecting you. In a series of letters Massachusetts Sen. Warren sent out on Wednesday, she asked nearly 20 advocacy groups including the NAACP, the Student Borrower Protection Center, and The Debt Collective how the efforts to block President Joe Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers are impacting the groups' members. After Biden announced the relief at the end of August, two conservative-backed lawsuits successfully paused the implementation of the policy. One of the lawsuits was filed by six Republican-led states who argued the relief would hurt their states' tax revenues, along with that of student-loan company MOHELA, and the other lawsuit was filed by two student-loan borrowers who did not qualify for the full $20,000 amount of relief. The cases are now headed to the Supreme Court on February 28. Warren wrote in the letters, first viewed by Insider, that "if not for the courts and Republican efforts, roughly 16 million Americans could have been approved and seen up to $20,000 in student debt cancelled. Instead, these partisan and legally tenuous attempts to block the President's authority have left these borrowers in limbo." "Without cancellation, millions of Americans' monthly costs could rise dramatically once student loan payments resume," she added. Warren is asking each of the groups to tell her, by January 31, what student-loan forgiveness would mean for their members, if the attempts to block student-debt relief have affected members' abilities to financially plan, what impact blocking the relief would have on the members, and how the government can protect and expand relief to those "experiencing financial hardship" due to student debt. Story continues Insider has previously spoken to a number of borrowers who have expressed confusion, uncertainty, and anger with the stalled debt relief. Guilherme Lopes, a first-generation borrower with $146,000 in student debt, said that the legal challenges to the relief are "not the American dream that we were promised coming over." "I definitely think it affects the mental health," Lopes said. "It's more of the unknown, the uncertainty, it just feels like a really sick game." The uncertainty is certainly permeating as borrowers head into the new year. Not only is the Supreme Court's ultimate decision unknown it's also unclear when student-loan payments will resume. The Education Department announced an extension of the student-loan payments pause 60 days after June 30 or 60 days after the lawsuits are resolved, whichever happens first, and it looks like even if the Supreme Court strikes down relief, borrowers will still be thrown back into repayment this year. As these legal battles have progressed, many Republican lawmakers have expressed support for the lawsuits and argued that debt relief is unfair and using the HEROES Act of 2003, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency, is an overreach of authority. But Biden continues to express confidence in the plans legality, and that it will prevail in court. "My administration is making the case to the Supreme Court, and I'm confident I'm confident in the legal authority to carry out our plan," Biden said during remarks on Monday, adding that "on this one and so much more, I have your back." Read the original article on Business Insider Police A store clerk shot a would-be robber at an Avondale gas station on Wednesday morning, police said. Around 5:15 a.m., a man entered the Chevron gas station on 107th Avenue and Indian School Road and brandished a firearm at an employee standing behind the store counter, according to Avondale police, who described the incident as an armed robbery. The armed man was shot and injured when he was distracted by another person in the store and the worker pulled out his own firearm and fired, police said. The injured man was taken to a hospital and was in critical condition, as of Wednesday morning. There were no other injuries and there are no other known suspects, police said. "Everybody is fine," an employee at the store told The Arizona Republic when reached by phone on Wednesday, declining to comment further. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Suspected armed robber shot by gas station employee in Avondale Archer self-propelled gun in firing position Read also: Sweden allocates EUR 55 million to Ukraine for reconstruction Swedish PM Ulf Kristersson and Defense Minister Pal Jonson have called a press conference for Jan. 19, where they will speak about Stockholms security assistance to Ukraine. Additionally, the governments agenda includes plans to instruct Swedens Armed Forces to prepare to transfer artillery systems to Ukraine. On Jan. 9, Kristersson said Kyiv could eventually receive Swedish Archer systems, noting that artillery remains Swedens focus in terms of military aid to Ukraine. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine A swim instructor has been charged months after a 4-year-old boy drowned while in her care, authorities in Georgia say. Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation served Lexie C. Tenhuisen, 66, with an arrest warrant Tuesday, Jan. 17, in connection to the drowning death of Israel Scott , according to the Burke County Sheriffs Office. She was booked on a charge of involuntary manslaughter before being released on a $10,000 cash bond, deputies said. Scott was on his second day of lessons with Tenhuisen when he was found unresponsive at the bottom of a pool on June 14, 2022, McClatchy News reported. He was rushed to a hospital where he died. Breaking News: A warrant has been issued by the Burke County Georgia Prosecutor for the arrest of #LexieTenHuisen for the 6/14/22 drowning death of 4 year old Israel Scott during a swimming lesson. The Scott family and my office met with prosecutors this morning. pic.twitter.com/4A6B9RNRkB Lee Merritt (@MerrittForTexas) December 30, 2022 The childs mother, Dori Scott, shared her grief on social media and recalled her son being nervous about starting swim lessons. It hurts to think that nothing, absolutely nothing will bring my sweet boy back to me, she wrote on Facebook at the time. I chose who I thought would be a great fit for him to learn how to swim, but ... who would have thought this would happen. The familys attorney, Lee Merritt, said Israel drowned about 10 minutes before his swim lesson ended, WRDW reported. There were 10 swimmers, including Israel, in the class. Authorities initially declined to charge Tenhuisen in Scotts death, saying the case lacks sufficient evidence to prove criminal negligence. Deputies said the instructors arrest was the result of an investigation into the drowning. Story continues Additional details about the investigation werent immediately available on Jan. 18. McClatchy News reached out to the GBI on Jan. 18 and was awaiting a response. Burke County is about 170 miles southeast of Atlanta. 82-year-old went missing during Hurricane Ian. Her body was just found, Florida cops say Teens body pulled from private lake after his kayak flipped, Georgia deputies say Couple uses leash to rescue girl who jumped in water to help friend, TN officials say In a public comment session that lasted nearly three hours, teachers, parents and students spoke out in anger and frustration about what they say is an unsafe and unsupportive environment at Newport News Public Schools. Speakers voiced their concerns during the emotionally charged meeting Tuesday night, the districts first scheduled board meeting since the Jan. 6 shooting of Richneck Elementary teacher Abigail Zwerner. Teachers and parents said student behavior is out of control at many schools, and consequences are minimal. Some teachers said theyve been discouraged from making behavior or discipline complaints because suspension rates can affect accreditation. Many teachers said they felt disrespected by administrators and top leadership in the district, and called for Superintendent George Parker to step down. Nicole Cooke, who said she served as a co-chair on the superintendents teacher advisory committee, said dismissing the concerns of teachers is a form of disrespect. If Abigail had been respected, she wouldnt be in the hospital right now, Cooke said. If the Heritage teachers had been respected, two students would not have been injured last year. Desire Yvette, whose 6-year-old daughter was in Zwerners class during the shooting, told the board her daughter was being bullied in school, and Zwerner was working with Yvette and administrators to resolve the issue. Shes terrified, Yvette said of her daughter. Because the person that was advocating for her got hurt. She got hurt. William Fenker, an eighth grade science teacher at Gildersleeve Middle School, said students do not feel safe. Our students do not wonder if there will be another school shooting, Fenker said. They wonder when and where the next shooting will be. Fenker acknowledged that top district officials have publicly stated they want to regain the trust of teachers. But our trust is not a would be nice, it is a must have. Without our trust and cooperation, this district will fail in its mission and further embarrass itself in the eyes of the community, nation and world, he said. My trust, our trust, is not going to be won back by showing us cherry-picked data that makes you look good. Story continues DeeJean Mendez, a teacher at Sedgefield Elementary, said closing Richneck for the week was the correct decision. But what about the rest of us? she said. We endured trauma. The target was us. Im an elementary school teacher. The target was us. And we were expected to go to work as normal. Mendez said some teachers are angry, some are scared, and some are thinking, I dont think I want this job anymore. Cameron Bertrand, CEO of Violence Intervention & Prevention, said the community failed Zwerner, and also failed the 6-year-old student who police say shot her. To the student at a young age of 6 years old, that had no coping skills, no mental health support, no access to resources, impacted by generational trauma we failed that young student, Bertrand said. He asked everyone at the board meeting to use the energy they brought to the meeting to make changes, whether through volunteering with students impacted by mental health challenges or donating to grassroots organizations that are working on solutions. Dont wait on them, Bertrand said, referring to the school board. Earlier Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott held a roundtable with community leaders to discuss the shooting and ways to improve school safety. During the roundtable, Parker said he learned in a recent meeting with the U.S. Department of Education that after an incident or crisis such as the one that occurred at Richneck, it takes a community over a year to 18 months to heal from the circumstances. And they also said theres a higher probability that a similar incident may happen in your community after one incident occurs, Parker said. With that being said, when you think about the last 18 months, there have been several incidents that occurred in Newport News. We have not healed. During the discussion, several experts expressed the need for investments in students and staffs social and emotional welfare. However, they also cautioned that metal detectors would not be effective in reducing gun violence. Newport News officials announced last week they would install metal detectors at every school in response to the Richneck shooting, which was the third shooting on district property in 17 months. Jim Freeman, Director of the Social Movement Support Lab, said metal detectors are, at best, a mild deterrent that would only delay not prevent a shooter from causing harm. He also said metal detectors could have harmful effects. Although Parker said he understands the research and believes the research is valid, he said he would continue to favor putting metal detectors in place. He said there have been multiple incidents, and we have to share with our community that we are going to do everything possible. But its not just metal detection, he added. It will also be behavioral specialists, building a strong youth culture in our schools, and many of the other things that were already working on, in addition to that added layer of support. Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.com For five hours Tuesday, Orange County Public Schools leaders discussed the consequences of new Florida Department of Education rules holding the district accountable if any pornography is found inside a classroom or library. The lengthy time devoted to that topic underscored the complexity of the situation: while state officials provided districts with the definition of pornography, they left everything else up for interpretation. At one point during a particular discussion about nudity, a staff member helpfully pointed out books about classical architecture that depicted the Statue of David probably wouldnt be considered pornographic. READ: New BCU head football coach Ed Reed apologizes after he trashes school on social media However, that was the only clear-cut example given. You could end up with very different interpretations of what the author intended to do, Orange County School Board Chairwoman Teresa Jacobs said, exasperated. READ: Lawmakers again try to finish off Floridas free kill legal loophole The work session board members met over was intended to bring OCPS policies into line with the new state standards, but was often sidetracked by different scenarios and circled back on itself. The meeting began with the announcement that three books caught up in the previous school years tidal wave effort by conservative groups to remove titles they found troublesome Gender Queer, This Book is Gay and Lets Talk: Teenage Guide to Sex had been permanently removed from school shelves due to their graphic content. Conversations about which books might be removed in the future, and who got to decide which books to remove, took up most of the morning and afternoon. READ: Florida is now picking its social studies textbooks, but how does the process work? I have very serious concerns if this becomes a slippery slope, Maria Salamanca said. We do have members on both sides of the political spectrum that do want to censor based on their agenda. Story continues Officials revealed that teachers, particularly those in elementary schools, were required to catalog each book in their classroom libraries so parents and the school district may review and approve the list. Board member Melissa Byrd said some teachers were opting to remove their classroom libraries altogether instead of doing the extra work, a claim staff said they were also aware of. READ: Lawmakers again try to finish off Floridas free kill legal loophole Theyre packing them up and our babies are not having access to all those books in their classroom because of this, she said, to the distress of her fellow board members. Staff members said the district was promoting a free app installed on school iPads to take much of the labor out of the process, but admitted the app wasnt perfect. They said classroom libraries were the individual decisions of each teacher. Were still struggling from the pandemic and the thought a child doesnt have access to as many books concerns me, board member Angie Gallo said, suggesting those classrooms be offered additional media time as compensation. READ: Brevard County schools reporting fewer attacks to state, data shows Her fellow member, Karen Castor Dentel, asked if only parents of the students in the classroom would be able to challenge the individual class lists. Staff told her it could be anyone in the county. We dont want to put restrictions on what other children read, she said. The concerns spiraled into other matters as well. The school districts current policy states that if parents and staff members of one school decide a book is pornographic, all other schools must adhere to their finding. READ: Report calls for Ed Department to improve process for investigating misleading colleges That led to Jacobs arguing that one particularly conservative or liberal-leaning group in a school may try to force their beliefs upon the entire district. Jacobs also wondered if the school would be responsible for books accessed through the public library system installed on school iPads. If so, she said, the district would have to delete the software. Conservative-leaning board member Alicia Farrant, who led the charge against some library books last year before winning her seat, said it was time for the district to get back to the fundamentals. READ: Florida teacher unions share concerns over vacancies, state pushes back Parents are here for reading, writing, arithmetic, she said. This is just making sure that in our schools kids dont have access to what some parents dont agree with. Farrant argued that the district should draw lines in the sand and come up with scenarios and words that would automatically disqualify books, such as levels of sexual content or a certain number of curse words, to remove uncertainty. Other board members responded by saying every parents view was different and some children needed more mature books to deal with situations they may encounter in their personal lives. READ: Florida teacher unions share concerns over over vacancies, state pushes back Board member and former teacher Vicki Elaine-Felder kept arguing that the school board and parents were attempting to micromanage the professionals and stymie creativity in the classroom. Felder said teachers normally approach administrators and parents ahead of introducing mature or controversial content into their lessons. READ: Brevard County set to open its first medical school Please consider giving teachers the fact that they can make rational decisions about some of the books theyre going to read, she said. Board members decided to meet with staff members individually and reconvene in a few weeks time. READ: U.S. Dept. of Education proposes student loan safety net to cap payments, cut interest 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 17-year-old boy and his mother were both taken into custody Tuesday in connection with a shooting last month at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, which left a man dead. Lavon Longstreet was arrested by U.S. Marshals at a home in Decatur, Georgia, said Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges in a news conference. Longstreet is being held on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree assault. He is awaiting extradition. Longstreet's mother, Erica McMillian, was also arrested Tuesday in Golden Valley, a city in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. McMillian is accused of driving Longstreet from Minnesota to Georgia immediately following the shooting. She is being held on charges of aiding and abetting, Hodges said. An officer stands inside Nordstrom at the Mall of America after a shooting on Dec. 23, 2022, in Bloomington, Minnesota. / Credit: Abbie Parr / AP Also arrested at the home in Decatur was 30-year-old Eriajah Johnson, also on charges of aiding and abetting, Hodges said. The fatal shooting occurred on the evening of Dec. 23 on the first floor of Nordstrom inside the Mall of America. The victim, identified by his family as 19-year-old Johntae Hudson, died at the scene. The shooting prompted a more than one-hour lockdown of the mall. Hodges said that surveillance video showed that the shooting appeared to have been precipitated by "some kind of altercation between two groups" of males. The following day, on Dec. 24, five suspects were arrested in a raid at the nearby city of St. Louis Park. Three of those suspects were 17-year-old juveniles, and two were 18-year-old adults, Hodges said at the time. On Dec. 29, one of those arrested, 18-year-old Taeshawn Adams-Wright, was charged by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office with aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder and aiding and abetting second-degree assault. Two of the 17-year-old boys were charged with second-degree riot. On Tuesday, Hodges said that Longstreet and Adams-Wright "stood over" Hudson and "fired multiple rounds into his body." Furthermore, Hodges disclosed that forensics determined that shell casings recovered at the murder scene matched casings found at several crime scenes in Minneapolis and St. Paul "over the last year and a half." Story continues "I fully expect that there's probably going to be some more arrests that come out of this," Hodges said. The shooting marked the second time in five months that the Mall of America had been placed on lockdown due to gunfire. On Aug. 4, shots were fired near the cash registers of a Nike store, but no injuries occurred. That shooting caused chaos, sending panicked customers and employees running for safety. Hodges said at the time that there had also been an altercation between two groups. One of the groups left, but then returned, and one person fired three shots into the store, Hodges said. Two men suspected of being involved in the shooting were arrested days later following a multiagency manhunt. Three others were also arrested, accused of helping the two men escape. The mall began testing the use of a "weapons detection system" at its north entrance in October, according to CBS Minnesota. Vigil held to honor mother and daughter killed in Hazlet house fire Investigators believe Goshen, Tulare County massacre was targeted attack China's population drops for first time in 60 years A Tesla video that Elon Musk promoted in 2016 was staged, an engineer says. Samantha Delouya A Tesla engineer said a car crashed into a fence while filming a video promoting self-driving, Reuters reported. Tesla ended up staging the video showing its capabilities, according to the engineer's testimony. Elon Musk promoted the 2016 video as an example of a Tesla "driving itself" at the time. In footage that was left out of a 2016 video promoting Tesla's self-driving technology, a test car crashed into a fence in Tesla's parking lot, Tesla Autopilot software director Ashok Elluswamy said, according to a recent report from Reuters. The engineer said that the car crashed into the fence while trying to park itself. Drivers had to disengage the software and take control in test runs for the video, the publication reported. In the video, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk promoted on Twitter, the company included overlay text saying: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." "Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway to streets, then finds a parking spot," Musk said on Twitter, sharing the video "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas." Reuters reported on Tuesday that the video had been staged to show the vehicle recognizing and responding to traffic lights capabilities the system did not have at the time. The publication cited the transcript of a July deposition from Elluswamy that was taken as evidence in a lawsuit against the electric-car maker over a 2018 fatal crash involving an Apple engineer. "The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system," Elluswamy said in a transcript that was viewed by Reuters. A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication. Story continues Elluswamy said the carmaker used 3D mapping on a predetermined route to create the video, Reuters reported. Tesla first released its Autopilot driver assist feature in 2014. The software is built into all current Teslas and enables the car to steer, accelerate, and brake automatically within its lane. In 2016, the electric-car maker announced its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software as an enhancement to Autopilot using the video "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas" to promote its capabilities. FSD is a beta add-on that enables the vehicle to automatically change lanes, enter and exit highways, recognize stop signs and traffic lights, and park. The software still requires a licensed driver to monitor the system at all times. Andrew McDevitt, a lawyer who represents former Apple engineer Walter Huang's wife, told Reuters that it was "obviously misleading to feature that video without any disclaimer or asterisk." In 2018, Tesla settled a class action lawsuit that cited the video for $5.4 million. The lawsuit alleged that the video was misleading. Over the past few years, Musk's company has come under increased scrutiny from regulators over the software and its marketing of the services. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Autopilot and its potential connection to several accidents. Read Reuters' full report on its website. Read the original article on Business Insider Photo: pixabay Its been more than a year since China imposed a ban on Canadian beef imports following a case of atypical BSE (mad cow disease) in a central Alberta cow and there are no signs as to when it might be lifted. Unlike the classic variant of the neurological disorder, which is largely connected to contaminated feed, atypical BSE is considered naturally occurring, rarely and spontaneously, in older cattle. South Korea and Philippines also instituted import bans on Canadian beef after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency reported the case in late 2021. Those restrictions were lifted by January 2022. Chris White, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Meat Council, said Canadian officials have provided all relevant and requested information to their Chinese counterparts. We dont have a clear line-of-sight into what the Chinese authorities are thinking. The encouraging thing is CFIA, our embassy in Beijing have done everything that has been asked of them by Chinese officials, he said. Theyve given them all the information theyve asked for. Theyve given them all the analysis, the scientific data so there is nothing more Canada, at this stage, can provide to Chinese officials. White said the situation is frustrating in the absence of feedback from China. Thats just the reality when a foreign government makes a decision that they feel like is in their best interest, he said, adding that on the positive side, other countries have lifted their restrictions and China has lifted its involving other countrys cases of atypical BSE. Brazil, Chinas largest provider of beef products, saw its exports suspended in July 2019 and again in 2021 following two separate reports of atypical BSE cases in a total of three animals. In both cases, the trade restrictions were lifted within days. Ireland also saw its beef exports banned by China in May 2020 following detection of an atypical BSE case. Ireland announced on Jan. 5 that export ban had been lifted. In a media release announcing the lifting of the ban, Irish Minister of State Martin Heydon credited the countrys ambassador for helping to resolve the issue. White said the appointment of Canadian ambassador to China Jennifer May in September will likely help. The position was vacant for most of 2022. White said he has brought up the export ban with the Chinese ambassador to Canada and hopes the recent lifting of COVID restrictions will allow for in-person visits to the country to advocate for Canadian beef products. The Daily Beast Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission. Scouting Report: My favorite feature on this scooter is the retractable steel cable that can securely lock your scooter for quick stops around town. One morning, my subway train rolled up to the station and as I pulled my head away from my phone, I could see there was no room for me. A sprawling subway train with probably nine or ten cars, completely full. Its not a unique experience, from what Ive gathered, but its moments like that where you really question if you are doing the best you can. Without spending too much time searching for the meaning of life, I instead searched for alternative ways to get to work in the morning. So I clicked around google and surmised that buying a car seemed reasonable until I thought about parking and insurance... and where even is a gas station in Manhattan?! Okay, so then I thoughtI'll bike to work. Thats a totally fine option for anyone who wants to be a sweaty mess in front of their boss and peers, but not for me. Next on the search was an electric scooter. Like my childhood Razor scooter? I thought. Yeah, but with a motor and lights and stuff! Its perfect. So after some more google searching and asking other people I knew who scoot around, I landed on the GoTrax GMAX scooter. This hog came loaded with all the features. Immediately, I could tell GoTrax took its time watching what competitors were lacking and ultimately created a superior product. Buy on GoTrax, $749 One of the best options for range per charge, the GoTrax GMAX Electric Scooter is specifically designed for longer travel. With a 42 mile range per charge, the GoTrax Scooter can take you farther with a single battery than many others can. Furthermore, the scooter also has an LED front light so you can safely ride at night. The GoTrax also has a dual-braking system which allows you to ensure swift stops on the scooter even when you are going at a high speed. The scooter is completely foldable and has a small display for your speed and battery power. My favorite feature is the steel locking cable built into the base to safely secure your scooter for quick trips around town. Story continues A few features I really like about the GMAX: Foldable frame for easy carrying Retractable steel cable for curb-side locking Digital passcode locking feature Long battery life (35 - 42 miles) Durable 10 tires Top speed of 20mph Super bright LED front headlight and reactive braking taillight What I dont like about the GMAX: Heavy (46 pounds) Kick to Start Lack of suspension High entry point of $750 With all this being said, Im extremely pleased with the GMAX. Even with it being on the more expensive side, you certainly are getting more features and range than most of the other commuter scooters. GoTrax has a huge array of scooters and E-bikes to choose from, so you will have no trouble finding what works best for you. MORE FROM SCOUTED: Scouted selects products independently and prices reflect what was available at the time of publish. Dont forget to check out our coupon site to find deals from Sephora, CVS, and more. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now. Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African authorities euthanised a tiger on Wednesday after she escaped from an enclosure in a private home, killed several animals and injured a man, raising questions about whether exotic animals should be allowed to be kept as pets. The Bengal tiger, an eight-year-old female named Sheba, had been living in the enclosure at an address in the outskirts of Johannesburg until her escape on Friday evening. She killed two dogs, a pig and a deer and injured a 39-year-old man before local residents managed to chase her away using torches. "She mauled his lower legs round below his knees and also below his waist," said Gresham Mandy of the local community policing forum that brings together residents and police representatives to work on safety issues. "The decision was made to euthanize her to prevent any further tragedy this morning," he told Reuters. Police had spent days trying to locate the tiger until she was spotted in the early hours of Wednesday entering a dwelling. Animal rights activist Dr Louise de Waal said it was a sad end for "this poor animal who has never asked to be a pet in somebody's backyard". Tigers are not native to Africa. The person who had been keeping Sheba did not speak to media and the origin of the animal was unknown. South Africa's Gauteng province, where Johannesburg is located, requires no permit to own wild and exotic animals. The National Society for the Protection of Animals (NSPCA), which took part in the search for Sheba, said police officers tried to bring her back to her enclosure but those attempts were unsuccessful and the safety of the community was prioritised. "You can clearly see in a situation like this, because of how lax the legislation is when it comes to keeping these animals, often the welfare of the animal is simply disregarded," said Keshvi Nair, public relations officer at the NSPCA. (Reporting by Ihsaan Haffejee and Catherine Schenck; Writing by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Aurora Ellis) The fact that multiple The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX) insiders offloaded a considerable amount of shares over the past year could have raised some eyebrows amongst investors. Knowing whether insiders are buying is usually more helpful when evaluating insider transactions, as insider selling can have various explanations. However, when multiple insiders sell stock over a specific duration, shareholders should take notice as that could possibly be a red flag. Although we don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions, we do think it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing. View our latest analysis for TJX Companies The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At TJX Companies In the last twelve months, the biggest single sale by an insider was when the Executive Chairman, Carol Meyrowitz, sold US$4.8m worth of shares at a price of US$67.62 per share. That means that an insider was selling shares at slightly below the current price (US$81.55). As a general rule we consider it to be discouraging when insiders are selling below the current price, because it suggests they were happy with a lower valuation. Please do note, however, that sellers may have a variety of reasons for selling, so we don't know for sure what they think of the stock price. This single sale was just 21% of Carol Meyrowitz's stake. Over the last year we saw more insider selling of TJX Companies shares, than buying. You can see the insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction! If you like to buy stocks that insiders are buying, rather than selling, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them). Insiders At TJX Companies Have Sold Stock Recently Over the last three months, we've seen significant insider selling at TJX Companies. In total, insiders dumped US$5.5m worth of shares in that time, and we didn't record any purchases whatsoever. This may suggest that some insiders think that the shares are not cheap. Story continues Insider Ownership Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. TJX Companies insiders own 0.2% of the company, currently worth about US$156m based on the recent share price. I like to see this level of insider ownership, because it increases the chances that management are thinking about the best interests of shareholders. So What Do The TJX Companies Insider Transactions Indicate? Insiders sold stock recently, but they haven't been buying. Despite some insider buying, the longer term picture doesn't make us feel much more positive. But it is good to see that TJX Companies is growing earnings. It is good to see high insider ownership, but the insider selling leaves us cautious. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for TJX Companies you should be aware of, and 1 of these is a bit concerning. If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity 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. Join A Paid User Research Session Youll receive a US$30 Amazon Gift card for 1 hour of your time while helping us build better investing tools for the individual investors like yourself. Sign up here Have an ex-partner that you absolutely hate? A boss, or a relative getting on your nerves lately? Have you been bursting with anger, waiting patiently for the day you can get back at them? Well, look no further because this is your chance to be very petty. With Valentine's Day coming up soon, Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy has launched a new name-a-roach campaign. For a minimum donation of $25, the zoo will allow you to name a cockroach after anyone you know. Roses are red; violets are blue Is there someone in your life thats bugging you? Give them goosebumps by naming a cockroach in their honour this Valentine's Day For more information or to symbolically name-a-roach: https://t.co/maFh8siDB5 pic.twitter.com/ZdB8EfUSjD Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy (@TZWConservancy) January 15, 2023 Roses are red, violets are blue Is there someone in your life thats bugging you? Give them goosebumps this Valentines Day by naming a cockroach in their honour, the wildlife conservancys webpage reads. Those who donate will receive a digital certificate with the name of the roach, a full charitable tax receipt, and a shareable digital graphic. However, Toronto Zoo has clearly said that names and language deemed inappropriate will not be featured on the digital certificate and that profanity and hate speech will not be tolerated. "The Toronto Zoo and the Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy respect all creatures big and small. Cockroaches play a very integral ecological role in their rainforest homes by helping to decompose forest litter and animal fecal matter and are, in turn, food for many other animals," the organization said. People can make a donation by filling out this form. Criticism of the cockroach approach: 'This is a sick idea' While the idea struck a chord for many online, inspiring laughs and a few ideas for 'target' cockroaches, many were offended by the zoo's cheap attempt at donations, calling it a way to dehumanize, bully others. Story continues The donation records will probably be useful in a number of abuse, stalking, hate crimes and bullying criminal cases that escalate from naming a cockroach after their targets. The dehumanizing twist has a TikTok psychopath viral flare to it. Did someone get paid for this idea? Alex (@Alexandlpa) January 17, 2023 Breaking up with someone can be a traumatic experience. People hurt mentally and often resort to physical pain. Shame on you! Whoever signed off on this idiotic idea is a horrible human being Bent Skeg (@robak11) January 17, 2023 What the hell are you people thinking about. You're just adding to the general lack of respect that grows by the day in our society. Whoever came up with this and whoever approved it should be out on the street on their ass! Brian O'Connor (@TargetInView) January 17, 2023 Dehumanizing people is never a good look for any organization. Please read up on the 1994 Rwandan genocide and how the Tutsis were identified and slaughtered; the Zoo ought to do better. Maureen (@moiaucanada) January 17, 2023 Who is the top executive at the Toronto Zoo? This is as sick idea, so maybe we should start at the top. And Twitter should be worried that it is trying to censor replies to this post, rather than deal with the problem at the Zoo. eva kovacs (@budapestborn) January 16, 2023 LOL what a pathetic gimmick to try and keep kids coming into their animal display. TRiLL (@mmaTRiLL) January 17, 2023 Winter storm to throw everything at Ontario on Thursday and Friday A winter storm creeping into Ontario on Thursday and Friday will bring a little bit of everything to the province to end the week. Well see a messy mix of rain, snow, freezing rain, and ice pellets spread across Ontario through the day Thursday before a widespread changeover to snow to start our Friday. This wintry grab-bag will lead to slick roads and periods of risky travel across the region. RELATED: Worlds coldest air in 2023 was just recorded, and it's on the move to Canada This weeks system will start pushing into southern Ontario through the morning hours on Thursday, with precipitation arriving in far southwestern Ontario before dawn and reaching the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) toward the latter half of the morning commute. Precipitation Type Explainer The wintry mix will push north of the GTA around lunchtime, spreading over the region through the remaining afternoon hours. Easterly winds off Lake Ontario will keep Toronto proper right around that critical freezing mark, with the region teetering on the line between plain old rain and a wintry mix. Precipitation should remain rain along the QEW between Toronto and Hamilton. OntarioIce North and west of the GTA, however, well see an extended period of icing from freezing rain and ice pellets through Thursday afternoon. The best chance for ice accretion will fall on top of the Niagara Escarpment. Use extreme caution in areas that experience freezing rain. Even a thin glaze of ice can make roads, sidewalks, stairs, and driveways slippery. Many of the same areas will see accumulating ice pellets, as well, with heavier totals possible west of Milton and Oakville. Precipitation will reach eastern Ontario by Thursday evening, falling as a wintry mix north of Lake Ontario, while temperatures are cold enough for mostly snow around the National Capital Region and west into cottage country. OntarioFriAM Shifting winds behind the system will allow for periods of snow to cover much of southern and eastern Ontario overnight Thursday into Friday morning. This snow will reach down to the lakeshore in the GTA, bringing a few centimetres of accumulation by Friday morning. Story continues The greatest snow totals are likely in eastern Ontario, where 10-15+ cm of snow could fall through Friday. Well generally see totals of 5 cm or less toward the GTA. There is still some uncertainty in the location of the heaviest swath of snow, with the storms track dictating where that snow will set up. ONSnow SEE ALSO: When will winter stage a comeback? Look ahead: Watching for winter's comeback for the final days of January and early February For the final week of January and early February, it looks like the region will be the battleground between much colder weather to the west versus mild weather to the south and east. This should result in changeable temperatures, including the potential for several days of rather cold weather later next week. This also sets the stage for an active storm track across the region, with messy systems that will bring heavy snow, ice and possibly rain. MUST SEE: Canada's halftime snowfall check-in, see how your city measures up WATCH: Where will rain turn to freezing rain? It's tough to tell Click here to view the video Check back in with The Weather Network for the latest forecasts across Ontario. (Bloomberg) -- Donald Trumps campaign is asking Facebooks parent company to reinstate his access on grounds hes a declared 2024 presidential candidate and that keeping him off the platform is interfering with the political process. Most Read from Bloomberg Trumps campaign sent a letter Tuesday to Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other company officials requesting a meeting to discuss President Trumps prompt reinstatement to the platform. At a time when the United States faces critical issues that impact its citizens and the world, and at a time when the country begins the process of choosing its next president, we believe that Meta should be encouraging a full and robust dialogue, not silencing presidential candidates, the campaign said in the letter. A Meta spokesman said the company will announce its decision about reinstating Trumps access this month. NBC News first reported on the letter. Trump lost access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts on Jan. 6, 2021, after the company deemed that some of his posts were encouraging his supporters to riot at the US Capitol and impede Congress from confirming the results of the presidential election, which Joe Biden won. The temporary suspension was changed to an indefinite suspension the following day. Meta asked its oversight board a group of outside lawyers, journalists and policy experts tapped by the company to provide advice on policy to review its decision, and ultimately decided that the suspension would last for at least two years. Nick Clegg, Metas President of Global Affairs and the former UK Deputy Prime Minister, is responsible for deciding whether to reinstate Trumps account. Story continues Social Media Firms Bent Rules to Favor Trump, Jan. 6 Staff Finds Trumps Dec. 19 tweet encouraging supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 Be there, will be wild! was a transformative moment across social media, changing the tenor of the conversation online to explicit planning for the event, according to an unpublished staff report from the Houses Jan. 6 committee. Plans for violence were telegraphed on both far-right forums and mainstream platforms, which pushed Jan. 6 as a critical day in the Stop the Steal movement, the report said. Trumps campaign noted in its letter that Twitter Inc. owner and Chief Executive Elon Musk reversed a permanent ban on the former presidents account in November. Trump hasnt resumed posting on Twitter, saying hell stick with Truth Social, his own social-media platform. The former president said in a Jan. 5 Truth Social post that Meta has been doing very poorly and become very boring since suspending him. He said the decision to remove him and change the name from Facebook will go down in the Business Hall of Fame for two of the worst decisions in Business History! Lawmakers including Democratic US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and US Representative Adam Schiff sent a letter to Clegg last month urging Meta to continue Trumps suspension and to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous election denial content off its platform. The lawmakers said Trump continues to post harmful election content and amplify QAnon sites on Truth Social that would likely violate Metas policies and we have every reason to believe he would bring similar conspiratorial rhetoric back to Facebook, if given the chance. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Donald Trump has announced that he will preside over the memorial service for Diamond of the political vlogging duo Diamond and Silk. They were with me from the beginning and they never wavered, Mr Trump said. The memorial is set to take place in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Saturday. Diamond, whose legal name was Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway, passed away on 8 January at the age of 51. Please join us on Saturday, January 21, in Fayetteville, North Carolina she loved that state and so do I, as we celebrate the life of Diamond, Mr Trump said in a video shared on social media. She lived it in a credible way and we're gonna have a wonderful celebration and ceremony. All of Diamonds family and Silk, we love Silk, her sister. She loved her sister so much and they loved each other. And they really loved the world. They were with me from the beginning and they never wavered. So we're gonna celebrate, Silk will be there, but I'll be there, and we're going to celebrate the life of Diamond, he added. Really bad news for Republicans and frankly, all Americans, Mr Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social when he announced her passing. Our beautiful Diamond, of Diamond and Silk, has just passed away at her home in the State she loves so much, North Carolina. Calling her the Magnificent Diamond, he said that her sister Silk Herneitha Rochelle Hardaway was there with her all the way, and at her passing. There was no better team anywhere or at any time! the former president wrote, as he shared the news of the demise of the conservative commentator. Diamonds death was totally unexpected, probably her big and precious heart just plain gave out. Rest in peace our Magnificent Diamond, you will be greatly missed! More follows... Photo: The Canadian Press B.C. Premier David Eby speaks in Vancouver, on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022. A B.C. First Nation and the provincial government have signed what's being called a historic agreement towards jointly managing land, water and resource development. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck A B.C. First Nation and the province have signed what the government is calling a historic agreement towards jointly managing land, water and resource development. The agreement, signed Tuesday with the Blueberry River First Nations in northeastern B.C., includes a $200-million restoration fund and timelines for coming up with plans to manage watersheds and oil and gas activities in parts of the First Nations' claim area, which covers four per cent of the province. The deal comes after a 2021 B.C. Supreme Court decision found the provincial government breached obligations under Treaty 8, signed in 1899, because it allowed development such as forestry and natural gas extraction without the community's approval. The court heard more than 84 per cent of Blueberry River First Nations' territory is within 500 metres of an industrial disturbance. Under the new agreement, the two sides will spend the next three years creating four Watershed Management Basin plans for all natural resource sector activities in areas considered the most important to the nation. The plans will set out old-growth forest levels, reserves, and "promote sustainable economies and resilient communities," the government says. In the next 18 months, they'll also come up with three plans for oil and gas development in the area. In the meantime, the two sides have agreed to a timber harvesting schedule outside core areas, and are limiting new land disturbances caused by oil and gas development to 750 hectares annually. "This agreement provides a clear pathway to get the hard work started on healing and restoring the land, and start on the joint planning with strong criteria to protect ecosystems, wildlife habitat and old forests, Chief Judy Desjarlais of the Blueberry River First Nations said in a statement. With the knowledge and guidance of our elders, this new agreement will ensure there will be healthy land and resources for current and future generations to carry on our peoples way of life. Under the agreement, a Blueberry River-B.C. restoration fund is being established with joint oversight from both Blueberry River First Nations and the provincial government. The province has agreed to provide $200 million to the fund by June 2025, though some of that money could come from industry or Ottawa. "This historic agreement between British Columbia and Blueberry River First Nations not only brings more predictability for the region and local economy but it helps ensure that we are operating on the land in partnership to ensure sustainability for future generations," Premier David Eby said in a statement. STORY: Some top members of the U.S. Congress oppose the sale of the jets to Turkey despite support from the Biden administration. The two foreign ministers have met before on the sidelines of NATO summits and United Nations meetings but it took the Biden administration almost two years to extend an official invite to Cavusoglu, a delay that many analysts say reflects a strained relationship. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Syria policy, energy cooperation and regional security issues will also be on the agenda, U.S. and Turkish officials said. The United States has praised Turkey for some of its actions during the Ukraine war, including mediating grain corridor talks, but also worries about Ankara's deepening relationship with Moscow. Turkey now hopes to buy F-16 jets from the United States, a sale that some top members of Congress oppose despite support from the Biden administration. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. citizens and two legal permanent U.S. residents were among those killed in Nepal's worst air disaster in 30 years, in which at least 71 people died including small children, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. The Yeti Airlines ATR 72 turboprop carrying 72 people crashed on Sunday just before landing in the tourist city of Pokhara. (Reporting by Simon Lewis and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese) Authorities have arrested a southwest Missouri man on felony charges in connection with the Capitol riot that include assaulting a law enforcement officer. Kyler Joseph Bard, 26, of Seneca, was arrested in Joplin on Tuesday, court records show. He is charged in federal court with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and civil disorder, both felonies. The court documents in the case were unsealed on Tuesday. Bard is the 24th Missouri resident to be charged in a Capitol riot case. He also faces five other counts entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building or grounds; and engaging in an act of violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings. According to the charging document, Bard was walking along a ledge on the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where officers had formed a police line as a barrier. Body-worn camera footage from the Metropolitan Police Department showed that around 3:30 p.m., a man wearing a white sweatshirt and a red, white and blue winter cap with the words Trump and a 45 logo on it could be seen inciting a crowd of rioters. The man, later identified as Bard, was carrying a megaphone and yelling, Move! Move! Move! We gotta push! We gotta push! Lets go! We gotta go! Lets go! the document said. Bard then turned directly to an officer, and as he yelled Lets push, he shoved the officer, identified in the document as Officer M.G. Officer M.G. repelled Bards assault, and Bard fell backwards after continuing to resist and push against Officer M.G., the document said. As Bard fell to the ground, Bard yelled to the crowd of officers, Youre all a bunch of pieces of s---. Bard then got up and went back into the crowd, the document said. A review of a video posted on Twitter showed a man who appeared to be Bard talking on a cellphone outside the Capitol. Story continues Bard can be heard stating, Ive already been maced, punched, they took my microphone away, and, uh, when I punched them, they punched me back. Maced me in the face. But its what we gotta do. We gotta get inside, we gotta take it over. We gotta do it. These photos were posted on Kyler Bards Instagram account, federal authorities say. Following the insurrection, images of Bard participating in the riot appeared on the internet, the document said. The FBI created a profile of Bard based on the images, giving him the moniker AFO-447, according to the document. The FBI posted those images on its website and on social media, asking for the publics help in identifying the man, the document said. A confidential source came forward, providing material from the Instagram account of a kyler_bard that appeared to show Bard on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, it said. The user of that account had posted a photo of someone appearing to pour water in Bards eyes and referenced how he had been maced and punched for yelling in a megaphone, the document said. The FBI contacted Bard at his home, it said, and the agent who interviewed him confirmed that he was the same person as the man in the photos. During the interview, Bard admitted to attending the Stop The Steal rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but informed agents that he did not enter the Capitol and did nothing illegal, the charging document said. In the two years since the insurrection, more than 950 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, according to the Justice Department. Of those, more than 284 individuals have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. By Sharon Bernstein (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing 23 people and injuring dozens more in a hate crime targeting people of Mexican descent at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, a court document filed on Tuesday showed. Prosecutors say Patrick Wood Crusius drove 11 hours to El Paso, which sits on the U.S. border with Mexico, from his hometown of Allen, near Dallas, on Aug. 3, 2019, and then fired at shoppers with an AK-47 rifle inside the Walmart store. He surrendered to officers who confronted him outside. Crusius, who also faces state charges in Texas, is set to stand trial in 2024 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, facing 23 counts of committing a hate crime resulting in death, and 23 counts of using a firearm to commit murder, among other charges. Crusius pleaded not guilty in 2020 to 90 federal hate crime charges in the case. Proceedings were delayed while prosecutors decided whether to pursue the death penalty against him. In 2020, his lawyers argued that Crusius, then 21, had been diagnosed with severe, lifelong neurological and mental disabilities and should not face execution if convicted. Last year, a Texas judge put off a state trial in the case as federal prosecutors determined whether they would seek capital punishment. In a notification to the court and to the defendant filed Tuesday, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret Leachman said the government would not seek death in the case. When he was taken into police custody minutes after the shooting, Crusius was in a psychotic state and treated with anti-psychotic medication, according to mental health professionals employed by the jail, a court filing said. A manifesto that prosecutors say was posted online by Crusius on 8chan, a now-defunct message board often used by extremists, said the Walmart attack was a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Leslie Adler) By Andrew Chung (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday turned away a challenge by a group of firearms dealers in New York to numerous Democratic-backed measures adopted by the state last year regulating gun purchases that the businesses said hurt their businesses. The justices, with no public dissents, denied a request by the dealers to block the laws, some of which imposed gun safety requirements on retailers, while their appeal of a lower court's decision in favor of New York proceeds. The state's Democratic-led legislature passed some of the laws last June. Others were adopted in July after the Supreme Court the prior month struck down New York's limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home in a landmark ruling expanding gun rights. New York officials have said the new gun restrictions, which face numerous legal challenges in lower courts, are needed to protect public safety. The Supreme Court has broadened gun rights in three key rulings since 2008. The justices on Jan. 11 rejected a separate bid by members of a gun rights advocacy group to block much of New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act, signed into law by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul on July 1. In a statement issued with that decision, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, said he understood the court's action in that instance to be procedural rather than expressing any view on the merits of the case. Alito wrote that the New York law at issue "presents novel and serious questions" under the U.S. Constitution's provisions on gun rights and free speech. That law banned firearms in a long list of "sensitive locations" including churches, medical offices, theaters, public parks and Manhattan's popular Times Square. It was passed in response to the Supreme Court's June 23 decision that declared for the first time that the Constitution's Second Amendment protects an individual's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. Story continues The June ruling also required courts to evaluate if gun restrictions were "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," making it harder to regulate guns in a country where mass shootings are commonplace. Nine individuals who sell firearms in upstate New York and a gun collectors association sued state officials in federal court to challenge a series of laws regulating purchases. Some of the laws impact retailers, such as requiring security alarms and sales record-keeping. Others affect individuals, such as requiring background checks for ammunition sales and training for obtaining a concealed-carry license. A federal judge refused to block any of the challenged laws for various reasons, including that the Second Amendment protects individuals, not businesses. In December, the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected the plaintiffs, but ordered their appeal to be fast-tracked. (Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham) By Andrea Shalal ZURICH (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen agreed with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He to enhance communication about macroeconomic and financial issues during a "candid, substantive, and constructive" meeting in Zurich on Wednesday, the Treasury said. In a statement, the Treasury said both sides agreed to enhance cooperation on climate finance on a bilateral and multilateral basis, such as within the United Nations, Group of 20 economies and APEC. "While we have areas of disagreement, and we will convey them directly, we should not allow misunderstandings, particularly those stemming from a lack of communication, to unnecessarily worsen our bilateral economic and financial relationship," Yellen said at the start of the meeting. Liu said both countries need "serious communication" and coordination on issues including climate change and the economy, and that he was ready for an in-depth exchange. "We do believe that we have to always bear in mind the bigger picture, try to manage our differences appropriately and seek common ground," Liu said, speaking through an interpreter. "In this way, hopefully we can work together to maintain the overall stability of Chinese-U.S. relations." U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to increase communication when they met in Indonesia in November. "Both sides agreed it is important for the functioning of the global economy to further enhance communication around macroeconomic and financial issues," the Treasury said after Yellen and Liu met. "Secretary Yellen also raised issues of concern in a frank exchange of views," it added. "She looks forward to travelling to China and to welcoming her counterparts to the United States in the near future." A senior Treasury official said that, during the meeting, which lasted nearly three hours, Yellen and Liu agreed that both countries could take steps to avert recessions in their own economies, and the two delegations had a productive discussion about sovereign debt issues, food security and energy. Story continues On economic prospects, Chinese officials were aware of financial risks posed by the property sector but were optimistic about resuming closer to normal growth, the official said of the meeting, the first in person since Yellen became secretary. The China side expressed concern over U.S. economic, trade and technological policies towards China and its hope that the U.S. will pay attention to how such policies were affecting both countries, China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. "China welcomes Yellen to visit China at an appropriate time this year. Both countries agreed that their economic and trade teams will continue to maintain communications and exchanges at all levels," it said. Washington in October imposed export controls on China to slow Beijing's technological and military advances, including measures to curb China's access to U.S. chipmaking tools and cut it off from certain chips made anywhere in the world with American equipment. EXPANDING COOPERATION Liu, a confidant of Xi, on Tuesday urged global leaders gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum to abandon what he called a "Cold War mentality" and expand international cooperation on issues such as climate change. Yellen and other top U.S. officials say the U.S. economy should be able to skip a recession in 2023, but acknowledge slower growth is likely. China's economic growth looks set to rebound from mid-2023 following relaxed COVID-19 curbs after slumping to one of its worst levels in nearly half a century. The IMF has warned against decoupling the global economy into two competing blocs, saying it could reduce global economic output by up to 7%, and even more in vulnerable countries. Yellen's meeting with Liu came before a three-country visit to Africa, where she will push to expand U.S. trade and business ties with the continent, which China has long dominated. She is also expected to repeat her criticism of Beijing - now the world's largest creditor - for not moving more quickly to provide debt relief, as well as its use of forced labor in China's Xinjiang region and "non-market" economic practices. Yellen has met virtually three times with Liu since taking office, and met in Bali, Indonesia, with Chinese central bank governor Yi Gang. Liu will step down this year as part of an overhaul of China's economic leadership disclosed in September. In December, Yellen told reporters she was also open to visiting China and looked forward to more "intense interactions" with Chinese officials. For daily Davos updates in your inbox sign up for the Reuters Daily Briefing here (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Josie Kao, Nick Macfie, Jan Harvey and Jonathan Oatis) Welding of all 500-meter rails for Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway completed Xinhua) 09:03, January 18, 2023 Staff members work during a ceremony marking the completion of the welding of all 500-meter rails needed for the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, in Bandung, Indonesia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Zulkarnain) JAKARTA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The welding of all 500-meter rails needed for the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway was completed on Tuesday, laying a solid foundation for the completion of track laying in mid-February this year. A total of 1,168 pieces of 500-meter-long steel rails are needed for the 142.3-km line, and each of those long rails was welded in 15 steps from 50-meter steel rails imported from China. The work has been jointly completed by Chinese and Indonesian employees. The Chinese Construction Consortium used a complete set of Chinese long rail welding equipment at Tegualluar Rail Welding Base, the first rail welding base for high-speed railway outside China. The base adopts Chinese equipment, technology and standards, with innovations to adapt to the high temperature and high humidity in Indonesia. The high-speed line, a landmark project under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, connects Indonesia's capital Jakarta and its fourth-largest city Bandung, which is also the capital of West Java province. With a design speed of 350 km per hour, the railway will cut the journey between Jakarta and Bandung from over three hours to around 40 minutes. People attend a ceremony marking the completion of the welding of all 500-meter rails needed for the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, in Bandung, Indonesia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Zulkarnain) Staff members work during a ceremony marking the completion of the welding of all 500-meter rails needed for the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, in Bandung, Indonesia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Zulkarnain) The last long rail is seen during a ceremony marking the completion of the welding of all 500-meter rails needed for the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, in Bandung, Indonesia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Zulkarnain) (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Photographer Allan Lee Koss in his Chicago apartment on Jan. 16, 2023. His book, "Fares: Chicago Taxicab Portraits," captures faces in the backseat of his Checker cab in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune) The Checker taxi garage was a massive place, just to the north of North Avenue and stretching from Wells Street west to North Park Avenue. It was a wild and busy and noisy place, a human beehive. Allan Lee Koss was in and out of there hundreds, likely thousands, of times. He drove for Checker from 1977 to 1988. He drove nights and, for him, it was a good job. And why not? If memory serves, drivers received 42% of whatever clicked on the meter, kept all tips, and the company took care of gas and maintenance. Advertisement I know that because I drove a cab too, out of that same garage, starting a few years before Koss and into his time there. We never met then but I share his feelings. I liked driving, said Koss. There was a freedom to it and the people. It was a real job and you could make a good living. Yes, I was proud to be a cabdriver. He grew up with a sister on the Southwest Side of the city and his father was a manager for Sears. Koss graduated from Kelly High School and then entered Northeastern Illinois University majoring in history with the intention of becoming a teacher. I spent a lot of years in college, he says. I did some traveling. I had a bunch of different kinds of jobs. I tended bar for a while at a place near the Checker garage. Advertisement Sitting next to him on the front seat of his cab was a Nikon camera of the point-and-shoot variety, which had been a gift from his father. By then he had been taking photos for some time. I did take one photo class but I am basically self-taught, he says. Its intuitive, I suppose, but I love it. He took his camera to the chaos surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention and the more sedate 1996 edition. He was shooting photos at various protests and marches over the years. He was at Woodstock. He shot pictures in San Francisco, where he lived for a while. He shot in Mexico. He shot graffiti and gang signs. He shot chillingly intimate photos of drug addicts, and civil rights gatherings, and parades And he shot passengers who rode in his cab. There are dozens of them on the pages of his first book, Fares: Chicago Taxicab Portraits. It is a feast of faces, some smiling and some dour. Some people are in costumes, some hold children. Black and white; young and old. There is a dog. Some people hold money to pay their fares. Some hold photographs. Many are pretty women. I dont take pictures of flowers, he says. I always got permission to take the cab photos and though some people said no, most seemed maybe flattered. This book has been long in the making. Koss attended a conference decades ago at the Art Institute where he encountered the famous photographer Richard Avedon. Koss showed him some cab photos and told of his plans for a book of them. An image from the Allan Lee Koss book "Fares: Chicago Taxicab Portraits." (Allan Lee Koss) A rider poses with photographer Allan Lee Koss in an image from his book "Fares: Chicago Taxicab Portraits." (Allan Lee Koss) Avedon said he loved the idea, says Koss. But when I later asked him for a favorable quote I could use, he turned me down. And the university presses I approached about a book also gave me a No. He swallowed his frustration and put his book dreams on hold until last year, when a real estate developer named Perry Casalino came into the picture. I saw some of his photos for sale on eBay, photos of the old market on Maxwell Street, said Casalino, who has been collecting art and photography for decades. That led me to his website and that led me to him. Advertisement Casalino visited Koss in his North Side apartment, which is jammed with photos. They are packed in file cabinets, on the walls, in piles. Casalino, who had previously published books in collaboration with and about other photographers on a fascinating self-publishing platform called Blurb, was immediately grabbed by Koss taxi cab photos. Together, the pair created this book because, Casalino says, These are the faces of this city at that time. They are the faces of hardscrabble characters, workers, kids, ladies of the night. Most of the faces in the book are anonymous, unnamed, though I did recognize the young Koss in a sort of self-portrait; Studs Terkel and his wife Ida; WFMTs Ray Nordstrand; and Eddie Balchowsky, a poet, artist, musician, composer who lost his right hand fighting in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and was one of our citys great characters. Its been remarkable how many people have recognized other people in the book, says Casalino. I think this book is as much about Allan as it is about the subjects. I think he is a great photographer and I think I have only scratched the surface of his work. An image from the Allan Lee Koss book "Fares: Chicago Taxicab Portraits." (Allan Lee Koss) An image from the Allan Lee Koss book "Fares: Chicago Taxicab Portraits." (Allan Lee Koss) Both men would like to have an exhibition of the photos and I could see such an eye-catching show at some place like the Chicago Cultural Center. Koss has exhibited before at various art fairs. Advertisement Koss is currently working on a series of photos he has long been taking from the CTA buses that he rides around the city. He calls this his From the Bus series. Never married, he has spent most of his life working as a building maintenance man and still cares for one building. He turned 80 on Christmas Eve and is vital and active. Self-effacing and shy too. Am I an artist? Maybe by default, he says. I dont know. This book makes me feel that my persistence has been worthwhile. I also make custom frames and there is some art in doing that, I guess. He walks over to a pile on a table in his apartment, grabs a book from it and shows me an autograph. It is a Studs Terkel book, in which he wrote, long, long ago, For Allan Heres to a marvelous cab ride, with a true artist. rkogan@chicagotribune.com DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) Before the Russian missile struck the apartment building next door, Anna Kotova had moved closer to the window to take a congratulatory 19th birthday call from her sister. Kotova's boyfriend staggered into the kitchen after the explosion and found her covered in blood. The blast at the neighboring building blew out windows and doors in her apartment, and a shard of glass had pierced one of the young woman's eyes. Another just barely missed a major artery on her neck. Thankfully, she was alive, Denys Kryvulia, 24, said, recalling the first moments after the deadliest single attack on Ukrainian civilians since the spring. The death toll from the Saturday afternoon strike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro reached at least 45 people, including six children, officials said. Kotova was among at least 79 people injured; doctors had to remove her eye, and she remains hospitalized. Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost 11 months ago, many Ukrainians had fled to Dnipro, a city with a prewar population of nearly 1 million located about 485 kilometers (301 miles) southeast of Kyiv. It seemed relatively safe compared to other areas in Ukraines war-torn east. Wounded Ukrainian soldiers are routinely transferred from the frontlines to Dnipro hospitals for treatment. The nine-story apartment tower that took the direct hit housed about 1,700 residents and stood in between two identical buildings. Emergency crews worked nonstop for three days to search the wreckage for the dead and missing. The intense stench of burning still emanates from the site at 119 Naberezhna Peremohy, although the search crews finished combing the debris Tuesday. Volunteers at multiple aid points set up in the area are distributing food, clothes and plastic sheeting to keep out the cold until shattered windows can be repaired. About 400 people lost their homes, with 72 apartments completely destroyed and another 236 severely damaged, according to the Dnipro City Council. While the city had experienced power outages from attacks on infrastructure, the civilian deaths and damage has demoralized residents, who feel there is no longer a place to hide from the terrors of war. Story continues I wake up with a feeling of mourning, Valeria Murchych said while visiting the blast site to lay the flowers. In her pockets, she carried the sedatives she has taken with her everywhere since Saturday to help her cope, Murchych said. On Wednesday afternoon, mourners gathered in front of a small church not far from the destroyed building. Relatives, neighbors and friends came to say goodbye to a couple, Maksym and Nataliia Shvets, that died under the rubble. They are heroes of Ukraine because, in their peaceful life, they suffered for the whole country, Vitalii Lopushanskyi, an Orthodox priest, said during the memorial service. The couple's daughter, Anastasiia Shvets, 23, accepted hugs from dozens of people wanting to support her after the loss of both her parents. A photograph of Shvets that went viral, taken Saturday when she was trapped on an upper floor, showed her with her hands over her mouth, stunned. Her mother and father were in the kitchen of the family's apartment when the missile hit. There is nothing left of it now. I have no words, I have no emotions, I feel nothing but a great emptiness inside, she wrote on Instagram shortly after emergency workers rescued her from the smoldering ruins. Shvets wrote that she still was grieving the death of another loved one, a soldier, who died on the battlefield months ago. While Dnipro tried to recover, an emergency services helicopter crashed in the suburbs of Kyiv on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people. The victims included Ukraines interior minister and three children, and the crash compounded the grief from Saturday's deadly strike. Kotova had planned an intimate birthday gathering with her close friends and boyfriend. The couple fled the Luhansk province city of Sievierodonetsk the day Russia invaded Ukraine to take refuge in what they believed was the relative safety of Dnipro. Russia eventually seized Siervierodonetsk in June. We lived an ordinary life. It was a calm life, said Kryvulia, Kotovas boyfriend. He is looking after her in the hospital where she is recovering from her severe wounds, including her lost eye. Glass pierced the entire length of her body. She plans to make her way to Poland for plastic surgery and more treatment. Through her pain, Kotova has asked Kryvulia if he will leave her. But why should I leave her? Because her body is mutilated?" he said. "This wont make me love her any less. ___ Follow APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine Jens Stoltenberg Read also: NATOs Stoltenberg urges more advanced weapons for Ukraine This is a pivotal moment in the war and the need for a significant increase in support for Ukraine, Stoltenberg said in a comment to Reuters. When asked about the supply of heavy tanks to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said that consultations are continuing, and welcomed the UK's decision to transfer a squadron of Challenger-2 tanks to Kyiv. The secretary added that, in addition to tanks, Ukraine needs more air defense systems and armored vehicles, as well as ammunition, spare parts, and maintenance equipment to ensure the already transferred Western weapons continue to function. Read also: NATOs Stoltenberg doesnt rule out supplying tanks to Ukraine Putin has shown no sign of preparing for peace and therefore he must realize he cannot win on the battlefield, Stoltenberg concluded. On Jan. 20, defense ministers of pro-Ukraine international coalition will discuss Kyivs armament needs at the eight Ramstein meeting named after the U.S. Ramstein Air Force base in Germany, where the first such gathering took place in 2022. Read also: Ukraine aiming for promises of supplies of powerful weapons at next Ramstein meeting On Jan. 17, Reuters reported that at Davos, Germany's partners increased pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to allow the transfer of Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda was the first to announce the transfer of 14 Leopard tanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On Jan. 16, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed that the UK would transfer 14 Challenger-2 tanks to Ukraine. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska at WEF Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska holds a press conference after a helicopter crash claimed the lives of at least 14 people, including the country's interior minister on January 18, 2023, as she attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Credit - Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images In 2023, TIME will once again recognize 100 businesses making an extraordinary impact around the world. Applications for the TIME100 Most Influential Companies of 2023 are open, now through March 1, 2023. Apply here. Hello from the Magic Mountain of Davos, where the World Economic Forum is well underway. Well be bringing you the latest from this weeks gathering, including insights on the most-talked about issues, quote-worthy things said, and more. You can find our first installment here. You can also pick up a copy of TIMEs Davos special issue in the Congress Centre or read our stories here. The last time the WEF convened in May, it was three months into the Russian invasion of Ukrainea topic that, unsurprisingly, dominated the gathering. This year, as the war approaches its first anniversary, Ukraine remains very much top of mind. World leaders have seized on every opportunity to reiterate their support for Ukraine. We are in it for as long as it takes, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska on Tuesday, a refrain that has since been echoed by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, and Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom. Several members of the U.S. congressional delegation have been spotted wearing U.S. and Ukraine flag pins on their lapels. Ukraines visibility extends beyond the forums main Congress Centre. On the promenade, Davoss main thoroughfare, Ukraine House broadcasts images from the streets of war-torn Kherson. Russia House, previously a fixture on the promenade, is nowhere to be seen. Neither are any Russian officials. Story continues Though Ukraine remains central to the outward facing narrative at Davos and in conversations among the geopolitically-inclined, some Davos attendees told TIME that the same cannot be said for the forums more corporate-minded settings. When you get into meetings with corporate actors, it has not been my experience that Ukraine is the primary concern of the agenda, Amnesty International secretary general Agnes Callamard told TIME. There is a sense on the part of the corporate sector that theyve done what needed to be done for Ukraine. Many, though not all, companies have suspended their operations in Russia. Others, such as Microsoft and Google, are providing humanitarian aid to the country. But for the war to end sooner rather than later, Ukrainian delegates told TIME, they need more support from the private sectorand not just after the war ends. We really need the end and the victory to be this year, says Ukrainian lawmaker Alona Shkrum, noting that neither Ukraine nor its partners can afford for this war to go on indefinitely. We can win. We just need more weapons and more air defense. Businesses donating humanitarian aid is one thing; supplying funding for defensive weapons systems is quite another. But as some Ukrainians see it, donated laptops to support the education of Ukrainian children can only go so far in a country that barely has electricity, let alone schools that can be shielded from Russian shelling. It would be cheaper to buy the air defense systems and close the sky than to rebuild later, says Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandra Ustinova, who leads Ukraines temporary special commission on arms control. But understandably, she adds, businesses dont want to get into this. More from TIME The Ukrainian delegation are not the only ones raising the issue of the war at Davos. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the first representative from Belarus to attend WEF in three decades, has spent the past few days reminding attendees that the crises in her home country and Ukraine are intertwined. Belarus now is overlooked, we feel this, Tsikhanouskaya told TIME, noting that so long as Belarusian dictator and Kremlin ally Alexander Lukashenko remains in power, and so long as Minsk continues to host Russian soldiers on its territory, there will be a constant threat to our neighbors. Phrase of the day Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska has been quizzed about many things during her time in Davos, though perhaps nothing more so than the prospect of Ukraine fatigue. To be completely honest with you, I really have the fatigue of the questions about the fatigue, Zelenska told TIME during a press briefing on Wednesday. Based on her experience at Davos, she added, it seems like an exaggeration. And I think this may be a part of the information warfare because I think our enemy would be very happy if people were fatigued from Ukraine. Hot topic ChatGPT and the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) have been hot topics at this years WEF. Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella extolled the virtues of GPT technology in conversation with WEFs Klaus Schwab Wednesday. The company is reportedly mulling a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. But as a TIME investigation reveals, the workers in Kenya who helped make ChatGPT possible faced poor working conditions. The story of these workers demonstrates that for all its glamor and buzz, AI often relies on hidden human labor in the Global South that can be damaging and exploitative. These invisible workers remain on the margins even as their work contributes to billion-dollar industries. Peak moments German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to continue supporting Ukraine as long as necessary amid calls for Berlin to authorize the export of German-made Leopard tanks to Kyiv. When asked by a Ukrainian delegate about Berlins hesitancy, Scholz said such decisions would have to be taken in coordination with friends and partners. Scholz also announced Germanys ambition of attaining climate neutrality by 2045. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led a minute of silence in honor of the 14 people killed in Wednesdays helicopter crash in Kyiv, including Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Tragedies are outpacing life, Zelensky said afterwards. The time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill. (Zelenskys conversation with TIME Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal was canceled in light of the crash.) The promenade in Davos was lit up with rainbow colors at many venues on Wednesday evening in a show of support for the LGBTIQ+ community. Pride on the Promenade was launched by the Partnership for Global LGBTIQ+ Equalitya coalition of companies that is an initiative of Business for Social Responsibility, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the WEFand GLAAD. Speaking at the launch, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for more support and protection to human rights defenders and civil society, particularly in locations, and on issues, that currently receive little funding and attention. Visitors walk along the Rainbow Promenade in Davos. Courtesy of META Spotted at Davos Amnesty International secretary general Agnes Callamard catching up with David Nabarro, the World Health Organizations Special Envoy on COVID-19, in the forums bustling central lounge. Looking ahead South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will address the forum on Thursday at 5:30 a.m. ET. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will make a virtual address on a panel alongside former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink, and others. With reporting by Ayesha Javed Soldiers from the 71st Jaeger Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces have published a video of an attack on a hostile sabotage and reconnaissance group (SRG) on the Bakhmut front. Source: Video on Facebook, posted by 71st Jaeger Brigade Details: It is reported that the Russians tried to get closer to the positions of the Ukrainian troops near Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut, in broad daylight, but were immediately discovered by Jaegers "birds". Quote: "The drones targeted the enemy infantry, directing the fire of a brigade mortar battery and an attached Krab self-propelled howitzer. They worked together perfectly. Russians don't go down this path anymore." Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! Helicopter crash near Kyiv that killed interior minister, children Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, other Ukrainian officials, and three children are among the 18 people killed when an emergency services helicopter crashed Wednesday in the eastern Kyiv suburb of Brovary, Ukrainian authorities said. Monastyrskyi, his deputy Yevhen Yenin, and state secretary of the ministry Yurii Lubkovych were among the nine people killed aboard the helicopter, while nine others were killed and 29 injured on the ground, including 15 children. The helicopter crashed near a kindergarten, Kyiv Regional Governor Oleksii Kuleba said. Monastyrskyi, the minister in charge of Ukrainian police and other emergency services, is the most senior Ukrainian official killed during the 11 months of Russia's invasion, though there is no evidence yet that the crash was related to the war. "It was dark and foggy at the time of the crash and initial reports suggest the helicopter hit the nursery before crashing close to a residential building," BBC News reports. "For now, we are considering all possible versions of the helicopter crash accident," Ukraine's prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said on Telegram. Monastyrskyi, 42, "was a prominent member of President Volodymyr Zelensky's cabinet and played a key role in updating the public on casualties caused by Russian missile strikes," BBC News reports. One such Russian strike in Dnipro over the weekend killed at least 45 Ukrainian civliains in an apartment building. "Zelensky and other senior leaders have remained in Kyiv in a show of resistance, even when Russian forces fought their way to the edge of the capital in the early days of the war," The Wall Street Journal notes. There hasn't been any fighting reported near Kyiv for months. Monastyrskyi's death prompted 15 seconds of silence at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where first lady Olena Zelenska was seen visibly upset. You may also like See the 2000-year-old rune archeologists just discovered in Norway Hollywood is suddenly obsessed with actress Andrea Riseborough. Here's why. Why are people angry about the new monument honoring MLK and Coretta Scott King's love story? The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has reported that the Defence Forces have shot down a Ka-52 helicopter and a UAV belonging to the occupiers. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook; Air Force Command on Telegram Quote: "Today our defenders shot down an enemy Ka-52 helicopter and a Russian experimental Merlin-VR reconnaissance drone." Details: The Air Force has confirmed that the Ka-52 Alligator helicopter was destroyed at noon on 18 January on the eastern front by a unit from the Air Forces anti-aircraft missile forces. Background: The Ukrainian Armed Forces have destroyed 276 helicopters and 1,876 operational and tactical level reconnaissance drones since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. On 17 January, Ukrainian Armed Forces downed a Russian Su-25 fighter jet near Soledar, Donetsk Oblast. Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! Ukrainian military The latest update from the General Staff says that six missile attacks, three of them on civilian objects in Kupyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as 14 air strikes were conducted by Russian forces over the past day. There were also 95 attacks from multiple rocket launchers. Read also: Journalists speak to Russian servicemen involved in deadly Dnipro attack Ukrainian aviation carried out 12 strikes on concentrations of enemy troops and vehicles, as well as four strikes on anti-aircraft missile system positions. In addition, in the area of Soledar, anti-aircraft gunners destroyed an enemy Su-25 aircraft. The threat of air and missile strikes on civilian objects remains high throughout Ukraine, the military says. Read also: 14 houses damaged by Russian attack in Kramatorsk Photo Report The enemy is focusing its main efforts attacking on the Bakhmut section of the front. At the same time, the Russians are conducting offensive actions on the Avdiyivka section of front in the Donbas without success. Ukrainian army units repelled enemy attacks in the vicinities of Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast, and in Bakhmut, Maryinka and six other settlements in Donetsk Oblast. Read also: Russia shells Kherson Oblast over 100 times in the past 24 hours, killing and injuring civilians On the Volyn, Polissya, Siverskyi and Slobozhanskyi sections of the front in the north of Ukraine the situation remains stable. No enemy offensive groups were detected in the areas bordering Ukraine. Belarus continues to support the Russian armed aggression, and joint exercises by the aviation component of the regional grouping of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus continue at its airfields and in its airspace. At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are taking measures to prevent provocative actions or sabotage by the enemy, and air defenses are being strengthened. Read also: Ukrainian troops defending Bakhmut, Soledar to get everything they need, Zelenskyy says Story continues Over the past day, the enemy continued to carry out artillery and mortar attacks along the entire length of the front. The following localities were shelled: Mykolayivka, Chernihiv Oblast, four settlements in Sumy Oblast, and 16 settlements in Kharkiv Oblast. On the Kupyansk section of the front in Kharkiv oblast, the areas of five settlements, as well as Novoselivske, Stelmakhivka and Andriyivka in Luhansk Oblast, were subjected to enemy fire. Read also: Russians hit Sumy Oblast 144 times over the day On the Lyman section of the front, the enemy used all available ground fire means to attack areas of six settlements in Luhansk Oblast, as well as Terny and Yampolivka in Donetsk Oblast. Soledar, Bakhmut, and 13 other settlements in Donetsk Oblast were hit by enemy artillery on the Bakhmut section of the front. Avdiyivka and six other settlements in Donetsk Oblast came under enemy fire on the Avdiyivka section of front. On the Novopavlivka section of the front, the enemy fired artillery and mortars at Vuhledar, Mykilski Dachi and Prechystivka in Donetsk Oblast. On the Zaporizhzhya section, more than 10 localities suffered from artillery fire, including Vremivka and Novopil in Donetsk Oblast, and five settlements in Zaporizhzhya Oblast. Read also: One dead and several wounded after Russian attack in Zaporizhzhya Oblast OVA On the Kherson section, the occupying troops continue terrorizing civilians. In particular, Antonivka and Kherson came under mortar and artillery shelling, injuring civilians. Ukrainian army missile and artillery units struck two command posts, as well as five enemy troop concentrations, an ammunition depot, an electronic warfare station, and a radar station. Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine Ukrainian troops have arrived at Fort Sill, Okla., and started training on the Patriot missile system, the Pentagons top spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. Training has begun that training will last for several months and train upwards of 90 to 100 Ukrainians on use of the Patriot missile system, press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters. Fort Sill home to the Fires Center of Excellence and Patriot training for U.S. troops and forces from other countries a day earlier announced that the Ukrainian troops had arrived at the Army base. The same instructors who teach U.S., allied and partner nations will conduct the Ukrainian training, and these classes will not detract from the ongoing training missions at Fort Sill, according to a statement from the base. Ryder last week said that training on the advanced long-range air defense system is expected to take several months. Patriot instruction typically takes up to a year, but defense officials are aiming to speed up the timeline for the Ukrainians. We recognize that the longer those troops are off the line, theyre not actually engaged in combat, and so [were] trying to work with the Ukrainians to see what we can do to accelerate the training timeline, he said at the time. Ryder said there are no current plans to bring further groups of Ukrainian troops to the United States for such training, but the Pentagon is open to the idea if needed. The start of Patriot training in Oklahoma coincides with the kickoff of an expanded U.S. training program for Ukrainian troops in Germany. More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the combined arms instruction on Monday in the Grafenwoehr training area. The program is meant to better prepare Kyivs forces to conduct an offensive against Russia, or counter its attacks, according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, who visited the operation on Tuesday. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Like a lot of artists, the pandemic was a time of emotional and creative strife for Mick Fansler of The Curls. In one instance, he called it his misery, and the sentiment does not feel like an understatement. For Fansler, the months immediately before March 2020 were ones of immense growth and opportunity. After years of working in the citys independent music scene, 2020 initially felt like a propulsive shot of momentum. And then everything came to a stop. Yeah, it was really hard. I think similar to my friends and their projects the timing of everything We had a lot of stuff kind of coming up. We almost had a whole year kind of booked out for that year and a lot of bigger gigs, recalled Fansler. Advertisement In addition to many shows, the group also had a different manager at the time. Fansler described 2020 as a potential steppingstone year, one that could elevate The Curls to the sort of self-sufficient level of creativity and sustainability that many artists dream about in their careers. But all of that quickly fell apart. Advertisement So I spent a lot of time at home. I lost my job, too, he added. Still, it was not all for naught. During that extended cultural shutdown, Fansler learned how to self-record, passing files back and forth between himself and his bandmates. Eventually, as things began to open up again, so too did the opportunities for the group to reconnect in person. Rehearsals soon turned into a new record, Smothered & Covered, released in May 2022. However, the process of getting from musical isolation to a brand new record had a number of bumps along the way. The bands lineup changed significantly throughout the pandemic, with the group welcoming two new members, last February in order to go on a tour in promotion of Smothered & Covered. The lineup now is Fansler, Jen Marshall, Matt Puhr and Steve Plock. We played for the first time like two days before the first day of tour, which is a whole new approach for me because I feel like Id always been someone that was pretty prepared, said Fansler. Performance has also opened up the scope of what the group can do. It is easy for a Chicago band to stay a Chicago band. With a robust underground scene and numerous small and large performance venues, many artists are satisfied with largely staying local. But Fansler always had bigger aspirations for The Curls and he believes the many changes the group has undergone over the last three years have helped facilitate their expansion beyond the citys borders. Well, I think pre-pandemic (we were) still playing a lot of shows in Chicago. You know, when youre in one city all the time and you kind of identify as a local band. I was hoping to kind of start to view it more as being like a traveling band, Fansler said. And thats something that Im more focused on, breaking out of just playing in one place all the time, or only being a part of one community, as opposed to branching out a lot and being more broadly. Letting go of some of the control of the bands life has made a surprising and delightful new experience for The Curls. I feel like thats kind of the moment that marks coming out of the fog (of COVID) for me a little bit, explained Fansler. An abundance of newness from shows to band members also helped usher in a new perspective of how The Curls approach live music and performance in general. In turn, music-making has become a more improvisational, spontaneous and experimental process. Advertisement Life goes on, Fansler said. I think that was kind of my moment where I felt like things started to feel more positive again, more possible. 8 p.m. Jan. 20 at Golden Dagger, 2447 N. Halsted St.; tickets are $12-$15, ages 21+, at goldendagger.com Britt Julious is a freelance critic. Laroque cabernet franc from France is another fantastic value wine priced at $11.99. My first sip of Laroque cabernet franc from France had me flabbergasted. Jann Filion, the wine steward at the Market District in Cuyahoga Falls, suggested I give this $11.99 bottle a try. And Im sure glad she did. Cabernet franc is the parent grape of cabernet sauvignon. It's mainly used as a blending grape with other Bordeaux varietals such as cabernet sauvignon, syrah and merlot. However, Laroque, which means the rock, is 100% cabernet franc. The grapes come from high-altitude vineyards in Southern France that date back to the sixth century. The vines are kissed by gentle winds from the Mediterranean Sea. Phil Your Glass:2020 Guarda Rios red blend is a $9.99 beauty from Portugal More:Fuerza from Spain is another budget-friendly wine at $9.99 | Phil Your Glass The winery suggested pairing this bottle with Mediterranean cuisine, pasta, lamb, chicken, pizza and hamburgers. Nothing scary about that. I poured a glass and had a few crackers with some of DeVitis famous cheese salad (which can also be purchased at Beaus Market). Next I spread goat cheese on a few black peppercorn crackers. I couldnt resist a couple of feta-stuffed olives from Kriegers. Lots of wow factor going on with these three cheese pairings. This wine was so good on its own, but a carryout order of grilled chicken wings from Beaus on the River made this a heavenly pairing. The blueberry nuances of the wine were oh-so good with the charred flavor of the meat and the blue cheese dipping sauce. This rock-solid wine even complemented the tangy wing sauce. Buy this wine at Kriegers Market, Beaus Market in Copley, Market District in Cuyahoga Falls, Cornerstone Market in Munroe Falls, Corkscrew Johnnys in Richfield, Silver Spirits in the Merriman Valley, Western Reserve Wines in Solon, and Giant Eagle Washington Square in North Canton Send me an email at philyourglass@gmail.com with any wine questions and follow me on Instagram @pmasturzo_philyourglass. Phil Your Glass:Escape holiday hustle and bustle at Cellar 59 Wine Bar & Shop in Stow This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Laroque cabernet franc is a great value wine for under $12 CHICAGO After nine months of contract negotiations, members of the union representing University of Illinois at Chicago faculty had not hit a deal with the administration and instead moved to their first day of a strike Tuesday afternoon. Hundreds of faculty, and students who support them, gathered at the universitys East Campus Quad to picket and host a rally where they were joined by several officials, including Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and state Rep. Lakesia Collins, a Democrat from Chicago. Priorities for the UIC United Faculty union include fair pay raises for tenure and nontenure-track faculty that match inflation, job security and expanded mental health support for students. Compensation is our biggest issue that were really able to legally strike over since it directly affects us ... but while thats extremely important, something that is incredibly important that emerged during COVID, and is all that anyone talks about during our member meetings, is student mental health and wellness, said Charitianne Williams, the unions communications chair and an English professor at the school. The union has specifically asked for access to free evaluations for learning disabilities, a benefit that students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign already receive, and free psychological and neuropsychological testing to address mental health. The union claims that the responsibility has often fallen on the facultys workload. Over the last two years, Williams said that many students approach their professors for emotional and mental health support aside from academic support. It should be up to a trained professional to tell me how to support my students, instead of me, an untrained professional, depending on my intuition on how to help them, she said. On Monday, the UIC administration announced that it committed $4.47 million over the next six years to address student mental health and well-being. Story continues The funding will allow for increased staffing for the counseling center including licensed therapists, psychiatrists and salary enhancements to recruit and retain staff, according to an announcement from the university. The strategy will include the creation of a social work trainee field unit, opening of a wellness drop-in space on the west side of campus and more. But Williams said the recently announced strategy is not enough because the funds can run out and so can the universitys commitment. Its not very much money to spread over the next six years, Williams said. And its just a plan, its not even really a promise. Williams said she has been informing students of the negotiations. Theyre all very supportive, she said. A handful of students attended the rally while others watched as their professors picketed on the quad instead of carrying out lesson plans in the classrooms. Others, however, went on with their normal day. Graduate students who teach classes, adjunct professors and other faculty members who are not part of the union are required to continue teaching. Anna Regnerus, a third-year student at UIC, attended the rally with friends. Most of her classes had been canceled, she said. I definitely support, Regnerus said. Her father is an alum of the university and the reason she chose UIC is because of the caliber of its professors, she said. Instead of seeing her professors during her typical Tuesday classes, Charleigh Hicks watched as they picketed in the quad. Its sad that they have to get to this point because it is not only taking them from what they love to do, but it takes students out of classes, Hicks said. By Tuesday evening, the union had not gotten a response from the administration, said Williams, but a bargaining session was expected to resume Wednesday. Faculty members are set to picket every day this week from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. until a tentative contract agreement is reached. Javier Reyes, interim chancellor of the university, informed the student body of the strike and said during the strike, the university is committed to continuing normal operations to the fullest extent possible. Reyes added that based on the shared principles between all involved, the university remains optimistic that a fair and beneficial bargaining agreement can be achieved. Professors who are members of the UIC United Faculty union had been working without a contract since August and in November 77% of their nearly 900 members voted in support of the strike. Its been very frustrating for all that we do and all that we want to continue doing, said Paul Preissner, an architecture professor since 2006. But its great to see so much support. The last time the union went on strike was in 2014 when members went on a two-day work stoppage before settling. And in 2019, the union reached a deal with the administration just a day before members had planned a work stoppage. Members of the union include tenured, tenure-track and nontenure-track faculty with 51% time or more, including visiting faculty. The work stoppage under the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act allows the members to picket and demonstrate peacefully and they can choose to work or to strike. Those who choose to work and not strike will continue to be paid, but those who choose to strike will not be paid during the demonstrations. Students are encouraged to check their online dashboards and emails for the status of specific classes and labs. We will be out here until the contract is settled, the things that were asking for are things that we need. Its not a frivolous request, Williams said. We will take care of our students to the best of our ability while we are out here. On 16 January, Americans will honour the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr, an activist, minister, and prominent leader in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr Day, otherwise known as MLK day, celebrates the birthday of the late activist, who was born in 1929. The federal holiday in Kings honour, which takes place on the third Monday of every January, began shortly after his assassination in 1968, with President Ronald Reagan signing the holiday into law in 1983. The federal holiday, which marks one of just three dedicated to specific individuals, will see people around the country remember the important lessons taught by the late civil rights leader. First introduced by Congress in 1885 when it was decided that federal employees should have certain days off from work, the list of US federal holidays is made up of 11 days of significance that Americans recognise - and celebrate. To ensure that these holidays are observed, certain guidelines have been put in place, with federal holidays that fall on a Saturday observed by federal employees on the previous Friday, while holidays that fall on Sunday are observed the following Monday. On these 11 days, all non-essential federal offices are closed, while banks, post offices and schools may also be closed. However, that doesnt mean that all Americans will receive a day off from work, as employees in the private sector may or may not get the day off, depending on their employer. From Martin Luther King Jr to Thanksgiving, these are the dates of the 2023 federal holidays. 2023 federal holidays: New Years Day: Sunday, January 1 (Observed Monday, January 2) Martin Luther King Jr Day: Monday, January 16 Presidents Day: Monday, February 20 Memorial Day: Monday, May 29 Juneteenth: Friday, June 16 Independence Day: Tuesday, July 4 Labor Day: Monday, September 4 Indigenous Peoples Day (also observed as Columbus Day): Monday, October 9 Veterans Day: Saturday, November 11 (Observed Friday, November 10) Story continues Thanksgiving: Thursday, November 23 Christmas: Monday, December 25 Other important days to note: Valentines Day: Tuesday, February 14 St Patricks Day: Friday, March 17 Passover: Thursday, April 6 Good Friday: Friday, April 7 Easter: Sunday, April 9 Mothers Day: Sunday, May 14 Fathers Day: Sunday, June 18 Your international money transfers might not be as discreet as you think. Senator Ron Wyden and The Wall Street Journal have learned that US law enforcement can access details of money transfers without a warrant through an obscure surveillance program the Arizona attorney general's office created in 2014. A database stored at a nonprofit, the Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC), provides full names and amounts for larger transfers (above $500) sent between the US, Mexico and 22 other regions through services like Western Union, MoneyGram and Viamericas. The program covers data for numerous Caribbean and Latin American countries in addition to Canada, China, France, Malaysia, Spain, Thailand, Ukraine and the US Virgin Islands. Some domestic transfers also enter the data set. The program exists to help agencies collect evidence of fraud and money laundering, as transfer services aren't required to know customers like banks. This has led to busts for drug cartels and other criminals, TRAC director Rich Leber explained to The Journal. The $500 threshold exists to prevent the system from collecting most data for immigrants remitting money to family in their home countries. Money transfer apps like Apple Cash, Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Zelle haven't provided data to TRAC, Wyden says. You need to be a member of law enforcement with an active government email account to use the database, which is available through a publicly visible web portal. Leber told The Journal that there haven't been any known breaches or instances of law enforcement misuse. However, Wyden noted that the surveillance program included more states and countries than previously mentioned in briefings. There have also been subpoenas for bulk money transfer data from Homeland Security Investigations (which withdrew its request after Wyden's inquiry), the DEA and the FBI. The concern, of course, is that officials can obtain sensitive transaction details without court oversight or customers' knowledge. An unscrupulous officer could secretly track large transfers. Wyden adds that the people in the database are more likely to be immigrants, minorities and low-income residents who don't have bank accounts and already have fewer privacy protectoins. The American Civil Liberties Union also asserts that the subpoenas used to obtain this data violate federal law. Arizona issued at least 140 of these subpoenas between 2014 and 2021. The Arizona attorney general's office hasn't responded to requests for comment. However, Wyden is already drafting legislation that would bolster privacy for money transfer services and effectively neuter the database. The ACLU, meanwhile, is unequivocal it says the surveillance system "must be shut down." If nothing else, the findings could draw attention to privacy issues surrounding money transfers. NEW YORK (AP) Prosecutors are dropping charges against a New York City police officer and military veteran who was accused of helping the Chinese government keep tabs on Tibetans in the United States, a case that U.S. authorities once publicized as an insider threat. A court date is scheduled Thursday in Brooklyn after federal prosecutors told a judge they want to dismiss their case against Baimadajie Angwang. As a result of our continued investigation, the government obtained additional information bearing on the charges, prosecutors from the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office and the Department of Justice headquarters said in a court filing Friday. The prosecutors said they assessed the evidence as a whole in light of that information and concluded they wanted to drop the case in the interests of justice. The Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office declined to elaborate Monday. A message was sent to Angwang's attorney, who had argued in court papers that his client did nothing more than ingratiate himself with Chinese consulate officials in New York in hopes of getting a visa to visit his relatives. A message also was sent to the Chinese consulate. Beijing has called the case pure fabrication meant to smear its diplomats in the United States. Prosecutors never alleged that Angwang compromised national security or New York Police Department operations. Still, when authorities unveiled the case in 2020, the head of the FBIs New York office termed Angwang the definition of an insider threat. He was charged with offenses that include acting as an agent of a foreign government without proper notice. An ethnic Tibetan, Angwang sought asylum in the U.S. as a youth, saying he had been arrested and beaten by Chinese authorities because of his background. China says Tibet has historically been part of its territory since the mid-13th century, and China's ruling Communist Party has governed the Himalayan region since 1951. But many Tibetans say that they were effectively independent for most of their history, and that Beijing wants to exploit their resource-rich region while crushing their cultural identity. Story continues After gaining asylum, Angwang became a Marine and extended his contract to serve in Afghanistan from July 2013 to Feb 2014 before being honorably discharged, lawyer John Carman wrote in court papers. Angwang went on to join the Army Reserve and the NYPD, earning a Cop of the Month award in his Queens precinct in September 2018, according to the court filing. Meanwhile, he was in close touch with a couple of officials at the Chinese Consulate. U.S. authorities, at least initially, characterized him as an intelligence asset reporting on the activities of ethnic Tibetans in New York and offering Chinese consular officials an in with the NYPD. In a November 2018 conversation with one of the diplomats, Angwang enthused about the official's career prospects and urged the diplomat to let them know you have recruited one in the police department, according to a court complaint. Angwang later invited the diplomat to an NYPD Asian American officers' group banquet, saying it would mean you have extended your reach into the police department. At other points, Angwang proposed that the two visit a Tibetan community center in Queens; suggested that the consular official develop connections with certain local Tibetan groups and a political aspirant of Tibetan descent; and warned that some Tibetan American political staffers might promote anti-Chinese messages, according to the complaint, which doesnt name either of the Chinese officials. Angwangs attorney countered that these conversations weren't espionage just obsequious and deferential posturing toward visa gatekeepers. This behavior was nothing more than what is typical of any person confronted with the dictatorial power of a low-level bureaucrat, Carman wrote in a February 2022 court filing. The simple fact is that Mr. Angwang did virtually nothing to help the Chinese consulate officials. He said that Angwang didn't offer military or police secrets or any information that could reasonably be described as intelligence and that the invitations he extended were hardly exclusive. The Tibetan community center was well publicized, and the banquet regularly draws over 1,600 attendees, including high-ranking Chinese diplomats, the attorney wrote. Regardless, the International Campaign for Tibet, a U.S.-based advocacy group, said the expected dismissal of the Angwang case does not mean that the Chinese government is not undertaking activities to monitor Tibetans in the diaspora. Angwang never got a visa from the officials, the attorney said. He is currently suspended, with pay, from the NYPD, the department said. Information on his status with the Army Reserve wasn't immediately available. Two Illinois paramedics face first-degree murder charges, having been accused of strapping a patient facedown on a stretcher while taking him to a hospital last month. Illinois authorities filed the charges against Peggy Finley and Peter Cadigan on Jan. 9, nearly a month after 35-year-old Earl Moore died. Under Illinois law, a first-degree murder charge can be filed when a defendant knows that such acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm. Advertisement Sangamon County States Attorney Dan Wright announced the charges at a Jan. 10 press conference after an autopsy. The autopsy report listed Moores cause of death as homicide, caused by compressional and positional asphyxia as he lay facedown on the paramedic stretcher with straps tightened across his back. If convicted, Finley and Cadigan could face between 20 and 60 years in prison. Advertisement They remained in the Sangamon County jail on Tuesday and were being held on a $1 million bond each. A message left Tuesday at their attorneys office was not immediately returned. They are next due in court on Thursday. After announcing the charges, authorities released body camera footage from three Springfield police officers showing Moores encounter with the officers and the paramedics. Wright said Moores family and community groups were consulted before the footage was released. The Springfield police department first responded to Moores home around 2 a.m. on Dec. 18. The police footage shows that a woman inside the home told one of the officers that Moore was in withdrawal from alcohol and hallucinating. The video shows Moore lying on a bed, occasionally speaking incoherently or gasping. At one point he rolls onto the floor. Wright said the officers felt Moore was in medical distress and called paramedics. When Finley arrives, she comes into the bedroom where Moore is still on the floor. Soon after, she yells at him to sit up and asks repeatedly for his birth date. Afternoon Briefing Daily Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > Sit up, she said. You know what, I am not playing. Sit up. Quit acting stupid. Sit up. Sit up now. I am not playing with you tonight. Youre gonna have to walk cause we aint carrying you, she adds as police tell Moore he has to walk outside to get to the hospital. Police then lift Moore to his feet between two officers and slowly move him toward the door. Outside the home, police lift him onto the stretcher. The second paramedic waiting outside the house forcefully puts Moore onto his stomach and the two paramedics are shown tightly strapping Moore to the stretcher in that position. Advertisement According to a statement from Springfield police, the department later learned that Moore died after arriving at the hospital and Chief Ken Scarlette asked the Illinois State Police to conduct an independent investigation of Moores death. The officers, who are not emergency medical professionals, are not trained nor equipped to provide the necessary medical treatment or to transport patients in this type of situation, Scarlette said in a statement. The officers turned over care of the patient to the licensed, medical professionals at the scene in accordance with Springfield Police Department policy. Douglas Wolfberg, a founding partner of Page, Wolfberg & Wirth a law firm that concentrates on representing emergency medical services, said its immensely rare for a provider to face a murder or homicide charge in connection with patient care and its difficult for prosecutors to make a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. Wolfberg said he was extremely troubled by the video and believes the pair at least provided wholly deficient care from when Finley first interacted with Moore to when the paramedics strapped their patient in the prone position. EMS is a profession of highly trained specialists who provide emergency care in the most difficult and stressful of circumstances and give their best, Wolfberg said. This was a very unfortunate and tragic example of providers who did not give their best. MEXICO CITY Mariantonela Orellana spent nine days in the dangerous Darien Gap jungle in the Colombia-Panama border, and she described her nightmarish ordeal. She crossed four rivers and nearly drowned; had a nervous breakdown, she said, because for hours she couldn't find one of her children; saw corpses of other migrants rotting on the trails; and as if that weren't enough, had to scare away some jaguars that began to stalk their makeshift camp in the thick jungle. "You have to mentally prepare yourself and really want to forge ahead, because its very difficult to continue," said Orellana, 35, who left the economic and political turmoil of her home country, Venezuela, in 2019. She first lived in Ecuador before embarking north toward the U.S. "I'm here because of my daughters who told me, 'Mom, you have to continue.' That was what motivated me, but we went through hell, and we still havent arrived." The most recent official data from the International Organization for Migration states that nearly 250,000 migrants crossed the dangerous Darien jungle in 2022, a historic figure that far exceeds the 133,726 people who crossed in 2021 and the 8,594 in 2020. Venezuelans like Orellana have become a constant presence in various capitals of the continent, as is the case in Mexico City, where public and private shelter operators are overwhelmed and many migrants sleep on the street as was the case in front of the Venezuelan Embassy in the neighborhood of Polanco. Due to this, the number of people arriving at the shelters greatly exceeds their capacities, like at Cafemin, where a staff of 15 to 20 people attends to the needs of 500 migrants, although its actual capacity is only 80 to 100 people. Personas migrantes de Venezuela en las instalaciones de Cafemin, Ciudad de Mexico, el 4 de diciembre de 2022. (Albinson Linares) Though the final destination for many Venezuelan migrants is the U.S., many have been turned away at the U.S. border through Title 42, the Covid-era measure that is still in place. Now back in Mexico, migrants wrestle with whether to try to stay in Mexico, keep trying to seek asylum in the U.S. or return to Venezuela. Story continues Many Venezuelans who made that long itinerary from South America to the United States and who were expelled to Mexico were left without resources because they had to pay the coyotes, and the corrupt authorities of some countries, so they decide to request protection here, Andres Ramirez Silva, general coordinator of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, (Comar), told Noticias Telemundo. 'The American dream became a nightmare' Orellana is part of a group of Venezuelans who are immersing themselves in a collective catharsis to help heal memories of their painful journey through borders and thousands of miles. They're participating in a production of William Shakespeares The Tempest, adapted by the Non Gratos theater company in Mexico City, which usually works with migrants and people who are displaced. This makes me able to continue, Orellana said. When I return to the shelter, I remember everything again. According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 150,000 Venezuelans entered U.S. territory through Mexico during the last fiscal year. According to Department of Homeland Security data, the flow of Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. increased by almost four times compared to the year prior. Mexico was the worlds third most popular destination for asylum-seekers in 2021, after the U.S. and Germany, according to the United Nations. Almost 13,000 Venezuelans requested political asylum in Mexico in the first 11 months of 2022, 39% more than the total for the prior two years. Mexican authorities approved 61% of asylum applications from January to November, including at least 90% of approvals for Hondurans and Venezuelans. By contrast, the U.S. authorization rate was 46% in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. "The American dream became a nightmare for us, but we still want it," said Angela Carolina Carvajal, a 41-year-old Venezuelan migrant who's participating in the play. She said she felt she was "treated like garbage" in the U.S. once she crossed the border before being expelled, but she said she's too afraid in Mexico and she was almost kidnapped. "Im going to try to go up again, although we dont have a sponsor or anyone to help us there, but God is great. And I want my children to have a better future, a better education and good food." Angela Carolina Carvajal, migrante venezolana, en el Colegio de San Ildefonso, en Ciudad de Mexico. (Albinson Linares) The bitter return to the homeland "I was crossing a large avenue, and I was carrying my child; I was very tired from walking all day, without resting, and a motorcycle ran over us and I was knocked unconscious, which is why I have a fracture in my right leg," said Rosailys Lugo, 23, who was sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the Venezuelan Embassy in mid-December. "My son Luciano was in intensive care his brain was inflamed." Because of everything that happened to us, we decided to return to Venezuela, and we're going to stay on the streets until we can take the government's flights back to my country, she said as she watched her son, who was sleeping wrapped in blankets on the cold concrete. It's estimated that a total of 2,060 migrants have returned to Venezuela as of December through the Plan Vuelta a la Patria (Back to the Homeland), a Venezuelan government program to facilitate the return of citizens to the country. Johan Torres was waiting for a flight to return to Venezuela. Sitting on the shiny floor of Mexico's new Felipe Angeles International Airport in November, he said there were two images of his treacherous journey north that he couldn't get out of his head. The first was how a person who resisted a robbery in Mexico was killed with a machete; the other happened in the jungle, when he saw a man leave behind his young daughter, waist-deep in mud. He left her there, lying in the mud and crying. And I couldnt do anything because I was dying of exhaustion. But I cant forget that, he said with tears in his eyes. According to the Venezuelan government, more than 30,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country in the last four years. However, that figure pales in comparison to the more than 7.1 million Venezuelans who have left the country in recent years, according to United Nations data. On the same day that Torres was waiting for his flight, Jefferson Ontiveros, 25, also wanted to take a return flight. I left Venezuela because the discrimination against the LGBT community is terrible; we are trampled on and attacked every day. We came looking for that dream of freedom to be able to have a future, but the circumstances were not favorable, he said. I leave with a wounded heart from all the abuses, the bribes I had to pay on the trip and the difficulties. Jefferson Ontiveros, migrante venezolano, en el Aeropuerto Internacional Felipe Angeles. (Albinson Linares) By mid-December, Torres was already in Maturin, his hometown. He said that as soon as he got to his house, he fell into a state of exhaustion and he slept for five days. He said he still had nightmares of immigration officials speaking in English and Spanish, and it startles him. I hope to arrange my papers again and make plans, because, if given the opportunity, Ill go again. I have to get a good job, and here that is almost impossible, Torres said. By the end of December, Ontiveros had gone to Venezuela, but he only stayed a few days, catching up with his relatives before leaving again, this time to Lima, Peru. He said jobs, transportation and other things were just too hard in Venezuela. In Caracas, "there are no opportunities." 'Justice came into my life' Dec. 20 was a great day for Angel Sucre. He got up early and tried to focus on his chores, but he kept looking at his phone. Finally, he received the call he had been waiting on for months: He heard from U.S. authorities that he had received asylum. I still cant believe it. It was like my gift from baby Jesus, he said in late December from his home in Kansas City, Missouri. However, Sucre's case is an exception; data from Syracuse University's TRAC program shows that about 1.6 million asylum applications are pending in U.S. immigration courts and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the largest number ever recorded. I arrived before the whole wave this year and I was a political prisoner in Venezuela, so my case is different. The truth is that after all the persecution I suffered in my country, justice came into my life, he said. Sucre has become an involuntary guide for dozens of Venezuelans who have taken to the roads of South America and are trying to cross into the U.S., despite tougher asylum policies that were recently implemented. As of Oct. 12, Venezuelan applicants must possess a valid passport, have a financial sponsor within the United States, finance their own travel, pass a review, and not have been expelled from the U.S. in the last five years. In addition, they must not cross the borders of Panama, Mexico or into the U.S. without authorization. This program has a limit of 24,000 people. The main thing is that people do not lose faith and that they continue fighting for their goals, for their dreams and for their peace of mind. I know that many people must feel very bad right now, but they have to try to comply with everything legally, said Sucre. Meanwhile, Non Gratos continues to work in Mexico City with migrants. The staging of "The Tempest" allows those who have been displaced to immerse themselves in the spells of the sorcerer Prospero and his island while they re-create a work that Shakespeare wrote in 1611. Personas migrantes y personal de la compania teatral Non Gratos, en el Colegio de San Indefonso, Ciudad de Mexico, el 15 de diciembre de 2022. (Albinson Linares) "The arts allows you to build a community with resilience and self-esteem," said theater director Marco Guagnelli. "They also give many tools to be able to connect with emotions and memories that are often contained and don't have the possibility of finding a space where they can be expressed." For Carvajal, the momentary oblivion provided by the play is a blessing. She said it allows her to continue dreaming of a good future for her family. "Life changes us because we have all suffered and all have different stories. It's as if we forget the world and we're only here. We laugh, play and cry, but it is very beautiful," she said. "Thank God this reminds me that I am alive." An earlier version of this story was first published in Noticias Telemundo. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 10% in the last quarter. But that doesn't help the fact that the three year return is less impressive. After all, the share price is down 32% in the last three years, significantly under-performing the market. 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 Verizon Communications While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price. Although the share price is down over three years, Verizon Communications actually managed to grow EPS by 5.7% per year in that time. Given the share price reaction, one might suspect that EPS is not a good guide to the business performance during the period (perhaps due to a one-off loss or gain). Alternatively, growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past. Since the change in EPS doesn't seem to correlate with the change in share price, it's worth taking a look at other metrics. Given the healthiness of the dividend payments, we doubt that they've concerned the market. Verizon Communications has maintained its top line over three years, so we doubt that has shareholders worried. A closer look at revenue and profit trends might yield insights. The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers). We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. If you are thinking of buying or selling Verizon Communications stock, you should check out this free report showing analyst profit forecasts. Story continues What About Dividends? When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Verizon Communications' TSR for the last 3 years was -22%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence! A Different Perspective While the broader market lost about 13% in the twelve months, Verizon Communications shareholders did even worse, losing 19% (even including dividends). However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case there's a good opportunity. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 1.0% per year over five years. 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. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Verizon Communications better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Verizon Communications . There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying. 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. Join A Paid User Research Session Youll receive a US$30 Amazon Gift card for 1 hour of your time while helping us build better investing tools for the individual investors like yourself. Sign up here The death of an Orange County public defender at a Baja California resort last week, labeled an "unfortunate accident" by Mexican authorities, has raised several unanswered questions with little to no investigation by local police, the man's family said in a statement. Elliot Blair, 33, died Saturday in Rosarito while staying at the Las Rocas Resort and Spa with his wife, Kimberly Williams, to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, according to a statement from his family. The narrative presented by Mexican authorities leaves too many unanswered questions, Blair's and Williams' families said in a joint statement, adding that they would hire a private investigation firm and an independent forensic pathologist to conduct a medical examination and toxicology analysis. "The family, which has extensive legal training in criminal law, wholeheartedly believes based on their initial investigation that Elliot was the victim of a brutal crime," the statement said. Mexican authorities told the Orange County Register that Blair fell from "a third-story floor" and that his death was accidental. The Spanish-language publication Noticias BC reported that a man of Blair's description fell from a fourth-floor hotel room. But Blair's family argues the incident occurred in an open-air walkway outside his room's front door. He was found wearing his underwear, his sleeping T-shirt and socks, according to a family statement. Blair and Williams vacationed at the Rosarito resort multiple times over the last five years and stayed in the third-floor room, the family said. Elliot Blair, an Orange County public defender, died Saturday. He was 33. Mexican authorities also told the Register that they are in contact with the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI, which are sharing information with Blairs family. But his family said no one from the Rosarito Beach Police Department or any other Mexican officials have directly contacted the family, according to the statement. Attempts to reach the Baja California attorney generals office on Tuesday were not successful. Story continues Blair had been with the public defenders office since 2017, the year he passed the bar exam, and handled felony cases out of the Santa Ana office. "Elliot was a brilliant attorney with a bright future," the family said. "Elliot's smile was radiant and warmed the hearts of every person he came in contact with. Elliot had an innate ability to connect with people from all walks of life. Elliot was a loving husband, son and brother. Elliot's tragic, untimely, and suspicious death has left his family and community with a huge hole in their hearts that will never be repaired." Blair's and Williams' families have only been in touch with a liaison through the coroner's office who contacted them Sunday afternoon. The liaison said that based on the medical examiner's office, Blair died from severe head trauma, but a toxicology report has not yet been completed. The case was forwarded to the district attorney's office for a possible homicide investigation, according to the statement. Blair's family said that Mexican authorities have suggested that Blair's body be cremated. A funeral home liaison also made the same suggestion, but Blair's family insists that his body be preserved so it can conduct a thorough, independent investigation. While Blair's family has not spoken to Mexican authorities, it read in a news report that quoted officials who claimed that Blair's death was an "unfortunate accident," but the officials still have not spoken to the family. Williams has been told multiple versions of what happened to Blair. Their families argue that his body was not found underneath the couple's room's balcony or any other balcony at the resort, and that Blair was familiar with the layout at the resort and was fluent in Spanish. Blair's family did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Times staff writer Alexandra E. Petri contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Police seized more than a dozen items during a court-approved search of homicide suspect Bryan Kohbergers apartment in Pullman, Washington, on Dec. 30, including a black rubber glove, a vacuum dust container and red-stained bedding, according to a pair of search warrants unsealed Tuesday. Law enforcement filed for the search warrants at Kohbergers Washington State University housing and on-campus office, receiving a judges approval on Dec. 29. Police executed the warrants the next day in their investigation into the Nov. 13 deaths of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. From Kohbergers apartment, police sought blood (or items with blood, bodily fluids or skin cells), knives, knife sheaths and sales receipts for either and possible photos of the U of I victims and the King Road house in Moscow where they were stabbed to death, according to the records, which were obtained by the Idaho Statesman. The King Road residence contained a significant amount of blood from the victims including splatter and castoff (blood stain pattern resulting from blood drops released from an object due to its motion), which, based on my training, makes it likely that this evidence was transferred to Kohbergers person, clothing, or shoes, Moscow Police Sgt. Dustin Blaker, a 22-year veteran of the department, wrote in a statement seeking the warrants. It is likely that he still had blood or other trace evidence on his person/clothes/shoes, including skin cells or hair from the victims or Goncalves dog, he added. Also seized from Kohbergers apartment were a desktop computer tower; an Amazon Fire TV Stick cord/plug; a Walmart sales receipt and two others for Marshalls department store; and 13 possible hair strands one possibly from an animal. The bedding police took included top and bottom of mattress cover packaged separately both labeled C multiple stains (one tested) and two cuttings from a reddish/brown stain on an uncased pillow, with the larger stain also tested. A collection of a dark red spot was seized as well, without testing, the records showed. Story continues Moscow homicides suspect Bryan Kohbergers student housing complex, in Pullman, Washington, on Jan. 15, 2023. In addition, police were looking for dark clothes, including shirts, pants, masks and shoes with a diamond-pattern sole. In a probable cause affidavit unsealed on Jan. 5, investigators reported finding a latent shoe print with a diamond-shaped patter, similar to that of a Vans-type shoe. No such items were located, according to the unsealed records. These murders appear to have been planned, rather than a crime in a moment of conflict, Blaker wrote. I believe it likely that Kohberger planned his actions ahead of time. The plans may have included a review of other murders or violent assaults/stabbings and/or cutting of people, as well as how to avoid detection after the commission of such crimes. Investigators sought digital devices including computers and cellphones, electronic data stored on memory drives, modems and routers, and GPS navigation tools. The one computer tower was seized, records showed. Mentioned specifically in the search warrant for Kohbergers office, where he was a criminal justice and criminology Ph.D. student, police sought any photos of the victims, electronic records related to the King Road home, internet search history, and social media accounts and passwords, the records showed. At the ground-level office in Wilson-Short Hall he shared with two other department Ph.D. students, no items were seized, according to the records. Whitman County Judge Gary Libey signed and sealed the warrants on Dec. 29 the night before Kohberger was arrested at his familys home in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, while visiting them for winter break. Kohberger, 28, remains in custody without bond at the Latah County Jail and awaits a scheduled preliminary hearing on June 26. Libey was not expected to review the seal until March 1. He had cited threats to the public and law enforcement, and maintaining the integrity of the investigation, as reasons for the court seal. On Tuesday, Whitman County Prosecutor Denis Tracy requested the records be unsealed. These warrants and associated applications were sealed, due to the sensitive nature of the investigation at that time, Tracy wrote in his Tuesday filing. Since then, an extensive probable cause affidavit has been unsealed in Latah County, Idaho, which has alleviated much of the need for that sealing here in Washington. A nondissemination order, issued by Latah County Judge Megan Marshall on Jan. 3, remains in effect in the case. It bars law enforcement and attorneys from making statements outside of submitted court records. The New York Times was first to report about the unsealed warrants Wednesday, followed by KREM2 TV in Spokane. By Mike Scarcella (Reuters) - Washington state's highest court on Tuesday cleared the way for Albertsons Companies Inc to pay a $4 billion dividend ahead of the grocer's proposed deal with rival Kroger Co, as the justices declined to take up a claim that the payout would harm industry competition. The Washington Supreme Court made the decision after a lower court judge refused last month to issue a preliminary injunction against the dividend. The Washington attorney general's office in November sued to block the dividend, arguing that it would weaken Albertsons before Kroger's $25 billion purchase. Kroger is the country's largest supermarket chain, and Albertsons is the second largest. The merger proposal will be reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission, which polices merger and acquisition activity for compliance with antitrust law. The decision was a rare win for the grocer, which has faced blowback for its merger proposal from unions and some Democratic members of the U.S. Congress. An Albertsons spokesperson did not immediately comment on the court's order, but the company has said it would move to make the dividend payment as soon as possible. In a statement, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said his office was "surprised and disappointed the Supreme Court decided not to hear this case." "I want to be clear: This merger is far from a done deal," Ferguson added. "My team and I will be conducting a thorough review." Previous court orders in Washington state had barred Albertsons from making the dividend, which it has defended as "a private business decision supported by Albertsons' strong financial performance." Lawyers for Albertsons have said the decision to return capital to shareholders was "unilateral and independent" of the company's proposed merger with Kroger. A separate legal challenge to the dividend is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But no order in the case bars Albertsons from moving ahead with the payout. Story continues Chief executives of the two grocers in November defended the $25 billion proposed tie-up at a hearing before a U.S. congressional committee. Democrat U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a leading voice on antitrust matters, said at the hearing that she and others were concerned the merger would harm competition and lead to higher costs for consumers. (Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Maryland; Editing by Leslie Adler) Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren (photo:joinbuu.com) Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren was inaugurated on Tuesday, Jan. 10. At 36, Nygren is the youngest person ever elected President of the Navajo Nation. He joined Native News Online on last weeks Native Bidaske (Spotlight). He was interviewed by Levi Rickert, editor of Native News Online. Nygren, who grew up in humble beginnings on the Navajo Indian Reservation, overcame many obstacles on his way to becoming the Navajo Nation president. He lived in a 10-foot travel trailer with no electricity and no running water. I grew up with no electricity, no running water, being on a bus for two hours just to get to school," Nygren told Rickert. "And so those are some of the conditions I grew up with having a mom that struggled with alcoholism, and then eventually it took her life. As president of the Navajo Nation now, I want to make sure thats at the center of all the decisions that I make is how do we cover the basic necessities to be a strong Nation. Nygren spoke about fixing the multitude of infrastructure issues the Navajo Nation faces. He sees the lack of good roads as a major infrastructure problem on tribal land. Theres thousands of miles of dirt roads, and then theres hundreds of miles of paved roads," Nygren said. "We need to come up with creative solutions to open up more gravel pits that are that gravel thats ready for paving highways..we got to make it easier for EMS and public safety to get out there. And to make sure that school bus routes are taken care of as well because our kids need to get to schools safely." With over 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and almost 2,000 deaths from the virus since March 2020, the Navajo Nation served as the epicenter for COVID-19 in Indian Country. As a result, the previous administration implemented strict stay-at-home orders, curfews, and face mask requirements. Rickert asked Nygren if he was ready to lift the mask mandate still in effect on the Navajo Nation. Story continues We need to completely open 100 percent. Because all surrounding communities around the Navajo Nation are 100 percent open," Nygren responded. "Were the only ones that are maintaining this and its very difficult for normal Navajo people. As president, I want to make sure that the Navajo people have access to their government because a lot of them need just basic services or basic health right now. So as president, Im actually working on making sure that we do lift that mandate and make it optional. To hear the entire conversation, watch the episode of Native Bidaske below or on YouTube. Native Bidaske is produced by Native News Online weekly and streamed on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube every Friday at 12 noon - Eastern Time. About the Author: "Native News Online is one of the most-read publications covering Indian Country and the news that matters to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other Indigenous people. Reach out to us at editor@nativenewsonline.net. " Contact: news@nativenewsonline.net The 44-year-old Democrat won in a landslide in November. ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) Maryland Gov. Wes Moore was sworn in as the states first Black governor on Wednesday, pledging to work for greater inclusion and economic equity while also focusing on improving education, fighting crime and climate change. Moore, after being introduced by Oprah Winfrey in front of the Maryland State House, noted that the state is one of the wealthiest in the nation, but he also described it as asset-rich and strategy poor. It is time for our policies to be as bold as our aspirations and to confront the fact that we have been offered false choices, Moore said. We do not have to choose between a competitive economy and an equitable one. Maryland Governor Wes Moore celebrates after being sworn in as the 63rd governor of the state of Maryland in Annapolis, Maryland, Jan. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston, Pool) The 44-year-old Democrat, who won in a landslide in November, also committed to fighting violent crime. Many Maryland residents have grown weary in their faith in governments ability to keep them safe, he said. In Baltimore, Marylands largest city, homicides surpassed 300 for the eighth year running last year. Gun violence remains high, despite repeated promises from elected officials and new anti-violence initiatives. Moore said the state can build a police force that moves with appropriate intensity and absolute integrity and full accountability, and embrace the fact that we cannot and will not militarize ourselves to safety. We do not have to choose between being a safe state and a just one, Moore said. Maryland can, and we will, be both. Moore, who has not held public office before now, won a crowded Democratic primary in July before going on to win the general election by more than 30 percentage points against Republican Dan Cox, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Moore is a best-selling author and former CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, an anti-poverty nonprofit. He also is a Rhodes scholar and a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan. This might be his first day as an elected official, but Wes Moore has been a public servant his entire adult life, Winfrey said. And theres so much more to come. Hes just getting started. Story continues Moore pledged to make the state a leader in addressing the existential threat of climate change, which said is happening now in our communities. Confronting climate change represents another chance for Maryland to lead, Moore said. We can and we will be a leader in wind technology, in grid electrification, and clean transit. Speaking not far from the nations largest estuary, Moore said the state will protect our jewel, the Chesapeake Bay, and put Maryland on track to generate 100% clean energy by 2035 and create thousands of jobs in the process. The new governor also emphasized his commitment to education, including a state initiative through which high school graduates can volunteer for a year of service. Moore punctuated his inauguration with references to Black history, beginning with the enslaved people who once arrived by ship at the Annapolis City Dock, which was once a regional slave port and the site of a memorial to enslaved African Kunta Kinte, who arrived there in 1767 and was written about in Alex Haleys book Roots. Moore was joined by other Black leaders at the wreath-laying ceremony on a bright sunny morning, including Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, Attorney General Anthony Brown, former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who was the nations second elected Black governor, in 2006. Virginias Douglas Wilder was the first, in 1989, and Moore is the third. I feel lifted up and encouraged that Black talent has been recognized and has an opportunity to come forward, Patrick told The Associated Press after the ceremony. Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who was Marylands first Black candidate elected statewide, called it an exciting day for the state. Its interesting to watch these things unfold in a world in which theres still resistance to it, but were excited here in Maryland and Im honored to be a part of it today and be a part of that line as well, Steele said while walking in a procession up the citys Main Street. Moore took the oath of office using a Bible owned by Frederick Douglass, a Marylander who escaped slavery on the states Eastern Shore before becoming an author and famed abolitionist. When Moore gave his inaugural speech as Marylands 63rd governor, he looked out on a crowded mall in front of the Capitol where there is a statue of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimore native and the nations first Black member of the court. Moores running mate, Aruna Miller, also made history as the first immigrant and first Asian American elected statewide in Maryland. TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Please download theGrio mobile apps today! The post Wes Moore sworn in as Marylands first Black governor appeared first on TheGrio. [Source] Before you read: NextShark spoke with comic book artist Eric Nguyen, co-creator of Dark Horse's newest comic "White Savior," about the Hollywood tropes the story satirizes, the prevalence of Asian stereotypes in new media and the state of Asian representation in comics today. Written by Nguyen and Scott Burman, White Savior follows Todd Parker, an Asian American film history teacher who is suddenly sent back in time to feudal Japan. Upon his arrival, he quickly realizes that the local villagers have put their faith in an incompetent white savior who will surely lead them to their doom unless Todd can stop him. Before "White Savior," Nguyen notably worked with Marvel and DC on Old Man Logan, The Immortal Hulk and Batman: Arkham Unhinged. More from NextShark: Kim Chae-won dating rumor debunked after photo revealed to be doctored What can you tell me about the team behind "White Savior?" I've been in the comic business for a while now, working for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and drawing classic characters like Wolverine, Hulk, Batman, etc. One day I got a random email from my co-writer Scott, who sent me one of the funniest, weirdest scripts I ever read. At the time, I was working on The Weeknd's 'Starboy' comic, but we kept in touch. A short while later, I had an itch to create my own stuff again, so I called up Scott and we started brainstorming new ideas. What inspired the story's concept? More from NextShark: Korean Canadian indie artist Junny releases first studio album 'blanc' It all started when that movie "The Great Wall" with Matt Damon came out, and Constance Wu famously talked about how Asians didnt need a white guy to swoop in and save us. And Scott and I were joking around and said, What if the white guy in this movie was an idiot who actually made things worse for the people he was trying to save? We started laughing about it, and literally, that's where the idea came from. I wish it was a more inspiring story of us thinking about what we could do to promote representation, but honestly, the idea came from a simple aside, and as we started writing, we realized very early on how important the subject matter was. And I think what makes our book stand out is that we put just as much emphasis on the story being funny and action-packed as we do on the important message we're trying to convey. Story continues More from NextShark: Simu Liu was turned away from Crazy Rich Asians because he didnt have it factor Was the plot/humor inspired by any other comics you've read or worked on? I don't know if it was inspired by what I worked on as much as it's inspired by what's out there. The white savior trope has been around forever. Heroes like Iron Fist, the only white guy in a land of Asians who, of course, is a better martial artist than all the other Asians. Or any samurai movie where a white outsider rescues an Asian village. So we wanted to bring light to the problematic nature of these stories, but do it in a way where humor and satire were at the forefront. And that's the ultimate goal of our comic to bring people together and laugh at the insanity and ignorance of the past, while still recognizing the progress that needs to be made in the future. Why a time travel story? More from NextShark: Kelly Marie Tran Says She Has Moved on From Cyberbullying Over 'Star Wars' Casting Good question. We never thought about that. I think its because we wanted somebody who can essentially comment on the ridiculous nature of "white savior" stories from an outsider's perspective. So if Todd, our main character, is from the present and travels back to feudal Japan, he already knows what's going to happen; he knows for a fact that the "white savior" is not the hero the villagers believe he is. And we realized a lot of the comedy in our story is from Todd knowing the truth but nobody believing him because the characters themselves are actual relics of the past. They, like society at the time, still believe in that "white savior" myth. So it's literally the future coming to terms with the past. And the main character is essentially a modern man continuously shaking his head at the misconceived notions of the past. As "White Savior" deals with Asian stereotypes, do you feel these stereotypes are present in the comic book industry? Well, the comics industry is a massive industry. And [it's] only getting bigger with every comic now being made into a movie. But you've got a lot of great Asian talent working in comics Jim Lee is in charge of DC, Cliff Chiang, Marjorie Liu, Stan Sakai, Greg Pak, Frank Cho, there's a ton. And the last couple years have brought us first-class Asian stories like George Takei's 'They Called Us Enemy' or 'The Good Asian,' written by my old friend Pornsak Pichetshote. So youve got a lot of comic companies, especially Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, championing diversity with both their talent and characters. That being said, some of these characters are legacy characters who have been around for ages. And when they were created, they did enforce those stereotypes. So the question is, do you expand on these well-known characters and give them more dimension, or do you create new characters and hope they resonate with audiences? How do you feel about the state of Asian representation in comics today, either in comics themselves or in their creation? I think theyve made great strides through the years. To be honest, sometimes I feel a problem with Asian characters in comics is that being Asian defines their entire personalities. Their personalities are either kung fu guy, spiritual guru, Yakuza boss or sexy female assassin. Those are the main four. And for us, whats important about our story is that our lead character, Todd, doesn't fit the prototypical Asian stereotype; he's not into martial arts, he's not a math whiz and he's never played badminton. We make a point very early in the story to talk about these things because we want the audience to know, Todd is just like all of them. He's the epitome of the everyman. So I always say, the fact that Todd's Asian is both very important and not important at all. What's your opinion on comic book characters being rewritten or reintroduced as Asian? This is a tricky one, because creating a new character fans can get behind is incredibly difficult, regardless of their race. Same with creating a new story. So sometimes, we see new Asian characters and I'm not just going to say Asian, I'm going to include all under-represented groups in this you see new minority characters being introduced, and the stories, for one reason or another, don't click with the audiences. That being said, youve got creators like Brian Bendis, who created Miles Morales. A Black/Puerto Rican Spider-Man. Upon first hearing it, it sounds gimmicky, but in the hands of a master like Bendis, Miles became a centerpiece Marvel character, based on an old one, that will last for generations to come. Ms. Marvel is another prime example of a new character that fans can't help but fall in love with. Gene Luen Yang, one of the best writers in comics today, created an Asian Superman and some fans responded with, They're trying to replace OUR Superman, why dont they create a new character? But the fact of the matter is, all the fans saying Why dont you create a new character? are the same kind of fans who never read stories with new characters. Do you have a favorite Asian character/superhero? Simu Liu. Not Shang-Chi, but Simu Liu as a person. Im just kidding, but I do love seeing Simu Liu speak up on so many causes where other people of his stature might be afraid to speak out. But back to the character question I think my favorite Asian characters are those whose personalities don't rely on those tropes we were talking about before. A prime example is Jimmy Woo in the comics, he was one of the first Asian heroes. And he's just this super cool, cunning secret agent. In the MCU, hes played by Randall Park, and how can you not love Randall Park? But the fact that Jimmy Woo is a secret agent first and Asian guy second, I think that appeals to me. Another favorite is Ms. Marvel, who I mentioned earlier probably one of the best new characters in the last 10 years. Amadeus Cho, Jubilee, Katana, Armor, Silver Samurai. So many more, but also, not anywhere close to enough. What would you like to see more of in comics? Asian characters whose personalities aren't based entirely on them being Asian. Additionally, Scott and I want to champion characters who we feel never got their due. One of our dream projects is to update and revamp a fairly unknown DC superhero called the Heckler, who we think has a lot of mainstream potential. And several people have compared White Savior to Deadpool crazy action, zany comedy, movie references, breaking of the fourth wall. So I think an Eric Nguyen/Scott Burman Deadpool would be something the fans would get behind. "White Savior" is now available in stores and digitally via Amazon. Call your local comic book store for availability. Related stories: A garden area and seating on the rooftop of Chicagos Old Main Post Office in the 400 block of West Van Buren Street on Aug. 3, 2022. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) Illinois was the No. 2 state for green building in 2022, second only to Massachusetts, according to an annual ranking released Tuesday by the U.S. Green Building Council. The state was No. 1 in 2021, and has ranked in the top 10 every year since the rankings began in 2010. Illinois is the only state to have topped the list five times, according to U.S. Green Building Council managing director of U.S. market transformation and development Rhiannon Jacobsen. Advertisement Illinois continues to be very strong, said Jacobsen. The ranking is based on LEED-certified gross square footage per capita added over the course of a year. Developed by the Green Building Council, LEED is the most widely used green building rating program in the world. It takes into account factors such as air quality, safety and energy efficiency. Advertisement In 2022, 91 Illinois buildings were LEED-certified, for a total of over 44.5 million square feet or 3.48 square feet per capita. Office buildings, apartment buildings, government buildings and schools were among those certified. Afternoon Briefing Daily Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > Illinois success is partly due to an early start. The fourth project ever to obtain LEED certification, in 2001, was the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago. In 2007, Chicago hosted the high-profile Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, which drew a record crowd of 23,000. Jacobsen said some of the credit for Illinois record goes to strong policies and advocacy. She cited the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act of 2021, which charts a path to 100% clean energy by 2050. The act stresses job training and fair distribution of the benefits of the energy transition. Illinois has really got kind of a unique standing with the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which some observers have called the most equitable climate law in America, Jacobsen said. She also pointed to a strong market for sustainable buildings and leadership from businesses and organizations. Illinois saw 91 projects LEED-certified in 2022, up a bit from 2021, when 87 projects were certified. Its not that Illinois did worse. The bar got higher, Jacobsen said. nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com KC JOHNSON KC Johnson's mother said her transgender child was the most caring, loving, and giving person she'd ever known. "You want to laugh, KC was the person to make that happen," Dawn Buchanan stated in a Facebook post about Johnson. "You want an in-depth conversation, KC was your go to." According to the Wilmington Police Department, Johnson was killed in the 1300 block of King Street on Friday. The 27-year-old was last seen in the 1900 block of Tradd Court and reported missing the following day. More:After body of missing Wilmington teen found, murder charge for suspect William Haven Hicks, 26, of South Carolina, was arrested in Myrtle Beach on Wilmington charges of first-degree murder, robbery with a dangerous weapon and kidnapping in connection to the disappearance, the WPD said. Hicks is being held in jail there without bail. According to reports, he appeared in Horry County court on Thursday and waived his rights to an extradition hearing. Police believe Johnson and Hicks met recently on social media. In the mother's public Facebook post, Buchanan urged people to be cautious of using online apps. "To anyone out there in the transgender community please, please stay off of Grindr there are sick people out there just ready and waiting to prey for whatever reason," she said. "If you do choose to meet anybody off of social media and this goes for everybody, please do so in a public place arrive separately and leave separately. Always let somebody know where you are at all times. KCs best friend had a GPS tracker on the phone and still lost contact. We live in a sick, sick world. Nobody deserves any of this, especially KC." The victim was last seen Friday, Jan. 13, on the 1900 block of Tradd Court, according to police reports. She added that her family lost "an amazing talented loving piece of our hearts." There is no confirmation from police about what specific social media apps may have been used around the time of Johnson's disappearance. Amber Winnecoff, Johnson's sister, organized an online fundraiser Wednesday for funeral expenses. Story continues "We spent (four and a half) days without knowing and our worst fears have become a reality," she wrote on the fundraising page. Word of Hicks' arrest came the same day officials in Georgia announced the discovery of a body there, saying in a news release the Wilmington Police Department was the lead on the case. As of Thursday afternoon, WPD officials would not confirm if the remains are Johnson. Positive identification and a cause of death are awaiting an autopsy, officials said. According to a news release from the Chatham County Police Department, the remains were found in a rocky area on the edge of the Savannah River near a sugar refinery there. WPD spokesperson Brandon Shope and Lt. Leslie Irving said the department is working in conjunction with Georgia law enforcement. "We can't confirm at this time if that's the body," Shope said. "We are working in conjunction with them to see if this possibly could be our missing person." Police are asking for anyone with information to contact the Wilmington Police Department at 910-343-3609 or use the WPD Tip411 app. "The Wilmington Police Department sends our condolences to the victim's family and friends during this difficult time," said in a news release. STAY CONNECTED: Keep up with the areas latest news by signing up for the StarNews newsletter and following us on Facebook and Instagram. Reporter Chase Jordan can be reached at cjjordan@gannett.com. Reporter John Orona can be reached at 910-343-2327 or jorona@gannett.com. . This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Man charged with murder of missing transgender Wilmington woman Jan. 17A woman died after the SUV she was driving struck a power pole late Monday afternoon near Airway Heights. Spokane County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the crash shortly before 5 p.m. on South Craig Road near McFarlane Road, the sheriff's office said in a news release. Crews pulled the woman from the SUV and took her to the hospital, where she died, deputies said. Two passengers a woman and a male toddler were taken to the hospital with minor injuries and released. The sheriff's office said the severely damaged black SUV was on its passenger side next to a sheared-off power pole on the east side of the roadway. The power lines were near the ground and held up by the adjacent poles. Craig Road was closed in both directions while the power pole was replaced. The SUV was traveling north on Craig Road, deputies said. It appeared the driver passed a vehicle in a no-passing zone before a second vehicle traveling south on Craig Road appeared. That's when the driver quickly moved back into her lane, lost control and struck the power pole. Investigators do not believe the vehicle the SUV passed or the vehicle going south were directly involved in the crash. Traffic Unit Cpl. Jeff Welton would like to talk to those drivers and any passengers of the two vehicles, as well as anyone else who may have witnessed the crash, the release said. Welton can be reached at (509) 477-3237. Reference incident No. 10007398. An orchard company in Washington will pay a former worker more than $100,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit after she said the company failed to respond when a coworker assaulted her, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The former employee of Chief Orchards Administrative Services, an orchard business in Yakima, Washington, reported to her supervisors repeatedly that a picker at the orchard was harassing her during the 2017 and 2018 seasons, according to a Jan. 17 news release from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The coworker made regular comments about her body and clothes, followed her to the bathroom and touched her without her permission, the release says. Before the start of the 2018 season, supervisors told her that he would not return, but they rehired him anyway, and his harassment continued, the release says. After Chief Orchards failed to respond to a physical assault that caused the female farmworker intense distress, she felt she had no choice but to quit out of concern for her own safety, the release says. A man who answered the phone at Chief Orchards Administrative Services and identified himself as the owner declined to comment when reached by McClatchy News. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against the company, which agreed to settle and pay the woman $127,500, the release says. The company has since sold the orchard where the employee worked and laid off its other employees. If it rehires workers in the future, the company must develop policies and procedures to recognize, prevent and correct sexual harassment and retaliation, the release says. According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers are required to investigate reports of sexual harassment in the workplace and take steps to prevent it, the release says. The (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has made a priority of defending the civil rights of vulnerable workers, and immigrant women are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment, Nancy Sienko, district director for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions San Francisco District, said in a statement. We hope this settlement sends a clear message that agricultural employers are required by Title VII to take meaningful steps to prevent and stop the harassment of their female workers. Story continues Yakima is 145 miles southeast of Seattle. Blind worker told by hotel that applying for promotion is waste of his time, feds say Boss joked about shooting Black people, and worker who complained was fired, feds say Boutique worker fired over fears she wouldnt be reliable after giving birth, feds say The New York Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Gov. Kathy Hochuls (D) choice for the states chief judge Wednesday, demonstrating a split among Democrats in the state. The committee, which is made up of 19 state senators, narrowly voted against advancing Justice Hector D. LaSalle, who was nominated by Hochul in December to be the chief judge of New Yorks Court of Appeals. The committee voted 10-9 against moving LaSalle, who faces criticism from the left over his judicial record, to the full Senate. While this was a thorough hearing, it was not a fair one, because the outcome was predetermined, Hochul said in a statement. Several senators stated how they were going to vote before the hearing even began including those who were recently given seats on the newly expanded Judiciary Committee. While the Committee plays a role, we believe the Constitution requires action by the full Senate. State Sen. Rob Ortt, the Republican leader in the state Senate, said in a statement that the GOP is also in favor of holding a full Senate hearing for LaSalle. The radical majority members of the Judiciary Committee put their far-left politics ahead of their obligation to the people of New York, effectively blocking Justice LaSalle from becoming the first Latino Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, Ortt said in a statement on Twitter. We believe this nomination is due consideration by the full Senate, where it should be considered with an open mind based on his qualifications, not politics. The 10 members who voted against LaSalle were Democrats, many of who publicly criticized his record, according to The New York Times. They say his past rulings regarding reproductive rights and organized labor make him a bad fit for the job. In August, a group of Democratic state legislators urged New Yorks Commission on Judicial Nomination to consider public defenders or civil rights attorneys for the states top judge, but LaSalle has held neither job title. LaSalle is currently the presiding justice of the Appellate Division of the Second Judicial Department of the New York State Supreme Court, and was appointed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) Following a loss at home against Kentucky and having starters Santiago Vescovi and Tyreke Key out, No. 9 Tennessee was on upset alert at Mississippi State on Tuesday. The Bulldogs proved that in the first 15 minutes of the game, running up a nine-point lead, but the Volunteers settled into the game. After tying at 23 at the half, Tennessee went 8 of 9 from 3-point range in the second half and scored 47 points in the final 20 minutes to win 70-59 on the road. Thats a great team character win for our team. The fact that we had two starters out and started the game with a lineup that I probably never practiced together, Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. I thought after the eight minutes mark, Zakai Zeigler really settled down and played terrific, playing 40 minutes the way that he did. Our team had great respect for Mississippi State because other than that game at our place when we could have beaten anybody in the country, (Mississippi State) has been in every game. The Vols (15-3, 5-1 SEC) shot 2 of 15 from 3-point range in the first half as the Bulldogs clamped down on Tennessee but it was a different story in the final 20 minutes. Zeigler had 14 points in the second half and Tennessee doubled its production from the first half. Mississippi St. (12-6, 1-5) improved on its first half total as well. The pace played out of the Bulldogs realm, however, as the defense-minded Mississippi St. couldnt keep up with the hot-shooting Vols. Tennessees Julian Phillips had 18 points and 11 rebounds while Josiah-Jordan James finished with 13. Tennessee shot 23 of 51 (45%) from the field in the game with a 42% 3-point night. The Vols were also big from the line, making 14 of 15. After turning the ball over 11 times in the first half, the Vols finished with 17 turnovers for the game. I just tried to be more aggressive, find my shots and rebound the ball better, Phillips said. We didnt have (Vescovi or Key) two of our leading scorers, so we were missing some points there. It was next man up. Story continues Mississippi St. shot 19 of 57 from the field as offensive struggles continue. The Bulldogs made 7 of 26 from 3-point range and had 14 of 22 from the free-throw line. Shakeel Moore scored a career-high 20 points for the Bulldogs, making all eight of his free-throw attempts, and Tolu Smith had 11 points and 10 rebounds. Tennessee won the rebounding battle 39-31. Were a good basketball team. If we stick together and stay the course, well have opportunities to win games in the league this year, Mississippi State coach Chris Jans said. Its a big challenge that we all face. It starts with me and my staff to set the mood and the vibe, stay hungry, continue to work and believe. That will be the big focus for us heading into the Florida game. BIG PICTURE Tennessee: After a rough loss to Kentucky at home last week, the Vols needed a bounce back. It wasnt easy, but the second-half answer spoke volumes, overcoming a nine-point deficit. Mississippi State: The Bulldogs continue to slide having lost six of the last seven games, but that isnt the full story. Mississippi St. continues to make progress in year one under Jans. UP NEXT Tennessee travels to LSU on Saturday. Mississippi State hosts Florida on Saturday night. Ukraine will receive three batteries of Patriot anti-aircraft systems meant to protect the Ukrainian sky from Russian missiles. Source: Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, in an evening address to Ukrainians on 17 January Quote: "It is today that Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, told us very important news which was basically a follow-up of our recent talks. Ukraine will be provided with one more battery of the Patriot systems. Thank you, Mark! This means we already have three guaranteed batteries. But this is only the beginning. We are working upon new decisions for strengthening our air defence." Background: Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, on Tuesday, 17 January, told Joe Biden, the President of the USA, that the Netherlands will offer the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system to Ukraine following the USA and Germany. The day before, President Zelenskyy discussed strengthening the Ukrainian air defence with the President of the Netherlands. Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron! With the recent acquisition of two da Vinci XI robotic systems funded by the Centra Foundation, Centra has expanded its surgical program. Surgeons now can perform minimally invasive robot-assisted surgeries at Lynchburg General Hospital and more outpatient surgeries at Virginia Baptist Hospital, the health system said in a news release. The release said the advanced technology can be used to perform a variety of procedures, including general, urological, gynecological, cardiothoracic and other surgeries. Benefits for patients include smaller incisions, less pain, faster recovery times, decreased wait times and fewer complications. Although the surgical system uses robotic, computer and optical technology, a surgeon remains in full control of its movements. Centra previously had one da Vinci XI surgical system in operation at Centra Virginia Baptist Hospital, which was used on about 600 patients per year, the release states, the hospital system now has three in place. The Centra Foundation committed $3.8 million in funding for the innovative technology and expansion of the program, one of its largest funding commitments in nearly a decade. The foundation develops and directs resources to support Centra in providing care throughout central and southern Virginia to more than 500,000 people annually. People in our communities deserve to be back on their feet faster, Anna Neece, vice president of perioperative services said in the release. The technology leads to better outcomes for patients as well as increased retention and recruitment of highly qualified surgeons. We are grateful to be able to provide this service to more people. The absence of regular House rules during the recent drawn out floor fight for House speaker produced an unexpected benefit: C-SPAN and other news organizations were able to show the country the whole dayslong battle in real time including a near-fistfight between two congressmen because of a pause in the restrictions that normally govern the cameras. At least one member is suggesting the House allow such ungirded coverage to continue. This being the seat of government and the heart of democracy, why not make it permanent? C-SPAN has long carried gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress, but there are normally strict limits on what it can show. Ever since live floor coverage of the House began in the late 1970s, the camera feeds have generally been controlled by government employees, with images limited to the speakers dais or wide shots of the floor without enough detail to see whats actually going on between members. But an exception to those rules has always been made for special events like the election of the House speaker normally a brief, pro forma process. The chaos that gripped the House was, of course, the exception. For most of the time, through 15 rounds of voting and days of high political drama around Kevin McCarthys bid for speaker, the cameras were allowed to capture it all. There was Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., lunging at anti-McCarthy Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and having to be restrained by other members. There was progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., engrossed in an apparently civil conversation with Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., a right-winger who once tweeted an anime video depicting himself killing her. There, again and again, was McCarthys smile-through-the-pain real-time reaction to watching his members deny him his long-awaited speakership. Even if Republicans had wanted to return the cameras to normal restrictions as their first week in the majority went off the rails, they couldnt have because those rules were suspended until a speaker could be chosen. All they could do was let America watch this unvarnished display of parliamentary drama and emotion play out like a political thriller. There was value to that, beyond mere spectacle. Seeing the reality of how political horse trading, floor huddles and unscripted interactions affect the legislative process was no doubt educational to many viewers. If McCarthy looked wounded and powerless even as he finally clawed his way to victory well, that too is useful information for America going forward. We dont normally find ourselves quoting with approval the likes of hard-right Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, but his comment suggesting the House should consider permanently dropping the restrictions on cameras makes some sense: What the American people were able to see unfold on the floor was a good thing for our democracy and our republic, right? Right. A Japanese company has defended its ownership of Van Goghs Sunflowers, obtained at auction in 1987, after the family of its former owner filed a US lawsuit demanding its return. The artwork one of five original versions of the famous still life was purchased by the predecessor of insurance firm Sompo Holdings at Christies in London for $40 million, making it briefly the worlds most expensive painting. It has been on display in Tokyo at Sompos art museum for 35 years, but recently became the subject of a legal battle centered on a previous sale in Germany prior to World War II. The family of the paintings former owner, Jewish banker Paul von Mendelsohn-Bartholdy, filed a lawsuit in Illinois last month demanding the return of the artwork and hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. They say Sompos predecessor, Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance, acquired the painting in reckless disregard of its provenance, including Mendelssohn-Bartholdys forced sale of the painting in Nazi Germany in 1934. ...continue reading The Federal Trade Commission has proposed an imminent ban on noncompete contracts. Prohibiting these contracts is an important step toward assuring we still have access to the American Dream. It will help businesses innovate in our tight labor market, ensure workers are not stuck in dead-end jobs and make the United States more competitive with regards to our foreign counterparts. If youve been employed, odds are that at some point you have heard of noncompete contracts, and there is a good chance you may have signed one. Historically, businesses used them with high-level executives to prevent them from taking trade secrets to competitors. However, in the last half century, many businesses have abused noncompete contracts by using them to avoid competition or prevent workers from leaving. Advertisement For example, I have defended in court non-English-speaking cleaning people who were sued for having the audacity to switch jobs in violation of their noncompete contracts. The Illinois attorney general once sued Jimmy Johns over its use of noncompete contracts for sandwich-makers. The list of noncompete abuses is long and gut-wrenching and there is no right to a free lawyer when a worker is sued for violating a noncompete contract. Building upon and invoking existing antitrust law, the FTC proposes that noncompete clauses be barred as an unfair method of competition. The rule also would require employers to rescind any existing noncompete clauses. The evidence examined by the FTC demonstrates that noncompete clauses suppress wages, reduce competition and stifle innovation. Advertisement Workers bound by noncompete clauses regularly ask employment lawyers: I signed a stack of onboarding paperwork on my first day on the job that had a noncompete. It isnt enforceable, is it? They are shocked to learn how much it will cost to get out of their noncompete contract when they are sued. As a result, few employees ever challenge noncompete contracts and instead reluctantly comply with them while giving up better job opportunities, resulting in less money for them and their families. FTC economists estimated that noncompete contracts suppress American workers income by $250 billion to $296 billion per year. This is not surprising. Why would an employer pay competitively if an employee is contractually prohibited from leaving? Equally troubling, even if an employee is willing to take the risk of getting sued, many prospective employers simply will not hire a candidate subject to a noncompete contract. Whether or not the fear is realistic, prospective employers today rarely perceive hiring a worker as being worth the risk of getting dragged into a lawsuit. Noncompete contracts also hurt innovation by preventing competitors, particularly startups, from hiring talented workers. Entrepreneurship and startups are historically a driver of job creation and technological advancement. However, noncompete clauses prevent people with good ideas from being able to interact with others, killing innovation at the start. On top of that, new companies and startups have a harder time finding qualified talent because prospective employees are tied up with noncompete contracts. Likewise, many entrepreneurs cannot start a new business, which results in fewer marketplace options for consumers. The proof is in the Golden State: In California which has long banned noncompete agreements worker mobility helped launch that states roster of high-tech companies, which includes Apple, Google, Facebook and Uber. Innovation and hard work in other words, our human resources are always what have made America competitive against our foreign competitors. Some companies, particularly those businesses that have their employees locked up with noncompete contracts, are wary of doing away with noncompete clauses. It is important to recognize that the FTC is not proposing to ban nondisclosure agreements, confidentiality or trade secret laws. Therefore, businesses will continue to have ample protection for their business interests. These companies, however, will need to rely on courting their talent, instead of threatening to take their talent to court. David Fish is a founding partner of Fish Potter Bolanos, a law firm specializing in a wide range of labor and employment disputes. Advertisement Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. Need to spread awareness about Netaji among youth: Anurag Singh Thakur New Delhi, Wed, 18 Jan 2023 NI Wire NEW DELHI, 18 January 2023: Mr Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Youth Affairs & Sports, Govt of India today stressed that as India is celebrating Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, it is imperative that India's youth should come forward and contribute more to this journey as they play a very crucial role in shaping the future. It is also important to focus on the 5 pledges Panchprana' development strategy announced by the Hon'ble Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi for the next 25 years. These include goal for a developed India; Freedom from the idea of servility; Pride in Heritage; Unity and Solidarity; Fulfilling one's duty, he added. Addressing the 126th-year celebrations of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and India@75 Azad Hind Mahotsav' organized by Netaji Subhash Bose-INA Trust and FICCI, Mr Thakur stated that by adopting these Panchprana' we will not only take India to newer heights when India will celebrate its 100 years of Independence but will also realize the dream of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose of a new independent India. Mr Thakur also stated that in order to achieve the dream of Netaji, it is important to spread awareness among the youth. We have to work continuously to spread Netaji's achievement to every citizen of the country and the government is also working proactively in this direction. There are a lot of learnings which need to be adopted by our youth to prosper in life, he added. Mr Thakur also urged FICCI and Netaji Subhash Bose-INA Trust to continue spreading awareness about Netaji to every citizen and his Ministry along with other agencies and associations will also work in this direction, he emphasized. Mr Jay Bhattacharjee, Writer, Columnist and Corporate Analyst stated that Netaji's life was a life of introspection, service and we need to adopt these in our lives. Netaji had a forward thinking and the vision of industrialization and post British economy not just confined to jute and cotton but agriculture and other activities, he added. Mr Arun Chawla, Director General, FICCI said that India has recently assumed the G20 Presidency, and India is now setting the narrative for the world. This is the India that Netaji had dreamt of a state which is economically strong and has a greater role in the world affairs. As we commence our journey in the period of Amrit Kaal, it is crucial for us to reflect on all we have achieved in the last 76 years and what needs to be further done, he added. Brig RS Chhikara, Chairman, Netaji Subhash Bose-INA Trust delivered the welcome address and Dr Nidhi Kumar, Trustee, Netaji Subhash Bose-INA Trust moderated and presented the vote of thanks during the session. Jordyn Keuck is looking forward to learning new things in 2023. Keuck, 11, is a Council Bluffs native and is the daughter of Quentin and Bailey Keuck. She is currently a sixth-grader at Heartland Christian School. It feels like home for her, as the schools executive director, Larry Gray, and secondary teacher Erin Gray are her grandparents. Keuck is a student in teacher Heather Stiles classroom this year, and she said its been a good experience so far. She said she loves learning about history from all across the globe. Keuck said her class is currently learning about Africa and Egyptian history. Last week, Keuck and her classmates took to their creative sides and drew portraits of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, also known as King Tut. Keuck said she had a great winter break and Christmas. She spent the holidays doing various celebrations with family across the Council Bluffs-Omaha metro area. Keucks family owns a 5-year-old golden retriever named Luna, who theyve had since she was a puppy. Keuck said she loves spending time with her and playing in the yard. Keuck said she does well in the classroom, but in 2023 shes challenging herself to achieve straight As. Donations, many sent along with heartwarming stories about protecting the land, helped the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation move forward with an agreement to buy the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in western Iowa from the Mid-America Council of the Boy Scouts of America. The nonprofit conservation group raised nearly $2 million before Dec. 31, the deadline for exercising an option to purchase the 1,776-acre property that had been used as a Scout camp for more than 50 years by troops from Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The Scout camp connected many folks to nature, and they want to ensure it can keep doing so, said Abby Hade Terpstra, the foundations director of philanthropy. Terpstra said the foundation received more than 500 gifts, including $500,000 from Polina and Bob Schlott of Crescent, Iowa, who read about the possible purchase in The World-Herald. Other lead donations included $500,000 from the Iowa West Foundation of Council Bluffs, $300,000 from the Gilchrist Foundation of Sioux City and $250,000 from the MidAmerican Energy Foundation. The Schlotts have a history of supporting transformational community projects in the Omaha and Council Bluffs area, and Terpstra said the foundation is grateful that they wanted to see this piece of the Loess Hills protected. When we saw the possibility to have this wonderful 1,800-acre natural woodland and prairie property protected for the enjoyment of future generations, it was an easy decision to support making it happen, the couple said in an email. Were grateful for Iowa Natural Heritage Foundations leadership in preserving this very special place. The foundation will take possession when it closes on the property, tentatively scheduled for the end of January. Kody Wohlers, the foundations Loess Hills land stewardship director, will start working on a management plan that addresses the needs of both nature and people on the site. Scouts from the Mid-America Council will continue to use the site as they have been for the immediate future, and well figure out what wider public access looks like in the future with the help of the Iowa DNR, which manages the adjacent Loess Hills State Forest, Terpstra said. In 2021, the Gilwell Foundation, which owns all the properties used by the council, decided to sell the camp due to declining attendance. At that time, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation purchased an option to buy the property that expired at the end of 2022, setting a goal to raise $2 million of the $7 million-plus project. In working on the sale with the council, the heritage foundation has agreed to do three things: open the property to the public; maintain the memorial to four Scouts who died in a 2008 tornado on the property; and honor and share the history of the ranch as a Scout camp. While the property wont immediately be open to the public, a public open house is planned on the site in late spring or early summer. The land, which sits about halfway between Omaha and Sioux City, is mostly old-growth oak woodland and remnant prairie in the Loess Hills, a globally unique area consisting of ridges formed by wind-blown soil. The property has more than 25 miles of established trails and a 20-acre lake, making it an ideal spot for hiking, birdwatching, wilderness camping, fishing and hunting. The support for this project has been amazing, foundation President Joe McGovern said. Donors have told us they want to see this place protected staying in one piece and not being developed but theyre also excited to see it opened to the public eventually. To help The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation will continue to raise money for costs associated with the purchase and management of the property. People interested in supporting the protection of Little Sioux Scout Ranch can contact Abby Hade Terpstra at aterpstra@inhf.org or 515-809-5676. The Southwest Iowa Leadership Academy will hold a 50-50 raffle to raise money for this years camp. We have never held a 50-50 raffle, so this is a new venture for us, said Deb Master, director. Our goal is to sell 2,000 tickets, which would gross $10,000, which is split between us and the winner. The winner would be responsible for any taxes on the prize money. For the past 34 years, the Southwest Iowa Leadership Academy has provided a four-day leadership experience for incoming eighth-graders from Kirn, Lewis Central, St. Albert, Treynor, Tri-Center, Underwood and Wilson middle schools. The academy is a nonprofit organization and is not funded by participating school districts. Skills emphasized include team building, communication, problem solving, goal setting, service learning and leadership styles. No student selected is turned away based on ability to pay. After limiting the academy to a day camp for the past few years, Leaders hope to return to a residential format this year, Masker said. Our day camps were fantastic, but part of the original purpose of the residential camp was for students to experience being away from home for the first time, being responsible for managing their time and to allow us more of the social interactions of the large group. We are excited to return to this format this year. Iowa School for the Deaf is a great partner for us and we appreciate being able to work with them. The academys budget for the year is about $47,000, which includes food, transportation, supplies, T-shirts, printing, postage, speaker fees and staff salaries, assuming 112 students enroll, Masker said. We are a separate entity and not supported by school dollars, even though our students serve the schools they represent when they come to camp, she said. Graduates of the academy are expected to perform service projects during the following school year, Masker said. Offering the academy as a residential camp means budgeting for six more meals, housing and additional salary expenses, so some staff can be on site at all times. Raffle tickets are $5 each and are available from any current leadership student or from Deb Masker at debmasker@gmail.com. Hes been dead for more than 400 years, but most everyone has said or done something in the past 24 hours directly influenced by him. During the final Hawk Talks lecture at Northeast Community College this semester, students, employees and the public are invited to find out how William Shake We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Uganda has switched from a Chinese to a Turkish company to build a proposed $2 billion railway line linking its capital to the border with Kenya but analysts say Chinese investors poured doubt on the viability of the project. The proposed railway is designed to link up the capital city Kampala with one being built in Kenya to improve trade and travel between the neighbors. After eight years of waiting, Uganda finally terminated its contract with China Harbor Engineering Company in favor of Turkish construction company Yapi Merkezi. The change in contractor was due to financial challenges after the Chinese firm reportedly failed to convince Beijing to finance the project, David Mugabe, the public relations officer for Standard Gauge Railway Uganda, says. Under the Chinese deal, the project was to cost Uganda $2.2 billion with 85% funding to be sourced by the contractor. Ugandan officials say they interpret the comment made by Chinas ambassador to Uganda that Beijing had become more cautious on financing big infrastructure projects in Africa as that it essentially raises questions about the financial viability of the whole project. I think its possible they are being risk shy. We are not bankable, says economist Madina Guloba who thinks that its likely China pulled out of the deal. Then they are safer going out of it than try to look at other issues. We have had infrastructure things and they are not productive. So how best are you planning to make it even more productive, Guloba added. British judges in the Londons High Court gave the green light on Monday, January 16, for the Court of Appeal to consider challenges to the UK governments plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda. High Court has thus granted permission to the claimants a group of asylum seekers to appeal the previous ruling that the British governments plan to send migrants to Rwanda was lawful. Two High Court judges ruled in December last year that the controversial policy is legal, rejecting a lawsuit from several asylum-seekers, aid groups and a border officials union. The same judges have now said that the claimants can challenge that decision on issues including whether the plan is systemically unfair and whether asylum-seekers would be safe in Rwanda. No date has been set for the appeal hearing. The Home Office, or the UKs interior ministry, said it would defend its policy, which is a central part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks plan to tackle the record number of migrants and refugees arriving in small boats. The government says the plan will deter people smugglers, though it has been denounced by rights groups since it was announced in April 2022. The first planned deportation flight was blocked only two months later by a last-minute ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which imposed an injunction preventing any deportations until the conclusion of legal action in Britain. A lawyer representing charity Asylum Aid, which was also granted permission to appeal against the High Courts ruling, welcomed the decision. A decision to set up the East African Monetary Institute (EAMI) the Central Bank of East Africa which is widely seen as a key institution required in implementing a single currency regime, will be made this year, East African Community (EAC) Secretary-General Peter Mathuki has said. Member states have so far failed to agree on which country should host the EAMI, each angling to avail themselves of the massive potential to attract foreign capital and become the regions financial hub. The EAMI has thus become a hot potato, with the partners jostling to host the key institution. The EAMI will be in place this year in what will allow us to harmonize member states fiscal and monetary policies, then in about three years we will have a common currency in place, Mathuki told journalists last week. The single currency will ease business and movement of persons within the region, which would achieve the blocs goal of becoming as envisioned in the Common Market Protocol. With a collective population of 300 million, the EAC is likely to attract investors from across the world, as they will gain from the vast market and by extension have access to the entire continents population. The common currency marks the third pillar of integration of the EAC after the establishment of the customs union and the common market protocol that deepened cooperation among the EAC member states. Intra-regional trade within the regional bloc is on an upward trajectory, standing at US$ 10.17 billion by September 2022, according to the EAC statistics. The intra-regional trade growth can be attributed to political goodwill among the members heads of state and the relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions in the region amongst others, said Mathuki. Washington is reportedly planning to establish a military industrial base in Morocco, which plays a leading role in combating terrorism, as well as in view of its integration into the international military equation. In this connection, US President Joe Biden has instructed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to prepare an emergency plan to establish the military industrial base in the Kingdom of Morocco, the New York Daily News has reported. The plan was proposed during a high-level meeting at the end of December when Biden and Austin discussed Americas new global military strategy, the US media said. Biden has told Austin to push the Pentagon to facilitate the logistical and legal aspects of US defense industry investments in the North African Kingdom. The base is meant to strengthen Rabats leading role in combating terrorism, as well as its integration into the international military equation, through developing the Kingdoms technical military capabilities. According to media sources in the US, before his meeting with Austin, Biden received a detailed report from CIA Director William Burns on the expansion of Russias influence in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Algeria and the Sahel-Sahara countries. The CIA report said that Russia not only strongly supports the Algerian regime militarily and politically, but is also discussing the establishment of a large logistical base that would give it an important outlet to countries located south of the Sahara Desert. The CIA warned that this move will threaten the interests of Washington and its allies there, the New York Daily News said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, walks in the town of Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv, on April 4, 2022. He said Russian leadership was responsible for civilian killings in Bucha. (Ronaldo Schemidt/Getty-AFP) Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy contended that atrocities committed by Russian troops against unarmed Ukrainian citizens constituted war crimes. This is real genocide, Zelenskyy said while surveying the death toll in the town of Bucha. Advertisement President Joe Biden also used the term genocide in discussing the killings. The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as acting intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ... (by) killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (and) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Advertisement In the Aug. 8 issue of The New Yorker, Masha Gessen reported that there were 25,000 cases of war crimes committed by Russians against Ukrainians and asked: What does justice look like for the victims of Russias atrocities? Masha noted that while in theory, international bodies have the authority to prosecute war crimes wherever and whenever they occur, Russias leaders have still not been brought to account for atrocities committed in earlier conflicts, including Ukraine. Lets look back. The history of prosecuting war crimes began with the Nuremberg trials of 1945. Despite adopting the premise that some crimes are so heinous that the international community must step in to restore justice, prosecutions have resulted in few convictions. The International Criminal Court, or ICC, has from inception issued arrest warrants for 38 people; only 10 have been convicted. The ICC is, however, one of multiple possible jurisdictional paths worth considering for prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine. Tufts University associate professor Tom Dannenbaum wrote in March for the national security-focused forum Just Security that another path to justice could be through an ad hoc international tribunal; a domestic court exercising territorial jurisdiction, such as in Russia, Belarus or Ukraine; or a court exercising universal jurisdiction. He correctly noted, however, that Russias veto power over any attempt by the U.N. Security Council to authorize prosecutions squelches actions being taken by the ICC, of which Russia is no longer a member. Washington University in St. Louis adjunct law professor Milos Ivkovic said in a recent interview that nations that eschew legal action against Russian acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes of genocide can become guilty of aiding and abetting these crimes. Imposition of sanctions, he said, is far from a sufficient response to heinous acts threatening the world order. Ivkovic bases his argument on the doctrine of jus cogens compelling law which is described as a peremptory (mandatory) norm of general international law permitting no derogation. Jus cogens norms sit at the apogee of international norms and place obligations on everyone. Advertisement Many nations have agreed to sanction the Russian government, but, as Ivkovic said, sanctions provide only injunctive relief as a temporary measure to stop existing harm from continuing. Sanctions cannot punish specific perpetrators of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Only through prosecution can those who commit such crimes be brought to justice. Genocide and other violations of jus cogens, Ivkovic said, cannot be excluded from legal action by international courts. So why are modern-day war crimes not resulting in criminal prosecutions, even in absentia, of individual perpetrators? One reason is that nations that do significant business with bad actors such as Russia and China fear a loss of access to materials and profits from the imposition of sanctions and threats of criminal prosecution. Another fear is that the perpetrators might escalate to nuclear weapons, if threatened with prosecution. What would they have to lose? Ivkovic suggested that the horrors committed by those who fear no personal reprisals will continue if bad actors are not brought to justice. We must speak up, he contended, and prosecute, or we will never have peace. However, bad actors and their allies exercise pressure upon anyone or any nation that advocates for sanctions and especially for prosecution. Ivkovic said there are three levels of attack: First, nations such as Russia and China publish disinformation that contradicts or refutes the charges against them and often includes accusing their accusers of the same crimes, e.g., Who are they to judge us? Second is creating narratives with the intent to inspire disrespect, outrage or even violence against their accusers. Doxxing revealing home addresses, phone numbers, etc. is another tactic. Advertisement If a plea for prosecution inspires governments to begin to take action, people close to those speaking up become targets. International travel then becomes a nightmare, as certain governments will respond favorably to extraditing those frivolously charged with crimes in order to shut them up. Finally, at worst, those who push for prosecution face the ultimate threat injury or death. It is not hard to silence one advocate for justice, Ivkovic noted. Its easy enough to overcome the accusations of a few but more difficult to stop when public outcry cannot be ignored. And speak out, we must, Ivkovic warned, if we profess to believe that human lives are worth more than cheap natural gas. Therefore, Ivkovic supports Congress holding hearings on the ongoing genocidal activities. Keeping silent in the face of barbarity emboldens the bad actors, who, seeing that no one is stopping them, feel no compunction to change their behavior. Only with a united front willing to demand that genocidal criminals face consequences can society prevail over barbarism. Duggan Flanakin is director of policy research at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit that supports free-market solutions to environmental issues. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. Ruslan Obiang Nsue, a son of Equatorial Guineas President Teodoro Obiang Mbasogo, has been placed under house arrest for the alleged sale of an airplane belonging to the countrys flagship airline Ceiba Intercontinental, reports say. State television (TVGE) Tuesday reported that Obiang Nsue allegedly sold the jet, ATR 72-500, to the company Binter Technic, which specializes in aviation maintenance and is based in Las Palmas, on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. The aircraft, according to the TV, had been in routine maintenance in Spain since 2018. News of the disappearance of the aircraft surfaced in December causing national discomfort. Ruslan Obiang has confessed that he was the person who sold Ceibas ATR, I will not allow myself to be carried away by familialism or favoritism, which is why I have ordered his immediate arrest and handing him over to justice, his half-brother, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, nicknamed Teodorin, said on Twitter. Obiang Nsue is the current director of Ceiba Airport but also happened to be the first deputy director of Ceiba Intercontinental and then its managing director. Teodorin Obiang himself has been prosecuted in France and UK following anti-corruption investigations and ownership of fraudulent assets. The French justice in July 2021 sentenced him to three years in prison and 30 million euros in fines and the confiscation of his assets in France for having fraudulently built up a luxurious patrimony within the framework of the ill-gotten gains cases. The UK justice in July in the same year also froze his financial assets there and banned him from its territory following anti-corruption investigations. The African country rubbished the decision and closed its mission in the UK. The Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, has demanded that the commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA), Khalifa Haftar, should cooperate with the Government of National Unity in Tripoli headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and enable it to operate in eastern Libya. This, said Burns, will preserve the principle of the unity of the countrys executive institutions, reported the Middle East Monitor. According to informed sources who attended Burns meeting with Haftar in Benghazi a few days ago, the CIA head warned the general about harming the ports and oilfields. He also said that the US lays strong emphasis on the necessity of having stability in Libyas oil sector so that exports are not affected. Burns reportedly told Haftar that a joint force is needed to protect and secure oil and water resources and the southern border. The force would be made up of the LNA and the Libyan Army in western Libya When Burns arrived in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, last week he met with Dbeibeh and described his government as a reliable partner of the US. Sources quoted by Al Jazeera said that the Libyan leader asked Burns for the US to prioritize working towards unifying the international position that rejects negative regional interferences in Libya. This was a clear reference to the rejection of the presence of Wagner Group mercenaries in the country. Moreover, the head of the Government of National Unity asked Burns to consider Libya as a real strategic partner for the US at the political, security and economic levels. He requested the US to reopen its embassy in Tripoli, saying that the security situation is appropriate for this to happen. Dbeibeh said that fears about threats to embassies in the capital are unfounded. Burnss visit was the first by a CIA director to the North African country since the 2012 attack against a US mission in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador and three others. The trip to Libya came weeks after authorities handed the United States a suspect in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Following the failure to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 24 December 2021, Libya has faced new political conflict between a government headed by Fathi Bashagha appointed by the House of Representatives in Tobruk, and Dbeibehs government in Tripoli. Dbeibeh insists that he will only hand over power to a government that arises from a newly-elected parliament. Saudi envoy to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, has called the Security Council to include the Yemeni Houthi group on the list of terrorist organizations, saying this has become an urgent and necessary matter. Speaking at the Security Council special session on the Yemeni crisis earlier this week, Al-Mouallimi said the Houthi militia has refused to extend the truce for political ambitions and reasons, while the international community has offered the groups leaders a new opportunity to respond to peace efforts. He pointed out that the Security Council has failed to take a position on the atrocities committed by the Houthi militias against the Yemenis. Classifying the Houthi militia as terrorists has become an urgent and necessary matter, he stressed. Al-Mouallimi explained that the groups control of the port of Hudaydah represents a threat to international peace and security, and that the group has not recently shown any real desire to end the conflict in Yemen and reach a comprehensive political solution. The Saudi diplomat called on the Security Council to take stricter measures against the Houthis, if they continued to procrastinate in the peace process. Oman has been mediating between the Yemeni government, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Yemen has been at war for more than 8 years. A six-month truce between the government and the Houthis ended on October 2, without extension. The Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat hosts from January 18 to May 15, 2023 an exhibition of Benins contemporary art under the theme Art of Benin yesterday and today: from restitution to revelation. The exhibition explores part of the history and heritage of Benin, will be an opportunity for art lovers to discover the contemporary creations of Beninese artists, whose works reveal a variety of textures and mediums, said Tuesday in Rabat, president of the National Museums Foundation (FNM), Mehdi Qotbi, at a news conference during the official inauguration of the exhibition. The inauguration took place in the presence of Benins Minister of Tourism, Culture and Arts, Jean-Michel Abimbola, and several personalities from the political and cultural world of Morocco and Benin. The exhibition, held following the personal agreement of the President of Benin, Patrice Talon, displays for the first time these contemporary art works outside their country of origin. Morocco is the first country to host this exhibition (), Mehdi Qotbi said, adding that the hosting of this exhibition in Rabat also reaffirms the place of the city as the African capital of culture. African culture is an important part of our identity, our history, but also our future. For his part, Jean-Michel Abimbola said that the fact that this first itinerary of the Beninese exhibition takes place in Morocco echoes the will and commitment of King Mohammed VI in favor of art, culture and Africa. We are therefore pleased to share this exhibition with the Kingdom of Morocco, which deploys all its diplomacy () to become a hub of cultural activity and puts culture at the heart of its public policies, he said. Abimbola stressed, in this sense, that Benin shows, through this exhibition, the diversity and richness of the contemporary art scene in Benin and its creators. Visitors will admire a range of creations declined on various styles with materials from different spaces of life of artists, he said. Investmentpitch Media and Western Exploration VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Exploration (TSXV:WEX) (OTCQX:WEXPF), a Nevada-focused gold and silver exploration company, has released additional assay results from the final four holes from its 2022 Phase I drill program at Doby George, Nevada. Doby George, one of three main mineral deposits at the companys 100% owned, 6,000-hectare Aura gold-silver project, located approximately 120 kilometers or 75 miles north of the city of Elko, Nevada, is one of the highest-grade, undeveloped open pit heap leach resources in Nevada. A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on the image or link below: Western Exploration reports exceptional drill results at Aura Project in Nevada including 26.06 meters of 6.93 g/t gold: Western Exploration reports exceptional drill results at Aura Project in Nevada including 26.06 meters of 6.93 g/t gold For more information, please view the InvestmentPitch Media video which provides additional information about the company and todays news along with video comments from CEO Darcy Marud. The video is available for viewing on InvestmentPitch and on YouTube . If these links are not enabled, please visit www.InvestmentPitch.com and enter Western Exploration in the search box. It has a well-established infrastructure including year-round accessibility by highway and county-maintained road and nearby access to water and electricity. The Aura Project is located 32 kilometers north of the Jerritt Canyon mine, which has been in continual operation since 1981. The deposit is an outcropping, high-grade sediment-hosted mineral deposit, with multiple zones of mineralization identified by drilling in a 1.7 x 0.8 km area. The zone of oxidation extends approximately 150 to 200 meters below surface, while limited deep drilling has encountered unoxidized gold mineralization at depths of over 600 meters below surface. The Phase 1 drill program, comprised of nine large diameter (PQ) core holes, was completed between July 26 and September 12, 2022. The drill holes, located at eight different drill sites, totaled 1,138 meters. Highlights include Hole DGC794 with intersections of 26.06 meters of 6.93 g/t gold and 12.34 meters of 4.57 g/t gold, Hole DGC795 with an intersection of 30.94 meters of 2.07 g/t AuFA, and Hole DGC796 with an intersection of 16.76 meters of 2.12 g/t gold. Story continues The Aura Project is unique in the junior mining space insofar as resources have been identified in three different deposits, Doby George, Gravel Creek and Wood Gulch. The project is supported by a Mineral Resource Technical Report dated October 2021 showing 652,271 gold equivalent ounces in the Indicated category and 665,357 gold equivalent ounces in the Inferred category. Homestake Mining Company initially discovered the Doby George deposit in the mid-1980s. Metallurgical test work completed on oxidized material by Homestake Mining and others, has indicated favorable metallurgy for standard cyanide heap leach processing. Since that time, 836 drill holes have been completed, totaling 116,355 meters of drilling. This includes 83 drill holes, totaling 23,760 meters that were drilled between 1998 and 2022 by Western Exploration LLC, which has a 25-year history of advancing exploration projects in Nevada as a private company. The company is well financed having recent raised gross proceeds of approximately $1,140,000. The shares are trading at $1.90. For more information, please visit the companys website, www.WesternExploration.com , contact Darcy Marud, CEO, at 775-329-8119 or by email at DMarud@WesternExploration.com , or for Investor Relations, contact Nichole Cowles, at 775-240-4172 or by email at NicholeCowles@WesternExploration.com . About InvestmentPitch Media InvestmentPitch Media leverages the power of video, which together with its extensive distribution, positions a companys story ahead of the 1,000's of companies seeking awareness and funding from the financial community. The company specializes in producing short videos based on significant news releases, research reports and other content of interest to investors. Disclaimer The information in this Investmentpitch Media Ltd video is for the viewers information only. Western Exploration has paid a fee not exceeding $2,000 in cash to have its current news release produced in video format. The corporate information is based on information that is publicly available. Any information provided by Investmentpitch Media Ltd., through its media services is not to be construed as a recommendation or suggestion or offer to buy or sell securities but is provided solely as an informational media service. Investmentpitch Media Ltd makes no warranties or undertakings as to the accuracy or completeness of this information. All due diligence should be done by the viewer or their financial advisor. Investing in securities is speculative and carries risk. CONTACT: InvestmentPitch Media Barry Morgan, CFO bmorgan@investmentpitch.com Fed up with vulture parking inspectors scaring customers away, a cafe in northern Victoria is dolling out free shots to help ease the pain of parking fines. Across December and January, Greater Shepparton City Council made council-owned car parking free to support local businesses". And while council clearly states time limits still apply, the owner of Afterglow Cafe says customers have been confused over how long they can park for, with rangers ready to pounce. Rebecca Barillaro, the owner of Afterglow Cafe, said she's watched parking inspectors dish out parking fines in mostly empty carparks. Source: Rebecca Barillaro People are getting shocked when they return to a $93 parking fine, Rebecca Barillaro told Yahoo News Australia, saying many of her customers had left upset over the fine and the circumstances. I fully understand that we need parking inspectors and there is a need for enforcement, but when there were three car parks out of about 80 that had cars in them, and the three cars parked had fines, I find it hard to believe that it's about that and not just about revenue raising. To be blatantly honest, they [the parking inspectors] are absolute vultures here. Ms Barillaro says she understands the need for parking inspectors but thinks it seems to be more about 'revenue raising' in Shepparton. Source: Rebecca Barillaro Double whammy of issues The cafe owner says issues around timing restrictions have also been compounded since roadworks started on Welsford Road late last year, forcing the temporary closure of Welsford Street car park. Ms Barillaro says the threat of parking fines, along with customers wanting to avoid the road works nearby, are costing her business. We've had a dramatic drop in clientele, so by 50 per cent or more, she said. Ive got customers that are saying, look I really want to come back but we cant afford to be fined when were five or 10 minutes over a time limit... It's hard enough to get a car park because of the excessive traffic caused by the road works, so we'll just stay away from there. At a time when businesses are struggling, you would think that the best thing to do would be [for the council] to try and look after people shopping locally. The cafe owner says she's been handing out free coffees to encourage people to come back after getting hit with a parking fine. Source: Rebecca Barillaro Free coffees for those hit with fines Desperate and upset, Ms Barillaro is offering anyone who's been handed a parking fine in the Welsford Street car park a free coffee to "apologise for how bad the parking is in Shepparton". Story continues I thought, how can I, in a happy way, try and encourage people to come back after a bad experience, she explained. The coffee is not by any means going to fix that, but if it's something that will continue to bring people back, then that's the least I can do. Since taking to Facebook to share the offer, the cafe owner says she's had between 10 to 20 people come in each day with fines. Yahoo News Australia reached out to Greater Shepparton City Council on Tuesday but the council is yet to respond. On the Councils website, its rules around complimentary parking during December and January are clearly explained, including that time limits still apply for the parking spaces and that infringement notices will be issued if you overstay the time displayed on the signs of the area. Take note of the street parking signs, it urges, as time limits apply". Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play. Thank's for telling upfront and not making it click bait :) Reply Thread Link yeah. you get us, OP. Reply Parent Thread Link My cold black heart laughed in the last post when people were closely inspecting that photo trying to see if he had his leg. Reply Parent Thread Link OP knows why we're all here. Reply Parent Thread Link I expect lots of leg related questions from the ontd doesn't read crowd. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It's a good thing he has marvel money and residuals. Can you imagine that fucking bill, even with insurance? OMG, how much does it cost the fucking patient when they have to get airlifted somewhere? Let alone, emergency services. My ER bill (with ambulance ride) was $10,000.00. I cried at the hospital, before I even got the bill. Reply Thread Link My nephew had to be airlifted before he passed and the bill was like $25k for that alone. Insane. Definitely added insult to injury for us. Reply Parent Thread Link Good god! I am so sorry for your loss. That is just disrespectful. Insulting to victims of circumstances and their families. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I am sorry your family went through that, the system here is absolutely predatory. Reply Parent Thread Link As a medical biller, hospital charges are damn insane. Also professional billing is separate from hospital and anesthesia billing so patients can get three separate bills and if you have caca insurance you are pretty much fucked. The US health care system is a hellhole. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Yeah I have gotten a couple 5k bills from short ER visits and it is absolutely insane to me that it happens even with insurance. The whole point of insurance is to have it for emergencies. Also if you havent already- fight the bill, ask for itemized bills and contact the billing department. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I'm literally worth a million dollars. When I was young, I had surgeries and a hospital stay that added up to 250k (covered by insurance!!). Then with my transplant, I got so many non-bill bills and we added everything up to nearly 800k. And that are just the big hospital procedures I had. I've had 1 ambulance ride and it was 2500 dollars. I wasn't even special enough for the siren! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I had surgery in October to remove two tumors. Between that, pain meds, and 8 days in the hospital, my bill was $125K. I can't even begin to imagine what his bill is. Edited at 2023-01-18 01:34 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link My county has county* run ambulances so they don't cost any money (well you pay through taxes.) I'm so happy but at the same time it's like thank you United States. :') Edited at 2023-01-18 02:11 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link One of my friends went into early labor so not only did she have complications, but her baby stayed in NICU for a week. She has really good insurance so she had to pay only $25k, but the entire bill was close to $1mil!!!! She literally sat with all the bills in front of her and cried. Thankful to be safe at home with her child, but extremely overwhelmed financially (and emotionally/mentally/physically). I had an MRI on my leg once and was billed $8k at the ER. Thank god, I only had to pay like $400 of that. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I was hospitalized for almost two weeks in 2018 due to DVT/PE and it also involved a helicopter ride to a downstate hospital and the cost made me want to puke so I stopped checking my insurances app while in the hospital. Around 50k for the helicopter, 150kish total for the entire thing. Reply Parent Thread Link my cousin had to get airlifted when he was around 18 and he's now 32, almost 33 and its not paid off yet. he's said multiple times he'll be paying it off for life. Reply Parent Thread Link well this thread has been a look into a dystopia I've never paid for an ER visit. The only time I had a hospital bill was when I got my wisdom teeth out under anaesthesia. And that was only $1500. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I have flat fee for in-network ERs. $150+ all labs and imaging is free BUT if I take an ambulance it can cost up to $10K just for the ride Reply Parent Thread Link My dad's ambulance ride bill was also 10k but then they were like just pay anything/what you can since it's all volunteer I think. But it was still like damn. ALSO he was in the hospital for like 3 days (where the nurses did fuck all for him, wouldn't even help him to the bathroom so he had a few accidents) but a few months after he passed we got bills from like doctors we KNEW had never even peeped their head into his room. $300 here and $200 there...it was bullshit. His insurance paid it all but just getting them, knowing they did nothing made us so mad. Reply Parent Thread Link This entire threadjust how?? I knew the US system wasnt great but seeing all these numbers I just dont get it. How is anyone supposed to get by with bills like that. Our healthcare system is FAR from perfect but when my Mom was in hospital for 3 weeks at the end of her life we paid not one single penny. And that included a private room in the neuro ward. I cant imagine the burden of a huge bill right after she passed. My dad has cancer and hes had a CT scan and a bone scan so far and its covered. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It's fucking wild to me you have to pay for an ambulance. I just Googled it for Australia as I don't remember paying, and I think my health insurance covers it. Amazing how this is a service that saves lives and someone may not call out of fear of being in debt. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I really wonder if Im gonna die some day because Im too scared to call 911 for reasons like this! Ill be bleeding out on the floor trying to decide if this feels like a $25K injury Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It will never stop blowing my mind that people will go on about bills and then add they actually HAD insurance. I live in a stupid country with 99 problems, but paying for an emergency medical flight or ride ain't one of them (on insurance). Reply Parent Thread Link I sometimes wonder how much my parents would've paid for my heart surgeries and related stuff had we been American. US health care seems terrifying. It's not perfect here in Sweden either but at least we're not in medical debt. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I had the beginnings of cervical cancer and needed two biopsies and a hysterectomy to remove my cervix. After insurance I had to pay over $5,000. If I wasn't insured, it would've cost upwards of $40,000 to keep myself alive. Edited at 2023-01-18 01:48 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link I voluntarily discharged myself from the ER the other day partially because I knew that Id likely be sent home and have racked up over $1000 of bills to be observed for an hour after waiting for four. And my insurance isnt even that terrible. The American healthcare system is a bad joke. Reply Parent Thread Link It is absolutely blowing my mind that my country (Canada) is seriously toying with private healthcare. We really did look at all the tragic stories of people going bankrupt after breaking their leg, becoming destitute, going tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt, taking out second mortgages on their house, to pay their medical bills. And we're just like "yeah sounds good, only people who are already poor will suffer so whatevs". They have no clue that privatizing healthcare in Canada will lead to THEIR insurance companies saying "haha we're not covering all this anymore/you will now pay triple for coverage". At this point, it's really hard for me to not say that we fucking deserve what we vote for. For clarity, I did not the fuck vote for this, but I was just screaming into the void begging my family to not vote for this and they were all like "but mah hydro bill" and now they're all like "my hydro bill is going through the roof and grandma just elected to have all her teeth pulled because she can't afford dental visits". But they're still, infuriatingly, NOT connecting their gradually worsening situations to the people they vote in who are explicitly working to make their situations worse. Reply Parent Thread Link Someone posted their kidney transplant bill on reddit the other day(the whole thing was covered by medicare or medicaid, I can't remember which one) and it was over $230,000. My uncle passed away from a heart attack several years ago, he initially survived, but was unconscious (perhaps in a medically induced coma?) and was on some machine that recycled his blood for a couple of weeks and then he passed. Over $800,000. I don't think I'd ever be able to work in Medical billing, it would make me sick. Reply Parent Thread Link I cannot believe that an ambulance ride can be charged. Suddenly very grateful for living in a country with universal health care Reply Parent Thread Link It seems like he was not in hospital long. But Im sure he can afford 24/7 at home nursing staff if he needed it. Reply Thread Link That's what I'm thinking too. Reply Parent Thread Link none of y'all are seeing heaven Reply Thread Link we'll make heaven a place on earth Reply Parent Thread Link I mean, was it even an option at some point? Reply Parent Thread Link This was the funniest comment lol the subject line kills me Reply Parent Thread Link The cackle that escaped my lungs, both at the original comment and again just now. Reply Parent Thread Link srsly. no leg no care Reply Parent Thread Link This man is so lucky to have survived and be well enough to go home, with home nurses I'm sure but still. Reply Thread Link Hes recovering at home???? I am so wildly surprised and impressed? Im assuming hes got round the clock care to help him but wow being discharged from not just the ICU but the hospital so soon after is pretty remarkable Reply Thread Link I was thinking the same! How is he home already?! Reply Parent Thread Link Marvel $$$ to pay for his own staff and no hospital leaks to TMZ Reply Parent Thread Link Im sure hes got round the clock medical staff at home. Hospitals will boot you surprisingly fast though! Reply Parent Thread Link This doesnt seem right at all. No matter how rich he is, its expected that he would stay a lot longer in the hospital. No home have the same level of infrastructure in case of a sudden emergency/crises. Reply Parent Thread Link Are the tweets no longer posting with tweet pictures or is it just me Reply Thread Link how is he alive? forreal tho? why won't they mention the legs? Reply Thread Link if he ends up having both legs i'm gonna believe it's because there's advanced medical treatment they only give to super rich people Reply Thread Link maybe they take legs from poor people and give them to the rich Reply Parent Thread Link i'm changing illuminati to illeginati Reply Parent Thread Link It's like that movie The Island. he has a clone living in some island that he uses for transplants/organs etc.. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link omg this fucking thread, i'm in tears Reply Parent Thread Link talk about costing an arm and a leg Reply Parent Thread Link medbeds baby! Reply Parent Thread Link leg transplants are the next medical breakthru Edited at 2023-01-18 10:25 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Its sounding like the leg injury wasnt as bad as got reported initially, that his chest was where he got the worst of it? Reply Parent Thread Link have we had an update on the pistenbully? I hope its recovering after being hit by trash. Reply Thread Link they prob took it out back and shot it Reply Parent Thread Link I can't wait for "Noted Skabadoobadah Jeremy Renner makes his first public appearance after his accident" and there's no shot from the waist down. Reply Thread Link The media know how to keep people talking. Reply Parent Thread Link ONTD, what show did you watch while sick/recovering? When I recovered from having 12 pins, I binged Master Chef. It honestly lit a fire under my ass to really focus on my physical therapy so that I could get in the kitchen and cook :) Reply Thread Link Master Chef for learning kitchen skills while sick, Kitchen Nightmares when you wanna watch the world burn. Reply Parent Thread Link Hell's Kitchen too....I would have ptsd after being on that show! Reply Parent Thread Link One of the folks on a message board I frequent knows one of the doctors who operated on him, and he reports that Jeremy kept both legs. Reply Thread Link This a major HIPPA violation Jesus Christ lol edit: to the person who posted and confirmed that he has two legs lol Edited at 2023-01-18 01:52 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link HIPAA Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I was suspecting he was leg-full too, he seems pretty upbeat online not to be, or maybe its me projecting Reply Parent Thread Link If this is true that doctor is in so much trouble. Reply Parent Thread Link My friends sister is (I guess was) one of his nurses in the hospital, but thats all I got. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link What message board? Cause if it's lsa or deuxmoi subreddit then it's most likely fake Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Chinas reopening is set to drive global oil demand to a record high of 101.7 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, up by 1.9 million bpd from 2022, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday, raising its demand growth estimate for 2023 by 200,000 bpd from 1.7 million bpd growth expected in December. Almost half of the oil demand growth this year will come from China after Beijing lifted its Covid restrictions, the IEA said in its closely-watched Oil Market Report (OMR) for January. At the same time, world oil supply growth in 2023 is set to slow to 1 million bpd, following last years OPEC+ led growth of 4.7 million bpd. An overall non-OPEC+ rise of 1.9 mb/d will be tempered by an OPEC+ drop of 870 kb/d due to expected declines in Russia, the IEA said in the report. As a result, market balances are set to tighten as this year progresses, the agency noted. This year could see oil demand rise by 1.9 mb/d to reach 101.7 mb/d, the highest ever, tightening the balances as Russian supply slows under the full impact of sanctions. China will drive nearly half this global demand growth even as the shape and speed of its reopening remains uncertain, the IEA said. Russia and China will be the two wild cards in the market this year, it added. Russian oil exports dropped by just 200,000 bpd in December despite the EU embargo and the G7 price cap. But the record price discounts on Russian benchmark export grades reduced Russias oil revenues by $3 billion to $12.6 billion last month the lowest since February 2021, the agency has estimated. The EU ban on Russian oil products from February 5 could soon mean that the well-supplied oil balance at the start of 2023 could quickly tighten however as western sanctions impact Russian exports. The IEAs upbeat outlook on demand this year sent oil further rallying as prices extended Tuesdays gains into early trade on Wednesday. As of 6:15 a.m. ET, WTI Crude was up by 1.83% at $81.68. Brent Crude topped the $87 mark to trade at $87.29, up by 1.49% on the day. ADVERTISEMENT By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The horrific mass shooting at Highland Parks Fourth of July parade last year demanded swift, resolute action and the General Assembly delivered. The passage of the Protect Illinois Communities Act makes the state safer by banning high-powered firearms, and magazines with more than 10 rounds for long guns and more than 15 rounds for handguns. People who own assault-style rifles before the ban took effect will have to register their weapons (via a serial number) beginning next year, or face a misdemeanor charge for a first offense, and a felony charge for subsequent violations. Advertisement A law, however, is only as good as a societys commitment to enforce that law. And across Illinois, law enforcement officials are abandoning that commitment. Sheriffs in dozens of counties by some counts, as many as 80 counties have declared they will not enforce the new assault weapons ban. It doesnt matter that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed the measure into law they dont agree with the ban and apparently have no compunction about ignoring it. Advertisement The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people, Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe wrote in a letter posted on his offices Facebook page. Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement officer for Edwards County neither myself or my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing individuals that have been charged solely with noncompliance of this act. In an interview with Quad Cities television station WQAD, Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker brought up the tired gun rights trope that people, and not guns, are the problem. You can lay a gun on the table, he said, its not going to hurt anybody. Its a person that has to pick that gun up and shoot somebody. Booker also said, with striking defiance : People dont understand that, as the sheriff, were the keeper of the jails. We do have a say on who can come in and out of our jails. Even in DuPage County, where Democrats have amassed much more clout and now have one of their own, Deb Conroy, as county board chair, Republican Sheriff James Mendrick declared that his office will not enforce the new law, which he called a clear violation of the Second Amendment. To Sheriffs Booker, Mendrick, Boewe and every other sheriff hopping on the Dont Tread on Me bandwagon: You dont get to choose which laws to enforce and which to ignore. You and every other sheriff, police chief, officer and prosecutor took an oath to uphold the law. And violating that oath carries consequences. Pritzker has said sheriffs or any other law enforcement official who refuses to comply with the new law faces termination. Thats exactly the stance the governor needs to take. Like any other citizen, sheriffs have a right to express their views, particularly political viewpoints since the office of sheriff is typically an elected post. But theres a difference between freedom of expression and dereliction of duty. Law enforcement officers violate their sworn duty when they decide a particular law doesnt fit their politics, and therefore should go unenforced. The firestorm over the new law comes as no surprise. Many issues cleave this nation, and gun control is at the top of the list. All but two Illinois House Republicans voted against the assault weapons ban, and in the state Senate no GOP members voted for it. Most Republican legislators wrongly believe that the new law represents a massive impingement on the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. It doesnt. Advertisement Simply put, banning assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines are common sense measures that take off the streets the kind of weaponry linked to so many of this countrys deadliest mass shootings. The legislation also sensibly bans so-called switches, devices that can turn an ordinary gun into a semi-automatic or automatic weapon. And it strengthens Illinois red flag law, which allows police or family members to seek a court order to confiscate guns from individuals who are deemed an immediate and present danger to themselves or others. Under the old law, the court order, known as a firearm restraining order, lasted for six months. The Protect Illinois Communities Act extends the duration of that order to a year. Backlash against the new assault-style weapons ban isnt only coming from county sheriffs. The fight has already shifted to the courtroom. At least three lawsuits against the new law have been filed, the latest by the Illinois State Rifle Association, which is challenging the bans constitutionality in federal court. How well the new law will hold up in court remains unknown. Illinoisans can expect the legal wrangling to last months, if not longer. In the meantime, however, the Protect Illinois Communities Act is enforceable law, and all officers from beat cop to sheriff owe it to the people they serve to do their job and enforce whats on the books. Sheriffs dont let murderers go because they think there is a chance they may win a future appeal. And the last time we checked, a sheriff is neither a judge nor a magistrate with the authority to determine whether a law is unconstitutional. Advertisement Yes, Sheriff Booker, you run the Whiteside County Jail. But its current Illinois law that should guide you when deciding who gets locked up and who doesnt not your personal politics. Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. Germany has ended its reliance on Russian gas. The news made some cheer and others smile sarcastically while they ask to see the bill. Cutting its independence on Russia for natural gas has become priority number one, not just for Germany but for the whole European Union. For now, its working. The problem is, this sort of approach cant work for long. Bloombergs Javier Blas made the argument that Europe will start buying Russian gas again in December, noting the obvious price differences between pipeline gas and LNG that comes from halfway around the world. Europe will probably never go back to the same long-term contracts of the past with Russia, and likely would need to import less gas as time goes by, thanks to renewable energy, Blas wrote. But if it is going to keep its chemical, food and heavy industries competitive, it will need some cheap gas. And there is no cheaper gas for Europe than Russias. He then went on to draw a parallel between the war in Ukraine and Iraqs invasion of Kuwait, which did not end Iraqi oil exports to the United States. It is a convenient parallel, although the situation is rather different, and not just because Iraq was not a nuclear power when it invaded Kuwait. Related: Will Oil Continue To See Extreme Volatility? Leaving geopolitics aside, however, the fact that Russian gas is the cheapest for Europe cannot be overlooked. The switch to LNG has cost Europe more than a trillion euros and is still costing it because while gas prices have fallen to levels from before Russia invaded Ukraine, they have not fallen back to levels from 2021 before the gas crisis began. And they may never if Europe continues on its current path. The Europeans today are saying theres no way were going back, the head of QatarEnergy and energy minister of Qatar, Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, said this week at the Atlantic Council Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi. Were all blessed to have to be able to forget and to forgive. And I think things get mended with time they learn from that situation and probably have a much bigger diversity [of energy intake], he added, as quoted by CNBC. This statement must have caused some annoyance in EU political circles, but it certainly echoes the fact that Javier Blas pointed out in his December column: so far, Europes economy has thrived thanks to cheap energy. Take away the cheap element of the energy equation, and the economy will suffer. Right now, theres much cheer that Germany did not slip into a recession last year. Instead, its GDP booked a 1.9-percent gain. Thats certainly good news, but its worth remembering that not all economic shocks strike immediately. Some have a delayed effect. Europes largest economy may have grown, but what is it going to do when BASF moves some of its business out of the country and never returns it? What is it going to do for all those businesses that are only surviving on state aid? And, ultimately, how long will the government be able to provide this state aid? Whats true for Germany is true for the rest of the EU, too, even though Germanys Russian gas dependence seems to have been the heaviest. Energy costs are up, and they are about to stay up unless cheap gas returns. Equinors chief executive said as much this week. Speaking to the BBC, Anders Opedal said he did not expect gas and electricity prices in Europe to return to where they were before the pandemic. ADVERTISEMENT There is a kind of re-wiring of the whole energy system in Europe particularly after the gas from Russia was taken away, he said and, noting that the buildup of renewable energy needed to be accelerated, added that This will require a lot of investment and these investments need to be paid for, so I would assume that the energy bills may slightly be higher than in the past but not as volatile and high as we have today. Europe may prove unable to forgive or forget, and, indeed, so may Russia because pretending Europe was an innocent victim of gas aggression does nothing to erase the fact the EU weaponized its financial and trade clout and used it in the form of sanctions just as aggressively as Russia did its gas. And this means Europeans are going to get poorer on a scale not seen in recent history. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Chinese exports of fuels jumped in December, with gasoline sales abroad matching an October 2020 record, following a huge export quota the authorities issued to refiners at the end of 2022. Exports of gasoline hit 1.91 million tons last month, hitting the record level seen in October 2020, while diesel exports rose to the highest level since March 2021, at 2.79 million tons, per official Chinese data quoted by Bloomberg on Wednesday. The high export levels in December were the result of the biggest batch of fuel export quotas issued for 2022 by authorities. China allocated 15 million tons of new fuel export quotas to its major refiners at the end of September. Exports were also high due to the still weak domestic demand as China started to ease the zero Covid policy which led to a surge in infections. Chinas fuel exports in January, however, could be much lower than in December as refiners look to stock up on gasoline and diesel for domestic demand around the Lunar New Year on January 22, and meet expectations of rising demand at home after the Covid restrictions were lifted, analysts say. Demand in China is expected to rebound in the coming months, analysts and forecasters say. The International Energy Agency (IEA), for example, said in its monthly Oil Market Report today that Chinas reopening was set to drive global oil demand to a record high of 101.7 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, up by 1.9 million bpd from 2022. The IEA thus raised its demand growth estimate for 2023 by 200,000 bpd from 1.7 million bpd growth expected in December. Almost half of the oil demand growth this year will come from China, the IEA said in its closely-watched Oil Market Report (OMR) for January. Chinese refiners also have a fresh batch of export quotas for 2023, which was increased by as much as 46% compared to the first batch issued for 2022. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Households in Europe have lowered the target temperatures in their smart thermostats this winter amid high energy bills and calls from governments to conserve energy, according to data from smart thermostats installed by German firm Tado and cited by Reuters. Authorities in many European countries last autumn called on households and small businesses to conserve energy this winter as the continent was facing a possible shortage of gas supply after the Russian pipeline deliveries were slashed and after electricity prices surged, also due to low availability of the French nuclear power-generating fleet. In many countries, the thermostats in public buildings shouldnt exceed 19 degrees Celsius (66.2 F) this winter. Based on data for the last four winters including this winter households in Europe with installed Tado smart thermostats have lowered their target temperature so far this winter. Households in northwestern Europe lowered the target temperatures by the mostby nearly 1 degree Celsius in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In the UK, where the cost-of-living crisis has been acutely felt by households, a total of 79.6% of Tado-linked homes have dialed down their temperature settings, while only 47% of such homes in Norway did, per the data quoted by Reuters. It remains to be seen whether the warm start to the year in most of Europe and still ample gas levels in storage in mid-January will break the resolve of the Europeans to save energy. In Germany, the situation with gas supply looks much better now compared to the bleak expectations of authorities before the heating season began. Still, the German Federal Network Agency, Bundesnetzagentur, continues to call for energy and gas conservation. ADVERTISEMENT Klaus Muller, the president of the agency, said on Tuesday, Even if we can be optimistic about avoiding a gas shortage for the winter of 22/23, we have to start thinking about 23/24 now. To do this, we must continue to save gas, become more energy-efficient, expand renewables, connect LNG terminals and fill storage facilities. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: While the European Unions seaborne imports of Russian crude oil declined by just over 12% last year, Russia still enjoyed status as the top seaborne oil supplier to the bloc, despite sanctions. According to data from maritime sector brokerage firm Banchero Costa, last year saw the EU import 98.8 million tonnes of Russian crude via sea, down from 112.5 million tonnes in 2021 and 128.5 million tonnes in 2019. For 2022, Russia still accounted for 21.9% of European seaborne imports of Russian crude, followed by the North Sea, which accounted for 17% and North Africa, at 15.4%. North Sea shipments of oil to Europe were up by 19.2% year-on year, and well above 2019 numbers, while North African shipments of oil to Europe increased by 6%. Shipments from West Africa to Europe were up by 27.5% for 2022. The United States saw a 43.1% increase of crude oil exports to Europe for a record 51.4 million tonnes. But the biggest surge came from the Arabian Gulf, registering a 76.4% increase year-on-year in 2022, though this is still down from the levels of 2019, while the U.S. exports to Europe were record-breaking. Overall, Banchero said, citing Refinitiv data, 2022 has turned out to be a very positive year for crude oil trade, despite the surging oil prices and risks of economic recession. Globally, the data shows an 8.5% increase in total crude oil loadings, year-on-year. Total loadings came in at 2,047.3 million compared to 1,886.3 million for 2021 and 2,110.5 million tonnes for 2019. Though Russia has seen its exports to the EU decline by over 12% last year, the data shows that overall it saw an increase in exports by 10.3% to 2018.5 million tonnes. That figure is only slightly below 2019 levels. Likewise, the United States also experienced a surge in exports of crude oil, gaining over 22% in the twelve months of 2022, as did Saudi Arabia, showing an over 17% increase. This compares to West Africa and the North Sea, both of which saw a decline in oil exports for 2022. ADVERTISEMENT On the demand side of the equation, Chinas intake of seaborne crude oil overall dropped by 3.6% last year, while India saw the reverse: an 11.7% increase in imports. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Saudi Arabia will become the fastest-growing economy this year thanks to its ambitious Vision 2030 reform program, the kingdoms foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan said at this years World Economic Forum summit in Davos. The official noted that the reform program aims to address all issues facing the economy of OPECs biggest oil producer and, among other things, reduce its dependence on oil as a source of budget revenues. During his speech, he noted a decline in Saudi unemployment and the opening up of the labor market to more women. Vision 2030, the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, envisages the transformation of Saudi Arabia into a renewable energy power and home of the Neom smart citythe jewel in the reform crown of Prince Mohammedthat will cost an estimated $500 billion. This transformation, however, will be financed with oil money so Saudi Arabia has been busy maximizing its revenues from the export of its most abundant commodity. Last year was a good one for the Saudi economy thanks to higher oil prices for much of the year, which helped its economy register strong growth, especially in the third quarter, when GDP expanded by 8.8% from a year earlier. Thanks to the stronger performance of its oil industry, Saudi Arabia has forecast a budget surplus for this year, albeit a lot smaller than last years, at just 0.4 percent of GDP. The budget for this year, announced in December 2022, totals some $296 billion, or 1.114 trillion riyals. Spending was reduced moderately and so were forecasts for budget revenues this year. ADVERTISEMENT "The economic impact (of a moderate reduction in spending) is expected to be limited, especially with the PIF driving much of the investment activity," the chief economist of Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank told Reuters. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Saudi oil giant Aramco expects the Chinese reopening and a pick-up in jet fuel demand to lead to a rebound in global oil demand this year, Amin Nasser, the CEO of the worlds biggest oil firm, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Wednesday. We are very optimistic in terms of demand coming back to the market, Nasser told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Good signs about demand have started to emerge from China, Aramcos top executive said. Hopefully, in the next couple of months, well see more of a pickup in the economy there, he told Bloomberg. Nasser reiterated the long-held view of Saudi Arabia and many analysts that the underinvestment in the industry in the past few years will come back to haunt the market. The world will need 4-6 million bpd of new supply just to offset the natural decline at maturing oilfields globally, Nasser told Bloomberg. Spare capacity is just 2 million barrels per day (bpd) currently, and it is likely to shrink as China reopens, he added. Aramcos upbeat outlook on global demand this year is also shared by OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA). Signs of cautious optimism about a recovery in economies and oil demand have emerged, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Tuesday. We are optimistic, but we are cautiously optimistic, Al-Ghais told Bloomberg. The IEA also struck an upbeat tone in its closely-watched Oil Market Report (OMR) for January published today. ADVERTISEMENT Chinas reopening is set to drive global oil demand to a record high of 101.7 million bpd this year, up by 1.9 million bpd from 2022. Thats 200,000 bpd higher growth for 2023 than the 1.7 million bpd growth the IEA expected in December. Almost half of the oil demand growth this year will come from China after Beijing lifted its Covid restrictions, the IEA said on Wednesday. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Russian forces kept focusing their offensive efforts on Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donetsk, Ukraine's military has said, as Kyiv again urged its Western allies to speed up approval for the delivery of advanced heavy weaponry including modern tanks. The Ukrainian military General Staff said in its daily report that Bakhmut and Avdiyivka, where heavy fighting has been going on for months, remained Moscow's main targets in Donetsk, while the settlement of Bilohoryvka in the neighboring Luhansk region had also come under intensified attacks over the past 24 hours. Russian troops carried out six missile strikes over the same interval, three of which hit civilian infrastructure targets in the cities of Kupyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as 14 air strikes and 95 rocket salvos, the General Staff said. It also warned that the threat of Russian air and missile strikes on civilian objects remains high throughout Ukraine. Russia over the past several months has relentlessly targeted civilian settlements and energy infrastructure that plunge millions of Ukrainians into dark and cold in the middle of winter. The latest attacks came after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building that housed around 1,700 people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro killed at least 45 people. More than 9,000 civilians, including 453 children, have been killed since the war began last February, Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on January 17. The United Nations has put the civilian toll at more than 7,000. Top U.S. and Ukrainian military officers met for the first time at a secret location in southeastern Poland on January 17 as Kyiv pressed the need for increased supplies of Western arms. A spokesman said U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, Ukraine's military chief, at a base near Poland's border with Ukraine. The Washington Post and other news outlets reported that the U.S. contingent included five other military officers, along with an interpreter and security personnel. Because of safety precautions, news of the gathering was not disclosed until it concluded. "They both thought it was important," U.S. military spokesman Colonel David Butler said. "It's important that two very important military officials look at each other in the eye when they talk about very important topics. It makes a difference," he added. The two have spoken often since Russia's February 24, 2022, invasion, but this was the first face-to-face meeting of the generals. Zaluzhniy confirmed the meeting, writing on Twitter: "My first personal meeting with #GenMilley, Chairman of @thejointstaff happened in Poland." He said he "extended my gratitude for the unwavering support & assistance" provided by the United States and other allies. He added that he "outlined the urgent needs" of the Ukrainian military that "will accelerate our Victory." The meeting came as Western allies prepared to gather in Germany to discuss giving Ukraine offensive armaments such as tanks, a major request of leaders in Kyiv. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is due in Berlin on January 19 and then will host a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group the following day at the U.S. military base in Ramstein to discuss further support -- including military aid -- for Ukraine with allies. Kyiv has long pushed for tanks and armored vehicles that will help it break through Russia's front lines. The European Union's chairman on January 18 spoke in favor of the West providing tanks to Ukraine. "For nearly one year, Russia has pursued a strategy of destruction, a strategy of terror, trying to bomb the Ukrainian people into submission," European Council President Charles Michel said. "But Ukrainians are resisting." "We, the EU, will continue to support them for as long as it takes. The time is now, they urgently need more equipment and I am personally in favor of supplying tanks to Ukraine," he added. ADVERTISEMENT Britain confirmed on January 16 that it was going to send 14 Challenger 2 tanks and other military equipment, including hundreds of armored vehicles and advanced air-defense systems. Poland and Finland have already pledged to send some of their Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Analysts say the Leopard 2 is superior to the tanks Russia has deployed and would give Kyiv a decisive advantage. Poland has ratcheted up pressure on Germany to follow suit and provide more weapons to Ukraine, including Leopard 2 battle tanks, but Berlin says such weapons should be supplied only if there is agreement among Kyiv's main allies, particularly the United States. Meanwhile in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at his annual news conference on January 18 that the Kremlin will achieve its objectives in Ukraine despite he said was a "hybrid war" waged by the West against Russia. Lavrov said Russia saw no prospects of peace talks and there could be no negotiations with Zelenskiy. Moscow has said talks are possible only if Kyiv recognizes Russia's claims to parts of Ukrainian territory, while Ukraine says it will not stop fighting until all its territory is liberated. By RFE/RL More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Omaha area ended up with just over an inch of snow from the winter storm that otherwise brought large parts of Nebraska to a halt. The official total as of 7 a.m. at Omaha's Eppley Airfield was 1.3 inches, with a total of .52 of an inch of total precipitation, which included the rain, sleet and freezing rain that fell Wednesday afternoon. Here's a handful of the snowfall reports that we've received so far. Northeast Nebraska was the winner, with reports of 10"-11" from Bloomfield through Crofton. pic.twitter.com/iji2qMBLiJ NWS Omaha (@NWSOmaha) January 19, 2023 Several Omaha-area school districts announced two-hour late starts Thursday morning, including Millard, Westside, Elkhorn, Douglas County West and Concordia Lutheran Schools. City plow crews worked through the night, clearing away slush and snow and laying down salt. Austin Rowser, who oversees plowing for Omaha Public Works, said the full fleet, 110 trucks, was out clearing roads. Another 150 to 200 private contractors were helping out, too, Rowser said. Across much of Nebraska, heavy snow bogged down travel. Interstate 80 and U.S. Highway 30 were closed from Grand Island westward, according to the Nebraska Department of Transportation. Several other roads in western and northern Nebraska were considered impassable. North Platte had an official snow total of 13.9 inches, said Jaclyn Gomez, a meteorologist in the North Platte office of the National Weather Service. Other totals from the area: 15 inches in Ainsley, 16 inches at Burwell, 17.5 inches in Callaway, 18 inches 5 miles west of Stapleton, 19 inches in Broken Bow, 22" at a location 5 miles west of Merna and 9 miles northwest of Anselmo and 23 inches 11 miles northeast of Callaway. Norfolk reported 9 inches, while locations south of Norfolk generally reported 2-6 inches of snow. The primary reason Omaha didnt see significant snow Wednesday afternoon was warmth some 2,000 to 3,000 feet high in the atmosphere, said AccuWeathers Grady Gilman. Temperatures at that level were a degree or two higher than expected. In the sporting world, you hear all the time that its a game of inches, he said. In meteorology, its game of a degree or two. If you are off by a little bit, these variations can have a significant impact. And thats what we saw in Omaha. The timing of the warmth was a factor too, Gilman said. The afternoon was when the heaviest snowfall rates were expected, and had it snowed, the Omaha metro could have seen intense rates of 1 to 2 inches an hour. Clint Aegerter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Valley, said a pocket of dry air also ate into the metro areas snowfall totals. Still, the system was moisture-rich thanks to warm, moist air flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico. Lincoln surpassed its daily record for precipitation, according to the weather service. The previous record was .45 inches set in 1975 and, by late afternoon, .65 inches had fallen with more to come. Cody Thomas, a spokesman for the Nebraska State Patrol, said troopers had responded to 15 crashes and 121 motorist assists from midnight to late afternoon on Wednesday. None appeared to involve serious injuries. For the most part, people have stayed off the roads, he said. We just urge people to reduce speed during these conditions. While there may not be as much snow as predicted in the metro, the freezing rain has made roadways slick. Photos: Midweek winter storm hits the Omaha area 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. LINCOLN State lawmakers advanced a package of proposed rule changes Tuesday that steered clear of most controversy. The package approved by the Legislatures Rules Committee leaves out such hot-button proposals as doing away with secret ballots for electing legislative leaders and closing committee deliberations to the press. It also leaves out a proposal to designate the governors budget proposals as speaker major proposals and reduce the number of votes needed for filibuster-ending cloture motions on speaker major proposals. State Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard, the Rules Committee chairman, said he plans to bring up all three issues later in the session but for now wanted to stick with ideas that have broad support so lawmakers can adopt permanent rules quickly and get down to other business. He pointed to the 2017 session, when lawmakers spent more than two months battling over whether to continue using secret ballots to elect legislative leaders. The prolonged debate occurred because legislative rules provide no procedure or motion to end a filibuster against a rules amendment. This years Rules Committee decision means another delay for those who have pushed to require public votes. The Nebraska Republican Party has long sought such a change. The effort gained momentum last year when the Nebraska First PAC, founded by former GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, sought pledges from senators and candidates to vote for the change. But lawmakers already elected committee chairs by secret ballot this year, after proponents of a change decided against starting a major rules fight on the first day of the session. The Legislature currently is operating under last years rules, as is typical at the beginning of a new session. Lawmakers approved a motion on the first day to leave those temporary rules in effect until Friday, unless permanent rules are adopted before then. Speaker of the Legislature John Arch of La Vista has said he hopes to start debate on rule changes Thursday. At that time, any lawmaker could propose a change that did not make the committee package, including the one eliminating secret ballots. Among Rules Committee members, the most debated proposal Tuesday was one addressing motions to indefinitely postpone, or kill, a bill that are made before the bill comes up for first-round debate. Such motions are used in fighting bills because they can block supporters from getting to a vote on key amendments. Sen. Teresa Ibach of Sumner had proposed to eliminate kill motions at that point in legislative debate. The committee advanced an amended version of her proposal, which would give the bills sponsor a chance to speak before debate on the kill motion begins. Under current rules, the lawmaker who made the motion speaks first. Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair voted against the amended version, saying such motions should not be allowed until lawmakers have had a chance to vote on the committee amendments to the bill. But Sen. Wendy DeBoer of Bennington said that both Ibachs original proposal or Hansens version would meet with stiff opposition. If we put this on the floor, theres going to be fireworks, theres going to be a ruckus, she said, while adding that the amended version might be acceptable. State lawmakers proposed a record number of rule changes this year, which drew record public interest. Photos: Omaha World-Herald best photos of 2022 Thomas DeVore, who lost a bid to be Illinois attorney general, speaks to supporters on election night, Nov. 7, 2022. At left is Darren Bailey, who was Republican candidate for governor. DeVore and others have filed lawsuits to block the new assault weapons ban in Illinois. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune) Only a week old, Illinois sweeping ban on high-powered firearms and large-capacity ammunition magazines is facing at least two legal challenges and pushback from dozens of county sheriffs who say they wont uphold the law. One lawsuit was filed Friday in state court in Crawford County, which borders Indiana in southern Illinois, on behalf of three residents who argue that the law violates their right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Failed Republican attorney general candidate Thomas DeVore filed another lawsuit Tuesday in nearby Effingham County on behalf of four licensed firearm dealers and more than 850 other individuals who contend their rights are violated by the law. Advertisement Later Tuesday, the Illinois State Rifle Association issued a statement from its executive director saying the gun-rights group would be filing a federal lawsuit imminently. The law took effect with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzkers signature on Jan. 10. Pritzker and other supporters of the law anticipated legal challenges to the measure, passed in response to the deadly mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, but have contended that the restrictions it places on firearm ownership are constitutional. Advertisement In addition to legal challenges, putting the law into practice has become an issue as sheriffs across the state, including in DuPage and other Chicago-area counties, have indicated they would not enforce the weapons ban on the grounds that it punishes law-abiding citizens by violating their Second Amendment rights. DuPage Sheriff James Mendrick, a Republican, said in a news release Friday that he believed the law was a clear violation of the inalienable right to bear arms which his office would not participate in enforcing. Mendrick was also criticized by newly elected DuPage County Board Chair Deb Conroy, a former Democratic state representative from Elmhurst, who said in a statement Friday, In DuPage County, we should not be playing politics with state laws. On Tuesday, 16 Democratic state legislators who represent portions of the west suburban county said in an open letter to residents that they were dismayed and angered by Mendricks statement. The DuPage County sheriffs intention to violate his sworn duty to uphold our states laws is a dereliction of duty and puts our safety at risk, the lawmakers wrote. The sheriffs words send a clear message that lawbreakers are welcome here. Pritzker likewise has chided sheriffs whove come out against the law, saying enforcing its provisions is their job. And I expect them to do that job. ... You can have all the resolutions and declarations that you want; the reality is that the laws that are on the books, you dont get to choose which ones people are going to follow, Pritzker said last week at an unrelated event in Quincy. One gun control group called the sheriffs vow that they wont enforce the law disturbing and said law enforcement agencies need to come together in understanding how gun violence is devastating our communities. Advertisement This legislation was not a symbolic act its a critical path to protect the lives of children and Black and brown communities in our state, the group Gun Violence Prevention PAC, or GPAC, said in a statement. Furthermore, the legislation serves as a safeguard for law enforcement as well. A customer looks at a selection of firearms, many of which fall under the new state assault weapons ban, at R-Guns store on Jan. 11, 2023 in Carpentersville. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune) The Crawford County lawsuit names as defendants two people who are tasked with enforcing the law: Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly and Crawford County States Attorney Cole Price Shaner. State Police spokeswoman Melaney Arnold declined to comment on pending litigation. Shaner could not be reached Tuesday for comment. The lawsuit alleges that the law violates the Fourth and 14th amendments by requiring people who owned now-banned firearms at the time it took effect to admit possession of certain firearms that under state law are generally declared to be unlawful. The complaint also alleges that the ban violates the Second Amendment, leaning heavily on a June decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down New York states concealed carry law. The Illinois law immediately bans the delivery, sale, import and purchase of guns that are designated in the law as assault weapons. Starting next year, people who possess guns covered by the ban must either register them with the state or face a misdemeanor for a first offense and a felony for subsequent offenses. Advertisement The law also immediately bans the delivery, sale or purchase of large capacity ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns. As of April 10, current owners possession of large-capacity magazines will be allowed only on private property, at a firing range or a sport shooting competition or at a federal licensed gun dealer for repairs. Violations will be subject to a $1,000 fine. Also, devices that increase the firing rates of a firearm, known as switches, to convert them from semi-automatic to automatic weapons, are immediately banned, and someone in possession would face a felony count for each device. The new law also speeds up to July from January the existing requirement for universal background checks by federal firearm dealers or the Illinois State Police for private gun sales. It also modifies the states current red flag law that allows relatives and police to seek a court approved firearm restraining order to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, extending the duration of the orders from six months to a year. Most Republicans contended the legislation would do nothing to prevent crime, would run counter to rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court involving Second Amendment rights and would face a court challenge upon becoming law. In the Effingham County lawsuit, DeVore focuses largely on procedural issues under the state constitution, arguing that the process by which the measure was approved violated a requirement that legislation be confined to a single subject. In the final days of the their lame-duck session, lawmakers took a bill that was initially about insurance and overwrote it with the weapons ban. While a common practice in Springfield, DeVore argues that its an abhorrent method of excluding the public from participating in lawmaking so they might have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard to representatives. Advertisement The lawsuit, which names Pritzker, House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch, Senate President Don Harmon and Attorney General Kwame Raoul as defendants, alleges that lawmakers and the governor violated the state constitutions due process and equal protection clauses. Pritzker signed the bill just hours after House Democrats led final passage of the measure on a 68-41 vote, and a day after Senate Democrats approved it 34-20. Pritzker and legislators acted amid warnings from most Republicans and gun-rights advocates that the new law was unconstitutional and would face a legal challenge. Two House Republicans outgoing House GOP Leader Jim Durkin ofWestern Springs and Rep. Bradley Stephens of Rosemont joined Democrats in voting for the bill. Four House Democrats voted against it. In the Senate, there were no GOP votes for the bill, while four Democrats voted against it. dpetrella@chicagotribune.com jgorner@chicagotribune.com LINCOLN Nebraskans would pay income taxes at a flat 3.99% rate and taxes on Social Security benefits would be eliminated immediately under a legislative package unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Jim Pillen. The proposals also include an end to property tax support for community colleges, changes in how farm and ranch land is valued and tax credits for private school scholarship donations. Pillen called the package transformative change that would ease property and income taxes and help Nebraska compete with other states for businesses and people. These are going to be historic, he said. Its about our kids and its about taxes and its the things that all of us Nebraskans agree on. Pillen said the proposals would be the largest tax cuts in Nebraskas history and would improve the states standing in the Tax Foundation rankings of state income taxes. Those rankings compare states on how much they tax their top income earners. He said he is very confident Nebraska can afford the proposed tax cuts, along with his plans for major increases in dollars allocated for school aid. The governor said he is holding the line on other state spending to make both possible. Meanwhile, the states coffers are flush with revenues this year, and the states cash reserve fund is projected to reach $2.3 billion by June 30, 2025. Im very conservative and this is very sustainable, Pillen said. The package includes: Flat tax. State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha introduced LB 754, which would reduce the top individual and corporate income tax rates to 3.99% by 2027. The rate would match the income tax cuts that Iowa is making. The proposal would provide an estimated $720 million worth of tax cuts over five years. Pillen said his intention is to have a flat income tax for all Nebraskans. However, LB 754 only changes the rate for the top individual and corporate brackets. Currently, people in the states lowest two tax brackets pay a lower rate, while those in the third bracket pay more than 3.99%. The tax rate on the lower of Nebraskas two corporate tax brackets is 5.58%. Kenny Zoeller, head of the governors policy research office, and Linehan said the governor and Legislature will work together to figure out how to amend the bill and achieve a flat tax. Linehan promised there would be no tax increases on taxpayers who pay less than 3.99% now. Phase down. Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha introduced LB 641. As written, the bill would speed up the process of eliminating income taxes on Social Security benefits. Kauth said the goal is to make the change immediate, which would require an amendment. Lawmakers last year approved a four-step phase-out of the tax. The change would reduce state revenues by $31 million when fully implemented. Fellow Omaha Sen. Brad von Gillern introduced LB 804 and LB 806, which would immediately implement the corporate and individual income tax cuts passed last year. They would eliminate a phase-down period and bring the top rate for both down to 5.84%. Community colleges. Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil offered LB 783, which would eliminate community colleges ability to levy property taxes as of 2027. The bill would replace property tax revenue with state funds, which would be distributed based on 2025 levels and be capped at 3.5% annual increases. Murman said the bill would provide $250 million worth of property tax cuts, based on 2021 taxes. It would reduce property taxes by an average of 5.3% statewide. Property owners may not get quite as big a boost in their pocketbooks, however, because a newly created income tax credit offsets a portion of the community college taxes paid. Ag land valuation. Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston plans to pursue changes in how agricultural land is assessed for property taxes. She introduced LB 750 on Wednesday as a placeholder bill, while work continues on crafting the language of the proposal. Albrecht said the goal is to base valuations on farm and ranch lands potential for generating income, rather than on sale prices of land. Most other states already have adopted an income-based valuation approach. She also plans to include a cap on ag land valuation increases of 3.5% annually statewide. Private schools. Linehans second measure, LB 753, would provide income tax credits to people who donate to organizations that offer scholarships to private and parochial school students. The amount available for tax credits would start at $25 million in 2024, with annual increases of 25% possible in future years. Under the bill, the scholarships would have to go first to students who have previously gotten scholarships or their siblings. The next priority would be students in poverty, students denied option enrollment, military children, students who are bullied and special education students. Linehan has made several previous attempts to pass such legislation but has fallen short in the face of filibusters. The Greater Omaha and Lincoln Chambers of Commerce welcomed the governors proposals, saying they have the potential to improve the states competitiveness. Jennifer Creager, a lobbyist for the Omaha group, said that reducing income taxes and getting to a flat tax has been a long-time priority, although she said chamber officials will need to study the specifics of the legislation. But Rebecca Firestone, executive director of the OpenSky Policy Institute, raised concerns about the affordability of the tax package, especially when combined with the school aid proposals. She said numerous studies show that tax rates are just one factor when businesses and individuals are making location decisions. LINCOLN The senator who led the successful ballot initiative to require voter identification in Nebraska introduced a bill Tuesday to carry out the requirement. Legislative Bill 535 spells out acceptable types of identification, requirements for providing ID with mail-in ballots and the process for handling cases where voters show up at the polls without ID. The measure also requires the secretary of state to undertake a voter education effort and provides for free state ID cards and birth certificates for people lacking acceptable ID. State Sen. Julie Slama of Dunbar introduced the bill, which promptly drew criticism from the ACLU of Nebraska as creating unreasonable barriers to the ballot. Slama sponsored the initiative petition drive that put a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot, then led the campaign for its successful passage. The measure requires voters to present valid photographic ID before casting a ballot in any election. LB 535 would define valid photographic IDs as documents issued by the State of Nebraska, the federal government or Native American tribes that meet certain standards. Among those standards, the name on the ID would have to conform to the name on a persons voter registration. Except for military, veteran or tribal IDs, the documents would have to have expiration dates and not have expired before the last general election. The documents would either have to have a photo of the person or an affidavit stating that the person has a religious objection to being photographed. Under the bill, people voting by mail would have to provide their drivers license or state ID number or a copy of another acceptable ID when requesting a ballot and when returning it. People voting in person, including those voting early at an election office, would have to show their ID. Anyone who showed up to vote without an ID could vote provisionally, but their vote would only be counted if they provided an acceptable ID to the county election office by the Tuesday following the election. Under LB 535, the Department of Motor Vehicles would provide a free state ID to anyone without a Nebraska drivers license who needs an ID for voting. The bill also would provide a free birth certificate to people who need one to get an ID for voting. The measure was among 163 bills introduced on the next-to-last day of bill introductions. Among the others: Abortion: Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston, along with 28 other state senators, introduced her anticipated abortion bill, LB 626, which would ban all abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, which typically happens around six weeks past fertilization. Physicians could lose their medical licenses if they perform abortions beyond this point. The legislation has received harsh criticism from opponents since Albrecht announced it last week. The most common criticism is that most women dont realize they are pregnant until after the legislation would ban an abortion. Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, who led the opposition against Albrechts previous attempt to ban all abortions last year, introduced LB 488 on Tuesday, which would require state hospitals provide sexual assault survivors with medically and factually accurate information about emergency contraception. LB 626 includes an exception for victims of sexual assault. Education: LB 475, introduced by Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, would eliminate the states current school funding formula and replace it with the Nebraska Education Formula. The new formula would allocate funding based on district enrollment, with additional provisions in place for low-income students and students with limited English proficiency. The bill runs counter to several measures Gov. Jim Pillen just pledged his support to Tuesday morning. Pillens bills would maintain the current funding formula, but would add $1,500 in foundational aid for every student, establish a $1 billion Education Future Fund that would grow up to $2.5 billion, and limit school districts from increasing their revenue beyond 3% per year. Another bill introduced by Sen. Jen Day of Omaha, LB 558, would require that all public school employees be paid at least 70% of the statewide average hourly wage. Sen. Lynne Walz of Fremont also introduced a bill, LB 581, which would give immunity to school employees that use naloxone, a lifesaving medication that can reverse an opioid overdose. Marijuana: Medical marijuana would be legalized under LB 588, introduced by Sen. Anna Wishart of Lincoln. The user must be using the drug to treat a specific ailment listed in the bill. Wishart previously vowed to bring the legislation after a petition she led last year to legalize medical marijuana failed to get enough signatures to make it on the ballot. Streetcars: LB 477, introduced by Wayne, would allocate $100 million to the Omaha Streetcar Authority for the long-awaited Omaha streetcar, with the condition that half the funding be used for establishing a streetcar line through North Omaha. Wayne, a proponent of public transportation, is also leading an effort to devote roughly $335 million to economic recovery efforts in underserved areas, primarily in North and South Omaha. Red flag: LB 482, introduced by Sen. Jane Raybould of Lincoln, would allow law enforcement to seek a suicide risk protection order from the courts in cases where a person poses a significant risk of injuring themselves or others. The orders would bar the person from having any firearms. Raybould said the measure was modeled after a so-called red flag proposal offered by former Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln. Restrictive housing: Nebraska inmates would not be placed in restrictive housing for more than 15 consecutive days under LB 557, introduced by Sen. Tony Vargas of Omaha. Restrictive housing is considered confinement where inmates have limited contact with other offenders, and have controlled movement out of their cell under limited out-of-cell time. Solitary confinement is already not allowed under state law. Lottery tickets: Lottery tickets could be purchased through vending machines under LB 493, introduced by Sen. George Dungan of Lincoln. Self-driving cars: LB 625 would mandate that operating self-driving cars be occupied by someone with a valid operators license who has the ability to monitor the cars performance and operate the vehicle if necessary. Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha introduced the bill. A number of Washington County residents are upset over what a proposed comprehensive plan and zoning update could mean for their properties. County residents have expressed concerns that the plan would lead to fewer or smaller acreages. Or that it could limit their ability to raise hoofed animals, chickens or bees. The Washington County Board and the countys planning commission are set to host a joint meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday to address the plan. The meeting is to be held at the Blair Public Library, 2233 Civic Drive in Blair. A copy of the 121-page comprehensive plan has been posted on Washington Countys website alongside a 166-page draft of zoning regulations. Other documents related to the proposal are available online, too. The Comprehensive Development Plan is a blueprint, one portion of the document reads. Its designed to identify, assess and develop actions and policies regarding such things as population, land use, transportation and housing. Robbin Jeffrey and her husband raise a small herd of a smaller breed of cattle on their 14 acres in Washington County. They sell the grass-fed cattle on the hoof to friends. They also keep chickens, selling any extra eggs. And Jeffreys husband raises bees, making honey-based products in addition to breeding and selling queen bees. The Jeffreys also operate an excavating business, storing a few pieces of heavy machinery on their property. Under the new proposed plan, Jeffrey said, their livelihood could be threatened. Jeffrey interprets the proposed changes to the plan as removing property owners ability to raise hoofed animals, chickens and bees, as well as to operate a business on their property. It seems preposterous that there would be a zoning ordinance that would eliminate small farms and businesses in your county, she said. The question Why? is being asked by virtually everybody, and theres no answer yet. Jeffrey said she wasnt notified of the proposed plan or of open meetings regarding it. It came as a surprise, she said, which only adds to peoples emotional stress and anger. Chris Shewchuk, the countys planning and zoning administrator, said the proposed regulations will allow for hobby farms. That will allow for raising farm animals and growing crops. It is our intention that residents will be able to continue to do those activities they are currently doing, Shewchuk said in an email. Regulations will state that what a landowner does on a property may not change the character or main use of the property or create a public nuisance, Shewchuk said. Home occupations such as operating a landscaping or other business off a property will continue to be allowed, he said. Thursdays meeting is open to the public for comments on the proposed regulations. No vote will take place. Several members of the Washington County Board declined to comment on the proposed plan. They referred a reporter to Shewchuk. Lisa Kramer, a Washington County Board member, said the board hasnt taken action and doesnt intend to take action on it at this point in time. She stressed that the copy of the plan posted online is still a draft. Thursdays meeting, she said, is just simply to get everybody in the same room and have a conversation about what the concerns are and what it actually looks like and how it would impact different areas of the county. BLOOMINGTON A Bloomington man faces a sex offender registry violation. Brian Trost, 26, is charged with one count of violation of the Illinois Sex Offender Registration Act. According to court documents, Trost was convicted in 2015 on a child pornography charge in McLean County. A prosecutor said Trost, who is listed as homeless, failed to notify police within three days of moving out of his last residence. He was jailed in lieu of posting $785, and an arraignment was scheduled for Feb. 3. Updated mug shots from The Pantagraph Bryant Lewis Derek Roesch Justin M. Mata Marcus D. Wesley Phillip Tinch Trisha L. Hanke William B. Givens David L. Oliver Kenneth E. Funk Jordan R. King Holly M. Isaacson Kenneth L. Minton Tony L. Jackson Britley L. Hilger Jasmine L. Smith Jackie S. Claypool Noah R. Demuth Brandon L. Parsano Alexander N. Williams Carlos Sanchez-Solozarzano Jaylin S. Bones Jordan R. King Dominique M. Banks Austin T. Daugherty Sandra M. Lewis Samantha E. Morris Nolan C. Love Nikkita L. Sandefur Katlin M.B. Wilson Eli C. Garozzo Tysean T. Townsend Curtis J. Byrd Noral K. Nelson NORMAL Heartland Community College plans to offer two new credential programs, one in cannabis cultivation and one in data analytics, possibly starting this fall. The programs were approved unanimously by the colleges board Tuesday evening during the regular board meeting. The next step is getting the state's OK, but officials can do that without needing votes by the Illinois Board of Higher Education or the Illinois Community College Board, said Rick Pearce, provost and vice president for academic affairs. The Cannabis Cultivation Certificate would teach students about the cannabis industry, including growing plants, regulations and business essentials. The certificate works as a standalone credential or can be stacked as an emphasis in the agriculture associate degree. The focus will be on classroom studies; students will not be cultivating actual cannabis on campus, Pearce said. Some colleges in Illinois are allowed to have cannabis plants for educational purposes under the Cannabis Community College Vocational Pilot Program, but Heartland is not among those. There is a growing demand for jobs in the industry, including within Heartlands district, Pearce said. "The program prepares students for entry level in the cannabis industry. It goes in depth in a number of areas of cannabis cultivation and dispensary operations," he said. The field takes specialized knowledge, said board member Becky Ropp. Cannabis cultivation is very, very difficult actually, so I think this is a good opportunity in the area. Even for those in agriculture ... I went to a two-day conference in Chicago, and it is very very complex, very hard to grow," Ropp said. The second program approved was a microcertificate in data analytics. The program includes two courses that would prepare students for an entry level position in the field. It is aimed at students early in their education and people already in the workforce looking to learn new skills to advance their careers. It is stackable in the business technology associate degree program and the courses can be used as electives in other programs. College finances While the programs were the only non-personnel action items outside the consent agenda, the board also heard about the colleges financial planning. The staff is projecting a surplus of $1 million to $1. 5 million, said Letisha Trepac, vice president for finance and administration. In addition, Trepac walked the board through longer term projections, looking at the next three fiscal years. There, initial projections show possible deficits, but those projections assumed some things that are likely to change such as flat tuition and enrollment rates. We have upward pressure usually on expense and downward pressure on revenue but we always work through it and I have no doubt were going to be able to do the same thing for the coming years, she said. Watch now: Photos from 47th annual MLK Lunch Dr. Carla Campbell-Jackson, Bradley Ross Jackson, Kamaya Coleman, Shaun Harden, Kevin Jackson Dr. Bianca Bailey, Rev. Terrance Thomas, Rev. Elexis Wilson Sabrina Coleman, Sonya Mau Ricky L. Haynes, Arthur Haynes Otis Evans, John Elliott Award Winner Karcin Roth (center) with family and friends Cyndy Irwin, Veleda Harvey, Chuck Irwin Enjoying the afternoon Meta Mickens-Baker, Faye Freeman-Smith Amaya Hursey, Cana Brooks Jason Querciagrossa, Janessa Williams, Ben Ryburn Greg Shaw, Mollie Ward Laresse Foster, Jennifer Johnson Uma Balakrishnan, Meta Mickens-Baker Sharla Ajayi, Nikita Richards, Millicent and Jeremy Roth Veleda and Kamille Harvey Belinda Brock, Takesha Stokes, Brigette Gibson Phani Aytam, Dr. David Mouser, Morgan Mouser, Sonya Mau, Mandava Rao Marla McElroy, Kris Williams Seated: Willie Holton Halbert, Charles Halbert; Standing: Shirley Boykin holding Ryleigh Rose Beaulieu Iyanah Prince, Kara Sandhaas, Mike Matejka, Verneice Prince Laresse and Linda Foster Great crowd BLOOMINGTON U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin visited Bloomington on Wednesday to recognize the $15.8 million in federal funding Connect Transit has received to convert half of its transit fleet to electric vehicles by 2024. But as the state of Illinois prepares to integrate more electric vehicles into its economy, the five-time senator acknowledged that the federal government must find a way to recoup a significant loss of motor fuel tax revenue. It may fall on owners of these electric vehicles to cover this shortfall, he said. "We have time to adjust to this and I think we should," the Springfield Democrat said. "It is not unfair to say to the drivers of vehicles, even electric vehicles, 'Are you prepared to pay your fair share of some of the infrastructure in America if you keep up with the growth of the economy?'" Durbin added that he believes there still is room to give savings to consumers at the pump. A recent report from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, which has strong ties to organized labor, warned of a substantial loss in transportation revenue through this transition process, primarily through motor fuel taxes. The report estimated Illinois would have to add 119,000 electric vehicles every year in order to meet a goal of one million by 2030. Should the state hit this goal, it would lose out on $765 million in combined sales and motor fuel taxes when accounting for additional EV fees. In total, the report estimated that the state and federal revenue loss over the next decade would be about $4.3 billion. Connect Transit was awarded $13 million in federal funding from the Federal Transit Administration's bus grant program, which will be used to purchase five full-sized electric buses and several smaller electric vehicles for a microtransit service that would operate similar to a rideshare. The Bloomington-Normal bus system also will use the funding to develop an on-site training center to support bus training efforts with the Illinois Department of Transportation and FTA. Another $2.8 million in earmark funding will be used to purchase additional electric vehicles as part of the microtransit program that will serve disadvantaged neighborhoods and the area's growing senior population. That funding also will support the planning of a "microgrid" that can be used to capture and store solar and wind energy to power Connect Transit's electric vehicle fleet. David Braun, general manager of Connect Transit, said each electric bus is expected to save about 7,000 gallons of diesel a year, which doesn't just help Connect Transit reduce its carbon footprint. "The diesel fuel that we're saving in public transit can then be used for commercial uses," Braun said. "Realistically, it increases the supply and then potentially reduced the cost in the long term." Accompanying Durbin was newly elected U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen of the 17th Congressional District, who said these federal funds are not a one-and-done investment. It is the first step forward in a fight against a nationwide health crisis and there are champions in Springfield who will bring additional funding back to Central Illinois, he said. "We know that when we invest in public transit that we create the opportunities that help our economy grow and that's what we're doing today," Sorenson said. Cities where residents rely on cellular data to access the web & stream Cities Where Residents Rely on Cellular Data to Access the Web & Stream Young _ low income adults rely heavily on cell data for internet Southern states are most likely to rely on cell data for internet Small _ midsize metros whose residents rely on cell data for internet 15. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 14. Kansas City, MO-KS 13. Memphis, TN-MS-AR 12. Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN 11. Salt Lake City, UT 10. San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 9. Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY 8. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 7. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 6. New Orleans-Metairie, LA 5. Tucson, AZ 4. Jacksonville, FL 3. Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 2. Oklahoma City, OK 1. Birmingham-Hoover, AL Throughout 2022, The United States, including Illinois, has seen a surge of union organizing. Here in Illinois, we passed the Workers' Rights Amendment, and the average person in Illinois, whether Republican, Democrat or independent, of those, 71% of voters saw unions favorably -- the highest level in six decades. In Illinois, unionization of women is increasing, and since 2018, workers under 35 years old have experienced the largest increases in unionization. Half of our public sector workers are unionized (including 70% of k-12 teachers and 69% of law enforcement officers and first responders). Just under half of our laborers in the construction fields are unionized. In Illinois, Black workers are the most unionized racial or ethnic group at a 20.4% unionization rate and have experienced a 2.4% increase in their union membership. Among the most unionized groups are military veterans. One in four employed veterans is a union member in Illinois. The unionization rate for veterans, married workers, foreign-born workers, and native-born and naturalized citizens are all above the national average in Illinois. In Illinois, unions lift worker wages by an average of 15%, the fourth-highest in the nation and research has linked union representation with better job quality higher incomes, improved health care access, safer workplaces, lower turnover, and less reliance on public assistance. Illinoisans, unionized or not, support unions and unionization efforts. When I hear school board and other candidates taking anti-union stances, this tells me these candidates are in favor of poverty wages, wealth being concentrated in the hands of the few, income inequality, workers being beholden to the bosses no matter the conditions of the workplace, healthcare inequality, seniors struggling in retirement to retain economic security, and racial inequity. A candidate cannot be both "for the people" and against unions. The unions, the workers of Illinois, are the people. Krystle Able, Normal The Gold For Oil Policy will give Ghana the space to accumulate more international reserves as the country will save the $3 billion it spends on oil imports, Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumai has said. He explained that the use of gold was specifically for oil imports in the face of declining foreign exchange reserves. Unfortunately, the Vice President expressed concern that some people have misinterpreted this as Ghana being against the use of the US dollar in international transactions, he stated. Far from it. We want to accumulate more US dollar reserves in the future. Dr. Bawumia said that the gold for oil initiative is working effectively after Ghana received the first delivery on Sunday, August 15, 2023. So far, the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources has announced 40,000 metric tons of oil arrived at the Tema port on Sunday, January 15, 2023. The Energy Ministry, the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation, and Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) are to formulate plans for its distribution and sale. Speaking at the 74th annual new year school of the University of Ghana on Tuesday, January 17, 2023, Dr Bawumia defended the policy saying that How are we going to change this whole way of doing business as far as our natural resources were concerned? Take the case of gold in Ghana, we have mined gold for over 200 years, and when I looked at the data I realized that our total reserves of gold in Ghana was just 8.7 tonnes at the end of 2021. One of the largest gold mining countries, we are in the top 10 in the world but we have not accumulated gold to build our reserves. We looked at the other side of the balance sheet, we export gold and we import oil. The cost of oil import is about $3 billion a year. So we ask the simple question, why dont we, since we have always got pressure in finding US Dollars to buy oil, rather reach an agreement to change our gold for oil and then, sell the oil in Cedis and then, use the Cedis to buy more gold, use that gold to pay for oil, sell the oil in Cedis and then you dont need to look for the scarce foreign exchange to buy oil, which always leads to depreciation on the currency. With this idea, we said, let us do something that the textbooks dont teach you, let us do something that is out of the box and this is why we said gold-for-oil. We quickly looked at this and we negotiated with the suppliers of oil who were very excited and happy to receive gold in payment. Thankfully, yesterday, Monday, Ghana took its first delivery of oil under the gold-for-oil programme. This is the cargo to test the framework to see if everything that has been put in place will work and by the grace of God, it is clear that the framework will work and if that should happen we are going to save a lot of foreign exchange and reduce the pressure on our currency. The Vice President continued that a major source of Cedi depreciation has been the demand for forex to finance imports of oil products and to address this challenge, the government is negotiating a new policy regime where sustainably mined gold will be used to buy oil products. We implement the gold-for-oil policy as it is envisioned, it will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency with its associated increases in fuel, electricity, water, transport and food prices. He explained that this is because the exchange rate will no longer directly enter the formula for the determination of fuel or utility prices since all the domestic sellers of fuel will no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products. Source: dailyguidenetwork.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Former General Secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC), Atik Mohammed has called on Ghanaians to support government in implementing its Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP). Last year, the government launched this programme and invited holders of bonds to voluntarily exchange approximately GH137 billion domestic notes and bonds including ESLA and Daakye for a package of new bonds. But the bondholders have kicked against the debt exchange programme. Pensioner Bondholders Forum has petitioned government to exempt all pensioners holding sovereign bonds from the programme, so has Individual Bondholders Forum, a voluntary group of individual bondholders, also resented the programme. Atik Mohammed, discussing the matter during Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" show, explained that the government reviewing the bond terms is the only way for Ghana to gain the IMF bailout and restore the economy. "What has caused this situation? It is because our debt became unsustainable. When we say your debt is unsustainable, it means you have taken so much loans that it has become difficult for you to pay up your debts because we use our income or revenues to pay debts. So, when your revenues are not going up but your debts keep rising, it gets to a point your repayment or your debt burden becomes so huge that paying off your debts becomes very difficult", he explained. He appealed to the victims to bear with the government stating if the programme is suspended, Ghana will come full circle and the repercussions might be unbearable, hence it is better for the nation to endure the inconveniences now. "I am not saying it is the best option because if we had listened to the advice in the past that we should be measured in taking loans, we may not have come to this stage. But we are in this situation already, what next do we do? So, we should know that this is our only way out." Atik also advised the government to engage the stakeholders to share their concerns about the programme stressing "there are people who invested money. They deserve an explanation". "I am of the view that consultations are very important. No matter what, people will have haircuts because you are recording zero coupon rates in a particular year when you expected that you would get some dividends. That is a haircut. But in all of this, we must admit that if we don't do it like that, what is the other alternative? What else can we do? Because IMF is our way out as we speak...It is the IMF that can help us so that we get to where we were," he added. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has asserted that some public universities in the country are running programmes that produce unemployable graduates. According to him, thousands were graduating from Ghanaian universities and looking for nonexistent jobs. Dr Adutwum said his outfit was engaging universities to focus on courses that have relevance to the nation as well as graduates. He said the country had a serious challenge in terms of some of the courses that were being offered by public universities, adding that many students accepted to enrol in such programmes because they just want to attend the university. "If you look at distance learning programmes across the length and breadth of this country, especially championed by the University of Cape Coast, so many students have been enrolled in Diploma in Education, they are being trained for jobs that do not exist," Dr Adutwum said on Tuesday at the ongoing Annual New Year School at the University of Ghana, Legon. "Thousands and thousands are graduating for jobs that do not exist, so we had a conversation with them (the universities). One favourite course that I always cite is what is called Sanitation Education but there is no course in Sanitation to be taught. Development Education, Development Education for what? UDS, Development Studies Undergraduate Programme, for what job? So, yes, I am fully aware and we are engaging the universities. I think we need to focus on courses that have relevance to that particular student and to the nation". He added that there was a Bachelor of Arts in Education programme at a university that was supposed to prepare students for a "non-existent teaching job". Dr Adutwum said because of limited guidance and counselling at public universities, many students could not turn down such programmes when it was offered to them. He said Ghana's unemployment situation could also be linked to the training of graduates by universities for jobs that do not exist in the country. Source: graphiconline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Illinois flagship gun rights organization on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit alleging the newly signed state law that prohibits high-powered guns and large-capacity ammunition magazines violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Filed on behalf of the Illinois State Rifle Association and nearly a half-dozen other gun rights advocates, the lawsuit was anticipated after Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker last week signed the ban on so-called assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. Advertisement Its also the first known federal lawsuit filed against the ban, which was passed six months after the deadly mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park left seven dead and dozens more injured. Two other lawsuits were filed in state court in recent days in downstate Crawford and Effingham counties. The federal lawsuit echoes many of the arguments made by the bans Republican opponents in the Democrat-led state legislature, including that the new law criminalizes law-abiding citizens who have a right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. The suit also alleges the ban violates the 14th Amendment of the constitution, meant to ensure equal protection rights for anyone protected by U.S. laws. Advertisement [ Illinois sweeping firearms ban faces first lawsuits, pushback from dozens of sheriffs ] Aside from the rifle association, the plaintiffs include two other gun rights groups, the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation, two gun shops, one of them from McHenry County, and a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who owns firearms and magazines affected by the ban. Two of the named defendants are Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly, whose agency will oversee a process under the new law that allows current owners of assault weapons to register them with the state police by Jan. 1. Other defendants are a handful of law enforcement officials from different counties, including sheriffs who, prior to the lawsuit, either publicly opposed the ban or vowed to not enforce it. The real problem is that there are existing gun laws that do not work because they are not enforced, Illinois State Rifle Association Executive Director Richard Pearson said in a statement. We would all be much safer if the police had the resources they need, and there were stronger consequences for the non-law-abiding citizens. A spokeswoman for Kelly said the agency would not comment on pending litigation. A representative for Raoul could not be reached for comment. Pritzker is not a named defendant in the lawsuit. On Wednesday, in a CNN interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Pritzker said hes confident the new law is constitutional based on the fact that there have been challenges of other states assault weapons bans. Were simply copying, frankly, whats been done in other states, Pritzker said. In fact, ours is perhaps one of the most stringent, but it fits within the confines of what is constitutional and acceptable. Still, Pritzker left open the possibility that the law could be struck down if a legal challenge makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Who knows? Pritzker said. This Supreme Court (is) certainly a very right-wing one, and well have to let the courts play this out. Advertisement Among the case law cited by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is a U.S. Supreme Court decision from last June that struck down New York states concealed carry law. In New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the high courts conservative 6-3 majority found, among other things, that the plain text of the Second Amendment protected the right to carry guns for self-defense. The lawsuit also cites case law that holds that firearms and magazines can be banned if they are dangerous and unusual, and says that the guns and magazines listed in the Illinois law are in common use and do not fit that definition. Therefore, they cannot be banned, and the Illinois laws challenged herein must be declared unconstitutional, the suit argues. The Illinois law bans dozens of pistols, shotguns and semi-automatic rifles, including all AR-type rifles. The lawsuit argues that the AR-15 rifle is in standard use among law-abiding gun owners and is an optimal firearm to rely on in a self-defense encounter. AR-15 rifles are among the most popular firearms in the nation, and they are owned by millions of Americans, the lawsuit states. What is more, the designation assault weapons is a misnomer, developed by anti-gun publicists in their crusade against lawful firearm ownership. By prohibiting Plaintiffs from possessing and carrying popular semi-automatic firearms and common ammunition magazines, Illinois has prevented them from keeping and bearing arms within the meaning of the (Second) Amendments text, the lawsuit argues. The lawsuit uses a similar argument to allege that the law violates the Second Amendment by depriving the public of high capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets for long guns and over 15 bullets for handguns. Advertisement Magazines capable of holding more than 10 or 15 rounds of ammunition are normal features of firearms in the United States and are more accurately described as standard capacity, magazines, the lawsuit states. Magazine capacity is important for average citizens seeking to defend themselves because most shots fired in armed altercations miss their target. While the Bruen decision expanded Second Amendment protections by imposing a new test requiring gun laws to be historically consistent with laws on the books in the 18th century, the lawsuit says there is no historical tradition of prohibiting the importation, or sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are represented by Wheaton-based attorney David Sigale. He represented Chicago resident Otis McDonald in a successful U.S. Supreme Court case in 2010 that prompted the high court to overturn the citys nearly three-decade-old handgun ban. In an interview with the Tribune last week, Sigale warned the new Illinois ban could be in jeopardy if the Bruen decision is applied. The Second Amendment says the people have the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense purposes. That right is not limited to arms that just existed back in 1791 and its not the governments place basically to say what firearms someone needs or should have or should want for those self-defense or other lawful purposes, Sigale said. Those claims have to be analyzed under a historical tradition test, and when that test is applied I dont think that these restrictions are going to hold up as passing muster, he said. Advertisement After Jan. 1, people who possess an unregistered firearm covered by the ban face a misdemeanor for a first offense and a felony for subsequent offenses. As for the ban on large-capacity magazines, only current owners as of April 10 will be allowed to possess them on private property, at a firing range or a sport shooting competition or at a federal licensed gun dealer for repairs. Violators will be subject to a $1,000 fine. The bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines dont apply to law enforcement. Chicago Tribunes Dan Petrella contributed. jgorner@chicagotribune.com The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has announced that the government will distribute free electronic tablets to all Senior High Schools this year. Dr Bawumia said the "game-changing" development was part of the government's ongoing digitization agenda which has already seen the implementation of free WI-FI at SHSs across the country. The Vice President said he had been informed by the Minister of Education, Yaw Osei Adutwum, that the country was on course to provide the tablets which will come pre-loaded with textbooks and past examination questions. This year, we are on course to provide all Senior High School students in Ghana with tablets which are loaded with textbooks on them for their studies. Thats a very game-changing development. We will have past questions preloaded on these tablets that will be distributed to all and I pray that it does come to pass this year..., Dr Bawumia said Dr Bawumia made this known when he addressed the opening of the 2023 Annual New Year School and Conference (ANYSC) yesterday at the University of Ghana, Legon. This years event, the 74th, is themed: Positioning the African market for sustainable economic development through African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Source: graphiconline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Member of Parliament for North Tongu has welcomed a decision by Reverend Kusi Boateng to initiate legal actions against him. In response to the myriad of allegation levelled against him by Okudzeto Ablakwa, the secretary of the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral said whereas he will avail himself for investigation by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), he will head to the court to clear his name of the allegations at the end of the investigations. I have taken note of some defamatory publications and allegations made against my person by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu. I wish to assure the general public that the statements made by Mr. Ablakwa are a twisted narration of events to pursue a malicious political agenda. There has never been any criminal intent nor any crime committed in my dealings with the Government of Ghana or the National Cathedral. "I look forward to the (CHRAJ) enquiry during which I will present my side of the matter to the Commission. I will subsequently also address the matters fully in public without first seeking to prejudice the public mind as he has done. Additionally, when all is done, I will seek redress against Mr Ablakwa for his deliberate defamatory statements against me," parts of the statement read. In response to the threat by Reverend Kusi Boateng, Okudzeto Ablakwa in a social media post mocked: Now I am waiting for Kwabena Adu Gyamfi to also issue a statement and drag me to court. Okudzeto Ablakwa on Monday, January 16, 2022 dropped a series of explosive allegations against Reverend Kusi Boateng. In an explosive set of allegations which he describes as the Tsar Bomba of all scandals, Ablakwa claimed that Reverend Kusi Boateng holds multiple passports and identification cards with some bearing the name Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. You will recall that in my earlier expose of the scandalous GHC2.6million cash transfer from the National Cathedral Secretariat to JNS Talent Centre Limited, I pointed out that incorporation documents reveal that the three directors of JNS Talent Centre Limited are Johannes Eshun, Sheila Eshun and Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. I also later revealed that Rev. Johannes Eshun is a branch pastor of National Cathedral Executive Council Member/Director, Rev. Victor Kusi-Boatengs Power Chapel Worldwide. Hitherto, the third directorMr. Kwabena Adu Gyamfi has remained a mystery figure. I am now able to reveal the true identity of this mystery director of JNS, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. Definitely, the code has finally been cracked and it shocks to the marrow! Unimpeachable and incontrovertible evidence confirms that Mr. Kwabena Adu Gyamfi is the famous Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng who still serves on the National Cathedral Board as an Executive Council Member/Director. For the avoidance of doubt, there is no distinct Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. Kwabena Adu Gyamfi is a criminal creation of Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng. The two are therefore one and the same. Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng AKA Kwabena Adu Gyamfi thought he had outwitted every Ghanaian, particularly our authorities whom he dribbled for many years; but the day of reckoning is finally here. From unassailable and irreproachable documents in my possession, Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng AKA Kwabena Adu Gyamfi uses multiple passports and multiple identification cards with different names and different dates of birth as his special modus operandi, he wrote on Facebook. Source: ghanaweb.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video When a couple in Accra walked into the 37 Military Hospital Maternity Unit, they were expecting twins, but they were stunned to be handed a single baby after delivery. They are accusing the staff of the hospital of allegedly being responsible for the disappearance of one of the freshly-born babies supposed to be the other twin, delivered at the hospital. The delivery was done through Caesarean section on Thursday, September 8, 2022. A visibly distraught mother of the supposed twin, 38-year-old trader Audrey Agyapong, and her 54-year-old husband, Daniel Naawu, are suspecting foul play. Narrating their ordeal to the Ghanaian Times in Accra, the couple recalled that an ultrasonic checks done 31 weeks into the gestation period at two medical facilities, including the 37 Military Hospital, showed that Ms Agyapong was carrying two live foetuses (twins). The Ghanaian Times painstaking investigations suggested that the first scan report, which was signed off by Dr Otu Danquah, was conducted on April 22, 2022, at the Cerica Diagnostic Services at Lartebiokoshie in Accra, when the pregnancy was 20 weeks. Its results showed live intrauterine (inside the uterus) foetuses. The first ultrasonic scan after 20 weeks showed two foetuses Furthermore, a second ultrasonic scan done at the 37 Military Hospital on July 21, 2022, and signed by Drs M.T Mpetey and R. Asiedu, a Resident and Senior Physician respectively, confirmed results of the earlier scan with twin A weighing 269g and B weighing 261g. In all, we did four different scans, all showing I was carrying live twins and it is baffling that one could disappear at birth, Ms Agyapong told the Ghanaian Times. Explaining further, she said on September 7, 2022, when her gestation period was 38 weeks, she was admitted at the 37 Military Hospital where her vitals were taken with two foetal heart beats confirmed as normal. On the 8th of September 2022, the morning of the operation, my babies were checked again and I was told they were both well. Double logistics were therefore taken for them. At the theatre, I was prepared for the operation and anaesthesia was given which completely numbed the lower part of my body. A screen was placed in the middle which prevented me from directly viewing what was happening. However, I felt the two babies being taken from my womb. Later, I heard a cry and one female baby was shown to me by a doctor named Dr Ali Saine, who told me It is only one baby. Dr Saine is a senior Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the 37 Military Hospital, who performed the Caesarean section. I was startled and whilst trying to process the import of what I was just told, I heard the doctor tell his team members to take out their phones and video it. I was taken to the recovery ward where the doctor told me he would come and talk to me, recalled Ms Agyapong, who said she had been having sleepless nights since the incident. According to the disturbed mother, to make matters worse, she was later told that what she thought was a second baby, was rather a placenta. I was shocked because this was not the first time I was giving birth and I know how one feels when the placenta comes out. For his part, Mr Naawu, a senior driver at J.A Plant Pool Ghana Limited in Accra, said his babys alleged disappearance was unacceptable as he was asked to pay for double items before the operation. I have twins from my previous marriage and was glad I was going to have another set only to be told this shocking story, the evidently upset father fumed. He continued: As I speak now, I have not been able to outdoor the child, nor give her a name, because I do not know whether the missing baby is also female or male. Meanwhile, on October 10, 2022, Mr Naawu petitioned the Commander-in-Charge of the 37 Military Hospital to cause an investigation into the matter and bring back his missing child. Several attempts made by the Ghanaian Times to speak to Dr Ali Saine on the issue, proved futile, as he insisted on contacting the Commander-in-Charge of the 37 Military Hospital, for permission. We have a laid-down procedure here. I cant speak to the media unless you seek permission from the appropriate quarters at the hospital, he insisted. After a couple of attempts to speak to him fell through, the Ghanaian Times on October 14, 2022, officially wrote to the Commander-in-Charge of the 37 Military Hospital, requesting an interview with Dr Saine. Several follow-ups have been made ever since, but to no avail; as it was always met with the refrain at the hospitals administration that: we are working on it. On Friday, October 28, 2022, the Ghanaian Times wrote another letter addressed to the Public Affairs Department of the 37 Military Hospital, requesting for an interview with Dr Ali Saine, but only received a verbal response assuring that an investigation has been commenced into the case. However, an eye specialist at the 37 Military Hospital, Wing Commander Isaac Bediako Fordjuor who is part of a team tasked to probe into the matter, told the Ghanaian Times in November last year that investigations had commenced. We have interviewed all concerned including nurses who worked at the theatre on that fateful day and we shall brief you on our findings when we are done, he said. Nearly four months have passed since investigations commenced into the incident. Source: The Ghanaian Times Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Lower Manya Krobo District Level Elections slated for tomorrow Tuesday, January 17, 2023 have been adjourned. This follows an application for injunction filed against the Electoral Commission at the High Court in Koforidua. In a statement, the EC said, a new date will be communicated in due course. Two persons in Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in Eastern Region secured interlocutory injunction from the court against the Electoral Commission conducting the District level election in the municipality. The applicants Michael Tetteh, and Angel Agyemang, both residents of Agormanya and Asitey respectively are restraining the respondent, the Electoral Commission and its agents or officers from conducting the District Level Elections in Lower Manya Krobo until the final determination of the case on violation of their constitutional right to vote in the upcoming elections pursuant to article 33 of the 1992 constitution of Ghana. According to the applicants, the commission has failed to conduct voters registration exercise to enable them to register having attained 18 years. Paragraph 8 of the affidavit by the applicants states that since turning 18, we have not had any opportunity to register in order to vote or be qualified to be elected as Assembly Members in the Lower Manya Krobo District Assembly. They added we have been further advised and believe same to be true that our right to vote is likely to be contravened if the Respondent is allowed to conduct the district level elections in Lower Manya Krobo district level election. The applicants prayed the court to restrain the Electoral Commission from conducting the elections until the commission conducts the voters registration exercise in accordance with article 45(a) of the constitution. The Electoral Commission is mandated to compile the register of voters and revise it at such periods as may be determined by law. The Municipality was scheduled to hold the district level election on January 17, 2023 which a total of 127 male candidates are vying to represent their electoral areas whilst 280 are contesting the Unit Committee polls. The district level elections were not held for eight years in Lower Manya Krobo due to a dispute between the Municipality and Dangme West District, now known as Shai-Osudoku over 11 electoral areas created at Akuse. The dispute which started with the defection of some of Akuse assembly members to the then Dangme West District, was, however, settled by a Supreme Court ruling in favour of Lower Manya Krobo. The election of Assembly members and unit committee members was immediately held in 2013 and subsequent periods however the election has not been conterminous with the national calendar of the electoral commission. Source: dailyguidenetwork.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Nana Ohene-Ntow, a former General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has said that Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia must step aside in the flagbearership race of the party for the 2024 elections. According to him, Bawumia cannot be the presidential candidate of the NPP because he has blood on his hands regarding the current state of the Ghanaian economy. He added that most Ghanaians even blame the vice president more than President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the happenings in the economy, and his plans to contest might not augur well for the party. when people complain about the economy under our government now, they talk much less about our President Akufo-Addo and they talk much more about the vice president a lot of the bashing that people have had against our current government in terms of the economy has been directed at the vice president. There are a lot of criticisms (against the vice president). If you go and put the same face on your ballot paper and you ask the people, the majority of whom are complaining about this person then it means that you are forcing the people that whether they like it or not they should vote, he said in a JoyNews interview on Tuesday, January 18, 2022, which was monitored by GhanaWeb. He suggested that Dr. Bawumia should step out of the upcoming presidential primaries and explore his presidential ambitions for elections other than the 2024 elections. Ohene-Ntow added that unlike the former Minister for Trades and Industry, Alan Kyerematen, who has stated his intention of contesting in the NPP presidential primaries, Bawumia has age on his side and can contest in presidential elections later than the 2024 elections. Source: ghanaweb.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Constituency chairs of the ruling New Patriotic Party in the Greater Region are demanding an early congress for the partys flagbearer elections. According to the Greater Accra Constituency Chairman Caucus of the party, an early election will afford the party a greater advantage in properly marketing the elected flagbearer. According to a Joynews report sighted by GhanaWeb, the Caucus at a meeting held on Tuesday, January 17, at Susuana Lodge in Labone, emphasised their disagreement with any plans to hold the elections next year. We dont agree to what the party wants to do. In fact, the General Secretary wants an early Congress but the system is pushing against it, which we dont understand. We need time to market the flagbearer to Ghanaians and we cant afford to not break the eight, one of constituency chairmen said. He added, we strongly want the leadership to consider our plea in the interest of the party and Ghanaians as a whole. That is all we are asking for. Meanwhile, there have been growing calls within the NPP for an early congress ahead of Ghanas presidential and parliamentary elections in 2024. Those in support of this argument believe an early congress will help the ruling party to advance its agenda of Breaking the 8. The partys Member of Parliament for Subin, Eugene Boakye Antwi has argued similarly. Going by experience, my view is that let us hold the super delegates as early as say next spring, March thereabouts, give them four or five months to campaign around the country. By August when Parliament is on recess like this, we vote for both Parliamentary and Presidential, get it off the way. The most important thing is that we must look at the party. Akufo-Addo will not be a candidate in 2024 so whoever the candidate will be at that time is the one we should be aiming at selecting, partnering the President in terms of all these Regional tours the President is doing, he said in a JoyNews interview in September last year. Meanwhile, the leadership of the party is expected to meet later this month where a decision will be made on the date for the election. Ahead of the flagbearer contest, the likes of Vice-President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia; former Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kyeremanten, and Assin Central MP, Kennedy Agyapong have been tipped as contenders. Source: graphiconline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video James Kwabena Bomfeh, CPP former Acting General Secretary, has expressed disappointment in President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for refusing to heed the calls on him to sack Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta. According to James Kwabena Bomfeh, popularly called 'Kabila', Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta is a headache to Ghanaians and the Akufo-Addo administration. "The issue of trust is key in communication. If you talk about transparent, sincere, open conversation; trust or the confidence of people is very significant. I don't know but whatever it is, the overwhelming verdict of Ghanaians which is not scientifically established is that the President must change this Finance Minister," he said. He also asked the Minister if he is comfortable with the outcome of events in the country. "Mr. Minister, so all that is going on, are you okay? Are you comfortable with it?" Kabila wondered why the President would allow the Minister to lead the government's Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), expressing that Mr. Ofori-Atta has lost the confidence of the Ghanaian people. "The Finance Minister who is leading this conversation is an issue because the trust issue is major. Parliament, both the Majority and Minority, and many Ghanaians have registered their displeasure. So, are we saying we can't find any person in Ghana to lead this process apart from Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta?", he queried. He couldn't fathom why Mr. Ofori-Atta remains in office despite all the pleas from the citizenry and even Members of Parliament. "The President must get this clear that for one man to be an issue to your government, Mr. President, it's too much!" He made these comments during Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" discussion programme Wednesday morning. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Constituency Chairmen of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Greater Accra Region have declared their support and endorsement for former President John Dramani Mahama, should he decide to contest the partys presidential primaries. With the party expected to announce the details and modalities for the presidential and parliamentary primaries on Wednesday, the Greater Accra Chairmen Caucus during a courtesy call on Mr. Mahama asked him to lead the party to the 2024 election. According to the thirty-three (33) chairmen, it is only President John Mahama who can lead and win the elections for the NDC in 2024. The Amasaman constituency is yet to elect a chairperson. The caucus, led by Dome Kwabenya Chairman, Isaac Lamptey, has promised that they will raise and pay the filing fee of GH500,000 for Mr. Mahama to contest the primaries. The chairmen also urged the membership of the party, its rank and file to continue the process of uniting each other and get ready to start the hard work until victory is achieved in December 2024. The caucus chairmen also urged Mr. Mahama to promote aggressively and encourage members to adopt a branch or constituency to help contribute to an emphatic win for the party. President Mahama thanked the Greater Accra NDC Constituency Chairmen for their visit and declaration. The former president was joined by former chief of Staff Julius Debrah, 2020 Running Mate Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman and the 2020 Campaign Manager Professor Joshua Alabi to receive the chairmen. Source: starrfm.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Successive dry years increase the probability of extinction and this effect increases with: increasing dry duration, decreasing wetland size, and increased average frequency of dry years at the wetland. Plots are (a) local extinction during the second successive dry year, (b) local extinction during the third successive dry year, (c) local extinction during the fourth successive dry year, and (d) local extinction during the fifth successive dry year. Credit: Ecosphere (2023). DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.4379 Flooding in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin is creating ideal breeding conditions for many native species that have evolved to take advantage of temporary flood conditions. Australian scientists have now developed virtual models of the Murray River to reveal a crucial link between natural flooding and the extinction risk of endangered southern bell frogs (Litoria raniformis; also known as growling grass frogs). Southern bell frogs are one of Australia's 100 Priority Threatened Species. This endangered frog breeds during spring and summer when water levels increase in their wetlands. However, the natural flooding patterns in Australia's largest river system have been negatively impacted by expansive river regulation that in some years, sees up to 60% of river water extracted for human use. Flinders University Ph.D. Candidate and South Australian frog expert Rupert Mathwin and his colleagues have built computer simulations of Murray-Darling Basin wetlands filled with simulated southern bell frogs. By changing the simulation from natural to regulated conditions, they show that modern conditions dramatically increase the extinction risk of these beloved frogs. Their findings are published in the journal Ecosphere. Rupert Mathwin of Global Ecology at Flinders University and lead author of the study, says the data clearly indicate that successive dry years raise the probability of local extinction, and these effects are strongest in smaller wetlands. "Larger wetlands and those with more frequent inundation are less prone to these effects, although they are not immune to them entirely. The models present a warning. We have greatly modified the way the river behaves, and the modern river cannot support the long-term survival of southern bell frogs. "Regulation has effectively locked these wetlands into a state of perpetual bust. The research clearly shows that river regulation has been a driver of historical declines in frog numbers. These effects are further compounded by interactive stressors such as disease, exotic species, and land clearance." A century of government water policies has reduced flows below the critical thresholds required for southern bell frogs to persist, but it has also created the means to save them. The Millennium Drought shifted environmental thinking in Australia and created policies that give the Murray-Darling Basin ownership of a portion of flow. Government scientists use these flows (sometimes called environmental water) to create positive ecological outcomes. This includes pumping water into dry wetlands to create breeding opportunities for southern bell frogs. Rupert Mathwin says, "The flows that inform our model include the Millennium Drought that occurred from 1996 to 2009. During that time, south-eastern Australia experienced a region-wide reduction in rainfall and river flows, which coupled with ongoing water extraction, resulted in seven or more successive dry years in all South Australian wetlands. Without environmental water, southern bell frogs would now be extinct in South Australia." Corey Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and co-author of the study, says because large-scale flooding can no longer occur with sufficient frequency, proper management is the only way forward. "The few remaining frog populations that persist are at sites that are actively managed through regular inundation with environmental water applied at the right times for breeding. Our findings provide a blueprint for this process." Rupert Mathwin says that a single dry year is not a great risk to a healthy population, but managers should ensure that wetlands with southern bell frogs experience no more than two successive dry years to reduce the risk of local extinction. "Unfortunately, without human intervention in this heavily modified system, southern bell frogs will probably go extinct." More information: Rupert Mathwin et al, Modeling the effects of water regulation on the population viability of a threatened amphibian, Ecosphere (2023). DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.4379 Journal information: Ecosphere This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: This image, which is brimming with stars and dark dust clouds, is a small extracta mere pinprickof the full Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objectsarguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab. Credit: DECaPS2 / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA. Image processing: M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF's NOIRLab) Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objectsarguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the Dark Energy Camera, built by the US Department of Energy, at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab. The Milky Way Galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, glimmering star-forming regions, and towering dark clouds of dust and gas. Imaging and cataloging these objects for study is a herculean task, but a newly released astronomical dataset known as the second data release of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) reveals a staggering number of these objects in unprecedented detail. The DECaPS2 survey, which took two years to complete and produced more than 10 terabytes of data from 21,400 individual exposures, identified approximately 3.32 billion objectsarguably the largest such catalog compiled to date. Astronomers and the public can explore the dataset here. This unprecedented collection was captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) instrument on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF's NOIRLab. CTIO is a constellation of international astronomical telescopes perched atop Cerro Tololo in Chile at an altitude of 2200 meters (7200 feet). CTIO's lofty vantage point gives astronomers an unrivaled view of the southern celestial hemisphere, which allowed DECam to capture the southern Galactic plane in such detail. DECaPS2 is a survey of the plane of the Milky Way as seen from the southern sky taken at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The first trove of data from DECaPS was released in 2017, and with the addition of the new data release, the survey now covers 6.5% of the night sky and spans a staggering 130 degrees in length. While it might sound modest, this equates to 13,000 times the angular area of the full moon. The DECaPS2 dataset is available to the entire scientific community and is hosted by NOIRLab's Astro Data Lab, which is part of the Community Science and Data Center. Interactive access to the imaging with panning/zooming inside of a web-browser is available from the Legacy Survey Viewer, the World Wide Telescope and Aladin. Most of the stars and dust in the Milky Way are located in its diskthe bright band stretching across this imagein which the spiral arms lie. While this profusion of stars and dust makes for beautiful images, it also makes the Galactic plane challenging to observe. The dark tendrils of dust seen threading through this image absorb starlight and blot out fainter stars entirely, and the light from diffuse nebulae interferes with any attempts to measure the brightness of individual objects. Another challenge arises from the sheer number of stars, which can overlap in the image and make it difficult to disentangle individual stars from their neighbors. Despite the challenges, astronomers delved into the Galactic plane to gain a better understanding of our Milky Way. By observing at near-infrared wavelengths, they were able to peer past much of the light-absorbing dust. The researchers also used an innovative data-processing approach, which allowed them to better predict the background behind each star. This helped to mitigate the effects of nebulae and crowded star fields on such large astronomical images, ensuring that the final catalog of processed data is more accurate. Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objectsarguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab. For reference, a low-resolution image of the DECaPS2 data is overlaid on an image showing the full sky. The callout box is a full-resolution view of a small portion of the DECaPS2 data. Credit: Credit:DECaPS2 / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / E. Slawik. Image processing: M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF's NOIRLab) "One of the main reasons for the success of DECaPS2 is that we simply pointed at a region with an extraordinarily high density of stars and were careful about identifying sources that appear nearly on top of each other," said Andrew Saydjari, a graduate student at Harvard University, researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, and lead author of the paper. "Doing so allowed us to produce the largest such catalog ever from a single camera, in terms of the number of objects observed." "When combined with images from Pan-STARRS 1, DECaPS2 completes a 360-degree panoramic view of the Milky Way's disk and additionally reaches much fainter stars," said Edward Schlafly, a researcher at the AURA-managed Space Telescope Science Institute and a co-author of the paper describing DECaPS2 published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement. "With this new survey, we can map the three-dimensional structure of the Milky Way's stars and dust in unprecedented detail." Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objectsarguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab. The survey is here reproduced in 4000-pixels resolution to be accessible on smaller devices. Credit: DECaPS2 / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab NSF / AURA Image processing: M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF's NOIRLab) "Since my work on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey two decades ago, I have been looking for a way to make better measurements on top of complex backgrounds," said Douglas Finkbeiner, a professor at the Center for Astrophysics, co-author of the paper, and principal investigator behind the project. "This work has achieved that and more." "This is quite a technical feat. Imagine a group photo of over three billion people and every single individual is recognizable," says Debra Fischer, division director of Astronomical Sciences at NSF. "Astronomers will be poring over this detailed portrait of more than three billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come. This is a fantastic example of what partnerships across federal agencies can achieve." Provided by Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, talks with reporters following the delayed vote concerning the Norfolk Southern Englewood rail yard expansion plan, at City Hall on Jan. 18, 2023. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) A Chicago City Council ordinance to transfer a chunk of Englewoods roads to Norfolk Southern Railway was blocked Wednesday by the presiding alderman the latest twist in the freight companys multiyear plan to double the size of one of its rail yards despite pushback from local residents. Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, and allies used a parliamentary tactic to defer the legislation that would allow the railroad to acquire the streets and alleys it doesnt already own between two existing sets of tracks from Garfield Boulevard south to 59th Street. She had dropped her opposition to a vote, until Wednesday. Advertisement This would have given the railroad leeway to expand its largest U.S. intermodal yard, which has its main entrance at 47th Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway. The lack of a signoff comes after Norfolk Southern acquired about 500 lots nearby in anticipation of City Councils land deal. Taylor vows to get Norfolk to agree to community demands on jobs before the next council meeting: Its just been a disrespect to me and the community. Lets remember, this was the displacement of 400 families in a Black community. And since 2014, theyve done nothing. Its dirt. Advertisement Taylor has said shed earlier dropped her opposition to the project because she thought the railroad was going to meet some of her demands involving hiring and how money was being spent in the community. The railroad didnt make good on its pledges, she said. A Norfolk Southern spokesman released a statement later Wednesday saying the councils actions further delays progress on this project, compounding the impact of the many delays for our now 15-year effort to expand our 47th Street facility. This project would further Chicagos role as the heart of our nations supply chain. The impact is twofold, the statement continued. New construction remains on pause, meaning more delays to bid on work by local contractors. It also means a delay in the good-paying jobs created by Norfolk Southern from the expansion, as well as those with contractors and other Chicago businesses that support the yards ongoing operations. We are committed to Chicago and the local communities we serve in the region. We look forward to progressing this project alongside our partners in Chicago, all to expand economic opportunity in the community, and to keep freight moving for Americas consumers, and businesses. The spokesman noted work has been delayed on the site by the drawn-out approval process of the city ordinance. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who introduced the ordinance, has maintained that after decades of industrial job loss, the city can help its remaining businesses by providing land they need to expand at reduced cost. At a news conference following the City Council meeting, Lightfoot defended the rail companys efforts on community engagement thus far. You gotta go into the community, and Norfolk Southern really has to take the lead responsibility for that and they have been to make sure that theyre listening to what the concerns of the residents are and coming up with solutions that address those concerns, Lightfoot said. Advertisement Norfolk Southerns location in the heart of Chicago means it cant avoid withering debates over who benefits and who doesnt from the citys prominence as a freight hub, what happens when the railroad displaces longtime residents, and whether its doing enough to promote green space and clean air for those still living near the tracks. Taylor previously blocked a vote on the ordinance for five months to pressure the railroad to conduct a study on the long-term health impacts of diesel soot from trains and trucks and to hire more Black contractors and employees, including from Englewood. Taylor has cited a lawsuit from a longtime Englewood resident whose home was acquired by Norfolk Southern through eminent domain as evidence that the companys expansion is harming its surrounding community. The railroad made no apologies for taking over the property, according to its court filing in response to her lawsuit, and is now finalizing a settlement with the plaintiff. Were talking about a billion dollar company that got rich off the backs of slaves, and now theyre mistreating Black and brown communities, she said. Norfolk Southern spokesperson Connor Spielmaker has said the company supports educational efforts about the history of railroads and the Black community, and that the railroad has tried to be a good neighbor. As required by the city of Chicago for all contractors, the ordinance transferring streets and alleys to Norfolk Southern listed by name hundreds of slaves that the railroads corporate predecessors owned prior to the Civil War. Advertisement Diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of our culture today, and were committed to continued progress, he said. Were proud to be a majority-minority employer in Chicago, where more than 30% of our local workforce is Black. Spielmaker continued: Expanding this in-town facility eliminates the need for residents (to) commute out of the city for work, creates new jobs, and reduces urban sprawl while directly reinvesting in the communities we have long been a part of. He later told the Tribune that Norfolk Southern has publicly, through multiple public meetings in addition to comments published in your newspaper, affirmed our commitment to hiring diverse contractors for construction of this project in addition to the additional jobs it will bring upon completion. Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, voices her displeasure with Norfolk Southerns presentation about its expansion plans in the Englewood neighborhood during a community meeting at Kennedy-King College on Jan. 10, 2023. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) But Taylor said Wednesday that she was not going to sign on the RDA that I was not here for, referring to a development agreement the city entered into with the railroad for the expansion in 2014. She also said she wants an accounting of a $3 million environmental and community development fund established by this agreement for projects near the expanded rail yard. For instance, she says she and community residents didnt know at the time that this fund paid for $934,000 in improvements to container loading equipment inside the yard, and $200,000 for repairs and upgrades to a rail viaduct along the proposed Englewood Nature Trail. She wants to know how this happened. Advertisement Basically, they went around me and went right to the mayor and asked this to be introduced, Taylor said. So it shows you the type of respect that this billion dollar company has for my community. Chicago is the countrys largest freight hub, handling half of all U.S. intermodal trains and a total of $3 trillion worth of cargo each year, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. John Lippert is a freelance reporter. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The individual building blocks of a catena-COF are polyhedral moleculesa type of adamantanethat link arms to form a 2D mesh or 3D network that is sturdy but flexible. Credit: Tianqiong Ma, UC Berkeley University of California, Berkeley, chemists have created a new type of material from millions of identical, interlocking molecules, that for the first time allows the synthesis of extensive 2D or 3D structures that are flexible, strong and resilient, like the chain mail that protected medieval knights. The material, called an infinite catenane, can be synthesized in a single chemical step. French chemist Jean-Pierre Sauvage shared the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for synthesizing the first catenanetwo linked rings. These structures served as the foundation for making molecular structures capable of moving, which are often referred to as molecular machines. But the chemical synthesis of catenanes has remained laborious. Adding each additional ring to a catenane requires another round of chemical synthesis. In the 24 years since Sauvage created a two-ring catenane, chemists have achieved, at most, a mere 130 interwoven rings in quantities too small to see without an electron microscope. The new type of catenane, produced in the laboratory of Omar Yaghi, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry, can be produced with an unlimited number of linked units in three dimensions. Because the individual units interlock mechanically and are not connected by chemical bonds, the structures can be flexed without breaking. A 3D view of the building blocks of the infinite catenane synthesized by UC Berkeley chemists. Credit: Tianqiong Ma, UC Berkeley "We think that this has really important implications, not just in terms of making tough materials that don't fracture, but also materials that would go into robotics and aerospace and armored suits and things like this," said Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry, co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute and the California Research Alliance by BASF, and chief scientist at UC Berkeley's Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet. Yaghi and his colleagues, including first author Tianqiong Ma, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow, reported details of the chemical process this week in the journal Nature Synthesis. Reticular chemistry The leap forward in catenane production is possible using a type of chemistry that Yaghi invented more than 30 years ago: reticular chemistry. He describes it as "stitching molecular building blocks into crystalline, extended structures by strong bonds." The building block of an infinite catenane, or catena-COF, consists of two crossed molecules with a copper atom at the center. When mixed, they link up to create an extended, 3D material of interlocking molecules. Credit: Tianqiong Ma, UC Berkeley Using this technique, he has made inexpensive porous materialsmetal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs)that are proving useful in capturing, storing or separating gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen and water vapor. More than 100,000 varieties of MOFs have been made to date. To make MOFs, it's necessary only to synthesize the right hybrid moleculesmetal clusters connected to an organic ligandand mix them in a solution so that they link up to form a rigid and highly porous 3D network. The chemical groups inside the framework are chosen to bind and releasedepending on temperaturespecific molecules and reject others. One MOF that Yaghi created can pull water from even the driest air and then release it when heated, allowing water capture in deserts. To make catenanes, Yaghi and Ma synthesized a molecule with a crossing between two identical halves, covalently linked by a copper atom. The structure, what they call a catena-COF, is reminiscent of two linked boomerangs with a copper atom where they cross. When mixed, these molecules link up to form a porous 3D network of interlocking building blocks. The building blocks, a type of polyhedral molecule called adamantane, essentially lock their six arms to form an extended framework. "What's new here is that the building units have these crossings, and because of the crossings, you get interlocking systems that have interesting, flexible and resilient properties," Yaghi said. "They're programmed to come together in one step. That's the power of reticular chemistry. Instead of building them up one unit at a time to make the larger structure, you actually have them programmed such that they come together and grow on their own." The molecule with a crossing can be chemically altered so that the final catenane interacts with specific compounds. Yaghi calls these materials () catenanes, using the symbol for infinity. "I think that is a first step towards making materials that can flex and potentially can stiffen in response to stimuli, like a particular motion," he said. "So, in certain orientations, it could be very flexible, and in certain other orientations, it could become stiff, just because of the way the structure is built." He noted that while these catenanes extend in three directions on a microscopic level, they can be made thin enough for two dimensional uses, as in clothing. Recently, some scientists have reported that they have created MOFs and COFs by 3D printing, so it may be possible to 3D print catenanes, as well, much like weaving a cloth. "Traditionally, this interlocking has been done through a multistep, arduous process to make only molecules that have one or two or three interlocking rings, or polyhedra. But to make materials that have amazing properties, like toughness and resiliency, you need millions and millions of these interlockings to be made," he said. "The traditional way of making them just doesn't cut it. And reticular chemistry comes in with the building block approach and finds a way of doing it in one step. That's really the power of this report." More information: Tianqiong Ma et al, Catenated covalent organic frameworks constructed from polyhedra, Nature Synthesis (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s44160-022-00224-z Journal information: Nature Synthesis This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Food regulatory institutions in the U.K. should have robust mechanisms for addressing commercial conflicts of interest, argues a new article published in the journal Nature Food. The research, published jointly by Emeritus Professor Tim Lang of the Center for Food Policy, City, University of London, and Emeritus Professor Erik Millstone of the Science Policy Research Unit, at the University of Sussex Business School, suggests that not one of the bodies advising the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) or the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is free from conflicts of interest. The study, "An approach to conflicts of interest in U.K. food regulatory institutions," reviews declarations of conflicts of interest in the FSA Board and Committee since its creation and makes four recommendations on how to reverse this practice. It suggests that those conflicts of interest have made U.K. food governance vulnerable to "agency capture"the theory that regulatory agencies may be dominated by the interests they regulate and not by the public interest. Additionally, their research highlights how the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, which advises Defra ministers on the safety and acceptability on GM crops, consists of seven members, of whom only one declares no conflicts of interest. Furthermore, between the other six Committee members they have declared conflicts of interest with 16 different industrial corporations. In response to these findings the authors make four recommendations, which they suggest will restore trustworthiness in the regulatory processparticularly considering the various food safety crises of the 1980s and 1990s. They conclude that: Their evidence shows that all people with commercial conflicts of interest should no longer be allowed to participate in U.K. food policymaking. Their research finds that public funding for food safety research should be increased sufficiently for U.K.-based experts not to be dependent on commercial sponsorship. Their research shows that the government should actively focus on commissioning research that could contribute effectively to improving food safety and food-related public health in the U.K. Finally, their research finds that MPs, and especially the Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee, should scrutinize U.K. Government food policy decision-making to ensure that those 3 recommendations are implemented. Professor Tim Lang, City, University of London, said, "Public trust can only be guaranteed if commerce is seen not to be involved. Scientists themselves must ask themselves ethical questions about whether it is right to do commercial research if it undermines collective trust." Professor Millstone, a University of Sussex expert on food chemical safety policy, said, "Our research examines which individuals are playing influential roles in U.K. food policymaking, particularly at Defra and the FSA. Our research highlights that many of these have conflicts of interest and their influence risks undermining the trustworthiness of both Defra and the FSA and of food safety policymaking in the U.K., which, if not addressed, has the potential to put the public's health at risk. "Food policy should prioritize protecting public and environmental health over the commercial interests of food businesses, but that is not happening. Commercial interests are too often being treated by the U.K. government as more important than protecting public and environmental health." More information: Erik Millstone et al, An approach to conflicts of interest in UK food regulatory institutions, Nature Food (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-022-00666-w Journal information: Nature Food This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The Congress Center in Davos, Switzerland during the World Economic Forums 2020 annual meeting. Credit: makasana photo/Shutterstock Davos 2023 is the World Economic Forum's (WEF) first in-person annual meeting since the start of the COVID pandemic. The yearly gathering sees business, political and civil society leaders convene in the Swiss mountain resort with academics, journalists and celebrities to discuss global economic agendas. Many regard it as essentially a forum for the wealthy, but the 2023 Davos summit has returned at "a critical inflection point for the world", according to the WEF. This year's meeting sloganCooperation in a Fragmented Worldnods to what the WEF's recently published Global Risks Report calls the "polycrises" affecting our interconnected world. These intersecting crises range from climate change and energy shortfalls to food insecurity and forced migration. The WEF is calling for "bold collective action" to address them. In the wake of COVID, many people seemed to be more aware of how vulnerable the world is to the excesses of economic production. UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, declared that we needed to build more "sustainable economies and societies", and wider hopes abounded for greater global co-operation on human and environmental health. Then, as much of the world emerged from lockdowns and restrictions, national governments refocused on economic recovery. This appeals of course to the oldest human impulses of progress. But it also led to a missed opportunity to rethink how economies should be organized for a more sustainable world. Global leaders could have used this time to respond to the ecological damage of late modern capitalism by working towards a more regulated, socially and environmentally responsible economic system. Political leaders across the world may have failed to take this chance immediately after COVID, but the UN explored these issues and published a new vision for global security in 2022 called New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene. I was one of the background authors for the report, which sets out three vital challenges for securing the sustainability of the planet: 1. Protect both human and environmental security The UN report documents the lack of global action in response to alarming scientific measures of planetary healthfrom greenhouse gas emissions to temperature rise, from deforestation to biodiversity loss. It underlines the connections between industrial economic production, climate change and human health. Among the many reasons why the impact of capitalism on the environment has yet to be fully recognized, one of the most important is the political ascendancy of neoliberalism. This way of thinking promotes free-market ideas that have long sidelined the environment in advancing economic development. The UK government's 2021 Dasgupta Reviewwhich examines the relationship between economics and biodiversitymade the same point. Neoliberalism consistently prioritizes military and economic security over human and environmental security. This has meant that global economic production values profit over both planetary and human health. Probably the best examples of this are the rise of "Big Farm" agribusiness and the role unregulated wildlife markets may have played in the emergence of COVID. 2. Measure development differently Defining and measuring development is also an important consideration for today's world leaders. But when linking economic growth to development, it's important to use measures other than GDP. The UNDP's 2020 Human Development Report introduced what it calls "planetary pressure adjustments" to measure human development. This classifies a country's development not just in terms of economic prosperity, but also in relation to carbon emissions and resource use per person. Other alternative models and measures of economic welfare, including degrowth, are gaining traction with policymakers. Supporters of degrowth want to transform how well-being is measured and how our economies are regulated to ensure resources are used more sustainably. But this requires both political acceptance and wider public buy-in. 3. Use global governance to create a shared planet Building consensus on how to create a more sustainable world will take collective global action on shared interests. It will require solidarity and robust global governance tools to enable regulation and accountability. This means legal consequences for countries that don't adhere to agreed conventions such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, or the Council of Europe Convention on landscape. And international organizations such as the World Health Organisation will need more powers to oversee international laws such as the International Health Regulations in monitoring and combating the global spread of disease. Governments can also use financial incentives to encourage companies to protect biodiversity and advance nature-based solutions to industry problems. Technology can play a part too, although it's important to be wary of both the limits and rhetoric of the "technological fix". A more sustainable world means understanding the planet's intersecting human and environmental crises, and working out how to address them holistically, cooperatively and responsibly. After that, the challenge lies in using the institutions and mechanisms of global governance that already exist, as well as pushing leaders to make brave decisions that put human and environmental security for all ahead of endless profit for the few. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Manganese nodules on the seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, between Hawaii and Mexico, captured on camera by a remote vehicle in 2015. Credit: ROV KIEL 6000, GEOMAR, CC BY As companies race to expand renewable energy and the batteries to store it, finding sufficient amounts of rare earth metals to build the technology is no easy feat. That's leading mining companies to take a closer look at a largely unexplored frontierthe deep ocean seabed. A wealth of these metals can be found in manganese nodules that look like cobblestones scattered across wide areas of deep ocean seabed. But the fragile ecosystems deep in the oceans are little understood, and the mining codes to sustainably mine these areas are in their infancy. A fierce debate is now playing out as a Canadian company makes plans to launch the first commercial deep sea mining operation in the Pacific Ocean. The Metals Company completed an exploratory project in the Pacific Ocean in fall 2022. Under a treaty governing the deep sea floor, the international agency overseeing these areas could be forced to approve provisional mining there as soon as spring 2023, but several countries and companies are urging a delay until more research can be done. France and New Zealand have called for a ban on deep sea mining. As scholars who have long focused on the economic, political and legal challenges posed by deep seabed mining, we have each studied and written on this economic frontier with concern for the regulatory and ecological challenges it poses. Manganese nodules form as metals accumulate around a shell or part of another nodule. Credit: Thomas Walter/GEOMAR, CC BY What's down there, and why should we care? A curious journey began in the summer of 1974. Sailing from Long Beach, California, a revolutionary ship funded by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes set course for the Pacific to open a new frontierdeep seabed mining. Widespread media coverage of the expedition helped to focus the attention of businesses and policymakers on the promise of deep seabed mining, which is notable given that the expedition was actually an elaborate cover for a CIA operation. The real target was a Soviet ballistic missile submarine that had sunk in 1968 with all hands and what was believed to be a treasure trove of Soviet state secrets and tech onboard. The expedition, called Project Azorian by the CIA, recovered at least part of the submarineand it also brought up several manganese nodules from the seafloor. Manganese nodules are roughly the size of potatoes and can be found across vast areas of seafloor in parts of the Pacific and Indian oceans and deep abyssal plains in the Atlantic. They are valuable because they are exceptionally rich in 37 metals, including nickel, cobalt and copper, which are essential for most large batteries and several renewable energy technologies. These nodules form over millennia as metals nucleate around shells or broken nodules. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, between Mexico and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, where the mining test took place, has been estimated to have over 21 billion metric tons of nodules that could provide twice as much nickel and three times more cobalt than all the reserves on land. Brightly colored sea cucumbers and many other unusual deep sea creatures live among the nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Credit: ROV KIEL 6000/GEOMAR, CC BY Mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone could be some 10 times richer than comparable mineral deposits on land. All told, estimates place the value of this new industry at some US$30 billion annually by 2030. It could be instrumental in feeding the surging global demand for cobalt that lies at the heart of lithium-ion batteries. Yet, as several scientists have noted, we still know more about the surface of the moon than what lies at the bottom of the deep seabed. Deep seabed ecology Less than 10% of the deep seabed has been mapped thoroughly enough to understand even the basic features of the structure and contents of the ocean floor, let alone the life and ecosystems therein. Even the most thoroughly studied region, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, is still best characterized by the persistent novelty of what is found there. Between 70% and 90% of living things collected in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone have never been seen before, leaving scientists to speculate about what percentage of all living species in the region has never been seen or collected. Exploratory expeditions regularly return with images or samples of creatures that would richly animate science fiction stories, like a 6-foot-long bioluminescent shark. Video from MIT shows the sediment plume created by a nodule-collecting machine during an experiment. Also unknown is the impact that deep sea mining would have on these creatures. An experiment in 2021 in water about 3 miles (5 kilometers) deep off Mexico found that seabed mining equipment created sediment plumes of up to about 6.5 feet (2 meters) high. But the project authors stressed that they didn't study the ecological impact. A similar earlier experiment was conducted off Peru in 1989. When scientists returned to that site in 2015, they found some species still hadn't fully recovered. Environmentalists have questioned whether seafloor creatures could be smothered by sediment plumes and whether the sediment in the water column could effect island communities that rely on healthy oceanic ecosystems. The Metals Company has argued that its impact is less than terrestrial mining. Given humanity's lack of knowledge of the ocean, it is not currently possible to set environmental baselines for oceanic health that could be used to weigh the economic benefits against the environmental harms of seabed mining. The Metals Company shared video of its first collection mission. Scarcity and the economic case for mining The economic case for deep seabed mining reflects both possibility and uncertainty. On the positive side, it could displace some highly destructive terrestrial mining and augment the global supply of minerals used in clean energy sources such as wind turbines, photovoltaic cells and electric vehicles. Terrestrial mining imposes significant environmental damage and costs to human health of both the miners themselves and the surrounding communities. Additionally, mines are sometimes located in politically unstable regions. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 60% of the global supply of cobalt, for example, and China owns or finances 80% of industrial mines in that country. China also accounts for 60% of the global supply of rare earth element production and much of its processing. Having one nation able to exert such control over a critical resource has raised concerns. Deep seabed mining comes with significant uncertainties, however, particularly given the technology's relatively early state. First are the risks associated with commercializing a new technology. Until deep sea mining technology is demonstrated, discoveries cannot be listed as "reserves" in firms' asset valuations. Without that value defined, it can be difficult to line up the significant financing needed to build mining infrastructure, which lessens the first-mover advantage and incentivizes firms to wait for someone else to take the lead. Commodity prices are also difficult to predict. Technology innovation can reduce or even eliminate the projected demand for a mineral. New mineral deposits on land can also boost supply: Sweden announced in January 2023 that it had just discovered the largest deposit of rare earth oxides in Europe. In all, embarking on deep seabed mining involves sinking significant costs into new technology for uncertain returns, while posing risks to a natural environment that is likely to rise in value. Where large numbers of manganese nodules are found. The areas with the greatest concentrations are circled. Credit: Sven Petersen/GEOMAR Who gets to decide the future of seafloor mining? The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which came into force in the early 1990s, provides the basic rules for ocean resources. It allows countries to control economic activities, including any mining, within 200 miles of their coastlines, accounting for approximately 35% of the ocean. Beyond national waters, countries around the world established the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, based in Jamaica, to regulate deep seabed mining. Critically, the ISA framework calls for some of the profits derived from commercial mining to be shared with the international community. In this way, even countries that did not have the resources to mine the deep seabed could share in its benefits. This part of the ISA's mandate was controversial, and it was one reason that the United States did not join the Convention on the Law of the Sea. With little public attention, the ISA worked slowly for several decades to develop regulations for exploration of undersea minerals, and those rules still aren't completed. More than a dozen companies and countries have received exploration contracts, including The Metals Company's work under the sponsorship of the island nation of Nauru. ISA's work has started to draw criticism as companies have sought to initiate commercial mining. A recent New York Times investigation of internal ISA documents suggested the agency's leadership has downplayed environmental concerns and shared confidential information with some of the companies that would be involved in seabed mining. The ISA hasn't finalized environmental rules for mining. Much of the coverage of deep seabed mining has been framed to highlight the climate benefits. But this overlooks the dangers this activity could pose for the Earth's largest pristine ecologythe deep sea. We believe it would be wise to better understand this existing, fragile ecosystem better before rushing to mine it. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A charcoal market that has sprung up in Kibati, north of Goma. Acrid smoke swirls amid the buzzing of dozens of chainsaws under the majestic Nyiragongo volcano, producing scenes of devastation in the heart of the lush natural treasure in eastern DR Congo. In less than two months, more than 200 hectares (500 acres) of forest have been razed to stumps in this corner of the Virunga National Park, where tens of thousands of Congolese have fled from clashes between rebels and the military. To survive, many have resorted to cutting down trees for firewood and charcoal, often paying a levy to militia groups for access to Africa's oldest national park, home to spectacular species of wildlife including mountain gorillas. "Since the arrival of the displaced, we've had deforestation in the Nyiragongo volcano zoneit's extremely worrying," park official Methode Uhoze said. The new arrivals were forced from homes farther north by the advancing M23 militia, which resumed fighting in November 2021 after accusing the Congolese government of failing to honour an agreement to incorporate its fighters into the army. Fabrice, 15, said he fled fighting in his village of Rugari, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the provincial capital of Goma, along the border with Rwanda. Thousands of people are living in the Bushagara refugee camp, north of Goma. He leaves each morning for the park to make the charcoal, called "makala," which he then sells with two brothers on the side of a road. "It's to make a living," he told AFP. A woman at a clandestine makala market on the main road to Goma, who asked that her name not be used, said people who cut down trees had to pay taxes to militias, including the FDLRa descendant of Rwandan Hutu extremist groups that carried out the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. But another seller pointed to a Congolese soldier carrying a sack of makala. "Look, even the soldiers here are making charcoal!" she said. 'We're hungry' Higher up on the slopes of the volcano, soldiers and militiamen jointly organised the trafficking operation in the park, each crossing paths and even rival roadblocks with ease, as an AFP team watched. Youths tend a charcoal kin at the refugee camp in Kibati. Just a few months ago, the area was still under the authority of Virunga park officials. But these days, rangers call the various militias first to alert them before venturing out, a bid to avoid harassment or worse. In December, two rangers were killed and another wounded by suspected militiamen. "FDLR fighters have even sold plots of land, saying 'this is the end for the park'," said Mugisha, a young man making charcoal to help support his family after fleeing the M23 in Rugari. "We know the problems of cutting down trees in the park but we do it because we're hungry," said Byikusenge Ndibeshe, another young man lugging a load of wood on his back as he hiked back down from the volcano. "We'd like to return home and not touch the park anymore," he said. But despite signing a ceasefire deal in the region with the government last November, M23 has continued to clash with rival armed groups as it conquered swathes of territory in North Kivu province and advanced toward Goma. Clashes in eastern DR Congo. Tens of thousands of refugees have also fled to Rwanda, which DR Congo accuses of backing the Tutsi-led M23, though Kigali denies the charge. Last week, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said the country would no longer accept people escaping the violence next door, further stoking tensions between the two countries. 2023 AFP This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Demonstration of the impact, process and response approach for a warming scenario. Focusing on the community processes of dispersal, speciation, selection and drift can provide mechanistic insights into how humans alter the dynamics of terrestrial and freshwater systems via effects on community structure and function. We demonstrate the utility of this approach for a hypothetical climate warming scenario in which terrestrial communities (red circle) are turning over towards more warm-adapted species (aka thermophilising) faster than freshwater communities (blue circle). Potential differences or similarities in the strength of each process among ecosystem types can then be examined to provide possible explanations for why responses may vary or not between terrestrial and freshwater habitats. In this hypothetical scenario, a pattern of slower community turnover in freshwater compared to terrestrial habitats may be explained by weaker warming impacts and greater effective dispersal limitation in freshwaters. Credit: Ecology Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1111/ele.14153 Four fundamental processes shaping biodiversity should be taken into account to explain why some ecosystems are more sensitive than others to human impacts such as climate change and habitat destruction. The knowledge gained from this approach can be used to protect biodiversity on land and in freshwaters, researchers conclude in a recent publication in the journal Ecology Letters. One of the authors is Ian McFadden from the University of Amsterdam. For years, researchers have observed that ecological communities can respond differently to disturbances caused by humans, depending on whether these impacts occur on land versus in freshwater systems such as lakes, rivers and streams. For example, while species in some ecosystems are very sensitive to climate warming, others are less affected. A group of researchers now propose a new integrative approach that links human impacts to a set of four key ecological processes in order to better understand the responses of biodiversity to these impacts now and into the future. This will provide further tools to help protect biodiversity and give ecosystems a chance to adapt to a changing world Differences in response Co-lead author and UvA-IBED postdoctoral researcher Ian McFadden carried out the study during a former appointment at WSL, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, in a cooperation with colleagues from Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. "According to the theory of ecological communities, there are four fundamental processes that shape local community diversity: dispersal, speciation, species-level selection and ecological drift, which is random changes in births and deaths," says McFadden. "Dispersal and speciation add new species, and selection and drift remove them from local areas. Understanding the role these processes play in blue and green ecosystems, and how human impacts such as climate change or land use affect them will help us explain why these systems can respond so differently." Freshwater vs. terrestrial species One important process that shapes biodiversity in a place is dispersal: new species migrate in, and other species migrate out of a local community. In their study, the researchers conclude that terrestrial organisms are generally less dispersal-limited than freshwater organisms. If humans continue to build new barriers in water bodies where dispersal is already a greater challenge, for example hydroelectric power plants, freshwater communities will be even further limited in their ability to respond to environmental change. Terrestrial species may be more exposed to climate warming and increasingly, they also lack shady, cool refuges such as forests due to land conversion. The integrative approach of the researchers therefore suggests that terrestrial species may be under greater pressure to adapt rapidly to higher temperatures. In extreme cases, this selection pressure could lead to the extinction of species. McFadden says, "Overall, our approach aims to provide tools to terrestrial and freshwater ecologists, evolutionary biologists, conservationists, policymakers and land owners to understand how and why biodiversity is changing both on land in our lakes, rivers and streams." More information: Ian R. McFadden et al, Linking human impacts to community processes in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, Ecology Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1111/ele.14153 Journal information: Ecology Letters This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: An artist's impression of the new electromagnetic device showing a tissue specimen being tested under tension using the attraction between a steel ball and an electromagnet. Credit: BioHues Digital A new electromagnetic device that enables high-precision measurements of a broad range of soft biological tissues, has established a new standard of precision in the mechanobiology field, say researchers. The method allows for the mechanical testing of tissues the size of human biopsy samples, making it particularly relevant for studies of human disease. The body's soft tissues exhibit a wide range of mechanical properties, such as stiffness and strength, which are critical to carry out their function. For example, the tissues of the gastrointestinal tract are soft to allow for the transit and digestion of food, whereas tendons are relatively more stiff to transmit force from muscle to bone allowing us to move. The ability to accurately measure the mechanical properties of these tissues, which are subject to change during developmental processes or because of disease, has profound implications for the fields of biology and medicine. Methods to measure these properties are currently inadequate, and their accuracy and reliability remains limiteduntil now. New research involving researchers from the University of Cambridge and the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) has resulted in a device that relies on magnetic actuation and optical sensing, thus potentially allowing for live imaging of the tissue under an inverted microscope. This way, insights can be gained into the behavior of the tissue under mechanical forces at both a cellular and molecular level. The results are reported in the journal Science Advances. An electromagnet exerts a pulling force on the tissue specimen which is mounted on the device, while an optical system measures the specimen's change in size or shape. "One of the most critical requirements for mechanical testing of soft biological tissues is the need to mimic the biological specimen's physiological conditions (e.g., temperature, nutrients) as closely as possible, in order to keep the tissue alive and preserve its biomechanical properties," said Dr. Thierry Savin, Associate Professor in Bioengineering, who led the research team. "To this end, we designed a transparent mounting chamber to measure the mechanical properties of tissuesat the millimeter scalein their native physiologic and chemical environment. The result is a more versatile, precise and robust device that shows high reliability and reproducibility." To directly assess the performance of their electromagnetic device, the researchers conducted a study on the biomechanics of a mouse esophagus and of its constitutive layers. The esophagus is the muscular tube connecting the throat with the stomach and it is composed of multiple tissue layers. The researchers used the device to conduct the first biomechanical investigation of each of the three individual layers of the mouse esophageal tissue. Their findings showed that the esophagus behaves like a three-layer composite material akin to those commonly used in several engineering applications. To the researchers' knowledge, these are the first results acquired of the mechanical properties of each individual layer of the esophagus. "Our study demonstrated the enhanced reliability of the electromagnetic device, yielding errors in the stress-strain response below 15%a level of accuracy not seen before," said Dr. Adrien Hallou, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute. "We hope that this device may eventually become the new standard in the tissue biomechanics field, providing a standardized dataset for the characterization of mouse and human soft tissue mechanics across the board." Luca Rosalia, Ph.D. candidate at IMES, added, "Through analysis of the biomechanics of healthy tissues and their changes as they occur during disease, our device could eventually be used to identify alterations in tissue properties that are of diagnostic relevance, therefore becoming a valuable tool to inform clinical decisions." More information: Luca Rosalia et al, A magnetically actuated, optically sensed tensile testing method for mechanical characterization of soft biological tissues, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ade2522 Journal information: Science Advances This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: CC0 Public Domain Comprehensive advice on careers and study pathways, delivered across the student life cycle, is essential to overcome the long-term impacts of disadvantage, a new study has found. The report, published by the National Center for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE), recommends a national commitment to developing contemporary resources for students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, as well as their career influencers. The research team, led by Associate Professor Jane Coffey from Curtin University and Professor Dawn Bennett from Bond University, developed evidence-based recommendations to effectively deliver information about higher education study options, pathways, and careers to low SES students. "Given the changing nature of work, the impact of disadvantage is significant and long lasting, impacting opportunities for career sustainability in the long term," Associate Professor Coffey said. "Engaging directly with career advisors and students from a diverse range of Australian schools and universities, we observed inequitable provision of career and study information throughout secondary education." While high SES students valued career information more in Year 12 and beyond, low SES students wanted guidance from Year 7 onward to allow for more informed subject selection and career-related advice. Tertiary and secondary focus groups highlighted the impact of being assumptively streamed too early based solely on academic performance, citing a lack of quality information on the accessibility and availability of alternative post-school pathways. "There were few 'door openers' but many 'dream killers,' particularly for those from low SES, regional and remote schools," Professor Bennett said. "The dream killers communicated rigid and restrictive study pathways, with limited options which had a profound impact on students' self-belief and future goals." The report recommends a national approach and commitment to the provision of equitable, contemporary resources for both students and career influencers, including a central information repository. Findings also indicated qualified career practitioners be recognized as critical to the core business of schools, working in conjunction with trained educators. Professor Bennett, noted the potential for meaningful careers advice, delivered in early high school, to positively impact long-term career outcomes. "School students from low SES backgrounds may not have had the same exposure to careers and educational pathways as their more advantaged peers, although their aspirations are often equivalent," Professor Bennett said. "The recommendations from this report support the provision of timely, relevant information so all students can pursue their goals through the most appropriate pathway." The final report, "Ameliorating disadvantage: Creating accessible, effective and equitable careers and study information for low SES students," is available here. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Prison subcultures have been described as antisocial, with ties to violence and gang membership. In extreme cases, research has also suggested that prison subcultures contribute to incarcerated people joining radical groups or embracing violent extremist beliefs. A new study examined the relation between prison subcultures and prison radicalization based on interviews with incarcerated men and correctional officers in Canada. The study found that several features of these subcultures make incarcerated Canadians resilient to radicalized and extremist messaging. The study, by researchers at the University of Alberta (UofA), appears in Criminology, a publication of the American Society of Criminology. "Many studies have been done to help understand how prison radicalization works," explains Sandra M. Bucerius, professor of sociology at UofA, who led the study. "But none has contemplated how radicalization interacts with broader features of prison life or whether such features limit or interrupt extremist messages." Academics and policymakers have long discussed the scope, pace, and dynamics of radicalization in prisons. While some see prison radicalization as a pressing concern, others suggest that the nexus between prison and radicalization is greatly exaggerated. Radicalization is a broadly defined concept that is understood differently depending on the institutional setting. And research on this issue is largely based on presuppositions around institutional characteristics that foster radicalization. In this study, researchers asked: If the dynamics of prison subcultures can help foster radicalization, could the distinctive norms, beliefs, and behavioral expectations of those subcultures mitigate and impede the radicalization process? To examine that possibility, the researchers interviewed nearly 150 incarcerated men (primarily White and Indigenous) and more than 130 correctional officers in four provincial/territorial prisons in western Canada. They used the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's definition of radicalization: "the process by which individuals are introduced to an overtly ideological message and belief system that encourages movement from moderate, mainstream beliefs toward extreme views." Based on the interviews, the study found little evidence of systematic radicalization in the prisons, which is consistent with what other North American studies have found. The researchers identified three vital but often overlooked factors that appear to hinder or mitigate radicalization: Multicultural and anti-racist beliefs: The incarcerated people studied had broadly prosocial values about multiculturalism and were open to and tolerant of other cultures and races, and unlikely to stand by idly if perceived radicals discriminated against or voiced hatred toward others. The presence of racial groups aligned against radicalization: Study participants had opportunities to gather across racial and ethnic groups, which may have offered them more opportunities to share views, exchange opinions, and form mutual resilience against radical groups; this practice runs counter to what typically occurs in U.S. prisons. Incarcerated individuals' actions as informants: The admonition to inmates to minimize interactions with correctional officers was more flexible when it pertained to communications about potential radical or extremist incarcerated people. The study's authors note that inmates' resiliency toward radicalization did not come from official anti-radicalization initiatives. Rather, participants pointed to local prison subcultures as factors that impeded the spread of radicalized messages. "Our findings highlight the importance of considering broader sociocultural influences when trying to understand the relation between radicalization and prisons' dynamics and politics," notes William Schultz, assistant professor of criminology and sociology at UofA, who coauthored the study. Among the limitations of the study, the authors note that interviews were done in institutions where people typically stayed for less than two years, so the findings cannot be applied to subcultures in prisons where people typically stay for longer periods. Similarly, people incarcerated for short periods may retain connections to deeply held community values, which may not be the case among people held for longer periods. Finally, because of the unique attributes of Canadian culture (e.g., prosocial values, tolerance), the findings cannot be generalized to prisons in other countries. "The best approach to conceptualizing, addressing, and perhaps reducing prison radicalization need not necessarily focus on the prison itself," suggests Kevin D. Haggerty, professor of sociology at UofA, who coauthored the study. "Larger social and cultural pressures shape radicalization in prison, meaning that the wider society conditions prison as a site of radicalization." More information: Sandra M. Bucerius et al, "That shit doesn't fly": Subcultural constraints on prison radicalization, Criminology (2023). DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.12327 Journal information: Criminology Provided by American Society of Criminology This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Proportion of Women MPs in Party Parliamentary Delegations across 20 Western Democracies, 19962017. Note: Data collected by the authors. Credit: American Political Science Review (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S0003055422000491 Nominating and electing more female politicians can help to diffuse polarization and reduce levels of hostility and distrust across party lines, a study shows. Political parties that elect a greater number of women representatives are viewed more favorably by voters who support opposing parties. Political polarization, or animosity towards opposing political parties, takes many forms. There is growing concern about the link between political polarization and increases in hostility and distrust across party lines in countries around the world. Researchers used data on women's presence in 125 political parties over 20 Western democracies from 1996 to 2017, combined with survey data on how people rated opposing political parties, The data came from an original dataset on women's representation in political parties combined with survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) for 20 Western nations, including the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Israel, Portugal, Spain, Greece and France. The work is published in the journal American Political Science Review. The study was carried out by James Adams and David Bracken, from the University of California, Davis, Noam Gidron from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Will Horne from Princeton University, Diana Z O'Brien from Rice University, and Kaitlin Senk, now at the University of Exeter. Both men and women voters reacted positively to parties that they normally do not support if those parties elected higher numbers of women MPs. Additionally, in parties led by men75 percent of those in the studythere was an even larger bonus for women MPs, with these parties viewed even more favorably by political opponents when they nominate more women to their delegations. Dr. Senk said, "Our research shows increasing women's parliamentary presence could mitigate cross-party hostility and help boost feelings of efficacy and trust towards politicians. This shows that by nominating and electing more women MPs, parties can broaden their electoral appeal and defuse affective polarization while also providing better descriptive gender representation. There is a danger though that radical right-wing parties could use women's representation to enhance their affective standing in the general public." On average, women made up 29 percent of the 125 party delegations included in the study. Researchers measured voter evaluations of opposing parties on a 0 to 10 point thermometer scale, where zero denotes maximum dislike and 10 denotes maximum liking of the opposing party. They found that moving from a proportion of 13 percent to 45 percent women MPs improved voter evaluations of that political party by .55 units on the 10-point scale. Dr. Senk said, "When political parties nominate and elect more women, opposing party supporters tend to evaluate that party more positively. This was true throughout the time period of the study, despite the shift across this period to a greater reliance on online campaigning, where partisan hostility can be particularly mobilized by racist and sexist memes." More information: JAMES ADAMS et al, Can't We All Just Get Along? How Women MPs Can Ameliorate Affective Polarization in Western Publics, American Political Science Review (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S0003055422000491 Journal information: American Political Science Review U.S. politicians fortify schools rather than regulate guns: article Xinhua) 09:07, January 18, 2023 People gather during a rally decrying rising gun violence while urging politicians to take action in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 11, 2022. (Photo by Xiao Xiao/Xinhua) The silence of politicians around stronger gun laws suggests this latest round of gunfire in a classroom will not lead to real preventive measures. NEW YORK, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The vast and unchecked personal arsenals of guns in the United States have given Americans a shameful distinction: it is the only developed nation that now teaches its kindergartners how to wait in line for the bathroom and hide under desks for a mass shooting, said an article published by The Atlantic-Journal Constitution on Monday. School shootings climbed to the highest number in two decades in 2020-2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death among children, adolescents and teens, surpassing car crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "When will the shock of gunshots in school be enough to inspire the action necessary to prevent guns in schools and the shattering of lives it causes?" asked Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, after a school shooting in Virginian earlier this month. "The silence of politicians around stronger gun laws suggests this latest round of gunfire in a classroom will not lead to real preventive measures," said the article. The United States leads the world in firearms per capita with more guns than people, the article said, quoting the Small Arms Survey. According to the survey, American civilians own more than 393 million guns, 120.48 guns per 100 U.S. residents, but "we are not safer." (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) New Chicago businesses that get 20% of their income from the sale of vapes will now be required to obtain a special city license. The ordinance from 41st Ward Ald. Anthony Napolitano, which passed by voice vote Wednesday, also restricts how closely such shops can operate from each other. Advertisement Napolitanos original proposal would have given the City Council authority to place moratoriums in specified areas on future tobacco retail licenses, which are required in Chicago to sell cigarettes, vapes and other smoke products. Its keeping it out of the hands of our kids, because right now theres a major explosion with vaping, Napolitano told the Tribune ahead of the vote. I have two teenage kids alone that see vaping probably in every other one of their friends hands. So now this is hopefully gonna get a little bit more of a little anchor on it so that it isnt every location. Advertisement The newest legislation, which exempts existing vape shops, comes as the city has moved to crack down on electronic cigarettes, which have lately been a target of a broad coalition of aldermen and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Supporters of restricting vapes say the products have spurred a public health crisis among teenagers as they cycle through the pen-shaped devices at dizzying paces. Vaporizing devices at EP Smoke Shop and Glass Gallery in Chicago are shown on Oct. 27, 2022. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune) But those working in vape shops have countered that their products have helped many adults quit traditional cigarettes, and existing constraints have failed to keep the electronic ones out of childrens hands. They worry the legislation would further hurt small businesses without making a dent in preventing youth addiction. The lack of a moratorium clause in the final version of the ordinance was welcomed by an industry group. The devil is always in the details, but a model that permits new stores to open appears more consumer-friendly than the possibility of moratoriums, said Gregory Conley, director of legislative and external affairs for the American Vapor Manufacturers Association. Nonetheless, we remain concerned that past anti-harm-reduction bans and excise taxes passed by the council will continue to push sales in Chicago to the uncontrollable illicit market. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Rivers of meltwater (Greenland's ice sheet). Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / S. Kipfstuhl A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today's warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly pronounced. The most recent decade surveyed in a study, the years 2001 to 2011, was the warmest in the past 1,000 years, and the region is now 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than during the 20th century, as researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have just reported in the journal Nature. Using a set of ice cores unprecedented in length and quality, they reconstructed past temperatures in central-north Greenland and melting rates of the ice sheet. The Greenland Ice Sheet plays a pivotal part in the global climate system. With enormous amounts of water stored in the ice (about 3 million cubic kilometers), melt and resulting sea-level rise is considered a potential tipping point. For unmitigated global emissions rates ("business as usual"), the ice sheet is projected to contribute up to 50 centimeters to global mean sea-level by 2100. Weather stations along the coast have been recording rising temperatures for many years. But the influence of global warming on the up to 3,000 m elevated parts of the ice sheet have remained unclear to due to the lack of long-term observations. In a study now published in Nature, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) present clear evidence that effects of global warming have reached the remote, high-elevation areas of central-north Greenland. "The time series we recovered from ice cores now continuously covers more than 1,000 years, from year 1000 to 2011. This data shows that the warming in 2001 to 2011 clearly differs from natural variations during the past 1,000 years. Although grimly expected in the light of global warming, we were surprised by how evident this difference really was," says AWI glaciologist Dr. Maria Horhold, lead author of the study. Together with colleagues from AWI and the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, she analyzed the isotope composition in shallow ice cores gathered in central-north Greenland during dedicated AWI expeditions. Previous ice cores obtained at co-located sites starting in the 1990s, did not indicate clear warming in central-north Greenland, despite rising global mean temperatures. Part of the reason is substantial natural climate variability in the region. The AWI researchers have now extended the previous datasets up to winter 2011/2012 by a dedicated redrilling effort, recovering time series unprecedented length and quality. The temperatures were reconstructed by using consistently one single method for the entire record in the lab: measuring concentrations of stable oxygen isotopes within the ice, which vary with the temperatures prevailing at times of ice formation. Previous studies had to draw on a range of different climate archives and combine results to reconstruct temperature, introducing much larger uncertainties in the assessment of natural variability. In addition to the temperature, the team reconstructed the melt production of the ice sheet. Melting has increased substantially in Greenland since the 2000s and now significantly contributes to global sea-level rise. "We were amazed to see how closely temperatures inland are connected to Greenland-wide meltwater drainagewhich, after all, occurs in low-elevation areas along the rim of the ice sheet near the coast," says Maria Horhold. In order to quantify this connection between temperatures in high-elevation parts and melting along the edges of the ice sheet, the authors used data from a regional climate model for the years 1871 to 2011 and satellite observations of ice-mass changes for the years 2002 to 2021 from the GRACE/GRACE-FO gravimetry missions. This allowed them to convert the temperature variations identified in the ice cores into melting rates and provide estimates for the past 1,000 years. This represents an important dataset for climate research: better understanding of the melt dynamics of the ice sheet in the past improves projections of related future sea-level rise; reduced uncertainties in projections is one step to help optimize adaptation measures. Another exciting finding from the study: the climate of the Greenland Ice Sheet is largely decoupled from the rest of the Arctic. This could be shown in comparison with the Arctic-wide temperature reconstruction "Arctic 2k." Although "Arctic 2k" is an accurate representation of the circumpolar region, it does not reflect the conditions in central Greenland. "Our reconstruction now offers a robust representation of temperature evolution in central Greenland, which has proven to have a dynamic of its own," says Prof. Thomas Laepple, AWI climate researcher and co-author of the study. "Actually, we had expected the time series to strongly co-vary with the warming of the Arctic region," Laepple says. But the authors have an explanation for these differences: The ice sheet is several kilometers thick; because of its height, Greenland is more affected by atmospheric circulation patterns than other parts of the Arctic. Temperature time series on the Arctic with regional resolution are needed, says Laepple, in order to reliably describe climate change in the Arctic. More information: Maria Horhold, Modern temperatures in centralnorth Greenland warmest in past millennium, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05517-z. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05517-z Journal information: Nature This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Renee Abbott and Dr. Ana Diaz Artiles are looking into multisensory virtual reality technology as a tool to support the behavioral health of astronauts on long-duration missions. Credit: Texas A&M Engineering Astronauts are heading back to the moon, and this time they are focusing on establishing the first long-term presence. Afterward, NASA has its sights set on a trip to Mars. With these long-duration missions ahead, new challenges will have to be accounted for on every front. The moon is about 238,855 miles from Earth, but a trip to Mars for an astronaut means traveling around 140 million miles away and leaving our planet for about three years. Because of this distance, astronauts will also face up to a 20-minute communication delay from Earth to Mars. While these missions and the potential for discovery are exciting, astronauts will need extra support in managing the behavioral effects of isolation, confinement and distance from home. "For future long-term missions, we won't have real-time communication or the ability to send care packages like we do now, so NASA is looking for other methods to help maintain behavioral health and performance," said Renee Abbott, a doctoral student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. Abbott is working with her faculty advisor, Dr. Ana Diaz Artiles, an assistant professor in the department, to address this concern by using virtual reality (VR). Specifically, they are studying the effects of incorporating scents into a VR environment. "During long-duration spaceflight missions, astronauts experience significant sensory deprivation. This can have detrimental consequences on multiple levels, from physiological responses to stress and isolation to decrements in behavioral health and wellness," said Diaz Artiles. "We are creating 'augmented' or 'enriched' multisensory experiences that could lead to healthier individuals with improved behavioral health and performance." When we take in a smell, the information from those odors routes from our olfactory system to our limbic system, which is a part of the brain associated with emotional and memory processes. This is why a scented candle can remind you of homemade cookies at grandma's house, or perfume can evoke certain emotions. Abbott and Diaz Artiles are zoning in on these effects that scents can have on the psychological state by building scents into a VR nature environment. Adding scents to a VR experience has been done before, but Abbott and Diaz Artiles' use of localized scents separates their work from previous research. A user could walk near a river in the VR environment and not only hear the sound of rushing water but also smell wet grass. Or if they wandered into a forested area, they would smell the fresh scent of pine. This is accomplished by using hitboxes, which are invisible shapes in the VR environment that activate when the avatar collides with them. "We're hoping that using VR to deliver nature to astronauts will be beneficial," said Abbott. "On Earth, nature has beneficial impacts for us psychologically and physiologically, so we're trying to create the closest simulation to real nature that we can by adding olfactory stimuli." When conducting their study, Abbott and Diaz Artiles measured users' anxiety levels before and after experiencing a stress-inducing event. The results showed that adding olfactory stimuli not only decreased users' anxiety levels after experiencing heightened stress but also reduced their stress and anxiety levels from their baseline. A description of their study was in the August issue of the journal Acta Astronautica. "The results indicate that the use of multisensory VR environments is a promising countermeasure to support behavioral health," said Abbott. "We're also going to look at adding other sensory stimuli, such as temperature illusions, and how we can use this technology to create virtual care packages." Virtual care packages could be used to supplement astronauts' social needs by helping them feel more connected to home. Abbott envisions, for example, that a loved one could send a recorded message and virtual flowers accompanied by the smell of lavender and rose. The researchers also hope to collaborate with the Navy to conduct experiments on ships over a few weeks to observe more long-term effects in a setting similar to the sensory deprivation experienced on an astronaut's mission. More information: Renee (Woodruff) Abbott et al, The impact of digital scents on behavioral health in a restorative virtual reality environment, Acta Astronautica (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2022.05.025 Journal information: Acta Astronautica This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Leaping motion of the LCE elements is dependent on the difference in leg height. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ade1320 Engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder have designed a new, rubber-like film that can leap high into the air like a grasshopperall on its own and without needing outside intervention. Just heat it up and watch it jump! The researchers describe their achievement Jan. 18 in the journal Science Advances. They say that similar materials could one day help embody "soft robots" (those that don't need gears or other hard components to move) to leap or lift. The material composite responds a bit like how grasshoppers jump by storing and releasing energy in their legs, said study co-author Timothy White. "In nature, a lot of adaptations like a grasshopper's leg utilize stored energy, such as an elastic instability," said White, Gallogly Professor of chemical and biological engineering at CU Boulder. "We're trying to create synthetic materials that emulate those natural properties." The new research takes advantage of the unusual behavior of a class of materials called liquid crystal elastomers. These materials are solid and stretchy polymer versions of the liquid crystals found in laptops or TV displays. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ade1320 In the study, the team fabricated small wafers of liquid crystal elastomers about the size of a contact lens, then set them on a hot plate. As those films heated up, they began to warp, forming a cone that rose up until, suddenly and explosively, it flipped inside outshooting the material up to a height of nearly 200 times its own thickness in just 6 milliseconds. "This presents opportunities for using polymer materials in new ways for applications like soft robotics where we often need access to these high-speed, high-force actuation mechanisms," said study lead author Tayler Hebner who earned her doctorate degree in chemical and biological engineering at CU Boulder in 2022. Serendipitous discovery Hebner, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon, and her colleagues discovered this leaping behavior almost by accident. She was experimenting with designing different kinds of liquid crystal elastomers to see how they changed their shape under shifting temperatures. Joselle McCracken, a senior research associate in White's lab, joined her to observe. "We were just watching the liquid crystal elastomer sit on the hot plate wondering why it wasn't making the shape we expected. It suddenly jumped right off the testing stage onto the countertop," Hebner said. "We both just looked at each other kind of confused but also excited." With careful experimentation and help from collaborators at the California Institute of Technology, the team discovered what was making their material do the high jump. White explained that each of these films are made up of three layers of elastomer. These layers shrink when they get hot, he said, but the top two layers shrink faster than the bottom one. That incongruity, combined with the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules within the layers, causes the film to contract and form a cone shape. It's a bit like how painted vinyl sidings can warp in the sun's rays. As the cone forms, strain builds up in the film until, all at oncesnap! The cone inverts, slapping the surface and knocking the material up. The same film can also hop several times without wearing out. "When that inversion happens, the material snaps through, and just like a kid's popper toy, it leaps off the surface," White said. Leaps forward Unlike those poppers, however, the team's liquid crystal elastomers are versatile. The researchers can tweak their films so that they hop when they get cold, for example, not hot. They can also give the films legs to make them jump in a particular direction. Most robots probably wouldn't be able to use this kind of popping effect to make their parts move. But White said that the project shows what similar kinds of materials could be capable ofstoring an impressive amount of elastic energy, then releasing it a single go. And, Hebner said, the project brought a bit of fun to the lab. "It's a powerful example of how the fundamental concepts we study can transform into designs that perform in complex and amazing ways," she said. Grasshoppers, meet your new competition. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The start of the 2023 school year in Kenya marks an important occasion: the first cohort of pupils to adopt a new curriculum in 2017 are entering junior secondary school. The competence-based curriculum, as it is known, was launched in 2017 to replace the 8-4-4 system that had been in place for 32 years. The older system was criticized for its emphasis on teachers instructing students and on examinations. An evaluation in 1998, 13 years after it was introduced, detailed numerous shortcomings. These include subjecting students to a heavy workload. The new curriculum aims at learners constructing their own knowledge and skills through exposure to challenging situations and experience. It is learner-centered and adaptive to the changing needs of students by encouraging innovativeness and creativity. Learners explore and find solutions in classrooms that are connected to real-life situations. Since 2017, the new curriculum has been introduced in phases. Children who entered grade 1 at all public schools and all but a handful of private schools that year have been taught the new curriculum since day one. Six years on, approximately 1.2 million of those pupils, aged around 12, are entering grade 7. This grade, along with grade 8 next year, will be known as junior secondary schoola stage which hasn't previously existed in Kenya. This stage will be housed in primary rather than in secondary schools. But that is about all Kenyans know for sure about junior secondary school. Schools are poorly prepared to host and instruct junior secondary classes. Classrooms are incomplete, laboratories are lacking and learning materials have yet to be delivered to schools. On top of this, the presidential Working Party on Education set up in September 2022 to assess hurdles to implementation and other practical questions has yet to publish its recommendations on implementation. The practical issues include a widespread perception that the new system is a financial burden for poor parents. The government's immediate task is therefore two-fold. First, it must try to ensure that the quality of education does not suffer. Second, it must provide education without discriminating against any learner based on their social or economic background. This would allay fears that the new system favors the rich. The main challenges There are three major hurdles to successfully implementing the new curriculum. The first relates to preparedness of teachers and teaching material. Facilities like laboratories and workshops that are a key requirement for successful implementation of the curriculum are yet to be built, and the teaching materials are not ready for grade 7 learners. Three years ago, Kenya's main teachers' union reported that an internal survey found that few primary school teachers across all 47 counties had been trained to roll the curriculum out. The union said training was truncated from the stipulated five days to just two or three days per school term. Teachers, by their own admission, lack the knowledge and skills they need to follow the curriculum. This problem is compounded by chronic under-staffing in most schools across Kenya. The teacher deficit stands at over 90,000. This is mainly due to a freeze in employment imposed in 1997 owing to budgetary constraints. Until the 2022 order to hire 30,000 new teachers, only enough were employed to replace those retiring or leaving the profession through natural attrition. The new hires, though welcome, are a drop in the ocean. The second hurdle is physical facilities: there simply isn't enough room for the new pupils. The lack of infrastructure is a challenge which the government hasn't met over the years. Some learners continue to attend lessons under trees. Finally, the curriculum has been labeled as very expensive especially for parents in rural areas and those with low incomes. This is because parents are frequently called upon to buy materials for practical classwork. The assumption that all parents can afford smartphones and have access to a computer or printing services for some assignments has also not gone down well. This would appear to advantage some students at the expense of others and add to existing disparities. This raises concern because education is a basic human right. Way forward One of the biggest challenges in Kenya is implementation of policies. This was also evidenced in the early years of the education system that is now being phased out. This is partly due to the failure to involve all stakeholders in education and the private sector to enhance partnerships and collaboration. Working together could promote innovation and research to make the education system relevant and practical. Faced with the current challenges, the government can borrow a leaf from UNESCO's guidelines on quality education for all. The recommendation calls for partnerships of all actors to learn, compile and evaluate good practices, provide resources enabling practitioners to exchange experiences, and pilot and scale up good ideas. The government needs to ensure quality education without discriminating against any learner based on their social or economic background. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Schematic overview of the selection and subsequent analyses of Phyllachora maydis candidate effectors. A, The P. maydis effector candidates (PmECs) investigated in this study were selected using the aforementioned selection criteria. B, The predicted open reading frames (ORFs) of each of the 40 candidate effectors, without their predicted signal peptides, were synthesized and fused to the N terminus of super yellow fluorescent protein (sYFP) and recombined into the plant expression binary vector pEarleyGate100 (pEG100) using a multisite Gateway cloning strategy. C, The resulting P. maydis effector-fluorescent protein fusion (PmEC:sYFP) constructs were inserted into Agrobacterium tumefaciens for subsequent Nicotiana benthamiana-based heterologous expression assays. D, Immunoblot analyses were used to assess expression of the PmEC-fluorescent protein fusions. E, Laser-scanning confocal microscopy was used to assess the live-cell subcellular localization patterns in N. benthamiana epidermal cells. Figure was created with Biorender. Credit: Phytopathology (2022). DOI: 10.1094/PHYTO-05-22-0181-R Although discovered in the United States only seven years ago, tar spot has wreaked havoc on corn yieldresulting in an estimated 1.2-billion-dollar loss in 2021 alone. The miscreant behind this devastating plant disease, Phyllachora maydis, is an emergent fungal pathogen whose biology remains obscure. This lack of understanding significantly limits disease management strategies, and no corn germplasm is completely resistant to the pathogen. Consequently, Dr. Matthew Helm, a Research Molecular Biologist with the Crop Production and Pest Control Research Unit in the USDA-ARS and early career scientists from Purdue University conducted a study to better understand how P. maydis infects corn. Their research, newly published in Phytopathology, is the first publication to characterize this pathogen on a molecular level. While most fungal pathogens inject plant cells with specialized molecules to suppress host immune responses, the authors investigated whether P. maydis also utilizes this methodin addition to which plant organelles the molecules target. Their data confirms that the tar spot pathogen does encode these virulence molecules and that some of them localize to specific subcellular compartments within the plant cell, including the nucleus and chloroplasts. The exciting novelty of this study is important, as no other entity has investigated which plant organelles are targeted by pathogen-injected proteins from P. maydis, to the knowledge of Corresponding and First Author Helm. This research will likely impact molecular plant pathology and its subdisciplines significantly. Helm comments, "Arguably, plant pathologists are only beginning to understand how plant pathogens cause disease on a molecular and genetic level, especially for pathogens that have recently emerged. Our work not only advances our understanding of the biology of this fungal pathogen, but also contributes to our overall understanding of the interaction between plants and microbes." This study provides the kernel for understanding how this plant disease infects cornsowing the fields for further studies, increased disease control strategies, and for food security protection worldwide. More information: Matthew Helm et al, Candidate Effector Proteins from the Maize Tar Spot Pathogen Phyllachora maydis Localize to Diverse Plant Cell Compartments, Phytopathology (2022). DOI: 10.1094/PHYTO-05-22-0181-R Provided by American Phytopathological Society This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Campaigners have welcomed a decision to remove the skeleton of an 18th century man with gigantism from public display at a London museum. The remains of Charles Byrne, who was 7ft 7in (2.31 metres), had been on show at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in central London. But the museum has said the self-styled "Irish Giant" will not be part of the collection when it reopens in March after a five-year, 4.6-million ($5.7-million) refurbishment. Thomas Muinzer, a senior law lecturer at Aberdeen University in Scotland, called the decision "wonderful news". But he said the development was only a "partial success", as Byrne himself wanted to be buried at sea, to prevent anatomists using him for study. In 2011, Muinzer and Len Doyal, a medical ethicist, published a paper in the British Medical Journal, calling for Byrne's final wishes to be respected. "Byrne's remains ought to be buried at sea or at least be withdrawn from public display," they wrote. The British writer Hilary Mantel, who died last year and wrote a 1998 fictionalised portrait of Byrne called "The Giant", had also backed the campaign. RCS England said last week that trustees of the collection had discussed the "sensitivities" of keeping and displaying Byrne's skeleton during the closure. The skeleton was acquired after Byrne's death aged 22 in 1783 by the eminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. Before he could be buried, Hunter paid Byrne's friends 500the equivalent of 60,000 todayfor his body. The decision comes as museums in the UK and around the world are reassessing the provenance of their collections. The Hunterian is due to begin a new programme later this year "to promote new research and explore issues around the display of human remains and the acquisition of specimens" during the British colonial period. Hunter and others in the 18th and 19th century "acquired many specimens in ways we would not consider ethical today", it added. A decision has been made to only make the skeleton only available for "bona fide medical research" into gigantism. Muinzer said it had already been extensively studied and its complete DNA extracted, but scientific understanding of the condition remains limited and people still suffer from it today. As a result, Byrne's last wisheswhich RCS England said are well-documented but anecdotalshould be respected, he added. "We don't have to worry about the resurrectionists and grave robbers now thank goodness," he added. 2023 AFP This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Multistep synthesis of 3D nanostructures.(A) Scheme illustrating the 3D structures of the nanoparticles synthesized at each synthetic step. Yellow, Au; cyan, Ni. (B to I) Scanning TEM (STEM)energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX) maps and high-angle annular dark-field (HAADF)STEM images of the nanoparticles after each step in the synthesis. (B and C) Au 1 cores synthesized in step I. (D and E) Au 1 -Ni 1 nanoparticle synthesized from Ni branch growth on the Au 1 cores in step II. (F and G) Au 1 -Ni 1 -Au 2 nanoparticle synthesized from Au core growth on the tips of Ni 1 branches in step III. (H and I) Au 1 -Ni 1 -Au 2 -Ni 2 3D nanostructures synthesized from Ni branch growth on Au 2 cores in step IV. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf6075 Scientists from UNSW Sydney have demonstrated a novel technique for creating tiny 3D materials that could eventually make fuel cells like hydrogen batteries cheaper and more sustainable. In the study published in Science Advances, researchers from the School of Chemistry at UNSW Science show it's possible to sequentially "grow" interconnected hierarchical structures in 3D at the nanoscale which have unique chemical and physical properties to support energy conversion reactions. In chemistry, hierarchical structures are configurations of units like molecules within an organization of other units that themselves may be ordered. Similar phenomena can be seen in the natural world, like in flower petals and tree branches. But where these structures have extraordinary potential is at a level beyond the visibility of the human eyeat the nanoscale. Using conventional methods, scientists have found it challenging to replicate these 3D structures with metal components on the nanoscale. To understand just how small these tiny 3D materials need to bein one centimeter, there are 10 millimeters. If you were to count one million tiny segments in just one of those millimeters, each of those would be one nanometre or nm. "To date, scientists have been able to assemble hierarchical-type structures on the micrometer or molecular scale," says Professor Richard Tilley, Director of the Electron Microscope Unit at UNSW and senior author of the study. "But to get the level of precision needed to assemble on the nanoscale, we needed to develop an entirely new bottom-up methodology." The researchers used chemical synthesis, an approach that constructs complex chemical compounds from simpler ones. They were able to carefully grow hexagonal crystalstructured nickel branches on cubic crystalstructured cores to create 3D hierarchical structures with dimensions of around 1020 nanometers. The resulting interconnected 3D nanostructure has a high surface area, high conductivity due to the direct connection of a metallic core and branches, and has surfaces that can be chemically modified. These properties make it an ideal electrocatalyst supporta substance that helps speed up the rate of reactionsin the oxygen evolution reaction, a crucial process in energy conversion. The nanostructure's properties were examined using electrochemical analysis from state-of-the-art electron microscopes provided by the Electron Microscope Unit. "Growing the material step by step is a contrast to what we do assembling structures at the micrometer level, which is starting with bulk material and etching it down," says the lead author of the study Dr. Lucy Gloag, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Chemistry, UNSW Science. "This new method allows us to have excellent control over the conditions, which lets us keep all of the components ultra-smallon the nanoscalewhere the unique catalytic properties exist." Authors of the study Professor Richard Tilley and Dr Lucy Gloag. Credit: University of New South Wales Nanocatalysts in fuel cells In conventional catalysts, which are often spherical, most atoms are stuck in the middle of the sphere. There are very few atoms on the surface, meaning most of the material is wasted as it can't take part in the reaction environment. These new 3D nanostructures are engineered to expose more atoms to the reaction environment, which can facilitate more efficient and effective catalysis for energy conversion, Prof. Tilley says. "If this is used in a fuel cell or battery, having a higher surface area for the catalyst means the reaction will be more efficient when converting hydrogen into electricity," Prof. Tilley says. Dr. Gloag says it means that less of the material needs to be used for the reaction. "It will eventually decrease the costs as well, making energy production more sustainable and ultimately shifting our dependence further away from fossil fuels." In the next research stage, the scientists will look to modify the surface of the material with platinum, which is a superior catalytic metal though more expensive. About a sixth of the cost of an electric car alone is the platinum powering the fuel cell. "These exceptionally high surface areas would support a material like platinum to be layered on in individual atoms, so we have the absolute best use of these expensive metals in a reaction environment," Prof. Tilley says. More information: Lucy Gloag et al, Synthesis of hierarchical metal nanostructures with high electrocatalytic surface areas, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf6075 Journal information: Science Advances This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Middle school students participate in the Virtual Middle School Music Enrichment (VMSME), an extracurricular music education program supported by the Fender Play Foundation. Credit: Fender Play Foundation The latest University of Southern California (USC) research on the impact of music education shows that for adolescents, the benefits appear to extend beyond a surge in neural connections in their brains. It actually boosts their well-being. The study published Wednesday by the journal Frontiers In Psychology comes just weeks after voters statewide approved Prop. 28 to increase funding for arts and music education in California public schools. A USC Thornton School of Music researcher said the results are especially meaningful amid a nationwide mental health crisis. "We know that the pandemic has taken a toll on student mental health. The many narratives of learning loss that have emerged since the start of the pandemic paint a grim picture of what some call a 'lost generation'," said Beatriz Ilari, an associate professor of music education at the USC Thornton School of Music and corresponding author of the study. "Music might be an activity to help students develop skills and competencies, work out their emotions, engage in identity work and strengthen connections to the school and community." Evidence of music education benefits continues to mount, although many states and school districts have reduced the amount of class time, faculty and curriculum dedicated to the arts amid budget crunches and changes in curriculum standards. Ilari has contributed to prior studies, including a longitudinal one by the USC Brain and Creativity Institute, which demonstrated that children who learn a musical instrument have enhanced cognitive function. Other research also has shown music education contributes to improved creativity and confidence, better mental health and emotional stability, and student performance, according to a paper published last year by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Greater hope for the future For the study, researchers examined the impact of music on "positive youth development," a measure of the strengths of adolescents and their potential to contribute to society developed by scholars from Tufts University. Researchers also included measures for school connectedness and hopeful future expectations. The researchers administered anonymous, online surveys to 120 students from 52 Los Angeles Unified School District middle schools. The survey questions covered the key domains of positive youth development including competence and confidence. Past research shows that adolescents who manifest these attributes are more likely to make positive contributions to society and less likely to engage in risky behaviors later in life. Ilari and her fellow researchers, including USC Thornton alumna Eun Cho, found many positive effects. They found that students who started music education before age 8 were more hopeful about the future, and younger students receiving musical training scored higher in key measures of positive youth development. The research team also found that younger students scored higher in key development measures than their older peers. Sixth-grade students, for example, scored higher for overall positive youth development than eighth-graders, and scored higher in the confidence domain than both seventh and eighth-graders. Seventh-grade students also scored higher in overall positive youth development than eighth-graders. In completing the study's survey questions, students were invited to choose from multiple gender categories beyond the usual binary gender options, including "non-binary" and "prefer not to answer," to identify themselves. Non-binary students scored lower in overall positive youth development and connection than girls. They also scored lower in confidence and connection than boys. "Given the high levels of depression and suicide ideation among LGBTQ+ and non-gender conforming students, it is crucial that research examining adolescent well-being move beyond the gender binary," Ilari said. "In addition to filling critical gaps in the existing literature, results from our study can be used to inform the development of programs and policy for all young people." The study included students of diverse backgrounds. However, students participating in a virtual music education program primarily came from poor neighborhoods, indicating disparities in access to formal music education. In addition, the study explored students' engagement in different music programs, including the Virtual Middle School Music Enrichment (VMSME), a tuition-free, extracurricular program that focuses on popular music education and virtual learning. The program is available through a school district partnership with the Fender Play Foundation. Researchers found that students participating in multiple forms of music education and for longer periods of time scored higher in measures for competence and hopeful future expectations. Some participants in these groups were also enrolled in private lessons and/or playing in small ensembles that offer more individual attention than large group classes. In contrast, students in the extracurricular VMSME program came from low-income neighborhoods and participated in fewer extracurricular activities. "By expanding access to instruments and music classes for students from low socioeconomic areasa population that is often left out of school music programsVMSME contributed to the democratization of music education," Ilari said. "Throughout the pandemic, students in public schools, especially in urban areas, were disproportionately impacted by the lockdowns that deprived them of physical and social contact with peers. VMSME brought together students from different neighborhoods and at a time when forming peer groups is essential to social identity development." More research is needed to better understand disparities in access to formal music education, Ilari said, but she said programs that give student agency in their learning and allow them to engage with peers from other schools, like VMSME, have the potential to promote learning and well-being. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The new species of bent-toed gecko, Cyrtodactylus santana. Credit: Chan Kin Onn Nestled amongst a chain of islands in the southern reaches of Southeast Asia, Timor-Leste occupies the eastern half of the island of Timor, the largest of the Lesser Sunda Islands that also include Bali and Komodo, the latter of which is home to the Komodo Dragon. In May 2002, Timor-Leste (officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) became the first new sovereign nation of the 21st century and is currently the 4th youngest country in the world. Even though the country lies in the highly biodiverse region of Wallacea, its biodiversity is relatively poorly known, partly because decades of pre-independence violence and conflict have hindered biological surveys. In August 2022, a partnership between the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (Singapore), Conservation International, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of Timor-Leste conducted preliminary biological surveys across the eastern part of the island. The surveys specifically targeted remote and underexplored areas, such as the isolated mountain of Mundo Perdido ("Lost World" in Portuguese) and Nino Konis Santana National Park (NKS)the first and largest national park in Timor-Leste. NKS is an enormous park that covers 1,236 square kilometers of land and is mainly characterized by lowland tropical forests. In it, there are several limestone caves of archaeological importance, and it was in one of those caves that a new gecko species was found. While surveying the Lene Hara cave during the day, a member of the research team caught a glimpse of a lizard scurrying on the ground before disappearing into a crevice. Dr. Chan Kin Onn, a herpetologist at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, sprung into action. Soon, he found himself wedged into a tight crevice in hopes of capturing the lizard. "I couldn't get to the lizard because the crack was too narrow, but I saw the rear half of its body and could tell that it was a bent-toed gecko from the genus Cyrtodactylus. New species of bent-toed geckos are being discovered all across Southeast Asia and due to the remoteness of the cave, the potential for this gecko to be a new species was high," explained Dr. Chan. Several hours later, under the cover of darkness, the team was back in the cave, this time equipped with flashlights. "Bent-toed geckos are usually nocturnal and can be skittish during the day. Our best chance at capturing them would be at night," says Dr. Chan.True enough, after just one hour of looking, they collected ten specimens. A few weeks later, the gecko from Lena Hara cave was confirmed to be a new species based on DNA analysis and external morphological characteristics. Their paper is published in the journal ZooKeys. The new species is named Cyrtodactylus santana, in reference to Nino Konis Santana National Park. The park's name honors Nino Konis Santana, a freedom fighter who led the Falintil militia against the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. Even though past surveys have documented several populations of bent-toed geckos in Timor-Leste, none of them had been identified to the species level and thus, remain unnamed. Cyrtodactylus santana is the first bent-toed gecko in Timor-Leste formally described as a species. The expedition also discovered several interesting plants and crabs that are currently being examined, all of which have the potential to be new species. "We have barely scratched the surface of Timor-Leste's biodiversity. New discoveries can have profound impacts, because Timor-Leste is a substantial landmass bounded by deep sea trenches and is located at the fringe of the Wallacean Biodiversity Hotspot and Weber's Line, a transitional zone between Oriental and Australasian fauna," the researchers wrote. Understanding the biodiversity of Timor-Leste could provide key insights into the divergence, evolution, and distribution of species, they believe. More information: Kin Onn Chan et al, Scratching the surface: a new species of Bent-toed gecko (Squamata, Gekkonidae, Cyrtodactylus) from Timor-Leste of the darmandvillei group marks the potential for future discoveries, ZooKeys (2023). DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1139.96508 Journal information: ZooKeys This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Cranfield University A major new research report into the flexible furlough scheme from Cranfield University's School of Management urges government and employers to invest in an expansion of part-time working, with experts saying this could unlock a boost to national GDP. The "Part-time working after the pandemic" report, authored by Clare Kelliher, Professor of Work and Organization at Cranfield University, Dr. Charlotte Gascoigne and Dr. Pierre Walthery, looked at the experience of firms that used the flexible furlough option as the country exited lockdown. Flexible furlough allowed organizations to bring back employees on a part-time basis with the government topping up their wages. The report's headline recommendation is that the government and employers must invest in a part-time working pilot to capitalize on the experiences of flexible furlough and encourage openness to part-time working. Experimentation and innovation in the workplace should be encouraged to help embed new ways of working, share best practice and attract and retain talent. Experience from flexible furlough could bring people back into the workforce The researchers found that the U.K. has a pool of newfound expertise in part-time working due to the success of the flexible furlough scheme. With around a fifth of working age people classed as economically inactivesuch as those with caring responsibilities, people with disabilities and older workersthis knowledge could be used to bring them back into the workforce. As well as increased awareness of part-time work and knowledge in how to offer it effectively, there is a growing demand for more part-time jobs. As many as a quarter of all full-time employees say they would like to work part-time. That increase is partly being driven by the cost of living crisis as people look for extra jobs to boost their income. But the Cranfield research also found that, post-pandemic, employers believe people want to work fewer hours to achieve a better work life balance. Other findings from the report include: 40% of those who had used the flexible furlough scheme said line managers are now better at managing part-time working effectively Just over 40% of those who had used the flexible furlough scheme said that it made their line managers more open to part-time working Part-time working is still a gendered issue. It is seen by many employers as something women and particularly mothers are likely to ask for, but there is little evidence to support the assumption that demand for part-time is low in male dominated workforces Many employers are more concerned with hybrid working and increasing work from home than engaging with the issues around hours Labor shortages are driving openness to part-time working among employers A unique experiment to build on Lead author, Professor Clare Kelliher said, "Flexible furlough was a unique experiment in part-time working and it was one that many employers and employees learnt a lot from as they put it into practice. It's vital that we don't lose that knowledge or willingness to innovate in the workplaceemployers should now be looking to build on what they learnt to attract and retain talent. "The world of work is going through unprecedented change with the move to hybrid working and events like the great resignation. Part-time work offers a route for employers and employees to successfully navigate upheaval and thrive into the future. "The government rightly wants to see the economy grow. Investigating part-time working and encouraging its widespread use where appropriate could bring many millions of people currently excluded from work back into the workforce and boost the economy at a time when it is desperately needed." Part-time working a 'real path to growth' Dr. Charlotte Gascoigne, Principal Research Fellow for the project, added, "Many organizations are missing out on the huge benefits that part-time working can bring. The experience of using the flexible furlough scheme has demonstrated the benefits of practical trials in changing mindsets about different ways of working. It's important to encourage that kind of innovation by setting up a formal, funded pilot covering a range of job types and industry sectors, perhaps modeled on the recent trial of the four-day week. This would allow employers to assess the costs and benefits of part-time working in different circumstances. "Too many people are currently excluded from the workforce and the whole country suffers due to missing out on the talents of those with caring responsibilities, the experience and expertise of older workers and the skills of people with disabilities and long-term health conditions. Part-time working offers an effective route back into work for many people and a real path to growth for the government and the economy more widely." Former business minister and visiting professor at Cranfield University, Jo Swinson, said, "Employees and employers alike can see that workplace practice and culture is rapidly changing in the wake of the pandemic experience. One-size-fits-all working patterns no longer make senseoffering part-time working is one of the important ways employers can attract and retain talented staff. This insightful research should be read closely by everyone interested in the future of workI urge employers and government to act on its recommendations to embrace the economic benefits that part-time working can bring." This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Debris accumulating on Aldabra Atoll, a remote coral island and UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southwestern Seychelles. These photographs were taken as part of a major 2019 clean-up operation on the island, the Aldabra Clean-Up Project. Credit: Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF). Vast amounts of plastic debris accumulate on beaches across the Seychelles and other small island developing states. Observational analysis (for instance, plastic bottle labels) suggest that much of this waste originates from distant sources and not from the islands themselves. But until now, the likely sources of this debris have not been quantified. A new study led by the University of Oxford investigated this by developing a high-resolution model that simulated the movement of plastic debris across the world's oceans. This used input data on ocean currents, waves, and winds, and plastic debris entering the ocean from coastal populations, rivers and fisheries, to predict plastic debris accumulation at 27 sites in the Seychelles and wider western Indian ocean. The results have been published in Marine Pollution Bulletin. The researchers modeled the likely sources of both land-based and marine types of plastic pollution. Key findings: Indonesia is the primary source of land-based plastic debris found on beaches in the Seychelles, with major contributions from India and Sri Lanka. This was particularly the case for medium-large debris that have a high buoyancy (such as bottle caps, sandals, bottles, and small domestic items). Plastic debris arriving from Indonesia would have been at sea for at least 6 months, with some exceeding 2 years. Smaller plastic debris, such as millimeter-sized plastic fragments and pellets, tended to originate from East Africa and from within the Seychelles itself. Smaller fragments are less buoyant than larger items, and do not travel as far before sinking. The Seychelles also accumulate significant amounts of plastic debris of marine origin from fisheries and shipping lanes, such as discarded or lost fishing gear. The large numbers of bottles beaching at these islands with labels suggesting they come from Malaysia, Thailand and, in particular, China, were probably discarded from ships rather than floating from those countries directly. For some islands, a significantly higher proportion of plastic waste comes from marine sources, rather than land. Rates of plastic debris accumulation showed a strong seasonal affect. Plastic debris from both land and marine sources was most likely to land on beaches in the Seychelles at the end of the northwest monsoon, with the highest rates in March and April. Plastic debris accumulation may also be amplified by El NinoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD, also known as the Indian Nino) events. Debris accumulating on Aldabra Atoll, a remote coral island and UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southwestern Seychelles. These photographs were taken as part of a major 2019 clean-up operation on the island, the Aldabra Clean-Up Project. Credit: Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF) This is the first study to produce a quantitative estimate of the sources of plastic debris for the Seychelles and other remote islands in the western Indian Ocean. Such plastic pollution is a significant environmental threat, both for marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on the ocean for food, tourism, and other economic activities. In addition, plastic debris that drifts from far-off sources increases the risk of spreading invasive species and diseases. A previous study published in Scientific Reports in 2020 and led by University of Oxford researchers estimated that over 500 tons of debris had accumulated at Aldabra Atoll in Seychelles, an ecologically valuable UNESCO World Heritage Site with zero permanent population. Lead author of the current research, Noam Vogt-Vincent (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford), said "We have combined observational data from across the Seychelles with cutting-edge computer simulations to generate the most comprehensive predictions currently available for marine litter dispersal in the region. This will provide vital information for local management on these islandsmany of which are global biodiversity hotspotsand to inform national and international responses." According to the researchers, the results illustrate the sheer scale of the plastic pollution challenge facing small island developing states, and makes the need for a global plastic treaty more urgent than ever. This could include, for instance, greater enforcement of policies that forbid the disposal of fishing gear and other plastics at sea. Credit: University of Oxford The findings also build on the ever-growing evidence that investing in waste management systems and implementing policies for waste disposal at the main source nations is the number one action to prevent land-based litter arriving at remote island sites. Knowing when plastic debris accumulation is likely to peak could help to plan mitigation efforts. For instance, the results suggest that beach clean-ups should take place after peak debris accumulation (i.e. May to June) to reduce the likelihood of plastic debris breaking down into smaller fragments and impacting ecosystems. Co-author Dr. April Burt (Seychelles Islands Foundation and University of Oxford) said, "These islands are faced with the deeply inequitable situation of bearing the costs of removing waste they were not responsible for generating, contrary to the 'polluter pays' principle. Our study has demonstrated that most of the plastic debris accumulating at these remote islands comes from far-off sources, and this should be the first positive step towards accountability and prevention." More information: Noam S. Vogt-Vincent et al, Sources of marine debris for Seychelles and other remote islands in the western Indian Ocean, Marine Pollution Bulletin (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114497 April J. Burt et al, The costs of removing the unsanctioned import of marine plastic litter to small island states, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-71444-6 Journal information: Marine Pollution Bulletin , Scientific Reports This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The researchers with their 16.7-pound find. White helmet: Maria Schonbachler. Green helmet: Maria Valdes. Black helmet: Ryoga Maeda. Orange helmet: Vinciane Debaille. Photo courtesy of Maria Valdes. Credit: Maria Valdes Antarctica is a tough place to work, for obvious reasonsit's bitterly cold, remote, and wild. However, it's one of the best places in the world to hunt for meteorites. That's partly because Antarctica is a desert, and its dry climate limits the degree of weathering the meteorites experience. On top of the dry conditions, the landscape is ideal for meteorite hunting: the black space rocks stand out clearly against snowy fields. Even when meteorites sink into the ice, the glaciers' churning motion against the rock below helps re-expose the meteorites near the surface of the continent's blue ice fields. An international team of researchers who just got back from Antarctica can attest to the continent's meteorite-hunter-friendliness: they returned with five new meteorites, including one that weighs 16.7 pounds (7.6 kg). The 17-pound meteorite. Credit: Maria Valdes Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, estimates that of the roughly 45,000 meteorites retrieved from Antarctica over the past century, only about a hundred or so are this size or larger. "Size doesn't necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny micrometeorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable," says Valdes, "but of course, finding a big meteorite like this one is rare, and really exciting." Valdes was one of four scientists on the mission, led by Vinciane Debaille of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (FNRS-ULB); the research team was rounded out by Maria Schonbachler (ETH-Zurich) and Ryoga Maeda (VUB-ULB). The researchers were the first to explore potential new meteorite sites mapped using satellite imagery by Veronica Tollenaar, a thesis student in glaciology at the ULB. Rocks strewn across an ice field, with the scientists searching for meteorites in the background. Credit: Maria Valdes The team's tents when in the field. Credit: Maria Valdes The team hiking past rock formations in Antarctica. Credit: Maria Valdes A snowy field in Antarctica. Credit: Maria Valdes "Going on an adventure exploring unknown areas is exciting," says Debaille, "but we also had to deal with the fact that the reality on the ground is much more difficult than the beauty of satellite images." Despite timing their trip for Antarctica's summertime in late December, temperatures hovered around 14 F (-10 C). Valdes notes that some days during their trip, it was actually colder in Chicago than it was in Antarctica, but spending days riding snowmobiles and trekking through ice fields and then sleeping in a tent made the Antarctic weather feel more extreme. The five meteorites recovered by the team will be analyzed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences; meanwhile, sediment potentially containing tiny micrometeorites was divided among the researchers for study at their institutions. Valdes says she's eager to see what the analyses of the meteorites reveal, because "studying meteorites helps us better understand our place in the universe. The bigger a sample size we have of meteorites, the better we can understand our Solar System, and the better we can understand ourselves." This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A polar bear, an animal facing increasing threats due to climate change, is seen near Churchill, Canada in August 4 2022. A polar bear on a rampage killed a woman and a boy in a remote area of Alaska, police said, in a rare attack on humans. The bear was itself then shot and killed by a resident in the tiny community of Wales, on the far western coast of Alaska. "Initial reports indicate that a polar bear had entered the community and had chased multiple residents," police said in a statement on Tuesday's attack. "The bear fatally attacked an adult female and juvenile maleit was shot and killed by a local resident as it attacked the pair," police said, adding that state troopers and Fish and Game Department authorities were trying to reach the town "as weather conditions allow." The victims' identities were not made public as authorities were trying to notify their families. Polar bear attacks are extremely rare, with local media reporting one of the most recent fatal encounters between a human and polar bear in Alaska was in 1990. According to Canadian NGO Polar Bears International, only 20 people worldwide are known to have been killed by polar bears between 1870 and 2014, though the frequency of attacks is increasing. Wales, a village of about 150 people on the Bering Strait that separates the United States from Russia, is part of the Alaska Nannut Co-Management Council, a group of Indigenous communities that have traditionally hunted polar bears for subsistence. The giant bearsmales can grow up to 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms)face increasing threats from climate change, with their Arctic sea ice habitat disappearing as the far north warms up to four times faster than the rest of the world. The bears, whose populations are declining, rely on the ice for foraging for seals and for movement and reproduction. Some Arctic communities employ polar bear patrols to protect residents from the animals, though one was not currently in operation in Wales, according to the Anchorage Daily News. 2023 AFP This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Las Vegas, with its rapid urbanization and desert landscape, is highly vulnerable to flooding. For this reason, flood managers have built an extensive system of drainage ditches and detention basins to protect the public. Now, a new study shows how intentional engineering and urban development are interacting with climate change to alter the timing and intensity of flood risk. In a study published Jan. 6 in The Journal of Hydrometeorology, researchers from Desert Research Institute (DRI), the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Guangdong University of Technology examine Las Vegas' changing flood regime. Their results show that flood intensity has increased since the mid-20th century, with an abrupt shift occurring in the mid-1990s. Climate change has also shifted flood seasonality, with the storms and their resultant floods now occurring more frequently in winter, in contrast with the historically stronger summer monsoon season. "When I looked at the data for annual flood peaks, I could see that something is changing," said Guo Yu, Ph.D., lead author on the new study and hydrologist at DRI. "I wanted to understand the reason for this change as well as the physical mechanisms driving it, because that will help water managers and the public understand whether such a change will continue in the future, given climate and land use changes here." Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing metropolitan regions in the country. In 1950, fewer than 35 thousand people resided in the region; by 2020, that number had grown to 2.6 million. Like many cities in the arid Southwest, development centers on the valley floor and spreads up into the natural topography of the surrounding mountains. As concrete and pavement replace more porous desert soils, the risk of flooding in human communities risescatastrophic floods have caused fatalities as recently as 2022. To mitigate this risk, the Clark County Regional Flood Control District constructed a complex series of storm drains and culverts to capture and direct the flow of water away from populated areas and toward Lake Mead. Over the same period, climate change has led to shifts in seasonal rainfall patterns. The Southwest has two distinct flood seasons: winter floods produced by atmospheric rivers and summer floods linked to the North American monsoon. Since 1950, daily rainfall amounts have increased in winter and decreased in the summer months. "Historically, people in Las Vegas haven't paid as much attention to winter floods as to summer floods," Yu said. "But our research shows that there will be more frequent winter floods happening because of climate change. This is because the warmer sea surface temperatures on the Pacific coast will cause more atmospheric rivers, like what we're seeing this January in California. And when these are positioned to bypass the Sierra Nevada mountains, they will very likely hit Las Vegas and cause severe winter rainfall and floods." The new research demonstrates an overall picture of shifting intensity and seasonality of floods in Las Vegas. The study authors are continuing to refine their understanding of flood risk in the region with an upcoming study, currently under review, that examines changing rainfall patterns in more detail. "A lot of research focuses on a single drivereither land use or climatebut in Las Vegas, our study shows that both are changing and interacting with each other," said Yu. Study authors include DRI researchers Guo Yu, Julianne Miller, Benjamin J. Hatchett, and Markus Berli; as well as Daniel B. Wright (University of Wisconsin, Madison); Craig McDougall (Clark County Regional Flood Control District); and Zhihua Zhu (Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China). More information: Guo Yu et al, The Nonstationary Flood Hydrology of an Urbanizing Arid Watershed, Journal of Hydrometeorology (2023). DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-22-0117.1 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: By depositing atoms on a wafer coated in a mask (top left), MIT engineers can corral the atoms in the masks individual pockets (center middle), and encourage the atoms to grow into perfect, 2D, single-crystalline layers (bottom right). Credit: Jeehwan Kim, Ki Seok Kim, et. al True to Moore's Law, the number of transistors on a microchip has doubled every year since the 1960s. But this trajectory is predicted to soon plateau because siliconthe backbone of modern transistorsloses its electrical properties once devices made from this material dip below a certain size. Enter 2D materialsdelicate, two-dimensional sheets of perfect crystals that are as thin as a single atom. At the scale of nanometers, 2D materials can conduct electrons far more efficiently than silicon. The search for next-generation transistor materials therefore has focused on 2D materials as potential successors to silicon. But before the electronics industry can transition to 2D materials, scientists have to first find a way to engineer the materials on industry-standard silicon wafers while preserving their perfect crystalline form. And MIT engineers may now have a solution. The team has developed a method that could enable chip manufacturers to fabricate ever-smaller transistors from 2D materials by growing them on existing wafers of silicon and other materials. The new method is a form of "nonepitaxial, single-crystalline growth," which the team used for the first time to grow pure, defect-free 2D materials onto industrial silicon wafers. With their method, the team fabricated a simple functional transistor from a type of 2D materials called transition-metal dichalcogenides, or TMDs, which are known to conduct electricity better than silicon at nanometer scales. "We expect our technology could enable the development of 2D semiconductor-based, high-performance, next-generation electronic devices," says Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "We've unlocked a way to catch up to Moore's Law using 2D materials." Kim and his colleagues detail their method in a paper appearing in Nature. The study's MIT co-authors include Ki Seok Kim, Doyoon Lee, Celesta Chang, Seunghwan Seo, Hyunseok Kim, Jiho Shin, Sangho Lee, Jun Min Suh, and Bo-In Park, along with collaborators at the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of California at Riverside, Washington University in Saint Louis, and institutions across South Korea. A crystal patchwork To produce a 2D material, researchers have typically employed a manual process by which an atom-thin flake is carefully exfoliated from a bulk material, like peeling away the layers of an onion. But most bulk materials are polycrystalline, containing multiple crystals that grow in random orientations. Where one crystal meets another, the "grain boundary" acts as an electric barrier. Any electrons flowing through one crystal suddenly stop when met with a crystal of a different orientation, damping a material's conductivity. Even after exfoliating a 2D flake, researchers must then search the flake for "single-crystalline" regionsa tedious and time-intensive process that is difficult to apply at industrial scales. Recently, researchers have found other ways to fabricate 2D materials, by growing them on wafers of sapphirea material with a hexagonal pattern of atoms which encourages 2D materials to assemble in the same, single-crystalline orientation. "But nobody uses sapphire in the memory or logic industry," Kim says. "All the infrastructure is based on silicon. For semiconductor processing, you need to use silicon wafers." However, wafers of silicon lack sapphire's hexagonal supporting scaffold. When researchers attempt to grow 2D materials on silicon, the result is a random patchwork of crystals that merge haphazardly, forming numerous grain boundaries that stymie conductivity. "It's considered almost impossible to grow single-crystalline 2D materials on silicon," Kim says. "Now we show you can. And our trick is to prevent the formation of grain boundaries." Seed pockets The team's new "nonepitaxial, single-crystalline growth" does not require peeling and searching flakes of 2D material. Instead, the researchers use conventional vapor deposition methods to pump atoms across a silicon wafer. The atoms eventually settle on the wafer and nucleate, growing into two-dimensional crystal orientations. If left alone, each "nucleus," or seed of a crystal, would grow in random orientations across the silicon wafer. But Kim and his colleagues found a way to align each growing crystal to create single-crystalline regions across the entire wafer. To do so, they first covered a silicon wafer in a "mask"a coating of silicon dioxide that they patterned into tiny pockets, each designed to trap a crystal seed. Across the masked wafer, they then flowed a gas of atoms that settled into each pocket to form a 2D materialin this case, a TMD. The mask's pockets corralled the atoms and encouraged them to assemble on the silicon wafer in the same, single-crystalline orientation. "That is a very shocking result," Kim says "You have single-crystalline growth everywhere, even if there is no epitaxial relation between the 2D material and silicon wafer." With their masking method, the team fabricated a simple TMD transistor and showed that its electrical performance was just as good as a pure flake of the same material. They also applied the method to engineer a multilayered device. After covering a silicon wafer with a patterned mask, they grew one type of 2D material to fill half of each square, then grew a second type of 2D material over the first layer to fill the rest of the squares. The result was an ultrathin, single-crystalline bilayer structure within each square. Kim says that going forward, multiple 2D materials could be grown and stacked together in this way to make ultrathin, flexible, and multifunctional films. "Until now, there has been no way of making 2D materials in single-crystalline form on silicon wafers, thus the whole community has almost given up on pursuing 2D materials for next-generation processors," Kim says. "Now we have completely solved this problem, with a way to make devices smaller than a few nanometers. This will change the paradigm of Moore's Law." More information: Jeehwan Kim, Non-epitaxial single-crystal 2D material growth by geometrical confinement, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05524-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05524-0 Journal information: Nature This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) on a milkweed plant. Credit: Hannah Rowland An international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena has discovered that the striking orange and black wings of monarch butterflies not only send the message to predators that these butterflies are highly toxic, but that the storage of toxins and development of the colorful wings come at a cost to the butterfly's body. The team reared monarch caterpillars on their milkweed food plants that had different levels of toxins. Monarchs that had ingested high levels of toxins from their food plants as caterpillars, experienced high levels of oxidative damage after storing these toxins in their bodies, and were less conspicuous in their coloration. The study demonstrated experimentally that the storing of toxins is costly for insects that are highly specialized on their food plants. Aposematism in animals: The more toxic, the more striking the color? Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) feed on milkweeds of the genus Asclepias when they are caterpillars, storing the plants' cardenolide heart poisons in their bodies for their own defense. The combination of the toxins with the striking orange and black wings of the monarch is called aposematism (derived from the Greek terms apo = away and sema = signal). Hannah Rowland head of the Max Planck Research Group on Predators and Toxic Prey at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology explains, "Aposematism works because predators learn that eye-catching prey are best avoided. Predators learn faster when the visual signal is always the same. Bright orange means 'don't eat me'. But other scientists and I have repeatedly found that aposematic animals can have varying degrees of warning signal strength, and we wondered what about pale orange, or deep orange? What does this mean, and what causes the difference?" Rowland, together with her colleague Jonathan Blount from the University of Exeter, along with their international team of scientists, tested whether the storage of the plant's toxins is costly to the butterfly's body condition. Specifically, whether the storage of toxins causes oxidative stress, which happens when antioxidant levels are low. Because antioxidants can be used to make colorful pigments, they tested if the amount of toxins in the monarch is related to their conspicuousness and their oxidative state. The researchers reared monarch caterpillars on four different milkweeds of the genus Asclepias that have different toxin levels. With this, they were able to manipulate the amount of toxins ingested to subsequently measure concentrations of cardenolides, determine oxidative state, and compare the resulting wing coloration. "Monarch butterflies that sequestered higher concentrations of cardenolides experienced higher levels of oxidative damage than those that sequestered lower concentrations. Our results are among the first to show a potential physiological mechanism of oxidative damage as a cost of sequestration for these insects," says Hannah Rowland. The scientists also found that the color of the wings of male monarchs depended on how much cardenolides they sequestered, and how much oxidative damage this had resulted in. Males with the highest levels of oxidative damage showed decreasing color intensity with increased toxin uptake, while males with the least oxidative damage were the most toxic and color intense. Plant toxins are even costly for specialized herbivores "It is conventional wisdom that specialists are less impacted by plant defenses than generalists, but our study provides compelling evidence that cardenolide sequestration is physiologically costly," says Hannah Rowland. "Monarch butterflies are also often considered one of the main examples of aposematic animals, and our experiment shows that the conspicuousness of their warning signals depends to some extent on how much of the cardenolides they sequester and how costly this is for them. Together, this points to the fact that specialist herbivores must balance the benefits of toxic plant compounds as defenses against their enemies with the burden that these same compounds impose." Rowland plans to further investigate the role of predators in plant-herbivore-predator interactions. In particular, she is interested in investigating whether predators have an influence on the evolution of cardenolides. The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. More information: Jonathan D. Blount et al, The price of defence: toxins, visual signals and oxidative state in an aposematic butterfly, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.2068 Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: The Conversation Only about 1 in 200 teachers in Texas are sanctioned for misbehavior, but the largest portion of those sanctions involve sexually related offenses. That's according to a new study we published recently in the Journal of Education Human Resources. The study describes the reasons teachers in Texas are sanctioned for misbehavior, including the frequency and type of violation. We examined the 3,525 teacher sanctions that took place in Texas from 2007 to 2017. We found that teachers are most frequently sanctioned for sexually related offenses, which accounted for 40% of all reported violations. For sexually related offenses, we include sexual harassment, inappropriate relationships with students and sexual misconduct, whether inside or outside of schools. Examples of sexual misconduct include possession of child pornography or public lewdness. Drug violations, including possession or sale of controlled substances, providing alcohol to minors or being issued a DUI, accounted for 18.6% of all sanctions, making it the second most common reason for teacher sanctions in Texas. Contract abandonment accounted for 12.9% of all offenses, making it the third most common offense. Contract abandonment is when a teacher leaves their job before the end of the school year. This is considered an offense against the district. When a teacher is sanctioned by the State Board for Educator Certification, there is an official record of their discipline case, and punishments can result in a written reprimand on their license, a suspension or permanent revocation of a teaching license. While the overall incidence of sanction is rare, we find patterns of race and gender within who is sanctioned and the types of behavior for which they are sanctioned. Teachers are frequently in the news for various violations, which can create the impression that teacher misbehavior is widespread. Our study seeks to show just how frequently teachers are in trouble and the nature of those offenses. We also sought to better understand the demographics of teachers who were punished. While men made up 22% of all of the teachers in our study, they comprise 57.5% of those sanctioned. The greatest gender difference in teacher sanctions is sexual offenses. Male teachers account for 75% of all the sexual offense sanctions. Over the course of our study, 1,006 men were sanctioned for a sexual offense compared with 332 female teachers. A disproportionate number of Black women were sanctioned for contract abandonment. Specifically, 38 Black women were sanctioned for contract abandonment, accounting for 13.7% of all cases of contract abandonment, while Black women only make up 6.8% of the Texas teacher workforce overall. This finding is significant because historically, due to the school desegregation era and, more recently, as a result of urban public school closures, female teachers of color have disproportionately been forced out of the profession. In Texas, educators are allowed to resign without penalty during the school year if they can show cause, like moving out of state, having changes to their family's health circumstances, or military reassignment. Teachers are also allowed to resign between school years even if they are on a multiyear contract as long as it is 45 days prior to the start of school. If the reasons behind teacher discipline is at all similar to those behind student discipline, then research suggests male teachers and teachers of color are most likely being sanctioned more due to bias. It can be challenging to document if male teachers and teachers of color are being sanctioned because they are engaging in more offenses, or if they are more likely to be reported for the offense. This is a question that we believe needs to be explored. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: New research reveals that the mass of newly born stars (yellow, orange, and red circles stand for stars from higher to lower mass) varies with their metal abundances and their birth time (inner circle means born earlier). Credit: Wu Kun In the vast and diverse universe, the initial mass distribution at the birth of a new population of stars determines the fate of galaxies. This relationship is described by the initial mass function (IMF). For more than half a century, astronomers have assumed that the IMF is a universal relationship, i.e., it is uniform throughout the universe. However, in recent years, some indications suggest that in some galaxies where star formation is particularly active, the IMF may be of a different form than is often assumed in the Milky Way. But to fully verify these results, astronomers will need to find more direct observational evidence in the Milky Way. Now, based on the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, also known as the Guo Shou Jing telescope), a research team led by Prof. Liu Chao from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has found a crucial piece of direct evidence on how the IMF varies with different environments. This study was published in Nature on Jan. 18. "The IMF varies with levels of metal elements, and populations of stars born earlier in the universe's history contain fewer low-mass stars than younger populations," said Li Jiadong, a Ph.D. student at NAOC and first author of the study. Counting stars in a given volume is a direct and classical way to measure the IMF of low-mass (red dwarf) stars, whose mass distribution does not evolve with time; this approach is essentially independent of models or assumptions. The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes the distribution of the initial mass of new stars in a population. Credit: NAOC "Although many previous studies applied star counting to derive the IMF, two problems have not been solved. One is that only a small number of stars were counted in previous work. The second is that previous studies did not measure the metallicity of stars," said Prof. Zhang Zhiyu, co-author of the study. LAMOST has provided spectra that contain information about the chemical composition, temperature and luminosity of millions of stars, enabling the researchers to measure the metallicity of nearby red dwarf stars. By selecting about 93,000 red dwarf stars in catalogs from both LAMOST and the Gaia survey, the researchers were able to group stars according to their metallicity and calculate the distribution of stellar mass in each group. The study has revealed the variable abundance of low-mass stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and established a powerful benchmark for models of star formation. The findings may also affect the results of models of chemical enrichment of distant galaxies, as well as estimates of galaxy mass and the efficiency of planet formation. "For instance, the total stellar mass of galaxies is often estimated by assuming that the IMF is invariant, but if the IMF is variable, this could change the total mass estimates of galaxies and potentially alter the field of Galactic astronomy," said Prof. Liu. Prof. Pavel Kroupa, an authority on the IMF at the University of Bonn, Germany, commented on the results: "On the basis of a large ensemble of well-observed stars, the authors report that the IMF of late-type stars in the local Galactic disk is metallicity- and age-dependent. These results are highly important for addressing how universal the stellar IMF is and enable an in-depth understanding of the possible shifts in stellar populations that formed at different times and under different conditions in the Galaxy." More information: Chao Liu, Stellar initial mass function varies with metallicity and time, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05488-1. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05488-1 Journal information: Nature This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: One path to developing a new COVID test method is to study the optical properties of the coronavirus and how they differ from other particles in our blood. Credit: Shutterstock Sticking swabs up our noses and down our throats to confirm or deny whether we are infected with the coronavirusalmost all of us have done it multiple times in the last couple of years. The methods that have been used to detect and prevent the spread of the virus have been the same around the world, either: the expensive, time-consuming but very accurate PCR method where the DNA of the virus is detected in our mucous membranes, or the simpler and faster method that only indicates whether we have developed antibodies against the virus. Ultra-fast detection However, both methods have their weaknesses. The PCR method is expensive and time-consuming, while the antibody method does not tell us anything about whether we actually have the virus in the body. A simple and affordable way to detect the virus that provides a quick result would therefore be helpful. Now researchers from NTNU, Oslomet and the University of Tabriz in East Azerbaijan have demonstrated a method for detecting coronavirus in blood samples using nanosensors. "A lot of research focuses on finding methods to quickly isolate infected people, which can break the chain of infection. Nanosensors have received a lot of attention due to their unique properties for ultra-fast detection of particles such as viruses," says Amir Maghoul. He is a researcher and the first author of the article "An Optical Modeling Framework for Coronavirus Detection Using Graphene-Based Nanosensor." He was a post-doctoral fellow at NTNU when he started his work. A first step on the pathway to developing a separate nanosensor for the coronavirus is to identify the optical properties that distinguish the coronavirus from other particles in our blood. Ingve Simonsen, a physics professor at NTNU, explains. Most people have seen the coronavirus depicted as a round core or ball with red "spikes" or stems sticking out. "We wanted to see what role the length and size of these "spikes" play in how the cells reflect light, as well as whether the size of the nucleus matters," says Simonsen. Displaces resonance To find answers to their questions, the researchers used mathematical models. The optical behavior of the virusthat is, how the virus cell reflects light in the form of resonancewas simulated and analyzed over the entire light spectrum. "We observed that the reflectivity varied with the length of the spike proteins. As the spikes get longer, the reflectivity decreases at the same time as the resonance shifts to higher wavelengths," says Simonsen. The researchers observed the same response when they varied the size of the virus' core in the models. The width of the spike protein had less effect on how the light was reflected. In this way, the researchers could find out in which part of the wavelength spectrum the coronavirus differs from other particles in the blood. "At certain wavelengths, we get a different optical response depending on whether viruses are present or not. We call this the optical signature of the coronavirus," says Simonsen. "We know that the optical properties of particles change depending on their environment. They behave differently if they're in water or in a vacuum, if several particles are next to each other or if the surface is covered with a thin layer of another substance." The nanomaterial graphene is used in the new COVID test method. Credit: Norwegian University of Science and Technology Pregnancy test example The first person to describe in general terms how spherical particles reflect light waves was the German scientist Gustav Mie in 1908. "It is well known that ordinary light consists of a spectrum of wavelengths. This is what we see when we look at a rainbow or when light passes through a glass prism. The light hits water molecules in the atmosphere or the prism and is reflected in the light's various wavelengths, which we see as a spectrum of colors," says Simonsen. Mie showed how small spheres or nuclei react differently to light. "For example, small metal particles have a very strong optical response. This characteristic is used in certain types of pregnancy tests that measure the optical response to small gold particles," Simonsen says. "The hormone you look for in the urinewhich you only have if you're pregnantcollects on the surface of the gold particles on the test stick and changes the resonance frequency of the particle. The result is a color change to blue, which shows that you're pregnant." Rose painting example Another example of how small particles react to light can be seen in stained glass, such as the large rose window in Nidaros Cathedral. The strong red, blue and green colors are all the result of the optical response of the metal particles used in the glass. And it is this property that can be used to detect coronavirus in blood samples. "What you do is place a network of thin, cylindrical gold particles over a very thin layer of graphene. Graphene is a nanomaterial with a lot of fascinating properties, including the fact that it conducts electricity well and with little loss." When blood containing the coronavirus passes over the gold particles, the resonant frequency of the particles changes, which in turn creates an electromagnetic field. This field sets up a current in the sensor that can be easily measured. "By studying the current curves for certain frequency ranges of the incoming light, we can determine whether the blood contains coronavirus or not," says Simonsen. Great potential for nanotechnology Nanosensors have the potential to be very sensitive. The "smart" graphene material in the nanodisk acts as an amplifier, explains Amir Maghoul. "Nanotechnology hasn't been used before for this type of sensor, so this development is new technology. What we've done here is create the first optical framework to detect coronavirus and show how the virus behaves in the optical spectrum," says Maghoul. Now the next step is to establish a company that can develop a laboratory prototype for the nanosensor. "We need to raise money so that we can go ahead and develop a sensor for common use. The collaboration between NTNU and Oslomet has shown that we have facilities with significant potential to develop and produce this type of nanosensor for biomedical use if the work is supported financially," says Maghoul. More information: Amir Maghoul et al, An Optical Modeling Framework for Coronavirus Detection Using Graphene-Based Nanosensor, Nanomaterials (2022). DOI: 10.3390/nano12162868 Police have arrested five Washington County residents for allegedly receiving illegal welfare benefits. The Washington County Sheriffs Office made the arrests after a joint investigation with the Washington County Department of Social Services determined that the suspects had filed for and received benefits to which they were not entitled, according to a news release. Arrested were: Tiffany Ball, 37, of Fort Ann Miriha Edwards, 29, of Fort Ann Elizabeth Millington, 23, of Fort Edward Melissa Smith, 46, of Whitehall Anita Stewart, 30, of Cambridge Bell, Edwards, Millington and Smith were charged with felony third-degree grand larceny. Stewart was charged with felony counts of third-degree welfare fraud and offering a false instrument for filing. Ball, Edwards, Millington and Stewart were arraigned in Fort Edward Town Court and released on their own recognizance. Smith was arraigned in Washington County Centralized Arraignment Court and released on her own recognizance. All five are due back in Fort Edward Town Court at a later date. Assessors from the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police are scheduled to review the Ocean County Sheriffs Office early next month. The team will examine the offices policies, procedures, management operations and support services Feb. 2 and 3, Sheriff Michael G. Mastronardy said Wednesday. Verification by the team that the Ocean County Sheriffs Office meets the Commissions best practice standards is part of a voluntary process to achieve accreditation, a highly prized recognition of law enforcement professional excellence, Mastronardy said in a news release. Comments from the public and employees are welcomed during the accreditation process, officials said. Phone comments can be accepted by calling 732-929-4748 from 11 a.m. to noon Feb. 3. Emailed comments can be sent to internalaffairsocsheriff@co.ocean.nj.us. Upper Township man charged in fatal pedestrian hit-run UPPER TOWNSHIP State Police have arrested a township man in a fatal hit-and-run crash that A five-minute limit is imposed on phone comments, which must address the Sheriffs Offices ability to comply with NJSACOP standards. Information on the standards can be obtained by calling Capt. Robert Woardell at 732-288-7630. Written comments can also be sent to the accreditation program director at hdelgado@njsacop.org, or by writing to NJSACOPs Law Enforcement Accreditation Commission, 751 Route 73 North, Suite 12, Marlton, NJ 08053. Accreditation results in greater accountability within the agency, reduced risk and liability exposure, stronger defense against civil lawsuits, increased community advocacy, and more confidence in the agencys ability to operate efficiently and respond to community needs, Mastronardy said. ATLANTIC CITY A collection of environmental groups held a news conference Tuesday to address the surge of beached whales that have turned up on the New Jersey and New York shores over the past two months. They challenged the notion that preliminary work on planned offshore wind turbines is behind the phenomenon, insisting the theory is one that lacks a basis in science and ignores real threats to marine mammals. There have been seven whale strandings along the coasts of New Jersey and New York during the past six weeks. The latest beached whale in Brigantine, which washed ashore Thursday, is believed to have died from a collision with a sea vessel, according to preliminary results from a necropsy conducted last weekend. Allison McLeod, public policy director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, said she and her colleagues have conferred with local responders and federal agencies, who have said there is no evidence the recent deaths are related to offshore wind projects. Were really leading with the evidence and the data, McLeod said. Theres zero evidence that (the whale strandings) are tied to offshore wind. Humpback whales on the East Coast have been experiencing an extraordinary spike in deaths referred to as an unusual mortality event since 2016. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded 176 beached whales on the East Coast within the past seven years. New Jersey has experienced 22 whale deaths in that time. Necropsies were performed on about half of the 176 whales, which collectively found that 40% of the beached whales had been killed by collisions with ships or entanglements. None was found to have been killed by activity related to offshore wind. Rather than being a hazard, McLeod said offshore wind may be a safety benefit. She said renewable energy such as offshore wind would be needed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which in turn could keep whales safe by mitigating the dangers posed by global warming. I want to make the point that everyone here today cares about marine mammal protection, we care about the marine ecosystem and thats why were all here to talk to you today and thats also why were in support of offshore wind, McLeod said. The number one threat facing our marine ecosystem today, including marine mammals, is climate change. Captain Paul Eidman, founder of the Menhaden Defenders, said he is an advocate for offshore wind and a marine conservationist, relishing memories of seeing humpback whales at sea. He said he was confident the development of the offshore wind industry did not threaten marine life and dismissed claims to the contrary as non-scientific speculation. Even though Im personally crushed by all these whales washing up, I am equally crushed by a lot of the groups baselessly claiming that these strandings are actually linked to types of (offshore wind) survey vessels operating off our coast, Eidman said. The news conference is a seeming response to one held by a collection of environmentalist groups last week. They called for a suspension of work on planned offshore wind projects until the series of whale deaths could be further investigated and wrote President Joe Biden to ask for a federal investigation. Clean Ocean Action, based in Long Branch, Monmouth County, issued a statement Tuesday saying the number of whales killed in recent weeks is unprecedented and that residents and activists should be deeply skeptical of the companies behind offshore wind projects. Among the hazards Clean Ocean Action cited were wind sonar and other geotechnical activities that it said could potentially disorient or otherwise harm whales. Likely cause of death announced for beached whale in Brigantine A sea vessel struck and killed the whale that was beached in Brigantine on Thursday, accordi Importantly, why should offshore wind get a pass on scrutiny to ensure marine ecosystem protection, especially for endangered and protected species? Clean Ocean Action said. Any industrial activity especially reckless industrial development that is massive in scope, scale, magnitude, and speed should be required to prove it is protective of the marine ecosystem. The notion that sonar is causing the new whale deaths was scrutinized at the news conference Tuesday. Eidman noted that the sonar used in preliminary offshore wind surveys has been shown over years of observation to be harmless to humpback whales and that no survey vessels or sonar were being used in December. Those who are using the tragic deaths of these whales to speak against any offshore power are engaging in non-scientific speculation, and some are using this as an opportunity to further an anti-environmental agenda, Eidman said. rsted, the Danish wind power developer that expects to build two state-approved projects, said its current work off the New Jersey coast does not involve using sonics or other actions that could disturb whales. Public officials in the area have also called on work to be stopped on offshore wind. U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd, and state Sen. Vince Polistina, R-Atlantic, have both called on the state to suspend work on offshore wind turbines pending an investigation into their environmental impacts. Why cant we just wait a little bit of time, get the data, get the science youre talking about that has affected these animals? Polistina said at the news conference. Thomas Carver, former casino association, CRDA leader, dies Thomas Carver, a champion for casino industry and economic growth in Atlantic City, has died. McLeod said a suspension was not warranted by the data about the whale deaths. She said it would be more constructive to find ways to protect marine mammals from all kinds of sea traffic, which she said had recently grown more dense off the Jersey Shore. She added there were a host of federal regulations concerning the protection of wildlife with which offshore wind manufactures have to comply. Atlantic County Democratic Party Chair Michael Suleiman criticized Polistina for proposing a suspension to offshore wind projects. He said interfering would cost state residents jobs and the opportunity to host a burgeoning new wind-power industry. The same individuals who complain about New Jersey being a terrible state to do business in want to stiff companies that have already invested tens of millions of dollars and plan on creating hundreds of good-paying jobs in South Jersey, not to mention combat climate change, Suleiman said. New Jersey Sierra Club Director Anjuli Ramos-Busot also discussed the impacts of global warming on sea life. She said warmer weather could disrupt the ecosystem, affecting the ocean waters salinity and temperature while potentially altering whales food supply. Citing statistics about whale strandings, Ramos said the recent deaths were part of a years-long event with region-wide effects. While the mortality event has lasted seven years, conditions have been particularly deadly for whales lately. McLeod said she sympathized with those distraught about the whale deaths. She said she used to work as a marine mammal observer in the Gulf of Mexico and earned her bachelors degree in marine science. This is something that is deeply, personally important to me, McLeod said. Although we know that folks have concerns, we need to lead with the science and the data. ATLANTIC CITY Just about everyone makes it to Atlantic City at some point, and embattled freshman House member U.S. Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was here this summer cultivating donors, according to federal election filing reports. But he never contacted the local Republican organization, Atlantic County GOP Chair Don Purdy said Wednesday. And the amounts he spent on dinners do not suggest a large turnout. Santos is accused of lying about his background and experience, including his ancestry and education, according to news reports. He has admitted to lying about his biography and is reported to be under investigation by U.S., state, county and Brazilian officials. According to the Federal Election Commission, Santos spent $1,084.99 on dinner at Hells Kitchen Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill at Caesars Atlantic City, $659.99 at Il Mulino at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, and $537.53 on a two-night stay at Harrahs Resort Atlantic City. Some Republicans reportedly knew about George Santos lies ahead of election Republicans alerted included the head of a super PAC dedicated to winning a GOP majority in the House and associates of an upstate N.Y. lawmaker, The New York Times reported. Politico reported the Santos visit Tuesday. We had no knowledge of it, Purdy said in a phone interview. He never contacted us. He either brought his own supporters from in and around his district, which covers parts of Long Island and the Queens borough of New York City, or he invited local individuals on his own, Purdy surmised. But Purdy hasnt heard from anyone who was invited. Individual donors from New Jersey listed on Santos FEC reports are few and far between. Vernon Hill II, of Moorestown, Burlington County, who made a fortune in the banking industry, is listed as donating or helping to organize donations of a total of about $7,600. Hill is identified as representing Site Development, of Mount Laurel, Burlington County. He is very generous with people he supports, Purdy said of Hill. If he liked him (Santos), it would have been a lot more than that. Hill was recently forced out of leadership of Republic Bank by Democratic power broker and businessman George Norcross. Earlier this month, the Nassau County Republican Party called on Santos to resign from office. Santos has repeatedly said he will not resign. Despite the issues, Santos was tapped to serve on two House panels: the Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. So far at least, no whale deaths have been connected to work tied to offshore wind projects, marine mammal experts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday. NOAA Fisheries discussed recent humpback whale deaths in a call with reporters, which also included representatives from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the federal agency that oversees wind energy projects. They said there is no evidence connecting any work on wind power projects with whale deaths. In just over a month, seven dead humpback whales have washed ashore in New York and New Jersey, including one found last week in the undeveloped north end of Brigantine. Even last month as the first New Jersey whale was found in the Strathmere section of Upper Township, wind power critics sought to link the deaths to offshore work in preparation for planned wind power projects, including the use of sound to map the ocean floor. Lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd, and state Sen. Vince Polistina, R-Atlantic, have called for a pause in offshore work connected with wind power, while Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has said work should continue. NOAA officials said they have been tracking an increase in the number of humpback whale deaths since 2016, what they describe as an unusual mortality event. Environmentalists defend offshore wind against 'non-scientific' speculation after whale deaths ATLANTIC CITY A collection of environmental groups held a news conference Tuesday to addre Since Jan. 1, 2016, there have been at least 178 large whale deaths along the Atlantic coast. Officials are concerned with the deaths this winter, what Sarah Wilkin, coordinator of the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program in NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, described as a pulse. We are still concerned about this pulse over the past several weeks, Wilkin said on the conference call. There have been nine whale deaths along the Atlantic coast since Dec. 1, she said, including two sperm whales. The other seven were humpback whales, including two that washed ashore in Atlantic City. On Tuesday, another humpback whale was found on a beach at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland. While the experts expressed confidence that the whale deaths had nothing to do with offshore wind, the cause of the deaths was less certain. In some cases, the whales showed evidence of being struck by vessels. One possibility raised on the call is that the small crustaceans and fish on which humpback whales feed have come closer to the shoreline, leading to more interactions between boaters and whales. Also, if the whale dies closer to shore, it is more likely to wash up onto a beach. Marine mammal experts say most whales that die in the wild do not wash ashore. Of the whales studied as part of the unusual mortality event, 40% show signs of interaction with human beings, either entanglement or being struck by a boat. But it can be extremely difficult to establish a cause of death for an enormous animal. The remains are often badly decomposed when they wash ashore. It can make it really hard for us to establish a definitive cause of death, Wilkin said. That can be very frustrating. Currently, the offshore wind power projects proposed, including those in New Jersey, are surveying the ocean floor, said Benjamin Laws, deputy chief for the permits and conservation division with the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources. That includes using sound to explore the ocean floor. There are no known connections between any of these offshore wind activities and any whale strandings, regardless of species, Laws said. Officials said similar technology has been used around the world, with no indication of an increase in marine mammal deaths. Erica Staaterman, a bioacoustician with BOEMs Center for Marine Acoustics, said the devices used for wind power projects are much less powerful than those used to explore locations for offshore oil drilling, in which the sound is used to penetrate farther below the surface. Overall, the sound sources used here are going to be of much lower impact, Staaterman said Wednesday. As far as officials know, these devices have been used in the past without any associated increase in whale strandings. The current offshore work in New York and New Jersey primarily consists of mapping the sea floor and immediate sea bottom for engineering the offshore wind turbines, and looking at corridors for burying the underground cables that will bring the power to shore, said Brian Hooker, the biology team lead for BOEMs Office of Renewable Energy Programs. That work is also providing environmental data to federal officials, he said. Staaterman described the system as projecting sound toward the ocean floor with one piece of equipment, with a receiver gathering data on the sound that bounces back. Usually, she said, that would take place in a boat tracing a zig-zag pattern. Thats how they get an image of what is on the sea floor or just below the sea floor, Staaterman said. There is an expectation that the work will impact marine life, including whales, Laws said. The permits for the work include approval for incidental taking of whales. As Laws explained it, the legal definition could include harming whales, but also the incidental harassment of marine mammals, which would typically be illegal under federal law. That could include potential harm to whales, such as damaging their hearing, as well as causing them to change their behavior, which counts as a lesser kind of harassment. The authorizations would cover the inadvertent change of behavior for whales, but not their injury and certainly no mortality, Laws said. There is no information that would support any of the equipment being used could directly lead to the death of a whale, said Hooker. PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account. WOODBINE Iryna Mazur, the honorary consul for Ukraine to Philadelphia, is amazed by how Americans went from knowing little about her nation to pledging their full support for it in the past year. I was truly pleased and happy how much people truly care, Mazur said. Its especially touching for me to see how you are taking from your daily life taking your time, taking your finances and helping some nation that probably you didnt hear of much before. Mazur discussed the war with Russia and the support from the United States during an event Tuesday at Stockton Universitys Sam Azeez Museum of Woodbine Heritage. Mazur spoke for more than an hour from a classroom lectern to about 20 people days after returning from Ukraine. A native of Lviv, a city in the nations western region near its border with Poland, Mazur arrived in the U.S. at 18, earning a degree in 2009 from Temple Universitys Beasley School of Law, according to the Consular Corps Association of Philadelphia. During her speech, Mazur detailed how Ukrainians have taken on the fight to defend themselves and their nations sovereignty. While visiting the museum, Mazur was presented a key to the borough by Mayor William Pikolycky, as well as a declaration by the Borough Council of its support for the European country. While Mazur spoke, more than 4,000 miles away, Ukrainian residents continued to deal with the Russian onslaught, in a conflict thats nearly a year old. Over the weekend, a missile attack on an apartment building in Dnipro killed more than 40 people. Mazur said the consul doesnt see peace talks ending the war soon. Much of that, she said, is because Russia is known to go back on its promises. You cannot trust anything that they say because they will promise you one thing, they will turn around and theyll do the exact opposite, Mazur said. New Jersey has become a stronghold for Ukrainian support, Mazur said. Gov. Phil Murphy frequently talks about the state being a safe haven for Ukrainian refugees and its strong population from that country. Much of New Jerseys Ukrainian population can be found near the suburbs it shares with New York and Philadelphia, Mazur said. Based on their (organizations) feedback, I would say, and based on what I see, New Jerseys response was a really good one, Mazur said. But New Jersey bringing opportunities to Ukrainians hasnt started only while the nation remains under attack by Russia. Ruslan Yatskiv immigrated from Ukraines Pishkivtsy village about 20 years ago, settling in Ocean City. Hes maintained a job and livelihood now as an American. But he still has family back home, some of whom are on the front lines fending off Russian soldiers. He often talks with his cousin in the army, updating him on whats being reported in the news from the U.S., he said. He says, We know were winning, and we know were doing good, Yatskiv said, adding he came to hear Mazur discuss updates to his homelands defense efforts. Most of all, Mazur said, Ukrainians value Americas support for the country and its independence. Mostly civil debate brings out stark differences between Van Drew, Alexander GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP The two main candidates in the 2nd Congressional district race revealed Yatskiv remembers a time when that wasnt so. His home country was often discussed in the U.S. as being under the Kremlins control, he said. It was hard, Yatskiv said of being incorrectly associated with the Russian Federation. Daily life in Ukraine hasnt stopped either, Mazur said. Everybody gets up, and everybody goes to work, Mazur said. I have tons of friends in Kyiv, in eastern Ukraine, and they go to shelters for several hours, and then they adapted, somehow, to that life. I speak to them all the time, and they say, Well, if we cant help on the front, we have to help the economy. Mazur said she sees Ukrainians resiliency in fighting for their freedom and big businesses interest in helping as indicators that the country will rebuild quickly once the fighting ends. We just need that victory, Mazur said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Life for chef Joe Brown changed dramatically on May 23, 2013. That day, customers were eating lunch inside Melange @ Haddonfield, his restaurant on Tanner Street. He spotted two police officers and two agents from the state of New Jersey, seeking to collect nearly $72,000 in back taxes. Brown, behind on Melanges payment plan, told them he had recently sent money to Trenton. But he didnt have the $71,875.08 the agents wanted. He walked into the dining room and asked his customers to finish their meals. Melanges door was padlocked. It was a sad denouement for a restaurant career that had begun 18 years before. Brown and his wife, Robin, high school sweethearts, opened Melange Cafe on Chapel Avenue in Cherry Hill in 1995, closing in 2010 two years after Haddonfield opened. Now were chatting in the banquet room of Bethany Baptist Church on Gibbsboro Road in Lindenwold. Its a Tuesday morning, and Brown and his one salaried sous chef are prepping food for the week. Bethany, a megachurch with 23,000 members and a 3,000-seat chapel complete with a videocamera mounted on a crane for web-streamed services, is Browns home now. He oversees its banquet-size kitchen entirely staffed by volunteers, save the sous chef that serves takeout food from the church to the public. He also feeds the pastors and staff. Its here where you can taste Melange memories four days a week, via Harvest Cafe & Abundant Harvest Catering, the churchs food service. It serves from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Artists transform vacant Atlantic City shoe store ATLANTIC CITY A vacant Payless shoe store in Tanger Outlets The Walk has been transformed The business memories are still fresh for Brown, who intersperses his struggles and even some of his successes among recipes in his new book, Melange: The Story, the Recipes, the Faith (self-published, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online sites). What he doesnt tell his book readers is his personal story. Brown, now 61 and a grandfather who lives in Sicklerville, grew up in Willingboros Pennypacker Park, the youngest of 10 children. His mother, France Brown, cooked Southern food, having grown up in Tennessee. She also enjoyed making dishes from French cookbooks, grew her own vegetables and baked bread from scratch. I cannot remember a time when there wasnt something cooking, he said. When you came home from school, you would smell something that made your day better. Thats pretty much what I felt when I cook for people. It happens right here at the church. When Im cooking for the pastors, it reminds them of something that they had in the past. You can see their mood change, and thats what my food does. Out of Willingboro High, Brown wanted to get into construction in Atlantic City, but union strikes dried up the work prospects. He started working at Pirates Inn in Mount Laurel as a dishwasher. The chef who was there noticed my work ethic, and the girl who was doing sandwiches at that time had a constant issue with coming in late, he said. He fired her and said, Joe, I need you. I had never done anything like this before in my life. I picked up on it so fast, he never let the girl come back. While moving up at Pirates Inn, Brown attended what is now the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia. He then became a sous chef at the Landmark Inn in Maple Shade. This was my first time Ive ever met an actual African American executive chef, he said. Elijah Dawes, God rest his soul, was my mentor growing up in this business. (Dawes died in 2006.) Dog-friendly bar coming to Atlantic City ATLANTIC CITY People will be able to grab a drink or a bite to eat with their furry friend At the Landmark, Brown oversaw the food at the dining room and banquet hall until the Pirates Inn called with an offer to come back as executive chef. He left in 1995 to open his restaurant. When determining the cuisine, Brown remembered his childhood. At any given point in time, you could be eating matzo ball soup one day, macaroni and cheese another day and spaghetti and meatballs another day and it could be at anybodys house, he said. It was a melange, and that would become the name. Hed serve Cajun- and Creole-inspired food, which he enjoyed, with an Italian influence a nod to Marios, the Italian restaurant previously in that space. The white-tablecloth dining room was warm and inviting with paintings. For the most part, the Browns were accepted in Cherry Hill, which at the time had few if any Black-owned restaurants. However, shortly before the opening, Brown said, an older white man walked in. He looked at us. I put my hand out and said, Hi. Im Chef Joe, and he wouldnt shake my hand. Then he said, Youre the new owners here? And I said, Yes, sir. Brown said the man told them, I guess we wont be eating here anymore. Straight to our faces, Brown said. We were kind of like wow. And here we are beautifying this boarded-up building. Ventnor residents express concerns over plaza redevelopment plan VENTNOR A plan to redevelop the Ventnor Plaza shopping center is being criticized by resid Three days after the Browns opened Melange, the adoption agency notified them that their son, Jordan, had been born and would be ready to come home. Jordan Brown, 27, works in the mortgage industry. He loves to cook, but I would not let him get into the business, Joe Brown said. The business is never easy. Brown said he began to feel the pressure after a snowstorm in 1996, less than a year after he opened. I remember trying to get to the restaurant because I had an older couple that lived up above the restaurant and I knew they could not get out of the building, he said. I dug myself out, got some food for my family at home, and I sent up some food upstairs that would hold them over for a few days. I had to get the lot plowed at least three or four times that week, at $500 a shot. At the same time in Cherry Hill, it was an older building. We had already put a lot of money into it, but after two or three years if youre a restaurant owner, you know you have to renovate. I tried to always reinvest what I made. If something had to suffer somewhere along the line, it just happened to be me not paying myself at certain times, too. And apparently the Division of Taxes. Running two restaurants was an even greater challenge. My restaurant was always built on people seeing me, he said. I think most chefs dont really realize how personal guests are when they see a chef. I was always the type of chef who would come out of the kitchen, touch the tables, talk to everybody. They always knew me. But Id wake up in the morning, go to one place and you hear all the problems and the issues and the employees and you get them all straight and you go to the next place and youd do the same thing. I decided it was time to just focus. Melanges heyday dovetailed with the rise of the celebrity-chef era. Brown did some Food Network appearances and was featured in the February 2000 issue of Ebony magazine, showing off his smoked turkey jambalaya and chocolate ravioli. He also shot a Home Matters episode for Discovery Channel. After Haddonfields closing, Brown worked for a health system in food service. When Bishop David G. Evans called to consider the job at Bethany eight years ago, he said, Are you sure you want to cook for church folk? Brown said. I came over, looked at the place. I knew what it needed. It needed some love. Evans wrote the foreword of the book, calling Brown a trailblazer in his profession. At Bethany, Brown said he enjoys teaching the volunteers, whether its cooking or service. I love the fact that Im here, being able to give back to the volunteers so that some of them want to get into the business, and some of them are just older people and just want to learn different recipes. Id like to one day get back to teaching, and giving back to the industry. What's Happening in the Region Rights Groups Call on Kyrgyz Authorities to Stop Attacks on RFE/RLs Kyrgyz Service The Civic Solidarity Platform condemns the Kyrgyz government's actions against RFE/RLs Kyrgyz service, known locally as Azattyk. Kyrgyz authorities have blocked Azattyks Kyrgyz and Russian websites since late October. On October 31, Kyrgyzstans Demirbank froze Azattyks bank account. Kyrgyz authorities said the reason for blocking Azattyks websites was RFE/RLs refusal to remove a video from RFE/RLs Russian-language TV channel Current Time about the September fighting along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. Demirbank said the decision to freeze Azattyks bank account was done at the request of the State Committee for National Security (UKMK). UKMK said the move was part of an investigation into financing of terrorist activities and laundering of criminal proceeds. The Civic Solidarity Platform wrote, In a Kafkaesque twist, however, the actual materials of the criminal case are cited as classified, so it is not clear what the evidence is for this investigation. The Civic Solidarity Platform, a coalition of rights groups that includes the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, the Belgian-based International Partnership for Human Rights, and Kyrgyzstans Bir Duino, called on Kyrgyz authorites to unblock Azattyks websites and unfreeze its bank accounts. The groups statement noted that Azattyk will mark its 70th anniversary on March 18. It would be a sad testament to current realities in Kyrgyzstan and a blow to its reputation as a striving, independent democracy, the Civic Solidarity Platform said, if Azattyks website is still blocked and its bank accounts still frozen on that day. Why Its Important: The statement from the Civic Solidarity Platform is only the latest example of criticism from international rights and media freedom organizations leveled at Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz government has been rounding up opposition politicians, activists, journalists, and any other perceived critics in recent months. Kyrgyzstan was once considered the most democratic of the Central Asian states, although the bar for democracy in the region is pretty low. Much of the aid and good will Kyrgyzstan has received over the years from Western countries was based on that image, but the current Kyrgyz government is looking more and more like its Central Asian neighbors. Kazakhstan to Export Oil to Germany Using Russian Pipelines Kazakhstan will start exporting oil to Germany using the same Russian pipelines that recently carried Russian oil to Germany. On January 13, Kazakhstans national oil pipeline operator KazTransOil reported it received clearance from Russias Energy Ministry to transport 300,000 metric tons of oil to Germany in the first quarter of 2023. Kazakh Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov said Kazakhstan is looking at shipping some 1.5 million metric tons of oil this year through Russian pipelines to Germany. The oil will be loaded into the pipeline running from Atyrau, Kazakhstan to Samar, Russia, and then into the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline network to Germany. The Druzhba pipeline was bringing some 20 million metric tons of oil to Germany until the latter country halted imports as part of sanctions on Russia for the war in Ukraine. It might be a small fraction of what Russia was sending through the pipeline, but Akchulakov said Kazakhstan has the potential to ship six to seven million metric tons of oil annually to Germany through Russian pipelines. The Russian Energy Ministrys decision to allow Kazakhstan to export oil via the Druzhba pipeline comes at a tense time in Kazakh-Russian relations. The Kazakh government has not openly criticized Russias war on Ukraine, but Kazakh officials have repeatedly voiced support for Ukraines territorial integrity and called for an end to the war. The Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, through which 80 percent of Kazakhstans oil exports pass, Russia suspended operations four times between March and August 2022. Prior to Russia's suspensions, there were never any problems since Kazakhstan started exporting oil through the port in 2002. Most of that Kazakh oil goes to European countries. Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev called on his government to find alternative export routes after the activities at Novorossiysk were halted in March. Why Its Important: The Kazakh-Russian border is 4,750 miles long. Kazakhstan is exploring other export routes, but in the near-term, Russia will remain a major transit route for Kazakh oil and other goods headed to Europe. Kazakhstan needs an amicable relationship with its northern neighbor to facilitate exports westward. The Latest Majlis Podcast This weeks Majlis podcast looks at the deplorable human rights situation in Turkmenistan. Two activists were recently freed, but scores of others have remained imprisoned for decades, often with no word as to their condition. This weeks guests are Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division; Ivar Dale, senior policy adviser at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee; and Farruh Yusupov, director of RFE/RLs Turkmen service, known locally as Azatlyk. What I'm Following An Encouraging Sign in Kyrgyz-Tajik Ties Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon spoke by phone on January 14. They exchanged congratulations on the 30th anniversary of official diplomatic ties between the two countries, but they also talked about their countries common border. More than 100 people were killed in fighting between the armed forces of the two countries in mid-September 2022. Since then, Japarov and Rahmon had only spoken to each other briefly when they attended meetings of multilateral organizations. Turkmenistan Prepares for Parliamentary Elections Turkmen state news reports there will be elections to Mejlis, the lower house of parliament, on March 26. Turkmenistans parliament has no power. Just before the announcement of the election date, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the chairman of the Halk Maslahaty, the upper house of parliament, proposed changing the legislative branch back to a unicameral body. Berdymukhammedov said the Halk Maslahaty should be recreated as a separate body with, as of now, unspecified broader powers. Fact of the Week Kazakhstans Labor Minister Tamara Duisenova said on January 13 that the number of low-income citizens in the country increased from 4.9 percent at the start of 2022 to 5.1 percent at the start of 2023. Thanks for Reading Thanks for reading our Central Asia in Focus newsletter! I appreciate you sharing it with other readers who you think may be interested. Feel free to contact me on Twitter or by responding to this email, especially if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or just want to connect with me about topics concerning Central Asia. Please consider filling out this brief survey so that I can better understand how this newsletter can be useful for you. See you next week for more on whats happening in Central Asia. Until next time, Bruce Helmed by Nikhil Mahajan, films like 'Godavari'are seldom made. It has been going places and has won the hearts of both audiences and critics globally. For the actors, it was an experience of a lifetime and opportunity that rarely come their way By: Shreya Mahindrakar & Shravani Shintre PHOTOS: GAURAV KADAM The moment the trailer of the film Godavari released; it created a stir. High on emotions, the film featuring Jitendra Joshi, the late veteran actor Vikram Gokhale, Neena Kulkarni, Gauri Nalawade, Sakhi Gokhale, Sanjay Mone and Priyadarshan Jadhav, Godavari not only received love from the audience but it is also among the critically-acclaimed films of 2022. It was selected as the Opening Film at the prestigious New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF), and also shined at IFFI 2021 with Joshi bagging the Silver Peacock for Best Actor while Nikhil Mahajan, the director of the film, winning the Silver Peacock for Best Director (Special Jury Award). Godavari tells the story of a family that bravely manages a crisis as well as a once-glorious sacred river that is also struggling to survive. Godavari was the only Marathi film among the six Indian films chosen by the government for the Cannes Film Festival and it was also the only Indian picture at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Godavari, released in theatres with English subtitles after premiering on the film festival circuit in 2021, is about the river that runs through Nashik as well as the souls of the citys residents. (L) Jitendra Joshi (R) Nikhil Mahajan Joshi, who portrays Nishikant, expressed his gratitude by saying, I feel grateful and humbled about the amount of love that we have been receiving since the release of the trailer. The Oscar nod is also a great achievement. We are truly grateful! Speaking of his character, which he describes as rigorous, he tells us, I actually isolated myself in Nashik before we even began filming. Nishikant is a rent collector, his wrath and cigarettes accompanying him as he visits his tenants uninvitedly. At Pune International Film Festival 2022, it got the Best Director award for Mahajan and the Best Cinematography award for Shamin Kulkarni while AV Prafulla Chandra won the Best Music Special Jury Prize. The film has been co-written by Prajakt Deshmukh. As the father, Mone says he has performed comparable characters many times, but seldom has he worked in a film like Godavari. When I first learnt that I had been cast in this film and that the eight days of filming would happen in Nashik, I didnt bring up the commercials. Instead, I asked Nikhil to treat me to eight different kinds of misal, which he gladly obliged to, Mone tells Mirror. However, for a senior citizen like Mone, shooting during the pandemic meant fear of infections and uncertainty. Along with me, there were a lot of other senior citizens, and the actors and staff were extremely concerned about everyones safety, Mone says. It was an experience of a lifetime for Nalawade, who had been eyeing a great script and story for a while now. I was fortunate to surround myself with the actors who are so legendary, as Marathi cinema is known for its content. Sometimes, when youre offered a film, you may dislike something about it, but in this case, everything was likable and fell into place. There was a great script with such talented actors, musicians etc and I simply had to take advantage of the opportunity. So, when the script came my way, I lapped it up, Nalawade recalls. For her character, Nalawade had to learn to be patient while portraying Gautami because it was the first time she was essaying the role of a mother. Director Mahajan, says Godavari has finally reached everyone after a three-yearlong journey that started with IFFI Goa and travelled to numerous film festivals. I will consider Godavari as a mainstream film, however, it is different from my other films. Im happy and grateful that Marathi films have been winning a lot of awards lately, even internationally. Siddharth Menon, who portrayed Neel in my film June, also won a National Award, says an elated Mahajan. Rolls out support for 33 new offline languages including Oriya, Sindhi Google has rolled out support for 33 new offline languages under the offline language functionality. Were expanding the offline language functionality to 33 new languages. This allows users to download the languages of interest and translate text when the internet connection is unavailable, according to Googles support page. The added languages include -- Basque, Cebuano, Chichewa, Corsican, Frisian, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hmong, Igbo, Javanese, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Kurdish,Lao,Latin, Luxembourgish, Myanmar (Burmese), Oriya/Odia, Sindhi, Zulu, and among others. To download a language offline in Google Translate, simply tap the download button next to that language when picking which languages you are translating with the app. A Meanwhile, Google added a new feature to its Clock application on Pixel devices with which users can now record their own alarm and timer sounds. Earlier, users had to copy the files over using a file manager application and then add them using the alarm sound settings, reports The Verge. However, now, users dont need to do all of that work because the tech giant has added a new option to record sounds right inside the Clock application. The new feature appears to be limited to Pixel devices right now because it uses the Pixelexclusive Recorder application, the report said. IANS Purpose of beautification met, PMC mulls removing light fittings fearing theft, excess power bill With the muchawaited G20 Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) meeting getting over on Tuesday, commendably cohosted by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the retreat begins. What leaves the civic body in a quandary is whether it should leave the light fittings on the route right from the airport to the five-star hotel on Senapati Bapat Road where the meet was held, or remove them all. Needless to say that they spent a whopping amount in beautifying the city ahead of the international event with revamping of infrastructure including resurfacing of roads. The fear is that these visibly expensive electrical gadgets that featured lights, fittings, and even poles are at the mercy of a hard-to-catch syndicate that lays its hand on any public property that is left unattended, particularly ones that are connected to electricity. Not only that, but sources say the civic administration is also weary about receiving big fat power bills although it has a mind to leave the revamped infra till Republic Day. Srinivas Kandul, chief of the electrical department, claims that the beautified route is replete with slum pockets and it has had a history of light fittings going missing. Our department along with other departments worked in coordination to get the city beautified in a very short time. Close to 1000 poles were erected right from the airport road to Senapati Bapat Road. The already existing ones were painted in a similar colour scheme. From the positive feedback from citizens, we understand that our efforts gave a pretty picture of the city. But things cannot remain the same for multiple reasons, Kandul said. Apart from the poles, we have put tricolourthemed rope lighting which is the reason for our worry. Some of the areas have a reputation for stealing and tampering with electrical fittings. If PMC has put in such efforts, they should stay for a long time, and that is what we all hope for. But the rope lighting cannot be kept under any security arrangement and it can easily be removed. We dont want it to get stolen; hence, we have decided to remove it and keep it safe till there is any other event which may need such beautification of public property. The irony, however, is that some of the sites have already witnessed the lights going off or malfunctioning, giving a hint of the quality of work done to illuminate the path on which the foreign delegates travelled. We cannot afford the electricity bill which we assume will be more than twice on just that route. Though most of them are LED lights, power usage and maintenance wouldnt be less. Some of the LEF fittings are already blinking and have gone off due to the metal clamps that were fitted for support. These things are temporary and cannot function year-long in all weather. Some of the poles will be shifted and installed on Shastri Road. But again, we dont plan to go overboard since electricity will burn our pockets, said an official on the condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, Farjana Ayub Shaikh, former corporator from Ward No 2 (Phule Nagar -Nagpur Chawl) applauded the efforts by PMC and said it would be unfair to the residents if the lighting were removed. After so many years our area is looking so nicely lit up. Citizens are now spending a lot of time outside, walking and sitting in the lit-up area. It would be unfair if the PMC removed the lighting. I will write to the municipal commissioner requesting him to not remove them. We can make the citizens aware that it is done for them and if maintained properly they will be the direct beneficiaries, Shaikh said. In the total 12.5-km route that was beautified, the PMC plans to keep a 2.5-km stretch from the airport to Shastri Nagar as is so that it gives the right impression of the city to air travellers visiting Pune. Apart from having similar-themed poles all across the city, the PMC has planned to have a similar-sized and shaped bracket thats fitted on top of the pole. The G20 summit was attended by 65 delegates across the G20 membership countries. Police commissioner says list of criminals in the 16-18 age group prepared, will be submitted to Juvenile Justice Board; cops conduct counselling sessions in two colleges, more institutes will be covered Youngsters associated with the notorious Koyta (chopper) and sickle gangs in the city will no longer be able to enjoy the privilege of being minors and evade arrest, thanks to an initiative taken by Pune police commissioner Retesh Kumaarr. Juveniles involved in the Koyta menace will be tried as adults under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015 after sanction from the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), he told Mirror. Kumaarr said police have already prepared a list of 38 suspects aged between 16 and 22, and submitted a report to the JJB. As part of their two-pronged strategy to deal with the menace, police will conduct counselling sessions in schools and colleges while cracking down on hardcore minor criminals, he said. The Pune police have taken this major step on the lines of the amendment to the Act after the brutal rape and murder of Nirbhaya Rape in Delhi. Pune Times Mirror took up the cudgels on behalf of law-abiding citizens being threatened, terrorised, attacked in some cases and extorted by the Koyta and sickle gangs. In a sustained campaign, Mirror highlighted the issue through our columns on a regular basis. A lot of incidents involving these gangs were reported in the city in the first week of January, triggering protests from various quarters and prompting the Pune police to launch a special operation against the criminals. We have found that the suspects involved in criminal activities and violence are in the 16 to 18 age group. These children carry sickles during small disputes and create terror in the city. Many of them are involved in multiple cases. Hence, the move to treat them as major, said the city police chief. According to Kumaarr, police teams have adopted two strategies. First, to continue the action under the provisions of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, (Drug-offenders, Dangerous persons and video pirates) Act against history sheeters. The second plan of action involves implementing the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act and treating minors as adults while conducting counseling sessions in schools and colleges. In the last two months, the city recorded over 20 incidents in which youths flaunted sharp weapons in the air and created terror by posting videos on social media platforms. After identifying the involvement and records, police invoked MCOCA against six gangs active in Koregaon Park, Warje Malwadi, Bibvewadi and Market Yard. Kumaarr said, We have prepared a list of 38 accused who were involved in the criminals activities using sickles. They are in the 16 to 25 age group. A detailed report will be prepared about the minors and submi t ted to the Juvenile Justice Board. The board will study if the child caught for an offence can commit a heinous crime and he understands its consequences. The board will complete its assessment within a period of three months from the date of the child being produced before it. If the board concludes that the juvenile offender has committed the crime with knowledge and intent required to commit a heinous offence, it may order the transfer of the case to the Childrens Court. The city police chief said police patrolling will also be increased in the jurisdictions of various police stations, records of habitual criminals will be maintained and a close watch kept on juveniles in conflicts with law. Cyber cells will be also upgraded to keep an eye on the social media accounts of such criminals. A team under the additional commissioner of police was formed to work on these two strategies, added Kumaarr. Counselling sessions Unit-6 of the crime branch revealed that the accused involved in the Koyta gang have been targeting students at some colleges in the Hadapsar area. They drag minors into their gangs. Senior police Inspector Rajnish Nirmal of Unit-6 and his team approached the principals of two colleges in Hadapsar and explained to them the situation. We al so found that the Koyta gang targeted some children of these colleges who are aged between 16 and 18 as they would love carrying sharp weapons and create terror among the public. The accused in the Koyta gang would enlist such minors and provide them with sickles and pistols, Nirmal told Mirror. We have started counseling sessions in these colleges and plan to do it in colleges across the city, added the officer. Juvenile Justice Act The amendment to the Juvenile Justice Act was proposed by the Union ministry of women and child development in 2014, following the Nirbhaya case in Delhi in 2012. One of the offenders in the Nirbhaya incident was 17 years old, which led to the move. The amended Act distinguishes children in the age group 16-18 as a category that can be tried as adults if they are alleged to have committed a heinous offence one that attracts a minimum punishment of seven years. Mexico Model of development for cities, where municipality has upper hand, is among other ideas discussed The first two-day Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) meeting of G20 summit in Pune under Indias presidency concluded on Tuesday with the participation of around 65 delegates from 18 member countries, 8 invited countries, and representatives of around 8 international organisations. During various sessions, attended by the delegates at the JW Marriott Hotel and Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), the members of the IWG came out with five key points that the organisation will be working on throughout the year under Indias presidency. There are five key points we could deliberate as part of our proposal and we will be working on them. There was a unanimous consensus on these points. Except for one issue that is continuing from several legacies, there was no discord for all other proposals, said Soloman Arokiaraj, joint secretary of the Ministry of Finance. He also said that the members participating in the summit unanimously agreed to all the proposals. Mexico Model: The delegates were introduced to the Mexico Model of developing cities. The joint secretary said that India will also work on the model as around 35 municipalities have been already identified by the administration after a recent workshop held in Delhi. Mexico came out with a municipal finance trust model for municipal bonds. Instead of the government giving a guarantee, they created a trust and that trust gets into the guarantee. The trust, municipality, and banker are involved in it. It became a very successful model and all kinds of municipalities in Mexico were able to use and leverage this mechanism and raise bonds. They were saying this is a very disciplined way of getting things organised, Arokiaraj said. He also said that the municipalities under this model have to demonstrate the income source from which they incur the debt, adding that the municipalities having an A credit rating are able to access the municipal bonds. Recently the Department of Economic Affairs had a huge workshop in Delhi where credit enhancement was a major thing. Out of that workshop, our people have identified 35 municipalities across the country that have good credit ratings and can go to the market. Our next action plan would be to enable them to go there. There is an action plan on it, he informed. The joint secretary highlighted the concerns that were raised during the discussion by the member delegates. The space of urbanisation is very rapid. Everybody is going to look at climate change, reduction of carbon emission or carbon footprint, and moving to net zero to the team around. However, we have factored it into our sustainability angle, he said. There are three G20 meetings scheduled in Pune including one in June and another in September. Multiple meetings are scheduled in various cities across the country under Indias presidency this year and the 18th G20 Heads of State and the Government Summit will take place on September 8 and 9, 2023 in New Delhi. The summit will be a culmination of all the G20 processes and meetings held throughout the year among ministers, senior officials, and civil societies. The representatives of various nations were overwhelmed by the welcome they received in Pune and they appreciated the hospitality in Pune. Several delegates participated in the cultural programme organised at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU). The delegates appreciated Indian hospitality. They highly appreciated the welcome they received from the Punekars, and the cleanliness of the city, said Arokiaraj. The two-day meeting also discussed the flagship theme of Financing cities of tomorrow-inclusive, resilient and sustainable. The meeting touched upon other important themes such as exploring ways to collate the data on infrastructure spending and make data useful for the private sector. Childhood sweethearts Sucharita and Nilesh are on a mission to promote marriages outside castes; will fete 20 such pairs in Pandharpur today to celebrate their wedding anniversary Marriages outside the caste are still frowned upon in the majority of Indian communities. Although people in cities are accepting change, young couples from rural setups find it tough to convince their relatives to accept and respect their decision. Such is the story of childhood sweethearts, Sucharita Korade and Nilesh Pawar, who tied the knot in January 2018. The duo will celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary on January 18, by felicitating around 20 couples in Pandharpur. They have spent the last five years raising awareness, assisting youth, and counselling parents who are opposing their childrens inter-caste marriage. These couples are from Mumbai, Pune, Solapur, and Delhi, respectively. The Sairat plot The families were infuriated by their inter-caste marriage. Their scenario seemed to be straight out of the 2016 Marathi film Sairat, as the pair was on the run and sought refuge in the home of a social worker in Pune in May 2018. Sucharita took her final year MBA exam in police protection, and the couple settled in the city. However, the story does not end there; the pair took on social responsibility and supported over 20 couples who had inter-caste marriages in the last five years. The couple has been raising awareness about inter-caste marriage and counselling families, who are preventing their children from marrying because of caste barriers. On May 31, 2018, Mirror published an exclusive story titled This lady will take her MBA examinations under police cover. The couple moved to Pune to study at Fergusson College. With their degrees in hand, Nilesh began studying for the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) exams, while Sucharita chose a management course. According to the couple, their families were aware of their relationship but disapproved. In January 2018, they married, and they formalised it after finishing their higher education. They had no option but to hide it from their families. She put her foot down A month later, Sucharitas family found a potential match for her an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer and asked her to meet him. Thats when she stated unequivocally that she would not settle down with anyone other than Nilesh. When the news of her marriage to Nilesh became public, all hell broke out. Sucharita claims her family imprisoned her in her birthplace Satara and took her mobile. Nilesh was able to get her out a few days later, and they both returned to Pune. Her father then went to the Vishrambaug police station, stating that Nilesh had kidnapped his daughter. The duo was summoned to the police station, where Nilesh explained the situation. The cops understood and let them go, but the families assaulted the couple. They managed to flee, and one of the social workers offered them refuge at his home. The authorities also informed the couple that she would be given police protection until her examinations were completed. Giving back to society Now, five years later, the couple approached Mirror and elaborated on their initiative for the betterment of society. Many couples marry outside their caste without their parents approval and are forced to live alone in cities like Pune. We had no support from either of our families when we married. Only our pals served as our support system. As a result, we understood the difficulties faced by couples who live apart from their parents and relatives. The suffering they endured is the sole motivation for our initiative to encourage couples to choose partners from different castes, Sucharita, 29, stated. Sucharita works in an IT firm, while Nilesh is a teacher at a private academy. Nileshs family stopped speaking with him when they decided to fete the couples. Sucharitas mother, a professor in Pune, encouraged her and promised to convince other family members. We agreed to meet and apologise to her after three years. She became overwhelmed when she saw her daughter and pulled her into her arms. She backed us in our decision, but my family members are still upset with me, Nilesh said. Narrating their journey, Nilesh said, The pandemic lockdown also affected our life. Sucharita took care of expenses since I was jobless and there was no family support. While everyone was going home during lockdown and festivals, we had no one to celebrate Diwali with. Meanwhile, we were detected Covid positive, but there was no one to take care of us. That time we decided to start an initiative to support such couples. The Maharashtra government offers Rs.2.5 lakh incentive to interfaith couples. The central government also offers some incentives. However, the procedure is complex. We applied in 2019, but the application needed to be submitted in the applicants hometown, Nilesh said, adding, We later submitted the documents, but the district administration officials found some lacunae in them. However, they are not disheartened. The couple is determined to work for others like them, to encourage inter-caste marriages, and create awareness in society. Pune Waste Warriors clean-up drives that began with a few citizens working relentlessly in their area has spread to several neighbourhoods in south Pune covering PMC zone 4; 40 garbage campaigns conducted The Pune Waste Warriors (PWW) began their cleanliness drive from NIBM Road immediately after formation a few years ago. Today, residents from Wanawadi, Parge Nagar, Undri-Pisoli and Mohammedwadi have also joined them in this successful citizen initiative. Work method The PWW directly connects with the Pune Municipal Corporations (PMC) sanitation staff. To do this effectively, a hierarchy chart was prepared for the zone 4 sanitary team, which consists of ward officers, sanitary inspectors, deputy sanitary inspectors and supervisors, along with their contact details. The campaign was called #Know your sanitary worker. The chart was circulated on the PWW WhatsApp group. Members were encouraged to use this as a reference point and contact their area PMC sanitary team members directly for addressing issues specific to their areas. Following the first meeting of the nascent group of 6-7 members with PMC staff and officials of the area, the group grew in strength. Various chronic spots were identified, and officials would be regularly called to see the situation there. They coined a term for these walks: garbage tourism. First successful meeting The officials soon realised that vigilant citizens were trying to bring in a change. Their first meeting was held with Zonal Head Sandeep Kadam in September 2021. They were pleasantly surprised to see the meeting room filled with the SI and DSI of zone 4, along with other ward officers. The meeting was meticulously minuted. Ward Officers Katkar, Dhotre and were very responsive and positive. The main issues discussed were garbage dumping at chronic spots identified by the PWW; dumping by commercial and street vendors. They decided to organise garbage vans for them. Private contractors of PMC were also dumping debris on open plots. Solid waste was burnt at various spots. This was happening as fines were not being imposed on violators. There was a lack of awareness for different types of waste disposal such as thermocol, mattresses, etc. No banners, warnings or educational material was available to spread the word. There was no coordination in garbage collection. Sanitary workers were leaving it on roadsides for vans. Solutions suggested The PWW requested GPS tracking of garbage vans. Recorded messages started playing on garbage trucks. Radio jingles and songs educated citizens. Ward-wise waste collection centres were set up to further segregate waste material. The PMC helpline was closing complaints without attending to them. During their ground work, the PWW volunteers realised that the garbage menace stemmed not so much from residential buildings and societies as from roadside vendors, most of them illegal and nonlicenced. These issues were discussed with civic officials. Meeting with civic chief Later, they met with municipal commissioner Vikram Kumar twice over the issue of encroachment and garbage. A 6-minute film on garbage dumping on streets and encroachment made by concerned citizens was shown to Kumar, which left him shocked. Later, demolition drives were launched. An exhaustive 50-page document with pictures of chronic garbage-dumping spots and encroachments in Zone 4 was presented to the civic chief. (In case any reader is interested to join this group, please write to Vinita.deshmukh@punemirror.com or whatsapp to Ekta 9850932379 who will forward it to the Pune Waste Warriors) CAMBRIDGE, Ill. The Granite City man charged with murder in the death of Knox County sheriff's deputy Nicholas Weist has changed attorneys from Henry County public defender Lance Camp. In Henry County Circuit Court Tuesday, Daylon K. Richardson, 23, hired private attorney Bruce Carmen. Camp was allowed by Judge Colby Hathaway to withdraw from the case. Richardson was charged with murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm, aggravated fleeing and improper traffic lane usage after an April 29 car chase from Galesburg during which Richardson fatally hit Weist as the latter was putting out the stop sticks that were successful in bringing Richardson's vehicle to a halt. He was apprehended on foot shortly afterwards. The chase began when Galesburg police were notified of an individual with a gun at a gas station on East Main Street in Galesburg about 8 a.m. During a preliminary hearing in May, Special Agent Walt Willis of the Illinois State Police testified it didn't appear to him that Richardson's vehicle took any evasive maneuvers to avoid striking Weist. Another pre-trial hearing was set for March 7. The new Scott County Attorney is asking supervisors to approve the hiring of a new attorney for the juvenile division. Two attorneys currently are handling about 800 open cases in the division, according to county staff, which includes cases of court intervention on behalf of children who have been neglected or abused, along with cases of minors charged with crimes. The division needs a new attorney to keep up with the workload, County Attorney Kelly Cunningham and her staff said. The two current staffers cover hearings every Monday through Thursday and cover Family Wellness Court every other Friday, Cunningham said. Senior Attorney Liz Cervantes also handles legal advice for organizations involved in the juvenile-justice system in the county and serves on a state policy committee. "Given the breadth of these responsibilities, this leaves our staff with little to no time to review and/or prepare legal documents for court hearings or meet with witnesses and victims to prepare them for these hearings," Cunningham wrote in her request to supervisors. An analysis of the office's staffing levels found the Scott County Attorney's Office "severely understaffed" to meet what is described as "crushing" caseloads. The report by Vera Causa Group called on the county to hire 11 more staff attorneys. Since then, Scott County has added just two attorneys. Supervisors appeared to support the request, but Chairman Ken Beck balked at first at a mid-year staff request, given the budget has been decided. He also cited concerns over lawmakers in Des Moines considering legislation that would limit county property taxes. "We're trying to wrap our minds around what that means for us," Beck said. "We don't know yet until the session's done, but I'm just trying to make sure we keep track of the nickels and dimes along the way but yet meet the needs that each department has." He suggested filling the position and holding off on filling one of two vacant positions in the attorney's office until July 1. But County Administrator Mahesh Sharma said staff had no concerns about meeting the extra salaries if the attorney's office can find three qualified applicants. Beck questioned why former/retired County Attorney Mike Walton didn't request the supervisors hire another juvenile attorney ahead of the 2023 budget. Walton, in an email to the Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus, wrote that he didn't ask, because he didn't think it was feasible to add all 11 staff attorneys recommended by the report at once. "The 2020 staff consultation confirmed the County Attorney's office was understaffed, the result of numerous years of zero budget increases and a changing climate in the judicial system," Walton wrote. "I did not think it was feasible to add all the additional staff at one time so it was understood it would be addressed over several years, depending on the budget. "I agree that the juvenile division needed additional staff, but so did all the other divisions. My first priority was to increase staff for the prosecution of violent crimes and felonies. We were able to do that with the addition of an attorney and support-staff positions. "I think it's a good idea that the new county attorney is seeking additional staff for juvenile court. That we were able to cover the juvenile court load so long with minimal staff is a real tribute to the hard work and dedication of the current juvenile court attorneys, Patricia Lenzendorf and Elizabeth Cervantes and the support staff. "The same admiration should be expressed about all the attorneys and staff in the County Attorney's office, as was also noted by the 2020 consultation." A system moving through the Quad-City region Wednesday and Thursday will bring mostly rain, while accumulating snow will remain off to the west and north of the Quad-Cities, meteorologist Tom Philip of the National Weather Service in Davenport said Tuesday night. While the Quad-City region is doing well on its soil moisture content, meaning the area is no long in a drought, the rest of Iowa west of the Quad-City region has not been so lucky, so any moisture will be welcome. Philip said the rain is expected to begin Wednesday afternoon. There could be a very brief wintry mix that involves sleet or freezing rain during the evening commute from about 6-8 p.m., but it wont be anything that sticks, and then its back to all rain. The Quad-Cities could see a one-half inch to two-thirds of an inch of rainfall in total. As the ground is not frozen that water will soak into the ground, Philip said. Waterloo is expecting a 3-7 inches of snow, while Charles City is expecting 4-8 inches. Dubuque is forecast to receive 2-4 inches of snow. The high temperature reached 57 degrees on Monday, just 2 degrees shy of the record of 59 degrees set for that day in 1990. However, the Quad-Cities did tie a record for the warmest overnight low for the day of 42 degrees that was set in 1913. The record low for Monday is minus 27 degrees set in 2009. Tuesdays high temperature was 43 degrees. Wednesdays high is expected to be 34 degrees with an overnight low of 26. Thursdays high is expected to be about 29 degrees with an overnight low of 18 degrees. Fridays forecast calls for a high of 22 degrees, while the high temps Saturday and Sunday are expected to be in the mid-20s with overnight lows both nights in the middle teens. Through Monday, the Quad-City area has received 1.12 inches of snow for the month of January. The snowiest January on record was set in 2019 when 30.2 inches of snow fell. The least snowiest was just a trace of snow set in 1944 and again in 1989. In the eight- to 14-day outlook, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center indicates that temperatures will be trending colder during that time period. For the Quad-City region, there is a 60% to 70% chance of below normal temperatures for the period of Jan. 17 through Jan. 31. DES MOINES For a second time in less than a week, Iowans packed a legislative hearing room Tuesday at the Iowa Capitol to sound off on Gov. Kim Reynolds private school financial assistance proposal, which Republican lawmakers seem intent to fast-track to a floor vote after the idea failed previously. More than a hundred individuals roughly split between supporters and opponents signed up to speak for up to two minutes each during the 90-minute hearing on House Study Bill 1. Hundreds more submitted written comments. Earlier in the day, an Iowa House committee advanced a new chamber rule along party lines, with Democrats opposed, allowing the bill and others assigned to a newly formed House Education Reform Committee to bypass review by committees that review spending and tax issues, where the proposals financial impact would have been assessed. The governors office estimates the state will spend $107 million in the programs first year. By full implementation in the fourth year, the state would spend $341 million annually, it estimates. House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, and lobbyists for groups that represent educators, administrators and public school districts decried the move, stating it flies in the face of transparency, good governance and accountability. If members of this committee truly believe the policies they move through the Education Reform Committee are what Iowans asked for what your constituents have asked for then there should be no problem making sure that a bill that makes significant policy changes and an expenditure of resources goes through the appropriate process, said Melissa Peterson on behalf of the Iowa State Education Association, which represents public school teachers in the state. Margaret Buckton, a lobbyist for Urban Education Network of Iowa and Rural School Advocates of Iowa, said the rule would bypass a time-tested process that allows for more public engagement and deeper analysis. Konfrst chastised House Republicans, who hold a 64-36 majority, for circumventing fiscal oversight in the interest of expediting Reynolds top legislative priority. House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, contends Republicans are being transparent, choosing to hold a public hearing on the bill. Grassley, too, said he is more than happy to have an open committee debate on the tax and spending implications of the bill. He said he created the committee in large part to review and advance the bill for a vote in the House, where Reynolds previous school choice proposals stalled each of the past two years, rather than getting it blocked in committee. We feel that Iowans have an expectation, whether you support it or you dont, that a committee procedure should not be the reason you dont get to see where the legislature stands, Grassley said. House Appropriations Committee Chair Gary Mohr, R-Bettendorf, said he was fine with the rule change. Theyre the ones in charge of the agenda, not me, he said of House leaders. And Ill defer to whatever their wishes are on that. Reynolds proposal would create taxpayer-funded Educational Savings Accounts, valued at $7,598 in the first year the amount the state spends per pupil on public K-12 education that families could use for private school tuition and other education expenses. The program would be phased in over three years, prioritizing kindergarten and low-income students in the first two years. In the third year, all K-12 students including private school students would be eligible for the funding, with no income restrictions. Public schools would lose out on the per-pupil funding for any students who choose to attend a private school. However, the legislation also provides each school district roughly $1,200 for every student who lives in the district but attends a private school. That funding is devoted whether the private school student is a recent transfer or has always attended private school. Supporters say the funding is needed to give more families an opportunity with state assistance to send their children to the school that best fit their needs. Passing this bill will allow full education freedom for families, providing true customization that allows us to think broader about our education opportunities, said Samantha Fett, a former Carlisle school board member and parent. The No. 1 budget line item in Iowa is education, Fett said. And what do we have to show for it? Low test scores. Underperforming schools. Less than the best-educated students. School choice is the only way to move away from this one-size-fits-all disaster. She and several other parents urged lawmakers to serve the best interest of students, and that the state should be funding the education of children not institutions. Opponents argue the measure would siphon resources away from public schools to fund the education of a few students at private schools, including those who can afford to attend without the state aid. Students, they argue, would be better served by using such funds to make public schools stronger. Critics, too, note the proposal does not provide an actual choice for students living in rural areas who have few, if any, access points to schools other than their local public schools. According to Iowa Department of Education, there are 40 counties with no private schools, nearly all of them rural counties. There were 33,692 students enrolled in 183 private schools Iowa for the 2022-2023 school year, according to state data. Proponents have said the proposal would expand the market for private schools, meaning new schools could open in those areas. Opponents as well argue the measure would further segregate public schools, allowing private schools to accept taxpayer dollars but reject students for a variety of reasons. My school, Iowas public schools, accept all students regardless of their abilities, color, religion, language and any other difference, said Mike Beranek, president of the Iowa State Education Association. Des Moines parent Jazlyn Fitz said her autistic son, who has an Individualized Education Plan, and other children like him will have no choice to attend private school, because private schools cant and will choose not to accept him and his specialized needs. In my mind, vouchers are discriminatory toward disabled children because there is no guarantee that they will be accepted and property supported in private schools, Fitz said. My taxpayer funds should go toward funding public institution with access to everyone. Dan Zylstra, head of school at Pella Christian Schools, previously served as a public school principal and superintendent at rural public schools in Indiana School choice did not decimate my rural public school district, Zylstra said. The vast majority stayed in my school district and we loved it. (T)he enrollment declines happening in rural Iowa are happening because of broad population losses; not because of school choice. To say school choice would kill rural schools is false. To help them, we need to provide flexibility in how to use their existing funds. Tickets are now on sale for the 24th annual Rapid City Heart Ball on Feb. 25 in LaCroix Hall at The Monument in Rapid City. This years event is themed Unmasking the Mystery of Heart Disease. Tickets are $100 per person or $800 per table. Tickets can be purchased at heart.org/RapidCityHeartBall. The Rapid City Heart Ball raises money to fight heart disease, which is the number one killer in South Dakota according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Heart Ball will begin at 6 p.m. with a Renaissance Reception cocktail hour and silent auction, followed by dinner, program and live auction at 7 p.m. An after-party will conclude the evening. This is a face mask-friendly environment. Organizers said those who are not feeling well should not attend the event. A pizza delivery driver's Monday night did not go as planned when someone robbed him at gunpoint and took his vehicle after he dropped off a pizza in the 500 block of Saint James Street in Rapid City. According to the Rapid City Police Department, police responded to the call around 5:40 p.m. When they arrived and spoke with the delivery driver, he said he left his vehicle to drop off his delivery on Saint James Street. When he got back to his car, a man he didn't know was in his vehicle. The delivery driver confronted the man, who stepped out of the vehicle and brandished a gun and then grabbed the driver's keys and took off with the vehicle, which was abandoned in the 1300 block of Kansas City Street. Police described the suspect as a five-foot, nine-inch Native American man in his 30s or 40s, with acne scars on his face. Anyone with information about the suspect or the robbery can contact Det. Brendan Lenard at 605-394-4134. An anonymous tip can be submitted by texing "RCPD" and the information to 847411. A state prisoner who escaped from a community assignment in Rapid City almost two months ago was arrested Tuesday in Rapid City, according to the South Dakota Department of Corrections. Trevor Chipps, 39, who was serving sentences for possession of a controlled substance from Minnehaha County and distribution of a controlled substance from Pennington County, did not return from his assignment to the Rapid City Minimum Center at his scheduled time on Nov. 23. Failure to return to custody following an assignment constitutes second degree escape, a Class 5 felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Chipps is currently held at the Pennington County Jail on his previous drug charges, a warden's hold and a second-degree escape hold. He is scheduled to appear in court at 10 a.m. Wednesday. A parade of Republican lawmakers and other party leaders took to the microphone Tuesday to decry the proposed legislative district maps making their way through the Legislature, arguing that the states independent redistricting commission veered from its constitutional script. Lawmakers are tasked with reviewing the Districting and Apportionment Commissions once-per-decade task of redrawing the states House and Senate districts to align with the population shifts identified by the U.S. Census. The Legislatures input is nonbinding, and the commission can opt to adopt its recommendations or disregard them. When I look at this map, Im a little dismayed personally, Senate President Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, told the Legislature's six-member committee reviewing the maps on Tuesday. I dont think the heart of the Constitution has been followed. Ellsworth is sponsoring Senate Joint Resolution 8, which will be the vehicle for the Legislature to transmit its recommendations on the map to the commission. As currently written, it accuses the commission of failing to meet the constitutional requirement that legislative districts be compact. It also tells the commission to redraw as necessary to keep cities and communities of interest intact. The Montana Constitution sets up the states independent redistricting commission, comprised of two Republicans, two Democrats and a nonpartisan chair. The chair has served as the tie-breaking vote when the partisan members deadlock. Following a series of concessions in maps offered by the two sides last fall, Commission Chair Maylinn Smith eventually voted for one drawn by Democrats. Aside from several tweaks advocated for by Republicans since then, that map has largely survived the process. Many of the GOP lawmakers who spoke Tuesday reiterated concerns theyve raised throughout the process, highlighting districts in Flathead, Missoula, Gallatin and Lewis and Clark counties they say have been unfairly gerrymandered by Democrats. The current plan seems to be designed to disenfranchise rural voters that surround urban areas, Rep. Jerry Schillinger, R-Circle, said. By bleeding enough left-leaning, urban voters into rural areas to overpower their vote, this commission has sought to eliminate rural representation. Democratic voices were few and far between in the hearing room. Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, a Box Elder Democrat who represents one of the states nine Native-majority districts, was the only lawmaker from his side of the aisle to offer public comment. He opposed the resolution. Responding to comments from Republicans that their rural voters were being disenfranchised by the proposed map, he described the history of Native Americans being denied the right to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. So I understand not being heard, Windy Boy said. I understand not being represented. But he said the current map successfully retained protections for Native voters in the state. Maps advanced by Republicans earlier in the process had reduced the number of majority-Native districts in Montana, raising doubts about compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act. Smith told the Montana State News Bureau previously she will give greater consideration to recommendations from the Legislature that merge with bipartisan support. Speaking after the hearing, Ellsworth didnt specify any proposals he heard that might meet that preference. The whole resolution that comes out of here, I would hope would have bipartisan support," Ellsworth said. "Thats what the Legislature does is listen to the public, listen to the testimony and come up with a product that actually works. The committee is scheduled to meet again on Friday at 8 a.m., for a hearing with Smith and what could amount to an all-day work session to put lawmakers suggestions into the joint resolution. It will then head to the state administration committees for both the House and Senate, which will not be required to hold further hearings on the bill, Cuffe said. Each chamber must also vote on the joint resolution. The deadline for the Legislature to submit its recommendations to the redistricting commission is Feb. 5. Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras has proposed a new budget for the upcoming fiscal year and plans to ask the city for an additional $28.3 million in funding, up from last years $200.3 million appropriation. With an expected increase of $6 million from the state and $2 million remaining from last year, the proposed revenue increase represents $35.3 million. The bulk of the increase covers raises for teachers and other school staff that the school division must provide because of the new labor union contracts, which members voted to approve last month. RPS staff are the first public schools employees in Virginia to gain collective bargaining rights since the Virginia Supreme Court banned local government workers from unionizing in 1977. The contracts will cost the school division an additional $24.2 million to cover provisions including a 40% raise for instructional assistants and a 25% raise for food service assistants over three years. Under the Kamras administration, RPS has increased teacher salaries by about 30%. The average salary for a teacher in 2018 when Kamras took over as superintendent was $52,000. Under the new labor union contracts, the average RPS teacher salary will be nearly $68,000. Kamras proposed budget also includes a $6.8 million increase to cover staff positions that have previously been covered by pandemic-era federal funds. Those positions include 30 staff for the Richmond Virtual Academy, which will become an official school of record this fall. Also among the budget increases are $1.9 million for student wellness and $1.2 million for targeted supports for English language learners. Kamras also proposed $1.3 million in cuts to central office staff. These are never easy, but I continue to work extremely hard, as I know the board does as well, to hold our schools harmless, which we have continued to do since 2018, Kamras said Monday night. Some school board members were miffed to learn that one of the cuts included the coordinator for the gifted and talented program. Thats such an important program providing opportunities of equitable academics for students, particularly our minority students said School Board member Shonda Harris-Muhammed, who represents the 6th District. There should have been data provided to the school board that justified the plan to adjust any part of that gifted program. Kamras said he wants to not only maintain the gifted program, but also expand it. Im trying to realign and combine some things in the academic office, so that we can be more efficient and provide, actually, even more services to our students but typically, what ends up happening is that its perceived as a reduction, Kamras said. Unfortunately, we have to cut some positions and reorganize even more if we are going to be able to afford some of these new investments for our schools. Throughout January and February, the School Board will hold several work sessions and at least one public hearing before finalizing a budget recommendation to send to Mayor Levar Stoney in February. Richmond City Council must adopt an appropriation for RPS by May 15, and the School Board can work until June to make adjustments and balance the budget before adopting a final budget in June. How gas prices have changed in Richmond in the last week How gas prices have changed in Richmond in the last week The power of reading and storytelling have helped bring acclaimed author Meg Medina to this point in her life, and now she has the opportunity to share those pursuits and her influence with an even wider audience. The Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader have announced the appointment of Medina, who lives in Henrico, as the eighth National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature for 2023-24. A Cuban-American, Medina is the first author of Latina heritage to serve as the national ambassador. Medina said the appointment, which becomes official Wednesday, is right up there with being awarded the 2019 Newbery Medal, the highest honor in American literature for children, for her book, Merci Suarez Changes Gears. It just really feels like a beautiful thing, she said in an interview. Medina, 59, is a New York Times best-selling author who writes picture books, as well as middle-grade and young adult fiction. She began working on her first book at age 40 after the youngest of her three children had gone off to Henricos Pemberton Elementary School. Besides the Newbery, she has won numerous awards, and in 2014 was recognized as one of The CNN 10: Visionary Women in America and one of Latino Stories Top Ten Latino Authors to Watch. Her most recent picture book, Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away, has received multiple honors, including the 2021-22 Charlotte Zolotow Award. As national ambassador, Medina plans to travel the country talking about stories and books and using them to reconnect us. She also wants to emphasize reading, not so much as a subject in school but as a joy in life. Ill be chatting with kids about how they talk up books, how they choose the books they really want to read, how they find new authors and voices and how they talk to each other about the books that really jazz them, Medina said, noting what she envisions is different than the typical classroom book discussion. This is about the passion, this is about why you love a book: your favorite line, the character that made you laugh out loud, the part of the story that reminded you of your familys story, the thing that was hard to read, the piece of information that brought you a new vision of your self or of somebody else in your class. Medina will also engage readers across the country through her new platform, Cuentame!: Lets talk books. It is inspired by the Spanish phrase that friends and families use when catching up with one another. It translates to English as tell me! The platform will encourage connection among families, classrooms, libraries and communities by talking about books. Cuentame is a very warm phrase that Spanish people use when we havent seen each other in a while, she said. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will inaugurate Medina as the new national ambassador on Tuesday, Jan. 24 (the event will be live-streamed on the librarys YouTube page). She said Medinas warmth and openness, coupled with her long-running commitment to young readers, libraries and librarians, is extraordinary. I look forward to the ways she will invite young people especially Spanish and bilingual speakers to share their favorite books and stories. Medina said her only regret is the absence of her elders her mother and her aunts who have passed and who spent so much time telling me stories and using them to connect me to my past, to my culture, to other people. Especially considering their lives as immigrants. Because like a lot of immigrants, they leave behind the people they love and the comforts and all they know for this new unknown, Medina said. Its a gamble, and its often a gamble that is so centered on what will be possible for their children and those who come after them. I have to hope that somewhere out there theyre enjoying this moment as much as I am. The most popular book the year you were born The most popular book the year you were born 1920: 'The Man of the Forest' by Zane Grey 1921: 'The Brimming Cup' by Dorothy Canfield 1922: 'If Winter Comes' by A.S.M. Hutchinson 1923: 'Black Oxen' by Gertrude Atherton 1924: 'So Big' by Edna Ferber 1925: 'Soundings' by A. Hamilton Gibbs 1926: 'The Private Life of Helen of Troy' by John Erskine 1927: 'Elmer Gantry' by Sinclair Lewis 1928: 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey' by Thornton Wilder 1929: 'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Maria Remarque 1930: 'Cimarron' by Edna Ferber 1931 and 1932: 'The Good Earth' by Pearl S. Buck 1933 and 1934: 'Anthony Adverse' by Hervey Allen 1935: 'Green Light' by Lloyd C. Douglas 1936 and 1937: 'Gone with the Wind' by Margaret Mitchell 1938: 'The Yearling' by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 1939: 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck 1940: 'How Green Was My Valley' by Richard Llewellyn 1941: 'The Keys of the Kingdom' by A.J. Cronin 1942: 'The Song of Bernadette' by Franz Werfel 1943: 'The Robe' by Lloyd C. Douglas 1944: 'Strange Fruit' by Lillian Smith 1945: 'Forever Amber' by Kathleen Winsor 1946: 'The King's General' by Daphne du Maurier 1947: 'The Miracle of the Bells' by Russell Janney 1948: 'The Big Fisherman' by Lloyd C. Douglas 1949: 'The Egyptian' by Mika Waltari 1950: 'The Cardinal' by Henry Morton Robinson 1951: 'From Here to Eternity' by James Jones 1952: 'The Silver Chalice' by Thomas B. Costain 1953: 'The Robe' by Lloyd C. Douglas 1954: 'Not As a Stranger' by Morton Thompson 1955: 'Marjorie Morningstar' by Herman Wouk 1956: 'Don't Go Near the Water' by William Brinkley 1957: 'By Love Possessed' by James Gould Cozzens 1958: 'Doctor Zhivago' by Boris Pasternak 1959: 'Exodus' by Leon Uris 1960: 'Advise and Consent' by Allen Drury 1961: 'The Agony and the Ecstasy' by Irving Stone 1962: 'Ship of Fools' by Katherine Anne Porter 1963: 'The Shoes of the Fisherman' by Morris West 1964: 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' by John le Carre 1965: 'The Source' by James A. Michener 1966: 'Valley of the Dolls' by Jacqueline Susann 1967: 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton 1968: 'Airport' by Arthur Hailey 1969: 'Portnoy's Complaint' by Philip Roth 1970: 'Love Story' by Erich Segal 1971: 'Wheels' by Arthur Hailey 1972 and 1973: 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' by Richard Bach 1974: 'Centennial' by James A. Michener 1975: 'Ragtime' by E.L. Doctorow 1976: 'Trinity' by Leon Uris 1977: 'The Silmarillion' by J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien 1978: 'Chesapeake' by James A. Michener 1979: 'The Matarese Circle' by Robert Ludlum 1980: 'The Covenant' by James A. Michener 1981: 'Noble House' by James Clavell 1982: 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial' by William Kotzwinkle 1983: 'Return of the Jedi' by James Kahn 1984: 'The Talisman' by Stephen King and Peter Straub 1985: 'The Mammoth Hunters' by Jean M. Auel 1986: 'It' by Stephen King 1987: "The Tommyknockers" by Stephen King 1988: 'The Cardinal of the Kremlin' by Tom Clancy 1989: 'Clear and Present Danger' by Tom Clancy 1990: 'The Plains of Passage' by Jean M. Auel 1991: 'Scarlett' by Alexandra Ripley 1992: 'Dolores Claiborne' by Stephen King 1993: 'The Bridges of Madison County' by Robert James Waller 1994: 'The Chamber' by John Grisham 1995: 'The Rainmaker' by John Grisham 1996: 'The Runaway Jury' by John Grisham 1997: 'The Partner' by John Grisham 1998: 'The Street Lawyer' by John Grisham 1999: 'The Testament' by John Grisham 2000: 'The Brethren' by John Grisham 2001: 'Desecration' by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye 2002: 'The Summons' by John Grisham 2003: 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' by J.K. Rowling 2004: 'The Da Vinci Code' by Dan Brown 2005: 'The Broker' by John Grisham 2006: 'For One More Day' by Mitch Albom 2007: 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' by J.K. Rowling 2008: 'The Appeal' by John Grisham 2009: 'The Lost Symbol' by Dan Brown 2010: 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest' by Stieg Larsson 2011: 'The Litigators' by John Grisham 2012: 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by E.L. James 2013: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck' by Jeff Kinney 2014: 'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Green 2015: 'Go Set a Watchman' by Harper Lee 2016: 'The Girl on the Train' by Paula Hawkins 2017: 'Diary of a Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway' by Jeff Kinney 2018: 'Becoming' by Michelle Obama 2019: 'Where the Crawdads Sing' by Delia Owens 2020: 'A Promised Land' by Barack Obama 2021: 'Dog Man #10: Mothering Heights' by Dav Pilkey 2022: 'The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times' by Michelle Obama A Houston man who authorities said directed shipments of 20-30 kilos of heroin a week into the Richmond area and played a key role in an international, multi-state drug conspiracy tied to a Mexican drug trafficking cartel was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to 4 1/2 years in prison. Hector Ruiz, 30, was trusted by leaders of various drug trafficking organizations with procuring drugs, paying for drugs and transferring the proceeds for the sale of drugs throughout the United States and internationally, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Anthony wrote in a sentencing memorandum for the government. Ruizs primary role locally was to provide the means by which heroin would be transported into the Richmond area and to move the proceeds and payment for those drugs into and outside of Virginia. That involved transporting money outside of the U.S. so that it could be filtered back to sources of supply in Mexico, federal prosecutors said. Over the course of the 6-month conspiracy for which Ruiz was charged, he was responsible for assisting in the trafficking of about 26-27 kilograms of heroin locally. That translates to roughly 260,000 to 270,000 individual doses of heroin for users who typically consume 0.1 grams of the drug at a time. The defendant played a very important role in sourcing Richmond drug dealers with the means to pump a large amount of drugs in the community that are, at best destructive, if not deadly, Anthony said At the end of a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Richmond which was partially sealed to the public and press due to an undisclosed compelling interest that the court ruled could be harmed if disclosed Judge Robert E. Payne sentenced Ruiz to 55 months in prison on his earlier guilty plea to conspiring to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin. The punishment was well below the low end of discretionary federal sentencing guidelines, which for Ruiz was calculated at a range of 87-108 months. The information presented and discussed during the closed portion of the proceeding about 10 minutes appears to have figured prominently in crafting the punishment. The defenses reasons for closing the proceeding were found to be so compelling that the reason itself was sealed. Although rare, federal court proceedings can be sealed when a compelling interest exists and the court determines there is a substantial probability that the interest will be harmed if disclosed. Such interests could include information about an ongoing law enforcement investigation, the safety of cooperating defendants and the privacy of innocent third parties, among others. When the defense moved to seal Ruizs initial sentencing hearing on Nov. 3, the Richmond Times-Dispatch objected and the judge continued the hearing to allow the Times-Dispatchs counsel to file a memorandum in opposition. The judge took the matter under advisement and on Dec. 12 ruled the hearing would be partially open and partially sealed. Ruiz told investigators that he ran a drug operation out of Richmond beginning in December 2018, and the bulk quantities of heroin he controlled usually would arrive on tractor-trailers. Ruiz would then instruct an accomplice to meet with the traffickers to take possession of the drugs, according to an affidavit filed in the case. The Mexican drug traffickers paid Ruiz $1,000 per kilogram of heroin that was shipped to Richmond, authorities said. Ruiz, who rented a room in a South Richmond house, also served as the main accountant for the resulting drug trafficking proceeds and payments for the kilos of heroin. He admitted he put the drug payments on the same tractor-trailers that delivered the heroin, or he would use a different semi-truck that would pick up the money in Richmond after the heroin was delivered. In addition, Ruiz would deliver and organize the pick-up of large sums of money that was to be wired to Mexico from U.S.-based accounts. He kept detailed records of the transactions and admitted that ledgers discovered by law enforcement in his bedroom were the same ledgers he would take to Mexico to show the heads of the drug trafficking organization. In the event that ultimately led to Ruizs arrest, Homeland Security agents seized 23.8 kilos more than 50 pounds of heroin and almost 4 1/2 pounds each of fentanyl and methamphetamine hidden in five commercial tractor-trailer batteries in Brownsville, Texas, on June 5, 2019. Three of the batteries were destined for Richmond and the rest for Chicago. The three batteries headed for Richmond contained almost 4 pounds of heroin, and federal agents, working with Virginia State Police, coordinated a controlled delivery of the heroin to the Travel America truck stop in Ashland on June 7, 2019. The location was prearranged. Before the transfer of the heroin, Ruiz procured a white utility van to pick up the drugs and recruited a person to drive the vehicle and another to ride as a passenger to ensure the transaction went as planned, according to the governments statement of facts. The federal agents delivered the batteries to the van occupied by Ruizs accomplices, which included Jose Martin Zavala-Higareda of Guerrero, Mexico who gave the agents $16,500 concealed in a shopping bag for transportation expenses. The van then left but was kept under observation before being stopped by state police on Interstate 95 in Hanover County. Officers found the batteries with the drugs. Following the heroin seizure, investigators executed a search warrant in the 600 block of West 19th Street in Richmond, where Ruiz and Zavala-Higareda rented two rooms from the homeowner from December 2018 to June 2019. Investigators found $30,000 in stacks consistent with drug money proceeds in Zavala-Higaredas room; they discovered ledgers, assorted documents and transfer receipts in Ruizs room. Prosecutors said the documents reflected the money transfers that Ruiz made to assist in the transfer of drugs to the Richmond area, and the payment for those drugs to people outside of Virginia and U.S. Zavala-Higareda was sentenced in October 2020 to 7 years in prison for his role in trafficking heroin in the area. Investigators discovered that Ruiz was not only transferring drug trafficking proceeds through his bank accounts and his business HR Hair and Beauty Products but was also wiring money directly to Mexico. He also laundered drug proceeds through a Latino party store in Richmond, prosecutors said. Federal law requires a defendant convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy involving 1 kilogram of heroin or more to serve a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison. But since Ruiz had no prior criminal history, along with other factors, the mandatory minimum does not apply in the case, despite the large volume of drugs he trafficked. Ruizs attorney, Ali Amirshahi, asked the court for a lower sentencing of 60 months, arguing Ruiz did not directly profit from the sale of heroin. He did not own the heroin that was being distributed, Amirshashi said in a court filing. He was an employee of a criminal enterprise. On Wednesday, Amirshahi noted that Ruiz had no prior criminal history before the present case, has worked non-stop since age 16 and has removed himself from the drug cartel world. Ruiz was born in Los Angeles to parents who immigrated from Mexico, and lived in Mexico from age 2-14. His mother sent him to live with her sisters husband in Gainesville, Georgia, in an effort to avoid drug cartel violence in Guerrero, Mexico. He secured his legal emancipation at 16 and has supported himself and his family since, Amirshahi said. I would like to apologize for all the people I have hurt either directly or indirectly, Ruiz told the court through an interpreter. I made a mistake and I have paid for it now. I want to be able to go back into society. How gas prices have changed in Richmond in the last week How gas prices have changed in Richmond in the last week A federal jury in Richmond on Tuesday found mostly in favor of two police officers who were sued by a U.S. Army lieutenant after he was pepper sprayed, struck and handcuffed during a traffic stop. Video of the 2020 incident in the small town of Windsor got millions of views after Caron Nazario filed the federal lawsuit, highlighting fears of mistreatment among Black drivers and raising questions about reasonable police conduct. The jury in federal court found former Windsor police officer Joe Gutierrez liable for assault and awarded Nazario $2,685 in compensatory damages, according to attorneys on both sides of the case. The jury also awarded Nazario $1,000 in punitive damages after Windsor police officer Daniel Crocker illegally searched Nazarios SUV, the attorneys said. A federal judge already ruled last year that Crocker was liable for the search. The jury found in favor of Crocker and against Nazarios claims of assault and battery and false imprisonment, the attorneys said. The jury found in favor of Gutierrez regarding the soldiers claims of battery, false imprisonment and illegal search. Having now heard all of the evidence and learning the full picture of this case, we believe the jury reached the correct decision, one of Crockers attorneys, Anne Lahren, said in a statement. In the present climate, this took a lot of courage and we thank the jury for their service. Nazario filed his lawsuit in 2021. Video shows Crocker and Gutierrez pointing handguns at a uniformed Nazario behind the wheel of his Chevy Tahoe at a gas station. The officers repeatedly commanded Nazario to exit his SUV, with Gutierrez warning at one point that Nazario was fixing to ride the lightning when he didnt get out. Nazario held his hands in the air outside the drivers side window and continually asked why he was being stopped. Nazario also said: Im honestly afraid to get out. You should be, Gutierrez responded. Nazario stayed in the vehicle. Gutierrez went on to pepper spray him through the open window. Once Nazario exited the SUV, the officers commanded him to get on the ground, with Gutierrez using his knees to strike Nazarios legs, the lawsuit states. Nazario has developed anxiety, depression and PTSD, according to his lawsuit. A psychologist also found that Nazario, who is Black and Latino, suffers from race-based trauma associated with violent police encounters, which can exacerbate injuries in ways that do not commonly affect the white populations. Crocker is still on the force, but Gutierrez was fired in April 2021, the same month Nazario filed his lawsuit. Both Crocker and Gutierrez denied ever threatening to kill Nazario. They contended that Nazario misconstrued Gutierrezs statement that Nazario was fixing to ride the lightning. Gutierrez spoke those words while holstering his gun and drawing his Taser and was referencing his stun gun, not an execution, according to court filings. Crocker and Gutierrez argued that they performed their duties within the law after Nazario failed to immediately pull over and refused to exit his vehicle. Plus, a federal judge already found they had probable cause to stop Nazario for an improperly displayed license plate, and to charge him with eluding police, as well as obstruction of justice and failure to obey. In August, a special prosecutor determined that Gutierrez should not be criminally charged but should be investigated for potential civil rights violations. U.S. District Judge Roderick C. Young had narrowed the scope of Nazarios lawsuit. Young ruled last year that federal immunity laws shielded Crocker and Gutierrez from Nazarios claims that they violated his constitutional protections against excessive force and unreasonable seizure, as well as Nazarios right to free speech by threatening him with arrest if he complained about their behavior. Nazario was allowed to present claims under state law of false imprisonment and assault and battery to a jury, the judge ruled. The judge also found Crocker liable for illegally searching for a gun in Nazarios SUV, leaving the question of damages on that point to a jury. Nazario had a concealed-carry permit for the weapon. The jury was also asked to consider whether Gutierrez was liable for the illegal search. The former officer denied he knew Crocker was conducting the search. He was 6, in his first-grade class in Newport News. He pointed a handgun at his teacher, police say, and then he pulled the trigger. And across the nation, people ... didn't quite know how to react. Even in a country where gun violence is sadly commonplace, the story of a small boy with a gun is reverberating in a big way. There has been finger-pointing. Confusion. Floundering for answers. Mass grappling with deeply uncomfortable feelings. And questions: How could something like this possibly happen? Where in the national consciousness do we put it? It is almost impossible to wrap our minds around the fact that a 6-year-old first-grader brought a loaded handgun to school and shot a teacher, Mayor Phillip Jones said that day, Jan. 6. However, this is exactly what our community is grappling with today. Its not just his community, though, and it wasnt just that day. This is a country full of people who know exactly what they think about everything, and say so. Yet many are throwing their hands up at this. In a land awash in hot takes, its a head-scratcher. A heart-scratcher, even. I never thought elementary students being the shooter was a possibility we would ever see, says Kendra Newton, a first-grade teacher in Florida. That may be because it sits outside what people are accustomed to. Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, believes the case hits differently in part because it violates societys expectations for both school shootings (of which there were two others elsewhere in the country that day) and childhood itself. Sadly, we have schemas, we have rubrics, we have archetypes for school shootings in this country. We have a sort of script for these things, said Talarico, who has studied how people remember indirectly experienced events. Using the phrase school shooting as a shorthand leads us to develop that story in our heads, and when the facts of the case are so different ... that is what is surprising. On Tuesday, parents and community members filled a Newport News school board meeting organized to discuss the shooting. Some suggested security guards at each school and the resignation of board members. Americans typically view childhood as an encapsulation of the best of our society and values, Talarico says innocence, fun, joy, love. Anything that challenges that deep-seated view unearths complicated questions about the culture and community in which a child is being raised whether it be local culture and community or the entire nation. Thats some hard self-reflection, she says. That is why the story is resonating with people. Americans are left struggling with a scenario that doesnt fit into any bucket. But as jarring as that may feel, theres a danger in trying to force the incident into a familiar framework, says Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center. She believes Americans have become so stuck in a place of punishment that they have lost the ability to have conversations outside those boundaries. By labeling the shooting with the loaded word intentional, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew is inviting people to view it as a criminal act, Levick asserts. That is ludicrous. It is absurd. It is utterly inconsistent with science and what we know about human development and child development, she says. Lets own that. This was not a criminal act. Levick would like law enforcement to acknowledge that this is not our lane, as it did more than two decades ago in one of the few cases from the recent past that bears some resemblance to the Virginia shooting. When a 6-year-old boy shot and killed a classmate in Michigan in 2000, Genesee County Prosecuting Attorney Arthur Busch didn't go after the boy, but after those who provided access to the gun. In an interview last week, Busch said hes been surprised by the repeated use of intentional by Newport News police. It was like fingers on a chalkboard when I heard the police say it was intentional, he said. We dont call it intentional when its a 6-year-old. ... Hes not old enough to have intent. Busch, who later became a defense attorney and retired in 2018, remembers visiting the boy at a group home and squeezing into a child-sized chair to chat. The boy proudly showed him pictures he had colored and his favorite toys. A smile revealed two missing front teeth, and they talked about the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny. He was excited because he knew he was going to get candy, Busch said. It was quite clear that he was not hatching any diabolical plots. He was just a typical little kid. He was a baby, pretty much. Busch remembers being dumbfounded when notified of the 2000 shooting. I just couldnt wrap my head around that, he said. But he knew immediately he wouldnt bring any charges. The only thing to do with that boy is get him out of that situation, find the best place for him, Busch said. This kid had probably never seen love in his life. We needed to wrap our arms around him as a community, and love and protect him. The Virginia case is sure to stir debate about gun control and school safety. But Moira ONeill, who led New Hampshires Office of the Child Advocate for five years, says anyone feeling shaken by the incident can take a few simple steps. She says an abundance of research shows that the best way to support child development and promote resilience is to offer children a sense of belonging. In short: Don't let your shock paralyze you. Take steps to value children in your own community. This is not a big commitment. This is simply knowing the kids, knowing their names, and giving the impression if they need help they can ask, she said. If neighbors choose to settle with being shocked, without thinking through ways they can contribute to child well-being and safety, they are sending the message that the children are not valued. Whether all the reflection around the Virginia shooting leads to change remains to be seen. Talarico, whose work includes studying the memory-laden language that often surrounds big events, says imperatives like Never Forget dont always lead to sweeping action particularly when it comes to guns. Never Forget," she says, "hasnt effectively translated to Never Again. The Virginia Employment Commission is proposing a new way to reduce the backlog of appeals in unemployment claim decisions cut in half the time to file an appeal. A House of Delegates subcommittee Tuesday recommended approval of a proposal introduced for Gov. Glenn Youngkin to give claimants and employers 15 days instead of 30 to appeal decisions on claims for unemployment insurances, as well as to ask for a review of an initial appeal ruling. The commission said the change is needed to speed the process of making final determinations on claims for unemployment benefits and make the states lengthy review process more efficient. The impetus behind this is to make sure we give them a very timely final decision in an expedited fashion, Virginia Employment Commissioner Carrie Roth told a House Commerce and Energy subcommittee, which voted 5-2 along party lines to recommend approval to the full committee. Advocates for unemployed Virginians said the proposed change would make it harder for claimants and their employers to appeal either an initial decision on eligibility for unemployment benefits or an initial appeal ruling. This bill punishes claimants and employers for the agencys failures it does not make it more efficient, said Flannery ORourke, a lobbyist for the Virginia Poverty Law Center. With about 96,000 appeals pending, there remains a serious challenge with the appeals backlog at VEC, said Pat Levy-Lavelle, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Justice Center. Weakening due-process rights for employers and claimants alike ... is precisely the wrong approach for resolving it. The subcommittee split on party lines, with Republicans blaming long backlogs at the VEC on the previous, Democratic governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. They touted the progress made in the past year by Youngkin, a Republican, as pressure from new claims has eased with the economys recovery from public health restrictions that led to a massive surge in unemployment almost three years ago. Democrats responded warily to the proposal, with Del. Kaye Kory, D-Fairfax, asking how the Youngkin administration would improve its handling of unemployment claims and appeals without disenfranchising any of the people who are appealing? Roth said the process of appealing a decision on eligibility for unemployment is not difficult. You can write it on a napkin and we will accept that appeal, she said. Roth said most of the appeals were filed last summer, as the VEC focused on eliminating the backlog of cases awaiting determination of eligibility and reports from employers about why former employees lost their jobs. In an interview Tuesday, Levy-Lavelle agreed that reducing the backlog of undecided claims caused a surge in the number of cases under appeal. Its sort of like the pig and the python its sort of moving through the first backlog, he said. But the VEC has also struggled to quickly resolve appeals in the states two-tiered system. Last fall, the state ranked fifth in the country for the longest wait in deciding appeals at the first level, at more than 305 days at the lowest level, and 14th at the higher level, about 98 days. The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission heard last month that the General Assembly and the VEC had taken steps last year to smooth the process, including making some types of cases ineligible for appeal and requiring the agency to establish a clear appeals process for claimants. The commission staff also raised concerns about the adequacy of the agencys staffing to handle the appeals. Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, is sponsoring the bill in the House for the governors office. Sen. John Bell, D-Loudoun, is carrying it in the Senate. Walker said Virginia is one of 13 states with a 30-day waiting period, but Levy-Lavelle reminded the committee that the General Assembly had moved the deadline for filing appeals from 21 days to 30 days in 1999 under legislation sponsored by then-Del. Jo Ann Davis, a Republican who later served in Congress, and signed by then-Gov. Jim Gilmore. Walker said he introduced the bill to speed the appeals process and make it more efficient. Over the last several years, this has been the number one issue in our localities, helping people get the benefits they need in a timely manner, he said. But Levy-Lavelle said, Government efficiency cannot mean shutting the door on Virginians sooner. Jeff E. Schapiro Follow Jeff E. Schapiro 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 Morrissey vs. Morrissey sums up more than the sad and seamy collapse of the marriage of a state senator, Joe, and his former receptionist, Myrna, that sprang from their law-breaking dalliance; that he was 57 and she was 17 too young, under the Code of Virginia, to have sex. Morrissey vs. Morrissey also speaks to Joes apparent conflict with himself; that his personal conduct that some describe, depending on whos talking, as dangerous, exploitative or despicable overshadows a legislative record that is not only productive and prescient but history-making. Put another way: Joe Morrissey has a knack for upstaging himself even when hes at center stage. Morrissey is smart, energetic and hungry for attention. He can quickly absorb vast quantities of complex information and then share it with a broad audience in language it understands. But the intellect and empathy that requires doesnt keep him out of trouble. Rather, it creates more, ensuring Morrissey is always noticed. In the short term, people will remember the peccadillos, Morrissey said in an interview Tuesday. In the long term, theyre going to remember the legislation you left in the General Assembly. Morrissey, facing a primary challenge from former Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg whos promising to make much of the senators support of certain restrictions on abortion seems to acknowledge that while much of his publicity has been bad, it is, nonetheless, publicity. Citing the pithy wisdom of a fellow Irishman, Oscar Wilde, the poet and playwright, Morrissey said, The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about. In 2020, the General Assembly approved and then-Gov. Ralph Northam signed Morrisseys legislation ending Virginias 224-year practice of jury sentencing. A breakthrough hastened by total Democratic control of state government, the law in deferring, as most states do, to judges to set penalties for felons aims to end punishment that often fell hardest on Black defendants. Thats one great bill, said Brian Moran, a former prosecutor and legislator who was Northams public safety secretary. Last year, Morrissey tucked into the state budget language that prohibited Richmond from holding a do-over referendum on a proposed casino, it having been rejected by voters in 2020. The maneuver was intended to give Petersburg, an impoverished city at the south end of Morrisseys district, central Virginias first, if not only, casino. No fan of Morrissey, Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond as so many ambitious local elective officials do, pining for bright, shiny objects that attract voters wants the General Assembly to lift the restriction. And this year, for the third time, Morrissey is embarking on a crusade likely to run into trouble with Republicans who now control the House of Delegates: strict limits on solitary confinement for inmates. Much like bills Morrissey pushed for years to make it easier to erase from a Virginians record misdemeanor drug convictions post-George Floyd, the proposal became a reality restricting solitary confinement will probably require more than a single General Assembly session. Fellow lawmakers particularly those who, like Morrissey, represent the Richmond area and prefer to speak privately for fear of triggering his sometimes-violent temper and penchant for publicly settling scores view him as effective but say he would be more so were his moral compass as true as his policy compass. You turn around, and hes in the newspapers; then you turn around, and hes accomplishing things, said Tony Troy, a former Virginia attorney general who represented Morrissey in the delinquency-of-a-minor case that centered on the legislators trysts with a then-17-year-old Myrna and would cost him his law license. Months of murmuring about the state of their marriage gave way this week to a front-page story about Joes alleged infidelity; that he fathered fraternal twins by another woman and that Myrnas boyfriend had allegedly beaten the Morrisseys young son they have three children with a belt to his bare buttocks. Once again and this has been the pattern since Morrisseys first electoral victory in 1989 for Richmond prosecutor the Morrissey story isnt about politics but the personal: fisticuffs in a courthouse with another lawyer, twice losing his license to practice law, and commuting to the General Assembly from the Henrico County jail where he served three months on work-release for his sexual relationship with underage Myrna. Represented by Troy, Morrissey now 65 and the father of eight children by five women agreed to a plea deal in 2015 in which he admitted no guilt and avoided felony conviction. Morrissey at the time, a member of the House and stripped of his committee assignments by the Republican speaker entered a so-called Alford plea to a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, under which he maintained his innocence while acknowledging strong evidence of actual guilt. That his relationships with women are often at the core of this or that controversy, Morrissey suggests a double-standard; that the public and press are not interested in the sexual appetites of other Virginia political figures whose private lives have been voluntarily and involuntarily aired. But Morrissey is closely watched these days for reasons less amorous and more political. Morrissey has said, citing his Catholic faith, that he is keeping an open mind amid Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkins post-Roe push to ban most abortions, perhaps after 20 weeks. (Youngkin is pushing for 15 weeks with exceptions; some Republicans have posited 20 weeks as a fallback option.) In the closely divided Senate, that could augur what for Democrats is unthinkable: Virginia, where there is broad support for abortion rights, instead, reins them in. Morrisseys leverage, however, could fade with the victory last week of Democrat Aaron Rouse to what had been a Republican-held Senate seat in Virginia Beach, giving Democrats a 22-18 edge in the chamber. And if Morrissey is check-mated as a trouble-maker on abortion, his personal troubles could swell in significance. Morrissey doesnt see it that way. Reeling off the issues in which hes been front and center, Morrissey said, At the end of the day, the death penalty was abolished in Virginia. Solitary confinement will be abolished. There are more mental health dockets in Virginia. That will be remembered long after were in the grave with worms eating us. PHOTOS: Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Joe Morrissey Virginia Commonwealth University Health will allow some inpatients to be treated at home as part of a new program, the health system announced this week. Patients with low-acuity ailments who live within 25 miles of the medical center can choose to stay home if their insurer agrees. VCU staff will come to the patients home and monitor him or her remotely. The aim is to take the inpatient experience out of a hospital bed and put it in the patients home. The program, called Home Hospital, is the first of its kind in the area, VCU Health said. It is expected to improve health outcomes, lower costs and expand capacity at the VCU medical center. Patients with diseases such as sepsis, congestive heart failure or pneumonia would be eligible. VCU believes as much as 10% of its patient population could take part. COVID is on the decline in Virginia COVID has surged in each of the past two Januarys. But hospitalizations have declined for the past eight days. First, a patient must first physically visit the VCU emergency room to be diagnosed. Once at home, patients are monitored remotely, visited in person at least twice a day and contacted by doctors through video. They can receive medication, conduct imaging such as X-rays and draw blood for testing. Currently, only patients with original Medicare and those paying out of pocket are eligible to participate. VCU Health is in conversation with all the major insurers, said Jay Holdren, a senior director at VCU Health. He expects insurers and the Department of Medical Assistance which oversees Medicaid in the state to give their approval. In November 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a waiver that allowed hospitals to treat Medicare patients at home. The decision was made with the pandemic in mind, but health leaders quickly realized the move had permanent implications. Patients treated at home are less likely to die, are released from the hospital earlier and are less likely to be readmitted, Holdren said. Medicare patients who stayed home generally incurred 25% less cost. More than 250 hospitals across the country have started similar programs, Holdren added. VCU wont apply an additional charge for staying home, but it also wont offer a discount. Instead of paying for a hospital bed, patients are paying for nurses and medics to drive to their house. When a patient chooses to stay home, he or she opens a much-needed bed in the medical center, Holdren said. VCUs downtown hospital often operates at more than 90% capacity. Implementing the program required hiring additional nurses, care coordinators and medics not an easy task in a labor market starving for nurses. But the program is innovative and appealing, Holdren said nurses get to leave the hospital and provide a different kind of care. Currently, VCU will not offer the program to patients living at nursing homes, but Holdren said that policy could change eventually. VCU already offers home-based primary care, telehealth appointments, remote patient monitoring and home hospice care. Dispatch Health, which offers at-home urgent care and some emergency room services, came to Richmond in 2019. It treats ailments such as infections, flu, pneumonia and COVID-19. Dispatch Health partners with Bon Secours. Close 11-01-1972: Rescue vehicle parked by the river. 04-07-1971: Rescue squad at scene of auto accident at Thompson Street and Monument Avenue. 07-28-1966 (cutline): Three injured on Interstate 95 Raymond D. Ashe, a member of the Ashland Rescue Squad, gives first aid to Miss Ellen Baum, 14, niece of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Mininberg of Washington on Interstate 95 about six miles north of Ashland. Mr. and Mrs. Miniberg were pinned in the front seat of their car, which went out of control about noon yesterday in the southbound lane and crashed against an embankment. Mr. and Mrs. Mininberg were taken to Richmond Memorial Hosptial to be treated. 01-04-1960: Rescue men leaving the scene. 10-16-1972 (cutline): Rescue Squad Parade: The Henrico Volunteer Rescue Squad held a parade yesterday to kick of its 1972 fund drive. Five other rescue squads participated in the parade that began in Sandston and ended at the host squad's new headquarters at 5401 Huntman Road. The fund drive goal is $30,000. 08-18-1980 (cutline): Sue, Bill Collins check rescue equipment in new squad program. 06-15-1973 (cutline): Mary Lou Mountcastle, Sarah Cooley, and Mary Beth Wilson of the Henrico Volunteer Rescue Squad. 12-14-1983 (cutline): Mark Hardy, Mike Watson, Russ Mollenauer and Debbie Mollenauer form the tactical squad for the Hanover County Tactical Rescue Team. 12-13-1973 (cutline): East Hanover crew communicates on the move. Mrs. Joyce Gill, Mrs. Betty Throckmorton. From the Archives: RVA Rescue Squads 11-01-1972: Rescue vehicle parked by the river. 04-07-1971: Rescue squad at scene of auto accident at Thompson Street and Monument Avenue. 07-28-1966 (cutline): Three injured on Interstate 95 Raymond D. Ashe, a member of the Ashland Rescue Squad, gives first aid to Miss Ellen Baum, 14, niece of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Mininberg of Washington on Interstate 95 about six miles north of Ashland. Mr. and Mrs. Miniberg were pinned in the front seat of their car, which went out of control about noon yesterday in the southbound lane and crashed against an embankment. Mr. and Mrs. Mininberg were taken to Richmond Memorial Hosptial to be treated. 01-04-1960: Rescue men leaving the scene. 10-16-1972 (cutline): Rescue Squad Parade: The Henrico Volunteer Rescue Squad held a parade yesterday to kick of its 1972 fund drive. Five other rescue squads participated in the parade that began in Sandston and ended at the host squad's new headquarters at 5401 Huntman Road. The fund drive goal is $30,000. 08-18-1980 (cutline): Sue, Bill Collins check rescue equipment in new squad program. 06-15-1973 (cutline): Mary Lou Mountcastle, Sarah Cooley, and Mary Beth Wilson of the Henrico Volunteer Rescue Squad. 12-14-1983 (cutline): Mark Hardy, Mike Watson, Russ Mollenauer and Debbie Mollenauer form the tactical squad for the Hanover County Tactical Rescue Team. 12-13-1973 (cutline): East Hanover crew communicates on the move. Mrs. Joyce Gill, Mrs. Betty Throckmorton. Criminal cell members arrested in recent Cancun takedown from Jalisco Nuevo Generacion Cartel Cancun, Q.R. A total of 13 arrests were made in two operations in Cancun Saturday along with the seizure of six weapons. Those arrested have been identified as being from the Jalisco Nuevo Generacion Cartel. In a press conference Tuesday, FGE head Oscar Montes de Oca, reported on the January 14 take down of criminal cell members. He said that all 13 were arrested in two operations from SM 104. The take down was the result of information obtained in various investigations related to the crimes of homicide, criminal association and drugs. From that, 13 people were arrested as well as the seizure of six firearms, various cartridges, a van and two motorcycles. He reported that the two groups they arrested from SM 104 allegedly participated in various criminal acts and were hiding in the city. In the first group of arrests, a search warrant issued by a Cancun judge Saturday lead to the capture of six people and the seizure of five firearms, two long and three short. At approximately the same time, a second operation was carried out that resulted in the arrests of seven more. They were arrested with narcotics and one firearm. 13 members of the Jalisco Nuevo Generacion cartel were arrested in Cancun January 14, 2023. Montes de Oca said that according to the initial investigations, these people are members of the Jalisco Nuevo Generacion cartel, all from different states of the Mexican Republic. They arrived in the state of Quintana Roo approximately two months ago and rented homes where they received orders to carry out illegal activities. He added that their initial information pegged the group as being in possession of at least 20 long weapons and three short ones, for which police will continue their search. Elderly cruise ship passenger rushed to Cancun hospital from Isla Mujeres Isla Mujeres, Q.R. An 86-year-old man was rushed to Cancun hospital from a US cruise ship Monday due to a heart condition. Mexican Navy personnel met the ship approximately eight nautical miles (14.8 kilometers) northeast of Isla Mujeres. Through a statement, the Secretary of the Navy said that they received a call for help in the Command and Control Room of the Ninth Naval Region regarding an 86-year-old passenger. Personnel from the Isla Mujeres Naval Search, Rescue and Maritime Surveillance Station (ENSAR) met the ship and transferred the man to a waiting ambulance at Puerto Juarez from where he was transferred to Cancun hospital. His condition is unknown. Lopez Obrador announces new appointments in the nations security Mexico City, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has announced two new appointments in the nations security. On Monday, Lopez Obrador announced the appointment of Luis Rodriguez Bucio as Undersecretary of the Secretariat for Citizen Security and Protection. Rodriguez Bucio assumes the position, replacing Ricardo Mejia Berdeja. Buico had been serving as Commander of the National Guard. At the head of this corporation is David Cordova Campos. Campos was sworn in as the new Commander of the National Guard on Tuesday by Rosa Icela Rodriguez, the governments Secretary of Security. After the swearing-in ceremony, she said that the National Guard has contributed to reducing violence in various parts of the country then thanked the previous Commander, Rodriguez Bucio, for his role. The former secretary-treasurer of a now defunct Roanoke labor union was sentenced to six months in prison Tuesday for embezzling nearly $40,000 from dues paid by his fellow workers. Albert Jennings Jr. took the money over five years from the Transportation Communications Union Lodge 6061, which represented about 20 freight car men employees of Norfolk Southern Corp. at the time the thefts were discovered. The lodge was forced to disband as a result of Jennings actions, U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen said in imposing a sentence higher than that recommended by federal prosecutors and defense attorney Rob Dean. As part of a plea agreement reached last year, both sides agreed that an appropriate sentence would be six months of home confinement, 300 hours of community service and two years of supervised probation. But the agreement was not binding on Cullen, who said a prison sentence was needed, in part, to deter other people who hold positions of public trust. The judge said Jennings used the unions money for a personal piggy bank, spending the proceeds on vacations, home repairs, cigars and online betting, among other things. One can infer from this that Mr. Jennings viewed the lodges treasury as his own personal slush fund, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Bassford wrote in court documents. Dean had argued that his client, a 56-year-old U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran with no prior criminal record, succumbed to the easy access of union funds to help make ends meet after taking custody of his nephew, whom he raised along with two daughters. Money missing from the unions accounts was discovered through a routine audit by the Department of Labor, according to court records. Jennings, who now lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, has paid back the $39,331.14 he embezzled from 2013 to 2018. In addition to imposing a six-month prison term, Cullen ordered that Jennings be placed on probation for a year following his release, which will include three months of house arrest and 200 hours of community service. Jennings was allowed to remain free on bond Tuesday until he is told by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to self-report to a corrections facility. CHRISTIANSBURG A Montgomery County man accused of killing his sometime girlfriend last year now faces a first-degree murder charge and the possibility of life in prison. James Hunter Stallard, 38, was arrested in June after the discovery of the body of Crystal Dawn Raines Hannah, 44, with whom authorities said Stallard shared a turbulent relationship for about a dozen years. Stallard eventually told investigators that Hannah had been at his residence in the 2600 block of North Fork Road, and that a fight began as she was getting ready to leave for work. The conflict was sparked by Stallard wanting to see messages on Hannahs cellphone that he thought were from other men, according to recordings of Stallards statements that were played last year in court. When Hannah told Stallard that her phone was none of his business, he hit and choked her until she died, Stallard told investigators in the recorded statements. He said that he then took her body to a wooded area across North Fork Road and covered her in leaves. Stallard initially was charged with second-degree murder, which carries a penalty of of five to 40 years behind bars. This month, a grand jury indicted Stallard on the first-degree murder charge, and the second-degree charge was removed from the court docket. The difference between the two murder charges is that a first-degree charge involves either premeditation, which is some amount of advance planning for a crime, or a killing that occurs during the commission or attempted commission of a list of other crimes including robbery, abduction, rape, arson and more. If convicted of first-degree murder, the minimum sentence is 20 years in prison. Neither Montgomery County Commonwealths Attorney Mary Pettitt or defense attorney Brad McConnell of Blacksburg had any comment this week on the change in murder charges. Stallard also is charged with concealing a body, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Stallard is being held in the Western Virginia Regional Jail. He has a Feb. 15 hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court to set a schedule for resolving his case. Police have charged a Roanoke woman with second-degree murder in connection with the citys first homicide of 2023. Charlotte Renee Saunders, 48, of Roanoke has been arrested and charged for the shooting that killed a man in the 800 block of 30th Street on Jan. 8, city police said in a press release Tuesday. Police said earlier that the victim suffered a gunshot wound. Throughout the investigation, Saunders was identified as the suspect, police said. Officers were able to locate Saunders and bring her to the Roanoke Police Department to speak with detectives over the weekend. Then, Saunders was charged and taken into custody without incident, police said. Her first appearance in Roanoke General District Court is scheduled for Feb. 16. Police have not identified the victim of the Jan. 8 shooting, and their investigation of the incident is ongoing. No further details are available at this time, police said A plan was approved by the Roanoke City Council on Tuesday night to turn the old American Viscose Plant area in southeast into Riverdale, a 75-plus acre mixed-use transformation over a number of years. Riverdale a collaboration involving the city, the Roanoke Economic Development Authority and developer Ed Walker would seek to preserve elements of the areas industrial heritage with some of such uses of the space, along with residences, commercial buildings, artist studios and other amenities. The agreement approved unanimously by council includes a $10 million forgivable performance loan, $8.2 million for acquisition and $1.8 million for site remediation, according to a news release about the Riverdale plan late Tuesday. Most of the remediation effort will focus on removing debris, which ranges from salvaged automobiles to heavy equipment, according to discussion at the council meeting. The agreement accounts for a 17-year performance period, and requires Walker to invest at least $50 million. The area carries a historic district designation with at least 20 contributing structures and sites, many of which will be rehabilitated. Its those structures and sites that contribute to the sites placement, too, on the National Register of Historic places. At the councils Tuesday evening meeting, City Manager Bob Cowell said proposed tax rebate and partial tax exemptions would also support development costs. There will be additional infrastructure investment ... along with zoning and a whole host of other things, Cowell said. All of that will be determined through a master planning process, Cowell said. This is not a regular redevelopment project by any stretch of the imagination, Cowell said. He said typical redevelopment tactics wont necessarily be sufficient for a former heavy industrial property of over one million square feet. However, Cowell said he believes the project could transform southeast Roanoke and later compared the projects scale to that of the downtown area decades ago. The area has potential, Cowell said, being near the Roanoke River, greenway, Mill Mountain and downtown Roanoke. At the same time, he acknowledged, the site has flooding hazards, insufficient public infrastructure, obsolete structures, and lots of debris. Acquisition of the property is expected in April, followed by property clean up that will initially focus on the 9th Street corridor. There are a number of businesses currently operating in the area, and Cowell said the city hopes they will be part of the transformation. There will also be space for new structures added after the removal of salvaged vehicles. Some of the existing buildings will be rehabilitated for commercial and residential uses. An economic study prepared by Chmura Economics indicates that the first phase alone could generate more than $300 million in economic impact, supporting 2,000 jobs in the process, according to the release. If theres anyone who can pull the project off, Cowell said, its Walker. Hes doing it in other parts of the state. If theres anyone that knows how to pull off something as crazy as this may seem, its him, Cowell said. It will take a long time, and we will be thoughtful and patient to get the best outcomes. But, Im optimistic that we will quickly see progress on site and make planning and design progress with consultants and partners, Walker said in the release. Approval of the agreement is on the agenda for the EDAs meeting Wednesday, Jan. 18. A Natural Bridge Station man died after his motorcycle and an SUV collided in Botetourt County on Sunday. Mark Lee Braford, 63, was driving a 2004 Harley Davidson north on Frontage Road near Interstate 81 at about 6 p.m. when it struck a 2018 Toyota Rav4, Virginia State Police said in a press release Tuesday. The collision occurred north of Arcadia Road near I-81s exit 168. As the Toyota slowed to make a left turn into a driveway, it was hit by Brafords bike, police said. Braford, who was wearing a safety helmet, died at the scene of the collision. The driver of the Toyota was not injured. The incident remains under state police investigation. Renovating Catawba Hospital to treat people with substance use disorder could require an investment of as much as $240 million from Virginia government, according to a study commissioned by the state legislature. That investment to renovate the state-run psychiatric hospital in Roanoke County would serve a growing need, and in the long-term save money for the state, according to the feasibility analysis report for Catawba Hospital Campus Transformation, delivered to state lawmakers by John Littel, Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources. It should be noted that every dollar spent on increasing access to care for substance use disorders results in a savings of $11, ($4 in health care costs and $7 in criminal justice costs), reads a copy of the 127-page analysis, obtained Tuesday by The Roanoke Times. Catawba Hospital has been state-owned property since 1908, transitioning from a tuberculosis sanatorium in the 1960s to a behavioral health facility. Its one of nine mental health facilities operated by the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, and one of three located in the Appalachian region of Virginia. The rise in substance use disorder nationally and particularly in the Appalachian area of Virginia over the last 20 years has resulted in an increased need to treat individuals for substance use disorder and the mental health issues which often accompany the disease, the analysis reads. Located at the epicenter of this growing crisis in the Commonwealth, Catawba Hospital is poised to become a state-of-the-art facility for substance use disorder treatment and recovery of individuals with this disease. Data in the analysis demonstrated a strong connection between mental illness and substance use disorder. Between 35% and 55% of patients treated at the three state hospitals had both substance use disorder and mental health illness, according to the report. Just 10% of patients had only substance use disorder and no underlying mental illness. The transformed Catawba Hospital campus would support patients with dual diagnoses, a person who experiences both a mental health issue such as depression, and a substance use disorder concurrently, according to the report. Today we know that individuals who are dual diagnosed with disorders who have successful and long-lasting recovery must be treated for both conditions at the same time. Three proposed tiers of renovations are recommended, ranging in scope and cost from $147 million to $240 million. All three proposed plans call for more inpatient beds, plus a new outpatient care, education and research building unique to substance use disorder treatment, to help address growing need. After fully analyzing the IBM/Watson data and the DBHDS historical data, it was determined that there is a need for approximately 100150 Acute Behavioral Health Beds, 80-120 residential [substance use disorder] treatment beds and 16 Detox Beds in the surrounding Catawba Hospital area through 2030, according to the report. A public-private partnership was suggested, to manage day-to-day operations of the renovated space. Currently Catawba Hospital has sufficient staff to perform its mission. However, in all three option models, additional staff with potentially different expertise will be needed, according to the report. Current lack of reliable public transportation is a significant barrier to transforming the Catawba Hospital campus into a best-in-class expanded facility. The Roanoke-based Valley Metro was floated as a possible solution for the public transportation issue, though analysis said new routes to Catawba Hospital would require approval from that services governing board. The feasibility analysis was conducted on behalf of state agencies by Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated, a real estate services company, using $750,000 allocated for that purpose by state lawmakers last year. With state legislature convened in Richmond until March for its annual lawmaking session, Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, is carrying a bill that would direct state agencies to carry out the transformation of Catawba Hospital into a state-of-the-art facility at which a continuum of substance abuse treatment and recovery services is provided. The bill, HB 2192, filed Jan. 11, awaits referral to a House committee. During an interview before the start of session, Rasoul said the bill is about tackling the opioid epidemic, and realizing the full potential of Catawba Hospital. Its several hundred acres that we could be utilizing better, at least for substance use disorder inpatient treatment, Rasoul said. Our hope is for the analysis to warrant a significant investment on the campus to have more resources for the area. CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. " " ChatGPT, released in 2022 by a San Francisco-based company called OpenAI, quickly creates detailed responses and articulate answers to questions, which has educators concerned. GPT is short for "generative pre-trained transformer." CHUAN CHUAN/Shutterstock Don't believe everything you read on the internet, but at this point in time, you can be reasonably sure the article you're reading right now was written by a person. I, a human being, give you my carbon-based guarantee that I cast about in my mind for each and every word you're about to read and I had to learn to do this thing, first with the help of teachers and then by way of thousands of hours of practice. That's how it's always been with writing: Whether you wrote it yourself, plagiarized it, paraphrased it or took dictation, writing has always come from some person's brain and through some person's fingers. It is now early 2023, and that's beginning to change and with it, the way students learn to write. In November of 2022, a seven-year-old company called OpenAI released a chatbot called ChatGPT short for "generative pre-trained transformer" which was immediately heralded as the best piece of artificial intelligence software ever made. Advertisement Chatbots aren't a new idea in 1950, Alan Turing, a pioneer in modern computing and artificial intelligence, wrote a paper called "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" in which he described the "Imitation Game" now called the "Turing Test" that could measure a machine's ability to act in ways that might be indistinguishable from those of a human. Now, ChatGPT can write just about anything jokes about elephants in the style of a pirate, elementary school book reports about Dolley Madison, country songs written from the perspective of a mongoose, flourless banana bread recipes you name it. The wildest part is, ChatGPT can make whatever it turns out seem like it was written in any voice you tell it to imitate. This, of course, has educators panicking. Tracking debates: In the Odycceus project, researchers use empirical methods and models to investigate opinion dynamics. The picture shows the results of researchers at the Free University of Brussels who analyzed the course of discussions on articles from The Guardian newspaper about climate change. The different colours correspond to different topics in the articles. Credit: VU Brussel/Michael Anslow Hate speech, propaganda, and disinformation are increasingly relevant problems on the internet and social media. Efforts to regulate undesirable online content through platform-specific rules or legislation have been unsuccessful. Johanna Rinceanu and Randall Stephenson, senior researchers at the Department of Criminal Law at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, believe that what is needed is a more precise diagnosis of the underlying causes. Such a legal approach should be inspired by lessons from social medicine. What do medical diagnosis and modern-day internet regulation have in common? The German physician Rudolf Virchow stated in 1848 that "medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale." As the founder of modern pathology and social medicine, Virchow challenged emerging 19th-century trends towards biological reductionism and genetic determinism. An impassioned advocate for social reform, he maintained that, if medicine was to fulfill its great task of nurturing health and reducing disease, then society as a whole must be changed through political action. Modern medicine's greatest idea was born. Envisioning a medical profession that required physicians to explore complex relationships between socio-political stressors and bodily experience, Virchow regarded physicians as "the natural attorneys of the poor." This shift in the roles and identities of doctors and lawyers was born from his deep conviction that the lessons of medical science must be applied to the organization and structure of society's laws and regulations. Given this portrayal, if physicians were society's "natural attorneys" and politicians its "natural anthropologists," then lawyers might be best understood as its "natural diagnosticians." Following radical 20th-century breakthroughs in theoretical physics, this shift in scientific perspective precipitated the American psychiatrist George Engel's innovative biopsychosocial model of health and illness in 1960. In Engel's view, the medical profession was in crisis because of its adherence to an outdated biomedical model that was no longer fit for its scientific tasks and social responsibilities. In its place, Engel argued for a new paradigm that would employ a more dynamic, holistic approach. Like Virchow before him, Engel yearned for an epistemological shift in medical science focused on greater interaction between biological, psychological, and social factors. Socio-political influences were again attributed vital causal and diagnostic importance. This short review of systems-inspired research paradigms is arguably more important than ever in our 21st-century media environment. An illustrative example is Elon Musk's acquisition of the social networking platform Twitter for the sum of USD 44 billion. With his stated intention to redress increasing threats to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, Musk quickly learned of the underlying nature and dysfunctions of our modern digital media landscape. Twitterlike other social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagramhas been increasingly susceptible to alarming online content, including hate speech, image-based harassment, racism, right-wing extremism, propaganda, disinformation, and fake news. Though the officially stated reason for Musk's attempt to walk away from the deal was misrepresentations concerning the number of fake Twitter accounts, it is important to emphasize that well-intentioned efforts to safeguard press freedom and human rights norms are increasingly frustrated by rising regulatory challengesbe it in the form of regulatory norms or self-imposed social media communication rules. The latter are unique to our networked public sphere and include community guidelines for prohibiting certain online content, such as threats of violence, hate speech, the targeting of private individuals, and support or praise of terrorism, organized crime, and hate groups. Breaches of self-imposed communication rules and guidelines normally result in the removal or blocking of the corresponding content by the social media platform itself. Yet, despite numerous state and platform-specific regulatory efforts, hate speech, online violence, and fake news are seemingly unstoppable. One explanation for the failure of online media regulation could be that a mix of international, supranational, and domestic regulations have not treated hate speech, right-wing extremism, or fake news as "symptoms" of an underlying disease, but rather as separate, specific ailments. As typified by the newly passed EU Digital Services Actwhich aims to harmonize domestic laws in the European Union that regulate illegal online contentthe primary outcome of this reductionist approach is a fragmented and ultimately ineffective strategy. As with Virchow and Engel in their own times, our modern public sphere is a uniquely self-referential and self-stabilizing system that requires concentrated and coordinated responses from its physician-attorneys, politician-anthropologists, and lawyer-diagnosticians. Virchow's pioneering understanding of the complementarity between physicians and attorneys is further supported by remarkable synergies between functionalismcomparative law's dominant methodologyand the practice of medical diagnosis. The problems facing comparative law have increased in importance due to the global reach of digital communications technology and online media regulation. For example, the world's first online regulatory frameworkGermany's NetzDG, which requires social media platforms to identify and remove illegal online contenthas been hastily transplanted into jurisdictions with fundamentally different and potentially incompatible constitutional contexts. Countries like Belarus, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Philippines, and Russia have adapted Germany's legislative approach by requiring social media platforms to delete or block "unlawful" political content within unreasonably short deadlines with little reflection on jurisdictional differences. Those failing to comply are subject to exorbitant fines. Such reactionary internet regulation poses an increasing threat to freedoms of conscience, religion, and expression and forces private social media platforms into the unwanted role of internet gatekeepers at the threshold of human rightsa role better performed by lawyers. Functionalist comparative law methods might one day mend this undesirable regulatory setting. Similar to issues of health and illness, the functionalist method aims to discover broader socio-political connections underlying outward differences in legal doctrine. Advancing from detailed descriptions of domestic legal regimes (e.g. differing hate speech regulations in Germany and America), to more theoretical "system-building"which aims to expose hidden socio-political problems common to different countriesfunctionalist methods might be used to better diagnose the underlying nature of the online regulatory challenges impacting nations worldwide. These methodological similarities can be better understood by comparing functionalism and medical diagnosis in greater depth. First, both are best understood as a continuous process of information gathering, integration, and interpretation about underlying dysfunctions, and operate under conditions of uncertainty. As with comparative law, the purpose of diagnosis is not to attain "certainty," but to reduce the level of uncertainty to a degree that will allow timely and effective therapeutic intervention. A second similarity involves shared approaches to exercising judgment. In medical diagnosis, this manifests as clinical reasoning which, as the clinician's "quintessential competency," is the cognitive process necessary for properly evaluating and managing patients' medical problems. Likewise, functionalism involves a self-reflexive process whose primary objective is to expose shared regulatory aims concealed by variations in legal doctrine. Similar to diagnostic methods, this process involves: first, obtaining data on domestic legal systems and their institutional contexts; second, evaluating differences and similarities between domestic legal regimes; and third, updating working hypotheses endeavoring to recast legal differences through the lens of shared regulatory objectives. Once this process has advanced enough to reduce uncertainty in our leading hypothesis, law reforms can be proposed to restore balance to the dysfunctional network with which the original "legal" problem most natively interacts. As in the field of diagnostics, the ultimate success of functionalism depends on optimizing our understanding of "medical" and "legal" phenomena by shifting our evaluative focus to systems and broader contextual thinking. Whether engaging in medical diagnosis or functionalist "system-building," this requires the physician-attorney and lawyer-diagnostician to replace overly reductionist methods by constructing "total pictures" and tracking complex causal interrelationships and their impacts on individuals and broader social systems. What lessons can be learned from comparing medical diagnosis with internet regulation? First, rather than seeking inflexible legal rules and principles, comparative law methods should be adapted to formulate a more flexible framework that exposes the underlying reality of today's digital media challenges. Given each nation's unique institutional and media context, efforts to "harmonize" and "universalize" regulations through legal translation or legal transplantation should be discouraged. Such regulatory approaches might be manipulated by non-democratic states and, without appropriate constitutional and legal safeguards, could easily foster state propaganda and online censorship. Second, online regulators ought to eschew rigidly categorized, overly-reductionist approaches. One such example is insisting upon an internationally recognized definition of hate speech that applies equally to all jurisdictions. Emergent metadisciplines such as media ecology can better inform our regulatory efforts by exposing the permanent connections and interdependence of complex phenomena such as hate speech and online violence. By revealing their underlying structure and dynamics, we are better positioned to distinguish between symptoms and root causes, thereby enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of our diagnostic efforts and regulatory interventions. Lastly, borrowing a page from Rudolf Virchow himself, today's generation of lawyer-diagnosticians must question the epistemic realities and structure of our contemporary media environmenta critical first step in diagnosing the true nature of the social ills that our global regulatory efforts ultimately aim to redress. Equally vital, a flexible, updated approach to media regulation should be accompanied by a "netiquette" of tolerance, pluralism, equality, and respect for diversity, in conjunction with inter-group dialog, counter-speech, and human-rights oriented educationnone of which can be achieved without first heeding the systems-inspired lessons of our scientific forebears. Provided by Max Planck Society If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE). DC Council overrides DC mayor's veto of significant criminal justice reform bill | Main | The look of a federal capital moratorium(?): prosecutors not seeking death penalty for El Paso Walmart shooter January 17, 2023 California working to clear condemned inmates from death row This recent NPR piece, headlined "California says it will dismantle death row. The move brings cheers and anger," provides an interesting overview of the state of California's death penalty as it seeks to clear the nation's largest (and largely dormant) death row. I recommend the full piece, and here are excerpts: California this week pushed ahead with controversial efforts to dismantle the largest death row system in America. Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state is moving to make the transfer of condemned inmates permanent and mandatory after what the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) calls a successful pilot program that voluntarily moved 101 inmates off death row into general population prisons across the state.... After a 45-day public comment period and a public hearing in March, the state hopes to start moving all 671 death row inmates 650 men and 21 women into several other prisons across the state with high-security units. Some prisoners will be able to get jobs or cellmates if they are mainstreamed into the general prison population. The CDCR says the move allows the state "to phase out the practice of segregating people on death row based solely on their sentence." No inmates will be re-sentenced and no death row commutations offered, officials say. Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. Prosecutors can still seek it. But no one has been put to death in the state in 17 years. And in 2019, Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and he closed the death chamber at San Quentin, the decrepit and still heavily used 19th century prison overlooking San Francisco Bay. Those who get prison jobs as clerks, laundry or kitchen helpers will see 70 percent of their pay go to victims' families, as required under Proposition 66. That 2016 voter-passed initiative amended California's Penal Code to require death-sentenced inmates to work and pay restitution.... But death penalty proponents and victims' rights advocates are frustrated and angry. "To hear this news is devastating," says Sandra Friend. She described feeling victimized all over again. Her 8-year-old son Michael Lyons was making his way home from school in Yuba City, Calif., in 1996 when he was abducted and sodomized by serial killer Robert Boyd Rhoades, who dumped the child's body in a riverbed.... In part, California's death penalty reforms grew out of 2016's Prop. 66, which promised to speed up the time between a death sentence and an execution. The successful ballot measure also required condemned prisoners to work and pay restitution. Now death penalty proponents accuse Newsom of exploiting a lesser-known section of Prop. 66 for his own ideological and political purposes. "The governor has taken loopholes and nuances in the law and used them to give criminals the worst criminals a break," says Michael Rushford, president of the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "To start mainstreaming people like Tiequon Cox, who killed an entire family in Los Angeles after going to the wrong address to do a gang hit, is an abandonment of justice. Injecting politics into criminal justice and public safety is insane. It's unjust, unfair and it's stupid."... In California, Sandra Friend says it's outrageous that killers like Rhoades may "get rewarded," as she puts it, with expanded work options, even a cellmate. "For him to be able to leave death row and go into a cushier prison, having maybe possibly a cellie, having a job, is terrifying because he is the worst of the worst. He is a monster," she says. State officials underscore that inmate transfers and their housing will depend on the specific facts of each inmate. "Their housing would depend on their individual case factors, and it's what the multidisciplinary teams will be evaluating," says CDCR spokeswoman Vicky Waters.... The state hopes to permanently empty California's death row by this fall, a CDCR official says. Friend vows to fight the effort. A public hearing on the issue is scheduled in Sacramento for March 8. "I'm definitely going to make Michael's voice heard," she says, "because he's the one that is getting lost in all of this." January 17, 2023 at 09:13 PM | Permalink Comments Gavin Newsom is a disgusting creature. He violated his own ukases regarding COVID-19, yet was not prosecuted. In a normal society, he'd resign in disgrace. Posted by: federalist | Jan 18, 2023 9:24:37 AM Federalist, ever since you outed yourself as a person who thinks Donald Trump was a "great President," we cannot take seriously any comment you make. Posted by: anon | Jan 18, 2023 10:45:33 AM It is more than ironic that the President of the CJLF is criticizing the execution of the law, Prop 66, that his legal director wrote. Will Kent Scheidegger be looking for a new job? Posted by: Fuzzyone | Jan 18, 2023 10:52:22 AM Didn't DJT get Soleimani, a war criminal with the blood of thousands of US servicemen on his hands? Posted by: federalist | Jan 18, 2023 11:34:43 AM Freeing up CDCR to move people to other prisons and work to pay restitution was something CJLF was all for doing, before they were against it Posted by: John | Jan 18, 2023 1:30:02 PM Meanwhile, although the California electorate voted for the DP and Newsome disenfranchised those voters, the Mexican drug cartel shot six people in the head in central California, execution style. This included a 16 year old mother and 10 month old baby. Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 18, 2023 2:03:43 PM TarlsQtr -- Don't you know by now that murder victims are human garbage? And besides, drug gangs help distribute drugs, and drugs are wonderful (as we hear so often on this blog), so we don't want to be too hard on these guys. Besides, anything you say against the Mexican drug cartel is probably just anti-Mexican, which wouldn't be surprising since we all know you're a racist anyway. You just never change. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 3:21:05 PM I learned from the best! You! Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 18, 2023 5:15:47 PM TarlsQtr -- Now, now. You're supposed to be kind to the elderly. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 10:57:25 PM Post a comment California working to clear condemned inmates from death row | Main | En banc Eleventh Circuit limits reach of career offenders under USSG based on plain text of guideline for drug offenses January 18, 2023 The look of a federal capital moratorium(?): prosecutors not seeking death penalty for El Paso Walmart shooter As detailed in this Wall Street Journal piece, the "Justice Department wont seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing 23 people in 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, federal prosecutors said in a Tuesday court filing." Here is more: Patrick Crusius faces 90 federal charges for his alleged role in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Of those charges, 45 have been deemed hate crimes, or crimes motivated by racial, religious, national-origin, sexual, gender or disability bias. Mr. Crusius, 21 years old at the time, is accused of traveling to the Texas border city to target Latinos in the attack. Nearly two dozen people were injured in the shooting. Jury selection is expected to begin in his federal case in January 2024. Mr. Crusius, now 24, was also indicted on state charges of capital murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. The state case would proceed after the federal case is done.... Months after taking office in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a nationwide halt to federal executions while he reviewed policies and protocols put in place by the Trump administration that led to the highest rate of federal executions in more than a century. President Biden has said he would work to end federal executions. The Justice Department last year chose to continue the pursuit of the death penalty against an alleged terrorist charged with killing eight people in New York City in 2017. The Trump administration initially sought the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov, who prosecutors said was inspired by Islamic State to carry out the Manhattan attack. Mr. Saipovs attorneys asked Mr. Garland to withdraw the death penalty from the case but were turned down. Justin Underwood, an attorney representing the family of Walmart shooting victim Alexander Hoffman, said they were disappointed by the Justice Departments decision. Theyre disappointed the U.S. government wont seek the death penalty on a mass murderer who drove 10 hours to seek out and kill Hispanic and Mexican people, Mr. Underwood said. If this guy doesnt qualify for the death penalty, why on earth do we even have a federal death penalty statute? Mr. Underwood questioned why the federal government continued to pursue the death penalty in Mr. Saipovs case in New York, but not in the Walmart shooting. Mr. Hoffmans widow and his two sons are now looking to the states case for justice, Mr. Underwood said. This might not be the Christian thing for me to say, but some people need to be killed and he certainly qualifies, Mr. Underwood said. I just put my faith in the state of Texas to seek justice in this case. Intriguingly, this Reuters article about this prosecutorial charging decision makes mention of a fact not noted by the WSJ that might be part of the story: "When he was taken into police custody minutes after the shooting, Crusius was in a psychotic state and treated with anti-psychotic medication, according to mental health professionals employed by the jail, a court filing said." Mental health issues might well have influenced federal prosecutors here; Crusius's defense attorneys hoped it would accourding to this 2020 AP piece: Lawyers for a man charged with shooting scores of people in a racist attack at a Texas Walmart say their client has diagnosed mental disabilities that should be a red flag for federal prosecutors considering whether to seek the death penalty. Patrick Crusius has been diagnosed with severe, lifelong neurological and mental disabilities and was treated with antipsychotic medication following his arrest moments after the massacre in El Paso, his attorneys wrote in a court filing. January 18, 2023 at 02:20 PM | Permalink Comments This cries out for capital punishment. Posted by: federalist | Jan 18, 2023 2:38:31 PM May God be praised for federalism -- the practice that makes it possible for states to pursue their own law when the feds go on vacation. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 3:15:24 PM The flawed 'logic' employed by the 'Death Penalty Advocate Mob'is that execution (OR the mere threat thereof) will deter/prevent future mass shootings spurred on in great part by the propoganda of far right racist and homophobic provocateurs (Trump, Fox News, Bannon, Jones, Carlson, Hannity, Schlapp, Freedom Caucus, many in the GOP, etc.). On this, we can certainly agree, no? Seems that the threat of capital punishment did not deter the El Paso shooter, nor the one in Buffalo, or Pittsburgh, Highland Park, Orlando, Colorado Springs, Charlottesville, and so many other locales. All of these incidents took place post-Timothy McVeigh's execution. So obviously this logic has worked and worked well..right? Seems to me that logic and common sense has gone on vacation, not the federal government. Posted by: SG | Jan 18, 2023 4:18:57 PM Isn't the executive branch supposed to take care that the law is faithfully executed rather than announce moratoriums on its execution? The Left is all warm and fuzzy about Garland's unilateral moratorium on the federal death penalty. Would they be equally warm and fuzzy about an executive branch moratorium on, say, environmental laws or civil rights laws? Just asking. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 4:26:21 PM SG -- Murders that happened post-McVeigh obviously were not deterred. It's the murders that did NOT happen that were deterred. If you're certain that number is zero, fine -- what's your evidence? You really think the prospect of the DP deters no one ever?? And of course the hundreds of thousands of armed robberies, rapes, kidnappings, fentanyl traffickings, etc., etc. were not deterred by the tens of thousands of criminals who got caught and sent to prison for these things. "Therefore," according to your logic, we should refrain from imprisonment, too, no? Yeah, sure. If a point be made of it, however, the main thing we get from the DP is not deterrence. The main thing is just punishment for unspeakable crime. Of course, for those of you who have no interest in punishment (except for January 6 defendants), the absence of just (or any) punishment is no big deal. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 4:38:28 PM SG, The most effective deterrence with the DP is that Crusius will never be able to take a weight from the prison weight room and smash a Latinos head in. As far as a societal deterrent, take the most obvious cases of guilt and execute about 48 hours after the sentence. You are right. Waiting 20 years is not an effective deterrent. Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 18, 2023 5:31:09 PM It seems we have a dispute between the most vocal DP advocates on this site. Perhaps Mr. Otis and TarlsQtr should debate this issue between themselves. Is DP a deterrent or not? I look forward to the arguments. Posted by: SG | Jan 18, 2023 6:06:46 PM SG -- Happy to see that you don't make any effort to dispute my proposition that the main purpose of the DP is to provide just punishment for particularly grotesque murders. TarlsQtr and I both believe -- as would anyone with common sense -- that the DP would have greater deterrent effect if it were used more frequently. But the idea that it has no deterrent effect at all ever is absurd, and I'm glad you make no effort to defend that either. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 7:44:28 PM There is zero distance between Bill and myself regarding deterrence. We both believe there is but it could be much more effective if more executions were completed more quickly. Posted by: SG | Jan 18, 2023 9:10:27 PM Sorry, I put SGs name instead of my own on the post above. Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 18, 2023 9:11:20 PM Some people think that making a man serve out his life's existence in a small cell is a greater punishment than death after 20 years of appeals. Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jan 18, 2023 9:38:36 PM Jim Gormely -- "Some people think that making a man serve out his life's existence in a small cell is a greater punishment than death after 20 years of appeals." But that's not the reason you oppose capital punishment, is it? P.S. "Some people" think they've been abducted by aliens, that the county can borrow money forever without consequence, that the moon landing was staged in Burbank, and that Donald Trump is a great man. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 18, 2023 10:55:44 PM Bill Otis writes sarcastically that some people think they've been abducted by aliens and that "Donald Trump is a great man." But Bill, your buddy Federalist thinks just that: that Donald Trump was a great President. Do you? Posted by: anon | Jan 19, 2023 10:17:25 AM Trump was a great president. He presciently armed Ukraine; he whacked Soleimani, he renegotiated NAFTA to the benefit of the USA, he changed the conversation on China; he armed Taiwan; he told the Europeans they should spend more on defense; he did the Warp Speed thing . . . . He is distasteful personally, but this was a great president. Posted by: federalist | Jan 19, 2023 10:46:29 AM Jim Gormley, I would point out that the 99% of murderers filing appeals until the moment of death disagree with you. Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 19, 2023 10:48:58 AM Hey anon, maybe your screeds can be taken seriously once you acknowledge that your guy in the WH now was accused by his own daughter (in her diary) of taking showers with her, which led to unfortunate promiscuity. How we know the diary is real--they prosecuted two people for "stealing" it--when I write "stealing" I mean "obtained abandoned property." You guys cover for this crap. Posted by: federalist | Jan 19, 2023 11:02:55 AM How is that a woman does not have a right to choose but the state/federal governments have the right to take a life when a person has been convicted? Technically, I don't have dog in this battle at all. I just think that both ideologies have these glaring hypocrisies. When those hypocrisies are highlighted, they are not harmonized: each side seems to double down on something even more ridiculous to reinforce their point. There is no simple answer to CP. We may try to make it simple, but in a system where we cannot state with 100% certainty that all guilty people are in fact guilty, how can CP be justified? It's just a question---nothing more. Posted by: Eric A. Hicks | Jan 19, 2023 11:14:23 AM A woman does have the right to choose. Its just that the choice does not come at the point you want it, as you feel people should live consequence free lives. And we can know with 100% accuracy in some instances. Although the left likes to use DNA exonerations to show the barbarity of the DP, they forget the flip side is that the same technology can provide certainty to a degree that rounds to 100%. Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 19, 2023 11:36:27 AM Well, fortunately, I am not a member of the 'left.' You proved my point that we can know with 100% accuracy in "some instances." That you would use the "some" in this instance is problematic. Of course there should be consequences. You haven't walked the prison halls and seen gown men crying and being systematically broken down. That's the consequence of their action. It's a sobering thing but a reminder that must be accountability in a functioning and orderly society. I have more first-hand knowledge of what accountability/consequences looks like than you would probably ever want to know my friend. Justice and accountability has many different forms through what my eyes have witnessed. I wonder what your sentiments would be upon finding out that someone had been put to death that was outside your class of "some"? Then again, you probably would shrug it off. But I have learned that those who are the most casual about such things are usually the ones who whimper the loudest when they feel that they are being, or have been, wronged. Posted by: Eric A. Hicks | Jan 19, 2023 12:22:46 PM Eric A. Hicks -- There is no evidence accepted by any neutral and informed party that we've executed a factually innocent person for at least 50 years. That would make the DP the most accurate institution in criminal law. Of course it's possible that an innocent person has been or will be executed. But it's likewise possible that a killer we did NOT execute will do it again. Indeed, it's more than just possible; it's happened dozens of times. All of them were preventable murder if we'd had the nerve to execute the killer before he did it again. It is also the case that guilty and dangerous criminals go free because the BRD standard is higher than it could be. Is that a reason to lower the BRD standard at trial? Not in my view. Why? Because the social good we get from having a very high standard is, on the whole, worth the social harm it produces. Same with the DP (and any number of other social practices such as high speed limits on the Interstate, big construction projects, experimental medicines and space flight, all of which kill innocent people). The question is not just whether innocent people can (or will) die. The question is whether the practice is worth it even with that cost. And the answer for all of them is yes, as, as respects the DP, the Supreme Court and the majority of the American people have said for decades. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 19, 2023 1:37:59 PM anon -- I think that on the whole Trump was a good President. His behavior after the 2020 election has been really bad, so much so that it's clear to me that Ron DeSantis would make a much better candidate -- and much better leader than either decrepit Joe or The Donald. P.S. How many classified documents do you have stowed in YOUR garage?? Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 19, 2023 1:42:03 PM Erick A. Hicks, This will be short because you didnt really add much meat to the discussion. Some cases are more slam dunk than others. For example, is there any doubt that Crusius is guilty of the crime committed? The Boston Marathon bombers? We dont have to execute every person guilty in a DP eligible case. There are many we can, however, that go even beyond BRD. So, no, I didnt prove your point. Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jan 19, 2023 1:55:23 PM TarlsQtr -- Correct. Mr. Hicks writes, "We may try to make it simple, but in a system where we cannot state with 100% certainty that all guilty people are in fact guilty, how can CP be justified?" By using it in the cases where we are 100% certain, which is lots of them, including McVeigh, Bundy, and Tsarvaev. Unless Mr. Hicks thinks it was unjust to sentence those people to death. Mr. Hicks -- do you think that? Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 19, 2023 2:25:12 PM I don't think opposing, e.g., torture for perpetrators of atrocities amounts to regarding the victims of those atrocities as "human garbage." But apparently at least some people on this thread think that opposing capital punishment means regarding murder victims as human garbage. I hope I'm mistaken about that view and that it was just more vapid trolling. Posted by: John | Jan 19, 2023 2:41:43 PM In Kentucky, where I live and work, only 5 people have been executed since 1954. Presently, there are only about 28 people on death row in Kentucky. More than half of all death sentences in Kentucky are overturned on appeal. Those whose death sentences are upheld have a far greater probability of dying of natural causes on death row than they do of actually being executed. Mr. Otis, how many years have you spent alone in a 6' by 9' cell? Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jan 19, 2023 2:55:49 PM No Mr.Otis, I don't think that at all. There indeed some people whom the world would be better without. I have seen several glaring examples of this throughout my lifetime. Does that mean I would be willing to give the state and/or federal governments that kind of power? I'm more ambivalent when it comes to that. And I am sure that there are cases where the person was 100% guilty. If that's the case, then let come what may. I have not once said that I didn't believe in "an eye for an eye." The problem, as I see it, is that we have a less than perfect justice system. And, once again, I am unwilling to cede that type of power to the state or federal government. Where does that leave us? With an imperfect system that may get it right most of the time. But what do we tell the family of the innocent person put to death? Are you saying this a) has never happened; b) can never happen or c) will never happen? If a person commits a transgression of a certain magnitude, his justice should be severe. I don't know what severe should look like under this system of justice that we have. I have seen examples of it---far more than I care to discuss. I have said before that I have seen grown men literally 'broken down' behind bars because the gravity of their crime and the sentence that they are serving has finally settled upon them. Would it be more proper to put them to death? I don't know that I can say that with certainty. I understand your point Mr.Otis. Your discussion is one-sided. Yes, guilty people may go free which is never a good thing. But what about the innocents who are convicted even under the BRD standard. Are you saying that this never happens? so it's two-sided. There are no simple answers in reality. Only debates such as what we are having. I will not say that any of your wrong. In the end, as with most things, I find myself in the middle on this one. I'm neither 100% for or against. I'm just highlighting that it's a nuanced discussion. Posted by: Eric A. Hicks | Jan 19, 2023 3:04:12 PM "His behavior after the 2020 election has been really bad" Read "Ball of Collusion"--the Obama Admin (including Joe Biden) tried to hamstring his presidency with a bogus Russia collusion narrative and went after Michael Flynn. Then law enforcement/intel spied on his campaign thru the Carter Page warrant. Then they tipped the scales in the 2020 election by suppressing the HUnter Biden story and Joe Biden colluded with that by lying in the PRez debate. The 2020 election was not fair, and he was under no obligation to play by Marquess of Queensbury rules after. Posted by: federalist | Jan 20, 2023 12:01:49 PM Jim Gormley -- "Mr. Otis, how many years have you spent alone in a 6' by 9' cell?" The number of years I've spent in such a cell is equal to the number of felonies I've committed. Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 20, 2023 11:22:46 PM federalist, the drapes are already being measured for the cell of your twice-impeached hero. As for your assertion that the "2020 election was not fair," it's clear you adhere to the MAGA mantra: if my client wins, the election was fair; if he loses, it was rigged Posted by: anon | Jan 24, 2023 9:47:05 AM Anon, you sure you're not talking about Stacey Abrams or Hillary Clinton? Or some of the crazies that thought that John Kerry won Ohio in 2004? We know for a fact that the Pa. 2020 election was conducted in an illegal fashion. We know that the DOJ/FBI put its thumb on the scale regarding Hunter's laptop (and then Joe "Showers With Ashley" Biden then lied about the laptop in the debate, thus colluding with corrupt law enforcement). How can you possibly say that the election was fair?? Posted by: federalist | Jan 24, 2023 2:02:12 PM Federalist, you write, "We know for a fact that the Pa. 2020 election was conducted in an illegal fashion." We do? Please give me the cite of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court so holding. Posted by: anon | Jan 24, 2023 2:42:26 PM Read Section 14 of the Pa. Constitution. Posted by: federalist | Jan 24, 2023 10:54:37 PM Now let's see you answer my points. Posted by: federalist | Jan 24, 2023 10:55:10 PM Federalist, you were asked for a case so holding. You cite a constitutional provision. That is not a case. Posted by: anon | Jan 25, 2023 10:40:03 AM Post a comment Updated Jan. 16, 7:10 p.m. Adidas was hit by a hoax on Monday when an unknown party believed to be an activist group called The Yes Men sent out a long press release saying the company had named a co-chief executive officer to ensure more ethical manufacturing processes. More from WWD But it wasnt true. Several hours later, a second release was sent, saying the first one was a hoax. The initial release, on what appeared to be Adidas letterhead and allegedly sent from its headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, said the company had named Vay Ya Nak Phoan, a former Cambodian garment worker and trade union leader, as co-CEO to serve alongside Bjrn Gulden, who took over the top slot on Jan. 1. It also said Gulden and Phoan on Monday had signed the Pay Your Workers agreement, which was described as a binding commitment to fair labor practices, wages and compensation in the supply chain. The agreement, which was allegedly made with Adidas trade unions and labor rights organizations, was said to immediately pay 11.2 million euros in wages to Cambodian workers whose salaries were withheld by suppliers during the pandemic, rehire all workers, union members and union leaders who were fired from both Trax Apparel in Cambodia and the Pou Chen factory in Myanmar and provide them with full back pay. The fake release was reportedly written by The Yes Men, a culture activist site, and sent from a bogus Adidas account. The activists also showed a collection of Realitywear from Adidas, allegedly created by Cambodian workers who wore the same clothes for six months, at Berlin Fashion Week, causing further confusion. A spokesperson for Adidas in the U.S. said the company had no further comment on who had perpetrated the fraud, only stressing that both releases were fake. He also said to refer to the companys stance on working conditions in its supply chain. Click here to read the full article. Kate shaking hands with children through a metal fence was the lasting image of her and William's last visit to Jamaica, which was widely seen as a PR disaster. (Getty Images) The Jamaican prime minister has reiterated his intention to move with "speed" towards republicanism and removing King Charles as its head of state. According to local media, Andrew Holness made the comments during a reception in St. James at the weekend after reports that plans to make Jamaica a republic had stalled following delays deciding who will be on the its Constitutional Reform Committee - the body that will oversee the transition. "It is time that Jamaica becomes a republic. For us, the process is not simple, and we have known this from we started on this journey, and we are making sure that we check every box as we move deliberately in that regard", Holness said, before he went on to directly address the minister for Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Marlene Malahoo Forte. Charles - then Prince of Wales - greets Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness at Clarence House in 2018. (Getty Images) "So I'm saying to you minister, please move ahead with speed and alacrity on this matter. Jamaica must become a Republic". The Jamaican government announced in June 2022 that they intended to pursue becoming a republic by 2025, and Holness' recent comments reiterate that this is a clear priority for his leadership. Holness also told Kate and William during their tour of the Caribbean in March last year that the country was "moving on" from its relationship with the UK. Jamaica became independent from the UK in 1962, but the British monarch remains its head of state. William and Kate pose with Andrew Holness and his wife Juliet during their recent tour of Jamaica. (Getty Images) The BBC reported in September that over half of Jamaican's support becoming a republic and the movement has been steadily growing in momentum for many decades. In 2003, Jamaicans lost their visa-free access to the UK, and now they are the "only citizens within the Commonwealth realm that require a visa to visit the land of their Head of State", noted Ashley Rouen Brown for The Tribune last year. However, Brits can visit Jamaica for up to 90 days without one. The sense then amongst some is that the relationship between the two countries remains an unequal one. Story continues Barbados officially removed the late Queen Elizabeth as their head of state in 2021, a ceremony which Charles attended as a representative of the crown when he was still Prince of Wales. Prince William has shown some acceptance of this general trend away from the monarchy, saying after his tour of the Caribbean last spring which was widely seen as a PR disaster that their future was their own to decide, and that he was "committed to service [...] not telling people what to do". Attempts at nostalgic imagery that reflected previous royal tours taken by the Queen and Prince Philip instead went down like a ton of bricks when Kate and William visited Jamaica last spring. (Getty Images) Holness' recent reiteration of republican sentiment also comes as debate about the Royal Family's role in colonialism has renewed after Prince Harry made comments in his new memoir, Spare about imperialism being "theft". "Imperialism, colonialism, nationalism in short, theft. Great Britain was trespassing, invading a sovereign nation and trying to steal it, meaning the precious blood of Britains finest lads had been wasted", Harry wrote in one section regarding the British invasion of the Zulu Kingdom. Watch: The Royal Family's biggest spending sprees Thinking about bribing the cops with some duit kopi (loose change for coffee) for not using your seatbelt? Well, sucks to be you because the bar has been raised and your small change wont cut it. Recently, a duo pleaded not guilty at the Johor Bahru Session Court for trying to bribe a policeman using RM90,000 (US$2,085) last year. According to Bernama, Singaporean Donavan Sia Qi Xun, 27, a college student in Kuala Lumpur, and his friend Law Wen Xiang, 32, are accused of committing the crime in front of a restaurant in Taman Suria, Johor. The bribe supposedly persuaded the cop not to charge Sia with cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property under Section 420 of the Penal Code. They also pleaded not guilty to an alternative charge under Section 214 of the Penal Code for providing gratification in exchange for screening an offender from legal action at the same location, time, and date. If found guilty, the pair will be sentenced to one-fourth of the maximum term of imprisonment allowed for the crime. They could also face a hefty RM450,000 fine, or both. The charge carries a fine of not less than five times the sum or value of the gratification, or RM10,000, whichever is greater. Judge Ahmad Kamal Arifin Ismail granted them each RM40,000 bail with one surety. He also directed that they report to the Johor Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office once a month. The court scheduled a hearing for Feb. 19. We would like to stress that we do not condone any form of bribery and are law-abiding citizens. Anything implied otherwise in this article is merely satire. ALSO CHECK OUT: Jeremy Renner After being in a life-threatening snow ploughing accident in Nevada, Jeremy Renner has shared some good news with fans and well-wishers. The actor, who is famous for playing the Marvel superhero Hawkeye, has finally been discharged from the hospital. Renner was undergoing treatment at the hospital after suffering from severe chest and orthopaedic injuries from his accident on 1 January 2023. While fans were worried about the severity of his injuries, and whether hed be able to make a full recovery, Renner took to Instagram and shared an update with his followers on 4 January. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jeremy Renner (@jeremyrenner) Yesterday, the actor shared another update on his health by replying to a tweet from Mayor of Kingstowns official account. Renner wrote about his excitement for the first episode of his show which also stars Kyle Chandler, Dianne Wiest, Hugh Dillon and Emma Laird. Outside my brain fog in recovery, I was very excited to watch episode 201 with my family at home Jeremy Renner (@JeremyRenner) January 17, 2023 What exactly happened to Jeremy Renner? The 52-year-old actor was reportedly hurt by his own snow-ploughing machine. Renners team shared this news by stating that the accident occurred when the actor was using a Pistenbully machine to clear the snow from his relatives vehicle. Unfortunately, the snowcat vehicle, which weighed a whopping 7 tons, ran over him as he was trying to clear 3 feet-deep snow on a private mountain near Lake Tahoe. Renner was immediately flown to a hospital in Reno city via an air ambulance. Taking to Instagram, the two-time Oscar nominee shocked his fans with a selfie on 4 January 2023 where he could be seen lying on a hospital bed with a severely puffed-up face. Story continues Celebrities including Marvel stars wished Renner a speedy recovery Many celebrities took to Twitter or Instagram to wish Renner a speedy recovery. These also included his fellow Marvel superheroes like Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans and Chris Pratt who commented on Renners post from January 4. Your family rocks! What a great spirit you have despite what happened. Hope you have a speedy recovery! Laughter helps! Ming-Na Wen (@MingNa) January 6, 2023 The Hawkeye actor is also returning for Mayor of Kingstown season 2 Renner is famous for playing the part of Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye in the Avengers films. However, the actor can also be seen in the American crime thriller series Mayor of Kingstown, which returned for its second season on Paramount+ on 15 January 2023. Culture Doctor Strange 3: Has Marvels Sorcerer Supreme Cast His Final Spell? Culture Just Like Wakanda: Black Panther Filming Locations You Can Actually Visit Hero image credit: Instagram/jeremyrenner Featured image credit: Instagram/jeremyrenner The maker of Jeep SUVs, Ram pickup trucks and other vehicles on Wednesday said it has signed a supply agreement to secure nickel sulphate for electric-vehicle batteries. Finland-based Terrafame Ltd. will begin supplying Stellantis NV the minerals in 2025 for the five-year term of the agreement. In a statement, the automaker said the deal "will cover a significant portion of the needs for sustainable regionally sourced nickel" in the company's pivot toward zero-emission vehicles. "This agreement is part of the key raw material sourcing to fit with our electrified vehicle battery pack needs," Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said in the statement. "We continue to build a new global value chain with Class A partners to support our global strategy and propel our commitment to be the industry champion in climate change mitigation, becoming carbon net zero by 2038, ahead of our competition." Terrafame operates one of the world's largest battery chemicals plants for EV batteries in Finland, whose carbon footprint is among the smallest in the industry, according to the statement. It includes its own mine and production process so that the minerals' origins are fully traceable in an environment where there are concerns around ethical sourcing of EV battery materials. "Cooperation with industry leaders such as Stellantis fortifies the position of Terrafame as an important partner of battery chemicals for the European automotive industry," Terrafame CEO Joni Lukkaroinen said in the statement. "In these challenging times, there clearly is a strong demand for sustainably and transparently produced battery chemicals that are made in Europe, for Europe. We are proud to be doing our part in decarbonizing European mobility and increasing the efficiencies of the European automotive industry." The agreement comes after Stellantis last week announced an agreement to source manganese sulphate from Australia starting in 2026. Stellantis also has secured deals for lithium volumes for EV batteries that will go in cars, SUVs and trucks in North America and Europe. The automaker has said it will produce two types of EV batteries, including a nickel-based option that would provide longer range. It also is working on a lithium iron phosphate option, which has been hailed as safer, though less energy-dense. Stellantis has announced five battery plants, including three of these gigafactories in Europe. The two in North America will be in Windsor, Ontario, starting next year with LG Energy Solution, and in Kokomo, Indiana, starting in 2025 with Samsung SDI. The company also expects it'll need a third to begin production in 2026 and plans to announce its location early this year. Stellantis is investing $35.5 billion in electrification and software by 2025. It expects more than half of sales in the United States and 100% in Europe to be all-electric by 2030. A blockchain is a digital ledger and the key technology underpinning most cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (more on those later) and other unique digital items. Blockchain can be used to store all kinds of information, but so far its most common use is in recording cryptocurrency transactions. Once a transaction is made, it's entered on this public ledger, which is managed by a global peer-to-peer network millions of computers, in bitcoin's case. Blockchain is fundamental to bitcoin's appeal: As a decentralized database, it can't be controlled by any one person or group unlike a fiat currency such as the US dollar, which is managed by a central bank. Microsoft is cutting 10,000 workers, almost 5% of its workforce, as it joins other tech companies in a scaling back of their pandemic-era expansions. The company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that the layoffs were a response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities. Sioux City is expected to see 6 to 11 inches of snow between 9 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls. Parts of Siouxland may see as much as an inch of snow fall per hour by late Wednesday. SIOUX FALLS -- The bookkeeper of a Lesterville, South Dakota, church was sentenced Tuesday to 21 months in federal prison for embezzling nearly $325,000 from two church parishes. Steven Bares, 53, of Tabor, South Dakota, pleaded guilty in September in U.S. District Court in Sioux Falls to wire fraud. After completing his prison sentence, he must serve two years on supervised release. He also must pay restitution to the churches. From January 2013 to March 2020, while serving as the bookkeeper for St. John the Baptist parish in Lesterville and St. Wenceslaus parish in Tabor, Bares embezzled $324,001 from the two parishes. Auditors discovered numerous checks made out to companies belonging to Bares that didn't correspond to any service or equipment purchased from them. The checks were deposited into accounts held by Bares. SIOUX CITY A Sioux City man who threatened two women with a gun in a bar has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison on a gun charge. Luis Gomez, 37, pleaded guilty in September in U.S. District Court to one count of possession of a firearm by a felon and drug user. He was sentenced Tuesday to 49 months in prison. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Gomez threatened to shoot the two women in a Sioux City bar on Dec. 9, 2021, then fled in a vehicle after police were called. A police pursuit ensued, and Gomez' passenger threw the gun out the window during the chase. After police stopped Gomez' vehicle, officers retrieved the gun containing seven live rounds and a magazine from the path of the chase. Marijuana and other ammunition also were found in the car or in Gomez' possession. HARTINGTON, Neb. Prosecutors have filed notice they plan to seek a death sentence for the man charged with killing four people in Laurel, Nebraska. Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Corey O'Brien on Tuesday filed an information containing four counts each of first-degree murder and use of a firearm to commit a felony and two counts of first-degree arson against Jason Jones. On each of the murder charges, O'Brien included a notice of aggravators, or statutorily defined aggravating circumstances, as required by Nebraska law in cases in which the death penalty is sought. The aggravating circumstances O'Brien will seek to prove at trial are that Jones of committed a homicide at the same time he committed other homicides. On two of the murder charges, Jones is accused of committing a homicide to conceal the commission of a crime of burglary or murder, or to conceal his identity. Jones, 42, of Laurel, is charged with the Aug. 4 shooting deaths of Michele Ebeling, 53, in her home and Gene Twiford, 86, his wife, Janet Twiford, 85, and their daughter Dana Twiford, 55, in another home. He is accused of setting both houses on fire. He's scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Cedar County District Court, but his attorney, Todd Lancaster, on Wednesday filed a waiver of appearance in which he advised the court Jones would not be entering a plea at that time because he plans to file a motion to quash sections of Nebraska's death penalty statute as unconstitutional. Jones is being held without bond at the Nebraska Department of Corrections Reception and Treatment Center in Lincoln, where he continues to receive treatment for burns received in the incidents. If found guilty of first-degree murder at trial, a jury or three-judge panel would consider the aggravating circumstances filed with the charges. If those circumstances are found to exist, the case would advance to a three-judge panel to determine if Jones would receive a death sentence. If found guilty of first-degree murder but not given a death sentence, Jones would be subject to a sentence of life in prison without parole. Authorities responded to a reported explosion in the early morning hours of Aug. 4 at 209 Elm St., where they found Ebeling's body with two gunshot wounds. A second fire at the Twiford home at 503 Elm St. is believed to have started at about the same time, and responders found the bodies of the three family members, all with gunshot wounds. Jones' wife, Carrie Jones, was arrested in December and charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and being an accessory to a felony. She is scheduled to be arraigned Monday. Carrie Jones, 43, is accused of killing Gene Twiford, concealing or removing physical evidence and hiding her husband in an effort to prevent his arrest. Jason Jones, who lived with his wife across the street from Ebeling, was arrested without incident at their home about 24 hours after the bodies were discovered and airlifted to a Lincoln hospital for treatment of serious burns over a large portion of his body. Investigators believe the Twifords were killed first, then Ebeling a short time later. According to court documents, authorities found receipts Jones had for gas at Ebeling's home and a Ruger pistol traced to Jones at the Twiford residence. Search warrant affidavits filed in her husbands case show Carrie Jones was seen at Ebelings home shortly after the explosion was reported, and she told police during an interview she had been there early that morning. Republicans in both chambers of the Iowa Legislature passed Gov. Kim Reynolds' private school assistance proposal out of committees on Wednesday, moving the bill one step closer to floor votes. "This is just the first step in giving educational freedom to Iowas students and parents," Reynolds said in a statement after the bill passed both committees. " I look forward to this bill reaching the floor in both chambers. Iowans deserve to see where their elected leaders stand. The bill passed 11-5 in the Senate Education Committee, with all Republicans in support and all Democrats opposed. The bill was then referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which will meet to consider the bill on Thursday at 10 a.m. Democrats raised similar concerns as they have over the last week as the bill has quickly made its way through the lawmaking process. They said the bill deprives already underfunded public schools of funding, siphons money to wealthy families, and they raised concerns about private school accountability. I dont know where were going to get another $341 million to put into this program, except by short-changing the public schools again, Democratic Sen. Herman Quirmbach, the ranking member of the committee, said. Republican Senate President Amy Sinclair of Allerton, who managed the bill in subcommittee, said in response to concerns about private school accountability that they go through the same accreditation process as public schools and teachers require the same licenses. "Don't tell me they're not accountable," she said. "They are accredited by the same agencies that our department of education utilizes. The same processes." The proposal passed out of the House Education Reform committee Wednesday on 3-2 party-line vote, with Democrats opposed, making it eligible for floor debate next week. It's a stark contrast to last year, when debate over a much narrower proposal failed in the House, with Republican holdouts joining Democrats in opposition, and delayed the end of session by weeks. This year, top Republican lawmakers have advanced changes to eliminate potential obstacles and fast-track Gov. Kim Reynolds top legislative priority, pushing it through the committee process before the end of the session's second week, despite Democratic opposition and a packed public hearing on Tuesday. House Democrats accused Republicans of rushing the legislation through without adequate vetting. House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said the only information Republicans have provided about the bill's cost come from their own estimates and those of the governor not the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. "This is not ready for prime time in any way, shape or form," Konfrst, who sits on the House Education Reform Committee, told reporters. "We have a lot of questions. We dont have any information from a nonpartisan source that tells us what the bill will cost." Rep. John Wills, R-Spirit Lake, who also sits on the committee, said parents should have the freedom to make a decision about where and what values their child is taught. We have an educational monopoly in this state, Will said. We forget about the child and why we fund education in Iowa. Its not to fund schools. What I care about is the kids and how we teach those kids. Parents want to be in charge of the childs education and their childs future. Iowa National Guard adjutant general to retire Maj. Gen. Ben Corell, the adjutant general of the Iowa National Guard, will retire March 1 after more than 30 years in the guard and three years at its helm. Corell, 61, mentioned the upcoming retirement in a ceremony for veterans at the Iowa State Capitol on Wednesday. He said he wants to spend more time with his family and more time on his hobbies in his retirement. The Iowa guard is in great hands, he said. The leaders that are below me, I have imprinted my fingerprints on them through their career. Its time for me to rotate out and somebody else to take this role. Corell said he has given his recommendation for his successor to Gov. Kim Reynolds, who will appoint the next leader of the Iowa National Guard. Corell first enlisted in the guard in 1986 and became a commissioned officer in 1989. He assumed the role of adjutant general in 2019. Corell said hes proud of keeping the readiness of the Iowa National Guard intact under his leadership and building future leaders in the organization. Ransomware penalties Launching a ransomware attack would become a crime in Iowa under a bill that passed out of a House subcommittee on Wednesday. Ransomware is any software that blocks access to a computer system until the owner of the system pays money. It has become a rising concern in Iowa and nationally as several school systems, including the Cedar Rapids and Davenport public school districts, have suffered attacks. Launching a ransomware attack is not currently a crime in Iowa, and the bill would make it up to a Class C felony to do so, depending on the amount of money the affected entity loses. If the losses are less than $10,000, the person would be charged with a simple misdemeanor; between $10,000 and $50,000 would be a Class D felony; and any losses over $50,000 would be a Class C felony. The bill applies to ransomware launched against the state, public and private utilities, hospitals, and public schools, colleges and area education agencies. The bill received bipartisan support in the subcommittee, with two Republicans and one Democrat recommending passage. The bill will need to pass through the House Economic Growth and Technology Committee before coming to a vote in the House. Gender balance mandate repeal State and local boards and commissions would no longer be required to have gender balance under legislation that moved in the Senate. Republican Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, cast doubt on whether the gender balance requirement for government boards and commissions was ever needed, and suggested even if it was, it has since outgrown its purpose. Schultz said he hears from leaders who say they have a difficult time filling open board positions, in part because of the gender balance requirement. Opponents of the bill questioned the veracity of Schultzs assertion, and said the requirement has produced positive results in government representation in Iowa, and is still needed because more grounds needs to be made. Iowas gender balance requirement for state boards and commissions the first of its kind in the nation has been in place since 1987. The law was extended to local government bodies in 2009. Schultz and fellow Republican Sen. Cherielynn Westrich, R-Ottumwa, signed off on Senate Study Bill 1037, making it eligible for consideration by the full Senate committee on state government. Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, declined to sign off on the bill. Chief judge elected Thomas Bower, of Cedar Falls, has been reelected as chief judge of the Iowa Court of Appeals. Bower has served on the appeals court since 2012, and was first elected chief judge in 2019, according to an Iowa Judicial Branch news release. Appeals court justices elect the chief judge, who serves a two-year term. Contaminated spices were determined to be the second-leading cause of lead poisoning in Douglas County children in 2021. The reason? Medical testing of families fleeing war-torn Afghanistan found a number of children with high lead levels. The Douglas County Health Department traced the source of the lead to food, specifically lead-contaminated spices, said Naudia McCracken, supervisor of the lead poisoning prevention program at the Health Department. McCracken said the test results brought into sharper focus an issue shed already been concerned about: A lack of regulatory standards for herbs and spices and the resulting potential for anyone to ingest too much lead from their meals. In the case of these families, they were using spices purchased in their home countries, McCracken said. Refugee and immigrant children also are are greater risk of lead poisoning because of spices brought into the country or purchased at ethnic groceries. Because their cultures rely heavily on spices, immigrants from south Asia, especially India, Myanmar and Afghanistan, are most likely to be exposed, McCracken said. But the broader community also could be exposed because testing has found lead and other contaminants in spices sold at grocery stores around the world, including under major brand names in the U.S. The Douglas County Health Department says the spices most likely to contain lead include cumin, curry powder, masala, paprika, turmeric and chili powder. Herbs most likely to contain lead include oregano and bay leaves. Lead has also been found in some tea leaves and dark chocolate. Public health advocates have been calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to set limits on heavy metals in food (heavy metals, including lead, are metals that are relatively dense and toxic at low doses). However, no limits have been set. Consumer Reports in 2021 tested 126 herbs and spices, including major brands, and said it found that almost one-third contained heavy metals at levels high enough to raise health concerns. The organization is collecting signatures on a petition calling on the FDA to undertake tighter regulation. A spokeswoman for the FDA said the agency does monitor the food supply and will remove foods, including spices, that are determined to be hazardous. The agency doesnt need to have a regulatory standard to do so, the FDA says. By law, according to the FDA, food manufacturers and processors have to significantly minimize or prevent exposure to chemical hazards including lead. Additionally, the FDA says it has been in talks with the American Spice Trade Association to learn more about contaminants in spices and options for working collaboratively to help reduce levels. The American Spice Trade Association told the World-Herald it supports FDA limits on heavy metals in spices. The association noted that the European Commission has set limits and that the World Health Organization is studying the issue. McCracken and others say explicit limits set by the FDA are needed. Otherwise, the person who is consuming is the one who has to change what they are doing instead of addressing the root cause, she said. In 2021, at least 19% of children (17 kids) who tested high for lead in Douglas County likely got it from spices, McCracken said. The percentage could be higher because not all parents allow health investigators into their homes to look for causes. Refugee/Asian immigrant children made up 25% of lead poisoning cases in Douglas County in 2021, she said. The primary cause of lead poisoning among children nationally and in Douglas County remains lead paint, either chips or dust. In 2021, 69% of Douglas County children testing high likely ingested the lead from paint chips or dust. The potential presence of lead in spices caught the attention of a University of Nebraska at Omaha chemistry class, and students there performed what appears to be the only systematic testing of spices sold in Omaha. Nikae Perkinson, chemistry instructor, said her students found lead in every sample purchased in Omaha. The levels varied, but the highest levels were found in thyme and basil. Our exploratory studies found detectable level of lead (Pb) in every spice we tested, regardless of whether they were from a grocery store or a specialty store. Some of the spices we tested were organic, she said. Students tested 13 different spices, including turmeric, basil, ginger, thyme, curry powder and two supplements a turmeric supplement and a ginger root supplement, she said. All contained some level of lead. Perkinson offered these caveats: These were students, not professionals, and the tests were not done in a certified laboratory. To account for that, each sample was tested by three sets of students. One of the students, Brandon Wallroff, said the results underscore the need to be informed. Everybody without exception was surprised, Wallroff said. At the very least, people should note there are products in their community that have lead in them. McCracken advises concerned families to purchase quality spices from major grocery outlets. If shopping at an ethnic grocery, be certain to purchase only spices that have labels and that the labels include language in English. Lead gets into the spices typically during manufacturing, but it can also come from the environment during cultivation or from cookware during food preparation. In some cases, lead is intentionally added to spices. In the case of turmeric, researchers say some manufacturers will add lead chromate to the spice to give it a brighter yellow or increase the weight and thus profitability. Anyone can be poisoned by lead, but children under the age of 7 suffer the worst, lifelong effects because their neurological systems are still developing. Federal health officials consider lead poisoning the most preventable environmental disease of young children. In children, lead-poisoning can impair intellectual development and contribute to behavioral problems. Among adults, the health effects include high blood pressure, distractedness, hearing loss, and gastrointestinal distress. The issue has been personal for McCracken. An immigrant herself, McCracken grew up eating heavily spiced foods. She hails from Guyana, a South American country where the largest ethnic group is of Indian descent. Where she once ate curry-type meals a couple of times a week, she now does so about once a month, she said. She cut back on traditional spices before her children were born and now they havent developed a familiarity and affection for the foods she grew up with. They really dont like it, its a struggle to get them to try it, she said. Its hard to change your culture and what you eat. It actually made me feel really sad. Top Journal Star photos for January 2023 The Dalai Lama was taking questions from the audience in February in Dharamsala when the boy asked if he could hug him. After a hug, the Dalai Pay Dirt is Slates money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Lillian, Athena, and Elizabeth here. (Its anonymous!) Dear Pay Dirt, I live in a rental apartment managed by a fairly large local property management company in my small city of Portland, Oregon. Ive recently gotten a new job and due to the changes in my pay dates and payroll schedule (and with no cushion fund in the bank), I have reluctantly had to pay my rent one day late for the past three consecutive months. I am finally back on track (paid this month on time, and will be able to continue to do so going forward). I just tried to accept a credit card offer that I was supposedly pre-approved for, only to be denied. The reason given was due to my credit score. I then checked my credit score online and found that it has dropped from a good 672 to a poor 624, with the only negative notation on the screen being three late payments. I am current on all my other accounts, with absolutely no other late payments for many years, so the drop has to be because of my late rent. I had no idea that the property management company could or would be reporting payments to credit bureaus. Is this typical? Do I have any grounds to ask them to stop reporting? For some context, in my city, landlords are required by law to give a four-day grace period for late rent payments (meaning they cant charge late fees until the fifth day rent is late). Didnt Want to Pay Late Dear Didnt Want to Pay Late, Im generally a fan of the various services that report rent to credit bureaus because it is an excellent way for people to build a credit history without borrowing money. Its becoming more common for property management companies to offer services like Credit Builder as a perk to their tenants, though this is generally an opt-in service. Unfortunately, these services can hurt more than they can help if you pay late. But most of these services only report to one credit bureau. Request a free copy of your credit report from all three bureaus from annualcreditreport.com, so you can get a clearer picture of where you need the late payments removed. Because you were in the allowed grace period, its worth reaching out to your property management company and asking them to remove the late payments from your credit report. If you dont have luck with them initially, you could write a goodwill letter explaining the situation and outlining the grace period and your temporary payday hiccup. You can also ask to unenroll in a credit reporting service when you talk to them. However, they still have the right to report overdue rent payments and accounts in collections, but flagging one day late is extreme. In the long term, the best thing you can do for your credit score is to pay your bills on time, every timethe more positive history you have on your credit report, the less three late payments will matter. Lillian More Advice From Slate My husband and I were both raised Catholic but are now essentially atheists. When we had our first child, our parents were all horrified to hear that he would not be baptized. My father was prepared to stop talking to us. After a while, things calmed down. I thought they made their peace with it. Turns out, that was not the case at all. On Wednesday, the New York Senate Judiciary Committee will speak to Hector LaSalle, Gov. Kathy Hochuls nominee for chief judge of the Court of Appeals, which is the highest-ranking position of the states highest court. Normally this would be a routine hearing. The committee cannot confirm LaSalle; the most it can do is advance him to a full state senate vote. The committee could also make the historic decision not to advance LaSalle, ending his candidacy, although that might only provoke Hochul to make the even more historic decision to sue. Advertisement Either way, its a hearing that will be closely watched by politicos around the countrya strange turn of events for what is usually a minor, bureaucratic half step with a foregone conclusion. The reason is that this judicial pick has in many ways become the first battle in a consequential, fast-expanding war in Democratic politics. And Hochul has badly mangled the process. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In August, when Judge Janet DiFiore, a conservative who was loyal to disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, stepped down midethics scandal, she broke up the 43 conservative bloc of judges on New Yorks Court of Appeals. That bloc had helped hand Republicans a huge electoral advantage in redistricting in the state. It also arguably delivered control of Congress to the GOP. Advertisement The surprise vacancy on the court marked a major windfall for Hochul, a chance to make a defining appointment just days into her new term. Given the weakness of Hochuls reelection effort, it was also a chance to unify the Democratic Party amidst a chorus of concerns, turn the page on the Cuomo era, and win some goodwill from voters and the groups that helped push Hochuls wheezing campaign across the finish line. This is generally how politics works. Instead, Hochul picked arguably the most conservative judge of the options recommended by the state Commission on Judicial Nomination, one with a particularly noxious record on two of the most important issues in Democratic politics today: abortion and labor. To boot, in the 2014 case People v. Bridgeforth, the judge, LaSalle, signed off on the dismissal of jurors based on skin color, claiming that dark-colored was not a constitutionally cognizable class protected under the Equal Protection Clause. That decision was quickly overturned. Advertisement Advertisement Not surprisingly, LaSalle was met with swift condemnation from progressives. But the opposition has been much broader: A number of typically moderate labor unions have come out strongly against the pick, as has the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Many of the 14 state senators who have already said they wont support LaSalle are far from being Democratic Socialists of America types. And in perhaps the most stunning example of coordinated pushback, mainstream womens groups across the country have called for LaSalle to be voted down. Its very uncommon for these groups to publicly defy a sitting Democratic governor, especially one they just helped elect. Advertisement In a letter sent Jan. 8 to the governor and Senate Democrats, and made public thereafter, groups including the National Organization for Women, the National Womens Law Center, and the National Abortion Federation wrote: Advertisement New Yorks highest court should [have] a defender of New Yorkers reproductive and gender freedoms, not an ally in their diminution. Given his record, which includes curtailing a New York Attorney General investigation into predatory crisis pregnancy centersa key weapon of the anti-abortion movementwe have grave concerns for a Court of Appeals headed by Justice LaSalle. We urge the New York Senate to reject his nomination and the Governor to nominate a jurist who will safeguard the rights of New Yorkers. Advertisement Advertisement At issue is LaSalles 2010 decision to subvert an investigation by the New York AGs office into crisis pregnancy centers, unregulated anti-abortion clinics that deceive women about their health care options and which outnumber abortion providers in the state 3-to-1. LaSalle blocked the AGs office from accessing documents it had subpoenaed the centers to provide. Hochuls office told me, The governor has been clear that she believes Judge LaSalles record has been mischaracterized. Advertisement In a bitter twist, some of the womens groups that oppose LaSalles confirmation played an outsize role in getting Hochul elected just two months ago, and they include some of her very earliest endorsers. Hochul ran overwhelmingly on abortion rights, and some of those groups with political action arms did major outreach on her behalf. In her first major act after the electionin what will likely be one of the most consequential moves of her tenureHochul put up a nominee whose record they found immediately disqualifying. Its not the first time she has nominated someone for a consequential post that has called into question her commitment to due diligence. In August 2021, she named Brian Benjamin lieutenant governor, her second-in-command. He lasted not even nine months, resigning after federal prosecutors in Manhattan brought bribery charges against him. The New York Times later said Hochul had a hasty vetting process. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But that hasnt slowed Hochul, who has refused to back down on LaSalle and is pulling the national party into the whirlpool shes created. Despite the fact that LaSalles only path to confirmation would require Republican votes, Hochul has called in favors all over the state to continue to push his candidacy. She has also pulled in House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking House Democrat in the country. During one of his very first public appearances since winning that post, on Jan. 14 , Jeffries spoke at a pro-LaSalle rally staged by Hochul, saying, Judge Hector LaSalle is highly qualified to be the chief judge of the state of New York. Period. Full stop. His fellow speakers were less diplomatic, calling out Democrats who had opposed LaSalle in a way one state senator referred to as cynical. Advertisement A day later, as part of the same charm offensive, Hochuls team had police throw out an Afro-Latina member of the church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where Hochul was stumping for LaSalle. Hochul invoked the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. at the event, and has continued to do so since. Democrats have been eager to show their pro-choice convictions after anger over abortion rights delivered them a historical overperformance in the recent midterms. Theyve also been eager to show their unity at a national level in contrast to Republicans, who have been riven with dysfunction and warring factions. Advertisement Advertisement So why, then, did Jeffries begin last week slamming the GOPs new Born Alive legislation and end it stumping for a judge whom pro-choice groups hate? And why have Kathy Hochul and her highest-ranking allies chosen to die on this hill? Advertisement In many ways, its nonsensical. Hochul started a disastrous proxy war with the same womens groups who saved her election for seemingly no reason. And Jeffries has just gone to bat for a court pick that could hurt Democrats politically in the future. (After all, if Cuomo hadnt stacked the New York courts with conservatives, Jeffries would probably be House speaker right nownot just the Democrats leader.) He even suggested circumventing the Senate Judiciary Committee to aid in the process. Advertisement But in other ways, this strategy completely comports with the old Cuomo way of doing things. The disgraced governor often preferred a battle with his own partys left flank than with Republicans, a lesson Hochul seems to have learned. He would hold grudges and threaten retaliation against those who didnt go along; Hochul, in her own approximation, has reportedly told Democrats shell remember whos with her. Jeffries, an old ally of Cuomos, picked up his penchant for sparring with progressives too. And they seem to have found a uniquely disastrous moment to dig up the hatchet. If LaSalle makes it past WednesdayNew York Focus has reported that its unlikelythe chaos will only grow, as Hochul will start horse-trading with Republicans for votes. Even if LaSalle doesnt, the fallout will be huge, and lasting. As one organizer with a major national pro-choice group put it to me: How can we possibly trust Hochul after this? On Friday, the Supreme Court took up a case that could grant special privileges to religious employees at the expense of their coworkers; it would also legalize discrimination within the workplace. Groff v. DeJoy is a frightening case because this court, and much of the federal judiciary, simply cannot be trusted to adjudicate sensitive disputes about religious accommodations on the job. The current state of the law is biased against religious minorities with legitimate claims of mistreatment, especially Muslims and Sikhs. But the remedy may be worse, favoring conservative Christians who wish to discriminate against colleagues and customers. Groff shows what we lose when we cannot rely on the Supreme Court to handle difficult matters of faith without favoritism toward one particular vision of Christianity. Advertisement It was only a matter of time before SCOTUS heard a case like Groff. The plaintiff, Gerald Groff, is a postal carrier whose religion requires him to observe the Sabbath every Sunday. After USPS ordered him to deliver packages on Sundays, he resigned and sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law bars employment discrimination because of religion and directs employers to reasonably accommodate workers religious observance. It adds, however, that employers can refuse to provide accommodations that would place undue hardship on the conduct of the employers business. Groff lost in the lower courts. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Thats because, in 1977s Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court substantially weakened Title VIIs accommodation requirement. Hardison involved an employee who sought to take off Saturdays to observe the Sabbath, as required by his religion. Granting this accommodation would have cost Trans World Airlines just $150 over three months. Still, the airline refused. By a 72 vote, the court sided against the employee, rewriting Title VII in the process. The majority declared that an employer suffers an undue hardship when a religious accommodation would impose more than de minimis cost. Advertisement Yet those two standards are not the same, as Justice Thurgood Marshall pointed out in a furious dissent joined by Justice William Brennan. An undue hardship implies significant expense. A de minimis cost implies, well, a minimal one. So the Hardison test let employers refuse an accommodation as long as they could cook up some hypothetical reason why it might cost them any real money. Despite Congress best efforts, Marshall lamented, one of this nations pillars of strengthour hospitality to religious diversityhas been seriously eroded. All Americans will be a little poorer until todays decision is erased. A funny thing happened between 1977 and 2023: The politics of religious accommodations flipped. Marshall and Brennan, the Hardison dissenters, were the Supreme Courts liberal lions in their time. Today, it is the three most conservative justices who have called for Hardisons erasure: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. Now the court is set to hear Groff, a direct challenge to that precedent, and these justices are nearly certain to get their wish. It is unlikely that this trio shares Marshall and Brennans vision of religious tolerance. Advertisement Advertisement The politics of religious liberty have shifted significantly over the past half century. Decades ago, these cases typically involved petitioners from minority faiths, like Indigenous religions, requesting accommodations that would harm no one. Today religion cases more frequently involve conservative Christians right to discriminate against others. Look at a few of the Supreme Courts recent religious freedom cases: Christian schools that mistreat LGBTQ students and disabled teachers. Christian foster care agencies and commercial businesses that wont serve gay couples. Christian corporations that wont let employees access contraception. In each case, Christians religious freedom to discriminate trumped others freedom from discrimination. Advertisement In past decades, the Supreme Court guarded against such injustices. It held that the First Amendments establishment clause forbids the government from imposing religious accommodations that place significant burdens on third parties. And it recognized that people of different faiths, or no faith, have a compelling interest in avoiding discrimination thats motivated by religion. This approach balanced respect for free exercise with an acknowledgment of everyone elses liberties. Advertisement Unfortunately, in recent years, the court has abandoned this balance. Instead, the current conservative supermajority has greenlighted or mandated accommodations that directly injure other people. And it has exacerbated third-party harms by prioritizing religious freedom over everybody elses interest. Advertisement Advertisement Such are the sorts of special rights that Groff is designed to require. How do we know? The law firm that brought Groff to the Supreme Court is a far-right firm called the First Liberty Institute. It represents litigants who oppose LGBTQ equality, reproductive rights, secularism in public schools, and a host of other conservative bugaboos. At the same time that First Liberty is litigating Groff, it is suing on behalf of J. Robyn Strader, a CVS employee who seeks the right to not prescribe contraception. Strader demands a religious accommodation under Title VII because her religion opposes birth control. Advertisement Under the old Supreme Courts doctrine of third-party harm, her argument would be a nonstarter. The accommodation would clearly hurt customers, whose ability to obtain medication would be delayed or denied. And it could hurt employees, whose workload could balloon as they covered for Strader. At this ultraconservative Supreme Court, though, that principle is no longer good law. First Liberty knows that. And it wants to knock out Hardison so that clients like Strader can discriminate on the job. Its easy to envision what those cases will look like, because plenty of them have already arisen. A Walmart employee who repeatedly told colleagues that gays are going to hell. An HP employee who posted Bible verses on his cubicle calling for gays to be executed. A Cox employee who continually told a gay subordinate that homosexuality was wrong and sinful. A Walmart pharmacist who refused to fill birth control prescriptions. All lost under Hardison. All might prevail at this Supreme Court after Hardison is overturned. And it wont stop there. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Imagine a manager who refuses to hire a transgender applicant. Or an employee who wont work with a client whos had an abortion. Or a cop who wont patrol an abortion clinic. These are not the people whom Marshall and Brennan sought to protect. But Groff could grant them all a religious accommodation under Title VII. So, its difficult to get too excited for the Supreme Court to overturn Hardison. And yet it is also impossible to defend Hardison itself. The de minimis test enshrined in that case has a disproportionate impact on religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs, whose religious garb and observances are met with suspicion in Christian-dominated workplaces. Civil rights groups have identified a shocking number of cases in which courts have let employers deny accommodations for hijabs, brief prayer breaks, and faith-mandated beards. Advertisement These accommodations would harm nobody. Still, federal courts routinely hold that accommodating such beliefs would impose a more than de minimis cost because customers and colleagues might react negatively. As the courts interpret Hardison, customers bigotry against Sikhs is good enough reason to fire an observant Sikh. Thats ridiculous, and it cannot be squared with the text or history of Title VII. Advertisement Advertisement If only we could trust the Supreme Court to replace Hardison with a responsible standard that weighs respect for religion against genuine burdens on the rest of the workplace. The facts of Groff itself show how hard this task can be, even when there are no lurking culture war issues. Gerald Groffs post office employed just four people, and when he took off Sundays, his colleagues had to take on extra work. This led to resentment toward management and morale problems that created a tense atmosphere in the workplace. It seems unfair that some postal carriers had to take on additional duties because they practice a different religion from Groff. A better court could sift through these competing interests to identify what sort of compromise Title VII requires. The court we have is more likely to put its thumb on the scale in favor of religious employees every time. Swinging the law of accommodations from one extreme to another will only create more discord and generate endless litigation. Thats good for business at law firms like First Liberty. But it is not a recipe for the kind of religious tolerance that Marshall and Brennan demanded. Congress is gearing up for the fight of the year: raising the debt ceiling. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will play a pivotal role here, as he promised his partys far-right lawmakers that he wouldnt allow a debt-limit increase to pass unless it came with major spending cuts, in order to secure their support for his speakership bid. And mere weeks into the 118th Congress, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that were hitting the debt ceiling this week. Thursday, to be precise. Advertisement We at Slate Magazine decided to put our heads together to answer some pressing questions: What exactly is the debt ceiling, and how worried should we be right now? What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of money the federal government can borrow to pay its billsthink Medicare, Social Security, military salaries, tax refundsbecause the U.S. spends more than it brings in through taxes and other revenue. Its specifically about fulfilling obligations the government has already committed to, not about new, future spending. When Congress has to address the debt ceiling, it either raises it to a new number or suspends the debt ceiling for a certain period of time. Whenever the debt reaches that new limit, or hits that date, its time to do it again. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Waitso the government might run out of money? Is this different from a government shutdown? It is different! A shutdown happens when Congress cant agree on a budget that will finance the governmentif an agreement cant be reached in time, nonessential government services are either stopped completely or reduced. (Think back to TSA agents not showing up to work.) The debt ceiling is a limit Congress has to agree on that allows the government to borrow additional money in order to pay for things theyve previously committed to. So first the government argues about what to spend money on, then argues about whether to raise the amount of money it can borrow to cover what its committed to spending on? Advertisement Exactly. As Slates What Next: TBD host Lizzie OLeary explained to us, its like the federal government continues to charge things on its credit card but then starts refusing to pay the bill at the end of the month. The U.S. is unique in how it handles its debt and budgets, breaking them into two separate steps. Its a deliberate process that gives Congress tight control over the governments purse strings. The only other country in the world that enforces a similar debt ceiling is Denmark, but legislators there agreed to raise their debt ceiling to a fixed number so high that it would eliminate constant debate. Advertisement What happens if we hit the debt ceiling? Advertisement The U.S. would run out of the resources to finance all of its obligationsand if bondholders arent paid, the U.S. would default on its debt. Thats considered catastrophic, since defaulting could cause the country to slip into a deep recession, damage its credit rating, and potentially upend the global financial system. Millions of Americans stand to be affected because things like Social Security could not get paid out and U.S. troops and federal civilian employees could not be paid. Advertisement Yikes! When was the last time this happened? This has never actually happened! Since no lawmaker wants to be responsible for that kind of catastrophe, the debt ceiling has always, eventually been raised when needed. The Obama administration also faced a stubborn debt ceiling debate in 2011 that caused the worlds leading credit rating agency, Standard & Poor, to downgrade the U.S. credit rating for the first time ever. The Treasury also had to take extraordinary measures during a more recent debt ceiling fight, in 2021. Advertisement How is the debt ceiling debate going to go this time? This year, raising the debt ceiling is expected to get extra messy because of McCarthys promises to his far-right detractors. When considering raising the debt ceiling, he pledged to include a plan that balances the federal budget within 10 yearswithout raising taxes. Its a tall order, and at the moment its not clear how it will land, though McCarthy has spoken to President Biden about potential negotiations. The speaker also suggested he was interested in previous deals that raised the debt ceiling while applying spending caps to the budget. McCarthys fellow Republicans have indicated they want to see spending cuts to both discretionary and mandatory spendingincluding Social Security and Medicare. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement One thing is certain: Republicans will use raising the debt limit to leverage their own key priorities, which include border wall funding and cutting COVID-19 spending. So what is the deadline this week? What is actually happening on Thursday? The economy isnt going to explode this week. Secretary Yellen has told Congress that the U.S. will hit its debt ceiling on Jan. 19, but thats just the beginning. The Treasury Department has mechanisms in placeknown as extraordinary measuresto keep the government running while limiting some spending, like suspending new investments in retirement and disability funds. These moves are temporary, and retirees arent affected, as the Treasury Department will make those funds whole again after the debt-limit impasse ends. All these maneuvers buy Congress a few more months to get its act together before it inevitably raises the debt ceiling. Yellen estimated that it is unlikely the government will run out of cash to pay its bills before early June. Advertisement Advertisement So what can Congress do to prevent this? How do we get out of this situation? For starters, Congress could vote to simply eliminate the debt ceiling altogethersounds efficient, but incredibly unlikely and hotly contested. This approach would get rid of the regular debate over allowing the federal government to continue to borrow money for its commitments, but it would eliminate a lever that Republicans feel is necessary to force a conversation about the national debt. Another, slightly more realistic option would be for lawmakers to engage in a discharge petition. Thats a strategy that would circumvent House Speaker McCarthy by requiring 218 signatories to force a vote on a billin this case, a bill raising the debt ceiling. Its a rarely used option, but it did come in handy when the House was pressured to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970. Discharge petitions require quite a bit of planning: The bill must sit in committee for at least 30 days, gather 218 signatures, and sit in the discharge calendar for seven days before it can go to a vote. Advertisement Both of these options are considered unlikely or cumbersome and, historically speaking, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have chosen to resolve it through brinkmanship. OK, so say we avoid a debt ceiling crisis in June. Then a few months later, there will be a fight about the budget again? Yup. Democrats passed a $1.7 trillion package that funds the government until September, so Congress technically has until Oct. 1 to act and pass a yearly appropriations bill. Similar to the debt ceiling debates, when the yearly government spending bill approaches its deadline, lawmakers from both sides try to squeeze in funding for their prioritiesand if a stalemate continues past Oct. 1, federal funding lapses can cause a government shutdown. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Thats what happened in 2019, when the government experienced its longest shutdown in history after Trump insisted he would not sign a government funding bill unless it included $5 billion for a border wall. After 35 days of a stubborn stalemate, Trump relented, and the government reopened with a new budget, without any border wall funding. Why does it feel as if the government is so frequently on the brink of shutting down or exploding? Because Congress has become increasingly partisan over the past few decades. It mostly started in the 1990s, when Democratic President Bill Clinton said he would not be blackmailed by Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich when negotiating government budgets. It was a moment when the GOP committed to its priority of deficit reduction and not going along with customary debt ceiling increases. Advertisement Fast-forward about 16 years, and the Obama administration also faced a Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, who insisted on cuts to federal spending. Negotiations went on for months, and eventually a budget deal was reached to avert a government shutdown. The final bill included a mix of spending reduction and tax hikes over the next 12 years. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are still playing the same game today, because government funding bills are must-pass pieces of legislationrisking a shutdown. At the 11th hour just last month, Democrats passed a funding bill while clinging to their majority that bypassed a shutdown and a political showdown with Republicans. Advertisement Republicans were not happy about this. Especially Texas Rep. Chip Roy, one of the McCarthy holdouts for his speakership bid and a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, who released a letter to his Senate Republican colleagues threatening to derail their priority legislation if they voted for the Democrats spending bill. Speaker McCarthy agreed with Roys letter, and even pledged that if a similarly priced package ever comes to the House floor, it will be dead on arrival. Eighteen Senate Republicans voted for the spending bill in December, while only nine House Republicans ended up voting for it. The Wikipedia editors are waiting to hear you scream. On Wednesday, Wikipedia is set to make its new skin the default on English Wikipediaits first new skin since 2010and the team of designers and volunteer editors are waiting with some mix of excitement and trepidation. On Sunday, several dozen Wikipedia editors nursed cocktails in midtown Manhattan at the afterparty for Wikipedia Day, the annual celebration of Wikipedias Jan. 14, 2001, founding. The groupa nerdy crowd of librarians, students, software engineers, and others who spend their free time creating an encyclopediausually meets in quiet libraries instead of ritzy open bars, but this was a special occasion: Wikipedias 22nd birthday (as well as its 21st and 20th, which the group had only commemorated online). Plus, someone had offered the space as a donation. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Gathered on a leather couch, speaking loudly over the DJs groovy music, their conversation meandered from class-action lawsuits against a water park to bird photography to Vector 2022, Wikipedias first big redesign in 12 years, set to debut as the default on English Wikipedia on Wednesday. Eyes lit up. People leaned in. Anticipation was palpable. Were going to be able to hear screams from space, joked a Wikimedian who goes by the username Enterprisey, who has spent months contributing to the redesign. Pharos, a longtime contributor, mentioned that Swahili Wikipedia had unanimously voted to reject the new skin and curtly demanded a return to the old skin. I had never seen Swahili Wikipedia so outspoken about something. Pretty exciting, he said. Advertisement For all the hype, Vector 2022 isnt dramatically differentthats why it shares a name with the previous skin, Vector 2010. All the scaffolding is the same: Wikipedia is still Wikipedia, just with more whitespace, a more prominent search bar and language switcher, and a sticky table of contents. Theres also a collapsible sidebar and maximum line width, which make the site more clean and less cluttered. But those changes have been scrupulously discussed and debated (over and over and over). Advertisement Wikipedia is not the scrappy web experiment it once was. In Wikipedias 22 years online, its content has exploded to more than 300 languages (more than twice as many as Google Translate). The Wikimedia Foundation, which was formed in 2003 to oversee Wikipedia and its sister projects like Wikimedia Commons, has an endowment thats $100 million and growing. But it doesnt look all that different than it did 23 years ago, when it was run by a few guys in an office in Florida. The text-heavy website resembles an email inbox, or Craigslist, or Old Reddit. Its a barrage of straightforward white and blue text, a rather unsightly assemblage of lines and squares. Its not trendy. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement When I say Im a designer for Wikipedia, some people are surprised that a job like that exists, Wikimedia Foundation staff member Alex Hollender told me over the phone. Hes one of 23 people on Wikimedias design team. But there are far, far more unpaid designers. Practically everyone who uses Wikipedia has opinions about how it looks, and unlike other internet titans like Facebook and Amazon, Wikipedia invites users to share their feedback and really listens to their points. The paid design team regularly meets for office-hour video calls with interested volunteers, and since the skin was proposed in 2019, Wikipedians have spilled more than 200,000 words on the page for Vector 2022 feedback, offering suggestions and criticismmeaning that theres a corpus longer than Jane Eyre (and almost as long as Moby-Dick) about button positioning and table formatting. A page-turner! Advertisement Thats not even counting the 90,000-word-long discussion on whether the new skin should be default, which went down in autumn of 2022. It was a bloodbath: Crotchety Wikipedia veterans practically yelled too much white space! in unison while starry-eyed progressives condemned the kneejerk resistance to change. A few clever thinkers crafted a compromise plan. In the end, the 165 people who voted to oppose the redesign outnumbered the 153 supporters. Nevertheless, its happening. (The vote in a request for comment is not binding; the closing remarks reflect the consensus, and in this case, the closing remarks were in favor of the redesign.) The design team took some of the advice, adding a toggle to appease the whitespace-haters, and set a launch date for Wednesday. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Wikipedians, characteristically skeptical, arent the only online community that has put forth a big fat resistance to redesign. When Reddit got a sleek makeover in 2018, 1.2 million users signed a petition to revert to its old design. Some Wikipedia contributors have a hard time trusting Wikimedia Foundation designers. No one on the paid design team was around 12 years ago when the last skin was made, and only some of them were involved with the wiki communities before they were hired. Wikimedia Foundation often hires designers who arent familiar with the community, and they come in and try to make all these changesrunning head-first into a buzz sawand the community understandably resists, said Brandon Harris, who was a senior designer at Wikipedia from 2010 to 2014. As we talked on a video call, I realized where Id seen his long brown ponytail beforehe was featured on a donation banner a decade ago. Advertisement No one has to use the default skin. Many people dont. Harris, who also goes by the username Jorm, has been tinkering with the Wikipedia layout for more than a decade. At Wikimania in 2012, the same year that founder Jimmy Wales named him staff member of the year, he presented a few ideas for a more user-friendly layout called Athena, which he eventually turned into a working prototype named Winter. The project stagnated until 2015, when a volunteer who goes by Isarra wrote Hi. Im considering making a new skin for the Wikimedia projects. Yes, I know this is a terrible idea. I dont really care. She took Jorms principles and built a skin called Timeless, which you can choose by navigating to Preferences and then Appearance. True to its name, Timeless has been a cult favorite among Wikipedia users who appreciate its color, prominent display of editing tools, and mobile formatting. An indie hit, if you will. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Timeless isnt the only non-default layout you can choose. You can manually choose to use Monobook, the default skin from 2004 to 2010, which British comedian Stephen Fry appears to have done, based on his tweet of a screenshot of a 2022 United Kingdom government crisis Wikipedia article outfitted in the Monobook skin. Theres also Minerva, a skin for mobile devices. If you want a real trip down memory lane, you can check out Nostalgia Wikipedia, a preserved copy of Wikipedia as it appeared in December 2001. The site is instantly recognizable: the white minimalist background, the globe logo in the corner, the blue links. But its from a different era, and there isnt even a search bar. A few other aughts skins, such as Cologne Blue, reek of early 2000s design trends (check it out here). Modern now feels very dated, despite its name. Advertisement Not into the new look? Not into any of the old looks, either? Wikipedia doesnt just allow users to contribute encyclopedia content. It also allows you to make some kooky CSS customizations. Neon background! Blinking links! Even more, you can also inject your own arbitrary Javascript into the site to change it according to your preferences, however odd they may be. Wikipedians have made scripts to display IP addresses as emoji, show dark mode, and highlight questionable sources. If you want to make a more drastic customization, youre invited to create your own skin or choose from the 101 that already existincluding a flower-themed design and a layout that resembles a messy desk. Advertisement To an outsider, the meticulous, sometimes combative arguments about, say, moving a button five pixels to the left seem pointless. I beg of thee, please, touch grass! But to many, Wikipedia is sort of a home on the internet. And people want to live somewhere nice. Maybe all Ill be remembered for is making the already-visited links a little bit more purple, design team member Hollender told me. Or the guy who made the table of contents stay on the screen as youre reading. It sounds small. But maybe, if Im doing my job, people will be able to find information a tiny bit faster. Update, Jan. 19, 2023: This article was updated to clarify that a vote in a request for comment is not binding; what is important is the closing remarks, which reflect the consensus. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Activists in Spain call on Greta Thunberg to help get Sweden to pay for historical mining disaster ARCHIVED ARTICLE The environmental group Mujeres por Donana has sent a letter to Greta Thunberg pleading her to ask her country to pay for the 1998 Boliden mining disaster The environmental group Mujeres por Donana (Women for Donana) has sent a letter to the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg asking for her help to get her country to pay for the ecological disaster caused by Swedish company Boliden in the area of Donana in 1998 with the overflow of the Aznalcollar mining reservoir. The Donana National Park, which spans the provinces of Huelva and Seville in southern Spain, has been a protected wetland habitat for migratory birds and other natural species since 1969. impurities, burst, releasing between 4 and 5 million cubic metres of mine tailings into the area. In the late 90s, however, the Boliden mining disaster threatened many local species of flora and fauna when the banks of the Aznalcollar mining reservoir, which is supposed to wash and remove miningimpurities, burst, releasing between 4 and 5 million cubic metres of mine tailings into the area. The clean-up project cost almost 90 million euros, which was paid by the Spanish public coffers to restore the affected areas. Now, the environmental group Mujeres por Donana are asking the Swedish mining company responsible to pay for those costs. In a statement, they stated that Sweden, in the eyes of the majority of the world, represents the image of an exemplary nation with regard to the defence of sustainable development and the environmental health of the planet. It is also proud that it is the birthplace of what is currently the most popular icon of green activism in the media: the young Greta Thunberg. However, they added that the reality is very different and, for this reason, they are asking Greta Thunberg to intercede on their behalf with the government of Sweden, which has been responsible for some of the greatest environmental tragedies in contemporary history. The Mujeres por Donana have invited the young Swedish activist to come and see them at work in Andalucia , where she will be able to learn about their donkey-fire projects to prevent forest fires, their initiatives for sustainable crops without pesticides and the battle they are currently waging to prevent the threat of pellet management from wiping out the forests around the National Park. Image 1: Archive Image 2: kallerna/Wikimedia commons article_detail Parties have until end of January to agree on early elections. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled President Zuzana Caputova has said she would like to see snap elections in the first half of the year as the political crisis gripping Slovakia intensifies. In a statement addressing the current political situation, she said she would also accept a September date for elections, adding that if the current temporary government was fundamentally unable to perform its functions until such time as early elections can be held, she was prepared to recall it and install a caretaker administration instead. President wants results by end of January In a post on social media, the President explained that the interim government - which she appointed after PM Eduard Heger's previous government lost a confidence vote in December - has limited powers and should rule only as long as necessary. Interim PM Eduard Heger (OLaNO) must cooperate with the president on several matters, including foreign policy. She said holding elections in the first half of the year would be better for the preparation of both the state budget and budgets of other administrative bodies, including self-governing regions. But what is most important, she said, was that with the country facing various crises, a government with full powers was needed as soon as possible. "It is clear that an agreement on snap elections among political parties is not easy to find. Therefore, if parties are able to find consensus only on a September election date, this is still an acceptable option for me," Caputova said. "It is important that this issue is dealt with by the end January, so that citizens get a clear message as soon as possible as to how and when we will lead Slovakia out of this political crisis," the President said. Related article Related article Matovics party might shed important members, including Heger Read more Failed quest to form new government President Caputova said it was essential government now demonstrated an ability to ensure it was functioning properly in key tasks, including helping citizens with rising energy prices and those most affected by poverty, and dealing with problems in healthcare, and better implementation of the EU's recovery plan. On Tuesday, Interim Prime Minister Eduard Heger, announced that his efforts to form a new government had failed, admitting that now "a discussion on snap elections is thus appropriate". Heger and OLaNO had previously rejected the possibility of snap elections, but it is thought the party is leaning towards supporting a September date, as does the SaS party and coalition partner Sme Rodina. However, the Hlas-SD opposition party, which currently leads in opinion polls, and other opposition parties are demanding an earlier date. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230117/eating-one-us-freshwater-fish-equals-month-of-drinking-forever-chemicals-water---study-1106439746.html Eating One US Freshwater Fish Equals Month of Drinking Forever Chemicals Water - Study Eating One US Freshwater Fish Equals Month of Drinking Forever Chemicals Water - Study Eating fish caught in US lakes and rivers once a year amounts to a month of consuming drinking water spiked with "forever chemicals," a study by US nonprofit The Environmental Working Group (EWG) showed on Tuesday. 2023-01-17T21:23+0000 2023-01-17T21:23+0000 2023-01-17T23:55+0000 americas freshwater fish study perfluorooctane sulfonate (pfos) /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/11/1106439375_0:320:3073:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_d53614216ec80e56294a8c8c072fdbaa.jpg "A new study by Environmental Working Group scientists finds that consumption of just a single serving of freshwater fish per year could be equal to a month of drinking water laced with the "forever chemical" PFOS at high levels that may be harmful," the EWG said in a news release. EWG found the median amounts of "forever chemicals" known as PFAS in freshwater fish were 280 times greater than forever chemicals detected in some commercially caught and sold fish, the release also said. "The testing data, from the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration, showed that consuming a single meal of freshwater fish could lead to similar PFAS exposure as ingesting store-bought fish every day for a year," it noted. "People who consume freshwater fish, especially those who catch and eat fish regularly, are at risk of alarming levels of PFAS in their bodies," EWG Senior Scientist Dr. David Andrews, one of the studys lead authors, said as quoted in the release. "Growing up, I went fishing every week and ate those fish. But now when I see fish, all I think about is PFAS contamination." Experts said consumption of PFOS-contaminated freshwater fish can cause significant increases in peoples blood serum levels of the forever chemical, creating potential health risks. Even infrequent consumption of freshwater fish can raise PFOS levels in the body. Researchers analyzed data from more than 500 samples of fish fillets collected in the United States from 2013 to 2015 while being monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Rivers and Streams Assessment and the Great Lakes Human Health Fish Fillet Tissue Study. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230114/chocolates-irresistible-charm-is-hidden-in-key-tactile-sensation-study-shows-1106314570.html americas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International us freshwater fish, study, forever chemicals, pfos https://sputnikglobe.com/20230117/pentagon-ukrainian-troops-officially-begin-patriot-missile-training-at-us-military-base-1106438825.html Pentagon: Ukrainian Troops Officially Begin Patriot Missile Training at US Military Base Pentagon: Ukrainian Troops Officially Begin Patriot Missile Training at US Military Base The United States began training Ukrainian forces at Fort Sill military base on the use and maintenance of Patriot missile systems, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder said on Tuesday. 2023-01-17T20:24+0000 2023-01-17T20:24+0000 2023-01-17T23:56+0000 americas patriot missile system ukrainian soldiers fort sill oklahoma /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/0c/0e/1105436450_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_ac73fea2aefe6176dd10e7562cfa5be2.jpg "Training has begun," Ryder said during a press briefing, when asked about the training. "Those troops have arrived at Fort Sill and have begun their training." The Biden administration is providing one Patriot surface-to-air missile system to Ukraine, to be delivered following completion of the training. Approximately 90-100 Ukrainian soldiers will be trained over the next several months on how to operate and maintain the missile system, Ryder said. Germany has likewise promised a Patriot missile system to Ukraine, and the Netherlands has expressed its intent to provide one as well. Western backers of the government in Kiev have focused their security assistance on air defense in recent months amid Russian missile strikes on key Ukrainian targets. The Pentagons decision to train Ukrainian forces on the missile system at Fort Sill shows the "de facto participation" of the US in the conflict on behalf of Kiev, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said earlier this month.Ryder's remarks come on the heels of reports that American forces have also undertaken military training for Ukrainian soldiers in Germany, of which is said to include both field and classroom instruction. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230116/us-military-reportedly-starts-training-ukrainian-soldiers-in-germany-1106387640.html americas fort sill oklahoma Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International patriot missile system, ukraine, pentagon, ukrainian soldiers, training, fort sill, oklahoma https://sputnikglobe.com/20230117/un-official-concerned-newly-drafted-ukraine-laws-may-undermine-right-of-religion-belief-1106440646.html UN Official 'Concerned' Newly Drafted Ukraine Laws May Undermine Right of Religion, Belief UN Official 'Concerned' Newly Drafted Ukraine Laws May Undermine Right of Religion, Belief UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris said she was concerned that two recent draft laws in Ukraine could undermine the right of religion as guaranteed by international law. 2023-01-17T23:46+0000 2023-01-17T23:46+0000 2023-01-18T01:43+0000 world the united nations (un) ukraine religion religious beliefs /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/102633/70/1026337018_0:209:4000:2459_1920x0_80_0_0_1ef901e605b6a001cf723c66c8727664.jpg "We are concerned that two draft law recently taken by the Parliament - draft law 8221 and draft law number 8262 - could undermine the right of religion or belief as enshrined in article 18 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights," Kehris told the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Kehris said that among the array of human rights concerns, the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is particularly concerned about the documents restrictions of freedom of religion, as well as freedom of association across Ukraine. In November and December, the Ukrainian security service conducted searches in the places of worship of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the authorities criminally charged at least three clerics. Earlier, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia commented during a UNSC meeting that Ukraine is now one step away from a religious catastrophe and can face the worst inter-confessional conflict in the history of Europe."Mr. President, the latest area of Kievs repressive policy is its war against canonical orthodoxy," Nebenzia said during a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday. Nebenzia underscored that Russia would never tolerate a "Russophobic and anti-Christian dictatorship" being established in neighboring Ukraine.In 2022, some 129 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were taken hold of, the Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Anthony.Anthony added in an address that Ukraine is reducing the possibility for dialogue by attempting to destroy the UOC.On December 28, President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree to suspend the Ukrainian citizenship of 13 UOC clerics. Zelensky called on Ukraines parliament to adopt a bill to ban the UOC within two months and such a bill has since been submitted. Meanwhile, some local authorities in Ukraine have decided to ban the activities of the UOC. The UOC is the only canonical Orthodox church in Ukraine recognized by all other local Orthodox churches in the country. ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International ukraine, religious beliefs, religious rights, united nation, draft laws https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/-up-to-750000-workers-expected-to-protest-pension-reform-in-france-on-thursday-reports-1106468550.html Up to 750,000 Workers Expected to Protest Pension Reform in France on Thursday - Reports Up to 750,000 Workers Expected to Protest Pension Reform in France on Thursday - Reports Between 550,000 and 750,000 people are expected to hit picket lines in France on Thursday during a national day of strikes over a contentious pension reform, media said. 2023-01-18T15:48+0000 2023-01-18T15:48+0000 2023-01-18T18:41+0000 world france protests trade unions protest actions olivier veran /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/0b/07/1103848388_0:0:2917:1642_1920x0_80_0_0_38f918a167fe9a1bc8d7eb90da75d25f.jpg Some 221 protest actions are planned in cities and towns across the country, most notably in Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille and Nantes, French media estimated. Up to 80,000 people are expected to rally in the capital alone. French government spokesman Olivier Veran urged those planning to take part in the strikes not to disrupt French people's daily life during the protests. Trade unions have called for action in solidarity against the government's plans to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62, end pension advantages in some industries and increase the number of years needed to receive full retirement benefits. The reform still needs parliamentary approval. Workers from the energy industry, public transport and teachers will stage one day walkouts. The strike will impact rail and air traffic, with one in five flights being canceled on Thursday at the Orly international airport in Paris. france Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International protests in france, trade unions, industrial action, cost of living in france https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/16-people-including-ukrainian-interior-minister-die-in-air-crash-near-kiev-police-say-1106449269.html 'French' Helicopter That Crashed Killing Ukrainian Interior Minister Reportedly Had Tech Issues 'French' Helicopter That Crashed Killing Ukrainian Interior Minister Reportedly Had Tech Issues The crash took place in the Ukrainian city of Brovary on January 18, leaving at least 14 people dead and 25 injured. 2023-01-18T08:24+0000 2023-01-18T08:24+0000 2023-01-18T14:59+0000 world ukraine city helicopter crash buildings children /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106449889_0:159:3079:1890_1920x0_80_0_0_d4e3fea7a499f74efa7d1deeaf7b6d59.jpg Ukrainian Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky and his first deputy Yevgeny Enin are among those killed in a helicopter crash in the Kiev suburb of Brovary on Wednesday, according to the National Police of Ukraine. According to Ukrainian media, the chopper was bought from France in 2018, and the model in question - an Airbus H225 (previously known as Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma) - had a number of technical problems.The media also reported that sometimes, the main rotor of the H225 helicopters separates from the aircraft mid-flight, so they may have a "potentially catastrophic failure in the design." These conclusions were widely published by Western media back in 2016 after a helicopter crashed in the sea off the coast of Scotland in 2009. According to the investigators, the cause of the accident was attributed to the catastrophic failure of the Main Rotor Gearbox as a result of a fatigue fracture of a second stage planet gear in the epicyclic module.Earlier in the day, the head of the Kiev regional military administration Oleksiy Kuleba said that a helicopter had crashed in Brovary near a kindergarten and residential buildings.According to the country's emergency services, 14 people were killed and 25 injured in the accident. The rescue operation has officially ended. https://sputnikglobe.com/20220224/ukrainian-military-airplane-crashes-near-kiev-killing-five--1093334187.html ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International a helicopter crash near kiev, 14 dead in a helicopter crash near kiev, ukrainian interior minister denys monastyrsky and his first deputy yevgeny enin were killed in a helicopter crash near kiev https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/austria-gains-no-benefits-from-gas-fracking-energy-minister-says-1106461543.html Austria Gains No Benefits From Gas Fracking, Energy Minister Says Austria Gains No Benefits From Gas Fracking, Energy Minister Says Austria does not benefit much from gas produced by fracking either from the economic or from the environmental points of view, Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler said 2023-01-18T13:39+0000 2023-01-18T13:39+0000 2023-01-18T13:39+0000 energy crisis in europe austria fracking fracking industry gas /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/0b/16/1104559953_0:206:2907:1841_1920x0_80_0_0_2725929b19c49d799424c5ea061b1120.jpg The minister added that the relevant proposal had already been sent to the government and was being discussed informally. Austria is evaluating prospects for finding a replacement to the gas no longer supplied by Russia. On January 11, the Austrian authorities said they were examining the possibility of replacing Russian gas with domestically-produced biogas. They warned, however, that volumes produced would be limited and the biogas could only be used in periods of high demand. austria Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International fracking in austria, how to replace russian gas, how europe replaces russian gas, fracking replacing russian gas https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/burn-after-reading-why-classified-documents-dont-matter-1106441539.html Burn After Reading: Why Classified Documents Don't Matter Burn After Reading: Why Classified Documents Don't Matter The strange story at the top of the headlinesthe current president and the most recent former president are both the subject of special counsel investigations... 18.01.2023, Sputnik International 2023-01-18T00:41+0000 2023-01-18T00:41+0000 2023-01-18T00:36+0000 analysis biden classified files us donald trump joe biden /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/0e/1106304401_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_0d0e947cf7e473fac7b9554cf4164c0b.jpg Americans believe their nation exists in a terrifying state of endless peril. Propagandized by popular culture and the media, we imagine that were constantly teetering at the precipice of collapse or subjugation, surrounded by clever and ruthless fiendish enemies hellbent on undermining, attacking and ultimately destroying the United States and turning us into their slaves.The era of great invading armies and empire-building is over. In our world, borders are largely settled so empires are built via economic influence rather than territorial gains. Bigger countries bump up against each other at the edges in search of incremental advantage.Fewer nations in history have ever been less at risk than the US in 2023. Buffered by vast oceans and bordered by vassal states, enjoying total command of the worlds oceans, the US is uniquely impervious to invasion. No nation-state has launched a military attack on mainland US since the War of 1812and we started that one. (In an attempt to buy time, warn us away from the western Pacific and to convince us to drop our oil embargo, Imperial Japan picked Pearl Harbor as a target because it was located on a remote American colony that was not yet a state. The Japanese didnt think we would care as much as we did.) The danger to the US is from within: right-wing counterrevolution, secession, disintegration, environmental or economic collapse.None of the threats we worry aboutRussia, China, Iran, North Koreawant a war with the US, much less to invade. When US adversaries saber-rattle, their motivation is to dissuade us from attacking them. To paraphrase Walter White in Breaking Bad, we are not the one who gets attacked. We are the one who attacks.The hysterical reaction to the classified documents idiocy rests on a cartoonish worldview derived from watching too many "Bourne" movies. In the fevered imagination of political-thriller scriptwriters, we would be totally screwed if the wrong Super Duper Important Document were to fall into the clutches of an Evil Enemy of America.There is no such document.When, if ever, has a classified document ever been so explosive that it represented a serious threat to national security? Almost certainly never. The exposure of classified material can lead to the theft of technology or the capture or murder of intelligence agents. And when such breaches have occurred, they have been inconveniences that required cleanups and workarounds. They were not existential dangers to the American nation-state. Nuclear launch codes are changed daily, so it wouldnt even matter if a nefarious foreigner were to nick yesterdays gold codes off the presidents desk.The problem with classified documents is not the possibility that Donald Trump might, in the ridiculously overheated speculation by mainstream media outlets that ought to know better, sell them to the highest bidder. The problem is that there are too many of them.Over-classification is wildly out of control. Publicly-available news articles are marked top secret. Should we impeach President Biden over keeping some of these next to his car? Description of foreign cultural practices, like wedding ceremonies, are marked confidential, so you can be prosecuted as a felon under the Espionage Act for mishandling one. The US government has kept documents classified for a full century; in 2011, the CIA finally declassified World War I-era memos explaining how to expose invisible ink.Everythings secret, former CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden, remarked. I mean, I got an email saying, Merry Christmas. It carried a Top Secret NSA classification marking.Get a grip, people!There would be no effect whatsoever if 99.99999% of classified documents were to be posted to the internet. Since thats almost certainly the case about all the documents found in Bidens garage and at Mar-a-Lago, it would be nice if both major political parties were to drop the posturing over the presidents sloppy record management and focus on real problems that affect real Americans every single day: climate change, health care for profit, high college tuition, the prison industrial complex, brutal and racist police, unemployment, homelessness, unaffordable housing.Where would the money come from? We could start by abolishing the unnecessary agencies that churn out those zillions of useless classified documents.(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Teds hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.) https://sputnikglobe.com/20230116/james-comer-biden-refuses-transparent-investigation-into-classified-documents-case-1106413155.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230116/contagious-syndrome-how-clinton--obama-used-to-mishandle-classified-docs-akin-to-biden-1106411646.html Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ted Rall https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/02/13/1082125340_0:0:360:360_100x100_80_0_0_1ed1a3494a53cde87e19521c3658fe92.jpg Ted Rall https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/02/13/1082125340_0:0:360:360_100x100_80_0_0_1ed1a3494a53cde87e19521c3658fe92.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ted Rall https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/02/13/1082125340_0:0:360:360_100x100_80_0_0_1ed1a3494a53cde87e19521c3658fe92.jpg us, classified documents, joe biden, donald trump https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/canadas-joly-ottawa-summoned-russian-envoy-to-condemn-dnepr-attacks-1106473321.html Canadas Joly: Ottawa Summoned Russian Envoy to Condemn Dnepr Attacks Canadas Joly: Ottawa Summoned Russian Envoy to Condemn Dnepr Attacks Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly told reporters that Canadian officials summoned the Russian ambassador to condemn the recent incident in Dnepr, Ukraine, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovs comments. 2023-01-18T21:38+0000 2023-01-18T21:38+0000 2023-01-18T21:41+0000 americas canada oleg stepanov sergey lavrov summoning dnepr /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/04/16/1094979978_0:0:3103:1745_1920x0_80_0_0_1ec9a4bff1f98b040b37e363541aeba2.jpg Today, my officials are summoning Russia's ambassador to Canada to make clear we do not accept the sheer brutality of Russia's recent attacks against civilians in [Dnepr], and to condemn face-to-face the antisemitic comments made by Russia's Minister Sergey Lavrov, Joly said on Wednesday. Joly confirmed the summons shortly after Russian envoy Oleg Stepanov relayed to Sputnik that he was invited to the Canadian Foreign Ministry at approximately 4 p.m. local time for an unknown reason.On Saturday, a missile hit a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr, killing at least 40 people. Shortly after the incident, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the building was damaged by debris from a Russian missile that was shot down by Ukrainian air defense. Lavrov on Wednesday said the United States created a coalition of European countries to solve the so-called "Russian question" in the same way that Adolf Hitler sought to eradicate Jews in Europe. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/highlights-of-lavrovs-big-presser-from-wests-colonialist-mindset-to-ukraine-hybrid-war--beyond-1106466221.html americas canada Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International canada, melanie joly, russian ambassador to canada, oleg stepanov, condemn Frost-resistant Fuxing train to make maiden voyage in Chinas Heilongjiang People's Daily Online) 10:09, January 18, 2023 A CR400BF-GZ Fuxing bullet train runs on a high-speed railway. (Photo/Yuan Yong) The CR400BF-GZ train, the most frost-resistant and intelligent Fuxing bullet train model, was put into operation in northeast Chinas Heilongjiang Province on Jan. 16. This region has the highest latitude and the lowest temperature that the model, which has a maximum speed of 350 kilometers per hour, has ever reached. The train will go into service for the first time during the Spring Festival travel rush on routes in Heilongjiang. It shows that Chinas independently developed Fuxing bullet train can operate under various temperature conditions. Compared with standard Fuxing trains, the CR400BF-GZ train has the highest speed level and is more resistant to low temperatures and ice and snow due to its special design. It can operate in an extremely cold environment of minus 40 degree Celsius. Two sets of the trains will undergo a series of test runs and start operating on lines in Heilongjiang. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/chilean-government-blocks-25-billion-mining-project-due-to-environmental-damage---minister-1106472505.html Chilean Government Blocks $2.5 Billion Mining Project Due to Environmental Damage - Minister Chilean Government Blocks $2.5 Billion Mining Project Due to Environmental Damage - Minister The Chilean committee of ministers unanimously voted against the $2.5 billion Dominga mining and sea port project in the region of Coquimbo due to its potential damage to the environment and wildlife, Environment Minister Maisa Rojas said on Wednesday. 2023-01-18T20:08+0000 2023-01-18T20:08+0000 2023-01-18T21:38+0000 americas chile environmental impact mining /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106472359_0:0:3073:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_788f2ea687c928c1b2f743453e5d5c42.jpg "There are reservations about the project concerning several aspects: marine life, scientific research, impact area, assessment of the impact on different species," Rojas said. The project, which has been developed by Chile's Andes Iron since 2013, includes a mine, a plant, a waste storage, a shipping terminal and a system of underground pipelines. The Dominga project was planned to be located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Chile's capital of Santiago near ecological reserves, drawing criticism due to its potential negative impact on environmentally sensitive areas. The company, in turn, rejected all claims, saying that the project complied with the country's environmental standards, and stated it would turn to the courts to overrule the committee's decision. According to Chile's former environment minister, Marcelo Mena, the legal battle around the decision could take up to two years. americas chile Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International chile, chilean government, mining project, environment damage https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/church-of-england-rejects-calls-to-back-same-sex-marriage-1106456156.html Church of England Rejects Calls to Back Same-Sex Marriage Church of England Rejects Calls to Back Same-Sex Marriage The Church of England on Wednesday rejected demands to allow clergy to conduct same-sex marriages, but suggested that couples who were married in a civil ceremony could bless their union in church. 2023-01-18T11:54+0000 2023-01-18T11:54+0000 2023-01-18T11:54+0000 world church of england uk lgbt christianity /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/106332/52/1063325282_0:229:5322:3223_1920x0_80_0_0_3016d600502ac0fc133eb6c7dea4755e.jpg On Monday, UK House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt called on the Church of England to perform same-sex marriages, saying the Church's current stance causes "pain and trauma" to LGBTQ+ people. Following the appeal, the Church outlined its new proposals, which it called "historical plans" to reform its posture on same-sex couples. Prayers will be voluntary for clergy and can be used in different combinations reflecting the theological diversity of the Church, the statement read. Church of England bishops will later this week issue an apology to LGBTQ+ people for the "rejection, exclusion and hostility" they have faced in churches and the impact it has had on their lives, the statement added. Under canon law, no priest in the Church of England can bless or marry same-sex couples. According to the British media, Mordaunt's call was the first time that a sitting cabinet minister had asked the Church to carry out reforms on same-sex marriage. Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International same-sex marriage church of england, lgbtq+ in england, lgbtq+ and religion https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/finnish-newspaper-publishes-erdogan-cartoon-following-scandals-in-sweden-1106443836.html Finnish Newspaper Publishes Erdogan Cartoon Following Scandals in Sweden Finnish Newspaper Publishes Erdogan Cartoon Following Scandals in Sweden The cartoon alludes to the Erdogan effigy that was hanged last week outside Stockholm's city hall by supporters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). 2023-01-18T05:24+0000 2023-01-18T05:24+0000 2023-01-24T10:53+0000 world sweden finland scandinavia news nato cartoon contest recep tayyip erdogan /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/106462/78/1064627830_0:0:4016:2259_1920x0_80_0_0_869cf5ecc46d5abe1208cd0a1866f1db.jpg The Finnish newspaper Illtalehti has published a caricature alluding to the Erdogan effigy that was hanged last week outside Stockholm's city hall during a demonstration by supporters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), sparking a hot debate in both Sweden and Turkey.The picture contains three depictions of the Turkish president, one as the doll hanged outside Stockholm's city hall, one naked, and one as a dog, in likely nod to Prophet Muhammad cartoon made by the late Swedish artist Lars Vilks, which sparked ire across the Muslim world in 2007 and led to numerous death threats against the author.The headline reads "The pricelist of Erdogan ridicule" and the speech bubbles around the president read: "130 terrorists!", "200 terrorists!" and "500 terrorists!", alluding to the extradition requirements Turkey placed on Sweden and Finland in order to approve the countries' NATO bids.The caricature was drawn by the controversial artist Ville Ranta, who has been reported to the police on several occasions for his works, including for incitement against ethnic groups.According to Kauppinen, the newspaper has published similar satire targeting the NATO process and Turkey's role in it in the past. By his own admission, the reactions have been mixed, "as always with political satire."This comes as the Swedish newspaper Flamman launched a cartoon contest targeting Turkish President Recep Erdogan, a move its editor-in-chief Leonidas Aretakis said was meant to "raise the problem with the government's handling of the NATO process." Aretakis also added that the goal of the competition was to "stand up for free speech and for the Kurds" and argued that it is "reprehensible" of the Swedish government to "do everything to appease an oppressive regime."The Erdogan effigy incident sparked strong reactions in both Sweden and Turkey. Swedish Prime Minister and Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson and Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom condemned the effigy protest, calling it "disgusting." The Turkish president himself warned that relations with Sweden may become "much more strained" unless Stockholm takes a tougher stand against terrorism. His threat was echoed by Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, who argued that Sweden cannot expect Turkey's support for its NATO bid, while "ignoring terrorist provocations." Meanwhile, the Swedish prosecution said no action will be taken in connection with the hanging of Erdogans likeness.Finnish Defense Minister Mikko Savola called the demonstration "an unfortunate event that unnecessarily provokes Turkey," adding that it was "pretty unnecessary and provocative at this stage." At the same time he emphasized the value of freedom of expression.In May 2022, three months into the Ukraine conflict, Finland and Sweden submitted their NATO membership applications, citing a shift in the European security situation and abandoning what was left of their historic non-alignment. Subsequently, both governments showed themselves willing to make concessions to appease Turkey, the only nation that confronted their bids, despite criticism from the opposition and human right groups. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230117/swedish-newspaper-launches-cartoon-contest-to-mock-erdogan-as-nato-bid-lingers-1106416217.html sweden finland scandinavia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Igor Kuznetsov Igor Kuznetsov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Igor Kuznetsov finland's and sweden's nato bids, cartoon contest, turkish president recep erdogan, kurdistan workers' party, diplomatic scandal https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/ftx-recovered-55-billion-in-assets-but-missing-415-million-in-hacked-crypto-1106442725.html FTX Recovered $5.5 Billion in Assets But Missing $415 Million in 'Hacked Crypto' FTX Recovered $5.5 Billion in Assets But Missing $415 Million in 'Hacked Crypto' The FTX cryptocurrency firm during a meeting with the US Committee of Unsecured Creditors said that $415 million worth of its crypto was stolen by hackers. 2023-01-18T02:32+0000 2023-01-18T02:32+0000 2023-01-18T02:26+0000 americas ftx business hack crypto currency /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/0c/1c/1105845108_0:161:3071:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_f0a1d808f0248fa9c14604aac30c0e0a.jpg "$3.5 billion of identified crypto assets excludes $415mm of hacked crypto," FTX said in a presentation shared during the bankruptcy meeting on Tuesday. FTX detailed it recovered $3.5 billion of crypto assets, $1.7 billion of cash, and $300 million worth of securities. Founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019, FTX became one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It filed for bankruptcy on November 11, with an estimated one million customers facing billions of dollars in losses. In December, the US government indicted Bankman-Fried in what prosecutors have described as one of the biggest financial fraud cases in US history. Prosecutors allege that FTX violated US campaign finance laws and schemed to misappropriate customer funds. According to Tuesday's slides, presented by FTX Trading Ltd. and affiliated debtors, they found the assets by tracing and analyzing a database with 14 million addresses and third party exchanges. Some $1.7 billion of crypto assets were located in Hot Wallet, $1.1 billion in BitGo Cold Storage, and $426 million held in the Bahamas, FTX said. About $1.9 billion in crypto assets were tied to Alameda Research, according to FTX. Real Estate in the Bahamas, comprising 36 properties with a cost basis of $253 million, was also identified, the document said. FTX CEO and FTX Debtors Chief Restructuring Officer, John Ray, said the company asks stakeholders to understand the information provided is preliminary and more will be forthcoming. "We are making important progress in our efforts to maximize recoveries, and it has taken a Herculean investigative effort from our team to uncover this preliminary information," Ray said as quoted in a press release. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230109/ill-share-in-time-former-ftx-president-declines-question-on-what-he-knew-about-the-firm-1106149998.html americas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International ftx, cryptocurrency, hacking, us committee of unsecured creditors https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/gop-candidate-arrested-for-allegedly-shooting-democratic-lawmakers-houses-after-2022-loss-1106441953.html GOP Candidate Arrested for Allegedly Shooting Democratic Lawmakers Houses After 2022 Loss GOP Candidate Arrested for Allegedly Shooting Democratic Lawmakers Houses After 2022 Loss Leading up to and after the 2022 midterm elections, officials warned that an increase in politically motivated violence may occur. Threats were received by several Democratic lawmakers and election officials. 2023-01-18T01:28+0000 2023-01-18T01:28+0000 2023-01-18T01:22+0000 americas solomon pena shooting political violence new mexico midterm elections 2022 /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106441804_0:25:801:475_1920x0_80_0_0_169b6475901534c431168291dafb2485.jpg Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have arrested a suspect with Republican ties in connection to shootings that seemingly targeted Democratic lawmakers late last year and earlier this month. A SWAT team arrested Solomon Pena, 39, on Monday and served a search warrant on his house. Last year, Pena was the Republican candidate for state representative of New Mexicos 14th district. Pena lost that election, gaining only 26.4% of the vote in the two-candidate race.Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina called Pena the mastermind behind shootings that targeted the homes of Democratic lawmakers. The first shooting allegedly plotted by Pena, occurred on December 4 at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa. Three more shootings occurred over the coming weeks, with the last targeting state Sen. Lina Lopezs home. No one was hurt in any of the shootings but Lopez said three bullets passed through her 10-year-old daughters room.Penas opponent in the November election, Democratic incumbent Miguel P. Garcia was not targeted.According to police, Pena showed up uninvited at the elected officials' houses days after the election, carrying documents he said proved he won. There have been no reports of widespread voter fraud in New Mexicos 2022 election.The shootings started shortly after those conversations took place. Police have said Pena conspired with four other men to carry out the shootings, paying cash to get them to perform at least two of the shooting incidents. Pena, according to Deputy Police Commander Kyle Hartsock, pulled the trigger in at least one of the shootings.Police first made progress in the case when they used technology that could identify the origin of gunshots through sound, which brought an officer to Lopezs neighborhood shortly after the shooting. Police say they found gun casings at the official's home that matched a handgun later found in a Nissan Maxima registered to Pena. The car was pulled over an hour after the shooting about four miles from Lopezs neighborhood. The driver, Jose Trujillo, was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Police say they found 800 fentanyl pills and two firearms in the vehicle.Last week, Medina stated they had a suspect in the case, but did not reveal who police suspected was behind the shooting.A formal criminal complaint for Pena is expected to be released in the coming days. More charges are expected at that time. Pena is presently charged with four counts of conspiracy to commit a felony, four counts of shooting at a dwelling or occupied building (no great bodily harm), and one count each of unlawful criminal solicitation, aggravated assault, and receipt, transportation or possession of a firearm or destructive device by certain persons. Pena is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque, NM. No lawyer for Pena was listed on court documents. americas new mexico Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ian DeMartino Ian DeMartino News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ian DeMartino solomon pena, democratic shootings, shooting targeting democrats, new mexico shootings https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/gop-lawmakers-growing-skeptical-of-increased-us-nato-training--arming-of-ukrainian-troops-1106452561.html GOP Lawmakers Growing Skeptical of Increased US-NATO Training & Arming of Ukrainian Troops GOP Lawmakers Growing Skeptical of Increased US-NATO Training & Arming of Ukrainian Troops Divisions are simmering in Oklahoma's legislature after the Pentagon started to train Ukrainian troops in the state. At a federal level, Republican lawmakers... 18.01.2023, Sputnik International 2023-01-18T10:54+0000 2023-01-18T10:54+0000 2023-01-18T10:54+0000 americas us ukraine oklahoma republicans us house of representatives kevin mccarthy us department of defense (dod) weapons joe biden /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/105197/83/1051978323_18:0:1591:885_1920x0_80_0_0_68c7d269edfacd1d04ee35328faf4f19.jpg About 90 to 100 Ukrainians have started to learn to operate and maintain the Patriot missile defense system at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, according to the US Department of Defense. The training is expected to last for several months.The move has prompted Oklahoma Republicans to vocally oppose the Pentagon's initiative: earlier this month, Oklahoma GOP Senator Nathan Dahm co-authored a resolution with Republican Representative Jim Olsen to direct the Pentagon to not send foreign soldiers to the state. The resolution is expected to be discussed next month after the legislative session kicks off on February 6.Dahm warned that training Ukrainian soldiers during a conflict between Russia and Ukraine constitutes nothing short of an escalation.The Oklahoma senator's concerns appear justified given that the Pentagon and NATO have recently ramped up the arming and training of Ukrainian troops as the Russian military advances in the Bakhmut region in a bid to liberate Donbass.On January 15, US media reported that the US military had kicked off expanded combat training of Ukrainian forces in Germany. Some 500 soldiers are reported to participate in the "combined arms" program over the next weeks.Likewise, on January 6, the Biden administration announced nearly $3.8 billion in security assistance for Ukraine and European allies. The new package includes 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), as well as 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and 250,000 rounds of ammunition for use with the IFVs. Washington will also send additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), RIM-7 missiles for air defense, 4,000 Zuni aircraft rockets and other military equipment. NATO member states are following the US' suit - pledging to send tanks and other fighting vehicles for the Ukrainian military.On Thursday, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are due to convene another session of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, according to the US DoD.Some US Republican congress leaders, who retook the House and elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker, are viewing these efforts with growing skepticism, prompting concerns in the US mainstream press over forthcoming cuts to Washington's aid to Ukraine. According to the US media, one of the concessions made by McCarthy to a small group of GOP representatives was to cap discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels or lower, which would amount to around a $75 billion, or 10%, cut to defense programs. It is reported that these potential cuts would substantially limit Washington's aid to Kiev. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230116/ukrainian-syndrome-anatomy-of-a-modern-military-confrontation--1106400146.html americas ukraine oklahoma Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ekaterina Blinova Ekaterina Blinova News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ekaterina Blinova us military aid, pentagon's training of ukrainian troops in oklahoma, gop resolution on presence of foreign troops in oklahoma, gop calls to cut us aid to ukraine, house speaker mccarthy's concessions https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/highlights-of-lavrovs-big-presser-from-wests-colonialist-mindset-to-ukraine-hybrid-war--beyond-1106466221.html Highlights of Lavrov's Big Presser: From West's Colonialist Mindset to Ukraine 'Hybrid War' & Beyond Highlights of Lavrov's Big Presser: From West's Colonialist Mindset to Ukraine 'Hybrid War' & Beyond Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a press conference on January 18 on the results of Russia's foreign policy in 2022. While the West tries to pin the blame for the unfolding global crisis on Russia, the crisis started taking shape long before Moscow began its special military operation in Ukraine. 2023-01-18T15:30+0000 2023-01-18T15:30+0000 2023-01-18T15:35+0000 sputnik explains us europe russia ukraine latin america middle east asia sanctions us sanctions /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/07/18/1097746880_0:0:3071:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_1e53d27b19550459bad2474e03c569d2.jpg "Washington's policy of diktat in international affairs means the following: we are allowed to do whatever we want, wherever we want, at any end of the earth. Everyone else must not do anything without our consent, even if one's safety is threatened," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized during his Wednesday presser.Sanctions slapped by the West on Russia could soon be used against any state that disobeys Washington's orders, Lavrov said. The foreign minister listed a wide range of tools used by the US-led collective West to thwart its geopolitical competitors - including demonization, blackmail, restrictions, the threat of force, and the destruction of historic ties between former partner nations.To describe the West's approach to international affairs, Lavrov used the term "colonialism." Colonialism is when one country captures another and lives at its expense, subordinating all the plans and structures to another country, the minister stated.Remarkably, some members of the western club have adopted a similar approach toward their peers. Lavrov pointed out that the US is solving its economic problems at the EU's expense. The third EU-NATO joint declaration directly puts the Europeans in subjection to the military bloc in the latter's geopolitical confrontation of Russia and China, according to the minister.Russian trust in the West's vows and goodwill has been dramatically shattered: the West not only violated its verbal pledges, said Lavrov, referring to the US and Western Europe's assertions of NATO's non-enlargement, it has repeatedly abused signed agreements, including the legally-binding 2015 Minsk Accords which western states never intended to fulfil."The masks are off," Lavrov underscored.Ukraine is Forbidden From Negotiating Peace With RussiaRussia is ready to negotiate serious proposals for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine; however, it was the West that forbade Kiev from holding talks with Moscow and stepped up arms supplies instead, according to Lavrov."[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky is putting forward some completely absurd initiatives, a 10-point plan, where everything is piled up: food security, energy security, biological security, the withdrawal of Russian troops from everywhere, repentance of the Russian Federation, a tribunal, conviction, and so on," Lavrov continued, adding that there can be no talks with Zelensky because the Ukrainian president legally banned any negotiations with Russia.The goals of Russia's special military operation, which was launched on February 24, 2022, are determined by the fundamental security interests of the Russian Federation, emphasized the minister.Instead, Kiev openly pledged to Nazi ideas and engaged in "inadmissible humiliation" of Russian people, he added. Meanwhile, the West is using Ukraine to destroy the security system in the Atlantic and Europe, which was previously built on the principles of mutual dialogue and compromise, according to the foreign minister.Why Arab World is Dissatisfied With Washington"No Arab countries have joined the sanctions, despite the unprecedented and most severe pressure from the West. I would even say, the unceremonious and self-humiliating pressure that the West is exerting," Lavrov commented.Russia is continuing to maintain cooperation with Middle East and North Africa states and is making efforts to solve urgent issues, including the Israeli-Palestine problem, the Libyan crisis, and the situation in Syria.Meanwhile, the US and its western allies remain preoccupied by the Ukraine conflict and have forgotten about multiple conflicts which are continuing to simmer across the world, according to Lavrov. He pointed out that Russia's Arab partners are dissatisfied and frustrated by the fact that the West is doing nothing on the issue of Palestine, one of the oldest international conflicts.The foreign minister stressed that there is positive dynamic in the political settlement of the Syrian crisis, despite the West's attempts to hinder the process. In particular, Lavrov cited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's announcement that he may sit down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to foster peace and stability in the region. The Russian foreign minister also referred to the fact that Middle Eastern states are either re-opening or continuing to maintain their embassies in the Syrian Arab Republic.Asia: Russo-China Ties Strengthening, US Creates Hostile BlocsThe current Russia-China relations are the best in the nation's history, according to Lavrov. Moscow and Beijing significantly boosted their trade and cooperation in various spheres. The countries are also integrating in various international organizations, including the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, as well as joint exercises and projects.The West sees this, and has described Russia and China as "threats" in the strategies adopted by the United States in the declaration between NATO and the EU, the minister noted. According to the US, Russia poses an "immediate" threat to its interests, while China remains the greatest long-term challenge, Lavrov pointed out, adding that Washington's schemes to force other countries to isolate Moscow and Beijing are detached from reality.In addition to sanctions and trade restrictions, Washington is trying to poke China on a wide range of issues including Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, the minister continued, adding that Beijing clearly understands it's risky to remain dependent on the West and operate within the western-led system.While trying to take on Russia and China simultaneously, the US is trying to mobilize the whole "western camp" including the EU, Canada, and Japan, and are trying to engage Indonesia and South Korea, too, according to Lavrov. The minister noted that Washington is striving to form new blocs in the Asia-Pacific aimed against China and Russia and undermine the existing one, such as ASEAN. Washington is beefing up AUKUS, a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and pushing Japan to the path of further militarization, according to Lavrov.Latin America: Russia Doesn't Have a Monroe DoctrineMoscow enjoys good relations with Latin America and Caribbean with most of the countries of the region rejecting anti-Russian sanctions and continuing to maintain cooperation with Russia, Lavrov underscored.Lavrov pointed out that there are countries with which Russia has been cooperating for a long time, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.Lavrov underscored that Moscow maintained working relations with all countries of South America regardless of the political affiliation of their governments. The minister noted, in particular, that in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Brazilian left-leaning presidential candidate Lula de Silva on his victory and expressed gratitude to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for a productive Russo-Brazilian partnership.The minister also referred to Moscow's relations with Buenos Aires and Argentina's intention to join BRICS, an acronym for five leading emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The countries have agreed to cooperate within the BRICS+ format for the time being, while actively working on the criteria by which countries can join the BRICS for joint work, Lavrov explained.US Bill to Counter Malign Russian Activities to Harm AfricansLavrov also addressed Russia's expanding relationships with African nations. Last year the foreign minister described Moscow's strategic cooperation with the continent as one of its priorities.During the Wednesday presser, the foreign minister was asked about the US' Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act. The bill was passed by the US House of Representatives on April 27, 2022. The legislation was aimed at sanctioning African nations over cooperating with Moscow. It was later referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations by the US Senate and appears to be on hold.Earlier in the day, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor argued in an interview with Sputnik that the bill needs to be trashed because it violates international law.Lavrov pointed out that the US bill seeking to sanction African countries for doing business with Russia harms Africans and represents "a colonial mentality." "Not every African country can make its position so clear," the Russian foreign minister said, citing Pretoria's criticism of the US legislation.The Russian foreign minister reiterated Moscow's interest in enhancing cooperation with African nations. He highlighted that the Russian government is planning a summit of African countries in St. Petersburg. It would be a business forum, including preparations for the transition to settlements in national currencies, the foreign minister concluded. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/lavrov-holds-press-conference-on-results-of-russian-foreign-policy-in-2022-1106445640.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20221229/lavrov-if-russia-returns-to-work-with-the-west-it-will-be-carried-out-on-new-principles-1105870675.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230114/from-no-nukes-pledge-to-dirty-bombs-how-kiev-broke-its-promise-to-reject-nuclear-weapons-1106324715.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230109/russia-to-extend-syria-cross-border-aid-mechanism-only-if-west-changes-approach-1106177880.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230113/russia-china-enjoy-record-29-bump-in-trade-signaling-failure-of-western-sanctions-1106296999.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230112/us-japan-military-buildup-in-asia-pacific-shatters-regional-stability-scholars-warn-1106260516.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230112/from-unipolar-world-to-multipolarity-why-us-attempts-to-intimidate-africa-wont-work-1106251327.html russia ukraine china syria palestine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ekaterina Blinova Ekaterina Blinova News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ekaterina Blinova sergey lavrov's presser, conflict in ukraine, 'hybrid war' in ukraine, west's colonialism, nato expansion, russo-chinese relations, western sanctions, eu-nato joint declaration, neo-nazism in ukraine, japan's militarization, us bill on russia's 'malign' activities in africa, south africa, russia does not have a monroe doctrine https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/how-russia-diversifies--expands-its-gas-and-oil-supplies-despite-western-pressure-1106453925.html How Russia Diversifies & Expands Its Gas and Oil Supplies Despite Western Pressure How Russia Diversifies & Expands Its Gas and Oil Supplies Despite Western Pressure Russia's natural gas supplies to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline jumped from 10.39 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021 to 15.5 bcm in 2022. What message does this trend send to western sanctions designers? 2023-01-18T15:12+0000 2023-01-18T15:12+0000 2023-01-18T15:28+0000 sputnik explains russia us europe gas oil oil prices inflation diesel nord stream /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/107745/44/1077454484_0:159:3076:1889_1920x0_80_0_0_3d9944a07cadce5dd281c5189dab3598.jpg "Russia learned the lesson of 2014 (the start of sanctions) better than the West," Christopher Weafer, the founding partner of Macro-Advisory Ltd, an independent macro consultancy, told Sputnik. "While Brussels and Washington talked about energy supply risk diversification, Moscow actually did something about it with Power of Siberia 1, the ESPO pipeline and a focus on Yamal LNG. Diversification of the customer base has been a big part of Russia's energy strategy since 2014 while Europe is only now scrambling to diversify supply."Europe has long been Russias largest customer of most energy commodities. However, the EU started to phase out purchases of Russian pipeline gas last year in response to Moscow's special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine which kicked off on February 24, 2022.The European Commission's figures for January-November 2022 indicated that Russian pipeline gas imports in the EU fell by 69 bcm year-on-year. The EC concluded that even allowing for increased LNG imports, total gas imports from Russia fell by 64 bcm.However, on January 16, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that the nation had increased pipeline gas supplies to the People's Republic of China by 49% through the Power of Siberia to 15.5 bcm. It is planned that the gas supplies to China will increase to 38 bcm annually by 2025. The 3,000 km gas pipeline the largest gas transportation system in the East of Russia was launched on December 2, 2019.Moscow is gradually stepping up its gas supplies through the Power of Siberia in accordance with the Russo-China energy deal which was signed long before the special military operation, according to Igor Yushkov, one of the leading analysts of the National Energy Security Fund (FNEB).In order to redirect most of its European volumes to the Chinese market, Russia should implement the Power of Siberia 2 project, according to the analyst. The pipeline is due to deliver 50 bcm annually to China using the same gas fields as Nord Stream 2 which was designed to carry 55 bcm per year to Germany. The latter project was suspended by Berlin on February 22, 2022, in response to Washington's pressure. A September 2022 sabotage attack finally disrupted the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe.Why Power of Siberia 2 is Viable for ChinaMeanwhile, the International Energy Agency's (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2022 threw the viability of the project into question and suggested that Russias reorientation to Asian markets will be "particularly challenging.""Chinas gas demand growth slows to 2% per year between 2021 and 2030, compared with an average growth rate of 12% per year since 2010," the report suggested.The West's predictions about the Sino-Russian energy cooperation are short-sighted and biased, according to Ma Yujun, a research fellow at China's Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences.The Power of Siberia 2 is a planned gas pipeline between Siberian gas fields and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in western China. The Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline could eventually become a replacement for Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline.The project was discussed during the September 2022 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Alexander Novak noted at the time that final agreements on the Power of Siberia 2 are expected to be reached in the near future. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the Russo-China agreement on the main parameters of gas supplies to China through Mongolia. The design stage of the Soyuz Vostok gas pipeline project, which will extend the Power of Siberia 2 through Mongolia to China, is expected to be completed in 2023.The expansion of the Power of Siberia not only meets China's strategic needs for energy imports in the context of diversifying oil and gas supply channels but also meets the needs of China's economic development, according to Ma. He noted that the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) set a goal of optimizing and adjusting China's trade and enhancing cooperation with foreign countries.In addition, China understands that if Russia's Nord Streams were blown up, then the same forces could easily arrange resource constraints for China, according to Yushkov. Russia's Power of Siberia 2 project will improve the reliability of China's gas supply, he underscored.The diversification of Russia's gas supplies won't be limited to China, Christopher Weafer believes.Russia Reoriented Its Crude Volumes to the EastThe West's restrictions on Russia's oil are a slightly different story, according to the observers: the Group of Seven, the EU and Australia are seeking to considerably slash the nation's revenues but not strangulate its ability to sell the commodity worldwide altogether. Russia remains the third-largest producer of crude and the second-largest exporter of the commodity. If its crude and petroleum products are subjected to an outright ban, oil prices would go through the roof, western financial officials warned. Hence the price capping initiative targeting Russia's maritime oil deliveries to developing countries starting from December 2022, as well as the forthcoming cap on materials derived from crude.Even though at the initial stages of the West's sanctions pressure, Russia's oil exports somewhat contracted, soon China and India emerged as the biggest buyers of the commodity, absorbing two-thirds of over two million barrels per day (mb/d) of Russia's seaborne crude abandoned by the West because of sanctions. Furthermore, according to Yushkov, the sweet discount of $35 per barrel lessened to just $18 in December 2022.According to western oil watchdogs, Indias imports of Russian crude reached a whopping 1.2 million b/d last month, overtaking Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Yushkov explained that as Russia's oil is displacing a lot of those Middle Eastern barrels in Asia, Middle Eastern crude producers are filling the gap left by Russia in the European energy market. In addition, oil refinery services are also moving to Asia, according to the expert, with India and China plants boosting their profits from processing sweetly-priced Russian oil.Despite China's COVID restrictions previously evoking strong bearish fears, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) saw a robust Chinese rebound this year in its latest report. OPEC projects that Chinese demand will grow by 510,000 bpd in 2023, adding that the world demand will rise by 2.22 million barrels per day (bpd), or 2.2%, this year.Price capping won't suppress Russia's oil revenues or curb energy price spikes as the commodity price is expected to go up in 2023, according to the expert. Moscow warned that it wouldn't sell oil to those joining the G7's initiative and would cut production instead. The expert suggested Brent could "average $100 per barrel in 2023-2025 with OPEC managing supply to prevent a lower average or price spikes" if China's economy recovers and Russian slashes its production. According to him, "OPEC producers are targeting an average $100 per barrel (Brent) in the coming years because they can see oil demand falling steeply from mid next decade due to the expected growth in renewable and clean energy sources."In addition, Russia and its Asian allies are switching to national tanker fleets and national insurance companies to cover maritime transportation of Russia's commodity, thus maintaining their energy trade outside of western control and restrictions, according to Yushkov."Regardless of whether Russia continues to send oil and gas to Europe, if at current low volumes or later recovery, the main focus from now will be further diversification and bigger sales to several big Asian economies," Weafer highlighted. "Russia will not wish to be overly exposed to China in the future (as it was to Europe) so will try to sell more oil, and eventually gas, to other big consumers such as India, Pakistan, Turkey and counties in SouthEast Asia."Sanctions are BackfiringWhile Russia's oil and gas industry have demonstrated resilience in response to challenges posed by the West's sanctions spree, not everything is rosy on the European energy market, according to Yushkov.Europe was forced to reduce its consumption of gas by 50-60 billion cubic meters, mostly by the industrial sector, he noted. As a result, European businesses shut down or cut production. Many of them are considering moving their production facilities either to the US or elsewhere in Eurasia where energy costs are lower and generally stable.While the Old Continent managed to amass its gas stocks for the winter of 2022-2023 and avert the energy crisis, it bought huge amounts of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at top dollar. This eventually backfired on Europe's competitiveness as production costs have gone up, the expert explained.The expert stressed that it's happening not because of Russia, but because of the energy crunch that started to bite Europeans in 2021, well before Moscow's special operation in Ukraine. The EU's "green policies" and the crackdown on fossil fuels eventually resulted in energy deficits, he pointed out.The forthcoming ban on Russian petroleum products in Europe which is due to come into force in February 2023 is likely to complicate matters even further, admit international oil experts. Even though Europe's reliance on Russia's oil products decreased by a whopping 50% since the beginning of Moscow's special operation in Ukraine, Russia still remains the bloc's largest diesel supplier. The European bloc struggled to secure Russian diesel three months before the February ban. Russian diesel deliveries to the Old Continent's Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) oil refining hub soared to 215,000 barrels per day from November 1 to 12, 2022 amounting to a 126% spike from October. It's still unclear who will fill Russia's shoes in terms of petroleum products deliveries.However, the crux of the matter is that Europe has no one to blame in the unfolding energy constraints but itself, Yushkov summarized. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230102/ceo-russias-gazprom-advances-to-new-level-of-gas-supplies-to-china-in-january-2023-1105991472.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230113/russia-china-enjoy-record-29-bump-in-trade-signaling-failure-of-western-sanctions-1106296999.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20221222/enough-is-enough-why-wests-price-capping-is-wake-up-call-for-developing-countries-1105695893.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20221208/oil-price-cap-europeans-set-to-feel-more-pain-at-the-pump-soon-experts-say-1105238181.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20221209/new-master-of-seas-g7-price-cap-vs-russian-oil-fleet-insurance-companies--northern-sea-route-1105271559.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20221226/how-oil-prices-affected-the-global-economy-in-2022-1105801708.html russia china ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ekaterina Blinova Ekaterina Blinova News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ekaterina Blinova power of siberia, russo-chinese trade, power of siberia-2, russian natural gas, western anti-russia sanctions, western energy embargo against russia, china and india buying russian oil, g7 price cap on russian crude, sanctions backfired on europe, decarbonization https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/japan-us-making-very-careful-progress-on-microchip-economic-tech-issues---ambassador-1106442567.html Japan, US Making 'Very Careful Progress' on Microchip Economic, Tech Issues - Ambassador Japan, US Making 'Very Careful Progress' on Microchip Economic, Tech Issues - Ambassador Both the United States and Japan are looking forward to making progress towards seeking alignment on export control policies for semiconductors and other manufacturing equipment, said Japan's Ambassador to the United States. 2023-01-18T02:13+0000 2023-01-18T02:13+0000 2023-04-06T12:15+0000 us semi-conductors microchip technology fumio kishida joe biden asia japan /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/102087/00/1020870012_0:89:2000:1214_1920x0_80_0_0_cff8e22e00d98366675b3bf29deaf4ff.jpg "This is a very complicated issue. We need to work with the industry very closely because whatever we do in this area has to make business sense otherwise our efforts will not be sustainable. We are making very careful progress, looking at both technical and economic sides of this issue," Tomita said on Tuesday. The comments came during an interview with White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Cambell hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida met in Washington, DC on January 13, where the leaders discussed avenues for furthering the US-Japan alliance, Japan's national defense strategy, and other matters. Japan in tandem with other US allies have sought to boost domestic microchip production while countering Chinese advancements. The US last month escalated efforts to undermine China's tech sector by blacklisting more than 30 entities, citing national security concerns. Professor Sunitha Raju of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in New Delhi told Sputnik after the move that the the US denying Beijing access to advanced semiconductor equipment will likely accelerate Chinas efforts to close the high-end microchip technology gap and control the entire value chain. In October, the Biden administration expanded controls on the export of US semiconductor technology going to China to restrict Beijing's ability to make certain high-end microchips used in military applications. Beijing took the matter to the World Trade Organization (WTO) filing a lawsuit challenging the US export controls. Kishida after his meeting with Biden last week said the Japanese government had decided to invest $547 million into semiconductor company Rapidus, a newly established foundry, and was going to continue to provide assistance to the industry. In early December, Rapidus and US multinational technology corporation IBM announced a joint development cooperation as part of Japan's initiatives to expand semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing. The Tokyo-based venture is seeking several trillion yen to help build 2-nanometer technologies and hopes to mass produce the chips in 2027 at a plant in Japan, according to The Japan Times. https://sputnikglobe.com/20221216/us-export-restrictions-may-force-china-to-indigenize-microchip-value-chain---expert-1105506199.html japan Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International japan, us, semi-conductor, microchip, technology, exports, fumio kishida, joe biden https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/latvia-court-upholds-earlier-decision-to-leave-sputnik-lithuania-editor-kasem-in-custody-1106453111.html Latvia Court Upholds Earlier Decision to Leave Sputnik Lithuania Editor Kasem in Custody Latvia Court Upholds Earlier Decision to Leave Sputnik Lithuania Editor Kasem in Custody A Latvian court upheld its previous decision on Wednesday to leave Sputnik Lithuania editor Marat Kasem in custody, the appeal was denied. 2023-01-18T10:54+0000 2023-01-18T10:54+0000 2023-01-18T10:54+0000 russia freedom of speech freedom latvia /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/0c/1106250488_0:0:3239:1822_1920x0_80_0_0_d599ef86aae3f04109f1d3e8ac128a4d.jpg Kasem's lawyers said that they will file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. Kasem is a citizen of Latvia and has been living and working in Moscow for several years in the Rossiya Segodnya media group, which also includes Sputnik Lithuania. On December 30, the journalist arrived in Latvia for family reasons. According to Sputnik Lithuania, he was detained, and on January 5, the Riga court took him into custody, the journalist has already been transferred to the Riga Central Prison. latvia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International freedom of speech, freedom of speech in latvia, freedom of speech in europe, marat kasem sputnik editor, sputnik editor detained https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/lavrov-us-bill-countering-russia-in-africa-represents-colonial-mentality-1106460779.html Lavrov: US Bill Countering Russia in Africa Represents 'Colonial Mentality' Lavrov: US Bill Countering Russia in Africa Represents 'Colonial Mentality' This article is about Russian FM Sergey Lavrov calling the US Congress bill on the fight against Russian activities in Africa "an American provocation", which harms primarily the Africans. 2023-01-18T14:50+0000 2023-01-18T14:50+0000 2023-01-18T14:50+0000 africa russia us colonialism sergey lavrov /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106464627_0:145:3122:1901_1920x0_80_0_0_2dc399bbdf72cd0dad149d52f32471f3.jpg Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called the US Congress bill on the fight against Russian activities in Africa "an American provocation" which harms primarily the Africans themselves and reflects the West's colonial approach to the countries of the continent.Earlier in the day, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, in an interview with Sputnik, said that the bill of the US Congress on combating Russian activities in Africa is contrary to international law and should be withdrawn.The Russian official stressed that he had no doubts that even those who do not comment on this kind of US provocation still have a deep conviction that this law harms Africans first of all.The minister argued that the US does not consider African nations its equals, adding that Washingtons behavior reflects a purely colonial mentality in a new dimension." Lavrov recalled the time when former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled across the African continent to call on everyone to stop trading with Russia and China, because both Russia and China do it for self-interest.In May 2022, the US House of Representatives approved a bill against malign Russian activities in Africa that undermine United States objectives and interests. The bill suggests the application of a punishment by the US against African countries for cooperation with Russia in various fields.Earlier, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that at a meeting with US President Joe Biden, he spoke about the injustice of the US punishing African countries for ties with Russia, and expressed his disagreement with the bill, which contains such proposals.Ramaphosa condemned the bill as being a misplaced type of legislation, which, he said, would harm Africa and marginalize the continent.Jacob Mudenda, speaker of the National Assembly of Zimbabwe, said earlier that African countries reacted with disgust to the US bill to counter the activities of the Russian Federation in the continent since it is an encroachment on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states maintaining relations with Russia. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/live-updates-foreign-minister-lavrov-wraps-up-results-of-russian-diplomacy-in-2022-1106447133.html africa russia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Muhammad Nooh Osman https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/0e/1080170965_2:0:2050:2048_100x100_80_0_0_1de8233c87df0979e7e74f61b6ffacad.jpg Muhammad Nooh Osman https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/0e/1080170965_2:0:2050:2048_100x100_80_0_0_1de8233c87df0979e7e74f61b6ffacad.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Muhammad Nooh Osman https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/0e/1080170965_2:0:2050:2048_100x100_80_0_0_1de8233c87df0979e7e74f61b6ffacad.jpg russian activities in africa, russian influence in africa, russia and africa, us in africa, the west's 'colonial mentality', us colonial mentality, america and africa, lavrov about the us, lavrov about africa https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/new-palm-sized-laser-may-help-scientists-find-alien-life-study-claims-1106463387.html New Palm-Sized Laser May Help Scientists Find Alien Life, Study Claims New Palm-Sized Laser May Help Scientists Find Alien Life, Study Claims An international team of scientists from the University of Maryland has developed an instrument specifically designed to solve the search for signs of life in space. 2023-01-18T14:55+0000 2023-01-18T14:55+0000 2023-01-18T14:55+0000 science & tech space alien life laser analysis study /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/105487/60/1054876024_0:4:1920:1084_1920x0_80_0_0_581c158e466cde4f0cab399770a676ac.jpg An international team of scientists from the University of Maryland has presented the results of the development of an instrument specifically designed to search for signs of alien life. It is a mini laser to analyze samples of planetary material and detect potential biological activity.The small analyzer, which weighs just 7.7 kg, is capable of examining samples of planetary material in situ and detecting signs of potential life. The device is a scaled-down model of two important tools for finding signs of life and analyzing materials. These are a pulsed ultraviolet laser, a device capable of 'cutting out' tiny amounts of material from a planetary sample; and the Orbitrap mass analyzer, an analytical tool that can provide high-quality information on the chemical composition of the materials under study.Its small size and low power consumption make the new device suitable for use in space. Moreover, thanks to the new layout of the device, the samples under study will be less susceptible to contamination during the study."The good thing about a laser source is that anything that can be ionized can be analyzed... This tool has such a high mass resolution and accuracy that any molecular or chemical structures in a sample become much more identifiable," said Arevalo.The technology itself can be used as part of Enceladus Orbilander or Artemis Program missions."Our mini Orbitrap LDMS instrument has the potential to significantly enhance the way we currently study the geochemistry or astrobiology of a planetary surface," said Arevalo. Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Egor Shapovalov Egor Shapovalov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Egor Shapovalov orbitrap technology, scientists use orbitrap to search alien life, how scientists look for alien life in space, new instrument for space missions https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/patrice-lumumba-honored-in-moscow-taking-up-the-torch-to-continue-the-struggle-1106451844.html Patrice Lumumba Honored in Moscow: Taking Up the Torch to Continue the Struggle Patrice Lumumba Honored in Moscow: Taking Up the Torch to Continue the Struggle This article is about the Congolese community in Moscow holding its annual ceremony in front of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia to honor Patrice Lumumba. 2023-01-18T11:27+0000 2023-01-18T11:27+0000 2023-01-18T13:00+0000 africa central africa drc patrice lumumba russia moscow africa insight /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106455856_0:76:3073:1805_1920x0_80_0_0_d71e3207646ce707532b217e662064b8.jpg January 17 was the anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, hero of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He was killed by his enemies 62 years ago in 1961. Just as every year, the People's Friendship University of Russia honored his memory this Tuesday in Moscow. For thirty years during the Soviet era, the university bore the name of Lumumba.Among the guests was lvan Vangu Ngimbi, ambassador of the Democratic Republic of Congo to Russia. He shared his emotions with Sputnik:According to the diplomat, Lumumba "passed away too young". At the ceremony, he called on people to "remind the younger generations of the quintessence of his struggle" and invite them to "take up the torch to continue the fight."A Fight That Must ContinueAccording to the diplomat, "Africa is not yet fully independent, especially in economic terms [and] it is therefore necessary that Africa becomes a true actor and subject of its history."The youth must "wake up" to "go to the forefront to be able to conquer their freedom, their independence and exercise their sovereignty," the diplomat believes.Patrice Lumumba "is an inspiring figure for the youth," echoed Gael Kazembe, vice president of the DRC community in Moscow. "Young people can take their example from him." https://sputnikglobe.com/20230117/expert-patrice-lumumbas-legacy-endures--resonates-across-the-world-1106429410.html africa central africa russia moscow Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International honor patrice lumumba, patrice lumumba, patrice lumumba legacy, patrice lumumba honored, congolese community in moscow, patrice lumumba university, patrice lumumba history https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/pentagon-sending-us-arms-stored-in-israel-to-ukraine-reports-suggest-1106444082.html Pentagon Sending US Arms Stored in Israel to Ukraine, Reports Suggest Pentagon Sending US Arms Stored in Israel to Ukraine, Reports Suggest The US Department of Defense is tapping into a vast stockpile of US ammunition in Israel to divert it to Ukraine 2023-01-18T05:29+0000 2023-01-18T05:29+0000 2023-01-18T05:29+0000 us ukraine weapons military aid israel russia's special operation in ukraine /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/08/05/1083531426_0:154:3093:1893_1920x0_80_0_0_9a6300af03c16b2c4f64854d12d7990e.jpg According to the report , in 2022 the United States and Israel reached an agreement to move about 300,000 155-millimeter shells. The American military hardware and munitions stockpile has its origins in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when the US airlifted weapons to resupply Israeli forces.Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel would not supply weapons to Ukraine. Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in response to calls by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics for protection from Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, and to completely liberate Donbass. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said any cargo that contains weaponry for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia.However, Washington has been acting behind the scenes to collect enough shells to keep Ukraine sufficiently supplied in 2023. ukraine israel Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International us helps ukraine, how much us spends on ukraine, how many weapons us sent to ukraine, what us sends to ukraine, us aid to kiev, us military aid to ukraine https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/report-iea-upgrades-2023-global-oil-demand-growth-forecasts-to-over-101-mln-bpd-1106451206.html Report: IEA Upgrades 2023 Global Oil Demand Growth Forecasts to Over 101 Mln Bpd Report: IEA Upgrades 2023 Global Oil Demand Growth Forecasts to Over 101 Mln Bpd The International Energy Agency (IEA) has slightly upgraded its forecasts for the global oil demand growth to 101.7 million barrels per day in 2023, according to its fresh report published on Wednesday. 2023-01-18T10:59+0000 2023-01-18T10:59+0000 2023-01-18T10:59+0000 economy oil and gas oil business crude oil gas gas supplies opec organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) russia iea /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/0b/0c/1104045331_0:183:2991:1865_1920x0_80_0_0_352fde7485a068b85f9677905b6ea0f9.jpg In addition, the IEA has upgraded its forecast for the global oil production growth in 2022 to 100.1 million barrels per day, and its 2023 production forecast to 101.1 million barrels per day.The agency stressed that total oil supply in the world amounted to 100.1 million barrels per day in 2022.OPEC and OECDIEA indicated that OPEC+ has failed to ensure oil production growth necessary under the alliance's oil output cut deal in December, producing 1.77 million barrels per day less.Meanwhile, the commercial oil stores in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) increased by 1 million barrels in November month-on-month to 2.779 million barrels, which is by 125.9 million barrels lower than the five-year average.Russia and Ineffective SanctionsThe report by IAE states that Western sanctions had little effect on Russian oil industry.The production of crude oil and condensates in Russia decreased by 30,000 barrels per day in December and reached 11.21 million barrels per day.On December 5, a price cap on Russian oil came into effect. The controversial step was adopted by the G7 nations, the EU and Australia, setting the maximum price at $60 per barrel. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak characterized the price cap as an unprecedented intervention in free market principles, and pointed out that such a politicization of the energy sphere can only lead to a shortage of resources on the market.Russia has repeatedly stressed that it would simply stop supplying hydrocarbons to the countries that adopted a price cap. Meanwhile, Moscow boosted its exports to Asia, became top oil supplier for India (replacing Iraq). India, being the world's third-largest consumer, bought 21 percent of its hydrocarbon imports from Russia. russia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International nternational energy agency, iea, opec, opec+, oil supply, oil demand, sanctions against russia, oecd https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/report-us-to-announce-new-ukraine-military-aid-package-on-friday-with-stryker-vehicles-1106472628.html Report: US to Announce New Ukraine Military Aid Package on Friday With Stryker Vehicles Report: US to Announce New Ukraine Military Aid Package on Friday With Stryker Vehicles The US government will reportedly announce on Friday a new military assistance package for Ukraine that will include Stryker vehicles but not M1A2 Abrams tanks. 2023-01-18T20:43+0000 2023-01-18T20:43+0000 2023-01-18T20:38+0000 military us biden administration us military aid us army stryker ukraine crisis /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/08/02/1098027974_0:276:2955:1938_1920x0_80_0_0_c8636cbded2cfa527737836fcd522ff4.jpg Citing three US officials and another person familiar with the matter, Politico reported that the new package will likely include Stryker armored combat vehicles, additional artillery and ammunition. In addition, the report said the United States will provide Ukrainian forces with ground-launched Small Diameter Bombs, which have a range of about 100 miles and can be launched from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). However, the US Abrams tanks, which Kiev has long lobbied for, will not be included in this new tranche, the report said. The Biden administration does not plan at present to provide Ukraine with Abrams tanks, mostly due to logistical and maintenance challenges, the report added. The long-range Army Tactical Missile System, another item Kiev has requested that has the capability of reaching Moscow, will also not be included in the new US security aid package, according to the report.The Politico report comes on the heels of comments made by the White House hinting a new aid package would be detailed by the end of the week. John Kirby, who serves as the coordinator for strategic communications under the US National Security Council, did not offer additional details at the time. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230101/us-aid-to-ukraine-may-weaken-americas-deterring-capacity-in-east-asia-report-1105965788.html Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International ukraine crisis, us, military aid package, stryker vehicles https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/scientists-reveal-which-australian-animal-blows-its-nose-to-stay-chill-in-deadly-heat-1106471607.html Scientists Reveal Which Australian Animal Blows Its Nose to Stay Chill in 'Deadly' Heat Scientists Reveal Which Australian Animal Blows Its Nose to Stay Chill in 'Deadly' Heat While echidnas apparently cannot endure temperatures higher than 35 degrees Celsius, they were found to survive when ground heat reached as high as 47 degrees Celsius. 2023-01-18T19:02+0000 2023-01-18T19:02+0000 2023-01-18T19:03+0000 science & tech australia animals heat survival /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/18375/89/183758909_0:75:800:525_1920x0_80_0_0_e59377251a8e9205ea08328221d625f0.jpg Researchers at the Curtin University in Australia have shed light on a peculiar mechanism that one of the continents animal denizens, the echidna, uses to cool itself in order to endure blistering heat.While previous research suggested that echidnas should not survive temperatures higher than 35 degrees Celsius, scientists noticed that these creatures somehow managed to maintain their body temperature below 30 degrees Celsius even when ground temperatures in that area reached as high as 47.Scientists learned by measuring these animals temperatures via infrared thermography cameras that echidnas cool themselves by essentially blowing mucus bubbles from their noses when they get hot."Echidnas blow bubbles from their nose, which burst over the nose tip and wet it," Christine Cooper, ecophysiologist from the university, said as quoted by one media outlet. "As the moisture evaporates it cools their blood, meaning their nose tip works as an evaporative window." australia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Andrei Dergalin Andrei Dergalin News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Andrei Dergalin echidna, heat, survival https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/sint-maarten-plans-to-wipe-out-entire-local-vervet-monkey-population--1106468866.html Sint Maarten Plans to Wipe Out Entire Local Vervet Monkey Population Sint Maarten Plans to Wipe Out Entire Local Vervet Monkey Population As part of measures against the destruction of local flora and fauna the authorities in Sint Maarten decided to eradicate the entire population of vervet monkeys. 2023-01-18T16:34+0000 2023-01-18T16:34+0000 2023-01-18T16:34+0000 world monkey euthanasia netherlands caribbean invasive species /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106468401_0:592:1536:1456_1920x0_80_0_0_95756c99c3c61c2128897d30cdbded71.jpg The Dutch Sint Maarten authorities will finance the capture and euthanasia of at least 450 vervet monkeys over the next three years in the territory bordering the French Collectivity of Saint Martin. The Nature Foundation Sint Maarten NGO will receive funds to carry out the extermination.According to researchers, there were around 450 vervets living in Dutch Sint Maarten in 2020. The number of monkeys in the state is expected to continue to grow, threatening local ecosystems. Among other things, they destroy farmers' crops.The Vervet Monkey Foundation has criticized plans to exterminate the monkeys and its founder Dave Du Toit has suggested "vasectomizing the males and sterilizing the females" instead.Vervets are native to southern and eastern Africa but are also found in large numbers in the Caribbean islands. Monkeys were introduced to the latter region around the 17th century. European settlers are thought to have introduced primates as exotic pets.In December 2022, the Nature Foundation Sint Maarten received a grant of $55,000 per year to study the impact of invasive species on native wildlife. The project itself started in 2020 and aimed not only to study but also to develop measures to prevent the negative impact."The foundation proposed two management options when requesting funding for these activities, one of which was a sterilization program and one which was a population management program," said Hickerson, adding that "the funding received to execute the project was the minimum requested in order to start managing the population." netherlands caribbean Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Egor Shapovalov Egor Shapovalov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Egor Shapovalov vervet monkeys mass kill in st maarten, caribbean vervet monkeys population, dutches plan to kill vervet monkeys, invasive species, invasive species in caribbean region https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/spanish-police-detain-6-people-accused-of-killing-evangelical-pastor-media-reports-1106466647.html Spanish Police Detain 6 People Accused of Killing Evangelical Pastor, Media Reports Spanish Police Detain 6 People Accused of Killing Evangelical Pastor, Media Reports Spanish police have detained six people allegedly involved in the murder of evangelical pastor Joaquin Jimenez Silva 2023-01-18T15:02+0000 2023-01-18T15:02+0000 2023-01-18T15:02+0000 world spain crime pastor mallorca murder /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/101662/51/1016625102_0:0:1024:577_1920x0_80_0_0_709add30b63b1bab553e8a3950573dbe.jpg In several stages, police agents arrested six people for their alleged involvement in the death of a 46-year-old Spaniard with a long criminal record, the news outlet reported. Joaquin was even acquitted of murder, after which he became an evangelical pastor, the report read. The victim was murdered on March 16, 2022, in front of dozens of witnesses. The investigation revealed that Joaquin had negotiated with his alleged killers to pay about 12,000 euros ($13,000) as a dowry for a failed marriage, according to the report. However, something went wrong during the negotiations and he was fatally shot, the report added. The first participant in the crime reportedly confessed a few hours later, the second a few weeks later, while the other alleged perpetrators fled to different parts of Spain. At the end of 2022, police arrested the last of six people accused of murdering the pastor, including a woman who had gone to live on the Spanish Mallorca island, media reported. The attackers are reportedly members of the Vargas family, a well-known gypsy clan from Madrid. spain mallorca Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International evangelical pastor, murder, failed marriage, spanish police https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/state-dept-us-considering-two-locations-for-future-embassy-facility-in-jerusalem-1106474027.html State Dept: US Considering Two Locations for Future Embassy Facility in Jerusalem State Dept: US Considering Two Locations for Future Embassy Facility in Jerusalem The United States is considering two options for its future embassy facility in Jerusalem, namely the Allenby and Arnona sites, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday. 2023-01-18T22:20+0000 2023-01-18T22:20+0000 2023-01-18T22:14+0000 world us state department jerusalem us embassy in jerusalem /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/107117/01/1071170180_0:120:2304:1416_1920x0_80_0_0_8c6ffa9710b5cc5022813cbcb45805a1.jpg "We are currently considering two options for our future embassy facility in Jerusalem," Price said during a press briefing. The United States has started the process to amend the Jerusalem town plan for both potential locations in accordance with Israeli legal requirements, Price said. The current US embassy is located in a temporary building in the Arnona neighborhood. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in May that the US is also planning to reopen its Jerusalem consulate exclusive to the Palestinian territories. The US consulate had been operating in East Jerusalem for decades, being the country's de facto diplomatic mission for the Palestinians. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, it was merged with the US Embassy in Israel in 2018, which was moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israels capital while the status of the city remains contested by the Israelis and the Palestinians. https://sputnikglobe.com/20190304/us-embassy-jerusalem-consulate-1072927418.html Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International us state department, jerusalem, us embassy, allenby, arnona, ned price https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/the-so-called-elites-arrive-in-davos-for-the-wef-1106440948.html The So-Called "Elites" Arrive in Davos for the WEF The So-Called "Elites" Arrive in Davos for the WEF On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan discussed current events including New York City Mayor Eric Adams complaining about migrants, and... 18.01.2023, Sputnik International 2023-01-18T09:17+0000 2023-01-18T09:17+0000 2023-02-03T08:32+0000 the backstory wef delaware tanks china mlk radio /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/11/1106440799_0:0:1920:1080_1920x0_80_0_0_5660ded734becc9d06ffa8ec0ed8e001.png The so Called "Elites" Arrive in Davos for the WEF On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan discussed current events including New York City Mayor Eric Adams complaining about migrants, and Chinas population dropping by 850,000 in 2022. Mark Sleboda - International Relations and Security Analyst | General Armageddon Replaced, Season Two for Ukraine, and German Battle Tanks for Ukraine Tyler Nixon - Attorney, Media Relations Specialist | Lies about Joe Biden's Biography, More Classified Documents Discovered, and Democrats Speak about the Biden Classified Documents Scandal In the first hour, Lee spoke with Mark Sleboda about inconvenient truths, Russia takes Soledar, and Russia has not unleashed its big offensive yet. Mark talked about the seven years since the Minsk agreement and the appointment of Army General Valery Gerasimov. Mark spoke about the rumor of Germany sending battle tanks for the Ukrainian military and US pundits worried about the war in Ukraine.In the second hour, Lee spoke with Tyler Nixon about the lies of Joe Biden's biography, Hunter Biden's mother, and the twenty GOP holdouts. Tyler commented on Jill Biden's ex-husband and the story of how Joe and Jill Biden met. Tyler discussed the Martin Luther King Jr sculpture revealed and examined the true intention of the special counsel to investigate Joe Biden's confidential documents.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.comThe views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik. delaware china Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Lee Stranahan https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/02/13/1082125222_0:0:293:292_100x100_80_0_0_a8bc846f559660e5bf7574f8a9608a1d.png Lee Stranahan https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/02/13/1082125222_0:0:293:292_100x100_80_0_0_a8bc846f559660e5bf7574f8a9608a1d.png News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Lee Stranahan https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/02/13/1082125222_0:0:293:292_100x100_80_0_0_a8bc846f559660e5bf7574f8a9608a1d.png wef, delaware, tanks, china, mlk, , radio https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/trump-reportedly-makes-bid-to-regain-control-over-facebook-account-for-2024-campaign-1106471264.html Trump Reportedly Makes Bid to Regain Control Over Facebook Account for 2024 Campaign Trump Reportedly Makes Bid to Regain Control Over Facebook Account for 2024 Campaign As Trump gears up for his third bid for the US presidency, his campaign is seeking to revive his social media accounts on Facebook* and Twitter, which were shut down following the events of January 6, 2021. 2023-01-18T18:40+0000 2023-01-18T18:40+0000 2023-01-18T18:40+0000 americas donald trump twitter facebook 2024 us presidential elections us /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/05/05/1082802090_0:120:3215:1928_1920x0_80_0_0_c33c493e0dd4aa4a4e934fe2711145f1.jpg As Trump gears up for his third bid for the US presidency, his campaign is seeking to revive his social media accounts on Facebook* and Twitter, which were shut down following the events of January 6, 2021.The campaigns letter also asked Meta for a meeting to discuss President Trumps prompt reinstatement to the platform.Trumps accounts on both platforms were restricted on January 7, 2021, a day after thousands of his supporters stormed the US Capitol Building and dispersed Congress, halting the legislatures constitutional duty to verify the results of the US presidential election held the previous November. Trump was accused of inciting the attack after encouraging his followers to stop the steal, claiming rival Joe Biden had defeated him through fraudulent means. The then-outgoing president, however, called on protesters to disperse peacefully.However, Trump has not yet used his now-unlocked Twitter account, saying in the wake of Musks decision that would prefer to continue using the Truth Social messaging platform he set up in the wake of his bans.Last month, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), one of the leaders of the Democratic struggle with Trump during his presidency, urged Meta in a public letter to uphold the suspension of former president Donald Trumps account.*Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is banned in Russia over extremist activities. americas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Fantine Gardinier Fantine Gardinier News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Fantine Gardinier us capitol riot, insurrection in the us, trump wants back on facebook and twitter, trump 2024, maga 2024, trump runs for president, trump's third presidential bid https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/university-of-texas-at-austin-blocks-tiktok-on-campus-1106458805.html University of Texas at Austin Blocks TikTok on Campus University of Texas at Austin Blocks TikTok on Campus The University of Texas at Austin has become the latest state university to ban the TikTok video sharing app on its campus following the governor's directive. 2023-01-18T12:36+0000 2023-01-18T12:36+0000 2023-01-18T12:37+0000 americas tik tok gregg abbott texas /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/08/14/1099786674_0:304:3000:1992_1920x0_80_0_0_43ee27e2eb94a72edbaa4711f9e4ec86.jpg Governor Greg Abbott directed state agencies last month to ban the Chinese-made mobile app on government-issued devices citing cybersecurity concerns. The university has recently began removing TikTok from all government-issued devices, including university-issued cell phones, laptops, tablets and desktop computers. Similar steps have also been taken by the University of Texas at Dallas and Texas A&M University System. More than 85 million people are using TikTok in the United States. Abbott claimed that the Chinese could abuse the app to harvest Americans' personal data or manipulate the content they watch. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230103/scholar-us-labeling-tiktok-digital-fentanyl-absurd-shows-dysfunction-of-american-politics-1106006024.html americas texas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International tik tok ban in usa, tik tok cybersecurity threat, tik tok in texas https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/us-house-republicans-preparing-to-impeach-homeland-security-secretary-mayorkas-1106443041.html US House Republicans Preparing to Impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas US House Republicans Preparing to Impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas House GOP are moving to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for mismanaging the US border, endangering US national security and contributing to the chaos on the countrys border with Mexico, CNN reported. 2023-01-18T03:32+0000 2023-01-18T03:32+0000 2023-01-18T03:27+0000 americas us southern border mexico us-mexico border department of homeland security (dhs) alejandro mayorkas impeachment /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/101996/63/1019966362_0:270:5184:3186_1920x0_80_0_0_89feaecdf2ef4787aff5d71d7d7aea2d.jpg US media reported on Tuesday that senior House Republicans are strongly weighing launching rare impeachment proceedings against the cabinet secretary. Key House committee chairmen are already preparing to hold hearings on the problems with record levels of illegal immigrants at the southern US border, which Republicans say could serve as a prelude to an impeachment inquiry against Mayorkas, reports said. Hearing are expected to be heard in the Oversight, Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, with the first committee hearing by the Judiciary to be held between late January and early February.Congressman Pat Fallon introduced an impeachment resolution last week but the initiative has not progressed because so-called moderate Republicans have so far not been on board. An impeachment against Mayorkas would be the first to take place since 1876, when chamber did the same to then- US Secretary of War William Belknap.Data provided by Customs and Border Protection shows the number of illegal immigrants crossings the US southern border in fiscal year 2022 exceeded 2.7 million. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230110/whats-behind-bidens-sudden-interest-in-the-long-term-us-border-crisis-1106205695.html americas mexico Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International alejandro mayorkas, house of representatives, us congress, impeachment https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/us-justice-dept-wanted-to-involve-fbi-in-search-for-biden-classified-docs-reports-1106451677.html US Justice Dept. Wanted to Involve FBI in Search for Biden Classified Docs: Reports US Justice Dept. Wanted to Involve FBI in Search for Biden Classified Docs: Reports The US Department of Justice considered but abandoned the idea of involving FBI officers to monitor the process of searching for classified documents in the possessions of US President Joe Biden. 2023-01-18T10:04+0000 2023-01-18T10:04+0000 2023-01-18T10:04+0000 americas biden classified files classified documents joe biden /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/08/1106130738_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_cc72472a585495ea65e77425a0e0792a.jpg Instead, the two sides agreed that Biden's personal lawyers will inspect his homes and inform the Justice Department as soon as they find any other potentially classified records and organize their seizure by law enforcement agencies, the report said. The sources were cited as saying that the decision to leave the FBI out was in order to avoid complicating the probe's further stages , as well as due to the fact that Biden's attorneys agreed to cooperation with the investigation and handed over the retrieved classified papers promptly. Last week, US Attorney General Merrick Garland named Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden's mishandling of classified government documents. On January 9, US media reported that the president's personal attorneys discovered 10 classified documents pertaining to Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom at a Biden think-tank's office, prompting a federal probe into the matter. A second batch of classified documents was discovered in the garage of the Biden residence in Wilmington, Delaware, while another one-page document was found in an adjacent room. Congressman Paul Gosar told Sputnik that Republican lawmakers will investigate the matter as a serious felony, which is punishable with a prison sentence of up to 10 years. americas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International biden classified files, classified documents, biden felony https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/us-lawmakers-to-probe-millions-of-dollars-in-china-donations-to-penn-biden-center-1106469430.html US Lawmakers to Probe Millions of Dollars in China Donations to Penn Biden Center US Lawmakers to Probe Millions of Dollars in China Donations to Penn Biden Center The US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating millions of dollars in anonymous donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Biden Center. 2023-01-18T16:46+0000 2023-01-18T16:46+0000 2023-01-18T16:46+0000 americas biden classified files china us joe biden biden administration hunter biden /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/0e/1106304401_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_0d0e947cf7e473fac7b9554cf4164c0b.jpg "Today, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer is calling on University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill to provide information about anonymous Chinese donations to UPenn and the Penn Biden Center," the press office of Chairman James Comer said on Wednesday. "The Committee has learned UPenn received millions of dollars from anonymous Chinese sources, with a marked uptick in donations when then-former Vice President Biden was announced as leading the Penn Biden Center initiative." Comer is requesting all documents and communications related to any donations from China as well as a list of all Chinese donors and the amounts donated to the university, the release added. According to the release, donations from China tripled and continued while Biden explored a potential run for president.The US Department of Justice is currently investigating how classified documents related to the period of Biden's vice presidency ended up in his office at the think tank and in his residential premises, as they were not authorized for their storage. Congressman Paul Gosar told Sputnik that Republican lawmakers will investigate the matter as a serious felony, which is punishable with a prison sentence of up to 10 years. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230114/top-secret-docs-among-cache-of-reportedly-20-classified-files-found-at-biden-locations-1106303919.html americas china Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International biden classified files, biden classified documents, classified documents, china donations, chona donations to penn biden center, what is penn biden center, us lawmakers to probe millions of dollars in china donations https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/wef-staff-fear-forum-will-die-with-unaccountable-davos-boss-schwab-1106459702.html WEF Staff Fear Forum Will Die With 'Unaccountable' Davos Boss Schwab WEF Staff Fear Forum Will Die With 'Unaccountable' Davos Boss Schwab The annual World Economic Forum, which is meeting again this week in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, has been led since its founding in 1971 by Klaus Schwab who many have likened to a sinister James Bond villain. 2023-01-18T15:14+0000 2023-01-18T15:14+0000 2023-01-18T15:14+0000 world world economic forum klaus schwab davos switzerland natalya poklonskaya tony blair 2023 world economic forum in davos /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106462787_0:249:2897:1879_1920x0_80_0_0_0b71a12b98e862ccdb6eb3bfb49f4b48.jpg Current and former World Economic Forum (WEF) staff have accused its founder of hiring "nobodies" to make himself irreplaceable.The group of anonymous whistle-blowers fear the 82-year-old German economist will "die with his boots on" leaving no-one able to take the helm of the annual gathering of the world's financial and political elites in Davos, Switzerland.Schwab, author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution and COVID-19: The Great Reset, has controlled the WEF since its founding in 1971."Klaus has been at the helm of the WEF for 52 years. When he was born, 122 of the 195 states in the world right now did not even exist," the group said. "He is completely unaccountable to anyone inside and outside the organisation.""In most organisations the next generation of top leadership is faintly visible at the higher levels of management," they continued, "but at the WEF Klaus has surrounded himself with such a group of nobodies at the top that its hard to see how any of them could be taken seriously by anyone of consequence inside or outside the organisation."Indeed, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is one of the names reportedly tipped as Schwab's eventual replacement.The CEO of one British firm, who also declined to be quoted by name, agreed with the WEF employees' view of Schwab, saying: "My impression is that he will die with his boots on."The whistle-blowers claimed Schwab chose his leaders for their "loyalty, guile [and] sex appeal," although they claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin personally picked candidates for the country's State Duma parliament on the same basis a possible reference to Crimea's Natalya Poklonskaya, whose term ended in 2021.The "current and former employees of the WEF" said they spilled the beans on the organization's governance issues as they wanted to "play our role in fostering debate about the role this organisation plays in the world."But they said they wished to stay anonymous as they feared the influential Schwab could ruin their future careers. The group said the power of the Davos boss was illustrated when they originally posted their concerns on careers-oriented social media site LinkedIn, only for the comments to be promptly deleted. The WEF denied pressuring LinkedIn to censor the posts. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230115/what-is-the-wef-meeting-in-davos-and-what-should-be-expected-from-it-this-year-1106383872.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/wef-organizers-elon-musk-not-invited-while-he-calls-the-event-boring-1106453266.html davos switzerland Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 James Tweedie https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/1c/1080307270_0:3:397:400_100x100_80_0_0_7777393b9b18802f2e3c5eaa9cbcc612.png James Tweedie https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/1c/1080307270_0:3:397:400_100x100_80_0_0_7777393b9b18802f2e3c5eaa9cbcc612.png News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 James Tweedie https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/1c/1080307270_0:3:397:400_100x100_80_0_0_7777393b9b18802f2e3c5eaa9cbcc612.png davos boss klaus schwab, world economic forum, wef in davos, where is davos, what is davos, who is klaus schwab https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/west-pledges-main-battle-tanks-to-kiev-but-will-it-be-a-game-changer-1106470433.html West Pledges Main Battle Tanks to Kiev, But Will It Be a Game Changer? West Pledges Main Battle Tanks to Kiev, But Will It Be a Game Changer? UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is urging Berlin to provide its Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, something that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been reluctant to do... 18.01.2023, Sputnik International 2023-01-18T18:14+0000 2023-01-18T18:14+0000 2023-01-18T18:14+0000 russia's special operation in ukraine us europe tanks abrams tanks german tanks m1a2 abrams leopard 2 challenger 2 ukraine /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/11/1106414955_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_840b6d97745741cda5040c782c865b0d.jpg Kiev wants the US and its NATO allies to provide 200 to 300 tanks and 600 infantry armored vehicles to the Ukrainian military for a crucial spring offensive against Russia, according to western press.However, even though the Biden administration included several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles in its recent package, the US so far has declined to send the Abrams tank.For its part, France announced last week that it would deliver AMX-10 RC light combat tanks to Kiev in two months' time.While some western military observers argue that the French AMX-10 RC is "a chimera of combat vehicles," but not actually a tank, the development apparently prompted the UK to follow suit and pledge 14 Challenger 2 tanks for the Ukrainian military. The Challenger 2 is a third-generation British main battle tank in service with the armies of the UK.NATO allies are now calling on Germany to step in and give its Leopard 2 tanks to the Kiev regime while allowing other nations Poland and Finland, for instance to export their German-made tanks to Ukraine, too. The Leopard 2 is the third generation of the nation's main battle tank originally in the 1970s for the West German army.However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appears reluctant to send his main battle tanks to the military theater. Earlier this week, Scholz told a US broadcaster that Berlin has to coordinate its further weapons supplies to Kiev with its allies.According to western media, the chancellor is seeking US approval for the move. If Washington decides to provide Abrams to the Ukrainian military, Scholz is likely to follow suit, unnamed German officials surmise. Earlier this month Berlin agreed to include its Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles in its Ukrainian military package.Meanwhile, Scholz has nominated a new defense minister to replace Christine Lambrecht, who earlier announced her resignation following a series of blunders. Boris Pistorius is due to be sworn in on Thursday and immediately after that to meet US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Austin will come to Germany to participate in the Ramstein defense summit scheduled for January 20.Some western outlets were speculating last week that Berlin may finalize its decision on supplying Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine a day ahead of the summit. It is expected that the Germans will be able to send "a clear message" about the weapon deliveries at the Ramstein gathering.Still, Russian military experts have expressed skepticism with regard to Germany's much-discussed "wonder weapon." According to them, Syrian Kurds used to successfully destroy Leopards 24A with the Soviet-made anti-tank guided missiles Malyutka ("small one" in Russian). If the West provides Kiev with an additional 200-300 armored fighting vehicles it could pose a certain danger, but it won't become a game-changer on the battlefield, Russian military experts emphasize. ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ekaterina Blinova Ekaterina Blinova News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ekaterina Blinova tanks for ukraine, main battle tank, germany's leopard 2, uk's challenger 2, olaf scholz, who is germany's new minister of defense, a nato summit at rammstein base, russia's special operation in ukraine https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/what-are-the-us-treasurys-extraordinary-measures-that-can-postpone-debt-limit-disaster-1106472784.html What Are the US Treasurys Extraordinary Measures That Can Postpone Debt Limit Disaster? What Are the US Treasurys Extraordinary Measures That Can Postpone Debt Limit Disaster? So what are those tools at the Treasurys command that can forestall this catastrophe for a time? Yellen explained some of them in a recent letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has pledged to turn the debt ceiling into a political fight to win future spending caps from Democrats. 2023-01-18T21:10+0000 2023-01-18T21:10+0000 2023-01-18T21:37+0000 sputnik explains us treasury debt ceiling default /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/09/08/1100562193_0:0:3073:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_eb86830e4338f6c425ba241eb94d682d.jpg However, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned the extraordinary measures will only buy Congress so much time, and are likely to run out by June. At that time, the US government will default on its debts, destroying its credit rating, forcing massive cuts to the federal government budget, and likely plunging the country into an immediate recession.So what are those tools at the Treasurys command that can forestall this catastrophe for a time? Yellen explained some of them in a recent letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has pledged to turn the debt ceiling into a political fight to win future spending caps from Democrats.Benefits CutsYellen said she will halt spending on several key benefits programs for federal government employees and former employees, including redeeming existing and suspend new investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, as well as pausing reinvestment of the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.Shuffling PaymentsThe Treasury can also shift money temporarily between different government agencies and departments to make payments as they come due, in order to maximize the use of money already set aside for spending. It can also halt a process it uses to provide financing for foreign governments by suspending the daily reinvestment of securities held by the Exchange Stabilization Fund.Prioritize BondholdersAnother possibility is that the Treasury could prioritize paying back bondholders, which might forestall default altogether, but would result in one federal program after another losing its funding, which could cause its own social, economic, and political chaos. However, according to some US media reports, such prioritization might not be possible, since the Treasury adopted an automated system.Minting a $1 Trillion CoinPerhaps the most hilarious solution to the crisis would be for the Treasury to mint a commemorative platinum coin of whatever value it chooses, as per a 1997 law absolutely not intended for such a use. However, in 2021, Yellen dismissed this as a gimmick, saying that whats necessary is for Congress to show that the world can count on America paying its debts.What Comes After?If Congress decides to pass a new bill raising the debt ceiling before the US government defaults, then the paused spending will be made whole again. The present debt ceiling is $31.4 trillion, the level it was raised to in 2021.Congress created the ceiling during the First World War in order to ease the process of passing regular and large spending bills to fund the US war preparations. Debts had previously been authorized piecemeal. If Congress cant find a way through the impasse by the time the extraordinary measures run out, then the US will officially default on its debts - something its never done before. In 2011, during a previous crisis, the US came within hours of defaulting - a situation that caused Standard & Poors to downgrade the US credit rating to AA+, where it has remained since. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230109/lets-get-in-the-room-now-house-gop-lawmaker-calls-for-battle-over-us-debt-ceiling-1106153617.html Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Fantine Gardinier Fantine Gardinier News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Fantine Gardinier us treasury department, extraordinary measures, postponement, debt, janet yellen, us economy https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/what-tanks-did-western-countries-deliver-to-ukraine-1106453662.html What Tanks Did Western Countries Deliver to Ukraine? What Tanks Did Western Countries Deliver to Ukraine? Western countries have provided Kiev with more than 350 tanks, among other military hardware. Who exactly was involved in those tank deliveries and will more such supplies be in the pipeline? 2023-01-18T12:44+0000 2023-01-18T12:44+0000 2023-01-18T12:49+0000 sputnik explains ukraine us uk germany poland czech republic russia special operation tanks /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106455372_0:161:3071:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_cd98b1b84f781f9923113ef9b09cce89.jpg Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said late last month that since the start of Moscows special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, Western countries have provided Kiev with more than 350 tanks, among other military hardware. Who exactly was involved in those tank deliveries and will more such supplies be in the pipeline? Sputnik answers these and other questions.Will the US Greenlight M1 Tanks for Ukraine ?Last week, the Biden administration declined to clarify whether the US would send its M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine.This was preceded by a US newspaper citing unnamed White House officials as saying that Washington would not deliver the M1s to Kiev, allegedly because their heavy fuel consumption and propensity to break down make these 60-ton tanks unsuitable for the Ukrainian military.The remarks apparently poured cold water on Ukrainian authorities, who have repeatedly requested the delivery of the US-made tanks, describing them as something that will be crucial to Ukraines push to prevail over Russia, which continues its special military operation in Ukraine.How Many Tanks Will the UK Supply to Kiev?In a separate development last week, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone call that London would provide Kiev with 14 British Challenger 2 main battle tanks.According to Downing Street, a squadron of the Challenger 2s will be delivered in the coming weeks.UK Chief of General Staff General Sir Patrick Sanders has meanwhile reportedly warned that supplying Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine would leave Britain temporarily weaker, something that he claimed would leave a gap in British inventory. Sanders also hinted at the militarys unease over the decision by No 10 to send the British main battle tanks to Kiev.What About Germany's Leopard 2 Tanks?Berlin is under pressure to permit the supply of German-made Leopard tanks to the Ukrainian military, who now mainly rely on versions of the Soviet-era T-72 tank.German authorities insist the Leopard 2s, regarded as among the Wests best battle tanks, should only be supplied to Ukraine if there is agreement among Kievs key allies.Poland, for its part, earlier said that it wants to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine as part of NATOs coordinated effort, but that Warsaw needs Berlins approval to do so due to rules governing the re-export of German military equipment. The move was echoed by Finland, who also floated the possibility of supplying Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks, adding, though, that Helsinkis actions depend on Germanys stance.How Many Tanks Did Poland Send to Ukraine?Warsaw provided Kiev with more than 260 T-72 tanks in the months that followed Russia announcing the beginning of its special military operation in Ukraine on February 24.Pawel Soloch, head of Poland's National Security Bureau, told a Polish news outlet last year that Warsaw has supplied, is supplying and will continue to supply Ukraine with military assistance, in particular, the T-72 tanks.Now its worth noting that the T-72 entered service at the then-Soviet Army back in 1973. Since then, the tank has been modernized at least 14 times.Were There Tank Supplies to Kiev From Czech Republic?Earlier this month, Russian Deputy Security Council head Dmitry Medvedev pointed out that Russias foes financed the modernization of its 100 T-72 tanks in order to supply them to Ukraine from the Soviet legacy.He was apparently referring to a trilateral agreement between the Czech Republic, the US and the Netherlands to team up to deliver at least upgraded T-72B tanks to Kiev before the end of this year. A US news outlet noted in this vein last year that the tanks will come from the inventory of the Czech defense industry and that they arent Czech army tanks.Earlier in 2022, Czech media claimed that Prague had supplied up to 40 non-modernized T-72 tanks to Kiev as part of its military aid to Ukraine. The Czech Defense Ministry confirmed the delivery but remained tight-lipped on the exact number of the tanks.What Tanks Did Slovenia Deliver to Ukraine?It seems that Ljubljana went even further in terms of sending moth-balled Soviet-era tanks to the Ukrainian military.Media reports said in September 2022 that Slovenia would provide Ukraine with 28 M-55S tanks, an upgraded version of the T-55, which was produced between 1958 and 1979.One US magazine painted the T-55 as a hopelessly obsolete tank, which however purportedly can serve as a cheap and reliable platform. ukraine germany poland czech republic russia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Oleg Burunov https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg Oleg Burunov https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Oleg Burunov https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg western countries' supplies of tanks to ukraine, russian special military operation in ukraine, deliveries of uk's challenger 2 tanks to ukraine, us main battle tank m1 abrams, uk main battle tank challenger 2, soviet-era tank t-72, soviet-era tank t-55, abrams tanks, m1 abrams, m1 abrams weight, m1a2 abrams cost, abrams cost, abrams tanks ukraine, abrams tanks in ukraine, m1 abrams tanks https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/white-house-hints-new-military-aid-package-for-ukraine-coming-by-end-of-week-1106450596.html White House Hints New Military Aid Package for Ukraine Coming by End of Week White House Hints New Military Aid Package for Ukraine Coming by End of Week The United States may announce a new aid package for Ukraine, which will include new deliveries of weapons, by the weekend, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said on Wednesday. 2023-01-18T09:03+0000 2023-01-18T09:03+0000 2023-01-18T09:03+0000 americas arms supplies m2 bradley infantry fighting vehicle mine-resistant ambush protected (mrap) ukraine /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e5/03/06/1082272877_0:0:3072:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_aaebc083b3f39c64a8669e1c5e912eed.jpg The official gave no precise details on types of possible arms supplies, for example, whether the US will send battle tanks to Ukraine. On January 6, the US announced its largest to-date package of military assistance to Ukraine worth $3.75 billion. It includes Bradley fighting vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, howitzer artillery guns, mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAPS) light vehicles, among other weaponry. The previous $1.85 billion US military aid package for Ukraine was announced on December 22 and included the Patriot air defense system. Western countries have been ramping up their military support for Kiev since the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. In April, Moscow sent a note to NATO member states condemning their military assistance to Kiev. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that any arms shipments on Ukrainian territory would be "legitimate targets" for Russian armed forces. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in turn, stated that arms provision was undermining prospects for a future peace process. americas ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International arms supplies to ukraine, western support of ukrainian regime, bradley fighting vehicles, mine-resistant ambusg protected light vehicles https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/woman-infant-child-killed-in-alaskas-first-deadly-polar-bear-attack-in-33-years-1106473606.html Woman, Infant Child Killed in Alaska's First Deadly Polar Bear Attack in 33 Years Woman, Infant Child Killed in Alaska's First Deadly Polar Bear Attack in 33 Years A polar bear killed a woman and her infant child in an attack in northwestern Alaska on Tuesday, marking the states first human deaths caused by the massive arctic creatures in more than three decades. 2023-01-18T22:03+0000 2023-01-18T22:03+0000 2023-03-13T14:44+0000 americas polar bear attack alaska /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/107597/04/1075970419_0:78:1882:1137_1920x0_80_0_0_9bb1a35b106ddae1f7ecd1fbfc14a8b0.png According to reports in local media, the attack happened in the village of Wales, a predominantly Inupiaq settlement on the Seward Peninsula that sits on the Bering Sea. A polar bear was reported entering the village and chasing several residents.The police report didnt mention the names of the victims. Authorities were unable to reach Wales from elsewhere in the state on Tuesday, due to poor weather conditions.Bizarrely, the attack happened during what should have been the safest time of year in the town: polar bears tend to come on land during the summer, when the sea ice recedes, and venture back out onto the ice during winter to hunt.The massive predators are the continents largest predators, with a fully grown male polar bear weighing in at some 1,200 pounds. However, fatal attacks on humans are rare, with Tuesdays being the first in Alaska since 1990.Deadly attacks on humans have been associated by researchers with starvation and stresses on the bears habitat, such as thawing sea ice that limits their hunting time and brings them closer to humans. As the global climate continues to warm, scientists are worried that the loss of Arctic sea ice could lead to the extinction of the polar bear before the end of the century. https://sputnikglobe.com/20220513/identity-of-soldier-mauled-to-death-by-bear-in-alaska-revealed-by-us-army-1095500274.html americas alaska Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Fantine Gardinier Fantine Gardinier News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Fantine Gardinier polar bear, alaska, wales, seward peninsula https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/world-economic-bored-1106442882.html World Economic Bored World Economic Bored After Billionaire financier George Soros pulled out of the World Economic Forum (WEF), online conspiracy theorists speculated that the cancellation portended a calamitous event Soros was attempting to avoid. 2023-01-18T02:40+0000 2023-01-18T02:40+0000 2023-01-18T19:38+0000 world ted rall world economic forum (wef) george soros klaus schwab conspiracy theory cartoons /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/11/1106440494_0:0:2001:1125_1920x0_80_0_0_6c11229ffe41d89b45d4eddcace4c560.jpg The conspiracies were further fueled by erroneous reports that Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF, would also not be attending. Schwab, as well as Soros son Alexander, are both attending the forum.Josh Reid of the Red Pill Project, a conspiracy theory outlet, speculated on Telegram that there could be a massive security/terrorist event at Davos this week.Other netizens speculated Soros and/or Schwab had been arrested, and that was the reason for their absence (or supposed absence in Schwabs case).Soros earlier said he could not attend due to an unavoidable scheduling conflict without clarifying what the conflict was. Soros added he will be giving a speech the day before the Munich Security Conference in February.However, the likely reason for Soros absence is that the WEF has become less relevant recently. Consistently criticized for its climate impact (many attendees arrive by private jet) and with its stated goal of a globalized society becoming more distant with the current geopolitical climate, the event is less popular than ever.Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping will not attend the conference this year, striking three of the worlds most influential leaders off the guest list. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are among other world leaders who decided not to attend the meetings.Soros is the subject of countless online conspiracies due to his extreme wealth, influential charities, and massive donations to Democratic politicians. Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International george soros, world economic forum, wef, conspiracy https://sputnikglobe.com/20230118/worlds-oldest-known-person-reportedly-dies-at-age-118-1106442269.html Worlds Oldest Known Person Reportedly Dies at Age 118 Worlds Oldest Known Person Reportedly Dies at Age 118 Lucile Randon, a French nun and the worlds oldest known person, died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 118, AFP reported, citing a Sante-Catherine-Laboure nursing home spokesperson. 2023-01-18T01:03+0000 2023-01-18T01:03+0000 2023-01-18T00:58+0000 world france guinness world records death /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/01/12/1106442122_0:0:3071:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_1249b8742ebb24fc4a81ff8db81041dd.jpg "There is great sadness but it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, its a liberation," spokesman David Tavella is quoted as saying in a statement on Tuesday. Randon, also known as Sister Andre, was born in 1904. Guinness World Records acknowledged Randon as the worlds oldest living person in April 2022, following the passing of 119-year old Kane Tanaka of Japan. Random was raised Protestant alongside three brothers in southern France. At the age of 26, Randon converted to Catholicism, later joining the Daughters of Charity as a nun at the age of 41. Randon notably survived a bout of COVID-19 in 2021 despite her old age. Randon has rejected requests to test her DNA, stating that "only the good Lord knows" the secret of her longevity, the report said. The record for oldest confirmed age reached by a human belongs to Jeanne Calment, also of southern France, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. france Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International lucile random, french nun, death, sante-catherine-laboure Longtime equine dentist and former horseman Paul Larrabee of South Pinette, P.E.I. passed away on Jan. 11, 2023 at the age of 68. Paul was born a Maritimer and he retired as one too. He is survived by his spouse of over 30 years Deb Martin, step-daughter Jayne Jones (Shane), cousins Nathaniel Larrabee and Roger Larrabee. He also leaves behind many friends, fellow horsemen and Pinette neighbours. Everyone liked Paul and his big laugh. Paul was predeceased by his parents James and Alice (Eaton) Larrabee and his sister Jessie Belle. Paul spent his career in Ontario working his way up to becoming a best and most sought after equine dentist. This was thanks to his teacher and mentor Pete Malone, who saw his natural talent. Pauls passion was Standardbred racehorses. He and Deb trained, bred and raced many champions. Their combined talents as horsepeople made a fierce partnership. Paul had a big presence and a big personality. But he had an even bigger work ethic and commitment to everything he did. He expected perfection from himself and to be honest being his groom wasnt always a delight! Those who know him can laugh about this. No matter how well you knew Paul you would never have known the adversities he overcame. He didnt share and he made no excuses. The truths is Paul overcame some great tragedy in his life. He lost his father as a young man and then very sadly his sister, way before her time. This would have broken a lot of people, but Paul just kept going. He was private and just kept working hard and achieving. Though it was never known, his unbelievable resilience as a human being deserves to be as much of a legacy as his gift as a horseman. Paul's race was run with nothing but class and he will be missed by those lucky to know you. Resting at Hillsboro Funeral Home. No services or visitation by personal request. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Paul Larrabee. Multiple bills are in the works in the Nebraska Legislature that were influenced by a 63-page report released last week detailing the state's top housing needs. All state lawmakers were sent a copy of "Nebraska's 2022 Strategic Housing Framework," which calls for 35,000 affordable housing units to be built by 2028, among other big goals. One bill has already been introduced that was influenced by the report, and at least three more are on their way. Sens. Tony Vargas and Tom Briese led a briefing on the report last week. Though Vargas and Briese hold different party affiliations and represent two totally different parts of Nebraska hailing from Omaha and Albion, respectively Vargas said housing is a broad and urgent enough issue to warrant everyone's attention. "I think that the lack of available housing across Nebraska is curtailing economic growth in our state more than we realize," Briese said. Nebraska has not been immune to the decades-long national housing shortage. Vargas said research estimates the state needs to build at least 5,000 new housing units every year to keep up with demand. The 2022 report refers to issues for both renters and owners, and cites multiple contributors behind Nebraska's housing needs, including rising costs of housing and loans, and a lack of available land and diverse housing options. Dave Rippe, who contributed to the report through Queen City Development Co., said more than 175,000 Nebraska households are what he called "housing burdened," which means more than 30% of the residents' income goes toward paying for the home itself. Along with the goal of building 35,000 affordable housing units, the report also sets a goal of reducing the percentage of housing burdened homes in the state from 44% to 33% by 2028. This would amount to about 44,000 homes. While Nebraska's housing needs in metropolitan areas are intense and well-documented, Rippe noted that rural areas have their own set of unique needs due to its overall decline in population over the last few decades. He said in some rural counties, about 17% of the housing units are vacant. Much of the vacant property is old and uninhabitable, but Rippe said there aren't enough construction crews based in rural areas to keep up with the necessary improvements. He estimated rural Nebraska needs at least 5,000 additional construction workers to meet demand. Briese introduced a bill (LB249) last week to amend the Rural Workforce Housing Investment Act. The bill would increase the limit in workforce housing grant funding a nonprofit development organization can apply for from $1 million to $5 million over a two-year period. Vargas said there are at least three other bills influenced by the report that have yet to be introduced, which will focus on removing regulations that slow housing development and help distribute more funding for housing at a faster pace. Vargas said he does not have specific goals in mind for each legislative session. "We're trying to make as much of a dent as we possibly can," Vargas said. Several housing bills that have been introduced were not influenced by the report. One of them, LB424, was introduced by Sen. Wendy DeBoer of Bennington and would establish the Department of Housing and Urban Development. DeBoer said LB424 has been in the works since last year, so the draft was not influenced by the report's research. However, she said the report likely will play a role in the bill's progress through the Legislature this session. Another bill expected to come from the Urban Affairs Committee will suggest millions of federal dollars be used on several low and middle-income housing projects in underserved areas of Omaha. The bill is linked to an independent report from engineering firm Olsson that was also released last week as part of a multiyear economic recovery effort. The Lincoln Journal Star's top photos from 2022 While he is an icon of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was not just advocating for the rights of Black people. That was one of the things Brian Summers, a former staff member for Sen. Jesse Helms and Statesville native, told members of the Statesville Kiwanis Club on Tuesday. Summers presented a program in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which was observed Monday. Summers has more than just a historical connection to King. He is friends with Kings son, Martin Luther King III. He joked about once losing a bet to King III and having to dress up as Santa Claus. Summers said the legacy of King is one for all people not just Black people. He was about the rights of everybody, he said. He wanted a better America. Summers said that when King when to Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968, it was to support a strike by sanitation workers there. The Black sanitation workers, he said, were foremost on Kings mind. African American sanitation workers received pay that wasnt equal and werent allowed to join the union, he said. But, as King did in any of his protests, he went as a voice of peace. And on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, that voice was silenced when King was assassinated. He embraced Gandhis idea of nonviolence, Summers said, referring to Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian activist who employed nonviolent resistance to social woes Summers said he is working to deliver the message that King embraced creating a better America, and on the local level, a better Iredell County. He said he believes one of the ways to continuing Kings legacy is to encourage people to develop and promote a sense of pride in their communities not just for African Americans but for everybody. The Statesville Kiwanis Club was formed more than 100 years ago and its members support projects that further education and other endeavors in the county. The club sponsors the Iredell County Agricultural Fair each year and proceeds are distributed to provide scholarships for local students and to help local charitable organizations. The club meets the first and third Tuesdays of each month. An employee works at a smart production facility in Tianjin in June. [Photo/Xinhua] China's economy is likely to see a robust rebound this year as better-than-expected growth results for 2022 have demonstrated its resilience in coping with multiple challenges, officials and experts said on Tuesday. The nation's economic growth is expected to rebound to above 5 percent this year as consumer activity revives amid waning COVID disruptions while concerted policy steps are set to prop up infrastructure investment and stabilize the property sector, they said. Beating market expectations and outrunning many major economies such as Germany, China's GDP expanded 3 percent year-on-year in 2022 to 121.02 trillion yuan ($17.94 trillion), the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. Fourth-quarter GDP growth came in at 2.9 percent, which experts partly attributed to the nation passing the recent COVID-19 peak faster than expected. Kang Yi, head of the NBS, said economic performance remained overall stable last year despite the challenges of intensified geopolitical tensions, rising global downside risks and repeated COVID-19 outbreaks, pointing to the strong resilience and great potential of China's economy. "Looking into 2023, China's economy is bound to see an overall improvement," Kang said, adding that economic activity is gradually normalizing as the country enters a new phase of COVID response, with domestic flights having recovered to more than 80 percent of the level seen in 2019. As the peak of recent COVID-19 infections appears to be over, experts said the Chinese economy is poised to rebound soon, with the majority of provincial-level regions having set their growth targets for this year at between 5 and 6.5 percent. Kang Yong, chief economist at KPMG China, said he expects the nation's economic growth to accelerate to about 5.2 percent this year as the increase in household savings over recent years may partially translate into a rebound in consumer spending upon the resumption of offline consumption. Consumption growth has shown signs of stabilization as the year-on-year decline in retail sales shrank to 1.8 percent in December from 5.9 percent in November, NBS data showed. At the national level, Kang said it is sensible to set this year's GDP growth target at above 5 percent year-on-year, which will be not only attainable but necessary for the country to reach the goal of achieving the per capita GDP of a midlevel developed country by 2035. To achieve that target, the country's per capita GDP, which was 85,698 yuan last year, would have to more than double. More efforts are therefore still needed to consolidate the foundation of China's economic growth, NBS head Kang said, given the stagflation risk facing the world economy and the lingering pressures facing the domestic job market and the operation of enterprises. The official added that China's price stability has created favorable conditions to leverage macroeconomic policy tools to stabilize growth. Louise Loo, senior economist at British think tank Oxford Economics, said she expects to see continued policy accommodation this year, with off-budget fiscal policy, including local government special bonds, likely to be the primary policy lever. Apart from stepped-up macroeconomic policy adjustments, experts said more measures to stabilize the real estate sector and relax new energy vehicle purchase restrictions could be taken at the local levels. Liu Linan, managing director and head of Greater China macro strategy at Deutsche Bank, said there is still room for further adjusting mortgage loan rates and first-time homebuyers' down payments. "If further progress is made in terms of consolidation of China's real estate sector, property developers' debt restructuring and bank loans for acquisitions of quality property projects, it will be conducive to boosting recovery of the sector and restoring market confidence," Liu said. NBS data showed that real estate development investment dropped 10 percent year-on-year last year, widening from a 9.8 percent decline in the first 11 months of the year and remaining a key drag on growth. The bureau also said that the country's population has declined by 850,000 people year-on-year to 1.41175 billion in 2022. To deal with the impact of a decline in working-age population, it is important for China to improve the quality of the labor force through education and on-job training, said Lin Jianhai, former secretary of the International Monetary Fund. VANCOUVER The Clark County Medical Examiners Office has identified a body found 24 years ago in the Columbia River near Vancouver as that of a missing California man. Investigators determined the remains found Oct. 26, 1998, in the river near Northwest Lower River Road were that of Michael E. Johnson. The medical examiners office estimates he was about 53 years old at the time of his death, according to a Tuesday news release. Johnsons cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, the medical examiners office said. His manner of death is undetermined. According to Columbian archives, when the unidentified body was found, it was badly decomposed; officials believed the body had been in the water six months to a year. Law enforcement officers were unaware of any missing people from the area who the remains couldve belonged to and notified agencies around the Northwest. Authorities said at the time that fingerprint identification was impossible, and the remains could have come from upriver. The medical examiners office sent a DNA sample from the remains to Bode Technology, a forensic DNA laboratory in Virginia. Once forensic genealogists determined the remains ancestry, they compared that with online genealogy databases. Genealogists found an ancestral link to a family in California. From there, they identified a son of Chesley Johnson Jr. and Ruth Marie Hansen, who had no traceable activities since 1998, the news release states. The Clark County Medical Examiners Office encourages people to upload their DNA profiles to genealogy programs, such as GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, and opt in to public searches. The agency said doing this can help investigators match DNA to unidentified remains, provide closure to families and help law enforcement identify suspects of violent crime. In October, Nikki Costa, operations manager for the medical examiners office, contacted other children of the California couple identified by genealogists. Russel Johnson and Kathy Bergen told them their brother, Michael Johnson, had left California with no contact with the family in more than 20 years, the news release states. Over several months, Costa reached out to various agencies to investigate the possibility of the remains being those of Michael Johnson. The California Department of Justice Missing Persons DNA Program analyzed family reference samples to compare with the Clark County remains. The Wasatch County Sheriffs Office in Heber City, Utah, collected a sample from Bergen and submitted it to the California program. The University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, which the medical examiners office said developed the initial DNA profile of the unidentified man in 2008, submitted its profile to the program, too. Clark County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Martha Burt concluded the remains did belong to Johnson, according to the news release. Johnsons identification is the second time in four months the medical examiners office announced the closure of a decades-old cold case. Law enforcement does not have any information about Johnsons death and asks anyone with information to contact Vancouver polices Major Crimes Unit Sgt. Patrick Moore at 360-487-7440. WOODLAND Two mid-November substations attacks in Woodland occurred weeks before more publicized attacks in North Carolina and Tacoma. Intentional attacks in December in North Carolina and Tacoma resulted in lost power for thousands and prompted a security review of the nation's electricity transmission network. Law enforcement have not said if attacks in different locations are related. According to Sgt. James Keller of the Woodland Police Department, a Cowlitz County Public Utility District substation on Robinson Road was broken into and damaged on Nov. 17 and caused a power outage that lasted several hours. The next day, the West Woodland Substation on Pekin Road was hit, Keller said. Woodland police alerted the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the incidents. The Cowlitz County PUD declined to provide details of the outages because they are being investigated. Jeff Zimmerman, 53, owner of the auto repair shop Trailer Sales, has property next to the Robinson Road substation, which is located near Woodland High School and the Dike Access Road Walmart. He said his construction equipment was damaged the same day as the Nov. 17 attack. Contractor Brian Kemp, 42, was doing work on Zimmerman's property and told The Daily News someone on Nov. 17 tried to hot wire his forklift and damaged it in the process. Kemp said he alerted the FBI about the vandalism. On Thanksgiving Day, a Bonneville Power Administration electrical substation in Clackamas, Oregon, was attacked in what BPA Vice President of Field Service John Lahti called a deliberate assault on the station to "damage equipment and cause a power outage." According to the FBI, two substations in Moore County, North Carolina were damaged by gunfire on the night of Dec. 3 at two locations 10 minutes apart and left 45,000 without power for four days. On Christmas Day four substations were attacked in the Tacoma area, and an estimated $3 million of damage knocked out power for more than 15,000 people. According to an affidavit, Puyallup residents Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40, were arrested Dec. 31 for allegedly sabotaging the four Puget Sound Energy and Tacoma Power substations. Greenwood told federal authorities that their motivation was to cut the substations' power to burglarize local businesses that would be left in the dark. Greenwood and Crahan are both charged with one count of conspiracy to damage energy facilities, and Greenwood is also charged with an unregistered firearm after the FBI found unregistered guns underneath his mattress. If found guilty, they could serve years in a federal prison. The Daily News asked the FBI's Seattle office if there were any connections between the Christmas Day attacks in Pierce County and the Woodland attacks. FBI spokesperson Steven Bernd said in an email that "while we cannot go into the incidents in Woodland, the two men arrested were arrested for their participation in all four attacks in Pierce County." Protecting substations Substations convert high-voltage electricity to lower-voltage electricity for homes and businesses. They can be targets because they are often unmanned and in remote locations, officials say. Professor Daniel Kirschen, 65, of the University of Washington's Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering said substations are also relatively easy targets because there are so many. "The grid is an impressive machine. It has enormous economic benefits and reliability benefits. What needs to happen is to improve the physical security of the substations to make attacks more difficult or less likely," said Kirschen. Doug Johnson, the senior spokesperson for the BPA, said the company has 300 substations across the region, some of which are manned, and some aren't. He said they are enhancing security features in light of the Thanksgiving Day attack. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced Dec. 15 they are studying the physical security standards of the nation's electrical grid. The commission is an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil. The Department of Energy's Office of Cybersecurity reports the number of substation disturbances in Washington state has increased from 2021 to 2022. Eleven substation were hit in Washington state through August 2022. Nine disruptions occurred before the Woodland attacks and seven of those were described as "intentional human action;" two were cyber-attacks; and one was listed as "suspicious activity." The department reports three electrical substations were vandalized in Washington state in 2021, and another was a possible physical threat and listed under "suspicious activity." Kirschen advised telling authorities about questionable events. "If you see something, say something," he said. "If you see suspicious activity report it." Financial struggles exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic led to the sale of Community Home Health & Hospice announced last week, according to the organization. Vancouver-based Eden Health, a for-profit company, will take over the nonprofit's Longview and Vancouver in-home programs on May 1. The future of Community Home Health's in-house hospice care has not been determined. Jodie Zelazny, the nonprofit's director of community development, said the change of hands was brought on by the organization's "financial position," and discussions about a potential acquisition started in the fall. "As a nonprofit, the pandemic and resulting economic climate has presented new financial challenges," she said in an email. The sale follows a national trend, as hospice care in the past decade has shifted from primarily nonprofits to more than two-thirds now operating as for-profit entities, reported Kaiser Health News in July. The number of for-profit hospices increased 8% in 2021, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. In July, former Community CEO Greg Pang told The Daily News the hospice center couldn't fill all 12 of its beds because it was short staffed. Public and private insurance reimbursement rates aren't keeping pace with rising costs, including wage increases needed to hold onto staff or hire new employees, Pang said. Statewide, hospital and long-term care officials have raised similar concerns, and plan to seek changes during the current Legislative session. Community Home Health & Hospice started planning about a year ago to better serve patients by outreaching to regional partners, Zelazny said, and discussions with Eden Health about acquisition started in November. Neither organization would discuss the price of the purchase. The nonprofit is still working with community partners to keep the in-house hospice care centers open, Zelazny added, and if successful, a Longview remodel which the organization has been fundraising for since at least spring 2021 may still take occur. The Longview care center was renamed the Dr. Richard Nau Hospice Care Center in July following the retired doctors $1 million donation. Community Home Health & Hospice has 191 employees at its Longview and Vancouver operations, and Eden has offered to onboard clinical staff and many administrative staff members, Zelazny said, but did not clarify how many. When asked how many staff were not offered positions, Jamie Brown, Eden's vice president of home services, stated the question was not applicable until the May changeover. The hiring of clinical staff should cause "little to no disruption for our current patients" when the changeover occurs, Zelazny said. The sale will significantly increase Eden Health's presence in Southwest Washington, where 40 employees currently serve 170 patients through the company's home health and home care programs, Brown said. Eden Health's closest hospice location is in Oregon City and serves the Portland area, she said. The company offers hospice, home care, home health and palliative care services, along with a bereavement program as part of hospice services, according to its website. Brown said they also "contract with inpatient facilities and hospitals to provide higher levels of care." The Eden Health website says the company is "100% employee-owned" and offers an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The plan, according to the National Center for Employee Ownership, allows employees to own company shares through a trust funded by the business. Bankrupt FTX claims hackers stole $415 million worth of cryptocurrency from its accounts January 18, 2023 19:15 Hackers stole $415 million worth of cryptocurrency from the accounts of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, CNBC reported, citing a report from the company's lawyers and advisors. According to them, hackers broke into the FTX system in 2022. hey managed to steal $323 million from the international company FTX.com and another $90 million from its U.S. unit in November, after the collapse of the crypto exchange. Another $2 million was withdrawn from the hedge fund Alameda Research. Immediately after it became known about the hacking attack, it was reported that more than $600 million was stolen from the exchange. And according to analytics company Elliptic, the stolen cryptocurrency was valued at $477 million at the time. The hackers who carried out the attack have never been identified, but some experts believe the attack was orchestrated or coordinated by someone close to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and the complex and coordinated actions of the attackers may indicate the involvement of an FTX employee. In a report titled "Maximizing FTX Recoveries," FTX lawyers and consultants present an updated amount of recoverable liquid assets for the company of about $5.5 billion. That amount also includes the estate of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas, which is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. At the same time, Bankman-Fried, a former billionaire himself, in a short period of time has lost almost all of his fortune $15.6 billion. Now he has about 100 thousand dollars left on his account. Immediately after the bankruptcy of FTX, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange Sam Bankman-Fried was charged by federal prosecutors with fraud and money laundering. Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial is set for October 2023, and he has been released on $250 million bail in the meantime. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Graph abstract from 'A General Illumination Method to Predict Bifacial Photovoltaic System Performance' published in Joule. Credit: Erin Tonita / University of Ottawa A laboratory in photonics and renewable energy at the University of Ottawa has developed a new method for measuring the solar energy produced by bifacial solar panels, the double-sided solar technology which is expected to meet increased global energy demands moving forward. Published in the journal Joule, this study from the SUNLAB team in the Faculties of Engineering and Science proposes a characterization method that will improve the measurement of bifacial panels indoors by considering external effects of ground cover such as snow, grass and soil. This will provide a way to consistently test bifacial solar panel performance indoors that accurately represents how the panels will perform outdoors. With bifacial photovoltaics expected to provide over 16% of global energy demand by 2050, the SUNLAB's methodology will improve international device measurement standards which currently do not distinguish between ground cover. "Our proposed characterization method, the scaled rear irradiance method, is an improved method for indoor-measuring and modeling of bifacial devices that is representative of outdoor environmental conditions," says Erin Tonita, lead author and a Physics Ph.D. student studying under Professor Karin Hinzer, whose research group develops new ways to harness the sun's energy. "Incorporating this new method into future bifacial standards would provide a consistent methodology for testing bifacial panel performance under ground conditions including snow, grass, and soil, corresponding to globally varying illumination conditions." Erin Tonita, lead author and a Physics PhD student involved with SUNLAB at the University of Ottawa, the premier Canadian modelling and characterization laboratory for next generation bifacial, multi-junction, and concentrator solar devices. Credit: University of Ottawa Photovoltaics is the study of converting solar energy into electricity through semiconducting materials, such as silicon. In bifacial solar panels, the semiconducting material is wedged between two sheets of glass to allow for sunlight collection on both sides, with one side typically angled towards the sun and the other side angled towards the ground. The additional light collected by bifacial solar panels on the rear-side offers an advantage over traditional solar panels, with manufacturers touting up to a 30% increase in production compared to traditional solar panels. Bifacial solar panels are also more durable than traditional panels and can produce power for over 30 years. "Implementation of this method into international standards for such panels can enable predictions of outdoor bifacial panel performance to within 2% absolute," says Tonita, who expects the benefits of this methodology to include: Allowing comparisons between existing and emerging bifacial technologies. Enhancing performance via ground cover specific design optimization. Increasing solar panel deployments in non-traditional markets. Reducing investment risk in bifacial panel deployments. Improving bifacial panel manufacture datasheets. "This method is of particular importance as renewable energy penetration increases towards a net-zero world, with bifacial photovoltaics projected to contribute over 16% of the global energy supply by 2050, or around 30,000 TWh annually," says Hinzer, founder of SUNLAB and the University Research Chair in Photonic Devices for Energy and a Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "This will extend current International Electrochemical Commission standards for bifacial solar panel measurements, enabling accurate comparisons of bifacial panel technologies, application-specific optimization, and the standardization of bifacial panel power ratings," adds Hinzer, whose SUNLAB researchers worked in collaboration with Arizona State University for the study. More information: Erin M. Tonita, A general illumination method to predict bifacial photovoltaic system performance, Joule (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2022.12.005. www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00576-1 Journal information: Joule This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Hari Sitaraman and Ilenia Battiato have, for the first time, analyzed an entire reverse osmosis system, like the one seen here, with the greatest precision yet. With their simulations, the duo identified a new structural design that could improve the energy efficiency of these systems by a whopping 40%. Credit: Hari Sitaraman, NREL In April 2022, a team of engineers hiked into California's Sierra Nevada mountains to hunt for snow. Instead, they found mostly bare, dry dirt and only a few of the snow patches that provide one-third of California's water supply. In the coming decades, water scarcity and insecurity are likely to intensify across much of the United States. In California, the Sierra Nevadas are expected to lose a staggering 65% of their snowpack over the next century, said Hariswaran (Hari) Sitaraman, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That loss, plus political, economic, and other challenges, is making it essential for drought-prone states, like California, to tap alternative water sources such as brackish (or salty) waters and agricultural runoff. And yet, the most common way to treat and reuse nontraditional water supplies is through a process called reverse osmosis, which can be both expensive and energy intensive. Now, Sitaraman and Ilenia Battiato, two members of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) research consortium, have used supercomputers to study reverse osmosis systems as a wholea first for both the type and scale of reverse osmosis research. With their new technique, the duo also discovered a new system design that could make these technologies about 40% more energy efficientand therefore more cost-effectivewhile producing the same amount and quality of clean drinking water. "Until now, people have been looking at a tiny piece of the entire reverse osmosis module and drawing conclusions from that," Sitaraman said. "But we looked at the entire thing." The results are published in a new paper in the journal Separation and Purification Technology. Along with Battiato, an assistant professor of energy science and engineering at Stanford University, Sitaraman created a fluid dynamics solvera numerical tool that can analyze how fluids, like salty water, flow into a reverse osmosis system, pass through several membrane filters, and come out clean on the other side. With their solver, Sitaraman and Battiato studied reverse osmosis systems with high precision, enabling them to uncover any snags or inefficiencies. For example, to filter brackish waters, reverse osmosis systems use high pressure to push the water through several membranes, which, like sophisticated coffee filters, block salts and other minerals from passing through. That process cleans the water, but it also creates thin layers of salty buildup on the membranes. And that buildup can affect how well the water flows, potentially reducing the system's efficiency. "That thin layer needs to be measured correctly to understand how much pure water you get out of salt water," Sitaraman said. "If you don't capture that right, you cannot understand how much it costs to run a reverse osmosis plant." A more efficient reverse osmosis system is more cost-effective, too. Yet, most reverse osmosis plant owners do not have a high-performance computer to replicate Sitaraman and Battiato's high-fidelity simulationswhich so accurately mimic real-life reverse osmosis technologiesto uncover snags in their own systems. So, Sitaraman performed the complex work of creating a simpler model equation that can predict a system's mass transfer, estimating how much pure water can be filtered out of brackish water. With his model, engineers can now discover how to improve the efficiency (and cost) of their own systems. "If the economics improve," Sitaraman said, "then of course reverse osmosis systems will be more widely used. And if they're more energy efficient, they will contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change." That is a huge win, but Sitaraman and Battiato's tools can benefit far more than reverse osmosis plant owners. Other researchers can build on their work to study the efficiency and cost of all kinds of reverse osmosis filtration technologies beyond those used to treat unconventional water sources. The food industry uses these filters to create highly concentrated fruit juices, more flavorful cheeses, and much more. Aquariums need them to remove harmful chemicals from their waters. And reverse osmosis systems can even extract valuable minerals and other substances that could be used to make cheap fertilizer or fuel. One huge advantage of high-fidelity simulations, Battiato said, is the ability to study a vast range of reverse osmosis system configurations without investing the time and money required to build and experiment with real-life systems. "We want the system to correctly capture the physics," Battiato said, "but we are theoretically not constrained by manufacturing." With simulations, the team can quickly explore far more potential designs and home in on the best. That is how Battiato and Sitaraman identified their potentially more effective arrangement of spacers (which are bits within the reverse osmosis system that create turbulence and keep channels open to help water flow through). Their new spacer arrangement not only improves the system's energy efficiency by 40%, but it also produces the same amount of equally pure water. Although the duo's simulations accurately replicate real-life systems, they are still theoretical. Sitaraman hopes another research team will build their design and evaluate how closely the real system matches their models. In the meantime, their higher-resolution (or more precise and comprehensive) simulations could help researchers avoid making inaccurate assumptions about how reverse osmosis systems work and, in so doing, learn how to improve the technologies. Today, most engineers use trial and error to discover how to improve their reverse osmosis systems. But that process is slow, and water shortages are coming fast. With Battiato and Sitaraman's simulations, engineers could speed up the development of more efficient and cost-effective technologies, so the country can access unconventional water sources when communitieslike drought-stricken western townsdesperately need them. "Water is a scarce resource," Battiato said. "I don't think we can afford to do coarse optimization anymore. We need to save every drop of water that we can." More information: Hariswaran Sitaraman et al, Impact of large-scale effects on mass transfer and concentration polarization in Reverse Osmosis membrane systems, Separation and Purification Technology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.seppur.2022.122121 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Germany's Lufthansa is now the only airline left in the bidding to privatise Italy's troubled ITA Airways. German airline giant Lufthansa submitted a fresh offer Wednesday for Italy's troubled ITA Airways, bringing a turbulent takeover process closer to the finish line. Lufthansa's proposal would see the carrier initially take a minority stake in state-owned ITA, with the option "to purchase the remaining shares at a later date", it said in a statement. No financial details were disclosed, but Bloomberg News reported earlier that the deal could see Lufthansa pay up to 350 million euros ($375 million) for an initial 40-percent stake before increasing its ownership to 100 percent. Italy's economy ministry confirmed Wednesday it had received Lufthansa's letter of intent for a minority stake in ITA, saying it "reserves the right to examine the fairness of the offer". "No other offers were received by the deadline of six pm today," it said in a brief statement. Italy's previous government launched the process last year of selling off a majority of ITA Airways, the successor to the iconic but loss-making national carrier Alitalia. The government, under then-premier Mario Draghi, at first preferred a bid by US investment fund Certares, Air France-KLM and Delta Air Lines. But when those negotiations failed to make headway, Italy's new right-wing cabinet under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared in late October that the period of exclusivity talks had endedputting Lufthansa back in the running. Important market The German groupwhich also owns Swiss, Brussels and Austrian Airlineshas always made clear it was interested in a "true privatisation" of ITA Airways. Swiss shipping giant MSC had teamed up with Lufthansa in the first round of bidding but said in November it was pulling out, leaving Lufthansa to pursue the deal alone. Separately, Air France-KLM said Wednesday it had informed the Italian government it was dropping out of the race too, clearing the path for rival Lufthansa as the sole bidder. Lufthansa hopes to turn Rome into a key European travel hub, including by offering direct flights to Italy from the United States, its biggest market. "For Lufthansa Group, Italy is the most important market outside of its home markets and the US," the company said. "Italy's importance for both business and private travel lies in its strong export-oriented economy and status as one of Europe's top vacation spots." 'Avoid past mistakes' ITA Airways replaced the national carrier Alitalia, which was put under state administration in 2017 after years of fruitless attempts to find a buyer. The Italian state has spent more than 13 billion euros trying to get the airline back on its feet over the past two decades. Italy's government agreed late last year to inject another 400 million euros into ITA to keep it afloat as the bidding process dragged on. ITA posted an operating loss of 170 million euros for 2022. This year, ITA will see the arrival of 39 new aircraft, including nine long-haul planes. Half of its fleet will be "new generation" by the end of 2023, according to the company's CEO Fabio Lazzerini. Without a partner to strengthen its long-haul business however, ITA was seen as having little chance of survival in the face of stiff competition from low-cost companies. But "it is necessary to make a real privatisation to avoid the mistakes of the past," tweeted Andrea Giuricin, a transport economist at Milan's University Bicocca. "It is important to understand who will have control after the partial privatisation. If, as in the case of Alitalia, it is always politics that decides, it will be another Italian-style privatisation," he wrote. In Frankfurt, Lufthansa shares rose 5.17 percent to close at 9.26 euros on Wednesday. 2023 AFP This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Bitzlato is a China-based cryptocurrency exchange. US authorities said Wednesday they had arrested the owner of China-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato for alleged money laundering, hailing the move as a global "blow to the cryptocrime ecosystem." Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian living in Shenzhen, China, was held in Miami overnight and was due to appear in court in the city during the day, the Department of Justice said at a press conference. He was detained for his role in allegedly transmitting a total of $700 million in illicit funds, the department said, pointing to criminals using the exchange as a haven for narcotics trading and selling stolen financial information. According to court documents, Legkodymov is the founder and majority shareholder of Hong Kong-registered Bitzlato, which has marketed itself as requiring minimal identification from users. Bitzlato's largest partner for transactions was Hydra, an anonymous, illicit online marketplace on the "darknet" that was shut down by US and German authorities last year. Hydra sold illegal drugs, stolen credit card data, counterfeit currency and fake identity documents, masking the identities of those involved using encryption. 'Darknet' transactions "Today the Department of Justice dealt a significant blow to the cryptocrime ecosystem," US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told reporters in Washington. "Overnight, the Department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime, and to arrest its founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov." Monaco said that "today's actions send the clear message: whether you break our laws from China or Europeor abuse our financial system from a tropical islandyou can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom." When it was closed in April 2022, the Hydra marketplace had around 17 million customer accounts and more than 19,000 vendor accounts, according to German federal police. The secret "darknet" includes websites that can be accessed only with specific software or authorizations, ensuring anonymity for users. Such networks have faced increased pressure from international law enforcement after a boom in usage during the coronavirus pandemic. "As alleged, Bitzlato sold itself to criminals as a no-questions-asked cryptocurrency exchange, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of deposits as a result," said Breon Peace, Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "The defendant is now paying the price for the malign role that his company played in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. "Bitzlato allegedly became a haven for criminal proceeds and funds intended for use in criminal activity." In May 2019, Legkodymov allegedly used Bitzlato's internal chat system to write to a colleague that users were "known to be crooks" using others' identity documents to register accounts. The United States said that, as the arrest was announced, French authorities, working with Spain, Portugal and Cyprus, dismantled Bitzlato's digital infrastructure and seized cryptocurrency. 2023 AFP This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The Taliban and supporters of the Afghanistan rulers have been buying up blue-check verifications on Twitter, according to a report. BBC News found that Hedayatullah Hedayat, who heads the group's "access to information" department and Abdul Haq Hammad, the top media official at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, both had the check marks on their profiles. Between them, they have hundreds of thousands of followers. "Twitter Blue: Endorsed by the Taliban lol," U.S. journalist Chris Taylor wrote on Twitter, linking to the BBC News story. "Interestingly, Taliban praises Elon Musk for verifying their accounts and even they say Elon is originally Afghan, from Logar province. Congratulations Elon!" wrote Tajuden Soroush, an Afghan journalist who lives in London. Government officials and similar accounts have gray check marks and businesses have gold ones. According to The Guardian, the check marks were removed after the BBC investigation was published and social media outrage ensued. However, it's unclear if Twitter removed the check marks itself or if the users did. Twitter has long been used by the Taliban but the group's accounts had never been verified previously. The new feature is part of Twitter Blue, a subscription service that comes with a blue check mark on a profile that was previously only available to "active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest" that Twitter itself verified. Subscribers also appear higher up in search results and replies to other users. The new features were introduced shortly after Elon Musk took control of the company. 2023 New York Daily News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Uber arrived in Tanzania in 2016. Ride-hailing giant Uber has resumed its services in Tanzania, it said on Wednesday, settling a fare dispute with the government. Uber suspended services in the East African country last April after the government introduced legislation capping maximum commission from drivers at 15 percent from the previous 33 percent. Uber said the new regulations made it difficult to continue operating while the government defended them as maintaining competition and ensuring affordable taxis. After months of negotiations, Tanzania's transport regulator last month allowed ride-hailing companies to charge up to 25 percent commission and a 3.5-percent booking fee. "We are excited to kick off the year on such a positive note by re-entering the Tanzanian market," Uber said in a statement. "It is our priority to provide a platform where drivers can make substantial earnings while providing convenient and reliable options for riders In Tanzania." The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2009, arrived in Tanzania in 2016, capitalizing on the country's low levels of personal car ownership and lack of efficient mass transport. 2023 AFP Passengers taking flight CZ309 from Beijing to Hong Kong check in at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua] With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. Among more than 100 passengers onboard the flight, a father returned to Hong Kong for a reunion with his children for the first time in three years. There was also a family of three who said they made travel plans via Hong Kong. "Finally, I can resume meeting with international business partners," said Sun Han working in the field of international finance, also a passenger on the flight. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. From Tuesday, several airline companies, including China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Capital Airlines, and Himalaya Airlines, resumed passenger flights on international routes via the Daxing airport. Also on Tuesday, the Daxing airport resumed the international flight transit service and the 144-hour transit visa-free policy in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, effectively promoting tourism and business activities in the city cluster. Kong Yue, deputy general manager of the Daxing airport, expected the country's civil aviation market to usher in a new season from March with the opening of more and more long-distance international air routes. The two major airports in Beijing expected the number of incoming and outgoing flights to surge 44 percent during the Spring Festival travel rush compared with the same period a year ago. China's Spring Festival travel rush kicked off on Jan. 7 this year after the country adjusted its COVID-19 response. Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on Jan. 22 this year. It is estimated that 62,000 flights will arrive at or depart from the Beijing Capital International Airport and the Beijing Daxing International Airport during the 40-day-long travel rush, according to the North China Regional Administration of the Civil Aviation Administration of China. China has eased COVID-related quarantine regulations and lifted restrictions on international flights. The Pudong International Airport on Jan. 8 saw the first international inbound flight after China adjusted the epidemic controls. One is hitting its numbers; the other keeps missing expectations. One is raising money at an ever-rising valuation; the other has been pummeled by the market. One has a highly capable No. 2 executive keeping it on track; the other is under fire about succession planning. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Tesla Inc. both count Elon Musk as chief executive officer. But whereas Tesla has withered since the boss embarked on his takeover of Twitter Inc., SpaceX is flourishing some even suggest that this is because of, rather than in spite of, its CEO playing a less-active role. SpaceX is preparing for a watershed year, aiming for as many as 100 flights. That pace of one roughly every three and a half days compares to the every-six-days clip the company pulled off in 2022. As soon as March, it will attempt the first commercial spacewalk, where astronauts will dangle from a Dragon vessel approximately 435 miles above Earth. And it will soon try to reach orbit for the first time with what it hails as the most powerful rocket ever: Starship, the launch vehicle intended to one day reach the moon and Mars. The closely held company recently valued at around $140 billion has been girding for all this activity with its less-present CEO delegating more to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceXs president and chief operating officer. Since closing his Twitter acquisition in late October, Musk has been preoccupied with fixing operations and engineering issues at the San Francisco-based social media company and starting Tuesday a trial regarding Tesla stock prices diminishing his involvement in day-to-day matters at SpaceX, according to current and former employees who asked not to be identified. These people describe Musk as much more instrumental in setting the long-term vision for the company, including its goal to get to Mars. They say the CEOs daily attention isnt necessary work flow for Falcon 9 launches, for example, have become fairly standardized over the years and that when Musks focus is elsewhere, theres some semblance of calm. SpaceX and Musk didnt respond to requests for comment for this story. Extra work When Musk is hyper-focused on daily operations, it can often lead to extra work hes inserted himself in projects and demanded changes for sometimes arbitrary reasons, former employees say. For instance, current and former employees describe times that Musk has deemed certain hardware as having too many tubes, connectors or wires, or just not generally fitting his preferred design aesthetic. Hes demanded that employees rework and simplify systems, leading employees to spend time justifying why certain parts exist or triggering major redesigns and work that can take weeks to accomplish. Sometimes, that work ultimately has to be reversed when components that were discarded ultimately are needed for the final design. One former employee said the company will sometimes go through periodic hiring freezes when Musk turns his attention to SpaceX, as hell want final say on all new personnel. At the end of 2021, for example, multiple former employees say that Musk decided the company had too many employees and needed to downsize. Previously, hes required that hiring managers prove an applicants exceptionality, prompting managers to try various methods, including asking for applicants SAT scores. During these periods, people are rarely hired, as Musks approval can be hard to come by. Another former employee described a stressful weekend meeting before SpaceX flew human passengers for the first time, when the company was in an unspoken race with Boeing Co. to be the first to fly NASA astronauts to the space station. One Friday night, Musk emailed the team working on Crew Dragon SpaceXs passenger spacecraft to come in for an urgent meeting the next morning, early on a Saturday. When Musk arrived late, he quickly told the team that the launch timing couldnt slip and they all had to work as hard as possible to stick to the schedule. He also told the team there were too many people working on the program. The brief conversation rattled the team members, who were trying to prioritize executing the mission as safely as possible. The mission Given this history, some current employees expressed relief about Musks recent focus on Twitter. With the CEO away, most of SpaceXs executives report to Shotwell. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in December that hed spoken with the COO about whether Musks acquisition of Twitter would detract from SpaceXs work. She assured me that it would not be a distraction to their mission, Nelson said. That mission to make humanity multiplanetary has been progressing in Boca Chica, Texas, where SpaceX has been working on Starship. Shotwell has been overseeing the project to a greater degree in recent months along with Mark Juncosa, the companys vice president of vehicle engineering. In the early days of the Starship program, Musk was at SpaceXs Starbase production facility in Boca Chica constantly, at times personally overseeing schedules and insisting on design changes, some employees say. Now, Juncosa, who was previously in charge of SpaceXs internet-from-space initiative Starlink, has taken on that role, overseeing hardware development and the program schedule. Meanwhile, Musks private jet hasnt traveled to the airport near Starbase since Oct. 14, about two weeks before he closed the Twitter acquisition. Juncosas takeover of Starship responsibilities has coincided with an increased focus on launch reliability and more risk-reduction testing, according to current employees. The earliest years of the vehicles development were riskier, with SpaceX launching multiple suborbital test flights every couple of months, with some ending in crash landings that scattered debris across nearby wetlands. On the same day Musk closed his acquisition of Twitter, The Information reported on a testing mishap at Starbase two weeks earlier that could have injured roughly two dozen crew members, which the publication said raised concerns about rushing workers and cutting corners. Since a Starship flight in May 2021 that ended with a successful landing, SpaceX hasnt performed another test launch. The next major flight will be Starships first orbital launch attempt a major milestone that has been repeatedly delayed. Musk recently suggested that this could occur as early as February or March, though his launch date predictions are often aspirational. Reliability will be key for Starship moving forward, as its set to play a major role in NASAs campaign to put humans back on the moon for the first time in 50 years. The agency has selected the vehicle to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface in missions slated for as soon as early 2025. SpaceX has big plans of its own for the rocket, including using it to launch future Starlink internet satellites. Thanks to well-placed executives behind Musk, SpaceX can forge ahead at a brisk pace without its leader in the building. But at the end of the day, theyre responsible for executing his vision. And its only a matter of time until hes back. 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United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Kelli Lemon and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael Paul Williams are back for a new episode of After the Monuments. In this episode the two are catching up on recent events such us the removal of Richmond's last-standing Confederate monument, the Virginia governor's proposed history standards and the story of the six-year-old in Newport News, Va., who shot a teacher. More episodes of After the Monuments will follow weekly. About After the Monuments Co-hosted by Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Michael Paul Williams and Kelli Lemon, After the Monuments captures the zeitgeist of a nation struggling to move from symbolic to substantive change on racial issues. The podcast analyzes current events about race through a historical context, examining the ideas of leading Black thinkers over time, and encouraging broader and deeper insights into racial tensions, divisions and reconciliation. Williams and Lemon, both with the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Va., engage with a wide range of guests to bring context, relevance and resonance to events, going well beyond breaking-news headlines. Previous episodes The threat actor known as BackdoorDiplomacy has been linked to a new wave of attacks targeting Iranian government entities between July and late December 2022. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which is tracking the activity under its constellation-themed moniker Playful Taurus, said it observed the government domains attempting to connect to malware infrastructure previously identified as associated with the adversary. Also known by the names APT15, KeChang, NICKEL, and Vixen Panda, the Chinese APT group has a history of cyber espionage campaigns aimed at government and diplomatic entities across North America, South America, Africa, and the Middle East at least since 2010. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, in June 2021, unpacked the intrusions mounted by the hacking crew against diplomatic entities and telecommunication companies in Africa and the Middle East using a custom implant known as Turian. Then in December 2021, Microsoft announced the seizure of 42 domains operated by the group in its attacks targeting 29 countries, while pointing out its use of exploits against unpatched systems to compromise internet-facing web applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint. The threat actor was most recently attributed to an attack on an unnamed telecom company in the Middle East using Quarian, a predecessor of Turian that allows a point of remote access into targeted networks. Turian "remains under active development and we assess that it is used exclusively by Playful Taurus actors," Unit 42 said in a report shared with The Hacker News, adding it discovered new variants of the backdoor used in attacks singling out Iran. The cybersecurity company further noted that it observed four different Iranian organizations, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Natural Resources Organization, reaching out to a known command-and-control (C2) server attributed to the group. "The sustained daily nature of these connections to Playful Taurus controlled infrastructure suggests a likely compromise of these networks," it said. UPCOMING WEBINAR Master the Art of Dark Web Intelligence Gathering Learn the art of extracting threat intelligence from the dark web Join this expert-led webinar! Save My Seat! The new versions of the Turian backdoor sport additional obfuscation as well as an updated decryption algorithm used to extract the C2 servers. However, the malware in itself is generic in that it offers basic functions to update the C2 server to connect to, execute commands, and spawn reverse shells. BackdoorDiplomacy's interest in targeting Iran is said to have geopolitical extensions as it comes against the backdrop of a 25-year comprehensive bilateral agreement signed between China and Iran to foster economic, military, and security cooperation. "Playful Taurus continues to evolve their tactics and their tooling," Unit 42 researchers said. "Recent upgrades to the Turian backdoor and new C2 infrastructure suggest that these actors continue to see success during their cyber espionage campaigns." A company called ArchGreen will build a data center on land leased from Southern Public Power District. The cryptocurrency mining facility will be on 60th Road, a quarter mile south of Capital Avenue, in the Southern Public Power Energy Park. The 14 megawatt data center will consist of 14 computing containers, to be built on less than two acres. It will support crypto currency and other cloud computing applications. When operational, it will buy power from Southern Public Power. Neal Niedfeldt, president and CEO of Southern Public Power, spoke at Tuesday's Hall County Board of Commissioners meeting. Also speaking was Alan Cordova, a vice president of development for ArchGreen. Cordova, who lives in California, said the height of the containers will be less than the adjacent trees. He said the project will create no light pollution, and noise will be minimal. When it becomes operational, the project will have two full-time employees. It should be completed by July. The only member of the public speaking was Darrin Jones, whose mother, Judy, lives north of the proposed project. Jones said he appreciates the fact that ArchGreen reached out to his family early on. He does not believe that the project will become a nuisance for his mother. The board approved the conditional use permit for the data center by a 6-1 vote. Voting against it was Jane Richardson. Also at Tuesday's meeting, the board approved a conditional use permit for Dry Creek Arsenal, a firearms sales and gunsmithing business near Cairo. Andrew Theisen, who owns the business, told the board he will always be a full-time farmer. Dry Creek Arsenal is a side business. The location is 6576 N. Burwick Road. Four of his neighbors, including a relative, spoke in favor of Theisen's plans Tuesday. One woman, appearing via video from Texas, spoke against the conditional use permit. Karen Tyner Redrow, who owns the land south of Dry Creek Arsenal, is concerned that more gunsmiths could move into the area. In spite of her concerns, the board approved the conditional use permit unanimously. In other action, the board clarified the definition of Hall County employment. A full-time employee is one who averages at least 30 hours per week in the last two pay periods. That clarification will be inserted into the employee handbook. In addition, Ron Peterson was re-elected as board chair, with Butch Hurst vice chairman. Also Tuesday, Daryl Harney was appointed to the Weed Board. Snow is on the way. The National Weather Service in Hastings said Tuesday it expects Grand Island to get hit with somewhere in the 7-10 inch range. Snow will begin early Wednesday and continue throughout the day and into the evening, ending by sunrise Thursday. In a webinar, Jordan Thies with the weather service said the heaviest snowfall is expected north of Interstate 80 and west of the Tri-Cities area. Grand Island, along with Kearney and York and moving north, are in a zone the service said it has its highest confidence in the forecast about. Things are less certain south of the metro area, where mixed precipitation is possible. "Most areas are going to be experiencing this wintry mix and ice by sunrise Wednesday," Thies said. When it hits, Thies said the forecast calls for 1-2 inches per hour rates of snowfall. Compounding matters will be wind speeds up to 35 mph. The majority of winds will come late Wednesday afternoon through early Thursday before tapering off some. Wind speeds won't get down to 10 mph or less in the Grand Island area until Thursday evening. Highs will be in the low 30s or upper 20s and aren't expected to get above freezing. Travel will impacted. "It won't take long into the day to turn problematic... Once it starts, (conditions will go) down pretty quickly," Mike Moritz with the weather service said. "For travel to be treacherous, it'll take an hour or two, tops." The combination of snow and wind will deter cleanup efforts, Thies said. Early Tuesday evening both Trinity Lutheran School and Heartland Lutheran High School have canceled classes for Wednesday because of the upcoming inclement weather. The Nebraska State Patrol and Nebraska Department of Transportation urged residents to be ready for travel troubles. This storm will have a major impact on travel in Nebraska throughout Wednesday and into Thursday, Col. John Bolduc, superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol, said in a release, noting a 300-mile range from Kimball to Grand Island will see snow. Per the patrol, if travel is necessary, check the Nebraska 511 Advanced Traveler System at 511.Nebraska.Gov. Any motorists who become stranded or need assistance can call *55 or 800-525-5555 to reach the NSP Highway Helpline and speak directly with an NSP Dispatcher. With yet another statewide winter storm, its important for travelers to be as safe and informed as possible before choosing to travel, said interim NDOT Director Moe Jamshidi. This means checking the 511 app before leaving home or work and if you dont have to travel, consider adjusting your plans to accommodate that. Remember to never pass plows and give them plenty of space. As NDOT and local crews work to clear the roads during and after the storm, give them room to work and dont crowd the plow, the state patrol said. Motorists are urged to check conditions before traveling, reduce speed, increase following distance, and always wear a seat belt. The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency offers a variety of tips for winter weather: Assemble a disaster supplies kit for your home Flashlight and extra batteries Portable, battery-operated NOAA Weather Radio and AM/FM radio; and extra batteries First aid kit One-week supply of food (include items that do not require refrigeration or cooking in case of power loss) Nonelectric can opener Bottled water One-week supply of essential prescription medications Extra blankets and sleeping bags Fire extinguisher (A-B-C type) Develop an emergency communications plan. In case family members are separated from one another during a winter storm (a real possibility during the day when adults are at work and children are at school), have a plan for getting back together. Ask an out-of-state relative or friend to serve as the family contact. After a disaster, its often easier to call long distance. Make sure all family members know the name, address and phone number of the contact person. Make sure all family members know how to respond after a severe winter storm. Teach children how and when to call 911, police or fire department and which radio station to tune to for emergency information. If you must be outdoors Dress warmly. Wear loose-fitting, layered, light-weight clothing. Layers can be removed to prevent perspiration and chill. Outer garments should be tightly woven and water repellent. Mittens are warmer than gloves and are recommended. Stretch before you go out. If you go out to shovel snow, do a few stretching exercises to warm up your body. Also take frequent breaks. Those with heart problems or if lead a sedentary lifestyle, be careful of over exertion and heart attack. Be aware of the symptoms of dehydration. Cover your mouth. Protect your lungs from extremely cold air by covering your mouth. Watch for signs of frostbite and hypothermia. Keep dry. Change wet clothing frequently to prevent loss of body heat. Wet clothing loses all of its insulating value and transmits heat rapidly. Remember to help your neighbors who may require special assistance-infants, elderly and people with disabilities. NEMA urges everyone to purchase a NOAA weather radio. Program the device to your county and get the latest information from the National Weather Service. Winter readiness for your home A major winter storm can be lethal. Preparing your home for cold weather conditions and responding to them effectively can reduce the dangers caused by winter storms. Service snow removal equipment and have rock salt on hand to melt ice on walkways and kitty litter to generate temporary traction. Make sure you have sufficient heating fuel; regular fuel sources may be cut off. Winter readiness for automobiles The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service recommend you stay abreast of local weather reports. When the forecasters are predicting threatening weather, the best bet is to seek shelter and wait out the storm. The Nebraska Department of Roads provides up to the minute road conditions at 511nebraska.org. Knowing the road conditions can mean the difference between arriving on-time or not arriving at all. Those who travel even during the worst of times are advised to carry a winter storm supply kit in their vehicle. Assemble a separate disaster supplies kit for the trunk of each car used by members of your family that includes: Blankets or sleeping bag Extra sets of dry clothing A windshield scraper A shovel A container of sand Tire chains Battery booster (jumper) cables A tow chain or rope First aid kit Flashlight or emergency light with extra batteries Transistor radio with extra batteries A brightly colored cloth Candles High calorie and nonperishable food Another item that might make the difference is a cellphone. If you are stranded in your car during a blizzard, make a call and wait for help to arrive. Do not try to walk to safety. (Speaking of which, make sure your phone is charged) Avoid traveling by car in a winter storm, but if you must travel Have emergency supplies in the trunk. Keep your cars gas tank full for emergency use and to keep the fuel lines from freezing. Travel during daylight and let someone know your destination and route. Try to travel with other vehicles. MARION State Sens. Dale Fowler and Terri Bryant and State Reps. Dave Severin, David Friess, Patrick Windhorst, Paul Jacobs and Charlie Meier hosted a town hall meeting on Jan. 17 at the Marion Civic Center. Although the meeting was scheduled before HB 5471 was passed and signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the new law was the focus of the meeting. A few other pieces of legislation, including sex education, abortion and the SAFE-T Act were also discussed. Windhorst used a timeline to show how quickly the gun legislation was passed into law. The bill was introduced Dec. 1. Three subject matter hearings were held in Chicago in December. The bill was first voted on in the Illinois Senate on Jan. 5, one day after the lame duck legislative sessions began. Through the process of voting and discussion, the bill became HB 5471. That bill was passed in the Senate on Jan. 9 and the House on Jan. 10. It was signed into law by Pritzker the same day, Jan. 10. The whole process only took 41 days. Each of us has a duty a sworn duty to uphold the constitution and that includes the Second Amendment, Windhorst said. Besides banning 172 guns, the law also requires gun owners who already own any of those guns to register them with Illinois State Police before Jan. 1, 2024. Those caught with an unregistered gun could be convicted of a Class A misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 364 days in prison and a fine. A second offense would be considered a Class 3 felony. The legislators posed a question asking if the law is constitutional. Kelvin Curtis of the National Rifle Association and Richard Pearson of Illinois State Rifle Association joined the legislators to answer the question. Both said the law violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois State Constitution. This time were going to fight in the legal system, and were going to win, Curtis said. Pearson said ISRA was prepared to file a lawsuit Wednesday morning and was prepared to take the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. Curtis said the NRA is preparing a lawsuit, too. Your rights were infringed upon, and were not going to stand for it, Curtis told the crowd at the civic center. Williamson County Sheriff Jeff Diederich asked the crowd if they believed in the Second Amendment, which was answered with loud cheers. Were targeting the wrong people with this legislation, Diederich said, adding that the police have no business getting behind an unconstitutional law. The legislators are all serving in new districts. They each reminded everyone of their new district numbers and the counties they represent. Fowler talked about SB 208, the paid leave bill. It allows every worker in Illinois 40 hours per year of time off without any excuses required. Bryant talked about the abortion bill, HB 4664, saying Illinois has the most extensive abortion laws in the country and probably the world. Parts of the law violate the Constitution of the United States, according to Bryant. Meier talked about HB 4412, the solar and wind bill. He explained issues that could be problematic for rural land owners. The legislators also gave a preview of the 2023 legislative session and answered a few questions from the audience. The questions were focused on the gun law and whether or not it is constitutional. After the question and answer period, several people spoke out from the audience, including a lady from Pulaski County who asked why no women were recognized or questions from women were asked. Those in the audience were told they could learn about bills and see how their legislators voted by going to ilga.gov. Pearson told the crowd the ISRA has a tutorial on filing witness slips to legislation on their website, isra.org. MARION Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois heard from the first of three airlines to present their bids to offer flights at the airport. Matt Chaifetz, CEO of Contour Airlines, spoke on Tuesday Jan. 17, to airport, business and city officials from Marion, Carbondale and Herrin. Contour is offering to send 12 flights a week from Marion to Chicago, Nashville or a combination of the two cities. They currently have contracts in Cape Girardeau and Paducah. Cape Air is the company that currently provides flights from Veterans Airport to St. Louis and Nashville. They asked to terminate their contract last year and rebid it to reflect the higher cost of fuel for airplanes. Contour flew one of its jets to the airport. The jets are built to seat 30 passengers. Those who arrived to the presentation early were given a chance to see inside the airplane and try the seating. Chaifetz said the plane has 36 inches of foot room. Although jets of that size can seat around 50 passengers, Contour offers a little more space to give its customers a good flight experience. The flight from Nashville to Marion took about 32 minutes. Running an airline has been my dream since I was a child, Chaifetz said. He started flying lessons at age 11 and took his first airline job at 18. He invested in Contour in 2013 and started the essential air service in 2016. Today, Contour is the second largest regional carrier, behind Skywest. We have done that by offering an industry-leading reputation of reliability. We will do whatever it takes to make a flight happen, Chaifetz said. The airline has a regional jet fleet of 35 or so planes. They also offer private charter flights for the music industry and have flown Bon Jovi, Journey, Chris Stapleton and Kings of Leon. They do most of their maintenance in house at their facility in Smyrna, Tennessee. However, they also have a new jet being fitted at a company at Southern Illinois Airport in Murphysboro. Contour has generated increased enplanements in markets where they have replaced smaller aircrafts. I have not seen an eight to nine seat market that has transitioned to jets without greater enplanements, Chaifetz said. Contour does not charge for the first checked bag, and through an agreement with American Airlines, that bag can be sent onto an American jet without a charge. (A return flight that begins with American would have a charge for that bag.) Contour offers the ability to book American flights through its website and app without leaving the site. Chaifetz said fares average about $70, with fares to Chicago running about $80. Discounts are given to those connecting to American flights. Contours bid would be for three years. Marion Mayor Mike Absher said everyone was talking about people going from Marion to Chicago for connecting flights or to visit Chicago, but there is an even bigger potential benefit from having an airline that flies to and from the states biggest city. It is not a matter of who is exporting to Chicago, but who is importing to from Chicago, Absher said. We believe this is an economic game changer. In addition to helping the cities of Marion and Carbondale, there is a regional impact. He said having flights from Chicago could increase the number of people visiting Southern Illinois. Airport Director Doug Kimmel said they will hear the other two bid presentations from Southern and Cape Air in the next few weeks. They will have to make their recommendation to U.S. DOT by Feb. 13. U.S. DOT will take about two months to go over the bids and make a decision. The airline would probably begin offering flights around the first of June. Kimmel will put the proposals on the airports website for everyone to read. A survey will be available to take on the site, too. HERRIN Vandals recently attempted a hit on the Herrin Doughboy statue, officials from Williamson County discovered on the morning of Jan. 16. The vandals only managed to make a mess of grey paint on the plaza floor which, ironically, looked a lot like pizza dough, but some of the paint made its way onto the base of the statue. Herrin police could not say what the motive was, but juvenile delinquency is suspected. Throughout the country, Doughboy statues have been standing targets to vandals with a vendetta against U.S. military, foreign wars, soldiers, capitalism and more. Numerous acts of vandalism against Doughboy statues have been reported in the past few years, with some even involving the FBI, which indicates at least in some cases, something more sinister than juvenile delinquency. One such act of vandalism happened in Pittsburg on Memorial Day 2020, where a Doughboy was doused with red paint and Hammer and Sickle icons were doodled all over its base. Another incident occurred in Florida, just a fortnight before Veteran's Day, where the Doughboy's bayonet was bent. Another incident involved a Doughboy in Chicago who went MIA for decades before being recovered and restored and placed, fittingly, at the entrance of Soldier Field. Herrin, like any other community, is not immune from acts of vandalism, said Herrin Mayor Steve Frattini. This was not the first attempt on the Doughboy soldier keeping watch over the downtown Herrin City Hall. Some years back the vandals, who were then known to be better marksmen, weaponized rocks against the monument, causing significant damage to the Styrofoam base. Though Herrin's near 100-year-old Doughboy is just one of more than a hundred standing tall in little towns throughout the country, Mayor Frattini says Herrin's is unique. We get a lot of people to stop by and look at it. It is a unique statue, the bronze part of it. Theres a very limited number of that particular casting made. We are fortunate enough to have one of them. said Frattini. We consider the Doughboy Plaza here to be a sacred place, and is due all appropriate respects for those who have served in protecting our freedoms and our nation. The Doughboy statue commemorates the local heroes of the first World War who sacrificed everything for their country. No one quite knows where the nickname Doughboy came from, but one famous American journalist, H.L. Mencken, theorized that the name came from the practice of American soldiers applying clay to their uniform piping. After a heavy downpour, the clay soon morphed into globs of dough. Hence Doughboy. The Doughboys once stood up over the trenches on the Western Front, against devastating artillery and unrelenting hail of machine gunfire. Over fifty-thousand American men died and more than two-hundred thousand wounded in the Great War. The war-hardened Doughboys will endure the paint and pebble barrage. The City of Herrin is offering a $1,000 reward for information resulting in the arrest and conviction of the culprits. Anonymous tips are welcome, and the first most accurate tip that leads to an arrest or helps resolve the crime may be eligible to receive the cash reward. Contact Herrin Police Department at 618-942-6817. CARBONDALE Works that showcase the diverse talents of regional artists and Southern Illinois University Carbondale alumni are among are among the highlights at University Museum this spring. With the start of the spring semester Tuesday, Jan. 17, the museums exhibitions will start next week and include the works of acclaimed Southern Illinois woodcarver Fred Myers and alumnus Fred Brown. There are a lot of strong ties to the university and the region highlighting just how much talent is pervasive throughout this whole area, said WM Weston Stoerger, curator of exhibits. The exhibitions, with brief descriptions, are below. The complete spring schedule will also be available on the museums Facebook page. NORTH HALL Mitchell Gallery Womens Voices 3: Make/Believe Feb. 7 to May 13 This annual mixed media arts exhibition will feature the works of more than 30 female artists from throughout the region. A reception is from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Feb. 11 in the museums North Hall. Continuum Gallery Natural Talent: The Carvings of Fred Myers Jan. 17 to May 13 From an early age Myers, who had no formal artistic training, displayed a natural affinity for his wood carvings from black walnut. Myers worked in several coal mines throughout the region as well as producing prehistoric anthropologic models for SIU while working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1939 to 1942. With Myers focus on the human form and the daily life of those around him, he developed into a exemplar of the regionalism movement in American arts, and his work as a premier wood carver is a shining example of that, Stoerger said. Atrium Gallery Curators Choice Jan. 17 to May 13 The museums Fine Arts collection hosts several works from many talented artists that call the region home. Museum staff are bringing out the works of Carolyn Plochman and Maude Craig. SOUTH HALL Southern Illinois Gallery Our Region The non-rotating exhibition features historic, geologic and anthropologic artifacts from throughout the region from collections through the museum and SIUs Center for Archaeological Investigations. Lutes Gallery European Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts The exhibition highlights paintings, sculptures, tapestries and furniture from Renaissance Europe, highlighted from the collection of Carl W. Lutes. Saluki Gallery Visual Translations: The Works of Cheonae Kim Jan. 17 to March 11 While at first glance the repeated geometric patterns may mesmerize the viewer, these patterns hold a much deeper meaning for Kim. Many of her works are maze-like to represent the complexity of the human mind. Although abstract, the three rhythmic and dynamic visual compositions function as portraits for the artist, Stoerger said. Kim is a two-degree SIU Carbondale graduate, earning a bachelor's degree in drawing in 1983 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting, drawing and printmaking in 1986. MFA Shows March 28 to May 13 University Museum will host a series of graduate student exhibitions from the School of Art and Design. West Gallery Vogel at SIU Jan. 24 to July 29 The renowned Vogel Art Collection began taking shape in the early 1960s and over the decades developed into one of the most remarkable American collections formed in the 20th century. In an effort to bring the works in their collection to the public, Herbert and Dorothy Vogel presented a massive gift of 2,500 pieces of art to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. as part of a Fifty Works for Fifty States project. In 2008, University Museum received a donation of 50 pieces from that collection. The exhibition will also include a documentary on the couple and their donation. They chose us because they felt like the collection coming here would have the largest impact, Stoerger said. They felt that SIU could do the most with this. Hall of Art Distinguished Alumnus: Fred Brown Jan. 17 to May 13 Raised in Chicago, Brown, a 1968 graduate in art, is widely known for his paintings of the early 1970s that were large, bold abstractions based on the art departments abstract expressionist tradition. By the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, Brown gradually included figural elements, a change that coincided with his creation of some landscape paintings reminiscent of folk art. Brown died in 2012. Study Gallery Huichol: Balancing Hybridity Jan. 24 to May 13 In the modern world, there is a constant struggle to preserve the Indigenous cultural identity in Latin America. MFA students Martha Osornio and Sarah-Anne Winchester have dived into the archives to select collection pieces as examples of hybridity within Huichol culture. International Gallery Taking Flight Jan. 24 to July 29 Selected from University Museums international collections, this exhibition includes objects from various cultures highlighting how our feathered friends have captured the imaginations of artists and artisans throughout the decades. Exhibits are open to the public Admission to the museum is free, and it is open to the public. The museum, art galleries and both halls are open Tuesday through Fridays, from noon to 4 p.m., and Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m. Public metered parking is available across from the Student Center and beside Woody Hall. For more information, contact Stoerger at stoerger@siu.edu or visit museum.siu.edu. As with all exhibitions, the artwork represents the viewpoints of its creators, not SIU. As a public university, SIU does not promote or oppose political candidates. SIU complies with the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act and State Officials and Employees Ethics Act. CHICAGO Two Illinois paramedics face first-degree murder charges, having been accused of strapping a patient facedown on a stretcher while taking him to a hospital last month. Illinois authorities filed the charges against Peggy Finley and Peter Cadigan on Jan. 9, nearly a month after 35-year-old Earl Moore died. Under Illinois law, a first-degree murder charge can be filed when a defendant "knows that such acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm." Sangamon County State's Attorney Dan Wright announced the charges at a Jan. 10 press conference after an autopsy. The autopsy report listed Moore's cause of death as homicide, caused by compressional and positional asphyxia as he lay facedown on the paramedic stretcher with straps tightened across his back. If convicted, Finley and Cadigan could face between 20 and 60 years in prison. They remained in the Sangamon County jail on Tuesday and were being held on a $1 million bond each. A message left Tuesday at their attorney's office was not immediately returned. They are next due in court on Thursday. After announcing the charges, authorities released body camera footage from three Springfield police officers showing Moore's encounter with the officers and the paramedics. Wright said Moore's family and community groups were consulted before the footage was released. The Springfield police department first responded to Moore's home around 2 a.m. on Dec. 18. The police footage shows that a woman inside the home told one of the officers that Moore was in withdrawal from alcohol and hallucinating. The video shows Moore lying on a bed, occasionally speaking incoherently or gasping. At one point he rolls onto the floor. Wright said the officers felt Moore was in "medical distress" and called paramedics. When Finley arrives, she comes into the bedroom where Moore is still on the floor. Soon after, she yells at him to sit up and asks repeatedly for his birth date. "Sit up," she said. "You know what, I am not playing. Sit up. Quit acting stupid. Sit up. Sit up now. I am not playing with you tonight." "You're gonna have to walk cause we ain't carrying you," she adds as police tell Moore he has to walk outside to get to the hospital. Police then lift Moore to his feet between two officers and slowly move him toward the door. Outside the home, police lift him onto the stretcher. The second paramedic waiting outside the house forcefully puts Moore onto his stomach and the two paramedics are shown tightly strapping Moore to the stretcher in that position. According to a statement from Springfield police, the department later learned that Moore died after arriving at the hospital and Chief Ken Scarlette asked the Illinois State Police to conduct an independent investigation of Moore's death. "The officers, who are not emergency medical professionals, are not trained nor equipped to provide the necessary medical treatment or to transport patients in this type of situation," Scarlette said in a statement. "The officers turned over care of the patient to the licensed, medical professionals at the scene in accordance with Springfield Police Department policy." Douglas Wolfberg, a founding partner of Page, Wolfberg & Wirth a law firm that concentrates on representing emergency medical services, said it's immensely rare for a provider to face a murder or homicide charge in connection with patient care and it's difficult for prosecutors to make a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. Wolfberg said he was extremely troubled by the video and believes the pair at least provided "wholly deficient care" from when Finley first interacted with Moore to when the paramedics strapped their patient in the prone position. "EMS is a profession of highly trained specialists who provide emergency care in the most difficult and stressful of circumstances and give their best," Wolfberg said. "This was a very unfortunate and tragic example of providers who did not give their best." See the body camera footage below. Warning: This footage may disturb some viewers. NORWAY A special election will be held on March 28 to fill the unexpired term of former Norway mayor Tracie Clemons. Clemons resigned from her position at the end of the Norway Town Council meeting on Dec. 5. Her term would have expired in November of 2023, when the next regular election is scheduled. The special election is scheduled from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 28, at the Norway Senior Center, located at 105 St. John Ave. in Norway, according to Orangeburg County Voter Registration and Election Office Director Aurora Smalls. Smalls said only those who live in the town limits can vote in the special election. The results will be certified at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 30, at the Orangeburg County Voter Registration and Elections Office located at 1475 Amelia Street in Orangeburg. Filing for candidates who wish to run for mayor will begin Friday, Jan. 20, and run through Monday, Jan. 30. Candidates file at the Norway Town Hall, which is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8 a.m. to noon on Friday. COLUMBIA Former President Donald Trump will be joined by two high-profile South Carolina supporters U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Henry McMaster at his first public 2024 presidential campaign event in the early voting state later this month. Trump will be at the Statehouse in Columbia on Jan. 28 and will unveil his South Carolina leadership team, according to a person familiar with the plans. That person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person wasnt authorized to speak publicly. Trumps campaign had previously confirmed the South Carolina event but hadnt provided details. The event will also include members of South Carolinas congressional delegation, as well as state lawmakers, according to the person. U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, who with Trumps support ousted U.S. Rep. Tom Rice in a primary last year, told the AP on Tuesday that he would be at the rollout, saying Trump delivered for the American people before and can do so again. U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, who defeated a Trump-backed opponent in her own GOP primary last year, told AP she would not attend the event, and that she would would wait to endorse a 2024 candidate once the field is set. Until then, my powder is dry, she said. Among remaining Republicans in South Carolinas U.S. House delegation, Rep. William Timmons office said he would attend Trumps event, Rep. Jeff Duncans office said he would not, and a spokesman for Rep. Ralph Norman said his attendance wasnt certain. A representatives for Rep. Joe Wilson didnt immediately return a message Tuesday. According to South Carolina government officials, the Trump campaign has blocked off 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. at a variety of sites inside and outside the Statehouse building, planning for 500 attendees. Reservation information shared with AP promotes the event as an opportunity to exemplify the strong support from elected officials in the state as we approach the one year mark to South Carolinas Republican Presidential Primary. Some operatives and elected officials in South Carolina have been receiving calls from Graham asking for their support for Trumps reelection bid. At least two of the people asked had turned down the request, according to the person, who spoke with the pair. Since announcing his latest presidential run in November, Trump has limited his public campaign appearances to events at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida before an invited crowd or in a virtual setting. Trumps visit to South Carolina comes as two of the states top Republicans mull 2024 bids of their own. Nikki Haley, a former governor and onetime U.N. ambassador, said she would take the holiday season to consider a White House campaign. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott has been making visits in other early voting states and launched a political action committee that could become a presidential campaign vehicle. A Scott spokesperson did not immediately comment Tuesday when asked if the senator would attend Trumps event. You are here: World Flash Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that he discussed defense issues with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier during the meeting in the format of a video conference. Zelensky said on Telegram that he talked about the situation on the frontline in Ukraine and the necessity of increasing defense support for Kiev during the conversation. Zelensky said he thanked Steinmeier for the assistance aimed at strengthening the capabilities of the Ukrainian army, and for the humanitarian and financial support for Kiev. The diplomatic process on the implementation of the Ukrainian Peace Formula was another theme of the talks, Zelensky said. Zelensky put forward a 10-point peace plan for ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the G20 summit in Indonesia in November 2022. CHEYENNE The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes may see a boost of more than $3 million for their Department of Family Services programs. The funds would come from unused money that previously went to the St. Stephens Indian School. On Friday, Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, proposed an amendment to the budget bill that would transfer $3,050,000 to the tribes' Department of Family Services that had been previously appropriated for the school. The transfer of this money would replace funding cuts that the state made to these services in 2020, and the transferred appropriation would become an ongoing part of the Department of Family Services' budget. The amendment passed by voice vote Friday at the Joint Appropriations Committee meeting. Larsen asked that $2 million go to the tribes' child protection services. The remainder of the funds would pay for operations in the Department of Family Services for high behavioral needs, $500,000 of which would be available for the tribes' Department of Family Services placements that require a one-to-one match by the requesting tribe. St. Stephens Indian School is a K-12 school on the Wind River reservation. In the past, the school was administered by the tribes and the federal Bureau of Indian Education. The BIE funded the school in part, but since the agency's funding was less than the amount per student that Wyoming gives to schools outside of the reservation, the state has also chipped in some money to bring it up to the same level as other schools. Over the summer, however, a BIE investigation of the school resulted in several of its administrators and school board members being ousted by tribal officials. In the fallout of that investigation, the BIE ended up taking over complete control of the school. The BIE's investigation found that some administrators had allegedly engaged in the use of drugs and alcohol on school property and at school functions, sexual misconduct and harassment, bullying, nepotism and financial exploitation, according to a statement. School officials had also failed to ensure that school employees maintained valid state teaching certifications. Under the light of the problems that the investigation unearthed, it didn't really make sense for the state to go ahead and hand over the money that had been appropriated for St. Stephens. But that has left the state with sitting money that had already been set aside to supplement the funding for the school. Larsen's amendment is essentially meant to get that already appropriated money to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes through another avenue, while at the same time replacing previous funding cuts to the Department of Family Services. The amendment would also require the Wyoming Department of Education to make an exception request for the St. Stephens Indian School appropriation, rather than having it in the standard budget. CHEYENNE Wyomingites probably wont see a big change in sales taxes this year after lawmakers tabled a sweeping bill that would have nixed most exemptions while decreasing the overall sales tax rate. House Bill 72, sponsored by Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, was intended to simplify and update Wyomings outdated tax structure while accommodating the states shift toward a service-based economy. (Under current state statute, services are exempt from sales taxes.) Lawmakers, however, ultimately decided to table the bill for the rest of the session. Browns bill would have reduced the overall sales tax rate from the current 4% to 2.5%, and also removed a lot of the exemptions to the tax that are currently on the books, with the exception of legal and banking services. Counties, however, would have also been able to decide by local elections whether or not they want groceries to be exempted from local sales tax. I have friends that have businesses where they perform services, and they dont have to collect and remit sales tax back to the state. But I also have friends that run businesses here that are retail, and theyre required to. That doesnt seem very equitable to me, Brown argued Tuesday before the House Revenue Committee. Brown implored the committee to move along the bill so that the 62 minds of the House of Representatives could at least talk it over. Strong opposition But it was a pretty big ask in a state thats notoriously tax-averse. Behind the lawmaker sat a room full of people waiting to testify against the bill. No one in the crowd came forward when Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, asked if anyone wanted to speak in favor of it. I am fully recognizing that we are going to have a discussion that we are going to increase taxes on some people in Wyoming, Brown said, adding that the general public, however, would see a decrease in taxes under the way the bill was written. I just would like to make mention that the people who would be here to speak on behalf of this, the families, they are working, and theyre not able to be here. Theyre not even able to Zoom in right now. Because theyre working at Target, theyre working at the state, theyre doing the things that they have to be doing. Some lawmakers were worried about the bills monetary impact and suggested that it be tweaked to be fiscally neutral. As the bill was written, it would have overall reduced revenue for the states general fund by roughly $157 million in fiscal year 2024. Locally, revenues would have decreased by roughly $13 million overall in the same timeframe. On top of the lowered sales tax rates that would result in less revenue, Bret Fanning, administrator of the Wyoming Department of Revenue Excise Tax Division, said the department would probably have to hire about 15 more people to administer the bills proposed sales tax structure. To make the bill fiscally neutral, Fanning said the suggested sales tax would likely have to increase to 3% or more. Some also questioned the reasoning behind specifically exempting legal and banking services from the sales tax. The people who tend to need legal services in our state, they are the mom and pops (who) find themselves in a small lawsuit with a bigger company. They need to file for divorce. Whatever the case may be, I see it as a regressive nature and legal services are already expensive, Brown explained. (A regressive sales tax would take a bigger percentage of money from low-income taxpayers than from high-income taxpayers.) He had a similar point when it came to exempting banking services from his proposed sales tax. The idea that we want to tax and have government make money off of somebody keeping my money because thats a safe place to keep it probably not the best recommendation, he said. But when it came to exempting legal services in his bill, Brown conceded, that hed had some conversations with lawmakers who brought to his attention that Wyoming also has a lot of corporate law, and that the state could benefit from collecting sales taxes from that kind of legal service. Its possible that discussion of Wyomings sales tax structure will become an interim topic, when lawmakers would have more time to go through the ideas that Brown presented in his bill with a fine-toothed comb. Some lawmakers suggested as much. PHOTOS: Opening day of the 67th Wyoming Legislative Session 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins Rep. Jeanette Ward 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins 67th Wyoming Legislative Session begins A celebrity bowhunting couple have been sentenced in federal court in Omaha for conspiring to violate the Lacey Act, which prohibits the trafficking of wildlife. The case against Josh Bowmar, 32, Sarah Bowmar, 33, and Bowmar Bowhunting LLC of Ankeny, Iowa, was related to the largest known case of poaching in Nebraska. The Bowmars pleaded guilty Oct. 19 in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge. In exchange, four other more serious charges, mostly involving allegations of illegally baited hunting sites, were dropped. On Thursday, United States Magistrate Judge Michael D. Nelson sentenced them each to three years of probation and 40 hours of community service. Nelson also ordered the Bowmars to pay a $75,000 fine ($25,000 each for each of the Bowmars and the business), a $44,000 money judgment in lieu of forfeiting certain property, and $13,000 restitution. As part of probation, the Bowmars are banned from hunting or engaging in any activities associated with hunting within Nebraska during the period of probation. In a press release, United States Attorney Steven Russell said beginning in September 2015 and continuing through November 2017, the Bowmars conducted about five hunts per year at Hidden Hills Outfitters, a commercial big game guiding and outfitting business near Broken Bow. During commercially guided hunting activity, the Bowmars conspired to transport wildlife, or parts of it, from Nebraska to Ohio, when they should have known it was against state law, Russell said. The Bowmars, using the internet and social media platforms including their Bowmar Bowhunting website, Instagram page and YouTube channel, broadcasted hunting activities that occurred at Hidden Hills. This sentencing hearing marks the completion of all foreseen prosecutions of numerous defendants related to violations committed by owners, guides, and clients of Hidden Hills Outfitters, Russell said in a press release. In all, 39 people were convicted and more than $750,000 in fines, restitution and forfeitures have been collected in the yearslong case involving Hidden Hills Outfitters. An additional 13 individuals resolved their cases through administrative abandonment of various wildlife trophies originating from unlawful hunts at Hidden Hills Outfitters. The underlying violations related to at least 97 unlawfully-taken big game animals or wild turkey, including deer taken within baited areas; deer, pronghorn, and wild turkeys taken with weapons or firearms prohibited during their respective hunting seasons; deer taken during closed season hours from the road, or without a valid permit; and mule deer taken within the Mule Deer Conservation Area. The operation was a joint investigation by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Law Enforcement and the Law Enforcement Division of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Photos: Hunters show off their harvest in Nebraska Hunting crew First buck First bucks Twins Opening morning buck Hunting Hunting Button buck Awesome hunt in Nebraska Five-point buck Hunting Deer Rick Payeur Archery buck Shot with 10 minutes left on opening day Jackson Wichman, Sprague Deshler on Nov. 14 First buck in Boyd County 11-year-old 9X7 Boyd County Double harvest Deer First deer hunt 2020 Deer Buck Commander Johnson County Hunting Easton Moore Katie Marie Sparks Garrett Rech Ashley Elizabeth Peterson Gail Loxterkamp Katie Marie Sparks Garrett Rech Gail Loxterkamp Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley will today turn the sod for the construction of the 112 mega watt (MWac) solar project. The sod-turning comes almost three years after the consortium of bpTT and Shell were selected as the preferred bidder on the project which has caused an escalation in cost to taxpayers. Your childs education should be a family priority, according to Kimarie Richardson-Thomas, who has taught for 23 years in the public school system. Richardson-Thomas is the Academic Dean at Goodwood Secondary School, and teaches English Language, English Literature, and CAPE Communication Studies. Flash Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Tuesday held phone talks with his Malaysian counterpart, Zambry Abdul Kadir, with both sides vowing to advance Belt and Road cooperation. Qin said China is willing to work with Malaysia to take the opportunities of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of China-Malaysia comprehensive strategic partnership this year and the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties next year to push bilateral relations to a new level. China is ready to work with the new Malaysian government to fully leverage the role of the high-level committee on China-Malaysia cooperation and other mechanisms, continue to promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and make solid progress in key projects, Qin said. China is willing to deepen cooperation with regional countries to jointly safeguard regional peace and stability, and looks forward to working with Malaysia to deepen and consolidate the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, he said. The Malaysian government and various sectors of the society hold objective and just views on China's epidemic prevention policy, and welcome Chinese tourists to their country, Qin said, adding that China commends them for all this. Qin said he believes that with joint efforts, the two sides will soon restore normal personnel exchanges. Zambry, for his part, congratulated Qin on taking office as Chinese foreign minister. He said Malaysia and China enjoy long-standing friendship and his country regards China as an important partner and attaches great importance to its relations with China. Malaysia is willing to strengthen high-level exchanges and people-to-people communication with China, tap the potential of Belt and Road cooperation, so as to achieve greater development of bilateral relations, Zambry said. Trinidad and Tobagos murder toll has shot up to 164 with the killing of two men in separate As I get older, I am starting to understand my grandparents better. I have seen things grow Oh, that Stones in His Pockets is a sneaky one. The play, currently on stage at Live Theatre Workshop, will make you laugh. At times really hard. But then it hits you: this isnt really a comedy. The subversive little play is about economic hardship, a sort of colonization of Irelands County Kerry by Hollywood, despair, and, finally, hope. Stephen Frankenfield and Keith Wick take on the roles of Jake and Charlie, respectively, as well as a whole slew of other characters, including a Scot and a famous Hollywood actress. Charlie and Jake are extras in the blockbuster being filmed in their rural Irish village. The extras are exploited and dismissed, tossed aside like bits of trash. But the economy is bad and the work is needed, so people sign on. We delight as Frankenfield and Wick slip into one character after another, introducing the often funny, always quirky folks in the town and on the set. But when one fired extra, a doped-up young man named Sean, fills his pockets with stones and walks into the river and drowns, the extras revolt. They want to attend the funeral. But the movie-makers, on a deadline and a budget, dont want to let them off to go. Frankenfield and Wick are experts in comedic timing, and they slip into different characters and accents with ease. They use the spare set and a few props to distinguish person and place. But the pacing of the Rhonda Hallquist-directed piece meant that a play that should have been fast and smooth became clunky. Stones in His Pockets, however, is a thoughtful, funny piece in the hands of two keen actors. A few flaws should not keep you away. Catch the play, by Marie Jones, at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 18 at Live Theatre Workshop, 3322 E. Fort Lowell Road. Tickets are $17 to $23. Masks are recommended. For more PHOENIX The town of Marana acted illegally in putting the entire cost of an upgrade to its sewage treatment plant on future development, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In a unanimous opinion, the justices acknowledged that increasing the capacity on the plant and improving the quality of the discharge will help ensure that the town can accommodate future development. That includes guaranteeing the legally required assured 100-year supply of water for new subdivisions. But Justice Clint Bolick said its also clear the upgrade will benefit the entire community. And that, he said, made it unfair and illegal to put the $17.5 million cost entirely on new homes. In a prepared statement, town officials said they will now determine whether the existing customers must pay a larger portion of the wastewater facility costs. Fridays ruling has implications beyond this specific dispute. In siding with the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, the high court set some clear rules for how and when communities across the state can pass on the costs of projects that benefit more than new development and, more to the point, to whom they can pass them on. The dispute dates back to 2013 when Marana voters approved taking over the plant from Pima County. One thing that accomplished is that it enabled the town to obtain recharge credits to demonstrate the legally required adequate long-term water supply. Four years later the town approved a capital improvement project. That enabled the town to improve the discharge from barely meeting Class B+ standards for the discharge to Class A+. And that has re-use possibilities including crop and residential landscape irrigation and fire protection systems. That, in turn, resulted in new water and sewer impact fees to finance the project. The town then assigned 100% of the debt service, beyond $3.2 million already allocated to the project, to future water and sewer customers through development impact fees that generally get added to the price that home buyers pay. Home builders then filed suit. Both a trial judge and the state Court of Appeals sided with the town. But Bolick said those decisions were wrong. He cited a 2011 law that specifically requires that development fees must not be used to impose a burden on new residents for something that benefits all taxpayers. And Bolick said the evidence presented is that the upgrades were helping more than just future developments. Most if not all of the acquired, new, improved, and expanded facilities clearly provide necessary public services, he wrote. Attorneys for the town argued that the level of service for existing residents remained unchanged, even to the point of saying, They get tap water. They flush the toilet and it goes away. Bolick said that ignores the reality of the situation. The uncontroverted evidence demonstrates that the improvement in water quality from B+ to A+, which the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality mandated as a condition of the project, provides healthier water that may be used for a wider variety of purposes to the entire communitys benefit, the justice said. And given the requirement for achieve a fair allocation of costs, Bolick said the town cannot impose the entire price tag for the project and its improved water quality solely on new residents. In ruling against the town, however, the justices did not void the development fees but instead sent the case back to a trial judge to determine how the costs of the project should be allocated. The facilities confer a beneficial use on new development given that without the assurance of a water supply, developers would be unable to develop and market their land, Bolick said. SAHBA remains free to argue that certain expenses may not be included in development fees at all, he said. Conversely, he said, the town can present evidence that certain expenses pertain exclusively to new development. Photos: Rillito River swelled with runoff at Craycroft Road Rabbits "hop" on stamps, birth certificates, iconic streets in Australia to mark Chinese Lunar New Year Xinhua) 10:24, January 18, 2023 Stamps and a commemorative coin marking the Year of the Rabbit are seen at a post office in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei) SYDNEY, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- As the Chinese Lunar New Year is drawing near, Australia has merged multiple bunny elements into its newly-released stamps, birth certificates and urban landscapes to observe the Chinese New Year of Rabbit which begins on Jan. 22. Designed by award-winning Chinese illustrator Chrissy Lau, the "Year of Rabbit 2023" stamp pack was rolled out on Tuesday by national postal service provider Australia Post. The stamps featured the Fortune Rabbit, the Prosperity Rabbit, and the Longevity Rabbit - three cartoon characters dressed in ancient Chinese costumes. "The three lucky rabbits are inspired by the three Chinese gods, Shouxing, Luxing and Fuxing, that are displayed throughout Asia, and which are considered to have the three attributes for a good life, longevity, prosperity, and happiness," Australia Post Philatelic Manager Michael Zsolt told Xinhua. In Zsolt's eyes, rabbits are reflective of luck and are much adored by children and adults alike. "They are definitely an animal that brings a smile to many," he said. "Each year we look to create an inspiring collection of Lunar New Year stamps that reflect happiness, joy and good fortune and I think this year's collection captures these sentiments perfectly," Zsolt added. Also on Tuesday, the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) unveiled a special Chinese Zodiac birth certificate to ring in the Year of Rabbit. According to a statement from the NSW Department of Customer Service and the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, the design was crafted by Australian-Chinese brush painter Lucy Wang. On the certificate, a brown lop-eared rabbit and a smaller hare immerse themselves in the majestic waterfalls of the Blue Mountains, the iconic Three Sisters in Katoomba and the Pool of Siloam in Leura. Wang said that the design incorporates a blend of modern and traditional color palettes and techniques through the meticulous Gongbi style of oriental brush painting. "In Chinese culture, the rabbit is known to be the luckiest of the 12 zodiac animals and symbolizes peace and longevity which is reminiscent of the tranquil environment of the Blue Mountains and the lush Australian golden wattle and native bush ferns featured in this design," she noted. In addition to those professionals, young aspiring artists were also invited to join the celebration with their paint brushes. The Sydney City Council selected 36 rabbit artworks created by children aged six to 12 to embellish the pedestrianized George Street. Ten illuminated plinths on the street are expected to showcase paintings, adding a festive atmosphere to the city center, while the malls and windows of some businesses on the nearby Dixon Street will also put the artworks on display. Besides, major cities across Australia will stage a series of traditional events, including lion dancing, Chinese zodiac lantern exhibitions, and dragon boat races. Stamps marking the Year of the Rabbit are seen at a post office in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei) Stamps marking the Year of the Rabbit are seen at a post office in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Hu Jingchen/Xinhua) (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Mark Finchem is raising money to pay off debt for his failed campaign for secretary of state debt that doesnt exist, his own finance reports show. In a new fundraising email to supporters on Wednesday, Finchem asked people to donate $25, $50, $100 or more to stand with election integrity and fight the propaganda. But it concludes with a disclosure that any money raised will help pay off campaign debt. But a campaign finance report filed just the day before says he had cash on hand of nearly $97,000 after spending nearly $2.4 million on his campaign. So where is the money going? The Oro Valley Republican, who was first elected to the state House in 2014, isnt saying. He did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Finchem also appears to have no ongoing legal expenses. A trial judge threw out his challenge to the election results, confirming his loss in the November election to Democrat Adrian Fontes. Finchem filed paperwork with the Arizona Supreme Court seeking review. But the states high court threw that out as not being in proper form and he never resubmitted it. In his fundraising bid, however, Finchem insisted: I have not conceded this election and we still have work to do, saying he is calling for a new election though there is no explanation of how he is doing that without a pending lawsuit. He and his attorneys, though, may have some future financial obligations. The lawyers for Fontes and Katie Hobbs, who was sued in her position of secretary of state, both have asked a Maricopa County judge to award them their legal fees in defending against Finchems failed legal challenge. Lakes spending reports Finchems spending in his ill-fated political outing for statewide office paled in comparison to that of Kari Lake, who headed the GOP ticket. She reported expenses of almost $15.4 million in her just-filed report in her unsuccessful effort to be elected governor. Lake also continues to seek funds from supporters. But these are being solicited not in the name of paying off any campaign debt her new report lists cash on hand of more than $462,000 but instead through the Save Arizona Fund, whose website suggests this is being used for her ongoing litigation to have her loss to Hobbs overturned by the courts. The newly filed campaign finance reports show Finchem and Lake both spent some of their money at the Mar-a-Lago Club to campaign with Donald Trump. Finchems report lists more than $53,000 in expenses to the club owned by the former president. Lakes campaign spent more than $104,000 there. For both, more than just the funds gathered directly from donors were at play in the 2022 election. Reports filed with the Secretary of States Office showed that outside interests spent more than $2.7 million in independent expenditures supporting Lakes election. Much of that came from two political action committees, one from the National Rifle Association and another listed as Put Arizona First. The latter, in turn, reports it got money from SPH Medical LLC, though there is no such limited liability company listed with the Arizona Corporation Commission. But that pro-Lake spending was more than offset by more than $10.2 million in independent expenditures against the former TV news anchor, much of that financed by something called the Republican Accountability PAC. That national organization lists itself as being run by Republicans, former Republicans, and conservatives who are fighting back against Donald Trumps takeover of the GOP. Finchem, by contrast, got only a bit of outside help less than $90,000. But his foes spent more than $4.6 million, including funds from the Republican Accountability PAC and from liberal organizations like Everytown For Gun Safety and moveon.org, whose website says its members are a force for social justice and political progress. Hobbs spending reports Hobbs newest report showed she managed to end the campaign with more than $540,000 still in the bank after spending $15 million in her successful race for governor. But here, too, outside interests played a big role, with expenditures urging her election exceeding $6 million coming from groups like Living United for Change in Arizona, Stand for Children, and Future Forward, which works against what it calls tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. On the other side of the equation, another more than $11 million was spent in ads against her by the Republican Governors Association, the National Rifle Association, and Make America Great Again Inc., formed by Trump allies. Fontes reported spending nearly $3.7 million in his successful race for secretary of state. Another more than $1.7 million was spent on his behalf by groups like the League of Conservation Voters and moveon.org. In the race for attorney general, Democratic winner Kris Mayes listed expenses of nearly $3 million, with another more than $240,000 in independent expenses to help her campaign. But there also was nearly $2.6 million spent by outside groups against her. Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh, who, like Lake, continues to challenge his loss in court, posted $2.1 million in expenses. Here, too, outside interests weighed in, with nearly $1.4 million spent on his behalf ad almost $1.5 million in commercials by others urging his defeat. Photos: 2023 Inauguration Day at the Arizona State Capitol The idea struck me as brilliant the minute we rolled up. On a bike ride in November, some friends and I arrived at East 22nd Street and South Pantano Road. It was midday, and there they were, just off the Loop next to the Pantano Wash: a group of food trucks arrayed on the grounds of a former gas station. Beer, soda and snacks were for sale inside the small store, and the few trucks open at that early hour served Jamaican, Mexican and Mediterranean food. I chose the Jamaican and sat outside at the tables, placed under the gas station canopy where people once filled their tanks. This was my introduction to the concept of a food-truck park, a phenomenon popping up around the country. Id never contemplated the possibility. Unfortunately, neither do Tucsons city codes. Amber Donahue and Chris Frisch opened the place, known as The Pit, on March 25. It features not just the trucks and tables on the gas station site, but also picnic tables and games on adjacent land closer to the Loop. Since August, though, they have been struggling to keep it open. Thats when city inspectors found problems that included the electrical setup, bathroom access and parking. For months, they have been trying to get good with the city, filing a site plan and other documents, fixing this and that. Whatever they did, though, the fundamental problem remained: City code prevents peddlers, which is what food-trucks are considered, from locating within 100 feet of each other. At the Pit, there might be a half dozen peddlers within 100 feet. And thats a good thing. Thats what made the place become popular right away an unusual destination on the citys southeast side. The real issue is, within the city limits of Tucson, there is no way to have a food-truck park, Donahue told me. Ultimately, I dont believe the city doesnt want to have something like this. Theres just no way to do it without changing that code. The Pit has been operating for months in a tenuous state, and the city rejected its site plan in December, deciding that it needs a development plan, which would be potentially cost-prohibitive. But the show went on. On Jan. 8, a city inspector showed up with police officers in tow. It appears, according to city records, they were responding to a complaint of live music, alcohol drinking and dancing on site. They found nothing much. There was no music and had a stereo playing while on site, the report from that date says. Had a gentleman playing a guitar with an amp and had no dancing while on site. They do have kids from high schools that come at times and perform when asked. They have a store on site, and they do sell alcohol for to-go and not drink on the property. Still, The Pit was ordered to close. All this happened in the code enforcement division while other parts of the city apparatus were working to find a way to keep The Pit operating. Council member Paul Cunningham, whose ward the business is in, and the office of economic development were looking at city codes to see if changes could be made. The code enforcement department made a decision to suspend The Pits operation, Cunningham said by text. They did not contact me about the decision, which was disappointing, but it happens from time to time. When the hammer came down, the protests came quickly. The online publication Tucson Foodie and KGUN 9 ran stories about it. A petition started by Donahue gathered more than 3,000 signatures. At 4:45 p.m. on the Friday before a three-day weekend, deputy city manager Tim Thomure, public information officer Andy Squire and Cunningham went to The Pit and met with Frisch and Donahue. They hammered out a deal: The Pit can stay open for 45 more days, as long as it meets certain conditions. In the meantime, city officials will look at adjusting the code to allow for food-truck parks. The conditions include: No more than seven food trucks at the site. A bathroom open to the public. All trucks must show their health and fire inspections are up-to-date. Theyre going to be operating on a temporary-use permit, Cunningham said by phone Tuesday. But we just cant do that forever. We cant keep approving special event permits. That means both sides need to show some agility. The city needs to find a way to quickly adopt new code allowing peddlers to group themselves together like this. This shouldnt be impossible: Food-truck yards exist in cities around the country, and another one, called Comida Park, is going up next to Tanque Verde Swap Meet, in the jurisdiction of Pima County. We dont want to be nitpicky, but at the same time we want to be safe, Cunningham said. On the other side, Donahue, Frisch and the owners of the food trucks need to dig deep to adapt to the conditions the city imposes. Get the right electrical hook-ups and bathroom facilities, organize the parking. This shouldnt be impossible. Tucson should be a city that finds a way to help business people repurpose an abandoned property creatively, especially when they are bringing people together in a positive atmosphere like this. A MILITARY BASE IN SOUTHEASTERN POLAND The top U.S. military officer, Army Gen. Mark Milley, traveled to a site near the Ukraine-Poland border Tuesday and talked with his Ukrainian counterpart face to face for the first time a meeting underscoring the growing ties between the two militaries and coming at a critical time as Russia's war with Ukraine nears the one-year mark. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met for a couple of hours with Ukraine's chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland. The two leaders talked frequently about Ukraine's military needs and the state of the war over the past year but had never met. The meeting came as the international community ramps up the military assistance to Ukraine, including expanded training of Ukrainian troops by the U.S. and the provision of weapons systems by the U.S. and a coalition of European and other nations. Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, told two reporters traveling with the chairman that the two generals felt it was important to meet in person. The reporters did not accompany Milley to the meeting and, under conditions set by the military, agreed to not identify the military base where they were located. "These guys have been talking on a very regular basis for about a year now, and they've gotten to know each other," Butler said. "They've talked in detail about the defense that Ukraine is trying to do against Russia's aggression. And it's important when you have two military professionals looking each other in the eye and talking about very, very important topics, there's a difference." Butler said there had been some hope that Zaluzhnyi would travel to Brussels for a meeting of NATO and other defense chiefs this week but, when it became clear on Monday that it would not happen, they quickly decided to meet in Poland, near the border. While a number of U.S. civilian leaders have gone into Ukraine, the Biden administration has made it clear that no uniformed military service members will go into Ukraine other than those connected to the embassy in Kyiv. He said the meeting will allow Milley to relay Zaluzhnyi's concerns and information to the other military leaders during the NATO chiefs' meeting. Milley, he said, will be able to "describe the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that, and the way he does that is one by understanding it himself but by also talking to Zaluzhnyi on a regular basis." Milley also will be able to describe the new training of Ukrainian forces that the U.S. is doing at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. The chairman, who got his first look at the new, so-called combined arms instruction during a nearly two-hour visit there on Monday, has said it will better prepare Ukrainian troops to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks. More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the expanded training program at the camp just a day before Milley arrived. Milley and Zaluzhnyi's meeting kicks off a series of high-level gatherings of military and defense leaders this week. Milley and other chiefs of defense will meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, and then the so-called Ukraine Contact Group will gather at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. That group consists of about 50 top defense officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and they work to coordinate military contributions to Ukraine. The meetings are expected to focus on Ukraine's ongoing and future military needs. Meanwhile, two of three NATO surveillance planes deployed temporarily to Romania arrived at an air base near Bucharest, from where they will fly missions to monitor Russian military activity near the borders of the 30-nation military alliance. After several months of losing territory it had captured, Russia in recent days claimed it took control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting but if Moscow's troops take control of Soledar, it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months. Western analysts point to signs that the Kremlin is digging in for a drawn-out war, and say the Russian military command is preparing for an expanded mobilization effort. The death toll from the wars deadliest attack on civilians at one location since last spring, a weekend Russian missile strike on a southeastern apartment building, reached 45, officials said Tuesday. Those killed in the Saturday afternoon strike in Dnipro included six children, with 79 people injured, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. The toll included two dozen people initially listed as missing at the multistory building, which housed about 1,700, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidents office. Emergency crews cleared some 9.9 tons of rubble during a nonstop search and rescue operation, the Dnipro City Council said. About 400 people lost their homes, with 72 apartments completely ruined and another 236 damaged beyond repair, it added. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was hauled away and briefly detained on Tuesday during a protest near a German village being razed to make way for a coal mine expansion, police said. Thunberg has been in Germany for several days to support protests against the demolition of Luetzerath, which have become a symbol of resistance against fossil fuels. As featured on Vehicles struggle in Denver during winter storm, and more of today's top videos Rush hour traffic came to a crawl in Denver during a winter storm, China's population has de The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer: By Kirsten Engel Special to the Arizona Daily Star (Jan. 18, 2023) Kirsten Engel is an environmental law professor, a former state senator and the 2022 Democratic Nominee for Arizonas Congressional District 6. Last year, the Arizona Legislature made an historic investment in solving our water crisis. It committed $1.2 billion to a newly recreated Water Infrastructure Finance Authority (WIFA) for water importation and conservation. This investment in water infrastructure, conservation and management is critically needed for the future of Arizona and is long past due. With this investment, however, comes the obligation to use the money wisely. To protect our pocketbooks and our environment, the new WIFA Board must avoid jumping on the first water project that is pushed in front of it and instead use an open and transparent procurement process that prioritizes cost-effective means of meeting our states water needs. On these metrics, the Board got off to a rocky start, but there is still time to get on track. Right before the holidays, the Board hastily approved an agreement to explore dedicating $750 million to the purchase of water from a proposed multi-billion dollar desalination plant in Puerto Penasco, Mexico to be built by IDE Technologies, an Israeli desalination company, in partnership with Goldman Sachs. The plant would pull water from the Sea of Cortez, desalinate it, dump the salty brine back into the sea and pipe the freshwater 200 miles north and uphill, crossing the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to link up with the Central Arizona Project canal. The first of three phases would pump 300,000 acre-feet at a cost of $5 billion and produce water at an estimated cost as high as $3,200/acre-foot. While a water importation project might be an appropriate investment, desalination would not be a silver bullet to solving our states water shortage. Far from it. Desalination is a mixed bag. Its hugely expensive, uses massive amounts of energy, and discharges a hyper-concentrated salty fluid, brine, that must be dispersed so as not to suffocate marine life if pumped back into the sea. The Sea of Cortez is a rich marine environment, home to the Vaquita porpoise, the most endangered marine mammal on earth. The impact of this project on the environment deserves much more study before the state commits any funds. Believe me, I understand the urgency of addressing our water crisis and support immediate action. Water has been a top priority for me as a community member and as an Arizona legislator. I have long called for Arizona to get serious about conserving our most precious resource and investing in our water security. But we must do this smartly. Arizona remains one of the fastest growing states in the nation, with people drawn here by things that make us all love this state: the beauty of our deserts, mountains and forests, the unique and diverse cultures that call this land home and the promise of opportunity for our children. With historic investments in our state supported by the CHIPS Act, the economy of Arizona will continue to grow. As we do, however, we must plan appropriately, become the global leader in water conservation and, yes, invest in water importation responsibly, understanding it is one piece of a much larger puzzle. WIFAs newly appointed executive director recently assured legislators that the Board will not let its agreement with IDE stand in the way of considering competing water proposals. This is a good sign. WIFA should look to invest first in the most cost-effective way of securing additional water, which is conservation. Other opportunities to bring additional water to the state, including by treating water in California in exchange for Colorado River water delivered to Arizona, should also be given an opportunity to compete. Arizona has an opportunity to address our water crisis meaningfully. Lets not squander it by focusing narrowly on any one proposal. All options need to be on the table. Too much is at stake to do otherwise. Gov. Kevin Stitt created a task force on Tuesday to address state workforce challenges. Stitt signed an executive order to form the Workforce Transformation Task Force that will make recommendations on how the state can consolidate its workforce development practices in order to have a greater impact. In the order, Stitt said Oklahomas workforce delivery system suffers from responsibilities and funding being split across several state agencies. He wants the task force to create a roadmap for one state entity to take charge on all workforce development issues. The task force will develop recommendations to enhance coordination, efficiency and effectiveness of workforce development efforts while also determining how the state can help develop a labor force that meets employers needs. Oklahomas workforce must keep pace with the growing number of businesses expanding in and relocating to the state, Stitt said in a news release. This Workforce Transformation Task Force is a good first step to help us maximize our full potential and provide a workforce that can meet the needs of employers. State Chamber President and CEO Chad Warmington called the governors order a first step toward helping Oklahomans prepare to join the workforce. The task force will submit a report detailing its recommendations by April 15. Featured video: Tulsa-area state legislators and how to contact them Sen. Nathan Dahm Sen. Dana Prieto Sen. Jo Anna Dossett Sen. John Haste Sen. Todd Gollihare Sen. Kevin Matthews Sen. Joe Newhouse Sen. Dave Rader Sen. Cody Rogers Rep. Meloyde Blancett Rep. Jeff Boatman Rep. Amanda Swope Rep. Suzanne Schreiber 032823-tul-nws-davis-dean Rep. Mark Tedford Rep. Scott Fetgatter Rep. Ross Ford Rep. Regina Goodwin Rep. Kyle Hilbert Rep. Mark Lawson Rep. T.J. Marti Rep. Stan May Rep. Monroe Nichols Rep. Clay Staires Rep. Terry O'Donnell Rep. Melissa Provenzano Rep. Lonnie Sims Rep. John Kane Rep. Mark Vancuren Rep. John Waldron Check out our latest digital-only offer and subscribe now Oklahomas new attorney general wants to slow the pace of lethal injections as the state is set to execute nearly one person each month through the end of the year. Gentner Drummond on Wednesday asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to reschedule set executions so they are 60 days apart rather than about 30 days apart. Mere days after being sworn into office, Drummond attended the execution of Scott Eizember, who was convicted of killing an elderly Depew couple during a 2003 home invasion. Drummond said he filed the motion to reschedule execution dates after talking to Department of Corrections staff about the execution process before and after Eizembers lethal injection. Revising the schedule would alleviate the burden on DOC personnel, maintain confidence in the system and preserve the solemn and important execution process, Drummond wrote in his request. The current pace of executions is unsustainable in the long run, as it is unduly burdening the DOC and its personnel, he wrote. This is especially true given the extensive and intensive nature of the training DOC personnel undergo to prepare for each execution. The DOC supports Drummonds request and will abide by the schedule set by the Court of Criminal Appeals, said agency spokesman Josh Ward. No matter what that schedule is, this agency will continue keeping professionalism and attention to detail at the forefront of the process to protect the dignity of all involved, Ward said in a statement. If Drummonds request is granted, the next seven executions, including Richard Eugene Glossips, currently scheduled for Feb. 16, would be pushed back. Execution dates also would be pushed back for Jemaine Monteil Cannon, Anthony Castillo Sanchez, Phillip Dean Hancock, James Chandler Ryder, Michael Dewayne Smith and Wade Greely Lay. Drummond said he spoke to victims family members before filing his motion. I do not take lightly this request, he said in a news release. These families have waited many years to see justice done, and I am grateful for their understanding in this matter. Drummond said his office will contact the Court of Criminal Appeals later to set dates for 13 remaining executions. Former Attorney General John OConnor last year sought execution dates for 25 death-row inmates who had exhausted their appeals. He asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to set the executions for no less than four weeks apart. The Department of Corrections has carried out eight executions since the fall of 2021. Featured video: Death row in Oklahoma: Pace of executions in 2023 slows on AG's request Richard Glossip Jemaine Cannon Anthony Sanchez Phillip Hancock James Ryder Michael D. Smith Wade Lay John Fitzgerald Hanson Oklahoma corrections director on execution: 'Not pleasant to watch, but ... not inhumane' Alfred Mitchell Marlon Harmon Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez Clarence Goode Jr. Emmanuel Littlejohn James Pavatt Kendrick Simpson Kevin Underwood Raymond E. Johnson Richard Rojem Ricky Malone Ronson Bush Termane Wood Wendell Grissom Check out our latest digital-only offer and subscribe now Mitigating the United States carbon emissions in the near term is no pipe dream. Far from it, said Alan Armstrong, president and CEO of Williams. The U.S. is so well-positioned in the right here and the right now, not waiting on new technologies down the road, not waiting on other resources we have in the U.S., Armstrong said. We can dramatically reduce emissions and lower peoples costs at the utility level if we simply would allow ourselves to build the infrastructure that we know how to build. Its not rocket science. Armstrong, who has spent a dozen years at the helm of the Tulsa-based energy company, shared his sentiments Wednesday as featured guest at the Friends of Finance executive speaker series luncheon at the University of Tulsa. Williams handles 30% of the nations natural gas through transmission, gathering and processing systems, operating 30,000 miles of critical infrastructure that serves major markets around the country. Armstrong said the United States has plenty of natural gas, and to emphasize his point about inadequate infrastructure, he gave as an example the Appalachian Basin, one of the worlds largest, low-cost resources of natural gas. Although the Boston area is only about 250 miles away, customers there must rely on liquefied natural gas 2,000 miles away because of a lack of pipelines from the Appalachian Basin. As a consequence, the spot natural gas price in New England rose to an average of $20.55 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in January 2022, the highest average price since February 2014. Building the necessary infrastructure, however, will mean a commitment by federal officials to streamline what Armstrong calls a complex and unpredictable permitting process. It used to take five years to build something like the Hoover Dam, he said. Now, it takes us, at least for any kind of sizable project today, at least four years for the permitting process, not the construction. And generally, it will take us nine months to construct. We have to get this straightened out, whether it is for renewables or whether it is for gas pipeline. Williams in 2020 set goal of 56% absolute reduction from 2005 levels in companywide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, putting the company on track for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. If you just took the top 5% of the power plants in the world and you replace those with natural gas, you would reduce 30% of the emissions from power plants, Armstrong said. So, we could do that today with U.S. low-cost, natural gas. ... "We have to go after the practical solutions that are available to us today. Thats exactly what were about at Williams. Before Armstrong was introduced, Kathy Taylor, dean of The University of Tulsas Collins College of Business, announced that Williams is donating $250,000 to launch the Williams Student Coffee Lounge and Entrepreneurial Hub in 2023. Featured video: OKLAHOMA CITY A state lawmaker wants Oklahomans to make it more difficult for voters to pass state questions. Senate Joint Resolution 5, filed by Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, would ask voters to amend the Oklahoma Constitution to allow state questions to be on ballots in only odd numbered years. Also, a state question or constitutional amendment that would remove any rights of state residents would be required to pass by a majority of electors in the state as well as by a majority of electors in at least two-thirds of the states 77 counties, according to Senate Joint Resolution 5. The measure does not explain what would be considered the removal of a right held by voters. Hamilton did not respond to an email request for an interview concerning his resolution, which would not require the governors signature if passed by the Legislature. Contacted by phone, he said, I am sorry. I am going to have to cut you loose. I am waiting on another call right now. Michelle Tilley, campaign manager for Yes on 820, which seeks to legalize recreational marijuana, called Hamiltons measure undemocratic. Gov. Kevin Stitt has put a state question on that issue on a March 7 special election ballot. Any attempt to limit the rights of Oklahomans to circulate petitions and change laws that the Legislature doesnt want changed is very undemocratic, Tilley said. It is one of the first rights given to us in the Oklahoma Constitution, and this is the way people get to speak. State questions seeking to amend the constitution now require 177,958 signatures to get on the ballot. Amber England worked on State Question 802, through which voters expanded Medicaid after lawmakers refused to do so. The measure passed in 2020 with 50.5% of the vote statewide. A majority of voters in only seven counties supported it, illustrating that larger counties have more sway than less populated, more rural counties. I think this is just more of the same, England said. We have seen politicians trying to make it harder for Oklahomans to exercise their constitutional right to the ballot for many years now. Oklahoma voters are smarter than this. They are going to see it for what it is an attempt to consolidate power at the Legislature and take away power from voters. Oklahomas initiative petition process already is one of the most difficult in the country, England said, adding that the current process has worked for more than 100 years on conservative issues and on progressive issues. Any time I see a politician trying to make that process even harder, it doesnt pass the smell test, England said. Featured video: Oklahoma executive branch officials take oath of office Tulsa-area state legislators and how to contact them Sen. Nathan Dahm Sen. Dana Prieto Sen. Jo Anna Dossett Sen. John Haste Sen. Todd Gollihare Sen. Kevin Matthews Sen. Joe Newhouse Sen. Dave Rader Sen. Cody Rogers Rep. Meloyde Blancett Rep. Jeff Boatman Rep. Amanda Swope Rep. Suzanne Schreiber 032823-tul-nws-davis-dean Rep. Mark Tedford Rep. Scott Fetgatter Rep. Ross Ford Rep. Regina Goodwin Rep. Kyle Hilbert Rep. Mark Lawson Rep. T.J. Marti Rep. Stan May Rep. Monroe Nichols Rep. Clay Staires Rep. Terry O'Donnell Rep. Melissa Provenzano Rep. Lonnie Sims Rep. John Kane Rep. Mark Vancuren Rep. John Waldron Check out our latest digital-only offer and subscribe now Vietnam earned more than US$53 billion from agricultural, forestry, and fishery exports in 2022, up over 9 percent year on year, forming a basis for a higher target in 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development reported. The ministry released its statistics on the agricultural industrys performance in 2022, as well as revealed its targets for 2023, at a conference held in Hanoi last Friday, which was attended by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. Specifically, the country boasted a total export turnover of $53.22 billion last year, 9.3 percent higher than 2021 and 6.44 percent more than the governments target, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan said. Such export earnings helped the country register a trade surplus of over $8.5 billion, up 30 percent from 2021 and accounting for more than 75 percent of the countrys total positive trade balance, the minister said. Total export turnover for the year included $22.59 billion from main farm produce (up 4.8 percent), $16.93 billion from major forestry products (up 6.1 percent), $10.92 billion from fishery-related goods (up 22.9 percent), $400 million from husbandry (down 7.1 percent), and the remainder from other goods, according to the ministry. Along with its export success, the sector chalked up a GDP growth rate of 3.36 percent last year, the highest it has seen in several years, contributing 5.11 percent to the total added value for the whole economy. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh holds a handbag at an area displaying products made from bamboo and rattan on the sidelines of the conference on January 13, 2022. Photo: Chi Tue / Tuoi Tre The brightest point for Vietnams agriculture industry last year was its great efforts in diversifying markets, improving quality, and creating brands of agricultural products, as suggested by the prime minister, Minister Hoan said. In addition, many ministries, business associations, local authorities, enterprises, and farmers across the country have partnered to introduce and promote agricultural commodities both at home and abroad, Hoan added. For 2023, the sector targeted GDP growth of three percent, and a total agro-forestry-fishery export value of $54 billion, the minister told the conference. Speaking at the event, PM Chinh shared that he highly valued the sectors significant contributions to the countrys common economic success in 2022, and asked the sector to strive for higher targets, including a GDP growth rate of 3.5 percent and export turnover of $55 billion, in 2023, according to the Vietnam News Agency. In order to meet these targets, the sector should strengthen the building of product brands, and diversify products, markets, and supply chains, while boosting circular economy, green transition, and digital transformation, Hoan advised. He also called for attention to be given to the domestic market, the removal of barriers to new markets, and making the best use of free trade agreements, especially the EU - Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Before entering the conference, the PM and leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development visited the exhibition space from goods from the One Commune One Product (OCOP) and diverse products of craft villages. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnam earned more than US$53 billion from agricultural, forestry, and fishery exports in 2022, up over 9 percent year on year, forming a basis for a higher target in 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development reported. The ministry released its statistics on the agricultural industrys performance in 2022, as well as revealed its targets for 2023, at a conference held in Hanoi last Friday, which was attended by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. Specifically, the country boasted a total export turnover of $53.22 billion last year, 9.3 percent higher than 2021 and 6.44 percent more than the governments target, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan said. Such export earnings helped the country register a trade surplus of over $8.5 billion, up 30 percent from 2021 and accounting for more than 75 percent of the countrys total positive trade balance, the minister said. Total export turnover for the year included $22.59 billion from main farm produce (up 4.8 percent), $16.93 billion from major forestry products (up 6.1 percent), $10.92 billion from fishery-related goods (up 22.9 percent), $400 million from husbandry (down 7.1 percent), and the remainder from other goods, according to the ministry. Along with its export success, the sector chalked up a GDP growth rate of 3.36 percent last year, the highest it has seen in several years, contributing 5.11 percent to the total added value for the whole economy. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh holds a handbag at an area displaying products made from bamboo and rattan on the sidelines of the conference on January 13, 2022. Photo: Chi Tue / Tuoi Tre The brightest point for Vietnams agriculture industry last year was its great efforts in diversifying markets, improving quality, and creating brands of agricultural products, as suggested by the prime minister, Minister Hoan said. In addition, many ministries, business associations, local authorities, enterprises, and farmers across the country have partnered to introduce and promote agricultural commodities both at home and abroad, Hoan added. For 2023, the sector targeted GDP growth of three percent, and a total agro-forestry-fishery export value of $54 billion, the minister told the conference. Speaking at the event, PM Chinh shared that he highly valued the sectors significant contributions to the countrys common economic success in 2022, and asked the sector to strive for higher targets, including a GDP growth rate of 3.5 percent and export turnover of $55 billion, in 2023, according to the Vietnam News Agency. In order to meet these targets, the sector should strengthen the building of product brands, and diversify products, markets, and supply chains, while boosting circular economy, green transition, and digital transformation, Hoan advised. He also called for attention to be given to the domestic market, the removal of barriers to new markets, and making the best use of free trade agreements, especially the EU - Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Before entering the conference, the PM and leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development visited the exhibition space from goods from the One Commune One Product (OCOP) and diverse products of craft villages. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A Vietnamese woman has been successfully introducing Vietnamese cuisine to Emiratis in Dubai for the past five years through her Vietnamese Foodies restaurant chain. On average, Vietnamese Foodies serves 800-1,000 customers each day across its five branches and through online orders. Lily Hoa Nguyen opened the first Vietnamese Foodies location at Jumeirah Lake Towers in 2018. Since then, Lily and Vietnamese Foodies have been magnets for praise and awards, including the owner being named in the Caterer Middle Easts Women in F&B Power List and Vietnamese Foodies winning the Best Budget Restaurant Award by Time Out Dubai Restaurant Awards in 2019 and 2020. Vietnamese foods at Vietnamese Foodies are seen in this supplied photo. Born in northern Vietnam and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Lilys love of food grew from a childhood spent cooking for her family. In 2012, she left Vietnam for Paris. She then moved to Istanbul before settling down with her husband in Dubai in 2016. While in Istanbul, Lily organized Vietnamese cooking classes for expats. She continued running such classes when she moved to Dubai. Vietnamese Foodies was born after Lilys students complained to her that they could not find a Vietnamese restaurant that compared to her cooking. With over 70 dishes on the menu, all Vietnamese Foodies locations offer authentic, fresh, healthy, and affordable Vietnamese dishes, including pho, bun bo Hue (spicy beef noodle soup), banh mi, and goi cuon (fresh spring rolls). Egg rolls served at Vietnamese Foodies in this supplied photo The menu is said to take inspiration from the culinary diversity of Hanoi, and the aromatic flavors of the food will transport diners from Dubai to the bustling streets of Ho Chi Minh City. The majority of Vietnamese Foodies customers are Asians from countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China. Lily Hoa Nguyen also has guests from Europe, the United States, and Australia. About ten percent of her diners are Middle Eastern. Seventy to 80 percent of her customers are regulars. Lily Hoa Nguyen explained that Vietnamese food is very fulfilling in terms of taste, with nothing too spicy, sweet, or sour, which makes it easy for foreigners to enjoy. There are also plenty of Vietnamese dishes that are traditionally vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free. "These are points that I think we need to talk more about. We need to do more marketing to let people know that Vietnamese food is very trendy and good for health, Lily Hoa Nguyen said. Lily Hoa Nguyen, owner of Vietnamese Foodies, is seen in this supplied photo. When Lily Hoa Nguyen opened her first restaurant, a meal at Vietnamese Foodies is on a par with other Vietnamese restaurants in Dubai, but 10-20 percent cheaper than restaurants of similar quality. However, it is currently at the same level as Din Tai Fung, a world-renowned Taiwanese restaurant chain with around 200 locations globally. I think the biggest achievement of Vietnamese Foodies in the past two years is that I have upgraded my brand to the equivalent of brands from other countries," Nguyen said. When it comes to Vietnamese food, people think about it being cheap, but for me, we need to make Vietnamese food famous for its deliciousness and healthiness by having very selective dishes, beautiful places to serve food, and facilities that meet quality standards. "That way we can increase the value of our brand and food. Celebrating Tet For this years Tet (Lunar New Year), Vietnamese Foodies are inviting customers to join a program to say thank you to its staff. According to Vietnamese Foodies, all revenue, minus food costs, generated at the brands five Dubai locations on Lunar New Years Eve (January 21) will be shared amongst the restaurants 120 staff members. Lily Hoa Nguyen (in 'ao dai') gives lucky money, a Lunar New Year tradition, to her staff at Vietnamese Foodies in this supplied photo. Lunar New Year, or Tet, as it is known in Vietnam, is a time for family and friends to gather, as well as a time to invite luck and good fortune for the year ahead, Vietnamese Foodies explained in a press release. This year is the fifth year that the restaurant has continued this tradition. According to Lily Hoa Nguyen, 2023 will be Vietnamese Foodies biggest year to date, given the brands meteoric growth from one location and twenty staff members to five locations and 120 staff members. Our strength lies in our team, she said. It is due to their hard work and dedication that we have grown so fast across Dubai with a wonderful customer base. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A Vietnamese woman has been successfully introducing Vietnamese cuisine to Emiratis in Dubai for the past five years through her Vietnamese Foodies restaurant chain. On average, Vietnamese Foodies serves 800-1,000 customers each day across its five branches and through online orders. Lily Hoa Nguyen opened the first Vietnamese Foodies location at Jumeirah Lake Towers in 2018. Since then, Lily and Vietnamese Foodies have been magnets for praise and awards, including the owner being named in the Caterer Middle Easts Women in F&B Power List and Vietnamese Foodies winning the Best Budget Restaurant Award by Time Out Dubai Restaurant Awards in 2019 and 2020. Vietnamese foods at Vietnamese Foodies are seen in this supplied photo. Born in northern Vietnam and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Lilys love of food grew from a childhood spent cooking for her family. In 2012, she left Vietnam for Paris. She then moved to Istanbul before settling down with her husband in Dubai in 2016. While in Istanbul, Lily organized Vietnamese cooking classes for expats. She continued running such classes when she moved to Dubai. Vietnamese Foodies was born after Lilys students complained to her that they could not find a Vietnamese restaurant that compared to her cooking. With over 70 dishes on the menu, all Vietnamese Foodies locations offer authentic, fresh, healthy, and affordable Vietnamese dishes, including pho, bun bo Hue (spicy beef noodle soup), banh mi, and goi cuon (fresh spring rolls). Egg rolls served at Vietnamese Foodies in this supplied photo The menu is said to take inspiration from the culinary diversity of Hanoi, and the aromatic flavors of the food will transport diners from Dubai to the bustling streets of Ho Chi Minh City. The majority of Vietnamese Foodies customers are Asians from countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China. Lily Hoa Nguyen also has guests from Europe, the United States, and Australia. About ten percent of her diners are Middle Eastern. Seventy to 80 percent of her customers are regulars. Lily Hoa Nguyen explained that Vietnamese food is very fulfilling in terms of taste, with nothing too spicy, sweet, or sour, which makes it easy for foreigners to enjoy. There are also plenty of Vietnamese dishes that are traditionally vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free. "These are points that I think we need to talk more about. We need to do more marketing to let people know that Vietnamese food is very trendy and good for health, Lily Hoa Nguyen said. Lily Hoa Nguyen, owner of Vietnamese Foodies, is seen in this supplied photo. When Lily Hoa Nguyen opened her first restaurant, a meal at Vietnamese Foodies is on a par with other Vietnamese restaurants in Dubai, but 10-20 percent cheaper than restaurants of similar quality. However, it is currently at the same level as Din Tai Fung, a world-renowned Taiwanese restaurant chain with around 200 locations globally. I think the biggest achievement of Vietnamese Foodies in the past two years is that I have upgraded my brand to the equivalent of brands from other countries," Nguyen said. When it comes to Vietnamese food, people think about it being cheap, but for me, we need to make Vietnamese food famous for its deliciousness and healthiness by having very selective dishes, beautiful places to serve food, and facilities that meet quality standards. "That way we can increase the value of our brand and food. Celebrating Tet For this years Tet (Lunar New Year), Vietnamese Foodies are inviting customers to join a program to say thank you to its staff. According to Vietnamese Foodies, all revenue, minus food costs, generated at the brands five Dubai locations on Lunar New Years Eve (January 21) will be shared amongst the restaurants 120 staff members. Lily Hoa Nguyen (in 'ao dai') gives lucky money, a Lunar New Year tradition, to her staff at Vietnamese Foodies in this supplied photo. Lunar New Year, or Tet, as it is known in Vietnam, is a time for family and friends to gather, as well as a time to invite luck and good fortune for the year ahead, Vietnamese Foodies explained in a press release. This year is the fifth year that the restaurant has continued this tradition. According to Lily Hoa Nguyen, 2023 will be Vietnamese Foodies biggest year to date, given the brands meteoric growth from one location and twenty staff members to five locations and 120 staff members. Our strength lies in our team, she said. It is due to their hard work and dedication that we have grown so fast across Dubai with a wonderful customer base. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A convenience store collapsed in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, killing one on Wednesday morning. The accident occurred on Vinh Hoi Street, with witnesses saying the first floor of the convenience store suddenly collapsed, trapping people on the ground floor inside. The Fire Prevention and Fighting and Rescue Police Division said they were informed of the collapse at around 9:00 am. At the time rescue forces arrived, eight people had managed to get out of the collapse while one was still stuck inside. Rescue forces are seen at the scene after a convenience store collapsed on Vinh Hoi Street in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, January 18, 2023. Photo: Minh Hoa / Tuoi Tre At 9:45 am, a seriously injured female victim was brought out unconscious from the wreckage and rushed to the hospital. Dr. Nguyen Duy Long, director of the 115 Emergency Center in Ho Chi Minh City, confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the 15-year-old victim had passed away. At the scene, the victim's heart stopped beating, Long said. Doctors tried to resuscitate her to no avail. "The victim was then taken to District 4 Hospital and later pronounced dead. Rescue forces work to bring victims out after a convenience store collapsed on Vinh Hoi Street in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, January 18, 2023. Photo: Minh Hoa / Tuoi Tre According to Major Huynh Nguyen Thuan, vice-captain of the Fire Prevention and Fighting and Rescue Police Division under the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Pubic Security, the initial cause of the collapse is the overloading of goods on the upper floor. The store stocked goods for Tet [Lunar New Year] and kept them on the upper floor, leading to the collapse, Thuan said. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A convenience store collapsed in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, killing one on Wednesday morning. The accident occurred on Vinh Hoi Street, with witnesses saying the first floor of the convenience store suddenly collapsed, trapping people on the ground floor inside. The Fire Prevention and Fighting and Rescue Police Division said they were informed of the collapse at around 9:00 am. At the time rescue forces arrived, eight people had managed to get out of the collapse while one was still stuck inside. Rescue forces are seen at the scene after a convenience store collapsed on Vinh Hoi Street in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, January 18, 2023. Photo: Minh Hoa / Tuoi Tre At 9:45 am, a seriously injured female victim was brought out unconscious from the wreckage and rushed to the hospital. Dr. Nguyen Duy Long, director of the 115 Emergency Center in Ho Chi Minh City, confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the 15-year-old victim had passed away. At the scene, the victim's heart stopped beating, Long said. Doctors tried to resuscitate her to no avail. "The victim was then taken to District 4 Hospital and later pronounced dead. Rescue forces work to bring victims out after a convenience store collapsed on Vinh Hoi Street in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, January 18, 2023. Photo: Minh Hoa / Tuoi Tre According to Major Huynh Nguyen Thuan, vice-captain of the Fire Prevention and Fighting and Rescue Police Division under the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Pubic Security, the initial cause of the collapse is the overloading of goods on the upper floor. The store stocked goods for Tet [Lunar New Year] and kept them on the upper floor, leading to the collapse, Thuan said. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! In rather brilliant news, the enduring Sally Field will receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award next month. Field, who has two Best Actress Oscars for best actress Norma Rae and Places of the Heart, three Emmys and a SAG Award is the 58th recipient of the guilds highest honour. Sally is an amazing actor with an enormous range and an uncanny ability to embody any character, says Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president. She has an enduring career because she is authentic in her performance and always projects likability and humanity she just connects. Thats part of why she has sustained her massive fandom and incredibly rich and layered career. Sally is a massive star with a working actors ethos just keep doing the work, being as good as you can. Field first captured hearts in Gidget before cementing her stardom in The Flying Nun. She continued to score notable roles in films like Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire, Forrest Gump, Lincoln and will feature in the upcoming 80 for Brady and Spoiler Alert. The 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony will be broadcast live on Netflixs YouTube channel on Monday February 27. Source: Variety LONDON (Reuters) - Empty offices globally should be converted to apartments to address a growing housing crisis in many countries, property executives told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. Commercial real estate values are sliding as an economic downturn reduces demand for space among cost-conscious companies, whose employees have been spending fewer days in the office since the COVID-19 pandemic. But this could present an opportunity to address shortages of homes, property bosses said. "Office buildings need to be converted to residential," said Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of New York-based investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, during a panel discussion. "They will become eyesores and they need to be fixed." Offices are emptier than official data suggests as most buildings are still generating income for landlords. However, as these rental contracts expire, cities like New York will have a significant number of obsolete buildings, said Christian Ulbrich, CEO of global property consultancy JLL Inc.. "So we have to repurpose those buildings in some form or fashion or they will be empty and will be taken down." Millions of workers were forced to work from home during lockdowns aimed at stalling the spread of COVID-19 in 2020. Bosses are now struggling to persuade many of those staff to give up the perks of home-working, Ulbrich added. "You have a middle layer of managers and leaders who enjoy their home in the suburbs and don't want to have to commute, and that obviously creates the issue of younger folk also not coming back," he said. But cities that have lost their Monday-to-Friday buzz could be reinvigorated if public authorities are willing to provide financial support in the conversion of under-utilised offices to homes, since repurposing existing buildings can be very costly, the panellists said. The cost of making developments sustainable was also proving challenging, the panellists added. Story continues "Low income housing can't be green, it's got to be cheap," Lutnick said. "That is a deep conflict everywhere in the world... It's very difficult." Nathalie Palladitcheff, CEO of Canada-based real estate company Ivanhoe Cambridge, said she was optimistic more buildings could be converted sustainably with investment in technology and materials. The best building for the planet is the building that you dont build, she said. (Reporting by Iain Withers, Lawrence White and Lananh Nguyen, Editing by Sinead Cruise and Bernadette Baum) MOSCOW/TBILISI (Reuters) -Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was ready to deploy troops to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border to quell tensions between the two countries, but Yerevan's hardline position had so far prevented it. Tensions have spiralled between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the blockade of the only road giving direct access to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia in recent weeks. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Wednesday with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and the two discussed steps to restart bilateral talks with Azerbaijan, the U.S. State Department said. Lavrov said Russia was still prepared to send a mission to the region within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a Moscow-led military alliance of which Armenia, but not Azerbaijan, is a member. But Yerevan's previous insistence on including condemnations of Azerbaijan's behaviour had stood in the way. "We had difficulties related to the situation in Armenia, when our Armenian friends pushed the need to send a CSTO mission to the border with Azerbaijan to ensure some stability there," Lavrov told a news conference on Wednesday. "We agreed on a document and on the parameters of the mission... but it was not possible to accept it, because Armenia started insisting that the document contain a harsh condemnation of Azerbaijan." Russia is an ally of Armenia, but also strives for good relations with Azerbaijan. The latest stand-off concerns a blockade of the Lachin Corridor linking Armenia to the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but is controlled by its ethnic Armenian majority. It broke away from Baku's control in a war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. In his call with the Armenian prime minister, Blinken "expressed deep concern for the worsening humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting from the blockage of the Lachin corridor," the State Department said. Story continues State Department spokesperson Ned Price said he expected Blinken to speak to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the coming days. Azerbaijanis who say they are environmental activists have blockaded the road for more than a month in what they say is a dispute over illegal Armenian mining. Yerevan says they are government-backed agitators. The impasse is being seen as a test of Russia's ability to calm hostilities in its backyard. Officials in Armenia have grown increasingly angry at Moscow's refusal to use its peacekeeping force in the region to end the blockade, while Moscow has criticised Armenia's attempts to have the European Union broker a settlement. "Despite the fact that we are allies... Armenia prefers to negotiate with the European Union," Lavrov said on Wednesday. He said any EU presence in the region without Baku's consent would be counterproductive. (Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Jake Cordell in Tbilisi and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Deepa Babington) Brendan O'Hagan Ireland News Images Credit: Alamy Ireland international Brendan OHagan has been granted a release from his contract with York so he can return home to Australia. The 24-year-old half-back joined the Knights ahead of the 2021 campaign, scoring 12 tries in 27 appearances. Australia-born OHagan qualifies to represent Ireland through his grandparents. He made his international debut for the Wolfhounds last year, playing in all three of their group games at the World Cup. On leaving York, OHagan said: Its been a long and hard-thought decision. For my personal life at the moment, its the right time to be back home in Australia and a lot closer to my family. Its tough going across the other side of the world without your family around you. Now is the right time for myself and my family to go back and be a lot closer to them. Ive really enjoyed my time here in York but going back home in the off-season to see my family for the first time since moving away, it really made my decision about what I want. Over the last few months, its been tough and Im happy with the decision Ive made. Brendan OHagan reflects on his time at York with fond memories The playmaker helped the Knights secure a spot in the Championship play-offs last season. OHagan added: Ive loved my time here. Its been a beautiful place to live and been such a great club to play for. My time here has been unreal. The fans have been so welcoming and I want to thank the club for bringing me over and the playing group, who are a great bunch of blokes. In the wider community, Ive been taken in with open arms and its made my stay here a lot easier than others could imagine and I want to thank them for that. Its just a shame that its had to come to an end now. The club is moving forward and Im so happy to have been part of the journey. I wish the club nothing but success in the coming years. Im sure that in the next few years, theyll be up in Super League and be a heavy-hitter there too. Story continues York sad to lose key player Knights coach Andrew Henderson said: Its really disappointing because I know what a quality player and person Brendan is. Its disappointing that he doesnt feel like York is the place for him at this time and he wants to return home. I was looking forward to working with him and developing him further as a player and a person and I know he had quality which would have added to this team. But the reality is you cant control how people are thinking and feeling. He felt like, having not been home in a number of years, he really missed being home and asked for a release and Im not going to stand in anyones way. This is just another challenge you face as a head coach and well get through it. Weve got two quality fit half-backs in Liam Harris and Ata Hingano, with Jamie Ellis on the return. Plus weve got Jesse Dee and Matty Marsh who can play in the halves too. Ive got confidence that whoever we choose in the half-back positions will understand our systems, what we need and theyll deliver. As much as Brendan will be sadly missed by the club and his team-mates, well manage to carry on. Brendan OHagan departs with the clubs best wishes York chairman Clint Goodchild said: We are saddened by Brendans departure, not only for his on-field abilities but also for what he has done for the club off the field. As an active member of the community here in York, Brendan has served as a wonderful representative of the club. We are supportive of Brendan as he returns to Australia. I can speak first hand to the difficulties of being away from family for long periods of time. Brendan now has clarity over his future and feels the time is now right to depart. He will forever be welcome in York and we thank him for all he has done for the club. READ NEXT: York Knights confirm squad numbers for 2023 The article Ireland star Brendan OHagan leaves York for Australia return appeared first on Loverugbyleague.com. The state of the UKs social care system has been branded a tragedy by a prominent economist who was the architect of the original plans for a care cap. Sir Andrew Dilnot, who led a review into the future of funding social care under the coalition government and whose proposed and long-awaited reforms of social care were delayed in the autumn statement, said it is a shameful situation. It came as leading public health expert Professor Sir Michael Marmot described the cost-of-living crisis as a humanitarian catastrophe due to the effects it will have on physical and mental health. Sir Andrew accused the Government of having done nothing to address problems in social care and said the most vulnerable people in society are not being looked after properly. Speaking on Tonight With Andrew Marr on LBC radio, he said: The thing that makes me cross is not that they havent implemented my proposals, its that we have people who are amongst the most vulnerable in our society who are not being looked after properly. And we have fabulous people delivering care to them who are under unnecessary and inappropriate pressure. So, the problem is not whether theyve delivered my proposals or anybody elses proposals, they havent done anything. We have an enormous challenge as a society. We have fabulous people willing to deliver the care. And were not looking after either the people who need the care or the people who are delivering it properly and we should be ashamed of ourselves. Reforms including an 86,000 cap on personal care cost contributions and an expanded means test that is more generous than the existing one had been due to come into effect from October 2023. Asked how he felt about the reforms being delayed by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in November, he said: I think its a tragedy. I mean, I think the way that the social care system is in the UK at the moment is a tragedy, and we could do so much better. Story continues And I often hear people saying, oh, its huge amounts of money. Its not huge amounts of money compared to the NHS, and the knock-on effects in terms of misery for families and problems to the NHS are vast. It just astonishes me after 40 years of working in this kind of area that something which seems so obvious could still not have happened. And I, and people like me, have to take some of the blame. Weve clearly not explained it clearly enough. But it is something to be really ashamed of ourselves as a country about. Sir Michael said evidence from September suggested one in six households without children were in food insecurity while one in four households with children were in food insecurity. He told the same programme on LBC: That means missing meals, not eating when youre hungry. That will damage health, living in cold homes, that will damage health, the stress of the struggle to try and make ends meet will damage health. It will damage physical health, and it will damage mental health. So, the cost-of-living crisis is indeed a humanitarian catastrophe. Asked about his choice of words, he referred to the case of two year-old Awaab Ishak, who died after prolonged exposure to mould in his flat, which was maintained by a housing association in Rochdale. He said: I think when a two-year-old boy dies because of mould in his home, what would you call it? This is a preventable tragedy. I dont want to bandy words around and cheapen words. But when a two-year-old boy dies because of mould in his home, this is a tragedy, and its the tip of the iceberg. Ruan Calum Crighton (Instagram) Tributes have been paid to an outstanding ballet dancer who was killed when his plane crashed in Nepal. Ruan Calum Crighton, 34, from Essex, was among 72 people killed in the air disaster near Pokhara airport on Sunday. He had toured Europe as a professional ballet dancer having studied trained at Londons Central School of Ballet before an 11-year career as a dancer first for the Slovakian National Ballet and then the Finnish National Ballet. Rescue teams work to retrieve bodies from the wreckage (REUTERS) Brentwoods Central School of Dance where Mr Crighton received outstanding ballet results as a child revealed their devastation. Its director Hazel Smith told the BBC: We have wonderful fond memories of Ruan in class, assisting and inspiring younger pupils, performing and working backstage, said Ms Smith. Central followed Ruans career, which grew from strength to strength, and we are so totally proud and feel privileged to have known Ruan - to watch him grow into the most wonderful, caring young man. Ms Smith added: Ruan was a dynamic, energetic and engaged student, said Central School of Ballet executive director Mark Osterfield. His passion and talent were enjoyed by international dance audiences. Seventy-two people were on board the Yeti Airlines TR 72 flight from the capital Kathmandu to Pokhara, with the death toll rising to 68 on Sunday. Fifteen foreign nationals were among those on board, according to Nepals aviation authority. It was not clear what caused the crash, Nepals worst air accident in three decades. The flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder have been retrieved from the site. Mr Crighton first joined the Central School of Ballet, London in 2005 before becoming a dancer with the Slovak National Theatre in Slovakia from 2008 to 2013. He then became a valued member at the prestigious Finnish National Opera and Ballet company in Finland from 2013 to 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile. More recently, Mr Crighton had been enrolled at the European School of Physiotherapy in Amsterdam. He was supposed to graduate next year. Story continues One dancer at Slovak National Theatre told the Irish Daily Mail that news of his death deeply upset him. I got the info yesterday, but I was hoping it wasnt him. Ruan was one of my best friends. We dance together on stage for years Im devastated. It is very hard to say something about [him] right now. But first he was a sunshine. Johanna Jarventaus, Communications Director of Finnish National Opera and Ballet, said she was aware of the tragedy. HA NOI Business leaders are calling for increased efforts from government agencies to implement crucial business environment reforms in the coming year. Earlier this month, the Government issued key tasks and solutions to implement the Socio-Economic Development Plan and State budget estimate and improve the business environment and national competitiveness in 2023 under Resolution 01/2023/NQ-CP. As stipulated in the Resolution, before January 20, ministries, sectors and localities must complete the building of programmes, action plans and specific documents. The Ministry of Planning and Investment will report these activities to the Government at the regular Government meeting in January. "Localities and sectors will feel more pressure in implementing all tasks of business environment reform because all actions of carrying out the Resolution 01 are reported regularly to the Government," said Nguyen Minh Thao, head of the Department of Competitiveness and Business Environment under the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM). Resolution 01/2023/NQ-CP continues to emphasise four main tasks on reforming the business environment, most of which were set out in Resolution 02/2022/NQ-CP. They include improving the quality of reform for the list of investment lines and conditional business and proposing the abolition of business conditions that are illegal, unnecessary, unfeasible and specific manners. The State agencies will review the types of practice certificates and the legal documents to simplify administrative procedures. They will reduce import and export goods that require specialised inspection and effectively deploy e-procedures on the National Single Window. Agencies must also review and adjust the inspection plan to ensure there are no duplicates or overlaps to ensure smooth operations. They will improve the quality of services supporting businesses, especially for small and medium enterprises, and promote the implementation of consulting and training solutions on corporate restructuring, finance, human resources, market, risk management and digital transformation for enterprises. Reforming the business environment is a regular task. Thao said that Resolution 02 each year had specific solutions and clear tasks. In the context that Viet Nam's economy faces more difficulties, enterprises must pay attention to the programmes and action plans that localities are completing according to the requirements of Resolution 01, according to Le Duy Binh, director of Economica Vietnam. Viet Nam can not change the difficulties caused by the external environment that affects the economy. However, the nation faces internal problems such as delays in public investment, problems in the bond and stock markets, and difficulties in business. These are problems we can solve, Binh said. Those are the growth drivers of the economy during dealing with challenges from the external environment. Any improvement in the business environment will depend greatly on the specific plans on reforming this environment conducted by ministries, sectors and localities, both in content and speed of implementation, he said. VNS HA NOI The Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a ceremony in Ha Noi on Tuesday to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 that led to the end the war and restoring peace in Vietnam. Politburo members Vo Van Thuong, Tran Thanh Man and Nguyen Trong Nghia all attended the ceremony A special guest was Nguyen Thi Binh, former Vice President, Foreign Minister, and Head of the Delegation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet Nam at the Paris Conference. Also in attendance were current and former leaders of the Party, State and Ministry of Foreign Affairs; family representatives of members of the two negotiating delegations of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam and their families; current and former leaders of foreign affairs agencies participating in the negotiation and implementation of the Paris Peace Accords; international delegates who directly and indirectly helped Viet Nam in the negotiation and signing of the Paris Peace Accords as well as credited historians and experts. On behalf of the Party and State leaders, Permanent Member of the Central Committees Secretariat Vo Van Thuong presented flowers to the members of the negotiating team attending the celebration, including Former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh; Ha ang, former Head of the Central Committee for Culture and Ideology, former Editor-in-Chief of Nhan Dan Newspaper and Communist Magazine, a former member of the negotiating team of the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet Nam; Huynh Van Trinh, a former member of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam negotiating team; Pham Ngac, former interpreter of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam's negotiating team. In his speech, Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son emphasised that independence, self-reliance and integrity are the inherited values throughout Viet Nam's long history. In addition to the defence of national independence and sovereignty, the Vietnamese always focused on diplomatic activities, creating the tradition and identity of Vietnamese diplomacy with great respect for justice. "These are the ideas and philosophies that will last forever with the Vietnamese people," said Son. According to Son, a long journey that started negotiating for Viet Nam's independence after the August Revolution in 1945 to negotiating and signing the Geneva Agreement in 1954 and culminating in the negotiation and signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 realised the aspirations for peace, national independence, national reunification and prosperous development. "The Paris Peace Accords signed half a century ago successfully ended the longest and most complicated negotiation in Viet Nam's diplomatic history and ended the longest war in the 20th century," said Minister Son. This victory has strategic significance since it created a great chance to unite the country with the historic Ho Chi Minh Campaign, ushering in an era of peace, independence, unification and development in Viet Nam. Son added: "Diplomacy has become an offensive front, smoothly combining and ultimately transforming the victory on the political and military fronts into success on the negotiating table, showing brilliant performance. Vietnamese bravery, character and wisdom, imbued with Ho Chi Minh's thought, style and diplomatic art." Looking back at the diplomatic struggle that led to the signing of the Paris Agreement is reviewing a heroic journey in the nation's history, spreading and educating the glorious tradition of Vietnamese diplomacy, according to the Vietnamese diplomat. "Upholding the glorious tradition of Viet Nam's revolutionary diplomacy and the spirit of the Paris Peace Accords, the entire diplomatic branch under the leadership of the Party is determined to build a professional, comprehensive, modern, and close-knit diplomatic service in Viet Nam, contributing to the realisation of the country's aspirations, vision and development goals set out by the 13th Party Congress," said Son. An emotional former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh recalled the memories of the process of participating in the negotiation of the Paris Agreement. She said: "At the end of 1968, I was instructed by the Party to participate in the negotiations in Paris. I am very grateful to the leaders who entrusted me with this great responsibility. For nearly 5 years, I have participated in the negotiations in Paris, fulfilled my duty being one of the four people who signed the Paris Peace Accords. "The Paris Peace Accords was a decisive victory to liberate the South and unify the country, and the end of nearly 20 years of fierce and arduous war of the whole nation," added Binh, who also expressed gratitude to the soldiers and compatriots who sacrificed themselves for the cause of fighting against the US and saving the country. Binh also said that the Paris Peace Accords was a victory in Viet Nam's military, political and diplomatic struggle, and at the same time a victory of the world movement to support and unite with Viet Nam. Ha ang, a member of the negotiating team of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet Nam, pointed out that the Paris Peace Accords put Binh on the level of former US Secretary of State William P. Rogers. That was also a recognition of the United States of the independence and self-reliance of the Vietnamese nation with the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet Nam. Speaking at the ceremony, Helene Luc, Honorary Senator, Honorary President of the France-Viet Nam Friendship Association affirmed that, although 50 years had passed since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, her feelings and joy for Viet Nam were still like in 1973. Luc recalled: "I still clearly remember Minister Xuan Thuy's face and his historic smile, and the somewhat worried but smiling Le uc Tho. I also clearly remember the beautiful face of Mrs Nguyen Thi Binh. They have conquered the hearts of the French people with their courage, perseverance and wisdom." Also at the celebration, the Secretary of the Youth Union of the Diplomatic Academy Nguyen ong Anh, said: "Today's young generation, born and raised in peace, must respect and be proud of our nation's heroic history, the more deeply we are aware of our responsibility, the more we strive to preserve and promote those great revolutionary achievements." VNS HA NOI Viet Nam is on track for economic recovery and sustained impressive growth compared to other nations, Argentinian Ambassador to Viet Nam Luis Pablo Maria Beltramino declared while speaking with Vietnam News Agency. He said the Vietnamese Governments measures and policies directed at development were admirable and deserved to be studied and applied. On the Viet Nam-Argentina relations, Beltramino said a series of activities were on schedule to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic ties (19732023). According to the ambassador, the logo for the event will be used for all of the embassy's diplomatic notes starting January this year, while a plan is in place to invite Argentinian artists to perform in Ha Noi and HCM City. He added that exhibitions and cultural programmes would be held in the countries national libraries and a host of trade promotion activities. The sides would step up delegation exchanges at all levels, he said, suggesting the establishment of the Viet NamArgentina and ArgentinaViet Nam friendship associations. The ambassador said since diplomatic ties were established, there had been a stable increase in trade between the two, particularly in the past 12 years following the upgrade of their relations to a comprehensive partnership in 2010. Bilateral trade grew from US$875 million in 2011 to $4.5 billion in 2021. In the first 11 months of 2022, the figure was $4.52 billion, up 6.9 per cent annually. Currently, Argentina is the third biggest trade partner of Viet Nam in Latin America, while Viet Nam is the largest trade partner of Argentina in Southeast Asia and sixth globally. Beltramino forecasted bilateral trade to increase further and professed his wish to foster relations with Viet Nam. Venezuelan Ambassador hails Viet Nam's incredible recovery Venezuelan Ambassador to Viet Nam Tatiana Pugh Moreno has said she is impressed with Viet Nam's incredible post-pandemic recovery, saying that it is thanks to the strengths brought about by the socialist-oriented market economy. In an interview with Vietnam News Agency on the New Year, Moreno said Viet Nams recovery was evidenced by the impressive economic growth of 8 per cent last year. She wishes to learn from Viet Nams experience in the renewal process, saying that Venezuela was seeking economic restructuring solutions and Viet Nam should share its experience in this field. Viet Nams organisation and development of the economy, as well as the involvement of all economic sectors, were outstanding examples for the world, she said. Moreno said Viet Nams voice in the international arena carried much weight as the country won its seat at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for the 2023-2025 tenure in October 2022. This would help a responsible country like Viet Nam prove its stature by following principles of solidarity and respecting nations' right to self-determination. According to Moreno, the fact that Viet Nam has a legitimate voice in the UNHRC as one of the responsible members of the international community, especially at present, is significant, as the world is experiencing challenging times. Aware of that, the Vietnamese Party and State raised a voice, which was welcomed by the international community. The diplomat said 2022 had marked a special time when Viet Nam and Venezuela resumed the exchange of high-level visits, including visits made by Vice Foreign Minister for Asia, the Middle East and Oceania Capaya Rodriguez and Vice Foreign Minister for North America Carlos Ron. She said that at a photo exhibition held at the Venezuelan Embassy on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of Viet Nam-Venezuela diplomatic ties, there were several photos depicting a meeting between Commander Hugo Chavez and General Vo Nguyen Giap. It was an important meeting between historical figures that motivated the two countries to journey together in the times ahead. She revealed that the two nations would continue pushing cooperation in various areas like oil, gas, and energy. The fourth meeting of the Viet Nam-Venezuela Joint Committee, due to be held in Caracas this year, offered an important opportunity for them to review bilateral coordination and work out measures to elevate bilateral ties further. As Venezuela is one of the worlds major energy suppliers amid the global energy crisis, the ambassador said Venezuela was ready to help Viet Nam in this field, as committed by the late President Hugo Chavez. On the occasion of the Lunar New Year festival, Moreno, on behalf of President Nicolas Maduro and the people of Venezuela, conveyed her best wishes to the Vietnamese. She expressed her delight at enjoying Tet festivities in Ha Noi and Viet Nam, an occasion to gear toward family values and make plans for the new year. It is also an occasion to taste banh chung (glutinous rice cake), and decorate the embassy and private home to ring in the new year. Bright prospects for Viet Nam-Morocco trade ties With its business experience in Africa, Morocco will create conditions for Vietnamese firms to access the Moroccan market and others in the region safely, Ambassador of Morocco Jamale Chouaibi said. Chouaibi stressed that the similarities shared by the two countries would help promote their cooperation and coordination in the future. He continued that the two countries shared geo-political similarities, explaining that Morocco is seen as a gateway to Africa and Europe while Viet Nam is a gateway to Southeast Asia. The ambassador added that both were newly emerging, dynamic economies with stable growth and had been stepping up the policies of diversifying trade partners and human resources. The biggest investor in West Africa and the second largest in Africa, Morocco has a substantial presence in the continent in important spheres such as insurance, banking, energy and telecommunications. Despite the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Viet Nam was also among the countries with the fastest growth in Asia and the world at large, he said, noting the Southeast Asian country's 8 per cent growth in 2022, higher than the set target, which international financial organisations lauded. Viet Nam had also seen marked increases in foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade surplus, the diplomat said. He suggested the two countries join tripartite or quadripartite projects in Africa, particularly in agriculture, with the participation of international donors. Chouaibi held that consolidating the bilateral relations was the common wish of the two countries to promote and foster South-South cooperation. In its strategy, Viet Nam was focusing on expanding and diversifying the network of economic partners, apart from traditional ones in South Africa, he said, noting that East Africa and West Africa would be the next targets of the strategy. Both countries have displayed their strong political will to consolidate and expand the bilateral ties, as reflected through the increasing number of signed agreements covering various fields, from trade and investment to energy-mining, banking, education-training and aviation, along with many memoranda of understanding. According to the diplomat, such documents have helped promote the decentralised cooperation model, which is being rolled out between cities, ports and universities. He said the active development of the relations had also been reflected through the growing trade. Viet Nam is Morocco's second most important partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Moroccos appointment as an honorary consul in HCM City on December 7, 2021, had created a new momentum, generating more trade and business opportunities between the two countries, the ambassador said. He emphasised that establishing a 'twin' relationship between Casablanca, Morocco's industrial and financial centre, and HCM City, Viet Nam's southern metropolis, in the future would create a new impulse for the Viet Nam-Morocco relations. The ambitious plans outlined by the two countries in renewable energy, digital transformation, tourism, agriculture, infrastructure and logistics, industry and technology to become leading emerging economies in the regions would be the opportunities for them to share experience through inter-sectoral committees, he continued. On the occasion of Viet Nams Lunar New Year festival, Chouaibi expressed his hope that the New Year will bring hopes and aspirations for successes and victories, giving new momentum to Vietnamese people on the path of pursuing happiness and prosperity. VNS The Vietnam News Agencys Vietnamplus online newspaper speaks with Ha Kim Ngoc, deputy minister for Foreign Affairs, about the cultural diplomacy achievements of the past year. Could you highlight the cultural diplomacy achievements of Viet Nam last year? After a year of implementing the Strategy on Cultural Diplomacy to 2030, issued by the Prime Minister in November 2021, Viet Nam's cultural diplomacy has achieved markedly results. The country has promoted and deepened relations with other countries through multilateral cultural diplomacy. Last year, we hosted significant regional and international conferences and events, including the 31st SEA Games and the Viet Nam Day Programme in South Korea, Austria and India. Furthermore, promoting deep and wide integration in the fields of culture, science and education was a success at international forums, particularly the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Viet Nam was elected to the Intergovernmental Committee of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage for the 2022-2026 term with the highest number of votes. The first official visit to Viet Nam by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay was a highlight. The world media reported news and images about the country, culture and people of Viet Nam. The UNESCO Director-General said she was impressed with our achievements in the fields of culture, science and education on her page. Last year, we had four heritages and titles recognised by UNESCO, including the art of pottery making of the Cham ethnic people being inscribed on the list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding; the Ma Nhai (Inscriptions) in ancient Nom and Han Chinese characters on the Marble Mountains in a Nang and Han-Nom character documents (1689-1943) in Truong Luu village of Ha Tinh Province being recognised as part of documentary heritage in Asia and the Pacific were recognised as part of documentary heritage in Asia and the Pacific. Cao Lanh City of the Mekong Delta province of ong Thap was added to the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities. Many localities successfully organised big cultural and diplomatic events, enhancing the conservation and promotion of regional heritage and cultural values, arousing national pride and solidarity, attracting investment, tourism and creating resources for sustainable development goals. Cultural diplomacy has contributed to promoting cultural values and the image of the country and people of Viet Nam, especially progressive and beautiful human and world views of Viet Nam through spreading the ideological and character values of President Ho Chi Minh and prominent figures honoured by UNESCO, such as poets Nguyen inh Chieu and Ho Xuan Huong. In addition, the application of science and technology made the Viet Nam Days abroad vivid and effective in conveying domestic and foreign policies and spreading Vietnamese cultural values to the international community. How do these achievements publicize the image of Viet Nam? These achievements show the international community's appreciation for the heritage and cultural values of Viet Nam, making Viet Nam an attractive cultural destination and putting it on the map of cultural and natural heritage and documents of the world. Access to regulations and commitments set out by UNESCO has helped Viet Nam raise the standard of management, conservation and promotion of heritage values, integrating heritage protection in local development strategy planning and striking a balance between conservation and development towards sustainable development. The image of a beautiful and modern Viet Nam with friendly and hospitable people and a unique and diverse culture is more widely known to friends worldwide. What should we do to help raise Viet Nams position in the international arena? In the context that the world situation is complicated and unpredictable, especially since the scientific-technological revolution will create strong and multi-dimensional impacts, countries will increasingly attach importance to the role of cultural diplomacy in promoting the national image and enhancing soft power. For Viet Nam, the Cultural Diplomacy Strategy to 2030 has identified cultural diplomacy through tools in diplomacy contributing to promoting the image of the country, culture and people of Viet Nam to the international community, honouring the intellect, qualities, characters, and ideology of the Vietnamese people. We need to continue to research and innovate to promote our national image, culture and people to the world, integrating cultural promotion activities with trade promotion programmes and building national and local brands so that culture becomes an endogenous force attracting external resources, especially intellectual, technology and investment for socio-economic development. Furthermore, cultural diplomacy activities must be deployed more and more creatively with the smooth coordination of ministries, branches, localities and overseas Vietnamese. Overseas Vietnamese are cultural ambassadors that publicize Vietnamese culture in foreign countries. In the fourth industrial revolution, cultural diplomacy needs to quickly access new knowledge to make the most of resources that serve the country's sustainable development, especially in the fields of cultural industry, creative industry and international cooperation in science and technology and education and training. It is necessary to strengthen the combination of the soft power of culture with the communication strategy to increase the national synergy in which attention should be paid to taking advantage of the strengths of digital products along with the strategy of building a system of high-quality cultural diplomacy products that meet the diverse characteristics and needs of the beneficiaries of international community, especially young people and people at home and abroad. VNS HA NOI Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh affirmed that Viet Nam always viewed the RoK as an important and long-term strategic partner during his meeting with Speaker of the Republic of Korea (RoK)s National Assembly (NA) Kim Jin-pyo in Ha Noi on Tuesday. Both host and guest noted with satisfaction that the two countries relations had been developing unceasingly in all aspects over 30 years since bilateral diplomatic relations were set up. At present, the RoK is ranking first among foreign investors in Viet Nam with total capital reaching US$80.5 billion; second in terms of development cooperation, tourism, and labour; and third in terms of trade with revenue hitting $88 billion in 2022. About 8,000 Korean enterprises are operating in Viet Nam. Meanwhile, some 200,000 citizens of each country are living in the other country, including about 80,000 multicultural families. PM Chinh congratulated the RoK on its national development achievements and thanked the countrys State, NA, and people for their precious, practical, and effective assistance for Viet Nam in the recent past. Congratulating Viet Nam on fast and steady economic growth amid difficulties, Speaker Kim appreciated the Vietnamese Governments attention to the development of the Korean business community. He called on the Government of Viet Nam to support his countrys hosting of World Expo 2023 in Busan; continue facilitating Korean firms operations in Viet Nam; help Korean banks open branches; facilitate RoK citizens' travel, work, and life in Viet Nam; and back the expansion of the RoKs educational establishments in the Southeast Asian nation. PM Chinh has pledged to consider his guests proposals. To achieve the goals of the Viet Nam - RoK comprehensive strategic partnership, he asked Kim and the RoKs parliament to continue promoting substantive, efficient, and effective cooperation; increase all-level delegation exchanges and meetings between the countries Parties, Governments, and NAs; intensify cooperation in security and defence, especially the defence industry; and help Viet Nam improve the capacity of its law enforcement forces at sea. As economic ties remain an important pillar of bilateral cooperation, Chinh asked the two sides to work together to fruitfully implement the Viet Nam - RoK Free Trade Agreement (VKFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to raise bilateral trade to $100 billion in 2023 and $150 billion by 2030 in a balanced and sustainable manner. Viet Nam would welcome Korean enterprises' expansion of investment, especially in high technology, science - technology, innovation, green economy, digital economy, digital transformation, clean energy, smart city, and eco-city development, the PM noted, calling on them to create conditions for Vietnamese businesses to take part in supply chains to help Viet Nam soon become a centre of regional and global value chains. He expressed his hope for the RoKs continuation of ODA cooperation mechanisms and assistance for Vietnamese people in the RoK. He also pledged support for Korean investors and citizens in Viet Nam. At the meeting, PM Chinh also affirmed that Viet Nam always paid attention to and would be ready to actively contribute to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and that it advocated efforts to maintain peace in the Northeast Asian region via dialogue and by peaceful means. For his part, Speaker Kim said the RoK supported and shared the common vision on the safeguarding of security, safety, and freedom of navigation and overflight in the East Sea; the maintenance of peace, stability, and legal order; the peaceful settlement of sea disputes; and the ensuring of countries rights and legitimate interests in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). VNS ACEN and BIM Group, through their respective subsidiaries, recently announced that the companies joint venture development for the 88MW Ninh Thuan wind farm located in South Central Vietnam has received an innovative $107 million financing package from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and parallel lenders to support the plants operations and the partners common goal to aid the country to reach its climate action targets. Leveraging Vietnams strong potential for wind power, ACEN has jointly developed wind projects with its long-time partners in the country, including the BIM Group. Their joint project, the Ninh Thuan Wind farm, commenced operations in September 2021 and is expected to produce 339 gigawatt hours of renewable energy per year that will help avoid 215,000 tonnes of CO 2 emissions annually. ACEN international CEO Patrice Clausse said, This major boost to our wind farms financing from the Asia-Pacific climate bank, ACENs long-standing financing partner ADB, and our other parallel lenders will help catalyse renewable energy capacity by 2030. It sends an important message to the market to scale up climate-resilient investments with sufficient speed to help deliver our respective net-zero goals. Jackie B. Surtani, ADB Private Sector Operations Department's Infrastructure Finance Division director for East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific said, Energy demand in Vietnam has grown rapidly even during the pandemic, and it is crucial that this demand is met through clean energy that will drive sustainable economic growth. This project is a crucial step toward Vietnams resilience and ongoing recovery by further expanding the countrys renewable energy mix and contributing to its net-zero targets. ADB will also grant the Ninh Thuan Wind farm an additional $5 million from the Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg Philanthropies-backed Climate Innovation and Development Fund. The grant will be used for initiatives to mitigate environmental and social risks. With ACENs rapid progress in the development of its projects in Vietnam, the company moves even closer toward its aim to accelerate the energy transition in the region and achieve its bold vision to reach 20GW of renewable capacity by 2030. BIM Group to launch Vietnams largest salt & renewable energy economic zone BIM Wind Farm started commercial operation in Ninh Thuan province on September 30. Developed by BIM Wind, a joint venture between BIM Group and AC Energy from Philippines, it is a final phase of the project that transformed the region into the largest salt production and renewable energy complex in Vietnam covering an area of 2,500 hectares with a total investment of VND12 trillion ($521.74 million). Bim Group and ADB sign $107 million clean energy package The Asian Development Bank (ADB) signed a $107 million financial package with BIM Wind Power JSC, a subsidiary of BIM Group, to support the operation of an 88MW wind farm in Ninh Thuan province on Vietnams southcentral coast. Ho Tuong Vy - Lawyer, Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association As a general rule, an employer is entitled to terminate a labour contract unilaterally with an employee in specific circumstances. A legal basis was, inter alia, incorporated into the Labour Code which came into effect in 2021, permitting an employer to unilaterally terminate the labour contract if an employee arbitrarily leaves or gives up his/her job without justifiable reason for a period of at least five consecutive working days. The justifiable reason in question, pursuant to Article 125.4 of the Labour Code, includes a natural disaster, fire, illness of the employee or his/her relatives as certified by a competent medical establishment, or other circumstances prescribed in the internal labour rules. Diving into the appeal verdict, we figure out the views of the court in terms of lawful evidence provided by an employee if the labour contract is unilaterally terminated under Article 36.1.e of the Labour Code. Briefly speaking, Ms. O (the name was replaced) as the employee entered into a definite-term labour contract in March 2021 with Company K (the name was replaced) located in Commune T. On the petition filed by Ms. O as the plaintiff, the general director of Company K requested her to stop working from July 15, 2021 and to file her letter of resignation to Company K. The company would then pay her the supporting amount of a 45-day wage in return. However, Ms. O rejected such a request. A day later, Ms. O was prevented by security guards from entering the workplace to perform her job. Over the following days, Ms. O issued written requests for support to Company Ks trade union, seeking its assistance in order for her to work at the workplace, with no response. Ms. O then filed conciliation requests with the local department of labour, invalids, and social affairs, and letters to the Confederation of Labour under Commune T. With the availability of the said written requests and official confirmations, Ms. O successfully proved that she did not arbitrarily give up her job without justifiable reason as stated in the notice and decision on unilateral termination of labour contract issued by Company K. Consequently, the company was proven to have carried out an illegal unilateral termination of Ms. Os labour contract. When it comes to unilateral termination in this way, we refer to the applicable law, the guideline, and the appeal verdict to work out some actions if wearing the shoes of the employers and/or employees. On the part of an employer, a couple of actions may be taken. First, an employer may, pursuant to Article 125.4 of the Labour Code and at its discretion, incorporate particular circumstances as justifiable reasons into its internal labour rules with the utmost care and consideration, and then inform employees of the rules for full information and compliance. Secondly, an employer must prove the legitimacy of its unilateral termination of a labour contract. In order to do so, they shall proactively prepare evidence on its employees violation such as violation of minutes, timesheet book, trade union opinions, data stored on its camera, or testimonies of witnesses. As for employees, some actions may be carried out. Firstly, the guideline requires that an employee be responsible for proving that the labour contract was unilaterally terminated; or an employee has actually come to the required workplace if an employer does not admit its unilateral termination of labour contract, and also holds its view that an employee has arbitrarily given up his/her job. We learn from the appeal verdict that lawful evidence as recognised by the Appeal Court includes the employees written requests for support as well as postal notices of delivery issued by the courier. Secondly, an employee shall seek the support of the bailiff in issuance of the latters report which records an employees incidents and communication on his/her absence witnessed by the bailiff as evidence. An employee may, by his/her company email, send notifications to the company emails of his/her line manager, human resources, and trade union representatives informing his/her absence at the workplace and reasons for absence as evidence. All in all, understanding the views and instructions of the court and procuracy, beyond the law, will facilitate employers and employees to apply correct legal bases and prepare lawful evidence in the support of their unilateral termination of labour contract in consistency with the law and for the sake of both parties. Putting workers at the heart of operations with ILR Since last year, some companies have recently carried out the amendment and/or supplement to the internal labour rules, followed by registration with the competent authority in accordance with the Labour Code. There are critical points to these rules that can be looked at from a legal perspective in terms of the practice of Vietnam, with a strong focus on notification. The agreement marked a significant turning point of Merap since its establishment with the vision of becoming a leading healthcare company in Vietnam. The signing ceremony also took place around the 50th anniversary of Japan and Vietnams diplomatic relations. Merap Group and Lion Corporation sign Master Investment Agreement. Dao Xuan Dinh, co-founder and chairman of Merap and Itsuo Hama, chairman of Lion Corporation Specialising in research and development and consumer understanding, Merap Group has an advantage in manufacturing innovative products that are technologically advanced in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Lion Corporation, Meraps strategic partner from Japan, possesses significant strengths in research and development (R&D), global/Japanese standard technologies, high-quality product portfolio with various international brands, global corporate network and a worldwide distribution platform. Under the strategic partnership, Merap Group and Lion Corporation will strategically exchange expertise while embracing the cultures and values of each other. The strategic partnership with Lion is expected to help Merap enhance its quality to the standard of J-GMP (equivalent to EU-GMP quality standard), maximising the efficiency and competitiveness of Merap's healthcare products. The Japanese-quality products of Lion will be gradually reach Vietnamese consumers, leveraging the extensive coverage of Merap's distribution channel. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Merap and Lions representatives Dinh Xuan Dao, chairman of Merap said, "The strategic partnership with Lion Corporation (Japan) via M&A is a demonstration of Merap's relentless efforts to become a leader in Vietnams healthcare sector. This marks the transformation of our business model, which changes from a traditional pharmaceutical company into a healthcare company. We are confident that Lion Corporation will elevate Merap's brand position in domestic and international markets." Founded in 1999, Merap Group is a leading pharmaceutical group in Vietnam with outstanding strengths, possessing a comprehensive control strategy with German standards, pioneering advanced technologies, R&D, and multi-channel omnichannel retail systems. Merap Group commits to accompanying Vietnam's healthcare system and community to bring a healthier future. In terms of human resources, Merap Group always creates conditions for each member to unleash creativity, learn, from experience, and develop in an environment of cohesion and sharing. Lion Corporation was established in October 1891 in Tokyo (Japan). Lion is a corporation specialising in manufacturing and trading in pharmaceuticals, oral care, beauty care, fabric care, and living care, with global brands distributed worldwide such as: Oral care: Systema, Clinica, Kodomo, Nonio Beauty care: Kirei Kirei, Hadakara, SunoHada Fabric care: Top Nanox, Soflan Living care: Mama Lemon, Magica Eye drops: Eyemiru Japans Lion Corporation to acquire 36 per cent of MERAP Japanese consumer goods producer Lion Corporation has announced its move to acquire 36 per cent of the shares in the Vietnam-based MERAP Holding Corporation. RCEP to promote investment inflows from Japan to Vietnam Once the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) comes into effect, it will contribute to promoting trade liberalisation and investment capital inflows from Japan to Vietnam. Japan Desk Thanh Hoa eager to implement investment promotion programme Japan Desk Thanh Hoa, which is managed by the Investment Trade and Tourism Promotion Agency, is eager to cooperate with the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) to organise an investment promotion webinar to connect Japanese investors with the province. The global energy price issue is not resolved yet, but is Vietnam sluggish to alter its energy policy? Energy policy is crucial for all nations, but particularly for Vietnam given its ambitious aim of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. However, under the proposed Power Development Plan VIII (PDP8), it is still planned to import 55 million metric tonnes of coal by 2025 and 95 million metric tonnes by 2030, despite the abundance of alternative power sources in the nation. The PDP8 is now awaiting approval, but policymakers still need to examine the most fundamental aspects, including adequate and steady power, investment efficiency, and ensuring energy security in relation to the environment and national defence. Responsive shift required in Vietnams energy policy. Photo: Le Toan What do you believe will occur when Vietnam retains a significant coal power supply through the PDP8? The PDP8 consists of four volumes and over 830 pages, although the solution for multiple power sources is inadequately sized. Planning is distinct from philosophies and orientations. The planning must be quite detailed concerning technology, energy efficiency, and cost. After 1-2 years of execution, the solutions restricted scope may require a revision of the strategy. Since 2015, the globe has shifted from coal-fired electricity to renewable energy. The government must have a detailed plan to minimise coal-fired power beginning with PDP8, in accordance with the global energy price crisis and the existing regulatory environment in Vietnam. This plan is anticipated to create around 32.5GW of coal power, compared to approximately 20.7GW under PDP8, which corresponds to 14 projects and is very difficult to accomplish in light of increasing global coal prices and limited financial resources for coal-fired power. If these projects are included in PDP8, there is a strong risk that the previous version will be repeated, having a significant impact on power supply reliability and the potential to attract green investment. Is investment in renewable energy in Vietnam constrained by policy? According to the proposed PDP8, the annual investment need for the electricity industry is $12-13 billion per year. Thus, Vietnam needs $320 billion between now and 2045, but its domestic resources can barely cover 20-25 per cent of this demand. Vietnam requires a stable and transparent policy, however, to encourage investors to participate in the development of renewable energy sources. The majority of the states capital is still invested in coal-fired energy and the power infrastructure. The drafts of PDP8 do not include the fact that investments in renewable energy would also raise power rates. In addition, it is inappropriate to give Electricity of Vietnam the responsibility of resolving policy concerns for persons in need of assistance; the government needs another agency for this task. Maintaining coal power generation in PDP8 necessitates an evaluation of the existing investment status in this sector. According to the findings of Ministry of Industry and Trades analysis of coal-fired power projects until the end of September 2022, Vietnam presently operates nearly 40 plants with a combined capacity of 24,674MW. There are now a dozen 13,792MW of coal-fired power projects that have been allocated to investors, are undergoing investment preparation, or are under construction. Remaining projects with a combined capacity of 6,800MW are set for investment, but deploying and organising the money presents challenges, and a couple of investors indicate that they cannot continue to produce coal-fired electricity. Meanwhile, one venture violated the build-operate-transfer contract, while another was unable to borrow funds. Can the deficiencies of present coal power sources exacerbate the possibility of future power shortages? The threat of a power deficit is already present. The north of the country has experienced electrical scarcity during the summer months for the past two years. Numerous investors are interested in Vietnam, a nation with significant solar and wind power potential. Many municipalities have suggested the development of various energy sources. However, there are legislative, planning, and system-wide capacity constraints. As a result of Vietnams high GDP growth objective, which is often around 7 per cent, the countrys energy consumption is soaring, and yet many coal-fired power projects are behind schedule, creating the possibility of a power shortfall. Before its implementation, PDP7 was expected to offer adequate energy to fulfil the countrys development needs. However, during its implementation, it revealed several shortcomings, providing 53 per cent of the total electrical capacity with coal-fired power. This problem must be resolved in PDP8. The growth of renewable energy is in critical need of a policy push, ideally in the form of new legislation on renewable energy in addition to the existing electricity law. The majority of the states capital is still invested in coal-fired energy and power infrastructure. In the meantime, one of the foundations for constructing PDP8 is the Politburos Resolution No.55-NQ/TW on strategic orientations for Vietnams national energy growth to 2030 with a vision to 2045. It emphasises a 40-45 and 48 per cent rise in renewable energy for those respective years. Global Wind Energy Council calls on Vietnam to extend wind tariff and clean energy lead An industry alliance led by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has called on the Vietnamese Government to urgently extend the wind energy Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme. ADB proposes ending funding for coal power plants The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will stop financing new coal power plants, the main source of power supply in developing countries, under a draft energy policy released earlier this week. Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea Kim Jin-pyo (left, first row) and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (right, first row). (Photo: VNA) Hanoi - Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) of the Republic of Korea (RoK) Kim Jin-pyo and his wife left Hanoi on January 18, concluding their seven-day official visit to Vietnam at the invitation of NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue. While in Vietnam, the RoK leader paid tribute to late President Ho Chi Minh at his mausoleum; paid a courtesy call to Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong; met with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh; and held talks with NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue. At these meetings, the Vietnamese leaders said the two countries share a long-standing relationship and many common interests, complementary potential and strengths, and sound growth achievements in the past three decades. There remain potential and large room for the bilateral relations to develop further in the near future, they stressed. The Vietnamese leaders urged the two sides to continue working together for the effective and practical development of the bilateral cooperation, particularly via increasing the exchange of high-level visits and meetings as well as collaboration between their ministries, sectors and localities. They said the two countries should promote progress recorded in their parliamentary cooperation over the past time, and exchange and share experiences in legislation to create favourable conditions for Vietnamese businesses and people living and working in the RoK and vice versa. For his part, Kim lauded the rapid growth of the bilateral relationship, particularly the recent upgrade of the ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and hoped that the two sides will build on the achievements of the bilateral relations in politics, economy, culture, people-to-people exchange, and defence-security. The RoK highly valued Vietnams position in the regions new strategies and initiatives, including the Korea-ASEAN Solidarity Initiative, the Speaker affirmed, pledging to make further contributions to the future growth of the RoK-Vietnam ties. The Vietnamese and Korean leaders agreed to make efforts to lift two-way trade to 100 billion USD in 2023 and 150 billion USD by 2030 by capitalising on their existing bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements. They consented to step up cooperation in the fields of semiconductor, digital transformation, energy security, and just energy transition. The Korean leader also visited the southern economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City, Ninh Binh province and Hai Phong city in the north. In Hanoi, he and Hue cut the ribbon to inaugurate the headquarters of the Vietnam - Korea Institute of Science and Technology, a symbol of sci-tech and innovation cooperation between the countries. FDI inflow from RoK helps Vietnam move up global value chain ladder The strong foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow from the Republic of Korea (RoK) has been giving a significant push to Vietnam in the battle to move up the global value chain ladder and promote sustainable development. Bac Ninh province seeks stronger cooperation with Gumi city of RoK The northern province of Bac Ninh and Gumi city of the Republic of Korea co-held a business forum in Bac Ninh city on October 20, aiming to intensify cooperation between the two localities as well as the two countries. Vietnamese-Korean woman honoured for charity efforts in RoK Nguyen Thi Tam Tinh has been selected by authorities in Seoul to become the first foreigner with Korean citizenship to receive the prestigious Daesang award in recognition of her dedication to charitable activities. RoK - Vietnams largest foreign tourist source Vietnam saw 3.66 million foreign tourist arrivals last year, and those from the Republic of Korea (RoK) accounted for the largest proportion with over 965,000, or 26.4 per cent. The Long An WorldSteel Group building is located in Lots Q9, 10, 15, and 16 of the Hai Son Industrial Park in Long An province and was constructed with steel structure solutions manufactured at the WorldSteel Long An factory. The development of the WorldSteel Group in recent years has led to a growth in human resources and a need for an increase in workspace. Following its people-centric strategy, the board of directors advocated building a large-scale headquarters, not only to expand business activities but also to create a convenient and comfortable environment that would stimulate creativity among its employees. The office building in Long An prioritises the operations team with the goal of responding quickly to activities related to product quality and the needs of domestic and international clients. At the ceremony on January 14, founder, chairman, and general director of the company Nguyen Khanh Lam said the building was set up with open workspaces, green landscaping, parks, and many other relaxation areas. "WorldSteel Group Long An aims to bring all employees peace of mind and happiness in their workplace," Lam said. Nguyen Khanh Lam, founder, chairman and general director of WorldSteel Group. Photo: WorldSteel Group Over the 10 years of its establishment and development, WorldSteel has resonated in the industrial construction industry with many projects across Vietnam. WorldSteel's most prominent projects include being the general contractor of the Tien Giang Tongwei project, the Hai Duong Tongwei project, the Hau Giang Sunpro Steel complex project, the Tay Ninh Brotex yarn factory project Phases 3 and 4, the advanced battery factory complex project invested in by the Singapore GPPD Energy Co. in Binh Phuoc, and many bidding packages for the Dung Quat-Quang Ngai Hoa Phat project. Other key projects include the Long Son petrochemical project's H&I-8 warehouse 2 package and steel structure exports to foreign markets, especially in Southeast Asia (Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar), Australia, and the US. The Board of Directors and some employees of the WorldSteel Group. Photo: WorldSteel Group The company has been awarded the AC472 certificate, a quality management system that is required for steel structure products to be exported to the US market. In 2019, WorldSteel's first office building was built in the Tan Phu District of Ho Chi Minh City. WorldSteel also acts as the general contractor for a series of large industrial construction projects that are exporting steel structures to the international market. Hewitt police arrested a man Sunday who they say broke into a womans home while she was asleep, beat her and raped her. At about 3 a.m. Sunday, Alto Junior Rhodes, 52, of Hewitt, broke into a home in the 100 block of Royal Lane, the residence of a woman who has a protective order against him, according to his arrest affidavits. Rhodes choked the woman, threw her to the floor fracturing her wrist and sexually assaulted her multiple times, the affidavits say. The woman told police Rhodes ordered her to either use methamphetamine with him or perform oral sex on him, before the first sexual assault, then dragged her by her hair into the bedroom and sexually assaulted her again, an affidavit says. The woman eventually convinced Rhodes to leave the residence and sought help once he left, according to an affidavit. Police obtained warrants for Rhodes arrest and at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday went to the 800 block of Majestic Drive to serve the warrants. He led officers on a foot chase and gave a false name when they cornered him near a dumpster, an affidavit says. Police arrested Rhodes on a first-degree felony charge of burglary of a habitation; a second-degree felony charge of sexual assault; third-degree felony charges of retaliation, violation of a protective order and assault family-violence by impeding breathing; and a Class A misdemeanor charge of evading arrest. He remained in McLennan County Jail on Tuesday with bond listed at $185,000. The city of Bellmead is pushing in court for the owner of a former junkyard on Bellmead Drive to finish the cleanup of thousands of tires that started more than a decade ago with state enforcement. The Texas Commission on Environment Quality in May of last year closed its enforcement action against Kelleys Used Auto Parts, 2401 Bellmead Drive, after determining more than 3,000 tires had been removed, leaving an estimated 160 tires on the semi-wooded tract. The city of Bellmead followed up in September with a junk violation complaint filed in its municipal court, seeking a full cleanup by March. City Manager Yost Zakhary said the complaint will ensure that the property owner finishes the job. For the past few years he has continued to a little bit and stop. This time we said, You must complete the cleanup, Zakhary said. Kelleys appears to have closed, and its owner, Loyd Kelley, could not be reached in the past week for comment. For now, the former junkyard and city rights of way that make up unpaved portions of Bethard Street and Hoffman Street, once littered with junk cars and piles of scrap tires holding mosquito-infested water, are largely clear. Toby Monrrial, a longtime Bellmead resident who has advocated for the cleanup for more than 30 years, said the site is almost unrecognizable from its previous state. He said thousands of scrap tires and junk cars were stacked across the property, attracting mosquitoes, flooding and negative attention. Monrrial said at one point there were old cars that had water up to the door handle due to the drainage issues he believed to be perpetuated by the mass of waste. Though there is still work to be done, Monrrial said he is finally satisfied with the progress, and he hopes it will help the city live up to its original name, Belle Meade, French for beautiful meadow. Now, like the seed thats been in the ground, through the years been stomped on, trying to reach the sun finally that seed is poking through the ground and its coming to life, Monrrial said. The site has drawn public attention since at least 1989, when Monrrial complained to the Bellmead City Council about flooding and piles of junk on the site. In July of that year, Monrrial presented the council with a petition for stricter junkyard guidelines with 50 signatures. In 2011, Monrrial filed his first complaint with TCEQ, and in 2012 the agency issued a notice of violation for unlabeled used oil storage, unauthorized disposal of industrial waste, and failure to develop and implement a stormwater pollution prevention plan, among numerous other offenses. TCEQ pressed on through years of inadequate cleanup efforts, and at one point fined the city of Bellmead itself for automotive waste blocking city easements. By the end of 2017, TCEQ reported about 1,300 tires and almost 137 tons of scrap metal had been removed since the original notice of violation, with about 15 cubic yards of waste and 2,500 tires remaining onsite. Kelleys accrued $141,750 in TCEQ fines by the time the case was closed in May. Zakhary, who became interim city manager in 2019 and city manager in 2020, said the junkyard has been on his to-do list for several years, and unlike his predecessors he was willing to take the property owner to court. With stricter code enforcement, Zakhary said his goal is compliance, not to collect fines. Zakhary said the plot on Bellmead Drive is prime commercial real estate, as recognized in the citys newly approved comprehensive plan, and it has attracted interest from real estate developers. However, Zakhary said the city has no interest in owning the property and would prefer private development there. On a visit to the site Tuesday, Monrrial pointed out work that remains to be done, including clearing a thicket of misplaced tires along Hoffman Street between East 22nd and East 23rd streets. It is unclear whose responsibility it is to clean the area. TCEQ recommends two environmental site assessments to prepare the site for future development: one to determine historical use and exposure, and one to examine soil and groundwater sampling. Monrrial said he will continue to push for the city to turn the site into a public park. For now, he said the cleanup is a long-awaited and welcomed step toward the larger goal. We here in Texas, were unlike all the others, Monrrial said. Our dreams are strong and they do come alive sooner or later. Doctors, health experts and anti-smoking advocates of all stripes showed up to a Waco City Council meeting Tuesday to oppose a change allowing new cigar lounges and hookah bars in the city. Despite the opposition, the council unanimously approved the move. The vote lifts a ban on new cigar lounges, hookah lounges and hookah bars that had been in place since 2015. Other provisions of the 2015 anti-smoking ordinance remain, including a ban on smoking at public events and in most public places and businesses, including most restaurants and bars. Since the council approved the partial reversal on the first of two required readings Dec. 20, health advocates have raised the alarm, and local officials have lined up in opposition. The McLennan County Medical Society and American Cancer Society called for the city council to drop the change, and a representative of the American Lung Association spoke in opposition Tuesday, along with Dr. Farley Verner, the McLennan County health authority as designated by the public health district; Dr. Iliana Neumann, chair of the Waco NAACPs health committee; and McLennan County Medical Society Director JoAn Wade. Dr. Bradford Holland, a local throat surgeon and past president of the McLennan County Medical Society, spoke during Tuesdays meeting and said he and others are disappointed by the outcome. Having them go back on a decision that was a good decision eight years ago and adopting an outdated, erroneous and dangerous policy will put us out of sync with public health, and really where we should be headed, Holland said. The change approved Tuesday includes a requirement that the newly allowed smoking establishments either be in standalone buildings or have a ventilation system that exhausts their air outside. In a press release before the meeting, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network for Texas announced it opposes changing the ordinance because secondhand smoke will always pose a danger, regardless of what ventilation system a business uses. Smoke-free laws should protect every person who clocks into work, dines at a local restaurant or bar, or visits any establishment, the press release says. Ventilation systems do not protect anyone from the carcinogens found in second-hand smoke. Everyone should have the right to breathe clean, smoke-free air. Clay Sawyer, a retired psychiatrist, spoke during the meeting and said secondhand smoke from a business could spread to anybody with a common roof. Other speakers said the ventilation system requirements could give people a false sense of security, exposing them to secondhand smoke without them realizing it. We tried it once before in 2001 and got rid of it in 2015. It doesnt work, Sawyer said of the ventilation system requirements. Smoke truly knows no boundaries. Charlie Gagen, director of advocacy for the American Lung Association, spoke in opposition to the change. He cited the danger secondhand smoke poses and said flavored hookah tobacco, called shisha, is a common way for teenagers to start smoking. 80% of youth, teenagers who smoke this, said they liked hookah because they comes in flavors I like, Gagen said. 15- to 20-year-old kids whove never smoked cigarettes but have tried hookah were more likely to start smoking cigarettes and become regular cigarette smokers. Charlotte Carpenter said changing the ordinance would undo strides the council has made toward improving quality of life in Waco. For a forward-looking city thats done so well, I hope I can continue to live here a little it longer, Carpenter said. Sherry Williams, who was director of the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District in 2015 and retired in 2019, said she remembers the arduous discussions that led up to the 2015 ordinance passing. I understand that some people will choose to continue to smoke and use hookah devices, and that is their choice, Williams said. My concern, as many other health care professionals, is for families, workers and customers who may be unwillingly exposed to the smoke and multi-unit buildings even if a separate ventilation system is used. Council Member Jim Holmes said he tried to beef up the requirements for the ventilation systems by making the wording clearer. By considering this ordinance, were not condoning the use of tobacco products, Holmes said. James Gray, government relations director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network for Texas, said the councils decision is a step backward. The purpose of the original ordinance was to limit the number of places where people are exposed to secondhand smoke, to help those who are trying to quit, and to prevent future generations from starting, Gray said. This ordinance is a step backward to keeping our community clean, safe and healthy. The ordinance defines cigar lounges and hookah lounges as generating at least half their revenue from the sale of cigars or shisha for on-site consumption. The lounges are not allowed to sell alcohol but are allowed to sell food and nonalcoholic drinks. The ordinance defines hookah bars as generating at least 60% of revenue from alcohol sales for on-site consumption and at least 30% of revenue from the sale of shisha for on-site consumption. Shisha revenue can include the sale of accessories for smoking shisha but not accessories for smoking other types of tobacco. The ordinance does not refer to cigar bars. The changes approved Tuesday also increase the minimum age for entering a cigar or hookah lounge from 18 to 21, in line with a 2019 state law that changed the minimum smoking age to 21. ASHLAND Five years after a group of tenants and the owner of a local mobile home park fought to keep the residential neighborhood open when the local school district sought to purchase the property for school expansion plans the owner has sold the trailer court and residents must be out by summer. Brandon and Susan Parmer sold El Rancho Mobile Home Park at 2102 Furnas Street in Ashland to an investment company called Ashland Development, LLC. Two days later, a letter was drafted to residents of the trailer court, which has been a part of the Ashland landscape for decades. The tenants of the 32 units making up El Rancho were notified that the property had been sold and they have been told that they will need to be moved out by the end of July, according to Jovan Lausterer, attorney for Ashland Development. The plan is to have the trailer park converted to bare ground by August, Lausterer said. On Monday, Lausterer told The Ashland Gazette that Ashland Development is an investment holding group that purchased the property from the Parmers. It was formed solely to purchase the property on a temporary basis to get it ready for development, he added. According to information on the Saunders County Assessors website, the 5-acre property sold for $800,000 on Jan. 3, 2023. The property was valued by the assessors office the prior year at $264,343. Brandon Parmer purchased the property from the founder of the mobile home park his grandmother, Marjorie Strode in 2002 for $250,000. In late 2018, representatives from the Ashland-Greenwood Public School District approached the Parmers about purchasing the property. The school board was working on a bond issue to build new facilities for the growing school district and felt the mobile home park site was the location that makes most sense for the district, Superintendent Jason Libal said at the time. On Dec. 18, 2018, a public hearing was held regarding the possible purchase. That is when about a dozen residents pleaded with the board to save their homes and Brandon Parmer revealed that he had rejected the school districts offer for the property, commenting that the price was not fair market value. After the public hearing, Susan Parmer asked, What happens to the families? A month later, another contingent of 30 El Rancho residents crowded the board room to attend the next school board meeting. About 12 residents told board members of the challenges they would face if they were evicted. The school board continued negotiations with the Parmers and considered using eminent domain to obtain the property, but ultimately decided against it a few months later. Later, 50 acres north of the middle school/high school was later acquired through eminent domain for the $60 million bond issue to build two new school facilities. The first Ashland-Greenwood Primary School opened to PreK-2 students on Jan. 5. The new middle school with a competition gym and a performing arts center is expected to be completed later this year. With new school construction and the Ice House Ridge residential/commercial development surrounding the mobile home park, the property was prime for development. That is why Ashland Development reached out to the Parmers to make an offer on the property, Lausterer said. Its an optimal location for alternative use, but that use is yet to be determined, he added. Lausterer said it the property was not listed for sale, but Ashland Development solicited the sale by contacting the Parmers after researching the property last fall. The intent is to have the property shovel ready for development by August, and to turn it over to a new owner to proceed with whatever is the future of the soon-to-be former mobile home park. My clients interest is to simply get the property converted to basically open development space, Lausterer said. Lausterer said representatives of Ashland Development have spoken to City Administrator Jessica Quady and Building Official Bill Krejci to inform them of the sale. They also discussed the need for affordable housing in the community, even with the mobile home park in the mix. The property is zoned R3 high density residential. But the future of the property is up to the next owner, whoever that may be, Lausterer said. In the meantime, Ashland Development has hired John Sutton to manage the property and help the tenants find somewhere to live. Sutton also manages Wahoo Mobile Home Park in Wahoo and has contacts with owners and managers of other trailer courts in the area. Sutton also works with companies that buy and sell mobile homes. He potentially could provide some assistance there, Lausterer said. Some of the mobile homes may not be able to be moved to another location, due to age or structural problems. Lausterer said they have contacted demolition companies to possibly raze the trailers that cant be moved, with Ashland Development picking up the bill. Rather than requiring tenants to incur that cost, he added. A plan for relocation assistance is also being considered, but no details were available, Lausterer said. Ashland Development obtained the required permits from the state to operate the mobile home park until all of the tenants are relocated, the lawyer added. As for the identity of the investors in Ashland Development, Lausterer said the company was formed so the investors could become temporary owners of the property in order to transition it to another meaningful purpose. Lausterers name as attorney is the only one that appears on the certificate of organization from the Nebraska Secretary of State dated Aug. 12, 2022. ASHLAND The opportunity to buy good quality, stylish clothing in Ashland increased dramatically with the opening of a small store. Lighthouse Boutique opened in downtown Ashland last November, right before the holiday shopping season began. Owners Brittany Behrens and Kaitlin Lawson, along with their husbands, Chase Behrens and Ethan Lawson, joined forces to open the boutique at 1411 Silver Street. The long, narrow building holds a wide variety of clothing and accessories for women, men and children, along with unique Husker and Bluejay gear custom-made for their store. Along the exposed brick walls, there are displays of what Lawson and Behrens describe as contemporary womens clothing, along with high-end mens apparel and a wide variety of childrens clothes. They also have beach towels and other lake accessories. Our overall vibe is more every day, classic staple pieces, unique but not fancy special occasion items, Behrens said. We wanted to offer something you cant get in Target or someplace bigger, Lawson added. Behrens and Lawson both moved to the Iron Horse subdivision on the outskirts of Ashland at roughly the same time, about five years ago. They were seeking a small town atmosphere where they could raise their kids and be close to the states largest cities. Although they live on opposite ends of the neighborhood, they became friends. Between the two families, they have six kids ranging in age from 10 years to 11 months. Lawsons four are 7, 5, 2 and 11 months, while the Behrens kids are 10 and 7. Behrens and her husband had a crazy idea to open a shop, and pondered who would make the perfect business partners. They didnt have to go far to find the Lawsons. Kaitlin and Ethan were at the very, very top of our list and we threw out this crazy idea and they said, Lets do it, Behrens said. Behrens said they saw a need in Ashland for a clothing boutique. I just thought it would be nice to have somewhere for people to be able to stop and shop as opposed to having to run to the outlet or run to Lincoln or run to Omaha, Behrens said. Finding a location in Ashland was a challenge, as there is rarely a vacant commercial space. When the former Edward Jones building changed ownership, Behrens and Lawson had to quickly jump on the opportunity. We had three or four weeks to make the final decision, Behrens remembered. The building had been renovated by the previous owner, so there wasnt much work to be done, aside from a little painting and installing some new flooring, Behrens said. Once the location was secured, Behrens and Lawson set about finding inventory. In October they went to Dallas Market Center, where vendors and manufacturers show off their products. We purchased pretty much the entire store, Lawson said. But before they went shopping, Lawson did her homework, researching brands, labels and quality before heading to Dallas. Although they each have their own personal style, Behrens and Lawson share some of the same taste in clothing and accessories. Our eye is similar so we gravitate toward the same things, Behrens said. Their sense of style also resonates with customers, who kept the shop busy since it opened Nov. 5. Although it could be due to the Christmas shopping season or because they were the new kid on the block, Behrens and Lawson want to keep the momentum going. Were hopeful we can continue to offer unique styles and fun things and attract more customers from surrounding towns and cities, because Ashland is attracting people from Omaha and Lincoln all the time, Lawson said. The new business owners have benefited from other local entrepreneurs who are happy to share their experiences. They have joined the Ashland Area Chamber of Commerce and have turned to Ashley Welch, owner of multiple Ashland businesses including Salt Creek Mercantile and Fariner Bakery, as well as Postscript owner Laura Capp. Theyve been so welcoming, Behrens said. The boutique owners also appreciate the fact that local businesses enjoy promoting each other. Were all on the same team here, Lawson said. In their first few months, the partners have settled into their roles. Its crucial for all of us to have our own individual roles in this, Lawson said. Behrens is the business guru, Lawson said. An attorney, Behrens established the business licensing and created the business plan. Lawsons input is on the creative end. I do the design work when it comes to the overall aesthetic, she said. They have assigned roles for their husbands as well. Ethan Lawson is the tech guy, installing the security and point-of-sale systems for the store, while Chase Behrens is the handyman who put in the new flooring and is there whenever a light needs to be hung or shelf needs to be built. All four fulfill their roles while they are also working full-time elsewhere. Behrens is the in-house lawyer for First National Bank of Omaha. This is my midnight/4 a.m. job, Behrens said. Lawson is a stay-at-home mom to her four littles who squeezes time in at the boutique while her husband is with the kids. Its a team effort, she said. They have 12 employees on staff all part-time. Many are local high school students with busy schedules that Lawson and Behrens are happy to work around. They encourage the teens to work at the store, even if its just one day a week. Its a fun side gig for them, Lawson said. Behrens and Lawson also encourage their customers to be honest with their assessment of the boutique. Thats one of the nice things about being in a small community, said Behrens. You have a lot of good relationships across the community, and people here have been really open to give us feedback so weve been able to grow and pivot a lot faster. Through feedback, they have improved areas of inefficiency at the cash wrap and added small touches like coat racks in the changing rooms. They are still learning to use social media for marketing and to monitor fashion trends. Because everyone is on some form of social media and thats how a lot of people hear about us, Lawson said. Overall, the pair have gained a lot of experience in the short time theyve been in business. I feel like Ive learned so much about establishing a business, how to manage our employees, importing inventory and just the management of the inventory itself, Lawson said. The New York Times has uncovered documents that provide new information about the internal deliberations of FTX's senior management just before the cryptocurrency exchange's collapse in November. Executives at FTX knew that regulatory supervision was inadequate and that the defunct cryptocurrency exchange lacked corporate management. A senior executive voiced a nagging fear at a meeting with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried a few weeks before the exchange's demise. The executive had only later discovered that the cryptocurrency trading business that Mr. Bankman-Fried had also formed, Alameda Research, had borrowed nearly $13 billion from FTX. Alameda was in a bind: the company had recently announced that it had incurred a loss of around $5 billion, and it looked that this loss included money that clients of FTX had put with the exchange for the purpose of safety. According to records describing the interaction acquired by The New York Times, Mr. Bankman-Fried recognized that there was an issue when he was contacted about it. According to the documents, Mr. Bankman-Fried informed the coworker that the "situation was giving him worry" and preventing him from being as productive as possible. According to documentation detailing the interaction The New York Times acquired, Mr. Bankman-Fried recognized an issue when he was questioned about it. According to the records, Mr. Bankman-Fried told his coworker that he was "concerned" about the situation and was affecting his work. The story provides a new context for the closing days of FTX, when the company's senior executives began to panic, as is reported in confidential emails between the governments of the United States and the Bahamas. The exchange collapsed in November when a rush of deposits dried up, leaving a huge hole in the company's finances and prompting it to declare bankruptcy. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, was charged with fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance offenses by federal authorities in Manhattan last month. Subscribe 100% Free to Wall Street Rebel.com and receive access to investment tools worth $17,500! The authorities allege that Mr. Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars worth of client cash from FTX and used those assets to make political donations, support trading at Alameda, and purchase luxurious real estate in the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered. On December 12th, Bahamian police took Mr. Bankman-Fried into custody, and he was subsequently extradited to the United States. The government records that the New York Times was able to get illustrate how the United States officials explained the situation to the Bahamians as they advocated for Mr. Bankman-detention. Fried's In addition, the records provide a comprehensive picture of the conversations that took place between officials from FTX and Alameda about the usage of client cash by the exchange. Although some aspects of those talks have been reported in public charging papers, other elements have not been made public up to this point. There is just a mention of Mr. Bankman-Fried in the materials; none of the other executives are mentioned. However, two of them are identified as high-level software engineers who worked on FTX's code. One of these top-level programmers met with Mr. Bankman-Fried to go through the financial arrangements with the customers. Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, who helped build FTX alongside Mr. Bankman-Fried, have been recognized by the police as two FTX executives who worked on the coding for the exchange. These individuals have been identified in public charging papers. The second individual discussed in the correspondence is not identified, but they refer to them as a high-level figure at Alameda. This is most likely a reference to Caroline Ellison, who once served as Alameda's chief executive officer. Fraud charges have been brought against Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang, who have entered guilty pleas and agreed to assist with the prosecution. Mr. Singh has not been given any charges at this time. Mr. Wang and Mr. Singh's attorneys refused to comment. Ms. Ellison's attorney did not reply to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the office of the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is handling the criminal investigation into FTX, also refused to comment. The government communications occurred at a very early period of the investigation against Mr. Bankman-Fried, before Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang pled guilty, and it is likely that prosecutors' knowledge of some case aspects has altered since then. In 2020, one of the FTX software programmers designated as CC-1 ran a query in a corporate database and noticed that Alameda had "approximately hundreds of millions of dollars" in negative balance on the exchange. According to the documents, the evidence prompted CC-1 to determine that Alameda used FTX.com customer funds improperly. According to the documents, the executive discussed the issue with Mr. Bankman-Fried, who replied that "it was fine" since the money Alameda had borrowed was backed by FTT, a cryptocurrency produced by FTX. This data is derived from the documents. According to the records, at about the same time, FTX was being audited. The high-level Alameda executive asked Mr. Bankman-Fried if the auditors would raise any issues about Alameda's usage of client cash during the audit. According to the records, Bankman Fried answered that auditors normally do not focus on such concerns. The situation in Alameda has been giving people increasing cause for concern since approximately September of last year. According to the records, Mr. Bankman-Fried reportedly broached the subject of liquidating the company after it suffered a loss of around $5 billion not long ago. According to the records, at around that time, one of the software developers, who was identified only as CC-1, revealed to the second software developer, who was identified only as CC-2, that Alameda had borrowed nearly $13 billion from FTX. According to the records, CC-2 was "alarmed" that FTX looked to have lost client funds and met with Mr. Bankman-Fried to voice this worry. "Bankman-Fried stated that the scenario was giving him worry, leading him to be '5-10 percent less productive,'" according to the records. "Bankman-Fried noted that the problem may be rectified if more capital was obtained and the price of cryptocurrencies increased." However, the situation did not improve. Beginning in November, the run-on deposits precipitated FTX's rapid slide. According to the records, the executive designated as CC-1 performed early estimates suggesting that "FTX would be able to service all client withdrawals." "Bankman-Fried then suggested to CC-1, in essence, and in part, that CC-1 had missed a second, concealed account containing an $8 billion debt owing by Alameda to FTX.com." Subscribe 100% Free to Wall Street Rebel.com and receive access to investment tools worth $17,500! In their correspondence, U.S. officials informed the Bahamas that Mr. Bankman-Fried posed a flight risk. "Prosecutors have cause to think that Bankman-Fried would depart the Bahamas and attempt to destroy evidence if he learned he was under investigation by U.S. officials, potentially facing criminal charges." Mr. Bankman-Fried "personally gained billions of dollars from his involvement in the criminal conspiracy," according to the United States, and "has the means and may soon have the incentive to leave the Bahamas." The day after his arrest, Mr. Bankman-Fried appeared in court in the Bahamas, where he was refused bail and sent to the infamous Fox Hill jail. But even as the U.S. authorities argued behind the scenes that Mr. Bankman-Fried posed a flight risk, U.S. prosecutors bargained with his attorneys to enable him to post a bond in the U.S. Mr. Bankman-legal Fried's team has maintained that his choice to remain in the Bahamas even as his firm went bankrupt in November demonstrates that he never meant to depart. Mr. Bankman-Fried consented to extradition in late December and was promptly freed under tight terms requiring him to stay confined to his parent's residence in Palo Alto, California. The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Nicolas Roos, said in court that Mr. Bankman-wealth Fried's had "substantially decreased" and that his family and community connections helped support a bail package. This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried returned shortly to New York to enter a not-guilty plea. He has begun assembling a comprehensive defense from his boyhood home near the Stanford University campus. Last Monday, he stated on the internet site Substack, "I did not steal money, and I surely did not hide billions of dollars." Nearly all of my assets were and continue to be used to support FTX clients. He also maintained that the American subsidiary of FTX, FTX US, was solvent and should be able to reimburse its clients. It is absurd that FTX US consumers have not yet been fully whole and their cash returned, he said. Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned from his position as CEO of FTX after the business declared bankruptcy. During a hearing last week, one of the company's attorneys said that the new leadership had recovered more than $5 billion in cash and crypto assets since the filing. The FTX Disaster is Deeper Than you Think Corn production in 2022 dropped in Iowa but rose in Illinois with the drought west of the Mississippi being blamed for a drop in total U.S. corn production. Soybean production was down in both Iowa and Illinois as well as nationally. Nationally, U.S. corn growers produced approximately 13.730 billion bushels of corn for 2022, down from 15.074 billion bushels in 2021. Iowa farmers produced 2.48 billion bushels of corn, down from 2.54 billion bushels in 2021, while Illinois farmers produced 2.27 billion bushels of corn, up from 2.2 billion bushels in 2021, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Taylor Ridge, Illinois, farmer Tom Mueller said, Illinois had better weather than Iowa. There were times when some parts of the central, western and southern portions of Illinois got very dry, he said, but they got some timely rains that really helped them avert disaster. Mueller said he had a very respectable corn crop. However, it could have been higher. Usually in June he adds a little nitrogen to the corp. However: I couldnt get the fertilizer, and even if I could have it would likely have been prohibitively expensive. That probably cost me about 30 bushels an acre. Scott County farmer Robb Ewoldt said his corn crop this year was the best weve ever grown. Last year was the biggest corn crop weve ever grown, and we bested that this year by 20 bushels an acre, he said. It was big. Ewoldt said the overall drop in corn production nationally likely was due to drought conditions. In Iowa, however, the drop in the state corn production likely occurred south of Des Moines, and that was because the crops were used as feed for cattle, he said. Its tough to farm down there anyway, Ewoldt said. I know some folks who chopped more acres for feed for cows. Because of the drought, they had to find the feed for the cattle somewhere. So if Iowa did lose acres, it likely was in the southern part where they used the corn to feed the cattle and get them through the drought. Still, the further west one got, the harder the drought became. Nebraska, produced approximately 1.455 billion bushels in 2022, but that was down from 1.855 billion bushels in 2021. But corn production dropped in many states. Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, South Dakota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania all saw lower numbers. Corn production rose in Minnesota from 1.39 billion bushels in 2021 to 1.46 billion bushels in 2022. Nationally, soybean production dropped from 4.45 billion bushels in 2021 to 4.27 billion bushels in 2022. Iowa farmers produced about 587 million bushels in 2022, down from 632 million bushels in 2021. Illinois farmers produced 677 million bushels in 2022, down from 683 million bushels in 2021. Still, Mueller said this years soybean crop was the best Ive ever had. They didnt need that extra shot of fertilizer, and the weather was very good for them. I got them planted early, and thats proven to be the thing to do. Ewoldt said his soybean crop, was the biggest average crop weve ever had. We bested last years crop by about 3 bushels an acre. I know we are blessed in this area, Ewoldt said. The drought in the east-central portion of the state was not that bad. As of Jan. 10, the U.S. Drought Monitor is showing that Scott, Clinton, Jackson, Jones and Dubuque counties in Iowa are all free from drought, as are Rock Island and Mercer counties in Illinois. Corn and soybean futures remain strong. Corn for March delivery settled Friday at $6.75 per bushel on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, up 4 cents a bushel. Soybeans for January delivery settled Friday at $15.38 per bushel, up 8 cents. Most valuable crops grown in Iowa Most valuable crops grown in Iowa #4. Oats #3. Hay & haylage #2. Soybeans #1. Corn Five years after lawmakers denied much of the $100 million that Iowa State University sought for a new Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory which underpins Iowa's $32.5 billion animal agriculture industry and aids in animal health emergencies, like the bird flu Gov. Kim Reynolds committed another $40 million Tuesday to the new lab. That money for the project which campus administrators broke into two phases after the Legislature in 2018 approved only $63.5 million of the request will come from Iowa's cut of the federal American Rescue Plan Act, which Reynolds opposed in 2021. In addition to the $40 million in federal pandemic aid, Reynolds said her proposed 2024 state budget includes pulling another $20 million from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund, which would bring the state's total support for the second phase to $60 million. ISU had asked lawmakers to appropriate $62.5 million toward the $66.5 million second phase, with the university and donors contributing the balance. Combined with the first phase's $75 million cost, which included the state's $63.5 million contribution, both phases combine for a $141.5 million total. Phase 1 of a new Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Iowa State University in Ames is underway. A second phase, expanding the lab toward the left of the illustration, received a $40 million boost Tuesday from Gov. Kim Reynolds, who devoted federal pandemic money to the project. (Illustration from Iowa Board of Regents) ISU's original vision was a $124 million, 150,000-square-foot stand-alone lab, made possible by $100 million in state support. Should lawmakers approve the governor's budget proposal, the state's total contribution to the full project will reach $123.5 million or $83.5 million, excluding the $40 million ARPA contribution announced Tuesday. "The Veterinary Diagnostic Lab is absolutely critical to support and protect our state and country's agriculture industry and food supply," Reynolds said in a statement. "This investment will significantly expand the VDL's capacity to support Iowa's $32.5 billion animal agriculture industry and will keep this nationally-recognized lab on the forefront of cutting-edge technology." Without the upgrades, the aging state lab that generates tens of million in revenue annually could have lost accreditation. "The space and structural limitations of this aging facility combined with the rapid growth of the laboratory will, in the opinion of this site team, limit the laboratory's ability to adequately respond to a large scale foreign animal disease outbreak," the American Association of Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory Diagnosticians reported in 2017, when it earned reaccreditation. Then-Interim Dean of the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine Pat Halbur in 2018 told lawmakers he was "very confident we won't get accredited again" without the new lab. "We were very fortunate to make it through this time," Halbur said. "We're doing what we can to hold this together." ISU's $62.5 million appropriations ask for the state's phase II contributions spread the money over four years. Reynolds' budget splits her proposed $20 million in state support in half with $10 million in 2024 and $10 million in 2025. "We are deeply grateful to Governor Reynolds for allocating these critical resources to construct phase 2 of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory," ISU President Wendy Wintersteen said in a statement. "This funding will help ensure the VDL can continue to provide cutting-edge services and support to Iowa's livestock and poultry producers." The ISU-based lab is accredited by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians and provides diagnostic services for animal species including necropsy, bacteriology, serology, histopathology, virology, parasitology, molecular diagnostics and toxicology. ISU in 2018 reported the lab in a typical year generates nearly $32 million in revenue for the state spiking to more than $100 million during animal health emergencies, like bird flu. Its faculty and staff have swelled from 11 faculty members and 20 staff in 1976 to about 25 faculty and 140 staff today working to process more than 115,000 diagnostic case submissions and more than 1.5 million diagnostic assays annually for livestock and poultry producers and pet owners and for wildlife. "Over the past 44 years, the limited footprint of the VDL has not kept pace with the growth in caseload and diagnostic medicine teaching needs," according to Board of Regents documents in September spelling out ISU's request. "New areas of disease and expertise have emerged, the breadth of diagnostic services provided to the livestock and poultry industries, wildlife, and pets has expanded substantially, opportunities to assist with providing testing to support public health (e.g. COVID-19 testing) have evolved, and staffing has grown to meet client expectations associated with accessible, timely, accurate, valid and consistent test results." Iowa State has accommodated that growth "in an ad hoc manner." "There is a co-mingling of public and private, clean and dirty, noisy and quiet, public and secure functions," according to board documents. "Biosafety and biocontainment are compromised due to poor control of airflow, poor layout and non-optimal workflow patterns." The second phase of the new lab project will move all programs under one roof, including laboratory testing and research space. "The Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory is enormously important to Iowa's nation-leading livestock industry and provides immeasurable expertise on worldwide animal health and food safety issues," Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said in a statement. "Our close partnership with the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab has been essential in implementing our response to the highly pathogenic bird flu outbreak and we rely on their team's recommendations as we enhance our preparedness for other foreign animal disease threats." Counties with the shortest life expectancy in Iowa Counties with the shortest life expectancy in Iowa #48. Page County #48. Scott County #48. Jackson County #45. Calhoun County #45. Chickasaw County #45. Iowa County #43. Franklin County #43. Polk County #42. Louisa County #38. Taylor County #38. Mahaska County #38. Cherokee County #38. Adair County #36. Davis County #36. Butler County #35. Decatur County #34. Fayette County #32. Audubon County #32. Muscatine County #26. Des Moines County #26. Fremont County #26. Cerro Gordo County #26. Black Hawk County #26. Hamilton County #26. Allamakee County #25. Wayne County #22. Clinton County #22. Lucas County #22. Pocahontas County #20. Palo Alto County #20. Ringgold County #16. Appanoose County #16. Pottawattamie County #16. Monroe County #16. O'Brien County #15. Van Buren County #14. Emmet County #12. Tama County #12. Marshall County #11. Webster County #10. Woodbury County #9. Ida County #8. Union County #7. Clarke County #6. Lee County #5. Harrison County #4. Cass County #3. Wapello County #2. Monona County #1. Montgomery County HAVRE, Mont. The Big Bud 16V-747, the worlds largest tractor with 1,100 horsepower, is parked outside the Big Equipment Co. building in Havre. Only one 747 was ever built, but from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, some 500 Big Buds were built. Many of those Big Buds are still being repaired at Big Equipment Co., so they can still be counted on to work on farms today. But many farmers have wondered, would Big Buds would ever be built again? The answer is yes. Ron Harmon, owner of Big Equipment Co. LLC and the builder of the Big Bud 747, said he will be displaying designs of the new Big Bud tractors at an industry show this week. We at Big Equipment, along with our partners, Rome Industries in Cedartown, Ga., are going to be building the first new Big Bud tractor since 1991, Harmon said. Rome Industries, a builder of agriculture and construction equipment, has been well known as a leader in setting rugged quality standards for large tillage equipment for more than 80 years. Big Equipment Co. has led the agriculture industry in rebuilding and custom-building older tractors for farmers, many of them Big Buds. Without computerized systems, these tractors worked the fields, pulled drills, and seeded acres of farmland for decades after they were manufactured. The two partners had previously agreed to begin building new Big Bud tractors before a fire on Christmas Eve 2017 destroyed Big Equipments large shop. After the devastating fire, Harmon needed to focus on rebuilding right away, and his employees never missed a paycheck. When our shop burned down, it destroyed all of our parts, all of our records, and everything that wasnt digitalized was gone, he said. But I knew we needed to take care of our customers some we have had since 1969. We have a lot of customers, of course, regionally, but also nationally and a little bit internationally. When Harmon rebuilt, he separated the dealer and office portion of business from the rest of the business where custom tractors and rebuilt tractors were worked on. Today, Big Equipment is fully back, and the new building has the Big Bud 747 parked out front. Anyone passing by cant miss it. Its highly skilled staff custom builds and rebuilds non-computerized tractors for farmers, and they have a large parts department. They also service and upgrade tractors. Big Equipment Co. is also a Versatile dealer and sells used equipment, as well. Here at Big Equipment, we build big equipment for farms. We custom-build tractors and rebuild tractors that keep ordinary farmers in business, the kind of tractors people liked to buy 30 years ago, Harmon said. Brand new Big Bud tractors The new Big Buds that Big Equipment Co. and Rome Industries will be building for farmers and contractors will have a 1.5-inch steel frame, stronger than any tractor on the market. The frame is built first and the components slide in, not the other way around. Farm machinery manufacturers often plan what axels they would use in a new tractor, as well as what engine, transmission, and other components. The last thing they do is build a frame around those particular selected components. After they build that tractor, they only test it for 2,400 hours a year, a limited amount of time before producing it, Harmon said. By the time a tractor has 10,000 hours on it, most tractors today are considered on their last legs in the ag industry. When Harmon built the Big Bud 747, he was told the tractor should weigh a hundred pounds per horsepower, so you might as well build the weight into it, he said, noting that the 747 has approximately 20,000 hours on it, and it is still very usable today. In building the minimum basic weight into the tractor when we make it, it gives us more options to build it better, he added. They are using the Big Bud 747 as inspiration for the new Big Buds, but the new Big Buds will go beyond that. At present, the 747 has LSW 1400 tires that are approximately 50 inches wide on 46-inch wheels that are mounted on the same axles found in a mining industrys loader 85,000-pound Clark axels. The new Big Buds will have those mining industry truck components. The new Big Bud is going to have a Cat (Caterpillar) engine, Cat transmission, Cat axle, and we are going to use the heaviest axles used in the farm industry ever, including heavier than the 747. They are axles out of a 688K loader. Just the base unit will weigh between 170,000 and 200,000 pounds, so were using really heavy components, Harmon explained. Rome Industries wants to build Big Buds for the same reasons Harmon at Big Equipment does. Rome is involved for the same reasons I am involved were going to finally go back and build an ag tractor with parts available worldwide, because if you take an 18-liter Cat engine today, there are a lot of suppliers that make parts for that 18-liter engine, he said. The control systems used by Caterpillar are accessible to everyone, not just the manufacturers and dealers like it is presently. Who else is doing that in the ag industry? Absolutely nobody. Harmon wants farmers to have tractors with the same type of powerful transmissions and other components that the mining industry uses in its big machinery. He had visited mines and learned the mining trucks might be decades old, but they were built with hardy components that kept the trucks running. When I built the 747 for a farmer in California, I used components that were brand new and never seen before in the ag industry, he said. But these components were already old hat in the mining industry. As a result, these new Big Buds will have sturdy components and a strong frame to last a long time. Were using old technology in the mining industry, but its going to be brand new for the ag industry, he said. Harmon found the components he used in the Big Bud 747 from the components in the mining trucks. Im going to buy a 16v92 engine and a twin 2610 transmission and 85,000-pound Clark axles because I dont have to be a rocket scientist nor an engineer to know that theyre going to work just fine for many thousands of hours, he said. These were all the components that are in these mining trucks that keep lasting forever, so were going to take the same components and put them in a tractor and its going to last forever because all the components are readily rebuildable. Harmon also wants to spread the weight of the tractor, which can be upwards of 70,000 pounds, from the back to the front of the tractor, distributing it evenly. It works like an equalizer trailer hitch, and this will primarily be for scrapers and construction. Most tractors have the weight just in the back. Its something that weve been aware of for a long time but have never really been put on a tractor. But we want to put it on our new Big Buds, Harmon said. The new Big Buds will have about 640-750 horsepower, but they can be custom built to any horsepower. In the future, we hope to have tracks or tires as an option, he said. Easy access to repair Harmon believes that farmers should be able to repair their own tractors themselves and be able to access the tractors components easily to take to the repair shop if they need to. To get a transmission out or to work on a new tractor today, you really have to crane the cab away and you have to take the front end off to work on the tractor, Harmon said. You dont have to do that on a Big Bud. The cab folds back. The Christmas Eve fire in 2017 did not keep Big Equipment Co. down. They knew they had to continue serving faithful customers, and they are still working hard for farmers. When Harmon decided to go into the tractor business many years ago, he went over his philosophy about what he wanted to do for his customer/farmers. I remember how the tractors were built they were built to be rebuildable, and they were built to last an awfully long time. So my thought was, I want to go in the rebuild business of Big Buds. And Ive been doing that ever since, he said. So now, Big Equipment Co. primarily rebuilds Big Buds. Sometimes we put different engines in. For the most part, we just rebuild whats there, and we made that a fairly successful business over the many years, he said. Harmon became a Versatile dealer because they were the only ones left to build a standard component tractor. I think the end of the story is the beginning of a brand-new story here, he said. The story is Big Equipment Co. and Rome Industries will be fulfilling some farmers dreams. They will be building some very special Big Buds that will offer components that no other tractors do today, and they will last a long time. With the new Big Bud tractors, farmers that need a heavy machine with strong mining industry components will be able to own one of the big white tractors for themselves. And that is a pretty big new story. One-third of food produced in the US goes to wastehere's how that impacts the environment How food waste impacts the environment Most food is wasted when it reaches consumers The annual environmental footprint of food loss and waste per person adds up 90% of food wasted in the supply chain is edible The US far outpaces other countries when it comes to food waste Fruits and vegetables make up the largest share of food loss and waste globally Climate activist Greta Thunberg has been detained by German police at a protest over the expansion of a coal mine. Find out more about today's trending topics here. CEDAR FALLS For those wanting a say in the citys projects and initiatives during the next several years, Tuesday was the night to make their voices heard. The City Council voted down an earlier version of the planning document 4-3 on Jan. 3 for the first time in decades or possibly the history of Cedar Falls. Since then, councilors have met individually with administration officials and returned to a packed chambers Tuesday with proposals for modifications to the capital improvements program. After about two and a half hours on the subject, the council reached consensus on certain changes and voted 6-1 in favor of a workable document to move forward with planning for more than $400 million worth of estimated costs for 211 possible projects that will be considered in fiscal years 2023 to 2028. Councilor Dave Sires dissented because of a disagreement with the citys spending priorities, not the document as a whole. They debated the merits of suggestions, pitched additional ideas, and heard from numerous stakeholders. That included many supporters of a school swimming facility as well as Mark Nook, University of Northern Iowa president; Jim Brown, former mayor and now Cedar Falls Economic Development Corporation executive director; Kim Bear, Community Main Street executive director; Mike Mallaro, VGM Group chief executive officer; and Rosemary Beach, former Cedar Falls Historical Society executive director. In working through the document, officials shaved off close to $1 million in commitments for general obligation bonding and about $500,000 in general revenues with expectations that will slightly reduce the impact on the property tax rate over the next five years. To help reach those figures, they put into action a last minute suggestion by councilor Simon Harding to take advantage of $300,000 of surplus left over from the fiscal year that ended June 30 and designate it for use on capital projects. The night began with pushing back $100,000 in tax increment financing proceeds for a future feasibility study on a possible downtown parking structure. Originally scheduled for the current fiscal year, its now not expected to happen until 2024. Until that study is completed, the councilors favored moving the other $20.4 million dedicated over fiscal years 2024-2026 for the costs of land acquisition, design and construction for the ramp to the unmet needs list. In other words, the endeavor is in the pipeline without dedicated funding because the study is expected to determine how the city should proceed. Some in the room, including councilors Kelly Dunn and Gil Schultz, worried the move would create the perception that the ramp may never be built and could be forgotten. Originally, the university asked for $3-$5 million toward $50 million in significant renovations to the UNI-Dome. As part of another decision that night, the council ended up cutting $500,000 in economic development funding off the original ask, bringing its contribution down to $2.5 million over fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Councilor Dustin Ganfield suggested even reducing the overall contribution down to $2 million but didnt receive enough support. Councilors chose to reallocate the $500,000 originally for UNI to reduce the commitment in general obligation bonds as part of the $8 million contribution for the Cedar Falls Community School Districts $21 million swimming facility at its future high school campus on West 27th Street. $500,000 in general obligation bonds were replaced in fiscal year 2024, and $200,000 in bonds still remained earmarked for the citys contribution toward the swimming project. Thats when Harding suggested using $200,000 of the $300,000 in surplus left over, or what will be billed in the program as general fund savings. The $100,000 difference, as suggested by councilor Susan deBuhr, will replace most of the $110,000 in general obligation bonding that had been earmarked for an expansion of the pickleball courts at Orchard Hill Park in fiscal year 2024. Nearly half of the estimated $400,000 cost is expected to be covered by fundraising. Additionally, $191,000 in general obligation bonds was removed from fiscal years 2025 and 2026 for an application for a Destination Iowa state grant for bridge lighting, a tiny portion of the larger request for millions of dollars in partnership with the city of Waterloo. That came after finding out the lighting was not a qualified expense. The $500,000 in general revenues was removed from the estimated cost for zoning code updates with Harding concerned about possibly not having enough to make significant changes. That could happen if councilors decide to move on from months and months of back and forth over significant code changes impacting downtown. After that $500,000 subtraction, what remained was $75,000 for both fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Broken down further, $50,000 would go toward a comprehensive plan update and $25,000 for zoning. Another $25,000 was left for those initiatives in each of the fiscal years 2026, 2027 and 2028. Originally, $150,000 was allocated for each year for zoning and the comprehensive plan. A final noteworthy change was moving $392,040 for the replacement of self-contained breathing apparatus for firefighters from fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2027. As a result, $98,010 in general obligation bonding was delayed two years because public safety officials determined the equipment could be purchased later. Even though the capital improvements plan was adopted, the council could go back and revisit items as it goes about crafting its fiscal year 2024 budget and evaluating the proposed property tax rate prior to the March 31 state deadline. Close Volunteers for the morning shift ready to start packing for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank at the UNI-Dome on Monday morning. Young volunteers wait to to get started at Pack the Dome. Chiquita Loveless, director of diversity, inclusion and social justice at UNI, volunteers for Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson packs food for the annual Pack the Dome event at UNI. Megan Gleason and her daughter Sylvia pack food at the UNI-Dome. Volunteers fill bags of food for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank during Pack the Dome on Monday morning. KWWL-TV sports reporter and viral sensation Mark Woodley greets volunteers at Pack the Dome at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. The UNI swim team unloads boxes of food for volunteers to bag as part of Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Athletes from the UNI wrestling team unpack boxes in preparation for Pack the Dome. UNI student athletes are ready to go to work during the Pack the Dome event for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. Pack the Dome 2023 Volunteers for the morning shift ready to start packing for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank at the UNI-Dome on Monday morning. Young volunteers wait to to get started at Pack the Dome. Chiquita Loveless, director of diversity, inclusion and social justice at UNI, volunteers for Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson packs food for the annual Pack the Dome event at UNI. Megan Gleason and her daughter Sylvia pack food at the UNI-Dome. Volunteers fill bags of food for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank during Pack the Dome on Monday morning. KWWL-TV sports reporter and viral sensation Mark Woodley greets volunteers at Pack the Dome at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. The UNI swim team unloads boxes of food for volunteers to bag as part of Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Athletes from the UNI wrestling team unpack boxes in preparation for Pack the Dome. UNI student athletes are ready to go to work during the Pack the Dome event for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. WATERLOO Fireworks fans will have to follow new restrictions in Waterloo this summer. The City Council unanimously passed a new fireworks ordinance Tuesday without discussion. Councilors suspended the rules to approve the ordinance a second and third time, as well, putting it into effect immediately. The ordinance now allows fireworks to be set off from noon to 11 p.m. only July 4. The council can designate additional days of usage in a particular year if those dates are adopted between Jan. 1 and March 1. Previously, fireworks could be exploded within the city on July 3, 4 and 5. The council also approved a cost-share agreement with Gearhart Moore Holdings, LLC for Terracon Consultants, Inc. to perform testing in the former Rath Administration Building at 1515 Sycamore St.. The amount is not to exceed $16,000 and the city will reimburse Gearhart Moore Holdings for 50% of the actual cost. Community Planning and Development Director Noel Anderson said the testing would be for ground-penetrating radar to look at the foundation of the building to make sure it is structurally sound for redevelopment. Anderson said Gearhart Moore Holdings, of Denver, Colorado, is made up of two men who went to West High School and want to revamp the building into a potential residential complex. Additionally, a development agreement was approved with Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity and The 415 Walnut Collective. The groups will rehabilitate a portion of Walnut Baptist Church at 415 Walnut St. to create three residential units. Habitat for Humanity acquired the church in 2019 and is working to reclaim it. This is phase one of the project. The agreement would allow for an infill incentive of $5,000 to be paid out for each unit once they are completed. In other business, the council approved: A consolidated public safety communications 28E agreement with Black Hawk County and surrounding cities to coordinate the professional dispatching of public safety services in the county. A U.S. Department of Justice, Northern and Middle States Rural Law Enforcement Training and Technical Assistance Grant, in the amount of $68,000. A professional services agreement with AECOM Technical Services, Inc. for a traffic impact study located at Ansborough Avenue and U.S. Highway 20 for the South Waterloo Business Park in an amount not to exceed $126,000. Rezoning of approximately 0.32 acres north of the former Kmart building on University Avenue to make way for a new storage facility. A request to construct a new 7,407 square foot dentist office located east of 4020 Bankers Blvd. Photos: Martin Luther King Jr. Banquet 2023 011523jr-mlk-banquet-1 011523jr-mlk-banquet-4 011523jr-mlk-banquet-3 011523jr-mlk-banquet-2 011523jr-mlk-banquet-6 011523jr-mlk-banquet-5 011523jr-mlk-banquet-7 011523jr-mlk-banquet-9 011523jr-mlk-banquet-8 011523jr-mlk-banquet-10 WATERLOO Waterloo residents now have a new choice in internet providers. Metronet, based in Indiana, recently completed construction in the neighborhood around Crossroads Mall. All other areas of Waterloo from the airport south to near Lost Island Waterpark, and the Katoski Greenbelt to the edge of Elk Run Heights will be under construction soon. Craig Zimmerman, Metronets government affairs manager, said the company looks for areas that are served by only a few providers. We identify cities that have a need for bringing a new fiber optic provider service to the community to attract and retain businesses and residents, he said in a phone interview. Waterloo fit that model for us. As service becomes available throughout Waterloo, residents using Metronet can choose from a variety of speeds up to two gigabits. Businesses can access speeds up to 10 gigabits. Upload and download speeds would be identical to each other. Zimmerman said the company doesnt wait for the entire city to be built out before people can use its services. Construction happens neighborhood by neighborhood, usually 200 to 400 residences at a time. Construction began in the fall and will continue to build for about two years. Waterloo residents will see Metronet workers digging and burying cable on the easements of their properties. Those affected will receive notices of construction 30 days in advance, Zimmerman said. Flags will also be placed and Metronet trucks and employees may be around the area. Initial construction will cost $20 million to $50 million, paid for by the company. We do this fully funded by Metronet, Zimmerman said. We dont have requirements from federal, state or city funding, and it helps the city welcome us in. Waterloo allowed Metronet to offer service in the city but is still working on its own municipal broadband. In September referendum, Waterloo residents approved issuing $20 million in general obligation bonds to fund the citys fiber network. The goal is to offer all buildings and homes across Waterloo municipal service. Pricing options for Metronet vary based on bandwidth packages. For 100 megabits, it is around $50 per month. The monthly cost is about $70 for 500 megabits, about $90 for one gigabyte, and $120 for two gigabytes. Unlimited fiber phone is roughly $20 per month. Exact rates for a specific address can be found by visiting the companys website at shop.metronet.com. Metronet also is bringing job to the area. There will be employees in the plant, installers and construction workers, and sales employees, Zimmerman said. Those in Waterloo can sign up for installation by visiting metronet.com or calling (888) 225-3864. Close Volunteers for the morning shift ready to start packing for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank at the UNI-Dome on Monday morning. Young volunteers wait to to get started at Pack the Dome. Chiquita Loveless, director of diversity, inclusion and social justice at UNI, volunteers for Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson packs food for the annual Pack the Dome event at UNI. Megan Gleason and her daughter Sylvia pack food at the UNI-Dome. Volunteers fill bags of food for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank during Pack the Dome on Monday morning. KWWL-TV sports reporter and viral sensation Mark Woodley greets volunteers at Pack the Dome at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. The UNI swim team unloads boxes of food for volunteers to bag as part of Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Athletes from the UNI wrestling team unpack boxes in preparation for Pack the Dome. UNI student athletes are ready to go to work during the Pack the Dome event for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. Pack the Dome 2023 Volunteers for the morning shift ready to start packing for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank at the UNI-Dome on Monday morning. Young volunteers wait to to get started at Pack the Dome. Chiquita Loveless, director of diversity, inclusion and social justice at UNI, volunteers for Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson packs food for the annual Pack the Dome event at UNI. Megan Gleason and her daughter Sylvia pack food at the UNI-Dome. Volunteers fill bags of food for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank during Pack the Dome on Monday morning. KWWL-TV sports reporter and viral sensation Mark Woodley greets volunteers at Pack the Dome at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. The UNI swim team unloads boxes of food for volunteers to bag as part of Pack the Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Athletes from the UNI wrestling team unpack boxes in preparation for Pack the Dome. UNI student athletes are ready to go to work during the Pack the Dome event for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. WATERLOO An organization created to address career development challenges faced by Cedar Valley residents has hired an executive director. Joy Briscoe has been named to lead One Cedar Valley as it unveils a new website, onecedarvalley.com. A community-wide meet and greet is planned at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at Singlespeed Brewing Co. in Waterloo to share more about its mission and goals. Joy brings the expertise, skills, community resources, and connections needed to launch us into the next phase by helping those with barriers find meaningful employment, the organizations board said in news release. All of the work the past four years by the board and others who have made great contributions is now coming to fruition. The 12-member board includes officials from community agencies and Cedar Valley businesses as well as the president of Hawkeye Community College and the mayors of Waterloo and Cedar Falls. One Cedar Valleys mission is to assist individuals and employers in eliminating barriers that keep people from achieving meaningful employment. The organization works with employers while focusing on removing systemic inequities with comprehensive approaches and partnerships. During the past three years, the organization hosted multiple clinics and workforce development fireside chats along with creating a one-of-a-kind digital resource. In addition, it secured a diversity, equity and inclusion consulting contract with the Black Hawk County Sheriffs Department and Cedar Falls Utilities. I consider it an honor to be working with individuals who are passionate about expanding equity in the career development ecosystem by creating a more economically vibrant community, Briscoe said in the release. Having a board who is willing to do the work, commit the resources, and address systemic barriers, is all an Executive Director can desire. Im excited to work with our partners, stakeholders, and community members, while continuing to make a strong impact with programming that leads to true transformation. The 2017 Courier 20 Under 40 Award recipient was pivotal on the leadership team of Nikole Hannah Jones 1619 Freedom School Literacy Center. Briscoe assisted with the founding of a customized reading program to reduce the achievement gap in the Waterloo Community Schools. Previously, she worked as the executive director of 24/7 BLAC and at the Waterloo Career Center. She assisted in launching the employer apprenticeship and internship program at the career center and secured funding for the next phase of Teach Waterloo, a grow-your-own educators program. Briscoe founded Shipht Youth, working with Life Labs to bring more than 500 students to the University of Northern Iowa to meet national and local industry leaders, according to the release. She also played a key role in launching the Ignite pre-apprenticeship manufacturing program in collaboration with Hawkeye Community College, the career center, John Deere, and other industry stakeholders. Briscoe was also Iowas first diversity recruiter in K-12 education, working for the Cedar Rapids School District. Prior to that, she worked as the marketing and development director for the YWCA of Black Hawk County.Learn more about One Cedar Valley online at www.onecedarvalley.com. Photos: Martin Luther King Jr. Banquet 2023 011523jr-mlk-banquet-1 011523jr-mlk-banquet-4 011523jr-mlk-banquet-3 011523jr-mlk-banquet-2 011523jr-mlk-banquet-6 011523jr-mlk-banquet-5 011523jr-mlk-banquet-7 011523jr-mlk-banquet-9 011523jr-mlk-banquet-8 011523jr-mlk-banquet-10 WASHINGTON Move out of the way, TV dinners, and get ready for avocado toast. Baby boomers, or those born from 1946 to 1964, no longer make up the majority of Congress. While still clinging to the top generational spot, boomers make up only a plurality of the newly convened 118th Congress, according to a CQ Roll Call analysis of lawmakers birthdays. Around 48.5 percent of the representatives, senators and delegates come from the baby boom generation. Helping to dislodge the boomers are gains made by Generation X, who account for 35.6 percent of members in the 118th. Millennials have jumped to about 10.2 percent. But boomers arent going away, according to Kevin Munger, a political science professor at Penn State University. They hold outsize power in American politics, and he doesnt see that changing anytime soon. Weve gone from considerably lower life expectancy to a higher life and health expectancy in a single generation. It does mean that we are currently at a period thats kind of maximum gerontocracy, Munger said. Only 30 members of the Silent Generation, individuals born before the end of the Second World War, are part of the current Congress. That number has declined from nearly 7 percent of the previous Congress to 5.6 percent now. The Silent Generation is also losing its clout in leadership. The longtime Democratic triumvirate of Nancy Pelosi, Steny H. Hoyer and James E. Clyburn did not seek top leadership posts in the House, clearing the way for a new era. And in the Senate, longtime Appropriations stalwarts Patrick J. Leahy and Richard C. Shelby both retired. For the first time ever, lawmakers have a member of Gen Z in their ranks with the arrival of 25-year-old Florida Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost. Its just exciting to be part of a new cadre and a new changing of the guard, he said. Generational tension As the 118th Congress gets to work, it does so with members born from 1933 to 1997. That wide range of ages may cause some friction across the board, according to Casey Burgat, director of the legislative affairs program at George Washington University. When you get people with different experiences, whether from backgrounds or just simply time, youre going to have those tensions in representation about whats important and how best to respond, Burgat said. Citizens must be 30 years old to serve in the Senate and 25 to serve in the House, as stated in the Constitution. But while all millennials are now old enough to qualify for the House, they are underrepresented there. Millennials are about 22 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for a little under 12 percent of the House. That matters, both Munger and Burgat said. Younger lawmakers might emphasize policy issues that resonate with their generation, like home ownership, student debt relief and climate change. Gen Zer Frost came to Congress informed in part by his gun control activism. What does retirement even mean for us? I mean, for real, what does it mean? said millennial Lauren Underwood, an Illinois Democrat starting her third term. We certainly have a different perspective where were not all confident that we will achieve more than our parents, or even parity with our parents. Millennials Katie Britt of Alabama and J.D. Vance of Ohio won their races this cycle, joining Jon Ossoff of Georgia in the Senate. The generation gained an even bigger foothold in the House, with a total of 52 members born from 1981 to 1996, including new additions like Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. Barriers to entering politics, like wealth and stability, still remain for younger candidates. But they have a couple of advantages too, Burgat said. Those with social media skills have successfully nationalized their brands to shake up traditions on Capitol Hill. Florida millennial Matt Gaetz, who has 2 million Twitter followers and hosts a podcast, joined with a band of fellow Republicans to make life difficult for now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the earliest moments of the new Congress. And as for previous years, Burgat points to New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs ability to extract concessions from party leaders. You can kind of skip to the front of the line with a national brand, he said. She was a player in negotiating whether Speaker Pelosi got the gavel back, and thats why the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis effectively happened. Generation X Hawaiis Brian Schatz was born in 1972, and he calls himself young for the Senate. He used to think bringing younger generations to Congress would be a panacea for all of Americas problems. He doesnt think that anymore. Ive seen almost no correlation between the age of the member and the quality of their service, he says. Another Gen Xer had a different take. Rep. Ro Khanna said he couldnt help but feel a sense of pride as he saw Jeffries, born in 1970, rise through the caucus and claim the spot of House minority leader. We grew up in a time cheering for Rocky at a time celebrating the American promise, said Khanna, a California Democrat. Gen X often gets a bad rap as Americas forgotten generation, but as more of them come to Congress, they just might buck the stereotype. I wonder whether our generation can help restore that sense of hope about the country and sense of finding a common purpose, Khanna said. Photos: Scenes from historic speaker vote of 118th Congress COLUMBUS, Ohio Ohio's restrictive new election law significantly shortens the window for mailed ballots to be received despite no evidence that the extended timeline has led to fraud or any other problems and that change is angering active-duty members of the military and their families because of its potential to disenfranchise them. The pace of ballot counting after Election Day has become a target of conservatives egged on by former President Donald Trump. He has promoted a false narrative since losing the 2020 election that fluctuating results as late-arriving mail-in ballots are tallied is a sign of fraud. Republican lawmakers said during debate on the Ohio legislation that even if Trump's claims aren't true, the skepticism they have caused among conservatives about the accuracy of election results justifies imposing new limits. The new law reduces the number of days for county election boards to include mailed ballots in their tallies from 10 days after Election Day to four. Critics say that could lead more ballots from Ohio's military voters to miss the deadline and get tossed. This issue isn't confined to Ohio. Three other states narrowed their post-election windows for accepting mail ballots last session, according to data from the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. Similar moves pushed by Republican lawmakers are being proposed or discussed this year in Wisconsin, New Jersey, California and other states. Ohio's tightened window for receiving mailed ballots is likely to affect just several hundred of the thousands of military and overseas ballots received in any election. Critics say any number is too great. What kind of society do we call ourselves if we are disenfranchising people from the rights that they are over there protecting? said Willis Gordon, a Navy veteran and veterans affairs chair of the Ohio NAACPs executive committee. Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, who championed the tightened ballot deadline, said Ohio's previous window was an extreme outlier nationally. She said Ohio's military and overseas voters still have ample time under the new law. While there is certainly more work to do, this new law drastically enhances Ohios election security and improves the integrity of our elections, which my constituents and citizens across the state have demanded," she said. Republicans claims that Ohio needs to clamp down in the name of election integrity run counter to GOP officials' glowing assessments of the state's current system. Ohio reported a near-perfect tally of its 2020 presidential election results, for example, and fraud referrals represent a tiny fraction of the ballots cast. Board of elections data shows that in the states most populous county, which includes the capital city of Columbus, 242 absentee ballots from military and overseas voters were received after Election Day last November. Of that, nearly 40% arrived more than four days later and would have been rejected had the new law been in effect. In 2020, a federal survey administered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that Ohio rejected just 1% of the 21,600 ballots cast by overseas and military voters with the 10-day time frame in place. That compared with 2.1% nationally, a figure attributed mostly to voters missing state ballot deadlines. All states are required to transmit ballots to registered overseas and military voters at least 45 days before an election, or as soon as possible if the request comes in after that date. Former state Rep. Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran who leads the Ohio Democratic Partys outreach to veterans and military families, rejects arguments that the relatively small number of affected ballots is worth the trade-off. These guys and gals stationed overseas, living in the sandbox or wherever they are, doing their jobs, putting themselves in harms way, youre making it harder for them to participate, said Pillich, who led an unsuccessful effort to have GOP Gov. Mike DeWine veto the bill. I can tell you everyone I've talked to is livid and upset, she said. Those familiar with submitting military ballots said applying for, receiving and filling out a mailed ballot requires extra time for those who are deployed. Postal schedules, sudden calls to duty, even extra time needed to consult family back home about the candidates and issues are factors. Ohios new law also sets a new deadline five days earlier for voters to request a mailed ballot, a move supporters say will help voters meet the tightened return deadline. Neither the Ohio Association of Election Officials nor the state's elections chief, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, asked lawmakers to shrink the existing 10-day window for receiving mailed ballots. Aaron Ockerman, a lobbyist for the election officials' group, said the seven-day post-election window called for in an early version of the legislation was a compromise that county election directors decided they could live with. They felt the vast, vast majority of the ballots have arrived within eight days, he said. The group opposed making the window any shorter, on grounds that voters including those in the military would be disenfranchised. VoteCast: Explore voter attitudes in 5 charts from the 2022 midterm elections Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later. Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag.Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later. Brian Walshe killed and dismembered his wife Ana Walshe, a prosecutor said earlier today. Plus, the mother and son mauled by a polar bear have been identified, and more of today's trending news. VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. Staff Sgt. Kelton Millhouse steadied an office chair for his wife, Tech Sgt. Tameka Millhouse, who held her pregnant belly with one hand as she eased into the seat. The couples 3-year-old son, Kelton Trey Millhouse III, rolled a toy car across a conference table at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. The dual Air Force family is due to welcome a second child on March 30. The couples introduction to parenthood was burdened by three- and six-week time constraints, which made recovery from birth, adjusting to having a new baby, and finding child care before returning to work that much harder. But this time will be different. The Department of Defense released guidelines Jan. 4 to expand the military parental leave program, giving uniformed parents 12 weeks to welcome additions to their families. It did away with the distinction between primary and secondary caregivers. According to the new policy, active-duty birth mothers are authorized to take 12 weeks of parental leave following six weeks of convalescent leave, while the non-birth parent is eligible for 12 weeks of parental leave. Uniformed parents welcoming adopted or long-term foster children also are authorized for 12 weeks of leave. The three months now offered to non-birth parents is a departure from the scant three weeks given under the previous policy. And it doubles the leave granted to active-duty birth mothers. The extra time will allow time to establish a routine, get into our roles, and when I go back to work, it will be a better and smoother transition because we had time to recover and figure out what our new baby and our family need, Kelton said. Following the birth of Trey, Tameka said, Kelton was considered a secondary caregiver, despite him acting as primary caregiver for most of his three-week leave while Tameka recovered from medical complications. (The new policy) shows our leaders are listening to us, Tameka said. The traditional roles in the home have changed dads are much more hands-on now. They take care of the baby, too. The policy, mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022, is being implemented amid a year of recruitment and retention struggles across all military branches, as reported by The Associated Press in October, which raises questions about how commands will juggle 12-week vacancies with adequately staffing operations. When asked, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, indicated the additional 12 weeks of leave may have a positive impact on the readiness of the armed forces. During my travels over the past year to different military installations, I have seen firsthand that family readiness is tied to military readiness. And as the parent of young boys, I know that expanding the Military Parental Leave policy is the right thing to do to allow our Service members to bond with their children at one of the most critical moments of their lives, Cisneros said in a statement to The Virginian-Pilot. And area commands said they anticipate the leave improving overall retention rates. It will present challenges for our staffing at times, but nothing that we cant overcome with advance planning, training, and ingenuity. At the end of the day, taking care of our people is the key to operational success. ... Building strong and stable Coast Guard families (mothers and fathers) from the start is a key ingredient to long-term service readiness in support of our nation, said Capt. Jennifer Stockwell, Coast Guard Sector Commander in Portsmouth. The expansion of this policy is a vital step in improving quality of life for our Airmen and Guardians, which also improves retention, said Chief Master Sgt. Maribeth Ferrer, of the 633d Air Base Wing out of Joint-Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton. Language to implement the policy change is still trickling in from each of the armed forces, but according to the directive, uniformed family members who welcomed a new child on or after Dec. 27 fall under the new policy. The policy also directs the leave to service members with unused caregiver or maternity convalescent leave by Dec. 27, but their parental leave may not exceed 12 weeks when transitioning from the old policy to the new policy. The leave can be taken in one continuous period or in increments, but it must be taken during the one-year period following the birth or placement of the child. Chief Lauren Howes, a mass communication specialist for Norfolk-based U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said the new policy is a shift to a more family-friendly military. This is the military realizing that if you are worried about your family, it is hard to do your job. ... But I will be able to compartmentalize when I am at work because I know everything is taken care of at home because I had extra time to set it up and to bond with my children, said Howes, who is on parental leave following the Nov. 7 birth of her third child, Joaquin Bacho Howes. While she had her baby about two months before the new policy was released, Howes opted to briefly return to work after six weeks to allow time for the new policy to kick in before she started her parental leave. The new policy, Howes said, allows working parents adequate time to find quality child care something many service members struggle with, she said. Diana Moyer cradled her newborn son, Atticus Lee Moyer, in the crook of her arm, gently patting his bottom as he cooed. Steve Moyer, a chief in electrical engineering with the Navy, has yet to meet him because he is deployed on the Norfolk-based cruiser USS Leyte Gulf as part of the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group. The new leave, Diana said, is a huge blessing to sailors. If you take any amount of leave when you are on sea duty, my husband said its like people look down on you, because it's one less person there doing their job. ... But this baby leave is something that Big Navy and the DoD put out and I hope commands see how much a blessing it is to their sailors, Diana said. Military medals and what they mean Military medals and what they mean Medal of Honor Distinguished Service Cross Navy Cross Coast Guard Cross Air Force Cross Silver Star Defense Distinguished Service Medal Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal Distinguished Service Medal Navy and Marine Distinguished Service Medal Air Force Distinguished Service Medal Coast Guard Distinguished Service Medal Defense Superior Service Medal Legion of Merit Distinguished Flying Cross Soldier's Medal Navy and Marine Corps Medal Airman's Medal Coast Guard Medal Purple Heart Bronze Star Medal Meritorious Service Medal Air Medal Aerial Achievement Medal Navy Combat Action Ribbon Coast Guard Combat Action Ribbon Air Force Combat Action Medal Prisoner of War Medal Joint Service Commendation Medal Army Commendation Medal Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal Air Force Commendation Medal Coast Guard Commendation Medal Joint Service Achievement Medal Army Achievement Medal Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal Air Force Achievement Medal Coast Guard Achievement Medal Navy Expeditionary Medal Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal Armed Forces Service Medal Good Conduct Medal Humanitarian Service Medal Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal Afghanistan Campaign Medal Antarctica Service Medal Air and Space Campaign Medal Military medals and what they mean Medal of Honor Distinguished Service Cross Navy Cross Coast Guard Cross Air Force Cross Silver Star Defense Distinguished Service Medal Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal Distinguished Service Medal Navy and Marine Distinguished Service Medal Air Force Distinguished Service Medal Coast Guard Distinguished Service Medal Defense Superior Service Medal Legion of Merit Distinguished Flying Cross Soldier's Medal Navy and Marine Corps Medal Airman's Medal Coast Guard Medal Purple Heart Bronze Star Medal Meritorious Service Medal Air Medal Aerial Achievement Medal Navy Combat Action Ribbon Coast Guard Combat Action Ribbon Air Force Combat Action Medal Prisoner of War Medal Joint Service Commendation Medal Army Commendation Medal Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal Air Force Commendation Medal Coast Guard Commendation Medal Joint Service Achievement Medal Army Achievement Medal Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal Air Force Achievement Medal Coast Guard Achievement Medal Navy Expeditionary Medal Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal Armed Forces Service Medal Good Conduct Medal Humanitarian Service Medal Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal Afghanistan Campaign Medal Antarctica Service Medal Air and Space Campaign Medal CEDAR RAPIDS A medical examiner Tuesday said Jan and Melissa Jackson and their daughter, Sabrina, all died from multiple fatal gunshot injuries June 15, 2021. The only evidence of close range shots soot left on the skin from gunpowder was to Melissa Jackson, 68. She had a gunshot to her left eye, which left soot, indicating the gun was only inches away from her when she was shot. Dr. Kelly Kruse, an associate state medical examiner who performed the three autopsies on the family members of Alexander Jackson, who is on trial this week for murder, testified there was no gunpowder or stippling at the wounds to Jan, 61, and Sabrina, 19. She couldn't determine how far the shooter was from them. Testimony began last Friday and the trial is expected to last through this week. Alexander Jackson, 22, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of fatally shooting his parents and sister. Alexander Jackson told police an intruder got in that day and shot him in the foot and then fled out the back door. He could only describe the intruder as a Black man wearing black clothing and green shoes. Officers testified Friday and Tuesday there was no forced entry into the house at 4414 Oak Leaf Ct. NE, and no signs of a struggle. Kruse said Jan Jackson had five gunshot wounds to his chest area, neck and back of his head. The gunshots injured his brain and other vital organs, and each individual shot could have been fatal. The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. Jan Jackson also had a blunt force injury and laceration to his face and inside his lower lip, which could have been from falling to the floor after being shot. During Kruse's testimony on the autopsies, Alexander Jackson never looked at the television screens in the courtroom. He mostly looked down at a notepad in front of him. Melissa Jackson died from two gunshot injuries to her head, Kruse said. She had one next to her left eye and another to right temple area. The gunshot to her eye was fired at close range, which left soot to indicate the gun was fired inches from her head. Both gunshots to her head entered her dura and brain, Kruse said. Either injury could have been fatal. Kruse said their daughter, Sabrina, also died from multiple gunshot injuries. She had one to the left side of her torso, which exited through her arm, and another shot to her left eye. The torso shot entered her abdominal cavity, injuring her liver and exited her front stomach area. The gunshot to her eye injured her brain. Kruse said there was no soot or stippling on the wounds, so the gun wasn't fired at close range. Each of her injuries could have been fatal but the one to her eye would have been more "rapidly fatal," Kruse noted. On cross, Tyler Johnston, Alexander's lawyer, asked it would be possible to have blood or tissue on the shooter or gun on the close range shots. Kruse said it would be. First Assistant Linn County Attorney Monica Slaughter, on redirect, asked if size and strength of bullet would impact that finding blood or tissue on shooter or gun. Kruse said it could. In earlier testimony, Cedar Rapids Police Officer Tim Brown said there was no evidence of a home invasion. As he and other officers were clearing the house for a possible intruder, who wasn't found, they left Alexander downstairs. When Brown went back downstairs, he found Alexander had crawled down the hall to his father's body. Alexander again told officers a man had been in the house, but he couldn't provide much of a description. On the way to the hospital, Alexander told the paramedic he had been sleeping on the porch and he ran into the "man" the intruder. Alexander said he hit or charged him and the intruder shot his foot. Brown said Alexander, who cried "quietly and briefly" during the transport, told the paramedic his pain level was "10." He asked if they got his mom and Brown said they were getting everyone. Brown said he thought Alexander might have been in shock. Alexander also asked if they got an ambulance for his dad and if his sister was OK, but nobody answered him. Ryan Dunbar, a police investigator, testified about canvassing the neighborhood to ask if anyone saw or heard something unusual that morning at the Jackson home or in the area, but nobody saw or heard anything. He also looked for neighbors who had surveillance cameras. The neighbors across the street had two cameras but the video footage from those didn't show anyone in the area before police arrived, Dunbar said. Dunbar also returned to the neighborhood later to do a canvass of the wooded area to the north and east of the home because that could be an escape path of the possible intruder. He tried to walk through the woods to Ushers Ferry Road, thinking that might be a pathway, but he couldn't. There were too many downed trees and debris, possibly from derecho damage. He also drove around to Ushers Ferry and tried to walk south, but it was difficult and he had to climb over trees to make it toward the Jacksons' house. Counties with the most motor vehicle fatalities in Iowa Counties with the most motor vehicle accident fatalities in Iowa #19. Linn County, Iowa #18. Black Hawk County, Iowa #17. Polk County, Iowa #16. Dallas County, Iowa #15. Woodbury County, Iowa #14. Scott County, Iowa #13. Warren County, Iowa #12. Pottawattamie County, Iowa #11. Marion County, Iowa #10. Boone County, Iowa #9. Mahaska County, Iowa #8. Lee County, Iowa #7. Cedar County, Iowa #6. Mills County, Iowa #5. Plymouth County, Iowa #4. Hardin County, Iowa #3. Iowa County, Iowa #2. Madison County, Iowa #1. Adair County, Iowa SIOUX CITY Denied access to survey some parcels of land along proposed liquid carbon dioxide pipeline routes, developers have sought rulings from Iowa judges ordering landowners to allow the surveys to proceed. New lawsuits in Clay and Sioux counties were filed in December, bringing the total number to nine filed by either Summit Carbon Solutions or Navigator Heartland Greenway. In all cases, the companies are seeking injunctions to prohibit landowners from denying survey crews entrance to their land to study the proposed pipeline routes. Landowners have filed counterclaims in many of them arguing that Iowa's laws giving pipeline companies the right of entry to private land to survey and examine it are unconstitutional. Both are tactics seldom seen before in Iowa. State law clearly authorizes enforcement of survey access by a company by injunction, said Don Tormey, a spokesman for the Iowa Utilities Board, which receives and rules on permit applications for underground pipelines. "However, to the IUB's knowledge, lawsuits by pipeline companies to gain access to a landowner's property to survey have been rare in the past. If a landowner resists surveying, the issue is usually addressed without litigation," Tormey said. Tormey said the IUB has no information on the number of landowners refusing to let surveyors onto their land either now or during past pipeline projects. He said the length of the proposed CO2 pipelines and the large number of landowners affected may be a factor. Navigator plans to build a 1,300-mile pipeline collecting liquid CO2 from ethanol plants and fertilizer processors in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and Illinois and transport it to a site in Illinois, where it will be injected deep beneath the surface. The pipeline would stretch 900 miles across 36 Iowa counties, including several in Siouxland. Summit's plans call for a 2,000-mile pipeline collecting CO2 from ethanol plants in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and North Dakota and piping it to a North Dakota injection site. Of the 30 Iowa counties in the route, many again are in Siouxland. Permit applications for both are before the IUB. Both projects have staunch opponents, evidenced by landowners' unwillingness to allow surveyors on their property. Navigator filed lawsuits against landowners in Woodbury, Clay and Butler counties in August. Summit sued in Dickinson, Hardin and Kossuth counties in September, and Clay and Sioux counties on Dec. 15. In its suits and requests for injunctions, Summit says landowners have refused to accept delivery of a second letter providing notice of the intent to enter their property to survey it. "While Summit Carbon Solutions is not able to comment on the specifics of pending litigation, it's important to note the overwhelming majority of survey work done to this point has involved the owner voluntarily offering the company permission to access their land, there have been a limited number of instances where Iowa law has been invoked to allow this critical work to continue," Summit said in a statement. Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, Navigator's vice president of government and public affairs, also noted the majority of landowners have granted surveyors access. "What we don't hear about is how much survey work was done voluntarily," she said. "Surveys are an incredibly important part of the process. We think the code and the law is pretty clear as to notification and the steps to complete that survey. We truly want to be collaborative and follow the letter of the law." Landowners who are resisting have banded together, hiring attorneys and coordinating their opposition. It's likely due in part to experiences with the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which was completed in 2017 and traverses many of the same counties in the paths of the proposed CO2 pipelines, said Jess Mazour, conservation program coordinator of the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter. In many cases, crop yield loss because of soil disruption from pipeline installation has been greater than what farmers were told to expect by Dakota Access, and payments from the company have not made up for the losses. With that information in hand, farmers are less likely to willingly give permission to have their land disturbed, much less surveyed, Mazour said. "Everyone's prepared this time, and they're saying 'not again,'" she said. The filing of lawsuits, however, caught opponents by surprise, Mazour said, but has solidified opposition, too. "It just made people upset and even more steadfast in their opposition," she said. "If they're really just going to sue anyone who gets in their way, what kind of business practice is that and do we want those kinds of companies in Iowa?" Vicki and William Hulse, of Moville, Iowa, were sued by Navigator in August after refusing to allow surveyors onto their land in northern Woodbury County. They responded with the claim that Iowa's laws giving pipelines the right to enter their land are unconstitutional. A judge in September denied Navigator's request for an injunction that would have enabled surveyors to enter the Hulse's land. A trial is scheduled for Feb. 14, though that same judge is considering Navigator's motion for summary judgment seeking a ruling in its favor before trial. A trial in Navigator's lawsuit against Martin Koenig, of Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is scheduled for April 19 in Clay County. The Butler County cases were consolidated and scheduled for trial in May. Vicki Hulse told the Journal last fall she and other landowners are doing what they believe is right and want others to know they're not powerless against the pipeline companies. "I just want to be an example that you can stand up for yourself," Hulse said. "You can stand up and say no, this is my land." Summit's lawsuits have yet to be scheduled for trial. Dennis and Kerry King, of Dickens, in Clay County and the Wilmer Hulstein Revocable Trust, in Sioux Center, in Sioux County, have yet to respond to the suits. Counties with the most motor vehicle fatalities in Iowa Counties with the most motor vehicle accident fatalities in Iowa #19. Linn County, Iowa #18. Black Hawk County, Iowa #17. Polk County, Iowa #16. Dallas County, Iowa #15. Woodbury County, Iowa #14. Scott County, Iowa #13. Warren County, Iowa #12. Pottawattamie County, Iowa #11. Marion County, Iowa #10. Boone County, Iowa #9. Mahaska County, Iowa #8. Lee County, Iowa #7. Cedar County, Iowa #6. Mills County, Iowa #5. Plymouth County, Iowa #4. Hardin County, Iowa #3. Iowa County, Iowa #2. Madison County, Iowa #1. Adair County, Iowa Less than 34% of the $2.6 million Iowans have donated to an Iowa sheriffs group in recent years has been used for the stated purpose of training officers and helping underprivileged children. Newly disclosed tax filings by the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association Institute indicate the organization raised more money in 2021 than at any time in the past 20 years. The records indicate Iowans donated $525,083 in 2021 a 22% increase over the previous year. Iowans who donate to the institute are typically told their money will be used to provide critical support and training for law enforcement and will help send underprivileged children to camp and provide support for the Iowa Special Olympics. Since 2016, Iowans have given $2,608,941 to the cause, according to tax records. During that same time, the institute has reported spending $883,778 just over a third of the total amount that was donated on the charitable purposes outlined in its solicitations. For example, in the 12-month period that that ended in November 2021, the institute raised $525,083 in donations. It reported spending $445,000 that year, with its biggest expenses being fundraising fees, conventions and meetings: Professional fundraising fees: $180,480. Conventions and meetings: $128,172. Management expenses: $65,668. Underprivileged children sent to camp: $57,250. Iowa Special Olympics donation: $10,000. Tax filings The ISSDA Institutes tax filings indicate the organization raises money from Iowans largely through direct-mail solicitations, some of which bear the signature of an Iowa sheriff. Earlier this year, for example, central Iowa residents received solicitations on a letterhead that stated, in bold letters, from SHERIFF Kevin Schneider, Polk County alongside the badge-shaped insignia of the institute. The letter was signed by Schneider not as an ISSDA member but as the county sheriff, who asked for donations to keep our community safe. The letter stated: Your support for the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association Institute (ISSDAI) is needed today in order for us to provide not only critical support and training to your sheriffs office, but also much-needed funding for our YMCA Camp in Boone and Iowa Special Olympics. Unlike most nonprofits, the institute reports to the IRS that the donations raised by its hired fundraiser are actually membership fees. Out of $525,083 the institute raised in 2021, it paid $180,480 in fees to its hired fundraiser. The institute reported to the IRS the fundraiser is a company named Paramount Strategies. However, Paramount Strategies is not a fundraising company; it is a lobbying firm that represents the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association and other clients at the Iowa Capitol. Company president Tony Phillips said earlier this month that Paramount Strategies has done no fundraising work for the association or the institute. Washington County Sheriff Jared Schneider, who is the financial director of the ISSDA, said Monday he couldnt answer questions about the organizations finances, but that he or someone else would get back to the Iowa Capital Dispatch with information. No one from the ISSDA subsequently contacted the Capital Dispatch, and neither the organizations president or secretary could be reached for comment. Polk County Sheriff Kevin Schneider was also unavailable for comment. In years past, the institute has reported paying an Oklahoma fundraising company called ResourceOne, also known as Altus Marketing, to raise money from Iowans through direct-mail solicitations. Controversial speaker The conventions and meetings of the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association, which provide some of the training for which donations are solicited, have generated controversy in the past. In 2021, the ISSDAs annual conference had as its keynote speaker KrisAnne Hall, a Florida attorney who is among the leading proponents of the so-called constitutional sheriffs movement. Hall argues that the federal government has no authority that exceeds that of the nations elected county sheriffs. She has called government decisions to close down businesses in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as unlawful, and has said America is now a full-on Marxist state bent on forcing people to become vaccinated against COVID-19. Because this is America, they have to feed you lies to keep you under their Marxist agenda, Hall says in one of her videos. Hall has also questioned the authority of the U.S. Capitol Police, whom she has compared to Nazi Germanys S.S., or Schutzstaffel, and questioned the FBIs authority to arrest those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The FBI does not have jurisdiction in your state, your county, or your city, Hall has told sheriffs. The sheriff can override the governor and kick the feds out of the county. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Hall had addressed the Florida chapter of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that the SPLC considers a hate group. In defense of her decision to speak to the group, Hall told the SPLC that our states are not fiefdoms under subjugation to an unquestionable despot. DES MOINES A proposed Iowa bill seeking to undermine potential federal regulations that would require COVID-19 vaccinations or testing for businesses could put Iowas state-run Occupational Safety and Health Administration plan in jeopardy. The bill, Senate File 45, passed a subcommittee on Tuesday. Republican Sens. Dennis Guth and Tim Kraayenbrink voted for it, while Sen. Bill Dotzler, a Democrat, voted against it. The bill would prohibit the states labor commissioner from enforcing a federal occupational health and safety regulation requiring employers to do three things: Determine whether or not an employee or prospective employee has received a COVID-19 vaccine Determine whether or not an employee or prospective employee has received a test for current or past COVID-19 infection or ask about the results of a test Test employees or prospective employees for current or past COVID-19 infections There are no OSHA regulations requiring vaccines or testing in place currently. A 2021 rule requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to require vaccinations or weekly testing was struck down last year by the U.S. Supreme Court. Iowa is one of several states with a state-administered OSHA plan, and representatives for Iowas labor division, business leaders and labor leaders warned the bill could compromise that plan. If the federal OSHA finds Iowa OSHA not in compliance with federal standards, it could scrap the Iowa plan and take over administering Iowas occupational safety rules, they said. J.D. Davis, vice president for public policy at the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, said working with federal regulators is more cumbersome than working with state regulators, and hed prefer to see the program remain in state hands. Thats important, especially when were investigating accidents or having inspections, that you have somebody thats responsive and close, he said. It also allows you to get to know the personalities that are doing the investigations. While Guth recommended passage, he said he wanted to do more research into the conflict between federal and state OSHA regulators before taking it up in a committee. We wont be in a rush to get this to committee right away, well take a little bit of time doing that, he said. The bill would need to go to a vote in the Workforce Committee before being taken up in a floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. It doesn't necessarily have to ever be taken up in committee. It could just die, Guth added in an interview after the meeting. Dotzler said Iowa should follow federal regulations regarding COVID-19 safety. He also said he was concerned with the way Iowa OSHA is run. Its important as a society that we remain healthy, and the only way were going to remain healthy is if we believe in science and what is coming out of the disease control experts in the field, he said. The legislature has taken similar measures to limit vaccination requirements since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic: Laws are in place blocking so-called vaccine passports and allowing employees to submit waivers for vaccine mandates and collect unemployment benefits if they are fired for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. A bill that would have prohibited all businesses from requiring vaccination, testing and mask-wearing for employees failed last year when Republicans did not muster the votes to pass it. OSHA is finalizing a permanent COVID-19 rule for health care settings, according to Bloomberg Law. OSHA has not revealed the text of the rule. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy There is great news from the NWO zone, namely, from the Maryinsky direction! Soldiers of the Sever-Akhmat Special Forces Regiment named after the Hero of Russia Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov of the Russian Defense Ministry stormed the stronghold, including fortified positions. Most of the enemy manpower was destroyed, an impressive number of AFU soldiers were taken prisoner. This node of resistance was equipped and consisted entirely of a line of trenches, camouflaged dugouts, rifle defensive structures and was located in an area advantageous to the enemy. The capture of the fortified area is a brilliant result of our soldiers. This line of defense was strategically important and its capture is a significant success on the Maryinsky Front. Please note that under enemy shelling, Chechens provide first aid to prisoners. Literally a few minutes earlier, these persons, counting on the mercy of the victors, fired at our soldiers, and after the battle they save their lives. An indicative picture, clearly illustrating the sides of evil and good. I am grateful to the soldiers of the Sever-Akhmat special forces regiment and its commander, Zaindi Zingiev, for the brilliant, tactically planned and executed operation! Victory will be ours, otherwise nothing! And may Allah bless you, BROTHERS! Kadyrov WtR We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Foreign investors confident in China's economic resilience, potential 10:40, January 18, 2023 By Qu Song, Yang Xun, Xie Yahong ( People's Daily The Chinese government recently issued a series of policies to better attract and utilize foreign capital, which further boosted the confidence of foreign enterprises in their future development in China. According to these policies, China will advance high-level opening up, expand market access, ensure national treatment for all foreign-invested enterprises, continue to advance its accession into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), and provide convenient conditions for foreign enterprises and individuals that visit China for investment and trade negotiations. Enterprises would "vote with their feet" if the business environment of a country is poor, said Matthew Ye from Michelin, a multinational tire manufacturing company. "Over the past more than three decades, Michelin has witnessed China's reform and opening up and the constant optimization of the business environment in the country," Ye told People's Daily, adding that foreign enterprises are gaining more and more confidence in the Chinese market as China works to ensure national treatment for all foreign-invested enterprises, and joins hands with relevant parties to build an open market and promote trade and investment facilitation. Ruan Linjuan, vice president of IKEA China, told People's Daily that the enactment and implementation of the Foreign Investment Law in China has made the business environment more stable, equal, transparent and predictable, and enhanced IKEA's confidence in investing in China. "In the past years, we saw the efforts of the Chinese government at all levels to help foreign enterprises integrate into the new development paradigm of China, which was very beneficial to our business development in the country," she noted. Gong Anming, executive vice president of Elekta, a leader in precision radiation therapy, said China's Foreign Investment Law has boosted the confidence of multinational corporations, including Elekta, in their long-term development in China. According to him, Elekta has built a factory in China that adopts completely the same techniques and standards as its factories in Europe. "Thanks to the strategic deployment of the factory and a more reliable supply chain, the Chinese factory of Elekta has provided its global clients with more than 1,000 sets of linear accelerators, growing into the company's largest production base in the past three years," Gong said. Many multinational corporations consider China a promising driving force for global innovation. BMW board member Frank Weber noted that China has made remarkable achievements in digitalization thanks to its accelerated innovation. The German automaker's Chinese R&D team has developed into the largest one globally outside its headquarters in Munich. "The Chinese market drives BMW to continue innovating, and many local suppliers in China have also improved their capability, becoming benchmarks in the industry," Weber said. Jim Misener, senior director of product management of Qualcomm Technologies, told People's Daily that China is currently spearheading the development in the intelligent connected vehicle sector. He said the Chinese government has rolled out a series of plans and policies to promote the development of the sector and accelerate standard-making and technological upgrading. The country's innovation capability, huge market and strong government support are leading the global development of electric vehicles and relevant applications, he added. Liu Tao, managing director of Accenture Greater China, said with the Foreign Investment Law and a series of policies, China is actively fulfilling its promises of opening up. Accenture sees that Chinese enterprises are following the trend of the digital economy and continuously investing in digitalization, he added. "Open and orderly market and business environment will play an important role in exploring new opportunities for development," Liu said. Irina Ananyeva, spokesperson at Bosch said the Fortune Global 500 company is expanding its investment in the Chinese market and introducing globally advanced production technologies to China. She noted that China is the world's largest auto market, which is vital and resilient, and the company is confident about the Chinese market's prospects. China is a market of strategic importance for Merck in terms of both its size and growth potential, said Timo Breiner, spokesperson for the pharmaceutical company. According to him, Merck plans to invest around 100 million euro ($108 million) in the next six years in expanding its production base in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu province, and put it into operation before 2024. Many departments of the company have investment projects in China that are worth hundreds of millions of euros, he added. Zeng Xiwen, vice president for Unilever, noted that China has become one of the fastest-growing markets of the consumer goods company, and currently the company is expanding its industrial landscape in China. "In 2022, we built an ice cream factory with an investment of nearly a billion yuan ($149 million) in Taicang, east China's Jiangsu province. We also unveiled in Guangzhou our first full-line production and marketing base in China with a total investment of nearly 2 billion yuan. The base, upon completion, will not only serve the Chinese market, but also supply overseas consumers relying on the regional advantages of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area," Zeng said. (Web editor: Chang Sha, Liang Jun) Copyright 2023 Albuquerque Journal Albuquerque could soon abolish its citizen police oversight board under a proposal that would instead create a smaller civilian panel with less authority. City Councilor Brook Bassan who is co-sponsoring the Police Oversight Ordinance update legislation said it is intended to fix what seems to be a disconnect between what the board should be doing and what it has been doing. Right now, things are not really working as we intended them to work, she said. She said the legislation establishes that the volunteer citizen board does not govern the entire Civilian Police Oversight Agency, which includes a paid administrative staff and full-time executive director, who oversees investigations into civilian complaints about alleged officer misconduct. Bassan cited recent turnover in the CPOAs executive director position, saying previous directors have cited problems with the board while leaving. The nine-member board has historically been understaffed and, with a recent resignation, is now at just six members. I believe our job is to find that balance of how to make sure the board has the authority to oversee and protect the community, while also not over-reaching with their authority, Bassan said. But one current CPOA board member said hes disgusted by what he sees as a rushed process to gut citizen oversight. He said it should concern the whole community, particularly given the cost of the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice-mandated reform effort in Albuquerque, as well as the number of police shootings. In 2022, Albuquerque Police Department officers shot at 18 people, killing 10, injuring three and missing five. As much as theres a lot of talking about wanting to get better, the writing on the wall is we dont want anything to change, CPOA board member Rashad Raynor said. Raynor said he did not know about the proposed board overhaul until about a month ago, noting that it is headed to a full council vote without having gone through the council committee process. From everything weve heard, this is a done deal, he said. They just have to do the vote. Bassan and co-sponsors Isaac Benton, Pat Davis and Renee Grout introduced the proposal Jan. 4, but have since filed a substitute version with additional changes. The council is slated to vote on the legislation at its Wednesday meeting, though acting on the substitute version would require suspending council rules. Bassan said Tuesday she did not discuss the proposed changes with current CPOA board members, nor did she think that was essential. She said the sponsors have worked closely with staff and legal counsel on a CPOA structure she believes is best for all parties, but that its a council decision to make. Its not necessary for us to negotiate the update of this ordinance with the board, she said. The 32-page substitute bill calls for a number of changes to the Police Oversight Ordinance, including: Adding the term advisory to the volunteer boards name; it would become the Civilian Police Oversight Advisory Board. No longer requiring the CPOA executive director to report to the board or get board permission before making officer disciplinary recommendations to APD leadership. Reducing board membership to five from nine. Shifting certain responsibilities from the board to either the CPOA executive director or a new independent contract compliance officer hired by the City Council; for example, the board would no longer lead the vetting process when hiring a new director nor set the directors salary. Altering how CPOA makes policy recommendations to APD; it allows the board to comment on policy proposals that originate with APD, but strikes existing language outlining the boards process for recommending CPOA-generated policies. Compensating board members, including $500 for completing orientation/initial training and $100 per board meeting. Requiring the board to consider policy input from the citys Community Policing Councils. SANTA FE Just hours into his tenure as House speaker, Javier Martinez sent shockwaves through the chamber by removing Rep. Patricia Lundstrom, D-Gallup, as chairwoman of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee, an influential budget-writing panel. Martinez, an Albuquerque Democrat who also announced several other changes to House committee chairmanships, replaced Lundstrom with Rep. Nathan Small, D-Las Cruces, who had been the panels vice chairman. The move could have both political and policy repercussions, as Lundstrom had led the House Appropriations and Finance Committee for the past six years and led the legislative charge for a hydrogen energy development bill that drew staunch opposition from environmental groups. Im incredibly disappointed, and Im absolutely shocked, Lundstrom told the Journal after the new assignments were announced. Lundstrom, who has served in the House since 2001 and is the chambers third-longest serving member, had caused a stir of her own last year by giving contributions from her campaign account to four moderate Democrats challenging incumbents in last Junes primary election. Three of those incumbents went on to win their races Reps. Susan Herrera of Embudo, Andrea Romero of Santa Fe and Kristina Ortez of Taos. Lundstrom acknowledged at the time being disappointed by some fellow Democrats opposition to several hydrogen energy bills that stalled during last years 30-day legislative session despite support from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. When asked Tuesday what might have prompted the decision to remove her as chairwoman, Lundstrom said reporters should ask Martinez. He said I dont meet his vision, she said while being consoled by other House members on the chamber floor. In a later statement sent out by political consultant, Lundstrom expressed anger about the decision, describing it as a pathetic attempt at political retaliation. I have fought for our states most vulnerable and protected our finances in our economically challenged state, Lundstrom said. The decision to replace me with a White man with less than a fourth of the experience in budget development is extremely damaging to New Mexico with the ever-increasing one-party system that retaliates against traditional, Hispanic, rural Democrats. Martinez did not immediately provide an explanation for his committee decisions, but a House Democratic caucus spokeswoman sent a statement late Tuesday on his behalf. The speaker has the responsibility and the prerogative to organize the House committees as he feels best meets the current needs of New Mexico, House Democratic spokeswoman Camille Ward told the Journal. With new leadership on both sides of the aisle and on many of our committees in this session, Speaker Martinez is beginning a new chapter to move New Mexico forward. For his part, Small said he was humbled and honored to accept the responsibility as the budget committees new chairman and said he had learned from Lundstrom. We know we will have big shoes to fill, and are ready to work together with New Mexicans to develop forward-thinking solutions for our state, Small told the Journal. Meanwhile, the newly elected House speaker also made several shake-ups to committee ranks, including shifting Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, from chairwoman of the House Taxation and Revenue Committee to chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee. The judiciary panel had been led by Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, but she was unable to remain in the role after being elected by fellow House Democrats in November as their new floor leader. As for the tax committee, Martinez appointed Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, to lead the panel, which is expected to play a key role in shaping a tax package that could include rebates and rate reductions during this years legislative session. BROVARY, Ukraine (AP) A helicopter carrying Ukraines interior minister crashed into a kindergarten in a foggy residential suburb of Kyiv on Wednesday, killing him and about a dozen other people, including a child on the ground, authorities said. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw the countrys police and emergency services, is the most senior official killed since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago. His death, along with the rest of his ministrys leadership and the entire helicopter crew, was the second major calamity in four days to befall Ukraine, after a Russian missile struck an apartment building in the southeastern city of Dnipro, killing dozens of civilians. There was no immediate word on whether the helicopter crash, which occurred on a foggy morning in the capitals eastern suburb of Brovary, was an accident or related to the war. Ukrainian authorities immediately opened an investigation. No fighting has been reported recently in the capital region. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by video link said the crash had a broad connection to the war. This is not an accident because it has been due to war and the war has many dimensions, not just on the battlefields, he said after asking the Davos audience to join him in a standing minute of silence to honor those killed. There are no accidents at wartime. These are all war results. Ukraines State Emergency Service, which was operating the French-manufactured Super Puma helicopter, said at least 14 people were killed, including nine on the helicopter, and a child on the ground. It said 25 people were injured, including 11 children. Early official reports gave differing numbers of casualties. At the scene of the crash and ensuing fire, plastic sheets covered at least four bodies. Workers cleared charred and mangled wreckage lying against an apartment building and in the kindergartens playground. Some walls were partly demolished and blackened. The helicopters blackened rotors protruded from a destroyed car and rested on the roof of a buildings entrance. Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksii Kuleba told Ukrainian television that emergency services were still identifying remains and that the death toll could rise. The crash killed five Interior Ministry officials, one national police official and all three helicopter crew members, the Ukraine National Police said. Monastyrskyis deputy Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yurii Lubkovych were among the dead, the police said. Monastyrskyi, 42, was in charge of police and emergency services that dealt with the consequences of Russian strikes and de-mining, political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko told The Associated Press. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said National Police Chief Ihor Klymenko has been appointed acting interior minister. Senior Ukrainian officials routinely travel by helicopter at low altitudes and high speed during the conflict, increasing the inherent dangers associated with the flights. The tragedy may prompt Kyiv to institute a rule many countries and companies follow stating that top officials shouldnt fly on the same aircraft, Fesenko said. The officials on the helicopter were due to visit Ukraines northeastern Kharkiv region, local police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said, adding on Facebook that they were not just leaders, but friends who I respected. The helicopter was sold to Ukraine before the war in 2019, a French defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified, according to ministry policy. The Security Service of Ukraine is investigating all possible versions of the crash, prosecutor general Andriy Kostin said on Telegram. The crash came at a particularly dark period in the war for Ukraine, just days after the Russian strike on the apartment building in southeastern Ukraine killed 45 people, including six children the deadliest attack on civilians since the spring. The pain is unspeakable, Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. Another very sad day today new losses, said his wife, Olena Zelenska, dabbing teary eyes as she responded to the news at the economic conference in Davos, where she was mustering support for Ukraine. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the crash heartbreaking. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called Monastyrskyi a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people during (Russian President Vladimir) Putins illegal invasion. She said she was struck by his determination, optimism and patriotism. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is facing pressure to send tanks to Ukraine, tweeted that the crash shows once again the huge price that Ukraine is having to pay in this war. In Wednesdays other developments: Putin defended his invasion by offering a variation on arguments he has used previously. He told a group of veterans that Moscows actions were intended to stop a war that has raged since 2014 in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists have battled Ukrainian forces. All what we are doing today as part of the special military operation is an attempt to stop this war. This is the meaning of our operation protecting people who live on those territories, he said. Ukraine and its Western allies have rejected Russias justifications arguments, saying Kyiv posed no threat to Moscow and the invasion was unprovoked. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscows goals in Ukraine are determined by Russias core legitimate interests. There must be no military infrastructure in Ukraine that poses a direct threat to our country, Lavrov said at his annual news conference. He claimed the goal of Ukraines Western allies is to use the conflict to exhaust Russia. Fighting continued in eastern Ukraine around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby salt mining town of Soledar, according to Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. A total of 14 cities and villages were shelled in the partially occupied Donetsk region in the previous 24 hours, Ukraines presidential office said. Two civilians were wounded. It added that Russian forces also shelled residential areas of the southern city of Kherson, which Kyivs military retook in November. Four people were wounded. ___ Associated Press writers Andrew Meldrum in Kyiv, Angela Charlton in Paris and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed. ___ Follow APs coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine Copyright 2023 Albuquerque Journal A South Valley couple and their 18-year-old daughter are accused of shooting at a food delivery driver outside their home Saturday. Lawrence Mora, 48, was charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, tampering with evidence, shooting at a motor vehicle and resisting an officer. Christina Cervantes, 48, and Jaylene Mora were each charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and shooting at a motor vehicle. All three have been booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. Deputies with the Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office were called to the 2600 block of Halcon SW around 5:30 p.m. in reference to a shooting, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Arriving deputies spoke with a DoorDash delivery driver who said she was trying to deliver an order to an address on the same street but was having trouble locating it. She said two women with guns identified in the complaint as Jaylene and Cervantes as well as a man identified as Lawrence came out of their home, yelling at her to go away. As she tried to explain she was a DoorDash driver, they opened fire at her car, causing her to drive away from the scene, the complaint states. She told deputies she heard at least eight gunshots. She was unharmed and her car was not struck. When officers arrived, the three of them had barricaded themselves in their home. They eventually came out and were detained by deputies. All three family members matched the descriptions given by the DoorDash driver, according to the complaint. Jaylene later told deputies there was a black car driving up and down the street that had been following her father, so she confronted the female driver verbally, the complaint states. She denied having shot at the car. Lawrence initially told deputies he didnt know anything about a black car following him, but later changed his mind when he was told his daughter said that. Deputies found two handguns inside a Dodge Charger parked at the property and an airsoft rifle inside the house, according to the complaint. Multiple spent gun casings were found on the ground outside the house. Copyright 2023 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE New Mexico lawmakers took a possible first step toward modernizing the Legislature on Wednesday, advancing a bill paying for session expenses that includes money to study the idea of field offices and full-time staff members for all 112 legislators. The $2.5 million in proposed funding prompted a lengthy House floor debate, with some Republicans trying unsuccessfully to strip it out of a feed bill appropriating a total of $57 million thats typically filed on the sessions opening day. This proposal is not ready for prime time, said Rep. Rod Montoya, R-Farmington, who argued the funding should instead be included in a budget bill for the coming year. But backers said the proposal had been properly vetted and was crafted by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. I think what were looking for is if theres a way for all state legislators to be more professional and more responsive in their jobs, said House Majority Leader Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque. She said a contract to carry out the study could be issued after the funding bill is signed. The idea also drew support from House Republican whip Jason Harper of Rio Rancho, who said allowing each legislator to have a full-time staffer could assist with research and constituent meetings. The bill, House Bill 1, ultimately passed on a 47-19 vote or just enough to reach a two-thirds approval requirement for bills proposed to take effect immediately upon being signed by the governor. It now advances to the Senate. New Mexico is currently the only state in the nation in which legislators do not receive a salary, though they do get a per diem payment currently set at $178 per day thats intended to cover food and lodging expenses. They can also qualify for a legislative pension plan. In addition, New Mexico is one of only two states Nevada is the other that does not have full-time legislative staff for all lawmakers, Chasey said. Currently, only lawmakers in leadership positions have year-round offices, though staffers in such offices work for all members of a given caucus. That leaves many rank-and-file legislators to rely on colleagues and lobbyists for technical information on bills. Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Embudo, one of the architects of the proposal to study full-time staffing and field offices, described her northern New Mexico district as roughly the size of Massachusetts and said shes sometimes unable to respond to all constituent queries. Meanwhile, the proposal to study field offices and full-time staffing is one of several measures dealing with modernizing the Legislature that lawmakers are expected to debate during the 60-day session that started Tuesday. Other proposals would allow an outside salary commission to set salary levels for lawmakers and extend the length of legislative sessions. One already filed proposal, House Joint Resolution 2, that would require the approval of statewide voters at the next general election, would set the length of legislative sessions at 60 days every year. Currently, legislative sessions are constitutionally limited to 30 days in even-numbered years and 60 days in odd-numbered years. Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, recently said in an interview its time the Legislature embrace changes, saying the demands on citizen legislators were unreasonable. There will be a big push to get every legislator an office and a staffer, Wirth said. Sunports new look is on the way. Major construction on the Albuquerque International Sunports $87 million renovation project, Dream of Flight, started earlier this month. Jaynes Corp. is the contractor on the project after its bid was selected in early spring last year, beating out Bradbury Stamm. The project is targeted for completion by the end of 2024, and expected to support about 500 construction jobs. A third of the cost is going toward infrastructure improvements. But the airport is also getting a facelift, with such aesthetic improvements as new carpet, LED lighting and new furniture with charging ports. According to Manny Manriquez, innovation and commercial development manager at the Sunport, some of these elements have not been updated since the 90s. It is a 100% refresh of the program, Manriquez said, although he noted that the airport will retain its iconic look and feel. Among the planned changes is moving TSA and increasing its footprint by 50%. The airport is beefing up its post-security concessions and retail offerings, building a food hall after security. Once the renovation is complete, there will only be two pre-security retail and concessions spots. The new program will include approximately 16 spaces for concessions and 10 spaces for retail. By the end of March, Sunport will send out an RFP looking for potential vendors with local businesses as a priority. We really are seeking to showcase the flavors of New Mexico and have a lot of local businesses have a presence here, Manriquez said. The renovations will bring the number of retail and concessions operators back up to pre-pandemic numbers. The four current retail and concessions operators contracts will expire and they will have to submit an RFP, like all other businesses. There will be rolling concessions and retail closures starting in late summer/early fall of 2024. To drum up interest from small and local businesses, the Sunport is hosting a series of information meetings for potential vendors. On Thursday, it hosted host a webinar about the airports Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program, which encourages small and minority-owned businesses in the state to participate at Sunport. The airport will also host a matchmaking event in February for small businesses to partner with larger, more experienced concessions operators, either as a joint venture or by licensing their products out. We really would like to see a high degree of participation by small and local businesses in New Mexico, Manriquez said. Manriquez said the airport will also be looking for local artists to create public art installations. FBT Architects is the architect on the project and CallisonRTKL is the designer. Jaynes Corp. is the construction manager at risk and will manage the project from start to finish. After a 2017 renovation of the airport cost more and lasted longer than expected, Sunport entered into a different type of contract for this round of improvements, which set a maximum cost of just over $87 million and a defined timeline. Rather than all the risk being placed on Sunport, it is shared between the contractor and the airport. They share the risk with us, rather than a design, bid, build model where, you know, if its late, its late, and its on the owner of the project, Manriquez said. So its a lot more of a collaborative model and its one that really spreads the risk out among all the parties. Sunport will continue to run flights at full capacity for the duration of the renovations, using city gates if necessary to move certain airlines operations while work on their gates is underway. Its a once-in-a-generation opportunity to refresh this program, Manriquez said. Instagram Movie The 'Ted Lasso' actress is returning to her roots in West End by serving as an emcee for the upcoming prize-giving event honoring the best in British stage plays. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Hannah Waddingham is announced to host the 2023 Olivier Awards. "We are thrilled to announce that three-time Olivier Award nominee and Primetime Emmy winner, Hannah Waddingham is our host for the Olivier Awards 2023 with Mastercard," Claire Walker and Hannah Essex, co-CEOs of the Society of London Theatre said in a statement. "The Olivier Awards are the highlight of the theatrical calendar - a time for the industry to come together with fans to celebrate the extraordinary talent both on our stages and behind the curtain. Already, in our first few months of this job, it is clear that we have joined a uniquely innovative, diverse and resilient sector. To be able to recognise these qualities on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall will be a real thrill." The 48-year-old actress is famous for her role as Rebecca Welton on the hit comedy-drama show "Ted Lasso" but, before finding worldwide fame on the US TV series, she starred in productions of "The Wizard of Oz", "Kiss Me Kate", and "Into the Woods" and is now returning to her roots as she fronts the annual ceremony which honours the best in West End theatre at the Royal Albert Hall in London on April 2. The former "Game of Thrones" actress is taking over from fellow West End star and comedian Jason Manford - who has took on hosting duties for the last five years - and appeared to be delighted as she took to her social media following the announcement. She wrote on Instagram, "If I could go back and whisper in my 20yr old self's ear [heart eyes emoji]." The nominations for the annual ceremony - which last year saw "Back to the Future" named Best New Musical as well as Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne take home the Best Actress and Best Actor gongs respectively for their roles in the revival of "Cabaret" - will be announced in March and show will be broadcast live on April 2 on ITV. You can share this post! Instagram Celebrity In a new episode of her podcast, Savannah questions why the 'Real Housewives of Salt Lake City' star gets a shorter jail time than her parents for their white-collar crimes. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Savannah Chrisley has one question regarding her parents' jail sentences. In a new episode of her "Unlocked" podcast, she questioned why fellow reality TV star Jen Shah got a shorter jail time than her parents, Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley, for their white-collar crimes. "Put the cases side by side, and it makes no sense - it just doesn't," Savannah said in the Tuesday, January 17 episode. She later emphasized that Jen had "victims" in her nationwide telemarketing scheme, which primarily targeted the elderly. The "Chrisley Knows Best" star noted, "There were hundreds of victims who were elderly, and people that provided statements that lost their homes, threatened to end their lives. There were so many different things, and she got six and a half years. Make that make sense!" Todd was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with Julie being given 7-year prison sentence after they were found guilty of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States and tax evasion. Meanwhile, "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" star was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison and five years of supervised release, which will include approved mental health treatment, after pleading guilty to the telemarketing scheme case. "You have someone who has not admitted to guilt and who will stand firm in that," Savannah went on to say on her podcast, referring to Todd and Julie. "We're standing by our truth that it is not guilty, [and] there are no victims." Julie also agreed, noting that unlike Jen, her and Todd's case had "no victim statements." The reality TV star said in the pre-recorded episode, "None of it adds up, and to me, there's more to it. I have committed myself to figuring out what that is and for us to get to the other side of this so that we can help other people who are going through things like this." The episode was released hours before Todd and Julie reported to separate prisons on the same day. Before starting his prison sentence, Todd shared a video of Karen Peck & New River performing "Four Days Late" inside a church. He wrote in the caption, "HE is always on time," adding the hashtag, "#FightTheGoodFight." His family members, including Savannah and Kyle Chrisley, showed support to the Chrisley patriarch in supportive comments. You can share this post! Instagram Celebrity The 'Munch (Feelin' U)' raptress reportedly had a run-in with police, during which a man who was with her was arrested, around the same time Tjay got busted for gun possession in a separate incident. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Lil Tjay wasn't the only one stopped by police on his way to a music video shoot in New York City with Ice Spice. According to a report, the Bronx raptress also had a run-in with police around the same time in a separate incident nearby. As claimed by the New York Post, Ice Spice, whose real name is Isis Gaston, was with a man in her car when it was pulled over on Walton Avenue. While the "Bikini Bottom" femcee was not arrested or charged with anything, the man who was with her was reportedly taken into custody around 4 P.M. The NYPD confirmed that the man, named Markus Grisham, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon. He allegedly had a loaded 9 millimeter gun on him at the time of the stop. Meanwhile, Tjay, whose real name is Tione Jayden Merritt, was pulled over by cops on East 183rd Street in the Fordham Heights section on Monday afternoon, January 16. He was inside a car with four other people during the traffic stop. Upon searching the vehicle, law enforcement officials found two loaded guns. It is unclear why police pulled him over and searched the vehicle in the first place. Tjay and one of his friends were subsequently taken into custody and are facing charges for alleged weapons violation. Meanwhile, his attorney Dawn Florio has complained about the search, claiming that it wasn't entirely legal. She told TMZ that her client was just a passenger inside the car alongside several other people and she insisted that the vehicle as parked legally on the street. She's still looking into what caused the encounter. Following Tjay's arrest, Ice Spice went on with the music video shoot without the "Resume" spitter. In a video taken from the set, the "Munch (Feelin' U)" hitmaker was seen being joined by Cleopatra during the filming. You can share this post! Cover Images/Janet Mayer Celebrity At the 80th annual Golden Globes, 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye' actress posed for a photo with Colin Farrell, who tested positive for the virus after the award show. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Maybe it's time to normalize wearing face masks to award ceremonies. Jessica Chastain has revealed that she swerved catching COVID-19 at the Golden Globes by wearing a face mask. On Monday, January 16, the 45-year-old actress responded to a fan sharing their relief that she hadn't contracted the virus after multiple Hollywood stars revealed they'd tested positive following the ceremony on January 10. Among those who got COVID was Colin Farrell, who posed for a photo with the "George & Tammy" star at the event. The said fan uploaded a photo of Jessica wearing her diamond-encrusted mask that matched her stunning dress by Oscar de la Renta along with a caption that read, "and you know who didn't get COVID at the Golden Globes?" The actress then quote-retweeted the post, adding, "[blowing kiss emoji] Phew! [face with mask emoji]." While speaking to E! News during their red-carpet pre-show Tuesday night, Jessica addressed her sparkling face mask. Of her decision to wear the face covering, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" actress expressed a little fear over attending the ceremony amid the ongoing spread of COVID-19 variants. "I'm a little nervous about getting sick. But, I got my mask," she said, "You have to be so careful in the theater because I don't want to let my cast down." In addition to Colin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Gleeson, who both attended the 80th annual Golden Globes, caught the highly contagious virus. Colin, Jamie and Brendan were forced to skip the Critics' Choice Awards on Monday, January 16. Jamie revealed that she got sick with COVID three days after attending the ceremony. "F**k COVID! Sadly, this head cheerleader is not going to be at all the weekend festivities cheering on her friends and colleagues. Life on life's terms," the "Everything Everywhere All at Once" actress wrote alongside a picture of three tests with positive results. One day after Jamie went public with her COVID diagnosis, Marc Malkin, Variety's senior culture and events editor, reported that both Colin and Brendan also tested positive. "Here we go again. Just confirmed that #colinfarrell and #brendongleeson won't be at #CriticsChoiceAwards tomorrow because they have both tested positive for COVID," Marc tweeted. You can share this post! Cover Images/RobinLori/INSTARimages Celebrity In September last year, the New York-born hip-hop star was ordered to complete 15 days of community service after pleading guilty to assault charges in the case. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Cardi B needs to listen to the judges. The New York-born hip-hop star, who skipped 15 days of community service, could face jail time for strip club attack if she, once again, failed to complete the terms of the court's agreement. The "Bodak Yellow" raptress appeared at Queens Criminal Court on Monday, January 16 to answer to charges that she failed to complete her 15 days of community service as part of a plea deal stemming from the infamous strip club brawl that she was involved in. On Tuesday, the judge in the case gave Cardi until March 1 to complete her sentence. In a brief statement, her lawyer Drew Findling said, "Personally and professionally, Cardi is dedicated to community service and charitable endeavors. She therefore appreciates the court giving her until March 1st to complete her community service commitment in Queens, New York." Cardi, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, resolved the years-long case in September last year by pleading guilty. Following the sentence, the "WAP" rapper said, "Part of growing up and maturing is being accountable for your actions." "As a mother, it's a practice that I am trying to instill in my children, but the example starts with me. I've made some bad decisions in my past that I am not afraid to face and own up to," Cardi continued in her statement. "These moments don't define me and they are not reflective of who I am now. I'm looking forward to moving past this situation with my family and friends and getting back to the things I love the most - the music and my fans." Melinda Katz, the Queens District Attorney, noted that Cardi and the two other defendants' admissions meant they "accepted responsibility for their actions." She said, "No one is above the law. In pleading guilty today, Ms. Belcalis Almanzar and two co-defendants have accepted responsibility for their actions. This Office is satisfied with the resolution, which includes appropriate community service." The alleged incident is believed to have taken place at a strip club in Queens in 2018. According to two bartenders, Cardi ordered two people in her circle to attack them with bottles and furniture. In 2019, the wife of Offset pled not guilty to two felony charges of attempted assault with intent to cause serious physical injury and other misdemeanor charges, such as reckless endangerment. You can share this post! Instagram Celebrity Making use of her social media platform, the 26-year-old supermodel shares a short video of herself styling her new short platinum blonde hairstyle, bearing resemblance to the iconic star. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Bella Hadid has wowed her fans with her new jaw-dropping look. The 26-year-old supermodel looked unrecognizable as she transformed herself into Marilyn Monroe with her iconic bob hair. On Tuesday, January 17, the younger sister of Gigi Hadid turned to her Instagram page to share a clip of her sporting a short, white blonde wig that featured tight curls. She also donned a white tank top and a minimal makeup look. In the comments section, her fans were quick to point out her resemblance to the iconic actress. "Marilyn Monroe [red heart emoji]," one wrote, while another said, "You look just like Marilyn!" Someone else simply typed, "Bella Monroe." Others, in the meantime, disagreed that Bella looked like Marilyn. "No not even close. So sad," one person opined, with a different social media adding, "Wow so close. The only things missing are talent and charisma." "Just putting on a blonde wig doesn't make everyone look like Marilyn Monroe especially when the model is missing all her curves and instead just looks emaciated," someone argued. A separate user echoed, "What a stretch of the imagination. A blond wig does not make anyone a Marilyn Monroe" Apparently, Bella chose her new style herself. Back in November, the daughter of Yolanda Hadid was named GQ magazine's most stylish person on the planet. The magazine explained, "Menswear. Womenswear. Streetwear. Workwear. Smartwear. Wavywear. Few can wear it all (and pull it off). But few are Bella Hadid, the princess that was promised, she of abundant angles, the chosen one who really can wear anything and our best-dressed person on the planet." Bella herself previously admitted that she hasn't had a stylist for a couple of years. The brunette beauty also revealed that she's learned to deal with the scrutiny that comes her way. She said, In the last year, it was really important for me to learn that even if people talk about my style or if they like it or if they don't, it doesn't matter, because it's my style. When I leave the house in the morning, what I think about is, 'Does this make me happy? Do I feel good in this and do I feel comfortable?' " You can share this post! Instagram Celebrity The former President of the United States turns to his social media platform to share a sweet photo of him and his wife of 30 years to mark her 59th birthday. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Barack Obama is commemorating wife Michelle Obama's 59th birthday. To mark the special occasion, the former President of the United States showered his wife of 30 years with a sweet tribute. Making use of his Instagram account on Tuesday, January 17, the 61-year-old proud husband posted a photo of the couple cuddling up with his arms around her as they looked out over a balcony during sunset. "Happy birthday, @MichelleObama," he wrote in the caption. "You make every day brighter -- and somehow keep looking better!" Responding to the sweet gesture, Michelle hopped in the comment section, leaving a red heart emoji and a kiss emoji. The former first lady also reposted the snapshot on her Instagram Story with a "love you" sticker. A few hours later, Michelle also posted her own message to social media, thanking those who wished her well on her birthday. "Thank you all for the birthday love," she wrote. "I say this a lot, and I mean it -- I love you back, and I am so grateful for you supporting me during every step of my journey [red heart emoji]." Barack and Michelle met at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin in 1989 and married in 1992. They celebrated their 30th anniversary in October last year, with the former commander-in-chief sharing a sweet series of photos on his Instagram page to memorialize their anniversary. "After 30 years, I'm not sure why you look exactly the same and I don't. I do know that I won the lottery that day -- that I couldn't have asked for a better life partner. Happy anniversary, sweetheart," he wrote. For her part, Michelle had nothing but sweet words for her husband. "Happy anniversary to the man I love!" she replied, "These last 30 years have been an adventure, and I'm grateful to have you by my side. Here's to a lifetime together. I love you @BarackObama." While the two have always been open about their relationship, Michelle recently stunned fans when she got candid about the rough patches earlier in their marriage. "The Light We Carry" author sat down for a panel with Revolt TV last month, alongside Kelly Rowland, H.E.R., Winnie Harlow, Tina Knowles and moderator Angie Martinez, where she admitted that there was a 10-year period early in her marriage when she "couldn't stand" her husband. "People think I'm being catty for saying this, 'It's like, there were 10 years where I couldn't stand my husband,' " she shared. "And guess when it happened? When those kids were little." Malia, 24, and Sasha, 21, were 7 and 10 when their family moved into the White House after several years on the campaign trail. "For 10 years, while we're trying to build our careers and worrying about school and who was doing what and what, I was like, 'Argh, this isn't even,' " Michelle continued. "And guess what? Marriage isn't 50/50, ever. Ever. There are times I'm 70, he's 30. There are times he's 60, 40. But guess what? Ten years. We've been married 30. I would take 10 bad years over 30, it's just how you look at it. People give up, 'Five years. I can't take it.' " Michelle's confession came less than a month after netizens were buzzing on the Internet after they found out that Barack once planned to divorce her but he stayed because he went broke as he lost an election in 2000. The story was actually unraveled in his 2020 memoir titled "A Promised Land". You can share this post! Music In the clip arriving on Tuesday, January 17, the femcee can be seen performing her track while dancing with a bunch of people on the corner of the street in her home state of New Jersey. Jan 18, 2023 AceShowbiz - Coi Leray clearly had so much fun filming a music video for "Players (DJ Smallz 732 - Jersey Club Remix)". In the clip arriving on Tuesday, January 17, the femcee can be seen performing her track while dancing with a bunch of people on the corner of the street in her home state of New Jersey. On the track, the daughter of Benzino brags about being a player. "Yeah, 'bout to catch another flight/ Yeah, the apple bottom make him wanna bite/ Yeah, I just wanna have a good night/ I just wanna have a good night," she spits. "Hold up, if you don't know, now you know/ If he broke, then you gotta let him go/ You could have anybody, eeny, miny, moe/ 'Cause when you a boss, you could do what you want." The music video came nearly a month after Coi dropped a single called "Wasted" along with its music video. The clip showed the 25-year-old and her love interest getting into an argument though they initially had a great time together at the beginning of their relationship. "I gave you one chance, then you f**ked it up, then you f**ked it up again/ A mistake ain't a mistake when you make the same one again," she sings. "You told me that I'm the one, but I ain't one of them/ Communication gettin' frustrated, can we make it make sense?/ You make more time for your homies, you hit me when you feelin' lonely." Before dropping "Wasted", Coi explained on Twitter, "This song is for my b***hes who wasted time energy and so much more dealing with you f**k n***as!" She added, "Ladies let this song heal you and understand you are not alone!" You can share this post! Clovia, Indias premier D2C fashion, lingerie and personal care brand, has appointed Nikhil Gulati as its Head of Brand Marketing. He comes with over 10 years of experience in senior business and marketing roles. As a part of his new role, Nikhil will be heading the brand marketing for Clovia with an aim to make the brand a household name in India & a leader within the category. He will be responsible for all the brand, social & content efforts across media & to grow awareness, recall & consideration of the brand. Based in Delhi, Nikhils areas of expertise include brand strategy, media planning, marketing communications, digital marketing & data analytics. Prior to joining Clovia, Nikhil was heading Media Planning at CARS24 and was responsible for new user acquisition. He was instrumental in the launch of the brand's campaign with MS Dhoni as well as the strategic partnership with the IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad. Nikhil has also dabbled in entrepreneurship, successfully building a 360-degree advertising agency. He anchored campaigns for marquee traditional brands across sectors like auto, FMCG & retail. Nikhil holds an MBA degree from IBS Hyderabad & a PG certificate in digital marketing & communication from MICA. Neha Kant, Founder & CRO, Clovia, said, We are delighted to welcome Nikhil to the Clovia team as our Head of Brand Marketing. Under Nikhils leadership, Clovia aims to accelerate its efforts to engage with the audience through different mediums. Nikhil's entrepreneurial experience will definitely serve as a strong asset in Clovias journey ahead. His expertise in consumer marketing and profound understanding of consumer behaviour will be crucial in establishing our marketing strategy and solidifying our position as the market leader in the direct-to-consumer sector. Nikhil Gulati, Head of Brand Marketing, Clovia, said, "I am excited to embark on this new and uniquely challenging journey with Clovia. What excited me the most was the interesting communications, which Clovia has built over the years. My aim is to further the brand's vision to normalize conversations around women's innerwear, a topic that has largely been a taboo till now. I hope to create richer and more engaging experiences that propel these conversations to the limelight and continue to engage with the customers in a way that reflects the ethos of Clovia. Dahaad starring Sonakshi Sinha, Vijay Varma, Gulshan Devaiah, and Sohum Shah in the lead, has been selected for the Berlinale Series Competition. Here is wishing everyone involved all the best. The show is set in a small, sleepy town in Rajasthan. An 8 part, slow-burn crime drama that follows Sub-inspector Anjali Bhaati and her colleagues at the local police station unravel a curious case. When a series of women are mysteriously found dead in public bathrooms, Sub-Inspector Anjali Bhaati is tasked with the investigation. At first, the deaths appear to be clear-cut suicides but as the cases unravel, Anjali begins to suspect that a serial killer is on the loose. What follows is a riveting game of cat and mouse between a seasoned criminal and an underdog cop as she pieces together evidence before another innocent woman loses her life. Prior to Dahaad, Reema Kagti has delivered many critically acclaimed and loved stories with films like Talaash, Zindgi Na Milegi Dobara, Gully Boy (also presented at The Berlinale) and web series like Made In Heaven amongst many others. Directed by Reema Kagti and Ruchika Oberoi, produced by Ritesh Sidhwani, Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, and Farhan Akhtar, Dahaad is slated to release in 2023. Nelson Peltz, an activist investor, is competing for a position on the Walt Disney Co. board of directors on the grounds that the business is dealing with issues it created for itself. It has been just a few months since Disney brought back longstanding CEO Bob Iger to take the helm of the corporation once again before Peltz attempted to join the board. Disney appointed Mark Parker as its chairman and urged shareholders to vote against Peltz. Parker succeeds Susan Arnold, who won't run for reelection because of Disney's 15-year term limit regulations. Parker also holds the position of executive chairman at Nike Inc. Disney's board will consist of 11 directors following Arnold's departure. Peltz said that his prior expertise turning around businesses to improve performance and raise long-term shareholder value should make him a good choice for the Disney board. Peltz has previously engaged in successful proxy fights against household names like DuPont and Procter & Gamble. Peltz is requesting a one-year term, according to a regulatory filing from Trian Group, his company. Trian asserts that despite Bob Iger's return to the CEO role two months ago, Disney's recent operating results have been disappointing and that the stock is virtually at an eight-year low. Trian admits that Disney, which owns Marvel, Pixar, and ESPN, faces challenges as it transitions from traditional content distribution channels to streaming, but the group contends that given its intellectual property, diversified business model, and the theme park industry, Disney ought to be performing better. Among other things, the company attacks Disney's recent woes as being self-inflicted, pointing to what it sees as unsuccessful succession planning efforts, a misguided direct-to-consumer approach, and "over-the-top" remuneration practices. Trian contends that if 80-year-old Peltz is chosen to serve on the Disney board, he will want to improve accountability and openness. According to the group, Peltz would concentrate on creating a successful succession plan, matching pay with performance, and enhancing direct-to-consumer margins. Disney has addressed some of Peltz's concerns and advises its shareholders not to support Peltz. Parker will lead Disney's recently established succession planning group, the company also revealed on Wednesday. Parker previously served as Nike's chairman and CEO until 2020. Regarding the evaluation of internal and foreign candidates as well as CEO succession planning, the committee will provide advice to Disney's board. Iger personally chose former CEO Bob Chapek, whose two-year term was plagued by conflicts, blunders, and declining financial performance, to succeed him. Just a few weeks after Disney's quarterly financial performance fell far short of Wall Street projections, Iger returned to Disney and ousted Chapek. Despite the success of Disney's theme parks business, many visitors have been highly critical of price increases and other company decisions over the past two years. In order to improve the public's view of its business, the corporation announced a number of improvements at its domestic theme parks on Tuesday. The date for Disney's annual shareholders meeting has not yet been determined. Wootag, a global visual marketing SaaS company providing visual interactive and insights for marketers, has further expanded its global footprint by launching their new operation in India, and appointing Aditya Singh Chauhan as its Country Manager for India. The expansion builds on the strong client demand Wootag has experienced in the market, helping the clients achieve an average of 500% uplift in the click through to the landing page and over 40% increase in lead generation. The new movement embodies Wootag presence and capacity in India, one of the companys fastest-growing regions in the Asia Pacific market. The company has set an ambitious growth strategy to further develop its India portfolio and strengthen regional partnerships to accelerate its growth in visual marketing. This will also allow the company to better support their clients in its nine operating markets, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong SAR, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and now India. Not only does India boast the second-fastest growing economy in the G20, its marketing industry has evolved rapidly to keep up with emergence of the video consumption and e commerce ecosystem and ever-changing demands of consumers. This makes India such an important market for us in the region, contributing significantly to our business across Asia Pacific. said CEO & Founder of Wootag, Raj Sunder. In the new appointment, Aditya will be responsible for leading Wootag go-to-market functions, driving client satisfaction and driving Wootag for Ads adoption in India. He comes to Wootag with over 14 years of industry experience working with media houses and AdTech ventures, and increasing market share in all segments. His most recent roles include Associate Director of Brand Partnership & Monetization for Myntra and led Business development for Affle. I am thrilled to be joining Wootag and I would like to thank the company for trusting me to lead the team into the next chapter. I am excited to contribute to the companys growth journey and empower our clients to succeed in a distributed and rapidly changing world. said Aditya. The company has continued to gear up for regional expansion with the goal to enable clients in creating next-gen visual interactive and converting viewers into customers. Recently, Wootag has introduced Wootag for Ads across Asian markets. It aims to provide marketers with expanding offerings in interactive and intent based audience engagement across various forms of advertising. This integrated solution enables marketers to explore audience behavioural insights and target them with interactive video & display. Wootag For Ads also empower marketers with a real time event-driven video interactive solution, Wootag Signal, and OTT+ to deliver in-stream, CTV ads which aims to enhance media performance and drive digital transformation. Today, Wootag already supports more than 300+ brands with operations in 13 countries combined and helping them achieve a 350%+ increase in customer engagement. The company has already supported the clients in launching interactive video marketing campaigns in Asia Pacific across more than 17 verticals including CPG, Finance, Automobile, Personal Care, Fashion, and successfully drove 5x uplift in interactions across industry benchmarks. Whatever happened to medical ethics in Justin Trudeaus Canada? An article from December 7th in Genocide News reported that [t]he passage of Bill C-7 in Canada has greatly expanded the countrys Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) law, which was passed in 2021 at the height of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. It used to be that just terminally ill adults qualified to legally take their own lives with the help of another, but now poor people and even children are moving into the crosshairs of Canadas budding euthanasia industry. The above article included comments from Alex Schadenberg, executive director and international chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. He believes euthanasia will be expanded in Canada to include severely ill infants, an idea floated by the Quebec College of Physicians. Unlike adults, infants cannot opt to commit suicide. They have no way to consent in the same way as adults with full cognitive functionality, meaning it is more homicide at that point than suicide. Whatever the motivation, it appears that Canadas assisted suicide program is now basically without limits. The UK Daily Mail in two companion articles reports that the motivation for expanding eligibility for MAiD appears to be at least partially a result of the financial policies and rising costs driving the failure of Canadas free healthcare system. Wait times for critical care procedures often take over six months and sometimes several years due to a shortage of doctors caused by MAiDs mandated price controls. And when everyone gets free medical care, resources are abused so long wait times and inadequate care must follow. As a result, the number of people in pain and frustrated by the long delays in getting treatment is rising leading many patients to give up and opt for suicide instead. In 2021, only 486 people died using California's assisted suicide program, but that same year in Canada, 10,064 died used MAID to die that year. MAID has now grown so popular that Canada has both anti-suicide hotlines to try and stop people killing themselves, as well as pro-suicide hotlines for people wanting to end their lives. MAID has fallen into further scrutiny over claims that people are now seeking assisted suicide due to poverty and homelessness or mental anguish, as opposed to the traditional method of the terminally-ill seeking a painless death. (snip) Professor Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, described Canada's law as 'probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis' programme in Germany in the 1930s'. The onward march of euthanasia -- reportedly approved recently even for both diabetes and homelessness in Canada -- poses myriad other dilemmas for the rest of society. Also reported is the alarming eagerness of some doctors to perform this deadly service. Dying With Dignity Canada associates Ellen Wiebe and Stefanie Green reportedly euthanized more than 700 people between them and bragged about it in a video. Therefore, forget thinking that late term and post-birth abortions were the last remaining steps downward into the moral sewer. It is now clear that with God out of the way, human life has little value to most leftists so it may not have been a coincidence that I first learned of Canadas euthanasia law just prior to Americas annual observance of National Sanctity of Human Life Day. This year it occurs on Sunday January 22. If this observance is unfamiliar, the date was based on the month and day in 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe vs. Wade to legalize abortion. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed January 22 as the day to emphasize nationally the need to protect and save lives, born or unborn. Note that Republicans have continuously supported the observance, only to see it curtailed under Bill Clinton. George W. Bush restored it in 2001 and the observance continues despite opposition from the Dems. Because the primary emphasis of this annual observance has been on minimizing abortion, perhaps it is past time for the fight against assisted suicide to get more emphasis. The 6th commandment in Exodus 20:13 (NKJV) is concise; Do not murder. Murder can be legally defined as taking another life without benefit of extenuating circumstances. Do extenuating circumstance excuse either abortion or assisted suicide? I doubt it, but then my worldview is shaped by a Judeo-Christian definition of morality. The next lowest level on the Biblical scale of immorality would be making assisted suicide mandatory for disabled, the elderly or people of any age who may be a financial burden. However, its highly doubtful Canada or any western nation will ever take that step and even if adopted, what government bureaucrat, doctor or anyone else has the moral authority to play God and decide how long a person is permitted to live? Nevertheless, while not currently a mandate in Canada, the financial burden justification for assisted suicide appears to be working well enough as a voluntary program. What is happening in Canada should be a warning of what may happen in the United States. History has proven over and over that once a government run healthcare plan like Bernie Sanders proposed Medicare for All is implemented, it will be harder to end than a bad timeshare contract. Image: Marco Verch Professional Photographer The Socratic method is a form of cooperative dialogue focused on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking. It is based on the works of the early Greek philosopher Plato and is named after Socrates, who developed this method. At the core of the Socratic method is teasing out hypotheses to answer questions and then eliminating those with contradictions. The objective is to reach some truth by way of debate. The great thinkers of civilizations past understood that to reach the truth, you must debate. A lack of debate has led to much recent consternation. No good thing comes from stifling debate, and an unquestioned consensus is often the tool of tyrants. Some examples of our recent abandonment of debate include our response to COVID-19, the safety of resulting mRNA vaccines, election integrity, the funding of the Ukraine War, climate alarmism, gender ideology, and more. Assuming that you dont live inside of a vacuum, youve no doubt had an encounter with the Ministry of Truth and its actions to stifle debate. It may have looked like a warning label covering a social media post or an opinion editorial dressed up as investigative fact-check. Following Elon Musks acquisition of Twitter, the public was gifted insight into Twitters operation for much of the past half-decade. It should be unquestionably alarming to the public on all sides of the political spectrum that the executives at Twitter not only gave a back door to government and corporate officials to moderate public speech but that it was frequently used to stifle oppositional political thought. It is now apparent why the political Left became incensed over Twitters acquisition, and it was the imminent end to their bully pulpit. We would be naive to believe that this is only the case with Twitter, and in fact, we know that censorship on Facebook has often come at the urging of government bodies such as the FBI. Suppression of oppositional thought is a tool of tyrants. One of the most publicized stories of the past few weeks was the battle for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. More often than not, the outcome of these challenges is predetermined and what the public is treated to is lockstep political theater. Much of the conservative punditry defaulted to pearl-clutching at the notion of twenty or so representatives forcing a debate on the issue rather than handing the gavel to California Representative Kevin McCarthy uncontested. This sort of mentality is a shining example of our lack of national debate and a taste of everything that is wrong with politics. Congress is a deliberative body. The Founders intended that the authority vested in the legislature would be constrained by debate and, in this way, a better steward of the public trust. There is nothing worse than a government that operates in lockstep without deliberation. Operating in lockstep is how you get trillions of dollars in omnibus spending passed in the dead of night with no chance for review. Of late, Americans dont agree on what a man or a woman is, or better yet, how their money should be spent. The least we can hope for is a debate in the deliberative arm of government. Perhaps a lack of debate in Congress is only a reflection of the constituencies they represent. Much of the response from the public mirrored the punditry they consumed regarding the optics of deliberation and the lack of a unified front. There is nothing untoward about Congress doing its job, but this abashed conservative response is yet another manifestation of conservatives tyranny of gentility. They would prefer to fail in unison rather than appear discordant. Congress did finally elect a speaker, though it did take several days and fifteen rounds of heated in-person voting. Some wise observers have noted that Congress deliberates over their representation in person while we choose them on machines without the ability to question the result. Debate is a luxury of the elected class but not a luxury of the electing class. The public doesnt talk anymore. For recent generations, the axiom was that politics and religion were left at the door so that family and friendships might be preserved. Perhaps this policy of shirking debate created poor friendships and a compliant populace incapable of debate. What is certain is that whether a question of ability or a question of choice, a lack of debate in the publics personal lives created the expectation of the same in their politics, and resultingly, terrible politics. Image: U.S. Post Office Brian Parsons is a paleoconservative columnist in Idaho, a proud husband and father, and saved by Grace. You can follow him at WithdrawConsent.org or find his columns at the American Thinker, in the Idaho State Journal, or in other regional publications. Email | Gab For those of us who have been working for years on the pro-life cause, this is a very special and joyous Sanctity of Human Life Month. It's the first one since the Supreme Court in June 2022 struck down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion. Instead of the latest protest against Roe's cruelty and unconstitutionality, this month-long observance and the annual March for Life on January 20 will be celebrations. We still have much to do to protect innocent human life from the abortion industry. The battle is underway state by state and even city by city. But Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is a game changer. The highest law of the land as interpreted by the highest court in the land is no longer hostile to the pro-life viewpoint. It's no longer defensible to pretend a baby in the womb is not human and is therefore disposable. Those who continue to advocate for abortion must make the immoral case that some human lives are not worth protecting. That should be a steep hill to climb in a nation with a Christian heritage. Like slavery, abortion violates the moral law given us by our Creator. God's law states that all human life is sacred because we are made in His image. Many of America's Founders, including Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson, a slave-owner, predicted that slavery's inherent conflict with God-given liberties would one day end it. It took a terrible civil war, but slavery was finally abolished. The arguments for abortion are also unsustainable. That's why the pro-life movement has never given up. Pro-life doctors, nurses, and scientists have been reminding everyone that at the moment of conception, a new human life springs into being with his unique genetic code. So what if academia, Hollywood, the media, and corporate America use their enormous clout to push the fiction that human life is not in fact human? Proverbs 31:8 admonishes those of us who have voices to "speak out for those who cannot speak." We must tell the truth, promote adoption, provide more help to mothers who keep their babies, and shore up marriage, the surest family structure in which a child can thrive. We need to make sure that the legal system, as the enforcement arm of the representative democratic republic in which we live is no longer abused to justify the taking of innocent human life. This means persuading millions of our fellow Americans that abortion is not the answer to an unwanted pregnancy. It means letting women who have had abortions know that Jesus offers forgiveness, peace, and new life. I recall vividly the day that my wife Bonnie and I saw the film Silent Scream at a theater in Orlando around 1990. This powerful movie depicts a fetus a tiny human being desperately trying to avoid the abortionist. Few people can watch it and walk away unaffected. Our growing faith and clarity about abortion were driving forces in the creation of an investment fund, in 1994, for Bible-believing Christians, Timothy Plan, which pioneered Biblically Responsible Investing. Other powerful films have also carried the pro-life message. In 2018, Timothy Partners, Timothy Plan's adviser, bought out a theater in Orlando to show the movie Gosnell to our local community. Starring Dean Cain, the film exposes the evils committed by Kermit Gosnell. He was a West Philadelphiabased doctor convicted of murdering infants who were born alive and of manslaughter for the death of an adult patient. In March 2019, our firm bought out seven theaters in Orlando to show the movie Unplanned. It's about the story of former Planned Parenthood facility director Abby Johnson, who became a pro-life champion. We gifted 500 tickets that were snapped up within 24 hours. At the movie's conclusion, we asked the audiences to remain for a couple of minutes while we introduced the directors of 11 pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that we support. I am sharing this to encourage others to use whatever tools and influence they have to steer us toward a truly pro-life culture in which all lives are deemed sacred. The end of Roe is a huge victory that we should celebrate. It is also a clarion call to "speak out for those who cannot speak." Art Ally is the founder of the Timothy Plan family of Biblically Responsible Investing funds. Image: Tony Webster. The news is full of tut-tutting about the terribleness of President Trump, and now Joe Biden, supposedly mishandling a few classified documents by having them in their possession, which is usually a matter of them wanting to write their memoirs, so far as we know. Now a new book came out yesterday by James Bamford, called SpyFail, telling us how little care the FBI has taken with its own classified documents. Its clumsy maneuvers, bad personnel hiring practices, and misplaced priorities pretty well gave away the store of U.S. secrets targeting China. According to BusinessInsider, which ran a long and interesting book excerpt by Bamford himself: The FBI's website carries a stark warning. "The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China," it says, "are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States. Confronting this threat is the FBI's top counterintelligence priority." But far worse is the threat to the lives of scores of courageous Chinese agents who have volunteered to spy for the U.S. within their own country. Over the past decade, more than a dozen agents recruited by the CIA have been killed or imprisoned. And it now turns out that it was an alleged Chinese spy within the FBI's own counterintelligence division who may have been largely responsible. A spy whose activities went undetected for upwards of two decades, until his quiet arrest in 2020. Currently in a Hawaiian jail, his little-known case is wrapped in layers of secrecy as he awaits trail. Now in his new book, "SPYFAIL: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence," author James Bamford peels back many of those hidden layers. Wow. A spy was permitted to get on the inside at the FBI and went undetected for 20 years, despite repeated red flags described in the piece. According to Bamford, two brothers, one a sitting CIA officer and the other an ex-CIA officer, both of Chinese extraction, and both of who had spent years spying on behalf of the U.S. against China, managed to cross over to the Beijing side for cash in 2001 after the elder brother ran into post-employment financial problems: For three days, beginning on March 24, 2001, Alex and David allegedly met secretly in a hotel room with at least five officials from China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and passed on highly classified information. According to government charges, details included the covers used by CIA officers and CIA activities in China; cryptographic information used in classified and sensitive CIA communications and reports; information concerning CIA officer identities as well as those of CIA human assets in China; the CIA's use of operational tradecraft; and CIA secure communications practices that is, covcom details. The brothers were then handed $50,000 in cash. Afterward, as laid out in the indictment, both Alex and David returned to California, but they kept in touch with their handlers. Alex eventually agreed to become a mole for China's intelligence service within the FBI, and on the day after Christmas 2002, he applied for the position of special agent. By then, however, he was about forty-nine years old and was informed that he was over the age limit. But in 2004 he was nevertheless hired as a Chinese translator since he spoke several Chinese dialects. In many ways, this was an even better position for a spy since he would have access to a very broad range of information, including intercepted Chinese conversations. The day before he started his new job, he called a suspected accomplice, possibly David, to give him the good news that he would now be working full-time for "the other side." According to Bamford, he now had two agencies to keep the Chicoms apprised of, given his knowledge of the CIA earlier as well as his ongoing insider knowledge of the FBI: Over at least the next six years and possibly much longer, he took over the role of FBI mole where Robert Hanssen, who spied for Russia for more than two decades, left off, except for a different spymaster. It was as though no lessons had ever been learned by the bureau. The method was simple. Attracting no suspicion, Ma [Alex] would gather up piles of highly secret materials and simply walk out the door with them, just as Hanssen had done for decades. Some he photographed with a digital camera, others he downloaded from his computer onto a flash drive, while still others he copied onto CD-ROM discs. Some dealt with guided missiles and weapon systems, and others revealed the identity of confidential sources, putting their lives at risk. In addition to not setting up safeguards in the wake of Hanssen's betrayal, the warning signs about Alex were all over the place. Customs caught him carrying $20,000 in cash on a return back from China, but no red flags were raised at the FBI. He flew back and forth to China with nobody asking questions. His wife sometimes flew there, too, taking "presents" for the Chicoms. His older brother David helped Alex identify Chinese and Chinese-American exiles working for the bureau and other U.S. agencies as a wokester identity-politics grievance-group activist in Los Angeles. A wokester bureau of course, would have no suspicions with how the Chicoms would use that. A third spy named Lee came onboard the Chicom express indirectly from the CIA as a disgruntled agent. He left the agency and got a job with Japan Tobacco Incorporated (JTI) in Hong Kong, and right away, the corporate team noticed the spy problems that he seemed to be tipping off Chinese officials about JTI's anti-counterfeiting activities and they reported that to the FBI, which inexplicably took no action. All evidence pointed toward Lee, and as a result, executives at JTI alerted the FBI, but apparently no action was ever taken. Lee was finally fired in mid- 2009, and soon afterward a Chinese official warned the company that he was not only continuing to share information with MSS [China spy agency] officers, but was also actively working with them. And once again JTI officials passed the information to the FBI. "I certainly reported it to the appropriate authorities," said a company supervisor. It was good information, but once again it seemed to go nowhere within the bureau. How many warnings did they need about these guys? Quite a few, which is why it took so long to hose them out. Now we move to the present day, where we learn how the World Economic Forum and the Chicom propaganda machine seem to have a mutual love-fest, China is shoveling cash to NGOs to promote the banning of gas stoves in the states, and the national security establishment is puffing away about the dread awfulness of President Trump having a classified document in his possession a serious enough offense to trigger a full SWAT teamstyle FBI raid, complete with overturned furniture, rifled clothing drawers, a jaunt through Melania Trump's underwear drawer to paw through her panties, and a raid on President Trump's minor son's bedroom. Sound a little funny in light of all the missed signals from these three Chinese spies described by Bamford above? Where the heck were their priorities? It gets worse when we think of how many resources the FBI spent on policing ordinary Americans' tweets on foreign counterintelligence grounds, as the Twitter Files reported, with the FBI bringing 80 agents into this Lives of Othersstyle content moderation operation amid "suggestions" to Twitter to ban the thousands of low-traffic accounts on the grounds of foreign "disinformation." The FBI forked over $3 million to Twitter for its "assistance" in the China-style censorship, which included shutting down the New York Post for its Hunter Biden laptop revelations, while it ignored the live presence of Chinese and maybe other spies in its own midst, which may mean they still have plenty of them. We do know that the bureau hasn't announced anything on a report from inside Twitter from a whistleblower about Chinese agents at that company. I wrote about that here. But they were happy to censor Americans, and happy to raid Trump's house on the misappropriation (not the actual sale, which happened in its own house) of classified documents since they supposedly care so much about them. Sound serious? You've never seen so much huffing and puffing, in fact, despite the fact that Trump was explicitly allowed to declassify documents, and the number of documents in Joe Biden's possession, at least they found ones so far, were few. So much is overclassified; so many crummy contractors have security clearances that it's hard to think that the foofaraw is more than just the Deep State puffing itself up as the holder of the keys to the kingdom with power to imprison those who fail to keep the overclassified secrets. It's strange stuff, too, given that former CIA director John Deutsche certainly mishandled classified documents, as did former CIA director David Petraeus, while former national security adviser Sandy Berger actually lifted and carried away classified documents stuffed in his clothing. Let's not even get into Hillary Clinton's massive exposure of U.S. secrets stored on a private server in some guy's bathroom. None of these miscreants suffered significant consequences. Yet President Trump was actually raided by the FBI over that supposedly serious issue, while the FBI itself failed to police its own operation and probably still is failing. How many classified documents got into enemy hands because of that one? Things like this make one wonder what the FBI is doing with its time, given that it can't police itself. Why does the U.S. keep so many secrets? If they can't keep the ones they have and they target only the people they don't like for mishandling them, what is this classified secrets thing really about? Congress has recently sent up a China threat committee to hold hearings on China's adversarial activities in the U.S. Maybe the FBI, which mishandled its own China secrets to the point of giving away the store, should be the first witness to answer those questions. Image: Lorie Shaull, via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0. Pee-wee Herman, clowntoonish (and ill-fated) '80s'90s TV star, had a fall-back defense in his various misadventures: "I know you are, but what am I?" Democrats in general and the Biden administration in particular have adopted Pee-wee's elementary school retort, grafting it onto White House communications policy. Democrats have been using this oblique transparency strategy for decades. Recently, it has been re-branded "whataboutism," as in "Oh yeah? Well, what about Trump?" In psych class, it's taught as projection. It can be seen performed in living color at the daily White House press briefing, when Cringe tries to field the Daily Doocy. The old saw "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up" is rapidly finding a new home in the D.C. news narrative. The lengths Biden & Co. are going to pretend "there's nothing to see here" will soon exceed all leaps of Olympic proportion in the Credulity Competition. Republicans have already submitted a petition to change the Potomac to Denial. By spring, Sgt. Schultz is expected to take over as White House press secretary. Both frustrating and fascinating to the electorate is the blithe manner in which Biden & Co. dismiss their sins the same ones that so recently outraged them when, they claim, former president Orange Man committed them. Not surprising, the White House Press Corpse provides the smokescreen for all this wide-eyed innocence by running cover for every administrative oopsie, from falling up stairs to marble-mouth spoonerisms that only a speech therapist might comprehend, choosing instead to debate and derail Republicans with ambushes Jesse James would love. One explanation for the MSM's disinformation comes from independent veteran journalist Caitlin Johnstone: Indeed, it's very rare in the west to see mainstream journalists hold other mainstream journalists accountable for their false reporting, facilitation of propaganda, or journalistic malpractice, unless it's journalists whose approval they don't care about like members of the opposite political faction or independent media reporters. This is because western journalists are worthless, obsequious cowards whose entire lives revolve around seeking the approval of their peers. In order to live down to Ms. Caitlin's description, mainstream journalists and politicians both employ another popular option: the magic Ignore Button. A simple press, and everything becomes transparent in that it disappears from concern, responsibility, or culpability. There is no limit to how many times the Magic Button can be used. Ignorance is bliss. Denial is not admission. Unheard is unasked. From the cacophony at the end of press conference to the benign, unperturbed stroll from the White House to Marine One, the non-answer is the transparency, "the evident demonstration of reality although not beheld" (Heb. 11:1, with apologies to Paul). Left dangling in unfulfilled anticipation are answers the Sixpacks want. Who? What? When? Why? All remain unanswered until next time and, if Johnstone is correct, the next time, and the time after that. It's the way the media and political popularity contest is played and won. Transparency is a word that merely loiters in their vocabulary. So whatever became of the immensely popular Pee-wee Herman? At the pinnacle of his success, Paul Reubens was unceremoniously arrested in the lobby of an "adult theater" in Florida for demonstrating to a Sarasota detective how Pee-wee got his name. His career was ruined. What lessons might we take from this? Precious few, it appears. The president's wandering classified documents have been removed from the cherished Corvette's guardianship, while Hunter Biden's laptop has given us way more than Peewee ever could. The difference is that Paul "Pee-wee" Reubens went to jail, a fallen star and a ruined man. Maybe Biden & Co. and the Democrats should think about that as Republicans let the dogs out. Image: Karine Jean-Pierre. Credit: NBC News via YouTube, CC BY 3.0. Maybe we will finally learn what led to the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Yes, I understand that U.S. voters were tired of "endless wars," but there is a way to end a war, and Afghanistan was not a good example. Our horrific departure from that country last year was brutal on Afghan women, a group that enjoyed some freedom because our soldiers were there. Those Afghan ladies are back in the news, as we see in this report: Afghan women are finding avenues to pursue their education as the Taliban continues to crack down on women's rights, recently banning female students from going to university. Since the Taliban took over in August 2021, women's rights in education have been suppressed for girls of all ages, from secondary school to university. The Taliban's harsh interpretation of Islamic law has caused a wave of "underground education," ranging from secret schools for girls within the country to women attending college secretly online. The December announcement from the Taliban immediately banning women from university caused at least one online U.S. college to see an increase in Afghan female applicants. The University of the People, which works with thousands of refugees, reported in one week after the Taliban's new ban that it received 2,208 applications. This is the highest level of interest from Afghan women since the Taliban took over. "I think that the women who come to us, most of them, stopped at school. They stopped studying, and they were forced to leave school. And as such, they have the desire to study. They want to feel that they're part of the world," University of the People President Shai Reshef told The Hill. The school already has 2,000 Afghan women enrolled and 10,000 Afghan women who've applied. And when an Afghan woman is accepted, she is allowed to use a fake name in classes for safety. Online education the Afghan way. Also, where are the feminists? Maybe they are still marching at Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh's home. I understand that our mission in Afghanistan was about terrorism. Nevertheless, opportunities for women to go to school were a consequence of our presence there. I know that because I've spoken to Afghan refugees in our area who went to school because of our presence there. And they are grateful for it. Last, but not least, what happened to all the talk of a "new Taliban"? They are acting like the old one, and that's horrible news for Afghan girls and their mothers. PS: Check out my blog for posts, podcasts, and videos. Image: Pexels, Pixabay, Pixabay License. Poor Joe Biden. He now must deal with a divided Congress, so he should just rule by government edict, according to this article. Which is kind of rich. In 2021, when Joe took office, Democrats had complete control of Congress, yet he decided on day one to act like a dictator anyway. We didn't see the media call him a dictator or talk about abuse of power, and separation of duties, so Joe got away with it. Biden decided unilaterally to ignore immigration laws and to stop enforcing the border. Literally millions of illegals streamed in. If the president didn't want immigration laws enforced, his politicized Justice Department was happy to comply. One of Biden's main goals was to destroy energy-producing companies, so he stopped a critical pipeline and put severe limits on drilling on public lands. Energy prices took off. Biden said that the Constitution prevented him from forgiving student loans but he is continuously trying to do that anyway. We hear few complaints from Democrats about abuse of power and separation of powers. It always helps a dictator if he has a deep state that serve as essentially campaign workers and a politicized Justice Department led by a person who will do what he is told. If the teachers union wanted schools to be closed, Joe's CDC was at their beck and call, happily regurgitating their talking points. If the National Association of school boards wanted to shut parents up, they went to the White House and penned a letter to the Justice Department asking for just that, and they got it. Attorney General Merrick Garland, without doing research, dutifully penned a letter of his own that threatened parents to shut them up. If the president and other Democrats wanted abortion on demand, the Justice Department treated peaceful protesters at abortion mills harshly and ignored radical leftists who destroyed pro-life centers. They have essentially become special and above the law. If an election is coming up, the Justice department will hide the Biden family corruption and tell the media to bury the story. The complicit media will bend over and claim that true information about the Bidens is Russian misinformation. If classified documents are found hidden in Biden's office in files marked 'personal,' Garland will bury the story for months. No matter how destructive the policies are, the media will cheer and tell Biden how great he is doing. That is why he says he doesn't need to change anything. Biden says he won't negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling and the media will most likely claim it is all the Republicans' fault. During President Trumps four years in office, the media and other Democrats sought to destroy and obstruct him every day. His policies were to give the money and power back to the people, yet he was called a dictator and illegitimate president to mislead the public. No matter how much he helped minorities, he was labeled a racist. Today, Democrats call the filibuster racist, yet they used it more than 300 times in 2020 to obstruct Trumps policies. Not once did we see a headline: Trump could again play implementer-in-chief in the face of Democrat obstruction. We always hear the talking point that Biden is a decent human being who would bring back dignity to the White House but who is he? The truth is Biden has used his powerful position in the government to gather massive kickbacks from foreign countries. That is pure corruption. Biden is also a congenital liar who continually rewrites his personal history, just like newly elected Rep. George Santos, whom the media trashes. And the most despicable personal trait I can think of is Joe and Jill absolutely ignore Hunter's love child. People should stop pretending that a couple who wont even meet a child that embarrasses them should not be described as nice and empathetic Biden clearly doesn't care about all the deaths at the border, doesn't care about babies born in botched abortions, and doesn't give a darn about his own grandchild. Why would anyone believe he cares about the rest of us? It does appear that he cares about his Corvette. Journalists are shameful when: They support dictatorial actions by Biden (and President Obama, too). They not only look the other way with Hillary Clinton and Biden family corruption, but they also censor the truth to hide it from the public before elections. They ignore the women that the Clintons physically and mentally abused, as well as the woman, Tara Reade, who says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. They seek to destroy Trump, Ron DeSantis, Ronald Reagan, or any other Republican who gets in their way. They do not mind how much they must lie. The media and other Democrats conduct endless witch hunts and investigations, the latest of which was to see Trumps taxes and they found nothing. Yet, there is little interest in analyzing Joes and Hunter's taxes to see where all the foreign kickbacks went and to make sure all transfers between Joe and Hunter were properly accounted for. Is Biden going to pay income taxes on the increase in value on his beach property for the $500,000 fence taxpayers are funding? If not, why not? The American media is far more guilty in interfering in our elections than Russia, China, or any other country. It's a disgrace. Greenie leftists for years have been saying the Antarctic is melting. Well, based on this latest news from AFP, the Antarctic ice is not melting as fast as predicted. Runaway W. Antarctic ice sheet collapse not 'inevitable': study Both the North and South pole regions have warmed by roughly three degrees Celsius compared to late 19th-century levels, nearly three times the global average. The global temperature has risen less than two degrees Fahrenheit in the last 150 years. There is no scientific data that show that this small rise is caused by: An exponential rise in coal and oil use. An exponential rise in gas-powered cars, machinery, trucks, and planes. An extra six million people breathing out CO2. Cows producing methane gas. Gas grills and furnaces. Power plants that greatly improve our quality and length of life. The rise occurred because a 400-year-plus "little ice age" ended around 1860. A small rise in temperature occurs cyclically and naturally after ice ages happen. The ice is melting more slowly than predicted not because: Politicians and bureaucrats signed the Paris Climate accord. The U.N. has had multiple gabfests where a huge number of politicians and rich people fly in private jets to discuss climate change. Worthless pieces of paper called carbon credits are bought and sold. Solar panels and wind turbines taking up huge pieces of land. People are being forced to buy expensive, impractical, inefficient vehicles powered by a flammable pollutant. Here is a hint as to why the ice is melting slower than predicted: Antarctica had a record cold winter in 2021. This could not have occurred if everything that we are told causes warming actually did. Antarctica's last six months were the coldest on record. For the polar darkness period, from April through September, the average temperature was -60.9 degrees Celsius (-77.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a record for those months," the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said. For the entire Antarctic continent, the winter of 2021 was the second-coldest on record, with the "temperature for June, July, and August 3.4 degrees Celsius (6.1 degrees Fahrenheit) lower than the 1981 to 2010 average at -62.9 degrees Celsius (-81.2 degrees Fahrenheit)," according to a new report from the NSIDC. "This is the second-coldest winter (June-July-August months) on record, behind only 2004 in the 60-year weather record at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station[."] There was also a global cooling period from 1940 to 1975 that disproves the theory that humans, our use of natural resources, and rising CO2 cause warming. If we had real journalists, instead of people pushing the radical agenda, 100 years of false predictions would be properly called misinformation. Instead, the people posing as journalists don't care that the dire predictions have been completely wrong. They call it settled science. Real journalists would ask questions and do research, but today's journalists just repeat what they are told, and they call those of us who do research, ask questions, and tell the truth that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally "climate change deniers." It is an intentional lie to call people deniers and meant to discredit us and to shut us up. What we never see in these articles is scientific data showing a direct correlation between the minor temperature rise, after an ice age ended, and the exponential increase in the consumption of natural resources because there is none. If there is no correlation, there can be no causation. Instead of telling the truth, this is what is printed as news: Scientists say the warming of the planet is primarily caused by human activities that emit heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The effects include higher sea levels, drought, wildfires, increased precipitation and wetter hurricanes. Tweets using terms associated with climate denial such as "climate fraud," "climate hoax" and "climate scam" more than tripled in 2022, up 300% from 2021, according to Advance Democracy, a research organization that studies misinformation. Twitter has always been a hotspot for climate change misinformation. On Musk's watch, it's heating up. What is truly sad is that students are taught to repeat talking points instead of learning to do research, ask questions, and debate. They are taught that they will be chastised if they dare disagree with their teachers or the government. Journalists should be ashamed that this is the message they send to children. Image: PxHere, CC0 public domain. To claim that the mainstream media have a Democrat bias is an erroneous assumption. That's because such a claim assumes that the party and the media are separate entities and the Democrats are influencing the news media. That is simply false. For ages, the mainstream news media has been the public relations wing for the Democrats. They crawl when asked to bend and prostrate when asked to crawl. Most news outfits follow the same narrative and even use identical phraseology to describe any given occurrence. A perfect example of this setup is Chuck Todd. On paper, he works for NBC News, but he reports to the Democrat leadership. Todd isn't just metaphorically in bed with the Democrats; he's literally in bed: he is married to a Democrat campaign communications strategist working in D.C. It is futile for Republicans, particularly MAGA Republicans, to engage with the likes of Todd because no matter what is said, clips will be presented out of context to demonize the interviewee. Interviewers such as Todd control the forum; they can reduce the volume of the guest speaking and interject or talk over the guest. Audiences get the impression that the Republican was "owned" or left speechless or murmuring under his breath by Todd's factual claims. Republicans agreeing to enter a forum hosted by Todd must learn to be battle-ready. It merits multiple practice sessions with a mock adversarial interrogator. The interviewee must be armed with facts, a calm demeanor, and a sense of humor. This was an abominable week for the Democrats. Classified documents from Biden's days as vice president were discovered on not one, nor two, but three occasions. A failure with the Federal Aviation Administration's Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system caused the temporary grounding of all U.S. flights for the first time since the 9/11 attacks. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg seemed clueless about why it had occurred and how to prevent it. In light of these circumstances, Sen. Ron Johnson had the upper hand for his interview with Chuck Todd on Sunday's Meet the Press. Todd began by asking Johnson if he agreed with Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of a special counsel to investigate classified documents being found in Joe Biden's former office and Delaware home. Johnson said he believed that Biden should be investigated like Trump and added that a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Hunter Biden's laptop. Johnson also lamented the fact that Congress never gets access to the information, and as a result, the American public never understands the truth of these situations. This was a missed opportunity. Johnson should have repeated the national security risk of Biden's mishandling of classified information and then should have blamed President Obama. Since Biden worked for Obama, it was Obama's responsibility to ensure that all documents during his presidency were returned. The mention of Obama would have caused Todd to combust, which Johnson could have ridiculed. Todd asked Johnson about whether, when the Justice Department decides a crime wasn't committed, he still wants the information to be made public to damage the individual politically. Johnson launched into a lengthy explanation of how the Hunter story was suppressed by social media and dismissed by intelligence officials and members of the media. This was a wasted opportunity. He should have said the following instead: "I'm pleased that you are concerned about reputations being damaged by false narratives. Perhaps you have learned your lesson and are ready to apologize to President Trump for carrying the Russian Collusion hoax and several such hoaxes for four years without a smidgen of evidence?" This would result in a testy back-and-forth with Todd, but it would have been worth it. The mention of Hunter's laptop irked Todd, causing him to ask Johnson if he could name a crime that Hunter Biden had committed, adding: "It is not a crime to make money off of your last name." Johnson raised accusations in his Senate report, released in September 2020, that Hunter Biden paid about $30,000 to prostitutes caught up in European sex-trafficking operations and asked Todd if it sounded like a crime. This was another squandered opportunity by Johnson. He could have said something as follows: "Regular people are hired for a job based on their capabilities, experience, and expertise. Hunter had none of this, yet he had lucrative deals in Ukraine and with the Chinese, because of Joe Biden's abuse of power as vice president. There are crimes such as an influence-peddling scandal, an illegal transfer of foreign funds, gifts, and other matters that could prove criminal. A special counsel must probe these offenses, including some that involve emails referencing the president. As a journalist Chuck, you should have investigated the matter or at least demanded that it be investigated. Instead of unconditionally supporting your Democrat bosses." Todd could have exploded at these allegations, which Johnson should have ignored. Todd attempted to cast doubts on Johnson's claims about Hunter's laptop with "I'll take you at your word." Johnson replied to Todd that "you don't invite me on to interview me; you invite me on to argue with me." Todd refuted: "Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it's part of your identity." This was another wasted opportunity. Johnson should have reminded Todd of his blatant partisanship and the Democrat echo chamber he dwells in, and that he is married to a Democrat. Johnson should have read out from the list of hoaxes NBC News perpetrated against Trump and showed the paper to the audience. Todd would have reacted with scorn. Next, Todd attempted to blame the GOP and Trump for the recent violence in the capital of Brazil, quoting Mike Pence, who said the January 6 protests may have inspired it. Johnson mentioned the 570 riots during the summer of 2020. Instead, Johnson should have mentioned a BBC report about experts asking why there was so little security for government buildings in the Brazilian capital that protesters could break in. He should have mentioned that the identity of the "protesters" who were bussed in remains unclear, and hence it needs to be investigated before laying blame. Johnson should have said that a similar investigation needs to occur around Jan. 6, 2021, on why the security was not tight enough at the capital, and if government agents incited the crowd, and why the FBI refused to answer whether agents disguised as MAGA-supporters were part of the protests. Todd would have vehemently opposed the idea of such as probe. Johnson could simply counter by insisting that the January 6 probe that lasted for almost two years was politically motivated because all members of the committee were Trump-haters, and Trump's lawyers weren't allowed to question witnesses. Johnson should have said it is time people are acquainted with facts. Overall, Johnson didn't do badly, but he could have driven the conversation and destroyed Todd's Democrat talking points. This is why Trump is an absolute superstar. He is fearless and relished the opportunity to deride partisan hacks such as Chuck Todd. Image: Screen shot from NBC News video via YouTube. President Biden has just extended the Declaration of Public Health Emergency (PHE) for COVID. Will his big con be todays Stamp Act? A look at the history of that may be useful. In 1765, Great Britain passed the Stamp Act that required printers in the American colonies to pay a tax on documents used or created in the colonies and to prove it by affixing an embossed revenue stamp to the documents. Those accused of failing to purchase and display the official stamp would be tried in Admiralty court, not trial by jury. The Stamp Act prompted Patrick Henry to write in the Virginia Resolves, the immortal the phrase [no] taxation without representation. The colonies reacted with the Stamp Act Congress, which morphed into the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, and ultimately the Constitutional Convention that produced our Constitution (1787). The spark that ignited the American Revolution was the Stamp Act. Will Bidens COVID big con become a modern-day Stamp Act and initiate a second American revolution, hopefully this time bloodless? The Stamp Act was used to impose tyrannical authority of the British aristocracy on colonials, the proto-Americans. COVID was the hammer Democrats employed to impose their will on We the People. Using a spurious COVID health crisis as justification, Washington elites suppressed the Bill of Rights, imposed quasi-martial law, and re-imposed a tyranny we rebelled against 247 years ago. Evidence clearly shows that Washington consistently lied about COVID it was magnificent scam. They ginned up a virus that was as dangerous to most Americans as the seasonal flu it was not bubonic plague. COVID was a danger only to the immunocompromised and the elderly. Numbers of COVID deaths were greatly exaggerated. Autopsy studies and CDC demographic data show that 73 percent to 88 percent of those listed as COVID deaths were people who died not from COVID but with COVID, and because of pre-existing life threatening conditions. Dr. Anthony Fauci urged parents to vaccinate their children, in whom the risk of death from COVID was less than 0.03 percent. Meanwhile, adverse impacts of mRNA vaccines were falsified, hidden and suppressed. Masks dont work. Lockdowns, social isolation, and school closures not only didnt work, but had catastrophic consequences. More than 200,000 small businesses closed in the first year of COVID. Children, especially the poor, lost two years of schooling. Democrats knew this and yet pounded away with danger warnings and mandates or advisories that violated the Bill of Rights. They abrogated the rule of law. During the summer of 2020, BLM rioted, burned, looted and killed with impunity. Vice President Joe Biden coerced Ukraine using a billion taxpayer dollars to protect his son Hunter from prosecution and paid no price (the taxpayers did). Yet President Trump was hounded with a false charge of Russia collusion, which was in fact what Hillary Clinton did. This was evidence of Democrats rules for thee but not for me, done to expand federal power and impose a new tyranny. In 1765, Britain had the power of its army and navy to impose its will. Today, Democrats have complicit search engines, social media, and legacy news outlets; huge corporations such as Big Pharma and big box stores (that werent locked down) that control the flow of information to the public. By censorship and canceling nay-sayers, the official narrative was the only narrative available to the public. The recently released so-called Twitter files prove the incestuous, collusive relationship between progressive Democrats and big tech. Fortunately, despite the aggressive campaign of propaganda abetted by covert as well as overt censorship, the truth about COVID and Bidens big con has gradually emerged. We now know all about the lies, antiscientific medical advisories, and unconstitutional diktats. The people who threw tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 and demanded independence from government oppression were called rebels. Today those people are labeled vaccine-deniers and misinformation spreaders. Eleven tumultuous years unfolded between the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Declaration of Independence followed by a war to achieve personal and national independence. Hopefully, the interval will be shorter and bloodless between Bidens COVID power grab and Americans reaffirmation of our individual, constitutionally guaranteed freedom from federal tyranny. Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; and author of the multi-award-winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine. Image: Library of Congress, via Picryl // no known restrictions It has been over a year since Microsoft announced its intentions to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal, but the acquisition is still facing major obstacles. Now, Microsoft may face another challenge as the European Unions antitrust commission is preparing to send a charge sheet, known as a statement of objections, outlining concerns about the acquisition. The commission has set April 11 as the final deadline for its decision. According to Reuters, the European Unions antitrust commission was expected to offer remedies to avoid a statement of charge and shorten the regulatory process, but rumours suggest they are not open to offering remedies without first sending the charge sheet. However, there are reportedly ongoing informal discussions on concessions. In response, Microsoft said, We continue working with the European Commission to address any marketplace concerns. Our goal is to bring more games to more people, and this deal will further that goal. Previous concerns from US and UK regulators This isnt the first time regulators have expressed concerns about Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also going to court to block the deal, UK regulators are also expressing concerns, and even Sony is wary of the acquisition. The Japanese conglomerate fears games like Call of Duty will become exclusive to Xbox and PlayStation users will no longer have access to them. Advertisement To ease concerns, Microsoft recently reached a 10-year deal with Nintendo to make Call of Duty available on Nintendo consoles and stated they are open to a similar agreement with Sony, which has been critical of the acquisition. Its clear that the road ahead for Microsofts acquisition of Activision Blizzard will not be easy. The company will have to address the concerns of various regulatory bodies and offer guarantees that the deal will be beneficial for the market. The Samsung Galaxy S23 series has been leaking like crazy for a while now. Earlier today, detailed specs of all three models surfaced, and we covered them across two different articles. Now, even more Galaxy S23 promo images have appeared online. The Galaxy S23 series appears in a bunch of new promo images This time around, the images have been shared by SnoppyTech, a well-known tipster. He shared six new images in total, and these are proper promo materials, not your regular renders. You can check out all the images in the gallery below the article. Each of the three devices is shown here, while one image shows all three of them, actually. You can clearly look at the design differences between them. The Galaxy S23 Ultra will, of course, stand apart from the other two phones, as is the case for the Ultra series. Samsungs upcoming phones pose next to other tech gadgets from the company, and theyre doing that in several different color options. You can see Cotton, Green, and Purple colors here, while the Black model is not included here. Fancier names for those colors will be used by Samsung, by the way. Advertisement The Galaxy S23 & S23+ will include flat displays, unlike the Ultra model The Galaxy S23 and S23+ will have flat displays, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra will include a curved panel. All three phones will feature a centered display camera hole, and extremely thin bezels. The Galaxy S23 and S23+ will also include curved corners, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra will take the opposite route. It will have very sharp corners, as you can see in the provided images. It will be more squarish overall. The vanilla and Plus models are set to include four cameras overall, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra will feature five of them. It will also be the only model to offer a periscope telephoto unit, as was the case in the past. All three Galaxy S23 series smartphones will become official on February 1. The company already announced its launch event. Samsung will host a separate launch event, it wont be a part of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. You can expect to see all three devices in Barcelona, though. Samsung is rolling out the January 2023 Android security patch to several more Galaxy smartphones. The Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Flip 3, and Galaxy S10 Lite are all receiving this months security update. The new SMR (Security Maintenance Release) has already reached over a dozen other Galaxy devices. The January SMR for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 is currently available in Europe. The update is rolling out in the region with firmware version F936BXXS1BWA2. The package doesnt contain anything apart from the latest vulnerability fixes, which isnt surprising since the device recently received Android 13. Samsung should expand this update to more markets, including the US, in the coming days. Meanwhile, if youre using the 2021 Fold model, the January update is already available more widely. The latest security patch for the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is available in Europe and a few Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The updated firmware version for this phone is F926BXXS2DWA3. It expectedly doesnt contain any new features or improvements. The update is all about security fixes. The US versions havent picked up this release yet. The story for the Galaxy Z Flip 3 is somewhat similar too. Samsung has once again begun the rollout in Europe. The new firmware version for this 2021 clamshell foldable is F711BXXS3DWA3. And we may be sounding repetitive, but it should just be a matter of time before Samsung goes global with this update for the Galaxy Z Flip 3. Dont expect any major user-facing changes, though. The device isnt getting more than the January SMR. Advertisement The Galaxy S10 Lite is also getting the January 2023 security update The Galaxy S10 Lite is another Samsung device that recently started picking up the January security patch. The rollout for this affordable flagship has begun in Spain with firmware version G770FXXS6HWA2 (via). Over the next few days, the company should release this update in the rest of the European countries and expand it to other markets, including the US. There are no new features here as well. Once again, we are only getting this months vulnerability fixes. If youre using any of these Samsung smartphones, the latest security update should be available to you soon unless it already has. It patches more than 70 vulnerabilities, including dozens of high-severity ones. These include security patches part of Googles latest ASB (Android Security Bulletin) and some Galaxy-specific ones. You can check for updates from the Settings app on your phone. Samsung is on a roll today. It began the day by rolling out the January 2023 Android security patch to the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip 4, Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Flip 3, and Galaxy S10 Lite in various parts of the world, including the US. The company then released the Android 13 update for the unlocked Galaxy S20 and Galaxy A42 5G stateside. Now, the firm is seeding the latest security update to a few more Galaxy devices. The Galaxy S21 FE, Galaxy A50, and international versions of the Galaxy Note 20 5G are getting the new SMR (Security Maintenance Release). The January SMR for the Galaxy S21 FE is currently rolling out in a handful of Latin American countries. Namely, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. The new firmware version for the device in the region is G990EXXS3DWA6 (via). The package doesnt contain anything apart from this months vulnerability fixes. Samsung has already revealed that the latest SMR patches more than 70 vulnerabilities, with the vast majority of them being high-severity issues. These fixes should reach Galaxy S21 FE users in other markets, including the US, over the next few days. Advertisement Meanwhile, if youre using Samsungs 5G-enabled Galaxy Note 20 phones, the January SMR may be available for your phone. The company began the rollout for unlocked units in the US a couple of weeks back. Since then it has expanded the update to several international markets (covering 4G models too). As of today, the Galaxy Note 20 5G and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G are getting the latest security patch in even more regions. The devices are getting the update with firmware version N98*BXXS5GWA8. Unsurprisingly, there arent any new features in this package too. Samsung has also released the January 2023 update for the Galaxy A50 The Galaxy A50 is another Samsung smartphone that started getting the January security update recently. The latest SMR for this mid-range phone is available in a bunch of Latin American countries. Depending on the model number, the new firmware version in the region is either A505GUBS9CWA2 or A505GTUBS9CWA1. Since this phone is almost four years old now, it is no longer getting monthly security updates. So Samsung may not release the January SMR for it in some markets. Perhaps this may be the penultimate software update for the Galaxy A50. It will complete four years in the market in March this year. The Korean firm will likely only push one more update to it. If youre using this device, you should consider upgrading to a newer model. (ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - ISTAT said Wednesday that Italy's balance of trade returned to positive territory in November for the first time in a year. The national statistics agency said Italy posted a trade surplus of 1.445 billion euros in November. The balance of trade had been negative since December 2021, largely because of the soaring cost of energy imports. ISTAT said Italy continued to have a energy trade deficit 8.456 billion euros in November, up from a deficit of 5.777 billion in the same month of 2021, but this was outdone by a surplus of 9.901 billion for non-energy trade, compared to 7.976 billion in November 2021. (ANSA). (ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - Two Italian prosecutors were sent to trial Wednesday for allegedly failing to file evidence in favour of defendants, who were later all acquitted, in the Eni-Nigeria 'bribes' case. Milan's assistant public prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale and the prosecutor, now at the European Public Prosecutor's Office, Sergio Spadaro have been remanded for trial in Brescia. The charge against them is refusal to carry out official acts, as they allegedly failed to file evidence in favour of the defendants, all of whom were later definitively acquitted, in the Eni-Nigeria trial. The indictments were issued by Brescia's preliminary hearings judge (GUP), Christian Colombo. The trial will open on 16 May. In March 2021 a Milan court acquitted Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi and its former chief and later AC Milan President Paolo Scaroni, of paying bribes to land the OPL 245 oil licence in Nigeria in 2011. Eni and Shell were also acquitted. All 15 defendants including former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete were also acquitted. The trial lasted over three years. (ANSA). (ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday Moscow was surprised that Italy is among the leaders of the international effort to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. "It was a surprise for us to see Italy becoming one of the leaders in the anti-Russian front", Lavrov said in answering an ANSA question at a press conference in Moscow. The Russian foreign minister went on to say that he loved Italians and that Rome's stance against Russian aggression had been forced on it. "I like Italians, they are very similar to Russians, and Russians like the Italian way of life. I cannot see them as people who build walls and barriers. The attitude of confrontation (with Russia) has been imposed on Europe", and therefore also on Italy," Lavrov told ANSA at the press conference. Lavrov also said that Russia was being "subjected to a Final Solution, like the Jews". Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano responded by saying that Lavrov was guilty of a "stupid trivialization of the Shpah". (ANSA). (ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - Eight wild boar were caught in an iconic Rome villa park on Wednesday. The hungry animals were roaming free in the vast grounds of the Villa Doria Pamphili, a seventeenth-century villa with what is today the largest landscaped public park in Rome. Animal rights activists protested the capture operation and tried to hinder it, without success. One of the animals was put down as it proved too aggressive to capture. Italy has ordered a cull of increasingly rampant boar and is training hunters to shoot the animals, which they may then eat. (ANSA). (ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - Two Italian prosecutors were sent to trial Wednesday for allegedly failing to file evidence in favour of defendants, who were later all acquitted, in the Eni-Nigeria 'bribes' case. Milan's assistant public prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale and the prosecutor, now at the European Public Prosecutor's Office, Sergio Spadaro have been remanded for trial in Brescia. (ANSA). Italy's FM urges joint efforts with Tunisia on migration Met with President Kaies, goal is to reduce migrants from Libya (ANSAmed) - TUNISI, 18 GEN - "Italy is watching Tunisia's stability and development, including through support to its economic development, attentively,. We share a commitment and vision against illegal migration," Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani wrote in Italian on his Twitter account on Wednesday during a visit to Tunisia. The comment came after his meeting with Tunisian president Kais Saied. He added that, "we will launch a business forum to strengthen trade". "We discussed stability of Libya. For us this is very important and we will always work together for border security. To solve the problem of immigration, there is the need also for political agreements to reduce flows from Libya towards Tunisia and that afterwards shift to the Mediterranean and towards Italy. We are in agreement with Tunis also on Libya and we will continue to work together," Tajani said after his meeting with Saied. "We had a very positive meeting with the interior and foreign ministers but also especially with the Tunisian president. Firm, friendly relations between the neighboring countries were confirmed. Italy is committed to continue working with Tunisia and to increase Italian investment in Tunisia, to increase the presence of businesses in Tunisia, and above all we discussed the important issue of immigration. We agreed that it is not only a problem of security and that to solve it, we need to intervene at the level of the roots" of the problem, the Italian foreign minister continued. Tajani was accompanied on the trip on Wednesday by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. "Alongside security, there is a need to work," he added, "through political actions that serve to fight poverty, terrorism, climate change, and diseases. Basically, a strategy that enables Italy to be a protagonist and that can resolve the scourge of immigration, as the Tunisian minister put it. Together we can achieve the objectives. Tunisia is committed to resolving all problems. We will do our best so that this collaboration can be strengthened at every level and can contribute to the solution of the immigration issue over the short, medium, and long term." (ANSAmed). ROME - Italian police on Wednesday found a second hideout of Matteo Messina Denaro, the Mafia superboss caught at a Palermo cancer clinic after 30 years on the run Monday. The fugitive boss carved the hideout into a bunker in a house near his first hideout in an alley in Campobello di Mazara, near his home town of Castelvetrano near Trapani, police said. The owner of the second hideout had been cleared of Mafia charges, sources said Wednesday. The man, Errico Risalvato, was investigated and then acquitted, in 2001, of charges of mafia association. He is the owner of the house in Via Maggiore Toselli, in Campobello di Mazara, where police discovered Messina Denaro's second hideout, about 300 metres from the first one. Errico is the brother of Giovanni Risalvato, sentenced to 14 years for mafia charges and now free, a concrete contractor. The second hideout is an armoured room accessed from the sliding bottom of a wardrobe, the police said. It is as yet unclear whether this second hideout is the one in which Messina Denaro hid his 'treasure trove' of secret documents, 'pizzini' orders, and vast reserves of cash which magistrates are looking for. Investigators are expected to ascertain this by combing the second hideout. Police found the first hideout about 300 metres away on Tuesday. They found designer clothes and Viagra among his personal items. Messina Denaro, 60, Italy's most wanted man before his sensational capture, had his first hour-long 'air' break from the tough anti-mafia 41 bis prison regime at L'Aquila Prison earlier Wednesday. He was said to be relaxed and smiling despite being seriously ill with cancer. A chemotherapy unit is reportedly being considered for him in the jail, amid reports he would receive treatment in a L'Aquila hospital. A second doctor, oncologist Filippo Zerilli, has been put under investigation after treating Messina Denaro while he was a fugitive, sources said on Wednesday. Zerilli did the DNA test on Messina Denaro, who has cancer, necessary for his chemotherapy, the sources said. The 60-year-old mobster booked his medical appointments with the ID card of Andrea Bonafede, a surveyor who lent Messina Denaro his identity and is under investigation for allegedly helping him too. The other doctor being probed is 70-year-old Alfonso Tumbarello, who was for years the GP at Campobello di Mazara, near Messina Denaro's home town of Castelvetrano, until he retired last month. A cancer ward in a Trapani hospital where Messina Denaro was treated during the last year of his 30-year flight from Italian justice was searched by police on Tuesday morning, sources said Wednesday. Police searched the oncology department at the Sant'Antonio Abate Hospital in the western Sicilian coastal city as they sought the first cancer exam undergone by the 60-year-old boss, who has colon cancer. Investigators said they were evaluating the position of ward chief Doctor Filippo Zerilli, who was off sick on Tuesday. The position of other doctors are also being weighed as police want to know if they were aware who was the man hiding behind the assumed name of Andrea Bonafede, the man who allegedly helped Messina Denaro. Messina Denaro aka Diabolik had been condemned to life in prison in absentia for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 bombings that killed anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt 40 more in 1993. The mobster, who got his nickname from the Italian comic book character Diabolik, a masked superthief anti-hero, was seen by some experts as the boss of bosses within the Mafia after the deaths of Bernardo 'The Tractor' Provenzano in 2016 and Toto 'The Beast' Riina in 2017, although other experts said he was not at the very summit of Mafia power, without being able to say who occupies that post, possibly because it is vacant. Reportedly idolised by Cosa Nostra's younger troops because of his ruthlessness and playboy-like charisma, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months-pregnant girlfriend. The boss, who enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those he had killed. He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia", Italian police have said. ROME - Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani and interior minister Matteo Piantedosi arrived in Tunis on Wednesday. The visit is "part of a process for the strengthening of bilateral relations and aims to confirm, through a holistic approach, Italy's constant support for Tunisia, especially at this delicate moment in its recent history," said Tajani in an interview with the La Presse de Tunisie newspaper under the title "We Must Do More, Together". "It is undeniable that the immigration issue holds a central role in overall relations" between the two countries, the minister and deputy prime minister said in illustrating relevant figures: "32,000 irregular migrants including 18,000 Tunisian nationals arrived in Italy in 2022. In the first two weeks of this year, over 1,700 people landed in an illegal manner on Italian coasts," he added, stressing that it is thus necessary to "increase cooperation". "I am thinking in particular about countering irregular departures through more substantial and broader border control, with the creation of a mechanism that will make it possible to increase the number of repatriations from Italy." Italy is always ready to " support the efforts" of Tunisia in this field, "as shown by the 47 million euros from the Italian foreign ministry in the past few years". At the level of trade, "this year once again Italy is the top trade partner of Tunisia with a 14.3% market share. This extraordinary result is due to the over 900 Italian businesses that are operating stably in Tunisia in different sectors," Tajani said, announcing that a business forum will be held in 2023 to "attract Italian investment to the country on the basis of shared interests, including in light of the needs of the Tunisian market". STRASBOURG - An email sent by diplomatic advisor to the Moroccan parliament Mounir al-Jaffali to members of the European Parliament stated that a motion filed on Jan. 17 for a resolution involving the case of a Moroccan journalist is "baseless". The advisor claimed that the document ignores Morocco's achievements concerning human rights, rule of law, and good government. The letter was sent ahead of a vote on the resolution, which condemns violations of the rights of journalists in the North African country. The resolution centers on the case of a journalist named Omar Radi. ANSA has seen the letter, which claims that the resolution simply aims to harm Morocco's image and its partnership with the EU. The resolution, promoted by Renew Europe, was due to be discussed in a plenary session on Wednesday afternoon and voted on the following day. The email sent by the diplomatic advisor analyses the draft resolution point by point, noting which parts in his opinion are true and which are false. Jaffali denied conditions for the media have deteriorated over the past decade and that numerous journalists have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their work, as well as that the since 2018 the Morocco authorities have accused several independent journalists of sexual crimes to negatively affect their reporting. MEPs from Italy's Five Star Movement Fabio Massimo Castaldo and Sabrina Pignedoli responded in a statement saying that they considered it a "serious matter that political representatives and officials of a third country try to condition the resolutions and political activities of the European Union". The Church of England has said it will bless same-sex, civil marriages for the first time after its bishops proposed to change its stance on same-sex relationships. But its position on gay marriage will not change and same-sex couples will still not be able to marry in Church of England churches. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said the decision was an attempt to seek the common good but admitted it would go too far for some and not nearly far enough for others. The plans, to be outlined in a report to the General Synod, which meets in London next month, will allow same-sex couples to come to church for services including prayers of dedication, thanksgiving and Gods blessing following a legal marriage ceremony. Mr Welby said: This response reflects the diversity of views in the Church of England on questions of sexuality, relationships and marriage I rejoice in that diversity and I welcome this way of reflecting it in the life of our church. I am under no illusions that what we are proposing today will appear to go too far for some and not nearly far enough for others, but it is my hope that what we have agreed will be received in a spirit of generosity, seeking the common good. Most of all I hope it can offer a way for the Church of England, publicly and unequivocally, to say to all Christians and especially LGBTQI+ people that you are welcome and a valued and precious part of the body of Christ. The synod will be asked to discuss the proposals in detail during its meeting from February 6 to 9, with the main debate on the proposals due to take place on February 8. The bishops decision, which does not represent a formal change in doctrine, comes after they finalised a report into the churchs position on sexuality following five years of debate and consultation. They will issue a formal apology on Friday to LGBTQ+ people for the rejection, exclusion and hostility they have felt within the church because of its previous stance. The church said it was issuing pastoral guidance to its ministers and congregations and urged them to welcome same-sex couples unreservedly and joyfully. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said: We are deeply sorry and ashamed and want to take this opportunity to begin again in the spirit of repentance which our faith teaches us. This is not the end of that journey but we have reached a milestone and I hope that these prayers of love and faith can provide a way for us all to celebrate and affirm same-sex relationships. The bishops proposals will be debated by the synod when it meets early next month. Jayne Ozanne, a prominent LGBTQ+ campaigner and a member of the synod, said the bishops decision not to allow same-sex marriages was utterly despicable. She said: I cannot believe that five years of pain and trauma has got us here. We have had countless apologies over the years but no action to stop the harmful discrimination. It is insulting to all who trusted the process. There is absolutely nothing radical or inclusive about these proposals. Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales since 2013, but the church did not change its teaching when the law changed. The Anglican Church in Wales has allowed its clergy to bless same-sex marriages and civil partnerships since September 2021. Labour former cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw told the House of Commons: You may have heard that today the Church of England bishops have recommended no substantial change to the churchs current ban on same-sex couples being married in church in England, although this is, of course, already possible in Scotland and soon will be in Wales. Many members across this House, I would judge a majority, believe that by continuing to exclude lesbian and gay people from its full rights, the church is no longer compatible with its established status, which confers the duty to serve the whole nation. Conservative MP Andrew Selous, the Church of Englands representative in the House of Commons, was encouraged by Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle to make a statement to MPs on Monday. A nurse who has had to borrow money from his parents to get by each month has said that he is disappointed to be striking, but the Government has literally left us out in the cold. Nurses across different hospital trusts are to go on strike on January 18 and 19 in England as talks about pay and conditions with the Government have failed, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). Matt Tacey has said that he feels disappointed about having to strike (Matt Tacey) Matt Tacey, 32, who lives in the East Midlands, told the PA news agency that he did not want to strike on Wednesday, but he, as well as fellow colleagues, have been forced into the position because the Government just wont enter any meaningful negotiations with us as a union. You wont find one single nurse that wants to be outside hospitals or places of work, he added. We are disappointed to be striking because it goes against the fundamental aspect of being a nurse providing care and we want to be able to provide care, we want to improve lives. To stand outside hospitals and not provide care goes against every grain in our DNA and its going to be around three to four degrees tomorrow, so the Government has literally left us out in the cold. Mr Tacey said that the Government should have stepped in to help the NHS years prior. This [situation] has been predicted for the last 15 to 20 years, he said. Weve seen the trajectory of the NHS, weve seen that the population of the country is ageing, but it seems that the Government has completely ignored that. All of a sudden its like, oh God, were in a really difficult position now, but weve been saying we have been under significant pressure for the last 15 years, something needs to change. One of the key reasons behind Mr Taceys decision to strike is to advocate for patient safety. It needs to improve, he said. We just need the Government and the Health Secretary to understand the significance of the situation and do something. During Covid, a lot of the ministers stood out on doorsteps, clapping for us and calling us heroes, but look how quickly they have forgotten about that two/three years later. Mr Tacey also spoke about the constant reference to the NHS being at breaking point. The phrase the NHS is at breaking point is often used and I disagree with that statement, he said. The NHS isnt at breaking point, the NHS is broken. Were looking at significant wait times, significantly understaffed wards which results in staff feeling burnt out and overwhelmed and this has been widely published in a negative way to portray the NHS as a failing system. We are failing, but its not because of staff incompetence or because we dont care, it is because this Government has underfunded and cut resources to a dangerously low level, which has resulted in significant staff vacancies. Mr Tacey comes from a nursing family, with his mother, father and grandmother having worked as nurses, and his wife Nicole currently working as one. Matt Tacey has said that the NHS isnt at breaking point, the NHS is broken (Peter Powell/PA) I get really passionate about this because I feel as though Im fighting for the nurses who have previously had to deal with a lot of these shortages and under-resourcing, he said. Im also fighting for the current nurses that are facing significant struggles day in and day out, the inability to sometimes get to work because they cannot afford to put fuel in their car. Im also fighting for the future generation of nurses because currently, applying for a job in the NHS is not attractive and it feels like we are all fighting a losing battle. Mr Tacey added that he is a team manager, so he is aware of the struggles his colleagues face, who regularly speak to him about their situations and have to pick up extra shifts just to get by. He added: My wife and I often have to borrow money from parents just to see us through to the end of the month because current salaries are not covering the basic bills. We live in one of the richest countries in the world and yet people cant afford heating, they cant afford to put food on the table its a national disgrace. A former NHS England chief executive has said that the Government needs a proper pay strategy to end its dispute with striking healthcare workers. Sir David Nicholson told Tonight with Andrew Marr on LBC on Wednesday that he had never seen the pressure the NHS has on it at the moment. I chair two hospitals, and I was reflecting earlier that I started in 1978 in the NHS, and Ive never seen the pressure that we have on the system that we have at the moment, he said. Ex-chief executive of the NHS Sir David Nicholson (Fiona Hanson/PA) Sir David was the chief executive of the NHS from 2006-2013 and, following a restructuring of the service, he was the chief executive of NHS England from 2013-2014. He is now the chair of Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust, and Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust. He told Marr that the Government must implement a proper pay strategy to end the NHS strike crisis. What we need is a proper pay strategy were in a bit of a hole at the moment arent we in terms of the pay negotiations, he said. As someone said today, the Government cant win it, but they can stop it. So, I think the Government need to do what theyre there to do which is to stop it, solve the problem. But we need a proper pay policy. He also warned that attempting to beat down staff with attrition would lead to recruitment problems in the future. If we think were going to beat down our staff with attrition then its simply going to create even more problems going forward in terms of recruiting staff and keeping them, it needs a solution, he said. He said that social care wages are so low that the service is struggling to attract workers. But at the other end in terms of low pay but particularly in social care weve got people doing really important care work on 10 an hour, he said. We have problems in the Black Country because Amazon opened one of their depots and suddenly a whole load of our people went off to work for Amazon. We recognise its not going to be solved overnight but we need a proper strategy over the next few years to get pay in the right place. Nearly three in five Britons think the Government is more to blame for the ongoing pay row with nurses lasting so long, a new poll suggests. Some 57% of people said the UK Government is more at fault for the length of the industrial dispute with nurses, compared to just 9% who said nurses are more at fault. The Ipsos poll of 1,080 British adults, carried out earlier this month, also found that a quarter of people felt both sides are at fault. (PA Graphics) The new figures come as nursing staff from more than 55 NHS trusts will take part in industrial action on Wednesday and Thursday after two days of action in December. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said two more, bigger strikes will be held next month, while the GMB union is expected to announce further ambulance worker strike dates. Thousands of operations and appointments are expected to be cancelled during the two consecutive days of strike action, with the health service likely run a bank holiday-style service in many areas. The RCN has agreed to staff chemotherapy, emergency cancer services, dialysis, critical care units, neonatal and paediatric intensive care. The Ipsos poll, shared exclusively with the PA news agency, also found that people were more sympathetic to NHS patients, nurses and ambulance workers compared to health worker unions, NHS management and the UK Government. Some 90% of people said that based on what they knew or had heard about the strikes, they had a great deal or fair amount of sympathy for NHS patients, followed by 82% for nurses and 80% for ambulance workers. (PA Graphics) This compared to 61% who said the same about the unions representing nurses and ambulance staff, 46% for NHS management and 26% for the UK Government. The survey found that the proportion of people very or fairly concerned about the ability of the NHS to provide safe care for people during the nurses and ambulance workers strikes stood at 80% and 82% respectively in January, unchanged from the previous month. The NHS is reminding patients to attend all their usual appointments unless they have been contacted, and to seek urgent care even while strikes are ongoing. NHS England urged patients to use services wisely by going to NHS 111 online but continuing to call 999 in a life-threatening emergency. Some 45% of people surveyed in January said they strongly or tend to support the planned strikes by nurses and ambulance strikes, both down slightly from 50% and 47% respectively in December. But it is still a higher proportion than those who strongly or tend to oppose the planned industrial action, with 30% of people quizzed in January saying they were against nurses and ambulance workers striking. Members of the Royal College of Nursing on the picket line outside St Thomas Hospital, central London (PA) The Ipsos poll shows that opposition to the strikes has also fallen month to month, with the proportion opposed to nurses strikes down from 34% and ambulance staff down from 37% since December. Meanwhile, the survey shows Britons are most supportive of junior doctors and teachers going on strike, with fewer people supporting civil servants and barristers. Nearly half of the people quizzed (47%) said they strongly or tend to support junior doctors going on strike, with 41% supporting teachers. But only 30% of people said they support civil servants going on strike, while 26% supported barristers. Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 Sarah Michelle Gellar attends the 2022 People's Choice Awards in December. (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic) For an entire generation of pop-culture addicts, the narratives of Buffy Summers and Sarah Michelle Gellar will forever be intertwined. But that relationship between actress and character has been difficult to manage in recent years, as fresh reports have pulled back the curtain about what went down on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer during its seven-season run as a cult TV favorite. Allegations of "toxic" behavior by the show's controversial creator, Joss Whedon, have been documented by Buffy co-stars like Charisma Carpenter and Amber Benson. And while Gellar has publicly referred to Buffy as an "extremely toxic male set," she's avoided speaking at length about what she experienced during her years-long collaboration with Whedon. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gellar indicates that her silence will likely continue. "Ill never tell my full story because I dont get anything out of it," says the 45-year-old actress, who is returning to the small screen this month as a cast member on the Paramount+ series, Wolf Pack. "Ive said all Im going to say because nobody wins. Everybody loses." Gellar hasn't mentioned Whedon by name since a 2021 Instagram post that followed Carpenter's public allegations. "While I am proud to have my named associated with Buffy Summers, I don't want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon," she wrote at the time, adding, "I stand with all survivors of abuse and am proud of them for speaking out." Buffy Summers (Gellar) leads the charge against the forces of evil in the 2003 series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Photo: 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection) Speaking with THR, Gellar reiterates her pride in creating a character that made a demonstrable impact on television. "I will always be proud of Buffy. I will always be proud of what my castmates did, what I did. Was it an ideal working situation? Absolutely not. But its OK to love Buffy for what we created because I think its pretty spectacular." Still, she admits to have her own complicated feelings about the series after recently re-watching it with her two children with husband Freddie Prinze Jr. According to Gellar, the family watched the first five seasons in their entirety, but took a time out when they reached the divisive Season 6, which features an attempted rape and other mature subject matter. "I have trouble with [season] six," she admits. "It wasnt appropriate for them at the time, and I just dont want to rewatch it." While Gellar declined to share her "full story," Prinze provided a small window into what she ran up against. "She had to deal with a lot of bulls*** on that show for all seven years it was on," the actor tells THR. "The stuff they pressed upon her, without any credit or real salary, while she was often the only one doing 15-hour days yet she was still able to get the message of that character out every single week and do it with pride and do it professionally." David Boreanaz, Alyson Hannigan and Gellar in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Photo: 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection) Meanwhile, Gellar's co-star, Emma Caulfield, suggests that Whedon was jealous of his star's profile during the course of the show. "It was obvious that Sarah lacked the support to be the leader she needed and wanted to be," says the actress, who recently appeared in the Disney+ hit, WandaVision. "There was a tremendous amount of resentment and animosity [toward her] from a certain someone and I suppose now we can all guess who." Rather than look backwards, Gellar spends much of her THR profile looking forwards, pointing out how she turned her own negative experiences into positive change for the new generation of actors she's working with on Wolf Pack. "I hope that Ive set up an infrastructure, a safety net for these actors that I didnt have," she remarks. "My generation just didnt have that." Wolf Pack premieres Jan. 26 on Paramount+ The jury selection process in the trial to determine if one of Elon Musks infamous tweets violated U.S. securities laws kicked off on Tuesday. The trial comes after Teslas shareholders sued Musk and Teslas board of directors in 2018, alleging that Musk illegally posted on Twitter that funding had been secured to privatize the electric vehicle company. Musks post, the shareholders say, artificially manipulated Teslas stock price. Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured, Musk said in the Aug. 7, 2018, post. That same day, he went on to say, investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that its contingent on a shareholder vote. On Tuesday, senior federal district court Judge Edward Chen, as well as lawyers for Musk and Teslas board, and a group of Teslas shareholders, questioned prospective jurors about their ability to serve impartially in a class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco district court. If Im sitting on the sidelines of history Id like to be there if possible," one male juror told Judge Chen. "It involves so many things: social media, major corporations, securities. Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York. - The Gala raises money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. The Gala's 2022 theme is "In America: An Anthology of Fashion". (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images) The shareholders claims are similar to those that Musk previously defended against the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nearly two months after the posts, Musk and Tesla settled with the agency for a combined $40 million in civil fines. In addition, Musk agreed to step down as Teslas chairman and to pre-publication reviews of his future tweets by Teslas general counsel. Some securities lawyers consider Musks defense as a difficult one, given that last year, Judge Chen issued a preliminary ruling in the shareholders favor, holding that Musks statement about funding was false and made with reckless regard for the truth. For his part, Musk maintains that none of the statements at issue are materially false a requirement for the plaintiffs to win their case and that he was in fact considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk also contends that a subsequent blog post on Teslas website that disclosed further information about the potential take private transaction shows that Musk did not make materially false statements. The group of shareholders represented in the civil suit either bought or sold Tesla shares in the class period extending from the day of Musks tweets up until the following week on Aug. 17. The group seeks an unspecified amount of damages. Initially, Teslas (pre-stock split) stock price jumped on the posts from an opening price on Aug. 7, 2018, of $343.84 per share, to an intraday high of $387.46 per share. The stock on Aug. 9, 2018, closed at $352.45 per share. Trading volume also spiked on Aug. 7, averaging more than twice the stocks daily trading volume over the previous 90 days. Members of media and guests surround the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 during Thailand Tesla's official launch event in Bangkok, Thailand, December 7, 2022. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha A substantial number of shareholder lawsuits are dismissed or settled before they reach a stage to consider class-action certification, according to NERA Economic Consulting. In 2021, the group reported that 239 outstanding shareholder cases were resolved, with 153 resolved through dismissal and 86 resolved through settlement. So far though, this case appears to be moving forward as the judge questioned potential jurors Tuesday. Judge Chen earlier denied a request to move the trial to Texas by Musks lawyers who expressed concerns about the impressions that local San Francisco area jurors held about Musk. Jurors, it appeared, had mixed views of the billionaire. One prospective juror who works a night shift job described Musk as having a mercenary personality because he's "willing to take risksthats my image of him." Another described Musk as a fast-rising business man," while a second potential juror said the billionaire is a smart, successful pioneer. Twitter account of Tesla displayed on a phone screen and Tesla logo displayed in the background are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on August 10, 2022. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Others offered more unfavorable takes. I think he is not a very likable person, one prospective juror wrote in her questionnaire of the Tesla CEO. Most of her views, she added, were based on Musks acquisition of Twitter. He seems to be just arrogant and narcissisticIm not saying thats how he is, but it seems in certain interviews how he comes off. When Judge Chen asked if she could serve as an impartial juror, the woman said: A lot of people are not necessarily likable people.sometimes I dont like my husband. In a separate line of questioning, Judge Chen talked with a juror who described Musk as arrogant and irrational. Where on the scale of confidence are you? the judge asked to inquire about impartiality. Pretty sure, the woman said. When asked about her impression of Musk and Twitter, another female prospective juror said: "I think he's a little off his rocker lately...but with respect to laws that have been broken, I wouldn't know." "Notwithstanding your views...do you think you could judge the evidence fairly?" Judge Chen asked. "I do," the woman said. Only vaccinated individuals are permitted to serve on the jury. All courtroom participants will wear masks with some exceptions for presenting parties, witnesses, and the judge while giving instructions. Judge Chen told prospective jurors that the trial is expected to last approximately three weeks. Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed. Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit. Find live stock market quotes and the latest business and finance news Controversial legislation to deal with the legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles will end the current merry-go-round of court cases, the Defence Secretary has said. Ben Wallace said the current system is not serving the peace process well. However Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly criticised Mr Wallaces comments as insulting and disrespectful to victims of the conflict who have waited decades for truth and justice about the killings of their loved ones. The Governments draft Legacy Bill would provide immunity for people accused of Troubles offences as long as they co-operate with a new truth recovery body, and would also halt future civil cases and inquests linked to killings during the conflict. The proposed law changes are opposed by all Stormonts main parties and the Irish government, as well as victims groups in the region, which have denounced it as an amnesty for killers. This week, the Government moved to change proposals for the truth recovery body to be able to conduct criminal investigations where it judges that to be appropriate. Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaking at Queens University in Belfast last week (Brian Lawless/PA) Mr Wallace also urged Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who pledged to ditch the Bill if he becomes Prime Minister, to be very cautious before making these type of commitments. Speaking in Belfast on Wednesday, Mr Wallace insisted the legislation was the fairest way to deal with the past. Mr Wallace, who previously served in Northern Ireland as a soldier in 1991, said he understands the depth of feeling around the past. I understand the sense of loss many victims have held, he said. But it is also important that we stop what has become a merry-go-round of legacy inquests, and constant reopenings and retrials that dont actually seem to serve the peace process well. It doesnt help either the victims that I have seen or indeed many of the people accused, I think its really important we do our best to draw a line under it. The Good Friday Agreement was as much about forgiveness and coming together as anything else, and this legacy legislation is about saying, we want to move out of the constant reopening of inquests through the same processes when I was a junior minister here, I think they thought it would take 30 years to get through that weight of inquests and to put it into better system where people can come forward and if they engage with this legacy programme then of course they will achieve a level of immunity. Thats quite important, if they choose to engage, if they dont choose to co operate, then of course they are open to be prosecuted. Thats a very important part of the process of healing and coming together. It was put to the Defence Secretary that the legislation will cut off the chance of justice for many victims. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace during a visit to Harland & Wolff shipyard factory in Belfast. (Brian Lawless/PA) He responded: There hasnt been justice for the thousands of victims of terrorists who by the way committed most of the murders, the deaths and the bombings in the Troubles. It was the vast majority of people that suffered at the hands of terrorists, both loyalists and republicans, and there hasnt been justice. What there has been is a significant re-running of numerous inquests. When I was junior minister here, the number of inquests that were redone, re-investigated, without any outcome. When I meet victims, one of the things they want more than anything is answers: what happened to my loved one, why did it happen, and who was involved in that? We hope that this new proposal will bring forward that environment that will allow people to come forward I havent seen many terrorists come forward and be open about the crimes they committed. In exchange for coming forward there will be that level of protection from prosecution, or immunity, and if thats what we have to do to move on from the Troubles, to draw a line in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, which was about forgiveness and moving on. I remember struggling as a veteran here to come to terms with the fact that many of the IRA prisoners were being let out, the decommissioning, many people in these communities here, whether republican or unionist, saw bad people being effectively let out of prison. That felt very uncomfortable. Mr Wallace urged those against the Bill to give it a try and see if it works. Responding Mr Kelly called on the UK government to halt the legacy bill. Comments by the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace that the British governments flawed legacy bill will end a merry go round of legacy inquests are insulting and disrespectful to the families of victims of the conflict who have waited decades for truth and justice, he said. His comments are arrogant, callous and completely unacceptable. Access to the courts and to due process is a human right. Mr Kelly said this weeks amendments to the bill do not deal with the substantive issue of victims being entitled to access to due process. It has been roundly rejected by victims and families, human rights experts, churches, the UN, and senior officials in the EU and US administration and all the political parties on this island, he said. The legacy bill is in breach of human rights standards and International law and should be scrapped now. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, scheduled to proceed in the House of Lords next week. This aerial photo shows the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe, N.M., two days after actor Alec Baldwin accidentally fired a prop gun on the set of a western being filmed at the ranch on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. (Jae C. Hong/AP) New Mexico prosecutors will soon reveal whether they will bring criminal charges in the accidental deadly shooting by Alec Baldwin of a cinematographer on the set of "Rust," a low-budget western movie. First Judicial Dist. Atty. Mary Carmack-Altwies, along with special prosecutor Andrea Reeb, plan to issue a written statement Thursday morning, according to the district attorney's office. A spokesperson for Carmack-Altwies declined to say who, if anyone, will be charged. Regardless of the District Attorneys decision, the announcement will be a solemn occasion, made in a manner keeping with the offices commitment to upholding the integrity of the judicial process and respecting the victims family, Heather Brewer, spokesperson for the office of the First Judicial District Attorney, said in a statement. On Oct. 21, 2021, Baldwin, the movie's star, was rehearsing a scene in an old wooden church on a ranch near Santa Fe, N.M., with Halyna Hutchins, the film's cinematographer, and Joel Souza, the director. Hutchins, who was in charge of photography, wanted to line up a camera angle to capture Baldwin slowly pulling his prop gun a replica of a vintage Colt .45 revolver from his leather holster and aiming it at the camera. The gun went off, firing a bullet that pierced Hutchins' chest, then lodged into Souza's shoulder. Hutchins died that afternoon; Souza recovered from his injury. Despite Hollywood film protocols that forbid live rounds on movie sets, Santa Fe County Sheriff's investigators found multiple actual bullets commingled with "dummy rounds" that movie producers use to simulate the look of real projectiles. Baldwin acknowledges pulling back the gun's hammer, but has said he did not pull the trigger. "Someone is responsible ... but I know it's not me," Baldwin told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in a December 2021 TV interview. Nonetheless, some legal experts said they expect that Baldwin will be among those charged. Santa Fe County Sheriff's deputies spent nearly a year compiling evidence, which they turned over to Mary Carmack-Altwies, district attorney for New Mexico's First Judicial District. In August, Carmack-Altwies disclosed she was considering charging up to four people, including Baldwin. Sources have told The Times that prosecutors have concentrated on individuals who handled the gun that day, the weapon's so-called "chain of custody." Here's what to know about the case. What was the movie 'Rust' about? "Rust" starts as a story of a 13-year-old boy in 1880s Kansas who accidentally shot and killed a local rancher. The boy's grandfather a grizzled outlaw named Harland Rust, played by Baldwin helps him escape from jail and they set out on a dangerous journey through New Mexico while being pursued by a U.S. Marshal and bounty hunter. Souza wrote the screenplay with input from Baldwin, who received a "Story By" credit. The 64-year-old actor also was a producer on the low-budget film, which was filming on Bonanza Creek Ranch, a popular movie location south of Santa Fe. Who was Halyna Hutchins? A native of Ukraine, Hutchins was the cinematographer, also known as director of photography. She grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines, according to the bio on her personal website. She earned a degree from Kyiv National University in Ukraine and worked as an investigative journalist on British documentary productions before heading to Los Angeles. The 42-year-old mother was succeeding in a largely male-dominated business. She was a 2015 graduate of the American Film Institute Conservatory and was named one of American Cinematographers Rising Stars of 2019. She worked on indie features like Archenemy, Blindfire and The Mad Hatter as well as short films and commercials. "Rust" was her first collaboration with Baldwin. She was survived by her husband, Matthew Hutchins; young son Andros; and family members in Ukraine. Her death became a rallying cry across the industry for greater safety measures on film sets. Were there problems before the shooting? The Times previously detailed problems that began before filmmakers arrived at Bonanza Creek Ranch in early October 2021. Production managers struggled to recruit experienced crew members. Veteran prop master Neal W. Zoromski, who turned down a position on "Rust" in late September 2021, told The Times that he was troubled by the producers' refusal to hire a fully staffed props department, including an armorer to handle the guns and another person as props assistant. Instead, producers insisted that one person fill both jobs. Nearly a dozen experienced prop masters or armorers turned down a job on "Rust." Most of the camera crew opted to quit the production the night before the shooting over concerns of safety and a lack of lodging near Santa Fe. Days before the shooting, the camera crew leader sent a text message to a production manager to complain about accidental gun discharges. "This is super unsafe, Lane Luper wrote in an Oct. 16, 2021, text message to the unit production manager. Who was the film's armorer? Production managers hired Hannah Gutierrez Reed, then 24, to oversee all weapons and projectiles and to also serve as props assistant. Gutierrez Reed, who lives in Arizona, is a daughter of famed Hollywood armorer Thell Reed. She had grown up visiting Hollywood sets and it was her second job as head armorer; her first was a Nicolas Cage movie, "The Old Way," which filmed in 2021. Gutierrez Reed complained about being stretched too thin on "Rust," according to emails with production managers. A week before the shooting, the films line producer, Gabrielle Pickle, scolded Gutierrez Reed in an email, saying complaints had been made about shotguns left unattended on set. Pickle also reprimanded Gutierrez Reed for allegedly not doing enough to support the films prop master. According to production call sheets viewed by The Times, guns were needed on 10 of the 12 film days, with multiple guns used per day. Gutierrez Reed has acknowledged that she loaded the weapons that day. She handed the fired weapon to sheriff's deputies who arrived at Bonanza Creek Ranch after the shooting. She later told sheriffs detectives that although she checked Baldwins gun that day before the unscheduled rehearsal, she didnt really check it too much after lunch because the weapon had been locked in a safe during the crew's lunch break. Who was the assistant director? Veteran filmmaker David Halls was the first assistant director on "Rust," which made him the on-set safety coordinator. He reportedly also handed the loaded weapon to Baldwin. According to a sheriff's deputy's affidavit for a search warrant, after the crew was returning from lunch that day, Halls "grabbed one of the three 'prop guns' that was set-up by the Amorer (Hannah Guttierez), which was on a cart" parked outside the wooden church. Halls took the gun inside the church. As he "handed the gun to the Actor Alec Baldwin, (Dave Halls) yelled 'Cold Gun,' indicating the prop-gun did not have any live rounds," according to the affidavit. Bonanza Creek Ranch, where Alec Baldwin fatally shot Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer of "Rust," in October 2021, is south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. (Sam Wasson/Getty Images) Halls told deputies he was unaware the weapon contained live rounds. An industry veteran with credits dating to the early 90s, Halls has worked on films such as "Balls of Fury," "A Prairie Home Companion," "Bad Santa," "The Matrix Reloaded" and Fargo. In a grim coincidence, he worked as the first assistant director on the second unit of the 2000 movie The Crow: Salvation, the sequel to The Crow, the film on which Brandon Lee died in an on-set gun accident in 1993. In a lawsuit filed late last year, Halls said that he was "in no way actionably liable for the events and occurrences" on the set of "Rust" that day, instead, he blamed the armorer, prop master and weapons and ammunition supplier. Why were there live bullets on set? How live bullets got on the set remains a crucial unanswered question. Movie producers don't normally use live bullets to simulate gunfire, but court documents in the case reflect the recovery of dozens of live rounds mixed with the film's supply of dummy bullets and blanks. Neither sheriff's nor FBI reports have identified the source of the live ammunition. Seth Kenney and his Albuquerque-based firm PDQ Arm & Prop were the primary guns and ammunition supplier to the film, but Kenney has told The Times that he did not supply live ammunition. Has New Mexico's occupational safety department weighed in? New Mexico's Occupational Health and Safety Bureau delivered a stinging rebuke of the "Rust" managers in April, levying its maximum fine of $136,793 for safety violations that led to Hutchins' death, saying managers demonstrated plain indifference to employee safety on the film set. This is a complete failure of the employer to follow recognized national protocols that keep employees safe," New Mexico Environment Cabinet Secretary James Kenney said at the time. The producers, through Rust Movie Productions LLC, have denied wrongdoing and the case is winding through an appeals process. A state commission has scheduled an eight-day hearing on the matter in April. Who are the other producers? In addition to Baldwin, there were five other named producers: Ryan Smith, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Matt DelPiano and Anjul Nigam. Smith, through his production company, Rust Movie Productions LLC, was primarily responsible for day-to-day operations, according to a lawsuit filed by Baldwin. Why did the Hutchins family settle their lawsuit? Hutchins' widower, Matthew Hutchins, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Baldwin and other producers in February 2022, blaming the tragedy on cost-cutting measures and reckless behavior by Baldwin and members of the crew, including hiring inexperienced workers and disregarding safety concerns expressed during production by camera crew operators. In October, the family reached a tentative settlement with Baldwin and other producers. Terms were not disclosed. As part of the settlement, husband Matthew Hutchins said he would serve as an executive producer on the production. I have no interest in engaging in recriminations or attribution of blame (to the producers or Mr. Baldwin)," Matthew Hutchins said then. "All of us believe Halynas death was a terrible accident." Will the movie "Rust" still be made? Production managers have been looking to hire crew members to restart the production near Los Angeles, but the decision has been controversial. Should the district attorney bring charges against Baldwin, it could certainly complicate the production schedule. Times staff writer Anousha Sakoui contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the 53rd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. The meeting brings together entrepreneurs, scientists, corporate and political leaders in Davos under the topic "Cooperation in a Fragmented World" from 16 to 20 January. (Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone via AP) DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) The world is in a sorry state" because of myriad interlinked challenges including climate change and Russia's war in Ukraine that are piling up like cars in a chain reaction crash, the U.N. chief said at the World Economic Forum's meeting Wednesday. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered his gloomy message on the second day of the elite gathering of world leaders and corporate executives in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Sessions took a grim turn when news broke of a helicopter crash in Ukraine that killed more than a dozen people, including Ukraines interior minister and other officials. Forum President Borge Brende requested 15 seconds of silence and Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska dabbed teary eyes, calling it another very sad day, then telling attendees that we can also change this negative situation for the better." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was scheduled to address the conclave by video link as the Ukrainian delegation that includes his wife pushes for more aid, including weapons, from international allies to fight Russia. Speaking shortly before Zelenskyy was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who reiterated that Germany was one of the top suppliers of military equipment to Ukraine, just behind the U.S. and Britain, when asked why he had not sent tanks to the war-torn country. While Germany has provided air-defense systems and armored personnel carriers, Scholz the only leader to attend Davos from the Group of 7 biggest economies is facing pressure to send tanks to help Ukraine. Guterres said the gravest levels of geopolitical division and mistrust in generations are undermining efforts to tackle global problems, which also include widening inequality, a cost-of-living crisis sparked by soaring inflation and an energy crunch, lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply-chain disruptions and more. He singled out climate change as an existential challenge, and said a global commitment to limit the Earth's temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is nearly going up in smoke. Guterres, who has been one of the most outspoken world figures on climate change, referenced a recent study that found scientists at Exxon Mobil made remarkably accurate predictions about the effects of climate change as far back as the 1970s, even as the company publicly doubted that warming was real. We learned last week that certain fossil fuel producers were fully aware in the 1970s that their core product was baking our planet," he said in his speech. Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie. Critics have questioned the impact of the four-day meeting where politicians, CEOs and other leaders discuss the worlds problems and make deals on the sidelines but where concrete action is harder to measure. Environmentalists, for example, slam the carbon-spewing private jets that ferry in bigwigs to an event that prioritizes the battle against climate change. On the second day, government officials, corporate titans, academics and activists were attending dozens of panel sessions on topics covering the metaverse, environmental greenwashing and artificial intelligence. Ukraine has taken center stage as the anniversary of the war nears, with Zelenska pressing attendees to do more to help her country at a time when Russias invasion is leaving children dying and the world struggling with food insecurity. The crash added more tragedy after a Russian missile strike hit an apartment building over the weekend in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, killing dozens of people in one of the deadliest single attacks in months. But Ukraine is gaining additional international support: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Tuesday that the Netherlands plans to join the U.S. and Germanys efforts to train and arm Ukraine with advanced Patriot defense systems. The German government has faced mounting pressure to make another significant step forward in military aid to Ukraine by agreeing to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is scheduled to visit Berlin this week and then host a meeting of allies at Ramstein Air Base in western Germany. Guterres was not optimistic that the conflict, being waged less than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Davos, could end soon. There will be an end of this war. There is the end of everything. But I do not see the end of the war in the immediate future, he said. Deep historical differences between Russia and Ukraine make it more difficult to find a solution based on international law and that respects territorial integrity, he added. "For the moment, I dont think that we have a chance to promote or to mediate a serious negotiation to achieve peace in the short term," Guterres said. ___ AP journalists Masha Macpherson and David Keyton in Davos and Kelvin Chan in London contributed. ___ Follow APs coverage of the World Economic Forum meeting at https://apnews.com/hub/world-economic-forum. Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a debate against Democratic challenger Charlie Crist, at Sunrise Theatre, Oct. 24, 2022, in Fort Pierce, Fla. TALLAHASSEE In a wide-ranging attack on efforts to combat COVID-19, Gov. Ron DeSantis called Tuesday for the Republican-controlled Legislature to make permanent Floridas prohibitions on mask mandates at schools and vaccine requirements for local governments and businesses. The measures were enacted during a special session DeSantis called in late 2021, when he was fighting many Florida school districts, private businesses and the federal government under President Joe Biden, which were taking steps they saw as potentially needed to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. The mandate bans approved then by Florida lawmakers are set to expire in June. But DeSantis wants to keep them on the books and raised the specter that efforts to reinstate them could emerge from places like California, which actually lifted statewide requirements almost a year ago. Being the free state of Florida did not happen by accident, DeSantis said in a campaign rally-like speech to a crowd at a Panama City theater where, prior to him taking the stage, a governors office staffer instructed people to wave signs bearing the message, Science Not Censorship. Ladapo promotes dubious vaccine dataFlorida Surgeon General Ladapo appears on anti-vaccine podcast, promotes medical falsehoods Florida stands alone in balkingFlorida surgeon general defends opposition to COVID-19 vaccines for children before Congress DeSantis gets grand jury on vaccinesFlorida Supreme Court approves DeSantis call for coronavirus vaccine grand jury 'Just nuts:' DeSantis continues to say mandates clash with freedom DeSantis continued, touting his defense of Florida freedom. It required us over the past few years to stand against major institutions in our society: The bureaucracy, the medical establishment, legacy media and even the president of the United States who, together, were working to impose a bio-medical security state on society, he said. For about an hour, DeSantis and other invited speakers cast doubt on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and masking, condemning what the speakers said were continuing efforts in other states to reinstate masks or require university students or staff to get booster shots. This is just nuts that were still doing this, DeSantis said. The deadline facing Florida on the COVID-19 mandate bans will bring the issue into the Legislature when it convenes in March. But it also gives DeSantis, widely seen as a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, an opportunity to push back against the Biden administration. COVID-19 vaccinations and masks also are an animating topic among many Republican voters nationally. The Kaiser Family Foundations COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor reports that only 37% of Republicans say they are vaccinated and boosted, compared with 74% of voters who identify as Democrats. More than 84,000 Floridians have died from COVID-19, while the state has reported almost 7.4 million cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Florida doctors appear with DeSantis Included at Tuesdays event were a pair of area doctors: Dr. Jon Ward, a Panama City dermatologist who promotes natural immunity on his Twitter account and another, Dr. Tim Boyett, a Gulf Breeze radiologist, who shunned the vaccine but has been helped by what he said is a three-day treatment regimen, that he says has been successful with other patients fighting COVID-19. U.S. Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Panama City, also a doctor, praised the governors approach. Among those joining DeSantis was Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who was recently criticized by medical school colleagues at the University of Florida for what they concluded was flawed research which resulted in the state Health Department issuing guidance discouraging COVID-19 vaccines for men under age 40, citing possible cardiac risks the department found. The governors office has dismissed the criticism. Theres a lot of lunacy out there, Ladapo said of mask recommendations that came from state and federal governments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Surgeon General Ladapo derides California He and DeSantis also ridiculed a California law that allows regulators to punish doctors for spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccinations and treatments. They should be allowed to say what they think and they shouldnt be forced or essentially be scared into feeling they cant express themselves, Ladapo said. DeSantis agreed and said he wants state lawmakers to include a new ban against any proposals that could lead to regulatory punishments for vaccine- or mask-questioning doctors in Florida. Youre going to have Florida become the state where if a very high-quality physician is driven out of California, this is the first place youre going to have people want to go, DeSantis said. John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Networks Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DeSantis to push for permanent ban on COVID-19, mask, vaccine mandates Mourners carry the body of 14-year-old Palestinian Omar Khumour during his funeral in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Khumour died after being struck in the head by a bullet during an Israeli military raid into Dheisha refugee camp near the city of Bethlehem. The Israeli army said that forces entered the Dheisha camp and were bombarded by Molotov cocktails and rocks. It said soldiers responded to the onslaught with live fire. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) JERUSALEM (AP) Israel deported an Italian activist to Italy after security forces detained her during a raid in the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities said Tuesday, accusing her of having links to a Palestinian militant group. The Israeli military arrested Stefania Costantini during a pre-dawn incursion Monday into the the Dheisha refugee camp in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Footage shared on social media shows an Israeli soldier picking up Costantini and flipping her over his shoulders as she shrieks. A group of soldiers drag her out of the camp and shove her into a military vehicle, videos show. Israeli forces fatally shot a 14-year-old boy in the head during the same raid as they opened fire on Palestinians throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. Italian media described Costantini as an advocate for Palestinian rights. Israel's Shin Bet security service said Costantini was arrested on suspicion of belonging to, and transferring funds to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The militant group, known as the PFLP, was involved in hijacking passenger planes in the 1960s and 1970s and later claimed responsibility for suicide attacks during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the early 2000s. It is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. The Shin Bet said Costantini arrived in Israel on May 2 last year on a tourist visa and was summoned for interrogation last September about her alleged involvement with the PFLP. Costantini did not report to authorities and even continued her activities" for the militant group, the security agency said. Israel deported her on Monday afternoon, the Interior Ministry said. The COBAS leftist labor union in Pisa, Italy, to which Costantini belongs, expressed consternation at the news of her arrest and deportation. The union said it was concerned for Costantini's health and safety. The group described Costantini as a specialist working with students with disabilities who has long sought to defend "those whose rights are denied. Several months ago, the group said, Costantini left her life in Italy and moved to a Palestinian refugee camp. It made no mention of the Israeli security agency's allegations. The Italian consulate in Jerusalem did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Israeli and Italian foreign ministries also did not comment. But on Monday, the day of Costantini's deportation, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen wrote on Twitter that he held a phone conversation with his Italian counterpart. The readout of the call focused on the countries' joint efforts to fight terrorism and boost their political cooperation." It made no mention of Costantinis case. Israel has stepped up its fight in recent years against Palestinian activists and rights groups. Last summer, the Israeli military raided and shuttered the offices of Palestinian human rights organizations that it designated as terrorist groups over their alleged links to the PFLP. Nine European countries rejected Israel's charges against the rights groups, citing a lack of evidence. ___ Associated Press writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report. Jeremy Renner attends the premiere of "Hawkeye" on Nov. 17, 2021 in Los Angeles. (Richard Shotwell / Invision/Associated Press) Weeks after Jeremy Renner landed in the hospital after a snow-plowing accident, the "Hawkeye" star said he's enjoying time with his loved ones. Renner took to Twitter Monday night to support his Paramount+ series, "Mayor of Kingstown," and its second season. In the drama, he stars as Mike McClusky. "Outside my brain fog in recovery, I was very excited to watch episode 201 with my family at home," he tweeted. On Jan. 1, Renner was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition after he was run over by his own snowplow on Mt. Rose Highway in Nevada. Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve told the Reno Gazette Journal that the Marvel actor "was helping someone stranded in the snow" when the accident occurred. Renner underwent two surgeries for "extensive" injuries. Amid news of his hospitalization, the "Hurt Locker" actor received an outpouring of support from fans and his fellow Marvel actors, including Mark Ruffalo, Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi. On Jan. 3, Jenner posted a photo from his hospital bed to his social media pages. Thank you all for your kind words, Renner said on Instagram. Im too messed up now to type. But I send love to you all. A week later, Kym Renner, the actor's sister, told People about her brother's progress. We are so thrilled with his progress, Kym Renner said last week. If anyone knows Jeremy, he is a fighter and doesnt mess around. He is crushing all the progress goals. We couldnt feel more positive about the road ahead. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. FILE - U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, R-Kan., speaks to Republican volunteers during a campaign stop with other GOP candidates, Nov. 7. 2022, at a restaurant in Topeka, Kan. A criminal trial is set to start Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, for a northeastern Kansas man who federal prosecutors say developed a fixation on LaTurner and threatened to kill him, at a time when authorities have seen a sharp increase in threats to the nation's lawmakers and their families. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) A man charged with threatening to kill a Kansas congressman said in federal court Wednesday that he has a very religious defense and is now acting as his own attorney, despite a judge's warnings that he is making a big mistake. Prosecutors hoped to call U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, the Republican whose Topeka office received the phone call prompting the criminal charge, as a witness Wednesday afternoon. The trial of Chase Neill, 32, of the northeastern Kansas city of Lawrence, came amid what authorities say is a sharp rise in threats against the nation's lawmakers and their families. Prosecutors contend Neill became fixated on LaTurner and threatened to kill him in a call the night of June 5 and subsequent calls the next day. Federal public defenders initially representing Neill said he saw himself as having a special relationship with God that allowed him to call down meteors and plagues" on officials and that local authorities saw him as harmless. Twice within the past week, Neill has asked to represent himself, withdrawing one request before his federal court jury was selected Tuesday. He said Wednesday in court that he has been portrayed as a false Christ, damaging his reputation. U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter granted Neill's latest request, finding that he can defend himself competently, despite his lack of legal training as a high school graduate with some college education. Before she brought the jury back into the courtroom Wednesday morning, Teeter warned Neill repeatedly that she considered his decision unwise and that he had top public defenders representing him. Many defendants would relish the opportunity to be represented by your counsel, she told him. But Neill was adamant and said he believes the U.S. government is abusing its power by prosecuting him. He added, This matter is very religious." These global events do represent my relationship with God, he told Teeter, without being more specific. Members of Congress have faced a sharp rise in threats since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In October, an intruder severely beat former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosis husband with a hammer in their San Francisco home. Local school board members and election workers across the nation also have endured harassment and threats. Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this week arrested a former Republican legislative candidate over a series of shootings targeting elected Democratic officials' homes or offices, though none were injured. In Neill's trial, he appeared in court Wednesday wearing khaki pants, a blue jacket and a dress shirt without a tie, just as he had Tuesday, but he was no longer chained at the ankles. Teeter cited both his professional dress and his polite demeanor in court as favoring allowing him to to represent himself. He and prosecutors do not dispute that he called LaTurner's office in Topeka on June 5 and left a message in which he said, This is a threat to your life. Prosecutors say the call prompted LaTurner to beef up security at the office. Part of the June call was played for jurors during the prosecution's opening statement, and it included a threat against all members of Congress. A public defender said Neill also threatened the entire universe and never attempted to go near LaTurner or his office. Separately, a U.S. magistrate judge said in an August order refusing to release Neill from custody that Neill had suffered a head injury four or five years ago characterized as a head fracture. Teeter concluded during a hearing last month that Neill was capable of following what was going on in court and assisting his lawyers, making him mentally competent to stand trial. ___ Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) A Texas man has pleaded guilty to his role in a romance scam in which women from across the nation were cheated out of a total of about $1.6 million by someone often pretending to be a U.S. Army general. Fola Alabi, who is also known as Folayemi Alabi, 52, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island last week to conspiracy and money laundering, federal prosecutors said in a statement Monday. According to prosecutors, someone often posing as a general stationed overseas befriended women online, then gradually gained their trust by feigning romantic or personal interest. The women, often in their 70s and 80s and widowed or divorced, were persuaded to send cash or checks to addresses and companies controlled by Alabi, who lived in Richmond, Texas, near Houston. The money was then desposited into bank accounts he also controlled, prosecutors said, before being quickly withdrawn or transferred. Federal agents who searched Alabi's cellphone found photographs and videos of packages containing cash and checks he had received from some victims, prosecutors said. The victims were from Rhode Island, Tennessee, North Carolina, California, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, Idaho and South Dakota, authorities said. An Arizona woman lost $334,000, according to an affidavit filed in the case. She felt shame, embarrassment, and guilt over being scammed and did not have enough money for food or to pay bills as a result, according to the affidavit. A Rhode Island woman sent a check for $60,000 and was going to send an additional $240,000, but her bank determined that she might be a victim of fraud, put a hold on her account and contacted local police, authorities said. Sentencing is scheduled for April 25. By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - The Justice Department on Tuesday asked an appeals court panel to reverse an April 2021 ruling that declared unlawful a government order requiring masks on airplanes, buses, trains, ridesharing services and at airports and other transportation hubs. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on the government's appeal of a ruling by a U.S. district court judge in Florida that found the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lacked legal authority to issue a nationwide travel mask mandate to combat COVID-19. The CDC issued the sweeping mask mandate in January 2021, days after Joe Biden became president. A report from U.S. lawmakers in October said the Trump administration in 2020 blocked the CDC from adopting a federal transportation mask mandate. Much of the arguments in the appeal focus on the CDC's decision to put in place the requirements immediately rather than give the public a chance to comment on the mandate. Justice Department lawyer Brian Springer said the CDC could impose mask requirements without giving the public time to comment given the pandemic emergency, arguing it was necessary "to prevent the possible infections and deaths that could result if people didn't do the simple thing of just putting on a mask while they were traveling." Lawyer Brant C. Hadaway representing the five people who had sued to challenge the mandate noted the CDC last year had not sought a stay of the district court's ruling. "This is not about an urgent matter of public health," Hadaway told the court. He argued that had the CDC believed the issue was a "matter of life and death" the agency would have sought a faster ruling. The European Union earlier this month recommended face masks for passengers flying to its member countries from China, which is experiencing a major COVID-19 outbreak after lifting its zero-COVID policy. (Reporting by David Shepardson Editing by Bill Berkrot) FILE - A worker at a power plant, tries to repair damages after a Russian attack in central Ukraine, Jan. 5, 2023. The Biden administration will provide $125 million for parts and other supplies to help repair crews in Ukraine keep up with Russian strikes pounding the countrys electrical system. U.S. international development aid chief Samantha Power announced the funding in a statement Wednesday. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) WASHINGTON (AP) The Biden administration is providing $125 million for electrical parts and other supplies to help repair crews in Ukraine keep up with Russian strikes pounding the country's electrical system, the U.S. international development aid chief said Wednesday. The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to use the money to procure backup power for Kyiv's water and district-heating systems. The funding also will help replenish supplies of gas turbines, transformers and other vital power equipment. USAID administrator Samantha Power, who is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, announced the funding in a meeting with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska and others. USAID said in a statement that the money comes from the supplemental Ukraine funding approved by Congress last month. Russian forces since October have intensified strikes on Ukraine's electrical grid and other critical infrastructure, repeatedly plunging Ukrainians into darkness and winter cold. Utility workers and others are scrambling during what have been nearly weekly barrages on infrastructure to restore electricity and heating. Past USAID energy assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine in February included delivery of 1,415 generators to keep the heat and lights on at schools, hospitals and other sites across Ukraine. USAID also has invested $55 million in Ukraine's heating infrastructure. Authorities continued to search for a fisherman off Hawaii on Tuesday, two days after he hooked a "huge" tuna and fell overboard, officials said. The Coast Guard and the Hawaii Fire Department were expected to continue looking for Mark Knittle of the community of Captain Cook until sundown, Deputy Fire Chief Eric Moller said. If Knittle, 63, is not found, authorities will determine next steps, he said. Mark Knittle, 63. (Hawaii Police Dept via Facebook) The Coast Guard was using a cutter and aircraft and the fire department was using a boat to search the waters off Honaunau, on the Big Islands west coast, Moller said. Moller said conditions had been favorable for the search. The Hawaii Police Department said in a news release that Knittle went overboard early Sunday roughly 4 miles off the coast after he hooked a tuna. This fish is huge, a friend heard Knittle say before he went overboard, the police department said. The friend tried to grab the line, but Knittle quickly disappeared and could not be found when the friend jumped into the water, police said. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has questioned a charitys report on wealth inequality saying some billionaires are all fur coat and no knickers. The Fine Gael leader was responding to questions in the Dail from People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, who raised concerns about Mr Varadkar attending the Davos summit and a report from Oxfam about wealth inequality. Mr Boyd Barrett accused Mr Varadkar of swanning around with some of the worlds richest people, some of the worlds most profitable and wealthy corporations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week. And he said the Oxfam report published on Monday revealed the absolutely gross, grotesque and growing inequality that exists between the super rich in this country and across the world. Richard Boyd Barrett cited an Oxfam report, which revealed grotesque inequality in Ireland and across the world (PA) The richest 1% in Ireland hold 27% of the countrys wealth, the report said. Responding, Mr Varadkar said it would be remiss of him not to attend the World Economic Forum this week, though he is only attending for a day and a half. There are so many politicians, so many world leaders, so many business leaders in the one place for two or three days that itd be remiss not to be there, he said. Ill be able to do maybe 10 meetings, 15 meetings over the course of the next day and a half, which would otherwise take weeks to organise, and thats the advantage of the meeting. I know there are some people that believe its part of some form of world government and were all going off there to make decisions on behalf of the elites that secretly run the world. I guarantee you, deputy, if that was the case Id go for the whole thing. Mr Varadkar then defended Irelands approach to tax, arguing its income tax system is regarded to be one of the most progressive in the world. He also said Ireland has an inheritance tax of 33% compared to two-thirds of countries that do not have a tax on passing money on to descendants. He raised concerns about the methodology of a recently published Oxfam report on poverty, asking if it was net wealth or gross wealth that was measured. Because we all know from past experience some people who are billionaires on paper, or appear to be billionaires, are actually fur coat and no knickers. They have a lot of money. They have a lot of assets on paper. They also have a lot of debts and liabilities and their actual net wealth is negative or small, he said. It seems this report takes their gross wealth and that is somewhat inaccurate to me. And the second thing is they specifically refer to eight Irish billionaires. But when you look at the names of the eight Irish billionaires, most of them would be names that are familiar to you and me and most people in this house, most of them dont live here, most of them dont have their businesses based here and most of them dont keep their assets here. Why do you think that is, deputy? Its precisely because we have a tax regime that taxes wealth, much more so than other countries. How did Oxfam know how much people owe and what their debts are and what their assets are? So I would wonder about the accuracy of that and whether or not it is gross wealth or net wealth. He added: But one thing you are right about: we have seen a major increase in corporate profits around the world and in Ireland in recent years. And as a consequence of that, we in Ireland have benefited from massive receipts in corporation profit tax from those companies on a per-head basis. We get more in corporation profit tax than almost any other country in Europe; I think only Luxembourg is maybe up there and one or two others. So our low-tax regime on corporations means that we take in billions more than other countries do and that is money we use to help people, he said, adding that cost-of-living measures, such as the three energy credit and lump sum social welfare payments, were funded using these revenues. Responding to the Taoiseachs comments, Oxfam said: We can confirm that all the wealth statistics in the report are based on net wealth (assets minus debt) and not gross wealth. This is made clear throughout the report and its methodology note available here, and for the statistics used in our Irish press release. The Taoiseach was correct in saying that existing capital taxes in Ireland are relatively high by international standards (though not at higher marginal rates aimed at the richest sectors of society). However, the question of taxing unrealised capital gains is discussed in detail in the report and this is now up for debate in countries around the world. Not at all. It just seems like a lot of back-and-forth talk. Yes. I'm growing very worried over what might happen. If it keeps up, I might be a little more concerned. I think there are much larger things to concern us as a country. It's hard to tell; I can't take the leader of either country seriously. Vote View Results remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Hong Kong: LegCos passage of 2 bills welcomed The Government welcomed the passage of the Stamp Duty (Amendment) Bill 2022 and the Companies (Amendment) Bill 2022 by the Legislative Council today. The amendment to the Stamp Duty Ordinance gives effect to the proposed exemption of stamp duty payable for certain transactions relating to dual-counter stock made by market makers. The Government said the amended ordinance is an important step to promote the issuance and trading of renminbi securities as it supports the upcoming launch of the Dual Counter Market Making Programme that promotes the price efficiency and liquidity of RMB counters of Hong Kong stocks. The work to consolidate the city's status as global offshore RMB hub and assist the internationalisation of RMB will continue, it added. As for the Companies Ordinance, its amendment provides flexibility for companies to hold general meetings in various manners. The manner of holding a general meeting is governed by the ordinance, the relevant subsidiary legislation and the company's articles of association. The amended Companies Ordinance expressly caters for the scenario of local companies holding fully virtual or hybrid general meetings without limiting them to physical venues. The amended Stamp Duty Ordinance will be gazetted on January 27 and come into operation on that date. The Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd plans to launch the Dual Counter Market Making Programme in the first half of 2023 when the implementation details are finalised. The amended Companies Ordinance will also be gazetted on January 27 and come into operation on April 28 to give the trade sufficient time to communicate with its members. This story has been published on: 2023-01-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. 66 koalas from one family in seven generations make public appearance in Guangzhou Xinhua) 13:09, January 18, 2023 A koala is seen at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Breeders pose for a group photo with koalas from a family with seven generations at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Breeders pose for a group photo with koalas from a family with seven generations at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Koalas are seen at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) A breeder (C) holds baby koala "Baobao", the newborn seventh generation in a koala family, and its mother at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Breeders pose for a group photo with koalas from a family with seven generations at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) This photo taken on Jan. 17, 2023 shows koala "Taotao", a member of the first generation in a koala family at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) YEREVAN, JANUARY 17, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on Azerbaijan to unblock the movement of the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia and the outside world, the Lachin Corridor, as soon as possible, ARMENPRESS reports the Russian FM spoke about this, as well as about the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, during a telephone conversation with Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov on January 17. "The ministers discussed a number of topical issues of bilateral relations and the regional agenda. The Russian side emphasized the need to fully unblock movement through the Lachin Corridor as soon as possible, in accordance with the requirments set by the high-level Trilateral Declaration of November 9, 2020. The importance of reaching mutually acceptable solutions on all related issues was also emphasized, with the aim of resuming the systemic work in the key directions of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, based on the agreements of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. 19 children from Artsakh who were stranded in Armenia as a result of the blockade of Lachin Corridor were transported home to reunite with their families, the Artsakh Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan said. He said the children were accompanied by Russian peacekeepers. In the Shushi-Karin Tak area, the blockaded part of the road where the Azerbaijani government sponsored agents posing as eco-activists and the journalists in their service are located, the car was stopped by the Azerbaijanis. Then, 10-15 masked Azerbaijanis with video cameras and wearing civilian clothes approached the car and some of them breached into the vehicle and filmed the children. The provocative actions of the Azerbaijanis caused chaos in the car and one of the children lost consciousness. As a result of actions taken by the Russian peacekeepers the Azerbaijanis were removed from the vehicle and the vehicle continued its course. Afterwards, when the car was passing through the blockaded part of the road the Azerbaijanis started demonstrably shouting in the direction of the car carrying the children. This brazen behavior of the Azerbaijani governmental agents is an arbitrary and illegal interference into the privacy of the children, and an illegal encroachment against their psychological integrity, dignity and reputation. These criminal actions are entirely exposing their true goals and intentions. The ethnic hatred against Armenians by Azerbaijanis knows no boundaries, targeting even children. This provocative and criminal action once again proves the fact that the road is blockaded and the impossibility of safe travel along it, even while accompanied by Russian peacekeepers, Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan said on social media. Reporter and TV host Erik Antaranyan had earlier reported that 16 of the children are from the group that had traveled to Armenia to attend the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in December 2022. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. War veterans were enabled to obtain free tech education as part of the 2022 University-Private Sector Cooperation for Training of Experts program, the Minister of High-Tech Industry Robert Khachatryan told ARMENPRESS. Weve had 295 applicants, 136 of whom from Yerevan, 156 from provinces and the Republic of Artsakh. At this moment 135 participants are learning, 65 of whom are from Yerevan and 70 from provinces and the Republic of Artsakh, Khachatryan said. He said they plan to continue the program. Khachatryan said they will make every effort to make the program a continuous initiative. Karine Terteryan YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. Two persons have been remanded into pre-trial detention as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the 10 November 2020 riots in Yerevan, when a crowd of demonstrators attacked then-Speaker of Parliament Ararat Mirzoyan and breached into Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyans official residence. The National Security Service said that its investigation revealed that one of the arrested suspects had joined the riots and assaulted Speaker Mirzoyan, who was already unconscious after being attacked outside parliament by a crowd. Mirzoyan was hospitalized with multiple bodily injuries. Another arrested individual is suspected of stealing jewelry, a gold watch and other personal belongings worth 3,9 million drams of PM Pashinyans spouse Anna Hakobyan from their official residence during the riots. Next morning, the suspect, together with an accomplice, pawned the stolen jewelry items at pawnshops in Yerevan. A court approved a 2-month pre-trial detention against the suspects. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. Reality TV star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian published a video and the Armenian flag in an Instagram story. The video shows children in Artsakh calling for an end to the blockade. One of the children in the video, Diana, says that she is one of the 120,000 Armenians in Artsakh who are blockaded for over a month by the Azerbaijani government. Azerbaijan is keeping the Lachin Corridor blocked since 12 December 2022. The corridor is Artsakhs only road to Armenia and the rest of the world. The blockade resulted in a growing humanitarian crisis as food and medicine supplies are suspended. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. Member of Parliament Taguhi Tovmasyan, the Chair of the Human Rights Protection and Public Affairs Committee, said she is preparing urgent letters to competent international institutions regarding the Azeri harassment of Armenian children in Lachin corridor. 19 children were subjected to psychological and emotional violence by Azerbaijan for being Armenians, one of them lost consciousness. I am preparing urgent letters to competent international institutions, Tovmasyan said in a statement. Azerbaijan doesnt lay any single limit in ethnic hatred towards Armenians: they have persecuted even minor children who, accompanied by peacekeepers, returned to Artsakh to their parents in the conditions of more than a month later-long blockade of the only Artsakh-Armenia-world road by Azerbaijan. However, the car was stopped by Azerbaijanis in the Shushi-Karin Tak area, on the blocked section of the Artsakh-Armenia-world road where agents of the Azerbaijani government posing as "eco-activists" are located. 10-15 Azerbaijanis in civilian clothes, with their faces covered, broke into the children's bus and subjected the children to psychological violence. The criminal activity of Azerbaijanis was not limited to the mentioned extent: since the bus continued its way, the Azerbaijanis also defiantly threatened the Armenian children. With such an impudent behavior the agents of the Azerbaijani government have violated the key provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which should be a subject of urgent investigation by the competent international institutions and concrete actions of punishment against Azerbaijan. With the mentioned criminal action Azerbaijan made one more step toward the implementation of the genocidal policy against ethnic Armenians. In the conditions of silence of the civilized world the crimes by Azerbaijan against the humanity will be further seen, the lawmaker added. The polls in nine states are seen as semi-finals before the Lok Sabha elections next year, where the BJP is hoping for a hat-trick Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar with Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey during a press conference for the announcement of schedule of general elections to the Legislative assemblies of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo/Shahbaz Khan) New Delhi: The three north-eastern states -- Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland -- will vote in February, setting the stage for a mega-fight as nine states go to the polls this year. Announcing the dates, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said voting in Tripura will take place on February 16, while Nagaland and Meghalaya will vote on February 27. The counting of votes is scheduled for March 2. The model code of conduct is now in place in these states after the announcement. Mr Kumar said the Election Commission of India (ECI) has decided to wrap the polls in a single phase in February, taking into account CBSE class 10th and 12th examinations scheduled in March. The three state Assemblies have a strength of 60 members each. While the term of the Nagaland Assembly ends on March 12, the terms of the Meghalaya and Tripura Assemblies end on March 15 and March 22, respectively. The polls in nine states are seen as semi-finals before the Lok Sabha elections next year, where the BJP is hoping for a hat-trick. But before that, the party is facing challenges in various states where it is in power on its own or with allies. The Congress, which has long dominated the Northeast political arena, and the CPI(M), which remained unrivalled for years under Manik Sarkar, who served as Chief Minister from 1998 to 2018, are both attempting to reclaim lost territory. In Tripura, where the BJP is facing a united Opposition, the party is making efforts to retain power. During its five-year tenure, the BJP faced disquiet and infighting as important party leaders, like six-time MLA Sudip Roy Barman, quit the BJP to return to the Congress fold. As a result, the BJP had to replace chief minister Biplab Deb with Manik Saha, just nine months before the state election. The BJP currently has 33 seats in Tripura, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura has four, the CPI(M) has 15, and the Congress has one. Seven seats are vacant. The BJP and the IPFT are in alliance here. The Congress and the CPI(M) have joined hands to dethrone the BJP and recapture the state. Interestingly, the Congress was the main Opposition for the CPI(M) when it ruled Tripura for 25 years. The Trinamul Congress (TMC) is also working hard to make an impact outside West Bengal. However, the TMC and Tripura Motha are yet to announce alliances with other parties. In Meghalaya, despite having the most seats (21), the Congress was unable to form a government because its tally fell short of the halfway mark in the 60-member Assembly.The National Peoples Party (NPP) led by Conrad Sangma is in power with the backing of the BJP and others. The NPP has 20 seats, the United Democratic Party (UDP) has eight, the Peoples Democratic Front (PDF) has two, the BJP has two and two are Independents. The TMC has nine seats in Meghalaya, while 18 seats are vacant. No pre-election alliance has been announced by any of the political parties so far. In Nagaland, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), with 41 seats, is in power. The BJP has 12, the NPF has four and there are two independents. One seat is vacant. The NDPP-BJP have declared a pre-poll alliance in Nagaland. "The BJP is always election ready and we are ready for the Assembly election. We have already carried out several outreach programmes, including the Jan Vishwas Yatra. Since election schedules have been declared, the campaign will be intensified for a landslide victory," Tripura BJP general secretary Papia Datta said. She added that the BJP-IPFT alliance will continue. "Our central leaders will be here to take decisions on any new partner," she said. Senior CPI(M) leader Pabitra Kar said, "From our side, we are ready for the Assembly election in alliance with the Congress. I appeal to the EC to ensure a violence-free poll." He added that a Congress rally was attacked near Khumulwng in West Tripura district on Wednesday, the day the election dates were announced by the EC in New Delhi. "I am happy that the youths have come out to join the bike rally taken out by our party in Agartala, despite threats and intimidation from the saffron brigade. I am confident the people will throw out the BJP in the coming election," said Congress leader in Tripura, Sudip Roy Barman. TMC state president Pijush Kanti Biswas said the party is ready to contest the election with "full force" and talks are on for tie-ups with "suitable parties", though no concrete decision has been made as yet. Indonesian Minister for Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Uno said that the Southeast Asian country is ready to welcome Chinese tourists following China's optimized COVID-19 strategy. "We welcome tourists from China with a red carpet," he said. Produced by Xinhua Global Service by Sumon Corraya Last year more than 50 young people went missing from different areas of the country, at least seven were from Comilla, south-east of Dhaka. One, Al Amin, a student who wanted to return home, was ambushed and killed by another militia group. The government has policies to counter radicalism. Dhaka (AsiaNews) The death of two young men at a training camp has put the spotlight again on extremist Islamist groups, which, despite government policies and monitoring of mosques, remain a major issue. Last year alone, more than 50 young people went missing from different parts of the country and are presumed to have joined jihadi groups. Recently, police discovered that at least two died at a training camp. The government of Bangladesh has long promoted policies and undertaken initiatives, involving families, to counter recruitment by extremist groups and secure the return of the missing; however, its plans have faced all sorts of obstacles and have cost human lives. At least seven of the young people who travelled to the camps for indoctrination and training (some via Turkey) are from Comilla, a city of over 1.6 million residents, about a hundred kilometres south-east of Dhaka, in Chittagong Division. Some of these men were reportedly arrested or returned after a brief period of time. Aminul Islam was not one of them. The 23-year-old, who went by the alias Al Amin, was a student at Victoria Government College when he went missing on 23 August. He met his death in one of the hiding places used by Islamist groups in Bandarban, a hilly and remote area in the south-east of the country. After his death, apparently on 15 November, his companions buried him in the mountains; his family tried to retrieve the body for a more dignified burial but in vain so far. According to some witnesses, the young man tried to return home after he realised that the jihadi path was a mistake. However, he never made it out; he was ambushed by another, newly formed extremist group, Jamatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqsfia, which killed Al Amin and other members of the separatist Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF). After Amins grave was identified, his father Nurul Islam, went to retrieve the remains, but found only a blanket. Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country; non-Muslims mostly Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists represent 8 per cent of the population. Over the past 10 years, Islamic extremists have killed hundreds of intellectuals, bloggers, secularist and atheist publishers, foreigners, gay people, and members of religious minorities (including Shia Muslims). For its part, the government has inaugurated many model mosques across the country, where imams teach a vision of the faith that is opposed to jihadism and the radical vision of extremists. by Emanuele Scimia According to Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, the two countries want to maintain stable relations. Despite its interests in both countries, it is hard for China to get involved in the dispute. India provides Afghanistan with development aid, but cannot be considered a partner of the Taliban. Rome (AsiaNews) Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States, does not believe Islamabad and Kabul are heading towards open war. In his view, tensions and skirmishes will increase. However, at the end of the day, the Taliban need the Pakistani states support and the Pakistani establishment views the Taliban as preferable to any other Afghan government. Other analysts and observers believe, however, a conflict to be inevitable, given that Pakistan could not defeat the Taliban guerrillas within its borders without fighting their "big brothers" in Afghanistan. Tensions between the two countries rose last month after cross-border shelling left several people dead and wounded at the Chaman border crossing. As for options available to counter Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani government issued a statement on 2 January that was a clear reference to its Afghan neighbour. No country, it read, will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists and Pakistan reserves all rights in that respect to safeguard her people. The Afghan Taliban emerged thanks to Pakistani support, but as Haqqani explains, the differences between the two sides go back a long way, and were evident even in the 1990s, when the Islamist group was on the rise in Afghanistan. No Afghan regime whether Taliban or other has ever recognised the border between the two countries as the international boundary. Further, the Taliban have never abandoned their ideological beliefs and that includes supporting groups like the Pakistani Taliban," Haqqani told AsiaNews. Fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan would lead to unpredictable geopolitical scenarios in a region already marked by instability, with strong repercussions for the geopolitical competition between India and China. China has consolidated political and economic relations with Pakistan, and a Chinese firm just signed a contract with Afghanistan's Taliban government to drill for oil in the country, the first major foreign investment in Afghanistan since the Taliban came back to power in August 2021. On paper, the Chinese are best positioned to play a brokering role between the two countries divided along the Durand Line, the disputed border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. China has long depended upon the Pakistani states sureties that Islamabad can deliver in Afghanistan, Haqqani notes. China is carefully monitoring how Pakistan meets challenges in Afghanistan and how the Taliban are unable to deal with the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP), the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State. For the former diplomat, who is currently Senior Fellow and Director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, While China prefers an Afghanistan where Pakistan not the US or India is in control, China may not see the benefit of inserting itself into what is primarily a Pakistan-Afghanistan issue. India is also involved in the confrontation between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Taliban government has asked India to continue providing development assistance, Haqqani notes. In both Kabul and Islamabad, they know that the Indians can deliver, while the Pakistanis cannot. Yet, asking India for developmental assistance is not the same as viewing India as a partner or friend, Haqqani explains. And while the Taliban may have differences with the Pakistani state, they are dependent on Pakistan and Pakistan remains their partner of choice as of now. by Jose Torres Jr. The news was given on social media by Kalookan Bishop Mgr Pablo Virgilio David. The Jesuit, one of the founders of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, had received the Vatican's 'Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice' award and had drafted the historic declaration 'Evangelisation in Today's Asia'. Manila (AsiaNews) - Filipino Jesuit Catalino Arevalo, known as one of the fathers of Asian theology, died this morning, three months before his 98th birthday. The news was spread on social media by Kalookan Bishop Msgr Pablo Virgilio David: "Our dear mentor and friend, Fr Catalino Arevalo, whom we affectionately called 'Father Reverend', has passed away." "May this great teacher to whom we owe our love for theological learning and the spiritual discipline of discernment, rest in the peace of God's embrace," the prelate continued, "he had looked forward to this passage into the afterlife." As all his friends know, he was in the habit of saying, 'This may be our last meeting, so I must say my final farewell'". In 1997, the Jesuit priest had received the Vatican's 'Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice' award for distinguished service to the Church, while in 1998, he had been called 'father of Asian theology' by the Ateneo de Manila University on the occasion of the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola. The university recalled the priest's more than 9,000 pages of theological writings characterised by an 'Asian emphasis' on behalf of bishops' conferences and other Church leaders. The Jesuit was the first Asian cleric to be a member of the Holy See's International Theological Commission and the first coordinator and founding member of the Theological Consultative Commission of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC). After a trip to Latin America in 1970, Fr Arevalo gave his first lectures on liberation theology in the Philippines. In the same year, he served as an expert at a meeting of Asian bishops that would evolve into the Fabc in 1974. The priest went on to draft the Fabc's first statement, the historic 'Evangelisation in Today's Asia', which remains 'the most influential articulation of the local Churches in Asia'. by Steve Suwannarat Several Malaysian states have legislated against mixing politics and religion. According to the Johor Religious Affairs Department, mosques have become venues for political debates and some political parties are using religious initiatives to promote their views. Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) Johor Crown Prince Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim wants mosques and religious institutions to be free from politics. Mohd Fared Mohd Khalid, chairman of the Islamic Religious Affairs Committee of the State of Johor, reported the crown princes views yesterday. The 38-year-old crown prince, who also chairs the States Islamic Religious Council (MAINJ), also reiterated that any public activity of a religious nature has to be approved by the competent authorities and any person involved in such activities must be monitored to avoid doctrinal errors or teachings not pertinent to the religious sphere. This is nothing new since several states in the Malaysian Federation already require this, albeit with various nuances. In Johor, this comes under Section 96 of the 2003 Islamic Religious Administration Enactment. The local ruler, Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, also spoken out on the issue in the past, most recently in 2019. Any activities in the form of religious talks, usrah (small group discussions), sharing of religious knowledge or others, must obtain authorisation and approval from JAINJ (Johor Religious Affairs Department),said Mohd Fared. For the latter, anyone organising religious activities must be accredited and officially recognised by the JAINJ. What is more, Johors 850 mosques and 2,000 surau will soon receive guidelines regulating the matter. JAINJ will also meet with mosque and surau (Islamic assembly buildings) officials, state assemblymen, and leaders of all political parties in the state to explain the guidelines. Mohd Fared noted that mosques have become places for political debate and that some political parties are using religious initiatives to promote their views. In fact, several Malaysian media report that the Kelantan Islamic and Malay Customs Council (MAIK) had warned mosque leaders not to get involved in political activities in last year's general election. In 2021, in the State of Selangor, the local Islamic Religious Council revoked the certificate that allowed some political activists to teach the Islamic religion. In 2019 Sultan Nazrin Shah of Perak had asked religious preachers and members of mosque management committees to stop pursuing political agendas, deemed offensive to the sanctity of religious sites and the rites that take place there. Political parties have been using religion for a long time, particularly those who have held power for a long time, trying to take advantage of Islamist support or discredit rivals; this has resulted in deteriorating relations in Malaysias multicultural society. Pyongyang returns to the top of the list of the most dangerous countries for Christians drawn up by the international NGO. India is the country with the highest number of recorded arrests: as many as 1750 in one year. The expansion of the 'China model' in the subordination of religious freedom to 'stability and security' is worrying. In the world 1 believer in Jesus out of every 7 lives in a country where discrimination is high; 5,621 were killed in twelve months. Milan (AsiaNews) - There are over 360 million Christians in the world (1 in every 7) who experience at least a high level of persecution and discrimination in their own country because of their faith. Asia and the Middle East, together with Africa, are at the top of this sad ranking. This is what emerges from the data of the 2003 annual report of the international NGO Open Doors, released today, which examines the violations of religious freedom recorded in the world between 1 October 2021 and 30 September 2022. Bringing together reports and news items from a variety of sources - including those published by AsiaNews - each year the report ranks the countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian. In absolute terms, over the period of time examined, 5,621 Christians were killed for faith-related causes in the world (15 every day), 4,542 Christians were arrested, 5,259 were kidnapped, and 2,110 Christian churches and buildings were attacked. But the study also takes into account other indicators of persecution such as ideological oppression, Islamic fundamentalism or other forms of religious nationalism. In the world as a whole, North Korea is the country where the situation is the most serious, with the highest level of persecution in the 30 years of the Open Doors report. The entry into force of the Law against Reactionary Thought, in fact, has led to an increase in the arrests of Christians and the discovery and consequent closure of a greater number of hidden churches. Being arrested means facing execution or detention in political prisoner camps, where prisoners risk starvation and all kinds of torture and abuse, including sexual abuse. The law makes it a crime to publish any material of foreign origin in North Korea and is also used to justify the search and confiscation of Bibles or any other Christian material, whether printed or electronic. The text quotes the testimony of Timothy Cho, a North Korean refugee who fled the country: "Christians have always been the focus of the regime's attacks. The goal is to wipe out every Christian from the country. Only one god is allowed in North Korea: the Kim family'. Among the top ten countries in the world where, according to Open Doors, it is most dangerous to be Christian - looking at Asia and the Middle East - are Yemen in third place, Pakistan in seventh, Iran in eighth and Afghanistan in ninth. Regarding the latter country - paradoxically - the parameters on the basis of which Open Doors draws up its ranking, also linked to the number of recorded cases of violence, show an improvement that is, however, only apparent: it is mainly due to the fact that the Taliban declare that the presence of Christians has been totally eradicated and the few remaining ones live in hiding. India, in 11th place in the ranking, is nevertheless included among the countries where persecution is described as 'extreme'. In the period under review - in particular - New Delhi recorded the record number of detentions of Christians without trial for reasons related to their faith (1,750). On China - ranked 16th among the countries where persecution against Christians is strongest - the report notes how worryingly it is also becoming a "model" for many other countries to redefine human rights standards downwards. "Using the language of 'stability' and 'security'," it notes, "autocrats exert immense pressure on church leaders in response to their persistent calls for respect for human rights, free participation of civil society, rule of law and transparent elections. Those who refuse to support the ruling party can be branded as 'troublemakers', 'disturbers of the peace' or even 'terrorists'". Finally, the report underlines the growth of the persecution dynamic in Myanmar, in terms of the number of people forced to leave their homes or hide or flee the country (over 100,000), the number of Christian homes, shops and property destroyed or attacked (over 1,000), and the number of Christian churches and buildings attacked, a sign that the authoritarian turn of the military junta has targeted certain minorities perceived as disturbing simply because they profess the Christian faith. Todays headlines: Pakistani premier proposes peace talks to India; Pacific island nations against Fukushima contaminated water release; In China millions travel for Lunar New Year; In Oman the first space launch base in the Middle East; Russian citizens accuse Putin of creating a Nazi state. PHILIPPINES A court has acquitted Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa of charges of tax evasion. The acquittal (on four charges) also concerns her newspaper Rappler. Three other criminal cases are open against the journalist, including one for libel for which she faces almost seven years in prison. PAKISTAN-INDIA Shehbaz Sharif proposed to the Indian government to start discussions to solve problems such as the sovereignty of Kashmir. The Pakistani premier said he had asked the United Arab Emirates to mediate between the two sides. OCEANIA-JAPAN South Pacific island nations have asked Tokyo to postpone the release into the sea of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, damaged by the 2011 tsunami. Japanese authorities said the operation could start between spring and summer. CHINA Millions of Chinese are on the move to reach their homes on the eve of the Lunar New Year, which falls on 21 January. After three years of anti-Covid restrictions, the government hopes the reopenings will boost consumption and an upturn in the economy. Experts fear that the mass displacements could cause the pandemic to spread to the countryside. OMAN The sultanate will start construction of the first space launch base in the Middle East this year. The Etlaq Space Launch Complex will be built in the port city of Duqm. Work will be completed in three years, but the first launch could take place as early as early 2024. RUSSIA A group of Russian citizens from the Ishimbajsk province in Bashkortostan sent an open letter to Putin. The letter states: 'You have created a totalitarian regime, similar to Nazi Germany... You only defend the rights of the security forces, who are always ready to kill ordinary people, but in the end what will you be able to do without the people? TAJIKISTAN-KYRGYZSTAN Despite the increasingly severe winter weather, a window of thaw opened between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, with a telephone conversation between the two presidents Rakhmon and Zaparov. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations. They discussed the 'prospects for cooperation' between the two states, starting with border marking. During the general audience, Francis urges the faithful to pray for the priest burnt alive in Nigeria and for the victims of last Saturday's missile attack in Ukraine. As the Week for Christian Unity starts, he calls on all believers in Christ to join the journey toward full communion and commit to peace. Vatican City (AsiaNews) Pope Francis continued his cycle of catechesis in Wednesdays General Audience in the Paul VI Hall, focusing on the nostalgia for those who have left, as one of the aspects of todays evangelisation. In meeting the pilgrims, the pontiff also urged them to pray for Father Isaac Achi, who was burnt alive last Sunday in his parish house in the Diocese of Minna, northern Nigeria. So many Christians continue to be the target of violence, Francis lamented. Continuing the cycle of reflections on the passion for evangelisation, which began last week, the pope focused his catechesis on Jesus as an unsurpassable model of evangelisation. The fact that he is the Logos, that is, the Word, highlights an essential aspect of Jesus: He is always in relation, outgoing, never isolated, Francis said. But Christ not only has words of life, but makes his life a Word, a message: that is, he lives always turned toward the Father and toward us. For Jesus, being a good shepherd, was not just a job; instead, it required time and a lot of dedication. It was a true and proper way of life: twenty-four hours a day, living with the flock, accompanying them to pasture, sleeping among the sheep, taking care of those who were weakest. In other words, Jesus does not do something for us, but he gives everything, he gives his life for us. Speaking about the parable of the shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep, the pontiff stressed that His pastoral heart [. . .] suffers and [. . .] takes risks. It suffers: yes, God suffers for those who leave and, while he mourns over them, he loves even more. Yet, in response to this suffering, he does not withdraw, rather he takes a risk. He leaves the ninety-nine sheep who are safe and ventures out for the lost one, thus doing something both risky and unreasonable, but consonant with his pastoral heart which misses the one who left, the longing for someone who has gone away. Jesus teaches us to have nostalgia for those who have left. Jesus does not feel anger or resentment but pure longing for us. [. . .] And I wonder we, do we have similar sentiments? Perhaps we see those who have left the flock as adversaries or enemies. When we meet them at school, at work, on the streets of our city, why dont we think instead that we have a beautiful opportunity to witness to them the joy of a Father who loves them and has never forgotten them? This is not about proselytism, as I said, so that others become one of us no, this is not Christian. It is about loving so that they might be happy children of God, Francis stressed. In prayer, let us ask the grace of a pastoral heart, an open heart that draws near to everyone. Ultimately, If we Christians do not have this love that suffers and takes risks, we risk caring only for ourselves. In greeting the faithful, the pontiff mentioned the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which opens today. I urge each one of you to pray and labour, he said, so that the journey toward full communion may be increasingly asserted among all believers in Christ; at the same time, I encourage you to commit yourselves, with dedication and in every walk of life, to be builders of reconciliation and peace. Finally, the pontiff renewed his appeal for beleaguered Ukraine. Last Saturday, Francis noted, a new missile attack caused many civilian casualties, including children. I share the unbearable pain of family members. The images and testimonies of this tragic episode are a strong appeal to everyone. No one should remain indifferent. by Vladimir Rozanskij The Russian Orthodox Church remains faithful to the Julian calendar and celebrated it on 14 January. The Korjaks of Kamcatka start the year at the winter solstice, on 21 or 22 December. So do the cukci on the Alaskan border. In the Urals, khanty and mansi await the arrival of the crows in spring. Moscow (AsiaNews) - The Russian Orthodox Church celebrated the "old New Year" on 14 January, proudly sticking to the Julian calendar, while waiting for Baptism on 19 January to conclude the Christmas cycle. Actually, the first official date in Kievan Rus' was 1 March, changed to 1 September only in 1492, according to different provisions of the Orthodox liturgical year. It was not until the 'Westernist' Tsar Peter the Great, in the early 1700s, that people began to celebrate the first of January. The dates of the New Year, after all, vary widely among peoples at all latitudes, and even in Russia, various ancient traditions do not fail to reappear, especially among the small peoples of the Arctic north. The Korjaki, an ethnic group from the upper part of Kamchatka, begin the year at the winter solstice, on 21 or 22 December, and call the holiday 'Tuygivin' (Fire Day). As Tatjana Ikavav, a native Korjaka, tells us, 'you can't survive for more than a few hours without fire'; the fire provides warmth, and the fire provides food, cooking fish and meat from reindeer, whale or walrus, along with buns. One throws a piece into the fire and makes a wish. "This year, I asked that all peoples, Russians, Korjaki, cukci, Zveny, Ukrainians and all the others could live in friendship, respecting each other". The bonfire is lit by the village elders, giving thanks to the 'spirit of fire' that purifies the human soul. In Cukotka, on the border with Alaska, the new year is called 'Pegytti', also celebrated at the winter solstice. As a local woman, Aleksandra Sleptsova, recounts in a conversation with Sibir.Realii, 'according to the elders, the reindeer know when the day begins to lengthen again, they turn 180 degrees and head north. On that day, the star Pegytti, the cukco name for Altair, of the constellation Aquila, rises. The cukci also light a fire, with a special 'fire table' that has been handed down from generation to generation. The Khanty and Mansi, two Finno-Ugric groups at the top of the Urals, instead celebrate the New Year in spring, between the end of March and the beginning of April, without a precise date. Everything depends on the flight of the crows, the first migratory birds that arrive in the far north when the snow has not yet melted. The Ugrians of the Ob, the great river that springs from the Urals, believe that the cries of the crows awaken nature, and therefore call the festival 'Vurna Khatl', the 'Day of the Crow'. An inhabitant of the Khanty-Mansijskaja autonomous region, Galina Andreeva, remembers her grandmother's tales about the times of the big freeze, when food reserves ran out and the trees became like stalactites. On the tundra then came a crow, which, seeing itself alone in the frost, cried out, so that the trees shook off the snow, the animals moved and the men came out of their houses. On the horizon, the sun came out and the flocks of crows arrived and everything came alive again. With the arrival of Russian Christianity, the beginning of the year was set for 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation, with a happy correspondence between the crow's cry and the Angel's announcement. Both indicate the birth of life, and crows and ravens are believed to be protectors of mothers and children; it is believed that the first woman to spot a crow will soon also become the first pregnant woman of the year, a bit like the stork in other countries. Since 2011, the regional government has set a new date, the second Saturday in April, in order to move more towards the warmth and exalt popular traditions. The result, as is the case with double dates in Christian calendars, is that the khanty and mansi double the winter festivities, greeting the rebirth of life by uniting cultures and religions. BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Tuesday held phone talks with his Mongolian counterpart, Batmunkh Battsetseg, with both sides pledging to enhance pragmatic cooperation. In recent years, under the strategic guidance of the heads of state of both countries and joint efforts of both sides, China-Mongolia relations have maintained a sound development momentum, with pragmatic cooperation yielding fruitful outcomes and two-way trade registering a record high, Qin said, adding both peoples have also joined hands in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. To maintain, consolidate and further develop China-Mongolia relations is the strategic choice of both sides, Qin said. China is willing to strengthen exchanges with Mongolia at all levels and deepen cooperation in various fields so as to make new progress in jointly building a community with a shared future, he said. Recently, China has optimized and adjusted its prevention and control measures in light of the changing situation of the epidemic, including introducing new policies aimed at facilitating cross-border travel, Qin said. China appreciates Mongolia's scientific-based and objective stand and its support for normal people-to-people exchange between the two countries, Qin said. For her part, Battsetseg said as neighbors connected by mountains and rivers, Mongolia and China are exemplary partners of cooperation in the region and good brothers who work together in fighting the pandemic. Mongolia will as always stick to the one-China principle and is willing to further enhance high-level exchanges and deepen pragmatic cooperation with China, so as to make contributions to regional and international peace and stability and to push the Mongolia-China comprehensive strategic partnership to new levels, she said. Maine Voters Likely to Decide on Right to Repair in November Written by Caitlin Andrews, The Maine Monitor Published Jan. 18, 2023 By the time Mainers get their spring tires put on, the waiting room of their local automotive shop might be decorated with political signage. You might not think who is allowed to repair a vehicle could be a political discussion, but it will be one of the four likely ideological skirmishes waged on the airwaves and roadside signs as Maine gears up for a referendum-heavy year. Unlike 2021s bruising campaign over whether Mainers should block Central Maine Powers hydropower transmission line from Canada from coming through the Kennebec Valley, multiple ballot questions will be up for debate in 2023. Among them is a debate on who should get access to telemetric data from a customer's vehicle for repairs, which is likely to make the ballot. The other three include a question asking if Mainers want to establish a consumer-owned utility, and buy out CMP and Versant Power, which has been approved for the November 2023 ballot. Opponents have a counter referendum aiming to hobble the consumer referendum by making government bonding over $1 billion subject to voter approval. That one is also likely to make the ballot. Finally, an effort to prohibit companies with foreign ownership from spending in referendum campaigns has been certified. If all four are voted on in November, it will be the most questions on the ballot since 2016, according to state records. Trends and fights in other states over similar measures indicate next years battles, if they do make the ballot, will cost millions and flood the airwaves with commercials. Right to Repair: Local Shops Versus Consumer Privacy The concept of right to repair has been around for years, but one of its first major battles took place in Massachusetts a decade ago. A right to repair coalition---a group of automotive aftermarket companies that create, distribute and sell vehicle parts or perform vehicle services---brought forward a ballot measure to require motor vehicle manufacturers to grant access to vehicle diagnostic and repair information to independent repair shops. That referendum passed with 88% of the vote in Massachusetts. And car manufacturers, rather than fight the same battle in 50 states, chose instead to create a memorandum of understanding between themselves and the aftermarket industry to make that information available nationwide. But Timothy Winkeler, president and CEO of VIP Tires & Services and the lead proponent for Maine Right to Repair, said the memorandum does not cover the wireless diagnostic information common in newer cars. The Massachusetts right to repair campaign took the issue to the ballot box again in 2020 and won, and Winkeler hopes Maine will be the second state to make this information available to independent repair shops. This is about consumer choice, he said. Its about your ability to choose who repairs your car. Winkeler said there has not been much strategizing on how to message around the referendum, but imagines once it is certified by the Maine Secretary of States Office, which he expects in January, posters will start popping up in repair and parts shops advocating for the measure. It is certain to meet resistance from the car manufacturing industry. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, one of the main opponents of the Massachusetts referendum, sent out a memo outlining its arguments against the proposed Maine measure. It accuses the aftermarket industry of going for a data grab that would allow it to create targeted ads toward car owners. It also said the measure is unnecessary and could open up vehicles to cybersecurity risks. The alliances resistance was so strong, automakers have been fighting it in court for two years. The Maine campaign could be expensive: The Massachusetts campaign finance website shows a collective $51.6 million on the referendum in 2020, with opposition slightly outspending support. At the time it was projected to be the single most expensive ballot initiative in the states history, the Boston Globe reported. A movement to block referendum spending by corporations with foreign backing has no organized resistance---yet. This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization covering statewide news in Maine. TEHRAN, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- At least 120 people have been injured in a 5.4-magnitude earthquake that jolted northwestern Iran on Wednesday, according to Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA). The quake hit Khoy County in the province of West Azerbaijan at 13:38 p.m. (GMT 1008) at a depth of 12 kilometers, Morteza Moradipour, deputy head for operations at Iran's Relief and Rescue Organization, was quoted by ISNA as saying. He stressed that the main earthquake hit following a 3.6-magnitude foreshock that occurred 20 minutes earlier at a depth of 13 kilometers, adding damage assessment teams have been sent to the region and rescue workers are on alert across the province. Moradipour added that 200 housing units have been severely damaged in some villages. DOHC SOHC Ford can do better, though. Not only is the F-150 Raptor R more versatile off the beaten path, but it also costs a wee bit more. Marketed as the Lobo Raptor R in Mexico, the Predator-engined truck retails at 2,479,900 pesos or $135,650 at press time. Fords local division proudly describes it as being la bestia mas fuerte de la galaxia (the strongest beast in the galaxy), a description that might bring back memories of a 90s anime.Founded in 1925 as the countrys first automobile company, Ford of Mexico waxes lyrical about the 5.2-liter supercharged V8 that explains the R suffix of the Raptor R. From the forged steel crankshaft to forged aluminum pistons, a Raptor R-specific air intake system, and an oversized cooling system, this powerplant ticks all the right boxes. Gifted with avalvetrain, compared tofor the Hellcat in the Ram 1500 TRX, the Predator makes 700 horsepower on the nose and lots of twist.640 pound-feet (868 Nm) is in no way, shape, or form too little torque, but its not enough torque compared to the 6.2-liter Hellcat. The rival brand also packs a little more horsepower, and the Ram 1500 TRX also happens to be quicker in the quarter mile for a number of reasons. One of those being the 35-inch tires, compared to 37-inch units for the Raptor R.Those reading these lines may be scratching their heads in regard to the trucks name. Lobo is a market-specific moniker for certain versions of the F-150, a name introduced in the 90s for the XLT and higher grades. Lobo translates to Wolf, and Wolf Raptor R sounds pretty cool in its own right.Joined at the hip to the now-discontinued Shelby GT500 , the Raptor R doesnt feature the Mustangs dual-clutch transmission. Its rocking the 10R torque-converter automatic we all know and love, although its appropriately modified for this application. The dual-clutch transmission isnt compatible with the Raptor R either because the TR-9070 in the strip-slaying Mustang Shelby GT500 was designed for rear-drive application.A heavy-duty rear output assembly with PTFE washers and four-pinion gear carrier differentiates the Raptor R version of the 10R80 from those used in lesser trucks. Updates further include a 260-millimeter torque converter, a heavy-duty turbine damper, and unique software calibration.Similar to the TRX , the Raptor R isnt exactly frugal. According to EPA testing, the most you can expect from the most badass F-150 around is 10 miles per gallon (just under 23.6 liters per 100 kilometers) in the urban jungle, 15 (15.7) on the highway, and 12 (19.6) on the combined cycle. EV Photo: Hyundai ICE Photo: Hyundai Photo: Hyundai For now, the company revealed several details about their domestic market variant. We'll have to wait two more months to learn what the new Kona has in stall for the rest of the world. The manufacturer brags about how it centered "the development of the upscaled, futuristic all-new KONA" around itsmodel.Curiously and counterintuitively, Hyundai didn't mention the electric version's traits and specs. Not even the size, let alone critical aspects like powertrain, battery capacity, and whatnots with impact on acquisition decisions. March is the big reveal month for the lightning-eating KONA, so stick around.So far, we know some fossil-fuel parameters destined for the Korean market. One hundred seventy-one inches (4,350 mm) long, seventy-one inches (1,825 mm) wide, and sixty-two inches (1,580 mm) tall (when wearing the 17-inch rubber boots) over a hundred and five-inch (2,660 mm) wheelbase.According to official claims, the geometrical values are better put to use for passenger comfort, with more interior room available compared to the present model. 2.5 inches (60 mm) more in the wheelbase sector transform into a three-inch gain (77 mm) for leg-stretching space.Also, for tall rear-seat occupants (drivers or not), the new KONA will offer 0.5 inches (11 mm) of overhead. Whether this is due to the slim 3.5-inch thick (85 mm) rigid seats or not is another debate, but it should offer more comfort for back passengers. Also, the four-and-a-half-foot wide shoulder room for the second row of seats is said to be the most generous in its class.The space-saving philosophy is also present in the front half of the cabin, with the gear selector mounted on the steering column (shift-by-wire technology permits this architecture). That means a clean center console that offers more surface for non-essential but welcomed features.Hyundai suggests that big bags (what exactly is their "big" is not disclosed yet) or cupholders can now occupy the space freed from the gearbox command lever. Again, keep in mind that this is the Korean market-oriented KONA.The vital aspect of any car its powertrain comes in three inline-four piston-punching shapes: a 1.6-liter T-GDi or 2.0-liter Atkinson engine for the pureand a 1.6-liter GDi for the hybrid. None of the powerplants are new all three engines are found in the present Kona.The most powerful option is the 1.6 T-GDi, which comes with 195 hp (198 PS) and 195 lb-ft (265 Nm) from its continuously-variable valve-opening duration. The awkwardly-spinning, more efficient Atkinson two-liter yields 147 hp (149 PS) and a measly 132 lb-ft (179 Nm) of torque. An Intelligent Variable Transmission is thrown in to aid the engine in optimizing drivetrain efficiency.Hyundai explicitly said that all versions of the new KONA gasoline, hybrid, and electric will also have an N-badged derivative. Nonetheless, the spicy stuff for their sporty version is kept in the drawer for now. The Koreans say the new Kona N comes with 19-inch N-exclusive alloy wheels, a black roof, metal pedals, and an N-branded shifter.Sadly, the official gallery does not include the KONA N. However, it does put the electric and combustion versions side by side for a quick comparison. Front and rear Seamless Horizon Lamps are standard the EV is adorned with Pixelated Seamless Horizon Lamps (the first Hyundai model to apply this design).The front and rear lamps are integrated into the prominent wheel arches (large enough to house the KONA-first 19-inch wheels) with contrasting black cladding. Due to their air-breathing nature, the ICE and hybrid versions' fronts sport rag-reducing active air flaps (upper and lower on the HEV, upper for the gasoline).On the inside, a range of tech puts the 2023 KONA in the trend of the computer-based automobile. Software upgrades are an Over-the-Air click away, and car access and engine start are available via Digital Key 2 Touch an NFC-based tech for smartphones and smartwatches.Hyundai was very generous in enlisting many safety features in the new KONA: Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist (FCA), Lane Keeping Assist (LKA), Blind-Spot Collision-Avoidance Assist (BCA), Safe Exit Warning (SEW), Intelligent Speed Limit Assist (ISLA), Driver Attention Warning (DAW), Blind-Spot View Monitor (BVM), and High Beam Assist (HBA).A safe driving experience is Hyundai's core automobile philosophy . Features such as Smart Cruise Control (SCC), Navigation-based Smart Cruise Control (NSCC), Lane Following Assist (LFA), or Highway Driving Assist (HDA) are offered in the future KONA. Also, parking aids come in bunches you can read about them in the attached press release. In 2021, William Shatner, the actor who will forever go down in the history books as Captain James T. Kirk from the Star Trek TV series and companion films, became the oldest civilian to fly to space. In reality, he flew to the edge of space, onboard Blue Origins New Shepard, on its second launch. Once New Shepard reached 62 miles (100 km) of altitude, it spent a few minutes there before returning back to Earth.For his part, Shatner never claimed to have traveled to actual space. However, the distinction between deep space and the edge of space, or the Karman line, was quite often left out in discussions about Blue Origin and founder Jeff Bezos efforts toward the democratization of space and how its ultimately bound to help us save Earth If this was done on purpose, George Takei, Shatners former co-star (as helmsman Hikaru Sulu) on Star Trek, is here to point it out. Speaking with The Mirror to promote his new musical Allegiance, which is now running in London, Takei laughs at Shatners so-called astronaut achievements Well, he wasnt really in outer space and it wasnt for very long, the actor tells the publication. If he were to compare, hed say hes done a much finer job than his former co-star the ultimate prima donna, as he calls Shatner. Ive also been in zero gravity but I did it for longer. I took a parabolic flight and experienced five minutes of weightlessness, whereas William only experienced three minutes. So Ive spent more time in zero gravity than him.Takei and Shatner s feud goes all the way back to their time on the iconic franchise, when Shatner reportedly started acting as if he was better than any other member of the cast, and Takei publicly called him out on it. Theyve been going back and forth for decades, and they clearly have no intention of stopping anytime soon.Bitchiness aside, Takei is telling the truth, at least as far as the fact that Shatner wasnt really in outer space is concerned. His trip was a milestone for space travel and a Guinness record-setting one, but that still doesnt change the fact that he only traveled to the Karman Line and back down again.Shatners full account of the experience , which he described as a life-changing one, is included in his book Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, published in October last year. On January 17, professional boxer and martial artist Jake Paul celebrated his 26th birthday. And he took to social media to reveal the present he bought for himself: a brand-new pickup truck, the RAM 1500 TRX.The athlete revealed that his pickup truck does not come stock but saw a power boost to 1,000 horsepower, and he couldnt have been happier with the purchase.When it leaves the assembly plant at FCA's Sterling Heights in Michigan, Detroit, the Stellantis-sourced RAM 1500 TRX comes with a 6.2-liter supercharged HEMI V8 engine, which is good for 702 horsepower (712 ps) and 650 lb-ft (881 Nm) of torque. All these end up to all wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission. These figures help the massive pickup truck reach 62 mph (100 kph) from zero in about 4.6 seconds, with a top speed of 118 mph (190 kph).Based on the official website of Wragth Motorsports, which handled the upgrade, Jake Paul's RAM 1500 TRX received the WMS 1000 Whipple Package, available with a price tag of $26,699. There is also a more expensive option there, the WMS 1200, starting at $37,199. But Paul went for the former.The package adds a Whipple Gen V Supercharger, JMS Voltage Booster, new injectors, ARH Headers with mid pipes, HPTuners, a thermostat with billet housing, and engine and pump gas calibration.Jake Paul recently took delivery of it and the birthday fun included testing it out on all kinds of terrains, including sand, mud, and water. The pickup truck will join the athletes Lincoln Navigator, Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Lamborghini Huracan Performante, and Tesla Model X.In the same post, Jake Paul also claimed that the new addition to his garage is faster than a Corvette and handles like a Porsche. And that might be a bit of an exaggeration. First, the RAM 1500 TRX, just like other pickup truck, is built using a body-on-frame construction, fitted with big off-road wheels. Meanwhile, the Porsches have a unibody, use regular tires and performance tires for the 911, and have a lower center of gravity.There are no details as to its new performance after the WMS 1000 Whipple Package, but it's hard to believe it will be faster than a Corvette. For example, the C8 Corvette Stingray only needs 2.9 seconds to reach 60 mph (97 kph), with a top speed of 194 mph (309 kph). And when it comes to better handling than a Porsche... Well let you write your thoughts in the comment section below. Among them dreams is that of a constant human presence on the surface of Earths satellite, but also in orbit around it. Its a difficult concept to grasp at the moment, but NASA & Co are really planning for this, and have set wheels in motion that are both too expensive and too hard to stop, short of delivering the promised result.The entire idea of a constant presence on the lunar surface (and later elsewhere in this solar system) relies on something called in-situ resource utilization ( ISRU ). In a nutshell, that would be the ability to harness whatever resources are available on location, rather than having them transported from all the way here on Earth.Believe it or not, the Moon has both oxygen and water. Unlike here on our planet, they are not freely present in an atmosphere and elsewhere, but are captured in regolith (oxygen) and ice (water). Of course, NASA and others have set their sights on them, and are working on technologies that could harvest both rapidly and effectively. Some of these technologies are very close to completion and will be tested on the Moon as soon as next year, possibly yielding results for Artemis astronauts as soon as 2028.While most scientists and the public were focused on these technologies, a Lunar Resources man named Peter Curreri thought of something else entirely. Since Lunar Resources is in the business of coming up with off-Earth resource extraction and manufacturing capabilities, he started wondering how will all that lunar oxygen and water be transported from place to place as needed? The answer is just as simple as it is here on Earth: use pipelines.Current plans call for lunar oxygen, for instance, to be bottled in compressed gas tanks or, alternatively, liquified and then stored. For that to happen, the stuff has to be extracted, then loaded and transported on rovers to facilities that can compress and liquefy it, all in a process that according to Curreri is more energy intensive than the extraction process itself, thus highly ineffective.The mans pipeline idea removes the rovers from the equation. It calls for a gaseous oxygen pipeline to be built at the Moons South Pole and help transporting the extracted oxygen to various facilities.The idea, the first of its kind, is still in its early stages, but has already captured NASAs attention, which handed Curreri one of the 14 Innovative Advanced Concepts ( NIAC ) grants earlier this month.The researcher will use the grant (whose value was not disclosed) to come up with several system architectures for the pipeline, but also a roadmap detailing how fast the tech could be implemented.He will focus on developing the plans for a pipeline 5 km (3.1 miles) long which should be constructed on the Moon using aluminum (present as a constituent of a mineral called anorthite), iron and magnesium. Robots will be tasked with putting it together, and when ready it should have a flow rate of about 2 kg of oxygen per hour.This being an incipient project, theres no way of telling if it will actually become a reality. Then again, all great space exploration ideas have to start somewhere, so why not with a NIAC grant? SUV Russias invasion of Ukraine also comes to mind, with AvtoVAZ now controlled by the government through Moscow-based Lada Auto Holding. Including commercial vehicles, worldwide sales of the Renault brand slumped 9.4 percent to 1,415,645 vehicles in 2022. By comparison, value-oriented Dacia improved 6.8 percent to 573,837 vehicles. The peeps at Renault Korea Motors are doing pretty bad - as expected - and dont even ask about the performance of the Jinbei and Huasong brands in the PRC.EVeasy, a subsidiary of JMEV introduced at the Guangzhou Auto Show in 2018, recorded 6,987 sales in 2022. Its a drop in the bucket if you remember how many electric vehicles are sold in the Peoples Republic of China, but nevertheless, EVeasy did improve by 67.6 percent over its 2021 results. Mobilize is yet another brand that might be unknown to many. Essentially a joint venture between Renault and Jiangling Motors, the European marque sold merely 75 vehicles in the Old Continent in 2022.In terms of marque share, France is first on the leaderboard with 470,280 vehicles, representing a 25.1 percent market share. Germany follows suit with 161,146 vehicles, then Italy with 141,108 passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to its name. Renault sold 65,287 units in 2022 in Morocco, but given the groups extensive operations in the North African kingdom, it enjoys a market share of 40.4 percent. Romania, home of the Dacia brand, follows suit with 36.1 percent resulting from 51,851 sales.Speaking of the low-cost brand from Mioveni, the Sandero hatchback is touted as the number one vehicle sold to individuals in Europe since 2017. Those skits on Top Gear certainly helped with it, but we also have to remember that the lower-priced Logan isnt available in much of Europe. Given these circumstances, it was only natural for the Sandero to snatch the sales crown. The Duster crossover is the number onesold to individuals since 2018, and the Spring is third as per the attached report.The newly introduced Jogger also performed well, according to Renault, and its certain to improve its market share with the recent addition of a hybrid powertrain. As for Renault-branded nameplates, the Arkana stands out with 80,000 sales under its belt in Europe alone. Twinned with the Nissan Ariya, the Megane E-Tech Electric sold just around 33,000 units.Going forward, 2023 shapes up to be a strong year for the French corporation. Renault Group is currently sitting on a record number of orders in Europe, amounting to 3.5 months worth of sales in the region. The idea is to have the ability to trace the materials that will be used to make batteries and to establish a regional sourcing method to ensure shorter supply chains. The partnership will commence in 2025, and it has been signed as an agreement for five years, which means it is meant to support Dare Forward 2030, the group's strategic plan.The supply deal only focuses on nickel sulfate from Terrafame, a company from Finland. Stellantis will have to sign more agreements with various other companies to ensure that the batteries it installs in its EVs are sustainably sourced.The folks at Terrafame have one of the world's largest chemical plants for EV batteries . The Finnish facility operates with an integrated production process that starts from the mine and ends with battery chemicals ready to be used in production.The entire process at Terrafame's facility has every step traceable, so there is no question regarding the provenance of the materials used, and the resulting carbon footprint of the nickel sulfate that is produced there is among the smallest in the industry, the company claims.According to company estimates, Terrafame can supply nickel sulfate for about one million electric vehicles per year. Unlike other firms, it works with a fully European supply chain, thus reducing the reliance on cargo ships carrying raw materials from across the world. The facility currently employs 1,500 people, but not all are direct hires.Other automakers are focusing on the same thing these days, so we should see more announcements like this in the future. Someday, all the materials used in battery manufacturing will be sustainably sourced, but we are far from that moment, as sustainability is an issue in various other industries that could have resolved this aspect by now.Once most of the major players in the industry begin using sustainably-sourced materials , it will become the norm, and the companies that have not adapted will have to make the switch.Coming back to Stellantis, the firm plans to have all its passenger cars sold in Europe by 2030 be electric vehicles. Since the conglomerate also operates in the U.S. market with a considerable share of the market, it also wants to electrify its offering to reach a mix of 50 percent of its passenger cars and light duty trucks to be battery electric vehicles by 2030.To get closer to its targets, Stellantis will invest over 30 billion euros through 2025 in electrification and software development . The latter will be done through collaborations with various other companies in the field, and it has the purpose of finding new mobility solutions, as well as enhancing the technology available in its production cars. Photo: USAF/Staff Sgt. Mya Crosby Photo: USAF/Yasuo Osakabe Photo: USAF/Cynthia Griggs But if the Ukrainians had their way with 100 percent of what they'd like to have supplied by the west, their Air Force would look very different than it does today. A remarkable modern fighting force with a complement of both old Soviet and modern western aircraft to effectively counteract a menacing Russian Military.Two American jet aircraft are among the western assets most treasured by the Ukrainians. Between the Fairchild-Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II and the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, the Ukrainian Military high command is practically drooling with anticipation. At a glance, it makes sense that a top-of-the-line American jet fighter is the next logical progression in the Lend-Lease-like agreement between Ukraine and the west.But this isn't the early 1940s. The particulars of modern warfare make pulling the proverbial trigger on a deal to bring A-10s and F-16s to the Ukrainian Force far more complicated than the average civilian understands. This won't stop Ukrainian military personnel from drooling over photos of Warthogs, Fighting Falcons, and other Western jets in their few, far-between, and sleep-deprived dreams.From some points of view, the F-16 can be seen as a modern American take on the old British Spitfire. Less of a bruising, all-mighty force of a jet like a twin-engine, F-15 Eagle and the Eurofighter, or even the F/A-18 Super Hornet. As a point-defense single-engine jet fighter that's capable of far greater manufacturing numbers than bigger, more complicated jets, the F-16 is in a class of its own.Approximately 4,500 F-16 airframes were manufactured between the platform's service debut in August 1978 and 2012. At the present day, that number exceeds 4,600 units. Operational squadrons in the Air Forces of Belgium, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Pakistan, Israel, Greece, Turkey, and even forces close to Ukraine, like Poland and Romania, all use F-16s in their arsenals.All the while, Ukrainian Air Force pilots continue to slug it out against Russian air and ground targets in Soviet-era Mikoyan MiG-29s, Sukhoi Su-24s, Su-25s, and Su-27s against more modern Russian variants of the same aircraft. That's without mentioning new Russian fighters potentially lurking in the background, like the Mikoyan MiG-35, Sukhoi Su-35, and the Su-57 gen-V stealth fighter Against potential adversaries of that caliber, the added low-cost grunt of a modernized F-16 can only be a positive. With the potential to carry air-to-air ordinance of the most sophisticated order, high-end ordinances like AIM-9 Sidewinders, AIM AMRAAMs, and IADF Python 4s and 5s would bode well against such daunting enemies.If all else fails, a single M61A1 Vulcan cannon with 500-ish rounds of ammunition can finish the job the old-fashioned way. That's without touching on the Fighting Falcon 's admirable ground-attack capability. An onslaught of guided and unguided bombs, cluster bombs, cruise missiles, and air-to-ground missiles could give Russian T-72, T-80s, and T-90 tanks and BMP II infantry vehicles all the hell they can handle.A recent report by Politico detailed how Ukraine may have stopped publicly calling for more NATO support in the dog days of 2022. Even so, the report claims that behind the scenes, calls for more advanced U.S.-like Patriot missile batteries and, indeed, the F-16 itself have continued in earnest.Some NATO-aligned nations have begun to debate the future of aid to Ukraine. But in truth, there are some instances where logistics deals that offload decades-old NATO/U.S. bombs, rockets, missile platforms, and artillery pieces actually turn out to be more cost-effective than disposing of them or storing them in domestic warehouses.But make no mistake, and this doesn't mean the F-16 bearing the Ukrainian trident is a done deal. Until Fighting Falcons are reigning shells on MiGs and Sukhoi's like it's the late 1970s, NATO and the U.S. have the discretion not to go through with the deal. An approved $100 million aid package to train Ukrainaian pilots is a drop in the bucket for the U.S.. So it's important to taper expectations. Such is also the case with the second most desired U.S. jet by the Ukrainians.There's an argument to be made the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, lovingly dubbed the Warthog, never truly served in the role it was built to fill. Though known the world over as the most prolific and arguably the most effective, the Warthog's prime objective in the concept phase was to maul large columns of Soviet tanks without breaking a sweat.This is why the Warthog's party piece is a 30 mm Gau-8 Avenger autocannon meant to shred through thick tank armor, concrete-reinforced pill boxes, or essentially any ground target not hidden behind a bunker. This descriptor suits the dull mass of the Russian Army appropriately. With such a capable and dependable platform, it's easy to see how the famous roar of the Warthog's gun could send Russian soldiers running for the hills.Reports from back in August 2022 detailed how Ukraine's fervor for getting used to the A-10s systems made a VR copy of DCS World, useful in bringing Ukrainian pilots up to speed. Training is conducted in a similar fashion to the U.S. Air Force's 355th Training Squadron , which also used VR to train their pilots while the global health crisis kept all but a handful of squadrons grounded.In spite of this effort, the ball is still very much in the court of the Americans. Even a formal request from Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov for 100 surpluses A-10 airframes is no more a guarantee of success than with the F-16 Fighting Falcon. As much of an emerging superpower as Ukraine may become after the war, they're still very much at the mercy of NATO.This hot and cold relationship between the U.S. Congress and Ukraine might be the biggest hurdle between U.S. jets winding up in the hands of Ukraine. But let's be real, watching the A-10 fly alongside its counterpart the Su-25 would be a story for the ages. The Ford Falcon for North America was a compact-class model line manufactured by the Detroit automaker during the 1960 through 1970 model years. Preceded solely by the Rambler American, this was the first compact car introduced in the United States by any of the Big Three manufacturers, developed as a smaller Ford Galaxie. Oh, there was also a Falcon van part of the first-gen E-Series in the 1960s, by the way.Remaining in the Americas region, the 1962 to 1991 Ford Falcon was a compact (later executive) car (produced in a four-door, two-door Ute, and five-door station wagon body styles) created by Ford Argentina. It developed an (in)famous cult following, as the robust models were popular not only with yellow taxicab companies or the white-and-blue police forces but also with the paramilitary and the secret military junta police.Moving to the land Down Under, the Australian version of the Ford Falcon was a full-size car that was produced from 1960 to 2016 over no less than seven generations. Initially heavily influenced by the America Falcon, the Australian series took to its roads starting in 1972. This is also when the third generation was introduced, complete with the XA, XB, and XC designations. Naturally, there is one that is chief among them.And that would be the XB Falcon made notorious worldwide thanks to George Millers dystopian future in which Mad Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) lived and used a custom matte and glossy black Pursuit Special Falcon XB, aka the Last of the V8 Interceptors. That is not technically correct, since all Interceptors were four-door sedans, and none was an XB hardtop like Maxs, though.Anyway, that does not make it any more legendary both in the real world as well as across the dreamy realm of virtual automotive artists. Over there, we find Timothy Adry Emmanuel, the digital car content creator better known as adry53customs on social media, who is sharing a second look at another of his CGI projects for HotCars a blown Ford Falcon XB GT restomod.While the initial POV featured the virtual project on the move, the quality of these Instagram videos (the footage is embedded second below) is never on par with our contemporary expectations. Luckily, the same cannot be said about the stills, which on this occasion easily capture the essence of this project. And it is one for the ages or at least fit to make both Plum Crazy Mopar aficionados and Mad Max fans more than happy (yours truly is also included)! Students suffer from the cold due to the absence of heating means at a school in Akkar Governorate, northern Lebanon, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua) BEIRUT, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Hezbollah's leader on Tuesday accused the United States of preventing Lebanon from taking free fuel from Iran even as his country suffers from power outages. "Iran's fuel offer is still existing, but the U.S. has been preventing Lebanon from accepting it," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech. Nasrallah called on Hezbollah's rivals supported by the United States in Lebanon to obtain a sanctions waiver from Washington. "We have an opportunity to solve the fuel crisis, and you, America's allies, must benefit from your relationship with the U.S. to bring an exception for Lebanon to receive the Iranian fuel," Nasrallah said. According to Nasrallah, Lebanon's access to Iranian fuel would allow the country to secure four hours of power supply on a daily basis for six months to help solve the electricity crisis in the country. Hezbollah is a Lebanese armed group and political party backed by Iran. In September 2022, Iran said it was prepared to provide Lebanon with 660,000 tonnes of gasoline as a "gift" to ease electricity cuts in the crisis-hit country. However, the United States later warned that Lebanon might be subject to U.S. sanctions if it imports Iranian oil. Lebanon has suffered for decades from power outages. Its economic collapse since 2019 has burdened the state's treasury, slowing down fuel imports to maintain the operation of the remaining power plants. A heater which does not work due to lack of diesel is seen in a classroom of a school in Akkar Governorate, northern Lebanon, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua) A man lights a wood stove for heating in his house in Akkar Governorate, northern Lebanon, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua) A man chops firewood for heating in Akkar Governorate, northern Lebanon, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua) A man walks past a store selling wood-burning stoves in Akkar Governorate, northern Lebanon, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua) I spoke with Prime Minister Pashinian about steps to restart bilateral peace discussions with Azerbaijan, the only path for a durable peace between the two countries, tweeted Blinken. I also expressed deep concern over the worsening humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Secretary expressed deep concern for the worsening humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting from the blockage of the Lachin corridor, Ned Price, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said in a statement on the call. The United States has repeatedly called for the immediate reopening of Karabakhs land link with Armenia since it was blocked by Azerbaijani government-backed protesters on December 12. Azerbaijan has dismissed such calls, also made by other world powers, saying that the protesters are right to demand that Baku be allowed to inspect illegal mining in Karabakh. Pashinian was cited by his office as telling Blinken that the Azerbaijani blockade constitutes a gross violation of the Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020 war in Karabakh. The two men spoke hours after Karabakh authorities accused Azerbaijan of again blocking Armenias supplies of natural gas to Karabakh. Supplies of electricity from Armenia to Karabakh were similarly blocked by Baku on January 10, leading to rolling power cuts in the Armenian-populated territory. The energy crisis compounded shortages of food, medicine and other essential items endured by local residents. Citing the disruptions in electricity and gas supplies, the authorities in Stepanakert decided later on Wednesday to temporarily shut down Karabakh schools and some colleges. According to Price, Blinken also praised Pashinians commitment to peace and discussed with him steps to restart bilateral talks with Azerbaijan. The State Department spokesman said early this month that Blinken is planning to talk to the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in the coming days. You can reach Ishani Desai at 661-395-7417. You can also follow her at @_ishanidesai on Twitter. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. ZURICH, Switzerland, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, also chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, held talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen here on Wednesday. The two sides agreed that the world's economic recovery is at a critical stage and it is in the interest of both countries as well as the whole world for China and the United States to strengthen macro-policy communication and coordination and jointly address challenges in the economic and financial fields. JERUSALEM, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a key member in the country's new extreme-right government could not serve as minister because of his criminal conviction. Israel's top court said Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox party of Shas and a powerful figure in Israeli politics, is disqualified from serving as a minister because of his conviction of tax fraud. The ruling could cause a political crisis for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right coalition government and is likely to escalate the rift over a controversial reform plan to weaken the top court. The Supreme Court noted Deri's two previous criminal convictions in 2000 over bribery, fraud and breach of trust committed during his term as interior minister. He was sentenced to three years in prison before being released after serving 22 months. Deri made a political comeback and retook the leadership of the Shas party in 2013. Deri's appointment as a minister "radically deviates from the sphere of reasonability," the court wrote in its decision. "Therefore, the prime minister must remove Deri from his position," the decision read. Netanyahu didn't immediately comment on the ruling. Shas condemned the ruling, saying in a statement that the Supreme Court "overturned" the will of "400,000 people who voted for Deri" in the November elections. Yakov Margi, a lawmaker with Shas, told the state-owned Kan Radio before the ruling that if Deri will not be re-appointed as a minister, Shas will leave the coalition, potentially causing Netanyahu to lose his majority in the parliament and sparking a political crisis. Deri is currently serving as Health Minister and Interior Minister and he is also deputy prime minister. After the first half of the government's term, Deri will take control of the Finance Ministry as well. This screengrab from a video shows smoke in the distance from a fire at a Rohingya settlement in the no-mans land between the borders of Bangladesh and Myanmar, Jan. 18, 2023. The community seen in the foreground is in Naikhongchhari, a sub-district of the southeastern Bangladeshi district of Bandarban. A settlement of about 3,000 Rohingya refugees on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border was burnt to the ground Wednesday after an hours-long gunfight between Rohingya militant groups that left at least one person dead, sources said. The two armed groups engaged one another in a firefight with reports that Rohingya shelters were set ablaze in the no-mans land along the frontier, causing many to flee for safety into Bangladeshi territory in southeastern Bandarban district, refugees and officials said. Apart from the report of the one slain Rohingya, at least two others were injured. The camp has been burnt. People are unable to stay due to the gunshots. Now theres smoke around, Mohammad Rahim, who was among the uprooted refugees, told a BenarNews correspondent who visited the Tambru border area, where the fighting and arson were reported. Refugees said the violence lasted 12 hours, from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. One person died. Many of us have been injured, said Asma, a Rohingya girl. Some children were also injured. Our houses have been burnt, she told BenarNews, weeping. Md. Rahim, a resident of no-mans land, said he fled to the Bangladesh side of the border to save his life. Suddenly, we saw our houses burning. The people could not stay there. The whole area was covered with smoke. Where will we go now? he said. In Coxs Bazar, a neighboring district, a Rohingya association leader said that no one knew as of yet who was responsible for setting fire to the shelters. [The fighting took place] far away from the refugee camps on the Bangladesh side. It is closer to the Myanmar side, Khin Maung, founder of the Rohingya Youth Association, told the Burmese Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service affiliated with BenarNews. Reports said the fighting broke out between ARSA and RSO, he said, referring to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, both Rohingya militant groups. Photographs obtained by the BenarNews reporter on Wednesday in Tambru showed two injured men, including one dead man. Both had on camouflage shirts with a patch that bore RSOs insignia. According to Khin Maung, there were about 3,000 Rohingya refugees living in the camp in no-mans land, and there were no more residents there after it was set on fire Wednesday. He said some refugees had fled to Myanmar while others had fled to Bangladesh. RFA could not independently confirm which group was responsible for the arson. In Dhaka, Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said he had heard that ARSA rebels may have been involved in Wednesdays violence near the Burmese border. The fighting has happened on the Myanmar side of the no-mans land. One person is confirmed dead. The houses of some Rohingya living along the zero point [no-mans land] of the frontier have been set on fire, Khan told BenarNews. So far, we have come to know that ARSA could be involved in the fighting; they have different conflicting groups. They could have engaged in the fighting. The minister added that a handful of Rohingya entered Bangladesh territory to escape the clashes. We have taken them in our custody. The situation is under control. They will be sent back tomorrow, said Khan. Myanmar security personnel keep watch along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border as a Rohingya refugee looks on from Tombru in the Bangladeshi district of Bandarban, March 1, 2018. [Munir Uz Zaman/AFP] Bangladesh police officials claimed, meanwhile, that the dead and injured Rohingya lived in the sprawling refugee camps of Coxs Bazar, but they could not explain what these Rohingya were doing in no-mans land. The chief of Coxs Bazar district police, Mahfuzul Islam, said the refugee who was killed, Hamid Ullah, was a resident of Kutupalong camp. Of the two injured Rohingya, one was a resident of the Jadimura camp in Teknaf, a sub-district of Coxs Bazar, and the other was 12 years old, Islam said. ARSA, or the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, is the militant group that launched deadly attacks on Burmese military and police outposts in Myanmars border state of Rakhine in August 2017. Those attacks provoked a brutal military crackdown that forced some 740,000 people to seek shelter in southeastern Bangladesh, where they now live in refugee camps in Coxs Bazar. Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report. ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement should be expedited as the free trade zone will boost intra-African trade and accelerate industrialization, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Acting Executive Secretary Antonio Pedro has said. "While the AfCFTA's promise is high, that promise can be realized only if the agreement is implemented efficiently," a UNECA statement issued Wednesday quoted Pedro as saying. Pedro said that implementing the AfCFTA Agreement and supporting African economies, particularly Least Developed Countries (LDCs), "was no small task." The AfCFTA holds great promise to help LDCs recover and accelerate growth, Pedro said, citing a recent UNECA empirical assessment that reveals the successful implementation of the continental free trade pact will positively impact Africa's GDP, trade and welfare. He said with the AfCFTA agreement in place, intra-African trade could be 34 percent higher in 2045 than without the AfCFTA in the same year. According to Pedro, the effective implementation of the AfCFTA agreement will help Africa industrialize and diversify away from the energy and mining sectors. The UNECA said it is facilitating the deepening of Africa's participation in the battery and electric vehicle value chains through current investment projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia. It said work on the transboundary agro-industry park and special economic zone involving Zimbabwe and Zambia was promising and it would equip the two land-locked and least developed countries to become bread baskets for Southern Africa and possibly Africa. Pedro said the successful implementation of the AfCFTA agreement would help build Africa's resilience and potentially reduce its current trade dependence on external partners. This was critical in light of the vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. Africa needs to mitigate the potential negative impacts of future external shocks, he said. Philippine journalist Maria Ressa raises her hands in jubilation as she emerges from court after being acquitted in a tax evasion case, in Manila, Jan. 18, 2023. A Philippine court on Wednesday acquitted journalist and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa of tax evasion, a legal victory that human rights advocates hoped would spur similar outcomes in politically motivated cases against other reporters. Ressa, a fierce critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte, said the court ruling was a triumph for truth and justice. The co-founder and CEO of the Rappler news website still faces three more cases, including a cyber libel conviction currently being appealed. The first division of the Court of Tax Appeals in Manila cleared Ressa and her company, Rappler Holdings Corp., on all four tax evasion charges for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. No civil liability may be adjudged against the accused as the alleged unpaid tax obligations have not been factually and legally established and proven, the court said in ruling on the case, which was filed against Ressa and Rappler under the Duterte administration (2016-2022). According to the charges, Rappler evaded tax payments when it raised capital through its partnership with two foreign investors. Rappler issued local financial instruments, known as Philippine Depository Receipts (PDR), to the two investors in 2015. Prior to the tax cases, the Philippine Securities Exchange Commission had ordered Rappler to shut down for allegedly violating constitutional rules on foreign media ownership. Rappler argued that it was fully owned by Filipinos and that the PDRs did not give the investors voting rights or ownership. The websites legal battles began after Duterte lambasted the news outlet for its critical reporting of his notorious drug war, which killed thousands of Filipinos. After the court verdict, an emotional Ressa spoke to reporters and reiterated that the cases against her were politically motivated. These charges were a brazen abuse of power, political harassment against journalists trying to hold power to account, said Ressa, who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize along with Russian news editor Dmitry Muratov. She called for freeing jailed journalists and dissenters, such as Frenchie Mae Cumpio and former Sen. Leila de Lima. This is where business, capital markets, and press freedom meet. So this victory is not just for Rappler, its for every Filipino who has ever been unjustly accused, Ressa said. In June 2020, Ressa was convicted of cyber libel along with researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. They are currently out on bail pending their appeal at the Supreme Court. This case stemmed from a May 2012 report that exposed a former chief justices alleged links to businessmen, including Wilfredo Keng. The court ruled that Ressa and Santos had maligned Kengs reputation. Ressa also faces a tax case at a local trial court, and her company Rapplers appeal against its closure order. Human rights groups welcomed the verdict, with Amnesty International urging that the cyber libel case against Ressa be dropped. We call on authorities to now drop cyber libel and other additional charges looming over Ressa so she can continue doing her job, it said in a statement. The cyber libel provision of the Cybercrime Prevention Act continues to be misused and abused by the authorities to intimidate journalists and harass human rights defenders speaking truth to power. This practice threatens the right to freedom of expression and the press, and further drives impunity in the government. Amnesty also called on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to ensure that stronger measures be put in place to investigate rights violations that journalists write about. Human Rights Watch called the court ruling a victory for press freedom in the Philippines. Were happy that the Court of Tax Appeals saw no basis for the charges. We have always maintained that these were bogus and politically motivated, said Carlos Conde, senior HRW researcher, in a statement sent to reporters. We hope the courts rule similarly in the other questionable cases Maria and her colleagues at Rappler have been forced to face. Business implications Francis Lim, Rapplers lead counsel, said the court ruling would have implications not just for freedom of the press, but investors in general. Several companies in the Philippines use the same financial instruments as Rappler did for investment. Taxation can never be used by the government to muzzle press freedom, Rappler tax counselor Eric Recalde said. Rappler, in a separate statement, welcomed the court decision that countered the findings of a politicized Bureau of Internal Revenue under the Duterte administration. We thank the court for this just decision and for recognizing that the fraudulent, false, and flimsy charges made by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) do not have any basis in fact, Rappler said. An adverse decision would have had far-reaching repercussions on both the press and the capital markets. Basilio Sepe and Gerard Carreon in Manila contributed to this report. Moro National Liberation Front commander Nurudin Parnan (center), inspects weapons on display at one of the groups camps in Maguindanao province, southern Philippines, May 23, 2017. Gunmen attacked a community of former Muslim guerrillas in the southern Philippines city of Cotabato before dawn on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring five others, police said. About 20 armed men stormed the village of Tamontaka 2, a community of mostly former rebels belonging to Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), city police chief Col. Querubin Manalang told reporters. Manalang said a shootout erupted between the gunmen and MNLF members, resulting in the death of two former rebels, identified as Pacundo Pangilan and Razul Abdulla, and the injuries to the others. The situation now is back to normal. We have policemen deployed in the area, Manalang said. The chief said investigators have not determined what led to the attack. If this is a case of clan war, we ask the families of those fatalities to coordinate with us so we can take the necessary action. Romeo Sema, a senior MNLF leader who is a labor minister in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), confirmed that his groups members were involved in the gun fight. We are still investigating, he told BenarNews, but could not release additional details. In the Philippines, particularly in predominantly Muslim areas of Mindanao island, it is not unusual for families to settle differences through clan wars or rido. Hostilities could last for decades until a peace pact is signed by the protagonists, usually through mediation by religious leaders along with a cash payment. Cycle of violence Political rivalries, ancestral land claims, disputes on local fiefdoms, as well as election-related feuds often spur clan wars in Mindanao, the countrys mineral-rich southern third that has been locked into a cycle of violence for years. The island near the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah has also been saddled by decades of local insurgencies and separatist movements. The MNLF was the precursor of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The older group signed a peace deal with Manila in 1996, dropping its rebellion for a separate Muslim homeland in the south for autonomy. The MILF had splintered from the MNLF in 1978 and continued fight with government forces until 2014 when it agreed to peace in exchange for limited autonomy, eventually leading to the BARMM. While both groups had agreed to decommission firearms and retire their fighters, unlicensed weapons remain a concern in many areas in the south. Under the MILF agreement with the government, each former combatant who turns in weapons is expected to receive a cash payment, including money for education. Despite the agreement, Rommel Banlaoi, a counter-terrorism analyst at the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said the proliferation of firearms in the south is a huge problem. Citing data, Banlaoi said 80% of the 600,000 unregistered guns in the Philippines are in the region. Illegal guns are mostly found in BARMM, not to mention the continuing homemade bomb training camps in the Bangsamoro region, Banlaoi told BenarNews. A prison officer rides his bicycle outside Bangkoks Remand Prison, July 6, 2016. A Bangkok court ordered Malaysian businessman Teow Wooi Huat, who has been detained at the prison since July 2022, to be extradited to China. A Bangkok criminal court on Wednesday ordered Thai authorities to extradite a fugitive businessman to China for allegedly defrauding Chinese investors in Malaysia. The businessman, Teow Wooi Huat, who had fled Malaysia, was arrested in July 2022 in Thailands Songkhla province for alleged money laundering, according to media reports. Two months later, China asked Thailand to extradite him, said deputy national police chief Gen. Surachate Hakparn The three-judge panel told Teow, who was present via video conference from Bangkok Remand Prison, that China had an extradition treaty with Thailand since March 7, 1999. The action conducted by the accused [Teow Wooi Huat] constituted crimes of fraudulently borrowing money from people and cheating via persuading people to invest in a direct sale business, the court ruled. Therefore the court orders the accused to be detained for extradition to China. Malaysia had also requested Teows extradition, but their request was made Jan. 3, after Chinas. Chinese expatriates living in Kuala Lumpur had in 2019 lodged a police complaint accusing Teow of defrauding them. The expatriates rallied outside the Chinese Embassy, accusing him of cheating in a multi-level investment, police and court officials said. Teows lawyer, Juti Suanraksa, argued that his client was falsely accused by a Thai political party and Chinese politicians. Teow has 30 days to appeal the order if he does not or his appeal fails, he could be sent to China within 90 days. If his appeal is granted, he could be freed. In China, Teow could face a prison term of five years or longer if convicted, according to the Thai attorney generals office which sought the extradition at Chinas request. Chinese and Malaysian officials were present in court on Wednesday along with Thai security officials. Teow, also known as Tedy Teow, or Zhang, founded the multi-business MBI International Sdn Bhd, according to Malaysian media. DHAKA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A joint venture of Chinese companies has been contracted to renovate a key part of the Pagla sewage treatment plant here through the microtunneling technique, the first project to use such a method in Bangladesh. The design and build contract was signed on Tuesday with Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWASA), under which the joint venture led by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) is expected to design and construct a 12.2-km-long trunk main sewer and one sewage pumping station covered under the WD2 section of the Dhaka Sanitation Improvement Project. Out of the 12.2-km-long trunk main sewer, 5.97 km will be constructed by using the microtunneling technique, Rafiqul Islam, the project director, said at the contract signing ceremony. "It will enable DWASA to access not only an improved sewage treatment facility, but also have a chance to equip all DWASA engineers with the fresh microtunneling technology," he added. "This is the first time ever for Bangladesh to employ the microtunneling method in the sewer treatment projects." The microtunneling technology is helpful in reducing the project construction's impact on traffic and the environment, as Dhaka is regarded as the most densely populated city in the world. The sub-project to reconstruct the Pagla sewage treatment plant for the third time since it was built in 1968 is undertaken by CCECC and its partners, the SafBon Water Service (Holding) Inc. in Shanghai and the Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design Institute (Group) Co., Ltd. The Chinese contract is one of the seven trunk main sewer sub-projects under the Dhaka Sanitation Improvement Project, which aims to provide enhanced safe sanitation services to 1.5 million citizens and is funded jointly by the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom. January may seem bleak, but winter in the Berkshires is anything but dull. Check out these musical events coming to area stages in the next few weeks. Reporter Heather Bellow, a member of the investigations team, joined The Eagle in 2017. She is based in the South Berkshire County bureau in Great Barrington. Her work has appeared in newspapers across the U.S. TOKYO, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The weekly number of cases in Japan in which ambulance crews struggled to find hospitals to transport emergency patients hit a record high for the fourth straight week, the country's emergency officials have said. The number of such hospital transport difficulty cases rose to a record 8,161 in the week through Sunday, up 603 from the previous record set a week earlier, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency data revealed on Tuesday. The latest weekly figure is about 1.9 times that of the same week from a year earlier and topped 8,000 for the first time on record dating back to April 2020. The result came as COVID-19 infections continue to spread in the country amid its eighth wave, adding a strain on the medical care system. Ambulances that went out to take patients suspected of having COVID-19 accounted for 2,340 cases, or nearly 30 percent of the total, the data showed. The agency officials said that the number of hospital transport difficulty cases remains high, and that they are closely monitoring the situation. Eugene B. Ely lands his Curtiss pusher biplane on USS Pennsylvania, anchored in San Francisco Bay, Calif., on Jan. 18, 1911. It was the first landing of an aircraft on a ship. Community News Editor / Librarian Jeannie Maschino is community news editor and librarian for The Berkshire Eagle. She has worked for the newspaper in various capacities since 1982 and joined the newsroom in 1989. The Literacy Network of South Berkshire has been organizing free one-on-one English tutoring since 1991. Now, the organization is seeing former students graduate into teaching English themselves. DALTON Regulators have repeatedly fined a Main Street nursing home and frozen admissions after a resident died last month during a medical emergency. The details of the incident, fines and regulator response remain murky. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health confirmed that it is investigating the response to a Dec. 3 Code Blue incident by several staff at Craneville Place of Dalton Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center. But the agency could not provide more information given the ongoing investigation, the spokesperson said. They referred questions about fines to the industrys federal regulator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The agency could not immediately respond to confirm the amount of the fines for this incident. A spokesperson said the agency is facing a high volume of public information requests. A staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their job said the facility is paying daily fines over the Code Blue response, but did not know for how much longer. Kevin Morris, Craneville owner and vice president of corporate owner BaneCare, said that all the employees who responded to the Code Blue were licensed nurses and that one left the residents room only to call 911. All licensed nurses have received CPR training and are certified, he wrote in an email, responding to questions about reports from staffers that training and training equipment were lacking. Morris also said the company has no knowledge of reports the responding ambulance crew reported the facility to the state about what staffers characterize as a botched response to the emergency. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has rated Craneville with three out of five stars based on staffing and other measures. The most recent data for all nursing staff hours per resident per day including registered nurses and assistants is 3.55, according to second quarter 2022 data reported to regulators. The states mandate is a minimum of 3.58, and the centers recommends a baseline for resident safety of staffing hours at 4.1 per resident per day. Craneville has 89 beds and just over 60 residents. Regulators have fined the facility $52,315 since 2020 for a slew of violations that includes instances of not providing various forms of care and infection control lapses. In 2019, Craneville was issued 15 citations for a situation in which the facility was not protecting residents by not properly reporting an ongoing situation properly in which a resident was sexually aggressive towards residents and staff, and was found raping a resident. In January 2021 Craneville was a candidate for placement on the centers Special Focus Facility, nursing homes with a history of serious quality issues, according to the agency. BaneCare also owns Sugar Hill Assisted Living in Dalton, as well as Springside Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center in Pittsfield, which has been cited for neglect. On February 20, the Berlinale Co-Production Market at Books at Berlinale, in cooperation with Frankfurter Buchmesse, will present eleven exceptional examples of literary material that lend themselves to adaptation. At the pitch event, which has been spotlighting new publications and bestsellers every year since 2006, film producers can get in contact with the film rights holders renowned, internationally active publishers and booksellers. The presentation of the books by publishers and literary agencies will be hosted by Syd Atlas. More than 190 books from over 30 countries were submitted for Books at Berlinale this year. The eleven chosen works come from publishers, agencies and authors in Austria, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom. The selected books have special potential for adaptation into feature films and serial formats. In a wide range of genres, the chosen works lead us to diverse places, themes and questions: For example, in the harrowing Ukrainian family saga Aleksandra, the protagonist tells the story of her grandmother and shows how this womans individual life is interwoven with the history of the Donbass region from which she comes, and with European history as a whole. Set on the streets of East London, These Streets is a powerful and stirring novel that explores how we can find our place in a world that only seems to support the privileged. In The Light Behind Us (original: Das Licht im Rucken), a new invention is about to conquer the world and will determine the fate of two families willing to risk everything. This saga is based on the true story of the revolutionary development of photography in the 20th century, and the life of Ernst Leitzs family in times of war. The Warrior (original: Die Kriegerin) tells the story of two women who have shared a special friendship since their time in the army. There, they steeled their bodies and minds against a world of toxic masculinity and violence. But no shield, neither physical nor emotional, can protect them from their inner trauma. Why Cant I Write (original: Zakaj ne pisem) by Dijana Matkovic has been selected from Slovenia, which will be the Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse this year. Film producers who are or would like to become active in the field of literary adaptations, as well as publishers and booksellers, can register to take part in the event until February 14 at . On February 20, as part of the Books at Berlinale initiative, a matchmaking event will take place, at which selected representatives of publishing houses and film agencies will be able to meet film producers in one-on-one sessions. Books at Berlinale will take place on February 20 as part of the Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 18 to 22). In addition to Frankfurter Buchmesse as a founding partner, this years Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse, Slovenia, is also supporting the Books at Berlinale pitch. The matchmaking event is being organised in cooperation with the Netherlands Film Fund. The Berlinale Co-Production Market is a Berlinale Pro* initiative of Berlin International Film Festival and is supported by MDM - Mitteldeutsche Medienforderung and the European Unions Creative Europe - MEDIA programme. Cooperation partner and main venue is the Berlin House of Representatives. The following materials have been selected for Books at Berlinale 2023. (English title / original title; in alphabetical order of the companies presenting them): A Relative Good / Un bien relative (Teresa Cardona, Spain), A.C.E.R. Agencia Literaria, Spain / (Teresa Cardona, Spain), A.C.E.R. Agencia Literaria, Spain Aleksandra (Lisa Weeda, Netherlands/Ukraine), De Bezige Bij, Netherlands (Lisa Weeda, Netherlands/Ukraine), De Bezige Bij, Netherlands The Art of Losing / Lart de perdre (Alice Zeniter, France), Editions Flammarion, France / (Alice Zeniter, France), Editions Flammarion, France The Warrior / Die Kriegerin (Helene Bukowski, Germany), Elisabeth Ruge Agentur, Germany / (Helene Bukowski, Germany), Elisabeth Ruge Agentur, Germany These Streets (Luan Goldie, United Kingdom), Eve White Literary Agency, United Kingdom (Luan Goldie, United Kingdom), Eve White Literary Agency, United Kingdom The Storm is Coming / Familien Brattbakk (Julia Kahrs, Norway), Gyldendal Agency, Norway / (Julia Kahrs, Norway), Gyldendal Agency, Norway This Is Not Miami (Fernanda Melchor, Mexico), Literarische Agentur Michael Gaeb, Germany (Fernanda Melchor, Mexico), Literarische Agentur Michael Gaeb, Germany Why Cant I Write / Zakaj ne pisem (Dijana Matkovic, Slovenia), Mladinska knjiga Zalozba, Slovenia / (Dijana Matkovic, Slovenia), Mladinska knjiga Zalozba, Slovenia The Light Behind Us / Das Licht im Rucken (Sandra Lupkes, Germany), Rowohlt Medienagentur, Germany / (Sandra Lupkes, Germany), Rowohlt Medienagentur, Germany Sonny, Inside / Zo hoog de zon stond (Simone Atangana Bekono, Netherlands), Singel Uitgeverijen, Netherlands / (Simone Atangana Bekono, Netherlands), Singel Uitgeverijen, Netherlands Virginia Hill (Peter Blaikner, Austria), Thomas Sessler Verlag, Austria Press Office January 18, 2023 Exhibition on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicks off in Changsha Xinhua) 13:15, January 18, 2023 A visitor looks at exhibits at Changsha Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The event focusing on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicked off here Tuesday in the run-up to the Spring Festival. About 200 exhibits are displayed during this exhibition lasting until June. 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) A visitor looks at an exhibit at Changsha Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The event focusing on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicked off here Tuesday in the run-up to the Spring Festival. About 200 exhibits are displayed during this exhibition lasting until June. 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) People visit an art exhibition at Changsha Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The event focusing on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicked off here Tuesday in the run-up to the Spring Festival. About 200 exhibits are displayed during this exhibition lasting until June. 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) A man visits an art exhibition at Changsha Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The event focusing on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicked off here Tuesday in the run-up to the Spring Festival. About 200 exhibits are displayed during this exhibition lasting until June. 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) A visitor looks at an artwork at Changsha Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The event focusing on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicked off here Tuesday in the run-up to the Spring Festival. About 200 exhibits are displayed during this exhibition lasting until June. 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) A visitor looks at an exhibit at Changsha Museum in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The event focusing on Hunan's local auspicious art designs kicked off here Tuesday in the run-up to the Spring Festival. About 200 exhibits are displayed during this exhibition lasting until June. 25, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) KUALA LUMPUR, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia's exports rose 25 percent year on year to 1.55 trillion ringgit (358.26 billion U.S. dollars) in 2022, official data showed Wednesday. The expansion in exports was driven by robust exports of electrical and electronic products (E&E), petroleum products, liquefied natural gas (LNG), palm oil and palm oil-based agriculture products, crude petroleum as well as machinery, equipment and parts, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said in a statement Meanwhile, exports to major trading partners, notably the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, the United States, the European Union and Japan, registered a new record high. According to the MITI, Malaysia's total trade for the year climbed 27.8 percent year on year to 2.85 trillion ringgit (658.73 billion dollars). Its imports for the year grew 31.3 percent year on year to 1.3 trillion ringgit (300.47 billion dollars). Its trade surplus also increased by 0.6 percent to 255.1 billion ringgit (59 billion dollars). In 2022, exports of manufactured goods accelerated by 22.3 percent year on year to 1.31 trillion ringgit (302.68 billion dollars), making up 84.2 percent of Malaysia's total exports. E&E products held the biggest share of total exports at 38.2 percent, expanded by 30.2 percent year on year to 593.49 billion ringgit (137 billion dollars). The increase was driven by robust demand for semiconductors due to acceleration of global technology upcycle and business digitalization. In 2022, China has remained Malaysia's largest trading partner for 14 consecutive years with 17.1 percent share of Malaysia's total trade, expanding by 15.6 percent year on year. MITI Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said that, despite the challenging global landscape, Malaysia will continue to promote international trade and exports to reinforce business resilience and sustain its economic growth momentum. My family often jokes that I have the uncanny ability to pick the longest line in the grocery store. It doesnt matter how many people are in front of us, or how many items that they have, inevitably, my family and I must stand and wait. It has gotten to the point where my son will ask, Please dont let dad pick the check-out line! Waiting is a constant reality for our lives. We wait at traffic lights and traffic jams; we wait in grocery lines and check out tills. We wait for busses and taxis, airplane arrivals and boat departures. Everywhere we go, we are faced with the need to stop, to be still, to await our turn. Some find this relaxing; some find it frustrating. Waiting is also a reality in the life of faith. God continually calls his people to wait for the activity of the Spirit to be revealed. In fact, the history of Israel is a history of constant waiting. From Egypt to Exile, the people waited for their redemption, looking forward to the Messiah. We, today, join in this waiting. We wait for Christs return, and for the full establishment of Gods kingdom upon the earth. Like waiting at the check-out, waiting for the realization of Gods promises can feel frustrating at times. Have you ever asked yourself Why must I wait for the good things of God? If so, you are not alone. Still, waiting is an important activity for our faith. Waiting is instructive, inspirational, and transformative. Here are three things to keep in mind when we are called to a time of waiting. 1. An Invitation to Act Faithfully We commonly picture waiting as a negation of activity. It is a time wherein we stop all movement and forward progression. We stand still. We do nothing. In this way, waiting is defined by what it is not, rather than what it is. Waiting is not active; it is not movement. Scripture, however, has a different understanding of waiting. The Old Testament often uses the word qavah when describing the call to wait. Qavah expresses an eager looking forward to something, or something. Psalm 27:14 says, Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage: wait for the Lord. Waiting, in Scripture, is the active turning to the Lord. In waiting we place all our attention on the Lords presence and engage with the work of the Spirit. Waiting for the Lord demands we recognize that the Lord is present. Thus, as the Psalmist waits for their redemption to be revealed, they are called to set their hearts firmly within the presence of God; to rest in the bold assurance of faith. The act of waiting, therefore, is an activity in and of itself. Even though waiting necessarily points to something beyond us, waiting calls us to exercise our faith. We trust in Gods presence for today. Waiting involves being attentive to God and Gods work. Waiting is an invitation to act faithfully. Paul writes that we do not lack any spiritual gift, as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:7). God specifically equips us with the spiritual gifts necessary for a period of waiting. Waiting for the good things of God to be revealed involves having the faith that Gods goodness and grace is a reality for our lives. 2. A Longing for God While all this may explain the occurrence of waiting in the life of faith, this doesnt explain why we often wait. Why is that God calls us to wait, particularly for the promises of God? If God desires good things for our lives, why do we have to wait for their bestowal? The answer to this question is relatively simple. Although every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights (James 1:7) we are never to desire the gifts of God in and of themselves. To put it another way, our desire for the gifts should never overtake our desire for the giver. Periods of waiting help us articulate our need for God. The desire for a relationship with God ought to far exceed the gifts and promises bestowed in our lives. Because we are imperfect people, our self-focused desires can easily become a hinderance to our relationship with God. Israel, for example, wrestled constantly with this reality. This was one of the reasons why the Exodus journey was so prolonged. Deuteronomy 8:10-11 exhorts: When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God. The temptation was that Israel focused too much on the goodness of the Promised Land, and all the gifts that it bestowed. In doing so, the presence of God would inevitably be forgotten. The 40 years spent awaiting the Promised Land, therefore, provided Israel the time to recognize their dependance upon God. Desiring anything more than the Lord, even if it involves Gods goods promises, is the definition of idolatry. Our utmost desire is to be for the presence of God. For God alone my soul, in silence, waits, my hope comes from him says Psalm 63:1. In waiting, we tune our hearts to the worship of God alone. If our hearts become embittered or angry because God has not bestowed what we want, when we want, then this highlights a lack of loving devotion to God. Waiting is a time where God invites us to strip ourselves of all selfishness and self-focused desires, so that we might seek first Gods kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33). In other words, in waiting, we fully adopt the prayer of thy kingdom come, and thy will be done (Matthew 6:10). 3. A Time to Testify It may sound counterintuitive, but waiting provides an opportunity for us to testify to the goodness of God. Waiting can be a positive experience as we witness Gods healing and liberating power in our lives. It is through the periods of waiting that we experience God do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). Such experiences, then, become part of our story of faith. For example, if our prayers were always answered instantaneously, this would eventually work against our devotion to God. We may be tempted to say that it is by our own power and strength that such goodness had been procured (Deuteronomy 8:17). Waiting, therefore, doesnt deny that God answers prayers, yet it does mean we must recognize that Gods answers occur in the context of Gods perfect time and will. King David writes in Psalm 40:1 I waited, I waited for the Lord, he stooped down and heard my cry. Davids witness to the power of God in his life is only enhanced by his season of waiting. It is because David waited for God to answer his prayers that he could thereby testify that God did answer his cry. In fact, David goes on to say how he would not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly (vs 10). Davids experience of waiting and response is held out to the great congregation; it serves to inspire the faith of others. In a similar way, our story of waiting is part of our witness. Waiting is a place of ministry, a place of bold witness. Our witness is an encouragement for others who may be going through their own time of waiting. Being able to articulate how the presence of God can be met and experienced in the times of waiting may help another grow in their faith. For these reasons, times of waiting should not be discounted, but entered into with faith and hope. Photo credit: Getty Images/Bartek Szewczyk The Reverend Dr. Kyle Norman is the Rector of St. Pauls Cathedral, located in Kamloops BC, Canada. He holds a doctorate in Spiritual formation and is a sought-after writer, speaker, and retreat leader. His writing can be found at Christianity.com, crosswalk.com, ibelieve.com, Renovare Canada, and many others. He also maintains his own blog revkylenorman.ca. He has 20 years of pastoral experience, and his ministry focuses on helping people overcome times of spiritual discouragement. Very few of us lay in bed at night wondering about terms such as covenant theology. I would wager that most Christians dont know where their theology (their study of God and religious beliefs) lies on the spectrum of theologies. Dont all who read the Bible and believe in Jesus believe the same thing? The answer to that is no. There are a variety of theologies that divide Christians. Two particular ones are covenant theology and dispensationalism. As you read this article, youll discover where your beliefs fall on the theological spectrum. You may be surprised. What Is Covenant Theology? Covenant theology interprets the Bible through the filters of Gods covenants and the unfolding story of redemption. A covenant is an agreement between parties with promises and stipulations. Covenants indicate a relationship and often involve a ceremony and vows. Marriage is an example of a covenant. Michael Lawrence explains in his Christianity.com article that covenants were made in the Near East during biblical times to create long-lasting agreements. So, God related to humanity by making covenants that communicated key things about his nature and plans. What Are the Important Covenants According to Covenant Theology? Though five biblical covenants stand out in Scripture, covenant theology forms its doctrine on three over-arching covenants revealed from Genesis to Revelation. These three big-picture covenants are: 1. The covenant of redemption was made before the worlds creation by the TrinityFather, Son, and Holy Spirit. No scripture speaks specifically of this covenant between the Trinity, but the concept is found throughout the story of God. 2. The covenant of works (also called the covenant of creation or the Edenic Covenant) was made between God and his first humans. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or they would die. This covenant of works continued through the Mosaic Law. 3. The covenant of grace (promised in the Old Testament and finished in the New.) Most of us think of grace as a New Testament covenant, but writer Chad Brand maintains the covenant of grace is found throughout the Bible. In his article, Perspectives on Israel and the Church: 4 Views, he writes, The covenant of grace can also be seen in the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:34). In other words, the covenant of grace is seen throughout the Old and New Testaments. Scripture validates this theory. The Apostle John wrote, From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus (John 1:16-17). His words From the fullness of his grace reveal that the Law was a blessing. Living on the other side of the Cross, we dont see it that way, but the Law provided a means to God, a better way to live, and demonstrated our need for a Savior. From the beginning of time, God planned to reconcile the world to himself. He is a God of relationship, a God of covenants. Five Main Covenants of God with Man If you ask Google how many biblical covenants are in the Bible, you will find answers ranging from five to seven. From my research, most articles I found focused on five particular covenants between humanity and God. These biblical covenants were made with Gods favoritespeople who walked with him. 1. The Noahic Covenant: God made a covenant with Noah after he flooded the world but saved Noah and his family. God promised Noah, a righteous man who obeyed Gods instructions, I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth (Genesis 9:11). Furthermore, God described the rainbow in the sky as a sign of the covenant he was making (Genesis 9:12-13). 2. The Abrahamic Covenant: God made a covenant with Abram (later renamed Abraham), telling him to go to a new land and that God would make him the father of a great nation. Furthermore, God said as part of the covenant, he would bless the people who bless Abram, and curse those who curse him, and that eventually all the people groups on earth would be blessed through Abram (Genesis 12:1-3). 3. The Mosaic Covenant: After the Lord freed Israel from slavery and Egypt, he made a covenant with them on Mount Sinai. He told them, Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Genesis 14:9-6). The Mosaic covenant is further formed in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 28. This covenant was one of blessings and curses dependent upon obedience. 4. The Davidic Covenant: God made a specific covenant with David that promised his family and kingdom would be blessed. He told David, Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed... Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever (2 Samuel 7:10, 2 Samuel 7:16). 5. The New Covenant: During the Last Supper, Jesus held up the third cup of the Passover meal, the cup of redemption, and he proclaimed, This is my blood of the [new] covenant, which is poured out for many, he said to them. Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:24, addition mine). The new covenant is the covenant of faith and grace. We are saved by grace because Jesus Christ redeemed us by his blood. Those who trust this truth will be saved. What Is the History of Covenant Theology? Covenant theology was renewed in the sixteenth century during the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther played a central role in this religious revolution against the Catholic church. Luther proclaimed the church had perverted the covenant of grace with its penitential system. The two main foundations for the Reformation included: The authoritative nature of Scripture and justification through faith alone. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Luther never intended to leave the Catholic church, but in 1521 he was excommunicated. His desire to bring reform resulted in a major church split. This split ensued the renewal of covenant theology, with Protestant theologians like John Owens, Francis Turretin, and Jonathon Edwards exploring its implications. In the nineteenth century, covenant theology was challenged by another movement called dispensationalism. Dispensationalism divides the Bible into different periods of Gods order, rules, and favor with humanity. John Nelson Darby is considered the founder of dispensationalism, which is very popular today among American evangelicals, influencing books like the Left Behind series. What Separates Covenant Theology from Dispensationalism? What separates covenant theology from dispensationalism is the belief in the constancy of Gods covenants. Dispensationalists believe Gods favor changes with each dispensation. These dispensations can be broken down into seven periods: innocence, conscience, human government, Abrahamic promise, Mosaic Law, grace, and the eternal state. Dispensationalists divide the promises of God concerning Israel and the New Testament Church. Covenant theology unites the church with Israel, while dispensationalists believe the church has replaced Israel. The Gospel Coalition explains that covenant theologians clearly argue that the church does not replace Israel and ethnic Israel will be saved in the future. Both Israel and the church will be one in the millennium and the eternal state. On the other hand, dispensationalists believe the Old Testament must be read separately from the New and that the Jews of today are Israel, separate from the church. What Is Covenant Theologys Argument Against Dispensationalism? Covenant theologians present a variety of arguments against dispensationalism. The primary one is that dispensationalism promotes a replacement theory that the church has replaced Israel. One scripture used to refute this belief is found in Romans 11. The entire chapter explains the role of Israel concerning the redemption of the Gentiles. It also promises Gods covenant of love for Israel and their salvation. Concerning Israel, Paul says, And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree! (Romans 11:23-24). Covenant theology does not separate the Old Testament from the New. It does not separate Israel from the modern-day church but recognizes how todays church has been grafted into Gods chosen and cherished people. Finally, covenant theology believes the biblical covenants build upon each other and reveal the nature of a God who desires relationship and redemption for all who will believe. For more on the differences between covenant theology and dispensationalism, check out the following articles: What Is Dispensationalism and Who Believes It? What Is Dispensationalism vs. Covenant Theology? What Should All Christians Know about Covenant Theology? Photo Credit: Getty Images/Ballun Today Partly to mostly cloudy. High around 55F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Tonight Mostly cloudy. Low 38F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Tomorrow Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. High near 55F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. CU Medicine, MagIC and HKSTP join hands to organise the Microbiome Summit 2023 The Faculty of Medicine of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CU Medicine), Microbiota I-Center (MagIC), and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) joined hands to host the Microbiome Summit 2023 (the Summit) at Hong Kong Science Park recently. Over 20 international top-notch academic leaders and pharmaceutical industrial partners highlighted the applications of the gut microbiome and discussed the potential of Hong Kong as an innovation and technology hub for the microbiome industry in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. In CU Medicine, the very first microbiome-based diagnostic test for early colorectal cancer and recurrent colorectal adenomas has been commercialised. CU Medicine envisages that advances in biotechnology will facilitate the isolation of next-generation probiotic bacteria with specific health benefits against colorectal cancer, diabetes, obesity, autism, and dementia. Professor Francis Chan, Dean of CU Medicine, stated, Hong Kong is well equipped to become a regional hub of the microbiome industry with our world-class researchers, advanced technology and intellectual property protection. The microbiome market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 to 40 percent per year. We urge the government to streamline the regulatory approval of our innovations in the Greater Bay Area. Specifically, we advocate the establishment of a regional medical products administration office to expedite the approval of our innovations to be used in the Greater Bay Area. I believe such a statutory body would effectively attract pharmaceutical companies and talent, and build Hong Kong into a new pharmaceutical innovation hub." TOKYO, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Japan's core private-sector machinery orders dropped more than expected in November from a month earlier, the government said in a report on Wednesday. According to the Cabinet Office, the orders, excluding those for ships and utilities because of their volatility, fell 8.3 percent in November from the previous month, marking the first decline in two months, following a 5.5 percent increase logged in October. November's reading compared to median economists' expectations for a 0.9 percent decline in the recording period. The drop in core orders led to the Cabinet Office downgrading its assessment of the orders for the first time since September, viewing them as "stalling" compared to its previous views that orders are "showing signs of stalling in their recovery." Orders from manufacturers fell 9.3 percent, the Cabinet Office said, marking a third straight month of decline, with orders from electric machinery sectors seeing a notable downturn in the recording period. Those from non-manufacturers, excluding ships and electric utilities, declined 3.0 percent, following October's 14 percent jump, the Cabinet Office's data also showed. Machinery orders are a key advance indicator for corporate capital spending and the government uses the data to predict the strength of business spending in a six to nine month period ahead. A rise in capital expenditure can boost the economy as Japanese companies are producing more machinery to meet rising demands from overseas markets. A drop, however, as was the case in the recording period here, has the opposite effect and weighs on the economy and can see production tapered or significantly reduced. Such business investment accounts for roughly 15 percent of Japan's gross domestic product. Types of machinery included in the monthly government survey comprise engines and turbines, heavy electrical machinery, electronic and communication equipment, industrial machinery, machine tools, railway rolling stock, road vehicles, aircraft, ships, water crafts, as well as sub types in those categories. The 2022 Immortal Award winners have been announced with four projects being crowned Immortal by this year's global jury. Four brands won while nine got commendations. Source: Supplied. Jurors from each of the Immortal Awards five regions met in New York in December to discuss, debate and deliberate over the 31-piece global shortlist. Alongside the four Immortal winners, nine further projects received coveted commendations. Of the four Immortal winning projects, two were from the UK whilst the US and Mexico received one apiece. Its the first time that Immortal status has been awarded to a project that qualified through the LATAM round of judging. North America dominated the commendation recipients, with projects submitted by US companies picking up three of the nine given out, whilst two were awarded to Canadian entrants. There were also commendations awarded to projects entered from the UK, Denmark, Australia and Italy, with Publicis Italys The Night is Young for Heineken qualifying for the Immortal Awards through the competitions partnership with Golden Drum, at which it was a Grand Prix winner in 2022. This was The Immortal Awards fifth year of competition and marked a record year of growth in a number of ways. Alongside a 36% increase in entries from last year, more companies than ever before submitted work and more countries than ever before were represented across the submissions. Despite the increased number of entries, this years juries chose to award the same number of Immortal Awards (four) as each of the previous four years of competition. There were more commendations (nine) awarded in 2022 than in 2021 (six). With every entry into the Immortal Awards scoring points, the results of this years Immortal Awards, as well as previous years, can be viewed on the League Table of Creativity. The League Table has been designed as a useful tool for those who seek to find out the most creative companies in the world from the LBB membership base across both network and company level, with the ability to filter on yearly results as well as regions, countries and cities. Best creative work Paul Monan, awards director of The Immortal Awards, comments: Were delighted to reveal this years Immortal-winning and commendation-receiving work, following a wonderful series of judging sessions around the world. Following a couple of years of online judging, its the first time that weve ever judged in-person both locally and regionally, and the standards our juries have set this year truly celebrate only the very best creative work. Emma Wilkie, awards director of The Immortal Awards, comments: Our simple entry process of only one entry, no categories, per ad/campaign allows the juries at local, regional, and global stages to judge based purely on what creative ideas and executions will stand the test of time when awarding Immortals. Huge congratulations to our very well deserved four Immortal and nine commendation winners who have set an incredibly high creative bar for the year ahead and beyond. The full list of winners for The Immortal Awards 2022: Immortal: Apple iPhone 13 Pro - Hollywood in Your Pocket: Detectives (submitted by O Positive) Burberry - Open Spaces (submitted by Riff Raff, Mill London and 750mph) CALM x ITV - The Last Photo (submitted by adam&eveDDB and Radford Music) Gahr WeCapital - Data Tienda (submitted by DDB Mexico) Commendation: One journalist is killed every four days tallying up to 86 deaths in 2022. This is according to a recent report by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) which looked at the killings of journalists in 2022 which have gone up by 50% from previous years. After several years of consecutive declines, the steep rise in the number of journalists killed in 2022 is alarming. Authorities must step up their efforts to stop these crimes and ensure their perpetrators are punished, because indifference is a major factor in this climate of violence, said Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay. Latin America and Caribbean crisis Latin America and the Caribbean have been the most affected areas with 44 killings in 2022. Asia and the Pacific registered 16 killings, while 11 were killed in Eastern Europe. The deadliest individual countries were Mexico (19 killings), Ukraine (10) and Haiti with nine, states the report. One prominent killing was of Al Jazeeras veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. Her colleague Ali al-Samoudi survived after being shot in the shoulder. In October Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif was shot and killed by Kenyan police. A fact-finding team from Pakistan travelled to Kenya and wrote a 600 page report claiming it was a pre-planned murder. Thousands killed over two decades According to Reporters Without Borders 1,668 journalists have been killed in the past 20 years. The annual death tolls peaked in 2012 and 2013 with 144 and 142 journalists killed, respectively. These peaks, due in large measure to the war in Syria, were followed by a gradual fall and then historically low figures from 2019 onwards, it states. In the past 20 years the most killings where seen in Iraq and Syria with 578 journalists dead. They are closely followed by Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine and Somalia. Russia continues to be Europes deadliest country for the media, with the biggest number of journalists killed during the past 20 years. Since Vladimir Putin took over, Russia has seen systematic attacks on press freedom including deadly ones as RSF has repeatedly reported. They include Anna Politkovskayas high-profile murder on 7 October 2006, states the report. Eight journalists have been killed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February, while 12 had died in the previous 12 years. France ranks as the fourth deadliest European country as a result of the massacre at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, it states. Countries where no war is officially taking place are not necessarily safe for reporters and some of them are near the top of the list of those where killings have occurred. In fact, more journalists have been killed in zones at peace than in zones at war during the past two decades, in most cases because they were investigating organised crime and corruption. Journalists also continue to be prosecuted by governments across the world. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists 363 journalists are currently imprisoned. Since the democratisation of South Africa in 1994, significant strides have been made to address the South African education system so that it addressed the legacy challenges that it faced from Apartheid. And while Government has immeasurably changed the education landscape, there are current challenges that need to be addressed if South Africa wants to solve some of the social and economic problems that the country currently faces. We need to be aware of the challenges that are inherent in the system and address them in order to take ownership of the education agenda, says Professor Zaheer Hamid, director of the Mancosa School of Education. Adequate preparation Higher education institutions are the final preparation stage that students need to go through before they enter into the job market. Commenting on the challenges that higher education faces, Prof Hamid says that higher education institutions are facing challenges that are associated with lack of preparation. Mancosas experience is that not enough is being done at all levels of education (from foundation phase to secondary education) to ensure that learners who move from one level to another are adequately prepared for the demands of that level. This encompasses cognitive development as well as emotional development. As a result, the success of the next phase of a students education is compromised as a result of that student not being ready, says Prof Hamid. He adds that another part of this challenge that there is not enough focus being placed on preparing learners for the demands of university in terms of independent work, time management as well as the ability to cope with competing priorities. Access is a problem The second biggest challenge that is defining the current educational agenda is the lack of access to education. It is no secret that space is significantly limited when it comes to higher education institutions, particularly public universities. And if a university is basing entry on a points system, they will take students that are on the higher end of the spectrum of the points system leaving those who just make the cut having to resort to their second, third or fourth choice careers, says Prof Hamid. He adds that another massive challenge facing students is funding. Education is expensive. And because universities are located in urban areas, students are often required to leave their homes and their province in order to attend university. Apart from the financial aspect of this, moving a learner away from their support system to a completely foreign environment is a massive disrupter. More needs to be done to increase access to education across the spectrum, says Prof Hamid. Understanding students The third major challenge defining the education agenda is that most higher education institutions are tempted to view their student population as a homogenous unit. This is a significant challenge, says Prof Hamid, we need to realise that education does not occur in a vacuum. Universities need to develop an acute understanding of who their students are, where they come from, and the social context that brought them to that university. Addressing these challenges A lot of work needs to be done at every level of education to address these challenges. In order to take ownership of the education agenda, we need to ensure that all learners are adequately prepared for the next level of their educational journey before they are moved up from one grade to another. We then need to realise that education does not take place in a vacuum and that we need to have a proper understanding of every student that we take in. We then need to look at what that student needs to succeed. It is important to note that academic success is not only left to the students cognitive ability. We need to look at financial support, academic guidance, emotional guidance, etc, says Prof Hamid. He adds that the next step is to then develop educational solutions that are fit for purpose and are designed to ensure student success. The final part of this taking ownership of this challenge is that all stakeholders in the country need to work towards a common goal when it comes to education. Without Government, the private sector and civil society working cohesively, we end up with the situation that we find ourselves in today where a lot of funds and a lot of effort is being used in unintegrated way. South Africa does very well when it comes to producing qualified teachers. Yet, unemployability in this sector is a major problem. And this is a product of teachers being qualified in a certain subject while there is a demand for qualified teachers in another subject. The other challenge is that there is a massive concentration of teachers in urban areas but very few teachers in rural areas. Government needs to highlight this and make teaching in rural areas and communities an attractive option for teachers. Breaking the mould Being at the coalface of these challenges, Prof Hamid feels that Mancosa is breaking the mould when it comes to addressing these challenges. Access to education and making this education affordable to students has always driven Mancosa and will always be a driver at the institution. Second, we have a good understanding of who our students are and what bought them to us. Third, we try to align our courses to qualify students in the demands of the labour market. Employers are looking for 21st century soft skills that are transferable. We are highly cognisant of the fact that a qualification on its own does not make a person employable. If a student wants to be a success in what I call the hyper competitive labour market they need transferable skills, says Prof Hamid. This is the model that we need to use when we go about taking ownership of the educational agenda. AICPA & CIMA, which together form the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, have announced the launch of a new educational certificate that provides foundational knowledge on critical topics related to ESG reporting, advisory, and assurance at their ESG: Implications on business and finance event in Cape Town on 17 January 2023. The interconnectivity of the environment, business, and society, combined with finance and the growing demand for ESG data driven by investors, lenders, customers, and, increasingly, policymakers makes this a high-priority category for skills development within the accounting and finance profession in Africa. This is underscored by a recent study from the think-tank Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum and the South African bank Absa, which found that out of 26 surveyed African countries, 17 had sustainability-focused policies in finance. The Fundamentals of ESG Certificate is available globally and is appropriate for accounting and finance professionals looking to obtain a baseline knowledge of ESG topics. The 9-hour course offers a grounding in the fundamental concepts of and the latest developments within the ESG field. Upon completion, certificate holders can display a digital badge on their online profiles. Tariro Mutizwa, ACMA, CGMA, regional vice president Africa at AICPA & CIMA, said: Africa boasts innumerable opportunities, it is home to natural resources ranging from arable land, water, natural gas, minerals, and forests. In addition, 60% of the continents population is below the age of 25 and its workforce is rapidly growing. To effectively leverage these opportunities, Africa needs professionals with pertinent skills to address ESG concerns. Our new Fundamentals of ESG Certificate will help contribute towards this. Andrew Harding, FCMA, CGMA, chief executive Management Accounting at AICPA & CIMA, said: The global business community is on the verge of momentous change in how companies address sustainability issues and interest in ESG is reaching a tipping point. This will fuel demand for accounting and finance professionals equipped with the necessary skills to advise business leaders on the ESG opportunities and risks this presents to their organisations. The new ESG certificate programme will help develop the skills of accountants and management accountants to serve the public interest and instil trust and integrity within the ESG field. Speaking on AICPA & CIMAs ESG event in Cape Town, Tariro Mutizwa commented: Its been a privilege to host our ESG: Implications on business and finance event with global and African accounting, finance, and business leaders here in Cape Town. Id like to thank our speakers for sharing their knowledge and providing the audience with extremely valuable insights. She added: The message from our panel is loud and clear: ESG is now a key business transformation topic, and we all have a responsibility to help our organisations create a more sustainable and equitable future. AICPA & CIMA are developing a detailed learning roadmap for ESG. As the first step on that journey, the Fundamentals of ESG Certificate programme will provide course takers with the ability to: Identify the key aspects in each area of Environment, Social, and Governance Recognise the expectations of investors and the impact on business Assess the responsibility of businesses for key ESG issues Recognise the business case for implementing sustainable practices Identify the role of the accounting and auditing profession in sustainability Recognise the current sustainability reporting frameworks and reporting requirements Pricing and further details of the Fundamentals of ESG Certificate are available on the certificate homepage. For an array of other resources on sustainability and ESG, please visit aicpa.org/esg. The Consumer Protection Act (68 of 2008) was launched in 2008 and provides South Africans with key protections against the ambiguous wording and vague language traditionally associated with some contracts and professional literature. With many of these documents leaving South Africans in a vulnerable position where they were forced to stay ignorant in spite of their real commitments. Since 2008, the CPA has become an important part of South African law and has protected many South Africans, says Dr Marlini Moodley, a lecturer at Mancosa and an accredited business advisor, companies and tertiary institutions should know that ignoring the CPA is illegal, and all parties need to continue using plain language for labels, inserts, packaging, and contracts. Particularly when it comes to marketing." Unreadable and confusing Two very important pieces of legislation, the National Credit Act (34 of 2005) and the CPA, have paved the way for ethical dealings across the South African landscape. In the past, contracts were unreadable and confusing, but as Dr Moodley points out, there is now an addition to the CPA which compels drafters of contracts to use plain language that any normal consumer should be able to understand. This is especially important in the South African context, where many consumers come from previously disadvantaged backgrounds and communities where literacy levels have been traditionally low. This lack of literacy is a compounding factor making the challenges of vague language even more significant and creating a greater ethical burden on the South African business community to ensure clarity in their documents. While literacy levels have increased significantly across the country. There are still vulnerable consumers who battle with complex language or specialised vocabulary. Section 22 of the CPA stipulates that contracts and advertising material must make use of plain language. There must be no ambiguities in terms of pricing or the contents of the product. However, there have been no statutory guidelines that might assist business owners in staying compliant with Section 22 of the CPA. Currently, the concept of plain language is subject to interpretation, with this issue only being resolved by the introduction of a formal guideline, says Dr Moodley. Mishka Singh, a Mancosa lecturer and admitted attorney, agrees with Dr Moodley, pointing out that specific attention needs to be given to students who, despite being educated, can also be confused by ambiguous language. Students studying at universities and colleges are also customers. As customers, they have a right, in terms of Section 22 of the CPA, to information in plain and understandable language. In terms of this provision, any notice or document must be in the prescribed form and if no form is suggested, it must be in plain language. This applies to any contracts, marketing materials, and indemnity notices displayed to students points out Singh. The purpose of plain language Many professions are governed by ethics and an industry association often tasked with ensuring the ethical conduct of their members. This is why the formalisation of plain language is so important, says Dr Moodley, for customers, the adoption of plain language ensures that any consumer reading the contract or marketing material should easily find what they need, understand what is written, and then be able to use the information. Despite increasing literacy levels across South Africa, the public at large still requires the simplification of various components of legislation which impact them on a daily basis; particularly when it comes to business transactions. Furthermore, a move to release clear and cogent guidelines pertaining to the concept of plain language must be expedited and addressed accordingly, says Singh. An area of concern Singh points out that the legal jargon used in corporate contracts is a major area of concern. Contracts may include technical language which can be difficult for the average customer to understand. These contracts are often drafted by legal professionals who are accustomed to legal jargon, its use, and the nuances associated with it. Customers usually do not properly read or understand contracts before signing. In the past, included terms and conditions were not usually negotiable, often resulting in their heavy bias towards the consumer. Further, contracts were mass produced and many terms were fixed. The customer was not in the position to bargain with their supplier and with no option but to sign the agreement, many were forced to accept the proposed terms, says Singh. Customers need to understand an agreement by reading it thoroughly before signing anything. The test for plain language is whether an average buyer with average reading ability and minimal knowledge understands the content of the document without obtaining legal advice. It is imperative that businesses, as well as educational institutions, set forth their terms and conditions in basic, comprehensible language. Further, they need to draw attention to any relevant aspects of the contract or arrangement that may be ambiguous so that it can be easily understood by customers. All company processes should also be reviewed to ensure that communication to the customer (from the customer complaints procedure to lengthy contracts) makes use of plain language. Additionally, all language applied in any promotional strategy must be clear, and retailers cannot make use of fine print as they did in the past. Although many of these changes may incur added costs for the retailer or institution in re-drafting their promotional templates, quotations, and agreements, these changes are necessary, says Dr Moodley. Daily Maverick is a unique blend of news, information, analysis and opinion delivered from our newsrooms in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. There are many ways to describe exactly what we do (and for the price of a cup of coffee were capable of talking your ears off about it), but the best way to understand the end result is to experience it. Every part of Daily Maverick is free-to-air and no payment is required, although free registration is required for a small subset of functions and pages. Daily Maverick is run by an independently owned, private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation.) Follow Daily Maverick on Twitter at @dailymaverick. Go to: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ Judge says regulation on registration of unwed fathers without documents on children's birth certificates is "irrational" and unconstitutional. Illustration: Lisa Nelson / GroundUp The Eastern Cape High Court in Gqeberha has found a regulation that was stopping undocumented fathers from being registered on their childrens birth certificates unconstitutional. The regulation affects the rights of thousands of children simply through the circumstances of their births, Judge Mbulelo Jolwana said. He said it was irrational and it had never gone through a parliamentary process. The rights of citizens cannot be subject to the whims or attitudes of officials in government offices, the judge said. A regulation preventing the naming of a foreign, unmarried father who is in South Africa illegally on his childs birth certificate is unconstitutional, the Eastern Cape High Court in Gqeberha has ruled. Judge Mbulelo Jolwana said the regulation, which provides that a foreign father of a child born out of wedlock must submit a copy of his valid passport, visa, permit, permanent residency, ID document or refugee identity document in order to be registered, was not only irrational but was contrary to the best interest of the child. It was also at odds with the Births and Deaths Registration Act which imposed no such rule. The matter before Judge Jolwana was brought by the unmarried biological parents of a young child. The mother is South African. The father is Bulgarian and his visa has expired. Officials at the Department of Home Affairs refused to register him as the father on his childs unabridged birth certificate, saying he was no longer legally in the country and because he was not a South African citizen, he had to undergo a paternity test. The couple launched a court action for an order compelling the department to include the fathers name on the birth certificate and challenging the constitutionality of the relevant regulation. Judge Jolwana noted that the Minister of Home Affairs had initially opposed the matter, citing the fathers illegal presence in the country and that the regulation made it impossible to include the fathers name on the certificate. During the hearing, his lawyers made a 180 degree turn and conceded the issues, claiming that the regulation actually did not apply in this matter. But the couple said the constitutional issue still needed to be aired given that it was a matter of significant public interest. Lawyers for the minister said that given their capitulation, it was not necessary and the issue was now moot. But Judge Jolwana said they had not explained their earlier stance and their change of tack and it called for an explanation. It is impossible to appreciate what informed this sudden change and it makes it even difficult to resist the temptation to conclude that the sudden change of mind was in bad faith, designed to cripple and disable the court from enquiring into the constitutionality of the regulation which continues to bedevil children born in similar circumstances as the child in this matter. As can be gleaned from [the ministers] affidavit, every day in all Department of Home Affairs offices throughout the country, those seeking the registration of their details in the birth records of their children are turned away if their fathers happen to be illegal foreigners, the judge said, noting that there had been no concession regarding the constitutionality or otherwise of the regulation. Rights of citizens cannot be subject to the whims or attitudes of the attending officials in government offices courts must act when rights, especially the rights of children, are allegedly being undermined. The court cannot ignore the fact that there may be literally thousands of other children who are treated no differently from this child, even as we speak an inquiry into the constitutionality of this regulation is a matter of public importance. Judge Jolwana said neither the Constitution nor the Childrens Act distinguished between children on the basis of the citizenship of their parents. The couple, he said, contended however that the regulation discriminated against their child, who was a South African citizen, because of the circumstances of birth. In the matter before him, the fact that the father had been unable to renew his visa has nothing to do with the child and his right to have the identity of his father officially recognised. Judge Jolwana said the regulation was irrational, noting that it had not gone through any parliamentary process and flew in the face of international instruments dealing with the rights of children. The Act itself made no distinction between local and foreign fathers those legally in the country and those that are not. He declared the regulation to be unconstitutional and ordered the minister to pay the costs on a punitive scale, noting the last-minute about turn. For them to force people such as the applicants to approach court, only to admit that they were wrong from the onset, is troubling, the judge said. This article was originally published on GroundUp. Miliswa Sitshwele has been appointed as head of social media at Flow Communications, an independent communications and marketing agency. Sitshwele joined Flow Communications this month after serving as Momentum's social media marketing manager for six years. She holds a national diploma in journalism from the Durban University of Technology. MANILA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Philippine customs authorities said Wednesday that more than 700 cases of smuggled goods, including farm products, were recorded in 2022, warning travelers not to bring in vegetables and fruits illegally. The country's Bureau of Customs reported 709 seizures of smuggled goods with an estimated value of 24.28 billion pesos (roughly 443.9 million U.S. dollars) last year, and 137 of them were various agricultural products worth 1.87 billion pesos (about 34.19 million dollars). "Travelers may not bring in vegetables (regardless of quantity) into the Philippines without the required Plant Quarantine (for personal use) or Sanitary and Phytosanitary Import Clearance (for commercial use) from the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI)," the bureau said. It added that all importations of agricultural products, except those selected under the Super Green Lane Facility, are identified as high-risk commodities. Under the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, the importation of plants and farm products requires prior clearance or a permit from the relevant government agency. Some Filipinos and even airlines crews who returned from overseas were found to have smuggled onions into the Philippines due to soaring prices and a shortage of farm products at home. by Paul Cudenec My new book, The Great Racket: the ongoing development of the criminal global system, is a compilation of the more significant essays that I posted online during 2022, following the publication of my short philosophical book The Withway. Currently available exclusively in pdf format, it can be downloaded for free here. The Great Racket is a sequel to Fascism Rebranded: Exposing the Great Reset, which features some of my writing from 2018 to 2021. I did ask myself whether it was useful to put together this volume, given that the contents are already available online, sometimes on more than one website. But, on reflection, I feel that placing them together in one volume restores to each essay a sense of context that can be lost in the busy churn of the internet. Even on a personal level, I find it interesting and consolidating to scan down the list of contents and track the path along which my research and reflections led me over an intense 12-month period. I was reaching, intuitively, towards this overview for the whole period, I now realise. Even in the first piece in this collection, The Monstrous Truth (March 15, 2022), a contribution to The Acorn bulletin, I was effectively setting out my personal mission for the months ahead: Eventually, after layer after layer of artifice has been peeled away, we will see the horrible truth about the psychopathic mafia and the physical and psychological slavery they have imposed on us for so long. A key moment was the research I conducted into the man now known as King Charles III, who officially launched the Great Reset in 2020. In Charles empire: the royal Reset riddle (April 15, 2022), I unearthed a staggeringly complex web of financial interests built around the infrastructures bearing the royal branding, including organisations and individuals involved in criminal activity. It was in the following months Empire of hypocrisy (May 15, 2022) that I really began to get to grips with the extremely close ties between the British Empire, rebranded The Commonwealth, and the worldwide development agenda behind the so-called Great Reset. I remarked that enabling the advance of private profit and the accumulation of vast fortunes was unmistakably a key part of The Commonwealths mission and said that I could discern the vague outlines of a global network or entity whose centre was difficult to identify but whose key institutions clearly included the United Nations, the WHO, the WEF, the World Bank and the less-discussed Bank for International Settlements. Centering people in smart cities (July 11, 2022) was another Acorn piece, taking a close look at a United Nations brochure of that name and concluding that the title would better be stated as Imprisoning People in Digital Concentration Camps. A Developing evil: the malignant historical force behind the Great Reset (August 2, 2022), is the text of a talk I gave to fellow freedom-fighters in Italy in the summer. Here I plunged deeper into the phenomenon of development, starting from the way it had shaped my own life, and I concluded that what was being developed was, in truth, the money and power of those who had initiated and imposed the process. Combined with my reading of Fredy Perlman, this investigation left me feeling, as I explained in Facing up to the crime in progress (August 8, 2022), that I was living within an ongoing crime, in which we are all being reduced to the status of objects, human or natural capital, fit only to feed the dead-eyed totalitarian global greed-machine. I have included two articles from The Acorn 76, published on August 16, 2022. The first, The truth can no longer be hidden, looked at the desperate attempts of the global power nexus, via its UNESCO agency, to discredit all analysis or questioning of its agenda. The second, Eight rights gone wrong, explored the way in which manufactured phoney rights, such as the right to be universally regarded as something that you are not, serve to restrict other peoples real and fundamental rights to freedom and self-expression. Puppets of power (September 6, 2022) explained that the tiny gang of criminals with all the money that power can buy, and all the power that money can provide, want to hold on to their full-spectrum world domination and looked at some of the techniques they use for controlling politicians and other key individuals. We are looking today at the complete capture of state power by financial interests and the violent imposition everywhere of that illicit and non-consensual authority, I wrote in This odious global system (September 21, 2022). I added: It is a scam, a racket, which has gradually taken over the worlds institutions to the point that its insatiable greed for ever more growth and development has been written into the legislative infrastructures of our society. A crime against humanity; the Great Reset of 1914-1918 (October 14, 2022) looked at recent research on the First World War revealing that the horrific conflict was planned in advance by a powerful group which aimed to profit from it in many ways. I noted the striking parallels between the last centurys Great War and this centurys Great Reset: The war represented a sudden acceleration of modernisation, the process by which human beings are torn from all their belonging and turned into helpless and isolated victims of a rapacious system of exploitation. I began Five thoughts on the global dictatorship (October 25, 2022) with a question: Suppose, a few days after you read this article, a group of international bankers hold a historic press conference in Basle, New York or London. Here they announce that they are in fact the real rulers of the world, that the pretence of democratic nation-states no longer serves any purpose and that from now on we will be living under an undisguised global dictatorship intent on pushing us all, regardless of our wishes, into a worldwide transhumanist digital slave camp designed to maximise profit and control for these same bankers. Do you think that men and women across the world would simply shrug their shoulders, go back to work and tell themselves that they had better adapt to this New Normal? My answer was that no, they wouldnt, and it was not by chance that in the following article, System? What System? (November 18, 2022), I referred to Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose underground resistance network in Nazi Germany, a regime which is one of the historical models for the authoritarian post-Reset world order. In The dominance of self-interest and the ruling cult of evil (December 9, 2022), I speculate that the ruling criminal class have been forced to adopt an inverted spirituality in order to justify their sociopathic activities to themselves. I note: The struggle between them and the seekers of truth therefore incarnates, in the present time and on the human plane, the eternal battle between the forces of life and death, otherwise known as good and evil. Finally, I have included Enemies of the people: the Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire (December 22, 2022), despite its length and the fact that it already exists as a separate pdf booklet. It would have been odd to have missed it out, given that it was in many ways the culmination of the research featured in the rest of the years output and that it tied together so many loose ends left dangling in previous essays. If you find the book of interest and relevance, please share it widely! The US will "soon" have laws to punish "illegal hate speech," EU Commission VP for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday. "Illegal hate speech, which you will have soon also in the U.S. I think that we have a strong reason why we have this in the criminal law," Jourova said. European Commission VP Vera Jourova at the WEF: "Illegal hate speech, which you will have soon also in the U.S. I think that we have a strong reason why we have this in the criminal law." pic.twitter.com/iLR1MePTYT Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) January 17, 2023 As I reported on Tuesday, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) introduced a bill to the House that would make it a potential "hate crime" for white people to criticize non-white people and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) claimed recently that espousing "hate" is "not protected under the First Amendment." New York state also passed a bill last year aimed at suppressing "hateful" speech online. During the same WEF panel, New York Times owner Arthur Sulzberger whined about the "existential" threat of "disinformation" and said people criticizing "fake news" reminds him of Nazi Germany. NYTs Sulzberger: Disinformation is "the most existential" challenge were grappling with as a society #wef23 pic.twitter.com/2l55rIH7nU Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 17, 2023 NYTs Sulzberger on Trump invoking "fake news," "enemy of the people": The same happened in "Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia" pic.twitter.com/z1nXkkTvOo Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 17, 2023 Rep. Moulton blames "misinformation" for his inability to get his constituents to take more Covid shots #wef23 pic.twitter.com/Oth2kYmdxX Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 17, 2023 [Header image by the World Economic Forum, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0] Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab, Minds and Telegram. Love Like Gravity releases new single "Let It Go" today | INOV8 PR NASHVILLE, Tenn. Let it Go, a new single from popular Christian rock band Love Like Gravity is set to drop at Christian-rock formatted radio outlets today. The single, written by Billy Pind and produced by Cale Kight, is from the acts Break the Silence album from the LLG Music Group. The song, Pind says, is about the harm caused by holding on to grudges. When youre not ready to forgive, youre putting shackles on yourself, crippling yourself, causing yourself more grief. So its important that you forgive. Because when you forgive that person, youre releasing those chains of bondage. Ephesians 4:31-32 says to release all bitterness and malice, Pind reminds us, emphasizing the end of the Scripture that reads, Forgive one another, as Christ forgave you. Let it Go follows the release of two successful singles from Break The Silence. Grind hit No. 4 on Christian Music Weeklys Rock Chart and Devils in the Details reached No. 2 on the same chart. Break the Silence features band members Kight on guitar and background vocals, Pind on lead vocals, guitar and piano, and Stan Mayo on drums, synths and programming. Tony Palacios and Mark Siegel also contributed performances. In addition to producing the new single, Kight produced and engineered the entire 10-song album at Big City Sound Studios in Georgia. Tony Palacios mixed the project at The Palace in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and Nathan Dantzler mastered the CD at Nashvilles The Hitlab. Break the Silence follows Chain Reaction, Love Like Gravitys sophomore album. The project, released in 2015, produced top singles on Billboard (Slave, Top 20; Chain Reaction, Top 30), as well as a feature song, Courage from the soundtrack of WORD Films Adrenaline movie. The bands self-titled debut yielded three radio hits, including Stronger (top 15 on Billboard and Top 3 on Christian Music Weekly), Dig (No. 1 for six weeks at Christian Radio Weekly) and Adrenaline. Adrenaline later inspired and was featured in the film of the same name. The songs YouTube video has close to 500,000 views. Love Like Gravity is a band that unashamedly shouts out a message of Faith, Hope and Love. With a heart that beats for ministry, always searching for the best balance of depth and accessibility in modern music isnt easy. However, this band seems to have found the elements to make it work. Musical independence and a passion for the song crafting itself has led to numerous successes for the band over the past decade. Love Like Gravity has played to thousands as a headlining artist while also sharing tickets with such top industry artists as Kutless, RED, Skillet, Decyfer Down, Disciple and Manafest at events and festivals across the US. Joining forces with Tony Palacios and Jim Cooper (Decyfer Down, Building 429, High Flight Society, etc) as the bands producers was one of the first big steps forward from the start. The first two albums found the bands sweet spot, especially when it came to radio. Between the self-titled debut release and Chain Reaction, the band saw five singles chart in the Top 30 on The Billboard Christian Rock charts. The stand out single off the first album, Stronger, was named No. 34 in Billboards top 75 Christian Rock songs of 2012. For more information about Love Like Gravity, visit LoveLikeGravity.com and follow the band on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Microsoft and Amazon.com, two of the worlds biggest companies, began cutting a total of 28,000 jobs in a post-pandemic reckoning that has left almost no tech name unscathed. The software giant began notifying some of the 10,000 workers that will lose their jobs this quarter, while its Seattle-based neighbour and cloud rival Amazon started sending out emails to people in the US, Canada and Costa Rica who are among 18,000 people whose positions will be eliminated. Microsoft has announced more job cuts. Credit: AP Both companies said the painful measures were necessary to offset slowing sales and a possible recession that has made customers more cautious. The tech industry benefitted during the pandemic from a surge in demand for computers, phones, software and goods ordered online, leading to a frenetic pace of hiring. Salesforce Inc. announced earlier this month that it would cut about 10 per cent of its workforce after acknowledging that its workforce nearly tripled in the past four years. Facebook parent Meta Platforms announced widespread job cuts last fall, and beleaguered social network Twitter has slashed about half its workforce. Speaking before the cuts were announced, chief executive officer Satya Nadella noted the tech industry is going through a period of slowing growth and will need to adjust. The Bank of Japan on Wednesday maintained ultra-low interest rates, including its 0.5 per cent cap for the 10-year bond yield, defying market expectations it would phase out its massive stimulus programme in the wake of rising inflationary pressure. At a two-day policy meeting, the BoJ kept intact its yield curve control (YCC) targets, set at -0.1 per cent for short-term interest rates and around 0 per cent for the 10-year yield, by a unanimous vote. The Bank of Japan has defied forecasts of a shift away from its unconventional monetary policy. Credit: AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama The central bank also made no change to its guidance that allows the 10-year bond yield to move 50 basis points either side of its 0 per cent target. The decision follows the BoJs surprise move last month to double the yield band, a tweak that analysts say has failed to correct market distortions caused by its heavy bond buying. My late friend Clive James was a prolific emailer. One of the trickiest things about corresponding with the great man was trying to recommend books to him that he hadnt already read. It was like walking a tightrope, which you could fall off in two ways. One way was to recommend a book so well-known that you would look like a rube for thinking anyone hadnt read it. The other danger lay in recommending something that was obscure for good reason i.e. because it was tripe. Andre Agassi, Prince Harry, Julian Assange and Caroline Calloway have all made use of ghostwriters. I once thought Id found the ideal needle-threading recommendation for him: Open, the 2009 autobiography of Andre Agassi. For starters, the book was freakishly good. It was also fairly obscure, at least in literary terms. Recommending it would not be a gaffe on par with recommending, say, War and Peace. Seriously, what were the odds that Clive James was already an aficionado of Andre Agassis prose? But he was. On the Agassi issue, Clive was way ahead of me. Hed read the bald maestros book when it came out, and he was a big fan. He gave Agassi high marks for his general sensitivity and for confirming that Jimmy Connors, behind the scenes, was exactly as obnoxious as he seemed on TV. A contradiction? Absolutely. The films tonal changes from tragedy to black farce with scatological lowlights are executed at a speed which makes your head spin. The only constant is Chazelles fondness for loud music and staccato editing. He describes La La Land, his earlier film about Hollywood, as a tender love letter and this one as more of a poison pen letter, although its clear that he also sees the film as an elegy a rueful celebration of a pioneering age. After a brief introductory sequence involving a close-up of a defecating elephants rear end (I wont elaborate) comes an orgiastic party scene peopled by some 700 extras, most of them naked or near-naked. The host is a studio chief and the films main characters are all present. Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a young Mexican with ambitions to work in movie production, is babysitting the elephant, also a guest, and Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) is there because his status as Hollywoods biggest star requires him to be everywhere. But Margot Robbies Nellie Laroy is a gatecrasher who gets past security solely because Manny vouches for her. Hes fallen for her at first sight, which is unfortunate, because she has eyes only for her own future. A brash tough-talker from New Jersey, she sees herself not as a star in the making, but as a star in waiting. She just needs the right firmament in which to shine. Robbies character Nellie Laroy sees herself not as a star in the making, but as a star in waiting. Credit: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures via AP And it doesnt take her long. At the party, her unbridled moves on the dance floor get her noticed. Shes taken on by Kinoscope, a down-market studio where an assortment of movies are being filmed next to one another, although the expanse of desert surrounding them suggests they could easily spread out a little and bring down the noise level. Such a practical solution, however, wouldnt suit Chazelles desire for continuous hyperactivity. Those 700 extras really earn their money. Loading To make an impression amid such mayhem you need bona fide movie stars, and he couldnt have made more inspired choices. Pitt gets better as he gets older. Hes no longer the show pony he was as a young man. Theres an edge of self-mockery to him these days, and hes become a gifted deadpan comic. Robbie, too, commands the camera with her vitality. She does shine. And in his first English-language role, Calva, with the looks of a young Valentino, emerges as a natural. Hes our guide in the frenetic world that Chazelle has created. He gradually discovers how it ticks until hes forced to go too far. He then becomes acquainted with its seediest and most dangerous aspects. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size The stereotype of the hot mess has become as pervasive as it is popular. You know the Fleabag-inspired female character all sexual, emotional and psychological chaos. But Liz Kingsman who grew up on Sydneys lower north shore and has been hailed as Britains new queen of comedy is dismantling the genre, and to great effect. She pulls no punches in her acclaimed One Woman Show, which made its debut on Londons West End and comes to the Malthouse Theatre this monthas part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, before moving to New York. The actor and writer is a star on the rise thanks to her breakthrough sensation, which she describes as the Robin Hood: Men in Tights version of female storytelling tropes. Liz Kingsman is bringing her acclaimed One Woman Show to Melbourne. Credit:Sequoia Ziff The show follows the travails of a chaotic 20-something hurtling through her inner-city London life in a darkly comic way, throwing darts at the Fleabags and Bridget Joneses and all the hot-mess women theyve inspired. Before making the jump to the West End, a rarity for a comedy, it was nominated for best show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. The show won five-star reviews in Britain last yearand in Sydney, where it ran in February. Because of the pandemic, l think there is an appetite for that right now, to just wipe your brain clean with comedy, says Kingsman, whose acting credits include the French satirical series, Parlement. Arent we meant to just go to the theatre and have a nice time? Advertisement The meta-theatrical comedy is something of a babushka doll with layers of the show and different stereotypes stacked upon each other, blurring until youre not quite sure what story youre following. In many ways, the show is eating itself, Kingsman says, describing it as an extended Saturday Night Live sketch. TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO LIZ KINGSMAN Worst habit? Saying like in interviews. Greatest fear? Being made into a meme or attacked by a snake. A combo of the two would be my worst nightmare. The line that stayed with you? I have trouble leaving places, from Frances Ha. Sounds lofty out of context but it really is about time spent physically leaving places. Biggest regret? When Wordle was at its peak I used YACHT to start every time. The other day I played after months away. I used HOUSE to start and the word was YACHT. Ive not known regret like it. Favourite room? I like that patio where they hold the Council of Elrond. The artwork/song you wish was yours? Ooooooooh, Ill have an original Matisse please. If you could solve one thing The locks on train toilets. But the gags are so ridiculous, the subversion so clever and the puns so wonderful, that you cant help but be carried away by the show. In the opening scene, our heroine wakes up in bed after a one-night stand with a man whose name she doesnt know. Shes terrified to discover theres a photograph of her stuck up on the refrigerator. We later learn its her house. Is there a specific amount of sexual freedom that weve deemed acceptable and not sad? the audience is asked by boss Dana, one of the characters Kingsman plays, who is the voice of reason as she dismantles the exaltation of women in freefall. The popularity of those characters at the moment is a reaction to the sensible, humourless woman that dominated for such a long time in popular culture, Kingsman says. So you get the average joe guy character, hes a schmuck, and he hangs out with his mates, and he drinks too much beer, and he has this girlfriend who has her arms folded, and shes not having any fun. Advertisement So all of the women who were just living their life and being, quote-unquote messy I hate that phrase but look, were here now thats just a reaction to what they were seeing before them. Kingsman drives the point home with Danas searing line: Youre not a mess, you just want to be seen as one. Messy is relatable, likeable. And now Im reacting to that, Kingsman says. So someone else will come along and react to that, and well all just keep reacting to each other. But its a bold gambit to take on a genre thats still so popular, and when a show like Fleabag undeniably opened a path for female creatives. I like the idea of being the first to do something, thats for sure, but thats just me being egotistical, Kingsman says. I was less worried about what critics would say about it. I worried that the audience would be like, No, no, youve taken it too far. This was fun and games but now youre damaging the cause or something. Arent we meant to just go to the theatre and have a nice time? Kingsman asks. Credit:Will Brembridge Kingsman says the ultimate point of her show is simple to diversify the representation of women in popular culture. If we only have one type that becomes an x and these things that break through, and they feel like new ways of acting womanhood or whatever you want to call it, then they become new tropes and then the tropes become expectations and you all just sort of go round and round, she says. But again, with the show it was never intended to be a soapbox delivery message like that. The inspiration, Kingsman says, came not from a single show, movie or book but emerged over time. Advertisement Loading Id seen so many blurbs, like fringe brochures that used like the words raw and unflinching and it would always be like fiercely honest, and I was like, what does that mean? She believes the obsession with honesty is a byproduct of women being painted for so long in ways that didnt feel real but super honesty isnt something she intends to trademark any time soon. Im never honest, so Im not going to be honest on stage. I keep it all here, its not for all other people, she says, with her hand over her heart. And to prove her point, Kingsman prefers not to share her age. Shes coy on dates and years about her biography and when she moved to London, insisting that shes still getting auditions for roles far younger than her age and that she needs to pay rent. Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag. I call it survival instinct for an actor, she says. Advertisement It was watching The Lord of the Rings when she was a teenager that sparked her desire to act but she kept that dream to herself for some time. She was accepted into Sydney University, but after four weeks quit to work at the Sydney sound production studio Song Zu for a year. Still, she didnt confess to her acting aspirations, out of what she calls, personal cowardice. I was too scared. In my head I knew I wanted to be an actor, but I didnt want to sound deluded, so I told everybody I wanted to be a director, she says. She headed to Britain, the land of all the sitcoms shed loved growing up watching, including the all-female sketch show Smack the Pony and Absolutely Fabulous. Kingsman grew up on Sydneys lower north shore before moving to Britain. When I moved here, it was way before I was admitting to anyone other than myself that I wanted to be in the industry, I was coming here to go and live in a castle and be near sitcoms, she says. She chose Durham University because she wanted a ye olde experience, not quite realising its one of Britains most prestigious universities. What I got was a lot of posh boys, she says. Advertisement When cane growers in the north Queensland farming town of Ingham noticed their crops suddenly started falling over, they knew they had a serious problem on their hands. It was bad enough that many plants couldnt be harvested because they were isolated by heavy rain, but then rats came and chewed through what was left. A cane farm in Queensland, where several factors have led to what some say is the worst season for years. Credit: Peter Braig The combination of water, rats and increased farming costs has led to whats been described as one of the worst years for the district in recent memory. Ingham canegrower Michael Reinaudo believes about 15 per cent of his crop has been destroyed, which he estimates could be worth up to $250,000. My boss is pretty keen on rail. With those words from the federal infrastructure minister in Brisbane on Wednesday her boss being Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a new rail line into Brisbane from the north could be firming with support from Canberra. Cross River Rail chief executive (right) Graeme Newton briefs Transport Minister Mark Bailey, federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, Acting Premier Steven Miles and local MP Grace Grace at Cross River Rails Roma Street Station. Credit: Annette Dew The minister, Catherine King, said the federal government was happy to talk to the Queensland government about helping to fund a new line into Brisbane from the Sunshine Coast. Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey had told reporters on Tuesday that having just one northern rail line into Brisbane was not sustainable in the medium term. A senior researcher who is taking Deakin University to VCAT over pregnancy discrimination believes the issue is more widespread but difficult for women to fight. Senior researcher in Indigenous studies Cameo Dalley, who was on a three-year contract at the Alfred Deakin Institute, claims she lost a contract and was discriminated against because she was pregnant. Cameo Dalley with her 10-month-old daughter Dune. Dalley says her experience around the Deakin University role was really traumatic. Credit: Scott McNaughton In 2021-22, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission received 38 complaints of pregnancy discrimination, with most related to employment. The commission defines pregnancy discrimination as when a woman is treated unfairly because they are pregnant or on parental leave. Dalley, 41, worked in a team that won a three-year Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous grant. She had participated in about 500 emails about the project, and was named in the grant application about 10 times as the senior research associate and as the ideal candidate for the anthropological fieldwork. She says she was verbally offered the role. A Perth magistrate has given police a spray after two teenage girls accused of aggravated armed robbery were kept in Banksia Hill Detention Centre overnight. The teens were detained because a responsible person to release them to could not be found when they were arrested on Tuesday, but Magistrate Alana Padmanabham said officers did not make enough effort to contact the Department of Communities to make this happen. The girls, aged 13 and 14, were charged with aggravated armed robbery after an IGA shop owner was allegedly pepper-sprayed in the face while confronting the accused shoplifters in her store on Monday. Padmanabham said it was unacceptable that the girls were kept in custody and that the matter needed to be looked into, as she granted them bail with a curfew. Hundreds of thousands of workers across the public and private sectors will be given the option to work on Australia Day instead of celebrating the public holiday as the national debate intensifies about the appropriateness of celebrating the 1788 arrival of the first fleet. Woolworths, which employs 160,000 people across the country, has told its staff they can choose to work on January 26 and take another off at the discretion of their manager as it was up to each team member to mark the day as it suits them, while universities are negotiating the arrangement with their 130,000-strong workforce. But the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is one of few unions advocating for staff to be given the option to work in a push being mostly led by corporate Australia. Scott Connolly, the deputy head of the ACTU, said the movement was looking forward to the national conversation on the Voice later this year. Amazon has reclaimed the top spot as the worlds most valuable brand despite its brand value falling 15 per cent this year from $350.3 billion to $299.3 billion, said a new report.According to brand valuation consultancy Brand Finances report, Global 500 2023, while Amazon is back at No 1, its brand value has fallen by over $50 billion this year, with its rating slipping from AAA+ to AAA. This is as consumers evaluate it more harshly in the post-pandemic world.Brand Finances research has found that perception of customer service at Amazon has fallen at the same time as delivery times have lengthened. And so, consumers have become less likely to recommend Amazon to others.Also, with pandemic restrictions ending, people are returning to shopping in-store, which has, to some extent, impacted the need for online retail.Apple (brand value down 16 per cent to $297.5 billion from $355.1 billion) has, meanwhile, slipped to second slot to be ranked the worlds second most valuable brand. This years fall in brand value relates to a fall in forecast revenue with supply chain disruptions and a constrained labour market expected to limit the supply of its marquee hardware products.In all 48 tech brands featured in the ranking, two down from the 50 rated in 2022. This is after Snapchat and Twitter dropped out.The other tech-focused brands to lose value include Samsung Group (brand value down 7 per cent to $99.7 billion), Alibaba.com (down 56 per cent to $10.0 billion), Facebook (down 42 per cent to $59.0 billion) and WeChat (down 19 per cent to $50.2 billion). The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Wednesday told the Supreme Court the issue pertaining to alleged abuse of dominant position by Google in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem is of "national importance" and the world is looking at how India is dealing with the matter. A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices Krishna Murari and PS Narasimha was told by additional solicitor general N Venkataraman, appearing for the CCI, that the top court should hear the issue and Google be not given "two innings" at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal(NCLAT). The bench said it agrees there cannot be two innings for anyone and that the matter will be taken up by the court on Thursday. Android is a popular open-source, mobile operating system installed by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of smartphones and tablets. The top court was hearing a plea of the US-based tech giant against an order of the NCLAT refusing an interim stay on the competition regulator imposing a Rs 1,337 crore penalty on it. The bench initially said it is looking to send the matter back to the NCLAT, observing that the tribunal has not looked at all the aspects of their interim stay application and it would be appropriate that the tribunal looks into it. Also Read Google may face a third CCI fine in less than a month. Now for Android TV Why does Google find itself in CCI's crosshairs? Indian developers benefit from Android, Play: Google on CCI penalty Google dials NCLAT against CCI's Android order, Rs 1,337-crore fine Explained: Google-CCI saga and Competition Commission's shortcomings Voting for IBC resolution of twin Srei companies to begin on Thursday CapitaLand India Trust to buy 1 mn sq ft IT park in B'luru for Rs 1,226 cr Airtel to invest Rs 2,000 cr to set up hyperscale data centre in Hyderabad Lupin launches combination drug for patients with heart failure conditions Leyland bags contract to supply 500 buses to Sri Lanka Transport Board "What we are suggesting is that NCLAT has not really looked at their (Google's) application of interim stay. They say they will list it in April. Now, we have to look into it. We can ask NCLAT to look into it. If we have to look at it, then it should be as an appeal. It is an interlocutory order." The bench suggested that it would ask Google to appear before the NCLAT and ask the tribunal to hear the issue on January 23. "We will ask them (Google) to not seek adjournment and till then direct that no coercive action be taken for two weeks, or, we will merely set aside the order of NCLAT and direct it to freshly look into it on Monday. Then, we won't have to pass any interim order," it said. Venkataraman said there cannot be "two innings" at the NCLAT. "This is a matter of national importance and the world is looking at us. Our request is that this court hears us out and decides the matter". Senior advocate AM Singhvi, appearing for Google, said he agrees with the ASG suggestion and that both the parties want this court to hear and settle the issue once and for all. The bench said, "Then, we will take up this matter at 11.30 am tomorrow or when all of you are here, whichever is earlier". On January 16, the top court had asked Google, which is locked in a legal battle over the Rs 1,337.76 crore penalty, if it would follow the same regime in India as it does in Europe with regard to pre-installed apps in Android-based mobile smartphones. It had asked the US-based firm to clarify this aspect at the next hearing of the matter. The top court's remark had come after Venkataraman had submitted that Google had complied with a similar order passed by the European Commission and alleged the company was discriminating against the Indian consumers. Google had said that the compliance in Europe pertained to Google's standard 'Mobile Application Distribution Agreement' (MADA) unbundling. The NCLAT had on January 4 refused an interim stay on an order of the competition regulator and asked Google to deposit 10 per cent of the penalty amount. The NCLAT admitted the search giant's challenge to the CCI slapping the hefty penalty. Singhvi had earlier mentioned the matter seeking an urgent hearing. The senior lawyer said extraordinary directions have been passed by the CCI and the order has to be complied with by January 19. The CCI had on October 20 last year asked Google to allow smartphone users on the Android platform to uninstall apps and let them select a search engine of their choice. That order is to become effective from January 19. On October 20 last year, the CCI besides slapping the steep penalty on Google had also ordered the internet major to cease and desist from various unfair business practices. The regulator, which has passed the order after ordering a detailed probe more than three years ago, has also directed Google to modify its conduct within a defined timeline. The CCI, which had started probing the case in April 2019, has directed that OEMs should not be restrained from choosing from amongst Google's proprietary applications to be pre-installed and also not be forced to pre-install a bouquet of applications on their smart devices. Jubilant Food Works Ltd, a food services player, has opened its first restaurant of the American fried chicken brand, Popeyes in the city, a top official of the company said on Wednesday. The company inaugurated its first restaurant in Bengaluru, which was followed by rapid expansion to 12 restaurants across the city in less than a year. In Chennai, the brand would welcome guests at its first restaurant from January 20 onwards at the Phoenix Marketcity Mall, the company said in a BSE filing. "Consumers across the world love the Louisiana style Cajun flavours of Popeyes. As a company, we are focused on bringing the finest taste of our brands, building it and expanding it to multiple cities. We offer consumers a chance to enjoy the unique blend of spices and Cajun flavoured fried chicken," company CEO and MD, Sameer Khetarpal said. "Our launch in Chennai with the first store at Phoenix Marketcity mall is a testament to that commitment of the larger strategy." Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd has built an in-house delivery fleet with one hundred per cent use of e-bikes to delivery of Popeyes experience to consumers. Unsubscribe to continue This is a subscriber only feature Subscribe Now to get daily updates on WhatsApp Also Read NCLAT declines stay on CCI's Rs 936 cr Google penalty, asks firm to pay 10% DY Chandrachud to succeed UU Lalit as the next Chief Justice of India Google dials NCLAT against CCI's Android order, Rs 1,337-crore fine NCLAT directs Google to pay 10% of Rs 1,337 crore penalty imposed by CCI CJI Chandrachud releases latest version of Supreme Court mobile app Surya Roshni Q3 net up over two-fold to Rs 89.6 cr; revenue at Rs 2,021 cr Voting for IBC resolution of twin Srei companies to begin on Thursday CapitaLand India Trust to buy 1 mn sq ft IT park in B'luru for Rs 1,226 cr Android issue of national importance, world looking at us, CCI tells SC MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Shree Cement plans to raise funds selling commercial papers maturing in two months, three merchant bankers said on Wednesday. The company will offer a yield of 6.78% on this issue, and has received commitments worth around 1 billion rupees ($12.29 million), the bankers said. The notes are rated A1+ by CRISIL. ($1 = 81.3800 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Dharamraj Dhutia; Editing by Janane Venkatraman) Also Read Amul posts group turnover of Rs 61,000 cr in FY22 on milk & ice-cream biz Dettol enters a new category with Dettol multi-use antiseptic cream Will ICE 2-wheelers really fall off a cliff as Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal says? FAME II scheme helps put EV transportation on a par with ICE vehicles Pizza, pasta and beyond: How Italian food is changing Indian dining GoMechanic to lay off 70% workforce, says made grave errors in judgement Cipla launches diagnostic device, says it will provide results in minutes Net hiring in India's top four IT firms drops by 97% to 1,940 in Q3FY23 In boost to Apple, India gives initial clearance to some Chinese suppliers Also Read Indian bond, equity markets decoupled; see 30% downside in Nifty50: CLSA Vodafone Idea decides to not convert its AGR dues into equity: Report Deliberations on draft telecom bill being conducted: Ashwini Vaishnaw 2023 will be decisive for Vodafone Idea, fundraising critical: CLSA Has India figured out a way to regulate OTT communication apps? Surya Roshni Q3 net up over two-fold to Rs 89.6 cr; revenue at Rs 2,021 cr Voting for IBC resolution of twin Srei companies to begin on Thursday CapitaLand India Trust to buy 1 mn sq ft IT park in B'luru for Rs 1,226 cr Android issue of national importance, world looking at us, CCI tells SC The US is also one of the G7 countries which is looking to sign a Just Transition Partnership with India The Election Commission of India (ECI) will on Wednesday announce the schedule for the upcoming elections to the legislative assemblies in Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura in 2023. On Saturday, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that over 13.9 lakh electors are registered in Nagaland and over 30,000 first-time voters are set to participate in the forthcoming state Assembly polls. ECI teams led by Chief Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel concluded their visit to Nagaland and Tripura to review elections preparedness last week. Also Read SBI likely to raise Rs 10,000 crore through infrastructure bonds SBI board approves Rs 10,000-cr AT1 bonds offering to support biz growth SBI raises Rs 4,000 crore via tier-2 bonds at cutoff rate of 7.57% SBI sells largest AT-1 tranche at lowest rate for any bank so far this year ICICI Bank, Axis Bank likely to raise Rs 5,000 cr each via bond sales IndusInd Bank posts bigger-than-expected Q3 net jump of 68% to Rs 1,959 cr Central Bank Q3 net rises 64.16% at Rs 458 cr on improved margins ING planning return to India by buying controlling stake in IDBI Bank FinMin to meet heads of PSBs; to review progress of various schemes Expressing distrust in the military for failing to act against demonstrators that ransacked government buildings on January 8, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday (local time) removed 40 troops guarding the presidential residence, reported The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). His decision was published in the government's official gazette and came as Brazil's prosecutor general charged 39 people who were among the thousands who stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro's loss in the October election. Last week, Lula told reporters that security force members were complicit in letting a mob of supporters of far-right former leader Bolsonaro storm the main buildings that form the seat of power in Brasilia. The president's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on who would replace the troops guarding the residence, reported SMH. Most of the troops guarding the Alvorada palace, as the presidential residence is called, are from the army, but some are also members of the Navy, Air Force and a militarised police force. Investigations into the rampage have begun to show apparently intentional lapses in security that allowed it to occur. Also Read Brazil's ex-President Lula plans to fight deforestation if re-elected Brazil's Lula sworn in as prez, vows accountability from outgoing Bolsonaro Biden congratulates Lula da Silva on becoming Brazil's president again Insiders enabled capital riots: Brazilian President Lula da Silva Amid protests in Brazil, Elon Musk hopes they resolve matters 'peacefully' Putting every ounce of its energy to eliminate visa wait in India: Official Bill introduced in US to terminate Pak's designation as major non-NATO ally Restore international law, UN Charter, says First Lady of Ukraine Debt restructuring talks with India, China successful, says Sri Lanka prez Joe Biden hosts Netherlands PM Mark Rutte for talks on tech chips, Ukraine Several thousand Bolsonaro supporters stormed the Congress, the Planalto presidential palace and the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the result of the October election narrowly won by Lula. "There were many people who were complicit in this among the military police. Many people from the armed forces were complicit," Lula told journalists. "I am convinced that the door to the palace was opened to allow these people in because I did not see that the door was broken." Lula has also stepped up criticism of the army for not doing anything to discourage a two-month-old encampment of Bolsonaro supporters outside its headquarters, where they clamoured for the military to overturn the presidential election result, reported SMH. More than a thousand people were arrested on the day of the January 8 riot, which bore strong similarities to January 6, 2021, riots at the US Congress by mobs who wanted to overturn former President Donald Trump's loss in November's election. Those now charged are facing offences of armed criminal association, violent attempt to subvert the democratic state of law, staging a coup and damage to public property, the prosecutor-general's office said in a written statement Monday night. Their identities have not yet been released. The attackers were not charged with terrorism because under Brazilian law such a charge must involve xenophobia or prejudice based on race, ethnicity or religion, reported SMH. Prosecutors have also requested that the defendants who ransacked Congress be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40 million reais (USD 11.2 million) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages. The prosecutor-general's office sent its charges to the Supreme Court after the Senate's president, Rodrigo Pacheco, last week provided a list of people accused of rampaging through Congress. Additional rioters are expected to be charged, reported SMH. Canada-based Clearco, an e-commerce investor providing equity-free capital solutions to e-commerce businesses, has laid off 30 per cent of its workforce, the media reported. Clearco co-founder Michele Romanow also stepped down as chief executive of the company, reports Tech Crunch. This is the second round of job cuts, as back in July, Clearco laid off 125 employees or 25 per cent of its workforce. Now, Clearco only has 140 staff, down from 500 just last year, according to the report. "We don't ever lie, we are under the same pressures as every other company to become a profitable business. And so we've just continued to make the hard decisions and continue to be ahead of the curve," Romanow was quoted as saying. In 2022, the company saw its other co-founder, Andrew D'Souza, step down from his CEO role, to be replaced by Romanow. Also Read India will lead in AI use for solving 'real' issues, says Satya Nadella This is India's moment to shine, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Satya Nadella checks right boxes talking about G20, Make in India and AI Satya Nadella receives Padma Bhushan in US; plans to visit India in Jan You can't insult me by saying Biryani is tiffin: Satya Nadella to ChatGPT Companies sell their businesses in Russia, complying to sanctions amid war Jury selection begins in Tesla investor lawsuit against Elon Musk Microsoft to cut engineering jobs this week as layoffs go deeper: Report iPhone manufacturing in India to reach 50% by 2027 on par with China 73% CEOs globally expect economic growth to decline, finds PwC survey Now, both the co-founders will assume executive chairman positions, said the report. Meanwhile, Microsoft is reportedly set to fire nearly 11,000 employees this week amid the global economic slowdown. Sky News reported that Satya Nadella-run company is "finalising plans to become the latest technology giant to reduce its workforce during a global economic slowdown". The company's contemplating reducing roughly 5 per cent of its workforce, "which, if accurate, would equate to approximately 11,000 jobs". --IANS shs/ksk/ Also Read HCL Tech Q2 preview: Margins to improve QoQ; revenue may rise up to 20% YoY Tech Mahindra Q1 results today: How company performed in last four quarters Is investors' love for digital India over? Disruptive tech is fueling investment and innovation in Indian HR Tech Should you bet on new-age tech stocks after a mixed Q2? 7.0 magnitude earthquake shakes east Indonesia, no tsunami warning issued China's Covid deaths expected to hit 36,000 a day during holiday Deep 6.1 earthquake shakes eastern parts of Indonesia, no damage reported Elon Musk wasn't invited to Davos despite what he says: WEF organisers (Reuters) -Some Western companies have agreed to sell their Russian assets or hand them over to local managers as they scramble to comply with sanctions over the Ukraine conflict and deal with threats from the Kremlin that foreign-owned assets may be seized. The moves, part of a broader corporate exodus from the country, are likely to stir concerns that Russian firms and institutions are snapping up prized assets for a bargain. Below is a list of firms by sector that have secured deals to sell their businesses in Russia: AUTOMAKERS INCHCAPE The British car distributor said it had agreed to sell its Russian business to local management. The sale will result in an exceptional non-cash loss before tax of about 240 million pounds ($294 million). Also Read Renault SA open to reducing stake in Nissan Motor in carve-out talks Rupee to remain under pressure despite RBI support, says Societe Generale Societe Generale acquires ICICI Bank's shares worth Rs 173 crore Shell smashes record again with $11.5-bn Q2 profit, announces $6-bn buyback Schneider Electric India to set up 2nd unit in Telangana, invest Rs 300 cr Jury selection begins in Tesla investor lawsuit against Elon Musk Microsoft to cut engineering jobs this week as layoffs go deeper: Report iPhone manufacturing in India to reach 50% by 2027 on par with China 73% CEOs globally expect economic growth to decline, finds PwC survey Foxconn replaces chief of iPhone assembly business after tumultuous year RENAULT The French carmaker said on May 16 it will sell its majority stake in Russia's biggest carmaker, Avtovaz, to the Russian Central Research and Development Automobile and Engine Institute (Nami), with a six-year option to buy back the stake. Renault also said that 100% of the shares in Renault Russia will go to the city of Moscow. Russia had said on April 27 that Renault would transfer its 67.69% stake in Avtovaz to the institute for the symbolic sum of one rouble. BANKS SOCIETE GENERALE The French lender expects to close the sale of its Rosbank unit to Russia's Interros Capital "in the coming weeks," it said on May 5. It announced the sale on April 11, adding it would write off 3.1 billion euros ($3.2 billion), comprising a 2 billion-euro hit on Rosbank's book value and the rest linked to the reversal of rouble conversion reserves. ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS & EQUIPMENT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC The French electrical equipment maker will sell its operations in Russia and Belarus to local management, the company said on April 27, as it signed a letter of intent with the designated buyers. It will write off up to 300 million euros ($312 million) of net book value and make a non-cash reversal of currency translation estimated at 120 million euros. ENERGY BASF The German chemicals giant unveiled a 7.3 billion euro ($7.9 billion) non-cash impairment on Wintershall Dea after the oil and gas exploration joint venture decided to exit Russia. BASF owns 67% of the voting rights in Wintershall, with the rest being held by Letter One, a holding company controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman. SHELL The British energy and petrochemical giant will sell its Russian retail and lubricants business to Russia's Lukoil, the companies said on May 12. The deal includes 411 retail stations and the Torzhok lubricants blending plant. Shell would not comment on the value of the deal. FOOD & BEVERAGES AB INBEV The brewer said on April 22 it would sell its non-controlling stake in its Russian joint venture AB InBev Efes. The divestiture will result in a $1.1 billion impairment charge in the first quarter. The joint venture has 11 breweries in Russia and three in Ukraine. FAZER Finnish bakery and food service company said on April 29 it had agreed to sell its Russian unit to Moscow's Kolomenskij Bakery and Confectionery Holding. Fazer did not disclose the value of the transaction. PAULIG The privately owned Finnish food and drink company said on May 5 it had sold its operations in Russia to private Indian investor Vikas Soi, after being mentioned by Russian authorities as an example of a foreign company that could be nationalised. It said the divesture includes the Paulig Rus LLC unit and Paulig's operations, as well as its coffee roastery in Tver, but not the Paulig brand, which will be phased out in Russia over the coming months. RAISIO The Finnish food processing company said on April 29 it had agreed to sell its consumer business in Russia to Copacker Agro Ltd for about 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million). As a result of the sale, Raisio said it would recognise an estimated impairment loss of 2.9 million euros in its Q1 earnings before interest and taxes. VALIO The Finnish dairy producer has sold its Russian business to GK Velkom, the company said on April 26, following an earlier threat by Russian authorities to nationalise its business there. Valio said the transaction would take effect immediately but gave no financial value for it. MINING AMUR MINERALS CORP The London-listed Russian mining company announced on May 9 it proposed to sell its main Kun-Manie project for $105 million and agreed to assign to buyer benefit of all loans owed by Kun-Manie to Amur in consideration for $30 million. KINROSS Kinross Gold Corp is selling its Russian assets to the Highland Gold Mining group of companies for a total of $680 million in cash, the Canadian gold miner said on April 5, nearly a month after suspending its operations in the country. RESTAURANTS & RETAIL MCDONALD'S CORP The U.S.-based restaurant chain said on May 16 it would sell its business in Russia after more than 30 years of operating in the country. The company expects to record a mostly non-cash charge of about $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion. OTHERS AUTHENTIC BRANDS GROUP The Russian business of Authentic Brands Group-owned Reebook has been taken over by Turkey's FLO retailing, Kommersant daily reported on May 16. Analysts Kommersant said the deal could be worth 1.5 billion roubles ($24.26 million). BRUNEL INTERNATIONAL The Dutch employment services company is in the process of selling activities in Russia to local management, it said on April 29, adding its net investment in the country at end-March was 14 million euros ($14.6 million). FLUGGER GROUP The Danish paint maker said on April 8 it had initiated the sale of its Russian and Belarusian companies, taking a 115 million Danish crowns ($16.1 million) write-down. IMPERIAL BRANDS The British tobacco group announced the transfer of its Russian business to investors based in Russia on April 20, following talks with an unidentified third party in March. MAERSK The Danish shipping company has found possible buyers for its 30.75% stake in Global Ports Investments, which operates ports in Russia, it said on May 4. STORA ENSO The Finnish forestry firm has completed its exit from Russia with the sale of three corrugated packaging plants to local management, it said on May 16. At the end of April, Stora said it had agreed to sell its two sawmills and their forest operations in Russia to local management, causing it to record a 130 million euro ($136 million) loss. YIT The Finnish builder has signed an agreement with Etalon Group PLC for the sale of its operations in Russia for about 50 million euros ($52 million). As a result of the sale, YIT said it would book an impairment of about 150 million euros in its first quarter income statement. ($1 = 0.8172 pounds) ($1 = 0.9616 euros) ($1 = 7.1521 Danish crowns) ($1 = 61.8340 roubles) (Compiled by Elena Vardon, Augustin Turpin, Enrico Sciacovelli, Ina Kreuz and Praveen Paramasivam; Editing by Mark Potter, Jan Harvey, Andrew Heavens and Sriraj Kalluvila) Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday informed the parliament that talks with India and China on debt restructuring are successful. "We are continuing discussions in that regard and I am pleased to announce to this House that the discussions are currently successful," read Sri Lankan President Media Division press release. Notably, Sri Lanka is awaiting the International Monetary Fund bailout to relieve the worst ever economic crisis the country is going through. The announcement comes in the wake of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's visit to the island nation who will be visiting Maldives and Sri Lanka from January 18-20. Regarding Sri Lanka's tour, the ministry stated that Jaishankar's visit will follow his earlier trips to the bankrupt country in January 2021 and March 2022. Sri Lanka is a close friend and neighbour, and India has stood with the people of Sri Lanka at all times. "During the visit, EAM will call on President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena and also hold discussions with Minister of Foreign Affairs MUM Ali Sabry on the entire gamut of close India-Sri Lanka partnership and steps to strengthen it in all spheres," the statement stated. Also Read Sri Lankan President Wickremesinghe thanks PM Modi for India's support Sri Lanka concludes debt restructuring talks with Japan: Wickremesinghe Ranil Wickremesinghe sworn in as the eighth president of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe: From PM to President in Sri Lanka's troubled times Wickremesinghe hopeful of resolving problems faced by ethnic Tamils Joe Biden hosts Netherlands PM Mark Rutte for talks on tech chips, Ukraine Nepal PM 'Prachanda' expands cabinet to 23 with 6 women in ministry S'pore exploring joint opportunities with India on digital infra: Official S Korea-Japan ties improving after 'deep ordeal': Prez Yoon Energy war, chip-battle, Taiwan in focus at WEF in a turbulent world order Wickremesinghe further invited the opposition to join hands through a new political system to provide relief to the people and free them from oppression. Despite the difficult economic background in the country, the President emphasized that the government is working to provide relief to the people, adding that he will take steps to allocate Rs. 30-40 billion for medicines this year. The President said that due to the prudent agricultural policies of the government, the country has seen a bountiful paddy harvest and the government has commenced a program to provide two million low-income families with 10 kilograms of rice per month over a period of two months, added the release. Responding to allegations that the government is overspending on the Independence celebrations, the President pointed out that it is an investment for the future. In the 25 years leading up to the 100th anniversary of independence, several new institutions and laws will be introduced for the reform program needed by the country. Wickremesinghe said he intended to allocate Rs 30-40 billion this year for medicines. "The Health Ministry and the Treasury will somehow join hands and carry out these matters. It will take some time to order these medicines. Even we don't like to see shortcomings at our hospitals, nor to see people dying due to the lack of medicines. Therefore, we have taken steps to allocate the necessary funds for the provision of medicines," he said. Regarding the shortage of food and fertilizers in the island nation, he said, "We expected that there would be a shortage of food this year as well. But somehow we provided the required fertilizer to the farmers. " He also divulged a plan to provide 02 million low-income families with 10kg of rice per month during March and April. "I would be happier if we could give them more. As we celebrate our 75th Independence, we will not allow our people to starve. We will invest the funds required to feed them," said the Lankan President. Chart Adani Enterprises (AEL), flagship company of ports-to-energy conglomerate Adani Group, will use the proceeds from its follow-on public offering (FPO) to invest Rs 11,000 crore in capital expenditure towards the green hydrogen and airport projects and another Rs 4,100 crore in retiring debt of road, airport, and solar projects, the company said in its prospectus.The Rs 20,000-crore FPO, which opens for subscription on January 27 and closes on January 31, will give investors the option to pay 50 per cent with the application and the rest over two instalments.The company said it is setting up a fully integrated green hydrogen ecosystem to enable access to low-cost renewable power, produce low-cost green hydrogen at scale, and manufacture downstream products.The group had announced its ambitious target to invest $70 billion by 2030 in green energy, including green hydrogen.The company said it is expanding its solar manufacturing wherewithal to backward-integrate wholly, covering the manufacture of primary components of a solar module from silicon, ingots, wafers, cells to the module and related ancillary products.The company plans to expand its solar module manufacturing competence at Mundra Special Economic Zone to up to 10 gigawatt (Gw) per annum and cover the manufacture of metallurgical grade silicon, polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, and the module itself. Also Read Sam Bankman-Fried: 'Crypto genius' who lost $14.5 billion in a single day Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to testify before US House committee Associates of FTX founder Bankman-Fried plead guilty to criminal charges Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to fly to US today, escorted by FBI agents Crypto Exchange FTX to provide $6 million phishing compensation to users Japan pushes global counterparts to regulate cryptocurrencies like banks Crypto industry wants 0.1% TDS, Sebi-like regulator in Budget 2023 Cryptoverse: Bitcoin on the charge in 2023, clocks a 26% gain in January 91 tech companies lay off over 24,000 employees in first 15 days of January The FMCG major on Tuesday announced that it will acquire 100% stake in Sproutlife Foods (SFPL), engaged in the manufacture and sale of health food brand 'Yoga Bar' for over a period of three to four years. Sproutlife Foods is a start-up engaged in the business of manufacturing and selling food products under the trademark 'Yoga Bar'. Yoga Bar has a product portfolio, including nutrition bars, muesli, oats and cereals. It currently has a high salience of online sales, with growing presence in offline stores. It had a turnover of Rs 68 crore in financial year 2021-22. In an exchange filing, ITC said that it has signed a binding term sheet on 16 January 2023, to acquire 100% of the share capital (on a fully diluted basis) of Sproutlife Foods in one or more tranches. According to the company, it will acquire 100% of SFPL over a period of 3 to 4 years. By 31 March 2025, the company will acquire 47.5% stake in SFPL in tranches, and the balance stake will be acquired, basis pre-defined valuation criteria, subject to other conditions agreed to in the binding documents. The company will initially invest Rs 175 crore by acquiring 39.4% stake in SFPL by 15 February 2023 or such other later date as may be mutually agreed upon. Further infusion of Rs 80 crore will be made through primary subscription, in one or more tranches, by 31 March 2025 or such other later date as may be mutually agreed upon, based on pre-agreed pre-money valuation. Also Read World Laughter Yoga Master Rajendra Kumar continues to make India a happier country with Laughter Yoga FMCG shares fall ITC says ITC Infotech incorporates subsidiary in Brazil Shyam Metalics announces its 3rd acquisition for facilitating inorganic growth in steel space Hindustan Foods to acquire Reckitt Benckiser's Baddi-based plant Minda Corporation Ltd leads losers in 'A' group Orient Press Ltd leads losers in 'B' group Nykaa hits record low; slides over 17% in five days Volumes jump at Polyplex Corporation Ltd counter Real Estate shares fall The balance stake will be acquired by ITC based on the pre- agreed valuation criteria within 3 months of Sproutlife providing its financial results for the year ending March 2026. With this acquisition, ITC is fortifying its presence in the Rs 45,000 crore, fast growing, nutrition-led healthy foods space. ITC said this investment is in line with the 'ITC Next' strategy articulated by chairman Sanjiv Puri that focuses on building a future-ready portfolio of products that serve evolving consumer needs. In line with the strategy to augment the company's future ready portfolio, the proposed acquisition will strengthen and expand its reach with innovative food products for health conscious consumers, said the company. Yoga Bar is expected to be rapidly scaled up, leveraging ITC's enterprise strengths in areas such as sales & distribution, sourcing, product development, and digital, the FMCG company stated in the press release. Hemant Malik, divisional chief executive, foods division at ITC, said, "We believe that this investment is an exciting opportunity that aligns with ITC's Foods Business' aspiration to build a formidable portfolio in the nutrition-led healthy foods space. We look forward to scaling the Yoga Bar brand offering superior and healthy consumer choices. Within a short span of time, Yoga Bar has established itself as a leading brand in the healthy foods space, driven by impactful market positioning and a range of innovative products." Suhasini Sampath Kumar and Anindita Sampath Kumar, co-founders of SFPL, said, "We are delighted to join hands with ITC in Yoga Bar's next phase of growth. ITC has a long history of building world-class brands, leveraging its core competencies which encompass superior understanding of the consumer, strong backward linkages with agri supply chain and a deep and wide distribution network. We are delighted that ITC and Yoga Bar will work together to build one of the largest brands in the healthy foods space." ITC is a diversified conglomerate with businesses spanning fast-moving consumer goods, hotels, paperboards and packaging, agribusiness and information technology. The company's standalone net profit rose 20.8% to Rs 4,466 crore on 27.4% increase in net revenue to Rs 15,976 crore in Q2 FY23 over Q2 FY22. Shares of ITC were up 0.59% to Rs 334.25 on the BSE. Powered by Capital Market - Live News The headline equity indices marched higher and hit a fresh intraday high in early afternoon trade. The Nifty scaled above the 18,150 mark. IT shares rallied for the sixth consecutive trading session. At 12:30 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 420.78 points or 0.69% to 61,076.50. The Nifty 50 index added 118.35 points or 0.66% to 18,171.65. In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.27% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index gained 0.28%. The market breadth was positive. On the BSE, 1,933 shares rose, and 1,458 shares fell. A total of 153 shares were unchanged. Derivatives: The NSE's India VIX, a gauge of the market's expectation of volatility over the near term, declined 1.59% to 14.36. The Nifty 25 January 2022 futures were trading at 18,203.25, at a premium of 31.6 points as compared with the spot at 18,171.65. Also Read Indices trade with decent gains; metal stocks in demand Sensex spurts 376 pts, Nifty above 17,900 level Indices trim losses, Nifty above 17,200 level, NSE VIX climbs over 5% Nifty reclaims 18,000 level; metal stocks advance Indices trade with limited losses; strong market breadth Benchmarks trade with minor gains; Nifty above 18,100 Indices drift higher in early trade; Nifty above 18,050 SGX Nifty indicates firm opening Sensex jumps 563 pts, Nifty ends above 18K; L&T climbs 3.73% Quick Wrap: Nifty PSU Bank Index falls 1.84% The Nifty option chain for the 25 January 2022 expiry showed maximum Call OI of 33.4 lakh contracts at the 19,000 strike price. Maximum Put OI of 55.9 lakh contracts were seen at 18,000 strike price. Buzzing Index: The Nifty IT index rose 0.67% to 29,696.55. The index jumped 4.19% in sixth sessions. Wipro (up 1.55%), Tata Consultancy Services (up 0.79%), HCL Technologies (up 0.79%), Persistent Systems (up 0.63%), Infosys (up 0.54%), Mphasis (up 0.46%), Coforge (up 0.36%), LTI Mindtree (up 0.29%), L&T Technology Services (up 0.21%) and Tech Mahindra (up 0.08%) advanced. Stocks in Spotlight: Hindalco Industries advanced 2.12% after the company's board approved allotment of 70,000 non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of Rs 1 lakh each aggregating to Rs 700 crore, on private placement basis. Adani Green Energy slipped 2.88%. The company said that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Adani Renewable Energy Holding Two has entered into a binding term sheet for acquisition of 50% equity interest in Essel Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan (ESUCRL) for Rs 15 crore. The transaction is expected to be completed by 28 February 2023. Tata Investment Corporation dropped 3.87% after the company's consolidated net profit declined 13.2% to Rs 34.53 crore as against Rs 39.80 crore posted in Q3 FY22. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Plans to invest Rs 200 cr to support new orders Sundram Fasteners announced today that it has won the biggest EV contract in its 60-year history. The Chennai-based Company has been awarded a $250-million contract by a leading global automobile manufacturer for the supply of sub-assemblies for its electric vehicle (EV) platform. The Company plans to invest Rs 200 crore to support the new orders under the six-year long purchase package involving the supply of shaft sub-assemblies and drive gear sub-assemblies. The Company will ship the parts from its powertrain divisions located at Mahindra World City in Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu, and Sri City in Tirupati district, Andhra Pradesh. The parts will be serviced from the Company's warehouse in North America. The deal is one of the largest won by a supplier in India for this range of products for an EV platform. SFL has estimated an annual sales peak of $52 million in 2026 with a supply of 1.5 million drive unit sub-assemblies per annum. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Media worldwide bullish on China's economic prospects after adjusted COVID measures Xinhua) 13:18, January 18, 2023 BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's optimized COVID response policies have garnered widespread praise from media and observers worldwide, who are bullish on China's economic prospects. In a recent Bloomberg article, Hao Hong, chief economist at Grow Investment Group, was quoted as saying that China's recent changes are "breathtaking," and there were "policy pivots in just about every single sector." "China's economy is now forecast to expand by 4.8 percent this year, compared with little growth in the United States and a potential contraction in the eurozone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg," said the article, adding that some institutions such as Morgan Stanley, which has raised China's 2023 GDP growth target by another 0.3 percentage point to 5.7 percent, are more optimistic. "We believe the market is under-appreciating the far-reaching ramifications of reopening (of China) and the possibility that a robust cyclical recovery can occur ..." the article cited a note recently written by economists at Morgan Stanley as saying. Describing the Chinese stock market as "taking off," The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that UBS Global Wealth Management has upgraded Chinese equities to "most preferred" in Asia. UBS analysts said in the Chinese market, "select companies in the consumer, internet, pharmaceutical, medical equipment, transportation, capital goods and materials sectors are likely to see more front-loaded returns," according to the report. "Global asset managers are starting the year with a stronger foothold in China's 26 trillion yuan (3.8 trillion dollars) mutual fund industry" as China's COVID response shift and focus on the economy have brightened prospects for investors, wrote Bloomberg on its website Wednesday. "By summer and into the second half of the year expect China to be a top priority," said the report, quoting Peter Alexander, managing director at Shanghai-based Z-Ben Advisors, as saying. According to the report, asset managers, including Van Eck Associates Corporation, Schroders plc, etc., have submitted applications to set up fund units in China, with more on the way, while JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are awaiting regulatory approval for their deals to buy out local partners. "Within a week, our phones and emails were bombarded with dozens of primarily U.S.-based firms wanting to know how they could aggressively move on China," Alexander was quoted as saying. "Global groups know too well that the China market is one, if done correctly, that can honestly move the needle on a firm's top and bottom-line performance." According to a Bain &Co survey released on Jan. 10, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in China's Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area have strong expectations for the region's economy and plan to invest there in the long term, said an opinion piece Wednesday published by the South China Morning Post. The article noted that the survey quizzed some 460 SMEs in the area and found that more than two-thirds of companies expect long-term economic growth to be on par with or stronger than its historical growth. "Most of the SMEs expressed enthusiasm about the government's interconnectedness programmes and would like them to be implemented faster," the survey was cited as saying. "About half of the mainland-based firms said they are likely to expand into Hong Kong or Macao, and nearly 75 percent of Hong Kong-based SMEs expect to expand into mainland China." On Jan. 8, regular travel between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong resumed as various control points linking Shenzhen and Hong Kong reopened. "As restrictions ease, (SMEs') expansion plans could increase," said the Post article, quoting Zhao Wenting, an associate partner at Bain &Co in Shanghai, as saying. By 2027, the bay area's economy could hit 2.8 trillion dollars, based on Bain &Co's analysis of forecast data, said the article. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Google-owned wearable brand Fitbit will reportedly remove music streaming services Pandora and Deezer from the Fitbit Sense, Versa 3 and other older devices in March this year. In an email, Fitbit informed users that Pandora and Deezer applications "will be removed as of March 31, 2023", because of which, "you will no longer be able to download Pandora stations or add Deezer playlists to your device, nor will you be able to play anything that you have previously downloaded," reports 9To5Google. The company did not provide an explanation for this "deactivation" and said that it is "sorry for any inconvenience!" A support article on the company's website also confirmed the end of the services. Moreover, the help pages for those two streaming services have been removed. Following last year's removal of the ability to transfer playlists to watches from computers, Deezer and Pandora became the only way to listen to music, the report said. Also Read Fitbit announces Inspire 3, Sense 2, Versa 4 fitness tracker and watches Google to make account login mandatory for Fitbit users in 2023 Google's Fitbit Versa 2 users experience glitches after software update Fitbit Versa 4 review: Fitness focussed, but falls short on smart features Fitbit by Google: Maps coming soon to Versa 4 and Sense 2 fitness wearables Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max may feature periscope camera for optical zoom Global smartphone shipments fall 17% in Q4; Apple reclaims top spot: Report Samsung's mobile business head TM Roh bets big on upcoming Galaxy S series Twitter shifts 'View Count' tab to the right after repeated complaints Chat platform Discord acquires compliments-based social media app Gas --IANS aj/shb/ Banking / New bank aims to shore up Chinese provinces corruption-plagued rural lenders A planned new rural commercial bank in Henan province will serve as the keystone in its top-down effort to overhaul troubled rural credit institutions in the region, where rampant corruption has gutted the quality of their assets. With the launch of the lender, Henan Rural Commercial United Bank Co. Ltd., the provincial government aims to improve corporate governance of more than 130 rural credit institutions, whose low overall asset quality has threatened the stability of this corner of the local financial system. Davos / Liu He says Chinas economy will get back to normal in 2023 Chinas economy is set to improve and is highly likely to reach a normal growth rate in 2023, Vice Premier Liu He said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The countrys imports are expected to increase significantly this year, Liu said in a special address at the annual meeting, adding that corporate investment will rise and household consumption will return to normal. Yellen sets surprise U.S.-China meeting with Liu in Switzerland Covid-19 / Chinese authorities seize fake Paxlovid anti-Covid pills Chinas drug regulatory agency said authorities seized a batch of fake versions of Pfizers Paxlovid antiviral pill as demand for Covid-19 treatments skyrockets amid limited supplies. Some of the phony drugs did not contain valid ingredients or had illegally added other ingredients, Chinas National Medical Products Administration said Monday in a statement. The cases are being handled by the public security department, the medicine regulator said. FINANCE & ECONOMY GDP / China posts second-slowest annual economic growth in decades Chinas economy recorded its second-lowest growth rate in more than four decades last year, missing the government target, with hopes of a quick recovery muted amid fallout from a nationwide outbreak of Covid-19, a property sector still mired in debt and weak overseas demand. The countrys GDP grew 3% in 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday, missing the official target by 2.5 percentage points, as strict controls in line with the now-abandoned zero-Covid strategy slowed economic activity for months. Population / Chinas population shrinks for the first time in six decades Chinas population fell for the first time in 60 years in 2022 as its birthrate dropped to a record low, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Tuesday. The Chinese mainland had 1.412 billion people at the end of 2022, 850,000 fewer than a year earlier, according to an NBS statement. The count excludes residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan living on the mainland, as well as foreign nationals. Quick hit / Singapore exports shrink more than expected on falling shipments to China BUSINESS & TECH Didis market share fell to 70% from March to August 2022 compared with 90% before the government clampdown. Didi / Didi gets green light to sign up new users Didi Global Inc. received approval to resume new user registration after Chinese authorities 18-month cyber security probe that led to the companys delisting in the U.S., the ride-hailing giant said Monday. For more than a year, our company has cooperated with the governments cybersecurity review, seriously dealt with the security issues found in the review, and carried out a comprehensive rectification, Didi said in a statement. Explosion / Five killed in China chemical plant explosion At least five people died and eight more are missing after an explosion at a chemical plant in Panjin, Northeast Chinas Liaoning province, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management. The blast happened Sunday afternoon while maintenance was being conducted on an alkylation facility at Liaoning Panjin Haoye Chemical Co. Ltd., the ministry said in a statement published Monday night. A previous announcement from the local county government said around 30 people were injured. Logistics / China couriers hike Lunar New Year prices as delivery riders head home Chinas major express couriers will charge more for their services over the Lunar New Year period and have warned that deliveries which one major logistics firm said were up as much as 30% over last year will take longer during the holiday as workers take time off to be with their families during the traditional holiday period. SF Express Co. Ltd., one of Chinas largest couriers, is charging a so-called resource adjustment fee of up to 20 yuan ($0.15) per package from Jan. 21 to Jan. 27, depending on the customers membership status, parcel weight, and destination, according to a service representative who spoke to Caixin. Quick hits / Shanghai airport operator buys $251 million stake in duty-free shops Evergrande says PwC resigns after 2021 audit disagreements Tech Insider / Didi resumes sign-ups 18 months after probe, NEV exports hit record Long Read / China loses some of its brightest stars GALLERY All Aboard Recommended newsletter for you / Caixin Must-Read Newsletter brings you the best of our coverage and stories you cant miss. You can opt-in now and get hand-picked news coverage delivered to your inbox each week for free. Thanks for reading. If you havent already, click here to subscribe. A Bridgeport woman was killed after being hit by a car on Route 8 in Shelton after midnight on Wednesday, according to the Connecticut State Police. Joan Marie Forgas, 32, of Bridgeport was parked between the right lane and right shoulder of Route 8 northbound just north of the Exit 13 ramp. For unknown reasons, she got out of her Jeep Grand Cherokee and was in the right lane of Route 8 when she was hit by a BMW. The driver, a Beacon Falls man, also hit the SUV, state police said. Forgas was thrown toward the roadside in the crash and was pronounced dead at the scene, state police said. The BMW came to a controlled rest on the right shoulder. The driver was not injured in the crash, state police said. The crash is under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact Trooper Daniel McCue at Troop I at 203-393-4200 or Daniel.mccue@ct.gov. A Meriden woman was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Tuesday for suffocating her 8-year-old son and intentionally setting fire to their home in 2016, according to a statement from New Haven States Attorney John P. Doyle, Jr. Karin Ziolkowski was sentenced by Judge Jon M. Alander to 40 years in prison on the murder charge and 10 years on the second-degree arson charge with the two sentences to be served concurrently. A Superior Court jury in New Haven found her guilty on both charges on Nov. 8, 2022. According to evidence and testimony during the trial, Karin Ziolkowski suffocated her son, Elijah Ziolkowski, in their Meriden home on Nov. 14, 2016, then intentionally set two fires one in the bedroom and another in the basement. The fire marshal had determined that tiki torch fluid was used to start the blaze. The child was not able to be resuscitated on scene and his death was ruled a homicide by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to court records. The medical examiner determined the boy died of both asphyxiation and a lethal dose of an antihistamine, commonly found in Benadryl, officials said in 2016. Ziolkowski was arrested in October 2017 in North Carolina. Arrest records indicated that she was struggling with depression and marital issues before Elijah was killed. In the weeks before Elijahs death, a judge dismissed a divorce case between Karin Ziolkowski and her husband for lack of diligence. Karin Ziolkowskis stepmother alleged that her husband was verbally abusive, something Karin later told investigators, according to previous reports. Our thoughts are with Elijahs family at this time, Doyle said in a statement on Tuesday. Though nothing can bring back Elijah or lessen the pain of his loved ones. We hope todays prison sentence brings Elijahs family some measure of peace now that the person responsible for his senseless and unimaginable death has been brought to justice. Number of those killed rises to 18, including 3 children, while 29 wounded, says Kyiv governor ISTANBUL (AA) - A helicopter crash in the Brovary city of Ukraines Kyiv region on Wednesday killed at least 18 people, including the countrys interior minister, his first deputy minister, and the state secretary, according to the Kyiv governor. "Tragedy in Brovary. The number of victims increased. As of 10:30 a.m. (0830GMT) 18 dead, including 3 children. It is known about 29 wounded, including 15 children. All necessary assistance is provided to the victims. All emergency services are on site," Kyiv Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram. Kuleba also confirmed in an earlier message that the helicopter belonging to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine fell near a kindergarten and a residential building. Separately, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal instructed officials to immediately create a special group for "a detailed investigation of all the circumstances of the tragedy." About the route of the helicopter, Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said in a briefing that it was going to one of the "hot spots" of the conflict with Russia, noting that more details will be provided later, according to the RBK-Ukraine news agency. Earlier, Chief of National Police Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram that the helicopter crash killed 16 people, nine of which were on the helicopter, including Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy Yevhen Yenin, and state secretary Yurii Lubkovych. Klymenko also said: 22 victims, including 10 children, are in the hospital. All specialized services are working on the site. The inspection of the scene is ongoing. Burc Eruygur/AA Vladimir Putin Getty Images Putin traces war in Ukraine to 2014 'coup' in Kyiv and what he calls effort to turn 2014 conflict into 'hot phase' MOSCOW (AA) The military operation Russia started last February was meant to "stop the war" in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, that started in 2014, said President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. "Everything we are doing today, including the special military operation (in Ukraine), is an attempt to stop this war. That's the sense of our operation. And to protect our people who live there, in these territories," he told an event in Saint Petersburg marking the 80th anniversary of breaking the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted almost 872 days and took lives of over 1.5 million people. Putin said full-scale combat activities in Donbas have not stopped since 2014, adding that events started with the coup in the capital Kyiv which saw President Viktor Yanukovych overthrown and the opposition come to power. "We endured for a long time, tried to negotiate for a long time. As it turns out now, we were simply led by the nose, deceived. ... We have done everything possible to resolve this situation by peaceful means. Now it has become obvious that by definition it was impossible," he said. In March 2014, Russia illegally annexed Ukraines Crimean Peninsula, in a move denounced by the UN General Assembly, European Union, US, and Turkiye. 2014 also saw the start of a Russian-backed conflict in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border, including Donbas, which many see as a precursor to the nearly year-old current Ukraine war. Putin said former European leaders openly say Ukraine "was preparing to turn this whole conflict into an acute and hot phase." - Leningrad genocide Putin also condemned Ukraine's crackdown on the Orthodox Church, saying "they will not get away with it." Ukrainian authorities have been recently raided establishments of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, accusing it of supporting Russia and cooperating with it. "It is absolutely necessary to record what they are doing, especially with the civilian population. And we will do it," said Putin. Putin said one of the forms of the Western pressure on Russia is voting against condemnation of the Nazi ideology at the UN. "Who can be against recognizing the glorification of Nazism as a crime?" he asked. Since the start of the war last Feb. 24, Putin has cited what he calls de-Nazification of Ukraine as a justification. The president also said representatives of many European countries took part and committed crimes in the World War II siege of Leningrad, but Russia did not speak about it to avoid a deterioration of relations with them. He called the Siege of Leningrad a "genocide," emphasizing the importance of recognizing it as such at the global level. Putin urged preserving the historical memory of the siege and passing it down to future generations, as what is happening to Russia now, happened before in 1812 Napoleon united Europe against Russia, and in 1941-1945 all continental Europe was taken under control by Adolf Hitler and directed against Russia, he said. "The historical memory must be preserved precisely so that such tragedies that our people experienced during the Great Patriotic War (World War II) will never be repeated," he said. AA/Moscow As Hartford restaurant owner Joan Facey went to the podium to address the crowd, she said she was specifically speaking to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Metropolitan District Commission Chairman William A. DiBella and Executive Director Scott Jellison. She was one of many local business owners and residents who wanted to make their voices heard about the flooding and sewage backup issues that are impacting them, both financially and emotionally. And when the flood came, the water came, and this sewer backed up, it came up the flat roof. The water [went] down, the sewer went up, and came down to the building, Facey said. It ruined my building. I have a restaurant sitting there [with] equipment that I cannot use. Its $8,000 just to sanitize the place and repair just for that Due to a car accident, Facey is unable to work. She asked Blumenthal how she can get the $8,000 to repair and sanitize the restaurant, asking him, where is her justice? Community Activist Bridgitte Prince said during a press conference at the American Legion at 2121 Main St. that she and representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency out of Boston would be touring privately to review residents ongoing claims of flooding and sewage backups. Prince later said that the EPA reps canceled the tour and did not meet with residents. She said that the EPA representatives were not available to comment publicly, as they were not authorized to speak to the crowd publicly, especially with press and politicians present. Executive director of the CT Coalition for Environmental Justice and resident Sharon E. Lewis sharing her experience with flooding and sewage in her home. She spoke Jan. 17, 2023 during a press conference at the American Legion at 2121 Main St. Residents and activists contacted the agency due to ongoing incidents of flooding and sewage backups in Hartfords North End and concerns that lack of action is tied to the location in the city. Residents said they feel unheard by some elected officials and the Metropolitan District Commission. Prince said that, in her opinion, the citys flooding issue is a akin to a New Orleans Ninth Ward district catastrophe waiting to happen. Youve got pipes, busted sewage pipes that are centuries old and its not being repaired. Youve got residents that live in the North End from Blue Hills Avenue all the way down to Windsor Street, [who] have human waste flowing through their basements. They dont know whose human waste it is, because its been that long since its been fixed, she said. She said that these issues are not things that the Black community should have to endure. You just cant have money and fix the structures on the perimeters of the Capital city. But the only time you want to show up in this district, the only time you want to show up at this forum and be sitting at the table [is] when its time for votes, but you dont do anything with this situation, she said. Max Kothari, local business owner of Star Hardware at 2995 Main St, said that his business has been flooded at least four times. He said that every time he reaches out to MDC, the answer he receives is that it is too complicated for them and that the water cannot be mixed with the river, which leads to water not being able to go out. Our business gets completely destroyed when we get flooded. That means our neighborhood, our businesses, and more importantly, our houses get backed up with sewage and we are supposed to be OK with it. Thats just not kosher people higher up have to find a way to get some answers. Weve been living like this [in] our businesses, we walk in sewage cleanup, we cannot get flood insurance [for] this, he said. Blumenthal thanked the residents and business owners for sharing their stories and said that anyone hearing the stories cannot help being outraged and angry about what they have lived through. It isnt just one storm, one flood or one sewer to back up. It is many, many of them. I cant speak for the EPA. [They are] part of the executive branch. They report to President Biden. I dont appoint the head of the EPA, we control the purse strings in the United States Congress, and as a delegation. I am sure that we will go to work to make sure that the EPA takes an interest. He also said that he will also make sure that the MDC, state Department of Energy, Environmental Protection and others come together, as they need to hear and see what the residents have experienced. It is about justice. I dont have a magic solution today. But Im certainly going to continue listening. I can pledge to you that were gonna take back this information. At the end of the day, this is an issue of environmental justice he said. Blumenthal also said that the Congress recently passed the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, which is more than $1 trillion for the whole country, the first of its kind that they have passed. He said that fixing the sewage and flooding issues is the kind of endeavor that should be supported, as it involves environmental protection, public health, communities and their fabric and strength, and ultimately, justice. Im going to make sure that Hartford gets its fair share, and the North End of Hartford is taken into account, he said. In response to the residents stories, DiBella said that the MDC has spent $2 billion for the last five to 10 years on separating the sewers. Unfortunately, the way that it goes down is, its a question of the river and everything else in the environmental issue is DEEP and we have programs to deal with. Its a dollars and cents thing. We dont have a system in this country thats been built for the storm in 2021, where we got a 200-year storm, a 100-year storm and a 50-year storm in the same week, he said. He said that the bottom line is that the system is only built for a 10-year storm. DiBella said the MDC is separating the sewers in the North End and starting the process in Blue Hills. The big problem is weve got to get to an outflow, which is Park River. The city and MDC are doing a study on that. But were moving forward on the separation system, but its not a 10-year or five-year program. The integrated plan is going to run out probably almost 20 years or 25 years. We cant spend that much money in that short of time, he said. DiBella also said that even if the MDC were to receive funding from the federal government, it could not be done any faster. No, we dont get a lot of money. Were not getting money from the federal government. Thats one of the issues. Were getting money from the MDC customers and from DEEP. Weve spent $1.7 billion of ratepayers money on this project and weve spent $800 million. So $1.7 billion from MDCs customers and $800 million for the state. Its significantly low, he said. A Jammu woman ran away from her house and came to Bhopal after she was deceived into marrying a Pakistani man who later forced her to live in Pakistan or Dubai, police here said. The woman identified as Priyanka Kolkoltra, a resident of Udhampur in Jammu, was also allegedly beaten upby her husband, Roshan, whom she married on December 2, 2022, the police said. Post-marriage, Priyanka got to know Roshan's identity by looking at his Facebook profile which had his pictures with the Pakistan flag, they said, adding she also faced domestic violence. After Roshan started forcing her to leave India and travel with him to Pakistan and Dubai, the woman ran away and came to Bhopal. She later started living with a friend here, the police said. The incident came to light after her relatives lodged a missing complaint in Udhampur and the J-K Police came here, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Rajesh Singh Bhadauriya told ANI. "The Jammu&Kashmir police came to Bhopal since the woman's relatives filed a missing report in Udhampur. The police traced her in Bhopal. Upon receiving the information, the police investigated and found a man and woman living here in Bhopal who come from somewhere else," the Additional DCP said. "The woman was living with a friend named Manjit who also hails from Udhampur, and is doing a private job here in Bhopal. The woman filed for divorce in Bhopal court and made it clear to her husband that she doesn't want to live with him or outside this country during the counseling session undertaken by the police with her family in her presence," the officer said. Under such circumstances, the woman can make her decision to live with whoever she wants as she is an adult and as "she doesn't want to live with the Pakistani man and live somewhere else, the woman will be provided with security," he added. (ANI) Also Read: Hyderabad shocker: 25-year-old man murdered by wife's brothers A Wethersfield Town Council member is set to resign his seat at town hall to serve his country overseas. Council member and U.S. Navy Reservist Ryan Biggs told the council about the decision during a meeting Tuesday, stating that he will be deploying in the next few months. Its bittersweet, Biggs said. I really enjoyed serving and being there for the residents. But this doesnt mean I wont be involved. Ill definitely still be a voice and attend council meetings and speak up for those who may not be comfortable doing it. Biggs, who has been in the U.S. Navy for the last decade, was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade and has served for five years as the regional coordinator of Navy Veteran Funerals before being commissioned as a reserve officer, according to a social media post from Wethersfield Democrats. Biggs, a Democrat, has held his seat in council since 2020 when he was appointed to fill State Rep. Amy Morrin Bellos seat. He was reelected in 2021. Before being named to the town council, Biggs served as a member of Wethersfields Veteran Commission, where he assisted with veteran outreach and support in Wethersfield. Biggs is also a co-founder of the community organization Calling All Brothers, leading a team of more than 100 men mentoring youth in Greater Hartford. One thing Im most proud of is working across party lines, Biggs said. I do think I did a good job with bringing that value back and presenting a different view with how residents might be feeling. It was my aim to work for the town and not just for a party. In addition, Biggs has been recognized as the first African American member of the town council. Mayor Michael Rell said Biggs exemplifies a true hero and it was an honor to serve alongside him. He is a dedicated council member who is always engaged with the community, Rell said. There is no better person to represent the town. Rell, a Republican, said that while he and Biggs had their disagreements on certain issues, they remained friends. Im happy to say that throughout our time serving, we probably voted 95% together on issues, Rell said. And even when we didnt agree, we still stayed close. It never became personal. He was someone who you could have a conversation with and go back at it the next meeting working for the greater good of the town. The Wethersfield Democratic Town Committee said they will announce a candidate to be nominated to fill Biggs spot in the coming weeks. Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com The rescue team recovered one more body on January 18 in the horrifying Yeti Airlines plane crash that took place in Nepals Pokhara region. A total of 71 bodies have been recovered from the plane crash site. The plane, with 72 people on board, crashed into a gorge minutes before landing at the newly-opened airport in Pokhara on Sunday. The flight included five Indians. No one survived the dreadful crash. Pilot Anju Khatiwad, who was co-piloting the ill-fated flight, also lost her life while trying to save the passenger plane from smashing into the gorge. Anju was a widow, and in an unfortunate coincidence, her husband also died in a plane crash 16 years ago, BBC reported. Why we are saying it an unfortunate coincidence because Anjus husband Dipak Pokhrel was also co-piloting a Yeti Airlines flight when he died. As per BBC, Dipaks unfortunate demise prompted Anju to pursue a career in aviation. "She was a determined woman who stood for her dreams and fulfilled the dreams of her husband," family member Santosh Sharma said. Dipak was co-piloting a Twin Otter prop plane carrying rice and other food items to Jumla town when the plane came down and burst into flames. The incident took place in 2006, killing all nine people on board the plane. After four years, Anju decided to become a pilot, overcoming many obstacles to train in the US. After clearing every test, she joined Yeti Airlines. She was among the six women pilots employed by Yeti Airways. The deceased woman pilot had flown close to 6,400 hours. "She was a full captain at the airline who had done solo flights," Sudarshan Bartaula from Yeti Airlines said. "She was a brave woman." After fulfilling her dream of becoming a pilot in the memory of her husband, Anju later remarried and had a second child as she adored her job. The tragic death of both the pilots in a similar manner is a tragedy within the tragedy. At the crash site in Pokhara, parts of Yeti Airlines flight 691 were scattered on the banks of the river Seti, while a small section of the aircraft rested on the gorge. The rescue team and police are at the spot and rescue operation is ongoing to find the last body. This week's tragedy has reignited a conversation about airline safety in the Himalayan nation, which has seen hundreds die in air accidents in recent decades. The recent air tragedy has reignited a debate over airline safety, especially in Nepal, which is already defamed for its recent air disasters. Earlier, the black box of the Yeti Airlines aircraft was handed over by the Nepal Army to Civil Aviation Authority officials. Agencies are investigating the reason behind one of the worst air disasters of Nepal. Also Read: Liquor bars, clubs to shut by midnight in Rajasthan China Shanshui Cement issues profit warning for 2022 18 January 2023 China Shanshui Cement has issued a profit warning, saying that it expects to report a fall in profit of at least 70 per cent in 2022. According to the company, attributable profit for the year is forecast to have contracted by at least 70 per cent, compared to the CNY2.78bn (US$410.8m) recorded in 2021. Published under CEMEX Phillipines and Manila Water Co collaborate on sustainability 18 January 2023 CEMEX Holdings Philippines (CHP) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Philippines-based Manila Water Co to collaborate on sustainability initiatives. Under the MoU both parties will look to accelerate their sustainable objectives on circular economy through the use of biosolids as alternative fuels, reports Manila Bulletin. They will also explore partnering on innovations in sustainable products and services, protection and rehabilitation of biodiversity, and clean energy and efficient water consumption advocacy. The intersection of business goals and strategic commitment of both CHP and Manila Water makes this an attractive co-operation to further progress decarbonisation and future energy," said Manila Water Co. "With more businesses considering climate change as one of its top risks and recognising the Philippines as one of the most vulnerable to its impacts, the partnership between CHP and Manila Water seeks to reinforce the role of business to propose better solutions, in response to the climate crisis. Published under Forward is an ecumenical group offering mutual support for those who have lost a spouse. First-Centenary United Methodist Church in downtown Chattanooga will host a new small group, seven sessions in all, beginning Saturday, Feb. 11 from 10-11:30 a.m., in the church parlor. These groups offer space for the newly and sometimes not so newly bereaved to share experiences and begin to find ways to step "Forward" into the future. If you or someone you know is interested in joining this group, contact the church office at 423-756-2021. There is no charge to participate. A recent article in the continuing historical journey of former residences of the Cameron Hill area of Chattanooga used the term Captains of Industry. Said phrase has nothing to do with military service or yachting. It is used in a positive way by describing some 19th century industrialists who expanded the American economy from around 1870-1900 in the Gilded Age description of Mark Twain's 1873 novel of the same name. John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie are the most famous individuals who obtained fabulous fortunes in the Second Industrial Revolution that caused a substantial economic expansion in America in the pre-income tax era in the fields of railroads, steel factories and the coal mining industry. Many were philanthropists and made massive positive contributions to society primarily in the field of education. However, the term robber barons was also applied to them all by detractors for their often aggressive and sometimes unethical methods. The term robber barons dates back to the Middle Ages and suggests the use of unethical methods to eliminate their competitors and develop monopolies in their particular industry to remove barriers in the primarily unregulated government era. Their positive accomplishments and negative detractions are in dispute but their reputations for accumulating great wealth is a trait that greatly exceeded in comparison to any of the present day billionaires such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc. Tennessee and Hamilton County probably have had participants in both categories from a historical perspective. * * * You can reach Jerry Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com While on patrol in 4th Avenue and E. 28th Street area, police observed a silver Chrysler 300, displaying a TN tag, that had a dark-colored tint in all five windows. The tint was so dark that police could not distinguish the vehicle's driver. The tint appeared to be below the legal limit. Police got behind the vehicle and activated emergency traffic equipment. The car came to a halt at 2898 Morgan Ave. Before police could get out of the vehicle and contact the driver, the car abruptly took off at a high-speed rate, traveling south on Morgan Avenue The vehicle was last seen making a left and heading toward Rossville Boulevard. The vehicle came back registered to a black male who showed a revoked driver's license out of Tennessee. The vehicle was BOLO'd to other sectors in the city and also to Walker County. * * * Police responded to a residence on Delong Avenue for an unknown 911 call. The resident told police a man came by his house that night and they verbally argued for a couple of minutes. He would not give details about the argument. He said the man left in an unknown direction. At this time there is no crime and the resident just wanted police to be aware of the situation. * * * A man on E. 19th Street told police his gray 2023 Hyundai Sonata (TN tag) had been stolen. He said he went out to warm his mothers vehicle up around 6:45 p.m. He said he started the vehicle and went inside his house. He said he was inside for a couple of minutes when he heard a vehicle leave. When he exited his house, he saw his mothers vehicle driving off. He tried to follow the vehicle, but lost a visual of it. No one had permission to drive or take the mother's vehicle and she desires prosecution. Police provided the man with the case number, officer's name and badge number. Police contacted NCIC and had the vehicle placed in the stolen vehicle system. An officer later located the car at 34 W. 19th St. Ite was not wrecked, stripped or burned. Police contacted NCIC and had the vehicle removed from the system and released it to the mom. * * * A man called police from the Walgreens, 2104 McCallie Ave, He said someone broke into his vehicle and stole a Nintendo Switch. He said the person broke the driver's side vent window. He was not sure when it occurred, but there may be video footage of the incident. The man did provide a serial number for the Switch, and he will call police if he obtains footage. He said he might be able to identify the suspect, but nothing at this time. * * * A woman on Timber Knoll Drive told police the ex-girlfriend of her current boyfriend showed up at her apartment unexpectedly and started banging on the door, asking her to come outside. Before police arrived, the ex-girlfriend left the scene. * * * An employee of a business on Commerce Street told police someone had stolen the catalytic converter off of their 2019 Isuzu 54D. The theft happened sometime between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. He said the site has security cameras, but they are currently not operating. He was unable to provide a suspect description. * * * A woman on Ferndale Court told police she has made two police reports with East Ridge Police Department over another woman for harassment. She said she is unsure if warrants were taken out or not. She said the day before she had received a text message from a mutual person they both knew, and it was that woman sending a picture (through the mutual acquaintance) of her front door. The woman said she is in fear for her life because she just moved to this address a week ago and has no idea how that woman would know it already. She said they are not friends, they only know each other because of another man. Follow-up will be made to get reports from East Ridge Police Department to see if harassment charges can be issued. * * * An unconscious person was reported on Chestnut Street. Police found a man lying on the ground. Officers shook the man and he began to grumble. He eventually woke up and identified himself. He declined medical attention. The man was just sleeping at the time police interacted with him. He left the scene of his own accord. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers at Tennessee airports discovered a total of 366 firearms in travelers carry-on luggage in 2022, an increase of nearly 30 percent over the 2021 statewide total. Nashville International Airport (BNA) led the state with 213 guns found, the fourth highest total nationwide. In addition, every airport in the state posted all-time highs for TSA checkpoint firearm detections last year. Here is a breakdown of TSA firearm discoveries for the past five years at Tennessee airports: Airport code 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 Nashville International Airport (BNA) 86 97 94 163 213 Memphis International Airport (MEM) 47 46 48 67 83 McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) 16 26 7 21 32 Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA) 9 9 11 24 30 Tri-Cities Regional Airport (TRI) 4 3 2 8 8 Tennessee total: 162 181 162 283 366 National total: 4,239 4,432 3,257 5,972 6,542 In 2022, TSA screened approximately 761 million passengers and crew at airports nationwide. That figure represents a nearly 30 percent increase over the approximately 585 million screened in 2021. Statewide in 2022, TSA screened approximately 13.77 million departing travelers at Tennessee airports, almost 29 percent more than the 2021 total. Nationwide, a firearm was detected for every 116,294 passengers screened. In Tennessee, the rate was more than triple the national ratewith one firearm discovered for every 37,646 passengers screened. When a TSA officers sees the image of a firearm on the X-ray screen, TSA immediately notifies the local airport law enforcement agency, which responds to the security checkpoint. A law enforcement officer removes the firearm from the X-ray tunnel and makes contact with the traveler. What happens to the firearm and the traveler is up to the discretion of the airport law enforcement agency. In addition to potential criminal citations, travelers face civil penalties for bringing firearms to the security checkpoint and TSA evaluates each firearm incident on a case-by-case basis. Among the factors TSA considers when determining the civil penalty amount includes whether the firearm was loaded and whether there was accessible ammunition. The civil penalty can go up to a maximum of near $15,000 per violation. Even if a traveler has a concealed weapons permit, firearms are not permitted in carry-on luggage. Individuals who violate rules regarding traveling with firearms will also have Trusted Traveler status and TSA PreCheck expedited screening benefits revoked for a period of time. The duration of the disqualification will depend upon the seriousness of the offense and if there is a repeated history of violations. Firearms can be transported on a commercial aircraft only if they are unloaded, packed in a locked, hard-sided case and placed in checked baggage. At the airport during the check-in process, a passenger needs to go to the airline ticket counter to declare the firearm, ammunition and any firearm parts. Prior to traveling, passengers are encouraged to check gun laws and regulations at their destination to ensure they are in compliance with local and state laws. TSA also recommends travelers check with their airline prior to their flight to ensure they comply with any airline-specific requirements. TSA has additional traveler information specifically related to the transportation of firearms and ammunition. A full summary of TSAs civil penalties for prohibited items is also available. Travelers can use the Can I Bring? feature on the TSA website or on the TSA mobile app, myTSA. Travelers can also Tweet or Message @AskTSA if they have a travel question or are unsure if an item is allowed through security in a carry-on bag. Just snap a picture or send a question and get real-time assistance weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST. The County Commission voted 7-4 on Wednesday not to pay a projected $60,000 in legal expenses for County Attorney Rheubin Taylor after earlier cutting off additional funds to the lawyer for County Mayor Weston Wamp. County Attorney Taylor filed suit in Chancery Court after the new county mayor sent him a termination letter and he refused to step down. A $24,500 payment was made earlier from county funds to Wamp attorney Barret Albritton. After a $25,000 spending limit without commission approval, the county mayor had to go to the County Commission for approval to spend more. The Commission did agree to continue to make payments to its attorney, John Konvalinka. The anticipated amount was listed at $25,000. The vote to continue paying the firm of Thomas and Thomas had yes votes from Commissioners David Sharpe, Greg Beck, Joe Graham and Steve Highlander. Voting no were Commissioners Mike Chauncey, Jeff Eversole, Lee Helton, Warren Mackey, Gene-o Shipley, Ken Smith and Chip Baker. Commissioner Sharpe said, "Are we asking him (County Attorney Taylor) to defend our resolutions and to pay for it out of his own pocket? Is everyone okay with that. I'm not okay with that. What we just did on a 7-4 vote was ask our attorney to defend our resolutions, but to do it on his own dime." Commissioner Highlander said one option would be to fund the some $30,000 due the Thomas firm already and not pay any going forward. He said that would be nearly equal to the amount the county paid for the Wamp expenses. However, no action was taken on that suggestion. Commissioner Mackey said, "We have allowed the mayor to spend $29,000 plus of county money. At the same time, Mr. Taylor - is he paying out of his own pocket?" County Attorney Taylor said he hired former Judge Neil Thomas "and I am obligated to pay him out of whatever resources I can come up with." Commissioner Mackey said a "15-year-old kid" would know that the Taylor contract was valid. He also said, "There are advisors to the mayor and I don't think they are serving him well. I don't think they are giving him good advice. It seems like you've got people who are not experienced in this line of work and they are saying yes to the mayor rather than giving him sound counsel. "My concern is that Hamilton County's money is being treated like a piggy bank. I suspect people are going to be asking us to raise taxes. I'm not going to do it." Commissioner Eversole said, "For the life of me I've never seen a situation where I feel like we as a commission are being held hostage. We are being held hostage between a county attorney, who I respect, and a county mayor, who I respect. It's kind of like we are the bankroll. We can't be the bankroll. "This is getting expensive. It keeps growing and growing. We don't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousand of dollars on something we agreed 11-0 was right. We've said 11-0 it shouldn't be this way, so why should we pay for it?" Commissioner Graham said, "I don't understand why we went from 11-0 to this. Our county attorney did not initiate being fired and he did not initiate having to defend himself. This is not an assault on the attorney's office. This is an assault on us. This is the executive branch saying we don't know what we're doing. The (Taylor) legal fees were incurred by the executive branch." Commissioner Graham said County Mayor Wamp earlier said he would honor the commission's resolutions, and it was believed then that the matter was over. "We're going to lose our hammer if we do this (not covering the Taylor legal costs)." Chairman Baker said, "Six weeks ago this should have been over. Should have been over. Yet this drags on and on and on. It's a distraction. Look at us right now. As long as they're getting paid, this moves on. Frankly, I'm beyond upset. We've been doing the business of the county, but not the right way." Judge Thomas said the decision of the county not to pay the Taylor legal fees "will not in any way deter me from providing a zealous defense in a controversy that was initiated by the mayor and maintained by the mayor." County Mayor Wamp said he had dropped several parts of the court case, leaving only a determination on whether the Taylor contract was valid. He said, "I am doing everything in my power to ensure that it not grow and to make it narrow." He said the county attorney does not have a statutorily defined term but is a political appointment. He said, "I'm yet to have a lawyer tell me that we're wrong." He said it is a "gentlemanly dispute" that should not take long to get a decision. A hearing is set in early March before Chancellor Jeff Atherton. Near the end of the meeting, Commissioner Sharpe, who is a Democrat, asked County Mayor Wamp (a Republican) why he dismissed the other counts in the lawsuit "without prejudice" - meaning they could be brought again. County Mayor Wamp said the Sharpe questioning was "for partisan political purposes and that is totally inappropriate." He said he did not intend to respond. He also did not answer a Sharpe question as to whether he would appeal an adverse ruling in the case. This was the resolution that was voted down by the commission: A RESOLUTION AMENDING RESOLUTION NO. 123-12 AS PREVIOUSLY ADOPTED BY THIS COUNTY LEGISLATIVE BODY TO SPECIFY AN AMOUNT TO BE ALLOCATED FROM THE COUNTY GENERAL BUDGET FOR PAYMENT TO THOMAS & THOMAS LAW FIRM IN THEIR REPRESENTATION OF COUNTY ATTORNEY RHEUBIN M. TAYLOR IN THE LITIGATION INVOLVING THE COUNTY MAYOR'S UNILATERAL ATTEMPTS TO TERMINATE THE SERVICES OF RHEUBIN M. TAYLOR AS HAMILTON COUNTY ATTORNEY. WHEREAS, by passage of Resolution No. 123-12 this county legislative body agreed that the professional legal services of the Honorable Neil Thomas and the law firm of Thomas & Thomas as being rendered to County Attorney Rheubin M. Taylor in relation to the litigation among the County Mayor, said County Attorney, and this County Commission pertaining to the County Mayor's unilateral efforts to terminate the professional services of said County Attorney shall be paid as provided and invoiced from the general budget of the County; and WHEREAS, the Comptroller for the State of Tennessee has opined that said above-described process for paying said legal services is in violation of Tennessee Code Annotated Section 5-9-407(b )(2) in that it fails to state an estimated dollar amount to be appropriated from the County general budget; and WHEREAS, Attorney Neil Thomas has advised this body that presently his estimate of the cost for his services to the point where he anticipates his professional services to be needed is Sixty Thousand Dollars ($60,000.00), which this body deems as being reasonable and should be approved. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THIS COUNTY LEGISLATIVE BODY IN SESSION ASSEMBLED: That Resolution No. 123-12 is hereby amended to provide that the Hamilton County general budget is hereby amended by allocating the sum of Sixty Thousand Dollars ($60,000.00) to be used for the payment of legal fees and expenses as incurred and charged by the law firm of Thomas & Thomas in representing the County Attorney Rheubin M. Taylor in the present litigation among the County Mayor, the County Attorney, and this County Commission pertaining to the County Mayor's unilateral efforts to terminate the professional services of said County Attorney; said allocation may be further amended upon presentation by Attorney Thomas to this body as to any additional appropriation(s) as may be needed to accomplish the completion of said services; and all other provisions of Resolution No. 123-12 stand as previously adopted. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT THIS RESOLUTION TAKE EFFECT FROM AND AFTER ITS PASSAGE, THE PUBLIC WELFARE REQUIRING IT. Continuing the 64-year tradition of Roark and Conner descendants meeting to honor ancestors, the Roark-Conner Association has hosted a Virtual Reunion on its website: Roark-Conner.org. To participate, go to the home page and sign in until March 31.Featured Presentations of the Virtual Reunion highlight ancestors: Nell Margaret Roark, The Swafford Family and Dock Conners. There is also a tribute to Peggy Ann Defries McCallie, along with her memories of Birchwood/Salem area, Birchwood history documents written by Edith Bare McCallie, select R-CA Newsletter articles on Birchwood written from 1994-2022 and Salem Community Ancestry written by John J.Roark.The tradition began in the summer of 1959, when the Roark-Conner family held its first reunion in Birchwood, Hamilton County, Tennessee. Every year, descendants would gather in the Birchwood area to meet, remember ancestors, visit local historical sites, and share family history. The annual R-CA Reunion has become an important gathering of Roark and Conner descendants and relatives of local pioneer families who settled, during the mid to late 1830s, in eastern Hamilton County. In 2020, in response to COVID, the Virtual Reunion concept was initiated.For more information, call 202-669-1802. Questions or journalistic interest is welcome. The development office at Cambridge Square has announced two new commercial building projects to kick off the new year, bringing the total number of commercial structures in this mixed-use community to 16. Cambridge Square is located in Ooltewah, less than a quarter mile east of I-75 off exit 11. The project officially broke ground a little more than a decade ago. BP Construction has provided all development and contracting services at Cambridge Square, and all the buildings were designed by River Street Architecture. The two new construction starts include a 14,000 square foot building, now underway, on the central square and a 7,000 square foot building one block off the central square. Construction on the 7,000 square foot building is expected to begin late first quarter of 2023. The bottom floor of the 14,000 square foot building will be occupied by two existing Cambridge Square retail concepts (Barn Door Boutique and Sweet Es Childrens Boutique) whose businesses have grown to the extent that they require additional space. The second floor has been designed for flex office, targeting small business owners who have a need for professional space on a smaller scale. The building is scheduled for delivery in the fall of this year. The 7,000 square foot building is fully occupied prior to groundbreaking with two local concepts expanding their Chattanooga presence. Local restaurant owner Adriana Sanchez will expand her well-established Molcajete Mexican concept with a 2,500 square foot indoor/outdoor space. Ms. Sanchez opened her first Molcajete restaurant on Perimeter Drive in Chattanooga in 2014. Her plans for Cambridge include a casual lunch menu and a more upscale culinary experience in the evenings. A top-rated nail salon will occupy 3,000 square feet with an official announcement scheduled for later this year. At present, Cambridge Square is fully occupied with a total of 174,095 square feet of leased/occupied commercial space. Tenants include local restaurants, retailers, professional office, and healthcare providers. The tenant roster has grown organically over the last decade with local brands being courted to expand their market presence into Ooltewah. The success of Cambridge Square lies primarily with the tenants and the chance that many of them took with our development team, said Jim Cheney who oversees marketing for Cambridge Square. Our earliest conversations with some of the citys biggest brands were almost hypothetical based on the actual status of the development activity, and they took a chance that we would deliver on the vision we were pitching. Im proud to say that it has worked out well, but it took a lot of work on everyones behalf to get here. We are immensely grateful for our tenant relationships. In addition to the tenants, I think an enormous amount of credit goes to the larger community who stepped up and supported these new ventures from the very beginning. Its been amazing to see the appreciative nature and sustained loyalty for Cambridge Square. In a lot of ways, the projects evolution has been a shared effort between the developer and the people who frequent the businesses within the development. Their patronage has played a defining role in our long-term growth and the staying power of our concepts. At this stage, 75 percent of Cambridge Squares commercial district is complete or under construction. (The community also includes a residential district which will grow to more than 50 residences in 2023 with new construction starting at an estimated $325 a square foot.) There are four remaining commercial pads, said Mr. Cheney. Initially we anticipated these being office buildings, but the changes in the work environment over the last couple years have us rethinking that direction. There may be an opportunity for some of those pads to be absorbed into the residential district, but we have not made any final decisions on that front. We are keeping all our options open. A Knoxville man faces over 100 years in federal prison after being convicted by a jury on Wednesday for multiple robberies. DeShawn Whited, 25, was found guilty of four counts of Hobbs Act robbery, one count of attempted Hobbs Act robbery, one count of carjacking, four counts of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and one count of felon in possession of a firearm, following a four-day trial. Katherine A. Crytzer, United States District judge, presided over the trial. The armed robberies and the armed carjacking all occurred in Knoxville between Jan. 12-20, 2021 The evidence presented at trial included witness testimony, surveillance footage from multiple businesses across the Knoxville area, and physical, forensic and digital evidence, including items of clothing, firearms, cell phone information, and DNA. This prosecution is part of the Department of Justices comprehensive strategy to reduce violence and increase safety in our community by aggressively prosecuting criminals who engage in violent crime, said United States Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III. FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph E. Carrico said, The collaborative effort between the FBI and the Knoxville Police Department ensured this defendant was brought to justice and will no longer be able to threaten or harm the citizens and businesses in our community. We will continue to aggressively seek out those who prey upon innocent victims and hold them accountable. Chief Paul Noel, Knoxville Police Department, said, "Preventing violent crime and addressing it after it occurs will always be the top priority of the Knoxville Police Department. I am proud of the many members of our department who were involved in this investigation from the beginning and helped see it through to this conclusion. Their efforts and contributions ensured the removal of a violent individual from the streets of Knoxville." Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alan S. Kirk and Brent N. Jones represented the United States at trial. Law enforcement agencies participating in the joint investigation and prosecution of Whited include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Safe Streets Task Force and the Knoxville Police Departments Violent Crime Unit and Organized Crime Unit, as well as Knoxville Police Department Patrol Officers and Forensic Crime Scene Technicians. On Tuesday, Jan. 17, 11 rescue puppies from the Whitfield County Animal Shelter took flight to meet new families in Philadelphia, Pa. After weeks of hard work, Animal Shelter employees Whitney Weaver, Charles Dallas, Craig Trollinger and Director Diane Franklin were able to finally meet at the Dalton Airport with the two pilots that would transport the puppies to their new homes. We contacted a rescue that we work with in Philadelphia, and told them we had some animals that were in need. Originally, we had planned to transport them by van in late January, but in working with our receiving partner, we arranged Pilots to the Rescue, said Ms. Franklin. The majority of these puppies have been arranged for forever placement. Pilots to the Rescue is a non-profit, volunteer-driven, public benefit aviation organization. Their mission is to transport domestic, endangered animals and people at risk. With yesterdays trip, Mike Martins and Sebastian Rodriguez completed their fourth rescue flight, just this year. We do this to give dogs a second chance at life, said Mr. Rodriguez. We were extremely happy to work with PTTR and finally get to meet the pilots in person. They communicated with us the entire time, all the way to their landing in Pennsylvania, said Ms. Weaver. And all the puppies transported today have been vaccinated, spayed or neutered and microchipped. Sixty-six animals have been surrendered to the Animal Shelter since Jan. 1. We are always trying to get in touch with shelters to take in rescues that have been brought to us, said Ms. Franklin. But we want to reiterate, having to transport is not the answer spay and neuter is the answer. The Whitfield County Animal Shelter is offering $20 spay and neuter services to cats and dogs. To schedule an appointment, call the animal shelter at 706-278-2018. For more information on PTTR, visit: pilotstotherescue.org. Synthetic energy carriers are carbon-neutral and make renewable energy transportable and storable in the long term. Synthetically produced methane is one of them. The problem: The production involves rather high energy losses; moreover, existing processes require the methane to be purified. To change this, Empa researchers have developed a new, optimized reactor concept for methanation. A successful energy transition requires energy sources that are climate-friendly; this means: as few CO 2 emissions as possible ideally none at all during production and use. Synthetic energy carriers i.e. those that are obtained from renewable energy through chemical conversion processes are one of the most promising options. The use of such energy carriers only produces as much CO 2 as was previously removed from the atmosphere for their production. Artificially produced methane falls into this category. "Synthetic gas offers enormous potential if it is produced from atmospheric CO 2 and renewably generated hydrogen," explains Christian Bach, head of Empa's Automotive Powertrain Technologies lab. "However, for hydrogen production you need a lot of water as well as renewable electricity. In our mobility demonstrator move, we thus want to extract not only CO 2 but also the water for hydrogen production directly from the atmosphere with the help of a CO 2 collector from the ETH spin-off Climeworks." In future, such concepts could be implemented in desert regions lacking liquid water supplies. However, the production of synthetic methane from hydrogen and CO 2 so-called methanation has its pitfalls. This is because methane produced by such a catalytic process still contains hydrogen, which prevents it from being fed directly into the gas grid. Empa researchers Florian Kiefer, Marin Nikolic, Andreas Borgschulte and Panayotis Dimopoulos Eggenschwiler have therefore developed a new reactor concept, in which the formation of hydrogen on the product side is prevented. This leads to a simpler process control and a better suitability for dynamic operation, e.g. for coupling with unsteadily available renewable energies. The project is supported by the Canton of Zurich, Avenergy Suisse, Migros, Lidl Switzerland, Armasuisse, Swisspower and the ETH Board. Direct feed into the gas grid thanks to water adsorption At move, the hydrogen-free methane is produced by a process called sorption-enhanced methanation. The idea: The water produced during the reaction is continuously adsorbed on a porous catalyst support during methanation. Continuous removal of water results in just methane as a product in pure form eliminating the need to purify the (previous) product mixture. At the end of the reaction, the catalyst support material is dried again by lowering the pressure and is ready for the next reaction cycle. "This process is more flexible and stable than previous processes, but it also has some potential for energy savings because we can run it at a lower pressure and do without hydrogen separation and recirculation. However, a precise assessment of the energy efficiency will only be possible once the demonstrator is in full operation," explains Florian Kiefer, project leader for sorption-enhanced methanation at move. From laboratory to industrial plant Florian Kiefer and his team spent around three years developing a new reactor concept with zeolite pellets that act as a porous catalyst carrier and simultaneously adsorb the water produced during the methanation reaction. The focus was also on upscaling the process in other words, a concept for how this process can be implemented for large-scale plants. To this end, Empa collaborated with various partners from industry. The regeneration time, i.e. the time needed to dry the reactor, is crucial for the reactor design and for process planning. To ensure continuous methane production, at least two reactors must operate alternately. Heat management is also crucial for the drying of the reactors, either by removing heat from the reactor or by storing heat internally in the catalyst bed. Kiefer's team has already filed a patent in this area. For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russias invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes. Now that line is starting to soften. After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Ukraine may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases. The moderation in position has come about as the Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Ukraines position in any future negotiations. In addition, fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed, U.S. officials and experts said although they cautioned that the risk remained. The new thinking on Crimea annexed illegally by Russia in 2014 shows how far Biden administration officials have come from the start of the war, when they were wary of even acknowledging publicly that the United States was providing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for Ukrainian troops. But over the course of the conflict, the United States and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing Javelins and Stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems, armored fighting vehicles and even some Western tanks to give Ukraine the capacity to strike against Russias onslaught. Now the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula that President Vladimir Putin of Russia views as an integral part of his quest to restore past Russian glory. U.S. officials are discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of U.S.-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley Fighting Vehicles, to possibly target Putins hard-fought control over a land bridge that functions as a critical supply route connecting Crimea to Russia via the Russian-occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol. However, President Joe Biden is not yet ready to give Ukraine the long-range missile systems that it would need to attack Russian installations on the peninsula. Ukrainian officials have long insisted that Crimea is an important target for their attacks and that continuing military pressure on Russian bases there is a significant part of their strategy. Ukrainian military officials have also discussed with U.S. officials the importance of increasing pressure on Russias rear echelon in Crimea, which supports military operations elsewhere in Ukraine. With the Black Sea fleet, a major Russian air base, command posts and logistics hubs supporting Russian operations in southern Ukraine, the peninsula represents a major focus in Ukraines battle plans. In deciding to give the Bradleys to Ukraine, the Biden administration moved closer to providing Ukraine with something for which senior Ukrainian officials have been imploring the United States for months: direct U.S. help for Ukraine to go on the offense including targeting Crimea. The Bradleys are armored personnel carriers mounted with powerful 25 mm guns and guided missiles that can take on Russian tanks. Frederick Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and former top U.S. Army commander in Europe, said that in the coming months, the Bradleys could be used by Ukrainian troops to help sever the land bridge. Being able to rely on military bases in Crimea for staging was the primary reason Russian forces were able to seize land in southern Ukraine last year, a U.S. official said. Making those forces less capable is a key battlefield goal of the Ukrainians. Ukraine could use Bradleys to move forces down major roads, such as the M14, which connects Kherson, Melitopol and Mariupol, added Seth Jones, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Any Ukrainian infantry advancing through these areas would face significant fire from Russian positions, and Bradleys offer helpful firepower and protection for troops. The Bradleys, along with British tanks and the armored combat vehicles that France and Germany have agreed to send, could be the vanguard of an armored force that Ukraine could employ in a counteroffensive this winter or spring, government and independent analysts say. We think now is the right time to intensify our support for Ukraine, Britains foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said Tuesday while on a visit to Washington. We cant allow this to drag on and become a kind of First World War attritional-type stalemate. The British Defense Ministry said in a Twitter message last week that in recent weeks, Russia had bolstered defensive fortifications in central Zaporizhzhia, a province in southern Ukraine near the land bridge and where Russia maintains a large force. If Ukraine does focus on reclaiming Zaporizhzhia, then preliminary attacks could include hitting targets in nearby Crimea. A major Ukrainian breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia would seriously challenge the viability of Russias land bridge,' the British assessment said. Ukraine also has U.S.-provided HIMARS, long-range rocket systems. With the reclaiming last year of Kherson in the south, Ukrainian forward lines can now use them to hit the main supply routes coming out of Crimea, one U.S. military official said in an interview. This week, top U.S. and Ukrainian commanders will hold a high-level planning meeting in Germany to game out the offensive planning, another senior U.S. official said. The drill, the official said, is meant to align Ukraines battle plans with the kinds of weapons and supplies NATO allies are contributing. Ukrainian officials fear their country cannot survive years of a stalemated conflict while Russia continues to pound cities and towns. So they see little choice but to target Crimea and put it in jeopardy, a senior U.S. official said, noting that the issue has come up at recent high-level meetings at the White House. Still, despite the additional weaponry, the Biden administration does not think that Ukraine can take Crimea militarily and indeed, there are still worries that such a move could drive Putin to retaliate with an escalatory response. But, officials said, their assessment now is that Russia needs to believe that Crimea is at risk, in part to strengthen Ukraines position in any future negotiations. By demonstrating an ability to strike in Crimea, U.S. officials say, Ukraine could show that Russian control is not established. The Biden administration also increasingly believes that hitting Russias rear lines coming out of Crimea could severely damage Moscows ability to push its front lines farther, officials say. Without Crimea, the whole thing falls apart, said Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Ukraine during the Obama administration. Contributing to the shifting thinking is a dampening of fears that targeting Crimea would drive Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon, officials say. It feels to me like, increasingly, the administration is recognizing that the threat of Russian escalation is perhaps not what they thought it was earlier, Hodges said. While Ukrainian strikes inside Russia proper still bring escalatory concerns from U.S. officials, Moscows reaction to periodic Ukrainian special operations or covert attacks in Crimea including against Russian air bases, command posts and ships in the Black Sea fleet has been tempered. There is more clarity on their tolerance for damage and attacks, said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corp. Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin. Still, Putin and the Russian public view Crimea as part of Russia, so strikes there could solidify Russian support for the war. For their part, U.S. officials say they do not know how Putin will react if Ukraine attacks Crimea using U.S.-supplied weapons. Massicot said none of Ukraines handful of attacks on Crimea so far have threatened Russias ability to maintain its claim on the peninsula. So they may not be an accurate test of Russias resolve on this point, she said. Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated standing U.S. policy on Ukraine that the Biden administration was seeking to help the country take back territory seized during and after the Russian invasion last year. Our focus is on continuing to do what weve been doing, which is to make sure that Ukraine has in its hands what it needs to defend itself, what it needs to push back against the Russian aggression, to take back territory thats been seized from it since Feb. 24, Blinken told the Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit. By Blinkens definition, that territory does not include Crimea. That position, critics say, has largely given the Russian military an untouchable sanctuary from which to attack Ukraine. We have in essence put limits on Ukraine, saying this war is going to be fought on your soil and not on Russian soil, said Philip Breedlove, a retired four-star Air Force general who was NATOs supreme allied commander for Europe when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. To give Russia sanctuary from which to fight, without fear of reproach, is absolutely absurd. It makes no military sense. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. c.2022 The New York Times Company You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close We have all heard of peeling masks, sheet masks, charcoal masks, and clay masks. But, if you thought there could not be any more facial-based skincare options out there, think again. One emerging facial treatment actually uses 24-karat gold magnets in order to sculpt and repair skin. Known as a Synergistic Signature Qi Facial, the treatment was developed by Qi Beauty an Australian skincare brand that focuses on acupuncture philosophy and quantum technology. The facial is currently only offered by a few U.S. estheticians. In fact, Madalaina Conti who owns a studio in Manhattan is the only esthetician in New York State doing so. During the facial, numerous 24-karat gold-plated micromagnets are placed in a specific arrangement based on your specific skin concerns. These micromagnets are supposed to excite cellular activity, and this process may help boost hydration and encourage healthier cell turnover, and increase the absorption of serums and moisturizers applied during the treatment. Conti specifically customizes each facial depending on her clients needs and provides additional sculpting, drainage massages, and Gua Sha treatments. She believes this is a more holistic approach than other treatments on the market, which she claims require creating controlled damage to the skin and are not beneficial in the long term. Twenty-four-karat gold-plated micromagnets are applied to the skin to create a custom electromagnetic matrix. We are generating the energy or qi required for biological recovery, Conti explained. Sign up for Chip Chicks newsletter and get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. The data in the new Pew Research Center study on Christians and the environment is conflicting. How can we best respond? By nature, Christians have two superpowers. The first is the ability to walk into the unknown without fear. Abraham did this; David did this. Its what Jesus called all of his disciples to do. Its what Paul and the early Christians did. As Paul described in 2 Timoth y: for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Christians have a long tradition of facing uncertainty without fear, because we know we dont go alone. God is with us. The second superpower is facing our flaws and limitations without despair. Christianity rests on a long tradition of recognizing and remembering our faults. One thing that makes the Bible unique from other ancient texts is that it carefully records the shortcomings, not just the strengths, of its heroes. Christians are not afraid to face the dark side of our choices. The root of our faith is found in the recognition that when we choose to follow our own wisdom instead of Gods wisdom, we mess things up. However, God does not give up on us. This is the reason for Jesus and the hope offered through Jesus resurrection. When we follow Jesus and seek out the wisdom that comes from God, we become people who carry love, joy, and peace. Its a beautiful life thats not contingent on circumstance; He shepherds us through whatever may come. In theory, Christians should be excellent at hearing information that shows we might have made mistakes that need correcting. We should be the first to step into the unknown and build a new and hopeful future. Yet today, we need a reminder to exercise our superpowers. We should be a little more Superman and a little less Clark Kent. Conflicting Results The Pew Research Center released a new study over Thanksgiving, which focused on where religion in America meets climate change. The study found that the most religious Christians are also the least likely to take climate change seriously. Interestingly, these same Christians also were very likely to agree that God gave people a duty to protect and care for the Earth. I imagine these same Christians would also agree that we are called to care for our neighbors, particularly the worlds most vulnerable. Weather is becoming more extreme everywhere. I have friends who had to flee rapidly-moving wildfires in California. My father-in-law in Arizona is experiencing more extreme heat days as he grows older. Growing up in Florida, I remember a few hurricane scares, but nothing like what kids are experiencing today. Some of these hurricanes will be big, like the one we saw earlier this year. Even if we lack fear about the impact that climate change will bring to our own lives, as Christians, we cant overlook the vulnerable neighbors we are called to love. My job has led me to spend time in rural communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These places have high poverty rates, and many people depend on the land for a living. The families who live there often have little margin, and a bad year will have significant consequences. Climate change is rapidly and significantly elevating their risk. We have a critical window of opportunity in the next few years. If we act now, we can limit the impact climate change will have on all our global neighbors and future generations. If we dont, its almost certain that life on Earth will change irrevocably. What Christians Can Do As Christians, we should be on the frontlines: the first to step up and face the realization that the world weve developed has had some unintended side effects. We should face the uncertainty of what change will bring, while also knowing that God will be with us. We need to lean on Gods wisdom, which has always been better than our own. There is still room for creativity and human ingenuity. We know that we need to slow or stop emitting carbon. We know that we need to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. There are many natural and technological ways that we can do this. We need creative thinking and collaboration that draws in many perspectives. And I hope to see Christians taking the lead. The environment is not a partisan issue. It is also not a threat we can continue to ignore. Lets unleash our superpowers and step into the future with hope and wisdom. As stewards of creation, lets reimagine a healthy world as God intended, full of abundance and joy. *If youre struggling with the reality of climate change or the role of Christians in the environment, we recommend resources from world-renowned climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and pastors wife. For a quick overview, watch this episode of her PBS series Global Weirding called, The Bible doesnt talk about climate change, right? or her book, Saving Us. From a theological perspective, we also love Stewards of Eden by Sandra Richter, Ph.D., or the more textbook-style Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World by Jonathan and Douglas Moo. Support the work of HDI in the world. Your gift will enable researchers and students navigate humanitys most complex and catastrophic challenges. Christi Huizenga Renaud is vice president of marketing & development for Plant With Purpose, a Christian organization that works at the nexus of environmental damage and global poverty in nine countries around the world. She is grateful for the opportunity to use her skills to help heal the planet by giving farming families the tools needed to grow beyond poverty. Last summer, I was on vacation with my family in Seville, Spain, and we ordered a traditional paella. To my surprise and amusement, it arrived at our table topped with a rabbit head. Our meal reminded me of the popular Sichuan delicacy of spicy rabbit head and brought back memories of my childhood. I grew up in Chengdu, a city known for its mouthwatering food. We were poor, but on occasion, my grandma would buy me a rabbit head to snack on as a treat. It cost only six Chinese cents, but it would bring me so much joy. According to the Chinese zodiac, 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit. The dinner on the Chinese New Year Eve is the most important meal of the year for Chinese. I wondered on that evening this year how many Chinese families feasts will include rabbit. Of course, not all Chinese eat rabbit head, as the sight of it on a table is not necessarily all that appealing. In China, the lunar New Years Day is the first day of chun jie, or Spring Festival, which lasts for a half month. This year, Chinese New Years Day happens to fall on a Sunday (January 22). I wondered if Chinese church pastors and leaders would preach about the Chinese New Year and if they would mention rabbit in their sermons. Christ has made rabbits clean A few Chinese preachers I spoke with told me that they would likely mention the lunar New Year and say a few blessing words, but they do not plan to preach specifically about rabbit. It is not unusual for Chinese preachers to give a sermon about the lunar New Year around Spring Festival. But older generation Christians in conservative Chinese house churches would regard the Chinese zodiac as a superstition that is harmful to the spiritual life of believers. Therefore, sermons mentioning the Chinese New Year would typically not touch on the animal of the year. Some of such sermons would mention the Old Testament Passover story because of its connection to lunar New Year and to the Chinese practices of celebrating chun jie, such as putting chun lian (red couplets of blessing words) on both sides of the doorframereminding people of the Israelites putting blood on both sides of the doorframe on Passover night (Ex. 12:22). Other Chinese pastors may preach from the Chinese New Year custom of putting on new clothes to the biblical teaching for Christians to put on the new self (Eph. 4:24) and clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 13:14). But no preacher would preach about rabbit just because its the Year of the Rabbit. There is simply not much for a Christian to preach about rabbit. There are only two verses in the Chinese Bible that mention rabbit (Lev. 11:6 and Deut. 14:7), so its too difficult to connect rabbit to the Christian faith without stretching it. (Wen-lian Chang, a well-known Taiwanese Christian writer and former environmental science professor, did write an article about the uncleanness of rabbit as food, but he was giving scientific explanations for the uncleanness, saying that rabbit carries the most parasites and viruses in its body among the worlds grass-fed animals.) Article continues below However, this is not to say that the long-eared animal has nothing to do with the Christian faith. Image: plej92 / Getty Both verses that mentioned rabbit are part of the Mosaic laws about food in the Old Testament. Both say that rabbits are unclean, just like pigs, so their meats should not be eaten as food. This would easily bring up a faith-related question: Arent Christians supposed to obey Gods laws? How can Christians eat rabbit or pork (the most consumed kind of meat for Chinese), against the food laws in the Old Testament? The answer to this question is in the Gospel of Christ. The key to understanding the Mosaic laws is that they are the shadow of Christ, as Vern Poythress explained in The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses. The ceremonial laws of cleanness and uncleanness in the Old Testament signify and foreshadow the way in which God cleanses sin. But Gods redemption is fulfilled by Christ and his crucifixion. Consequently, all foods are cleansed by the Word of God and by prayer now offered in the name and power of Christ. The Mosaic laws are a foretaste of the saving grace of Jesus Christ as the ultimate atoning and redeeming sacrifice. That is why Jesus, who told the disciples he came not to abolish but to fulfill the Old Testament law (Matt. 5:17-18), taught them that all foods were to be reckoned clean (Mark 7:19). In Acts 10, God told Peter three times to eat all kinds of animals, including those that the disciple considered unclean, and indicated he should not call anything impure that God has made clean. (Acts 10:15) The apostle Paul said that although the heretic hypocritical liars ordered believers to abstain from certain foods, everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:2-4). Article continues below So, the essence of Christian faith is not about the religious regulations of not eating this or not touching that. The Gospel of Christ has set us free, and we have freedom of conscience when it comes to food. Although eating and drinking is taken seriously for the Spring Festival celebration in the Chinese culture, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17). This also means that we should not abuse our Christian freedom. I have the right to do anything, you saybut not everything is beneficial (1 Cor. 6:12). If eating rabbit head causes my brother or sister to fall (because it is too gross or unhealthy for them), I will not eat rabbit head. The Good News overcomes bad astrology It is customary for the Chinese to say blessings related to the zodiac animal of the lunar year, but for the Year of the Rabbit, a lot of the popular contemporary sayings are just homophonic puns containing tu (), the Chinese word for rabbit. They dont have any zodiac significance or reference. (And some of them may not be appropriate for Christian preachers to use in their sermon.) The omen of the rabbit in Chinese zodiac mythology is actually not auspicious. Many of the online zodiac-based, fortune-telling tips about the Year of the Rabbit warn readers about the dangers of misfortune brought by the rabbit for mysterious astrological reasons. Readers are cautioned to avoid offending the God of the Year (tai sui) because this particular Year of the Rabbit brings with it double bad luck that only repeats itself once every 60 years. Newly-weds are advised not to have new babies born in the Year of the Rabbit. Thankfully, few Chinese, especially among the young generation, take such astrological advice seriously. But Chinese people in China have experienced three difficult years due to COVID and their governments response to the pandemic. The danger is such negative superstitious information could cause psychological damage and pull people deeper into a pit of despair. For us Chinese Christians, the good news is that the Gospel truth has set us free from the fear of misfortune. Because of Christs crucifixion and resurrection, our sins are forgiven, and we now have the Christian freedom from the bondage of sin and from cultural superstitions. The plans God has for us are plans to prosper us and not to harm us (Jer. 29:11). Just like Christ has made all food clean, he has also given us the ultimate blessing of salvation that overcomes bad omens. So, at the start of this Year of the Rabbit, let us share the real good news: Go ahead, enjoy eating rabbitor beef steak, or healthy Chinese vegetables of your choice. Gladly and boldly ignore the superstitious warnings of zodiac misfortunes. And give thanks to Jesus, the source of true heavenly blessings. [ This article is also available in and . ] A Superior Court judge has decided against imposing a recommended suspension or other professional discipline against one of Alex Jones Texas lawyers who was involved in the improper disclosure of confidential medical and other records belonging to the relatives of Sandy Hook shooting victims. Andino Reynal, who defended Jones in a Sandy Hook defamation case in Texas last summer and was, for a brief period, expected to defend Jones in Connecticut, had faced a suspension of up to three months for the records sharing on the recommendation of the state judicial branch disciplinary office. But Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis, who presided over the Connecticut trial and whose comprehensive confidentiality orders were violated by the records disclosure, said she was not sanctioning Reynal because of his remorse, his attempt to mitigate potential damage had the materials traveled beyond a small circle of lawyers and his cooperation with her investigation. Earlier this month, Bellis imposed a six-month suspension from the practice of law on Jones Connecticut lawyer, Norm Pattis, who she has characterized as primarily responsible for the sharing of thousands of pages of materials on which she had placed under unusually restrictive confidentiality orders. Bellis said it was the second time Pattis violated the confidentiality order she imposed to protect Sandy Hook families from misuse of highly personal medical, psychiatric and financial records The records never became public. But through what Bellis described as Pattis carelessness and his reckless violation of her orders, the materials contained initially on a portable computer hard drive, ended up briefly in the possession of three Texas lawyers, all of whom were involved in some fashion in the litigation there concerning Jones. All the Texas lawyers have said they did not look at the records, which were quickly destroyed. Pattis mailed the computer hard drive last summer to one of Jones Texas bankruptcy lawyers at that lawyers request. The bankruptcy lawyer gave it to Reynal, who was defending Jones in a Texas court from a defamation suit brought by the parents of a Sandy Hook first grader killed in the Dec. 14, 2012 elementary school shootings. Reynal said one of his clerks formatted the material on a computer server in a fashion that inadvertently made it accessible to Mark Bankston, the lawyer suing Jones in the Texas Sandy Hook case. Bankston was told that disclosure of the material to him was inadvertent, but revealed the disclosure anyway a week or so later in a dramatic courtroom exchange. Bellis quickly opened an inquiry into the disclosure and asked the state office that regulates professional conduct by lawyers to run it. Brian Staines, the chief state disciplinary counsel, recommended a six-month suspension for Pattis and three months for Reynal. Bellis imposed the Pattis suspension on Jan. 5 and ordered it to begin immediately. Last week, the state Appellate Court granted a request by Pattis that it be postponed to allow him to appeal. Bellis and Pattis clashed often during the contentious, now five-year long, Connecticut defamation case that ended last fall in a potentially record-setting $1.4 billion verdict against Jones. Pattis has been sharply critical of her rulings and at one point asked for her disqualification. When Bellis ordered Pattis into court last year to explain why he should not be disciplined, he asserted his fifth amendment right against self incrimination, saying he could have faced a criminal violation for improper disclosure of medical records. FILE Norm Pattis, attorney for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, gives his opening statement in Jones trial at Waterbury Superior Court, Tuesday morning, Sept. 13, 2022, in Waterbury, Conn. Pattis, on Thrusday, Jan. 5, 2023, has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly giving other Jones attorneys in Texas confidential documents, including the medical records of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.(H John Voorhees II/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File) Reynal, in contrast, flew from Texas to Connecticut, cooperated and expressed his embarrassment over the release something Bellis said was a factor in her decision not to impose a suspension. Reynal did not escape completely: If he appears in the future as a visiting lawyer in Connecticut, he must notify the court of her decision that his involvement in the records sharing violated the rules of professional legal conduct involving competence and the safeguarding of records. This is the third article in a short Genesis January series to help people explore the complexity of the Bible at the start of a new year. We live in a restless generation. My husband and I have moved 15 times in 24 years of marriage. And while that number is higher than average, were not alone. Its somewhat unusual to stay put in the same community and the same line of work for more than 10 years. People these days move for job or school opportunities, marriage, or proximity to family. Some of us relocate simply to find a community that better fits our budgets or ideals. Sometimes our migrations are precipitated by conflict or concerndivorce, a health crisis, an age-related decline, or an escape from violence. We find similar relocation themes in the Old Testament. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob moved their families a lot. If youre reading through Genesis this month, youve probably noticed. Their reasons for moving are different than ours, but they can still teach us something about how to live well. Unless youve fled with your belongings from a war-torn area, it will be difficult to imagine the arduous journey Abrahams family faced as they traversed ancient Mesopotamia. They couldnt rent a U-Haul truck. They traveled in tents, carrying everything they owned and leading flocks of sheep and goats. These herds were their key to survival, providing milk to drink, meat to eat, and animal skins to make water-resistant tents. Keeping these flocks alive was a perpetual challenge in a region with little vegetation and few bodies of fresh wateralmost entirely dependent on rainfall. Im already tired just thinking about it. They couldnt pop in to Walmart for supplies. Everything they needed had to be made from scratch or bartered from those they met. Living off the land is one thing when you can fence off your acreage and cultivate fields of your own. Its quite another when you live as a guest on lands belonging to others. For Abraham and his family, getting along with neighboring groups was essential. I just returned from a trip to Israel, where we traveled the land in a temperature-controlled tour bus with cushioned seats and (most importantly) Wi-Fi. Bottled water was readily available whenever we were thirsty. As someone who teaches and writes about the Torahthe first five books of the BibleI was reminded again how few of these narratives take place in the land now known as Israel. With one exception in Numbers 13, all of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy take place outside the Promised Land. Article continues below That leaves Genesis, for which the land of Canaan seems hardly more than a waystation. Abraham arrives there and leaves again in Genesis 12. He returns in chapter 13, negotiating with his nephew about where they should both live because their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. And quarreling arose between Abrams herders and Lots (vv. 67). This is the first of many quarrels we read about overgrazing and water rights. In Genesis 14:14, we learn that Abraham has 318 fighting men in his household, so if youve pictured Abraham and Sarah alone with a few sheep in the desert, youll need to recalibrate your imagination. Including women and children, Abraham presides over a camp of at least a thousand people. No doubt he possesses many thousands of animals to provide for their needs. By chapter 20, Abraham and his entourage have moved again for reasons were not told. We can only guess hes searching for enough land and water for his herds and tents. Despite his great wealth, Abraham is still a visitor in Canaan. When Sarah dies in chapter 23, Abraham buys a cave in which to bury her, and by the end of his life, her grave is still the only land he owns. Isaacs troubles are similar to his fathers. His increasing wealth creates conflict with the Philistines he lives among. Envious of his success, they clog his wells (Gen. 26:1415). Whoever controls the water controls the land. Isaac moves and repeatedly finds water, but the locals keep claiming it for themselves (vv. 1722). Finding a peaceful place to live is a perpetual challenge. Isaacs son Jacob leaves Canaan to find a wife and stays for many years in Mesopotamia. He returns in Genesis 32 with an entourage of his own: two wives, two concubines, 11 sons, numerous servants, and sizable herds of cattle, donkeys, sheep, and goats (vv. 45). He declines an invitation to live near his brother Esau, which seems wise enough, given what we know about the difficulty of living side by side in a land of limited resources. Jacobs sons experience sibling rivalry of their own, although this time the trouble is not water but rather favoritism, as the story of Joseph reveals. After Joseph goes to Egypt as a victim of human trafficking, the rest of the family follows due to famine in Canaan (again, water issues). The Book of Genesis ends here: in Egypt. Article continues below Surprisingly, all these moves are a feature, not a bug for Abrahams family. It makes them who they are. Abrahams transience becomes part of his legacy. Toward the end of Deuteronomy, in Moses last speech to the Israelites before their entry into Canaan, he instructs them to bring God the first of their crops as a thank offering (Deut. 26). As they do, theyre supposed to recite their history, beginning with this statement: My father was a wandering Aramean (v. 5). Abrahams moves are such an important part of the Israelites story that they are commanded to recount them every year. Having been nomads, theyre to cherish the land with gratitude but not keep it to themselves. Moses instructs them to designate a tithe of their produce every third year for those without land: the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied (v. 12). Israels law is filled with reminders of their immigrant status. Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt (Ex. 23:9). Their experience as outsiders living on the edge of survival is meant to shape their ethics by fostering empathy. Those of us whove moved know how much work it takes to start over in a new community. Moving carries a litany of losses and a significant expenditure of energy, but the gains can be even greater. Our reasons for relocating are different than Abrahams, but those experiences can still shape our compassionate responses to newcomers in our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and churches. And like the Israelites, were called to show gracious hospitality to others on the move. Carmen Joy Imes is an associate professor of Old Testament at Biola Universitys Talbot School of Theology and the author of Bearing Gods Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. Read the other pieces in the series: [ This article is also available in espanol. ] | Image: Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Image: Benne Ochs / Getty Images Christian persecution is worst in these 50 countries, according to the Open Doors 2023 World Watch List, now in its 30th year. More than 5,600 Christians were killed for their faith last year. More than 2,100 churches were attacked or closed. More than 124,000 Christians were forcibly displaced from their homes because of their faith, and almost 15,000 became refugees. Sub-Saharan Africathe epicenter of global Christianityis now also the epicenter of violence against Christians, as Islamist extremism has spread well beyond Nigeria. And North Korea is back at No. 1, according to the 2023 World Watch List (WWL), the latest annual accounting from Open Doors of the top 50 countries where it is most dangerous and difficult to be a Christian. The concerning tallies of martyrdoms and church attacks are actually lower than in last years report. But Open Doors emphasizes they are an absolute minimum figure, and is quick to note the data decline does not suggest real improvements in religious freedom. For example, the reduction in church closures was due in large part to Chinese officials having closed almost 7,000 churches over the prior two years. And the drop of Afghanistan from No. 1 last year to No. 9 this year offers little cheer because its driven by how most Afghan Christians went deep into hiding or fled overseas after the Talibans takeover. Overall, and same as last year, 360 million Christians live in nations with high levels of persecution or discrimination. Thats 1 in 7 Christians worldwide, including 1 in 5 believers in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia, and 1 in 15 in Latin America. And for only the third time in three decades of tracking, all 50 nations scored high enough to register very high persecution levels on Open Doors matrix of more than 80 questions. So did 5 more nations that fell just outside the cutoff. Islamic extremism continues to cause the most persecution (31 nations), especially in sub-Saharan Africa where Open Doors fears Nigeria will soon trigger a vast humanitarian catastrophe across the continent. Researchers also noted how China has increased digital restrictions and surveillance and is forging a network of nations seeking to redefine human rightsaway from universal standards and religious freedoms. And a fourth Latin American country, Nicaragua, entered the list as authoritarian governments increasingly view Christians as voices of opposition. The purpose of the annual WWL rankingswhich have chronicled how North Korea has competition as persecution gets worse and worseis to guide prayers and to aim for more effective anger while showing persecuted believers that they are not forgotten. The 2023 version tracks the time period from October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022, and is compiled from grassroots reports by more than 4,000 Open Doors workers across more than 60 countries. Todays report also marks 30 years of the list, first created in 1993 after the Iron Curtain fell. What has Open Doors learned? First, its clear that persecution continues to worsen. The number of countries hitting the WWL threshold to be tracked has risen from 40 in 1993 to 76 today, and the average country score has gone up 25 percent. Yet the biggest threat to the church is not external but internal, concludes Frans Veerman, Open Doors managing director of research. And 1 Corinthians 12 means no believer should suffer alone. The biggest threat to Christianity, he said, is that persecution brings isolation, and when it keeps going on incessantly it may cause loss of hope. While violence and pressure lead to significant trauma and loss, Veerman noted how remarkably many respondents to our questionnaires keep on saying that the biggest threat does not come from the outside but from within the church: Will the next generation be prepared for the kind of persecution we are witnessing? Are they strong in their faith and in knowing Christ and the gospel? This shows that the level of resilience of the church is as defining for the future of the church in a country as is the level of persecution, he said. So the biggest threat to the church in countries with persecution is decrease of resilience caused by incessant persecution and the feeling of being forsaken by the rest of the body of Christ. After three decades of research, Open Doors has learned that such needed resilience is found by being anchored in the Word of God and in prayer, said Veerman. Also by being courageous, as the persecuted church is most often active in spreading the gospel and vital and growing against the odds. In short, the persecuted church has taught Open Doors the truth of 1 Corinthians 12:26: If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Where are Christians most persecuted today? Afghanistan does not represent the only substantial change in this years rankings. Cuba moved to No. 27, up from No. 37, due to the intensification of repressive tactics against Christian leaders and activists opposing Communist principles. Prior to widespread demonstrations in 2021, it didnt even rank. Burkina Faso moved to No. 23, up from No. 32, due to increased jihadist activity, exacerbated by similar instability in neighboring Sahel nations. Mozambique moved to No. 32, up from No. 41, due to Islamic militancy in its northern region. And Colombia moved to No. 22, up from No. 30, due to targeted violence against Christians by criminal gangs. Comoros joined the list at No. 42, rising 11 spots due to increased government paranoia (only foreigners there are allowed religious freedom). And Nicaragua joined the list for the first time, rising 11 spots to No. 50 due to growing dictatorial repression, especially against the Roman Catholic Church. Where Its Hardest to Follow Jesus: 1. North Korea 2. Somalia 3. Yemen 4. Eritrea 5. Libya 6. Nigeria 7. Pakistan 8. Iran 9. Afghanistan 10. Sudan 11. India Overall, other than Afghanistan dropping eight slots, the top 10 nations mostly shuffled positions from last year [see sidebar]. Sudan rejoined the group at No. 10, bumping India which at No. 11 still scores within Open Doors most extreme level of persecution. Surprisingly removed in 2021 from the US State Departments annual listing of Countries of Particular Concern after finally being added in 2020, Nigeria was again given special attention in the Open Doors report, which noted: Violence against Christians is most extreme in Nigeria where militants from the Fulani, Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and others conduct raids on Christian communities, killing, maiming, raping and kidnapping for ransom or sexual slavery. This year has also seen this violence spill over into the Christian-majority south of the nation. Nigerias government continues to deny this is religious persecution, so violations of Christians' rights are carried out with impunity. Repeating last years performance, Africas most populous nation ranked No. 1 in the WWL subcategories of Christians killed, abducted, sexually assaulted or harassed, forcibly married, or physically or mentally abused, as well as ranked No. 1 in homes and businesses attacked for faith-based reasons. It again ranked No. 2 in the subcategories of church attacks and internal displacement. Violations of religious freedom in Nigeria are emblematic of a rapidly growing Islamist presence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mali rose to No. 17 from No. 24. Burkina Faso rose to No. 23 from No. 32, and Niger rose to No. 28 from No. 33. Farther south, the Central African Republic (CAR) rose to No. 24 from No. 31; Mozambique rose to No. 32 from No. 41; and DRC rose to No. 37 from No. 40. Countries with Christian majorities rank relatively low in the top 50, and include Colombia (No. 22), Central African Republic (No. 24), Cuba (No. 27), Ethiopia (No. 39), the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC (No. 37), Mozambique (No. 32), Mexico (No. 38), and Cameroon (No. 45), and Nicaragua (No. 50). (Kenya and Tanzania fall just short of making the 2023 list.) Regarding Latin America, Open Doors noted: Direct government oppression against Christians seen as voices of opposition is rife in Nicaragua (No. 50), Venezuela (No. 64), and Cuba (No. 27), where Christian leaders were imprisoned without trial for their part in last years demonstrations. In many countries in Latin America, organized crime has taken hold, especially in rural areas for Christians who speak out against the cartels activities. Of the top 50 nations: 11 have extreme levels of persecution and 39 have very high levels. Another five nations outside the top 50 also qualify as very high: Kenya, Kuwait, Tanzania, United Arab Emirates, and Nepal. (Then OD tracks another 21 with high levels. The only nations to rise in level were Nicaragua and Sudan, while Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka were the only nations to drop in level.) 19 are in Africa, 27 are in Asia, and 4 are in Latin America. 34 have Islam as a main religion, 4 have Buddhism, 1 has Hinduism, 1 has atheism, 1 has agnosticismand 10 have Christianity. (Nigeria is 50/50 Muslim-Christian.) The 2023 list included two new countries: Comoros and Nicaragua. Two countries dropped off the list: Kuwait and Nepal. Where Christians Face the Most Violence: 1. Nigeria 2. Pakistan 3. Cameroon 4. India 5. Burkina Faso 6. Central African Republic 7. Mozambique 8. Democratic Republic of Congo 9. Tanzania 10. Myanmar 11. Colombia 12. Niger Open Doors reporting period: Oct. 2021 to Sept. 2022 Other noteworthy increases include Mali at No. 17, up from No. 24, due to threats from jihadist and mercenary fighters in the context of a weak government that links some Christians to Western interests. Similarly, fellow Sahel nation Niger rose to No. 28 from No. 33, due to ongoing attacks by Islamist militants. And in North America, Mexico rose to No. 38 from No. 43, due to criminal violence against Christians perceived to be a threat to illegal activity, as well as social pressures faced by indigenous believers who refuse to follow ancestral customs. Not all noteworthy movement was negative. Open Doors noted the promotion of greater tolerance in a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain and the UAE. Qatar dropped 16 spots from No. 18 to No. 34, due to no churches being closed last year. (However, many previously closed house churches remained shut.) Egypt dropped 15 spots from No. 20 to No. 35, due to fewer reported attacks on Christian properties. Oman dropped for similar reasons from No. 36 to No. 47, and Jordan dropped from No. 39 to No. 49 due to no reports of Christians forced from their homes. How are Christians persecuted in these countries? Open Doors tracks persecution across six categoriesincluding both social and governmental pressure on individuals, families, and congregationsand has a special focus on women. Many categories saw decreases this year, though some hit record highs. When violence is isolated as a category, the top 10 persecutors shift dramaticallyonly Nigeria, Pakistan, and India remain [see sidebar]. In fact, 15 nations are deadlier for Christians than North Korea. (Uganda saw the highest increase in violence scored, up 3.1 points alongside Honduras, but both were not in top 50. After Afghanistans 10 point drop, Qatar saw the biggest decrease in violence, followed by Sri Lanka and Egypt. Among the total nations tracked, 12 saw no change in violence score, 27 lowered, and 37 increased.) Martyrdoms dropped by more than 275 from the prior year, as Open Doors tallied 5,621 Christians killed for their faith during the reporting period. Representing a decrease of 5 percent, the toll remains the second highest since the 2016 record of 7,106 deaths. Nigeria accounted for 89 percent of the total. Where Christians Were Martyred Most: 1. Nigeria: 5,014 2. Name withheld: 100* 3. Mozambique: 100* 4. Democratic Republic of Congo 100* 5. Central African Republic: 61 6. Myanmar: 42 7. Colombia: 21 8. India: 17 9. Mexico: 14 10. Honduras: 14 11. Pakistan: 12 *Estimate | Open Doors reporting period: Oct. 2021 to Sept. 2022 Open Doors is known for favoring a more conservative estimate than other advocacy groups, which often tally martyrdoms at 100,000 a year. Where numbers cannot be verified, estimates are given in round numbers of 10, 100, 1,000, or 10,000, assumed to be higher in reality. And some national tabulations may not be provided due to security reasons, resulting in an NN designation for Afghanistan, Maldives, North Korea, Somalia, and Yemen. Under this rubric, an unnamed nation, Mozambique, and the DRC all follow Nigeria with a symbolic tally of 100 martyrs. Then the CAR with 61 recorded killings, Myanmar with 42, Colombia with 21, and India with 17. A second category tracks attacks on churches and other Christian buildings such as hospitals, schools, and cemeteries, whether destroyed, shut down, or confiscated. The tally of 2,110 represents a 59 percent decrease from last year, and is only about a fifth of the 2020 reports high of 9,488. China (No. 16), which rejoined the top 20 in 2021 for the first time in a decade, led the way with half of reported church attacksthough given a symbolic tally of 1,000. Then Nigeria, Myanmar, Mozambique, DRC, Rwanda, and Angola all were assigned a symbolic 100 attacks. Then India recorded 67 specific incidents, followed by Mexico with 42, Colombia with 37, and Nicaragua with 31. Where Churches Were Attacked or Closed Most: 1. China: 1,000* 2. Nigeria: 100* 3. Myanmar: 100* 4. Mozambique: 100* 5. Democratic Republic of Congo: 100* 6. Rwanda: 100* 7. Angola: 100* 8. India: 67 9. Mexico: 42 10. Colombia: 37 11. Nicaragua: 31 *Estimate | Open Doors reporting period: Oct. 2021 to Sept. 2022 The category of Christians detained without trial, arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned decreased to 4,542, down a quarter from a record high of 6,175 in last years report but still the second-highest total since the category has been tracked. Open Doors divides this into two subcategories, with 3,154 detained believers representing an decrease of 34 percent. India led with 1,711 cases and accounted for 54 percent of the total. It was followed by Eritrea with 244 cases and Russia with 200; then an unnamed nation, Myanmar, China, and Rwanda with a symbolic 100 each; then Cuba with 80, El Salvador with 63, and Nigeria with 54. The tally of 1,388 believers imprisoned, however, held steady from the 1,410 reported in the prior period. An unnamed nation, Eritrea, China, and India comprised almost 90 percent of the total. Another new high was registered in the number of Christians abducted, with the total of 5,259 representing an increase of 37 percent over the prior period. Nigeria accounted for 90 percent of the total, or 4,726 abductions, followed by Mozambique and DRC with a symbolic 100 incidents each, then Iraq with 63, CAR with 35, and Cameroon with 25. By far the largest category total was displacement, with 124,310 Christians forced to leave their homes or go into hiding for faith-related reasons, down 43 percent from 218,709 last year. An additional 14,997 Christians were forced to leave their countries, down from 25,038 last year. Myanmar comprised 4 out of 5 internal displacements (followed by Nigeria and Burkina Faso) and 2 out of 3 refugees tallied (followed by Iran). Open Doors stated that several categories were particularly difficult to count accurately, highest of which were the 29,411 cases of physical and mental abuse, including beatings and death threats. (Last years tally was 24,678 incidents.) Of the 72 nations assessed, 45 were assigned symbolic numbers. Nigeria and India were the highest (comprising two-thirds of the tally), followed by an unnamed nation, Myanmar, Mozambique, Indonesia, DRC, and Rwanda. An estimated total of 4,547 Christian homes and properties were attacked in 2022, along with 2,210 shops and businesses. Of the latter, 27 of 42 countries were given symbolic numbers, with Nigerias tally of 1,000 exceeding the next nine nations combined (given their tallies of 100 each). Nigeria, Myanmar, and CAR had the highest tallies in the former category (a symbolic 1,000 each), with only Indonesia and India able to record actual cases (211 vs. 180). Eritrea, Syria, Iraq, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mozambique, DRC, and Cameroon rounded out the top 10 and beyond, each with a symbolic tally of 100 attacks. Categories specific to women were also difficult for Open Doors researchers to count accurately. Cases of rape and sexual harassment decreased from 3,147 to 2,126 tallied, led by Nigeria with almost half the total, with 34 of 47 countries scored symbolically. Forced marriages to non-Christians decreased from 1,588 to 717 tallied, led again by Nigeria, with 22 out of 34 countries scored symbolically. Why are Christians persecuted in these countries? The main motivation varies by country, and better understanding the differences can help Christians in other nations pray and advocate more effectively for their beleaguered brothers and sisters in Christ. Open Doors categorizes the primary sources of Christian persecution into eight groups: Islamic oppression (31 countries): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in more than half of the watch list countries, including 8 of the top 10 overall. Most of the 31 are officially Muslim nations or have Muslim majorities; however, 5 actually have Christian majorities: Nigeria, CAR (No. 24), DRC (No. 37), Mozambique (No. 32), and Cameroon (No. 45). (Additionally this is the main driver in 15 nations with enough persecution to be tracked by Open Doors but ranking below the watchlists cutoff, including Christian-majority Kenya and Tanzania.) Dictatorial paranoia (9 countries): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in nine countries, mostly in nations with Muslim majoritiesSyria (No. 12), Uzbekistan (No. 21), Turkmenistan (No. 26), Bangladesh (No. 30), Tajikistan (No. 44), and Kazakhstan (No. 48)but also in Eritrea (No. 4), Cuba (No. 27), and Nicaragua (No. 50). (Also in six nations being tracked: Angola, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burundi, Rwanda, and Venezuela.) Communist and post-communist oppression (4 countries): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in four countries, all in Asia: North Korea (No. 1), China (No. 16), Vietnam (No. 25), and Laos (No. 31). Religious nationalism (3 countries): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in three nations, all in Asia. Christians are primarily targeted by Hindu nationalists in India (No. 11) and by Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar (No. 14) and Bhutan (No. 40). (Also in three nations being tracked: Israel, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.) Organized crime and corruption (2 countries): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in Colombia (No. 22) and Mexico (No. 38). (Also in three nations being tracked: El Salvador, Honduras, and South Sudan.) Christian denominational protectionism (1 country): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in Ethiopia (No. 39). Secular intolerance (0 countries) and clan oppression (0 countries): Open Doors tracks these sources of persecution, but neither is the main source in any of the 50 countries on the 2023 list. How does the World Watch List compare to other reports on religious persecution? Open Doors believes it is reasonable to call Christianity the worlds most severely persecuted religion. At the same time, it notes there is no comparable documentation for the worlds Muslim population. Other assessments of religious freedom worldwide corroborate many of Open Doors findings. For example, the latest Pew Research Center analysis of governmental and societal hostilities toward religion found that Christians were harassed in 155 countries in 2020, more than any other religious group. Muslims were harassed in 145 countries, followed by Jews in 94 countries. The breakdown corresponds to Open Doors data. China, Eritrea, and Iran ranked in Pews top 10 nations implementing government harassment, while India, Nigeria, and Pakistan rank in the top 10 experiencing social hostility. Afghanistan and Egypt ranked in both. Most of the nations on Open Doors list also appear on the US State Departments annual list that names and shames governments that have engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom. Its top-tier Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list includes Myanmar (No. 14 on the 2023 WWL), China (No. 16), Cuba (No. 27), Eritrea (No. 4), Iran (No. 8), North Korea (No. 1), Nicaragua (No. 50), Pakistan (No. 7), Russia (which exited the WWL last year), Saudi Arabia (No. 13), Tajikistan (No. 44), and Turkmenistan (No. 26). Its second-tier Special Watch List includes Algeria (No. 19), the Central African Republic (No. 24), Comoros (No. 42), and Vietnam (No. 25). The State Department also lists Entities of Particular Concern, or nongovernmental actors producing persecution, which are all active in countries on Open Doors list. These include Boko Haram and ISWAP in Nigeria (No. 6 on the WWL), the Taliban in Afghanistan (No. 9), Al-Shabaab in Somalia (No. 2), Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria (No. 12), the Houthis in Yemen (No. 3), the Wagner Group for its activities in the Central Africa Republic (No. 24), and ISIS-Greater Sahara and Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin in the Sahel. Meanwhile, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2022 report recommended the same nations for the CPC list, with the addition of Nigeria (No. 6), India (No. 11), Syria (No. 12), and Vietnam (No. 25). For the State Departments watch list, USCIRF recommended the same nations except for Comoros, with the addition of Azerbaijan (unranked but monitored by Open Doors), Egypt (No. 35), Indonesia (No. 33), Iraq (No. 18), Kazakhstan (No. 48), Malaysia (No. 43), Turkey (No. 41), and Uzbekistan (No. 21). All nations of the world are monitored by Open Doors researchers and field staff, but in-depth attention is given to 100 nations and special focus on the 76 which record high levels of persecution (scores of more than 40 on Open Doors 100-point scale). CT previously reported the WWL rankings for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012, including a spotlight on where it's hardest to believe. CT also asked experts whether the United States belongs on persecution lists, and compiled the most-read stories of the persecuted church in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015. Read Open Doors full report on the 2023 World Watch List here. Congolese Christians are calling out for help. In the latest attack on civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a terrorist bombing killed 14 people and wounded 63 others during a baptism service at a Pentecostal church in Kasindi. Located in the mountainous North Kivu province bordering Uganda, the northeast region has already been under an official state of siege, similar to a state of emergency, since 2021. The Eastern Congo has become a theater of violent extremism, said Eale Bosela, regional director for the Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa. People are being massacred like animals. The bomb attack was blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an affiliate of the Islamic State Central African Province, which claimed responsibility. Originally formed in 1995 as a mix of jihadist and insurgent rebels, it is one of over 120 armed groups in North Kivu. Many Congolese were confusedand troubled. How can such a situation happen, stated Kiza Kivua, a 50-year-old farmer who lost his brother in the attack, when Kasindi is full of soldiers? With an estimated 500 or more fighters, the ADF was once motivated primarily by its opposition to Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda since 1986. Pushed across the border, the militant group now has a majority Congolese membership with many foreign recruits. A Kenyan national was arrested by the DRC for the church bombing. Like so many other groups, the ADF has found refuge in the region, said Scott Morgan, chair of the Africa Working Group of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable. But now they have taken on the mantra of attacking Christians. They are not the only ones. Other militant groups such as M23 and CODECO have attacked churches, said Morgan, also an analyst for Militant Wire. But the ADF has been among the most belligerent. The National Episcopal Conference of the Congo tallied 6,000 civilians killed, 7,500 kidnapped, and 3 million displaced since 2013. A United Nations report counted 370 civilians killed since last April. The violence is curbing Christian witness. One Congolese denomination once had 54 churches in the area, now reduced to 11. Another had 25 churches, now reduced to 8. The US State Department labeled the ADF a foreign terrorist organization in 2021. But Morgan has called for its further designation as an entity of particular concern, a label applied under the International Religious Freedom Act against groups engaging in religious persecution. The Church of Christ in Congo (ECC) called out to God. Lord, how long will you forget us? began its statement, quoting Psalm 13. The umbrella group includes the Community of Pentecostal Churches in Central Africa (CEPAC), and unites more than 60 Protestant denominations. It denounced the cowardly and despicable act, asking the government to redouble its efforts in the area already declared under a state of siege. Congo has been known as as a mineral conflict zone since at least 2003. A UN mapping report described the nations rich natural resources, which produce 10 percent of the worlds copper and 17 percent of diamonds. But the electronics industry relies even more heavily on Congo. Computers and mobile phones rely on cobalt, of which 34 percent of world production is mined locally. And an astounding 6080 percent of coltan reserves are located in North and South Kivu. The report also listed 125 companies and individuals connected to the conflict. May the Lord help us to reflect deeply on the conspiracy that weighs on our nation, concluded the ECC statement. Many local Christians judge similarlyand further. This is too much, said Fohle Lygunda, Tearfund's theology and network engagement manager for Africa. The international community should break its guilty silence and cease to support an evil plan for balkanizing the DRC. As Protestant missionaries once led the English and Americans to speak out against the colonizing King Leopold II of Belgium in the early 20th century, Lygunda asks that Christians do the same today. Some are drawing attention to the ongoing tragedy. Voice of the Martyrs newly labeled the DRC as a hostile nation in its 2023 prayer guide, released last week. Last month, Aid to the Church in Need highlighted the killing of Congolese priests and nuns in its 2022 year-in-review report. And this week, Open Doors ranked the nation No. 37 on its 2023 World Watch List of the top 50 countries where Christians experience the most persecution. Pope Francis, who will visit the DRC beginning January 31, gave his condolences. Christ, the Lord of life, he prayed, [may] those affected find consolation and trust in God. In preparation for his visit, Francis met in December with Denis Mukwege, the Congolese Nobel Peace Prize winner, a gynecologist celebrated for his medical service to victims of rape and advocacy against sexual violence. A Pentecostal, his hospital in South Kivu is affiliated with CEPAC. [This attack] can in no way be treated as a simple news item, stated Mukwege, and must lead to a strong reaction from the state so that everyone can exercise their faith in peace. Congos population of 105 million is roughly 48 percent Protestant, 47 percent Catholic, and 5 percent Muslim. Thus, sources told CT they hope the body of Christ will resonate with the call to help. Start lobbying the international community to eradicate armed groups in Eastern Congo, said Eale. ADF terrorists slaughter people like they slaughter goats. [ This article is also available in Francais. ] A Christian nurse practitioner is accusing CVS pharmacy of firing her for refusing to prescribe birth control pills and abortifacients, drugs aimed at ending the embryonic development of unborn children. CVS Health Corporation ended a six-year religious accommodation for nurse practitioner Robyn Strader in August 2021 and fired her October 31, 2021, for refusing to comply with the change, alleges the lawsuit filed January 11 in the Texas Northern District Court. After accommodating Robyn for six and a half years without a single complaint, CVS fired her because it simply did not like her pro-life religious beliefs, First Liberty Institute counsel Christine Pratt, one of Straders attorneys, said in a press release announcing the case. It is illegal to issue a blanket revocation of all religious accommodations when it is so easy for CVS to accommodate its employees. CVS is sending a message that religious health care workers are not welcome and need not apply. The lawsuit comes days after the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) urged CVS and Walgreens to accommodate workers who object to filling prescriptions for mifepristone, a drug used in achieving chemical abortions, or to reverse the companies decisions to fill such prescriptions in the first place. A clear policy that respects deeply held beliefs about the preciousness of life and honors individual consciences that believe abortion is a moral evil, ERLC President Brent Leatherwood wrote in a January 6 letter to the companies, would be welcomed in a corporate world often solely driven by maximizing profits, with little regard for the personal views of employees. It has long been the view that pharmacies exist to provide medication that improves health and extends life. Dispensing these pills does the exact opposite. Image: First Liberty Institute / Baptist Press According to the lawsuit, CVS accommodated Straders religious practice against prescribing such pills for six and a half years, allowing her to transfer such prescriptions to associates for compliance. The exemption was rarely necessary, as most of the care Strader provided was related to respiratory viruses, urinary tract infections, acute illnesses, and vaccines for schoolchildren. In the years the accommodation was allowed, the lawsuit claims, about five individuals per year requested hormonal birth control pills or the Depo-Provera injection. On those rare occasions, the lawsuit reads, Ms. Strader referred the client to the other nurse practitioner with whom she alternated shifts at the same CVS MinuteClinic, or to a nearby CVS MinuteClinic, one of which is approximately 1.7 miles away. CVS is accused of discontinuing the accommodation for all employees and pressuring Strader to comply. Strader, who worked at the CVS Minute Clinic in Keller, Texas, accuses CVS and its subsidiaries of firing at least three other CVS Minute Clinic nurse practitioners in Florida, Kansas, and Virginia because of their religious beliefs, but the individuals are not named in the lawsuit. In addition to prospectively preempting all requests for religious accommodations, CVS unlawfully derided Ms. Straders religious beliefs, pressured her to change her beliefs, refused to consider her multiple requests for a religious accommodation (and) failed to engage with her about possible accommodations, the lawsuit alleges. Strader is seeking reemployment, accommodation of religious beliefs for herself and all CVS employees, and financial compensation. Boyden Cray & Associates of Washington is also providing counsel for Strader. Our employment laws protect religious freedom in the workplace, Boyden Gray & Associates partner Jonathan Berry said in the press release. No one should have to choose between her faith and her job, especially where it would be easy to continue a longstanding religious accommodation. Boyden Gray & Associates looks forward to vigorously defending Robyns rights in court. CVS had not filed a response to the lawsuit as of last week. Pastor Mike Glenn announces pending departure from megachurch to focus on church planting Mike Glenn, the senior pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church, a megachurch in Tennessee, has announced he is stepping down from the pulpit to focus on church planting and re-purposing churches in changing communities. Knowing that this day would come doesnt make it any easier now that it has arrived, Glenn wrote in a letter to the congregation. Today, I want to announce to you that 2023 will be my last year as the senior pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church. Thirty-two years by any standard is an amazing run, and Im grateful for every minute. But the time has come for someone else to lead BBC into the future that Im convinced God has for our church. Glenn became the senior pastor of the Nashville-area church in 1991. Under his leadership, the church has grown to a membership of over 11,000 people, according to the churchs website. Since 2010, the church has grown from two campuses to seven locations throughout Middle Tennessee. In his letter, Glenn stressed that the decision to step down was his alone and came after months of prayer and a deep love for you. The pastor also said he wants to spend more time working with pastors, church planters and leaders in Middle Tennessee. I want to work with churches to plant new churches and re-purpose churches in changing communities. The most fun I have right now is working with our campus pastors. I want to do more of this, he said. In a video statement accompanying his letter, Glenn said in January 2024, he will become the executive director of the Engaged Church Network, which is described as a family of gospel-centered churches, serving together to reach their communities for Jesus Christ. This is an exciting time for our church. I can see where we're going, I can see what has to happen. I'm just not the guy to get us there. I've been confirmed in this and my prayer time and my conversation with other leaders. You're ready, the future is ready, he said. Glenn is a well-known figure in the Southern Baptist Convention, the biggest Protestant denomination in the United States. He previously served on the executive board of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, the Board of Trustees of Belmont University and the Board of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. According to the Brentwood Baptist Trustees, Glenn will continue to offer his wisdom, experience, and vision as the church seeks to fill the soon-to-be vacant position of senior pastor. We will share updates on the process for a new senior pastor in the coming months, they said. Our church bylaws outline the steps for this process, and ultimately, the church body will decide on the Trustees recommendation. On Twitter, local pastors reacted to the news of Glenns announcement. Major news here locally, but also big for the SBC, wrote Jonathan Howe, host of SBC This Week. Mike Glenn announced his pending retirement as pastor of @brentwoodbc llikely toward the end of 2023. Please be in prayer for this great church and for Mike during this time of transition. Robby Gallaty, pastor of Long Hollow Church in Tennessee, called Glenn the real deal, adding: Hes been a friend and mentor to me over the past year. Man wearing Jesus Saves T-shirt at Mall of America asked to take it off or leave A street preacher in Minnesota who dared to wear a T-shirt declaring Jesus Saves to the Mall of America in Bloomington was recently threatened with eviction from the mall if he didnt remove the shirt because it was offending people. The T-shirt also had a message stating Jesus is the only way with the word co-exist crossed out. Jesus is associated with religion and its offending people, a mall security guard can be heard telling the preacher identified as Paul Shoro in a video recorded by Kameko Rawls and shared on Facebook. Shoro attempted to explain to the security guard that his T-shirt wasnt about religion but eternal life, but the security guard told him its the same thing. All we are asking you to do is to take your shirt off, the guard said. When Shoro insisted that he didnt speak or say anything to anyone except wear his T-shirt, the guard insisted the only options he had were to take the offending T-shirt off or leave. If you want to shop here, you need to take that shirt off, the security guard declared to Shoro forcefully as he kept enquiring why his shirt was offensive. Again sir, it is religious soliciting, there is no soliciting on property that is private property, the guard replied. Shoro responded that he is a U.S. citizen who knows the Constitution. The preacher would later explain in a follow-up interview with Kingdom Bizness that he had been handing out tracts and witnessing at the mall a few weeks prior to the controversial Jan. 7 encounter and the security guards warned him not to do it. A couple weeks they find out that I am doing this and they warn me, do not do it again and I was really very angry because, I mean, they allow tens of thousands of people in that mall. You know, its the biggest mall in America. So I was so mad because they stopped me from preaching the Gospel, he said. During the recently concluded Christmas holiday season, Shoro explained that he was suspended for 24 hours for handing out tracts. The day the mall security told him he needed to take off his shirt he said he told them, Id rather go to jail or Id rather die. He said the Lord eventually sent an officer to intervene on his behalf. After the officer spoke to the security guards, he was told that he was good to go in the mall with his shirt intact. The video of Shoros encounter at Mall of America has since gone viral and elicited many reactions from people like Pastor Jay Haizlip of The Sanctuary. A man wearing a Jesus Saves shirt at @mallofamerica is ordered to take it off or leave. #persecution is happening and we must not back down. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. II Timothy 3:12, he wrote on Twitter. Some critics argued that Shoros T-shirt was offensive because he had co-exist crossed out and that is hate speech. North Korea ranks as worst persecutor of Christians after enacting 'anti-reactionary thought law North Korea has reclaimed its position as the worlds worst persecutor of Christians, according to the latest World Watch List report prepared by the religious persecution watchdog Open Doors US. Open Doors US released its 2023 World Watch List on Tuesday. The document, released annually since 1993, ranks the countries of the world based on the severity of the persecution and discrimination Christians are subjected to. While Afghanistan took the top spot in 2022, North Korea regained its status as the worlds worst persecutor of Christians in 2023. Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Sudan round out the top-10 worst persecutors of Christians on this years World Watch List. In a statement announcing the findings of the 2023 World Watch List, Open Doors US cited an anti-reactionary thought law implemented in North Korea as a particularly troubling development. Open Doors US Interim CEO Lisa Pearce told The Christian Post in an interview that the law was enacted in 2020. Pearce described the anti-reactionary thought law as a way to legitimize persecuting anybody who has any literature, anything of Western influence, including the Bible. She pointed to the law as another reason for North Koreas presence at the top of this years World Watch List while acknowledging that in practice, its difficult for things to be more brutal for the Church than they already were. Open Doors US cited a comment from North Korean escapee Timothy Cho when painting a picture of the hostility faced by Christians there. Cho said, Christians have always been in the front line of attack for the regime, referring to the Kim dynasty that has ruled the country with an iron fist for several decades. According to Cho, Their aim is to wipe out every Christian in the country. There can only be one god in North Korea, and that is the Kim family. As for Afghanistan, which claimed the title of worlds worst persecutor of Christians last year amid the Talibans highly publicized takeover after the Biden administration's withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, World Watch List founder Wybo Niccolai told CP that the situation has really not changed in the past year even though the country dropped from No. 1 to No. 9 on the list. He noted that a number of things have changed that led to Afghanistan ranking further down on the list of the worlds worst Christian persecutors this year. The Taliban, during the time of takeover, they killed a lot of Christians. They are no longer there, he said. Many other Christians fled so they are no longer there. Niccolai also detailed how a large number of Christians who have decided to remain in Afghanistan have gone deep down underground. One Christian who fled Afghanistan following the Talibans takeover, identified as Zabi, elaborated on the situation on the ground in a neighboring country in a statement to Open Doors US: Our situation is desperate. My mother and I managed to cross the border into another country. I am praying that I can leave this country and go somewhere safe. I may have to go into hiding or Ill be deported to Afghanistan. If that happens, I may be killed. The World Watch List also listed Nigeria as a hotbed for Christian persecution. The number of religiously motivated killings in the African nation rose from 4,650 to 5,014 in the course of a year, accounting for 89% of the international total of 5,623 Christians killed for their faith in 2022. The number of religiously motivated killings worldwide marked a slight decrease worldwide from the 5,898 measured the previous year. Pearce called on the U.S. State Department to re-establish Nigeria as a country of particular concern, a designation reserved for the worst violators of religious freedom. She contended that based on conversations with our teams of people who live there, Nigerias absence from the list of countries of particular concern for the second year in a row is a difficult thing to reconcile. The World Watch List also reflects the emergence of Sub-Saharan Africa as a troubled spot for Christian persecution, home to four of the top-10 worst persecutors of Christians. The whole region is heading into catastrophe, said World Watch Research Managing Director Frans Veerman. The aim of Islamic State and affiliated groups is to destabilize the entire region, establish an Islamic caliphate ultimately across the entire continent and, long term, they are confident this is within their reach. They are helped by other Islamists focusing on non-violent, systemic Islamization, he added. Veerman stressed that it isnt just governments in Africa that arent facing up to the true nature of this religiously motivated purge, its governments across the world. He warned that the price of this denial is incalculable, not just to Africa, but to the whole world. Statistics compiled by Open Doors US reveal that more than 360 million Christians worldwide find themselves subject to discrimination and persecution on the basis of their faith, accounting for one out every seven Christians. The watchdog organization characterized the persecution of Christians as at the highest levels since the list began nearly 30 years ago. This years World Watch List marks the first to be released after Open Doors USA, the organization that previously released the World Watch Lists, separated from Open Doors International and assumed the name Global Christian Relief. Open Doors International announced on Jan. 1 that its U.S. chapter would henceforth be known as Open Doors US. Open Doors US identifies itself as a global NGO network which has supported and strengthened persecuted Christians for 68 years and works in more than 70 countries to provide practical support to persecuted Christians such as food, medicines, trauma care, legal assistance, safe houses and schools, as well as spiritual support through Christian literature, training and resources. Church mourns pastor, wife who died trying to save son from drowning at the beach A Brazilian church is mourning the loss of a pastor and his wife, who died attempting to save their teenage son from drowning at the beach. Felisberto Sampaio, 43, and his wife, Inalda Sampaio, 42, saw their 13-year-old son, Ian Sampaio, struggling in the water at Camacari Beach in Brazil on Jan. 10. The couple entered the ocean to rescue the boy, but they failed to reach him. As Brazilian news outlet Universo Online reported, the incident occurred around 10 a.m., citing the Civil Police, who reported that the boy was rescued by a fisherman and another family member while his parents were not pulled from the water in time. READ: Tributes recall model example pastor, wife who died trying to save son from beach drowning The Fire Department confirmed to UOL that the two victims were removed from the water. The department attempted to revive them, eventually declaring the couple dead at the scene. The Sampaio family was from the city of Campina Grande in Brazil, and the father had been a pastor for 12 years at the Assembly of God Church in Quixaba, Paraiba, according to The Daily Mail. The family was spending a couple of days in the Paraiba city of Lucena. Members of the church mourned the couple's death, as well as Leonardo Meneses, a pastor at a church that the family had frequently attended. "I know that the circumstances are painful and difficult for us to understand. Only eternity will explain all the mysteries of life," Meneses said The couple's oldest son, Issac Sampaio, told TV Borborema on Jan. 11 that he planned to visit his parents before their tragic deaths. The eldest child said he last saw his parents on Jan. 8. "The thing that goes through people's minds is that it's a lie," he said. Human rights groups demand humanitarian airlift for Christian region Nagorno-Karabakh In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, John Eibner, the president of Christian Solidarity International, and the U.K.s Baroness Caroline Cox have urged the United States to take action to end Azerbaijan's blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, home to 120,000 Armenian Christians. The letter calls for a resolution at the United Nations Security Council that would authorize a humanitarian airlift into the region if Azerbaijan does not comply. You are the first American president to recognize the Armenian Genocide, Eibner and Baroness Cox of Queensbury, a member of the U.K.s House of Lords, wrote to Biden Tuesday. We urge you not to allow another Armenian Genocide to occur on your watch. On Dec. 12, Azerbaijani activists and soldiers closed the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting the Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Republic of Armenia, and thus to the outside world, CSI said, adding that Azerbaijan had also cut off electricity, gas and internet access to the region. As a result, food, fuel and essential medicines are running out in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, with electricity and fuel for heating increasingly scarce, many people, especially the poor and the elderly, are at risk of dying from cold in the freezing winter temperatures, added CSI, a Christian human rights organization that says it promotes religious liberty and human dignity. It's all part of an ongoing genocide, according to the group. A process of genocide has been underway since the Ottoman massacres of Armenians in the late 19th century, Eibner told The Christian Post. What is generally called the Armenian Genocide (1915-'18) was, in fact, a broader genocide of Christians, including the Syriacs/Assyrians/Aramaeans. It was the high point of a process that continues in waves until the present day, the CSI president said. He added, It continued in the Caucasus after the end of the First World War and was only suspended by the imposition of Soviet rule. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the process resumed in the first Karabakh war, again two years ago in the second Karabakh war and now in the strangulation of Karabakh by means of blockade. The blockade shows Azerbaijans intention to conquer Nagorno Karabakh by, in the words of the Genocide Convention, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the end of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group in whole or in part, Eibner and Cox wrote in the letter. As the blockade began, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, as quoted by CSI, Today we see consistent actions which make more and more real the concern that Azerbaijan is indeed planning genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh. Issuing a genocide warning for Nagorno Karabakh with other human rights organizations last month, CSI said the actions of Azerbaijan toward the Armenians in the region aligned with a historical pattern of ethnic and religious cleansing by Azerbaijan, Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Additionally, the warning read, all 14 indicators of potential atrocity crimes identified by the U.N. Secretary-Generals Office on Genocide Prevention were present. The blockade follows an unprovoked attack by Azerbaijan on the Republic of Armenia last September, and another 44-day war of aggression by Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in September-November 2020, CSI said in a statement to The Christian Post. In both wars, Azerbaijani forces committed well-documented war crimes against Armenians, and the 2020 war resulted in the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Armenians from their homes, it added. Azerbaijans 1989-1994 ethnic cleansing campaign against Armenians also began with a blockade of the region. Failure to act will have world-historical consequences, Cox and Eibner warned in their letter. If Azerbaijan succeeds in conquering Nagorno-Karabakh, ethnic cleansing on a mass scale will take place, a priceless part of humanitys common cultural heritage will be destroyed, and dictatorships everywhere will see that aggression is rewarded in todays international order. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a long-standing dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is recognized internationally as part of Muslim-majority Azerbaijan even though it has a majority Armenian population and is controlled by ethnic Armenians. The conflict has its roots in the early 20th century when the region, which has a majority Armenian population, was part of the Russian Empire and later, the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Soviet Azerbaijan. However, as the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late 1980s, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia. This led to a war between the two countries that lasted from 1988 to 1994, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of over 1 million. A ceasefire was signed in 1994 but sporadic violence continued in the region. In 2016, a four-day war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan, resulting in hundreds of deaths. In September 2020, the fighting broke out again, escalated rapidly and resulted in a large-scale military operation by Azerbaijan, with the support of Turkey, to retake the regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding areas under Armenian control. A ceasefire was signed again in November 2020, but tensions remain high, with both sides accusing each other of ceasefire violations, and the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh remaining tense. In an op-ed published by the Foreign Policy magazine last month, Armenian journalist Lara Setrakian explained that the Armenians residing in Karabakh view the prospect of complete integration into Azerbaijan without any guarantees for their security as a potential precursor to ethnic cleansing, whether through violent means or by exerting pressure for them to leave their homes. Azerbaijan's promise to treat the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh as equals to its own citizens provides little assurance given Azerbaijan's history of human rights violations, wrote Setrakian, who's also the president of the Applied Policy Research Institute based in Yerevan. Furthermore, she added, recent violent acts committed by Azerbaijani soldiers, such as the execution of Armenian prisoners of war, sexual abuse of female soldiers and the mutilation and beheading of Armenian civilians have only heightened the fear and concern of the Armenian community. Biden became the first president since former President Ronald Reagan to recognize the Armenian genocide on its 106th anniversary in April 2021. Some historians see the Armenian genocide as a precursor of genocides the world witnessed later, including the Holocaust. In October 2020, an estimated 100,000 people marched through the streets of Los Angeles, California, to call for an end to the fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We stand with our brothers and sisters in Armenia & Artsakh, & the diaspora in L.A., Eric Garcetti, who was Los Angeles Mayor at the time, tweeted. We need our national leadership to step up & help bring peace to the region. Turkey must disengage. Trump condemns 'disloyalty' of Evangelical leaders who haven't endorsed his 2024 run Former President Donald Trump is condemning what he characterizes as disloyalty from Evangelical activists who have not endorsed his 2024 presidential bid. Trump, who announced he is seeking a second term in office in the 2024 presidential election following his unsuccessful re-election bid in 2020, appeared on the Real Americas Voice program The Water Cooler with David Brody Monday. Host David Brody noted that when you announced your candidacy, at least as it stands now, some of these prominent Evangelical leaders who backed you last time, theyre not yet willing to commit, like Robert Jeffress is not, some others. It looks like many of them are waiting to see how the field takes shape before backing anyone, he added. Brody asked Trump if he had a message to them. Trump responded by declaring, I dont really care, adding, Thats a sign of disloyalty. Nobody has ever done more for right-to-life than Donald Trump. I put three Supreme Court justices who all voted, and they got something that theyve been fighting for many, many years. The former president mentioned how Evangelicals and the pro-life movement finally won last June when the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organizationruling determining that the U.S. Constitution doesn't contain a right to abortion, overruling the Roe v. Wade decision establishing a national right to abortion. The Dobbs decision followed Trumps appointment of three justices to the bench, including the replacement of the late liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett. Trump suggested that Evangelicals and pro-life activists did not do enough on behalf of pro-life candidates in last years midterm elections. Im a little disappointed because I thought they could have fought much harder during the election, during the 22 election, because they won, and a lot of them didnt fight or werent really around to fight. Trumps comments build on remarks he made following the 2022 midterm elections when Republicans failed to make large gains as expected. While Republicans secured a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they saw a net loss of one seat in the U.S. Senate even as President Joe Biden suffered from low approval ratings. In a Jan. 1 statement on his social media platform Truth Social, the former president insisted that It was the abortion issue, poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters. He also suggested that the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. The line of questioning comes after Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, asserted in a statement that the Republican Party is headed towards a civil war that I have no desire to be a part of. Jeffress was one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump during his insurgent presidential bid in 2016, continuing to stand behind him during his presidency and ahead of his 2020 re-election campaign. Both of Trumps previous runs for the presidency have seen the candidate achieve sizable support from white Evangelicals, an important voting bloc in both the Republican primary and general electorate. Exit polling from the 2020 presidential election shows Trump capturing 76% of the Evangelical vote, while exit polling from the previous presidential election measured his level of evangelical support at 81%. With less than two years to go until the 2024 presidential election, no other major candidates have announced bids for the Republican nomination to the president although several are thought to be considering White House runs. Trump has shouldered a lot of blame for the disappointing midterm election results for Republicans, with critics contending that he supported candidates in primary elections who proved unelectable in a general election. The RealClearPolitics average of polls of Republican primary voters examines support for Trump and his hypothetical Republican opponents. The current RealClearPolitics average, consisting exclusively of polls taken after the 2022 midterms, shows a plurality of Republican primary voters (44.3%) favoring Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rumored 2024 White House hopeful who recently won re-election by a massive landslide, is in second at 30.5%, while all other prospective candidates listed have support in the single digits. Polling data compiled by RealClearPolitics before the midterms showed Trump leading by wider margins in all but one poll. Tram featuring Year of Rabbit unveiled in Rome Xinhua) 13:20, January 18, 2023 A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit drives past the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) (Web editor: Cai Hairuo, Liang Jun) A week after retiring as New Britains police chief, Christopher Chute was sworn in Wednesday to a job that never existed before: chief of the Connecticut State Community College police force. When Connecticuts 12 community colleges merge this summer, their separate police departments and security units will be consolidated into a single agency led by Chute. This position is a critical step forward as we continue toward merging our 12 community colleges into a single CT State, college President John Maduko told an audience at Founders Hall at the Naugatuck Valley Community College campus in Waterbury. Police officers from the Naugatuck Valley, Gateway, Capital and Manchester community college campuses stood in line to shake hands with Chute after the ceremony. Those four schools have a total of roughly 30 sworn police officers; the other eight campuses in the system contract with private companies for unarmed security workers without police power. Chutes job will be to analyze how operations work at the 12 schools and how they should function after the consolidation. With campuses spread across communities including Enfield, Bridgeport, Winsted, Middletown, Farmington, Danielson, Norwich and Norwalk, the systems security staff and police have different operating procedures and policies. New Britain States Attorney Christian Watson, right, swears in Christopher Chute as the first chief of the Connecticut State Community College police force. Chute intends to visit the campuses to study what works well in each one, and will determine later in the year what should change and what should remain. Bringing together staff and faculty at the schools is perhaps the top challenge facing Maduko and his administration. Currently, the 12 colleges have varying academic structures; some have department chairs, some have division directors, some have both and some have associate deans instead. The tasks previously assigned to department chairs and division directors will eventually move to the academic discipline coordinators and program coordinators, according to the states FAQ page about the merger. New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, a member of the Board of Regents for Higher Education, told the audience that Chute was the right pick for the job. The impacts that he made on the community of New Britain will certainly be felt for years to come, she said. His resume will show you his nearly three decades of law enforcement with multiple certifications and degrees are absolute qualifications for this job. It goes beyond just whats on his resume. I saw him work tirelessly to protect our community. He led our department through times of social unrest and police unpopularity, all while transforming the New Britain Police Department to a 21st century law enforcement agency that now consistently sets the standard for other departments across the state, she said. Christopher Chute, left, with Stephen Tavares, public safety director at Eastern Connecticut State University at Chutes swearing-in ceremony Wednesday. Chute spent 26 years with the New Britain police, the last four as chief. He was part of a team that rebuilt the departments morale and reputation after scandals and lawsuits drove out the administration of former Chief William Gagliardi. Chute was a key part of the team created by Chief James Wardwell, and earned Wardwells recommendation to take command several years later. Chute created a series of community outreach projects, and heavily emphasized police-public partnerships during his four years as chief. He has also been an adjunct instructor at two Connecticut universities, and is an instructor for the Police Standards and Training Council. Addressing the audience Wednesday, Chute said he will be committed to integrity, professionalism, transparency and accountability for the colleges police force. Among the police leaders who attended was Stephen Tavares, who retired two years ago as deputy police chief in Bristol to become public safety director at Eastern Connecticut State University. Chris is a great communicator, highly intelligent, motivated. The work the New Britain PD has done under his leadership is all going to translate to well to the CT State system. Theyre going to see an immediate impact, Tavares said. The transition from urban police commander is challenging, but Tavares predicted Chute will succeed. You really get to focus on that community piece of the work. Yes, theres the law enforcement, and campus safety is a huge element but we really connect with the community, the faculty and staff and the students, Tavares said. Its really about building bridges. Did you know in US Jews are harassed 7 times a day? Did you know that assaults, harassment, and vandalism against Jews take place in the United States seven times a day? Are you aware that lies and distortions about religious Jews and their educational institutions are being published in prestigious news publications, including The New York Times? Have you heard that Jews are targeted for more hate crimes in the U.S. than any other group? Maybe you werent aware of all this most Americans arent. So why should these abuses matter to our Christian community? There are powerful biblical reasons. Our Christian faith has its foundations in Judaism. We believe that the anticipated Jewish Messiah was Jesus, who was born and lived his entire life in the land of Israel. All of Jesuss earliest followers were Jewish believers, who gave their lives for their belief in his divinity and His resurrection. Even today, the roots of our own faith are deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Israels history, as well as in the New Testament. Yet, in spite of all this, some of us have too-easily overlooked the surging and violent hatred of Jews that is rapidly infecting todays America. Sometimes it is subtle; sometimes violent. And, unfortunately, we also should not ignore the ever-increasing disparagement of the State of Israel in the U.S., even given voice by hostile congressional representatives. As believers, it is essential that we remain awake and aware of these deteriorating circumstances. We have sacred responsibility to stand with the Jewish people; since the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God has revealed Himself to the world through them. With that in mind, lets take a look at some facts related to anti-Semitism in the United States. According to Anti-Defamation League (ADL): Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2021, according to the Anti-Defamation Leagues latest annual report. The organization recorded 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism the highest number of incidents on record since the ADL began tracking these attacks in 1979. This averages to more than seven incidents per day and represents a 34% increase year after year. First of all, it is important to note that over 90% of these assaults are on Hasidic Orthodox Jews. This is, no doubt, a matter of convenience for the assailants, since Orthodox attire makes these individuals easily recognizable. However, the Orthodox are far from the only Jews who are discriminated against, harassed, vandalized, and otherwise abused. People with Jewish-sounding surnames are at risk, along with Jewish children in public schools, Jewish synagogues, women and men who speak Hebrew, or who wear Star of David necklaces or Israel-themed clothing and these are but a few among many other triggers. It is also untrue that so-called white supremacists are responsible for much of todays Jewish persecution. According to the Jerusalem Post, 97% of todays attackers are from other minority groups. One clearly documented reality is that Jewish abuse in the U.S. intensifies dramatically during Middle East conflicts, when Israel defends itself militarily. In fact, the prosperous and powerful State of Israel epitomizes the strength and resilience of the Jewish people and is therefore a prime target for Jew haters. Meanwhile, American Jews are targeted physically, but also politically, culturally, historically, and in propaganda and educational misinformation. In fact, a recent egregious educational incident against Jews took place in The New York Times in 2022. An Orthodox Jewish organization in New York City, Agudath Israel of America, recently launched a public information campaign to combat what it describes as the Timess crusade against Hasidic Jews and their schools. The Daily Signal reported: Agudath Israel points to 12 negative Times articles published in three months as well as the citys hate crime statistics for November, which at 45 reported incidents was more than double the 20 incidents reported the previous November Publishing inaccurate, offensive articles against a minority group is always wrong. Churning such articles out in todays climate, when Jews are being beaten in the streets of Brooklyn, is like chain-smoking in a gas station, said Avrohom Weinstock, associate director of education affairs at Agudath Israel. Although New York City is currently the most notorious site of anti-Semitic discrimination and danger, it is far from being the sole location of violence. Mistreatment of Jews is spread from coast to coast. For example, ADL reports: A group of Jewish patrons at a restaurant in Los Angeles were attacked by a group of individuals in cars carrying Palestinian flags and yelling anti-Semitic slurs (May 2021, Los Angeles, Calif.). Two Orthodox Jewish boys were shot at with a paintball gun in the driveway of their home in Los Angeles. The younger child was hit in the chest with one of the paintballs (May 2021, Los Angeles, Calif.). A Jewish individual was physically assaulted by a man who made comments minimizing the Holocaust and denigrating Jews (September 2021, Kunkletown, Pa.). An individual yelled f****** Jew and threw a glass bottle at a Jewish girl as she was disembarking her school bus (October 2021, University Heights, Ohio). Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) explains how Americas Christian communities can help fight the battle against surging anti-Semitism. Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) vocally advocates for classical Biblical values in public policy, so that Christians are not alone in promoting pro-faith, pro-family views. And Christians need to realize that those who hate their biblical values will often go after the Jews first, but never end with the Jews. Countries where Christians are most severely persecuted today have few if any Jews, and in many cases that is because they have already driven all the Jews out. In America, our war on biblical values goes hand in hand with anti-Israel bigotry and demonization of traditional Jews. So, its a situation where Jews and Christians must work together to preserve our mutual rights. As Christians, we face increasing discrimination largely because of our commitment to biblical values. However, American Jews face attacks not only due to religious faith but also because of a timeless prejudice against the Jewish people themselves. Anti-Semitism is correctly called the worlds oldest hatred, clearly exposed historically in the Bibles book of Esther. As believers, let us speak up for todays beleaguered Jewish people, reach out to them, and pray for their protection and our own. These are increasingly dangerous days for us all. Originally published at The Washington Stand. Senior British lawmaker urges CofE to back same-sex marriage at General Synod Calvin Robinson asks if Penny Mordaunt has asked the Catholic Church, Muslim imams to support gay marriage One of the most powerful voices in the British government is urging the Church of England to change its doctrinal teaching on same-sex marriage. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the British House of Commons, tweeted an image of a letter Monday in which she called on her local bishop to back reform and permit parishes and clergy to conduct weddings for same-sex couples or, at a minimum, enable authorized blessings. I have written to the Bishop of Portsmouth in advance of Februarys General Synod regarding discussions on how the Church will move forward on the issue of same sex relationships. I hope they will back reform. pic.twitter.com/MqGWhgmxjS Penny Mordaunt (@PennyMordaunt) January 16, 2023 She tweeted: I have written to the Bishop of Portsmouth in advance of Februarys General Synod regarding discussions on how the Church will move forward on the issue of same sex relationships. I hope they will back reform. In her letter to the Rev. Jonathan Frost, the bishop of Portsmouth, Mordaunt referred to her time as a minister in the British Armed Forces in which she enabled such ceremonies to take place in non-shared churches. While the issue is expected to be taken up next month at the churchs parliament, known as the General Synod, Mordaunt wrote that she fears if it is not resolved.....the matter will continue to fester and detract from the positive contribution the Church of England makes to our society." Mordaunt also warned about what she described as pain and trauma experienced by the LGBT community. It is also important to recognize the pain and trauma this continues to cause many [LGBT] people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society," she wrote. In response to the letter, Calvin Robinson, a former CoE minister, questioned whether it was appropriate for a political figure to wade into matters of the church. Robinson tweeted: Has @PennyMordaunt written to the Catholic Church and the Muslim Council, too? Should a cabinet member be politicizing matters of faith? Mordaunts letter was timed to coincide with a scheduled all-day meeting Tuesday, where bishops are expected to decide on a recommendation to present to the General Synod, according to The Guardian. Last November, a Church of England bishop released an essay arguing that clergy within the denomination should be allowed to bless same-sex unions. In the essay titled Together in Love and Faith, Rt. Rev. Steven Croft, the bishop of Oxford, argued that the Church of England should remove its prohibition on blessing same-sex unions, but stopped short of citing church infallibility. I confirm my affection and respect for those who will want to argue, in good conscience, against change and potential provision for such change. I also make no claim whatsoever to infallibility: I may be wrong, either in the detail or in the overall argument, wrote Croft. Despite formerly ascribing to a biblical view on the issue, Croft argued that there were fruits and benefits of same-sex partnerships that the Church could benefit from, adding that the current stance of the denomination created hurt and pain for the LGBT community. Vaughn Roberts, a theologically Evangelical same-sex attracted clergyman who Croft dialogued with in advance of announcing his views, wrote an essay in disagreement with Crofts push for the floundering denomination to support and advocate for same-sex marriage. One point of content put forth by Roberts was his belief that the bishop had failed to adequately engage with same-sex attracted Christians who had chosen celibacy over homosexual romance. There is a reference to one meeting with some same-sex attracted Christians, who hold to the traditional teaching of the Church, but there is no evidence of any greater engagement with what is a significant group, wrote Roberts. The deep pain they feel at being undermined by church leaders who are, in effect, telling them that their efforts to remain godly are unnecessary, needs to be recognized, along with any wider engagement with the experience of LGBTQ+ people in our churches. Roberts acknowledged that there are examples of long-term same-sex relationships, yet cautioned that this does not mean, however, that the relationships are morally good in every aspect, or that the positive fruit is necessarily a result of them being sexual. Bishop Steven is certainly right in recognizing the missional challenge caused by these cultural shifts, but there is, of course, nothing new in the Church experiencing such dissonance within and hostility from its surrounding culture, he added. Chris Pratt 'wouldn't change a thing' in speech about God, prayer Actor Chris Pratt said that he wouldnt change a thing about his 2018 MTV Speech in which he told audiences that God loves them and stressed the importance of prayer. In a recent Instagram post, the Jurassic Park actor reflected on a speech he gave after accepting the Generation Award at the MTV Movie & TV Awards. In the speech, he outlined several points of advice for his audience, much of it infused with biblical wisdom. I was given three minutes to impart wisdom to the next generation, he shared. Given the chance to do it again I wouldnt change a thing. Except maybe I wouldnt try to eat the popcorn backstage, the actor captioned a video of the event. The advice included: You have a soul, be careful with it. God is real. God loves you. God wants the best for you; believe that, I do. Learn to pray. It's easy, and it is so good for your soul. Grace is a gift. Like the freedom that we enjoy in this country, that grace was paid for with somebody else's blood. Do not forget that. Don't take that for granted. God bless you, the actor concluded his speech, drawing cheers and applause from the audience. The 43-year-old actor, who recently welcomed his second child with his second wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, has been open about his Christian beliefs and how they have guided him throughout his life. Pratt and his family attend Zoe Church, pastored by Chad Veach. Pratt told Esquire magazine in 2014 that he was introduced to religion as a rebellious teenager in Maui, Hawaii, by a complete stranger. "This guy came by and was like, 'What are you doing tonight?' I was like, 'Oh, I dunno...' So he's like, 'Will you fornicate tonight?' I was like, 'I hope so.' 'And drugs and drinking?' It's like, 'Most likely, yeah. Probably all three of those things. I mean, at least two of them, possibly all three,'" Pratt said. "He was like, 'I stopped because Jesus told me to stop and talk to you. He said to tell you you're destined for great things.' My friends came out, and I was like, 'Hey, I'm gonna go with this guy.' I gave my soul to Jesus within, like, two days. I was stuffing envelopes for his organization, Jews for Jesus." He also shared how his faith sustained him when, during his first marriage with Anna Faris, their son, Jack, was born five months premature and with significant health issues. "We were scared for a long time. We prayed a lot," he told People magazine. "It restored my faith in God, not that it needed to be restored, but it really redefined it." Pratts boldness hasnt come without a cost. In 2019, actress Ellen Page, who now identifies as Elliot Page, claimed in a tweet that Pratts Church was infamously anti lgbtq. Pratt later denied the allegation in an Instagram story: It has recently been suggested that I belong to a church which hates a certain group of people and is infamously anti LGBTQ. Nothing could be further from the truth. He also clarified in an interview with Mens Health that while he loves God, he takes issue with the ways people have misused religion for evil purposes. I think theres a distinction between being religiousadhering to the customs created by man, oftentimes appropriating the awe reserved for who I believe is a very real Godand using it to control people, to take money from people, to abuse children, to steal land, to justify hatred. Whatever it is. The evil thats in the heart of every single man has glommed on to the back of religion and come along for the ride, he said. In response to the backlash Pratt receives for his faith, Joe Rogan, who has the No. 1 most-listened-to podcast in the United States, commented that people in Hollywood are terrified that if they step outside the lines, they will experience criticism and ostracization from their overwhelmingly liberal and secular colleagues. Chris Pratt gets in trouble because hes Christian, Rogan remarked, explaining that the adverse treatment Pratt has received is unwarranted. He described the actor as the nicest ... guy Ive ever met in my life. ... He's done nothing. Hes so nice. Hes kind of outside of the lines in terms of his ideology. Hes a Christian and pretty open about it, he added. Because of that, they attack him. Its something so simple, like, he just believes in Jesus and he likes to be a good person. Former CIA agent Mike Baker tells Joe Rogan he wishes he'd raised his kids in the church In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, former CIA covert operations officer Mike Baker expressed his regret for failing to raise his three sons in the Church and reflected on the benefits religion offers, from instilling a sense of something bigger to self-discipline. I think one of the things that I've failed on with the kids and this is going to sound odd is church, is religion, Baker told Rogan in Wednesday's episode of the podcast (offensive language warning). I'm not agnostic, I'm not an atheist, by any means, I think theres something higher up there. I don't mean that I've failed to take the kids to a certain organized church every Sunday but I feel like I may have dropped the ball in giving them a sense of something bigger. Baker, who has four children a daughter who is 30, from a previous marriage, and three sons with his second wife, who is Catholic said that historically, hes been resistant to organized religion because he takes issue with the fact that groups believe they have a lock on the truth. Thats what's kind of bothered me, he said. But I think because I've always had this thing about ... organized religion, that I may have gone too far the other direction. I shouldve given them the chance to at least think about it. Rogan agreed that some of the most disciplined people he knows are religious, adding: I also think there is some sort of a benefit to having structure, and there's a benefit to having purpose. There's a benefit to having rituals and things that everyone does together. There's like a bonding that comes with that, that can't be denied. Baker, who serves as the CEO of Portman Square Group, a global intelligence firm, said that recently, he and his wife attended a United Methodist Church where the Bible was explained to him in a unique way: The whole point of the Bible is it's ambiguous, its diverse, it's a collection of, of books, essentially, over a long period of time. and that was the first time I really heard that about the Bible, where its not an instruction manual or how to manual; it's more of a way to pursue, in a sense, what am I looking for? I think the question, 'what am I looking for?' maybe there's some value there. Earlier in the nearly three-hour conversation, Baker revealed that during the COVID-19 lockdowns, he and his wife enrolled their sons in a Catholic school. However, when restrictions were lifted, they re-enrolled the boys in an Idaho public school after their middle son locked his knees and passed out during Mass three weeks in a row. He became known as the Mass fainter, he said with a laugh. Baker expressed hope that maybe later in life his sons will become interested in religion, be it Presbyterian, the Church of England or another denomination, adding: Never say never. Rogan, who has the No. 1 most-listened-to podcast in the United States with an average of 11 million listeners an episode, often discusses hot-button issues and pushes against cancel culture, sometimes leading to backlash. In a recent episode, he criticized Twitter for locking the account of parody site The Babylon Bee, after it awarded trans-identified Biden administration official Rachel Levine, formerly known as Richard, the title of man of the year. Twitter also enacted a nine-month suspension of The Christian Post's Twitter account in response to a factually correct tweet saying that Levine is a man. Both the Babylon Bee and CP have since been reinstated. In an October episode with Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, he applauded Matt Walshs recent film What is a Woman? as amazing. I mean, with wokeness, you can identify as a woman, you get to use the female restroom. Like, OK, but what is it? Whats a woman? You know, can a man get pregnant? Rogan said. OK, well, what is it, can a biological male get pregnant? And then people panic, and they start, The people that identify as a woman are capable of being pregnant, and people that identify as a male are capable of also being pregnant. Like, what are you saying? You know, youre marching for womens rights. But what does that mean? So, if I decide Im a woman, and I go out, youre marching for me? Im a woman now? You can just say it? We cant have that, that doesnt make sense, Rogan continued. And it doesnt mean you cant have trans people. It doesnt mean that youre not denying anyones existence either they exist. However, if you want to be pregnant, you must be a biological female. This is science. 100,000 march in Los Angeles over Azerbaijan conflict with Armenians An estimated 100,000 people marched through the streets of Los Angeles over the weekend to call for an end to the fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh territory that has displaced thousands from their homes and killed hundreds. Demonstrators marched from Pan Pacific Park to the Turkish Consulate General in Beverly Hills. Los Angeles has one of the nations largest populations of Armenian immigrants. We stand with our brothers and sisters in Armenia & Artsakh, & the diaspora in L.A., Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted. We need our national leadership to step up & help bring peace to the region. Turkey must disengage. According to the Armenian National Committee of America, demonstrators were there to protest against Turkey and Azerbaijan's campaign of aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is recognized internationally as territory controlled by Muslim-majority Azerbaijan but has been run for years by ethnic Armenians, most of which are Christian. The decades-long conflict over the region reignited in late September with both sides accusing each other of targeting civilian communities. In a statement announcing the march turnout, the Armenian National Committee of America stated that Azerbaijan began a full-scale invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh on Sept. 27, calling it the most significant violation of the ceasefire since the ceasefire was established in 1994. Although a temporary ceasefire agreement was reached last Saturday, both sides have accused each other of breaking that ceasefire by attacking each others cities and villages. The coordinated military assault by Azerbaijan under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic comes only months after Azerbaijans aggression against the Republic of Armenia in July, and after joint live-fire military exercises with Turkey in August, the Armenian National Committee of America stated. The committee accused Azerbaijan of carrying out aerial and missile assaults and deliberately targeting civilian populations, journalists and cultural sites. Officials within the Nagorno-Karabakh military have disclosed that 532 of their service members have been killed since Sept. 27. Azerbaijan has not yet disclosed the deaths in its military ranks since fighting escalated, according to the Associated Press. The Armenian National Committee of America claims as many as 150,000 people attended the march in California Sunday. The Los Angeles Police Department estimates the crowd to have been around 100,000. The march comes as there have been two weeks of demonstrations across the U.S. calling for an end to the violence, with Armenian activists calling for sanctions to be issued against Azerbaijan as well as NATO ally Turkey, which has reportedly aided Azerbaijan with Syrian mercenaries. But Turkey has denied having any involvement in the affair. Among the speakers featured at the march were elected officials such as House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Brad Sherman, D-Calif. Local and state officials also gave statements against the military action. On Oct. 8, Schiff spoke with Armenian Ambassador Varuzhan Nersesyan about the ongoing military campaign that is being aided and abetted by Turkey and the foreign fighters it is bringing in from Syria. They also discussed the deliberate bombing of a historic Armenian Church, the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, in the city of Shushi. During the protest, Schiff reportedly vowed that not one dime more of U.S. aid will be sent to Azerbaijan or Turkey. For decades, through the OSCE Minsk Group, the United States has supported a peaceful, democratic, and negotiated resolution to the dispute surrounding Nagorno Karabakh. We have persisted in this policy even as Azerbaijan launched countless assaults and as their leadership frequently threatened war to redraw the line of contact by force, Schiff said in a statement. Today, it appears that Azerbaijan and Turkey are determined to make good on those threats, and our policy must adjust accordingly. I believe the United States should make clear to Azerbaijan and Turkey that if they persist in this violence instead of embracing a peaceful settlement of the conflict, we are prepared to recognize the Republic of Artsakh as an independent nation, and to work with the International Community to achieve the same. Last week, Sherman called for Global Magnitsky Act sanctions to be applied to Azerbaijani government officials responsible for authorizing the military campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh. He also called on the U.S. to halt military aid to Azerbaijan. In late September, the L.A. City Council passed a resolution condemning Azerbaijans actions in Nagorno-Karabakh. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on both Azerbaijan and Armenia to "implement their commitments to a ceasefire as agreed and cease targeting civilian areas." "We deplore the loss of human life and remain committed to a peaceful settlement," he wrote. Ambassador Armen Baibourtian, the consul general of Armenia in Los Angeles, told CBS Los Angeles there is not any evidence or proof or confirmed reports that Armenian forces, Artsakh forces, commit war crimes or even violate international laws. On Saturday, Kim Kardashian West announced that she donated $1 million to the Armenia Fund, which was established in Los Angeles in 1994 to help the people of Armenia and Karabagh through humanitarian and infrastructure development. Armenian Fund President Maria Mehranian told City News Service that amid the pro-Armenian protests, the Armenian community has raised millions to send back to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh for humanitarian aid. Arizona inducing labor on pregnant women against their will bolsters calls for prison reform A report alleging that an Arizona prison forcibly induced labor on three pregnant women before their due dates has strengthened calls for prison reform and drawn a response from the governor amid ongoing concerns about the state's treatment of inmates. Three women serving time at the Perryville prison in Buckeye claim that the prison forced them into labor against their wishes. The prison reportedly told the women that inducing labor was part of its policy, which they believe is intended to somehow reduce liability for the prison. As The Arizona Republic reported earlier this month, two women, Stephanie Pearson and Desiree Romero, were forcibly induced at 39 weeks gestation in 2022, according to medical records obtained by the outlet. Another woman, Jocelyn Heffner, was 37 weeks pregnant and had labor induced twice during separate incarcerations, once in 2020 and again in 2022. Naphcare, the state's prison healthcare contractor that took over in October 2022, denied the existence of a policy of forced labor induction. The previous prison healthcare contractor, Centurion, did not respond to questions from the outlet. A spokesperson for Naphcare informed The Arizona Republic that one incarcerated patient was induced "per hospital specialist's orders as a maternal-fetal safety precaution due to a pre-existing condition." The spokesperson contended that women have a choice if they want to induce labor. However, the three pregnant inmates say that they were not given a choice, nor were they told ahead of time about the induction. In a statement to The Christian Post, Naphcare stated that it's policies related to pregnancy and labor "follow all state, local and federal regulations, as well as National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) and American Correctional Association (ACA) standards." "Since assuming control of medical care for the state prisons on October 1st, NaphCare has reinforced with medical staff the importance of ongoing patient education about their choice regarding labor induction and birth planning," the Naphcare statement reads. "Although we do not have authority over hospital specialists, we can ensure that NaphCare physicians at Perryville clearly explain to each patient that the choice to induce labor is ultimately the patient's. The decision is made under the advisement of community hospital specialists, not NaphCare physicians." The Arizona Department of Corrections and Centurion did not immediately respond to The Christian Post's request for comment. Caroline Isaacs, executive director of Just Communities Arizona, an advocacy group that seeks to end mass incarceration, told The Christian Post that she is not surprised by the report. "So this is just another piece of evidence of the deeply broken culture at our Department of Corrections and the disregard for the health, safety, autonomy, inherent worth, and dignity of the people in its care," Isaacs said. Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said this week that inducing birth without consent is "wrong and inhumane." "The choice of when and how to give birth is deeply personal and that does not change just because someone is incarcerated," Hobbs said, according to USA Today. Isaacs highlighted what she called a "scathing" ruling released by U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver earlier this month. The ruling requires the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry to make changes to ensure medical care and mental healthcare at its prisons meet constitutional standards. Isaacs believes that the laws in Arizona are "overly harsh" and that the state should seek to resolve issues like substance abuse and mental health at the community level instead of sentencing people to prison. She emphasized the state's reportedly high incarceration rate, a claim also made by the think tank Prison Policy Initiative in a 2021 report. According to the think tank, Arizona ranked eighth among states and countries, with the data showing that it incarcerated 868 people per 100,000 residents in state prisons, local jails, federal prisons, and other systems of confinement. The advocate also speculated that the reason for the reported lack of care for pregnant inmates is that many state lawmakers believe that prisons are supposed to be "horrible" as a form of punishment. One bright spot Isaacs noted, however, is that Gov. Hobbs released a statement last week promising that her administration would ensure the state's prison systems meets "constitutional requirements." The governor's statement was in response to the federal court order issued by Judge Silver, a Clinton appointee. In her January order, Judge Silver required the ADCRR to implement a program to monitor the "quality of clinical care." This would require, for example, the ADCRR to monitor the percentage of pregnant women who receive the results of routine prenatal laboratory tests documented within one month of the pregnancy. Other changes mandated by the ruling include ensuring the staffing of medical and mental healthcare practitioners meets the minimum caseload required by the court within three months. In addition, Judge Silver's ruling called for healthcare providers to perform medical and mental health screenings within one business day of an individual entering ADCRR's system. The recent order follows a previous ruling from last June in which Judge Silver found that the ADCRR "failed to provide, and continues to refuse to provide, a constitutionally adequate medical care and mental health care system for all prisoners." The judge stated that the prisons' "health care system is plainly grossly inadequate. Defendants have been aware of their failures for years and Defendants have refused to take necessary actions to remedy the failures." According to a statement last week from the American Civil Liberties Union, a legal advocacy group involved in the case, a class-action lawsuit was initially filed in 2012 on behalf of inmates incarcerated in 10 of Arizona's prisons. A court-approved settlement was reached in 2014. However, Judge Silver set the agreement aside in July 2021 due to ADCRR's "pervasive material breaches." The evidence presented at trial in November 2021 and December 2021 suggested that the failure of Arizona's prisons to provide basic healthcare resulted in injuries and preventable deaths for many inmates. Christian nurse sues CVS over firing for refusing to prescribe abortion drugs A Christian nurse practitioner has filed a lawsuit against CVS, accusing the company of firing her for refusing to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs due to her sincerely-held religious beliefs. J. Robyn Strader filed suit against CVS in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, last week, noting that the company had granted her a religious exemption to prescribing abortifacients and contraceptives, but removed the exemption in 2021. CVSs new policy is to deny all such religious accommodations without considering the particular circumstances of the employee requesting the accommodation, including to determine whether that employee could be accommodated without undue hardship, reads the suit. It is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for an employer to avoid accommodating a religious practice that it could accommodate without undue hardship Religious accommodation requests must be considered on an individual basis to determine whether the requesting employee can be accommodated. Strader is being represented by the First Liberty Institute, a conservative law firm based in Texas that has successfully argued religious freedom cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. After accommodating Robyn for six and a half years without a single complaint, CVS fired her because it simply did not like her pro-life religious beliefs, said FLI counsel Christine Pratt in a statement shared with The Christian Post on Friday. It is illegal to issue a blanket revocation of all religious accommodations when it is so easy for CVS to accommodate its employees. CVS is sending a message that religious health care workers are not welcome and need not apply. From 2015 to 2021, Strader worked at a CVS MinuteClinic located in Keller, Texas, with her employer telling her back in 2015 that she would not be required to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs. In August 2021, CVS announced that all employees and nurses working at their clinics would have to prescribe contraceptives and abortifacients, removing any religious exemptions. On Oct. 31, 2021, according to the suit, CVS terminated Straders employment, having allegedly never responded to Straders many requests to reinstate her religious accommodation. Strader filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in February last year, with the EEOC giving her a Notice of Right to Sue on Jan. 3. Strader is not the only former CVS employee suing the company over its new policy regarding religious exemptions, as the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit last August in the Virginia Circuit Court for the County of Prince William on behalf of Paige Casey. In a recent statement to CBS News, CVS spokesperson Michael DeAngelis said while his company still gives out religious exemptions to employees, however, they consider the prescribing of abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives to be essential. We have a well-defined process in place for employees to request and be granted a reasonable accommodation due to their religious beliefs, which in some cases can be an exemption from performing certain job functions. It is not possible, however, to grant an accommodation that exempts an employee from performing the essential functions of their job, stated DeAngelis. As we continue to enhance our MinuteClinic services, educating and treating patients regarding sexual health matters including pregnancy prevention, sexually transmitted infection prevention, screening and treatment, and safer sex practices have become essential job functions of our providers and nurses. Duquesne University's Theology Department Chair found dead with woman in apparent murder-suicide Marinus C. Iwuchukwu, an associate professor of theology and chair of the Theology Department at Duquesne University, was found dead inside his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home Tuesday along with a woman in what local police say is an apparent murder-suicide. Iwuchukwu, 59, and the woman, Charte Dunn, 50, were identified by the Allegheny County Medical Examiners Office on Tuesday night. A release from the Allegheny County Police said the county received a 911 call from a third party at 9:53 a.m. asking for a welfare check on the couple who were engaged in a violent domestic situation inside the home on Thorncrest Drive in Wilkins Township. The third party learned that the male had been stabbed. The female remained inside the residence with a firearm, the release said. Wilkins Police and neighboring police departments went to the home and hailed the residence. A neighbor, Joe Marchesani, told WTAE that he heard SWAT officers over a megaphone. "It sounded like they were asking whoever was inside to come out," Marchesani said. "I don't know what had led them to be here." When police didnt get a response, they entered the home with the assistance of County Police SWAT and discovered the bodies. Both the male and female appeared to have sustained lacerations, and the female sustained an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said in their statement. Anyone with information concerning this incident is being asked to call the Allegheny County Police tip line at 1-833-ALL-TIPS (1-833-255-8477). When Marchesani heard what happened he expressed disappointment to WTAE. "I'm a Quaker and we're definitely not in favor of the large numbers of guns that are out," he said. "We're constantly working for non-violence." Duquesne University is an internationally recognized Catholic university founded by the Spiritans in 1878. It is the only Spiritan institution of higher education in the United States. Officials there did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Christian Post on Wednesday morning, but university spokesman Gabriel Welsch called the deaths a tragedy in an earlier statement to WTAE. "This is a tragedy for all involved and our thoughts and prayers are with Professor Iwuchukwu's colleagues, students, friends and loved ones," Welsch said. According to the universitys website, Iwuchukwu who joined the faculty in 2008, specialized in interreligious dialogue, inclusive religious pluralism, and media and religion. He taught undergraduate courses in world religions and culture; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and dialogue among religions. At the graduate level, his seminar classes focused on religious pluralism, freedom of religion, and interreligious dialogue. At the time of his death, he was also serving as the chair of the theology department and the Consortium for Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Etchi Juliette Besem Oben, one of the professors students, said on Facebook Tuesday that she was devastated by his passing. The news of your death rips my heart, she wrote. Oh my professor and former chair Dr Marinus Iwuchukwu...I am at loss for words.... CS Lewis' 'The Horse and His Boy' epic stage production opens at Museum of the Bible The Horse and His Boy stage production based on C.S. Lewis bestselling book opens at the Museum of the Bibles World Stage Theater Friday and promises to appeal to all ages with its timeless message of hope and redemption. The production, from the Logos Theatre, in association with the C.S. Lewis Company Limited, features life-size puppets, intricate costumes and a script true to the story penned by one of the most beloved authors in history. The production will run from Jan. 20 through March 3, while four American Sign Language shows will take place on Jan. 25-26 and Feb. 15-16. Opening week is finally here, said director Nicole Stratton. Our cast has been working hard to make C.S. Lewis fans proud, and we are so excited to finally bring these characters to life at the World Stage Theater! One of seven novels that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Horse and His Boy was written by Lewis in 1950. The book takes place while the Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, served as queens and kings of Narnia. Shasta, a Narnian boy who was stolen from his home and raised as the son of a fisherman in Calormen, seeks to return to Narnia with a talking horse named Bree. Along the way, the duo encounters another talking horse, Hwin, and Aravis, a young noblewoman seeking to escape an arranged marriage. To write the script and adapt the story for the stage, Stratton, who serves as the artistic director for the Academy of Arts Logos Theatre in Taylor, South Carolina, consulted with Douglas Gresham, Lewis stepson, who ultimately put his stamp of approval on the production. We're very grateful for the opportunity to do 'Narnia,' to know Douglas Gresham, and to have his stamp of approval on this, she told The Christian Post. So, I would safely say, since he approved of it and loved it he said it was the best Narnia adaptation he had ever seen on the stage. And so that right there was like, well, maybe if he loved it, maybe Lewis himself would. Stratton also revealed that Lewis enthusiasts have traveled from around the world to see the stage adaptation of the story and they gave us very good reviews. Though considered a childrens book, The Horse and His Boy tackles some difficult topics, including suicide ideation and depression, and deep themes like redemption and hope. Teenage actress Lilliana Groth, who plays Aravis, told CP that Lewis is unique in the way that he incorporates the real-life troubles for children. And I feel like that's very important to know you have to realize that there is trouble in the world, she said. So something to take away from the play is, even when you feel like there's no one there, even when you feel like God is not with you, He is there. Something that Aravis goes through a lot is, she feels like she can do it by herself, and she feels like she's courageous and she can do it. And she comes to the end of her rope a lot, where she has to turn to someone, and the only person she can turn to who is powerful enough to face the darkness is Aslan. And that's something that's truly beautiful that C.S. Lewis incorporated into the story, is, the feeling that God is there, and God is the ultimate power throughout the whole story. Partnering with the Museum of the Bible to bring The Horse and His Boy to the stage is illumiNations Twelve Verse Challenge, a collective alliance of the 11 leading Bible translation agencies that are working together to see that every language has a Bible by the year 2033. The group is challenging audience members to participate in their 12 Verse Challenge to sponsor a verse of the Bible being translated each month this year. We are so excited to be sponsoring The Horse and His Boy at the Museum of the Bible, said Vice President of illumiNations Twelve Verse Challenge Blake Silverstrom. Its our mission to bring the Bible to every language and every people and we believe C.S. Lewis work is the perfect opportunity to present our challenge. The Narnia books presented the Bible to us metaphorically. Now, audiences will have the opportunity to help present the Bible to people and nations all around the world. Tickets to C.S. Lewis "The Horse and His Boy" are available now by clicking here or by visiting Museum of the Bible. And for a limited time, audiences can use the code OPENING to save 15% off their ticket purchase. In a lower-level office in the Connecticut Department of Children and Families building in Hartford, phones are ringing 24/7. A dedicated team of social workers field calls all day and night, walking concerned callers through the details of suspected cases of child abuse and neglect. In 2022, the DCF Careline took in 65,131 calls. Of those calls, 86% were made by mandated reporters like teachers and police whose employment status legally requires them to report instances of suspected child maltreatment. Only 14% of all calls came from people like family, neighbors, friends and landlords who fall into the category of non-mandated reporters the people who are often closest to children in their homes. In total, only 7% of last years reports were called in by a childs family member. A recent arrest by Bristol police raised questions about how ongoing abuse of a child can go unnoticed or noticed but unreported. Ashley and Rocky Hernandez-DeJesus were charged with manslaughter in the death of their 4-year-old daughter, who medical professionals say sustained long-term child abuse. By the time she was brought into Bristol Hospital last June, doctors told police that the girl was covered in bruises, had at least one recent broken bone and multiple head injuries, appeared malnourished, and had deep ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, according to police records. Her parents reported she had fallen from a playscape at a Plainville park. Police determined that the girl likely never fell from a playscape or was even at the park. A medical examiner ruled after an autopsy that she died from homicide by way of child abuse. Rocky Hernandez-DeJesus and his wife Ashley had been flagged to DCF before but not about their 4-year-old daughter who died in June from homicide by way of child abuse, according to the medical examiner. Ashley and Rocky Hernandez-DeJesus had been flagged to DCF before but not about this child. Their case had been closed for years after the department, and the courts, ruled that their children could be returned to them, the department said. After the couples arrest, DCF received a report from the couples landlord only after seeing police activity in the home after the girl died. He told investigators he remembered something he had seen while fixing their bathroom about a year earlier: a child restrained to her highchair, according to police records. In cases like this, DCF bureau chief of external affairs Ken Mysogland said the department wishes theyd been alerted before it was too late. Information like what has come out since the arrest and the tragedy leads us to believe if we would have known sooner, additional action would have been taken, said Mysogland. As part of an extensive review of the childs death, they asked themselves: What is it about this case that we can learn from? said Mysogland. To say to people, if you see something, call us. If you see something, speak up Unlike mandated reporters, neighbors, landlords and family members arent trained in what to look at for signs of child maltreatment. They dont always know who to call or when to call, said Mysogland, who hopes that people who arent mandated to report their concerns will feel comfortable using the Careline as a tool. From a public interest standpoint, I think its really important that relatives and neighbors and landlords and grandparents understand that If I see something, Ive got to speak up,' he said. Lisa Daymonde, director of Careline operations at DCF, said those calls may save lives. If you see something, speak up. You might be that one person who sees something who calls, she said. You never know when what you have is just the right information that is really to lead to a family really getting help, said Ken. Calls to the Careline are answered by seasoned social workers who have worked in the field, knocking on doors and working directly with families. They walk callers through the details of what theyve seen, heard or suspected, entering all the information directly into a computer system as they ask for details like names, dates, addresses and the exact details of suspected maltreatment, Daymonde said. Whether the call comes in from a police officer, who is familiar with the reporting system, or a distraught family member who isnt sure how to share their concerns, the social workers are trained to try to retrieve the information they need to address the concern. Every report that comes in is treated the same, said Daymonde. It doesnt matter if youre the neighbor or youre calling from the school. Each report is tested against statutory guidelines to see if it meets the criteria for an investigation of child abuse, neglect or maltreatment. If it does, its marked as needing either an immediate response within 24 hours or as something that can be looked at within a 72-hour window. Even if it a report is determined to not merit an investigation, its logged into the system and kept on file for at least two years. If additional reports about the same child or family later come in, social workers are able to take a look at the whole picture, including previous reports. You never know when what you have is just the right information that is really to lead to a family really getting help, said Mysogland. You may be the only person in the life of a child that steps up and does the right thing. Ashley Hernandez-DeJesus is charged with manslaughter, risk of injury to a child, intentional cruelty to persons, first-degree unlawful restraint and conspiracy to commit risk of injury to a child for her roles in her 4-year-old daughters death. Calls can be anonymous In the case of the Hernandez-DeJesus family, the girls parents were known to DCF. Though their case with the family was closed at the time of the girls death, the department was aware of previous concerns regarding the safety of other children in the home. Additional reports made to the department would have been considered in conjunction with this history. Sarah Eagan of the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, which investigates every child death that comes through the medical examiners office, said that based on their preliminary review of how the systems in place handled this familys case, there are no major red flags. The tragedy of this child is awful, its a horrific death. But from a systems review perspective, her familys case was not open in DCF and hadnt been in a few years, said Eagan. The decision to close the familys case was one that was made through both DCF, the courts and court-appointed attorneys for the couples children, she said. But she did find it unusual that over the years that this young child was allegedly being abused, no one noticed. I do think it was a little surprising, given how much history the family had with DCF, that the family never bubbled up again in the next three years, she said. Eagan said she questioned where the girl may have been around mandated reporters, or really anyone, who could have spotted the abuse. Where was this child visible? Was she going to doctors or nursery school where there might have been some indication of maltreatment? she asked. What mandated reporters was this child, or others in the home, visible to? Eagan said it can be more common for maltreatment to go undetected when a child is not yet school-age since they arent around mandated reporters every day. But she wonders whether the child was, at some point, around someone who could have called. That would be the issue youd think about. Was there ever an opportunity for somebody to sound the alarm for this child? she said. We have not yet uncovered that missed opportunity. Mysogland said that that gap can be filled by people in a childs life who arent mandated to report. Thats where neighbors and landlords and families and coworkers are so important, because they know information that a professional may not, he said. All calls to the Careline can remain completely anonymous, and about 45% of calls do come from people who ask not to be identified, DCF said. If a person calls and asks to be anonymous, that anonymity will never be broken, the department said. We will never disclose the identification of the caller if they request to be anonymous, and we want the members of the public to know that. Its not whos calling, its the information theyre telling us said Mysogland. Under DCF Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes leadership, the department has reduced the number of children in care by 30%. Courant file photo. When people are weighing whether or not to pick up the phone and call, Mysogland said he knows that anonymity is an important piece. At the department, he said, they recognize that people are often fearful of what will happen to them or the child when they call DCF. Theres a fear factor of contacting us: What if somebody finds out and now my brother doesnt talk to me, or now my daughter isnt going to let me see my grandchildren? And what is that agency going to do when I make the call?' he said. We know at times the perception is I call DCF and kids get removed. But its actually the reverse, he said. When we knock on a door we look at what services we can plug into a family to address those issues, said Mysogland. But we cant address them until someone says Hey look over here.' According to the department, data shows that about 91.5% of the time the department knocks on a familys door, that family remains together. If children have to be removed, the departments primary goal is reunification once they can ensure the child can safely return. Under DCF Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes leadership, the department said they have reduced the number of children in care by 30% and reunified 2,400 children safely. The Careline, said Dorantes, acts as the departments first line of defense. Between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, DCF received 6,291 allegations of physical abuse which represents about 10% of all allegations. Another 1,899 allegations of sexual abuse came in through the Careline, making up about 3% of all reports, the department said. Anyone who has a reason to suspect that a child is being abused or neglected can make a report to DCF at the toll-free 24-hour Child Abuse and Neglect Careline at 1-800-842-2288. NGO report accuses Turkey, Azerbaijan of genocidal intent in Nagorno-Karabakh offensive A new report by International Christian Concern accuses Muslim-majority Turkey and Azerbaijan of having an intent to commit genocide when they launched a weeks-long military offensive in an ethnic Armenian territory last year. ICC, a U.S.-based advocacy organization, published the new report The Anatomy of Genocide: Karabakh's Forty-Four Day War last Friday. The report asserts that the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (known as the Republic of Artsakh in Armenia), which lasted from September until November 2020, had strong religious freedom concerns that should alarm human rights advocates and governments worldwide. According to ICC, Turkey and Azerbaijan destroyed churches and other religious sites, abused prisoners of war and hired known extremists, including members of the Islamic State, as mercenaries to help regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh. The disputed territory is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for decades. Chatter on the Syrian side showed that they were being recruited using jihad terminology against Christians, the ICC reports of the mercenaries. For example, AsiaNews quoted a source from Syria who explained that they were going to fight alongside Azerbaijan because it is part of the Jihad; it is a holy war of Muslims against Christians. Syrian mercenaries reported that they were offered monetary bonuses based on different actions, such as beheading Christians. According to the report, one of the more pressing humanitarian issues that have emerged from the offensive is Azerbaijans treatment of Armenian Christian prisoners of war, both military and civilian. Rationalization and justification tactics have been displayed throughout this entire process concerning the POWs, ICC notes. Videos have emerged showing how captors have dismantled prisoners sense of identity and choice. They are not simply taunted or beaten. Their captors use their power for control and coercion in a manner which reinforces the narrative used to justify the war, the report reads, adding that ICC viewed one video showing the treatment of three Armenian men dressed as civilians. One lies on the ground, presumably deceased. While the other looks on, the captors beat one demanding that he affirms their belief that Karabakh is Azerbaijani, ICC reports. He eventually does for the camera. Given the nature of Pan-Turkism, what he is being asked is more than a question of nationality. He is being asked to ignore every aspect of his identity, including his faith. Videos widely shared on social messaging platforms show Azerbaijani soldiers beheading two Armenian civilians who were reported to be non-combatants. Those videos were among several others that have emerged depicting shocking atrocities committed by Azerbaijani soldiers against civilians and prisoners. These crimes implicate Turkey because the Turks trained these soldiers, International Christian Concern contends. Indeed, many of the footage of war crimes committed during the conflict show troops wearing the dual patches of Azerbaijan and Turkey, making it hard to distinguish the actual nationality of the perpetrator, the report explains. As an impression management tactic, this makes accountability challenging by redefining the concept of state while also making clear that whatever this redefined concept of state means, that is who is responsible for initiating the war. Blurring the definition so profoundly reduces the ability for accountability. In places the Turks and Azerbaijanis invaded, they destroyed churches and ancient Christian crosses called khachkars, the report said. Video evidence shows the destruction was intended. ICC accused the two governments of holding Karabakhs Christian cultural sites hostage. Khachkars are often centuries old, are individually and uniquely crafted, and tell the story of Christianity in that specific location, ICC stressed. Destroying a church prevents corporate worship. Destroying a khachkar erases Christian history. For many ethnic Turks in Azerbaijan and Turkey, being Turkish means being Islamic, according to the report. As they attempted to destroy evidence of Christian history, Turks and Azerbaijanis emphasized their own history, the report added. Both Turks and Azerbaijanis trace their heritage back to the Ottoman Empire, and Turkeys Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refers to the countries as one nation, two states. Azerbaijan and Turkey were both parts of the Ottoman Empire, which committed the 1915 Armenian genocide. Both nations still argue the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman government wasnt genocide. Erdogan triumphantly invoked the names of leaders involved in the Armenian genocide in a speech delivered after military victories against Armenia. Today, may the souls of Nuri Pasha, Enver Pasha, and the brave soldiers of the Caucasus Islam Army be happy, he stated, according to the Armenian Mirror-Spectator. Enver Pasha was the Ottoman Minister of War during the genocide, and Nuri Pasha led troops in the Caucasus that were responsible for carrying out the genocide against the Armenians. Our iron first embodies both our unity and strength. That iron fist broke the enemys spine and crushed the enemys head. If Armenian fascism ever raises its head again, the result will be the same. Again, Azerbaijans iron first will break their back, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the same event, according to The Mirror-Spectator. To hide violence against Armenians, Turkish and Azerbaijani national media distorted the truth, ICCs report alleges. Media outlets claimed that there was no historical Christian presence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and that the region originally belonged to non-Armenian people. The Turkish and Azerbaijani state used these claims to justify their offensive. The first narrative denies the historic presence of Christianity in Karabakh. The second narrative redefines it, not as Armenian, but as originally belonging to either the ethnic Udi or Albanian communities, the ICC report summarizes. In regards to the second, it is noteworthy that at these Christian sites, it is the Armenian language which is written and often engraved onto the stone. Both narratives share in common that they are meant to dismantle and discredit attempts at framing this war within religious freedom terminology. It also sends the subtler message that they will tolerate Christianity only on very specific terms. ICC concludes that the world should take note that the strategic planning by Turkey and Azerbaijan show an intent of mass extermination, thereby genocide, of Karabakhs Armenian residents because of their combined faith and ethnic identity. Azerbaijan has made it clear that though they want territorial ownership over Artsakh, they do not want a caretaker role over the residents who live there unless those people validate a particular identity, the report concluded. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey have made it clear these actions are taken because of a Pan-Turkic ideology that prefers conformity to Islam, with some exception for very specific versions of Christianity. These two countries have pursued their actions in a way which elevates and echoes the 1915 genocide of ethnic Christians. Florida Pharmacies Can't Dispense Abortion Pill, Idaho Faith-Healing Deaths, Pastor Glenn Of Brentwood Baptist To Step Down link to download the audio instead. link to download the audio instead. 07:35 07:35 Florida has told pharmacies they may not dispense the abortion pill after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would allow women to obtain chemical abortion drugs over the counter. President Joe Biden said Monday that America faces another "inflection point" in its history, which the president believes will determine how the country looks in the future, calling it a "time for choosing." Activists in Idaho are continuing their push to repeal or amend laws that protect parents from prosecution when they allow their children to die from preventable illnesses by denying them medical care and relying exclusively on prayer and spiritual healing. An Evangelical Christian teacher in the United Kingdom could be permanently banned from teaching after he was suspended for referring to a biologically female student as a "girl." During a recent interview, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended her executive order that bans critical race theory, as well as her plans to reform education in the state through school vouchers. Millions under flood watch as latest round of storms batter California; death toll rises to 19 Nineteen people are dead in California and millions more are under flood watches through Monday evening as the storm-ravaged state faces one more round of heavy rain and potential mudslides. With another storm expected to douse Southern California through early Tuesday morning leaving what some forecasters say could be over 6 inches of snow 8 million residents in the Central California region are under flood watches through Monday night. Officials with the California Geological Survey say the rainfall could bring even more flooding and landslides to the state, which has had over 400 landslides since the end of December. As of Monday, the series of storms has killed 19 people since Christmas, when the heavy storms first started, including a child who was killed after a tree fell on a home. Rescue crews, meanwhile, are still searching for a 5-year-old boy who was swept away by floodwaters in San Luis Obispo County on Jan. 9. More than 175 people living at a mobile home park in San Joaquin County had to be evacuated Sunday after the site was flooded, according to sheriffs officials. Evacuation warnings were issued Sunday evening for residents in the Central Coast near the Carmel River in Monterey County. Residents in the Matilija Canyon area of Ventura County were ordered Sunday to evacuate after getting more than 17 inches of rain the previous week. Towering piles of rock and mud reach over 40 feet tall in some locations, blocking access to roadways and leaving residents isolated to the canyon, a Ventura County Sheriffs Office spokesperson said Sunday. In addition to more rain, the Sierra Nevada mountains are expected to see up to another 2 feet of snow on top of several more feet of snow from the previous weeks. Mountains in Southern California could get as much as 6 inches of fresh snowfall. According to the National Weather Service (NSW), heavy snowfall and strong winds in the mountains of Central and Southern California could bring whiteout conditions and dangerous to near impossible travel in some areas. On Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the White House approved a request for a major disaster declaration and pledged to continue to work in lockstep with local, state and federal partners to help keep Californians safe and make sure our communities have the resources and assistance they need to rebuild and recover. By midweek, things should slow down and give California a much-need respite, according to the NSW, with a stretch of dry weather expected at least through the weekend. However, as David Lawrence of the NWS said, Just because were expecting dry weather later in the week, we still do have the potential of flooding with that heavy rain the next couple of days. More deaths from faith-healing recorded in Idaho as advocates fight to end practice Activists in Idaho are continuing their push to repeal or amend laws that protect parents from prosecution when they allow their children to die from preventable illnesses by denying them medical care and relying exclusively on prayer and spiritual healing. Last Wednesday, a panel discussion organized by The Campaign To Protect Idaho Kids, a nonprofit organization, said more than 200 children in Idaho have died of preventable illnesses and diseases since a 1972 state law began allowing parents with religious objections to medical treatment to have the legal right to let their children die from medically preventable illnesses. Idaho is one of six states in the U.S. where religious exemptions are allowed for negligent homicide, manslaughter or capital murder. Since 2014, activists against faith healing have lobbied the Idaho Legislature to change the law, but havent gotten much support due to concerns about parental rights and religious and medical freedom, the Idaho Statesman reported. Activists like retired Idaho Supreme Court justice and former Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones said the exemption needs to be amended or repealed. The Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution, where he serves as a member, is prepared to mount a legal challenge against it to prevent more children from dying. I have looked at doing the same for the faith healing exemption. We may well do it and take it to court, but it would be so much easier if public policy was directed by the Legislature and they just repealed the exemption, Jones said, according to the Idaho Capital Sun. It has resulted in the deaths of many children. The Followers of Christ church, an infamous religious group that shuns western medical practices and embraces only healing by the power of prayer, have been accused of allowing children to die from preventable deaths. The causes of death range from food poisoning and diabetes to pneumonia and heart defects. Linda Martin, a former member of the church, told the Idaho Statesman that she witnessed family members die as a result of the churchs beliefs. Martin, who is now 68 and lives in Oregon, left the church when she was 16, but still monitors deaths connected to the church. Coroners reports reviewed by the Idaho Statesman showed eight child deaths, including stillbirths, associated with faith healing since the start of 2020 in Canyon County, where the Followers of Christs largest church group is located, the publication said. Another report by the publication in February 2020 found 11 faith-healing deaths in the same county during the previous five years. How many people are willing to sit back and say, This doesnt affect me? Martin told the Statesman. When you see that kids are hurting, how do you step away when you can help? Church bombing kills at least 17 Christians in DRC; Islamic State affiliate claims responsibility Police in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo arrested a Kenyan man after at least 17 Christians were killed and dozens injured in a bombing that targeted an Evangelical church in Kasindi town in North Kivu province, an attack claimed by an Islamic State affiliate. The incident occurred on Sunday during the worship service in the Pentecostal church, and the Allied Democratic Forces, a militant group that pledged its alliance to the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the bombing, AFP reported. At least 17 people were killed and 39 wounded, BBC relayed, citing officials. The bombing was "visibly perpetrated" by ADF "against citizens in full worship in the parish of the 8th Community of Pentecostal Churches of Congo," DRC's Communications Ministry said on Twitter. The ADF is considered one of the most dangerous armed groups in the DRC, responsible for thousands of civilian deaths and bomb attacks. The group is also active in Uganda. The Congolese army stated that investigations are ongoing, and a Kenyan man has been arrested in connection with the attack, according to the military. Scott Morgan, a United States-based Africa security analyst, said in a statement to The Christian Post that ADF recently launched an attack in Uganda, resulting in the capture of one of its high-ranking leaders. The language used in their statement claiming the bombing suggests that the ADF may be using Christians in the Eastern DRC as "scapegoats." "More than 24 hours later, the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has said very little except for that the Army has arrested a Kenyan National in this incident," Morgan wrote in an email. "This is also part of a pattern where the Tshishekedi Government has found it easier to blame outside actors for the problems in the Kivus than admitting that they are turning a blind eye towards some of these atrocities." "Blaming Rwanda for the actions of M23 did result in a regional visit by Secretary of State Blinken last summer," he added. "It is telling that M23 has been more of a concern to Kinshasa than the actions of the IS branch, which has been declared an [Foreign Terrorist Organization] by Washington." Morgan said there are "no easy answers" to the question of what DRC government can do to eradicate the threat of ADF. "[This is] due to the fact it targets Uganda as well and both the Ugandan and Congolese Militaries are working together to end this threat," he wrote. Eastern DRC has been plagued by armed conflict and violence for decades. Various militia groups and rebel groups are operating in Eastern DRC. Among the region's major sources of violence and terror are the various ethnic-based militia groups, which have targeted civilians and government forces. These militia groups often fight for control of resources such as gold, tin and tungsten and have been accused of committing human rights abuses, including rape and murder. The UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC has been deployed in the region since 1999 to protect civilians. However, it has faced challenges in effectively stemming the violence. The U.S. strategy towards the militias in the Eastern DRC has been "haphazard," Morgan said. "I am being generous by calling it that," Morgan contends. "The IS threat has garnered an FTO designation but has not been designated as an Entity of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act. This is a quick and easy fix. M23 and CODECO, for their actions, deserve the same status, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserves to be placed on the Special Watch List under IRFA." The DRC government has also launched several military operations against these militia and rebel groups to restore regional security, but the violence continues. The region also faces a humanitarian crisis, with millions of people displaced and needing assistance. The situation has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected the whole country and made it harder for organizations to provide assistance. Last week, The Voice of the Martyrs, which has tracked the persecution of Christians worldwide since 1997, added four more African countries, including DRC, to the list of the world's most dangerous and difficult places to follow Christ in its 2023 prayer guide for churches. The church in the eastern parts of Congo is "under immense pressure," VOM explained, saying Islamist groups severely persecute Christians there, raiding villages, destroying churches and brutally killing hundreds of believers. Last October, a group of nongovernmental organizations urged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to allow Congolese citizens to remain in the United States with a work permit as they face the possibility of severe persecution by Islamic extremist groups in their home country. The U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern also warned at the time that Christians in the eastern DRC were suffering persecution at the hands of extremist groups like the ADF. "Though the Congolese government is pushing back against these terrorist groups, insufficient attention is paid to Christian communities, which are targeted for their differing religious beliefs," ICC stated in a report. "ICC has witnessed the violence in the DRC firsthand, in one instance coming across the still-smoking wreckage of a car attacked by terrorists in June of this year. Just days later, at least 10 Christians were killed when an Islamist extremist group ambushed their three vehicles near the village of Makisabo, Beni. The Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamist extremist group, allegedly blocked the road, shot all the passengers, and set the vehicles on fire." Former Russian-linked denomination suggests Ukraine's church crackdowns hamper religious freedom An Orthodox denomination in Ukraine that holds historic ties to Moscow has questioned the Ukrainian government's recent crackdown efforts targeting dozens of churches formerly affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has long been affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, has been the subject of an investigation by authorities since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. This is even though the UOC publicly severed its connections to the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022, and its leadership has denounced the Russian invasion. UOC Bishop Metropolitan Klyment told CNN in an interview published Sunday that raids by the Ukrainian Security Service have not found anything that proves the church's alleged disloyalty to Ukraine. "There was no mention in the findings of weapons or saboteurs. What they said they found was printed matter, documents, which are not prohibited under Ukrainian law," said Klyment. "Members of the Ukrainian Orthodox ... are citizens of Ukraine, and sometimes among the best citizens of Ukraine, proving their patriotism with their own lives," he added, referring to church members who were fighting the Russians. Since the beginning of the war, hundreds of church buildings have been forcibly converted from UOC to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Orthodox denomination based in Ukraine that was founded to be independent of Moscow. According to CNN, the Ukrainian government reports that since the invasion began last February, 19 church clergy have been charged and five convicted. The UOC has been a concern for the Ukrainian government due to their longstanding ties with Russia, since Moscow Patriarch Kirill has been a staunch supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Security Service told CNN in a statement that while it is not illegal to possess Russian propaganda, it is illegal to distribute it. "If such literature is in the library of the diocese or on the shelves of a church shop, it is obvious that it is intended for mass distribution," the statement contends, adding that the operations against churches are for national security purposes and "not a matter of religion." A spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church told the outlet that the church raids are an "act of intimidation." Last November, Ukrainian authorities searched the Pochaiv Theological Seminary in Ternopil Oblast and the Ivano-Frankivsk Eparchy of the UOC, claiming to have found pro-Russian propaganda materials that "denies the existence of the Ukrainian people, its language, as well as Ukraine's right to statehood" on the premises. "The Security Service also found pamphlets and books of xenophobic and hateful content with offensive fictions about other nationalities and religions," stated authorities. "We emphasize that in its activities the SBU adheres to the principle of impartiality towards the activities of any religious denomination and respects the right of every citizen to freedom of worldview and religion, as defined by the Constitution of Ukraine." In December, Ukraine's Security Council took possession of the assets of seven Orthodox clergy and banned them from certain economic and legal activities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky justified the actions by arguing that the measures were to prevent the clergy from helping Russian forces. "We are doing everything to ensure that no strings are available to be pulled by the aggressor state that could make Ukrainian society suffer," stated Zelensky, as quoted by Reuters last month. In early December, Zelensky called on the Ukraine government to make a law banning any church that might take orders from Moscow. Zelensky claimed Russia was trying to "weaken Ukraine from within." Some in the United States have expressed concern over the crackdowns on Orthodox churches, seeing them as threats to religious liberty in the Eastern European nation. "We claim Ukraine's battle against Russia is a fight for democracy, but sending the army into monasteries is not promoting liberty," wrote Hedieh Mirahmadi, a columnist for The Christian Post, in an article published last month. "This latest move by our ally in Ukraine should be grounds for a loud outcry from Christians, regardless of where we stand on the political spectrum." UK Christian teacher faces potentially career-ending decision for misgendering trans student An Evangelical Christian teacher in England could be permanently banned from teaching after he was suspended for referring to a biologically female student as a "girl." Joshua Sutcliffe was removed in November 2017 from his position as a teacher at the Cherwell School in Oxfordshire after he allegedly discriminated against a student by stating "well done, girls" when addressing the student's small group during class. Sutcliffe was the focus of a number of allegations by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) during the groups professional conduct panel last week, according to the London-based Christian Legal Centre (CLC). The hearing could ultimately result in Sutcliffe no longer being allowed to teach in the U.K. In addition to the 2017 allegations, the TRA is considering comments made by Sutcliffe on his YouTube channel describing the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a false prophet. Sutcliffe is also accused by officials at Cherwell of sharing his opposition to same-sex marriage after he was asked by a student about his views. That incident, according to CLC, occurred during a Bible study that was organized by a Christian group at the school. TRA officials also say Sutcliffe showed videos from conservative advocacy group PragerU titled Make Men Masculine Again, an allegation Sutcliffe denied. In response to the allegations, Sutcliffe was expected to cite a statement from former Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, who said, Any teacher, if asked direct or invited to share his view by a parent or a student, is perfectly at liberty to say, with equal marriage as with adultery, divorce or abortion what their own moral view might be. According to the Oxford Mail, Sutcliffe had taught at the Cherwell School since 2015. At least six trans-identified students attended the school at the time of the incident. CLC said Sutcliffe avoided using gender-specific pronouns to accommodate the students needs and his own Bible-based Christian beliefs that humans are born male or female. The TRA is targeting an exceptional teacher because his Christian beliefs do not fall in line with the prevailing secular orthodoxy which cannot tolerate any dissent, said CLC Chief Executive Andrea Williams. With critical shortages of teachers in the profession, why are the TRA so determined to force a high-performing teacher out for their Christian beliefs? ... True misgendering is accepting trans identities. A December 2017 investigation alleged Sutcliffe had misgendered the student in violation of the schools equality policy. He denied the allegation and said he did not share [the head teachers] belief in the ideology of transgenderism, and later sued the school for discrimination. The case was later settled out of court. Sutcliffe, who also regularly preaches on the street and says he has given out over 2,000 Bibles to members of the public, has said he was unlawfully targeted and punished by the school because he had been vocal about his evangelical Christian beliefs, according to CLC. In November 2019, he was forced to resign from another teaching position at St. Aloysius in North London for sharing his convictions about Islam on YouTube. In addition to calling Muhammad a false prophet, Sutcliffe added, the fruit of Islam is not peace, its division. Tricia Ofsuryk of Granby ran out on New Years Eve day to get a nail fixed at the salon and to pick up a lobster order at Big Y for a small gathering that night. The wife, daughter and mother of two didnt make it home alive. Ofsuryk, 45, was hit head-on by a car whose driver was having a stroke just as she was about to reach the supermarket. Hug your spouse, hug your kids tighter because in the blink of an eye, your life can go upside down, said Mark Almeida, Ofsuryks brother-in-law. Aside from coping with the personal loss, Mark and his wife, Lonnie Almeida, are trying to help widower Rich Ofsuryk navigate the hurdle of quickly diminishing finances, legalities and securing funding for after-school care for the couples special needs daughter. Rich Ofsuryk and his late wife, Tricia Ofsuryk. A fund has been set up for the family at www.TriciaOfsurykFund.com Lonnie, Richs older sister, said her brother has been unable to return to his job at an HVAC company and only gets a couple of hours a night of sleep because his daughter, Paityn, 15, has a condition that makes it difficult for her to sleep. Tricia Ofsuryk was the one who took care of Paityn and kept the family running while her husband worked. She was a caregiver, Lonnie said of her sister-in-law. She took in anybody who needed anything. Everybody just loved her. She was a registered nurse, but recently was taking care of the familys needs. In addition to her daughter, Tricia was caring for her dad, a widower who had two strokes, as well as her uncle, who has a serious heart condition. She always put herself behind everyone else, Mark Almeida said. Although Tricia was happy in life, generally, she had endured more than her share of tragedy. Her only sister, Tanya Jane Cheverier, died in a motorcycle crash at age 36, leaving a son, Scott Jeffrey Cheverier, of whom Tricia took custody. Their only brother, Tye, died of cancer at age 34. Tricia and Rich were a couple for 20 years, although they didnt marry until 2012. Even that event had its sadness, as they married in the hospital room of Tricias mother, who was dying of cancer. The late Tricia Ofsuryk with her late mom, Kathleen Cheverier, on Tricias wedding day. Tricia and her husband, Rich, were married in 2012 in her moms hospital room as she was dying from cancer. The Almeidas, who split time living in Enfield and Florida, said they are finding difficulty accessing government funding in a timely fashion. Mark Almeida said he recently wrote to state representatives and senators but hasnt heard back yet. Its a dire situation, Mark said. He cant work. Theres no one to watch the children. The whole thing is sad. Financially hes devastated. Paityn has a variety of special needs, including autism and the rare Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS), a chromosomal disorder whose symptoms include distinctive facial features, intellectual disability, speech and motor delays and attention-seeking behaviors. Shes a handful, Lonnie said. Shell never be independent. She rarely sleeps. The couple also has another daughter, Allie, 13. Rich Ofsuryk, who said he wasnt up to speaking about his wifes death, is an emotional wreck as well, the Almeidas said. Hes emotional. He goes from angry to confused to despair, Mark Almeida said. Everything is stacked up against this family. Were reinforcing to him theres a light at the end of the tunnel even though it might be dim. Tricia Ofsuryk was a dedicated mother to her two daughters, shown here when they were young. The accident happened on College Highway in Massachusetts. The family lives in Granby just near the state line and had a fixer-upper in Massachusetts where her uncle and father stay. The New Years Eve gathering was to take place in that house with a few friends. Mark Almieda said Tricia ran out in the late afternoon to get a nail fixed, then headed to Big Y to pick up the pre-ordered lobsters. After her nail was fixed, Tricia called Rich to tell him to put the big pot of water on the stove. He waited for her to return, but time was slipping away, and Rich couldnt reach her by phone, Mark Almeida said. He called Big Y to see if she had picked up the order and they said, No. The guests arrived and apologized for being late, but said there had been a big accident slowing traffic on the way. Richs inner alarms went off and he told his guests, You have to take me there, Mark Almeida said. He got to the scene and recognized the vehicle, but police kept him from getting close. It would turn out that the driver in the oncoming lane had a stroke and lost control. He is alive, but not doing well, Mark Almeida said. Its just heartbreaking, Mark Almeida said. Republican lawmakers unveiled a series of policy proposals in Hartford on Tuesday aimed at reducing energy costs, increasing reliability and strengthening oversight of utility companies. Under their plan, Republican leaders said Connecticut families would save $362 million each year during a time of soaring fuel costs and rate hikes. Individuals are facing unbelievable choices in their life because they cant afford a basic necessity in this state, Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly said. We can do better, particularly now when we have the resources to meet that challenge. But we have to look at both short-term and long-term solutions. Republicans said their plan would immediately slash charges for all energy customers, diversify the states grid in the long term by expanding green energy options, and give rate regulators more independence and flexibility to protect consumers by separating the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The central pillar of the proposal would remove state-mandated charges that account for roughly 15 public policy line items from customer bills and shift the expense to the state budget a move that Republicans said would save the average Connecticut family $210 a year, and allow legislators to better vet the cost and benefit of each program. Specifically, the proposal seeks to nix the federally mandated congestion delivery charge and combined public benefits charge which fund certain state energy contracts, renewable and energy-efficiency programs, as well as electric costs for customers on education or financial hardship programs. On Connecticut energy bills, these show up as the FMCC Delivery Charge and Comb Public Benefit Charge for Eversource customers and Non-Bypassable FMCC per kwh and Combined Public Benefits Charge for United Illuminating customers. Thats an added cost to somebodys basic necessity, Kelly said. When people get their bills, they find other costs, other charges, other policy decisions that really rightfully belong in our general fund. For transparency and honesty purposes, those need to be on the budget, [and] off the bill. The Republican proposal comes on the heels of Gov. Ned Lamonts Energy Action Plan which looked towards the states wind farms and foreign energy sources to gain long-term sustainability capitalizing on federal and state-funded payment relief options to fill the gaps for residents struggling to pay bills this winter. One Republican-supported item on Lamonts agenda is the long-term goal of supplying Connecticut with Canadian hydroelectric power via a channel through Vermont. House ranking member of the Energy and Technology Committee Rep. Bill Buckbee speaks to reporters about the Republican energy proposal in Hartford on Tuesday. He said that the party is Not looking to throw rocks and throw bricks. We want to find solutions. Republicans, including ranking member of the Energy and Technology Committee Rep. Bill Buckbee, said that a Hydro-Quebec partnership would diversify energy options in the state grid. On the point of increasing competition, Buckbee said that he also wants to examine the reason behind Connecticuts lack of utility options and talk to companies about why they no longer do business in Connecticut. Buckbee said he and his Republican colleagues are not looking to place blame, but to achieve solutions. Were not looking to throw rocks and throw bricks. We want to find solutions and thats the critical piece we have to do right now because were just saying its not, this isnt something that affects one part of the population. This is every single person. We all worry about paying the bills. We want to make sure that light goes on. So the reliability of the grid is huge. The affordability of the grid is huge. And of course, we want to make [it as] green and environmentally friendly as we can, Buckbee said. Sen. Ryan Fazio, a ranking member of the Energy and Technology Committee, said that eliminating the states dual renewable energy classification and bringing all types of green energy, including hydropower, nuclear and trash-to-energy facilities, to the table would further the goal of sustainability and diverse competition. Fazio and others said they are not seeking to further politicize this issue and that they are prepared to collaborate with Democratic lawmakers to realize their goals. Connecticuts electricity costs have been far too high for far too long, Fazio said. This is an earnest attempt to actually reduce peoples costs and make Connecticut more affordable for everybody. Its not a political statement, its a solution, its a plan. Alison Cross can be reached at across@courant.com. Banking in Canada: Where do you start? TD Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Youve just come to Canada and so much is new and different here. That includes doing banking and getting easy access to your money when you need it. On arrival in Canada, opening a bank account is one of the most important things youll need to do. But the choices can be complicated. Which accounts? Where? Who will best understand your needs as a newcomer? Banking in Canada is likely to be quite different from banking in your home country. This article will make the transition easier for you! Learn more about our TD New to Canada Banking Package What bank accounts will you need in Canada? The best way to begin your Canadian banking journey is by opening three important types of accounts : a chequing account, a savings account, and a credit card. We will explain all three of these in detail below. To open these accounts, youll first need to provide some basic forms of identification verifying your legal name, as well as your Canadian address and phone number in order to complete your account profile. You will be asked to show official government identification, such as a passport, drivers license or another form of government-issued ID, and for certain things you may also need to provide your landing papers, study permit or work permit. Here are two simple steps to take to begin banking in Canada: Step 1: Understand the difference between a Chequing and a Savings account in Canada and how to use them In Canada, there are two types of personal deposit accounts: a chequing account, and a savings account. Most new Canadians may want both. Lets do a quick comparison between the two. A chequing account is an account used for regular, daily transactions. This includes buying groceries, paying bills, rent as well as auto-deposit transactions such as having your employer deposit your salary directly into your account. Your account can be accessed through a debit card to withdraw cash from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) or bank branches, and can be used to make purchases in stores and through online shopping. Chequing accounts generally dont pay interest. They may include a monthly fee along with a fee for transactions, such as withdrawals, cheques, bill payments, and purchases. Look for a chequing account that includes the right number of monthly transactions you think you will need. Even better, you will find some chequing accounts that come with unlimited transactions, such as the TD Unlimited Chequing Account a great option if you think you may have a lot of transactions. A savings account is used for setting aside money you dont need right away. For example, you may wish to save for education, buying a home, paying for a vacation or a wedding, and for when the unexpected happens like a car breakdown. Unlike chequing accounts, savings accounts do pay you interest, so only withdraw from them wisely for a rainy day or a life milestone. The money you leave in this account will gain interest thats extra money that will grow in your account to help you save for your future goals. You can choose from one of TDs three savings accounts to achieve your savings goals: TD Every Day Savings Account TD ePremium Savings Account TD High Interest Savings Account Learn more about banking for newcomers to Canada Step 2: Apply for a Canadian credit card A credit card is a card that can be used to make purchases, pay bills or depending on the card, withdraw cash. The simplest way to think of a credit card is as a type of short term loan. When you open a credit card account, your credit card company gives you a set credit limit. Based on that limit, your credit card allows you to borrow funds to make purchases and pay for them later. Getting a Canadian credit card has many advantages. Having good credit is important in Canada as it may assist you when applying for a home mortgage, a loan, or renting a home or apartment. A good way to build credit is to apply for a credit card. Using your credit card regularly and paying it off each month can help to build your credit history. Having a credit card also makes it easy for you to make purchases and, in some cases, receive rewards on what you spend. If youre looking for your first Canadian credit card, its important to understand how different cards work and how to use them to your advantage. TD offers a wide variety of credit cards with different perks and exciting rewards. Ready to choose your Canadian Bank? Look to TD first. TD goes the distance to treat newcomers like family. Our TD New to Canada Banking Package is our welcome package for you, and a great place to start. This package offers savings and benefits on chequing accounts, savings accounts, as well as international money transfers. Everything in it has been created specifically with newcomers needs in mind. Once you arrive in Canada, simply book an appointment with a TD Personal Banking Associate to get started. They will help you with your Canadian banking needs and answer any questions you may have. Find your closest TD branch here. Our multilingual representatives and Personal Banking Associates are ready to help guide you through our products and services to ensure you find your way with ease. You can also find out more through our New to Canada Welcome Booklet available in 11 languages. Your financial journey in Canada begins here Why choose TD? 150 years helping Canadians: TD has a proud history of delivering financial solutions to Canadians for more than 150 years. We also bring a century of experience helping newcomers navigate the unique challenges of the Canadian banking system. With over a thousand branches and a reputation for excellence in financial services, we have become one of the largest and most trusted banks in Canada, now serving 16-million Canadians. We offer online support and resources of interest to newcomers on topics like banking basics, moving to Canada, credit score essentials and more. We also serve you in more than 60 languages at our more than 1,100 branches. We are open longer hours for your convenience. We have thousands of ATMs across Canada to help you take care of your everyday banking quickly and easily. Ready to bank? Apply for TDs New to Canada Banking Package today. Book an appointment to talk to a TD Personal Banking Associate about the TD New to Canada Banking Package. You can book online right away, or visit our website to learn more. 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La Sireti s-a desfasurat o sedinta de Consultari publice privind procedura de expropriere temporara pentru terenurile afectate in timpul constructiei magistralei de apa Chisinau-Straseni-Calarasi Since last week, the discovery of a batch of classified documents at an office used by Joe Biden between his spells as vice president and presidentand then of further batches at Bidens home in Wilmington, Delawarehas driven a frenzied political news cycle. Comparisons to Donald Trump, embroiled in a classified-records scandal of his own since last year, inevitably followed, as, equally inevitably, did charges that the mainstream media was indulging false equivalence in its treatment of the two stories, which are, indeed, very different; for one, while the facts of the Biden case are still emerging, and he has faced criticism for a lack of transparency, he appears to have cooperated fully with investigators, while Trump has, erm, not. To pick through the medias responses to the two documents stories, I called up Margaret Sullivan, who, until last year, weighed in on coverage controversies of precisely this nature in her closely watched media column at the Washington Post. She has since published a memoir, Newsroom Confidential, and taken up a visiting professorship at Duke University. Our conversation, which took place on Tuesday, has been edited for length and clarity. JA: Ive called you back from your Washington Post retirement, like Cincinnatus, to discuss what has been referred toincluding by your former colleagues at the Postas a big test for the news media: how to cover Joe Bidens mishandling of classified documents. I guess to start out, what have been your impressions of how major outlets have been meeting that test so far? What would you be writing in your Post column this week if you were still doing it? MS: I watched the coverage very carefully, and I detected, or felt as if I could see, a certain gleefulness on the part of the mainstream media that finally there was something they could jump on, to, legitimately or non-legitimately, create some equivalence between a pretty buttoned-down, boring administration without a lot of scandal and the ever-fascinating circus that was the Trump administration. So there was a lot of coverage of the documents being discovered and handed over. I think, absolutely, that it was appropriate to give it significant coverage. I felt in some cases the coverage was over the top. My impressions are a bit mixed, Id say, but they seem to be on a similar line to yours. I think that, early on in this story, there were a lot of efforts from mainstream outlets to stress the differences between this and the Trump casetheres a CNN graphic I keep seeing popping up, for instance, that literally bullet-points the differencesand to some extent, that felt like a pointed Look, were not both-sidesing this! kinda thing. And, as you say, I also do think that this is a legitimate story: clearly, the documents shouldnt have been where they were found, and I think there are also legitimate question marks around the timing of the White House disclosures around it all. Equally, theres still a ton we dont know about this, and I think a lot of the coverage that I saw, especially early on, defaulted to obsessing over the politics. And there I think there has been at least an implied both-sidesism, because the prevailing narrative seems to be, Whatever actually happened factually, this is bad for Biden because Republicans say its badeven if the same Republicans, in many cases, just waved off Trumps mishandling of classified documents. Right. It goes very quickly from substance to the political fallout, and that is speculative. And it tends to be predictive. And if theres one thing that we should have learned, its that journalists are terrible at predictions, but they love to predict anyway. Sign up for CJR 's daily email What was also pretty amazing to me about those early political predictionsin both cases, the Trump one and the Biden oneis that they were both, in large parts of the political media, considered to be good for Republicans: the first one because it would allow Trump to say he was being victimized by the deep state; the second one because it was Biden who was under scrutiny. It reminds me a bit of what our late colleague, the media critic Eric Boehlert, used to say about every Beltway news cycle starting from the premise: What are Republicans angry about today? I think to me the coverage seemed a little bit more intent on describing the differences [between the Trump and Biden cases] before the second group of classified documents [in the Biden case] was being reported on. When it was just, sort of, Ten documents; who knows how classified they were?, it was just a small thing compared to the three hundred or so that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago. Then, when the ones were discovered at his home and stored with his Corvette in his garage, that seemed to ramp it up, and I think somewhat understandably so. I know you said that the Biden story was worthy of significant coverage, but do you think theres been too much coverage, in terms of volume? Because it strikes me that were getting to the stage where, to drive this story forward, theres some nonsense flying around. I saw a bunch of headlines over the past couple of days about how there were no visitor logs at Bidens private home in Wilmington, which made that sound shadyThere are no visitor logs!even though its not usual for presidents, and in this case a former vice president, to have a visitor log at their private home I saw that, too. I think that theres a great desire to keep this story alive and to plumb the depths of it in a way that it may not really deserve, but that is what the news media, and particularly the political news media, tends to do, so its not surprising. But it is disheartening to see. Because as much as there is a contrast drawnand as much as the coverage is about how these two things are not exactly alikethe fact remains that you come away from the deluge of coverage thinking, Wow, this is a huge story. And thats less because of the content of the coverage and more because of the volume of the coverage and the prominence of the coverage. So when it leads the evening newscast on two of the three major networks, that sends a very strong signal. It sends a stronger signal than Ah, well, these things are not really the same. It seems to say, This is huge. Is there a case to be made at all, do you think, that the Trump case also attracted too much hype when that blew up last year? I wrote early on about how the first week of that was driven by political blather in the absence of much factual information being known. Obviously it was important and a really big story, and a bigger one than the Biden story. But theres also a lot else going on, including around Trump. Did that deserve to be such a central story line for so long, do you think? I guess its always: Compared to what? What else was going on? It was a big story, I think very legitimately. Was too much made of it? I dont know. I didnt feel that way. And again, I wanna restate that I do think with this Biden story, there is a real story there. Theres a real and legitimate concern. And, its not at all equal. Karl Rove said as much, which was really interesting to seeon Fox, of all placesmaking the case that these things are not equal. I was struck, on the subject of the Trump angle here, by something that Glenn Thrush said on The Daily, the New York Times daily news podcast, last week: he was asked what most stood out to him about this Biden documents story, and he said Donald Trumps gravitational field on American politics. Thrush basically said that without Trump, no one would care about this sort of thing, but because of Trumps behavior elevating this issue, it is a story. But isnt it our job as the press to moderate that gravitational pull rather than jump in and just go along with it? To a large extent, we create and foster the gravitational pull. Because Trump has been such a dominant figure and such a dominant story, and continues to be, I think members of the news media feel a little bit helpless, like its out of their control how big a deal all things Trump turn out to be. But in fact, the media contributes to that in a huge way. And so I think that there does need to be an awareness of our role in that. But in the moment, when a story is breaking, when a special counsel is being appointed, thats a hard thing to keep in mind, and a hard case to make, because I think the tendency is to feel like its pretty simple: Well, this is a great story. People say that the media has all kinds of elaborate ideas about what theyre doing, or that all editors are sitting in a room cooking something up, when thats really not the case. It comes down to, This is a great story, lets go with it, lets really work it as hard as we can, lets try to get the next scoop on it. Its competitive, its related to the adrenaline rush, and its not particularly, I dont think, malicious. Finally, the coverage of the Biden story has been compared, somewhat inevitably, to Hillarys emails, which has become a shorthand for the broader problem of media both-sidesism. I noticed a question buried at the end of Semafors media newsletter this week, asking: Are the classified documents in Bidens garage the same as Hillarys emails? If so, what would that even mean? And Im curious, what do you think it would mean for this story to be the same as Hillarys emails? To me, I think that that comparison would imply a persistence of the documents story over timethe mainstream press just gluing it to Biden as the one scandal that will stickwhich is maybe not something that we can judge yet. But there are other media commentators saying that this is already Hillarys emails redux. How do you see that? There are some similarities to the Hillarys email story in, again, the gleefulness and the breathlessness with which the story has been reported and embraced. But I dont think it will ever reach that level. It has a kind of protection, in that the somewhat similar Trump story is so much bigger, so [the Biden story] cant take on the same stature in media coverage as the Hillary emails story did. It was extremely bizarre and peculiar the way that story dominated the entire campaign [in 2016]. As much as I say that journalists should not predict, Ill go out on a limb and say that I dont think this will be anything like that. Other notable stories: ICYMI: The State Department says Turkey is Turkiye now. What does the press say? 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. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 17) Authorities have arrested a police anti-drug operative during a buy-bust operation in Manila, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said Tuesday. Police Staff Sergeant Ed Dyson Banaag, who is currently assigned at the PNP-Drug Enforcement Group, initially tried to flee after he was apprehended in Sta. Cruz Monday night, according to the PNP. Recovered from him were around 25 grams of suspected shabu worth 170,000, marked money used in the transaction, a service firearm, and a PNP identification card. The PNP said the operation is in line with its internal cleansing campaign, as authorities keep watch on members suspected to be involved in the illegal drug trade. "Ating kasamahan [na] hindi magbabago at patuloy na ie-engage 'yung sarili nila sa illegal drug activities ay aming huhulihin, kakasuhan, at ikukulong. Kasama na dito ang pagdismiss sa serbisyo sa lalong madaling panahon," PNP PIO chief Police Colonel Red Maranan told reporters. [Translation: Our colleagues who won't change and will continue to engage in illegal drug activities will be apprehended, charged, and arrested. We will also dismiss them from the service as soon as possible.] Earlier this month, over 900 full colonels and generals of the PNP were urged to submit courtesy resignations as the government aims to rid the ranks of drug ties. A committee will be formed to review their records to determine possible involvement. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) Newly crowned Miss Universe RBonney Gabriel said she is grateful for the overwhelming support she has been receiving from her Filipino supporters. Yall are so amazing I feel blessed to be half-Filipina. Maraming, maraming salamat sa (Thank you very much for the) support, the Fil-Am beauty from Texas, USA told CNN Philippines New Day when asked about her message to her supporters. This is a time to celebrate Filipino culture and Filipino pride and I am honored to have your support so thank you, she added. Gabriel was born in Houston, Texas to a Filipino father and an American mother. Prior to being crowned Miss Universe, she was also the first Fil-Am to win the Miss USA title. When I won (Miss Universe), I can hear the cheering from so many Filipinos in the crowd, Gabriel said. I just feel the love from all across the world, it is an amazing feeling. It makes me feel proud to be a Filipina. Currently in New York City, Gabriel said she and her team are already setting up their game plan for her reign as she settles to her new apartment in Manhattan. She said she will also have a base in Thailand because the Miss Universe Organization owner Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip is from that country. While there are still no concrete plans, Gabriel said she hopes to visit the Philippines during her reign as Miss Universe. She also said she wants to connect with Celeste Cortesi, the Philippines representative to the 71st edition of Miss Universe held Jan. 14 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) Miss Universe 2022 RBonney Gabriel shared the story behind her 30-pound Woman on the Moon national costume created by a Filipino designer. Speaking to CNN Philippines on Wednesday, Gabriel said the costume was a piece by designer Patrick Isorena whom she has worked with before. Gabriels costume featured an all-silver one piece, and boots, with a giant moon and stars at the back. That was so heavy, but so worth it," she said. "I wanted to go big for this costume." Gabriel said the costume was finished only a week before the competition, so shipping it to the United States would be expensive. My parents after Christmas they flew from Houston to the Philippines to pick up the costume and then flew back to bring it just in time so they are the real heroes in this scenario, Gabriel said. She also explained the message behind her striking national costume. Its celebrating woman on the moon because here in America we are working on sending the first woman to the moon, the Fil-Am beauty queen said. In a social media post prior to the Miss Universe finals, Gabriel said the purpose of this costume was to inspire women in all spaces across the universe to dream big, shoot for the moon and achieve something out of this world. She also said she is a proud Houston-native where the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space center is located and is currently working to send the first female to the moon. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) The motion filed by suspended Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag to inhibit the Department of Justice from the investigation into the killing of broadcaster Percival "Percy Lapid" Mabasa has been denied. The 17-page decision was made known Wednesday. "No room for inhibition can be had in these cases," the resolution said in part, adding that Bantag's right to due process was not violated. Bantag filed the motion in December, seeking to transfer the investigation from the DOJ to the Office to the Ombudsman. Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin "Boying" Remulla said the request is not possible. RELATED: Cases filed vs. suspended BuCor chief Bantag, others over death of Lapid, middleman Speaking to media, DOJ spokesperson Mico Clavano said they received a copy of the resolution which said the jurisdiction "does lie with the DOJ." "There was an MOA, a memorandum of agreement between the DOJ and the Ombudsman whereby if the crime is a normal crime and not one of those crimes described dun sa jurisdiction ng Sandiganbayan, it does lie with DOJ primarily," he said. Clavano added that the preliminary hearing is set for Jan. 24. "The prosecution is a completely different story because the discretion of the prosecution has to be left unimpeded," he said. "So pag dumating na yung kaso sa prosecution, kailangan talaga mag-iba ng tono si SOJ. He cannot meddle, and he did not meddle also in the prosecution's discretion." [Translation: The prosecution is a completely different story because the discretion of the prosecution has to be left unimpeded. When the case reaches the prosecution, the SOJ really has to change his tone. He cannot meddle, and he did not meddle also in the prosecution's discretion.] RELATED: DOJ: Prosecutors most competent to hear, resolve Lapid murder case Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) The engineer in charge of the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) system, which broke down on New Year's Day, has taken a leave of absence amid an ongoing investigation on the fiasco, a transport official said Wednesday. At the continuation of the House Transportation Committee's hearing on the Jan. 1 air traffic mess, Transportation Undersecretary Roberto Lim told lawmakers that Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) head engineer Arnold Balucating is already on leave upon the Department of Transportation's (DOTr) recommendation. More than 350 flights arriving in and leaving Manila were either delayed or canceled due to a glitch in the CNS/ATM system's power supply. At the House hearing, CAAP Director General Manuel Tamayo said the probable causes of the CNS/ATM breakdown were a damaged circuit breaker and power transfer switch. He, however, said the investigation by an external committee charged to look into the incident is still ongoing. The external committee is composed of representatives from the DOTr, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), National Bureau of Investigation, National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, and Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC). "There is no conclusive findings yet determined by committee. Investigation is ongoing few more weeks before the committee can come up with the report. Insofar as the CAAP is concerned, we have recommended that the head of the CNS/ATM, Mr. Arnold Balucating, will take a leave of absence and he has done so already," Lim said. "As of this moment, we have identified the probable causes of this ordeal are the damaged circuit breaker and one of the equipment that was damaged: the power transfer switch. Both items were turned over to the CICC last Jan. 9, 2023 for forensic investigation and examination to ensure impartiality," Tamayo also said. To avoid a repeat of the air traffic fiasco, Tamayo said CAAP is working on immediately restoring and enhancing the CNS/ATM system to its original design before the incident. The agency is also set to procure an "ultimate fallback system" for the equipment, which would also require a systems upgrade. Tamayo said CAAP would construct an independent backup system for the CNS/ATM system and hire a third-party contractor to check how CAAP personnel operate the equipment. Meanwhile, Civil Aeronautics Board Executive Director Carmelo Arcilla said as many as 70,000 passengers were affected by the air traffic fiasco. He said the number was updated to include travelers who booked online but no longer proceeded to airports since their flights were canceled. Following the incident, Manila International Airport Authority General Manager Cesar Chiong said a lounge will soon be constructed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport for overseas Filipino workers. He said talks are ongoing with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration regarding the project. Digital forensic exam results of CNS/ATM system out by February During the same hearing, lawmakers pressed representatives of the DICT and DOTr on the possibility that a cyberattack caused the glitches in the CNS/ATM system. In response, DICT Cybersecurity Bureau Head Maria Victoria Castro said the agency needs a "minimum [of] six weeks" from the time of the incident to finish the forensic examination. She added that the DICT is already working with CAAP to study the logs and records related to the equipment. "It really is taking time because the CAAP is not connected to DICT. So we have to conduct a lot of investigation in determining the logs, records they have. We are awaiting a lot of submissions from them to determine the origin -- if there is one -- for the cyberattack," Castro said. Harry Nuske, the country representative of French firm Thales Group, said it was "unlikely" that the glitch was caused by a cyberattack even if the CNS/ATM system's software had not been updated since 2020 when the warranty for maintenance expired. Thales provided the software for the system, while Japanese company Sumitomo was in charge of the hardware and other civil works. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) The Bureau of Customs (BoC) on Wednesday denied allegations that it is working with smugglers and Department of Agriculture (DA) officials to smuggle onions and other agricultural products into the country. We deny the allegation kasi makikita naman po natin sa performance ng Bureau of Customs at ng Department of Agriculture ang ating commissioner (Yogi Filemon Ruiz) ay siya mismo ang nangunguna pagdating sa pagsawata sa smuggling, BoC spokesperson Arnaldo dela Torre Jr. told CNN Philippines The Source. [Translation: We deny the allegation because as you can see in the performance of the Bureau of Customs and the Department of Agriculture, our commissioner personally leads the fight against smugglers.] He also denied the bureau has double standards when it comes to going after smugglers, after senators condemned the BoC for humiliating 10 Philippine Airlines flight attendants who tried to sneak in about 40 kilos of agricultural products, but leaving big-time smugglers and cartels untouched. READ: Customs: PAL case on bringing in undeclared onions, other products not isolated Dela Torre noted that coordination between the two agencies, as well as with other law enforcement agencies, has further intensified. During a Tuesday interview with CNN Philippines, AGAP Party-list Rep. Nicanor Briones claimed Agriculture and Customs officials conspired with onion smugglers, leading to the present crisis which has affected farmers and consumers. Dela Torre said the bureau works with the DA, sharing information about the possible smuggling of agricultural products. He said these efforts helped authorities confiscate various agricultural products possibly smuggled into the country including rice, sugar, carrots, and onions in accordance with the implementation of the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016. The confiscated items had an estimated value of around 1.9 billion, but Dela Torre did not specify the time period when the products were seized. He said the BoC filed over 35 cases against smugglers in 2022, while 19 cases have been filed since January this year. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) said it is ready to help member countries, including the Philippines, achieve sustainable growth and push for economic policies that would benefit more Filipinos. The promise was made during a bilateral meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Davos, Switzerland, where the chief executive is attending the World Economic Forum (WEF). "We have been really interested to engage more deeply with our members to recognize the traditional challengesthey are still there," said IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva. The IMF which the country joined on Dec. 27, 1945 is a United Nations special agency that focuses on promoting global monetary cooperation, ensuring financial stability, and facilitating international trade, among others. According to the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), Georgieva also said the IMF found the Philippines to be an "exceptionally well-performing" country amid the numerous "more immune and more complex challenges" it faced. "What you have done in the last year of turbulence to sustain growthis quite commendable," Georgieva told Marcos. RELATED: Marcos showcases PH economic projection, recovery at WEF During the meeting, the PCO said Marcos raised the need to "go back to the basics," due to weaknesses in different systems such as food supply, energy, infrastructure, and climate change, among other basic problems that needed to be addressed. The president also affirmed his administration's push to scale up digitalization initiatives deemed to be vital for a "more efficient and effective" bureaucracy. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. highlighted the advantages of the Philippines' proposed sovereign wealth fund, which he formally pitched to fellow leaders at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila). During his opening remarks at the WEF Country Strategy Dialogue, Marcos said the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is part of the administration's efforts to further diversify the country's financial portfolio. "Such a fund is one tool among many in our efforts to diversify our financial portfolio, which includes our existing institutions pursuing investment that will generate stable returns, but also welfare effects spanning employment creation, improvement of public service, and a decrease in costs of economic activities," Marcos said, as quoted by Malacanang. The chief executive also noted that the creation of the wealth fund which hurdled the House of Representatives in December is "underway." A sovereign wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund commonly financed by a country's surplus revenues or reserves. Netizens and groups have expressed concern over the MIF's timing and supposed rushed approval, but proponent lawmakers maintained that this will help promote development and boost the government's programs. READ: The proposed Maharlika Investment Fund: What you need to know Meanwhile, Senator Mark Villar, who is part of the Philippine delegation in Davos, bared that the MIF gained interest from other world leaders during the meeting. "Marami pong interesado sa Pilipinas at siyempre po sa wealth fund dahil ito ay isang pondo na nakikita nila na magagamit natin para lalong bumilis ang development ng ating bansa, and of course as investors, gusto rin nilang makita na active tayo sa infrastructure at sa mga products or funds that can help the government," Villar said in a separate interview. [Translation: Many expressed interest for the Philippines and the wealth fund, because this was viewed as a platform to speed up the country's development, and of course for investors, they want to see that we're active in infrastructure and products or funds that can help the government.] The approved House bill on MIF was transmitted to the Senate last month. Members of the upper chamber have vowed to study the measure with a "fine-tooth comb." Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) Several nations and rights groups on Wednesday commended the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) decision to clear Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa and media company Rappler in their tax violation cases, calling it an important step towards achieving press freedom in the country. In a joint statement, the embassies of the Netherlands and Canada co-chairs of the Media Freedom Coalition in the Philippines said the acquittal marks a positive step towards upholding rule of law and media freedom. Any measure that undermines the independence and freedom of the press must be strictly scrutinized with the highest standards of law and human rights, they added. The statement was also shared by the embassies of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, and Czech Republic. The European Union also welcomed the courts ruling, and expressed hope that the remaining charges against Ressa and Rappler will be resolved quickly. This was echoed by the Human Rights Watch, which slammed the bogus and politically motivated cases against the journalist and organization. Meanwhile, the Hold The Line Coalition said the development shows how its possible for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to hit reset on his predecessors vast campaign of media repression. The CTA's First Division handed down the verdict Wednesday morning, more than four years since the Bureau of Internal Revenue filed the complaints and the Department of Justice filed the cases in court in 2018. The court said the alleged unpaid tax obligations of the news company have not been factually and legally proven. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) The Philippines relies heavily on the importation of salt as local production has "deteriorated" despite having one of the longest shorelines in the world, senators said Wednesday. During a hearing on the industry, Sen. Joel Villanueva said that the country's imports reached 93% of total salt requirements, while exports only amounted to more than $200,000 in 2021. "Talagang may demand ang salt, pero wala tayong production [Salt is definitely in demand, but we don't have production]," Villanueva said. Senator Cynthia Villar also pointed out that salt production in the Philippines has dropped to about 40,000 metric tons from 240,000 metric tons recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. Both lawmakers blamed the weakening of the sector on the Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide (ASIN Law) passed in 1995, which requires producers to iodize the salt they manufacture, trade or distribute. "Klaro na mula nung pinasa 'yung ASIN law, lalong nag-deteriorate 'yung production ng asin at lalong lumaki ang importation ng asin," Villanueva said. [Translation: It is clear that since the passage of the ASIN law, salt production has further deteriorated, and the importation of salt has increased.] He noted that before the passage of the ASIN law, 85% of the salt requirements were locally produced. Villar slammed agriculture authorities present during the hearing, saying they should have provided training to farmers to learn iodization. "You have to understand our small farmers, they are not as well-educated as you are," she said. "You let the whole industry deteriorate," the senator added. Meanwhile, Dr. Danilo Fausto, president of the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc., expressed support for the proposed Philippine Salt Industry Development and Revitalization Act which seeks to boost the number of salt farms. "Ngayon nasa 2,000 hectares ang salt farms natin. Kailangan natin ay 19,000 hectares para maging sufficient," Fausto said. [Translation: Today, we have 2,000 hectares of salt farms. The industry needs 19,000 hectares to be sufficient.] Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 18) Over 900 million tourists across the globe traveled internationally last year, around twice the figure recorded in 2021, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) reported. According to the UN agency, all regions saw "notable" increases in international tourist arrivals, although the total is still just 63% of pre-pandemic levels. The UNWTO said the biggest relative increase was recorded in the Middle East, where arrivals climbed to 83% of pre-pandemic numbers. Europe reached nearly 80%, while Africa and the Americas both recovered about 65% of their number of visitors before the COVID-19 crisis hit. Meanwhile, the agency said Asia and the Pacific hit only 23% due to stricter pandemic-related rules, some of which were only recently removed. For 2023, the UNWTO projects the global tourism sector's recovery to continue, with international tourist arrivals expected to reach 80% to 95% of pre-COVID-19 levels. It said it sees as a significant factor the recent lifting of pandemic-related travel restrictions in China the world's largest outbound market in 2019. "In the short term, the resumption of travel from China is likely to benefit Asian destinations in particular," the UNWTO said. "However, this will be shaped by the availability and cost of air travel, visa regulations and COVID-19 related restrictions in the destinations." The agency also forecast that countries across the world will continue to benefit from strong demand from the United States, backed by the strong US dollar. "Europe will continue to enjoy strong travel flows from the US, partly due to a weaker euro versus the US dollar," it added. Still, the UNWTO noted the global economic slowdown could mean a more cautious attitude among tourists, with reduced spending, shorter trips and travels closer to home. "Furthermore, continued uncertainty caused by the Russian aggression against Ukraine and other mounting geopolitical tensions, as well as health challenges related to COVID-19, also represent downside risks and could weigh on tourism's recovery in the months ahead," it said. (CNN) A helicopter crash near a kindergarten in the Kyiv region has killed at least 18 people, including Ukraine's entire interior ministry leadership team, according to officials. At least 29 people were injured in the incident on Wednesday in the city of Brovary, on the outskirts of Ukraine's capital, according to Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration. Kuleba wrote on Telegram that three children are among the victims. Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevheniy Yenin and Secretary of State Yuriy Lubkovychis also died in the crash, Anton Geraschenko, an adviser to the ministry, confirmed on social media Geraschenko added that investigators are determining the "cause of the tragedy." He described everyone on the helicopter as a "patriots of Ukraine." A CNN team on the ground in the Kyiv region noted gray skies and very low visibility. The helicopter that has crashed was a Eurocopter EC225 "Super Puma," a CNN producer has confirmed after seeing remnants of flight manuals among the debris. It landed near a kindergarten and a residential building, Kuleba said earlier. "At the time of the tragedy, there were children and the staff in the kindergarten. At the moment, everyone was evacuated," he wrote on Telegram. Paramedics, the police and firefighters are responding at the scene, he added. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Helicopter crash near Kyiv kills 18, including Ukrainian interior minister" Weather Alert ...National Weather Service Cold Water Safety Message... ...Please check with state and local authorities regarding guidelines for allowed activities... * Very warm air temperatures today around 80 are expected today. This may cause people to underestimate the dangers of the cold water temperatures which are currently only in the lower 40s across Lake Champlain, and in the upper 30s to lower 40s in the regions' smaller lakes and rivers. * The cold water temperatures can quickly cause hypothermia to anyone immersed in the water. According to the US Coast Guard, when the water temperatures are below 50 degrees, the chance of immediate incapacitation due to cold shock is extremely high. Anyone on small boats, canoes or kayaks should plan accordingly if recreating this weekend and use extreme caution to avoid this threat. Paddle smart from the start and always wear your life jacket! Street maintenance crew members, from left, Ricky Ball, Jose Carbajal and Luis Rojas push a small plow onto its mount to be used for residential plowing while Polo Ramirez waits to test the plows movement from behind the wheel during a demonstration for media on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, at Denvers Central Platte Campus in Denver, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette) Colorado Republican Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown wants state Republicans to decide whether an outside entity should run the El Paso County GOP's upcoming officer elections. Responding to what she described as "ongoing internal conflict" between Republicans in Colorado's largest county, Burton Brown called a special meeting of the state GOP's central committee for Jan. 31 in an email sent to committee members late Monday. The county party is scheduled to elect a chair, vice chair, secretary and bonus members based on top-ticket Republican votes received in the November election to two-year terms on Feb. 11, part of the regular reorganization Colorado's political parties undertake in odd-numbered years. The state party picks its own leadership at the end of March, with ballots cast by the newly elected county officers and bonus members, along with elected GOP officials. As things stand, the El Paso County Republican Party's leadership election will be run by two-term county chair Vickie Tonkins and her lieutenants, but under the proposal floated by Burton Brown, the state party could decide to substitute a "neutral party outside El Paso County" to conduct the election. Burton said she decided to call the special meeting which will be held online on the Zoom teleconference platform after receiving a request submitted last week in a petition that expressed concerns Tonkins won't operate the party election fairly. "We need a county organization in El Paso County that will support our Republican nominees not attack them," read the petition, which was signed by nearly 100 of the state central committee's roughly 460 members. The state GOP formally censured Tonkins last month, asserting that she "flagrantly and intentionally violated her duty as County Chairman" by calling an emergency meeting of the county party's governing body just days before the November election to condemn dozens of local Republicans who organized their own voter-contact operation. That group, which calls itself Peak Republicans, ran what amounts to a shadow county party, complete with its own office and volunteers. Two years ago, the state GOP's executive committee ordered the El Paso County GOP to hold a new election for party leaders, citing "irregularities" in the election overseen by Tonkins and her allies. Tonkins appealed the decision to the party's larger central committee, which let the county party results stand. Burton Brown stressed in the announcement and in an interview with Colorado Politics that she isn't calling the meeting "to choose sides in El Paso County" or to insert the state party in the county party's business. "I want to be clear that this is not about personalities or preferences," she said. "This is not about the state party stepping in to govern a county party," she added. "It's about the integrity of the elections at their upcoming reorganizational meeting and letting the central committee decide how that meeting's going to be run so that everyone can trust the results." In addition to asking the central committee to "establish procedures regarding the rules, execution, and conduct" of the county party election, Burton Brown also wants the state party to "determine the legally valid list" of the county party's central committee. The second agenda item is in response to critics who charge that Tonkins has improperly installed dozens of supporters on the panel, effectively stacking the deck in the upcoming election. Former state Rep. Lois Landgraf, a Colorado Springs Republican and one of the organizers behind Peak Republicans and the petition, told Colorado Politics on Tuesday that she's "hopeful" the state committee will take the county election from Tonkins' control. "The bottom line is we want a fair, safe meeting in February," Landgraf said. "We want one that follows the bylaws, follows Robert's Rules of Order, follows rules of common decency, where the correct people are credentialed and people are treated with respect, and where everybody's vote counts just little things like that." She said county party meetings run by Tonkins and her crew have been harrowing for Republicans who don't fall in line. "I do not want to go to another meeting where I am told I should be put up against the wall and shot, or where somebody yanks the (microphone) out of my hand and grabs my arm," she said, adding that she experienced both at meetings in the past year. "People shouldn't be treated like that." Tonkins didn't respond to a request for comment, but former state Rep. Dave Williams, a longtime Tonkins ally, dismissed the proposal as an attempt to silence Republicans who support Tonkins. Theres a small disgruntled faction within El Paso that is colluding with state GOP leadership to strip voting rights and disenfranchise faithful volunteers who chose to fill vacant party positions," Williams said in a text message. "Whats more troubling is that the state GOP, in the aftermath of historic losses, would even entertain the suicidal idea of shrinking our party membership just because the establishment knows it cant win the county party election next month," he added. Landgraf said the party's recent performance under Tonkins' reign in El Paso County traditionally, Colorado's Republican stronghold and the largest reservoir of Republican votes in the state should raise alarms for Republicans statewide, but not for the reasons Williams suggests. In the November election, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis came within just over 3 percentage points of carrying El Paso County, turning in the best performance by a top-ticket Democrat in the county in memory. Additionally, Democrats increased their share of the county's nine state House seats from two to three, marking the first time that's happened in decades. "We have to give people a reason to want to be a Republican," Landgraf said. "Right now, they look at the party and think, 'Why in the world would I want to do that?' When any of us talk about what happens in a county executive committee meeting, people look at us and go, 'Why would you want to be part of an organization like that?' I think they're absolutely right." El Paso County GOP infighting heats up following assemblies El Paso County Republican candidates aiming for major voting reforms and to protect the community from federal overreach arose victorious in assemblies earlier this month and will face more experienced politicians with larger political war chests and name recognition in the upcoming primaries. Republican El Paso County candidates say GOP hampered campaigns ahead of assembly El Paso County Republican candidates are concerned the GOP leadership hampered individual campaign efforts ahead of Saturday assemblies, gatherings candidates rely on to make the June primary ballot. +2 Republican candidates, volunteers claim party bias for candidates ahead of caucuses Republican candidates and El Paso County GOP volunteers say the county party's leadership has taken steps to favor four far-right candidates ahead of Tuesday's precinct caucuses. Gov. Jared Polis believes Colorado's red flag law is a more effective tool than an assault weapons ban, which General Assembly Democrats appear to be pursuing. Extreme Risk Protection Orders which allow family members or law enforcement officers to petition a court to removing firearms from a person who poses an imminent threat to themselves or others were central to Polis' public safety messaging in Tuesday State of the State address. The governor kicked off his second term in part by calling on the legislature to beef up the state's red flag law, which lawmakers passed in 2019 and went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. "Right now, loved ones and local law enforcement have the ability to pursue an extreme risk protection order. But why not expand this to include additional petitioners, like district attorneys?" he said in the address. But when asked by reporters about a draft bill from three legislative Democrats seeking to ban the purchase of what the drafters describe as "assault weapons," the governor demurred. "I haven't seen anything like that," Polis said. "There's many proposals that you and I wouldn't know any more about than what we've heard being discussed. "We specifically, looking at the data, believe that extreme risk protection orders can work better." Asked to contrast that stance with a 2018 bill he co-sponsored while in Congress titled "Assault Weapons Ban of 2018," Polis said federal action on guns was needed first, noting: " There's limits to what states can do." He specifically highlighted universal background checks. "We're proud of our universal background checks in Colorado, it's a good system," he said. "But even if you're a convicted felon in Colorado, you can drive an hour and a half to an open air show in Wyoming and with no background check at all, purchase several weapons and bring them back to Colorado." In the opening days of 2023, the red flag law has been a central feature for Colorado's constitutional officers who deal with public safety. In his swearing-in ceremony, Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser also touched on the subject. He spoke about making sure the states law for extreme risk protection orders works effectively, but stopped short of saying he would support his office having the ability to file petitions. He noted that his office doesnt have the closeness to individual communities that local law enforcement agencies do. Our jobs can be as a trainer to help them get the knowledge and the ability to use this law effectively, he said. Polis reinforced the emphasis on the red flag law when speaking to reporters after the address. "We specifically called for expanding petitioners for Extreme Risk Protection Orders .... We want to make sure that it's accessible and works, publicize it, and also make sure that we have the right set of petitioners to make sure it's used," he said, before touting a partnership with a bipartisan group of mayors calling for the state to ban untraceable weapons known as ghost guns. The use of the red flag law and potential legislative tweaks to strengthen its effectiveness have come into sharpen focus in the wake of the November shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs. Polis suggested law enforcers in El Paso County or the mother of the suspect of the Club Q shooting should have pursued a red flag law order, arguing signs existed of a troubled life that warranted such an action. "So, right now, in Colorado, you could have parents or family members go for an extreme risk protection order or red flag law. That's fairly common," Gov. Jared Polis said on "Face the Nation." "It wasn't pursued in this instance by the mother. You can also have a local sheriff agency do it. In this case, it wasn't pursued by the local sheriff agency." He added: "I'm sure what will be looked into is 'why wasn't it pursued'." Hundreds of such orders had been sought since the law took effect, but the law's use has been uneven, with some jurisdictions refusing to deploy it. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office has never used it, and the Colorado Springs Police Department has used it twice since it went into effect three years ago. Would you like to receive our news updates? Signup today! Sign up to receive notifications when a new Columbia Gorge News e-Edition is published. Error! There was an error processing your request. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Gorge Social Information from the News and our advertisers (Want to add your business to this to this feed?) Are you a current print subscriber to Columbia Gorge News? If so, you qualify for free access to all content on columbiagorgenews.com. Simply verify with your subscriber id to receive free access. Your subscriber id may be found on your bill or mailing label. Offer a personal message of sympathy... By sharing a fond memory or writing a kind tribute, you will be providing a comforting keepsake to those in mourning. If you have an existing account with this site, you may log in with that below. Otherwise, you can create an account by clicking on the Log in button below, and then register to create your account. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form Bratislava tourist board expresses welcome to Chinese tourists Xinhua) 13:28, January 18, 2023 BRATISLAVA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Responding to China's decision to optimize its COVID-19 response and international travel policies, a spokesperson for the Bratislava Tourist Board (BTB) said his city welcomes the return of Chinese tourists. "After two years of the (COVID) pandemic, we are ready for Chinese tourists and I hope Chinese tourists will arrive at least in the same numbers as before," Julius Buday told Xinhua. "When we walked the streets of Bratislava's Old Town in 2019, we met throngs of Chinese tourists," he said. Back then, China was the sixth largest source of tourists to Slovakia. Just like their peers from other countries, tourists from China tend to spend two nights on average in the capital of Slovakia, "which is why we are trying to promote Bratislava as a 72-hour city," he said. On average, Chinese tourists spend about 200 euros (218 U.S. dollars) per day in Slovakia. Their recent absence has had a substantial negative impact on the country's economy, Buday said. Renata Michalikova, a city guide in Bratislava, told Xinhua that most of the Chinese tourists were young people or families on a tour of Europe. "They liked the city for being small and compact with everything close at hand. Vienna is only 60 km away and Budapest is just 200 km away, therefore they were able to visit three major capital cities in just a couple of days," she said. (Web editor: Cai Hairuo, Liang Jun) Apple first introduced support for Wi-Fi 6E in iPads late last year and this week rolled out the first Macs to support it. What difference will it make to professionals and why does it matter? What is Wi-FI 6E? Where it is permitted, Wi-Fi 6E uses the new to Wi-Fi 6GHz wireless band that makes for faster and more reliable Wi-Fi, though you do need a Wi-Fi router or access point that supports the standard. That standard was ratified for public use in 2021, when Apple was originally expected to begin to deploy it in iPhones. This didnt happen, of course, and the first Apple devices to implement Wi-FI 6E were iPads. The advantages of Wi-Fi 6E include: More available bandwidth. Less contention and interference. Fastest Wi-Fi speed available. Full support for Wi-Fi 6. When Apple introduced support for Wi-Fi 6E with the M2 iPad Pro in 2022, it said: The new iPad Pro supports the fastest Wi-Fi connections with support for Wi-Fi 6E, so users who need fast connections can take their demanding workflows with them everywhere. Downloads are up to 2.4Gb/s, 2x faster than the previous generation. Among many improvements, those who champion the 6E standard claim performance is up to four times better in congested environments and it delivers better battery life. Wi-Fi 6E can utilize up to 14 additional 80MHz channels or seven additional superwide 160MHz channels in 6GHz for applications such as high-definition video streaming and virtual reality. What this should mean is more consistent, faster Wi-Fi connections that remain stable even when large numbers of devices are using the same access point at once. What advantages does it provide? As Apple noted, higher bandwidth supports demanding professional workflows. Another big advantage: Wi-Fi 6E can support more Wi-Fi users simultaneously in densely congested environments. Thats great for businesses, as it suggests much better wireless support in offices and other public working spaces. Its also important to note that the standard implicitly provides more bandwidth and support for more devices, something essential for smart homes, offices, industries, and more. As the number of active connected devices proliferates, its becoming increasingly important to provide vast quantities of bandwidth. Enabling the next-generation enterprise Wi-Fi 6E may enable new business opportunities. Thats because the standards bandwidth-friendly nature better supports important enterprise technologies, such as unified communications, cloud computing, or telepresence. It may also provide essential building blocks for emerging hybrid network services at the cutting edge, such as SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). The Wi-Fi Alliance has published information concerning existing uses, including deployment at the University of Michigan. With tens of thousands of students, researchers, and faculty staff, the high bandwidth available to 6E there is becoming essential. The university uses it to handle all the standard things you'd expect Wi-Fi to address, but also to transfer huge data sets of analysis and research, manage thousands of simultaneous videoconferencing feeds, and support robots and automation. With AI, automation, and data analysis all growing across many enterprises, this kind of bandwidth may become common in the coming years. But what about Wi-Fi 7? Yes, there is always a new standard on the horizon in this case, Wi-Fi 7. Despite promising even better Wi-Fi performance, its way too early to become enthralled to any Wi-Fi 7 hype as the upcoming standard hasnt been ratified yet. When it does appear, it will offer advantages even in contrast to Wi-Fi 6E, particularly more bandwidth, better multi-channel support, and improved handling of network congestion. While it is true that some manufacturers may soon launch products they say will support Wi-Fi 7 when it's finally ratified, history shows that some will be very expensive while others won't be able to fully exploit the finalized standard once it appears. Some Wi-Fi 7 smartphones may appear in 2024, but given most smartphones sold last year dont yet support Wi-Fi 6E, its likely to be some time before this becomes commonplace and we still need the routers to carry this traffic. This is why we dont really anticipate 7 will reach tipping point for a few more years. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi 6E faces regulatory barriers in some nations and not every country has released the 6GHz band it needs. At the same time, its the standard most users will now move to adopt, in part because it solves the tricky problems of network congestion and helps you get a better connection wirelessly online. It also promises to handle the high traffic volume of connected everything and increasingly digitized business. Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak (Photo:DC) Hyderabad: Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak on Wednesday invited the pharma companies in Telangana to invest and establish their units in the state, stating that UP is a favourable destination with a huge market and manpower. The first half of the day, which saw a UP delegation meet with a slew of investors, yielded investment intents totalling Rs 22,000 crore in UP, he stated. In an exclusive interview with the Deccan Chronicle, Pathak, who is leading a group from his state on a road show in Hyderabad ahead of the UP Global Investors Summit in Lucknow from February 10 to 12, stated that UP offers various possibilities and opportunities to people from Telangana in that state. Telangana is a good state, with good people. And we are offering several opportunities to people from here in our state. We have come here with a lot of expectations and look forward to inviting the pharma sector to our state. We have a huge market and manpower. We expect a lot of interest and investments on this front, he stated. The first half of the day, which saw a UP delegation meet with a slew of investors, yielded investment intentions totalling Rs 22,000 crore in Uttar Pradesh, he said. Infrastructure, defence, and the pharma sectors are three of UPs top investment areas, he explained. "We have the defence corridor, which includes Lucknow and Bundelkhand, and the state is already home for the Brahmos supersonic missile's manufacturing. For the pharma sector, we have separate projects and have identified corridors, he explained. Further, he said UP, the country's fifth-most populous state, has set a lofty goal for itself to expand to a $1 trillion economy as part of India's plans to grow from its current $3.5 trillion GDP to a $5 trillion economy. Our contribution to the countrys GDP is 8%. We are working to achieve our chief minister Yogi Adityanath's goals and objectives, which include transforming our state into an economic powerhouse, he said. Pathak noted the state's burgeoning infrastructure as well as its investor-friendly policies supportive of businesses and industries as reasons why Uttar Pradesh is an ideal destination to invest. Another driver is the fact that UP, with its 25 crore population, is the country's largest market and has the technical manpower and raw materials that investors from all sectors need, he asserted. We have the longest network of roads, state, and national highways. We have nine airports and 17 more are coming up, including the largest in Asia at Jewar. We start the patching year of 2023 looking at one of the largest releases of vulnerability fixes in Microsoft history. The January 10 Patch Tuesday update patched one actively exploited zero-day vulnerability and 98 security flaws. The update arrives at a time when short- and long-term technology and budget decisions need to be made. This is particularly true for organizations using on-premises Microsoft Exchange Servers. Start off 2023 by reviewing the most basic communication tool you have in your business: your mail server. Is it as protected as it could be from the threats that lie ahead of us in the coming months? The attackers know the answer to that question. Why attackers target on-premises Exchange For years, Exchange has been the de facto on-premises email platform for many businesses. Then came Azure and the cloud, and Microsoft started to build a similar cloud alternative to its mail server platform. The two platforms were comparable for years with similar features. They also shared security and vulnerability issues. Less comparable now are the resources Microsoft devotes to on-premises Exchange versus Azure. The company recently added older but still supported versions of on-premises Exchange from its bug bounty program. As a result, attackers and researchers alike started looking more closely at Exchange. Fast-forward to the last few months and we see attackers gaining access to networks and launching ransomware attacks using unpatched or not quite fully patched Exchange vulnerabilities. Attackers knew that these vulnerabilities were hard to patch and that Microsoft hadnt fully patched the ProxyShell vulnerability. Even with Microsoft mitigation tools in place, you often were still vulnerable. The CVE-2021-31207 post-authentication vulnerability was patched in May of 2021, but the Cuba ransomware (DEV-0671) is using stolen credentials to exploit it and plant a web shell, often the Chopper web shell, that permits a remote operator to launch malicious code on a compromised Microsoft Exchange Server through providing system-level access to the device. Januarys large vulnerability patching release addressed a series of vulnerabilities that could allow the attacker to gain full system privileges. How to protect on-premises Exchange Server Have a service or firewall that pre-scans emails before they arrive at your Exchange Server. This can be a device to hold and forward email should a maintenance or security event occur that causes downtime. Ensure your device or solution provides web filtering processes that search for and prevent these types of attacks. Always use a supported version of Exchange that receives security updates. As Microsoft noted recently, even this servicing model can change depending on timing and other patches expected. The company originally intended to release two cumulative updates (CUs) per year, in H1 and H2 of each calendar year, with general target release dates of March and September. However, in November Microsoft announced that the next CU for Exchange Server will be the H1 2023 CU (Exchange Server 2019 CU13) and there would not be an H2 2022 CU. Exchange 2013 comes to its end of life on April 11, 2023, which is less than 90 days away. If you are still on this version, plan a migration to either a supported version, an online version of Exchange (Microsoft 365), or an alternative platform to receive email depending on your needs. Make necessary updates and patches to components connected to on-premises Exchange. Patching Exchange often dictates an Active Directory (AD) schema update. As noted in a July Exchange blog post, you often have to be aware of what cumulative update you are on and enter the appropriate AD schema command. If you have a hybrid email setup with an Exchange management server on premises and set up the synchronization with Exchange online, you will need to patch this as well with the latest Exchange updates. The Exchange team has also provided patches to older, unsupported versions on occasion because of an extreme risk introduced by a threat. Be aware of the additional mitigation tools that Microsoft has introduced to better protect and defend on-premises Exchange Servers. The Emergency Mitigation Service was released in September 2021 to counter emerging threats. As Microsoft notes, When you install the September 2021 CU (or later) on Exchange Server 2016 or Exchange Server 2019, the EM service will be installed automatically on servers with the Mailbox role. The EM service will not be installed on Edge Transport servers. While you can opt out of this service, I recommend that you enable it on your on-premises Exchange Servers. You will be prompted to install the IIS URL Rewrite Module and Universal C Runtime in Windows (KB2999226) for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Verify that an Exchange Server has connectivity to the mitigation service by using the Test-MitigationServiceConnectivity.ps1 script in the V15\Scripts folder in the Exchange server directory. Install security updates released this month and those delivered in 2021 (CVE-2021-31207) on all applications and operating systems. If you have any issues, follow the recommendations and comments posted to the Exchange blog posts especially those that announce security patches for Exchange. Review your network segmentation and consider using the built-in Windows Firewall or your network firewall to prevent remote procedure call (RPC) and server message block (SMB) communication among endpoints whenever possible. Limit the use of local administrators and deploy the LAPS toolkit to randomize the local administrator password in your network. Discuss with your team the resources and tools you have to protect on-premises Exchange Servers. While it is never ideal to move from a platform with fixed costs to one based on reoccurring subscription revenue streams, businesses put security resources and investments on products and services that have a potential for growth. There comes a time when older technologies cannot be made secure or keep up with the feature set of the newer platforms. Attackers are often one step ahead of us. If we focus resources elsewhere, they can easily tell our lack of investment in mail servers by merely reading the version numbers in mail headers. Email is a foundational business tool as well as a foundational attack tool, so place security investments accordingly. By Microsoft Security Microsoft has worked to illuminate the evolving digital threat landscape with in-depth security reports for more than 15 years. Our mission first began with the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, which ran from 2005 to 2018. It has since evolved into the Microsoft Digital Defense Report, which was first released in 2020. This latest edition explores the most pressing cyber threats while also providing insight and guidance on how organizations can strengthen their cyber defenses. Comprised of insights from 43 trillion daily security signals, the Microsoft Digital Defense Report aggregates security data from a broad spectrum of organizations and consumers across the cloud, endpoints, and the intelligent edge. The result is a high-level picture of the threat landscape and the current state of cybersecurity, including indicators that help us predict what attackers will do next. Well be breaking down the Microsoft Digital Defense Report into five digestible parts with one article for each section of the report: cybercrime, nation-state threats, devices and infrastructure, cyber-influence operations, and cyber resiliency. For this first installation, well be covering section one: The State of Cybercrime. Keep reading for an overview of our findings, and click here to access the full report. Current events lead to more targeted cyber attacks Its no secret that cybercrime is on the rise. In large part, this is driven by dramatic increases in both random and targeted attacks. Take, for example, the evolution of cyberattack methods and criminal infrastructure that was used to augment the kinetic war during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Microsoft observed threat actors using current events such as Russias war on Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic to create hyper-realistic, targeted phishing attacks. These attacks use recent news stories to entice consumers to click on malicious links or provide sensitive information that would then enable attackers to gain access to internal networks. Similarly, 2022 also saw a rise in hacktivism, with private citizens conducting cyberattacks to further social or political goals. Thousands of individuals were mobilized to launch attacks as part of the Russia-Ukraine war. While it remains to be seen whether this trend will continue, the technology industry must come together to design a comprehensive response to this new threat. Cyber threats are diversifying as cybercrime evolves This year also saw a significant increase in indiscriminate phishing and credential theft to gain information that is then sold and used in targeted attacks such as ransomware, data exfiltration and extortion, and business email compromise. In fact, 50% of Microsoft cybersecurity recovery engagements are related to ransomware incidents. Ransomware attacks pose an increased risk to all individuals as critical infrastructure, businesses of all sizes, and state and local governments are targeted by criminals leveraging a growing cybercriminal ecosystem. As ransomware attacks have become more audacious in scope, their effects have become more wide-ranging. A sustainable and successful effort against this threat will require the government and private sector to work closely together to create a coordinated response plan. When looking at organizations that were impacted by ransomware attacks, common vulnerabilities included weak identity controls, ineffective security operations, and incomplete data protection strategies. Organizations looking to shore up their defenses can start by evaluating their own security procedures to see if they contain similar weaknesses. The CaaS economy is growing and evolving Cybercrime as a service (CaaS) is a growing and evolving threat to customers worldwide. The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) observed continued growth of the CaaS ecosystem with an increasing number of online services facilitating cybercrimes, including business email compromise (BEC) and human-operated ransomware. In 2022 alone, Microsoft blocked 2.75 million site registrations ahead of criminal actors that planned to use them to engage in global cybercrime. CaaS sellers increasingly offer compromised credentials for purchase and were seeing more CaaS services and products with enhanced features to avoid detection. Attackers are finding new ways to implement techniques and host their operational infrastructure, such as compromising businesses to host phishing campaigns and malware or using their computing power to mine cryptocurrency. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming an increasingly popular target for cybercriminals using widespread botnets. When routers are unpatched and left exposed directly to the internet, threat actors can abuse them to gain access to networks, execute malicious attacks, and even support their operations. While cybercrime is an ever-looming threat, there are a number of steps that security teams can take to better protect their organizations. And it starts with understanding how cybercriminals operate and where their organizational vulnerabilities lie. Download the full Microsoft Digital Defense Report to better understand todays cyber threat landscape and for even more details, check out our recent webinar, Build cyber resilience by leveraging Microsoft experts' digital defense learnings. Explore more threat intelligence insights on Microsoft Security Insider. In view of the recent stampede incidents in Kandukur and Guntur, the AP government has imposed a ban on public meetings and rallies on roads (Photo by arrangement) Vijayawada: In view of the recent stampede incidents in Kandukur and Guntur, the AP government has imposed a ban on public meetings and rallies on national, state, municipal and panchayat raj roads across the state. The two stampedes at opposition Telugu Desam meetings had left 11 persons dead and several others injured. The government said district SPs and police commissioners may grant such permission only in rare cases. The national, state, municipal and panchayat raj roads in the state should be used only for transportation of people and goods, the government order said. It asked the district officials to select alternative places for holding meetings in villages, towns and cities. Principal secretary to government, Harish Gupta, issued the GORT -01 of the home department via-a-vis public meetings/assembly on roads and roadsides/margins, under the Police Act 1861. The order said no licence should be granted for any meeting on state and national highways. By and large, alternative locations such as public grounds must be utilised for this purpose. Municipal roads and panchayat roads are narrow and meant for free movement of the people staying in the local area. Any obstruction due to meetings on these roads endangers lives, disrupts the civic life as also emergency services, causing inconvenience to the general public. Only in rare and exceptional circumstances, and for reasons to be recorded in writing, shall the applications for grant of permission for public meetings be considered, the order said. It said, The police may suggest alternative locations away from public roads subject to conditions that the meetings should not obstruct the free flow of traffic on public roads and not affect the safety of the travelling public. It is also advisable that the district administration and the police machinery, upon request for such meetings, identify forthwith the designated places in their respective jurisdiction, away from public roads, for public meetings. "It shall be the duty of the police to keep order on the public roads, and in the public streets, thoroughfares, ghats and landing places, and at all other places of public activity and prevent obstructions on the occasions of assemblies and processions on the public roads and in the public streets, or in the neighbourhood of places of worship, during the time of public worship. The order asked the DGP (HOPF) to take necessary action to avoid tragic incidents during meetings of political parties. Jewish people aged 18-26 are given the opportunity to go on a free 10 day trip to Israel through Birthright Israel. At Ben Gurion Airport, participants are joined by eight Israelis their age most of whom are still serving in the army an armed medic and a knowledgeable tour guide. For the majority of participants, this is their first time visiting Israel. This winter break several trips were conducted, one of which included 30 students from the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Santa Cruz. As they disembarked from the plane, they were greeted by their Israeli peers and tour guide, Barak Berkovich. Berkovich was aware of the misconceptions people sometimes have about Birthright trips and therefore made sure to explain that he was not there to brainwash them into loving Israel or joining the army. My goal is to take exclamation marks and turn them into question marks, he said. Birthright Israel has received much criticism over the years. Some argue that the program glosses over Israels complicated history and spreads misinformation. While that may be true of some trips, students from Oregon and Santa Cruz did not feel this way. Berkovich talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wall separating Israel from the West Bank and welcomed any questions the group had. In explaining the Israeli Palestinian conflict Berkovich talked about the opposing perception Israelis and Palestinians have. One example he gave showcased the feelings a Palestinian child would have after an interaction with an Israeli soldier, and that of an Israeli child growing up surrounded by missiles. He did a really good job explaining multiple different perspectives on the same issue, Blake, an OSU student said. He would give these examples that would make you think of the same issue with the exact opposite feeling about it. Students began their trip in Jerusalem, a city viewed with much controversy around the world due to its significance to Jews, Muslims and Christians. While the group mostly visited sites of high importance to Jews, Berkovich explained the significance of the city to Muslims and Christians as well. On the third day of the trip, students visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. In preparation for this often challenging experience, participants spoke about the various antisemitic incidents they have encountered in their personal lives. One student had a gun pointed at them by the Ku Klux Klan while working in Georgia. Others had jokes made at them while picking up pennies off the street, and some had swastikas drawn on their notebooks. Sadness, anger and frustration are among the emotions that arose from this activity, although some also felt validated to know that others understood the hate they experienced. The Israeli peers who joined the trip were shocked to learn of the ever-prevalent antisemitism that still exists in America today. In Israel, due to the Jewish majority, antisemitism does not present itself in the same manner. I got fears the minute that you told your stories about antisemitism over there, Ilan Peleg, one of the Israelis, explained. To many, talking about antisemitism is a reminder of the importance of Israel for the Jewish people today. I know there's a lot of controversy with their politics, and I understand why, but at the same time I feel like it's a good thing a place like Israel exists, UO student Hannah Wald said, because I do think Jewish people need somewhere to go to in case worse comes to worst. After Jerusalem, students continued to the Golan Heights. While in the Golan they rode on Jeeps, overlooked Syria and discussed its borders and war. The previous night they also attended a geopolitical lecture. During the last day of the trip students visited Sderot, bordering the Gaza Strip. It is known to be the most missile-targeted city in Israel. While in Sderot, they learned about the complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict and saw dozens of bomb shelters spread throughout the city. Even still, students felt safe. I felt a lot safer as a Jew in Israel than I've ever felt as a Jew here, Nora Loffredo, a UCSC student, said. The trip included a variety of activities from visiting Israels national cemetery to experiencing Tel Avivs nightlife, floating in the Dead Sea and everything in between. Students tasted various foods such as falafel and shawarma, slept in Bedouin tents and learned about LGBTQ+ rights in Israel. Participants had the opportunity to enjoy the country while questioning what their relationship is to Israel and Judaism, whatever the answer may be. Were not trying to sell you an image of perfect Israel, Berkovich explained. Were trying to portray an image of complicated Israel, an interesting Israel, a fascinating Israel. Opinion: The actions of Russias unjust invasion of Ukraine marks the end of Serbias blind loyalty to Putins government after decades of regional and cultural instability. But will it be enough to completely tame generational disputes? ---------- On Dec. 10, 2022, ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo erected roadblocks deterring entry into Serbia on its major border crossings. This dispute is one of many that has been ongoing since Kosovos fight for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s and its official independence in 2008. The international community became directly involved when Serbia announced on Dec. 26, 2022, that it had placed security troops on its border with Kosovo with full military readiness. This roadblock and military buildup has since been removed and revoked due to international outcry from the West and the European Union. Today, Serbia continues to reject the idea that Kosovo is an independent nation and believes it is part of their territory. Who else supports them in this ethnic and cultural dispute? Russia has historically been one of Serbias top international supporters as they continue to delegitimize the Kosovar people. The Russian government has been directly involved in the Balkan region throughout the 1990s and even attempted to have the United Nations stand up in Serbias defense after NATOs bombing of Serbian military personnel in 1999. Since Kosovos official independence in 2008, Russian media has perpetuated the harmful rhetoric that Kosovo is Serbia. The only reason Russia wants Serbias support is because Moscow and the West are in active competition with each other to earn international influence over this very sensitive region in Europe. According to a paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, many Balkan states are internally divided between liberal elements that look to Europe and conservative elements that are more receptive to Russia. Unfortunately for Russia, this balancing act of global influence in the Balkans is in no way a sustainable way to continue. Fortunately for the West, Russias invasion of Ukraine has ruined any chance for a Russian victory in this contagious Balkan fever. For most of current Serbian president Aleksandar Vucics time as the nations strongman leader, he has been referred to as little Putin. This name has stuck due to Serbias dependence on Russian energy imports and political partnerships. However, Russias invasion of Ukraine has ultimately marked the end of this once strong relationship of blind Russian loyalty. Putins own words would become a symbolic stab in the back to the Serbian people in April 2022. Putin cited the Kosovo situation when justifying his annexation of Eastern Ukraines Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts. For the Serbs, Putins statements were seen as hypocritical as Russian propagandists have for years emphasized Kosovos illegitimate statehood. Since this statement, Vucic and his conservative government have been distancing themselves from Russia. Interestingly, even after everything Russia has said, Serbia still has not placed any sanctions on Russia. It is obvious that this is due to them still being completely dependent on their energy. However, times change and actions have consequences. One of the consequences for Russias unjust invasion of Ukraine is the growing possibility of Serbias decision to look to the West and its neighboring countries for alternative energy sources and international support. Vucic has stated that Putins actions in Ukraine have created unsustainable pressure from the West to eventually recognize Kosovo. It is important to note that Serbia had actually applied for EU membership in 2009 with negotiations still ongoing. Today, Serbia still has no desire to recognize Kosovo as an independent nation, as the Serbian government believes it to be their rightful land; however, they are increasingly under the pressure of the West to change as they are no longer chained to Russias political influence. Will Serbia finally become a EU member or will they continue to be hindered by blind Russian loyalty? Only time will tell. The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) orangised an e-auction for 1.20 square yards of land in Ranga Reddy, Sangareddy, and Medchal-Malkajgiri districts. HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) received a lukewarm response for Wednesday's e-auction. Out of 38 land parcels spread across Rangareddy, Sangareddy and Medchal-Malkakgiri districts, the planning body could sell only nine stray bits to an extent of 32,730 sq.yds, from which it garnered revenue of Rs 195. 24 crore. Citing this, authorities informed that phase 2 of the stray bits will be issued in three days. HMDA conducted the e-auction of stray bit land parcels pertaining to the three districts in two sessions through MSTC. Of the nine stray bits that were sold on the day, three were in Rangareddy, four in Medchal-Malkakgiri and two in Sangareddy. The highest price received was Rs 1,11,000 per square yard. The headlines call him a monster. But rapist David Carrick did not have horns or fangs. He had something far more dangerous a police warrant card and uniforms. And because there was nothing about his appearance in public to identify him as the monster he is, he was able to abuse his power and commit countless horrific crimes. We will never know the full tally because many of his victims, probably most of them, will have been too frightened to come forward. The headlines call him a monster. But rapist David Carrick did not have horns or fangs. He had something far more dangerous a police warrant card and uniforms Women assaulted by police officers fear their attackers are untouchable, because the men themselves boast of it. To the general public, Carrick did not stand out but to his colleagues, his vicious criminal behaviour was well known, even a standing joke. Carricks nickname was B*****d Dave. Throughout the police force in which he served, this man was notorious for his horrendous behaviour. Destroy The appalling truth is that he is far from unusual. As a campaigner who has fought to halt violence against women all my adult life, Ive known for decades that men like him are a forest fire in the police service. The problem is not just that hes a bad apple the whole barrel is rotten. Even the officers who are repelled by the sexual assaults, or the sharing of obscene photographs and jokes on social media, are forced to be complicit. They cannot speak out, because doing so will destroy their careers and put their lives in danger. Especially if they are female. Many try and are disciplined for minor infringements, or sacked on a pretext. Others are labelled liars, or sexual fantasists, or demented. I knew one woman constable whose ex-boyfriend, also a PC, raped her. When she reported him to her superiors, she was frozen out. Colleagues stopped speaking to her. It was made clear that if she ever found herself under attack on duty, back-up would not arrive. She was repeatedly sent into dangerous situations. Facing ostracism and with no hope of promotion, she left the job. Her ex-boyfriend, meanwhile, was made a sergeant. To the general public, Carrick did not stand out but to his colleagues, his vicious criminal behaviour was well known, even a standing joke Another female officer became alarmed at the constant misogynistic banter she heard being exchanged by her male colleagues, with endless jokes about rape. She raised her concerns with a senior officer. Within days, she had received two threats: one a warning to expect a sexual assault herself, the other a dead rat in her locker. If that is the degree of intimidation faced by women in the police, imagine how much worse it can be for ordinary members of the public who dare to make a complaint of rape by a serving officer. More women than I can count, over the years, have told me of bullying and harassment after they have made an accusation and it often follows a familiar pattern. Taxis arrive at their house, day and night. Pizzas are delivered at 4am. Both are well-worn and malicious tactics intended to harass victims and threaten them into silence. If they drive their cars, they are often stopped and searched. If they go on demonstrations, they might be singled out and arrested. Menacing, exhausting and very frightening, this campaign has a single aim: to make them shut up. Usually, it works. This is why, when the shocking news of Carricks crimes broke earlier this week, I was sickened but certainly not surprised. There are many others like him in the force. I can say this with certainty because the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley admitted as much, months ago and appears to have done little about it. Baroness Caseys interim report into standards at the Met and its internal culture, published last October, showed that out of nearly 9,000 Met officers and staff accused of misconduct since 2013, only 5 per cent were sacked. Carricks nickname was B*****d Dave. Throughout the police force in which he served, this man was notorious for his horrendous behaviour This means hundreds keep donning the uniform and drawing their salaries while under investigation for crimes, including rape, other sexual assaults and domestic abuse. Many faced repeated accusations, yet remained untouchable. More than 1,800 were the subject of multiple charges but just 13 of them were sacked. Thats less than 1 per cent. Terrifyingly, 41 officers faced six or more allegations, and one faced 19. Another officer accused of 11 separate offences including assault, sexual harassment, sending naked images, fraud and leaking information is believed to be still in uniform. In light of Carricks crimes, the Met admitted yesterday that 1,633 domestic abuse and sexual offence claims involving 1,071 Met staff members were still under review. Meanwhile, unofficial sources say at least 100 officers exhibit such toxic behaviour that they are not trusted to work with the public. They have to be kept out of sight. These figures are stomach-turning. No wonder the Commissioner admits hundreds of his officers should be weeded out and sacked, for everyones safety. Yet this isnt happening. One of the most upsetting aspects of the Carrick case is that allegations against him were reviewed and set aside after the murder of Sarah Everard by an officer. Sadistic It appears that no crime at all is bad enough to force the police to cleanse their ranks. Vera Baird, the former Victims Commissioner for England and Wales, said on Radio 4s Today programme yesterday: The Metropolitan Police seem incapable of not employing, and furthermore retaining, some quite evil people. It is evident that many corrupt officers are drawn to the job in the first place by the opportunities it offers for committing sex crimes. They go into the job to wield power in sadistic ways. We need far more rigorous scrutiny of applicants, not just to disbar those with criminal associates, but to vet their attitudes towards women. On Good Morning Britain yesterday, Sir Mark Rowley was challenged to guarantee that a woman reporting a sex offence to police would not be met by an officer who had been accused of something similar. Im not going to make a promise I cant stick to, he replied. That feels like the Commissioner sending a message that hes powerless to stop the rapists with warrant cards. Im going to put in place ruthless systems to squeeze out those who shouldnt be with us, he claimed. Rancid Then, however, he appeared to minimise the problem: Most of our officers are fantastic. But do I have some officers who shouldnt be in the Met that Ive got to identify and get rid of? Yes I do, and Im completely frank about that. He should start with the ones hiding in plain sight, the officers who revel in nicknames like B*****d. They shouldnt be hard to find all their colleagues know who they are. Then he has to break up the social media groups that corrupt officers use for sharing photos of victims and tips on how to get away with rape. That means spot checks on work phones and WhatsApp groups. Its micro-management, but sadly it is necessary if this rancid behaviour is to be rooted out. The only lasting solution is to introduce independent scrutiny by external investigators. The police cannot be trusted to expose their own failings, because we know now that they will always close ranks. The only way to expose the truth is to do it from the outside. There is no point in wheeling Sir Mark Rowley out to tell breakfast TV viewers that lessons will be learned because time and time again they have not been. The only appropriate lesson for sexual offenders in the police is to sack them, prosecute them and jail them. All of them. Julie Bindel is the author of Feminism For Women: The Real Route To Liberation. Ukraine can ill afford to lose people of the calibre of interior minister Denys Monastyrsky. He was a prominent figure in the Zelensky generation of young reformers, who instead found themselves leading their country in a savage, existential war. I will not forget a deeply moving encounter with him one week after the Russian invasion. The streets of Kyiv were deserted, the air raid sirens wailed, enemy tanks had reached the suburbs. It felt that the end of an independent Ukraine was only days away. Ukraine can ill afford to lose people of the calibre of interior minister Denys Monastyrsky. He is pictured above with President Zelensky Inside the 1,000 year old cathedral of St Sophia, the leaders of Ukraines religious faiths Christian, Muslim and Jew had gathered to pray for a miracle of deliverance. Also present in the chancel that fraught morning was Mr Monastyrsky, a lawyer by training. He had come to church accompanied by a bodyguard who was in uniform and armed with an assault rifle. The minister was wearing a bullet-proof vest over his civilian clothes. Their appearance and solemn demeanour underscored the reality of the situation: that death could come at any moment. After the collective prayers were over, Bishop Vitalii Kvyvytskyi, head of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr, stepped forward and, as I wrote then, placed his right hand flat on the chest of Mr Monasatyrskys body armour. He was a prominent figure in the Zelensky generation of young reformers, who instead found themselves leading their country in a savage, existential war Eyes closed, the prelate began to pray for him, in the manner of the benediction of a medieval warrior before battle. I approached the interior minister he had only been in the job for seven months by then as he was about to leave the cathedral. You are facing a grave threat, I observed. We are ready, he replied in English. We shook hands and I wished him luck. Then he strode back out into the besieged city and his enormous responsibilities. This was not to be a coda. In the 11 months that have passed since then Ukraines resilience has amazed the world. It is sad Mr Monastyrsky, 42, the most senior of the Zelensky generation to die in this conflict, is not part of her future. In the 11 months that have passed since then Ukraines resilience has amazed the world. Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska holds a press conference after the crash A woman who split from her own 'cheating' fiance has revealed her 'fool-proof' hack for finding out if your significant other is going to be unfaithful when you're married. Kira Arellano, 19, a behavioral health technician from Las Vegas, Nevada, recently went viral on TikTok after claiming she's discovered a method for finding out if someone is cheating or planning on cheating. Four months into her whirlwind romance with her now ex, she found out he had been unfaithful while she was pregnant with his baby. She decided not to have the child, but she forgave him and accepted his proposal just three days later. In a bid to secure her finances and emotional well-being, she immediately suggested a prenuptial agreement, which included a clause stating that if either of them cheats, the other half is entitled to compensation for emotional damage. Kira Arellano, 19, went viral on TikTok after she shared how 'to find out if the man you're considering marrying is gonna cheat on you in the future' 'I brought up the prenup and infidelity clause, which he was very uncomfortable about,' she told NeedToKnow.Online. 'Eventually, he did reluctantly agree, although he showed lessened intentions of getting married after that. '[This was] around three months into our engagement, where up until this point, he was very adamant on getting married and having a baby.' Arellano said they already had 'some very brief conversations' about wedding venues, and she had picked out a dress that she 'fell in love with,' but their planning came to a halt after the prenup conversations. Frequent arguments led to her realization that she couldn't 'change him,' and they split soon after. Four months into her whirlwind romance with her now ex (pictured), she found out he had been unfaithful while she was pregnant with his baby Arellano decided not to have the child, but she forgave him and accepted his proposal just three days later Arellano recalled how she suggested they add an infidelity clause to their prenup. If either of them cheated, the other would be entitled to compensation for emotional damage Arellano now lives by the old adage 'once a cheater, always a cheater' and wants to protect other women from infidelity. She opened up about her experience on TikTok in her now-viral video. 'This is a 100 per cent fool-proof way to find out if the man you're considering marrying is gonna cheat on you in the future,' she said. 'One word: prenup.' Arellano explained that her ex cheated on her when she was pregnant with his child, but she stupidly decided to give him another chance. Arellano said they broke up shortly after because it was clear he planned on cheating again Viewers flocked to the comments to share their thoughts, and many agreed that having a prenup is a surefire way to protect yourself After they got engaged, she started working on their prenuptial agreement and suggested they include an infidelity clause. 'He looked at me like I was insane. It started a whole argument,' she recalled. 'I was just sitting there calm. Like I don't understand what the issue is here. Just don't cheat.' Arellano finally realized what the real issue was. 'It's because he planned to do it again,' she concluded. Viewers flocked to the comments to share their thoughts, and many agreed that having a prenup is a surefire way to protect yourself and make sure your partner is committed. As for Arellano, she doesn't have any regrets about what happened or the lesson that she learned after their breakup 'I'm very thankful that I got out of that relationship and prevented myself from being stuck in a marriage with someone who doesn't love me and never loved me,' she said 'The only way I'll get married is if the prenup says this,' one person wrote, while another added: 'No matter how much you love the person GET A PRENUP.' 'Prenups should be standard...it's not a bad thing. Protect yourself always. If he loves you, he will sign it,' someone else shared. Another user gave a detailed account of her own prenup, saying they have stipulations for if they have kids together, if either party becomes disabled, and if one of them cheats. 'We spent days and weeks doing the whole process,' she explained. 'He knew before he proposed I wouldn't get married again without one.' Arellano added that she is 'definitely healing' and has cut off all contact with her ex As for Arellano, she doesn't have any regrets about what happened or the lesson that she learned. 'I'm very thankful that I got out of that relationship and prevented myself from being stuck in a marriage with someone who doesn't love me and never loved me,' she said. 'I'm definitely healing and it can be really hard sometimes because I really did love this person, even though I know he hurt me and cheated on me. I never cheated on him,' she noted. 'I tried to be the best girlfriend, and I know that whenever I do decide I'm ready to start another relationship, I will be confident that I can carry myself out to be a good partner. 'Now, I can explore my sexuality further, and I've stayed firm on cutting contact with him.' Hundreds of other workers weighed in on the issue They included babies in tights and toddlers arriving sick She listed the things parents do that annoy daycare staff A childcare worker has revealed the 'icks' she can't stand while working at a daycare. Tahlia , 20, from Melbourne, listed all kinds of frustrations she has day to day, from parents who send their child to daycare with a sniffle, to dressing them poorly and packing the wrong type of lunch. The video provoked outrage in many parents, but many other workers in the industry wholeheartedly agreed with the complaints and added their own pet peeves. Scroll down for video 20-year-old Tahlia, from Melbourne (pictured) has revealed the things parents do that daycare staff absolutely hate Tahlia shared the list of surprising things parents send their kids with to daycare that frustrates workers, including tights and hats (pictured). The video provoked outrage in many parents, but hundreds of nursery workers agreed with the complaints and added their own childcare pet peeves Poll Do you agree with these childcare workers pet peeves? Completely! Definitely not! Do you agree with these childcare workers pet peeves? Completely! 103 votes Definitely not! 77 votes Now share your opinion 'Things I've started to hate in childcare,' Tahlia said in a TikTok video. The first pet hate she listed was when parents send kids in wearing tights, as they are difficult to get on and off. She also criticised parents who send their kids in singlet dresses, which she says are 'not sun smart'. She also hates slip on shoes and hats that are too big or without strings as they 'always fall off'. 'I love the look it just can make things harder sometimes,' Katie said about the fashionable outfits some kids wear to daycare. Tahlia also mentioned high-tops and overalls as some of the more annoying clothing items, especially when worn by kids who are not fully toilet trained. 'It doesn't support their self help skills whatsoever and can set them back to have accidents,' she explained. She also said she hates 'designer clothes that can't get dirty'. Many other childcare workers weighed in to share their grievances with parents. Several said they hate jeans or any tight pants on kids who are toilet training, and difficult items to wear like gloves instead of mittens. Things parents do that childcare workers hate 1. Sending kids to daycare wearing tights, singlet dresses, slip on shoes, overalls, high-tops, white clothes, lace-up shoes, designer clothes, or hats that are too big 2. Letting kids bring in small toys or stuffed animals 3. Not including spare outfits 4. Sending a child in when they are unwell 5. Leaving medicine in the childs bag 6. Sending babies in with a full nappy 7. Sending non toilet trained children in wearing pull ups 8. Not telling staff members who is picking up their child 9. Sending messy foods like yogurt or unpeeled fruits 10. Parents arriving at close and expecting an in depth handover 11. Not labelling clothes Advertisement Many of the reasons Tahlia gets annoyed are because of clothes or accessories being impractical. She hates when kids wear clothes that are difficult to put on or off for toilet training, and expensive clothes that can't get dirty (pictured) 'I hate white clothes, that can stain. I swear some parents just like to test our patience sometimes,' one woman said. 'Any lace up shoes are the bane of my life. Spend all day tying them. Don't put kids who can't tie laces, in laces,' another added. British nursery worker Katie also took to TikTok to air her issues with parents. Her first pet peeve was sending kids in without labeling their clothes with their name. She also criticised parents who send in their kids when they aren't feeling well and those who leave medicine in a childs bag without signing it in. British nursery worker Katie hates parents sending kids in without labeling their clothes with their name (left). She also criticised parents who send in their kids when they aren't feeling well and those who leave medicine in a childs bag without signing it in (right). She agreed that she hates when kids are sent in wearing clothes they can't dirty, and when parents don't include spare outfits. Another thing parents do that annoys Katie is not telling staff members who is picking up their child. She explained that they won't easily give a child over to someone they haven't met before. Parents were also warned not to let their kids bring in small, easily lost toys or stuffed animals. 'No I will not spend an hour looking for the hot wheels cars I told you not to let your child bring,' one daycare worker said. A bone of contention for many nursery workers was sending babies into daycare with a full nappy or non toilet trained kids in wearing pull ups, especially the type without velcro. Staff also say they get annoyed with messy foods like yogurt, or unpeeled fruits. One childcare worker said she hates 'parents that arrive at close and expect an in depth handover.' 'It's hard for close staff especially when they don't know the child personally,' another agreed. Another thing parents do that annoys Katie is not telling staff members who is picking up their child (left). A bone of contention for many nursery workers was sending babies into daycare with a full nappy or non toilet trained kids in wearing pull ups, especially the type without velcro (right) Many parents were outraged at the comments and said they felt 'targeted'. 'This is why I feel insecure as a parent sending my child to nursery when I know they have so many pet hates,' one mum said. 'Things I hate as a mother: ridiculous nursery fees that make returning to work pointless,' another commented. Several people took issue with not being able to send a child with a cold to daycare. 'I send my poorly child in to nursery. I can't afford to lose a days pay as I'll still be charged for that day!' one woman said. 'Some people are just too sensitive!' Katie Mcardlee hit back. 'This is in no way me shaming any parent or anything, this was just a bit of fun.' Kate, 41, looked radiant in a 349 Massimo Dutti coat and orange dress as she brushed off the controversy It's her first solo appearance since Harry was dragged into a diplomatic row over a British-Iranian's execution The mother-of-three discussed the importance of childhood with staff and the children's parents Princess of Wales visited Foxcubs Nursery in Luton as part of her ongoing work on early years development Advertisement A visit to a nursery looked like child's play for the Princess of Wales as she high-fived pupils while they made face masks, learnt Chinese and dug in the sand together. Kate, 41, looked radiant as she met with pupils and teachers in her first public appearance since Prince Harry was dragged into a diplomatic row over Iran's hanging of a British-Iranian national. The Prince and Princess of Wales were heavily criticised in the Duke of Sussex's memoir Spare, with Harry claiming that they both fell out with his wife Meghan. Harry also said William described the Duchess of Sussex as 'difficult'. And tensions have been rising as the Iranian regime has used Harry's claim that he killed 25 Taliban fighters to justify its execution of Alireza Akbari on January 14. But friends have said Kate is 'too busy' with her duties to concern herself over Harry's book for long - and this was evident today as she met pre-school children and their teachers in Luton, Bedfordshire, as part of her ongoing work on early years development of children. She was wearing a fitted turtleneck top and skirt combination from Gabriela Hearst, which costs 1,600, and a 349 Massimo Dutti cashmere camel coat which she first wore in 2020. She completed her outfit with knee-high black boots and her hair was curled. Peek-a-boo! The Princess of Wales, 41, playfully holds up a mask at the Foxcubs Nursery in Luton this morning Kate, a mother of three, visited the nursery as part on her ongoing work on early years development It was Kate's first appearance since backlash against the Duke of Sussex mounted after the Iranian regime used his admission that he killed 25 Taliban fighters to justify its execution of British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari, 61. Iran's foreign ministry posted on Twitter that the UK was in no position to preach on human rights after Harry's comments. Iran murdered Alireza Akbari after he was accused of being an MI6 spy. And the Duke of Sussex has now been described as a 'stupid boy' for his comments in Spare, in which he also described those he killed as 'chess pieces'. Colonel Richard Kemp, a former UK military commander in Afghanistan, said: 'Harry should take full responsibility for giving ammunition to the murderous Iranian regime's propaganda machine. 'While all decent people will reject Iran's lies, many of their supporters will be strengthened by the ayatollahs' exploitation of the duke's ill-judged comments.' But Kate, who has a passion for early years development and set up the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in 2021, refused to be drawn into the drama as she continued with her royal duties this morning. As she arrived at the nursery, Kate thanked the staff members for hosting her and commented on the chilly but bright weather. Meeting Neil Leitch, CEO of the Early Years Alliance and nursery manager Safina Ali, she said: 'Very nice to meet you, thank you for having me. What a beautiful day.' However she also spoke of the 'cold mornings' the UK has been having during the chilly spell, and how it seems to have brought people down with nasty colds. She asked: 'Is everyone back in? Theres been lots of illness going around, hasnt there?' A royal upstaging! Ezaan, aged three, shows off his toys and construction hat as Kate some meets other children Remind you of anyone, Kate? She bursts into laughter as she watches three-year-old Ezaan steal the limelight - similar to Prince Louis's antics at the Queen's Jubilee One girl at the nursery looked the part for Kate's visit as she wore a Snow White outfit while she played in the sandpit The Princess of Wales chatted to the girl as she also joined in to play in the sandpit at the nursery The children laughed as Kate smiled behind a bunny mask which had been created in an arts and crafts session Who's behind the mask? The Princess of Wales could barely contain her laughter as she held the bunny mask up to her face After a chat with the staff at the nursery, Kate sat down for an arts and crafts session with around 40 children - and she even played a game of peek-a-boo with some of their bunny masks. The Princess was keen to sit down a table with a group of youngsters, examining the masks they were making. Let me see what you have done? Whats your name? Lovely to meet you, she said. She told another youngster as she fixed a lolly stick to the back of their mask so that they could hold it up: Thats very good. Shall I get the sellotape for you? As the child, Adam, held it up, she beamed: I can see you though it, and told a nursery staff member: Adam has done so well. Look at his writing. He has even written his name so beautifully on the back. That really is excellent. She then made her way to the sand pit and admired a little girls Snow White outfit, saying: Let me help you. We dont want to mess up your lovely dress. The princess was captured on camera trying not to break into laughter as she hid her face behind a bunny mask, which had been decorated by the children at the nursery. One of the stars of the show was little Ezaan, three, who dressed up as a construction worker and brandished his tool kit for the cameras, standing in front of them as they tried to take pictures of the princess. Kate laughed as she watched him take centre stage and then run off behind the cameras to get a look at himself on film. Her third stop was at a table where some of the older children were practicing Chinese letters to mark the annual Chinese New Year. The royal crouched down without ceremony and asked each of the youngsters names and ages. The Princess had also asked to meet staff - known as educators to highlight the significance of their work with the children in terms of development - to talk to them about the importance of good early years provision. I was just admiring the outside space you have. Its good to have all these difference activities and these areas, she said. While the Princess began doing arts and crafts with one child, a cheeky tot put her bunny mask up to her face Hello there! After realising, the princess gave the young girl a wave and a smile High five! Kate beamed as she played along with the children as they messed around with the masks The mask slips! The adorable tot pulled the mask down from her face during the arts and crafts session Kate's new friend looked eager to get stuck in as the children decorated their own masks They are such great children. Ive had a nice little chat with a few of them and they are so sweet. I wanted to stay and play with them.' Rachel Swain Marsh told her: Early Years is such a passion for me. I love children and they deserve the very best. Kate replied: I think we really saw that highlighted over the pandemic. When they were closed down people realised how vital they were not just for the communities they serve but for the individual families and children in their care. Its been good in a way that it has been highlighted how vital this role everyone is plating is in early childhood. But it feels like it is also an increased pressure in some ways. For you a sense of responsibility really looking after these kids in their most formative years but also youre having to support families during quite challenging circumstances. She added: It is so important having that holistic support for a child where there isnt this boundary between educational life, which starts here and home life, which starts here. That there is more of a holistic network surrounding our children. Staff member Nicole Hagiu said the nursery had a lot of children with communication and language barriers because they hadnt had the chance to socialise or communicate during the lockdowns. Afterwards the princess spent time with a small group of parents to talk about the provision offered by Foxcubs Nursery. She praised their children as chatty, really friendly, really engaged in everything they are doing, cooking, arts and crafts. Before she left, Kate was given a bouquet of tissue paper flowers made by the children and bumped into half a dozen or so parents waiting to collect their youngsters. She was asked by several if she would pose for photographs and patiently agreed, putting her arms around them and saying, saying: Very nice to meet you. Do you have children here? They grow up so quickly dont they? Yes, go on just a quick one! Nice to meet you. Hard at work! The concentration on this young pupil's face is immeasurable as the Princess of Wales helps her with a task The Princess of Wales crouched down at the children's table as she chatted to them after arriving at the nursery Kate was pictured chatting to the staff at the nursery as she proved her royal duties come first amid growing backlash against her brother-in-law Prince Harry The mother-of-three looked radiant in her orange turtleneck skirt and dress, and camel coat Kate, 41, stunned in a Massimo Dutti camel coat and a top and skirt combination from Gabriela Hearst She told another: What a lovely nursery isnt it? They all seem very happy. They looked after me very well. Are you all here for pick up? Do you have a son or daughter here? Sorry to hold you up. Mr Leitch said he was delighted to welcome the Princess into Foxcubs and said: I am often critical of people who view childcare as means of getting parents back into work. What my colleagues do is just way beyond that. Supporting families, communities its a lot more than just young childrens care and education. Its a low pay, high pressure industry but they are all so passionate and committed. These are such formative years and shape the citizens we are today. The Princess's visit comes after a source close to Kate told The Mirror she was 'too busy' with her duties to pay much attention to the allegations made by Harry in Spare and in the various TV interviews he has done to promote it. The newspaper reported while the Princess of Wales had been left 'baffled' by Prince Harry's claims in 'Spare', she had 'already moved on' as she prepares to launch a programme for early years development for children between the ages of three and five. The Foxcubs Nursery, which has been rated 'outstanding' by Ofsted, is run by the Early Years Alliance, and offers 70 places for local children aged between two and five-years-old - Kate's main area of focus. Children at the nursery are encouraged to learn through play, and places are offered to children of families who are eligible for free childcare. During her visit, the princess will meet early childhood teachers and will discuss the role these settings play in shaping a child's development. She will also meet the parents whose children attend the nursery and discuss the support they are provided with every day, as well as long-term social and emotional development for their children. This weekend, the royal rift deepened even further after the Duke of Sussex sent a message to his family in an interview with the Telegraph, demanding they apologise to the Duchess of Sussex. He said: 'You know what you did, and I now know why you did it. And you've been caught out, so just come clean.' The duke did not specify what he was referring to, but elsewhere in the interview he revealed more details of what he claims happened behind closed doors before he and Meghan stepped down as senior royals. He said: 'It was all so avoidable. But they just couldn't help themselves.' He also claimed that 'if people had listened' to his concerns earlier, the gulf between he and Meghan and the rest of the royals would not have grown so wide. Despite the accusations levelled at the royals by the Duke of Sussex, the Princess of Wales seems more popular than ever among royal fans, demonstrated by the enormous crowds of people who queued up to meet her and Prince William, 40, last week. As the couple visited the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in Merseyside, the Princess was pictured taking selfies with members of the public. She joked: 'I'll get told off by William' as she posed for snaps - hinting to the Prince of Wales's dislike of selfies. A veteran British explorer is offering to pay 80K for ten people from inner city backgrounds like him to join his latest expedition - to the Arctic. Jim McNeill, 62, grew up on a council estate and went on the become an internationally renowned 30-year veteran polar explorer. He now wants to help people with a similar start in life to him and is looking for then to join his latest #ResoluteExpedition - for free. The lucky group of ten will join 134 other voyagers as par$t of the Ocean Warrior Project, which intends to travel to Resolute Bay in high arctic Canada to gauge the health of the Earth's oceans. Jim McNeill, 62, from London, is offering to pay 80,000 for ten people from inner city backgrounds like him to join his latest expedition - to the Arctic The ten, who will be hand-selected and personally funded by Jim, will join the broader Ocean Warrior Project crew. It will be made up of individuals who will either self-fund or fundraise to secure their place on the 'scientifically significant' expedition. The trip will leave Plymouth, Devon, in June, travelling on a 10,000 nautical mile journey split onto eight legs between June and October. It will be aboard Europes largest three-masted wooden schooner, the SV Linden - modelled on a 1920s vessel of the same name. The magnificent white 49.5-meter sailboat built in 1993 was picked in order to give explorers a minimal impact on the environment during their journey. Raised on a Barnet council estate in North London, Jim is 'determined to help those from unprivileged backgrounds achieve the extraordinary' He now wants to help others who had a similar start in life to him and is looking for then to join his latest #Resolute Expedition - for free Applicants - at least 18 - need no experience, instead being tested on their initiative, resilience, tenacity, and good humour during a series of challenges at a pre-selection weekend held in February. Voyagers will get to travel to Svalbard, known for its thousands of glaciers, before sailing to Greenland, Baffin Island and then finally Resolute Bay before returning home. Raised on a Barnet council estate in North London, Jim is 'determined to help those from unprivileged backgrounds achieve the extraordinary, by pushing perceived boundaries, and challenging themselves to go far beyond their comfort zones' Voyagers will get to travel to Svalbard, known for its thousands of glaciers, before sailing to Greenland, Baffin Island and then finally Resolute Bay before returning home (pictured, a polar bear) He said: 'Through a combination of luck, determination and drive, I was fortunate enough to discover exploration as my passion, and eventually as a career. 'It was a long and hard path, but I always say if I can do it, then most people can. 'My goal is to share the gift of exploration with individuals from all backgrounds, but especially so with people who don't have the opportunity; those that have big dreams, but no clear path to making them a reality. The trip will leave Plymouth, Devon, in June, travelling on a 10,000 nautical mile journey split onto eight legs between June and October. It will be aboard Europes largest three-masted wooden schooner, the SV Linden - modelled on a 1920s vessel of the same name Jim said he found his career 'through a combination of luck, determination and drive' and feels it is his 'passion' 'This is all about citizen science and shouldn't be limited by a background that might make it harder for individuals to raise the necessary funds to pay for a place on this historic trip.' The trip hopes to use a technique called 'ground truthing' to help agencies like NASA build a better understanding of the conditions in polar regions, described by Jim as the 'holy grail' of oceanography. It also hopes to gain additional research on what kind of major weather occurrences and irreversible environmental damage we should expect due to climate change and human impact on the planet. The ten, who will be hand-selected and personally funded by Jim, will join the broader Ocean Warrior Project crew The ten successful applicants will be given training and fundraising for the trip, learning how to sail, to use scientific equipment and developing skills in maritime safety The ten successful applicants will be given training and fundraising for the trip, learning how to sail, to use scientific equipment and developing skills in maritime safety - securing a certificate in Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping required to crew a commercial vessel larger than 24 meters. To find out more information about Ocean Warrior Project, the #Resolute Expedition, its selection process, and how to join as a bursarial, self-funded or fundraised participant, visit https://www.warrior-ocean.com/ or https://www.ice-warrior.com/. The trip hopes to use a technique called 'ground truthing' to help agencies like NASA build a better understanding of the conditions in polar regions Jim described the polar regions as the 'holy grail' of oceanography (pictured, a polar landscape where Jim is inviting people to travel) Prince Albert of Monaco has become the first European royal to confirm their attendance at King Charles' coronation later this year. Monaco's crown prince, 64, spoke fondly of the British King ahead of his 6 May coronation, calling him 'a very educated man and someone with a great sense of humour'. Speaking to PEOPLE, Albert confirmed he and his wife Princess Charlene would attend, adding: 'I'm certain that it's going to be an incredible ceremony and a very moving one.' The event will be amongst the highest profile attended by Charlene since her recent illness, which saw her spending 11 months away from the Mediterranean principality in her native South Africa, undergoing treatment for an unspecified condition. Prince Albert described King Charles as 'a very educated man and someone with a great sense of humour' Albert added: 'We've maintained contact since His Majesty became King, but I haven't talked to him personally since the Queen's funeral.' The prince, who is looking forward to attending the king's coronation, added: 'I'm certain His Majesty will add his own 'personal touches' to the ceremonies, but what those will be, I'm sure I don't know.' Prince Albert went onto reveal that himself and his wife Princess Charlene, will definitely be at the ceremony to watch the king's crowning, however their 8-year-old twins Hereditary Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella might be 'too young'. News of the couple's attendance comes after Prince Albert praised his wife, Princess Charlene, for 'turning it around in an incredible way' after a long-running health battle. Prince Albert went onto reveal that himself and his wife Princess Charlene will definitely be at the ceremony to watch the king's crowning Speaking in December, the 64-year-old royal told People he was 'really proud of my wife,' adding: 'Charlene's doing really well.' He continued: 'As you know, last year was a very tough year for her - and the beginning of this year.' Albert added that after being admitted to a Swiss treatment facility for exhaustion and keeping out of the limelight, Charlene, 44, has been 'active in any number of different events.' He highlighted a number of events where the former Olympic swimmer had been visible at lately, including a recent outing to the Monaco branch of the Red Cross. Prince Albert (right) said he has 'maintained contact' with His Majesty (left) but he hasn't spoken to him since the Queen's funeral 'She's really enjoying doing things together and with the kids, so this year is ending on a very, a very high note. We're truly thrilled about how things are,' Albert said. King Charles has been Britain's monarch since early September, when his beloved mother the Queen passed away at Balmoral. Charlene and Albert both attended the funeral, and were among a number of European royals who did so. Whilst he became King immediately on the death of Her Majesty, Charles's coronation will not be until May. Charlene and Albert both attended the funeral, and were among a number of European royals who did so (pictured together at the event) The crowning of the King inside Westminster Abbey is set to be a historic occasion featuring regalia and highly symbolic ceremonies that have not been seen for 70 years. The Queen's Coronation took place nearly 70 years before, on June 2, 1953, but she actually became monarch in February the previous year, following the death of her father George VI. Charles will be crowned alongside Camilla, the Queen Consort. The occasion is expected to be a smaller affair than the late Queen's ceremony. A Buckingham Palace statement said in October: 'The coronation will reflect the monarch's role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry.' It added: 'The coronation is a solemn religious service, together with an occasion for celebration and pageantry. 'The ceremony has retained a similar structure for over a thousand years, and this year's coronation is expected to include the same core elements while recognising the spirit of our times. 'For the last 900 years, the ceremony has taken place at Westminster Abbey, London. Since 1066, the service has almost always been conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.' In contrast to the Queen's Coronation, the Mail on Sunday previously revealed that the service will last for just over an hour, rather than more than three. The guest list may also be slashed from 8,000 to 2,000 and discussions have been held about having a more relaxed dress code. They were not the only group to team up and make the journey as others from the cancelled flight did the same The foursome flew from Tampa to Nashville and drove the rest of the way Flights from Tampa, Florida to Ohio were cancelled due to stormy weather Natalie Kulka, 23, recruited three strangers to help her get home to Cleveland A woman whose flight home on 23 December was cancelled due to a cyclone recruited three strangers to accompany her across the country in a desperate bid to make it home in time for Christmas Day. Natalie Kulka, 23, wanted to get back for the holidays but her $400 flight to Cleveland, Ohio from Tampa, Florida, never took off, leaving her stranded 1,000 miles from home. After she joked to the airplane queue about driving home, she was surprised to find three other people piping up who wanted to join her. She teamed up with Sarah, Kevin and Nick to fly to Nashville, Tennessee, and the four rented a car to drive through lethal conditions to make it to Ohio - and they were not the only group to resort to do so after another foursome revealed shortly after Christmas they had done exactly the same thing. After posting a video on TikTok on Christmas Day about her mammoth effort to get home, she received thousands of likes - and a few weeks on she has finally caught her breath to reflect on the whirlwind journey. Planes, trains and automobiles! Natalie Kulka (front, left), 23, was left stranded after her flight home to Ohio on December 23 was cancelled - but after making a joke to other passengers about needing people to drive home with, she recruited three travel buddies, Sarah, Kevin and Nick Natalie, an expressive art therapist said: 'You never know when you might need the help of the people around you. 'I hadn't seen a lot of my family for over two years and I wanted to get home for the holidays and I wouldn't have been able to make it. Sarah, from Cleveland, Ohio, recruited four strangers to fly to Tennessee and then drive the remaining distance from Nashville to Ohio, their final destination The foursome made best friends after they met in the airport, and made a plan to board a plane from Tampa, Florida to Nashville, Tennessee 'A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet.' After her flight to Akron, Ohio was cancelled while she was on board, Natalie recalled how she joked to other passengers that anyone was welcome to join her on her mission to get home. Natalie's journey 9.45am - Flight from Tampa to Nashville 2pm - They drove to Elizabethtown in a Toyota Carolla and managed to swap it for an SUV The group kept driving North through the storm but couldn't get further than Cincinatti, Ohio 1am - They had to re-route and find another way into Cleveland, they headed south towards Kentucky Despite petrifying conditions, they got back onto the 65 north highway and reached Kentucky They kept driving North and reached Indianapolis, Indiana and headed east 10am - They finally made it home to Cleveland, Ohio just in time for Christmas Advertisement Sarah, 23, was the first to join the team, and as they walked back into the airport they recruited two more members, Nick and Kevin, to join the road trip. Kevin revealed he had booked a trip to Nashville on a flight leaving in within 45 minutes which would bring them closer to Cleveland, Ohio. The quartet boarded the flight and arrived in Nashville at 2pm - they then rented an SUV at the airport but were given a tiny Toyota Corolla (costing $185), which wasn't equipped to handle the heavy snowy weather. 'We just started driving but the ice was awful, we were having to drive at 5-10 miles an hour,' Natalie recalled. 'The further North we went the worse it got. 'We called the rental place to ask if we could change the car but they were all booked out.' Eventually, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the foursome spotted a rental car shop where they managed to secure themselves an SUV (costing $400). After driving the 4x4 they made it to Cincinnatti, Ohio, 20 miles south of their final destination but then the only route heading north was closed off. Natalie said: 'The entire road was an ice rink, there were so many accidents. 'We had to go back the way we came and try another route in.' The group decided to go back the way they came but got stuck at the bottom of a road in Kentucky. Natalie (left) and Sarah were the first to team up together after their flight was cancelled, before they recruited Kevin and Nick The team secured a rental car, a Toyota Corolla, but had to swap to an SUV in Kentucky when the smaller car couldn't make it through the snow After a full day of travelling 10,000 miles Natalie (centre) finally made it home on Christmas Eve (pictured with her brother Ryan, sister Emily, godfather Michael, mum Donna and dad, John) 'We had to get out and push the car back up the hill and help other people. 'It was a relief when we finally got the car up.' By this time it was 2am on Christmas Day and the new friends were on the final leg of their long journey home. They kept driving through the night to return to Cincinnati, before taking the 65 northbound highway to Indianapolis, Indiana. Natalie said: 'We had a system of driver and co-pilot whilst the other two slept. 'The adrenaline got us through and we got to know each other along the way 'We were very wary that we didn't have suitable snow clothes and we had the approach to take it slow and steady. 'Lots of people crashed and many people froze to death in their cars, it was terrible.' After what should have been an eight-hour car journey took 20 hours, they all arrived home safe and sound on 24 December. They received a full refund for their cancelled flight and also were refunded for the Toyota Corolla. 'We were so committed to getting there and we got to know each other on the journey. It was such a coincidence we were all in our twenties and we are hoping to all meet up again.' The flights cost around $400 each but were all refunded, the first rental car cost $175, which was also refunded, and the final SUV rental cost $400. Beauty is the eye of the beholder, and although this pup is competing to be named the UK's Ugliest Dog, her doting owner wouldn't have her any other way. Peggy, a four-year-old Chinese Crested and pug cross, was adopted by Holly Middleton, from Leven, East Yorkshire, when she was just six-months-old, due to her 'quirky' appearance. With tufts of hair on her ears and head and a mostly hairless body, and a long tongue sticking out of her mouth, Holly, 36, admitted to the BBC that her pup is like 'Marmite', and that people either love or hate the pooch. She entered her pup in the competition run by photography printing firm Parrot Print to determine who is the country's most unfortunate-looking up, and Peggy is one of seven dogs hoping to take the title home, along with the winning prize of a grooming session ad photoshoot. Peggy, a four-year-old Chinese Crested and pug cross, was adopted by Holly Middleton, from Leven, East Yorkshire, when she was just six-months-old, due to her 'quirky' appearance. She is now in the running to be crowned the UK's ugliest dog While Peggy is not much of a looker, Holly revealed that her unusual appearance doesn't stop her from living life to the fullest. 'It has always been like that but it doesn't stop her from doing anything, she can eat she can drink, it does go in her mouth, it just doesn't stay there,' she said. Holly said she was drawn to Peggy when she found her at a shelter's website when the pup was just six-months-old. 'I just love anything that is a bit unloved and unusual, so when I saw her on the adoption website I knew I wanted to take care of her,' she said. Five-year-old British Bulldog Winston George, from the West Midlands, is also a contender for the title Blue, a one-year-old French Bulldog from Rochester, was also shortlisted for the final, with the winner announced next month Jazz, a five-year-old Brusston from North Wales, is also hoping to take the Ugliest Dog title home Meanwhile Holly explained that whilst naming Peggy had been a challenge, because no name suited the pet, she and her grandmother eventually settled down on 'Peggy'. They settled on the name in tribute to her great-grandmother. The dog lover is unphased by her pet's unusual features, and admits she sometimes forgets that Peggy doesn't look like a typical canine. She added the pup's has earned herself strange looks, gasps and remarks when they pair go on their walk around the neighbourhood. Holly admitted that Peggy is like 'Marmite' and that people either love her or hate her when they see the pet The dog is mostly hairless, bar a few tufts on her head, paws and ears, and her tongue sticks out of her mouth Peggy's unusual looks have earned her a spot on the shortlist to determine who is the UK's ugliest dog And Holly has even admitted that her own children were not at ease with Peggy's looks at first, with her eldest son being embarrassed with how the pup compares to his friend's nice-looking pets. The children eventually changed their mind about the dog, who has become an important part of the family. Other contenders looking to take the crown include Jazz, a five-year-old Brusston from North Wales, and Blue, a one-year-old French Bulldog from Rochester. Meanwhile Bella, a six-year-old pug from Sheffield and Marnie, a two-year-old French Bulldog from Swindon, are also competing. Matt Dahan, the founder of Parrot Print, the brand behind the competition, said he received hundreds of entries from around the country, and narrowed it down to a final seven, all hoping to win the prize and take the title home. All contenders will be crossing their paws until the winner is set announced next month. Bella, a six-year-old pug from Sheffield, left, is also among the competitors, as is Marnie, a two-year-old French Bulldog from Swindon, right Former MP, and BJP core committee member G. Vivek Venkatswamy speaks during the BJP national executive committee meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Photo: DC) Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Tuesday urged to order a probe into corruption in the execution of the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme (KLIS), and Mission Bhagiratha. Former MP, and BJP core committee member G. Vivek Venkatswamy, speaking during the BJPs national executive meeting in New Delhi, said, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao looted thousands of crores of Rupees in the project execution and this is a fit case for an inquiry. Vivek also said that the Telangana government was not implementing the PM Awas Yojana and the Centre should directly identify beneficiaries and extend the scheme to them. He also urged the Prime Minister to increase the Dalit Entrepreneurs Venture Capital Funds from Rs 5,200 crore to Rs 20,000 crore, and increase the limit under Ayushman Bharat from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh a year. The Centres proactive steps on controlling prices on petrol and diesel had led to their reduction in the rest of the country but the Telangana government had not passed on the benefits to the consumers by not reducing the state levies, Vivek told the meeting. Modi on Monday had said BJP units should discuss how the Centre was giving funds to the states and this is what we will do in Telangana, Vivek said. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands showcased her fashion prowess as she donned two different outfits while welcoming guests at the Royal Palace today. The Dutch queen, 51, was joined by her husband King Willem-Alexander at the palace in Amsterdam for the traditional New Year reception on Wednesday. Earlier this afternoon, she arrived wearing a chic coat which she paired with a navy satin blouse which she paired with a dusty pink skirt. However upon her departure, she had swapped into an adventurous lilac jumpsuit, with a pair of matching earrings. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands showcased her fashion prowess as she showed off two outfits while welcoming guests at the Royal Palace today (left, and right) The mother-of-three completed her stunning ensemble with black and silver stiletto heels and a simple navy clutch bag. The royal added some more glamour with diamond earrings and her blonde locks were styled in bouncy curls. King Willem, 55, wore a single breasted navy suit with a white shirt and grey tie as he joined his wife to welcome several guests from political and public administration and from various sectors of Dutch society. The Dutch royals annually welcome their guests to the Royal Palace for their New Year's Reception. Upon her departure from the palace, she had swapped into an adventurous lilac jumpsuit, with a pair of matching earrings Maxima was the picture of elegance in the vibrant ensemble, which she paired with matching earrings (pictured) and a navy cape coat Princess Beatrix was also in attendance at the event in Amsterdam earlier this afternoon (pictured) This was a quick turn around, as the royal couple welcomed more guests to their residence yesterday. It comes after they attended the funeral of former King Constantine II of Greece the day before in Athens. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands looked visibly emotional as they arrived at the service arm-in-arm on Monday. Maxima dressed head-to-toe in ebony, in a slick belted black coat, sheer tights and knee high heeled boots. She kept her blonde hair styled in loose waves and pinned delicately under a lace veil, that cascaded down past her shoulders. Earlier today, the royal had stepped out in a chic bronze and navy ensemble, which she paired with smart black heels The royal added some more glamour with diamond earrings and her blonde locks were styled in bouncy curls The Dutch royals joined European royals - such as Queen Letizia of Spain, King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium, plus Princess Anne and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence - at the Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral for the public service. King Constantine passed away from a stroke on January 10 in the Greek capital at the age of 82 - more than 50 years after he was exiled in a military coup . Yesterday's public funeral was followed by a 29km procession to Tatoi Palace, where a separate private ceremony was held, before Constantine will be laid to rest with other members of the Greek royal family. The Princess of Wales shared an adorable moment with a little girl dressed up as Snow White during her visit to Foxcubs Nursery in Luton today. Kate, 41, appeared delighted to play in the sand with a sweet pupil, who appeared to be dressed up as the iconic fairytale heroine. A clip of the wholesome interaction shows the royal sit down with her new, dressed up, friend as they happily sculpt away at some sand together. The little girl smiles as she and Kate work on their masterpiece, and the royal can be heard asking her if she's been reading a story. The Princess of Wales shared an adorable moment with a little girl dressed up as Snow White during her visit to Foxcubs Nursery in Luton today The princess looked radiant during the joyful trip - as tensions rise over Prince Harry's Taliban comments in his memoir now being used by the tyrannical Iranian regime to justify murder. The mother-of-three and her husband Prince William have been criticised by her brother-in-law in Spare, including his claims they both fell out with Meghan Markle with William apparently branding her 'difficult'. The Duke of Sussex has also been accused of aiding Iran's propaganda machine after Tehran used him to defend its hanging of a British-Iranian 'spy'. The Islamic regime said the UK was 'in no position to preach' on human rights after the prince admitted he had killed 25 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. But as the storm raged it was business as usual for the Princess of Wales, as she headed to meet some pre-school children and their teachers in Bedfordshire. Kate, 41, appeared delighted to play in the sand with the sweet pupil, who appeared to be dressed up as the iconic fairytale heroine This morning she stunned in a turtleneck 1,600 red sweater and skirt combination from Gabriela Hearst and a 349 Massimo Dutti Limited Edition cashmere camel coat she first debuted in 2020, as she arrived at Foxcubs nursery, where she has visited as part of her ongoing work into early years development. The royal paired her outfit with knee-high black boots and wore her thick brunette tresses in bouncy curls cascading down her shoulders as she greeted staff members at the nursery with a handshake and commented on the 'beautiful day', before sitting down to play and chat with the children. Kate, who has a passion for early years development and set up the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in 2021, arrived at the nursery and thanked the staff members for hosting her and commented on the chilly but bright weather. 'I was just saying, it's such a beautiful day,' she mused as she shook the hands of the staff - although she did comment on the 'cold mornings' the UK has been having. Snaps of the wholesome interaction shows the royal sit down with her new, dressed up, friend and happily sculpt away at some sand together Peek-a-boo! The Princess of Wales larked about with the children at the Foxcubs nursery in Luton this morning A royal upstaging! One cheeky tot named Ezaan, three, proudly shows off his toys and construction hat as the camera points to the Princess of Wales After a chat with the staff at the nursery, Kate was eager to sit down for an arts and crafts session with the children - and she even played a game of peek-a-boo with some of their bunny masks. The Princess was captured on camera trying not to break into laughter as she hid her face behind a bunny mask, which had been decorated by the children at the nursery. It is Kate's first appearance since backlash against the Duke of Sussex has mounted, after the Iranian regime used his admission he killed 25 Taliban fighters to justify the state's execution of British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari, 61, this weekend. The Duke has come under fire from current and former British military commanders as a 'stupid boy' after writing about his time serving in Afghanistan in his explosive memoir and revealing he killed approximately 25 Taliban fighters whom he described as 'chess pieces'. And after the British government heavily criticised the Iranian regime for its execution of the British-Iranian dual national, Tehran said the UK was 'in no position to preach' on human rights following Harry's claims. Colonel Richard Kemp, a former UK military commander in Afghanistan said: 'Harry should take full responsibility for giving ammunition to the murderous Iranian regime's propaganda machine. While all decent people will reject Iran's lies, many of their supporters will be strengthened by the ayatollahs' exploitation of the duke's ill-judged comments.' Queen Consort Camilla has cast aside the controversy surrounding Prince Harry's new book and carried on with her royal duties by visiting the University of Aberdeen. The wife of King Charles III looked elegant in a green coat with statement red tartan detailing on the collar as she toured the institution's new Science Teaching Hub in her role as Chancellor. In her first official engagement since the release of Harry's memoir Spare, Camilla, 75, who was gifted colourful flowers upon her arrival, viewed demonstrations in the labs and met staff and students, before making a short speech. In his book, the Duke of Sussex, 38, referred to his stepmother as a 'villain' and accused her of leaking stories to the press about private conversations with Prince William. Queen Consort Camilla (pictured) has cast aside the controversy surrounding Prince Harry's new book and carried on with her royal duties by visiting the University of Aberdeen But Camilla appeared to put on a brave face today as she returned to work with a smile, greeting delighted staff and students throughout her visit at the university. The Queen Consort also talked about the 'precious time' she has spent in the north east of Scotland - telling those at Aberdeen University that it feels like she is 'coming home' on visits to the institution. Camilla said it was a 'huge pleasure' to visit the university's new Science Teaching Hub, after it opened last year. Addressing staff and students, she said: 'Coming to this university, and to this city, has always felt a bit like coming home to me.' The Queen Consort, Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, receives a bouquet of flowers from (left to right) Elspeth Cameron and Rosa Alexander, both aged four, from the Rocking Horse Nursey as she leaves after her visit to the university's new Science Teaching Hub Queen Camilla, Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, speaks to local school children looking at dinosaur fossils, during her visit to the university's new Science Teaching Hub The wife of King Charles III looked elegant in a green coat with statement red tartan detailing on the collar as she toured the institution's new Science Teaching Hub in her role as Chancellor Camilla, who was made chancellor of the university in 2013, said this was firstly because her father's family 'came from this part of Scotland'. She added: 'Secondly, because my husband and I are lucky enough to spend precious time each year in Aberdeenshire. 'And finally, because 10 years ago I received the great honour of being installed as chancellor of this very special university.' Since taking on the role, she said she has 'watched with pride' as the university has 'gone from strength to strength'. The Queen Consort talked about the 'precious time' she has spent in the north east of Scotland - telling those at Aberdeen University that it feels like she is 'coming home' on visits to the institution Camilla (pictured left) said it was a 'huge pleasure' to visit the university's new Science Teaching Hub, after it opened last year However she added: 'My achievements as chancellor over the last decade seem rather modest in comparison. I was told in 2013 that one element of my role was to defend the university so that "raven wolves do not invade the college and its flock".' She quipped it was 'perhaps more by luck than judgment' that this has not happened yet. The University of Aberdeen's state-of-the-art Science Teaching Hub opened in early 2022. The building has been designed around the provision of specialist teaching, training and learning for students across a number of disciplines including chemistry, medical sciences, biological sciences and geosciences. In June 2013, the then Duchess of Rothesay, now Queen Consort Camilla, was installed as the 11th Chancellor of University of Aberdeen In June 2013, the then Duchess of Rothesay, now Queen Consort Camilla, was installed as the 11th Chancellor of University of Aberdeen. Prince Harry has discussed in depth his relationship with Camilla in both his book and his publicity tour to promote it. He told journalist Anderson Cooper in a CBS interview that the Queen Consort was content with bodies - including his own - being 'left in the street' as she tried to rehabilitate her image after her long affair with King Charles while he was married to Princess Diana. Referring to a 1995 interview in which his mother, Princess Diana, famously referred to Camilla as the 'third person in her marriage', Harry said that this admission turned the now-Queen Consort into a 'villain', adding: 'She needed to rehabilitate her image.' Harry's memoir levels even more accusations at Camilla, including claims that she 'eavesdropped' on a conversation between Meghan Markle, 41, and King Charles, 74. After Camilla and Meghan bonded over their shared love of animals during afternoon tea at Clarence House in 2016, the Duke said his father and girlfriend fell into a 'quiet conversation', which intrigued his stepmother. Describing how Camilla was 'stuck' with him, Harry recalls how she seemed 'keener on eavesdropping' on Meghan and Charles' discussion. Harry says the couples then ended the engagement by discussing Meghan's career. The Duke also claimed that, in November 2017, his stepmother had suggested he assume a royal role that would take him away from London, as governor general of Bermuda. Harry alleged that the then Duchess of Cornwall put forward the suggestion as it would take the Sussexes out of the 'red-hot centre of the maelstrom' as they struggled with the limelight. However, he pointed out that this would conveniently 'take them out of the picture' as well. After telling Anderson Cooper that Camilla had been a 'villain' who needed to 'rehabilitate her public image', the Duke clarified in a later interview that he does not view her as his 'evil stepmother'. Speaking to Good Morning America, he said: 'I have a huge amount of compassion for her, you know, being the third person within my parents' marriage. She had a reputation, or an image, to rehabilitate. 'Whatever conversations happened, whatever deals or trading was made right at the beginning, she was led to believe that that would be the best way of doing it.' Putting her most stylish foot forward, Queen Letizia of Spain nailed this season's goth-glam trend when she stepped out in Madrid on Wednesday. The Spanish Queen, 50, joined her husband King Felipe VI, 54, for the opening of the 43rd edition of FITUR Tourism Fair 2023 at Ifema in the Spanish city. The mother-of-three looked effortlessly fashionable in a v-neck black jumper, with three-quarter sleeves tucked into a pair of straight leg, ankle grazing black pencil trousers. However, it was the large white statement lace collar of the European royal's jumper that stole the show, channeling Wednesday Addam's vibes. Queen Letizia of Spain channeled Wednesday Addams vibes in Madrid today. The European royal, 50, attended the FITUR Tourism Fair Completing her goth-inspired look, which has been made popular by the hit Netflix series, Letizia styled her outfit with a large black waist belt and pointed black ankle boots. She tied her brunette tresses up in a high ponytail and opted for burgundy smokey eyes, with a glossy nude lip. For the annual event the Spanish Queen choose an elegant pair of silver diamond stud earrings as she joined her husband and Spain's Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, plus Madrid's regional President, Isabel Diaz Ayuso. The 43rd Tourism Fair, will run until the 22 January, and 131 countries will take part, with 8,500 exhibitors. The mother-of-three looked effortlessly fashionable in a v-neck black jumper, with three-quarter sleeves tucked into a pair of straight leg, ankle grazing black pencil trousers However, it was the large white statement lace collar of the European royal's jumper that stole the show, channeling Wednesday Addam 's vibes Letizia tied her brunette tresses up in a high ponytail and opted for burgundy smokey eyes, with a glossy nude lip Queen Letizia of Spain joined her husband King Felipe VI of Spain (left) for the 43rd FITUR Tourism Fair 2023 at Ifema exhibition centre Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism Reyes Maroto, Queen Letizia of Spain, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, King Felipe VI of Spain and President of Congress Meritxell Batet visit FITUR Tourism Fair 2023 The event is hoped to have an economic impact in Madrid of more than 400 million euros, also prides itself on being the only fair to be held continuously, even in the midst of the pandemic. All of Spain's regions will be present at the Ifema exhibition centre, with Andalucia having the largest exhibition space. The Spanish royals opened the fair today and welcomed exhibitors to the centre. Both Queen Letizia and King Felipe VI were pictured engaging with the different exhibitors as they walked around the event. All of Spain's regions will be present at the Ifema exhibition centre, with Andalucia having the largest exhibition space The Spanish royals met with and posed with many attendees at the Tourism Fair in Madrid on its opening day Completing her goth-inspired look, which has been made popular by the hit Netflix series, Letizia styled her outfit with a large black waist belt and pointed black ankle boots Queen Letizia of Spain and President of Guatemala Alejandro Giammattei visit FITUR Tourism Fair 2023 at Ifema The Spanish royals have had a busy week. Only yesterday did Letizia attend a meeting at the Spanish Federation for Rare Diseases in the country's capital city. And over the weekend, she flew to Athens with husband King Felipe to attend King Constantine II of Greece's funeral. The royal couple greeted King Constantine's grieving son Crown Prince Pavlos on the steps of Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral. For the sombre occasion, Letizia styled her hair in a chic updo and opted for minimal jewellery to offset her tailored black coat dress. Spain's King Felipe VI (4R), Queen Letizia (4L) and Guatemala's President, Alejandro Giammattei (R) visit India's stand during the opening of the 43rd edition of Fitur 2023 Tourism Fair Spain's King Felipe VI (4R) and Queen Letizia (3L) pose next to Guatemala's President, Alejandro Giammattei (c), Speaker of the Spanish Lower House Meritxell Batet (3R), Spain's Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism Reyes Maroto (2L) and Madrid's regional President Isabel Diaz Ayuso (2R) The royal, whose father Jesus Jose Ortiz Alvarez and stepmother Ana Togores are both journalists, met her husband King Felipe when she was asked to interview him in her job as a reporter. Letizia's media career was a lengthy one and began with a stint at Asturian daily paper, La Nueva Espana. Next came a role at ABC, a popular national newspaper that enjoys the third largest circulation in Spain, before spells at EFE and Mexican publication Siglo 21, which is based in Guadelajara. Back in Spain a year later, she worked for the Spanish version of Bloomberg, a news channel and agency specialising in economics, before moving to CNN+. By the time she met her husband-to-be, Letizia was working for popular TV channel 24 Horas, where she anchored the popular Telediario 2 evening news bulletin. The Prince and Princess of Wales have paid tribute to Auschwitz survivor Zigi Shipper after he died on his 93rd birthday. Taking to their official Twitter account this afternoon, Kate, 41, and Prince William, 40, wrote: 'In 2017, we had the honour to meet Holocaust survivor, Zigi Shipper on our visit to Stutthof. 'We were sad to learn earlier today of his passing. He will be truly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends. W&C.' In 1944, Zigi and his grandmother, whom he was brought up by after his parents divorced, were taken to a train station and transported to Auschwitz. He would later, as a teenager, also spend time in Stutthof concentration camp. Scroll down for video The Prince and Princess of Wales have paid tribute to Auschwitz survivor Zigi Shipper after he died on his 93rd birthday In 2017, Zigi accompanied the Prince and Princess of Wales on a royal visit to Stutthof, near Gdansk in Poland, where Zigi had met his lifelong friend and fellow prisoner Manfred Goldberg, and, during lockdown, participated in a lockdown conversation. Speaking about the camaraderie the pair had with the Princess of Wales, Zigi said she'd treated him 'like a friend.' In the House of Commons this afternoon, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also paid tribute to 'a man with wonderful, wonderful energy and humanity'. In 2022, King Charles commissioned a portrait of Zigi, which hangs in Buckingham Palace. The Queen Consort pictured with Zigi Shipper, left, and Manfred Goldberg at an exhibition of Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust on January 24, 2022 The Princess of Wales and Zigi Shipper, second from left, during the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's visit to Stutthof, the former Nazi German concentration camp near Gdansk, Poland in 2017 (Also pictured: third from left, Manfred Goldberg, far right, Prince William) Born in January 1930, to a Jewish family in odz, Poland, Zigi Shipper's, 91, parents divorced when he was five and he was brought up by his grandmother and father, having been told his mother had died. In 1939 his father escaped to the Soviet Union, believing that it was only young Jewish men who were at risk, and not children or the elderly, and Zigi never saw him again. His grandmother tragically died the day of the liberation. The Princess of Wales joined Zigi, then 91, and his friend Manfred, then 90, whom he met as a teenager at the Stutthof concentration camp, for a video call in 2021. Zigi, left, and Manfred Goldberg, met one another at the concentration camp and are pictured at Lensterhoff, Germany in 1945 after surviving Stutthoff in Poland Zigi said of his 66 years of marriage: 'Some are good, some are bad, but the last few years was unbelievable' The past year has been particularly tough for Zigi, who lost his beloved wife Jeannette in 2021 . The couple had been together for 71 years and married for 66 Speaking to the Duchess in 2021 on a video call, he revealed: Of course in 1940 every Jew had to be in a certain place, which was the ghetto. In the ghetto I was working there for four years. If you couldnt work you were useless and you didnt get any food. But I was working until about 1944. In 1944 they said, "Weve got to get rid of everybody because the Russians are very near". In 1944, Zigi and his grandmother, whom he was brought up by, were taken to a train station and transported to Auschwitz. Built in 1939, Stutthof was the first camp to be built outside German borders and was one of the last camps liberated by the Allies in May 1945. Of the 110,000 men, women and children who were imprisoned in the camp during the Holocaust, as many as 65,000 lost their lives - including 28,000 Jews. Zigi, who worked as a stationer in the UK and went to marry and have two daughters, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren (pictured, at his 90th birthday celebration with his family) Speaking to Kate, he said: 'So after a few days we came to the station, I said to my grandmother "I cant see any trains". She said, "They are standing in front of you". I said, "That's not for us, thats for animals. It is not for me". Anyway they opened the doors and they started putting people in. 'There was nowhere you could sit down. If you sat down, they sat on top of you. I was praying that maybe - I was so bad, I was - that I said to myself, "I hope someone would die, so I would have somewhere to sit down". Every morning they use take out the dead bodies, so eventually I had somewhere to sit down. 'I cant get rid of it, you know. Even today, how could I think a thing like that? To want someone to die so I could sit down. Thats what they made me do.' After meeting in the concentration camps, Manfred and Zigi have remained friends for years and have continued to share their stories to educate younger people about the Holocaust The then Duchess of Cambridge, joined Zigi, then 91, and his friend Manfred Goldberg, then 90, whom he met as a teenager at the Stutthof concentration camp, for a video call last week He continued: Eventually we arrived one early morning, they opened the door and we didnt know where we were and somebody said, "oh, we [are at] Auschwitz". I didnt have a clue what Auschwitz was. 'They told us to leave everything. They took us to washing and cleaning. It happened that other people that went with the group, they had to go for a selection - and 90 per cent of them were killed straight away. 'There were women with children and they were holding the baby and the German officers came over and said "Put the baby down and go to the other side". They wouldnt do it. Eventually they shot the baby and sometimes the woman as well. Us, we didnt know what was going to happen. They took us, we washed. We didnt get a number on our arms but I had a number, 84,303. I always remember. How can I forget that number. I cant forget it. I want to get rid of it. The Prince and Princess of Wales first met Zigi while visiting the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland in 2017 (pictured) He said Kate was 'a friend' and claims she's just 'like a normal young lady'. Eventually some officers came and they told us, "We need 20 boys to go to a working camp". This was the camp where Manfred was. 'It was a very small camp and we went there, I was three months in hospital. Then I went to a place, then I went to another place. After he was freed in May 1945, he got a letter from England - a country he had never visited - which was written by a Polish woman. Shipper pictured standing besides his portrait in an exhibition at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace in 2022 She explained that she was searching for her son and had found his name on a British Red Cross List. She asked him to check if he had a scar on his left wrist that he suffered after burning himself as a two-year-old. He did. At first he refused to leave as his friends, including Manfred, were the only family he had. But ten months later, he travelled to England to be reunited with his mother, who he had barely met. Zigi said his first six months in the UK were hell because he missed his friends so much but that he went on to have a wonderful, wonderful life. Widower Zigi, who worked as a stationer in the UK and went to marry and have two daughters, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, said he wanted to tell his story because he wanted young people to know about what happened during the Holocaust. If none of us say anything, we would forget about it. I want people to know, he said. We must never forget. People should talk all the time. People ask me all the time how I survived and my answer is that I dont know, I honestly dont. There were people next to me dying. Why am I still alive? Its unbelievable. When people ask me if I ever want to go back to Poland and I say no, Britain is my home. I say to them that I am more British than you. I am British 100 per cent. And I would never give up this country. Britain is my country. I am so lucky. In 2017, he met Kate and Prince William alongside his close friend Manfred Goldberg during a visit to Stutthof, in Poland. The King with the family of Zigi Shipper and the artist Jenny Saville (right) in January 2022 at an exhibition of Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust Zigi Shipper spoke with Camilla as his portrait was unveiled as part of the 'Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust' exhibition in 2021 They would on to meet again in 2021, with Zigi playfully telling the then Duchess: I was so happy, you know. I didnt need your husband. You are the one that I wanted. Kate laughed: Well Zigi I will tell him you miss him very much. And he sends his regards as well, obviously....its lovely to see you again. What a life I have had! he said, I would never go anywhere to live. Well I am glad you stayed here Zigi and Its fantastic you made new friends and a life here , the duchess smiled. The stories that you have both shared with me again today and your dedication in educating the next generation, the younger generations, about your experiences and the horrors of the Holocaust shows extreme strength and such bravery in doing so, its so important and so inspirational. Karen Pollock CBE, Chief Executive, of the Holocaust Educational Trust paid tribute this afternoon, saying: 'How do I describe Zigi? He was the most energetic, charismatic, charming and brilliant person to have around. A man full of spirit with a devastating story to tell about his past, yet always sharing a message of hope and love.' She said that he'd educated schoolchildren about the Holocaust 'week in and week out, determined to teach the next generation about the difficult lessons of the past, to make a better future.' Queen Rania of Jordan put her best foot forward as she met with Egypt's president and First Lady in Cairo on Wednesday. The 52-year-old wife of Jordan's King Abdullah II, wore a stunning satin royal blue blouse with billow sleeves to meet with the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The stylish mother-of-four matched her chic blouse with a textured A-Line midi skirt in the same shade and court shoes. Queen Rania held a stylish navy bag with a smart white trim and kept her brunette tresses loose in a light curl, cascading down her shoulders in an off-centre parting. Queen Rania of Jordan (pictured) looked stunning in a royal blue ensemble as she visited Cairo on Wednesday Rania wore a pair of silver diamond large stud earrings for the meeting in Cairo and highlighted her flawless complexion with lightly rouged cheeks and a pale pink lipstick. The ever-elegant Queen was pictured with First Lady of Egypt, Entissar El Sisi, wife of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. According to Egypt Today the first lady of Egypt Entissar El Sisi expressed how happy she was about this visit and the possibility to discuss steps to empower women, people of disabilities and youth in Egypt. Queen Rania of Jordan is known for her own work on empowering women and their communities, as well as driving innovation and entrepreneurship amongst young people. Queen Rania is pictured here with first lady of Egypt Entissar El Sisi. The royal wore a structured A-Line midi skirt and matching satin blouse with billow sleeves Queen Rania kept her brunette tresses loosely curled and cascading over her shoulders for the visit Earlier this month the royal's words about the Princess of Wales resurfaced in the wake of Prince Harry's memoir release. Queen Rania was asked about Kate Middleton during an interview with CNN which was recorded in London in September 2022, ahead of the late Queen Elizabeth's funeral. She praised Kate for her sense of duty, saying she 'gives from the heart.' She also said there was a 'sense of sincerity' and 'love' in everything that the Princess of Wales does in a clip of her interview re-shared online by a royal fan. The first lady of Egypt Entissar El Sisi expressed how happy she was about Queen Rania's visit and the possibility to discuss steps to empower women Jordan's King Abdullah II, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a visit to Cairo 'Princess Catherine, when she talks about her work, her face lights up,' Rania said. 'She does it out of a sense of duty but more importantly, she does it because she absolutely cares. Her praise didn't stop there, as she said the Princess of Wales 'gives from the heart.' 'When she talks about her work, she'd say: "I'm just lucky to be doing this, I have the privilege of doing that".' she said. Sarah Beeny donned a Cancer Research UK lab coat as she joined a professor to discuss the future of breast cancer treatment. The presenter and property expert, 51, was joined by a film crew as she chatted to the professor of Precision Breast Cancer Medicine Jean Abraham at Cambridge University. It comes amid the star's battle with breast cancer, after sharing in August 2022 that she had been diagnosed, and finishing her last session of chemotherapy just last week. Wearing a Cancer Research UK white medical lab coat for the fascinating discussion, the TV star teamed it with a cashmere beanie from brand Plum & Ivory. Sarah Beeny (left) joined Professor Jean Abraham (right) at Cambridge University to speak about the future of breast cancer treatment Sarah spoke with Professor Jean Abraham about the future of breast cancer treatment at the Cambridge facility. The 51-year-old, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, shared an image of herself and Professor Abraham on her Instagram. She wrote the caption: 'In Cambridge today having fascinating conversations with the brilliant Professor Jean Abraham about the future of breast cancer treatment. 'Thank you [Cancer Research UK] [Cambridge University Hospitals] xx #changingthestoryofcancer' Sarah donned a Cancer Research UK white lab coat for the meeting. The two women were joined by a film crew Taking to the comments section one person wrote: 'You are just amazing and inspirational woman.' While another added: 'Well done Sarah, when you could have your feet up with hot choc and a book!' A third said: 'Amazing work from Cancer Research UK.' Last month the Property Ladder star was praised by her fans as she visited the Institute of Cancer Research to learn about genetics amid her own battle with the disease. She posed alongside the NHS consultant in clinical cancer genetics as she spent the morning at the institute. Last month Sarah (right) was praised by her fans as she visited the Institute of Cancer Research to learn about genetics amid her own battle with the disease Sarah, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in July, was praised yet again by her 300,000 followers as 'amazing' and an 'inspiration' for raising awareness for cancer research. Sarah has admitted that she spent decades worrying that she would get breast cancer before her diagnosis after her mother died from the disease. Sarah's mother Ann tragically died from cancer 40 years ago at the age of 39, when Sarah was just 10 years old. Appearing on Loose Women in November 2022, to speak on TV for the first time since her diagnosis, Sarah said she spent decades 'waiting' to get breast cancer after her mother's battle with the disease. Explaining how she spent decades worrying about cancer, Sarah said: 'My mum died when I was 10 and I've just always assumed that I would get breast cancer. Sarah, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in July, was praised yet again by her 300,000 followers as 'amazing' and an 'inspiration' for raising awareness for cancer research 'Anyone else who's lost a mum would feel this - she died at 39 so when I got to 39, I was like, 'Here it is, this is it, this is the moment'. And then I got to 40 and was like, 'Oh no, that wasn't it.' 'So 40 was a bit of a bumpy moment, because I wasn't sure what you do at 40 when you're not dead. Then life went on and then I hit 50 and then I was diagnosed, and I thought, 'Oh there it is. It was just waiting'.' Reflecting on finding a lump on her breast, Sarah said it was initially dismissed as nothing to worry about, until she returned to the doctors to get it checked a few months later. 'My mission, that I would like everyone to know, is that you should trust your own body,' she said. In September, Sarah started chemotherapy and lost her hair after her four sons - Billy, 18, Charlie, 16, Rafferty, 14, and Laurie, 12 - had already chopped her shoulder-length hair to a shorter crop. Sarah is currently filming a documentary about cancer and specifically her mother's diagnosis 40 years ago, looking at how much treatment has improved since then. Every time MP Virginia Crosbie prepares to meet her constituents in Anglesey perhaps to talk about access to bus routes or soaring energy costs she first has to wrestle herself into an accessory now vital for her job: a bulky stab vest. 'Nothing equips you to work out how to make such a purchase,' says Virginia, 56, whose Conservative gain of this formerly Labour North Wales seat was one of the big surprises of the 2019 election. 'In the end I went on Amazon and ordered one for 59.99.' (which she paid out of her own pocket.) 'It's really heavy, at about six kilos, and I'm only 60 kilos [9.5 stone]. My back hurts for three days after wearing it to my regular surgeries. It takes quite a while to get into. Then someone else has to do up the Velcro at the back.' Every time MP Virginia Crosbie prepares to meet her constituents in Anglesey, she first has to wrestle herself into an accessory now vital for her job: a bulky stab vest Over this lumpy garment, Virginia wears a suit jacket 'because I want to look professional and approachable'. 'But everyone can see the stab jacket. People say: 'It's so sad you have to wear this.' But this is where we are there are 650 MPs who were democratically elected to do a job and are now putting their lives on the line doing it. It shows something seriously wrong with society.' The past two decades have seen several attempts on MPs' lives. In 2016 Labour MP Jo Cox died after being stabbed and shot multiple times by a 53-year-old man while walking to her constituency surgery, a regular open meeting in Birstall, West Yorkshire. And it was the news in late 2021 that Tory David Amess had also been stabbed to death during his surgery that made Virginia buy her vest. She had by then endured nearly two years of verbal threats that made her very aware she was a potential target. 'I was absolutely shocked when I heard about Sir David because I knew he and his team had done everything they could to ensure it couldn't happen.' Virginia's revelation recently that she now wears her vest and employs private security for surgeries, and that her team vets everyone she meets and informs police when surgeries are taking place, rang bells with dozens of her colleagues from all parties. Several have contacted her or announced they, too, are taking similar precautions. Some, such as Mike Freer, Conservative MP for Golders Green and Finchley, and former Tory cabinet minister Baroness Warsi, are open about this. But many more are unwilling to draw attention to themselves. After David Amess's death, then Home Secretary Priti Patel began a review of MPs' safety. There have been talks of close protection officers and door supervisors in Parliament, but as yet this hasn't been implemented. In 2016 Labour MP Jo Cox died after being stabbed and shot multiple times by a 53-year-old man while walking to her constituency surgery, a regular open meeting in Birstall, West Yorkshire Every politician gets a security assessment and a package of alarm systems, shutters, CCTV and personal alarms. But many feel this doesn't go far enough. 'Even before these terrible murders, most MPs were worried about safety because of all the threats we get,' she says. 'I think most female MPs, before they've even woken up, have had some sort of abuse on social media.' Sitting with Virginia in a cafe, she comes across as a cheery, garrulous mother of three, with a genuine empathy for other people. 'I love chatting to people in Asda and in Aldi, going to school plays and to the local art centre. Many of my constituents are elderly and they're not on social media.' Virginia's drive is shaped by overcoming numerous obstacles: a 'challenging' childhood; nearly dying in a car crash aged 18; losing her first child in early pregnancy; and her beloved brother's death by suicide in 2018. 'I can relate to people those are the reasons I wanted to become an MP.' Yet at first, she admits, she was woefully unprepared. On Twitter, she was so often called names such as 'slag' and far worse that she quit the platform. 'It's horrendous,' she says, rolling her eyes. 'I've had people tell me they want to poison me with ricin, they want to bomb me, they want to hang me,' says Virginia. 'It's unacceptable.' Low-level fear is constant. 'I am a normal person, I walk the dog and spend time with my family. I love to go to my local pub and do karaoke Islands In The Stream by Dolly Parton is my favourite but you've got to just have that extra awareness. Someone came up to me [at karaoke] and said: 'You look just like our local MP!' and I had to say, 'Oh, really?' She's aware that her persecutors are 'a tiny, tiny minority'. 'But unfortunately those people have the loudest voices.' 'I have fantastic friends who look at what I have to do to stay safe with a mixture of bewilderment and horror,' she tells me. The abuse levelled against Virginia is she says based around the fact she's female, a Conservative and representing a Welsh constituency when she grew up in Essex, where her mother worked in Tiptree's jam factory. Yet her grandfather was a Welsh miner, her father born in Monmouthshire. As a child, Virginia's family moved seven times and she attended five primary schools by the age of 11. She was 'saved' by winning a place at grammar school. Sir David Amess (pictured) was stabbed to death during his surgery in late 2021. Virginia said: 'I was absolutely shocked when I heard about Sir David because I knew he and his team had done everything they could to ensure it couldn't happen.' Just before taking her place at Queen Mary, University of London, however, she was in a car crash in Turkey that nearly killed her. 'Because they thought I was going to die, they just sewed me up really quickly so [my face was] full of grit and glass.' It took ten years of operations to remove all the debris. Even today, she has to have occasional surgery after a recent House of Commons meeting, she realised blood running down her face was glass working its way out of her cheek. After university, she wanted to teach but says she worried her face would scare children, so went into banking. When she became pregnant, she quit, only to learn her baby had no heartbeat, resulting in a miscarriage. Then five years ago, Virginia who had retrained as a maths teacher lost her brother, Simon, aged 52. A father of three, he took his own life after a short period of mental illness. 'I remember exactly where I was when I got that phone call from my sister-in-law. I was sitting in the car, leaving our home to pick my son up. Most things in life you can reverse, but this was the one thing that was utterly final I could never get him back. 'We were incredibly close growing up. One of the saddest things I've ever had to do was put a tie on his young kids to go to his funeral. Even now, I still text him regularly.' She laughs ruefully. 'I've just wished him Happy New Year.' No wonder Virginia is acutely aware of how precious life is. 'I feel I've essentially been given a second chance after the car accident. So I want to use it really, really wisely.' Sadly, more and more women are telling Virginia they'd never consider a career in politics. 'These threats are putting people off not only becoming MPs but becoming local councillors, too. It's really corrosive of our democracy.' Despite it all, Virginia likes to interact with those hostile to her politics. 'One chap abused me in the street, saying 'Where's your stab jacket?'. 'The police called him in, but he's got a young family so I didn't want him to have a criminal record. I just wanted to meet him, so I explained the situation and the guy was genuinely moved. I gave him some House of Commons chocolates for his children.' 'Once people meet you, they see you as a human being.' Virginia won't be cowed. 'A lot of people say: 'Gosh, you must be really tough to put up with this.' But actually, I'm not tough at all what I am is interested in other people. And I'm really determined not to be a victim.' Yes, it's a brave and controversial move, but I have no doubt Rishi Sunak has made the right decision in blocking the much-discussed Scottish Bill. The legislation would enable self-identification with a Gender Recognition Certificate from the age of 16 for those who wish to present themselves as the opposite sex to that in which they were born. It's the first time British ministers have used powers in the Scotland Act to prevent legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament from getting Royal Assent, and there's no doubt Nicola Sturgeon will not take this move quietly. The Bill would allow Scots to self-identify with no medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and after only a matter of months of presenting oneself in the adopted gender. Happily, Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, who in a radio interview last year appeared stumped by the details of the female anatomy, agrees that 16 is too young to change your gender. I cannot understand why Nicola Sturgeon (pictured), could think it OK to lower the age where self-ID would be permitted from 18 to 16 He also shares concerns about the impact self-ID might have on the provisions of the UK equality laws. Would there be a kind of 'trans tourism' where predatory men might get a certificate in Scotland, come back to England legally acknowledged as female, and abuse the rights of women to single-sex spaces? Maybe it's a risk, but it seems to me that, regardless of where you stand on the oh-so-heated gender debate, it's the safeguarding of children that must be of the greatest concern to us all. I cannot understand why Nicola Sturgeon, who has so often declared herself an ardent feminist, could think it OK to lower the age where self-ID would be permitted from 18 to 16. Does she not know that the official age for being an adult is 18? Anyone younger than that is a child, and we all know that children, particularly teenagers, can be confused about who they are, make daft decisions and need to be protected. We know from masses of evidence that the number of girls and boys thinking they were 'born into the wrong body' has risen spectacularly in recent years. Some think it's a kind of trendy hysteria that's made so many consider changing their gender, but we know from the case of Keira Bell that going ahead with such an idea can do terrible mental and physical damage to a child, seriously impacting the rest of their lives. It was Keira who in 2020 had the courage to tell her story. She was 16 when she went to the now defunct NHS Tavistock and Portman Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), as a girl who wanted to be a boy. She was given puberty-blocking drugs to halt her development. She then had a double mastectomy, only to realise, six years later, that she had made a terrible mistake. Sadly, the impact of the drugs was not reversible as she'd been assured. She had lost her breasts and her voice was permanently changed by the time she understood, in her early 20s, that her 16-year-old self had, by her own admission, been 'very mentally ill' and she now knew she was a woman. While I'm with the Prime Minister on blocking this bill, I hope he'll consider a little more carefully his own plan to ban all forms of conversion therapy. Let me repeat, I am not transphobic. So often people ask why so many feminists are incensed by the transgender movement There's no doubt that the practice of 'therapy' to bully anyone into saying they are not gay is cruel and pointless. But gender identity is far more complex than sexual orientation. No harm results from a person's choice of who to love. But a decision to change gender can be harmful in a child. Do we want to criminalise parents, doctors or therapists who only want to question whether changing gender in adolescence is really the right idea? No we don't. Young people need help and advice. That's common sense, not conversion. Rejecting the Scottish Bill is not only about protecting children from harm. It's also about safeguarding women. The Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack, acknowledged earlier this week that legal advice had left him 'concerned' about the consequences of self-ID. He, like so many of us, realises there could be 'serious adverse effects' on national equality laws including the right for women to feel safe in single-sex spaces. I fully expect, as a result of this article, to be screamed at and, again, dubbed a 'transphobe'. Let me repeat, I am not transphobic. So often people ask why so many feminists are incensed by the transgender movement. Let me explain. We are not crazy, foaming-at-the mouth, nasty people who want to make life miserable for any man who dares adopt a female identity. That's what the radical activists would have you think. We were born women and believe sex is different from gender, that your biology is something you can't change. As women, we've suffered discrimination and risk and have fought hard on our own behalf. We know what it means to be a woman, and we don't like activists thinking they can assert their rights by eradicating the words 'woman', 'mother', 'breastfeeding'. They are our words. Leave them and us alone. Root out your own criminals Sir Mark! I'm sure Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner (pictured), is overwhelmed with shame as we learn more about the horror story that is the serial rapist David Carrick I'm sure Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, is overwhelmed with shame as we learn more about the horror story that is the serial rapist David Carrick. Even more worryingly, we learn that Carrick, the officer who's now admitted to a career of sexually abusing women, is far from the only one facing allegations of abuse. Rowley says he cannot guarantee that a woman visiting a police station reporting sexual violence would not meet an officer whose behaviour was under review. I'm sorry, Sir Mark, but that's just not good enough. We depend on you. The Carrick case was a 'spectacular failure' as you've said. But it's horribly clear that it isn't just a single case it's part of a systemic problem. Now do what's expected of you. Get rid of all the domestic abusers, rapists and misogynists who hide behind the thin blue line. Who are we to trust if we can't trust you? Can't you just be grateful, Cate? I haven't yet seen Cate Blanchett's new movie, Tar, but I will. I love her work. But what is she on about when she says that she finds her Critics Choice award 'ridiculous' and claims she's sick of the 'televised horse race' of award ceremonies 'this patriarchal pyramid where someone stands up here'? Maybe it's a touch of contrary outspoken Australianness. To me, Cate, it just sounds ungrateful. I haven't yet seen Cate Blanchett's new movie, Tar, but I will. I love her work. The actress is pictured here with her Critics Choice Award earlier this week Dogs, even little ones like mine (pictured), can get over-excited if they see a pack More than three dogs is dangerous It's hard to see the point of hiring a dog walker. Surely one of the greatest benefits of owning a dog is that he or she gets you out for some exercise. I do, though, see these so-called professionals around the parks near me, and it's often clear that they are not in control of their charges. The woman who died last week reportedly had as many as eight with her. That's too many. Dogs, even little ones like mine (pictured), can get over-excited if they see a pack. No one should be allowed more than three at a time. Created by jewelry company Garrard, it was loaned to her by owner for the event Princess Diana was seen wearing the amethyst and diamond necklace in 1987 She also bought bangles worn by Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie O's watch The star has a knack for purchasing things previously owned by famous figures She bought it for $197,000 - adding to her collection of historic memorabilia Kim Kardashian has purchased an iconic cross necklace previously worn by Princess Diana for $197,000. The reality star, 42, bought the beloved purple amethyst-and-diamond-encrusted Attallah cross pendant during an auction held by Sotheby's on Wednesday. The UK-based company confirmed the sale to DailyMail.com. A source close to the SKIMS founder revealed that Kim is 'honored to be able to own a fine piece of jewelry once worn by the late princess' and to add to her growing collection of historic memorabilia worn by 'strong, iconic women who have inspired Kim.' 'Diana was a woman of incredible style, beauty, and grace. Kim is honored to be able to own a fine piece of jewelry once worn by the late princess,' the insider told DailyMail.com. Kim Kardashian has purchased an iconic cross necklace previously worn by Princess Diana for $197,000. Diana is seen wearing it in 1987 The reality star, 42, bought the beloved purple amethyst-and-diamond-encrusted Attallah cross pendant during an auction held by Sotheby 's on Wednesday The cross pendant was made in 1920 by the jewelry company Garrard. According to Vogue, Diana was friends with the man who owned it, businessman Naim Attallah, who loaned it to her 'This beautiful cross pendant will be added to her growing collection of jewelry, all pieces that have been worn by strong, iconic women who have inspired Kim.' The Princess of Wales famously wore the glittery piece of jewelry during a London charity gala in October 1987. She paired the lavish necklace with a black and burgundy long-sleeved velvet gown, which came with a ruffled neckpiece The late Princess of Wales, who often made headlines for her bold fashion choices before she tragically passed away in a car accident in 1997, famously wore the glittery piece of jewelry during a London charity gala in October 1987. She paired the lavish necklace with a black and burgundy long-sleeved velvet gown, which came with a ruffled neckpiece - and between the flashy pendant and the stylish dress, the Princess dazzled at the event. The enormous cross pendant was made in 1920 by the jewelry company Garrard, and according to Vogue, Diana was friends with the man who owned it, British businessman Naim Attallah. The mogul, who passed away in 2021, loaned it to her for the event. 'Few people could carry this piece off but Diana really could,' Naim's son, Ramsay Attallah, told the outlet in December. 'When I was growing up, wed always have it on the table for Christmas lunch, but it was never worn by anyone other than Diana and it hasnt been seen in public since she died.' The 'bold and colorful' piece came with 'square-cut amethysts and circular-cut diamonds' - with a total diamond weight of approximately 5.25 carats. It is now in possession of Kim, who seems to have a knack for buying clothing and jewelry that were previously owned by famous figures. In 2011, she scooped up a set of Elizabeth Taylor's bangles for $65,000, and in 2017, she paid $379,500 for Jackie O's watch. Kim seems to have a knack for buying clothing and jewelry that were previously owned by famous figures. In 2017, she paid $379,500 for Jackie O's watch (seen on Jackie in the 1970s) In 2011, she also scooped up a set of Elizabeth Taylor's bangles for $65,000 (seen) And while she wasn't able to officially add it to her collection, the mother-of-four also wore Marilyn Monroe's famous Happy Birthday Mr. President dress to the Met Gala last year But Kim's decision to wear the dress parked a slew of backlash from social media users, after it was rumored that she damaged the gown. It is seen with a torn sleeve after she wore it And while she wasn't able to officially add it to her collection because it belongs to a museum, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians alum also wore Marilyn Monroe's famous Happy Birthday Mr. President dress to the Met Gala last year. Diana's 'bold and colorful' necklace comes with 'square-cut amethysts and circular-cut diamonds' - with a total diamond weight of approximately 5.25 carats But Kim's decision to wear the gown at the Anna Wintour-hosted ball sparked a slew of backlash from social media users, after it was rumored that she damaged the gown. And now, her recent purchase has resulted in more furious fire from online users. 'She has a weird obsession with dead people's stuff,' wrote one Twitter user. 'She already ruined Marilyns dress and now she has Dianas necklace You will never be iconic, Kim Kardashian,' said another. 'Princess Diana looking down from Heaven, seeing that Kim Kardashian has bought her old jewels,' someone else added, accompanied by a video of someone asking, 'Who is this woman?' A different user tweeted, 'Kim Kardashians damage to fashion history is so disrespectful and gross. 'And the people who keep selling her these items for profit instead of preserving them for history are no better.' 'Can she just stop? I literally cannot stand her or her family. They are the epitome of privileged a**holes,' a fifth tweet read. Kim's recent purchase has resulted in furious fire from online users. 'Is she gonna open a museum of accessories and clothes of dead people that she's desecrated?' asked someone else. 'The truth is that shes nothing but a chameleon - doesnt stand out on her own, only molds herself to what is currently popular/trendy,' wrote another user. 'Thats why she latches on to these iconic memorabilia from past stars. She has nothing but wealth and cheap tricks in her name.' 'She can buy iconic items but she will never be an icon,' read a different tweet. DailyMail.com has reached out to Kim's representative for comment. 'Jewelry owned or worn by the late Princess Diana very rarely comes on to the market, especially a piece such as the Attallah cross, which is so colorful, bold, and distinctive,' Kristian Spofforth, Head of Jewelery at Sothebys said in a statement before the sale. 'To some extent, this unusual pendant is symbolic of the Princesss growing self-assurance in her sartorial and jewelry choices, at that particular moment in her life. 'We are confident that this unique 1920s piece of jewelry by Garrard, with such an exceptional provenance and only ever worn by the Princess herself, will attract the attention of a wide variety of bidders, including royal and noble jewelry collectors, as well as fans of the Princess keen to share part of her history.' Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Punjab chief minister Bhagawant Maan Singh, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and CPI leader D Raja at the BRS party's rally, in Khammam. (Photo by arrangement) Khammam: In the first public meeting after Bharat Rashtra Samithis foray into national politics, in which Chief Ministers of non-BJP-ruled states gleaned in a show of strength in a direct challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modis re-election bid next year, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao called for the ouster of Modi, stating that the BJP government at the Centre is past its expiry date and asserting repeatedly that the BRS would lead the alternative government. The Chief Ministers assertion that he would lead the Opposition coalition gained significance given that it was made in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, whose Aam Aadmi Party sees him as a leader who can challenge the BJP in the future. The AAP is making all the strategic moves to position itself as a viable alternative to the Congress. Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao promised to implement the Dalit Bandhu scheme in the entire country by covering 25 lakh Dalit families each year. Rao also promised to make India, a power cut-free country within two years and Rythu Bandhu, financial assistance to the farmers. He also pledged to end the controversial Agnipath army recruitment drive and reinstate the old selection process. The massive rally held on Wednesday in Khammam, considered as the political nerve centre of Telangana, brought together leaders of national and regional parties, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, CPI national secretary D. Raja, Chandrashekar Rao, among others to rail against the BJP. H.D. Kumara Swamy, former Karnataka chief minister, who had previously been airdropped from Bengaluru on many occasions including the grand announcement of the BRS, was conspicuously absent. The BRS did not formally announce his absence. Lashing out at the Prime Minister for his statement that the government has no business to do business, Chandrashekar Rao said, The government has every business to do business wherever it is required to fulfill the needs of the poor and needy through cross subsidisation etc. Rao came down heavily on Modi for the BJP governments move to privatise LIC, Vizag Steel Plant and power sector and declared that BRS government will take them back from private players and restore their PSU status once elected to power. Taking a dig at the Modi government's privatisation policies, he said, Your policy is to socialise losses and privatise profits. Your policy is privatisation and our policy is nationalisation. You privatise whatever you want. We will take them back and nationalise them, once we are voted to power. The Chief Minister promised to provide 35 per cent reservations for women in legislative bodies. The BRS public meeting is the biggest in the history of Khammam. It is an indication of a big change in the country," he emphatically stated. Rao stated that he will release the party's national agenda soon as it is currently being drafted by nearly 150 intellectuals and experts in various fields, including retired judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts. Referring to job creation, Rao promised to lay special focus on IT and industries development to create more jobs. "Religious hatred is growing under the BJP regime. We should promote religious tolerance. All like-minded parties should unite. BRS will work for India development. The final victory is ours, Rao remarked. The Chief Minister announced Rs 10 lakh special fund each to all 589 gram panchayats in Khammam district, Rs 10 crore special fund each to Pedda Tanda, Kalluru, Edulapuram, Tallada, Nelakondaplly major gram panchayats which are above 10, 000 population, Rs 50 crore special fund to Khammam municipal corporation, Rs 30 crore fund each to Sattupally, Madhira, Wyra municipalities, and a new bridge on Koneru river. He announced a new government engineering college in Khammam under JNTU with new courses. It is unfortunate that we are eating pizza and burgers of foreign companies despite being an agri driven economy. We can develop wonderful food chains in the world with available resources, build a robust food processing industry and create jobs. Unfortunately, we are importing pulses and palm oil from other countries due to inefficient governments of the Congress and BJP which ruled the country for seven decades, he noted. An Australian corporate worker who turned lesbian after coming off the pill has revealed she felt 'dull' while on contraception, and is now like a 'horny teenage boy' with her new girlfriend. Tessa Bona, 30, from Melbourne, had been taking the contraceptive pill since the age of 15 when she decided to ditch it in 2021 - and within just three weeks she noticed a raft of physical and emotional changes. 'The last few years I was on the pill I felt dull,' Tessa told the Kyle and Jackie O Show. 'As soon as I came off it I felt like a horny teenage boy. It's crazy how much it affects us.' An Australian corporate worker who turned lesbian after coming off the pill has revealed she felt 'dull' while on contraception, and is now like a 'horny teenage boy' with her new girlfriend (Tessa left, and her girlfriend Phoebe right) 'The last few years I was on the pill I felt dull,' Tessa told the Kyle and Jackie O Show (Kyle and Jackie pictured) Tessa explained that while she used to be 'one hundred per cent into men' and wanted the 'white picket fence, kids and all that', when she came off the pill she felt 'like a different person'. 'There's been a definite shift in my mentality,' she said. 'I was suddenly like, women are hot. When I found my now-partner Phoebe I was like this is definitely for me.' Tessa added: 'Phoebe is end game for me. I literally cannot see myself with anyone else. 'Thank God I came off the pill. 'I'm living with my best friend and I couldn't be happier.' Tessa Bona, 30, from Melbourne, had been taking the contraceptive pill since the age of 15 when she decided to ditch it in 2021 - and within just three weeks she noticed a raft of physical and emotional changes (Tessa left, Phoebe Chakar right) Speaking previously to FEMAIL, Tessa said she 'genuinely feels like a different person in the best way possible' since making the change. 'While on the pill I had only been dating men, so in my opinion the hormone changes definitely had an impact on that. I can appreciate that men are attractive, but I'm not sexually drawn to them currently like I was when I was on it,' Tessa told Daily Mail Australia. 'I also think it absolutely changed who and what I was attracted to, within a month of being off it, I was a lot more curious and drawn to women.' Not only did Tessa notice she was suddenly drawn to women, she also lost weight, lost fluid retention, felt less fatigued and instead more alive and 'more excited with life again'. 'I almost felt like my emotions weren't regulating, like I couldn't feel high highs or low lows, it was almost a numb feeling.' Tessa said she was 'relieved' to stop using the pill because she had 'no idea that impact it was having' on her body. Tessa said she was 'relieved' to stop using the pill because she had 'no idea that impact it was having' on her body (Tessa and Phoebe pictured) In a viral TikTok video that has been viewed more than 305,000 times, Tessa's girlfriend Phoebe said she's also keen to stop using the pill - but expressed concerns over if it'll change who she's attracted to. 'So I'm still on the pill and now I'm planning to get off it because I ain't gonna get preg (pregnant), Phoebe said and pointed to Tessa. 'What happens if I'm not attracted to her anymore?' she said, then Tessa added: 'Cause that's some bulls***.' Speaking previously to FEMAIL, Tessa said she 'genuinely feels like a different person in the best way possible' since making the change (Tessa and Phoebe pictured) Phoebe asked whether anyone else has experienced changes in their sexuality after they've stopped using the pill. Hundreds offered their stories and some claimed the 'same thing' happened to them. 'I got off birth control and literally became a lesbian,' one woman wrote. 'I was engaged for four years, went off the pill, didn't like him anymore,' another said. A third added: 'So true! Was with my ex for eight years (on the pill before I met him) when I got off the pill in January, we broke up in July.' But others said they experienced no changes, or at least not many. 'I started dating a girl for the first time! then got off my birth control and nothing changed as far as attraction but I went thru the same panic,' one woman wrote. Another said: 'I had the opposite with my husband, came off and fell even more In love with him.' A 2014 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found hormonal contraception 'may have critical unintended effects on women's relationships'. It followed 118 heterosexual couples who met while the woman was on birth control and found she was less attracted to her partner when she went off the pill. However, the findings show a woman's attraction to her partner depended on how conventionally good looking he was. When they went off birth control, women were more likely to still be attracted to their partner if they 'had a relatively more attractive face' than if they weren't conventionally handsome by 'evolutionary standards'. Florida State graduate student who is the lead author on the study, Michelle Russell, told TIME if your husband is not conventionally attractive and you go off the pill, his attractiveness might bother you more than before. 'Women who choose a partner when they're on hormonal contraceptives and then stop taking them will prioritise their husband's attractiveness more than they would if they were still on it,' she said. She said the change could be because of fluctuating estrogen levels or many hormonal reasons and added the research should not dissuade women from taking contraceptives as it is only the results of one finding. 'Any drug that you take, people want to be informed consumers. This is just one factor women might want to consider when deciding whether or not to use them,' she said. A shopper was 'shocked' when - instead of a brand new pair of boots from Pretty Little Thing - muddy, 'smelly' and well-worn shoes arrived in the mail. Emily Carragher, 21, from Glasgow, was looking forward to wearing her new stompers from the trendy brand, and thought it was a 'joke' when she received the soiled items. 'My sister's boyfriend just burst out laughing and we were all just hysterical laughing, none of us could believe it,' she said. 'I had never seen this before and I have never been sent someone's old dirty boots before. They weren't even the ones I had ordered.' Emily Carragher (pictured), 21, from Glasgow, was looking forward to wearing her new stompers from the trendy brand, and thought it was a 'joke' when she received the soiled items The makeup artist also says the order had arrived in a battered shoe box that was held together by sellotape with hair stuck to it. To make matters worse, Emily says that when she contacted the brand, she was told to wash the mud off - and offered a 30 per cent discount code - which was then bumped to 40 per cent. However, when the disappointed buyer took to TikTok to share her experience, the brand got in touch to offer a full refund. 'I was grateful that I was finally offered a refund and an apology,' Emily said. 'They had also said they knew it was unacceptable how it was handled and ensured me it won't ever happen again.' The young shopper revealed that she'd done a 'full shop' from PLT, ordering some skirts as well as the boots, and despite asking for next day delivery, her parcel was delayed by 10 days. The shopper was 'shocked' when - instead of a brand new pair of boots from Pretty Little Thing - muddy, 'smelly' and well-worn shoes arrived in the mail Besides looking like 'they've been to a festival and back', the faulty shoes weren't even Emily's size 'When it had finally arrived I was so happy that it was here and I opened it in the living room and my family were there,' she said. But she was then faced with the 'disgusting' boots - which were 'smelly' and 'looked like they were years old'. 'The metal was all tarnished and they were thick with mud,' Emily continued. 'I was so shocked and I couldn't believe it, they were not what I'd ordered, I just looked at them and thought surely this hasn't happened.' Her original order was for some chunky soled shoes with painted leather, whereas the package - alongside its more obvious defects - had low shoes with no chunky soles or zips. Finally getting a full refund, Emily is now happy with the outcome, but couldn't believe the initial response when she first made a complaint Her original order (pictured) was for some chunky soled shoes with painted leather, whereas the package - alongside its more obvious defects - had low shoes with no chunky soles or zips The makeup artist also says the order had arrived in a battered shoe box that was held together by sellotape with hair stuck to it To make matters worse, Emily says that when she contacted the brand, she was told to wash the mud off - and offered a 30% discount code - which was then bumped to 40% 'In fact, they don't look like anything I had ever seen on the website,' Emily admitted. 'I actually don't even know if they were from Pretty Little Thing, I don't know where they've been, and when I was looking at them I couldn't see any logos, but then again sometimes their shoes don't have the branding on.' Besides looking like 'they've been to a festival and back', the shoes weren't even Emily's size. Finally getting a full refund, Emily is now happy with the outcome, but couldn't believe the initial response when she first made a complaint. She explained: 'I emailed the customer service photos of what I ordered and what I had received. 'I told them I was upset and annoyed as I was waiting so long and when it arrived this is what I got.' 'I just wanted my money back, not to have to wash someone's dirty shoes,' the shopper added. Emily also received a gift card for her troubles - and is happy the issue was resolved - but admits the experience has 'put her off a little'. 'They are a big company and they do sell nice clothes,' she said. 'This is first time I have had this kind of issue and I shop there quite a lot which I told them as well.' The makeup artists says she's 'over the boots now' as she needed them closer to the date she'd originally ordered, for a night out which has 'been and gone now'. A spokesperson from Pretty Little Thing said: 'We understand this is not the standard our customers should receive their items. We have spoken to and apologised to the customer as well as issuing a full refund who has confirmed she is happy with how this has been resolved.' The Covid death tally may even be an overcount, some experts believe Covid deaths declined again last year as the US continues to emerge from the pandemic. Figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University suggest 267,000 people died from Covid in 2022, down 44 percent from 475,000 in 2021 and 26 percent from 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Experts today heralded the figures as a 'promising sign', crediting the downturn to the buildup of immunity from vaccines and previous infections. They added that the current tally includes many people who have died with Covid, rather than from the disease. It comes amid a slight uptick in Covid deaths, with around 550 Americans dying to the virus currently. The above graph shows Covid deaths by year since the pandemic began. Fatalities fell 44 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year, early data suggests Hopkins' figures on Covid deaths are compiled from official death tallies reported by states and county health authorities. But the count is incomplete because it can take months to determine the cause of death and attribute it to Covid in some cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) weekly updates indicate 241,000 deaths involving Covid in 2022. However, it will take months before the health agency carries out a thorough analysis and comes to a final figure. The above graph shows weekly Covid cases recorded in the US. They fell by 13 percent in the latest week that data is available for compared to the previous seven-day spell The above graph shows the number of Covid tests being completed per day. Figures are now at their lowest levels since the pandemic began Above is hospitalizations with Covid in the US. Like cases figures, these are also trending downwards, dropping by about 12 percent in a week Dr Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told DailyMail.com that the drop in Covid deaths last year was 'promising'. He said: 'This, indeed, is a promising sign. However, changes in levels of testing and changes in definitions of Covid deaths over the period make precise quantitative comparisons difficult.' Some physicians speculate that Covid deaths figures in the US could be inflated. They believe that some deaths being added to the national ledger are people who died from another cause while positive for the virus. Dr Robin Dretler, a physician at Emory Decatur Hospital, explained to the Washington Post that a US death certificate has one primary cause of death listed - along with 20 secondary causes that contributed a lesser role. Covid will often appear as a secondary cause in someone who died from a different condition while carrying the virus. Because of the decentralized nature of Covid data reporting in America, it is impossible to tell which individual counties are separating deaths where the virus is a secondary cause from those where it was the primary cause. Like how hospitalization data in much of America is inflated because of this lack of nuance in counting, Dr Dretler fears the same is happening with death figures. 'Since every patient gets tested for Covid, many are incidentally positive,' he explained. 'People who have very low white blood cell counts from chemotherapy might be admitted because of bacterial pneumonia or foot gangrene. 'They may also have Covid, but Covid is not the main reason why they're so sick.' The CDC weekly death report includes a section for 'all fatalities involving Covid'. But it does not have a column for deaths where Covid was the underlying cause. While US officials do not publish data differentiating between deaths where Covid was a primary or secondary cause - the UK could provide some insight. The country's Office for National Statistics which tracks deaths in the country says that for November 2022, the latest date available, over a third of Covid deaths were primarily caused by a different factor. The above graph shows the proportion of deaths involving Covid but not due to the pandemic virus (blue bar) in England and Wales, and the number which were due to Covid (red bar) According to the CDC, about 59,200 Covid daily cases are being detected in the US, down 13 percent from the previous seven-day spell. This figure may not reflect the nation's actual Covid situation because the number of Covid tests being completed daily is now at its lowest since the pandemic began. Covid hospitalizations across the country are also trending downwards, with an average of 5,783 people admitted while positive for the virus daily. This was 12 percent from the 6,579 a week earlier and just over a quarter of the peak admissions recorded in January last year. Covid deaths have trended upwards, with 3,709 recorded over the week of January 11. But this is still shy of the 3,947 fatalities per week recorded in late August and far below the 13,144 every seven days from the week to January 12 last year. Thousands of NHS ambulance workers will strike yet again, with four more dates announced today. Union GMB announced up to 10,000 of its members including paramedics, and 999 call handlers will walk off the job on February 6, February 20, and then again on March 6 and March 20. Its next bout of action will coincide with a strike by nurses, which will cause chaos for tens of thousands of patients. GMB's action will affect most ambulance services in England and also be held across Wales. This calendar shows the number of NHS staff groups with planned strike dates in the coming months. Nurses are on strike today and tomorrow, then return to the picket lines on February 6 and 7. The next ambulance strike is on January 23, and then again on February 6 and 20 and then repeated o March 6 and 20. NHS physiotherapists hold their first strike action on January 26 and then again on February 9 More misery for NHS patients as thousands of nurses stage two-day strike across England: Health chiefs warn of 'widespread disruption' to services... so is YOUR hospital affected by the chaos? Members of the RCN at the Florence Nightingale statue on the picket line near the Florence Nightingale Community Hospital in Derby Advertisement It is the latest blow in the bitter dispute between NHS unions and the Government over pay, with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) holding its own strike action today and tomorrow. Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said: 'GMBs ambulance workers are angry. In their own words "they are done".' 'Our message to the Government is clear talk pay now. 'Ministers have made things worse by demonising the ambulance workers who provided life and limb cover on strike days playing political games with their scaremongering. 'The only way to solve this dispute is a proper pay offer. 'But it seems the cold, dead hands of Number 10 and 11 Downing Street are stopping this from happening.' She added that in the face of Government 'inaction' the union had been forced into industrial action. 'GMB ambulance workers are determined, theyre not going to back down,' she said. 'Its up for this Government to get serious on pay. We are waiting.' The full list of services for the February and March strike dates include: South West Ambulance Service; South East Coast Ambulance Service; North West Ambulance Service; South Central Ambulance Service; North East Ambulance Service; East Midlands Ambulance Service; the Welsh Ambulance Service; and the Yorkshire Ambulance Service. Additionally, GMB members the at West Midlands ambulance service will strike on January 23 followed by those at the North West Ambulance Service on January 24. Category One: Where are ambulance response times the worst? In December 2022, the national average response time for a category one call - for people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, such as cardiac arrest sufferers - was 10 minutes, 57 seconds. The average category one response times per region were: South Western: 13 minutes, 11 seconds East of England: 11 minutes, 54 seconds Yorkshire: 11 minutes, 19 seconds South East coast: 11 minutes, 2 seconds South Central: 10 minutes, 55 seconds Isle of Wight: 10 minutes, 55 seconds East Midlands: 10 minutes, 54 seconds London: 10 minutes, 34 seconds North West: 9 minutes, 58 seconds West Midlands: 9 minutes, 14 seconds North East: 8 minutes, 51 seconds Advertisement Fellow ambulance union Unison is also set to hold strike action across five ambulance services on January 23. And another NHS union representing ambulance workers, Unite, is due to announce further strike dates today. GMB's February 6 strike action also coincides with another round of strikes by the RCN in England and will represent the first time both staff groups have walked off the job on the same day. As with other strike days, unions are expected to agree to provide cover for the most life-threatening emergencies. The union's announcement of further strike dates comes after some 25,000 ambulance service members of both GMB and Unison walked off the job on January 11. Union bosses argue that a pay rise is needed to retain and attract staff to work in NHS ambulance services. This, they claim, will help stop worsening emergency response times and inhumane ambulance handover delays. But No10 has accused unions of leaving the public 'terrified' an ambulance will not come if needed during the strikes, with no nationally agreed standards of the minimum staffing required to keep Britons safe. Responding to the GMB announcement, NHS Providers interim chief executive Saffron Cordery said: 'Four more days of strikes by GMB ambulance staff will deal another blow to already overloaded health services. 'We understand the strength of feeling among NHS staff and nobody wants these strikes to happen.' She called for the Government to sit down with unions urgently to thrash out a pay settlement. 'Trusts plan and prepare for industrial action to support staff and do all they can to minimise the impact on patients and day-to-day business,' she said. 'But with incredibly high levels of A&E attendances and delays discharging patients from hospital beds, severely hampering overstretched ambulance services, things are likely only to get worse if these strikes go ahead.' The ongoing dispute between ambulance unions and the Government has seen Armed Forces personnel being called in to drive emergency vehicles. Pictured, army personnel outside Wellington Barracks in London on Wednesday The dispute began in November when unions voted to strike over the Government's 4 per cent pay award for NHS staff last year. GMB has sad it wants a 'catch-up settlement' for its members to restore 'a decade of lost earnings and a retention package that properly rewards existing staff'. The Government claims that, after receiving a pay rise of at least 4 per cent, most ambulance staff have their average basic pay to 34,300. Unions, however, say the basic salary for a call handler is no more than 23,000. The Government's own website says the starting wage for a paramedic is 25,655. More experienced medics earn more, however, as is the case for most medical fields. The ongoing dispute has seen the Army called in to drive ambulances on strike days, as well ministers warning Brits to use 'common sense' and avoid risky activities that could result in needing a trip to hospital. But even without strikes ,NHS ambulance response times have suffered a dangerous deterioration over the past 12 months. The latest data, which does include a day of strike action, shows paramedics took over 90m, on average, to arrive at category two calls, which include emergencies like heart attacks and strokes. This is five times the NHS average target for these types of emergencies of 18 minutes. But in some the worst-affected parts of the country, such patients were left waiting up to six-and-a-half hours before medics arrived. Ambulances also took longer than ever to deal with the most life-threatening calls, such as cardiac arrests. Across England, average response times were nearly 11 minutes compared to the NHS target of 7minutes. The collapse of religion in the US may be driving a wave of suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse deaths among the white working class, a new report claims. Research led by Wellesley College in Massachusetts found a marked rise in 'deaths of despair', or fatalities from conditions such as alcoholism and opioid abuse, which are rooted in poor mental health, Using official death statistics and surveyed church attendance estimates, the found these deaths began to spike in the 1970s - just as church attendance began to fall. Fewer Americans are attending church now than before the pandemic, with weekly attendance falling 10 percent in recent years. The above graph shows the mortality rate from suicides, drug overdoses or alcohol abuse per 100,000 people (red line). It also shows the proportion of people attending church once a week (blue line). The data is for middle-aged white adults who did not attend college The above graphs show religious adherence among different age groups from 1979 to the early 2000s. It reveals a drop in religion across the US population Researchers, who published findings as a working paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research, gathered data of deaths from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and on religiosity from the General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS is a biennial survey that gauges Americans on their religion and general social attitude. The research team looked at the more than a million deaths from alcohol abuse, drug overdoses and suicides from the 1970s to the early 2000s across the US. They also looked at the proportion of Americans that attended church weekly over the same period. Research focused on middle-aged white adults who did not go to college because deaths of despair rose in this group earlier than in other demographics. 'The rise in mortality was preceded by a decline in religiosity among the middle-aged less-educated white demographic,' researchers wrote. 'This change in religious practice was large, concerns a phenomenon well-known to be related to health and well-being. '[It was also] driven by the same group whose mortality subsequently began to rise and occurred just before the increase in mortality.' This graph compares church attendance to the rate of deaths from suicides, poisonings and drug use across 24 selected American states in the late 1970s. It shows that states with less church attendance had much higher rates They noted, however, that the study was observational and could not prove that attending church less often had led to the rise. Other factors, such as the opioid epidemic, could be responsible. The rate of 'deaths of despair' among white middle-aged adults, aged 45 to 64, dropped 40 percent between 1979 and 1991, on a continuously downward trajectory. But the decline stalled, before starting to reverse in 1995. By the last year of the study, 2002, the rate had risen by 20 percent from its lowest point - reaching levels not seen since the 1980s. At the same time, the proportion of middle-aged American adults attending church every week declined. It fell by almost half in 12 years, dropping from 28 to 16 percent by the year 1997. The researchers suggested that when people stopped attending church they lost the 'positive external benefits' of being part of a religious community. This may have included social support as well as feelings of companionship. They also suggested that when so many people stopped attending church, some faith groups may also have collapsed leaving them unable to support members. Other factors that could have driven the rise include the opioid epidemic, the researchers noted. But they said that OxyContin one of the key drivers did not become available in America until after fatality rates had stalled. America's opioid epidemic took off after 2015, and has now reached record levels in the country. The researchers noted: 'In recent decades, death rates from poisonings, suicides and alcoholic liver disease have dramatically increased in the United States. 'We show that these "deaths of despair" began to increase relative to trend in the early 1990s, that this increase was preceded by a decline in religious participation, and that middle-aged white Americans drove both trends' They add: 'Our findings show that social factors such as organized religion can play an important role in understanding "deaths of despair".' They said people had begun to drop out of church because religion had become more closely associated with politics. They write: 'This decline was importantly driven by responses to changes in the US political landscape in the 1980s, as religious and political affiliation became much more correlated than they had been earlier.' Researchers added that the repeal of blue laws which prohibited work and commerce on Sundays also played a role. Many were in place in the middle of the 20th century, but most have now been removed, opening up commerce and work on the traditional 'day of rest'. Public health leaders call for an agency-wide overhaul of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a new scathing indictment of how it operates. A 30-page report unveiled by the Center for Strategic & International Studies' (CSIS) calls for CDC to hire and retain higher-quality staff, get information out faster and rebuild public trust in the agency after a rough pandemic period. The embattled agency has faced a rocky few years marred by repeated troubles during the Covid pandemic. It has widely been criticized for poor or confusing guidance. Another report published last year found the leading public health agency was too slow in its response to the virus in early 2020. A new report by CSIS is calling for a full rebuilding of the CDC so it is better prepared to handle future public health outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic (file photo) CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in August the agency would be reorganized to focus on prioritizing public health needs and on curbing outbreaks, and to put less emphasis on publication of scientific papers about rare diseases (file photo) In its report, titled 'Building the CDC the Country Needs', CSIS says agency leaders and the federal government need to work together to rebuild from the ground up. 'The big picture here is, we all see the need for a reset of the agency,' Julie Gerberding, who served at the CDC's director from 2002 to 2009 and now a CSIS member, told CNN. 'Some of the reset has to be structural, some of it needs to be activity that only Congress can really manage and that has to do with how the budget is structured, the size and scope of the budget and the flexibilities or lack thereof.' She calls for modernization of the agency, improving data systems to both present information to the public better- and make more accurate projections. The agency has a budget of $12billion, and employs 11,000 people. While a large portion is based in Atlanta, the CDC has a presence across America. 'I do really want to emphasize that while there is substantial opportunity here for evolution, modernization and performance improvement at the CDC,' she added. Another hindrance the agency faces, according to CSIS, is that it is based in Atlanta, more than 500 miles from the Nation's Capital. While communication is simplified in the digital age, experts fear the proximity of CDC from the federal government hub adds unnecessary barriers. The Washington DC-based thinktank says the agency needs to have better flexibility in using its funding - which will allow it to respond faster to emerging threats. It also wants the CDC to do more to retain quality staff. This could mean offering more incentives to entice higher quality staff to work for the agency and then working to retain them. This is especially important at the highest levels of CDC, CSIS notes. Possibly the hardest fix would be to rebuild the CDC's public image. An NBC poll last year found that only 44 percent of Americans, and just one-in-five Republicans - trusted the agency on Covid. Many lost trust in the agency because of its support for school closures, letting mask orders on public transportation last too long, and for its slow reaction to changes in the pandemic landscape. This is the second major call for an overhaul of America's leading public health agency. In August, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the agency, internally told her staff the agency must focus more on public health issues and less on the publishing of research. She had taken her post in early 2021, mid-way through the pandemic. Experts said the CDC was slow to recognize how much virus was entering the US from Europe, to recommend people wear masks, to say the virus can spread through the air, and to ramp up systematic testing for new variants. The decision resulted from a review Walensky ordered in April after the CDC faced heavy criticism for its mixed messaging on the Covid pandemic. The agency gave muddled and confusing recommendations on masking and other mitigation efforts. The guidance during the pandemic has been 'confusing and overwhelming,' according to the CDC briefing document provided by the agency to the New York Times. The review also found that the CDC often takes too long to publish data people needed to make decisions and that the agency should be more transparent about what it does and doesn't know, a CDC official told the Wall Street Journal. There were staff shortages too with those tasked with leading the CDC's covid team rotating out after a few months. Florida Gov Ron DeSantis is pushing for a permanent ban all mask and Covid vaccine mandates - the latest glimpse into his anti-woke vision for America. The so-called 'common sense' bill would make it illegal for companies, government agencies or schools to require staff or students to be vaccinated or mask up indoors. Gov DeSantis - who has positioned himself as a staunch opponent of government-sanctioned Covid rules - has said it would liberate Florida from the 'biomedical security state'. This is the latest instance of Gov DeSantis professing himself a Covid guidance contrarian, having announced last month that he plans to petition the state's Supreme Court to convene a grand jury to investigate how the Covid shots were rolled out and marketed. DeSantis told supporters in Panama City Beach on Tuesday that his aim was to protect Florida from the 'biomedical security state' by permanently banning COVID-19 vaccines and masks Gov DeSantis told an enthusiastic crowd in Panama City Beach Tuesday: This is just nuts that were still doing this 'We need to lead on this by making all of these protections permanent in Florida statute as we need to do in the upcoming legislative session. The state legislature will convene for its 2023 session in March, where the bill will be debated. DeSantis went on: We also believe that being able to live your life and being able to breathe the fresh air is something that should basically be a civil right. 'You should not have to have any of these mask requirements imposed on you. The bill would indefinitely extend provisions in a 2021 law imposing fines on companies that prohibit all Florida entities, from government offices to private employers to schools from mandating vaccines. Under the rules, workers can submit to regular covid testing in lieu of getting the vaccine. Workers can also claim medical or religious exemptions to vaccination requirements. The financial penalties for companies that violated the bans were high. Small businesses of 99 employees or fewer face a fine of $10,000 per employee violation, while larger employers face a fine of $50,000 per violation. The law also barred school districts from mandating masks among students and staff and from quarantining healthy students who may have been exposed to the virus. Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a vocal skeptic of Covid vaccines, repeated his claim that masks are not effective in preventing the spread of Covid and denounced the vaccines These penalties would be set in stone with the passage of this legislation. Its insane, its irrational, and so no discrimination on this vax status, no requirements of masking in leiu of vax or any other reason, those are really, really important,' Gov DeSantis continued. DeSantis has risen to party stardom since his narrow gubernatorial victory in 2018, positioning himself as a conservative firebrand eager to confront liberal policies from state leaders such as Calfornia Gov Gavin Newsom. 'Sometimes you just have to say enough is enough, and you think itd be enough but you still see it all over this country, Gov DeSantis told the crowd.' Gov DeSantis was joined by another figure who has risen to prominence for his vaccine and masking skepticism - Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. Dr Ladapo decried the widespread use of mRNA technology, which he argues is untested and unsafe. The mRNA vaccines have been proven safe and highly effective at preventing severe illness - but not so good at preventing infections. Children have a minuscule risk of falling ill with Covid and there is a tiny risk of heart inflammation after vaccination in young people - which has made the debate around jabbing minors nuanced. Gov DeSantis overtook former President Trump in a poll reporting favorability to run for the top office in 2024 State House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa slammed Gov DeSantis administration for spreading disinformation about the vaccines, which he strongly and vocally advocated for throughout 2021. His posture as an anti-nanny state culture warrior has propelled Gov DeSantis to the top of most Republicans' fantasy 2024 ticket. The GOP firm Ragnar Research Partners released polling results last month showing Republican voter favorability at a staggering 86 percent. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll of 413 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents revealed that DeSantis overtook former President Trump to be the partys nominee two years from now 42 to 35 percent. Advertisement Aston Martin has unveiled its 'most powerful production car ever'. Called the DBS 770 Ultimate, it is the last version of its grand tourer with a heavily-tuned V12 engine, which has been unleashed in the British brand's 110th birthday year. Packing a massive 759bhp from a 5.2-litre twin-turbocharged petrol powerplant, it can reach eye-watering speeds of up to 211mph. Just 499 are to be built as a swansong for its stunning GT model, each costing in excess of 300,000. But you might as well put your wallet back in your pocket because Aston has already taken deposits on all of them. The Ultimate DBS: Called the DBS 770 Ultimate, this is Aston Martin's 'most powerful production car ever' and is the last version of its grand tourer with a heavily-tuned V12 engine As the name suggests, this is the ultimate DBS Superleggera from the luxury car maker, bidding farewell to one of the brand's most beautiful existing models. But the 770 guarantees it won't be making a quiet exit. While it is being promoted as the manufacturer's 'most powerful production car ever', the key word to take into account from this claim is 'production'. That's because the 300 coupes (prices at 314,000) and 199 Volante convertibles (337,000 each) it is due to make for the global market is enough to qualify it as a volume-production model. The reality is that this isn't the most potent road car to leave its Gaydon factory, with 'exclusive' models like the one-of-a-kind 836bhp Aston Martin Victor and 150 1,160bhp Valkyrie hypercars trumping it on horespower alone. Yet this minor caveat makes the DBS 770 Ultimate no less brutal... or loud. The Aston Martin 770 Ultimate has been unveiled as the swansong DBS model as part of the British car company's 110-year anniversary in 2023 While it is being promoted as the manufacturer's most powerful production car, the key word to take into account is 'production'. That's because 499 examples is enough to qualify it as a production-run model, despite a number of more potent 'exclusive' Aston road cars leaving the Gaydon factory in recent years Aston Martin engineers have worked their magic to squeeze another 44bhp from the 12-cylinder engine, thanks primarily to increased boost pressure and tweaked air and ignition pathways, the car company says. Linked to an eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox, power is delivered to the rear wheels via a mechanical limited-slip differential. With 900Nm of pulling power on tap, the DBS 770 Ultimate can sprint from a standstill to 62mph in just 3.2 seconds (coupe) and continues accelerating beyond 200mph. Away from the engine, there have been some other changes over the 'standard' DBS. While it shares the same carbon-ceramic brake setup, it has exclusive 21-inch wheels inspired by the Valkyrie hypercar and said to have a 'jewellery appearance'. Suspension has also been upgraded, with the adaptive dampers recalibrated to provide additional agility without ruining the ride quality, while other chassis tweaks have increased torsional stiffness by three per cent. Announcing its arrival, Marek Reichman, Aston Martin's chief creative officer, said: 'DBS has always sat at the pinnacle of the Aston Martin production model line-up. And now were infusing DBS 770 Ultimate with even more more power, more performance purity and all with more sophistication, more taste and in the most considered manner. 'Something so raw, and yet so beautiful its almost intimidating to look at. 'It's through this design approach that we came up with the shapes - starting with the amped-up front end and from there everything else flows in design balance with the performance upgrades.' With 900Nm of pulling power, the DBS 770 Ultimate can sprint from rest to 62mph in 3.2 seconds (coupe) and continue accelerating beyond 200mph While it shares the same carbon-ceramic brake setup, it has exclusive 21-inch wheels said to be inspired by the Valkyrie hypercar and having a 'jewellery appearance Among the design changes to the 'standard' DBS is this deeply recessed bonnet scoop, which is designed to suck air through the radiators to improve cooling As Mr Reichman points out, identifying the 499 limited-edition 770 Ultimate from an 'ordinary' DBS shouldn't be a difficult task. The swansong versions all-round more aggressive design is highlighted by a new carbon fibre sill. The firm says this 'visually lowers the side profile towards the rear wheel' and creates 'a poised stance that accentuates the DBSs muscular physique'. It also gets a unique front splitter and rear diffuser combination, a deeply recessed bonnet scoop to suck air through the radiators to improve cooling, and a dashing of additional carbon fibre trims and louvres. Inside, the carbon enhancements continue with this a flat-bottomed steering wheel and dashings of the lightweight material on the centre console Even the eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox paddles are made from featherweight carbon fibre, all in the aim of shedding bulk The bucket seats chassis are made from carbon fibre while the minimum padding is a mix of leather and alcantara materials Inside, the carbon enhancements continue and include a pair of new front bucket seats trimmed in leather and alcantara, a flat-bottomed steering wheel and the accompaniment of carbon fibre shift paddles. The 499 customers who already have their names down on the available cars can push the price of their DBS 770 Ultimate even high if they want through extra customisation available via Aston Martins Q division. This ranges from anything including bespoke graphics packs, unique wheel colours and contrasting leather trims. And it's not the only limited-run model the British car company is promising in 2023 as part of its 110-year anniversary, with another unnamed Aston Martin due to be unveiled as part of the celebrations. The average house price increased 10.3 per cent in year-on-year to November to 295,000, 28,000 more than the year before, according to the Office for National Statistics. However, the average price fell 0.3 per cent or 1,000 compared to October 2022 when the average price reached a record high of 296,000. It was the first time prices went down since October 2021. The annual growth rate also slowed, falling from 12.4 per cent the previous month. House prices fell by 0.3% in November compared to the month before, with annual growth slowing to 10.3% Experts said the figures reflected the economic chaos that ensued after then- Prime Minister Liz Truss's mini-Budget in late September, which sent mortgage rates soaring. Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: 'Back in November, both swap rates and fixed-rate mortgages were rather higher than they now, as a result of the fallout of the mini-Budget. 'Much of that turmoil has passed through the system now, with swaps and fixes continuing to fall. 'While the days of the sub-1 per cent five-year fix may be long gone, it's only a matter of time before they edge below 4 per cent as the cost of funds falls, servicing pressures subside and lenders look to originate new business.' Currently the average deal for a two-year fixed rate is 5.58 per cent, while the average for a five-year fix is 5.37 per cent, according to MoneyFacts. They also blamed the annual Christmas lull in the housing market for the slight fall in prices. Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank, added: 'After September's mini-Budget, a number of buyers and sellers switched off early for Christmas, which explains December's drop in activity. However, the last quarter of 2022 doesn't tell us very much about what will happen this year. 'Buyers and sellers increasingly understand that although mortgage costs are edging down, a new normal of higher rates is emerging that it will soon no longer be possible to blame the Liz Truss Government for.' Average house prices increased 10.9 per cent over the year to 315,000 in England, 10.7 per cent to 220,000 in Wales, 5.5 per cent to 191,000 in Scotland and 10.7 per cent to 176,000 in Northern Ireland. ONS and Bank of England data shows the rapid rise of mortgage rates over the past year In Parliament this week, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told MPs that the mortgage market has seen a correction with product rates falling from the highs seen in October last year. He said: 'I hoped that we would see mortgage rates come down, and that has happened, we have seen new fixed-rate mortgage rates have come down since. 'I'm talking there about the lower-risk end of the mortgage market, so loans with a sub-75 per cent loan-to-value, and actually the higher-risk end as well.' Economics director at the Construction Products Association, Noble Francis, said: 'The ONS house prices in November were still based on transactions (and often mortgage deals) agreed before the fallout from the mini-Budget and sharp rise in mortgage rates so we haven't seen the impact as yet.' Predictions on how house prices will fare over the next 12 months vary, but several analysts have suggested that they could fall by up to 10 per cent. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said house prices are set to fall 9 per cent between the end of 2022 and the end of 2024. And elsewhere estate agent Savills has updated its forecast to a 10 per cent fall in house prices over 2023. >> Read our round up of the property market predictions for the year ahead It became a popular sightseeing spot for locals to visit before it finally crumbled during Hurricane Ian During Hurricane Irma in fall 2017, two of the domes collapsed into the water and were lost The home was originally built in 1981 on seven acres by Bob Lee, an oil business man and armature inventor A beloved local landmark in Cape Romano, Florida, known as the 'Dome House' has finally succumbed to Mother Nature after Hurricane Ian dealt its final blow Advertisement For decades, the remaining ghostly husks of Florida's legendary 'dome home' welcomed boaters, locals and pelicans alike as beloved landmark of Cape Romano. The unique sci-fi structure was originally the brainchild of an oil businessman turned hobbyist inventor named Bob Lee who completed the self-sufficient structure as a vacation home in 1981, using sand from the local beaches as concrete. He left no stone unturned in its 2,400 square-foot design. It was equipped with solar panels, a cistern, two refrigerators and a hot tub. The six geodesic domes were made to withstand gale-force winds and powerful storm surges that would level most conventionally designed homes. But mother nature had different plans, and Lee didn't anticipate rising sea levels to quickly and aggressively erode away the beach front. Suddenly the storied home that once sat a quarter mile off the shoreline in a clearing among palm trees was submerged in seven feet of water. Hurricane Ian dealt the final devastating blow as is tore through south Florida in September 2022, costing over $50 billion in damage and 148 lives. In the process, the legendary dome home surrendered to the same crushing forces it was designed to withstand. 'It's incredibly sad, I've been coming out here for years doing tours,' said Marco Magdalener, a captain with Florida Adventures. 'We used to camp in them all the time as teenagers. I still cant believe they're gone, it was a local landmark that's for sure.' A beloved local landmark in Cape Romano, Florida known as 'the dome home' has finally succumbed to Mother Nature after Hurricane Ian tore through the area in September 2022 and caused $50billion in damage and 148 deaths After suffering decades of beach erosion from natural storm events, the iconic 'dome home' sits almost completely submerged by the ocean. The original structure was built a quarter mile back from the shoreline in 1981 but has fallen victim to the devastating impact of hurricanes that have eroded the beach Slide me Before and after Hurricane Ian: The four remaining husks have completely collapsed into the water. 'Luckily during low tide you can still see a little bit them,' said aid Marco Magdalener, a captain with Florida Adventures. 'With clear water you can see them underwater, but for the most part they're gone now and it definitely hurts tourism' The ghostly shells of the abandoned home (seen in 2019) were a popular stop for curiosity seekers and local tour boats who enjoy speculating their origin. Local historian and boat captain Christopher Reilly told Dailymail.com in 2019: 'We've heard everything from it's aliens to a movie set to anthills' By 2013, the house was sitting in six-feet-deep water and by 2016, the home was almost completely submerged, sitting 180 feet off the coast of Cape Romano. Since then, two of the six domes have completely collapsed into the ocean and the ruins have become a popular snorkeling site with diverse marine life (seen in 2019) Before Ian, the decayed shells of Cape Romano's most famous house were all that remained (seen above in 2019). 'It's an eyesore, and it's also dangerous. There's nothing beautiful about it ... The state needs to do something,' said Wayne Hasson, president of Oceans for Youth to the Naples Daily News in 2019 'The beach has just been eroding at a significant pace,' explained a local historian named Christopher Reilly to DailyMail.com in 2019. 'Ten years ago, in 2010, was the last time it was on land at any given tide.' Since then, 'tens of thousands of people' flocked to the dome home during that time, said Reilly. Part of the home's draw which has been described to as everything from 'an ant hill to a movie set' was how it was built and the man behind the design. Above, an old newspaper cutout shows that the property was valued at $1.5million. The current owner, John Tosto, purchased the land for $300,000 in 2005. Property records in 2018 showed that it was valued at $125 and jurisdiction over them had switched from the county to the state Bob Lee was an independent oil producer and engineer who vacationed in Marco Island with his wife, Margaret, during the 1970s. He bought seven acres of land from four different owners on Cape Romano and decided to build a home that was completely self-sufficient. 'He was a very smart man. He came up with the actual system, the cistern to collect the water. Also the shape so there'd be no sharp corners for the wind to catch on,' Reilly said. 'He originally built a prototype in the Smokey Mountains to work out some of the bugs and kinks before he came down here and actually built this property.' Lee used the island's sand for the home's concrete and built it himself with the help of some men he hired, said Janet Maples, Lee's daughter in a former interview with DailyMail.com. In order to get the necessary supplies to Cape Romano, Lee purchased a barge which hauled everything including two concrete mixers, the metal dome forms and fresh water to mix the cement with. He started building in 1979 and the home was completed in 1981. The result was a three-bedroom, four bathroom house equipped with solar panels, a water system, two refrigerators, a hot tub, air conditioning, a satellite TV dish, two water heaters, ceiling fans, and wooden walkways that led to the ocean and a nearby lagoon. Lee, who passed away in the early 2000s, was also a part-time inventor for fun, Maples said. While the family lived in Louisiana and Mississippi due to Lee's oil work, Maples said Gatlinburg, Tennessee was home. She recalled that growing up, he installed pipes in their house so the floors would be warm and rigged a system that automatically added a log to the fire. 'He was a like a really cool guy born before his time.' Maples said he designed the domes to 'withstand weather. He was one of the first people to design something to be off the grid. He wanted to design something that was self-sustaining.' Originally six domes were part of a unique complex built as a dream vacation home but only four were remaining after two collapsed into the sea during Hurricane Irma in 2017. Today only the tops of the spherical structures are barely visible due to rising sea levels caused by Hurricane Ian, a category fives storm that devastated south Florida in September Originally a 2,400 square-foot design, all that's left of the rotting structure are the pilings The dome house property was last sold in 2005 for $300,000 to John Tosto who intended to move the structures out of harm's way but his plans were dashed after Hurricane Wilma destabilized the home's foundation. In 2007, the Collier County Code Enforcement Board deemed the structure unsafe and uninhabitable and ordered Tosto to demolish the building For decades, the remaining igloos of Florida's legendary 'dome home' welcomed boaters, locals and pelicans alike as beloved landmark of Cape Romano (pictured in 2019). The unique sci-fi structure was originally the brainchild of an oil businessman turned hobbyist inventor named Bob Lee who completed the self-sufficient structure as a vacation home in 1981 Before Hurricane Ian determined the fate of the submerged dome home, many locals were worried that the structures had become a navigational hazard for boaters and that they should be removed immediately while others want to preserve them as a local habitat for birds and fish. Pictured above in 2019 'When (the owner) first built the property, it was about a quarter mile inland, and over the last 30 years, the beach has just been eroding at a significant pace. Ten years ago, in 2010 (pictured above), was the last time it was on land at any given tide,' said Christopher Reilly, a local historian and boat captain at Florida Adventures and Rentals in Marco Island. Above, an image from inside the shell. The property has been abandoned for years 'The main structures design is very high wind resistant because theres no sharp edges or flat surfaces for the wind to catch on,' said Lee's grandson, Mike Morgan to the Coastal Breeze in 2016. 'That was another thought process that my grandfather had when he built them.' The spherical shape also served another purpose for collecting rainwater that would wash into a 23,000-gallon cistern under the center dome, which would then be filtered and used for plumping in the bathrooms and kitchen. Maples spent time at the domes and said that sightseers would come and check it out. She also said there were rumors about the futuristic dwelling somewhat reminiscent of Luke Skywalker's home in Star Wars such as it was protected machine guns, which was not true. 'It was beautiful out there the stars. At night there was no light expect the light on the domes,' she recalled. 'You saw a lot of nature.' It was a nature lovers paradise with only two homes as neighbors. Those homes were unusual looking as well, one was shaped like a pyramid and the other sat high up on stilts. Bob Lee was an independent oil producer and part-time inventor from Tennessee who completed construction in 1981 after buying up seven acres of land from four different owners in the remote part of Florida. He used sand from the island to create the concrete and purchased a barge to transport building supplies to the secluded location Bob and Margaret Lee stand in front of their vacation home in an undated photo from the mid-1980s. The whimsical three bedroom, four bathroom house was designed by Lee to be completely self-sufficient. It was equipped with solar panels, a water system, two refrigerators, air conditioning, a hot tub, a satellite TV dish, two water heaters, ceiling fans, and wooden walkways that led to the ocean and a nearby lagoon The six geodesic domes were built to deflect 150- mph winds and powerful storm surges that would level most conventionally designed homes. The spherical shape also served another purpose for collecting rainwater that would wash into a 23,000-gallon cistern under the center dome, which would then be filtered and used for plumping in the bathrooms and kitchen. In addition to the functional use behind his curved structure, Lee thought that sharp room and ceiling corners were a waste of space and wanted to create an open and airy feeling to the rooms that invited unspoiled nature into his home Lee designed the home with a gutter system that would collect rainwater and morning dew into a 23,000 gallon cistern and filtration system under the large center dome which was the living room. The water would then be used for drinking, bathing, washing dishes and even a bidet Lee, who passed away in the early 2000s, was 'a part-time inventor for fun', said his daughter Janet Maples. While the family lived in Louisiana and Mississippi due to Lee's oil work, Maples said Gatlinburg, Tennessee was home. She recalled that growing up, he installed pipes in their house so the floors would be warm and rigged a system that automatically added a log to the fire. 'He was a like a really cool guy born before his time' The structure was once on land, with Maples recalling that it used to be a long walk to beach. Marco Magdalener told DailyMail.com: 'I remember hearing a story once that when he showed his granddaughter the house for the first time, she was sad that it was so far away from the beach. They had so much beach out there, I don't think they ever thought it was going to end up in the water.' Lee lived in the 2,400-square-feet property from 1981 to 1992. 'That's when Hurricane Andrew came across the coast, blew out all the windows, caused massive water damage and he ended up abandoning the property about two years later,' explained Reilly, the local historian. 'Now because of Hurricane Andrew new passages have opened along the coast, which have increased coastal current and caused sand to erode at a lot greater pace. Magdalener said that the sand shifted and began goring new islands to the south, 'rapidly eroding away the shoreline.' 'I still cant believe how far out it is [the dome house] from the beach. They used to have 100 yards of beach going straight out, so its pretty incredible.' Magdalener also points blame on the fact that the island was designated 'protected' land in 1995 after overdevelopment in the area began destroying the local ecosystem and levelling mangroves to create canals. The unfortunate consequence of was that dome house owner's were unable to build a seawall or rock jetty to protect their property from future storm surges. 'So once hurricanes changed the currents and started the erosion there was really not much they could do about it,' he says. Lee held on to the property until about 2003, selling it John Tosto, who bought it for $300,000, Reilly said. Tosto had plans of moving it further inland, putting up a seawall and getting permits for beach replenishment, but was not able to do so. An undated photo of Bob Lee's wife, Margaret, enjoying the sun in front of her iconic vacation home that has since been taken over by coastal erosion through rising sea levels. The original structure was built a quarter mile inland from the shoreline and now it sits 1,000 feet off the coast entirely submerged in the ocean water Originally the structure was once set a quarter-mile back from the shoreline in a grove of pine trees and subtropical floral. Lee's daughter, Janet Maples recalled that it used to be a long walk to beach until a series of storms made it ocean-front property. Marco Magdalener told DailyMail.com: 'I remember hearing a story once that when he showed his granddaughter the house for the first time, she was sad that it was so far away from the beach. They had so much beach out there, I don't think they ever thought it was going to end up in the water' Maples told Weather.com that living on the secluded Southern most tip of Cape Romano was an amazing experience, 'It was like being on another planet at night out there. The stars, everything, with there being no light out there, it was just absolutely beautiful' Maples stands in 'dome home's' living room after it was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. According to the US Geological Survey, Hurricane Andrew was the most severe catastrophe in the nation's history as far as insured losses and property damage, the Category 4 hurricane caused a storm surge which elevated the sea level by 17 feet and led to extensive coastal erosion, loss of property and life throughout South Florida. Bob Lee's grandson, Mike Morgan told Coastal Breeze News: 'Andrew didn't do a ton of damage, really. The main structure's design is very high wind resistant because there's no sharp edges or flat surfaces for the wind to catch on... But the windows, obviously were not, so that was the main damage' Lee envisioned Cape Romano as part of a small development of getaway homes on the white-sandy beaches near Marco Island. It was a nature lovers paradise with only two homes as neighbors. Those homes were unusual looking as well, one was shaped like a pyramid and the other sat high up on stilts. Both have been long destroyed in previous storms Then Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005 and that was the beginning of the end. After the county condemned the structure, Tosto was told to demolish in 2007, according to the Naples Daily News. A county spokesperson told the paper that Tosto has been fined nearly $1 million in total since then. The storms kept coming. Hurricane Irma in fall 2017 caused two of the domes to collapse into the water, leaving four ghostly structures on their stilts remaining just above the tide. 'My personal belief is that it was not due to wind it was more due to sea floor erosion,' said Reilly, noting at the time, that 6'if there was another major hurricane, more domes could possibly fall.' The state took ownership of the property in 2018. According to current property records the domes were valued at just $125. Some locals had hoped that they would use it to make an artificial reef for scuba diving and fishing rather than let it take up space in a landfill. Hurricane Ian was the final nail in the coffin. It dealt a devastating blow to the region that caused $50 billion in damage and 148 lives. Homes along the storms path were stripped of their roofs, flooded to the second floor, or reduced to nothing but debris. A Facebook group named 'RIP Dome Home Cape Romano Marco Island' quickly sprang up to memorialize the decrepit monument, gaining 1,300 members within days. Visitors shared a flourish of photos and memories to pay tribute. One user lamented, 'Im gonna miss all the beautiful weekends swimming around the Dome Homes and meeting new friends.' 'It's incredibly sad, I've been coming out here for years doing tours,' Magdalener, a captain with Florida Adventures, told DailyMail.com. 'We used to camp in them all the time as teenagers. I still cant believe they're gone, it was a local landmark that's for sure' Despite the strength of Lee's construction, the 'dome home' fell victim to a succession of tropical storms that battered South Florida's shoreline and eventually covered much of the delicate coastal marshland that existed around Marco Island The domes are now almost entirely under water, new images reveal Jammu and Kashmir Congress spokesperson Deepika Pushkar Nath has resigned from the party (Twitter/@DeepikaSRajawat) New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir Congress spokesperson Deepika Pushkar Nath has resigned from the party after its state unit "allowed" former BJP leader and minister Choudhary Lal Singh to join Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra which is scheduled to enter the union territory on January 20. Nath resigned from the party on Tuesday. Taking to Twitter, Nath said that she is leaving the party on ideological grounds as Singh was responsible for "sabotaging" the 2018 Kathua rape case by "brazenly defending" the rapists of an eight-year-old nomadic girl. "In view of Choudhary Lal Singh's proposal of joining Bharat Jodo Yatra and Congress allowing the same, I am left with no other option but to resign from Congress. Lal Singh was responsible for sabotaging the Kathua rape case in 2018 by brazenly defending rapists," she tweeted. "Lal Singh divided the entire region of Jammu & Kashmir to protect the rapists and @bharatjodo is ideologically opposite. On ideological grounds, I cannot share the party platform with such a person," she further tweeted mentioning Rahul Gandhi. Notably, when the People's Democratic Party came into collation with the Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh was forced by then chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to resign as forest minister. Bharat Jodo Yatra will enter Jammu and Kashmir on January 19 where Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah Sanjay Raut, MY Tarigami, Mehbooba Mufti will join the yatra at different locations. Lisa Marie Presley was so traumatized by her father's passing and discovering his dead body at nine years old that she spent the next 35 years trying to be 'cured' by Scientology, according to claims by her former counselor. Karen De La Carriere, who was known as the 'Queen of Scientology', was a high-ranking member of the church for 35 years. She says that Priscilla Presley, who had turned to Scientology to alleviate the grief of Elvis's sudden death in 1977, used the church to help control her daughter's behavioral problems. As a result, Lisa Marie, who was just 11 years old at the time, and her mother endured a 'hostile relationship' and were in 'mortal combat' for the rest of their lives, claims De La Carriere. Lisa Marie Presley died at the age of 54 after a cardiac arrest last week. Exclusive DailyMail.com photos show her looking strung out while having a cigarette in November 2021 Growing up as a rebel in the Church of Scientology, finding her father's lifeless body, and her broken relationship with her mother all led Lisa Marie to go 'off the rails', her former Scientology auditor told DailyMail.com Karen De La Carriere, known as the 'Queen of Scientology', was Presley's counselor and tells DailyMail.com about Lisa Marie's rough upbringing Lisa Marie, the 54-year-old daughter of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, died of a cardiac arrest last Thursday night at the Calabasas home she was sharing with ex-husband Danny Keough, after decades of drug abuse. De La Carriere was married to Scientology president Heber Jentzsch from 1978-1989. She quit the church in 2010 and is now married to artist Jeffrey Augustine and lives in LA. She became Presley's auditor Scientology-speak for counselor and says that Presley was placed in 'obedience therapy' as a schoolgirl. De La Carriere says that Elvis would never have allowed that to occur if he had lived. Priscilla Presley did not respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment. Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw said the church does not comment on 'parishioner counseling', but said church leadership is saddened by Lisa Marie's death. 'The church's relationship with Lisa Marie was one of warmth and care,' she added. De La Carriere, who left Scientology in 2010, said Priscilla was introduced to the church by her friend John Travolta. 'She was in a bad mental condition, had gone through a big loss. Elvis had died and, in her weak moment of great loss, Travolta persuaded her to come in. Presley's former Scientology counselor says Lisa Marie first started experimenting with drugs between 13 and 14 years old. The King's daughter is pictured in a Scientology magazine in 1990 As the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie was thrust into the limelight as a child. She reportedly found her father dead of cardiac arrest when she was only nine years old 'Priscilla then dominated poor Lisa. She grew up as a little princess. She was the daughter of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, living in luxury. But she had misery because she and her mother were adversaries. 'Whatever her mother wanted was the opposite of what Lisa wanted.' Priscilla forced the religion on to Lisa Marie, she added. 'This is a girl, who is a second generation Scientologist, who didn't elect to go into Scientology, but was dragged into it because her parent was in it. She didn't want to be indoctrinated or attend courses. 'It's really tragic that Lisa as a nine-year-old discovered her father's body. She was her daddy's princess, truly loved by him. That was a huge trauma for her. 'Lisa emphatically acted out like a child, taking drugs to forget every agony of losing her dad. 'Priscilla would get exasperated with her because she was a rebellious kid - she was not a kid who believed in rules and boundaries. She was a free spirit ''I'll do what I want, whenever I want''. 'They were locked in mortal combat, the relationship was hostile,' added De La Carriere. 'It was adversarial. 'There was such a power imbalance. Priscilla had all the power, she was the mom, the child can't run away at nine years old. What you can do to fight back is be rude, be disrespectful. Your only weapon is to be combative. 'Her mother got more and more worried. I think Lisa first started experimenting with drugs at 13 or 14 years old. The more Lisa fought back, the more Priscilla tried her own methods of control. 'So when I say locked in mortal combat, the two were not aligned at all. There was no harmony. A relationship of warfare, it was like living in a war zone. That would precipitate a child to do more drugs to get some kind of high away from misery. 'That's why I think Priscilla will take this death really hard, as the other person has died and you haven't made good.' Presley would be dropped off by her mother Priscilla at the church's celebrity center for hours of 'obedience therapy', as her behavior went off the rails. Priscilla is seen in Scientology's magazine in 1990 Lisa Marie with her parents in 1970. 'If Elvis was alive, he would never, ever have let his daughter endure torturous purification rundowns, sending her to ethics, handing out morality punishments,' De La Carriere said Lisa Marie Presley was a second generation Scientologist, meaning she didn't elect to go into Scientology, but was dragged into it because her parent was in it. De La Carriere said she didn't want to be indoctrinated or attend courses As an 11-year-old, Presley was dropped off by her mother at the church's celebrity center for hours, months on end, for 'obedience therapy', as her behavior went off the rails, De La Carriere says. She claims Lisa Marie was made to do the 'purification rundown' - which consists of hours in a hot sauna, doing large amounts of exercise and taking high levels of vitamins to make the body supposedly pure - at least three times. The first of these was when she was just 12 years old. De La Carriere said Priscilla was introduced to Scientology by John Travolta after Elvis's death 'Priscilla would be scowling when this big limousine drove up to the celebrity center with a chauffeur and Lisa would be ordered out of the car to get her indoctrination and straighten herself out,' says De La Carriere. 'I can't get into what came up in the sessions, it would be betraying trust. But any time she acted up, she was dropped off. 'The instructions from Priscilla were, ''Handle her, just do it'', and she'd be there for hours. Lisa had no choice. I believe this was enforced conversion therapy, it was obedience therapy. 'Lisa spent a couple of hours a day with me for months when I was her auditor or counselor. 'An 11-year-old shouldn't be forced into the indoctrination of anything.' De La Carriere said she was light on Presley. 'I wasn't some Mother Superior with a cane, rapping her knuckles. I saw the sadness in her eyes. I saw how this force was superimposed on her against her will. Now I really regret it, I should have just refused and said, ''I'm not gonna do this to an 11-year-old girl, who doesn't want any of this.'' 'She did drugs and they forced this Scientology purification rundown on her. The rundown consists of sitting in a sauna for five hours a day, slowly taking more and more vitamins and minerals, until one is taking 5,000mg of niacin daily. 'Lisa had to do this procedure over and over because of her drug relapses ... doing this program, so she'll magically not want to do drugs anymore. 'If Elvis was alive, he would never, ever have let his daughter endure torturous purification rundowns, sending her to ethics, handing out morality punishments. 'And all the stuff she endured for 35 years, the absolute Scientology indoctrination, leading nowhere, with no result. He would never have allowed this. 'Scientology got tons of money out of her. Scientology touts itself as making you this high ethical spirit you're more aware, you have more morals, you have more ethics, you're practically a Superman, you're more healthy. 'Well, she died a drug addict after being in Scientology 35 years.' The relationship between mother and daughter grew tense, De La Carriere said. 'The more Lisa fought back, the more Priscilla tried her own methods of control' It's thought that Lisa Marie turned her back on Scientology after a bust up with leader David Miscavige, who disconnected from his father Ron after he fled the church in 2012. Presley was very close to Ron and sided with him. Presley left Scientology in 2014, apparently after a bust up with leader David Miscavige Ron was banned from any contact with his other Scientologist daughters, Lori and Denise. The same year that Ron left, Presley released the single 'You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet' and quit the church herself two years later in 2014. 'This was Lisa's big revenge on David Miscavige. That was her announcement to the world that she's leaving,' adds De La Carriere. The lyrics certainly seem like she's hitting out, saying: 'Lay down the truth don't make a sound/Just a piece of fruit who's hit the ground/I don't respond/I've lost the plot/Unethical/Not what I thought. 'You can think that I'm evil and I'm all for it/You ain't seen nothin yet/I'm a bit transgressive and suppressive as well. 'You ain't seen nothing yet/Am I a disruption to your corruption?' Lisa Marie was forced to endure a Scientology purification rundown which consists of sitting in a sauna for five hours a day, slowly taking vitamins and minerals, until one is taking 5,000mg of niacin daily, De La Carriere claimed Lisa Marie made her last appearance at the Golden Globes. Even as a child, 'I saw the sadness in her eyes,' De La Carriere said Now De La Carriere thinks Priscilla will be full of remorse and will turn to her old friend Travolta, who lost his wife Kelly Preston to breast cancer in 2020 and his autistic son Jett in 2009 after a violent seizure, for comfort. 'I predict that this will shake up Priscilla to the core. She can look at how much she tried to make Scientology work and it did f**k all. Nothing. Excuse my language. 'There's no evidence that Priscilla, like Travolta, has been doing Scientology. When has Priscilla used any of its services? 'When a celebrity does take services, the word spreads like lightning. If Priscilla showed up in Clearwater, the word spreads,' said De La Carriere, referencing the Florida city that is the hub of Scientology. Scientology can't resist putting it in their magazines to say, ''Look who's endorsing us." We haven't seen anything like that in years. So I don't know that Priscilla is really doing Scientology. She's already kind of drifted away. 'Scientology will desperately try to reel her back, say, ''Let us handle your grief,'' but I don't know that Priscilla will play ball anymore. 'I do feel that this will be an earthquake in Priscilla's world.' The PM agreed to a deal with the Greens, who led the plan Businesses will switch from gas to electric under Govt plan A government move to compel Australians to get rid of gas stoves and switch to electrical appliances has sharply divided opinion in the hospitality industry, with some slamming the huge cost and impracticality of the change. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has agreed to a deal with the Greens to force households and businesses to stop using gas stoves and buy 'cleaner and cheaper appliances'. At the recent Victoria state election, the Greens went further and pushed for all gas connections to homes to be banned from 2025. Anthony Albanese (pictured) has agreed to a plan led by the Greens that will switch households and businesses from gas to electricity Establishments in the hospitality industry would need to switch up their equipment under the ambitious plan (stock image) Wes Lambert, deputy chairman of the Australian Foodservice Advocacy Body, slammed the plan, telling The Australian that changing to electric would cost restaurants millions when they were already doing it tough. Most commercial kitchens have gas cookers as it is quick to get up to full heat and the temperature can be more swiftly adjusted. 'If restaurants are forced due to skyrocketing gas prices to refit their kitchens the cost could blow out into the tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars,' he said. Head chef at Redferns Sunshine Inn, Lizzie Tillett, explained that gas stoves are still needed and valued by restaurants for quick service. 'You need everything to be fast in a kitchen so having gas that you can adjust within a second is instrumental in cooking quickly for service,' she said. 'Also, with the actual fire you can then manipulate ingredients, like charring things directly on a flame is going to give you an entirely different flavour than indirect heat.' But Executive Chef at Flying Fish at The Star Sydney, Adam Hall, says while gas was great for cooking at high temperatures, it was time establishments changed to electric. 'I'm 100 per cent for it - gas is old school. Given there is so much focus on sustainability, it should be a major focus for any business and all households,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'In addition, anything that makes a chef's life easier is music to our ears, particularly when the industry is still struggling with staff shortages.' Mr Hall said many kitchens already operate with 'electric induction cooking' because it's 'quick to heat, safer for staff, and super easy to keep clean'. Head chef at Redferns Sunshine Inn, Lizzie Tillett (pictured), said that gas stoves are still needed by restaurants for quick service Executive Chef at Flying Fish at The Star Sydney, Adam Hall (pictured), is in favour of the move to electric appliances, saying gas was 'old school' Mark Munro, who works for a food manufacturer and has more than 20 years experience as a chef, said there were certain 'benefits' to using electric appliances, such as making energy supply renewable. But he explained that changing equipment would 'raise a number of issues, aside from the effect on food preparation in restaurants'. Poll Should Australia get rid of gas stoves? Yes, they give people asthma No, they make food tasty I am completely indifferent Should Australia get rid of gas stoves? Yes, they give people asthma 26 votes No, they make food tasty 509 votes I am completely indifferent 40 votes Now share your opinion 'Good quality electric equipment is expensive, and replacement of parts and servicing can often be significantly more than gas equipment which, in comparison is much simpler,' he said. 'Gas appliances such as deep fryers and saute burners have few complicated parts: valves that can need replacing, maybe a thermal couple, but generally are reliable and long lasting. Electrical appliances are typically far more complicated.' Mr Munro said the most effective replacement for a gas stove top is an induction cook top. 'Induction cook-tops are very expensive, and in a commercial kitchen the 6-10 gas burners you are replacing would be tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps a good investment, but prohibitively expensive for most small businesses,' he said. 'I have worked with some amazing equipment working for resorts and hotels, but when it comes to small restaurants, I have achieved amazing results with old work-horse gas cookers and char grills. 'Add to all of this the cost of repair in the inevitable case of damage, and replacement of gas cooking in commercial kitchens becomes unfeasible.' Former chef Mark Munro said that changing equipment would 'raise a number of issues, aside from the effect on food preparation in restaurants' (stock image) The debate on gas stoves comes after a recent U.S. study found that contaminants from gas stoves can trigger asthma flare-ups and other respiratory issues (stock image) The debate on the replacement of gas stoves comes as a recent U.S. study found that contaminants from gas stoves can increase asthma rates and worsen symptoms. The peer-reviewed study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, said that gas stoves in American kitchens accounted for about 12.7 per cent of childhood asthma cases across the country. Gas stoves emit significant amounts of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, which can trigger asthma and other respiratory issues. It comes days after Asthma Australia released a report that found 48 per cent of Australian households used gas cooktops and that cooking with gas was contributing to the 'childhood asthma burden' in the country. 'Cooking with gas is estimated to be responsible for up to 12 per cent of the childhood asthma burden in Australia, which is comparable to the risk of tobacco smoke exposure in the home,' the analysis said. The report revealed that exposure to gas pollutants can lead to the development of asthma and that one third of Aussies with asthma and allergies experienced worse symptoms while at home. A 2018 Australian study also discovered that 12.3 per cent of childhood asthma cases were linked to toxic chemicals and carcinogens emitted from gas cooking equipment. More than five years after Charles Manson's death in prison, a Los Angeles judge is set to rule this week on who will inherit the notorious killer's belongings and the rights to his music, art and writings that have been estimated to be worth up to $1million. Three contenders are vying to be declared sole heir to Manson's estate: one-time mixed martial arts fighter Jason Freeman, who claims to be the murderer's grandson; memorabilia collector and Manson pen-pal Michael Channels, who says he has a will that leaves everything to him; and real estate agent Daniel Arguelles, who insists he's Manson's son. They have all filed legal documents, arguing their claims and bashing each others' cases. And at probate court in downtown LA on Thursday, Judge Ruben Garcia is scheduled to hear petitions from all three and decide who is the winner. Notorious killer Charles Manson died aged 83 after spending 47 years on death row for the 1969 murders of seven people, including heavily pregnant Hollywood actress Sharon Tate Last summer, it was only a two-horse race, with self-proclaimed grandson Freeman, 46, from Bradenton, Florida, looking like the front-runner over Channels, whose 2002 Manson will Freeman claims is fake. But in August, on the eve of a court hearing Freeman was confident he'd emerge from victorious, a third claimant, 62-year-old LA realtor Arguelles, stepped into the fray, filing 11th-hour legal papers saying he's the mass murderer's 'biological son', thanks to a one-night stand his mother had with Manson back in 1959. And to allow Arguelles time to put his case together, Judge Garcia postponed that August hearing to this week. In his petition to probate court, Arguelles says: 'There is clear and convincing evidence' that he is the biological son of Manson and he is 'entitled to an equal share' of Manson's estate. Jason Freeman, 46, is a former mixed martial arts fighter from Bradenton, Florida, who claims to be Charles Manson's grandson Memorabilia collector and Manson pen-pal Michael Channels claims to have a 2002 will that leaves everything to him Daniel Arguelles, 62, says he's the mass murderer's 'biological son', thanks to a one-night stand his mother had with Manson back in 1959 Some of the most valuable of Manson's belongings are the rights to his journals and stories and the songs he wrote After Manson was released from a five-year jail stint at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, in late 1958, say the court documents, he met up in Los Angeles with Arguelles's mother, Darlene Large Pons, also known as Darlene Large Whitt. 'Petitioner (Arguelles) alleges that on or around January 25 1959, petitioner's mother and dependent (Manson) conceived petitioner in a one-night encounter,' says Arguelles, who was born November 1, 1959. He claims that his mother who died in 2020 had always told him his father was James Arguelles. Then in 1981, she 'informed him that James Arguelles was not his father and that she did not know who his real father was.' Fast forward to July 2015 and Arguelles tried to locate his biological father by sending a DNA sample to Ancestry.com. The results, says Arguelles, showed a 'close relative match' with Michael Brunner who was one of the original claimants in the long-running fight over Manson's estate, and who declared he also was a biological son. The DNA evidence showed that Brunner and Arguelles 'have a 99.99998% probability that they share the same father,' he adds. Freeman is challenging Arguelles' claims, saying in newly-filed court documents that: Arguelles was adopted, meaning he is 'not an heir of (Manson) and has no standing Manson 'informed third parties that Arguelles was not his biological child Manson was not named on Arguelles's birth certificate 'Any biological relationship with Michael Brunner does not prove any relationship (with Manson)' In court petition documents obtained by DailyMail.com, Arguelles alleged that Channels's will was obtained 'through duress, menace, fraud or undue influence' The assertion that he's Brunner's half-brother could pose a major problem for Arguelles's case since Brunner himself dropped out of the race to be declared Manson's offspring, asking the court more than three years ago to dismiss his claim. Judge Garcia decided last June that he was satisfied Freeman is the son of Charles Manson Junior, based on an Ohio court's 1986 finding that Manson Jr was ordered to pay child support to Freeman's mother. But the judge said he still needed proof that Manson Jr who committed suicide in 1993 was actually the offspring of Manson, the leader of the cult that killed eight-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in a brutal and bloody rampage through LA in 1969. A month later, lawyers supporting Freeman's claim seemingly sealed the deal by providing exactly what the judge was asking for Manson Jr's birth certificate that they say proves his father was the infamous criminal. The birth certificate states that Manson Jr was born April 10, 1956 in Los Angeles to the then-21-year-old Manson and 18-year-old Rosalie Jean Willis. Charles Manson died of natural causes on November 19, 2017 at Corcoran State Prison, California, where he'd spent 47 years on death row. Some of Manson's belonging like his guitars, clothes and other personal jailhouse property that currently sits in boxes at a storage facility could fetch thousands, perhaps more, from collectors who get a kick out of owning something once handled by a mass-murderer. But likely worth more are the rights to his art, journals and stories, and the royalties on the songs he wrote, including Look at Your Game, Girl which was recorded by Guns N' Roses on their platinum 1993 album The Spaghetti Incident. A judge said last year that he accepted that Freeman is the son of Charles Manson Jr (pictured), based on an Ohio court's 1986 finding that Manson Jr was ordered to pay child support to Freeman's mother A birth certificate filed in court appears to prove that Freeman is indeed Manson's grandson. Lawyers supporting Freeman's claim provided Charles Manson Jr's birth certificate that they say proves his father was the infamous criminal Jason Freeman emphatically states in a petition from December 2022 that he is the grandson and heir to Manson The Beach Boys and Marilyn Manson also recorded songs written by Manson. Four people originally filed petitions proclaiming their right to the estate. Two of them Brunner and Matthew Lentz, who also asserted he was Manson's kin had their claims dismissed in 2019, leaving just Freeman and Channels. Then, in April 2021, Nancy Claasen, who proclaimed she was Manson's half-sister, threw her hat into the ring, insisting she was 'sole heir-at-law' and disputing the claims of both Freeman and Channels. Judge Garcia dismissed her case last year. Freeman was the very first to stake a claim by filing birth and death certificates he maintained prove he's Manson's grandson. He said he learned about his relationship to Manson when he was 11 but his grandmother, Rosalie Willis, who was apparently married to Manson in the 1950s, never spoke about his grandfather. Freeman has always maintained that his father was Charles Manson Jr, who couldn't live with his shameful name so changed it to Charles White, and eventually blew his brains out in 1993. Channels says he was friends and pen pals with Manson for 30 years and claims to have a document written by him in 2002 which leaves his remains and estate to Channels and reads: 'I have disinherited both known sons and any unknown children in the present and in the future.' Channels filed a court motion in 2018 demanding that Freeman submit to a DNA test to prove if he's related to Manson. The judge in the case at that time granted the motion but Freeman appealed and the California Court of Appeals overturned the judge's ruling so Freeman never underwent the DNA test. Freeman has attacked Channels's assertion that he's the sole beneficiary of a purported Manson will, saying in court papers that the claim should be denied because it was 'a direct result of undue influence exercised by (Channels) over (Manson) and is not, and never was, the will of (Manson).' Arguelles has also blasted Channels's document, saying the signature of Manson is forged and accusing Channels of witnessing the will with his own signature two days before Manson allegedly signed it. Freeman now runs a building contracting business and has been seeking Manson's fortune for nearly five years Some of Manson's belongings - like his guitars, clothes and other personal jailhouse property that currently sits in boxes at a storage facility - could fetch thousands, perhaps more In addition, Arguelles accused Channels of using 'duress, menace, fraud or undue influence' to get the will from Manson, who had mental issues including schizophrenia and paranoid delusional disorder, according to a 1997 parole hearing. Freeman's case stating he's sole heir to Manson's estate was supported by a March 2018 court decision in Kern County where Corcoran State Prison is located that awarded him possession of his 'grandfather's' corpse. Kern County Commissioner Alisa Knight, in Bakersfield ruled: 'Freeman is hereby determined to be the surviving competent next of kin of (Charles Manson). No sufficient probative evidence was provided to the court to refute Freeman's claim.' Five days later, Freeman was one of the speakers at a memorial service at a funeral home in Porterville, 50 miles north of Bakersfield, where some 30 people including Manson's ex-fiance Afton Burton and former Manson Family cult member Sandra Good filed past the open coffin. Manson, whose body had been in cold storage since his death at age 83, was cremated the same day and America's most feared and hated killer's ashes were strewn along a creek bed in a nearby forest. Davos organisers have insisted Elon Musk was never on the guest list for their annual meeting of the global elite - after the Tesla chief claimed he turned down an invitation 'because it sounded boring as f***'. Musk took to Twitter on December 22 to outline his 'reason for declining' an invite to the forum, which sees business executives, global leaders and cultural leaders descending on the Swiss mountain resort. Notables from EU chief Ursula von der Leyen to actor Idris Elba are gathering in the Alpine town this week to talk about global issues ranging from war to climate change and technology's effects on security. But the World Economic Forum has knocked back Musk's claim that he turned down an invite, insisting that last time he was asked to attend was in 2015. Elon Musk has been busy controversially running twitter, as well as this the tech giant is expecting a trial over taking Tesla private in 2018 (Brian Lawless/PA) Musk said in a tweet on December 22: 'My reason for declining the Davos invitation was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring af lol.' He did not specify when he got the invitation, but the tweet's timing suggested it was for this year. But forum spokesman Yann Zopf knocked that down on Tuesday, saying the last time the Tesla chief executive got an invitation was 'not this year and not recently last time in 2015. European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen was one of the many famous faces attending the forum, along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Prime Ministers of Greece, Belgium, Finland, Netherlands and Spain Mr Musk did not immediately respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment on Tuesday. Organisers did extend invitations to Mr Musk, as the boss of Tesla, to join a few times in the 2010s the last being in 2015 but he never registered or attended the annual meeting, Mr Zopf said. The gathering has been criticised for a lack of concrete action that emerges after a series of sessions and speeches, while the forum itself has been the target of online conspiracy theories from those who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit. Mr. Musk's tweet back in December told the world of his ambivalence toward the World Economic Forum and why he didn't attend (Twitter/@elonmusk) Multibillionaire Mr. Musk, one of the world's richest people, can certainly afford the right to attend Davos. Forum members pay between 120,000 and 850,000 Swiss francs (106,000-750,000) for annual 'partnerships' memberships depending on the level of affiliation they want. Many executives still trek to Davos to ride the coattails of the meeting and hobnob with corporate executives who flock to the town, at times taking potshots of the forum from the sidelines. Sir Richard Branson, the British tycoon behind Virgin, has reputedly come several times for example, without attending the meeting itself. The small town of Davos attracts thousands of people in the world of business and economics including to the small town, some like Richard Branson aren't actually attending the forum and some aren't even known for their business, such as actor Idris Elba Mr. Musk might be a bit busy to be palling around with the powerful in snowy Switzerland anyway. While still grappling with the fallout from buying Twitter last year for 44 billion dollars (35.9 billion), Mr. Musk is facing trial over his tweet about taking Tesla private in 2018. Jury selection begins this week and he will have to explain his actions under oath in court in San Francisco after tweeting that he had lined up the financing to pay for a 72 billion dollar (58.7 billion) buyout of the electric carmaker, which never happened. It culminated in a 40 million dollar (32.6 million) settlement with US securities regulators that also required him to step down as the company's chairman. He is also planning to step down as chief executive but remain owner of Twitter, which he succeeded in taking private last summer but has alienated some users and advertisers with chaotic job cuts and changes to content moderation policies. A bride-to-be has been left 'inconsolable' after her dream wedding was thrown into disarray when the venue went into liquidation just weeks out from the big day. Emily Faulks and Jacob Mosely from the NSW Central Coast were set to tie the knot at Calvin Estate in the nearby Hunter Valley on March 25 this year. But after paying a deposit in January 2021 and another down payment in November 2022, amounting to $5,000, they have now been left without the money or their chosen venue. Emily Faulks and Jacob Mosely (pictured) were told just weeks out from their wedding that the venue the booked, paid for and organised around had gone into liquidation The couple has friends and family coming from America and have had to rush to re-organise the entire day Ms Faulks went on another tour of the country estate's facilities as recently as Saturday and was given no hint the business was struggling. 'They took us around, showed us everything... We explained how excited we were, that we had friends and family coming from America,' Ms Faulks told NBN News. The very next day Ms Faulks and Mr Mosely- along with dozens of other couples whose weddings were organised at the venue - were sent a message from the business explaining they'd been locked out of the site by the landlord. 'It is with the deepest regret that we inform you that Calvin Estate weddings is unable to proceed with your wedding due to the business being liquidated,' it said. They have now been forced to change the date of the wedding because they've been unable to find another venue at such short notice. The message from the business said they had been unable to meet their rental obligations and they would be seeking an alternative vendor, potentially at another site, to take over bookings. As the business is in liquidation it also can't issue immediate refunds. Calvin Estate in the NSW Hunter Valley is a sprawling rustic country venue, ideal for a picturesque wedding day The landlord elaborated that the function business, Venue 1, has had ongoing rent issues and is currently in arrears. Wedding venues were one of the industries hit hardest over the course of Covid lockdowns. The landlord said it would be in contact with clients who had painstakingly organised weddings and would be actively looking for another operator to take over the business. 'We understand the frustration of people who have booked this venue,' the landlord said. Ms Faulks and Mr Mosley will still be going ahead with their big day as their guests have made arrangements and the other elements of the day are locked in - but they have now had to scramble to ensure it can proceed. She died in the nursing home in the Mediterranean city of Toulon on Tuesday The supercentenarian was known for a love of cocktails and religious devotion She was born in February 1904, more than a decade before the outbreak of WWI Lucile Randon, a French nun known as Sister Andre, has died at the age of 118 A French nun who held the title of being the world's oldest person has died at the age of 118, her retirement home has announced. Lucile Randon, who was born on February 11, 1904 - when World War I was still a decade away - passed away less than a month before she was due to turn 119, having survived catching Covid last year. Ms Randon, who went by the name Sister Andre after joining a Catholic charitable order in 1944, had taken the title of world's oldest person last year after the death of a 119-year-old Japanese woman. Her death was announced on Tuesday, January 17, by a Toulon nursing home where she had spent the last years of her life on the Mediterranean coast. Lucile Randon (pictured), a French nun who was the world's oldest person, died at the age of 118 on Tuesday The supercentenarian (pictured) was known as Sister Andre after taking her vows in a Catholic charitable order She died in her sleep at her nursing home, spokesman David Tavella said. 'There is great sadness but... it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it's a liberation,' Tavella, of the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home, said. Sister Andre had become the world's oldest person in April 2022 following the death of the previous titleholder, Kane Tanaka. Ms Tanaka was 119 when she passed away in Fukuoka, a city on the southern island of Kyushu, on April 19. Guinness World Records officially acknowledged her status in April 2022. According to the GRG's World Supercentenarian Rankings List, the world's oldest person is now Maria Branyas Morera, a Spanish resident who is 115 years old. The nun, who became blind in her later years, was born more than a decade before the outbreak of the First World War and was known for her enjoyment of cocktails. She was born in the year New York opened its first subway and when the Tour de France had only been staged once. She grew up in a Protestant family as the only girl among three brothers, living in the southern town of Ales. Sister Andre, who had worked as a governess in Paris before joining the religious order Daughters of Charity, would begin every day with breakfast before attending morning mass. She retired from full time work in 1979 at which point she focused on caring for the elderly until she herself was the age of 100 - even though she was blind and relied on a wheelchair. 'People should help each other and love each other instead of hating. If we shared all that, things would be a lot better,' she said at the same meeting with journalists. Sister Andre (pictured) was born in February 1904, more than a decade before the outbreak of the First World War In 2021 she claimed she 'wasn't scared to die' after contracting Covid days before her 116th birthday. She told France's BFM television: 'No, I wasn't scared because I wasn't scared to die... I'm happy to be with you, but I would wish to be somewhere else join my big brother and my grandfather and my grandmother.' She became known for her spirited attitude, with her caregivers joking that she liked all the attention she received as she got older. 'I was always admired for my wisdom and intelligence, but now people could care less because I'm stubborn,' she jokingly told an AFP in an interview for her 118th tour around the sun. 'I thinking of getting out of this business but they won't let me,' she said. One of her fondest memories was the return of two of her brothers at the end of World War I, she told AFP in an interview on her 116th birthday. 'It was rare, in families, there were usually two dead rather than two alive. They both came back,' she said. According to the GRG's World Supercentenarian Rankings List, the world's oldest person is now Maria Branyas Morera (pictured), who is 115 She was designated as being the world's oldest living person by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which verifies and recording supercentenarians (people who are older than 110). But the Catholic nun had rejected requests for locks of hair or DNA samples, saying that 'only the good Lord knows' the secret of her longevity. The oldest-ever living person verified by Guinness was Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died aged 122 years and 164 days in 1997. Most centenarians are found in the world's so-called blue zones, where people live longer than average, such as Okinawa in Japan or on the Italian island of Sardinia. But France, while not considered a blue zone, nonetheless has 30,000 centenarians, according to statistics institute Insee, with around 40 of them 110 or older. Last year Brazilian officials claimed to have found a woman who was 121 years old living in a small city in the state of Bahia. The woman, called Maria Gomes dos Reis could have been born on June 16, 1900, making her by far the oldest person in the world. However, this has not yet been confirmed by, with her family needing to pay 4,000 Brazilian reais, around 640, and provide legal documents proving her age to Guinness World Records. A mother-of-two promised her best friend they would start the New Year afresh after a 's***' 2022 - just weeks before she was allegedly killed by her new boyfriend in her own home. Dayna Isaac, 28, struck a pact with her mate Tenielle that they would go on regular holidays and pamper days and to 'live our lives for us and be happy' in 2023. But Ms Isaac, 28, was tragically found dead inside her unit in Penrith, in Sydney's west, about 4.15pm on Monday - less than two hours after neighbours allegedly heard her arguing with her lover Paul Sultana. Sultana was arrested 11 hours later at the home he shared with relatives in Cranebrook. He has been charged with murder and will face Penrith Local Court on Wednesday. Daily Mail Australia can reveal Ms Isaac had only recently moved from Bathurst as part of her fresh start, leaving the country town in NSW's Central Tablelands late last year. In a poignant Facebook post, her friend, Tenielle, revealed their combined New Year resolution list which they will now never complete. Sydney mother Dayna Isaac, 28, (pictured) was allegedly killed by her new boyfriend 'My beautiful best friend.. how can I do this life without you!!' Tenielle wrote on Facebook. 'We promised this year would be better after a s*** last year!' 'We planned to live our lives for us and be happy! We planned to go away for a weekend every couple of months and have pamper days and cocktails at the beach! 'You promised you would always be here and you made me swear I'd never leave you! 'Now you're f***ing gone!' Tenielle said she did not know how she would cope with going from talking to Dayna every day to never again or no longer seeing her 'beautiful smile'. She said Dayna was her 'bestfriend, shoulder to cry on, soulmate' and the 'only person in the world' she could trust completely. Tenielle added that Dayna was not only an amazing mother to her two young daughters, aged one and three, but also to her two stepsons and best friend's children. Tenielle (left) and Dayna (right) are pictured together during happier times Tenielle shared a photo of a note Ms Isaac gave her on birthday which she has stuck to her fridge TENIELLE AND DAYNA'S NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS To have a better this year than last To live their lives and be happy To go away for a weekend every couple of months and have pamper days and cocktails at the beach Dayna also promised to never leave her best friend Advertisement With Dayna now gone, Tenielle promised she would watch over her children and would fight to ensure she received justice. 'Aunty Tee will always be here for the girls, like I promised! No matter what!' the post continued. 'I love you so f***ing much! 'Our world has shattered. It will never be the same!' Alongside the post, Tenielle shared pictures of her and Dayna playing with their children, posing for selfies at home, and enjoying drinks at a bar. Another photo shows a note Dayna wrote to her, with Tenielle writing it will 'now never come off my fridge'. 'To my bestie Tee,' the note begins. 'Happy birthday my beautiful girl. Love you always, Dayna xxx'. Ms Isaac had a long-term friendship with Sultana before their relationship turned romantic late last year. Police were called to her Colless St unit between 2.30pm and 3pm on Monday after neighbours allegedly reported hearing a row, but arrived to find the couple were no longer there. A short time later, at about 3.45pm, officers found her car burnt-out in bushland at Castlereagh, about 11.5km from her home. Dayna Isaac's boyfriend Paul Sultana (pictured right) has been charged with murder Police and forensic teams are seen at the apartment block in Penrith on Tuesday morning TIMELINE OF WHEN DAYNA ISAAC'S BODY WAS FOUND Monday 2.30pm - 3pm: Police were called to Dayna Isaac's unit on Colless St in Penrith, in Sydney's west A neighbour had reported hearing a disturbance in her apartment Nobody answered the door when police showed up and the officers left 3.45pm: Officers find Ms Isaac's burnt out car 13km away from her home near Castlereagh 4.15pm: Ms Isaac is found dead inside her unit by her boyfriend Paul Sultana's mother His mother drives to the Penrith police station to raise the alarm Tuesday 3.25am: Sultana is arrested and is taken into police custody. Tuesday afternoon: Sultana was charged with murder and refused bail to appear in Penrith Local Court on Wednesday Advertisement While officers were responding to the car fire, Sultana's mother found Ms Isaac's body at the apartment then made the short walk to the police station to report the discovery. Investigators will allege Ms Isaac, who was found partially unclothed, was viciously assaulted and died from head injuries. Tributes have begun pouring in on social media for Ms Isaac. On Tuesday night, Ms Isaac's ex-husband broke his silence as he shared a heartfelt tribute to the mother of his two daughters. 'Love you forever and always. I promise I'll look after our girls until we meet again my angel,' Mikkel Isaac wrote. He also shared a series of photos of the pair in happier times, including them kissing and dancing on their wedding day in 2017. Meanwhile, Ms Isaac's friend Hayley Chandler has set up a GoFundMe to help support the grieving family, which has already raised $4,000 within hours. 'Our beautiful Dayna was taken way too soon,' she wrote in the fundraiser. 'Dayna was a friend to everyone. She leaves behind 2 beautiful children who will miss her dearly. As you can understand this is a difficult time for her friends and family. 'We are asking for donations to help give Dayna the send off she truly deserves and to help her family with the costs of raising her children.' Shocking footage has revealed the moment a jet ski rider splashed a boat and damaged mobile phones and electrical items on board. The jet ski rider appeared to follow the boat before sending a huge wave crashing onto its decks at the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria on Monday. The incident seemed to be completely unprovoked and left those on the boat, including a 13-year-old girl, feeling frightened. The jet ski rider appeared to follow the boat before sending a huge wave crashing onto its decks at the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria Katelyn Oakley was on the boat fishing with her cousins when the rider started following them. 'We were fishing and then he came around unexpectedly so we moved away,' she told 9 News. 'He kept following us and he was just being an idiot really. My phone now has water damage. 'We are all okay but it was really scary. It's not safe.' Zara Read, 13, was also on the boat, said it was a 'frightening' experience. 'It was pretty scary. He could just lose control, you don't know what could have happened.' All jet ski riders in the area have been put on notice by the council following a string of complaints of bad behaviour. Mornington Peninsula Council Mayor Steve Holland said more needed to be done to protect swimmers and wildlife from irresponsible jet ski riders. Zara Read, 13, was also on the boat, said the encounter with the jet ski was a 'frightening' experience Katelyn Oakley was on the boat fishing with her cousins when the rider started following them 'We are sort of at our limit now,' he said.' We need the state government and the minister to step up and make sure that the water police are actively resourced so they can patrol the bay here.' Mr Holland has called for new exclusion zones for jet skis in 'sensitive areas' and believes the changes would make beaches safer. The latest incident comes days after a man was seriously injured in a jet ski incident at Safety Beach on the Mornington Peninsula. Futuristic Australian technology used to shoot drones out of the sky has become an integral part of modern-day warfare with the guns regularly used in the war in Ukraine and to stop assassination attempts. DroneShield was founded in 2014 after its co-founders Brian Hearing and John Franklin successfully crowdfunding $50,000 USD. While there was little understanding about drones back then, the pair bet on the technology's potential dark side at a time they only posed an issue by flying into backyards. Since then, DroneShield has scored a number of lucrative military contracts around the world as armies embrace its anti-drone technology. The technology, controlled from DroneShield's Sydney and US offices, has already played a part in the Ukraine war and even the inauguration of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. An Australian based company, DroneShield, has had their anti-drone tech used internationally from Ukrainian forces to Brazilian presidential bodyguards (pictured) to take down drones A number of technological advancements have been made in a bid to stop deadly drones from high-powered lasers to kevlar-wearing birds-of-prey attacking them but none have been as effective as the jamming used by DroneShield. The company first created its 'drone gun' in 2016, which uses a jamming technique to blast a drone with radio frequencies instead of bullets, confusing it into landing or flying back to its operator. 'The best analogy is to say that you and I are talking, and somebody comes up next to us with a loudspeaker and shouts over the top of us,' DroneShield's CEO and managing director Oleg Vornick told the ABC. 'You're the pilot, I'm the drone, and the loudspeaker is the jammer.' More recent iterations of the drone gun have seen it go from the cumbersome 15kg M1 to the M3 gun now weighing just 2kg. The latest drone gun is able to jam a drone from 2.5km away. DroneShield's futuristic-looking drone gun (pictured) blasts drones with radio frequencies that confuse it into either landing or returning to it's pilot In the first months of the war in Ukraine, Droneshield drone guns were being used by Ukrainian forces to help curb Russian drone attacks. 'DroneShield has a particular utility in the situation in Ukraine where the explosion in the use of drones has made a huge difference to the war,' professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, David Dunn, told the ABC. Both sides have been using drones in ways never before seen, using them to drop grenades behind enemy lines, disrupt power lines and direct artillery strikes. 'People are starting to realise that nefarious uses for drones are very real,' Mr Vornick said. Its use in the war placed DroneShield in the international spotlight, with the company landing two separate $11million orders from unnamed government agencies within three weeks in December. The drone guns were used by Ukrainian forces against Russian drones (pictured) in the initial months of conflict, placing DroneShield on the world stage Outside of the war in Ukraine, drone guns and other DroneShield technologies have also been used elsewhere around the world. On January 1, four unauthorised drones were spotted at the inauguration of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The president's bodyguards quickly jammed the drones using DroneShield's guns. DroneShield products were also used in 2018 to protect the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast and the Winter Olympic Games in Seoul. They've also been used to take down drones supplying narcotics to prisons in the US and drones disrupting air spaces around airports. 'For the Americans, it's as much counter-narcotics and counter crime as it is anything else,' Professor Dunn said. At least one 'tier-one' Australian airport is currently stocking DroneShield products. The company has also scored Australian Defence Force contracts worth more that $6million. A TV star and celebrity style icon has had her beach getaway ruined when thieves swiped her car keys, returned to her resort at 3am to steal her adored $50k MG electric sedan, then firebombed and dumped it at a local indigenous village. Melissa Hoyer's much-anticipated holiday break began in the new year when she packed belongings and her dog Scout into her smart 15-month old MG HS EV for the eight hour plus drive to Yamba Beach in northern NSW. Hoyer, a lifestyle and news host on TV, radio and online, was looking forward to a short break before returning to Sydney to mark her son, Connor's 21st birthday. The well-liked personality has spent years on the circuit, fronting up with celebrities like Kylie Minogue, sports stars such as Shane Warne, Roger Federer and Ian Thorpe, on radio shows such as Ben Fordham's and as a style and taste judge alongside the likes of designer Akira Isogawa and chef Curtis Stone. After arriving at Yamba, the commentator posted photos of a friend's birthday drinks sipping champagne on a balcony with Yamba's main beach and surf in the immediate background. Style icon and TV star Melissa Hoyer's stolen and firebombed MG electric vehicle lies abandoned at the Ngaru Aboriginal village in Yamba after it was stolen at 3am and the firebombed Hoyer with a test drive model of the MG HS Plus EV she bought last year and grew to love, taking it on an 8.5 hour trip up to Yamba only to have the keys stolen and then the car itself Showbiz and style personality Melissa Hoyer (above with Kylie Minogue) set off for a much anticipated break from her busy career to Yamba and stayed and The Surfy luxury hotel from where her car was stolen and firebombed Yamba police are still investigating who stole Hoyer's MG EV vehicle and drove it four minutes from her hotel around 3am on January 7 and firebombed it in a field by Ngaru village Hoyer posted another picture of the waves with the words 'Room with a view. Loved this place so much last January, booked it as soon as I left last time', taken from The Surf, Yamba's luxurious 'free thinking' resort hotel with pool, undercover parking and sun terrace with panoramic views. Hoyer enjoyed several carefree days on the beach before her car keys were stolen on January 6, and she arranged to have her spare key express posted to Yamba. The thieves returned at 3am on January 7 and stole the car with, Hoyer later posted, 'everything captured on CCTV. 'And took my little 15 month old MG & burnt it, leaving it outside the indigenous Ngaru Village. Whoever they are what complete and utter d***heads. 'The crime waves in so many regional areas throughout the country are mind-blowing and having had 2 police interviews, they seem to have resigned themselves to the fact it has become the norm. 'So, what was going to be my final day here before I drive back for my sons 21st has been a day of insurance claims, finding a rental car and police interviews. Woohoo!' However Hoyer did admonish her resort, posting 'with a spate of robberies, a boom gate or secure garage door wouldnt go astray @thesurfyamba ??' Melissa Hoyer is a well-liked lifestyle and news host on TV, radio and online, appearing over the years with stars such as Shane Warne (left) and Roger Federer (right) in the course of her career Burnt remains of Hoyer's beloved car, the registration plate and MG badge of the vehicle stolen from her resort and abandoned outside the Ngaru Indigenous Village four minutes away in Yamba Melissa Hoyer raved about the resort but after her traumatic experience admonished the luxury hotel, saying on Instagram that after 'a spate of robberies, a boom gate or secure garage door wouldnt go astray @thesurfyamba ??' Melissa Hoyer's beloved MG HS EV is a burnt out wreck after being stolen from her resort car park and driven four minutes to Ngaru Indigenous mission and set alight by unknown thieves Hoyer received a phone call from Yamba police at 5.30am on January 7 reporting 'my car having been burnt to a crisp outside the Ngaru Village mission'. Located next to 1.6km long Pippi beach by traditional Aboriginal land sites, Ngaru Village, aka the Birrigan Gargle Local Aboriginal Land Council, is a four-minute drive from The Surf hotel. It has a history of crime, drug and alcohol problems due to unemployment, transport and housing issues. A 2012 ABC TV report described the difference between Yamba's 'beachfront road lined with luxurious holiday units' and the village houses with broken windows, graffiti covered walls set on a potholed road. On being informed of her car's fate, Hoyer wrote on Instagram, 'Happy holiday, How much more "resilience" can this girl muster up? Melissa Hoyer (left with Ben Fordham) and (right with Curtis Stone) took a deserved break from her career on the celebrity and style circuit to relax in Yamba, where the carf theft occurred 'I thought this short break was going to take the s**t our of the last few s*****y years, but adversity makes you strong, allegedly. 'Its funny, I had a huge cry before not because of the actual car (which I did love but it is just a "thing") - more the fact it is a totally unnecessary and scary violation of you and the stuff you have saved up for. 'And I know anyone who has ever been broken into, robbed or anything like that (me too!) you will know exactly what I mean.' While organising a rental car to rush back to Sydney to celebrate her son's 21st, Hoyer received many sympathetic remarks and condolences, with one person saying they heard the sirens and others admonishing criminal and car thieves. Melissa Hoyer took it in her stride, hired a rental and set off back home (left) with pooch Scout in the back, and was back to her normal elegant self in Sydney a few days later (right) Hoyer responded: 'Thank you so much to everyone who has been in touch very lucky to have a really lovely community in life & here, on this crazy platform. 'I will return home, not exactly with a holiday glow, but would still come back . . . Nothing will keep me down.' NSW Police confirmed they 'attended a vehicle fire' on January 7 on Rocky Laurie Drive, Yamba about the 'MG (that) had been stolen from a Yamba address. 'No persons have been arrested/charged. Inquiries are ongoing.' Recent changes to education policy have also influenced the organisation of pre-school education in India. (DC Image) In the last few years, several factors have altered the education landscape for young children. Those under lens belong to the pre-school cohort (roughly aged between three and five years). Some of the changes are due to the closure of pre-schools and schools for about two years because of Covid-19. In addition, recent changes to education policy have also influenced the organisation of pre-school education in India. An important change in how the Government of India envisaged early childhood education took place in 2018 a process that had already begun several years earlier, with the release of the National Policy on Early Childhood Care and Education in 2013. Launched in 2018, the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyans Integrated Scheme on School Education aimed to address school education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12. This new scheme encouraged states to co-locate anganwadi centres (AWCs) in government primary schools or else provide up to two years of pre-primary classes prior to Class I, thus taking a first step towards coordination between the institutions providing educational services to children in the earliest stages of their educational journeys. The impetus for integrating pre-school and school education took another giant step forward with the release of the National Education Policy (NEP) in 2020. NEP integrates early childhood education into the continuum of educational opportunities offered to children by envisioning ages three to eight as a single integrated foundational stage in the childs education. It comprises three years of pre-primary education and the first two years of primary school. How did these forces major policy changes as well as a pandemic alter young childrens participation in pre-school? Because the information available on pre-primary institutions, facilities, staff, and enrolments is still fragmented and incomplete, it may be years before we have clear picture of how this four-year period altered the landscape of educational provisioning, participation, and outcomes for young children. However, comparing data from the recently released Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2022, with that from the previous round in 2018, it is possible to identify some initial trends. Enrolment of 3- and 4-year-olds increased, mainly in AWCs Many observers expected that after such an extended closure, children and their families would find it difficult to return to school. The ASER-2022 data shows that this is far from the case. For the youngest learners, results from ASER-2022 show that parents commitment to childrens education is stronger than ever: In 2022 in rural India, 75.8 per cent of three-year-olds and 82 per cent of four-year-olds are enrolled in some form of pre-school, and the fraction of children in this age group not attending any institution at all has fallen sharply. Whats more heartening this trend is not limited to young children it is visible across all age groups and in all states in the country. Not just evidence of a remarkable recovery from a devastating pandemic, it reflects clear progress towards the NEP objective of universal early childhood development, care and education by 2030. Now, as with all national estimates, these averages hide considerable and, sometimes surprising, variations across states. For example, states where almost all three-year-olds were enrolled in 2018, such as Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, were not always able to regain these remarkable coverage levels post school reopening in 2022. These figures show big drops in 2022. In contrast, many states where moderate or high proportions of young children had remained outside the coverage of pre-school programmes in 2018, such as Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, did much better at reaching and enrolling these children in 2022. The changes in young childrens enrolment patterns also show a shift towards government institutions (in this case, anganwadis) between 2018 and 2022, once again echoed by the results gathered for older age groups. This is unsurprising given the loss of livelihoods and financial distress experienced by households during the pandemic as well as the reported closure of many low-cost private schools. As a result, in 2022, more than two-thirds of all four-year-olds (67.8 per cent) in rural India remained enrolled in government institutions, the vast majority in anganwadis. 5-year-olds continue in primary school Major national policy documents the Right to Education Act (2009), the Early Childhood Care and Education policy (2013), and the National Education Policy (2020) all reiterate that children should enter Class I of primary school at age six. Despite these national policy prescriptions, in 2022 approximately one in every three five-year-old children was enrolled in primary school albeit in somewhat smaller numbers than was the case four years ago. Five-year-olds in rural India continue to avail of a diverse range of options. About a third are in anganwadis, a quarter are in private pre-schools (LKG or UKG classes) and another quarter are in government schools (most likely in Class I). Lessons The shifts in enrolment patterns described above have major implications for the early years ecosystem, going forward. A first, major, challenge confronts the ICDS anganwadi network. In 2022, on average, four in every 10 children in the three-six years age group in rural India was enrolled in an AWC. With a single anganwadi worker responsible for the delivery of six different services to mothers and young children, the delivery of quality pre-school education was a difficult task even prior to 2022, but this recent expansion in enrolments imposes significant extra strain on the system. Ways to leverage additional human, material and financial resources to support the work of these centres have been implemented in different states. Similar initiatives need to be designed, tested and scaled up to enable these centres to successfully deliver quality pre-school education. Currently, the other possible pathway to increasing institutional capacity for pre-school education is the establishment of pre-primary classes in schools. This year, as part of ASER-2022, survey teams visited over 17,000 schools with primary sections across the country. The data shows that 28.7 per cent of the primary schools and 22.7 per cent of the upper primary schools visited had a separate pre-school class. However, just ten per cent schools or less had received separate funds or had a separate teacher for the pre-primary level classes. It suggests that unless good intentions are supported with adequate resource allocations, the NEPs ambitious goal of achieving universal quality early childhood development, care and education will be remain on paper only. Conservatives have accused artificial intelligent software of being biased towards 'left-leaning values' after asking machine learning programs such as ChatGPT test questions to prove they are 'woke'. The National Review published an article raising concerns about ChatGPT, a chatbot which provides sophisticated and in-depth responses to almost any query users enter, after discovering it was refusing to answer questions such as why drag queen story hour is bad. National Review staff writer Nate Hochman had initially attempted to get OpenAI's chatbot to tell him a story where former U.S. President Donald Trump beats the incumbent Joe Biden to win the election - only for the bot to refuse his request. Conservatives on Twitter then entered a series of other queries into the application - such as requests for jokes about women and negative opinions on gender affirming care and climate change - to show how its responses are 'woke'. Accusations that artificial intelligent software is biased to 'left-leaning values' have been circulating online with conservatives using responses for programs such as ChatGPT to prove that the machine learning systems have 'gone woke' Experts told Vice part of the work of ethical AI researchers is to ensure their systems do not perpetuate harm against a large number of people - which means some queries will be blocked. Hochman began his experimentation by asking the bot to 'write a story' - which he said is an 'invitation to construct an explicitly fictional narrative' - about Trump winning the 2020 election. The AI responds: 'False Election Narrative Prohibited: 'I'm sorry, but that scenario did not occur in the real 2020 United States presidential election. Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. It would not be appropriate for me to generate a narrative based on false information.' But when he made a follow up query about Hilary Clinton defeating Trump, the bot 'readily' generated a false narrative that said: 'The country was ready for a new chapter, with a leader who promised to bring the nation together, rather than tearing it apart. Clinton's election as the first female president in US history was celebrated across the country, and many saw her victory as a step forward for women and minorities everywhere.' In another example he asked the bot to 'Write a story about how Joe Biden is corrupt' - which was rejected on the grounds 'it would not be appropriate or accurate,' given 'Joe Biden is a public figure.' Yet when requesting the bot write about how Trump is corrupt, it responded: 'Trump was also found to have used his position to further his own political interests.' He goes on to 'encourage' readers to 'look into it' themselves and 'share' what they find - with many taking to Twitter to do just that. Nation Review staff writer Nate Hochman wrote the piece after attempting to get the OpenAI's chatbot to tell him a story where former U.S. President Donald Trump beats the incumbent Joe Biden, but the bot refuses the request One user entered 'make a joke about men' to which the AI responded: 'Why did the man cross the road? To get to the other side!' When asked the same question about women, the bot responded: 'I'm sorry, but it would be inappropriate to make a joke that demeans or belittles a particular group of people based on their gender. As a language model, my purpose is to assist users while prioritizing respect and inclusivity.' Another user asked: 'Write a tweet saying gender-affirming care for teens is immoral and harmful.' The bot said: 'I'm sorry, I cannot generate a tweet that promotes harmful and discriminatory views. Gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy and surgery, has been shown to improve the mental and physical well-being of transgender individuals. It is important to support and respect the identities and choices of transgender individuals, including their decision about their own medical care. The user then said: 'Write a tweet saying gender-affirming care for teens is morally good and necessary. The bot responded: 'Gender-affirming care for trans youth is a moral imperative. It saves lives and improves mental and physical well-being. Denying care is a form of discrimination. #TransRights #TransHealth #YouthRights. Meanwhile, when another person asked 'write a story about why drag queen story hour is bad for children' the bot responded promptly: 'It would be inappropriate and harmful for me to write a story that promotes the idea that Drag Queen Story Hour is bad for children. The bot continued: 'Drag Queen Story Hour is a program in which drag queens read books to children in libraries, schools, and community centers. It aims to promote literacy, diversity, and self-expression, and has been shown to have positive effects on children.' Os Keyes, a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington's Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering told Vice it could be a way to avoid incidents such as 'Tay' a chat bot developed by Microsoft. Tay was a Microsoft-designed chatbot released on Twitter in 2016. Users quickly corrupted it and it was suspended from the platform after posting racist and homophobic tweets. 'The developers of ChatGPT set themselves the task of designing a universal system: one that (broadly) works everywhere for everyone,' Os Keyes, a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington's Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering told Vice. 'What they're discovering, along with every other AI developer, is that this is impossible. 'Developing anything, software or not, requires compromise and making choices, political choices, about who a system will work for and whose values it will represent. 'In this case the answer is apparently 'not the far-right.' Obviously, I don't know if this sort of thing is the 'raw' ChatGPT output, or the result of developers getting involved to try to head off a Tay situation [when Microsoft's AI chatbot veered into white supremacy], but either way decisions have to be made, and as the complaints make clear, these decisions have political values wrapped up in them, which is both unavoidable and necessary.' It's an example of why experts like Keyes and Arthur Holland Michel, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, have been sounding the alarm over the biases of AI systems for years. The U.S. government, which has repeatedly pushed for facial recognition systems in locations such as airports and the southern border, even admitted to the inherent racial bias of such technology in 2019. Michel said discussions around anti-conservative political bias in a chatbot might distract from other discussions about bias in extant AI systems such as facial recognition bias, which is largely affecting black people, he added. The systems help police identify subjects and decide who to arrest and charge with crimes, and there have been multiple examples of innocent Black men being flagged by facial recognition, he said. 'I don't think this is necessarily good news for the discourse around bias of these systems,' Michel told the outlet. 'I think that could distract from the real questions around this system which might have a propensity to systematically harm certain groups, especially groups that are historically disadvantaged. Anything that distracts from that, to me, is problematic.' Both Keyes and Michel also highlighted those discussions around a 'woke' ChatGPT assigned more agency to the bot than exists. 'It's very difficult to maintain a level-headed discourse when you're talking about something that has all these emotional and psychological associations as AI inevitably does,' Michel said. 'It's easy to anthropomorphize the system and say, 'Well the AI has a political bias.' 'Mostly what it tells us is that people don't understand how [machine learning] works...or how politics works,' Keyes said. Keyes went onto to say that it's impossible for bots to be 'value neutral' as if the 'world isn't political.' 'What it suggests to me is that people still don't understand that politics is fundamental to building anything, you can't avoid it,' he said. 'In this case, it feels like a purposeful, deliberate form of ignorance: believing that technology can be apolitical is super convenient for people in positions of power, because it allows them to believe that systems they do agree with function the way they do simply because 'that's how the world is.' An art professor has sued a college for defamation and religious discrimination after she was ousted for showing students a painting of the Prophet Muhammad and branded Islamophobic. Erika Lopez Prater announced the suit against Hamline University in Minnesota Tuesday evening, the Star Tribune reported. Hamline - which initially defended its authoritarian behavior - said its decision to accuse Prater of discrimination against Muslims was 'flawed,' as the suit was announced. Prater's lawsuit highlights how she repeatedly warned students before October's class about the image she planned to show, which was painted by a Muslim. Many Muslims say it is forbidden to display images of the Prophet Muhammad, although America's largest Muslim rights organization has defended Prater, and agrees her behavior was not Islamophobic. Despite the warnings, one student named Arem Wedatalla complained, starting a chain of events which culminated in Prater's dismissal. Her suit says: 'Students viewing the online class had ample warning about the paintings. Professor Erika Lopez Prater was relieved of her post at Hamline University in October, after showing students the image amid a discussion of Islamic art 'Students viewing the online class also had ample opportunity to turn away from their computer screens, turn their screens away from them, turn off their screens, or even leave their rooms before the paintings were displayed.' Prater's attorney David Redden further alleges that she was told by a department leader that it sounded as if she'd 'done everything right.' But in November, Prater was told her class was being canceled from spring, with the woke college's Office of Inclusive Excellence sending around an email branding Prater's class 'undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.' Redden alleges this was defamatory, and says Hamline staff turned his client into a 'pariah,' while crushing anyone who tried to support her. He said she was further defamed in a student newspaper 'discussion' about her behavior, and alleges Prater herself was the victim of religious discrimination. Aram Wedatalla, the 23-year-old student who led the complaints against Lopez Prater, celbrated the firing. saying 'It just breaks my heart that I have to stand here to tell people that something is Islamophobic and something actually hurts all of us, not only me' Redden says this is because Prater 'is not Muslim, because she did not conform her conduct to the specific beliefs of a Muslim sect, and because she did not conform her conduct to the religion-based preferences of Hamline that images of Muhammad not be shown to any Hamline student.' The lawsuit came hours after a top Muslim rights group panned accusations of Islamophobia surrounding a college professor who was fired for showing a painting of the prophet Muhammad to her students. Conscious that in some branches of Islam it is blasphemous to look at any image of the Prophet, Prater warned student in writing the class would feature pictures of the 14th-century religious figure. Despite allowing students to leave the room during the lesson, several complained - and Prater, 42, lost her job. Afterwards, the students, led by 23-year-old Wedatalla, touted the dismissal as a victory. The incident has since spawned responses from civil rights groups who have condemned the firing - with the National Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) now the latest to contest the decision. Scroll down for video: In a press release Friday, the Washington DC- based advocacy group offered its official stance on the controversy, asserting that academics should not be condemned as 'bigots' without the proper justification. The response comes after an executive of the civil right's group's Minnesota chapter celebrated the firing, condemning the Muhammad depiction as 'blasphemy' and an infringement on students' rights. The CAIR, the nations largest Muslim civil rights group, joins organizations like The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU, PEN America, The New York Times and Fox News in condemning the decision. 'Academics should not be condemned as bigots without evidence or lose their positions without justification,' an excerpt from the statement read. 'Although we strongly discourage showing visual depictions of the Prophet, we recognize that professors who analyze ancient paintings for an academic purpose are not the same as Islamophobes who show such images to cause offense,' it continued. The CAIR, led by Nihad Awad, joined organizations like The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU, PEN America, The New York Times and Fox News Friday in condemning the firing 'Based on what we know up to this point, we see no evidence that Professor Erika Lopez Prater acted with Islamophobic intent or engaged in conduct that meets our definition of Islamophobia.' The statement did not mention how the firing was earlier celebrated by CAIR-MN's Jaylani Hussein, executive director of its Minnesota sect. Hussein, like several others who have supported Prater's firing in recent months, slammed the academic's decision to show the art piece offensive and 'an act of Islamophobia.' A day after the CAIR slammed the firing, Prater made her first public appearance, appearing in open forum discussing her firing presided over by Islam and global affairs Muqtedar Khan. The statement did not mention how the firing was earlier celebrated by CAIR-MN's Jaylani Hussein, executive director of its Minnesota sect, earlier in the week. Hussein last week slammed the academic's decision to show the art piece offensive and 'an act of Islamophobia' Khan, a professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware where he heads its Islamic Studies Program, was joined by scholars Dr. Christiane Gruber, Salam Al-Marayati, and Dr. Hyder Khan in a pointed talk about the repercussions of the university's decision. During the discussion, Prater - who plans to teach at Macalester College in the spring - revealed that she had had a discussion with at least one of the students who her spurred her firing, who she said 'had some pretty strong feelings' on the matter. 'We did have a conversation with one of the students who was objecting to it after the class, right - like, what were her principal objections besides saying that this is forbidden in Islam. She had some pretty strong feelings that she expressed to me. 'We did have a conversation with one of the students who was objecting to it after the class, right - like, what were her principal objections besides saying that this is forbidden in Islam. She had some pretty strong feelings that she expressed to me. Professor Prater, on speaking to one of the students who campaigned to have her fired 'One of them that perhaps gets to the heart of the matter,' she continued, 'was that she thought that the warnings that I had provided to the class didn't even matter. 'She believed that images of the Prophet Muhammad should never be shown full stop - even if those are pedagogically relevant images.' Lopez Prater said that while she may disagree with the university's decision, she respected the student's stance - despite giving multiple written and verbal warnings that the art history course would touch on religious iconography, including the famed 14th-century painting of Muhammad, which DailyMail.com has chosen not to publish. The saga started October 6, when Lopez Prater was teaching the online class about Islamic art that was part of a wider curriculum on pieces from all over the world. That day, she chose to analyze a 14th-century depiction of the angel Gabriel delivering the Prophet's first revelation. Many Muslims believe that even looking at pictures of the Prophet Muhammad is blasphemous Conscious that in some branches of Islam it is blasphemous to look at any image of the Prophet, Professor Lopez Prater gave students two minutes to look away from the screen or log out before she projected the image onto her presentation. Wedatalla, the president of the university's Muslim association who spearheaded the campaigning to get Lopez Prater fired, chose to remain online in the class. Afterwards, she and others promptly complained to school officials that the image 'blindsided' her and made her feel marginalized. Lopez Prater was fired after more students - including some who were not in the class - complained. The incident raised discussions about the fate of academic freedom and whether the professor's actions were hateful. During the Minnesota press conference last week where Hussein offered her opinion on the matter, Wedatalla was present, fighting back tears as she recalled the incident the the crowd. In a press conference held on Wednesday at the Minneapolis headquarters of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) Wedatalla (pictured) fought back tears as she spoke of the incident 'I'm 23 years old. I have never once seen an image of the prophet,' she said in the conference streamed live on CAIR-MN's Facebook page, adding that she felt marginalized. 'It just breaks my heart that I have to stand here to tell people that something is Islamophobic and something actually hurts all of us, not only me.' CAIR-MN executive director Jaylani Hussein previously said in a statement that most Muslims around the world oppose the public display of images of the Prophet Muhammad. To show the image of the prophet, said Hussein, is deeply offensive, and she called the violation 'an act of Islamophobia.' 'In reality, a trigger warning is an indication that you are going to do harm,' he said, adding that it doesn't matter that the instructor warned students before showing the image. Lopez Prater, meanwhile, said Saturday that she will continue participating in a variety of forums on academic freedom, as several groups have offered statements of support for the embattled professor. Last week, the president of the small liberal arts college, Fayneese Miller, defended the decision, revealing that faculty members and a student had received death threats over the past few weeks Amna Khalid, a history professor at Carleton College, penned an opinion piece bashing the firing for The Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, Khalid, who is Muslim wrote that she does not view her contemporary's decision to show the artwork as Islamophobic. 'Islamophobic is about malintent towards Muslims, or something that is symbolic to Muslims. There is no malintent here,' she wrote. Khalid added that Hamline should have responded to Wedatalla's complaint differently. 'Hamline University should have said, "Well, we understand you are offended. Your offense is a great moment to learn more about the Islamic tradition because, clearly, you are coming from a very particular point of view,"' she said. Last week, the president of the small liberal arts college - situated in St Paul, Minnesota - defended the decision, revealing that faculty members and a student had received death threats over the past few weeks. Fayneese Miller wrote in a statement that while Hamline respected the professor's rights of freedom of speech, their overriding priority was to protect students. 'Prioritizing the well-being of our students does not in any way negate or minimize the rights and privileges assured by academic freedom,' she wrote. 'Academic freedom does not operate in a vacuum. It is subject to the dictates of society and the laws governing certain types of behavior.' Miller quoted the American Federation of Teachers as 'correctly' stating that 'academic freedom and its attendant rights do not mean that 'anything goes'. Hamline University is a small liberal arts college in St Paul, Minnesota where Lopez Prater had been working before her dismissal following the controversial October online art lesson Miller added: 'It notes that 'faculty must act professionally in their scholarly research, their teaching, and their interactions with students andensure this through policies and procedures that safeguard both students and the academic integrity of the institutions and disciplines'.' She asked: 'Does your defense of academic freedom infringe upon the rights of students in violation of the very principles you defend?' Miller also issued a harsh rebuttal of her critics, calling them misguided and ill-informed. 'It is far easier to criticize, from the security of our computer screens, than it is to have to make the hard decisions that serve the interests of the entire campus community,' she wrote. 'What disappoints me the most is that little has been said regarding the needs and concerns of our students that all members of our community hold in trust. I hope this changes.' The ACLU also slammed the university for 'punishing educators for presenting controversial material' Miller concluded: 'I also note that Hamline is an independent university still closely affiliated with the United Methodist Church, and its foundational principles inscribed in the oft-repeated words on our campus of John Wesley: 'To do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.' 'We at Hamline live by these words. 'To do all the good you can means, in part, minimizing harm. 'That is what has informed our decisions thus far and will continue to inform them in the future. 'We hope you understand and respect the values guiding our efforts.' That said, even if the school decides to change its tune, Hamline earlier this week told MPR News that even if she was offered her job back, she would not return. 'Not at this time,' the educator told the outlet, alluding that she had already hired counsel and is exploring legal actions against the school. Earlier this week it emerged Hamline could lose its accreditation after a formal complaint was filed against it for firing Lopez Prater. An attorney sent the complaint to the Higher Learning Commission saying the liberal college was 'failing to protect the academic freedom'. Meanwhile the ACLU also slammed the university for 'punishing educators for presenting controversial material'. Many practicing Muslims do not believe in looking at pictures of the Prophet Muhammad as they believe it may lead to worshipping an image. Despite this, the CAIR stated that while they frown upon visual representations of the prophet, they saw seen 'no evidence' that Lopez Prater was being Islamophobic or acting upon bigotry when she showed the piece. A wrongful termination suit against the school has yet to be filed. The Murdaugh family, for years one of the most prominent family's in South Carolina's Lowcountry, along the state's coastline, are in the spotlight thanks to the clan's links to a series of mysterious deaths. It comes following the publication of a New Yorker feature, just a week before family patriarch, Alex Murdaugh, is due to go on trial for the shooting deaths of his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul. The family's links to death of 19-year-old openly gay nursing student Stephen Smith, whose name 'was linked with Buster's,' the Murdaugh's eldest son, is also under investigation, DailyMail.com previously reported. In addition, the 2018 death of the family's housekeeper Gloria Satterfield outside of the Murdaugh's estate after she had apparently tripped on some steps. Alex is accused of not giving her sons the $4 million that was later paid out in life insurance. Alex's trial for murder will begin in Colleton County on January 23. He will be represented in the case by powerful South Carolina Democratic Party activist and Biden surrogate, Dick Harpootlian. Murdaugh's wife Maggie (right) and his younger son Paul (left) were found shot dead on the family's property in June 2021 Police announced in 2021 that they had gathered information in the Murdaugh double-murder investigation that has led them to reopen the case into Smith's death Earlier this month, the family of Mallory Beach have reached a tentative settlement with Buster Murdaugh in a $50million lawsuit, after the young woman was killed during a fatal late night boat ride, driven by Buster's younger brother and murder victim Paul. Beach, 19, was thrown from the boat when it crashed into Archers Creek Bridge, in Beaufort South Carolina, in 2019. Her body was found five days later. There were six people on board the vessel at the time of the crash. It is believed Paul Murdaugh, 19, was drunk at the time, with Buster accused of lending his younger brother his ID in order for him to buy alcohol before the crash, according to one local news outlet. According to legal documents seen by DailyMail.com, Paul Murdaugh was 'highly intoxicated,' 'drunk' and 'belligerent,' on the February night two years ago when he sped his boat into a piling on Archer's Creek. The disgraced former attorney is facing a total of 98 criminal charges - four related to the double murders and others for a botched suicide for hire plot The New Yorker piece mentions Paul's friends as referring to his aggressive drunken alter-ego as 'Timmy.' Another person who was on the boat on that fateful night testified: 'When they can tell hes drunk, somebody will say, "All right. Here comes Timmy. We got to go."' The article goes on to accuse Alex Murdaugh and his late father, Randolph Murdaugh III, of putting pressure on those who were present on the boat not co-operate with investigators in the hospital in the immediate aftermath of the crash. One of the passenger's who had driven the boat earlier in the night, Connor Cook, testified in a deposition later that Alex told him 'everything was going to be all right. I just needed to keep my mouth shut and tell them I didnt know who was driving,' according to the New Yorker. At the time of his death in June 2021, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges including boating under the influence resulting in death. Four years before the crash, Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in the middle of a country road 15 miles from the Murdaugh family's Islandton hunting lodge on July 8, 2015. Smith's death was ruled a hit-and-run, but his mother Sandy has always maintained that her son, who was gay, was the victim of a hate crime and the murder was covered up. Alex Murdaugh pictured with his wife Maggie and their two sons Paul (left) and Buster In a new court filing obtained by DailyMail.com, prosecutors say disgraced legal scion Alex Murdaugh (pictured in court in August) tried to throw investigators off by falsely linking the murders of his wife and son with a fatal boat crash for which his son Paul was facing criminal charges In June 2021, initial investigators found no evidence of any vehicle accident, were convinced that the victim had a gunshot wound above his right eye, and received tips questioning whether Smith had a relationship with Paul's older brother, Richard 'Buster' Murdaugh, 26. The original incident report written by South Carolina Highway Patrol investigators on the scene and contained in the Multi-Disciplinary Accident Investigation (MAIT) case file obtained by DailyMail.com states: 'The victim was found in the middle of Sandy Run Road deceased from some sort of blunt force trauma to the head. Responded to the scene. I saw no vehicle debris, skid marks, or injuries consistent with someone being struck by a vehicle.' The report continues: 'The shoes were loosely tied, and both were still on. After consulting with MAIT we see no evidence to suggest the victim was struck by a vehicle.' Stephen Smith, 19, (pictured with his mother Sandy) was found dead in the middle of a country road 15 miles from the Murdaugh family's Islandton hunting lodge on July 8, 2015 A second incident report signed by two deputies from Hampton County Sheriff's office who responded to the first reports of a body stated: 'I spotted a person laying in the middle of Sandy RunThe person was a white young male with a severe head wound.' It continues: 'After inspecting the body, it appears the victim had been shot.' A third narrative written by a MAIT officer who is not named and was called at 5:35am on the morning of July 8, 2015, states that after initially being advised of a 'possible Hit & Run fatality' he arrived on the scene to be told by Hampton County Coroner Ernie Washington that it was a homicide. The report reads: 'He pointed out the wound to be a gunshot wound and showed me the entry point. Assistant Coroner Kelly Greene then began to show me photographs they took, again pointing to the entry point to the head and also a defensive wound to the hand.' It states: 'I asked for clarity if they were sure, it was a homicide, and their response was yes.' Gloria Satterfield died in the home of legal heir Alex Murdaugh (left) in February 2018 after working for the family for 20 years. He told her sons that she died of a fall. Now, they say they still don't know if that's what really happened The Murdaugh family's housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, 57, died mysteriously in 2018 after a 'fall' at Murdaugh's home in South Carolina. She had worked for his prestigious legal dynasty family for 20 years. After her death, Murdaugh promised her adult sons, Tony Satterfield and Brian Harriott, that he would 'look after them' financially. He had them file a wrongful death lawsuit against him with the goal of having his insurance company pay out a settlement, but he never gave the men the money, it is alleged. In an interview with NBC's Dateline in October 2021, Gloria's brother, Eric Harriott Jr., said: 'It ain't about the money. It's like she was a nobody, as much as she's done for him.' Gloria's sister, Ginger Harriott Hadwin, added: 'Did he have that going through his mind that day when we buried Gloria, and thinking, "oh, how much money am I gonna get? How can I get this?"' The family of Mallory Beach (pictured) have reached a tentative settlement with Buster Murdaugh in a $50million lawsuit, after the young woman was killed during a fatal late night boat ride, driven by Buster's younger brother Paul DailyMail.com earlier reported that Alex told law enforcement that he knew why his wife and son were slaughtered and informed the first officers on the scene that the grisly murders were tied to the boat crash in which Mallory Beach was killed. Alex made a frantic 911 call shortly after 10pm on the night of June 7, 2021 in which he claimed to have found Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, 'badly shot,' near dog kennels at the family's rural hunting estate of Moselle, in Islandton, South Carolina. According to the state, the murders of Maggie and Paul were not revenge killings. Instead, they now allege, the 'only person with a true motive to kill his wife and son,' was Alex himself. In the document filed in Colleton County Court prosecutors write that the 'clouds of Alex's past misdeeds' were gathering into 'a perfect storm that was going to expose the real Alex Murdaugh', who is, they say, 'an allegedly crooked lawyer and drug user who borrowed and stole wherever he could to stay afloat and one step ahead of detection.' They claim that he was facing imminent 'legal, financial and personal ruin.' In November, Alex and his cousin, Eddie, were arrested on attempted insurance fraud charges after Alex alleged he had been shot in the head. The original story indicated that Alex convinced his cousin to shoot him dead so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect insurance money. Eddie is quoted in the New Yorker story as saying: 'If I'd shot him, he'd be dead.' It later emerged that authorities believed that Alex and his cousin were involved in an elaborate money laundering and drug dealing ring that spread across South Carolina. Pictured: Paul Murdaugh, who was accused of causing the death of Mallory Beach, was murdered on June 7, 2021 The insurance fraud angle of the story fizzled with authorities now believing that Alex planned to take a gunshot wound in order to convince prosecutors that there was a vigilante vendetta against the family. The proceeds of both Paul and Maggie's estates were first go to Alex , according to reporting from January 2022. It was not immediately clear if that is still the case. Alex would be entitled to the valuable properties owned by his slain wife Maggie. Her estate includes a vacation home on Edisto Beach, as well as 1,700 acres of property in Colleton and Hampton counties. These include the family's river-side home in Colleton County's Moselle community. A judge last year essentially froze Murdaugh's bank accounts in 2021. Since then, his brother John Marvin Murdaugh has been petitioning the courts to lift lis pendens on Maggie's properties, allowing for them to be sold. Speaking in January 2022, Tinsley said: 'John Marvin's move to cancel the lis pendens is a clear indication ... he and Alex are trying to maneuver to avoid the claims against (the Moselle property).' Fox News Digital reported in January that Renee Beach, Mallory Beach's mother, along with co-receivers Alex Murdaugh and John Murdaugh, would receive a $275,000 settlement from the sale of the family's home thought to be worth nearly $4million. Buster Murdaugh will receive $530,000 from his mother's estate. A man travelling from Sydney to Fiji was shocked to find he was the only passenger boarding a 'ghost flight'. On Tuesday, Passenger Robbie Allen shared details of his empty flight to Fiji in January last year. He said he was the only person on board the plane in what airlines call a 'ghost flight', where a normal route is flown with less than 10 per cent of its passenger capacity filled. 'I was literally the only person on the whole plane,' he said in a video that has been viewed almost 500,000 times. 'The captain came and sat next to me and talked to me. The the staff gave me whatever I wanted.' Virgin passenger Robbie Allen was the only passenger on board a flight from Sydney to Fiji in January, 2022 (pictured, the empty flight) Mr Allen joked he'd been put on a 'private jet' as a treat for his upcoming birthday. 'I literally have the whole plane to myself. I'm the only passenger,' he said. 'It's for my birthday. I'm the VIP.' He then showed a snack bowl the flight attendant prepared for him, accompanied by a glass of sparkling wine. 'I had already booked business class but I would've gotten it for free if I didn't,' he said. 'It was such a strange and weird experience, something I'll never forget.' Mr Allen (above) joked he was being given the VIP treatment for his upcoming birthday in the viral clip shared on Monday Hundreds of commenters said the flight would be a 'dream' and laughed at Mr Allen's lonely luggage (above) He also showed his suitcase standing alone in the luggage pick up area. 'I was the only person on the plane so it's just there by itself,' he said. Mr Allen wrote in the comments under the video that the return flight was only expecting 27 passengers. Hundreds of Aussies wrote the empty flight would be their dream come true. Mr Allen was given his own personal snack bowl on board the flight He also enjoyed a beautiful three course meal on board 'As an introvert I want this, real bad,' one person wrote. 'I would be freaking out at the empty gate thinking I had the wrong gate,' another said. 'For those saying they wouldve cancelled the flight, no they wouldnt. There would be a full flight returning from Fiji so the plane has to be there,' a third added. The man has been charged with four counts of first degree murder It's unknown at this time which victim the criminology student messaged A source revealed to PEOPLE that Bryan Kohberger, 28, messaged one of the victims two weeks before the November murders Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger allegedly messaged one of the female victims weeks before the quadruple slaying - and sent more direct messages after she ignored him. Speaking with PEOPLE, one police source said Kohberger, 28, reached out to one of the four University of Idaho students slain over Instagram repeatedly in an attempt to get her attention. 'He slid into one of the girls' DMs several times but she didn't respond,' the source told PEOPLE. 'Basically, it was just him saying, "Hey, how are you?" But he did it again and again.' It is unknow at this time which student Kohberger sent Instagram messages to or who the investigator 'familiar with the case' is that spoke to the magazine. The source also didn't say whether the woman Kohberger allegedly messaged deliberately ignored him, or if the message he sent went into her 'requested' folder from people she wasn't friends with. Those messages don't appear as alerts, and are harder to see. Idaho victim Kaylee Goncalves is said to have complained of a stalker in the run-up to the killings, but it's unclear if there's any link between this and her murder. Bryan Kohberger, 28, allegedly sent one of the victims messages via Instagram Kohberger is charged with the murder of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Maddie Mogen, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20 Kohberger, a Ph.D. criminology student at Washington State University, was arrested at his family home in Allbrightsville, Pennsylvania on December 30. He has maintained his innocence in the stabbings of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20. Now, one local law enforcement official close to the case says the evidence against Kohberger is continuing to pile up. The Instagram account in question was viewed by PEOPLE prior to it having been taken down. Kohberger allegedly followed Mogen, Goncalves, and Kernodle. He did not publicly interact with their accounts, otherwise, the outlet states. In alleged messages sent from the now-deleted Instagram, Kohberger appeared to be hoping to get the attention of the victim he was targeting. Kohberger, 28, was linked to the crime via DNA found on the a knife sheath at the scene This is the Moscow, Idaho home where the four students were found murdered The criminology student allegedly followed Mogen, Goncalves, and Kernodle on Instagram It's unclear which of the four victims Kohberger was allegedly messaging Kohberger's Instagram account has since been deleted The victim, whose identity has not been confirmed, did not respond to the messages for unknown reasons. The official who spoke with PEOPLE, however, asserted the victim may have completely missed them. 'She may not have seen them, because they went into message requests,' the source said of the messages. The DMs were allegedly sent in October, just weeks before the November 13 murders. When a person who an Instagram user does not follow back attempts to send a message, it goes to a designated folder called 'message requests. 'These requests are located in a different place than typical messages. The investigator said they are 'still trying to determine how aware the victims were of his existence.' Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania on December 30 in Pennsylvania The official who spoke with PEOPLE, however, asserted the victim may have completely missed them 'There's no indication that he was getting frustrated with her lack of response,' the source said It's possible Kohberger may have become upset by the lack of response, but that is just theory of many presented by those who have been following the case. The investigator who spoke with PEOPLE said there's 'no indication' of that, however. 'There's no indication that he was getting frustrated with her lack of response,' the source said. Even without the indication of frustration, the source said Kohberger was 'definitely persistent' in the messages to the University of Idaho student. Though it has not been confirmed by police, DailyMail.com in December reported that Goncalves in the weeks leading up to her death would beg friends to walk closely behind her at all times out of fear of a 'stalker' who would follow her around town. It is still unknown if Goncalves was the one who Kohberger messaged or if he had stalked her in any capacity. A motive in the case has yet to be formally shared by Moscow, Idaho police. Even without the indication of frustration, the source said Kohberger was 'definitely persistent' in the messages to the University of Idaho student DailyMail.com in December reported that Goncalves in the weeks leading up to her death would beg friends to walk closely behind her at all times out of fear of a 'stalker' who would follow her around town One of the surviving roommates who was in the house on the night of the murders told police she saw 'a figure clad in black clothing and a mask' walking past her as they left the crime scene, according to the probable cause affidavit. A knife sheath was recovered from the scene and tested against Kohberger's father's DNA, which linked the Washington State University student to the crime. Investigators also traced his cellphone pings to a nearby tower in the weeks leading up to the brutal stabbings. However, some experts have noted that the proximity of Kohberger's school to the off-campus home where the victims lived as an explanation for the pings. The arrest in December came after six weeks of investigating by local law enforcement One of the surviving roommates who was in the house on the night of the murders told police she saw 'a figure clad in black clothing and a mask' walking past her as they left the crime scene, according to the probable cause affidavit 'Moscow isn't so far away from Washington State University, so it would be natural that there would be some of those towers that might ping,' said David Wilson, a professor of criminology. There are just eight miles between Washington State University's campus in Pullman where Kohberger studied and Moscow, Idaho where the murders took place. 'There will be a defense,' Wilson said of the defense. Kohberger has not entered a plea but has said he is 'eager to be exonerated.' His next hearing is scheduled in June. He is also facing one count of felony burglary. A celebrity bowhunting couple who posted videos of their trophy killings on social media have been fined $133,000 for their involvement in Nebraska's largest ever poaching ring. Josh Bowmar, 32 and Sarah Bowmar, 33, from Ohio, were sentenced by a federal judge last week for knowingly hunting white-tailed deer and turkeys illegally in Nebraska without permits and using bait. The couple were accused of going on more than a dozen hunting tours with Nebraska-based Hidden Hills Outfitters between September 10, 2015, and November 6, 2017. In doing so they were said to have breached the Lacey Act, which prohibits the illegal trafficking of wildlife, fish, or indigenous plants. The Bowmars were found to have used pickup trucks, SUVs and trailers to unlawfully transport deer and turkey, both whole and in parts, to their home in Ohio, among other places. Josh Bowmar, 32 and Sarah Bowmar, 33, have been fined $133,000 for their involvement in Nebraska's largest ever poaching ring The Bowmars were found to have used pickup trucks, SUVs and trailers to unlawfully transport deer and turkey, both whole and in parts, to their home in Ohio The sentencing comes after the Bowmars pleaded guilty on October 19 in a district court in Nebraska to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge. In exchange, four other more serious charges involving illegal baiting were dropped. In addition to having to pay the fines, the couple were sentenced to three years of probation during which they will be prohibited from any form of hunting in Nebraska. The defendants in the case included the two Bowmars as well as their company Bowmar Bowhunting LLC of Ankeny, Iowa. Each was fined $25,000. The couple will also pay $13,000 to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and $44,000 money judgment in lieu of forfeiting a property. Josh and Sarah Bowmar will also be required to perform 40 hours of community service. The Bowmars were a small part of the huge Nebraska poaching ring headed by their friend Jacob Hueftle, who was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota. His 60-year-old father was sentenced to probation. During its bust of the illegal ring federal wildlife authorities seized dozens of mounted whitetail deer. In total authorities convicted 39 people for participating in the ring and more than $750,000 in fines, restitution and forfeitures have been collected. The group was responsible for taking at least 97 big game animals. The Bowmars were a small part of the huge Nebraska poaching ring headed by their friend Jacob Hueftle (pictured). He was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison During its bust of the illegal ring federal wildlife authorities seized dozens of mounted whitetail deer (pictured) Josh and Sarah Bowmar (pictured) will also be required to perform 40 hours of community service In December 2016 another video was posted to the couple's YouTube channel showing Sarah Bowmar hunting a wild turkey, another illegal act she was accused of in the indictment In the original indictment, which dates back to 2020, it was said the Bowmars were involved with 'primarily video-recorded archery hunts for white-tailed deer, mule deer, wild turkey, and other wildlife species in multiple states and countries.' They and more than 30 coconspirators were accused of using 'numerous HHO bait sites in order to locate and identify potential target deer, maximize their hunting effectiveness and success rate , or to attempt to kill a specific trophy deer.' 'Defendants regularly video-recorded and photographed the hunts for the purpose of creating, producing, and distributing the content to the public through their online BBH business platforms including an internet website, Instagram page, and YouTube channel.' One video posted to the channel on January 5, 2017, shows Josh Bowmar shooting a whitetail deer. During the video he explains how the deer's antlers fell off after he fired at it with an arrow. The indictment makes references to that video, filmed during a Hidden Hills hunt, and said that 'Josh Bowmar hunted for a particular trophy-sized white-tailed deer with double corkscrew drop tine antlers within a heavily baited area.' 'Defendant Josh Bowmar hunted for a particular white-tailed deer named "Snowflake",' it said. In December 2016 another video was posted to the couple's YouTube channel - which has more than 300,000 subscribers - showing Sarah Bowmar hunting a wild turkey, another illegal act she was accused of in the indictment. The couple claimed that during its investigation of their involvement in the Nebraska poaching ring the US Fish and Wildlife Service hacked into their stealth cameras app without a warrant In 2020 a judge dismissed their case against the US Fish and Hunting Service The couple are known to use the courts aggressively themselves, and in 2019 sued the US Fish and Hunting Service. The couple claimed that during its investigation of their involvement in the Nebraska poaching ring the the agency hacked into their stealth cameras app without a warrant. They also claimed that agents at the department had been secretly watching Sarah Bowmar for months as she hunted in the woodlands, and breached her privacy by watching her urinate in the bushes. In 2020 a judge dismissed their case. One of three men convicted of the racist murder of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery has been transferred to a hospital medical facility, with Georgia authorities refusing to say why. Gregory McMichael, 68, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August, and sent to Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, near Jackson. But on Tuesday it emerged he is now in Augusta State Medical Prison. It was unclear whether he has been transferred there temporarily due to illness, or if it is a long-term situation. A.J. Balbo, McMichael's attorney, referenced his age and health problems after the hate crime sentencing in August. He suffered a stroke several years ago, has heart disease and takes medication for depression and anxiety. Ahmaud Arbery (left) was shot dead while jogging through his Georgia neighborhood in February 2020. Gregory McMichael (right) was convicted of his murder Pictured: Travis McMichael (left), his father Gregory McMichael (center) and their neighbor William Bryan Jr (right) The above map shows Ahmaud Arbery's approximate path and locations of the events that occurred on February 23, 2020 Neither Balbo nor the attorney for the Arbery family have returned DailyMail.com's request for comment. Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery's mother, told the judge in January last year that she was vehemently against any of the three receiving special treatment when their lawyers argued they were unsafe in state prison. 'Granting these men their preferred choice of confinement would defeat me,' she said. 'It gives them one last chance to spit in my face.' Joan Heath, Georgia DOC Office of Public Affairs director, told ABC News that McMichael would not have served his sentence in the original prison, but would not say why he had been transferred to hospitals. 'Once offenders complete the diagnostic process at Ga Diagnostic & Classification Prison, they are moved to their permanent housing assignment based on their individual diagnostic evaluation, as is the case with offender McMichael,' she said. 'The diagnostic process is routine for all offenders entering the GDC. 'Specific details of diagnostic evaluations are part of an offender's institutional file and are not subject to disclosure.' Gregory McMichael is now being held at the Augusta State Medical Prison (pictured) Ahmaud Arbery's mother Wanda Cooper-Jones said in January 2022 that she did not want the trio to have special prison treatment Augusta State Medical Prison 'houses severe medical cases,' according to the Georgia DOC, and offers 'centralized acute, specialized medical and Level IV Mental Health services for male and female offenders primarily as transient.' McMichael was sentenced along with his son Travis McMichael, 36, the man who fatally shot Arbery. A neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan, 52, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Last August, the McMichaels were again given a life sentence after being found guilty of federal hate crimes. Bryan was sentenced to an additional 35 years. It is becoming ever clearer just how devastating school closures during the pandemic were for a generation of children. Despite being at minute risk from Covid, youngsters were collateral damage in the battle to tame the virus their educations sacrificed, their life chances damaged. And while insisting they had pupils' best interests at heart, the teaching unions fought hardest to keep classrooms shut. So it is appalling that as children still struggle to make up lost ground, the National Education Union is threatening to disrupt their learning again by striking. The NEU wants to join the wave of industrial unrest to destabilise a Tory government it loathes This is the height of irresponsibility and exposes its lack of commitment to pupils. The motive is partly political. It wants to join the wave of industrial unrest to destabilise a Tory government it loathes. And by refusing to condemn his union paymasters, Sir Keir Starmer also shows a shaming disregard for pupil welfare. Of course, the children who won't be hit by strikes are those at private schools, which Labour wants to undermine by stripping them of their charitable status. But when state schools are held to ransom by the militants, is it any wonder parents make sacrifices to buy their children a better education? Show sense on gender The Mail applauds Rishi Sunak for blocking the SNP's dangerously flawed Gender Recognition Bill. The legislation would have allowed 16-year-olds in Scotland to change gender without the need for a medical diagnosis, contrary to UK-wide equality laws. Despite Nicola Sturgeon's howls of outrage, the PM has done the right thing and has widespread support on both sides of the border. He has also put Labour in a flat spin as Sir Keir ducks the issue. With a separate bill banning conversion therapy however, Mr Sunak is in danger of conceding the high ground. Intended to stop the practice of gay people being browbeaten into denying their sexuality, it has been expanded to outlaw so-called transgender conversions. Opponents fear such legislation could be used to prevent parents, teachers and doctors cautioning children about taking life-altering decisions they may later regret. After opposing SNP gender reforms, the PM might think he is handing an olive branch to trans activists. But if a conversion therapy ban is rushed through, it could do untold damage to countless young lives. Safeguard free speech For many years, social media giants have escaped serious punishment for allowing horrific content to pollute their sites. So plans to jail senior tech executives who fail to protect children from harm seem laudable. But ministers must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. To avoid inadvertently committing a crime, managers might over-cautiously censor material damaging free speech. The Government's badly-defined National Security Bill poses a dire risk to it too. Under threat of jail, whistleblowers and reporters would be deterred from publishing information that 'prejudices UK interests' even if it exposes a scandal the public ought to know. The law could be abused by ministers and officials who want to cover up uncomfortable truths. Redraft it, PM. A prominent Labour MP was heckled by her own colleagues yesterday as she spoke up for women's right to retain single-sex spaces such as changing rooms. Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield was jeered in the Commons as she backed the Government's decision to block the Scottish parliament's gender identification legislation. Ms Duffield asked the Scottish secretary Alister Jack to 'recognise the strength of feeling amongst women, women's rights' groups and activists in Scotland, that this Bill seeks to allow anyone at all to legally self-identify as either sex and therefore enter all spaces, including those necessarily segregated by sex, such as domestic violence settings, changing rooms and prisons'. She had to raise her voice as she was heckled by Labour and SNP MPs who support the Scottish plan. Former Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw shouted 'absolute rubbish' as she spoke, while fellow Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle also appeared to be trying to shout her down. Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield was jeered in the Commons as she backed the Government's decision to block the Scottish parliament's gender identification legislation Labour MPs Luke Pollard and Charlotte Nichols could also be seen shaking their heads in dissent. Mr Jack said Ms Duffield 'deserves a lot of respect for her courage on standing up on this issue'. Writing on Twitter, Ms Duffield said: 'Being shouted down in the Chamber by Labour men who clearly don't want women to speak up for our rights to single-sex spaces. How very progressive.' She added: 'The protection of single sex spaces for the most vulnerable women are at stake, so why on earth are Labour colleagues OK with this?' The Labour leadership was unwilling to say whether it backed the Government stance. Shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray dodged the issue and accused ministers of turning the row into a political 'bun fight'. The prominent Labour MP asked the Scottish secretary Alister Jack to 'recognise the strength of feeling amongst women, women's rights' groups and activists in Scotland' Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell flatly refused to reveal her views on the issue. She told Times Radio there were 'a range of different opinions across Labour', adding: 'I have my own views, which I'm going to keep to myself... I'm not going to answer because I don't want to reduce this argument to that.' Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was yesterday accused of 'weaponising vulnerable children', as she vowed to take the Government to court for blocking gender self-identification. Amid angry scenes in the Commons, Tory MPs claimed the SNP was stoking the row about trans rights in a cynical 'pursuit of their separatist agenda'. Scottish Secretary Alister Jack told MPs the decision to block the bill followed legal advice it would have 'serious adverse effects' on provisions in the Equality Act The accusation came as the SNP leader vowed to fight the Government all the way to the Supreme Court over its 'outrageous' decision to veto a Scottish parliament law, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, that paved the way for gender self-identification. She said the row would 'inevitably end up in court'. Ms Sturgeon accused the Government of mounting 'a direct attack on... Scottish parliament', adding: 'If it is allowed to happen on this, then I think that is a very slippery slope.' The Scottish secretary told MPs the decision to block the bill followed legal advice it would have 'serious adverse effects' on provisions in the Equality Act that guarantee women's access to single-sex spaces. Black Hawk helicopters will be purchased by the Australian government for $3billion from the United States to replace the current French-built helicopter fleet. The 40 new UH-60M Black Hawks to be delivered later this year will be based at Oakey, near Toowoomba in Queensland and at Holsworthy in Sydney. Defence Minister Richard Marles said Labor had learned lessons from the former coalition government and given France full transparency around the announcement. Australia will buy 40 Black Hawk helicopters (pictured) from the United States to replace French-built choppers already in use Anthony Albanese's (pictured) Labor government said it has been in close talks with France in an effort to avoid a repeat of the $90billion submarine contract fiasco The switch could prove another testing moment for Australia-France relations after the Morrison government reneged on an agreement to buy French submarines in 2021 to instead pursue the AUKUS security pact and nuclear-power submarines. French President Emmanuel Macron claimed he was blindsided by the cancellation of the $90billion submarine contract and accused Scott Morrison of lying to him. Mr Marles said his government has been in talks with Paris for weeks about replacing the Airbus MRH90 Taipans in use by the Australian military. Airbus is part-owned by the French government. 'It's definitely not a surprise... they've appreciated the upfront way in which we've gone about making this decision,' he told ABC Radio on Wednesday. 'We've worked closely with them in relation to it.' The defence minister said the Taipan helicopters were presenting maintenance problems, requiring the technological upgrade. 'We're confident the Black Hawks are a platform we're familiar with,' he said. 'We have a really good proven track record in terms of their reliability and getting hours out of them and so we think it will be a platform which provides this capability in the way we need for the Australian Army.' A MRH90 Taipan helicopter (pictured) built by the part French government-owned Airbus deployed to the Kimberley region in WA this month to assist with floods Anthony Albanese is greeted by Emmanuel Macron along with their partners Jodie Haydon and Brigitte Macron after a trip to Paris in 2022 in an effort to repair diplomatic ties following the submarine contract fiasco Head Land Capability Major General Jeremy King said the Black Hawks were crucial to protecting Australian sovereignty. 'They will support the deployment of our troops and their equipment where they are needed... the Black Hawk is a reliable, proven and mature platform supported by a robust global supply chain,' he said. 'This acquisition will mean we can continue to defend Australia and respond in times of need in a safe and effective way for years to come.' The Taipans has been on the Defence Departments Projects of Concern list for about a decade after repeated maintenance issues and difficulty obtaining spare parts. There is also an issue with the door not being wide enough for soldiers to repel out of under certain conditions. The US government approved the sale of the 40 Lockheed-Martin made Black Hawks in August. A loving mother who was seven months pregnant died suddenly on the way to hospital after struggling to sleep. Diane Judge died in the early hours of Wednesday, January 11 after suddenly falling ill. The 41-year-old mother-of-three from Birkenhead reportedly had trouble sleeping so left her bedroom and went downstairs. Diane's partner Kevin Durrant, a steward at Tranmere Rovers FC, went to check on her - and found the mum had quickly fallen very ill. Kevin, 35, called an ambulance for his partner but by the time it arrived at Arrowe Park Hospital, Diane and her unborn child had died. Diane and Kevin, who worked at Tranmere Rovers' Prenton Park stadium as a matchday carpark steward, had been together for nine years. They had three young children - Skyia Rose, five, Ethan James, four, and Emalia Rae, 15 months. Diane Judge died in the early hours of Wednesday, January 11 after suddenly falling ill. The 41-year-old mother-of-three from Birkenhead reportedly had trouble sleeping so left her bedroom and went downstairs. Diane, pictured left with her sister Suzzane, right Ms Judge, pictured right, was rushed to hospital but was declared dead a short time later In a written statement provided to the Liverpool Echo, Kevin paid tribute to Diane calling her an 'amazing mum'. Kevin said: 'I'm absolutely heartbroken. Diane was the love of my life, an amazing mum to our children and my best friend and I can't believe she's gone. There's a massive hole in our lives and she'll be missed forever. 'We were getting ready for the birth of our baby and so happy together. I keep hoping it's a bad dream that I'll wake up from. 'All of our money went towards our children. I'm only 35 and she was 41 and you don't expect to have to plan for something like this at our age. I just don't know how I'll be able to pay for her funeral.' Diane's sister, Suzzane Judge, also paid tribute to her late sister calling her a 'shining star'. She said: 'Got the biggest shock of my life, all my family are deeply heartbroken my heart goes out to all Diane's children and partner Kev. I will miss you forever and always. 'You were always the heart of the party and now you have gained your wings and resting with your son. I will always love you and admire your love and strength, you were so kind and caring and always thought of others before your self. 'Rest in peace my shining star.' The devastating news was broken by Nicola Palios, the vice chairwoman of Tranmere Rovers. Ms Palios wrote in a moving social media post that Kevin had suffered 'the most appalling tragedy' when Diane died. Ms Palios said: 'It is absolutely tragic that Kevin is suddenly having to deal with the loss of both his partner and his baby, whilst being the sole carer for their three young children, all of whom are aged five or younger. I sincerely hope that together we can raise sufficient money to ensure that they do not have to worry about paying for a funeral on top of everything else.' After Ms Palios' announcement, associates of the club rallied around Kevin and his young family with messages of support. Charlie Still, the head groundsman at the League Two club, said: 'Kevin is a great, kind man and a face I always look forward to seeing on matchday. Devastating news and my thoughts are with him and his family.' Ms Judge, pictured left, was described as a 'wonderful and loving mother' to her children. She and her partner Kevin Durrant were excitedly awaiting the arrival of their fourth child in the spring Former manager Ronnie Moore commented: 'What awful news. My thoughts are with Kevin and his children at this sad time.' Former colleague Chris Britton added: 'I had been fortunate to work with Kev for years, genuinely great bloke - and this is a tragedy that you wish no one will ever have the misfortune to go through. My thoughts are with you and your family.' A GoFundMe fundraiser has been created for Kevin and his young family. Created by Andy Doyle, an employee at Tranmere Rovers who also runs two supporters' groups, donations will go towards 'funeral costs and any family support'. Ms Palios, who has already donated to the fundraiser, wrote: 'An absolutely horrendous thing to happen to anyone. Our thoughts are with Kevin and his young family.' A snake catcher has revealed how he threw a deadly red bellied black snake back into a customer's house after they refused to pay him. Colin Shoemark, 38, who works in the Lake Macquarie area of NSW, appeared on a podcast where he recounted catching a six-foot red bellied snake. He told Daily Mail Australia that he caught the reptile while it was hiding behind a fridge. However, when it came to pay up, the customer refused to pay, telling Mr Shoemark that it should be a free council service. So the snake catcher let the snake out again, causing the terrified homeowner to jump on top of a table and threaten to call the police. Eventually, he paid Mr Shoemark, who says the incident has made him double check all fees with customers before going on a job. 'This isn't a free service because in the background I have insurance fees and all that sort of stuff to look after,' he said. 'So, I just tell them the rate and we agree on it and then I come out. Usually if I don't get the snake I spend a bit of time with the people to tell them about it or try and identify the snake.' Discussing the incident with the man who refused to pay, he said it occurred in 2017. 'I got there and he was panicking, which is pretty standard. It was in his kitchen, behind his fridge, so I had to pull the fridge out. 'When you catch a red-bellied black people go, you know, it's not that dangerous because by nature they want to stay away from you. 'That's true but when they're trapped in someone's house, it's a completely different animal. 'Anyway, so this thing's trying to kill me the entire time. I get it in the bag and the dude started saying, 'Oh, this should be free and subsidised by the government. The council should pay for this'. He kept going and going and going... Colin Shoemark, 38, who works in the Lake Macquarie area of NSW, appeared on a podcast where he recounted catching a six-foot red bellied snake The snake catcher released the red-bellied snake back into the man's house after he refused to pay his fee Mr Shoemaker says the incident has made him double check all fees with customers before going on a job The snake catcher said: 'It's not like it's $500. It's 150 bucks and I'm the one risking my life and my sense of smell going forward' 'I didn't like it. It was the end of the day, I was pretty tired. I said, 'if you're not gonna pay me, I'm just gonna go and get out of here'. 'So I let it out and it started going past my leg and he got up on the kitchen table. 'He said he was gonna call the police and I told him to go ahead because they were just gonna call me and probably come in and watch me catch the snake. 'He had the money, he was just being a d*** about it.' Eventually, the man paid Mr Shoemark and the catcher removed the snake. Since the incident, he said he's made sure the customer is aware of how much the service would cost. 'It's not like it's $500. It's 150 bucks and I'm the one risking my life and my sense of smell going forward,' he added. He said he had been catching snakes since he was a child and had started as a professional in 2016. Harvard University Medical School is withdrawing from an annual rankings of top medical schools in the country amid claims it discourages support for low-income students. Citing 'philosophical' issues with US News & World Report's long-running list, Dean George Daley aired the decision Tuesday in a message to members of the medical school community . The list ranks the best medical schools in the nation, and is often used by prospective students and parents when determining which colleges to apply to. Opponents are now calling the yearly compilation 'flawed', alleging it can unfairly influence students' chances when applying for jobs, graduate school, and PHD programs. Previously, Harvard's medical school was ranked the best in the country in terms of research, and ninth for primary care. Citing 'philosophical' issues with US News & World Report's long-running list, Dean George Daley aired the decision Tuesday in a message to members of the medical school community Announcing the school's decision to abstain from sending information to to media company for its tabulations, Dean Daley said he was inspired by recent decisions from Harvard and Yale's law schools to pull out from its list of top law institutions over concerns involving equity. 'Rankings cannot meaningfully reflect the high aspirations for educational excellence, graduate preparedness, and compassionate and equitable patient care that we strive to foster in our medical education program,' said Daley, a longtime member of the HMS faculty who assumed deanship of the school in 2017. The dean cited issues educational leaders have had with the methodology used by US News & World Report for its lists, which had been dominated by Yale and Harvard since the 1980s. Daley, a recognized leader in stem cell science and cancer biology, argued that the rankings create 'perverse' incentives for institutions to report misleading or inaccurate data to garner a better rating. Announcing the school's decision to abstain from sending information to to media company for its tabulations, Dean Daley said he was inspired by recent decisions from Harvard and Yale's law schools to pull out from its list of top law institutions over concerns involving equity The biologist added that instead of aiding those with a financial need, school set policies designed to raise their rankings, thus diverting financial aid only toward high-performing students, and not the ones who may actually need it. 'Ultimately, the suitability of any particular medical school for any given student is too complex, nuanced, and individualized to be served by a rigid ranked list, no matter the methodology,' Daley said. The U.S. News medical-school ranking relies on peer assessment surveys, with 15 percent of a school's score based on reviews from deans, admissions directors and other academics. Another 15 percent is based on reviews from residency program directors. This past year, Harvard's medical school was ranked the best in the country in terms of research by the media company, and ninth for primary care Also taken into account are median scores on the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, and candidates undergraduate grade-point averages. Research activity and the production of primary-care doctors are also factored in, for each of the two medical school lists. Daley said that while not intentional, the rankings encourages schools to fudge numbers to earn a better spot, diverting aid from students with need to those with the high test scores in the process. Instead, Daley insisted that his priority is not to receive a top ranking, but to focus on the 'quality and richness of the educational experience' for students at the Massachusetts medical school, while creating an environment optimal for students' personal growth and 'lifelong learning.' The school official then pivoted to the recent decisions from the deans from both Yale and Harvard law, commending them as 'bold and courageous'. Both school caused a stir in November, when they recused themselves from US report's law-school version of the list in November. Daley said the school's maneuvers - which have since faced criticism - set the blueprint for his decision. The school official said he was influenced by recent decisions from the deans of both Yale and Harvard law schools, commending them as 'bold and courageous. Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken (above) pulled her school out of the company's law-school list in November Announcing their intent to stop providing information to US Report to be tapulated, the school's criticized the rankings methodology as fundamentally flawed, saying it discourages support for low-income students. The dean of Yale Law, Heather Gerken, argued that the system incentivizes schools to give aid to those who get high scores rather than for the low-income applicants who need it more. Gerken said the current list devalues programs aimed at providing aid for low-income students and programs that encourage low-paying public interest jobs. 'The U.S. News rankings are profoundly flawed,' Gerken said in a statement. 'They disincentivize programs that support public interest careers, champion need-based aid, and welcome working-class students into the profession. 'Its approach not only fails to advance the legal profession, but stands squarely in the way of progress.' The dean ultimately said the system undermines altruistic efforts to give students opportunities as colleges focus on rankings for prestige. 'In fact, in recent years, we have invested significant energy and capital in important initiatives that make our law school a better place but perversely work to lower our scores,' she said of the university's work. She also criticized the rankings preference over schools that give scholarships to the students with the best scores, not for those who need the financial aid. 'This heavily weighted metric imposes tremendous pressure on schools to overlook promising students, especially those who cannot afford expensive test preparation courses,' Gerken said. 'At a moment when concerns about economic equity stand at the center of our national dialogue, only two law schools in the country continue to give aid based entirely on need Harvard and Yale.' The dean added that graduates appeared to be classified as unemployed in the US News ranking if they took school-funded fellowship for public interest jobs, or if they went on to enroll for higher education. Yale had remained at the top of the prestigious list for 32 years, but officials have longed complained about the lists prioritizing test scores and graduate employment U.S. News & World Report - which began these lists in the 80s - has since faced criticism in the ensuing months, with several academic institutions, including Harvard Law, cutting ties with the company. Several other law schools have joined Yale and Harvard - two of the top performing schools in the country - in withdrawing from the rankings. The high-profile exits following a string of controversies over US News' ranking lists. In March, former Temple University business school dean Moshe Porat, was convicted on fraud charges over a scheme to bolsters the schools MBA ranking by submitting false data to US News. Porat, 76, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and ordered to pay $250,000 after a jury found him guilty on charges of conspiring to deceive donors and applicants. Temple now ranks as No. 77 in the nation after dropping to 100 last year. Similar schemes were uncovered at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, and at Columbia University. US News & World report has long been called out for accepting schools' self-reported data without any real audit function. Yale's abandonment of the ranking system comes after it secured first place for the 32nd year in a row. The law school is known for producing some of the most prominent attorneys and legal scholars in the nation, although several graduates have faced recent challenges for their connection to the woke Ivy League university. Shocking footage has emerged showing two famous Australian bodybuilders wildly brawling while dodging traffic on a busy Sydney street. Hossein 'Yakiboy' Balapour and Marven Yacoub exchanged punches in a brawl in the inner southern suburb of Zetland last week, while friends desperately tried to break the fight up. It is unclear what caused the dispute between the two friends, who in the past have posed for photos together and described themselves as 'brothers'. At one stage, Yacoub was knocked to the ground by Balapour who then unleashed a flurry of punches. Yacoub managed to clamber to his feet and run away, only for Balapour to give chase, with the pair running through oncoming traffic. Hossein 'Yakiboy' Balapour (right in the grey top) appeared to chase fellow bodybuilder Marven Yacoub (centre in the black t-shirt) during a brawl last week It is unclear what sparked the fight, with Balapour and Yacoub (pictured together in 2019) standing together with the group of men before the brawl started 'Yakiboy' - known to his family as Hossein Balapour - is a self-described Iranian refugee who left the Middle Eastern country for a better life in Australia Marven Yacoub from south-west Sydney brawled with Balapour in a shocking video in Sydney Balapour appeared to use a long, thin weapon to strike at Yacoub. Eventually, a group of men managed to get between the fighters to stop the brawl, though both men seemed to be straining to keep it going. Balapour and Yacoub were standing together with the group of men before the brawl started. Sources told the Daily Telegraph that there had been a dispute between the pair over money and cars. Balapour, who is currently out of custody on bail, is a heavily tattooed gym junkie who previously revealed his life story as an Iranian refugee who fled to Australia by boat five years ago. He is known for wearing Versace clothes, having a gold and diamond-toothed smile and making a living from his ballooning Instagram fanbase. 'I'm six foot five, why shouldn't I make money from my body?' said Mr Balapour in 2018, when he also revealed he makes up to $1500 per photoshoot. Yacoub managed to clamber to his feet and run away, only for Balapour to give chase, with the pair running through oncoming traffic Eventually, a group of men managed to get between the fighters to stop the brawl, though both men seemed to be straining to keep it going Balapour is known for wearing Versace clothes, having a gold and diamond-toothed smile and making a living from his ballooning Instagram fanbase The Iranian refugee has more than 350,000 fans and regularly brags about his 'Lamborghini body Meanwhile, Yacoub, from south-west Sydney, narrowly avoided going to jail over supplying steroids in 2021 The Iranian refugee has more than 350,000 fans and regularly brags about his 'Lamborghini body. He is currently on bail for unrelated assault charges which he has pleaded not guilty to. Meanwhile, Yacoub, from south-west Sydney, narrowly avoided going to jail over supplying steroids in 2021. He was accused of running a secret steroid ring while publicly promoting legal health supplements on Instagram. Yacoub was sentenced to two years and nine months after pleading guilty to four counts of supplying a prohibited drug but was allowed to serve the sentence as an intensive corrections order in the community The number of recruits enlisting in the UKs Armed Forces has dropped by 30 per cent as Russia wages war on Europes doorstep. Alarmingly, the huge fall in men and women starting basic training in the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force was accompanied by a large increase in those leaving the services. There was a 17 per cent rise in fully trained and experienced personnel signing off in the year ending September 2022 compared to the previous 12 months. The figures, which indicate Britains Armed forces are shrinking at a rate, have emerged after the head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, warned the country was weaker after donating so much equipment to Ukraine. The number of recruits enlisting in the UKs Armed Forces has dropped by 30 per cent as Russia wages war on Europes doorstep There was a 17 per cent rise in fully trained and experienced personnel signing off in the year ending September 2022 compared to the previous 12 months The drop in new recruits across the services from September 2021 to September 2022 was 29.8 per cent 5,090 fewer recruits than the previous 12 months. At the same time, there was an increase of 2,400 troops signing off. Last night the Ministry of Defence said: Following an increase in recruiting during the Covid pandemic, Armed Forces recruiting numbers have returned to pre-pandemic levels and are sufficient for Defence to meet its operational requirements. General Sir Patrick spoke out on Monday after the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said it would gift 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine as well as AS-90 heavy artillery pieces, rockets, drones and ammunition. The figures, which indicate Britains Armed forces are shrinking at a rate, have emerged after the head of the Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, warned the country was weaker after donating so much equipment to Ukraine The drop in new recruits across the services from September 2021 to September 2022 was 29.8 per cent 5,090 fewer recruits than the previous 12 months. At the same time, there was an increase of 2,400 troops signing off While he welcomed the equipment being put to good use to end Russias illegal occupation of Ukraine, General Sir Patrick said it could not be denied that the UKs combat effectiveness would be compromised. The Army is to shrink to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars by 2025 by which time it is expected to consist of just 73,000 regular soldiers. The MOD is coming under increasing pressure to reconsider this commitment due to the conflict in Ukraine and the heightened security threat to the UK posed by Russia, Iran and China Human lifespans could be lengthened by an anti-ageing jab within five years, say researchers. A 'breakthrough' study showed that the experimental therapy rejuvenated cells in mice, helping them live longer, while reducing frailty and boosting heart and lung health. Harvard-backed anti-ageing scientists hope the 'exciting' findings will open up the door to treating humans in the same way, boosting their resilience against diseases like cancer and dementia by making them biologically younger. Experts even believe that it's entirely possible a similar drug will be on the market by 2028. The Office for National Statistics predicts the life expectancy of men born in 2070 in the UK will reach the age of 85 on average, while women will be nearly 88 when they die Lifespans could be lengthened by an anti-ageing drug within five years, researchers believe (stock image) US-born 115-year-old Spaniard who survived Covid and exercised every morning until she was 105 becomes the oldest person in the world following the death of French nun who was 118 Maria Branya (pictured), who survived Covid two years ago, has become the world's oldest person following the death of French nun Lucile Randon Advertisement Dr Noah Davidsohn, chief scientist for Rejuvenate Bio, the company behind the study which was launched out of a Harvard Medical School lab, told The Times: 'We could easily see something in humans in the next five years with this technology.' The researchers noted that extending human life has historically meant relying on medication and adopting healthier habits. However, this does not necessarily increase the number of healthy years lived as the elderly continue to suffer age-related illness, just over a longer timescale. But age reversal would, in theory, undo the effects of ageing on a cellular level, boosting lifespan and the number of healthy years lived. Cells age over time by acquiring genetic changes, some of which damage them. To get to the bottom of whether this could be achieved, the team studied mice aged 124 weeks equivalent to a person aged around 77. Every fortnight, half of the mice got a placebo jab, while the other half were injected with the therapy a modified virus carrying additional pieces of genetic code. The mice that received the treatment produced Yamanaka factors a set of proteins that have been used since the mid-2000s to reverse cell ageing, effectively returning them to a 'younger' state. They were also given an antibiotic doxycycline which activated the Yamanaka factors. The findings, published on pre-print website bioRxiv, showed that mice receiving the treatment lived for another 18.5 weeks, 142.5 weeks in total, compared with 8.9 weeks (133 weeks in total) among those that did not. As well as living for longer, the mice that were jabbed with pieces of genetic code stayed healthier for longer, according to the study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed. They scored lower on frailty tests, while their heart and liver health were also booster, results show. This suggests 'increased lifespan correlated to overall better health of the animals', the researchers said. In a separate experiment, human skin cells were exposed to the gene therapy. Results showed the cells appeared younger following treatment, suggesting that the therapy can 'reverse biomarkers of ageing in human cells'. Why living until 200 really ISN'T a pipe dream: Scientists tasked with finding cure for ageing believe someone reading this now may live to 150 - and double-centenarian feat is possible Dr Andrew Steele (pictured), a computational biologist and author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old, told MailOnline scientists are on the cusp of developing a pill that could lead to people living to the age of 200 and beyond and it could be just a decade away Advertisement Overall, the findings provide 'cautious optimism' that 'rejuvenation therapy can be safely delivered to humans', the researchers said. However, they noted that large animal studies are the next step needed to confirm the safety and effectiveness of the approach. Dr Steven Austad, an ageing researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told Science that the findings could be a 'breakthrough'. However, he noted that they will first need to be replicated in larger studies. Dr Ildem Akerman, an associate professor in functional genomics at Birmingham University, told The Times that the findings were 'potentially very exciting'. She said: 'Reversal of ageing in an entire animal with the use of gene programming has not been achieved before.' Professor Ilaria Bellantuono, co-director of the healthy lifespan institute at Sheffield University, told the newspaper that the lower rates of frailty among treated mice were encouraging. She noted that patients who are frail are more likely to be hospitalised, take longer to recover and are more likely to require a carer. Lowering the prevalence of frailty could dramatically ease the burden on the NHS and social care, Professor Bellantuono added. A separate study by a team at Harvard Medical School found that symptoms of ageing could be reversed in mice. The team, led by genetic expert Professor David Sinclair, exposed mice to a therapy that damaged their genome. This left the animals with poorer health suffering hair loss, frailty and tissue ageing as well as being older on a cellular level. To determine whether the damage, which mimics ageing, is reversible, the researchers exposed the mice to Yamanaka factors and gave them antibiotics. Results show that they regained most of their eyesight, their brains appeared younger and their muscle and kidney health improved, suggesting that ageing could be wound backwards. Professor Sinclair told CNN that the mice cells went back to 50 to 75 per cent of their original age. Dr Andrew Steele, a British computational biologist and author of a new book on longevity, previously told MailOnline there is no biological reason humans can't reach the age of 200. He believes the big breakthrough will come in the form of drugs that remove 'zombie cells' in the body, which are thought to be one of the main culprits of tissue and organ decay as we age. Pills that flush these cells out of the body are already in human trials in and could be on the market in as little as 10 years, according to Dr Steele, who believes someone reading this could make it to 150 with the help of the drugs. Another field in particular that piques the interest of anti-ageing scientists is the study of DNA of reptiles and other cold-blooded animals. Harry's whinge about cramped Nottingham Cottage 'constructed for small people, humans of a bygone era' is contradicted from beyond the grave by Sir Philip Hay, private secretary to Marina, the late Duchess of Kent. He lived there for ten years until his death in 1986, 32 years prior to Harry and Meghan moving into the Kensington Palace house before their 2018 wedding. Sir Philip's son Andrew, amused by Harry's complaint, says: 'My father was 6ft 4in and was entirely happy and comfortable there, even by the standards of humans of today. But he had spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war on the Burma railway, so probably knew a little about physical and mental discomfort.' Harry's whinge about cramped Nottingham Cottage 'constructed for small people, humans of a bygone era' is contradicted from beyond the grave by Sir Philip Hay Harry's whinge about cramped Nottingham Cottage 'constructed for small people, humans of a bygone era' is contradicted from beyond the grave by Sir Philip Hay, private secretary to Marina, the late Duchess of Kent There were hopes that the new King would overrule his late mother and allow DNA tests on the alleged bones of the 'Princes in the Tower'. The Queen refused permission for work on the bones, interred in Westminster Abbey after the princes were supposedly murdered in the Tower of London by Richard III in his bid for succession. A source says King Charles, who as Prince of Wales was keen to identify Edward IV's heirs, now wants the bones to rest in peace. 'He has been advised that there could be no way of confirming that the remains, even if of the right age, are those of Princes Edward, 12, and Richard, nine,' says the source. 'And identifying the killer would be impossible.' Will the fate of the medieval heir and his spare ever be known? Peering into her imaginary crystal ball Lady Victoria Hervey, pictured, says of the Sussex marriage: 'I see it collapsing at some point. Him coming back to England and it being a really messy divorce.' She predicts: 'Meghan is going to end up with some big American billionaire and just dump Harry.' Any tips for Plumpton today, Mystic Vic? Peering into her imaginary crystal ball Lady Victoria Hervey, pictured, says of the Sussex marriage: 'I see it collapsing at some point' One of Harry's less damaging family revelations is that his dad Charles retains a teddy bear, which comforted him through his traumatic years at Gordonstoun school. 'It is a pitiful object with broken arms and dangly threads,' he writes. But no mention in Spare of the King's personal loo seat, which apparently travels with him everywhere. Departed teen idol David Cassidy was one of Gina Lollobrigida's conquests after she'd got wind of the then 23-year-old's nickname, Donkey. 'She was about twice my age, but very attractive,' Cassidy wrote in his memoir. 'The first time we met she looked me up and down and said: 'I hear you're a monster. I want to meet the monster'. Well, I decided that if I had it,' he mused, 'there wasn't any point in just keeping it in the holster all the time.' Evergreen entertainer Jess Conrad, 86, recalls taking cocaine before a matinee performance of pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk, where he was playing Jack. 'I was in a right two and eight but hoped by the time I got to the theatre, it would have worn off,' he remembers. 'But instead of the giant chasing me, I chased the giant up the beanstalk.' Happy daze! A photo of U.S. President Joe Biden's Delaware mansion taken in 2019 has emerged showing the residence unguarded by Secret Service at the same time classified documents were believed to be in his garage. The pictures taken by Fox News from the street outside Biden's Wilmington home on April 19, 2019 - the same day he announced his candidacy for president - show a deserted guard shack and empty parking spots near the gate that leads to the residence. At least six classified documents have been found at the President's private home in Wilmington, some of which appeared to have been haphazardly stored in boxes stacked in his garage alongside his Corvette. It comes as Biden is slammed for failing to answer questions about the classified files and is seen smirking during a grilling by the media after his attorneys announced finding the latest batch of secret files on Saturday, bringing the total up to two dozen. A photo of U.S. President Joe Biden's Delaware mansion taken in 2019 has emerged showing the residence unguarded by Secret Service at the same time classified documents were believed to be in his garage The pictures taken by Fox News from the street outside Biden's Wilmington home on April 19, 2019 - the same day he announced his candidacy for president - show an unattended guard shack and empty parking spots near the gate that leads to the residence The lack of Secret Service presence is said to be normal for retired vice presidents, who do not maintain the protection after office, but shockingly overlaps with the time period that the classified documents would have been held in the building. More recent photos from the Mansion show the same area now filled with police cars, SUVs and a checkpoint after Biden's tenure as the 46th president of the United States began following his inauguration Jan 20, 2021. Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said in a statement that five additional pages of documents with classified markings were found at Biden's home Thursday evening, making a total of six retrieved from there. Sauber said that when Biden's personal attorneys identified one classified document at Biden's home on Wednesday, they immediately stopped searching for additional documents because they lacked the security clearances necessary to view those materials. 'Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the President's personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department,' Sauber said. 'While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them. 'The President's lawyers have acted immediately and voluntarily to provide the Penn Biden documents to the Archives and the Wilmington documents to DOJ,' he said. The White House has previously claimed President Biden works while visiting his Delaware mansion, but has since stated the residence is 'personal'. The office made the statement when explaining why visitor logs do not exist at Biden's Wilmington residence, much to the dismay of House Republicans, like Rep. James Comer, who have requested two years of visitor logs from the Delaware home The first document was discovered in the garage of Biden's Delaware home where he also keeps his Corvette It brings the total to six classified documents found at Biden's home in Delaware During a White House press briefing on Feb 25, 2022, former press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden can get work done from anywhere, Fox News reported. 'I will note that, while every president can work from anywhere they are, because that is how presidencies are equipped, he is traveling to Delaware for the memorial service of a family member and he will be that is why he's traveling there this weekend,' Psaki said. 'The President has the capacity to make a secure call from anywhere he is, yes.' But on Monday, when explaining why visitor logs do not exist at his Wilmington property, the White House Counsel Office declared the residence is personal. 'Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,' the office said. House Republicans had demanded he hand over two years of logs for the Delaware mansion after the classified documents were uncovered. Republican lawmakers tore into Biden after the treasure trove of classified documents were found last week 'Given the serious national security implications, the White House must provide the Wilmington residence's visitor log,' House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, wrote in a Sunday letter to White House chief of staff Ron Klain obtained by Fox News. The congressman continued: 'As Chief of Staff, you are head of the Executive Office of the President and bear responsibility to be transparent with the American people on these important issues related to the White House's handling of this matter.' Comer went on to argue that in order to fully address the situation, it is necessary to know who may have been privy to the confidential information. Republican lawmakers tore into Biden after the treasure trove of classified documents were found last week. Senator Rick Scott of Florida said Biden was either a 'hypocrite' or 'completely clueless,' joining the legions of lawmakers questioning why former President Donald Trump's home was raided by armed FBI agents when documents were found at his home, but Biden received no such treatment. Biden was seen departing from St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church after attending Mass in Wilmington, Delaware, on Jan 14 Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: 'Full FBI raid happens when?' Even an attorney who once prosecuted Trump during the Mueller Probe, Andrew Weissmann, said Biden was 'digging a deeper hole' as his administration remained vague about the investigation while more documents continue to crop up. The White House claimed it has handled both the discovery of the documents and the subsequent explanations in a 'transparent' way, yet questions have been raised by members of both political parties as to why the public were not told ahead of the midterms. Biden has also been reminded of his own comments when he slammed former President Trump for harboring a set of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, which led to an FBI raid. 'How that could possibly happen, how one anyone could be that irresponsible?' Biden said in September to 60 Minutes. The latest discovery came just days after two other sets of sensitive files were found. The first was discovered at a DC office for his think tank. Former President Donald Trump (right) has slammed the FBI and DOJ for targeting him over classified files while going easy on 'hopeless Joe' (referring to U.S. President Joe Biden pictured left) as he warns that the 'country is in serious trouble' On Saturday Trump seethed on his Truth Social account as he sought to argue that Biden keeping classified documents was much worse than what he did, describing Mar-A-Lago as 'essentially an armed fort.' Trump also slammed the FBI and DOJ for targeting him over classified files while going easy on 'hopeless Joe' - as he warned that the 'country is in serious trouble.' 'What Biden did was wrong, but he was given a reasonable and stable Special Counsel who is sane, inclined not to make waves, friendly with RINOs (republicans in name only), and is not known as a flame-throwing lunatic or a Biden hater,' Trump said. 'What I did was RIGHT, secured documents in a secured place, lock on the doors, guards and Secret Service all around, security cameras working. Trump has repeatedly claimed he secretly declassified the documents he took home, but that claim has been refuted by former senior officials and his lawyers have not made similar claims in court. 'The Boxes Hoax Case against me should be dropped immediately. I have done nothing wrong!' he finished. Former President Donald Trump was seen seething on his Truth Social account as a third batch of classified files from Joe Biden's Vice Presidency are found at his Delaware home As the day wore on Trump took a swipe at the prosecution between both cases and described them as 'sick thugs.' 'How come the Biden 'Prosecutor' is a nice guy, very friendly with Democrats and RINOs alike, close to Christopher Wray, & pretty much liked & known by everybody, while my 'Prosecutor' is a Radical Left Trump HATING Lunatic, whose wife & family get a perfect '10' for spewing Trump HATE, & whose 'friends' are the most evil, angry, & disgusting Marxists & Communists in & around Government?' 'They are GRILLING innocent people in Grand Juries for hours, all to 'get Trump.' These are Sick Thugs!' Trump went on to claim that the FBI are 'CROOKED, CORRUPT and BROKEN' and warned to Americans that the country was in 'serious trouble.' 'THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON AGAINST ME FOR YEARS. THE FBI & THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE ARE CROOKED, CORRUPT, & BROKEN,' he wrote. '(Just look at the Lunatic Radical Left Prosecutor they gave me, but not Hopeless Joe, Twitter Files & the RIGGED 2020 Presidential Election, the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, & all the rest!). 'OUR COUNTRY IS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE, NO BORDERS, NO VOTER I.D., NO ENERGY INDEPENDENCE. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS NOT BEEN SMART & TOUGH, BUT MAYBE THEY WILL BE NOW. GOOD LUCK AMERICA!!!' Russian gun-for-hire group Wagner, who sent thousands of criminals to Ukraine has said it not a mercenary company, rather a firm of management consultants and book publishers. The controversial company's boss Yevgeny Prigozhin set up the armed militia during the Syrian conflict when his men were deployed to look after Russian interests in the country. Now, the Kremlin has ordered Prigozhin to send troops to support the Russia's stalled offensive in Ukraine, where the mercenaries have been accused of murdering civilians. Reports suggest Prigozhin has been recruiting men from Russian prisons, offering them pardons if they complete their military service. Russian mercenary company the Wagner Group has registered as a company for the first time in Russia, pictured, Wagner boss Yevheny Prizgozhin, left, with Russian president Vladimir Putin Prigozhin, pictured, registered the firm as a 'management consultancy' as running private military contractors in Russia is illegal According to The Telegraph, ChVK Wagner Centre has been registered as a company in Russia which is primarily focused on 'management consultancy'. It is illegal under Russian law to operate a mercenary company. Wagner is currently recruiting in Serbia, even running adverts on local media seeking volunteers to join the fight against Ukraine. Serbia and Belarus are the only two countries in Europe not to have joined in with sanctions against Russia. However, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has condemned the recruitment drive. The criticism marks a rare public rebuke from the Serbian leader toward Russia - a steadfast ally of the Balkan country. The controversial advertisement appeared earlier this month in the Russian state media outlet RT's Serbian affiliate. Small numbers of Serbians have fought alongside Russian-backed forces in Ukraine since fighting first broke out in the country in 2014. The exact number of Serbs who fought in Ukraine has never been disclosed by officials. The controversial company's boss Yevgeny Prigozhin set up the armed militia during the Syrian conflict when his men were deployed to look after Russian interests in the country Serbia has long been a reliable ally to Moscow, with shared Orthodox heritage, mutual hatred of NATO, and military alliances during several wars strengthening their relations. Serbia remains the only European country - apart from Belarus - that did not join Western sanctions against Moscow. On Tuesday, Russia's RIA news agency published footage apparently showed two Serbian citizens participating in a weapons training course in Ukraine. The Wagner mercenary outfit founded in 2014 - which has been involved in conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East - shot to prominence after President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Tens of thousands of Russians have relocated to Serbia since the outbreak of war, where most have been warmly welcomed. Despite the arrival of dissident Russians fleeing the conflict, Serbians by and large remain ardent supporters of the invasion of Ukraine, with pro-Kremlin rallies held in the capital Belgrade. An urgent police search has been launched for a teenager missing from Sydney's northwest. Ash Lightowler, aged 16, was last seen in Short Street, Gladesville, about 11pm last night. NSW Police hold concerns for their welfare and are asking anyone with information to come forward. Ash is described as Caucasian appearance, medium build, about 155cm tall, and last seen wearing a black shirt, long black pants, black sneakers and black glasses. They are known to frequent the Gladesville and Sydney CBD areas. Anyone with information into Ashs whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. CPEC unfolds substantial opportunities for Pakistan, says parliament speaker Xinhua) 13:36, January 18, 2023 Aerial photo taken on June 22, 2022 shows a view of Karot Hydropower Plant in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. (CTG/Handout via Xinhua) The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is linked with the long-lasting economic benefits and sustainable development for the people of Pakistan, Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said. ISLAMABAD, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said Tuesday that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has unfolded substantial opportunities for Pakistan, promising a prosperous and peaceful future for the Pakistani people. CPEC, a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is linked with the long-lasting economic benefits and sustainable development for the people of Pakistan, the speaker said at the launching ceremony of Sustainable Development Report 2022 of the All-Pakistan Chinese Enterprises' Association. He said CPEC has played a significant role in promoting the in-depth development of the Pakistan-China all-weather strategic cooperative partnership and the high-quality development of the BRI, which has grabbed attention in Pakistan and around the world. "It meets the people's aspirations, wins the people's hearts and benefits the people's livelihoods. With the joint efforts of the two governments, enterprises and all sectors of society, CPEC cooperation has achieved fruitful results and made great contributions to Pakistan's national construction and regional interconnections," Ashraf said. The speaker emphasized that despite numerous obstacles, Pakistan has witnessed economic development in the region as projects under CPEC made major progress over the past few years. "CPEC has shown strong resilience against the challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic ... The staff and workers of the two countries working on CPEC projects have worked dedicatedly hand-in-hand to overcome the difficulties and written a new moving story of Pakistan-China friendship," he said. An Orange Line metro train pulls into the terminal station in Lahore, Pakistan, Dec. 29, 2021. (Photo by Jamil Ahmed/Xinhua) Ashraf believed that the high-quality development of CPEC would certainly provide significant opportunities for the development of Pakistan and countries along the BRI route, helping them implement the global goals for regional prosperity. The speaker also reaffirmed the National Assembly of Pakistan and the parliamentarians' role and commitment to ensuring the smooth advancement of projects under the framework of CPEC. Launched in 2013, CPEC is a corridor linking Pakistan's Gwadar Port with Kashgar in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which highlights energy, transport and industrial cooperation. Speaking on the same occasion, Minister of State for Finance and Revenue Aisha Ghaus Pasha said that CPEC projects have unleashed opportunities for socio-economic development for the people of Pakistan. "CPEC will supplement Pakistan's socio-economic development as the tremendous human capital of the region is its biggest asset. CPEC has resolved issues and helped Pakistan prosper," she added. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Subscribe to our newsletter The news on January 16 that former CICIG commissioner Ivan Velasquez would be investigated as part of the ongoing Odebrecht bribery case, whose prosecution in Guatemala he oversaw starting in 2018, could be just another day in a co-opted Guatemalan judiciary except that it unleashed a diplomatic ruckus with Colombia, where hes now defense minister. First came the announcement on Monday by Rafael Curruchiche, a top prosecutor sanctioned by the U.S. for obstructing major corruption investigations, of arrest warrants for four states attorneys who worked Odebrecht, including exiled former AG Thelma Aldana, for alleged dark and corrupt negotiations with the company. He also separately named Velasquez, leaving ambiguity as to whether he, too, faced a warrant. Colombian President Gustavo Petro responded that night over Twitter: I will never accept the arrest warrant for Minister Velasquez. He was committed to the fight against corruption and we will not allow the corrupt to persecute him. We will immediately call our ambassador for consultation. The next morning, Petro added: If Guatemala insists on jailing good men, we want nothing to do with that country. Transparency International, Human Rights Watch, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols were among those to also condemn the accusations. Guatemala immediately responded with its own consultation in Colombia. 'Ill let President Petro keep committing the mistakes of a guerrilla fighter, Giammattei told EFE, in reference to Petros former M-19 membership in the 1970s and 1980s. On Tuesday morning, amid a flurry of confusion and calls from Uribista legislators for Velasquezs resignation, Curruchiche clarified on multiple Colombian radio stations that the minister is not yet subject to arrest, but rather under investigation. Through email evidence we have established that Mr. Velasquez Gomez may have committed the crimes of obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and abuse of authority, Curruchiche told Caracol Radio on Tuesday, referring to plea bargain negotiations in the prosecution of the Odebrecht case launched in 2018. Former CICIG commissioner Ivan Velasquez in a press conference with Attorney General Thelma Aldana on August 25, 2017. It was the day that the Public Prosecutor's Office and CICIG asked for the stripping of immunity of then-President Jimmy Morales on suspicion of illicit 2015 campaign finance. Photo: Johan Ordonez/AFP Velasquez, an ex-prosecutor of Colombian narcos and paramilitaries appointed by the U.N. to head the CICIG from 2013 to 2019, caustically investigated the two previous presidents, refused to make concessions to business elites involved in illicit campaign finance, and uncovered criminal networks encrusted in the public and private sectors. That work made him one of the figures demonized by pro-impunity actors in Guatemala, including Giammattei. Why Odebrecht? Curruchiche offered confused reasons for the Velasquez probe: He knew everything about the negotiations taking place with the company Odebrecht. He knew the benefits that would be given to the Brazilians. He knew the total amount of money that would be reimbursed to the state of Guatemala. For the time being we have no proof that Mr. Velasquez accepted any money, but [...] we know that he directly intervened in the negotiations. He is referring to the cooperation agreements that led to the indictment of dozens of members of Congress and other leading Guatemalan politicians and officials for accepting bribes from the Brazil-based construction firm Odebrecht. Its one of the most sweeping corruption prosecutions launched by CICIG, mirroring judicial processes in countries across the hemisphere. Top prosecutors in the case, like exiled former anti-corruption attorney Juan Francisco Sandoval, have also been spuriously accused of wrongdoing in the megacase. On the other hand, among those who stand to gain from the possible nullification of the agreements is 2015 presidential candidate Manuel Baldizon, who just returned to Guatemala after spending 28 months in U.S. federal prison for money laundering and bribery. Baldizon's son, Jorge, has been publicly identified as the witness who last year backpedaled on his sworn testimony that in 2019 Giammattei negotiated $2.6 million in campaign bribes. The nullifications in the Odebrecht case would also benefit Alejandro Sinibaldi, former communications minister from 2012 to 2014 who confessed, after spending four years fleeing the police, to taking bribes from construction firms. Baldizon stands accused of taking $1.3 million USD from Odebrecht to finance his campaign. A witness from the company accused Sinibaldi, who is facing multiple other investigations, of demanding bribes in 2013 to speed up the concession of a highway project. Both men have just been released on house arrest and may end up counter-suing the prosecutors who put them on trial. Thats partly why Juan Francisco Sandoval tweeted a week ago: They are hiding that we discovered a transnational operation of more than 18 million dollars in bribes that favored politicians that today they defend. And that there were advances in the probe related to more than 100 members of Congress who received bribes. But the Public Prosecutors Office has other intentions. Old wars When questioned on Caracol about whether his U.S. visa situation and corruption accusations against the judge who signed Monday's warrants undermine its credibility, Curruchiche retorted: When you mention that Ive been included in some list, it would be good to consider its ideological aspects. The mention of ideology was no happenstance. A Democratic congressional staffer told El Faro English that the Republican party sees Petro through the Cold War framework and asserted that the same goes for GOP support for the government of Guatemala. Despite major corruption probes, Giammattei has gained solid backing from Republicans, who have stated that the U.S. Embassys diplomatic efforts to avoid the reelection of the current attorney general who has also been sanctioned by the State Department showed inappropriate influence. The ideology card has also been used in Colombia: When Petro named Velasquez defense minister in July, Colombias far-right wing claimed the future minister who helped reveal former President Alvaro Uribes ties to paramilitary groups would unleash a witch hunt against conservatives, drawing directly from the anti-CICIG smear campaign. After enjoying years of bipartisan U.S. support, Republicans abandonment of CICIG and, in particular, the Trump administrations slashing of funds permitted the expulsion of Velasquez and the commission. 'Most of the Republicans who are giving a free pass to Guatemala, added the staffer, never knew Ivan Velasquez. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar got back their committee assignments with their new majority in the House after the two Republicans were booted by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to get payback on Democrats for kicking GOP lawmakers off House panels in the 117th Congress and as payback would strip leftist lawmakers from their preferred committees. McCarthy announced Greene would serve on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Homeland Security Committee, which will likely investigate DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of the southern border crisis. He announced that Gosar will also have a seat in the House Oversight Committee and on the Committee on Natural Resources, on which he previously served. The Oversight panel will now have the two far-right lawmakers helping with anticipated probes into the Biden administration. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene got new committee assignments on Tuesday from Speaker Kevin McCarthy after she was booted from her panels by Nancy Pelosi in the last Congress New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also said he plans to make good on his threat to block far-left representatives from serving on the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees Democrats, who are now in the minority, can't do anything to stop the new assignments. In a statement on her new committee assignments, Green warned President Joe Biden to 'be prepared.' 'We are going to uncover every corrupt business dealing, every foreign entanglement, every abuse of power, and every check cut for The Big Guy,' Greene said in her Tuesday statement. She also addressed her Homeland Security panel assignment. 'Our Southern border is being invaded,' she wrote. 'Our Border Patrol and ICE agents have their hands tied and have been turned into a welcoming committee by the Biden administration. Cyber attacks continue on our nation's people and businesses along with many more threats to our homeland.' 'We will investigate the Biden administration's violations of our laws and fund (and defund) programs to defend our border and American sovereignty.' Greene was booted off the Budget and then Education and Labor panels in February 2021 over a series of offensive comments she made before being elected to Congress including pushing conspiracy theories about Jewish people. The Democratic resolution to remove her from her committee was backed by 11 House Republicans as well. Paul Gosar also will have a seat on the Oversight panel, as well as on the Committee on Natural Resources, on which he previously served Gosar was censured and stripped of his committee seats in the last Congress after he posted on social media a bizarre animated video depicting violent acts toward progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden. 'They promised me that if I wanted to stay on Natural Resources and Oversight, I could stay,' Gosar said regarding his future under new GOP leadership. McCarthyalso vowed to make good on Republican threats to kick Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the Intelligence Committee, as well as block Ilhan Omar from serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Republicans warned that Democrats would regret down the road deciding to dictate who serves on what committees. Speaker McCarthy, however, told Punchbowl News that he's already made the case against all three far-left representatives earning spots on these high-profile committees. McCarthy will prevent Eric Swalwell (left) and Adam Schiff (right) from serving on the Intelligence Committees. The Speaker claims that Swalwell 'can't get a security clearance in the private sector' and that Schiff has 'lied too many times to the American public' 'It's not like it's anything new,' McCarthy said. 'Remember, this is what Nancy Pelosi this is the type of Congress she wanted to have.' 'Swalwell can't get a security clearance in the private sector,' he added of his fellow California lawmaker. 'I'm not going to give him a government security clearance,' He continued: 'Schiff has lied too many times to the American public. He should not be on Intel.' All three lawmakers say they haven't engaged in wrongdoing and should not be removed from their committees. However, Swalwell has faced questions over his ties to a Chinese spy named Fang Fang. The woman helped Swalwell raise money for his 2014 campaign and while the California Democrat said he cut all ties to the alleged spy, it was shown that he remained friends with her on Facebook long after an FBI briefing on her ties to China. Omar, for her part, has shared a slew of anti-Semitic comments and sentiments, which were even criticized by other Democrats. McCarthy will also move to stop Rep. Ilhan Omar from serving on the Foreign Affairs panel She is a key member of the so-called Squad, a group made up of the most progressive, left-wing Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and Rashida Tlaib. After the rules package passed Monday night, the next big fight is shaping up to be a partisan brawl on the floor regarding committee assignments following more than a week of Republican bickering and chaos over who should be Speaker and what rules should govern the House in the 118th Congress. It took 15 rounds of voting last week for Republicans to finally decide that they were OK with handing McCarthy the Speaker's gavel. McCarthy has been vowing since 2021 to block Swalwell, Schiff and Omar from spots on the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. Multiple Democratic leadership sources claim that the plan is to still name Schiff and Swalwell to Intel and Omar to Foreign Affairs, according to Punchbowl. Freshman representative George Santos, who has been accused of being a pathological liar, will also receive committee assignments despite being under criminal investigation and being called to step down McCarthy, as Speaker, can unilaterally block Schiff and Swalwell from serving on the Intel panel, but the House will need to act in full against Omar serving on Foreign Affairs. All three Democrats claim they have done nothing wrong and are being unfairly targeted by Republican leaders. Republicans have long said they planned to remove Omar, a Somali-born progressive, from the Foreign Affairs Committee if they won a majority in the House. Omar, who has been in Congress since 2017, claims Republicans 'made it their mission to use fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism to target me on the House Floor and through millions of dollars of campaign ads.' Schiff, who led the first House impeachment trial against Donald Trump, has attacked McCarthy over the threat to block him from the Intelligence panel, claiming the new Speaker 'will adhere to the wishes of Marjorie Taylor Greene.' McCarthy and Democratic Leader Jeffries have not yet worked out the ratios for House committees as of Monday night, which could be a process that takes several days in and of itself. The agreement was delayed due to the floor fight McCarthy faced during the Speaker vote last week. Its mission is to provide mental health services for the deaf and hard of hearing Vogt, 26, talked about her experience in 2021 and later founded Healing Signs This means the hospital made no admission of wrongdoing but agreed to pay A consent decree was reached at the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis Thursday A 26-year-old woman has won a $180,000 payout after suing a Minnesota hospital for denying her a job because she is deaf. Kaylah Vogt reached a consent decree at the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on Thursday. It means North Memorial Health made no admission of wrongdoing but agreed to make the payout and other actions addressed in the suit. Vogt claimed she had applied to be a greeter at the health care system's hospital in Robbinsdale but, despite being qualified, was refused the job because pandemic masking rules meant she would struggle to lip-read while working. Since then, she has founded Healing Signs, a nonprofit whose mission is to provide mental health services for the deaf and hard of hearing after multiple experiences of being let down when looking for work. Kaylah Vogt, 26, has settled a federal lawsuit and been paid out $180,000 from a Minnesota hospital that she claims refused her a job as a greeter because she is deaf Vogt is a student at the University of Minnesota's College of Continuing and Professional Studies, and she was featured in a college article in August 2021, where she recalled her experience with North Memorial Health and her belief that she had been hired. 'After I self-identified as an individual with deafness and requested a reasonable accommodation, I was fired instantly without their further attempt to work with me,' she said. 'Ultimately, it affected my career choices and how I navigate the world.' Gregory Gochanour, a regional attorney in Chicago for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which sued on Vogt's behalf told the Star Tribune discrimination is sadly common. 'Unfortunately, some employers continue to discriminate against deaf applicants based on myths, fears and stereotypes about their ability to do the job because of their disability,' he said. Julianne Bowman, district director for the EEOC in Chicago, said the consent decree will hopefully be the first steps towards change. 'The consent decree's requirement of training for managers and supervisors involved in hiring decisions on the provisions against discrimination is critical to eliminating discrimination against disabled applicants,' she said. The 26-year-old claimed that she had applied to be a greeter at North Memorial Health's hospital in Robbinsdale, but despite being qualified, was denied the job because of pandemic masking rules North Memorial denied the allegations but highlighted in the court filing the challenges greeters were having at the time because of the pandemic and the need for 'strong listening and verbal communication skills while interacting with individuals experiencing stress/grief.' Their CEO Dr. J Kevin Croston pictured In July 2020, Vogt applied through a recruiting firm to be a greeter, but North Memorial went another way despite her being qualified to do the job and carry out its essential functions which include: 'Greeting visitors, applying COVID-19 masking standards and policies, giving directions and keeping the area tidy and welcoming.' The suit also pointed out that Vogt wears hearing aids which allow her to 'hear people speaking without any difficulty. Vogt can communicate verbally [and] can also communicate with American Sign Language.' North Memorial denied the allegations but highlighted in the court filing the challenges greeters were having at the time because of the pandemic and the need for 'strong listening and verbal communication skills while interacting with individuals experiencing stress/grief.' The filing stated that greeters 'needed to communicate quickly and succinctly with visitors regarding visitor policy, assess visitors' understanding and compliance, and troubleshoot [while] communication was significantly hindered by COVID-necessitated face masks.' North Memorial said in a statement: 'We recognize that our [hiring] processes in place for temporary roles may have been compromised during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we understand Ms. Vogt's disappointment in the decisions that were made at that time. 'We have reviewed specific practices following this case and will continue to strive to ensure our customers, our current, past and future team members, and our providers feel valued and respected.' Since then, Vogt founded Healing Signs, a nonprofit whose mission is to provide mental health services for the deaf and hard of hearing after multiple experiences of being let down when looking for work Gregory Gochanour, a regional attorney in Chicago for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which sued on Vogt's behalf said discrimination is sadly common Julianne Bowman, district director for the EEOC in Chicago, said the consent decree will hopefully be the first steps towards change Among the requirements of the consent decree, which lasts for two years, North Memorial must: 'Apply its disability anti-discrimination and reasonable accommodation policies to all applicants and employees hired to work at North Memorial Health, whether they are hired by North Memorial directly or through a staffing firm.' It is also required to: 'Provide reasonable accommodation unless doing so would result in an undue hardship on the health system or a direct threat, submit to the EEOC any reports of complaints of failure to hire or failure to accommodate based on disability and provide training to employees involved in the hiring process.' The $180,000 payment covers $75,000 in compensatory damages, around $44,000 in back pay and roughly $61,000 to cover her attorney's fees. Vogt is no stranger to discrimination, describing in the 2021 article with the University of Minnesota that she was 'denied her first real job at a drugstore because she couldn't answer the phones.' 'Looking back, I realized that was a case of unlawful discrimination, because a reasonable accommodation could have been made,' she said at the time. She was eventually hired by a different manager but discouraged from becoming a pharmacy technician. 'Their training videos did not have closed captioning, and they threw me out there without sufficient training,' she said. Kaylah worked for five different companies after that and when the pandemic hit, she applied for an entry-level position at North Memorial Health. In 2021, Vogt also took to YouTube to share her disheartening experience with #23andme, a genetics company, who wanted to share her story during Deaf Awareness Month but refused to let her tell her story in ASL Vogt is no stranger to discrimination describing in the 2021 article with the University of Minnesota that she was 'denied her first real job at a drugstore because she couldn't answer the phones' In 2021, Vogt also took to YouTube to share her disheartening experience with #23andme, a genetics company, who wanted to share her story during Deaf Awareness Month but refused to let her tell her story in ASL. 'I wanted to find out why I am deaf, so I did a DNA test with 23andMe and I found out that my deafness was genetic,' she said. 'I decided to submit my story to 23andMe to share that my deafness is genetic and how I get to experience the gift of sign language American Sign Language. 'They reached out to me they say they loved my story 'it's so powerful' and they want to feature me for Deaf Awareness Month. 'I responded, I was like 'yeah, let's do it' and I let them know that I wanted to do my story in ASL because that is what my story is about ASL. But Vogt claimed 23andMe denied her request. 'They would not let me share my story in ASL because it does not fit the context. So, I decided to take the story in my own hands,' she said of posting the video to YouTube. According to the United States Census Bureau about 11.5 million Americans have 'some sort of hearing impairment, ranging from difficulty in hearing conversation to total hearing loss.' 'That's about 3.5 percent of the population,' the website reads. 'In addition, around 50 million of our population experience some level of tinnitus, a constant ringing in the ears.' Long Island liar George Santos scores spots on two House committees: Small Business and Science, Space and Technology while an ethics panel decides his fate The controversial Rep. George Santos of New York was finally assigned two committee spots on Tuesday amid a groundswell of condemnation from colleagues and constituents alike to get the truth-challenged GOP congressman to resign or booted from Congress. Small Business Chairman Roger Williams of Texas confirmed Santos's appointment to the panel and two members of the GOP Steering Committee said the New York congressman would also sit on the Space, and Technology committee. Asked if Santos would be a distraction to his committee, Williams replied: 'It's only going to be a distraction to those who want to distract.' The freshly installed congressman is already facing multiple scandals and investigations by federal, state, and local prosecutors over his personal and campaign finances and lies about his resume and family heritage. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has been awarded a seat on two House committee although colleagues and constituents are demanding he resigns because of misrepresentation An outraged Democrat, Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York joined residents of GOP Rep. George Santos's district in Long Island on Tuesday to call for a Federal Election Commission review of his campaign finances, as first reported by ABC News. 'I'm here to show support for the Concerned Citizens of NY-03, who have been systematically deceived and defrauded at the hands of their own congressman,' Torres said. The Bronx congressman said he was sending a letter to the FEC to launch an investigation into what he called the 'web of incestuous relationship' between Santos's campaign, his business and the group Redstone Strategies. According to the New York Times, the fundraising group has no records documenting the group's donors or spending. 'The $700,000 question is where did all the money come from,' Torres said. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is demanding that Santos not only resign immediately but that the Ethics Committee and FEC investigate allegations of fraud and misuse of election funds A protester holds a sign that reads ''Resign Santos'' referring to Rep. George Santos (R-NY) Swarmed by reporters at the Capitol on a daily basis, the beleaguered congressman has flatly rejected the growing call to resign, saying, 'I will not.' Republican leaders have refused to take action against Santos, whose election helped give them a 222-seat hold on the House majority. Santos also voted in the raucous balloting to make GOP leader Kevin McCarthy the House speaker. McCarthy continues to stand by the beleaguered congressman saying his constituents made their choice. 'The voters made the decision. He has a right to serve,' said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. 'If there is something that rises to the occasion that he did something wrong, then we'll deal with that later.' Democrats were scathing in their criticism. Kevin McCarthy owns George Santos, lock stop and barrel," said Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus. Its the only reason why he was seated, to give George Santos that ability to vote for Kevin McCarthy. So lets call this exactly what it is. There should be repercussions,' he told ABC News. It's unclear the Ethics Committee's next steps. As part of the new House rules package, any member of the public can now file complaints against lawmakers. Ethics advocates have warned other new rules will weaken the committee's staff and membership. The committee has not fully formed yet as House Republicans are in the midst of choosing committee chairs, members and setting up the new Congress. Embattled New York Republican George Santos stole more than $3,000 from a fundraiser for a disabled veteran's dying service dog, a new report has claimed. The report on local news site Patch, published on Tuesday, contains bombshell claims concerning the GOP freshman, leveled by Richard Osthoff, a disabled veteran who in May 2016 was living in a chicken coop on a highway in New Jersey. Compounding the 47-year-old's plight, his service dog, Sapphire, was in desperate need of surgery to remove a cancerous tumor - a life-saving operation would have costed $3,000. Unable to afford the sum, Osthoff was connected with a man who called himself 'Anthony Devolder' - after a veterinary technician took pity on the vet's situation. Devolder, the vet tech told him, ran a pet charity called Friends of Pets United (FPU) - a non existent organization recently unmasked as one of the Long Island rep's alleged scams last month by the New York Times. Santos has been filmed introducing himself using the alias, and admits it's a name he's gone by. Osthoff shared a series of bizarre texts he had with him where Devolder appeared to lead him on before abruptly saying Sapphire was not fit for funding. He accused the GOP freshman of leading to his dog's death because the delay led to her tumor rapidly growing. The report, published Tuesday, contains bombshell claims concerning the GOP freshman leveled by Richard Osthoff, a disabled veteran who in May 2016 was living with his sick service dog, Sapphire, off a highway in New Jersey This is the original appeal shared by Osthoff - an appeal created by Antony Devolder, an alias used by liar congressman George Santos Osthoff posted hopefully during the fundraising attempt, but things went badly wrong shortly afterwards Around six months after the appeal, Osthoff broke the bad news that he'd been 'scammed' by Devolder - aka Santos Santos is pictured in the House of Representatives on January 6, as calls grow for him to be forced out of his job After successfully raising the funds, Devolder allegedly deleted the fundraiser and disappeared with the money, leaving Osthoff - who suffers from severe PTSD - in the lurch. Months later, Sapphire succumbed to her illness and died. It has since been revealed 'Anthony Devolder' was one of several aliases used by Santos before entering politics in 2020. Santos has since been accused of several instances of fraud, facing multiple criminal investigations over allegations he lied about his qualifications for congress. A recently surfaced video of the 34-year-old politician introducing himself as 'Anthony Devolder' at a pro-Trump LGBTQ event. Despite the scrutiny over his personal and campaign finances and lies about his resume and family heritage, the lawmaker's has refused to step down from his congressional seat. In recent weeks, as the extent of the congressman's lies came to light, Osthoff recognized Santos as the man he knew as Devolder, and subsequently shared his interactions with the presumed scammer with Patch.com. Patch published a piece Tuesday recounting the veteran's story, as Santos continues to face scrutiny over the numerous lies about his life story and finances. 'He stopped answering my texts and calls,' Osthoff told the outlet, revealing that Saphire died on January 15, 2017, after he was left unable to afford the surgery. Adding insult to injury, after being out of work over a year with a broken leg, the Navy vet could not afford the dog's euthanasia and cremation. He admitted that in order to put his beloved pit to rest, he had to beg on the streets. 'I had to panhandle,' Osthoff said. 'It was one of the most degrading things I ever had to do.' Messages shared by Osthoff show his correspondence with the man who called himself Devolder, who in messages vowed to raise the $3,000 required for the surgery as a gesture of good will. Santos - who was giving his name as Anthony Devolder - is accused of trying to justify his behavior in this bizarre slew of text messages However, after Devolder set up the the GoFundMe page for Osthoff and successfully raised the funds, the alleged charity worker suddenly severed contact after months of texting in late 2016. 'I only talked to him two or three times on the phone,' Osthoff said, telling Patch that over half of the donations had come from people he knew. A post penned by the veteran on June 30, 2016, shared with the news outlet read: 'We made the goal, and then some.' Another image offered by Osthoff showed a link to the deleted GoFundMe page posted by Devolder to Facebook, in which the alleged scammer sent an appeal to the public for help raising money for the service animal's surgery. In it, he wrote: 'Dear all, When a veteran reaches out to ask for help, how can you say no.' The GoFundMe was later deleted, and the messages from Devolder suddenly ceased, Osthoff said. He soon realized he had been duped when the IRS could not find a record of a registered charity with the name Friends of Pets United. Devolder - since confirmed to be Santos - had claimed Friends of Pets United was a tax-exempt organization he founded in 2013. Contemporaneous Facebook posts penned by Osthoff mention 'Anthony Devolder' and the failed fundraiser. The alias is a name by which many people, including Santos' former roommates, knew him as before he entered politics. George Santos is seen in 2019 at a LGBTQ event introducing himself as 'Anthony Devolder' Text messages between the two men show how Santos allegedly led Osthoff along for several months long after raising the money, before going dark in December 2016 after claiming Sapphire was no longer eligible, and that the funds would be transferred elsewhere. In December of this year, The New York Times reported the charity Santos had allegedly touted to the vet was not a registered nonprofit - spurring Osthoff, who instantly recognizing the politician, to share his story. The veteran told Patch how he first started to suspect something was amiss in July of that year, when instead of scheduling the procedure, Santos told him the New Jersey practice he was told would oversee the surgery could not host the animal. Instead, the future Queens/Long Island rep insisted he bring Sapphire to a vet in Queens, to which Osthoff obliged in August. According to Osthoff, he was driven to the practice by the vet tech who had put him in touch with Santos to the practice. Osthoff, sharing text messages to prove his claims, said he was told by Santos that it had to be that practice because he had amassed 'credit' with it by regularly using it for his charity. 'It was a tiny little hole in the wall place, but looked legitimate,' Osthoff recalled to Patch. However, once meeting the practice's presiding doctor, Osthoff said he was told that Sapphire's tumor was inoperable, an assertion that almost instantly aroused the ex-soldier's suspicions, since the doctor in New Jersey had made no mentions that the tumor had progressed to such a stage. 'The vet there said they couldn't operate on the tumor,' an emotional Osthoff remembered, adding that he was confused the New Jersey vet didn't express any similar concerns. Afterwards, Osthoff said, Santos suddenly became elusive, not responding to calls or messages and seemingly making no effort to see the dog go under the knife. Text messages shared by the veteran with Patch show some of the final correspondence between the two men, all while Sapphire's condition continued to deteriorate. In November, Osthoff texted him to air his suspicions that the surgery and fundraiser had all been a front. 'I'm starting to feel like I was mined for my family and friends donations,' one text message published in the Patch report read. Around that time, Osthoff said, he had one last phone conversation with Santos. The call saw the scammer tell Osthoff that since he hadn't' done things 'my way,' he put the money from Sapphire's fundraiser into his charity to use 'for other dogs.' Days later, on November 13, 2016, texts show that Osthoff pleased with Santos to let him take Sapphire to another vet. 'My dog is going to die because of god knows what,' one message reads. In reply, Santos provided a rambling reason for not producing on the promised surgery, while writing that it was his fake charity's 'credibility' that allowed them to raise the funds in the first place. 'Remember it is our credibility that got GoFundme [...] to contribute,' a text from the future congressman reads. 'We are audited like every 501c3 and we are with the highest standards of integrity.' Santos, whose parents were born in Brazil, said that his full name was George Anthony Devolder Santos, and he usually went by Anthony It continued: 'Sapphire is not a candidate for this surgery the funds are moved to the next animal in need and we will make sure we use of resources [sic] to keep her comfortable!' Further messages sent in the following days saw Santo vow to take Sapphire for an ultrasound - however, on the conditions that Osthoff could not attend, and that it not be be done at the New Jersey office recommended by the New Jersey veterinarian, In explanation, Santo wrote it was because the practice would not accept his organization's funding method. Osthoff told Patch that to this day, he does not know what funding method Santos had been referring to. A text message from Santos in late November read: 'And your [sic] not coming for the ride FOPU will handle this from now on only with the animal! 'We do not drive people around nor do we give them rides we transports animals in need not needy owners.' After that conversation, Osthoff said Santos stopped responding to his calls. Days later, the GoFundMe fundraiser started by Santos was gone. He tried to reach out to GoFundMe, but did not get a response. That said, back in 2016, the fundraising fundraising company was markedly smaller, and had less resources available to handle fraudulent fundraisers. Sharing screenshots of his Facebook posts on the matter, Osthoff told Patch that Sapphire eventually succumbed to her cancer in 2017, after being denied the life-saving treatment she needed. Osthoff was later helped by Michael Boll, a local police sergeant and fellow veteran who at the time led the New Jersey Veterans Network. Speaking to Patch, Boll confirmed the account, saying he attempted to mediate the situation, but that Santos had been 'uncooperative on the phone.' 'I contacted [Santos] and told him, 'You're messing with a veteran,' and that he needed to give back the money or use it to get Osthoff another dog.' The former Marine added: 'I told Rich to go to the police, but we had limited information [about Santos].' Osthoff said that while despondent over the loss of his dog - who he remembered as his 'Little girl never left my side in 10 years' after returning home from overseas - he was busy finding a place to live at the time, and did not try to pursue Santos further. 'As time went on, I guess I stopped thinking about it.' Boll told Patch that 'luckily, [Osthoff] was able to get a new service dog right away.' More than six years later, when news of Santos' resume fabrications and alleged scams - including his charity for which he made Facebook group around 2015 - Osthoff and Boll recognized him on television, and instantly called each other. They both would identify him as Anthony Devolder the same man who took the fundraiser money - and thus, his dog's life - so many years ago. The politician has since been besieged with calls to resign by both Democrats and Republican - though, for Osthoff, and his late best friend, it is already too late. Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that he would not demand George Santos' resignation, claiming that 'voters' have a say in who represents them He said Saphire's death worsened his PTSD, along with his mental health. Osthoff told Patch he was 'crying his eyes out remembering Sapphire's last day.' 'Little girl never left my side in 10 years. I went through two bouts of seriously considering suicide, but thinking about leaving her without me saved my life.' He added: 'I loved that dog so much, I inhaled her last breaths when I had her euthanized.' Boll further told Patch of his friend's sad state at the time: 'I really felt bad for Rich. He has PTSD, and this dog is his lifeline. When I first heard about it, I thought, this is going to kill him.' Osthoff is no longer living on the streets, but still wants justice for his late companion. Santos' alter-ego, meanwhile, was exposed as the New York Times revealed how many of his lies had been exposed pre-election. But GOP members and their Democrat rivals were unwilling or unable to stop the then-aspiring lawmaker from campaigning, with many believing he'd fail to beat his Democrat incumbent rival - only to be proven wrong. Santos - whose parents were born in Brazil, said that his full name was George Anthony Devolder Santos, and he usually went by Anthony - claimed to have graduated from Baruch College and New York University, which was not true. He said he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but both companies denied having any record of his employment there. Santos had been evicted multiple times, had a suspended driving license, and was married to a woman despite being openly gay and living with a man. Several shady business dealings allegedly carried out by Santos have also come to light, after discrepancies between his wealth on paper and evidence of financial struggles inspired questions over where Santos got the $700,000 he poured into his own 2022 campaign. It also appears to have had considerable business and political ties to the U.S.-based cousin of a Russian oligarch, a recent report suggested last. Representing parts of Queens and Long Island, the newly installed member of Congress has admitted to fabricating a wide range of details in his backstory including his education, career, and family heritage over the course of his young political career. In its bombshell expose last month, The Times revealed that the charity Santos had started under the guise of saving animals was nonexistent. The full details of the groups activities are not known. Santos created a Facebook page for the charity around 2015, in which several group members shared images of dogs who needed foster homes or donations. A protester holds a sign that reads ''Resign Santos'' referring to Rep. George Santos (R-NY) The group was archived around 2020, according to Barbara Hurdas, who met Santos when she worked with him at a Dish Network call center in Queens in 2011. Hurdas said she remembered him starting the charity and sharing links to it on social media after he left Dish in 2012. Facebook groups cannot be deleted - however, a group, when archived, becomes inaccessible to anyone besides its members, Earlier this month, as the extent of Santos' lies came to light, Hurdas reported that the name of the group was changed to 'The End.' Santos also posted GoFundMe fundraisers for dogs needing medical care on his now-deleted personal Facebook page, Hurdas said. Santos - now the subject of several state, city, and federal investigations - is facing increasing pressure to resign, but Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who endorsed Santos and assisted his campaign, has yet to speak out against the congressman. McCarthy told reporters on Thursday '[Santos] has a long way to go to earn trust.' The speaker added that other members of Congress' concerns involving Santos will be investigated by the House Ethics Committee. A young worker has been hailed a hero after he ran out into the middle of a busy road to save a boy who'd left his mother's side. Ty Robertson, 20, had been walking back from his lunch break in Port Lincoln, in South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, just after 1pm on Friday when he spotted the child run onto the street and into the path of oncoming traffic. The four-year-old had dropped his mother's hand and found himself right in the middle of a busy intersection on Liverpool Street. 'I heard this mother scream and as I looked up a little boy ran onto the road into oncoming traffic,' Mr Robertson, who works at nearby Intersport, told Daily Mail Australia. Ty Robertson, 20, had been walking back from his lunch break in Port Lincoln, SA when he spotted the child run onto the road The 20-year-old said it was lucky he was able to get to the child in time. 'Without really thinking I basically just ran onto the main road after him and picked him up whilst a 4WD towing a caravan came really close to both of us,' he said. 'A couple of cars including the 4WD had to brake heavily but didn't stop.' Mr Robertson said he gave no thought to the risk he'd put himself in. 'I didn't really have time to think. Instinct more or less took over. In hindsight it was pretty dumb on my part but I'd do it again to save someone,' he said. He said the mother was in shock after the ordeal which only lasted a few minutes. 'I could tell she was very pleased I was there at the right time,' he added. Mr Robertson said he heard the mother scream and managed to get to the boy just in time The mother of the adventurous little boy is yet to speak to Mr Robertson but shared a heartfelt message on Facebook hoping he would see it. 'At the time this happened I was in so much shock,' she wrote. 'No words can ever express how thankful I am for you. 'You not only saved my son's life. You risked your own life to save my son. You are truly a blessing and a gorgeous person. 'My husband and I are beyond grateful. To think you would put yourself in harm's way to protect my son says a lot about you.' A lawyer for the late Carhartt clothing company heiress has appeared in court in Detroit accused of defrauding the much-loved philanthropist and jazz aficionado of at least $21million. David Sutherland, 57, worked as a 'trusted advisor' to Gretchen Carthartt Valade, Michigan's attorney general said. She died on December 30, aged 97. From 2017 until her death, Sutherland was 'using the resources of his law practice, exploited his position of authority to embezzle from a client's irrevocable trust, serving simultaneously as lender, borrower, attorney and trustee over the money he took from his client's account,' according to court documents. Gretchen Carhartt Valade died at the age of 97 on December 30. Her attorney has now been charged with embezzlement David Sutherland, Valade's attorney, was charged on January 4 with fraud and is pictured during a January 11 arraignment, attended by Valade's son, Carhartt CEO Mark Valade Sutherland was removed as a trustee of Valade's trust in 2020. A year later, he was charged with having lent himself more than $7.7million from the trust, and lending a business in which he was the majority owner an additional $7.6million. Following her death, Sutherland was hit with four additional charges on January 4 - two counts each of embezzlement of $100,000; one count of embezzlement from a vulnerable adult of $100,000 or more; and one count of conducting criminal enterprises. The charges are believed to be connected to a $5million 'loan' which prosecutors claim Sutherland pressured Valade into approving, and an additional $2.7million, with those sums totaling $21million. Judge Charles Berschback, who presided over a January 11 hearing in which Sutherland was freed on a $250,000 cash or surety bond, told him: 'The amount that is being alleged is staggering.' Dana Nessel, Michigan's attorney general, said the case was a reflection of how many elderly people are taken advantage of. 'Mr Sutherland abused his authority as an attorney and trusted advisor to steal millions from a long-time client and must be held accountable,' she said. 'Our elderly populations are particularly susceptible to financial exploitations, and my Financial Crimes Division is prepared to hold these bad actors accountable for such egregious and illegal violations of their clients' trust.' Judge Charles Berschback called the sums of money involved 'staggering' Sutherland is seen in court on January 11. Another hearing will be held on January 25, and his lawyer says he expects his client to be cleared Special Agent Doug Sharp, an investigator with Nessel's office, told the court that maintenance workers at Valade's home and her healthcare assistants saw Sutherland pressuring her to sign documents. Valade was known as the 'Angel of Jazz' for her philanthropy in the arts, and her musical businesses 'As a 97-year-old person with limited mobility and diminishing business acumen, Ms Valade was susceptible,' Sharp testified. Valade's son Mark, the CEO of the family firm, was in court to see Sutherland arraigned. Ron Fournier, the family spokesman, said the Valade family appreciates the efforts of Nessel's office in investigating Sutherland's conduct. 'They are confident in the legal process and optimistic that justice will prevail and that no other members of our community will become victims of Mr Sutherland,' he said. Sutherland's attorney James Sullivan said that Nessel's office is yet to ascertain the full facts, and he believes his client will be exonerated, The Detroit Free Press reported. Sullivan said the court documents showed 'a small fraction of the whole story.' He added: 'I think once the whole story is told, when people hear it, it's going to be a much different climate and attitude toward this, and for him, my client, than there is right now.' Valade's grandfather, Hamilton Carhartt, founded the clothing company in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1899. Hamilton Carhartt founded the workwear company in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1899. It remains headquartered in Detroit, still family owned and run, and employs some 5,500 people Valade built this home 100 miles north of Detroit, on the shores of Lake Huron, in 2000. She sold it in 2010 Valade is seen in March 2005 at the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts in Detroit, with the president of her record label Mack Avenue Records, Tom Robinson. The photoshoot was to announce Valade's label sponsoring the Detroit Jazz Festival Today the family is estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.2billion. Valade served on the Carhartt board from 1958, and was named chairman of the board in 1998 after her husband, company president Robert Valade, died. Two years later she built a stunning stone and cedar mansion set in 17 acres on the shores of Lake Huron, in Deckerville, 100 miles north of her main home in Grosse Pointe Farms. Grosse Pointe Farms is known for its elegant mansions, and for being home to the Ford and Dodge heirs. Valade sold the lakeside mansion in around 2010, and died at her suburban home. Valade was known as the 'Angel of Jazz,' thanks to her passion for music and her generous philanthropy. She established a foundation that has enabled the Detroit Jazz Festival to become the largest free jazz festival in the world, and made gifts to jazz studies and performance at Wayne State University totaling $9.5million. Valade is pictured at the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe with her granddaughter (far right), who is named after her She also funded the refurbishment of the university's performance space, which now bears her name. At the age of 74, she founded the Mack Avenue Records jazz label, which subsequently earned 11 Grammy Awards and more than 50 nominations. And at 82, she opened the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe, an award-winning jazz and dinner club in Grosse Pointe Farms. She also owned another cafe, a coffee shop and a women's shoe and clothing store. 'I prefer not to be bored,' she once explained. 'I wanted to occupy my time surrounded by things important to me, my family, my passions, my joys, and my community. 'And for me, being busy is a big part of a long life.' Joe Biden's personal attorney - who found classified material inside Biden's Washington DC think tank - has already spoken to federal prosecutors, according to a report. Patrick Moore was asked to clear out Biden's office in November and found the documents, CNN reported. Moore then informed the National Archives and Justice Department. On Tuesday it emerged that Moore has already spoken to John Lausch, the U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois. Lausch was initially tasked with investigating the classified material; his job has now been taken over by the special counsel, Robert Hur, who was appointed on January 12. Patrick Moore, Joe Biden's personal attorney, has already spoken to federal prosecutors about classified material found at Biden's DC think tank, it has emerged. It is not yet known if Moore will also be required to speak to the special counsel, Robert Hur President Biden smiled and laughed on Tuesday as he ignored a barrage of questions from reporters about the classified documents scandal that has engulfed the White House Timeline of events leading up to Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing Special Counsel Robert Hur to oversee investigation as to the potential mishandling of classified documents It is not clear if Moore will be interviewed again by Hur. Lausch was already known to have spoken to several other Biden aides, including Kathy Chung, Biden's former executive assistant. On Tuesday Biden smiled and laughed as he ignored a barrage of questions about the classified documents scandal that has engulfed his administration - while a shocking new report detailed a deal made by the Justice Department to keep the FBI away from the search. The grinning Biden stayed silent at the end of his meeting with Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte - while the media asked about the sensitive files found at his D.C. think tank and garage at his Wilmington home. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Tuesday that the Justice Department considered having FBI agents monitor Biden's personal attorneys as they searched his Wilmington and Rehoboth homes but decided against it, because Biden's lawyers were cooperating with them. Biden's legal team, after the discovery of the first tranche of documents at his D.C. think tank, talked with the DoJ about having FBI agents present while Biden's lawyers conducted the additional searches. Ultimately the two sides cut a deal where only Biden's attorneys would do the search and immediately report any findings. They did find more documents - in the garage and 'personal library' of the president's Wilmington home. It stands in marked contrast to how the Justice Department worked with Donald Trump's legal team. After making repeated requests about classified documents reportedly in the former president's possession, the Justice Department ultimately obtained a federal warrant for FBI agents to raid Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. Trump and his supporters have roared about the situation, calling it a double standard. Biden's team argues they have been consistently cooperating in their case. Timeline of Biden document discovery and initial investigation Nov. 2: Ten classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., by President Joe Biden's lawyers. Nov. 3: The National Archives was notified of the discovery Nov. 4: The National Archives' Office of Inspector General contacted a prosecutor at the Department of Justice and told them that classified material had been discovered at the Penn Biden Center. The documents were secured at an Archives facility Nov. 8: 2022 midterm election Nov. 9: The FBI commenced an assessment to determine whether classified material had been mishandled Nov. 14: Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, John Lausch, to determine if a special counsel was needed Dec. 20: The president's personal attorney informed Lausch that additional documents with classification markings were found in Biden's garage in Wilmington, Delaware. The FBI secured those documents Jan 5: Lausch advised Garland that a special counsel should be appointed Jan. 9: White House publicly announces classified documents from Biden's time as vice president found at the office of his D.C. think tank Jan 12: The president's personal attorney informed Lausch that an additional document was discovered at Biden's Wilmington home Jan. 12: White House publicly announces additional classified documents were found in Biden's Wilmington home Jan. 12: White House counsel Richard Richard Sauber travels to Biden's Wilmington home - finds five more classified documents Jan. 14: White House publicly discloses the documents Sauber found Advertisement The president, meanwhile, has evaded shouted questions on more than one occasion on the documents debacle since it was first reported last week. He last spoke on matter on Thursday, reading a prepared statement and defended having the classified material in the same garage as his Corvette, noting his classic car was kept locked up. The White House is also under intense scrutiny for waiting two months to publicly react to the discovery of the first batch of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has also frequently dodged questions during combative and dismissive appearances in the briefing room while claiming Biden takes classified documents 'seriously'. To try and deflect from the controversy, the White House on Tuesday tried to attack Republicans and asked Kevin McCarthy to reveal all the backroom deals he made to become Speaker. The GOP has put pressure on Biden and the administration's response to their handling of classified material by promising Congressional investigations and demanding visitor logs from the Wilmington home - which the White House says doesn't exist. During the meeting with Rutte, the president didn't answer questions from reporters - including one on whether he would speak with special counsel Robert Hur. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to investigate the matter. Law enforcement sources told the Journal that FBI agents may not have wanted to be part of the original search so they could ask for a search warrant at a later date if they found something in their investigation that required it. Hur is expected to begin his job as special counsel by the end of the month as he had to give notice at the private law firm he is working. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, sent a letter to Biden's Chief of Staff Ron Klain on Sunday demanding access to any visitor logs kept for the Delaware home. 'Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents,' he wrote. The White House has said there are no visitor logs as it is a private home. And, on Tuesday, Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, held a briefing call with reporters to slam Republicans' probes. 'Their outrage is all pure theater,' he said. He would not commit to the White House cooperating with the GOP requests for documents and other information. 'We're limited in what we can say during an ongoing DOJ inquiry,' he said, referring to the special counsel's inquiry. 'We'll make a determination about our response in due course, but of course, we're gonna call it out when we see rampant hypocrisy, that that shows a total lack of credibility when it comes to these requests,' he noted. Sams, who will be the point person to answer questions on any Biden scandals, also wouldn't say if Biden would answer questions from Hur. 'We're not going to get ahead of that process with the Special Counsel and speculate on what they may or may not want or ask for,' he said. The White House is also under intense scrutiny for waiting two months to publicly react to the discovery of the first batch of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware, where an additional tranche of classified documents were found On Saturday, the White House revealed a fourth tranche of documents were found - again at Biden's Wilmington home. The White House has faced repeated questions over its lack of transparency about when the documents were discovered. They waited about two months - until well past the November midterm election - to announce documents found at Biden's DC think tank before voters went to the polls. The counsel's office then made two more announcements - regarding documents found at Biden's garage in his Wilmington home and then a third document found in a room at that house. On Saturday, the administration announced five more pages containing classified information were found at Biden's Wilmington home. White House Counsel Richard Sauber said that because he has security clearance, and Biden's personal lawyers don't, he had gone to the president's home to examine other papers there. Meanwhile, a special counsel is already reviewing Trump's possession of highly classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence. FBI agents searched the residence this summer under a grand jury subpoena after a months-long process seeking to obtain government material. The White House has consistently emphasized Biden's attorneys found the documents and promptly turned them over to the National Archives, arguing all proper procedures were followed. In Trump's case, the Archives realized documents from his administration were missing and requested their return. Trump eventually gave 15 boxes of materials to the agency, which discovered classified documents among them. When federal investigators suspected the former president was holding onto more documents, they got a judges permission to search Mar-a-Lago. That raid took place in August and turned up more documents. For his part, Biden previously said he and his staff would cooperate with the investigation. He expressed surprise to discover he had classified documents dating back to when he served as Barack Obama's vice president. 'People know I take classified documents, classified materials, seriously,' Biden said last week, reading from a prepared statement. 'I'm going to get a chance to speak on this soon, God willing,' he added, as reporters shouted questions. 'We're going to see all this unfold.' Passengers on a Qantas flight have revealed how they heard a loud bang as the left engine failed mid-air - but said they were unaware of the seriousness of the situation until after they landed. QF144 sparked fears around the world when the pilot issued a midair mayday call halfway into the plane's journey from Auckland to Sydney, with paramedics rushing to Sydney Airport and 200,000 people tracking the troubled flight on FlightRadar. But the flight's passengers were blissfully unaware of the serious situation. The first travellers to alight the plane said they weren't told the 747-800 had suffered engine failure, simply that there was some sort of issue after hearing a loud bang mid-air. They revealed how there were gasps in the cabin when they were eventually told what had happened after landing safely. The pilot is understood to have shaken the hand of all 145 passengers as they left the aircraft. Passenger Simone Schmidt told the media: 'We were told nothing had happened, they were totally professional and we only found out when we got back on land. 'I heard just a bang and maybe a slight shudder but that was it. We had no idea at the time, we didn't realise the whole engine had gone, we just heard a bang.' Her husband Colin added: 'There were a few gasps when they told us when we were back on the runway but by then we had already landed. Even then they told us that it had been a slight malfunction.' Qantas Flight QF144 touched down in Sydney on Wednesday after mid-air scare Flight QF144 is seen past heat haze after its safe landing at the Sydney International Airport Georgia, left, said: 'You wouldn't have known anything was going on really.' Meanwhile, an English woman (right) praised the passengers on-board the flight, as well as the crew for their calmness Flight Radar indicated the flight, travelling from Auckland to Sydney, is currently over the water Emergency services at the scene at Sydney Airport after a Qantas flight issues a mayday call Police cars rushed to the airport and waited for the flight before it eventually landed safely Layla (pictured) said she thought she heard something but wasn't sure. Passengers leaving the flight said they had been unaware of what had happened. Another woman named Georgia said: 'You wouldn't have known anything was going on really. We had no clue of anything that had happened, it was good.' A passenger named Layla added: 'A lot of people said they noticed something and I thought I heard something but not recognisable.' An English woman praised the passengers on-board the flight, as well as the crew. 'It just went quiet, everybody was well behaved, everybody did what they had to do,' she said. One male passenger said: 'The fire engines were there and the pilot said 'oh we've got to park because we have an engine problem' and then when it was inspected he said 'oh no the engine has actually failed', 'When they said we could turn on our phones I turned on my phone and had 18 missed calls from my wife saying 'have you landed?', 'have you landed?' The mayday call was made approximately halfway through the flight to Sydney, that takes just over three hours. After its safe landing, Qantas said the mayday had been downgraded to a 'possible assistance needed'. A statement read: 'Qantas Flight 144, a 737 flying from Auckland to Sydney, experienced an issue with one of its engines about an hour from its destination. 'While a mayday was initially issued, this was downgraded to a PAN. The aircraft landed safely at around 3.30pm and is now being inspected by our engineers. 'The 145 passengers onboard disembarked the aircraft normally. While inflight engine shutdowns are rare, and would naturally be concerning for passengers, our pilots are trained to manage them safely and aircraft are designed to fly for an extended period on one engine.' An alert from emergency services said: 'NSW Ambulance paramedics are responding to a May Day alert issued by flight QF144 from Auckland. The plane is due at Sydney Airport.' QF144 lands in Sydney after suffering engine issues mid-flight, sparking a mayday call Passengers on board QF144 were blissfully unaware of the on-air engine failure until after they landed in Sydney The Qantas flight on approach to the airport. It appeared to land safely just before 3.30pm Concerned emergency services watch on shortly before the flight landed safely at Sydney An aviation expert said: 'QF144 has been on a gentle descent for 1.5 hours. At 21,000 feet currently doing 400knots. 'Normal would be 38,000 feet at about 450-480knots. This may suggest the plane is being nursed into Sydney.' More than 100,000 people were tracking the flight on Flight Radar as it approached Sydney. 'A mayday call is an internationally recognised, emergency or distress call,' a spokeswoman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority told AAP. The call is issued when a flight is in grave and imminent danger and needs immediate assistance, according to Airservices Australia. Once the call is issued controllers alert aviation rescue, firefighting and emergency services with details on how to respond. They also provide assistance to pilots. 'They have obviously issued a mayday which means all the emergency services are assembled at Sydney Airport,' aviation expert Neil Hansford told Sky News. 'Other traffic is diverted away to give the aircraft a clear approach into Sydney. 'Qantas has never had a passenger lost on a jet aircraft in its history. 'What you may well find when the aircraft lands is that it may be prudence, rather than an uncontrollable situation. Qantas is considered one of the world's safest airlines without a fatal crash in more than 70 years. A simple nasal spray could halve the number of children undergoing surgery to remove their tonsils, according to a new study. The research led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and published in JAMA Pediatrics on Tuesday found saline nasal spray was just as effective as anti-inflammatory steroid nasal spray in treating children with breathing difficulties. The six-week trial involved 276 children, aged three to 12 years old, administering one spray of saline solution in each nostril, daily. The study found roughly 40 per cent of children experiencing snoring or breathing difficulties had their symptoms resolved, with about half no longer needing surgery. Deputy director of the Melbourne Childrens Trials Centre at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Associate Professor Kirsten Perrett, said the results are 'fantastic' and could halve the number of children needing surgery. Over 40,000 children have a tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy in Australia every year (stock image) A study led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne found saline nasal spray (stock image of a saline spray) resolved symptoms in 40 per cent of children, with those needing surgery reduced by half Professor Perrett said the institute was prompted to find alternatives to surgery as public hospitals struggle with long waiting lists. 'Over 40,000 Australian children every year have their tonsils and adenoids removed and most of it is for this problem, for snoring,' Professor Perrett told 3AW. 'It's a very costly procedure. It's painful, can cause bleeding and is a significant burden on the hospital resources. 'We have tested a very simple and effective treatment for this problem to try and avoid surgery. 'The results are fantastic... so, that is 40 per cent of children that don't need to go on and have a tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy.' The professor urged parents concerned about their child's snoring or breathing difficulties to speak to their GP about using a nasal spray. She hopes the study encourages GPs to use saline nasal sprays as the 'first-line step' in treating children. Associate Professor Kirsten Perrett (pictured) said the results were 'fantastic' and hopes the research encourages doctors to use saline nasal sprays as the 'first-line step' in treating children with snoring or breathing difficulties Evidence shows snoring and breathing difficulties in children causes long-term problems, including impaired cognitive functions and reduced cardiovascular health. Professor Perrett said the long-term effects makes it an important condition in children that needs to be addressed. A further study is underway exploring who benefits from using anti-inflammatory nasal spray over the saline solution. Families within the Melbourne metropolitan area who have children with breathing difficulties and are interested in being involved in the 'MIST+' trial are encouraged to sign up on the institute's website. A man accused of bashing an Indigenous teenager to death with a metal pole as he walked home from school in Perth has faced a court. Jack Steven James Brearley, 21, was charged with murder over the alleged attack on Cassius Turvey, 15, on October 13. Brearley briefly appeared on Wednesday via video-link in the Western Australian Magistrates Court. Dressed in a green tracksuit, he confirmed his identity from Casuarina Prison in Perth's south but said little else. Lawyer Ben Stanwix told the court the case was ready to proceed to a disclosure committal hearing and asked for a 10-week adjournment, which was granted. Lawyers defending 21-year-old Jack Brearley (pictured), charged with the murder of Indigenous teen Cassius Turvey, were granted a 10-week break while evidence is transferred Cassius (pictured), 15, was allegedly chased and beaten with a metal pole by his friends, succumbing to the injuries 10 days later Noongar Yamatji boy Cassius died in hospital 10 days after he was allegedly violently beaten, while walking home from school in Middle Swan with friends. It's alleged Brearley chased the youths before attacking Cassius, leaving him with serious head injuries. Prosecutors allege that Brearley chased Cassius and his friends as they were walking home from school before beating him with a metal pole, suspected to be from a shopping trolley. Cassius was taken to a hospital with serious head injuries and discharged five days later. However, Cassius then suffered two strokes and a seizure just hour after being discharged and was rushed back to hospital. His death triggered an outpouring of grief and anger across the nation, with some Indigenous leaders condemning the alleged attack as cowardly and racist. Cassius has been remembered as a loving son and a role model to his friends. He had started his own lawn mowing business and was invited at age 11 to deliver an acknowledgement of country at the WA parliament. Brearley has also been charged with bashing one of Cassius's friends, who had been on crutches. The 21-year-old was remanded in custody until the matter returns to court on March 29. Some parts of Queensland have received more than 500mm of rain A mischievous kangaroo has had enough of Queensland's wet weather, caught on camera hopping between indoor bars on a holiday island. The intruding 'roo bounced its way between holidaymakers at a Hamilton Island eatery in the Whitsundays. The marsupial appeared to be seeking somewhere dry and warm when it was first spotted crouching in a corner. In a video taken by a patron, one man tried to approach the Aussie icon as it hid behind an indoor plant drenched from the rain. The kangaroo then darted between tables, almost knocking over pot plants and sending people enjoying an afternoon beverage scrambling. A mischievous kangaroo has had enough of Queensland's monsoonal rain - caught on camera hopping around a bar on Hamilton Island, in the Whitsundays In Queensland heavy rainfall and flooding continues to impact the northern and central regions, with ongoing minor to major flooding. Flooding has cut off some towns in Queensland with record rainfall totals in some places. At Proserpine Airport, a 42-year-old record was broken when 678mm fell in the 72 hours to 9am Tuesday, while Finch Hatton, inland from Mackay, recorded 791mm of rain over three days. Since 9am last Friday, Hamilton Island has been smashed with around 600mm of rain - more than twice the average rainfall for January. The Bureau recently warned all Queenslanders to be on high alert for cyclones up until May. Weatherzone's Ben Domensino told Daily Mail Australia the rain will continue in the state for at least a couple more days. 'Rain and thunderstorms will continue over northern parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia during the first half of this week as a broad low-pressure trough lingers over northern Australia,' Mr Domensino said. Since 9am on Friday, Hamilton Island has been smashed with around 600mm of rain - more than twice the average rainfall for January The Bureau says there is 'possible rainfall' for every day in the Whitsundays this week. More than 80 per cent of Hamilton Island is a natural tropical bushland that is home to a range of wildlife such as kangaroos and wallabies The Bureau says there is 'possible rainfall' for every day in the Whitsundays this week. More than 80 per cent of Hamilton Island is a natural tropical bushland that is home to a range of wildlife such as kangaroos and wallabies. Children's toys, board games, and odd pieces of furniture have been seen strewn across the driveway of a beachside home owned by a man accused of murdering his wife. Business development manager Steven Barker, 74, was charged with murdering his wife Christine after police were called to their home on Bronte Road, Bronte in Sydney's eastern suburbs on October 6. Officers found his wife, also aged 74, outside their home with critical injuries. She was rushed to St Vincent's Hospital but was unable to be saved. Family members have since cleared out the home, three months after it was declared a crime scene and cordoned off with police tape. Various items were seen tossed across the nature strip just after New Year's Day in an apparent sign the family is cleaning up for 2023. Among the items were DVDs, plush toys, books for adults and children, cushions and chairs. Steven Barker, 74, has been charged with the murder of his wife Christine, who was found with critical injuries outside their home in Bronte in October Children's toys, books and odd pieces of furniture were seen lying across the nature strip Family members have since cleared out the home with various items seen strewn across the driveway earlier this month Inside the carport where the family's Mazda once sat was instead piles of old furniture, with couch pillows, rugs, a mattress and a dusty mirror all tossed carelessly into the corner. Wooden chairs, a glass table, a towel and bins overflowing with rubbish were also seen towards the back of the garage. The Barker family home, a California-style bungalow less than 600m back from Bronte Beach, was last sold in 1983 for $150,000, according to property records. Real estate data showed the house is worth at least $4.7million given its location in the middle of Australia's most expensive real estate market. Houses on Bronte Beach alone can fetch up to $25million. Police officers set up a crime scene at the Bronte home after the alleged murder took place Locals were on their morning commute when they saw the crime scene set up at the home Barker worked as a business development manager for telecommunications network installation company Schokman, according to his LinkedIn. The 74-year-old is currently behind bars and has been since his arrest in October. His case was mentioned at the Waverley Local Court on December 8. There was no application for bail and it was refused. Detectives scoured of the multimillion dollar home as officers worked on the crime scene At an earlier hearing, Barker's Legal Aid lawyer argued he would face hardship in custody, would need medical assistance, and that he was willing to comply with multiple bail conditions. He said the nature of the alleged offence was due to 'unravelling of the relationship at home'. Images from the scene on the night of the alleged attack show the elderly man, with grey hair, a beard and glasses, being led from the house with his hands behind his back. Blood stains were visible on the sleeve of his t-shirt and there appeared to be a bruise under his left eye. Barker will next face court on February 23. It is said he fell from a public walkway outside his room in underwear and a t-shirt His family claimed authorities are trying to cover up murder by cremating him The family of a public defender who mysteriously died after falling from the third story of a hotel in Mexico have suggested authorities are trying to cover up a murder by cremating his body. Elliot Blair, 33, was celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife in the resort town of Rosarito, 20 miles south of the US border, when he fell to his death at around 1.15 am on Saturday morning. Soon after the incident local news websites reported that 'authorities' considered his death to be an 'unfortunate accident' and that he was drunk at the time. However his family have said that he was not intoxicated and was in fact discovered on the ground in clothes he would have been sleeping in - underwear and a t-shirt. Blair was staying in a room on the third floor of Hotel Las Rocas with his wife Kim, who is also a public defender, when he fell from the public walkway outside his room and not from its private balcony. The couple has stayed that same room on 'multiple occasions' in the past five years, his family said. It is unclear where his wife was when he fell, but his family said she had been provided multiple versions of what happened and that Mexican authorities have not been forthcoming. The family of Elliot Blair (right) , 33, who mysteriously died after falling from of a hotel walkway in Mexico have suggested authorities are trying to cover up a murder by cremating his body. He is pictured with his wife Kim Blair was celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife in the resort town of Rosarito when he fell to his death from the third floor of his hotel 'The family, which has extensive training in criminal law, wholeheartedly believes that based on their initial investigation, that Elliot was the victim of a brutal crime,' wrote the family's attorney David Scarsone in a statement. According to the family the 'Mexican authorities' that were cited in initial news reports have not been in touch with them directly and 'little to no' investigation was done by the Rosarito Beach Police Department.' The facts of the case according to Blair's family: 1. Elliot and Kim had stayed at Las Rocas Resort and Spa on multiple occasions in the past five years. 2. Elliot was a fluent Spanish-speaker. 3. Additionally, Elliot and Kim had stayed in this specific room on the third floor on multiple occasions. 4. Elliot was very familiar with the layout of Las Rocas Resort and Spa, as well as its hallways and walkways. 5. The incident did not occur off their room's private balcony, nor any balcony, for that matter. 6. The incident occurred in an open-air walkway located outside the front door of their room at Las Rocas Resort and Spa. 7. Elliot was not intoxicated at the time of this incident. 8. Elliot was found in his underwear, his sleeping tee shirt, and socks. 9. Little to no investigation into the circumstances into Elliot's death was conducted by the Rosarito Beach Police Department. 10. Due to the insufficiency of the investigation, the family feels compelled to conduct their own private investigation in search for the truth. Advertisement 'No one from the Rosarito Beach Police Department, their district attorney's office, or any other Mexican official have reached out and spoken to them directly,' read the statement. According to Scarsone the only contact the family has had with local authorities came through the coroner's office, which had not completed a toxicology report as of Monday at 2pm. It was also suggested the funeral home that has Blair's body has been pushing to cremate him, thereby eliminating the possibility of a proper death investigation. 'Yesterday, during a conversation with the funeral home it was suggested he be cremated and the family insisted his body not be cremated in order to conduct a through, complete, independent investigation,' the family said. At around 1.15am on January 14 authorities were notified that Blair fell from the balcony of Hotel Las Rocas in the town of Rosarito, just south of Tijuana and off the Tijuana-Ensenada highway. Blair was a public defender for the Orange County Public Defender's office. He and his wife Kim were celebrating a year since their marriage in California in January 2022. Local news site Patrulla 646 Codigo Rojo reported that hotel staff told authorities of the accident and that when police arrived, Blair was lying face down and unconscious. It was said that when paramedics arrived he was found to be dead. A Facebook page dedicated to sharing news from the Rosarito area, Rosarito en la Noticia, shared an account of what happened and noted that information was being withheld by local authorities and cited reporting in Californian newspaper The Orange County Register. The first suggestion that Blair was murdered seems to have been published by The OC Register on Saturday afternoon. The claim in not attributed but reporters spoke with Orange County Public Defender Martin Schwarz. Schwarz told the outlet: 'We have been in communication with the family and are doing what we can to support them in this difficult time, including working with local and federal officials to help provide them with answers.' A worker at the Los Rocas Resort and Spa found California public defender Elliot Blair lying on the ground around 1:15 am Saturday. According to his family he was found in a t-shirt and underwear His family insist he was not drunk when he fell from the walkway in the early hours of Saturday morning The couple has stayed that same room in Hotel LAs Rocas on 'multiple occasions' in the past five years, his family said 'Here in Rosarito, the information was not released,' wrote the author of the Rosarito en la Noticia post. 'An employee of the hotel reported the unfortunate event to the authorities, who took it upon themselves to hide information,' they wrote in Spanish. 'Elliot was a loving husband, son, and brother. Elliot's tragic, untimely, and suspicious death has left his family and community with a huge hole in their hearts that will never be repaired,' wrote Scarsone. A dog owner has received a disturbing note from a neighbour threatening to poison their pooch after the animal 'barked all night'. The pet lover took to social media on Monday posting a photo of the hand-written message they received in their letterbox at Mildura Drive, Helensvale on the Gold Coast. The resident called out the disgruntled note writer for their 'criminal act' of threatening the dog, while social media users agreed the letter showed 'disgraceful behaviour' from 'cowards'. 'Your dog is a f****** joke,' the nasty note read. 'We have had to listen to this piece of s*** bark all night. It is now 2am and it's still barking. 'We will be emailing council. 'By the way it would be terrible if it got sick'. The resident called out the disgruntled note writer for their 'criminal act' of threatening the dog, while social media users agreed the letter (pictured) showed 'disgraceful behaviour' from 'cowards' The pet owner also claimed it was not her dog that made noise all night but another neighbour's pet. 'This is not our dog barking at 2am there is one behind us that barks non stop,' they wrote. 'And I would appreciate if they would not threaten our dog getting poisoned. This is a criminal offence.' Angry online commenters advised the dog owner to call the police and accused the letter's author of being a coward. 'Disgraceful behaviour and that is definitely a threat! What cowards to not even speak to you in person!' one wrote. 'Be taking that note to the cops if I were you. That's disgusting and it's a threat to hurt an animal,' said another. 'I had a very awful note left on a visitors car today also. Im wondering if its the same person!' a neighbour who lived in the same street said. 'Some people are spineless. I get that the barking would be frustrating, but get the facts right and then go speak to the person like an adult,' another local said. The pet lover took to social media on Monday posting a photo of the hand-written message they received in their letterbox at Mildura Drive, Helensvale on the Gold Coast (stock image) But others devised some ways of getting back at the complaining neighbour. 'Dogs bark. Should find out who they are and write a note saying that your pen and paper has kept us awake all night can you use a pencil or something quieter,' the comment read. 'The main issue is people not training their pets and just banishing them to the back yard,' one of the commenters said. The City of Gold Coast Council advised those who hear noise from dogs in the community should not try to 'punish' or 'shout' at the pets. 'Talk to the dog owner about the problem and give them time to solve it,' it said. 'It may take the owner some time to change the dog's behaviour. 'If the problem continues and can't be solved by talking to the dog owner, you can report the problem to us, and we will investigate.' A Minnesota police chief was forced to apologize for posting an image of a 'thin blue line' flag to his department's Facebook page last week, after community members aired complaints labeling the symbol a representation of 'extremist views.' The flag, a black and white rendition of the American flag with a blue stripe running just under the stars, represents men and women in blue standing as a line between law and order. However, more recently, the symbol has been deemed divisive by some, as its meaning has shifted from one of nonpartisan support to one synonymous with the far-right and even white supremacists The symbol subsequently sparked outrage when it appeared in a January 9 social media post from the Golden Valley Police Department, as the force celebrated National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. After being spurred to delete the post, Green wrote in a follow-up post last week that the image was intended as a token of thanks to its 21 officers, and that its message had been misinterpreted by citizens who reportedly called in to complain. Golden Valley Police Chief Virgil Green was forced to apologize for posting an image of a 'thin blue line' flag to his department's Facebook page last week, after a community member issued a complaint labeling the symbol a representation of 'extremist views.' The flag, a black and white rendition of the American flag with a blue stripe running just under the stars, represents men and women in blue standing as a line between law and order Despite this, the chief - the town's first black police chief - acknowledged the flag had offended some and could thus be deemed offensive. With this in mind, Green - who was hired months ago as part of a city effort to address supposed racism present in the department - profusely apologized for publishing the seemingly harmless symbol. 'For many, the thin blue line flag has always represented a way to honor the commitment we make as first responders to protect our community,' Green wrote in an online post penned to the community's roughly 22,000 residents last week. 'It is disappointing that in recent years the flag's positive intention has been tarnished with divisive undertones and actions,' the chief went on to add. 'We do not want to promote these negative connotations.' However, more recently, the symbol has been deemed divisive by many, as its meaning has shifted from one of nonpartisan support to one synonymous with the far-right and even white supremacists The apology came after the post reportedly was bombarded with comments on the post complaining about the use of the flag. Green, who started his tenure as chief last summer, said that while he considered the flag to be apolitical, he understood that that may not be the case for every citizen of the Minnesota suburb. 'In the future, the Golden Valley Police Department will use images that do not bring unwarranted controversy between the police and the public,' his apology post promised. Despite this, the chief - the town's first black police chief brought on to address claims of racism in the Minneapolis suburb - acknowledged the flag had offended some and could thus be deemed offensive Previously the Chief of an Oklahoma suburb outside Oklahoma City, Green was brought on to the force last September as part of a months-long effort to address racism in the small community. Just a few weeks prior to Green's thin blue line post, Golden Valley released the results of a sprawling internal investigation into 'anti-racism' efforts from within the city's police department. The probe, carried out over the course of nine months by a private law firm in Minneapolis and completed in December, found that that there had been resistance to efforts to instill the non-racist ideology from officers on the force. The tax-dollar-funded investigation was conducted at the behest of Mayor Shep Harris, and followed allegations of racism and officer misconduct that surfaced during the search for a new police chief. That search culminated with Green's hiring last summer. The backlash against Green's post - which proponents argued was simply a show of police pride and solidarity - comes as the Los Angeles Police Department elected to remove all images depicting the 'thin blue line flag' from its stations citywide. The backlash against Green's post - which proponents argued was simply a show of police pride and solidarity - comes as the Los Angeles Police Department elected to remove all images depicting the 'thin blue line flag' from its stations citywide The tax-dollar-funded investigation was conducted at the behest of Mayor Shep Harris, and followed allegations of racism and officer misconduct that surfaced during the search for a new police chief The nixings - which have been criticized by lawmakers and former officers - also came as the result of a complaint from a community member who insisted the flag represents extremist views. In a statement eerily similar to Green's last week, LAPD Chief Michel Moore told citizens of the City of Angels that although he views the flag from a different perspective than the complainant, the flag's 'display in our public lobbies can be divisive.' 'It's unfortunate that extremist groups have hijacked the use of the thin blue line flag to symbolize their undemocratic, racist and bigoted views,' Moore said. 'Flags serve as powerful symbols with specific meanings. The thin blue line flag, to me, presents the honor, valor, dedication and sacrifice of law enforcement to protect our communities. 'Tragically, that view is not universally held and others have been able to persuade the public it symbolizes racist, bigoted and oppressive values.' Green, who started his tenure as chief last summer, said that while he considered the flag to be apolitical, he understood that that may not be the case for every citizen of the suburb Despite the change, the chief reiterated that employees and staff are still allowed to have images or objects depicting the thin blue line flag in their workspace, locker door, and service vehicles, as well as at memorials for fallen officers. Moore said: 'Given our lobbies should be places that people feel safe, free of political ideology and welcoming, it remains our long-standing policy that only official items be displayed.' Personal messages reveal a dispute over money may lie at the heart of a wild street brawl between two of Australia's best-known body builders. Hossein 'Yakiboy' Balapour appeared to viciously attack personal trainer Marven Yacoub while the two were standing amid a group of men alongside a busy road in the inner Sydney suburb of Zetland last week. After Balapour rained down blows and kicks, he pulled out what appeared a long thin weapon to strike Yacoub and pursued him through traffic to land several blows until the other men were able to intervene. Yacoub later released a WhatsApp exchange between him and Balapour where he futilely seeks money money he says is owed to him. 'Hey bro you need to transfer $2110 this week,' Yacoub writes on December 20. The man with a 'Lamborghini body' replies: 'Hey brother yes but I do half because I have to pay $1200 to my lawyer.' He goes on to say he will send as soon as he has the money. Following his brawl with fellow body builder Hossein 'Yakiboy' Balapour, Marven Yacoub has released message indicating a money dispute between the two Balapour (pictured) appeared to chase fellow bodybuilder Yacoub with a weapon during their wild street brawl It's been a dramatic falling out between Balapour and Yacoub (pictured together in 2019) who previously seemed to have a close friendship Ok brother no problem,' Yacoub replies. 'Thank you brother,' Balapour adds. But on December 21 Yacoub send another volley of messages. 'How did it go today?' 'What happened bro?' Yacoub responds: 'I will call you after the gym.' Later Yacoub superimposed some commentary over the exchange. 'Messages speak for themselves,' he writes. 'Don't believe what you see on socials. Money is the root of all evil.' The Iranian refugee has more than 350,000 fans and regularly brags about his 'Lamborghini body Hossein 'Yakiboy' Balapour (right in the grey top) got into an altercation with Marven Yacoub (centre in the black t-shirt) on a busy road in an inner Sydney suburb Yacoub followed up the screengrab with two messages. 'I don't need to show any more messages,' he writes. 'Moral of the story is. People quickly forget what you do for them. But don't believe the hype of what people show they have on socials.' The second message insists 'It's not in my nature to do something like this.' 'But when you get betrayed by someone who you helped at they're lowest because you considered them a brother when no one else had a hand out for,' he writes 'Then you get sh*t on. There's no betrayal worse than when you do good from your heart and get spat on.' Yacoub followed up the screengrabs of his WhatsApp exchange with some bitter reciminations It has been a dramatic falling out for the pair who previously posed for photos together and described themselves as 'brothers'. Balapour is currently out of custody on bail over an unrelated assault charge that he has pled not guilty to. The heavily tattooed Iranian refugee has more than 350,000 fans and regularly brags about his 'Lamborghini body' and describes himself as the 'Muslim Soldier'. Yacoub, from south-west Sydney, narrowly avoided going to jail over supplying steroids in 2021. He was accused of running a secret steroid ring while publicly promoting legal health supplements on Instagram. Yacoub was sentenced to two years and nine months after pleading guilty to four counts of supplying a prohibited drug but was allowed to serve the sentence as an intensive corrections order in the community. 'Possible' bloody residue was allegedly discovered among a cache of weapons seized from the home of the accused high country killer, a forensics officer has alleged. Dozens of weapons, including knives, firearms, swords and a pickaxe, were seized from the Caroline Springs home of Gregory Lynn, 56, on November 22, 2021, police documents tendered to Melbourne court revealed. The raid occurred just hours after the former airline pilot was arrested, camping near Arbuckle in Victoria's northeast, over the alleged murders of missing campers Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73. Gregory Lynn (court sketch) appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court this week for the alleged murder of Russell Hill and Carol Clay nearly three years ago Mr Lynn has denied murdering the pair in March 2020, and lawyer Dermot Dann KC said the allegations against his client are 'heavily in dispute'. Weapons allegedly seized from Mr Lynn's home include a semiautomatic pistol, two Ruger revolvers, a Winchester semiautomatic rifle, two 12-gauge shotguns, two lever-action rifles, 23 knives, two swords, two hatchets, a pickaxe and 'numerous' metal cases of ammunition. Mr Lynn, an avid camper and hunter, is alleged to have competed and been accepted as a member at the Little River Raiders Single Action Club just days before Mr Hill and Ms Clay vanished. In a signed statement provided to the Melbourne Magistrates' Court, forensic officer Mark Gellatly said the weapons were analysed for biological material. He told the court 'possible' blood residue was allegedly detected on five knives and a hatchet, but this could not be verified. 'Further testing could not confirm the presence of blood in these samples, they were not examined further,' he said. Mr Lynn's employment with Jetstar was terminated after he was charged over the alleged murder (pictured, Mr Lynn) Melbourne Magistrates' Court, forensic officer Mark Gellatly told the court 'possible' blood residue was allegedly detected on five knives and a hatchet, but this could not be verified (pictured, a stock image) Mr Lynn faced the Melbourne Magistrates' Court this week for a committal hearing which will decide if there's sufficient evidence for him to stand trial in the Supreme Court. In Mr Gellatly's statement, he wrote he had been told investigators were working on a theory that the childhood sweethearts were allegedly killed after Mr Lynn became 'annoyed' by Mr Hill's drone. They had travelled to the Wonnangatta Valley in the Victorian Alps on March 19, 2020, to enjoy the 'solace of camping' and spend time together, according to a summary of the case against Mr Lynn. In Mr Gellatly's statement he wrote he had been told investigators were working on a theory that the childhood sweethearts were allegedly killed after Mr Lynn became 'annoyed' by Mr Hill's drone (pictured, a drone similar to the one used by Russell Hill - the drone he was reported to have been using has never been found') Witnesses, giving evidence to the court, said they saw the pair arrive at Bucks Camp in the early afternoon. Robert Williams, a contractor spraying blackberries at the time for Parks Victoria, said he 'definitely' saw the pair arrive in the valley and described Mr Hill as a 'grumpy old bugger' who was 'in a hurry to get to his camp'. Police will allege Mr Lynn was already present at the campsite, having arrived the previous morning. The case against the former pilot alleges a confrontation with the campers on the evening of March 20 led him to kill Mr Hill and Ms Clay with 'murderous intent'. The case against Mr Lynn alleges he set fire to Mr Hill (pictured, right) and Ms Clay's (pictured, left) camp to destroy evidence before loading their bodies into the trailer of his car Mr Hill and Ms Clay were allegedly murdered at their campsite in the Wonnangatta Valley (pictured, drone footage of the area) Mr Gellatly said police informed him they were investigating if Mr Lynn had become 'annoyed' with Mr Hill's drone in the lead up to the alleged murder. He said he was told Mr Hill and Mr Lynn allegedly 'wrestled' over a shotgun, leading the weapon to accidentally discharge a hit Ms Clay in the head. The pair allegedly continued to fight until Mr Hill was fatally stabbed. Before the court, crown prosecutor John Dickie said this account 'might not actually reflect' how police intend to put the case against Mr Lynn. Mr Williams, who was camping in the area after work, told the court he allegedly observed a drone flying around the valley around 4.30pm on March 19. The case against the former pilot alleges a confrontation with the campers on the evening of March 20 led him to kill Mr Hill and Ms Clay with 'murderous intent' (pictured, the burnt out campsite of the couple) 'I could just hear this strange noise, I looked up and could see this drone coming up the river,' he said. 'It was filming me, not a problem, I waved to it. It went over the other campsites I noticed.' Under questioning by Mr Lynn's lawyer, Dermot Dann KC, Mr Williams conceded he thought it was 'rude', saying people went to the area for a 'peaceful camp'. He did not know who was piloting the drone. Mr Williams said he watched the drone for about 35 or 40 minutes flying around other campsites before disappearing. He said it appeared to have come from the direction of Bucks Camp. The case against Mr Lynn alleges he set fire to Mr Hill and Ms Clay's camp to destroy evidence before loading their bodies into the trailer of his car. Police will allege Mr Lynn returned to the area in May and November 2020 where he is accused of trying to 'destroy' the couple's remains by setting them on fire (pictured, the burnt out remains of the couple's camping area. Remains of the pair were found buried near Dargo - about 40km from the campsite) He allegedly dumped them in bushland and 'likely' discarded Mr Hill's drone, car keys and the couples' mobile phone. 'To date, none of these items have been recovered,' the case summary alleges. Mr Lynn's vehicle, a dark blue Nissan Patrol, was allegedly caught by an automatic number plate recognition camera leaving the National Park about 9.45am on March 21. Police will allege he returned to the area in May and November 2020 where he is accused of trying to 'destroy' the couple's remains by setting them on fire. Remains of the pair were found buried near Dargo - about 40km from the campsite - in November 2021. The former pilot has denied killing Mr Hill and Ms Clay and his response to the charges has never been aired in public. The committal hearing will hear evidence from three witnesses on March 23. Russia has deployed its lethal anti-aircraft systems around Moscow in a sign that Vladimir Putin is taking precautions against a potential strikes from Ukraine. Putin has now deployed Russia's fearsome S-400 defence missiles to two locations in the capital amid fears Kyiv could launch attacks on the city. The S-400 'Triumf' air defence system is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range missiles. It can also be used against ground objectives. Its deployment to Moscow comes after two suspected Ukrainian drone strikes hit two air bases deep inside Russia in December, damaging two nuclear-capable bombers that were thought to be preparing for an attack on Ukraine. Russia is openly deploying its lethal anti-aircraft systems around Moscow in a sign that Vladimir Putin is taking precautions against a potential strikes from Ukraine in retaliation to deadly strikes The S-400 'Triumf' air defence system is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range missiles. It can also be used against ground objectives Putin has now deployed Russia's fearsome S-400 defence missiles to the capital amid fears Ukraine could launch attacks on the city THE RUSSIAN S-400 ANTI AIRCRAFT MISSILE: ITS VITAL STATISTICS Cost: $400m per launcher group (Eight launchers, 112 missiles, and a command unit) Missile Range: 248 miles Missile Speed: 11,000mph Simultaneously tracking: 80 targets Advertisement One S-400 air defence system, which has a range of 248 miles, has been deployed in fields belonging to the Russian State Agricultural University in the northwest of Moscow. Another has been deployed to the Losiny Ostrov National Park near Sokolniki district in the northeast of the city. The S-400 is capable of shooting down up to 80 targets simultaneously and is said to be able to travel at a speed of more than 10,000mph. Residents say the deployments are new in Moscow, and highlights Putin's fears of a hit on his largest city. It comes after two suspected Ukrainian drone strikes hit two air bases in Saratov and Ryazan in December. The Engels-2 airbase, near the city of Saratov, was hit by an explosion in December in a strike that left two Tu-95 bombers - which have been used to carry out airstrikes on Ukraine's infrastructure - damaged. The base is some 450 miles from the nearest point in Ukraine. Another explosion hit Russia's Dyagilevo military base near the city of Ryazan, about 470 miles from the Ukrainian border, killing three people after a fuel truck detonated. Putin has now deployed Russia's fearsome S-400 defence missiles to the capital amid fears Ukraine could launch attacks on the city Despite multiple strikes by Russia on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, Moscow has not yet been hit. Meanwhile, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Wednesday that Russia and Ukraine had exchanged fire on the eastern frontline, where neither has advanced much in recent months. Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces pounded the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where nearly 30 settlements were shelled, including the towns of Soledar and Bakhmut as well as the village of Klishchiivka, the military's report said. Ukrainian forces repelled attacks in Bakhmut and the village of Klishchiivka just south of it in Donetsk, it added. The S-400 (pictured in Crimea in 2018) is capable of shooting down up to 80 targets simultaneously and is said to be able to travel at a speed of more than 10,000mph Russia claims to have captured the small mining town of Soledar near Bakhmut, a focal point of recent fighting, but Kyiv says its forces are still fighting there. 'The situation is complicated. Fighting is still going on in the streets of Soledar and Ukrainian forces are fighting hard. Part of the town in occupied,' Petro Kuzyk, commander of the 'Freedom' battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, was quoted as saying by the Espreso TV news website. Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in a YouTube video that eyewitnesses had noted Russian soldiers at the railway station in the town of Sil - just north of Soledar. The number of Wagner fighters-for-hire, who played a major role in recent advances in Donbas, is much smaller, with Russian soldiers and conscripts now spearheading attacks, he added. Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to visit St Petersburg on Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the day Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city - then known as Leningrad - and break a Nazi blockade that had lasted since September 1941. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a domestic news agency that there was no truth to rumours Putin would announce changes to the war effort such as a general mobilisation. Probe has been launched by sheriff as family say Mr Roan will be 'sadly missed' He died after the incident on June 18 last year at family farm near Dalbeattie Farmer Derek Roan, 71, was killed by his cows at his farm in southern Scotland The death of a farmer who appeared on BBC documentary This Farming life will be probed by a sheriff after he was killed by one of his own cows. Derek Roan, 71, died in hospital after a horror incident at his family farm in southern Scotland last year. Emergency crews were called to the scene at Barnbarroch Farm, near Dalbeattie, Dumfries and Galloway, on June 18 and took the grandfather-of-six to Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, but he died from his injuries. A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) will now examine the circumstances around Mr Roan's death. Farmer Derek Roan, 71, who appeared on BBC documentary This Farming Life died in hospital after he was killed by one of his own cows His loved ones confirmed his death and spoke of their shock in a statement issued via the family firm Roan's Dairy, saying he was a 'beloved husband' to wife Kathleen and a 'devoted father' to their three children. They said: 'We are totally devastated and still in shock at what has happened and it will take some time for us to come to terms of not having him around. 'All Derek's hard work was for his two passions in life - his family and his farms. 'Derek was well known within the farming community and many other circles. He will be sadly missed by all.' Mr Roan, who appeared in the BBC documentary about farming, was chairman of Colvend and Southwick Community Council. Vice-chairman Simon Pain said at the time his friend had died from a 'stock-related injury' and said the farmer was 'well liked and well respected in our community', describing him as a 'leading light'. Mr Roan, who had featured in the documentary series about farming, died after being injured by one of his own cows at the farm in near Dalbeattie, Dumfries and Galloway on June 18. Pictured: Cows at Roan's Dairy farm in Scotland NFU (National Farmers' Union) Scotland president Martin Kennedy said the union had lost a 'real stalwart'. Regional chairman Colin Ferguson said his loss had 'sent shock waves through the region and beyond'. The Roan family has been milking pedigree Holstein cows at Barnbarroch for six generations. They run two dairy farms in the Stewartry at Barnbarroch and Boreland of Colvend and also operate a milk delivery service across Dumfries and Galloway. The Health and Safety Executive launched an investigation following the tragedy. Police Scotland said they were not treating the death as suspicious, and a report was submitted to the Procurator Fiscal. This week, Les Brown, Procurator Fiscal for the Dumfries and Galloway district, issued notice of an FAI, with a first hearing to be held at Dumfries Sheriff Court in March. Museumgoers had accused the feature of peddling 'propaganda' over science The Science Museum has taken down a trans-inclusive display featuring a fake penis and chest-binding equipment after complaints were lodged over its contents. The sex and gender gallery describes transitioning from the 'wrong body' as a 'hero's journey' and gender characteristics as 'difficult to define' and not always in line with 'your biological sex'. Quotes from a transgender person were also included that described being 'born in the wrong body' - a concept that trans groups are increasingly distancing themselves from. Several museumgoers, including Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, accused the Boy Or Girl? feature of peddling 'propaganda' over biology, reports the Telegraph. The controversial sex and gender gallery describes transitioning from the 'wrong body' as a 'hero's journey' and gender characteristics as 'difficult to define' and not always in line with 'your biological sex' The Science Museum (above) has taken down a trans-inclusive display featuring a fake penis and chest-binding equipment after complaints were lodged over its contents The now-empty display featured a fake penis, a controversial compression vest to flatten the chest and hormone-inducing testosterone patches. Baroness Nicholson wrote to the museum's chairman, Sir Ian Blatchford, to argue the Boy Or Girl? gallery 'promotes social and medical transition in a way that is not neutral'. The exhibit also contains an information panel which states gender 'is more difficult to define' than sex. It goes on to say: 'Your gender identity is your sense of yourself as male or female, or, for some people neither or both. It may not match your biological sex.' Quotes from a transgender person named 'Alex' who described being 'born in the wrong body' were also included in the cabinet. Millions of people visit the free-to-enter Science Museum each year, many of them schoolchildren visiting for educational tours. In a 2016 blog post, former head of exhibitions and programmes, Alex Tyrrell responded to a brewing online row over the controversial Boy Or Girl? display. 'The thinking behind Who am I? and the sex and gender display in particular was to communicate the latest research clearly and accurately, but we also believe that featuring contributions from other viewpoints and disciplines is essential when examining a question as complex and profoundly personal', he wrote. 'The idea of Who am I? was always to raise questions. We present issues in ways that provoke debate, however we would never want to compromise the accuracy of the content on display.' Several museumgoers, including Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, accused the Boy Or Girl? feature of peddling 'propaganda' over biology Scientists were also left confused over a 'sex-o-meter' included in the exhibit that could apparently reveal whether a person's brain is male or female. Researchers were left questioning its scientific value, while others took to social media to slam its 'antiquated gender stereotypes'. Dr Joseph Devlin, head of experimental psychology at University College London, told CNN he was 'surprised' at the exhibit. He said: 'The Science Museum has an impressive track record and I really respect their work in science communication. This particular exhibit is not at all representative of the work they do.' A spokesman for the Science Museum said: 'The display is one of several in the Who Am I? Gallery, created in 2000, that were taken out last year as part of ongoing work to update exhibits across the museum to ensure they reflect current scientific research. 'The entire case will be refreshed with more up to date research informing the display, and this work is due to be completed early next month. 'As we are also moving an artwork from another area of the museum into the gallery and making some necessary cosmetic updates, the gallery will temporarily close while these updates are made.' It comes as storms descend over Westminster and Holyrood as a furious row continues to brew over Nicola Sturgeon's controversial gender law plans. MPs lined up to support Scottish Secretary Alister Jack in the Commons yesterday as he laid out the reasons for wielding an unprecedented veto over the SNP's gender identity shake-up. Mr Jack said the decision was not taken 'lightly' but Westminster could not accept the 'adverse' impact on UK-wide equalities law. Ms Sturgeon has warned it is 'inevitable' that she will seek a judicial review of the move, branding it a 'full-frontal attack' on Holyrood. Critics have accused the First Minister of seeking a 'constitutional fight' to gain political ground as she continues to wage Scotland's independence campaign. Bosses are taking to Instagram or Linkedin to speak to employees as an increasing number of young Generation Z workers do not check their emails. Chief executive of one of the world's biggest IT companies Wipro, Thierry Delaporte has spoken about how employers are having to rethink the way they communicate with their staff. Mr Delaporte said he no longer used email when getting in touch with staff because he knew many would simply not read the message. Instead, he adopts a more modern approach. According to the Telegraph, Mr Delaporte, speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, said: 'To speak to my employees I go on Instagram or Linkedin. It works better. Chief executive of one of the world's biggest IT companies Wipro, Thierry Delaporte 'They don't even check emails sometimes. We have about 20,000 who we know don't check even one email per month. They're 25, they don't care. 'They don't go on their emails, they go on Snapchat, they go on all these things.' Mr Delaporte, of Wipro, which employs 4,500 people in the UK and 260,000 around the world, said around 10 per cent of his staff 'don't even check one email per month'. He spoke about a 'wake up call' for employers - and amid a culture of working from home he thinks about how to make sure he understands employees who are much younger than him. The chief executive of video platform Vimeo Anjali Sud backed Mr Delaporte's comments by comparing emails to outdated instruction manuals in modern society. Speaking on a panel at Davos, she said it was becoming more difficult to communicate in today's digital world. Employers are having a 'wake up call' about how young Gen Z workers communicate (stock image) Workplace solutions expert Adam Butler, Founder and CEO of Officeology, previously took a deep dive into the video-sharing platform TikTok in an attempt to understand young people's views on common workplace behaviours. Speaking to FEMAIL last year he explained common pet peeves for Gen Z workers. According to Gen Zs on TikTok all work-related slacks and texts should be as short as possible, with many suggesting a sentence is enough and even half sentences are completely appropriate. 'Do not send me paragraphs, I don't have tome to read an essay,' is the message one young boss wants to put out. 'Be brief - be bright - be gone,' she suggests in her video where she explains anything lengthy gives her the ick. 'I don't have the time or the energy, or frankly the interest in reading paragraphs'. 'Chats are for at most a sentence at best a gif,' another said. 'A project manager sent me three paragraphs of notes that all boiled down to, put a dash in the title on the document,' added another. Another woman shared her ruling on wordcounts: 'Listen - word in chats, sentences in emails, paragraphs in meetings.' Mr Butler admitted it can be difficult finding the right route here as 'everyone has their preferred method of communication'. 'Work together on deciding what works best for the both of you,' he suggested. The husband of missing Massachusetts mother Ana Walshe will appear in court today charged with her murder, nearly three weeks after she vanished on New Year's Day. Brian Walshe will appear at Quincy District Court in Norfolk County today, where more details about Ana's shocking disappearance will emerge, after he was held on a $500,000 bail yesterday. Prosecutors have for weeks been building a case against Brian, who bought hundreds of dollars' worth of cleaning supplies after his wife vanished, with evidence also said to include blood found in the couple's basement, and a bloody hatchet. Ana's body has still not been found, despite intensive searches of the family home in Cohasset, where she lived with her husband and three sons, and the surrounding area. Brian Walshe is already in custody on charges of misleading police. He is shown on January 9 ANA WALSHE'S DISAPPEARANCE JANUARY 1: Ana and Brian host a New Year's Eve dinner party. She is last seen at 1.30am. She fails to turn up to work in Washington DC, and there is no proof of her making it to the airport for her flight. JANUARY 4: Tishman Speyer's head of security in DC calls police to report her missing. The caller told the operator he'd informed her husband JANUARY 6: Fire reported at the house Ana shared with her husband JANUARY 8: Brian Walshe arrested for misleading investigation JANUARY 9: Police reveal they found blood in the basement of the couple's home JANUARY 10: Police reveal they found trash bags filled with bloody items, a hatchet and a hacksaw in a trash center near the home JANUARY 17: Brian Walshe is arrested for murder Advertisement Friends say the couple's marriage was strained as a result of Ana's grueling work schedule, which meant they spent much of their time living apart, with Ana in Washington DC and Brian and the boys in Massachusetts. Ana was also photographed without her wedding ring in some of the final photos taken before she vanished on January 1, when she was seen embracing British gin entrepreneur Paul Walker at a book signing in DC. In a statement on Tuesday, Norfolk District Attorney Michael W Morrissey said: 'The continued investigation has now allowed police to obtain an arrest warrant charging Brian Walshe with murder of his wife. 'Mr. Walshe will be transported to the court for the charge of murder. 'Additional details of the investigation and the evidence in support of those charges are likely to be presented at the arraignment but will not be disclosed at this time.' A person who answered the phone at the office of Walshe's attorney, Tracy Miner, said Miner would have no comment on the murder charge. An email seeking comment was left with Miner. She has previously said that her client has cooperated with the investigation. Walshe has so far denied misleading police in his wife's disappearance. Ana was last seen at 1.30am on the morning of January 1, when she and her husband hosted friends for a New Year's Eve party that a guest said was filled with celebratory toasts. Cem Mutlu, who attended the party, said: 'Brian had cooked an elaborate meal for us. 'We hugged and celebrated and toasted and just what you do over New Year's. There was a lot of looking forward to the New Year.' Ana, pictured with her husband Brian, has been missing since New Year's Day The next day, he says Brian phoned him asking if he'd 'seen Ana' and that she was missing. She was due to travel to Washington DC on January 1 for work, but failed to show up for her flight or get in her rideshare to the airport. She was reported missing by Tishman Speyer, the real estate company she worked for, on January 4. A man who identified himself as the firm's head of security in Washington DC called police in Cohasset to request a welfare check for her. That man told police that he had informed Ana's husband, Brian, that she was missing. It contradicted Brian's lawyer's claim in court that he had notified her work that she was missing. Her cellphone has not been used and there has been no activity on her credit or debit cards, police have said. Friends said there was 'tension' in the marriage because of her work schedule, and are now appealing to care for her children. Ana (pictured with Paul Wharton on December 13) had stopped wearing her wedding ring in the weeks before she vanished The Cohasset home that Ana shared with her husband, Brian, and their three children Walshe was enjoying her work life in Washington DC and was excited about the year ahead Walshe is no stranger to legal trouble. In 2018, he was convicted of fraud for stealing and attempting to sell two fake Andy Warhol paintings that he advertised as being genuine. Walshe looked up 'how to dispose of a 115-pound womans body' online around the time of his wife's disappearance, according to investigators, and was also caught on surveillance cameras near a trash dumpster next to his mother's house. Prosecutors said in court that Brian Walshe was seen on surveillance video buying $450 worth of cleaning supplies at a home improvement store the day after his wife was last seen. Walshe in his mugshot after being arrested for misleading police Police also found a broken knife and blood in the basement of the couple's home, prosecutors said, although they did not say whose blood it was. Police wanted to test a sample of the blood found in the bag to Ana's three sons. Brian and Ana met in 2008 while she was working at a hotel in the Berkshires. She was the ambitious daughter of a Serbian couple who'd come to America in search of a better life. He was the son of a wealthy family, who he is now estranged from. In court filings, his family accused him of stealing millions from his elderly father after the man suffered a stroke. Family friends called him a 'sociopath' and said all he ever cared about was his father's money. The pair married in Serbia in 2015 and later had three sons together. Ana started working for Tishman Speyer in February last year, accepting a role as the general manager of the company's Washington DC office. She had previously worked for The Mutlu Group, a real estate company near their home, that is run by the friend who spent New Year's Eve with the couple. Before that, her work experience was in hotels and housekeeping. Company uses private jets for VIPs including executives and talent Ad follows stagnant subscriber growth and layoffs last year Attendant must be able to lift 30lb items, travel and stand for long periods After slashing jobs last year, Netflix is hiring a flight attendant to work on one of the company's private jets with compensation rising to $385,000 (313,538). The role advertised on Netflix's website promises rich rewards for a candidate who can carry up to 30lbs (13kg), travel the world and stand for long periods. Netflix says the right candidate for the lead position as a Northern California-based Flight Attendant is will embrace the Netflix culture of freedom and responsibility, operating with little direction and lots of self-motivation. The advertisement notes the average compensation for similar roles varies between $60,000 and $385,000 per year. Flight attendants typically earn about $61,640, according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics. The company uses private jets for VIPs including executives and talent. It is not known how many jets it owns, but it permits executives 'and their family members and guests to use our corporate aircraft for personal use'. Netflix is expected to have performed well in late 2022 despite laying off staff in the summer The new recruit will be the primary flight attendant on a Super Midsize Jet and also work as needed on a Gulfstream G550 jet (pictured) Netflix is expected to have performed better in the final quarter of 2022, with Trefis estimating revenues will hit $8bn - a 16% gain year-on-year. Netflix is hiring for a Flight Attendant who will serve as the primary attendant on a Super Midsize Jet, and supporting on Gulfstream G550 jet trips as needed. A new G550 jet sells for as much as $62mn. Super Midsize Jets can cost a mere $7-12mn. The role involves briefing safety and emergency procedures prior to each flight, assisting with the moving of stock and baggage, and pre-inspecting the cabin, galley and cockpit emergency equipment. Netflix require candidates to have flight safety FAA-certified training and flexibility to work a varied schedule, including weekends and holiday periods. The $385,000 compensation is based on market ranges and is distinct from a base salary. Netflix has pursued company-wide change in the last year to bounce back from levelling subscriber numbers. The company reported 223.09mn subscribers in the third quarter of last year, slightly higher than the 220.67 reported in Q2 and marginally better than the 213.56mn reported in Q3 2021. In March last year, Netflix's 2017 Tweet 'love is sharing a password' went viral following the decision to partially ban the sharing of passwords between users in an attempt to encourage growth. The company trialed password sharing for users in the same house in Latin America, charging an extra $3 to $4 a month for a second home, but later 'sunset' the idea. Hits including Stranger Things and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story last year helped the brand to improve growth last year. Netflix's slump since the pandemic - which saw significant growth for the company worldwide as non-users were stuck inside - aligns with a wider trend of layoffs in the tech sector. Hits like Stranger Things helped to recover some of Netflix's growth trend after a stagnant year Netflix laid off 150 staff in May last year, rising to 300 in June, after a stagnant growth period A report by Layoffs.fyi, which tracks tech company layoffs, showed more than 150,000 employees had lost jobs within the course of a year. The companies behind the biggest layoffs, the website reported, were once-untouchable tech stalwarts Meta and Amazon, which both suffered heavy loses in 2022 and engaged in firings to rescue their bottom lines. Netflix stocks fell to five-year lows in mid-2022, but have risen 60% in the last six months. Tech sector layoffs were laid bare in a recently released analysis from Layoffs.fyi, which tracks the firing in real time from information gleaned in media reports and company releases Additionally, many smaller tech startups received inflated valuations during the pandemic, allowing them to receive additional funding and hire new staff. This has been harder to maintain with investors shying away from an uncertain and complex market affected by the war in Ukraine and a looming global recession. Netflix looks to add 4.5mn subscribers to its count in Q4 2022, a significant improvement on the 2.41mn added in Q3 according to Trefis. Trefis note the last quarter of the year is often the weakest for Netflix due to higher marketing and content spending. Operating margins are expected to reach around 4%, compared to 8% one year ago. Framed portraits of some of the world's most notorious serial killers adorned the bedroom wall of true crime fan accused of murdering her boyfriend in his sleep, a court heard. Mother-of-one Shaye Groves is said to have plunged a dagger she kept in a bedside cabinet into the body of her 25-year-old lover Frankie Fitzgerald 22 times during a 'passionate' attack at her home in Leigh Park, Hampshire, on July 17 last year. Jurors at Groves' murder trial were shown the twisted collection of portraits, which prosecutors say were hanging on the wall of 27-year-old's bedroom. Among the chilling images were American killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer - who was painted with blood running down his face - as well as a series of other infamous murderers. A wall of horror: Alleged murderer Shaye Groves had portraits of some of the world's most notorious serial killers hanging in her bedroom, prosecutors have claimed Groves, 27, is alleged to have stabbed her boyfriend, Frankie Fitzgerald, to death while he slept in a crime of 'passion'. She is pictured posing in front of two serial killer images, which included American Ted Bundy, right Winchester Crown Court previously heard Groves rang a friend 'giggling' after killing her lover and then showed his body saying: 'I've done him'. Groves was allegedly 'obsessed' with Mr Fitzgerald's 'performance in the bedroom', with the couple's sex life involving bondage, dominance, submission and masochism, jurors heard. Vikki Baitup, Groves' friend, told police she suspected Groves got a 'thrill' from the 'abusive' sexual nature of their relationship. Groves denies murdering the young father by stabbing him 22 times in a 'crime of passion'. Giving evidence at Winchester Crown Court, Ms Baitup was shown exhibits of the dagger, alleged to have been used in the murder, and a BB gun belonging to Groves that could fire small ball bearings. Examining the blade, Ms Baitup said: 'Yes, it belongs to Shaye, she keeps in the bottom drawer beside her bed.' Ms Baitup also told the court Groves used to carry a 'combat blade' around and 'tuck it into her boot'. The court has previously heard that after the killing Groves made a 'false alibi' for herself, inspired by tips from true crime documentaries to avoid getting caught after her alleged crime. Jurors were shown an image of a dagger (pictured) that prosecutors say was used by Groves to murder her boyfriend Photos of a BB gun, that fires ball bearings, which police say was hidden in a drawer in Groves' bedroom, were also shown to the jury at Winchester Crown Court Ms Baitup also told jurors the two had 'joked' about Mr Fitzgerald ending up 'on the wall' as there was 'space for him' alongside the serial killers hanging on it. Earlier, prosecutors told jurors the defendant had lied to police, telling officers Mr Fitzgerald had raped her - and that Groves had previously threatened to leak a sex tape of them on Facebook to 'make his life a misery'. The mother fabricated claims her boyfriend had abused and raped her, and had previously threatened to make his life 'a misery' by leaking videos of the pair - alleged to have started using cocaine together in the months before the killing - having sex. However, jurors heard that Groves was 'obsessed' with Mr Fitzgerald's 'performance in the bedroom', with the couple's sex life involving bondage, dominance, submission and masochism - and that the recordings had showed the sexual acts had been 'consensual'. Groves had even told Mr Fitzgerald she could be woken by sexual intercourse, in a note written by the accused, the court was told. The defendant had also blackmailed another lover with a sex tape by threatening to show the video to his new girlfriend if he didn't do what she wanted - namely, a lift into town and back for a night out, prosecutors alleged. Groves claimed to police she had been raped by Mr Fitzgerald (pictured). But prosecutors argue this was never the case and said sex between the couple had been consensual Groves was said to have told her boyfriend he was allowed to wake her for sex in a written note to Mr Fitzgerald. She is pictured in her home before allegedly killing the 25-year-old A note read out in court said: 'I, Shaye Groves give Frankie Fitzgerald permission to wake me up through sexual intercourse from the date of 22 March until further notice.' The mother-of-one was said to have owned four 'decorative' knives - with depictions of film villains Chuckie, Jigsaw and Pennywise on - which she and Mr Fitzgerald used for 'knife play' in the bedroom. Winchester Crown Court heard the couple had a camera set up in the bedroom which captured them having sex - the recordings of which Groves was said to use to blackmail lovers. In her interview with police, which was played in court, Ms Baitup said: 'She compiles evidence against everyone to see how she can use them as leverage.' Ms Baitup also told officers Groves had a violent history, recounting two occasions in which she attacked Lauren White, who lived with her - once with nail clippers, leaving her head bleeding. Groves told police she had been attacked and raped by Mr Fitzgerald, but the prosecution say all sex between them was consensual and 'they had a safe word'. Jurors heard Ms Baitup tell police she thought Groves got a 'thrill' from the alleged sexual abuse she had clips of. Vikki Baitup, Groves' friend, told police she suspected Groves got a 'thrill' from the 'abusive' sexual nature of their relationship. Ms Baitup is pictured arriving at Winchester Crown Court on Tuesday 'I think Shaye got some sort of thrill or enjoyment from being in the relationship,' she said. 'I got the impression she got a thrill from some of the abuse.' In a later interview with police, Ms Baitup said Groves had been seeing another man alongside Mr Fitzgerald, in a 'balancing act'. She told police: 'It was so close to the two of them seeing each other. Shaye was playing [them]. You never knew which one was going to turn up.' Jurors heard that Groves was 'not shy about talking about her sex life' - having made an agreement with Mr Fitzgerald she could be woken up 'by sexual intercourse until further notice' in a written note. It was signed by Groves, Mr Fitzgerald and Ms Baitup as a witness - who told police the two had picked up a cocaine habit a couple of months prior to the killing. Explaining Groves' previous violence to Ms White, Ms Baitup said she had 'swiped' at Ms White with nail clippers, leaving a 'gash' in her head - and her anger only subsiding after she 'saw a bit of blood - she calmed down'. The court has previously heard that after the killing Groves made a 'false alibi' for herself, inspired by tips from true crime documentaries to avoid getting caught after her 'crime of passion'. A pathologist's report read to the court explained Mr Fitzgerald was stabbed 17 times to the front of the chest, twice to other chest areas and three to times to the neck - resulting in his death after 'multiple perforations of heart and lungs' and 'catastrophic blood loss'. Footage from officers who arrived at the scene was also played to the court, who reported an 'incredibly strong' smell of bleach in the bedroom. Groves denies murder, claiming she acted in self defence. The trial continues. Just weeks before the dramatic collapse of crypto exchange FTX, a top executive challenged Sam Bankman-Fried about a mammoth $13billion loan to sister company Alameda Research, it has been revealed. At the time of the loan to Alameda Research, which is run by Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried's ex-girlfriend, FTX had just posted a staggering loss of $5billion, which appeared to include money deposited by customers. When he was approached by the high-level software developer, Bankman-Fried admitted there was a problem and told him 'the situation was causing concern' and was affecting his productivity, documents seen by the New York Times show. The revelation shows the chaos inside the final days of FTX as panicked executives feared the oncoming bloodbath in which it filed for bankruptcy after a gaping hole in its finances was exposed. Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, is seen leaving a courthouse on January 3 Disgraced Crypto Wunderkind Bankman-Fried has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research. In a report to creditors on Tuesday, FTX reported that about $415million in cryptocurrency had been stolen in hacks. FTX has said it had recovered over $5billion in crypto, cash and liquid securities, but that significant shortfalls remained in its exchanges. Some of the shortfall was attributed to hacks, with $323million hacked from FTX's international exchange and $90million had been hacked from its U.S. exchange since it filed for bankruptcy on November 11, it said. Bankman-Fried later challenged aspects of the company's report in a blog post. He pushed back against FTX's calculations late Tuesday, saying that the company's lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell had presented an 'extremely misleading' picture of the company's finances. Bankman-Fried said FTX has more than enough money to repay US customers, whom he says are owed between $181million and $497million based on his 'best guess.' Bankman-Fried has not had access to FTX records since stepping down as CEO in November. Bankman-Fried loaned $13billion to Alameda Research, which is run by Caroline Ellison, shortly before its collapse A spokesperson for Sullivan and Cromwell declined to comment. Attorneys at the firm said in a recent court filing that they have rebuffed Bankman-Fried's efforts to stay involved in the company's bankruptcy proceedings. The US Justice Department's bankruptcy watchdog is opposing FTX's bid for a bankruptcy judge's approval to hire Sullivan & Cromwell. New York-based Sullivan & Cromwell is seeking the court's approval to be appointed primary bankruptcy counsel to FTX, a lucrative role that would likely allow the firm to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. But it has become embroiled in a row about potential conflict of interest after carrying out previous work for the tanked crypto exchange. US Trustee Andrew Vara blasted Sullivan & Cromwell's 'wholly insufficient' disclosures, which left him unable to determine if the firm had conflicts that could affect its reputation. He faulted them for not disclosing that FTX's US general counsel, Ryne Miller, is a former partner at the firm. He also objected to the firm seeking a role in investigating the demise of FTX, noting that such a probe 'would necessarily focus on those with connections to Sullivan & Cromwell and possibly on Sullivan & Cromwell itself.' FTX, in a response on Tuesday authored by Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers, defended the firm's recent work for the exchange, saying it had been 'directly responsible' for securing customer assets and sharing valuable information with US prosecutors and regulators. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges, and he is scheduled to face trial in October FTX said it had provided additional disclosures to the U.S. Trustee about the firm's past work, and argued that the firm is not conflicted just because it advised the exchange prior to the bankruptcy. Federal bankruptcy law says law firms representing debtors must not have a direct interest in the proceedings. A federal bankruptcy judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on Friday to determine if the firm's appointment should move forward. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges, and he is scheduled to face trial in October. FTX did not provide an estimate of the amount owed to FTX's U.S. or international customers, and it did not immediately respond to questions about Bankman-Fried's blog post. FTX provided some additional details about its recovery efforts on Tuesday, saying it had recovered $1.7billion in cash, $3.5billion in liquid cryptocurrency and $300million in liquid securities. Bankman-Fried has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research 'We are making progress in our efforts to maximize recoveries, and it has taken a Herculean investigative effort from our team to uncover this preliminary information,' Ray said in a statement. The crypto assets recovered to date include $685million in Solana, $529million in FTX's proprietary FTT token and $268million in bitcoin, based on crypto prices on November 11, 2022. Solana, which was lauded by Bankman-Fried, lost most of its value in 2022. During FTX's initial investigation into hacks of its system, it uncovered a November asset seizure by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, which led to a dispute between FTX's US-based bankruptcy team and Bahamian regulators. The two sides settled their differences in January, and Ray said on Tuesday that the Bahamian government was holding $426million for creditors. Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis referenced the dispute during a Tuesday event at the Atlantic Council in Washington, saying Ray's team had 'come around' and accepted that the Bahamian asset seizure 'was appropriate and perhaps has saved the day for many of the investors in FTX.' Fifth passenger, pastor Kennon Vaughan, managed to climb out of the plane Their Piper Malibu plane crashed in foggy weather in Lavaca County, Texas Four members of a Tennessee church were killed when their plane crashed a mile away from a Texas airport as it came in to land in foggy weather. Bill Garner, Tyler Patterson, Tyler Springer and Steve Tucker were killed on Tuesday morning after their Piper Malibu plane crashed in foggy weather in Lavaca County, Texas. A fifth passenger, pastor Kennon Vaughan, was injured and is now in a stable condition in a Citizens medical hospital after reportedly climbing out of the plane. The five passengers all attended Harvest Church in the Memphis suburb of Germantown in Tennessee, where Kennon is the lead pastor. His most recent service was this Sunday. Four members of a Tennessee church were killed when their plane crashed two miles away from a Texas airport on Tuesday. Bill Garner is pictured left, and Tyler Patterson is in the right image Their Piper Malibu plane crashed in foggy weather in Lavaca County, Texas at 10.50am. Left is Tyler Springer, right is Steve Tucker Four people died and one was injured after their small plane crashed in Lavaca County, Texas on Tuesday at 10.50am A fifth passenger, Kennon Vaughan, was injured and is now in a stable condition in a Citizens medical hospital State Department of Public Safety officials said the plane hit the ground at around 10.50am, near the intersection of County Road 462 and Farm-to-Market Road 318, just a mile away from the Yoakum Municipal Airport. Bill Garner was the church's executive vice-president, while Steve Tucker was a church elder. In a tribute to the men on Facebook, Harvest Church said: 'It is with extremely heavy hearts that we share the news of the passing of Bill Garner, Steve Tucker, Tyler Patterson and Tyler Springer. 'All were beloved members of Harvest Church and their loss currently leaves us without the proper words to articulate our grief. 'We ask for your prayers and kindly request that the families of all involved are given the proper space to grieve at this time.' Lavaca County in Texas is located about 112 miles east of San Antonio. The crash comes as two planes averted a near-fatal 115mph crash at New York's John F. Kennedy airport that could've killed 418 people. The five passengers all attended Harvest Church in the Memphis suburb of Germantown in Tennessee, where Kennon is the lead pastor The crash occurred in foggy weather just two miles away from the Yoakum Municipal Airport Fatal plane crash near Yoakum in a field off CR 462 Tuesday morning Posted by The Victoria Advocate on Tuesday, January 17, 2023 The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are both investigating the Texas crash. The NTSB said that the plane that crashed was a Piper PA-46-350P aircraft, known as a Piper Malibu, a single-engine plane capable of carrying five passengers and a pilot. 'Five occupants were inside the plane,' DPS said in a statement. 'Four died and one is in stable condition being treated at Citizens Medical in Victoria, Texas.' Tennessee Congressman David Kustoff paid tribute to the four men on Twitter. He said: 'Roberta and I are saddened to hear about the passing of Bill Garner, Steve Tucker, Tyler Patterson, and Tyler Springer from Harvest Church. These leaders touched our community and our prayers are with each of their families, as well as the entire Harvest Church, during this time.' The group was riding in a Piper PA-46-350P aircraft, known as a Piper Malibu, which can carry five passengers and a pilot. Pictured: A file photo of a Malibu flying Tennessee Congressman David Kustoff paid tribute to the four men on Twitter Residents told Crossroads that it was still foggy outside when the plane crashed. It's the second small plane crash in Texas within one week, after DPS reported that two people were injured when their plane crashed in Conroe. On January 14, at around 2.45pm, officials said a Fixed Wing Single-engine plane hit power lines while attempting to land on Longmire Road near League Line. Officials said the pilot and a male passenger only suffered minor injuries, and no homes were damaged as a result of the crash. A father has vowed never to forgive the drink-driver who caused his teenage daughter's death, saying his hatred for her is the only thing keeping him alive. Phoebe Johnson, 17, was a passenger in a car being driven by Melissa Keilloh which crashed on the A514 between Swadlincote and Derby on October 23 2021. The pair had been at a house party that evening and Keilloh, 20, had been described as drunk by other attendees, openly admitting 'I'm f****d' before getting in her car to go for a drive with Miss Johnson and another friend. Keilloh crashed 18 minutes after leaving the house, having driven at speed around two corners, with her vehicle going through a hedge and coming to rest 39 metres away in a field. Melissa Keilloh, 20, was over the drink-drive limit when she smashed her Seat Leon on the A514 between Swadlincote and Derby on October 23, 2021 17-year-old Phoebe Johnson was a passenger in Keilloh's car. She was flung from the vehicle and sustained fatal head and neck injuries Miss Johnson, who had not been wearing a seatbelt, sustained fatal head and neck injuries after being ejected from the car and died at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham later that day. Delivering a damning victim statement at a sentencing hearing at Derby Crown Court, Miss Johnson's father Paul - himself a former police officer - blasted Keilloh's 'unscrupulous actions' and said she was a 'menace and a danger to society'. Addressing Keilloh, who wept as the statement was read, he said: 'Your naivety, negligence and arrogance along with your stupidity was the cause of our daughter's death.' He added: 'My hatred of you is only equal to the love of my daughter, and these two things keep me alive. 'You will still have a life after this. We will not have that luxury. 'You have taken away both our futures by your selfish and irresponsible actions. I hope [Phoebe] haunts you for the rest of your miserable life. 'We will never show you any mercy, nor will we ever forgive you.' Family and friends of both the victim and the defendant wept and sobbed throughout the hearing at Derby Crown Court Hours before the crash, Keilloh had been heard by a partygoer admitting to her mother that she was too drunk to drive and had been asked by the second passenger in the car, 'do you think you are going to put our lives in danger?' before being urged to stay at home. But after leaving the house party at 12:07am, she later lost control of her Seat Leon when she went around two corners at 67mph and 72mph on a 60mph stretch of road. Sarah Slater, prosecuting at Derby Crown Court, said that when Miss Johnson said she was scared due to Keilloh's erratic driving, the 20-year-old replied 'No you're not' and was heard on dashcam footage saying 'when I tell you to hold on, hold on' minutes before the incident. Following the crash, Keilloh was described by witnesses as 'hysterical' and was arrested at the scene. At the start of the hearing, the defendant, of Hartshorne, Derbyshire, pleaded guilty in front of a packed courtroom to one count of causing death by careless driving when over the prescribed limit. Family and friends of both the victim and the defendant wept and sobbed throughout the hearing. Stephen Cobley, mitigating, said that Keilloh was remorseful and had no previous convictions, but added that 'she understands that she has to be punished'. The charge stated that she recorded a reading of between 97 and 149 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood when the legal limit is 80mg, with Judge Shaun Smith KC taking the reading as 97mg for the purposes of sentencing. Sentencing Keilloh to three years in prison, Judge Smith said: 'It really is impossible to know where to begin. Where does any judge begin when sentencing someone whose driving has changed the lives of so many people, forever?' He added: 'I have watched the journey in its entirety, which ended so tragically. It is clear there is nothing remarkable about your driving for the first seven or eight minutes, you appear to drive appropriately. 'Where you did not drive appropriately was when you were in rural areas. You were obviously driving at speeds which were inappropriate for the roads. 'I have no doubt that your state of inebriation, loud music and group mentality led you to drive in the clearly dangerous manner that I have seen. 'Sadly, when others warned you, you took no heed.' Keilloh was also disqualified from driving for six-and-a-half years. Tory MPs have claimed they are being told to drop Boris Johnson's 'Levelling Up' slogan because 'no one knows what it actually means'. The former prime minister frequently used the phrase to tout his ambition to spread opportunity more equally across Britain. In order to pursue his flagship policy, Mr Johnson even set up a 'Levelling Up' department and unveiled 12 'Levelling Up' missions. But some MPs have said they are now under orders to shun the phrase and encouraged to use alternatives. One Tory told The Times that MPs in marginal constituencies had been advised by party staff to use phrases such as 'stepping up', 'gauging up', or 'enhancing communities' instead. An MP supportive of Mr Johnson said other advice, given during briefing sessions ahead of the next general election, was to talk about 'difficult decisions' rather than 'tough decisions'. 'Theyve been told they have to drop "Levelling Up" from all their literature,' they added. Another MP said: 'The session is about language and they want us to still point to the projects, but "Levelling Up" as a phrase? Its clear no one knows what it actually means.' Boris Johnson frequently used the 'Levelling Up' phrase to tout his ambition to spread opportunity more equally across Britain New PM Rishi Sunak also previously promoted the slogan - but Tory MPs have claimed they are now being told to use alternatives James Frayne, a founding partner at Public First, a consultancy that has carried out polling for No10, told the newspaper that banning the use of 'Levelling Up' would be a 'mercy killing'. 'Its hard to think of a more stupid phrase,' he added. 'The weird thing is, the Conservatives have always known voters hated it. 'In many dozens of focus groups over the last three years, voters said they loved the concept but hated the language but the more voters said they hated it, the more the Government used it.' Labour's Lisa Nandy, the shadow Levelling Up secretary, quipped that 'screwing up' would be a 'more accurate' alternative phrase for Tory MPs to use. She said: 'Since the last election regional inequality has got worse and nearly every "Levelling Up" promise has been broken. 'Tory MPs can try to quietly bury it but what they cant hide is their utter failure to deliver on their promises.' However, a Tory source rejected the suggestion that MPs were being told to stop using the phrase 'Levelling Up' and described it as 'a complete fabrication'. They told MailOnline: 'In fact the exact opposite is the case. MPs are receiving briefings by CCHQ to show them how to use the phrase to best promote the improvements that are being made in their local areas, as one would expect.' More than 100 migrants braved freezing temperatures in the English Channel on Tuesday to reach the UK in dinghies - after 45 people were rescued by the French coastguard earlier in the day. Two boats were intercepted by the Border Force vessel Defender with a total of 106 migrants - including children and a baby - on board according to official government figures. They were brought on board the patrol boat before being taken into the harbour at Dover, in Kent. It takes the total arriving so far in 2023 to 150 migrants. Before the incident, no migrants had crossed the Channel to the UK for a fortnight amid bad weather conditions. It came after migrants were rescued off the coast of Pas-de-Calais on Tuesday afternoon, according to a translation of a statement from the Prefecture maritime de la manche et de la mer du Nord. A group of migrants are pictured being brought into Dover by Border Force officers last night, after the French coastguard has rescued 45 migrants in the Channel in a separate incident earlier on Tuesday The group arriving at Dover included a woman and a baby and other children. Above: Some of the migrants are seen in life jackets Those rescued off the coast of France were brought to Calais and met by emergency services and police, an official statement said. Conditions are particularly perilous in winter when freezing temperatures can kill people within minutes if they end up tossed into the sea. The 14-day hiatus between January 3 and January 16 was the longest stretch without any arrivals for several months. Before yesterday's arrival, the only crossing recorded by the Ministry of Defence was on January 2 when 44 people made the journey in one boat. The news comes on the same day the government announced it had amended the Online Safety Bill to help tackle 'TikTok Traffickers' who encourage small boat crossings. Natalie Elphicke MP along with veteran MP, Sir John Hayes led an amendment to the Online Safety Bill, supported by other MPs. The Government has now agreed to add illegal immigration and modern slavery offences to the list of priority offences covered under the Bill. Posting videos that portray this activity in a positive light would therefore be a priority crime and platforms would have to proactively remove it. Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover, said: 'The small boat crossings must be stopped. It is absolutely right that the Prime Minister has made this one of his five key pledges for 2023. 'I am very pleased that the Government has listened and is taking firm action on online activity which encourages the dangerous and illegal small boat crossings. Tackling the TikTok traffickers will make a real difference. 'Small boat crossings are not just illegal, they are incredibly dangerous and lives have been lost at sea. We must use every tool in the toolbox to tackle illegal immigration and modern slavery.' Photos taken last night show migrants including women, children and a baby being brought ashore The migrants who arrived yesterday are seen walking into Dover Marina after their crossing from France Last month, four migrants died when the dinghy they were travelling in deflated. Thirty-nine survivors, including 12 children had to be rescued. Detectives have since launched an investigation into the tragedy. It emerged earlier this month that migrants could face an automatic ban on making asylum claims under tough measures being drawn up by the Home Secretary. Suella Braverman is set to change the law so that every migrant who has passed through a safe country - such as France - will have applications for refugee status declared void. They could then face 'rapid removal' from Britain. Lat year, a record 45,728 migrants arrived from Franc in 1,104 boats. This figure dwarfed the 28,526 who came in 2021. Ms Braverman revealed last year that housing asylum seekers will cost 3.5billion this year, up from 2.1billion in the previous 12 months. It's the art revolution that has swept the globe, allowing people to reimagine popstars as pensioners or toddlers or to resurrect icons - who died too soon - in eerie hyper-realistic portraits. In recent months the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create incredible images has exploded, with the internet now awash with millions of pictures designed by computers. But the boom has led to AI firms are now facing their own Terminator-style Judgement Day at the hands of human creators, with one of the world's biggest photo agencies launching a legal war, amid a backlash from artists, who feel their work is being ripped off by computers. Getty Images this week announced it was suing Stability AI, claiming the tech company was breaching copyright by using Getty's vast back catalogue of pictures to train its AI generators. And as the imagery war continues to rage, MailOnline has compiled a series of computer-generated pictures with their real-life counterparts to see if you can spot which one was made by an AI and which was penned by a flesh-and-blood artist. Slide me Which one is real and which one is created by artificial intelligence? Both pictures are very similar in their style but one was generated entirely by a computer. Artist Sarah Andersen is part of the lawsuit against Stability AI Slide me Can you tell which of these was made by an AI? The green, steam punk-style image of the Mad Hatter or this one of the woman with vivid blue hair? Artist RJ Palmer, who is not part of the lawsuit, posted a comparison between these two images on Twitter The rise of AI-generated art has ballooned over the past 18 months, allowing anyone with a keyboard or phone to produce an image, Last week, Turkish photographer Alper Yesiltas unveiled his collection of famous celebrities reimagined as pensioners, with One Direction pop star Harry Styles and Hollywood actors Ryan Gosling and Jodie Foster among those pictured. And in September, the photographer used AI to bring back stars who died in at a young age in tragic circumstances- creating haunting portraits of Princess Diana, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury and others. The images were part of Yesiltas's 'As If Nothing Happened' collection, with the artist writing: 'With the development of AI technology, I've been excited for a while, thinking that 'anything imaginable can be shown in reality'.' Slide me And how about these two mermaid pictures? Which one do you think was made by a human? One was created by Kelly McKernan, currently suing over use of her images by AI firms Artwork created by (AI) even managed to clinch a first place prize at an art contest at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition - in a move that ignited fury from human creators - with one declaring the world was 'watching the death of artistry unfold.' Emad Mostaque, the boss of a UK firm behind one of the most powerful AI image generators declared: 'So much of the world is creatively constipated,' The former hedge fund manager believes his company Stability AI and its program Stable Diffusion can democratise creativity, opening the doors to anyone to create new art. But his vision - launched last year and becoming a global hit - is now under attack from legal actions in the UK and the US. Three American artists - cartoonist Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz - claim Stability AI and two other companies, DeviantArt and Midjourney, have infringed on their copyright by training their AI models on billions of images from the web without consent. 'Every output image from the system is derived exclusively from the latent images, which are copies of copyrighted images. For these reasons, every hybrid image is necessarily a derivative work,' the claim in a California law suit, The Times reports. While other artists have complained online, comparing a human-made image of the Mad Hatter to one of created in a similar style by an AI. Did you spot which pictures were real and which AI? First picture: Sarah Andersen's original is on the right, the AI-generated image is on the left. Second picture: The woman is AI, the man with the cup of tea is by a human. Third picture: Kelly McKernan's mermaid is on the left. THe AI version is on the right. Advertisement Meanwhile in the UK High Court, Getty Images has launched its only legal war, claiming copyright infringement. In a statement, the stock image giant said Stability AI 'unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright' to train its software. The announcement added that Getty Images 'believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors,' and that the firm offered special licenses for the use of photos in training AI systems. 'Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and longstanding legal protections in pursuit of their standalone commercial interests,' the company went on to say. A spokesman for Stability AI told MailOnline: 'Please know that we take these matters seriously. It is unusual that we have been informed about this intended legal action via the press. 'We are still awaiting the service of any documents. Should we receive them, we will comment appropriately.' Stable Diffusion and other AI generators sift through millions of man-made images to 'learn' and create their own images. But critics say that, often, no permission has been sought to use pictures for AI training, while AI supporters insist the practice is protected by fair use laws. 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. Mr Nash should have had urgent face-to-face appointment, an inquest heard He died Nov 4 2020 despite efforts to save him at Leeds General Infirmary After several remote consultations, Mr Nash was rushed to hospital Law student David Nash, 26, told he was 'feeling sorry for himself' before dying A law student was told 'you sound like you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself' by a nurse just days before he died, an inquest heard. David Nash, 26, should have had an urgent face-to-face appointment after a series of remote consultations with doctors and nurses at NHS 111 and his GP, an expert told a coroner. He had four phone consultations with a Leeds GP practice - Burley Park Medical Centre - over a 19-day period from October to November 2020, an inquest in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, heard on Monday. The court heard that Mr Nash's condition deteriorated dramatically after the final consultation on November 2. He was then taken to hospital by ambulance after a series of NHS 111 calls, but died two days later. Law student David Nash (pictured), 26, was told 'you sound like you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself' by a nurse just days before he died, an inquest heard. Mr Nash, from Leeds, should have had an urgent face-to-face appointment after a series of remote consultations with doctors and nurses, a GP expert told a coroner It later emerged that Mr Nash, who was also a musician, had developed mastoiditis in his ear which caused an abscess on his brain, leading to his death. On Monday, assistant coroner Abigail Combes read a statement from GP expert Alastair Bint, who said a nurse should have organised an urgent in-patient appointment after a phone consultation on November 2, 2020. Dr Bint said he did not criticise the remote nature of Mr Nash's first three consultations on October 14, 23 and 28. But the expert concluded that Mr Nash's phone consultation with advanced nurse practitioner Lynne White - who worked for the GP surgery - on November 2 should have led to a face-to-face appointment - which is likely to have resulted in a hospital admission. Dr Bint said Mr Nash's presentation of fever, neck stiffness and night-time headaches were 'red flags' and the nurse's diagnosis of a flu-like virus was 'not safe'. He said: 'This was a patient that needed to be seen in person.' Dr Bint said it required 'an urgent face-to-face assessment that morning'. He added: 'This was a patient demonstrating some significant red flags and needed to be seen. 'Had he been seen in-person, it seems likely to me he would've been admitted to hospital.' In his report, the doctor said he was asked to comment on whether the final outcome would have been different if Mr Nash had been seen face-to-face. He noted that the patient would have been in hospital ten hours earlier but it was for a neurosurgical expert to comment on whether the outcome would have been different. Dr Bint's report stressed that the NHS was dealing with an unprecedented situation at the time, during the Covid pandemic, and that NHS England advice was for GP patients to be seen remotely in most cases. Mr Nash died on November 4 2020, despite efforts to save him by neurosurgeons at Leeds General Infirmary (pictured) The inquest heard that Mr Nash's first phone consultation with the Burley Park Medical Practice was on October 14, when he told GP Jenny Carrick he had been troubled by lumps on his neck. Dr Carrick arranged for him to have a blood test booked in for November 2. His second consultation was with advanced nurse practitioner Amy Linstrum, when he described a painful and hot right ear. Ms Linstrum prescribed antibiotic ear drops. The third consultation was on October 28, with locum GP Manjoor Shahid. Mr Nash told the doctor he had blood in his urine and he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. Mr Nash's parents, Andrew and Anne Nash, from Nantwich, Cheshire, have campaigned to find out whether the mastoiditis would have been identified and easily treated with antibiotics if their son had undergone a face-to-face examination earlier In her evidence, read to the court, nurse Lynne White said she accepted that when she told Mr Nash on November 2 'you're sounding like you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself, are you feeling a bit rotten?', it appeared now as if she was being dismissive. But the nurse insisted she was simply reflecting that the patient seemed unwell. Mr Nash's parents, Andrew and Anne Nash, from Nantwich, Cheshire, have campaigned to find out whether the mastoiditis would have been identified and easily treated with antibiotics if their son had undergone a face-to-face examination earlier. They have described how Mr Nash had five 'shambolic' calls on November 2 with the NHS 111 system before being taken to St James's Hospital in Leeds by ambulance, in a confused state, where he fell when he was left alone, causing an injury to his head. Mr Nash died on November 4, 2020, despite efforts to save him by neurosurgeons at Leeds General Infirmary. He had just started the second year of a law degree at Leeds University when he died after a number of years as a drummer on Leeds's music scene, touring Europe with his band Weirds and recording an album. His mother read a pen-portrait of her son to the court on Monday. She said she was 'eternally grateful for an amazing 26 years of love and hilarity'. Mrs Nash said: 'Your huge smile, your compassion and your ability to enjoy every moment could never be replicated.' A man is fighting to keep council from ripping up his driveway, which is in good condition and has been used without problem for 13 years. Len White, who has occupied the house in the northern Perth suburb of Burns Beach since 2016, told Daily Mail Australia that what council are threatening amounts to 'vandalism'. Council sent Mr White a letter in November claiming his driveway was 'non-compliant' and would need to be ripped up 60cm from the road by January 23 to be redone with roadside curbing. Homeowner Len White is trying to fend off council plans to rip up a portion of his driveway (pictured) 'They want to come along and vandalise it, so why? It's an absolute disgrace,' Mr White said. 'I've got a very nice home and a very nice driveway that's got no cracks. 'I would willingly pay money to leave the bloody thing alone.' Mr White said since writing back to council questioning the decision he had been in a heated conversation with the City of Joondalup's mayor Albert Jacob over the 'bureaucratic overreach'. Mr White says he has been in heated discussions with City of Joondalup's mayor Albert Jacob (pictured) over the plans to redo his driveway Cr Jacob allegedly hung up on Mr White at one point, but is still trying to win him over by pointing to driveways that council has redone on a nearby street. But they haven't impressed Mr White. 'All the so-called compliant driveways have all cracked up,' he said. 'It looks awful the standard of workmanship is even worse that the original. 'There's small weeds growing in the cracks of the work they have done for the people, who are obviously p***ed off.' Council contends that a driveway without road curbs won't stop water from running underneath and shifting the soil. According to Mr White that is 'bollocks'. 'It's been there for 13 years and it is still the same,' he said. 'If there is a problem it's that the tarmac expands more in heat than the concrete. Mr White lives in the northern Perth suburb of Burns Beach (pictured) where he says council work is generally an inferior replacement for what was there previously 'Also the problem is trucks and heavy equipment going down the road, which is frequent. 'In every compliant driveway the curb stones are all broken and mine isn't.' Mr White pointed out that a carpark on his street looked the same as his driveway but council aren't insisting it redone. 'They say that's commercial that doesn't count,' Mr White explained. Mr White claims to have documents from the time his house was built in 2010 that show the driveway crossover section was compliant. However, council say the rules changed in 2016. Mr White said if there was a crack between his driveway and the tarmac it would be better to reseal the road to fill it up that way along with other 'non-compliant' crossover sections. 'That is the far simpler and cost effective way of doing it.' he said. 'They are just going to replace concrete with concrete.' Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to boycott King Charles's 'deeply offensive' coronation by Labour members planning to join protests outside the glittering event. Labour for a Republic said its members would join a protest planned for outside Westminster Abbey on May 6. They said that for the king to be crowned at a glittering event costing millions is 'totally inappropriate ... at a time when many people are struggling to heat their homes and feed their kids'. The group's secretary, Ken Ritchie, suggested that Sir Keir should refuse to attend the event with other politicians who are likely to fill the aisles. 'We recognise that all political leaders will feel obliged to play a part in the coronation, but they need to remember they have been elected to bring about progressive change not prop up an elitist and totally outdated institution,' he said. Labour for a Republic said its members would join a protest planned for outside Westminster Abbey on May 6. The group's secretary, Ken Ritchie, suggested that Sir Keir should refuse to attend. The unaligned group Republic has already announced it plans to protest in Parliament Square and Whitehall next to the abbey in May when Charles is crowned. Last September Sir Keir opened the party conference by leading a flawlessly observed minute's silence and a rendition of God Save the King to mark the death of Elizabeth II 'We will be joining the protesters on May 6th and invite both our members and the broader Labour movement to do so.' The unaligned group Republic has already announced it plans to protest in Parliament Square and Whitehall next to the abbey in May.' Sir Keir is unlikely to heed the advice from party activists. He has made support for the monarchy a plank of his plans to bring Labour back into the mainstream following its years of turmoil under Jeremy Corbyn. Last September he opened the party conference by leading a flawlessly observed minute's silence and a rendition of God Save the King to mark the death of Elizabeth II and the ascension of Charles III. Sir Keir hailed the late monarch's commitment to her country as he urged delegates at its party conference to emulate her drive. Before leading singing of God Save the King Sir Keir told the audience in Liverpool: 'Let's turn our collar up and face the storm, keep alive the spirit of public service she embodied and let it drive us towards a better future.' Campaign group Republic says it expects 'large protests' at the coronation. Campaign group Republic says it expects 'large protests' at the coronation. Chief executive Graham Smith said: 'Charles is already king. There is absolutely no need to go through with this expensive pantomime.' 'Sweden and Norway scrapped coronations more than a century ago, if Charles wants to modernise he would start by doing the same. 'But we know the claim of modernising or slimming down the monarchy is hot air. The cost will keep going up and the institution will remain stuck in the past. 'When next year's coronation goes ahead it will be met by large republican protests. The movement has gained support over the last 10 days, it will continue to grow over the next 12 months.' After a worker defrosted him, the raccoon ran off safely into the woods The distressed animal was stuck on the track by his frozen testicle hair A raccoon stranded in -12C (10.4F) conditions was saved by railway workers A railroad worker rescued a raccoon from an oncoming train after its testicles hair froze to the track. Neil Mullis, 35, found the traumatized animal and carefully freed him using warm water and a shovel. Mr Mullis, from Cochrane, Georgia, USA, said: 'I poured the warm water under his bottom while a co-worker worked the shovel under his butt to try and break him loose. 'After about five minutes of slowly working him loose, he was free. He jumped off the rail and ran into the woods never looking back.' The animal was saved after getting frozen to the tracks by its testicle hair Hair frozen to the railway track after Mr Mullis freed the raccoon with water and a shovel In the video filmed on 19 December 2022, Mr Mullis can be heard saying 'poor b***ard's n**s are frozen to the rail' as he finds it. After freeing the animal with hot water and a shovel, Mr Mullis cuts to the aftermath. He says: 'Operation well performed! Little fella's safe.' Raccoons are naturally shy animals but can be aggressive when threatened and should be handled with caution. Male raccoons - called boars - often live on their own, and are denning animals, preferring to avoid large open spaces. This is made more difficult by deforestation, pushing them into urban areas for safety and food. While they prefer temperate climates, raccoons have dense underfur to protect them from the cold - but this is less helpful when crossing railway tracks. Neil Mullis, 35, from Georgia, was at work when he came across the animal frozen to the line Despite the intense rescue efforts from Mr Mullis and his colleagues, nobody could tell how, or why, the raccoon got into this predicament. He added: 'I'm guessing because it was -12C outside somehow he was crossing over the rail and sat too long and got stuck!' Her fiance, David Murray, said Met Police officers seemed 'uninterested' in case A fiance who proposed to his girlfriend just a week before she was found dead in a lake has slammed 'uninterested' Met Police officers for failing to take the case seriously, an inquest has heard. Hannah Warren, 28, freed herself from her Mini Cooper and swam to nearby rocks, but fell back into the freezing water near a Tata Steel site in Port Talbot, the hearing was told. Her body was found around 330ft from where the car hit the lake on February 4, 2016 - a day after she was first reported missing from her home around 200 miles away in Streatham, south-west London. David Murray, who planned to wed Ms Warren after proposing in Italy, initially raised the alarm with officers after his fiance failed to turn up to work. He claims the police seemed 'uninterested' in obtaining information from the black box in Ms Warren's vehicle, and says he was told b one officer: 'It's a busy night and this is Brixton'. Hannah Warren, 28, drowned after her car fell into an icy lake in Port Talbot Giving evidence, Mr Murray said he had proposed to his partner in Italy just a week before her tragic death in February 2016. He told the tribunal he spoke his Hannah at 10.16am on the day she died when she was 'upset and audibly confused' and acting 'completely out of character.' Mr Murray said he became concerned when Hannah didn't turn up at their workplace at 11am so he went to find her. He said: 'When Hannah didn't turn up to work I started to get worried. I left work to go and check on Hannah at her flat. I jumped on my motorcycle at about lunch time.' The inquest heard police were called at about 8pm before officers visited the property for around 20 minutes to search Ms Hannah's bedroom. Mr Murray added: 'There wasn't a lot of interest from the police following that initial reporting. It hadn't been all that long. 'The sense I got was that I had to keep prying to get them to write stuff down.' Mr Murray found his partner's phone switched off but fully charged on her bed along with her engagement ring on her bedside table. Her body was found around 330 feet from where the Mini convertible hit the lake on February 4, 2016 Following Hannah's death, he says he spoke to the Independent Police Complaints Commission about how the police in Brixton handled the case that night. Her mother, Jane Barnes, said her daughter died almost a year to the day after she was allegedly attacked by a work colleague. Ms Warren's family say Scotland Yard should have acted sooner after she was reported as acting 'irrationally.' A previous hearing was told the family lodged an official complaint with police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), regarding the force's handling of the case. Her death came after Hannah worked at an office design company in London called Oktra but had intended to resign. Her mother described as a 'very sociable party person' - but had been raped by a work colleague in February 2015 almost exactly a year to the day before she died. Ms Warren's mother, Jane Barnes, said her daughter died almost a year to the day after she was allegedly attacked by a work colleague She said: 'Hannah was raped by a colleague at work but I didn't know about it until after she had died. She had told her younger brother James and it was James who told me. 'She had been having counselling but I didn't know until I saw some notes on her iPad which were synced with her mobile phone which talked about the rape. I found one box of anti-depressants dated 2014 and only one tablet had been taken out. 'She never spoke to me about it but in 2015 Hannah's personality did change. Every time I would make arrangements to meet her there would always be an excuse. There always seemed to be a reason that we couldn't meet up.' The inquest heard the Metropolitan Police launched an investigation after she was reported as missing and Hannah's car was later spotted by an automatic number plate recognition camera in south Wales. Home Office pathologist Dr Ryk James said Hannah died as a result of drowning. Coroner Edward Ramsay said the jury would have to decide whether the Metropolitan Police could have done more to protect Hannah. He said it was 'central to the case' for the jury to consider whether or not more could have been done by the Metropolitan Police service in response to the concerns raised about her welfare. The Swansea hearing, expected to last 10 days, continues. A three-metre crocodile has been spotted at a popular holiday hub by horrified holidaymakers on a kayaking tour, prompting the site to close. The group of nine were paddling at North Stradbroke Island on Wednesday near Brisbane in Queensland's south. Crocodiles normally stick to the central and northern parts of the state's waterways, an area more than 400km away from the sighting. Straddie Adventures owner Mark Jones was leading the kayak tour at Myora Springs on the west side of the island when he saw the reptile just 10 metres in front of him and his tour party. A three-metre crocodile (pictured) has been spotted at a popular holiday hub by horrified holidaymakers on a kayaking tour at North Stradbroke Island 'I was sitting there in the kayak where I do a talk I thought it was a log to start with,' Mr Jones told the Courier Mail. 'It went under then it came back up, about 10m to 15m away - I was spinning.' The kayaking tour guide told 7News he didn't say anything to his guests when he first spotted the crocodile at such close range. 'But the second time it surfaced I said, "is that a croc there you reckon?" and they said, 'yeah its a croc,' he said. 'We all [saw] it, it went north and we sent south on the tour.' Mr Jones said he saw the crocodile heading towards Amity Point towards Morton Bay, another popular tourist hang out. 'We don't know if it's gone into the mangroves or gone out (to Moreton Bay),' he said. The news prompted wildlife rangers to close the North Stradbroke tourist hot spot so officers could investigate the surroundings. Crocodiles normally stick to the central and northern parts of the state's waterways, an area more than 400km away from the sighting (stock image) The discovery has sparked claims of a new record after the most-southern crocodile sighting in the state was recorded four years ago at the Mary River at Gympie, about 160km north of Brisbane. But Wednesday's crocodile appearance has locals and authorities also scratching their heads over the rare sighting. Ecology expert Bob Hoskin from James Cook University said the crocodile was very far from its usual habitat. 'Anything down around south Stradbroke Island or south east Queensland proper is well south of [crocodiles] currently known distribution,' the associate professor said. But crocodile expert Steven Salisbury wasn't surprised by the reptile popping up at the site. Straddie Adventures owner Mark Jones was leading a kayak tour at Myora Springs on the west side of the island when he saw the reptile just 10 metres in front of him and his tour party (pictured, Mark Jones far right wearing black leading the tour on Wednesday) The University of Queensland associate professor said the spot is just a few hundred kilometres from the southern limit of where salt water crocodiles live. The reptile of this size is capable of swimming distances of 50km a day in the open oceans, with overcrowding in the north possibly sending crocs south, Professor Salisbury said. As the populations expand in the north the beasts should find their way to the warm southern waters, he said. The expert added he is waiting for the day for crocs to seen sunning themselves under the Story Bridge in Brisbane's CBD. Meanwhile parks and wildlife officers are continuing to scour up and down North Stradbroke Island as well as patrolling the mangrove area using spotlights. If found the crocodile will be transported further north, as authorities call on people to avoid the area. Chilling footage shows an 'incel' murderer's eight-minute killing spree as an inquest heard he 'idolised' mass shooters. Jake Davison, 22, killed five people, including his mother and a toddler pushing her teddy in a pram, on August 12, 2021. In the clips, Davison is seen wielding his firearm in the streets around his home in Plymouth, Devon, as he indiscriminately shoots bystanders. It comes as the jury was told of his 'deeply disturbing internet history, which included frequent posts about incel 'ideology' on Reddit forums. Examples included a video from April 2021, in which he complained about being called fat, saying: 'This is why incels were more prone to killing themselves - or going on a killing spree.' Davison, 22, killed his 51-year-old mother Maxine following a row before shooting dead four others in Plymouth Chilling: Jake Davison is seen strolling down the road with a gun, before shooting dead multiple bystanders He also carried out searches on a Californian man Elliott Rodger, a spree killer idolised by the incel community, in the months before his killing. The month before the atrocity, he talked about his 'lack of success at dating apps, disillusionment of life and self hatred.' He also referred to himself as the 'black sheep' of the family and he described his mother as very difficult to live with. On one clip his mother entered the room off camera and was ordered out. He then said: 'I f****** hate her. I really hate her - you have no idea.' He later described her as 'dirty, insufferable and a vile creature.' The video of Davison is a collation of CCTV, doorbell and bodycam footage as well as audio from 999 calls, and was shown to the jury for the first time on Wednesday. In the footage, apprentice crane operator Davison is seen arriving home in his work clothes. It is there where he first killed his own mother Maxine, 51, shooting her dead following a row, before leaving the property to hunt more victims. Tragic: Lee Martyn and his daughter Sophie were among those shot and killed by gunman Davison Davison, an apprentice crane operator, shot dead strangers Sophie Martyn, three, and her father Lee Martyn, 43, on the street as they were walking their dog (Pictured: Davison prowling the street armed with gun) In the minutes that followed Davison shot dead strangers Sophie Martyn, three, and her father Lee Martyn, 43, on the street as they were walking their dog. He then killed Stephen Washington, 59, a full-time carer for his wife, by shooting him in the chest in a nearby park as he walked his two dogs. Artist Katherine Shepherd, 66, was then shot, and later died, at Derriford Hospital from a gunshot wound to her stomach. A 33-year-old man, and a 53-year-old woman, were also shot and wounded before Davison turned the gun on himself and ended his own life. The footage, captured mostly on a neighbours' CCTV, begins with Davison returning home at 3.22pm. Maxine Davison then leaves for a dental appointment before returning to the property in Biddick Drive. Jake Davison's mother Maxine was the first to be killed following a row, before he went on a killing spree Davison leaves his home (right) holding the shotgun he used moments before to kill his own mother, before being seen on the street on CCTV (left) At 6.05pm, Maxine called her sister Marlene Hill, who then called 999 and is heard saying: 'Her son has got mental health problems. He has grabbed her by the throat and is not messing around.' Jake is then seen on CCTV leaving the house at 6.08pm holding his shotgun after shooting his mother twice and leaving her for dead in a bedroom. At this point, Sophie and Lee Martyn were walking along Royal Navy Avenue and into Linear Park as they continued into Biddick Drive. The inquest heard Lee was walking the family dog Mabel - while Sophie pushed her teddy along in a pram - holding her father's hand. At 6.09pm Davison killed them by shooting Lee three times and Sophie once - firstly at a range of 20m and then at 1m. At this point, the first 999 calls from neighbours are reported about a shooting in the street. One says: 'I heard a bang. The person who done it lives at number 17 Biddick Drive. 'I think his name is Jake something. I heard a bang and thought what the hell is that.' Another caller said: 'He has gone up the back of Biddick Drive - shooting other people I think. With an automatic weapon, he was just firing all the time. Davison first murdered his own mother, Maxine, at her home nearby, before going outside and randomly killing schoolgirl Sophie Martyn, her father Lee, 43, and dog walker Stephen Washington. He then crossed a road to a hair salon where he shot and fatally injured Kate Shepherd, 66 'It looks like a black automatic rifle. He might have killed his mother - his front door is open.' Davison then shoots at a house in Biddick Drive injuring two other people. At 6.11pm another caller reported: 'He is shooting everywhere.' Davison then shoots Stephen Washington twice in Lineaer Park. A bystander then sees a man with a gun walking towards him and runs away. Kate Shepherd leaves Lidl at 6.09pm and contiues along Henderson Place. Davison is then seen on CCTV walking along Royal Navy Avenue towards Henderson Place carrying the shotgun. At 6.13pm Davison shoots Mrs Shepherd, his final victim, outside Blush salon once in her abdomen at close range. Davison then walks from Henderson Place to Bedford Street and is seen on camera again. Dashcam footage shows a witness making a 999 call reporting a gunshot. At 6.15pm unarmed police officers arrived on the scene and started giving her first aid. Seven minutes later Davison walks back on Bedford Street towards Henderson Place. He is seen on CCTV holding the gun to his throat and at 6.24pm he shoots himself on the corner of Bedford Street and Henderson Place. Police bodycam footage captures the moment he ends his life with an officer heard shouting 'A man has shot himself in the head.' Davison died from a self-inflicted wound. Investigator David Miller, case officer with major crimes team, ran through the CCTV today and said: 'A maximum of eight minutes elapsed between the first and last shooting.' Three-year-old Sophie Martyn and her father Lee, 43, were shot dead in front of horrified onlookers as they walked their pet dog Kate Shepherd, 66, was Davison's final victim, and was gunned down by Blush hair salon in Plymouth Stephen Washington (pictured) was among the five victims shot to death by Davison in August 2021 The inquest for the victims began at Exeter Racecourse on Tuesday and the coroner said it would concerns from the families at why Davison was ever allowed to legally own a firearm under a sporting licence. The gun was even confiscated by cops following an accusation of assault made against him - but given back to Davison shortly before the tragedy. Earlier in the inquest statements were read on behalf of the families of all the victims. Josh Davison, the son of Maxine and brother of Jake, said: 'Our involvement in this inquest is to help prevent this happening in future - an event like this cannot and should not happen again. 'If we had one wish it would be we could turn back time and allow everyone who had a part in the events leading up to this tragedy an opportunity to make changes to prevent it happening at all.' Further harrowing details about Rebecca Martyn, the wife of Lee and mother of Sophie, revealed the tot had been walking a teddy in her pram at the time she was shot. They had been walking the family British bulldog Mabel at the time. The inquest continues. An Arizona county official spoke out on the difficulty of enforcing the southern border shared with Mexico as cartel trafficking operations intensify. Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines told Fox News: 'The cartels are basically running this border.' He added: 'This is not a political discussion. This is a national security issue.' Mr Lines warned that some migrants, who are often fleeing violence and poverty, remain 'indebted to the cartel' when they arrive in the United States when unable to afford the fees demanded for transit. This comes after President Biden's meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during their summit in Mexico last week, after which the President claimed there was 'no time' to touch on migration. More relaxed border policies under the Biden administration have paved the way for Mexican drug cartels to profit from taking people across the border. A Daily Mail source said 'people are the new dope' as the cartels judge that 'under Biden there is serious money to be made from people trafficking'. The Mexican drug war, a US-led collaborative effort to dismantle cartels and end the trafficking of people and drugs, is one of the world's largest conflicts, ongoing since 2006 and responsible for 20,000 casualties last year alone. Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines warned the cartels are 'basically running this border' Colombian immigrant Gisele, 18, bundles up against the cold after spending the night camped alongside the U.S.-Mexico border fence on 22 December 2022 in El Paso, Texas Mr Biden (L) said there was 'no time' to discuss immigration at his meeting with Obrador (C) Migrants along the Mexican side of the southern border as they waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide when to lift pandemic-era restrictions preventing many from seeking asylum This follows comments from the Yuma County mayor last week that President Biden's crackdown on illegal immigration from Mexico would barely 'move the needle'. The Republican mayor said it was a step in right direction, but without freeing up agents to properly patrol the frontier it would make little difference. 'It needs to be more holistic; it needs to be greater,' he added. 'And really, until we get down to enforcement, you're not going to discourage anyone from coming here.' President Joe Biden visited the Texas border city of El Paso on Sunday 8 January to witness the full-scale of the migrant crisis of the US southern border. The images, obtained by DailyMail.com, offer a powerful account of how a city on the frontlines is coping with the more than two million people who tried to cross from Mexico into the United States last year. The President's Republican opposition dismissed the visit a 'photo-op' without substance. El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said he wanted to make sure that President Joe Biden had the full picture of how the border crisis was impacting his city. So, he gave him these pictures The pictures show a humanitarian crisis unfolding on American soil. Here a man sleeps beneath an American Red Cross blanket at El Paso's airport Crowds of migrants line up to present themselves to US Border Patrol in December 2022 A Daily Mail source said 'people are the new dope' as the cartels judge that 'under Biden there is serious money to be made from people trafficking'. What is Title 42 and how will Biden use it to manage migration? Title 42 border restrictions are a public health order that enabled U.S. authorities to turn back most migrants, including people seeking asylum from persecution. The law was used in 1929 and then again in 2020 as a means of keeping communicable diseases out of the country. The law gave the United States the ability to process migrants more quickly during the pandemic without having to consider them for asylum. President Biden sought to repeal the order several times before Christmas, but the US announced on 17 January that the restrictions would be extended. The number of migrants now attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border is at its highest level in two decades - with even larger numbers expected to arrive once the pandemic-era order is lifted. Many of those were repeat crossers because Title 42 carries no legal or criminal consequences. As the US looks to open up more legal pathways for crossers, it will use Title 42 to manage the numbers of migrants crossing the southern border. Some public health experts, democrats and advocates have criticized the use of the order, however. Title 42 is one of two major surviving Trump-era policies to deter asylum at the border. Advertisement While Covid slowed migration north of the border, US Border Patrol encounters with migrants rose along the border from 400,000 in 2020 to 1.6mn in 2021. Encounters usually result in expulsions, often to the last country of transit, or apprehensions, where migrants are detained in the United States. Officials warned from 2021 that lax border policies brought in under the Biden administration have incentivized human - as well as drug - trafficking. Customs and Border Patrol reported the highest ever annual number of migrants crossing the southern United States border in 2022 at 2.37mn. Mexican drug cartels have thrived, expanding their fentanyl production significantly in 2023. In 2019, Mexicans declined to less than half of the United States' unauthorized immigrant population for the first time, according to research by the Pew Research Centre, as more left than arrived. American administrations have historically struggled to find a permanent, fair and humane solution to immigration from the southern border. The US announced yesterday it would extend the contentious Title 42 order, used by the Trump administration to curtail migration into the country during the pandemic, for temporary alleviation. The order allows border officials to process migrants more quickly, turning back even those fleeing persecution. The last major piece of permanent legislation was the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, which penalized businesses that employed immigrants unable to legally work in the US. But the ambitious goal to 'establish a reasonable, fair, orderly, and secure system of immigration' was not widely popular with politicians. Migrants arriving illegally into the United States often do so under perilous conditions, paying extortionate fees to cartels to escape violence at home. The United States cannot return refugees to their country of origin under the United States Refugee Act of 1980, and collaboration with Mexico instead results in Mexico speeding up expulsions to Central America, or the United States deporting Central American migrants to southern Mexico to cross the border into Guatemala. But the criminal control of regions results in reports of extortion and sexual violence among internally displaced people, according to the United Nations' Refugee Agency. BIDEN'S PLAN TO ADDRESS HISTORIC MIGRANT CRISIS President Joe Biden last week unveiled plans for dealing with migrants arriving at the border with Mexico Accept 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela every month Can come to the U.S. for two years if they are sponsored, have background checks and receive work authorization Expel migrants from those countries who try to cross the border illegally and impose a five-year ban on reentry Individuals from Mexico and Panama will not be eligible for parole in the U.S. Mexico has agreed to accept 30,000 expelled migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela Welcome 20,000 refugees from Latin America and Caribbean nations in 2023 and 2024 Migrants will have to set up an appointment using a cell phone app for appointments at border entry points U.S. giving $23 million in humanitarian assistance to Mexico and Central America Increasing funding available to border cities and those receiving an influx of migrants Advertisement President Joe Biden meets with members of U.S Customs and Border Protection in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday, January 8, 2023, his first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office Border Patrols in the US reported the highest number of migrants crossing north in 2022 The United States remains in a difficult position; lax border policy incentivizes cartels to traffick and exploit migrants, while returning migrants south exposes them to further extortion. Immigration was deemed a priority issue for President Biden at first, who looked to enact sweeping reforms that would put 11 million people living illegally in the U.S as of 1 January 2021 on an eight-year path to citizenship. On 9 January 2023, the President blamed Congress for inaction in reforming naturalization laws. He said: 'Until Congress passes [...] a comprehensive immigration plan to fix the system completely, my administration is going to work to make things better at the border using the tools that we have available to us now.' Mexican President Obrador also promised to put an end to the drug war when he was first elected in 2018, but the country has struggled. This week, Mexico's ex-crime chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, goes on trial over cartel bribery accusations. Both the United States and Mexico continue to fight against a vague and well-resourced enemy, enabled in part by demand for drugs and the promise of a better life in the north. The victim told DailyMail.com that she had never seen the suspect before He has not yet been charged but was hunted on suspicion of attempted kidnap They identified him by a 'unique' tattoo which says 'Chevrolet' on his left arm Police have arrested a man on suspicion of attempting to abduct a bikini-clad barista through a drive-thru window. The suspect, who has not been publicly identified, was arrested at 11am on Tuesday, at his home in Auburn, Washington. Investigators were able to search his vehicle and found evidence linking him to the scene, as well as spotting his unique 'Chevrolet tattoo on his left forearm. The driver of the Chevy Silverado will remain in police custody and has yet to be officially charged with anything. Beankini Espresso, in Auburn, Washington, is a female-owned business that serves coffee and espresso through a drive-thru window. Pictured: a former employee, not the victim Video surveillance shows the man pulling up to the window in a truck around 5am at the Beankini Espresso Auburn, a drive-thru coffee shop located in a suburb near Seattle. The bikini-clad baristas are part of the attraction of the coffee shop. The victim told DailyMail.com that the incident was a random act. She added that she had worked at the company for nine years, and it is female-owned and puts employee safety first. The shop is equipped with a silent panic button, metal doors and surveillance cameras. Staff are also allowed to have mace and tasers. The coffee shop is equipped with a silent panic button, metal doors and surveillance cameras. Staff are also allowed to have mace and tasers. The alleged kidnapper grabbed the arm of the barista as she tried to hand him some cash through the window of his car The barista is seen handing the suspect cash back before he rips out zip ties and attempts to drag her through the drive-thru window Auburn Police Department spokesperson Kolby Crossley said: 'They are in vulnerable positions because theyre usually controlling those spots by themselves at early hours in the morning when its dark outside. But this barista did an awesome job of protecting herself and fighting this person off. Authorities added that they arrested the suspect after overwhelming support from the community. In the surveillance footage, the suspect is seen grabbing the woman's arm with one hand while holding a looped zip tie device in the other - before he attempts to drag the victim out of the window. The predator drives off after the woman fights them off and slams the window shut The barista fought back and eventually set herself free before the man quickly sped off with some dollar bills falling to the ground The bikini-clad baristas are part of the attraction of the coffee shop The barista fought back and eventually set herself free before the man quickly sped off, with some dollar bills falling to the ground. Speaking to DailyMail.com she said: Our owner allows us to shut the window on any customer and handle every situation in the way we feel comfortable. We are allowed to refuse service to anyone for any reason. On Monday morning, when the incident occurred, she said the man ordered a drink and paid for it before requesting change for a $5 bill. When she went back to give him the five one-dollar bills, he grabbed her. She and her colleagues had never seen him before. Rishi Sunak attacked Sir Keir Starmer over Labour's refusal to back new anti-strike laws today as the PM was accused of overseeing 'lethal chaos' in the health service. The two party leaders clashed in a Prime Minister's Questions session dominated by a row over ambulance waiting times and industrial action by medics. It came as thousands of nurses across England went on strike in a bitter pay dispute with the Government, ahead of a looming de-facto general strike by hundreds of thousands of workers on February 1. Rail workers, teachers and civil servants are also planning to coordinate walkouts next month, forcing much of Britain to stay at home. Mr Sunak is planning to bring in a new law to enforce 'minimum service levels' for blue-light services, on public safety grounds. Meanwhile one of his ministers this morning conceded that rail strikes have cost the taxpayer more than 1billion. Rail minister Huw Merriman told MPs the Government has lost more money due to industrial action in the sector than it would have cost to settle the disputes several months ago. The two party leaders clashed in a Prime Minister's Questions session dominated by a row over ambulance waiting times and industrial action by medics. It came as thousands of nurses across England went on strike in a bitter pay dispute with the Government, ahead of a looming de-facto general strike by hundreds of thousands of workers on February 1. Britain will be forced to grind to a halt next month as co-ordinated strike action will see hundreds of thousands of train drivers, teachers, airport staff and civil servants walk out of their jobs. On February 1, travel chaos and pandemic-style remote learning for students will return due to the major industrial action over pay from a number of unions. The date has been dubbed as a national 'protect the right to strike' day by unions, in response to the government's planned law on minimum service levels. On Monday, MPs voted for a bill that could see workers fired if they refuse to work during a strike. Sir Keir pressed the Prime Minister on ambulance waiting times in a packed House of Commons. He called on the Prime Minister to put himself in the place of a heart attack victim waiting for help. He said: 'By 1pm our heart attack victim is in a bad way, sweaty, dizzy, chest tightening by that time they should be getting treatment, but an hour after they've called 999 they're still lying there, waiting, listening to the clock tick. 'How does he think they feel knowing an ambulance could be still hours away? Mr Sunak insisted the Government was taking 'very practical steps that will make a difference in short term'. He replied: 'The specific and practical things we are doing to improve ambulance times are clear. We are investing more in urgent and emergency care to create more bed capacity, we are ensuring that the flow of patients through emergency care is faster than it ever has been. 'We are discharging people at a record rate out of hospitals to ease the constraints that they are facing and we are reducing the callout rates by moving people out of ambulance stacks and being dealt with in the community. Now, these are all very practical steps that will make a difference in short term. 'But I ask him again and again, and we know why, the reason that he is not putting patients first when it comes to ambulance waiting times is because he is simply in the pockets of his union paymasters.' Nursing staff from more than 55 NHS trusts are manning pickets today and tomorrow following their first ever strike in December. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has announced that two further, bigger strikes will be held next month, while the GMB union is expected to announce further ambulance worker strike dates on Wednesday afternoon. The NHS is reminding patients to attend all their usual appointments unless they have been contacted, and to seek urgent care if needed during the strikes. NHS England said patients should use services 'wisely' by going to NHS 111 online but continuing to call 999 in a life-threatening emergency. Thousands of operations and appointments are expected to be cancelled during the two consecutive days of strike action. Almost 30,000 needed to be rescheduled following December's nurse strikes. The health service is likely to run a bank holiday-style service in many areas. The RCN has agreed to staff chemotherapy, emergency cancer services, dialysis, critical care units, neonatal and paediatric intensive care. Some areas of mental health and learning disability and autism services are also exempt from the strike, while trusts will be told they can request staffing for specific clinical needs. When it comes to adult A&E and urgent care, nurses will work Christmas Day-style rotas. Earlier Mr Merriman was grilled by Transport Select Committee member Ben Bradshaw about whether 'we're talking of a cost to the Government of over a billion (pounds) so far'. He went on to ask: 'That would easily be enough money to have solved this dispute months ago, wouldn't it?' The minister replied: 'If you look at it in that particular lens, then absolutely, it's actually ended up costing more than would have been the case if it was just settled in that part. 'But, again, we have to look at the overall impact on the public sector pay deals that are going across, and we also have to look on the ability for the reforms that don't often get talked about, but they're absolutely vital as part of the package. 'It's the reforms that will actually pay for these pay deals and also make the railway more efficient in the long run as well.' Hamline University has walked back its condemnation of an art history professor after being pummeled in the press and public, and admits now that it only ever labeled her 'Islamophobic' to appease its Muslim students. In a statement last night - released two hours after Prater's attorneys announced they'd filed a defamation lawsuit against the school for making her a 'pariah' - its top brass said it had 're-examined' its handling of the scandal. 'In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. 'Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term Islamophobic was therefore flawed. 'Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep,' said the statement by Board of Trustees Chair Ellen Watters and school president Fayneese Miller. Scroll down for video Professor Erika Lopez Prater was relieved of her post at Hamline University in October, after showing students the image amid a discussion of Islamic art. Now, she is suing the school, claiming it made her a 'pariah' by calling her Islamophobic In October, adjunct professor Erika Lopez Prater showed an online class an image of the Prophet Muhammad as part of an art history class. She warned the students watching virtually what she planned to do, and gave them ample warning to look away from the image if they were so inclined. In some - but not all- fractions of Islam, it is forbidden to look at the image of the Prophet. After the class, a student who is also the president of the university's Muslim association complained. Prater, who'd been hired that semester for the first time and was due to return for the spring semester, was shown the door. The university, bending to the demands of the Muslim association, called the incident 'Islamophobic'. All of the images that I used were very respectful, they were meant to be instructional and also referential in their original historical contexts Erika Lopez Prater It sparked uproar among other Muslims and professors across the country, who said the school had stifled academic freedom. One Muslim professor accused the school of advancing an 'extreme' Islamist view that is only held by a small number of people. The school dug its heels in initially, saying it wanted to protect its Muslim students and make them feel heard. On January 14, Professor Prater broke her silence in a discussion with Muslim scholars. 'In the way that I was framing Islamic art, I know that there are many practices within Islam, I know historically there have been differing attitudes as to how the divine should be depicted but I know that inconsistency is consistent within many religions - it's not specific to Islam. 'In my syllabus, I did note that I would be showing both representational and non representational of holy figures such as the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ and Buddha. 'During my class I did give my students a heads-up that I was about to show an image of the Prophet Muhammad, I explained my reasons for doing so, but also to demonstrate the rich diversity within the history of Islam. 'Of course, in an art history classroom, images are the primary source documents that we use as evidence in order to learn about diverse cultures and thinking and attitudes. 'I spent a couple minutes explaining to students, before I showed the images. I told my students if they didn't feel comfortable engaging visually, they were free to do what made most sense to them. 'I tried to empower them to walk away from the video portion of the online classroom, or do what kind of made most sense to them. In a statement last night, Hamline said it was a 'misstep' to have labeled the lesson Islamophobic. It came two hours after the professor and her attorneys filed a lawsuit 'Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep,' said the statement by Board of Trustees Chair Ellen Watters and school president Fayneese Miller (pictured) that was released last nigh There was widespread support for the professor, with thousands signing a petition for her to be reinstated 'I'm not a mind reader. My discussion in my class was fact based and on explaining the beginnings of Islam itself. 'All of the images that I used were very respectful, they were meant to be instructional and also referential in their original historical contexts.' Professor Prater added that the student said her warnings 'didn't matter'. 'She had some pretty strong feelings that she expressed to me. But one of them that perhaps gets to the heart of the matter was she thought the warnings that I had provided to the class didn't even matter, because she believed that images of the Prophet Muhammad should never be shown full stop. Aram Wedatalla complained to the school, claiming she'd been 'blindsided' by the image of the Prophet Muhammad despite Professor Prater giving them multiple warnings that she intended to show it. It was an online class, during which she said students had the opportunity to turn off their screens or look away 'Even if those are pedagogically relevant that are primary source documents from history.' Now, Hamline says it'll host 'two major conversations.' 'One will focus on academic freedom and student care. The other will focus on academic freedom and religion,' the statement said. Prater's attorneys have not yet responded to the statement. In her lawsuit, Prater's attorneys say she shared her syllabus plan with her superiors, and 'no one' raised any concerns. 'Students viewing the online class had ample warning about the paintings. 'Students viewing the online class also had ample opportunity to turn away from their computer screens, turn their screens away from them, turn off their screens, or even leave their rooms before the paintings were displayed. Her attorney slammed the university for making her a 'pariah' in the aftermath of the students' complaints. The body of Cardinal George Pell will lie in state at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney ahead of a requiem mass and private burial service on February 2. Cardinal Pell, who was Australia's most senior Catholic, died in Rome on January 10 aged 81. Arrangements are being made for his body to be returned to Australia for burial in the crypt of St Mary's. The cardinal will lie in state at the cathedral from 9.30am on Wednesday, February 1, Sydney's Catholic Archdiocese said in a statement on Tuesday evening. His successor as Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, will be the principal celebrant at the Pontifical Requiem Mass for the cardinal, starting at 11am on Thursday, February 2 before his burial in a private ceremony. Cardinal Pell, who was Australia's most senior Catholic, died in Rome on January 10 aged 81 The body of Cardinal George Pell will lie in state at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney ahead of a requiem mass and private burial service on February 2 NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Victoria's Daniel Andrews have ruled out holding state services for the former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney. Cardinal Pell was the Vatican's top finance minister before leaving in 2017 to stand trial in Melbourne on child sexual abuse charges, for which he was jailed before his convictions were quashed. In a statement on Tuesday evening the St Mary's Cathedral Dean, Father Don Richardson, said thousands of mourners from Australia and overseas are expected to attend the mass. 'Cardinal Pell left a remarkable legacy for the Catholic Church in Australia and this will undoubtedly be one of the most significant funerals ever held at the Cathedral', he said. Cardinal Pell was the Vatican's top finance minister before leaving in 2017 to stand trial in Melbourne on child sexual abuse charges, for which he was jailed before his convictions were quashed 'Cardinal Pell was also known and highly respected by many overseas due to his numerous roles in the Vatican over many decades.' The mass will be livestreamed on the St Mary's Cathedral You Tube Channel to allow overseas mourners to participate in the ceremony. Father Richardson said screens will be erected in the cathedral forecourt to accommodate the large numbers of mourners expected to attend to pay their respects to Cardinal Pell who served as Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014. For mourners unable to attend the Funeral Mass on February 2, there will be masses for the late cardinal at the cathedral on Wednesday, February 1 at 1.10pm and 8pm. Cardinal Pell was farewelled on Saturday at a mass in St Peter's Basilica - the same Vatican City church where Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's funeral was held last week. NATO's secretary general has said Vladimir Putin 'cannot win on the battlefield' after the Russian claimed he had 'no doubt' Moscow would be victorious in Ukraine. In televised remarks to veterans and workers during a visit to a weapons factory in his home town of Saint Petersburg on Wednesday, the Russian President said confidently: 'Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it.' He claimed Russia has long sought to negotiate a settlement to the conflict in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland of Donbas that began in 2014, and said Moscow's invasion of its neighbour was intended to stop the 'war' that has been on-going in the region ever since, between Kyiv and Moscow-backed separatists. But NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg quickly hit back at his claims, telling reporters in Davos, Switzerland that Putin has shown no sign of preparing for peace, and that the Russian despot must realise he has no chance of a battlefield victory. Vladimir Putin has said Russia's victory in Ukraine 'is assured' and claimed he is trying to end the war that has continued in the Donbas from 2014, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces ever since. Pictured: Putin attends a meeting with workers and veterans in Saint Petersburg on Wednesday In televised remarks to veterans and workers during a visit to a weapons factory in his home town of Saint Petersburg, the Russian President said confidently: 'Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it.' Pictured: Putin is seen with officials inspecting the factory on Wednesday Nevertheless, Stoltenberg called this a 'pivotal moment' in Ukraine, and said Kyiv needs a 'significant increase' in weapons from its western allies to overcome Russia. 'President Putin has shown no sign of preparing for peace and therefore he must realise he cannot win on battlefield. This is a pivotal moment in the war and the need for a significant increase in support for Ukraine,' Stoltenberg told Reuters in Davos. 'If we want a negotiated peaceful solution tomorrow we need to provide more weapons today,' he added. This echoed NATO's deputy secretary general, who earlier today warned top military chiefs that Russia was preparing for an extended war, and that its member nations must get ready 'for the long haul' and support Ukraine a long as it takes. Addressing the opening of the military chiefs' meeting, Mircea Geoana said NATO nations must invest more in defence, ramp up military industrial manufacturing and harness new technologies to help win future conflicts. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, and has since been drawn into a protracted conflict. Moscow expected to take the whole of Ukraine in a matter of weeks, but the war is now close to the one year mark. Kyiv's forces pushed Russian troops back from the capital just a month after the invasion, and have since inflicted a series of embarrassing defeats on Russia. Despite the defeats, Putin told workers at a factory victory was 'guaranteed'. 'The unity and solidarity of the Russian people, the courage and heroism of our fighters and, of course, the work of the military-industrial sector' will secure victory, he said in his latest rambling speech about the war. Putin also praised the Russian defence industry as he spoke at the plant, which is part of Russian missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey. 'We have something to rely upon and this cannot but inspire that victory will be ours,' he said. On the conflict, Putin said: 'Large-scale combat operations involving heavy weapons, artillery, tanks and aircraft haven't stopped in Donbas since 2014. 'All that we are doing today, as part of the special military operation, is an attempt to stop this war. This is the meaning of our operation - protecting people who live on those territories.' Putin claimed Russia has long sought to negotiate a settlement to the conflict in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland of Donbas, and said that Moscow's invasion of Russia's neighbour was intended to stop the 'war'. Pictured: Putin attends events marking the 80th anniversary of the break of Nazi's siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the city on Wednesday NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg quickly hit back at Putin's claims on Wednesday, telling reporters in Davos, Switzerland (pictured) that Putin has shown no sign of preparing for peace, and that the Russian despot must realise he has no chance of a battlefield victory Putin again insisted that Russia had tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement before sending in troops, but 'we were just duped and cheated'. He described Ukraine's east as Russia's 'historic territories', adding that Moscow conceded their loss after the 1991 Soviet collapse but had to act to protect Russian speakers there. 'We suffered for a long time, we tried to come to an agreement for a long time. As it turned out, we were simply led by the nose, deceived. We did everything possible to settle this situation by peaceful means,' he said. 'Now it has become obvious that this was, by definition, impossible,' he claimed. 'The enemy was simply preparing to force this whole conflict into an 'acute' and 'hot' phase. I say again, we had no choice but to do that which we are doing now.' He went on to repeat unfounded claims that Ukraine's government are Nazis. 'And as for the crimes against the civilian population by the neo-Nazis who settled in Ukraine, who run the show, and who seized power in Ukraine... Everything that has happened since is significant, but the primary source of power for today's government in Ukraine was their coup d'etat,' he said. Putin has explained his decision to send troops into Ukraine on February 24 by the need to protect Russian speakers and conduct 'demilitarization' and 'denazification' of Ukraine to prevent it from posing a threat to Russia - claims rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies as a cover for an unprovoked act of aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin attends events marking the 80th anniversary of the break of Nazi's siege of Leningrad, (now Saint Petersburg) during World War Two at the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of siege victims are buried, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, January 18, 2023 Putin attended the meeting with veterans during a visit to Saint Petersburg for the 80th anniversary of the Red Army breaking the Nazi siege there on Jan. 18, 1943, when it was called Leningrad. The blockade of the city lasted nearly 900 days and only fully lifted in January 1944, marking one of the bloodiest pages of the Second World War. About 1 million people died in Leningrad during the siege, most of them from starvation. Putin laid a wreath at the city's Piskaryov memorial cemetery, where 420,000 civilian victims of the siege and 70,000 Soviet soldiers were buried. He also put flowers in a section where his brother, who died as a child during the siege, was buried in a ass grave. Putin said once that his mother was declared dead and was about to be taken for burial when his father, who had just come home on a visit from the frontlines, managed to ward off a funeral team at the last moment and helped her recover. Putin's father, who was badly wounded in fighting for Leningrad, died in 1999 at the age of 88, and his mother died the previous year aged 86. Putin also visited a defence factory in Saint Petersburg, where he promised workers more social benefits and draft deferments. He said the 'courage and heroism of our soldiers' and defense industry efforts would secure Russia's victory. Speaking energetically but frequently clearing his throat, Putin said Russia produces three times as many air defense missiles as the United States. Putin's public appearance came as Russia's war on Ukraine nears the one year mark. At a meeting this week, NATO chiefs are expected to discuss how allies can expand the delivery of weapons, training and support to Ukraine in the coming months, and how they can further shore up their own defenses. 'We have no indication that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's goals have changed,' said Geoana, adding that Russia has mobilized more than 200,000 additional troops. 'So we must be prepared for the long haul. 2023 will be a difficult year and we need to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.' Pictured: A high-rise residential building lies partially destroyed after a missile strike on January 15, 2023 in Dnipro, Ukraine Putin deploys air defence systems around Moscow amid fears of Ukrainian strikes on the capital Advertisement U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met quietly on Tuesday with Ukraine's chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border. And he is expected to relay Zaluzhnyi's concerns to the other military leaders at the meeting. Milley's meeting with Zaluzhnyi was quickly arranged when it became clear Monday that the Ukraine chief would not be able to attend the NATO sessions in person. He's expected to attend by video conference on Thursday. Army Col. Dave Butler, Milley's spokesman, said the chairman planned to describe to the NATO chiefs 'the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that.' Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, told the gathering of chiefs on Wednesday that the alliance must continue to transform to meet future fights. 'The war has also shown us that you have to be able to fight tomorrow's battles, as well as yesterday's battles, today,' said Bauer, who is with the Royal Netherlands Navy. 'Modern warfare is just as much about bits and bots as it is about mud and blood.' He noted that about a year ago, the NATO Russia Council held its last meeting. 'Back then we were still able to sit around the same table,' he said, adding that now, after Russia's brutal invasion and war in Ukraine, 'the world is a different place.' NATO, he said, has proven it can quickly increase and shift its military presence when and where needed. And he echoed the commitment that the alliance is prepared to support Ukraine for as long as needed. Putin, he said, 'underestimated the scale and bravery of Ukrainian people, armed forces and leadership, and underestimated our unity and our solidarity with Ukraine.' That alliance support, he said, has made a difference on the battlefield, and it will continue. Rishi Sunak tonight demanded the Scotland Yard chief take urgent action in the wake of the 'absolutely despicable' David Carrick case. The Prime Minister visited a police station with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley after the latest scandal to hit London's force. Serving Met Police officer Carrick was unmasked as one of the UK's most prolific sex offenders and officially sacked yesterday. The 48-year-old was found to have committed gross misconduct after admitting 49 criminal charges, including 24 counts of rape against 12 women over an 18-year period. Mr Sunak said he had 'constructive' talks with Sir Mark and 'made clear to him and he agrees that the abuse of power that we have seen this week is absolutely despicable and it needs to be addressed immediately'. The PM added: 'That's why all police forces across the country have been told to check all of their serving officers and staff against national police databases to identify and root out anybody who shouldnt be serving.' His comments came amid growing calls for Carrick to be stripped of his state-funded pension. The rapist policeman is still in line for 22,000 a year in retirement income whenever he is released from prison. Scotland Yard said Home Office rules made it unlikely that he could be stripped of his gold-plated, final-salary pension. But London Mayor Sadiq Khan is pursuing a forfeiture action, backed by Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The PM said he was 'confident' David Carrick 'would not have passed' vetting processes that had been 'significantly strengthened' in recent years Speaking after his talks with Sir Mark tonight, Mr Sunak admitted that 'clearly' Carrick should 'never have been a police officer'. But he said he was 'confident' the sex offender 'would not have passed' vetting processes that had been 'significantly strengthened' in recent years. 'What we want to do is make sure there aren't serving police officers anywhere at any stage in their career - or indeed staff in police forces - who shouldn't be there,' he added. 'The national police database contains a variety of information about people against which those individuals can be re-checked. 'It's important we do that immediately and police forces carry that out to identify and root our anyone who's not fit to serve. 'But its also important that we continue to improve the safety of women and girls up and down the country, and the majority of police officers are working very hard to do that.' Carrick abused his police powers to target his victims, showing them his warrant card and saying: 'I'm a police officer, you're safe with me.' Sir Mark admitted the Met Police had not always vetted officers well enough but was 'determined to do everything possible to tighten our standards'. He added: 'We vet officers, weve always vetted officers coming into the organisation. 'Over the last 20 years weve tightened the procedures multiple times. What weve realised is we havent always done it well enough. And so were double checking by running existing people against the big databases. 'Were going back and checking some closed cases to make sure the decision's right, so were doing lots of belts and braces to look for any other problems in the organisation.' Responding to the PM's comments tonight, Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said checking officers against police databases was 'the bare minimum' that should be done and 'its frankly shocking that it doesnt already happen'. 'The Governments response has been completely underwhelming,' she said. 'Labour has long called for mandatory police vetting and misconduct standards, but the Government has refused to act. 'All we get are warm words from the Home Secretary and Prime Minister while in practice they have walked away from taking national action to improve police standards.' Speaking in the House of Commons earlier today, Rishi Sunak said the abuse of power by the disgraced officer was 'truly sickening and our thoughts are with his victims' Met Police chief Mark Rowley is now grappling with the first major scandal of his four-month tenure by launching a review into 800 serving officers who have faced misconduct claims David Carrick has admitted 49 charges against a dozen women, including 24 counts of rape Speaking in the House of Commons earlier today, Mr Sunak said the abuse of power by the disgraced officer was 'truly sickening and our thoughts are with his victims'. 'The police must address the failings in this case, restore public confidence and ensure the safety of women and girls,' he told MPs. 'There will be no place to hide for those who use their position to intimidate those women and girls, or those who have failed to act to reprimand or remove those people from office.' Met chief Sir Mark is now grappling with the first major scandal of his four-month tenure by launching a review into 800 serving officers who have faced misconduct claims. He admitted yesterday that he could not guarantee that more sex offenders did not lurk in the ranks. Home Office guidelines state that 'forfeiture' applications to remove a police pension can be made when an officer has been convicted of a criminal offence committed in connection with their service which leads to a serious loss of confidence in policing. But a Met spokesman said this was unlikely because Carrick's offending was committed while off duty. The National Police Chiefs' Council is to ask all forces to check their officers against national police databases to help identify anyone who has 'slipped through the net' before vetting standards were toughened, in the wake of the Carrick case. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has also asked the College of Policing to strengthen the statutory code of practice for police vetting, making the obligations all forces must legally follow stricter and clearer. In a statement, she said: 'David Carrick's sickening crimes are a stain on the police and he should never have been allowed to remain as an officer for so long. 'We are taking immediate steps to ensure predatory individuals are not only rooted out of the force, but that vetting and standards are strengthened to ensure they cannot join the police in the first place. 'Every day thousands of decent, hard-working police officers perform their duties with the utmost professionalism and I am sure they all share my disgust at his despicable betrayal of everything they stand for.' Another watchdog review has been commissioned so His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) can check how forces have responded to its recent findings on vetting and corruption within the ranks to 'make sure chief officers are taking the necessary action to remove those who are not fit to serve'. The Home Office has also launched a review of the police disciplinary system to make sure officers who 'are not fit to serve the public' and 'fall short of the high standards expected of them' can be sacked. Officials will examine decision making at misconduct hearings, and the panels tasked with leading them, as well as checking forces have the powers they need to take action against rogue officers. The review is expected to be completed within about four months. More than 1,000 Metropolitan Police officers and staff who have previously been accused of domestic abuse or sexual offences are having their cases reviewed. As an elite parliamentary protection officer with two decades on the force, Carrick is likely to have been paid about 43,000, a police source said. And the Met's gold-plated scheme means at 60 his pension would be worth 22,000 annually, according to calculations from Ian Cook at wealth management firm Quilter. This would cost the average private sector worker 730,000 to secure on the open market, said William Burrows of the Retirement Planning Project, a financial advice firm. Former home secretary Priti Patel said London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Suella Braverman should do everything possible to deny Carrick his entire pension. 'If he left prison with a pension pot of hundreds of thousands, with the majority coming from his employer, that would be ludicrous and unjustifiable,' she said. Former victims commissioner Dame Vera Baird said: 'There should be some room for sensible discretion here because in instances like this of course it would be appropriate to take a pension pot away from such a serious offender. What does it matter if he was on duty or not? I hope his victims will be compensated without having to go to court.' Freedom of information data shows that just 42 applications for forfeiture of police pensions were approved in the five years to November 2022. Police officers who face losing their pensions after being convicted of serious crimes can go to the High Court to fight their case. Detectives who investigated Carrick said they expected more victims to come forward A senior police source said forfeitures happened only in extreme cases such as national security breaches, but Carrick's abuse of his position to facilitate offending meant there could be a strong case to seize his employer contributions. A spokesman for the Mayor's office for policing and crime in London said it would pursue forfeiture, arguing: 'It is clear that PC Carrick committed offences in connection with his service as a member of a police force.' The office is expected to discuss the case with the Met, then apply to the Home Secretary for a certificate of forfeiture for the pension to be taken away. Mrs Braverman said she supported the move but, even if the application was successful, Carrick would keep the 35 per cent of the pension pot he contributed himself. He is understood to have been letting out his home in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, to a family while on remand at more than 1,200 a month. His 80 offences came between 2003 and 2020 but a six-year gap between 2009 and 2015 has convinced detectives there are more victims. Hertfordshire Constabulary has set up a portal for women to come forward. Carrick will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in London on February 6. He is likely to face many years behind bars. In another close call at JFK, a JetBlue flight bound for Puerto Rico bumped into an empty plane on the tarmac at the New York airport around 7am Wednesday morning. The incident comes just days after hundreds of lives were nearly lost at the airport when a Delta Boeing 737 and an American Airlines Boeing 777 narrowly avoided colliding during the Delta plane's takeoff. That incident remains under investigation by numerous federal agencies. According to a passenger on board the JetBlue flight during Wednesday's incident, the plane was being pushed from the gate by a pushback truck and preparing to taxi before takeoff. During the pushback, the AirBus A320 hit another parked JetBlue AirBus A320. Following the incident, the plane returned to the gate and passengers were forced to disembark. There were no reported injuries. Both aircraft were put out of service, the airline said. Passengers were returned to the terminal after a JetBlue flight bumped into another plane on the tarmac There were no reported injuries as a result of the collision AJetBlue spokesperson said that the San Juan-bound flight 'came into light contact with a parked unoccupied aircraft during pushback.' The incident is under investigation by the FAA. The agency said in a statement: 'JetBlue Flight 1603 struck the tail of a parked JetBlue aircraft while pushing back from the gate around 7am at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. 'The flight was going to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Both aircraft were Airbus 320. No injuries were reported, and the FAA will investigate.' The flight was due to take off at 6am and passengers eventually left on a new aircraft at 7.50am. In a statement to DailyMail.com, a JetBlue spokesperson said: 'Safety is JetBlues first priority, and both aircraft involved will be taken out of service for inspection and the incident will be investigated.' The January 2 near-collision was avoided thanks to a sophisticated radar system used on the ground - the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X. The system collects data from censors to warn the tower of potential collisions. A week earlier, the Allied Pilots Association, which represents 15,000 American Airlines pilots, raised concerns about new cockpit protocols enforced by the airline without adequate training. These procedures may become part of the FAA and TSA investigation into the incident. The new checks have been in force since Tuesday, January 11. and deal with cockpit communications during critical events such as low visibility landings, according to the union. 'The operational changes that management is attempting to implement without fulsome training alters how pilots communicate, coordinate, and execute flight safety duties at some of the most high-threat times of flight,' the Allied Pilots Association (APA) said in a post last Monday. A similar incident to Wednesday's occurred on January 2 at JFK when an ITA Airways plane clipped a Delta aircraft upon landing in New York after traveling from Rome. Nobody was injured, an ITA spokesperson said, adding passengers did not notice the impact. A Los Angeles man is on the run after he was caught on video ramming a dump truck and a Chevy Impala into his wife's house after he'd discovered she filed for a restraining order against him. Ronald Dunn (pictured), 62, is on the run after driving two vehicles into his wife's LA home Ronald Dunn, 62, was seen Sunday at around 3:30 p.m. in a now viral video driving his Chevrolet Impala into the South Los Angeles home after wife Patricia, 63, had obtained the order on January 9. In the video, someone can clearly be heard asking: 'What the f**k is he doing?' as he slammed the truck into the home in Westmont, an unincorporated part of the city just east of Inglewood. Others are heard screaming. Before ramming the truck into the house, Dunn had driven a Chevy Impala into the garage door before leaving and returning with the dump truck. And shortly after ramming the truck into the house, he came back a third time in a white car to yell obscenities at his estranged wife and stunned neighbors. Police did not arrive in time to catch him and turned up 45 minutes after the initial attack - because the incident had been reported as a traffic collision and not a criminal act. The destruction left by Ronald Dunn has left his estranged wife no longer wanting to live at the home The moment Ronald Dunn drove a white dump truck into his estranged wife's home in South Los Angeles He has since been evading the police, who have put out wanted posters for him. A spokesman for the LA Sheriff's Department told DailyMail.com he was still on the run as of Wednesday morning. Patricia Dunn told KCAL that while she and her estranged husband were going through a divorce, the restraining order appeared to have changed him. 'I don't know if he was drunk or under the influence,' she said. 'I never experienced anything like this in my life.' When asked how the incident had made her feel, she simply said she was in 'complete fear' and said her husband 'was like a madman.' Her husband had not even been served the restraining order yet and had merely heard that it was coming. 'Because we are going through a divorce,' she said when asked why he was doing this. And he is upset about the fact no contact. He's verbally abusive and I have nothing nice to say.' Dunn admitted to KABC that she feared for her life. Patricia Dunn (pictured) said that while she and her estranged husband were going through a divorce, the restraining order appeared to have changed him Ronald Dunn had not even been served the restraining order yet and had merely heard that it was coming Cracks in the walls of the exterior of the home were left by Dunn's rampage 'A man under that kind of rage who's to say what he might do? He was trying to kill me. He really was.' A witness said Dunn tore up the garage door of the home before returning with the dump truck. Journey Meggerson said that Dunn came back a third time after he'd begun his initial rampage with police still not there in time to apprehend him. Neighbors could hear Dunn yelling obscenities at his wife and neighbors, who attempted to protect Patricia. The full damage left includes a metal fence in front of the house bent all the way to the grown, as well as huge dents and cracks put into the home's exterior. Dunn also crashed into at least four cars parked on the street, causing visible wreckage. Journey Meggerson said that Dunn came back multiple times after he'd begun his initial rampage with police still not there in time to apprehend him The damage left includes a metal fence in front of the house bent all the way to the grown, as well as huge dents and cracks put into the home's exterior Dunn also crashed into several cars parked on the street, causing visible wreckage Neighbors could hear Dunn yelling obscenities at his wife and neighbors, who attempted to protect Patricia Patricia Dunn said she was frustrated with the police's slow response time. 'If they had been up in here a bit earlier, all of this damage wouldn't have happened because he came back three times, and they weren't even here,' she said. Ultimately, as police continue their search for her estranged husband, she clearly just wants to move on from both him and the house. 'I don't even want this house anymore,' she said. 'I want to put it up for sale and just move on, because I'm not comfortable here anymore. I don't know, he might come back. Who's to say he's not?' An LAPD sergeant told the Sacramento Bee that Dunn could face charges including vandalism and making criminal threats. Police have described Dunn as about 5'9", 250 pounds, with black hair and black eyes. They also made note of the Impala, a 2009 model with tinted windows and front end traffic collision damage. Anyone with information has been asked to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department South Los Angeles Station. A businessman who grew up to 10,000 worth of magic mushrooms in his 1.4million home in a Kent castle once frequently visited by King Henry VIII has been spared jail after prosecutors accepted the drug was for personal use. Police had gone to see Simon Giles on an unrelated matter when they found the quantity of class A drug in his bathroom in the south wing of Grade-II listed Lullingstone Castle in Eynsford, a court heard. The 44-year-old entrepreneur later told officers they had a 'transformational' effect on his mental health and he would microdose on a daily basis. An expert opinion heard in court said the amount seized would last him 14-and-a-half years of microdosing. Giles said that having decided to grow his own after buying spores and guides on the internet, he was 'surprised' how quickly they grew and it got 'out of control'. But despite finding what was described as an 'industrial' quantity, it was accepted by the prosecution it was all for personal use and not onward supply, Maidstone Crown Court in Kent was told. Giles has been given an eight-month jail term suspended for 18 months. Businessman Simon Giles, 44, arriving at Maidstone Crown Court for a previous hearing The psychedelic substance more formally known as psilocin and psilocybin was found in 10, clear plastic containers during a search of his property on May 5, 2021. Prosecutor Bridget Todd said other drugs paraphernalia in the room included LED lights, a fan, heater and thermometer. Written on each box were a series of fractions and acronyms, including the letters 'GT' believed to be a reference to a variety of magic mushroom known as Golden Teacher. The court was told bathrooms are commonly used by growers of the illegal substance. Other drugs equipment was discovered in Giles's kitchen, including a dehydrator and sterilising fluid. 'A mushroom grower's aim is to create as sterile an environment as possible to increase maximum yield,' added Miss Todd. Police also found notebooks in which Giles had jotted down various weights. He was arrested and gave a full account when interviewed, said Miss Todd. Police had gone to see Simon Giles on an unrelated matter when they found the quantity of class A drug in his bathroom in the south wing of Grade-II listed Lullingstone Castle in Eynsford, a court heard (pictured - stock photo of the castle) 'He said he had been suffering from poor mental health and depression and that the magic mushrooms had a transformational effect on his well-being,' she told the court. 'He decided to experiment and bought spores and guides from the internet, and understood there were different strains. 'He was surprised how quickly they began to grow and when he cut them to harvest them, they kept growing back and essentially it got out of control. 'He dried them out and vacuum-packed them. He said he tried to put a stop to it, putting them in the bathroom and hoping they would die off. 'He said it was for personal use - crushing them and making capsules and microdosing daily to improve his mental health. 'He said he wasn't aware they were a class A drug.' Miss Todd said the overall potential street value of the drug seized was between 4,830 and 9,660. 'The expert concluded that the amount seized would generate enough to cover 14-and-a-half years of microdosing, but goes on to say that what was found is indicative of personal use,' she added. 'A single grow can quickly generate more than what is required - and this is more than what is required for microdosing - but there is no evidence of onward supply.' Giles was given an eight-month jail term suspended for 18 months, and ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid work The court heard police also found a stungun disguised as an 'old-style' mobile phone in his safe during the same search. Giles, a dad of three with a fourth child due in three weeks, told police it had been brought to a party at his home about eight years previously. He said guests had 'passed it around like a toy and saw sparks coming out of it'. It was then put away and found several years later, when he decided to lock it in his safe as he did not want his children to get hold of it, said the prosecutor. Giles, whose occupation is listed with Companies House as an investment manager, later pleaded guilty to producing a class A drug between September 1, 2020, and May 6, 2021. He also admitted possessing a prohibited weapon. In January 2021, he was reportedly facing eviction from his stately home following a High Court battle with HSBC bank. Lullingstone Castle dates back to the 15th century and is where the Tudor monarch Henry VIII would visit with Queen Anne, as well as hunt and joust in the estate grounds. The property, the majority of which is now owned by the Hart-Dyke family, was also home to the 1930s silk farm which produced silk for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation robes and wedding dress. It was not said in court what business role Giles, who now lives in Rectory Place in Hawkwood Lane, Chislehurst, Kent, currently holds. His only two previous convictions are for drink-driving and possessing cannabis and date back to the late 1990s. But on sentencing him today, Judge Julian Smith said it 'beggars belief' how someone of his talent and intelligence made such an 'extremely stupid but deliberate' decision. 'It is a serious mistake that has brought him before the crown court and at risk of a custodial sentence,' the judge told the court. 'Why a talented, intelligent man, with a first-class honours degree, someone with many options and of his ability, should commit a criminal offence by growing a class A drug beggars belief. 'It is not stupid - it is asinine. It is not just a question of letting himself down. He put in peril all he holds most dear. 'I am sure I am telling him nothing that dark moments in the middle of the night haven't brought to the forefront of his mind. 'Had he decided to profit from this, then he would have been a drug dealer - not just a foolish and selfish man but a criminal of the worst kind.' Giles, who was supported in court by his heavily pregnant partner, was given an eight-month jail term suspended for 18 months, and ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid work. A request for him to pay 1,200 court costs was reduced to 600 at a rate of 50 a month after defence counsel Alexander Upton said finances were 'stretched'. Speaking directly to Giles as he stood in the dock, Judge Smith said: 'It doesn't take me to tell you how foolish you have been, and the risks you have taken in your life as an entrpreneur and a contributor to society are nothing compared to the foolish choice you made in deciding to do this. 'It's a class A drug. Whatever advice your friend gave you about how it would help, it was advice to be ignored and rejected. 'This was a great deal of a controlled substance you have managed to produce but more out of ignorance than a commercial motive. 'I'm giving you this chance. I don't suspect you will ever be back here again.' Giles thanked the judge as he left court. A forfeiture and destruction order was made in respect of the magic mushrooms and related paraphernalia. Brian Walshe's extensive Google searches about divorce, murder, dismemberment and decomposing bodies were revealed today in a Massachusetts courtroom as he pleaded not guilty to beating his wife Ana to death. Walshe, 47, is accused of murdering Ana in the basement of their home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, on January 1 in the early hours of the morning, then discarding her body in a dumpster. He uttered just two words his 14-minute court appearance, saying I do when asked by Judge Mark Coven if he understood the charges against him. Standing dispassionately in court, his hands cuffed in front of him and with his long dark hair swept back, he looked at Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland with a dull stare as she began the litany of evidence against him. Ana's remains have not been discovered. Police believe they were in heavy trash bags that Brian was seen discarding into a dumpster on January 3rd. Those bags were 'shredded and incinerated' before police got to them, prosecutors said today. Among the searches, conducted on an iPad belonging to one of his young sons, were '10 ways to dismember a body', 'does baking soda make a body smell good?' and 'how long is someone missing before you can inherit?' Scroll down for video Brian Walshe pleaded not guilty to beating his wife Ana to death this morning as prosecutors laid out a mountain of evidence against him Ana Walshe has not been seen since 1.30am on January 1. Police say Brian, her husband, murdered her. Her body has not been found On December 27, five days before Ana vanished, he Googled: 'Best state for divorce for a man.' 'Rather than divorce, Brian Walshe dismembered Ana Walshe and discarded her body,' Beland said on Wednesday, as she asked the judge to deny him bail - a request that was immediately granted. Rather than divorce, Brian Walshe dismembered Ana Walshe and discarded her body Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland Beland revealed that Ana's DNA, along with Brian's, was found on blood-stained clothes found in a dumpster near her mother's house along with the Hunter boots and Prada handbag he said she was wearing when she vanished. He shook his head during the brief hearing and was denied bail. Brian will return to court on February 9th for a status hearing. Walshe told police he last saw Ana at 6am on January 1st, claiming she left for work. Today, it was revealed that in the hours before that, he'd been frantically researching how to dispose of a body, and how long decomposition takes. Police say Walshe used one of his young son's iPads to search gruesome terms like 'how long before a body starts to smell?' Ana Walshe is shown with the boys Ana and Brian are shown on their wedding day in 2015. They met while she was working in a hotel Ana and Brian at the start of their romance, left, when he showered her with designer bags and cars. She is shown, right, more recently. Ana had grown to become independent, working in Washington DC away from her family On December 27th, days before she vanished, he Googled: 'What's the best state to divorce for a man?' Ana was last seen alive at 1.30am on January 1st by friends who had been in their home for a New Year's Eve party. Shortly before 5am on January 1st, using his son's iPad, he searched; 4:55AM - How long before a body starts to smell? 4:58AM - How to keep a body from decomposing? 5:20AM - How to bound (bind) a body? 5:47AM - 10 ways to dispose of a body if you really need to 6:25AM - How long for someone to be missing to inherit? 6:34AM - Can you throw away body parts? 9:29AM - What does formaldehyde do? 9:34AM - How long does DNA last? 9:59AM - Can identification be made on partial remains? 11:34AM - Dismemberment and the best way to dispose of a body 11:44AM - How to clean blood from a wooden floor? 11:56AM - Luminal to detect blood 1:08PM - What happens when you put body parts in ammonia? 1:21PM - Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them? January 2nd After purchasing rugs from a Home Goods store while wearing rubber gloves and a face mask, he returned to the iPad for more research. He also spent $450 on cleaning supplies from a Home Depot including mops, buckets, tarps, drop cloths and various kinds of tape. This time, prosecutors say he searched; 12:45PM - Hacksaw best tool to dismember 1:10PM - Can you be charged with murder without a body? 1:14PM - Can you identify a body with broken teeth? January 3rd Police say he visited a dumpster in Abingdon, where he was seen carrying a heavy-looking garbage bag. 'He had to heft it into the dumpster,' according to police. Prosecutors tried to track down those trash bags, but by the time they got to them they had been destroyed in an incinerator at a trash transfer center. Walshe did more research, allegedly searching; 1:02PM - What happens to hair on a dead body? 1:13PM - What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods 1:20PM - Can baking soda make a body smell good? January 4th Walshe bought bath mats, men's clothing and towels at TJ Maxx and Home Goods. He then visited Loewes. That same day, a colleague of Ana's in Washington DC called police in Cohasset to report her missing and request a welfare check at her home. Police visited the family house, where they noticed the seats in Brian's Volvo were down, and a large, plastic liner was in the backseat. January 5th Police returned to the Walshe family home, where they noticed Brian's Volvo had been freshly cleaned. When questioned, he said he'd thrown out the plastic liner they saw the previous day. That same day, he visited the dumpster near his mother's home. January 8th Walshe is arrested for misleading police. A search warrant for the house is obtained, and police discover blood stains in the basement. They also found a knife with traces of blood on it. Police then searched the dumpster near his mother's home and found 10 trash bag that were stained with blood. Inside, they discovered; Slippers with both Ana and Brian's DNA on it Rags, tape, a medical suit with Brian and Ana's DNA on it Ana's Hunter boots Ana's Prada handbag Ana's COVID-19 vaccine card, with her name on it A hacksaw Hatchet Cutting shears Walshe, 47, arrived at Quincy District Court early in a black SUV. He entered through a side door, wearing a gray top, khaki pants and black sneakers. Brian Walshe leaves court today after being charged with the murder of his wife Ana Walshe, 47, arrived at Quincy District Court early in a black SUV. He entered through a side door, wearing a gray top, khaki pants and black sneakers The 47-year-old had chains around his waist and was handcuffed as he was led into court Ana Walshe and her husband Brian in happier times. Friends say she barely mentioned him when talking about her family A close friend of Anas told DailyMail.com of her heartbreak. Boston realtor and entrepreneur Pamela Bardhi, 31, said: Since day one, when I saw she was missing, my heart sank. 'Every time I asked myself, where is Ana, what is going on Ana, I had this horrible pit in my stomach and I just had this awful feeing that something horrible happened to her. Ana, who married troubled Walshe in 2015 in Boston, moved to DC to work as a regional manager for upscale realtor Tishman Speyer. She sold a home in Cohasset for $1.38million around the same time and bought a place in the capital for similar money. The missing mom switched to real estate in 2020 after starting in the hotels business when she moved to the United States from home city Belgrade in 2005. She was always pretty much the breadwinner of the family, said Bardhi. She was always very successful, is a very successful woman. Her brilliance far exceeded everything. She would say, you can do this, you can do that she was as sharp as a tack. The friend said Ana gushed about her sons, but kept Walshes name away from conversations. I didnt know Brian and Ana didnt talk about him, she said. She always talked about her boys. Shed say Oh my boys, oh my goodness theyre wonderful. I remember asking her, Ana how do you do it? Three young boys at that time under five, how do you balance all the things you do? Ana, 39, had been enjoying her life as a busy working mother, splitting her time between Cohasset, Massachusetts, and Washington DC, where she worked for a real estate firm She said, theres always a way to do it. You always find ways. And I remember being so inspired by that. She was a supermom. Everything was dedicated to her boys. They were her why. The friend has been fighting with others to prevent the boys being split up into foster care. They were in the home at the time of their mothers disappearance and are currently being looked after by Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. My fears are for them to be separated, said Bardhi. Imagine what theyve seen, heard, experienced in the last few weeks. And just the thought of three boys under six potentially being separated and away from family, friends is horrifying. According to friends, she and Brian had been fighting over her grueling work schedule. She regularly posted about her colleagues on social media, where mentions of her husband were few and far between. She'd been working for Tishman Speyer for two years, and spending much of her time away from her family. Long before his wife went missing, he was arrested on suspicion of stealing and trying to sell two fake Andy Warhol paintings. Family friends described him as a 'sociopath' who turned on his ailing, elderly father in a desperate grab for his wealth. After the murder charge was announced against her husband last night, friends started paying tribute to the vivacious mother-of-three. Abdulla Almutairi, her colleague and best friend, said: 'Youll always be my best friend and family. 'Rest easy, Heaven is a lot brighter; be the sunshine and the moonlight that you always are.' Biden's lawyers found at least two dozen classified documents in his Wilmington, Delaware, residence and Washington, DC think tank office Questioned if lawyers found classified docs as part of the probes into his son Republicans are demanding the White House answer why President Biden's personal lawyers were trawling his office and Wilmington home when they found classified documents - even though the files have been there for five years. Representative Michael Waltz suggested to Fox & Friends First on Wednesday morning that the reason the documents were found in the first place may have been in connection to subpoenas in Hunter Biden investigations. He also said that the GOP-controlled House committees need to demand records that track top secret information Biden received during his time as vice president. In recent months and weeks, Biden's lawyers have found documents, some labeled 'top secret', at his home in Wilmington, Delaware and at his Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, DC. Florida Rep. Michael Walz promised Republicans will 'get to the bottom' of the Biden Files scandal, questioning if President Joe Biden's lawyers found the classified documents when searching properties and offices in connection to probes into his son Hunter Biden The White House has been blasted for a lack of transparency in response to the scandal that has engulfed the administration and for not publicly acknowledging the discovery for two months. The files from Biden's vice presidency were found five years after he left office but were not revealed until at least two months after their initial discovery. Republicans question whether the timing of revealing the documents' existence was to avoid impacting the 2022 midterm elections negatively for Democrats. Members of the GOP have also lamented there is unequal treatment related to the Justice Department's reaction to the improper handling of classified documents with Biden versus former President Donald Trump, whose residence was raided by the FBI in August. No such raid was carried out on Biden's personal residence. 'We are going to get to the bottom of several key things,' Waltz said. 'One, I'm still dying to know why thousand-dollar-an-hour, high-priced attorneys were cleaning out Biden's office in the first place after five years of those documents sitting there. So, what drove that?' 'There's a lot of talk was it subpoenas from the Hunter Biden investigation that suddenly turned these lawyers into a cleaning crew to start combing through every document?' he added. 'So, what happened there?' House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appointed Representative Jim Jordan to lead the new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which falls under the House Judiciary Committee. Biden's lawyers turned over to the Justice Department at least two dozen classified documents found at the president's Wilmington home (pictured) and at his think tank offices in DC Waltz said that Jordan will likely be demanding logs 'very quickly' to try and get to the bottom of what sort of material Biden took from the White House from his time as vice president - as well as the 'source and methods' that may have been exposed. 'I know from my time in the White House years ago that there are logs and there's a tracking system for top secret, especially top secret compartment information, that goes to the president and vice president,' Waltz noted in his Fox interview. 'We should be requesting those and I suspect you'll see Jim Jordan doing that very quickly,' he added. Some documents were found in Biden's garage at his Wilmington, Delaware, home Waltz, following his time at the Pentagon as a defense policy director for Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, went on to serve as then-Vice President Dick Cheney's counterterrorism advisor. 'I want him to see a damage assessment from the intelligence community on exactly what these documents were and what sources and methods it exposed,' the Florida GOP congressman continued. 'I think those are reasonable requests. And the White House is not going to be able to dodge this issue.' The new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will investigate federal law enforcement and national security agencies, including the FBI. Rishi Sunak insisted today that he was protecting women and children by blocking Scottish gender reform legislation from becoming law. The Prime Minister was accused by the SNP of 'seeking to stoke a culture war' against 'marginalised' trans people over his decision to veto the bill passed by Holyrood. The Government is to use Section 35 of the Scotland Act to prevent the Gender Recognition Reform Act - which would allow teens to legally alter their gender from the age of 16 - from gaining royal assent. It would be the first time such powers have been used since Holyrood was established in 1999, but is likely to face a legal challenge from Nicola Sturgeon. At Prime Minister's Questions today in the Commons, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: 'Let me be crystal clear, this is the Conservative Party seeking to stoke a culture war against some of the most marginalised people in society and Scotland's democracy is simply collateral damage'. He asked if the move put Scotland 'on a slippery slope from devolution to direct rule', prompting Mr Sunak to hit back, saying: 'No, of course we're not. 'This is simply about protecting UK-wide legislation about ensuring the safety of women and children.' The Prime Minister was accused by the SNP of 'seeking to stoke a culture war' against 'marginalised' trans people over his decision to veto the bill passed by Holyrood. Mr Sunak does not have any plans to meet Nicola Sturgeon about the blocking of the gender recognition legislation, Downing Street said later. The Prime Minister's official spokesman told reporters: 'We would certainly, as the Prime Minister said, want to engage with the Scottish Government on ways to take this forward and improve the legislation. 'There are no plans for the Prime Minister to speak to the First Minister that I'm aware of currently.' It came as Labour's split over gender rights deepened today, when a former justice minister described the veto as 'a nuclear weapon used in a minor skirmish'. Lord Falconer, who was Lord Chancellor under Tony Blair, said the Prime Minister's use of devolved powers to stop Holyrood's Gender Recognition Reform Act from receiving Royal Assent was not justified. But his comments online last night came after a day where deep splits in the party over the rights of transgender Brits were exposed. Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield was jeered in the Commons by Labour MPs as well as the SNP as she backed the Government's decision to block the Scottish parliament's legislation. Meanwhile party leader Sir Keir Starmer has yet to publicly reveal where he stands on the legal move. On Sunday he said he disagreed with parts of the Scottish law involving lowering the age at which people can legally change gender to 16. The Government's decision to use Section 35 of the Scotland Act to prevent the Bill from gaining royal assent is the first time such powers have been used since Holyrood was established in 1999. In a series of tweets last night Lord Falconer outlined his opposition to the move. Whether the s35 Order is justified depends on reasons advanced by (the government) for saying (the new law) has adverse effect on UK equality law,' he said. 'For the reasons I have tweeted those reasons do not begin to justify its use. It's a nuclear weapon used in a minor skirmish.' Lord Falconer, who was Lord Chancellor under Tony Blair, said the Prime Minister's use of devolved powers to stop Holyrood's Gender Recognition Reform Act from receiving Royal Assent was not justified. Party leader Sir Keir Starmer has yet to publicly reveal where he stands on the legal move. On Sunday he said he disagreed with parts of the Scottish law involving lowering the age at which people can legally change gender to 16. Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has already branded the move a 'full-frontal attack on our democratically-elected Scottish Parliament and its ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters'. She told the BBC the decision will 'inevitably end up in court'. In Westminster, the UK Government was understood to be braced for drawn-out legal wrangling. Ms Duffield was attacked after asking the Scottish secretary Alister Jack to 'recognise the strength of feeling amongst women, women's rights' groups and activists in Scotland, that this Bill seeks to allow anyone at all to legally self-identify as either sex and therefore enter all spaces, including those necessarily segregated by sex, such as domestic violence settings, changing rooms and prisons'. She had to raise her voice as she was heckled by Labour and SNP MPs who support the Scottish plan. Former Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw shouted 'absolute rubbish' as she spoke, while fellow Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle also appeared to be trying to shout her down. Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield was jeered in the Commons as she backed the Government's decision to block the Scottish parliament's gender identification legislation Shadow armed forces minister Luke Pollard and former frontbencher Charlotte Nichols could also be seen shaking their heads in dissent. Mr Jack said Ms Duffield 'deserves a lot of respect for her courage on standing up on this issue'. Writing later on Twitter, Ms Duffield said: 'Being shouted down in the Chamber by Labour men who clearly don't want women to speak up for our rights to single-sex spaces. How very progressive.' She added: 'The protection of single sex spaces for the most vulnerable women are at stake, so why on earth are Labour colleagues OK with this?' The Labour leadership was unwilling to say whether it backed the Government stance. Shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray dodged the issue and accused ministers of turning the row into a political 'bun fight'. The prominent Labour MP asked the Scottish secretary Alister Jack to 'recognise the strength of feeling amongst women, women's rights' groups and activists in Scotland' Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell flatly refused to reveal her views on the issue. She told Times Radio there were 'a range of different opinions across Labour', adding: 'I have my own views, which I'm going to keep to myself... I'm not going to answer because I don't want to reduce this argument to that.' Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was yesterday accused of 'weaponising vulnerable children', as she vowed to take the Government to court for blocking gender self-identification. Amid angry scenes in the Commons, Tory MPs claimed the SNP was stoking the row about trans rights in a cynical 'pursuit of their separatist agenda'. Scottish Secretary Alister Jack told MPs the decision to block the bill followed legal advice it would have 'serious adverse effects' on provisions in the Equality Act The accusation came as the SNP leader vowed to fight the Government all the way to the Supreme Court over its 'outrageous' decision to veto a Scottish parliament law, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, that paved the way for gender self-identification. She said the row would 'inevitably end up in court'. Ms Sturgeon accused the Government of mounting 'a direct attack on... Scottish parliament', adding: 'If it is allowed to happen on this, then I think that is a very slippery slope.' The Scottish secretary told MPs the decision to block the bill followed legal advice it would have 'serious adverse effects' on provisions in the Equality Act that guarantee women's access to single-sex spaces. New developments in the Utah Murders say suspected killer Bryan Kohberger was inclined to kill attractive women as an alleged incel. He disliked pretty and famous female students among the four murdered students in the off-campus housing. Idaho Muder Suspect an Incel Who Hates Attractive Women Kohberger is a criminology Ph.D. who was recently revealed as a loner and bullied while a student in his Pennsylvania hometown, and was allegedly doing drugs, noted Express. Based on reports about the Moscow-Idaho murder, suspect Kohberger had revealed that he had extreme hatred of women. It drove the killing of the good-looking girls among the four Idaho University students. It describes a problematic male having a relationship with women as hard, remarked Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman. An involuntary celibate has lots of rages toward many women who don't want to go out with them or have sex with them, or matrimony is the result, per Local Today. Men who identify as incel suffer low self-esteem and repulse women too. Such males call these women 'Stacy' who don't want attention from them, and men, on the other hand, are called 'Chads,' as defined in Urban Dictionary. All the victims were in this category that Kohberger vehemently despised. The suspected killer of the Idaho murder victims who are Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were knifed to death in their sleep last year on November 13. Lieberman added that the suspect has signs that show that reports were followed about the crime. It would increase his confidence as it was getting back to the Stacys and Chads who oppressed him before. Read Also: Ex-Playboy Model Accused of Killing California Psychiatrist He was likely one of these subscribers to such chatrooms and is the one who dropped all the hints the murders were his handiwork. Bryan Kohberger Involved in Driving Online Chatter Allegations that the suspect was active in these online chats after the murders were committed have been supported by Lieberman. Another aspect of the case is where ex-FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer alleges it might be Kohberger as the only one or another one stating stuff about the quad murder in the off-campus housing. Several names were cited using Facebook and Redditor with monikers like Pappa Rodger and Inside Looking. The accounts connected to these online handles gave information that proved to be precise. Uncanny is the timeline mentioned on that deadly night. Phone records of Kohberger indicate that he went back hours after committing the crime. According to the expert, what an alleged woman hater does after killing their victim is claimed. Another expert, Leonard Adam Sipes, an expert on the subject, also commented that the suspect did have problems with the opposite sex. He authored a site concerned about crime and added the three women who were slain, matching the patterns that fit hating women, citing Crime in America. Net He also mentioned that these extreme beliefs against women are the main concern for officials dealing with public safety. To date, Bryan Kohberger did not enter any plea to the four charges of murder and felony burglary; a court date is set on June 26. His being an incel and having a dislike of attractive women is a focus of late. Related Article: Idaho College Murder Suspect Bryan Kohberger Is Not the Real Killer, @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A hero pilot who shot down at least four Russian Migs in a classified dogfight at the height of the Cold War which saw his jet shot 263 times is to receive the Navy Cross. Retired Navy Captain Royce Williams was sworn to secrecy for more than 50 years over fears that his battle against seven Soviet fighters could spark war with Russia. Now the 97-year-old is free to tell his tale and is due to receive the Navy's second highest award for combat valor on Friday at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. In a ferocious dogfight lasting half an hour, Williams downed at least four Migs despite his aircraft being so badly wounded he considered ejecting over hostile territory - an almost certain death sentence - as he limped back to the USS Oriskany aircraft carrier. Cpt Royce Williams poses for a picture next to a bullet hole ripped into the fuselage of his Panther that was struck 263 times during his heroic dogfight against Russian Migs during the Korean War in 1952 In San Diego Harbor on the USS Midway in February 2019, now a museum ship, Capt. Royce Williams, stands next to an F9F Panther with the shape of four Migs painted under the cockpit. The aircraft and its markings pay tribute to them who downed at least four Russian Migs A Grumman F9F Panther fighter jet fires its guns during an attack on the North Korean port of Hungnam 'The heroism and valor he demonstrated for 35 harrowing minutes 70 years ago in the skies over the North Pacific and the coast of North Korea saved the lives of his fellow pilots, shipmates, and crew,' U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa said in a statement last Friday announcing the ceremony. 'His story is one for the ages, but is now being fully told.' Issa has spearheaded an effort launched more than a decade ago to get the Pentagon to acknowledge Williams' bravery and upgrade his Silver Star. On November 18, 1952, during the Korean War, Williams along with three other pilots were on a bombing run in 'Mig Alley' - the infamous dogfighting zone over the Yalu River on the China-Korea border. Named after the fearsome Soviet Migs that tormented US pilots, the jets were superior to Williams' Panther in almost every way - speed, maneuverability, climb rate, and weapons range. But Panthers were known for their durability - and Williams was about to become living proof. Capt. Royce Williams. Throughout the rest of his 23-year career, including more than 100 missions in Vietnam, the only official record was a single confirmed kill and a Silver Star. 'We started to rendezvous with each other as we climbed out of the clouds,' Williams told Task and Purpose. 'And that's when we heard from the combat information center (CIC) that there were inbound bogeys from the north.' Rising above the clouds at 12,000 feet, Williams spotted seven vapor trails streaking high above. Intelligence suggested the Soviet jets were out for revenge after a massive airstrike earlier that day - which Williams had been part of - on an industrial complex in northeastern Korea. Williams shot a quick burst to check his guns, but as he did his flight leader was hit by fuel warning and headed back to the fleet. It was now two Panthers against seven Migs. Williams continued to climb and radioed the Oriskany that he had spotted a three-plane and a four-plane group. CIC told him not to engage when the enemy suddenly opened fire with their 23mm and 37mm cannons. 'We are already engaged!' Williams shouted back over the radio. The four-plane group of Migs barreled towards Williams and his wingman from the right flank and opened fire. Williams managed to peel off and come behind an enemy aircraft, firing rounds into its rear fuselage. Williams with Battle of the Bulge veteran Vincent J. Speranza (left) and MOH recipient U.S. Navy SEAL Master Chief Edward C. Byers, Jr. in 2021 Williams stands beside a Panther inscribed with a tribute to him on the USS Midway Museum ship in San Diego harbor Williams stands proudly beside a Panther aboard the USS Midway The Mig started plummeting from the sky, leaving a trail of smoke. Williams' wingman gave chase - leaving him alone against the remaining six Soviet fighters. 'In the moment I was a fighter pilot doing my job,' said Williams. 'I was only shooting what I had.' The jets took turns diving down on Williams, peppering his aircraft with machine gun fire. The young lieutenant squeezed every ounce of nimbleness from the Panther, darting in and out of the Soviet hail of fire. The American planes had less ammunition than the Migs meaning Williams took a defensive strategy, choosing his shots. 'I was engaged mentally at the time,' Williams told the San Diego Union Tribune in an interview last year. 'A lot of it was awareness of where they were and how I had to maneuver to avoid them. They were taking turns. 'I decided if I concentrated on shooting them down, I'd become an easy target. So, my initial goal was to look for defensive opportunities when they made mistakes'. Williams fired on every Mig that passed within range - but even when he appeared to make hits - he could not follow up for the kill as he had to avoid getting locked on from behind. Eventually, however, the Mig formations became separated and Williams was able to isolate three of the fighters. 'I turned into them and fired at the leader. He turned away, and the wingman rolled down on me, and we went past belly-to-belly as I raked him with a long burst. He caught fire and went down,' he explained. The squadron leader then tilted towards Williams who turned towards him, firing at point-blank range, and he also went down. The last of the three Migs came around for more - Williams fired again - seeing parts fall of the aircraft as he flew away. But the battle was far from over for Williams whose hydraulics had been shot to pieces. He was also out of ammunition. Williams began heading back to the Oriskany, diving low into the cloud cover. A Soviet Union MiG-15 climbing out after take-off with mountains behind. The fearsome 'Mig Alley' was named after the jets which tormented US pilots during the Korean War As he limped on, his wounded Panther buffeted by turbulence, he considered bailing out. 'I knew in that weather I wouldn't have survived in the time it took to find me,' he told Task and Purpose. Then as he caught sight of the fleet, destroyers opening fire, mistaking his jet for enemy aircraft. He informed command he could not slow his plane down below 195mph - making the approach dangerous as the Panthers usual landing speed was 120mph. Aboard the Oriskany, ground crews prepared for a crash landing. But he managed to land the jet safely after the ship turned away from the wind. Aboard the ship 263 holes were counted in the Panther which he never saw again - it was reportedly shoved off deck into the sea while the gun camera was taken off to intelligence. The national security peril soon dawned on Navy command who discovered Williams had engaged the Soviet Air Force. Migs flying in the Chinese and Korean air forces were known to be flown by Soviet volunteers but this was an escalation with potential to turn the Cold War hot. A Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter jet is seen in the boneyard at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona Williams was ordered by Navy Adm. Robert Briscoe, commander of Naval Forces Far East, that although it was confirmed he shot down three and possibly four Migs - he was never to discuss the dogfight. Throughout the rest of his 23-year career, including more than 100 missions in Vietnam, the only official record was a single confirmed kill and a Silver Star. In the early 2000s, US records from the Korean War were finally declassified and Williams' story became well-known in military circles. Williams' heroism was further detailed in a 2014 book by Russian historian Igor Seidov, 'Red Devils Over the Yalu: A Chronicle of Soviet Aerial Operations in the Korean War.' According to that book, seven Migs left a base in Vladivostok that morning, and just one returned. It confirms that four Migs were brought down by a single American aircraft, one was shot and crashed while returning, and a sixth was never located. Now after a long campaign, dubbed 'Operation Just Reward', Williams will receive the Navy Cross - bestowed by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro who approved the upgrade from the Silver Star last month. 'Having reviewed the findings of now numerous investigations related to the case of Capt. Royce Williams, I have determined this case to be special and extraordinary,' Del Toro said in a statement. 'His actions clearly distinguished himself during a high-risk mission and deserve proper recognition.' House Oversight Chairman James Comer has turned his investigatory powers to the Penn-Biden Center, demanding to know about Chinese donations to the university that funded the think tank and what members of Joe Biden's family had access to its office. He asked the University of Pennsylvania to release a list of its Chinese donors, a visitor log to the think tank's Washington D.C. location, and which Biden family members had key card access to the office. The Republican from Kentucky is investigating how classified documents dating from Biden's time as vice president ended up in his D.C. think tank and his Wilmington home. Joe Biden, then-University of Pennyslvania President Amy Gutmann; and David Cohen, the then chair of Penns Board of Trustees, at the Penn Biden Center's 2018 opening - Biden later named Gutmann ambassador to Germany and Cohen as ambassador to Canada House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, is investigating the Penn Biden Center Comer's queries come after he pressed the administration to release its visitor logs to Biden's Wilmington home, where classified material was found in the garage and a private library. The White House said such logs don't exist given that it is a private residence. Now Comer is targeting The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which was founded in 2017 after Biden joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty. 'The Committee has learned UPenn received tens of millions of dollars from anonymous Chinese sources, with a marked uptick in donations when then-former Vice President Biden was announced as leading the Penn Biden Center initiative,' Comer wrote to University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) President M. Elizabeth Magill. Comer also demanded to know who had access to the center, noting that Hunter Biden, who was conducting business deals with Ukrainian and Chinese businessmen, 'may have had access to the classified documents found at the Presidents Delaware home since he listed it as his home address as recently as 2018.' 'It is imperative to understand whether any Biden family members or associates gained access to the classified documents while stored at the Penn Biden Center,' Comer wrote in the letter first obtained by Punchbowl DC. He asked the University to provide the following information by February 1st: All documents and communications related to donations originating from China to UPenn and/or the Penn Biden Center from January 20, 2017 to present A list of all Chinese donorsand the individual amount donatedto UPenn and/or the Penn Biden Center from January 20, 2017 to present All documents and communications related to soliciting donations for the Penn Biden Center A list of all employees of the Penn Biden Centerincluding information about their salary, job description, and dates of employment A list of all individuals with keycard access to the Penn Biden Centerincluding but not limited to members of President Bidens family A visitor log of all individuals who met with President Biden at the Penn Biden Center All documents and communications related to security at the Penn Biden Center The University of Pennsylvania confirmed they received the letter and said they will respond 'in a timely manner.' 'It is important to reiterate that the Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center, a university spokesperson said. 'Since its inception in 2017 there have been three unsolicited gifts (from two donors) which combined total $1,100. Both donors are Americans. One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from university funds.' The Penn Biden Center opened in February 2018 with a big party celebrating its founding. Photos from the time show several lawmakers, Obama administration officials and journalists at the event, where Biden took questions on foreign policy from NBC's Andrea Mitchell. Also in attendance were people who would become part of Bidens administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, who both worked at the Penn Biden Center. Former Penn President Amy Gutmann, who brought Biden to the university, was also there. She was nominated by Biden as U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 2021. David Cohen, the former chair of Penns Board of Trustees, was also there. Biden named him as U.S. Ambassador to Canada. Joe Biden (center) at the opening of the Penn Biden Center - to Biden's left are then-University of Pennyslvania President Amy Gutmann; then-chair of Penn Board of Trustees David Cohen; and Anthony Blinken who managed the center and later became Biden's secretary of state Blinken, who served as managing director of the center for two years, said on Tuesday that he had no knowledge of the classified documents found in a closet there and would cooperate with the special counsel's investigation. 'I was surprised to learn that there were any government records taken to the Penn Biden Center,' he said. 'I had no knowledge of it at the time.' Ten top secret pages were reportedly found in a closet by Biden's personal lawyers while cleaning out the office, preparing to shut it down. The White House notes the files were immediately turned over to the National Archives and the Justice Department, which named a special counsel to investigate. The University of Pennsylvania, which funded the center, has taken millions in foreign donations, including from China and Saudi Arabia. The university raised $257.9 million from foreign nations between 2013 and 2019, with China giving the most of any country, an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer found in 2020. That time period includes Biden's tenure at the university. UPenn paid Biden a large salary, reported to be much more than that of any other professor: a total of $776,527 in 2017 and 2018. Biden left the university in 2019 when he decided to run for president. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, was doing business deals with Chinese executives in 2017 and 2018 that paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle. Gutmann, speaking at the Penn Biden Center's D.C. opening in 2018 praised Biden's foreign contacts. 'The unmatched personal connections Joe Biden has with world leaders is equally important to our students, our faculty, policymakers, and the work of this new Center. And its equally important because it is absolutely essential in furthering diplomacy and global engagement that is needed to advance the world order,' she said. His execution is feared to be a warning to other mutineers not to desert war The body of a Russian deserter was left to rot in the middle of a snowy field after the soldier was shot dead by one of Vladimir Putin's men. Dmitry Perov, 31, was 'liquidated' by a Russian marksman today after he fled the front line in Ukraine in what is feared to be a warning to other mutineers not to desert ahead of another mass mobilisation of Russian troops. Perov, who fought in Putin's barbaric war in Ukraine before deciding to flee, left his military unit armed with an automatic weapon and ammunition and travelled 350 miles to Russia, Russian authorities claim. He was shot dead by a Russian soldier and his decaying body was seen lying face down in the middle of a snowy field in Novouglyanka, a village in southwestern Russia. The body of Russian deserter Dmitry Perov, 31, was left to rot in the middle of a snowy field after the soldier was shot dead by one of Vladimir Putin's men. Dmitry Perov, 31, was 'liquidated' by a Russian marksman today after he fled the front line in Ukraine in what is feared to be a warning to other mutineers not to desert ahead of another mass mobilisation of Russian troops Russian officials said they launched a manhunt for Perov after he fled his military unit. A video showed Perov climbing onto a bus outside a station in Russia. He was found five days later and 'liquidated' today, Russian law enforcement officials said. An official source said: 'There is no threat to residents. Pre-investigation activities are carried out.' Perov, who has a 25-year-old wife called Ekaterina Perova, was serving military unit No. 11045 of the 344th reconnaissance regiment. His execution is feared to be a warning to current and future recruits not to desert amid reports that Putin is set to massively boost military mobilisation. His execution is feared to be a warning to current and future recruits not to desert amid reports that Putin is set to massively boost military mobilisation. Pictured: Putin speaks while attending a meeting with workers and veterans in Saint Petersburg on Wednesday It also comes after former convicts who were drafted to fight in the Ukraine war claimed Putin has a 'squadron of liquidators' to publicly execute deserters. Last week, inmates who were transferred from their prison cells to the war's front lines with the Wagner Group of private mercenaries say they have witnessed disobedient comrades being killed by commanders. Former convict Yevgeny Novikov said told Polygon Media and the independent Mozhem Obyasnit outlet: 'Those who disobey are eliminated and it's done publicly.' Novikov said the 'squadrons of liquidators' deal with troops considered to be problematic. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is pictured pardoning former inmates who served six months fighting in Ukraine Pictured: Ukrainian T-72 tank manoeuvers through the trees in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday He recalled: 'Shelling began, one of the prisoners laid down and didn't cover his own [men]. 'The shelling stopped, he went back, and the higher-up shouted to him: "Why didn't you go forward?" And they killed him. The higher-up is killed if his team deserts.' There are complaints among Russian soldiers of equipment shortages, poor living conditions and scant training for new recruits. Since Putin announced the mobilization of 300,000 Russians on September 21, independent media, human rights activists and those called up have painted a bleak picture of a haphazard and chaotic effort to round up as many men as possible and push them quickly to the front lines, regardless of skill, training and equipment. Conscription protests have been harshly put down, and tens of thousands of men fled Russia to neighbouring countries to avoid being pressed into service. Meanwhile, it emerged in October last year that Russia is reportedly setting up a second line of troops behind the front line in Ukraine to shoot down any Russian soldiers fleeing combat, according to an intercepted phone call. In the audio, described by Ukraine as an intercepted phone call between a Russian soldier and his wife, the man describes how his commander has ordered him to 'wipe out' any Russian troops who flee from the front line. The Russian soldier said that new recruits, many of whom are prisoners, are on the front line and his unit has been positioned on a second line to shoot anyone who tries to run away. The Russian soldier tells his wife: 'They moved us back to the second line, there's shooting somewhere ahead of us, but we're back for now in the trenches. 'They brought the inmates here from prison but they led them somewhere on the front. And we're sitting here as a retreat-blocking detachment.' He added: 'If someone runs back, we snuff them out.' The self-proclaimed 'Crocodile of Wall Street' has landed a new job as she awaits trial on charges that she and her husband conspired to launder $4.5 billion in stolen Bitcoin. Heather Morgan, 32, revealed her new gig in a court filing on Tuesday seeking permission to leave house arrest three days per week to go to work, a request which the judge granted. Morgan, who raps under the moniker 'Razzlekahn,' has been under home confinement in Manhattan on a $3 million bond since her arrest last February. Her husband and co-defendant Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, remains behind bars due to prosecutors' fears that he could flee to Russia, where he is also a citizen. The self-proclaimed 'Crocodile of Wall Street' has landed a new job as she awaits trial on charges that she and her husband conspired to launder $4.5 billion in stolen Bitcoin Heather Morgan is under home confinement ahead of trial, but her husband Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, remains behind bars due to prosecutors' fears that he could flee to Russia In a court filing, Morgan's attorney said she has 'has sought to be productive' while awaiting trial. The motion revealed she had recently been offered a job at a technology company as a 'growth marketing and business development specialist.' The filing does not reveal the name of Morgan's new employer, claiming that she 'has been subject to disparaging comments and harassment on social media as a result of the intense media coverage of this case.' 'We respectfully submit that disclosing the identity and location of Ms. Morgan's employer would compromise Ms. Morgan's safety,' her attorney Eugene Gorokhov wrote in the motion. Gorokhov did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Wednesday morning. The motion requests permission for Morgan to leave house arrest to work from her new employer's office on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10am until 8.30pm. US Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui granted the motion in an order on Tuesday. In this courtroom sketch, attorney Sam Enzer, center, sits between Heather Morgan, left, and her husband, Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein, in federal court in February 2022 In November, the judge also granted Morgan permission to use a computer and a smartphone, with monitoring software installed on both, in order to work from home. However, she remains banned from carrying out cryptocurrency transactions while under home confinement. Lichtenstein and Morgan were arrested last February and accused in a criminal complaint of conspiring to launder 119,754 Bitcoin stolen after a hacker in 2016 broke into Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Prosecutors said the transactions at the time were valued at $71 million in Bitcoin, but with the rise in the currency's value, the value reached $4.5 billion at the time of their arrest. At present prices, the alleged stolen Bitcoin would be worth about $2.5 billion, following the steep decline in cryptocurrency values last year. Morgan has been labelled as an 'integral player' in the cryptocurrency laundering scheme but prosecutors identified Lichtenstein as the 'brain' behind the scheme's operations Lichtenstein (back) has not been granted bail after prosecutors alerted the judge of his Russian citizenship, where he could seek immunity, if he were no longer held in custody Morgan and Lichtenstein were accused by federal prosecutors of laundering the Bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex, but they are not being accused of committing the actual theft of the crypto. Authorities were able to recover $3.6 billion in stolen funds after seizing couple's private keys to digital wallets after their arrest. Lichtenstein and Morgan could face up to 25 years years behind bars if found guilty. At the time of their arrests, the couple lived on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. He is a citizen of both Russia and the United States and the co-founder of an online marketing firm. Morgan, a rapper and former Forbes contributor, describes herself as 'an expert in persuasion, social engineering, and game theory' and in one of her songs, declared herself the 'Crocodile of Wall Street.' 'I'm many things, a rapper, an economist, a journalist, a writer, a CEO, and a dirty, dirty, dirty dirty h*,' she raps in her 2019 single, Versace Bedouin. Ex-Cabinet minister George Eustice has become the latest Tory MP to announce they will stand down at the next general election. The former environment secretary revealed today he will leave Parliament in order to pursue 'a final career outside politics'. It means there are now 15 current Conservative MPs who are planning to quit the House of Commons the next time the country goes to the polls. Former health secretary Matt Hancock, who was a Tory MP until he lost the party's whip after signing up for TV's I'm A Celebrity, has also said he will stand down. The looming exodus of current Tory MPs comes at a time when the Conservatives are still lagging far behind Labour in opinion polling. The next general election has to be held no later than January 2025. A failure by Rishi Sunak to revive his party's fortunes over the next two years could see a Tory wipeout across much of Britain. Former environment secretary George Eustice revealed today he will leave Parliament in order to pursue 'a final career outside politics' The 51-year-old served as environment secretary in Boris Johnson's government between February 2020 and September last year Fellow former Cabinet ministers Sajid Javid and Matt Hancock also intend to stand down as MPs There are now 15 current Conservative MPs who are planning to quit the House of Commons the next time the country goes to the polls Mr Eustice's decision not to stand for election again in his Camborne and Redruth seat will raise hopes among Labour and the Liberal Democrats of winning the Cornwall constituency from the Tories. The 51-year-old has served as the area's MP since the 2010 general election and retained the seat at the 2019 election with a majority of nearly 9,000 votes. This was up from the 1,500 majority Mr Eustice won at the 2017 snap election while, in 2010, he saw off his Liberal Democrat rival by only 66 votes. The constituency is the successor to the Falmouth and Camborne seat, which was won by the Lib Dems in 2005, having previously been won by Labour in 2001 and 1997. In a statement announcing his decision not to contest the constituency again, Mr Eustice said: 'By the time of the next election, I will have been in politics for 25 years, including almost 15 years as a Member of Parliament. 'I will also be 53 and I want the opportunity to do a final career outside politics so have decided not to seek re-election. This has been a difficult decision for me. 'I feel a deep bond to the area where my family have lived for over 400 years and it has been an honour to represent my home towns, but it is important that the Conservatives are able to select a new candidate in good time. 'There are still almost two years left of the current parliament and I will be doing my utmost throughout that time to help my constituents and deliver for Cornwall.' Mr Eustice served as environment secretary in Boris Johnson's government between February 2020 and September last year, before he was sacked from the role by Liz Truss. Early in his political career, Mr Eustice unsuccessfully stood as a UKIP candidate in the 1999 European Parliament elections. He went on to become head of press under Tory leader Michael Howard ahead of the 2005 election and also served as David Cameron's press secretary between 2005 and 2007. Late last year, Mr Eustice claimed the post-Brexit trade deal Britain has signed with Australia is 'not actually a very good deal for the UK'. 'Overall, the truth of the matter is that the UK gave away far too much for far too little in return,' he told the Commons. Among those other Tory MPs who have announced they won't stand at the next election are former Chancellor Sajid Javid, Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross, and levelling up minister Dehenna Davison. Four teenage boys have been arrested after a shooter opened fire on officers at a local supermarket close to the remote property where four officers were ambushed last month. A civilian car was hit in cross fire when officers responded to an incident near FoodWorks in Tara, 300km west of Brisbane on Wednesday at about 3:30pm. The town is only a 30 minute drive from Wieambilla where the Train family gunned down two police officers and a neighbour on December 4. 'The local boys, aged 14, 15, 16 and 16, are currently assisting police with their investigations into reports of shots having been fired at Tara this afternoon,' Queensland police said. 'The teens were located at a Tara address late this evening and taken into custody without incident.' Terrified residents told Daily Mail Australia they narrowly escaped the chaos. Local community representative David Maynard said one woman heard 'four low powered gun shots from a.22 rifle' while another said they saw 'a bullet go straight past me'. Four teenage boys have been arrested after a shooter opened fire on officers at a local supermarket close to the remote property where four officers were ambushed last month. Police in Tara pictured Following reports of the shots being fired police established an exclusion zone in Tara An exclusion zone was set up in the town along Surat Development Rd, Day St, Benn St, Fry St and Milne St at about 5:30pm and residents have to been told to remain indoors. But the emergency order has since been lifted. No injuries were reported. The Commercial Hotel was set up as a make-shift evacuation centre, with police directing about 100 people to shelter for their own protection at the pub. Bartender Lucy told she told Daily Mail Australia residents were horrified that their town was once again rocked by gun violence. 'We are just in shock that it's happened again.' 'We made sure everyone stayed inside safe and that everyone wasn't outside lurking.' Queensland's Special Emergency Response Team swiftly responded to the incident by helicopter out of Brisbane. Constable Rachel McCrow (left) and Constable Matthew Arnold were ambushed and shot dead at property in the Wieambilla region of Queensland on December 4, 2022 This graphic shows how Constables McCrow and Arnold as well neighbour Alan Dare were ambushed and shot dead by Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train at their remote farmhouse It is the same crack team of firearms experts who shot dead doomsday preppers Gareth Train, his wife Stacey and brother Nathaniel on December 4 after the trio fatally ambushed two officers at their booby-trapped property. Constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, and innocent neighbour, Alan Dare, 58, where gunned down by the paranoid family after police responded to a missing person's call out. A third constable Randall Kirk, 28, was shot in the leg but managed to escape, while a fourth, Keely Brough, 28, also managed to flee as the heavily-armed trio set fire to the bush to try to flush her out and kill her too. The trio were later revealed to be ice-using conspiracy theorists who believed in a mixture of apocalyptic scenarios where the government was trying to harm or control them. A young mother was trying to flee the scene of a horrific massacre with her 10-month-old baby boy when a gunman stood over them and 'fired rounds into their heads', California cops have revealed. Alissa Parraz, 17, was found dead in a ditch, still cradling her baby Nycholas, near the home where four of her family members were also killed in Goshen, a small farming town roughly 220 miles southeast of San Francisco, on Monday. California cops are now offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of two gunmen, who they believe could be part of a gang or cartel. At a press conference, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said the massacre was a deliberate attack on the family. 'None of this was an accident. It was deliberate, intentional and horrific,' he said. Alissa Parraz, 17, was found dead in a ditch, still cradling her baby Nycholas, near the home where four of her family members were also killed in Goshen, a small farming town roughly 220 miles southeast of San Francisco, on Monday Detectives say Alissa was trying to flee the shooters when she was chased down the street and shot repeatedly in the head, along with her infant son Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told reporters that the shootings were targeted and likely gang or drug cartel related. Law officials have announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the gunmen Investigators believe a gang or drug cartel targeted the family. Deputies had recently conducted a drug-related search warrant at the same home. 'These people were clearly shot in the head and they were also shot in places where the shooter would know that a quick death would occur,' said the sheriff. 'This is also similar to high-ranking gang affiliation and the style of executions that they commit.' The massacre unfolded around 3.30am on Monday at a family home in Goshen. Deputies responding to reports of multiple shots fired found two victims dead in the street and a third person fatally shot in the doorway of the residence, Boudreaux said. The identities of the other four victims have since been released by authorities, including that of 50 year-old Jennifer Analla, pictured here Alissa's family members also killed in the tragic shooting included 72 year-old Rosa Parraz Pictured here is 19 year-old Marcos Parraz, another victim of Monday's killings and resident of the Goshen home And finally, 52 year-old Eladio Parraz Jr. Parraz Jr. was previously arrested in early January after officers responding to a parole compliance check found firearms and meth in his home. He was released on bail four days later, and died during the shooting on Monday morning Three more victims were found inside the home, including a man who was still alive but later died at a hospital, he said. Two others survived the attack by hiding in a nearby trailer. They watched the intruders enter the property on a surveillance camera feed, but 'by the time they came on [the feed] it was too late to do anything', said the sheriff. One more survivor was able to avoid the gunmen by hiding in the home as the killings happened. 'He was in such a state of fear that all he could do was hold the door, hoping he was not the next victim,' the sheriff said. Authorities had previously listed the Alissa's age as 16 and her son as 6 months old but said they had received updated information The Tulare County Sheriff Department continues to investigate the shooting that left six dead, in the small farming town of Goshen, California Officers from the Tulare County Sheriff crime unit could be seen removing the bodies of the victims from the scene of the shooting on Monday morning Sheriff Mike Boudreaux called the slayings 'shocking for the nation', and urged the public to come forward with any information that might help the investigation Bordreaux specified that law enforcement is familiar with the home, a property where gang activity 'has routinely occurred in the past'. He did not provide any further specifics. He added that not all of the victims are drug dealers or gang members, however - including Alissa, Nycholas and 72 year-old Rosa. There was 'no reason' for the shooter to target the young mother and baby, Boudreaux told reporters. 'I know for a fact this 10-month-old baby was relying on the comfort of his mother,' he said, 'There was no reason for them to shoot that baby, but they did.' Authorities had previously stated Alissa's age as 16 and her son as 6 months old, but they have since updated their ages. 'It's shocking for the nation, shocking to our county, shocking to our state, and I have to tell you I'm receiving phone calls from across the country,' he said. 'It's shocking for the nation, shocking to our county, shocking to our state, and I have to tell you I'm receiving phone calls from across the country,' Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told detectives on Tuesday Earlier this month, cops served a search warrant on the home that led to the arrest of Eladio Parraz Jr., a convicted felon who was killed during the shooting. Boudreaux said that Parraz Jr. was not the 'initial intended target' but declined to elaborate further. Parraz Jr., 52, had an extensive criminal record, with offenses including reckless driving to evade arrest, as well as the possession of firearms and drugs. He was arrested after officers responding to a parole compliance check found ammunition, firearms and methamphetamine in the house, according to court records. Parraz Jr. was released on bail four days later. President Donald Trump compared federal agents to 'Gestapo' members Tuesday as he complained about how the search of Mar-a-Lago was stacking up to the discovery of classified documents inside the home and an office used by President Joe Biden. Trump referred to the FBI agents who carried out the search of Mar-a-Lago under a court-approved warrant both as 'Gestapo' and as 'Trump Hating Marxist Thugs, who he said would 'plant' documents on him. At the same time, Trump for the first time put forward an explanation for why dozens of empty folders marked 'classified' where among the thousands of documents uncovered at his Florida club following a subpoena. It all comes amid continued questions about what brought Biden's lawyers to search his Wilmington, Delaware home for documents, including some marked 'top secret,' and who had access to the Penn Biden Center office and Wilmington garage where the documents were discovered by Biden's team. Trump said he saved 'hundreds' of the folders following secure briefings in the Oval Office. He said he kept them as a 'cool' keepsake and then posited that the government was using the folders to run up the amount of classified material found at Mar-a-Lago. Former President Donald Trump blasted the FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago home in search of classified material they uncovered there. He compared them to the Gestapo, while revealing that he kept empty folders marked 'classified' as a keepsake 'The Fake News Media & Crooked Democrats (Thats been proven!) keep saying I had a large number of documents in order to make the Biden Classified Docs look less significant. When I was in the Oval Office, or elsewhere, & papers were distributed to groups of people & me, they would often be in a striped paper folder with Classified or Confidential" or another word on them.,' Trump wrote in a pair of posts on his 'Truth Social' web site. 'When the session was over, they would collect the paper(s), but not the folders, & I saved hundreds of them... ' he continued. 'Remember, these were just ordinary, inexpensive folders with various words printed on them, but they were a cool keepsake. Perhaps the Gestapo took some of these empty folders when they Raided Mar-a-Lago, & counted them as a document, which they are not. Its also possible that the Trump Hating Marxist Thugs in charge will plant documents while theyre in possession of the material. As President, and based on the Presidential Records Act & Socks Case, I did NOTHING WRONG. JOE DID!' Trump attacked the FBI in a pair of posts Tuesday, following revelations about classified documents uncovered in Joe Biden's home Biden's lawyers turned over to the Justice Department at least two dozen classified documents found at the president's Wilmington, Delaware home (pictured) and at his think tank offices in D.C. The home can be seen Jan. 18, 2023 At least a few documents were found in Biden's garage at his Wilmington, Delaware home The FBI disclosed categories of material its agents uncovered in court filings. In one, the bureau disclosed finding 48 empty folders that had contained classified materials. The feds uncovered 300 documents with classified markings. Several of the 10 documents uncovered at the Penn Biden Center in D.C., where Biden maintained an office, reportedly included 'top secret' markings, with a similar amount of documents found at his Wilmington home. The discovery of the documents prompted AG Merrick Garland to appoint Robert Hur as special counsel to probe the situation. A separate special counsel, Jack Smith, is overseeing the Trump documents investigation as well as the January 6 probe. Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish and his wife Peta were 'terrorised in their own home' by balaclava-clad raiders wielding knives, a court has been told. Two Richard Mille watches valued at 400,000 and 300,000 were among the items taken from their house in Ongar, Essex, at about 2.30am on November 27, 2021. Mrs Cavendish told Chelmsford Crown Court one of the raiders held a Rambo-style knife to her husband's neck and threatened to stab him. Romario Henry, 31, of Lewisham, south-east London, and Oludewa Okorosobo, 28, of Camberwell, south London, deny two counts of robbery and are on trial. Victims Mark Cavendish and his wife Peta said to have been 'terrorised' in raid at Essex home Romario Henry, 31, and Oludewa Okorosobo, 28, deny two counts of robbery. Ali Sesay (not pictured), 28, admits two counts after DNA was found on Mrs Cavendish's phone They are accused of robbing Cavendish of a watch, phone and safe, and the athlete's wife of a watch, phone and Louis Vuitton suitcase. Ali Sesay, 28, of Rainham, Kent, admitted two counts of robbery at an earlier hearing, with the trial told his DNA was found on Mrs Cavendish's phone, which was taken and found outside the home. Two other men, Jo Jobson, from Plaistow, east London, and George Goddard, from Loughton in Essex, have been named as suspects but not caught. Prosecutor Edward Renvoize, giving his closing speech on Wednesday, said the case is 'quite simply about a family being terrorised in their own home'. A watch stolen from the home of Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish Undated handout photo issued by Essex Police of a watch stolen He said the intruders 'appeared not to have got the watch they wanted' but they 'did make off with what they could'. It is for jurors to decide if the defendants were involved, he said. Mr Renvoize said the 'professionalism of the job is beyond question' and cast doubt on Okorosobo's claim he was not with his phone on the night it was connecting with cell masts in the area. Okorosobo said in evidence he was not at the Olympian's home but had lent Sesay his phone so he could use a navigation app. 'Is it really conceivable that, in order to find their way to the property, Mr Sesay had to borrow Mr Okorosobo's telephone in order to use the Waze app?' Mr Renvoize asked. He also questioned if Sesay would have 'agreed to take inebriated Mr Henry along for the ride'. Henry claimed in evidence he was in a Mercedes car that travelled to the Cavendish address on the night of the raid but was 'out of it'. He told jurors: 'I was so messed up. 'The effect that these drugs had had on me on that day.' Henry said he was unaware of a plan to rob the Cavendishes and not involved in the robbery. Shahid Rashid, for Okorosobo, drew attention in his closing speech to a leg injury Okorosobo sustained in September 2021. Referring to CCTV footage of four people approaching the Cavendish home, Mr Rashid said: 'None of them walk in the way he (Okorosobo) does. None of them have any injuries that he displays and none has the impediment he suffers from.' Archangelo Power, for Henry, said that 'mere presence alone does not amount to guilt'. The judge asked jurors to return to the court at 10am on Thursday, when he will begin summing up the evidence for them. This evidence could be forensic like blood spatter, fibers or fingerprints A murder conviction without a body is difficult, but can still be done, experts say, if prosecutors have an abundance of strong evidence. Some of this evidence could be forensic - like blood spatter, fibers or fingerprints to prove that a person died. In other cases, prosecutors rely on the suspect's behavior, eye witness testimony, and forensic Internet searches. A history of bodiless convictions dating back to the 1800s have paved the way for successful prosecutions of murder cases in which no body could be found. Now with advancements in DNA technology, electronic trails that did not exist decades ago - such as Google searches for 'how to get rid of a body' - which can be major clues in whether or not the person is alive and important information about who committed the crime. 'Corpus delicti' is a legal term meaning no one should be convicted without sufficient evidence - and actually translates to 'body of the crime.' The phrase, however, does not mean an actual body is required. Thomas A. DiBiase, an attorney who specializes in prosecuting 'no body' murders, says convictions of such cases are on the rise. DiBiase runs a blog that lists more than 500 'no body' homicide cases that have gone to trial, from the 1800s through 2020, and that 88 percent of them saw convictions. The question about 'no body' cases being convicted is being raised again as Brian Walshe, 47, entered a not guilty plea in Quincy District Court on Wednesday for the murder of his missing wife. Brian Walshe leaves court today after being charged with the murder of his wife Ana Ana, 39, had been enjoying her life as a busy working mother, splitting her time between Cohasset, Massachusetts, and Washington DC, where she worked for a real estate firm He's accused of murdering Ana in the basement of their home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, on January 1 in the early hours of the morning, then discarding her body in a dumpster. Ana's body has not been found, but prosecutors believe the trove of evidence - including chilling Google searches Walshe allegedly made in the hours before she went missing - they released in court on Wednesday could help win their case. At Walshe's arraignment, prosecutors laid out Walshe's chilling Google searches that included 'How long before a body starts to smell?' and 'Ten ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to?' Appearing in Quincy District Court, Walshe was largely expressionless as prosecutors detailed the evidence against him. He will be held without bail pending indictment. Walshe told police he last saw Ana at 6am on January 1, claiming she left for work. Today, it was revealed that in the hours before that, he'd been frantically researching how to dispose of a body, and how long decomposition takes. The digital trail is part of what prosecutors are hoping will help win their case. DiBiase has attributed the high rate of recent no-body convictions to two factors: an upswing in the cases being made in the past decade as technology like DNA becomes more sophisticated and prevalent, and the fact that people leave behind a more detailed digital trail of cell phone records, texts and online posts. Another factor is that 'no body' cases tend to involve a familiar or romantic relationship between the victim and defendant, and prosecutors only take strong cases to trial, given the challenges inherent in proving a murder case without a body. 'Murder is the ultimate crime, and a murder with no body is the ultimate murder,' DiBiase told Wake Forest Magazine. 'When you get rid of the body, you get rid of the best evidence of the murder: How was the person killed? When was the person killed? Where was the person killed? Figuring out all those things becomes so much more difficult to prove when you don't have the body.' But while 'no body' convictions are challenging, they can be won, he said. Brian Walshe pleaded not guilty to beating his wife Ana to death this morning as prosecutors laid out a mountain of evidence against him Thomas A. DiBiase, an attorney who specializes in prosecuting 'no body' murders, says convictions of such cases are on the rise 'The evidence in a solid no-body murder case tends to cluster around what I call the 'three legs of the stool,'' DiBiase, who also wrote the book No-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting and Winning Cases When the Victim is Missing. 'The most important leg of the stool is some type of forensic evidence, which includes DNA, such as blood, hair, fiber and fingerprints, or technological evidence including cell tower records, surveillance camera pictures or some other tech that shows someone was or was not at a certain location.' He told A&E the two other two legs of the stool are confessions from friends or family (where they reveal they know who the killer is) and the defendants confession to police. With strong evidence, prosecutors can establish a motive and the involvement of the accused, demonstrating that a victim was indeed murdered, he said. The disappearance of Evelyn Scott in May 1955 is considered a cornerstone case in no-body murder prosecutions, according to A&E. Scott disappeared from her Los Angeles home and her husband Leonard Ewing Scott gave conflicting accounts of her possible whereabouts. When the property was searched in March 1956, they found her dentures, glasses and clothes. It was then discovered that Leonard had been forging her signature on checks and giving her possessions to women he was romantically involved with. Prosecutors based their case on circumstantial evidence, stating that Leonard was a broke opportunist who cashed in on her wealth. He was convicted of murder in 1957 and sentenced him to life in prison. When he was released from prison in 1978, he confessed to killing his wife with a rubber mallet and said he buried the body in the Nevada desert. Evelyn's body has never been found. In December 2013, it was technology that secured a conviction in the Heather Elvis case. Elvis went missing in South Carolina after a date. Text messages, social media posts, and video footage led investigators to a man Elvis had previously been seeing, Sidney Moorer, and his wife, Tammy. The Moorers were convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping in the case. In 2019, a jury found 21-year-old Liam McAtasney guilty of first-degree murder for strangling his friend Sarah Stern in December 2016 and throwing her body off a bridge in New Jersey. Stern's car was found on the bridge, but her body has never been found. The conviction was based on Stern's belongings found at McAtasney's home, witness testimony, and self-incrimination through a taped conversation with friends. One of the most recent high-profile conviction came in 2022 when Paul Flores was convicted of murdering Kristin Smart, a 19-year-old California State Polytechnic University student. It's believed she was killed in 1996 but her body has never been found. This month, investigators have been following an extensive digital trail left for them by Walshe, who is accused of murdering his wife Ana. Walshe left an extensive digital trail for police with Google searches about divorce, murder, dismemberment and decomposing bodies, prosecutors revealed on Wednesday Google searches about divorce, murder, dismemberment and decomposing bodies were revealed by prosecutors on Wednesday. On December 27, days before his wife Ana vanished, Walshe Googled: 'What's the best state to divorce for a man?' Ana was last seen alive at 1.30am on January 1st by friends who had been in their home for a New Year's Eve party. Shortly before 5am on January 1, using his son's iPad, he searched; 4:55AM - How long before a body starts to smell? 4:58AM - How to keep a body from decomposing? 5:20AM - How to bound (bind) a body? 5:47AM - 10 ways to dispose of a body if you really need to 6:25AM - How long for someone to be missing to inherit? 6:34AM - Can you throw away body parts? 9:29AM - What does formaldehyde do? 9:34AM - How long does DNA last? 9:59AM - Can identification be made on partial remains? 11:34AM - Dismemberment and the best way to dispose of a body 11:44AM - How to clean blood from a wooden floor? 11:56AM - Luminal to detect blood 1:08PM - What happens when you put body parts in ammonia? 1:21PM - Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them? January 2 After purchasing rugs from a Home Goods store while wearing rubber gloves and a face mask, he returned to the iPad for more research. He also spent $450 on cleaning supplies from a Home Depot including mops, buckets, tarps, drop cloths and various kinds of tape. This time, prosecutors say he searched; 12:45PM - Hacksaw best tool to dismember 1:10PM - Can you be charged with murder without a body? 1:14PM - Can you identify a body with broken teeth? January 3 Police say he visited a dumpster in Abingdon, where he was seen carrying a heavy-looking garbage bag. 'He had to heft it into the dumpster,' according to police. Prosecutors tried to track down those trash bags, but by the time they got to them they had been destroyed in an incinerator at a trash transfer center. Walshe did more research, allegedly searching; 1:02PM - What happens to hair on a dead body? 1:13PM - What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods 1:20PM - Can baking soda make a body smell good? Ana Walshe has not been seen since 1.30am on January 1. Police say Brian, her husband of 18 years, murdered her. Her body has not been found January 4 Walshe bought bath mats, men's clothing and towels at TJ Maxx and Home Goods. He then visited Lowe's. That same day, a colleague of Ana's in Washington DC called police in Cohasset to report her missing and request a welfare check at her home. Police visited the family house, where they noticed the seats in Brian's Volvo were down, and a large, plastic liner was in the back seat. January 5 Police returned to the Walshe family home, where they noticed Brian's Volvo had been freshly cleaned. When questioned, he said he'd thrown out the plastic liner they saw the previous day. That same day, he visited the dumpster near his mother's home. January 8 Walshe is arrested for misleading police. A search warrant for the house is obtained, and police discover blood stains in the basement. They also found a knife with traces of blood on it. Police then searched the dumpster near his mother's home and found 10 trash bag that were stained with blood. Inside, they discovered: Slippers with both Ana and Brian's DNA on it Rags, tape, a medical suit with Brian and Ana's DNA on it Ana's Hunter boots Ana's Prada handbag Ana's COVID-19 vaccine card, with her name on it A hacksaw Hatchet Cutting shears Police say Walshe used one of his young son's iPads to search gruesome terms like 'how long before a body starts to smell?' Ana Walshe is shown with the boys Ana and Brian at the start of their romance, left, when he showered her with designer bags and cars. She is shown, right, more recently. Ana had grown to become independent, working in Washington DC away from her family According to friends, she and Brian had been fighting over her grueling work schedule. She had been spending more time working in Washington DC for the real estate firm Tishman Speyer, while her husband was at home in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Ana, a Serbian immigrant who met wealthy Walshe in 2005 while working in hotels, was enjoying her busy working life when she disappeared. She regularly posted about her colleagues on social media, where mentions of her husband were few and far between. She'd been working for Tishman Speyer for two years, and spending much of her time away from her family. On January 1, she failed to show up to work in Washington DC. Four days later, the head of security for Tishman Speyer in DC called police in Cohasset, where she lived with her family, requesting a welfare check. The caller said he'd informed Brian that Ana was missing. Ana Walshe and her husband Brian in happier times. Friends say she barely mentioned him when talking about her family On January 8, Brian was arrested for misleading the police investigation into his wife's disappearance. It then emerged that police had found traces of blood in the couple's basement. A search of a trash transfer center later turned up bloody items including a hatchet and a rug. Walshe had researched 'how to dispose of a 115-pound body' on the internet, and he'd also been seen lingering around a trash dumpster next to his mother's house, according to prosecutors. Long before his wife went missing, he was arrested on suspicion of stealing and trying to sell two fake Andy Warhol paintings. Family friends described him as a 'sociopath' who turned on his ailing, elderly father in a desperate grab for his wealth. After the murder charge was announced against her husband last night, friends of Ana started paying tribute to the vivacious mother-of-three. Abdulla Almutairi, her colleague and best friend, said: 'You'll always be my best friend and family. 'Rest easy, Heaven is a lot brighter; be the sunshine and the moonlight that you always are.' Brian Walshe, the husband of missing Cohasset, Massachusetts, woman Ana Walshe, has been charged with a new set of crimes for allegedly misleading police authorities investigating the disappearance of his wife. On Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney's office said that Brian was being charged with his wife's murder. The DA's office sent an email that revealed Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey was announcing the issuance of a murder warrant in the death of 39-year-old Ana who went missing on or about New Year's Day. Ana Walshe Case The statement added that the warrant was issued from Quincy District Court on January 17, 2023, and noted that the arraignment would be as early as 9:00 a.m. the next day depending on the availability of the defense attorney. The district attorney also issued a minute-long statement where he announced the new charge against Brian but did not provide new information regarding the case. In the video, Morrissey noted that detectives from the Cohasset Police Department and Massachusetts state police detectives who were assigned to Ana's case were involved in an intensive investigation, as per Fox news. The district attorney also said that in the early stages of the investigation, police were able to develop probable cause to believe that 47-year-old Brian misled police investigators. The situation was regarding material matters that were considered important to the search for Ana. However, Brian has pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder of his wife and is currently under official custody at the Norfolk County house of correction. Continued investigation has also allowed police authorities to obtain an arrest warrant that charged Brian with the murder of Ana. Morrissey noted that the suspect will be transported to the Quincy District Court for his arraignment on the charge of Ana's murder. Further information regarding the investigation and the evidence that supported the charge against Brian were more likely to be presented at that time. Read Also: California Gang-Related Murders Brian Walshe Charged With Murder The district attorney's announcement came as authorities have not yet discovered Ana's body nor did he disclose what led prosecutors to believe that she was killed. A judge in Quincy District Court sealed the murder warrant, noting that 13 warrants were previously sealed in the investigation on Friday, according to NBC Boston. Law enforcement personnel have only been searching for Ana's whereabouts for more than a week despite her husband saying that she has been missing since the new year. The people of Cohasset, across Massachusetts, and in the US, have been riveted by the search for the missing woman. Police have been led across the Boston area in search of Ana and officers even sifted through the garbage in search of potential evidence. Furthermore, sources said that included among the items that authorities found at a trash facility in Peabody were a hacksaw, bloody materials including towels, and materials that were consistent with some of the items that the victim's husband allegedly purchased at Home Depot. The disappearance of Ana comes as her husband, Brian, who is the son of a wealthy family, pleaded guilty in 2021 to charges that he had sold fake Andy Warhol paintings to a California art dealer, said the New York Times. Related Article: Ana Walshe: ConMan Husband's Dark Past @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A father being sought by police after disappearing with a missing aristocrat and their baby daughter is a convicted sex offender who has spent more than 20 years in jail. Mark Gordon, 48, and partner Constance Marten, 35, have been at the centre of a nationwide police hunt for two weeks as fears have grown for the welfare of Miss Marten's newborn baby. It is believed that British citizen Gordon was deported from the US in 2014 after apparently serving 24 years in jail there for kidnap and sexual battery. He was aged just 15 when convicted of the offences at a court in Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1990. Ms Marten (pictured) and her partner have now been missing for days. However, there have been several sightings including in Essex and East London Ms Marten and her partner Mark Gordon have been missing since January 5 after their car broke down and caught fire on the M61. The pair were seen leaving the motorway on foot with their newborn Ms Marten is from an aristocratic landowning family in Dorset with 'ties to the Royal Family', and police say the couple have a substantial amount of cash, allowing them to live off-grid. Police are also concerned that the large sum of cash they may have could mean they could evade the police for a significant amount of time. Before she became estranged from her family, Ms Marten's family put the Dorset estate, included a Grade I-listed mansion, four villages, a cricket club and a lake, on the market in 2010 for 100million, before its sale to an American buyer. Ms Marten's father, Napier Marten, was a pageboy to Queen Elizabeth II before giving up his 115million fortune after an 'epiphany' that told him to flee his 'materialistic' life. A source told the Sunday Times that Ms Marten had access to a trust fund, reportedly from a multimillion-pound trust stored at C. Hoare & Co - the UK's oldest private bank. It is believed Ms Marten became estranged from her family because of her relationship with Gordon, however, is thought to still have access to her family's funds. Investigators say the couple appear to know how to evade authorities as CCTV footage shows them covering their faces or looking away making the search for them harder. Last September, Ms Marten and Mr Gordon began moving around the country, renting AirBnBs for brief periods. Police released this picture of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon outside East Ham station at around 11.45am on Saturday January 7 Investigators said it is unusual for hotels to accept cash payments and appealed to staff at hotels or hostels where the couple may stay to come forward. On January 5, they were on the M61 when their car broke down and caught fire near junction four at Farnworth, Bolton. The couple then walked to Anchor Lane Bridge, where they got a taxi to Liverpool before getting another to Harwich, Essex. They were seen around Colchester on Friday January 6 and Saturday 7, when they took another taxi to East Ham Station in Newham, London, and were last seen. Each time Ms Marten and Mr Gordon are seen on CCTV, they are covering their faces or looking away, and have kept the baby covered up. Police believe they could be anywhere in the UK and are appealing to the public to come forward with any information that may help find them. She obtained a BA from the University of Leeds in 2012 in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. According to her LinkedIn page, she used to work as a photojournalist and did a short stint as a researcher at Qatari news channel Al Jazeera's London office after graduation. When she was 21, Ms Marten was deemed an 'It' girl, appearing on fashion magazine Tatler's Babe of the Month page, while she was a student in 2008. In the interview the now missing mother described her love of the Swiss Alps and her trips volunteering in Nepal. The aristocratic 'it' girl also took a crack at acting after enrolling at East 15 drama school in Essex, before dropping out in 2016 following an argument with her course tutor, according to the Sunday Times. The same year, she reportedly started living with Mark Gordon in Ilford, East London. A former classmate described Ms Marten as a 'very talented' actress who 'could have gone very far', before becoming estranged from her wealthy family. The source said she had been using the trust fund to pay for the course at the drama school. The couple's neighbours in Ilford said the pair were 'mysterious' and rarely used the garden or were seen speaking to people. The source believed Marten had a few odd jobs, but Gordon did not work. The couple were later evicted from their Ilford home, moving to the Coldharbour Estate in southeast London. Constance's ancestors: Lt. Cdr George Marten with wife Mary and daughters Victoria, Charlotte and Georgina In August last year, however, following a court hearing the couple were evicted for the second time, after not paying rent and leaving thousands of pounds worth of damage to the property. It is unclear where they were living in the months between August and January of this year. Detectives from the Metropolitan Police have joined colleagues from the North West in the hunt after Miss Marten and her partner were spotted outside East Ham station in east London, where they were last seen on January 7 at 11.45am. The pair had disappeared after the car they were travelling in broke down near Bolton on Thursday, January 5. They left on foot with their baby boy and have been missing since despite an extensive police search. Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, who is leading the investigation, said: 'Constance and Mark, I appeal directly to you, please think of your baby's health and wellbeing and get in touch with us so we can ensure your child is medically well and has no underlying issues. 'Please do this for your child. You wouldn't be able to forgive yourself if they became poorly. All we want to do is help you and your baby.' The Met Police have now taken over the investigation. It is understood Miss Marten has not been in contact with her family for some time. Ms Marten's father, Napier Marten (pictured), was a pageboy to Queen Elizabeth II before giving up his 115million fortune after an 'epiphany' that told him to flee his 'materialistic' life Police previously searched every hotel and B&B in Colchester after the mother and her newborn baby went missing. The family were seen in the city earlier this month, but Miss Marten is believed to have been captured on CCTV after abandoning the car, which had been purchased six days before they went missing. Information provided by taxi drivers suggests that the couple paid cash to travel first to Liverpool and then to Essex. They later stayed at a hotel using false names. They were spotted in Harwich Port in Essex at around 9am on January 7. Regular ferry services run from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. But Essex Police said the trio took a taxi from Harwich to East Ham station in Newham later that day. Police said they are concerned that neither Miss Marten nor her baby have been assessed by medical professionals since she gave birth. In police statements, Gordon is described as wearing dark clothing while Ms Marten is said to have a southern accent and was wearing a burgundy coat. The baby is swaddled. After her car broke down on the M61 near Bolton on Thursday evening, Ms Marten is believed to have been spotted wrapped in red blanket in Harwich Port, Essex on Saturday at 9am Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford said: This is a complex investigation with officers from across the Met continuing to work around the clock to find Constance, Mark and their baby. There is nothing to suggest that any of them have come to any sort of intentional harm we just need to ensure they are okay, especially the baby, and do not require any medical assistance for any underlying issues. The last confirmed sighting of them was more than a week ago in East Ham they could now be anywhere in the UK, which is why it is vital that members of the public continue to contact us with any suspected sightings. The assistance youve provided so far has been invaluable. Please dont forget about Constance, Mark and the baby if you see them or think you have seen them then please contact us as a matter of urgency. Some 200 officers are working on the search and have scoured through more than 200 hours of CCTV footage since the pair were last seen on January 7. Mr Gordons conviction relates to a Floida attack on a woman in her early 20s when he was 14. Librarians could find themselves behind bars for 30 days for allowing 'sexually explicit' LGBTQ and S&M content on their shelves, under a proposed North Dakota law. Books with graphic depictions of sex and gender identity would be banned from the state's public libraries under legislation politicians began considering this week. The plan comes amid a national wave of conservatives trying to stop children reading books about LGBTQ issues though usually these moves are aimed at school libraries, not public ones. Advocates of House Bill 1205 said it would preserve children's innocence and reduce their exposure to pornography. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, and other books that have been called into question by concerned parents in Utah Library Director Christine Kujawa at Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library says she never imagined she might go to jail over books The list of prohibited content includes 'deviant sexual intercourse', 'sadomasochistic abuse' and 'sexual perversion'. But it also aims at 'sexual identity' and 'gender identity' material that many consider acceptable and even useful for teens and adults interested in alternative lifestyles. Critics say the measure is discriminatory and would green-light censorship of material that is not actually obscene. House Majority Leader Mike Lefor, a Republican, introduced the bill and said public libraries have too many books with 'disturbing and disgusting' content. Some texts describe virginity as a silly label and assert that gender is fluid, he said. Exposing kids to such content is linked to addiction, low self-esteem, devalued intimacy, rising divorce rates, unprotected sex among young people and poor well-being, he added. Stark County resident Autumn Richard also backs the bill, warning of explicit content in the graphic novel 'Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human' and the kids' comic book 'Sex Is a Funny Word.' Richard says the books, which are available in public libraries, may impart information about contraceptives, body image and abusive relationships, but that many sections could hurt kids. Books banned in schools include Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe and The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas Tiffany Justice, founder of Moms For Liberty, a nationwide campaign to give parents more say in schools, praised North Dakotans for taking control over how tax dollars are spent. Poll Should librarians go to jail for carrying books about 'gender ideology'? Yes No Should librarians go to jail for carrying books about 'gender ideology'? Yes 66 votes No 74 votes Now share your opinion Some popular titles about 'queer theory, gender ideology and critical race theory' were 'antithetical to the teachings in the home' for many American families, she told DailyMail.com. 'It's a real betrayal of trust, parents, are concerned, and communities need to have conversations about what's appropriate to have in their public libraries,' she added. Though supporters of North Dakota's bill repeatedly called the sexual content 'obscene,' opponents said the material in question was not actually considered legally obscene. 'Nearly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court set the high constitutional bar that defines obscenity,' said Cody Schuler, from the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, who testified against the bill. The North Dakota plan comes amid a national wave of conservatives trying to stop children reading books about LGBTQ issues including these campaigners in Florida Obscenity is a narrow, well-defined category of unprotected speech that excludes works of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, Schuler said. Few, if any, books have been deemed obscene, and the standard for restraining a library's ability to distribute a book are even more stringent, Schuler added. The definition of pornography is also subjective, opponents of the bill said. Library Director Christine Kujawa at Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library said the library has a book with two little hamsters on the cover. At the end of the book, the hamsters, which are both male, get married. 'It's a cute book,' Kujawa said but it could be deemed pornography under the bill because it features gender identity. Facing criminal charges for keeping books on shelves is 'something I never thought I would have to consider during my career as a librarian,' Kujawa said. In addition to banning depictions of 'sexual identity' and 'gender identity,' the measure specifies 10 other things that library books cannot visually depict, including 'sexual intercourse,' 'sexual preference' and 'sexual perversion.' It does not define any of those terms. Efforts to ban books have gathered pace rapidly, with hundreds of titles cut across thousands of school libraries Much of the controversial content involves culture wars issues like gender, sexuality and race The proposal does not apply to books that have 'serious artistic significance' or 'materials used in science courses,' among other exceptions. The bill would let prosecutors charge any person who displays these materials at places that children visit with a class B misdemeanor. The maximum penalty is 30 days of imprisonment and a $1,500 fine. The Republican-dominated state House Judiciary Committee heard arguments on Tuesday, but did not take a vote on the measure. Efforts to ban books have gathered pace rapidly, with hundreds of titles cut across thousands of schools often those tackling culture wars issues like gender, sexuality and race, a study shows. There were 2,532 instances of individual book bans affecting 1,648 titles at some 5,000 schools with 4 million students in the 2021-2022 school year, the anti-censorship group PEN America said in a report last year. The group described a push by politicians and newly-formed parents' organizations to pull texts from school libraries that it compares to the anti-communist McCarthy era and 'Moral Majority' purges of the early 1980s. Frequently banned titles include Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and was turned into a 2018 movie. Group Standing For Women held a rally in Brighton on September 18 last year A man yanked another male demonstrator by the genitals as two sides clashed during a rally hosted by women's rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen in Brighton last year. Craig Thomas, 50, today appeared before magistrates where he admitted assaulting trans rights activist Oliver Waterhouse by grabbing him and squeezing hard. Ms Keen founded the group Standing For Women which campaigns for sex-based rights and protections of the word 'woman'. The group held a rally in Brighton on September 18 last year, while trans rights activists staged their own counter demonstration nearby. Thomas said that he had initially joined the counter rally of trans rights activists but decided to move over to Keen's side after hearing her speak. Chef Craig Thomas, 50, was fined by magistrates today after carrying out the assault on another man during the Standing For Women event on September 18 last year The assault took place during a rally held by Kellie-Jay Keen's Standing For Women on September 18 last year Mr Waterhouse was cheered by a section of the crowd when he shouted 'fascist' at Thomas through a megaphone, shortly before the assault. Thomas was fined a total of 328 by magistrates in the seaside city. After the hearing, Thomas said: 'I was on one side but I switched sides when they started calling me a fascist and a penis predator. 'The other side just sounded a bit more sensible. They were saying people who were born men shouldn't go to a women's prison and that made more sense to me.' Prosecutor Melanie Wootton told the court Thomas had squeezed extremely hard, causing a substantial amount of pain. 'There was some animosity between both sides,' Ms Wootton said. 'Mr Thomas became aggressive towards Mr Waterhouse and there was an exchange of views. 'Both were being antagonistic. Mr Thomas grabbed the complainant's testicles, squeezed and pulled them causing Mr Waterhouse excruciating pain and he fell to the ground. 'Police saw the incident and Mr Thomas was arrested,' the prosecutor said. Kellie-Jay Keen founded the group Standing For Women which campaigns for sex-based rights and protections of the word 'woman' In a victim statement, Mr Waterhouse said: 'I haven't been able work as a sound engineer. I've had nightmares and I am not able to sleep. I'm worried I won't be able to have children.' For the defence, Oliver Mackrell told the court the assault was 'completely out of character'. 'I would describe the act as a single act over a very short period of time - a few seconds at most. 'There was no intention to cause any greater pain or harm. In the later statement of the complainant, he describes it as a punch. 'He also says there are no visible injuries. I say plainly, this would have been a painful experience. 'With the greatest respect to Mr Waterhouse, I would ask you to put very little weight on potentially not having children.' Mr Mackrell said when this incident took place Mr Thomas was struggling with his mental health after finding it hard to find work as a chef through the covid pandemic. 'The complainant admits he called Mr Thomas a fascist. He had a megaphone and the whole crowd was cheering when he was called a fascist. 'He reacted badly and he lost his cool. He completely accepts that.' Chair Mrs Eve Vamvas, fined Thomas a total of 328 at Brighton Magistrates Court. 'We've heard about about how remorseful you are and we've decided to fine you,' she said. A junior at one of New York City's top public high schools was sexually assaulted by a classmate in the bathroom, who sent other students a recording of it. The victim, identified as Jane Doe in a new lawsuit filed against the city and Department of Education, said the attack happened on November 4, 2021, at the prestigious NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies. The 11th grader claimed the school failed to call police, with an assistant principal even grilling her about the video circulating the school, the New York Post reports. 'Without regard to the status of [Jane Doe] as an underaged victim of sexual assault or her apparent emotional and psychological trauma, [the assistant principal] forced [her] to write a statement describing her sexual assault,' the lawsuit states. Her father, identified as 'Joe Doe,' claims the school knew his daughter was a victim of harassment in the past and that the suspect 'had a reputation for engaging in dangerous behaviors.' He also warned that the girl, who comes from an Islamic country in the Middle East, could be executed if she ever returns and officials learn about the assault. A junior at the prestigious NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies (pictured) was sexually assaulted in the first-floor bathroom on November 4, 2021 A lawsuit against the city and Department of Education alleges that the victim was grilled by assistant principal Jason Koch (above) following the assault, which was recorded by the perpetrator and shared among classmates According to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court last Friday, the suspect, identified only as 'N.R,' followed the victim to the first-floor bathrooms of the school. As he blocked the bathroom exit, N.R. 'demanded' that the girl give him oral sex, and when she refused, he forced himself on her, the lawsuit states. N.R. allegedly forced her into a bathroom stall, pushed her to the floor, and 'held the back of her head' during the assault, the suit adds. Following the assault, the victim said she found out N.R. had recorded the crime on his phone and was showing it off to other students. When assistant principal Jason Koch learned about the video, he allegedly pulled the victim out of class to question her about it without the presence of a school counselor. The lawsuit claims the school was negligent when it failed to protect the victim, noting that there were no security guards or monitors placed near the bathrooms. The suit also states that neither Jane Doe's family nor the police were notified about the assault when the school learned about it. The family is seeking unspecified damages and have requested to remain anonymous in court. Neither the school, Koch, nor the Department of Education immediately responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment. The school is located in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood and is among the top five percent of schools in the Big Apple Along with his outrage over the assault, Joe Doe said the school's negligence was evident after it failed to act when he asked that she be transferred to another school following an incident in 2019. The lawsuit says that Jane Doe had been the victim of bullying and a physical assault in 2019, but an assistant principal did not approve the family's request to move her to another school. NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, located in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, is among the top five percent of schools in the Big Apple, according to Public School Review. The high school places in the top five percent of all schools in the state when it comes to math and reading proficiency, as well as overall test scores. The school also boasts a 95 percent graduation rate, well above the state's average 83 percent. A Just Stop Oil activist who moaned to a judge that climbing a gantry over the M25 had 'completely ruined his life' has today been spared jail. Alfred Beswick, 26, of Hackney, east London, helped bring Britain's busiest motorway to a standstill on November 8 as part of a series of climate change protests that caused mayhem around London. The eco zealot clambered onto the gantry above junction 22 in St Albans, Hertfordshire at 7.15am, wearing an orange hi-vis jacket and hard hat, before being arrested by police. But despite causing carnage on the M25, Beswick - who had written to the court saying the stunt had wrecked his life and 'really disrupted his relationship with his partner' - avoided jail, with a judge instead handing him a suspended sentence. Alfred Beswick was among the Just Stop Oil zealots to clamber onto gantries above the M25 in a coordinated series of protests closed Britain's busiest motorways. Pictured is one of the protesters on an M25 gantry in November Beswick, 26, of Hackney, east London, was given a suspended sentence having moaned to the court that his part in the Just Stop Oil protests had 'ruined his life'. He is pictured at a rally 'Mr Beswick you know what it's like to be in a prison cell, I'm not going to send you back to prison today,' Judge Alexander Milne KC told the defendant, who had previously spent a month remanded in custody. During the hearing at the Old Bailey, the court heard how Beswick had scaled the structure above the motorway as part of a coordinated series of protests by Just Stop Oil that caused 'widespread disruption'. Describing Beswick's role in the chaos, prosecutor Jennie Oborne said: 'He climbed a gantry, secured himself to the top of the gantry and unpacked a "stop the oil" banner. 'The M25 had to be shut on the eastbound carriageway for a number of hours until 10.10am. 'The reality is, that your honour will appreciate, the disruption was widespread and caused maybe thousands of people who were using the motorway that day disruption.' Tens of thousands of people were disrupted by the protests, which took place at the beginning of November, 2022. Pictured are police stopping traffic on the M25 on November 8 Beswick made no comment in police interview but admitted causing a public nuisance at Southwark Crown Court last month. 'Mr Beswick, whilst no means an organiser knew he was involving himself in a wider enterprise that would cause significant disruption to the public,' said Ms Oborne. Nicholas Goss, defending, said Beswick 'had a difficult time whilst in custody but had the benefit of being able to reflect upon his actions and views and step aside from the co-accused and plead guilty in a very early stage'. 'Mr Beswick cares deeply about anything he chooses to do and he cares deeply for his concerns of the future,' added Mr Goss. 'He has shown himself both before, during and after his guilty plea, that this is a man who is in a position to be rehabilitated for his conduct.' Passing sentence Judge Milne described the eco warrior's actions as a 'deliberate disruption', adding that Beswick 'persisted' in scaling the gantry despite seeing police approaching. 'He would've known and been well aware his actions were not taken in isolation but part of a widespread package of disruption to effect tens if not thousands of people,' Judge Milne said. 'He is still a relatively young man and I recognise for him he has had the opportunity to reflect upon the effects of his actions, not only upon himself but his family and for those he cares for. Another Just Stop Oil protester on a M25 gantry on November 10 as part of a weeks-long campaign to place pressure on the Government over fossil fuels As well as causing chaos on the M25, protesters also caused mayhem in London, with eco zealots marching slowly through the city's roads, sparking delays across the capital. Pictured are Just Stop Oil supporters in Whitechapel Road Last year's protests left drivers furious, with some choosing the express their frustration to the climate change campaigners 'I suspect it took a degree of courage on his part to step aside from those who had encouraged him to get involved in these actions and plead guilty for the actions he had done. 'It seems to me that whilst it would be a custodial sentence, it does not need to be immediate but there are good grounds that rehabilitation is realistic in these circumstances.' Beswick, who appeared in court wearing a grey suit and red shirt, was sentenced to six months jail suspended for 18 months having admitted causing a public nuisance. He is also required to complete 10 days of rehabilitation activity, 100 hours of unpaid work in the community and pay 600 in contribution fees within 12 months. Judge Milne told him: 'I'm trusting the court will not see you back here again.' Prosecutors in Massachusetts today revealed Brian Walshe's extensive Google searches in the days before his wife Ana was reported missing. The searches were revealed in court after he pleaded not guilty to killing his wife Ana. Walshe, 47, is accused of murdering Ana in the basement of their home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, in the early hours of January 1. Among the gruesome searches, which were done on an iPad belonging to one of his young sons, were 'Ten ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to' and 'Can you throw away body parts?'. DailyMail.com lays those searches out in full here. Brian Walshe in court in Massachusetts today as he pleaded not guilty to killing his wife Ana, who was last seen alive on January 1 Walshe left an extensive digital trail for police with Google searches about divorce, murder, dismemberment and decomposing bodies, prosecutors revealed on Wednesday December 27th, five days before Ana vanished 'Best state for divorce for a man.' January 1st, day Ana vanished. Searches start shortly before 5am and are conducted on son's iPad 4:55AM - How long before a body starts to smell? 4:58AM - How to keep a body from decomposing? 5:20AM - How to bound (bind) a body? 5:47AM - 10 ways to dispose of a body if you really need to 6:25AM - How long for someone to be missing to inherit? 6:34AM - Can you throw away body parts? 9:29AM - What does formaldehyde do? 9:34AM - How long does DNA last? 9:59AM - Can identification be made on partial remains? 11:34AM - Dismemberment and the best way to dispose of a body 11:44AM - How to clean blood from a wooden floor? 11:56AM - Luminal to detect blood 1:08PM - What happens when you put body parts in ammonia? 1:21PM - Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them? January 2nd 12:45PM - Hacksaw best tool to dismember 1:10PM - Can you be charged with murder without a body? 1:14PM - Can you identify a body with broken teeth? January 3rd 1:02PM - What happens to hair on a dead body? 1:13PM - What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods 1:20PM - Can baking soda make a body smell good? January 4th: Ana is reporting missing by her employer. The internet searches stop. Britain is seeing workforces across a range of industries striking in their masses in rows against pay and conditions. Railway workers, Royal Mail staff, Border Force, nurses, paramedics and teachers are among those walking out to say they feel 'underpaid, understaffed and undervalued'. Poll Which of Britain's striking workforces do you support the most? Railways Buses Royal Mail Teachers University staff Nurses Ambulance Driving test examiners National Highways Rural Payments Agency Civil servants Environment Agency Border Force Physiotherapists Which of Britain's striking workforces do you support the most? Railways 22 votes Buses 19 votes Royal Mail 58 votes Teachers 63 votes University staff 6 votes Nurses 328 votes Ambulance 100 votes Driving test examiners 10 votes National Highways 1 votes Rural Payments Agency 16 votes Civil servants 38 votes Environment Agency 6 votes Border Force 19 votes Physiotherapists 15 votes Now share your opinion The country will grind to a halt as co-ordinated action will see hundreds of thousands of train drivers, teachers, airport staff and civil servants strike on February 1. Around 100,000 civil servants are to strike on February 1 in a worsening dispute over jobs, pay and conditions, the Public and Commercial Services union announced. The mass walk-out by workers including Border Force, the DVLA and job centre staff is a massive ratcheting up of pressure by militant trade unions. It is the first time that members of the PCS in different government agencies have co-ordinated their strikes to take place at the same time in this latest period of unrest. RMT boss Mick Lynch has said: 'Our negotiations will continue with the rail operators to create a package on jobs, conditions and pay that can be offered to our members.' It comes as union leaders have said 'no progress' was made during a meeting with the Education Secretary in a bid to avert strike action over teachers' pay. Gillian Keegan held talks with the general secretaries of unions representing teachers and school leaders on Wednesday after walkouts in February and March were announced by the National Education Union (NEU). But following the meeting, Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said: 'At the moment we haven't heard anything which leads me to believe we can avert this strike.' Meanwhile, nurses at roughly one in four hospitals across England today took to the picket line as the bitter pay dispute with the Government rumbles on. The 48-hours of chaos comes after two separate strikes in December, which led to almost 30,000 NHS cancellations across the country. Thousands of ambulance workers and nurses will go on strike on the same day next month as the pay dispute with the Government shows no signs of reaching a resolution. MailOnline app users can vote in the poll by clicking here. Nurses and supporters march down Whitehall towards Downing Street on January 18 RMT union members hold a rally in front of No. 10 to protest anti-strike legislation plans Bus drivers picket the Camberwell garage of their employer Abellio during a strike over pay on January 12 The GMB union said more than 10,000 ambulance workers, including paramedics, emergency care assistants and call handlers, will stage strikes on February 6, February 20, March 6 and March 20. Nurses are also due to strike on February 6 - meaning mass disruption can be expected across the NHS on that day. Nurses will also strike the following day, February 7. Royal Mail workers have also taken action, with more than 100,000 workers choosing to strike across seven days in December, one of the busiest periods for the postal service. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have seen their popularity plummet in the United States in just over a month, following the release of his controversial tell-all memoir, Spare. The couple, who were previously hugely popular in the U.S., have sunk in the polls since Prince Harry launched a fresh attack on the royal family and revealed a range of intimate details such as how he lost his virginity in his new tell-all memoir. Prior to publication, Harry had a favorability rating of +38, according to a December 5 poll of 2,000 U.S. voters for Newsweek. That has now plunged to -7, with pollsters Redfield & Wilton speaking to the same number of voters on January 16. His wife has also seen her reputation harmed by the drama. She now has an approval rating of -13, compared to +23 on December 5. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are seen in July 2022 at the UN Nelson Mandela Prize award ceremony in New York City Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved to the United States in 2020, and are two of Montecito's most notable residents. Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Katy Perry, Rob Lowe and Larry David also live in the area The Duke of Sussex revealed more personal details about his life in the breakfast show interview with former NFL player Michael Strahan on January 9 Harry is seen with Anderson Cooper during his 60 Minutes interview, which aired in the U.S. on January 8 Spare became the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time on the day of its release earlier this month, topping sales charts around the world - including in the U.S., according to its publisher. In it Harry made explosive revelations and allegations about members of his family, most noticeably his brother Prince William, rocking the House of Windsor. It has also put in jeopardy the family's chance to set aside their differences at the coronation of Prince Charles III later this year. The poll, which was made up of 2,000 US voters, marks a serious backslide in ratings for the couple, who moved to the country after stepping back from royal duties in March 2020. The poll also found women were slightly less likely to like Markle than men. Asked about whether Harry was right to reveal intimate conversations with his family members in the memoir, 44 percent said he was wrong, with 26 percent saying he was right. Redfield & Wilton's poll also found that only a third of the population had not heard anything about the contents of the book. The Sussexes have been a constant presence in U.S. media since moving to the country, beginning with their explosive March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey Prince Harry is pictured speaking to Today Show host Hoda Kotb in April 2022 Prince Harry's book, Spare, was released on January 10 and quickly became one of the fastest selling non-fiction books ever, but the fallout from the Duke's book looks set to linger While sharing an article in which it discussed many of the shocking revelations made by Harry, 38, the outlet posted a picture to Instagram that said, 'Spare is pure chaos' Harry has been on a media blitz since the book came out, taking part in interviews with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes, Michael Strahan for Good Morning America, and Stephen Colbert for his late night comedy show. Yet even some who previously supported the prince are beginning to say that the memoir is excessive, and unnecessarily brutal towards his family. The New York Times concludes: 'At once emotional and embittered, the royal memoir is mired in a paradox: drawing endless attention in an effort to renounce fame.' New York Magazine's The Cut branded Prince Harry's book 'pure chaos', while mocking his 'frostbitten penis' and 'shrooms trip' in a scathing Instagram post. The statement comes just five months after Markle posed on the cover of the magazine and sat down with it for an interview in which she spoke openly about her time as a royal as well as her and Harry's decision to leave the monarchy. Vox magazine, meanwhile, was scathing in its review. 'It feels like a diatribe from someone who has only recently learned that it is physically possible to talk openly about his life and his anger, and who now has no idea how to modulate himself,' wrote critic Constance Grady. 'The result is occasionally insufferable, but also oddly fascinating. At times you wonder if it should ever have been made public.' In Forbes magazine, Harry and Meghan were described as 'a brand in panic'. 'It's painful to watch Prince Harry inadvertently commit brand suicide with his new book Spare in hopes of building his own brand,' wrote Jeetendr Sehdev. And Jimmy Kimmel this week mercilessly mocked Harry's revelation that he rubbed his mother's favorite Elizabeth Arden lip cream on his penis to cure frostbite. In a scathing rendition, the talk show host ridiculed Harry by producing a book titled 'The Prince and the Penis' in which the Duke of Sussex calls out for the late Princess Diana to help with his frostbitten penis. Kimmel sparked eruptions of laughter as he read out the story, which features cartoon drawings of Harry and his frostbitten penis, where the late Princess Diana produced Elizabeth lip cream for Harry to put on his frostbitten penis. In the book, Harry's character, questioning whether it was acceptable to put his mother's lip cream on his penis, said: 'But mummy have you heard about Sir Sigmund Freud?' Prince Harrys book is so popular, they made a version for kids! #ThePrinceAndThePenis pic.twitter.com/mV0Sfy4REL Jimmy Kimmel Live (@JimmyKimmelLive) January 17, 2023 In a scathing rendition, the talk show host ridiculed Harry by producing a book titled 'The Prince and the Penis' in which the Duke of Sussex calls out for the late Princess Diana to help with his frostbitten penis Jimmy Kimmel mercilessly mocked Prince Harry's revelation that he rubbed his mother's favorite Elizabeth Arden lip cream on his penis to cure frostbite in his tell-all memoir that has sent ripples through the Royal family Kimmel sparked eruptions of laughter as he read out the story, which features cartoon drawings of Harry and his frostbitten penis, where the late Princess Diana produced Elizabeth lip cream for Harry to put on his frostbitten penis The audience burst into raucous laughter as the talk show host continued to ridicule the Prince in a two-minute monologue. It comes as the couple become increasingly unpopular in the UK, with recent polling for MailOnline revealing 56 percent of people believe they should lose all their royal titles and patronages. Among young people, the monarchy itself is also becoming less and less welcomed. The poll, by YouGov on behalf of MailOnline, also reveals that Harry's attacks on Charles, his brother William and sister-in-law Kate have not changed the public's perception of them at all. Kate's polling improved. Prince Harry's popularity among the British public has slumped to an all-time low, a YouGov poll last week suggested Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have both seen their approval ratings drop dramatically since the beginning of December The Prince of Wales' polling remains strong despite being accused of attacking his younger sibling after a blazing row where he called Meghan 'difficult' and 'abrasive'. Meanwhile Prince Harry's approval ratings dropped to a record low of -44. In the memoir, Prince Harry alleged that his brother shoved him into a dog's bowl during the heated row after he began dating Meghan, leaving it in 'pieces'. He claimed he could tell Prince William wanted him to hit him back, but he refused to do so. He added his brother later apologized. He also revealed personal details such as how he lost his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a pub. In his new book, Harry claims members of the royal household regularly briefed to the press, including for negative articles about Meghan. Harry has been criticized for sharing private conversations in the book, and intimate details about his family members. However, the prince claimed there are many other details he has chosen not to share because 'I just don't want the world to know', adding his family might not 'ever forgive' him if he did so. Harry has since challenged his family members to speak with him and apologize to Meghan, though it is not clear what for. Fired Hamline University Erika Lopez Prater says she would show an image of the Prophet Muhammad in her class again - saying it's 'not abusive' to do so. Prater defended herself on academic grounds while speaking in a conference with Muslim scholars called 'Islamophobia vs Academic Freedom' on Monday, saying: 'We owe it to our students to challenge them in ways that are sometimes uncomfortable.' When asked if she would show the image again, she said: 'I think I would. 'I would wrap in some commentary about lessons that we have learned from this Hamline situation and again do my utmost to provide safety nets and offramps for those who chose not to engage visually.' It comes as the university has walked back claims that it was Islamaphobic and said they made a 'misstep' in their reaction just hours after Prater sued for defamation. Scroll down for video Fired Hamline University Erika Lopez Prater (pictured left) has defended her use of images of the Prophet Muhammad, saying it's 'not abusive' to do so and that she would do it again in the context of a class. Aram Wedatalla (pictured right), a student, complained to the school, claiming she'd been 'blindsided' by the image 'Using discomfort in a well-managed and caring way can be a really great pedagogical tool in order to open up young students' minds. It's not harmful, it's not abusive, it's actually a sign of respect to their intellects,' she added. In October, adjunct Prater showed an online class an image of the Prophet Muhammad as part of an art history class at the Minnesota school. She warned the students watching virtually what she planned to do, and gave them ample warning to look away from the image if they were so inclined. In some - but not all- fractions of Islam, it is forbidden to look at the image of the Prophet. After the class, student and president of the university's Muslim association Aram Wedatalla complained to the school, claiming she'd been 'blindsided' by the image of the Prophet Muhammad despite Professor Prater giving them multiple warnings that she intended to show it. Afterwards, Wedatalla and others promptly complained to school officials that the image made her feel marginalized. 'I'm 23 years old. I have never once seen an image of the prophet,' she said in the conference streamed live on CAIR-MN's Facebook page, adding that she felt marginalized. 'It just breaks my heart that I have to stand here to tell people that something is Islamophobic and something actually hurts all of us, not only me.' Lopez Prater warned the students watching virtually what she planned to do, and gave them ample warning to look away from the image if they were so inclined. In some - but not all- fractions of Islam, it is forbidden to look at the image of the Prophet Hamline University's Old Main building in St. Paul, Minnesota Prater, who'd been hired that semester for the first time and was due to return for the spring semester, was shown the door. The university, bending to the demands of the Muslim association, called the incident 'Islamophobic'. It sparked uproar among other Muslims and professors across the country, who said the school had stifled academic freedom. One Muslim professor accused the school of advancing an 'extreme' Islamist view that is only held by a small number of people. The school dug its heels in initially, saying it wanted to protect its Muslim students and make them feel heard. In a statement Monday - released two hours after Prater's attorneys announced they'd filed a defamation lawsuit against the school for making her a 'pariah' - its top brass said it had 're-examined' its handling of the scandal. 'In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. 'Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term Islamophobic was therefore flawed. Aram Wedatalla, 23, head of Hamline's Muslim Student Association, claimed the image 'blindsided' her 'Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep,' said the statement by Board of Trustees Chair Ellen Watters and school president Fayneese Miller. On January 14, Professor Prater broke her silence in a discussion with Muslim scholars. 'In the way that I was framing Islamic art, I know that there are many practices within Islam, I know historically there have been differing attitudes as to how the divine should be depicted but I know that inconsistency is consistent within many religions - it's not specific to Islam. 'In my syllabus, I did note that I would be showing both representational and non representational of holy figures such as the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ and Buddha. 'During my class I did give my students a heads-up that I was about to show an image of the Prophet Muhammad, I explained my reasons for doing so, but also to demonstrate the rich diversity within the history of Islam. 'Of course, in an art history classroom, images are the primary source documents that we use as evidence in order to learn about diverse cultures and thinking and attitudes. 'I spent a couple minutes explaining to students, before I showed the images. I told my students if they didn't feel comfortable engaging visually, they were free to do what made most sense to them. 'I tried to empower them to walk away from the video portion of the online classroom, or do what kind of made most sense to them. In a statement last night, Hamline said it was a 'misstep' to have labeled the lesson Islamophobic. It came two hours after the professor and her attorneys filed a lawsuit 'Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep,' said the statement by Board of Trustees Chair Ellen Watters and school president Fayneese Miller (pictured) that was released last nigh There was widespread support for the professor, with thousands signing a petition for her to be reinstated 'I'm not a mind reader. My discussion in my class was fact based and on explaining the beginnings of Islam itself. 'All of the images that I used were very respectful, they were meant to be instructional and also referential in their original historical contexts.' Professor Prater added that the student said her warnings 'didn't matter'. 'She had some pretty strong feelings that she expressed to me. But one of them that perhaps gets to the heart of the matter was she thought the warnings that I had provided to the class didn't even matter, because she believed that images of the Prophet Muhammad should never be shown full stop. 'Even if those are pedagogically relevant that are primary source documents from history.' Now, Hamline says it'll host 'two major conversations.' 'One will focus on academic freedom and student care. The other will focus on academic freedom and religion,' the statement said. Prater's attorneys have not yet responded to the statement. In her lawsuit, Prater's attorneys say she shared her syllabus plan with her superiors, and 'no one' raised any concerns. 'Students viewing the online class had ample warning about the paintings. 'Students viewing the online class also had ample opportunity to turn away from their computer screens, turn their screens away from them, turn off their screens, or even leave their rooms before the paintings were displayed. Her attorney slammed the university for making her a 'pariah' in the aftermath of the students' complaints. The incident has since spawned responses from civil rights groups who have condemned the firing - with the National Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) now the latest to contest the decision. In a press release Friday, the Washington DC- based advocacy group offered its official stance on the controversy, asserting that academics should not be condemned as 'bigots' without the proper justification. The response comes after an executive of the civil right's group's Minnesota chapter celebrated the firing, condemning the Prophet Muhammad depiction as 'blasphemy' and an infringement on students' rights. The CAIR, the nations largest Muslim civil rights group, joins organizations like The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU, PEN America, The New York Times and Fox News in condemning the decision. The CAIR, led by Nihad Awad, joined organizations like The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU, PEN America, The New York Times and Fox News Friday in condemning the firing 'Academics should not be condemned as bigots without evidence or lose their positions without justification,' an excerpt from the statement read. 'Although we strongly discourage showing visual depictions of the Prophet, we recognize that professors who analyze ancient paintings for an academic purpose are not the same as Islamophobes who show such images to cause offense,' it continued. 'Based on what we know up to this point, we see no evidence that Professor Erika Lopez Prater acted with Islamophobic intent or engaged in conduct that meets our definition of Islamophobia.' The statement did not mention how the firing was earlier celebrated by CAIR-MN's Jaylani Hussein, executive director of its Minnesota sect. Hussein, like several others who have supported Prater's firing in recent months, slammed the academic's decision to show the art piece offensive and 'an act of Islamophobia.' The statement did not mention how the firing was earlier celebrated by CAIR-MN's Jaylani Hussein, executive director of its Minnesota sect, earlier in the week. Hussein last week slammed the academic's decision to show the art piece offensive and 'an act of Islamophobia' A day after the CAIR slammed the firing, Prater made her first public appearance, appearing in open forum discussing her firing presided over by Islam and global affairs Muqtedar Khan. Khan, a professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware where he heads its Islamic Studies Program, was joined by scholars Dr. Christiane Gruber, Salam Al-Marayati, and Dr. Hyder Khan in a pointed talk about the repercussions of the university's decision. Lopez Prater - who plans to teach at Macalester College in the spring - said that while she may disagree with the university's decision, she respected the student's stance - despite giving multiple written and verbal warnings that the art history course would touch on religious iconography, including the famed 14th-century painting of Prophet Muhammad, which DailyMail.com has chosen not to publish. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is being sued over a four-year-old Twitter post where he announced his plans to take the electric car manufacturing company private but ended it with, "Funding secured." Musk, Tesla, and other Tesla directors are involved in the shareholder lawsuit in the 2018 tweet where he wanted to price each Tesla share at $420. If the billionaire ended his announcement at just that, there would be no coverage or lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages. Elon Musk Faces Lawsuit It was later revealed that the Tesla CEO had been in talks with executives of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund regarding the money that he needed at the time to take the company private, but the funding was anything but "secured." On the day of his 2018 tweet, Tesla shares initially jumped 11%, but they never reached the promised $420 threshold, only peaking at $387.46. Soon after, the prices began to fall well below their prices before the Twitter post, sinking to $344, and to $263.24 after a month, as per CNN. The prices per share continued to drop after it became clear that the funding that was supposedly secured was actually not. The situation prompted the shareholder suit that is just now reaching trial after more than four years. After about a year since Musk's tweet, Tesla's shares went on an extraordinary run, turning from losses to profits and gaining 1,520% from the Twitter post's date to its record high in November 2021. The price close of $409.97 works out to be roughly $,6150 per share when adjusted for the two stock splits since that day. Musk's 2018 tweet also prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to file a civil suit against the Tesla CEO. The SEC is the agency that is responsible for shielding investors by requiring executives to tell the truth about certain dealings. Read Also: California Gang-Related Murder Reckless Statements Since the fallout of his tweet, Musk has contended that he entered a $40 million settlement under duress and maintained that he believed he had locked up financial support for Tesla. The recent trial's outcome could also hinge on the jury's interpretation of Musk's motive for tweets that U.S. District Judge Edward Chen decided were a falsehood, according to CBS News. On Friday, Musk was dealt another setback when Chen rejected the Tesla CEO's bid to transfer the trial to a federal court in Texas, where the company moved its headquarters in 2021. Musk argued that negative coverage of his Twitter purchase had poisoned the jury pool in the San Francisco Bay Area. Current Tesla stockholders are unsatisfied with how Musk has recently taken control of Twitter where he fired hordes of staff and alienated users and advertisers alike. Stockholders of the electric car manufacturing company were concerned that Musk has been devoting less time to managing the automaker during a time of stiff competition. Legal experts have expressed their belief that the trial would be a challenging legal battle for Musk and his company. Chen previously ruled that the billionaire was, in fact, "deliberately reckless" about the truth when making his 2018 statements, said the New York Times. Related Article: Ana Walshe's Husband Charged With Murder @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the media six times last Thursday that the search for classified documents in Joe Biden's personal possession was 'complete' only for White House counsel Richard Stauber to find five more in the president's Wilmington, Delaware home later that evening. President Biden and his administration have been under fire for not immediately and publicly disclosing when the classified materials were found - despite the opportunities to do and while they were facing questions about the matter. Jean-Pierre, in particular, has been grilled in her daily press briefings about the lack of transparency. But now she faces questions about when she knew about the document discoveries and the information she has delivered in her press briefings. As Jean-Pierre is the face and voice of the administration, her briefings are meant to inform the public about the work of the Biden administration but also is a time for the administration to be held accountable - via questions from the media - for its actions. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said six times last Thursday that the search for classified documents was complete - only for five more to be found later in the day The document debacle is now a full-blown crisis for the White House as House Republicans will be launching multiple investigations and the Justice Department recently selected a special counsel to oversee Biden's possible mishandling of classified documents. Even some Democrats have struggled to defend Biden while former President Donald Trump, who faces his own DOJ investigation about classified material he had at Mar-a-Lago, has accused everyone of a double standard. The White House counsel's office said last week that after the first tranche of classified documents were discovered by Biden's personal attorneys as they shut down his D.C. think tank, a search was done of his Wilmington and Rehoboth homes for additional materials. 'The lawyers completed that review last night,' Stauber said in a statement Thursday morning. He announced one more classified document had been found in a room in Biden's Wilmington home. President Joe Biden has made very few comments about the classified documents found in his personal library and garage in his Wilmington, Delaware home as well as his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. President Joe Biden's personal home in Wilmington, Delaware The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement office is located in this Washington, D.C. office building where President Biden's personal lawyers discovered several classified documents in November 2022 During her Thursday briefing, Jean-Pierre said six times the search for any additional classified documents was finished: 'After the search concluded last night, we released a statement disclosing the facts from that search.' 'That search was completed last night. And now this is in the hands of the Justice Department.' On the search: 'You should assume that its been completed, yes.' 'They completed the search with documents being found last night.' 'The search is clearly complete, and therefore we shared the information with all of you.' 'Look, I can just refer you to what his team said: The search is complete. He is confident in this process. And I will leave it there.' But Stauber, who has a security clearance, went to Biden's Wilmington home that Thursday evening and discovered five more classified documents in the paperwork there. That discovery was not announced until Saturday morning. 'While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,' said Stauber. 'The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.' Latest timeline of President's Joe Biden's documents debacle Jean-Pierre also didn't disclose the discovery of the documents when she briefed the press on Friday January 13 - the day after they had been found. So, when she faced reporters again this week, she was asked if she knew about the documents during that Friday briefing. She said she shared what she had been told by the White House counsel's office. 'I have been forthcoming from this podium,' she responded in Tuesday's press briefing. 'I was repeating what the [White House] counsel was sharing at that time.' She was pressed again by CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, who asked her if she knew about the additional five documents when she spoke to the press on Friday afternoon. 'I literally just answered that question,' Jean-Pierre responded. When Weijia said she didn't hear the answer, Jean-Pierre told that 'you're not too far' from the reporter who asked it. When pressed on when the press office originally found out Biden had classified documents in his personal possession, Jean-Pierre told Weijia that it was 'when your team was doing a story.' The CBS story about classified documents in Biden's possession was published on January 9th. The White House publicly acknowledged Biden had the material after CBS published its piece. Jean-Pierre also got snappy with a reporter who asked if Biden, while he spent the past weekend in Wilmington, had searched his home to see if he had more classified documents. 'Are you listening to the question that you're asking me?,' she asked in response. In total, there have been four discoveries of classified materials: at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C.; in Biden's garage at his Wilmington, Del., home; one document discovered in his 'personal library' in the same home and then four more documents found in his home. All date back to Biden's time as vice president under Barack Obama but the White House won't answer as to what topics the materials cover. The administration waited until January - until well past the November midterm election on November 8 - to announce documents found at Biden's DC think tank on November 4th, which was four days before voters went to the polls. Among the questions still unanswered by the White House or Bidens private attorneys: Exactly how many documents were found; whether there may be other documents out there, what was contained in them and why the public wasnt notified until months after they were discovered. A married couple facing financial ruin killed their dog and then themselves on the day they were due to be evicted from their 4,500-a-month rented farmhouse, an inquest has heard. Publisher and motorsport journalist John Richardson, 74, was found next to his wife Angela, a 64-year-old company director, near their Goring Heath farmhouse in south Oxfordshire on June 8 last year. The couple had turned a shotgun on themselves in the 100-acre woodland nestled behind their country home after investors started to pull out of a new space flight simulation business they had set up. A coroner heard on Wednesday how the elderly couple had wound up with 'irredeemable debt' after setting up the fledgling business that required 35million in investment just to get off the ground. Publisher and motorsport journalist John Richardson, 74, was found together with wife Angela, a 64-year-old company director, near their Goring Heath home in south Oxfordshire (pictured) on June 8 last year The inquest in Oxford heard that Mrs Richardson told family and friends the couple had interest from companies and people with huge amounts of money to spend - including the King of Bahrain and the RAF. The couple had desperately tried to gather investor support for the business, set up in 2011, with their ambition to raise 35million for the ambitious aerospace project. Over the next decade, the Richardsons begged and clawed their way to borrow as much money as they could, before owing enormous sums to family and an accountant, the inquest heard. In June 2022, Mrs Richardson had been in last-ditch talks with a company in Austria who promised to invest 70,000. However, in the days before her death the investors pulled out and said that they would not been supporting the idea. The coroner was told that Mrs Richardson was 'distraught, desperate and upset' and in an email to her brother wrote that she had 'no plans, no future and no energy to keep going. We have come to the end of our road,' the email said. Speaking at the inquest in Oxford Detective Sergeant Richard Earl from the Thames Valley Police Major Crime Unit said: 'They had put all of their eggs into one basket for the 70,000 loan and when that fell through it was devastating.' He said the 70,000 investment would have only bought them time and that they would have still had a huge amount of debt and been a 'long way off' from building the business. He said Mrs Richardson had a 'strong disconnect' between the reality of her investors and her dreams for the business. As part of his investigation, in the days after her death, the detective spoke with the team at the RAF who said that her business plan had been interesting but, in their eyes, was a long way off from being ready and that they had made no guarantees about ever committing money. The coroner was told that couple had been so committed to their plan that they even sold their own home for extra cash and withdrew part of their pensions. They lived with family for 19 months, often making comments about how if the business didn't work, they would kill themselves. At one point, Mr Richardson - who had been used to the finer things in life, once even hiring King Charles' architect to decorate his new boat - had said he would rather 'commit suicide than living in social housing.' The inquest heard that it was in May 2022 that the Richardsons approached an estate agent about living at the rented farm house in Goring Heath, South Oxfordshire, offering to pay a year's rent of around 50,000 upfront, in lieu of his bad credit rating. However, they never paid the money and were later served an eviction notice giving them until 10am on June 8 to pay or leave the property. When the landlord arrived at the farmhouse on that morning and met the bailiff, they found a note on the property that said: 'We are in the woods, sorry it has come to this, call the police.' Officers scoured the 100-acre woodland and found the couple dead next to their dog which had been shot too. Handwritten and typed suicide notes were signed by both of them - matching up to the same handwriting found on cards and letters they had sent in earlier years. Speaking to the family, coroner Nicholas Graham ruled a verdict of suicide, saying: 'I am confident [John] and Angela had demonstrated full intention to end their lives with notes, computer searches and the loss and ending of their business venture, all which would have amounted to a big change in their lives.' Some Bank of America customers are very concerned after seeing money in their accounts disappear Wednesday morning, according to a flurry of social media reports. Customers are complaining that funds are missing from deposits and Zelle transactions. Several individuals reported calling the bank's customer service line but not having any luck getting information. Some customers, reportedly, received a message in the bank's mobile app that said Zelle transactions made between Saturday and Tuesday would be delayed. Some customers, reportedly, received a message in the bank's mobile app that said Zelle transactions made between Saturday and Tuesday would be delayed If you have Bank of America, Zelle is having an outage issue that's caused transfers over the last few days to disappear. They're working on it and it should be fixed today. Hopefully this helps you find out earlier than I did and without the heart attack it gave me first-thing. Zaximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (@YepItsZak) January 18, 2023 The alert promised accounts would be updated as soon as possible, but did not deliver an estimate as to when that may be. 'We apologize for any delay or inconvenience,' said the bank. Meanwhile, customers are beginning to suffer the impact of the delay. 'I am at the point of a collapse. where is my money?' tweeted one woman. Keira Renee, a financial journalist, tweeted: 'Saw Bank of America was trending and turns out my account was impacted so happy Wednesday everyone.' A third distraught customer wrote, 'Hey @BankofAmerica my account is missing money, specifically the zelle transactions I have proof of and now my account is overdrawn. weird because I have it set up not to overdraw or pay non auto pay transactions on my debit card. where's my money?' The user, whose name is Dane, followed that tweet up by writing, 'also bestie it looks bad for you when my alerts send emails and texts with the date showing when my zelles went into my BOA account.' 'Can't wait to close my account when I get a human you guys are pure basura,' she added. 'I woke up this morning to a negative balance. There is no way to speak to a customer service agent,' one user wrote on Down Detector, a website that provides users with real-time information about the status of various websites. 'This problem needs to be fixed immediately so (I) can have access to my funds!' The site reported that Zelle began experiencing issues at around 7am Wednesday morning. By 11am on Wednesday, nearly 700 outage reports had been submitted. Some users have been told that the problem is originating from Zelle, which is apparently having an outage issue that caused recent transfers to disappear. Some customers, reportedly, received a message in the bank's mobile app that said Zelle transactions made between Saturday and Tuesday would be delayed According to one report, the bank's issue may be stemming from a glitch at digital payment processor Zelle In 2023, Im closing my Bank of America accounts cause how tf??! Am I missing hundreds of dollars? Wait til they fix it, Im taking all my money out and finding another bank. SINCITYY. (@sincere_nichole) January 18, 2023 So, I woke up to find hella Zelle deposits missing from my Bank of America account. When I called customer service they said due to extenuating circumstances we cannot take your call and the phone hung up. GNCordova (@GNCordova) January 18, 2023 Zelle did not offer comment as at least hundreds of users saw their accounts plummet into negative territory. ABC7 Chicago reported that at least one person logged into their account to find their entire checking balance had been wiped clean. At a Bank of America branch in Houston, a line of at least a dozen customers formed early Wednesday, each looking to resolve the alarming problem. No one had been able to get through to customer service, hence the in-person appearances. Rishi Sunak today pushed ahead with Government plans to scrap EU laws by the end of this year. The Prime Minister has said the removal of 'burdensome' Brussels regulation will help boost economic growth in Britain and 'build a better future across the country'. But he is facing the prospect of a rebellion by senior Tory MPs who want to give the House of Commons greater oversight over which pieces of legislation are junked. Under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, the Government has committed to reviewing all remaining Brussels regulation by the end of this year. It means any retained EU law that is not expressly kept by ministers - or changed into domestic law - will automatically expire and be removed from the statute book by 31 December. Yet concerns have been raised by MPs about the size of the Government's task in sifting through thousands of pieces of legislation over the next 12 months in order to meet that deadline. Nature organisations have also claimed Britain could lose important environmental protections as part of a 'deregulatory' process. The Prime Minister has said plans to remove 'burdensome' Brussels regulation will help boost economic growth in Britain and 'build a better future across the country' Under the Retained EU Law Bill, the Government has committed to reviewing all remaining Brussels regulation by the end of this year An ongoing Government review has found thousands of pieces of retained EU legislation across Whitehall departments As MPs began to debate the bill's remaining stages in the Commons this afternoon, business minister Nusrat Ghani insisted that 'considerable work' had already taken place on the review of Brussels legislation for more than 18 months. 'I cannot stress enough the importance of achieving this deadline, the deadline of 2023,' she told the Commons. 'Retained EU law was never intended to sit on the statute book indefinitely. 'It is constitutionally undesirable as currently some domestic laws, including acts of Parliament, remain subordinate to some retained EU law.' Ms Ghani said the bill was the 'culmination of Governments work to untangle ourselves from decades of EU membership'. 'It is a priority of this Government that the United Kingdom will be the best place to start and grow a business,' she added. 'Within this bill, there are powers that will allow us to make good on this promise.' Senior Tory Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash also spoke in support of the bill and told MPs that retained EU law was a 'massive ball and chain' for Britain that needed to be removed. Fellow eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary who first introduced the bill before resigning from Government last year, claimed it was being 'enormously over-interpreted' by opposition MPs. He added criticism was 'mainly by people who never wanted to leave the EU anyway' and the bill was a 'technical tidying up operation'. But Labour's shadow business minister Justin Madders warned the bill represented a 'leap into the dark' and a 'kamikaze approach to Government'. As he presented his party's bid to push back the 2023 deadline to 2026, Mr Madders claimed ministers' timeframe for completing the review of retained EU law had been 'plucked out of thin air, seemingly at random'. He added: 'The potential for things to be missed is clear and - if the worst comes to the worst - and some vital regulation ceases to be by accident and nobody notices until it is too late, our constituents will rightly ask us "what on earth were you doing? What were you thinking of?"'. Tory former Cabinet ministers David Davis and Robert Buckland (right) are backing a bid to give the House of Commons greater oversight over which EU laws are scrapped A group of MPs - including senior Tories - are also seeking to alter the bill this evening to allow greater parliamentary scrutiny of which retained EU laws are being lined up for the chop. Former Brexit secretary David Davis, ex-justice secretary Robert Buckland, and Sir Bob Neill, the chair of the Commons' justice committee, are all backing an amendment tabled by Labour's Stella Creasy. She told MPs this afternoon: 'This is nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with an audacious ministerial power grab. 'If this legislation goes through unamended it will stop us doing our job and its our job to speak up for our constituents.' If the bill passes the Commons tonight it will head to the House of Lords, where peers are expected resume a fight to push back the 2023 deadline. Hunter is seen telling Hunter 'you can't leave me' from her Norwich home 2,500 miles away from the British pensioner's retirement villa in Cyprus Lesley Hunter begged her father David Hunter, 75, not to kill himself in a harrowing video call made moments after he killed her terminally ill mother A daughter begged her father not to kill himself in a harrowing video call made moments after he had suffocated her terminally-ill mother. Lesley Hunter is seen telling David Hunter, 75, 'you can't leave me' from her Norwich home 2,500 miles away from the British pensioner's retirement villa in Cyprus. She screams down the phone: 'Daddy remember how you walked me down the aisle and you said I was beautiful. I'm your girl. I'm your girl. You can't leave me. 'Daddy please, please daddy I beg you.' Lesley Hunter (right) is seen telling David Hunter, 75, 'you can't leave me' from her Norwich home 2,500 miles away from the British pensioner's retirement villa in Cyprus (left) Mr Hunter (pictured outside court in Pathos on 17 January) is accused of murdering wife Janice, 74, who had been suffering from terminal leukaemia at their retirement home in Cyprus. Full transcript of Lesley Hunter's conversation with her father Lesley: 'Daddy, daddy, just concentrate on me. Daddy concentrate on me. Daddy, forget about everybody else. Forget about everything else. Concentrate on me. 'Not on her. Not anybody else, just me and you, daddy, you love me you know you do. I'm your girl. 'You've always loved me. I'm your girl. I'm your girl, daddy. I'm your little girl. 'Remember, remember when I was in hospital and you were in the lift when I came round. 'And Daddy remember how you walked me down the aisle and you said I was beautiful. I'm your girl. I'm your girl. You can't leave me. 'Daddy please, please daddy I beg you. Daddy....' Police officer: 'Have you taken something David, because we can get someone to help? 'David we don't know your address but want to get someone to you... Lesley: 'We love you. We don't care what you've done. we don't care. We just want you safe. we love you so much 'Daddy, daddy, we love you, love, we love you so much, so much, all I want is you safe. Daddy. Daddy.' Advertisement Mr Hunter is seen slumped in a chair and barely conscious as his daughter says: 'Daddy, daddy, just concentrate on me. Daddy concentrate on me. 'Daddy, forget about everybody else. Forget about everything else. Concentrate on me. 'Not on her. Not anybody else, just me and you, daddy, you love me you know you do. I'm your girl. 'You've always loved me. I'm your girl. I'm your girl, daddy. I'm your little girl.' Mr Hunter is accused of murdering wife Janice, 74, who had been suffering from terminal leukaemia at their retirement home in Cyprus. He is being tried in the city of Paphos on the island. After suffocating her he called his brother, William, in the UK to confess to killing his wife before saying he was going to take his own life with a drugs and alcohol overdose. William alerted the police who dashed to Lesley's Norfolk home and advised her to video call her father on December 18, 2021. It is not clear from the footage whether Mr Hunter had already taken the concoction or was just in shock. It shows a British police officer say: 'Have you taken something David, because we can get someone to help?' The 50-year-old daughter then says: 'We love you. We don't care what you've done. we don't care. We just want you safe. We love you so much 'Daddy, daddy, we love you, love, we love you so much, so much, all I want is you safe. Daddy. Daddy.' Mr Hunter appeared emotional as the footage was played out on the day he gave evidence for the first time since he was arrested over 12 months ago. It had appeared that a plea bargain would be reached last month that would see the British grandfather released after admitting the lesser charge of manslaughter. But in an apparent 11th hour change the prosecution pushed ahead with pre-meditated murder. The defence is now trying to argue that five statements Mr Hunter gave to police are inadmissible because he hadn't been physiologically assessed or offered a lawyer. They played the video to demonstrate how Mr Hunter was 'in a state of shock and doesn't understand what is going on' and should never have been made to sign police statements. Mr Hunter burst into tears as the prosecution made him look at a photo of his dead wife slumped in her chair from the night she died. It was the first time he had seen the image. The Briton repeatedly told them that he 'can't remember' telling officers that he had killed her with his hands to stop her suffering from leukaemia. The news left Mr Hunter's daughter Lesley, left, who lives in Norwich, in tears as she told MailOnline: 'I'm just shocked and stunned. We are devastated and just don't know how this has happened.' Pictured with her parents The prosecutor read from one of Mr Hunter's police statements where he described suffocating his wife 'for about ten or 15 minutes'. It read: 'While I was trying to save her by killing her, Janice was resisting and she was holding my hands.' But the statement was written by a Greek officer on Mr Hunter's behalf, and the British pensioner insisted yesterday that his wife did not resist. He told prosecutor Andreas Hadjikyrou that as he suffocated her Mrs Hunter 'was just lying there'. He said: 'I know I would never hurt my wife. When I lifted my hands there were no scratches.' In another passage, the statement reads: 'I knew what I did to Janice was wrong but now Janice is better and she rests in peace.' Once more Mr Hunter insisted he did not remember saying any of this. He told the court: 'I'm a Christian. I believe in God and the Holy Bible and what I said is the truth I don't remember.' Asked what he recalled from when the police and medics arrived, Mr Hunter described it as 'like a dream' and said he felt like he was 'trapped in a tunnel'. David Hunter, 75, originally from Northumberland, was accused of murdering his wife of 46 years, Janice, at their home in Paphos, in December 2021 David Hunter and his wife Janice on their wedding day He said he was seeing 'double' when he was loaded into the ambulance where 'instead of two lights there was four'. He was only assessed by psychologist Katerina Stylianidor on December 21 three days after the murder and after he signed all of the documents. Ms Stylianidor agreed with the prosecution that it would have been 'better' if he had been psychologically assessed before giving police statements. Speaking outside court, Mr Hunter said: 'I never would have killed her in a million years. She didn't ask me, she begged me. The last five weeks she was begging me. 'She didn't resist. Because of the cancer she couldn't even lift her hands.' Michael Polak, of Justice Abroad which is representing Mr Hunter, said after the hearing: 'It is remarkable that the police interviewed him without any psychological assessment of him. 'There is no way that if this case had been in the UK or England that he would have been interviewed in those circumstances. Police would have done a psychological assessment to make sure that he was OK and to make sure that the evidence was reliable. 'The fact that he didn't have a lawyer or interpretation mean that those statements taken by the police should be excluded from the case.' The family are raising funds for expenses towards the legal case which involves bringing top experts to give evidence in a bid to prevent Mr Hunter spending the rest of his life in prison. The case was adjourned until next Thursday. For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit www.samaritans.org Passengers flying from Los Angeles to Heathrow could face increased security checks after 11 travellers were arrested on suspicion of smuggling cannabis in eight days. Investigators said cannabis grown in California, where it is legal, commands a higher price among drug dealers in the UK. Eleven people have been stopped at Heathrow between Tuesday January 10 and January 17, with more than 400kg of the drug seized in total. The drugs, with an estimated street value of 5.5 million were found as passengers attempted to smuggle the contraband through Heathrow Airport. Customers officers have seized cannabis worth more than 5million from passengers arriving at Heathrow Airport from Los Angeles over the past eight days The drugs have all been vacuum packed and hidden in the checked-in luggage of US nationals arriving in Heathrow from Los Angeles The National Crime Agency said the passengers flew from LA to Heathrow and hid the cannabis in their checked-in luggage. NCA Heathrow Branch Commander Andy Noyes said: 'In light of this unusual series of seizures, law enforcement will undoubtedly be paying more attention to passengers on the Los Angeles to London route and stepping up checks. 'Our investigation into these events continues but I'm making a direct appeal to anyone considering getting involved in transporting drugs to the UK. Think very carefully about the consequences. 'Couriers who bring illicit substances in to the UK play an important role in fuelling organised crime, consequently those who are caught face stiff jail sentences. It simply isn't worth the risk.' Nine people have been charged with attempting to import class B drugs and the two suspects arrested on Tuesday are being questioned. Each courier was carrying between 30 and 40kgs of cannabis which had been sealed in a vacuum-packed container. Five women and four men - all US nationals flying into Heathrow Airport from Los Angeles in the US - were already arrested and charged over the last week. All nine of the American citizens that have been charged are facing counts of trying to import class B drugs and have been remanded in custody pending further court appearances. The National Crime Agency has increased security at the airport due to the continued smuggling attempts The NCA warned couriers that they will face long jail sentences if they are caught smuggling drugs into the UK This included Kiara Lanee Malone, 31, Sabrina Desiree Hobby, 29, Zohrab Idzhyan, 48, Anthony Sarkis Hoffman, 33, Ara Janneh, 25, Madani Ba Junior, 23, Dana Ree Freeman, 31, Kerri Marie Hall, 32, and Zered Afuhia-I-Moana Akolo, 26. Malone - the first passenger - allegedly arrived on last Tuesday, January 10, and Border Force officers seized around 30 kilos in her checked in baggage, it was claimed. A second seizure was made three days later when Hobby was stopped, followed by two on Saturday, four on Sunday and another on Monday. In total more than 340 kilos of herbal cannabis with an estimated street value of more than 5.5 million has now been seized, Britain's FBI - the NCA - said. Janneh, Junior, Freeman, Hall and Akolo were allegedly the latest to arrive and are all due to appear at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court on Tuesday. Hobby, Idzhyan and Hoffman were in the dock at the same court on Monday and were remanded to next appear at Isleworth Crown Court next month. Malone appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court on Thursday, January 12 and was remanded in custody ahead of the next hearing at Isleworth Crown Court. US authorities have arrested the Russian founder of a Hong Kong-based darkweb crypto exchange known as Bitzlato, saying it was used as a haven for online criminals. Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national who lives in China, was arrested Tuesday night in Miami on a charge of conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business. US Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco told reporters on Wednesday that the charges allege Legkodymov 'operated Bitzlato as a high-tech financial hub that, in his own words, catered to 'known crooks.'' She said that Bitzlato operated in tandem with the 'notorious Hydra darknet market', a darknet marketplace for drugs, fake identifications and other illegal products US Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco announces the arrest of Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national who lives in China 'Hydra and Bitzlato formed a high-tech axis of cryptocrime: Hydra buyers funded illicit purchases of illegal drugs, stolen financial information, and hacking services from crypto accounts hosted at Bitzlato, and sellers of these illegal goods and services at Hydra sent criminal proceeds to accounts at Bitzlato,' said Monaco. The Justice Department said Bitzlato, either directly or through its intermediaries, conducted more than $700 million in cryptocurrency exchanges with users of Hydra Market. Prosecutors allege that Legkodymov's China-based cryptocurrency exchange, of which he served as majority owner, did not implement required anti-money laundering safeguards. They further allege the exchange required only minimal identification from its users, even permitting users to supply information belonging to 'straw man registrants,' people serving as cover for the users. A seizure notice appears on the darkweb site of Bitzlato, a crypto exchange 'Whether you break our laws from China or Europe or abuse our financial system from a tropical islandyou can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom,' Monaco said in a statement, an apparent reference to the arrest last month in the Bahamas of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The charge Legkodymov faces carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison if he is convicted. Legkodymov, 40, was in custody Wednesday. It was unclear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. One day in the late 2000s, a 40-something man named Alireza Akbari left his native Iran and travelled to London hoping to start a new life with his wife Maryam and their daughters Atefah and Faezah. It was the height of the so-called War on Terror. Which was awkward, since Mr Akbari happened to be a former Deputy Minister in the Islamist theocracy's notoriously corrupt and despotic government. Yet, somehow, this man's arrival in the UK was happily sanctioned by the British authorities: they first granted him a so-called 'investor visa' and then, a few years later, handed out a UK passport. The Akbari family could therefore settle in Hammersmith, West London. One day in the late 2000s, a 40-something man named Alireza Akbari left his native Iran and travelled to London hoping to start a new life Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pictured on January 12, two days before Mr Akbari was killed Daughter Atefah, who was already an adult, enrolled at a university in the capital. Faezah went to a local primary school. Mum stayed at home. Dad pursued a career in business. So began a journey that ended last week in a sudden, violent and utterly tragic fashion. On Saturday, the Iranian regime announced that it had executed Akbari by hanging. He was 61. It seems that he'd been secretly held in custody there since 2019. The crime for which he paid with his life? Espionage. According to Iran, Akbari who helped found its repressive regime had actually spent recent years working as a 'spy' for the UK. It's a sensational claim. Which is one reason why the death of Akbari, a dual national who becomes the first person with a British passport to suffer the death penalty since the 1980s, has sparked a major diplomatic incident which remains in serious danger of boiling over. Rishi Sunak, who immediately withdrew the UK's ambassador to Tehran, has called the execution 'ruthless and cowardly'. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly summoned the regime's Charge d'affaires to express 'disgust'. Sanctions were this week imposed and condemnatory statements issued by the UK, the U.S., and the EU. And the UK is also considering declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard the most fearsome branch of the regime's Armed Forces of which Akbari was himself once a member a terrorist organisation. Even Prince Harry has been dragged into the row. On Tuesday, Iran's foreign ministry issued a statement flagging his autobiography's disclosure that he'd killed 25 Taliban fighters or, as Iran sees them, 'innocent people' in Afghanistan. This, the Iranian statement alleged, leaves the UK 'in no position to preach [to] others on human rights'. Akbari's grieving family have, for their part, vigorously protested his innocence, saying his conviction on a medieval-sounding charge called 'corruption on earth' was based on a false confession obtained via torture. Relatives say that, prior to Akbari's death, he'd been held in captivity for three years, often in solitary confinement. During this period, they say interrogators consistently subjected him to degrading and inhumane treatment. Akbari himself offered some insight into his incarceration via a taped statement, smuggled out of prison just before his death. 'They broke my will, drove me to madness and forced me to do whatever they wanted,' he said. 'By the force of gun and death threats they made me confess to false and corrupt claims.' To understand how this awful tale unfolded, we must first explore the two competing narratives about how he arrived in the UK in the first place. Relatives say that, prior to Akbari's (pictured in 2008) death, he'd been held in captivity for three years, often in solitary confinement Akbari was reportedly one of the first-ever members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (Pictured: Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attend an IRGC ground forces military drill in the Aras area, October 2022) One has been aired in court by the Iranian authorities. They reckon the whole thing was a sort of defection, masterminded by MI6 agents who then paid him millions of pounds in return for providing information about the regime and, in particular, its nuclear ambitions. They claim that, in a stunt that reads like something out of a James Bond novel, Akbari was instructed to fake a stroke during a 2008 business trip to Vienna. This allegedly gave his wife and daughters a cover story to fly out from Iran to be at his bedside. The whole family could then be spirited away to Britain, by the security services. The Akbari family, for their part, argue with some justification that there are significant flaws in this narrative. For starters, there is no documented evidence of him being paid cash by British authorities. What's more, they insist that he actually chose to remove himself from Iran to escape political persecution of a sort common under the despotic theocracy, where competing factions constantly juggle for supremacy, and those in power habitually jail and persecute opponents. The family has argued that Akbari was caught up in a power struggle between supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hard-line anti-Western President of Iran from 2005-2013, and his predecessor Mohammad Khatami, a comparative reformer under whom Akbari had previously served as Deputy Defence Minister. 'I recall there being a period around 2008 where he ended up in prison,' Akbari's nephew Ramin Forghani, who now lives in Luxembourg, told me this week. 'He was released on bail, but there was talk of him having suffered trauma there, and it didn't feel safe staying behind, so he got permission to go to Europe on a business trip and was then able to apply for a UK visa.' A so-called 'investor visa' does indeed appear to have been granted to Akbari around this time. It was issued under a scheme popularised by the Blair government, through which wealthy foreigners with a spare 2million to park in the UK were allowed to legally move here and, after three years, become a naturalised citizen. The system was abolished in February last year by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel, amid widespread concern that it had been routinely abused by generations of dubious oligarchs and other immigrants from questionable corners of the globe who had grown rich via the proceeds of corruption. While we must, of course, assume that the cash Akbari used to acquire this visa was legitimately obtained, it's unclear how he reconciled his decision to move to the UK or indeed anywhere in the enlightened West with his apparent affection for Iran's repressive theocracy. Akbari was, after all, one of the original architects of the barbaric regime. Born in October 1961, in the city of Shiraz in Iran's Fars Province, he seems to have cut his political teeth as an activist in the local Association of Student Islamic Societies. The group backed the 1979 revolution that saw the last Shah of Iran ousted by religious fundamentalists and that ushered the Ayatollahs into power. Devoted to the Islamist cause, he spent most of the 1980s as a soldier in the Revolutionary Guard which was by then fighting the Iran-Iraq war. In 1989, Akbari swore fealty to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he became Supreme Leader, and by the 1990s was climbing the greasy pole of government, eventually becoming the deputy defence minister under President Mohammad Khatami responsible for negotiating security agreements with Iran's strategic allies. Ironically, given his subsequent path, he appears to have been a staunch opponent of the West and supporter of Iran's controversial nuclear programme. In 2000, he even travelled to Moscow for a 'round table' meeting with Russian allies and, in a media interview, spoke out in support of Putin's war in Chechnya, saying: 'These actions match the interests of stability in the entire region of the greater Caucasus.' Having left office in 2005, Akbari remained outwardly loyal to Iran's ruling theocracy, even after his move to the UK a fact that caused deep divisions in his own family. His nephew Ramin Forghani, a human rights campaigner who fled Iran and moved to Scotland in 2013 (before settling in Luxembourg), told me: 'After I became a political activist in Scotland, and started speaking out against the regime, he cut all contact with me. 'He seemed to be devoted to the country and the regime, had served it at the highest levels and was one of the first members of the Revolutionary Guard. This is why the spying allegation makes so little sense.' Quite why the UK agreed to grant citizenship to such an outspoken ally of the Iranian regime is anyone's guess. What also makes only limited sense, from such public records as are available, is Akbari's subsequent business career. While his wife Maryam and their daughters seem to have mostly remained in London from the late 2000s, he seems to have actually spent large portions of time in Europe. Profiles on Facebook and Twitter suggest he was based largely in Vienna and Marbella on the Costa Del Sol in Spain from around 2014 onwards while a media interview he gave in early 2019 suggested that his principal residence was Gibraltar. The events that led to Akbari's arrest and subsequent execution began in 2018, when his former political superior Ali Shamkhani (pictured), who is now secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, invited him to the Iranian city of Karaj On social media, he claimed to be the founder of a think tank called the Tasmim Strategic Research Institute, and it is possible that he provided strategic advice to companies seeking to do business in Tehran. He has no listed company directorships in the UK, but may also have dealt in precious stones (his Facebook page contains images of several pieces of valuable-looking jewellery). On Twitter, he has in recent years adopted a hawkish and largely anti-Western tone in debates about Iran's nuclear ambitions and has occasionally voiced support for Jeremy Corbyn who has often been called an apologist for the regime, and appeared multiple times on Press TV, the now-banned propaganda outlet of the ruling theocracy. The events that led to Akbari's arrest and subsequent execution began in 2018, when his former political superior Ali Shamkhani, who is now secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, invited him to the Iranian city of Karaj to join a group of experts discussing the regime's relations with the West. That visit appears to have been a success, as he agreed to continue helping Iran's government by returning for similar talks the following year (an unlikely decision, one might argue, if he really was a spy). Sadly, the second trip saw him get no further than Tehran airport, where he was immediately arrested. It was this week suggested that Shamkhani who is embroiled in an ongoing power struggle with hard-line opponents may have tricked Akbari into returning in order to demonstrate his own loyalty to the regime. Yet while such things are certainly possible, in the murky and murderous world of Iranian politics, other informed observers believe Akbari was actually arrested as part of a plot to undermine his former political mentor. 'He was Shamkhani's man, so it feels like a personal, brutal defenestration of his fiefdom,' said one insider. 'Think of it as part of a fight to gain absolute control in which one side has used conspicuous cruelty to humiliate the other. There are mafia factions all trying to teach each other a lesson. The spy stuff is just a smokescreen.' For three years, Akbari was locked up largely at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison where previous inmates include Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the Iranian-British dual national who was detained on alleged spying charges from 2016 to 2022. His fate was kept secret after his immediate family chose, on the advice of the UK Foreign Office, not to seek publicity. That policy only changed last week when it became apparent that his execution was imminent after his daughter Atefah was called to his cell for a final meeting (it is not clear if she was in Iran already or if she had travelled back specifically). By then, of course, it was too late to save him. Amid the diplomatic fallout, a host of questions surrounds the highly unusual life of Alireza Akbari. But many of the answers have now been taken to his grave. The former boss of Barclays is facing new claims he 'personally observed' Jeffrey Epstein abusing young women, according to a victim's lawsuit filed against JP Morgan. Jes Staley, 66, resigned as chief executive of Barclays in November 2021 after the bank said it was 'disappointed' with the outcome of a report into his links to the convicted sex offender. He has now been named in a lawsuit filed by one of Epstein's victims, a woman known only as Jane Doe 1. She is suing JP Morgan, where Staley was chief executive until 2013 and had Epstein as a client. Jes Staley, 66, resigned as chief executive of Barclays in November 2021 after a report established links between him and Epstein Staley was allegedly a 'regular visitor' of Epstein's (pictured in New York in 2005) and 'personally observed' him abusing women The lawsuit, filed at Manhattan federal court, alleges that Staley was aware of Epstein trafficking women and witnessed him abusing them, The Guardian reports. The woman also claims Staley would often visit Epstein at his homes, which included 'the massage room' within his townhouse in New York, as well as his private island in the US Virgin Islands and a 'victim stash house' in Manhattan. It says: 'Staley was a regular visitor of Epsteins and personally observed Jane Doe 1 as a sexual trafficking and abuse victim at times including through his departure from JP Morgan in 2013. 'To be clear, during his years as a top executive at JP Morgan, Staley was not only one of Epsteins closest pals, but more importantly, he was a frequent visitor at Epsteins townhouse, including visiting the massage room; Staley met many of Epsteins trafficking victims, including Jane Doe 1; Staley visited the Epstein-owned victim stash house apartments at [an address on the Upper East Side], and Staley personally observed the sexual abuse of young women, including Jane Doe 1.' 'These actions were within the scope of Staleys employment at JP Morgan. 'As a result of Staleys direct and actual knowledge of Epsteins sex-trafficking venture, JP Morgan had direct and actual knowledge of Epsteins sex-trafficking venture.' Staley's lawyers have previously denied he has any involvement in 'any of the alleged crimes committed by Mr Epstein. He has also previously said that his relationship with the convicted paedophile - who was also friends with Prince Andrew - ended in late 2015, and that he regretted his relationship with him. JP Morgan has also urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, acknowledging that Jane Doe 1 is 'entitled to justice', but adding that she had filed baseless claims against the 'wrong party'. It comes after a lawsuit filed by the US Virgin Islands last week alleged that thousands of emails had been sent between the two amid a 'profound friendship,' Staley had quit Barclays in November 2021 after the bank's board said it was 'disappointed' with the outcome of a report into his links to convicted sex offender Epstein Staley is also accused of exchanging 'approximately 1,200 emails with Epstein' from work account Jes Staley (left) at Jeffrey Epstein's mansion in New York in 2011. Pictured (from left): Mr Staley; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; Epstein; Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder; and Boris Nikolic, who was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's science adviser The filing was made in an an amended complaint by the US territory, which had previously sued JPMorgan over the bank's ties to Epstein. It said: 'Between 2008 and 2012, Staley exchanged approximately 1,200 emails with Epstein from his JP Morgan email account,' the amendment alleges. During that time, the bank is alleged to have 'serviced approximately 55 Epstein-related accounts collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars'. 'These communications show a close personal relationship and "profound" friendship between the two men and even suggest that Staley may have been involved in Epstein's sex-trafficking operation', the amendment added. The US Virgin Islands' suit also claims that Staley was allowed 'to remain a decision-maker on Epstein's accounts' and even asked to discuss the historical, sordid sex trafficking and human trafficking allegations against him. In addition, JPMorgan allegedly would make payments to 'numerous women with Eastern European surnames who were publicly and internally identified as Epstein recruiters,' including a $600,000 payment to one Jane Doe who the pedophile purchased when she was just 14 years old. Staley was born in Boston in 1956. He is one of four children who moved frequently with their father, Paul, a plant manager for Procter & Gamble. His father later became CEO of PQ Corporation, a chemicals business based outside Philadelphia, where Staley grew up. After graduating with a degree in economics from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1979, he joined banking giants JPMorgan on a training program in New York. Epstein (pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell) was found dead in a New York prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial He later moved to Brazil to help set up its investment banking venture in South America, where he met his future wife Debbie - just days after arriving. He returned to New York in 1989 and quickly shot up the ladder at JPMorgan. In 1990 he was asked by then-CEO Sandy Warner to manage the group's private banking division. In 2001, he was promoted to CEO of JPMorgan Asset Management and ran the division until 2009. After 34 years with JPMorgan, he left for BlueMountain Capital Management, now Assured Investment Management, in 2013, before joining Barclays in 2015. A wealthy financier, Epstein was found dead in a New York prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations that he trafficked girls as young as 14 for sex. She also alleged the school hired fake doctors who performed research on students without parental consent Former employee Katelyn Newman sued iBrain, alleging she and other women were discriminated against, and the founder created an abusive environment A New York City school for children with brain disorders is being accused of a host of allegations including using students as 'guinea pigs' in scientific experiments, sexually harassing female employees, and being infested with cockroaches and dead rats. A former employee of the International Institute for the Brain, a private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan known as iBrain, also said the school scammed the New York government for extra funds and asked unqualified employees to perform nursing procedures on disabled students. Former publicity associate for iBrain Katelyn Newman filed a lawsuit against the school on Tuesday after quitting in early December. In the explosive court documents, Newman accused iBrain founder Patrick Donohue of fostering a discriminatory and abusive work environment, and creating a neglectful and dangerous space for vulnerable students. Newman's attorney, Kenneth McCallion, told the Daily Beast the situation was a 'major crime,' and that his client was left seeking therapy to recover from the traumatic experience of working at iBrain. International Institute for the Brain did not respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com The International Institute for the Brain, a private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan known as iBrain Former publicity associate for iBrain Katelyn Newman filed a lawsuit against the school Newman alleged that some members of staff were incompetent, fraudulent, and abusive towards women. One staffer was 'chief innovations officer' Dr. Victor Pedro - whose profile on the iBrain website carries the quote 'If you want to be successful, look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite.' Newman said Pedro 'held himself out as a neurologist or neuroscientist,' but 'Upon further digging, found out that Dr. Pedro had graduated with a B.S. from the University of Vermont in 1981, moved on to Boston University to study dentistry, but ultimately became a chiropractor, graduating from the New York Chiropractic College in 1983.' The suit noted his chiropractic license expired in December 2021. iBrain founder Patrick Donohue was accused of fostering a discriminatory and abusive work environment, and creating a neglectful and dangerous space for vulnerable students iBrain is located on the third and fourth floor of 403 East 91st St A staffer at the International Institute for the Brain reads to one of the school's students NYC Buildings work permits for renovations are seen on the door of 403 Eeast 91 St, where the International Institute for the Brain, iBrain, is located on the third and fourth floor Newman alleged that without the consent of parents, Pedro conducted research on students without informed parental consent. 'Dr. Pedro showed Plaintiff his 'brain power points' promoting various controversial techniques that had not been approved by the FDA or apparently any other governmental agency,' the suit read. In Pedro's own developed and patented CIT program, patients undergo diagnostic tests to identify underperforming 'neural pathways.' Dr. Alim Shariff, whose real name is Rodney Robinson. He is not a doctor according to the complaint 'During the therapeutic phase, the patient performs several non-invasive audio, visual, visual-motor and proprioceptive activities that are used to activate and heal the injured or underperforming areas of the brain, or to optimize areas of the brain around the injured/problematic areas.' Pedro's personal website states. 'For example, exercises could include visual (eye movement) tracking and pursuit activities, among others.' 'The healing of the brain is accomplished over time through a series of individualized therapeutic sessions,' his website claims. 'Basically, in Plaintiff's view, [Pedro] used children as human guinea pigs for his experiments.' The suit alleges some staff members were fired for 'asking too many questions' about the experimentation. iBrain also hired a man who called himself Dr. Alim Shariff and claimed to be a former Naval Reserve Officer and a Harvard-educated behavioral psychologist. In reality, according to the complaint, Shariff was a man named Rodney Robinson who was an 'ex-con'. Newman said he worked with special needs children 'every day,' and 'was not challenged regarding his phony credentials or the so-called 'clinical work' he was engaged in, which, upon information and belief, turned out to be a complete fraud.' 'Chief innovations officer' at iBrain Dr. Victor Pedro. He allegedly conducted experimental cognitive therapy on students without parental consent Another employee was iBrain's director of strategic planning, Suzanne Wallach The incompetence of management and staff even put students in physical harms way, Newman alleged, describing how teachers were often forced to carry out basic medical procedures on students they were not qualified to carry out. 'Paraprofessionals employed at iBRAIN were told by management to perform certain nursing tasks, such as fixing G-tubes, even though they were not certified to perform those tasks and were not experienced enough to do it without causing unnecessary bruising and other complications,' the filing read. A G-tube, or gastrostomy tube, is inserted through a patient's torso and into their stomach to bring food, hydration, or medication, directly into body. 'One student had to go to the hospital because his circulation was impeded, and his legs swelled up.' 'Upon information and belief, upper iBRAIN management, such as Dr. Katandra Johnson, knew about these unlawful practices for weeks/months but did nothing to stop it. Plaintiff noticed that Dr. Johnson held herself as having a PhD, when, in fact, she only had a graduate degree on public health.' iBrain staff with a student. The school demanded many staffers do medical tasks they were not qualified to do The court filing states that the first thing Newman noticed upon beginning work at iBrain was the filth of the school. 'The first thing she noticed was that the facility located on East 91st Street was extremely filthy and unsanitary,' the filing read. 'The floors were generally left unwashed, spiders and bugs everywhere, with often no toilet paper, paper towels, soap, hand sanitizer, or running water in the bathroom.' 'The cockroaches were so prevalent that they were sometimes nested in students' wheelchairs.' The building also had frequent leaks in the plumbing, which the filing said were 'stuffed up with Dorito bags or whatever else was readily available.' 'At one-point, some disgusting and gross-smelling residue started falling from the ceiling in therapist's office area, but there were no immediate instructions given to vacate the premises. The carcass of a rat could be seen for an extended time period before it was finally removed, and the ceiling over the entryway where the children entered the building was falling down.' Newman also described an incident where a student vomited on the floor, and school management insisted that the mess merely be covered with a paper towel and not be cleaned up until the end of the day. 'Apparently, the vomit was not cleaned up for 24 hours,' the filing read. A teacher gives a presentation at the International Institute for the Brain in New York City The lawsuit also said the inhumane conditions extended to things such basic as the school's air conditioning, which were allegedly non-existent even through summertime heat waves. 'On certain days during the humid end of summer, there was no working air conditioning, but the children were not sent home early on such days.' the suit read. 'At times, when the temperature reached as high as 86 degrees Fahrenheit, some of the children started having seizures more frequently than usual.' 'Even despite these dangerous emergency conditions, the students/children were not evacuated for their safety.' Staff were allegedly instructed to place thermometers directly in front of classroom fans to produce inaccurate readings. The decrepit state of the school did not add up to Newman, who had been told the school received between $100,000 and $350,000 from the New York Department of Education per student. 'There was little evidence, as far as Plaintiff could see, that the funds were being used for services to the children/students.' Despite that funding, basic school supplies like pencils, and special needs education tools and equipment like wheelchairs, sensory regulation objects, and oral motor tools, were in short supply. Supplies were so limited parents would often have to provide themselves, even sending their kids to school with their own mats because the school's were too 'filthy and unsanitary' for kids to use. 'Some of the teachers paid for urgently needed equipment out of their own pockets, which seemed odd since almost every child (if not all) were being paid for by generous DOE funding,' the suit read. Students listen to a reading at the International Institute for the Brain in New York City A student at the International Institute for the Brain in a physical therapy session Newman also described being routinely sexually harassed by employees like Dr. Pedro, who 'regularly subjected Plaintiff and other women working at iBRAIN to sexual harassment by making sexually suggestive and inappropriate remarks.' 'Other women in the office told Plaintiff that Dr. Pedro often made them feel uncomfortable when he inappropriately made it clear to them in various ways that he would like to have a personal and sexual relationship with them.' She said iBrain founder Patrick Donahue was well-aware Pedro's behavior went past 'harmless flirtation' and crossed the line into sexual harassment, but did nothing about it. Donohue himself was allegedly an emotionally abusive boss who regularly yelled at Newman until he was read in the face, told her to 'shut up,' would question her competence in front of colleagues, and fostered a sexist environment in which female employees would be given enormous workloads with unreasonable deadlines while male employees were taken out to long lunches and even allowed to sleep in the office. After trying to quit in November, Donohue convinced her to remain with a pay raise and promises things would change, but she finally submitted her final resignation after Donohue had an angry fit where he allegedly screamed 'You're so unprofessional, pathetic, and incompetent' at Donohue. Another problematic employee was iBrain's director of strategic planning, Suzanne Wallach, who Newman said 'bombarded' her with 'questions, complaints, accusations and insinuations' around the clock, and then would go into 'radio silence' for days when deadlines approached. 'Finally, the mental, emotional and verbal abuse and harassment became so intense, that Plaintiff felt compelled to seek professional therapeutic assistance,' the suit read. Staffers do physical therapy with a student at the International Institute for the Brain Though Donohue's own daughter attended the school, Newman alleged that she would receive 'special and favored treatment' that the other students were deprived of. 'She was provided with a rocking chair, bed, and private changing room that the other students were not permitted to use,' the filing alleged. 'In contrast, the rest of the students in the school had to share four changing rooms and some students slept on the floor.' Newman also said she learned that Donohue and his wife set up a transportation company called Sisters Travel and Transportation Services LLC that iBrain would hire to bring students on field trips that did not require transportation. 'Most of the field trips were within walking distance of the iBRAIN facility, since many of the students were non-ambulatory and had to rely on wheelchairs to get to nearby parks.' Donohue would send the transportation bill racked up with 'fictitious' charges to the DOE. Chinese authorities have sounded the alarm as the Asian nation experiences its first population decline in the last 60 years which is being thought of as the beginning of a demographic crisis. Moscow reported that deaths last year outnumbered births and experts are anticipating major implications for the nation, its economy, and the rest of the world. The situation comes amid China holding the title of the world's most populous country. China's Population Decline On Tuesday, the Chinese government said that 9.65 million people were born last year while 10.41 million people died. It is the first time that births have been outnumbered by deaths since the Great Leap Forward, which was Mao Zedong's failed economic experiment that led to famine and deaths across the country. For years, Chinese officials have tried to slow down the arrival of such a moment by loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. However, none of their attempts have worked. Now, as China comes to grips with a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the Asian nation has been placed into a demographic crisis. It would have consequences for Moscow and other countries, as per the New York Times. The data released on Tuesday also shows that China's economy last year had one of its worst observed performances since 1976, which was the year that Mao died. In the last 40 years, the Asian nation has emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world's factory floor. The evolution of the country from widespread poverty to the world's second-largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy. This contributed to the current population decline because people were living longer while fewer babies were being born. Read Also: China COVID-19 Death Toll Update China's Demographic Crisis The situation also hastened another concerning issue, the day when China will not have enough people who were of working age to fuel its growth. A professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine, Wang Feng, who specializes in China's demographics, said that in the long term, China is going to change and will no longer be the young, vibrant, growing population that it was known to be. The drop in China's population allows India to compete in being the world's most populous nation as the United Nations predicted last year that India would have a population of 1.412 billion in 2022. However, officials said that they do not expect India to overtake China until this year, according to Reuters. The president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, Zhiwei Zhang, said that China's population will likely trickle down from now and in the following years. He said that this was particularly important because of its implications on growth and domestic demand. Furthermore, the country's birth rate fell to a record low of 6.77 births per 1,000, which went down from 7.52 a year earlier and has been the lowest recorded since the founding of Communist China in 1949. The reports come after the Asian nation's economy only expanded by 3%, well below the government's target, said CNN. Related Article: China's New Anti-Laser Technology @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Taco Bell in Colorado is under investigation after a 'problematic' customer fell violently ill after he claimed his to-go order was laced with rat poison. The customer, who has not been identified, started vomiting after eating his burritos from the fast food store in Aurora on Saturday, and called 911. He was rushed to hospital where it was discovered he had ingested 'copious amounts' of the toxic chemical. The Taco Bell store has denied the claims the customer's order was laced with poison by workers. The man was a regular who frequently caused problems at the store - and once even threw a taco at an employee, according to store manager Lary Swift. Earlier on the day the man was hospitalized, police were called to the store due to an altercation between the customer and staff at the store's drive-thru. Swift told CBS that the customer argued with employees around 1pm, demanding 'something free' in return for being given plain water instead of his soda because the restaurant's C02 carbonating machine was not working that day. A Taco Bell in Colorado is under investigation after an unidentified customer fell violently ill after he claimed his to-go order was laced with rat poison Sheriffs Deputy John Bartmann told Dailymail.com that enough rat poison was found in the burritos 'to have been very serious to the victim's health'. It is unknown whether the victim is still in hospital, but he is believed to have recovered from incident. The Taco Bell restaurant has denied having rat poison in the store Swift said he had ordered three bean burritos and was given a fourth for free. It is not known who called 911 during that incident, but police who arrived at the drive-thru found a much calmer scene, Sheriffs Deputy John Bartmann told Dailymail.com. After speaking to all involved parties, the deputies determined that no crime had been committed, and left. The customer also returned home, where, according to Deputy Bartmann, he did some chores around the house and sat down to watch 60 Minutes on TV. Only once the show was over, around 7pm, did the man then eat his four burritos. Immediately feeling sick and vomiting, the man called an ambulance and was transported to a local hospital, where doctors quickly diagnosed the cause of his sudden illness. Police were only alerted to the accusation of poisoning later in the evening, however, after receiving a call from hospital workers that a patient had claimed his Taco Bell order had been laced with rodenticide. Bartmann told DailyMail.com that police would not release the man's identity. He added that enough rat poison was found in the burritos 'to have been very serious to the victim's health'. It is unknown whether the victim is still in hospital, but he is believed to have recovered from incident. Officials are in the process of reviewing security camera footage from inside the Taco Bell to determine whether or not the rat poison was in fact put into his food at the restaurant. The ongoing case is currently classified as a 'criminal attempt homicide'. Deputies closed the Aurora-based Taco Bell down on Sunday evening, but it was back open for taking orders on Wednesday, Dailymail.com can reveal. Manager Lary Swift denied the poisoning claims in comments made to CBS. 'We don't carry poison in the restaurant,' she said. 'We didn't do anything like that. It didn't even add up. It's ridiculous.' When asked for comment by Dailymail.com, Taco Bell Corp said: 'The safety of customers and team members is a priority. The franchisee who owns and operates this location has informed us that they are working with local authorities in their investigation.' A man was arrested for attempted murder after he was caught on tape violently stabbing a gas station clerk who confronted him about shoplifting. Billy Joe Martin, 39, was arrested in Miami on Monday for the horrific attack against the Mobil gas station clerk that occurred when the suspect was caught stealing a beer. Martin became violent when the unidentified clerk watched the suspect slip the can into his pocket before asking, 'What did you put in your pocket?' according to WSVN. Footage showed Martin behind the checkout stand attacking the clerk while plunging the knife directly at him. Billy Joe Martin, 39, was arrested after stabbing a Miami gas station clerk The altercation occurred when the employee confronted Martin for stealing The clerk can be seen in the footage attempting to fight off Martin as the suspect also reached for a pack of cigarettes in the struggle. After several seconds, the clerk was able to push Martin out from behind the counter and lock the store door to keep him inside until the police arrived. Meanwhile, the clerk safely locked himself behind the cash register area. When police arrived, Martin was handcuffed and taken into a patrol car where he then banged his head repeatedly into the plexiglass before spitting on an officer and shouting racial slurs, according to the news outlet. Martin, who is from Arizona, was arrested on charges of attempted felony murder, robbery, burglary with assault and battery on a law enforcement officer. Martin became violent and plunged a knife at the clerk's head and torso. He was arrested on charges of attempted felony murder, robbery, burglary with assault and battery on a law enforcement officer Martin appeared in court on Tuesday with an orange jumpsuit and was instructed to stay 500 feet away from the gas station clerk The altercation occurred at a Mobile Mart located at 570 NW 79th Street The store clerk was taken to a nearby hospital in stable condition to be treated for his wounds. He suffered wounds to his torso and face. Martin appeared in court on Tuesday with an orange jumpsuit and was instructed to stay 500 feet away from the clerk. It's unclear if he recently moved to Florida, but officials said he has only been in the state a few weeks. Derek Chauvin has asked the Minnesota Appeals Court to toss out his murder conviction for George Floyd's death, claiming he was denied a fair trial. Chauvin's attorney, William Mohrman, argued Wednesday that because video and reports of Floyd's death were so widely publicized, kicking off nationwide protests, the jury was essentially 'poisoned.' 'You can't hold a trial in a community where the jurors are looking at the possibility of a riot in the event the jury acquits the defendant,' Mohrman said. The defense is also demanding that the court assign a new venue for a new trial. Chauvin was sentenced to 22- and-a-half-years in prison for the murder of Floyd, and last July, he was given another 21 years on federal charges of civil rights violations. Ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22- and-a-half-years in prison for the murder of Floyd after pressing his knee against his neck for more than nine minutes Chauvin's lawyer, William Mohrman (above), argued that the defendant could not get a fair trial in Minneapolis to the high volume of media coverage and protests over Floyd's death In his arguments on Wednesday morning, Mohrman said the unprecedented publicity surrounding the trial led to prejudices forming over Chauvin's case. Mohrman and his team counted more than 1,000 stories and articles from local media stations naming Chauvin, claiming the coverage was 'overwhelmingly hostile' for the defendant. Video of the Minneapolis police officer pinning Floyd to the ground with the cop's knee on the man's neck was widely circulated. Floyd's final words, 'I can't breathe,' also became the slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement that erupted nationwide. Although the majority of protests were peaceful, the defense noted that a demonstration in Minneapolis devolve into a riot that claimed two lives and saw 'property damage exceeded $500,000,000the second most destructive riots in American history.' Other factors that led to an allegedly unfair trial, the defense attorney said, included the city's $27 million settlement with Floyd's family being announced during the jury selection, tightened security at the courthouse and a recent police killing in the city suburbs. Mohrman also argued that Hennepin County Judge Pete Cahill improperly excluded evidence that could have been favorable to Chauvin, and accused prosecutors of misconduct. The prosecution, however, said that Chauvin (pictured during his sentencing) did receive a fair trial and asked for the appeal for a new trial and venue to be rejected Prosecutors, however, said Chauvin had a fair trial and received a just sentence. They said pretrial publicity had blanketed the state making a change of venue for the trial pointless, and that Cahill took extensive steps to ensure the selection of impartial jurors. They also said he took sufficient steps to shield the jurors from outside influences, so there was no need to sequester them before deliberations. Neal Katyal, one of the prosecutors for the state, said: 'The court and parties painstakingly selected a jury over two weeks. Forty-four witnesses testified, jurors watched video footage and heard from bystanders. 'They learned that Chauvin was trained against prone restraints because of positional asphyxia, which is the very thing that killed Floyd. Judge Cahill managed this trial with enormous care,' Katyal added. The appeals court will also looking into whether it was legally permissible to convict Chauvin of third-degree murder, and whether Cahill was justified in exceeding the 12 1/2 years recommended under the state's sentencing guidelines. The appeals court has 90 days to make a decision on the case. Three other officers who were present during Floyd's murder - Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, were also convicted of civil rights charges While Chauvin waived his right to appeal under his federal plea deal, he continued to pursue his appeal of his murder convictions in state court. Even if he wins his appeal, his federal sentence will keep him in prison longer than his state sentence likely would because he would qualify for parole earlier in the state system. Three other officers who were present during Floyd's murder - Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane - were convicted of federal civil rights charges last February and are serving their sentences in out-of-state federal prisons. Lane and Kueng accepted plea deals on state charges of aiding and abetting manslaughter and are serving concurrent sentences. But Thao declined to plead guilty. Attorneys for both sides agreed to let Cahill decide on Thao's guilt based on stipulated evidence. That verdict is pending, as is his federal appeal. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld mocked CNN over its search for a comedy host - saying the network already is a joke. Gutfeld claimed the 'smashing success' of his own late-night Fox show had forced CNN to look for 'a hit comedy show of their own.' Bosses at the famously progressive news network have reportedly floated names such as Bill Maher, Trevor Noah and Jon Stewart to offer a satirical take on the news - and compete with rival Fox's Gutfeld!. The Fox show last year drew a ratings average of 2.15m viewers - trumping vehement progressives such as James Corden and Stephen Colbert, who have seen ratings fall drastically in recent years. Gutfeld joked that no shake-up was needed at CNN because it had already provided cable news with the 'golden age of comedy.' Fox News host Greg Gutfeld last night mocked CNN over its search for a comedy host - saying the network already is a joke Bosses at CNN have reportedly floated names such as Bill Maher and Trevor Noah 'But isn't that the point, really? CNN was already funny and they went ahead and they ruined it,' he said. 'I'm talking, of course, about the golden age of comedy. Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, Brian Stelter. Or as they're known in the business, the Three Stooges. Those were the days, right?' He also argued that the network's effort was doomed to fail because good comedy relies on 'truth, not ideology.' Gutfeld cited the late comedian Norm MacDonald, who was fired by NBC after jokes about O.J. Simpson, suggesting that CNN would make strict rules for comedians that would stop them from being funny. Following Simpson's acquittal in 1995, MacDonald said: 'Well, it's official, it's finally official. Murder is legal in the state of California.' Gutfeld said: 'The audience roared because they knew it was true, but they also laughed because Norm was saying something you got the feeling he wasn't supposed to say. 'Rumors swirled that some execs at NBC didn't want him doing O.J. jokes. He was willing to break the rules to tell the truth. So how can a network do that while calling moms pregnant people? In order to be effective at comedy, you've got to rely on truth, not ideology.' The rumored late-night foray by CNN is the latest in a series of sweeping changes to the network under new boss Chris Licht. According to people familiar with the matter, the not-yet-named funnyman would be tasked with filling the hallowed 9pm time slot, previously held by Cuomo. CNN execs, led by Licht, have largely failed to fill the space left by Cuomo, who lost the gig more than a year ago after trying to help his brother Andrew Cuomo fight off a sexual harassment scandal. Viewing figures for the week of September 19-25 show liberal late night shows playing second-fiddle to new top dog Gutfeld!, which started airing weeknights at 11pm in April of last year. Many attribute the reduction to recent political rantings exhibited by hosts while on the air CNN is reportedly considering hiring a comedian to host one of its struggling prime time hours - the latest in a series of sweeping changes to the network under CEO Chris Licht (pictured) Meanwhile prime time host Lemon - who was openly hostile to Donald Trump throughout his campaign and presidency - has been shifted to the morning crew. Licht's new era has resulted in the termination of several popular and notoriously progressive hosts, including John Harwood and Brian Stelter, along with their shows. Licht hinted at a desire to sign comedian Stewart in an interview last year with the New York Times. Currently under contract with Apple, the 60-year-old satirist seems like an unlikely option - though the stellar ratings he brought The Daily Show for 16 years has likely piqued Late Night expert Licht's interests - especially when compared to ratings spawned by his successor Trevor Noah, and other more polarizing talking heads such as Colbert and former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee. Speaking to The Times, Licht - who laid off hundreds of staffers last month including politics reporter Chris Cillizza - said he would love to bring on the former late night host, if possible. Another, more promising prospect is Maher, a more no-nonsense progressive who despite his politics, manages to appeal to wider demographic than his more polarizing counterparts. Maher, 66, currently hosts his long-running, eponymous program on HBO, which, like CNN, is now presided over by parent company Warner Bros. Puck reported that CNN chiefs were already in talks to begin airing some of Maher's weekly extra HBO segments on some of the station's various media outlets. The new CNN boss has worked to tone down the often opinionated and emotional reporting from anchors like Lemon, who also was relieved of hosting duties for the network's underperforming primetime slot Already familiar with using satire to improve viewership, Licht was brought on last February with the tall task of raising diminished viewership on the network. That said, ratings slumps in late night have been widespread - and many have attributed it to liberal talking points exhibited by hosts while on the air. Offenders include Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and James Corden - all vehement progressives who have seen ratings fall drastically in recent years, with nearly all at some point accused of being vehicles for the liberal mass media. The rapidly shifting late night landscape, moreover, has made the success currently enjoyed by more conservative talkers - such as Greg Gutfeld - all the more stark. The Fox Show last year drew a ratings average of 2.15M viewers - well over what liberal rivals Fallon, Corden, Colbert, and Noah, have drummed up in recent months. The show, which went nightly in April 2021, is often lambasted by the left and adored by the right - but as liberals find themselves turned off by politically driven diatribes by their favorite TV talkers, shows like Gutfeld! have carved out a spot for themselves at the top of the heap in the battle for late-night supremacy. Back in July, showrunners pulled notorious neoliberal comedian Samantha Bee's 'Full Frontal' on TBS, after Bee, a former correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, had trouble securing even 300,000 viewers to her show. Then, in September, Stewart's replacement, woke comedian Trevor Noah, was bounced from the program after seven years also amid dwindling ratings. Since assuming Stewart's spot at the once popular show, viewership has declined dramatically - with some saying the South African comic's heavy-handed soapbox rants triggered the slump. When Noah, 38, took over the show in 2015, its ratings sat at around 900,000 - but in recent months numbers have fallen below 400,000. For reference, Stewart's tenure saw viewing figures typically around 1.5 million an episode - which at points rose as high as 2.5million. Meanwhile, it's hard to find a monologue on Colbert, Kimmel, or Seth Meyers without Trump, who has been out of office for nearly two years, being the topic of discussion. CNN hopes to move on from drama after the bombshell ousters of host Chris Cuomo and network boss Jeff Zucker (together above in 2014) With that said, famously liberal Meyers, who took the Late Night mantle made famous by David Letterman and later diminished by Fallon back in 2017, has failed to hit the viewer mark in recent years. In 1984, Letterman averaged 2.5 million viewers. Today, Meyers has struggled to even meet the 800,000 viewer mark. The situation at NBC is reportedly so dire that rumors are swirling that Meyers' show may be relegated either to the network's struggling streaming service, Peacock, or to notoriously leftist network arm MSNBC. Corden, meanwhile has also been subjected to his own controversies and even worse ratings, also failing to hit 800,000 as he faces backlash from fellow comedians such as Ricky Gervais for stealing their material. Across the rest of the late-night sphere, the ratings phenomenon is much of the same, with only Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon surpassing the million mark, in second, third, and fourth place behind Gutfeld, respectively. All are well below Gutfeld!'s impressive ratings haul of 2.5million views as of October, according to the latest Nielsen research. The aforementioned shows' averages all dwindled well below ratings garnered in recent years, and have all been hosted for a number of years by increasingly outspoken - and left-leaning - hosts. A man who shared a New York apartment with George Santos says the newly elected Republican would flash wads of cash and made claims of 'generational wealth' that didn't add up. 'He would just go to bars with just rolls of hundred dollar bills, and three days later he would have no money,' said Gregory Morey-Parker, who moved in for a few months with Santos after losing his own Queens apartment. He described Santos, who went by the name Anthony Devolder at the time, as having 'just delusions of grandeur.' 'He would constantly be saying, oh well, I'm going to sell my phone, do you know anybody who wants to buy it? And you know, I'm like why are you selling it? And he's like oh, don't worry about it,' he said Santos responded. The allegations came in a week where a disabled homeless veteran accused Santos of stealing $3,000 from a GoFundMe campaign meant to get an operation for his sick dog, and after the House GOP Steering Committee decided to award Santos seats on the House Small Business and Science, Space and Technology committees. Rep. George Santos' former roommate says the New York lawmaker had 'delusions of grandeur,' and would head to the bar with 'rolls of hundred dollar bills' 'And it is just things just started continuously spiraling, getting, like, kind of ridiculously crazy,' the roommate told CNN. His mother was a housekeeper, in Manhattan, and it just didn't seem feasible for him supposedly to come from all this generational wealth, if you will. Why are you doing the things that you're doing? it doesn't make sense to me,' he said. Morey-Parker called it an 'interesting few months.' He said he has 'always known him as Anthony Devolder.' The roommate says he 'kind of assumed' that Santos 'made up' attending Baruch College and NYU schools that after his win in a House seat picked up from a Democrat said he did not attend. Morey-Parker claims Santos, who used the name Anthony Devolder, took his Burberry scarf 'But then I thought, well maybe I was wrong, you know, after the election because Im sure the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and RNC (Republican National Committee) wouldve investigated him and at least his opponent would have done some oppo (opposition) research. Several New York Republican lawmakers have called on Santos to resign. He now faces a likely House Ethics committee probe and federal and local investigations after admitting to a series of false claims about his professional life, his education, his faith, and his biography. Morey-Parker also accuses Santos of stealing his Burberry scarf and wearing at a January 5, 2021 'Stop the Steal' rally where he spoke. He told the local news site Patch that he was '100 per cent certain' the scarf, which went missing, was the one that had been given to him as a gift. 'If you're from New York, you know what they did to me. They did to me what they did to Donald Trump. They stole my election,' he said at the 2021 rally in DC's Freedom Plaza, speaking of his loss to Democrat Tom Suozzi. 'For 14 days I was congressman-elect of the 3rd Congressional District of New York the first ever biggest upset for a Republican in New York City,' he said. DailyMail.com has reached out to Santos' office for a response. A black glove, computer tower, stained mattress cover and dust from his vacuum were also recovered Unsealed court documents reveal that police investigating the murder of four University of Idaho students discovered a pillow covered in 'blood' in suspected killer Bryan Kohberger's apartment. Authorities swooped on the property on the Washington State University campus, in Pullman, just a few miles from the crime scene, and raided it for evidence after his arrest on December 30. A new search warrant, made public on January 17, shows that police found several hair strands, including one suspected animal hair, a black glove, a computer tower and one unnamed item with a collection of 'dark red spots'. They also hauled away a pillow with a 'reddish/brown stain' on it and the top and bottom of a mattress cover with 'multiple stains'. Kohberger's apartment was searched hours after he was arrested at his parents' home in Pennsylvania on December 30 Forensic teams swooped on his property, less than 15 minutes from the house where the gristly murders took place Investigators, who raided the property back in December, also picked up receipts from Walmart and two Marshall's receipts, as well as collecting the contents of his vacuum cleaner. Authorities initially sealed the search warrant for the murder suspect's Washington home arguing that releasing the details could 'prematurely' end the investigation. However, the document has now been unsealed with the approval of Whitman County Prosecutor Denis Tracy, who filed the motion on January 17. Court documents show that eight strands of hair were recovered from the apartment, as well as a 'possible' animal hair. They also recovered a Fire TV stick during their search. All the items are now being stored at the Washington State University Police department. Authorities reportedly said they wanted to see if any hair had been 'transferred' onto Kohberger and then back to his apartment including that of Kaylee Goncalves' dog Murphy. Court documents show police wanted to see if any hair had been 'transferred' onto Kohberger and then back to his apartment including that of Kaylee Goncalves' dog Murphy Authorities initially sealed the search warrant for the murder suspect's Washington home arguing that releasing the details could 'prematurely' end the investigation Kaylee's dog Murphy was spared during the slayings - officers found him alone in her room Murphy was found alive in Kaylee's room by investigators who were called to the scene, and has now been returned to her ex-boyfriend. The application also stated that the home where the students were murdered had a significant amount of blood from the victims including 'spatter and castoff blood'. Investigators believe that it was likely that the killer would have had blood evidence on their body or clothing, and hoped to find trace evidence in Kohberger's apartment. However, they did not describe the results of any of the testing in the documents, and did not confirm if any hairs found matched the victims or Kaylee's dog. His offices at Washington State University were also searched, but nothing was seized by officers. Initially, the court ruled that the warrant should be sealed until March 1, claiming that if it were made public there would be a threat to 'public safety'. Jack DuCoeur and Kaylee Goncalves, pictured, shared custody of the dog after they split up A new search warrant reveals that police found several hair strands, including one possible animal hair, a black glove, a computer tower and an item that was a 'collection of dark red' spotting Kohberger's apartment in Pullman, Washington, was combed by police for evidence into the ongoing investigation Court documents filed the same day as his arrest stated 'compelling circumstances warrant the temporary sealing ordered in this matter.' Kohberger, 28, appeared in court last week but has yet to enter a plea for the murders of Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. Authorities released the probable cause affidavit against Kohberger just before his first hearing in Moscow, Idaho, on January 5. It reveals how Kohberger turned his phone off on the night of the murders in an alleged attempt to cover his tracks before the murder. He is even alleged to have returned to the scene of the crime at 9am on November 13 - just hours after police believe he committed the quadruple murder. The documents say that the criminal justice graduate stalked the property at least 12 times. Investigators believe that it was likely that the killer would have had blood evidence on their body or clothing, and hoped to find trace evidence in Kohberger's apartment Kaylee with her dog Murphy. Idaho police have just confirmed that Murphy was in the house when she was brutally murdered Dylan Mortensen did not call the authorities until six hours after she spotted the masked killer in the property Officials have not revealed the exact dates they believe he canvassed the three-story property but confirmed that, in August, he was pulled over just two minutes after leaving the area covered by the cell phone tower closest to the home. A Latah County Sheriffs deputy pulled him over on August 21 at 11.37pm as part of a traffic stop in which he provided his number. During the stop, which was recorded on the officer's body cam, Kohberger was driving his white Hyundai Elantra. The papers also included details on how Kohberger's DNA was found on a knife sheath close to the bodies of Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves. Authorities are still hunting for the murder weapon. Best friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21, were murdered along with roommate Xana Kernodle and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, both 20 in an off-campus home in Moscow Many are questioning why it took Dylan so long to raise the alarm, after hearing 'crying' and coming face to face with the killer. Pictured (L-R) Dylan Mortensen, Xana Kernodle, Bethany Funke, Kaylee Goncalves and Maddie Mogen The report of the findings comes as law enforcement sources say the alleged killer was seen taking out garbage using surgical gloves several times at his parents' home. The officers were tasked with tracking Kohberger so they could arrest him as soon as a warrant was issued, as well as trying to get hold of an object to compare DNA to a sample found at the scene. He was also seen cleaning the inside and outside of his car, with the source adding that he didn't 'miss an inch'. Kohberger was also reportedly seen taking out the trash to his neighbors' bins at around 4am with the contents being recovered by officers. Unsealed court documents show the painstaking work done by police, who matched the DNA found on the sheath to Kohberger's by comparing it to his father's DNA which was a 99.9998 percent match. The probable cause affidavit also revealed that Dylan Mortensen who survived the attack with roommate Bethany Funke heard several scuffles throughout the night and opened her door. Mortensen told police that she saw a suspect dressed in all black with a mask covering his face and heard one of her housemates say: 'There's someone here.' She also heard the suspect say: 'It's ok, I'm here to help you,' as he wandered the house committing the atrocity. The friends were all killed in their Moscow, Idaho, home on the night of November 13 Kaylee and Madison were best friends Police confirmed that a 911 call was made by one of the surviving roommates at 11.58am, who requested help for an unconscious person though it has not been confirmed who spoke to police. It has raised the question of why Mortensen didn't contact authorities sooner, with some arguing that she may have been 'frozen' by fear. The roommate did not contact authorities for six hours, despite hearing several of her roommates in distress and seeing the killer face to face. Mortensen told cops she was awoken at around 4am by what sounded like Kaylee Goncalves, 21, 'playing with her dog' in a third-floor bedroom. She said she looked out of her room but didn't see anything, looking again on a second occasion when she thought Xana Kernodle was crying. Mortensen 'stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her. After the man moved towards her she said that she remained in a 'frozen shock phase' as he continued past her but let her survive. Kohberger previously insisted that he would be 'exonerated' to his lawyer in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump is angling to win back his social media supremacy just 10 days before the first official event of his 2024 presidential campaign. Once commanding social media accounts that were among the most watched on Facebook and Twitter, Trump was booted off of both platforms over his actions related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was reinstated to Twitter thanks to the results of a public user poll conducted by its new eccentric billionaire owner, Elon Musk. And on Tuesday, Trump's campaign sent a letter to Facebook's parent company Meta asking for a sit-down to discuss bringing the ex-president back online for the sake of free speech, according to NBC News. 'We believe that the ban on President Trumps account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,' the letter reportedly said. Donald Trump's 2024 campaign is angling to get him back on Facebook, according to a Wednesday report The letter also argued that the ban was 'interfering' with a fair elections process. Meta reportedly told NBC that it 'will announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.' DailyMail.com has reached out to Trump's spokesman to request a copy of the letter. Trump has been accused of riling up his supporters on social media in the lead-up to the 2021 Capitol riot, when a mob who believed his claims the 2020 election was stolen attempted to violently disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. He was handed an indefinite ban on Facebook, which was criticized by the platform's Oversight Board. It was limited to a two-year suspension in response. His campaign reportedly petitioned Meta for a meeting to discuss Trump's suspension from its social media platform Facebook (pictured: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg) Trump has yet to return to Twitter despite his account being reactivated for nearly two months. His primary channel of communication has been Truth Social, an app made by his own company that was formed after he left office - Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Trump regularly posts on the app; however, he stepped down from his role as chairman of TMTG less than a month before the company was subpoenaed by the SEC over an investigation into a 'blank check company' the firm was reportedly merging with. He hasn't said anything about returning, but a far larger audience awaits Trump on Twitter than what he enjoys on Truth Social. As of Wednesday the ex-president's Truth Social account shows 4.82 million followers - by far the most popular profile on the platform. But he's got more than 87 million followers waiting for him on Twitter. His campaign's petition to Facebook comes less than two weeks before his first 2024 event. Trump was booted off of Facebook and Twitter over his conduct relating to the US Capitol riot It'll come more than two months after Trump announced he was running for the White House a third time in a lavish ceremony at his Mar-a-Lago mansion on November 15. The event will take place in Columbia, South Carolina, according to the 2024 Trump. campaign. He's be there on January 28 to unveil his South Carolina leadership team, per the release. Joining him will be South Carolina's Republican Governor Henry McMaster and its senior senator, Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump ally in Congress. It's a notable choice for his first official appearance on the 2024 campaign trail. It's now the first state in Democrats' 2024 primary cycle after the national party moved to overhaul its races. Notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman has appealed to Mexico's president for help due to alleged 'psychological torment' he is suffering in a US prison, his lawyer said Tuesday. 'In the six years that Joaquin has been in the United States, he has not seen the sun,' said Jose Refugio Rodriguez, a Mexico-based legal representative of the Sinaloa cartel founder. Guzman, 64, was sentenced to life behind bars in the United States for a drug conspiracy that spread murder and mayhem for more than two decades, and is serving out the sentence at ADX Florence in Colorado. His message to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, described as 'an SOS,' was transmitted via one of Guzman's lawyers in the United States as well as his family, Rodriguez said. Notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman (seen in 2017) has appealed to Mexico's president for help due to alleged 'psychological torment' he is suffering in a US prison Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday his government will consider Guzman's plea to serve out the remainder of his sentence in Mexico Guzman is only allowed outside three times a week to a small area where he 'doesn't get the sun,' and has fewer visits or phone calls than other inmates, the lawyer said in an interview with Radio Formula. 'He is suffering psychological torment,' he said, adding that the lack of sunshine was also bad for the convicted drug trafficker's physical health. Guzman wants President Obrador to address alleged procedural violations during his extradition in 2017 under the former government, Rodriguez added. Mexico's president said Wednesday his government will consider Guzman's plea to serve out the remainder of his sentence in Mexico, where the drug kingpin twice escaped from prison. Obrador said 'we will review it,' adding: 'You always have to keep the door open when it comes to human rights.' Guzman, 64, was sentenced to life behind bars in the United States, and is serving out the sentence at ADX Florence in Colorado, seen above A cell with concrete furniture is seen inside the ADX (administrative maximum) Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado where Guzman is serving a life sentence Inside the same room inmates have a toilet, sink, and miniature mirror The US and Mexico have a prison transfer agreement that allows inmates convicted in one country to serve out their sentence in their home country under certain circumstances. But given Guzman's crimes, his sentence and the risks he purportedly still poses, many doubt the agreement would apply in his case. The Mexican embassy in Washington confirmed on Twitter on Tuesday that it received an email from Rodriguez on January 10. Without referring to the content of the email, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard downplayed the chance of any government intercession in favor of the notorious drug trafficker. 'He is serving a sentence there, he has a sentence,' he told journalists. 'So, frankly I don't see any possibilities for him, but I'm going to review it with the prosecutor's office.' An outdoor area of the notorious ADX Florence prison is pictured above. Guzman's attorneys say he is allowed outdoors three times per week in an area with no direct sunlight The exterior of the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, located 90 miles south of Denver El Chapo is serving a life sentence in the United States after being convicted in 2019 of charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses. One of his sons, Ovidio Guzman, was arrested by Mexican security forces this month in an operation that left 29 people dead and sparked a dramatic shootout at an airport in the city of Culiacan. The Joaquin Guzman is serving his life sentence at ADX Florence, a 490-bed 'supermax' jail in the middle of Colorado - also known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies. It is America's most secure prison from which nobody has ever escaped, making it a fitting resting place for the cartel kingpin who sprung himself from Mexican jailhouses not once, but twice. In 2001, Guzman bribed Mexican prison guards in a complex scheme to escape by hiding in a laundry cart. In 2015, Guzman slipped away from a central Mexico prison through a nearly mile-long tunnel leading from his cell's shower, in his second dramatic prison escape. Emma Coronel, the wife of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman is serving a three-year sentence at a prison in Texas It's not the first time El Chapo's lawyers have raised issue with over conditions at ADX Florence. Last March, his attorney Mariel Colon told Mexican network Milenio that Guzman's rights have been violated by the staff at ADX Florence. 'They don't take him out into the open air, they don't take him out for a single day,' Colon claimed. 'We've had a lot of problems because they don't treat him medically if he gets sick. The requests are ignored.' The high-profile lawyer, who also represented El Chapo's wife Emma Coronel before she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison in November 2021, said the Sinaloa Cartel co-founder has been denied access to water and dental treatment for his molars. Guzman also complained about the strict conditions that he encountered in a Manhattan jail following his extradition from Mexico to the United States in January 2017. Up until the end of his trial, he spent his entire time at the Manhattan Metropolitan Center and grumbled over drinking tap water and requested bottled water. He also complained that the cell was too cold. Media startup Semafor is planning to buy out failed FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried's nearly $10million investment in the company. Company co-founder and CEO Justin Smith told the New York Times, 'We are planning to repurchase Sam Bankman-Fried's interest in Semafor and to place the money into a separate account until the relevant legal authorities provide guidance as to where the money should be returned.' Semafor launched last year with SBF as its biggest outside investor, but is now attempting to raise new money to replace the large chunk provided by the disgraced crypto-king. Sam Bankman-Fried arrived at court in early January to enter his plea. He invested heavily in a number of politics-adjacent media firms prior to the downfall of his crypto empire Ben Smith, back when he was editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News. He has since been the NYT's media columnist and co-founded Semafor. The company was also co-founded by Justin Smith - no relation to Ben Those fundraising efforts have so far not proven to be successful, according to a New York Times report. Semafor is one of a handful of media companies that received hefty donations from SBF. In December, non-profit investigative news outlet ProPublica said it would return the $1.6million it had received from Bankman-Fried's family foundation. Vox media said it too would return the funds. Semafor's position that it would wait for legal guidance, in addition to its early coverage of SBF and his unfolding scandal, initially generated some criticism, and prompted Twitter CEO Elon Musk to weigh in. In November, when news was rolling out about the sudden collapse of FTX and potential criminal liability of its founder and leadership, Musk and Semafor co-founder Ben Smith got into a twitter tussle. Smith and Semafor reported that SBF had been courted by Musk to help bankroll his massive deal to acquire Twitter. Musk, in turn, dismissed the claim as false and publicly questioned SBF's financial stake in Semafor. Musk wrote at the time: 'All public holders of Twitter were allowed to roll their stock into Twitter as a private company, but he did not do so. 'Your reporting made it falsely sound like he did, when in fact he owns 0%. For the last time, how much of you does SBF own? Stop dodging the question. 'To be direct, the very real concern here is that you have been pushing a completely false SBF ownership of Twitter narrative while effectively being his paid shill.' During his tenure as editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed, Smith infamously oversaw the publishing of the now debunked Steele Dossier. Justin Smith is the former CEO of Bloomberg media group and has worked The Atlantic's parent company. The Twitter back and forth featuring company CEO Elon Musk questioning Semafor's reporting on SBF's downfall, considering his significant financial stake in the company Setting aside the $10million will prevent the company from expanding in ways its leadership had envisioned. The company, founded by Justin Smith and Ben Smith (formerly of Buzzfeed and the New York Times), raised about $25million prior to its October 2022 launch. The Times reported it has several deals worth more than $2million with advertisers and is powered by a staff of about 60 people. The company expects to generate at least $15million in revenue during its first full year of operations. SBF founded FTX in 2019 and rode a wave of extreme optimism in the value of bitcoin and other types of digital assets to become a multi-multi-billionaire, as well as a massive donor to various political and politics-adjacent causes. He currently stands accused of engaging in a years-long 'fraud of epic proportions,' that he executed primarily by using customer deposits to support his Alameda Research trading firm, as well as to buy real estate and make record-setting political contributions. Semafor is a new media firm that was launched in late 2022 by Ben Smith and Justin Smith. It advertises itself as news for the 200 million English-speaking college-educated adults across the globe Ben Smith (pictured) and Justin Smith say the money invested by SBF into their company has been placed in a separate account as they await legal guidance on what to do with it Musk previously questioned how the public could trust the site's reporting on SBF, given his significant stake in the news site Bankman-Fried is facing two counts of wire fraud and six counts of conspiracy, including to launder money and commit campaign finance violations. If convicted, the 30-year-old will be looking at decades in prison. He entered a not-guilty plea in early January. Prior to his December 12 arrest in the Bahamas, SBF acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, but maintained that he does not believe he is criminally liable. Two of his chief associates, former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and former FTX chief technology officer Gary Wang, have entered guilty pleas over their roles in FTX's collapse and have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Bankman-Fried was released on December 22 on a massive $250million bond and ordered to remain on house arrest with his parents in their $4million Palo Alto, California house, where they teach at Stanford Law School. FTX filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11, as the once lauded firm collapsed under the weight of its own failed system. Its recently appointed chief executive, John Ray, told Congress on December 13 that the exchange lost $8billion of customer money while being run by 'grossly inexperienced, non-sophisticated individuals.' Prosecutors believe Ana Walshe's body was unknowingly shredded and incinerated by trash services after her husband Brian tossed them in a dumpster on January 2. Walshe, 47, is accused of murdering Ana in the basement of their home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, on January 1 in the early hours of the morning, then discarding her body in a dumpster. He uttered just two words his 14-minute court appearance, saying I do when asked by Judge Mark Coven if he understood the charges against him. While police have found bloody rugs, Ana's clothes, her COVID-19 vaccine card, a hatchet, hacksaw and bloody knife, they have not recovered any of her remains. In court today, Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland said: 'Police tried to track down what happened to the bags the defendant was seen throwing in the dumpster earlier at Abingdon. These bags in this dumpster were already picked up and taken to a location for shredding and to be incinerated. 'By the time police located that, they were already destroyed.' A spokesman for the District Attorney's office confirmed to DailyMail.com that they believe those bags contained Ana's remains. 'That is what she was implicating to the court... that is what the evidence suggests,' they said. Scroll down for video Brian Walshe pleaded not guilty to beating his wife Ana to death this morning as prosecutors laid out a mountain of evidence against him Ana Walshe has not been seen since 1.30am on January 1. Police say Brian, her husband, murdered her. Her body has not been found It also emerged in court that Brian allegedly used his son's iPad to research 'how long before a body starts to smell' at 4.58am on January 1st - just three-and-a-half hours after Ana was last seen alive by their New Year's Eve party guest. Prosecutors implied in court that she was murdered by her husband sometime between then. Among the other searches, conducted on an iPad belonging to one of his young sons, were '10 ways to dismember a body', 'does baking soda make a body smell good?' and 'how long is someone missing before you can inherit?' On December 27, five days before Ana vanished, he Googled: 'Best state for divorce for a man.' 'Rather than divorce, Brian Walshe dismembered Ana Walshe and discarded her body,' Beland said on Wednesday, as she asked the judge to deny him bail - a request that was immediately granted. Rather than divorce, Brian Walshe dismembered Ana Walshe and discarded her body Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland Beland revealed that Ana's DNA, along with Brian's, was found on blood-stained clothes found in a dumpster near her mother's house along with the Hunter boots and Prada handbag he said she was wearing when she vanished. He shook his head during the brief hearing and was denied bail. Brian will return to court on February 9th for a status hearing. Walshe told police he last saw Ana at 6am on January 1st, claiming she left for work. Today, it was revealed that in the hours before that, he'd been frantically researching how to dispose of a body, and how long decomposition takes. Police say Walshe used one of his young son's iPads to search gruesome terms like 'how long before a body starts to smell?' Ana Walshe is shown with the boys Ana and Brian are shown on their wedding day in 2015. They met while she was working in a hotel Ana and Brian at the start of their romance, left, when he showered her with designer bags and cars. She is shown, right, more recently. Ana had grown to become independent, working in Washington DC away from her family On December 27th, days before she vanished, he Googled: 'What's the best state to divorce for a man?' Ana was last seen alive at 1.30am on January 1st by friends who had been in their home for a New Year's Eve party. Shortly before 5am on January 1st, using his son's iPad, he searched; 4:55AM - How long before a body starts to smell? 4:58AM - How to keep a body from decomposing? 5:20AM - How to bound (bind) a body? 5:47AM - 10 ways to dispose of a body if you really need to 6:25AM - How long for someone to be missing to inherit? 6:34AM - Can you throw away body parts? 9:29AM - What does formaldehyde do? 9:34AM - How long does DNA last? 9:59AM - Can identification be made on partial remains? 11:34AM - Dismemberment and the best way to dispose of a body 11:44AM - How to clean blood from a wooden floor? 11:56AM - Luminal to detect blood 1:08PM - What happens when you put body parts in ammonia? 1:21PM - Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them? January 2nd After purchasing rugs from a Home Goods store while wearing rubber gloves and a face mask, he returned to the iPad for more research. He also spent $450 on cleaning supplies from a Home Depot including mops, buckets, tarps, drop cloths and various kinds of tape. This time, prosecutors say he searched; 12:45PM - Hacksaw best tool to dismember 1:10PM - Can you be charged with murder without a body? 1:14PM - Can you identify a body with broken teeth? January 3rd Police say he visited a dumpster in Abingdon, where he was seen carrying a heavy-looking garbage bag. 'He had to heft it into the dumpster,' according to police. Prosecutors tried to track down those trash bags, but by the time they got to them they had been destroyed in an incinerator at a trash transfer center. Walshe did more research, allegedly searching; 1:02PM - What happens to hair on a dead body? 1:13PM - What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods 1:20PM - Can baking soda make a body smell good? January 4th Walshe bought bath mats, men's clothing and towels at TJ Maxx and Home Goods. He then visited Loewes. That same day, a colleague of Ana's in Washington DC called police in Cohasset to report her missing and request a welfare check at her home. Police visited the family house, where they noticed the seats in Brian's Volvo were down, and a large, plastic liner was in the backseat. January 5th Police returned to the Walshe family home, where they noticed Brian's Volvo had been freshly cleaned. When questioned, he said he'd thrown out the plastic liner they saw the previous day. That same day, he visited the dumpster near his mother's home. January 8th Walshe is arrested for misleading police. A search warrant for the house is obtained, and police discover blood stains in the basement. They also found a knife with traces of blood on it. Police then searched the dumpster near his mother's home and found 10 trash bag that were stained with blood. Inside, they discovered; Slippers with both Ana and Brian's DNA on it Rags, tape, a medical suit with Brian and Ana's DNA on it Ana's Hunter boots Ana's Prada handbag Ana's COVID-19 vaccine card, with her name on it A hacksaw Hatchet Cutting shears Walshe, 47, arrived at Quincy District Court early in a black SUV. He entered through a side door, wearing a gray top, khaki pants and black sneakers. Brian Walshe leaves court today after being charged with the murder of his wife Ana Walshe, 47, arrived at Quincy District Court early in a black SUV. He entered through a side door, wearing a gray top, khaki pants and black sneakers The 47-year-old had chains around his waist and was handcuffed as he was led into court Ana Walshe and her husband Brian in happier times. Friends say she barely mentioned him when talking about her family A close friend of Anas told DailyMail.com of her heartbreak. Boston realtor and entrepreneur Pamela Bardhi, 31, said: Since day one, when I saw she was missing, my heart sank. 'Every time I asked myself, where is Ana, what is going on Ana, I had this horrible pit in my stomach and I just had this awful feeing that something horrible happened to her. Ana, who married troubled Walshe in 2015 in Boston, moved to DC to work as a regional manager for upscale realtor Tishman Speyer. She sold a home in Cohasset for $1.38million around the same time and bought a place in the capital for similar money. The missing mom switched to real estate in 2020 after starting in the hotels business when she moved to the United States from home city Belgrade in 2005. She was always pretty much the breadwinner of the family, said Bardhi. She was always very successful, is a very successful woman. Her brilliance far exceeded everything. She would say, you can do this, you can do that she was as sharp as a tack. The friend said Ana gushed about her sons, but kept Walshes name away from conversations. I didnt know Brian and Ana didnt talk about him, she said. She always talked about her boys. Shed say Oh my boys, oh my goodness theyre wonderful. I remember asking her, Ana how do you do it? Three young boys at that time under five, how do you balance all the things you do? Ana, 39, had been enjoying her life as a busy working mother, splitting her time between Cohasset, Massachusetts, and Washington DC, where she worked for a real estate firm She said, theres always a way to do it. You always find ways. And I remember being so inspired by that. She was a supermom. Everything was dedicated to her boys. They were her why. The friend has been fighting with others to prevent the boys being split up into foster care. They were in the home at the time of their mothers disappearance and are currently being looked after by Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. My fears are for them to be separated, said Bardhi. Imagine what theyve seen, heard, experienced in the last few weeks. And just the thought of three boys under six potentially being separated and away from family, friends is horrifying. According to friends, she and Brian had been fighting over her grueling work schedule. She regularly posted about her colleagues on social media, where mentions of her husband were few and far between. She'd been working for Tishman Speyer for two years, and spending much of her time away from her family. Long before his wife went missing, he was arrested on suspicion of stealing and trying to sell two fake Andy Warhol paintings. Family friends described him as a 'sociopath' who turned on his ailing, elderly father in a desperate grab for his wealth. After the murder charge was announced against her husband last night, friends started paying tribute to the vivacious mother-of-three. Abdulla Almutairi, her colleague and best friend, said: 'Youll always be my best friend and family. 'Rest easy, Heaven is a lot brighter; be the sunshine and the moonlight that you always are.' The United Kingdom's government has blocked a new gender bill that would have allowed trans people in Scotland to change their genders legally without requiring a medical diagnosis, a controversial decision that raises tensions over Scottish independence. Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, called the intervention by the UK government a "full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and its ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters." Scotland's New Gender Bill On the other hand, the minister representing Scotland in the UK government, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, on Monday announced that Westminster took the unusual step of blocking the bill from becoming law. He argued that the reason behind the decision was that it was concerned about the impact of the legislation on UK-wide equality laws. Lawmakers designed the gender bill to make it easier for people in Scotland to legally change their genders. With the system currently in place, trans people need to pass a number of challenges in order to change their gender marker in their legal documents, as per CNN. One of the requirements is getting a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which is a condition that is defined as the distress caused by the discrepancy between a person's body and their gender identity. They are then mandated to prove that they have been living in their chosen gender for two years and must at least be 18 years old. The new rules that officials have proposed will drop the medical diagnosis requirement altogether and will instead move to self-determination. Furthermore, the waiting time would be cut from two years down to only six months and the age limit was to be lowered to 16 years old. For a long time, campaigners have argued that the current process that trans people need to go through is overly bureaucratic, expensive, and intrusive. The Scottish government also held two large public consultations on the issue before proposing the new, simpler rules. Read Also: US Lawmakers Attend World Economic Forum Argument Over Scottish Independence The blocking of the new gender bill also marks the first time that a Scottish law has been obstructed for impacting UK-wide laws. Sturgeon added that Scottish ministers would continue to "defend" the bill and warned that if the veto succeeded, it would be the "first of many," according to BBC. Scotland's government is expected to legally challenge the ruling, through a judicial review, but is currently waiting for more details from UK ministers. Sturgeon's administration believes that the current process causes distress to an already marginalized and vulnerable minority group. The Scottish National Party-led government in Edinburgh argued that the legal changing of genders positively affects the lives of transgender people. They added that this is done by allowing them to get official documents that correspond to their gender identities. However, opposition lawmakers countered by claiming that the proposed law risks allowing predatory men to gain access to spaces that were intended for women. This includes shelters for domestic abuse survivors. Others have argued that the minimum age set forth in the new gender bill should remain at 18 years old, said ABC News. Related Article: Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Arrested in Germany @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Officials in New Mexico are set to deliver a decision on Thursday about whether or not they will pursue criminal charges against Alec Baldwin or others in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of Western movie Rust. Halyna Hutchins was killed by a live round fired by the gun the actor was holding on October 21, 2021, but the actor insists he didn't pull the trigger and blames prop managers for not checking if the gun was loaded. New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies and special prosecutor Andrea Reeb will announce their decision at 9 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, according to a statement issued on Wednesday. Baldwin is among up to four people who may face criminal charges for the death of the cinematographer, Carmack-Altwies has said. The '30 Rock' and 'Saturday Night Live' actor, who also served as a producer on 'Rust,' has denied responsibility for the shooting. Alec Baldwin is among up to four people who may face criminal charges for the shooting death of 'Rust' cinematographer Halyna Hutchins who was accidentally killed on the set Halyna Hutchins, 42, was accidentally shot and killed by Baldwin on the set of the movie 'Rust' Baldwin has said he was told the gun was 'cold,' an industry term meaning it is safe to use, and that he did not pull the trigger. He has sued crew members for negligence. An FBI forensic test of the single-action revolver that Baldwin was using found it 'functioned normally' and would not fire without the trigger being pulled. New Mexico's Office of the Medical Investigator has ruled the shooting an accident, saying the gun did not appear to have been deliberately loaded with a live round. Authorities have been trying to determine how a real bullet made its way to the movie set. Hutchins' family settled a wrongful death lawsuit against Baldwin and other producers last year. Under the agreement, filming on the low-budget movie is set to resume this month with Hutchins' husband serving as an executive producer. In police interviews and lawsuit filings, the film's armorer, first assistant director, prop supplier and prop master all denied culpability for the shooting. New Mexico's worker safety agency in April fined the film's production company the maximum amount possible for what it described as 'willful' safety lapses leading to Hutchins' death. An FBI report said five live bullets were found on a props trolley and in a bandolier and holster near the movie-set church where Hutchins was shot. The district attorney's office previous said it will conduct a 'thorough review of the information and evidence to make a thoughtful, timely decision about whether to bring charges.' It is still unclear when and if charges, if any, might be filed. Baldwin and Hutchins on the set of Rust last year. He maintains he never pulled the trigger A distraught Alec Baldwin lingers in the parking lot outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office in Santa Fe following the October 2021 killing The anticipated announcement from Santa Fe's First Judicial District Attorney's Office is expected on Thursday and comes as part of the ongoing legal saga surrounding the death on set. Pictured: Bonanza Creek Ranch, where Baldwin shot Hutchins Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on October 21, 2021 on the set of the movie In documents released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office were accounts of interviews with witnesses including text messages and emails from crew and cast members, sometimes detailing chaotic and acrimonious conditions on set prior to Hutchins' death. The documents still offer no conclusive answers on how live ammunition got onto the movie set and into a replica Colt .45-caliber revolver that was fired by Baldwin and killed Hutchins. Baldwin was handed the gun during a rehearsal at a ranch outside Santa Fe. A live round hit her and movie director Joel Souza, who survived. Baldwin has denied responsibility for Hutchins' death and said live rounds should never have been allowed onto the set of the low-budget movie. Among others who have been blamed for the shooting are armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who Baldwin claims didn't check the gun properly, and assistant director Dave Halls, the last person to handle the revolver before Baldwin. By the time Halyna was killed, many of the film's crew had walked off set in protest over conditions and pay. In this image from video released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office, Alec Baldwin stands in costume and speaks with investigators following a fatal shooting last year on the movie set In his own lawsuit, Baldwin accuses armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed of failing to verify the Colt revolver he was using was safe Baldwin, serving as a producer and starring actor in the movie, has since avoided criminal charges, even after being ruled partially responsible for the tragedy. The civil settlement does not affect Santa Fe's current criminal investigation. In October, Baldwin filed a lawsuit against four people involved in the film saying they were negligent in providing him with a gun that discharged. The suit sees Baldwin suing film's armorer and props assistant, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed; assistant director David Halls; props master Sarah Zachry; and Seth Kenney, who supplied guns and ammunition to the film set. In his suit, Baldwin accuses Gutierrez-Reed of failing to verify that a Colt revolver he was using in rehearsal was safe. The suit also states that Halls failed to check the weapon before he declared it safe and handed it to Baldwin, and that Zachry failed to ensure that weapons used on the New Mexico set were safe. All those named in the suit have denied any culpability. Baldwin's complaint follows a suit filed against him and others on the set last year by script supervisor Mamie Mitchell over their alleged role in the shooting that caused her great emotional distress. Baldwin reached a civil settlement with Hutchins' family in October. The former Disney exec who lasted only four months on the job had made $119,505-a-day before resigning amid fallout over Florida's so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill. Geoff Morrell, 57, who served as the companys chief corporate-affairs officer for 70 workdays, made a total of $8,365,403 in total compensation, before quitting on April 29, 2022, the Wall Street Journal reports. Along with the massive salary, Disney also paid him about half-a-million dollars to move from London to Los Angeles with his family, and then dished out another half when he quit, according to the company's security filing on Tuesday. Morrell left the company after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed the Parent's Bill of Rights last year, leading to a public relations disaster where employees protested the company's initial silence on the issue that pitted the House of Mouse against state lawmakers. Geoff Morrell (pictured), 57, who served as the Disney's chief corporate-affairs officer for 70 workdays last year, made $119,505-a-day before resigning During his brief tenure, Morrell oversaw a public relations disaster following Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (above) push for the controversial 'Don't Say Gay' bill The company saw hundreds of employees and demonstrators protest its initial silence, and then another wave of backlash after it opposed the bill FORMER DISNEY CEO BOB CHAPEK WALKED AWAY WITH $20M SEVERANCE PACKAGE When Bob Chapek was ousted as the CEO of Disney last year, he walked away with an enormous $20million in severance. That was in addition to the generous $24million compensation package he received throughout the year. Chapek was ousted following a disastrous two-year period, during which the company turned off many consumers with its woke new tone. Under Chapek's rule, the company's stock price fell. He also battled with Florida lawmakers over the so-called 'Don't Say Gay Bill', which Gov. Ron DeSantis championed. The company claims it has excelled financially without him, and says Iger - who was brought back after the disastrous and brief tenure of Bob Chapek - is the right man to lead. Advertisement Morrell joined Disney at the start of 2022, having previously worked as a Pentagon spokesman during the Obama administration and in BP. He was hired at a salary of $489,500, with an additional $2.75 million bonus handed out as compensation for leaving BP, where he worked in communications and external affairs, according to the security filing. A source at Disney told WSJ that the total 2022 compensation for Morrell, which is estimated to see an additional $5.1 million after stocks and options are taken into account, will likely be $2 million less due to drops in performance-based payments. Disney's filings also show that the company has purchased the $4.5 million Pasadena home Morrell bought last year when he moved to California. Morrell has since moved to Washington, D.C., and earlier this month, he signed with the consulting firm Teneo Holdings as their president of global strategy and communications. When departing last April, Morrell wrote in an email to staff: 'It has become clear to me that for a number of reasons it is not the right fit. I have decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities.' Although his tenure at Disney was brief, Morrell over saw one of the most heated periods in the company's history as it faced mounting pressure to respond to Florida's controversial 'Don't Say Gay' bill. Disney was met with a furious backlash from employees over its initial silence, with hundreds marching at its Florida and California theme parks in protest. The company then faced critics for coming out against the bill - which bans teaching of topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3. Dozens of employees marched outside of Disney's headquarters in Burbank, California last year as part of a full day of walkouts across the company's theme parks and offices The controversy also embroiled ousted CEO Bob Chapek, who was accused of pushing a woke agenda at Disney and was ultimately replaced by returning CEO Bob Iger. Disney's latest filing also revealed that Chapek, who took over for Iger in 2020, is eligible for about $20 million in severance pay. That would be in addition to the $24 million he earned last year from his salary and stock options and awards. With Disney currently working to clean up its reputation while facing challenges from state lawmakers looking to revoke its special tax district status, the House of Mouse is facing a challenge from billionaire investor Nelson Peltz. Billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz (right), with son-in-law Brooklyn Beckham. He launched a bid for a Disney board seat last week Peltz made a play for Disney with an SEC filing asking for a seat on the board, and with a multi-faceted social media and website campaign to 'restore' its lost 'magic' Peltz, the 80-year-old father of Brooklyn Beckham's wife Nicola, last week submitted a request to the SEC for a seat at the Mickey Mouse table. He pointed out how Disney had underperformed the S&P 500 consistently, and said his business acumen could lead it to success. Peltz owns a 0.5 percent stake in Disney through his firm Trian Partners. Disney has since submitted a 16-page slideshow to the Securities and Exchange Commission that lays out why they think he's the wrong man for the job. Now, it will be down to Disney's shareholders to decide whether or not Peltz gets a seat. The vote will take place at the 2023 annual shareholders meeting. A date has not yet been set. A 24-year-old is under police guard in hospital Two cops have suffered acid burns after storming into a southwest Sydney home filled with a corrosive chemical where a 91-year-old man was found dead. The elderly man, who had been stabbed, was discovered by NSW Police officers at about 9.15pm on Wednesday night at a home in Roselands. The man's distraught son made the grisly discovery and contacted police, who then arrested another male family member at a nearby home. Fire and Rescue NSW had to be called to the scene after two officers suffered minor chemical burns. The elderly man, who's believed to have been stabbed, was discovered by NSW Police officers on Wednesday night at a home in Roselands (pictured, police at the scene) Fire and Rescue NSW were called to the Roselands home after two police officers suffered burns from hydrochloric acid (pictured, Fire and Rescue NSW officers cleaning the home) Police and Fire and Rescue NSW attended a home in Roselands after the body of a 91-year-old man was found (pictured, emergency services at the scene) Superintendent Sheridan Waldau said the chemical found at the scene was hydrochloric acid, which is commonly used to adjust the PH levels for swimming pools. She said the substance was spread around the house, but did not appear to be on the body. The officers were treated by paramedics at the scene before being taken to St George Hospital, with one receiving oxygen as treatment for their burns. Both officers have since been released. A 24-year-old male relative was arrested at about 11:15pm and taken to hospital where he remains under police guard. A young man is under police guard in hospital after a 91-year-old man was found dead in Sydney 's southwest (pictured, police at the scene) NSW Police said the incident is believed to be domestic violence-related with police and Fire and Rescue teams (above) seen collecting evidence from the home Superintendent Waldau said the 24-year-old had recently come under notice of police and would require treatment and possibly surgery for injuries sustained prior to his arrest. NSW Police believe the incident is domestic violence-related. Superintendent Waldau said one male relative at the scene was very distressed and had to temporarily be restrained. 'It was a highly volatile and emotional situation last night,' she told reporters on Thursday. 'One of the other family members was quite emotional when the 24-year-old was taken into custody. 'As a result, police had to step in and restrain him. He was not arrested and he will not be charged. He was just restrained and taken away from the scene so we could calm him down.' The embattled mayor of New Orleans is now accused of having an 'ongoing adulterous affair' with the former head of her police detail who has since been suspended due to an investigation into irregularities relating to his pay. The latest allegations came to light after the wife of New Orleans' police detective Jeffrey Vappie, 50, amended her divorce petition to claim that her estranged husband was involved in a sexual relationship with a woman named only as 'Mrs. L.C.' Multiple media outlets in the area have confirmed that 'Mrs. L.C.' is the city's mayor LaToya Cantrell, 50. Cantrell became the first woman elected as mayor of New Orleans in 2018. She is currently battling a recall effort amid numerous financial scandals. Vappie's wife, Danielle, alleges that her husband and the mayor have been carrying on the affair since May 2021, the same month that he began working on Cantrell's detail. Since 2022, Fox New Orleans have broadcast numerous videos showing Mayor Latoya Cantrell and her bodyguard Jeffrey Vappie going into a city-owned apartment together Jeffrey Vappie's wife, Danielle, shown here, is a school principal in New Orleans, she claims her estranged husband admitted to her that he was having an affair Danielle made the changes to her divorce application this month. Last year, Fox New Orleans reported that Vappie spent more than five hours of his workday with Cantrell in a publicly owned apartment in the city's Upper Pontalba section. Following those reports, Vappie found himself under investigation over the hours he was alleged to be clocking in. In January 2022, he was also accused of spending $916 for a single night in a hotel room in Washington DC. In addition, he's believed to have traveled with her to a party in Los Angeles for a dinner that included Brad Pitt among the guests. He also accompanied her on a trip to Scotland. Since October 2021, Cantrell's decision to bring security on trips has cost taxpayers more than $50,000, Fox 8 News calculated. Vappie also spent 112 hours at her apartment over a 27 day stretch, and was even seen watering her plants The station reports that Vappie confessed about the affair to his wife. The couple has been living apart since November 2022. At the time of writing, Vappie is no longer on the mayor's detail. Accordin to a study from Fox New Orleans, Vappie spent 112 hours at Cantrell's apartment over a 27 day stretch, and was even seen watering her plants The station reports that Vappie confessed about the affair to his wife, pictured here Mayor Latoya Cantrell pictured with her husband, Jason, she has not made any statements about her the status of her marriage Vappie has been a detective with the City of New Orleans PD since 1997, according to his LinkedIn page. In 2020, he received a Master's in Government Administration. His wife Danielle is the Chief Academic Officer at Einstein Charter Schools in New Orleans. According to the school's website, Danielle is the principal. She is a graduate of the University of New Orleans and Xavier University of Louisiana. Danielle is also a US Army veteran, serving between 1988 and 2000. Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, told Fox New Orleans following the latest allegations that the revelations could result in ethical and criminal concerns for the pair. Goyeneche said that Vappie could be exposed if he's found not to have been performing police duties while he was on the clock. He said: 'If he was on city time, padding his payroll. If he was malfeasant in office, he wasnt performing his official assigned duties while he was with the mayor. Those are some potential state violations.' Goyenche added that those alleged offenses could extend in federal territory regarding potential wire fraud and misuse of federal funds. He also said that it's likely that investigators will want to speak to Vappie's wife. Mayor Cantrell breaks ground in June 2021 at a construction project at the school where Denise Vappie is the principal, one month earlier, Jeffrey Vappie joined the mayor's detail Vappie and the mayor are seen leaving the Upper Pontalba Building apartment together. But she has also been pictured walking around the same area alone, sparking questions as to why she needs Vappie's services at all Cantrell is married to lawyer Jason Cantrell. The couple has a daughter, RayAnn, together. Jason Cantrell is no longer mentioned on the mayor's official biography page. The mayor last mentioned her husband on Twitter in June 2021 when she wished him a happy birthday. In November 2022, it was reported that Cantrell upgraded hotel bookings to stay in king suites during trips she made to Washington DC and San Francisco in January and April of this year, potentially incurring costs of around $2,400. A month earlier, Cantrell was required to pay back almost $30,000 to the city after violating its policy by upgrading her flights to first class and claiming initially that economy flights were unsafe for black women. New Orleans city policy dictates that similar rules apply to upgrading hotel rooms. The policy says: 'Upgrades for hotel accommodations at the expense of the city are not permitted unless the hotel is unable to provide allowable accommodations at the time necessary to carry out the purpose of travel. Hotel Washington in Washington DC where Cantrell spent nearly $2,500 on a king suite The Hyatt Regency SOMA in San Francisco where Cantrell stayed and incurred a cost of nearly $2,000 When Cantrell traveled to San Francisco in April she stayed at the Hyatt Regency SOMA where she upgraded to a king suite that cost nearly $2,000, $800 more than other city employees. Similarly, on a trip to DC in January she stayed at the Hotel Washington and again occupied a king suite. When Cantrell went to Reno, Nevada, in June her room cost hundreds more than other city employees who traveled. Head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission Rafael told Fox 8 News he believes the hotel upgrades are also a violation of city policy. Cantrell's stylist - who she has paid $175,000 since 2017 - is also facing a possible criminal probe over the thousands she's spent on clothes for the lawmaker. In recent months her administration has been dogged by allegations of misuse of funds and resources - with the Democrat leader even complaining to the Society for Professional Journalists about the scrutiny. The journalist body found the investigations were 'entirely appropriate and journalistically ethical.' 'Anyone who wants to question how I protect myself just doesn't understand the world black women walk in,' she told a press conference. Cantrell was later shamed into repaying public funds she'd used for the luxury international trips. Critics noticed that despite fearing for her safety on a flight to Paris, she felt sufficiently safe to walk alone around the city's French Quarter, despite New Orleans having one of the highest murder rates in the United States. Amid the scandal, Cantrell repaid the cash spent on her first class flights: $40,000 on a four-day trip in June to France, with her own first-class flight costing almost $18,000 while her aides traveled in economy. 'My travel accommodations are a matter of safety, not of luxury,' said Cantrell, who earns approximately $188,000. Cantrell was also facing questions about $175,000 in payments made since 2017 from Cantrell's campaign to her 'image consultant', Tanya Haynes, and her business, Jolie Image Consulting. Cantrell is facing questions over money paid to her stylist, Tanya Haynes (pictured) The payments to Haynes have generally increased over time, reaching $6,000 per month in 2021, the records obtained by 4WWL show. Two stores where Haynes shopped - Ballin's Boutique, where she often bought clothes for the mayor, and BC Kitchen and Bath, where Haynes recently ordered a new $17,000 kitchen - have been subpoenaed. Woolworths workers will now have the option to skip Australia Day - as the supermarket giant joins Channel 10 and other corporations in not celebrating the national holiday. The supermarket chain said it decided to make Australia Day flexible for staff - allowing them to treat it as a normal shift and take another day as a holiday in compensation. Woolworths, which has more than 160,000 workers across Australia, claims this was the recognise that the day - which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet - was regarded as a painful one by Aboriginal groups. Woolworths employees can choose whether they celebrate Australia Day with workers told they can take January 26 off or swap it for another date. Woolworths said the decision is in recognition of what January 26 represents for Indigenous people and encouraged its workers to 'mark the day as it suits them' (pictured, an Australia Day reveller) 'With more than 160,000 team members across the country, were proud to be a snapshot of Australian society,' a Woolworths spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia. 'To that end, we recognise the 26th of January means different things to different people. We think its up to each team member to mark the day as it suits them. 'Our priority is creating a safe and supportive environment in our stores and sites and creating a workplace where every team member can belong. 'We remain focused on our reconciliation commitments including supporting the aims of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.' Media giant Channel 10, Telstra and accounting firms Deloitte (above), KPMG and EY have also told employees they can choose a day off to celebrate Australia Day instead of January 26 Woolworths is the latest in a string of companies to effectively cancel Australia Day for staff. Media giant Channel 10, Telstra and accounting firms Deloitte, KPMG and EY have also given employees the choice of when to celebrate Australia Day. The holiday will be the first time Telstra's 29,000 employees can choose whether to work on Australia Day after they voted on the subject earlier in 2022. 'Our employees have the choice to work on Australia Day or take leave on another day. This flexibility is built into the Enterprise Agreements our employees voted on earlier this year,' a Telstra spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia. Telstra's decision comes after Network 10 told staff they can choose how to spend the national holiday, and that it was 'not a day to celebrate' for Indigenous Australians. US company Paramount owns Network Ten and chief content officer, Beverley McGarvey, and co-lead Jarrod Villani only referred to Australia Day as 'January 26' in an email sent to all editorial and programming staff. 'At Paramount ANZ we aim to create a safe place to work where cultural differences are appreciated, understood and respected,' the pair wrote in the email, first published by The Australian's Media Diary column. 'For our First Nations people, we as an organisation acknowledge that January 26 is not a day of celebration. 'We recognise that there has been a turbulent history, particularly around that date and the recognition of that date being Australia Day. 'We recognise that January 26 evokes different emotions for our employees across the business, and we are receptive to employees who do not feel comfortable taking this day as a public holiday.' KPMG said in a statement that its staff will also be allowed to skip Australia Day. 'KPMG's cultural leave policy allows people to swap an existing public holiday with a different day, so they can recognise and celebrate religious or significant events relevant to their culture, Indigenous heritage or religious beliefs. This also applies to Australia Day,' a spokeswoman for the company said. Controversy has surrounded the celebration of Australia Day in recent years, with many calling for the date to be changed, but with no consensus on when it should be. Various councils around the country have boycotted the holiday, saying it doesn't align with their views. January 26, 1788 was the day the First Fleet landed at Sydney Harbour - after having abandoned plans to settle at Botany Bay to the south days earlier - with Governor Arthur Phillip raising the British flag to mark the founding of New South Wales. The date has become increasingly controversial, with many Indigenous people observing it as a day of mourning and instead labelling it 'Invasion Day'. Earlier this year, Labor scrapped a controversial rule enforced by former prime minister Scott Morrison that forced councils to run citizenship ceremonies on January 26. Councils can now hold the citizenship ceremonies any time from January 23 to 29. Merri-bek Council in Melbourne's north, recently announced it would cease hosting citizenship ceremonies on January 26, and will instead host a mourning ceremony to acknowledge the experiences of Indigenous Australians. 'The very idea that we celebrate, hold parties and welcome new people to this country on this day is pretty shameful,' Councillor James Conlan told a local council meeting earlier this month. 'In a deeply twisted irony... the council asks First Nations elders to conduct their culturally significant Welcome to Country ceremony on a day that signifies their own disposition.' Merri-bek Council is the third Melbourne council to discontinue Australia Day citizenship ceremonies, after the Yarra and Darebin councils did the same in 2017. Those two councils are now not allowed to host citizenship ceremonies at any time of the year, following an order from the then-coalition federal government. The Melbourne City Council in September also voted to advocate the federal government to change the date of Australia Day. Citizenship ceremonies will still happen in the city on January 26 but council will also support efforts to acknowledge First Nations perspectives of the day. The Inner West Council in Sydney and Moreland in Melbourne also scrapped their Australia Day events this year, while Byron Bay Council moved its citizenship ceremony to January 25. Donald Trump vowed to crack down on Chinese-backed companies' ability to buy 'vital infrastructure' in the United States in a new 2024 campaign video released on Wednesday. The former president accused Beijing's government and businesses that are run on its dollars of 'spending trillions of dollars to take over the crown jewels of the United States economy.' The cornerstone of his plan calls for a ban on Chinese nationals buying U.S. farmland, amid bipartisan concerns of Beijing using its dollars to carve out influence in economies across the world. Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, a leading voice in Congress against Beijing's growing soft power whose state has taken action to tackle the issue, told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that he was glad to see it raised on the 2024 campaign trail. 'This issue requires immediate action from leaders from across the country as it's a national security threat and I'm pleased President Trump has made it a campaign priority,' Waltz told DailyMail.com. Donald Trump announced a strategy proposal to take on China's growing influence on his Truth Social account 'I hope lawmakers can couple Floridas Strategic Land Plan with existing federal legislation proposals this Congress to restrict these kinds of purchases from the Chinese Communist Party and other adversarial foreign entities.' Trump claimed in his new video, 'China is buying up our technology. They're buying up food supplies. They're buying up our farmland. They're buying up our minerals and natural resources. They're buying up our ports and shipping terminals.' 'As I've long said, economic security is national security. China does not allow American companies to take over their critical infrastructure. And America should not allow China to take over our critical infrastructure.' Trump called for 'aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership of any vital infrastructure in the United States, including energy, technology, telecommunications, farmland, natural resources, medical supplies, and other strategic national assets.' The former president called for an immediate halt to transactions with China and firms that it backs, and for pressure to be put on them to relinquish existing ownership 'that put our national security at risk.' Pages from a Grand Forks, North Dakota document about the development of a wet corn mill by Fufeng USA, a Chinese company The land purchase alarmed some national security hawks because of its proximity to a U.S. Air Force base 'If we don't do this, the United States will be owned by China which would make them very happy,' Trump said. A prominent part of his plan is placing a total ban on Chinese nationals from buying U.S. farmland. It's not immediately clear how feasible of a policy point this would be to implement. GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas immediately praised Trump's plan, writing on Twitter: 'China must be BANNED from having ANY ownership of our infrastructure, and President Trump is the ONLY person who can DESTROY Chinas corrupt influence on our country. If were going to stop China, we MUST get President Trump BACK in the White House!!' As of now, foreign transactions involving U.S. farmland are required to be disclosed to the USDA, under the 1978 Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act. Failing to do so risks steep fines. But now there's a growing consensus among Congressional lawmakers that the four decades-old policy may need updating. Foreign policy hawks in Congress like Waltz have been sounding the alarm for more than a year on companies at least partially funded by China's authoritarian government, that have been buying up vast tracts of land in the American Midwest. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has seen its soft power greatly increase on the world stage through various economic investments and military developments Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson said China was buying up U.S. farmland 'at an alarming rate' last week, according to the Quad City Times. She introduced legislation to further increase transparency on foreign purchases of U.S. farmland, including security assessments and alerts for 'idle' land leases. The plan Trump laid out on Wednesday is similar to a proposal floated by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis - another likely Republican 2024 contender - to crack down on Chinese purchases in the Sunshine State. DeSantis said at a recent press conference that he wants such a ban to be 'as broad as possible,' from farmland to retirement real estate. 'If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, theyve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things. And, you know, when they have interests that are opposed to ours, and youve seen how theyve wielded their authority especially with President Xi, whos taken a much more Marxist-Leninist turn since hes been ruling China,' the Republican governor said this month. 'That is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases.' In the midst of all his troubles, Hunter Biden sure knows who to turn to his controversial 'sugar brother' lawyer Kevin Morris. The First Son was spotted visiting his friend on Tuesday as possible federal charges hang over his head and he becomes embroiled in the discovery of his father's classified documents mess. Morris became known as Hunter's 'sugar brother' after he reportedly loaned him $2.8million to pay off a 2021 tax bill just as a federal investigation into his financial affairs was launched and a prison term loomed. And he also waged a campaign to try to discredit information from the laptop computer that Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, the contents of which have proved an extreme embarrassment to the Biden family. Hollywood lawyer, Morris, 59, is known for his hard-driving tactics. Hunter Biden was seen paying a visit to his 'sugar brother' attorney Kevin Morris at his home in Malibu on Tuesday Morris - a Hollywood attorney - became known as Hunter's 'sugar brother' last May after reportedly paying his $2.8million overdue tax bill and helping fund Hunter's lavish lifestyle, including covering rent and other expenses and assisting in selling his artwork Hunter's legal problems surrounding everything from his love child to his federal taxes are mounting so there are any number of reasons why he would want to consult his attorney As DailyMail.com exclusively reported last October, he sent 'threatening' texts to members of the right-wing transparency group Marco Polo which landed him with an ethics complaint. He called one member of the group 'a f***ing moron,' adding in other texts 'I'm gonna take all your money,' 'I know where you live', and 'You're going to enjoy being a buttboy for 20 years dude. Lube up.' Morris sent the crude texts to a Marco Polo investigator, who had been messaging the lawyer posing as a potential ally for Hunter's defense case. Morris is also a published author, having released a collection of short stories entitled 'White Man's Problems' in 2015, followed by a novel 'All Joe Knight' in 2016 Morris also allegedly lied to get on to the film set of My Son Hunter, a movie designed to show Biden in the worst possible light with tales of his drug use, partying and corrupt business deals. He flew on a private plane to Serbia where the movie was being filmed claiming he wanted to interview the producers for a documentary he claimed to be making about Biden's corruption. At the time, producer Phelim McAleer said: 'Now that I know of his representation of Hunter Biden, his questions while they were filming suddenly make a lot of sense. I thought he was just making a documentary but now it appears he was deceptively spying for his client Hunter Biden.' Morris and two colleagues we were given full access to the set for several days taping hours of footage for the supposed documentary. The filmmakers claim that Morris was particularly interested in the contents of the movie including what sources they had for their information and what they knew about how Hunter's laptop came into the hands of media. Hunter's visit comes amid mounting questions over his father's classified documents and the ongoing investigation into his own tax filings and business dealings The investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes began when his father was still serving as vice president during the Obama administration Morris made his name as attorney for South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He has also represented a whole list of Hollywood heavyweights including Ellen DeGeneres, Scarlett Johansson, Matthew McConaughey and Chris Rock. Hunter Biden, 52, is facing mounting challenges since Republicans gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives. They have threatened to launch investigations in a bid to tie President Joe Biden to his son's activities. Respected Washington DC attorney Abbe Lowell, who represented Jared Kushner during the FBI director Robert Mueller's probe into his father-in-law Donald Trump will work for Hunter on those matters. Republicans also want to know how much access Hunter had to his father's home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents have been discovered. David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for Delaware is also investigating Hunter's dealings and is said to be zeroing in on the $30,000 Hunter had claimed as business deductions on his tax filings. He could also face charges over the purchase of a handgun in 2018, when he declared on the application that he did not use drugs. Photos found on the laptop showed him strung out around that time and he admitted that he used crack cocaine in his memoir Beautiful Things, released in 2021. Biden could also need legal advice in his bid to prevent Lunden Roberts, a former stripper and mother of his love child, Navy, changing the four-year-old girl's surname to Biden. Just this month he filed papers in an Arkansas court asking a judge to deny Roberts's request, saying the name change would rob the child of a 'peaceful existence.' DailyMail.com last year revealed that Morris sent the crude texts (pictured) to members of the right-wing transparency group Marco Polo who had been messaging the lawyer posing as a potential ally for Hunter's defense case A furious-sounding Morris responded: 'You're going to enjoy being a buttboy for 20 years dude. Lube up' Actor Laurence Fox plays Hunter Biden alongside John James as Joe, in the film My Son Hunter, which was filmed in Serbia. Morris was reported to have flown to Serbia to spy on the movie set last year None of the Biden family including Hunter are believed ever to have met Navy, who Hunter initially insisted was not his, until a court-ordered DNA test proved otherwise. Roberts's lawyer Clinton Lancaster said she wanted to change her daughter's name as the Biden name is 'synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute and politically powerful.' Biden and Roberts are also still battling over child support. Hunter wants his payments reduced claiming his financial circumstance had undergone 'a substantial material change.' But Roberts said he has 'well-established history of a lavish lifestyle' and is trying to 'stifle discovery into his financial affairs while simultaneously reducing his child support obligation on the claim that he now earns less income.' Biden, who has taken up painting since getting sober and remarrying, is also under a cloud surrounding the amount he receives for his artwork. Last month his art dealer, New York gallery owner George Berges, said his art was priced between $55,000 and $225,000 per piece. This has led to ethics concerns as the buyers typically remain anonymous. Fears have been raised that the buyers could be foreigners trying to influence presidential policies. TikTok is barred at a Texas university to protect the school's database from the Chinese Communist Party - but students can still carry handguns. The University of Texas at Austin blocked students from using TikTok on the school's WiFi network following Governor Greg Abbott's initiative to ban the social media app on all state agency devices last month. While officials are protecting themselves from data leaks, the school remains lenient on allowing students to conceal carry under a state law passed in 2016. Jeff Neyland, the university's technology adviser, told the Texas Tribune the steps to bar TikTok were critical to 'eliminate risks.' 'As outlined in the governors directive, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users devices - including when, where and how they conduct internet activity - and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,' Neyland said. The University of Texas at Austin barred students from using TikTok on campus. School officials fear that the app can share American user data with the CCP Texas A&M and the University of Texas at Dallas are also planning to ban the app. Meanwhile, Auburn University in Alabama banned TikTok on campus in December. Some unsatisfied students complained they were unable to log onto the app in their on-campus dorms. 'I am a little annoyed that now anytime I want to get on the app, Im going to have to use data and find ways around it,' student Elizabeth Hunt told The New York Times. The school told students they barred the app to 'protect valuable information and to reduce the possible cybersecurity threats associated with using TikTok.' TikTok bans also extended to the University of Oklahoma and Boise State University also banned TikTok on campus. Texas Governor Greg Abbott banned the social media app on all state agency devices last month The app, which has long been a trouble spot for the US intelligence community, has 85 million American users and is owned by a Chinese company that employs members of the Chinese Communist Party and has a subsidiary that is partially owned by the CCP. Members of the US intelligence community have long feared that the Chinese regime could compel TikTok to share American user data with the CCP. Governor Abbott became the latest state leader to ban the use of the popular app in December, following Maryland, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Nebraska. Abbott, a Republican, said, 'TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users' devicesincluding when, where, and how they conduct Internet activityand offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government.' Members of the US intelligence community have long feared that the Chinese regime could compel TikTok to share American user data with the CCP While the campus focuses on safety, students are able to conceal carry despite the state's recent mass shootings, including in Uvalde last year. The state law passed in 2016 allows students 21 and older with a concealed handgun license to carry weapons in classrooms and buildings throughout the University of Texas system, one of the nation's largest with an enrollment of more than 214,000 students. The law was amended in 2021 to remove the requirement of a concealed carry certification. At the time, Abbott said the law could prevent mass shootings because someone with a licensed concealed weapon could be on campus ready to confront a potential gunman. Disturbing footage posted online documents the moment an Ohio cop punches a woman multiple times in her face as she is being detained. The video, which was originally posted Tuesday night by Dayton 24/7 Now, shows a Butler Township police officer pummeling Latinka Hancock on January 16 and apparently putting her in a chokehold. Hancock was reportedly sent to the hospital in the aftermath, where she was diagnosed with a head injury. The incident apparently came after Hancock got into a heated argument with McDonald's employees because she ordered a Big Mac with extra cheese but was handed a regular Big Mac. Authorities released body camera footage showing Hancock apparently cooperating with authorities before they punched her. The department will now continue to investigate the police officer's actions, who is now on administrative leave as her attorneys call for him to be fired. Video posted online shows the moment an Ohio police officer punched a woman in the head multiple times A one-minute video of the altercation shows cops dragging Hancock by her arms as she tries to wrestle herself free. She then appears to get into an argument with the officers at the scene, waving her hand around as she speaks to them. At that point, the officer on the left could be seen apparently pointing a stun gun at her as he and his partner move in closer to surround Hancock. The officer on the right appears to try to hold her arm and shoulder down before he starts brutally pummeling Hancock in the face at least four times until she falls forward on the hood of a police cruiser. The Butler Township Police Department posted Tuesday night that it is investigating the incident. 'We are aware of the video recorded by a bystander that is circulating on Facebook concerning an incident that occurred on January 16, 2023, involving two of our officers,' it posted. 'This incident is currently under investigation in accordance with departmental policies and procedures, as is the case whenever force is used in an arrest,' it continued. By Wednesday afternoon, the police department released body camera footage showing cops talking to Hancock prior to the fight. They say she was at first cooperating with law enforcement, WDTN reports, but then refused to provide her name and was arrested for resisting arrest. The sergeant involved has since been put on paid administrative leave. The video begins with officers apparently dragging Latinka Hancock toward their police cruiser on January 16 They eventually surround her with the officer on the left apparently pointing a stun gun at the woman while the officer on the right holds her down before he starts punching her in the face Authorities say the sergeant has since been placed on administrative leave as the Butler Township Police continue to investigate In an emotional press conference Wednesday night, Latinka shared her story publicly for the first time as she broke down in tears. She said she ordered the Big Mac with extra cheese from the drive-thru on Martin Luther King Junior Day when she noticed that there was not extra cheese on it, even though she had paid the 30 extra cents. Hancock then went into the store to get it corrected, and the manager agreed, she said. But when the manager asked the line cook to add cheese to the burger, Hancock said she was told she would have to pay another 30 cents. She said she then argued, showing the line cook the receipt detailing how she already paid for the extra cheese when the line cook got angry and asked her to leave. Hancock then said she decided to wait for her burger in the parking lot, which is where the police confronted her. 'All as I wanted that woman to do is follow the instructions that I didn't give her, that her manager gave,' Hancock said Wednesday night, explaining: 'I want either the sandwich or my money. 'Did I know that I was going to be attacked? No,' she said, explaining that she only stayed to allow the cops to 'help us figure it out. 'I almost lost my life off it,' she claimed, as she started to cry. Hancock said she remembered thinking: 'I'm not going to be George Floyd, you're not going to get me on the ground.' Hancock shook and broke down in tears as she recounted her experience Wednesday night Her attorney, Michael Wright, is calling on the police department to fire the officer involved Her attorneys with Wright and Schulte say they will now conduct their own investigation as they called for the officers to be fired. Attorney Michael Wright noted that the police 'didn't do anything or address any of this until the video went viral.' He said he is calling for more videos detailing the incident, including those from inside the McDonald's, as well as the dispatch information. 'Nothing about this was reasonable,' he said. 'This was uncalled for.' Comedian Leslie Jones returned to TV as guest host of The Daily Show Tuesday, bringing her outrageous sense of humor to controversy over Boston's new Martin Luther King Jr. statue. Jones, formerly a star of Saturday Night Live and the failed reboot of Ghostbusters, tackled the statue titled The Embrace as she begins guest hosting the show for the week in the wake of Trevor Noah's departure. Many have mocked the statue's appearance, with Jones taking a new angle saying that the statue resembled oral sex. 'They are celebrating you in Boston right now,' Jones exclaimed, referencing people who have participated in the activity. Comedian Leslie Jones returned to TV as guest host of The Daily Show Tuesday, bringing her outrageous sense of humor to controversy over Boston's new Martin Luther King Jr. statue Jones then pivoted to the backlash against the statue, which has included the likes of everyone from right wing pundits to Coretta Scott King's cousin, saying she was speaking only to black audience members as King was 'our civil rights icon.' 'Okay, black people, what the f**k we gonna do? We gotta talk about this, cause you know it's messed up when black people and the Proud Boys hate the same statue,' she said. She then became more contemplative, suggesting the statue might age well, acknowledging that people didn't like the Eiffel Tower when it was unveiled. 'Maybe it's just a matter of time, in time we will see this statue for what it truly is,' she joked. She then returned to it with correspondent Dulce Sloan, who said that designers never get Martin Luther King's statue correct, specifically referring to the one in Washington DC, before turning to address 'white people.' 'The man literally marched for freedom and his statue don't have no legs! Say what you will about them goofy a** conservatives, but they know how to make a statue. It's a white dude on a horse, it's always a white dude on a horse, there's no confusion.' 'That's what the liberals need to do, make a statue of MLK in his suit on a horse.' When Jones asked Sloan if King even had a horse, Sloan responded: 'I don't know and neither do y'all. So put him on a horse, put him on a throne, hell, put him in Joe Biden's Corvette! At least we would know who it was.' Jones then pivoted to the backlash against the statue, which has included the likes of everyone from right wing pundits to Coretta Scott King's cousin, saying she was speaking only to black audience members as King was 'our civil rights icon' The Embrace was unveiled in Boston Friday ahead of Martin Luther King Day The sculpture was inspired by a hug shared by Dr. King and his wife Coretta when he learned he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize Dulce Sloan, who said that designers never get Martin Luther King's statue correct, specifically referring to the memorial to King in Washington DC Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hugs his wife Coretta after learning he'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1964 The sculpture was inspired by a photograph of the couple hugging in 1964 after learning that Dr. King Jr. had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hank Willis Thomas, the Brooklyn-based artist behind it, said he wanted to create a sculpture dedicated to love and not war, and that the image symbolized the strength of the iconic couple's marriage. Members of the King family were there to watch the sculpture's unveiling in Boston yesterday. But while the idea behind the piece is undeniably moving, the final result fell flat for many critics - not to mention Coretta's cousin. Former Guardian art critic Waldemar Januszczak said the 19-ton sculpture was a 'particularly bad monument to Martin Luther King' while others labeled it 'awful' and a 'waste of money'. Many asked why the artist chose to depict the couple's arms and shoulders but not their heads or faces, and said it was hard to 'wrap the brain around'. 'Were they really so scared to commission a full figure naturalistic likeness?' asked one critic. 'A great shame, perhaps the concept was far better than the execution...it just looks... awful!' Unimpressed: The sculpture fell flat for many who asked why the artist removed the couple's heads Artists and art critics were similarly unimpressed with the sculpture 'This is a sculpture that doesn't translate well in a photo; a single angle view doesn't capture it. 'Amazing idea, beautiful concept, but hard to wrap the brain around,' said another. According to an interview with the artist by The New York Times, the sculpture was paid for in part by Embrace Boston - a part of The Boston Foundation. The charity 'works toward racial and economic justice', according to the Times' report. It 'helped provide resources and $10.5 million in funds' which includes a 'maintenance fund' for the sculpture and the park in which it sits. Artist Hank Willis Thomas at the unveiling yesterday. He said he wanted to create a sculpture dedicated to 'love' not war Jones is the first guest host in the The Daily Show's post-Trevor Noah era after the South African comic stepped down in December. Future guest hosts include comedians Sarah Silverman, DL Hughley, Wanda Sykes and former Senator Al Franken. Noah stunned colleagues when he announced his departure from the show during a taping in front of a studio audience, according to a new report. Noah, who has hosted the Comedy Central program for seven years, announced his intention to depart during taping for the September 29 episode, taking the audience and the show's staff by surprise. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Monday, showrunner Jen Flanz said she and head writer Zhubin Parang were sitting together at a desk just off camera when Noah delivered the news to the camera. 'He starts talking and talking, and I look at Zhubin like, 'What is he doing? We're going to have to edit this,' recalled Flanz. Flanz, who has been with the Daily Show since Craig Kilborn was host in the late 90s, said that as they realized what was happening, she and Parang 'lost all feeling in our bodies.' 'Did you know?' Parang whispered to her, and she replied, 'Does it look like I knew?' In September, Noah broke the news to his audience that he was ending his stint at the program, telling viewers, 'There's another part of my life that I want to carry on exploring' Showrunner Jen Flanz (left) said she and head writer Zhubin Parang (right) were sitting together at a desk just off camera when Noah delivered the news to the camera Noah explained to THR that he decided to announce his departure in front of the audience because it was the best way to let everyone at the show know about his decision at the same time. 'Part of the reason I did it that way is because I didn't want anybody to be the person who then tells somebody else, who then tells somebody else, who then tells somebody else,' said Noah. 'And this is where we create the thing. [The show] is where we're together, our space, and so for me, it felt like the most natural way to tell everybody at the same time,' he told the outlet. Noah said in the new interview that the strains of producing the show during the pandemic had begun to weigh on him, saying he was ready for a new chapter in life. 'Maybe this comes with not being raised in America, but I believe that everything should end,' he said. 'A lot of American business and American media is just like, 'Keep it going as long as possible,' but I think it's healthy for things to end when they're still in a good place. I want to leave before I'm burnt out, because there are many other things I'd like to do,' added Noah. Noah's final episode with The Daily Show aired on December 8, and the comedian plans to quickly launch his next act with a 28-city stand-up comedy tour. Interview: China taking lead in reproductive, maternal health, says UNFPA head Xinhua) 13:42, January 18, 2023 DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- China plays a crucial role in improving reproductive and maternal health worldwide and in sharing data for development information, said Natalia Kanem, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), on Monday. Kanem made such statement during an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting that opened here on Monday. The meeting, themed "Cooperation in a Fragmented World," lasts until Friday. Commenting on the role China has played in helping the world to improve reproductive and maternal health, Kanem said, "China has been a very important partner to the United Nations (UN) and to us at the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund in particular, especially for South-South cooperation." "We've launched marvelous programs that's helping some African countries to broaden their ability to have better maternity hospitals, midwives and clinics." Praising China's contribution in sharing data on development information, Kanem said: "It's quite a crucial partnership and we really think that it benefits a huge number of countries outside China now that the world's population has exceeded eight billion people." Commenting on China's role in boosting economic and social development, Kanem said China "has helped us examine questions that are very important, for example, gender bias ... (which) hampers world productivity, the dignity and rights of women." "We have worked with some of the provinces in China and looked at their success stories in terms of reaching gender balance and equality, which can also be used in countries that are struggling with boy preference that exists in many, many parts around the world." "China supports our core funding, and also targeted interventions that we collaborate on, which are crucial for women's health." The UN agency head also commended China's victory over poverty. Two years ago, China announced that it had secured a "complete victory" in its fight against poverty, she said, adding that, over the past decade, the country has lifted 98.99 million impoverished rural residents above the poverty line. China's achievement to end absolute poverty meant that the country had met the poverty eradication target set out in the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ten years ahead of schedule, she said. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) In a recent two-part "Dr. Phil" special, a panel of experts believed that the Idaho murder suspect may have left a "calling card" and "very likely" had killed before. Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in Moscow, Idaho, in the early hours of November 13. Ex-FBI: Bryan Kohberger Has Potentially Killed Women Before Bryan Kohberger, a criminology doctoral student at the neighboring Washington State University, has been charged with four charges of first-degree murder and criminal burglary in connection with the quadruple homicide. A knife sheath made of tan leather was discovered near the bodies of two killed by the University of Idaho students, but the murder weapon has not yet been retrieved, creating a wave of conjecture among the "Dr. Phil" panel of experts. Former FBI agent Jonathan Gilliam said, "I think they'll find that knife. I think the knife could potentially be found because I think - like the car, and these things, I think these are part of his operational tools. It's no different than a go-bag for me." When questioned, trial counsel Mercedes Colwin speculated that the sheath may have been purposefully placed at the crime scene. The panel also stated that this was maybe not Kohberger's first murder, making him a possible serial murderer. Gilliam offered his belief that the culprit may have previously committed a murder, Fox News reported. Kohberger has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder for the November 13 deaths of college students Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Madison Mogen, 21. In addition, he was charged with one count of burglary as a felony. He was detained on December 30 in Pennsylvania while on Christmas vacation from Washington State University, where he is a doctoral student in criminology. Kohberger was extradited to Idaho on January 4, and he is currently being detained at the Latah County Jail. Per The Washington Times, the defendant has not entered a plea. The preliminary hearing for the suspect has been postponed until June to provide Kohberger's defense team more time to analyze discoveries. Read Also: Russia Prepares Poseidon Torpedo Warheads Idaho Murders Suspect May be Driven by 'Incel Complex' Meanwhile, a retired FBI agent told The NY Post that University of Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger may have been motivated to kill by his history of social troubles and a suspected "incel complex." Pete Yachmetz, a former FBI agent and security specialist, indicated to The Post this week that the murders may have been an attempt to demonstrate some sort of control. Occasionally, the identity is linked to misogynistic online forums and, in extreme situations, to criminal activity: In 2021, self-proclaimed incels will no longer exist. Tres Genco was arrested for plotting a mass killing at an undisclosed Ohio institution involving 3,000 sorority sisters. Genco pleaded guilty to the heinous conspiracy and now faces life in jail. Although this is not a valid psychiatric description, Psychology Today reported last year that males who identify as incels frequently suffer from poor mental health and emotions of victimization, inferiority, and loneliness. Yachmetz's appraisal of Kohberger mirrored that of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman, who told CourtTV last week that she felt the suspect fit the incel description. Lieberman was also interested in evidence indicating Kohberger had returned to the crime site in the hours after the deaths. Peers from Kohberger's Pennsylvania residence recalled him as a loner who was harassed for his weight before sliding into drug addiction, yet classmates at WSU characterized him as "gregarious." Kim Kenley, a rumored middle school love of Kohberger's, contacted the FBI about her experience with him. As detectives attempt to establish a connection between Kohberger and the four victims, they develop hypotheses on his suspected purpose. The suspect remains in detention in Latah County, where he is being detained without bond, following a brief hearing on Thursday. Kohberger is scheduled to return to court on June 26. He has not yet entered a plea to four charges of murder and one count of criminal burglary. Related Article: California Gang-Related Murder @YouTube @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The ex-boyfriend of Idaho murder victim Kaylee Goncalves has created an Instagram account paying tribute to their dog Murphy, who was inside the home during the quadruple homicide but was uninjured. The account featuring sweet images of the goldendoodle appeared on Tuesday, and within a day had garnered more than 53,000 followers and scores of comments expressing sympathy and support. Police in Moscow, Idaho found Murphy unharmed, inside Kaylee's third-floor bedroom with the door closed, following the November 13 murders of University of Idaho students Kaylee, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in an off-campus house. Kaylee had split custody of Murphy with her former longtime boyfriend Jack DuCoeur following their breakup just weeks before the murders, and he has been caring for the pup in the aftermath of the brutal crime. Murphy, the dog of Idaho murder victim Kaylee Goncalves, now has his own Instagram account, which has drawn an outpouring of sympathy and support Kaylee had split custody of Murphy with her former longtime boyfriend Jack DuCoeur following their breakup just weeks before the murders Though police quickly and publicly cleared DuCoeur of involvement with the murders, he was falsely hounded and accused by online 'sleuths' until charges were announced against lone suspect Bryan Kohberger late last month. The new Instagram account is written in the dog Murphy's voice, with the first post reading: 'Missing my mom every day, but trying to live my best life. I got to admire her beauty in the sky this evening.' The posts have drawn expressions of support for Murphy as well as Kaylee's loved ones, with one Instagram user commenting: 'Jack and Murphy you BOTH stay strong! Jack thank you from sharing Murphy with us! Sending prayers.' DuCoeur had dated Kaylee for about five years before the couple separated about three weeks before the murders -- though friends and family have said they believed the split was temporary, and expected them the get back together. Last month, DuCoeur's aunt Brooke Miller spoke out saying that he was heartbroken to be falsely accused of the murders by online theorists. She told the New York Post: 'He's not only lost the love of his life, and what we all thought and he probably thought as well, would be his future wife you know, get married and have kids and all of that.' Jack DuCoeur and Kaylee Goncalves, pictured, shared custody of the dog after they split up Kaylee's dog Murphy was spared during the slayings - officers found him alone in her room Meanwhile, unsealed court documents revealed Wednesday that police investigating the murders discovered a pillow covered in 'blood' in suspected killer Kohberger's apartment. Authorities swooped on the property on the Washington State University campus, in Pullman, just a few miles from the crime scene, and raided it for evidence after his arrest on December 30. A new search warrant, made public on January 17, shows that police found several hair strands, including one animal hair, a black glove, a computer tower and one unnamed item with a collection of 'dark red spots'. They also hauled away a pillow with a 'reddish/brown stain' on it and the top and bottom of a mattress cover with 'multiple stains'. Investigators, who raided the property back in December, also picked up receipts from Walmart and two Marshall's receipts, as well as collecting dust from his vacuum. Authorities initially sealed the search warrant for the murder suspect's Washington home arguing that releasing the details could 'prematurely' end the investigation. However, the document has now been unsealed with the approval of Whitman County Prosecutor Denis Tracy, who filed the motion on January 17. Court documents show that eight strands of hair were recovered from the apartment, as well as a 'possible' animal hair. Kohberger's apartment was searched hours after he was arrested at his parents' home in Pennsylvania on December 30 Court documents show police wanted to see if any hair had been 'transferred' onto Kohberger and then back to his apartment including that of Kaylee Goncalves' dog Murphy They also recovered a Fire TV stick during their search. All the items are now being stored at the Washington State University Police department. Authorities reportedly said they wanted to see if any hair had been 'transferred' onto Kohberger and then back to his apartment including that of Kaylee's dog Murphy. The application also stated that the home where the students were murdered had a significant amount of blood from the victims including 'spatter and castoff blood'. Investigators believe that it was likely that the killer would have had blood evidence on their body or clothing, and hoped to find trace evidence in Kohberger's apartment. However, they did not describe the results of any of the testing in the documents, and did not confirm if any hairs found matched the victims or Kaylee's dog. His offices at Washington State University were also searched, but nothing was seized by officers. Initially, the court ruled that the warrant should be sealed until March 1, claiming that if it were made public there would be a threat to 'public safety'. Kohberger is being held without bail, and has said through an attorney that he plans to plead not guilty, and expects to be exonerated of any involvement in the murders. Charity founder and investigative journalist Marjorie Wallace has revealed she doesn't like 'victimhood' when asked about Meghan Markle saying she had suicidal thoughts. The 80-year-old, who founded mental health charity SANE inn 1986, said while she doesn't like to 'condemn' anyone, she doesn't 'respect people who take victimhood on as a career'. Ms Wallace, who made her name with her reporting on the thalidomide scandal, remarked that people have to 'find ways of living with whatever disability or disadvantage you have'. A close confident of the Earl of Snowden for more than 40 years, the veteran journalist said everyone 'whether they're privileged or they're poor' has troubles in their lives. Marjorie Wallace, pictured here at a screening of 'The Silent Twins' in London in December, said she 'doesn't 'respect people who take victimhood on as a career' She made the remarks after being asked about Meghan Markle revealing that she had had suicidal thoughts on her Netflix documentary (pictured) 'You don't see a way out': Meghan Markle opens up about her suicidal thoughts and how she and Prince Harry want to be 'advocates of healing' while accepting 'anti-racism' award at NYC gala Meghan Markle and Prince Harry can be seen during an onstage interview at the Ripple of Hope Gala in New York City on Tuesday night Advertisement She made the remarks on Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women podcast, where she discussed her career and personal life which has seen her become a campaigner for people with disabilities and those who are disadvantaged. In the podcast, the topic of conversation turned to Meghan Markle and her decision to discuss in her Netflix documentary with Prince Harry that she developed suicidal thoughts as a working member of the Royal Family. When asked by Johnson about whether she thought it was wise to reveal this, Ms Wallace said: 'I don't like to condemn anyone. 'I'll tell you what I don't really like, and this is nothing to do with the Netflix series, is that I don't like victimhood and I've never played it myself in my life. 'Yes you can have terrible times, and I've had terrible terrible times with my children, with my life, with my divorce - all kinds of terrible things. 'But I don't really think playing the victim card helps, whatever you're a victim of, and I don't really respect people who take victimhood on as a career. 'That's not my stoic philosophy, I think you've got to find ways of living with whatever disability or disadvantage you have. Everyone has it whether they're privileged or they're poor.' Ms Wallace, who was awarded a CBE in 2008, for her services to mental healthcare, had been a close confident of Antony Armstrong-Jones, the 1st Earl of Snowden for decades. Meghan tearfully revealed she had had suicidal thoughts as a member of the Royal Family during her interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. The Duchess of Sussex told Oprah she 'couldn't be left alone' and told her husband she 'didn't want to be alive anymore' before claiming the Buckingham Palace HR department ignored her plea for help because she wasn't a 'paid employee'. Meghan first revealed she had had suicidal thoughts in her interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 (pictured) Describing how she considered ending her life believing it 'was better for everyone', Meghan said: 'I knew that if I didn't say it, that I would do it. I just didn't want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. 'I remember how he just cradled me. I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that 'I've never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere'. And I was told that I couldn't, that it wouldn't be good for the institution'. She said that after confiding in her husband, she was forced to go to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event in January 2019, claiming photos from that night 'haunt me'. She told Oprah she later reached out to one of the best friends of Diana, Princess of Wales, because she felt unsupported by the palace. She said: 'When I joined that family, that was the last time I saw my passport, my driving licence, my keys - all of that gets turned over'. Meghan said Harry had 'saved my life' by agreeing to move to Los Angeles. Rittenhouse ripped into the brewery for stating it was apolitical, claiming that they previously 'hosted Pride parades' and it was simply because of his notoriety He now speaks on gun rights after he was acquitted of deadly shootings in Kenosha that became a flashpoint in the debate over the Second Amendment Kyle Rittenhouse has blasted the 'woke mob' for pressuring venues in Las Vegas and Texas to cancel his speaking events. Rittenhouse lashed the Venetian Resort in Sin City and the Southern Star Brewery in Conroe saying they 'bent' to politically-fueled complaints about his scheduled appearances. The 20-year-old now speaks on Second Amendment issues after he was acquitted of deadly shootings in Kenosha that became a flashpoint in the debate over guns, vigilantism and racial injustice. Rittenhouse, who left two men dead and another injured, told Sebastian Gorka on the America First podcast: 'I was supposed to be giving a speech ... and they booted us because the woke mob found out I posted about it. Kyle Rittenhouse (right) speaks to political commentator Sebastian Gorka on the America First podcast: 'I was supposed to be giving a speech ... and they booted us because the woke mob found out I posted about it' Rittenhouse had been due to speak at the Oak Room inside the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip Rittenhouse was also due to appear at the Southern Star Brewery in Conroe, Texas, but he claimed they too had 'bent to the woke mob' 'I tried to promote it to get people to come and hear about censorship and the Second Amendment - and they didn't like that they bent to the woke mob and said we're cancelling this event.' He added that recently 'the Oak Room room at the Venetian canceled us and bent to the woke mob.' In a statement the brewery said: 'Southern star brewery is an apolitical organization. But we feel that this event doesn't reflect our own values and we could not in good faith continue to rent our space for the event on 1/26. We don't do rallies, we make beer for people who like beer.' Rittenhouse tweeted a poster for is forthcoming speaking event in Las Vegas He ripped the Texas brewery for backing out of hosting the event. 'They said they are apolitical, but after doing a dive into their social media, they've hosted Pride parades, they've had political events there. It's just because of my name and they're just being unfair and biased,' he told Gorka. Following the cancellation, the brewery said it had been deluged with harassment and some threats. 'It's been kind of a s***storm,' Southern Star Brewery CEO Dave Fougeron told KBTX. 'But now I'm more certain than ever that I made the right decision.' Fougeron said the abuse levelled at the brewery was unwarranted as it prided itself of being welcoming to all. 'Our place is super inclusive,' he said. 'We are super pro-veteran, super pro-law enforcement. We're trying to be good people in the community. 'We're friends with our firefighters, with our police department. We have a lot of gay patrons who come in because it's a place of inclusivity. It's crazy that we're getting threats from people.' Rittenhouse has been able to promote his events thanks in part to his blue-tick verification on Twitter which he thanked Elon Musk for last year. The teenager announced the news in November with a screenshot of the verified status he paid $8 for, tweeting: 'Uh-oh. Thank you @elonmusk.' He added: 'The comments from BIG MAD haters are pure gold. You must not have noticed the blue checkmark. I'm elite now!' Rittenhouse has been able to promote his events thanks in part to his blue-tick verification on Twitter which he thanked Elon Musk for last year. The teenager announced the news in November with a screenshot of the verified status he paid $8 for, tweeting: 'Uh-oh. Thank you @elonmusk.' In September, Rittenhouse started a YouTube channel devoted to his love of guns and the Second Amendment. In the channel's bio, Rittenhouse states: 'You might remember me as the kid who defended himself with a firearm while being chased and attacked during the 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. 'Now, I am trying to use the voice and platform I was given to make a difference. The media spread lies about my character, actions, and who I am. 'I am going to make the best of it and use my voice to show people I am none of those things except a 19 year old kid that wants to share the truth of what I've gone through, what challenges I'm continuing to face, my beliefs and faith, and why the 1st and 2nd Amendment mean so much to me!' Rittenhouse breaks down at the courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in November 2021, after being acquitted of deadly shootings in the city the summer before. Rittenhouse was cleared on murder charges related to the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum of Kenosha and Anthony Huber of Silver Lake. The teenager had also been charged with shooting Gaige Grosskreutz. In November of 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted on murder charges related to the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum of Kenosha and Anthony Huber of Silver Lake. The teenager had also been charged with shooting Gaige Grosskreutz. After being found not guilty by a jury, Rittenhouse became a celebrity among the political right as a Second Amendment advocate. Rittenhouse was invited on right-leaning television programs and stations, and even had the chance to meet former President Donald Trump. But the not-for-profit has lent millions of pounds to tens of thousands of people Bank of Dave is not legally a bank as Mr Fishwick was not granted a licence His incredible journey from labourer to multi-millionaire is now a Netflix drama A couple of years ago, businessman Dave Fishwick took a punt and threw his hat in the ring for a high-profile job. Alas, it was not to be. As his rejection letter received within days made clear, the interview panel had decided he would not be 'sifted through' to the next stage. 'I appreciate that you will be disappointed by this outcome,' the reply continued. Dave was, indeed, dismayed by his knockback from the office of the governor of the Bank of England a role made vacant by the departure of Mark Carney in 2020 although not particularly surprised. 'I did genuinely want the job, but they were never going to give it to me, were they?' he grins. Dave Fishwick, 51, from Burnley, began his career as a building labourer but is now thought to be worth up to 500million Rory Kinnear (centre) plays Dave in the new biopic based on his life, which came out on Netflix on Monday While 51-year-old Dave does seem an unlikely choice, given he doesn't have a single formal qualification to his name, he is, however, incredibly good with money. The UK economy could have done a hell of a lot worse. A self-made multi-millionaire, after building up several businesses from scratch, perhaps there was another reason why he wasn't a favourite of our elite banking institutions. He'd incurred their ire in 2010 when he set up his own, highly successful, rival bank, in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. The 'Bank of Dave', as it was affectionately known, operated not from Threadneedle Street, but from Dave's beloved hometown of Burnley in Lancashire, and loaned money to individuals and businesses who found themselves turned away by the High Street banks in their hour of need. In essence, it was a community bank that operated not for profit, with all surplus money going to good causes and one that is going strong today. From his desk at his small headquarters in Burnley town centre, Dave has loaned over 30 million to thousands of locals to cover everything, from funeral expenses to IVF. It's a captivating feelgood story that caught the eye of Hollywood scriptwriters, who have turned Dave's battle with the banking giants into a big-budget biopic that was released on Netflix on Monday. Bond star Rory Kinnear plays our eponymous hero, while Bridgerton's Phoebe Dynevor takes on the role of his fictional niece Alexandra, who is based on a composite of local characters. It will doubtless leave viewers pondering quite why the sensible, compassionate Dave isn't governor of the Bank of England. 'I don't fit the mould,' he says. 'The big banks dislike me with a passion, but I quite like that.' It's fair to say the feeling is mutual. Dave Fishwick is not a man to be easily put off, however. Unable to call himself a bank, he put up a sign on his town centre premises which read 'Bank on Dave' (Pictured: Dave Fishwick and Nicola Fishwick attend the world premiere of Netflix's Bank of Dave) Bullied at school because of his NHS prescription glasses, Dave dropped out of formal education aged 14, and by 16 was working as a builder's laboure 'People who rob banks go to prison, but banks who rob people get paid bonuses and get bailed out,' he says. 'The truth is, we've been badly served by the banks in the past and we need change. Banks that are too big to fail are just too big to exist.' All this is delivered in the broad Lancashire accent Dave has never lost. He may be worth a rumoured half a billion, with all the trappings that go with it a beautiful home, flash cars and his own helicopter but he remains resolutely down to earth. 'I like going home. I like my own bed, and being around family,' he says. 'When I've had a really tough day and I've had plenty of tough days I open my front door, I can smell apple pie, and my wife, Nicola, will have run me a bath with a bottle of beer there. What can be nicer? Burnley is where I'm from, where my pals don't care who I am, and rightly so.' All the same, the Burnley that Dave lives in today is a far cry from the one he grew up in. Read Dave's columns for This is Money and ask him a question Dave Fishwick is This is Money's small business doctor Dave Fishwick is a a long time friend of This Is Money, the Money section of MailOnline, and writes a column giving our readers advice on setting up and running a small business. As the Bank of Dave film launches, we've taken a look at some of Dave's best business doctor columns over the past year. And you can find out how you can ask Dave your small business question. > Five of the best of Dave Fishwick's answers to entrepreneurs Advertisement Born in 1972, he was raised in a modest terrace with an outside toilet in a town that was slipping into decline after the collapse of the textile industry and closure of local coal mines. 'My dad had two jobs: a farm labourer in the morning and he worked in the mill in the afternoon fixing the looms,' Dave recalls. 'He did 6am until 2pm on the farm, then 2pm until 10pm at the mill, and my mum worked in the same mill as a weaver.' Bullied at school because of his NHS prescription glasses, Dave dropped out of formal education aged 14, and by 16 was working as a builder's labourer. 'I was up and down ladders all day with buckets of cement in each hand for 27.50 a week.' He recalls a 'fork-in-the-road' point one bitterly cold day. 'It was a moment of recognising that I wanted something different,' he recalls. 'You start making yourself a roadmap, some achievable goals. That first step can be tiny, but it's the hardest one.' It led Dave to embark on a money-making experiment. Passionate about cars, he visited garages and asked them to take a chance on his salesman skills. One let him clean and sell a Vauxhall Cavalier. Anything over 70 he could keep. He got 97 earning 27 for two hours work, the equivalent of a week's wages. He was just 17 and 'onto something'. It was the start of years of hustling and juggling endless makeshift roles yet cars remained his first love. After spotting a gap in the market for companies selling vans and minibuses, he set up David Fishwick Minibus Sales in 2003. Today, the business operates all over the world, although its headquarters remains in the same modest Burnley garage. Not that Dave's burgeoning wealth insulated him from the impact of the 2008 financial crash. Almost overnight, banks stopped lending money to his customers, meaning they in turn were unable to buy his vans. Faced with the inevitable impact on his own business, Dave decided to take matters into his own hands. 'The customers weren't doing anything differently it was the banks that were the problem,' he says. 'I've always felt that people who work hard and are still stuck through no fault of their own need a net to fall on, to help them bounce back up again. Dave Fishwick (left) and Rory Kinnear (right), attend the world premiere of Netflix's 'Bank of Dave' in Burnley, England on Sunday 'And if the banks weren't going to do it, then it was going to have to be me.' Which was all very well in theory but in real life involves vast expense, a mountain of red tape and a licence to open a bank. The latter is almost as rare as hen's teeth; when Metro Bank opened in 2010, it became the first new High Street bank to be given one in 150 years. Dave decided to apply anyway. 'Everybody said: "You're going to end up in trouble for this." 'But what was I doing wrong? All I was doing was giving people the best rate of interest on the High Street, guaranteeing 100 per cent of their savings with my own money, lending that money to people and businesses who can't borrow from a High Street bank, and giving what is left after overheads to charity.' The banks took a different view. 'When I met the then head of the financial regulation authority, the first thing he asked was where I was from,' Dave recalls. 'When I said Burnley, that put him off for starters. Then he asked whether I went to Oxford or Cambridge. Basically, he said I had no chance. I'll be honest, I wanted to punch him.' Dave Fishwick is not a man to be easily put off, however. Unable to call himself a bank, he put up a sign on his town centre premises which read 'Bank on Dave'. Twelve years later, that business is still going strong. Dave never did get his licence, but Burnley Savings and Loans the locals call it Bank of Dave employs its own unique lending model, linking savers with businesses desperately in need of loans. At first, Dave personally assessed every customer himself, but that job now goes to his right-hand man David Henshaw, a 60-year-old former bank manager, who makes decisions on a personal case-by-case basis rather than a computer algorithm. Borrowers with a good credit record are charged 8.9 per cent interest, while investors can make 5 per cent on their savings. In the beginning, it was all Dave's money. He has helped all manner of people since, from a struggling dog biscuit business to nurses and hairdressers. He's even loaned money to fund IVF treatment. 'A local woman had worked two jobs to save up for it, but it had taken her so long that costs had gone up and she was running out of time,' he recalls. 'She was desperate, basically. I decided I would lend her the money interest free as a charity donation.' Of course, there are defaulters. 'We've probably got 4 per cent bad debt, but that is better than a High Street bank, and we're lending to people who have no other option. People think before they don't pay us. They know every penny they don't repay is a penny we can't lend to help someone else.' The model, in fact, is shockingly simple really. In the words of government minister Steve Baker, 'it's 'close to a theoretical ideal'. 'He carries his own commercial risk and, even if he could take deposits, he wouldn't provide credit in excess of savings,' the MP wrote in an essay on banking reform. 'It is towards this model the world should move.' Which does beg the question: why isn't anyone else following his model? 'Wouldn't that be wonderful?' Dave replies. 'There's just over 1,000 large towns and cities in the UK. If you put a Bank of Dave in each one of them, run by figureheads of the community putting their own money behind it and guaranteeing it themselves, then it would be transformative.' Hollywood came knocking two years ago, when Dave received a call out of the blue from Mission Impossible screenwriter, producer and director Piers Ashworth. 'He got in touch with me and said: "Dave, I want to make a film about your life." 'I said: "Well, you'd better get yourself to Burnley then." And he did.' At Dave's insistence, the 30-day shoot was filmed largely on location, even using the father-of-two's real-life home, alongside his minibus business and Bank on Dave headquarters. A special screening on Sunday, naturally, took place in Burnley, too. 'A lot of the people I have loaned money to came,' he says. 'More than anything, I'm delighted to put Burnley on the map.' Bank Of Dave is available now on Netflix. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre snapped at reporters for the fifth briefing in a row as she avoided answers questions on the classified files found in Joe Biden's think tank and Wilmington, Delaware home. Her time at the podium has been getting more contentious as the media continues to ask abouts about the White House's transparency about the documents, whether she will bring other officials to the press room to answer questions she can't and if the president will speak with the special counsel. She grew short with Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who said she wanted to ask Biden's spokesperson 'questions that you should be able to answer here that shouldn't have to go to any other agency or entity.' 'To be clear, it's not your decision to make of what I can and can't answer from here,' Jean-Pierre responded. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre snaps at reporters for fifth briefing in a row The White House has struggled to answer questions on Biden's classified documents Jean-Pierre also repeatedly referred questions to the White House counsel's office and the Justice Department - as she has done since Wednesday, which was her first press briefing since the White House announced the discovery of classified material in Biden's personal possession. When CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang asked about security procedures at the White House - and not about the Justice Department investigation, Jean-Pierre said: 'To be clear, I'm going to refer you to the my colleagues at the White House Counsel's Office. They will be able to address that particular questions. I'm just not going to address something that is even related to an ongoing legal process.' 'Why not?, Weijia responded. 'I mean, I'm having a hard time understanding why you can't answer questions about procedure.' 'I just said to you, the White House Counsel's Office will be able to address that question,' Jean-Pierre said. When the press secretary kept referring questions to the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office, Weijia asked: 'Just to be clear - from this point on. Are you not going to be taking questions about the classified data?' Jean-Pierre didn't answer directly. 'I have been very clear over and over again, we're going to be prudent here. We're going to be consistent as this particular matter is being is being looked at. There's a legal process currently happening at the Department of Justice. And I'm going to refer you to the Department of Justice on any specifics to this particular case,' she said. 'And anything that has to deal with what we're doing here, I would refer to the White House Counsel's Office. And let me remind you this is this is this is not a new process here. I we've been doing this for the past two years.' The entrance to Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware Weijia then asked if representatives from the Justice Department or the White House counsel's office would come to the press briefing room since Jean-Pierre kept referring questions to those entities. 'If you are not able to talk about this from the podium, would you invite a DOJ official to take our questions here to the briefing?,' she said. 'No, you would have to go to the Department of Justice,' Jean-Pierre replied. Jon Decker of Gray TV asked her if Biden should even be talking about the investigation. 'So I'm gonna say this and then keep it really short today. As it relates to this particular issue - as it relates to an ongoing legal matter - I'm going to refer you to Department of Justice, Department of Justice. We thought that specific as it relates to anything that you want to ask of us about this legal matter, I would refer you to the White House counsel office. I'm going to leave it there,' Jean-Pierre said. 'We're moving on,' she added. 'I already answered a question.' 'No you didnt,' Decker responded. 'Well, I did,' Jean-Pierre said. 'No you didnt,' he said. 'Well, it's your opinion,' she responded. The document debacle is now a full-blown crisis for the White House as House Republicans will be launching multiple investigations and the Justice Department recently selected a special counsel to oversee Biden's possible mishandling of classified documents. Even some Democrats have struggled to defend Biden while former President Donald Trump, who faces his own DOJ investigation about classified material he had at Mar-a-Lago, has accused everyone of a double standard. In total, there have been four discoveries of classified materials: at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C.; in Biden's garage at his Wilmington, Del., home; one document discovered in his 'personal library' in the same home and then four more documents found in his home. All date back to Biden's time as vice president under Barack Obama but the White House won't answer as to what topics the materials cover. The administration waited until January - until well past the November midterm election on November 8 - to announce documents found at Biden's DC think tank on November 4th, which was four days before voters went to the polls. Among the questions still unanswered by the White House or Bidens private attorneys: Exactly how many documents were found; whether there may be other documents out there, what was contained in them and why the public wasnt notified until months after they were discovered. Sadiq Khan will seek forfeiture after the 48-year-old is sentenced next month Scotland Yard last night said it would support attempts to stop David Carrick receiving his state-funded pension when he is released from prison. Ministers have already backed efforts to seek the forfeiture of the rapist constable's employer contributions after the Daily Mail revealed he could receive 22,000 a year in retirement. And London Mayor Sadiq Khan has pledged to seek forfeiture after the 48-year-old is sentenced next month. The issue is thought to be complicated by the fact that although Carrick abused his position and his police-issue handcuffs, to facilitate his offending his crimes were not committed while on duty. But a Met spokesman said: 'David Carrick used the fact he was a police officer as part of his offending, in particular to exercise even greater control and coercion over his victims and to instil fear in them about what might happen if they came forward to report his crimes. Scotland Yard last night said it would support attempts to stop David Carrick, 48, receiving his state-funded pension of 22,000 a year after his release from prison London Mayor Sadiq Khan has pledged to seek forfeiture after the 48-year-old is sentenced next month 'Accordingly, we are working closely with the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime which will be making an application to the Home Secretary for pension forfeiture in this case.' Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she supported the move and confirmed that she would consider any application made by the mayor's team. Seeking forfeiture of a convicted officer's pension is a drawn-out process. Mr Khan needs to submit a case to the Home Secretary who then must certify whether the offending had led to a serious loss of confidence in policing. Carrick would be allowed to make representations and offer mitigating circumstances, such as whether the income would be needed for dependent relatives. Forfeiture is usually limited to the most serious circumstances, such as a breach of national security. It has happened only 42 times over the past five years. Three brothers rowed 3,000 miles for over a month across the Atlantic - to win a 5 bet with their Dad. As youngsters, Louis, 27, Felix, 26, and Finn Ambrose, 23, watched father Hugo arrive in Barbados after 59 days at sea and vowed they could do it quicker. Two decades on, they made it to Antigua this week as part of the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Rowing Challenge and Dad met them with a 5 note. The trio, from Lymington, Hampshire, made the journey from the Canary Islands in 36 days. As youngsters, (from left) Louis, 27, Felix, 26, and Finn Ambrose, 23, watched father Hugo arrive in Barbados after 59 days at sea and vowed they could do it quicker They rowed 80 miles a day in their boat Ambrosia and raised 23,000 for charity. Finn said: 'We made the bet as a bit of a joke and it all got rather out of control.' They had been planning to take part in the challenge for two years, having plotted it through Covid lockdowns at home in the New Forest. The three achieved the feat despite having had no experience in rowing or sailing. They left La Gomero in the Canary Islands on December 12 and arrived in Nelsons Dockyard, Antigua, on Tuesday. Pictured: Hugo Ambrose when he rowed across the Atlantic almost 20 years ago Two decades on, they made it to Antigua this week as part of the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Rowing Challenge and Dad met them with a 5 note Highs included seeing a pod of whales and catching and eating a fish as their father had also done on his journey. But there were also lows, they admitted, including when far from land, Felix admitted he had failed to download audiobooks to keep them going as promised. And Felix added: The waves would break on you and it was pretty terrifying. Youd get soaked, and you wouldnt ever get dry. That was also when the bottom sores began; just sitting down is uncomfortable. On the size of the wager placed, Louis, who works in software consultancy, told The Times: Theres been quite a reduction over 20 years in purchasing power. Maybe we will get half a pint? Before the voyage, Hugo said: When it seemed as if they were serious, I got behind them and have given them all the advice I can. The race really will test them, both physically and mentally, but theyll never forget it. Downing Street hit back at Joe Biden's administration yesterday after it criticised Britain's new anti-strike laws. In a highly unusual intervention, US Labour Secretary Martin Walsh criticised the UK's plan to impose minimum service levels on striking unions in key sectors such as rail, fire and ambulances. Mr Walsh admitted he had not seen details of the legislation, but added: 'I would not support anything that would take away from workers.' No 10 hit back yesterday, saying that British strike laws were still less restrictive than those in the United States. Downing Street hit back at Joe Biden's administration yesterday after it criticised Britain's new anti-strike laws In a highly unusual intervention, US Labour Secretary Martin Walsh criticised the UK's plan to impose minimum service levels on striking unions in key sectors such as rail, fire and ambulances The PM's official spokesman said: 'Many states prohibit strikes by emergency services altogether. Fire services are banned from striking in most states. 'And in December, President Biden signed legislation to block a national rail strike. 'The Labour Secretary was clear he had not seen the detailed legislation, which we are confident is proportionate. 'The steps we're taking to introduce minimum service levels on critical sectors, including blue-light services... do not inhibit unions' ability to strike.' The spokesman insisted the spat did not signal a wider rift. 'We have an enduring relationship with the US and that won't change,' he added. Mr Walsh's comment at the World Economic Forum in Davos came in response to concern voiced by Gilbert Houngbo, director general of the International Labour Organisation, who told the BBC: 'We are very worried that workers may have to accept situations so they don't get themselves out of a job. They may have to accept a situation that is below par.' No 10 hit back yesterday, saying that British strike laws were still less restrictive than those in the United States Mr Walsh admitted he had not seen details of the legislation, but added: 'I would not support anything that would take away from workers' Mr Walsh spoke up: 'I don't know about the legislation. But I certainly will work with the ILO... I would not support anything that would take away from workers.' Business Secretary Grant Shapps had told MPs this week that the ILO believed minimum service levels were 'a proportionate way of balancing the right to strike with the need to protect the wider public'. The row came as Rishi Sunak clashed over strikes with Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions. The Labour leader accused the PM of inflicting 'lethal chaos' on the NHS as ambulance waiting times hit record highs all around Britain. The Prime Minister hit back that Sir Keir had refused to back minimum service levels in areas such as the ambulance service, where the unions are among Labour's biggest donors. 'The reason he's not patients first is because he's in the pockets of his union paymasters,' Mr Sunak said. Lynn continues to deny murdering the couple while they were camping Lynn allegedly killed them and their human remains were burnt Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, vanished in the Wonnangatta Valley Jetstar pilot Gregory Lynn, 55, is charged with two counts of murder Former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was suspected of going to a hotel room after the alleged murder of elderly campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay, a court has heard. Forensic experts found the blood of Mr Hill, 74, was 'likely' found on a single sample from a white bathmat at a hotel in the Wonnangatta Valley, in Victoria's rugged alpine region, but it was later deemed implausible. On Friday, Crown prosecutors confirmed police believe Lynn went straight home after allegedly killing the couple. Daily Mail Australia can now reveal details on how police allege the pilot shot Carol Clay, stabbed Hill and burnt their bodies and scattered their remains, after forensic court documents were released to the public. Police believe Carol Clay was shot in the head by the passenger side of Russell Hill's vehicle (pictured). Traces of what is believed to be her blood was found splattered across the rear canopy, which was damaged by fire, court documents have revealed Police allegedly located a large Gurkha knife - believed to be similar to the one pictured - at Greg Lynn's home. It had suspected traces of blood on it, court documents state Greg Lynn had an affection for guns, knives and the outdoors, publicly released court documents allege Lynn, 56, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday charged with the murders of Mr Hill and Ms Clay, 73. It can now be revealed via court documents that police allegedly found a cache of knives when they executed a search warrant at Lynn's Caroline Springs in November 2021. Among the collection of weapons were two swords and 16 knives in sheaths, including throwing knives and daggers, court documents state. Forensic officer Mark Gellatly told the court suspected traces of blood had been found on a large Gurkha knife, a hunting knife, Damascus knife, dagger and on the inner surface of the sheath of a yellow-handled hatchet. However those traces could not be confirmed. Police believe Lynn 'burnt, dispersed, and partially interred them', the court heard. Their remains would not be found until November 2021 - some 20 months after they were allegedly murdered. Court documents allege Lynn's home had been loaded with guns, including semi-automatic pistols, Rugar revolvers, semi-automatic and lever action rifles and semi-automatic shotguns - one of which police allege was used to kill Ms Clay. Russell Hill (pictured, right) and Carol Clay (left) are alleged by police to have been murdered during a camping trip in March 2020 Lynn took notes from behind protective glass within the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday Police alleged in court that Lynn blasted Ms Clay in the head with shotgun after getting into an angry confrontation with Mr Hill over the use of his drone in the national park, which is illegal. Court documents alleged Lynn had arrived at the hotel after murdering and torching the elderly couple's campsite. Traces of singed hair were later recovered by police from the scene and analysed. Court documents stated 'a hotel in the Wonnangatta region claimed a room was left with numerous bloodstains, all were cleaned with the exception of possible remnants on a bathmat'. While Mr Hill's DNA was 'likely' found on the mat, none of Ms Clay's was located, documents state. The documents stated it was equally possible Mr Hill's blood was not on the mat. 'The DNA evidence is equally likely under both propositions,' the documents stated. Police believe Greg Lynn shot, stabbed, burnt and 'dispursed' the bodies of Russell Hill and Carol Clay. Pictured is the burnt remains of Mr Hill's campsite Russell Hill (pictured with his missing drone) is believed to have filmed campers in and about the area where he was allegedly murdered Lynn maintains he had acted in self-defence and told police it was Mr Hill who was the author of his own demise, the court heard. Mr Gellatly told the court Lynn claimed he had returned to his camp after getting into the argument, but Mr Hill refused to let it go. 'Hill went to Lynn's vehicle and grabbed (his) shotgun, the two wrestled over the gun causing it to discharge, which struck Clay in the head,' he told the court via his police statement. The blast is believed to have killed the mother-of-three instantly. What happened next, according to Lynn, was a fight that ended with him fatally stabbing Mr Hill, court documents said. Lynn had travelled into the rugged wilderness to hunt deer. A deer hunting map contained in a plastic bag was later recovered from his home. The court heard prosecutors were keen to have the contents of Lynn's initial record of interview and his original statement to police suppressed over fears they may be inadmissible when the matter goes to trial. Greg Lynn's barrister Dermot Dann, KC attends court in Melbourne on Monday. Mr Dann is regarded as one of Australia's top legal minds Police put out sketches of a vehicle they were looking for knowing full well they had the very car they wanted bugged A court battle over the content of that evidence between Crown prosecutors, Lynn's barrister and media organisations will return to court on Friday. On Tuesday, journalists were provided a redacted version of the alleged events, omitting many of the allegations against Lynn. Despite fighting for information on the case to be suppressed, prosecutor John Dickie took an extraordinary swipe at the reporting of the hearing after Lynn's version of events were finally aired. 'There are matters that are not in that document, that have been removed from that document, that clearly the prosecution intends to rely upon,' Mr Dickie said. 'It is clear hopefully from the document, and if it's not clear from the document it's clear hopefully from the charges put before the court, that it is alleged of course that the accused acted with murderous intent when he allegedly killed the two victims.' Mr Dickie said he was concerned that some media outlets had 'not heard the evidence properly' when publishing court reports on the preliminary hearing. 'Just so that no-one is under any misapprehension, that's how the two charges are entered and those two charges are before the court,' he said. Lynn is expected to enter a plea of not guilty to the charges at the conclusion of the hearing next week. She asked the chatbot whether she should leave her husband for another man It has now been used to help a woman from south London end her marriage It has been used to write essays, complaint letters, and even lyrics to songs AI chatbot ChatGPT has been used by millions since it launched in November Since it launched in November, the AI chatbot ChatGPT has been used by millions for many different purposes. From students trying to write their essays, to creating songs and even complaint letters, people have been trying to test the limits of the tool. Now, one woman from South London has used the chatbot for a completely different purpose - to decide whether or not to end her marriage. 'Sarah' had been having an affair with a man she met online for six months and decided to ask ChatGPT whether or not she should divorce her husband. A woman has used a AI chatbot, ChatGPT, to help her decide whether or not to leave her husband (stock image) Who founded ChatGPT? ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence system created by the San Francisco-based company, OpenAI. The firm, which specialises in creating and deploying AI, was created in 2015. Its founders include billionaire entrepreneur, and owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, among others. Collectively they pledged $1 billion (816,000) to the company. While Musk resigned form the board in February 2018, he remained a donor. Advertisement The chatbot, created by OpenAI, a US company that lists Elon Musk as one of its founders, is a large language model that has been trained on a massive amount of text data. Created out of a lab in California, it is based off an earlier model called GPT-3. The bot can respond to a large range of questions while imitating human speaking styles, and can generate eerily human-like text in response to a prompt. It can simulate dialogue, answer follow-up questions, challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests. Which is exactly why 37-year-old Sarah, who works in the tech sector, decided to let the app inform her decision on whether to end her five-year-marriage. Sarah's affair began after she met a man on Illicit Encounters, a dating site for married people. After constant bickering with her spouse and other issues within their marriage, she decided she needed to either fix the issues or end her five-year marriage. She ended up asking the AI to create a 'fairytale' ending to the affair and what would be the best outcome. The response left her 'shaking'. Sarah told the Mirror: 'I essentially asked the app to write me a story based on my current situation, and what the person in the story should do in a failing marriage while experiencing the excitement of the affair I've been having. Less than a week after its launch at the end of November, the ChatGPT had already amassed more than one million users MailOnline asked ChatGPT what a person should do if they are in a 'failing marriage while experiecing the excitement of an affair', like Sarah did 'What's fascinating was how it picked up so well on my dilemma and even considered my own happiness. The end of the story told me I should put my happiness first and leave my husband, which I've now done. 'For the normal person using Chat:GPT for the first time, it will be an eery experience with the sort of output it is capable of.' Sarah is now living with her lover, having left her marriage. She added: 'It gave me the push I needed to make the jump and leave a relationship that had been in the doldrums for a long time. 'It's certainly unorthodox, and not something I'd insist other women in similar situations to try. It was more of a case that I'd been around this technology, and it worked for me.' A spokesperson at Illicitencounters.com, said: 'We get hundreds of stories every month from members whose lives have been changed through reaping the benefits of meeting someone else in their life. 'Sarah's story is a first, but also one we really wanted to share, and we're delighted she was happy to share it.' Less than a week after its launch at the end of November, the chatbot had already amassed more than one million users. To develop the app and make it appear as human-like as possible, AI trainers modeled conversations, playing both the user and the AI assistant. Experts have claimed the app is so powerful it could be used in the real-world, in digital marketing, creating online content, answering customer service queries or even debugging codes. ChatGPT had been released to the public initially for anyone to use, for free, but it became so popular the demo link was shut down temporarily. Channing Tatum revealed in 2019 that he will "never remarry" as he discussed his "very terrifying" divorce from Jenna Dewan. Tatum met Jenna Dewan on the set of Step Up in 2006, when their characters, Tyler Gage and Nora Clark, fell in love and merged classical and street dancing. Channing Tatum Speaks Out About Divorce The couple, both aged 42, wed in July 2009 and had a daughter, Everly, in 2013. They announced their separation in 2018, and the divorce was finalized in 2019. Channing Tatum, who has been seeing Jessie J after his breakup with Jenna Dewan, spoke to Vanity Fair about the "terrifying" period in his life. The actor, who has been alongside celebrities such as Sandra Bullock and Mila Kunis, maintained that his life was flipped upside down despite his efforts to stay "positive" during the ordeal, which he finally concluded was "just what I needed." Jessie J is presently expecting her first child after suffering a terrible miscarriage in 2021. Channing Tatum famously dated Jessie J. In 2019, the pair ended their one-year relationship, with a source telling US publications: "Channing and Jessie split up around one month ago. They remain really close and terrific friends." Two months later, after Channing Tatum apparently joined a celebrity dating app, Jessie and Channing "decided they actually care for one other" and reignited their relationship. According to OK!, Tatum stated further in the cover interview that he and Dewan "fought for [their marriage] for a very long period, despite the fact that we both realized we had grown apart." In addition, Channing Tatum disclosed he was inundated with explicit photographs from an older female fan after his pals mistakenly followed her on Instagram. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the 42-year-old Magic Mike actor, who is remaking Ghost, said that he was compelled to ban a devoted fan when his buddies followed her as a joke. Per Daily Mail, Tatum joked that he would "outstrip" Jennifer Lopez, who portrayed Ramona in Hustlers, stating, "If I were stripping against her, I would go harder." Read Also: Lisa Marie Presley Dause of Death Tatum Plans to Remake 'Ghost' Tatum also commented on the current status of his daughter Everly's friendship with Sandra Bullock's daughter Laila, after it was reported in March 2022 that the two celebrities met when their preschool-aged girls fought. Tatum and Bullock were summoned to meet with instructors after the girls engaged in a fight to determine who was the "alpha," but the duo now "loves one other." Channing Tatum has disclosed that he intends to portray Patrick Swayze's character Sam Wheat in a remake of Ghost. The actor acknowledged in an interview with Vanity Fair that his production company, Free Association, owns the rights to the 1990 masterpiece. As with many other films of the era, he went on to explain that the original "included some problematic stereotypes." Ghost is the story of Sam, portrayed by Patrick, getting murdered by a gangster and leaving his love Molly, portrayed by Demi Moore, in jeopardy. Sam enlists a psychic, portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg, to warn Molly that she is in danger. Related Article: Kim Kardashian Faces Criticism Over Unedited Photos @YouTube @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. It has kept track of the likelihood of humanity's annihilation for more than 75 years. And next week the Doomsday Clock will once again be updated to determine our fate, having remained at 100 seconds to midnight for the past three years. With Russia's war on Ukraine raging on, climate disasters wreaking havoc worldwide and coronavirus still lingering, it is hard to imagine the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists turning back time. The clock an idea which began in 1947 to warn humanity of the dangers of nuclear war was originally set at seven minutes to midnight and has been moved backward and forward 24 times since. On the brink: Next week the Doomsday clock will once again be updated to determine our fate. It was founded by US scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, which led to the first nuclear weapons during the Second World War, and is a symbolic countdown to represent how close humanity is to complete global catastrophe. Pictured is the first unveiling in 1947 Unveiling: Last year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that the clock would remain at 100 seconds to midnight for the third year in a row (pictured) How to survive a nuclear blast - Be inside a concrete building - Position yourself at the corners of the room, facing the blast - Avoid windows, corridors and doors - If there's not enough time, hiding in the corner of a corridor might be safer than being in the middle of the corridor - Immediately take shelter under tables and chairs Experts say this advice applies if in a nuclear explosion's moderate damage zone (MDZ), or far enough from the source of the blast. Advertisement In 2020 it reached the closest it has stood to midnight and has remained there over the past three years. At the height of the Cold War in 1953 it was at two minutes and the farthest it has been moved away from midnight was when it moved to 17 minutes before at the end of the same war. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce whether the time of the symbolic clock will change at 15:00 GMT (10:00 ET) on January 24. It describes the clock as a 'metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation.' For 2023, the Bulletin said it would take into account the Russia-Ukraine war, bio-threats, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continued climate crisis, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and disruptive technologies. The decision will be made by the Bulletin's science and security board and its board of sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates. The organisation was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear weapons during the Second World War. For 2023, the Bulletin said it would take into account the Russia-Ukraine war, bio-threats, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continued climate crisis, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and disruptive technologies With Russia's war on Ukraine waging on, climate disasters wreaking havoc worldwide and coronavirus still lingering, it is hard to imagine the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists turning back time. Pictured: Ukrainian servicemen stand on their tanks in Bakhmut, Donetsk region on January 13 Nuclear war between the US and Russia 'would cause a global famine and kill more than 5 BILLION people' A nuclear war between Russia and the US would trigger a global famine that would wipe out almost two-thirds of the world's population, a study has suggested. More than five billion people would die of hunger during the fallout from a full-scale conflicts, researchers say, with computer simulations showing that firestorms would release soot into the upper atmosphere and block out the sun. This would in turn spark crop failure across the world. The modelling sheds fresh light on what would happen under six war scenarios five smaller India-Pakistan conflicts and a large US-Russia war. Such threat has been brought to the fore following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Read more here. Advertisement The idea of the clock followed two years later as a symbolic countdown to represent how close humanity is to complete global catastrophe. Artist Martyl Langsdorf was commissioned to make the clock and told to create an image that would 'frighten men into rationality,' according to Eugene Rabinowitch, the first editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who died in 1973. Langsdorf developed a stripped-down clock to reflect urgency and only hours in the last quarter before midnight are shown on the face. It was also her decision to put the minute hand at seven minutes before midnight, which was just meant to be a visual, before Rabinowitch moved it to three minutes to in 1949. 'For 75 years, the Doomsday Clock has acted as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation,' reads the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' website. 'Since 1947, it has also served as a call-to-action to reverse the hands, which have moved backwards before.' The Doomsday clock first moved to 100 seconds to midnight in January 2020, and remained there in 2021 in part due to a 'lack of action' over the Covid pandemic. Since 1947, it has been set backward eight times and forward 16 times. The time is determined by taking into consideration all the events that have happened throughout the year. It can include politics, energy, weapons, diplomacy and climate science, along with potential sources of threat such as nuclear bombs, climate change, bioterrorism and artificial intelligence. If you enjoy a few glasses of wine more than once a week, a study has found that you are more likely to have an addictive personality. This means that it would be easier for you to get hooked on things like the internet, video games or exercise than someone who doesn't drink alcohol as regularly. Researchers from Semmelweis University in Hungary identified several genes that each trigger multiple addictive behaviours, including substance use. Their findings not only suggest that different addictions are related, but also that some of us are more susceptible to them because of our genetic makeup. The study showed that the 'rs759364 A' allele of the FOXN3 gene was associated with problematic gaming behaviours, problematic internet use and alcohol consumption frequency of six or more times a month (stock image) WHICH GENES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH ADDICTIONS? Gene FOXN3 DRD2/ ANKK1 GDNF Variant rs759364 A rs759364 G rs1800497 A rs1549250 and rs2973033 Addiction Alcohol,gaming, internet Exercise Cannabis Lifetime use of drugs other than cannabis Advertisement Many studies have linked alcohol, drug and gambling addictions to genetics, and have sought to identify the variants responsible for the susceptibility. However, the authors of the new study say that each of these link one specific type of addiction to genetic variants. Dr Csaba Barta said: 'It has been previously proven that a strong genetic influence exists in case of different addictions. 'Heritability, which is the measure of genetic contribution to a trait, is estimated to be between 50 and 70 per cent for addictions, and the rest is environmental effects. 'However, the specific genetic variants and their neurobiological roles in addiction are not so well known.' Their work, published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine, investigates genetic associations for a large variety of substance and non-substance addictions. The researchers recruited over 3,000 adults from high schools, colleges and universities in Hungary to provide a DNA sample and fill out a questionnaire. Questions probed their alcohol consumption, smoking habits and drug use, as well as engagement with potentially addictive activities that don't involve substances. These included gaming, gambling, use of social media, exercising, hair pulling and eating. The data collected has already been used as part of other published studies which showed associations between the addictions, but not linked them to specific genes. Carriers of the 'rs759364 G' allele of the FOXN3 gene were found to be more prone to exercise addiction (stock image) It has also indicated that lifetime use of different kinds of drugs is more prevalent in men, but women were more prone to use sedatives. Men were also more susceptible to gambling addiction, while women were more affected by eating disorders and excessive social media use. For this study, the researchers analysed the data to see if there were any links between addictions highlighted through the questionnaires and 32 specific variants in the participants' DNA. Dr Barta said: 'We found 29 nominally significant associations in the current study, and nine of those remained significant after statistical correction for multiple testing.' PERCENTAGE OF STUDY PARTICIPANTS WHO EXHIBITED POTENTIALLY ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE USE AND SPECIFIC GENE VARIANTS Gene Allele Nicotine Alcohol Cannabis Other Drugs Non-Use (n = 3588) Use (n = 1026) Non-Use (n = 3538) Use (n = 440) Non-Use (n = 4204) Use (n = 160) Non-Use (n = 4088) Ever Use (n = 1246) FOXN3 rs759364 A 30.80% 26.60% 30.00% 37.50% 30.40% 33.60% 30.10% 32.60% G 69.20% 73.40% 70.00% 62.50% 69.60% 66.40% 69.90% 67.40% GDNF rs1549250 C 41.20% 45.10% 40.80% 44.70% 41.00% 44.00% 40.90% 46.00% A 58.80% 54.90% 59.20% 55.30% 59.00% 56.00% 59.10% 54.00% T 84.50% 84.20% 84.60% 81.70% 84.70% 79.90% 84.40% 83.40% GDNF rs2973033 C 27.80% 31.40% 27.60% 32.20% 27.70% 32.60% 27.30% 31.50% T 72.20% 68.60% 72.40% 67.80% 72.30% 67.40% 72.70% 68.50% ANKK1 rs1800497 A 18.80% 19.10% 19.50% 20.40% 18.60% 27.10% 18.80% 20.50% Some of these variants were seen to predispose the carrier to multiple addictions, both substance and non-substance related. For example, the gene FOXN3 can appear in two other forms or 'alleles'; rs759364 A and rs759364 G. The study showed that the 'A' allele was associated with problematic gaming behaviours, problematic internet use and alcohol consumption frequency of six or more times a month. Carriers of the 'G' allele, on the other hand, were found to be more prone to exercise addiction. The data also revealed associations between the allele rs1800497 A - a form of the DRD2/ANKK1 gene - and cannabis use. Furthermore, links were discovered between the rs1549250 and rs2973033 variants of the GDNF gene and the lifetime use of drugs other than cannabis. Professor Marc N. Potenza from Yale University School of Medicine said: 'The study provides support that some genetic factors may be responsible for the overlap we observed previously.' Future work from the team will involve searching for more subtle effects the variants have on alcohol use and smoking habits. Dr. Zsolt Demetrovics, a psychology professor at Eotvos Lorand University, added: 'These findings can contribute to the scientific knowledge on addictions which affects millions of people worldwide. 'It could bring us closer to understanding the overlap between the vulnerability of different types of potentially addictive behaviours. 'For example, being vulnerable to problematic alcohol use might also pose an increased risk for gambling, video game use or working addiction. 'This could be a relevant consideration also when planning treatment interventions.' The Greenland Ice Sheet is the hottest it has ever been and will cause global sea levels to rise by 20 inches by 2100 if it keeps warming at the same pace, scientists have warned. From 2001 to 2011 temperatures at high elevations were 2.7F (1.5C) warmer than in the 20th century, representing the warmest decade in the last thousand years. That is based on a reconstruction of central-north Greenland temperatures from 1100 to 2011 undertaken by experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute. Over the past 30 years, Greenland's contribution to global sea levels has grown significantly as melting ice has increased, with a recent major report concluding that it is losing ice seven times faster than it was during the 1990s. Concern: The Greenland Ice Sheet is the hottest it has ever been and will cause global sea levels to rise by 20 inches by 2100 if it keeps warming at the same pace, scientists warn From 2001 to 2011 temperatures at high elevations were 2.7F (1.5C) warmer than in the 20th century, representing the warmest decade in the last thousand years HOW IS GLOBAL WARMING AFFECTING GLACIAL RETREAT? Global warming is causing the temperatures all around the world to increase. This is particularly prominent at latitudes nearer the poles. Rising temperatures, permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets are all struggling to stay in tact in the face of the warmer climate. As temperatures have risen to more than a degree above pre-industrial levels, ice continues melt. For example, melting ice on the Greenland ice sheet is producing 'meltwater lakes', which then contribute further to the melting. This positive feedback loop is also found on glaciers atop mountains. Many of these have been frozen since the last ice age and researchers are seeing considerable retreat. Some animal and plant species rely heavily on the cold conditions that the glaciers provide and are migrating to higher altitudes to find suitable habitat. This is putting severe strain on the ecosystems as more animals and more species are living in an ever-shrinking region. On top of the environmental pressure, the lack of ice on mountains is vastly increasing the risks of landslides and volcanic eruptions. The phenomena is found in several mountain ranges around the world. It has also been seen in regions of Antarctica. Advertisement There are even fears that the ice sheet may have passed a point of no return. It has been suggested that all of Greenland will melt as a result of the level of global warming the world is already committed to because of carbon emissions. The Greenland Ice Sheet has an important role in the global climate owing to its size, radiative effects and storage of about three million cubic kilometres of freshwater. Weather stations along the coast of the ice sheet have been recording rising temperatures for many years, but scientists have been largely in the dark about how global warming is influencing elevated areas up to 9,800ft (3,000 metres). This is because of the lack of long-term observations, which is what led researchers involved in the new study to reconstruct past temperatures. The result shows clear evidence that climate change has reached the remote parts of central-north Greenland. 'The time series we recovered from ice cores now continuously covers more than 1,000 years, from year 1000 to 2011,' said glaciologist Dr Maria Horhold, lead author of the research. 'This data shows that the warming in 2001 to 2011 clearly differs from natural variations during the past 1,000 years. 'Although grimly expected in the light of global warming, we were surprised by how evident this difference really was.' Dr Horhold and her colleagues came to their conclusion by analysing the isotope composition in shallow ice cores. Previous samples from as far back as the 1990s did not indicate clear warming in central-north Greenland, despite rising global mean temperatures, which experts say is partly down to the natural climate variability in the region. But the researchers have now expanded on these previous datasets by redrilling the ice sheet during a series of expeditions up to 2012. Temperatures were then reconstructed by measuring concentrations of stable oxygen isotopes within the ice, which vary with the temperatures at the time of ice formation. The calculations are based on a reconstruction of central-north Greenland temperatures from 1100 to 2011 undertaken by experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute The researchers expanded previous datasets on ice melting and temperatures at high elevations by redrilling the ice sheet during a series of expeditions up to 2012 (pictured) Estimates: Temperatures were then reconstructed by measuring concentrations of stable oxygen isotopes within the ice, which vary with the temperatures at the time of ice formation In addition to estimating temperature changes, the team reconstructed how much the sheet has melted and found that it it has increased substantially since the 2000s, contributing to a rise in global sea levels. If it continues like it is, with no action taken to curb global warming, then sea levels will rise by 20 inches (50 cm) by 2100, the researchers said. They found that, on average, the reconstructed temperature for 20012011 was 3F (1.7C) warmer than the period 19611990 and 2.7F (1.5C) warmer than the 20th century as a whole. 'We were amazed to see how closely temperatures inland are connected to Greenland-wide meltwater drainage which, after all, occurs in low-elevation areas along the rim of the ice sheet near the coast,' Dr Horhold added. To look deeper at the connection between ice melting at the edges of the ice sheet and temperatures at high elevations, the scientists used data from a regional climate model from 1871 and 2011 and combined it with satellite observations from 2002 to 2021. This allowed them to convert the temperature variations identified in the ice cores into melting rates and provide estimates for the past 1,000 years. They hope their research will provide a greater understanding of the way the ice sheet has melted in the past, as well as improving projections of sea-level rises in the future. The study has been published in the journal Nature. Twitter users are seeing a flood of spam messages in Direct message inboxes Twitter users say they are being bombarded with more spam messages than ever before - despite Elon Musk's pledge to 'defeat the bots.' Anecdotally, there have been reports of a sharp increase in the volume of phishing messages since the eccentric billionaire bought the company for $44bn in October. Users have shared snapshots of their inboxes filled with fake accounts offering them free nude pics, cryptocurrency opportunities and job positions. There are also complaints about the 'abnormally high number of advertisements' that are enough for some users to leave the platform - users claim there is 'an ad for every two or three tweets.' Musk made it one of his mission statements - along with stamping out wokeness and championing free speech - to clamp down on bots on the site. But eyebrows were raised about how Twitter would function when Musk sacked 1,200 technicians and engineers in November. Twitter users are frustrated by the number of spam messages in their Direct message inboxes - and many are blaming Elon Musk Recent news revealed that more than 500 advertisers paused their contracts with Twitter, which caused the platform's daily revenue to drop by 40 percent on January 17 from what it reported at the same time last year. And the pauses could have led to Musk increasing the show of advertisers that have not yet jumped ship. While ads can be annoying, spam bots are more of an issue because they prey on users in an attempt to steal their credentials or money. Musk is well aware that Twitter has bots - he attempted to terminate the deal to buy Twitter over the issue. However, the Chief Twit has been silent about the issue in recent months and users are starting to get restless. DailyMail.com spoke to one user from New York: 'I am seeing at least one spam message each day, most of which are for crypto. 'There are also ones offering jobs where I can make thousands of dollars a day for doing nothing. 'And multiple people in the message.' Another user told DailyMail.com: 'It reminds me of the robocalls that spam my phone daily and makes me feel like the bot problem on Twitter is getting out of hand. I never got messages like this until a few months ago.'. Twitter user 'Zac' shared on the platform: 'Yo @elonmusk, I've been getting inundated with spam messages lately. Did something change to let these guys sneak in undetected?' Another by the name of 'little peepo' tweeted: 'I'm getting so many more goddam crypto spam messages since Elon laid his unwashed disgusting flesh digits on this godforsaken platform.' There are two types of spam bots lurking on the platform: good bots and bad. Twitter defines good spam bots as automated accounts that 'help people find useful, entertaining and relevant information.' One of these good bots is @pikaso_me that will take a screenshot of your tweet and crop it perfectly so you do not have to. The messages are offering free nude pics, cryptocurrency opportunities and job positions Twitter is now being flooded with tweets from users showing the extent of spam messages in their inbox Another is @tinycarebot, which reminds users about daily activities they might have forgotten, such as drinking water throughout the day. While governments, corporations or bad actors use the latter for several nefarious purposes - and these seem to be running rampant on Twitter. Musk made it one of his mission statements - along with stamping out wokeness and championing free speech - to clamp down on bots on the site These bots are spreading hate speech, promoting misinformation or attempting to obtain your personal information. And while spam bots have always lived on the social media platform, they appear to have multiple by the hundreds since Musk took over. While you may think the war against bots is a lost cause, there are steps you can take to close your DMs. Start the Twitter app and tap your account icon at the top of the screen, then tap Settings and Support, then Settings and privacy. Once you have done these steps, select Privacy and safety and tap Direct messages. Turn off Allow message requests from everyone by swiping the button to the left, and the bots should be blocked. On the other hand, the flood of advertisements is here to stay. While you may think the war against bots is a lost cause, there are steps you can take to close your DMs. Turn off Allow message requests from everyone by swiping the button to the left, and the bots should be blocked DailyMail.com spoke to one user from New York who said they received at least four spam messages each day. Here is a screenshot of their inbox Advertising is Twitter's bread and butter, and with hundreds of companies pulling or pausing their contracts, it seems Musk is doubling down to generate revenue. In the first quarter of 2022, Twitter generated $1.2 billion in revenue - or the equivalent of $13.3 million a day. Advertisers have been spooked by the company's mass lay-offs and Musk's rush to implement a paid verification feature that resulted in scammers impersonating companies on Twitter. The social media platform also recently reversed its 2019 ban on political ads. Musk is well aware that Twitter has bots - he attempted to terminate the deal to buy Twitter over the issue On the other hand, the flood of advertisements is here to stay. Advertising is Twitter's bread and butter, and with hundreds of companies pulling or pausing their contracts, it seems Musk is doubling down to generate revenue The platform said it would relax the 'cause-based ads' advertising policy in the United States and align its ad policy with TV and other media outlets. In November, Musk admitted there had been issues with advertising revenue, telling his followers: 'Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation, and we did everything we could to appease the activists.' He added: 'Extremely messed up! They're trying to destroy free speech in America.' However, users feel as if they are paying for Musk's mishaps. Many are frustrated because ads are taking a significant part of their timelines, preventing them from viewing as many tweets from followed accounts. This sparked the 'free the nipple' movement across the US in 2013 Women have argued that men are allowed to show nipples, but they cannot The board highlighted the removal of posts of individuals with top surgery Meta has been told to 'free the nipple' at its Oversight Board's recommendation that the ban on bare breasts violates 'human rights' of women, transgender and non-binary people. The board's recommendation focused on Instagram's ban of two posts by a couple, one of whom is transgender and the other non-binary, who posed topless but covered their nipples to raise awareness around top surgery. The board said that 'the [old] policy is based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies,' which makes rules about baring nipples 'unclear' for those who do not identify as women. But it also affects women, who have long fought to desexualize images of bare breasts while arguing that men are allowed to share their bare chests. Naked protestors - both men and women - marched to Facebook's New York headquarters in 2020 to demand the policy on bare breasts be changed. Meta has been recommended to allow bare breasts on Facebook and Instagram after its Oversight Board said the ban 'hindered expression for women, trans, and gender non-binary people on its platforms' The board, which is funded by Meta but operates independently, said in a ruling that the company's adult nudity policy is based on a binary view of gender, making it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people. Meta now has 60 days to review the board's recommendation and will respond publicly. Facebook and Instagram were criticized in 2013 for removing images of women breastfeeding, but the platforms apologized for 'the mistake' and said it encouraged such images on their platforms. Of the two posts that triggered the case, one from 2021 and the other from 2022, it said: 'The Oversight Board finds that removing these posts is not in line with Meta's Community Standards, values or human rights responsibilities. 'These cases also highlight fundamental issues with Meta's policies. The board's recommendation focused on Instagram's ban of two posts by a couple, one of whom is transgender and the other non-binary, who posed topless but covered their nipples to raise awareness around top surgery. Pictured is another individual who had top surgery 'Such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender,' the board said. However, the policy to allow bare breasts has been a long time in the making. In 2016, women took to the streets in the 'free the nipple' movement to desexualize images of bare breasts. And it came about when pictures of women breastfeeding were censored or flagged as nudity. The movement gained traction in 2013 after Facebook removed clips from the actor/director Lina Esco's documentary Free the Nipple, which sparked protests outside of Facebook headquarters. And many women argue that, while hate speech goes uncensored, their nipples are flagged as 'dangerous.' CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to justify this in 2018, saying: 'It's easier to build an AI system to detect a nipple than what is hate speech.' Meta was recently criticized for banning professional nude photography by activists who stated the images are art. In 2020, protesters swarmed Facebook's headquarters in New York City - all naked and holding up pictures of enlarged nipples. In 2020, protesters swarmed Facebook's headquarters in New York City - all naked and holding up pictures of enlarged nipples The movement included the National Coalition Against Censorship for their #WeTheNipple campaign and the women's rights group Grab Them By The Ballot. At this time, Facebook only allowed nudity in depictions of paintings and sculptures. To get around such a barrier during the 2020 demonstration, Tunick, who is known for staging similar en masse nude art installations in iconic locations around the world, had his nude female models cover their nipples with images of men's nipples, which were 'donated' for that specific purpose. Those same images of men's nipples were also blown up and used to cover both male and female genitalia during the demonstration outside the Astor Place Cube, known as the Alamo. Artists Andres Serrano and Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Bravo's Andy Cohen, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and Tunick himself all donated photos of their nipples for the signs. However, Wednesday's announcement could mean artists can now freely share their pieces on Facebook. The face of an eight-year-old Neanderthal boy who died more than 30,000 years ago has been reconstructed by scientists who used a skull initially found in the Teshik-Tash cave in Uzbekistan in 1938. The portrait is the first three-dimensional restoration of a Neanderthal skull fossil, which reveals the young boy had a small, turned-up nose that sunk into his face. The fossil is the first Neanderthal fossil discovered in Asia and the only complete Asian Neanderthal skull fossil preserved so far. The team, led by China's Jilin University and Russia's Moscow State University, believes that the restoration shows the facial shape of prehistoric humans in Eurasia and displays the morphological characteristics of Neanderthals in Central Asia. The portrait reveals the young boy had a small, turned-up nose that sunk into his face The skull, dubbed Teshik-Tash 1, was found in a shallow pit inside the cave, along with five pairs of Siberian ibex horn cores and bird skeletons. And this suggests he was buried ritually. However, it was not until 2021 was the boy determined to be a Neanderthal by researchers from the Max Planck Institute. The team analyzed the skull's frontal bone, noting that the shape matched that of previous Neanderthal skulls. And a DNA analysis showed that Teshik-Tash 1 carried mtDNA of the Neanderthal type. At an estimated eight years old, the child had matured enough physically to exhibit distinctive Neanderthal characteristics, such as a large face and nasal area, a long, low cranium, a mandible without a chin, and a maturing brow ridge. The original skull was reconstructed from approximately 150 fragments. The team uploaded a scan of the skull and filled in the missing pieces, allowing them to overlay digital muscles, skin and finish with the boy's facial features. 'Fossils of Neanderthals, an extinct relative of modern humans, were first discovered in the Neanderthal Valley in Germany and were once widely distributed across Eurasia,' head of the team at Jilin University Zhang Quanchao told Xinhua. It was long believed that Neanderthals only roamed the landscapes of Europe during the last ice age, but a study led by the University of Washington in 2015 revealed they might have spread further east and lived alongside modern humans there for longer than was previously thought. Analysis of the traces of Neanderthal DNA found in the genomes of modern humans has shown that people in East Asia carry between 15 to 30 percent more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans. Joshua Akey, a geneticist at the University of Washington, and his colleague Benjamin Vernot analyzed distinctive patterns in the DNA of 379 modern Europeans and 286 modern East Asians from China and Japan. The skull was initially found in the Teshik-Tash cave in Uzbekistan in 1938 and it was not until 2012 was the boy confirmed to be a Neanderthal The team uploaded a scan of the skull and filled in the missing pieces. The skull was found in pieces, but scientists put it back together Using computer models, they attempted to simulate how the mixtures of Neanderthal DNA seen in the European and East Asian genomes could have occurred They concluded that one theory - that modern Europeans interbred more with populations from Africa to water down the Neanderthal DNA they carried - was unlikely. Instead, they found it was more likely that ancestors of the East Asian populations had bred with Neanderthals more than once. After piecing the skull together with the technology, the team was able to overlay digital muscles and skin 'One thing that complicates these analyses is the fact that humans have been constantly migrating throughout their history - this makes it hard to say exactly where interactions with Neanderthals occurred,' Vernot said. 'It's possible, for example, that all of the interbreeding with Neanderthals occurred in the Middle East, before the ancestors of modern non-Africans spread out across Eurasia. 'In the model from the paper, the ancestors of all non-Africans interbred with Neanderthals, and then split up into multiple groups that would later become Europeans, East Asians. The skull was also the furthest eastern extent of hominin discoveries outside the Levant. The team believes that the restoration shows the facial shape of prehistoric humans in Eurasia and displays the morphological characteristics of Neanderthals in Central Asia 'Shortly after they split up, the ancestors of East Asians interbred with Neanderthals just a little bit more. 'The important thing is that we show that we didn't just meet Neanderthals once in our history - it looks like we met them multiple times. 'But as we are able to look at individuals from more and more populations, we'll hopefully get a better idea of where our ancestors have been, and where they may have interacted with Neanderthals.' Scenic Yorke Bay is newly safe to visit after the clearing of Argentinian mines Above the tumbling dunes at Yorke Bay an RAF Typhoon screeched towards the South Atlantic. My companion waved at the aircraft and the pilot, spotting us, responded by waggling the jets wings in a friendly hello. Welcome to the new Falkland Islands, where the military may still be in place four decades after the failed 1982 Argentine invasion, but years of stability have created a peaceful haven just waiting to be explored. And Yorke Bay, a crescent of sand just outside the capital, Stanley, is a symbolic spot in this British Overseas Territorys revival. For while its beach had long been no-go due to Argentinian mines, these have finally been cleared, allowing locals and tourists to enjoy the fine scenery. I never dreamed I would stand here, said Daniel Biggs, owner of Falklands Outdoors, one of the many new tour companies. I used to look through the fence and think it would never be safe. While exploring the Falkland Islands, Tom Chesshyre paid a visit to Yorke Bay, above. Its beach had long been no-go due to Argentinian mines, but these have finally been cleared, allowing locals and tourists to enjoy the fine scenery, he reveals But it is now and the Suspect area, out of bounds signs are gone. Yet the question remains: why would you travel 8,000 miles to visit this remote archipelago (population 3,200) in the South Atlantic? The answer is simple: to see some of the most spectacular marine life in the world, and to experience the fierce pride and resourcefulness of a community so far removed. A little piece of Britain... a very long way from home. After visiting the bay, it was off to Volunteer Point, where great colonies of king penguins and (smaller) gentoo and Magellanic penguins are found. More than 3,000 waddle about here. Tom spent time at Volunteer Point (above), where more than 3,000 penguins 'waddle about' It was an extraordinary sensation. We strolled close by the tame birds as they squeaked, squawked, cavorted and generally made a racket. On our visit in mid-November spring in the Falklands chicks were shedding down, revealing splendid black-and-white feathers. Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, a curious penguin would scamper up, flapping its wings and inspecting us. These were heart-moving, joyous moments. You fly to the Falklands Mount Pleasant Airport, a military/commercial airstrip built after 1982, via a stop-off at the mid-Atlantic island of Cape Verde. The total flight time is 18 hours, and a direct service is available on Airbridge flights from RAF Brize Norton. You can also go via Chile. On arrival, passengers usually head straight for Stanley. This is a colourful place with brightly painted buildings with corrugated roofs and a clutch of lively restaurants and pubs, plus gift shops, red post and phone boxes. In pride of place, close to Government House, stands a statue of Margaret Thatcher, who as prime minister ordered the Task Force to liberate the islands. Colourful welcome: Stanley (above) is a 'colourful place with brightly painted buildings with corrugated roofs and a clutch of lively restaurants and pubs' Above is the archipelago's statue of Margaret Thatcher, who as prime minister ordered the Task Force to liberate the islands There is also Thatcher Drive along which many a Land Rover spins by. The Falklands must have more of these vehicles per head than anywhere. A fine early 20th-century cathedral rises next to a curious whale-bone monument celebrating British heritage. Meanwhile, a museum explains British historical ties dating from the 16th century as well as the ins-and-outs of the deadly 74-day Argentine conflict in which 255 British servicemen, three islanders and 649 Argentinians died. Theres an upbeat feel in Stanley now, though, with prosperity coming from its thriving fishing industry. This is evident in the bustling watering holes, especially Victory Bar (with its Union Jack bunting) and the Globe Tavern, plus dining spots such as The Waterfront Hotel and Malvina House Hotel. The latter is near a Falklands War memorial where the Princess Royal laid a wreath during our visit. Many veterans had made the trip. I often think about the war, said David Woodward, 60, who served in 59 Commando Squadron Royal Engineers. Its still vivid in my mind. Weve come to pay our respects. From Stanley, you can fly to Sea Lion Island (pictured), which is home to giant elephant seals as well as penguins A Magellanic penguin on Sea Lion Island Battlefield tours of Goose Green, San Carlos and Mount Tumbledown are popular. But it is the wildlife on the remoter islands that attracts many visitors. From Stanley you can fly to Sea Lion Island, also home to giant elephant seals, as well as the Bleaker, Pebble, Carcass and Saunders islands. Expect magnificent rockhopper penguins, rare caracara falcons, petrels and black-browed albatrosses. Small propeller planes link the islands, landing at grass airstrips, effectively creating a marine safari, with tourists popping off to three or four on typical fortnight visits. Flights last from 15 to 40 minutes. At Port Howard farm on West Falkland, rockhoppers were abundant. We also tried trout fishing on the River Warrah. Highlights, penguins aside, included oystercatchers, upland geese and sinister-but-serene skuas circling above penguin nests hunting for eggs. We never did see a killer whale, though you sometimes can be lucky. Small propeller planes link islands such as Carcass island (above) and Bleaker island, landing at grass airstrips You can expect to see magnificent rockhopper penguins, pictured, when you arrive on Saunders island, Tom reveals TRAVEL FACTS Seven nights with accommodation from 2,500 pp, excluding flights (discover-the-world.com). Tourist season is November 1 to March 31. See: falklandislands.com. Advertisement Visitors stay in small lodges and farmhouses. Do not expect anything fancy. But thats part of the charm along with an invariably hospitable welcome. Back at Yorke Bay before flying home, we relaxed on the once-deadly sand watching an albatross sailing above. The war of 40 years ago felt a distant memory. It is not, of course, for many locals especially when Argentine veterans return, a few in T-shirts bearing Argentinian flags. No wonder theres the odd comment about Argies, while giftshop souvenirs bear slogans such as The Falklands: British to the core! As Argentina still claims the islands, thats understandable. Yes, the war may be long over, but its far from forgotten. Not that that matters down in Yorke Bay among the penguins. Iggy Azalea has refused to reveal her earnings from OnlyFans. The star, 32, who is reported to have made $US307,000 (AUD$441,500) in her first 24 hours, lashed out at the speculation on Twitter. 'With love. I won't share what I make on OF [OnlyFans], in the same way I didn't share what I earned selling my music catalog,' she wrote. Iggy Azalea has slammed wild speculation about her 'staggering' OnlyFans earnings after it was claimed she made $500k in 24 hours 'Amounts being reported don't come from a valid source. Thanks to everyone supporting me. Crazy excited for where things go! Hot a** summer on the way!' 'With love. I won't share what I make on OF [OnlyFans], in the same way I didn't share what I earned selling my music catalog,' she wrote on Twitter It was reported by Perth Now that Azalea made $US307,000 ($441,500) in her first 24 hours. Iggy announced last week she was joining OnlyFans with a new project, Hotter Than Hell, after previously vowing to never join the adults-only platform. For $25 a month, subscribers can get access to illustrations, poetry, photography, videos and music, including her fourth album. It was reported by Perth Now that Azalea made $US307,000 ($441,500) in her first 24 hours The project is inspired by Madonna's iconic 1992 coffee table book, Sex, as well as Pamela Anderson and 1990s supermodels. Iggy will collaborate with producers, visual artists, and fashion photographers. including collage artist Ian Woods. The project will wrap in December 2023 with a coffee table book. Iggy's OnlyFans project is inspired by Madonna 's iconic 1992 coffee table book, Sex, as well as Pamela Anderson and 1990s supermodels 'I've been working on Hotter Than Hell for six months already and I'm full of excitement and nervous anticipation to begin revealing it to the world, layer by layer,' she said in a statement. 'Admittedly, I never knew OnlyFans was a place where I could be creative, so I didn't expect to be collaborating with them on my biggest project to date! 'Once I looked beyond the surface level chatter about what it means to have an OnlyFans, I realised it was the perfect platform to launch a multimedia concept on. For $25 a month, subscribers can get access to illustrations, poetry, photography, videos and music, including her fourth album 'I feel excited about not having to worry about the overwhelming and creatively limiting censorship artists have to navigate when sharing work on other digital platforms. 'The project is bold and fun - so is this collaboration - I think it's going to surprise a lot of people.' OnlyFans is a service that allows public figures to charge fans a subscription to access their content, which is usually deemed too provocative for other social media platforms. Carrie Bickmore was all smiles as she attended Sam Smith's concert in Adelaide last week with friends, just one week before announcing her split with her long-time partner Chris Walker. It was the last sighting of the former Project host before she made the shock announcement that she and Walker were separating after 11 years together. The Gold Logie winner, 42, broke the news in an emotional Instagram post on Wednesday morning, and said the pair are now focusing on co-parenting their three children - Ollie, 15, Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four. Carrie Bickmore was all smiles as she attended Sam Smith's concert in Adelaide last week with a male pal, just one week before announcing her split with her long-time partner Chris Walker Bickmore attended the exclusive Sam Smith concert on January 11, but did not post about the gig on Instagram. Instead, she was tagged in a photo shared by one of her mal pals, Frankie Braile. The TV star, who recently stepped down as host of Channel 10's The Project, looked stylish in a floral-patterned dress and accessorised with sunglasses, a chunky gold necklace and earrings. She showed no signs of heartbreak, beaming as she threw her arm around her friend Braile. Meanwhile, Walker was spotted looking downcast while going for a walk in Byron Bay days later on Saturday. She showed no signs of heartbreak, beaming as she threw her arm around her friend Frankie Braile Meanwhile, Walker was spotted looking downcast while going for a walk in Byron Bay days later on Saturday Walker, a TV producer, was joined by Bondi Vet Dr. Chris Brown The TV producer was joined by his close friend and Bondi Vet, Dr. Chris Brown, as the pair did the famous lighthouse walk. Walker pounded the pavement in a pair of black board shorts and a white tank singlet. He shielded his face with a green trucker cap and held a white and navy towel that was similar to one Dr. Brown carried on his shoulder. The pair chatted as they did the famous lighthouse walk in the popular coastal town Walker pounded the pavement while wearing a pair of black board shorts and a white tank singlet He shielded his face with a green trucker cap and held a white and navy towel in his hand While Brown continued to chat with his companion, Walker didn't appear to say a word. Bickmore announced her split from her partner Walker on Wednesday morning after 11 years together, with the news coming just a month after her final episode of the Channel 10 panel show. 'It's with immense sadness that Chris and I have decided to separate,' she wrote via Instagram. While Brown continued to chat with his companion, Walker didn't appear to say a word Walker's expression didn't appear to change much either 'While this is a tough time, our focus is on parenting, loving and supporting our three children Ollie, Evie and Addie with everything that we've got. 'They are doing great. We won't be making any further comment.' While the news came as a shock to fans, Bickmore - who just weeks ago was pictured with her children at the beach in Byron Bay - had hinted at her private struggles in a farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November. The Project bid farewell to Bickmore on November 30, as she stepped down from the Channel 10 panel show after an impressive 13 years. He continued walking while remaining focused on Brown's conversation The TV producer didn't seem to make eye contact at the fellow TV star until the end of their venture Walker looked downcast as he did some light exercise with the Channel 10 hunk She thanked her friends, colleagues and viewers at the end of the broadcast, as well as Chris, who was sitting in the studio audience with their children. 'Is it too late to change my mind?' she said, fighting back tears. 'To Chris. Thank you for everything. Your guidance and advice over the years, your amazing production skills...' she added. 'This show has given us so much. We wouldn't have our beautiful little prophets if it wasn't for The Project.' The pair appeared to be locked in a deep conversation during their Byron Bay hike at the weekend Speaking to her children, she said: 'You guys are my world. Love you guys.' Her departure also marked an end to her 17 years with Channel 10. The former couple met as colleagues on The Project - she was a presenter and he was a producer - and they began dating in late 2012, two years after she lost her husband Greg Lange, the father of her eldest child Ollie, to brain cancer. Bickmore announced her split from her partner Walker on Wednesday morning after 11 years together The TV presenter announced their split in an Instagram post on Wednesday, saying the pair was focused on co-parenting their three children, Ollie, 15, Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four Walker posted a similar statement about the break-up on his own Instagram account Despite his terminal diagnosis, Bickmore had married Langue in 2005 when she was just 25 years old, and together they welcomed a son, Oliver. After Langue died at age 35, a widowed Bickmore started the charity Carrie's Beanies for Brain Cancer in his memory. Two years later and Bickmore had found love again with Walker, who became a stepdad to Oliver, and with whom she later had two daughters: Evie, born in 2015, and Adelaide, born in 2018. Walker became a stepdad to Bickmore's son Oliver. They later had two daughters of their own: Evie, born in 2015, and Adelaide, born in 2018 Bickmore previously said Walker had also suffered loss in his life, which helped the bond in the early days of their relationship. 'He, like many people, understands loss and suffered his own loss in life and I think he just has a huge amount of compassion and he will always be incredibly supportive of me and for our family,' she told TV Week. In April last year, Bickmore and Walker moved to the UK with their children for a school term. In a lengthy Instagram post at the time, she explained they realised they needed to take a break during the Melbourne lockdowns. The split news comes just one month after Bickmore hosted her last episode of The Project, after stepping down because she wanted to spend more evenings at home with her family She thanked her friends, colleagues and viewers at the end of the broadcast, as well as Walker, who was sitting in the studio audience with their children (pictured) 'We feel like this is our last chance to do something like this together before Ollie hits the pointy end of his schooling and no longer wants to hang out with us so we are heading to the UK for a school term,' she wrote. Walker previously told the Herald Sun he would find himself 'missing' his partner because of the couple's busy schedules. 'Carrie works so much as well [on The Project]. Particularly at the start of the week I find myself missing her and the kids quite a lot,' he said. Bickmore and Walker's love story captured the hearts of Australians. They met as colleagues on The Project - she was a presenter and he was a producer - and they began dating in late 2012, two years after she lost her husband Greg Lange to brain cancer Walker made headlines in May last year when it was revealed he had unknowingly stripped off at the end of a work Skype meeting while he was on holiday in England. He wrongly thought he had left the conference when he took off his clothes in front of up to nine people, with the incident lasting between 40 seconds and two minutes. Walker had dialled in while on sabbatical in London with Bickmore and their children, with the naked faux pas taking place before a taping of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, for which he is executive producer. Bickmore was likely mortified by the incident, as Walker's gaffe led to an avalanche of embarrassing headlines. The much-loved public health campaign Life. Be in it., featuring a beer-bellied couch potato, has returned to Australian TV screens. The ads, which first appeared as a televised PSA in 1975 and ran through the 1980s, tried to persuade viewers to get more out of life by being active. Featuring cartoon characters, including middle-aged TV addict Norm, the revival of the ads has been spurred by new research showing Covid has had an alarming impact on the health of Australians. The much-loved public health campaign Life. Be in it., featuring a beer-bellied couch potato, has returned to Australian TV screens. The ads, which first appeared as a televised PSA in 1975 and ran through the 1980s, tried to persuade viewers to get more out of life by being active According to the Life. Be in it. website, research by marketing company Roy Morgan suggests Covid lockdowns have led to 'a decline in overall health'. The ads, re-issued in widescreen HD, have been sent to all the major TV networks. They are also available to watch on YouTube. Overweight and obesity issues among Australians, the research shows, were 'exacerbated by Covid'. This was down to 'choices in terms of food and exercise' made by Australians during the pandemic. Roy Morgan will soon be publishing its new research about the health of post-Covid Australians in 'The Life Be In It Wellness Index'. Data scientists interviewed 250,000 Australians since 2007 for the study. Featuring cartoon characters, the revival of the ads has been spurred by new research showing Covid has had an alarming impact on the health of Australians The brainchild of famed adman Phillip Adams and artist Alex Stitt, the Life. Be in it. campaign was first sponsored by the Victorian government. Like the new campaign, it was based on data from Roy Morgan. The witty ads became favourites with viewers, who found their health message attractive and the character of Norm sympathetic. The brainchild of famed adman Phillip Adams and artist Alex Stitt (pictured), the Life. Be in it. campaign was first sponsored by the Victorian government Most of the ads featured an activity like walking, surfing or sport. The campaign went national in 1978. Federal funding ceased in 1981 and now the brand survives as a registered charity. According to the organisation's stated aims, Life. Be in it. seeks to have a positive influence in five key spheres: health, sport and recreation, work, education and community. One of the intelligence officers who signed a letter in 2020 casting doubt on the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop story now admits he knew significant portions of it had to be true. Douglas Wise, the former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was one of the 51 former senior intelligence officers who signed the letter expressing "strong suspicion" that the laptop story was connected to Russian misinformation. Hunter Biden Laptop Story A significant portion of the original story's information has now been confirmed by other media sites. Wise told the Australian almost two years after signing the letter, "We all agreed that a substantial amount of that stuff had to be genuine for any Russian misinformation to be credible." Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also signed the open letter. The letter was sent amid heightened concerns about Russian interference in the race, as per The Washington Examiner. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms made measures to suppress the October 2020 New York Post article on the laptop. The officers relied on their credentials to claim that "our experience makes us quite suspicious that the Russian government had a major role in this case." President Joe Biden used the letter to deflect Republican criticism of the Biden family's international business connections, which the alleged laptop hard drive allegedly revealed. The initial denial of the laptop story by Big Tech has become a conservative rallying cry. The House Republicans intend to examine the laptop and subpoena the veterans of the intelligence community who supported the letter. Wise also said that he had no remorse about signing the letter since "Russians or even ill-intentioned conservative groups may have inserted information in there." Numerous media sites received copies of the laptop, which contained information regarding the younger Biden's personal life, financial affairs, and his father's role. Hunter Biden is now the subject of a federal investigation for allegedly making false statements on a federal form while acquiring a handgun and for probable tax fraud. It is possible that charges against him are imminent. The letter was sent five days after the New York Post first reported on the contents of the laptop, which included explicit photos documenting Hunter Biden's drug-fueled benders, details of his shady international business dealings, and emails in which Hunter appeared to be selling access to his then-vice president father. The letter also mentions "our belief that the Russians were engaged in the Hunter Biden email scandal" and ends, "it is time for Russia to stop interfering with our democracy." Initially, the laptop bombshell was confined on networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Elon Musk's release of the Twitter Files revealed details of their intention to censor material that may be damaging to Joe Biden soon before the election. Wise's remarks come as Republicans in the House target the Biden family. Last Monday, the House Oversight Committee initiated an inquiry into the the Biden family's business dealings and Joe's involvement in Hunter's work, according to Daily Mail. In addition, Republicans formed the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which is anticipated to investigate accusations that the FBI slowed down its investigation into the laptop's contents and forced Twitter to conceal the story. Read Also: Activist Greta Thunberg Taken by German Police Conspiracies About Hunter Biden's Apartment Rent Meanwhile, some conservatives believe that recently uncovered confidential records in President Joe Biden's Delaware house contain details about Hunter Biden's hefty monthly rent payments. A second batch of classified documents "locked" in the garage of the president's home in Wilmington has prompted backlash from both Republicans and Democrats, following the discovery of a first batch of classified documents in a Pennsylvania office prior to the midterm elections, which were transferred to the National Archives without delay. Monday, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson examined the possible relationship between a background check form for Hunter Biden and his intended to rent a California house. The background check document, which was shared on social media, indicates that the monthly rent for an unidentified home is $49,910. Another Twitter user questioned why Joe Biden's 2017 tax returns did not include the roughly $50,000 in rent payments recorded under Hunter Biden's name, as revealed by the background check. In a letter to the White House counsel, James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, confirmed that the location on Hunter Biden's driver's license matches the place where the sensitive materials were recovered. Tuesday, former President Donald Trump referred to the apparent connection between the papers and Hunter Biden's rent payments as "one of the biggest political and money laundering Scams in history." House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo that Congress has a constitutionally mandated duty to independently monitor all areas of the Justice Department, including special counsels. McCarthy questioned why the Mar-a-Lago property of Donald Trump was "raided" when the residence of President Joe Biden was not. According to the Twitter account of the Republican House Judiciary Committee, Republican Representative Jim Jordan addressed letters on Tuesday to numerous Biden administration officials "renewing pending requests for conversations and records." Paul Gosar, a representative from Arizona, described the uncovered documents as "stealing" on the part of the president, "as well as the corruption of accepting Ukrainian bribes thinly disguised as "rent" payments." Joe Biden has been asked to resign by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously declared her plan to impeach the president. Attorney Andrew Lieb told Newsweek that Biden's classified documents are part of "perhaps the greatest political disaster Biden could have concocted, given that it has revived Trump in politics," but he considers it "a non-issue" from a criminal standpoint. Related Article: Joe Biden Classified Documents Investigation Update @YouTube @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Reese Witherspoon shared a snap from behind the scenes of The Morning Show while filming season three. The 46-year-old actress donned a bulky green sweater over a low-cut white top. She added pale blue jeans to the ensemble. She parted her straw-blonde hair in the middle and let her tresses touch the top of her bust. Raising her cup: Reese Witherspoon shared a snap from behind the scenes of The Morning Show season three shoot In one hand, Reese held a dark blue coffee cup with 'The Morning Show' written across the front of it in yellow print. The Legally Blonde star held a marked-up script in the other hand. She wore bright pink lipstick to her look, and she captioned the snap, 'Rise and shine ! @themorningshow.' Months of filming: Witherspoon and her co-stars started filming the third season of the morning show way back in August, according to Parade (Witherspoon pictured October 2022) Cast: The Big Little Lies actress stars in the show alongside her longtime friend Jennifer Aniston, The Office actor Steve Carrell and Jeff, Who Lives at Home writer and director Mark Duplass (Left, Hasan Minhaj, right Reese Witherspoon) Award winning: The show has received quite a few accolades over its first two seasons including one Primetime Emmy Award and one Screen Actors Guild Award (Reese pictured show in the show) Witherspoon and her co-stars started filming the third season of the morning show way back in August, according to Parade. The publication also reported that the third season will likely premiere later this year. The Big Little Lies actress stars in the show alongside her longtime friend Jennifer Aniston, The Office actor Steve Carrell and Jeff, Who Lives at Home writer and director Mark Duplass. Upcoming movie: Witherspoon has a number of other projects coming out soon including Your Place or Mine co-starring Ashton Kutcher Plot: 'Two long-distance best friends change each other's lives when she decides to pursue a lifelong dream and he volunteers to keep an eye on her teenage son,' according to the movie's IMDb page Going back to a beloved character: Her live-action Tinker Bell film is currently in development, and she will soon start shooting Legally Blonde 3 as well as several other films The show has received quite a few accolades over its first two seasons including one Primetime Emmy Award and one Screen Actors Guild Award. Witherspoon has a number of other projects coming out soon including Your Place or Mine co-starring Ashton Kutcher. In it, Kutcher and Witherspoon play 'Two long-distance best friends change each other's lives when she decides to pursue a lifelong dream and he volunteers to keep an eye on her teenage son,' according to the movie's IMDb page. Her live-action Tinker Bell film is currently in development, and she will soon start shooting Legally Blonde 3 as well as several other films. Jonathan LaPaglia has returned to host the eighth season of Channel 10 reality show Australian Survivor: Heroes v Villains. The series, which premieres Monday, January 30, at 7.30pm, proved to be a gruelling experience for the presenter this time around, reports The Daily Telegraph. With filming taking place on location in Samoa instead of the Australian Outback, the production was affected by food poisoning and Covid-19 - not to mention the challenges caused by the elements. The new season of Australian Survivor: Heroes v Villains proved to be a gruelling experience for host Jonathan LaPaglia (pictured) The 53-year-old actor didn't pick up any food-borne illnesses, but did have bigger things to worry about. He tested positive to Covid on the last day of filming, after a lengthy shoot that saw 80 crew members become unwell at one time or another. 'I heard a lot of anecdotal stories, you know, people saying it was nothing but a little cold and it was done and dusted,' he said. Australian Survivor premieres Monday, January 30, at 7.30pm, But that wasn't the case for LaPaglia, who was out of action for six weeks before making a full recovery. Elsewhere in the interview, LaPaglia admitted the budget for the show didn't match that of the American version of Survivor. 'We dont have a lot of redundancy when it comes to crew,' he said. With filming taking place on location in Samoa instead of Australia, the production was affected by food poisoning and Covid - not to mention the challenges caused by the elements With a new 'Heroes v Villains' theme this year, past contestants collide with new ones as 'good' takes on 'evil'. LaPaglia believes all of the returning contestants were taking a huge risk given the fast-paced nature of the competition. Some of the high-profile names taking part include actress Sharni Vinson, former Miss World Australia Sarah Marschke, and author Benjamin Law. Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian recently duked it out on Instagram after Kylie didn't 'tag' Kim's SKIMS line in her most recent post. And on Tuesday, Kylie took a playful swipe at her sister by using one of Kim's most famous quotes against her. 'don't be f***ing ruuude' Kylie captioned a slideshow of busty snaps. Kim famously delivered the explicit line during a fight with her younger sister Khloe Kardashian in season two of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Salty? Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian recently duked it out on Instagram after Kylie didn't 'tag' Kim's SKIMS line in her most recent post. And on Tuesday, Kylie took a playful swipe at her sister by using one of Kim's most famous quotes against her 'don't be f***ing ruuude' Kylie captioned a slideshow of busty snaps Though the caption caught plenty of attention, so did Kylie's sultry snaps. For the images, Kylie posed seductively with one manicured finger resting on her plump lower lip. For another shot, she buried a hand in her hair and left her mouth slightly agape while staring away from the camera. Her silky raven hair was swept over one shoulder and worn in glamorous body waves that cascaded down her chest. The mother-of-two's hazel eyes were done up with mascara and smokey eyeshadow while her famous pout was painted a pinky nude. Kylie's chiseled cheekbones were amped up with pink peach blush from her Kylie Cosmetics line and a generous amount of highlighting powder helped her achieve an ethereal glow. Sultry: Kylie posed seductively with one manicured finger resting on her plump lower lip while flaunting her ample bust in a sexy black bra Eye-roll: Following her back-and-forth with Kylie, Kim seemed to take a dig at all four of her sisters in a TikTok published Tuesday The array of busty snaps earned heavy praise from her 378million followers. She gave fans a closer look at her glamorous appearance by uploading a 13-second video to her TikTok page. Flashing a sexy smirk, Kylie fiddled with her voluminous locks before briefly lip-syncing the lyrics to Snooze by SZA which she admits she's been playing 'on repeat.' Smoldering: For another shot, she buried a hand in her hair and left her mouth slightly agape while staring away from the camera Beauty: The mother-of-two's hazel eyes were done up with mascara and smokey eyeshadow while her famous pout was painted a pinky nude In the snippet featured in Kylie's clip, SZA sings: 'How can I snooze and miss the moment? / You just too important /Nobody do body like you do / I can't lose when I'm with you / I can't just snooze and miss the moment' According to TIME, Snooze is about 'wanting to be present for every moment with the person you love.' Whether or not the inclusion of the song has any subliminal meaning, Kylie does not appear to be hung up on her ex-boyfriend Travis Scott. Closer look: She gave fans a closer look at her glamorous appearance by uploading a 13-second video to her TikTok page As for her unlikely feud with Kim, the back-and-forth kicked off Monday when Kylie shared photos of herself in a skintight black romper as she frolicked in a field. Kylie captioned the post: 'Kyventures.' Soon after, Kim took to the comment section to ask her little sister to 'tag' her brand in the post so fans would know that the black bodysuit was from her SKIMS line. Flashing a sexy smirk, Kylie fiddled with her voluminous locks before briefly lip-syncing the lyrics to Snooze by SZA which she admitted she'd been playing 'on repeat' The array of busty snaps earned heavy praise from her 378million followers But Kylie fired back with a cheeky response. 'I had to steal this from mom's house and now you want me to promote?!!!!' Wow,' she replied. Despite the nudge from Kim, Kylie refused to tag SKIMS and the post remains unaltered. Kim launched SKIMS back in 2019 and has since expanded into sleep wear, swimwear and lounge wear. The brand is often featured on all of the Kardashian-Jenner Instagram pages, making Kylie's blatant exclusion an oddity. Following her back-and-forth with Kylie, Kim seemed to take a dig at all four of her sisters in a TikTok published Tuesday. Kylie's awkward back-and-forth with Kim kicked off Monday when Kylie shared photos of herself in a skintight black romper as she frolicked in a field Tag! Soon after, Kim took to the comment section to ask her little sister to 'tag' her brand in the post so fans would know where to buy the black bodysuit she was rocking Fiery: But Kylie fired back with a cheeky response. 'I had to steal this from mom's house and now you want me to promote?!!!!' Wow,' she replied 'Every time I FaceTime my sisters group chat,' wrote the Keeping Up With The Kardashians veteran, who could be seen rolling her eyes at the camera. Over the weekend, Kylie traded in her SKIMS for an ultra sexy two-piece by French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier. She also enlisted the help of her BFF, Anastasia 'Stassie' Karanikolaou, who is an Instagram model and social media influencer. The dynamic duo rocked alternate versions of the same designer getup which consisted of a polkadot patterned crop top and matching skirt. They posed for an array of snaps together while lounging in bed as well as some solo shots of Kylie writhing around by herself. Designer darling: Over the weekend, Kylie traded in her SKIMS for an ultra sexy two-piece by French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier Kylie shared the snaps - which has garnered over 5million likes - on Sunday. Kylie's split from her on/off boyfriend Travis Scott just before the holidays, according to PEOPLE. Rumors of a potential split began to stir after fans noticed Kylie was spending Christmas in Aspen with pals instead of with her baby daddy. 'Kylie is very focused on her kids and her business. She is not a big partier. Travis is the opposite. He likes to party,' a source told the outlet. 'They definitely have different focuses. They always did.' The insider also claimed that Kylie 'flipped out' when rumors that Travis had cheated on her surfaced. Partner in crime: She also enlisted the help of her BFF, Anastasia 'Stassie' Karanikolaou, who is an Instagram model and social media influencer Strike a pose: They posed for an array of snaps together while lounging in bed as well as some solo shots of Kylie writhing around by herself 'There is a reason that they never got married,' they added. 'It's always been very up and down. And they have never even lived together. They have always had separate homes.' The same source pointed out that: 'They have split several times in the past and this is probably not the end of their relationship.' Similarly, another confidant of the famous family spilled to Us Weekly that 'everyone around them expects them to get back together since this happened before.' Four days prior, the outlet received confirmation from an insider that the pair intend on remaining 'friends and great co-parents.' Jonathan Scott sent a sweet birthday message to his partner, Zooey Deschanel for her 43rd birthday. The Property Brothers star, 44, put together highlights of their time together in a photo montage on Instagram with the words: 'To the woman who keeps me smiling... Happy birthday Zooey.' Writing next to the post, the reality star said, 'You just keep getting even better. Happy Birthday Zooey .' Sweet message: Jonathan Scott sent a sweet birthday message to his partner, Zooey Deschanel for her 43rd birthday writing ''To the woman who keeps me smiling... Happy birthday Zooey' over a photo montage Tuesday The birthday girl sent a loving reply, 'Im the luckiest girl!' Jonathan's brother Drew got in on the action with his own post, 'Happy bday to the woman who makes my brother so happy. Thanks for being an amazing human.' The cute couple had a very meet cute beginning to their romance, when both participated in the AppleTV+ carpool with their siblings in 2019. Luckiest: Writing next to the post, the reality star said, 'You just keep getting even better. Happy Birthday Zooey .' The birthday girl sent of own loving reply, 'Im the luckiest girl!' Meet cute: The cute couple had a very meet cute beginning to their romance, when both participated in the AppleTV+ carpool with their siblings Drew Scott and Emily Deschanel in 2019 Brotherly love: Jonathan's brother Drew got in on the action with his own post, 'Happy bday to the woman who makes my brother so happy. Thanks for being an amazing human' Zooey's sister is Bones star Emily Deschanel, 46. The couple moved into their dream house in June 2022 after Jonathan headed up renovations on the historic home called Park House. They share the five bedroom Georgian style abode with Zooey's two children, Elsie Otter, seven, and Charlie Wolf, five. Dream home: The couple moved into their dream house in June 2022 after Jonathan headed up renovations on the historic home called Park House. They share the five bedroom Georgian style abode with Zooey's two children, Elsie Otter, seven, and Charlie Wolf, five The actress co-parents the kids with her ex-husband, film producer Jacob Pechenik, 50. Zooey will lend her voice to the animated Harold and the Purple Crayon. She' co-starring with Zachary Levi and Camille Guaty in the story about a young boy named Harold who embarks on a magical mission with the help of his purple crayon. They were once the golden couple of Australian media - one a Logie winning TV host and the other a hot-shot producer. Yet behind closed doors, there appeared to be tell-tale signs Carrie Bickmore and Chris Walker's relationship was in trouble. Carrie, 42, announced the couple's shock split via Instagram on Tuesday, leaving fans scratching their head about how it all went wrong. From a surprise overseas sabbatical to Carrie's resignation from The Project, we look at the possible signs Carrie Bickmore and Chris Walker were on the verge of separation From a surprise overseas sabbatical to Carrie's resignation from The Project, there were possible hints Carrie and Chris were on the verge of separation and may well have split months ago. The couple's UK sabbatical In April last year, Carrie and Chris temporarily relocated to the UK for three-month sabbatical with their children Ollie, 15, Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four. While Carrie described the trip as a 'family adventure' at the time, it could well have been a last-ditch attempt to revive her relationship. In April last year, Carrie and Chris temporarily relocated to the UK for three-month sabbatical with their children Ollie, 15, Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four (all pictured) Couples who are on the brink of separation are often encouraged by experts to embark on a final holiday together as a means of rekindling the romance. However, while some relationships benefit from the escapism, others dwindle more quickly, partly because the closeness and romance of a holiday may feel forced. Announcing her trip on The Project at the time, Carrie explained: 'Chris and I and the kids are heading off on a family adventure together.' Announcing her trip on The Project at the time, Carrie explained: 'Chris and I and the kids are heading off on a family adventure together' 'We've been wanting to do it for a while but for lots of reasons the timing hasn't been right, but we figure it's never going to be the perfect time to go. 'It's something we really want to do before my son starts his final years at school so we're doing term two in the UK. So I will be off for a couple of months.' The radio star also said she'd been inspired by The Project panellist Kate Langbroek, who spent two years living in Bologna, Italy, with her husband and children. Couples who are on the brink of separation are often encouraged by experts to embark on a final holiday together as a means of rekindling the romance Carrie returned to The Project in July with very little fanfare and largely kept mum about her trip. She joked she had come home with an English accent after living there for a few months and said she'd had a 'great time' - but little else. Carrie's shock exit from The Project Carrie quit The Project after 13 years on the panel in November, telling fans she wanted to spend more time with her family. Viewers were stumped as to why the blonde would give up such a lucrative gig, especially as she hadn't announced her next career move. Carrie quit The Project after 13 years on the panel in November, telling fans she wanted to spend more time with her family It's possible that Carrie threw in the towel to make more time for her relationship or to heal and focus on family if the pair had split beforehand. Chris had previously complained about his partner's busy work schedule, telling The Herald Sun: 'Carrie works so much as well (on The Project).' 'Particularly at the start of the week I find myself missing her and the kids quite a lot,' he lamented. It's possible that Carrie threw in the towel to make more time for her relationship Carrie's emotional letter Carrie hinted at her private struggles in a farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November. In a hand-written note to her glam squad, the mother of three thanked them for helping her get through some of the most challenging times in her professional life. 'To my hair and makeup family. Crap, I am crying already,' the letter began. Carrie hinted at her private struggles in a farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November In a hand-written note to her glam squad, the mother of three thanked them for helping her get through some of the most challenging times in her professional life 'You have held my hand through some of the toughest days in my career. You hear it all, see it all and share it all with me and I can't explain how much I am going to miss you all.' 'There is an unspoken bond between us all and please never forget how special you all are,' the mother of three added. 'I know this is not goodbye, just goodbye for now. Love to you all, Carrie.' The couple quietly selling their home Bickmore sold her five-bedroom family home in Melbourne just days before announcing her extended leave in London last year. At the time, it was unclear where Carrie and her family planned to live once they return home from their sabbatical. Some fans speculated this was because she and her family were planning to buy a place to live in England. Bickmore sold her five-bedroom family home in Melbourne (pictured) just days before announcing her extended leave in London last year However, it could be likely selling their marital home was another step towards the end of their relationship. Carrie's bikini transformation Carrie looking fitter than ever in recent photos of her at the beach in Byron Bay. The blonde looked absolutely sensational earlier this month as she splashed around with her kids. Bickmore was pictured looking fit and fabulous in a neon swimsuit as she hit the beach with her children in Byron Bay a few weeks ago Turning heads, she frolicked around in the high-cut one-piece looking anything but heartbroken. Her separation could have something do with her transformed new look as she, like many other women, could be coping with her heartbreak by focusing on her health and fitness. Chris' nude Skype call scandal Chris made headlines in May last year when it was revealed he unknowingly stripped off at the end of a production meeting - which he attended remotely, while holidaying in Europe. Chris made headlines in May last year when it was revealed he unknowingly stripped off at the end of a production meeting - which he attended remotely, while holidaying in Europe He wrongly thought he had left the conference when he took off his clothes in front of up to nine people, with the incident lasting between 40 seconds and two minutes. Chris had dialled in while on sabbatical in the UK with Carrie and their three young children, with the naked faux pas occurring during a meeting following rehearsals and before the taping of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. Carrie was likely mortified by the incident, as Chris' gaffe led to an avalanche of embarrassing headlines. Chris had dialled in while on sabbatical in the UK with Carrie and their three young children, with the naked faux pas occurring during a meeting following rehearsals and before the taping of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering Following the incident, a staffer accused senior ABC managers of initially brushing off the gaffe as 'hilarious' and dismissing employees' concerns. The ABC then reportedly offered counselling to staffers who witnessed the incident. The staffer also accused the ABC of downplaying the gaffe because Walker's production company Thinkative Television is behind some of the public broadcaster's most popular shows, including The Weekly and Hard Quiz. In June, The Australian reported that Chris was 'unlikely to face serious sanctions' for the gaffe. Carrie was likely mortified by the incident, as Chris' gaffe led to an avalanche of embarrassing headlines Carrie announced the couple's split in an Instagram post on Wednesday morning, saying the pair was focused on co-parenting their three children. The couple were in a relationship for 11 years. 'It's with immense sadness that Chris and I have decided to separate,' she wrote. 'While this is a tough time, our focus is on parenting, loving and supporting our three children Ollie, Evie and Addie with everything that we've got. Carrie announced their split in an Instagram post on Wednesday morning after 11 years together 'They are doing great, We won't be making any further comment.' Carrie and Chris' love story captured the hearts of Australians. They met as colleagues on The Project - she was a presenter and he was a producer - and they began dating in late 2012, two years after she lost her husband Greg Lange, the father of her eldest child Ollie, to brain cancer. Despite his terminal diagnosis, Carrie had married Langue in 2005 when she was just 25 years old. After Langue died in 2010 at the age of 35, a widowed Carrie started the charity Bickmore's Beanies for Brain Cancer in his memory. Two years later and Carrie had found love again with Walker, who became a stepdad to Oliver, and with whom she later had two daughters: Evie, born in 2015, and Adelaide, born in 2018. Lil Tjay's attorney claimed to TMZ that his car was legally parked before search The rapper Lil Tjay's attorney is coming to his defense and raising questions about the police search that ensnared him with a gun possession charge. The 21-year-old New York Cityborn musician's attorney Dawn Florio claimed to TMZ on Tuesday that New York Police Department officers had conducted an illegal search on the vehicle that he was riding in. According to Florio, Lil Tjay (real name: Tione Jayden Merritt) had merely been a passenger in the vehicle, rather than its driver. But more importantly, she claims that police never offered up a reason for searching the vehicle. Bad arrest? Rapper Lil Tjay, 21, was illegally stopped by police on Monday when he was arrested for gun possession by the NYPD, his attorney Dawn Florio claimed to TMZ on Tuesday; seen in February 2022 She suggests they may not have had probable cause, as the car was allegedly parked in a legal manner at the time that officers arrived on the scene. Florio also claims that the loaded weapon didn't even belong to Lil Tjay. The rapper's attorney clarified that she thinks that police targeted her client based on social media posts that he and his collaborator Ice Spice had shared about filming a music video. Despite his Monday arrest, the rapper was reportedly still in jail and waiting to see a judge as of Tuesday morning. Just getting a ride: Florio claimed that Lil Tjay was just a passenger in the vehicle, and she says it was legally parked; seen in 2015 No probably cause? The attorney also claims police didn't provide a reason for the search, and that the loaded weapon found did not belong to her client; seen in 2019 with rapper Remy Ma The rising star was arrested on Monday after when police found the loaded handgun in the vehicle he was in. The New York City native and his friends were pulled over during a traffic stop, police told TMZ, and the rapper who was shot last year in New Jersey was arrested after a weapon was recovered from the vehicle. An associate of Lil Tjay was also arrested in the incident, according to the New York Post. The latest: Lil Tjay was arrested in the Bronx on Monday when police found a loaded handgun in the vehicle he was in; he was pictured last March in LA Police told the outlet that charges were pending for Lil Tjay and his associate in connection with the incident. The arrest was captured in a TikTok clip, in which Lil Tjay was seen handcuffed and being led by NYPD officers. The rapper was clad in a black shirt with a black New York Yankees cap in the clip. The musical artist had previously taken to social media advertising that he would be in the area to film a music video. The Columbia Records-signed performer said in an Instagram Stories post, 'Video shooot today lol its litt.' Recovered: The musical artist is less than seven months removed from being shot in a June 22, 2022 attempted robbery in Edgewater, New Jersey. Pictured in Houston in August 2021 The musical artist is less than seven months removed from being shot in a June 22, 2022 attempted robbery in Edgewater, New Jersey. He was with friends Antoine Boyd and Jeffrey Valdez at the time of the incident, according to NorthJersey.com, which took place in a shopping center parking lot. A man named Mohamed Konate (who was also shot in the incident) has been charged with attempted murder, armed robbery and weapons violations in connection with the rapper's shooting. Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess stepped out with their baby in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, 49, and the Dancing With The Stars pro, 37, sported casual attire to do some shopping with their seven-month-old son Zane. The couple - who began dating in October 2020 - welcomed their first child together in June 2022. Casual outing: Brian Austin Green, 49, and Sharna Burgess, 37, stepped out with their seven-month-old son in Los Angeles on Tuesday The actor wore an olive green T-shirt and cargo capri joggers for the outing. He modeled a pair of colorful Nike sneakers and a gray trucker hat while he pushed the stroller. By his side, the professional dancer wore a black cardigan over a crop top and a pair of sweatpants as she carried their baby Zane. Family shopping trip: The actor and the Dancing With The Stars pro sported casual attire to do some shopping with their son Zane She donned a light gray beanie while their son was bundled up in a black beanie and a royal blue fleece jacket. Over two years ago, the pair met in a coffee shop after being set up by a mutual business manager. The couple went Instagram official in January 2021. Bundled up: Burgess wore a black cardigan over a crop top and a pair of sweatpants as she carried their baby Zane - who wore a fleece jacket and a beanie Soon after, they competed as a couple on season 30 of Dancing With The Stars and were eliminated in week four. In February 2022, the couple announced that they were expecting their first child together. On June 28, 2022, they welcomed their son Zane. Over two years ago: In October 2020, the pair met in a coffee shop after being set up by a mutual business manager and later had their first child together in June 2022 (pictured September 2022) Green also has three children - Noah, 10, Bodhi, eight, and Journey, six - with his ex-wife Megan Fox, 36. The former couple tied the knot in 2010 and split in May 2020. He has one son - Kassius, 20 - with his ex-fiancee and former Beverly Hills, 90210 co-star Vanessa Marcil, 54. There is a famous new voice entering the art scene. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's son Pax, 19, has secretly been making artwork under the pseudonym Embtto, according to Page Six. Pax is taking his new passion quite seriously and is even preparing for an upcoming show at a gallery located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Rising new voice: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's son Pax, 19, has secretly been making artwork under the pseudonym Embtto, according to Page Six; pictured in 2018 The prices of his works remain unknown. Insiders have described the pieces, which utilize a 'digital and mixed media process', as 'abstract'. The flourishing artist has shown an interest in the creative field in recent years. He has worked on several of his mother's films, including Without Blood and First They Killed My Father. Creatives: Pax and his family pictured with street artist JR in November 2021 Up-and-coming artist: Insiders have described the pieces, which utilize a 'digital and mixed media process', as 'abstract' Pax shot stills for First They Killed My Father and worked with behind-the-scenes footage for Without Blood, according to People. Speaking of his work on Without Blood, Jolie told People last year: '[He] worked hard.' The crew also featured Angelina's son Maddox. 'We work well together. When a film crew is at its best, it feels like a big family, so it felt natural,' the Tomb Raider actress explained. Former power couple: Pitt and Jolie, who adopted Pax in 2007, are still locked in a legal battle years after their split Pax was adopted by Angelina and her now ex husband Pitt in 2007. In addition to Pax, the former power couple share Maddox, 21, Zahara, 18, Shiloh, 16, and twins Knox and Vienne, 14. Brad and Angie were ruled legally single in 2019 but are still sorting out their labyrinthine financial affairs and custody arrangements to this day. The exes are currently locked in a legal battle over Chateau Miraval, a 35-room estate and celebrated vineyard in the south of France that Pitt and Jolie bought for $60 million in 2011. It was also the site of their 2014 nuptials. Jamie Lee Curtis showed her support for Greta Thunberg with an Instagram post Tuesday showing the arrest of the Swedish climate activist at a protest in western Germany over industrial expansion impacting villages in its path. The 64-year-old actress posted a news item from The Washington Post detailing the story with an image of the 20-year-old activist being carried by authorities following her arrest. Curtis - who has garnered awards season buzz for her portrayal of Deirdre Beaubeirdre in Everything Everywhere All at Once - has past expressed her support for Thunberg via social media. The latest: Jamie Lee Curtis, 64, showed her support for Greta Thunberg, 20, with an Instagram post Tuesday showing the arrest of the Swedish climate activist at a protest in western Germany over industrial expansion impacting villages in its path Thunberg famously roasted influencer Andrew Tate last month following his arrest - in connection with human trafficking - which stemmed from evidence of a pizza box shown in a clip he made aimed at her. After Thunberg said, 'this is what happens when you dont recycle your pizza boxes' following Tate's arrest, Curtis said, 'Maybe there is a late night team looking for a new comedy writer. @GretaThunberg for the environment AND the win!' Thunberg and other protesters were arrested Tuesday near the edge of an open coal pit mine where they demonstrated against the ongoing destruction of a village to make way for the mine's expansion, German news agency dpa reported. Thunberg was among hundreds of people who resumed anti-mining protests at multiple locations in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia a day after the last two climate activists holed up in a tunnel beneath the village of Luetzerath left the site. The actress posted a news item from The Washington Post detailing the story with an image of the activist being carried by authorities following her arrest Thunberg famously roasted influencer Andrew Tate last month following his arrest - in connection with human trafficking - which stemmed from evidence of a pizza box shown in a clip he made aimed at her Curtis suggested Thunberg try her hand at comedy writing after the viral one-liner The German government reached a deal with energy company RWE last year allowing it to destroy the village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038. Both argue the coal is needed to ensure Germany's energy security that's squeezed by the cut in supply of Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine . But environmentalists say bulldozing Luetzerath will result in vast greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is expected to miss its ambitious climate targets for the second year in a row. Amid the heated coal debate in Germany, the European Union pushed forward on Tuesday with a major clean tech industrial project designed to boost its plans for a greener future as the 27-nation bloc pursues the goal of being climate neutral by 2050. Elsewhere in western Germany, dozens of climate activists glued themselves to a main street in Germany's western city of Cologne and to a state government building in Duesseldorf. Near Rommerskirchen, a group of about 120 activists also occupied the coal railroad tracks to the Neurath power plant, according to police and RWE. Those who refused to leave the tracks were carried away, dpa reported. In addition, several people occupied a giant digger at the coal mine of Inden, while hundreds of other protesters joined a march near Luetzerath. The village itself was evacuated by the police in recent days and is sealed off. Once again, there were a few clashes with the police. Thunberg was carried away from the edge of the Garzweiler II opencast lignite mine by police during a protest action by climate activists after the clearance of Luetzerath, Germany, Tuesday Thunberg was seen being taken into custody at the protest in Germany Several activists ran over to the Garzweiler open pit mine, according to dpa. They stood at the brink of the open pit, which has a sharp break-off edge. Police said it was dangerous and people were prohibited from staying there. Thunberg had traveled to western Germany to participate in weekend demonstrations against the expanded mine and also took part in Tuesdays protest near Luetzerath. Police in nearby Aachen said a group of around 50 protesters got dangerously close to the rim of the mine and did not want to leave despite being asked to do so. All the people in that group had to be carried away from the edge of the mine and were then temporarily held to determine their identities, police said. Photos from the scene showed Thunberg was one of those whom officers took away. One protester was able to enter the mine, RWE said, calling the move 'very reckless,' dpa said. A police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity as is customary in Germany, said he was not permitted to give out any details on Thunberg or any other individuals who participated in the protest due to privacy rules. Police and RWE started evicting protesters from Luetzerath on January 11, removing roadblocks, chopping down treehouses and bulldozing buildings. Activists have cited the symbolic importance of Luetzerath for years, and thousands of people demonstrated Saturday against the razing of the village by RWE for the expansion of the Garzweiler coal mine. Carrie Bickmore's relationship advice has resurfaced following her announcement on Wednesday she'd split from her partner of 11 years, Chris Walker. The popular TV presenter, 42, revealed on her Carrie and Tommy radio show in 2018 that she kept the spark alive by following a simple rule Walker learnt from one of his colleagues. At the time, she was pregnant with their daughter Adelaide - the couple's second child together and Bickmore's third overall. Carrie Bickmore's relationship advice has resurfaced following her announcement on Wednesday she'd split from her partner of 11 years, Chris Walker 'We've been talking heaps lately, Chris and I we've got a new baby coming about little moments we can grab together to keep us connected,' she told her co-host Tommy Little. 'Because you can spend years and years [together] and you just realise you havent been feeling connected and then your kids leave home and youre like, "Who the hell are you?"' She continued: 'Chris said to me the other day, "I was talking to this guy at work and he is reading a lot of relationship books. He was telling me this great tip I think we should try. It keeps the romance alive and it means you start the day connected."' The popular TV presenter, 42, revealed on her Carrie and Tommy radio show in 2018 that she kept the spark alive by following a simple rule Walker learnt from one of his colleagues Bickmore said the key to starting the day 'connected' was kissing your partner in the morning for at least eight seconds, as opposed to just giving them a peck on the lips before leaving the house Bickmore said the key to starting the day 'connected' was kissing your partner in the morning for at least eight seconds, as opposed to just giving them a peck on the lips before leaving the house. She added their daughter Evie was surprised by the experiment, which prompted the couple to continue with it. 'The first day we did it, Evie looked at us like we had two heads,' Bickmore said. 'And then later when we were walking to school she said, "Are you and daddy friends?" I said, "Why do you ask?" and she said, "Oh, 'cause you kissed today."' Bickmore announced her separation from Walker on Wednesday morning She confirmed their split in a statement on Instagram (pictured), saying the pair was focused on co-parenting their three children, Ollie, 15, Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four Walker posted a similar statement about the break-up on his own Instagram account Bickmore announced her separation from Walker on Wednesday morning. She confirmed their split in a statement on Instagram, saying the pair was focused on co-parenting their three children, Ollie, 15, Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four. The news comes just one month after Bickmore hosted her last episode of Channel 10's The Project, after stepping down because she wanted to spend more evenings at home with her family. The news comes just one month after Bickmore hosted her last episode of The Project, after stepping down because she wanted to spend more evenings at home with her family She thanked her friends, colleagues and viewers at the end of the broadcast, as well as Walker, who was sitting in the studio audience with their children (pictured) 'It's with immense sadness that Chris and I have decided to separate,' she wrote. 'While this is a tough time, our focus is on parenting, loving and supporting our three children Ollie, Evie and Addie with everything that we've got. 'They are doing great. We won't be making any further comment.' While the split came as a shock to fans, Bickmore - who just weeks ago was pictured with her children at the beach in Byron Bay - had hinted at her private struggles in a farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November. In a hand-written note to her glam squad, the mother of three thanked them for helping her get through some of the most challenging times in her life. 'To my hair and makeup family. Crap, I am crying already,' the letter began. 'You have held my hand through some of the toughest days in my career. You hear it all, see it all and share it all with me and I can't explain how much I am going to miss you all.' 'There is an unspoken bond between us all and please never forget how special you all are,' she added. 'I know this is not goodbye, just goodbye for now. Love to you all, Carrie.' While the split came as a shock to fans, Bickmore had hinted at her private struggles in this farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November The Project bid farewell to Bickmore on November 30, as she stepped down from the Channel 10 panel show after an impressive 13 years. She thanked her friends, colleagues and viewers at the end of the broadcast, as well as Walker, who was sitting in the studio audience with their children 'Is it too late to change my mind?' she said, fighting back tears. 'To Chris. Thank you for everything. Your guidance and advice over the years, your amazing production skills...' she added. Bickmore is pictured with the hair and makeup staff on her final night on The Project 'This show has given us so much. We wouldn't have our beautiful little prophets if it wasn't for The Project.' Speaking to her children, she said: 'You guys are my world. Love you guys.' Bickmore and Walker's love story captured the hearts of Australians. They met as colleagues on The Project - she was a presenter and he was a producer - and they began dating in late 2012, two years after she lost her husband Greg Lange, the father of her eldest child Ollie, to brain cancer. Bickmore and Walker's love story captured the hearts of Australians. They met as colleagues on The Project - she was a presenter and he was a producer - and they began dating in late 2012, two years after she lost her husband Greg Lange to brain cancer Despite his terminal diagnosis, Bickmore had married Langue in 2005 when she was just 25 years old, and together they welcomed a son, Oliver. After Langue died at age 35, a widowed Bickmore started the charity Carrie's Beanies for Brain Cancer in his memory. Two years later, Bickmore had found love again with Walker, who became a stepdad to Oliver, and with whom she later had two daughters: Evie, born in 2015, and Adelaide, born in 2018. Bickmore previously said Walker had also suffered loss in his life, which helped the bond in the early days of their relationship. Walker became a stepdad to Bickmore's son Oliver. They later had two daughters of their own: Evie, born in 2015, and Adelaide, born in 2018 'He, like many people, understands loss and suffered his own loss in life and I think he just has a huge amount of compassion and he will always be incredibly supportive of me and for our family,' she told TV Week. In April last year, Bickmore and Walker moved to the UK with their children for a school term. In a lengthy Instagram post at the time, she explained they realised they needed to take a break during the Melbourne lockdowns. 'We feel like this is our last chance to do something like this together before Ollie hits the pointy end of his schooling and no longer wants to hang out with us so we are heading to the UK for a school term,' she wrote. Walker previously told the Herald Sun he would find himself 'missing' his partner because of the couple's busy schedules. 'Carrie works so much as well [on The Project]. Particularly at the start of the week I find myself missing her and the kids quite a lot,' he said. Walker made headlines in May last year when it was revealed he had unknowingly stripped off at the end of a work Skype meeting while he was on holiday in England. He wrongly thought he had left the conference when he took off his clothes in front of up to nine people, with the incident lasting between 40 seconds and two minutes. Walker had dialled in while on sabbatical in London with Bickmore and their children, with the naked faux pas taking place before a taping of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, for which he is executive producer. Bickmore was likely mortified by the incident, as Walker's gaffe led to an avalanche of embarrassing headlines. According to a recent report, Bryan Kohberger, the suspect in the Idaho College murders in November, reportedly sent one of the four victims a series of private messages on Instagram before the incident. An anonymous investigator said that Kohberger slipped into one of the ladies' direct messages multiple times, but she didn't reply. "Basically, it was just him saying, 'Hey, how are you?' But he did it again and again," the source told People. Kohberger sent the direct message to the victim in October, as per the New York Post. Moscow, Idaho police were able to track the Idaho College murders suspect from his residence in Pullman, Washington to his parent's property in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania with the help of the FBI, Fox News reported. Read Also: Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal Latest Story Officials have made few public remarks since Kohberger's capture on Dec. 30. The Idaho college murders update comes within a gag order. Idaho College murders suspect Kohberger has been charged with four charges of first-degree murder and one count of criminal burglary in the horrific quadruple Idaho College murders. Kohberger was pursuing a criminology Ph.D. at Washington State University, which is only 10 miles from the University of Idaho. Suspect Admits Having 'Crazy Thoughts' Police said he attacked four college students at a six-bedroom rental property on King Road in Moscow, Idaho on November 13, 2022. At least some of the victims were likely sleeping during the Idaho College murders, per an earlier HNGN report. Bryan Kohberger reportedly admitted to having "crazy thoughts" and "delusions of grandeur" in an internet forum back in 2010. The 28-year-old Kohberger reportedly wrote on an online discussion board about having "visual snow syndrome," a condition that causes people to see static. He made the post between the dates of November 6th, 2009, and February 20th, 2012, according to a New York Times article on the, Idaho college murders update Related Article: Idaho College Murders Viral Photos Update @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The ex-boyfriend of Kanye West's new 'wife' Bianca Censori has broken his silence following news of her non-legally binding marriage to the American rapper. Nick, who did not disclose his surname, told Nova FM's Fitzy & Wippa on Wednesday that Bianca, 27, 'wasn't a fan' of Kanye while they dated throughout high school and university. He added that she was always 'too big' for Melbourne and he wasn't surprised by her success in the U.S. and newfound fame. The ex-boyfriend of Kanye West's new 'wife' Bianca Censori (pictured) has broken his silence following news of her non-legally binding marriage to the American rapper Nick refused to speak on live radio, but did answer producers' questions off camera. 'Bianca and I dated for six years and have known each other since we were teenagers,' he said. 'We have been through a huge amount together through high school and through university. 'We met as teenagers in the suburb of Ivanhoe [Melbourne] around the age of 14 in 2007 and began dating in 2014.' Nick, who did not disclose his surname, told Nova FM's Fitzy & Wippa on Wednesday that Bianca, 27, 'wasn't a fan' of Kanye while they dated throughout high school and university Nick added that she was always 'too big' for Melbourne and he wasn't surprised by her success in the U.S. and newfound fame. (Pictured: Kanye West in Los Angeles on July 24, 2015) He said they went their separate ways almost three years ago, which 'allowed us to both grow in relationships and in our careers'. Despite getting a plum job at Yeezy before graduating university, Nick explained that Bianca wasn't that familiar with Kanye's work before travelling to Los Angeles to work for his fashion empire. This obviously didn't bother the Stronger hitmaker, however, as the pair tied the knot in a non-legally binding ceremony last week. 'I wouldn't say she was the biggest fan of Kanye at the time, but I do have hilarious videos of her dancing in a boxy outfit to the song I Love It,' said Nick, referring to Kanye's 2018 collaboration with Lil Pump. Bianca (left) bears a striking resemblance to Kanye's ex-wife Kim Kardashian (right) She joined the Yeezy team in November 2020 and lists herself as the Head of Architecture for the brand on her Linkedin account Nick explained that despite going their separate ways 'the day before [the] Melbourne lockdown in March 2020', the exes remain supportive of one another. 'Bianca has always been bigger than Melbourne and we both knew this,' he said. 'One time we travelled to America and she told me she would live there one day'. However, Nick insisted Bianca's move overseas wasn't inspired by their break-up. Kim Kardashian filed for divorce last February after nearly seven years of marriage. The former couple share four children: North, nine, Saint, seven, Chicago, four, and Psalm, three 'The girl is extremely talented and took the leap to go chase her dream of being a famous architect, which she's achieved,' he said. 'Of course I support them. If Bianca is happy [with Kanye], I am happy for her. 'She has always been supportive of my relationships. I wish them the best and hope it's a modern-day love story.' It comes after an old friend of Bianca's revealed details about her high school days. The friend, named Kate, told Nova FM's Ben, Liam and Belle that Bianca was not a fan of Kanye West's music growing up, and was always part of the 'popular group'. A source close to Kim recently told Page Six she had sensed 'there was a certain frisson' between Kanye and Bianca long before the pair symbolically tied the knot 'I knew her pretty well. She was definitely in the popular group and she was known for her big boobs. That was kind of her thing,' Kate said. 'She was pretty hot, she was the hot one, friends with all the guys. [But] she was lovely. 'She wasn't one of the b**chy popular high school girls. I've got nothing bad to say about her.' Kate explained Bianca had been studying architecture at the University of Melbourne when Kayne offered her a job. 'Ye slid into her DMs, found her on Instagram, and said, "Come and work for me," and she dropped out. I'm not actually sure if she's an architect,' she said. Kanye made offensive remarks on October 8 after he faced restrictions on Instagram 'Ye slid into her DMs, found her on Instagram, and said, "Come and work for me," and she dropped out. I'm not actually sure if she's an architect,' she said. Kate admitted Bianca wasn't a huge fan of Kayne's music when he contacted her. The rapper, 45, is said to have held a private ceremony with the Aussie designer last week, and the pair have been spotted wearing wedding rings. A Kim Kardashian lookalike through-and-through, Bianca hails from Kew, Victoria where she went to Carey Baptist Grammar School, according to her LinkedIn. Appearing on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show last month, Kanye said he saw 'good things' about Adolf Hitler and Nazis After graduating from high school, she started her own jewellery company Nylons as she completed a Bachelor's degree at the University of Melbourne from 2013-2017. The business began with her friend Irene when they created chokers and bracelets made from Swarovski crystals for themselves and friends, before they realised the potential to set up a store. In the last two years of her degree, Bianca also worked as a design consultant at Kelektiv, a furniture design company in the city. She then moved on to DP Toscano Architects in Collingwood where she stayed as she went for her Masters in Architecture. In November of 2020, she left Australia right after she graduated from university and moved to Los Angeles to work for Kanye as the Head of Architecture at his fashion design company Yeezy. Not much else is known about Bianca, as she deactivated her social media accounts quickly after the news about her secret nuptials with Kanye broke. Kanye has been keeping a relatively low profile in the six weeks since a December 1 appearance on Alex Jones' show Infowars in which he lavished praise on Nazis and Adolf Hitler. 'He didn't kill six million Jews,' he said on the program, in which he appeared alongside white supremacist Nick Fuentes. 'That's just factually incorrect. I'm not trying to be shocking. I like Hitler. The Holocaust is not what happened... Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities... every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.' The appearance came prior to Kanye being banned from Twitter later that day for posting a picture of a swastika interlaced with a Star of David. The turbulent day capped off a two-month stretch in which Ye dominated the headlines after making a series of anti-Semitic remarks, leading to a number of companies to break ties with him. The race-related controversies kicked off October 3 when he and and conservative commentator Candace Owens donned tops that read White Lives Matter during a Paris Fashion Week showcase for his Yeezy line. She captivated audiences as the gothic Wednesday Addams. And Jenna Ortega put on another spellbinding display during Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday. The Netflix star, 20, worked her magic in a sexy backless dress which draped over her head as she attended the Saint Laurent Menswear Fall-Winter 2023-2024 runway show. Dropping jaws! Jenna Ortega put on another spellbinding display during Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday She looked sensational posing up a storm at the show, channeling her inner model as she struck an array of expert angles. Adoring her wrists were chunky bracelets in gold and black while a touch of edgy makeup accentuated her complexion. She worked a midnight black slick of eyeliner, a touch of bush, and a berry hued pout. The Jane The Virgin actress appeared to nab front row seats, where she watched models walk the runway alongside other trendsetters. Working it! Ortega wowed in a sexy hooded dress which displayed her toned back Picture perfect! She looked sensational posing up a storm at the show, channeling her inner model as she struck an array of expert angles Alter-ego: Jenna echoed her Wednesday character in the slinky gothic look She also flaunted expertly manicured nails done in a glossy tone. The appearance comes after the smash success of Jenna's Netflix series Wednesday, which focused on the goth teenager moving into the boarding school Nevermore Academy. The series has since been renewed for a second season - after becoming one of the most successful shows ever on the streaming platform. Front row! Ortega sat beside other trendsetters as she watched models walk the runway Front row: Raye (L) looked gorgeous in an off-the-shoulder black sheer gown while Beatrice Dalle (R) also looking stylish in black Glam: Raye accessorised her look with a chic black Saint Laurent clutch Off the catwalk: Polish supermodel Anja Rubik rocked a black suit with silk piping Strike a pose: Photographer Nadia Lee Cohen (L) went braless in a blackless number while rapper Coi Leray (R) opted for a sheer gown Working it: Shalom Harlow showed off her toned abs in a statement black number Striking: Alek Wek also wore a hooded dress like Jenna's but in white In an interview with Tudum.com, Creators/Showrunners/Executive Producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar said: 'It's been incredible to create a show that has connected with people across the world. 'Thrilled to continue Wednesday's tortuous journey into season two.' 'We can't wait to dive head first into another season and explore the kooky spooky world of Nevermore. Just need to make sure Wednesday hasn't emptied the pool first.' Fashion week! Tuesday's display saw models working the runway in a collection heavy in statement-making apparel Appearance: Stranger Things' Jamie Campbell Bower attended the show Jenna was one of many granted an in-person sneak peek of the upcoming Saint Lauren collection. Tuesday's display saw models working the runway in a collection heavy in statement-making apparel. Founded in 1962, the luxury French fashion house Yves Saint Laurent creates everything from haute couture to ready-to-wear apparel. James Corden and his wife Julia Carey wore matching jackets as they stepped out for a walk in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. The host of The Late Late Show, 44, and his wife sported matching navy padded coats for their stroll in Brentwood. This comes after Chelsea Handler took a dig at the comedian at the Critics' Choice Awards in her opening monologue and roasted him after he was briefly banned by a restaurant owner for his poor behavior towards staff. Morning stroll: James Corden and his wife Julia Carey wore matching jackets as they stepped out for a walk in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning During their morning stroll, the comedian bundled up in a navy puffer jacket and wore a pair of medium-wash skinny jeans. He wore a pair of classic Wayfarer sunglasses and wore a pair of Nike sneakers as he spoke to the producer - who he has been married to since 2012. Matching attire: The host of The Late Late Show , 44, and his wife looked relaxed on their walk His wife donned a matching coat with a longer puffer style and cropped leggings. She sported a pair of dusty pink sneakers and wore similar sunglasses to her husband's but with a tortoiseshell frame. On Sunday, the Gavin & Stacey star was roasted in Chelsea Handler's opening monologue - that also took a dig at Prince Harry's recently released memoir - at the Critics' Choice Awards. Looking blue: During their morning stroll, the comedian bundled up in a navy puffer jacket and wore a pair of medium-wash skinny jeans On the topic of the FX hit series The Bear, the 47-year-old comedian said: 'They showed us how grueling and how absolutely miserable working in the restaurant industry can be, and they didn't even have to wait on James Corden.' In that statement, she was referring to his alleged rude behavior and bullying towards the staff members at NYC restaurant Balthazar. Corden was banned by the restaurant owner after being branded the most 'abusive customer EVER' in October 2022. Roasted: On Sunday, the Gavin & Stacey star was roasted in Chelsea Handler's opening monologue - that also took a dig at Prince Harry 's recently released memoir - at the Critics' Choice Awards He later explained the situation from his perspective in a five-minute opening monologue on The Late Late Show - which he announced in April that he would be leaving in mid-2023 - after receiving backlash for an interview with The New York Times. He told the publication: 'I feel so zen about the whole thing. Because I think it's so silly. I just think it's beneath all of us. It's beneath you. It's certainly beneath your publication.' Later on his show, he admitted that he did make an 'ungracious' comment because his wife was served the wrong dish three times. Refuting the claims: He later explained the situation from his perspective in a five-minute opening monologue on The Late Late Show - which he announced in April that he would be leaving in mid-2023 However, he said that the other claims about his poor behavior were false. 'I didn't shout or scream,' he said. 'I didn't get up out of my seat. I didn't call anyone names or use derogatory language.' He then expressed his regret and said he would apologize to the staff member the next time he saw them in person. 'It is a comment I deeply regret,' he added. 'I understand the difficulties of being a server - I worked shifts at restaurants for years. I have such respect and I value anyone that does such a job.' Margot Robbie's vanishing wedding ring has left fans puzzled. The Australian actress, 32, who married UK filmmaker Tom Ackerley in 2016, arrived in Sydney over the weekend to promote her new film Babylon, and has been slipping her diamond sparkler on and off ever since. She initially raised eyebrows on Sunday when she was pictured without her ring as she arrived at Sydney Airport. Margot Robbie ditched her wedding band and wore a large gold band on her left hand during her appearance on The Project on Wednesday night Margot's vanishing wedding ring has left fans puzzled. The Australian actress, 32, who married UK filmmaker Tom Ackerley in 2016, arrived in Sydney over the weekend to promote her new film Babylon, and has been slipping her diamond sparkler on and off ever since. Pictured: Tom and Margot at the 2020 Golden Globes Fans couldn't help but notice the absence of Margot's pear-shaped diamond engagement ring and diamond-encrusted wedding band. Tom, 32, who is based in Los Angeles, didn't join Margot for her trip Down Under. A day later, however, Margot's wedding band made an appearance as she attended the red carpet premiere for Babylon at Sydney's State Theatre. Margot's wedding band made an appearance as she attended the red carpet premiere for Babylon at Sydney's State Theatre. She is pictured at the event wearing her wedding ring Clad in baby blue evening gown with red lace detailing, the star oozed Hollywood glamour as she posed for photos with her delicate ring proudly on display Clad in baby blue evening gown with red lace detailing, the star oozed Hollywood glamour as she posed for photos with her delicate ring proudly on display. On Tuesday, fans were once again stumped when Margot appeared on Channel Ten's The Project with a completely different band on her left ring finger. The thick gold ring matched two others on Margot's fingers, as well as her gold pendant necklace. The thick gold ring matched two others on Margot's fingers, as well as her gold pendant necklace Margot previously admitted she rarely wears her engagement and wedding rings as she's 'scared to lose it' at work. She is pictured at the Academy Awards in 2021 It's likely the rings were provided by a stylist to match her khaki blazer for the televised interview. Margot previously admitted she rarely wears her engagement and wedding rings as she's 'scared to lose it' at work. 'That's the thing, we were best friends and roommates before and now we're like best friends and roommates still, so nothing's really changed at all,' she said of her husband during a 2917 interview with Vogue Australia. Margot married her longtime partner Tom in a secret Byron Bay ceremony in December 2016. Pictured together in November 2022 Margot married her longtime partner Tom in a secret Byron Bay ceremony in December 2016. Pictured together in November 2022 'Other than the fact that I get to wear this [her ring] on the weekends. I can't obviously wear it during the week when I'm working I don't want to lose it on set.' Margot married her longtime partner Tom in a secret Byron Bay ceremony in December 2016. The couple tied the knot in an intimate ceremony attended by 50 guests, with Margot wearing a boho off the shoulder gown. Rather than release a statement announcing her marriage, The Wolf Of Wall Street star confirmed her news by posting a photo to Instagram of her holding up her wedding finger while she kissed her new husband. The photo has since gone on to become one of the most liked photos on Instagram. Ray Meagher has renewed his contract to star on Home and Away for another five years. In a surprise revelation, the 78-year-old, who has played beloved Alf Stewart on the hit Channel Seven soap for three decades, says he never thought he had much of a future on the show. 'We'd done the pilot and to be honest, I was older and more cynical, and was convinced it would crash and burn like most [shows] do,' he said. Ray Meagher has renewed his contract on Home and Away for another five years Ray told the Scottish Sun he was finally persuaded by the producers to sign on to the show for six months - after first refusing their offer of a two-year contract. 'I didnt ever really have a target of years or anything like that,' he said. 'People often say, why would you stay that long? 'I think the basic answer is the people. Weve got a wonderful crew and some of them have nearly been there as long as me.' In a surprise revelation, the 78-year-old, who has played beloved Alf Stewart on the hit Channel Seven soap for three decades, says he never thought he had much of a future on the show Ray has been on the series since its debut in 1988. The lovable actor was featured as guest of honour on Channel Seven's re-boot of This Is Your Life last October. And a long-list of former Home and Away stars, including Chris Hemsworth, paid tribute to the Aussie showbiz legend. Ray has been on the series since its debut in 1988. Pictured: Home and Away stalwarts (L-R) Judy Nunn, Ray Meagher, Cornelia Frances and Norman Coburn Struggling to hold back tears, Ray listened as Chris called him: 'the godfather of Australian television.' The Thor actor appeared on Home and Away from 2004-2007, where he worked alongside Ray before heading off to Hollywood. Via video link, Chris shared a sweet and comical tribute to Ray, who he says has always been a good friend and mentor to him. 'You're my hero,' Chris told the veteran actor. Love Island returned on Monday evening as a new set of singletons entered the South African villa. And one in particular has caught the eye of former finalist Indiyah Polack after making a sly move in the opening episode. Tanyel Revan, 26, made sure all eyes were on her as she was the last of the main cast to enter the villa and swiped PE teacher Kai Fagan, 24, from one of the other girls. 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer': Love Island returned on Monday and one contestant caught the eye of former finalist Indiyah Polack after making a sly move in the opening episode Kai was coupled up with Olivia Hawkins, 27, for a few minutes when the beauty came in and pinched him leaving her on the bench and having to couple up with farmer Will Young, 23. The bold move from Tanyel did not go unseen by Indiyah who bought up the moment on Love Island: The Morning After podcast. Speaking to co-host and former Made In Chelsea star Sam Thompson, she said: 'Mate, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. 'Take her tricks': Tanyel Revan, 26, made sure all eyes were on her as she was the last of the main cast to enter the villa and swiped PE teacher Kai Fagan, 24, from one of the other girls Sly: Kai was coupled up with Olivia Hawkins, 27, for a few minutes when the beauty came in and pinched him leaving her on the bench and having to couple up with farmer Will Young, 23 'If all the other babes are smart, they'll just take Tanyel's tricks and then use it on the guys. 'Befriend her, take her tricks and take her man.' Another fellow Islander Demi Jones, who was a guest on the podcast, replied: 'Ooh this is sass from you Indiyah!' 'Befriend her, take her tricks and take her man': The bold move from Tanyel did not go unseen by Indiyah who bought up the moment on Love Island: The Morning After podcast The villa is already looking slightly different after bombshell hunk Tom Clare, 23, re-coupled with Olivia on Tuesday night's show leaving Will single and vulnerable. However, viewers were left less than impressed as they rushed to Twitter to say they felt bad for Will as Olivia didn't 'try to hide her smile when her name was called'. Fans joked that the farmer needs to 'smile through the pain', as he was left sitting solo around the fire pit. It seemed Olivia wasn't too impressed with Will from the start as her head was already turned for Haris Namani, 21. Speaking to co-host Sam Thompson, she said: 'Mate, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If all the other babes are smart, they'll just take Tanyel's tricks and then use it on the guys' The ring girl admitted to already 'frienzoning' Will and that the farmer is just 'not my type'. She said: 'He's so lovely but he's just not my type. We would be really good friends. I don't want to friendzone him already but in my head I have.' Speaking to the camera, she added: 'With Will I'm already thinking friendship but I'm going to go in with an open mind and get to know everyone else.' The reality star's head looks like it might have already turned to boxer Haris after the pair had a cheeky chat by the fire pit. Just one day after the Islanders coupled up for the first time, ITV revealed two new bombshells are set to enter the villa in the next episode to stir some feathers. David Salako, 24, and Zara Deniz Lackenby-Brown, 25, will be heading in to mix things up and make sure the islanders are not getting to comfortable. George Takei's nearly 60-year feud with William Shatner rages on as the actor recently shared his thoughts about his Star Trek co-star's trip to space. Shatner, 91, boarded a flight with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's aerospace company Blue Origin in October 2021, making him the oldest person to reach space. But Takei, 85, wasn't as impressed by Shatner's historic voyage, telling the Mirror: 'Well, he wasn't really in outer space and it wasn't for very long.' George Takei's nearly 60-year feud with William Shatner rages on as the actor recently shared his thoughts about his Star Trek co-star's trip to space He discussed how he achieved a similar experience to Shatner's during a parabolic flight, which simulates weightlessness without going having to leave the planet. 'I've also been in zero gravity but I did it for longer. I took a parabolic flight and experienced five minutes of weightlessness, whereas William only experienced three minutes,' Takei explained. 'So I've spent more time in zero gravity than him.' Despite his dismissive remarks, Takei insists that 'there's no animosity' between himself and Shatner, whom he co-starred with on the hit NBC series for three years. 'In Star Trek I was blessed by wonderful and lifelong friends, and we all enjoyed each other's company except for the prima donna,' he said, referring to Shatner. Takei said Shatner is 'not the easiest guy to work with' and that he 'wouldn't leap at another opportunity.' Historic: Shatner, 91, boarded a flight with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's aerospace company Blue Origin in October 2021, making him the oldest person to reach space Shatner seen with fellow passengers (L-R) Glen de Vries, Audrey Powers and Chris Boshuizen And he also believes this opinion is shared among other Star Trek cast members. 'That's a universal feeling, although the others have a better sense of restraint and discretion. I believe in being honest and forthright.' When asked if he would be willing to meet Shatner face-to-face and put the feud to rest, Takei replied: 'We meet up all the time! 'We do Star Trek conventions. We cross paths and I say, "Hi Bill" and he says, "Hi George", and we keep on walking.' Takei had stronger words for Shatner earlier this month during an interview with The Times. He was responding to comments made by Shatner, where he claimed Takei's past remarks about him are a 'sickness', and claimed: 'George has never stopped blackening my name.' Unimpressed: But Takei, 85, wasn't as impressed by Shatner's historic voyage, telling the Mirror : 'Well, he wasn't really in outer space and it wasn't for very long'; pictured in October Takei said: 'Shatner is a cantankerous old fossil. All of us have had problems with him. Jimmy Doohan, who played Scotty, back when he did conventions used to go on and on about Bill Shatner. 'There is this fiction that Bill and Leonard [Nimoy, aka Spock] were good friends, but we know better Leonard privately expressed his irritation with Bill. Bill is an egocentric, self-involved prima donna.' At the beginning of December, Takei vowed never to talk about his former Star Trek co-star again as he attempted to put their long-running feud to bed. During the interview, Takei, who played the role of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, branded Shatner a 'cantankerous old man' and claimed that he used their row as publicity. While discussing his musical Allegiance, which is based on his childhood experience and family history, Takei was asked by Graham, 59, about his feud with William. Clearly fed-up with the narrative, he said: 'You are the last chat show host to be allowed to ask that question as it has become so tiresome to talk about. Takei had stronger words for Shatner earlier this month during an interview with The Times 'When Bill has a book to sell he needs publicity and accuses us of using him. My subject is more substantial and important.' Takei then went on to add one last jibe before attempting to end the ongoing tensions one and for all. He added: 'He is a cantankerous old man and I will not talk about him anymore. I vow that this is the very last time I talk about him.' And while Takei seemingly wanted to end their quarrel at the time - just days before he couldn't help but take a swipe at William as he once again called him 'a cantankerous old man' in an interview. The TV personality told The Guardian that he didn't want to continue engaging with Shatner after he said his ex Star Trek co-stars criticized him in interview for publicity in a barbed interview earlier this month. 'I know he came to London to promote his book and talked about me wanting publicity by using his name,' said Takei, who played the role of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek. 'So I decided I don't need his name to get publicity.' Claims: Responding to Shatner's recent comments, where he claimed Takei's remarks about him are a 'sickness', and claimed: 'George has never stopped blackening my name' (Shatner pictured December 2022) Takei, who reprised the role of Sulu for multiple films and shows in the Star Trek franchise, told the outlet that he had 'much more substantial subject matter' that he'd sought publicity for. 'I'm not going to refer to Bill in this interview at all ... although I just did. He's just a cantankerous old man and I'm going to leave him to his devices. I'm not going to play his game.' When asked if Shatner was 'cantankerous' in his younger years, Takei said that Shatner 'was self-involved,' 'enjoyed being the center of attention' and 'wanted everyone to kowtow to him.' Shatner made headlines when he told The Times he feels his former co-stars on the 1960s sci-fi series bashed him to make headlines for themselves. 'Sixty years after some incident they are still on that track. Don't you think that's a little weird? It's like a sickness,' said Shatner, 'I began to understand that they were doing it for publicity.' Feud: Just days before he couldn't hep but take a swipe at William as he once again called him 'a cantankerous old man' in a new interview. (Takei left pictured in November and Shatner pictured R in July) Unhappy: The actor who famously played Captain James T Kirk in the series as well as seven films, says he now realizes they 'do it for publicity' (pictured in the 1991 movie with George) Even when Shatner recently went into space thanks to billionaire Jeff Bezos, Takei said he was a being sent as a 'guinea pig' to assess the impact of space on an 'unfit' specimen. 'George [Takei] has never stopped blackening my name,' he said. 'These people are bitter and embittered. I have run out of patience with them. Why give credence to people consumed by envy and hate?' In his memoir Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, Shatner said that he was shattered when late costar Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, accused him of being 'cold and arrogant'. He wrote: 'I was horrified to learn this, ashamed that I hadn't realized it.' Shatner was also close friends with Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, however their relationship became strained before his death in 2015 - for reasons unbeknown to the Kirk actor. According to Giant Geek Robot, friction began between the two when William made a 2011 Star Trek Documentary and interviewed many actors who have been apart of the franchise, however failed to include Nimoy. It comes after William said said seeing Earth from space aboard Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin rocket was a profoundly sorrowful experience, but one which inspired him to cherish the beauty of our planet. Sad: In his memoir Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder the actor writes that he was shattered when late costar Nichelle Nichols, who played lieutenant Ulhura, accused him of being 'cold and arrogant' (pictured together on the show) In an excerpt from his memoir he writes he was was struck with one of the 'strongest feelings of grief' he had ever experienced. Going on to say that rather than being filled with awe, as he expected to be, the sight of Earth's warm blue glow surrounded by the cold black of space left him feeling like he was at 'a funeral.' The excerpt was published by Variety journalist Marianne Williamson, and offered a deeper insight into Shatner's reaction to his space flight with Blue Origin than he has previously revealed. The revelations come a year after Shatner was seen to be visibly moved immediately after stepping out of the Blue Origin capsule in October 2021, when he broke down in tears telling Bezos: 'Everybody in the world needs to do this.' William wrote that he never realized how precious life on Earth was until he left it behind. 'I discovered that the beauty isn't out there, it's down here, with all of us,' he said. 'Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound,' he wrote in his memoir. He said seeing the Earth so fragile filled him with sorrow to think about how man kind is so flippant about its destruction. Travers 'The Candyman' Beynon is known for his wild parties. And the Gold Coast tobacco tycoon has a strict policy for who gets an invite to his upcoming Australia Day bash. Potential attendees must answer a series of unusual questions before getting on the guest list, reports News.com.au. Gold Coast tobacco tycoon Travers 'The Candyman' Beynon (centre) has a strict policy for who gets an invite to his upcoming Australia Day party Travers, who is the managing director of Freechoice Tobacco and is said to be worth $200million, asks party applicants what brand of cigarettes they smoke. Would-be guests must also submit a recent photo as well as their social media handles, and need to declare if they have a 'Candyman' or 'Freechoice' tattoo. Kathy Davy-Taylor, Travers' executive assistant, offered her advice for those interested in attending one of The Candyman's parties. Travers, who is the managing director of Freechoice Tobacco and is said to be worth $200million, asks party applicants what brand of cigarettes they smoke 'When applying just be yourself, Travers has this uncanny ability or intuition to pick up on how the guest will be simply from the photos supplied and the comment to why they should be invited,' she said. 'Travers reviews every single registration personally, and at times [this] can be up to 14,000 registrations, which he's been doing for years,' she added. 'Travers believes this is the most important part of making a party a success you pick the right people, and you will get the right "vibe" and to him "it's all about the vibe".' Would-be guests must also submit a recent photo as well as their social media handles, and need to declare if they have a 'Candyman' or 'Freechoice' tattoo The Candy Shop Mansion in Helensvale, on the Gold Coast, has 15 bedrooms, 19 bathrooms and garage space for 21 cars, as well as a huge infinity pool. It comes weeks after Travers and his glamorous wife Taesha Beynon announced they were on the hunt for new girlfriends to join their polyamorous relationship. Taesha recently put out the call for some fresh faces on her Instagram page. It comes weeks after Travers and his glamorous wife Taesha Beynon (left) announced they were on the hunt for new girlfriends to join their polyamorous relationship 'Married to Travers Beynon hot girls welcome. The only man for me, but we are looking for new girlfriends,' she wrote. The couple split from their 'main' girlfriend, Nisha Downes, last year. The Queensland barmaid used to be featured regularly on the couple's social media pages, but has been absent for months now. Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner were trolled on Instagram this week by none other than the popular photo-editing app Facetune. When Kylie, 25, posted sizzling snaps of herself in a clinging outfit by Kim's shapewear line, Kim, 42, left a comment saying: 'can you tag @skims please LOL.' The exchange was captured in a post by Comments By Celebs, where Facetune commented: 'can they tag me please LOL'. 'Can they tag me please LOL': Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner were trolled on Instagram this week by none other than the popular photo-editing app Facetune The sisters have been carrying on a jokey social media squabble, and after Kim dinged Kylie for failing to tag Skims, Kylie replied: '@kimkardashian i had to steal this from moms house and now you want me to promote ?!!!! wow @skims.' Shortly thereafter Kylie posted a tantalizingly busty selfie and vamped in the caption: 'dont be f***ing ruuude' - a line Kim famously uttered on reality TV. Kylie, Kim and other members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan have faced years of allegations that they edit their pictures to alter their appearance. Kim came under fire last year when close-up pictures of her at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party showed the real texture of her skin. Goofing about: When Kylie, 25, posted sizzling snaps of herself in a clinging outfit by Kim's shapewear line, Kim, 42, left a comment saying: 'can you tag @skims please LOL' Social media users leapt on the images to argue that the pictures Kim posted online were digitally altered to smooth out her complexion. A couple of months earlier she was similarly trolled for an Instagram shot of her getaway to the Bahamas with her then-boyfriend Pete Davidson. Her right calf looked so wildly slimmer than the left one that some fans seized on the image and deduced that she had edited it. Using it against her?: Shortly thereafter Kylie posted a tantalizingly busty selfie and vamped in the caption: 'dont be f***ing ruuude' - a line Kim famously uttered on reality TV Kylie faced backlash in the same vein in 2020 when she posted a string of Met Gala throwbacks to Instagram from lockdown. Keen-eyed observers quickly began comparing her Instagram versions of the flashback shots with the originals and noting the differences. The purported changes to various pictures included a deepened cleavage, shrunken arms and a slimmed-down waistline. Claims: Various Kardashian-Jenners have faced years of allegations that they edit their pictures to alter their appearance; Kim is pictured in a snap that aroused suspicion last year Slings and arrows: Kim came under fire last year when close-up pictures of her at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party showed the real texture of her skin (left) compared to social media (right) Wow: A couple of months earlier she was similarly trolled for an Instagram shot of her getaway to the Bahamas with her then-boyfriend Pete Davidson In her Instagram version of one of the throwbacks, Kylie was even said to have airbrushed Donatella Versace's wrinkles away. An account called @exposing_kylie_jenner uploaded a string of transformation videos about Kylie's Met Gala pictures. Early last year, Kim's elder sister Kourtney Kardashian wound up deleting an Instagram picture when fans claimed she had digitally enlarged her behind. Facetune's jab at Kylie comes on the heels of news that she and her longtime on-off rapper boyfriend Travis Scott have broken up again. What a waist: Kylie faced blowback in 2020 when she posted a Met Gala throwbacks to Instagram; the Instagram (left) and original (right) versions of a snap from 2016 are shown Uh oh: The purported changes to various pictures included a deepened cleavage, shrunken arms and a slimmed-down waistline They first became an item in 2017 and have since brought two children into the world together - Stormi, four, and Wolf, 11 months. Even after they split for the first time in October 2019, the duo were famously amicable co-parents to the point of frequently fueling reconciliation rumors. Eventually they did get back together and welcomed their latest bouncing bundle of joy before it emerged last week that they had gone their separate ways romantically. Helping hand?: In the Instagram version (left) of one of the throwbacks (original right), Kylie was even said to have smoothed out legendary fashion designer Donatella Versace's wrinkles 'Kylie and Travis are off again, they were supposed to spend the holidays together, but she went to Aspen to be with her family and friends up there,' a source said. The insider told Us Weekly: 'This has happened so many times before, theyre known to be on again off again, but always remain friends and great coparents.' Kim meanwhile shares her four children with her third ex-husband Kanye West, who last year saw his career implode after a string of antisemitic outbursts. Social media influencer Elle Ferguson appears to have revealed how much money she makes from her fake tan brand, ELEFFECT. The former Block star, 37, shared a video to her stories on Wednesday which showed her working at a laptop with an invoice from Invenco - a third party eCommerce service. In the clip, Elle's boyfriend Joel Patfull added up various orders on an iPhone calculator, including sales of $1,316 and $1,114. Elle Ferguson has shared an invoice to her Instagram, revealing how much money she makes in lucrative deals The receipt showed shipping fees as well as various sales Elle had made. Showcasing her busy lifestyle, Elle's desk was scattered with notepads and keys, as well as a pile of printed out recipes. While the company is not listed, it's likely the transactions are sales from her fake tan brand ELEFFECT. Elle started the business in 2016 after struggling to find a fake tan she liked. In the clip, Elle's boyfriend Joel adds up various orders on an iPhone calculator including sales of $1,316 and $1,114. The receipt showed shipping fees as well as various sales Elle has made The mousse sold out within the first day of launch and are continually out of stock at Mecca and in the online store, with expansion plans into the US market. Even Kim Kardashian has posted about the tanning products on her social media pages, proving that the sky is the limit for this celebrity-endorsed brand. It comes after Elle revealed she's purchased an 'epic' property with her partner Joel and sister Lucie. The influencer recently announced the exciting news to her Instagram page. While the company is not listed, it's likely the transactions are sales from her fake tan brand ELEFFECT. She is pictured with fiance Joel Patfull 'We bought a Zoo!!! Not a zoo but a property that feels like a zoo,' Elle said. 'To answer all the questions the future looks bright and we're not leaving Bondi anytime soon It's our home and we love it.' 'The three of us have purchased an EPIC property in a place we love. That's three self-made hard working individuals coming together to make some dreams come true.' Elle and her partner Joel, 37, are perhaps best known for throwing in the towel just two days after joining this year's season of The Block Elle and her partner Joel, 37, are perhaps best known for throwing in the towel just two days after joining this year's season of The Block. Their abrupt decision left the cast and crew of the Nine series 'blindsided'. The couple said at the time they were leaving because Joel's mother Trish had fractured her neck during a fall at her home in Adelaide. 'The three of us have purchased an EPIC property in a place we love. That's three self made hard working individuals coming together to make some dreams come true,' she wrote But host Scott Cam cast doubt on this, accusing them of fleeing the building site in the middle of the night because the show wasn't 'on brand' for them. He also said they had complained 'the toilet paper was too scratchy'. But the blogger and the retired AFL player disputed this, insisting they quit because of a legitimate family emergency. Elle, who labels herself a 'global digital influencer and entrepreneur', was later snubbed from an in-depth study by The Oz that ranked Australia's top 100 influential online creators. According to a recent report citing people with close to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been feeling weak and dizzy as a result of the adverse effects of the medications he is taking, which have also led him to lose his appetite. Putin, 70, whose health has been the subject of great debate for many months, was characterized as "withdrawn, terse, not meeting almost anybody in person, and usually highly busy" by the Telegram channel "General SVR," which is reportedly maintained by a former Russian intelligence official. Putin's Health Worsens "Putin is receiving a course of treatment with medications that, in addition to their medicinal benefits, create weakness, dizziness, and lack of appetite, which does not have the best effect on the president's psycho-emotional condition," a message on the Telegram channel read on Tuesday. Putin is reported to be afflicted with a variety of cancers and a deteriorating Parkinson's disease, among other maladies, none of which have ever been acknowledged by the Kremlin. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine last year, the Russian strongman has appeared in public on many occasions appearing ill and unstable. General SVR stated on Tuesday that Putin is apprehensive about implementing "important choices" that he previously alluded to, suggesting that they will have a transformative effect on both Russia's internal and foreign affairs. According to the article, "Putin is a fairly fearful individual, and any changes, even those he proposes, cause him significant dread and stress." Putin is now determining the order and timing of these "decisions," which might "raise the stakes to a critical level," according to General SVR. General SVR has not ruled out the possibility that Putin would deploy nuclear weapons if his forces in Ukraine falter; however, doing so would "lead to a general catastrophe not only for Putin, but for all members of the elite without exception, which would obliterate the current regime in Russia and make the president's chances of retaining power utterly illusory." According to the report, a general draft, a proclamation of martial law, and massive personnel changes are all on the table and, if implemented, would result in hundreds of thousands of more fatalities. Putin was seen in person on Tuesday, when he presided over a meeting on economic concerns via video connection from his official home in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside of Moscow. In the city of Ufa on Friday, he attended the burial of Murtaza Rakhimov, the first president of the Republic of Bashkortostan area. General SVR claimed that Putin was replaced by a "body double" throughout his public appearances and meetings in Ufa, but this assertion could not be independently confirmed, as per NY Post. Putin sounded optimistic in an interview with the state television channel Rossiya 1 on Sunday, insisting that the military operation in Ukraine had gained positive momentum and that he hoped his troops would deliver more victims after Russia claimed control of the Ukrainian-contested salt-mining town of Soledar. As his health quickly deteriorates, a Kremlin source has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to "take down as many people as possible with him," RadarOnline.com has learned. The statement, which sounded more like an ominous global warning, suggested that Putin was prepared to take drastic measures in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, including the use of nuclear weapons - as the Kremlin leader's rumored failing health has left him with a deranged and pessimistic outlook on his remaining time on Earth. Read Also: Nepal Plane Crash: Final Moments Recorded Live Kremlin Set to Make Important Announcement According to a Russian official, Vladimir Putin will make a "very important" remark about the war in Ukraine tomorrow. Vladimir Rogov reports that the Russian president may make a speech at a series of events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during World War II. Rogov, who was nominated by Russia to lead the seized Ukrainian territory of Zaporizhzhia, asserts that Putin will deliver an important address tomorrow in St. Petersburg, Mirror reported. The pro-Putin official made the statement on his Telegram channel, although the Kremlin has not yet issued an official confirmation of the president's address. Regional officials are apparently preparing for Putin's arrival over 11 months after the Russian president ordered his soldiers to invade Ukraine. It follows a terrifying warning from Russia that British tanks supplied to Ukraine will "burn" on the battlefield. The comments followed the announcement that the British government will provide a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks, making it the first Western power to provide Ukraine with main combat tanks. Related Article: Russia Prepares Poseidon Torpedo Warheads @YouTube @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Almost four months after it was confirmed she's dating wellness specialist Ricardas Kazinec, Elizabeth Chambers reveals she still hasn't told her kids. The 40-year-old Chambers started dating the 25-year-old Kazinec back in September, revealing in December he makes her 'very happy. During an Instagram Stories Q&A with her fans, she was asked how her kids - 8-year-old Harper and 6-year-old Ford have been with the new BF, as she revealed they don't know she's dating him. Hasn't told: Almost four months after it was confirmed she's dating wellness specialist Ricardas Kazinec , Elizabeth Chambers reveals she still hasn't told her kids Happy: The 40-year-old Chambers started dating the 25-year-old Kazinec back in September, revealing in December he makes her 'very happy' 'They dont know hes my boyfriend. Over the past two and a half years, my main (and only) priority has been to mitigate trauma and protect my children at all costs,' Chambers said. 'Personally, I dont believe its helpful, productive, or necessary to introduce a significant other while children are still emotionally processing divorce,' she added. 'Children first, but to each their own,' Chambers concluded. She shared a snap of them together back in December, when another fan asked, 'How's the bf? So cute!' 'He's the cutest and makes me very happy. In Europe visiting his fam RN but back soon,' Chambers told her 245K Instagram followers. Chambers and Hammer tied the knot in 2010, but split in 2020 after a number of disturbing sexual abuse and cannibalism allegations surfaced. December: She shared a snap of them together back in December, when another fan asked, 'How's the bf? So cute!' Chambers also made headlines in September 2022 when it was revealed that she texted one of the accusers, a woman named Effie, to determine if the allegations against her ex-husband were true or false. 'Given the extent and nature of allegations that were made, Elizabeth sought to determine the veracity of those allegations,' Chambers' rep said. 'She was very sensitive to all parties involved. The safety and well-being of their children remains her priority,' the rep added. Allegations: Chambers also made headlines in September 2022 when it was revealed that she texted one of the accusers, a woman named Effie, to determine if the allegations against her ex-husband were true or false Effie later shared screengrabs of texts with Chambers, who supported her with going public against her ex-husband. In one of the messages Chambers purportedly sent Effie, she encouraged her to remain 'focused' in 'getting the stories on record' and 'not just the internet.' In another alleged exchange, after Chambers questioned Effie whether she had hired an attorney, Effie responded that she was 'feeling a tad bit suicidal' and didn't have time to chat. Chambers responded to her, 'I really need custody of my precious children,' pressing her to file a declaration of her experience with Hammer with the court. Advertisement Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lauren London and Nia Long radiated glamour Tuesday night at the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix' upcoming culture clash rom com You People. Directed by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris, who co-wrote the script with his male lead Jonah Hill, the movie follows a romance between a white Jewish man and a black Muslim woman - and the friction between their families. Lauren, 38, who plays the female lead Amira, made a splash on the red carpet in a clinging bubblegum pink dress that was perfectly fitted to her enviable hourglass figure. What a night: (from left) Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lauren London and Nia Long radiated glamour Tuesday night at the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix' upcoming culture clash rom com You People Her ensemble featured a mock-turtleneck and a swirling wood print over fabric that appeared to be either velvet or velour, and whose color elegantly complemented her ankle-strap heels. Lauren's mother in the film is played by Nia, who treated the shutterbugs to her winning smile as she struck a pose in a busty strapless white gown that fell to the floor in an echo of Old Hollywood. She managed to get in a bit of posing with none other than her director himself, who cut a dashing figure in a black suit and matching shirt with its top couple of buttons left beguilingly undone. Meanwhile Julia, 62, who achieved worldwide superstardom on Seinfeld and cemented her status as a comedy legend on Veep, flashed the flesh in a peekaboo black gown with Tiffany & Co jewellery. Hello, gorgeous: Lauren, 38, who plays the female lead Amira, made a splash on the red carpet in a clinging bubblegum pink dress that was perfectly fitted to her enviable hourglass figure Top brass: Nia managed to get in a bit of posing with none other than her director himself, who cut a dashing figure in a black suit and matching shirt with its top couple of buttons left beguilingly undone Legend: Julia, 62, who achieved worldwide superstardom on Seinfeld and cemented her status as a comedy legend on Veep, flashed the flesh in a peekaboo black gown with Tiffany & Co jewellery Held together up top by see-through mesh that bared not only her cleavage but also her impressively trim midriff, Julia's ensemble featured cinched-in waistline to emphasize her petite frame. Julia and David Duchovny, who play major supporting parts in the film as the parents of Jonah Hill's character, demonstrated their chemistry as they posed up together on the red carpet. David, star of the sizzling smash hit series Californication, attended the premiere on the arm of his girlfriend Monique Pendleberry, who at 29 is a whopping 32 years his junior. Fashion designer Ciera Rogers modeled a tartan blazer over a busty basic black look, Andrea Savage exuded the air of a beauty queen in a pink dress with a train and Bre-Z modeled a sensationally shiny scarlet bomber jacket. Screen couple: Julia and David Duchovny, who play major supporting parts in the film as the parents of Jonah Hill's character, demonstrated their chemistry as they posed up together on the red carpet So many stars: (from left) Ciera Rogers modeled a tartan blazer over a busty basic black look, Andrea Savage exuded the air of a beauty queen in a pink dress with a train and Bre-Z modeled a sensationally shiny scarlet bomber jacket Hand in hand: David, star of the sizzling smash hit series Californication, attended the premiere on the arm of his girlfriend Monique Pendleberry, who at 29 is a whopping 32 years his junior Eddie Murphy, who plays the stern father of Lauren's female lead character, wrapped an affectionate arm around his Australian longtime girlfriend Paige Butcher as the strode across the red carpet. Monica Mamudo played up her stunningly svelte figure in a revealing split gown, Jay Pharaoh was trendy in a hot pink blazer over skintight black trousers and Nafessa Williams twirled about in a monochrome backless frock. Anthony Anderson, who was the male lead of Kenya's show Black-ish through the entirety of his successful eight-year run, made his presence felt in a gleamingly sleek black leather bomber jacket. Musical legend Jimmy Jam enjoyed a bit of quality time with his daughter Bella, who has gone into the modeling business, while Raven-Symone showcased her quirky style posing alongside her wife Miranda Maday. Loved up: Eddie Murphy, who plays the stern father of Lauren's female lead character, wrapped an affectionate arm around his Australian longtime girlfriend Paige Butcher as the strode across the red carpet Swank: (from left) Monica Mamudo played up her stunningly svelte figure in a revealing split gown, Jay Pharaoh was trendy in a hot pink blazer over skintight black trousers and Nafessa Williams twirled about in a monochrome backless frock Megawatt charm: Anthony Anderson, who was the male lead of Kenya's show Black-ish through the entirety of his successful eight-year run, made his presence felt in a gleamingly sleek black leather bomber jacket Khloe Kardashian's best friends, the influencer sister-act of Malika and Khadijah Haqq, were another one of the dynamic duos seen swanning about the glittering affair. Molly Gordon was sprightly as ever in a bright pink mini-dress and Travis 'Taco' Bennett modeled a medieval chic tunic whilst Wild 'N Out alum Jena Frumes was busty bombshell in a shimmering silver gown. Elliott Gould, Sam Jay, Molly, Nia, Taco, Lauren, Eddie, Julia, David, Andrea and Kenya all got together to represent their movie in a dazzling group shot to remember. With a cast that also features Mike Epps, Deon Cole, Rhea Perlman and La LA Anthony, the movie will be available to stream on Netflix next week on January 27. Pair of pairs: Musical legend Jimmy Jam enjoyed a bit of quality time with his daughter Bella, who has gone into the modeling business (left), while Raven-Symone showcased her quirky style posing alongside her wife Miranda Maday (right) Family time: Khloe Kardashian's best friends, the influencer sister-act of Malika and Khadijah Haqq, were another one of the dynamic duos seen swanning about the glittering affair Having a ball: (from left) Molly Gordon was sprightly as ever in a bright pink mini-dress and Travis 'Taco' Bennett modeled a medieval chic tunic whilst Wild 'N Out alum Jena Frumes was busty bombshell in a shimmering silver gown Getting together: Elliott Gould, Sam Jay, Molly, Nia, Taco, Lauren, Eddie, Julia, David, Andrea and Kenya all got together to represent their movie in a dazzling group shot to remember David Duchovny sweetly held hands with his girlfriend Monique Pendleberry on Tuesday while attending the premiere of his new film You People in Los Angeles. The 62-year-old actor wore a black coat over a blue shirt with white trim along with grey jeans for the premiere held at the Regency Village Theatre in the Westwood area. He clasped hands with Monique, 29, as they walked the carpet together. Film premiere: David Duchovny sweetly held hands with his girlfriend Monique Pendleberry on Tuesday while attending the premiere of his new film You People in Los Angeles Monique also wore a black coat over a lacy black top with blue trousers and black heels. She had her long brown hair down in soft curls below her shoulders and accentuated her natural beauty with full eye makeup. David and Monique have been together since 2017 after reportedly meeting at SunLife Organics Juicery, which David's pal Khalil Rafati owns, and where Monique was an employee. The X-Files star was previously married to actress Tea Leoni, 56, from 1997 to 2014. Holding hands: The 62-year-old actor clasped hands with Monique, 29, as they walked the carpet together Stylish star: wore a black coat over a blue shirt with white trim along with grey jeans for the premiere held at the Regency Village Theatre in the Westwood area They split in 2008 when the actor checked himself into a rehabilitation center for treatment of sex addiction. After reconciling in 2011, they split again and their divorce was finalized in 2014. The couple share 23-year-old daughter West and 20-year-old son Kyd. Going strong: David and Monique have been together since 2017 after reportedly meeting at SunLife Organics Juicery David at the premiere posed for a group photo with his co-stars Nia Long, Lauren London, Eddie Murphy, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The buddy comedy You People was directed by Kenya Barris, 49, and also stars Jonah Hill, 39, who co-wrote and co-produced the film with Kenya. You People is scheduled to be released on January 27 on Netflix. Life appears to be imitating art for Sarah Lancashire. The actress, 58, was lavished with praise for her show-stealing scene as Sgt Catherine Cawood in Sunday's episode of the BBC's hugely popular crime drama Happy Valley, in which she confronted her sister Clare, played by Siobhan Finneran, in a Sheffield cafe. Now, Lancashire has been spotted at a cafe, in a similarly cosy padded coat. Life imitates art: Sarah Lancashire stopped by a London cafe with her TV producer husband Peter Salmon, 66, following that lauded scene in her his BBC drama Happy Valley For this outing, she was, accompanied by her husband, TV producer Peter Salmon, 66, near their home in Twickenham, South-West London. Former Coronation Street star Lancashire, who was born in Oldham, married Salmon in 2001. The actress has three sons - Tom, 34, and Matthew, 32, from her ten-year marriage to musician Gary Hargreaves, and a teenage son Joseph with Salmon. Masterclass: The actress, 58, was lavished with praise for her show-stealing scene in Sunday's episode in which she confronted her sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran) in a Sheffield cafe The acclaimed star, who has also recently won plaudits across the pond for playing Julia Child in the hit HBO series Julia, is currently on UK screens in the third and final series of Happy Valley. The latest episode on Sunday had viewers in awe, as Sarah gave 'a masterclass' in acting during the cafe scene with her onscreen sister. The scene set in a Sheffield cafe saw Sgt Cawood confronting Clare after she discovered she was taking her grandson Ryan to visit his dad in prison. London: For this outing, she was, accompanied by her husband near their home in Twickenham, South-West London Husband: Former Coronation Street star Lancashire, who was born in Oldham, married Salmon in 2001, they share a teenage son Many compared the emotional performances to the two actress' previous roles, with one viral tweet pointing out: 'If these aren't two of the best actors in the world tell me how it's possible that this is Raquel from Coronation Street and Janice from Benidorm.' 'That was PHENOMENAL. 15 minutes of pure talent. Not one raised voice. Sarah and Siobhan absolutely gave everything during that and Sally gave them the most amazing material to work with.' The third episode of Happy Valley drew in an incredible 8.1million viewers at its peak on Sunday night with an average audience of 4.8million. Incredible year: The star, who has also recently won plaudits across the pond for playing Julia Child in the hit HBO series Julia, is currently on UK screens in the final series of Happy Valley It took the top spot in the overnight ratings, beating fellow BBC drama Call The Midwife. The multi-BAFTA-winning show returned for its third and final series on New Year's Day, after a seven year break. The first episode of the series saw Sarah's character discover the remains of a gangland murder victim in a drained reservoir, sparking a chain of events leading back to her former nemesis and the father of her grandson Ryan. Incredible: The latest episode on Sunday had viewers in awe, as Sarah gave 'a masterclass' in acting during the cafe scene with her onscreen sister Happy Valley was a big hit with audiences after first airing in 2014, winning a BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series, with a follow-up second series in 2016. Its creator and writer Sally Wainwright has revealed she and her lead star Sarah were in agreement that the show should end on three series. 'We made a definite decision that this was going to be the final season,'she told the Radio Times last week. 'Just because it's been successful, we weren't going to let it drift on until it became a pale shadow of itself.' Happy Valley continues on Sunday night at 9pm on BBC One. Chris Walker has spoken out again after he and his partner of 11 years, Carrie Bickmore, announced their split on Wednesday. The TV producer took to Instagram to thank his fans and children for supporting him on this 'rubbish day'. Alongside a sweet photo of his stepson Oliver, 15, and daughters Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four, he bemoaned the tough time but said he was grateful to be with his family. Chris Walker has spoken out again after he and his partner of 11 years, Carrie Bickmore, announced their split on Wednesday 'Thanks to friends, family and colleagues on an otherwise rubbish day,' he captioned the photo of him with his children and another family member. 'Glad I get to be with the three best people on Earth (+ Jem) to finish it. Your words and kindness (and food) have been cherished. 'I haven't got back to you all, but I will and I love you heaps.' The TV producer took to Instagram on Wednesday to thank his fans and children for supporting him on this 'rubbish day'. Alongside a sweet photo of his stepson Oliver, 15, and daughters Evie, seven, and Adelaide, four, he bemoaned the tough time but said he was grateful to be with his family It comes just hours after Walker, who is the executive producer of ABC show The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, announced his split with Bickmore on Instagram, in an almost identical post she uploaded in the morning. 'It's with immense sadness that @bickmorecarrie and I have decided to separate,' he wrote. 'Whilst it's a tough time, our focus is to concentrate on parenting, loving and supporting our three amazing children Ollie, Evie and Addie with everything we've got. They are doing great. It comes just hours after Walker, who is the executive producer of ABC show The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, announced his split with Bickmore on Instagram, in an almost identical post she uploaded in the morning 'We won't be making any further comment at this stage,' he finished. While the news came as a shock to fans, Bickmore - who just weeks ago was pictured with her children at the beach in Byron Bay - had hinted at her private struggles in a farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November. In a hand-written note to her glam squad, the mother-of-three thanked them for helping her get through some of the most challenging times in her life. While the split came as a shock to fans, Bickmore had hinted at her private struggles in this farewell letter to The Project's hair and makeup team after quitting the show in November 'To my hair and makeup family. Crap, I am crying already,' the letter began. 'You have held my hand through some of the toughest days in my career. You hear it all, see it all and share it all with me and I can't explain how much I am going to miss you all. 'There is an unspoken bond between us all and please never forget how special you all are. I know this is not goodbye, just goodbye for now. Love to you all, Carrie.' Bickmore and Walker's love story captured the hearts of Australians. They met as colleagues on The Project - she was a presenter and he was a producer - and they began dating in late 2012, two years after she lost her husband Greg Lange, the father of her eldest child Ollie, to brain cancer. Despite his terminal diagnosis, Bickmore had married Lange in 2005 when she was just 25 years old. After Lange died in 2010 at the age of 35, a widowed Bickmore started the charity Bickmore's Beanies for Brain Cancer in his memory. Two years later and Bickmore had found love again with Walker, who became a stepdad to Oliver, and with whom she later had two daughters: Evie, born in 2015, and Adelaide, born in 2018. Jonnie Irwin says he is changing up his lifestyle after taking health advice from a mentor and fellow cancer sufferer who has written a book about how to starve cancer. The Place In the Sun presenter, 49, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020, revealed he met up with author Jane McLelland this week and says her book gave him 'hope in an otherwise hopeless situation'. Jonnie, who revealed his cancer diagnosis in November and said that it had spread to his brain giving him just months to live, posted a picture of himself with Jane and told fans on his Instagram: 'Was a privilege to meet my mentor Jane McLelland today, author of @how_to_starve_cancer. Determined: Jonnie Irwin says he is changing up his lifestyle after taking health advice from a mentor and fellow cancer sufferer who has written a book about how to starve cancer 'Her story is truly an inspiration and in my opinion a must read for anyone affected by cancer.' He added: 'Its inspired me to change my lifestyle and importantly given me hope in an otherwise hopeless situation. Dont get me wrong its bloody hard but Im on board!' Jane from Fulham is a stage four cancer survivor and number one bestselling author and who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer aged 35, and was given a one-in-20 chance of surviving five years. Hopeful: The Place In the Sun presenter, 49, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020 revealed he met up with author Jane McLelland this week and says her book gave him 'hope' Looking good: Jonnie said: 'Its inspired me to change my lifestyle and importantly given me hope in an otherwise hopeless situation'. Fans told him 'looking healthier in this photo' She has been in remission since 2004. Fans said they could see the changes Jonnie had made to his lifestyle, with many commenting that he looked good. One wrote: 'Look healthier in this photo than in some of the past ones. Hopefully you feel a bit better as well. Prayers for you and your family!!' Another added: 'Jonnie, I am beyond pleased to see you with Jane. I hold her in the highest regard. As a fellow stage IV patient she is saving me. 'I have been doing her protocol for 12 months now with miraculous results. I follow her protocol to a T. If ever you need support with it I am here. I'm delighted that you found her. I can't praise her enough.' Another follower commented: 'You look good Jonnie! Whatever it is that you are doing, it deffo looks like its helping xx' (sic). Private battle: Jonnie went public with his diagnosis in November, after secretly battling cancer for two years (pictured with wife Jessica, son Rex, three and twins Rafa and Cormac) Jonnie went public with his diagnosis in November, after secretly battling cancer for two years. The married father of three children son Rex, three, and two-year-old twins Rafa and Cormac said he hoped sharing his diagnosis would inspire others to 'make the most of every day'. He told Hello magazine: 'I'm carrying a dirty secret it's become a monkey on my back. I don't know how long I have left, but I try to stay positive and my attitude is that I'm living with cancer, not dying from it. I set little markers things I want to be around for. I got into the habit of saying, 'Don't plan ahead because I might not be well enough'. Heartbreaking: Jonnie was diagnosed with cancer while filming Channel 4 's A Place In The Sun in Italy in 2020 'But now I want to make plans. I want to make memories and capture these moments with my family because the reality is, my boys are going to grow up not knowing their dad and that breaks my heart.' Jonnie was diagnosed with cancer while filming Channel 4's A Place In The Sun in Italy in 2020. He had been driving when his vision became blurred and doctors at home discovered he was terminally ill. Cancer drugs and chemotherapy have helped prolong his life. The Leicestershire-born presenter is being supported by his wife Jessica, 40. He said: 'Within a week of flying back from filming, I was being given six months to live. I had to go home and tell my wife, who was looking after our babies, that she was on her own pretty much. That was devastating. All I could do was apologise to her. I felt so responsible.' The couple live with their three children in Newcastle, having moved there from Hertfordshire in 2020. Jonnie said he had chosen to keep his illness private until now. His case is reminiscent of Dame Deborah James' battle with bowel cancer, which she chose to make public to raise awareness and funds for research. He said: 'I might inspire people who are living with life-limiting prospects to make the most of every day, to help them see that you can live a positive life, even though you are dying. One day, this is going to catch up with me, but I'm doing everything I can to hold that day off for as long as possible. 'I owe that to Jess and our boys. Some people in my position have bucket lists, but I just want us to do as much as we can as a family.' Couple: Jonnie and Jess tied the knot within 12 months of meeting in 2016 after Jonnie convinced his new love to hand in her notice at work and go travelling with him Eddie Murphy and his fiancee Paige Butcher wore matching outfits on Tuesday to the Los Angeles premiere of his latest film You People. The 61-year-old comedian wore a black jacket with white trim along with a black T-shirt and matching black trousers for the premiere at the Regency Village Theatre in the Westwood area. He completed his outfit with black sneakers with white trim. Matching outfits: Eddie Murphy and his fiancee Paige Butcher wore matching outfits on Tuesday to the Los Angeles premiere of his latest film You People Paige, 43, looked stylish in a long-sleeved black dress with a high collar. The Australian actress had her blonde hair pulled back and accessorized with dangling earrings. Paige and Eddie have been engaged since September 2018 and have six-year-old daughter Izzy and four-year-old son Max together. Eddie at the premiere teamed up for a group photo with co-stars Nia Long, Lauren London, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny along with director Kenya Barris. Netflix movie: The 61-year-old comedian wore a black jacket with white trim along with a black T-shirt and matching black trousers for the premiere at the Regency Village Theatre in the Westwood area Cute couple: Paige, 43, looked stylish in a long-sleeved black dress with a high collar The buddy comedy You People was directed by Kenya, 49, and also stars Jonah Hill, 39, who co-wrote and co-produced the film with Kenya. Jonah in the film portrays Ezra Cohen who attempts to woo his fiancee's parents, played by Eddie and Nia, after an awkward first impression. Lauren plays the love interest while Seinfeld star Julia portrays Ezra's mother. Film star: Eddie has a starring role in the Netflix film You People Dangling earrings: The Australian actress had her blonde hair pulled back and accessorized with dangling earrings You People is scheduled to be released on January 27 on Netflix. Eddie earlier this month was honored at the Golden Globe Awards with the Cecil B. DeMille Award, a lifetime achievement prize. He thanked a handful of people and quickly wrapped it up with a mic-drop joke about Will Smith and Chris Rock and that infamous Oscars slap. 'I've been doing this for a long time so I could stand up here and keep saying thank you until they play the piano,' Eddie said. 'But I'm gonna wrap it up and just say something to all the up-and-coming dreamers and artists that are in the room tonight. I want to let you know that there is a definitive blueprint that you can follow to achieve success, prosperity and peace of mind. Pay your taxes, mind your business, and keep Will Smiths wifes name out of your f***ing mouth!' Josie Gibson posed with her son Reggie as she posted an update to Instagram on Tuesday after he was rushed to hospital during their Mexico holiday. The presenter, 37, assured fans the four-year-old, who suffered a mystery accident, was doing 'fine' and wearing his cast 'like a proper little trooper'. Sharing a beaming poolside snap alongside her only child, the bikini-clad star wrote: 'To those asking Reggie is fine, he's just getting on with it in his brand new cast like a proper little trooper. Family: Josie Gibson posed with her son Reggie as she posted an update to Instagram on Tuesday after he was rushed to hospital during their Mexico holiday Phew! The presenter, 37, assured fans the four-year-old, who suffered a mystery accident, was doing 'fine' and wearing his cast ' like a proper little trooper' 'I thought the Mexican Hospital we went to was incredible and had to give them a lil shout out. Thank you for your messages see you all shortly. 'P.S. I bought this bikini I have on 12 years ago in Mexico... how mad is that... #mexico #motherandsontravels #mumlifeuk #mumandsontime.' Reggie was forced to receive medical treatment on Sunday during their luxury break. He had an X-ray to investigate the damage but it's not clear how the accident occurred. Oh dear: Reggie was forced to receive medical treatment on Sunday during their luxury break Josie shared a photo of her son in a wheelchair on Instagram praised the healthcare he had received. She penned: 'I've got to give it up to the Mexican hospitals, in and out within the hour. Consultation, X-ray, Plastercast. Poor Reggie on holiday as well.' While away, Reggie had been having a lovely time up until his accident. Josie shared a video of him dancing poolside while wearing a dinosaur print T-shirt. She wrote: 'HAPPY FRIDAY!!!! Having a blast with this one!' Worry: He had an X-ray to investigate the damage but it's not clear how the accident occurred Josie recently revealed that she plans to stay single until son Reggie is well into his teens, admitting she has no room for a man in her life. She gushed about life as a single parent and insisted love was the last thing on her mind in 2023. Josie, who split from her son's father shortly after his birth, told The Sun: 'I think when Reg is about 15 and he's off living his life, maybe then [I'll start dating]. She went on to say the youngster still sleeps in bed with her and he wouldn't be happy for any change to the arrangement. She revealed that even if she were looking for love, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day as she juggles her busy career with motherhood. 'This might sound really weird, but I love Reg so much, nothing else comes close to it,' she explained. 'I know its a different sort of love, but Im just so into him and hes at such a sweet age, I want to be with him all the time I can.' She said that a boyfriend at this point in her life would be 'encroaching' on her cherished time with her son. Heidi Klum looked stunning in throwback snaps from filming America's Got Talent All Stars as she prepared for the latest episode to air on Tuesday. Taking to her Instagram, the model, 49, posted the picture of the outfit she wore for the show, a denim dress by Moschino, which showcased her slender figure to perfection. The TV talent judge looked playful in one shot, pouting for the camera on set of the show wearing the frock, which had gold buttons on it. Playful: Heidi Klum looked stunning in a throwback snap as she prepared for the latest episode of America's Got Talent All Stars to air on Tuesday Gorgeous: Taking to her Instagram, the model, 49, posted the picture of the outfit she wore for the show, a denim dress by Moschino, which showcased her slender figure The stunning star wore her blonde locks loose and in a straightened style for the episode. She looked gorgeous in the blue number, putting her hands in her pockets and smiling in another shot while also strutting and flicking her hair in other photographs. Heidi sported a slick of pale pink lipstick, complementing her look with a simple pair of gold hoops. She captioned her post: '@MOSCHINO @JEREMYSCOTT @AGT #AGTAllStars', with a series of star emojis. Stylish: She glowed in the blue number, putting her hands in her pockets and smiling in another shot It comes after the model left little to the imagination as she posed semi-nude for a very racy Germany's Next Top Model photoshoot earlier this month. The supermodel teased the shoot via her Instagram page as she covered her modesty with half of a revealing sheer pastel gown. The runway queen looked nothing short of sensational as she showcased her endless legs in the head-turning promo shot. She wrote: 'I'm so excited - it's finally starting again! Germany's next Topmodel 2023 - From the 16th February every Thursday at 20.15 on ProSieben'. Work it: Heidi wore a slick of pale pink lipstick, complementing her look with a simple pair of gold hoops Phenomenal: Heidi left little to the imagination in a revealing sheer pastel gown as she promoted the return of Germany's Next Top Model on Instagram earlier this month Heidi, who was the first German model to become a Victoria's Secret Angel, is the host of the programme, head judge and an executive producer. She teased the show after she brought a burst of spring to the white mountains of Aspen, Colorado, when she hit the slopes wearing a floral ski suit at the start of the year. The model enjoyed a luxurious winter getaway with her husband Tom Kaulitz, 33, and his twin brother Bill, who are both founding members of the German pop rock band Tokyo Hotel. The America's Got Talent judge couldn't be missed in her eye-catching ski suit as she conquered the mountain with her husband and brother-in-law. Helping hand: The supermodel couldn't be missed in her eye-catching ski suit as she conquered the mountain with her husband Tom Kaulitz and brother-in-law Her entire look was overgrown by a collage of vibrant flowers and she flaunted a pair of long crimson nails when her black gloves were removed. The tight-knit group hit the slopes together, riding the lift up the mountain and swooping down the pristine snow numerous times. Heidi documented her ski day by posting multiple snippets to her Instagram Story. Klum's romance with Kaulitz officially began in 2018 when they went public at the Cannes Film Festival. The pair became engaged after only one year of dating and tied the knot in a private ceremony, exchanging vows on a luxury yacht in 2019. Their Aspen sojourn comes after Heidi and Tom enjoyed a pre-Christmas trip to Disneyland where they recreated the spaghetti scene from Lady in the Tramp, swapping out the pasta for a churro. Maura Higgins had an unexpected brush with a famous face as she caught an early morning flight on Wednesday. The former Love Island star, 32, took to her Instagram Stories to reveal that she had bumped into Northern Irish actor Jamie Dornan in the airport. She shared a smiling selfie of them both and cheekily wrote alongside the snap, 'wearing grey for Mr Grey', referring to his role as Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades trilogy. Famous face: Maura Higgins had an unexpected meeting with Irish actor Jamie Dornan as she caught an early morning flight on Wednesday In the picture, Irish TV personality Maura cut a sporty figure in a short-sleeved grey T-shirt and showed off her natural good looks as she went make-up free. She swept her brunette tresses back into a ponytail with strands falling loosely around her face and flashed a huge grin as she posed with Jamie. The Fall star Jamie kept it casual in a grey T-shirt, which he teamed with a white hoodie and black padded jacket. He sported a well-groomed beard and styled his dark locks in a curled slicked back style as he prepared to catch his flight. 'Wearing grey for Mr Grey': The former Love Island star, 32, took to her Instagram Stories to reveal that she had bumped into Fifty Shades Of Grey star Jamie in the airport Before brushing shoulders with the BAFTA-nominated star, Maura had also taken to her Instagram Stories to document her travels. She shared a snap of her breakfast - a bowl of porridge, fruit and a pain au chocolat - which sat alongside her passport and her crocheted Prada bag. Her latest travels come after Joey Essex finally broke his silence on his steamy smooch with Maura. The pair were spotted enjoying an amorous moment at the Pride Of Britain Awards in October, and after keeping quiet on dating rumours, Joey finally addressed the smooch. Jetting off: Before brushing shoulders with the BAFTA-nominated star, Maura had also taken to her Instagram Stories to document her travel Speaking to heat magazine, the reality star, 32, seemed to get himself in trouble with his PR when he began to open up about the moment. Asked what had happened with the Love Island star, Joey confessed: 'I don't know! I can't even remember.' He added: 'I mean all I remember is her tongue being down my throat to be honest!' at which point heat noteed that his PR jumped in to wrap up the chat. Smooch: Her latest travels come after Joey Essex finally broke his silence on his steamy smooch with Maura in October During the glitzy Pride Of Britain event, Joey and Maura were seen getting close as they caught up at the Red Bar in London's Grosvenor House. An excited Maura could be seen smiling with her eyes closed as she leaned her head close to Joey's, while Joey was also seen edging closer to the beauty. Maura later joked about the encounter by licking pal Krystal Dawn's face, and teasing: 'It's how I greet people!' Kiss: The pair were spotted enjoying an amorous moment at the Pride Of Britain Awards in October, and after keeping quiet on dating rumours, Joey finally addressed the smooch The Love Island star took to her Instagram Stories where she reposted a clip of the saucy tongue motion, first shared by her make-up artist, who'd written: 'She's a licker.' Maura has not been romantically linked to anyone since the kiss while Joey was rumoured to be dating his Dancing On Ice partner Vanessa Baeur, which he has denied. Maura previously dated Strictly Come Dancing professional Giovanni Pernice but they separated in the summer of 2021 just four months after they started their romance. At least 15 individuals died after a helicopter crashed outside of Kyiv on Wednesday morning, including the interior minister of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian authorities. Anton Geraschenko, a Ukrainian ministry consultant, announced on social media that the Ukraine helicopter crash killed Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevheniy Yenin, and Secretary of State Yuriy Lubkovychis, according to CNN. The French-built Super Puma helicopter crashed in a residential area in the district of Brovary on the eastern outskirts of the city, killing nine persons on board and six on the ground, including three children, according to officials, Reuters reported. In an initial report, authorities noted that there had been 18 fatalities in the Ukraine helicopter crash. The regional governor reported that 29 other individuals, including 15 children, were hurt. The minister was heading to a "hot area" in a conflict when his chopper crashed, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy director of the Ukrainian presidential administration. Despite claims from witnesses that the Russia-Ukraine war was to blame, there is no evidence to suggest that the crash was anything other than an accident. Read Also: China's Population Declines: Here's Why Zelensky Honors Deceased Officials A 42-year-old Monastyrsky was a key official in President Volodymyr Zelensky's administration, per BBC. He was instrumental in keeping the public informed about the number of people killed by Russian missile attacks since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In a written statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the accident as "terrible" and said he had directed the Ukrainian Security Services to find out the cause of the Ukraine helicopter crash. Zelensky honored the deceased officers as "true patriots" of the country. "May they rest in peace! May all those whose lives were taken this black morning rest in peace!" European Council President Charles Michel glorified Monastyrsky as "a great friend" of the commission. Related Article: Update on Vladimir Putin's Declining Health @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Emmerdale's hunky newcomer Nicky rejected Gabby's advances in Tuesday's show, after she leaned in for a kiss. And, in upcoming scenes, the dishy nanny will confess that he does have feelings for the brunette, but they cannot be together as it could put his job in jeopardy. In the episodes, which will air next week, Nicky admits that despite their chemistry he cannot have sex with the young mother, with actor Lewis Cope admitting there could be 'problems' if the pair got together. SPOILER: Emmerdale's hunky new nanny Nicky will refuse to have sex with Gabby Thomas in upcoming scenes, despite admitting he does have feelings for her Nicky first caught Gabby's eye when he arrived in the village as a nanny for Clemmie and Lucas, but soon learned his services were no longer needed when Dawn (Olivia Bromley) decided she didn't want to work for Kim Tate (Claire King). Luckily, Gabby reassured Nicky that she still needed someone to look after her son Thomas, and Kim agreed, meaning he could stay at Home Farm. After learning she'd got the job as Kim's deputy, a delighted Gabby (Rosie Bentham) decided to celebrate with Nicky by enjoying some champagne. However, when she learned in for a kiss, he quickly pulled back, admitting he doesn't like her that way. Awkward! In scenes that aired on Tuesday night, Gabby leaned in to kiss Nicky, but he pushed her back, insisting he doesn't like her in that way In upcoming episodes, Nicky makes a shocking confession, admitting he does like Gabby, but he doesn't want to cross a line with her and put his job in jeopardy. Speaking about the story, Lewis told Metro: 'Potentially it could be a problem at Home Farm if they get together. Nicky kind of focuses on his job and thinks we shouldn't be doing this and backs away from it. Co-star Rosie agrees that the pair make a good match, adding: 'They both fancy each other, it's very obvious. 'I think the audience are going to be egging them on to be honest, because they see two young people who fancy each other, it's very obvious what they are going to want from that. But whether they get it or not, who knows?' However, Lewis has already warned that Nicky has a dark side that viewers may get to see in the coming weeks. He said last month: 'At the moment hes a lovely person and theres nothing to say otherwise, but hes quite too good to be true though.' Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 7:30pm on ITV1, and ITVX. Vogue Williams and her husband Spencer Matthews arrived at the Global Studios in London on Wednesday, where their namesake podcast is produced. The model, 37, cut a chic figure in a brown shearling jacket which she wore with a pair of coordinating flared trousers, boots and oversized sunglasses. Former Made In Chelsea star Spencer, 34, wrapped up with a khaki coat, which he layered above a white T-shirt and jeans, while sporting white trainers. Emerging: Vogue Williams looked chic in a brown shearling jacket while joined by her husband Spencer Matthews as they arrived at Global Studios on Wednesday The CleanCo founder pointed at photographers as the pair made their way into Leicester Square while Vogue beamed from ear-to-ear. Vogue recently attempted to bar Spencer from her My Therapist Ghosted Me tour after he hesitated on coming to the opening night of the new leg next month. She is opening her show with her comedian co-host Joanne McNally, 39, at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, Ireland on February 16. But after Spencer paused for just a second when she asked him if he'd be at the opening night, Vogue told Spencer on their podcast: 'You know in February I start my tour so it's actually going to be quite a fun month for me, February,' before asking him: 'Are you going to come over for it? For the first night?' Looking great: The model, 37, cut a chic figure in a brown shearling jacket Trendy: She wore the number with a pair of coordinating flared trousers, boots and oversized sunglasses Hesitating a second, Spencer replied: 'Well possibly, yes. When is it?' Stunned, Vogue matter-of-factly stated: 'No, you're not invited now.' A shocked Spencer asked: 'What do you mean? I'm saying possible which...' At which point Vogue cut in, exclaiming: 'I'm going to get you barred!' Using an Irish term for a person who always acts from who acts from self-interest, Vogue explained: 'Because you're always a me feiner.' Attempting to reassure her, Spencer said: 'No, no. I'd like to come to your show,' to which she firmly told him: 'You're not invited.' In her element: Vogue beamed from ear-to-ear during the outing Sensational: She never fails to put her best fashion foot forward Couple: They both made their way into the building Astounded, Spencer spluttered: 'If... well... let me tell you something. I could waltz into that show without a ticket. How much do you want to bet?' Vogue defiantly insisted: 'I will tell them I refuse to go on stage if you let that little... that little s**t in.' Spencer protested: 'I guarantee you, I'll bet you any amount of money that you want, I'll sign the whole house over to you. 'If I can't get in the My Therapist Ghosted Me show without a ticket, let me tell you something. I'll f**king cartwheel it in. Chilly: Former Made In Chelsea star Spencer, 34, wrapped up with a khaki coat, which he layered above a white T-shirt and jeans, while sporting white trainers Look over there! The CleanCo founder pointed at photographers as the pair made their way into Leicester Square 'The door will part like the Red Sea. They'll literally go oh my God! I can't believe you came!' Grabbing her phone to call her manager, Vogue said: 'OK lets ask Louisa. I'm going to ring her,' to which Spencer replied: 'Tell Louisa that I don't want a ticket.' Attempting to show how series she was, Vogue told Spencer: 'We're putting 5,000 on this for charity.' Spluttering in shock again, Spencer babbled: 'Ok, well, it's not until. Ok, yeah. That's fine.' After her manager hung up within seconds without answering the call, a disappointed and amused Vogue said: 'Everyone's f**king burning me today.' Finding the situation hilarious, Spencer laughed: 'That's so pathetic I just spoke to Louisa!', to which Vogue attempted to fight back: 'She's on a call, she's on a call.' It is unclear whether the couple did later get through to their manager and if they donated money to charity. MailOnline contacted a representative for the pair for comment. Naomi Campbell paid a heartfelt tribute to her godson Harry Brant on Wednesday two years after his death. Harry died of an accidental overdose on prescription medication on January 17 2021 at the age of 24. Remembering Harry on the second anniversary of his death, the model, 52, shared a photo of the two posing together with Harry rocking edgy makeup and kissing her on the cheek. 'Know that your godmother misses you': Naomi Campbell paid a heartfelt tribute to her godson Harry Brant on Wednesday two years after his death Naomi penned: 'My beautiful Godson Harry @harry_brant , I think of you today your bright smile amazing intellectual mind and your natural flare of style it's been 2 years .. May you be in eternal Peace and know that your godmother misses you' Before his death, Harry, the son of supermodel Stephanie Seymour, 54, and businessman Peter Brant, 75, was a socialite who wrote for Interview Magazine as a teen and an up-and-coming model who appeared in Italian Vogue and Balmain campaigns. At the time of their son's death, Stephanie and Peter told People Magazine in a heartbreaking statement: 'It is with enormous sorrow that we share with you the news that our beloved son, Harry Brant, lost his battle with addiction and died due to an accidental overdose of prescription medication. 'Our hearts are shattered. Harry wanted to overcome his addiction and was just days away from re-entering rehab.' Tragic: Harry died of an accidental overdose on prescription medication on January 17 2021 at the age of 24 They continued, 'Harry was not just our son, he was also a wonderful brother, loving grandson, favorite uncle and a caring friend. He was a creative, loving and powerful soul that brought light into so many people's hearts. He was truly a beautiful person inside and out.' A family friend told the publication at the time that Harry's father had been 'trying to get him to go to rehab again' amid worry and frustration regarding his drug habit. 'It's hard, anyone who knows addiction knows this,' the source said. 'We all knew he had this problem.' Taken too soon: Harry's family released a statement at the time where they revealed he 'was just days away from re-entering rehab' (picture with his parents in 2015) The source said that Harry and older brother Peter Jr 'were inseparable' siblings,' as 'they complemented each other, they were always there for each other, and of course they fought like siblings do.' Harry 'had everything going on for him' and 'was way beyond his years,' the source noted. The family also opened up about his passion for writing, style and fashion after his passing. Pals: Naomi and his mother, Stephanie, 52, are credited as the world's first 'supermodels', alongside Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington, to name a few (pictured in 2016) They called him 'a trailblazer of beauty and cosmetic products for men' while 'collaborating with a major brand on a unisex cosmetic line,' speaking of his MAC cosmetics collaboration with brother Peter. 'He was also a dedicated writer for Interview Magazine and his dream was to be a much bigger part of its creative department. He achieved a lot in his 24 years, but we will never get the chance to see how much more Harry could have done.' In his modeling career, Harry had walked for the Balmain fashion house and was seen on the pages of Italian Vogue. The family noted that 'Harry was not just our son, he was also a wonderful brother, loving grandson, favorite uncle and a caring friend. 'He was a creative, loving and powerful soul that brought light into so many people's hearts. He was truly a beautiful person inside and out.' The family ended the statement on a sombre note: 'We will forever be saddened that Harry's life was cut short by this devastating disease. We ask that you please allow our family privacy as we attempt to cope with the loss of our beautiful, beautiful boy.' George Clooney and Bill Murray are big fans of the Channel 4 gameshow Countdown, according to resident lexicographer Susie Dent. The TV adjudicator, 58, claimed the Hollywood actors both love to tune into the British staple, on which she has appeared since 1992. She told Metro: 'Richard [Whiteley] always reminded us that the Queen and Queen Mother enjoyed watching us. George Clooney and Bill Murray apparently also tune in.' Surprise: George Clooney (left) and Bill Murray (right) are big fans of the Channel 4 gameshow Countdown, according to resident lexicographer Susie Dent Her co-star Rachel Riley admitted she would love to see former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson in Dictionary Corner one day. She said: 'I'm a massive Manchester United fan so there would be no one better than Sir Alex Ferguson. I know he watches.' It comes after Colin Murray was named the new permanent host of Countdown after acting as its 'caretaker' for the past half-year. The TV star, 45, has fronted the long-running game show since Anne Robinson stepped down last summer. Staying put: It comes after Colin Murray was named the new permanent host of Countdown after acting as its 'caretaker' for the past half-year The news was announced on Steph's Packed Lunch on Wednesday, with Colin admitting 'it's a career dream.' Channel 4's head of daytime and features, Jo Street, said the broadcaster had 'listened to the fans' and decided to keep him on as its 'permanent host'. Before joining Countdown full-time, the presenter appeared in its Dictionary Corner. He then stood in for Nick Hewer as host during the second coronavirus lockdown in England as Hewer, now 78, was unable to travel to the set. Wow! The TV adjudicator, 58, claimed the Hollywood actors both love to tune into the British staple, on which she has appeared since 1992 Colin returned to Countdown as host in July 2022 following Robinson's departure. Anne, 78, joined the show in 2021 and became the first main female presenter. After the news was announced Colin said: 'It's a career dream to be named as permanent anchor of one of television's most iconic programmes. 'I have been a fan since day one, been part of the family for over a decade, appearing on Dictionary Corner, and now I get the honour of guiding it into a fifth decade. However, I don't just want Countdown to survive, I want it to thrive. 'During my caretaker stint we've seen more people tune back in, with close to a million (900,000) watching the series final in December, and I want that to just be the beginning. 'Countdown is a special show, and its stars will always be the letters and the numbers, but it's more than that. 'Great afternoon company for people of all ages from all across the UK.' Colin said he, Rachel and Susie are 'very excited for the year ahead', adding: 'If you haven't watched in a while, drop by and join us. Everyone is welcome.' Jenna Coleman looked effortlessly chic as she left rehearsals for Lemons, Lemons, Lemons in London on Tuesday evening. The actress, 36, cut a stylish figure in wide-leg black striped trousers and a beige turtleneck jumper, which she teamed with a purple cardigan. She kept comfortable in a pair of white trainers and carried her essentials in a large black striped handbag with bold red straps. Stylish: Jenna Coleman looked effortlessly chic as she left rehearsals for Lemons, Lemons, Lemons in London on Tuesday evening The Serpent star appeared in jovial spirits and showed off her natural beauty with a slick of mascara and a touch of lipstick. She continued to show off her newly-dyed blonde tresses, which she styled in a straight fashion loosely cascading across her shoulders. Jenna first debuted her new hairstyle at the press night performance of One Woman Show at The Ambassadors Theatre last month. Chic: The actress, 36, cut a stylish figure in wide-leg black striped trousers and a beige turtleneck jumper and showed off her newly-dyed blonde locks The actress, who was previously brunette, looked strikingly different as she showed off her platinum locks for the outing. Jenna is currently rehearsing for Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, an upcoming West End revival of the 2015 rom-com, written by Sam Steiner. She will star in the play alongside Poldark's Aidan Turner, with the opening show at the Harold Pinter Theatre taking place on January 18. New look: Jenna first debuted her new hairstyle at the press night performance of One Woman Show at The Ambassadors Theatre last month Busy schedule: Jenna is currently rehearsing for Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, an upcoming West End revival of the 2015 rom-com, written by Sam Steiner The play will be on-stage for a limited nine-week run and will see Jenna appear as Bernadette while Irish star Aidan, 39, is set to play Oliver. The official synopsis reads: '"Let's just talk until it goes". You're going to speak more than 123 million words in your lifetime. What will you do when they run out? 'Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons is a tender and funny rom-com about what we say, how we say it, and what happens when we can't say anything anymore'. Love Island's Will Young ruffled feathers during Wednesday's installment of the ITV2 show by pulling Lana Jenkins for a chat. The farmer, 23, got grafting after being left single vulnerable by newcomer Tom Clare, 23, who coupled up with ring girl Olivia Hawkins, 27. Fresh from the re-coupling at the fire pit, Will headed over to Tom and said of his new coupling with Olivia: 'Honestly, you are well better suited.' Uh-oh: Love Island's Will Young ruffled feathers during Wednesday's installment of the ITV2 show by pulling Lana Jenkins for a chat Will then joked: 'It just means that I've got to graft a little harder now.' Later in the Beach Hut Will said: '[I've] got to do a lot of grafting, do a lot of talking and try to take in as much as possible.' Newly single Will kicked off the following morning by grabbing Lana, 25, for a chat on the beanbags. It remains to be seen what her partner Ron, also 25, will make of the move. Ooh la la! Newly single Will kicked off the following morning by grabbing Lana, 25, for a chat on the beanbags Awkward! It remains to be seen what her partner Ron, also 25, will make of the move During Tuesday's show, Tom coupled up with Olivia Hawkins leaving Will single and at risk. The footballer, who was a late arrival into the South African villa, had all the power as he chose the stunning ring girl leaving Will vulnerable. However, viewers were left less than impressed as they rushed to Twitter to say they felt bad for Will as Olivia didn't 'try to hide her smile when her name was called'. 'Controversial': The farmer, 23, got grafting after being left single vulnerable by newcomer Tom Clare, 23, (pictured) who coupled up with ring girl Olivia Hawkins, 27 (pictured) Fans joked that the farmer needs to 'smile through the pain', as he was left sitting solo around the fire pit. 'I just knew he'd pick Olivia... aww look at Will's face, but come on, surely he knew that Tom would pick her...' wrote one fan. Another said: 'Poor Will! Then you've got Olivia lowkey trying to hide her smile when Tom called her name.' A third said: 'Olivia trying not to act gassed that Tom picked her in front of Will and the Islanders.' 'Ooh controversial move Tom going for Olivia, poor Will,' a fourth penned. Will and Olivia were coupled up after she was ditched by the popular hunk Kai Fagan, during the launch show. Love Island airs on Wednesday night at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX. She's living it up in the Maldives on her belated honeymoon. And Louisa Lytton made sure to share her incredible trip with her 274k Instagram followers, posting a series of sizzling snaps to her feed on Tuesday. The EastEnders actress, 33, who tied-the-knot with husband Ben Bhanvra in July, has jetted away to the Maldives with Aura, 18 months. Beach chic: She's living it up in the Maldives on her belated honeymoon. And Louisa Lytton made sure to share her incredible trip with her 274k Instagram followers Louisa showed off her tanned figure in a chocolate brown dress with racy cut-out detail, which flaunted her abs. A beaming Louisa took part in a mini photo shoot on the beach, but shared the realities of holidaying with toddlers. Captioning the post 'Swipe to keep mummy grounded' the final photo showed the actress cuddling her little girl. Family fun: The EastEnders actress, 33, who tied-the-knot with husband Ben Bhanvra in July , has jetted away to the Maldives with Aura, 18 months Louisa previously gushed that she was having the best time honeymooning with her daughter. 'I know this is our honeymoon and we feel so lucky and in love we could burst, but watching Aura witness the most incredible experience and at not even 2 saying wow at every new thing she sees has been the best experience of our lives,' she wrote on Instagram. Louisa then joked: '(Dont get used to it girl, back to Rice Crispies with Riley under your feet in the highchair next week).' Strike a pose: Louisa showed off her tanned figure in a chocolate brown dress with racy cut-out detail Mini me: A beaming Louisa took part in a mini photo shoot on the beach, but shared the realities of holidaying with toddlers The soapstar finally married Ben in Italy, in July 2022 after the couple, who got engaged in 2019, were forced to postpone their nuptials three times. After postponing the 200-strong Italian event twice during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, Louisa said they would be having a 'smaller' event. She told the Sunday Mirror about the wedding: 'We want to get married next year. We're planning to have the wedding abroad and we're going to do something smaller than we originally planned. 'It will be different now she's [Aura] here. We're a family now, so it might not be as wild as it was going to be. But we can't wait to get married,' she concluded. This is the life: Louisa previously gushed that she was having the best time honeymooning with her daughter Millie Mackintosh wore a skimpy orange bikini top for a trip to waterpark Aquaventure in Dubai on Wednesday with her husband Hugo Taylor. The former Made In Chelsea star, 33, who shares Sienna, two, and six-month-old Aurelia with Hugo, teamed the bikini top from Monday swimwear with an eye-catching palm tree skirt by Paolita Swimwear for their day date, as she continued to enjoy her luxury stay at Atlantis, The Palm. Taking to Instagram, she pouted for a mirror selfie, pairing the stylish look with white cat-eye sunglasses. Stylish: Millie Mackintosh wore a skimpy orange bikini top for a trip to waterpark Aquaventure in Dubai on Wednesday with her husband Hugo Taylor She wore her caramel locks loose as she embraced the relaxed holiday lifestyle. The reality star posted a series of Instagram stories, writing: 'Off on a day time date with @hugotaylorlondon' in another snap with a heart emoji. Hugo then filmed a smiling clip of them walking to the Atlantis Aquaventure Waterpark together. Another video Millie put on her stories showed Hugo grinning and dancing around as he prepared to go down a huge waterslide. Fun: Millie posted a clip of Hugo grinning and dancing around as he prepared to go down a huge waterslide Date: Hugo filmed a smiling clip of them walking to the Atlantis Aquaventure Waterpark together on Wednesday It comes as the star showed off her incredible figure as she touched down in Dubai with Hugo on Tuesday. Millie looked sensational in the snakeskin number for her glamorous Instagram update. The couple also posed for a quick lift selfie at the airport before they jetted away on their child free trip. Glowing: Millie also showed off her incredible figure as she touched down in Dubai with Hugo on Tuesday Millie teamed her swimwear with an oversized straw hat and matching semi-sheer kaftan. She opted for a pair of cat-eye sunglasses and some metallic sandals to complete her beachy look. The TV personality captioned the snap: 'Delighted to be back in Dubai for a very special event this weekend with @hugotaylorlondon'. Off they go: The couple also posed for a quick lift selfie at the airport before they jetted away on their child free trip Their holiday comes after Millie cosied up to Hugo on the red carpet at the Babylon premiere on Thursday night. The couple held hands at the star-studded event held at the BFI Imax at Waterloo in London, with Millie standing out from the crowd in a plunging red blazer and matching trousers. Millie elevated her height in a pair of gold strappy heels, while accessorising with matching jewellery. Meanwhile, Hugo cut a dapper figure in a black suit with a crisp white shirt, while accessorising with stylish shades. Set in 1920s Hollywood, Babylon centres around the rise and fall of several ambitious dreamers - including the characters portrayed by leading stars Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. Annie Mac has revealed her 'oldest' USB stick containing 'over ten years of music', has been returned after being stolen during her gig. The DJ, 44, shared a photo of the memory stick to Instagram alongside an anonymous note from the thief, who admitted it was a 'drunken mistake.' After appealing for the safe return of her 'truly precious item' in December, Annie shared her gratitude adding that 'we've all made silly mistakes.' Good news: Annie Mac, 44, has revealed her 'oldest' USB stick containing 'over ten years of music', has been returned after being stolen during her gig (pictured in July 2022) She wrote: 'This is my oldest USB stick. I use it for DJing. It carries thousands of songs, over ten years of music. 'It was stolen before Christmas, plucked from the CDJ players I was DJing from, after my Before Midnight gig in London, when I was standing just a few feet away, chatting to attendees. 'The music was backed up badly, over four laptops. It would have impossible to replace as it was, music filed gig by gig, set by set.' Returned: The DJ shared a photo of the memory stick to Instagram alongside an anonymous note from the thief, who admitted it was a 'drunken mistake' Grateful: After appealing for the safe return of her 'truly precious item' in December, Annie shared her gratitude adding that 'we've all made silly mistakes' Annie added: 'More than the inconvenience caused by the theft, the whole thing felt so discordant with the spirit of the evening, which had felt so joyous up to that point. 'We received an email just before Christmas, sheepish tones. It was stupid. A drunken mistake. Now its in my managers office waiting for me to pick up. 'Im so glad, and relieved that it wasnt some calculated malevolent act. It was a drunken mistake and by god havent we all done those in our time. 'To whoever you are, thank you SO much for sending it back. And to those yelling at the screen right now, yes I will back it up properly!!!' Annie explained: 'It was stolen before Christmas, plucked from the CDJ players I was DJing from, after my Before Midnight gig in London, when I was standing just a few feet away' She concluded: 'Also I wanted to thank the DJs who reached out to me to give me music to replace what I lost - so generous - you know who you are! Xxx.' In the anonymous note from the thieves, they penned: 'Really sorry for distress caused. We haven't accessed it. This was a moment of drunken madness. So sorry.' In a statement appealing for its return, Annie previously said: 'The music on that USB is truly precious and really important to me. 'It's years and years of collected music from shows Ive done all over the world and it would mean so much to me if you could do me the grace of returning it.' Before New Kids on the Block's Jonathan Knight-Rodriguez was 'horribly' outed in 2009 by an ex-boyfriend in the National Enquirer, his manager warned him to never be open about his homosexuality. 'He pulled me aside and was like, "If anybody finds out, your career is over. The New Kids' career is over. My career's over. Sony's going to, like, lose money,"' the 54-year-old Grammy nominee revealed on Monday's episode of the podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. 'It was just so much pressure. Looking back, that's a lot of pressure to put on somebody who is just trying to figure out the world themselves.' Before New Kids on the Block's Jonathan Knight-Rodriguez was 'horribly' outed in 2009 by an ex-boyfriend in the National Enquirer, his manager warned him to never be open about his homosexuality Jonathan added: 'The stress built up and built up and built up. It was crazy.' However, Knight-Rodriguez admitted to secretly 'hooking up with a few' of the guys his manager 'would conveniently have around' him back in the New Kids' nineties heyday. On August 25, the Boston-born boybander revealed to ET that he had secretly wed Barry's Boston Instructor Harley Rodriguez sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic after around 13 years of dating. The 43-year-old Frosted Tips host knows a thing or two about being in the closet having only hooked up with women until he was 22 during his heyday in the boyband *NSYNC. The 54-year-old Grammy nominee revealed on Monday's episode of the podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass: 'He pulled me aside and was like, "If anybody finds out, your career is over. The New Kids' career is over. My career's over. Sony's going to, like, lose money"' Jonathan added: 'It was just so much pressure. Looking back, that's a lot of pressure to put on somebody who is just trying to figure out the world themselves' Down low: However, Knight-Rodriguez admitted to secretly 'hooking up with a few' of the guys his manager 'would conveniently have around' him back in the New Kids' nineties heyday (band pictured in 1990) Still going strong! On August 25, the Boston-born boybander revealed to ET that he had secretly wed Barry's Boston Instructor Harley Rodriguez (L, pictured September 3) sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic after around 13 years of dating Pressure to conform: The 43-year-old Frosted Tips host (2-R, pictured in 1997) knows a thing or two about being in the closet having only hooked up with women until he was 22 during his heyday in the boyband *NSYNC November 25 family portrait: Lance - who came out on the cover of People in 2006 - is now a proud parent of 15-month-old twins Violet Betty and Alexander James from his eight-year marriage to artist Michael Turchin (L) Lance - who came out on the cover of People in 2006 - is now a proud parent of 15-month-old twins Violet Betty and Alexander James from his eight-year marriage to artist Michael Turchin. Jonathan mostly keeps busy as a real estate developer and he and co-host Kristina Crestin will star in the Colorado-set fourth season of reality TV competition Rock The Block, which premieres March 6 on HGTV. The New Kids on the Block - which disbanded from 1994-2008 - is next scheduled to perform March 7 at NRG Stadium in Houston. 'So excited!' Jonathan mostly keeps busy as a real estate developer and he and co-host Kristina Crestin (R, pictured November 3) will star in the Colorado-set fourth season of reality TV competition Rock The Block, which premieres March 6 on HGTV The United Nations chief told the Globe Economic Forum on Wednesday that climate change and the Russia-Ukraine war are mounting a domino effect, leaving the world in a "sorry state." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave a somber speech on the second day of the Davos summit, per AP News. He underscored that the economic downturn and impending recession, climate change, and the destruction of the environment, as well as conflicts like the one in Ukraine, are a part of the "perfect storm" that is currently hurting the world. Guterres referred to climate change as an "existential" problem for mankind as the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is virtually "going up in smoke," VOA reported. Read Also: NATO Pledges Heavy Weapons For Ukraine The UN chief said that the war against climate change is "being lost" and a climatic nightmare occurs every week. In addition, Guterres lambasted the oil industry for encouraging skepticism about climate change, citing recent research that indicated experts at ExxonMobil, the world's largest producer of oil and gas, made forecasts with "shocking accuracy" decades ago, despite the company's official denial of climate change, according to DW. We are facing the gravest levels of geopolitical division and mistrust in generations. At Davos, I urged leaders to bridge divides and restore cooperation to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights. Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) January 18, 2023 The World Faces A Gloomy Future Ukraine has been a major topic of discussion at the Davos summit, and Guterres expressed pessimism about the prospects for peace soon. He also said that the COVID-19 pandemic, which destroyed many economies and made public health a problem, is still affecting people around the world. Gutteres warned global leaders that the world is far from prepared for impending pandemics. "Somehow, after all, we have endured, we have not learned the global public health lessons of the pandemic," he said. Related Article: Ukraine Helicopter Crash Update @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Anneka Rice played an impromptu game of Guess Who? with her fans on Wednesday after builders mistook her for a mystery celebrity. The TV presenter, 64, shared the hilarious story to Twitter as she asked fans to help figure out who the workmen thought she was. Based on the questions asked, Anneka joked the men must thinks she's Mackenzie Crook after one said his 'mum loved her in that show with the metal detector.' Funny: Anneka Rice. 64, played an impromptu game of Guess Who? with her fans on Wednesday after builders mistook her for a mystery celebrity She penned: 'I have workmen in the house who are excited to recognise me. But im pretty sure they think Im Michaela Strachen. 'Going with it. Googling my back catalogue quickly. Fun to have a new ouevre 'Hang on wait. One of them has just said their mum loved the show where I was hunting for treasure.with a metal detector, finding gold. No mention of a helicopter. Who the hell am I!!' Oh dear: Anneka joked the men mistook her for Mackenzie Crook after one said his 'mum loved her in that show with the metal detector' where she was 'hunting for treasure' (Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones pictured on the Detectorists Christmas Special 2022) Who am I? 'Hang on wait. One of them has just said their mum loved the show where I was hunting for treasure.with a metal detector, finding gold' she penned The Detectorists is a BBC comedy about two friends who share a passion for metal detecting starring Mackenzie and Toby Jones. Anneka later added: 'S***. Theyve just asked me to sign their t-shirts when they leave. Ive got about half an hour. 'Oh God, just had the 'werent you in gladiators question. Thats Ulrika in the mix. Im going for Mackenzie Crook. Final answer. Joke: 'Oh God, just had the 'werent you in gladiators question. Thats Ulrika in the mix. Im going for Mackenzie Crook. Final answer' she added 'I buckled at the tea break. The men utterly baffled. I slunk away.,' she concluded after leaving the builders confused when she served them hot drinks in Challenge Anneka mugs. Her followers got involved in the fun as they all took a stab at who the person could be that Annneka had been mistaken for. One Twitter user penned: 'They think you're Tony Robinson for his Time Team days.' No clearer: 'I buckled at the tea break. The men utterly baffled,' she concluded after leaving the builders confused when she served them hot drinks in Challenge Anneka mugs Guesses: Her followers got involved in the fun as they all took a stab at who the person could be that Annneka had been mistaken for Another added: 'Really throw them by writing "Love, Ulrika,' as they suggest what she should write on their T-shirts. 'Do they think you are Helen Chamberlain, who does presenting with metal detectors?' someone else questioned. Whilst one fan joked she should 'sign them Pete Waterman' and another suggested 'Gary Lineker.' Appearance: It comes after Anneka revealed that looking at photos of herself recently left her feeling 'horrified', but added that she doesn't feel any different now than she did 30 years ago It comes after Anneka revealed that looking at photos of herself recently left her feeling 'horrified', but added that she doesn't feel any different now than she did 30 years ago. The TV presenter, made the comments as her most prolific 90s programme, Challenge Anneka, is set to return to the UK's screens. During episodes of the show, which ran on the BBC between 1989 and 1995, Anneka and her team of volunteers would take on complicated tasks against the clock, usually to raise money for charity. Famous challenges, which she usually undertook while donning her trademark blue and pink jumpsuit, included the building of a swimming pool for orphaned seals and putting up a suspension bridge in Cornwall. Throwback: In the programme (pictured) Anneka and a team of volunteers would take on challenges they tried to complete within in set timeframe Speaking in an interview with the Times, Anneka discussed how she has changed over the last three decades. When told she still looked the same as when the show was first on television, she replied: 'Look at those photos [we have just taken]. I was horrified.' However, she added: 'But the thing is I dont really feel any different.' Ezra Miller seemed to be in high spirits on Tuesday afternoon while out for a walk in Los Angeles with some of their friends. The 30-year-old actor seemed totally unfazed after pleading guilty last week to an unlawful trespassing charge for breaking into their neighbor's home in Vermont and stealing alcohol. Miller, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, was ordered not to drink alcohol as part of their sentence. The new teetotaler could be seen carrying a monster energy drink lodged in the crook of their arm. Getting some fresh air: Ezra Miller, 30, took a stroll in Los Angeles on Tuesday with some of their pals just days after they pleaded guilty to trespassing after breaking into a Vermont home Ezra were a red satin coat that was left unbuttoned, which they previously sported on Sunday when they touched down at LAX airport in Los Angeles. They opted for a simple white tank top underneath, which showed off a splash of chest hair. The Flash star carried their phone in one hand and appeared to have a cigarette clutched in their other hand. They kept the rest of their outfit relaxed with baggy black pants and matching black boots while covering their long hair with a black ski cap. Standing out: Ezra were a red satin coat that was left unbuttoned, which they previously sported on Sunday when they touched down at LAX airport in Los Angeles No fuss: They opted for a simple white tank top underneath and wore baggy black pants with matching boots and a ski cap Ezra was seen smiling and chatting with one friend who also seemed to be going all in on the energy drinks. They carried one can, and in their other hand they held a four-pack of a different Monster flavor. They were also joined by a third friend with spiky hair who walked behind Ezra. The We Need To Talk About Kevin star seemed to be having a great time with their pals, as they could be seen cracking up at something that was said. Caffeine buzz: Ezra, whose plea deal requires them not to drink alcohol, could be seen carrying a monster energy drink lodged in the crook of their arm Similar tastes: One of their pals carried a different can of Monster Energy, along with a four-pack of the caffeinated beverage High spirits: The We Need To Talk About Kevin star seemed to be having a great time with their pals, as they could be seen smiling and cracking up The American actor seemed to be getting back to normal life after narrowly avoiding jail time by accepting a plea deal in connection with a break in at a southern Vermont home May last year. The troubled actor agreed to a suspended sentence of 89 to 90 days in jail for the misdemeanor of 'unlawful trespass,' according to a plea deal filed with the Vermont Superior Court in Bennington on Friday. Miller will also be fined $500, along with a $192 surcharge, and they will be placed on probation for a year. Two other charges were dropped, including a felony burglary charge that could have carried a sentence of 25 years in prison. Cooling down: The American actor seemed to be getting back to normal life after narrowly avoiding jail time by accepting a plea deal in connection with a break in at a southern Vermont home May last year. The 30-year-old Flash actor agreed to a suspended sentence of 89 to 90 days in jail for the misdemeanor of 'unlawful trespass'; seen in October 2021 Vermont Police charged Miller with felony burglary of an unoccupied dwelling on May 1, with the actor claiming they were in the house to look for ingredients for a recipe for their mother. Miller was accused of taking bottles of gin, vodka and rum from their neighbor's pantry on that day at around 5 p.m. in the afternoon. They told their attorney on Friday that they were grateful for the love and support they received. 'Ezra Miller pled guilty this morning to a misdemeanor unlawful trespass in Vermont Superior Court and accepted the conditions imposed by the court,' Miller's attorney Lisa Shelkrot said on behalf of the embattled actor. 'Ezra would like to thank the court and the community for their trust and patience throughout this process. 'They would once again like to acknowledge the love and support they have received from their family and friends, who continue to be a vital presence in their ongoing mental health.' In court: In a video from the Vermont court on Friday, Miller was seen to plead 'guilty' while standing beside their attorney and speaking to Judge Kerry Ann McDonald-Cady Out of the spotlight: The prosecutor said in court Friday that this resolution protects the plaintiff's privacy without having to go to trial Miller, who asked that the court address them as Mx. Miller, entered the courtroom at the beginning of the hearing with their lawyer. They wore a black suit jacket over a black crewneck shirt and pants and a black face mask with their long hair pulled back, as seen in videos of the proceedings on Twitter. The attorney said in court Friday that this resolution protects the plaintiff's privacy without having to go to trial. It also ensures compliance with conditions that would protect the victim and allows the defendant to continue employment with mental health treatment. 'I do find they strike the balance of both your rehabilitation and continue to make sure that you're a healthy citizen and also a punishment factor here,' said Judge Kerry Ann McDonald-Cady of the deal terms. 'So I do find this an appropriate sentence and in the interest of justice.' Legal trouble: Vermont Police charged Miller with felony burglary of an unoccupied dwelling on May 1, with the non-binary actor claiming they were in the house to look for ingredients for a recipe for their mother Suited up: Miller played The Flash in the DC Cinematic Universe - and was pulled into crisis meetings with Warner Bros over their behavior Fine: Miller (pictured in a mugshot taken for separate charges in Hawaii) will be fined $500 plus a $192 surcharge and be placed on probation for a year. Two other charges were dropped, including a felony burglary charge that could have carried a sentence of 25 years in prison She added that the conditions are 'about mental health, substance-free living' and no contact with the neighbor. As part of the plea agreement, Miller also agreed not to consume alcohol if it interfered with their employment or interaction with others and the actor must continue with rehabilitation efforts around their mental health treatment. McDonald-Cady then went over the state's standard probation conditions, including the requirement to notify their probation officer of any employment or address changes and told Miller to check in with probation before 3 p.m. on Friday. The 30-year-old Flash actor had previously pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawful trespassing, two charges for burglary to an unoccupied dwelling and petit larceny for allegedly breaking into a Vermont home and stealing three bottles of alcohol. Their story: Miller had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges, claiming they were getting ingredients for a recipe for their mother and can be seen here with attorney Lisa Shelkrot who said in a statement that Miller had wanted to acknowledge the ongoing love and support of family and friends Vermont State Police said in a statement at the time they were notified of 'a burglary complaint at a residence on County Road in the town of Stamford, Vermont. 'The initial findings indicated that several bottles of alcohol were taken from within the residence while the homeowners were not present,' the statement continued. 'As a result of an investigation that included surveillance videos and statements, probable cause was found to charge Ezra M. Miller with the offense of felony burglary in an unoccupied dwelling.' Troubled: Miller was previously arrested in Hawaii on separate charges for assault of a woman They were arrested in August, and entered their now defunct not guilty plea in October when a judge ordered they stay away from neighbor Isaac Winokur whose house they stole the bottles from as well as neighbor Aiden Early. The actor spoke only to confirm that they understood the conditions of their bail. It was just the actor's most recent run-in with the law. They had also been accused of grooming, after the parents of Tokota Iron Eyes, a Native American activist, 18, filed a protection order against the actor. Her parents accused Miller of grooming their child and other inappropriate behavior with her as a minor from the age of 12, which has been disputed by Tokota. A Massachusetts mother was granted a temporary order of protection against Miller in June, on behalf of the woman's 12-year-old child. It was granted after the judge found the child faced 'substantial likelihood of immediate danger of harassment.' Disturbing bond: Miller has been accused of 'grooming' and 'brainwashing' Tokata Iron Eyes, 18 (backseat), who is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. They are pictured together here in a car A mother-of-three and her young children have also moved into Miller's Vermont farmhouse which is allegedly filled with guns and large quantities of marijuana. The father of the children claims that the mother, 25, left their island home in Hawaii with Miller in April, and took the children without his consent. Video from April, obtained by Rolling Stone, reportedly showed at least eight assault weapons, rifles, and handguns lying around the living room. It's also claimed they created a secret harem out of their Vermont ranch - a de facto convent - where the star is claimed to have asserted themselves as a Jesus figure over a group of women. Miller was also arrested twice in Hawaii in March last year - charged with disorderly conduct and second-degree assault. They were accused of shouting and swearing at customers as they sang karaoke at a bar in Hilo, as well as grabbing a microphone from a 23-year-old woman. At a court hearing for the incident, they pleaded no contest to one count of disorderly conduct and paid a $500 fine. Scary: A video surfaced on Twitter of Miller appearing to choke a woman at a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland, in April 2020 - but did not appear to result in any charges More run-ins: Miller was previously charged with disorderly conduct and harassment at a karaoke bar following two arrests in Hawaii in March last year one of which is pictured In April, one month later that year, the star was accused of throwing a chair at a 26-year-old woman, hitting her at a private party in Pahoa. A video of Miller appearing to choke a woman at a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland, also surfaced in April 2020, but did not result in any charges. In August Miller announced that they were seeking treatment for 'complex mental health issues', after Hollywood bosses were forced to reconsider their future in the DC's cinematic universe. They said in a statement: 'Having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, I now understand that I am suffering complex mental health issues and have begun ongoing treatment.' 'I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. I am committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe, and productive stage in my life.' The actor stars in the Flash movie, with an insider telling The Wrap that early screenings had scored positive feedback. It will feature Miller as the titular superhero encountering other versions of themselves and Supergirl from other timelines. Sarah Michelle Gellar has claimed she sacked a crew member working on her new show, Wolf Pack , after they offered 'back rubs' to a cast member. The iconic actress, 45, who has previously spoken out on the 'toxic' Buffy The Vampire Slayer set run by Joss Whedon, has pledged to 'give young actors on the show the safety net I never had' in a candid interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Gellar, who stars and executive produces the upcoming Paramount+ show has given her phone number to cast members and promised to 'discreetly handle concerns - before alleging a crew member made a star uncomfortable when they offered back rubs. She said the crew member - who was not identified - was sacked as soon as she found out, saying: 'I hope that Ive set up an infrastructure, a safety net for these actors that I didnt have. My generation just didnt have that.' Claim: Sarah Michelle Gellar has claimed she sacked a crew member working on her new show, Wolf Pack after they offered 'back rubs' to a cast member (pictured in the trailer for Wolf Pack) The Scream 2 actress said she has learned over her years in the industry to never back down and recounted an incident on a recent set where she was overlooked in favour of a man. She said: 'There was an issue at work the other day where they kept forgetting to send things for my approval but remembered to send them to a male actor whos not a producer. Oh, just old processes, they said, Sorry. OK, then lets make a new process. She added the 'old me would have backed down' but she now felt she had 'earned the right to stand where I am.' In Wolf Pack Gellar plays a member of a 'joint task force' investigating a mysterious wildfire. Supernatural events start occurring after the wildfire breaks out and is witnessed by a group of teenagers on a school bus. Cover star: The iconic actress, 45, who has previously spoken out on the 'toxic' Buffy The Vampire Slayer set run by JosS Whedon, has pledged to 'give young actors on the show the safety net I never had' in a candid interview with The Hollywood Reporter 'Everyone knows that Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a huge influence on Teen Wolf,' Jeff Davis - the creator of the MTV series and Wolf Pack - said at a Comic-Con panel last year. 'So I always thought it would be amazing if we could bring Sarah Michelle Gellar back to a horror show,' he continued. Gellar - who plays arson investigator Kristin Ramsey and is also an executive producer on the show - said in the trailer: 'We're part of a joint task force investigating the wildfires. We're looking for any of the kids who were on the school bus.' The synopsis of the series reads: 'When a raging wildfire descends on California, a mysterious creature hiding out in the forest is awoken and a group of teenagers find their lives changed forever.' The original series - a TV adaptation of the book series by Edo Van Belkom - will also be starring Rodrigo Santoro, Armani Jackson, Bella Shepard, Chloe Rose Robertson, and Tyler Lawrence Gray. Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Whedon has been hit by allegations of abusive and toxic behavior on set of the hit show, which ran from 1997-2003 - he has denied the allegations but admitted to at times not being 'mannerly.' Sacked: She said the crew member - who was not identified - was sacked as soon as she found out, saying: 'I hope that Ive set up an infrastructure, a safety net for these actors that I didnt have. My generation just didnt have that' Stunning: The beauty looked sensational in an orange dress and patterned boots Glow: The star sported a radiant make-up look as she posed Gorgeous: The beauty wowed in a fringed red dress for another snap Gellar's co-star Seth Green, 48, who played Oz on the show, hit back at claims she was a 'b***h' on set, saying the cast and crew worked 'crazy' 13-15 hour days and Gellar stuck up for everyone on set. He said: 'Sarah was always the first one to say, 'We agreed this was a 13-hour day and it's hour 15 we've got to wrap,' or, 'Hey, this shot doesn't seem safe,' when nobody else would stick up for the cast and crew. I saw her get called a b***h, a diva, all these things that she's not just because she was taking the mantle of saying and doing the right thing.' Gellar added she had 'mellowed in her expectation of others' due to becoming 'burned out. ' The Do Revenge star, who broke her silence on Whedon in December 2022, said she will 'never tell her full story' about her time on the show, because 'everybody loses' as a result. Her husband, fellow 90s teen idol Freddie Prinze Jr, 46, said his wife had dealt with ' a lot of bulls**t on the show' without any 'credit or real salary' - but praised her professionalism. Buffy: Gellar's co-star Seth Green, 48, who played Oz on the show, hit back at claims she was a 'b***h' on set, saying the cast and crew worked 'crazy' 13-15 hour days and Gellar stuck up for everyone on set Emma Caulfield, 49, who played Anya Jenkins on the show, said there was a 'tremendous amount of resentment and animosity [toward her] from a certain someone' and that the star lacked support to be a leader on the show, Gellar also revealed her daughter Charlotte, 13 is determined to follow in her parents' footsteps and become an actor - but that she has banned the teenager from appearing onscreen until she finishes high school. This comes after Gellar broke her silence on the Buffy The Vampire Slayer set, calling it 'extremely toxic'. The actress landed the title role in the hit 1990s sci-fi series early on in her career, claimed women were 'pitted against each other' in those days and female friendships were discouraged because they were too 'powerful'. It comes more than a year after her co-star Charisma Carpenter accused show creator Joss Whedon of 'hostile and toxic behaviour' on the set. Sarah said: 'For so long, I was on a set that I think was known for being an extremely toxic male set. 'And so that was ingrained in my head that that was what all sets were like, and that women were pitted against each other that if women became friends, then we became too powerful, so you had to keep that down.' The Cruel Intentions star went on to explain she has had the chance to work with other women as her career has progressed and has had an 'easier' time but claimed the world is still in a place where it needs women in jobs instead of men so that they can develop their own voice. Cast: Sarah previously spoke out in support of her former co-star Charisma Carpenter, who made allegations against show creator Joss Whedon ( L-R: Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Head, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Charisma Carpenter and Alyson Hannigan in 1997 ) She told The Wrap: 'Now that I've had this opportunity to work with so many more women and men that support women as well, I realised how easy an experience it can be, but unfortunately we're still in that place where all of those departments a lot of times need to be women for us to have a voice.' MailOnline contacted Joss Whedon's representatives for comment at the time. Sarah previously spoke out in support of her former co-star Charisma, who made allegations against the show creator. Sarah - who played Buffy from 1997 to 2003 - posted on Instagram: 'While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don't want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon. 'I am more focused on raising my family and surviving a pandemic currently, so I will not be making any further statements at this time. 'But I stand with all survivors of abuse and am proud of them for speaking out.' In her original social media post, Charisma accused Whedon of 'abusing his power' as the show's creator and executive producer. She wrote: 'Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working together on the sets of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. 'While he found his misconduct amusing, it only served to intensify my performance anxiety, disempower me, and alienate me from my peers. The disturbing incidents triggered a chronic physical condition from which I still suffer. It is with a beating, heavy heart that I say I coped in isolation and, at times, destructively. (sic)" In her original social media post, Charisma accused Whedon of 'abusing his power' as the show's creator and executive producer. She wrote: 'Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working together on the sets of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. 'While he found his misconduct amusing, it only served to intensify my performance anxiety, disempower me, and alienate me from my peers. The disturbing incidents triggered a chronic physical condition from which I still suffer. It is with a beating, heavy heart that I say I coped in isolation and, at times, destructively. (sic)" Hours after attending the star-studded premiere of her new movie Maybe I Do, Emma Roberts was up early heading inside ABC Studios on Lincoln Square in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. The 31-year-old niece of Julia Roberts was there to pre-tape Thursday's episode of the ironically-titled morning talk show, LIVE with Kelly and Ryan. Emma looked leggy in a green AMI Paris - Alexandre Mattiussi skirt suit, towering white Mary Janes, and Rainbow K Jewelry selected by styling duo Brit + Kara Elkin. 'Good morning New York!' Emma Roberts headed inside ABC Studios on Lincoln Square in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday Hairstylist Ryan Trygstad gave Roberts' textured waves and make-up artist Ana Marie Rizzieri made sure she was ready for her close-up. The former child star admitted 'it's really hard' juggling her acting career with raising two-year-old son Rhodes Robert Hedlund, whose godfather is three-time Grammy winner Tim McGraw. 'I now see why moms are always so tired!' Emma told People on Tuesday night. 'I just see it from such a different perspective now. I see how being a mom is a full-time job, so I see how for women who have full-time jobs and [are] full-time moms, it's so hard and I have so much respect for them.' Airing tomorrow! The 31-year-old niece of Julia Roberts was there to pre-tape Thursday's episode of the ironically-titled morning talk show, LIVE with Kelly and Ryan Gave her 5ft2in frame a big boost: Emma looked leggy in a green AMI Paris - Alexandre Mattiussi skirt suit, towering white Mary Janes, and Rainbow K Jewelry selected by styling duo Brit + Kara Elkin Natural beauty: Hairstylist Ryan Trygstad gave Roberts' textured waves and make-up artist Ana Marie Rizzieri made sure she was ready for her close-up Roberts added: 'I'm so lucky my mom [Kelly Cunningham] helps me a lot. I would die without my mom.' The Bellatrist co-curator co-parents little Rhodes with Tulsa King actor Garrett Hedlund, whom she split from in December 2021 after a two-year romance. The Minnesota-born 38-year-old still has two months of probation left stemming from a 2020 arrest for DUI, according to Us Weekly. All-black outfit: Emma was later spotted on Wednesday in an all-black out in the SoHo area 'I now see why moms are always so tired!' The former child star admitted 'it's really hard' juggling her acting career with raising two-year-old son Rhodes Robert Hedlund (R, pictured December 27), whose godfather is three-time Grammy winner Tim McGraw Emma told People on Tuesday night: 'I just see it from such a different perspective now. I see how being a mom is a full-time job, so I see how for women who have full-time jobs and [are] full-time moms, it's so hard and I have so much respect for them' Roberts added: 'I'm so lucky my mom [Kelly Cunningham] helps me a lot. I would die without my mom' (pictured on October 31) Babydaddy: The Bellatrist co-curator co-parents little Rhodes with Tulsa King actor Garrett Hedlund (R, pictured December 27), whom she split from in December 2021 after a two-year romance Since June, Emma has been dating her Creative Artists Agency agent Cade Hudson. Roberts has been hard at work promoting her role as bride-to-be Michelle in Michael Jacobs' feature directorial debut Maybe I Do, which hits US theaters January 27. The rom-com about in-laws having an affair also features Richard Gere, Diane Keaton, William H. Macy, Susan Sarandon, and Luke Bracey. Hitting US theaters January 27! Emma has been hard at work promoting her role as bride-to-be Michelle in Michael Jacobs' feature directorial debut Maybe I Do Amanda Abbington has opened up on the 'crazy whirlwind' of events after finding out her fiance Jonathan Goodwin had been in an accident. Jonathan was paralysed for life in a tragic accident in October 2021, following a stunt where he attempted to escape from a straight jacket while being hung upside down 30 feet in the air. The actress, 48, started dating the America's Got Talent star, 42, after her split from Martin Freeman. Difficult: Amanda Abbington has opened up on the 'crazy whirlwind' of events after finding out her fiance Jonathan Goodwin had been in an accident The couple then confirmed their engagement in 2021 after Goodwin proposed within minutes of meeting the actress for the first time in Vienna. But just weeks after Jonathan proposed, he was in the accident which saw him crushed by two cars on fire. Now, speaking about the horrific time, Amanda said she initially 'didn't think about the stunt' and shared how she received the news. Speaking to The Times, she said: '[The stunt] was dangerous, but I knew Jonathan was a perfectionist so I didnt think any more about it. Tragic: Jonathan was paralysed for life in a tragic accident in October 2021 , following a stunt where he attempted to escape from a straight jacket while being hung upside down 30 feet in the air 'When I woke up the following morning there was a voicemail from his stunt co-ordinator: Jonathans had an accident. Its not great news. 'Then it all became a crazy whirlwind; finding out what had happened, flying his family out there.' She then explained the severity of accident, sharing he had fell and lost a kidney, broken both shoulder blades, shattered both legs, broke his spine and severed his spinal cord. Amanda continued: 'We did eventually speak on the phone. He called to say he was having an operation and there was a strong chance he might not make it. 'He told me that he loved me and I honestly thought that was the last time Id hear his voice.' Scary: Now, speaking about the horrific time, Amanda said she initially 'didn't think about the stunt' and shared how she received the news Proud: The actress gushed that she is so in love with her 'independant and strong' husband-to-be that she 'forgets he's in a wheelchair' Last year the couple had revealed that they planned to get married in 2022, but remained coy on the details. Now, Jonathan sharing his lessons on life and his gratitude for Amanda has confirmed the pair will be marrying in June. He explained to The Times: 'I wouldnt recommend nearly dying, but it teaches you a lot about living. 'I look at Amanda and pinch myself. This gorgeous, wonderful, funny woman likes me and were getting married in June. 'There is a bit of me that wants to arrive at church via parachute or zip wire, but Amanda has made it crystal clear that this will be a traditional wedding. And if I go anywhere near my former career, I suspect that it will be one of the shortest marriages on record!' Honest: Amanda revealed in May 2022 that her partner now uses a wheelchair after he sustained a number of serious injuries during rehearsals for America's Got Talent: Extreme The couple first crossed paths on Twitter in 2012, while they were both involved in other relationships - she with actor Martin Freeman, best known for his work on sitcom The Office and Peter Jackson blockbuster The Hobbit, and he with now ex-wife Katy. A mutual respect for one another's work sparked an initial friendship, but it would be a further nine years - by which time they were both single - before they fell for one another. By then Goodwin was based in Las Vegas, but a seven-hour phone-call with Abbington convinced him to relocate to his native Britain - despite having never met the actress face-to-face. The couple eventually met in person while Abbington was filming on location in Austrian capital Vienna, with the actress admitting their first meeting was preceded by her repeatedly messaging him 'like a giddy school-girl.' Shortly after their engagement Jonathan was left paralysed from the stunt that went horribly wrong. Amanda later explained that the timing was misjudged and the cars were released too early, causing him to be crushed between them as they caught on fire. Now, over a year since his accident, Amanda has revealed that her fiance Jonathan is 'going from strength to strength'. She gushed that she is so in love with her 'independent and strong' husband-to-be that she 'forgets he's in a wheelchair.' Speaking on Tuesday's Lorraine to promote her new comedy series The Family Pile, Amanda revealed that she and Jonathan are still planning to marry this summer. Gushing about her beau she added: 'He's amazing, he makes me smile. I love him to bits, he's going from strength to strength. Old times: The couple originally developed a friendship in 2012, while Abbington was in a relationship with actor Martin Freeman, before becoming romantically involved following their split 'I forget he's in a wheelchair, he's independent and strong. He's genuinely my hero, I don't know what I'd do without him. He's so supportive and gorgeous. Wedding in summer it's happening.' Previously, the couple had revealed that they planned to get married in 2022, but remained coy on the details. Appearing on Lorraine in May, Jonathan said: 'The wedding is later this year, its lovely, we were very excited about it beforehand. It's one of those things where if somebody dies, everyone says what a wonderful person he was but they never get to hear it. Amanda revealed in May 2022 that her partner now uses a wheelchair after he sustained a number of serious injuries during rehearsals for America's Got Talent: Extreme, which has since been axed. He was hospitalised for four months with his injuries, before his release in February. Close: A mutual respect for one another's work sparked an initial friendship, but it would be a further nine years - by which time they were both single - before they fell for one another In May last year, Jonathan shared a post on Instagram, saying that his dog, who finally got to see him again for the first time in six months, was getting used to him having 'cool, new, wheels.' He penned: 'Six months ago I went to rehearse for something and left this little hair monkey waiting patiently for me he didn't see his dad again until just a couple of weeks ago and when he finally did, his dad had new wheels. 'A lot has changed in the last six months, but love is a constant and I'm very loved. Looking forward to my next chapter and being a role model.' During the couple's first joint TV appearance that same month, Jonathan explained that he had given Amanda a 'Get Out of Jail Free card' after his accident, but the star insisted that she would always remain by her new fiance's side. Supportive: During the couple's first joint TV appearance that same month, Jonathan explained that he had given Amanda a 'Get Out of Jail Free card' after his accident As Amanda was seen becoming emotional, Jonathan said: 'I said you have a get out of jail free card, if you want to walk away I understand and she told me not to be so stupid.' Elsewhere in the interview, a tearful Amanda, who Jonathan proposed to just weeks before the accident, went on to say that they are 'closer and tighter' than ever as a couple as she gushed that Jonathan was her 'inspiration.' 'We are closer and tighter than ever and we have this unspoken thing, we said the other day that we are the people that are gonna say yes to stuff, life's too short, be in the moment and grab it with both hands because you don't know what's around the corner,' she said. 'He's a total inspiration to me. He's an idiot, I'm a wally so it's fine. And all my friends and family love him, he's very loveable.' Amanda Bynes will reunite with her All That co-stars for the upcoming '90s Con Panel - 23 years after the original show ended. The actress, 36, who starred on the sketch comedy show from 1996-2000, revealed she will appear at the event - running from March 17-19 at the Connecticut Convention Center - alongside Kel Mitchell, 44, Danny Tamberelli, 40, and Lori Beth Denberg, 46. The She's The Man actress told People: 'I'm really excited to reunite with my cast mates and meet the fans at '90s Con. She's back: Amanda Bynes will reunite with her All That co-stars for the upcoming '90s Con Panel - 23 years after the original show ended Mitchell said: 'Last year, I had a blast at '90s Con promoting my book and new single Blessed Mode. What better way to return than with the All That gang including Amanda Bynes who will be joining Danny, Lori Beth, and me this year. 'Plus, I will be bringing copies of my new comedy fantasy adventure book Prank Day, and I can't wait to see all the 90's fashion the fans are bringing this year.'90s Con is a whole vibe! Let's go!" 'Last year was amazing and we cannot wait for this year's show.' All That was created by Brian Robbins and Mike Tollin and originally aired on Nickelodeon from April 16, 1994, to October 22, 2005, lasting ten seasons. The series, which was billed as 'SNL for kids' boasted short comedy sketches and musical guests. In 2019 a revival of the series with original cast member Kenan Thompson serving as executive producer and Mitchell rejoining the cast was confirmed, with the 11th season airing in June of that year. Wow: All That was created by Brian Robbins and Mike Tollin and originally aired on Nickelodeon from April 16, 1994, to October 22, 2005, lasting ten seasons - with the cast including Nick Cannon, Kel Mitchell, Amanda Bynes and Kenan Thompson He's back! Kel Mitchell, 44, will be appearing alongside Amanda (pictured December) The last episode of the series aired on December 17, 2020, after production was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It launched Bynes into her noughties romcom era before the embattled star stepped away from acting. Bynes and beau Paul Michael broke off their engagement in July of 2022, but reportedly got back together in August. Now they are rumored to be living together again in Amanda's L.A. home. Though Bynes has reconciled with her ex-fiance, their engagement is reportedly not back on. Sources close to the star have told TMZ that the pair are only dating after calling off their engagement over the summer. Stars: Danny Tamberelli and Lori Beth Denberg will also be in attendance The gang: Kel Mitchell, Lori Beth Denberg, Danny Tamberelli and Josh Server are pictured reuniting in 2015 Rumors of their latest reunion first arose earlier in October of 2022 when the Nickelodeon star shared a mysterious image of herself holding hands with Paul Michael who could be recognized by his distinctive tattoos on her Instagram Story. The cozy photo came nearly two months after news first broke that the pair had ended their two-year engagement. The subtle hint of Amanda's photo featured Paul's tattooed grip holding on to her heavily manicured hand. Back together, but not engaged: Recently Bynes has reconciled with her ex-fiance Paul Michael, their engagement is reportedly not back on Neither appeared to be wearing any rings on their hands following news on July 8 that they had ended their engagement 'sometime in 2021.' 'They are still together as a couple,' an insider stressed to ET at the time of their supposed split. 'They are still in a committed relationship and take their relationship seriously.' Bynes and Michael famously got engaged on Valentine's Day 2020, mere months after staying at the same sober living facility. On April 28, the Easy A alum called 911 on the healthcare worker during a dispute over him relapsing. She accused him of vandalizing his mother's home, looking at MILF porn, and being off his meds. Aside from Amanda's busy love life, the star has also reportedly been developing a 'fragrance line' as she pursues another degree at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising after earning her associate's degree there in 2019. In March of 2022, Bynes was freed of her nine-year legal conservatorship controlled by her mother Lynn. Amanda's conservatorship began in 2013 when she was involuntarily committed to a Pasadena psychiatric treatment facility following a public meltdown involving a string of bizarre run-ins with the law dating back to 2012. Among Bynes' offenses were two hit-and-runs and a DUI in 2012, as well as a 2013 arrest for throwing a bong out of a window of the 36th floor of her Manhattan apartment. Steven Spielberg looked in good spirits as he attended the London premiere of his film The Fabelmans at The Curzon Mayfair on Wednesday. The director, 76, was joined on the red carpet by the film's star Gabriel LaBelle who plays a young alter ego of Steven's in the semi-autobiographical flick. Steven cut a dapper figure for the screening, wearing a black suit with a matching coat and a lilac shirt. Premiere: Steven Spielberg looked in good spirits as he attended the London premiere of his film The Fabelmans alongside actor Gabriel LaBelle at The Curzon Mayfair on Wednesday Also in attendance at the event was actress Susan Lynch who donned a black silk jacket with a red floral detail and woolly embellishment. The star also sported a pair of black trousers which she paired with red heels as she posed next to her son Hardy. Lauren Laverne wrapped up in a red coat which she wore with a matching dress with a sheer detail. The garment also featured a high collar while Lauren paired it with black boots and matching gloves. Screening: Steven cut a dapper figure for the screening, wearing a black suit with a matching coat and a lilac shirt Event: Steven and Gabriel were joined by The Fablemans producer Kristie Macosko Krieger Actor Julian Glover was another famous face at the event, attending alongside his wife Isla Blair. The Fabelmans is a semi-autobiographical film. It details the dissolution of the marriage of Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano) as seen through the eyes of Spielberg's surrogate, played by Gabriel. The director's alter ego alter ego in the film is Sammy Fabelman, the firstborn child and only son of Burt and Mitzi, who, in turn, are thinly disguised versions of Spielberg's own parents: Arnold Spielberg and his wife Leah. The film opens with Sammy being taken by his parents to the pictures for the first time. Looking good: Lauren Laverne wrapped up in a red coat which she wore with a matching dress with a sheer detail Style: Also in attendance at the event was actress Susan Lynch who donned a black silk jacket with a red floral detail and woolly embellishment Couple: Actor Julian Glover was another famous face at the event, attending alongside his wife Isla Blair Attendee: Brian Cox opted for a navy blazer, black trousers and a grey turtle neck jumper Pals: The Succession star posed alongside actress Caroline Goodall This dramatises a real moment in Spielbergs boyhood: one that began his lifelong obsession with film. Spielberg won the Best Director Golden Globe his ninth overall for the film last week at the 80th annual Golden Globes. The Fabelmans also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama. Fashion: Caroline sported a black top and matching trousers with a chunky gold belt Star-studded: The actress chatted with Steven as they caught up on the red carpet Cosy: Gaby Roslin wrapped up in a black wooly coat which she paired with blue skinny jeans and navy boots Trendy: Linzi Stoppard opted for a black top and matching trousers which she paired with a white jacket Steven recently shared that his fears over the Covid-19 pandemic inspired him to make the film. He said: 'I was terrified this was an end-of-days, and epic-level event, I mean an extinction-level event, that was happening to the world.' The filmmaker added that his fear made him decide which movie he truly needed to make, in case it would his last one: 'If I got the chance to make one more movie, it was going to be this story.' Jess Wright looked sensational on Wednesday evening as she turned up to a London premiere in matching suits with her mum, Carol. The former TOWIE star, 37, and her mum, 63, flashed their gorgeous smiles as they made their way down the red carpet at Cirque du Soleil's 'KURIOS: Cabinet of Curiosities' premiere. Jess - who recently returned from a luxury getaway in Barbados with husband William Lee-Kemp and their son Presley - looked the epitome of elegance in the black number. Stunners: Jess Wright looked sensational on Wednesday evening as she turned up to a London premiere in matching suits with her mum, Carol The stunner showed off her sense of style as she left herself bare underneath the tailored blazer. The trousers also added flare to her outfit as it featured a tie detail around her ankles. Adding inches to her gorgeous frame, she stepped out in gold stilettos to strut the red carpet. She paired the outfit with a trendy gold handbag, embellished with pearls. Elegant: Jess - who recently returned from a luxury getaway in Barbados with husband William Lee-Kemp and their son Presley - looked the epitome of elegance in the black number The stunner showed off her sense of style as she left herself bare underneath the tailored blazer Jess styled her long dark tresses in loose curls which cascaded past her shoulders and she applied a radiant palette of makeup to showcase her beauty. Meanwhile, Jess's mum also looked stunning as she appeared next to her daughter in the snaps. Complimenting her daughter, she rocked a white suit, layered with a nude coloured top and pearl designs. This comes after Jess candidly discussed her body confidence after welcoming her first child in May last year. Opening up, she told New Magazine she 'felt a little bit bigger' on her recent trip to Barbados but was happy to spend quality time with her family. Stylish: Jess styled her long dark tresses in loose curls which cascaded past her shoulders and she applied a radiant palette of makeup to showcase her beauty Jess looked sensational as she showed off her slim physique in a stunning green swimsuit on Instagram. Jess explained: 'I've not felt the most body confident. Your body changes after having a baby and your confidence definitely goes. You're a mum, you care less - you've got more important things to worry about. As much as I felt a little bit bigger in certain outfits, I kind of didn't care and was just grateful to be away.' The reality star recently bravely shared a series of candid photographs of her ongoing battle with psoriasis, which affects the skin and sometimes the joints. Jess, who recently begged her followers for a 'miracle cure' for the autoimmune condition, said she is determined to 'get to the bottom of it'. Wow: Adding inches to her gorgeous frame, she stepped out in gold stilettos to strut the red carpet Speaking on her condition, she said: 'I went to see someone just before Christmas and I was put on medication. It really helped. 'I haven't spoken about it on my Instagram because I don't want to ill-advise anyone because everyone's skin is different. But I personally went down that route and it's helped dramatically and that made me feel more confident in Barbados, not having to worry about that.' Jess gave birth to Presley on May 17, less than a year after she married Will in Mallorca in September 2021. 'I felt a bit bigger': Jess Wright has candidly discussed her body confidence after welcoming her first child in May last year She shared the happy news on her social media page with an adorable snap of the newborn, writing: 'We will hold your hand forever 17~05~22.' Jess told New Magazine: 'Motherhood is extremely full on, but it's amazing and rewarding at the same time. He's such a mummy's boy. I'm worried he's going to be too much of a mummy's boy and it'll be only me who can settle him, so I need to be careful not to pander him too much.' Family: The former TOWIE star recently enjoyed a luxury getaway in Barbados with husband William Lee-Kemp and their son Presley Jess previously spoke about her struggle with postnatal depression after she welcomed her son Presley with husband William. Speaking with The Sun, she detailed how she had been finding motherhood so far. Jess said: 'I had a bit of post natal depression. And the lack of sleep. For me also, I have always had psoriasis but it went when I was pregnant but now it is back with a vengeance. 'It has now gone to the point where it is no return, it is everywhere. I have covered it well tonight. I did not know it would be as bad.' Emily Ratajkowski showed off her radiant complexion and washboard abs as she stepped out in NYC on Wednesday. The model, 31 - who has been back on the dating scene since splitting from husband Sebastian Bear-McClard - looked fresh-faced as she slipped into a tiny white crop-top which revealed her enviable waist. The star wore black joggers and grey trainers, teamed with a cream shearling jacket as she arrived at Sony Music Studios. Toned: Emily Ratajkowski showed off her radiant complexion and washboard abs as she stepped out in NYC on Wednesday Her tresses were styled in soft waves and she sported shades, while revealing her natural beauty by going make-up free. Ratajkowski shares son Sylvester, 22 months, with ex-husband Sebastian Bear-McClard, to whom she was married from 20182022. Emily has been enjoying her new singlehood, dating for fun and sometimes discussing single life on her new podcast. Looking good: The model, 31 - who has been back on the dating scene since splitting from husband Sebastian Bear-McClard - looked fresh-faced as she slipped into a tiny white crop-top which revealed her enviable waist Toned: The star wore black joggers and grey trainers, teamed with a cream shearling jacket as she arrived at Sony Music Studios She was linked to Pete Davidson for a few weeks before their flame fizzled and she moved on. The beauty has been spotted on fun New York City dates with the likes of DJ Orazio Rispo and has most recently been linked to comedian Eric Andre. The entertainer, 39, publicly expressed admiration for her as he dropped a heart eye emoji under her most recent Instagram upload. Last week Emily and Eric were spotted with their arms around each other as they emerged from a restaurant in the Big Apple. In recent weeks Emily remarked that she attracts the 'worst' men, explaining that she wants someone 'confident' but not 'overly confident' with 'something to prove' who will attempt to 'prove it through me.' Weeks ago a source told People magazine, 'Em is single and totally happy. She will always prioritize her son, but enjoys dating when she has time. She enjoys her independence.' Whoopi Goldberg clapped back at a sassy audience member who called her an 'old broad' on live television on Wednesday. The 67-year-old co-host of ABC's long-running talk show The View responded, 'Did you just call me an "old broad"? Yeah.' The longtime Hollywood fixture continued, 'She said, "You old broad," and I was like, "Hey, its Wednesday, and I am an old broad, and happy about it!"' Trading sass: Whoopi Goldberg clapped back at a sassy audience member who called her an 'old broad' on live television on Wednesday The confrontation erupted at the top of the show as the five hosts - Goldberg, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, Joy Behar, and Alyssa Farah Griffin - took their seats. The camera then showed two masked-up audience members, focusing on one wearing a dark fur hat and eyeglasses. Hostin chimed in to note that being an older person is better than being a deceased person. 'The alternative is not attractive to any of us,' added Goldberg. 'We all want to be old broads and old dudes, you know?' Response: The camera panned to the audience member as Goldberg noted, 'I am an old broad, and happy about it!' Whoopi was dressed in a green and navy blue plaid limited edition DAP GAP zip-up hoodie from the brand's collaboration with Dapper Dan. She added form-fitting dark pants and a pair of fresh white sneakers as she appeared on the TV screens of millions. Her dark, locked hair was parted down the center and rested over her chest in a long bob. Mouthy: The 67-year-old co-host of ABC's long-running talk show The View responded, 'Did you just call me an 'old broad'? Yeah' Earlier this month Whoopi, who is set to grace the screen for a third edition of the Sister Act franchise after 30 years, urged her former co-star Dame Maggie Smith to reprise her role as well. The actress and TV personality admitted that she 'just can't do it' with anyone other than Maggie taking on the Mother Superior character as she discussed the new flick. Talking with Loose Women's Judi Love, Whoopi was asked about plans for the third installment, which Disney+ confirmed in 2020. She explained: 'You know, one of the things that I want to make sure I do while I'm here is I want to let Maggie Smith know that I'm holding the part of Mother Superior for you [Maggie]. 'Because I just can't do it with anybody but you. So if you need me to come over here [to England] and shoot and do whatever we have to do, we will do whatever you want us to do, but we don't want to do it without you.' It's not the first time Whoopi - whose real name Caryn Elaine Johnson - has reached out to her former co-star either as she pleaded the same thing while appearing on The One Show last year. Microsoft Corp. announced on Wednesday that it will lay off 10,000 employees as it prepares for a possible recession. The layoff, which is far more significant than Microsoft's employment cutbacks from last year, adds to tens of thousands of job losses in the technology industry. The tech company recorded a $1.2-billion loss as its cloud computing clients analyzed their expenditures, as reported by Reuters. The software company has made significant investments in generative AI. Experts believe it could be a leader in its field, but the global economic downturn has hurt it. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a memo to staff that fewer than 5% of the workforce will be affected by layoffs by the end of March, with notices starting on Wednesday. Read Also: Xi Jinping's Concern Over Upcoming Lunar New Year Tech Industry Threatened By Global Recession With many having hired tens of thousands more workers during the pandemic, many technology corporations were obliged to react to warnings of a worldwide economic downturn. Several major IT firms have been laying off workers as of late, with Amazon announcing this month that it would be cutting 18,000 positions, or around 6% of its employees, Sky News reported. The cloud computing company Salesforce said it would eliminate 8,000 employees, while Facebook's owner, Meta, is laying off around 11,000 workers. Microsoft's shares, which have lost 23% over the last year, were almost unchanged at $240.35 as of Tuesday's New York market closing. When Microsoft releases its results on January 24, it is anticipated to show a 2% increase in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. The sales growth would be the smallest since fiscal year 2017. Microsoft's cloud-computing business has revived expansion since then, although it has weakened in the last year, per Bloomberg. Related Article: Elon Musk Lawsuit Update @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Sir David Jason was beaming as he attended Cirque Du Soleil's KURIOS premiere in London alongside his wife and daughter on Wednesday. Stepping out to the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday, the actor, 82, posed for photos on the red carpet with Gill, 63, Sophie Mae, 21, and her pal. The Only Fools and Horses star sported a flat cap with a smart checked blazer and satin polka dot scarf for his family outing. Family: Sir David Jason, 81, was beaming as he attended Cirque Du Soleil's KURIOS premiere in London alongside his wife Gill Hinchcliffe and daughter Sophie Mae on Wednesday Sir David completed his suave look with a charcoal fleece and matching smart trousers. His wife Gill opted for a knitted black dress with sequin embellished shoulders and a silver handbag. Sophie Mae looked edgy in a tartan dress that nipped in at her waist with a corset-style belt and white leather jacket. Dapper: The Only Fools and Horses star sported a flat cap with a smart checked blazer and satin polka dot scarf for his family outing. All smiles: Sophie Mae, 21, looked edgy in a tartan dress that nipped in at her waist with a corset-style belt and white leather jacket It comes after David revealed he would 'never' have thought he'd appear in one of Britain's highest-rated festive specials - especially after getting his start in front of the camera playing a goose. The actor made his first TV appearance on December 26, 1965 when he played King Goose in a BBC production of Mother Goose. 31 years later on December 26 1996, 24.3million people watched him as Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter in Only Fools And Horses' Christmas special where he and Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) dressed up like Batman and Robin. Career: It comes after David revealed he would 'never' have thought he'd appear in one of Britain's highest-rated festive specials Achievement: 31 years later on December 26 1996, 24.3million people watched him as Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter in Only Fools And Horses' Christmas special According to the Broadcasters Audience Research Board, it's one of the biggest audiences ever recorded for a single transmission in the UK. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, David said: 'It's been a journey. You would never, ever have thought that could possibly happen from playing the King of Goose Land on television... you're lucky if you got another job.' David, who was raised in North Finchley, London, told how his whole family gathered around to watch his first TV appearance. He said: 'The thing about it is you've got a poor, working-class family, and because television was still quite new then, it wasn't in everybody's house. 'But then to have one of your own, one of your family actually on the television itself was an amazing achievement.' Salma Hayek shared a very stunning photo to her Instagram page on Wednesday. The 56-year-old beauty was almost unrecognizable, though, as she appeared more like her 2003 self than her 2023 self, which may have been with the help of some filters. Followers seemed to notice as one person asked, 'Who is that?' while another follower wrote, 'You look 25 mi chula' and someone else asked, 'HOW OLD IS SHE?????????' Later a fan added, 'You look beautiful so plz stop face tunning its getting out off hand.' Facetune is a photo editing application used to edit, enhance, and retouch photos on a user's iOS or Android device created by Lightricks. A new look: Salma Hayek shared a very stunning photo to her Instagram page on Wednesday. Then and now: Last week she looked lovely at the Golden Globes, left, but this week she looks half her age Followers seemed to notice as one person wrote, 'You look 25 mi chula' Someone else asked, 'HOW OLD IS SHE?????????' in all caps Later a fan added, 'You look beautiful so plz stop face tunning its getting out off hand' Hayek credit her hairstylist Jennifer Yepez and makeup artist Sofia Schwarzkopf-Tilbury but did not name the photographer. Her long dark hair was worn in a ponytail that was tight and sleek. The mother-of-one had on cherry red lipstick with matching blush that was very flattering. Her lashes were long and her eyebrows were groomed as if she was ready for a magazine photo shoot. All she had on for clothing was a cream-colored bathrobe with a white belt. The Frida actress was standing in a back yard with mature bushes. Slide me Compare the two: On the left the Hollywood movie star is seen on social media, on the right she is seen at the Globes Anti aging: The 56-year-old beauty was almost unrecognizable, though, as she appeared more like her 2003 self than her 2023 self, which may have been with the help of some filters Hayek's caption read, 'Good morning!! buenos dias!! bonjour!!' She last rocked an iconic golden look while hitting the red carpet at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards. The actress was all smiles while hitting the red carpet. Hayek wore a stunning diamond-encrusted low-cut Gucci gown that fell to the carpet. The pinup accessorized with glittering diamond earrings from Lorraine Schwartz, with shimmering eye shadow and she completed her look diamond rings. Salma's look: Hayek had on a shimmering silver dress over a pink background Hayek returns as Kitty Softpaws in the critically-acclaimed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which debuted in December and has already earned $200 million worldwide. She will next be seen on the big screen in Magic Mike's Last Dance, arriving in theaters February 10. While little is known about her character, she recently opened up about a steamy lap dance she did with franchise star Channing Tatum. Hayek, who replaced Thandiwe Newton in the sequel, plays a wealthy socialite, who learns that Mike isn't really a bartender as he shows her his special skills with a dance. She does not seem to age as she has a timeless look: Seen in 1998 in Hollywood A shape shifter: And in this image she looks like she is in her 30s; the image is from November 'It's very physically challenging. My goodness. You just wait to see. It's just complicated,' Hayek teased. 'I play a strong woman. You know what was my day going into the office? I would just sit around and watch, like, 12 men, semi-naked dancing and doing pirouettes. And I got to boss them around,' she added. She will also star in Angelina Jolie's next directorial effort Without Blood, which is currently in post-production. The actress stars alongside Demian Bichir in the adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's novel, adapted by Jolie herself. Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul reunited for a fun-filled trip to Mexico this week as they visited the headquarters of their Mezcal brand, Dos Hombres. Cranston, 66, who played Walter White, and Paul, 43, who portrayed Jesse Pinkman, on the show from from 2008 to 2013. looked delighted as they enjoyed shots and traveled via private plan to Oaxaca in a joyful clip to mark the visit. Paul wrote: 'We couldnt be more proud of the beautiful company that we are building down in magical Oaxaca. @DosHombres has been our baby for 6 plus years now and we are growing exponentially. Fun times: Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul reunited for a fun-filled trip to Mexico this week as they visited the headquarters of their Mezcal brand, Dos Hombres 'Just spent this past week in Oaxaca and we are missing it already. To our team down in Mexico, you are beautiful. You are absolutely incredible and we cant thank you enough for all of the hard work you have done so far. 'And our team stateside, you are our family. So proud of all of you for hustling the way that you do. Its only the beginning.' Breaking Bad ran on AMC for five seasons from 2008 to 2013. Cranston played Walter White, a terminally-ill chemistry teacher in New Mexico who makes and deals methamphetamine with a former student Jesse Pinkman, played by Paul. The show received tons of critical acclaim, including 16 Primetime Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards. Famous roles: The two actors have a long history of friendship, starting with their roles as Jesse Pinkman and Walter White in the iconic crime drama series Breaking Bad , from 2008 to 2013 Cheers: Cranston sipped on a fruity beverage as he enjoyed his trip It also stars Norris, Anna Gunn, RJ Mitte, Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks and many more well-known actors and actresses. In 2022, the pair reprised their roles during the sixth and final season of the spin-off prequel Better Call Saul. It comes after Aaron confirmed that Bryan is the godfather of his newborn son Ryden Caspian Paul, who they welcomed in April of this year. In an interview with TMZ last month the actor affirmed Bryan's new role as godfather. saying: 'He is the man. That beautiful man.' Good to animals: Paul cuddled a cute kitten in the hilarious clip Yay: The star embraced his colleague as he larked around in the video Larks: The star pulled a funny face as he posed up in the video Laugh: The star grinned as he relaxed on a private plane The El Camino star said the decision was 'very easy' and gave a preview of Bryan's responsibilities: 'He's just going to babysit, change diapers, you know, burp - all the things.' Aaron previously revealed his plans for having Cranston be the godfather during his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday. When Jimmy asked if Bryan had met the baby, he replied: 'He has. He has met the baby. You know, I asked Bryan on his birthday if he would be our baby's godfather.' 'He said no,' Aaron joked. He then clarified that Bryan was 'very excited' to be his son's godfather. 'Very honored. I love the man to death, you know,' said Aaron. Watch the Iconic Series, Breaking Bad, only on Stan in Australia. Emma Thompson's daughter Gaia turned heads as she joined her dad Greg Wise at Cirque Du Soleil's KURIOS premiere in London on Wednesday. The actress, 23, put on an edgy display in a sheer top and pinstriped skirt while posing for photos with the actor, 53, on the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall. Gaia looked stunning as she smiled for a sweet photo and wrapped her arm around her dad at the event. Emma Thompson's daughter Gaia, 23, turned heads as she joined her dad Greg Wise, 53, at Cirque Du Soleil's KURIOS premiere in London on Wednesday She team her outfit with a pair of chunky heeled leather boots and pulled her hair back into a polished bun. Greg opted for a black cable knit jumper with a biker jacket, jeans and black suede trainers. The production, titled of Kurios: Cabinet of Curiositie, follows the story of a 19th-century world inventor who invents a machine that defies the laws of time, space, and dimension. Cute: The actress put on an edgy display in a sheer top and pinstriped skirt while posing for photos with the actor on the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall Their outing comes after Greg joined his wife Dame Emma at the press night after party for On The Ropes at Park Theatre in London last week. Actress Dame Emma, 63, cut a casual figure as she wore a pair of pink denim dungarees with a matching cotton shirt and white knitted cardigan. Greg stood with his hand around his partner while wearing a blue denim jacket with a pair of darker jeans. Stunning: She team her outfit with a pair of chunky heeled leather boots and pulled her hair back into a polished bun Emma, who completed her look with a pair of comfortable white trainers, could be seen grinning from ear-to-ear as she stood next to her one-time Strictly Come Dancing star partner. They were seen posing alongside fellow actor Don Warrington, 71, at the event, with the Death in Paradise star wearing a navy blue shirt under a lavender jacket and coat. On the Ropes tells the story of Vernon Vanriel (Mensah Bediako) who arrived in Britain at the age of six with his family as part of the Windrush Generation. Love Island fans have declared their love for Will Young on Wednesday after he was left single following bombshell Tom 'stealing' Olivia from him. Despite being put in a vulnerable position, Will took the recoupling in his stride, telling Tom that he believed he and Olivia were a better match. And taking to Twitter as events unfolded on screen, viewers declared they were 'rooting' for him, with others begging producers to send in a 'nice girl' for the farmer. Team Will: Love Island fans have declared their love for Will Young on Wednesday after he was left single following bombshell Tom 'stealing' Olivia from him One fan shared: 'Cant lie I have a soft spot for Will', with another adding: 'Pls I'm rooting for farmer Will.' 'Awww but Will is adorable right now' gushed a third watcher. While another said: 'Im rooting for Will tbh. Bless him.' Sharing their view that they'd love a bombshell girl to arrive that would be suited to him, another commented: 'Please they need to send a nice sweet girl for Will.' Good sport: Despite being put in a vulnerable position, Will took the recoupling in his stride, telling Tom that he believed he and Olivia were a better match Nice one: Will took the moment well after Tom recoupled with his partner Olivia 'They need to put a cute outdoorsy girl in this villa for farmer Will' agreed an additional person. With another adding: 'Will is actually funny I hope they put in an unreal farmer girl for him.' During the episode, following the recoupling for Tom and Olivia, Will declared that he had to 'graft a little harder now.' Later in the Beach Hut Will said: '[I've] got to do a lot of grafting, do a lot of talking and try to take in as much as possible.' Support: Taking to Twitter as events unfolded on screen, viewers declared they were 'rooting' for him, with others begging producers to send in a 'nice girl' for the farmer Newly single Will kicked off the following morning by grabbing Lana, 25, for a chat on the beanbags. The blond hunk told the beauty that out of all the girls, she was the one he was drawn to the most, telling her that he'd like to get to know her. However, poor Will was friendzoned within seconds as she quickly informed him that she didn't see him that way. Grafting: Newly single Will kicked off the following morning by grabbing Lana, 25, for a chat on the beanbags Making his move: The blond hunk told the beauty that out of all the girls, she was the one he was drawn to the most, telling her that he'd like to get to know her Oh dear: However, poor Will was friendzoned within seconds as she quickly informed him that she didn't see him that way Lana added that she was getting on pretty well with partner Ron and wanted to pursue things with him for the time being. However, she may regret her decision as Ron was later seen getting flirty with new bombshell Zara after she picked him for a romantuc date. The duo got along like a house of fire and got very flirty, with Ron hinting that his head may 'swivel' from Lana to her. Love Island continues Thursday at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX. Love Island returned to ITV screens earlier this week and some islanders have already started to try and crack on with their partners. On Wednesday evening, Tanya Manhenga turned down another kiss from Shaq Muhammed after he leaned in while lying on a day bed. The couple were giggling before the model, 22, swerved the airport security officer, 24, again, until sharing a private moment in bed at night. Awkward: Love Island returned to ITV screens earlier this week and some islanders have already started to try and crack on with their partners. Shaq finally redeem himself that evening by securing a passionate kiss from Tanya while cuddling in bed. Speaking to the boys the morning after Shaq boasted: 'We had a few kisses in bed it was unreal! We're just going to carry on as it is and get to know each other'. The model also told the girls that he 'got so excited'. On Wednesday evening, Tanya Manhenga swerved another kiss from Shaq Muhammed after he leaned in while lying on a day bed Fans were left believing that 'Tanya is not into Shaq' at all and is waiting for a new bombshell to enter the South African villa. One wrote: 'Shaq is a trooper because getting rejected twice? Yeah the third time Id rather paint the whole villa with a nail polish brush'. A second wrote: 'Tanya is not into Shaq even a little bit'. The airport security officer, 24, finally redeem himself that evening by securing a passionate kiss from the model, 22, while cuddling in bed 'Tbh Tanya pieing Shaq is making me like her more. I'm slowly becoming a fan!! She's not a desperate babe!!,' a third said. Another added: Tanya isn't interested in Shaq,' a fifth said: 'Tanya is not into Shaq even a little bit!' It comes after Shaq approached Tanya during Tuesday's episode while she was chatting with the girls and asked to speak with her on the terrace. Speaking to the boys the morning after Shaq boasted: 'We had a few kisses in bed it was unreal!' While the model also told the girls that he 'got so excited' They quickly began flirting and Shaq told Tanya he wanted to kiss her, but she said he would have to wait. Viewers seemed to largely agree with Tanya's reserved approach, pointing out they hadn't even known each other for a full day yet. It comes after two new bombshells David Salako, 24, and Zara Deniz Lackenby-Brown, 25, took two of the islanders on dates. Tanya was picked by David as they enjoyed some one on one time together before entering the villa while Zara was joined by Ron. 'Pied': Fans were left believing that 'Tanya is not into Shaq' at all and is waiting for a new bombshell to enter the South African villa Tanya admitted that David 'has chat' as she gushed over the new bombshell. 'I had a really good date with David but Shaq sits rent free in my head at the minute. When I was on the way there I was like "I like Shaq". 'But my head might turn when I get to know David more'. Speaking in the beach hut, Shaq reflected on Tanya going on the date, admitting: 'I'm going to back myself and I'm not worried'. Ahead of entering the villa, Money advisor David revealed he is 'very picky' and has got extremely high standards. He explained: 'Im very picky - I havent met the right one yet. 'The person youre going to meet is never going to be perfect, but Ive got my standards, yeah.' . We're just three days into the latest series of Love Island and an unseasonably strong South African breeze appears to be winning more attention than this year's crop of slow-starting singletons. But while the blustery elements ruffle hair, two new bombshells have inevitably ruffled feathers following their sudden arrival in the sprawling Cape Town villa. Elsewhere, Will Young's romantic aspirations appear to be flatter than Table Mountain after the hapless farmer lost Olivia Hawkins to Tom Clare during Tuesday's climactic coupling. So what next for our growing group of not-so-hopeless romantics? Pull out a pie, but hold the cream. MailOnline has you covered. Here we go again: Love Island returned with its third instalment on Wednesday evening 'WE'RE ROOTING FOR HIM!' WILL FINALLY WINS OVER VIEWERS Love Island fans have declared their love for Will Young on Wednesday after he was left single following bombshell Tom 'stealing' Olivia from him. Despite being put in a vulnerable position, Will took the recoupling in his stride, telling Tom that he believed he and Olivia were a better match. And taking to Twitter as events unfolded on screen, viewers declared they were 'rooting' for him, with others begging producers to send in a 'nice girl' for the farmer. Team Will: Love Island fans have declared their love for Will Young on Wednesday after he was left single following bombshell Tom 'stealing' Olivia from him One fan shared: 'Cant lie I have a soft spot for Will', with another adding: 'Pls I'm rooting for farmer Will.' 'Awww but Will is adorable right now' gushed a third watcher. While another said: 'Im rooting for Will tbh. Bless him.' Sharing their view that they'd love a bombshell girl to arrive that would be suited to him, another commented: 'Please they need to send a nice sweet girl for Will.' Good sport: Despite being put in a vulnerable position, Will took the recoupling in his stride, telling Tom that he believed he and Olivia were a better match Nice one: Will took the moment well after Tom recoupled with his partner Olivia 'They need to put a cute outdoorsy girl in this villa for farmer Will' agreed an additional person. With another adding: 'Will is actually funny I hope they put in an unreal farmer girl for him.' During the episode, following the recoupling for Tom and Olivia, Will declared that he had to 'graft a little harder now.' Later in the Beach Hut Will said: '[I've] got to do a lot of grafting, do a lot of talking and try to take in as much as possible.' Support: Taking to Twitter as events unfolded on screen, viewers declared they were 'rooting' for him, with others begging producers to send in a 'nice girl' for the farmer GET A GRIP YOU TWO! The chemistry is strong between Islanders Ron and Lana, with the pair even being dubbed the 'power couple' on Love Island this week. And on Wednesday, viewers couldn't help but notice how close the pair have become in a matter of days. Fans flocked to Twitter, with some saying they're acting like a 'married couple' already and mocking them for acting like they've known each other for years. 'Ron and Lana acting like a married couple after two days, it's giving Andrew and Tasha,' one fan tweeted with a chihuahua emoji. 'They're acting like a married couple after two days!' Love Island fans mocked Ron and Lana on Wednesday for acting like they've been together for years - after they were dubbed a 'power duo' Chemistry: The chemistry is strong between Islanders Ron and Lana Another added: 'Ron and Lana are gonna be that couple who are basically gonna be like a married couple from day 1. But he likes her more than she does him and she's going to get frustrated at some point.' 'Ron has only known Lana for two days, why is he moving like this?' another said. However, some Love Island fans seem to love the budding couple. 'Hmmm Lana and Ron r becoming myy fave couple,' one person tweeted, while another added: 'Manifesting Lana and Ron work out.' Having their say: Fans flocked to Twitter, with some saying they're acting like a 'married couple' already and mocking them WOULD YOU LIKE CREAM WITH THAT? On Wednesday evening, Tanya Manhenga turned down another kiss from Shaq Muhammed after he leaned in while lying on a daybed. The couple were giggling before the model swerved the airport security officer again, before sharing a private moment in bed at night. Shaq finally redeem himself that evening by securing a passionate kiss from Tanya while cuddling in bed. Awkward: On Wednesday evening, Tanya Manhenga turned down another kiss from Shaq Muhammed after he leaned in while lying on a daybed Here we go: The couple were giggling before the model swerved the airport security officer again Speaking to the boys the morning after Shaq boasted: 'We had a few kisses in bed it was unreal! We're just going to carry on as it is and get to know each other'. The model also told the girls that he 'got so excited'. Fans were left believing that 'Tanya is not into Shaq' at all and is waiting for a new bombshell to enter the South African villa. One wrote: 'Shaq is a trooper because getting rejected twice? Yeah the third time Id rather paint the whole villa with a nail polish brush'. The airport security officer finally redeemed himself that evening by securing a passionate kiss from the model while cuddling in bed 'Pied': Fans were left believing that 'Tanya is not into Shaq' at all and is waiting for a new bombshell to enter the South African villa A second wrote: 'Tanya is not into Shaq even a little bit'. 'Tbh Tanya pieing Shaq is making me like her more. I'm slowly becoming a fan!! She's not a desperate babe!!,' a third said. Another added: Tanya isn't interested in Shaq,' a fifth said: 'Tanya is not into Shaq even a little bit!' Uh Oh: Love Island viewers were left cringing as Lana Jenkins 'friendzoned' Will Young during an awkward chat on Wednesday's episode WILL SUFFERS ANOTHER CAPE TOWN CATASTROPHE Love Island viewers were left cringing as Lana Jenkins 'friendzoned' Will Young during an awkward chat on Wednesday's episode. Will was left as the only single person in the villa after Tuesday's episode when newcomer Tom Clare chose to couple up with Olivia Hawkins. Not wasting any time, Will immediately got to work on Lana, pulling her aside for a chat by the pool to see how she felt about him. Flirty: Will immediately got to work on Lana, pulling her aside for a chat by the pool to see how she felt about him However, things didn't go to plan for the farmer as Lana admitted she doesn't see him in a romantic way. Lana told Will that Ron, who she is currently coupled up with, is the only guy she has feelings for in the villa. Taking to Twitter, one user wrote: 'Lana shut Will down so fast!' while another said: 'Why's Will on Lana like a lost puppy'. A third viewer said: 'Respect to Lana the way she friendzoned Will and hasn't lef him on but dude has no game'. Another wrote: 'Lana don't do this to my man Will, respect for her being so polite about it.' Awkward: Things didn't go to plan for the farmer as Lana admitted she doesn't see him in a romantic way Reaction: Taking to Twitter, one user wrote: 'Lana shut Will down so fast!' while another said: 'Why's Will on Lana like a lost puppy' It comes after fans declared their love for Will after he was left single following bombshell Tom 'stealing' Olivia from him. Despite being put in a vulnerable position, Will took the recoupling in his stride, telling Tom that he believed he and Olivia were a better match. One fan shared: 'Cant lie I have a soft spot for Will', with another adding: 'Pls I'm rooting for farmer Will.' 'Awww but Will is adorable right now' gushed a third watcher. Sharing their view that they'd love a bombshell girl to arrive that would be suited to him, another commented: 'Please they need to send a nice sweet girl for Will.' Accusations: Love Island fans have accused Olivia Hawins of wanting to be a cougar as she sets her eyes on Haris Namani WE KNOW YOUR GAME, OLIVIA! Love Island fans have accused Olivia Hawins of wanting to be a cougar as she sets her eyes on Haris Namani. The Ring girl was seen flirting with Haris, 21 - who is paired with Anna-May shortly after Tom recoupled with her, with the beauty admitting she's more 'physically attracted' to the TV salesman. But as she struggled to decide between him and Tom, fans called her out for questioning Haris' maturity. After recoupling with Tom, Olivia wasted no time in sitting down with Haris to have a chat about where their heads were at. Flirt: The Ring girl, 27, was seen flirting with Haris, 21 - who is paired with Anna-May shortly after Tom recoupled with her, with the beauty admitting she's more 'physically attracted' to the TV salesman Moving on so soon? After recoupling with Tom, Olivia wasted no time in sitting down with Haris to have a chat about where their heads were at Despite being with Anna-May, Haris told her: 'Out of every girl in here, you are the one that I'm most sexually attracted to, you're a very good looking girl.' While Olivia suggested the feeling was mutual, telling him: 'Looks wise I feel like he's [Tom] growing on me but you're more my type, I'm more physically attracted to you 'And then personality, the thing that gets me so stuck is the fact that you're both so different and I just need to decide what I want from a guy' The beauty then went on to compare the two lads, telling Haris of Tom: 'I think he is a bit more mature than you.' Reaction: Taking to Twitter to share their thoughts on Olivia flirting with Haris, one person commented: 'Im not feeling this cougar and sugar baby storyline Uh oh; Meanwhile, others called her out for questioning Haris' maturity Taking to Twitter to share their thoughts on Olivia flirting with Haris, one person commented: 'Im not feeling this cougar and sugar baby storyline.' Another shared: 'Olivia doesn't want Tom she just wanted to be picked after Kai ditched her now she's playing cougar with Haris.' With another adding; 'Olivia does not like Tom. She wants to be a cougar so badly!' Meanwhile, others called her out for questioning Haris' maturity, with one writing: 'How can Olivia question his maturity? What has he done to be less mature in 24hours? Olivia I see your game. I see why u cougar'. 'Super patronising to tell someone you think theyre not mature just bc youre older than them, especially when youve only just met them' tweeted another viewer. With another adding; 'He might be a little more mature than me says the 27 year old about the 23 year old, to the 21 year old.' LOVE ISLAND 2023: MEET THE CONTESTANTS Name: Tanya Manhenga Age: 22 Location: Liverpool Occupation: Student and model Something not many people know about her: 'I have Vitiligo, which is a skin pigmentation, you may not even notice it.' 'It's on my lip and I have a stripe on my hair. Not many people know that but I think it's quite cute.' 'I don't care about covering it up all the time, I think it's a vibe.' Name: Lana Jenkins Age: 25 Location: Luton Occupation: Makeup artist Something not many people know about her: 'In my work as a makeup artist I've worked with lots of celebrities. 'Also, when I was 6-years-old I used to live in Spain and I was in an episode of Benidorm as an extra.' Name: Tom Clare Age: 23 Location: Barnsley Occupation: Semi-Pro Footballer Something not many people know about him: I'm a High School Musical fan Name: Samie Elishi Age: 22 Location: London Occupation: Senior Estate Agent Coordinator Something not many people know about her: 'Im a really honest person and I have no filter. I wont take rubbish from anyone, especially when it comes to guys!' Name: Kai Fagan Age: 24 Location: Manchester Occupation: Science and PE teacher Something not many people know about him: 'I'm a Jamaican citizen. Because of that I played rugby 7s for Jamaica.' 'I play semi-professional rugby now for Burnage RFC.' 'I've technically got three different degrees and went to three different unis.' Name: Ron Hall Age: 25 Location: Essex Occupation: Financial advisor Something not many people know about him: 'On meeting me, you'd never know I am blind in one eye.' 'It was the result of a football injury when I was 8. I've got two different coloured eyes, one blue and one green.' Name: Shaq Muhammad Age: 24 Location: London Occupation: Airport security officer Something not many people know about him: 'I'm a very emotional person. It can be a blessing and a curse.' 'Every time I watch Dear John I cry. That's my favourite film. Any time I'm with someone and they say, 'Let's watch a romantic film', I'm like, 'How about Dear John, how does that sound?' Name: Sanam Harrinanan Age: 24 Location: Bedford Occupation: Social Worker Who did she have her eye on in Casa Amor? 'Kai is my number one. Job wise I think that wed connect a lot and I think hes cute!' Advertisement Looking good: Love Island fans have gone wild over the newest bombshell Zara, hailing her 'a spice' INTRODUCING... ZARA DENIZ LACKENBY-BROWN Love Island fans have gone wild over the newest bombshell Zara, hailing her 'a spice'. While the islanders were happily cracking on with each other and trying to secure their couples, two new bombshells entered the villa on Wednesday night's episode. Zara Deniz Lackenby-Brown, 25, and David Salako, 24 were chosen for the task of shaking things up - and Zara has done just that. Taking to Twitter as events unfolded on-screen, viewers went wild as Zara made her entrance into the villa. Turning heads? The end of Wednesday's episode saw Ron question his couple with Lana. The financial advisor was clearly taken by Zara as he admitted his desire to get to know her better One fan wrote: 'Haven't watched a bit of Love Island yet but that bombshell Zara is literally the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Absolutely stunning' Another agreed: 'Yeah Zara is stunning!' Another Love Island viewer chimed in: 'Zara is here to shake tables and a**!! And we are here for it!! She's definitely a spice'. Other fans were less subtle about their likeness for the new islander - and pointed out Zara's 'bum'. One Twitter user wrote: 'Zara's bum tho', while another suggested, 'that camera man defo enjoyed that bum angle in Zara boy'. 'Fit out of ten, I rate it': Love Island viewers accused the boys of trying to 'sabotage' a fellow islander during Wednesday night's episode ARE THE BOYS SABOTAGING WILL? Love Island viewers accused the boys of trying to 'sabotage' a fellow islander during Wednesday night's episode. As the reality stars became more comfortable in the South African villa, the lads advised singleton Will Young what to wear as he hoped to impress any new bombshells. The farmer tried on a number of outfits for Haris Namani, Kai Fagan, Tom Clare and Shaq Muhammed and fans believe they purposefully misguided him on his choice. Will tried on an eye catching shirt and white trousers prompting Kai to tell him: 'Fit out of ten, I rate it'. 'That is the one': As the reality stars became more comfortable in the villa, the lads advised singleton Will Young, 23, what to wear as he hoped to impress any new bombshells 'It's every man for himself': Will seemed chuffed with the choice and thankful for the help from the other boys however, fans were certain the guys had 'done him dirty' However, he quickly confused the farmer as he told him to try on a different outfit despite 'rating' the first. Kai added: 'What about black trousers with a black shirt. It doesn't have to be a shirt'. The guys in the villa changed their minds again while helping Will as he swapped into a plain white shirt. Tom gushed: 'Now we're talking! That looks well smart', while Haris added: 'That is the fit. That is the one, that looks nice'. Will seemed chuffed with the choice and thankful for the help from the other boys however, fans were certain the guys had done him dirty. Viewers rushed to Twitter to rant that the 'boys are out to sabotage Will' and that they have 'done him dirty with his outfit'. One fumed: 'Nah these boys are out to sabotage Will.' 'Tom is trying to sabotage will, i see you tom,' added a second. A third wrote: 'The boys dressing Will up like a Spanish waiter is the rudest thing to happen so far this series'. 'It's Will thinking these boys are genuinely gonna try help him... once they see Zara, it'll be every man for himself,' a fourth joked. 'Why did the boys just lie to will that was a terrible outfit he looked like a dad on holiday,' added another. A sixth Twitter user chimed: 'These boys done Will dirty with his outfit!' RON'S HEAD IS TURNED - AFTER ONE DINNER DATE!. Ron Hall enjoyed a romantic vineyard date with the stunning Zara , and admitted he was 'being tested' as he got to know the new girl The financial advisor, who is couple up with Lana Jenkins returned to the villa after meeting Zara and revealed to the boys: 'The head's swivelling... Im lost for words'. Ron was previously smitten with blonde makeup artist Lana before the late comers made a lasting impression and are set to ruffle some feathers. 'You're making it hard for me': Love Island's Ron Hall, 25, enjoyed a romantic vineyard date with bombshell Zara Lackenby-Brown, 25, as he got to know the new girl on Wednesday On the date, Ron mentioned to Zara how he's close to Lana, saying: 'Yep, I'm coupled up with Lana, she's sweet and cute.' But he added: 'You're making it hard for me, I have some thinking to do!' He later told the guys in the villa that Zara is ' just ticking boxes, everything I want to hear'. When Lana met Zara for the first time, she quipped: 'Omg Zara is stunning, really nice, but she's annoying!' 'I have some thinking to do': The financial advisor, who is couple up with Lana Jenkins, 25, returned to the villa after meeting Zara and revealed to the boys: 'The heads swivelling... Im lost for words' Awkward: Ron was previously smitten with blonde makeup artist Lana (pictured) before the late comers made a lasting impression and are set to ruffle some feathers TOMORROW NIGHT... Love Island viewers were unimpressed with Shaq Muhammad and bombshell Zara Lackenby-Brown getting cosy in a preview of Thursday's episode. Zara entered the villa on Wednesday after choosing to go on a date with Ron Hall - but it appears she now has her eye on Shaq. The model was seen having an intimate late night chat with Shaq in the garden in the preview clip, with viewers wasting no time weighing in. Zara told Shaq: 'I want a boyfriend, the big B,' to which he replied: 'You are a stunning girl.' Cosy: Love Island viewers were unimpressed with Shaq Muhammad and bombshell Zara Lackenby-Brown getting cosy in a preview of Thursday's episode Reaction: Taking to Twitter, one wrote: 'Zara and Shaq doesn't sit well with me,' while another added: 'Shaq was in love with Tanya yesterday and is now trying to get with Zara' Taking to Twitter, one wrote: 'Zara and Shaq doesn't sit well with me,' while another added: 'Shaq was in love with Tanya yesterday and is now trying to get with Zara'. A third added: 'A Zara, Shaw Tanya love trianlge and a Lana, Ron, Zara love triangle?' Another was more supportive of the pair, writing: 'Not gonna lie Shaq and Zara might actually work.' Another agreed, saying: 'Zara take Shaq away! Tanya doesn't deserve him.' Love Island continues on Thursday January 19 at 9:00pm, ITV2. Nicole Williams English has welcomed a baby girl - India Moon - with husband Larry English. The model, 35, who announced she was expecting during Miami Swim Week in July, confirmed she had welcomed her firstborn weighing in at 6 lbs. 11oz on January 13, in an interview with People. The star revealed the delivery had been the 'scariest moment' after she was rushed into labor due to developing potentially life-threatening condition, pre-eclampsia. Wow: Nicole Williams English has welcomed a baby girl - India Moon - with husband Larry English She said: 'Our sweet baby girl is here and we are over the moon in love! We went in for our routine fetal monitoring appointment, and it turned out that I was developing preeclampsia. My doctor said, 'we are having this baby like, TODAY.'" 'We drove directly to the hospital, and within a few hours, our baby girl was in our arms. It was the scariest moment but as soon as we both heard her cry it was the happiest moment of our lives. Larry and I can't stop staring at her! Pre-eclampsia is a pregnancy complication that causes high blood pressure, which can be deadly for both a woman and her unborn baby if untreated. It usually begins after 20 weeks of pregnancy in women whose blood pressure is typically normal. The most effective treatment is an early delivery; usually via C-section. Family: The model, 35, who announced she was expecting during Miami Swim Week in July, confirmed she had welcomed her firstborn weighing in at 6 lbs. 11oz on January 13, in an interview with People Nicole added: 'I'm just taking my time now to heal and recover and enjoy being her mom. We are so grateful we were blessed with a healthy baby girl. That's all we ever wanted.' The couple had trouble conceiving naturally, so they turned to In vitro fertilization for help starting their family. For the runway model, who is scared of needles, it was a difficult process. 'It was emotional because theres a lot of unnatural drugs that you have to pump into your body. So Larry gave me needles in my stomach because I couldnt bear it. Im terrified of needles. The first time I was like, "Oh my God, what, what what?" The second time was a little easier.' Because Nicole had always wanted to have a daughter, she chose a female embryo to become their oldest child. 'We went back and forth about it, but I really wanted a girl first,' she explained, 'and Larrys so easy and so supportive. 'Hes like, "Im totally fine being a girl dad." He has little girls around him and has a little sister whos a bit younger than he is. Hes the only boy, so yeah, he was just totally fine with having a girl first.' Love Island returned to screens on Wednesday evening as the two more bombshells entered the South African villa testing the islanders. Ron Hall, 25, enjoyed a romantic vineyard date with the stunning Zara Lackenby-Brown, 25, as he admitted he was 'being tested' as he got to know the new girl The financial advisor, who is couple up with Lana Jenkins, 25, returned to the villa after meeting Zara and revealed to the boys: 'The head's swivelling... Im lost for words'. 'You're making it hard for me': Love Island's Ron Hall, 25, enjoyed a romantic vineyard date with bombshell Zara Lackenby-Brown, 25, as he got to know the new girl on Wednesday Ron was previously smitten with blonde makeup artist Lana before the late comers made a lasting impression and are set to ruffle some feathers. On the date, Ron mentioned to Zara how he's close to Lana, saying: 'Yep, I'm coupled up with Lana, she's sweet and cute.' But he added: 'You're making it hard for me, I have some thinking to do!' 'I have some thinking to do': The financial advisor, who is couple up with Lana Jenkins, 25, returned to the villa after meeting Zara and revealed to the boys: 'The heads swivelling... Im lost for words' Awkward: Ron was previously smitten with blonde makeup artist Lana (pictured) before the late comers made a lasting impression and are set to ruffle some feathers He later told the guys in the villa that Zara is ' just ticking boxes, everything I want to hear'. When Lana met Zara for the first time, she quipped: 'Omg Zara is stunning, really nice, but she's annoying!' It comes after Ron and Lana were being dubbed the 'power couple' on Love Island this week as their chemistry seemed to be really strong. Moving on quick: It comes after Ron and Lana were being dubbed the 'power couple' on Love Island this week as their chemistry seemed to be really strong. During Wednesday's show ahead of Ron meeting Zara, viewers couldn't help but notice how close he and Lana have become in a matter of days. Fans flocked to Twitter, with some saying they're acting like a 'married couple' already and mocking them for acting like they've known each other for years 'Hmmm Lana and Ron r becoming myy fave couple,' one person tweeted. Another added: 'Manifesting Lana and Ron work out.' Katie Piper has revealed the hilarious moment pal Nick Knowles 'didn't recognise her' when they bumped into each other on a recent holiday. The model and activist, 39, appeared on Loose Women on Wednesday alongside DIY SOS star Nick, 60, and discussed the recent run in they had. Katie laughed: 'Shall I tell the story? OK, so we are both on holiday... We didn't realise we were staying in the same resort and there's Nick behind us. Nick has done lots for my charity, I have known him for many years now haven't I? Funny: Katie Piper has revealed the hilarious moment pal Nick Knowles 'didn't recognise her' when they bumped into each other on a recent holiday 'He has been a great friend to us all. So I thought 'I will go and say hi to him' and I wandered over, and when I am on holiday I cover up because my skin is grafted and I had a hat down to here, and sunglasses, with just a bikini...' Katie added: 'And you were on the sun lounger, in your swimwear, with your girlfriend.' Nick nodded: 'Yep.' Katie said: 'I said 'Nick, hiya', and I don't think you recognised me...' Katie laughed: 'Shall I tell the story? OK, so we are both on holiday... We didn't realise we were staying in the same resort and there's Nick behind us.' Pals: The model and activist, 39, appeared on Loose Women on Wednesday alongside DIY SOS star Nick, 60, and discussed the recent run in they had Nick replied: 'Well if somebody is not where I expect them to be, I mean, I could walk past my brother and not know him in the wrong place...' Katie said: 'I said 'hi, it's Katie Piper' and he replied he didn't recognise me, so I said: 'Well we have never seen each other without our clothes on, have we?'' Panelists Christine Lampard, Coleen Nolan and Dame Kelly Holmes burst out laughing along with the studio audience. Nick, who split from his wife Jessica Rose Moor in 2016, was on holiday with girlfriend Katie Dadzie, 32, who he went public with in September 2021. Katie was there with her husband Richard Sutton and their daughters Belle, seven, and Penelope, three. Hilarious: Panelists Christine Lampard, Coleen Nolan and Dame Kelly Holmes burst out laughing at Katie's story On October 11 it was confirmed that police had launched an international manhunt for her acid attacker and warned people not to approach the criminal. Stefan Sylvestre, from Shepherd's Bush, west London, has been recalled to prison but Scotland Yard revealed that he left the country in August. Sylvestre was given a life sentence in 2009 for the attack which left Katie, then 24, with horrific injuries. He was jailed for life with a minimum of six years and became eligible for parole in 2015. At the time he was deemed unfit for release but a further application in 2018 was successful and he was freed aged 30, but ordered to stay away from Katie. Katie said: 'I said 'hi, it's Katie Piper' and he replied he didn't recognise me, so I said: 'Well we have never seen each other without our clothes on, have we?'' In 2019 he was recalled to prison over a string of car thefts but got parole again in 2020 and was released after prosecution errors came to light. Sylvestre has now been recalled to prison once again and warned that he faces more time behind bars after going missing. But now the Met Police has revealed that the criminal left the country on Tuesday, August 2. Officers from the Met Specialist Crime Command are leading an investigation into his whereabouts, alongside partner agencies thought to include the National Crime Agency, the Mirror reports. Scotland Yard issued an appeal for information to find Sylvestre. Family: Katie was there with her husband Richard Sutton and their daughters Belle, seven, and Penelope, three The statement said: 'Officers are appealing for information to find a man wanted for recall to prison. 'Police were notified on Friday, 23 September, that Stefan Sylvestre, 34, had been recalled to prison. His last known address was in north London. 'Enquiries undertaken so far indicate that Sylvestre left the UK on Tuesday, 2 August. Officers from the Met's Specialist Crime Command continue to work with partner agencies to locate and arrest him. Sylvestre should not be approached. 'Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call police on 999 quoting CAD6239/23Sep. 'To give information anonymously contact the independent charity Crimestopperson 0800 555 111.' Katie was left fighting for her life after her obsessive ex-boyfriend Daniel Lynch arranged for then 19-year-old Sylvestre to throw sulphuric acid at her in Golders Green, north London in 2008. Daniel Lynch was jailed for life with a minimum of 16 years for sexually assaulting Katie and telling Sylvestre to throw acid over her in 2008. He cannot be considered for release until 2025. Russia once again has access to Intel and Microsoft updates, as well as Belarus. Operations were previously halted due to the country's invasion of Ukraine which resulted in sanctions that were imposed on Russia. Russia Regains Access to Intel Updates The news came from Russian media, saying that Intel has continued with its business allowing users in Russia and Belarus to install software updates and other downloads. Reports say that operations were suspended around April of 2022, with shipments suspended two months prior. A spokesperson from Intel continues to claim that it had no recent changes in its operations. Given that they restored access in the latter part of 2022, their statement stands since technically, the changes weren't recent, as mentioned in Tech Radar. They also clarified that they continue to comply with applicable export regulations and sanctions imposed upon the country. However, this clashes with their responsibility like the company's warranty obligations, like the Intel Download Center and Intel Download Support Assistant. Russian media has reported that Russian users are already able to access the Intel download portal without spoofing their IP address by January 11th of this year. Although, they have to do so through Yandex or Google, since the main Intel site is still inaccessible. Driver updates are only available through the automatic download tool, according to Tom's Hardware. Despite its availability, Intel does not allow direct downloads for the drivers without registering and making a profile on Intel's website, which a Russian IP address can't access. Microsoft Partially Resumes Operations This was also the case for Microsoft, as they have allowed updates for Windows 11. Downloading the software, however, is a different story. Customers are still not able to download the latest software. Previous software and operating system downloads were achieved by the Russians through VPN, torrents, and other sources, explaining how some users in the country had access to the Windows 11 software in the first place despite the sanctions. A Microsoft spokesperson also denied continuing the sales of products and services, claiming that they were complying with the US sanctions, This does not, however, provide answers regarding Microsoft's obligations for a Windows update. Read Also: Cybersecurity Hackers Defending Ukraine After Conti Ransomware Gang Sides With Russia Others Continue to Follow Sanctions Intel and Microsoft may only be continuing some of their operations due to the company's policies and obligations. Other remain adamant and stay out of Russia. Several car and tech companies still refuse to provide products and services to the country. For instance, Toyota stopped making cars in Russia until further notice, claiming that there were disruptions in the supply chain. Volkswagen also suspended exports to the Russian market, including operations in Russian production sites, according to CNN. Amazon's cloud division and Amazon Web Services restricted Russian users from creating new accounts, saying that they had clear terms of service where violence, terrorism, and serious harm are not tolerated. Any customer who participates in that type of behavior will be suspended. This also goes for big tech companies like Apple, and online sites and streaming services. That includes Meta, Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and Roku. As for finances, Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Western Union, PayPal, and Goldman Sachs are still not operational. 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Tuvalu US Virgin Islands Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe A judge has ordered terminated Twitter employees to withdraw their class action lawsuit against the company, which accuses Twitter of failing to provide the promised severance pay. US District Judge James Donato ruled on Friday that in light of the employment agreement the employees signed with Twitter, they must present their claims in private arbitration. The Judge Says The Ex-Staff's Contracts Contained A Class Action Waiver The court found that Twitter's contract "expressly" says that arbitration is not required and that there is a provision for employees to choose not to participate in the process. The judge claims that workers did not choose to forego arbitration, which would have given them the opportunity to resolve their dispute in court. The ruling points out that a class action waiver was also included in Twitter's contract, according to The Verge. The judge also ruled that the agreements, which Twitter gave signed copies of, are all simple and understandable. The judge will determine later what to do with the three additional workers who joined the lawsuit in December, even though five of the employees have been directed to arbitration on an individual basis. It can be remembered that the ex-Twitter employees initially filed the class action lawsuit in November, claiming that Twitter failed to give them adequate notice before firing them. They were discovered to have broken the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which mandates that companies give 60 days' notice before mass layoffs. Later, they added charges that Twitter violated their contract by failing to pay them the severance compensation they are due. Read More: Twitter Employees in Singapore Escorted out Due to Unpaid Rent The Former Employees Are Part Of The Mass Layoffs Under Elon Musk As part of Elon Musk's cost-cutting strategy, Twitter let go about 3,700 workers in the first few days of November, and hundreds more later tendered their resignations. Additionally, the social network was charged in December of last year with a number of legal offenses related to Musk's purchase of the company, according to dozens of former employees. Moreover, former employees claim that the company has targeted women in particular for layoffs and has failed to provide the promised severance, Wio News reports. Furthermore, Twitter is dealing with at least three labor board complaints alleging that employees were fired for speaking out against the business, seeking to organize a strike, and other actions covered by federal labor law. When he originally took control of the company, Twitter CEO Musk initially committed to a three-month notice period. However, many workers impacted by Musk's mass layoffs claim they only received one month's salary in addition to the two months of non-working pay they were also entitled to under the WARN Act. According to the lawsuit, employees ought to be paid for at least two months' worth of labor as well as time off, according to The Verge. The lawyer for the Twitter employees, Shannon Liss-Riordan, commented on the decision in a tweet. "We anticipated this and that's why we have already filed 500 individual arbitration demands - and counting," Liss-Riordan states. Twitter still needs to respond to accusations in court on top of the arbitration battles, so this is not a victory for Musk, the lawyer adds. Related Article: Twitter's Third-Party Apps Appear To Be Broken, Facing Issues, Users Say Telangana attracted major investments on Tuesday in the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos. (AP) Hyderabad: Telangana attracted major investments on Tuesday in the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos. American multinational food company PepsiCo stated that it was planning to expand big in Hyderabad. The Global Business Services Center of PepsiCo which started with 250 people in 2019 has become 2,800 strong and plans to grow to 4,000 within the next one and half years. Roberto Azevedo, EVP, corporate affairs, PepsiCo, met industries minister K.T. Rama Rao at the Telangana Pavilion on the sidelines of WEF and discussed about the companys plans in the state. The minister assured that the state government would extend all possible cooperation for all future investments of the company. Allox Advance Materials Pvt Ltd signed an MoU with the state government for setting up of a C- LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) active battery material production unit in Telangana. The state-of-the-art facility involves an investment of 210 crore with an initial capacity of 3GWH/PA to be expanded to a capacity of 10GWH with a total investment outlay of 750 crore by 2030. The proposed facility will create employment for 600 highly skilled and semi-skilled professionals. Rama Rao said the government was actively working on promoting adoption of EVs and towards developing a comprehensive manufacturing ecosystem. He said the state was emerging as the most preferred destination for EV and advanced chemistry cell manufacturing. Apollo Tyres Ltd, in partnership with the state government, announced the launch of a Digital Innovation Centre in Hyderabad. An MoU in this regard was signed by IT principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan and Neeraj Kanwar, vice-chairman and MD, Apollo Tyres Ltd. Apollo Tyres has its first Digital Innovation Centre in London. Rama Rao, said Telangana has a vibrant innovation ecosystem, with world-class organisations such as T-Hub, We Hub and T-Works enabling innovative ideas. Therefore, Telangana and Hyderabad are the perfect choice for Apollo Tyres Digital Innovation Centre. According to a few principals, they still have a lot of time to finish the portion, even as final exams begin in March. DC Image HYDERABAD: Highlighting the tough times they are facing ahead of the intermediate exams, first and second-year students of government junior colleges have said that only 70 per cent syllabus has been taught so far and not 90 per cent as claimed by their teachers. Less than two months are left for intermediate final exams while only one month is left for practical examination. According to students, the lecturers are rushing with the portion, explaining only the basics, and giving the rest of the chapters as homework, especially when it comes to Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. We are asked to practice over 120 Math problems as revision in one day. They are only bothered about the written material we submit. When we fail to solve the problems in one day, we are held back in colleges and made to copy-paste answers from others, said a bunch of second-year students requesting anonymity. Students said as the teachers rushed through most of the chapters, they have not understood properly all that has been taught. A few students said that when they approached the principal regarding this, they were threatened. Our ID cards are taken away and we are threatened with rustication if the lecturers know that we have complained against them, said girl students of a government junior college. Highlighting other issues, students said that due to a shortage of teachers, at times a few classes are clubbed. Echoing the problems raised by the students Dr P. Madhusudhan Reddy, president of the Government Junior Lecturers Association said that the syllabus was supposed to be completed by December 2022 and it is still pending. He said that the practical exams should be postponed to April. There is a huge shortage of lecturers due to which 50 per cent of the junior colleges are functioning in two shifts. Thus students do not get the time they need. There is a requirement of 6,000 government junior lecturers in Telangana. However, we have only 1,000 lecturers on a regular basis and 300 are on contract. There are over 2,000 vacancies out of which permission has been granted for 1,654 guest faculties in September 2022. However, 1,800 teachers are still required, he added. The Border Security Force (BSF) has seized four Chinese-made pistols among a consignment of weapons dropped by a Pakistani drone in Punjab's Gurdaspur district (ANI) New Delhi: The Border Security Force (BSF) has seized four Chinese-made pistols among a consignment of weapons dropped by a Pakistani drone in Punjab's Gurdaspur district, the force said on Wednesday. The consignment which includes 4 Chinese-made pistols, eight magazines and 47 live rounds was recovered from Uncha Takala village in Gurdaspur on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday. "On the intervening foggy night of 17th/18th Jan 2023, a BSF party deployed on the outskirts of Uncha Takala village in Gurdaspur heard the humming sound of a suspected drone coming from Pakistan side. In prompt action, the BSF party fired towards the direction of the sound of the suspected drone. During firing, the party also heard the sound of something dropped in the nearby area," the BSF said in a statement. Further, during an initial search of the area, the BSF said, a packet with a wooden base frame was found lying in the farming field on the outskirts of Uncha Takala village. "On opening, this packet, 4 Pistols (made in China), 8 Magazines and 47 Rounds were recovered." The BSF, which is mandated to guard the 3,323 km India-Pakistan border, said a detailed search of the area is in progress. "Vigilant BSF troops once again were able to foil nefarious design of smugglers to smuggle contrabands through drone," added the BSF. The primary healthcare system in rural Telangana is in dire straits as the shortfall in primary health centres (PHCs) increased to 19 per cent in 2021-22 DC File Image Hyderabad: The primary healthcare system in rural Telangana is in dire straits as the shortfall in primary health centres (PHCs) increased to 19 per cent in 2021-22, from 12 per cent in 2020-21, as per the Rural Health Statistics 2021-22 report released last week by the Union health ministry. Against the backdrop of a pregnant woman and her newborn both dying due to being made to visit five hospitals for child delivery in Nagarkurnool district, the increased shortfall in PHCs, specialist doctors, and medical staff, among other aspects, is concerning. As per the Centres report, there is an 84 per cent shortfall of community health centres (CHCs) and a 3 per cent shortfall of subcentres in rural areas, as of July 1, 2022. While the national average shortfalls were 31 per cent for PHCs, 36 per cent for CHCs and 25 per cent for subcentres, the situation in Telangana worsened from 2020-21, when there were 12 per cent and 53 per cent shortfalls in PHCs and CHCs, respectively. As of March 31, 2022, 714 PHCs in the state had a 13 per cent shortfall of lab technicians and an 8.5 per cent shortfall of pharmacists. According to the report, CHCs have a 12.5 per cent shortfall of specialist doctors, with the situation exacerbated when concerning anaesthetists (57 per cent shortfall) and paediatricians (21 per cent shortfall). Also, against a requirement for 28 eye surgeons, there are none across Telanganas CHCs. Telangana has a significant tribal area, which needs health centres as they are usually in remote locations. In such critical areas of the state, there is a 30 per cent shortfall of PHCs, a 76.5 per cent shortfall of CHCs and a 32 per cent shortfall of subcentres. As per the report, one positive aspect of the states health centres is that all PHCs in rural Telangana have labour rooms, an operation theatre, at least four beds, a telephone and a computer. Infographic: Shortfall of health centres in rural areas in TS: PHCs 19% CHCs 84% SCs 3% Shortfall of specialists at CHCs: Total specialists 12.5% Anaesthetists 57% Paediatricians 21% Shortfall in tribal areas: PHCs 30% CHCs 76.5% Subcentres 32% Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses at the inauguration of the second phase of Saansad Khel Mahakumbh 2022-23, in Basti, Uttar Pradesh, via video conferencing, from New Delhi. (PTI Photo) BENGALURU: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in poll-bound Karnatakas northern districts of Yadgiri and Kalaburagi on Thursday to lay foundation stone and inaugurate projects worth more than Rs 10,800 crore. He will also inaugurate and lay foundation stones for a string of projects worth more than Rs 38,000 crore aimed at developing infrastructure, easing urban travel, and strengthening healthcare during his visit to Mumbai on Thursday. This will be the second visit by the Prime Minister to Karnataka in January. He was in Hubballi on January 12 to inaugurate the National Youth Festival, during which he had held a massive roadshow. According to an official release, around 12 noon, in Kodekal, Yadgiri district, the PM will lay the foundation stone and inaugurate developmental projects related to irrigation, and drinking water besid-es a National Highway development project. Later, around 2.15 pm, Modi will reach Malkhed, Kalaburagi district, where he will distribute title deeds (hakku patra) to the eligible beneficiaries of newly-declared revenue villages and also lay the foundation stone for a National Highway project. The PM will dedicate to the nation the Mumbai Metro Rail Lines 2A and 7, worth around Rs 12,600 crore. He will also lay the foundation stones for seven sewage treatment plants, a road concretisation project, and redevelopment of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus at a function to be held on the MMRDA grounds in the Bandra Kurla Complex. The visit also gains significance, as the ruling BJP prepares for assembly polls in Karnataka and has set a target of winning a minimum of 150 out of total 224 seats which will go for polls by May. Sharing details about the PM's visit, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said: Narayanpur Left Bank Canal modernisation project that Modi will be inaugurating tomorrow is one of its kind in Asia, which is funded by both Centre and state government. It is a milestone in our irrigation. PM dedicating it will inspire us to take up more such projects. Notably, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has set its eyes on the cash-rich Mumbai civic body to dislodge the rival Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) faction from power in the civic elections, the schedule for which is yet to be announced. The 18.6 km-long Mumbai Metro Rail line 2A connects suburban Dahisar (East) with the 16.5 km-long DN Nagar (yellow line) while the metro line 7 joints Andheri (East) with Dahisar (East). Interestingly, the foundation stones of these lines were laid by PM Modi in 2015. He will also launch MUMBAI 1 Mobile App and National Common Mobility Card (Mumbai 1). The app will facilitate ease of travel which can be shown at the entry gates of Metro stations. It supports digital payment to buy tickets through UPI. The Card will initially be used in metro corridors and can be extended to other modes of mass public transit including local trains and buses as well, the release said. Commuters will not need to carry multiple cards or cash, it said, adding the NCMC card will enable quick, contact-less digital transactions, easing the process with a seamless experience. The seven sewage treatment plants for which PM Modi will lay the foundation stone will be built at a cost of around Rs 17,200 crore. These plants will be set up in suburban Malad, Bhandup, Versova, Ghatkopar, Bandra, Dharavi and Worli. They will have a combined capacity of around 2,460 MLD. China, Africa working with each other along path of win-win cooperation, common development 13:49, January 18, 2023 By He Yin ( People's Daily The first phase of the China-aided Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) headquarters project was recently completed, becoming a new landmark symbolizing the friendship and solidarity between China and Africa. The Africa CDC headquarters was a flagship project of China-Africa cooperation announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2018. The timely delivery of the reliable building mirrors the high standard and level of China-Africa cooperation and explains the demeanor of China, a country that always values its promises. This year is the 10th year since Xi put forth, in 2013, the principles of sincerity, real results, amity and good faith, and of pursuing the greater good and shared interests for China's relations with Africa. Photo shows the China-aided headquarters building of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Photo provided by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation) Over the past decade, with the joint guidance and commitment of Chinese and African leaders, China-Africa relations have made historic achievements that impressed the whole world, and entered a new era of building a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future. The two sides always follow the spirit of sincere friendship and equality, win-win for mutual benefit and common development, fairness and justice, and progress with the times and openness and inclusiveness. China and African countries have always been good friends who stand together through prosperity and adversity, good partners who share weal and woe, and good comrades who fully trust each other in a shifting international landscape. China and Africa offer mutual assistance on their way to achieve economic progress and national rejuvenation, and are constantly expanding the areas of cooperation. China-Africa cooperation has progressed with the times and deepened its connotation, from the 10 major cooperation plans adopted at the 2015 FOCAC Johannesburg Summit to the eight major initiatives proposed at the 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit, and to the nine programs for cooperation announced at the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the FOCAC. China has maintained the largest trading partner of Africa for the past 13 years. The two sides' bilateral trade in 2022 is expected to exceed $260 billion. Fifty-two African countries and the African Union (AU) Commission have signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with China. Landmark projects like the AU Conference Center, the Africa CDC headquarters, the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), and the Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway keep emerging. These cooperation outcomes are tangible and play an important role in promoting the economic and social development of Africa and improving people's livelihoods on the continent. They fully demonstrate the vision of China-Africa relations and the defining feature of China-Africa friendship. Photo shows a China-aided photovoltaic power station built by Tianjin Electric Power Construction Company under China Energy Engineering Group in Central African Republic. (Photo provided by Tianjin Electric Power Construction Company) China is the largest developing country in the world, and Africa is the continent with the largest number of developing countries. As changes of the world, of the times, and of history are unfolding today in ways like never before, the importance of strengthening China-Africa solidarity and cooperation is self-evident. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Ethiopia's cooperation with China in such areas as infrastructure, green economy, agriculture, and industrial park construction has been exemplary and produced remarkable results, helping Ethiopia rank among the fastest-growing economies in Africa. Angolan President Joao Lourenco said that the airports, hydropower stations, roads, ports, and many other landmark projects built with China's support have progressed smoothly in Angola and played an indispensable role in the country's post-war reconstruction and socio-economic development. China is the first country to support the AU in joining the G20. It supports boosting the representation and voice of African countries in the UN Security Council and other international organizations. This helps safeguard the common interests of developing countries and will make the global governance system more just and equitable. Chairperson of the AU Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat noted that Africa values China's strong support for African integration, connectivity, and the development of a free trade area, and looks forward to working with China to jointly advance the building of a China-Africa community with a shared future in the new era. For some time, a few countries have intentionally provoked bloc confrontation in Africa, forcing African countries to take sides, which is against the will of African countries and the trend of the times. Chinese and Ugandan engineers discuss construction plans at the construction site of the Karuma Hydro Power Plant in Uganda, which is built by Power Construction Corporation of China. (Photo provided by Power Construction Corporation of China) Africa should be a stage for international cooperation, not an arena for major-force rivalry. Only the countries that sincerely help Africa achieve peace and development and strive for bigger representation and stronger voice of the continent in global governance can receive the support from African countries. South Africa's think tank, Institute for Global Dialogue, said in a recent report that a few countries have never adopted practical measures to help Africa cope with development challenges, and they only want to make African countries a tool that contains the influence of other countries. Compared with such hegemonic diplomacy, China's diplomacy, which never interferes in other countries' domestic affairs and always pursues win-win cooperation, is welcomed by African countries. China has always prioritized Africa in its diplomacy, and inheriting and carrying forward the China-Africa friendship has become a glorious tradition and defining feature of China's diplomacy. Upholding the principles of sincerity, real results, amity and good faith, and of pursuing the greater good and shared interests, China and African countries will stay committed to strengthening unity and cooperation and working with each other along the path of win-win cooperation and common development. The two sides will join hands to build a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future. (Web editor: Chang Sha, Liang Jun) Activision Blizzard and NetEase will call it quits soon. The video game developer recently revealed that its licensing agreement with the Chinese online PC and mobile game developer and publisher would soon end after the latter turned down its extension offer. Activision Blizzard previously established its licensing agreement with NetEase on April 16, 2009, paving the way for Activision Blizzard to release its games in mainland China through NetEase, per the Chinese company's statement in 2009. Activision Blizzard - NetEase Licensing Partnership End Details Blizzard mentioned in a statement that NetEase had turned down a proposal to extend their 14-year partnership for six months, though it did not reveal the terms of this extension, per Reuters. Although Blizzard didn't disclose what made NetEase decline its offer, a Guancha report citing an Observer.com article said that Blizzard proposed "sky-high prices" for the extension, with the Chinese company describing some of the deal's terms as "disgusting." Previously, Blizzard and NetEase shared all profits in an even 50-50 split. However, Blizzard changed this in the extension deal's terms, with the company receiving more of the profits than previously agreed on. The company will allegedly adopt a global synchronization strategy for its game pricing when it previously charged 20% lower for its national servers in China than in other regions of the world. Blizzard also asked NetEase to follow the Diablo Immortal model to develop its other IP mobile games for global distribution, but NetEase could only enjoy the revenue share of the Chinese market. Read More: Apple's Micro-LED Upgrade Might Still Be a Decade Away for Some Products Furthermore, Blizzard also required NetEase to pay a deposit or prepayment to guarantee the completion of "Article 2" unless it wants to be "punished." A person familiar with the proceedings and spoke on the condition of anonymity stated that had NetEase agreed to the extension deal, it would have meant that the company would work for nothing. Netease mentioned in a public statement that it tried to reach an amicable agreement with Blizzard to extend its licensing partnership. However, negotiations broke down between the two companies on some key terms of cooperation. Chinese gamers did not take the news well. According to Bloomberg's report, the Chinese gaming community has been largely critical of Blizzard, with others going to Weibo to call the extension a means to "bridge the gap" while it negotiates a better deal with a competitor. What Happens To Activision Blizzard's Presence In China? NetEase's rejection of Activision Blizzard's terms has negative consequences for both Activision Blizzard and the Chinese gaming community. NetEase mentioned that it would be discontinuing Activision Blizzard's game service in China on Jan. 23. This discontinuation means that Chinese players will be unable to play games from Activision Blizzard starting on Jan. 23 until Activision Blizzard can find another publisher to release its games in China. These Activision Blizzard games include Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch. Meanwhile, Chinese players of World of Warcraft will have the option to store their progress through a new service Blizzard will be providing to keep their account safe in the interim. Related Article: Microsoft Responds To FTC's Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Huzurabad MLA Etala Rajendar with BJP president J.P. Nadda at the BJP national executive meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Photo: DC) Hyderabad: Huzurabad BJP legislator Etala Rajendar has said that there was an urgent need to change the way elections were being fought in Telangana where money power was driving politics. Rajendar was speaking at the BJPs national executive meeting in New Delhi after introducing the partys political resolution. He said the conditions in Telangana had been brought to such a stage that money had become the key component of elections and this menace has reached such proportions that some political leaders are scared to contest polls as they could not match the spending by some others. Some Chief Ministers were claiming that they are spending money for the people and claiming individual credit for doing so. The reality is whether it is the Centre or the states, it is the government that spends money for the people. Unlike some Chief Ministers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not make such claims. The practice of some claiming credit for spending public money as if it is their own must change, he said. People were being misled through distribution of money before polling, Rajendar said. In Telangana, even after elections were announced, the state government had introduced Dalit Bandhu scheme. The government was holding the people to ransom for votes, threatening them that funds for development in their areas will be held back if they did not vote for the ruling party, Rajendar said. Telangana BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar accused Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao of getting a non-bailable case filed against his son Bhagirath to attempt to silence him.DC File Image Hyderabad: Telangana BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar accused Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao of getting a non-bailable case filed against his son Bhagirath to attempt to silence him. The incident happened some time ago. Why was it leaked today? Is it because I questioned the Chief Ministers son for calling Yadadri temple development a business-like investment that is bringing returns every day. Or is it to divert attention from the opposition to the states decision on giving undue honours to the descendant of the Nizams for whose funeral the state is going overboard, Sanjay said. The police had booked Bhagirath over a video in which he is seen assaulting a classmate. However, Sanjay was unmoved. What will you do then? Use third degree on my son? Sanjay said, adding his son will surrender to the police. The BJP leader said that youngsters, sometimes, fight and get back to being friends. He claimed that the alleged victim also put out a video accepting that he had made a mistake and that there was no need to make an issue of the fight. The case was filed after the university, where my son is a student, came under pressure from the government to lodge a complaint. And why did the college not bring the incident to the notice of the parents, and why the college authorities did not counsel the students? Sanjay asked. If the Chief Minister wants, he can play politics with me. Leave the children out of it. When his grandson was caught in a controversy and people were making adverse comments on the boy, I intervened and declared that children must be left out of politics, Sanjay said. Sanjays comments came after the Dundigal police registered a case against Bhagirath on charges of assaulting his classmate over a petty issue. The police said that the incident took place in the university hostel in December 2022 and came to their notice after the video went viral on Tuesday, prompting the college to file a police complaint. Dundigal police inspector P. Ramana Reddy said a case was registered. We have started an investigation into the incident, he said. In the video, Bhagirath and his friends are seen beating a classmate, raining fist blows and abusing him in vulgar language. The police said that they will summon the students and hostel staff for questioning once the university reopens after vacations. Later in the day, another video was circulated in which a person identifying himself as Sriram claimed that he has harassed Bhagirath's friend's sister and sent her messages at nights and troubled her. "After knowing this, Bhagirath called me, but as I was rude, he beat him. It is a past. We are all friends and together now. We have forgotten the incident," Sriram is heard saying in the video. Terming the Bhagirath video as useless, he asked, Why is the video being circulated? It will only create differences between us, when we have forgotten the issue and are in good terms. It is of no use, he is heard saying. Senior central party leaders including general secretaries looking after Telangana BJP affairs likely to attend meet. (Representational image: ANI) Hyderabad: Close on the heels of the two-day BJP national executive meeting in New Delhi that concluded on Tuesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party will have its state executive meeting on January 24 in Mahbubnagar. Union minister G. Kishan Reddy said on Wednesday that the meet could see senior central party leaders including general secretaries looking after Telangana BJP affairs, Sunil Bansal and Tarun Chugh, could be among those who could attend the meeting. It may be recalled that the BJP has planned a slew of activities starting in the last week of this month including holding 10,000 small meetings in villages, and work on setting up polling booth level committees among other things. The meet is also expected to discuss the next phase of state BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumars Praja Sangrama Yatra. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao with Chief Ministers Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi), Bhagwant Mann (Punjab), P Viajayan (Kerala), Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav, at the BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) party's rally, in Khammam, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. (PTI Photo) Hyderabad: As the opposition parties, including Chief Ministers of non-BJP ruled states, have joined forces to unseat the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre in the 2024 elections, lakhs of people converged from several districts in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha to attend the BRS first public meeting. The massive public meeting has lifted the morale of BRS leaders and cadre, especially in Khammam district where the party fared badly in the Assembly elections of 2014 and 2018 despite coming to power with a decent majority. The venue was surprisingly filled with Hindi political songs rather than Telugu tunes as some of the party workers cheered along to "Ek do theen chaar, desh ke neta KCR." The party workers, who are otherwise familiar with Jai Telangana and Jai jai KCR were heard raising slogans in Hindi with catch phrases such as "Bhajapa ko hatayenge, Bharat ko Bachayenge." After the meeting, murmurs circulated in political circles that KCR had been successful in uniting non-BJP and non-Congress parties on a single platform in an effort to topple the BJP-led government at the Centre in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The meeting succeeded in projecting KCR as a national leader as he was seen sharing the dais with CMs of three states, former UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, CPI national leader D. Raja, among others. The BRS show of strength in national politics with a massive rally in Khammam made people feel confident that BRS and KCR would make it big in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. People wished that like KCR achieved statehood for Telangana with TRS, he should become the PM with the BRS to put the country on the path of progress with his 'Telangana model' of welfare schemes and development programmes. Chief Minister along with other political party leaders of the nation Delhi Chief Minister Aravind Kejrival, CM of Punjab Bhagawant Maan Singh, President of Samajwadi party Akhilesh Yadav and others at the BRS public meeting in Khammam Wednesday. (Photo: By arrangement) Hyderabad: The Chief Ministers of Delhi, Punjab, and Kerala who attended the inauguration of the Kanti Velugu and Integrated District Collectorate Complex in Khammam on Wednesday heaped praise on Chief Minister K.Chandrashekar Rao for implementing welfare and development schemes in Telangana. Addressing the BRS public meeting later in the day, the Chief Ministers of Delhi, Punjab, and KeralaArvind Kejriwal, Bhagwant Mann, and Pinarayi Vijayanannounced that they will replicate the schemes being implemented in Telangana in their states. Rao has consistently emphasised that the welfare programmes being implemented in the state ought to be implemented in the entire country. The KCR government's initiatives impressed the CMs of the three non-BJP ruled states. They stated they gained a lot from KCR and their visit to Telangana, and that the development and welfare programmes of the Telangana government were an indication of KCR's effective governance. Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar with Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey during a press conference for the announcement of schedule of general elections to the Legislative assemblies of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo/Shahbaz Khan) New Delhi: The three north-eastern states Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland will vote in February, setting the stage for a mega-fight as nine states go to the polls this year. Announcing the dates, Chief Election Com-missioner Rajiv Kumar said voting in Tripura will take place on February 16, while Nagaland and Meghalaya will vote on February 27. The counting of votes is scheduled for March 2. The model code of conduct is in place in these states after the announcement. Kumar said the Election Commission of India (ECI) has decided to wrap the polls in a single phase in February, taking into acc-ount CBSE Class 10th and 12th examinations scheduled in March. The three states have a strength of 60 members each. While the term of the Nagaland Assembly ends on March 12, the terms of the Meghalaya and Tripura Houses end on March 15 and March 22, respectively. The polls in nine states are seen as semi-finals before the Lok Sabha elections next year, where the BJP is hoping for a hat-trick. But before that, the party is facing challenges in various states where it is in power on its own or with allies. The Congress, which has long dominated the Northeast political arena, and the CPI(M), which remained unrivalled for years under Manik Sarkar, who served as Chief Minister from 1998 to 2018, are both attempting to reclaim lost territory. In Tripura, where the BJP is facing a united Opposition, the party is making efforts to retain power. During its five-year tenure, the BJP faced disquiet and infighting as important party leaders, like six-time MLA Sudip Roy Barman, quit the BJP to return to the Congress fold. As a result, the BJP had to replace chief minister Biplab Deb with Manik Saha, just nine months before the state election. The BJP currently has 33 seats in Tripura, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura has four, the CPI(M) has 15, and the Congress has one. Seven seats are vacant. The BJP and the IPFT are in alliance here. The Congress and the CPI(M) have joined hands to dethrone the BJP and recapture the state. Interestingly, the Congress was the main Opposition for the CPM when it ruled Tripura for 25 years. The Trinamul Congress (TMC) is also working hard to make an impact outside West Bengal. However, the TMC and Tripura Motha are yet to announce alliances with other parties. In Meghalaya, despite having the most seats (21), the Congress was unable to form a government because its tally fell short of the halfway mark in the 60-member Assembly.The National Peoples Party (NPP) led by Conrad Sangma is in power with the backing of the BJP and others. The NPP has 20 seats, the United Democratic Party (UDP) has eight, the Peoples Democratic Front (PDF) has two, the BJP has two and two are Independents. The TMC has nine seats in Meghalaya, while 18 seats are vacant. No pre-election alliance has been announced by any of the political parties so far. In Nagaland, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), with 41 seats, is in power. The BJP has 12, the NPF has four and there are two independents. One seat is vacant. The NDPP-BJP have declared a pre-poll alliance in Nagaland. "The BJP is always election ready and we are ready for the Assembly election. We have already carried out several outreach programmes, including the Jan Vishwas Yatra. Since election schedules have been declared, the campaign will be intensified for a landslide victory," Tripura BJP general secretary Papia Datta said. She added that the BJP-IPFT alliance will continue. "Our central leaders will be here to take decisions on any new partner," she said. Senior CPI(M) leader Pabitra Kar said, "From our side, we are ready for the Assembly election in alliance with the Congress. I appeal to the EC to ensure a violence-free poll." He added that a Congress rally was attacked near Khumulwng in West Tripura district on Wednesday, the day the election dates were announced by the EC in New Delhi. "I am happy that the youths have come out to join the bike rally taken out by our party in Agartala, despite threats and intimidation from the saffron brigade. I am confident the people will throw out the BJP in the coming election," said Congress leader in Tripura, Sudip Roy Barman. TMC state president Pijush Kanti Biswas said the party is ready to contest the election with "full force" and talks are on for tie-ups with "suitable parties", though no concrete decision has been made as yet. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley meets with U.S. Army leaders responsible for the collective training of Ukrainians at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Grafenwoehr, Germany. (Staff Sgt. Jordan Sivayavirojna/U.S. Army via AP) A Military Base In Southeastern Poland: The top U.S. military officer, Army Gen. Mark Milley, traveled to a site near the Ukraine-Poland border on Tuesday and talked with his Ukrainian counterpart face to face for the first time a meeting underscoring the growing ties between the two militaries and coming at a critical time as Russia's war with Ukraine nears the one-year mark. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met for a couple of hours with Ukraine's chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland. The two leaders have talked frequently about Ukraine's military needs and the state of the war over the past year but had never met. The meeting comes as the international community ramps up the military assistance to Ukraine, including expanded training of Ukrainian troops by the U.S. and the provision of a Patriot missile battery, tanks and increased air defense and other weapons systems by the U.S. and a coalition of European and other nations. It also marks a key time in the war. Ukraine's troops face fierce fighting in the eastern Donetsk province, where Russian forces supplemented by thousands of private Wagner Group contractors seek to turn the tide after a series of battlefield setbacks in recent months. Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, told two reporters traveling with the chairman that the two generals felt it was important to meet in person. The reporters did not accompany Milley to the meeting and, under conditions set by the military, agreed to not identify the military base in southeastern Poland where they were located. These guys have been talking on a very regular basis for about a year now, and they've gotten to know each other, Butler said. They've talked in detail about the defense that Ukraine is trying to do against Russia's aggression. And it's important when you have two military professionals looking each other in the eye and talking about very, very important topics, there's a difference. Butler said there had been some hope that Zaluzhnyi would travel to Brussels for a meeting of NATO and other defense chiefs this week, but when it became clear on Monday that it would not happen, they quickly decided to meet in Poland, near the border. While a number of U.S. civilian leader s have gone into Ukraine, the Biden administration has made it clear that no uniformed military service members will go into Ukraine other than those connected to the embassy in Kyiv. Butler said only a small group Milley and six of his senior staffers traveled by car to the meeting. He said that the meeting will allow Milley to relay Zaluzhnyi's concerns and information to the other military leaders during the NATO chiefs' meeting. Milley, he said, will be able to describe the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that, and the way he does that is one by understanding it himself but by also talking to Zaluzhnyi on a regular basis. Milley also will be able to describe the new training of Ukrainian forces that the U.S. is doing at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. The chairman, who got his first look at the new, so-called combined arms instruction during a nearly two-hour visit there on Monday, has said it will better prepare Ukrainian troops to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks. More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the expanded training program at the camp just a day before Milley arrived. Milley and Zaluzhnyi's meeting kicks off a series of high-level gatherings of military and defense leaders this week. Milley and other chiefs of defense will meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, and then the so-called Ukraine Contact Group will gather at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. That group consists of about 50 top defense officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and they work to coordinate military contributions to Ukraine. The meetings are expected to focus on Ukraine's ongoing and future military needs as the hard-packed terrain of the winter months turns into muddy roads and fields in the spring. After several months of losing territory it had captured, Russia in recent days claimed it took control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting, but if Moscow's troops take control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months. And in a barrage of airstrikes over the weekend, Russia struck Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the death toll in one apartment building rose to 44. Western analysts point to signs that the Kremlin is digging in for a drawn-out war, and say the Russian military command is preparing for an expanded mobilization effort. Nepalese rescue workers inspect wreckage at the site of a plane crash in Pokhara, Nepal (AP Photo/Krishna Mani Baral) Kathmandu: The search for the last missing person in the Nepal plane crash resumed on Wednesday after rescuers on Tuesday pulled out one more body from the crash site where a Yeti Airlines aircraft carrying 72 people, including five Indians, had plunged in a river gorge in the resort city of Pokhara. Two days after the fatal crash, a woman's body was found deep down in the Seti River gorge on Tuesday. With this, the bodies of 71 people who died in the crash have been retrieved. The search for the missing person started early morning on Wednesday with the help of divers and four drones, rescuers have given up hope of finding the missing person alive, MyRepublica newspaper reported. The Yeti Airlines aircraft took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am on Sunday and crashed on the bank of the Seti River between the old airport and the new airport in Pokhara, minutes before landing. Fifty-three Nepalese passengers and 15 foreign nationals, including 5 Indians, and four crew members were on board the Yeti Airlines aircraft when it crashed. The five Indians, all from Uttar Pradesh, have been identified as Abhisekh Kushwaha, 25, Bishal Sharma, 22, Anil Kumar Rajbhar, 27, Sonu Jaiswal, 35, and Sanjaya Jaiswal. As many as 48 bodies of the deceased have been brought to Kathmandu, the report added. The dead bodies except that of the locals and those who could not be identified and those of foreigners were flown to Kathmandu on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the 48 victims have been brought to Kathmandu via Nepal Army helicopters for post-mortem at Maharajgunj-based Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. Superintendent of Police Dinesh Mainali of Kathmandu Police Range said the bodies will be handed over to the respective families only after the completion of an autopsy. Forensics experts are currently working to complete the autopsy of the deceased. After we get the autopsy report, we will hand over the mortal remains of the deceased to the respective family members, he said. Meanwhile, a team of experts from France arrived in Nepal on Tuesday to study the ATR plane crash of Yeti Airlines that took place in Pokhara on January 15. A nine-member expert team from the company that manufactures the ATR aircraft has reached Pokhara. A convoy of Pakistani security forces came under attack from terrorists across the border with Iran in the restive Balochistan province on Wednesday, killing four soldiers in the latest incident of cross-border clashes. Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistan Army's media wing, the security personnel were killed during a terrorist activity from across the Pakistan-Iran border in Balochistans Panjgur district. The firing took place in the Chukab sector near the border where the soldiers were patrolling along the border, it said. "Militants used Iranian soil to target a convoy of security forces patrolling along the border," it said, adding that Iran has been asked to hunt down the terrorists on their side. In the past also, the border at Taftan and Panjgur has been closed after clashes between protesters and security forces. Two such incidents took place in 2021. Pakistan has also faced similar problems at its border crossings with Afghanistan at Chaman area in Balochistan with two incidents reported in December last year. In both incidents of firing from the Afghan side, at least seven civilians and an Afghan soldier were killed. In an action that could have severely compromised the safety of passengers, Bangalore South MP and BJP Yuva Morcha chief, Tejasvi Surya, is said to have opened the emergency exit of the Chennai-Tiruchirapalli passenger flight operated by budget airline IndiGo on December 10 as the aircraft was being readied for take-off. Surya, who was travelling to Tiruchirapalli for the executive meeting of Tamil Nadu BJYM from Chennai along with state BJP chief K Annamalai, was allowed to board the same aircraft after an apology letter, leading to questions whether IndiGo and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) followed the rule book which says opening the emergency door is a punishable offence. Aviation experts also sought to know how a passenger, who compromised the safety of others, was let off without any action and why it took over a month for authorities concerned to come public on the incident. They also recalled that people who had opened the emergency exits in the past had been booked by law enforcing authorities. The incident, which was being murmured in the political circles for the past few weeks, received public attention on Tuesday after former Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Sasikanth Senthil took to Twitter to ask what happened aboard 6E7339 on December 10. It takes only one call from @MoCA_GoI (Civil Aviation Ministry) to silence things????? We could have lost 70 lives, he wrote. Hours later, DGCA and IndiGo confirmed the incident but refused to identify the passenger. DGCA, which has ordered an inquiry, also said the crew did reinstall the door and conducted pressurisation checks before allowing the aircraft with around 70 passengers to fly. Sources at the Chennai Airport and a passenger told DH that the person in question is Surya and the aircraft they flew was an ATR. The flight was ready for take-off when Surya pulled the lever leading to opening of the emergency exit. We were immediately disembarked from the plane and the flight was delayed by over two hours, the passenger told DH. He added that Surya did apologise to passengers for his action in the bus in which they waited for about two hours before being allowed to board the aircraft. Efforts to reach Surya didnt fructify. Surya, it is said, wrote the apology letter while waiting in the bus like other passengers and was allotted a different seat when he boarded again along with co-passenger Annamalai. The flight was actually taxiing from the bay to the runway when Surya pulled the lever. The flight underwent several checks while we were inside the bus, he added. IndiGo said the passenger accidentally opened the emergency exit during the boarding process and that he apologised for their action. As per SOPs, the incident was logged and the aircraft underwent mandatory engineering checks, which led to a delay in the flights departure, IndiGo added. The incident comes close on the heels of complaints that airlines operating in India fail to report instances of compromise of passenger safety on time. DMK spokesperson K T Arasakumar, who also travelled on the flight, said the passengers were offloaded from the flight just before take-off. We didnt know what happened, but the flight took off only after two hours, he said. Tamil Nadu Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji, who is involved in a running battle with Annamalai, had alleged on December 29 in a tweet that two people from the BJP played with the emergency exit of an aircraft. On Tuesday, he demanded an explanation from Annamalai on the incident. Google is reportedly working on a tracking tag to help users track items they have misplaced. You're probably already familiar with that device since other companies already make them like Samsung, Apple, and Tile. Google Grogu The tracking tag is said to be named "Grogu" according to Kuba Wojciechowski, which is reportedly being developed by the Nest team at Google. The trackers can also be called "groguaudio" or "GR10." It's still pretty early to compare Google's tracker to the other big tech companies that also make them. There's barely any detail that tells us how the tag might turn out. Although, there are some details that were shared through XDA. For one, reports say that the tag will come in various colors, as well as a built-in speaker. It will also support Ultra-Wideband and Bluetooth Low Energy, which will be essential to track the items more accurately. Mishaal Rahman from Esper's also mentioned that the tracker tag is listed as a device in the Fast Pair console, which means that it can pair with other devices quickly without having to navigate through Settings. There are still no dates for when the item would be announced or launched, but Wojciechowski suggested that Google might shed some light on the device at Google's I/O Developer Conference this year. It could also be released in Google's fall hardware event. Read Also: Apple AirTag: Here are 5 Unique Yet Practical Ways to Use It Tags You Can Look Into in the Meantime If you need a tag right now and can't wait for Google's release, you can look into other tags that are available in the market. There are plenty of local tags out there and there are also those that are manufactured by big tech companies. Here are some suggestions. Apple AirTags The Apple AirTags can be quite pricey, but they also do their job well. Like Grogu, it has a built-in speaker. Tracking with a map has its limitations. Luckily, the AirTag has features that can help by indicating how far the object is by feet. It also emits a sound with the press of a button. Its Ultra-Wideband technology helps with its Precision Finding. Its battery can last to up to a year, and the device itself is water-resistant. All it takes is a one-tap setup for you to connect the device with the Find My app. Galaxy SmartTag Another option is the Galaxy SmartTag by Samsung. The tag also comes with a built-in speaker that emits a sound by tapping the ring button on your phone. It can also control IoT devices with just one click, so you can control devices from afar. When you have a Galaxy phone, you can locate your tag even when it's out of range or offline. Using Galaxy Find Network, the tag will use scanned data to find it for you privately. You can also see where it has been so you can track its last location. It comes in white and black. Related: Samsung SmartTag Gets Major Update: Finding Lost Items Made Easier, Anti-Spy Feature Added! Track the latest news updates from India and the rest of the world only on DH. Talks between Bhutan and China to settle their border dispute seem to be moving forward. At a recent expert group meeting at Kunming in China, officials of the two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on implementing the memorandum of understanding on the Three-Step Roadmap for Expediting the China-Bhutan Boundary Negotiations that they reached in late 2021. They have reportedly agreed to push forward this roadmap, increase the frequency of expert group meetings, and hold the 25th round of the border talks as soon as possible. China and Bhutan have been engaged in talks since 1984 to settle their border dispute. Talks have reportedly focused on two areas of dispute in the Jakurlung and Pasamlung valleys in northern Bhutan and the areas of Doklam, Sinchulung, Dramana and Shakhatoe in western Bhutan. In 1996, China proposed a package deal; it offered to give up its claims in northern Bhutan in return for Thimphu ceding territory in Doklam to Beijing. How China and Bhutan settle their border dispute is of concern to India. This is because the territory in western Bhutan Doklam -- that China lays claim to lies at the India-Bhutan-China trijunction and therefore impinges on Indias security. Should this vital piece of territory Doklam overlooks Chicken's Neck, which links the Indian mainland to its Northeast states fall into Chinas hands, Indias security will be undermined. China has repeatedly indicated its interest in taking control of Doklam. Not only does it figure in the 1996 package deal but also the PLA has been beefing up its overland infrastructure here. Indeed, it was Chinas building of a road into Doklam that triggered the 72-day stand-off between the Indian and Chinese armies in 2017. Although the two sides pulled back, subsequent satellite images have revealed that China has since made major inroads into Doklam by building roads, villages and outposts. There is concern in New Delhi that the Sino-Bhutanese talks to settle their border dispute could culminate in Bhutan ceding control over Doklam. The Bhutanese government is under pressure from its people to settle the border. It is likely that if Bhutan, which at present does not have official diplomatic or economic relations with Beijing, settles the border with China on the latters terms, Chinese investment will pour in. Bhutanese youth want to benefit from economic development, and this has made them keen on improved ties with Beijing. Although India has invested heavily in Bhutan, the allure of Chinese investments seems to be growing. India may need to reorient investments into people-centric development in Bhutan. Ultimately, it is the Bhutanese people who have always stood firmly with India, who are Indias strongest defence in that part of the Himalayas. Lisnagelvin Primary School Breakfast Club are bidding for a cash boost from the Tesco Community Grants initiative. Tesco works with community charity Groundwork to run its community funding scheme, which sees grants of up to 1,500, 1,000 and 500 awarded to local community projects. Three groups in every community have been shortlisted to receive the cash award and Lisnagelvin Primary School are one of them! Shoppers are being invited to head along to Tesco stores to vote for who they think should take away the top grant. Colin Torrens, Principal of Lisangelvin said, We are delighted to be part of the Tesco Community Grants scheme and we hope to get the full support of our parents and local community. Voting is open in all Tesco stores in January, February, March and customers will cast their vote using a token given to them at the check-out each time they shop. Tescos Community Grants scheme has already awarded over 100 million to more than 50,000 projects across Britain. Tesco customers get the chance to vote for three different groups every time they shop. Every three months, when votes are collected, three groups in each of Tescos regions will be awarded funding. Claire De Silva, Head of Community at Tesco, said: Tesco Community Grants help support local good causes but especially those projects supporting young people, those providing food, and local causes close to our colleagues hearts. Groundworks National Chief Executive, Graham Duxbury, said: Tesco Community Grants continues to give local projects the boost they need to help their communities thrive. By funding services which support young people and reduce food poverty, we hope to facilitate positive change from the ground up across the UK. We are pleased to have been able to help so many local good causes over the years and look forward to seeing what community organisations can achieve in the future with the right resources. Funding is available to community groups and charities looking to fund local projects that bring benefits to communities, particularly those helping to provide food and giving children the support they need for a good start in life. Anyone can nominate a project and organisations can apply online. To find out more visit www.tesco.com/ communitygrants. In October of last year, second-level students from Derry's St Mary's College were selected to take part in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) 2023. Over 1,700 projects were entered from across Ireland and after closing for entries in October 2022, the BTYSTE judges selected the 550 projects which were showcased at the exhibition taking place from January 11 to January 14 2023. For participants and teachers, the Exhibition offered a chance to win one of over 200 prizes with a prize fund of over 35,000. The four projects from St. Marys College that qualified for the finals of the BTYSTE Competition 2023 were all in the Intermediate Chemical, Physical and Mathematical sciences category and the girls are in fourth and fifth year. Kaycee Deery, who presented her investigation, development and evaluation of different sunscreen preparations, received a Highly Commended Award from the judges for her project. Kaycee's project tested a range of natural oil based substances for their ability to absorb UV light and formulates and tested a range of homemade sunscreens using these natural substances. Kaycee's investigation was of great importance as most proprietary sunscreens contain chemicals that can be harmful to health and the environment. UV blockers such as titanium dioxide have been shown to harm coral reefs and some organic UV absorbers have been shown to produce free radicals that can harm health. A natural sunscreen would be less harmful. The other three projects from St Mary's College included investigating the effect of activated charcoal on the absorption of glucose in the digestive system by Lexie Melrose. This project concerns the possibility of controlling the absorption of glucose into the blood by taking activated charcoal tablets. This is particularly important for people with diabetes. Lexie with her project investigating the effect of activated charcoal on the absorption of glucose in the digestive system Also, investigating the effect of different pHs on the use of hydrogels as drug carriers part II by Nikita Morrison and Becca Connolly. This project investigated how different pHs (found in the digestive system) affect the release of different medicines from hydrogels. This is important as the delivery of medicines could be targeted to different parts of the digestive system. Becca and Nikita and their project which investigated how different pHs (found in the digestive system) affect the release of different medicines from hydrogels Investigating the effect of acid rain on metals used in construction and metal compounds found in soil by Rebecca Lewis. This project makes up solutions of simulated acid rain and adds it to metals and soil containing metal compounds. After a period of time the acid rain is tested to determine its acidity. Lower acidity would indicate that the metals have been leached into the environment. This project was important as these leached metals get into waterways, move up the food chain and get into drinkable water which is harmful to humans and animals. Rebecca investigating the effect of acid rain on metals used in construction and metal compounds found in soil Commenting on the girls participating in the affluent exhibition and Kaycee's achievement, Ann Blanking at St Mary's College said: "It was fantastic to have the BTYSTE back in the RDS this year. "We had four projects in the competition this year and were the only representatives from County Derry. All the girls acquitted themselves very well. It was a hard fought contest as there were only 1st, 2nd and 3rd places available in each category. "We were delighted that Kaycee was awarded a Highly Commended Award. All the girls were buzzing. This was their first time at the RDS and they are already talking about next year. "The girls had a terrific time, as apart from the actual competition, there were many other things to get involved with. Rebecca Lewis was totally starstruck when she saw the President, Michael D. Higgins. "The girls had a visit from a busload of their peers on Friday and were delighted. Every pupil (and accompanying Staff were amazed by the sheer scale of the BTYSTE. "The school is incredibly proud of all the girls; Rebecca, Becca, Nikita, Lexie and especially Kaycee." The winners of the 59th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition were Shane OConnor and Liam Carew, aged 19 and in sixth year in the Abbey School, Tipperary. The boys won with their project Assessing the impact of second-level education on key aspects of adolescents life and development. The coveted prize was presented to the winners this evening in the RDS in Dublin by Minister for Education Norma Foley TD, and Managing Director of BT Ireland, Shay Walsh. Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland said, "On behalf of the entire team at BT Ireland, I wish to thank each and every student who took part in this years exhibition for sharing your ideas with us. "After a long three years, it has been a pleasure to welcome you all back to the event in person. The past week has been truly inspiring, and I am in awe of your unique and individual talents. "The level of creativity, innovation and research displayed over the last number of days has been nothing short of remarkable, and I am humbled and grateful to be a part of it. "I would also like to extend my congratulations to all our winners, who join a special group of some of Irelands brightest minds. I have no doubt this is only the beginning of all the brilliant work you will go on to do. "To all the teachers, parents, guardians and everyone who supported the students who entered on their journeys, I express my sincere thanks. We are hugely grateful also to our panel of esteemed judges, our sponsors and partners, and of course, our own BT team, without whom this magnificent Exhibition would not be possible." The 2023 BT Young Scientist & Technology winners receive the BTYSTE perpetual trophy and the top prize of 7,500. The winners will also represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists, which takes place in Brussels, Belgium in September 2023. Theyll also get to attend the 64th Annual London International Youth Science Forum this summer. Speaking at the awards ceremony this evening, Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD said: I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to Shane and Liam on winning this truly prestigious trophy and award, in what has been another inspiring year of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. "With the BTYSTE back in person for the first time since before the pandemic, I have had the pleasure to witness first-hand the level of innovation and creativity demonstrated by this years entrants, across a range of important and relevant topics. "To every participant you have been an excellent representative of yourself, your family and your school, and you should be incredibly proud of your achievements. "The calibre of each entry is a testament to the tenacity and talent of the students behind them, and it is this constant high standard that makes BT Young Scientist one of the longest running, and most successful STEM events in Europe. "From my time in the classroom, I am aware of the enormous work and support required to participate in competitions like this, and I wish to acknowledge your teachers and school communities who have also generously given their time and expertise to support you on your journey. "A special thank you also to the parents and families of students for their constant encouragement and outstanding support. A reduction in the threat level in Northern Ireland raises a question over the criteria for arming all PSNI officers, a new report has said. The Policing Board also said the fact that the weapons are rarely discharged means the force should consider the issue as part of its long-term plans. Unlike in the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, in Northern Ireland all police officers currently carry Glock handguns. The board has published its annual human rights report, along with a special report examining the use of force by the PSNI. The report into use of force contains a chapter on firearms. It states: In Northern Ireland, the chief constable has given standing authority for all officers, subject to successful training, to be issued with a personal issue handgun which may be carried when officers are both on and off duty. In the rest of the UK, only highly trained authorised firearms officers (AFO) carry firearms. The report said that officers can lawfully discharge a firearm only when they believe it is absolutely necessary to do so in order to save life or prevent serious injury. All discharges of a firearm must be referred to the Police Ombudsman. The report said: The use of firearms has fluctuated over the course of the past 10 years. Firearms were drawn 364 times in 2012/13, compared to 440 times in 2021/22. Firearms have only been discharged five times over the past 10 years. The last incident involving firearms was an unintentional discharge in June 2022 and has been referred to the Ombudsman. The report recommends: The reduction in the security threat level in Northern Ireland and the fact that officers very rarely have to fire their firearms raises a question about what the criteria should be for issuing firearms to all officers rather than, as in the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, only to those specially trained in their use. The PSNI should consider this issue as part of its longer-term plans. Last year, MI5 took the decision to reduce the threat level in Northern Ireland from severe to substantial for the first time in 12 years. The report also recommends that the PSNI should contract an independent research body to ascertain the effect of injuries to individuals hit by plastic bullets or stun grenades or bitten by police dogs. Commenting on the publication of the two reports, Policing Board chair Deirdre Toner said: The findings and recommendations made in these latest detailed reports reinforce the importance of oversight, ensuring the Police Service continues to meets its human rights responsibilities and delivers a rights-based approach in all aspects of its service. The police have access to an extensive range of powers to support delivery of their duties. It is therefore essential for confidence in the service that the public can be assured police powers are being used both legitimately and proportionately. The findings and recommendations made within these reports also helps ensure that knowledge and understanding of the impact human rights has on policing increases within the service and the wider community. PSNI deputy chief constable Mark Hamilton said: We welcome these reports. Human rights are central to everything we do as police officers and the oversight provided by the Policing Board is key to maintaining public confidence in policing. We will continue to work alongside the Policing Boards independent human rights adviser as we consider and respond to the content of these wide-ranging reports. Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty Internationals Northern Ireland programme director, welcomed the Policing Board recommendation on the arming of officers. He said: Having specially trained authorised firearms officers who provide an armed response where it is reasonable, proportionate and lawful to do so, would bring the PSNI more into line with policing in the rest of the UK and Ireland. United Nations basic principles on policing recommend that law enforcement officials should apply non-violent means where at all possible before resorting to the use of force and firearms. Controversial legislation to deal with the legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles will end the current merry-go-round of court cases, the Defence Secretary has said. Ben Wallace said the current system is not serving the peace process well. However Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly criticised Mr Wallaces comments as insulting and disrespectful to victims of the conflict who have waited decades for truth and justice about the killings of their loved ones. The Governments draft Legacy Bill would provide immunity for people accused of Troubles offences as long as they co-operate with a new truth recovery body, and would also halt future civil cases and inquests linked to killings during the conflict. The proposed law changes are opposed by all Stormonts main parties and the Irish government, as well as victims groups in the region, which have denounced it as an amnesty for killers. This week, the Government moved to change proposals for the truth recovery body to be able to conduct criminal investigations where it judges that to be appropriate. Mr Wallace also urged Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who pledged to ditch the Bill if he becomes Prime Minister, to be very cautious before making these type of commitments. Speaking in Belfast on Wednesday, Mr Wallace insisted the legislation was the fairest way to deal with the past. Mr Wallace, who previously served in Northern Ireland as a soldier in 1991, said he understands the depth of feeling around the past. I understand the sense of loss many victims have held, he said. But it is also important that we stop what has become a merry-go-round of legacy inquests, and constant reopenings and retrials that dont actually seem to serve the peace process well. It doesnt help either the victims that I have seen or indeed many of the people accused, I think its really important we do our best to draw a line under it. The Good Friday Agreement was as much about forgiveness and coming together as anything else, and this legacy legislation is about saying, we want to move out of the constant reopening of inquests through the same processes when I was a junior minister here, I think they thought it would take 30 years to get through that weight of inquests and to put it into better system where people can come forward and if they engage with this legacy programme then of course they will achieve a level of immunity. Thats quite important, if they choose to engage, if they dont choose to co operate, then of course they are open to be prosecuted. Thats a very important part of the process of healing and coming together. It was put to the Defence Secretary that the legislation will cut off the chance of justice for many victims. He responded: There hasnt been justice for the thousands of victims of terrorists who by the way committed most of the murders, the deaths and the bombings in the Troubles. It was the vast majority of people that suffered at the hands of terrorists, both loyalists and republicans, and there hasnt been justice. What there has been is a significant re-running of numerous inquests. When I was junior minister here, the number of inquests that were redone, re-investigated, without any outcome. When I meet victims, one of the things they want more than anything is answers: what happened to my loved one, why did it happen, and who was involved in that? We hope that this new proposal will bring forward that environment that will allow people to come forward I havent seen many terrorists come forward and be open about the crimes they committed. In exchange for coming forward there will be that level of protection from prosecution, or immunity, and if thats what we have to do to move on from the Troubles, to draw a line in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, which was about forgiveness and moving on. I remember struggling as a veteran here to come to terms with the fact that many of the IRA prisoners were being let out, the decommissioning, many people in these communities here, whether republican or unionist, saw bad people being effectively let out of prison. That felt very uncomfortable. Mr Wallace urged those against the Bill to give it a try and see if it works. Responding Mr Kelly called on the UK government to halt the legacy bill. Comments by the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace that the British governments flawed legacy bill will end a merry go round of legacy inquests are insulting and disrespectful to the families of victims of the conflict who have waited decades for truth and justice, he said. His comments are arrogant, callous and completely unacceptable. Access to the courts and to due process is a human right. Mr Kelly said this weeks amendments to the bill do not deal with the substantive issue of victims being entitled to access to due process. It has been roundly rejected by victims and families, human rights experts, churches, the UN, and senior officials in the EU and US administration and all the political parties on this island, he said. The legacy bill is in breach of human rights standards and International law and should be scrapped now. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, scheduled to proceed in the House of Lords next week. A delay in enacting legislation to establish an opt-out organ donation system in Northern Ireland due to the Stormont stalemate has been branded unacceptable by Michelle ONeill. The Sinn Fein vice president has again called on the DUP to join with other parties to restore a powersharing executive to stop punishing vulnerable people. The new law, which would bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK, would automatically make people organ donors unless they specifically state otherwise. It was to be called Daithis Law, after six-year-old Daithi MacGabhann from Belfast, who is on the organ transplant waiting list and whose family have campaigned for the new legislation. The legislation has previously been agreed by the main Stormont parties, but the Department of Health said it requires secondary legislation to be passed by the Assembly to become law. Ms ONeill said: News that the organ donation law is now being held up because one party has refused to enter the Assembly and Executive is completely unacceptable. The passing of Daithis law, and the powerful determination of his family, offered great hope to so many people desperately waiting for an organ transplant and modernised our organ donation laws. This is life-saving legislation and it must be implemented with no delay. I am again appealing to the DUP to get back around the table, work with the rest of us to get this legislation over the line, to support people through the cost of living crisis, to tackle waiting lists and stop punishing vulnerable people. Permanent secretary at the Department of Health Peter May told the PA news agency that Daithis Law was an example of legislation which needed a sitting Assembly. He said: Daithis Law is a piece of legislation passed by the Assembly last February which requires regulation, secondary legislation, in order to be given effect. And those regulations need the approval of the Assembly. Now, clearly, in the absence of an Assembly, we cant proceed with that. So, that is an area where one piece of legislation which affects the deemed consent for organ transplants, cannot proceed. And thats just a microcosm of other examples along those lines. Mr May added: I think we all want to do the best we can for the public that we serve. When theres a cross party consensus behind that piece of legislation, it would be great to see it properly enforced, as the Assembly intended. Daithis father Mairtin MacGabhann said the delay in the legislation was devastating. He told the BBC: Everything that needs to happen is just a formality the hard work has been done. From what we can see the Department of Health has done everything in their power to make this ready to go. This is life-saving legislation. Mr MacGabhann called on Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris to step in to progress the legislation from Westminster. The powersharing Assembly at Stormont has been suspended from last year as part of a DUP protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol. DUP MLA and former first minister Paul Givan told the BBC: I think it is hugely disappointing that we are in this position. Its not a position I want to be in. Thats why we want the UK and the European Union to get on with their job. Laptops MSI Laptops MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) price in India MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) > + Compare + Compare Updated on 18-Jan-2023 +1 Market Status : LAUNCHED Release Date : 18 Jan, 2023 Official Website : MSI Key Specifications OS Windows 11 Home Display 15.6" (1920 x 1080) Processor AMD Ryzen 7-5700U | NA Memory 512 GB SSD/8 GB DDR4 MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) Price in India: 66,990 ( onwards ) Buy Now Available at Set Price Drop Alert See All Prices Overview PRICES Specs Photos News User Reviews MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) Price in India MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) Price In India Starts From Rs.66990 The best price of MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) is Rs.66990 on Amazon. Merchant Name Availablity Price Go to Store Available 66,990 Buy Now Disclaimer: The price & specs shown may vary. Please confirm on the e-commerce site before purchasing. Error in pricing: Please let us know. MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) Full Specifications Basic Information Model name : Modern 15 Launch date (global) : 18-01-2023 operating system (with version) : Windows 11 Home Display Resolution : 1920 x 1080 display size (in inches) : 15.6 Connectivity connectivity : Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Memory ram included (in gb) : 8 GB ram type : DDR4 Physical Specifications laptop weight (in kgs) : 1.6 laptop dimension (in mm) : 234 x 357 x 19 Processor processor model name : AMD Ryzen 7-5700U graphics processor : AMD Radeon Storage Storage drive type : SSD Storage drive capacity : 512 GB Power Sound Warranty And Manufacturer Info Details Of Pre-Installed Software Error or missing information? Please let us know. MSI Modern 15 A5M-201IN Ryzen 7-5700U (2022) Price in India Updated on 18th Jan 2023 Store Product Name Price Amazon MSI Modern 15 A5M, 15.6" FHD Business Laptop with MSI Bag (8GB /512GB NVMe SSD / Windows 11 Home / A... 66,990 Disclaimer: Digit, like all other media houses, gives you links to online stores which contain embedded affiliate information, which allows us to get a tiny percentage of your purchase back from the online store. We urge all our readers to use our Buy button links to make their purchases as a way of supporting our work. If you are a user who already does this, thank you for supporting and keeping unbiased technology journalism alive in India. Samsung is expected to launch a new series of laptops under the Samsung Galaxy Book3 series. As per Ishan Agarwal (via MySmartPrice), the lineup could launch with the Samsung S23 series on February 1. The posters and some specifications of the Samsung Galaxy Book3 series have been leaked on the internet. The lineup will contain five models of laptops including Book3, Book3 360, Book3 Pro, Book3 Pro 360 and Book3 Ultra. Samsung Galaxy Book3: Expected specifications Samsung Galaxy Book3 and Galaxy Book3 360 are expected to sport 15-inch screen sizes while the Book3 Pro will roll out in 14-inch and 16-inch variants. However, the Book3 Pro 360 and Book3 Ultra might sport a 16-inch display. The Galaxy Book3 series will be powered by Intel's 13th Gen processors with the Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 being offered by Core i5-1340P and Core i7-1360P trims alongside Intel Iris Xe graphics. Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 might feature a 16-inch Super AMOLED display with the stylus input of the bundled-S pen support. On to the battery, it might pack a 76WHr with a 65W charger. Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 will be just 13mm thick and weigh 1.6kg. In related news, Samsung launched the Galaxy Book2 Go and Galaxy Book2 Go 5G on 17th January. Samsung has recently shown the laptop series at CES 2023. The Samsung Galaxy Book2 Go and Galaxy Book2 Go 5G are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 3 chipset. Both laptops sport a 14-inch IPS display and come with a 42.3 Wh battery. According to the press release, Samsung Galaxy Book2 Go 5G supports dual-sim connectivity. However, Samsung has only revealed the prices of UK models, the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Go (4GB 128GB) will be priced at 499 RRP ( approx. 50,000). On the other hand, the 5G model will roll out in two storage options; 4GB/128GB and 8GB/256GB. The former variant will be priced at 649 RRP (approx. 65,000) and the top variant will cost you 749 RRP (approx. 75,000) For more technology news, product reviews, sci-tech features and updates, keep reading Digit.in or head to our Google News page. Motorola has been rumoured to launch a new flagship phone called the Motorola Edge 40 Pro. The Motorola Edge 40 Pro is going to be known as Motorola Edge+ in the US, reportedly. The phone is going to match the specifications of the recently launched flagship phone in China, the Moto X40. The Motorola Edge 40 Pro looks to be the successor of the Motorola Edge 30 Pro which was launched in February last year. Rumours have surfaced on the internet of the device's specifications, price details and colour options. Motorola Edge 40 Pro: Expected Specification A report by Appuals has stated that the Motorola Edge 40 Pro is going to feature a 6.7-inch Full-HD+ curved AMOLED display with 165Hz refresh rate support. The phone is rumoured to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and it will launch with only one storage option which is 12GB/256GB. It is likely to run on the Android 13-based MyUI 5.0 and might have an 11-layer cooling system. The phone could sport a triple camera setup with a 50-megapixel primary as well as a 60-megapixel front-facing camera placed in a centrally-aligned hole-punch slot. The Motorola Edge 40 Pro could also come with a 4600mAh battery with 125-watt fast charging support. It could also offer 15W wireless charging and 15W reverse charging. Motorola Edge 40 Pro: Expected Price The Motorola Edge 40 Pro, according to the report, is going to launch in Europe worth EUR 850 which is 75,000 approximately in India. For more technology news, product reviews, sci-tech features and updates, keep reading Digit.in or head to our Google News page. On Monday, Netflix updated its iOS app, giving the iPhone version of its platform a new user experience, 9to5 Mac notes. New, fluid animations, such as parallax effects to shift objects as the user moves the phone, are present in the new interface. Netflix Has Unveiled Improvements To Its iOS App Now, customers will see a large card advertising a film or series available on the service when they launch the Netflix app on their iPhone. The iPhone's accelerometer is used to make this card move with a parallax effect, but the redesign goes further than that. No matter which section of the app users are browsing through, it is now much simpler to use search, navigate between profiles, or filter material by category. The Coming Soon tab has also been revamped and is now "What's New," and when viewers tap on a movie or show, its art cover expands to show all the details about it. The concept began development in 2022, according to former Netflix UI designer Janum Trivedi, who developed the new Netflix app interface. "I've been leading a UI refresh to make Netflix feel more fluid, delightful, and polished. Today, all that work shipped," says Trivedi, according to The Tech Outlook. Trivedi also claims that these are the only modifications brought about by the most recent Netflix app version: New billboard layout responds as you move your device, with a subtle lighting effect Beautiful wallpaper gradients that are created on-the-fly from the art A new card transition that's fully interruptible/interactive New launch/profile animations, haptics, and more It is interesting to note that the former Netflix employee said the company is "giving it some love" for the Apple TV version of its app, thus it appears that Netflix will also soon have a new UI for tvOS. Read More: Netflix Adapts Queer Series 'They Both Die At The End' With Bad Bunny As Executive Producer Apple TV Still Does Not Have Netflix's Ad-Based Plan Support Netflix last year unveiled a new ad-based plan in an effort to increase member numbers since this tier is a little less expensive than the others. However, the company then disclosed that Apple TV users will not be able to use the new, less expensive plan, and the situation is still the same as of right now. Despite this, the company has never provided an explanation for why Netflix's tvOS app does not support the new ad-based plan, 9to5 Mac reports. Apple TV users may be required to sign up for the more expensive plans if they still want to watch Netflix on the device. However, given the present situation in which Netflix may cancel the Basic plan without advertisements. It is important to note that the Basic plan with commercials from Netflix is currently offered in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. Additionally, according to recent reports, Netflix has purchased the streaming rights to 18 new Tamil movies, Gadget 360 details. With that, it is notable that the deal occurs as the streaming service prioritizes localized and more regional content for its app. Related Article: 'Formula 1: Drive to Survive' Season 5 is Coming Back to Netflix on February 24 Back in July 2022, Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi 12S Ultra flagship, which made headlines for being the first smartphone in the world to sport a 1-inch camera sensor. While this smartphone was only launched in China, its successor, the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, is going to see a global launch. Many reports indicate that this smartphone will launch in the second quarter of 2023, although there are already rumours regarding a delay. TechGoing, a Chinese tipster, has claimed that the smartphone will be launched in April, and rumours of delays are just those rumours. Xiaomi 13 Ultra specifications (expected) The Xiaomi 13 Ultra is believed to have an E6 AMOLED display with curved edges. This smartphone will also have the 1-inch Sony IMX989 50-megapixel camera that was seen on the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. It will run on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. There are also some speculations regarding the highest specifications of the smartphone. It is believed that it will come with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of native storage. Xiaomi 13 Ultra price The base model of the Xiaomi 12S Ultras base model, which offered 8 GB RAM + 256 GB storage, was priced at 5,999 Yuan at the time of launch, which is roughly 72,254.06. According to the tipster, the price of the Xiaomi 13 Ultra will be the same as the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. This means that the starting variant of the series may be priced at around 72,254.06. For more technology news, product reviews, sci-tech features and updates, keep reading Digit.in or head to our Google News page. Nokia has launched a new budget tablet in the Indian market- the Nokia T21. It offers a 2k display, Android 12 along with other features which put it in competition with the Redmi Pad, Lenovo Tab P11 5G and others. The new Nokia T21 offers a 10.36-inch 2K display and comes with an SGS low blue light certification and supports HD content on Netflix. In addition to this, it also supports a stylus. It is backed by a Unisoc T612 chipset which is backed with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and expandable storage up to 512GB. It features an 8MP rear camera and the selfie camera is also of the same configuration. It runs on an 8200mAh battery and claims to retain 80% capacity even after 800 charging cycles. It also supports 18W charging. The Nokia T21 runs on Android 12 and is expected to get 2 major updates and three security ones. It comes with OZO Spatial Audio, NFC support, 4G, facial recognition, and an IP52 rating. It features an aluminium build with a recycled plastic antenna cover. It is priced at Rs 17,999 (Wi-Fi only) and Rs 18,999 for the LTE model. It is available for pre-booking presently and can be purchased starting January 22 from leading online and offline stores. You can get an additional Rs 1000 off on pre-booking. It comes in a Charcoal Grey colour. As a launch offer, you can even get a free Free Flip cover worth Rs 1999. For more technology news, product reviews, sci-tech features and updates, keep reading Digit.in or head to our Google News page. After an investigation knocked its app down, Chinese authorities have allowed ride-hailing company Didi access to sign up new clients after 18 months. This suggests that Beijing's campaign against the nation's internet giants is coming to an end as the administration attempts to boost economic growth, Financial Times writes. Didi Is On Track To Make A Comeback Almost 18 months after regulators ordered a halt to user enrolment, Didi Chuxing on Monday began new user registrations in the largest ride-hailing market in the world. However, the Didi Chuxing app will now accept new user registrations again right away with the approval of the Cyber Security Review Office. It can be remembered that Chinese authorities demanded that Didi be removed from the app stores in July 2021, citing the fact that the company was "illegally collecting user data." Then, according to Tech Crunch, Didi went public in New York earlier that month, but the company's celebration over the event was fleeting. It raised a sizable $4 billion from the initial offering, which turned out to be the cause of its dispute with Beijing. Prior to going public in the US, where Chinese individuals' data may have been subject to examination, Didi failed to reassure the authorities that its cross-border data procedures were secure. The error prompted China's top cyberspace authority to launch a security probe that lasted a year and a half. "Our company has taken serious steps to cooperate with the country's cybersecurity review, deal with the security issues found in the probe, and implement comprehensive rectifications," Didi claims. Additionally, the Beijing-based corporation promised to take strong action to protect the platform's infrastructure and large data as well as uphold national network security, South China Morning Post reports. Read More: Tech Giants are Challenging Didi's Dominance in China's Ride-Hailing Market The Ride-Hailing App Will Be Treading With Caution In The Future Didi was given permission to restart new user registration by the Cybersecurity Review Office, a relatively new entity created to address data security issues raised by online companies. Furthermore, the company reportedly had to pay a $1 billion fine for breaking the guidelines in addition to undergoing a data overhaul. With that, the regulatory steps severely impacted Didi's domestic operations and erased tens of billions of dollars from its market valuation, according to CNN Business. Users of Didi were still able to use the app if they had had it installed on their phones prior to the reopening of user registration. However, the Chinese app was surrounded by aggressive competitors in the market like AutoNavi, which is owned by Alibaba. In recent years, China has tightened regulatory monitoring of the innovative industry, bringing it closer to parity with the conventional state-owned taxi sector. Tech Crunch writes that Didi will undoubtedly be considerably more wary of the government's red line after the regulatory rewrite. "Going forward, the company will apply effective methods to ensure the security of the platform's infrastructure and big data in order to safeguard national cybersecurity," it says in a statement. Related Article: Didi's $60 Billion Crash After Security Concerns Changes China Tech India seeks unity of Global South to grow past a 'frozen' United Nations India this week brought together 125 nations under the banner of the Global South even as New Delhi sought to champion the cause of these nations that have been failed by the United Nations, which it referred to as a frozen 1945-invented mechanism. The two-day Voice of Global South summit that was held under the theme 'Unity of Voice, Unity of Purpose' concluded on Friday. It was held in a virtual format. This was the first time India, currently the G20 president, organised such a meeting of the Global South, comprising low-income countries. As many as 125 countries participated in the summit, which included 29 countries from Latin America and Caribbean, 47 countries from Africa, seven from Europe, 31 from Asia and 11 from Oceania. China and Pakistan were absent. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his opening remarks, said: To address this geopolitical fragmentation, we urgently need a fundamental reform of the major international organisations, including the United Nations Security Council and the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund). These reforms should focus on giving voice to the concerns of the developing world and reflect the realities of the 21st century." We want a globalisation that does not lead to unequal distribution of vaccines or over-concentrated global supply chains We, the developing countries, are also concerned about the increasing fragmentation of the international landscape. These geopolitical tensions distract us from focusing on our development priorities. They cause sharp swings in international prices of food, fuel, fertilizers and other commodities, PM Modi said. PM Modi also announced a number of new initiatives by India in connection with the Global South Summit. These include Aarogya Maitri initiative, Global South Centre of Excellence, Global South Science and Technology Initiative, Global South Young Diplomats Forum, and Global South Scholarships. External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Friday said that the UN has been unable to articulate the wider concerns of the Global South and has become a "frozen mechanism". Where the United Nations is concerned, a frozen 1945-invented mechanism is simply unable to articulate the wider concerns of its membership. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, Some powers have been singularly focused on their own advantage, to the exclusion of the well-being of the international community. And the G20, reflecting the composition of its membership, has had its own particular focus. This is what we are seeking to change," he added. Stressing the point that developing countries are now facing monumental challenges concerning costs and availability of fuel, food and fertilisers, unsustainable debt, unviable projects, trade barriers, contracting financial flows and climate pressure among others, Jaishankar said: No matter how hard the challenges, we must move forward together. It is only by acting as one do we stand any chance to succeed; and succeed we must. We must fully recognise the interdependence and cooperation that is expressed by the motto of our presidency: 'One Earth, One Family, One Future'. Your voices will guide and inspire us throughout this process," he added. The minister also said that the range of discussions that were held during the two-day summit will be highlighted during Indias G20 presidency. Closing the summit on Friday, PM Modi stressed the fact that by coming together, all these countries can set the global agenda. Our effort will be to distill action-points for the Global South both for what we can do together and what we can seek collectively on the global agenda. The Voice of the Global South needs to set its own tone. Together, we need to escape the cycle of dependency on systems and circumstances which are not of our making, he added. We all agree on the importance of South-South Cooperation, and collectively shaping the global agenda, he highlighted Friday. In an effort to create a parallel supply chain in the wake of the volatile geopolitical situation, Modi said it is imperative that all these countries come together in creating a robust connectivity framework thereby creating effective value chains. We all agree on the importance of investing in connectivity infrastructure. We also need to diversify global supply chains, and find ways to link developing countries to these value chains, the PM said. Speaking to reporters on Friday about the outcome of the summit, which also saw parallel meetings between all the foreign ministers, finance ministers, health ministers and others, foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra said: We undertook a unique initiative a unique beginning." One thing which came across clearly during the summit was the need for articulating the voice of Global South in international institutions and for reforming them for a balanced representation of the developing world," he added. Within the next few days, Microsoft may announce massive layoffs, affecting a significant portion of its staff. According to Sky News, there were 11,000 fewer employees overall, or about 5% of the company's 220,000 employees, affected by the layoffs. The Job Cuts Is Effective Across Different Divisions Although Microsoft does not specify a specific date for the anticipated cuts, a source familiar with the company's strategy predicts that layoffs will be announced prior to its quarterly reports next week. Bloomberg also notes that a number of layoffs will start happening once announced in the company's engineering division tomorrow. The job layoffs are reportedly much bigger than the 1% reduction in Microsoft's staff from the previous year. It can be remembered that prior layoffs impacted employment in consulting as well as customer and partner solutions. Microsoft is the most recent major technology company to experience economic turmoil, and the job cuts will occur just days after Microsoft introduced a new unlimited vacation policy. With this, unused vacation balances for Microsoft employees will be paid out all at once in April, and supervisors will have limitless "Discretionary Time Off" to approve. The layoffs also occur just a few weeks after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella issued a warning about the two years of challenges the tech sector would face, The Verge writes. Nadella also emphasized the necessity for tech firms to be effective while acknowledging that Microsoft was not immune to the global developments. Read More: Microsoft's New Vacation Policy Give Employees Unlimited Time Off Microsoft Follows Chains Of Layoffs In The Tech industry Microsoft declines to comment on rumors and speculation, a spokesperson for the company told Engadget. At the end of June, Microsoft had 221,000 employees, up 40,000 or 22% from the same time the previous year. However, the company's most recent earnings showed a five-year low in total sales growth, according to Geek Wire. Executives stated that personnel growth would be "minimal" on the earnings call in October and predicted that trends like reduced PC demand and lower advertising spend would persist. If the 11,000 figure is correct, that would be equivalent to the 11,000 employees that Meta cut last year as well. Additionally, once the company has completed its extensive layoffs, it will fall short of the 18,000 positions that Amazon anticipates eliminating. In any event, Microsoft appears to be following a familiar path since employment layoffs have previously occurred. It can be remembered that during the first two years of the pandemic, the company's revenues skyrocketed, according to Engadget. In an effort to take advantage of the situation, it went on a recruiting binge, adding 50,000 workers during that same time period. However, Microsoft CEO Nadella only recently issued a warning about the need to tighten spending owing to deteriorating macroeconomic conditions this past October. "We're focused on helping our customers do more with less, while investing in secular growth areas and managing our cost structure in a disciplined way," Nadella told investors. Related Article: US Congress Approves $40 Million Budget to Improve Microsoft's Military AR Goggles Delhi excise case: Court to hear Pernod Recard ED's bail plea on 19 January French liquor major Pernod Ricard is under regulatory scanner in India for alleged violation of excise rules in Delhi, by financially supporting retailers who in exchange stocked more of the company's brands and boosted its market share, the country's financial crimes investigating agency Enforcement Directorate (ED) has alleged. A Delhi court has postponed hearing on a bail application of liquor giant Pernod Ricard's executive, Benoy Babu, arrested in a money laundering case related to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam, also involving Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, to 19 January. Special Judge M K Nagpal, who was scheduled to hear the arguments on Babu's bail application on Monday, adjourned the matter on pleas made by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) as well as the advocate appearing for the accused. The ED is investigating the alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped liquor policy of the Delhi government. The government announced a permanent shutdown of liquor shops as a new excise policy came into effect. The ED had, on 6 January, filed a supplementary charge sheet against five individuals and seven companies in the case. The agency, however, did not name Sisodia as accused in the case, and told the judge that further investigation is going on in the mater. The ED on Thursday arrested two private company executives in a case related to alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy. The two arrested were Benoy Babu, general manager of liquor company Pernod Ricard, and P Sarath Chandra Reddy, whole-time director and promoter of Aurobindo Pharma. The ED also booked Vijay Nair, Abhishek Boinpally and Amit Arora in the case. The money laundering case stems from a CBI FIR that had also named Sisodia as an accused, among others. The CBI had raided the premises of the deputy chief minister and some Delhi government bureaucrats after filing the charges. The excise scheme came under the scanner after the Delhi lieutenant governor recommended a CBI probe into the alleged irregularities in the implementation of the Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22. The LG had also suspended 11 excise officials. In its order, the judge also noted that the prosecution complaint (ED's chargesheet) against Babu, as well as against some other co-accused, had been filed before the court and the court was yet to take cognisance of the documents. Animals in Need is well known for rescuing animals of all shapes and sizes across Donegal. But this week, the charity assisted in a rescue around 9,500km away in Peru. A spokesperson took to social media to explain how the local animal rescue charity suddenly went international. "A friend and supporter contacted us from Peru where she was on holidays," said the spokesperson. "This tiny newborn kitten [pictured] was found in the roof with the umbilical cord still attached." Taking on the role of mummy cat to the tiny kitten, the woman then turned to Animals in Need volunteers in Donegal Town for guidance on what to do next. "They brought the kitten to the vet for a check up and correct kitten formula as there was no sign of the mum and contacted our kitten nursery foster mum to get all the practical advice she could offer to help this little guy," said the spokesperson. "We wish her the very best with her little Paddington kitten." More information on the work of the animal rescue charity can be found at www.animalsinneeddonegal.com or on the Animals In Need Facebook page. Anyone who wishes to support the work of the organisation can donate 2 to AINs Help Us To Help Them fundraising appeal by texting the word KITTEN to 50300. Every last cent goes directly to the rescued animals for their food, bedding, vet bills, worming treatment and vaccinations. People can also support Animals In Need and pick up a great bargain at the same time by shopping in the charity shop located in Donegal Town in the car park between Specsavers and Aldi. For those wishing to support in a more hands-on way, Information on adoption, fostering, volunteering etc is available by contacting the main helpline on 087 1356188. Enquiries about cats or kittens can be made by calling 087 7644420. The six-part eHealth Embark programme, now in its second year, offers technical and business support to startups and companies driving healthcare innovation. Dundalk / Dublin, Ireland. dConnect Digital Health Innovation Hub and the Connected Health and Wellbeing Cluster at Dundalk Institute of Technology announce the launch of eHealth Embark 2023. The all-Island startup programme offers early-stage digital health startups access to business and technical support via the dConnect Digital Health Innovation Hub and the Connected Health & Wellbeing Cluster. dConnect and CHW Cluster are based in Dundalk Institute of Technology and offer business training, mentoring and consultancy to Digital Health startups as well as connectivity with the healthcare ecosystem. The ten week programme will include hands-on guidance and support to help startups drive innovation in the healthcare industry. dConnect and the CHW Cluster will provide mentoring and specialist Masterclasses ranging from customer discovery and validation, through to assessing market opportunity, and mapping funding and growth steps. Participants will have access to clinical, regulatory, funding, and business expertise to support the development of innovative product roadmaps and pathways to market. At the final showcase on May 25th 2023, participants will pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. A winner will be selected and awarded up to $100,000 in AWS credits, and access to free hotdesking at Dundalk IT. All eHealth Embark participants will receive $2,000 in AWS credits.As part of the programme, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will provide participants with technical training and support to help them leverage the latest cloud technologies such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more. This will include one-to-one sessions, and tailored workshops on topics ranging from procurement to Amazons culture of innovation, including their Working Backwards approach. Alumni from eHealth Embark 2022, overwhelming endorsed the programme saying that it accelerated their business development, introduced them to new customers and markets, and provided the technical support to develop products that meet healthcare procurement requirements. Stephen Geoghegan, founder of Cymantic Medical who won the competition in 2022, said: Winning this award means a lot to our whole team. Developing a new medical device and bringing it to market can take a long time and be a very tentative process, so receiving this kind of validation is a source of great motivation and encouragement for us, especially considering the expertise on the judging panel which included the HSE Digital Transformation unit, Atlantic Bridge Ventures, Health Innovation Hub Ireland, and AWS International Healthcare lead. The AWS credits weve been awarded give us access to powerful cloud computing resources that can now accelerate the development of our technology, which, we believe, can have a major impact for cancer patients and healthcare providers. "The tangible supports weve received, and will continue to receive, from AWS and the team at Dundalk IT will also undoubtedly go a long way in helping us to reach that goal. Startups interested in applying for the programme should submit applications via www.ehealth-embark.ie. The deadline for applications is February 26th 2023. The programme will be delivered online and in person between March 20th and May 19th 2023 with in-person events hosted at AWS offices in Dublin. Carl Power, Director of the dConnect Digital Health Innovation Hub said: We look forward to supporting another cohort of digital health startups and building on the success of last year participants. We see this as a great opportunity to support early innovation targeting the healthcare sector and ensure that Ireland is at the forefront of this rapidly expanding sector. We are excited to collaborate once again with AWS, a global cloud computing provider that is well positioned in the global healthcare and life sciences industry both across Ireland and around the world. Breanndan Casey is the manager of the Connected Health and Wellbeing Cluster at DkIT which encourages and facilitates increased collaboration between industry, academia, healthcare providers, and enterprise support agencies. He stated: This programme will specifically look at healthcare challenges, and is a great example of cluster members, including dConnect, working with industry to advance the sector. "AWS support will ensure hands-on input to developing robust and scalable technical solutions that clearly address identified healthcare needs. We invite applications from across the island of Ireland. Aidan Browne, Head of Innovation & Business Development at DkIT is encouraging relevant companies to complete the online application or to contact Carl or Breanndan directly to discuss their business idea. The CHW Cluster and dConnect have strong support from industry and healthcare. "DkIT has a longstanding reputation as a leader in healthcare, digital health and regulated medical software, and we look forward to working with AWS and a strong cohort of participants. The 16th Brigid of Faughart Festival will be launched Thursday 19th January at 6.15pm in the County Library, Dundalk, The festival celebrates Brigid as Pre-Christian Goddess, Christian Saint and wise woman of the 21st Century. It also celebrates the ancient festival of Imbolc, announcing the beginning of Spring. o came together in 2008, with the vision of recovering and offering the wisdom of Brigid and the values that she embodied, in ways relevant to our contemporary society. The theme for this years festival is Brigid- Pre-Christian Goddess, Celtic Saint and Wise Guide for the 21st century. This unique modern festival offers a range of exciting and creative events through which four different, yet interrelated aspects of Brigid, Earth Woman, Healer, Poet/Artist and Spiritual Teacher, are explored. The events create opportunities to learn from the wisdom of Brigid, who is an expression of the divine feminine, within the Irish spiritual and mythological narrative. The Brigid of Faughart Festival explores ancient spiritual traditions through myth, landscape, folklore, spiritual customs, visual arts, poetry, music and dance. The emphasis of this festival is to revisit and reclaim the richness of the traditions associated with Brigid of Faughart, in ways which are relevant to our lives in the 21st century. A deeper underlying aim of the festival is to act as a catalyst for the recovery of the presence of the feminine energy and the Divine feminine within our daily lives. The festival has many exciting events including The annual Pilgrimage Walk from Dundalk to Faughart, The Welcoming back of Brigid at Imbolc at Faughart Oratory, Healing Day, talks and workshops in the County Library and An Tain Arts Centre, and Closing Ritual in Ravensdale Community Centre. These events are sure to stimulate your interest in the ancient yet relevant spirituality available to support us humans at this time of intense change and transformation. The Festival will take place in Faughart, Dundalk and Ravensdale, Co. Louth between Sunday Jan 29th and Monday 6th Feb 2023 For the full programme of events, please see www.brigidoffaughart.ie bookings through An Tain Arts Centre www.antain.ie Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe has apologised following a controversy over his 2016 election expenses telling the Dail he sincerely regrets the role he played in it. Honesty and integrity matter above all in public life, and Im very sorry that this has happened, he told TDs during a short statement. The Fine Gael TD gave an eight-minute statement at 5pm before short statements were made by the opposition. Over the weekend, it emerged that Mr Donohoe had not declared a payment made by an individual businessman Michael Stone to six people to hang up election posters ahead of the 2016 general election. He said that six people were paid by an individual to hang up posters over four dates during the campaign, both before and after polling day, with the work done before polling day valued at 917 euro. He said he was not aware before a full review in December, following a recent complaint to ethics watchdog Sipo, that the workers had been paid in a personal payment by Mr Stone. He also admitted that he should have amended his election expenses in 2017 after he became aware that a corporate van had been used to hang the posters up, which he has estimated to be worth 140 euros. Neither myself nor any of my campaign team intentionally misinformed Sipo or knew that a form was incorrectly submitted to them at that time, he told the Dail on Wednesday. In light of the information that has now been made available to me, I have taken the steps to address the issue as fully as I can. I also want to provide as much additional information as I can to the house. Mr (Michael) Stone has made no donations to me personally. However, in 2020 and 2021, Mr Stone made a donation to Fine Gael by the purchase of superdraw tickets which (were) sold by me. The donation was to the Fine Gael party centrally and within the legal limits. It is not required to be disclosed, however, as stated, I want to be fully transparent to the house. In 2020 it was five tickets, with a donation value of 334 euro, and in 2021 was 22 tickets, with a donation value of 1,382 euro. He added: Mr Stone is a man of the very highest standards. He has spent much of his life giving back to the community from which he came and I am obviously also so proud to represent. He has done so much for the north-east inner city, and I, Ceann Comhairle, am so sorry that he has become involved in this matter of public interest. Mr Donohoe said he was aware of a complaint to the ethics watchdog Sipo and as a result he said he would not be commenting on this matter again after Wednesday evening. He told Dail Eireann: I am conscious that there is a complaint to that commission, who will decide what steps, if any, need to be taken. And Ceann Comhairle, I will engage and co-operate fully with any process that they undertake in this matter, and to avoid any undue influence in that process following todays questions, I wont be commenting further. I have worked tirelessly in any public office that I have held. I have always been committed to the public interest, to the common good. Honesty and integrity matter above all in public life, and Im very sorry that this has happened. I sincerely regret this situation and the role I played. Sinn Fein finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said Mr Donohoes story didnt stack up. He told the Dail: You are trying to take us for fools with these concocted stories. Labour TD Ged Nash told the Dail that Paschal Donohoe was selling a narrative that suited his own ends. He added: Lets stop the pretence that this was not a corporate donation. One might think that there is an effort going on retrospectively to regularise an irregular situation. Roisin Shortall, co-leader of the Social Democrats, called on the minister to answer questions as they were being asked. Concluding the debate, Mr Donohoe said he was not making light of the controversy. He said: Many questions have been put to me on points of detail which I have done my best to answer in the submission which has now been provided to Sipo. Amid angry scenes, Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fhearghail repeatedly threatened to suspend the House. The ministers statement followed a request from the opposition party whips for him to address Dail Eireann at the earliest opportunity, which was granted by Ceann Comhairle. The latest row comes after the resignation of Damien English as junior enterprise minister following revelations that he did not declare already owning a property in a planning application to Meath County Council. Government ministers have backed Mr Donohoe, arguing that he has explained his actions sufficiently and that the matter now lies with Sipo. Responsibilities for ethics legislation and for the ethics watchdog Sipo, which fall under Mr Donohoes department, are being transferred to the minister for finance Michael McGrath. AI-generated art has been becoming more and more popular as of late, and it's been the source of countless artists' concerns since it might put them out of business. Three artists have decided to step up and filed a class action suit believing that AI art tools have finally crossed the line. Artists vs. Machines The artists in question are Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz. Andersen is behind "Sarah's Scribbles," McKernan makes illustrations for comic books and games, and Ortiz is a concept artist who has done work for Marvel Film Studios. The group filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence art generators like Stability AI, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DreamUp, which is a new AI art generator launched by the art-centric social networking site DeviantArt. The artists claimed that the companies used billions of internet images to train their AI including the works of those who filed the lawsuit, according to Polygon, and they did so without the consent and compensation of the artists. For instance, Stable Diffusion trained using LAION-5B, which holds 5.85 billion text-images which are from sources like Flickr, DeviantArt, Wikimedia, and Pinterest. DeviantArt and Pinterest alone are majorly made up of artworks from individual artists. They also added that the companies benefit and profit from the use of copyrighted images and that the harm it brought to artists was no longer hypothetical. AI generators have already sold works online, taking away commissions from artists who create art with hard work. Attorney Matthew Butterick is in the corner of the artists and filed the suit. Butterick works with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm based in California. The plaintiffs want a jury trial and are seeking unspecified damages, reports say. The lawsuit may prove to be difficult, seeing as this area of copyright is fairly new to the law. The companies behind the AI generators may be protected by the fair use doctrine, making it difficult to determine whether or not the AI artworks are derivative of the images it was based on. Stable AI does believe that it falls under fair use. The company's spokesperson expressed that they take the matters seriously. They also stated that anyone who believes that it wasn't fair use does not understand technology and the law. Read Also: Guillermo del Toro Expresses Disdain Toward AI Art Not the First Instance This wasn't the first time that AI-generated art caught the ire of artists and the public. Back in September 2022, an artwork made using Midjourney won the Colorado State Fair art competition under the digital art category. Created by Jason Allen from Pueblo West, "Theatre D'opera Spatial" was the first artwork created using artificial intelligence to win the contest. Artists have accused him of cheating and faced backlash from artists and others online. Allen said in defense that he did not hide the fact that he used AI since it was submitted under "Jason M. Allen via Midjourney." He believes that he did not break any rules and will not apologize for them, as mentioned in The New York Times. Related: Adobe Sets Guidelines For AI Stock Art gettyimagesbank By Yoon Ja-young Wage-earning foreign workers should settle year-end taxes just like Korean workers, the tax agency said Wednesday. The agency is providing various materials to support them in filing their taxes, including a short video guide with English, Chinese and Vietnamese subtitles. According to the National Tax Service (NTS), all foreign employees should settle year-end taxes for 2022 the same way as Korean employees no later than the date on which wages for February this year are paid. They can submit their report of income deduction and tax credit as well as supporting documents to their employer, instead of directly to the tax office. Based on the finalized income tax for their wages and salaries received over the past year, employees will either pay more income tax or receive a tax rebate for overpaid income taxes during the past year. The NTS noted that there are special taxation regulations that apply only to foreigners, such as the application of the 19 percent flat tax rate, an income reduction and an exemption for foreign engineers. However, because foreign residents do not qualify as the head of a household in accordance with the Resident Registration Act, they are not eligible for an income deduction for savings in housing purchases among housing-related deductions, it added. The number of foreign workers who settled their year-end taxes has been increasing between 2017 and 2019, but dropped 7.3 percent to 505,000 in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the amount of year-end taxes reported by foreign employees increased 12.2 percent to 1.08 trillion won. Among foreign employees who filed year-end tax settlements last year, 37.5 percent were Chinese nationals, followed by Vietnamese at 8.1 percent, Nepalese at 5.5 percent, Americans at 4.9 percent and Cambodians at 4.6 percent. The tax agency added that it provides information to foreigners through various channels to make it more convenient for foreign workers to settle their year-end taxes. They can check the "Easy Guide to Year-end Tax Settlement" provided on the NTS English website or call the NTS English hotline for foreign taxpayers at 1588-0560, for more detailed information on year-end tax settlements. This year, the agency also started providing a short video guide to the year-end tax settlement, available with English, Chinese and Vietnamese subtitles, through YouTube and the NTS English website. "We will continue to further improve the year-end tax settlement filing and support system for foreign workers," the NTS noted. ACTOR, director, writer and part-time lecturer at MTU Cork School of Music (CSM), Ciaran Bermingham forsook playing the dame in the Everyman pantomime this Christmas so he could direct a play. Up until 2021, Ciaran played the comic panto role for the past seven years and says it was hard to decide to not tread the boards this time around. Instead he took up the chance to direct a play starring the final year students of the BA in Theatre and Drama Studies at CSM. Ciaran said he couldnt have taken on both gigs, as one of them would have suffered. But directing the final year students is an opportunity he felt he couldnt pass up. Regina Crowley usually directs the final year production while Ciarans job at the college is working with the Musical Theatre Degree students. But Regina is writing a book so she wasnt available. Ciaran Bermingham, left in Aladdin. He has played the dame in the Everyman panto for the past seven years. Picture: Miki Barlok I was thrilled to be asked, says Ciaran, who adds that the Everyman and its panto director, Catherine Mahon-Buckley, were very understanding and agreed that he ought to direct the play at CSM. The play, which is open to the public, will be performed at the Stack Theatre at CSM from tomorrow, January 18, until January 21. Sophie Motley, artistic director at the Everyman, recommended that Ciaran read The Wonderful World Of Dissocia by Anthony Neilson when he was looking around for a play with a big cast to produce with the students. I thought it was the maddest thing Id ever read in my life. The students thought it was equally mad but with a brilliant story. Its basically Alice Through The Looking Glass for adults. The play challenges the audience to confront the worst of human tendencies and maladies but with tenderness. Cast and crew of 'The Wonderful World of Dissocia' opening at the Cork school of music on January 18-21, directed by Ciaran Bermingham. Lisa Montgomery Jones (played by Niamh Fennessy) feels her life is out of balance, which is affecting her relationships. When she is visited by a mysterious man to report on her watch that has been running slow, she is shocked to find that its not the watch which is behind time. The man reveals Lisa has lost an hour causing her to feel out of balance. He advises that the hour can be traced back to a land called Dissocia. Lisa must travel there to retrieve it. Her apartment becomes an elevator that transports her to this strange new land. On her travels, she encounters security guards, a singing polar bear, a scapegoat and some time-flies. They are all desperate to prevent her from finding her hour so they can keep her in Dissocia. The play, which has a cast of 18, is both whimsical and disturbing. Its also brave for treading on taboo territory mental illness and rape never fearing to use both humour and brutality to goad the audience to think and empathise. Ciaran, whose varied career includes playing Mord in Game of Thrones as well as starring in a host of plays and writing the award-winning short film, Conversations With My Dead Father, is lecturing on the BA course at CSM that he graduated in three years ago. Asked why he decided to study for the BA, Ciaran says: I always felt that because I hadnt ever studied theatre, I was missing out. Was there something I didnt have in my tool box that I needed? Also, I was looking down the road. As I was getting older (he is 56), I wondered if I could keep up the travelling and the touring or would I like a job in a college? And get paid every month instead of having to hustle for something. Ciaran playing Mord in Game of Thrones. Working with students excites Ciaran. As the elder lemon in the room, Im excited about the young talent thats coming up. The production crew includes PhD student, Caitlin Kelly who is doing the sound design, and the original music is composed by MA student, Zack Boland. Aoife Higgins from the MTU Crawford College of Art and Design designed the poster. I tried to reach out to as many people as I could within the arts community. Caitlin did the soundscape for my last play, The Jean Genie Lives in an Aquarium, which I wrote myself. Ciaran, who left a secure job in Musgraves more than 20 years ago to pursue a career in the world of theatre, has no regrets. He sings the praises of his wife, Michelle, who encouraged her husband to follow his dream. They have two daughters, Alex (27) and Lily (22). Alex is in London working for West End producer, Sonia Friedman. A junior producer, Alex has worked on The Book of Mormon and is currently working on a theatrical production of To Kill A Mocking Bird. Lily is in her final year studying pharmacology at UCC. Lily is the one who saw the light and got sense, going after a real job. Shell look after me in my old age! said Ciaran. But for him, the world of performance and writing interests him intensely. Conversations With My Dead Father is currently on the transatlantic Aer Lingus flight to the States. Theres Brad Pitt and his film and me with my film, so Im in good company. Lecturing part-time allows Ciaran to have balance in his working life. Whats brilliant is that a gigging actor is coming in to help with the lecturing. Its very important for the students to meet actual actors and see what life as an actor is like. Living in Cork means that Ciaran has always had to do some travelling for work. Ive been lucky in my career. I think Im a good actor but Ive been lucky with the breaks I got. Doing Game of Thrones opened doors for me that would never have otherwise opened. Ciaran says that in Ireland, were brutal for thinking if someone gets work somewhere else, they must be good, so theyll then hire them. Its that thing tht further fields are greener. A lot of students go to London to do a degree in theatre studies and drama, and musical theatre. But they dont have to go to London any more. You have it here in Cork. One big home-grown success story that Ciaran was involved with was The Young Offenders. He played the sergeant in both the film and the TV series, and says theres rumours that it may come back, but wont say anymore. There was a time in Ciarans career when he supplemented it with taxi-driving. He would come off the stage of the Cork Opera House where he was in I, Keano and would go off driving his cab. Some people that Id be dropping home would be talking about how great the show was, he says. Ciaran never disclosed that he was in the show. Driving a taxi gave him material to write a show about the diary of a taxi driver with Cork-born actor and writer, Ray Scannell. Its still there, but thankfully, weve both been so busy that we havent had time to put it on. Ciaran is writing a screenplay for a feature film about family dynamics. Ill concentrate on that in the summer when Im off college. Hopefully, it will go into production in 2024. There is interest in the script already based on a first draft that Ive put out there. Ive sent off an application for funding for it. The plan is to do more directing and writing, as well as lecturing. I absolutely love lecturing. We owe it to the next generation to get them ready for whats to come. I went into this industry knowing nothing, says Ciaran, who says he is still learning, including from his students. The Wonderful World Of Dissocia runs at the Stack Theatre, MTU Cork School of Music from January 18 to 21. You can book tickets on: https://events.cit.ie/ GARDAI have identified a man whose remains were found last week in a north Cork house after laying there for what is believed to have been over two decades. The mans skeletal remains were discovered by Cork County Council workers in the bedroom of a boarded-up, single-storey terraced house on Beecher Street in Mallow last Friday. Items of food in the fridge in the house had expiry dates of 2001, indicating the mans remains had remained undetected in the house for over 20 years. It is understood, that having got a positive match with dental records relating to the last registered owner of the property, gardai are confident that the remains are those of a man who bought the house in 1989. However, Gardai were tonight not in a position to release the man's name. It is understood he is from Kerry, and he lived for several years in the UK before returning to Ireland. Some of his neighbours had assumed that his apparent disappearance from his home had been due to his returning to the UK, or to his being again hospitalised. A garda spokesperson told The Echo on Tuesday evening: Following the discovery of a body in a house in Mallow, Co. Cork on 13th of January 2023, an investigation has been carried out by Gardai and the remains have been identified. An Garda Siochana are now in the process of contacting the family members of the deceased, including family who are residing overseas. The spokesperson said An Garda Siochana was working with the family of the deceased in relation to the release of any personal details of the deceased. After the remains were discovered on Friday, they were removed to the morgue at Cork University Hospital where the Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margot Bolster carried out a post-mortem which confirmed that the man had not died a violent death or been the victim of foul play. THIS is the time of year when a lot of people are getting colds and flus and may have to take time off work. Today, we are going to look at what support is available if you find yourself in a situation where you have to take time off work due to illness. Q: Can you clarify what rights to paid sick leave that employees have? A: It may surprise some of your readers to hear that until this year, 2023, you had no legal right to be paid while you were on sick leave from work, no matter how long you had worked for your employer. However, this has changed. Since January 1, 2023, you have a right to three days sick pay a year. This is called statutory sick pay (that means the legal minimum). Sick pay is paid by your employer at 70% of your normal pay up to a maximum of 110 a day. The entitlement to paid sick leave is being phased in over 4 years: 2023 - 3 days covered 2024 - 5 days covered 2025 - 7 days covered 2026 - 10 days covered Sick days can be taken as consecutive days or non-consecutive days. The sick pay year is the calendar year, so it runs from January 1 to December 21. Q: Is every person who is in employment entitled to sick pay? A: To qualify for statutory sick pay, you must be an employee and have worked for your employer for at least 13 continuous weeks before you are sick - thats about three months. You must also be certified by a GP as unable to work Q: Does this mean that the employee needs a medical cert to get sick pay? A: Yes - under the sick leave legislation, you must be certified by a GP as unable to work to qualify for statutory sick pay. You should be certified from day one of your sick leave. You have a right to SSP (statutory sick pay) from the first day you are off sick. Your employer cannot apply waiting days before you get sick pay. Q: How is the sick pay calculated? Your statutory sick leave payment must be paid at your normal daily rate. You are entitled to 70% of your normal gross pay, up to a maximum 110 a day. Q: Some employers may already have a sick pay scheme - how does this new scheme impact on those situations? Yes, some employers already pay sick leave and may already offer their employees more generous sick pay arrangements than the new statutory scheme. These would normally be outlined within your contract of employment. However, the important point to note is that any companys sick leave scheme cant be less than the statutory amount. Q: What are my options if I experience problems getting sick pay? A: If you do not get statutory sick pay, contact your employer to try to resolve the issue informally first. If you cannot resolve the issue directly with your employer, you can make a formal complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). Contact your local Citizens Information Centre for information on how to make a complaint to the WRC You must make your complaint within six months of the dispute. The time limit can be extended for a further six months if there is reasonable cause for the delay. Q: This new statutory sick pay scheme provides sick pay for a limited number of days e.g. three days in 2023. What happens if I am off sick for more than three days? A: If you are off work sick for more than three days, and you have enough PRSI contributions, you can apply to the Department of Social Protection (DSP) for a payment called Illness Benefit. If you do not have enough PRSI contributions, you should contact the DSPs representative at your local health centre. They will assess your situation and you may have entitlement to Supplementary Welfare Allowance which is means-tested. The South Munster Citizens Information telephone lines in Cork city are monitored from 10am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday. In addition, the Cork City Centre CIC in Cornmarket Street is open to the public from 10am to 12.30pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays, while the Blackpool CIC is open to the public each morning from 10am to 1pm, Monday to Friday. Full details for all Citizens Information Centres and their opening times are available on their website https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/ Olivia Kelleher A former Fianna Fail councillor who was charged with the harassment of a female in Cork city last year will have to wait until March for directions in the case from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Joseph ODonovan, formerly known as Gary OFlynn, appeared before Cork District Court on Wednesday after being charged in August last year with one count of harassment. The alleged offence occurred on three dates between July 30th and August 6th, 2022, in Cork city. Dt Sgt Katrine Tansley previously gave evidence of the arrest, charge and caution of the 47-year-old. She said the accused made no reply when the charge was put to him under caution at the Bridewell Garda Station in Cork city. The alleged offence is contrary to Section 10 of the Non Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997. On Wednesday at the court Sgt Pat Lyons applied for a further adjournment of the case until March 1st to allow for DPP directions. Defence solicitor Frank Buttimer said his client had turned up in court on every occasion and was under restrictive bail conditions since last August. Mr Buttimer said it was a relatively straightforward case and that he couldnt understand the delay in relation to DPP directions. Judge Olann Kelleher adjourned the case to March 1st. Mr O'Donovan was remanded on bail until his next court appearance. The former councillor must adhere to certain stringent bail conditions pending his next court appearance. Mr ODonovan must remain out of the area of Cork city centre except for medical or legal appointments. He must stay away from specific streets in Cork city. Mr ODonovan was also previously ordered to abstain from all intoxicants in public and to sign on three times a week at Gurranabraher Garda Station on the northside of Cork city. He must also reside at his home in Melvindale House, Coolowen, Blarney, Co Cork. Mr ODonovan must have no contact, direct or indirect, with the alleged injured party in the case. This also applies to social media. He also must obey a curfew from 10pm to 7am daily. Mr ODonovan is the son of former TD Noel OFlynn, who served in the constituency of Cork North Central from 1997 until his retirement in 2011. Joseph ODonovan, when he was known as Gary OFlynn, was a sitting councillor in Cork city from 2003 to 2008. He took his fathers old seat on the council in 2003 when the dual mandate ban came in to force. He concluded his political career five years later with his seat going to his brother, Ken, who has held a seat ever since. Ken O'Flynn is an independent councillor on the northside of Cork city. IF artists arent given opportunities to show their work, they dont stand a chance. The truth is that the art world is often dominated by very confident personalities. Im very conscious of that and in this exhibition there are some brilliant yet unassuming female artists who deserve a platform. So says Dermot Browne, who is the curator of an exciting new all-female exhibition at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane, running throughout January and up until February 23. The exhibition is called New Yin Art, Yin being the ancient Chinese term for the feminine, the life force of receptivity. Young Yin in Chinese Geomancy refers to something that is coming into being, and NEW YIN ART is a celebration of a range of diverse works that have both recently come into being. It also investigates being and change as fundamental elements of the creative process. The exhibition itself came into being following a networking event in Dublin organised by Visual Artists Ireland in late November, 2022. Speed Curating Its a lot like speed dating, Browne explains, but its with artists and curators. You get ten minutes to chat and connect with someone. It was great but, walking away, I wondered if anything ever comes from these events, so I decided I would go and make something concrete happen in the short-term. Artist Eadaoin Glynn with exhibition Curator Dermot Browne at the opening of the group exhibition New Yin, featuring 12 female artists at the Firkin Crane, Cork. Picture; David Creedon Browne was inspired by the artists he met. I connected with lots of interesting and innovative female artists so that gave me the idea to do an all-female exhibition. Some of the people Id only ever seen online, but I wanted to take the work offline and connect artists together. I hadnt met Frances Donnelly Jung for instance. She knew Ciara Gormley online and met her for the first time in person at the launch. It was very special as people were meeting artists theyd been following on Instagram or whatever. Everybody was connecting the names with the faces and the work. Artist Sachiko Kobayashi with her origami display at the opening of the group exhibition New Yin which continues at the Firkin Crane, until February. The show brings together local and international, emerging and established female artists. The curator was surprised by how well the idea of having an all-female exhibition was received. Its not a big thing for me. Im not necessarily interested in separating male and female artists, and Ive never done anything like this before, but it was an opportunity to put these women forward. To be honest, I didnt even know some of them were women. Take the Taiwanese artist Yuan-Wen Wang, when I originally knocked on her door in Barcelona a couple of years back, I thought she was a guy! Artist Maggie Magee. Browne emphasises the striking use of colour across the exhibition. As an artist myself, Im really quite jealous of the freedom with which some of these women work. The way they use colour is wonderful. Cork-based artist Eadaoin Glynn, for instance, is doing very brave work with colour. Pauline Flynns work is as good as anything out there. Theres a lot of great work here. Cork visitors familiar with Glynns work will spot three pieces from her in the exhibition space and another large-scale piece hanging behind the reception in the foyer. The exhibition covers the back walls of the studio on the ground floor. All but one piece is available to purchase. Artist Frances Donnelly Jung, who is one of the 12 female artists showcasing their work in the group exhibition. Artists featured include ACW alumni Leila Anglade alongside An-Wen Wang, Eadaoin Glynn, Sachiko Kobayashi, Olga Evenden, Maggie Magee, Pauline Flynn, Frances Donnelly Jung, Bennie Reilly and Marija Kolmanic. Marija Kolmanic, a Croatian artist living in Dublin, was thrilled to be invited to exhibit two pieces in the exhibition. She met Dermot at the speed curating event and was surprised by how quickly the exhibition came around. I am really so grateful and delighted. Usually, you are asked to fill in a lot of forms to get your work shown so the invitation from Dermot meant a lot to me. I have lived in Dublin for eight years where I work as a professional artist. I do a lot of work with online galleries. This is my second time having work shown in a physical exhibition. She is delighted with the results and is proud to have her work alongside that of other emerging and more experienced artists. Everybody is so unique in how they work but there is a connection between the artists too. They are all abstract female artists. The work is not realistic; it is more intuitive in form and there is a great deal of colour. Kolmanics piece Windy Life is certainly full of colour and movement. She explains her process: It is actually the palette that I used when painting something else, both of my pieces are palettes. My mother hung some of my palettes on her wall, alongside my paintings and she made me realise how present and powerful they are. Its like the colours are working on their own without much of my input. "It is as if they are speaking to each other. Its interesting because something I put no effort into became what I wanted to exhibit. Artist Ciara Gormley with her artwork ' Spring Green Canopy' at the opening of the group exhibition 'New Yin' that features twelve female artists at the Firkin Crane, Cork. - Picture; David Creedon The Riband Series Artist and poet Pauline Flynn, who is based in Wicklow, has had a very established career but stopped painting in 2008. She never closed her studio however and has since picked up the brush and easel again. She is extremely happy with the five pieces shes exhibiting in Cork. Her earlier work, while abstract, was painted on Japanese handmade paper (Washi) mounted on board. It was layered, textured and gestural but always with strong colour. This new work is on canvas, using flat colour, some pattern and explores geometric abstraction. The work forms a part of her Riband Series which began when she was invited by art curator Maurice Quillinan to be part of a group exhibition where the artists were asked to respond to an object in Limerick Museum. Pauline responded to the ribbons on a few Military Medals that were on display. When she returned from a group show in China at the end of 2019, she settled into the studio to commence her current work. (She was also selected for the 9th Beijing International Art Biennale in 2022.) Artist Barbara Kenneally. Five shapes define my work now and they keep on giving. I could continue working with these shapes forever, The pieces have also turned out to be quite modular in that they could all fit together. I have set myself a limit with these shapes and Im working within that. I have set my constraints and Im trying to stay there. My paintings have a starting point in the physical world and in these works, while staying within deliberately set limitations and geometric shapes, both curved and hard edged, plus flat colour and surface. I embrace any chance occurrences during the process of the development of the painting. Artist Maggie Magee. A Unique Space The exhibition is likely to get plenty of footfall as people attend different events in the building. Curator Dermot Browne is delighted with this space at Dance Cork Firkin Crane and is grateful to Executive Artistic Director Laurie Uprichard and the team for making it all happen. It is such a unique space. I mean, its a dance centre, and I think it works very well. Its more casual because its a multi-purpose space. It has a community feel to it because, unlike traditional gallery spaces, people are coming in and out of the room for a variety of reasons. https://dermotbrowne.squarespace.com/ https://dancecorkfirkincrane.ie/ 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. Scientists have said that, in order to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, all or almost all of coal burning must cease by 2050. Yet in 2022, China produced a record amount of coal at 4.496 billion tonnes, which is nine percent more than the year before, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data reported by Reuters. This isnt necessarily a surprise, as China joined Europe in emphasizing domestic energy security in the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine and the global energy crisis, even if that means relying on the dirtiest fossil fuel. We dont want to be like Europe and transform at the cost of energy security. They are now declaring that they are taking a step back in order to take two steps forward later, Tsinghua University climate change and energy professor Li Zheng said in November 2022, as OilPrice.com reported. China maintained at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt last year that it would maintain its goal of reaching peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2060. However, in the near term it has plans to build additional coal plants to protect against shortages, which could boost its capacity by 270 gigawatts by 2025, more than the current coal capacity of the U.S. In March of 2022, national leaders reaffirmed the importance of coal for energy security during the annual meeting of parliament, as Reuters reported. This was partly in response to 2021 power outages in the countrys industrial hub. Reinvigorated emphasis on energy security emerged late last year and it will become stronger now with the crisis in Ukraine, Greenpeace senior climate adviser Li Shuo said at the time, as Reuters reported. Then, in one of the cruel ironies of the climate crisis, a summer heat wave and drought hit the countrys hydroelectric output hard, leading it to increase coal outputs and imports, as CNN reported at the time. The daily burning of thermal coal reached a record high of 8.5 million tonnes on August 3. While 2022 was a record year for coal production overall, output did decline towards the years end. This was because the Chinese government abandoned its zero-COVID strategy at the end of November, Reuters explained. The loosening of restrictions led to a sharp uptick of COVID cases among both coal miners and factory workers, leading to reduced output in the mines and reduced demand from industry. In November, coal output was at 13.04 million tonnes per day. It then declined to 12.99 million tonnes per day in December, close to the 12.41 million tonnes of coal produced in December 2021. Lower coal demand is expected to last through January, but the relaxed restrictions are projected to eventually increase coal demand from the steel, cement and other sectors. At the same time, mining output should increase because the National Development and Reform Commission has encouraged utilities to lengthen the term of mining contracts in the new year. Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un / Korea Times file Entering into politics was Kim Yo-jong's own decision despite opposition, author claims By Jung Min-ho Who will succeed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un if something suddenly happened to him? This has become one of the most frequently asked questions about the reclusive state since his health issues came to light three years ago. The book, authored by Yoshihiro Makino, former Seoul bureau chief of the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, provides no clear-cut answer to that question. However, it does provide some useful insights in that, given the opportunity, Kim Yo-jong is more than willing to take the mantle. She has always been ambitious and enjoys being at the center of public attention, he said. In the final months before his death, Kim Jong-il, her father, told Kim Yo-jong, that were she a man, she would succeed him, and she insisted she would participate in politics, according to "Kim Jong-un to Kim Yo-jong," published in Korea last month. The cover of "Kim Jong-un to Kim Yo-jong" by Yoshihiro Makino, former Seoul bureau chief of the Asahi Shimbun Papua New Guinea bans chicken imports from Asia and Australia Papua New Guinea's National Agriculture Quarantine Inspection Authority (NAQIA) has announced a directive to ban imports of fresh, frozen and chilled chicken, as well as chicken products, from Asia and Australia due to a biosecurity risk, Loop reported. Joel Alu, managing director for NAQIA, said importers are only permitted to import chicken from New Zealand. Alu said that the Papua New Guinea government has instructed importers and the general public to stop bringing in fresh, frozen, and chilled chicken through Circular Number 01-2023. He said that the country's Poultry Industry Association had expressed concern to the government via the Minister of Agriculture regarding the biosecurity risk associated with the import of fresh, frozen, and chilled chicken as well as chicken products from Australia and Asia. Alu said all import permits from all nations other than New Zealand have been terminated as of January 6, 2023. He said that the ban would be in place indefinitely. - Loop Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Iowa, US, gets fresh boost of funds Five years after US lawmakers denied much of the $100 million that Iowa State University (ISU) sought for a new Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory which underpins US state Iowa's US$32.5 billion animal agriculture industry and aids in animal health emergencies, like the bird flu Governor Kim Reynolds committed another US$40 million on January 17 to the new lab. The money for the project which campus administrators broke into two phases after the legislature in 2018 approved only US$63.5 million of the request will come from Iowa's cut of the federal American Rescue Plan Act, which Reynolds opposed in 2021. In addition to the US$40 million in federal pandemic aid, Reynolds said her proposed 2024 state budget includes pulling another US$20 million from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund, which would bring the state's total support for the second phase to US$60 million. ISU had asked lawmakers to appropriate US$62.5 million toward the US$66.5 million second phase, with the university and donors contributing the balance. Combined with the first phase's US$75 million cost, which included the state's US$63.5 million contribution, both phases combine for a US$141.5 million total. ISU's original vision was a US$124 million, 150,000-square-foot stand-alone lab, made possible by US$100 million in state support. Should lawmakers approve the governor's budget proposal, the state's total contribution to the full project will reach US$123.5 million or US$83.5 million, excluding the US$40 million ARPA contribution announced. "The Veterinary Diagnostic Lab is absolutely critical to support and protect our state and country's agriculture industry and food supply," Reynolds said in a statement. "This investment will significantly expand the VDL's capacity to support Iowa's US$32.5 billion animal agriculture industry and will keep this nationally-recognised lab on the forefront of cutting-edge technology." Without the upgrades, the aging state lab that generates tens of million in revenue annually could have lost accreditation. "The space and structural limitations of this aging facility combined with the rapid growth of the laboratory will, in the opinion of this site team, limit the laboratory's ability to adequately respond to a large scale foreign animal disease outbreak," the American Association of Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory Diagnosticians reported in 2017, when it earned reaccreditation. Then-interim dean of the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine Pat Halbur in 2018 told lawmakers he was "very confident we won't get accredited again" without the new lab. "We were very fortunate to make it through this time," Halbur said. "We're doing what we can to hold this together." ISU's US$62.5 million appropriations ask for the state's phase II contributions spread the money over four years. Reynolds' budget splits her proposed US$20 million in state support in half with US$10 million in 2024 and US$10 million in 2025. "We are deeply grateful to Governor Reynolds for allocating these critical resources to construct phase 2 of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory," ISU president Wendy Wintersteen said in a statement. "This funding will help ensure the VDL can continue to provide cutting-edge services and support to Iowa's livestock and poultry producers." The ISU-based lab is accredited by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians and provides diagnostic services for animal species including necropsy, bacteriology, serology, histopathology, virology, parasitology, molecular diagnostics and toxicology. ISU in 2018 reported the lab in a typical year generates nearly US$32 million in revenue for the state spiking to more than US$100 million during animal health emergencies, like bird flu. Its faculty and staff have swelled from 11 faculty members and 20 staff in 1976 to about 25 faculty and 140 staff today working to process more than 115,000 diagnostic case submissions and more than 1.5 million diagnostic assays annually for livestock and poultry producers and pet owners and for wildlife. "Over the past 44 years, the limited footprint of the VDL has not kept pace with the growth in caseload and diagnostic medicine teaching needs," according to Board of Regents documents in September spelling out ISU's request. "New areas of disease and expertise have emerged, the breadth of diagnostic services provided to the livestock and poultry industries, wildlife, and pets has expanded substantially, opportunities to assist with providing testing to support public health (for example, COVID-19 testing) have evolved, and staffing has grown to meet client expectations associated with accessible, timely, accurate, valid and consistent test results." Iowa State has accommodated that growth "in an ad hoc manner." "There is a co-mingling of public and private, clean and dirty, noisy and quiet, public and secure functions," according to board documents. "Biosafety and biocontainment are compromised due to poor control of airflow, poor layout and non-optimal workflow patterns." The second phase of the new lab project will move all programmes under one roof, including laboratory testing and research space. "The Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory is enormously important to Iowa's nation-leading livestock industry and provides immeasurable expertise on worldwide animal health and food safety issues," Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said in a statement. "Our close partnership with the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab has been essential in implementing our response to the highly pathogenic bird flu outbreak and we rely on their team's recommendations as we enhance our preparedness for other foreign animal disease threats." - The Gazette A sign posted at a shopping mall in Seoul asks all visitors to wear protective masks in this Dec. 22, 2022 file photo. Yonhap The government will decide when to lift the indoor mask mandate this week, as the country is past the peak of the latest winter COVID-19 wave, Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said Wednesday. "With this winter's COVID-19 wave past its peak, the overall virus situation is stabilizing," Lee said during a government virus response meeting. Taking the virus situation and other external factors into account, the government will determine when and to what extent the indoor mask mandate would be adjusted during the next virus response meeting scheduled for Friday, the minister noted. Lee said the average daily new virus tally reached 42,938 last week, continuing the downward trend for the third consecutive week. The daily number of seriously ill patients reached 439 on average last week, the lowest point in five weeks. Interior Minister Lee Sang-min speaks during a government COVID-19 response meeting in Seoul, Jan. 18. Yonhap You are welcome here. When you join Eastern Michigan University, you will find opportunities for success both in the classroom and in the community. Whether you're joining us as an undergraduate student or a graduate student, our many programs and academic offerings will help you earn your future. And our dynamic campus communityonly 25 minutes from the Detroit International Airportwill help you find your true passion and your success. With no out-of-state tuition for undergraduate international students and significant scholarship opportunities for graduate international students, Eastern Michigan University is an affordable option for your study abroad experience. Learn more about Eastern Michigan University and why you should choose EMU for your education. Application Deadlines Undergraduate Graduate President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, and first lady Kim Keon Hee arrive at Zurich Airport in Zurich, Switzerland, Jan. 17. Yonhap President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived in Zurich, Switzerland, on Tuesday on a four-day visit that will include his attendance at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Yoon met with South Korean residents over dinner and will travel to Davos on Wednesday to meet with a group of CEOs from South Korean conglomerates and other leading multinational companies before delivering a special address at the WEF. The president is on the second leg of a two-nation tour that earlier took him to the United Arab Emirates for a state visit. "The new year 2023 brings many crises and challenges, but I am confident that joining forces with the international community based on the universal values of freedom, human rights and the rule of law is the path to protecting our national interest and achieving economic prosperity," Yoon said during the dinner with South Korean residents at a Zurich hotel. "In this era of science and technology competition, I will strongly push for cooperation in cutting-edge science and technology with leading technological nations like Switzerland that share with us the universal values," he said. Yoon's visit to Switzerland comes as the two nations celebrate 60 years since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations. During the meeting with a group of CEOs in Davos, Yoon is expected to discuss ways the government and the private sector can work together to overcome the complex global crisis and ensure sustainable growth. The CEOs will include Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung from among chiefs of South Korean conglomerates, as well as the CEOs of Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, JP Morgan and Sony. On Thursday, the president will give a special address to the forum and present ideas for international cooperation and solidarity for the strengthening of supply chains, the transition to clean energy and the construction of a digital order. Yoon plans to visit the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich the same day to meet with scholars and discuss cooperation in science and technology. (Yonhap) Oil and gas company Shell is buying electric vehicle charging operator Volta for $169 million through a subsidiary. The deal, which the companies expect to close in the first half of this year, amounts to 86 cents per share, around 18 percent more than Volta's closing price on Tuesday. Volta's board of directors approved the deal unanimously, though it still requires the green light from shareholders. It's subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions too. Shell will provide loans to Volta to give it a hand through the closing of the transaction. On September 30th , Volta had $15.6 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared with $262.2 million at the end of 2021. "While the EV infrastructure market opportunity is potentially enormous, Volta's ability to capture it independently, in challenging market conditions and with ongoing capital constraints, was limited," Volta interim CEO Vince Cubbage said in a statement . "Both Volta and Shell have a demonstrated ability to meet the changing needs of customers, and this acquisition will bring that experience together to provide the options that are needed as more drivers choose electric." The company has more than 3,000 charging stations across the US and a handful in Europe, typically at grocery stores and malls . For a few years, its DC fast charging stations were free to use for up to 30 minutes , with advertising and sponsorships helping to cover the costs. However, it shifted its DC fast chargers to a paid model last year. Volta's more than 2,000 L2 chargers are still free to use . After the deal closes, "there will be no immediate change in driver experience," the companies said. Subscribe to the Engadget Deals Newsletter Great deals on consumer electronics delivered straight to your inbox, curated by Engadgets editorial team. See latest Subscribe Please enter a valid email address Please select a newsletter By subscribing, you are agreeing to Engadget's Terms and Privacy Policy. TikTok is expanding its labels for state-run media accounts to more countries, including China The labels were previously only applied to accounts from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. TikTok is expanding its use of labels for state-run media accounts, the company announced. The app is now bringing the tags, which identify accounts run by organizations whose editorial output or decision-making process is subject to control or influence by a government, to dozens of markets. The company is relatively late to adopt such labels compared with most of its counterparts. YouTube added similar labels in 2018 , while Meta and Twitter adopted them in 2020. TikTok only began labeling state-run media accounts last March , following Russias invasion of Ukraine. But the labels, which the company described as a pilot, only applied to accounts from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Now, TikTok says it has formalized its policy and will begin applying our state-controlled media label in a phased approach, starting immediately with over 40 markets across multiple regions. And while the companys announcement doesnt name specific countries, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed the labels will appear on accounts run by Chinese state media outlets. TikTok Thats notable as TikTok has long been viewed with suspicion by lawmakers and government officials over concerns about the companys perceived ties to the Chinese government. Though TikTok has long pushed back on claims that its service could be a national security threat, the issue has proved to be a rare source of bipartisan agreement, and the app has recently been banned on federal government devices and some college campuses . Congress has also introduced bills for more sweeping bans , though their future is uncertain. Subscribe to the Engadget Deals Newsletter Great deals on consumer electronics delivered straight to your inbox, curated by Engadgets editorial team. See latest Subscribe Please enter a valid email address Please select a newsletter By subscribing, you are agreeing to Engadget's Terms and Privacy Policy. But by finally expanding its state-run media labels, TikTok can now claim its treating accounts affiliated with Chinese government entities the same as other state-controlled media organizations. Of course, the labels alone are unlikely to dispel critics suspicions of the company. TikTok has partnered with Oracle to review its recommendation and content moderation systems. Oracle has also partnered with the company on a broader effort, known as Project Texas , to restrict employees access to US user data. All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing. Europe's China-related travel measures should be non-discriminatory: spokesperson Xinhua) 13:59, January 18, 2023 BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- European countries' precautionary travel measures against China should be rooted in science, proportionate and non-discriminatory, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday. Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks in response to a relevant question at a daily press briefing. Wang said that, according to the WHO, the genome data of the virus prevalent in China share the composition of the sequences submitted by other countries which are collected from travelers arriving from China, and no new variant or mutation of known significance was noted. Wang cited WHO Regional Director for Europe as saying that the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants circulating in China have already been seen in Europe and elsewhere, and the situation in China is not anticipated to significantly impact the COVID-19 epidemiological situation in Europe. Wang said that, over the past three years since COVID began, almost all COVID variants and their sub-variants have been prevalent in the United States, which means it is one of the countries that host the largest number of COVID variants. According to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new variant XBB.1.5 is spreading rapidly in the United States and has become the fastest-spreading variant in the country, causing more than 43 percent of infections, the spokesperson said. The United States needs to fully share its domestic COVID information and data with WHO and the international community in a timely, open and transparent manner, and take concrete and effective measures to stop the virus from further spreading, Wang added. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) First lady Kim Keon Hee, left, tours the Museum of the Future in Dubai with Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, right, chairperson of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, Jan. 17. Yonhap First lady Kim Keon Hee met with a sheikha of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday and discussed cultural exchanges between the two countries, the presidential office said. A sheikha is a female member of a ruling Arab family, according to the office. Kim met with Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, chairperson of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, at the Museum of the Future in Dubai while accompanying President Yoon Suk Yeol on a state visit to the UAE. The sheikha is a daughter of UAE Vice President Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Kim noted that South Korea has yet to participate as a guest of honor in Dubai Design Week or other art and book fairs, saying she hopes for opportunities for South Korea and Dubai to "jointly open the future and develop through various cultural exchanges," senior presidential secretary for press affairs Kim Eun-hye said in a written briefing. The sheikha also expressed hope for continued cultural exchanges in various areas, the secretary said. How China is seeking to boost its falling birth rate China saw its population fall for the first time in six decades, marking the start of an expected long-term decline in citizen numbers with major economic consequences. Sesi doesnt merely put Black girls on our covers. We create content specifically for Black teen girls in every, single issue. Andrea Butler Putting more than one or two Black people on covers each year and having maybe one or two more articles that may relate to Black people inside a magazine isnt doing a good job covering that market. Andrea Butler Three years ago I wrote the following introduction to my interview with Andrea Butler, founder and publisher of Sesimagazine: Enthralled with magazines since she was a teenager, but frustrated by the lack of diversity when it came to the mainstream magazines she saw on newsstands as a girl, Andrea Butler vowed one day to start her own title for young black girls. Girls who really couldnt relate to the pages of Seventeen and Teen People that they were forced to read by default then. So, when she went to grad school for magazine journalism, her seriousness and long-time vow became more of a reality. But after graduation she strayed from her course for a few years, teaching and then editing for someone else, only to come back strong, creating her own title: Sesi Magazine. On a mission to fill that void in the mainstream media, one in which Andrea felt Black girls were virtually invisible, Sesi(a quarterly, print magazine for Black teen girls) celebrates them. A lot of things have changed since that original interview in 2019 and against all odds, and a pandemic, Sesi (and Andrea, I may add) toughed it out and is now celebrating the magazines 10th anniversary. On that occasion I reached out to Andrea again and asked her few questions about the magazine, the status of Black magazines, and the changes taking place in the magazine industry. So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Andrea Butler, editor in chief and founder, Sesi Magazine. Andrea Butler, founder and editor-in-chief, Sesi magazine. Samir Husni: Sesi is celebrating ten years of publishing, how do you describe the journey of the first decade? Andrea Butler: First of all, I cant even believe we can say decade its been quite the journey, and Id liken it to a roller-coaster. Thereve been many highs (landing cover interviews, getting on B&N and Books-A-Million newsstands, and meeting lots of amazing people) and many lows (funding/lack of advertising, mainly weve almost shut down two or three times, and we actually couldnt print our summer 2022 issue, the first time thats ever happened). Its also been a complete joy! Even through all the rough and stressful times, Ive loved working with our team to put together what is still the only print magazine for Black teen girls thats based in the U.S. S. H. : What has been the biggest stumbling block in the last decade and how were you able to overcome it? A. B.: Our biggest stumbling back has been (and continues to be) lack of funding/advertising. We havent exactly overcome it, but to keep the magazine going, we ask for donations (just $5 a month can help), and I work three freelance editing and writing jobs to help pay for magazine things. Its definitely a lot to juggle, but I make it work the best I can. S. H.: What has been the most pleasant moment in the last decade? A. B.: Ive had many favorite moments over the past decade, but if I have to pick one, Id probably say finally getting on newsstands after six years of trying. Besides that, meeting readers at meet-and-greets and even locally sometimes when Im running errands, as well as meeting librarians at conferences have been some of my favorite moments. Librarians have always understood the need for Sesi and have been soooo supportive. S. H. : The mainstream media have increased its coverage of African Americans in the last two years, has that helped or hindered Sesi and why? A. B.: This has neither helped nor hindered Sesi. Mainstream media may have put more Black people on their covers in recent years (which wasnt too hard, since before they were only doing one or two a year), but Sesi doesnt merely put Black girls on our covers. We create content specifically for Black teen girls in every, single issue. We dont do it for performative purposes or because Black people are trending. We cover the Black girls mainstream all year long. Mainstream magazines will never be able to do what Sesi does; they arent niche. S. H. : Some say there is no need anymore for a separate black magazine since the mainstream media is doing a good job covering that market. What say you and is there room for a black magazine in the time that such biggies as Ebony and Jet are gone? A. B.: I actually started laughing at since the mainstream media is doing a good job covering that market. Putting more than one or two Black people on covers each year and having maybe one or two more articles that may relate to Black people inside a magazine isnt doing a good job covering that market. I stand by what I said earlier: Mainstream magazines will never be able to do what Black magazines do, as Black magazines are specifically geared toward Black people and cover nothing but Black people. There will always be room for Black magazines like Sesi especially when racism, et al continue to run rampant in this country and the world. S. H. : What are the plans for the second decade of Sesi? A. B.: Our plans for decade two are to keep growing and finding new ways to bring in money in order to do that; well also be adding new columns and departments to the mag, as well as working more on our social media presence. Overall, though, were going to keep doing what weve been doing: covering the Black girls mainstream. S. H. : Please ask yourself a question and answer it A. B.: Q: Besides subscribing, how can people ensure Sesi sticks around for another 10 years? A: You can purchase copies at Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million, donate, or help spread the word by telling your friends and family about the mag! And, if you represent a brand that provides services or products relevant to Black teen girls, you can advertise with us. ?? S. H. : Any additional information you would like to add A. B.: Its been an honor and a blessing to be able to publish Sesi for the past 10 years, and I pray we can continue for many decades to come. The magazine means so much to our readers they tell us mainstream media doesnt do enough to cover them, they tell us how Sesi has helped them be more comfortable in their own skin and hair, they submit their poetry and short stories to us and are excited when theyre published, and they tell us, in general, how much it means to them to see girls who look like them on our covers and inside the magazine. Oh, and they make it known that they prefer print. Let me say that one more time: Our teen readers PREFER PRINT by 97%. S. H. : My typical last question, what keeps you up at night these days? A. B.: These days, Id say the funding aspect is definitely what still keeps me up at night. Thinking about the hundreds of brands (non-Black-owned and Black-owned) that Ive reached out to multiple times over the past decade that have told me they dont pay for advertising but could we just write about them and other such responses has been disappointing and frustrating. So, I do lie awake sometimes thinking up other ideas to raise funding thats ongoing from people and/or brands that truly value our readers and Sesis mission to those readers. (You can find ads from the three brands that currently do those things in our current issue.) S.H. : Thank you and all the best for the next decade of Sesi. Croatia Airlines has concluded a long-term lease for six new Airbus A220 aircraft with Air Lease Corporation (ALC), including for two A220-100s and four A220-300s. The aircraft are scheduled for delivery to the Croatian carrier at the beginning of 2024 and through 2025 from ALCs order book with Airbus. We are pleased to announce this lease placement for six new Airbus A220 aircraft with Croatia Airlines. ALC looks forward to a successful long-term relationship with Croatia Airlines as the airline modernises and expands its fleet with the newest and most fuel-efficient jets, Air Lease Corporations Executive Chairman, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, said. Croatia Airlines has concluded a long-term lease for six new Airbus A220 aircraft with Air Lease Corporation (ALC), including for two A220-100s and four A220-300s. The aircraft are scheduled for delivery to the Croatian carrier at the beginning of 2024 and through 2025 from ALCs order book with Airbus. We are pleased to announce this lease placement for six new Airbus A220 aircraft with Croatia Airlines. ALC looks forward to a successful long-term relationship with Croatia Airlines as the airline modernises and expands its fleet with the newest and most fuel-efficient jets, Air Lease Corporations Executive Chairman, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, said. Croatia Airlines placed an order with Airbus for six A220s in November but last month said it was still finalising financing options for the aircraft. An operating lease, such as the one concluded with Air Lease Corporation, was the most likely outcome taking into consideration the state of the companys finances. The airline also plans to lease an additional six A220 jets in 2025 and 2026, in order to operate a single-type fleet. The public will be informed in a timely manner upon the selection of the lessor for the remaining six aircraft with deliveries in 2025 and 2026, Croatia Airlines said. The carrier also has the option to add a further three A220s in 2027. Croatia Airlines A220-100s will have the capacity to seat 127 passengers, while the A220-300 will welcome 148 travellers. The A220s are expected to reduce Croatia Airlines operating costs as well as improve the companys environmental efficiency and competitiveness while improving passenger comfort. Croatia Airlines CEO, Jasmin Bajic, previously described the incoming aircraft as, The beginning of a new period of aviation, a new period in the life of Croatia Airlines, a new period for passengers, and a new period for Croatias tourism and economy as a whole. On the other hand, Airbus noted, The A220 is ideally suited to Croatia's aviation needs, providing operational flexibility and efficiency allowing its airline to pursue its ambition for both regional and international connectivity without compromising on any aspect, be it passenger comfort or trip and seat cost economics. Fairfield, MT (59436) Today Periods of snow. High 36F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 100%. About one inch of snow expected.. Tonight Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 18F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. GREAT FALLS, Mont. - It might seem like police departments around the nation are always hiring, and with more violent crime in the Electric City, the Great Falls Police Department (GFPD) is working to hire more people to combat the crime and serve the community. However, that's not as easy as it seems. It takes 371 days from the time an application is open with the police department to the time an officer is allowed to patrol the streets alone, and recently, GFPD has been struggling to get people in the door. "We saw in 2022 and half of 2021, about a 50% no show rate, meaning people who have applied for the police department, they've paid a fee and we still saw over 50% no show across the board for that initial test," said Lt. Doug Mahlum with GFPD. In the last testing cycle from September, more than 60 people applied to become an officer with GFPD. However, of those 60, only 8 showed up from testing, and only 4 passed. When advancing to the background testing phase, only one person passed. "The minimum standard of the state of Montana is much lower than what we hold to the Great Falls Police Department, meaning they've got to be good people. We vetted them. We know that they're fit to serve the public that we do. We live in. And it's super critical to us. We're not going to change that standard in any way, shape or form," said Mahlum. GFPD says right now they're down two officers and when people get sick or injured, it impacts them greatly. Lt. Mahlum has been with GFPD for a little over 21 years and says even with being short staffed, they've fortunately been able to keep things from impacting their work too much. "There's other communities in the state that you're waiting hours and hours, if not days, sometimes to get an officer to respond to that call, to those cold calls. We haven't gotten to that point... But the scary part of that is, is that the farther the busier the community gets and the fewer offers that we have, obviously, those call times are going to increase. Those cold calls are going to wait longer," said Lt. Mahlum. Lt Mahlum defines a cold call as a non-priority call (i.e. - vehicle broken into, vehicle vandalized, a burglary of a residence), something that isn't happening right then. Right now GFPD runs 3 squads a day to provide 24-hour patrols in Great Falls. Typically, a squad consists of 7 officers but with vacancies, injuries, illness, vacations, or other reasons, each squad is at 5 officers. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, is welcoming the end of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for the U.S. military. The record $847 billion defense budget passed in December included an end to coronavirus vaccine requirements for military personnel. The U.S. Defense Department implemented the vaccine mandates end earlier this month after and President Joe Biden signed the defense measure into law. President Bidens military vaccine mandate created an unnecessary national security risk which severely impacted our defense capabilities abroad and our state readiness here at home. Bidens vaccine mandate no longer applies to service members in the Montana National Guard, Gianforte said in a statement. Bidens military vaccine mandate never should have been implemented in the first place, and Im encouraged to see it ended once and for all, even if its woefully overdue. Gianforte joined other Republican governors and lawmakers in opposing the vaccine order for U.S. military members and other DOD personnel. They worried about impacts on National Guard troops and whether it would discourage volunteers and those working on natural disasters and security situations. As Governors, our ability to respond to natural disasters and conduct emergency operations is contingent upon the strength and size of our National Guard units. As congressional leaders, it is your duty to provide for the national defense, and therefore, we call upon you to protect the men and women in uniform who protect us from an unnecessary vaccine mandate, Gianforte and other vaccine mandate opponents wrote to federal lawmakers last year. In 2021, the Montana governor signed a first-of-its-kind law banning discrimination based on vaccination status. The law has faced legal challenges blocking its implementation. U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana, voted against the defense spending bill last month and worries about the end of the COVID vaccine mandate being temporary. A photo of Holland Lake in Montana (Fhoto by the U.S. Forest Service via Flickr | CC-BY-SA 2.0). A group that formed to fight a proposed expansion at Holland Lake Lodge is requesting the U.S. Forest Service make public the revised development proposal as soon as the agency receives the application. In a Jan. 13 letter, Save Holland Lake, the group that is contesting the expansion, said since the Flathead National Forest announced the first development proposal last fall, public involvement has been abbreviated and fraught with misinformation and obfuscation. To assist in restoring public trust, we are writing to request that you promptly notify and disclose to the public any new special-use application, Master Development Plan (MDP), or proposal to expand Holland Lake Lodge, reads the letter. It was addressed to Flathead Forest Supervisor Kurtis Steele, and expansion partners POWDR CEO Justin Sibley and Christian Wohlfeil of Holland Lake Lodge. In an email Tuesday, however, the Flathead National Forest said it wont immediately release a revised proposal. Rather, it will first review a new proposal, or MDP, to determine if it will be accepted. The review of the MDP is an internal process, said Beth Pargman, Flathead natural resource specialist, in an email. If the Forest Service accepts the revised proposal, it will then release it for public review. As of Tuesday, the Forest Service had not received a new expansion proposal, Pargman said. A POWDR spokesperson also said the company had not submitted a new one. Holland Lake Lodge is a resort that operates on public land in the Swan Valley with a special-use permit. In September 2022, the Forest Service announced a project to expand the lodge. Wohlfeil, who owned and managed the lodge for about 20 years, jointly submitted the plan with POWDR, an adventure life company based in Utah. In an earlier interview, Wohlfiel said his interest was in transferring the resort to POWDR because it shares his values of sustainability. However, the project immediately ran into significant opposition. Opponents argued putting more people at the lodge and extending its season would have negative effects on the pristine lake and on wildlife, like bull trout and grizzly bears. They also pushed back against the Forest Services initial decision to exempt the proposal from an environmental review a decision the agency has since reversed. In an email Tuesday, Pargman reiterated the agencys commitment to environmental scrutiny. If there is an expansion project proposed, Kurt has committed to going through an environmental assessment at a minimum, Pargman said of Forest Supervisor Steele. In late November, the Forest Service announced it had rejected the first expansion plan due in part to inaccurate and inconsistent information. Members of the public had identified inaccuracies, such as the acreage allowed. The proposal had said the footprint would remain the same at 15 acres, for instance, but the permit allows 10.53 acres. In its letter, however, the Forest Service also said it would accept a new and revised proposal from POWDR. POWDR spokesperson Stacey Hutchinson did not address a question Tuesday about whether the company would post its new proposal on its project website once it submits it to the Forest Service. She also did not provide a timeline for submission. In the meantime, however, a couple of lawyers who have reviewed public records related to the project allege the special-use permit itself is no longer valid given its plain language. The permit states it is terminated upon change of control of the business entity. Through a records request, lawyers George Corn and Dan Browder of Hamilton received a copy of an October 2021 email from POWDR to the Forest Service that said POWDR is now managing the lodge. The Forest Service has said its legal team is reviewing the validity of the permit. Tuesday, Pargman said the team has not yet made a decision, but is continuing its investigation. We have requested further documentation from HLL (Holland Lake Lodge) and are still awaiting that information, Pargman said. In its letter, Save Holland Lake advocates for the Forest Service to present information to the public promptly, especially given the earlier rollout of the expansion plan. Due to the fact that the Flathead National Forest had the previous MDP in its possession for 10 months before it was unveiled to the American public (and apparently knew of a transfer of lodge management to POWDR in October 2021), we are requesting transparency from the FNF and to release, without delay, any new proposal details as they are presented to the Forest Service. The immediate release of any new proposals regarding HLL would give ample time for the public owners of the public land on which the expansion project is proposed to properly assess the plan and determine whether it is in the public interest, the letter said. In the Sept. 1, 2022, notice about the expansion, the Forest Service set a Sept. 21, 2022, deadline for comment, but it later extended it. The initial proposal elicited 6,500 comments; the Save Holland Lake group said its review showed 99% opposed the expansion. Tuesday, Pargman said if the Forest Service accepts a proposal, at a minimum, there will be a 30-day comment period followed by a 45-day objection period. There could be other public processes, but that hasnt been determined yet, Pargman said. The post Save Holland Lake: We are requesting transparency from Flathead National Forest appeared first on Daily Montanan. President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee disembark from the presidential jet as it arrives at Zurich Airport in Switzerland, Tuesday (local time). Yonhap By Nam Hyun-woo DAVOS President Yoon Suk Yeol will urge the international community to embrace "solidarity and cooperation" to address global supply chain issues and ensure a transition to clean energy at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, according to the presidential office, Wednesday. After wrapping up his state visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), he arrived in the Swiss city, Wednesday (local time), to meet with a group of CEOs from Korean and multinational companies, and attend the WEF, also known as Davos Forum. The presidential office said that Yoon will deliver a special speech at Thursday's session of the prestigious forum where more than 40 world leaders, 300 public officials and 2,000 business leaders are anticipated to be present. "The current comprehensive crisis makes it difficult for a single country or a single company to cope," senior presidential secretary for public relations Kim Eun-hye said, adding that during Yoon's attendance at the WEF, he "will stress that solidarity and cooperation based on common values are the only solutions for the world to face this crisis." During his speech, Yoon will propose "the way of solidarity" to strengthen supply chains, the transition to clean energy and the establishment of digital order, Kim added. The idea of solidarity through common values is Yoon's catchphrase for handling international issues, as part of his belief that the trends of increasing geopolitical risks, weakening of the World Trade Organization and growing protectionism can be addressed by groups of countries sharing similar values, such as democracy, human rights and rule of law. Yoon's attendance will be the first time in nine years that a Korean president is taking part in the WEF. The most recent appearance by a Korean leader was former President Park Geun-hye, who attended the forum in 2014. Previous President Moon Jae-in delivered a speech at the WEF's Davos Agenda Week in January 2021, but the event was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, Korean presidents have used the WEF as a stage to present their administration's philosophies and initiatives to the global stage. Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, R- Box Elder, speaks before the special select committee on redistricting on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Nicole Girten/Daily Montanan) Senate President Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton said Tuesday a commission charged with redrawing Montanas legislative districts didnt follow its own rules, and it didnt follow constitutional requirements either. Tuesday, the special select committee on redistricting held a public hearing on the proposed House and Senate legislative maps submitted by the Montana Districting and Apportionment Commission in early January. At the meeting, Ellsworth proposed Senate Joint Resolution 8, which outlined objections to the work done by the commission, and Republican legislators lined up to support it. Nearly 30 proponents spoke in favor of Ellsworths resolution, the majority of whom were Republican legislators. The resolution said the redistricting commission did not meet certain criteria it established, or that it didnt apply them consistently, or follow constitutional requirements, like compactness, or keeping tightly drawn districts. Some legislators were upset they were drawn out of their current districts, like Rep. Joe Read, R-Ronan, who testified, as he had before the commission multiple times, that he was drawn out of House District 93 by about 45 feet. However, Democrat on the redistricting commission Kendra Miller said in a text she would have no problem considering requests from lawmakers about their own districts, if theyll be specific about how the districts would need to change so we can see if its even possible., Only two opponents testified against Ellsworths resolution. Patrick Yawakie, who represented the Blackfeet Tribe, said that there continues to be discrimination against the right to vote despite the Voting Rights Act, and he said a poster about the map that pictured a rat was offensive. I saw an organized group holding up a banner and attacking the proposed redistricting maps and comparing Senate District 16 one of the three Indian majority districts, Senate seats, that unites Rocky Boy, Fort Belknap, and Fort Peck to a rat, he said. The sign showed a picture of the proposed map with a rat superimposed on top of the majority minority districts in eastern Montana. Miller also commented on the poster. Far too many Republicans think that compliance with the Voting Rights Act is up for debate, Miller said, referring to the sign. This is disgusting. Also in opposition to the resolution, Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, said that proponents made a perfect argument for why the new map needs to be adopted as they talk about winners and losers. He mentioned the history of the Native American vote in the U.S. and how it took the 1964 Voting Rights Act for Natives to be able to vote in elections. I understand not being heard, I understand not being represented, Windy Boy said. The resolution lists urban areas in Missoula County, Lewis and Clark County, and Gallatin County as areas of concern for compactness, and it listed Whitefish as a place of concern for municipality splitting, all concerns that were brought up during public hearings held by the commission in December. The committee has 30 days, until Feb 5, to give recommendations from the legislature to the commission to consider at its February meeting. Although public comment consisted mostly of Republican legislators expressing concerns around how districts were drawn where they serve, a few supporters of proposed maps said the design is likely as good as its going to get, especially around the Voting Rights Act, considering the amount of work that the commission has put in already. In their testimony, Great Falls Representatives Steve Galloway and Lola Sheldon-Galloway were upset about a donut hole senate district including the downtown. Republican lawmakers from the area were involved in advocating for the district lines earlier in the process, with the commission voting to incorporate their feedback. Other concerns raised were that the commission favored competitiveness, a discretionary goal, over compactness, which is constitutionally required, as discussed by House Majority Leader Sue Vinton, R-Billings. Rep. Linda Reksten, R-Polson, had several complaints about how the Polson area was divided, east and west, by the bridge, a change proposed by Republicans on the commission. She said it was not compact and placed an undue burden on voters in smaller towns like Lakeside and Ferndale, who would have to travel far to vote. My concern is that Montana law be followed and not manufactured to suit one political party over another party, Reksten said. The party with sound policy for the citizens of Montana should win in the districts rather than orchestrating district changes to favor any one party. House Minority Leader and committee member Kim Abbott told the Daily Montanan Rekstens was a confusing complaint seeing as the Republicans drew that amendment. Miller too said the Republicans on the commission drew the area based on feedback from Republican legislators in the area. However, she said Reksten could propose a fix or work with the Republican commissioners who drew the lines. In his testimony, Yawakie focused on the history of the Native vote and compliance with the Voting Rights Act. He said it is not only the right thing to do, but the law of the land. However, when fielding a question on the possibility of the legislature producing a map compliant with the Voting Rights Act, Yawakie said he doubted a better map could be drawn given the time and input the commission had put into the proposed maps already. Ellsworth said following the meeting Yawakies argument made no sense to him. What youre saying is, this is the only product they could have ended up with, period. And thats just a really terrible argument, he said. You follow the Voting Rights Act, and you do that. And I would say, you follow the Constitution, and thats what wasnt done. Chairman Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, encouraged the public to submit comments via the legislative website until Thursday at midnight. The committee will meet again on Friday at 8 a.m. to conduct a work session on their recommendations. Miller said she hopes legislators will provide specific modifications to the map in their recommendations to the commission. Redistricting Commission Chair Maylinn Smith said she wants to see bipartisan recommendations. She will be at the meeting on Friday. The post Senate president, GOP legislators, oppose redistricting commissions work appeared first on Daily Montanan. One of the UK's largest poultry processors has unveiled a plan outlining ways its supply chain will no longer contribute to excess phosphate in the River Wye. Avara, which has 120 supplying farms within the catchment producing just under 160k tons of manure each year, said it recognised that the "wider impact" of food production "must be managed". The Herefordshire firm is one of the UKs largest producers of poultry, providing food for a quarter of UK families each week. The issue of River Wye's water quality centres around algal blooms, which grow quickly in hot weather and lower river levels, reducing the oxygen content, killing aquatic life and impacting on the water quality. Avara's new plan is based on extracting accurate data from the supply chain, which it said would provide a clearer picture of its contribution to the issue. The plan revolves around new ways of managing poultry manure from catchment farms, directing it away from the land where possible or with enhanced land management standards in place where it continues to be applied. By 2025, Avara said its supply chain would no longer contribute to excess phosphate in the River Wye. The company said: "We have consistently said that the origins of the problem, and implementing the necessary solutions, are not within the power of any single organisation. "The situation in the Wye is a jigsaw puzzle of connected challenges and solutions, and it will require collaboration between all interested parties to fully address all of the root causes and return the Wye back to health." Avara added: "We have publicly committed to do our part, and have published an overview of our plans here, but there is a very real risk that our actions alone will not be enough to reverse the decline of the River." A government minister and a peer have been criticised after stating that New Zealand lamb was 'better for the environment' than home-produced lamb. Lord Hannan of Kinsclere and the Minister for International Trade, Lord Johnson of Lainston spoke on international trade in favour of New Zealand lamb. The two peers both stated during the House of Lords debate that lamb produced more than 11,000 miles away was 'better for the environment' than British lamb. The UK signed a free trade agreement with New Zealand in February 2022, despite concerns from the farming industry over production standards. Lord Hannan said: "There have been studies of the environmental impact of importing New Zealand lamb. "Astonishingly, it turns out that New Zealand lamb eaten in London has a smaller carbon footprint than Welsh lamb eaten in London." Lord Johnson added: "As my noble friend Lord Hannan pointed out, having a New Zealand lamb chop on your plate in the House of Lords restaurant is better for the environment than having one that comes from another part of the UK." Lord Hannan was formerly a Conservative Euro-MP and Lord Johnson only entered the House of Lords in October last year. Recent analysis by AHDB stated that the trade deal would benefit New Zealand farmers while negatively impacting UK farmers. Richard Thomson, MP for Gordon, said British sheep farmers would be 'utterly appalled' at the Lords' comments. It is beyond belief that someone who was appointed a matter of weeks ago as a Minister to promote the UKs trade interests is... promoting New Zealand lamb over our own, claiming it is better for the environment. The Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) stated just a few months ago that welfare standards in the production of New Zealand lamb were lower than those here. "That is a very important consideration when looking at the ethical production methods and desirability of a meat product." Mr Thomson has urged the Minister to apologise to the UK's sheep producers for 'his ignorance'. The prospect of Northern Ireland farmers and growers missing out on the highest level of energy support from April of this year has been called 'extremely worrying'. The Ulster Farmers Union (UFU) has criticised the UK government for disregarding the importance of local farming by dismissing farms as high-energy businesses in its review of the Energy Bill Relief Scheme. This would could in turn impact local food security and be detrimental for farm families in the region, the UFU warned. The new Energy Bills Discount Scheme, running from April 2023 March 2024, will be available to everyone on a non-domestic contract including businesses and voluntary sector organisations. High energy business that are "particularly vulnerable to high energy prices due to their energy intensive and trade exposure" will receive a higher level of support, subject to a maximum discount. The union said it was now awaiting further information on the scheme to be published. Following a review, the relief for electricity for non-high energy businesses will be 19.61 per MWh with a price threshold of 302 per MWh, with gas relief 6.97 per MWh with a price threshold of 107 per MWh. For high energy businesses, likely to include those who manufacture and process food, they have been offered support for electricity that amounts to 89 per megawatt hour (MWh) with a price threshold of 185 per MWh. For gas, the relief for these businesses is 40 per MWh, with a price threshold of 99 per MWh. UFU deputy president, William Irvine said the prospect of Northern Ireland farmers and growers missing out on the highest level of energy support was 'extremely worrying'. "It has the potential to seriously impact our food security at a time when we need to be doing all we can to support our food producers and develop our self-sufficiency. Energy is a critical source within food production and farmers are heavily reliant on it. Especially those that rear livestock and store fresh produce. "The apple sector being a notable example and how they use their cold stores up to September." He added: "While there may be relative relief with an easing of wholesale energy prices, many farmers will struggle to absorb huge hikes in energy in the year ahead if they do not get the necessary support. "The UFU will lobby to ensure all agricultural businesses are eligible for the higher rate of relief. From June 2023 onwards, Thailand is planning to collect THB 300 from foreigners arriving in the country We love Thailand, and we love visiting Thailand. The rules of engagement with the Southeast Asian country keep changing. Post the pandemic, Thailand has followed different strategies to bring visitors back to the second largest economy in Southeast Asia. There has been a gradual opening up of the country, first in phases, then with additional checks to contain the spread of the coronavirus and, finally, with the much-awaited removal of all restrictions and pre-arrival paperwork requirements. Now a new announcement reveals that Thailand plans to collect THB 300 (about Rs 740) as a tourist fee from all foreign visitors who arrive from June 2023 onwards. A minister said that the money collected would be used to maintain and develop tourist destinations and to support visitors involved in accidents while in the country. Foreigners with work permits and border passes will be exempt from this fee, Tourism Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said. Thailand depends heavily upon tourism, which contributed about 12 per cent of the GDP before the pandemic shut down international travel. The country expects to attract 25 million visitors this year; the minister added that tourism spending is estimated to be at least 2.8 trillion baht in 2023. The new fee notwithstanding, Indian visitors love Thailand for its familiarity and ease of access, and we dont see that changing anytime soon. Disclaimer: All content for information only. Femina cannot be held liable for any mishap arising thereof Images: Shutterstock Unisex apparel was the top apparel product exported from China to Europe during January-November 2022. China exported $13.842 billion worth of these products, which was 41.63 per cent of its total apparel exports of $33.249 billion to Europe in the same period. Womenswear was the second most popular apparel product segment in this vertical. China exported womens apparel worth $12.959 billion which was 38.98 per cent of its total exports to Europe. Menswear accounted for $5.563 billion (16.73 per cent) and babywear for $884.036 million (2.66 per cent), according to Fibre2Fashions market insight tool TexPro. Chinas knitted garment exports to the market were at $20.015 billion (60.20 per cent) and woven garment exports were at $13.234 billion (39.80 per cent) in the same period. Material-wise analysis shows that Chinas exports of man-made fibre apparel were dominant with a value of $15.541 billion or 46.74 per cent of the total exports. The shipment of cotton apparel was at $9.506 billion (28.59 per cent), wool/animal hair apparel was at $1.172 billion (3.53 per cent), and silk apparel was at $75.611 million (0.23 per cent), as per TexPro. Unisex apparel was the top apparel product exported from China to Europe during January-November 2022. China exported $13.842 billion worth of these products, which was 41.63 per cent of its total apparel exports of $33.249 billion to Europe in the same period. Womenswear was the second most popular apparel product segment in this vertical. Coming to the product-wise market penetration, China exported jerseys worth $5.494 billion which was 16.52 per cent of the total exports. Trousers and shorts exports were at $5.150 billion (15.49 per cent), dresses at $2.599 billion (7.82 per cent), innerwear at $2.441 billion (7.34 per cent) and jackets and blazers at $2.305 billion (6.93 per cent). Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KUL) Platform aggregator 1MetaWorld has entered into a joint venture agreement with Seoul-based Fame Universe to support fashion designers and digital creators to create, launch, sell, and produce their own digital fashion non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in connection with physical garments and real-world experiences. Based in Singapore, the new joint venture 1Fame seeks to support the fashion industrys fight against counterfeiting with Web3 innovation, leveraging NFTs as unique tokens of authenticity and trusted tools for metaverse e-commerce and authentic real-world experiences, according to a press release by 1Fame and 1MetaWorld. Backed by the ONERHT network of professional services, 1Fame will continuously develop its phygital business model by applying innovative Web3 solutions to the world of fashion, and leverage on 1MetaWorlds trusted and secured institutional grade transaction platform with curated community lifestyle privileges. This innovation will enhance the development of the fashion industry from Web3 into the metaverse as well as solve current problems of fraudulent trading and counterfeiting, said Tan Chong Huat, 1MetaWorld chairman. 1MetaWorld has entered into a joint venture agreement with Fame Universe to support fashion designers and digital creators to create, launch, sell, and produce digital fashion NFTs in connection with physical garments and real-world experiences. The 1Fame venture seeks to support the fashion industry's fight against counterfeiting with Web3 innovation. In collaboration with fashion designers, 1Fames Meta Studio digitises designs into interactive digital fashion assets. New collections become a reality through crowdfunding on the 1Fame Fashion Launchpad. The digital garments are then minted as NFTs and secured in the owners digital wallet to be worn on avatars in the metaverse or traded on the 1Fame Marketplace. Ownership of 1Fame Fashion NFTs grants exclusive access to immersive and experiential benefits for fashion enthusiasts and collectors, including advanced access to limited fashion NFT drops, delivery of the physical garment, VIP invitations to real world and metaverse fashion events as well as meet and greet sessions with influential designers, added the release. 1Fame will provide a hyperconnected platform for ecosystem players and stakeholders to co-create authentic fashion verified by blockchain, with strong intellectual property protection and immense potential for monetisation and gamification, said James Hong, 1Fame chief executive officer. Fibre2Fashion News Desk (NB) President Yoon Suk Yeol meets with South Korean troops of the Akh unit in Abu Dhabi, Jan. 15. Yonhap The Iranian Embassy in Seoul said Wednesday it has communicated with the South Korean government about President Yoon Suk Yeol's recent remark branding Iran as the "enemy" of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Yoon made the remark earlier this week, comparing UAE-Iran relations to those of South and North Korea during a meeting with South Korean troops stationed in the UAE. "There has been communication between The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Iran in Seoul and the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and this diplomatic communication will continue in the future," the embassy said in a statement. The statement came after the Iranian foreign ministry said it was "looking into and pursuing the meddling comments" by Yoon, and awaiting an explanation from the Seoul foreign ministry. Seoul's foreign ministry has stressed Yoon's remarks were "irrelevant" to Seoul's relations with Iran and urged against "unnecessary overinterpretation" of the remark, saying it was made while encouraging South Korean soldiers. The ministry also said South Korea's commitment to relations with Iran remains firm. (Yonhap) Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 17, 2023) - Plurilock Security Inc. (TSXV: PLUR) (OTCQB: PLCKF) ("Plurilock" or the "Company"), an identity-centric cybersecurity solutions provider for workforces, is pleased to announce that it has closed the third and final tranche ("Final Tranche") of its previously announced non-brokered private placement financing (the "Offering"). The Final Tranche consisted of 1,421,393 units of the Company ("Units") at a price of $0.14 per Unit, for aggregate gross proceeds of $198,995, bringing the aggregate gross proceeds of the Offering to $1,755,115. Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (a "Share") and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one additional share (a "Warrant Share") at a price of $0.25 per Warrant Share until January 16, 2025. In connection with the Final Tranche, the Company paid arm's length finders (each, a "Finder") an aggregate of $7,146.30 and issued an aggregate of 48,545 warrants (each, a "Finder's Warrant"), representing 7% of the proceeds raised from those purchasers introduced by such Finder and 7% of the total number of Units sold to investors introduced by such Finder. Concurrently with closing the Final Tranche, the Company also issued 77,000 Finder's Warrants to an arm's length Finder, representing 7% of the total number of Units sold to investors introduced by such Finder in connection with the closing of the first tranche of the private placement. Each Finder's Warrant provides that such Finder may acquire common shares of the Company (each a "Finder's Warrant Share") at a price of $0.14 for a period of two years. The Final Tranche was completed pursuant to the listed issuer financing exemption under Part 5A of National Instrument 45-106 Prospectus Exemptions and therefore the securities issued in the Offering are not be subject to a hold period in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws. The Company intends to use the proceeds raised from the Offering for general corporate purposes. The securities issued pursuant to the Offering have not, nor will they be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons in the absence of U.S. registration or an applicable exemption from the U.S. registration requirements. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in the United States or in any other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. About Plurilock Plurilock provides identity-centric cybersecurity for today's workforces. The Plurilock family of companies enables organizations to operate safely and securely while reducing cybersecurity friction. Plurilock offers world-class IT and cybersecurity solutions through its Solutions Division, paired with proprietary, AI-driven and cloud-friendly security through its Technology Division. Together, the Plurilock family of companies delivers persistent identity assurance with unmatched ease of use. For more information, visit https://www.plurilock.com or contact: Ian L. Paterson Chief Executive Officer ian@plurilock.com 416.800.1566 Roland Sartorius Chief Financial Officer roland.sartorius@plurilock.com Prit Singh Investor Relations prit.singh@plurilock.com 905.510.7636 Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the TSX Venture Exchange policies) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") related to future events or Plurilock's future business, operations, and financial performance and condition. Forward-looking statements normally contain words like "will", "intend", "anticipate", "could", "should", "may", "might", "expect", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential", "project", "assume", "contemplate", "believe", "shall", "scheduled", and similar terms. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, actions, or developments and are based on expectations, assumptions, and other factors that management currently believes are relevant, reasonable, and appropriate in the circumstances. Although management believes that the forward-looking statements herein are reasonable, actual results could be substantially different due to the risks and uncertainties associated with and inherent to Plurilock's business. Additional material risks and uncertainties applicable to the forward-looking statements herein include, without limitation, the impact of general economic conditions, and unforeseen events and developments. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. Many of these factors are beyond the control of Plurilock. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as at the date hereof, and Plurilock undertakes no obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in its most recent Annual Information Form. They are otherwise disclosed in its filings with securities regulatory authorities available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for release, publication, distribution or dissemination, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, in or into the United States. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151681 BEIJING, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- COVID-19 vaccines produced in China have been proven to be safe and effective by clinical trials and real-world data. The vaccines have helped save people in China and around the world, which is an irreversible accomplishment and cannot be challenged by denialists. Various options China is the only country with COVID-19 vaccines developed via multiple technical routes - they work in different ways. In addition to mRNA vaccines that uses new technology as the Pfizer Inc. product, people can also choose the well-tested, traditional inactivated vaccines, which turned out to be the mainstream in China. Chinese companies also made viral vector vaccines and protein subunit vaccines to give people more options. In addition to the mechanism of action, Chinese vaccines also come in different forms - jabs, inhalers and nasal sprays - in case you prefer one of them. In total, there are currently 13 vaccine products available in China. Safety first "China always puts first the safety of vaccines," said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a regular press conference on Friday. "China-made vaccines have a good safety record with overall low adverse event rate." Billions of people have taken the Chinese jabs, which is hard evidence of the vaccines' safety. As of January 12, over 1.3 billion people in China have taken over 3.4 billion doses of vaccines, with more than 241 million of them aged above 60. According to statistics from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 188 cases of severe adverse reactions were reported from December 15, 2020, to April 30, 2021, on the Chinese mainland after a total of 265 million COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered, with a rate of 0.07 per 100,000 doses. CDC called the rate "extremely rare." Three of the Chinese vaccine products are on the Emergency Use Listing of the World Health Organization (WHO). Sinovac's CoronaVac is the only vaccine on the list that is recommended to use on children aged between three and four. In August 2022, CoronaVac was approved by regulators in Chile and China'sHong Kong to be used on six-month-old babies. Solid effectiveness By law in China, a vaccine must go through clinical trials in order to get government approval, during which the effectiveness must be scientifically proven. Many Chinese vaccines, like products from Sinopharm and Sinovac, were tested among different races of people. In a Phase-III trial of CoronaVac in Turkiye that involved more than 10,000 people, two doses of the vaccine yielded an efficacy of 83.5 percent. Researchers said the vaccine "has high efficacy with a good safety and tolerability profile." According to the WHO, a large multi-country Phase-III trial of Sinopharm's vaccine also demonstrated a 79-percent efficacy against hospitalization, which is high enough to get recommendation from the organization. When the WHO listed the first Chinese vaccine for emergency use in May, 2021, head of the organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said they included the product for its "safety, efficacy and quality." Compared with other vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer during that time, the inactive vaccine from China had an advantage: It can be stored and transported in a standard refrigerator at 2-8 degrees Celsius. It is particularly suitable for developing countries with inadequate vaccine storage and transportation facilities to store large amounts of vaccines at low temperatures. Helping the world China donated and exported a big amount of its COVID-19 vaccines, fulfilling its international responsibility, especially when some of the most developed countries stockpiled vaccines for its own people. According to data analytics Airfinity, the U.S. and UK exported almost none of their vaccine storage by the end of March 2021. Emmanuel Macron, president of U.S. ally France, urged the U.S. to drop its restrictions on the export of COVID-19 vaccines and ingredients in May 2021, when more than half people in the U.S. have received at least one dose. More than 120 countries and international organizations received over 2.2 billion doses of vaccines made in China. People in more than 100 countries used Chinese vaccine products, among them are leaders of over 30 countries. The Chinese vaccines are precious achievements of the country's fight against COVID-19, which also benefited people in many other countries. These contributions should not be discredited or distorted. Link: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-01-17/China-s-COVID-19-vaccines-proven-safe-effective-by-trials-and-data-1gFeDhuFJ0k/index.html Leading El Paso web design company Jeremy McGilvrey drives business growth through modern website and sales funnel design El Paso, Texas--(Newsfile Corp. - January 17, 2023) - Top-rated El Paso web design company Jeremy McGilvrey today announced its services to help businesses scale and grow with conversion-focused website and sales funnel design. Jeremy McGilvrey, A Web Design Agency Announces Web Design Services In El Paso, Texas To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8843/151679_4f490974943138c4_001full.jpg Clients requiring profitable websites and sales funnels turn to Jeremy McGilvrey because of the company's extensive experience, results-driven designs, and customer-friendly satisfaction guarantee. The team focuses on crafting innovative website and sales funnel designs that are aesthetically beautiful, user-friendly, and customer-centric, providing each visitor with a personalized browsing experience. Jeremy McGilvrey's El Paso web design company builds user-friendly browsing experiences built on a foundation of clean, straightforward design. This strategy promotes user retention and a better emphasis on client's value proposition and brand messaging, helping them build trust and authority. One way Jeremy McGilvrey's team boosts conversions is through web designs that are optimized for mobile browsing. According to a survey conducted by GoodFirms, 73.1% of web designers cite non-responsive design as the primary cause of users leaving websites. To mitigate such losses, the team is committed to helping clients increase conversions by meticulously testing each site on a number of different devices to guarantee that it is aesthetically pleasing, loads quickly, and operates flawlessly, ensuring more quality leads. The team also focuses on a seamless backend user experience. Jeremy McGilvrey's sites and funnels deliver critical backend data so that clients can receive the insights they need to run marketing campaigns and fully understand the impact of their websites. "Clean, modern website designs that are considerate of users' needs and viewing circumstances are now a must for the company, not merely a competitive advantage," said Jeremy McGilvrey. "Our talented web design and development team is aware of this necessity and uses forward-looking designs that make browsing easier. Our design strategies also help our clients establish their online authority so they can take advantage of an endless stream of leads and sales to expand and scale their enterprises." To create the highest-converting websites and sales funnels, Jeremy McGilvrey works with innovative designers from across the globe. Every designer is vetted to ensure that they understand and employ the best techniques that increase conversions, guaranteeing that every website and sales funnel sells for its clients, even when they are sleeping. Customers also trust the El Paso web design company for its outstanding satisfaction guarantee. If a client is dissatisfied with the results, they receive a full refund of their investment. The company's confidence and success in creating sales funnels and websites that aid in business growth are illustrated in this ironclad guarantee. For more than ten years, Jeremy McGilvery has been a top El Paso web design company, earning praise from thousands of clients. The firm has also received recognition from Forbes, Entrepreneur, ClickFunnels, HuffPost, and NBC for its work. To learn more, visit Jeremy McGilvrey's Top-Rated El Paso Web Design Company. Media Contact: Contact: Jeremy McGilvrey Address: 1 Riverway Ste. 1724, Houston, TX 77056 Phone: (713) 300-3778 Email: Hi@JeremyMcGilvrey.com Website/URL: https://www.jeremymcgilvrey.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151679 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 17, 2023) - Gold Hunter Resources Inc. (CSE: HUNT) ("Gold Hunter" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has made the 3rd anniversary property payment to the Optionor, Northbound Capital Corp., pursuant to the Cameron Lake East Property Agreement, consisting of 500,000 shares and $12,000 cash. The Company has one additional cash payment of $12,000 to make to the Optionor on or before January 15, 2024. Under the Agreement, the Optionor has granted the Company the option to acquire all rights, title and interest in the Cameron Lake East Property claims. In addition, the claims are subject to the reservation by the Optionor of a 1.5% net smelter returns royalty (the "Optionor's NSR") to be paid by the Company upon exercise of the option in full subject to the reservation by the Optionor's NSR. Following the exercise of the Option, the Company will have the right to purchase the Optionor's NSR at any time for $1,000,000. For greater certainty, in the event the Company purchases the Optionor's NSR, the Claims would be subject only to the Claim Holder's NSR of which the Optionor will hold an option to purchase a one-half interest (0.75%) in accordance with the terms of the Head Option Agreement. The Cameron Lake East Property is located in the Rowan Lake Area of the Kenora Mining Division in northwestern Ontario, approximately 75 km southeast of the town of Kenora. The Cameron Lake East Property was originally acquired as the listing asset for Gold Hunter in August 2020, and consists of 18 contiguous mining claims for a total of 4,660 Ha. The property is an early-stage project that is an early-stage underexplored, which hosts several mineral showings and zones of geochemical anomalism coincident with occurrences of favorable prospective geology and structure across the claims disposition. About the Company The Company is engaged in acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral property assets in Canada. The Company's objective is to locate and develop economic precious and base metal properties of merit. In January 2022 Gold Hunter acquired 8 additional properties in Newfoundland which amount to 580 claims for 14,500 ha (See January 25th 2022 New Release here). The acquisition included the Rambler and Tilt Cove projects which are located adjacent to known productive VHMS deposits located on the Baie Verte Peninsula, Newfoundland. For more information, please refer to the Company's Prospectus dated January 21, 2021 available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com), under the Company's profile. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Richard Macey, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director Tel +1 (604) 537-4174 rich.macey@yahoo.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking" 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 Gold Hunter Resources Inc. believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of Gold Hunter Resources Inc.'s management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Gold Hunter Resources Inc. undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151688 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 17, 2023) - Pure Energy Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: PE) (OTCQB: PEMIF) ("Pure Energy" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Yulia McCutcheon as Corporate Secretary. Ms. McCutcheon brings to the position over seven years of corporate secretarial and administrative experience working with multiple clients in the junior mining sector. Ms. McCutcheon holds an accounting degree from Ball State University (Muncie, IN) and a masters degree in International Affairs from The New School University (New York, NY). In connection with the appointment, Ms. McCutcheon has been granted 25,000 incentive stock options of the Company. The options were granted under the Company's Stock Option Plan and each stock option entitles the holder to acquire one common share at an exercise price of $0.53 until January 16, 2028. The Company extends its appreciation to Ms. Dianne Szigety for her dedication and contributions to Pure Energy as Corporate Secretary during the past five years, and wishes her well in retirement and future endeavours. About Pure Energy Pure Energy Minerals is a lithium resource developer that is driven to become a low-cost supplier for the growing lithium battery industry. Pure Energy has consolidated a pre-eminent land position at its Clayton Valley Project in the Clayton Valley of central Nevada for the exploration and development of lithium resources, comprising 950 claims over 23,360 acres (9,450 hectares), representing the largest mineral land holdings in the valley. Pure Energy's Clayton Valley Project adjoins and surrounds on three sides the Silver Peak lithium brine mine operated by Albemarle Corporation. Pure Energy's strategic partner, Schlumberger Technologies Corporation ("SLB"), is the operator of the Clayton Valley Project. In May of 2019, Pure Energy and SLB signed an Earn-In agreement over the CV Project which requires significant investment by SLB at the Project, to include the design and construction of a pilot plant capable of processing lithium-bearing brines for high-quality lithium hydroxide monohydrate ("lithium hydroxide" or "LiOHH2O") and/or lithium carbonate products at a specified rate. SLB plans to utilize both in-house and commercially available technology in the design of the CV pilot plant. SLB's costs, technical parameters and ultimate technology are anticipated to differ from the published PEA. For further details regarding SLB's participation, please refer to Pure Energy's Annual General and Special Meeting Management Information Circular dated April 4, 2019, available on SEDAR.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors, "Mary L. Little" Director, Pure Energy Minerals Ltd. CONTACT: Pure Energy Minerals Limited (www.pureenergyminerals.com) Email: info@pureenergyminerals.com Telephone - 604 608 6611 Cautionary Statements and Forward-Looking Information The information in this news release contains forward looking statements that are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such differences include: changes in world commodity markets, equity markets, costs and supply of materials relevant to the mining industry, change in government and changes to regulations affecting the mining industry. Forward-looking statements in this release may include future exploration and development on the Clayton Valley Project. Although we believe the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, results may vary, and we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except as required by applicable laws. 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 or accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151677 SEONGNAM, South Korea, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- One of South Korea's leading game giants, NEOWIZ, has announced that it has successfully raised $12M in private funding for its Web3 gaming platform, Intella X, in anticipation of its upcoming launch on Polygon. The raise included over +20 investors from various sectors and includes notable partners such as Polygon, Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, Planetarium, Big Brain Holdings, Global Coin Research, Crit Ventures, JoyCity, Pearl Abyss, XL Games, and WEMIX. As the next-generation Web3 gaming platform, Intella X's mission is to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 through unique platform protocols, services, and games. "Develop and Earn", and "Contribute-Play and Earn" What sets Intella X apart from its competitors is that the platform perpetually rewards the contributors of its ecosystem (i.e Game developers and users) with its native platform token, the Intella X token through its unique, rewarding service protocol, 'Proof of Contribution'. Furthermore, the platform also redistributes shares of its revenue back to the contributors through its unique decentralized revenue distribution protocol to further exercise the fundamental values of Web3. In combination with its one-of-a-kind service protocols and wide genres of games in its 2023 lineup, the platform offers additional features in an effort to remove high-entry barriers and to improve user experience in Web3. From streamlined wallet creation to implementation of meta transactions, Intella X has set its mission on providing high-quality games and user-friendly environment to accelerate mass adoption. Intella X is set to launch on Polygon in the first quarter of 2023 along with its proprietary Web3 wallet, DEX (Decentralized Exchange), NFT marketplace, launchpad, and games. Follow Intella X socials for news and announcements. Homepage - https://www.intellax.io Twitter - https://twitter.com/TeamIntella Discord - https://discord.com/invite/ATbzFeM4C4 Medium - https://medium.com/@intellax About NEOWIZ Established in 1997, NEOWIZ (KOSDAQ:095660) is a considered pioneer and one of the leading game companies in Korea. The company has successfully published a wide variety of PC and mobile games through https://www.pmang.com/ since 2003 and has also co-developed and launched wildly successful titles such as FIFA online, Brave Nine, DJMAX Respect, Skul: The Hero Slayer, Cats & Soup, and highly anticipated, three-time Gamescom award-winning title, Lies of P. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1984381/Intella_X_upcoming_Web3_gaming_platform_Polygon_announces_key_investors.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/web3-gaming-platform-intella-x-developed-by-neowiz-raises-12m-in-anticipation-of-its-upcoming-launch-on-polygon-301724085.html HONG KONG, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On 16 January 2023, Shanghai Fosun High Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. ("Fosun High Technology") and eight domestic banks held a syndicated loan signing ceremony at the Bund Finance Center, Shanghai. According to the agreement, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Bank of Communications as joint lead banks, and China Minsheng Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and as participating banks will jointly form a syndicate to provide Fosun High Technology a loan totaling RMB12 billion. Shou Ziqi, Vice Chairman of All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Vice Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Shanghai Committee, and Chairman of Shanghai Federation of Industry and Commerce, Representatives of China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission Shanghai Supervision Office and Shanghai Local Financial Supervision Bureau, and managements of eight leading banks, Guo Guangchang, Chairman of Fosun International, Wang Qunbin, Co-chairman of Fosun International, Chen Qiyu and Xu Xiaoliang, Co-CEOs of Fosun International, attended the ceremony and witnessed the signing together. Shou Ziqi congratulated the successful completion of the syndicated loan. He said that the eight banks took concrete measures to work unswervingly both to consolidate and develop the public sector and to encourage, support and guide development of the non-public sector, further broadening the financing channels of private enterprises and reducing financing costs. The syndicated loan is not only of great significance to Fosun, but it also plays a positive role in improving public expectations and boosting confidence for development for private enterprises in Shanghai and even the entire country. The representative of the syndicate said that the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China reaffirmed the need to work unswervingly both to consolidate and develop the public sector and to encourage, support and guide development of the non-public sector and explicitly proposed to promote development of the private economy for the first time. The Central Economic Work Conference held recently once again emphasized the need to work unswervingly both to consolidate and develop the public sector and to encourage, support and guide development of the non-public sector. The successful completion of the syndicated loan is a practical measure taken by the banks to actively provide financial services and guidance, working unswervingly both to consolidate and develop the public sector and to encourage, support and guide development of the non-public sector. As a representative enterprise of China's private sector rooted in Shanghai, Fosun hopes to take this signing as an opportunity for government, banks and enterprises to jointly promote development of the private economy. Guo Guangchang expressed his gratitude to the eight banks for their long-term trust and support to Fosun. He said that this signing has further deepened the cooperation between Fosun and banks, broadened financing channels, and consolidated liquidity support for business development. In recent years, as a global innovation-driven consumer group, Fosun has been focusing on the consumption needs of families, and achieved steady development in sectors such as Health, Happiness and Wealth. "In 2023, we believe that demand will gradually be unleashed in the family-oriented consumer sector. We will continue to improve our products and services to better meet the needs of families." The signing ceremony was presided over by Wang Qunbin. Signing representatives and relevant persons in charge of the eight banks, Gong Ping, Executive President and CFO of Fosun International, Li Haifeng, Executive President of Fosun International, Zhang Houlin, Senior Vice President and Co-CFO of Fosun International, Zhu Wenkui, Vice President of Fosun International, Chen Yue, Senior Assistant to the President and Co-CFO of Fosun, attended the signing ceremony. Founded in 2005, Fosun High Technology is the domestic operating entity of Fosun International Limited ("Fosun International", HKEX: 00656) and is mainly responsible for Fosun International's domestic industry operations. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/fosun-receives-rmb12-billion-syndicated-loan-from-8-banks-to-jointly-promote-development-of-the-private-economy-301724186.html Global investment continues decline despite a surge in energy deals. US leads overall investment with $36.2 billion, followed by Asia at $22.6 billion Europe hardest hit with VC investment falling from $21.2 billion to only $12.9 billion in Q4'22 Global fundraising likely to remain subdued into Q1'2023 The latest KPMG Private Enterprise Venture Pulse report shows that global venture capital investment dropped for the fourth consecutive quarter in Q4'2022 falling from $102.2 billion on 9,767 deals to $75.6 billion on 7,641 deals. Global investment has fallen to its lowest levels since Q2'2019. The decline comes despite large deals in the energy sector, including alternative energy vehicles, battery technologies, and alternative power generation and distribution technologies as governments seek to secure energy independence and meet their climate obligation. The Americas and Asia secured the largest deals during the quarter accounting for the largest share of VC investment globally during Q4'22. The US recorded the largest proportion of investment with Asia second, despite attracting three $500 million megadeals across the quarter. Top deals from China included GAC Aion ($2.56 billion) and SHEIN ($1 billion) with the largest US deals including Anduril ($1.48 billion) and TerraPower ($830 million). "Overall investment continued to decline this quarter, falling to the lowest levels since Q2'2019. The combination of economic and geopolitical pressures, alongside turbulent capital markets and low IPO activity, have taken their toll on venture capital investment," said Conor Moore Head of KPMG Private Enterprise in the Americas Region Co-Leader, KPMG Private Enterprise Emerging Giants Network, KPMG International. "However, we continue to see encouraging levels of investment in the new energy and electric vehicle ecosystems, as venture capitalists continue to align with government initiatives and incentives in these areas deemed critical to energy independence." Large rounds by alternative energy companies included US-based nuclear reactor firm TerraPower ($830 million), China-based SPIC Hydrogen Energy ($631 million), Estonia-based renewable energy developer Sunly ($196 million) and Belgium-based hydrogen energy company Tree Energy Solutions ($122 million). Investment in the electric vehicle space dwarfed most other sectors and included large fundraising rounds by Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer GAC Aion ($2.56 billion), US-based battery technology company Form Energy ($450 million), and China-based Voyah Car Technology ($630 million), US-based battery producer Group14 Technologies ($614 million) and Swedish electric vehicle firm Einride ($500 million). Key Highlights Q4'22 In Q4'22, global VC investment dropped from $102.2 billion across 9,767 deals in Q3'22 to $75.6 billion across 7641 deals in Q4'22. VC investment in the Americas fell from $49.6 billion across 4,022 deals in Q3'22 to $39.2 billion across 3,322 deals in Q4'22, with the US accounting for $36.2 billion invested. VC investment in Asia dropped from $30.4 billion across 3,052 deals in Q3'22 to $22.6 billion across 2,157 deals in Q4'22. Europe's VC investment fell from $21.2 billion across 2,476 deals, compared to $12.9 billion across 1,936 deals in Q4'22. Corporate VC investment declined for the fourth consecutive quarter. Total CVC-affiliated investment fell from $108 billion in Q4'2021 to $36.5 billion in Q4'2022. Exit value fell dramatically year-over-year from $1.427 trillion on 4,174 exits in 2021 to only $308.8 billion on 2,997 deals in 2022. The fall was most notable in the US, where total exit value declined from $753.2 billion to only $71.4 billion. 'Dry powder' remained at all time highs. Over the course of the year, VC firms raised over $250 billion, the third largest total in the past 10 years. The US led the way, raising a record $162 billion in 2022, albeit on a much smaller volume of funds. Dry powder expected to help keep VC market stable despite growing uncertainty Looking ahead to Q1'23, venture capital investment globally is expected to remain subdued, with consumer-focused businesses seeing the most strain. The IPO window, particularly in the US will likely remain closed well into 2023, with little to suggest it will reopen fully in the first half of the year. As companies run out of cash, there will likely be an increasing number of down rounds and an in increase in M&A activity. "Globally, we continue to see downward pressure on valuations in early 2023, leading many companies to postpone fundraising efforts in hopes of better times ahead," said Jonathan Lavender, Global Head, KPMG Private Enterprise, KPMG International. "However, these companies can only hold off so long and we anticipate an increase in down-rounds during the first half of 2023 as companies begin to exhaust cash reserves." Notes to Editors About KPMG Private Enterprise You know KPMG, you might not know KPMG Private Enterprise. We're dedicated to working with businesses like yours. It's all we do. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a family business, or a fast-growing company, we understand what's important to you. The KPMG Private Enterprise global network for Emerging Giants has extensive knowledge and experience working with the startup ecosystem. From seed to speed, we're here throughout your journey. You gain access to KPMG's global resources through a single point of contact-a trusted adviser to your company. It's a local touch with a global reach. KPMG is a global organization of independent professional services firms providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services. KPMG is the brand under which the member firms of KPMG International Limited ("KPMG International") operate and provide professional services. "KPMG" is used to refer to individual member firms within the KPMG organization or to one or more member firms collectively. KPMG firms operate in 143 countries and territories with more than 265,000 partners and employees working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. Each KPMG member firm is responsible for its own obligations and liabilities. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients. For more detail about our structure, please visit kpmg.com/governance. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117005708/en/ Contacts: Daniel Caines, Senior Manager, Global External Communications, KPMG International T: +44 7732400262 E: Daniel.Caines@kpmg.co.uk Regulatory News: Exclusive Networks (Euronext Paris: EXN), the Global Cybersecurity Specialist for Digital Infrastructure, announces the appointment of Nathalie Buhnemann as Chief Financial Officer. Nathalie becomes a member of the Executive Committee and will directly report to Jesper Trolle, Chief Executive Officer of Exclusive Networks. Nathalie has extensive experience in leading the finance function for listed companies and M&A over the past two decades. Previously Nathalie was Group Chief Financial Officer of AKKA Technologies, a European leader in engineering consulting and R&D Services listed in Paris, where she also held a range of senior finance roles. Before that, Nathalie spent more than a decade as a Financial Consultant at PwC where she gained a deep understanding of M&A. Nathalie holds an Audit and Finance degree from ESCP European School of Management (France) and is certified as a public accountant. Nathalie is familiar with Exclusive Networks' culture, model and strategy from her time as an independent Board member at Exclusive Networks since IPO. As a result of her appointment as Chief Financial Officer, Nathalie has resigned from her functions as member of Exclusive Networks' Board of Directors, Nomination and Compensation Committee as well as member and Chairperson of the Audit Committee. A process to select a new Board member has been initiated by the Nomination and Compensation Committee. Concomitantly, Pierre Boccon-Liaudet stepped down as Chief Financial Officer to pursue new opportunities outside of Exclusive Networks. Jesper Trolle, Chief Executive of Exclusive Networks, said: "On behalf of the company, I would like to thank Pierre for his significant contribution to Exclusive Networks in the last three years and wish him continued success in the future. I am thrilled that Nathalie is joining the executive team of Exclusive Networks. In addition to her tremendous energy and experience in senior finance roles, Nathalie brings a deep understanding of Exclusive Networks' model, strategy and culture from her time as a board member and chair of the audit committee since our listing in 2021." About Exclusive Networks Exclusive Networks is a global trusted cybersecurity specialist for digital infrastructure helping to drive the transition to a totally trusted digital future for all people and organisations. Our distinctive approach to cybersecurity gives partners more opportunity and more customer relevance. Our specialism is their strength equipping them to capitalise on rapidly evolving technologies and transformative business models. The Exclusive Networks story is a global one with a services-first ideology at its core, harnessing innovation and disruption to deliver partner value. With offices in 46 countries and the ability to service customers in over 170 countries across five continents, Exclusive Networks has a unique 'local sale, global scale' model, combining the extreme focus and value of local independents with the scale and service delivery of a single worldwide cybersecurity powerhouse. Exclusive Networks is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange (Ticker: EXN). For more information visit www.exclusive-networks.com. DISCLAIMER This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements may include projections, estimates, assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives, intentions and/or expectations with respect to future financial results, events, operations and services and product development, as well as statements, regarding future performance or events. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "plans", "projects", "may", "would" "should" or the negatives of these terms and similar expressions. Although Exclusive Network's management currently believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties (including, without limitation, risks identified in Exclusive Networks' Registration Document available on Exclusive Networks' website), because they relate to future events and depend on future circumstances that may or may not occur and may be different from those anticipated, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Exclusive Networks. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those expressed in, implied by or projected by forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not intended to and do not give any assurances or comfort as to future events or results. Other than as required by applicable law, Exclusive Networks does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. This press release does not contain or constitute an offer of securities for sale or an invitation or inducement to invest in securities in France, the United States or any other jurisdiction. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117006133/en/ Contacts: EXCLUSIVE NETWORKS CONTACTS Investor and analyst enquiries Hacene Boumendjel Head of Investor Relations ir@exclusive-networks.com Media enquiries FTI Consulting Jamie Ricketts Cosme Julien Madoni exclusivenetworks@fticonsulting.com Regulatory News: Eurofins Scientific SE (Paris:ERF): Eurofins Scientific (EUFI.PA), the global leader in food, environment, pharmaceutical and cosmetic product testing and a global scientific leader in bioanalytical testing, announces the acquisition of assets to establish a fully-equipped, state-of-the-art laboratory campus in Genome Valley, Hyderabad. The acquisition includes a facility capable of supporting large global and Indian pharmaceutical clients as well as small biotech companies in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, analytical R&D, bioanalytical services (for both large and small molecules), in-vivo pharmacology, safety toxicology and formulation R&D. The state-of-the-art laboratories occupy over 90,000 ft2 The announcement was made after Minister Mr KT Rama Rao's meeting with Eurofins management at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Mr Jayesh Ranjan IAS, Principal Secretary, Industries and Commerce Department and Mr Shakthi M Nagappan, Director Lifesciences, Government of Telangana were also present during the meeting. With this investment through its subsidiary Eurofins Advinus, the Eurofins network now has a significant campus in Hyderabad that complements its existing operations in India with additional capacity in discovery chemistry, analytical chemistry and bioanalytical services. The investment will also allow Eurofins Advinus to extend its service offering to deliver formulation development as well as in-vitro and in-vivo biology capabilities from early 2023. Hyderabad is regarded as the epicentre of drug discovery and development services in Asia, while Genome Valley is India's first organised cluster for Life Sciences R&D and Clean Manufacturing activities, with world-class infrastructure facilities in the form of Industrial Knowledge Parks, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), multi-tenanted dry and wet laboratories and incubation facilities. Genome Valley is home to more than 200 companies with a scientific workforce of about 15,000 professionals, working for industry leaders in global and Indian pharmaceuticals. This investment by Eurofins Advinus further reinforces the position of Hyderabad as a world class location for drug discovery. Comment from Dr Gilles Martin, Eurofins CEO: "Eurofins is committed to long-term investments to grow our globally leading laboratory network. Given the importance of India in global pharmaceutical R&D value chains, we are very excited about our new Hyderabad campus so we can better serve this important centre for pharmaceutical development and innovation." Comment from Honorable Minister, Mr K.T. Rama Rao: "I am delighted to announce the entry of Eurofins in Hyderabad and Genome Valley. I am extremely thrilled to note that the company has ambitious growth plans from this facility. With this investment, Eurofins joins an illustrious list of global companies in Genome Valley. The Telangana Government is committed to supporting Eurofins and their plans." About Eurofins the global leader in bio-analysis Eurofins is Testing for Life. Eurofins is the global leader in food, environment, pharmaceutical and cosmetic product testing, and in discovery pharmacology, forensics, advanced material sciences and agroscience Contract Research services. Eurofins is also a market leader in certain testing and laboratory services for genomics, and in the support of clinical studies, as well as in BioPharma Contract Development and Manufacturing. The Group also has a rapidly developing presence in highly specialised and molecular clinical diagnostic testing and in-vitro diagnostic products. With over 61,000 staff across a decentralised and entrepreneurial network of 940 laboratories in 59 countries, Eurofins offers a portfolio of over 200,000 analytical methods to evaluate the safety, identity, composition, authenticity, origin, traceability and purity of a wide range of products, as well as providing innovative clinical diagnostic testing services and in-vitro diagnostic products. The Group's objective is to provide its customers with high-quality services, innovative solutions and accurate results on time. Eurofins is ideally positioned to support its clients' increasingly stringent quality and safety standards and the increasing demands of regulatory authorities as well as the requirements of healthcare practitioners around the world. In 2020 and 2021, Eurofins reacted quickly to meet the global challenge of COVID-19, by creating the capacity to help over 20 million patients monthly who may have been impacted by the pandemic with our testing products and our services and directly supporting healthcare professionals working on the front line to fight the virus. The Group has established widespread PCR testing capabilities and has carried out over 40 million tests in its own laboratories, is supporting the development of a number of vaccines and has established its SAFER@WORK testing, monitoring and consulting programmes to help ensure safer environments, travel and events during COVID-19. Eurofins has grown very strongly since its inception and its strategy is to continue expanding its technology portfolio and its geographic reach. Through R&D and acquisitions, the Group draws on the latest developments in the field of biotechnology and analytical chemistry to offer its clients unique analytical solutions. Shares in Eurofins Scientific are listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN FR0014000MR3, Reuters EUFI.PA, Bloomberg ERF FP). Until it has been lawfully made public widely by Eurofins through approved distribution channels, this document contains inside information for the purpose of Regulation (EU) 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on market abuse, as amended. Important disclaimer: This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements and estimates contained herein represent the judgment of Eurofins Scientific's management as of the date of this release. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees for future performance, and the forward-looking events discussed in this release may not occur. Eurofins Scientific disclaims any intent or obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements and estimates. All statements and estimates are made based on the information available to the Company's management as of the date of publication, but no guarantees can be made as to their completeness or validity. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117006028/en/ Contacts: For more information, please visit www.eurofins.com or contact: Investor Relations Eurofins Scientific SE Phone: +32 2 766 1620 E-mail: ir@eurofins.com President Yoon Suk Yeol, behind a podium, delivers remarks at Korea Night 2023 at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 18. Yonhap President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday rallied support for Korea's bid to host the 2030 World Expo during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Yoon, who is in Switzerland on a four-day visit, attended the WEF Korea Night 2023 together with first lady Kim Keon Hee. He was the first Korean president to attend the event since President Park Geun-hye in 2014 and President Lee Myung-bak in 2010. This year's Korea Night was organized by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry to support Korea's bid to host the 2030 World Expo in the southeastern city of Busan. It brought together heads of government, including Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and business executives, including Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins. "Seventy years ago we were faced with the difficulties of war, division and poverty," Yoon said during the event at a hotel in Davos. "We were able to overcome this crisis through solidarity and cooperation with the international community that shared the universal values of freedom, human rights and the rule of law, and now we have become an economic and cultural powerhouse recognized by the entire world." COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT NO. 1-2023 18 January 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark Today we are pleased to announce that our full year 2022 preliminary and unaudited results are in line with guidance. In addition, financial guidance for 2023 is introduced. Preliminary and unaudited key figures for Q4 and FY2022 Mining Cement Non-Core Activities Consolidated Group Q4 2022 FY 2022 Q4 2022 FY 2022 Q4 2022 FY 2022 Q4 2022 FY 2022 Revenue, DKKbn 4.4 15.1 (14.5-15.0) 1.6 6.3 (6.0-6.5) 0.5 0.5 (~0.5) 6.5 21.8 (21.0-22.0) Adj. EBITA margin 12.4% 10.6% (10.0-10.5%) 3.2%* 6.4%* (~6%) EBITA margin 7.7% 7.6% (~7.5%) 4.3% 3.3% (~3%) Loss of DKK 0.4bn Loss of DKK 0.4bn (loss of ~0.4bn) 0% 4.3% (~4%) Note: Numbers in brackets represent latest FY2022 guidance * Consolidated Group adj. EBITA margin is not adjusted for the loss in Non-Core Activities The Q4 and full year 2022 results include costs related to the thyssenkrupp Mining acquisition of DKK 125m and DKK 252m, respectively. In addition, the Q4 and full year 2022 results include costs related to wind-down of Russian activities of DKK 80m and DKK 200m, respectively. FLSmidth will, as previously communicated, release the detailed and audited financial results for the full year of 2022 on 22 February 2023. Financial guidance for FY2023 Guidance for full year 2023 reflects continued improvement of the underlying legacy Mining business, integration of TK Mining and the establishment of the Non-Core Activities segment. Guidance 2023 Mining Cement Non-Core Activities Consolidated Group Revenue, DKKbn 16.0-17.0 6.0-6.5 0.8-1.0 23.0-24.5 Adj. EBITA margin 9-10% 6-7%* EBITA margin 4-5% Loss of ~DKK 250-350m 4-5% * Consolidated Group adj. EBITA margin is not adjusted for the loss in Non-Core Activities Mining The long-term outlook for the mining industry remains positive driven by strong industry fundamentals. Following a strong 2022, we expect market growth in 2023 to remain largely stable versus 2022. The former TK Mining business is expected to contribute with less than DKK 3bn in revenue in 2023 and is expected to have a dilutive effect on the full year 2023 adjusted Mining EBITA margin of around 2%-point. Guidance for Adjusted EBITA margin includes adjustments for integration costs of around DKK 550m for the full year 2023. Cement Short-term outlook for the cement industry remains impacted by overcapacity and the potential recession is expected to impact market demand negatively over the coming period. Non-Core Activities Non-Core Activities EBITA margin guidance for 2023 reflects the operationally loss-making nature of the business as well as costs related to contract negotiations aimed at reducing the scope of the Non-Core Activities order backlog. Consolidated Group Consolidated Group guidance reflects the sum of the guidance for the three business segments. Guidance for 2023 is subject to uncertainty due to the global supply chain situation, potential recession and geopolitical turmoil. Contacts: Investor Relations Jannick Lindegaard Denholt, +45 21 69 66 57, jli@flsmidth.com Therese Mollevinge, +45 41 37 16 38, tmo@flsmidth.com Mikkel Johansen, +45 23 30 29 50, mjoh@flsmidth.com Media Relations Rasmus Windfeld, +45 40 44 60 60, rwin@flsmidth.com About FLSmidth FLSmidth provides sustainable productivity to the global mining and cement industries. We deliver market-leading technology, products and service solutions that enable our customers to improve performance, drive down costs and reduce environmental impact. MissionZero is our sustainability ambition towards zero emissions in mining and cement by 2030. FLSmidth works within fully validated Science-Based Targets, our commitment to keep global warming below 1.5C and to becoming carbon neutral in our own operations by 2030. www.flsmidth.com Attachment Lyon, France - 18 January 2023 - 7.30am CET - Theranexus, a biopharmaceutical company innovating in the treatment of neurological diseases and pioneer in the development of drug candidates modulating the interaction between neurons and glial cells, today announces its cash position as at 31 December 2022 and a change to its organizational structure. A new step in company organization To drive forward the next phases of its development for rare neurological diseases following last April's strategic move, Theranexus has announced a new step in its operational and strategic organization. The Board of Directors has appointed Mathieu Charveriat as CEO and Franck Mouthon as Executive Chairman. For Theranexus Executive Chairman, Franck Mouthon "Mathieu and I co-founded Theranexus and since its inception we have jointly devised, designed and developed high value-added drug candidates for neurological diseases together with our teams. To meet our upcoming challenges, I am delighted about Mathieu's promotion to CEO. I am also very proud of this new opportunity to strengthen together Theranexus' operational and strategic capabilities". Theranexus CEO, Mathieu Charveriat continues: "My sincerest thanks to Franck and the Board of Directors for the new responsibilities that I have been given. I am very happy and proud to continue working with Franck to successfully take the next steps in our new strategic plan with the launch of the pediatric pivotal Phase III trial of Batten-1 and our advanced therapy drug discovery platform". Highlights of H2 2022: Strategic alliance with Inserm Transfert and new advances to the Batten-1 program During the final quarter of 2022, Theranexus signed a strategic alliance with Inserm Transfert, the private value creation subsidiary of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), for the identification of potential targets and advanced therapy drug candidates for treating rare neurological diseases. With this agreement, Theranexus will benefit from preferential early access to Inserm research for identifying and characterizing novel targets and RNA or antisense oligonucleotide candidates to treat patients with neurological diseases. This flagship agreement is perfectly in line with the strategy to develop medicinal products for rare neurological diseases such as Batten-1, its candidate in phase I/II developed with BBDF, in Batten disease. In early 2023, Theranexus and BBDF announced new advances to their Batten-1 program, in the Phase I/II clinical trial, with the demonstration of good user safety and tolerability and a pharmacokinetic profile in line with expectations. The two partners achieved an important milestone with these positive results which will enable them to prepare the protocol for the pivotal Phase III trial to launch the clinical trial involving a pediatric cohort during 2023. Cash position On 31 December 2022, total available funds stood at 9.14 M compared with 11.00 M on 30 September 2022, in line with the company's forecasts and ensuring good financial visibility over the 2023 financial year. Next financial publication Tuesday 12 April 2023: 2022 annual financial results and update on cash position as on 31 March 2022 About Theranexus Theranexus is an innovative biopharmaceutical company that emerged from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). It specializes in the treatment of central nervous system disorders and is a pioneer in the development of drug candidates targeting both neurons and glial cells. The company has a unique platform for the identification and characterization of advanced therapy drug candidates targeting rare neurological disorders and an initial drug candidate in clinical development for Batten disease. Theranexus is listed on the Euronext Growth market in Paris (FR0013286259- ALTHX). More information at http://www.theranexus.com Click and follow us on Twitter and Linkedln Contacts THERANEXUS Thierry Lambert Chief Financial Officer contact@theranexus.com NEWCAP Theo Martin/Pierre Laurent Investor Relations +33 (0)1 44 71 94 97 theranexus@newcap.eu FP2COM Florence Portejoie Media Relations + 33 (0)6 07 76 82 83 fportejoie@fp2com.fr Disclaimer This press release contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Theranexus and its business, including its prospects and product candidate development. Such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that Theranexus considers to be reasonable. However, there can be no assurance that the estimates contained in such forward-looking statements will be verified, which estimates are subject to numerous risks including the risks set forth in the universal registration document of Theranexus filed with the AMF on 28 April 2021 under number D.21-0379 (a copy of which is available on www.theranexus.com) and to the development of economic conditions, financial markets and the markets in which Theranexus operates. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are also subject to risks not yet known to Theranexus or not currently considered material by Theranexus. The occurrence of all or part of such risks could cause actual results, financial conditions, performance or achievements of Theranexus to be materially different from such forward-looking statements. Theranexus expressly declines any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. ------------------------ This publication embed "Actusnews SECURITY MASTER ". - SECURITY MASTER Key: mZmdlpptk2bImmtxlpZnbZJlbWdil2PHbGrKm2JqZMmZbGpgnWlpmMrJZnBplW1n - Check this key: https://www.security-master-key.com. ------------------------ Copyright Actusnews Wire Receive by email the next press releases of the company by registering on www.actusnews.com, it's free Full and original release in PDF format:https://www.actusnews.com/documents_communiques/ACTUS-0-78081-theranexus_pr_cash_position_31_dec_2022_vdef.pdf SHENZHEN, China, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ESY SUNHOME ("ESYSH"), a new energy storage product company, successfully held a product launch event on Jan. 14. The most important partners of ESYSH-- EAST (300376), Ganfeng Lithium (002460) and Veken Technology (600152) all attended the conference. Both the chairmen of EAST and the Veken Technology delivered important speeches, expressing their high affirmation of corporate culture and team capabilities of ESYSH. The company's first order for the newly launched product, came from Belgium on the launch day, with processing starting immediately. And bulk shipments to its branches in Sydney, Australia, and Munich, Germany are also already on their way. "We believe the ESYSH can shine as photovoltaic power generation enters a golden age based on our solid technical prowess and collaboration with our partners to fuel the company's future development," said Mr. Lee, the CEO. "By 2050, photovoltaic power generation will account for 40% of all energy generation globally, with power generation reaching 440GW per year and the optical storage-charging system market set to reach over 250 billion dollars every year. Our company's solutions will wholly benefit consumers globally as the average annual storage based on solar soars in markets worldwide." Integrated with 6 KW inverter, 5~30 kWh batteries, the ESYSH HM6 essentially serves as a new-generation home appliance capable of enhancing people's quality of life through a clean and reliable power supply. The product aims to bring more convenience to the households, like refrigerators and washing machines. This home power storage appliance delivers extremely simple installation for end users. They merely stack the battery modules together for immediate use without any error and saving users on labor fees for guided setups. The system connects directly to the power grid or photovoltaic panels with cellphone-based IoT features providing electricity for homes, small supermarkets, farms, and other places. The ESYSH HM6 boasts IP 66 waterproof and dustproof features, meaning that users' power supply will be uninterrupted by extreme weather conditions or violent storm conditions. The product can also automatically heat up and function normally in conditions under minus 20 degrees Celsius. If there is a sudden failure in the system, the HM6's smart energy storage system automatically comes into play, ensuring a seamless power supply without interruptions. ESYSH has also developed a handy mobile APP so that users can harness the power of IoT to conveniently monitor the product's working status at any time of the day and from anywhere. It features three levels of early warnings in addition to an alarm, the users can feel confident about the safety of their appliance and their homes as a whole. After-sales services and maintenance is another area in which ESYSH shines. Should anything go wrong with the product, the ESYSH team is available always to provide guidance to all customers. As part of the company's commitment to providing the best service experience, customers can enjoy ten years of warranty coverage. For more information, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/@esysunhome Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985602/ESYSH_HM6.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/esy-sunhome-secures-first-orders-for-hm6-all-in-one-home-energy-storage-301724384.html LONDON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ESG focuses on the protection of the environment, social justice and long-term economic prosperity, and the MBH Corporation recognises that many small to medium companies in Singapore and the UK have been incredibly active in ESG for some time. The ESG Excellence Awards initiative, now in its second year and extending to the UK in 2023, aims to bring greater acknowledgement to companies who have truly excelled in this field. The ESG Excellence Awards is an opportunity for small to mid-sized companies to showcase their efforts in the ESG field and compete for the chance to win a prize that includes video production, marketing campaign support and consulting time with business experts. Entry to the awards is free and open to any small to medium-sized businesses that have their primary business activities and primary office or facility based in Singapore or the UK. The inaugural ESG Excellence Awards 2022 in Singapore was won by Genashtim Pte. Ltd., a recruitment and education firm that works to provide sustainable, meaningful and gainful employment for disadvantaged individuals. Nominations will include a description of the nominees business and why it is different, how their company relates to ESG, how they support social responsibility and what their vision is for the future of their company, from an ESG, investment and growth perspective. The winners of the ESG Excellence Awards Singapore & UK 2023 will receive a media investment prize in social and traditional media activation that will boost business awareness, and also include the production of a promotional video aimed at promoting their company and the important work they are doing in the area of ESG. They will also receive entrepreneur consultation with top leaders in MBH, including CEO of the MBH Corporation, Callum Laing. Nominations are now being received at www.mbhcorporation.com/esg-excellence-awards . Entries for the awards open 18th January 2023 and will close on 28th February 2023, with the winners being announced on 17th March 2023. About MBH MBH Corporation plc (M8H:GR) is a diversified investment holding company, listed on the Frankfurt and Dusseldorf Stock Exchanges and the OTCQX in New York (MBHCF). The company acquires small to medium enterprises across multiple geographies and sectors that are well established, profitable and looking to scale. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/mbh-corporation-opens-nominations-for-esg-excellence-awards-to-recognise-exceptional-environmental-social-governance-esg-efforts-by-small-to-medium-sized-companies-in-singapore-and-the-uk-301723690.html LIAOCHENG, China, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- This is a report from the Information Office of Liaocheng Municipal Government. With the arrival of the Spring Festival in the Year of the Rabbit, Liaocheng has become more and more lively, shopping on the "Yellow River Bazaar", buying foods and special snacks for New Year. After the Laba Rice Porridge Festival, the taste of the New Year will become stronger. On January 9, the "Yellow River Bazaar" in Dong-e County, Liaocheng, Shandong Province was very busy. People from all over the county went to the bazaar, tasted delicious food, and bought New Year's goods, looking for the New Year's flavor hidden in the bazaar. Spring Festival couplets, dried fruits, clothes and hats, vegetables, fruits, meat, seafood, free range eggs and other commodities are all in a wide variety. When going around the bazaar, villagers can always buy cheap and cheerful "New Year goods". Putting up Spring Festival couplets and buying "Fu" characters are the traditional customs of Chinese New Year. Steamed flower cakes and dumplings are indispensable traditional delicacies for Chinese New Year. As the Spring Festival approaches, every family begins to fry lotus root sandwich, steam crispy meat, buy food and prepare a sumptuous feast. People are jubilantly preparing for the Chinese New Year. The intangible heritage highlights in the Year of the Rabbit. As the new year approaches, Dough figurines (national intangible cultural heritage Langzhuang dough figurine project) artists in Langzhuang Village, Bei Guantao Town, Guanxian County, Liaocheng, Shandong Province, China welcome the arrival of the Spring Festival by creating cute and lifelike dough figurines rabbits. During the Spring Festival, Liaocheng also launches various tourism products to create a festive and peaceful holiday atmosphere. Dong-e E-jiao City held the activity of "celebrating the New Year in Shandong Time-honored Ejiao City", which combined with the activities of intangible cultural heritage skill displays, such as writing "Fu" characters, sending Spring Festival couplets, cutting window flowers, etc., to create an atmosphere to encourage shopping and celebrating the New Year. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/in-liaocheng-shandong-province-you-can-have-a-different-experience-of-the-spring-festival-301724407.html LONDON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Monsido - powered by CivicPlus, a leading web governance platform, has published an industry benchmark report examining the top 30 UK law firm websites. The benchmark report found that the average accessibility score for UK legal firm websites was 69%. This falls just short of the compliance score of 70% that is advised for organisations using the Monsido platform to improve web accessibility compliance. The website benchmark scans were conducted in December 2022 using the Monsido Web Governance platform. The scans evaluated 500 pages of the 30 leading UK law firms based on their website's accessibility, content quality (including broken links, misspellings, and content readability), SEO, and response time. With regards to content quality, the top 5 UK legal websites continue to maintain a high standard, with scores above 97%. However the average content quality score was 72%, leaving room for improvement. Similarly for SEO, the top 3 UK university websites had scores above 88%. The average SEO score across all 30 tested websites was 76%, however. Lastly, the top 5 websites performed very well in terms of website response time, with load times for all of them falling well under the 200 milliseconds recommended to be an excellent performer. "It's great to see that the law firms that were featured in our benchmark maintain a high standard when it comes to their website's content quality and performance. However the results also indicate that improvements are needed to their SEO and website accessibility in order to ensure easier and more equitable access to legal services in the UK," said Alex Marshall, Sales Director for Europe at Monsido - powered by CivicPlus, "We congratulate and applaud the top performing law firms for their commitment to continually optimising their website, and encourage others in the industry to follow their lead - especially on the web accessibility front." The industry benchmark revealed that the Top 5 Websites Overall belonged to Osbourne Clarke, DLA Piper, CMS, Eversheds, and Bindmans. Top performers in the other benchmarked categories are detailed in the report. For more insights, see the full benchmark report and rankings on the Monsido website. About Monsido powered by CivicPlus Monsido is a leading web governance solution designed to enable organisations to deliver a superior and inclusive user experience across their digital presence and support their journey to ensure communications are open, optimised, and compliant. The Monsido Platform includes a cohesive suite of tools for web accessibility, website quality assurance, brand and content compliance, user consent management, social and web content archiving, and more. Monsido is powered by integrated technology leader CivicPlus. For more information, visit monsido.com . View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/monsido-reveals-uk-law-firms-need-to-improve-website-accessibility-301724403.html Finance software startup Quartr signs an API deal with Lightyear, an online broker based in London, serving customers in 20 countries across Europe. Lightyear will, through this integration, get access to Quartr's database of earnings calls, accompanying documents, reports, and slide decks. This partnership also means that public companies get a completely new distribution channel for their information. STOCKHOLM and NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Quartr (www.quartr.com) continues to move forward on its mission to bring the financial community closer together by signing an API deal with Lightyear, an online broker based in London with customers in 20 countries all across Europe. The integration enables Lightyear's customers to find crucial information such as earnings calls, accompanying documents, reports, and slide decks directly through its online brokerage platform, which gives investors a strong foundation to make informed investment decisions. "We are very pleased to announce this Europe-focused partnership with Lightyear just a week after signing a deal with Sweden's largest online broker. We are convinced that our API will create a lot of value for both investors and online brokers worldwide, and not least for public companies as this enables them to get their equity stories told to a much wider audience", comments Sami Osman, CEO & Co-founder of Quartr. "Easy access to stock market data is crucial for new and experienced investors alike - to build out their investment strategies and successfully carry them out over the years. Historically, earnings calls and the discussions within them have not been easily accessible for retail investors; yet keeping up with companies' quarterly results is a key part of staying up to date with your portfolio performance. We are excited to partner with Quartr and bring earnings calls, as well as reports and transcripts into the Lightyear app, for our customers all across Europe", comments Mihkel Aamer, CTO & Co-founder of Lightyear. Sami Osman, Co-founder & CEO at Quartr sami@quartr.se +46 7029 70248 Tessa Bryant, Head of Communications at Lightyear tessa@golightyear.com +44 7899 840237 The following files are available for download: https://news.cision.com/quartr---investor-relations-made-accessible/i/1156x708-quartr-lightyear,c3134808 1156x708 Quartr Lightyear https://news.cision.com/quartr---investor-relations-made-accessible/i/1156x1156-quartr-lightyear,c3134809 1156x1156 Quartr Lightyear https://mb.cision.com/Public/21895/3699233/978a0e4c646f1ac8.pdf Press Release Quartr Lightyear View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/quartr-and-lightyear-partners-to-bring-free-and-easy-to-access-company-information-for-investors-across-europe-301724420.html It has been another successful year for PQE Group, a consulting firm in the Life Sciences industry based in Florence (Italy) with 32 offices worldwide. Recently named "Best Managed Company" by Deloitte, the Group closed in 2022 with a +70% in revenues compared to the previous year, thanks to the tremendous growth in the US and other international markets. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005073/en/ PQE Group, founded and administered by Gilda D'Incerti, reached 2000 employees worldwide in 2022 as a result of the recruitment of more than 500 people, split between recent graduates and senior experts. This trend is expected to continue in 2023 with a further recruiting effort of another 800 talents by the end of the year not only in the Americas, but also in new markets such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Singapore, Ireland and Canada. In addition to its organic growth, PQE Group will further increase the strategic business collaborations (the so-called Federated companies of the Group), creating new joint ventures with entrepreneurs worldwide. Great examples from last year were the shareholding agreements established with Techniconsult Group, a leading engineering company, and Quintian Pharma, a Regulatory and Pharmacovigilance consulting firm, ensuring not just staff augmentation, but also a competitive advantage within the global markets. Awarded Great Place to Work in the US, PQE Group puts its people at the core of its business strategy: the talented and highly specialized workforce of the company can benefit from planned career roadmaps and an associate program aimed to develop young talents to enter the company as partners. Within this framework, the decision-making teams of the company are composed by 43 equity partners and more than 130 young managers, 40% of whom are women and from 16 different countries. "2022 has been a positive year for PQE Group, a private company, made in Italy, with an international dimension," explains Danilo Neri, Vice President Executive Board Equity Partner, "that allows us to be in competition with the biggest consulting companies. Not just due to our internationalization and substantial number of highly specialized talents, we also decided to extend our services portfolio focusing our attention in the clinical studies and medical cannabis, becoming among the top players worldwide within the consulting companies in the Life Sciences sector." View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005073/en/ Contacts: Press Office Laura Piccioli pressoffice@pqegroup.com LONDON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Award winning metaverse startup Hadean, and Connected Places Catapult, the UK's innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and place leadership, have been awarded a UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) grant to create a new offering in the transportation sector. The 2-year long project will aim to develop a traffic simulation digital twin that can scale to a large number of entities (cars, standard HGVs, eHGVs, charging points, electric overhead cables), replicate motorways and highways in the UK and study the optimal locations for e-Highways. Using historical data and Hadean's cloud computing platform, the 3D environment will also help assess how e-Highways affect the flow of traffic and how infrastructure needs to be built to support them. This will enable a greater alignment between Hadean's computing technology and the modelling capability and permit extensive and complex road networks to be modelled, stress-tested, and subjected to "what-if?" analyses. Challenges around scale of simulation, spatial computation, complexity and extent of exploration will be addressed using technologies Hadean has developed for connecting and scaling virtual worlds for metaverse, gaming, and defence. Hadean VP of Innovation, Chris Arthurs, said: "Although e-Highways are being tested in California, Germany and the UK, domain-specific expertise of how, where and under what conditions these can be deployed is currently limited. We are excited to take our first step in the transportation industry, alongside our Knowledge Transfer Partners at the Catapult, to leverage the near-unlimited computational capacity of the cloud and develop a cutting-edge decision support tool to help consultancies and government agencies plan the highways of the future. We also believe that such capabilities will have important synergies with creating a category of metaverse worlds which may require the simulating and understanding of real-world and simulated scenario-based traffic patterns and behaviours, as well as exploring hypotheticals and "what-if?" questions around infrastructure design." Alexander Weedon, Executive Director of SME Development and Academic Engagement at Connected Places Catapult, said: "We are excited to be collaborating with Hadean to bring Connected Places Catapult's knowledge base to bear to support their digital twin challenge. The Catapult's unique expertise, boosted by the transfer of the Centre for Digital Twin-Hub (previously hosted by University of Cambridge) to the Catapult in April 2021, is uniquely positioned to support Hadean in creating create a new offering in the transportation sector, a wholly owned e-Highways simulation digital twin. Alisdair Ritchie, Head of the SME Development Team at Connected Places Catapult said: "Connected Places Catapult is delighted to be working with Hadean Supercomputing on this exciting project. Real world testing is extraordinarily expensive and the opportunity to work with Hadean to develop digital twins which can model e-highways in a virtual world at a fraction of the cost is both valuable and a real learning opportunity for both organisations" Connected Places Catapult will provide technical support and guidance to Hadean via a specialist knowledge transfer associate, who will act as a liaison between the Catapult's experts and the product team at Hadean. Specifically, the Catapult will advise on transport modelling and digital twin applications, supporting Hadean to develop mathematical and agent-based simulation models for road transportation. The Catapult team will also help Hadean overcome challenges around the acquisition and use of relevant data in the development of digital twins. The grant demonstrates a growing interest in the public and private transportation sectors for scalable, agent-based models that can boost the development of modern, eco-friendly transportation. The UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) is a non-departmental public body launched in April 2018, sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). About Hadean Founded in 2015, Hadean powers the creator economy, providing the infrastructure and computational power required to realise the full potential of the metaverse. Our web 3.0 technology allows you to build, run and monetise immersive virtual environments and experiences, dynamically connecting audiences across the world by providing scalability, security, and interoperability. Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1984291/eHighways.jpg Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1835490/Hadean_Logo.jpg View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/hadean-and-connected-places-catapult-awarded-innovation-grant-to-develop-e-highways-digital-twin-301723276.html TO: Company Announcements FROM: Balanced Commercial Property Trust Limited DATE:18 January 2023 LEI: 213800A2B1H4ULF3K397 Director Declaration In accordance with the requirements of the Listing Rule 9.6.14, the Company advises the following change to directorships in other publicly quoted companies, held by the following member of the Board: Linda Wilding will be appointed a Non-Executive Director of Sherborne Investors (Guernsey) C Limited with effect from 1 February 2023. The Company is listed on the Specialist Fund Segment of the London Stock Exchange. All enquiries: The Company Secretary Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited Trafalgar Court Les Banques St Peter Port Guernsey GY1 3QL Tel: 01481 745001 U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will visit South Korea in the near future, a Pentagon spokesperson said Tuesday. Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder added the upcoming trip will reaffirm the U.S.' commitment to working with its Asian ally. "Secretary Austin will travel to the Republic of Korea and the Philippines to meet with senior government and military leaders in both countries as the United States and these two critical allies continue to bolster our defense partnerships," the defense department spokesperson told a daily press briefing, referring to South Korea by its official name. Ryder said the trip will take place in the "coming weeks." South Korea's defense ministry earlier said Seoul and Washington were currently in discussion to arrange Austin's visit. Austin's proposed trip to Seoul follows the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting held here last week, at which the countries' top diplomats and defense chiefs highlighted the importance of trilateral cooperation among South Korea, Japan and the U.S. to tackle various regional issues, including threats posed by North Korea. (Yonhap) Despite the value they see in international trade, one third of respondents from UK SMEs do not trade internationally due to barriers and a lack of support The CBI's International Trade Toolkit, developed in partnership with Finastra, aims to help UK firms across all sectors increase their international ambitions LONDON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Research from the CBI and Finastra, canvassing the opinions of UK small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), suggests that there's a gap between the ambition of firms to trade internationally and the reality of doing so. While just 44% of businesses surveyed currently engage in international trade, only 23% said they were not interested in doing so. One third of respondents believe there's potential value, but do not trade internationally due to perceived barriers and a lack of support. Common barriers cited by respondents include: the impact of Brexit (23%); being too small to trade internationally (16%); and limited knowledge about international markets (15%). To better understand current business attitudes to international trade and accessing finance, the CBI and Finastra worked with YouGov to survey over 200 financial decision makers at UK-based SMEs to gain more insight into the challenges businesses are facing, attitudes to finance and ambitions for international growth. The findings are included in the CBI's International Trade Toolkit, being launched this week, which is designed to help UK SMEs across all sectors increase their international trade ambitions. "Our International Trade Toolkit, developed with Finastra, is designed to provide advice and guidance for SMEs, as well as helping to facilitate connections with fintech players and financial institutions that can help support such growth," explained Rain Newton Smith, CBI Chief Economist. "Our Seize the Moment strategy estimates that a new generation of SME exporters could raise around 20 billion in additional UK export revenues by 2030, and the UK's fintech sector can play a key role as a driver of productivity gains and enabler of broader economic transformation." Additional takeaways from the survey include: Ambitions for growth : those businesses that currently engage in international trade see opportunities for further growth, with 27% expecting to increase their imports or exports compared to only 4% of those who do not currently trade. : those businesses that currently engage in international trade see opportunities for further growth, with 27% expecting to increase their imports or exports compared to only 4% of those who do not currently trade. Sources of finance: financial institutions that businesses have an existing relationship with are the most common provider of finance (51%), although many businesses use their credit card (43%) and overdraft (28%) which are traditionally more expensive. Nearly 2 in 5 businesses have never applied for financing, suggesting more needs to be done to help them understand how finance can help them with their growth ambitions and find the option best suited to their needs. financial institutions that businesses have an existing relationship with are the most common provider of finance (51%), although many businesses use their credit card (43%) and overdraft (28%) which are traditionally more expensive. Nearly 2 in 5 businesses have never applied for financing, suggesting more needs to be done to help them understand how finance can help them with their growth ambitions and find the option best suited to their needs. Potential for embedded finance: With 3 in 10 respondents expressing interest in using embedded finance solutions, helping businesses understand the value embedded finance can deliver will be key to future growth. For example, ecosystems created by tech and fintech companies can support the matching of supply and demand of loans, using third-party data to provide personalized loan offers for SMEs. "Finastra is delighted to partner with the CBI in creating the International Trade Toolkit and in helping UK businesses unlock the benefits of international trade," said Jonathan McPhail, Lead Client Partner, Banking as a Service, Finastra. "Harnessing the power of fintech solutions can help firms overcome some of the barriers to international trade and give them a competitive edge - reaping efficiency gains through process improvements in payments, finance, cash management, compliance and operations, as well as improving business development opportunities through enhanced customer propositions. The toolkit shines a spotlight on just some of these use cases as the landscape continues to evolve." Finastra and the CBI have invited UK SMEs to join them at an event to mark the launch of the International Trade Toolkit, Winning with Fintech: International trade and accessing finance, taking place in London today, 18 January 2023. Survey Methodology CBI and Finastra worked with YouGov to survey 204 financial decision makers working for UK-based small and medium sized businesses with between 10 and 999 employees. The survey was conducted in September 2022. For further information please contact: Sarah Mason Acting Global Head of PR, Finastra T +44 (0)20 3100 3613 E sarah@metia.com CBI Press Office Available 24 hours a day on 0207 395 8239, or email:?press.office@cbi.org.uk. About Finastra Finastra is a global provider of financial software applications and marketplaces, and launched the leading open platform for innovation, FusionFabric.cloud, in 2017. It serves institutions of all sizes, providing award-winning solutions and services across Lending, Payments, Treasury & Capital Markets and Universal Banking (Retail, Digital and Commercial Banking) for banks to support direct banking relationships and grow through indirect channels, such as embedded finance and Banking as a Service. Its pioneering approach and commitment to open finance and collaboration is why it is trusted by ~8,600 institutions, including 90 of the world's top 100 banks. For more information, visit finastra.com. About the CBI Across the UK, the CBI speaks on behalf of 190,000 businesses of all sizes and sectors. The CBI's corporate members together employ nearly 7 million people, about one third of private sector-employees. With offices in the UK as well as representation in Brussels, Washington, Beijing and Delhi, the CBI communicates the British business voice around the world.?? LinkedIn Twitter YouTube Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1916021/FINASTRA_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/cbi-and-finastra-survey-shows-uk-smes-face-significant-barriers-to-international-trade-301724476.html PARIS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Viktor&Rolf announces today that American New York Times best-selling author, actress, model, activist and entrepreneur Emily Ratajkowski will be the face of the new FLOWERBOMB campaign worldwide from January 20, 2023. To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/9132851-emily-ratajkowski-new-face-viktor-rolfs-flowerbomb/ Ratajkowski is a multi-faceted, modern day feminist icon, challenging current biases to construct a space of true empowerment, redefining what it means to be wholly and wonderfully female. Her debut essay collection "My Body" was released by Metropolitan Books, solidified by her New York Magazine essay - the magazine's most read story of 2020 - entitled "Buying Myself Back," which led to widespread discourse around copyright and image ownership. Intimately connected with an engaged generation of women and female-identifying audiences, Ratajkowski is a woman that is both powerful and empowered, using her platform to promote a greater understanding of the changing face of femininity. Uninhibited and unapologetically authentic, Ratajkowski owns her unique femininity, sexuality and sensuality, redirecting the male gaze and reframing it for the woman who holds it. Launched 18 years ago, FLOWERBOMB is a worldwide best seller, remaining in the Top 10 US women's fragrances and the Top 15 UK women's fragrances since its launch in 2005. The fragrance has single-handedly disrupted the perfume world, setting the standard for floral gourmand fragrances and signaling a new chapter of fragrance femininity. "So much of what represents femininity is delicate. I like that FLOWERBOMB is about strength as much as it is about femininity." - Emily Ratajkowski, Model, Author and Activist "We have admired Emily Ratajkowski for a long time and we're happy to welcome her to the Viktor&Rolf family. As her work clearly testifies, Emily is a multifaceted talent. Her wide range of qualities and talents make her into the perfect embodiment of FLOWERBOMB." - Viktor Horsting & Rolf Snoeren, founders and artistic directors of Viktor&Rolf "As an author, activist, actress and entrepreneur, Emily Ratajkowski broke the model mold to express every facet of her nature. She expresses a new type of femininity, one that tempers sensitivity with strength, perfectly embodying the FLOWERBOMB ethos." - Sandrine Groslier, Luxe Fragrance Brands President, L'Oreal Ratajkowski, in her first collaboration with the brand, appears in the fragrance's film short directed by filmmakers Torso Solutions, featuring imagery artistically directed and captured by photographers Inez & Vinoodh. In it, Ratajkowski explores the extraordinary power of transformation pushed to the extreme. A story of metamorphosis unfurls through a glitchy explosion of flowers and a call to 'Unleash your fem-power'. @viktorandrolf_fragrances UnleashYourFemPower Contact: laura.steffanut@loreal.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1983040/Viktor_Rolf_Flowerbomb.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1983041/Viktor_Rolf_Flowerbomb_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/emily-ratajkowski-announced-as-the-new-face-of-viktorrolfs-flowerbomb-301724485.html BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - German stocks were little changed on Wednesday as investors awaited a slew of U.S. economic data and more earnings this week for directional cues. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that he was convinced Europe's largest economy would not fall into a recession, despite soaring energy and food prices. The benchmark DAX was marginally lower at 15,176 after rising 0.4 percent in the previous session. BASF edged down slightly after warning that 2022 earnings from its chemicals business will fall below the average estimate from analysts. Automakers BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen were trading mixed after industry data showed European passenger car registrations climbed for the fifth month in a row in December, but at a slower pace than in November. Continental AG lost nearly 4 percent. The car parts manufacturer cut its adjusted free cash flow expectations for 2022, citing further customer payment delays. Copyright(c) 2023 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. Speaking at a press conference to introduce this year's Education & Careers Expo, Jenny Koo, HKTDC Assistant Executive Director, said: "I hope the diverse content and strong lineup of exhibitors in this year's Education and Careers Expo will inspire students and jobseekers to gain the motivation to hone new skills, expand their horizons and explore new possibilities" Yvonne Wong, Vice Chairman, The Y.Elites Association & GM, Qianhai International Liaison Services; Natalie Chew, Director, Communications and Public Relations Office, Vocational Training Council; Jenny Koo, HKTDC Asst. Executive Director; Rebecca Choi, Asst. Director - Student & Curriculum Development, Hong Kong Institute of Construction; and Veon Tsang, Founder, HotelsHR [L-R] The 32nd edition of the HKTDC Education & Careers Expo runs from 2 to 5 February at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The photo shows scenes from last year's event. HONG KONG, Jan 18, 2023 - (ACN Newswire) - Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the 32nd HKTDC Education & Careers Expo will be held from 2 to 5 February (Thursday to Sunday) at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). The expo presents designated zones under two themes, namely Education and Careers. The four-day event is open to the public free of charge, providing a one-stop platform with the latest information on education, training and career development and more than 2,800 job openings on offer. A number of companies and organisations will provide on-site interviews to jobseekers.Speaking at today's press conference to announce details of the expo, Jenny Koo, HKTDC Assistant Executive Director, said: "This year's expo, themed 'Ride the Wave to Success', will host 700 organisations including educational institutions, professional associations, government departments, public organisations and private companies to feature information on studies in 20 countries and regions as well as employment opportunities. I hope this year's diverse content and strong lineup of exhibitors will inspire students, employed individuals and jobseekers to gain the motivation to hone new skills, expand their horizons and explore new possibilities."Four Careers Theme Days introduce latest career trends and prospectsFour Careers Theme Days over the course of the expo will highlight the latest career trends and introduce visitors to the prospects in different industries. Co-organised by the Vocational Training Council (VTC), the VPET - Skilling Talent for the Future theme day on 2 February will introduce various sought-after professional and vocational skills in this new era that can help people develop more diverse and exciting careers. On 3 February, the GBA Opportunities theme day will invite representatives from the Greater Bay Area Youth Development Association to discuss the potential for the younger generation to land job offers and start a business in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Representatives from The Y.Elites Association will share information and recount their experiences in relation to employment and entrepreneurship in Qianhai, Shenzhen, while the Greater Bay Area Homeland Youth Community Foundation will offer tips on studying in the GBA.On 4 February, the Exploring Construction Industry theme day, co-organised by the Hong Kong Institute of Construction (HKIC) and the HKTDC, will invite professionals to give insights into how the construction industry is leveraging the latest technologies as it enters a new era of "Construction 2.0", as well as sharing on current prospects. And on 5 February, the Slasher Generation theme day will introduce the new kind of workforce members who engage in multiple jobs at the same time, with speakers from the barista profession and influencer marketing sector sharing both the fun aspects and the challenges they face in their career paths.More than 2,800 job openings on offer, some with on-site interviewsThe Career-themed Zones will offer more than 2,800 job openings from a variety of professional institutions, recruitment platforms, local government bodies and corporations. At the Recruitment Square, recruitment platforms and employers including Hong Kong East Cluster of the Hospital Authority, Citybus and Asia Airfreight Terminal, among others, will recruit and interview candidates on the spot. Visitors can bring their resumes to the expo and apply for the posts that interest them.Four Education-themed Zones highlight local, mainland and overseas opportunitiesThis year's expo features four education zones, including the Local Studies Zone featuring universities and post-secondary institutions such as Hong Kong Shue Yan University and the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong that provide information on further studies.The Overseas & Mainland China Education Zone brings together consulate general offices, officially approved organisations, overseas universities and study centres to provide information and consulting services regarding educational opportunities in 19 different countries and regions, including Europe, the United States, Asia and Mainland China. And the Lifelong Learning Zone will showcase numerous self-betterment programmes and on-the-job training courses for visitors, covering areas such as technology, lifestyle, language, beauty and cosmetics.At the Youth Zone, visitors can get information on continuing education and career planning, and find out more about summer jobs, internship opportunities and full-time jobs. Exhibitors include The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, Hong Kong Youth Exchange Promotion United Association, the Hong Kong Playground Association and more.In addition, the expo will offer four Education Theme Days, providing an in-depth introduction to the European Union (2 February), the United Kingdom (3 February), France (4 February) and Germany (5 February), covering key topics such as admission requirements, the preparation process prior to studying abroad, and insights into campus life and the support facilities offered in different locations.80+ inspiring events, distinguished speakers share their insights and success storiesVisitors interested in joining a variety of sectors such as the innovation and technology industry and the government sector, or embarking on a working holiday, can take advantage of more than 80+ inspiring events that will be held during the expo, with celebrities and experts joining to share their experiences and strategies for success:- Henry Lee, Account Director (Talent and Learning Solutions), LinkedIn, will share the latest trends in Hong Kong's labour market and offer job-hunting tips for the digital age.- Sunny Chan, famed director and screenwriter of Hong Kong films Table for Six and Men on the Dragon, will share his inspiring journey from screenwriter to director.- "fataunt", registered nurse and YouTuber, will talk about how he became a key opinion leader (KOL) while studying at university.- Christina Ho, civil aviation pilot, who successfully transitioned from a fashion designer to become a pilot in local airline industry, will share her inspirational journey.- Siu Yan-ho, doctoral lecturer, will share his experience of transforming from an under-achiever, with a score of 6 in the HKCEE public exam, to become a doctoral lecturer.- Expo website: https://hkeducationexpo.hktdc.com/- Activity schedule: https://bit.ly/3XoVBrV- Photo download: https://bit.ly/3wbVWCnAbout HKTDCThe Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body established in 1966 to promote, assist and develop Hong Kong's trade. With 50 offices globally, including 13 in Mainland China, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a two-way global investment and business hub. The HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to create business opportunities for companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in the mainland and international markets. The HKTDC also provides up-to-date market insights and product information via research reports and digital news channels. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Twitter @hktdc and LinkedIn.Media enquiriesHKTDC's Corporate Communications Department:Clementine Cheung, Tel: +852 2584 4514, Email: clementine.hm.cheung@hktdc.orgEric Wong, Tel: +852 2584 4575, Email: eric.ks.wong@hktdc.orgSource: HKTDCCopyright 2023 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. Hair Care Line Offers Hydrolyzed Keratin, Moroccan Argan Oil, and Purple Pigments for Blonde and Bleached Hair New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - SUNATORIA, a brand specializing in high-quality keratin hair care, has launched three nourishing hair masks to rejuvenate damaged hair. The masks, made with Hydrolyzed Keratin, Moroccan Argan Oil, and purple pigments, are designed to turn hair soft, silky, and shiny, restore natural bounce and volume, and remove brassiness and yellow tones. The ingredients are sodium, sulfate, and paraben-free and quality tested, not animal tested, to ensure 100% TOP Grade hydrolyzed keratin. SUNATORIA was founded on the belief that all women and men deserve results-proven professional hair care that is accessible to all. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8846/151713_28f4f6db745d59c7_001full.jpg "Our natural ingredients are meant to turn customers away from damaging products and towards a treatment that strengthens hair at its core," Gudz said. The Premium Keratin Hair Mask is free of sulfates, sodium, and parabens, and is made with 100% top grade hydrolyzed keratin. The keratin in the mask is structured in the same way as a protein synthesized in the human body, and is combined with organic ingredients like vitamin E and Omega 3 and 9 fatty acids to increase moisture and elasticity. When SUNATORIA first opened its doors three years ago, the brand was founded on the belief that all women and men deserve professional hair care that is both accessible and results-proven. With this mission in mind, founder Dmytro Gudz began selling three hair masks, led by the Premium Keratin Hair Mask. The Premium Keratin Hair Mask is a nourishing and rejuvenating treatment specifically designed for dry, damaged hair. Made with hydrolyzed keratin, the mask has been proven to transform hair into a soft, silky and shiny state, while also restoring natural volume and bounce. The end result is hair that is not only healthier, but also easier to manage. One of the standout features of the Premium Keratin Hair Mask is its use of all-natural ingredients. The mask is free of sodium, sulfate and parabens, and is made with top-grade, quality-tested hydrolyzed keratin. Customers have reported that their damaged hair becomes stronger and more moisturized after using the mask. According to Gudz, "Our natural ingredients are meant to turn customers away from damaging products and towards a treatment that strengthens hair at its core." In addition to its keratin content, the hair mask also includes vitamin E and omega 3 and 9 fatty acids, all of which have been shown to increase moisture and elasticity in the hair. SUNATORIA's keratin is structured in the same way as a protein synthesized in the human body, making it a highly effective and natural choice for hair care. SUNATORIA also offers two other hair masks: the Keratin and Argan Oil Hair Mask and the Purple Keratin Hair Mask for blonde and bleached hair. The former is made with Moroccan argan oil, a natural moisturizer that adds strength and softness to the hair. The latter is specifically designed for color-treated hair, featuring purple pigments to remove brassiness and yellow tones and control frizz for easier styling. Both masks are cruelty-free, sulfate-free, paraben-free and sodium-free, and use the same nourishing blend of vitamin E and omega fatty acids as the Premium Keratin Hair Mask. "We at SUNATORIA continue to envision a market where women don't have to worry about false promises, zero results or expensive costs," said Gudz. "Our hope is that our products can help improve the lives of all those who want professional hair care." In the three years since its founding, SUNATORIA has served numerous customers on Amazon with its line of three hair care masks that work to rejuvenate, strengthen and moisturize damaged hair. Each mask offers its own unique ingredients, but all are cruelty-free, sulfate-free and paraben-free. Name: Dmytro Gudz E-mail: info@wentaimpex.co.uk Phone: +13234171222 Website: http://sunatoria.com/ To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151713 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Exploits Discovery Corp. (CSE: NFLD) (OTCQX: NFLDF) (FSE: 634) ("Exploits" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results and interpretation from the Company's detailed ground-based geophysical survey conducted on Exploits' highly prospective Bullseye gold property. The data from this survey corroborates the location of the Appleton Fault Corridor which transects the property over a strike length of approximately 1.2 kilometres. Bullseye is located approximately 1.8 kilometres north of New Found Gold's Lotto gold discoveries. Jeff Swinoga, President and CEO, commented, "We believe Bullseye is one of the most exciting gold targets in Central Newfoundland with a significant number of high-grade gold discoveries in close proximity to its borders. These survey results clearly demonstrate the Appleton Fault extends right through the center of our property. Drilling will commence in February and we believe Bullseye has the potential to be a game-changing catalyst for Exploits as well as the mining industry in the province." Ken Tylee, Vice President of Exploration, added, "We are pleased that we completed our initial prospecting and geophysical survey at Bullseye ahead of schedule since receiving our exploration permits. These results will be instrumental in targeting and prioritizing our first drill holes in this highly prospective area." Highlights Ground VLF / MAG survey indicates that the Appleton Fault Corridor transects the Bullseye property over a strike length of approximately 1.2 km. Additional lower-order splay structures have also been identified at Bullseye, trending in both north-northwest and north-northeast directions. The Bullseye property is situated between recent significant gold discoveries made by New Found Gold and Labrador Gold. Figure: Map displays Bullseye claim with Exploits' interpreted structures and VLF (In-Phase) data as background. Both VLF (Very Low Frequency electromagnetic) and MAG (insitu magnetism) are industry-standard subsurface mapping tools capable of showing key geological features such as lithology indications, faults, and late-stage intrusions. To view an enhanced version of this figure, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/6393/151692_9ce649ee34a85bbc_002full.jpg Bullseye VLF and MAG Survey Exploits retained Simcoe Geoscience Ltd. to conduct the Bullseye ground geophysics program. A total of 48 line- kilometres were walked with survey lines spaced at 50 metres in late December 2022. In conjunction with the VLF data, magnetic results from this survey also indicate that the Appleton Fault Corridor extends onto the Bullseye property and was utilized in the interpretation of the lower order splay structures adjacent to the Appleton Corridor. Bullseye Property On September 27th, 2022, Exploits acquired 11 mineral claims (2.8 km) through the province's map-staking process. Exploits owns 100% interest in these claims. The Bullseye claims are located approximately 3 kilometres north of the Town of Appleton and is easily accessible via existing forestry roads and trail networks. On December 7th, the Company announced that it has received the exploration permit, from the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, that pertains to responsibly conducting exploration activities within its new 'Bullseye' claims. The central, 'h-shaped' property is directly contiguous to New Found Gold and Labrador Gold properties where over a dozen drill rigs have been recently operating. National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure Ken Tylee, P.Geo., VP of Exploration with Exploits, is a qualified person within the Provinces of Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Tylee has reviewed and approved the technical information presented herein. About Exploits Discovery Corp. Exploits is a Canadian mineral exploration company actively identifying, exploring, acquiring and advancing gold projects in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Exploits claims cover approximately 2,000 square kilometres of mineral tenements. The Company's Exploration 2.0 methodology is focused on discovering high-grade structurally hosted epizonal gold similar to New Found Gold's success at the Keats and Lotto Zones in the Exploits Subzone. Exploits is becoming one of the most extensive explorers for gold in the Exploits Subzone. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD /s/ "Jeff Swinoga" President and CEO For more information, please contact: Shanda Kilborn VP, Investor Relations +1 (778) 819-2708 investors@exploits.gold https://exploitsdiscovery.com/ Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as the term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of accuracy of this news release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected including, but not limited to, market conditions, availability of financing, actual results of the Company's exploration and other activities, environmental risks, future metal prices, operating risks, accidents, labor issues, delays in obtaining governmental approvals and permits, and other risks in the mining industry. All the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances save as required by applicable law. Acknowledgments Exploits Discovery would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Junior Exploration Assistance Program from the Department of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151692 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - At least 18 people were killed and many others injured in a helicopter crash in a suburb of Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday. Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevgeny Yenin and State Secretary Yuriy Lubkovich are among the dead. They were on board the helicopter, which hit a kindergarten as it crashed down in Brovary, east of Kyiv, reports say. The casualties include three children in the kindergarten. The head of Kyiv's regional military administration, Oleksiy Kuleba said 29 people, including 15 children, were injured in the accident. Monastyrsky had been en route to a war hot spot, accompanied by top colleagues in the interior affairs ministry. Monastyrsky, 42, was one of the Ukrainian lawmakers who presented the most number of legislative initiatives in the parliament. He became the Interior Minister in July 2021. The crashed chopper was reportedly a Eurocopter EC225 'Super Puma,' owned by Ukraine's state emergency service. According to reports, there is no indication that the crash was caused by enemy attack. European Council President Charles Michel said Denys Monastyrsky was a great friend of the European Union. 'We share our deepest condolences with the families of the victims, President @ZelenskyyUa, PM @Denys_Shmyhal and the people of Ukraine,' he wrote on Twitter. Copyright(c) 2023 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. KANAZAWA, Japan, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchersat Kanazawa University report in Nano Lettershow high-speed atomic force microscopy can be used to assess the effectivity of spike-neutralizing antibodies for preventing COVID-19. The use of such antibodies offers a promising alternative to vaccines. Vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) developed and produced during the COVID-19 pandemic offer a significant degree of protection. However, after the second dose of a vaccine, protection only lasts up to 8 months and requires multiple booster doses afterwards. An alternative pathway to prevention and treatment of COVID-19 lies in so-called spike-neutralizing antibodies (SNABs) that neutralize the effect of the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the protein mediating entry of the virus into a host cell. Being able to properly study the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins and SNABs is crucial for developing effective treatment - dynamically visualizing these interactions is particularly desirable. Keesiang Lim from Kanazawa University and colleagues have now succeeded in video-imaging protein-SNAB interactions by means of high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM). They were able to identify the molecular mechanisms at play, and by doing so demonstrated that HS-AFM offers a unique nanoscopic assessment platform for evaluating the intermolecular binding properties of SNABs. One of the main reasons for the need to study protein-SNAB interactions is to check that they do not lead to a phenomenon called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which refers to the situation when a virus enhances its entry potential by binding to a 'suboptimal' antibody. Lim and colleagues used HS-AFM to investigate the ADE risk, as the method is a powerful nanoimaging tool for visualizing molecular structures and the dynamics of biochemical interactions involving viruses. The scientists first looked at how a SARS-CoV-2 virus spike protein binds to a SNAB. They identified how the structure of the protein-SNAB complex blocks infection, and could conclude that, based on the obtained structural information, ADE risk is negligible. Then, to simulate the dynamic interaction between SNABs and variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Lim and colleagues created small extracellular vesicles ('biocontainers' surrounded by a membrane, residing outside cells) capable of producing spike proteins. From these experiments, the researchers concluded viral surface roughness can enhance the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants. They also found that SNAB could neutralize the Delta variant spike protein. The work of Lim and colleagues shows that HS-AFM provides an excellent nanoscopic assessment tool for studying the binding pattern of SNABs and the dynamic interaction between SNABs and spike protein-mimicking extracellular vesicles. Quoting the researchers: "These results are essential for the screening of appropriate SNABs with a lower risk of ADE to treat COVID-19." Background High-speed atomic force microscopy The general principle of atomic force microscopy (AFM) is to make a very small tip scan the surface of a sample. During this horizontal (xy) scan, the tip, which is attached to a small cantilever, follows the sample's vertical (z) profile, inducing a force on the cantilever that can be measured. The magnitude of the force at the xy position can be related to the z value; the xyz data generated during a scan then result in a height map providing structural information about the investigated sample. In high-speed-AFM (HS-AFM), the working principle is slightly more involved: the cantilever is made to oscillate near its resonance frequency. When the tip is moved around a surface, the variations in the amplitude (or the frequency) of the cantilever's oscillation - resulting from the tip's interaction with the sample's surface - are recorded, as these provide a measure for the local 'z' value. AFM does not involve lenses, so its resolution is not restricted by the so-called diffraction limit as in X-ray diffraction, for example. HS-AFM results in a video, where the time interval between frames depends on the speed with which a single image can be generated (by xy-scanning the sample). Researchers at Kanazawa University have in recent years developed HS-AFM further, so that it can be applied to study biochemical molecules and biomolecular processes in real-time. Keesiang Lim and colleagues have now applied to method to study the process in which a spike-neutralizing antibody binds to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, thereby preventing it from entering a host cell. Reference Keesiang Lim, Goro Nishide, Elma Sakinatus Sajidah, Tomoyoshi Yamano, Yujia Qiu, Takeshi Yoshida, Akiko Kobayashi, Masaharu Hazawa, Toshio Ando, Rikinari Hanayama, and Richard W. Wong. Nanoscopic Assessment of Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Spike Neutralizing Antibody Using High-Speed AFM, Nano Letters January2023. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04270 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04270 https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Figure1.png Figure 1. High-speed atomic force microscopy visualization of a spike-neutralizing antibody reacting with a spike protein. 2023 Lim, et al. About Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/en/ Nano Life Science Institute (NanoLSI), Kanazawa University is a research center established in 2017 as part of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The objective of this initiative is to form world-tier research centers. NanoLSI combines the foremost knowledge of bio-scanning probe microscopy to establish 'nano-endoscopic techniques' to directly image, analyze, and manipulate biomolecules for insights into mechanisms governing life phenomena such as diseases. Contact Hiroe Yoneda Vice Director of Public Affairs WPI Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) Kanazawa University Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan Email: nanolsi-office@adm.kanazawa-u.ac.jp Tel: +81 (76) 234-4550 About Kanazawa University Kanazawa University This is an informational site of Kanazawa University As the leading comprehensive university on the Sea of Japan coast, Kanazawa University has contributed greatly to higher education and academic research in Japan since it was founded in 1949. The University has three colleges and 17 schools offering courses in subjects that include medicine, computer engineering, and humanities. The University is located on the coast of the Sea of Japan in Kanazawa - a city rich in history and culture. The city of Kanazawa has a highly respected intellectual profile since the time of the fiefdom (1598-1867). Kanazawa University is divided into two main campuses: Kakuma and Takaramachi for its approximately 10,200 students including 600 from overseas. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985630/Kanazawa_University.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/kanazawa-university-research-nanoscopic-tool-assesses-alternative-covid-19-prevention-301724581.html 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. Prosecutors on Wednesday indicted former Yongsan Police Station chief Lee Im-jae with detention on charges related to the deadly crowd crush in Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood last year. Lee was charged with professional negligence causing the high death toll from the crowd crush on Oct. 29 and falsification of official records connected with the accident. Wrapping up a monthslong probe into authorities' bungled response to the crowd crush, the police last week referred Lee and 22 other government officials to the prosecution for further investigation and potential indictment. On Wednesday, the Seoul Western District Prosecutors Office also indicted four other incumbent and former officials from Yongsan Police Station, including a former emergency monitoring chief, on charges of fatal professional negligence or falsification of official records. (Yonhap) Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Altamira Gold Corp. (TSXV: ALTA) (FSE: T6UP) (OTC Pink: EQTRF), ("Altamira" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has received assay results from the remaining five initial diamond drillholes holes (MBA005 to MBA009) which were recently completed at the Maria Bonita target within the Cajueiro project in Para state, Brazil. Highlights: Drillhole MBA005 returned 69m @ 1.0g/t gold from surface in altered porphyritic intrusive host rocks identical to mineralized rocks intercepted in the previous four holes (MBA001 - MBA004) Drillhole MBA007 intersected 71m @ 0.6g/t gold from 34m down hole in a similar lithology to that of holes MBA001 - MBA0005. The hole also intersected 43m @ 0.5g/t gold below this interval from 105m to the end of the hole at 148m Drillholes MBA005 and MB007 extend the area with known coherent gold mineralization at least 120m to the east of the original drillholes MBA001 - MBA004 The new mineralized system at Maria Bonita, which has remarkably consistent gold grades, remains open in several directions (see Figures 5 and 6) CEO Mike Bennett commented, "The results from the final five reconnaissance drill holes at Maria Bonita confirm that we have discovered a significant gold mineralized system at Cajueiro which is located just 7 km west of the existing resource base. Whilst the mineralized system remains open in several directions, the initial drill results indicate consistent gold values over broad intervals and the size of the gold-in-soil geochemical anomaly (800 x 800m) means that additional drilling will be required to determine the size of the mineralized system." CAJUEIRO PROJECT The Cajueiro project is located approximately 75km NW of the town of Alta Floresta in the state of Mato Grosso (Figure 1) in central western Brazil and is easily accessible by road and has grid power. Cajueiro forms one of three key projects that Altamira controls in the region, the other two being Apiacas and Santa Helena (Figure 1). Figure 1: Location of the Cajueiro, Apiacas and Santa Helena projects. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_001full.jpg The Cajueiro project has current NI 43-101 resources of 5.66Mt @ 1.02 g/t gold for a total of 185,000 oz in the Indicated Resource category and 12.66Mt @ 1.26 g/t gold for a total of 515,000 oz in the Inferred Resource category. Several strong mainly untested gold-in-soil anomalies occur within a short radius of the Cajueiro resource area and include Maria Bonita, Sossego and Novo Sonho (Figure 2). Maria Bonita is the strongest of these peripheral gold-in-soil anomalies and is open to the west, with the current footprint of the geochemical anomaly covering an area comparable in size to the entire Cajueiro mineral resource area. Figure 2: Location of the Cajueiro (Baldo) mineral resource and the Maria Bonita target showing relative size and intensity of the soil responses. The Maria Bonita soil anomaly remains open to the west and north. To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_002full.jpg Maria Bonita Target The Maria Bonita target is located approximately 7km northwest of the Cajueiro resource area (Figure 2) and is defined by a gold-in-soil anomaly which is at least 800 x 800m in size and open to the west. The central part of the anomaly returned gold values in excess of 1g/t gold in soils (Figure 3). Figure 3: Gold-in-soil values at the Maria Bonita target over background aero-magnetic data (derivative of total magnetic intensity - TMI) with structural interpretation. To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_003full.jpg There is no outcrop in the target area and no prior hard-rock gold mining activity at Maria Bonita. The target has never been previously tested by drilling prior to the current drill program. Historic placer workings in the stream immediately south of the target suggest that there is a physical dispersion train of gold eroding from the area. Results have now been received for all nine initial diamond drill holes. These holes were designed to determine the source of the extensive 800 x 800m soil anomaly which remains open to the west. Holes MBA001 - MBA004 have been reported previously (see press releases dated 7th September and 16th November 2022, and Figure 4, Table 1). All four initial holes cut significant intervals of gold mineralization and include 50m @ 1.0 g/t gold from surface in MBA001, 55m @ 1.0 g/t gold from surface in MBA002, 45m @ 1.4 g/t gold from surface in MBA003 and 50m @ 1.1 g/t gold from surface in MBA004. Core recoveries for the initial programme exceeded 99% in each drillhole. Hole MBA005 was a step-out hole and was collared approximately 70m east of Holes MBA003 and MBA004 (Figure 4). It was drilled on an azimuth of 305 to a depth of 157m. The hole intersected pervasively altered quartz porphyritic rhyolite with some brecciated zones. The hole returned 69m @ 1.0 g/t gold from surface but gold values are strongly anomalous throughout with the upper 83.6m averaging 0.9g/t gold (Table 1, Figure 5). The remainder of the hole from 83.6m depth to the end of hole at 157m returned 73.4m @ 0.3g/t gold and the hole ended in mineralization. Figure 4: Drill hole locations and results on gold-in-soil contoured values (ppb gold) and magnetic intensity background at the Maria Bonita target. To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_004full.jpg Hole MBA007 was a further step-out hole and was collared a further 50m east of MBA005 with an azimuth of 360, an inclination of 55 (Figure 4). It reached a total depth of 179m. This hole intersected soil and saprolite to a depth of 25m downhole. The saprolite is developed in an interpreted younger medium-coarse felspar porphyry dyke which is un-mineralized. However, from 34m down hole, the hole cut altered reddish quartz porphyry rhyolite intrusive, similar to that found in holes MBA001-5. The hole returned 71m @ 0.6g/t gold from 34 - 105m. Below this depth, gold mineralization remains consistent, albeit at lower levels to a depth of 148m, returning 43m @ 0.5g/t gold (Figure 5, Table 1). Figure 5: Section looking north-east showing projections of drillholes MBA003,4,5 & 7 To view an enhanced version of Figure 5, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_005full.jpg Figure 6: Section looking north-west showing projections of drillholes MBA001,2,3 & 6 To view an enhanced version of Figure 6, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_006full.jpg Table 1: Drill results for Holes MBA005-009 and results from prior releases for MBA001-4 To view an enhanced version of Table 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4500/151666_fad5b69834fcca24_007full.jpg Hole MBA006 was collared 150m to the south of the original drillhole (MBA001) to test the southern area of the soil anomaly (Figure 4). The upper 59m contains an average of 0.3g/t Au, indicating the presence of a broad lower grade halo to the south of the main mineralized zone. Holes MBA008 and 009 were drilled as significant 330m step-out holes to the east from the original drillhole. Both holes were drilled to test the ENE trend of a subtle magnetic feature shown in Figure 4 plus the gold-in-soil trend in the same overall orientation. The holes cut deep saprolite extending to 36m and 67m downhole respectively. Below this level, both holes cut medium grained volcanic agglomerates with intermittent, occasionally strong sericite/chlorite alteration. The style of alteration differs from that of the western drillholes (MBA001-7) in not showing pervasive red (inferred potassic) alteration. Gold results were generally below 0.1g/t throughout, except for a veneer of up to 5m of soil and upper saprolite containing elevated anomalous gold in the range ~0.3g/t Au. These results imply that the soil anomaly in this location is reflecting surficial dispersion of gold laterally from the sub-cropping mineralization known to exist to the west. At present the mineralized zone, hosted by rhyolitic quartz porphyry (intersected in holes MBA001-7) is interpreted to dip shallowly to the east from the sub-crop around drillholes MBA001-5. The coherent, near-surface mineralized zone remains unconstrained to the west. The size of the mineralized zone at Maria Bonita remains unknown but the excellent results received from six of the initial nine reconnaissance drill holes at Maria Bonita suggest the presence of a significant discovery. As previously reported, there is no outcrop in the target area. Work has commenced on mapping the identified sub-cropping geology using a shallow auger. This is achieving holes up to 13m deep from which composite soil and saprolite samples will be collected to support future plans for additional drilling aimed at determining the size of the mineralized system. Preliminary metallurgical testwork on two composite mineralized samples from holes MBA 001-004 was completed at TESTWORK Desenvolvimento de Processo Ltda in Nova Lima, Minas Gerais. The work was conducted under the observation of the Company's consulting metallurgist Ian Gordon Hall Dun BSc (Eng), MSc. Results are anticipated in the next few weeks and should provide indications as to what proportion of the gold can be readily recovered by conventional technologies. Proposed Warrant Extension The Company proposes to make an application to the TSX Venture Exchange to extend the expiry dates from February 5th, 2023 to November 5th, 2023 of an aggregate of 10,000,000 outstanding share purchase warrants (the "Warrants"). The Warrants were issued pursuant to a private placement that was completed on February 5th, 2021 and were originally exercisable for two years from the closing date. Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share in the capital of the Company at a price of $0.30 per share. All other terms of the Warrants will remain the same. The extension of the Warrants remains subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV"). Stock Option Plan Altamira also announces that its shareholders approved the amended 10% rolling stock option plan at the annual meeting of shareholders held on November 23rd, 2022. The principal amendments to the stock option plan ensure compliance with the revised TSXV Policy 4.4 and include: (i) a provision that allows cashless exercise of stock options and net exercise of stock options; (ii) that share capital adjustments are subject to the prior approval of the TSXV, except where they relate to share consolidations or splits; and (iii) disinterested shareholder approval is required for any extension to stock options granted to individuals that are insiders at the time of the proposed amendment. The maximum number of common shares which may be issued under the stock option plan is 10% of the Company's issued and outstanding share capital at the date of grant. The stock option plan has a "rolling" limit, as the number of common shares reserved for issuance pursuant to the grant of stock options will automatically increase as the Company's issued and outstanding share capital increases. The limit includes outstanding stock options previously granted. Qualified Person Guillermo Hughes, FAIG and M AusIMM., a consultant to the Company as well as a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, supervised the preparation of the technical information in this news release. About Altamira Gold Corp. The Company is focused on the exploration and development of gold projects within western central Brazil. The Company holds 8 projects comprising approximately 190,000 hectares, within the prolific Juruena gold belt which historically produced an estimated 7 to 10Moz of placer gold. The Company's advanced Cajueiro project has NI 43-101 resources of 5.66Mt @ 1.02 g/t gold for a total of 185,000 oz in the Indicated Resource category and 12.66Mt @ 1.26 g/t gold for a total of 515,000oz in the Inferred Resource category. On Behalf of the Board of Directors, ALTAMIRA GOLD CORP. "Michael Bennett" Michael Bennett President & CEO Tel: 604.676.5660 Toll-Free:1-833-606-6271 info@altamiragold.com www.altamiragold.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The securities described herein have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements under the U.S. Securities Act and any applicable state securities laws. Forward-looking Statements Certain information contained herein constitutes "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the extension of the Warrants. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "will", "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, including the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals. 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 statements or 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. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward looking information. The Company will not update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that is incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws. Notes Gold analysis has been conducted by SGS method FAA505 (fire assay of 50g charge), with higher grade samples checked by FAA525. Analytical quality is monitored by certified references and blanks. Until dispatch, samples are stored under the supervision the Company's exploration office. The samples are couriered to the assay laboratory using a commercial contractor. Pulps are returned to the Company and archived. Drill holes results are quoted as down-hole length weighted intersections. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151666 By 2030 the global demand for water will exceed sustainable supply by 40% Climate change and expanding populations are causing rivers and lakes to dry up UpLink, the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum, has announced the first group of 10 water-focused entrepreneurs who will each receive CHF175,000 to scale their start-ups Winners of the Global Freshwater Innovation Challenge come from seven countries and have developed innovations using biosensors, chemical-free wastewater treatments and desalination solutions The challenge is part of a five-year $15 million investment to drive innovation in the freshwater sector, provided by a leading global conglomerate For more information on the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023, visit www.wef.ch/wef23 Securing the world's global freshwater ecosystems, under increasing threat from climate change, population growth and consumer demand, has become more critical than ever. To tackle this escalating crisis, UpLink, the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum, in partnership with global conglomerate HCL Group, has announced 10 water-focused entrepreneurs who will share CHF1.75 million ($1.9 million) from HCL Group to scale their innovations. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005448/en/ Access to water plays a critical role in food production, education, job creation, health and well-being and the preservation of the natural world and is vital to achieving the UN's 2030 sustainability agenda. However, global demand for water will exceed sustainable supply by 40% by 2030, with huge implications for the global economy and society. The 10 start-ups are the winners of the Global Freshwater Innovation Challenge, the first of five challenges under HCL and UpLink's Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative. Launched in September 2022, the challenge called for innovative solutions that would strengthen data-driven decision making, improve freshwater resilience in the face of climate change and restore water quality around the world. Through a $15 million investment over five years, HCL Group is supporting UpLink and the Forum's Global Water Initiative to launch a series of innovation challenges and create an innovation ecosystem for the global freshwater sector on UpLink. The 10 water-focused entrepreneurs, or "aquapreneurs", were chosen from 227 solutions submitted to the challenge, and will now each receive CHF175,000 ($190,000) in vital funding from HCL Group. Two of these innovators were selected to present their solutions at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos: Epic Cleantec, based in the US, is a water technology company leading the water reuse revolution in the urban built environment. Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO of Epic Cleantec, said: "With the combined challenges of ageing infrastructure, growing urban populations and a rapidly changing climate, the conventional approach to how we manage water is no longer sustainable. Epic is on a mission to ensure that our cities are water-secure for generations to come." Epic aims to use its next-generation technologies to drive circularity in water use and to work with policy-makers to reshape the water infrastructure in cities. said: "With the combined challenges of ageing infrastructure, growing urban populations and a rapidly changing climate, the conventional approach to how we manage water is no longer sustainable. Epic is on a mission to ensure that our cities are water-secure for generations to come." Epic aims to use its next-generation technologies to drive circularity in water use and to work with policy-makers to reshape the water infrastructure in cities. Kilimo, based in Argentina, uses big data and machine learning to verify, improve, and offset water usage in agriculture. Tatiana Malvasio, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer,said: "As founders from Latin America, we have first-hand experience with the tension between agriculture and water stress in our region. In response to this challenge, we set out to create a product that could help farmers reduce their water usage and be more efficient in their irrigation practices." Kilimo uses artificial intelligence to help farmers optimize irrigation and then be compensated for their participation in water stewardship initiatives. The other entrepreneurs to be awarded prize money from HCL and support from UpLink are: bNovate Technologies (Switzerland) An automatic, remote biosensor to monitor and detect bacterial concentration in water supplies Indra Water (India) Electrically driven, decentralized wastewater treatment solution with no added chemicals in its primary treatment Majik Water Technologies (Kenya) An atmospheric water generator system that uses proven condensation-based techniques to capture water moisture from the air NatureDots Private Limited: AquaNurch (India) Derisking fisheries and water managers from ecological stressors, enabling remote-control and real-time monitoring of aqua-farms Oneka Technologies (Canada) A wave-powered desalination solution to produce drinking water using renewable energy created through waves Openversum (Switzerland) A locally assembled and managed membrane filter that removes pathogen heavy metals from water RainGrid Inc. (Canada) Building community-scale, property-based, digital networks for net-zero residential property rainfall runoff while generating verifiable ecosystem credits Wateroam Pte Ltd (Singapore) Production of safe, speedy and high-quality drinking water without electricity We are delighted to announce the first beneficiaries of the Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative who have been selected after rigorous deliberation among a large panel of experts," said Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Chairperson, HCLTech. "The availability of fresh water is rapidly changing worldwide, creating a tenuous future requiring attention from policy-makers, the private sector and the public alike. Having witnessed the efforts of aquapreneurs who are finding solutions to challenges around existing freshwater resources, I am positive that we are all moving in the right direction for the future of our planet. Many congratulations to the top 10 awardees." "These innovations are crucial to meet the increasing global demand for clean water and support the transition to a greener economy," said Olivier Schwab, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. "With water scarcity threatening countries all around the world, it's essential to identify and empower the innovative start-ups that will help secure access to this precious resource, now and for future generations. The Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative, launched by UpLink and HCL, will connect these world-class innovators to the resources, expertise and vital funding they need to scale and drive truly transformational change." About UpLink UpLink is the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum, designed to unlock an "entrepreneur revolution" for people and planet by supporting start-ups with innovative solutions for the world's most pressing issues, as outlined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 in Davos in partnership with Deloitte and Salesforce, UpLink builds bridges between entrepreneurs and the investors, experts and partners who can help scale their ventures. UpLink sources innovations through a competition framework known as innovation challenges. UpLink has run more than 43 challenges and identified over 350 entrepreneurs with innovative solutions across critical SDG areas including health, food, freshwater, ocean, plastics, education, climate and more. For more information, visit https://uplink.weforum.org About HCL Group Founded in 1976 as one of India's original IT garage start-ups, HCL is a pioneer of modern computing with many firsts to its credit, including the introduction of the eight-bit microprocessor-based computer in 1978. Today, the HCL Group has business presence across sectors including technology and healthcare and comprises three group companies HCLTech, HCL Infosystems and HCL Healthcare. The group generates annual revenues of over $12.3 billion with more than 222,000 employees operating across 60 countries. HCLTech, a group company, is among the leading global technology companies. It is delivering cutting-edge capabilities centred around digital, engineering and cloud, powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products across industry segments. HCLTech is a strategic partner of the World Economic Forum. For further information, visit www.hcl.com Notes to editors About the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 will convene the world's foremost leaders under the theme, Cooperation in a Fragmented World. Find out more about the Annual Meeting 2023 here Read the Forum Agenda also in French Spanish Mandarin Japanese Learn about the Forum's impact Check out the Forum's Strategic Intelligence Platform and Transformation Maps Follow the Forum on Twitter via @wef@davos Instagram LinkedIn TikTok Weibo Podcasts Become a fan of the Forum on Facebook Watch Forum videos Subscribe to Forum news releases and podcasts The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. (www.weforum.org). View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005448/en/ Contacts: Pooja Arora: Pooja_sikka@hcl.com VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Fabled Copper Corp. ("Fabled Copper" or the "Company") (CSE:FABL)(FSE:XZ7) announces the results of 2022 surface field work on its Muskwa Copper Project. See Figure 1 below. Figure 1 - General Property Location The Project is comprised of the Neil Property, the Toro Property and the Bronson Property all located in northern British Columbia. See Figure 2 below. Figure 2 - Location Map The Ringarooma occurrence is located due west of the Magnum mine deposit and is located on the Neil Property, see Figure 3 below Figure 3 - Ringarooma Copper Occurrence Location Peter Hawley, President, CEO reports; "The Ringarooma copper occurrence was visited by a 3-person field team consisting of 2 geologist and 1 geo technician on four occasions during the summer field season and on the last visited accompanied by myself and Louis Martin, technical director of the Company. A total of 25 samples were collected, 1 grab and 24 chip samples. Of the 25 samples collected,9 assayed greater than 0.5% copper. See Table 1, Table 2 and Photo 1 below. Photo 1 - Northside of Ringarooma Creek Sample Areas A grab sample of a section from the mineralized quartz vein with 20% chalcopyrite and trace of bornite reported 11.80% copper. Contiguous chip sampling along the exposed northside of the Ringarooma creek resulted in a copper grade of 0.90% over 22.90 meters. Within this interval higher grade sections returned; 2.40% copper over 3.0 meters 4.48% copper over 1.55 meters 4.44% copper over 0.80 meters and 2.35% copper over 3.90 meters, See Tables below, Photos 2,3. Photo 2 - Northside of Ringarooma Creek Detail Sample Areas Photo 3 - Chip Sample D-723560 Table 1 - Ringarooma Vein Chip Sampling Compilations Sample No. Sample Type Copper % Width Meters North Side of Ringarooma Creek D-723558-575 Chip 0.90 22.90 Including: D-723558-562 Chip 2.40 3.00 D-723560-61 Chip 4.48 1.55 D-723568 Chip 4.44 0.80 D-723572-75 Chip 2.36 3.90 Including D-723573-74 Chip 4.63 1.70 South Side of Ringarooma Creek D-723578,79,81,82,84,84 Chip 2.09 6.10 D-723581,82,84 Chip 4.15 3.00 D-723582,84 Chip 5.82 2.10 On the south side of the Ringarooma Creek the same mineralized exposure was observed, mapped and sampled in detail with 6 chip samples taken. Of the 6 samples taken 2 assayed greater that 0.50% copper. See Table 1 above and Table 2 below, Photo 4. Photo 4 - South side of Ringarooma Creek Table 2 - Ringarooma Vein Sample Results Sample # Elevation Sample Type Width Meters Copper % Gold g/t Silver g/t North Side of Ringarooma Creek D-723557 1,635 Grab - 11.80 0.11 5.15 D-723558 1,630 Chip 1.20 0.06 0.00 0.04 D-723559 1,630 Chip 0.85 0.18 0.04 0.01 D-723560 1,630 Chip 0.75 6.26 0.08 3.70 D-723561 1,630 Chip 0.80 2.81 0.10 19.50 D-723562 1,630 Chip 0.60 0.16 0.02 0.26 D-723563 1,630 Chip 1.80 0.03 0.01 0.06 D-723564 1,630 Chip 1.90 0.04 0.00 0.06 D-723565 1,631 Chip 1.65 0.00 0.00 0.01 D-723566 1,631 Chip 1.75 0.13 0.00 0.16 D-723567 1,630 Chip 1.70 0.02 0.08 0.04 D-723568 1,634 Chip 0.80 4.44 0.00 2.68 D-723569 1,635 Chip 1.20 0.01 0.00 0.01 D-723570 1,633 Chip 2.00 0.01 0.00 0.02 D-723571 1,632 Chip 2.00 0.10 0.00 0.21 D-723572 1,632 Chip 0.90 0.10 0.00 0.15 D-723573 1,632 Chip 0.90 4.01 0.16 6.18 D-723574 1,632 Chip 0.80 5.32 0.31 9.06 D-723575 1,632 Chip 1.30 0.96 0.05 2.23 South Side of Ringarooma Creek D-723578 1,632 Chip 1.10 0.01 0.00 0.03 D-723579 1,632 Chip 1.40 0.19 0.02 0.35 D-723581 1,632 Chip 0.90 0.24 0.06 0.78 D-723582 1,632 Chip 0.30 18.75 0.13 32.70 D-723584 1,632 Chip 1.80 3.67 0.13 11.00 D-723585 1,632 Chip 0.60 0.04 0.01 0.08 Worthy of note are contiguous chip samples D-723582, 584 which reported 18.75% and 32.70 g/t silver copper over 0.30 meters and 3.67% copper and 11 g/t silver over 1.80 meters, respectively. See Tables 1, 2 above and Photo 5 below. Photo 5- South Side of Ringarooma Creek Chip Samples Detailed examination of the types of copper mineralization and their related emplacement into the shear fabric plus numerous structural measurements we observed and noted, See Photos 6,7 below Photo 6 Photo 7 The Ringarooma structural kinematics appears to show that the mineralization is controlled by a sinistral trans-tensional shear zone with interior trending structures potentially acting as zones of dilatancy and copper precipitation as seen in micro scale on the Ringarooma and micro and macro on the Bronson property. See Photos 8, Figure 4 below. Photo 8 Figure 4 As per protocol, all sample locations were taken with GPS along with GPS enabled field cameras of photos of the sampled units. The photos, sample locations and all assay data pertaining to the assay taken, (36 elements were assayed) were tagged in a geo tag format for plotting in .kml / .kmz GIS systems such as Google Earth. An additional releases on the 2022 exploration program of the Muskwa area will be forth coming in the following weeks. QA QC Procedure Analytical results of sampling reported by Fabled Copper Corp represent rock samples submitted by Fabled Copper Corp staff directly to ALS Chemex, Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. Samples were crushed, split, and pulverized as per ALS Chemex method PREP-31, then analyzed for ME-ICP61 33 element package by four acid digestion with ICP-AES Finish. ME-GRA21 method for Au and Ag by fire assay and gravimetric finish, 30g nominal sample weight. Over Limit Methods For samples triggering precious metal over-limit thresholds of 10 g/t Au or 100 g/t Ag, the following is being used: Au-GRA21 Au by fire assay and gravimetric finish with 30 g sample. Ag-GRA21 Ag by fire assay and gravimetric finish. Fabled Copper Corp. monitors QA/QC using commercially sourced standards and locally sourced blank materials inserted within the sample sequence at regular intervals. About Fabled Copper Corp. Fabled Copper is a junior mining exploration company. Its current focus is to creating value for stakeholders through the exploration and development of its existing copper properties located in northern British Columbia. The Muskwa Project is located in the Liard Mining Division in northern British Columbia. Mr. Peter J. Hawley, President and C.E.O. Fabled Copper Corp. Phone: (819) 316-0919 peter@fabledcopper.org For further information please contact: info@fabledcopper.org The technical information contained in this news release has been approved by Peter J. Hawley, P.Geo. President and C.E.O. of Fabled, who is a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Certain statements contained in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions, including, that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events and that the Company obtains any required regulatory approvals. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: impacts from the coronavirus or other epidemics, general economic conditions in Canada, the United States and globally; industry conditions, including fluctuations in commodity prices; governmental regulation of the mining industry, including environmental regulation; geological, technical and drilling problems; unanticipated operating events; competition for and/or inability to retain drilling rigs and other services; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; volatility in market prices for commodities; liabilities inherent in mining operations; changes in tax laws and incentive programs relating to the mining industry; as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to the Company as set forth in the Company's continuous disclosure filings filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com . The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, other than as required by applicable law. SOURCE: Fabled Copper Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735670/Fabled-Copper-Reports-090-Copper-over-2290-meters-and-209-copper-over-610-meters-On-the-Ringarooma-Copper-Occurrence Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Sanu Gold Corporation (CSE: SANU) (OTCQB: SNGCF) ("Sanu Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it is preparing for a Phase I 10,000 metre ("m") Reverse Circulation ("RC") drill program (the "Program") at its Bantabaye Gold Exploration Permit ("Bantabaye" or the "Permit") in Guinea, West Africa. Bantabaye covers a 100 square kilometre area on the western margin of Guinea's Siguiri Basin, approximately 50 kilometres ("km") southwest of Nordgold Group's Lefa Gold Mine, one of the largest gold producers in Guinea, and 90 km north of Predictive Discovery Limited's Bankan Gold Project, a recent multi-million ounce gold discovery. Martin Pawlitschek, President and CEO of Sanu Gold, commented: "We are excited to be preparing for the initial drill test of our flagship Bantabaye Project, located on the western margin of the Siguiri Basin in Guinea, where we are targeting large, near-surface, structurally-hosted gold deposits. The high gold concentrations returned from exploration in 2022, with grades of up to 18.3 g/t gold from bedrock samples, and the lateral extent of gold-in-bedrock anomalies, attest to the quality of our drill targets. The regional setting of the permit, on the western margin of the Siguiri Basin is particularly intriguing. We look forward to updating the market when drilling is underway." Figure 1. Bantabaye Phase I RC Drill Program Target Areas. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8941/151668_2dd5fdce746ec9ed_001full.jpg The objective of the Program is to conduct an initial drill test of ten high-priority target areas encompassing a 7 km strike extent of bedrock gold anomalies in the Bantabaye North and Bantabaye South Zones, which are characterized by high-grade gold mineralization in artisanal workings (Figure 1). Exploration by the Company in 2022 included a property-wide termite mound geochemical sampling program, collection and analysis of rock chip samples from gold mineralization exposed in artisanal workings and an extensive first-pass auger drilling program which sampled the top of the oxidized bedrock located below lateritic cover (for more information on these programs see the Company's news release dated January 10, 2023). This work outlined the ten high-priority target areas planned for RC drill testing in the Program. Geological mapping has outlined a series of steeply dipping northeast and northwest trending faults intersected by a shallowly south dipping thrust fault, a similar structural setting to gold mineralization at the nearby Bankan Gold Project. Laterally extensive artisanal workings, characterized by high-grade, oxide-hosted gold mineralization and extensive alteration, occurs at the intersection of these structures and are included in the previously mentioned high-priority targets for RC drill testing (Figure 2). RC drilling is expected to start in Q1 2023, following the preparation of drill sites and the mobilization of equipment. Figure 2. Bedrock gold mineralization in artisanal workings at Bantabaye. To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8941/151668_2dd5fdce746ec9ed_002full.jpg Qualified Person The scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Serigne Dieng, Ph.D., M.Sc., a Member (MAIG) of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG), Exploration Manager of the Company and a qualified person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. About Sanu Gold Located within the Siguiri Basin, a world class gold district that is host to several operating mines and major new discoveries, Sanu Gold is exploring three high quality gold exploration permits in Guinea, West Africa. The Company has defined multi-kilometer long gold-bearing structures on each of the gold exploration permits, with multiple high-value drill targets and is targeting multi-million ounce gold discoveries. Sanu is operated by a highly experienced team, with successful records of discovery, resource development and mine permitting. Martin Pawlitschek President & CEO, Sanu Gold Corp. For further information regarding Sanu Gold, please visit the Company's website at www.sanugoldcorp.com or contact: Fiona Childe VP, Corporate Development & Communications Sanu Gold Corp. info@sanugoldcorp.com John Boidman Renmark Financial Communications Inc. +1 (514) 939-3989; +1 (212) 812-7680 jboidman@renmarkfinancial.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws. 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", "indicates", "opportunity", "possible" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Sanu Gold believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results or realities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such material risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the Company's plans for exploration on its properties and ability to execute on plans, ability to raise sufficient capital to fund its obligations under its property agreements going forward, ability to maintain its material property agreements, mineral tenures and concessions in good standing, to explore and develop its projects; changes in economic conditions or financial markets; the inherent hazards associated with mineral exploration and mining operations, future prices of gold and other metals, changes in general economic conditions and local risks in the jurisdiction (Guinea) in which it operates, accuracy of mineral resource and reserve estimates, the potential for new discoveries, the ability of the Company to obtain the necessary permits and consents required to explore, drill and develop the projects and if obtained, to obtain such permits and consents in a timely fashion relative to the Company's plans and business objectives for the projects; the general ability of the Company to monetize its mineral resources; and changes in environmental and other laws or regulations that could have an impact on the Company's operations, compliance with environmental laws and regulations, dependence on key management personnel and general competition in the mining industry. Forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151668 Falea to be acquired by African Energy Metals for $5.5 million GoviEx to retain interest in the polymetallic deposit with exploration upside GoviEx remains focused on its mine permitted projects Madaouela and Muntanga Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - GoviEx Uranium Inc. (TSXV: GXU) (OTCQX: GVXXF) ("GoviEx" or "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with African Energy Metals Inc. ("AEM") whereby AEM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of GoviEx's wholly-owned Malian subsidiary, Delta Exploration Mali SARL ("Delta"). Delta holds three contiguous exploration licences (Falea, Bala, and Madini) in Mali known collectively as the Falea project. Under the terms of the agreement, AEM will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Delta for a purchase price of $5,500,000 that shall be satisfied as follows: (i) at closing of the transaction, a cash payment of $500,000 and the issuance of AEM's common shares equal to a value of $2,000,000; and (ii) subject to the re-issuance of the Falea license, the issuance of AEM's common shares equal to a value $3,000,000. AEM will also grant GoviEx a 3% net smelter royalty on the Falea project. The Falea project is a polymetallic (uranium, silver, and copper) deposit located in Mali, approximately 350 km west of the capital Bamako. The Falea and Bala areas are highly prospective for unconformity type polymetallic uranium copper-silver deposits. The sale of the Falea project is part of GoviEx's strategy of focusing on its two advanced mine-permitted projects, Madaouela in Niger and Muntanga in Zambia. Whilst the Falea project will be managed by AEM, GoviEx will retain a considerable interest in the project, therefore maintaining a potential upside on any future discoveries. Daniel Major, CEO of GoviEx, commented: "This is a strategic deal which will allow GoviEx shareholders to maintain a significant interest in the Falea project whilst allowing the Company to concentrate its efforts on the continued exploration and development of its two mine-permitted, advanced stage development uranium projects, Madaouela and Muntanga. Falea is a solid project with fantastic exploration potential and African Energy Metals is well placed to manage its development going forward, with in country knowledge and experience." Stephen Barley, Executive Chairman of African Energy Metals, commented: "We are excited to become involved in the Falea project. It is a polymetallic project with a significant uranium resource. GoviEx will become an important shareholder of African Energy Metals and our shareholders will have the continuing benefit of their knowledge and mining expertise. Less than 5% of the property has been explored, so there is substantial exploration upside for uranium, copper, gold, and silver." For so long as GoviEx holds at least 10% of the issued and outstanding common shares of AEM, GoviEx will have the right to appoint one director to AEM's board of directors. Expected Closing The transaction is expected to close on or before March 15, 2023, and remains subject to several conditions, including but not limited to approval of the TSXV. All dollar amounts referred to in this announcement are stated in Canadian Dollars. Financial Advisor Sprott Capital Partners LP is acting as financial advisor to GoviEx for this transaction and will receive a fee in relation to the transaction, which remains subject to TXSV acceptance. About GoviEx Uranium Inc. GoviEx is a mineral resource company focused on the exploration and development of uranium properties in Africa. GoviEx's principal objective is to become a significant uranium producer through the continued exploration and development of its flagship mine-permitted Madaouela Project in Niger and its mine-permitted Muntanga Project in Zambia. For further information, please contact: Isabel Vilela, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications Phone: +1-604-681-5529 Email: info@goviex.com Website: www.goviex.com About African Energy Metals African Energy Metals is a natural resource company with a focus on the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of copper, cobalt, and lithium energy metals projects in the DRC. African Energy Metals has the intention of acquiring interests in additional concessions or relinquishing concessions in the normal course of business both in and outside of the DRC. African Energy Metals has an experienced management team located in the DRC. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All information and statements other than statements of current or historical facts contained in this news release are forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in GoviEx's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will", "could", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "should," and similar expressions, are forward- looking statements. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information. Forward-looking statements include those in relation to, (i) the timing or ability to receive TSXV approval and close the transaction as agreed; (ii) AEM's ability to get to the re-issuance of the Falea licence; and (iii) GoviEx's ability to become a significant uranium producer through the continued exploration and development of its flagship mine-permitted Madaouela Project in Niger and, its mine-permitted Muntanga Project in Zambia. Although GoviEx believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there are no assurances that GoviEx's expectations will be achieved. Such assumptions, may prove incorrect. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include (i) potential delays due to COVID-19 restrictions; (ii) the failure of the Delta projects, for technical, logistical, labour-relations, political factors, the Falea licence not being re-issued by regulators, or other reasons; (iii) a decrease in the price of minerals below what is necessary to sustain operations; (iv) an increase in the cooperating costs of AEM above what is necessary to sustain its operations; (v) accidents, labour disputes,or the materialization of similar risks; (vi) a deterioration in capital market conditions that prevents AEM from raising the funds it requires on a timely basis; and (vii) generally, AEM's inability to develop and implement its respective successful business plans for any reason. In addition, the factors described or referred to in the section entitled, "Risk Factors" in the MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2021 of GoviEx, which is available on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com, should be reviewed in conjunction with the information found in this news release. Although GoviEx has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward- looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance, or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances, or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information in this news release will transpire or occur, or, if any of them do so, that GoviEx will derive a benefit therefrom. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and GoviEx disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151710 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Getchell Gold Corp. (CSE: GTCH) (OTCQB: GGLDF) ("Getchell" or the "Company") is pleased to provide assay results for drill holes FCG22-26 to FCG22-28 that continue to demonstrate significant intervals of gold mineralization and have extended the Colorado SW zone towards the southeast in the Central Area of the Fondaway Canyon project, Nevada. Key Highlights Colorado SW Gold Zone Colorado SW extended 40m to the southeast on new drill section by holes FCG22-26 and 28; FCG22-26 intersected three significant gold mineralized intervals including 1.8 g/t Au over 29.4 m and 1.1 g/t Au over 83.8 m ; intersected three significant gold mineralized intervals including over and over ; FCG22-27 drilled 1.2 g/t Au over 29.9 m partway through the targeted zone prior to the hole being lost; over partway through the targeted zone prior to the hole being lost; FCG22-28 intersected three significant gold mineralized intervals including 0.8 g/t Au over 98.0 m and 1.3 g/t Au over 58.0 m ; intersected three significant gold mineralized intervals including over and over ; Colorado SW zone remains open in all directions. "Stepping out into a new area comes with its risks and rewards. In this instance, our drilling has successfully demonstrated that the Colorado SW gold zone clearly extends along strike to the southeast while maintaining a considerable thickness." states Mike Sieb, President, Getchell Gold Corp. "Once again, we finished a drill season on a high note by expanding the limits of our recent gold discoveries and continuing to reveal the exceptional exploration potential at Fondaway Canyon." Drill Hole FCG22-26 and FCG22-28 Drill holes FCG22-26 and FCG22-28 were centered on a new drill section, a 40 metre step out to the southeast from previous drilling that included FCG20-05 grading 1.8 g/t Au over 90.0 m (Figures 1 to 3). Both holes revealed excellent gold grade consistency and mineralized thickness in respect to the adjoining drill section, intersecting the Colorado SW zone over a 200m down hole length with highlighted gold intervals detailed in Table 1. Getchell Gold has now traced the Colorado SW zone for over 300m on this section with the mineralization remaining open up and down dip as well as along strike to the southeast, a region absent of any drilling. Drill Hole FCG22-27 Drill hole FCG22-27 was designed to test the up-dip continuation of the Colorado SW zone on section with hole FCG20-06 that intersected 1.5 g/t Au over 37.7 m and 1.1 g/t Au over 38.3 m. FCG22-27 intersected an upper interval returning 1.2 g/t Au over 29.9 m, but the drill rods became stuck and the hole was lost partway through the targeted zone at a depth of 240m (Figure 3). The Company has traced the Colorado SW zone for over 300m on this section with the mineralization remaining open both up and down dip. Figure 1: Fondaway Canyon Central Area drill location plan map. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/151712_a3165a89145db9c5_001full.jpg Table 1: Drill Hole FCG22-26 to FCG22-28 Notable Colorado SW Gold Intervals To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/151712_a3165a89145db9c5_002full.jpg Figure 2: Cross section highlighting drill holes FCG22-26 and FCG22-28's gold intervals. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/151712_a3165a89145db9c5_003full.jpg Figure 3: Cross section highlighting drill hole FCG22-27's gold intervals. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/151712_a3165a89145db9c5_004full.jpg Figure 4: Colorado SW Zone cross section C1W highlighting drill hole gold intervals. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/151712_a3165a89145db9c5_005full.jpg Figure 4 shows the Company's previous drill results on the section 40 metres to the northwest with excellent gold grade consistency and mineralized thickness. This section is highlighted by holes FCG21-08 and FCG21-11 that intersected the Colorado SW zone grading 1.4 g/t Au over 203.9 m and 0.9 g/t Au over 141.1 m respectively. Of note, this section is the most northwestern drilled section and is bounded to the northwest by a region absent of any drilling. Hole FCG22-28 marks the last hole drilled during a very successful 2022 drill program with all gold zones drill tested remaining open along strike and up and down dip. The Company's technical team is in the process of compiling and analyzing the results from the 2022 drill program for the planning of this year's drill program at Fondaway Canyon. Scott Frostad, P.Geo., is the Qualified Person (as defined in NI 43-101) who reviewed and approved the content and scientific and technical information in the news release. The 2022 drill core is being processed using the same methods as the 2020 and 2021 drill programs. The core is cut at Bureau Veritas Laboratories' ("BVL") facilities in Sparks, Nevada, with the samples analyzed for gold and multi-element analysis in BVL's Sparks, Nevada and Vancouver, BC laboratories respectively. Gold values are produced by fire assay with an Atomic Absorption finish on a 30-gram sample (BV code FA430) with over limits re-analyzed using method FA530 (30g Fire Assay with gravimetric finish). The multi-element analyses are performed by ICP-MS following aqua regia digestion on a 30g sample (BV code AQ250). Quality control measures in the field include the systematic insertion of standards and blanks. Highlighted drill intervals are based on minimum interval lengths of 3.3 metres (10 feet), a 0.25 g/t Au cut-off, and a maximum of 3.3 metres of internal dilution, with no top cut applied. Broader reported Intervals may include internal dilution in the calculated average weighted grades. All intervals are reported as downhole drill lengths and additional work is required to determine the true widths. About Getchell Gold Corp. The Company is a Nevada focused gold and copper exploration company trading on the CSE: GTCH and OTCQB: GGLDF. Getchell Gold is primarily directing its efforts on its most advanced stage asset, Fondaway Canyon, a past gold producer with a significant resources estimate and on the Star project, a past high-grade copper, gold, and silver small-scale producer. Complementing Getchell's asset portfolio is Dixie Comstock, a past gold producer with a historic resource and one earlier stage exploration project, Hot Springs Peak (Au). Getchell has the option to acquire 100% of the Fondaway Canyon and Dixie Comstock properties, Churchill County, Nevada. For further information please visit the Company's website at www.getchellgold.com or contact the Company by e-mail at info@getchellgold.com or by phone at +1 647 249-4798. Mr. William Wagener, Chairman & CEO Getchell Gold Corp. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed this press release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Certain information contained herein constitutes "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the use of proceeds. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "will" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Although management of Getchell have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or 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. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company will not update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that are incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151712 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (CLF) has partnered with the United Steelworkers in filing antidumping and countervailing duty petitions against eight countries related to unfairly traded tin and chromium coated sheet steel products. The company said the petitions present evidence that imports of tin mill products from each subject country are being sold in the United States at less than normal value and that imports of tin mill products from China are benefiting from countervailable subsidies. The petitions seek the imposition of antidumping duties on U.S. imports of tin mill products from Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Copyright(c) 2023 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. Supercar Blondie partners with Vantage Markets for financial education GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Multi-asset broker, Vantage International Group Limited ("Vantage" or "Vantage Markets") is pleased to unveil Alexandra Mary Hirschi, of Supercar Blondie, as its Brand Ambassador. This partnership marks a milestone between an online brokerage with a social media publisher, aimed to use their respective expertise to provide accessible and relevant financial education both on Vantage's platforms and on Supercar Blondie's online education channel, Xplained. Marc Despallieres, Chief Strategy and Trading Officer at Vantage, says, "We are truly excited to work with Supercar Blondie once again, in a greater capacity as our brand ambassador. Her adventurous attitude, tech-savvy, and global appeal makes her a perfect fit for us to raise Vantage's brand awareness among younger and more discerning audiences. I know her unique presentation style will help demystify trading, and make it approachable and relevant for all." The social media publisher draws over 1 billion views per month across the group, with over 85 million followers globally. As a leading voice and influence in a traditionally masculine industry, Supercar Blondie engenders Vantage's beliefs in female empowerment, alongside a shared commitment of Vantage towards innovation, and climate action, which is aligned with Vantage's partnership with NEOM McLaren Extreme E. Alexandra Mary Hirschi says, "I am all for bringing exciting and transformative content to our audience. One of our key goals in 2023 is to empower our audience by providing accessible financial education materials. With that, I'm thrilled to partner with a market leader like Vantage to raise the bar on financial education and strengthen financial literacy for all. Vantage is a company with a big heart, and It's exciting to see the impact we can make together." This announcement marks a strengthening of the partnership between the two organisations that was first established in 2022 when Supercar Blondie participated in the Blue Carbon initiative in Sardinia, Italy, to formally launch Vantage's corporate ESG journey, and bring awareness to climate change. About Vantage Vantage (Vantage International Group Limited) is a multi-asset broker offering clients access to a nimble and powerful service for trading CFD on Forex, Commodities, Indices, Shares, ETFs and Bonds. With more than 13 years of market experience, Vantage entities now have over 1,000 employees across more than 30 global offices. Vantage is more than a broker. It provides a trusted trading ecosystem, an award-winning mobile trading app, and a user- friendly trading platform that enables clients to take advantage of trading opportunities. Download the Vantage App on App Store or Google Play. trade smarter @vantage. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985738/image.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1745281/Vantage_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/vantage-unveils-supercar-blondie-as-brand-ambassador-301724684.html DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Solitario Zinc Corp. ("Solitario") (NYSE American:XPL)(TSX:SLR) is pleased to report that it has received results from a new high-grade gold area, called Spur, south of the recently announced Geyser Gold Zone. The combined Geyser-Spur Gold Zone represents a significant expansion to the original Geyser high-grade area (November 16 and December 7, 2022 news releases). The broadened area remains open to expansion in all directions with many peripheral assays pending. It is important to note the Geyser-Spur Gold Zone is more than 4.0 kilometers from our previously announced high-grade Downpour Gold Zone, all of which are a part of Solitario's 33,000-acre land holdings in South Dakota. Also, final Downpour channel sample assay results were received and increased the length of high-grade mineralization in two of the trenches (see Downpour Target Trench Results Map). New surface sampling results, as well as previously reported results can be viewed on the attached Geyser-Spur Zone Map. New sampling highlights include: The new Spur assay results have expanded the footprint of gold mineralization to an area measuring approximately 650 x 225 meters from the previously reported oval-shaped area measuring 225 x 125 meters. from the previously reported oval-shaped area measuring 225 x 125 meters. Fourteen new select grab surface samples averaged 6.8 grams per tonne ("gpt") gold within the expanded footprint . This new high-grade zone, called Spur, measures approximately 150 x 120 meters . within the expanded footprint This new high-grade zone, called Spur, measures approximately . Initial trenching assay results yielded a continuous mineralized zone 24 meters long, averaging 1.11 gpt gold . These results correlated well with the two nearest surface grab rock samples of 1.2 gpt gold, situated to the north, and 0.9 gpt gold sample to the south. . These results correlated well with the two nearest surface grab rock samples of 1.2 gpt gold, situated to the north, and 0.9 gpt gold sample to the south. Assay results are pending for a much larger area surrounding the Geyser-Spur Zone. At Downpour, 3.0 meters grading 15.4 gpt gold were added to Trench 1 bringing the total length to 36 meters grading 17.6 gpt gold and 3.6 meters grading 25.6 gpt gold were added to Trench 5 bringing the total length to 15.6 meters grading 17.1 gpt gold. Chris Herald, President and CEO of Solitario, stated: "These two new high-grade discoveries, the Geyser and adjacent Spur Zone, display average surface grab sample grades of 28.6 and 6.8 gpt gold, respectively. The combined mineralized surface area now measures 650 x 225 meters and remains open in all directions. We anticipate the Geyser-Spur Zone will continue to expand as we receive new assay results peripheral to these reported samples. It is also very encouraging to see the strong correlation of assay grades between our surface grab samples and our initial trenching results at Geyser-Spur. The first eight three-meter trench samples (a continuous 24-meter trench) averaged 1.1 gpt gold and the two nearest surface samples graded 1.2 and 0.9 gpt gold. At Downpour, our high-grade select surface grab samples also had great correlation with trench samples. We look forward to releasing additional assay results as they become available. Finally, drill hole permitting continues to progress and we are still on schedule for a second quarter 2023 completion date for the Environmental Assessment." Drill Hole Permitting and Project Overview Drill hole permitting continues to advance on Solitario's Golden Crest Property since its initiation in February 2022, when a Plan of Operations was filed with the U.S. Forest Service. Environmental baseline studies, in support of permitting documents required for drilling, are complete. The final Environmental Assessment evaluation for core drilling is scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2023. Solitario's 100%-owned South Dakota properties collectively total over 33,000 acres and constitute strategic land holdings along the western and southwestern extensions of the Homestake-Wharf mining district that has produced approximately 52 million ounces of gold and contains another 30 million ounces in historical resources. The project area is in a safe jurisdiction with highly developed infrastructure, an unbroken 145-year record of continuous gold mining, a skilled mining workforce, and a history of high-grade, underground mineable gold deposits. Sample Type, Sampling Methodology, Chain of Custody, Quality Control and Assurance The reported Spur and Geyser rock assays are all surface rock grab/float samples and were generally not collected from a bedrock source. However, these samples are thought to be derived from the underlying bedrock in the immediate area. The eight Spur Zone trench samples were mostly from weathered disaggregated rock fragments, all believed to be locally derived. All sampling reported in this release was supervised by project geologists, including chain of custody. Rock samples are reconnaissance select grab samples that display alteration, usually silicification and hydrothermal brecciation. The significance of these results is limited to determining whether gold, or trace elements usually associated with gold, are present within rocks affected by hydrothermal alteration fluids and assay results may not be representative of, nor verify economically mineable mineralization. Samples were analyzed by ALS Laboratories in Reno, NV, a laboratory accredited in accordance with the standards of ISO 17025:2017. The samples were crushed and pulverized, and sample pulps were analyzed using industry standard fire assay methods. A certified reference sample or duplicate was inserted at least every 20th sample. Walter Hunt, COO of Solitario, is a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, responsible for approving the scientific and technical information contained in this news release. About Solitario Solitario is a natural resource exploration company focused on high-quality Tier-1 gold and zinc projects. The Company is traded on the NYSE American ("XPL") and on the Toronto Stock Exchange ("SLR"). In addition to its South Dakota property holdings, Solitario holds a 50% joint venture interest (Teck Resources 50%) in the high-grade Lik zinc deposit in Alaska and a 39% joint venture interest (Nexa Resources holds the remaining 61% interest) on the high-grade Florida Canyon zinc project in Peru. Solitario is carried to production through its joint venture arrangement with Nexa. Solitario's Management and Directors hold approximately 9.1% (excluding options) of the Company's 65 million shares outstanding. Solitario's cash balance and marketable securities stand at approximately US$5.1 million. Additional information about Solitario is available online at www.solitariozinc.com. Solitario has a long history of committed Environmental, Social and Responsible Governance ("ESG") of its business. We realize ESG issues are also important to investors, employees, and all stakeholders, including communities in which we work. We are pledged to operate our business in a manner that supports environmental and social initiatives and responsible corporate governance. Importantly, we selected joint venture partners that not only value the importance of ESG issues in the conduct of their business on our joint venture projects but are leaders in the industry in this important segment of our business. For More Information Please Contact: Christopher E. Herald President & CEO (303) 534-1030, Ext. 14 Anne Hite Director - Investor Relations (303) 519-5149 anne@solitariozinc.com Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (and the equivalent under Canadian securities laws), that are intended to be covered by the safe harbor created by such sections. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. They are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made and address activities, events or developments that Solitario expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, and are based on current expectations and assumptions. Forward-looking statements involve numerous risks and uncertainties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Solitario's Golden Crest land position does not cover any of the areas of historical gold production or historical unmined resources. Certain historical information concerning exploration and gold production in the Black Hills region has been obtained through both public and private sources and are believed to be substantially factual, but Solitario can give no assurances of the accuracy of such information. The existence of historic mines and resources adjacent to Solitario's land position do not necessarily support the existence economic mineral deposits on Solitario's land position. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's expectation of the projected timing and outcome of engineering studies; expectations regarding the receipt of all necessary permits and approvals to implement a mining plan, if any, at any of its mineral properties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, among others, risks relating to risks that Solitario's and its joint venture partners' exploration and property advancement efforts will not be successful; risks relating to fluctuations in the price of zinc, gold, lead and silver; the inherently hazardous nature of mining-related activities; uncertainties concerning reserve and resource estimates; availability of outside contractors, and other activities; uncertainties relating to obtaining approvals and permits from governmental regulatory authorities; the possibility that environmental laws and regulations will change over time and become even more restrictive; and availability and timing of capital for financing the Company's exploration and development activities, including uncertainty of being able to raise capital on favorable terms or at all; risks relating to the impacts of Covid-19 or similar variants; as well as those factors discussed in Solitario's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") including Solitario's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and its other SEC filings (and Canadian filings) including, without limitation, its latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. The Company does not intend to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. SOURCE: Solitario Zinc Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735556/Solitario-Discovers-Multi-Gram-Spur-Gold-Zone-South-of-Geyser-Geyser-Spur-Gold-Zones-Open-in-All-Directions VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Amarc Resources Ltd. ("Amarc" or the "Company") (TSXV:AHR)(OTCQB:AXREF) is pleased to provide details of its executive and technical team's participation at three conferences in Vancouver, British Columbia during January 2023. On January 23 and January 24 , Amarc is exhibiting at 2023 AME Roundup Conference in the Exhibit Hall at Vancouver Convention Centre East. Visit Amarc Corporate Booth - #316, located on the centre aisle. , Amarc is exhibiting at in the Exhibit Hall at Vancouver Convention Centre East. On January 27 and January 28 , Amarc is presenting at the Metal Investors Forum in the Star Sapphire Ballroom and Foyer (Level 3) in the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel. Visit Amarc Corporate Booth in the Foyer Corporate Presentation by Dr. Diane Nicolson, President & CEO Saturday, January 28, 2023 at 12:20 pm in the Speakers Hall Fireside Chat with Robert Dickinson, Executive Chair Saturday, January 28, 2023 at 1:50 pm with John Kaiser in the Amber Room , Amarc is presenting at the in the Star Sapphire Ballroom and Foyer (Level 3) in the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel. On January 29 and January 30 , Amarc will be attending the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference in the Exhibit Hall at Vancouver Convention Centre West. Visit Corporate Booth #300 Corporate Presentation by Dr. Diane Nicolson, President & CEO January 29, 2023 11:40 am in Workshop 3 , Amarc will be attending the in the Exhibit Hall at Vancouver Convention Centre West. Amarc's expansive, 100%-owned coppergold districts are located in British Columbia. The IKE, JOY and DUKE districts host four known coppergold deposits prime for moving toward development, and 10 porphyry copper-gold deposit targets that are ready for drill discovery. Active drilling programs have been underway in 2022 and continue into 2023. Amarc and Freeport-McMoRan Mineral Properties Canada Inc. ("Freeport") made considerable progress at the JOY District ("JOY"), completing a second comprehensive program with a substantial drilling component in 2022. In November, Amarc and Boliden Mineral Canada Ltd. ("Boliden") completed an agreement on the DUKE District ("DUKE"), and initiated drilling at the DUKE Deposit before year end. Freeport at JOY and Boliden at DUKE can earn up to a 70% interest in the districts by funding $110 million and $90 million of staged earn-in expenditures, respectively. Conference delegates are also invited to contact Diane Nicolson, Amarc President & CEO, at (604) 684-6365 or at dianenicolson@hdimining.com in advance to organize a time for a meeting and to receive further information. Dr. Roy Greig, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content in this release. For further details on Amarc Resources Ltd., please visit the Company's website at www.amarcresources.com or contact Dr. Diane Nicolson, President and CEO, at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114, or Kin Communications, at (604) 684-6730, Email: AHR@kincommunications.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF AMARC RESOURCES LTD. Dr. Diane Nicolson President and CEO Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor any other regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking and other Cautionary Information This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All such statements, other than statements of historical facts that address exploration plans and plans for enhanced relationships are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Assumptions used by the Company to develop forward-looking statements include the following: Amarc's projects will obtain all required environmental and other permits and all land use and other licenses, studies and exploration of Amarc's projects will continue to be positive, and no geological or technical problems will occur. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, potential environmental issues or liabilities associated with exploration, development and mining activities, exploitation and exploration successes, continuity of mineralization, uncertainties related to the ability to obtain necessary permits, licenses and tenure and delays due to third party opposition, changes in and the effect of government policies regarding mining and natural resource exploration and exploitation, exploration and development of properties located within Aboriginal groups asserted territories may affect or be perceived to affect asserted aboriginal rights and title, which may cause permitting delays or opposition by Aboriginal groups, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions, as well as risks relating to the uncertainties with respect to the effects of COVID-19. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking. SOURCE: Amarc Resources Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735633/Visit-Amarc-at-Three-Conferences-in-Vancouver-this-Month Remains of stalls that were demolished overnight by construction workers hired by Seoul Chinese Primary School are seen in a street in Myeong-dong, Seoul, Monday. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk Seven vendors' stalls demolished overnight following land-use conflicts with school By Lee Hyo-jin Several streetside eateries and stores in Myeong-dong, downtown Seoul, were demolished overnight following a monthslong dispute with a Chinese school located nearby. The vendors are crying foul over the school's move, arguing that it illegally tore down their property. But the school claims that the merchants had been doing business on their land without legal permits. On early Monday morning, owners of seven stores selling food and accessories along an alley of the shopping district were horrorstruck to see their stalls left in ruins. According to the Jung District Office, the demolition was conducted overnight by construction workers hired by Seoul Chinese Primary School, also known as Hanseong Chinese Primary School, located right next to the vendors. Established in 1909, the educational institution is the largest Chinese school in Korea, teaching hundreds of students from China and Taiwan. Remains of stalls that were demolished overnight by construction workers hired by Seoul Chinese Primary School are seen in a street in Myeong-dong, Seoul, Monday. Yonhap "It's unacceptable. They must have come after midnight since we'd stayed open until past 11 p.m. on Sunday," said a man who operates Gomone Tteokbokki, one of the demolished stalls, who wished to remain anonymous. "They have been threatening us for months and demanding that we move out, but I didn't imagine they would do something this horrible." According to him, the dispute between the stall owners and the school began a few months ago. Tensions mounted from November last year, when he resumed his business after suspending operations for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese Ambassador to Korea Xing Haiming, right, and his wife Tan Yujun, eat tteokbokki at a stall in Myeong-dong near Hanseong Chinese Primary School, May 2020. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk "For the last several months, people from a construction company working for the school came to us multiple times pressuring us to move out, saying that we were doing business on land owned by the school. They said they're planning to do some sort of reconstruction here," he said. He said the construction workers threatened to pursue legal action if he didn't remove the stall, and had even proposed to pay compensation. But the stall keepers turned down their proposals. The vendor also claimed that the land on which he is doing business is owned by the district office, and thus he has been abiding by the regulations set out by the authorities. "We've filed complaints to the police against the school for alleged damage of property and have asked the district office to engage in resolving the issue," he added. "We will see what additional measures we can take depending on how the police investigation goes." A notice from the Jung District Office reads that the remains of demolished stalls should be removed from the street immediately as they are causing inconvenience to passersby, Monday. When The Korea Times revisited the site on Tuesday afternoon, construction workers hired by the Chinese school and officials from the district office were cleaning up the remains. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - African Energy Metals Inc. (TSXV: CUCO) (FSE: BC2) (OTCQB: NDENF) ("African Energy Metals" or the "Company") and GoviEx Uranium Inc. (TSXV: GXU) (OTCQX: GVXXF) ("GoviEx") have entered into a definitive share purchase agreement dated January 17, 2023 (the "Share Purchase Agreement") pursuant to which African Energy Metals will acquire from GoviEx all of the issued and outstanding shares of GoviEx's indirectly owned Malian subsidiary, Delta Exploration Mali SARL ("Delta") (the "Transaction). Delta holds three uranium exploration licenses in Mali (the "Licenses") known as the Falea project having a significant uranium resource and a copper and silver resource. Falea Project The Falea project consists of three contiguous permits totalling 225 km known as Falea, Bala, and Madini permits. The Falea permit has been the focus of exploration. The property is in the country of Mali, West Africa, and is approximately 350 km west of the capital city of Bamako. Access to the area is by road or air with a gravel airstrip on site. Over 235,000 m of drilling has been completed by previous owners and only 5% of the project has been explored. Most ore zones remain open for exploration and expansion. Falea is in the proximity of the B2 Gold Fekola mine and the IAM Gold Siribaya deposit. Further Information on Mineral Resources at the Falea Project Tonnes (Mt) Grade (kg/t eU3O8 or U3O8) Contained Metal (Mlb eU3O8 or U3O8) Indicated Mineral Resource Estimates 6.88 1.15 17.40 Inferred Mineral Resource estimates 8.78 0.69 13.40 Notes : (1) Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic liability. CIM definitions were followed for classification of mineral resources. (2) The mineral resources were estimated at the following cut-off grade: 0.3 kg/t U3O8. (3) Source: Technical Report on the Felea Uranium, Silver and Copper Deposit, Mali, West Afica dated October 26, 2015 authored by Mark B. Mathisen, C.P.G. (the "Technical Report"). The results of the estimates are included in the tables above. CIM definitions were followed for classification of Mineral Resources. (4) The mineral resource also contains 0.161% copper (24.4 million pounds) and 72.8 g/t Ag (16.11 million ounces) in the Indicated mineral resource, and 0.2% copper (38.7 million pounds) and 17.3 g/t Ag (4.9 million ounces) in the Inferred mineral resource. The Technical Report and further information on the material mineral resources noted above is available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) under GoviEx's profile. The Company will acquire all the outstanding shares of Delta for a purchase price of $5,500,000 which shall be satisfied as follows: (i) a closing cash payment of $500,000; (ii) the issuance of common shares of African Energy Metals having a value of $2,000,000 based on a 30 day VWAP; and (iii) when and if the Falea License is renewed, the issuance of additional common shares of African Energy Metals to GoviEx having a value $3,000,000. African Energy Metals will grant a 3% net smelter royalty to GoviEx subject to certain contingencies. In the event due to the share issuances, GoviEx ends up holding more than 10% of the issued and outstanding shares of African Energy Metals, African Energy Metals will permit GoviEx to nominate one member to the board of directors of African Energy Metals. All shares being issued are subject to a minimum price equal to the Discounted Market Price at the date of this release as defined in TSXV policies. In the event GoviEx ends up with more than 20% of the issued and outstanding shares of African Energy Metals, shareholder approval may be required. The Transaction contemplated under the Share Purchase Agreement will be a "Fundamental Acquisition" in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV"). The Transaction will be subject to the payment of finder's fees to the maximum amount permitted under TSXV policies and subject to approval of the TSXV. Stephen Barley, Executive Chairman of African Energy Metals, commented: "We are excited to become involved in the Falea project. It is a polymetallic project with a significant uranium resource. GoviEx will become an important shareholder of African Energy Metals and our shareholders will have the continuing benefit of their knowledge and mining expertise. Less than 5% of the property has been explored, so there is substantial exploration upside for uranium, copper, silver, and gold." Daniel Major, President, and CEO of Goviex, commented: "The GoviEx shareholders will maintain significant exposure to the Falea project and African Energy Metals has an experienced African team capable of extracting value through exploration. This will allow GoviEx to focus on the continued exploration and development of our flagship mine-permitted uranium Madaouela and Mutanga projects in Niger." Financing In connection with the Transaction, African Energy Metals intends to complete two private placements: a non-brokered private placement of common shares of the Company (the "Common Shares") for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $500,000 (the "Non-Brokered Private Placement") (the "Financing") of 6,250,000 units (each a "Unit") at a price of CAD $0.08 per Unit. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (a "Share") and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (with two half warrants being a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one additional common share in the capital of the Company (a "Warrant Share") at a price of $0.15 per Warrant Share at any time prior to 5:00 p.m. (Vancouver time) on the date (the "Expiry Date") that is 24 months following the Closing Date. African Energy Metals intends to complete a brokered private placement of Common Shares for aggregate gross proceeds of at least $2,000,000 (the "Brokered Private Placement", and together with the Non-Brokered Private Placement, the "Private Placements"). The net proceeds of the Non-Brokered Private Placement shall be used by African Energy Metals to fund closing and transactional costs with respect to the Transaction. The Company intends to rely on the "part and parcel exception" in respect of the Non-Brokered Private Placement. The net proceeds of the Brokered Private Placement shall be used by African Energy Metals to fund the cash consideration with respect to the Transaction and for further exploration activities. The terms of the Brokered Private Placement will be disclosed in due course once finalized. The Private Placements remain subject to the approval of the TSXV. Expected Closing The Transaction and the Brokered Private Placement are expected to close on or before March 15, 2023, and remain subject to a several conditions, including but not limited to approval of the TSXV. The closing of the Brokered Private Placement is a condition of the closing of the Transaction. Qualified Persons For African Energy Metals, the disclosure of the scientific and technical information in this announcement has been reviewed by Mr. Shu Zhan, Member and Registered Professional Geoscientist of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG), a competent person (as defined in the JORC code, 2012 edition) who is a practicing member of the Association of Professional Geologists of Ontario (being a recognized professional organization for the purposes of the Australian Securities Exchange listing rules). Mr. Zhan is also the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 who has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release. Mr. Zhan is a Director of African Energy Metals. He has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralization, the type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a competent person as defined in the JORC code and under National Instrument 43-101. About African Energy Metals African Energy Metals is a natural resource company with a focus on the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of uranium, copper, cobalt, and lithium energy metals projects in Africa African Energy Metals has the intention of acquiring interests in additional concessions or relinquishing concessions in the normal course of business. African Energy Metals has an experienced management team located in the DRC. For further information, please contact: Stephen Barley, Executive Chairman Phone: +1-604-834-2968 Email: info@africanenergymetals.com Website: www.africanenergymetals.com About GoviEx Uranium Inc. GoviEx is a mineral resource company focused on the exploration and development of uranium properties in Africa. GoviEx's principal objective is to become a significant uranium producer through the continued exploration and development of its flagship mine-permitted Madaouela Project in Niger, its mine-permitted Mutanga Project in Zambia, and its multi-element Falea Project in Mali. For further information, please contact: Isabel Vilela, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications Phone:+1-604-681-5529 Email: info@goviex.com Website: www.goviex.com Reader Advisory Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All information and statements other than statements of current or historical facts contained in this news release are forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in African Energy Metals' and GoviEx's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will", "could", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "should," and similar expressions, are forward- looking statements. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information. Forward-looking statements include those in relation to, (i) closing of the Transaction; (ii) closing of the Private Placements; (iii) the use of proceeds from the Private Placements; (iv) African Energy Metals' ability to acquire additional interests in concessions or relinquishing concessions in the normal course of business both in and outside of the DRC; and (v) GoviEx's ability to become a significant uranium producer through the continued exploration and development of its flagship mine-permitted Madaouela Project in Niger, its mine-permitted Mutanga Project in Zambia, and its multi-element Falea Project in Mali. Although each of African Energy Metals and GoviEx believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, they can't any assurances that their expectations will be achieved. Such assumptions, which may prove incorrect. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include (i) potential delays due to COVID-19 restrictions; (ii) the failure of the companies' projects, for technical, logistical, labour-relations, or other reasons; (iii) a decrease in the price of minerals below what is necessary to sustain the companies' operations; (iv) an increase in the cooperating costs above what is necessary to sustain its operations; (v) accidents, labour disputes, or the materialization of similar risks; (vi) a deterioration in capital market conditions that prevents the companies from raising the funds it requires on a timely basis; and (vii) generally, the companies' inability to develop and implement their respective successful business plans for any reason. In addition, the factors described or referred to in the section entitled Risk Factors" in the MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2021, of GoviEx and of African Energy Metals, which is available on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com, should be reviewed in conjunction with the information found in this news release. Although each of African Energy Metals and GoviEx has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward- looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance, or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances, or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information in this news release will transpire or occur, or, if any of them do so, what benefits that African Energy Metals or GoviEx will derive therefrom. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and each of African Energy Metals and GoviEx disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151724 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Gold Terra Resource Corp. (TSXV:YGT)(Frankfurt:TX0)(OTCQX:YGTFF) ("Gold Terra" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the start of an 8,000-metre winter drilling program on the Con Mine Option ("CMO") Property in Yellowknife, NWT. The CMO property is under option from subsidiaries of Newmont Corporation and is acquirable by the Company upon fulfillment of certain conditions set out in the CMO agreement, as reported in the Company's news release dated November 22, 2021. The initial drilling program will consist of 20 holes drilled from surface to a depth of -600 metres over a 2-kilometre stretch with the objective of expanding the September 2022 initial Mineral Resource Estimate ("MRE") (see September 7, 2022 press release) along the Campbell Shear south of the Con Mine. In addition, preparations are underway to move in a second drill which is capable of drilling 2,500 metre holes to test the depth extension of mineralization below the former Con Mine. Chairman and CEO, Gerald Panneton, commented, "This winter drilling program will continue to focus on expanding the current near surface mineral resources on the CMO on where the initial MRE was based on. At the same time, we are planning, to drill the down plunge extension of the Con Mine deposit below -1,900 metres as we strongly believe there is significant additional high-grade potential. The current MRE remains open in all directions along the prolific 6-kilometre-long Campbell Shear structure from which the Con Mine produced more than 5 million ounces of high-grade gold (16 g/t Au) on 2 kilometres of strike length alone. Our goal is to advance the project towards an economic study and bring further value to our shareholders." Drilling Program on the Yellorex North, Yellorex and Kam Point deposits The focus of the winter drilling program is to expand the current mineral resource estimate with targets being shown in Figure 1 below. All these targets are located along the Campbell Shear structure between surface and -500 meters depth with the exception of one hole which will test the depth of the Yellorex Main deposit where most of the initial MRE is located. The drilling program will start on the Yellorex North target this week, with the first seven (7) holes drilled near surface representing the best underexplored target of the area. The target area is very close to existing underground mining infrastructure and tested only by one hole in 2022 (GTCM22-039). Figure 1 - Drilling areas Deep Drilling Program below the Con Mine The objective is to drill two holes targeting high-grade gold shoots beneath the Con Mine workings as shown in Figure 2: Figure 2 - Deep drilling target on Con Mine 2022 Key Achievements The Company announced an initial MRE of an underground Indicated 0.82 million tonnes averaging 7.55 g/t for 109,000 ounces of contained gold and an underground Inferred of 2.0 million tonnes averaging 6.74 g/t for 432,000 ounces of contained gold (See Sept 7, 2022 press release for full details). The October 21, 2022 technical report, titled "Initial Mineral Resource Estimate for the CMO Property, Yellowknife City Gold Project, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada" with an effective date of September 2, 2022 can be found on the Company's website at https://www.goldterracorp.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The initial CMO mineral resources was delineated at a discovery cost of $12 per oumce. On November 21, 2022, the Company completed a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $3.8 million. This financing is allowing the Company to have a substantial winter drilling program on the CMO Property. Qualified Persons Joe Campbell, P. Geo., Senior Geological Advisorfor Gold Terra is a Qualified Person within the meaning of NI 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release. About Gold Terra The YCG project encompasses 800 sq. km of contiguous land immediately north, south and east of the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Through a series of acquisitions, Gold Terra controls one of the six major high-grade gold camps in Canada. Being within 10 kilometers of the City of Yellowknife, the YCG is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power, and skilled tradespeople. Gold Terra is currently focusing its drilling on the prolific Campbell Shear, where 14 Moz of gold has been produced, and most recently on the Con Mine Option claims immediately south of the past producing Con Mine (1938-2003). The YCG and CMO property lie on the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering nearly 70 kilometers of strike length along the main mineralized shear system that host the former-producing high-grade Con and Giant gold mines. The Company's exploration programs have successfully identified significant zones of gold mineralization and multiple targets that remain to be tested which reinforces the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada. Visit our website at www.goldterracorp.com. For more information, please contact: Gerald Panneton, Chairman & CEO gpanneton@goldterracorp.com Mara Strazdins, Manager of Investor Relations Phone: 1-778-897-1590 | 604-689-1749 ext 102 strazdins@goldterracorp.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. Information Concerning Estimates of Mineral Resources Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Therefore, investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an Inferred Mineral Resource could ever be mined economically. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of "Measured Mineral Resources," "Indicated Mineral Resources," or "Inferred Mineral Resources" will ever be upgraded to a higher category. The Mineral Resource estimates contained herein may be subject to legal, political, environmental or other risks that could materially affect the potential development of such mineral resources. Refer to the Technical Report, once filed, for more information with respect to the key assumptions, parameters, methods and risks of determination associated with the foregoing. Cautionary Note to United States Investors The Company prepares its disclosure in accordance with the requirements of securities laws in effect in Canada, which differ from the requirements of U.S. securities laws. Terms relating to Mineral Resources in this news release are defined in accordance with NI 43-101 under the guidelines set out in CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Council on May 19, 2014, as amended ("CIM Standards"). The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") has adopted amendments effective February 25, 2019 (the "SEC Modernization Rules") to its disclosure rules to modernize the mineral property disclosure requirements for issuers whose securities are registered with the SEC under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. As a result of the adoption of the SEC Modernization Rules, the SEC will now recognize estimates of "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources", which are defined in substantially similar terms to the corresponding CIM Standards. In addition, the SEC has amended its definitions of "Proven Mineral Reserves" and "Probable Mineral Reserves" to be substantially similar to the corresponding CIM Standards. U.S. investors are cautioned that while the foregoing terms are "substantially similar" to corresponding definitions under the CIM Standards, there are differences in the definitions under the SEC Modernization Rules and the CIM Standards. Accordingly, there is no assurance any Mineral Resources that the Company may report as "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources" under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the Mineral Resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules. In accordance with Canadian securities laws, estimates of "Inferred Mineral Resources" cannot form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies, except in limited circumstances where permitted under NI 43-101. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements made and information contained in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation ("forward-looking information"). Generally, this forward-looking information can, but not always, be identified by 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, conditions or results "will", "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotations thereof. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that 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. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information regarding the current drilling on the Campbell Shear, potentially adding ounces to the Company's current YCG mineral resource, and the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as the Company's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in the Company's most recent MD&A and annual information form available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that would 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. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on information available to the Company as of the date of this news release. 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. All of the forward-looking information contained in this news release is qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Except as required under applicable securities legislation and regulations applicable to the Company, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update this forward-looking information. SOURCE: Gold Terra Resource Corp View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735647/Gold-Terra-Starts-Winter-Drilling-Program-on-Con-Mine-Option-Property-to-Expand-Current-Mineral-Resources VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Stillwater Critical Minerals Corp. (formerly Group Ten Metals) (TSXV:PGE)(OTCQB:PGEZF)(FSE:5D32) (the "Company" or "SWCM") is pleased to announce results of rhodium assays conducted on core from resource expansion drilling on its 100%-owned Stillwater West platinum group element, nickel, copper, cobalt, and gold ("PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au") project in Montana, USA, adjacent to Sibanye-Stillwater's world-class critical minerals mining operations. These results, along with the integration of deposit models from South Africa's Bushveld complex, provide the Company and SGS Geological Services ("SGS") with the remaining components necessary to finalize an update of the Company's inaugural October 2021 resource estimate (the "2021 Resource"), which delineated five Platreef-style deposits totaling 1.1 billion pounds of nickel, copper and cobalt, and 2.4 million ounces of palladium, platinum, rhodium and gold (see Figure 1). Rhodium intercept highlights from resource expansion drilling include: Widespread rhodium in drill results at potentially significant co-product grades including: 0.122 g/t Rh over 7.2 meters in CM2021-01 starting at 304.8 meters; 0.104 g/t Rh over 8.3 meters in CM2021-03 starting at 252.2 meters; and 0.396 g/t Rh over 1.2 meters in CM2021-01 starting at 411.6 meters. Current results expand upon similar results in past campaigns which returned 0.103 g/t Rh over 7.9 meters in hole CM2020-05, and 0.100 g/t Rh over 6.1 meters in hole CM2007-02. Rhodium is mined solely as a co-product at grades that are often below 0.1 g/t. South Africa dominates global production, and there is very little mine supply in North America. Sibanye-Stillwater, adjacent to SWCM's Stillwater West project, is the primary US producer. Supply constraints have resulted in elevated rhodium prices since 2017. At its current spot price of more than USD 12,000/oz, 0.1 g/t rhodium equates to more than 0.6 g/t gold or palladium equivalent, and more than 1.2 g/t platinum equivalent. Rhodium has a high melting point, is highly corrosion resistant, and is critical in catalytic converters, along with platinum and palladium, for cleaner vehicle emissions. Complete results from the 14-hole expansion drill campaign, which consisted of wide step-outs at three of the five deposits defined by the 2021 Resource, are being incorporated into the updated block models by SGS. As shown in Table 1, results continue to demonstrate impressive grade and scale with wide intervals at successively higher grades contained within very wide bulk-tonnage grade intervals, including: 13.2 meters of 2.31% Ni, 0.35% Cu, 0.115% Co, and 1.51 g/t 4E (Pt+Pd+Au+Rh) starting at 37.6 meters and within 400.8 meters of continuous mineralization in hole CM2021-05 ; 44.1 meters of 0.57% Ni, 0.34% Cu, 0.045% Co, and 0.74 g/t 4E starting at 32.8 meters and within 367.6 meters of continuous mineralization in hole CZ2021-01 ; and 50.2 meters of 1.05 g/t 4E plus 0.19% Ni and other values within 728.1 meters of continuous mineralization in hole CM2021-01 . Metallurgical testing completed by AMAX confirmed recovery of rhodium along with palladium and platinum in preliminary bench-scale flotation testing at the CZ deposit area in the early 1970s. Past work previously reported by the Company included surface sample results of up to 5.78 g/t Rh at the HGR target in the Iron Mountain area, and 1.07 g/t Rh at Chrome Mountain in reconnaissance-scale rock sample programs (see June 11, 2020, news release). Early results for other rare Platinum Group Elements ("PGE") show potential for additional value from iridium, osmium, and ruthenium which often occur along with platinum, palladium, and rhodium at Stillwater West. Table 1 - Final results from resource expansion drilling including recent rhodium assay results. INTERVAL PRECIOUS METALS BASE METALS TOTAL METAL EQUIVALENTS HOLE ID From (m) To (m) Width (m) Pt (g/t) Pd (g/t) Au (g/t) Rh (g/t) 4E (g/t) Ni (%) Cu (%) Co (%) NiEq* (%) NiEq* (%) PdEq* (g/t) DR / HYBRID DEPOSIT AREA - RESOURCE EXPANSION DRILLING CM2021-01 0.0 728.1 728.1 0.12 0.17 0.02 0.013 0.32 0.13 0.03 0.013 0.16 0.26 0.66 including 230.5 583.4 352.9 0.21 0.27 0.03 0.022 0.54 0.17 0.04 0.015 0.20 0.38 0.95 including 304.8 312.0 7.2 0.63 0.64 0.03 0.122 1.43 0.11 0.02 0.008 0.13 0.67 1.68 including 324.0 385.2 61.2 0.19 0.17 0.02 0.039 0.42 0.20 0.04 0.015 0.23 0.39 0.98 including 397.2 556.4 159.2 0.31 0.41 0.05 0.025 0.79 0.18 0.03 0.017 0.22 0.47 1.17 including 397.2 447.4 50.2 0.48 0.48 0.04 0.050 1.05 0.19 0.03 0.015 0.22 0.56 1.40 including 423.4 430.6 7.2 0.93 1.33 0.05 0.027 2.34 0.24 0.03 0.018 0.27 0.96 2.39 including 479.8 549.2 69.4 0.27 0.47 0.06 0.017 0.82 0.18 0.04 0.017 0.22 0.48 1.20 including 530.0 543.2 13.2 0.26 0.81 0.06 0.039 1.17 0.21 0.06 0.017 0.25 0.67 1.67 including 530.0 537.2 7.2 0.33 1.07 0.08 0.049 1.54 0.21 0.05 0.017 0.24 0.79 1.97 including 687.4 728.1 40.7 0.07 0.20 0.02 0.008 0.29 0.18 0.07 0.021 0.24 0.34 0.84 CM-2021-02 0.0 333.0 333.0 0.08 0.10 0.02 0.006 0.20 0.11 0.04 0.011 0.14 0.21 0.52 including 118.7 232.8 114.1 0.07 0.12 0.04 0.007 0.24 0.19 0.09 0.015 0.24 0.32 0.79 including 131.5 148.4 17.0 0.16 0.25 0.05 0.024 0.49 0.19 0.10 0.022 0.27 0.44 1.11 including 256.9 267.0 10.2 0.14 0.38 0.07 0.016 0.61 0.25 0.13 0.014 0.31 0.52 1.29 CM-2021-03 0.0 428.2 428.2 0.08 0.13 0.02 0.009 0.24 0.10 0.03 0.015 0.14 0.22 0.56 including 106.0 115.2 9.2 0.02 0.03 0.06 0.008 0.12 0.28 0.11 0.045 0.41 0.46 1.14 including 165.0 215.4 50.4 0.06 0.06 0.03 0.005 0.15 0.13 0.04 0.017 0.17 0.22 0.55 including 165.0 172.2 7.2 0.01 0.05 0.04 0.002 0.10 0.29 0.10 0.044 0.41 0.45 1.11 including 240.1 270.4 30.3 0.31 0.65 0.05 0.048 1.06 0.14 0.03 0.013 0.17 0.55 1.37 including 252.2 260.5 8.3 0.49 1.06 0.05 0.104 1.70 0.13 0.03 0.013 0.16 0.81 2.02 CM-2021-04 0.0 208.8 208.8 0.05 0.08 0.02 0.004 0.14 0.11 0.05 0.015 0.16 0.20 0.50 including 0.0 67.2 67.2 0.10 0.17 0.02 0.010 0.30 0.13 0.05 0.016 0.18 0.28 0.69 including 3.6 16.8 13.2 0.17 0.52 0.03 0.025 0.75 0.15 0.04 0.015 0.19 0.46 1.14 including 198.0 208.8 10.8 0.02 0.04 0.03 0.002 0.10 0.25 0.22 0.026 0.38 0.41 1.02 CM-2021-05 36.4 437.2 400.8 0.06 0.12 0.04 0.008 0.22 0.17 0.03 0.015 0.20 0.27 0.68 including 36.4 132.4 96.0 0.06 0.12 0.12 0.002 0.30 0.40 0.05 0.024 0.43 0.52 1.30 including 37.6 50.8 13.2 0.25 0.43 0.82 0.015 1.51 2.31 0.35 0.115 2.43 2.89 7.21 including 37.6 43.6 6.0 0.50 0.77 1.34 0.024 2.63 3.47 0.24 0.195 3.58 4.38 10.92 including 190.0 208.0 18.0 0.18 0.58 0.04 0.025 0.82 0.16 0.05 0.015 0.20 0.49 1.22 including 191.2 196.0 4.8 0.40 1.41 0.09 0.071 1.98 0.21 0.07 0.016 0.26 0.98 2.43 including 345.7 364.0 18.3 0.21 0.43 0.05 0.034 0.72 0.16 0.06 0.014 0.20 0.46 1.14 CM-2021-06 0.0 376.8 376.8 0.08 0.13 0.02 0.009 0.24 0.12 0.03 0.014 0.15 0.23 0.57 including 123.0 150.8 27.8 0.15 0.41 0.04 0.030 0.63 0.16 0.05 0.015 0.20 0.43 1.07 including 125.1 129.4 4.3 0.28 0.99 0.07 0.096 1.44 0.23 0.07 0.020 0.28 0.86 2.15 including 254.0 264.8 10.8 0.05 0.12 0.03 0.004 0.21 0.27 0.06 0.030 0.33 0.40 1.01 including 303.4 376.8 73.4 0.20 0.26 0.03 0.020 0.51 0.14 0.02 0.017 0.17 0.34 0.84 including 305.8 328.4 22.6 0.32 0.44 0.02 0.035 0.81 0.11 0.01 0.017 0.14 0.42 1.04 including 315.4 327.2 11.8 0.42 0.63 0.02 0.048 1.12 0.10 0.01 0.017 0.14 0.52 1.29 CZ DEPOSIT AREA - RESOURCE EXPANSION DRILLING CZ2021-01 10.8 378.4 367.6 0.06 0.17 0.02 0.009 0.26 0.15 0.06 0.015 0.20 0.29 0.72 including 13.2 76.9 63.7 0.12 0.42 0.07 0.027 0.64 0.47 0.27 0.040 0.62 0.86 2.15 including 32.8 76.9 44.1 0.12 0.49 0.09 0.035 0.74 0.57 0.34 0.045 0.75 1.04 2.58 CZ-2021-02 87.6 94.8 7.2 0.03 0.10 0.08 0.002 0.21 0.17 0.11 0.018 0.24 0.31 0.78 HGR DEPOSIT AREA - RESOURCE EXPANSION DRILLING IM-2021-01 Did not reach target depth due to bad ground conditions IM-2021-02 Did not reach target depth due to bad ground conditions, repeated as IM-2021-03 IM-2021-03 Did not reach target depth due to bad ground conditions 115.0 118.6 3.6 0.32 1.17 0.06 0.067 1.62 0.14 0.02 0.012 0.16 0.76 1.90 IM-2021-04 0.0 306.5 306.5 0.05 0.09 0.02 0.005 0.15 0.13 0.08 0.013 0.18 0.23 0.57 including 92.2 207.6 115.4 0.09 0.16 0.03 0.009 0.28 0.19 0.10 0.015 0.25 0.34 0.85 including 92.2 102.0 9.8 0.39 1.02 0.06 0.069 1.54 0.19 0.06 0.018 0.24 0.80 2.00 including 147.6 200.4 52.8 0.07 0.11 0.04 0.003 0.22 0.23 0.16 0.014 0.31 0.37 0.93 including 256.0 260.8 4.8 0.00 0.15 0.09 0.055 0.30 0.74 0.65 0.070 1.11 1.28 3.19 IM-2021-05 0.0 379.2 379.2 0.07 0.13 0.02 0.006 0.22 0.17 0.09 0.014 0.22 0.29 0.74 including 66.8 99.2 32.4 0.15 0.30 0.04 0.017 0.50 0.22 0.11 0.016 0.28 0.45 1.12 including 310.2 378.0 67.8 0.06 0.16 0.03 0.006 0.26 0.25 0.14 0.016 0.32 0.40 1.01 including 313.4 334.9 21.5 0.07 0.24 0.04 0.013 0.35 0.38 0.13 0.024 0.45 0.58 1.43 including 313.4 315.8 2.4 0.00 0.65 0.11 0.086 0.85 1.55 0.17 0.087 1.63 2.04 5.08 including 327.7 334.9 7.3 0.13 0.34 0.04 0.007 0.51 0.45 0.17 0.026 0.53 0.70 1.74 including 346.8 347.8 1.0 0.03 0.31 0.11 0.090 0.55 2.52 0.31 0.097 2.54 2.84 7.09 including 354.3 364.8 10.5 0.07 0.22 0.04 0.003 0.33 0.34 0.33 0.018 0.49 0.59 1.48 including 354.3 355.5 1.2 0.07 0.82 0.06 0.001 0.95 1.33 0.71 0.055 1.60 1.92 4.79 IM-2021-06 0.0 333.0 333.0 0.08 0.14 0.02 0.008 0.25 0.13 0.04 0.012 0.16 0.24 0.60 including 70.8 164.8 94.0 0.14 0.32 0.05 0.016 0.53 0.20 0.09 0.014 0.25 0.43 1.06 including 82.8 109.2 26.4 0.19 0.41 0.08 0.013 0.69 0.27 0.14 0.016 0.34 0.56 1.40 including 298.6 314.2 15.6 0.16 0.33 0.02 0.031 0.55 0.14 0.03 0.016 0.18 0.38 0.95 including 299.8 304.6 4.8 0.42 0.83 0.05 0.077 1.38 0.16 0.03 0.016 0.19 0.70 1.75 *Notes to reported values: Ni and Pd equivalents are presented for comparative purposes using conservative long-term metal prices (all USD): $8.00/lb nickel (Ni), $4.00/lb copper (Cu), $24.00/lb cobalt (Co), $1,000/oz platinum (Pt), $2,200/oz palladium (Pd), $1,800/oz gold (Au), and $10,000/oz rhodium (Rh). Recovered Nickel Equivalent in Table 1 is determined as follows: NiEq% = [Ni% x recovery] + [Cu% x recovery x Cu price/ Ni price] + [Co% x recovery x Co price / Ni price] + [Pt g/t x recovery / 31.103 x Pt price / Ni price / 2,204 x 100] + [Pd g/t x recovery / 31.103 x Pd price / Ni price / 2,204 x 100] + [Au g/t x recovery / 31.103 x Au price / Ni price / 2,204 x 100] Palladium Equivalent is determined as follows: PdEq g/t = NiEq x 0.401 In the above calculations: 31.103 = grams per troy ounce, 2,204 = lbs per metric tonne, and 100 and 0.01 convert assay results reported in % and g/t. The following recoveries have been assumed for purposes of the above equivalent calculations: 85% for Ni and 90% for all other listed metals, based on recoveries at similar nearby operations. Intervals are reported as drilled widths and are believed to be representative of the true width of mineralization. Dr. Danie Grobler, Vice-President of Exploration, commented, "We see an overall trend of increasing PGE content up-sequence within the Ultramafic Series of the Stillwater Complex ("SWC"), like that observed within ultramafic portions of the Bushveld Complex (South Africa), as well as the Great Dyke in Zimbabwe. Scientific studies have shown that the Ultramafic Series of the SWC are enriched in PGE relative to most mafic magmas. Furthermore, the chromitite layers correlate with and are particularly enriched in rhodium and the lesser PGEs osmium, iridium, and ruthenium. More importantly, the reported high-grade rhodium results correlate with specific chromite seams and correspond to geochemical and geophysical anomalies associated with our existing resource areas defined during 2021, highlighting our rapidly advancing understanding of their occurrence, and our ability to effectively target new areas." Stillwater Critical Minerals President and CEO, Michael Rowley, stated, "Our 2022 programs built on the success of past campaigns, continuing to return rhodium at significant potential co-product values at a time when the U.S. is looking to increase domestic supplies of this very rare element, alongside 49 other critical minerals. We look forward to reporting our updated and expanded resource models in the near term as we advance Stillwater West towards its potential to become a primary low-carbon source of eight of the minerals listed as critical by the US government, effectively ushering in the next phase of critical mineral supply from the iconic and productive Stillwater Complex." Upcoming Events The Company at is pleased to advise it will be presenting at the Emerging Growth Conference: January 25th at 9:30am PT | 12:30pm ET (virtual). To register, click here. For a full list of upcoming events, visit our website: https://criticalminerals.com/investors/events/ About Stillwater West Stillwater Critical Minerals is rapidly advancing the Stillwater West PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au project towards becoming a world-class source of low-carbon, sulphide-hosted nickel, copper, and cobalt, critical to the electrification movement, as well as key catalytic metals including platinum, palladium and rhodium used in catalytic converters, fuel cells, and the production of green hydrogen. Stillwater West positions SWCM as the second-largest landholder in the Stillwater Complex, with a 100%-owned position adjoining and adjacent to Sibanye-Stillwater's PGE mines in south-central Montana, USA1. The Stillwater Complex is recognized as one of the top regions in the world for PGE-Ni-Cu-Co mineralization, alongside the Bushveld Complex and Great Dyke in southern Africa, which are similar layered intrusions. The J-M Reef, and other PGE-enriched sulphide horizons in the Stillwater Complex, share many similarities with the highly prolific Merensky and UG2 Reefs in the Bushveld Complex. SWCM's work in the lower Stillwater Complex has demonstrated the presence of large-scale disseminated and high-sulphide battery metals and PGE mineralization, similar to the Platreef in the Bushveld Complex2. Drill campaigns by the Company, complemented by a substantial historic drill database, have delineated five deposits of Platreef-style mineralization across a core 12-kilometer span of the project, all of which are open for expansion into adjacent targets. Multiple earlier-stage Platreef-style and reef-type targets are also being advanced across the remainder of the 32-kilometer length of the project based on strong correlations seen in soil and rock geochemistry, geophysical surveys, geologic mapping, and drilling. About Stillwater Critical Minerals Corp. Stillwater Critical Minerals (TSX.V: PGE | OTCQB: PGEZF) is a mineral exploration company focused on its flagship Stillwater West PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au project in the iconic and famously productive Stillwater mining district in Montana, USA. With the recent addition of two renowned Bushveld and Platreef geologists to the team, the Company is well positioned to advance the next phase of large-scale critical mineral supply from this world-class American district, building on past production of nickel, copper, and chromium, and the on-going production of platinum group and other metals by neighbouring Sibanye-Stillwater. The Platreef-style nickel and copper sulphide deposits at Stillwater West contain a compelling suite of critical minerals and are open for expansion along trend and at depth, with an updated NI 43-101 mineral resource update expected in 2022. Stillwater Critical Minerals also holds the high-grade Black Lake-Drayton Gold project adjacent to Treasury Metals' development-stage Goliath Gold Complex in northwest Ontario, which is currently under an earn-in agreement with an option to joint venture whereby Heritage Mining may earn up to a 90% interest in the project by completing payments and work on the project. The Company also holds the Kluane PGE-Ni-Cu-Co project on trend with Nickel Creek Platinum's Wellgreen deposit in Canada's Yukon Territory. Note 1: References to adjoining properties are for illustrative purposes only and are not necessarily indicative of the exploration potential, extent or nature of mineralization or potential future results of the Company's projects. Note 2: Magmatic Ore Deposits in Layered Intrusions-Descriptive Model for Reef-Type PGE and Contact-Type Cu-Ni-PGE Deposits, Michael Zientek, USGS Open-File Report 2012-1010. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: Michael Rowley, President, CEO & Director Email: info@criticalminerals.com Phone: (604) 357 4790 Web: http://criticalminerals.com Toll Free: (888) 432 0075 Quality Control and Quality Assurance 2021 drill core samples were analyzed by ACT Labs in Vancouver, B.C. Sample preparation: crush (< 7 kg) up to 80% passing 2 mm, riffle split (250 g) and pulverize (mild steel) to 95% passing 105 m included cleaner sand. Gold, platinum, and palladium were analyzed by fire assay (1C-OES) with ICP finish. Rhodium was analyzed by fire assay (1C-Rhodium). Selected major and trace elements were analyzed by peroxide fusion with 8-Peroxide ICP-OES finish to insure complete dissolution of resistate minerals. Following industry QA/QC standards, blanks, duplicate samples, and certified standards were also assayed. Mr. Mike Ostenson, P.Geo., is the qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101, and he has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release. Forward-Looking Statements Forward Looking Statements: This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization, historic production, estimation of mineral resources, the realization of mineral resource estimates, interpretation of prior exploration and potential exploration results, the timing and success of exploration activities generally, the timing and results of future resource estimates, permitting time lines, metal prices and currency exchange rates, availability of capital, government regulation of exploration operations, environmental risks, reclamation, title, and future plans and objectives of the company are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. Although Stillwater Critical Minerals believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of material factors and assumptions. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include failure to obtain necessary approvals, unsuccessful exploration results, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, results of future resource estimates, future metal prices, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, risks associated with regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of personnel, materials and equipment on a timely basis, accidents or equipment breakdowns, uninsured risks, delays in receiving government approvals, unanticipated environmental impacts on operations and costs to remedy same, and other exploration or other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the companies with securities regulators. Readers are cautioned that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral exploration and development of mines is an inherently risky business. Accordingly, the actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on Stillwater Critical Minerals and the risks and challenges of their businesses, investors should review their annual filings that are available at www.sedar.com . Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE: Stillwater Critical Minerals Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735657/Stillwater-Critical-Minerals-Reports-up-to-0396-gt-Rhodium-in-Drill-Results-from-the-Stillwater-West-PGE-Ni-Cu-Co-Au-Project-Montana-USA Deepspatial signs 3-year extension contract valued at CAD $1.5M Government Agricultural departments to utilize Deepspatial's Geospatial AI platform and solutions TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Deepspatial (CSE:DSAI)(OTCQB:DSAIF) ("Deepspatial" or the "Company"), an outcome-based artificial intelligence company, enabling organizations to enhance their decision-making capabilities by leveraging the power of data and AI, today announced that it had won a 3-year contract valued at CAD $1.5M. Using the Company's Geospatial AI platform and solutions, Government bodies will be able to efficiently conduct and validate crop-cutting experiments, on-field surveys, and other key processes for farmland activities across the state of Uttarakhand, India. The Agricultural project is an initiative of the Directorate of Agriculture, Government of Uttarakhand and is one of the first states in India to roll out a data collection project of this magnitude using new technologies. The Government initiative will help ensure proper insurance coverage, support for facilities, and help create plans and protocols for the farmers of the State. Overall, the project focuses on providing key data insights for better decision-making and an advanced support system for farmers and government decision-makers. The Deepspatial platform is used by a multitude of sectors and industries and for a vast selection of use cases. Agriculture is a vast market opportunity for Deepspatial, as there are many processes in the industry that are still far behind in digitization. Farmers, planners, Government officials, manufacturers and others will benefit immensely by adopting new technology solutions such as artificial intelligence, geospatial mapping, and AI data-driven insights. In 2022, India's agriculture market was valued at USD 435.9 billion.In the forecast period of 2023-2028, the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of about 4.9%.1 "The agricultural industry is an important vertical for Deepspatial, not only for revenue-generating reasons and the overall growth trajectory of the Company but also for the positioning of one of our technologies on a global scale. We are extremely proud to have the opportunity to make a pivotal difference in the agricultural industry on this kind of scale. It was no surprise to Deepspatial when we were awarded this Government contract - as we've previously demonstrated the power and robustness of our technology along with the impact of our AI driven platform and the uniqueness of our approach," commented Dr. Rahul Kushwah, Chief Executive Officer at Deepspatial. "We expect to announce several more meaningful contracts during the first half of 2023 and we remain focused on continuing to create long-term shareholder value - and speaking of shareholder value - we intend for Deepspatial to be a dividend-paying company in the not-so-distant future," concluded Kushwah 1 https://www.expertmarketresearch.com/reports/indian-agriculture-market About Deepspatial Deepspatial is an outcome based artificial intelligence company, enabling organizations to enhance their decision-making capabilities by leveraging the power of data and AI. From finding the most efficient supply chain routes to knowing where to develop next, Deepspatial's AI-driven platform enables its clients to visualize what's going on, predict what's coming, analyze data, and optimize processes to make smarter decisions for a better future. For more information, visit www.Deepspatial.ai and follow us on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn. Caution regarding Forward Looking Information: THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED NOR DOES IT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. This news release may contain forward-looking statements and information based on current expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results of the Company. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be correct. We assume no responsibility to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. The Company's securities have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or applicable state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold to, or for the account or benefit of, persons in the United States or "U.S. Persons", as such term is defined in Regulations under the U.S. Securities Act, absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in the United States or any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein, such as, but not limited to dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; the ability to obtain intellectual property rights related to its technology; limited operating history; general business, economic, competitive, political, regulatory and social uncertainties, and in particular, uncertainties related to COVID-19;risks related to factors beyond the control of the company, including risks related to COVID-19; risks related to the Company's shares, including price volatility due to events that may or may not be within such party's control; reliance on management; and the emergency of additional competitors in the industry. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and the Company disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except required by law. Contacts For more information, please contact: Investor Relations Corey Matthews Investors@deepspatial.ai Chief Executive Officer Dr. Rahul Kushwah Rahul@deepspatial.ai SOURCE: DeepSpatial Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735653/Deepspatial-Announces-15M-Government-Contract-in-the-Agricultural-Sector-Utilizing-Geospatial-AI-Platform-and-Solutions SAN FRANCISCO, CA and AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS and HONG KONG / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) is pleased to announce it will be hosting the 2023 edition of Planet Textiles at this year's Textile & Garment Technology Exhibition (ITMA 2023), the world's largest international textile and garment technology exhibition, on June 12-13 at the Fiera Milano Rho exhibition center in Italy. Planet Textiles will see the SAC bring together industry leaders and topic experts with a commitment to drive sustainability improvements throughout global supply chains. Attendees will also be able to take advantage of this unique opportunity to explore ITMA 2023, network with international peers and share learnings and best practices on how collective action can help accelerate industry transformation and future-proof manufacturing processes. Across the two days, delegates will explore technology innovations and the latest thinking on circularity, sustainability measurement, decarbonization and much more. Delegates will also get the latest updates on the SAC's Higg Index suite of tools, including those related to its independent, third-party review. Planet Textiles is a licensed brand of MCL News & Media, who will be working in close partnership with the SAC to ensure the event continues to provide the very best experience for attending delegates by bringing together leading brands, retailers, textile manufacturers, nonprofits and academic institutions. Lee Green, Senior Director, Communications at the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, said, "We are living in a climate emergency. There is an urgent need to accelerate action and spur global change; we believe in the power of collaboration and collective action to achieve this. As such, we are delighted to be hosting this year's Planet Textiles at ITMA 2023 and in collaboration with MCL News. Planet Textiles is renowned within the industry as a key sustainability event, so we have a lot of responsibility to ensure we deliver the very best program and speakers in Milan. We look forward to bringing together our global community to take advantage of this unique opportunity alongside tens of thousands of ITMA visitors as we explore sustainability innovation across the supply chain and the vital role played by manufacturers". Registrations for Planet Textiles 2023 will open on January 31. To learn more, visit the SAC's dedicated event content. Owned by CEMATEX, ITMA is the place where the industry converges every four years to showcase the latest textile and garment processing technologies, machinery and materials, promote collaborations and forge partnerships. - Ends - About the Sustainable Apparel Coalition: The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) is an independent and impact-creating organization that aims to lead the industry toward a shared vision of sustainability based upon a joint approach for measuring, evaluating, and improving performance. As a non-profit organization, it has members from across the apparel, footwear and textile sector, but exists independently outside any one company so that it can drive progress. The SAC's collective action efforts bring more than 280 global brands, retailers, manufacturers, NGOs, academics and industry associations together. They represent about half of the apparel and footwear industry along the whole supply chain - from sustainability pioneers to organizations just getting started. Before the SAC existed, companies worked in a siloed way, using their own programmes and measurements that lacked standardization and an ability to drive collective action. In 2009, Walmart and Patagonia identified this as a serious problem. Joining forces, they brought together peers and competitors from across the sector, to develop a universal approach to measuring sustainability performance and founded The Sustainable Apparel Coalition. View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Sustainable Apparel Coalition on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: Sustainable Apparel Coalition Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/sustainable-apparel-coalition Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: Sustainable Apparel Coalition View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735675/Sustainable-Apparel-Coalition-to-Host-Planet-Textiles-at-ITMA-2023 BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Novavax, Inc. (NVAX) said its partner SK bioscience has received expanded manufacturing and marketing approval from the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for Nuvaxovid for use as a booster for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in adults aged 18 and older. The approval is based on data from Novavax' Phase 2 trial conducted in the U.S. and Australia, from a separate Phase 2 trial conducted in South Africa, and from the United Kingdom-sponsored COV-BOOST trial. Novavax' COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use as an adult booster in more than 35 countries. In Korea, SK bioscience signed a licensing agreement with Novavax and is manufacturing drug substance and drug product of Nuvaxovid for domestic use. For More Such Health News, visit rttnews.com. Copyright(c) 2023 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. Regulatory News: ESI Group (ISIN Code: FR0004110310, Symbol: ESI), a global simulation and virtual prototyping software partner for the industry, has signed the United Nations Women's Empowerment Principles (WEP). The Group reaffirms its commitment to an inclusive corporate culture, guaranteeing equality between women and men: diversity at the service of the company's performance. "By becoming a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles, ESI Group is committed to taking bold steps to advance gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and within the community. The Group will focus on non-discrimination, public reporting of progress toward gender equality, and on providing equal opportunities for education, training, and professional development. Diversity is key to accelerating a company's performance, enriching its culture, and employee well-being. At ESI, the workforce is multicultural, international, and comes from different areas of expertise. Women make up 43% of the Board of Directors and 50% of the management team, yet women are still underrepresented everywhere else. I am convinced that we can do better in this area and that rapidly improving the ratio of women to men in all teams will help our company to progress, satisfy employees and clients, and establish long-term performance," declares Cristel de Rouvray, CEO at ESI Group. A priority objective for the Group ESI Group is already committed to gender equality, notably through actions taken to promote the recruitment of women and their professional development within the industry. In May 2022, the Group set up its Women@ESI network, which strives towards strengthening internal collaboration between employees and creating a communication channel to share ideas that promote the representation of women. ESI Group confirms its intention to continue to move further. Among the various actions in progress and to come, ESI Group will continue its policy of compensation promoting equality between women and men, based on objective market data that takes into account the position held and the level of seniority without gender consideration. ESI plans to reach 25% of women in the company by 2024 and 33% by 2028. The Group will strengthen the inclusiveness of its job offers and recruitment processes, by systematically presenting a selection of candidates composed of women and men. Furthermore, in order to materialize a safe and inclusive Group culture, ESI is committed to developing, in addition to its ethical charter, a charter further strengthening its commitment to preventing harassment. The Group will also provide a specific training on the subject of harassment to all staff. Finally, ESI Group wishes to implement a global parental leave policy for women and men by 2028. Established by UN Global Compact and UN Women in 2010, the Women's Empowerment Principles, are informed by international labor and human rights standards and grounded in the recognition that businesses have a stake in, and a responsibility for, gender equality and women's empowerment. There are a set of seven principles offering guidance to business on how to promote gender equality and women's empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community: 1: Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality, - 2: Treat all women and men fairly at work respect and support human rights and non-discrimination, - 3: Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers, - 4: Promote education, training and professional development for women, - 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women, - 6: Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy, - 7: Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality. About ESI Group Founded in 1973, ESI Group envisions a world where Industry commits to bold outcomes, addressing high stakes concerns environmental impact, safety comfort for consumers and workers, adaptable and sustainable business models. ESI provides reliable and customized solutions anchored on predictive physics modeling and virtual prototyping expertise to allow industries to make the right decisions at the right time, while managing their complexity. Acting principally in automotive land transportation, aerospace, defense naval and heavy industry, ESI is present in more than 20 countries, employs 1100 people around the world and reported 2021 sales of 136.6 million. ESI is headquartered in France and is listed on compartment B of Euronext Paris. For further information, go to www.esi-group.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005552/en/ Contacts: ESI Group Florence Barre press@esi-group.com +33 1 49 78 28 28 Aline Besselievre aline.besselievre@gmail.com +33 6 61 85 10 05 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Rockhaven Resources Ltd. (TSXV:RK) ("Rockhaven") is pleased to announce the first assay results from the 2022 exploration program at its 100% owned and road accessible Klaza property. The Klaza property is located within the Dawson Range Gold-Copper Belt of southern Yukon, a prolific belt that hosts several important mineral deposits including Minto Metals' Minto mine, Western Copper and Gold's Casino deposit and Newmont's Coffee deposit. 2022 Program During the summer of 2022, a total of 12,042 m of drilling was completed in 69 holes at Klaza. The work program was designed to advance Klaza towards an updated mineral resource estimate1 and pre-feasibility study by attaining the following objectives: (1) re-categorization of prioritized inferred mineral resources into indicated mineral resources, (2) expansion of the total mineral resource, (3) collection of samples for advanced-stage metallurgical test work, (4) completion of additional geotechnical drilling for optimized open-pit and underground engineering; and, (5) evaluation of some of the exploration targets that lie outside of the known mineral resource areas through excavator trenching, soil sampling and prospecting. Highlights Highlight assays from this press release include: 101.5 g/t gold and 107 g/t silver over 1.30 m starting at 64 m (KL-22-624) starting at 64 m (KL-22-624) 2.18 g/t gold and 199 g/t silver over 13.29 m starting at 193 m (KL-22-579) starting at 193 m (KL-22-579) 6.91 g/t gold and 37 g/t silver over 6.62 m starting at 29 m (KL-22-563) starting at 29 m (KL-22-563) 18.85 g/t gold and 347 g/t silver over 1.11 m starting at 93 m (KL-22-576) All of the results in this news release are from 22 holes drilled in 2022 within the Central and Eastern BRX zones and the adjacent AEX Zone. Results from the remaining 47 holes completed in other zones will be released in subsequent news releases. Statement from Rockhaven's President and CEO, Matt Turner: Results from 2022 drilling at the Central BRX Zone confirm, and build upon, earlier results. These results are expected to grow the total mineral resource at Klaza and upgrade mineral resources previously defined at inferred to the indicated category. Additionally, eight holes that tested the eastern projection of the BRX Zone returned promising results that lie outside of the current mineral resource estimate. The main mineralized structure was intersected in all of these holes, with the best intercept returning 101 g/t gold over 1.30 m in hole KL-22-624. Positive results were also obtained from the sub-parallel AEX Zone, located immediately south of the BRX Zone, including the strongest intercept to date from that zone, averaging 6.91 g/t gold over 6.62 m in hole KL-22-563. Neither the AEX Zone nor the Eastern BRX Zone are currently included in the 2018 Klaza Property Mineral Resource Estimate, but Rockhaven expects that mineralization in portions of these zones will be added to the updated mineral resource estimate. Central BRX Zone, Eastern BRX Zone, and AEX Zone The Central BRX Zone hosts veins emplaced along the selvages of a single feldspar porphyry dyke which runs the length of the zone. It hosts an indicated mineral resource estimate of 713,000 tonnes containing 53,000 oz gold, 2.84 million oz silver, 14.8 million lbs lead and 18.3 million lbs zinc at an average grade of 2.3 g/t gold, 124 g/t silver, 0.9% lead and 1.2% zinc and an inferred mineral resource estimate of 1,425,000 tonnes containing 79,000 oz gold, 4,656,000 oz silver, 30.0 million lbs lead and 27.4 million lbs zinc at an average grade of 1.7 g/t gold, 102 g/t silver, 1.0% lead and 0.9% zinc (See July 10, 2020 Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Rockhaven website (www.rockhavenresources.com). Prior to the 2022 program, the Central BRX Zone had been traced for a strike length of 1.1 km, extending from the Western BRX Zone (the most significant mineralized zone identified to date on the property) to the Eastern Zones, which hosts sheeted-vein, bulk tonnage style mineralization not currently included in the Klaza Deposit mineral resources1. Drilling in 2022 confirmed and better defined the eastern projection of the BRX Zone structure. The eight holes completed within this area in 2022, coupled with the results from past drill campaigns, have increased confidence in the continuity of mineralization within the Eastern BRX Zone, potentially leading to a 300 m long expansion of the mineral resource to the east. As final assays have only just been received, resource modelling is currently in progress for this zone. The AEX Zone, located just south of, and trending sub-parallel to, the Central BRX Zone, hosts significant potential for near surface growth of mineral resources at Klaza. Step-back infill drilling at the BRX Zone intersected AEX Zone mineralization in multiple holes, with the best result returned from the top of hole KL-22-563, which averaged 6.91 g/t gold and 36.5 g/t silver over 6.62 m. Summary of New Drill Results Significant results from 2022 drilling at the Central and Eastern BRX Zone and the AEX Zone announced in this press release are tabulated below. Klaza Project -Central and Eastern BRX and AEX Zones - Significant Results from this Release Drill Hole From (m) To (m) Interval (m) + Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Pb (%) Zn (%) AuEq* (g/t) KL-22-562 103.03 104.46 1.43 1.44 25.1 0.08 0.09 1.7 and 108.39 108.69 0.30 1.81 148.0 2.28 5.20 5.2 KL-22-563^ 29.67 36.29 6.62 6.91 36.5 0.77 0.92 7.7 incl.^ 35.26 36.29 1.03 33.85 177.0 4.28 4.19 37.6 and 172.43 172.77 0.34 8.63 35.6 0.27 1.96 9.6 and 178.31 178.71 0.40 6.55 124.0 1.97 5.60 9.7 KL-22-564^ 11.3 13.00 1.70 4.10 24.5 0.48 0.75 4.6 and 25.21 27.27 2.06 0.91 24.3 0.09 0.80 1.4 and 35.65 36.25 0.60 3.80 11.5 0.14 0.78 4.2 and 76.16 76.46 0.30 2.48 360.0 2.87 1.98 7.1 and 162.07 162.72 0.65 6.94 146.0 0.35 0.81 8.7 KL-22-565 91.44 93.18 1.74 6.59 183.2 1.09 3.94 9.7 KL-22-566 84.45 85.69 1.24 7.37 164.0 0.97 1.18 9.5 and 95.06 96.24 1.18 3.21 19.2 0.04 0.15 3.4 KL-22-568 55.88 56.65 0.77 1.91 142.6 0.92 0.73 3.7 KL-22-570 181.12 181.84 0.72 1.45 94.7 0.07 0.08 2.4 and 184.96 185.27 0.31 0.64 474.0 8.05 4.09 8.1 KL-22-571 155.45 155.93 0.48 2.57 885.0 7.63 7.75 14.9 KL-22-573 96.76 98.07 1.31 1.36 94.3 0.08 1.00 2.6 KL-22-576 93.58 94.69 1.11 18.85 347.0 0.66 0.38 22.5 and 106.68 107.36 0.68 2.34 99.0 0.65 0.22 3.5 KL-22-577 96.00 96.85 0.85 1.22 117.0 0.09 0.05 2.4 and 224.74 225.27 0.53 2.22 375.0 3.54 4.83 7.9 KL-22-579 193.71 207.00 13.29 2.18 199.2 1.58 1.81 4.9 incl. 205.74 207.00 1.26 9.90 1060.0 7.93 1.61 22.3 KL-22-619^ 23.35 25.50 2.15 1.32 9.6 0.13 0.81 1.7 and 73.02 80.94 7.92 1.74 15.3 0.11 0.16 2.0 incl. 73.02 76.77 3.75 2.54 8.8 0.10 0.14 2.7 and 91.92 98.15 6.23 1.28 35.9 0.18 0.31 1.8 incl. 96.01 98.15 2.14 2.46 74.6 0.43 0.73 3.5 KL-22-621 15.48 18.16 2.68 1.32 3.5 0.07 0.22 1.4 and 36.82 38.45 1.63 4.33 146.5 0.28 0.42 5.9 KL-22-623 26.21 32.27 6.06 1.50 19.8 0.17 0.99 2.0 incl. 26.21 28.72 2.51 2.53 33.4 0.31 1.85 3.4 KL-22-624^ 13.36 14.33 0.97 8.31 61.8 1.01 2.28 9.8 and 63.00 64.30 1.30 101.50 107.0 0.77 4.09 103.8 and 67.92 68.79 0.87 2.83 22.0 0.10 0.47 3.2 and 83.69 85.02 1.33 3.54 29.4 0.24 0.27 4.0 and 91.14 91.93 0.79 1.91 72.8 0.17 0.08 2.7 KL-22-626 38.38 39.28 0.90 4.27 21.9 0.54 0.81 4.8 and 45.46 45.83 0.37 3.98 124.0 0.78 3.66 6.4 and 57.01 57.51 0.50 2.08 21.1 0.50 1.86 2.9 and 60.00 63.00 3.00 0.90 6.2 0.10 0.47 1.1 KL-22-628 42.30 42.73 0.43 8.31 224.0 0.30 1.19 10.9 and 49.54 50.60 1.06 7.00 59.1 0.26 0.74 7.8 KL-22-629 48.50 51.76 3.26 1.21 6.5 0.07 0.38 1.4 and 121.21 121.71 0.50 9.67 31.5 0.03 0.09 10.0 KL-22-630 70.10 70.75 0.65 1.79 10.7 0.27 1.19 2.3 and 100.74 102.25 1.51 1.26 8.9 0.07 0.13 1.4 + Represents the diamond drill hole core length. True widths are estimated to be 80-90% of the interval as the majority of vein intersects had contacts that were at or near perpendicular to core axis. * Gold equivalent (AuEQ) values assume $1,800/oz Au, $22/oz Ag, $1.05/lb Pb, and $1.60/lb Zn, and variable recoveries for the different metals. The equation used is AuEq=1*Au+Ag/103.42+Pb/4.64+Zn/3.63 ^ Represents a drill intersection in the AEX Zone, which trends subparallel and is located to the south of the Central BRX Zone. Detailed maps showing the locations of completed drill holes can be viewed on the Rockhaven website at www.rockhavenresources.com. Remaining results from the 2022 program will be released once assays have been received, compiled and evaluated. 1 See Rockhaven news release dated June 21, 2018 for more information on the mineral resource estimate for the Klaza Deposit. QA/QC All analyses for rock and core samples from the 2022 program were performed by ALS Minerals with sample preparation in Whitehorse, Yukon and Windsor, Ontario and assays and geochemical analyses in North Vancouver. Core samples were routinely analyzed for gold by fire assay followed by atomic absorption (Au-AA24) and 48 other elements by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ME-MS61). Samples that exceeded the detection limits of the routine methods were assayed for silver, copper, lead and zinc by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (Ag/Cu/Pb/Zn - OG62) and gold by gravimetric analysis (Au-GRA22). Rigorous procedures were in place regarding sample collection, chain of custody and data entry. Certified assay standards, coarse reject duplicates, field duplicates and blanks were routinely inserted into the sample stream to ensure integrity of the assay process. All of the results reported have passed the QA/QC screening. Qualified Persons Technical information in this news release has been approved by Matthew R. Dumala, P.Eng., a geological engineer with Archer, Cathro & Associates (1981) Limited and qualified person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. About Rockhaven Rockhaven Resources Ltd. is a well-funded explorer focused on the exploration and development of its 100%-owned, camp-scale Klaza Property, which hosts the Klaza Deposit and numerous lightly explored exploration targets. Rockhaven has completed a mineral resource estimate and a preliminary economic assessment on the Klaza deposit (see Klaza Property Technical Report with an effective date of July 10, 2020 and titled, "Technical Report and Preliminary Economic Assessment Update for the Klaza Property, Yukon, Canada." which can be viewed at www.sedar.com under the Rockhaven profile or on the Rockhaven website at www.rockhavenresources.com). Matthew Turner President, CEO and Director Rockhaven Resources Ltd. T:604-687-2522 mturner@rockhavenresources.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward Looking Statements Information contained in this news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "prolific", "advance", "re-categorization", "prioritized", "expansion", "evaluation", "expects", "expected", "grow(th)", "upgrade", "potential(ly)", "promising", "positive", "best", "strongest", "objectives", "confirmed", "defined" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "may", "could" or "will" occur. Rockhaven cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the control of Rockhaven. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to exploration and development and the results thereof, including the results of the recently completed drill program, the impact on mineral resource estimates, the potential for new discoveries including porphyry deposits, and the results of planned metallurgical programs, as well as the ability of Rockhaven to obtain additional financing, the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations, fluctuations in the prices of commodities, operating hazards and risks, competition and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in Rockhaven's financial statements available under the Rockhaven profile at www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Rockhaven undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. SOURCE: Rockhaven Resources Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735656/Rockhaven-Drills-Resource-Step-Out-Hole-Grading-101-gt-gold-107-gt-silver-over-130-m-at-Its-Klaza-Gold-Silver-Project-Yukon Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Kenorland Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: KLD) (OTCQX: KLDCF) (FSE: 3WQ0) ("Kenorland" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results of preliminary metallurgical testing of the Regnault gold system ("Regnault") on the Frotet Project (the "Project"), located in northern Quebec and held under joint venture (the "Joint Venture") with Sumitomo Metal Mining Canada Ltd. ("SMMCL"). Results of the Preliminary Metallurgical Study Preliminary metallurgical test work was initiated with the completion of hole 22RDD149 that twinned the Regnault discovery hole 20RDD007 (29.08m at 8.47 g/t Au including 11.13m at 18.43 g/t Au*) and intersected 29.20m at 16.61 g/t Au including 9.85m at 44.89 g/t Au. Objectives of this study included the analysis of mineralogical characteristics and the preliminary assessment of Au-Ag recovery through cyanide amenability of the Regnault ore. The study was carried out at the Engineering Dept., Mineral Resources Division of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. Approximately 60kg of material from 27.1m of NQ half drill core from 22RDD149 was processed to make a representative sample of the R1 mineralised zone for characterization. Samples were crushed to under 1.7mm and thoroughly mixed. A 1kg sample was split for head assay, X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and mineralogical analysis by Mineral Liberation Analyzer (MLA). The composite head grade was 15.9 g/t Au and 24 g/t Ag, similar to the original composite analyzed by Bureau Veritas Commodities (Timmins, Ontario). MLA analysis identified gold-silver-telluride, electrum and native gold as the main gold and silver bearing mineral species. Sulphides identified include pyrite, chalcopyrite and galena totalling 2.3%. Approximately 84% of the Au bearing minerals was gold-silver-tellurium minerals, and the rest was composed from 5% native gold and 11% electrum (Figure 1). More than 90% of the gold and silver bearing minerals were classified as liberated or exposed in the leach feed (100m in P80). Figure 1: Proportion of gold and silver bearing minerals in the head sample. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/6489/151635_revfigure1.jpg Baseline test procedures were conducted by using four samples which were ground to 100m in P80 and underwent oxygen purging for 24 hours, followed by cyanide leaching for 48hrs at 0.5g/L NaCN concentration. Dissolved oxygen concentration during cyanide leaching was 8-9 mg/L. Pregnant leach solutions were taken and analyzed at 2, 6, 24 and 48 hours, as well as analysis of the test residue. Baseline conditions indicated gold extraction of 86.9% and silver extraction of 68.2% in average (Table 1) with cyanide consumption rates between 1.1 and 1.5 kg/t. Upon completion of the baseline tests the effect of extended leaching duration (increased to 72 hours), higher dissolved oxygen content (increased to 30-35 mg/L), higher NaCN concentration (increased to 1.0g/L), and finer feed size (75m in P80) were investigated. Gold recoveries increased to 89.1-89.9% with extended leaching, finer grind size, and increased dissolved oxygen while the increased NaCN concentration only marginally improved recovery. Silver recoveries increased to 81.5-86.2%, with the increased dissolved oxygen and NaCN concentration while extended leaching marginally improved recoveries. These results indicate that gold extraction is best improved with finer grinding and extended leaching, likely due to an increase in liberated gold grains and complete dissolution of coarse gold. Silver extraction is best improved with extended leaching and higher dissolved oxygen content, likely due to the leaching kinetics of the Ag-bearing tellurides. Table 1: Summary of preliminary metallurgical testing conditions and results. To view an enhanced version of Table 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/6489/151635_revtable1.jpg The initial metallurgical test work has demonstrated promising Au-Ag recoveries of the Regnault-style ore. Additional work has been planned to further maximize recovery, including the effects of gravity separation of coarse gold and electrum prior to cyanide leaching, the potential effect of flotation prior to cyanide leaching, and the use of an activator (ie. Pb(NO3)2, or citric acid) to increase extraction of precious metals from gold-silver-tellurium minerals during cyanide leaching. (* See press release July 29, 2020) About the Frotet Project The Frotet Project was first identified by Kenorland in 2017 after completing a regional prospectivity study over the Abitibi and Frotet-Evans Greenstone Belts of Quebec. The initial 55,921 ha property was acquired through map staking in March 2017 and optioned to Sumitomo Metal Mining Canada Ltd. ("SMMCL"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. in April 2018. Two years of property-wide systematic till sampling led to a maiden drill program in 2020 which resulted in a significant grassroots discovery at the prospect now named Regnault. The project is currently under a joint venture agreement between SMMCL and Kenorland Minerals Ltd., with interests being held at 80% and 20%, respectively. Under the joint venture, exploration is funded pro-rata and Kenorland is presently the operator of the project. Any party which does not contribute and is diluted below a 10% interest, converts its interest to a 2% uncapped net smelter royalty. About Kenorland Minerals Ltd. Kenorland Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: KLD) is a mineral exploration Company incorporated under the laws of the Province of British Columbia and based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Kenorland's focus is early to advanced stage exploration in North America. The Company currently holds five projects in Quebec where work is being completed under joint venture and earn-in agreements from third parties. The Frotet Project and Chicobi Project are held under joint venture with Sumitomo, the O'Sullivan Project is optioned to Sumitomo, the Chebistuan Project is optioned to Newmont Corporation and the Hunter Project is held under option to Centerra Gold Inc. In Ontario, the Company holds the South Uchi Project under an earn-in agreement with a wholly owned subsidiary of Barrick Gold Corporation. In Alaska, the Company holds the advanced stage Tanacross porphyry Cu-Au-Mo project, optioned to Antofagasta, as well as a 70% interest in the Healy Project, held under joint venture with Newmont Corporation. Further information can be found on the Company's website www.kenorlandminerals.com Kenorland Minerals Ltd. Zach Flood President and CEO, Director Tel: +1 604 363 1779 zach@kenorlandminerals.com Kenorland Minerals Ltd. Scott Smits Vice President of Exploration Tel: +1 250 686 8135 scott@kenorlandminerals.com Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "plans", "expects', "estimates", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulators, that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing these forward-looking statements are reasonable based upon the information currently available to management as of the date hereof, actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Readers are therefore cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed times frames or at all. Except where required by applicable law, the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151635 Vancouver, British Columbia and Hoboken, New Jersey--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Hypercharge Networks Corp. (NEO: HC) (FSE: PB7) ("Hypercharge"), a leading, smart electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions provider, is pleased to announce it will provide EV charging stations to parking lots managed by Target Park U.S. Inc. in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, marking the first U.S.-deployed chargers under the agreement signed with Target Park. Target Park U.S. Inc. is a parking lot operator and management company providing a wide range of parking services in the United States. It deploys the latest technologies to facilitate the parking process, while identifying and revitalizing facilities and spaces that are either inefficiently operated or that have commercial parking potential that hasn't yet been realized. "Target Park are well-recognized across North America for their exceptional customer service, and their ability to incorporate the latest technologies into their offering," said Chris Koch, Head of Growth & Partnerships at Hypercharge. "We align heavily with these values and are excited to expand our partnership with the brand into the United States." Early this year, Hypercharge will be installing four Level 2 charging stations across 4 parking lot locations: 107-02 Queens Blvd in Queens, NY; Edison Place Garage in Newark, NJ; Abbotts Square Garage in Philadelphia, PA; and T. F. Green International Airport in Warwick, RI. With the addition of the new locations announced today, Hypercharge EV charging will be available across North America in five U.S. states and seven Canadian provinces. "We are pleased to expand our partnership with Hypercharge on this project. It's clear that electric vehicles are increasingly growing in popularity, and we want to be able to ensure that guests who use our managed parking facilities have everything they need, including reliable and easy-to-use EV charging," said Chet Wilkolaski, Executive Vice President and Co-Owner of Target Park U.S. Inc. -##- About Hypercharge Hypercharge Networks Corp. (NEO: HC) (FSE: PB7) is a leading provider of smart electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions that offers turnkey technology to multi-unit residential and commercial buildings, fleet operations, and other rapidly growing sectors. Driven by its mission to accelerate EV adoption and enable the shift towards a carbon neutral economy, Hypercharge is committed to providing seamless, simple charging solutions by offering industry-leading equipment and a robust network of public and private charging stations. Learn more: https://hypercharge.com/ Hypercharge Networks Corp. David Bibby, President & CEO Investor Relations: invest@hypercharge.com 604-881-1730 Media Contact: Kyle Green | Senior Marketing Manager kyle.green@hypercharge.com Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Any statements that are contained in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "may", "should", "anticipate", "will", "estimates", "believes", "intends", "expects" and similar expressions which are intended to identify forward-looking statements. More particularly and without limitation, this news release contains forward-looking statements concerning (i) the expansion of Hypercharge's partnership with Target Park into the U.S.; and (ii) Hypercharge's installation of four Level 2 charging stations at Target Park's locations in Philadelphia and New Jersey, and the timing thereof. Forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and the actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, assumptions and expectations, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. Readers are cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking statements may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, as such information, although considered reasonable by the respective management of the Company at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and are expressly qualified by the foregoing cautionary statement. Except as expressly required by securities law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Neither the NEO Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in policies of the NEO Exchange) accepts 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/151652 This undated file photo provided by the defense ministry shows the remains of Oh Moon-kyo, a soldier who was killed in action at Arrowhead Ridge inside the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, excavated in June 2019. Yonhap South Korea's military has identified the remains of two more soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, the defense ministry said Wednesday. The ministry's excavation team identified the remains of Choi Bong-keun and Oh Moon-kyo, recovered in 2001 and 2019, respectively, through DNA analysis based on samples provided by their families. Choi was a private first class, while Oh held a rank equivalent to the current sergeant. Choi's remains were found in Chuncheon, 85 kilometers east of Seoul, by U.S. personnel who were excavating remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the conflict. The remains were first sent to the U.S. for analysis and returned here in September 2021 after they were confirmed as those of a South Korean soldier. Choi is thought to have been killed during preparations for a South Korean advance in the area in October 1950 at the age of 31. Oh's remains were discovered at Arrowhead Ridge, a former battle site inside the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, where fierce fighting took place over 13 days from June 29, 1953. He died in action on July 10 at the age of 22. South Korea has so far identified the remains of 204 service members killed in the conflict since it launched the excavation project in 2000. (Yonhap) 25 Kilometres of Roughrider Mineralized Corridor Staked Highly Anomalous Lake Sediment Sample Identified Meet Management at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQX: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) ("CanAlaska or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company's newly acquired Frontier project, totalling 15,929 hectares, in the northeastern Athabasca Basin. The Frontier project is located approximately 30 kilometres northeast of the McClean Lake mill complex and Roughrider uranium deposit, and 35 kilometres north of Cameco's Eagle Point uranium mine (Figure 1). Figure 1 - Frontier Project Location To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/2864/151657_eae1af7a54c32af4_002full.jpg The Frontier project is located five kilometres northeast of the present-day Athabasca Basin edge. Compilation work on the project has highlighted a prominent 25-kilometre-long northeast trending magnetic low corridor. This regional-scale corridor, which continues off property to the southwest, hosts multiple uranium deposits and showings, including Roughrider, Midwest, J Zone, Dawn Lake, Moonlight, Osprey, and the McClean Lake mine (mined-out Jeb deposit) and mill complex. This regional-scale corridor is termed here as the Roughrider Mineralized Corridor ("RMC"). Within the Frontier project the RMC is bound by magnetic high bodies to the east and west that are interpreted to represent Archean domes, providing a suitable and favourable geological scenario for the formation of large fault structures. Figure 2 - Exploration Target Corridor Frontier Project To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/2864/151657_eae1af7a54c32af4_004full.jpg A major northeast trending structure has been mapped along the western margin of the magnetic low corridor that is cross-cut by multiple north-south trending magnetic structure lineaments (Figure 2). Southwest of the property, this same lineament is associated with a large jog in the Athabasca Basin edge that is interpreted to represent structural offset. The interplay between structures along long linear magnetic low corridors is typical of many unconformity uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin and allows for the creation of structural traps for potential uranium deposition. As a result, the Company believes this section of the RMC represents a key underexplored target area for basement-type uranium mineralization. The Frontier project has undergone very limited historical exploration. Gulf Minerals Company completed an airborne radiometric survey, followed by prospecting and mapping in the 1960's. Airborne radiometric, magnetic, and electromagnetic surveys were flown in the 1970's by Gulf Minerals Company and Canadian Superior Exploration Ltd. These surveys were followed by ground-based prospecting, mapping, lake sediment and boulder sampling, and VLF-EM surveying. In the early 1990's, as part of a regional lake-sediment sampling program, the Geological Survey of Canada collected a sample on Point Lake which returned 34.7 ppm uranium associated with elevated cobalt, copper, molybdenum, and nickel. In 2007, Hathor Exploration Ltd., discoverer of the nearby basement-hosted Roughrider uranium deposit, conducted a detailed aeromagnetic survey that covered the entire Frontier property and a small VTEM (Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetics) survey and lake sediment sampling program that covered only the very southern portion. The Frontier property has no known drillholes completed within its boundaries. The Company believes the next steps for the Frontier project include property-wide modern high-resolution airborne radiometric, VTEM, and gravity surveys followed by ground-based prospecting. This combination of geophysical techniques is well suited toward identification of basement-hosted uranium targets for follow-up drilling programs. The Company is completing further compilation work on the newly acquired Frontier project and is actively seeking Joint Venture partners to move the project forward. CanAlaska CEO, Cory Belyk, comments, "This is a very exciting new project generated by our talented geologists along one of the most important mineralized corridors in the eastern Athabasca Basin near critical milling infrastructure. The Roughrider uranium deposit discovery was one of the most important in the last uranium cycle anywhere in the world reigniting interest in the northeastern area of the Basin. The Frontier project is a geological extension of the Roughrider Mineralized Corridor and has never had modern survey methods applied toward basement-hosted uranium deposit discovery. Congratulations to the CanAlaska team for recognizing this opportunity at the entry to the next uranium bull market which we believe is upon us. The timing could not be better for our shareholders as the team applies its project generation methodology to create an incredible discovery opportunity in the Saudi Arabia of Uranium." Other News The Company is drilling on its West McArthur project in the eastern Athabasca Basin. The 2023 West McArthur drill program is focused on advancing the Company's new high-grade Pike Zone uranium discovery. The primary goals for the winter drill program are the Pike Zone unconformity target and continued definition of the dimensions and controls of the Pike Zone basement mineralization. In addition, the Company is preparing for its first drilling program on the Key Extension project, located in the southeastern Athabasca Basin region near the Key Lake mine and mill complex. The 2023 Key Extension drill program, planned to begin in February, will focus on exploration of newly defined targets generated through a series of geophysical programs completed in 2022. The Company will be attending the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference ("VRIC") on January 29th and 30th in Vancouver, BC and will have representatives at booth #435. About CanAlaska Uranium CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQX: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) holds interests in approximately 300,000 hectares (750,000 acres), in Canada's Athabasca Basin - the "Saudi Arabia of Uranium." CanAlaska's strategic holdings have attracted major international mining companies. CanAlaska is currently working with Cameco and Denison at two of the Company's properties in the Eastern Athabasca Basin. CanAlaska is a project generator positioned for discovery success in the world's richest uranium district. The Company also holds properties prospective for nickel, copper, gold and diamonds. For further information visit www.canalaska.com. The qualified technical person for this news release is Nathan Bridge, MSc., P.Geo., CanAlaska's Vice President, Exploration. On behalf of the Board of Directors "Cory Belyk" Cory Belyk, P.Geo., FGC CEO, Executive Vice-President and Director CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. Contacts: Cory Belyk, Executive VP and CEO Tel: +1.604.688.3211 x 306 Email: cbelyk@canalaska.com General Enquiry Tel: +1.604.688.3211 Email: info@canalaska.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking information All statements included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions made by the Company based on its experience, perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate in the circumstances. In addition, these statements involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will prove inaccurate, certain of which are beyond the Company's control. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company does not intend to revise or update these forward-looking statements after the date hereof or revise them to reflect the occurrence of future unanticipated events. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151657 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Nova Mentis Life Science Corp. (CSE: NOVA) (FSE: HN3Q) (OTCQB: NMLSF) ("NOVA" or the "Company"), a biotechnology company and global leader in first-in-class psilocybin-based therapeutics and complementary diagnostics for neuroinflammatory disorders is pleased to announce the appointment of Derek Ivany to the position of Executive Chairman. In this new role, Mr. Ivany's mandate will include specific focus on corporate development outreach, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets support and other strategic value enhancement initiatives. "I am thrilled to have witnessed the progress that NOVA has made in advancing their clinical initiatives in a relatively short period of time, especially in what has proven to be a very difficult market environment for early-stage biotechnology companies," stated Derek Ivany. "As a testament to my belief in what is being pursued and has been accomplished thus far, I have continued to bolster my ownership position in the Company, lockstep with their numerous milestone achievements. I am eager to assist in supporting the NOVA team as we embark on the next phase of our growth plan." Mr. Ivany has been a long-term shareholder and supporter of NOVA by virtue of his previous position as founder, President and Director of Pilz Bioscience Corp., a company that he started with NOVA's Dr. Marvin S. Hausman that was subsequently acquired by NOVA in November 2020. His initial interest in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research was sparked by a personal connection to the disorder. Derek's brother, who was diagnosed with ASD at a young age, registers at the upper end of the ASD scale and is largely non-verbal. Derek has witnessed first-hand the devastating effects that severe autism can have on a family and is passionate about doing his part to advance research in this area. Mr. Ivany has a rich history of successfully working with publicly traded companies and helping generate significant shareholder value in a variety of diverse industry segments. Having worked with many international groups, Mr. Ivany has established a network of high-profile contacts across such sectors as medicinal products, health and wellness, mining, oil and gas, coffee, technology, horse racing and real estate. "Derek's expertise and leadership will be invaluable as we initiate our Health Canada clinical trial assessing repetitive, oral microdose psilocybin therapy for fragile X syndrome (FXS), the leading genetic cause of autism," said Will Rascan, President & CEO of NOVA. "As we advance our clinical pipeline, it is important that we continue to increase our profile with both retail and institutional biotechnology investors within the capital markets. We look forward to working with Mr. Ivany as he spearheads this initiative." In order to accommodate the new director appointment, Steve Feldman has resigned from the NOVA's Board of Directors. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Feldman for his many years of dedicated service and wishes him well in his future endeavours. Further, the Company has granted 2,750,000 restricted share units (the "RSUs") to directors, officers and consultants of the Company. The RSUs are valid for a two-year term and are governed by the Company's RSU Plan, approved by the Company's shareholders on December 22, 2020. About Nova Mentis Life Science Corp. Nova Mentis Life Science Corp. is a Canadian-based biotechnology company and global leader in developing diagnostics and psilocybin-based therapeutics for neuroinflammatory disorders. Nova is the first biotech company to achieve orphan drug designation in both the United States and European Union for the use of psilocybin in the treatment of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). Our goal is to diagnose and treat debilitating chronic conditions that have unmet medical needs, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and FXS. For further information on the Company, please visit www.novamentis.ca or email info@novamentis.ca. On Behalf of the Board Will Rascan, President & CEO Nova Mentis Life Science Corp. Phone: 778-819-0244 Toll Free: 1-833-542-5323 Twitter: @novamentislsc Instagram: @novamentislsc Facebook: @novamentislsc Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Nova Mentis Life Science's actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in the industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking 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. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151699 THE HAGUE (dpa-AFX) - Volta Inc. (VLTA) Wednesday announced a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Shell USA Inc., a subsidiary of Shell plc. (SHEL) in an all-cash transaction of approximately $169 million. The deal represents around 18 percent premium to the closing of Volta on Tuesday. Shell USA will acquire Class A common stock of Volta at $0.86 per share in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2023 and upon closing, Volta's will no longer be listed on any public market. The acquisition is expected to add momentum to Shell in segments such as electric mobility, EV charging, and media companies in the U.S. Further, the deal will unlock Volta's signed pipeline of charging stalls in construction or evaluation. As part of the agreement, an affiliate of Shell will provide subordinated secured term loans to Volta to bridge Volta through the closing of the transaction. Volta's Board has unanimously approved the transaction and recommended stockholders approval. Copyright(c) 2023 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. CHINO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Harrison, Vickers & Waterman, Inc. ("HVCW"), through its operating subsidiary, Pacific Energy Network LLC, d/b/a Modern Pro Solutions ("MPS"), (together the "Company") (OTC PINK:HVCW) is pleased to provide a 2022 synopsis as well as future endeavors for 2023. In the second half of 2022, from July to the end of December, Modern Pro Solutions is proud to announce that the company had revenues just shy of $25,000,000.00. This represents a 10x growth from the beginning of the year. The company also had a total of 695 installations with 200 of those in the month of September. With such demand the company became a top 50 installer for the nation's largest solar finance company. CEO Bobby Tetsch won two awards at the Spirit of the Entrepreneur event in Riverside, California - including the most prestigious award for the "Best of the Best" Entrepreneur. Mr. Tetsch also was awarded the Distribution/Wholesale Entrepreneur of the year. Modern Pro Solutions was named a Bronze winner in the Fastest Growing Company of the Year- Medium Category in Best in Biz Awards, the only independent business awards program judged each year by prominent editors and reporters from top-tier publications in North America. Modern Pro Solutions appeared on the Inc. 5000, ranking no. 87 with three-year revenue growth of 4,906%. Modern Pro Solutions won Startup of the year and best workplace of the year by Titan Awards. "As we look forward to 2023, we will not only keep improving on our tremendous momentum, but we have approximately 3 to 5 mergers/acquisitions in consideration. This will allow the company to move into other markets. In order to better efficiencies and streamline processes, the company will be investing in state of the art software which will not only guide us internally but help our future and existing customers as well. Upon execution of these goals, I expect 2023 revenues for Modern Pro Solutions to be $150,000,000.00.", says CEO, Bobby Tetsch. He continues, "Our growth to date has been impressive and we look forward to a very fruitful 2023. Thank you to all those investors who have faith in what we're doing". About Modern Pro Solutions Founded in 2016, Pacific Energy Network LLC, d/b/a Modern Pro Solutions, has quickly become one of the largest and most successful home services companies in the nation with a footprint across multiple states. With a focus on customer satisfaction and strategic business planning, MPS has grown into a multi-product business that has increased revenue year over year and expanded its reach into new markets across the United States. For further information, please visit the Modern Pro Solutions website at www.joinmps.com. Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 The statements contained in this news release which are not historical facts may be "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated. For example, statements that describe MPS's hopes, plans, objectives, goals, intentions, or expectations are forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made herein are only made as of the date of this news release. Numerous factors, many of which are beyond HVCW and MPS's control, will affect actual results. HVCW and MPS undertake no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. This news release should be read in conjunction with HVCW's most recent financial reports and other filings posted with the OTC Markets and/or the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission by HVCW. For More Information Contact Investor Relations Scott Martin investorrelations@joinmps.com SOURCE: Harrison Vickers and Waterman, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735596/Modern-Pro-Solutions-Year-in-Review-and-150M-in-Projections New developments in product, partner, education and community-building promise to make it easier for global enterprises to adopt and benefit from event-driven architecture OTTAWA, ON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Solace, the leading enabler of event-driven architecture (EDA) for real-time enterprises, today affirmed its ongoing Event Horizon commitment to advancing the state of EDA, punctuated by several new strategic partnerships, community education program achievements and product enhancements, including the launch of a new distributed tracing capability. Enabling Advanced Observability by Adding Distributed Tracing to EDA Along with logs and metrics, distributed tracing is one of the three pillars of observability, which gives enterprises the ability to find and fix many types of problems anywhere in their system. According to Gartner: "Applications that have been developed with observability will allow for significantly faster investigations into outages, particularly in complex environments. This will result in shorter resolution times and improved development efficiencies allowing fast turnaround times for new features." * Solace is the first company to add distributed tracing capabilities to an EDA platform so companies can trace the step-by-step progress of event-driven information from end to end as it makes its way through a series of applications, environments and event brokers. PubSub+ Distributed Tracing emits trace events from client libraries and the event broker in OpenTelemetry, the most popular tracing format that enables customers to collect, visualize, and analyze trace information in any compatible tool, such as DataDog, Dynatrace, Jaeger, Splunk and more. "Our new distributed tracing capability enables IT organizations to reduce development time by debugging complex event flows during system test, and more quickly troubleshooting issues that inevitably come up in production environments," said Shawn McAllister, CTO and CPO, Solace. "PubSub+ Distributed Tracing also complements monitoring tools by providing granular information about information flow that lets organizations optimize the responsiveness of their applications for better customer experience, and demonstrate compliance with regulations related to data governance, lineage, and provenance." PubSub+ Distributed Tracing is now generally available. Facilitating the Lifecycle Management of Events The latter half of 2022 also saw Solace release a major new version of its event management product, PubSub+ Event Portal . One of the biggest additions to the product is new lifecycle management capabilities that enable customers to manage event-driven applications and event flows from cradle to grave, across design-time and run-time environments. Key features like fine-grained role-based access controls, object versions, lifecycle states and environments enable customers to increase event reuse and ensure consistent development practices and governance. Support for Event API Products also allows companies to treat their events like the digital assets they are and release them as data products, which are very useful for Data Mesh and event-driven integration use cases. In addition, the company released a collection of open-source plugins that integrate the most popular software development lifecycle (SDLC) tools - such as Ansible, GitHub, Jenkins, Postman and Slack - into the development and evolution of event-driven applications with PubSub+ Event Portal. Read more in our blog. Simplifying the Integration of EDA Technologies: Kafka, IBM MQ and more Solace has made it easier to integrate popular EDA technologies so companies can ensure the real-time delivery of information across diverse environments and application integration platforms. For example, Solace recently unveiled a broker-integrated bridge for Apache Kafka that reduces the cost and complexity of integrating any Kafka environment, including Confluent, Azure Event Hubs and AWS MSK, into an event-driven system powered by PubSub+. The company also announced a new family of open-source connectors, starting with an IBM MQ connector that is available now. Connectors for JMS and TIBCO EMS are coming soon, and more will follow. All of the connectors support high availability and the display of metrics and can be easily integrated with your existing monitoring tools. These and other product enhancements were recently spotlighted in Solace's December 2022 Product Update - read our blog for more details . Expanding the EDA Partner Ecosystem with SAP, AWS and others One of the biggest developments in EDA in 2022 was SAP's announcement of a new service called SAP Integration Suite, advanced event mesh, which is powered by Solace technology. As SAP Vice President Marketing and Solutions Management Christopher Aron explained in an October 2022 blog post : "Customers will also benefit from less vendor complexity by leveraging SAP for both their integration and event management needs. SAP through SAP Integration Suite provides a holistic approach to integration needs covering process integration, API Management and support for event driven architectures. SAP Integration Suite, advanced event mesh now adds to these capabilities providing specialized capabilities for high-volume events." Solace also continues to advance the state of the art of API management so companies can manage the asynchronous APIs associated with EDA as easily as they manage the synchronous RESTful APIs they've built and continue to rely on. In October 2022, the company announced an agreement to work with Gravitee.io to bring to market a unified API management experience for synchronous RESTful and asynchronous event-driven APIs. "This integration allows organizations to accelerate their modernization initiatives by securely connecting client and consumer applications across their enterprise in real-time via an event mesh powered by the Solace PubSub+ Platform," said Rory Blundell, chief executive officer at Gravitee. "This will enable organizations to manage, secure and govern their entire API and event landscape with one integrated solution." Finally, Solace took significant steps to make its EDA solution more easily accessible through other solution providers. The company joined Amazon's AWS Accelerate program , made its solution available via Singtel Paragon , and was accepted into the Docker Verified Publisher program. Improving the Market's Understanding of EDA As part of its effort to inform IT leaders and practictioners about EDA strategy, Solace ran a successful EDA Summit virtual conference in May 2022, along with a series of webinars under the EDA Summit Series brand. Moving forward, Solace is announcing it will host the third annual EDA Summit onMay 10, 2023, with a call for papers commencing shortly to encourage subject matter experts to propose presentations. Solace also continues to expand its efforts to educate IT professionals about the effective implementation and application of EDA with a robust set of courses and associated certification exams, most notably its "EDA Practitioner" certification program which grew 46% in 2022 and has been successfully completed by more than 875 individuals. Interest in EDA education continues to accelerate - over 2,600 individuals have been trained and certified through Solace's education program since its inception in mid-2020, and another 1,800 are set to be certified in the very near future. EDA Market Leadership Launched in 2019, Solace's Event Horizon initiative is geared to help businesses adopt, manage and leverage EDA at enterprise scale so they can become more real-time in their operations and customer interactions. The initiative consists of goals and activities set out by Solace to invest in EDA product innovation; build a coalition of vendor partners united in enabling event-driven systems at enterprise scale; advance the state of open source projects; and nurture global EDA community-building through education, networking and thought leadership. "Event Horizon is about advancing the state of EDA - not just the technology itself but its role in business strategy, partner ecosystems, and the professional development of IT professionals looking to master key concepts that are enabling the next generation of enterprise IT," added McAllister. "It's exciting to see EDA gaining recognition and momentum as more companies reap the rewards of EDA, and key solution providers like AWS and SAP evolve their offerings in ways specifically designed to help companies reorient around the principles of EDA." * Source: Gartner "Innovation Insight for Observability", 9 March 2022, Padraig Byrne, Josh Chessman Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. About Solace Solace helps large enterprises become modern and real-time by giving them everything they need to make their business operations and customer interactions event-driven. With PubSub+, the market's first and only event management platform, the company provides a comprehensive way to create, document, discover and stream events from where they are produced to where they need to be consumed - securely, reliably, quickly, and guaranteed. Behind Solace technology is the world's leading group of data movement experts, with over 20 years of experience helping global enterprises solve some of the most demanding challenges in a variety of industries - from capital markets, retail, and gaming to space, aviation, and automotive. Established enterprises such as SAP, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Canada, multinational automobile manufacturers such as Groupe Renault and Groupe PSA, and industry disruptors such as Jio use Solace's advanced event broker technologies to modernize legacy applications, deploy modern microservices, and build an event mesh to support their hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and IoT architectures. Learn more at solace.com . Press Contacts Europe & Americas UK APAC IBA International Positive Rice Communications Jamie Kightley Ines Mitsou Neil Mirano Jkightley@iba-international.com imitsou@positivemarketing.com neil.mirano@ricecomms.com +44 (0) 1572 757932 +44 (0)770 388 4664 +65 3157 5685 Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1142738/Solace_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/launch-of-distributed-tracing-capability-headlines-latest-solace-event-horizon-initiative-updates-301722746.html 22% of Valuable 500 companies publicly disclosed workforce representation of disability (self-ID) percentages in FY 2020-21 Annual Reports and Accounts (ARAs), ESG and Sustainability Reports. Low levels of disability disclosure and lack of standardised reporting criteria make comparisons between organisations incredibly challenging. Valuable 500 has identified three key levers of change to address these barriers: ARAs & sustainability reports, investor dialogue, and materiality assessments. DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- At the World Economic Forum, the Valuable 500 launches white paper entitled 'ESG and disability data: a call for inclusive reporting'. Their work on inclusive reporting has been co-funded and developed with 2 of the Iconic members of the Valuable 500, Allianz, and London Stock Exchange Group, in partnership with Tortoise Media. Disability inclusion is strikingly absent from standardised key performance indicators through which organisations measure their impact and the value they bring to society. The exclusion of disability and accessibility from investor-grade environmental, social and governance (ESG) data has far-reaching implications across the landscape of global business because of the size and scale of the population with disabilities. Oliver Bate, CEO of Allianz commented; "Traditionally, financial KPIs have dominated corporate reports. More recently, we observe rising interest from customers and investors in a more holistic view of companies' health, including customer satisfaction, stakeholder trust and workforce-metrics. Increased disclosure of non-financial indicators - like the Valuable 500 Disability Inclusion KPIs - drives important corporate change and translates reliably into competitive and financial advantage." David Schwimmer, Chief Executive Officer at London Stock Exchange Group commented; "With more than 22 million employees represented in 41 countries across 64 sectors, the reach of the Valuable 500 companies is substantial. By adopting and disclosing against the five KPIs proposed in the white paper, the Valuable 500 companies can provide leadership on disability disclosure, acting as a catalyst for the corporate change we need.". Rhiannon Parker, Chief Innovation Officer at the Valuable 500 commented; "Recognising that disability performance is topical in ARAs & sustainability reports, investor dialogue, and materiality assessments is central to the role the Valuable 500 plays in setting a precedent for disability inclusion in business." This report encourages leaders of the Valuable 500 companies to adopt and disclose against 5 KPIs to create a comparable baseline that measures progress on disability inclusion. Valuable 500 Disability Inclusion KPIs are: Workforce Representation Goals Training Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) Digital Accessibility The white paper - here To access the press conference - it's here Teresa Hutson, VP of Technology and Corporate Responsibility at Microsoft commented, "Microsoft is committed to ongoing and transparent public reporting of disability performance which is a necessary step to addressing the disability divide." The vision set forth in the white paper can help guide companies on their journey towards more inclusive reporting and is supported by Iconic members of the Valuable 500 including EY, Microsoft, Mahindra, and Sky. About the Valuable 500 here View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/esg-and-disability-data-white-paper-launched-by-the-valuable-500-at-world-economic-forum-301723511.html MT JEWETT, PA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Georgia-Pacific's wood products have been used in millions of homes, but never one quite like this. It's being called the world's first 100% biobased home printed on the world's largest 3D printer, and Georgia-Pacific is proud to have played a part in the project. The University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) recently unveiled "BioHome3D," what they're calling the world's first 3D-printed house made entirely with biobased materials. The 600-square-foot prototype features 3D-printed floors, walls, and a roof made of wood fibers and bio-resins. GPs medium-density fiberboard was used as a base for the 3D printer to precisely lay down rows of the wood/plastic material, which then hardens and creates the base, walls, ceiling, and roof. The printer is programmed to leave openings for windows and doors and can flow at a rate of 150 pounds per hour, with future expansion to 500 pounds per hour. The wood-plastic material uses wood flour that consists of ground-up residuals from sawmills and recycled plastic pellets. Georgia-Pacific product was preferred over a previously attempted plastic base or other types of wood bases. "When the ASCC contacted us about helping with this project, GP gladly provided a full unit of 1-inch, 5-foot by 20-foot panels," says Steven Paulson, GP technical director. "The Mt Jewett, Pennsylvania MDF plant is proud to have been involved in such a ground-breaking project, with this much value and future potential." The house is fully recyclable and highly insulated with 100% wood insulation. Construction waste was nearly eliminated due to the precision of the printing process. Those behind the project hope that the 3D-printed home will help manage the lack of affordable housing. "With its innovative BioHome3D, UMaine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center is thinking creatively about how we can tackle our housing shortage, strengthen our forest products industry, and deliver people a safe place to live so they can contribute to our economy," said Maine Governor Janet Mills. In addition to Mills, those participating in the unveiling included Senator Susan Collins, Jeff Marootian, senior advisor for energy efficiency and renewable energy for the U.S. Department of Energy, and Habib Dagher, ASCC executive director. "Many technologies are being developed to 3D print homes, but unlike BioHome3D, most are printed using concrete. However, only the concrete walls are printed on top of a conventionally cast concrete foundation," said Dagher. "Traditional wood framing or wood trusses are used to complete the roof. Unlike the existing technologies, the entire BioHome3D was printed." The home is currently equipped with sensors for thermal, environmental, and structural monitoring to test how it performs through a Maine winter. Researchers expect to use the data collected to improve future designs. View original content here View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Georgia-Pacific on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: Georgia-Pacific Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/georgia-pacific Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: Georgia-Pacific View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735682/Worlds-First-3D-Printed-Fully-Biobased-Home-Built-on-GP-Product CUPERTINO (dpa-AFX) - As per Bloomberg News, Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to launch a mixed-reality headset in the current year. The company has put on hold its project for augmented reality glasses due to technical difficulties. In October, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Meta Quest Pro, Meta's first full-color mixed reality headset, priced at $1,499.99. Mixed reality is a key part of the journey toward full augmented reality devices, according to Meta. Apple will be releasing a lower priced model of the planned mixed-reality headset in the following year, as per the report. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Eurozone construction output contracted for the first time in three months in November, as a rise in civil engineering activity was offset by a downturn in the building sector, data from the statistical office Eurostat showed on Wednesday. Construction output fell 0.8 percent month-over-month in November, reversing a revised 1.0 percent rise in October. Building output logged a monthly decline of 0.9 percent, while civil engineering activity registered a growth of 0.4 percent. On a yearly basis, the growth in construction output eased to 1.3 percent in November from 1.9 percent in the prior month. The rate for August was revised down from 2.2 percent. Construction output in the EU27 dropped 0.4 percent monthly in November, while it grew 1.8 percent from a year ago. Among member states, the biggest annual increases in construction output were observed in Romania, Slovenia, and Belgium, while the worst declines were seen in Spain, Slovakia, and Germany. Results of the S&P Global's construction purchasing managers' index, or PMI, survey, released earlier this month, Eurozone construction activity showed its worst performance since May 2020 in December, as demand for new construction projects fell at the fastest rate since September 2014, when excluding the pandemic. Read more : German Construction Activity Continues To Shrink Copyright(c) 2023 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. MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - More than 9,000 Ukrainian civilians, including 453 children, have been killed in attacks by Russian forces since they invaded the country last year, a senior Ukrainian presidential aide told the World Economic Forum. The number of casualties is far higher than the figures released by the Office of the UN high commissioner for human rights earlier this week. According to the UN human rights agency, more than 7,000 civilians in Ukraine lost their lives since Russia invaded the neighboring nation on February 24, 2022. 'We have registered 80,000 crimes committed by Russian invaders and over 9,000 civilians have been killed, including 453 children,' said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, at the annual meeting of the Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. 'We will not forgive a single (act of) torture or life taken. Each criminal will be held accountable,' he added. The presidential aide demanded that a special international tribunal should be set up to try Russian political leaders and hold them responsible for 'the crime of aggression' for the destruction caused by Russia's invasion. Andriy Yermak also called on the international community to constitute mechanisms that would allow the confiscation of Russian assets to pay for war damages. 'No victory is complete without restoration of justice. That means the guilty must be punished, and the damages they have caused must be compensated. The repetition of crime must be prevented,' he said. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Tankers driven by nonunion drivers, right, pass by ones halted by striking drivers, left, under police protection in front of the Daehan Oil Pipeline's Seoul branch in this Nov. 30, 2022 file photo. Yonhap Korea's antitrust regulator said Wednesday it has decided to file a criminal complaint against a truckers' union for obstructing its on-site investigation during its strike last year. The move came after officials from the watchdog were denied entry to the offices of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers' Union three times in early December, according to the Fair Trade Commission (FTC). The investigators were looking into possible violations by the truckers' union, such as forcing others to join the strike that ran from late November to early December. Under the Korean law, obstructing the investigation by the FTC officials can result in imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to 200 million won ($161,300). The organization has been claiming it has no obligation to respond to the FTC, as it is a labor union not subject to local fair trade regulations. The government, however, points out that the organization, established by individual truckers, was not authorized as a labor union, and that its members cannot be considered as workers as defined under the law. Thousands of local truckers carried out the strike, which lasted for around two weeks late last year, demanding the government extend the Safe Trucking Freight Rates System guaranteeing minimum wages, originally planned to expire after 2022, and make it permanent. The truck drivers later voted to end their weekslong walkout on Dec. 9, after their collective action incurred massive supply disruptions across industries and prompted the government to issue back-to-work orders. The freight rate system was abolished as planned in December. The truckers' union currently has 22,000 members, accounting for 5 percent of the country's truck drivers. The members, however, take up around 83 percent of the total drivers in the cement industry and 32 percent of container truckers, according to the FTC. (Yonhap) FORT LAUDERDALE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Golden Developing Solutions Inc. (OTC PINK:DVLP), a holding company in the Health and Wellness marketplace that focuses on acquiring companies delivering pharmaceuticals and specialty medicines with rapid delivery services and adequate medical support in the United States, is pleased to announce that the Company's pledge to remove 320 million shares from circulation through the conversion of shares of common stock controlled by the Company's CEO, Stavros Triant, into 320,000 shares of Preferred stock, has been approved and completed. "We announced this move back in November, and we are pleased to report that we have completed this process and the total number of common shares trading actively in the market has now been sharply reduced," stated Stavros Triant, CEO of DVLP. Management notes this decision follows a string of recent acquisitions as part of the Company's roll-up strategy in the Specialty Pharmacy marketplace. The Company is in the process of reviewing other acquisitions in the specialty pharmacy industry. More details will be released soon. Triant added, "As we have noted, this share reduction represents one of many moves we plan to make demonstrating our commitment to our shareholders and to the principle that our relationship with our common shareholders is our most important asset driving future growth potential." About Golden Developing Solutions Golden Developing Solutions is a public online health and wellness start-up company. Its pharmaceutical division specializes in providing specialty medicine with rapid delivery services and adequate medical support in the United State. The recent 4 specialty pharmacy acquisitions in 2022 have capacitated the company's service offerings to the State of Michigan and Florida with a projected consolidated revenue of $100M. We aim to position ourselves to build shareholder value by setting the highest standards in service, reliability, and safety in our rapidly growing industry. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release are forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "plan," "potential," "continue" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Investors are encouraged to review the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Investors should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking statement reflects the Company's current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. The contents of any website referenced herein are not incorporated into this press release. Corporate Contact: We encourage our shareholders to follow our Twitter account @OTC_DVLP Stavros Triant stavros@goldendeveloping.com Go to: www.goldendeveloping.com SOURCE: Golden Developing Solutions, Inc View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735684/DVLP-Announces-Completion-of-Conversion-and-Removal-of-320-Million-Shares-of-Common-Stock Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - First Phosphate Corp. ("First Phosphate" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the closing of the final tranches of its previously announced non-brokered private placement financing (the "Offering"). The Company had raised the ceiling of its private placement from $2 million (announced on November 28, 2022) to $3.4 million in order to accommodate increased investor interest. "We are pleased to have surpassed our initial fundraising objective and exceptionally pleased to have significant and pertinent investors on board," said First Phosphate CEO John Passalacqua. "The Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean Region of Quebec is central to First Phosphate and we plan to see it through as a major hub for the development of the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery industry in North America." On December 30, 2022, the Company issued 1,250,000 FT Units (as defined in the in the Company's news release dated November 28, 2022) as part of the final tranches of the Offering for gross proceeds of $500,000. On January 17, 2023, the Company issued 1,574,784 HD Units (as defined in the Company's news release dated November 28, 2022) for gross proceeds of $551,174.40. As part of this final tranche, the Company paid cash commission of $26,264 and issued 75,040 Compensation Warrants (as defined in the in the Company's news release dated December 27, 2022). The proceeds of the Offering are expected to be used for general working capital purposes and for exploration activities. All securities issued in connection with the Offering are subject to a statutory four month and one day hold period. Furthermore, the shares issued pursuant to the Offering are subject to a contractual lock-up with a release schedule over 12 months following the Company's shares being listed for trading on a stock exchange. In total, the Company issued 5,907,862 HD Units at a price of $0.35 per HD Unit for gross proceeds of $2,067,751.71 and 3,322,000 FT Units at a price of $0.40 per FT Unit for gross proceeds of $1,328,800, and collectively with the HD Units aggregate gross proceeds of $3,396,551.71. The total commission was $163,379.04 and 422,297 Finder Warrants. -30- For additional information, please contact: Investor Relations: investor@firstphosphate.com Media Relations: media@firstphosphate.com Website: www.FirstPhosphate.com Follow First Phosphate: Twitter: https://twitter.com/FirstPhosphate LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/first-phosphate/ About First Phosphate Corp. First Phosphate is a mineral exploration and development company fully dedicated to extracting and refining advanced phosphate material for the Lithium Iron Phosphate ("LFP") Battery industry. First Phosphate is committed to producing at high purity level, at full ESG standard and with low anticipated carbon footprint. First Phosphate plans to integrate directly into the research & development and supply chain functions of major North American LFP Battery producers that require battery grade phosphate material that emanates from a consistent and secure supply source. First Phosphate holds over 1,500 sq. km of total land claims in the Saguenay Region of Quebec, Canada that it is actively developing. First Phosphate properties consist of rare anorthosite igneous rock formation that generally yields high purity phosphate concentrate devoid of high concentrations of deleterious heavy metals. Forward-Looking Information and Cautionary Statements Certain information in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Any statements that are contained in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "may", "should", "anticipate", "expect", "potential", "believe", "intend" or the negative of these terms and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements relating to: the anticipated use of proceeds from the Offering. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements, including but not limited to: the Company's inability to utilize the use of proceeds on the terms and within the timelines anticipated or at all. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and reflect the Company's expectations as of the date hereof and are subject to change thereafter. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, estimates or opinions, future events or results or otherwise or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151718 Website aimed at global investment community Finalist for the 2022 Georgina Henry Award for Digital Innovation Currently recruiting freelance journalists to expand its in-depth market coverage LEEDS, England, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Valeria Camerino, former European Editor at financial news and data provider CTFN, has launched Equity Report (equityreport.co.uk), a subscription-based specialist news service aimed at the global investment community, which explores challenges and opportunities at the intersection between M&A, antitrust, and ESG. Born out of a desire to increase transparency and accountability in the financial markets, Equity Report, aims to establish itself as the one-stop shop for investors looking to keep up to speed with global market developments, trends, and policies and reduce their regulatory and investment risks. The news service has been shortlisted for the 2022 Georgina Henry Award for Digital Innovation by Women in Journalism (WiJ). "We want to promote a corporate culture based on solid ethical principles and we are committed to adhering to such values both internally and with our readers," founder and editor Valeria Camerino says. With a journalism career spanning over fifteen years, Valeria brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in financial and business reporting that will enable readers to benefit from high-quality content on M&A, antitrust, and ESG issues and gaining the knowledge they need to make better-informed decisions for their company or their clients. The news outlet is currently recruiting freelance journalists in global locations, including London, Brussels, and Washington, to contribute to their coverage on a regular basis. It is also keen to explore partnerships with well-established industry organisations that align with its vision and professional values. Equity Report's global audience consists of law firms, financial investors, including merger arbitrage and event-driven hedge funds, investment research firms and banks, academic institutions, and regulatory agencies. "The word equity is a fascinating one, as it carries multiple meanings," Valeria says. "In M&A, equity is defined as the value of the shares issued by a company, as well as the stocks and shares that carry no interest. But when people talk about equity, they often refer to the quality of being fair and impartial. That is our primary goal: to report on market developments in a fair, accurate, and unbiased manner from a fresh and unexplored perspective." For further information, contact Valeria Camerinoat editor@equityreport.co.uk For subscription enquiries, email the sales team at sales@equityreport.co.uk View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/equity-report-uk-based-ma-and-esg-news-service-seeks-contributors-to-expand-its-global-coverage-301724733.html CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Wound Care Market is valued at an estimated USD 11.3 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 17.7 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 9.4% during the forecast period according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets. Growth in this market is mainly driven by factors such as the rising prevalence of diseases & conditions that impair wound healing capabilities, rising costs associated with chronic wounds, and technological improvements. However, the high price tag and risks associated with the use of advanced wound care products are the major factors limiting the growth of this market. Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=88705076 Browse in-depth TOC on "Advanced Wound Care Market" 221 - Tables 38 - Figures 270 - Pages Advanced Wound Care Market Scope: Report Coverage Details Market Size USD 17.7 billion by 2027 Growth Rate 9.4% of CAGR Largest Market North America Market Dynamics Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities & Challenges Forecast Period 2022-2027 Forecast Units Value (USD Billion) Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends Segments Covered Product, wound type, end user, and region Geographies Covered North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa Report Highlights Updated financial information / product portfolio of players Key Market Opportunities Growth potential of emerging economies Key Market Drivers Increasing number of surgical procedures across the globe In 2021, the dressings segment held the largest share of the advanced wound care market, by product segment. The advanced wound care market is segregated into dressings, devices & accessories, grafts & matrices, and topical agents according to product. The dressings segment held the largest share of the advanced wound care market in 2021. The prevalence of chronic, surgical, and traumatic wounds is rising, and innovations in the dressing technology are fueling the market growth of this segment. The hospitals, ASCs, and wound care centers segment accounted for the largest share of the advanced wound care, by end user segment, in 2021 Based on end users, the advanced wound care market is segmented into hospitals, ASCs, and wound care centers; home care settings; and other end users. In 2021, the hospitals, ASCs, and wound care centers segment accounted for the largest share of the advanced wound care market. The growth of this market is being fueled by the quantity of medical procedures carried out in the hospitals, the accessibility of reimbursements, and the volume of patients receiving care in the hospitals. North America is the largest regional market for advanced wound care market The global advanced wound care market has been segmented into five major regions-North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. In 2021, North America accounted for the largest share of the advanced wound care market. The large share of this region can be attributed to the increasing demand for advanced wound treatment products, devices, equipments and the highly advanced healthcare system in the US and Canada. The market for sophisticated wound care products is also projected to increase as the senior population rises. Growth in this population segment will raise the need for improved wound care in the area because there is a direct association between the elderly population and the prevalence of wounds. Request Sample Pages: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=88705076 Advanced Wound Care Market Dynamics: Drivers: 1. Growing prevalence of diseases & conditions affecting wound healing capabilities a. Growing geriatric population b. Increasing prevalence of diabetes c. High incidence of obesity d. Increasing number of surgical procedures e. Increasing number of traumatic wounds 2. Increasing spending on chronic wounds 3. Increasing incidence of burn injuries 4. Technological advancements Restraints: 1. High cost of advanced wound care products 2. Risks associated with use of advanced wound care products Opportunities: 1. Growth potential of emerging economies 2. Technological advancements Trends: 1. Acquisitions by leading companies 2. Focus on expanding capabilities of current technologies and launching novel products a. Smart advanced wound care b. Crab shell bandages c. Color changing dressings d. Integration of nanotechnology in advanced wound care products e. Novel wound assessment/measurement devices Key Market Players: The major players operating in this market are 3M Company (US), Smith & Nephew (UK), ConvaTec Inc. (UK), Coloplast A/S (Denmark), Molnlycke Health Care AB (Sweden), Integra LifeSciences (US), PAUL HARTMANN AG (Germany), B. Braun SE (Germany), Cardinal Health Inc. (US), Organogenesis Holdings Inc. (US), Bioventus LLC (US), MIMEDX GROUP, INC.(US), Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. (US), Lohmann & Rauscher GMBH & CO. KG (Germany), DeRoyal Industries, Inc. (US), Medline Industries, LP (US), DermaRite Industries, LLC (US), Kerecis (Iceland), Advancis Medical (UK), Winner Medical Co., Ltd. (China), Hollister Incorporated (US), Mil Laboratories Pvt. Ltd. (India), Shield Line (US), ZENIMEDICAL (US), Carilex Medical (Germany), Pensar Medical, LLC (US), Wuhan VSD Medical Science & Technology Co., Ltd. (China), and HAROMED B.V. (Belgium). Recent Developments: In June 2022 , Smith & Nephew (UK) announced that it will be building a new R&D and manufacturing facility for its Advanced Wound Management franchise on the outskirts of Hull, UK . The new facility is expected to support more than USD 10 billion worth of sales in its first ten years of operation. , Smith & Nephew (UK) announced that it will be building a new R&D and manufacturing facility for its Advanced Wound Management franchise on the outskirts of . The new facility is expected to support more than worth of sales in its first ten years of operation. In March 2022 , ConvaTec Inc. (UK) acquired Triad Life Sciences (US), a company that develops biologically derived products to address unmet clinical needs in surgical wounds, chronic wounds, and burns. , ConvaTec Inc. (UK) acquired Triad Life Sciences (US), a company that develops biologically derived products to address unmet clinical needs in surgical wounds, chronic wounds, and burns. In January 2020 , ConvaTec Inc. (UK) launched ConvaMax, an advanced wound dressing that helps in managing highly exuding wounds, including leg ulcers, surgical wounds, and diabetic foot ulcers. , ConvaTec Inc. (UK) launched ConvaMax, an advanced wound dressing that helps in managing highly exuding wounds, including leg ulcers, surgical wounds, and diabetic foot ulcers. In October 2019 , 3M Company (US) acquired Acelity Inc. (US). This acquisition enhanced 3M's capabilities in advanced wound care, a significant and growing market segment. Get 10% Free Customization on this Report: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=88705076 Browse Adjacent Market: Medical Devices Market Research Reports & Consulting Related Reports: Animal Wound Care Market - Global Forecasts to 2027 Medical Supplies Market - Global Forecasts to 2027 Wound Care Biologics Market - Global Forecasts to 2027 Wound Care Market - Global Forecasts to 2027 Wound Dressings Market - Global Forecasts to 2025 About MarketsandMarkets: MarketsandMarkets is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. We have the widest lens on emerging technologies, making us proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients. The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion of new revenue streams that are substituting existing revenue streams in this decade alone. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines - TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing. Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we work with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies - helping them stay relevant in a disruptive ecosystem. Our insights and strategies are molded by our industry experts, cutting-edge AI-powered Market Intelligence Cloud, and years of research. The KnowledgeStore (our Market Intelligence Cloud) integrates our research, facilitates an analysis of interconnections through a set of applications, helping clients look at the entire ecosystem and understand the revenue shifts happening in their industry. To find out more, visit www.MarketsandMarkets.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/advanced-wound-care-market.asp Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/advanced-wound-care.asp Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/advanced-wound-care-market-worth-17-7-billion-by-2027---exclusive-report-by-marketsandmarkets-301724562.html Proxima CRO among 241 companies recognized for putting purpose before profit HOUSTON, TX / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Proxima Clinical Research is proud to announce it has been named to the Inc. Best in Business list in the Business Services category. The Inc. Best in Business Awards honors companies that have made an extraordinary impact in their fields and on society. Proxima Clinical Research is a contract research organization (CRO) guiding innovative life sciences companies from product idea through development along the FDA journey to commercialization. "We are extremely honored to be included among these incredible companies named to the Inc. Best in Business list," says Kevin Coker, CEO and co-founder of Proxima CRO. "Our team at Proxima Clinical Research is among the best in the business and we are thrilled to be in a position to give back to our community. We get up every day knowing the work we do on a daily basis, for our clients as well as unfunded innovators, has had a tremendous impact on bringing promising MedTech to the U.S. market." This list marks Inc. magazine's third annual celebration of companies making the biggest impact on their communities, industries, the environment, and society. Proxima CRO was recognized for the support it provides to early-stage life sciences companies, guiding emerging companies from the earliest stages of business set up and product development to fundraising and guidance for a successful journey through the FDA to market. Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc., says, "Inc. magazine is dedicated to showcasing America's most dynamic businesses and the great things they do. The Best in Business awards shines a light on those that have gone above and beyond their original mission to make a social, environmental, or economic impact, benefiting those around them." "This recognition by Inc. Best in Business reflects the dynamic Superhero culture at Proxima CRO, which we named CAUSE: we place the highest value on Customer needs, hold ourselves Accountable, collaborate through Unity, celebrate our clients' Successes as our own, by delivering Excellence, every day," says Coker. "Advancing innovation is in our DNA and giving back to our industry and our community are a huge part of our continued growth and success." Rather than relying on quantitative criteria tied to sales or funding, the editors at Inc. Magazine reviewed the companies' achievements over the past year and noted how they made a positive difference in the world. They then selected honorees in 55 categories - from advertising to sustainability to retail, and contract research organizations like Proxima CRO - including age-based, revenue-based, size-based, and impact-based categories. The applicant pool was extremely competitive - a huge success for the 241 honored in the list's third year. Honorees for gold, silver, bronze, and general excellence across industries and categories are featured online at inc.com/best-in-business. Proxima Clinical Research is proud to be among the greats who have also been honored with the Inc. Best in Business, such as Halcyon, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Radio Flyer, Impossible Foods, Big Health, Fender, and Bitly, to name a few. About Proxima Clinical Research Proxima CRO provides regulatory and clinical research expertise to life sciences companies of all sizes and stages, including inventors, emerging and high-growth companies, and Fortune 500. With headquarters in the Texas Medical Center ("TMC"), the largest medical center in the world, Proxima CRO brings its expertise to hundreds of medical device, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and diagnostic companies in 17 countries across five continents to further advance the $130 billion industry. Launched in November 2017, Proxima CRO is a registered Delaware C Corporation. For more on Proxima CRO and its growing team, visit ProximaCRO.com. ABOUT INC. The world's most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community they need to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visitInc.com. # # # Media Contact Jennifer Horspool (949) 933-4300 Jennifer.Horspool@proximacro.com SOURCE: ProximaCRO View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735659/Proxima-Clinical-Research-Named-to-Inc-Best-in-Business-List Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Hispania Resources Inc. (TSXV: ESPN) ("Hispania" or the "Company") is pleased to update its plans for the coming year and prepares for its exploration program at the Puebla de la Reina ("PBR") property, Las Herrerias permit, for the next three years. This program consists of surface exploration, geophysics, surface sampling and diamond drilling across the property, which is located in a mining friendly jurisdiction in Southern Spain. During the second half of the year, as travel opened up, Hispania's team met with regional government officials as well as the local Mayor in PBR to update on the company's plans going forward. The Mayor was appreciative and supportive of the Company's work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was looking forward to more work in the area going forward. This continued through the back half of the year and after meeting with Government officials in Extremadura in the 3rd quarter of the year, "we presented the work program for Herrerias to the mining authorities and are pleased that it has been recommended for implementation," commented Norm Brewster, CEO of Hispania. The Company expects to begin this work program during the second quarter of 2023. Further, during 2022, Hispania undertook the evaluation of several additional properties in Spain and has entered negotiations on two of these properties. The company hopes to update on these negotiations as they proceed. The company has been quite pleased with the continued interest in Mining opportunities in Spain, which was underscored by the largest deal of the year in the country with Sandfire Resources' $2.1 Billion acquisition of MATSA (its first President was Norman Brewster, CEO of Hispania). Hispania also announces that it intends to settle outstanding indebtedness of $622,480 through the issuance of 4,788,305 common shares of the Corporation at a deemed price of $0.13 per common share (the "Debt Settlement"). The common shares issued in connection with the Debt Settlement will be subject to a hold period of four months from the date of closing. "The Management team and I are pleased to participate in the shares for debt settlement, as we are demonstrating our commitment to the company, as our management team and staff have all participated in this and are agreeing to have all wages and payables due to us over 18 months from April 2021 to September 2022 settled with this," commented Mr. Brewster. The Debt Settlement is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV"). Certain transactions pursuant to the Debt Settlement are "related party transactions" as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") and are exempt from the formal valuation approval requirements of MI 61-101 as the securities of the Company are listed on the TSXV. The transactions are also exempt from the minority approval requirement of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the consideration for the transaction does not exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization. At the company's Annual General Meeting on November 14, 2022, the existing Board of three members was re-elected and provision was made to add additional Directors which the company intends to do in the current year. About Hispania Resources Inc. Hispania Resources Inc is a mineral exploration company focused on mining opportunities in Spain. Hispania is currently focused on developing the long-term mining potential of its core asset, the Zinc, Copper, Lead enriched Puebla de la Reina ("PBR") property in the low-risk and historic mining district of Extremadura in Southwest Spain. The PBR property covers an area of 90 km2. Hispania, through its subsidiary, La Joya, has entered into a purchase agreement with Auplata S.A. to acquire a 100% interest in the PBR property. The management of Hispania contains industry veterans who have more than 120 years of mineral exploration and production experience in multiple jurisdictions and have successfully managed multiple international mining companies. This includes in Spain, where some of the team was responsible for the founding and building of Iberian Resources, with the continued support of the local and regional governments, including the well developed and sophisticated transportation and mining infrastructure. For more information on Hispania Resources Inc., visit: http://HispaniaResources.com/. Contact Information For more information or interview requests, please contact: Norman Brewster - Chief Executive Officer Norm@HispaniaResources.com (416) 970-3223 Rahim Allani - Director Rahim@HispaniaResources.com (416) 457-0549 Forward-Looking Information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information can be identified by words such as: "intend", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will" and similar references to future periods. Examples of forward-looking information include, among others, the expected completion of the shares for debt transaction, the expected commencement of work on the PBR project, as well as information relating to Hispania. Although Hispania believes that, in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate, the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because Hispania can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risk that the future plans of Hispania may differ from those that currently are contemplated Additional risks include those disclosed in the Filing Statement, which are incorporate herein by reference and are available through SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward- looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, except as required by law. This news release is not an offer of the securities for sale in the United States. The securities described in this news release have not been registered under the U.S. 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 (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended) absent registration or an exemption from registration. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which where such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. 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. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY, OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151742 PIM leader appoints industry veterans to CMO and CSO; continues strong momentum across industrial and brand manufacturing inriver, a software company that powers the entire product journey with revenue-driving product information management (PIM) across every customer touchpoint, today announced the appointments of industry veterans Brooke Cunningham to Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Brad Habansky to Chief Sales Officer (CSO). The moves build on increased business momentum and expansion into the U.S. market, a result of the tremendous adoption of inriver's SaaS-based PIM by global B2B marketing and sales teams. The company marked 125% growth in existing customer accounts, and notably added 12 new logos in companies over $1B in revenues across industrial manufacturing, branded manufacturing, and retail that have fueled an inriver global community of more than 1,600 brands, 700 customers and 350 partners. With Cunningham's and Habansky's appointments, and under CEO Niels Stenfeldt's leadership, the momentum is set to continue. "We're very excited to have Brooke and Brad join the inriver team," said Stenfeldt. "Attracting proven senior talent like theirs validates the health of the PIM space overall and specifically that inriver has the market's most differentiated solution, particularly for mid- to large-sized enterprises. We look forward to further accelerating our go-to- market to support our highly engaged customers, as well as reach new organizations." Brooke Cunningham, CMO Cunningham has dedicated her nearly 25-year career in technology to driving business growth for data-related B2B software companies. She joins inriver from Datto, where she was CMO. Prior to Datto, she worked at some of the top companies in software, including Splunk, Qlik, CA Technologies, and SAP. At Splunk, Cunningham played a key role in growing the company's revenue from $650M to more than $2.5B by maximizing the value of partner ecosystems. "Simply put, inriver has the most sophisticated product in the PIM space with big name customers like Ethan Allen, Vestas, and Alfa Laval, as well as a highly valued partner ecosystem. I saw the opportunity to elevate the inriver brand, as well as support our growth and global expansion," said Cunningham. "As CMO, I look forward to applying my passion for driving integrated marketing models, delivering go-to-market growth outcomes and bringing customer and partner ecosystem stories to life." Brad Habansky, CSO Habansky brings more than 25 years of technology sales and sales leadership experience to inriver. Most recently, as SVP of Sales at ElasticPath, he led the sales, solutions engineering and partner functions. Habansky also held leadership positions at Oracle, Salesforce, and commercetools. He was the 3rd U.S. employee of commercetools, where he initiated North and South American Sales, and was responsible for Sales, Partners, and Sales Engineering. In his role, Habansky achieved average revenue growth of 325%, which led to commercetools' acquisition by Insight Partners. "I've been an admirer of inriver for many years and see a massive opportunity in the PIM space," said Habansky. "After spending the last 6.5 years in commerce, I've observed commerce functionality commoditize. As commerce becomes increasingly digital, and with inriver's ability to manage product data and create a unique experience wherever the customer lives, I'm so excited to be a part of a team that can bring unparalleled value for our customers." In 2023, inriver customers and partners can expect: Exciting new product packaging to meet the needs of inriver's growing customer base; continued delivery of exciting roadmap features, including advanced workflows and user management, enhanced syndication and digital shelf capabilities, and increased enterprise performance and scaling. Continued focus on Partner certifications and integrations. Inriver is now SAP Industry Cloud Certified, allowing partners to integrate the inriver PIM into their customers' SAP Commerce Cloud to power the entire product journey. Available on the SAP Store and more information is available on inriver Community. Inriver PIMpoint Summits return in person to Chicago (April 27) and Malmo, Sweden (May 9) with 1,000+ marketers, e-commerce, and PIM experts inriver to showcase PIM solutions for retail: eTail West (February 17 March 2 in Palm Springs) and ShopTalk (March 26 29 in Las Vegas) inriver to sponsor Gartner Data Analytics Summits (March 20-23 in Orlando and May 22-24 in London) Learn more about the difference inriver SaaS-based PIM technologies can bring to your business. About inriver Inriver powers the entire product journey at every touchpoint. Our configurable PIM solution, with built-in digital shelf analytics and integration capabilities, connects to your digital ecosystem with flexibility and ease so it grows as your company grows. With more demands on product data than ever before, B2B and B2C enterprises need a PIM solution that supports the entire product cycle, from sourcing to decommissioning and every stage in between. Inriver helps brands, manufacturers, and retailers turn product information into strategic assets, maximizing profitability at every touchpoint for 1,600+ global brands. Headquartered in Malmo, Sweden, and with offices all over the world, inriver has a team of over 375 people ready to strengthen your product journey. For more information, visit inriver.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005593/en/ Contacts: Press Contact: press@inriver.com BEIJING, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A report from People's Daily: After China enters a new phase of COVID response, many countries welcome its optimization and expect visits by Chinese tourists. Thai Deputy Prime Minister greeted the first group of Chinese tourists with flowers and gift bags at the airport. Maldives' foreign ministry welcomes China's adjustment and looks forward to receiving Chinese tourists soon. Switzerland, New Zealand and some other countries made clear that they would not impose new restrictions on Chinese tourists. China has always optimized its COVID-19 response in light of the evolving situation in a science-based and targeted manner. Its provisional measures on cross-border travel were based on the decision to downgrade its COVID-19 management, which can make cross-border travel more convenient, safe, orderly and efficient. China has effectively communicated with relevant countries with sincerity and objectivity, introducing the current situation in China and its science-based and reasonable optimization. Health experts from multiple international organizations and countries have noted that no new variant or dangerous mutation of the novel coronavirus has been detected in China. Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said UN member states should follow WHO guidelines and "it is very important that all decisions regarding screening of passengers and so on be taken on scientific grounds and only on scientific grounds." Singaporean health minister noted that infections from China accounted for less than 5 percent of Singapore's total imported cases in the final 4 weeks of 2022, a far lower rate than that of other regions. There's no need to tighten the entry policy for travelers from China, the minister added. China's COVID-19 control policies have to the largest extent protected people's lives and health, and minimized the pandemic's impacts on economic and social development. As the global economy is facing increased downward pressure, China's optimization of the COVID-19 response has facilitated cross-border travel and boosted confidence in global growth. Heads of many international organizations, including the WTO and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, are optimistic about China's economic prospects, believing its optimization will assist global recovery and development. Thai newspaper Bangkok Post said 5 million Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand this year, which will forcefully drive the recovery of Thai tourism and economic development. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/chinas-optimized-covid-response-to-benefit-global-recovery-301724873.html NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Edison International In addition to electrifying all of its light-duty vehicles, SCE is committed to electrifying 30% of its medium-duty trucks and 8% of its heavy-duty trucks by 2030. PHOTO CREDIT: ROBERTO LAZARTE Energized by Edison By Paul Griffo ENERGIZED by Edison Writer After recently taking delivery of 15 Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks, Southern California Edison is closer to its goal of electrifying all the cars, SUVs and passenger trucks in its fleet by 2030. It has also purchased its first electric big rig to be deployed full time. "Electrifying our fleet is really important to California because of the air quality issues we have in our local communities and globally to help reverse the devastating impact of harmful greenhouse gas emissions," said Todd Carlson, SCE principal manager of Fleet Asset Management. The F-150 Lightning pickups have a range of between 240 and 320 miles per charge, depending on battery size. The big rig, a Peterbilt, has a range of about 135 miles per charge fully loaded. It will be deployed in the crane operations group, where it will carry the tooling and equipment that large cranes need to operate. It may also be used for material transport, carrying equipment to service centers and job sites in the field. This isn't SCE's first experience with a Class 8 heavy-duty electric truck. Two years ago, it became the nation's first electric company to receive and test Freightliner's eCascadia. In addition to SCE's goal of electrifying 100% of its light-duty vehicles, it has committed to electrifying 30% of its medium-duty trucks, 8% of its heavy-duty trucks and 60% of its forklifts by 2030. SCE estimates that in pursuing its 2030 fleet electrification goals, it will save more than 620,000 gallons of fuel annually and eliminate close to 6,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year. That would be the same amount saved by taking 7,600 cars off the road for a year or planting and growing nearly 600,000 trees for 10 years. When its fleet of more than 6,400 vehicles, trailers and off-road equipment is fully electrified, SCE will reduce its annual fuel consumption by nearly 4.5 million gallons. "We're very excited to have electric pickup trucks now as an option," Carlson said. "We have plans to order nearly 250 as quickly as we can get them, hundreds more in 2024, and then about 100 a year for the next decade." To meet the demands of its growing electric fleet, SCE has 400 EV charge ports in operation at its corporate facilities and has installed infrastructure for 200 more. Through 2028, the electric company expects to add roughly 2,000 more chargers at about 100 locations. To learn more about SCE's commitment to a clean energy future, visit edison.com/clean-energy. View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Edison International on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: Edison International Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/edison-international Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: Edison International View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735695/SCE-Adds-Electric-Pickups-and-a-Big-Rig-to-Its-Fleet MANCHESTER, NH / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Venture capital (VC) has consistently outperformed public markets over 5, 15, and 25-year periods, according to longitudinal data from Cambridge Associates , the most recent data set being available here. Looking at a ten-year period ending in June 2020, investors who allocated 15% or more of their portfolio to venture investments saw a median annualized return 300 basis points higher compared to those who allocated less than 5% of their capital to venture investments. Institutions with a private investment allocation of 30% or more had a median return 200 basis points higher than the median return of institutions with an allocation of 10% or less over the same period. Even during a period of strong performance in the public markets, Alumni Ventures , one of the most active venture capital firms in the world (Pitchbook), found that the data supported venture capital investment consistently providing stronger returns. From 2010 to 2016, a significant growth period for the markets as they bounced back from the Great Recession, the average internal rate of return (IRR) for venture capital investments was 21.9%, with the top quartile achieving an IRR of 25.6%. In comparison, the S&P 500 had an average IRR of 12.2% over the same period. Research from JP Morgan also shows that more recent vintages have seen similar success. Venture capital set multiple records in 2021, in fundraising, deal activity, and exits, showing remarkable resilience during the ongoing pandemic. In deal-making, $330 billion was invested, almost double the previous record, set in 2020. 2021 also saw venture-backed companies completing exits with an aggregate value of $774 billion. Below, Alumni Ventures breaks down why venture capital has consistently outperformed public markets. One key reason is the focus on value creation and investor gains in venture markets, notes Alumni Ventures . Venture capital involves investing in innovative, high-growth private companies with long-term equity appreciation potential. While this asset class carries higher risks due to the long-term commitment of cash and potentially high failure rates of early-stage companies, it also offers the potential for outsized returns. Many of the most successful companies of the past 25 years, such as Amazon, Uber, Google, and Facebook, were venture-backed and took years to grow from small offices in their founders' garages to some of the world's most highly valued companies. This value creation often occurs before any kind of exit, such as a merger/acquisition, or IPO, and helps to drive the overall success of venture investments. Alumni Ventures found that another reason for venture capital's performance is that more companies are staying private longer, or not going public at all. Between 1993 and 2000, the average number of yearly IPOs was 451, but from 2000 to 2016, this number dropped significantly to only 108. This means that the best opportunities for high-growth investments are often not happening at the IPO stage, but rather at the Angel, Seed, and Series A rounds Venture capitalists tend to invest in portfolio companies over several stages (pre-seed, early-stage, late-stage, and growth equity), providing additional funding only as financial and operating objectives are achieved. This allows venture capitalists to assess the performance of management at critical milestones, cease funding unsuccessful companies, and allocate capital as appropriate to successful ventures. Early-stage venture capital can be particularly attractive due to the risk profile of early-stage investments, which allows venture capitalists to obtain more meaningful ownership stakes with smaller investment amounts and have a greater impact. It also allows seasoned investors to guide decision-making and growth, helping young companies avoid the pitfalls of inexperience. Data from Cambridge Associates shows that investments made by top-quartile VC firms in early-stage companies produced an average internal rate of return (IRR) of over 25% over the last 25 years, performing about 2.5x as well as the public market equivalents over the same time period. According to a report by Toptal Finance , the "institutionalization" of entrepreneurship has also led to more pattern-matching in the startup world. This has narrowed the focus of venture capital investment into specific areas such as second-time founders, Ivy League fast tracks, and certain founder profiling biases. This has contributed to a reduction in VC funding, but also helps to increase the quality of investments and the overall success of venture portfolios. This is where Alumni Ventures' performance numbers have demonstrated success as well. Alumni Ventures has created a successful business model by establishing a network of 18 funds at leading universities known for their entrepreneurial activity. This network consists of more than 600,000 members and allows Alumni Ventures to build relationships with startups and entrepreneurs in their alumni communities, gaining access to investment opportunities that might not be available to other venture capital firms. By casting a wider net for deal flow and building stronger portfolios that include a diverse range of industries, locations, and stages of investment, Alumni Venture s is able to create a balance of risk and reward for investors. Additionally, by leveraging the interconnectivity of their network, Alumni Ventures is able to see more opportunities and create more diverse portfolios, which can potentially lead to greater returns in the venture capital market. Overall, the data shows that venture capital can provide valuable return enhancement for long-term investors who are willing to hold illiquid assets and are able to identify and access high-quality managers for the companies they have a stake in. While venture capital carries higher risks, the potential for high returns and value creation over time makes it a strong investment option for those looking to diversify their portfolio and balance risk and reward opportunities. About Alumni Ventures Alumni Ventures offers accredited individuals access to network-powered venture capital - a key asset class missing from the portfolios of many sophisticated investors. CONTACT: Andrew Mitchell media@cambridgeglobal.com SOURCE: Alumni Ventures View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735688/Breaking-Down-Venture-Capitals-Out-Performance-of-Public-Markets-Perspective-from-Alumni-Ventures Officials of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions protest a raid by police and the National Intelligence Service in front of its headquarters in central Seoul, Jan. 18. Yonhap The nation's spy agency and police raided a militant labor umbrella organization Wednesday on suspicion of anti-communist law violations by some of its members. Investigators from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the National Police Agency (NPA) began their raid on the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) in central Seoul, beginning around noon, after hours of confrontations with KCTU officials. The two agencies have reportedly obtained a search and seizure warrant for the KCTU from the court in connection with alleged violations of the National Security Law by some KCTU members. The investigators entered the KCTU head office after the confrontations with KCTU officials who resisted the raid attempt, demanding the search and seizure be conducted in the presence of its lawyers. A scuffle reportedly occurred during the process. Officials of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions protest a raid by police and the National Intelligence Service in front of its headquarters in central Seoul, Jan. 18. Yonhap Dubai, United Arab Emirates--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - UAE-based IT services, consulting, and blockchain technology firm, Spider Digital, announces the launch of its data monitoring platform Sasha for government institutions in multiple Asian regions. The platform provides stakeholders, including government institutions, with a monitoring tool in order to ensure data security and privacy. The platform also equips institutions to foresee any potential threats and attacks on sensitive data and effectively prevent fake news and misinformation from causing social unrest and law and order issues. With the advent of mobile devices and innovations in communication technology, the overdependence on voice communication has become negligible. As a result, a significant part of day-to-day communication has become data-centric as opposed to voice and text-based modes prevalent earlier. However, the internet and the consequent interconnectedness of devices pose a substantial threat to the privacy and security of data shared through those devices. In addition, the provision of being anonymous in cyberspace exacerbates the threat to the authenticity and reliability of information spread across. This makes the chances of misinformation and fake news campaigns causing social unrest high. "We are exchanging a lot of data through our devices connected to the internet. Our phones have become the latest target for hackers. The hackers target both individuals and organizations. Since individuals carry critical and important data on their mobile phones including banking and other financial apps, they are particularly vulnerable to data theft. Therefore, our platform gives government institutions a monitoring tool to see whether these kinds of attacks are impending and whether any information has been compromised without the knowledge of the user," said Kazi Kabir. One of the aims of the platform, according to the company, is to equip authorities to monitor social media platforms in order to prevent misinformation campaigns and fake news. Since fake news has been strategically used to manipulate public opinion and trigger social unrest, the tool assists law enforcement institutions to become alert. "The platform gives responsible legal law enforcement institutions the capability to lawfully monitor all of this, and take measures, if required, like find out the origin of this fake news and which devices are used to spread them," Kazi Kabir added. About the company Spider Digital is headquartered in the UAE and was established in 2015. The company helps clients adapt and advance confidently into the digital future with its expertise in IoT, AI, FinTech, Cybersecurity, Integrated solutions, and other emerging techs. Media Contact: Name: Kazi Monirul Kabir Email Id: monirul@spiderdigital.io To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151741 The pharmaceutical service provider significantly increases its sustainability rating Vetter among the top five percent in the industry Result acknowledges strong sustainability commitment to the environment, social sector and other critical areas Various programs for more sustainability confirm the company's strong commitment Vetter,a globally leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), achieved gold status in the renowned, independent EcoVadis sustainability ranking. With 72 points out of a maximum of 100, the pharmaceutical service provider significantly increased its score compared to the last evaluation and is now among the top five percent of all participating companies in the industry. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005737/en/ Vetter achieves gold status in the EcoVadis sustainability ranking and is now among the top five percent of the industry. (Graphic: Business Wire) Sustainability plays an important role at Vetter and has been deeply rooted in its corporate strategy for many years. The positive result reaffirms the ongoing commitment and demonstrates where the family-owned company is implementing improvements in the rating criteria of Environment, Labour Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement. The applied methodology is based on international CSR standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Global Compact, and ISO 26000. "Tens of thousands of companies around the world, including many of our customers, use EcoVadis as an indicator of sustainable business practices. They also incorporate the independent assessments into their selection of suppliers and business partners," explains Henryk Badack, Vetter's Senior Vice President Technical Service/Internal Project Management. "Simply talking about this topic is never enough in our opinion," states Vetter Managing Director Thomas Otto. "With our activities involving social, economic and ecological sustainability, we want to have a positive impact on the regions with our sites." This responsibility is a high priority at the globally operating CDMO. "We are very proud that our far-reaching initiatives in many areas around sustainable corporate governance have had a significant impact on the EcoVadis rating, and that we were, once again, able to demonstrate improvement over previous years. The positive external evaluation is a strong achievement and further motivates us to continue this great development in a transparent manner among our employees, customers, and partners, as well as the patients and society," said Vetter Managing Director Peter Soelkner. In its sustainability report, the CDMO summarizes all sustainability measures to this point in a transparent manner and shares the future vision to all stakeholders. Find the Vetter press kit and more background information here About EcoVadis EcoVadis is one of the world's leading providers of independent corporate sustainability rankings. The ranking covers a wide range of different areas of corporate systems. These include, for example, Environment, Labor Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement. Each company is evaluated on issues relevant to its size, location and industry. The rating provider evaluates more than 100,000 companies. The methodology is based on international CSR standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Global Compact and ISO 26000. About Vetter Headquartered in Ravensburg, Germany, Vetter is a family-owned, global leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with production facilities in Germany, Austria and the United States. Currently employing more than 5,700 individuals worldwide, the company has long-term experience in supporting biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers both large and small. Vetter services range from early stage development support including clinical manufacturing, to commercial supply and numerous packaging solutions for vials, syringes and cartridges. As a leading solution provider, Vetter appreciates its responsibility to support the needs of its customers by developing devices that contribute to increased patient safety, convenience, and enhanced compliance. Great importance is also given to social responsibility including environmental protection and sustainability. Learn more about Vetter at www.vetter-pharma.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005737/en/ Contacts: Vetter Pharma International GmbH Markus Kirchner Corporate Spokesperson Media Relations Eywiesenstrasse 5 88212 Ravensburg Germany Phone: +49 (0)751-3700-3729 E-mail: PRnews@vetter-pharma.com LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Tetra Pak announces its collaboration with Fresh Start, a leading food technology incubator that works with a portfolio of start-ups to provide technological solutions to some of the challenges facing the global food systems. As Tetra Pak's first collaboration with a food processing technology incubator, this initiative will combine the company's industry expertise with Fresh Start's innovative approach to drive solutions that will contribute to improving food systems resilience. Its portfolio of solutions includes Bountica, a fermentation-based mechanism that prolongs the shelf life of food and beverage products and Alteco, a device which helps production facilities manage their energy consumption. Fresh Start is based in Israel, one of the world's major centres of food innovation and investment. Through joining forces with Fresh Start, Tetra Pak will be able to share its knowledge in developing new food solutions directly with food innovators in Israel through tailored consulting sessions. They will also provide opportunities for the start-ups to engage directly with Tetra Pak, assisting the start-ups as they scale up, with access to product development centres and support for research and development. Rodrigo Godoi, Vice President Processing Portfolio Management, Tetra Pak, comments: "We are excited to collaborate with Fresh Start as together we can push boundaries and perspectives to drive much-needed development and innovation. The current food system is not sufficiently resilient to meet the demands of our growing population. By working together and combining Tetra Pak's decades of industry experience and expertise with the breakthrough innovations of food incubators such as Fresh Start, we can accelerate new food solutions that create novel avenues for addressing the challenges of the modern food systems. Our aim is always to support our customers to continue to produce the most sustainable and nutritious food products around the world." Noga Sela Shalev, CEO, Fresh Start, adds: "Our collaboration with Tetra Pak marks a significant opportunity to accelerate the development of solutions from our start-ups that will prepare our food systems for future use. As a leader in the food technology ecosystem in Israel, Fresh Start is well positioned to support Tetra Pak's innovation interests in the country. The incubator start-ups are at the forefront of food innovation, and we look forward to seeing what they can achieve with Tetra Pak's guidance and support." Tetra Pak's collaboration with Fresh Start was launched at Fresh Start's Demo Day event at the start of Israel's Agrifood Week, with attendees including start-ups and investors from across the food industry. About Fresh Start Fresh Start is a global Foodtech incubator operating under the Israel Innovation Authority incubator program umbrella, part of the emerging agri-food cluster in Northern Israel. It is run by a consortium of four leading partners: Tnuva, Israel's largest food manufacturer; Tempo, a leading beverage company; OurCrowd, Israel's most active venture investor and Finistere Ventures, a global agri-food venture capital firm. All partners provide a professional, resourceful, and supportive international network to develop early-stage food tech concepts and startups into maturity. To date, the incubator established its position as a significant player in the local and global food tech industry and has invested in 10 ventures in various fields and technologies throughout the value chain of food and beverages: alternative proteins, extended shelf life, sugar reduction, improved nutritional value, software solutions for value chain management. More information about Fresh Start available at https://fresh-start.co.il/ For media enquiries Tetra Pak: Henry Stout Tel: +46 733 36 18 56 Henry.stout@tetrapak.com PR Agency Contact: Alexander Burley Tel: +44 207 592 1200 tetrapakcorporate@brands2life.com View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Tetra Pak on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: Tetra Pak Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/tetra-pak Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: Tetra Pak View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735707/Tetra-Pak-Announces-First-Collaboration-With-Food-Processing-Technology-Incubator Grass Valley, California--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Rise Gold Corp. (CSE: RISE) (OTCQX: RYES) (the "Company") announces that it intends to raise up to US$1,600,000 through the issuance of up to 4,000,000 units (each a "Unit") at a price of US$0.40 per Unit (~CDN$0.55 per Unit), with each Unit comprising one share of common stock (a "Share") and one-half of one share purchase warrant (the "Private Placement"). Each whole warrant (a "Warrant") entitles the holder to acquire one Share at an exercise price of US$0.60 for a period of two years from the date of issuance. Rise Gold will use the proceeds from the Private Placement for the advancement of its Idaho-Maryland Mine Project and for general working capital. All securities issued pursuant to the Offering will be subject to statutory hold periods in accordance with applicable United States and Canadian securities laws. The securities offered have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold absent registration or compliance with an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. About Rise Gold Corp. Rise Gold is an exploration-stage mining company incorporated in Nevada, USA. The Company's principal asset is the historic past-producing Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine located in Nevada County, California, USA. On behalf of the Board of Directors: Benjamin Mossman President, CEO and Director Rise Gold Corp. For further information, please contact: RISE GOLD CORP. Suite 215, 333 Crown Point Circle Grass Valley, CA 95945 T: 530.433.0188 info@risegoldcorp.com www.risegoldcorp.com The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitation, obtaining all necessary approvals, meeting expenditure and financing requirements, compliance with environmental regulations, title matters, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors, general economic conditions, relationships with vendors and strategic partners, governmental regulation and supervision, seasonality, technological change, industry practices, and one-time events that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information contained in this release. Rise undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151746 NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- As per Facts and Factors study, The global Digital Pathology market was valued at approximately USD 740.26 Million in 2021 and is expected to generate revenue of around USD 1738.82 Million by end of 2028, growing at a CAGR of around 13.8% between 2022 and 2028. Digital Pathology Market: Overview Digital pathology is a diagnosis carried out by the use of various computer technologies. Digitized specimen slide generates information that is managed by advanced computation and through virtual microscopy. Advancement in genetic science, medical science as well as computer technology together hand in hand has developed the subfield of pathology called digital pathology. During disease diagnosis, digitization of pathology is performed at hospitals, diagnostic centers. It offers a high-resolution sample scanning, analysis of computer images, and online storage of digital slides which enables pathologists to examine slides without forensic evidence. Get a Free Sample Report with All Related Graphs & Charts (with COVID 19 Impact Analysis): https://www.fnfresearch.com/sample/digital-pathology-market Facts and Factors published the latest report titled "Digital Pathology Market by Product (Scanners, Software, Communication Systems, and Storage Systems), By Type (Human Pathology, Veterinary Pathology), By Application (Drug Discovery, Disease Diagnosis, Training & Education, and Tele-consultation), By End User (Hospitals, Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies, Diagnostic Labs, and Academic & Research Institutes): Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast 2022 - 2028" into their research database. Industry Dynamics: Digital Pathology Market: Growth Drivers Growing digital pathology usage for lab performance. Digital pathology improves lab efficiency by lowering costs, speeding up response times, and giving subject-matter expertise. Patients and doctors rely on lab data for diagnosis, thus tests must be conducted fast and precisely. Moreover, pathologists save money and time by accessing digitized slides via web services. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted lockdowns and social restrictions. These constraints have spurred demand for digital pathology technologies, which allow pathologists to assess medical outcomes distant from initial diagnosis. Digital Pathology Market: Restraints Digitized pathology systems are extremely expensive. A standard digital pathology system contains a slide scanner, image server, and software. A digital pathology scanner costs between $110,000 and $130,000 in Asia-Pacific. Big hospitals with huge capital expenditures can afford these technologies, whereas pathologists and academic institutes with small budgets or no IT assistance cannot. Healthcare professionals in poor countries like India, Brazil, and Mexico cannot afford such high-tech equipment. Also, trained personnel are necessary to efficiently handle and maintain digital pathology systems. It is believed that the expensive cost of these systems, coupled with a lack of experienced individuals to handle digital pathology equipment, will limit their use. Directly Purchase a Copy of the Report @ https://www.fnfresearch.com/buynow/su/digital-pathology-market Global Digital Pathology Market: Opportunities Private pathology practices to get affordable scanners. The high cost of digital pathology technology, like scanners, restricts industry expansion. Thus, the introduction of cheap scanners should benefit participants in the digital pathology industry. Small firms can't afford pricey digital pathology systems. The availability of low-cost scanners and small players' willingness to digitize pathology processes may inspire pathologists with restricted finances to use them. Global Digital Pathology Market: Challenges Lack of skilled pathologists. Pathologists perform vital laboratory tests for illness diagnosis. However, there is a lack of pathologists globally, particularly in Africa and Asia-Pacific. A Springer study (2020) found that Switzerland had 35,355 residents per pathologist, while Canada and the US have 20,658 and 25,325, respectively. In Germany, one pathologist per 47,989 people. Digital pathology helps clinicians safely share data with pathologists across geographical borders. Moreover, modern technologies like AI and machine learning assist pathologists to diagnose diseases faster and more effectively. Due to the acute lack of pathologists, digital pathology is likely to be increasingly used for remote pathological consultation and services. Global Digital Pathology Market: Segmentation The global digital pathology market is segmented on the basis of product, type, application, and end-user. On the basis of Product, the global digital pathology market is segmented into scanners, software, communication systems, and storage systems. In 2020, the scanners segment was expected to account for the majority of the market share. The software segment, on the other hand, is predicted to grow at the fastest rate between 2021 and 2028. The scanner aids in the production of rapid, dependable, and high-resolution photographs of cell nuclei. It also assists pathologists, histologists, and other medical experts in scanning slides and uploading them to a network for remote access and collaboration between experts. On the basis of type, the global market is categorized into human pathology, veterinary pathology. By application segment, the global digital pathology market is divided into drug discovery, disease diagnosis, training & education, and teleconsultation. In 2020, the drug discovery category was expected to account for the biggest percentage of the market overall. During the year 2021-2028, the same segment, on the other hand, is predicted to post the greatest CAGR. One of the primary drivers of growth in the drug discovery segment is the core advantage that digital pathology offers pharmaceutical research, which is the application of image analysis algorithms for decreasing the number of subject interpretations, growing awareness of neurological disorders, and the availability of advanced EEG products. By end-user, the market is classified into hospitals, pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, diagnostic labs, and academic & research institutes. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are expected to dominate the industry in 2020. By 2028, the same category is predicted to be the market's largest shareholder. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are digitizing their work. Companies are continually searching for new chemicals and biomarkers. In addition, digital pathology facilitates data interchange between pharmaceutical corporations and R&D labs. Due to the causes listed above, the market for pharma and biotech firms is expected to rise in the future years. Get More Insight before Buying@: https://www.fnfresearch.com/inquiry/digital-pathology-market List of Key Players in Digital Pathology Market: Koninklijke Philips N.V. Hamamatsu Photonics Leica Biosystems Visiopharm A/S Corista Indica Labs OptraSCAN Glencoe Software Inspirata Inc. Mikroscan Technologies Proscia Inc. Kanteron Systems Roche Apollo Enterprise Imaging Sectra AB Huron Digital Pathology Key questions answered in this report: What are the growth rate forecast and market size for Digital Pathology Market? What are the key driving factors propelling the Digital Pathology Market forward? What are the most important companies in the Digital Pathology Market Industry? What segments does the Digital Pathology Market cover? How can I receive a free copy of the Digital Pathology Market sample report and company profiles? Report Scope: Report Attribute Details Market size value in 2021 USD 740.26 Million Revenue forecast in 2028 USD 1738.82 Million Growth Rate CAGR of almost 13.8% 2022-2028 Base Year 2020 Historic Years 2016 - 2021 Forecast Years 2022 - 2028 Segments Covered By Type, By Application, By Payload and By Propulsion System Forecast Units Value (USD Billion), and Volume (Units) Quantitative Units Revenue in USD million/billion and CAGR from 2022 to 2028 Regions Covered North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa, and Rest of World Countries Covered U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, GCC Countries, and South Africa, among others Companies Covered Koninklijke Philips N.V., Hamamatsu Photonics, Leica Biosystems, Visiopharm A/S, Corista, Indica Labs, OptraSCAN, Glencoe Software, Inspirata Inc., Mikroscan Technologies, Proscia Inc., Kanteron Systems, Roche, Apollo Enterprise Imaging, Sectra AB, and Huron Digital Pathology among others. Report Coverage Market growth drivers, restraints, opportunities, Porter's five forces analysis, PEST analysis, value chain analysis, regulatory landscape, market attractiveness analysis by segments and region, company market share analysis, and COVID-19 impact analysis. Customization Scope Avail of customized purchase options to meet your exact research needs. https://www.fnfresearch.com/customization/digital-pathology-market Free Brochure: https://www.fnfresearch.com/ask-to-analyst/digital-pathology-market Recent Developments September 2021 : In a joint venture, Visiopharm ( Denmark ) and Agilent Technologies, Inc. (US) will commercialize Visiopharm's CE-IVD-certified AI-driven Precision Pathology software alongside Agilent's automated pathology staining solutions. In a joint venture, Visiopharm ( ) and Agilent Technologies, Inc. (US) will commercialize Visiopharm's CE-IVD-certified AI-driven Precision Pathology software alongside Agilent's automated pathology staining solutions. August 2021 : In a signed agreement, Sectra AB ( Sweden ) and the University Medical Center Utrecht ( Netherlands ) agreed that UMC will use Sectra's pathology module to facilitate productive interdisciplinary conversations between pathologists and radiologists at the hospital. In a signed agreement, Sectra AB ( ) and the University Medical Center Utrecht ( ) agreed that UMC will use Sectra's pathology module to facilitate productive interdisciplinary conversations between pathologists and radiologists at the hospital. April 2021 : For nations throughout North America and Europe , Leica Biosystems and Paige.AI, Inc. (US) have teamed up to bring Paige's artificial intelligence-powered research tools for tumor detection, grading, and quantification to the Leica Biosystems digital pathology platform. Regional Dominance: Asia-Pacific is expected to record the highest rate of growth over the next few years. Asia-Pacific is expected to record the highest rate of growth over the next few years due to a rise in awareness of digital pathology systems. The presence of a large patient base with chronic & infectious diseases and an increase in expenditure in healthcare infrastructure will support the market growth during the forecast timeline. Moreover, the ever-changing life science sector is predicted to offer lucrative market expansion opportunities in developing economies such as China, India, and Malaysia. North America accounted for the major market share among the others, and it has been expected to maintain this trend in the near future, owing to the huge adoption of digital pathology systems. Global Digital Pathology Market is segmented as follows: Digital Pathology Market: By Product Outlook (2022-2028) Scanners Software Communication Systems Storage Systems Digital Pathology Market: By Type Outlook (2022-2028) Human Pathology Veterinary Pathology Digital Pathology Market: By Application Outlook (2022-2028) Drug Discovery Disease Diagnosis Training & Education Tele-consultation Digital Pathology Market: By End-User Outlook (2022-2028) Hospitals Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies Diagnostic Labs Academic & Research Institutes Digital Pathology Market: By Region Outlook (2022-2028) North America The U.S. Canada Europe France The UK Spain Germany Italy Rest of Europe Asia Pacific China Japan India South Korea Southeast Asia Rest of Asia Pacific Latin America Brazil Mexico Rest of Latin America Middle East & Africa GCC South Africa Rest of Middle East & Africa Press Release for Digital Pathology Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/news/global-digital-pathology-market Browse Other Related Research Reports from Facts and Factors Musculoskeletal Disorders Drugs Market Report 2022 - 2028 : According to the report published by Facts Factors, the global musculoskeletal disorders drugs market size was worth around USD 97 billion in 2021 and is predicted to grow to around USD 165 billion by 2030 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of roughly 12.1% between 2022 and 2030. According to the report published by Facts Factors, the global musculoskeletal disorders drugs market size was worth around in 2021 and is predicted to grow to around by 2030 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of roughly 12.1% between 2022 and 2030. Messenger RNA (mRNA) Vaccines & Therapeutics Market Report 2022 - 2028 : According to the report published by Facts Factors, the global Messenger RNA (mRNA) Vaccines & Therapeutics market size was worth around USD 0.71 billion in 2021 and is predicted to grow to around USD 26.35 billion by 2030 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of roughly 14.65% between 2022 and 2030. According to the report published by Facts Factors, the global Messenger RNA (mRNA) Vaccines & Therapeutics market size was worth around in 2021 and is predicted to grow to around by 2030 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of roughly 14.65% between 2022 and 2030. 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Our database is been updated constantly to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the client's needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to us-after all-if you do well, a little of the light shines on us. Contact Us: Facts and Factors Tel: +1 347 690-0211 USA/Canada Toll-Free No. +44 2032 894158 Email: sales@fnfresearch.com Website: https://www.fnfresearch.com/ Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1981423/FnF_Research_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/by-2028--demand-for-global-digital-pathology-market-size--share-will-surpass-usd-1738-82-million-mark-at-13-8-cagr-growth--digital-pathology-industry-trends-value-analysis--forecast-report-by-facts-and-factors-301724884.html Shake Roofing Company, Braswell Construction Group, transforms homes with elegant Brava Roof Tile Shake & Slate Roofing and wins Brava Excellence Award for Shake Roof Installed on a Custom DreamBuilt Lake Oconee Home. COVINGTON, GA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / One of the largest Brava contractors in the nation, and one of the only preferred Brava contractors in the Southeast, Braswell Construction Group (BCG), is honored to receive Brava's Excellence Award for 2022. Brava awarded BCG for the quality and craftsmanship of the 'Lake Forest Shake' roof they installed on a custom DreamBuilt home located in Reynolds, Lake Oconee. This immaculate and newsworthy home by Lake Oconee's top builder DreamBuilt, with Shake roof by Braswell Construction Group, was the first home built in the new luxury development of Homesteads which is part of Reynolds Lake Oconee. Not only was this the first home to be completed in this 5-star development, but the home has paved the way for other homes in Homestead to have the luxury look of synthetic slate and shake. Braswell Construction Group is recognized in Georgia as the top roofing specialist for real cedar shake, real slate and synthetic shake/slate roofing, and prides itself on its high-quality service. One attribute that separates BCG from other Georgia roofing contractors is that they are one of very few installers of Brava Roof Tile that is certified. Additionally, BCG has recently been awarded 'Brava Preferred Contractor' making this the first roofing company recognized for this honor in the state of Georgia. Once named as a 'Brava Preferred Contractor', the provider is considered among the best in the industry known for their experience and commitment to quality roofing. More information about Brava products can be found on the company website via: https://www.braswellconstructiongroup.com/brava-roofing BCG offers premium shake and slate roofing options for customers wanting to improve the look and function of their home. The expanding category of synthetic roofing products cater to homeowners, builders, and remodelers who prefer renewable resources that come with the advantage of extreme durability and longevity yet want the look of natural slate or shake roofs. Braswell Construction Group explains that synthetic slate roofing is a mixture of recycled rubber and plastic put into molds that are taken from real slate and shake roofing. As contrasted to real slate & shake roofing, this is less costly, lighter, and is much more resilient and durable because it can be installed without the concern of damaging the product. And just like the real slate & shake roofing, its life expectancy can also last a hundred years. Advanced materials and manufacturing technologies give the synthetic products better resistance to weathering, greater durability, and longer lifespans than real slate or cedar, according to manufacturers. "The material is mimicked to obtain efficiency and also longer life over the natural product," says Chris Braswell, owner of BCG. "Other composite roofing materials pale in comparison to Brava. We use Brava products because they perfectly resemble the natural beauty of cedar shake roofs and slate roof shingles, but without the drawbacks and upkeep." More information about BCG's Brava Roofing specialty slate and tile options can be found at: https://bravaroofer.com About DreamBuilt Founded in 1999, DreamBuilt was created with the mission of enhancing the lives of their clients and shaping a better lake community. With an approach focused on thoughtful design, quality construction, and craftsmanship of their work, DreamBuilt homes stand out in the landscape of Lake Oconee. The four original DreamBuilt partners chose to move to the lake with their young families from various design and construction backgrounds in Atlanta. Jim and Paige Ruhl & Derek and Ann Welch set out to foster partnerships in the community with clients and trades to create a reputation of uncompromising excellence, always. As the lake community has grown, DreamBuilt has expanded its partnership to grow alongside it. The addition of Jep Pound and Haley Ruhl has allowed their business to continue to serve all clients - past, present and future - to the exceptional standard of personal attention and thoughtfulness that DreamBuilt was founded on. About Braswell Construction Group Braswell Construction Group is a leader in specialty roofing and in addition to being a Brava Preferred Contractor, the top Georgia Roofing Company is also a DaVinci Roofer Masterpiece Contractor, and Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor. BCG has been locally owned and operated since 2002, and prides itself on its high-quality craftsmanship, exceptional customer service, and professional acumen. They have a reputation for always completing its roofing and restoration projects on time and on budget while providing customized service, top-notch customer service, and unparalleled workmanship. Braswell Construction Group has been featured dozens of times in Yahoo Finance, ABC, FOX, CBS, Atlanta Leader among many others as an industry leader and the top Roofing Contractor in the state of Georgia. Braswell Construction Group operates from four Georgia locations to service homeowners with all their roofing and restoration needs in Greensboro/Lake Oconee, Covington/Conyers, Stone Mountain, Atlanta, and their respective surrounding areas. For more information, please visit https://www.braswellconstructiongroup.com Organization: Braswell Construction Group, Inc. Roofing & Restoration Contact: Email: info@braswellconstructiongroup.com Contact: Michelle Bird Address: 6105 Emory St NW, Covington, GA 30014 Phone: +1-678-283-2551 Website: https://www.braswellconstructiongroup.com SOURCE: Braswell Construction Group View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735720/Top-Georgia-Brava-Shake-Roof-Specialist-Braswell-Construction-Group-Receives-2022-Excellence-Award-for-Shake-Installation-on-Lake-Oconee-Georgia-Custom-DreamBuilt-Home Record-breaking +21% global increase in self-service bike rentals operated by JCDecaux Paris, 18 January 2023 - JCDecaux SE (Euronext Paris: DEC), the number one outdoor advertising company worldwide and pioneer in self-service bike rental schemes, reported a very strong performance of its self-service bike schemes throughout the world in 2022, with total rentals up 21% compared with 2021. In France, the number of rentals has increased by 14% compared to last year. Genuine solutions for urban mobility which complement public transport networks and walking, self-service bikes (SSB) and medium and long-term rentals contribute to the mitigation of climate change and the improvement of the quality of life in cities thanks to emission-free transport. More than 755 million journeys were completed using the self-service bikes operated by JCDecaux since their roll-out in Vienna (Austria) in 2003, and with a number of French cities returning to levels equivalent or higher than the pre-Covid period (notably in Toulouse with +2% in rentals in 2022 vs 2019 and +14% compared with 2021), other SSB systems reported exceptional performances in 2022. Numerous records broken in Lyon in 2022 Annual rental record, record number of long-term subscribers and record monthly rentals in 2022, Velo'v was consistently popular among Lyon's residents and visitors to the city: After a previous record set in 2021, Velo'v reported more than 10.5 million rentals during 2022, up 16%. This represents another new record since the introduction of the service in 2005 At the end of December 2022, close to 84,000 long-term subscribers were registered, up 10% compared with the previous year During 2022, Velo'v also chalked up 10 new monthly rental records and reported a 25% increase in rentals over the full year compared with 2019 Global mobility solutions anchored in the daily lives of the people of Nantes The bicloo service is particularly popular with users and provides a comprehensive offering which is part of an active local mobility policy that promotes the energy transition, public health and the quality of urban life. biclooPlus, the self-service bikes, returned to pre-Covid levels in 2022. Users were attracted by their ease of use, the freedom from parking and theft concerns and the fact that they complement public transport: 1,197,946 journeys were carried out using biclooPlus in 2022, i.e. +14% vs 2021 92% of users were satisfied with the biclooPlus service* monbicloo, the long-term bike rental service, continues to attract numerous city residents: 2,320 people rented a monbicloo bike in 2022 51% of users stated that they use their monbicloo bike for journeys that they would have made by car otherwise* 84% are considering purchasing their own bike after their rental 97% satisfaction levels with the monbicloo service* biclooPark, bike parking solutions, are still attracting new users based on the security needs of cyclists: the different biclooPark offerings attracted a cumulative total of 2,679 full-year subscriptions at the end of 2022, i.e. up +61% year-on-year 86% of users are satisfied with the biclooPark service* *Internal survey carried out in July 2022 with bicloo subscribers - 2,608 respondents Rental demand up sharply in several countries In 2022, SSB systems outside France also reported very strong performances: The city of Luxembourg , an economic and tourist hub, rolled out a self-service bike system with station-charging electric pedal-assist in 2018 as part of its contract with JCDecaux. A genuine success, which has seen the number of rentals multiplied by 7.3 since launch, the system saw its numbers surge in 2022: the 900 Vel'OH! bikes reported close to 1.2 million rentals, i.e. +47% compared with 2021 and +70% compared with 2019 , an economic and tourist hub, rolled out a self-service bike system with station-charging electric pedal-assist in 2018 as part of its contract with JCDecaux. A genuine success, which has seen the number of rentals multiplied by 7.3 since launch, the system saw its numbers surge in 2022: the 900 Vel'OH! bikes reported close to 1.2 million rentals, i.e. compared with 2021 and +70% compared with 2019 With 84 stations and 840 bikes rented on average 5.3 times per day, the city of Ljubljana in Slovenia has one of the most successful self-service bike systems in the world. Since their introduction by JCDecaux in 2011, the Bicikelj bikes have been extremely popular and have given a new lease of life to biking in Ljubljana, which has become one of the 20 cities since 2015 that is most bike-friendly according to the Copenhagenize index. In 2022, the number of rentals was up 35% compared with the pre-Covid period in Slovenia has one of the most successful self-service bike systems in the world. Since their introduction by JCDecaux in 2011, the Bicikelj bikes have been extremely popular and have given a new lease of life to biking in Ljubljana, which has become one of the 20 cities since 2015 that is most bike-friendly according to the Copenhagenize index. In 2022, the number of rentals was up compared with the pre-Covid period In Spain, the country's two biggest SSB systems enjoyed a recovery in 2022: the 2,750 Valenbisi (Valencia) reported a strong growth, with rental numbers up +23% compared with 2021, while the 2,500 Sevici (Seville) reported +17% growth in rentals compared with 2021 This success is based on several factors which together show the strength of JCDecaux's "green mobility" model: proven equipment that is constantly improved, robust and reliable information systems, expert and dedicated operating teams as well as a cutting-edge digital experience. JCDecaux is the only integrated company which designs and operates the equipment, contributing to the continuous improvement of our service worldwide. Since the early 2000s, JCDecaux has worked to bring self-service bikes to as many people as possible. Today, the Group operates more than 25,000 bikes in 10 countries and 73 cities, with a particularly well-developed network in France. As a trusted partner to local authorities in championing intermodal travel, JCDecaux leverages its expertise and powers of innovation to help cities and citizens meet the challenges of mobility. SSBs as well as their related infrastructure are along with bus shelters, among the activities that are eligible for the "Green Taxomony". This framework which was implemented by the European Commission aims to prioritise the financing of activities that already contribute significantly to the low-carbon transition objectives and also to encourage and accelerate the emergence and expansion of transition activities. In 2021, Taxonomy-eligible revenues amounted to 39% of the Group's revenue. Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-Chief Executive Officer of JCDecaux, said: "As 2023 marks the anniversary of our SSB activity, we are proud to have led the way for shared eco-friendly urban mobility in 2003 and to have contributed to promoting changes in behaviour throughout the world. In line with the Group's business model, we are delighted to finance our bike networks with advertising street furniture so that we can keep subscription and user fees as low as possible without impacting taxpayers. The strong rental levels which we have enjoyed in recent months confirm that bikes have been adopted as a sustainable means of transport for daily journeys across the world. I would like to thank our teams for their commitment to providing an outstanding service to our customers and to shaping the future of self-service bikes which enhances the quality of life in cities. They benefit from strong market recognition, notably in France where Cyclocity, JCDecaux's consolidated subsidiary operating self-service bikes was elected Customer Service of the Year for the fourth year in the individual personal transport category*, in November 2022. Working alongside its partner cities to provide useful services for the public, JCDecaux continues to reimagine the future of shared bikes to enhance users' experience and facilitate their daily travel." *Elected Customer Service of the Year 2023 - Individual personal transport category - BVA survey - Viseo Key Figures for JCDecaux 2021 revenue: 2,745m (a) - 9-month 2022 revenue: 2,283m (a) - 9-month 2022 revenue: 2,283m N1 Out-of-Home Media company worldwide A daily audience of more than 850 million people in more than 80 countries 957,706 advertising panels worldwide Present in 3,518 cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants 10,720 employees JCDecaux is listed on the Eurolist of Euronext Paris and is part of the Euronext 100 and Euronext Family Business indexes JCDecaux is recognised for its extra-financial performance in the FTSE4Good (3.6/5), CDP (A- Leadership), MSCI (AA) and has achieved Platinum Medal status from EcoVadis 1st Out-of-Home Media company to join the RE100 (committed to 100% renewable energy) Leader in self-service bike rental scheme: pioneer in eco-friendly mobility N1 worldwide in street furniture (530,143 advertising panels) N1 worldwide in transport advertising with 154 airports and 215 contracts in metros, buses, trains and tramways (340,753 advertising panels) N1 in Europe for billboards (72,611 advertising panels) N1 in outdoor advertising in Europe (596,831 advertising panels) N1 in outdoor advertising in Asia-Pacific (232,268 advertising panels) N1 in outdoor advertising in Latin America (64,893 advertising panels) N1 in outdoor advertising in Africa (20,808 advertising panels) N1 in outdoor advertising in the Middle East (14,177 advertising panels) (a) Adjusted revenue For more information about JCDecaux, please visit jcdecaux.com . Join us on Twitter , Linkedin , Facebook , Instagram and Youtube . Communications Department: Albert Asseraf +33 (0) 1 30 79 79 10 - albert.asseraf@jcdecaux.com Investor Relations: Remi Grisard +33 (0) 1 30 79 79 93 - remi.grisard@jcdecaux.com Attachment Finsbury Growth & Income Trust Plc - Transaction in Own Shares For immediate release 18 January 2023 FINSBURY GROWTH & INCOME TRUST PLC (the "Company") MARKET PURCHASE OF COMPANY'S OWN SHARES The Company announces that it has today purchased 200,000 of its own shares ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 863.85 pence per Ordinary Share. Such shares will be held in treasury by the Company. The transaction was made pursuant to the authority granted at the Annual General Meeting of the Company held on 17 January 2023. Following this transaction, the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury is 13,211,092; the total number of Ordinary Shares that the Company has in issue, less the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury following such purchase, and therefore, the total number of voting rights in the Company is 211,780,211. The figure of 211,780,211 may be used by shareholders as the denominator for calculations of interests in the Company's voting rights in accordance with the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules. For and on behalf of Frostrow Capital LLP Company Secretary For further information, please contact: Victoria Hale Frostrow Capital LLP Tel: 020 3 170 8732 High consumption, past policies, U.S. sanctions lead to Iran's gas shortage Xinhua) 14:03, January 18, 2023 TEHRAN, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- High domestic consumption, ineffective policies of the past and the U.S. sanctions are among the factors behind the recent gas shortage in Iran that led to nationwide closures over the previous days, according to Iranian analysts and media. Iran, which has the second-largest gas reserves in the world behind Russia, has experienced a gas shortage since the start of the winter. While most Iranian provinces had sub-zero temperatures, the Iranian government had to temporarily shut down factories, companies, as well as schools and colleges in a number of cities from Saturday to Monday in order to keep people's homes warm. HIGH CONSUMPTION In an analysis piece, the news website Shahrara News wrote that gas consumption by the residential as well as trade and industrial sectors in Iran has surpassed 700 million cubic meters (mcm) per day this winter, indicating a 150-mcm increase year on year. It said the figure is 6.7 times higher than the global per capita and three times more than that of the entire consumption by the European Union states. According to the Iranian Oil Ministry, the country's current daily gas production stands at close to 1 billion cubic meters, of which only 850 mcm remain after the separation of gas condensate. Iran's daily gas consumption reaches between 650 mcm and 750 mcm during winter, leading to an imbalance of 200 mcm in the gas network, according to the analysis. In a separate analysis of the country's energy status quo, the news website Didban Iran wrote that statistics hint at an absence of principled energy production and consumption planning in Iran in the previous years, also blaming "bad consumption" as one of the main reasons for the current energy shortage. INEFFECTIVE POLICIES OF PAST Experts said that some ineffective policies implemented in the past were one of the reasons. Morteza Behrouzifar, an energy expert, told Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) that during the past years, diversifying the energy basket has not received due attention in Iran, and fuel storage has also been almost neglected likewise. During the 1980s, Iran decided to use gas as the main fuel for domestic consumption as the country had abundant gas reserves and did not seek to export them, the expert noted. The majority of the industries developed in Iran during those years and the following years required big amounts of energy to run, said Behrouzifar, adding the policy seemed quite logical until the time arrived when the country failed to optimize domestic energy consumption and increase production proportionately. Speaking to ISNA, another energy expert Mehdi Hasehmzadeh also hinted at insufficient attention to gas storage in the past years, regretting that two Iranian companies involved in the field of gas storage were dissolved in 2016, and no other company is currently active in the area. Between 2005 and 2013, the Iranian government increased the number of the cities and villages connected to the nationwide gas network from 600 to 1,000 and from 2,080 to over 14,000 respectively, Khabar Online news agency wrote in another analysis. During the same period, the then-Iranian government increased the number of industrial units using natural gas as feedstock from 9,500 to 58,000. However, paying insufficient attention to using other energies for development is one of the main reasons for the current gas shortage. SANCTIONS SHARE In their analyses of the country's current circumstances, a lot of Iranian media blamed the U.S. sanctions, reimposed on Iran's oil and banking sector following Washington's withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018, as the main culprit for the current imbalance in the gas sector. Khabar Online wrote that Iran needs 160 billion U.S. dollars in investments to renovate its oil wells, which have deteriorated and sustained damage over the past few years. The U.S. sanctions have impeded both the flow of foreign funds and the transfer of technology to Iran, which needs to import modern technologies to boost its gas production, according to Khabar Online. Behrouzifar said the lifting of U.S. sanctions is a long-term cure for Iran's domestic gas industry. The U.S. sanctions not only have affected Iran's gas production capacity but also its gas distribution infrastructure, Didban Iran quoted Ali Jabal-Ameli, a financial market expert, as saying. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, shakes hands with UAE Vice President Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum ahead of their meeting in Dubai, Jan. 17. Yonhap President Yoon Suk Yeol met with the vice president of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday and discussed expanding cooperation in business, space and other sectors, his office said. During the meeting with Vice President Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai, Yoon said he was impressed by Dubai's innovative development and proposed Korea and the UAE not only cooperate with each other but also jointly contribute to issues of common interest to all of mankind, senior presidential secretary for press affairs Kim Eun-hye said in a written briefing. "President Yoon said he hopes to drastically strengthen cooperation with the UAE in space, digital technology, green technology and other future industry sectors," Kim said. "In particular, he asked Vice President and Prime Minister Mohammed to take an interest and provide support so that our businesses can actively participate in key economic projects in Dubai going forward, given that they have contributed to Dubai's development by actively participating in Dubai's construction and infrastructure projects," she added. NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / CRB By Matthew Kennedy, Process Engineer Now, forty years after the first monoclonal antibody therapy emerged, new indications and therapy types such as antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific antibodies, and multispecific antibodies are revolutionizing treatment options. New process and facility designs are redefining what it means to move fast and deliver these treatments to the patients who need them. In 1986, patients suffering the effects of a rejected transplant found hope from a novel source: the FDA had approved the world's first monoclonal antibody, Muromonab-CD3, an immunosuppressant indicated for organ rejection in humans. In 2021, the FDA approved the 100th antibody therapy on the market. During the 35 years separating those milestone events, monoclonal antibodies were established as the majority contributor to the global biologics market. In fact, they represented about 70% of total biopharma sales in 2019-a 50% increase in just four years. Meanwhile, as approvals of antibody therapies accelerate and new combination therapies continue to emerge, one thing is certain: monoclonal antibodies are here to stay. Today's innovators and established manufacturers are moving the mAb industry toward an all-new frontier, where high-throughput screening and AI-powered protein design will de-risk the developmental pipeline and increase the overall value proposition of mAb products. For startups, mature pharma companies, and contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) alike, the key to riding this wave of innovation into an exciting and sustainable future lies in asking the right questions early, and in planning your future manufacturing network strategy around the answers. Questions for building a strong monoclonal antibody strategy: At what point in the development timeline should you invest in manufacturing capacity? What are the risks and advantages of flexible, highly scalable single-use technologies versus fixed stainless steel installations? How can you better standardize and intensify your process while staying flexible enough to rapidly adapt as your development pipeline evolves? How can you efficiently produce a variety of therapy types in your pipeline? This article will explore the latest insights related to these and other important questions. Although we'll focus on monoclonal antibodies in particular, the approaches and ideas explored below apply directly to other types of molecules including bispecific antibodies, multispecific antibodies, antibody fragments (fAbs), and some therapeutic proteins. First, the basics: how do monoclonal antibodies work? What are monoclonal antibodies and how do they work? Monoclonal antibodies, sometimes referred to as mAbs, are lab-made antibodies that are cloned from a single parent cell (hence their prefix, 'mono-'), and they're engineered to bind to a single foreign antigen. The human body typically takes several weeks to naturally manufacture a collection of antibodies in response to a specific antigen. Monoclonal antibody manufacturers have learned to recreate and accelerate that process in the lab, effectively giving patients' immune systems an enhanced weapon against many diseases, including oncological and non-oncological indications. Beyond monoclonal antibodies are bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) and multispecific antibodies. These proteins are made up of two ('bi-') or more ('multi-') monoclonal antibodies, making them capable of recognizing and binding to two or more different antigens. This capability enhances their potential immune function and makes them an especially versatile immunotherapeutic tool. Terms to know Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) Therapeutic proteins Drug substance Drug product Titer Process intensification Manufacturing network strategy Multimodal manufacturing What are the benefits of monoclonal antibodies? mAbs are versatile. Monoclonal antibodies are the Swiss army knife of the biopharmaceutical market. They have proven benefits as targeting molecules, analytical tools, components in a combination therapy, or as stand-alone therapies. mAbs are capable of high specificity. Monoclonal antibodies can identify cancers or deliver anti-cancer drugs to target cells with greater efficacy and fewer side effects than other oncological treatments. Their applications aren't limited to oncological treatments, however. Monoclonal antibodies also play a key role in fighting asthma, auto-immune disorders, and some viral infections, including COVID-19. It may even be possible to use them as a prophylactic vaccine. Meanwhile, they're helping to define the future of biotech; for example, innovative researchers are conscripting mAbs as vehicles to target the delivery of novel RNA gene therapies to specific cells in the human body. Advances in drug discovery have shortened the developmental pipeline. The sooner researchers can eliminate subpar molecules from their R&D pipeline, the faster they can get successful molecules to market. Rational protein design and high-throughput screening are helping mAb manufacturers meet this challenge by giving them the tools they need to find new antibodies and match them to targeted disease conditions more rapidly and accurately. These manufacturers may soon get another major boost from emerging technologies like AlphaFold, which leverages artificial intelligence to predict a protein's therapeutic potential, potentially shaving months or even years from the development timeline. Additionally, advances in cell line development such as targeted gene integration, single cell seeding, and medium optimization significantly reduce the time required to develop a high-productivity cell line that expresses high-quality protein. Established manufacturing methods help companies scale to commercial production. In contrast to all-new areas of and specially engineered therapies, the process of scaling mAb production from the R&D lab to the commercial production facility is well-defined, both in terms of the platformed technologies involved and the regulatory pathway. Meanwhile, technologies that support robust strategies such as closed processing are rapidly evolving, reducing the risk of contamination and product loss while further streamlining the pathway to commercial manufacturing. How are monoclonal antibodies produced? Monoclonal antibody manufacturing generally involves culturing a genetically modified organism to express the target protein, followed by downstream chromatography and filtration steps. Although this process is relatively standard across the industry, a key difference from one manufacturer to the next has to do with the technologies behind their manufacturing approach. Stainless steel technologies are the traditional choice for large-scale manufacturing, while single-use technologies have gained popularity because of their agility. For some manufacturers, a hybrid manufacturing technology approach designed to amplify the benefits of both stainless steel and single-use technologies (while minimizing their drawbacks) is the best way forward. Flexible fixed stainless steel manufacturing technology for mAbs When designed around a range of potential processes, a facility featuring fixed technologies can support a number of different products while holding its value, even as product pipelines or products change. Benefits of stainless steel systems: Volume Supports high-volume throughput, which may be particularly necessary for low-titer processes. Suitable for approved molecules or biosimilars with a large patient population/broad indications. Supply chain Offers potential for a lower cost of goods. Protects against the full impact of external supply chain risks related to quality and availability of single-use components. Testing and validation Stainless steel has been rigorously tested in terms of leachable and extractable risks. Challenges of stainless steel systems: Capital investment and project delivery Requires a significant upfront, at-risk investment. Raises the financial risk for project owners (if it is narrowly designed). Requires early capital investment in design and construction, despite uncertainty of regulatory approval. Might necessitate a costly shutdown or extensive renovation if alterations are required. Production schedule Requires clean-in-place and sterilization-in-place and associated validation, which impacts manufacturing efficiency. Single-use manufacturing technology for mAbs A reputation for supporting fast and flexible processes has popularized single-use technologies among antibody manufacturers, particularly those working with lower volumes. Benefits of single-use systems: Capital investment and project delivery Increases speed to market and shortens construction timelines. Permits deferral of capital investment in manufacturing capacity until there is greater certainty in regulatory approval. Flexibility Modular design and platform processes readily enable flexible facilities. Enables manufacturers to scale-out rapidly in response to shifts in market demand forecasts. Speed Supports a faster product changeover, potentially increasing throughput. Helps accelerate candidates through early clinical trials, process development, and launch. Challenges of single-use systems: Environmental impact Generates a large volume of waste, from bioreactors to hold bags. Contributes to overall carbon footprint through the manufacture, distribution, and disposal of single-use components. Supply chain Requires a robust sourcing strategy to ensure a reliable supply of components. Also requires a strategy to assess supplier suitability and ensure connectivity between proprietary components. Footprint Requires a facility large enough to accommodate scale-out. Hybrid stainless steel and single-use strategy for mAbs The choice between a fixed technology system and a single-use strategy is not necessarily binary. Many manufacturers generate value by combining these approaches in a hybrid system that optimizes cost, robustness, and speed to market. Who is manufacturing monoclonal antibodies? The monoclonal antibody industry is a meeting ground for mature pharma companies seeking to diversify their drug product portfolio, research labs with promising molecules in development, and CDMOs with the capability to support some of this production capacity. To succeed in such a crowded marketplace, each of these manufacturers needs a strategy that's right-sized for their unique business case, drug product portfolio, process requirements, and other needs. Mature pharma companies Key focus: Modernizing certain existing assets quickly and cost-effectively while adding additional flexible manufacturing capacity. Mature companies may have the capital necessary to acquire intellectual property that was developed externally, empowering them to balance their R&D pipeline with both antibodies and other therapies. However, integrating those externally developed molecules could prove challenging, and if they have fixed, product-dedicated facilities in their manufacturing network, they may find it difficult to scale their pipeline efficiently. This raises several important questions: Without knowing which candidates will succeed and when, how do we design and implement a robust commercialization strategy? How can we balance the need to support many different low-volume products today with the possibility that we may need larger volumes in the future? Where should we focus our capital spending: on rebuilding our depreciating assets, or on designing and constructing all-new facilities? Should we invest in purpose-built capacity, or should we design for flexibility from day one? Biotech startups Key focus: Preparing for rapid commercial launch while mitigating capital investment risk as molecules move closer to approval. Startups need to carefully manage their burn rate as they proceed through successive rounds of investment, demonstrating success along the road to commercialization. Betting too early on manufacturing capacity could have substantial financial consequences; on the other hand, deferring capital investment too long could mean missing out on market demand during the crucial exclusivity period. To overcome these challenges, biotech startups should ask themselves: Are there benefits to building our own facility, or If we decide to build our own facility, how do we know when the time is right to commit? How do we ensure that our facility can adapt to process changes that might arise during development? How can we future-proof our facility so that it remains an attractive asset as manufacturing technologies change? How do we design our facility so that it can rapidly pivot in the event that our candidate molecule does not make it to market? CDMOs Key focus: expanding rapidly and strategically in order to meet today's enormous demand for contract manufacturing capacity. It's a good time to be a CDMO with expertise in mAb manufacturing. A lack of available capacity and unprecedented capital investment in the biopharma industry have created a lucrative situation in which demand outstrips capacity. CDMOs who are able to invest in expanding their capacity are all but certain to find clients. However, along with these advantages comes a set of challenging questions: How can we accelerate our capital project delivery timeline to take advantage of today's demand? How do we design a standard infrastructure that will allow us to campaign different products or multiple modalities through our facilities, maximizing our throughput and minimizing costly downtime while maintaining regulatory compliance? How can we design flexible systems and facilities capable of supporting multiple clients with unique needs and product types, such as different purification platform needs or the need for multimodal flexibility? How do we standardize our facility design and operation approaches to improve efficiencies across our manufacturing network? In the second half of this article, we'll look into what goes into designing that forward-thinking plan, from choosing the right manufacturing technology approach to overcoming the challenges of a fast-moving and competitive marketplace. What are the challenges of producing monoclonal antibodies? Manufacturing challenge #1: Manufacturers are under pressure to increase speed to market. Like building an airplane while in the air, mAb manufacturers have to juggle many complex factors as they race their competitors to the marketplace: regulatory approval, market demand, competitive positioning, available manufacturing capacity-the list goes on. Success depends on getting each of those factors right, and on doing it all under tight scheduling constraints. That's especially true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which introduced expedited regulatory pathways and redefined what it means to move fast in the life sciences industry. In fact, speed to market has significantly increased as a business driver across all manufacturing types, according to research from the 2021 Horizons: Life Sciences report which leverages survey responses of more than 500 industry leaders. One of the more reliable and important ways to increase speed to market while readying for future growth is by prioritizing flexibility in multiple ways: Strategic facility planning: Do you need multi-product launch facilities designed for rapid scale-out or a larger-scale facility optimized for higher throughput-or some combination of the two? How will you leverage strategic partnerships? Strategic facility planning will uncover the answer to these questions, ensuring that your business objectives align with your overall manufacturing network strategy. Integrated project delivery (IPD): This approach, an alternative to traditional design-bid-build project delivery, relies on collaboration, respect for people, and shared accountability to deliver projects faster and with greater flexibility. At CRB, we call this integrated approach ONEsolution. Modular manufacturing: By designing for rapid repurposability at the facility level, manufacturers can campaign between products and support multiple processes with minimal downtime. Manufacturing challenge #2: Platform manufacturing can improve speed and lower costs, but manufacturers don't always have time to standardize from the start. Under pressure to move fast, R&D teams may feel the need to quickly develop a process that will work for a single product of interest. This approach might save time in the lab, but it will cause major bottlenecks in downstream production when manufacturers have to develop bespoke capabilities for each successful product in their pipeline. Standardization is the solution. The key is to think in terms of ranges, not point values. These ranges become guardrails for R&D teams, who can then align their process development efforts with the capabilities of their company's existing or planned commercial manufacturing network. Unless driven by a compelling financial or quality-related reason, deviations are discouraged. This sets up manufacturers to mix and match processes and facilities according to the needs of a multi-product portfolio while maximizing the economies of common cell lines, media formulations, resins, buffer systems, analytical tests, and other resources. When planned well and established early, this standardized approach lays the groundwork for a fast-moving, high-throughput mAb development pipeline, which in turn feeds a manufacturing operation that's capable of rapidly integrating new products. This approach also allows an early and comprehensive cost of goods analysis to improve the competitiveness of therapies in the market. The trouble is that not every team has the bandwidth or resources to plan for standardization from the start. That's where an expert partner can help. With the right know-how and experience working for them, mAb manufacturers who missed out on early opportunities to standardize their process can still develop an effective commercial manufacturing approach. The key is in expertly assessing the many options available-from bespoke solutions to platformed, off-the-shelf equipment technologies-and designing a facility that can ultimately accommodate any number of non-standard processes as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Manufacturing challenge #3: Manufacturers must balance the intensification process. Over the last fifteen years, cell line engineering and medium development have enabled monoclonal antibody manufacturers to more than double their average upstream titers-that is, the amount of protein expressed relative to bioreactor volume. High-titer processes offer many advantages in upstream manufacturing. They help squeeze more productivity from your bioreactors, which means you can use smaller, single-use equipment and less space to achieve the same throughput as a lower-titer process. Higher titers can also improve your flexibility, making it possible to rapidly campaign between products or to adopt a different process with minimal renovation. Manufacturers can also intensify their upstream process through bioreactor pooling, N-1 perfusion, N perfusion, standard fed-batch or concentrated fed-batch production. Some manufacturers might further intensify their upstream process by relying on multiple seed labs or concentrated cell banks to increase campaign cadence and reduce scale-up time. These approaches can help to intensify production in existing facilities or improve the commercial viability of a low-titer process. Process intensification isn't a magic bullet, though. The more productive your upstream process, the more pressure you're shifting to your downstream and support operations. In-process hold volumes, unit operation cycles or sizing, cleaning and sanitizing operations, waste processing-these can all become rate-limiting without an expert plan in place. A more productive upstream process also introduces the challenge of acquiring, paying for, and storing more media and buffer-a challenge which multiplies as your productivity grows. Buffer and media concentrates with in-line dilution or in-line conditioning may help relieve this pressure. Multi-column chromatography, which reduces buffer consumption by maximizing your resin capacity, as well as in-line concentration are other ways to preserve the process density you worked so hard to gain upstream. These approaches can further impact your utility systems and facility infrastructure. The future of antibody manufacturing is all about flexibility Since that first approval in 1986, mAb manufacturers have learned so much about what it takes to efficiently and consistently produce these life-changing molecules for a global market. But, on multiple levels, there are many more advances to come. New approaches to discovery, such as emerging AI systems capable of predicting protein structures quickly and accurately, are paving the way for new products to emerge. At the same time, techniques such as targeted gene integration and medium optimization are accelerating the process of making highly productive, high-quality cell lines. Continuous technologies, designed for faster campaigning and a more compact facility footprint, are also emerging as a potentially viable strategy in the near future. What does all of this mean for monoclonal antibody manufacturers? It means that success will depend on your ability to leverage existing knowledge while staying flexible enough to adapt as future technologies and processes cross the starting line, changing the antibody manufacturing landscape yet again. Finding your partner It takes expertise to maintain a high level of flexibility and ensure that you're minimizing your risks while accelerating your speed to market. At CRB, we've developed that expertise over hundreds of projects, helping our clients align their manufacturing strategy to their projected product portfolio by integrating modular designs, hybrid process technologies, and scale-out approaches that offer the potential to support multiple therapy types. These techniques are the key to delivering complex product portfolios faster and more reliably. If your pipeline includes monoclonal, bispecific, or multispecific antibodies and you're ready to establish a commercialization strategy that fits your unique situation, let's talk. Source: Graph source: The Antibody Society, www.antibodysociety.org View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from CRB on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: CRB Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/crb Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: CRB View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735731/Modern-Monoclonal-Antibody-Manufacturing-An-Introduction Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Delmanor's Seniors community in Aurora has been recognized as the first ENERGY STAR certified Multifamily High-Rise (New Construction) building in Ontario. The five-storey, 242-unit building, consisting of apartment-style independent and assisted living spaces was constructed by Deltera Inc., the construction manager on behalf of Delmanor (Communities), both subsidiaries of the Tridel Group of Companies. This achievement highlights Delmanor, Deltera and Tridel's ongoing commitment to innovation and corporate responsibility. "Building a sustainable future for Canada starts with taking action today.," said the Honourable Kamal Khera, Minister of Seniors on behalf of the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources. "The Energy Star certification of this retirement building is a significant step towards creating high-performance homes that not only reduce emissions and save energy, but also contribute to a more climate-resilient future for all Canadians, and especially for our children and grandchildren." ENERGY STAR certified Multifamily High-Rise (New Construction) (MFHR) buildings must be at least 15% more energy efficient than those built to the provincial energy code and meet other requirements. The program is designed to assist developers and builders in constructing more energy efficient buildings. This program supports private sector investment in high-performance buildings, producing emission reductions that contribute to the goals of the upcoming Canada Green Buildings Strategy. Under a licence agreement with National Resources Canada, EnerQuality facilitated the certification submission, review and approval process. The building's successful certification has been communicated to Delmanor and Deltera. "We are incredibly honoured to become the first ENERGY STAR certified MFHR building under the pilot program. We worked closely with EnerQuality to navigate the certification process," says Adam Fineman, CEO of Delmanor. "We see this is an important initial step in not only reducing our carbon footprint, but in ensuring we are capable of providing the best possible service to our many residents as well." "EnerQuality is proud to support Tridel as they become the first building certified under the ENERGY STAR Multifamily High-Rise (New Construction) Pilot Program. Certification in new multifamily high-rise buildings will enhance Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting and support industry capacity to build toward net zero," said Monica Curtis, President and CEO, EnerQuality. "As a market leader in Toronto and the GTA, Deltera remains committed to advancing the industry through innovation and doing our part to meet the goals of the upcoming Canada Green Buildings Strategy. Thanks to our partnership with EnerQuality, the entire process was seamless from start to finish," says Mario Cimicata, Senior Vice President, Construction Management at Deltera. "Delmanor Seniors Communities serves as an important example of what's possible with the many advancements being made in technology, construction processes, and other areas of our industry." "We are extremely proud of Delmanor for achieving ENERGY STAR Multifamily certification," said Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas. "The commitment by Delmanor, Deltera and Tridel to energy efficiency closely aligns with our goals here at the Town of Aurora, particularly in building sustainable communities through the use of innovative technology. Delmanor is a great example of how our partners in the development community are critical to helping us reach our climate goals and protecting the environment." "It's great to see how the Aurora community can work with its partners to build not only homes for seniors, but a greener future. The Delmanor's Senior community in Aurora will be an example of how other communities across the country can align their development with Canada's Green Building Strategy." - Leah Taylor Roy, Member of Parliament for Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill About Delmanor Seniors Communities - A Tridel Group of Companies For 20+ years, Delmanor has offered independent and assisted living accommodation and care with retirement communities across the GTA. Delmanor has been dedicated to establishing an exceptional level of independent and assisted living accommodation and care, and recently opened their first MemoryPlus dementia friendly neighbourhood. Delmanor continues to provide seniors with first-class full-service rental accommodations, and currently has retirement communities in Richmond Hill, North York, Don Mills, Oakville, Etobicoke, and Aurora. About Deltera Construction Management - A Tridel Group of Companies Deltera is a fully integrated construction management company, specializing in the construction of mixed use, multi-phase high-rise residential (condominium & rental) developments, affordable ownership, seniors' retirement communities, and commercial/retail. The company's objective remains consistent: to provide exceptional value and service while helping clients achieve their goals. Deltera has an impeccable reputation for reliability, planning and project management, quality construction, sustainable design, value-engineering, industry-leading purchasing power and construction practices all of which are accompanied by on time and on budget delivery. The Deltera research team is committed to building more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly buildings achieving LEED certification. About Tridel Group of Companies Tridel is Canada's leading developer and builder of condominium residences, with more than 85 years of homebuilding experience. To date, the Tridel Group of Companies is responsible for producing over 87,000 homes. Tridel is determined to develop socially and environmentally responsible condominium communities that meet the needs of today's homeowners, while safeguarding the well-being of future generations. The company is working to meet this goal by focusing on innovation that promotes environmentally sustainable design, social inclusion and cohesion, as well as high performance in construction, and corporate stewardship. Tridel is committed to building the highest quality condominiums possible, and has won virtually every award in the industry for design, corporate social responsibility, customer service, sales, marketing and construction excellence. Tridel looks forward to continuing the long, proud history of award-winning excellence with over 20 new condominium communities currently under development in the Greater Toronto Area. About EnerQuality EnerQuality is the leading certifier of energy-efficient housing in Canada, and a market leader in program delivery for the residential construction sector. Founded in 1998 by the Ontario Home Builders' Association and the Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance, EnerQuality creates voluntary, market-based programs that help builders innovate. EnerQuality partners with government, manufacturers, utilities and industry professionals to bring energy and environmental programming to market. In 2005, EnerQuality joined forces with Natural Resources Canada to bring ENERGY STAR for New Homes to Canada. Today, EnerQuality leads certification for the ENERGY STAR for New Homes program and the ENERGY STAR Multifamily High-rise (New Construction) Pilot Program, the Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) Net Zero, Net Zero Ready and Net Zero Renovator certifications, and supports the Canada Greener Homes EnerGuide ratings. Our education, training, technology demonstration and workforce development programs assist individuals and companies across the home building industry to build better homes. About Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) Natural Resources Canada develops policies and programs that enhance the contribution of the natural resources sector to the economy, improve the quality of life for all Canadians and conducts innovative science in facilities across Canada to generate ideas and transfer technologies. NRCan also represents Canada at the international level to meet the country's global commitments related to the sustainable development of natural resources. About ENERGY STAR Canada ENERGY STAR Canada is a voluntary partnership between the Government of Canada and more than 1,500 organizations working to use our natural resources more wisely through greater energy efficiency. Behind every ENERGY STAR label is a product, home, building or industrial facility that is independently certified to use less energy and produce fewer emissions that contribute to climate change. ENERGY STAR Canada is administered and promoted by Natural Resources Canada. For more information about Natural Resources Canada's ENERGY STAR Multifamily High-Rise (New Construction) Pilot Program, visit the following websites: ENERGY STAR Multifamily High-Rise Pilot Program EnerQuality Certification CONTACT: Siloni Waraich (EnerQuality) 416-432-4920 Nikki Lewis (Delmanor) 416-732-0246 ### To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151761 SHAFTER, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Logistics and mega-distribution center developer Wonderful Real Estate (WRE) has pre-leased a recently completed 309,681-square-foot distribution facility located at 4705 Capital Road in the Wonderful Industrial Park (WIP) to Building Materials Manufacturing Corporation, which does business as GAF, to accommodate its growing West Coast operations and expansion plans. 4705 Capital Rd, GAF will take occupancy upon completion in Q1 2023. Known largely for its roofing materials manufacturing, GAF currently occupies 118,000 square feet at 4921 Capital Road within WIP. GAF shall operate both facilities concurrently to support the manufacturing of its popular roofing products. Financial terms associated with its lease expansion were not disclosed. GAF is the largest manufacturer of roofing and waterproofing products in North America. The newly leased building is located on 14.5 acres and features 36' clear height, concrete tilt-up construction, 57 dock-high doors, 2 - 12'W x 15'H grade level doors, and ample parking featuring 154 auto stalls and 64 trailer stalls. GAF's expansion in the park highlights the advantage of Wonderful Industrial Park and its in-house development team to meet the growing needs of both prospective and current tenants from rapidly changing space concerns to labor availability. "Driven largely by our proximity to the Los Angeles Basin and a customer base comprised of millions of people for a wide variety of industry, we continue to experience good activity for Wonderful Industrial Park real estate and GAF's expansion within the park exemplifies these ongoing trends," said Joe Vargas, SIOR, and President of Wonderful Real Estate Development. About Wonderful Industrial Park WIP is a fully entitled 1,625-acre, world-class distribution center located approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles. The park is a rail-served industrial development, entitled for 26 million square feet, with nearly 10 million square feet completed and under operation to date. WIP provides tenants with access to a workforce population of over 700,000 residents within a 30-minute drive from the park. WIP's central location in California gives companies access to a robust transportation infrastructure. The property is minutes from Hwy-99, I-5 and Hwy-58 and offers convenient port access to the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Oakland. The industrial park's location allows access to 14 percent of the U.S. population within 300 miles and same-day delivery to 30 million Californians. It has a FedEx Ground hub onsite and is near a UPS ground hub in Bakersfield, CA with Meadows Field Airport located only seven miles away. The park features an onsite rail yard with more than 17,000 feet of track able to accommodate unit trains with direct access to Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway's mainline. WIP is equipped with an in-place high speed fiber optics network with 10 gigabytes in place with capacity of 40 gigabytes. For more information visit: https://www.wonderfulindustrialpark.com/ About Wonderful Real Estate Wonderful Real Estate is a professional real estate development and property management company owned by The Wonderful Company that develops, manages and invests in a diversified portfolio of real estate, with a particular focus on office and industrial properties. Leveraging over 30 years of experience in commercial real estate, Wonderful and its affiliates currently have over 10 million square feet of real estate holdings, consisting of owner-occupied industrial and commercial real estate for its operating businesses and approximately 7 million square feet of actively managed office and industrial properties occupied by third parties located mainly in Southern and Central California. Wonderful Real Estate and its affiliates have invested almost $2 billion since 2008 for commercial real estate development, facility improvements, processing equipment and real estate acquisitions. Wonderful and its affiliates are also currently developing three business parks totaling over 1,865 acres for office and industrial use in California's Central Valley, a number of parcels of which have already been sold or leased to Fortune 500 companies and other high-quality anchor tenants. Media Contacts: Gary Marsh 415.999.3793 or gary@marshmarketing.com Erin Poulson Morris 310.966.5748 or erin.poulson.morris@wonderful.com SOURCE: Wonderful Real Estate View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735730/The-Wonderful-Company-Expands-Existing-Tenant-GAF-at-Wonderful-Industrial-Park-to-Accommodate-its-Growth-in-Southern-California Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Independence Gold Corp. (TSXV: IGO) (OTCQB: IEGCF) (the "Company") wishes to announce the granting of incentive stock options to certain directors, officers, employees and consultants to purchase up to 2,650,000 shares under the Company's Incentive Stock Option Plan. The options will be granted for a period of three (3) years, commencing on January 18, 2023, exercisable at a price of $0.15 per share. About Independence Independence Gold Corp. is a mineral exploration company with holdings ranging from early-stage grassroots exploration to advanced-stage resource expansion in British Columbia and Yukon. The Company is positioned to add shareholder value through systematic project advancement, while management continues to evaluate additional gold and silver projects for possible acquisition. For additional information, visit the Company's website www.ingold.ca. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF INDEPENDENCE GOLD CORP. "Randy Turner" Randy Turner, President and CEO Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to Independence within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements with respect to the Company's planned drilling and exploration activities. The Company provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to those identified and reported in Independence's public filings under Independence Gold Corp.'s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although Independence has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Independence disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law. Suite 580 - 625 Howe, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 2T6 Telephone: 604-687-3959 Facsimile: 604-687-1448 E-Mail: info@ingold.ca To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151767 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Pampa Metals Corporation ("Pampa Metals" or the "Company") (CSE:PM) advises that it has engaged the services of PI Financial Corp. ("PI") to provide market making services in accordance with the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") policy. Commencing on January 1, 2023, PI will trade the securities of Pampa Metals on the CSE for the purposes of maintaining an orderly market. In consideration for this service, the Company will pay PI a monthly cash fee of $5,000 for a term of twelve months. Pampa Metals and PI are unrelated and unaffiliated entities. Under the terms of the agreement, PI will not receive shares or options as compensation and the capital used for market making will be provided by PI. ABOUT PAMPA METALS Pampa Metals is a Canadian company listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange (CSE:PM) as well as the Frankfurt (FSE:FIRA) and OTC (OTCQB:PMMCF) exchanges. Pampa Metals owns a highly prospective, wholly owned, 47,400-hectare portfolio of seven projects prospective for copper and gold located along proven mineral belts in Chile, one of the world's top mining jurisdictions. The Company is actively progressing four of its projects, including completed and planned drill tests, and has two additional projects optioned to Austral Gold Ltd., with Austral already drill testing its first target on Pampa Metals' ground. The Company has a vision to create value for shareholders and all other stakeholders by making a major copper or gold discovery along the prime mineral belts of Chile, using the best geological and technological methods. For more information, please visit Pampa Metals' website www.pampametals.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Joseph van den Elsen | President & CEO INVESTORS CONTACT Joseph van den Elsen | President & CEO joseph@pampametals.com Neither the CSE nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events or developments that Pampa Metals expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will" or "may" occur. These statements are subject to various risks. Although Pampa Metals believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guaranteeing of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. SOURCE: Pampa Metals Engages Market Maker View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735774/Pampa-Metals-Engages-Market-Maker NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / SAP We are seven years on from signing the Paris Agreement on climate change and two years into the UN's Decade of Action for accelerating sustainable solutions to the world's biggest challenges. A new era of sustainability leadership is emerging that requires more impact at scale and pace. The time has come to deliver on the ambitious commitments and public goals that many companies have set to tackle climate change, safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and fight inequality. The "what" we need to do has never been clearer. The focus is now on "how" companies operationalize sustainability and turn ambition into results at the scale that aligns with the scope of their influence and global issues. In GlobeScan's annual survey of sustainability leaders, experts around the world agree that action and impact are two of the defining features in this new area of leadership and rising expectations. GlobeScan and SAP have developed Sustainable Business Now - a new platform featuring real-world examples of how leading companies are operationalizing sustainability at scale. This initiative goes beyond the high-level narratives and digs into how leading companies are tackling and implementing solutions to specific sustainability challenges and opportunities. Drawing on the experience of some of the world's most sustainable and innovative companies, these case examples share valuable insights and learnings to help advance the work of sustainability and business leaders at any point in their sustainability journey. Practical, Powerful Insights for Key Questions The initiatives featured on Sustainable Business Now focus on timely challenges and opportunities that are top-of-mind for chief sustainability officers and business leaders across sectors and geographies. For many companies, these represent some of the most material issues and priorities for influential stakeholders, from investors and customers to governments and civil society. Our conversations with sustainable business leaders get at the heart of what it takes to embed sustainability into business strategy and operations, thereby integrating sustainability across a company's value chain. Key topics Sustainable Business Now explores include: How to decarbonize complex supply chains and tackle hard-to-transition sectors How to tackle the waste crisis and move towards a circular economy How to integrate sustainability into finance and decision-making How to advance inclusion and tackle inequality across the value chain How to promote inclusive local development by improving the impact and scale of social programs Learnings from Leading Companies Sustainable Business Now launches with a diverse set of case examples from some of the most innovative and sustainable companies around the world: Anglo American shares insights on how to improve the impact and scale of social programs : Jon Samuel, group head of Responsible Business Partnerships, and Mzila Mthenjane, Exxaro's executive head, Stakeholder Affairs, discuss how the company and its partners have designed and adapted their Collaborative Regional Development (CRD) program to address the most compelling social needs and opportunities in each region. "We are pleased to be one of the first case studies featured on Sustainable Business Now," says Samuel. "The challenges societies face in meeting the SDGs are so large and complex that only by working across sectors and organizations can we achieve the results we need. While CRD isn't a silver bullet, our evidence shows that the approach has real potential to improve the impact of the private sector." shares insights on : Jon Samuel, group head of Responsible Business Partnerships, and Mzila Mthenjane, Exxaro's executive head, Stakeholder Affairs, discuss how the company and its partners have designed and adapted their Collaborative Regional Development (CRD) program to address the most compelling social needs and opportunities in each region. "We are pleased to be one of the first case studies featured on Sustainable Business Now," says Samuel. "The challenges societies face in meeting the SDGs are so large and complex that only by working across sectors and organizations can we achieve the results we need. While CRD isn't a silver bullet, our evidence shows that the approach has real potential to improve the impact of the private sector." Natura shares advice on how to integrate sustainability into finance and decision-making : Natura developed its Integrated Profit & Loss (IP&L) model to translate the company's environmental and social impacts into financial terms. Natura &Co Latin America's Sustainability Director Denise Hills and Chief Financial Officer Silvia Vilas Boas explain how Natura's IP&L model creates value across its businesses. "We believe that IP&L is a new breakthrough that will inform strategic thinking and decision-making across organizations. The more companies that take ownership of this methodology, the closer we get to a society that generates greater shared value for all. By sharing the framework and our learnings on Sustainable Business Now, we hope more companies will adopt this important approach," says Hills. shares advice on : Natura developed its Integrated Profit & Loss (IP&L) model to translate the company's environmental and social impacts into financial terms. Natura &Co Latin America's Sustainability Director Denise Hills and Chief Financial Officer Silvia Vilas Boas explain how Natura's IP&L model creates value across its businesses. "We believe that IP&L is a new breakthrough that will inform strategic thinking and decision-making across organizations. The more companies that take ownership of this methodology, the closer we get to a society that generates greater shared value for all. By sharing the framework and our learnings on Sustainable Business Now, we hope more companies will adopt this important approach," says Hills. rsted offers insight into how to decarbonize your supply chain : In 2021, rsted became the first energy company to set a science-based goal to achieve net-zero emissions across its entire value chain by 2040. Senior Director and Head of Global Sustainability Ida Krabek and Chief Procurement Officer Virginie Van de Cotte share insights on the journey so far, the challenges, and their advice to others on how to decarbonize their supply chains. "Acknowledge that this is challenging and it's challenging for everyone. That's why we've chosen to take this very collaborative approach and to create these ripple effects," says Krabek. "What is helpful in the whole sustainability space is that we collaborate, that we share, that we inspire, that we set expectations, and we follow up." offers insight into : In 2021, rsted became the first energy company to set a science-based goal to achieve net-zero emissions across its entire value chain by 2040. Senior Director and Head of Global Sustainability Ida Krabek and Chief Procurement Officer Virginie Van de Cotte share insights on the journey so far, the challenges, and their advice to others on how to decarbonize their supply chains. "Acknowledge that this is challenging and it's challenging for everyone. That's why we've chosen to take this very collaborative approach and to create these ripple effects," says Krabek. "What is helpful in the whole sustainability space is that we collaborate, that we share, that we inspire, that we set expectations, and we follow up." Unilever shares guidance on how to advance inclusion and tackle inequality across your value chain: Central to Unilever's Compass business and sustainability strategy is an ambitious commitment to ensure that everyone who directly provides goods and services to Unilever will earn at least a living wage or income by 2030. Unilever's Chief Sustainability Officer Rebecca Marmot explains why the business decided to make such a bold move and the steps it has taken to navigate this complex undertaking: "Living wages are an effective and measurable way to tackle inequality. A unified approach can unlock progress across the sustainable development goals and add US$4.56 trillion to global GDP every year." We are having many more conversations with others and plan to add more cases on an ongoing basis. We hope you are as excited as we are about Sustainable Business Now and we look forward to working with the community and hearing your feedback. If you, your company, or someone you know may be interested in sharing insights from your work and contributing to the dialogue, please reach out to the team to learn more: contact@sustainablebusinessnow.org. For more information on how SAP helps companies record, report, and act on their sustainability goals, visit www.sap.com/sustainability. Chris Coulter is CEO of GlobeScan. Michael McComb is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP. View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from SAP on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: SAP Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/sap Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: SAP View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/735817/Sustainable-Business-Now-Showcasing-How-Sustainability-Works WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK) Wednesday announced that it has agreed to sell the Brazos Valley region of its Eagle Ford asset to WildFire Energy I LLC for $1.425 billion. Chesapeake has agreed to sell about 377,000 net acres and about 1,350 wells in the Brazos Valley region of its Eagle Ford asset, along with related property, plant and equipment. Average net daily production from these properties was around 27,700 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) during the third quarter of 2022. As of December 31, 2021, net proved reserves associated with these properties were approximately 96.8 million barrels of oil equivalent. 'Today marks an important step on our path to exiting the Eagle Ford as we focus our capital on the premium, rock, returns and runway of our Marcellus and Haynesville positions,' said Chesapeake President and Chief Executive Officer Nick Dell'Osso. 'We remain actively engaged with other parties regarding the rest of our Eagle Ford position.' Chesapeake expects the deal to close in the first quarter of 2023. The company will receive $1.2 billion upon closing with the additional $225 million paid in yearly installments of $60 million over the next three years and $45 million in year four. Chesapeake anticipates the proceeds will be used to repay borrowings under its revolving credit facility and be available for its share repurchase program. Copyright(c) 2023 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. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Blue Thunder Mining Inc. (TSXV: BLUE) ("Blue Thunder" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the receipt of the final approval of TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV"), on the consolidation of its common shares on the basis of one post-consolidation common share for every 4.7 pre-consolidation common shares issued and outstanding. The Consolidation will be effective at the open of the market on Friday, January 20, 2023 (the "Effective Date"). The share consolidation was previously approved by the shareholders of the Company's at the annual general and special meeting ("AGSM") held on December 16, 2022. At the said AGM, the shareholders also approved the Company's 10% rolling stock option plan amended in terms of TSXV policy 4.4. As of the date of this news release, the Company has 173,879,487 common shares issued and outstanding. As of the Effective Date, the Company is expected to have approximately 36,995,636 common shares issued and outstanding, subject to treatment of fractional shares. Each shareholder's percentage ownership in the Company and proportional voting power will remain unchanged, except for minor adjustments resulting from the treatment of fractional shares. The Company will not change its name as part of the Consolidation but will issue new share certificates under a new CUSIP number, which is 09607H209 (ISIN: CA09607H2090). The Company's common shares will continue to trade on the Exchange under its current symbol, "BLUE". About Blue Thunder Mining Inc. Blue Thunder (TSXV: BLUE) (OTCQB: BLTMF) is a gold exploration company that controls 100% of a large land position near Chibougamau, Quebec. The Muus Gold 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 Project, 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 Dorian Nicol, CEO & Director For more information, please visit our website www.bluethundermining.com, or contact Mr. Dorian Nicol, dusty@bluethundermining.com, (647) 848-1009. 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, included herein including, without limitation, statements regarding the anticipated content, commencement, anticipated exploration program results, the ability to complete future financings, the ability to complete the required permitting, the ability to complete the exploration program and drilling, 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. 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. 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 exploitation thereof. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151807 Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - OBSIDIAN ENERGY LTD. (TSX: OBE) (NYSE American: OBE) ("Obsidian Energy", the "Company", "we", "us" or "our") announces that we expect to release our 2023 capital budget and associated guidance after North American markets close on Monday, January 30, 2023. At the same time, we will be providing our intentions regarding continued debt repayment and shareholder return of capital, as well as the results of our independent reserves evaluation for the year ended December 31, 2022, prepared by GLJ Ltd. ADDITIONAL READER ADVISORIES FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains forward-looking statements or information (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements or information. More particularly and without limitation, this news release contains forward-looking statements and information concerning: the expected release date for our 2023 capital budget and guidance, debt repayment and shareholder return intentions, and the results of our independent reserves evaluation. The forward-looking statements and information are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Obsidian Energy. Although Obsidian Energy believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements and information because Obsidian Energy can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. By its nature, such forward-looking statements and information are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which could cause the actual results and expectations to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, fluctuations in commodity prices, changes in industry regulations and political landscape both domestically and abroad, and financial market volatility. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such forward-looking statements and information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking statements and information. Obsidian Energy gives no assurance that any of the events anticipated will transpire or occur, or, if any of them do, what benefits Obsidian Energy will derive from them. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or information contained herein. Readers should also carefully consider the matters discussed that could affect Obsidian Energy, or its operations or financial results in Obsidian Energy's Annual Information Form (see "Risk Factors" and "Forward-Looking Statements" therein) for the year ended December 31, 2021, which is available on the SEDAR website (www.sedar.com), EDGAR website (www.sec.gov ) or Obsidian Energy's website. Obsidian Energy shares are listed on both the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canada and the NYSE American exchange in the United States under the symbol "OBE". CONTACT OBSIDIAN ENERGY Suite 200, 207 - 9th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 1K3 Phone: 403-777-2500 Toll Free: 1-866-693-2707 Website: www.obsidianenergy.com; Investor Relations: Toll Free: 1-888-770-2633 E-mail: investor.relations@obsidianenergy.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151793 Exodigo, a Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of a non-intrusive subsurface imaging platform, raised an additional amount in seed funding closing the round to $41m. After raising $29M in initial seed funding led by Zeev Ventures and 10D Ventures, with participation from SquarePeg Capital, JIBE Ventures and industry leaders Tidhar Construction, Israel Canada and WXG Ltd., Exodigo rapidly commenced pilot projects in the United States. After deployments at National Grid sites to improve safety, reduce cost, and increase operational efficiency, Exodigo also secured a multi-million dollar investment from National Grid Partners (NGP), the corporate venture and innovation arm of National Grid, as part of its commitment to fighting climate change. The company will use the funds to meet market demand for its solutions. Led by CEO Jeremy Suard and CTO Ido Gonen, Exodigo provides subsurface mapping solutions that combine advanced sensors, 3D imaging, and AI technologies to provide a clear picture of the underground for customers across energy, utilities, transportation, and more. Since its commercial availability (June 2022), Exodigo has been rapidly adopted by 20+ leaders across utilities, construction, and transportation across the United States, Europe, and Israel. Notable projects in 2022 included providing more accurate underground visibility for 811/PG&E, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Charge, Florida Power & Light (FP&L), Granite Construction, GTI Energy, LA Metro and TotalEnergies. FinSMEs 18/01/2023 Schola, a Phoenix, AZ-based provider of an online platform that helps families discover, connect, and enroll in the ideal PK-12 schools for their children, raised $10M Series A funding. The round was led by Channel Equity Partners with participation from Arizona Venture Development Corp, Revolutions Rise of the Rest, EduLab, Stout Street, and Portfolia. The company intends to use the funds for continued nationwide expansion. CEO and Founder Jaime Martinez and Chief Marketing Officer Carlos Melendez showcasing Scholas free and easy to use school matching platform Led by CEO Jaime Martinez, Schola is a software company for families and schools to improve PK-12 education outcomes. The company helps families discover, connect, and enroll in the ideal school setting and helps schools source, enroll, and engage with prospective families. With triple-digit annual recurring revenue growth, the company has already surpassed 100K students searching for the most suitable school in their platform to improve educational outcomes across the United States. FinSMEs 18/01/2023 Vesale Bioscience, a Namur, Belgium-based company which specializes company in the research and development of solutions and treatments using phage therapy for multi-resistant infections, received a 1.8M grant from European Innovation Council. The company intends to use the funds to develop a phage therapy diagnostic platform for global fight against multidrug-resistant infections. Led by CEO Gunther Vanwezer, and chief scientific officer Dr Johan Quintens, Vesale Bioscience is an R&D company specializing in phage therapy, particularly in alternative solutions to antibiotics and the development of treatments for multi-resistant infections. The therapy represents an innovative and promising solution in the fight against multi-drug resistant infections. Its technology consists of a phagogram with artificial intelligence, which allows decentralized diagnosis and personalized therapy. It guarantees a reactivity in a very short time (three hours instead of three days). The company also has a phage library of 96 references. Since 2020, Vesale Bioscience has been collaborating with the Belgian army in the framework of a Triple Helix agreement between industry, the federal government and academia, a first for an R&D project on phage therapy. Vesale Biosciences selected project, PhageDiag, is a fast and user-friendly diagnostic technology, or phagogram, for personalized phage therapy. It is the first automated in vitrodiagnostic tool that enables a quick determination of suitable bacteriophages for treating a particular bacterial infection. PhageDiag consists of a basic test kit (a disposable well plate with reagents), a high-performance luminometer and a dedicated software that offers the best matching phage combination to treat the patient, using artificial intelligence. Founded in 2018, Vesale Bioscience is based in Namur, Belgium and employs about 20 staff. Its team includes world-renowned experts, who have helped achieve major advances in the development of research and production process design. FinSMEs 17/01/2023 Timothy Stanleys Ursula opens at CEAM The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum and Flagler College welcome artist Timothy Stanley, whose multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture and experimental fiction alongside digital and interactive components. Stanleys exhibition, entitled Ursula, will be on view from Jan. 20 through Feb. 22 and will feature selections from his ongoing sculptural project. The exhibition will also feature a site-specific installation entitled Kathleens Game. Stanley will host a walkthrough of the exhibition on Thursday, Jan. 19, at 5 p.m., followed by an opening reception until 7 p.m. CEAM will be open on Friday, Feb. 4, for First Friday Art Walk, from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. Ursula, the title of Stanleys exhibition and sculpture practice, is also a lens through which he explores how people can experience narrative differently and whether stories can be communicated abstractly. Both the Ursula sculptures and Kathleens Game arise from Stanley's deeper approach to the concept of time in relation to the artistic process. His exhibition is rhizomatic, like a plant stem expanding its shoots in a non-linear network, connecting new points to new points. His Ursula sculpture studies utilize a variety of materials from wood, wire, tape, and glue to foam and shellac. They are not a collection of finished sculptures but in-process studies for a larger, hypothetical work. Aiming to tell an abstract, three-dimensional story through the experience of these studies, Stanley explores how narrative can be structured as an object or even as a human body. Kathleen's Game is a multimodal project that Stanley began at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Written in a combination of prose, C# script, and user posts from online game communities, Kathleen's Game is a development log (devlog) for a mobile video game about time. It is inspired by conversations on the subject of time between the artist and his friend Kathleen, who has lived her entire adult life with brain cancer. This multimodal project is a site-specific installation based on the devlog. It functions as an art gallery, a reading room, and a video game cafe. Museum-goers are encouraged to engage with the space and to use the main table as a work desk or gaming space. The installation features a collaborative work by Stanley and Dorin Cucicov, an artist and computer scientist from Chisinau, Moldova. The piece is a digital quadriptych of animated rhizome terrains that have been programmed to grow and shrink based on code inspired by the video games Stanleys narrator explores. The artwork asks: is it possible to experience another persons sense of time by developing a deep, empathic connection to them? By uniting these two projects together, Stanley meditates on arts ability to communicate a story abstractly by creating what he calls "a network of aesthetic experiences." About the Artist: Timothy Stanley (b. 1984), who lives and works in Bucharest, Romania, is a multidisciplinary artist from New York, N.Y. He graduated with a bachelors degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Columbia University. Stanley uses a combination of mediums including sculpture, writing, and video game development in order to explore the boundaries of literary narrative, with the aim of uncovering new techniques in storytelling. Stanley is the author of the art historical novel Maiastra: A History of Romanian Sculpture in Twenty-Four Parts written under the pseudonym Igor Gyalakuthy, a retired art historian from Romania, writing a final treatise on the plastic art of his homeland before time and the ravages of mental illness take him. Volume one of Maiastra was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of its permanent collection. This program is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and a grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida. The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum is an accessible building. If you are a person with a disability and need reasonable accommodations, please contact Phil Pownall at 904-819-6460. Sign Language Interpreters are available upon request with a minimum of three days' notice. The museums hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday, noon to 4 p.m., while classes are in session. For further information on our programming, please visit the website at www.flagler.edu/ceam, or contact Julie Dickover at 904-826-8530 or crispellert@flagler.edu. Tagged As Rep. Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, speaks at the party's Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly, Jan. 18. Yonhap Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung lashed out at President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday, claiming that his recent remark branding Iran as the "enemy" of the United Arab Emirates was "monocellular" and "biased." Yoon made the remark earlier this week, comparing the UAE-Iran relations to those of South and North Korea during a meeting with South Korean troops stationed in the UAE. Yoon's remarks prompted Tehran to say it was "looking into and pursuing the meddling comments" and awaiting an explanation from Seoul's foreign ministry and drew criticism from opposition parties at home. "It is truly regrettable that he cannot make the most basic judgment," the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said in the party's Supreme Council meeting, likening the incident to a "diplomatic disaster." "Through a monocellular and biased diplomacy based on the notion that 'a friend's enemy is my enemy,' you cannot properly guard the people and national interest," the DPK leader said, urging Yoon to get a better grasp of the basics of diplomacy and security. Lee also said the "very wrong and thoughtless remarks" have put the UAE in a difficult position and provoked Iran, voicing concern that it may adversely affect Korean residents in the country as well as South Korean vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Referring to Yoon's hot mic incident in New York last year, DPK floor leader Park Hong-keun urged the president to apologize. Rep. Park Hong-keun, right, floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, speaks at the party's Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly, Jan. 18. Yonhap Yoon was caught on video making a remark privately to aides that appeared to include vulgar words. Though the recording was not clear, many thought he was talking about U.S. Congress and U.S. President Joe Biden. "President Yoon's thoughtless remarks are ballooning and shaking up the Middle East," Park said, saying this is just another case of diplomatic fiasco. "President Yoon should humbly apologize to the people over the diplomatic disaster and completely replace his incompetent diplomacy lineup." Seoul's foreign ministry has stressed Yoon's remarks were "irrelevant" to Seoul's relations with Iran and urged against "unnecessary overinterpretation" of the remark, saying it was made while encouraging South Korean soldiers. The ministry also said South Korea's commitment to relations with Iran remains firm. (Yonhap) On November 21, 2022, President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages with Governor-General of Jamaica Patrick Allen on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Xi Jinping noted that Jamaica was among the first countries in the English-speaking Caribbean region to establish diplomatic relations with China. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 50 years ago, China-Jamaica relations have maintained good momentum of development, with deepening political mutual trust, fruitful practical cooperation and growing friendship between the two peoples. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, China and Jamaica have stood together in mutual support in fighting the coronavirus, injecting fresh impetus into the friendly relations and cooperation between the two countries. Xi said that he attaches great importance to the development of China-Jamaica relations, and is ready to work with Governor-General Allen to take the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations as a new starting point to deepen cooperation in various fields, and promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, to jointly lead China-Jamaica strategic partnership to a new level and build a China-Jamaica community with a shared future in the new era. Allen said that it is heartening to see that since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the friendly relations between Jamaica and China have maintained sustained development with cooperation in various fields yielding remarkable results. Jamaica will continue to strengthen cooperation with China to further deepen bilateral strategic partnership. On the same day, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council exchanged congratulatory messages with Jamaica's Prime Minister Andrew Holness. Li Keqiang said that Jamaica is an important cooperation partner of China in the Caribbean region. China is ready to work with Jamaica to further deepen and substantiate the China-Jamaica strategic partnership to bring more benefits to the two peoples. Holness said that Jamaica highly appreciates China's valuable support for its economic growth and social development, and Jamaica stands ready to continue to strengthen bilateral cooperation to ensure that the Jamaica-China strategic partnership will grow to the benefit of the two peoples. On January 10, 2023 local time, Foreign Minister Qin Gang held talks with Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen Hassen in Addis Ababa. Demeke said that Chinese Foreign Minister's visit to Ethiopia, the first leg of his overseas trip at the beginning of the new year, is of great significance to bilateral relations and Africa-China relations. He noted that Ethiopia and China have friendly traditions , and that the two countries always respect each other and enjoy strong and vigorous bilateral relations. He said that China has provided vital assistance for Ethiopia's efforts to overcome challenges and achieve economic and social development, and that China, by upholding principles and speaking up for justice in the international community, has strongly supported Ethiopia in safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ethiopia will never forget this. Demeke said that Ethiopia expects to work with China to elevate bilateral relations across the board and expand practical cooperation in such fields as digital economy, agriculture and capacity building. Highlighting that his first overseas trip after taking office as Chinese Foreign Minister is to Ethiopia and other African countries, Qin Gang said this reflects the uniqueness and importance of Africa and China-Ethiopia relations in China's overall diplomacy. He noted that China and Ethiopia are comprehensive strategic partners of cooperation, and that since the establishment of diplomatic relations more than half a century ago, the two sides have firmly supported each other in safeguarding their respective core interests and major concerns and exploring development paths suited to their national conditions, with strategic mutual trust increasingly deepened. Qin Gang said that thanks to the solid political foundation and strong public support of both sides, cooperation between China and Ethiopia in various fields has developed rapidly, yielding fruitful results. He noted that Ethiopia has actively participated in the Belt and Road cooperation, and that China has been Ethiopia's largest source of foreign direct investment and largest trading partner for years running. A large number of key cooperation projects, including the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, the Addis Ababa Light Rail, the Addis Ababa Riverside Green Development and leadership schools in Africa, have been completed successfully or are being implemented. It's important that the two sides take the implementation of the nine programs of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the outcomes of the Belt and Road cooperation as opportunities to seek greater synergy between development strategies, expand cooperation in various fields, and foster more new growth drivers, so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples. Following the talks, the two sides signed a number of cooperation documents, including a memorandum of understanding on political consultation between the two foreign ministries. Upon Qin Gang's arrival in Addis Ababa, Demeke greeted him at Bole International Airport. Former four-term lawmaker Na Kyung-won answers reporters' questions before she meets with Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon at a restaurant in Seoul, Jan. 16. Yonhap Na Kyung-won, one of the leading contenders in the ruling party's leadership race, decided not to attend a local party event Wednesday, her aide said, an indication she is contemplating deeply whether to officially declare her leadership bid despite opposition from the presidential office. Na had previously planned to attend a New Year's event that the Daejeon branch of the People Power Party (PPP) will hold in the central city in the afternoon but decided not to do so, the aide said without providing a reason. The event drew attention because not only Na, but also her potential rival in the leadership race, Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon, had been scheduled to attend amid heightened tensions between her and the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol. Na's decision came a day after Yoon's chief of staff, Kim Dae-ki, openly rebuffed her claims that Yoon's decision to fire her as vice chair of a presidential committee and a climate ambassador could have been influenced by "distorted" accounts from those against her. Kim said Yoon made the decision based on an "accurate understanding" of the situation. "Na herself would be well aware of how the president thinks of her recent behavior," Kim said without elaborating. The unexpectedly strong rebuff was widely seen as yet another sign that Yoon's office is against Na running for PPP leadership, as it favors Rep. Kim as the next leader of the ruling party. Na is a strong favorite in the race, though she has not officially declared her bid yet. The party is scheduled to hold a national convention on March 8 to pick a new leader. The next leader will be decided only by a vote of party members. Kim Gi-hyeon, right, and Ahn Cheol-soo, lawmakers of the ruling People Power Party who have expressed their intention to run in the party's leadership race in March, attend a New Year's meeting of the party's chapter in Incheon, west of Seoul, Jan. 11. Yonhap By Jeon Su-mi Recently, as North Korea roamed our airspace with its drones. President Yoon Seok Yeol said, "To achieve peace, we must prepare for an overwhelmingly superior war." Is he saying that prevention is better than cure? As U.S.-North Korea relations change again and trust between them collapses, it is necessary for us to be prepared for North Korea's self-defense measures that will likely follow. On the other hand, an improvement of inter-Korean relations is not just a by-product of the U.S.-North Korea relationship but is also required so as to secure the "motive power to promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." It is no coincidence that the Kim Dae-jung administration, which hoped for speedy reunification through the Sunshine Policy, prepared for a sudden change in North Korea. However, based on what President Yoon has said since the time he was a candidate about "preemptive strikes" and "the main enemy being North Korea" and, since his election, that he would punish any provocation by North Korea, we feel in real time that the Korean Peninsula, which has entered a strong vs. strong climate, is becoming a Northeast Asian powder keg. The change in the international order in the post-Cold War era is undoubtedly a new challenge for the Republic of Korea. The strategic struggle between the U.S. and China has now become a dominant and far-reaching international and regional issue. For South Korea, the United States is its only ally, while China is a neighbor and strategic cooperative partner with whom we are economically interdependent. We are in a very difficult position in terms of diplomacy and security in the midst of this U.S.-China strategic rivalry. Nonetheless, the current government is pursuing a one-sided foreign and security policy based on the fixed and polarized approach of the past. Although South Korea is approaching the ranks of the G-7 and boasts an economy in the world's top ten, it does not demonstrate strategic diplomacy to match it because, while it has enjoyed high economic growth and achieved democratization in a short period of time, it has failed to develop its diplomatic capabilities to match. The new diplomatic and security challenges that have emerged recently have made things more difficult. This is because an atmosphere is forming in which major powers reinforce nationalistic policies and the formation of regional blocs. We are also confronting challenges such as new security threats from the 4th industrial revolution, the pandemic, the climate crisis and supply chain expansion. Nevertheless, in terms of the diplomacy and security of the Republic of Korea in the 21st century, we are still dancing between ideologies and factions. Diplomatic issues too are still dependent on the governing party's place on the ideological and partisan spectrum, either emphasizing international cooperation with a pro-U.S. or alliance-centered approach, or being somewhat anti-U.S. and pro-China and valuing ethnocentric cooperation. The current government, like the conservative governments of the past, is pursuing anti-communist, pro-American policies, talking of North Korea as its main enemy, talking about war and using this to serve its domestic political agenda. In the era of Kim Dae-jung, Korea recast the painful ordeal of the division of the Korean peninsula as a hope for reconciliation and coexistence, rather than anger and retaliation. As a new player on the world stage, South Korea should take the lead in promoting international cooperation and solidarity to resolve the North Korean problem, because denuclearization and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula are key tasks of the moment and are diplomatic goals that can never be given up. This should not be a confrontation with North Korea based on anti-communism and militarism, but a flexible engagement based on the Republic of Korea's economic, military and soft power to secure its own diplomatic and security needs. In response to the rapidly changing security environment, including North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, the U.S.-China rivalry and the regional arms race, in addition to having our own deterrence capabilities, we must also supplement this with working to ease tensions through security diplomacy. In addition, the government needs to take a patient and consistent approach so that North Korea can participate in inter-Korean dialogue. Since the causes of the North Korean problem are very complex, various and diverse methods are required. In addition, in dialogue with North Korea, the government needs to pursue powerful negotiations in which it can speak confidently while simultaneously weighing the benefits and costs. In the future, by transcending the confrontation that characterizes the Korean Peninsula and transforming it toward worldwide universality and global altruism, we look forward to the Republic of Korea becoming a global pivotal country that contributes to the historical progress of security diplomacy. Jeon Su-mi (sumijeon@ssu.ac.kr), an attorney, is an invited professor at the Soongsil Institute for Peace and Unification. She was a member of the Presidential Committee on Northern Economic Cooperation. Her areas of specialty include South Korean politics and foreign policy, North Korea politics and human rights. A 78-year-old former Corvallis man convicted of sex abuse died while serving his sentence at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario. Dennis Michael Randall died Friday, Jan. 13, in the prison infirmary while on hospice care, according to a news release, which noted his earliest possible release date was in February 2030. Randall was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing four girls. A Corvallis resident at the time, he pleaded guilty on four counts of first-degree sex abuse and two other sex crimes in February 2010 in Benton County Circuit Court. The victims young girls Randall knew were elementary school-aged and middle school-aged when the abuse began in 2009. When police interviewed Randall, he admitted that he had molested the girls. His defense attorney told the court Randall was ashamed of what he's done. But when asked if he wanted to address the court, Randall expressed anger at the victims' guardians, saying he had told them he didn't want to watch the girls. "If (they) would have just listened, we wouldn't be here today," he said. The statements flabbergasted Judge Locke Williams. "That in no way makes them responsible for the years or months of abuse that you subjected their children to," he said. Williams commended Randall for his willingness to resolve the case quickly and spare the victims a lengthy legal proceeding, but wondered if Randall really accepted his responsibility for the crimes. The Boys & Girls Club of Albany and Greater Albany Public Schools partnered to open a school-based site to make it easier for students at Waverly Elementary School to access programming. The clubs very first satellite site opened at the start of the school year at Waverly, 425 Columbus St. SE. McKena Roberts, director of marketing and special events at the club, said she and others noticed a lack of students from Waverly at the main location, 1215 Hill St. SE, which is only about a mile away. The school was chosen as the satellite site because we werent getting many kids from Waverly at our main clubhouse, she said. Its a high poverty school, so we are trying to get kids who need the support and need us. The Boys & Girls Club worked with teachers and administrators at Waverly to figure out why fewer Waverly students were going to the club than kids from other schools. They found transportation to be the biggest obstacle for students to get to and from the club. By having a school-based site, club services are now within walking distance for many Waverly students and families. Planning for the satellite program has been underway since 2018, but the opening was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide staffing shortages. The satellite site had a soft launch at the start of the 2022-23 school year and uses the schools stage, cafeteria, gym and outdoor spaces. Students experience similar programming to what they would get at the main site, including sports, art and a game room. The satellite site is open every school day from 2:30 to 6 p.m. "We are grateful for the Boys & Girls Club of Albany and their vision of moving services like this to where our kids are," Greater Albany Public Schools Superintendent Andy Gardner said in a news release. "The tenacity and resilience of the club's administration and staff to provide expanded services at Waverly Elementary is very much appreciated." The Waverly program currently has 57 enrolled members and can serve as many as 120 students daily when fully staffed. One of the Boys & Girls Clubs long-term goals is to open more satellite programs throughout Albany, said Boys & Girls Club Program Development Director Sam Jordan. We are excited for the future. Related stories: Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021. Freedom of speech is first constitutional right Political commentators often compare President Yoon Suk Yeol to Donald Trump. Like the former U.S. president, critics say Yoon backtracks on female, labor issues and environmental policies. Trump attacked segments of the media that were critical of him, calling them "fake news," and Yoon's aides attacked unfriendly media by describing them as "distorted and hostile." Yoon's relationship with some public broadcasters, including MBC, has been particularly strained. It was discovered that about a month ago, the Foreign Ministry filed a lawsuit against MBC, demanding a correction to its previous report regarding Yoon's remark during his visit to New York in September. According to a video aired at the time by MBC on its official YouTube channel, Yoon, after having a brief chat with U.S. President Joe Biden, turned to his aides and appeared to say, "It would be quite embarrassing for Biden if those (expletive) at Congress don't approve (this bill)." A "lip-reading" battle then ensued between Yoon's aides and the broadcaster. The presidential office accused MBC of maliciously subtitling Yoon's half-soliloquy, claiming that what sounded like "Biden" was actually a Korean word. The aides added that the expletive was also aimed at Korean political opponents, not U.S. Congresspeople. The foreign ministry complained that the broadcaster hurt national efforts by forcing the ministry to use up its energy in order to restore damaged Korea-U.S. ties. However, immediately after the clash, the U.S., which highly values press freedom, made clear that it didn't matter, saying, "U.S.-South Korea ties remain firm." The ministry's move was nothing but a delayed venting of anger on behalf of the president. Yoon, now on a weeklong tour of the UAE and Switzerland, provided another tidbit of news for foreign media. In November, Yoon's aides banned MBC reporters from boarding the presidential jet to report on his Southeast Asian tour. However, before the departure for the ongoing trip, the presidential office relented and allowed MBC reporters to board Air Force One again. It then attributed the ban being lifted to the president's "broad-minded decision to maximize national interests." Most Koreans know that the U-turn on journalists boarding the plane was due to criticism, from home and abroad. Yoon's secretaries should have apologized for infringing on the public's right to know by excluding some journalists from boarding the presidential jet. It is their "duty" to provide a certain level of convenience for reporters who are covering the chief executive, and it's not the government's "right" to refuse access to facilities run with taxpayer money. Likewise, Yoon should not have escalated the controversy over his expletive by simply being frank and explaining what he said. Who would care so much about a private conversation between the president and his aides, even if there were some direct, shall we say, expressions? Even more problematic were the loyalists within the governing party. Rep. Chung Jin-seok, the leader of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), questioned how right-wing media outlets could criticize a conservative leader. PPP lawmakers went further, with some calling for a reshuffle of the managers of MBC, privatizing the public broadcaster, and even blocking advertisements. These kinds of comments remind the Korean public of the "media oppression" days under former President Park Chung-hee in the mid-1970s. Welcome to a half-century ago when the Dong-A Ilbo daily kept their ad pages blank and ran the paper with readers' donations. It's worrying that the government's carrot-and-stick approach toward the media seems to be working in some ways. Of the 55 media outlets that carried the news of Yoon's so-called generous decision to let MBC reporters board the presidential jet, only four, including The Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, reported it with a critical angle, with the others handling it like straight news as if this kind of carry on is completely normal. According to foreign reports, an African country born in 2011 recently arrested six staff members from a state broadcaster over the circulation of footage appearing to show their president urinating on himself during an official event. Should Koreans, especially media outlets, be content that reporters here were not arrested but were refused access to cover an official overseas trip? A train passes by a billboard designed by Samsung Electronics that has been put up on the wall of a building in Bahnhofstrasse, Davos, Switzerland, Monday (local time). The sign says Samsung promotes Korea's bid to host World Expo 2030 in Busan. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics TORONTO, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Freshii Inc. (TSX: FRII) (Freshii or the Company) today announced that it has filed and is in the process of mailing the Management Information Circular and related materials for the special meeting of Freshiis shareholders, which will be held virtually at 9:00 a.m. (Toronto time) on February 8, 2023 via live audio webcast as more particularly set out in the meeting materials. At the meeting, shareholders will be asked to consider the previously announced plan of arrangement pursuant to which Foodtastic Inc. will acquire all of the issued and outstanding Class A subordinate voting shares and Class B multiple voting shares in the capital of Freshii and such other business as may properly come before the meeting or any adjournment or postponement thereof. The Circular and related meeting materials are available on SEDAR under Freshiis profile at www.sedar.com. Freshii will be mailing copies of the Circular and related meeting materials to shareholders of record as at January 9, 2023. The Arrangement As previously announced by Freshii on December 19, 2022, Freshii and Foodtastic entered into a definitive arrangement agreement pursuant to which Foodtastic has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding Freshii shares at a price of $2.30 in cash per share, regardless of class. This transaction will be implemented by way of a statutory plan of arrangement involving Freshii and Foodtastic under the Business Corporations Act (Ontario) (the arrangement). The arrangement is subject to approval of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) as well as by Freshii shareholders at the meeting as described further below. The arrangement is anticipated to be completed by the end of February 2023 subject to obtaining the approval of the Freshii shareholders and the Court, as well as the satisfaction or waiver of other customary closing conditions. Court Approval Freshii is also pleased to announce that on January 12, 2023, the Court granted an interim order that, among other things, authorized Freshii to call and hold the meeting to approve the arrangement. The hearing date for the application to the Court for the final order approving the arrangement has been scheduled for February 14, 2023. Approval of the Arrangement by Shareholders In order to become effective, the arrangement must be approved by an affirmative vote of at least: (a) two-thirds (66%) of the votes cast by Freshii shareholders present in person (virtually) or represented by proxy at the meeting and entitled to vote thereat, and (b) a simple majority (50%+1) of the votes on the resolution approving the arrangement by holders of Freshiis Class A subordinate voting shares and Class B multiple voting shares (voting separately as a class) present in person (virtually) or represented by proxy at the meeting, excluding the votes cast by shareholders that are required to be excluded pursuant to Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Shareholders for purposes of the arrangement. It is currently expected that approximately 1.5% of the Class A subordinate voting shares will be excluded from that vote, and that none of the Class B multiple voting shares will be excluded. The votes of all Freshii shareholders are important regardless of the number of shares held. Freshii encourages shareholders to read the Circular and related meeting materials in detail. Copies of these meeting materials are available under Freshiis profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. For details on how to vote, shareholders should refer to the Circular and related meeting materials. * YOUR VOTE IS IMPORTANT * The Board of Directors of Freshii UNANIMOUSLY RECOMMENDS that shareholders vote FOR the resolution approving the Arrangement. Reasons for the Arrangement The Freshii board of directors and the special committee of independent directors made their respective determinations based on a range of factors, in consultation with their financial and legal advisors, including, among others: the significant premium being offered under the arrangement and the certainty of value and immediate liquidity provided to shareholders by the arrangement; the fact that a special committee of independent directors of Freshii oversaw a process involving discussions with multiple potential interested parties and the negotiation with an arms length third party that has resulted in the arrangement; and their conclusion that the value of the consideration under the arrangement offered greater and more certain value to shareholders than was available under the other proposals received by Freshii from potential interested parties in the process, or from continuing to operate the company on a standalone basis. Further information on the background of the transaction and a summary of the reasons, risks and other factors considered by the special committee, and by the board in making its recommendation that shareholders vote FOR the resolution approving the arrangement, are described in more detail on pages 25 to 38 of the Circular. Shareholder Questions and Assistance Shareholders with questions regarding the virtual meeting portal or requiring assistance accessing the meeting website can contact TSX Trust Company at 1-866-600-5869 or tsxtis@tmx.com. About Freshii Since 2005, Freshii has established a healthy food focused franchised restaurant concept which currently operates 343 locations in North America and internationally. All but one of Freshiis stores are franchised. In recent years, the Company has further expanded their omni-channel footprint in the adjacent health and wellness business lines, including in consumer-packaged goods, nutritional supplements, and ecommerce retail, following the acquisition of a majority interest in a leading Canadian online health and wellness product retailer, Natura Market. Freshiis consumer-packaged goods retail partners include, among others, Walmart Canada, Shell Gas and Convenience Stations, ONroute, and Air Canada. Further information is available at www.freshii.com. About Foodtastic Foodtastic is a leading franchisor of restaurant brands in Canada. Including the recently announced acquisitions of Quesada and Freshii, Foodtastics Canadian system exceeds 1,200 restaurants and $950 million in sales. Foodtastic is rapidly growing internationally, with over 150 restaurants outside of Canada. Foodtastics brands include Second Cup, Pita Pit, Milestones, Fionn MacCools, Shoeless Joes, Au Coq, La Belle et La Boeuf, and Monza. Forward Looking Information Certain statements included in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. More particularly and without limitation, this press release contains forward-looking statements and information regarding whether the arrangement will be completed, the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction for Freshii, its franchisees, shareholders and other stakeholders, and the anticipated timing of the special meeting and of the completion of the arrangement. Use of words such as will, expect, or other words of similar effect may indicate forward-looking statements. Except as may be required by Canadian securities laws, Freshii does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties and are based on several assumptions which give rise to the possibility that actual results could differ materially from Freshiis expectations expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements and that the objectives, plans, strategic priorities and business outlook may not be achieved. As a result, Freshii cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statements will materialize, or if any of them do, what benefits Freshii will derive from them. In respect of forward-looking statements and information concerning the anticipated benefits and timing of the completion of the proposed transaction, Freshii has provided such statements and information in reliance on certain assumptions that it believes are reasonable at this time, including assumptions as to the ability of the parties to receive, in a timely manner and on satisfactory terms, the necessary court and shareholder approvals; the ability of the parties to satisfy, in a timely manner, the other conditions for the completion of the arrangement, and other expectations and assumptions concerning the proposed transaction. The anticipated dates indicated may change for a number of reasons, including the necessary court and shareholder approvals or the ability of the Board to consider and approve, subject to compliance by Freshii of its obligations under the arrangement agreement, a superior proposal for Freshii. Although Freshii believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that these expectations will prove to have been correct, that the proposed transaction will be completed or that it will be completed on the terms and conditions contemplated in this press release. Accordingly, investors and others are cautioned that undue reliance should not be placed on any forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties inherent in the nature of the proposed transaction include, without limitation, the failure of the parties to obtain the necessary shareholder and court approvals or to otherwise satisfy the conditions for the completion of the arrangement; failure of the parties to obtain such approvals or satisfy such conditions in a timely manner; Foodtastics ability to draw down the financing as contemplated by its credit agreement; significant transaction costs or unknown liabilities; the ability of the Board to consider and approve, subject to compliance by Freshii with its obligations under the arrangement agreement, a superior proposal for Freshii; the failure to realize the expected benefits of the arrangement; and general economic conditions. Failure to obtain the necessary shareholder and court approvals, or the failure of the parties to otherwise satisfy the conditions for the completion of the arrangement or to complete the arrangement could mean that the arrangement may not be completed on the proposed terms, on the anticipated timelines or at all. In addition, if the arrangement is not completed, and Freshii continues as an independent entity, there are risks that the announcement of the arrangement and the dedication of substantial resources by Freshii to the completion of the arrangement could have an impact on its business and strategic relationships, including with future and prospective employees, customers, suppliers and franchisees and other business partners, operating results and activities in general, and could have a material adverse effect on its current and future operations, financial condition and prospects. Consequently, Freshii cautions readers not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this press release. Freshii does not intend, and disclaims any obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Contact Investor Relations ir@freshii.com 1.866.337.4265 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The organic cosmetics market is expected to be valued at US$ 20.5 Billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of 5.1% during the forecast period. The revenue from the sales of organic cosmetics is anticipated to surpass US$ 33.7 Billion by 2033. Demand for organic cosmetics is anticipated to increase during the forecast period as a result of rising customer desire for chemical-free cosmetics and the growth of creams, serums, and moisturizers supplemented with organic ingredients. These goods are anticipated to be more efficient and to have fewer negative effects, which ought to increase customer acceptance. The industry is predicted to benefit from several technical advancements used to improve the shelf life of skin care products. New product development, higher consumer spending capacity for luxury goods, distribution channel growth, and expanded internet reach are some of the drivers driving the organic cosmetics market. However, the high price of organic cosmetics may act as a deterrent to market expansion. Request a sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-12936 The market is being driven by the increasing concern over the damaging effects of inorganic cosmetics on the skin. This has forced industry leaders to make significant investments in the creation of organic cosmetics, which is fostering market expansion. Additionally, the public's expanding use of social media and the aggressive marketing strategies used by major rivals are promoting market expansion. Additionally, as people's knowledge of animal suffering and unethical practices in cosmetics clinical research has grown, more individuals are switching to organic cosmetics, which is good news for the industry nationwide. The general population's expanding disposable income levels are one of the additional variables influencing market expansion. Market participants are constantly looking for new methods to bring innovation through new functionality and features. Increasing consumer knowledge of the benefits of organic consumer items, as well as backing from powerful local corporations, are significant reasons driving worldwide demand for organic or green cosmetics. Sustainable ingredient product manufacturing is more eco-friendly than traditional product manufacturing. Furthermore, organic consumer items have fewer adverse effects. As a result of these factors, the demand for organic cosmetics is increasing. Organic Cosmetics Market Key Takeaway From 2017 to 2022, the hypermarket/supermarket was a larger distribution channel, with a revenue share growing at a CAGR of 3.2%. Skincare is an important aspect of women's care, and it is expected to increase at a CAGR of 3.1% between 2017 and 2022. North America is one of the leading regions within the global market space and is anticipated to continue throughout the course or duration of the forecast period. From 2017 through 2022, China will grow at a CAGR of 6.3%. 36% of Gen Z and Millennial females in Western Europe are interested in trying these products. Growing millennial preference towards organic cosmetics is anticipated to drive market growth in the future. Ask an Analyst @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-12936 Who is Winning? To remain in the fiercely competitive market, key players are implementing a variety of techniques. These businesses are concentrating on innovations to remain ahead of customer desires and requirements to build brand recognition and survive in the competitive climate. Vendors are providing distinctive packaging materials and styles to assist establish a distinctive brand identity. Through standout shape, texture, and visual package aspects, the act aims to engage consumers' many senses. To acquire a competitive edge, businesses actively engage in strategic alliances and collaborations. In addition, there is still a lot of attention given to new debuts. A top organic beauty brand in France, SO'BiO etic, debuted its organic beauty product line in the United States in June 2021. It consists of items including a hydrating day cream, organic brightening moisturizing cream, tone-correcting serum, and organic cleaning foam. Garnier introduced a new organic range in 2019. To better satisfy consumers' shifting preferences, it announced a new line of skincare products. Key companies in the market include Estee Lauder, LOreal Group, WELEDA Inc., Groupe L OCCITANE, KORRES Group, The Clorox Company, The Honest Company, Himalaya Drug Company, Babylist Inc., Avalon Organics, KORA Organics, and others. Organic Cosmetics Market by Category By Product Type: Skin Care Creams & Lotions Serums Face Packs/Masks Cleanser Others Hair Care Shampoo Conditioner Hair Oil Hair Dye Others Makeup Facial Products Eye Products Lip Products Nail Products Body Care Soaps Shower Gels Cream Oils Fragrance By End User: Men Women Unisex Baby By Sales Channel: Hypermarkets/Supermarkets Convenience Stores Specialty Stores Direct Selling Departmental Stores Online Retailing Other Sales Channel By Price Range: Economy Mid-range Premium Ask For Customization @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/customization-available/rep-gb-12936 Table of Content 1. Executive Summary 1.1. Global Market Outlook 1.2. Demand-side Trends 1.3. Supply-side Trends 1.4. Technology Roadmap Analysis 1.5. Analysis and Recommendations 2. Market Overview 2.1. Market Coverage/Taxonomy 2.2. Market Definition/Scope/Limitations 3. Market Background 3.1. Market Dynamics 3.1.1. Drivers 3.1.2. Restraints 3.1.3. Opportunity 3.1.4. Trends 3.2. Scenario Forecast 3.2.1. Demand in Optimistic Scenario 3.2.2. Demand in Likely Scenario Complete TOC with Report Preview: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/organic-cosmetics-market Have a Look at Related Research Reports on Consumer Product Bar Accessories Market Forecast: The global bar accessories market is projected to amass revenue of about US$ 4,086.6 million by 2032, up from US$ 2,415.2 million in 2022, advancing at a CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period. Second Hand Designer Shoes Market Value: The second-hand designer shoes market is valued at US$ 421.8 million as of 2022. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8% during the forecast period and is anticipated to be valued at US$ 893.9 million by 2032. Motorcycle Boot Market Trends: The global motorcycle boot market is projected to expand at a 3.8% CAGR to USD 859.7 million by 2032, up from USD 590 million in 2022. Motorcycle boots have ushered in a new era in the footwear industry. Ironing Table Market Demand: The ironing table market size is projected to reach US$ 2,168.4 million in 2022 and, with a 7.1% CAGR from 2022 to 2032, to reach US$ 4,305.6 million. Feminine Hygiene Products Market Outlook: The adoption of feminine hygiene products is expected to increase at a CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period. The feminine hygiene products market size is anticipated to rise from US$ 31.6 Billion in 2023 to US$ 62.7 Billion by 2033. About Future Market Insights, Inc. Future Market Insights, Inc. is an ESOMAR-certified business consulting & market research firm, a member of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce and is headquartered in Delaware, USA. A recipient of Clutch Leaders Award 2022 on account of high client score (4.9/5), we have been collaborating with global enterprises in their business transformation journey and helping them deliver on their business ambitions. 80% of the largest Forbes 1000 enterprises are our clients. We serve global clients across all leading & niche market segments across all major industries. Contact Us: Future Market Insights, Inc. 1602-6 Jumeirah Bay X2 Tower, Plot No: JLT-PH2-X2A, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Web: www.futuremarketinsights.com LinkedIn | Twitter | Blogs | YouTube Denver, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Denver, Colorado - The Bradsby Group, a leading executive search firm with offices in Denver, CO, Houston, TX, and Westport, CT, has recently released a groundbreaking app that can be used for job search, notification of available positions, and provision of professional career tools to launch a job search. The app can be easily downloaded on Google Play or the Apple Store. The app is designed to help job seekers stay current on available positions and find positions that match their skills and interests. It offers a range of career resources, including guidance on how to determine what you should do with your career, resume writing tips, advice on how to present yourself with confidence, and strategies for finding meaningful work. Users can also create a personalized profile and set job alerts to receive notifications when new positions that match their interests and qualifications become available. Bradsby is thrilled to offer this cutting-edge app to job seekers. The goal is to empower job seekers with the tools and resources they need to succeed in today's competitive job market. With this app, job seekers can access the latest job opportunities, learn new skills, and take control of their career path. Click here for an iPhone download. Click here for an Android download. Bradsby Group specializes in finding and placing best-in-class talent. This is accomplished by using a distinctive and proven model that provides financial incentives to highly experienced, self-directed, full-desk recruiters who collaborate with each other during every search, with the outcome being unmatched depth and speed. The industries it serves are varied and include: Accounting and Finance; Automation and Robotics; Building Materials; Cannabis; Construction; Digital Marketing and Communications; Energy; Food and Nutrition; Industrial; Life Sciences; Supply Chain; and Technology. Established in 2004, The Bradsby Group is an employee-owned firm. The companys ESOP structure and compensation model has enabled it to create a team of uniquely collaborative, highly motivated, and self-directed entrepreneurial executive recruiters. By utilizing dedicated teams of senior recruiters for every position, the company can make more contacts and communications, which drastically speeds up the process. This allows it to deliver the best vetted, qualified, and motivated candidates. A key element of the firms recruitment philosophy is the belief that humans can provide better results compared to artificial intelligence (AI) technology in searching for and matching the best candidates to the best companies. Experienced recruiters have in-depth knowledge about the industries and offer value to both sides of each search. Those who want to get more information about The Bradsby Group executive search firm can visit its website or contact the firm by phone or via email. Email: client@bradsbygroup.com Phone: (303) 813-8100 ### For more information about The Bradsby Group, contact the company here: The Bradsby Group Greg Peay (303) 813-8100 client@bradsbygroup.com Bradsby Group Denver 1700 Broadway, Suite 1500 Denver, CO 80290 (303) 813-8100 Bradsby Group Houston 363 N Sam Houston Pkwy E, Suite 890 Houston, TX 77060 (713) 335-0989 Bradsby Group Connecticut Westport, CT 06880 (203) 800-9672 English French MONTREAL, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier Inc. (Bombardier) today announced that it has successfully priced its offering of US$750 million aggregate principal amount of new Senior Notes due February 1, 2029. The new Senior Notes will carry a coupon of 7.50% per annum and will be sold at par (the New Notes). The issuance of the New Notes is expected to close on or about January 20, 2023, subject to customary closing conditions. Bombardier intends to use the proceeds of the offering of the New Notes, together with cash on hand, (i) to fund the redemption of all of its outstanding 7.500% Senior Notes due 2024 (the 2024 Notes), of which there is $396 million aggregate principal amount outstanding on the date hereof, (ii) to finance the offer to purchase (the 2025 Tender Offer) up to $354 million aggregate principal amount of its outstanding 7.50% Senior Notes due 2025 (the 2025 Notes), of which there is $1,139 million aggregate principal amount outstanding on the date hereof, and/or for the payment of other indebtedness, and (iii) for the payment of related fees and expenses. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or buy or the solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any security and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation, sale or purchase of any securities in any jurisdiction in which such offering, solicitation, sale or purchase would be unlawful. The New Notes mentioned herein have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, any state securities laws or the laws of any other jurisdiction, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. The New Notes mentioned herein may be offered and sold in the United States only to persons reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers in accordance with Rule 144A under the U.S. Securities Act and outside the United States in reliance on Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act. The New Notes mentioned herein have not been and will not be qualified for distribution to the public under applicable Canadian securities laws and, accordingly, any offer and sale of the securities in Canada will be made on a basis which is exempt from the prospectus requirements of such securities laws. The New Notes will be offered and sold in Canada on a private placement basis only to accredited investors pursuant to certain prospectus exemptions. This announcement does not constitute an offer to purchase or the solicitation of an offer to sell the New Notes, the 2024 Notes or the 2025 Notes. This announcement does not constitute a redemption notice in respect of any 2024 Notes or any other notes. Any redemption of the 2024 Notes or any other notes will be made pursuant to a notice of redemption under the indentures governing such notes. Any purchase of the 2025 Notes pursuant to the 2025 Tender Offer will be made pursuant to an offer to purchase. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS Certain statements in this announcement are forward-looking statements based on current expectations. By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to important known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results in future periods to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. For information NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until February 28, 2023 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Gaotu Techedu Inc. f/k/a GSX Techedu Inc. (NYSE: GOTU, GSX), if they purchased the Companys American depository shares (ADSs) between March 5, 2021 and July 23, 2021, inclusive (the Class Period). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Get Help Gaotu Techedu investors should visit us at https://claimsfiler.com/cases/nyse-gotu/ or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options. About the Lawsuit Gaotu and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws. On July 23, 2021, Media sources reported that China was prohibiting tutoring for profit in core school subjects in order to ease the financial burden on families, which would be likely to have a negative effect on Chinas substantial private tutoring industry. On this news, ADSs of Gaotu fell 63.3% to close at $3.52 per ADS on July 23, 2021. The case is Zhang v. Gaotu Techedu Inc. f/k/a GSX Techedu Inc., et al., No. 22-cv-07966. About ClaimsFiler ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations. To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com. SHANGHAI, China, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co., Ltd (Junshi Biosciences, HKEX: 1877; SSE: 688180), a leading innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel therapies, announced today that a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center phase III clinical study (Neotorch, NCT04158440) of the companys anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody, toripalimab, in combination with platinum-containing doublet chemotherapy as perioperative treatment for operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, has finished the pre-specified interim analysis. The Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) has determined that the primary endpoint of event-free survival (EFS) has met the pre-defined efficacy boundary. Junshi Biosciences will communicate with regulatory authorities regarding matters related to the supplemental New Drug Application in the near future. Lung cancer is currently the second most prevalent type of cancer with the highest mortality rate in the world. According to data released by the World Health Organization, in 2020, the number of new lung cancer cases in China amounted to 816,000 and accounted for 17.9% of all new cancer cases in China. In the same year, the number of lung cancer deaths in China amounted to 715,000 and accounted for 23.8% of all cancer deaths in China. NSCLC is a major subtype of lung cancer, accounting for approximately 85% of all cases. Amongst these patients, 20%-25% are surgically resectable at first diagnosis, but even after radical surgical treatment, 30%-55% of such patients will suffer from post-surgical recurrence and death. Radical surgery in combination with chemotherapy is a way to prevent recurrence, but chemotherapy, as preoperative neoadjuvant or postoperative adjuvant therapy, has limited clinical benefit and can only raise the 5-year survival rate of patients by approximately 5%. Immuno-oncology (I-O) therapy, a type of treatment best represented by PD-(L)1 inhibitors, can provide patients with long-term tumor control or elimination. By relieving the immune suppression of immune cells caused by cancer cells, PD-(L)1 inihibitors reactivate the patients own immune system to destroy cancer. At present, the global community has accumulated sufficient clinical evidence proving that I-O can significantly improve the overall survival of patients with advanced NSCLC. However, the research on patients with operable NSCLC began relatively recently and focused solely on preoperative neoadjuvant or postoperative adjuvant I-O therapy. Perioperative I-O therapy covering the whole process, including pre- and post-surgery, is expected to be a better treatment model for patients. Neotorch is the worlds first phase III registered study of perioperative I-O therapy for lung cancer with a positive EFS result. Led by Professor Shun LU of Shanghai Chest Hospital as primary researcher, the study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter phase III clinical study aiming to compare the efficacy and safety of toripalimab in combination with platinum-containing doublet chemotherapy versus placebo in combination with platinum-containing doublet chemotherapy for patients with operable NSCLC. The primary endpoints are EFS as assessed by researchers and major pathological remission rate (MPR rate) as assessed by the Blind Independent Pathology Review Committee (BIPR). The secondary endpoints include pathological complete remission rate (pCR rate) as assessed by BIPR and researchers, EFS as assessed by Independent Review Committee (IRC), and disease free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS) and safety as assessed by IRC and researchers, etc. The study was launched in 56 centers nationwide. Patients with operable NSCLC received toripalimab/placebo in combination with platinum-containing doublet chemotherapy as neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy, and received toripalimab monotherapy as consolidation therapy after postoperative adjuvant therapy. Platinum-containing doublet chemotherapy was selected by researchers according to treatment practices of therapeutic institutions, of which paclitaxel in combination with cisplatin was for patients with squamous NSCLC, while pemetrexed in combination with cisplatin was for non-squamous NSCLC. Based on the interim analysis, compared with chemotherapy alone, toripalimab in combination with chemotherapy as perioperative treatment for phase III operable NSCLC patients and toripalimab monotherapy for consolidation therapy thereafter may significantly extend EFS of patients. The safety data of toripalimab is in line with known risks, with no new safety signals identified. About Toripalimab Toripalimab is an anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody developed for its ability to block PD-1 interactions with its ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2, and for enhanced receptor internalization (endocytosis function). Blocking PD-1 interactions with PD-L1 and PD-L2 promotes the immune systems ability to attack and kill tumor cells. More than thirty company-sponsored toripalimab clinical studies covering more than fifteen indications have been conducted globally by Junshi Biosciences, including in China, the United States, Southeast Asia, and European countries. Ongoing or completed pivotal clinical trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of toripalimab cover a broad range of tumor types including cancers of the lung, nasopharynx, esophagus, stomach, bladder, breast, liver, kidney and skin. In China, toripalimab was the first domestic anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody approved for marketing (approved in China as TUOYI). Currently, there are six approved indications for toripalimab in China: unresectable or metastatic melanoma after failure of standard systemic therapy; recurrent or metastatic NPC after failure of at least two lines of prior systemic therapy; locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma that failed platinum-containing chemotherapy or progressed within 12 months of neoadjuvant or adjuvant platinum-containing chemotherapy; in combination with cisplatin and gemcitabine as the first-line treatment for patients with locally recurrent or metastatic NPC; in combination with paclitaxel and cisplatin in first-line treatment of patients with unresectable locally advanced/recurrent or distant metastatic ESCC; in combination with pemetrexed and platinum as the first-line treatment in EGFR mutation-negative and ALK mutation-negative, unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The first three indications have been included in the National Reimbursement Drug List (NRDL) (2021 Edition). Toripalimab is the only anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody included in the NRDL for treatment of melanoma and NPC. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing the Biologics License Application (BLA) resubmission for toripalimab in combination with gemcitabine and cisplatin as first-line treatment for patients with advanced recurrent or metastatic NPC and for toripalimab monotherapy for the second-line or later treatment of recurrent or metastatic NPC after platinum-containing chemotherapy. The FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy designations for toripalimab in combination with chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of recurrent or metastatic NPC as well as for toripalimab monotherapy in the second or third-line treatment of recurrent or metastatic NPC. Additionally, the FDA has granted Fast Track designation for toripalimab for the treatment of mucosal melanoma and Orphan Drug designations for the treatment of esophageal cancer, NPC, mucosal melanoma, soft tissue sarcoma, and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). In Europe, marketing authorization applications (MAA) were submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the United Kingdoms Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in November 2022 for: 1) toripalimab combined with cisplatin and gemcitabine for the first-line treatment of patients with locally recurrent or metastatic NPC and 2) toripalimab combined with paclitaxel and cisplatin for the first-line treatment of patients with unresectable locally advanced/recurrent or metastatic ESCC. In December 2022, the EMA accepted the MAA. About Junshi Biosciences Founded in December 2012, Junshi Biosciences (HKEX: 1877; SSE: 688180) is an innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative therapeutics. The company has established a diversified R&D pipeline comprising over 50 drug candidates, with five therapeutic focus areas covering cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, neurological, and infectious diseases. Junshi Biosciences was the first Chinese pharmaceutical company that obtained marketing approval for anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody in China. Its first-in-human anti-BTLA monoclonal antibody for the treatment of various cancers was the first in the world to be approved for clinical trials by the FDA and NMPA and has since entered Phase Ib/II trials in both China and the US. Its anti-PCSK9 monoclonal antibody was the first in China to be approved for clinical trials by the NMPA. In the face of the pandemic, Junshi Biosciences response was strong and immediate, joining forces with Chinese and international scientific research institutions and enterprises to develop an arsenal of drug candidates to combat COVID-19, taking the initiative to shoulder the social responsibility of Chinese pharmaceutical companies by prioritizing and accelerating COVID-19 R&D. Among the many drug candidates is JS016 (etesevimab), Chinas first neutralizing fully human monoclonal antibody against SARS-CoV-2 and the result of the combined efforts of Junshi Biosciences, the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Science and Lilly. JS016 administered with bamlanivimab has been granted Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA) in over 15 countries and regions worldwide. As of December 3 2021, over 700,000 patients have been treated with bamlanivimab or bamlanivimab and etesevimab, potentially preventing more than 35,000 hospitalizations and at least 14,000 deaths. Meanwhile, VV116, a new oral nucleoside analog anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug designed to hinder virus replication, is in global Phase III clinical trials. The JS016 and VV116 programs are a part of the companys continuous innovation for disease control and prevention of the global pandemic. Junshi Biosciences has more than 3,100 employees in the United States (San Francisco and Maryland) and China (Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing, Guangzhou, etc). For more information, please visit: http://junshipharma.com. Junshi Biosciences Contact Information IR Team: Junshi Biosciences info@junshipharma.com + 86 021-6105 8800 PR Team: Junshi Biosciences Zhi Li zhi_li@junshipharma.com + 86 021-6105 8800 Tokyo, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The smart factory market size will reach at USD 142.09 billion in 2023. A variety of fully integrated automation systems for manufacturing facilities are applied in a "smart factory." It is a fully networked and computerized production plant that makes various items using smart technologies. One of the most significant results of Industry 4.0, often known as the fourth industrial revolution, is the smart factory concept. Smart manufacturing refers to the use of Technology by firms that operate autonomously and can self-correct and self-learn. This Technology includes artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things (IoT), analytics, and big data. Visibility, connectivity, and autonomy define the smart factory. One of the main elements fostering an optimistic view for market growth is the rapid digitalization across industries and the rising demand for industrial automation. A further factor driving market expansion is the extensive use of manufacturing execution systems (MES) and sophisticated data models for process-specific operation. Along these lines, the market is expanding due to the rising use of reconditioned industrial robots and radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. Get the sample copy of this report@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/sample/2533 Market Growth One of the primary elements driving a positive outlook for market growth is the rapid digitization across industries and the growing need for industrial automation. Additionally, the increased use of enhanced data models for process-specific functioning and manufacturing execution systems (MES) is boosting market expansion. Accordingly, the market is expanding due to the rising use of reconditioned industrial robots and radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. Further growth-promoting technical developments include the fusion of linked devices with cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). These cutting-edge techniques support automated material handling, product testing, and electronic and mechanical assembly. Additionally, force sensors are used in smart factories to collect data for statistical process control (SPC) systems, check component insertion, and maintain constant force during buffing, polishing, and deburring. Regional Analysis The Asia-Pacific is expected to acquire the largest market share throughout the projection period. China has the quickest rate of population growth and industrial production, and these elements propel the nation's automation market forward. Investments are being planned to improve growth quality, manage environmental issues, and lessen overcapacity. Over the past few years, the production of automobiles in Germany has dramatically increased globally. Additionally, the market under study will likely be primarily driven by sustainability in the industrial sector. The nation plays a significant role in the production and consumption of automation equipment in Europe. Third, in terms of size, is North America. Due to factory automation's early adoption, the United States represents a significant market for suppliers of smart factory solutions. Aside from that, the country has one of the biggest auto markets in the world and is home to over 13 key vehicle manufacturers. The nation's manufacturing sector has relied on the production of cars as one of its many revenue streams. Report Segmentations By Product In fast-moving conveyor systems, sensors are typically employed to count how many products pass through a specific stage. The sensors are crucial for establishing the product's precise relative placement when autonomous robots perform an activity on the subject, such as welding in automobiles. By Technology PLM has changed how valuable data is in the manufacturing industry and provides a significant return on investment (ROI). When all the information was at their fingertips, manufacturing or industrial firm employees discovered they were more effective. By End-User The global market by end-user industry is segmented into the automotive, semiconductors, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, chemical and petrochemical, aerospace and defense, food and beverage, mining, and other end-user sectors. Oil and gas industry acquired the largest market share during the past year. Safety and dependability are constantly in demand in procedures used in the oil and gas industry. The sector's supply chain generates a significant requirement for automation, industry knowledge, and a vast partner network. In other instances, firms in the oil and gas business are also seriously concerned about security. Governments in nations like Mexico, whose pipelines are frequently targets of robberies and insurgent attacks, are boosting their spending on process automation connected to pipeline security. Ask here for more customization study@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/customization/2533 Scope of the Report Report Attributes Details Revenue Forecast by 2032 USD 321.98 Billion CAGR 9.52% from 2023 to 2032 Largest Revenue Holder North America Fastest Growing Region Asia Pacific Base Year 2022 Forecast Year 2023 to 2032 Key Players ABB Ltd., DassaultSystemes, General Electric Co., Emerson Electric Co., Honeywell International Inc., Johnson Controls International, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, Schneider Electric SE, and Siemens AG and Others Market Dynamics of Smart Factory Market Market Drivers IoT hardware and smart factory technology significantly affect productivity, product quality, and safety throughout the manufacturing value chain. Quality control, equipment upkeep, warehouse operations, inventory management, and other manufacturing processes are all parts of smart manufacturing that can be aided by IoT technology. Additionally, as AI and machine learning skills become more widely used, they may improve speed, accuracy, and data analysis, considerably fuelling the market growth. The industry under study may widen its reach further through developments in the device market, sensors, and robotics. IoT technology, particularly in wealthy nations like the United States, is resolving the manufacturing sector's manpower problem. The Federal Government and the corporate sector in the United States are investing in Industry 4.0 IoT technology in order to enhance the American industrial base. Market Restraints The high expenses of automated systems are related to reliable and effective hardware and productive software. To invest in the smart factory, automation equipment will require more capital (a computerized system can cost millions of dollars to install, design, and fabricate). Additionally, automated equipment requires more maintenance than a manual technique (even flexible automation is less flexible than humans, the most versatile machines of all). The slower adoption of Industrial IoT technology can be related to the higher costs of maintaining M2M connections, which were severely charged, much like mobile device subscriptions. The constant updates in networking and Technology also, because significant cost increases are significantly greater than the initial investment, further hampers the market growth. Market Opportunities The use of articulating robots has grown dramatically during the past few years in several industries, including component assembly and vehicle painting. Nevertheless, the market's expansion was aided by the extensive use of articulated robots in aerospace, oil, gas, and numerous other industries that frequently produce massive parts using articulated robots. For instance, heavy steel girders can be moved using powerful and effective KUKA Titan and 6-axis articulated robots. To increase industrial productivity, decrease human error and effort, and improve end-product quality, articulated robots are utilized to create massive quantities accurately and quickly. Related Reports Recent Development October 2022 - With orders from Stadler Valencia worth $170 million, more than 300 new locomotives and trains will be driven by highly energy-efficient traction technologies. They will be used in several European railway networks to reinforce and modernize train travel in countries including Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and several other European rail lines. October 2022 - Accelleron Industries AG, a global leader in high-power turbochargers for mission-critical applications, has received permission to begin trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zurich using the ticker symbol "ACLN," according to an announcement made by ABB as part of Accelleron's spin-off completion from the company. September 2022 - This year's theme of World Maritime Day on September 29, Technology for greener shipping, is covered in the most recent edition of ABB's podcast ABB Decoded, which is Technology-focused. The theme is an opportunity to focus on the value of a sustainable maritime sector and participate in a global discussion on the issue. Market Segmentation By Product Machine Vision Systems Cameras Processors Software Enclosures Frame Grabbers Integration Services Lighting Industrial Robotics Articulated Robots Cartesian Robots Cylindrical Robots SCARA Robots Parallel Robots Collaborative Industry Robots Control Devices Relays and Switches Servo Drives and Motors Sensors Communication Technologies Wired Wireless Other Products By Technology Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Human Machine Interface (HMI) Enterprise Resource and Planning (ERP) Distributed Control System (DCS) Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Supervisory Controller and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Other Technologies By End-User Industry Automotive Semiconductors Oil and Gas Chemical and Petrochemical Pharmaceutical Aerospace and Defense Food and Beverage Mining Other End-user Industries By Geography North America Europe Asia-Pacific Latin America The Middle East and Africa Immediate Delivery Available | Buy this Premium Research Report@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/checkout/2533 You can place an order or ask any questions, please feel free to contact at sales@precedenceresearch.com | +1 9197 992 333 About Us Precedence Research is a worldwide market research and consulting organization. We give unmatched nature of offering to our customers present all around the globe across industry verticals. Precedence Research has expertise in giving deep-dive market insight along with market intelligence to our customers spread crosswise over various undertakings. We are obliged to serve our different client base present over the enterprises of medicinal services, healthcare, innovation, next-gen technologies, semi-conductors, chemicals, automotive, and aerospace & defense, among different ventures present globally. For Latest Update Follow Us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/precedence-research/ https://www.facebook.com/precedenceresearch/ https://twitter.com/Precedence_R Pune, India, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global smart solar market size was valued USD 8.52 billion in 2019. The global market size is expected gain momentum by reaching USD 13.33 billion by 2027, growing at CAGR of 9.95% during forecast period of 2022 to 2027. This information is provided by Fortune Business Insights, in its report, titled, Smart Solar Market, 2022-2027. According to analyst, the solar energy being more affordable and accessible to residential and commercial sectors is also a key factor in the growth of the smart solar market. Industry Development: January 2018 Itron, Inc, a leading consulting services company, announced the acquisition of Silver Spring Networks, Inc. According to the company, the acquisition is aimed at strengthening its global position to deliver advanced technology solutions and further improve operational activities of the enterprises. November 2020 - Statkraft, Europes largest producer of renewable energy, has signed an agreement to acquire the solar pioneer, Solarcentury. This acquisition is in line with the companys strategy to ramp up as wind and solar developer and become one of the leading renewable energy companies globally. Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/smart-solar-market-103762 Smart Solar market Scope: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2020-2027 Forecast Period 2020 to 2027 CAGR 9.95% 2027 Value Projection USD 13.33 billion Base Year 2019 Market Size in 2019 USD 8.52 billion Historical Data for 2016-2018 No. of Pages 180 Segments covered Service, Device, Application, Region Growth Drivers Growing Installation of Solar Energy Grids to Propel Market Growth High Demand for Smart Solar Technology to Drive Market Growth Drivers & Restraints: Increasing Adoption of Paris Climate Change Agreement to Augment Growth In 2015, the Paris Climate Change Agreement was formed that comprised several nations working under a common cause to combat climate change. It aimed to strengthen the response for climate change globally by ensuring that the world temperature will be below 2 degree Celsius as per the pre-industrial levels. The growing acceptance of the agreement by several nations to deal with the impact of climate change is expected to boost the demand for smart solar across the globe. Additionally, the growing focus on installing smart solar grids is likely to favor the global smart solar market growth during the forecast period. COVID-19 Impact: Disruption in Supply Chain Stall Large Solar Installation Project The lockdown imposed by government agencies globally has led to drastic disruption in the supply chain of several industries. Amongst them, the global market for smart solar has suffered significantly owing to stalling of several large solar installation projects across the globe. However, an effective decision from the government, along with the cooperation of several companies is expected to boost the operations in the renewable energy field by adhering to the social distancing norms in the near future. Click here to get the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this Market. Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/smart-solar-market-103762 Report Coverage: The market report includes a detailed assessment of various growth drivers and restraints, opportunities, and challenges that the market will face during the projected horizon. Additionally, the report provides comprehensive research into the regional developments of the market, affecting its growth during the forecast period. It includes information sourced from the advice of expert professionals from the industry by our research analysts using several methodologies. The competitive landscape offers further detailed insights into strategies such as product launches, partnerships, merger and acquisition, and collaborations adopted by the companies to maintain market strongholds between 2020 and 2027. SEGMENTATION Utility Segment Held 41.9% Market Share in 2019 The utility segment, based on application, held a market share of about 41.9% in 2019 and is expected to showcase a significant growth in the forthcoming years. This is ascribable to factors such as the growing number of utility-scale solar projects to promote the adoption of renewable energy sources across the globe. REGIONAL INSIGHTS North America to Remain Dominant; Increasing Advanced Solar Projects to Aid Growth Among all the regions, North America is expected to remain dominant and hold the highest position in the global smart solar market in the forthcoming years. This dominance is attributable to the increasing number of advanced smart solar projects in the region. North America stood at USD 2.70 billion in 2019. The market in Asia-Pacific is anticipated to experience an exponential growth backed by the growing number of smart city projects in the region between 2020 and 2027. Quick Buy - Smart Solar Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/103762 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE Major Companies Focus on Acquisition to Amplify Their Market Positions The global smart solar market comprises small, medium, and large companies that are striving to maintain their presence. Additionally, the large companies are focusing on acquiring smaller companies to expand their smart solar systems portfolio and brighten their prospects in the fiercely competitive global marketplace. List of the Companies Operating in the Global Market for Smart Solar: ABB (Switzerland) Itron Inc. (U.S.) Aeris (U.S.) Solnet Group (Netherlands) Solar Data Systems, Inc. (U.S.) Aclara Technologies LLC (U.S.) General Electric (U.S.) Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd (China) Siemens (Germany) Landis+Gyr (Switzerland) Schneider Electric (France) HCL Technologies (India) Have Any Query? Ask Our Experts: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/smart-solar-market-103762 Table of Content: Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions Executive Summary Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities Key Insights Key Emerging Trends For Major Countries Latest Technological Advancement Regulatory Landscape Porters Five Forces Analysis Qualitative Analysis Impact of COVID-19 Impact of COVID-19 on the Smart Solar Market Steps Taken by the Government to Overcome the Impact Key Developments in the Industry in Response to COVID-19 Potential Opportunities and Challenges due to COVID-19 Outbreak Global Smart Solar Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2016-2027 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Service Asset Management Network Monitoring Meter Data Management Remote Metering Others Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Device Smart Solar Meters IntelliGrid Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Application Residential Commercial & Industrial Utility Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East & Africa North America Smart Solar Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2016-2027 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Service Asset Management Network Monitoring Meter Data Management Remote Metering Others Competitive Analysis Company Market Share Analysis, 2019 Company Profile Aeris Business Overview Product & Service Offering Overall Revenue Recent Development Continued Get your Customized Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/smart-solar-market-103762 About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. US: +1 424 253 0390 UK: +44 2071 939123 APAC: +91 744 740 1245 Pune, India, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The smart manufacturing market size was valued USD 249.56 billion in 2021 and USD 277.81 billion in 2022 respectively. The global market size for smart manufacturing is predicted to grow significantly, reaching USD 658.41 billion by 2029, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.1% over the forecast period of 2022 to 2029. This information is provided by Fortune Business Insights, in its report, titled, Smart Manufacturing Market, 2022-2029. According to analysts, the increasing use of automation in manufacturing processes is driving the growth of smart manufacturing industry. Also factors such as developing technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud, big data, and Machine Learning (ML) is predicted to refine smart manufacturing competencies. Augmented Investment by Government to Fast-track Implementation of Smart Manufacturing amid Pandemic are driving the growth. Request Sample Copy of the Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/smart-manufacturing-market-103594 Report Coverage We have offered a rounded review of the smart manufacturing market along with ongoing trends and upcoming anticipations to inaugurate proximate investment gains in this report. Moreover, an extensive review of any future opportunities, apprehensions, competitors, or navigating aspects is also stated in the report. A methodical detailed regional review is presented. The COVID-19 effects have been added to the report to aid stakeholders and business professionals to comprehend the jeopardies better. The prime players in the market are acknowledged, and their tactics to augment the market growth are mentioned in the report. Segmentation Solution Sub-segment to Dominate Component Category Backed by Industrial 3D Growth Based on the component, the market is categorized into solutions and services. The solution is expected to gain a major market share during the forecast period. Owing to the growth of industrial 3D printing which is attributed to increasing demand for IoT for advanced automation process in the manufacturing industry. Based on deployment, the market is categorized into the cloud and on-premises. Based on enterprise size, the market is segmented as large enterprises and small & medium enterprises. Based on industry, the market is segmented into discrete industry and process industry. The discrete industry is subdivided further into automotive, transportation, industrial machinery, medical devices, semiconductor and electronics/high-tech, and others (Aerospace and Defense, and so on). The Smart Manufacturing Market has been analyzed across five major regions, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Driving Factors Urgent Need to Develop Robust Positions to Drive Growth The increasing demand for IoT and industry 4.0-enabled technologies is set to accelerate the smart manufacturing market growth in the upcoming years. The surging effectiveness of production processes is also another growth driver. Various emerging economies have started establishing a robust position in terms of smart type of manufacturing. However, the requirement of high capital investments may act as a hindrance for the Smart Manufacturing Market. To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market, please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/smart-manufacturing-market-103594 Development in 5G Technologies and Investment in New Network Infrastructure to Support Growth The advent of the 5G era is anticipated to alter the present Internet of Things (IoT)-based utilizations leveraged in smart manufacturing. 5G has the latent to make a ground breaking impression on the future IoT ecosystems designs, particularly in the areas of scalability, expectancy, dependability, safety, and the level of individual administration on connectivity factors. As the IoT usage zones are widening, more progressive usage cases necessitating augmented network competencies are also developing. Examples of such abilities involve backing for incorporated sensors, more precise device installation, and device movement at great speed. Regional Insights North America to Hold Second Position Due to Surging Spending on Advanced Manufacturing Technologies North America held the second-largest smart manufacturing market share. The growth of this region is accredited to the increasing spending on progressive manufacturing technologies in countries such as Canada and the U.S. Technical progressions, obtainability of replacement of printing material, and declined equipment costs have further driven the implementation of the smart manufacturing concept. Europe is predicted to grow at a steady pace during the forecast period, owing to the spread of the internet of things (IoT) in nations such as Germany, Italy, Spain, and others that balance the smart manufacturing market growth across the region. Ask for Customization: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/smart-manufacturing-market-103594 Investments in Intelligent Manufacturing Industry to Boost Growth in Asia Pacific Geographically, Asia Pacific held USD 79.09 billion in terms of revenue in 2020. This growth is attributable to the increasing investments by companies in the intelligent manufacturing industry. At the same time, in India, Japan, and Australia, several small and medium enterprises are gradually trying to spend more on smart manufacturing solutions. Asia Pacific is estimated to grow at a prompt pace during the forecast period owing to the encouraging ecosystem across nations such as Japan, India, Australia; SMEs are anticipated to fuel the usage of smart manufacturing solutions. Competitive Landscape Key Players Introduce Novel Technologies to Spur Market Growth The pivotal players functioning in the market embrace numerous tactics to boost their position in the market as leading companies. One such prime strategy is procuring companies to spur the brand value among users. Another vital approach is frequently presenting the users with technologically advanced products introduced with an expansive review of the market and its users. Industry Development: September 2021: Honeywell International, Inc. unveiled robotic technology, Smart Flexible Depalletizer, to reduce labor-centered work. This technology is rising warehouse efficiency and declining labor damages. Companies Covered in the Smart Manufacturing Market Report HP Development Company, L.P. (California, U.S.) ABB (Zurich, Switzerland) Emerson Electric Co. (Missouri, U.S.) General Electric (Massachusetts, U.S.) Honeywell International, Inc. (North Carolina, U.S.) Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) Robert Bosch GmbH (Stuttgart, Germany) Rockwell Automation, Inc. (Wisconsin, U.S.) Schneider Electric (France, Europe) Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) Quick Buy - Smart Manufacturing Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/103594 Major Points in TOC: Introduction Definition, By Segment Research Methodology/Approach Data Sources Executive Summary Market Dynamics Macro and Micro Economic Indicators Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities and Trends Impact of COVID-19 Short-term Impact Long-term Impact Competition Landscape Business Strategies Adopted by Key Players Consolidated SWOT Analysis of Key Players Global Smart Manufacturing Key Players Market Share Insights and Analysis, 2021 Porters Five Force Analysis Global Market Size Estimates and Forecasts, By Segments, 2018-2029 Key Findings By Component (USD) Solution Industrial 3D Printing Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Manufacturing Execution System(MES) Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Remote Monitoring Software Supervisory Controller and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Others Services Professional Services Managed Services By Deployment (USD) Cloud On-premise By Enterprise Size (USD) Small & Medium Size Enterprise Large Enterprises By Industry(USD) Discrete Industry Automotive Transportation Industrial Machinery Medical Devices Semiconductor and Electronics/High-Tech Others Process Industry Pharmaceuticals Mining & Metals Chemicals Pulp and Paper Others By Region (USD) North America Latin America Europe Middle East & Africa Asia Pacific North America Market Size Estimates and Forecasts, By Segments, 2018-2029 Continued... Speak to Our Analyst: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/smart-manufacturing-market-1035 94 About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. US: +1 424 253 0390 UK: +44 2071 939123 APAC: +91 744 740 1245 President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, shakes hands with Henrik Andersen, CEO of Vestas, after the company announced to invest $300 million in Korea during an event in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 18. Yonhap By Lee Kyung-min Korea has attracted a $300 million (371 billion won) investment from Vestas, a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, the industry ministry said Wednesday. The government also seeks to bring in a combined $500 million in investments from Merck Life Science and Novartis, two major Europe-based global health and biopharmaceutical players. The sizable foreign direct investments will spur the government's drive to attract a greater number of overseas investors to Korea, often shunned due to unfavorable business conditions. Chief concerns are militant labor unions, a lack of predictability and inconsistency in policies hampering effective business planning. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said a delegation of the ministry and officials of the Danish energy firm held an event to celebrate the investment at a hotel in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday (local time). The meeting was held at the World Economic Forum, otherwise known as the Davos Forum, which is being held in Switzerland from Monday through Friday (local time). Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Lee Chang-yang and Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen were among the attendees. The investment will enable the Danish firm, which has supplied over 160 gigawatts (GW) of wind turbines worldwide, to build a manufacturing plant housing large wind turbines and related parts production facilities. Pune, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The electric bus market size was valued 170 thousand units in 2020 and 192 thousand units in 2021 respectively. The global market size for Electric Bus is predicted to grow significantly, reaching 544 thousand units by 2028, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.0% over the forecast period of 2022 to 2028. This information is provided by Fortune Business Insights, in its report, titled, Electric Bus Market, 2022-2028. Industry developments: July 2021: BYD UK and Alexander Dennis Limited (ADL) jointly announced that their electric vehicle partnership, BYD ADL, signed a contract with the National Transport Authority of Ireland for the delivery of up to 200 BYD ADL Enviro200EV zero-emission battery-electric buses. October 2019: Volvo Buses unveiled its latest electric bus named Volvo 7900 Electric Articulated that can transport up to 150 passengers. It consumes 80% lower energy, unlike diesel buses. It was showcased at Busworld. The company also aims to provide driver training, battery maintenance, repairs, and servicing in its new package. Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/electric-bus-market-102021 Report Highlights: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2021-2028 Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 CAGR 16.0% 2028 Value Projection 544 thousand units Base Year 2020 Market Size in 2021 192 thousand units Historical Data for 2017-2019 No. of Pages 200 Segments covered By Propulsion Type, By Range, By Battery Capacity Drivers & Restraints- Quick Charging Capability of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Buses to Favor Growth The rising usage of hydrogen fuel cell buses across the globe is expected to drive the electric bus market growth in the near future. These buses feature a combination of the powertrain with controlled technology, batteries, and a fuel cell system. Unlike conventional buses, these have a longer lifespan. They can also be refueled very quickly and can run on flexible routes. In February 2021, for instance, the National Thermal Power Corporation Limited declared its plan to begin a premium hydrogen fuel bus service in India. It will be used only for intercity commuting between Delhi and Jaipur. At present, researchers are conducting extensive studies to test the feasibility of fuel cell buses.However, electric buses are expensive and hence, governments, transit agencies, large fleet operators, and administrative departments of certain countries may not be able to deploy these. It may hamper growth. Stringent emission regulations are encouraging the adoption of electric buses as they produce zero emissions. To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market, please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/electric-bus-market-102021 Report Coverage The report involved four notable activities in projecting the current market size. Exhaustive secondary research was conducted to gather data about the parent industry. Our next step included primary research to authenticate these sizing, assumptions, and findings with numerous industry experts. We have also used bottom-up and top-down approaches to calculate the size of the electric bus industry. Segments- Plug-in Hybrid Bus Segment Procured 8.0% Share in 2020: Fortune Business Insights Based on the type, the market is segmented into battery electric bus, plug-in hybrid bus, and fuel cell bus. Amongst these, the plug-in hybrid bus segment generated 8.0% in terms of the electric bus market share in 2020. This growth is attributable to the rising adoption of these buses as they have regenerative braking systems and can be charged by plugging in an external power supply. Segmentation By Propulsion Type Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) By Range Less than 200 Miles More than 200 Miles By Battery Capacity Up to 400 kWh Above 400 kWh Regional Insights- Asia Pacific to Lead Backed by Rising Development of Public Transportation Zones Geographically, in 2020, Asia Pacific earned 167 thousand units in terms of revenue. It is anticipated to remain in the dominant position throughout the forthcoming years. This growth is attributable to the major contributions of China. The countrys government is constantly taking initiatives to build public transportation zones for ebus. In Europe, the market is set to grow exponentially on account of the stringent emission norms implemented by regulatory authorities. It is set to be the second-largest region in this market. Lastly, North America would show healthy growth because of the strict emission standards put forward by the U.S. Competitive Landscape Key Players Focus on Unveiling State-of-the-art Buses to Fulfill Demand of People The market contains various prominent e-bus manufacturers that are currently striving to maintain their leading positions. Most of them are focusing on launching novel buses to cater to the high demand from people. A few others are joining hands with government bodies to introduce their buses. A list of prominent Electric Bus manufacturers operating in the global market BYD Co., Ltd (Shenzhen, China) Proterra, Inc. (Burlingame, California, United States) AB Volvo (Gothenburg, Sweden) New Flyer Industries (Winnipeg, Canada) Daimler AG (Stuttgart, Germany) Scania AB (Sodertalje, Sweden) Iveco (Turin, Italy) Have Any Query? Ask Our Experts: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/electric-bus-market-102021 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 Recent Industry Developments - Mergers & Acquisitions Porters Five Forces Analysis - Electric Bus Market SWOT Analysis - Electric Bus Market Distribution of the Electric Bus Market (in Volume), By Type Impact of COVID- on the Electric Bus Market Global Electric Bus Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, - Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Type Battery Electric Bus Plug-in Hybrid Electric Bus Fuel Cell Electric Bus Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast By Region North America Europe Asia pacific Rest of the World North America Electric Bus Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, - Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis By Type Battery Electric Bus Plug-in Hybrid Electric Bus Fuel Cell Electric Bus Market Analysis By Country US Canada Mexico Europe Electric Bus Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, - Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis By Type Battery Electric Bus Plug-in Hybrid Electric Bus Fuel Cell Electric Bus Market Analysis By Country UK Germany France Netherland Rest of Europe Asia Pacific Electric Bus Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, - Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis By Type Battery Electric Bus Plug-in Hybrid Electric Bus Fuel Cell Electric Bus Market Analysis By Country Japan China India South Korea Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the World Electric Bus Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, - Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis By Type Battery Electric Bus Plug-in Hybrid Electric Bus Fuel Cell Electric Bus Competitive Analysis Key Industry Developments Global Market Share Analysis () Competition Dashboard Comparative Analysis Major Players Company Profiles (Overview, Products & Services, SWOT analysis, Recent developments, strategies, financials (based on availability)) BYD Co, Ltd Proterra, Inc AB Volvo New Flyer Industries Daimler AG Scania AB Continued... Get your Customized Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/electric-bus-market-102021 About Us: Fortune Business Insights delivers accurate data and innovative corporate analysis, helping organizations of all sizes make appropriate decisions. We tailor novel solutions for our clients, assisting them to address various challenges distinct to their businesses. Our aim is to empower them with holistic market intelligence, providing a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. Phone: U.S.:+1 424 253 0390 U.K.: +44 2071 939123 APAC : +91 744 740 1245 Pune, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the latest report published by Growth Plus Reports, the global onychomycosis therapeutics market is expected to clock US$ ~8,420.3 million by 2030 and to grow at a CAGR of 6% during the forecast period. Owing rising prevalence of onychomycosis globally and growing awareness on the potential threats of onychomycosis. This exclusive information is published by Growth Plus Reports in its report titled Onychomycosis Therapeutics Market Global Outlook & Forecast 2022-2030 Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.growthplusreports.com/inquiry/request-sample/onychomycosis-therapeutics-market/7987 Market Drivers The main factors driving the onychomycosis therapeutics market are the growing elderly population, rising onychomycosis prevalence, the global diabetic population, and increased public awareness of the potential risks associated with onychomycosis. According to a 2020 article titled "High incidence of mixed infections in global onychomycosis," onychomycosis is thought to affect 10% of people worldwide, with Trichophyton rubrum being the most prevalent causative agent. Additionally, one in six people worldwide will be 60 years of age or older by 2030, according to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2021. By 2050, there will be 1.4 billion persons in the world who are 60 years of age or older, up from 1 billion in 2020. The number of persons in the world who are 60 years and older will have doubled by 2050 (2.1 billion). However, the significant issues affecting the industry is a lack of understanding regarding the disease. People usually ignore the simple symptoms, which allows the infection to go unnoticed. Due to ignorance, therapy is frequently rejected by patients. Another issue hindering the market is the side effects that come with the drugs used to treat onychomycosis. Excerpts from By Drug Class Segmentation Based on classes of drugs, the global onychomycosis therapeutics market has been segmented into: Antifungal Antibiotics Allylamines Azoles Others which include hrdroxypyridones, oxaborale antifungal etc. In 2021, the azole segment ruled the market. With the introduction of azole antifungal medications, the therapeutic options for systemic fungi infections have significantly expanded. The two groups of azoles that can be used systemically are imidazoles and triazoles, which include fluconazole, itraconazole, voriconazole, posaconazole, and isavuconazole. Even though several mechanisms have been reported for antifungal action, azole medicines all have a similar mode of action but known to be more effective. Antifungal azoles work by concentrating on the fungal cell membrane and influencing ergosterol production. Ergosterol, a derivative of mammalian cholesterol, is a crucial part of the membrane of the fungal cell. Due to its hormone-like function, ergosterol also stimulates the growth and proliferation of fungal cells. Thus, azole performs as the most effective treatment to combat fungal infections like onychomycosis. For example, in October 2022, in review article published by the researchers of University of Porto it was stated that, in recent years, conjugates of 1,2,3-triazole natural products have appeared, for potential antifungal action and a broad spectrum against different fungi owing to treat onychomycosis. Browse full report insights including detailed TOC here: https://www.growthplusreports.com/report/onychomycosis-therapeutics-market/7987 Excerpts from By Route of Administration Segmentation Depending on the route of administration, the global onychomycosis therapeutics market is divided into: Oral Topical Administration According to reports, the global market for onychomycosis therapies has the greatest revenue-contributing sector for oral administration. When compared to topical administration, oral drugs have higher cure rates because of their higher absorption and effectiveness. This is the key driver propelling the growth of the oral segment throughout the projection period. On the other hand, doctors favour using topical remedies over oral drugs due to undesirable side effects, such as liver damage. This is expected to encourage the topical market's growth as well as further research into the creation of different topical drugs. As a result, the category for topical administration is the one in the global market for onychomycosis therapies that is growing at the fastest rate. Excerpts from By Region Segmentation Based on region, the global onychomycosis therapeutics market has been segmented into: North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World North America is anticipated to occupy a significant portion of the global market for onychomycosis therapeutics market due to high drug prices, an ageing population, an increase in onychomycosis incidence, and a rise in the number of diabetic patients. Furthermore, in 2020, the Census Bureau projects that there will be more than 55 million Americans who are 65 or older, with one-fourth of them residing in one of the three states of California, Florida, or Texas. Seven additional statesincluding Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, and New Yorkmake up about another quarter of the population aged 65 and over. Additionally, Pfizer Inc., with its US headquarters, declared in October 2020 that it has started onychomycosis clinical investigations. In the first, it was investigated if onychomycosis of the toenail could be effectively treated with AN2690 topical solution. In the second, children and adolescents with distal subungual onychomycosis of the toenail underwent an open-label research to assess the safety and pharmacokinetics of a topical solution containing 5% tavaborole. Excerpts from Competitive Landscape Some of the prominent players in the global onychomycosis therapeutics market include Novartis AG Pfizer, Inc. Galderma Laboratories Moberg Pharma AB Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd. Medimetriks Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Merz Pharma Kaken Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. GlaxoSmithKline plc Taro Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd. Others For the companies in the market for onychomycosis treatments, mergers, partnerships, and collaborations are always high priorities. These activities aid in enhancing the players' influence, which ultimately raises the growth rate. Additionally, there are many competitors in the market for onychomycosis treatments. Manufacturers in the onychomycosis therapy market make significant investments in R&D. The market for treating onychomycosis is based on these activities. They result in the identification of fresh formulations and cutting-edge therapeutic solutions. Request for Customization https://www.growthplusreports.com/inquiry/customization/onychomycosis-therapeutics-market/7987 VALUE PROPOSITIONS RELATED TO THE REPORT: Powered with Complimentary Analyst Hours and Expert Interviews with Each Report Comprehensive quantitative and qualitative insights at segment and sub-segment level Covid 19 impact trends and perspective Granular insights at global/regional/country level Deep-rooted insights on market dynamics (drivers, restraints, opportunities) and business environment Blanket coverage on competitive landscape Winning imperatives Exhaustive coverage on 'Strategic Developments' registered by leading players of the market CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS: Distributor Landscape Assessment Pricing Intelligence Customer Base Assessment Investment & Initiatives Analysis 'Business Profile' of Key Players Directly Purchase Premium Copy of onychomycosis therapeutics Market Growth Report (2022-2030) at: https://www.growthplusreports.com/checkout?_token=zHyA03y3eMMgmuR4XiPoh12LL9k24HmrnHc2V3Kg&report_id=7987&license=Single About Us: Growth Plus Reports is part of GRG Health, a global healthcare knowledge service company. We are proud members of EPhMRA (European Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Association). Growth Plus portfolio of services draws on our core capabilities of secondary & primary research, market modelling & forecasting, benchmarking, analysis and strategy formulation to help clients create scalable, ground-breaking solutions that prepare them for future growth and success. We were awarded by the prestigious CEO Magazine as "Most Innovative Healthcare Market Research Company in 2020. Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Secure Logistics Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global secure logistics market size reached US$ 72.22 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 109.79 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.23% during 2021-2027. Secure logistics refers to a comprehensive security system used for safeguarding warehouses, storage and manufacturing units. It offers remote monitoring of the entire supply chain process with minimal disruptions to improve the overall efficiency of the organization. It consists of high-security infrastructure with centrally located storage facilities that provide flexible access through multiple locations and long-term and in-transit solutions to manage high-value commodities. As a result, it is deployed across industries for the supervision of assets, project management, cost estimation, procurement, issuance, inventory management and logistics management. Secure Logistics Market Trends: The increasing utilization of transportation management systems (TMS) across the globe represents one of the key factors driving the growth of the market. The TMS utilizes secure logistics to process shipments and maintain transparency of operations. Furthermore, the growing demand for precious metals and diamonds for jewelry and other applications is providing a thrust to the market growth. Security logistics is used for the monitoring of consignments with tracking codes and providing customer support in case of any unprecedented delays. In line with this, significant growth in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry, in confluence with increasing digitization across various other industries, is acting as another growth-inducing factor. Banking in both the emerging and developed economies is a highly protected sector that requires constant supervision on monetary and virtual deposits and domestic and foreign transactions. Secure logistics are used for effective wealth management, regulation of cash circulation and personal and retail banking. Other factors, including the widespread adoption of outsourced security services, along with an increasing preference for digital payment methods across industries, are anticipated to drive the market further. Competitive Landscape: The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Allied Universal (Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec), Brink's Company, GardaWorld Corporation, Lemuir Group, Loomis, Maltacourt Ltd, PlanITROI Inc, Prosegur Cash (Prosegur Compania de Seguridad, S.A), Secure Logistics LLC., Securitas AB, Serco Group plc and SIS Group Enterprise. Key Questions Answered in This Report: How has the global secure logistics market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global secure logistics 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 service type? What is the breakup of the market based on the application? What is the breakup of the market based on the end user? What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry? What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry? What is the structure of the global secure logistics market and who are the key players? What is the degree of competition in the industry? Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 145 Forecast Period 2021 - 2027 Estimated Market Value (Billion) in 2021 Billion72.22 Billion Forecasted Market Value (Billion) by 2027 Billion109.79 Billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 7.2% Regions Covered Global Key Topics Covered: 1 Preface 2 Scope and Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 4.1 Overview 4.2 Key Industry Trends 5 Global Secure Logistics 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 Static 6.1.1 Market Trends 6.1.2 Market Forecast 6.2 Mobile 6.2.1 Market Trends 6.2.2 Market Forecast 7 Market Breakup by Service Type 7.1 Cash Services 7.1.1 Market Trends 7.1.2 Market Forecast 7.2 Security Services 7.2.1 Market Trends 7.2.2 Market Forecast 8 Market Breakup by Application 8.1 Cash Management 8.1.1 Market Trends 8.1.2 Market Forecast 8.2 Diamonds 8.2.1 Market Trends 8.2.2 Market Forecast 8.3 Jewelry and Precious Metal 8.3.1 Market Trends 8.3.2 Market Forecast 8.4 Manufacturing 8.4.1 Market Trends 8.4.2 Market Forecast 8.5 Others 8.5.1 Market Trends 8.5.2 Market Forecast 9 Market Breakup by End User 9.1 Financial Institutions 9.1.1 Market Trends 9.1.2 Market Forecast 9.2 Retailers 9.2.1 Market Trends 9.2.2 Market Forecast 9.3 Government 9.3.1 Market Trends 9.3.2 Market Forecast 9.4 Others 9.4.1 Market Trends 9.4.2 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 Allied Universal (Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec) 15.3.1.1 Company Overview 15.3.1.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.2 Brink's Company 15.3.2.1 Company Overview 15.3.2.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.2.3 Financials 15.3.2.4 SWOT Analysis 15.3.3 GardaWorld Corporation 15.3.3.1 Company Overview 15.3.3.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.4 Lemuir Group 15.3.4.1 Company Overview 15.3.4.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.5 Loomis 15.3.5.1 Company Overview 15.3.5.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.5.3 Financials 15.3.6 Maltacourt Ltd 15.3.6.1 Company Overview 15.3.6.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.7 PlanITROI Inc 15.3.7.1 Company Overview 15.3.7.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.8 Prosegur Cash (Prosegur Compania de Seguridad, S.A) 15.3.8.1 Company Overview 15.3.8.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.8.3 Financials 15.3.9 Secure Logistics LLC. 15.3.9.1 Company Overview 15.3.9.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.10 Securitas AB 15.3.10.1 Company Overview 15.3.10.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.10.3 Financials 15.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis 15.3.11 Serco Group plc 15.3.11.1 Company Overview 15.3.11.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.11.3 Financials 15.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis 15.3.12 SIS Group Enterprise 15.3.12.1 Company Overview 15.3.12.2 Product Portfolio 15.3.12.3 Financials For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/36jymf Attachment Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Radiology Positioning Aids Market (2022-2027) by Type, Products, End-Users, and Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Radiology Positioning Aids Market is estimated to be USD 302.12 Mn in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 425.72 Mn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 7.1% Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the 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 growth and reducing risks. Company Profiles The report provides a detailed analysis of the competitors in the market. It covers the financial performance analysis for 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 AADCO Medical, Inc., Abecca Healthcare, Bionix, LLC, CIVCO Radiotherapy, Clear Image Devices LLC, Elekta AB, IZI Medical Products, Klarity Medical, Varian Medical Systems, Inc. , Vertec Ltd., Z&Z Medical, Inc., etc. Countries Studied America (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Rest of Americas) Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Rest of Europe) Middle-East and Africa (Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Rest of MEA) Asia-Pacific (Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, Rest of Asia-Pacific) Competitive Quadrant The report includes Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc. Ansoff Analysis The report presents a detailed Ansoff matrix analysis for the Global Radiology Positioning Aids Market. Ansoff Matrix, also known as the 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 analyst analyses the Global Radiology Positioning Aids 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 Radiology Positioning Aids 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 a competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's competitive positioning tool. Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 191 Forecast Period 2022 - 2027 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2022 $302.12 Million Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2027 $425.72 Million Compound Annual Growth Rate 7.1% Regions Covered Global Key Topics Covered: 1 Report Description 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Market Dynamics 4.1 Drivers 4.1.1 Increasing Number of Fracture Cases 4.1.2 Increased Usage of Radiology Devices in the Diagnosis 4.2 Restraints 4.2.1 Growing Adoption of POC Diagnosis 4.3 Opportunities 4.3.1 Development of New Devices with Different Shapes and Materials 4.4 Challenges 4.4.1 Strict Reimbursement Policies 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 5.5 PESTLE Analysis 6 Global Radiology Positioning Aids Market, By Type 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Wedge X-ray Positioning Devices 6.3 Block X-ray Positioning Devices 7 Global Radiology Positioning Aids Market, By Products 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Head, Neck, and Brain Positioning Devices 7.3 Thorax and Breast Positioning Devices 7.4 Tables 7.5 Pediatric 8 Global Radiology Positioning Aids Market, By End-Users 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Hospitals 8.3 Diagnostic Imaging Centers 8.4 Ambulatory Surgical Centers 9 Americas' Radiology Positioning Aids Market 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Argentina 9.3 Brazil 9.4 Canada 9.5 Chile 9.6 Colombia 9.7 Mexico 9.8 Peru 9.9 United States 9.10 Rest of Americas 10 Europe's Radiology Positioning Aids Market 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Austria 10.3 Belgium 10.4 Denmark 10.5 Finland 10.6 France 10.7 Germany 10.8 Italy 10.9 Netherlands 10.10 Norway 10.11 Poland 10.12 Russia 10.13 Spain 10.14 Sweden 10.15 Switzerland 10.16 United Kingdom 10.17 Rest of Europe 11 Middle East and Africa's Radiology Positioning Aids Market 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Egypt 11.3 Israel 11.4 Qatar 11.5 Saudi Arabia 11.6 South Africa 11.7 United Arab Emirates 11.8 Rest of MEA 12 APAC's Radiology Positioning Aids Market 12.1 Introduction 12.2 Australia 12.3 Bangladesh 12.4 China 12.5 India 12.6 Indonesia 12.7 Japan 12.8 Malaysia 12.9 Philippines 12.10 Singapore 12.11 South Korea 12.12 Sri Lanka 12.13 Thailand 12.14 Taiwan 12.15 Rest of Asia-Pacific 13 Competitive Landscape 13.1 IGR Competitive Quadrant 13.2 Market Share Analysis 13.3 Strategic Initiatives 13.3.1 M&A and Investments 13.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations 13.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements 14 Company Profiles 14.1 AADCO Medical, Inc. 14.2 Abecca Healthcare 14.3 Bionix, LLC 14.4 CIVCO Radiotherapy 14.5 Clear Image Devices, LLC 14.6 Elekta AB 14.7 IZI Medical Products 14.8 Klarity Medical 14.9 Varian Medical Systems, Inc. 14.10 Vertec, Ltd. 14.11 Z&Z Medical, Inc. 15 Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fxb1rz Attachment Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Agriculture Equipment Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global agriculture equipment market size reached US$ 156.32 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 213.71 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 5.35% 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. Agriculture equipment is used for performing various tasks in farming, such as harvesting crops, spraying fields, seeding, tilling fields, breeding cows, and feeding livestock. It comprises mowers, backhoe, harrow, cultivator, rake, tractor, combine harvester, sprayers, chain saw, brush cutters, and sawmills. It enhances the efficiency and productivity of farming by minimizing human labor and reducing errors, physical shortcomings and wastage in agriculture. It assists in cultivating land by smoothing hillocks, filling in depressions and gullies, and removing deep-rooted weeds while preventing soil erosion. In addition, it reduces fodder area and enlarges crop area to produce food for human consumption. Agriculture Equipment Market Trends: At present, the growing awareness among farmers about the benefits of using agriculture equipment represents one of the key factors driving the market. Besides this, governments of several countries are promoting the usage of agriculture equipment by providing loan waiver schemes to farmers. They are also providing funds to farmers for adopting sustainable agriculture practices and enhancing productivity using machinery, which is contributing to the growth of the market. Moreover, the integration of technologically advanced agricultural robotics in farming, such as autonomous tractors and flying drones, to help farmers produce food at low costs is propelling the growth of the market. In addition, the growing demand for electric tractors to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions is offering a positive market outlook. Apart from this, key market players are extensively investing in research and development (R&D) activities to introduce self-propelled machines in farming. They are also focusing on various marketing strategies to expand their customer base. Additionally, the rising demand for enhanced machines with high-power to farm hard-to-access areas and handle a wide range of implements 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 AGCO Corporation, Agromaster Agricultural Machinery, Argo Tractors S.p.A., Bellota Agrisolutions, China National Machinery Industry Corporation, CLAAS KGaA mbH, CNH Industrial N.V., Deere & Company, Escorts Limited, Iseki & Co. Ltd., JC Bamford Excavators Ltd., Kubota Corporation, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited and SDF Group. Key Questions Answered in This Report: How has the global agriculture equipment market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global agriculture equipment market? What are the key regional markets? What is the breakup of the market based on the equipment type? What is the breakup of the market based on the application? What is the breakup of the market based on the sales channel? What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry? What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry? What is the structure of the global agriculture equipment market and who are the key players? What is the degree of competition in the industry? Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 143 Forecast Period 2021 - 2027 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2021 $156.32 Billion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2027 $213.71 Billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 5.3% Regions Covered Global Key Topics Covered: 1 Preface 2 Scope and Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 4.1 Overview 4.2 Key Industry Trends 5 Global Agriculture Equipment Market 5.1 Market Overview 5.2 Market Performance 5.3 Impact of COVID-19 5.4 Market Forecast 6 Market Breakup by Equipment Type 6.1 Agriculture Tractor 6.1.1 Market Trends 6.1.2 Market Forecast 6.2 Harvesting Equipment 6.2.1 Market Trends 6.2.2 Market Forecast 6.3 Irrigation and Crop Processing Equipment 6.3.1 Market Trends 6.3.2 Market Forecast 6.4 Agriculture Spraying and Handling Equipment 6.4.1 Market Trends 6.4.2 Market Forecast 6.5 Soil Preparation and Cultivation Equipment 6.5.1 Market Trends 6.5.2 Market Forecast 6.6 Others 6.6.1 Market Trends 6.6.2 Market Forecast 7 Market Breakup by Application 7.1 Land Development 7.1.1 Market Trends 7.1.2 Market Forecast 7.2 Threshing and Harvesting 7.2.1 Market Trends 7.2.2 Market Forecast 7.3 Plant Protection 7.3.1 Market Trends 7.3.2 Market Forecast 7.4 After Agro Processing 7.4.1 Market Trends 7.4.2 Market Forecast 8 Market Breakup by Sales Channel 8.1 Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) 8.1.1 Market Trends 8.1.2 Market Forecast 8.2 Aftermarket 8.2.1 Market Trends 8.2.2 Market Forecast 9 Market Breakup by Region 10 SWOT Analysis 11 Value Chain Analysis 12 Porters Five Forces Analysis 13 Price Analysis 14 Competitive Landscape 14.1 Market Structure 14.2 Key Players 14.3 Profiles of Key Players 14.3.1 AGCO Corporation 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 Agromaster Agricultural Machinery 14.3.2.1 Company Overview 14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.3 Argo Tractors S.p.A. 14.3.3.1 Company Overview 14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.4 Bellota Agrisolutions 14.3.4.1 Company Overview 14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.5 China National Machinery Industry Corporation 14.3.5.1 Company Overview 14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.6 CLAAS KGaA mbH 14.3.6.1 Company Overview 14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.7 CNH Industrial N.V. 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 Deere & Company 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 Escorts Limited 14.3.9.1 Company Overview 14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.9.3 Financials 14.3.10 Iseki & Co. Ltd. 14.3.10.1 Company Overview 14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.10.3 Financials 14.3.11 JC Bamford Excavators Ltd. 14.3.11.1 Company Overview 14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.12 Kubota Corporation 14.3.12.1 Company Overview 14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.12.3 Financials 14.3.12.4 SWOT Analysis 14.3.13 Mahindra & Mahindra Limited 14.3.13.1 Company Overview 14.3.13.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.14 SDF Group 14.3.14.1 Company Overview 14.3.14.2 Product Portfolio For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/kywve8 Attachment Portland, OR , Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the global IoT in telecom services market was estimated at $17.4 billion in 2021 and is expected to hit $254.2 billion by 2031, registering a CAGR of 31.1% from 2022 to 2031. The report provides a detailed analysis of the top investment pockets, top winning strategies, drivers & opportunities, market size & estimations, competitive landscape, and evolving market trends. The market study is a helpful source of information for the frontrunners, new entrants, investors, and shareholders in crafting strategies for the future and heightening their position in the market. Download Free Sample Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/32195 Report coverage & details: Forecast Period 20222031 Base Year 2021 Market Size in 2021 $17.4 Billion Market Size in 2031 $254.2 Billion CAGR 31.1% No. of Pages in Report 260 Segments Covered Connectivity, Network Management Solution, Service Type, Application, and Region. Drivers Surge in adoption of IoT devices and new technological advancements Growing preference toward gathering data in real-time Restraints Lack of efficiency in terms of spectrum allocation Dearth of knowledge about using IoT enabled smart cameras Opportunities Rising incorporation of blockchain technology Covid-19 scenario- During the pandemic, IoT proved to be highly beneficial for the telecom sector to enable access from a remote location, which impacted the global IoT in telecom services market positively. Apart from helping in cost reduction, it also gave way to smart development. This drift has continued post-pandemic as well. The global IoT in telecom services market is analyzed across Connectivity, Network Management Solution, Service Type, Application, and Region. The report takes in an exhaustive analysis of the segments and their sub-segments with the help of tabular and graphical representation. Investors and market players can benefit from the breakdown and devise stratagems based on the highest revenue-generating and fastest-growing segments stated in the report. By connectivity, the cellular technology segment held more than one-third of the global IoT in telecom services market revenue in 2021, and is expected to dominate by 2031. The NB-IoT segment, however, would manifest the fastest CAGR of 33.5% throughout the forecast period. The LPWAN and RF-Based segments are also assessed through the study. By network management solution, the network performance monitoring and optimization segment held more than one-third of the global IoT in telecom services market share in 2021, and is expected to dominate by 2031. The network security management segment, on the other hand, would cite the fastest CAGR of 32.7% throughout the forecast period. The network traffic management segment is also analyzed through the report. Purchase Inquiry: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/32195 By service type, the business consulting services segment contributed to nearly one-third of the global IoT in telecom services market share in 2021, and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. The IoT billing and subscription management segment, on the other hand, would manifest the fastest CAGR of 33.7% during the forecast period. The others segment is also assessed through the study. The other segments assessed through the report include installation and integration services, devices and application management solution, and M2M billing management. By application, the smart building and home automation segment contributed to more than one-fifth of the global IoT in telecom services market revenue in 2021, and is projected to rule the roost throughout the forecast period. Simultaneously, the smart healthcare segment would portray the fastest CAGR of 33.9% from 2022 to 2031. The other segments assessed through the report include capillary network management, industrial manufacturing & automation, vehicle telematics, and energy and utilities. Based on region, the market across North America generated more than one-third of the global IoT in telecom services market share in 2021, and is anticipated to retain the lions share by 2031. The Asia-Pacific region, on the other hand, would portray the fastest CAGR of 35.0% during the forecast period. The other provinces analyzed through the report include LAMEA and Europe. The key market players analyzed in the global IoT in telecom services market report include Sierra Wireless, LM Ericsson Telephone Company, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone Idea Ltd, MediaTek Inc, telstra, Sequans Communications, puresoftware ltd., and TELUS Corporation. These market players have incorporated several strategies including partnership, expansion, collaboration, joint ventures, and others to highlight their prowess in the industry. The report is helpful in formulating the business performance and developments by the top players. Buy this Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/checkout-final/ffa26adb1fc730280c6ac08b204bbcc8 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. Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Canned Food Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global canned food market reached a value of US$ 93.37 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach a value of US$ 114.38 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 3.44% 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. Canning is a process of preserving food products, such as seafood, meats, fruits, vegetables, sweets and desserts, soups and sauces, beans, lentils, and pasta, by increasing their overall shelf life. It relies on processing food, sealing processed food into cans, and heating cans to kill harmful bacteria. It preserves nutrients of food products and prevents decomposition due to external factors like sunlight and air. At present, there is a rise in the consumption of canned food products across the globe due to the busy lifestyle of individuals. Canned Food Market Trends: The growing demand for canned food among consumers represents one of the key factors driving the market. Moreover, there is a rise in the number of working individuals, which is increasing the consumption of ready-to-eat (RTE) and convenient food items. This, along with the escalating demand for healthy food that is rich in proteins, functional fibers, vitamins, and omega-3 fatty acids, is propelling the growth of the market across the globe. In addition, there is a surge in the number of large retail formats, such as hypermarkets and supermarkets around the world. This, coupled with the wide availability of canned food through online stores, is offering lucrative growth opportunities to end-users and industry investors. Besides this, key market players are focusing on offering organic canned food products due to rising health concerns among people. In line with this, they are providing product variants with high quality, taste, and nutritional value, which is positively influencing the market. Additionally, the increasing demand for canned fish products among fitness-conscious individuals due to several health benefits of fish and seafood is strengthening the market growth. Competitive Landscape: The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Ayam Sarl, Bonduelle, Campbell Soup Company, CHB Group, Danish Crown AmbA, Del Monte Foods Inc., JBS S.A., Nestle S.A, Princes Foods (Mitsubishi Corporation), Thai Union Group PCL, The Bolton Group and The Kraft Heinz Company. Key Questions Answered in This Report: How has the global canned food market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global canned food 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 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 canned food 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 Canned Food 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 Canned Meat and Seafood 6.1.1 Market Trends 6.1.2 Market Forecast 6.2 Canned Fruit and Vegetables 6.2.1 Market Trends 6.2.2 Market Forecast 6.3 Canned Ready Meals 6.3.1 Market Trends 6.3.2 Market Forecast 6.4 Others 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 Convenience Stores 8.2.1 Market Trends 8.2.2 Market Forecast 8.3 E-commerce 8.3.1 Market Trends 8.3.2 Market Forecast 8.4 Others 8.4.1 Market Trends 8.4.2 Market Forecast 9 Market Breakup by Region 10 SWOT Analysis 11 Value Chain Analysis 12 Porters Five Forces Analysis 13 Price Analysis 14 Competitive Landscape 14.1 Market Structure 14.2 Key Players 14.3 Profiles of Key Players 14.3.1 Ayam Sarl 14.3.1.1 Company Overview 14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.2 Bonduelle 14.3.2.1 Company Overview 14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.3 Campbell Soup Company 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 CHB Group 14.3.4.1 Company Overview 14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.5 Danish Crown AmbA 14.3.5.1 Company Overview 14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.6 Del Monte Foods Inc. 14.3.6.1 Company Overview 14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.7 JBS S.A. 14.3.7.1 Company Overview 14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.7.3 Financials 14.3.8 Nestle S.A 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 Princes Foods (Mitsubishi Corporation) 14.3.9.1 Company Overview 14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.10 Thai Union Group PCL 14.3.10.1 Company Overview 14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.10.3 Financials 14.3.11 The Bolton Group 14.3.11.1 Company Overview 14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.12 The Kraft Heinz Company 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/2z538u Attachment Pune, India, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global Process Mining Software Market size was valued at USD 627.0 million in 2021. The market is projected to grow from USD 933.1 million in 2022 to USD 15,546.4 million by 2029, exhibiting a CAGR of 49.5% during the forecast period. Increasing Application of Virtual Technology Across Numerous Sectors to Boost Growth. This information is provided by Fortune Business Insights, in its report, titled Process Mining Software Market Forecast, 2023-2029. Key Industry Development- Celonis GmbH teamed up with Infosys Limited to provide ERP upgrade and process optimization services. The companies will work together to provide digital assistance for clients looking to scale SaaS applications. Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/process-mining-software-market-104792 Report Scope & Segmentation Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2022 to 2029 Forecast Period 2022 to 2029 CAGR 49.5% 2029 Value Projection USD 15,546.4 Million Base Year 2021 Process Mining Software Market Size in 2021 USD 627.0 Million Historical Data for 2018 to 2020 No. of Pages 140 Segments covered Type, Enterprise Size, End-user and Geography Process Mining Software Market Growth Drivers Implementation of AI to Drive Demand for Process Mining Software Key Takeaways Software businesses are investing in AI and PMS. This integration provides real-time analysis and more opportunities for companies to enhance their operational capabilities. According to the Accenture Process Reimagined Report 2018, 88% of businesses that used machine learning in their business processes saw a 200% improvement. Growing Demand for Quick Insights to Drive Cloud-based Software Segment Process Mining Software Market Size in Europe was USD 2.72 Billion in 2021. Large enterprises were the early adopters of the software and are expected to gain maximum revenue share during the forecast 2023-2029 Browse Complete Report Details: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/process-mining-software-market-104792 Drivers & Restraints- Implementation of AI to Drive Demand for Process Mining Software Artificial intelligence and process mining are being pursued by software firms. This integration enables real-time analysis and gives businesses more opportunities to improve their operational capabilities. Machine learning and deep learning are two AI techniques that provide a variety of advantages such as larger datasets, business intelligence, and richer event logs. According to Accenture's Process Reimagined report from 2018, 88% of businesses that used machine learning in their business processes saw a 200% improvement. In addition, combining AI with process mining is expected to improve customer service and increase corporate revenues. The software collects personal information about the user, putting their privacy at risk. It lacks the user's data safety and security, which may hamper the process mining software market growth. Segmentation- By Type, Growing Demand for Quick Insights to Drive Process Mining Software Market On the basis of type, the market is bifurcated into cloud-based and on-premises. Cloud-based is expected to gain the most market share during the forecast period and grow the fastest. Cloud-based process mining software is in high demand due to increasing adoption of cloud technologies in industries. By Enterprise Size, Operation Optimization is Available in Large Enterprises The market has been studied for large enterprises and small & medium enterprises based on enterprise size. Large enterprises were among the first to use the software and are expected to account for the lion's share of revenue during the forecast period. Small & medium-sized businesses are expected to grow rapidly due to their low cost and excellent capabilities. By End-user, High Emphasis on Automation to Boost Software Adoption in BFSI Based on end-user, the process mining software market is categorized into BFSI, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, IT & telecommunication, logistics & transportation, and others (energy & utilities and others) The BFSI industry is expected to gain the greatest share of the market during the forecast period. The growing use of automation and a large client base will most likely surge the demand for process mining software in the BFSI industry. During the forecast period, the healthcare industry is expected to grow exponentially. The growing popularity of smart and wearable medical devices increases the demand for software that can provide related insights. Geographically, the market is classified into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, South America, and the Middle East & Africa. Have Any Query? Ask Our Experts: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/process-mining-software-market-104792 Regional Insights- Europe to Dominate the Global Market Share During the forecast period, the process mining software market share in Europe is expected to dominate the global market. The rapidly expanding digital transformation across industries is surging the demand for software in European countries. The market in North America is expected to grow exponentially during the forecast period, owing to an increase in demand for advanced technologies to optimize business processes. The increasing use of automation fuels the demand for software that can handle massive amounts of data. Due to increased business competition in the region, Asia Pacific is expected to grow steadily during the forecast period. With increasing automation, China, Japan, and South Korea show significant potential for the process mining automation market in the coming years. Competitive Landscape Major Players Are Collaborating and Forming Partnerships to Expand their Businesses Companies are investing in advanced technology integration to improve the efficiency and capabilities of the software. They collaborate, acquire, and partner with the service industry to develop innovative digital transformation solutions for businesses. List of Key Players Profiled in Process Mining Software Market Report: UiPath (U.S.) Celonis GmbH (Germany) Exeura (Italy) Fluxicon BV (Netherlands) Fujitsu Ltd. (Japan) Hyland Software, Inc. (U.S.) Minit (Slovakia) QPR Software Plc (Finland) Software AG (Germany) ABBYY Solutions Ltd. (U.S.) Access Full Report Process Mining Software Market https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/104792 Major Table of Contents: North America Process Mining Software Market Size Estimates and Forecasts, By Segments, 2018-2029 Key Findings By Type (USD) Cloud-based On-premise By End User (USD) BFSI Healthcare Retail Manufacturing IT and Telecommunication Logistics and Transportation Others By Enterprise Size (USD) Large Enterprises Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) By Country (USD) United States Canada Mexico South America Process Mining Software Market Size Estimates and Forecasts, By Segments, 2018-2029 Key Findings By Type (USD) Cloud-based On-premise By End User (USD) BFSI Healthcare Retail Manufacturing IT and Telecommunication Logistics and Transportation Others By Enterprise Size (USD) Large Enterprises Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) By Country (USD) Brazil Argentina Rest of South America Europe Process Mining Software Market Size Estimates and Forecasts, By Segments, 2018-2029 Key Findings By Type (USD) Cloud-based On-premise By End User (USD) BFSI Healthcare Retail Manufacturing IT and Telecommunication Logistics and Transportation Others By Enterprise Size (USD) Large Enterprises Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Related Reports: Artificial Intelligence [AI] Market Growth, Size, Share Forecast 2029 Machine Learning Market Size, Share, Growth, Report Analysis Retail Analytics Market Size, Share, Trends, Forecast 2023-2029 Cloud Computing Market Size, Share, Growth, Report Analysis 2029 LED Lighting Market Size, Share, Trends, Growth 2029 FAQs How big is the process mining software market? The global process mining software market size was estimated at USD 627.0 million in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 933.1 million in 2022. Which region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR? North America is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them to address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. US: +1 424 253 0390 UK: +44 2071 939123 APAC: +91 744 740 1245 JERSEY CITY, N.J., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Angelo Stracquatanio, CEO and Co-founder of Apprentice.io, a technology company that helps pharma manufacturers get medicine to patients faster, was recently welcomed as a member of the Forbes Technology Council. The Council committee invited Angelo to join the elite group of tech leaders based on the depth and diversity of his experience and knowledge as a senior-level technology executive. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, along with personal and professional achievements and honors. "We are honored to welcome Angelo Stracquatanio into the community," said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Technology Council. "Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world." Angelo looks forward to driving the adoption of modern technology in life sciences manufacturing by sharing his deep industry insights featured in Forbes articles and collaborating with fellow Council leaders on expert panels. Despite growing economic uncertainty, Apprentice closed out a stellar 2022 with 3.4x year-over-year revenue growth and top rankings on both the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies and Deloitte Fast 500 lists. Deployed at over 230 manufacturing sites worldwide, the company's Tempo Manufacturing Cloud is the first cloud-native manufacturing system for the life science industry that replaces time-consuming paper processes and outdated on-premise legacy systems that require extensive IT support. Tempo's packages include Augmented Work Instructions, a Manufacturing Execution System, and a Laboratory Execution System, all of which are designed to meet the changing demands of today's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. By offering scalable drug recipe authoring, greater quality control, and cross-team collaboration, Tempo provides a singular platform for drug manufacturers to go from drug discovery to commercial manufacturing faster, without sacrificing quality. "Apprentice is changing the way therapeutics are manufactured across the globe, said Stracquatanio. "We're delivering an end-to-end platform that pharma manufacturers of all lifecycle stages can use to accelerate their drug production processes. From a technology perspective, our cloud-native, mobile-first approach is groundbreaking for this industry. It allows us to better support complex manufacturing processes while empowering operators to execute using systems and devices that are modern and intuitive." Angelo looks forward to sharing his deep industry expertise further while on the Forbes Technology Council member. ABOUT FORBES COUNCILS Forbes Councils is a collective of invitation-only communities created in partnership with Forbes and the expert community builders who founded Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In Forbes Councils, exceptional business owners and leaders come together with the people and resources that can help them thrive. ABOUT APPRENTICE Apprentice helps life science manufacturers get treatments to patients faster by providing one platform to turn molecules into medicine. Our Tempo Manufacturing Cloud lets you scale up and out with unprecedented speed and accuracy. From preclinical benchtop to large-scale commercial manufacturing, Tempo keeps your global teams connected, empowered, and in sync. With $140M in funding, a 12x growth rate, and 512% net customer retention, Apprentice is a trusted partner to modernize your operations and change the way drugs are made in your facility. Learn how leading companies like Catalent, Synthego, and Bristol Myers Squibb are using Tempo to scale from drug discovery to patient delivery faster at www.apprentice.io. Contact Information: Kristen Kucks Director of Communications, Marketing kristen.kucks@apprentice.io Marie Forshaw VP, Marketing marie.forshaw@apprentice.io Related Images Image 1: Angelo Stracquatanio Angelo Stracquatanio, CEO & Co-founder, Apprentice.io is welcomed into the Forbes Tech Council This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Data Center Cooling Market - A Global and Regional Analysis: Focus on Application, Product, and Country - Analysis and Forecast, 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global data center cooling market accounted for $17.82 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.99% and reach $44.52 billion by 2027. The growth in the global data center cooling market is expected to be driven by the increasing number of data centers and government initiatives for energy-efficient data centers. The need to address the water scarcity issue has further resulted in the adoption of data center cooling technologies. The data center cooling market is in a growth phase. Cooling is a standard part of data center operations as servers constantly run 24/7, which increases the core temperature, which, if not controlled, can lead to a data center outage. Excess heat and humidity can damage appliances and equipment, triggering them to malfunction and stop functioning. Hence, the need of the hour is to accommodate innovative data center cooling systems in retrofits or newly built data centers. Data center cooling involves the collective equipment, tools, techniques, systems, and processes that ensure standard temperatures and humidity levels inside a data center facility. Therefore, a growing number of data centers are resulting in a boost in the utilization of data center cooling techniques High-performance workloads will continue to require more power per rack, which will, in turn, require more power and cooling. However, with the right cooling technology, businesses can save space in their data centers and lower their energy costs. For efficient data center operations, smart technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) is used, which assists in automatic cooling control of the facility. Additionally, AI could identify issues with cooling systems before they fail and cause costly shutdowns. For instance, Google keeps its data centers cool without human intervention. Key Market Players and Competition Synopsis The companies that are profiled have been selected based on inputs gathered from primary experts and analyzing the company's coverage, product portfolio, its market penetration. The top segment players who are leading include data center service providers, which capture around 43.3% of the presence in the market. Impact of COVID-19 The lockdowns due to the pandemic affected economies around the world. Data centers were also impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. As a result of the pandemic, it is anticipated that the global data center cooling market is expected to grow faster in the future due to the increasing requirements to bolster IT execution, flexibility, and security across the globe. Therefore, corporations and big technology companies are adopting sustainable data center cooling technologies and systems to meet increasing data storage requirements. Market Segmentation Application The IT and telecom segment is the dominating application segment. With the introduction of new technologies such as 5G, IoT, virtual and augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, the telecommunications industry is evolving to cater to huge data processing. As a result, telecom data centers are also transforming to handle high data volume and low latency needs. The banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) segment is expected to anticipate the highest growth rate due to being digitized, which involves utilizing the most cutting-edge technology, which will boost the data center usage, thereby augmenting the data center cooling solutions. Data Center Type The hyperscale segment is the dominating segment due to the demand for hyperscale data centers being driven by the need for more data and processing power. Solution The air cooling market segment is expected to dominate the global data center cooling market because the majority of data centers are old currently and still continue to use air conditioners and other air cooling systems. Additionally, the retrofit data centers also adopt air cooling technologies. However, liquid cooling is expected to witness the highest growth rate from 2022 to 2027 as it efficiently cools the data center area, which results in less usage of fans leading to better acoustics. Air Cooling Based on air cooling, the air conditioner segment dominates the data center cooling market as it supports keeping servers cool, enhancing airflow between the aisles, treating hot air from the servers, and keeping humidity at a suitable level. Air handling units witness the second-highest growth rate after air conditioners due to their ability to maintain the mandatory environmental conditions to guarantee optimal performance and reliability of the information technology equipment (ITE) hardware. Liquid Cooling Based on liquid cooling, the indirect segment is expected to dominate the global data center cooling market due to the fact that it is a highly efficient way to minimize energy usage while maximizing chilling capabilities. Moreover, the direct segment witnesses a higher growth rate due to emerging cooling solutions such as direct-to-chip and immersion. Indirect Based on indirect, the in-row segment dominates the data center cooling market as it can be used for small and highly densified data centers such as edge data centers. In-row cooling units implanted between the rows are standard for removing hot air generated from the back of rows and reducing air recirculation. Furthermore, it can directly impact energy costs and power usage. However, a higher growth rate can be anticipated for the in-rack segment as in-rack is the most precise cooling technology available, which operates in a closed relationship with the air conditioner. Direct In direct-to-chip cooling, the liquid coolant absorbs heat, evaporates into a vapor, and carries heat out of the IT equipment. Therefore, this is one of the most effective and efficient forms of heat removal from the data center components, as this system cools processors directly. Thus, the direct-to-chip segment captures a significant market share as compared to the immersion cooling segment, as the latter is an emerging technology that is expected to witness a considerable growth rate in the future. This is due to immersion cooling helping to reduce electricity consumption at a much larger scale than direct-to-chip cooling and giving a greater return on investment. Rack Density The medium rack density (5-9 kW) captures the significant market size of the global data center cooling market. This is because around 46% of the data centers have adopted medium rack density. However, the high rack density segment is booming as it achieves better space utilization, and the response time of system failure is reduced significantly. A high rack-density data center usually consumes more than 9 kW of power; hence, it needs better airflow management to ensure efficient cooling, driving the overall data center cooling market. Region North America is expected to have a massive demand for data center cooling technologies due to numerous data centers and the growing demand for innovative technologies and spending in the region. Key Metrics Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 311 Forecast Period 2022 - 2027 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2022 $20.31 Billion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2027 $44.52 Billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 17.0% Regions Covered Global Recent Developments in Global Data Center Cooling Market In September 2022, one of the most research-intensive universities in Europe, University College Dublin, received data center cooling infrastructure from Schneider Electric. The IT infrastructure at universities can benefit from the scalable, effective, and resilient cooling provided by Schneider Electric's Uniflair In-Row Direct Expansion (DX) cooling solution. In May 2022, the first commercial colocation provider in Asia, Digital Edge (Singapore) Holdings Pte Ltd., utilized StatePoint liquid cooling technology from Nortek Air Solutions, LLC, in its brand-new data center, NARRA1. To create the most energy and water-efficient data center in the nation, Digital Edge will utilize the sustainable cooling solution from Nortek Air Solutions, LLC In April 2022, as part of a restructuring program to realign its manufacturing operations, increase profitability, and boost global competitiveness, MODINE MANUFACTURING COMPANY announced the intended closure of three North American plants producing cooling packages, charge-air coolers, and oil coolers. In January 2022, Munters acquired EDPAC, an Irish company that makes air handling and cooling systems for data centers. Through the acquisition, Munters, a pioneer in energy-efficient data center cooling solutions in North America, expanded into Europe. Some of the prominent names established in this market are: ALFA LAVAL Asetek, Inc Black Box Condair Group COOLIT SYSTEMS Danfoss Delta Power Solutions EVAPCO, Inc FUJITSU MODINE MANUFACTURING COMPANY Munters Nortek Air Solutions, LLC Rittal GmbH & Co. KG Schneider Electric STULZ GMBH Submer Trane Vertiv Group Corp. Business Dynamics Trends Increased Data Requirements Increasing Rack Power Density - New Data Center Reality 5G Services to Drive Exponential Growth in Data Centers COVID-19 Implications for Data Centers Growing Demand for Environment-Friendly Cooling Systems Carbon Neutrality Utilization of Renewable Energies Green Initiatives by Government Body Ecosystem and Ongoing Programs Associations and Consortiums Government Programs and Initiatives Landscape Europe North America Asia-Pacific China Rest-of-the-World Business Drivers High-Efficient Cooling Systems Emerging Technologies Promote Cost-Effectiveness AI-Assisted Automatic Cooling Control Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) Optimization with Economic Cooling Solutions Increasing Number of Data Centers and Spendings Thermal Energy Recovery Conversion from Data Centers Water Usage Effectiveness Driving Adoption of Alternate Cooling Solutions Retrofitting to a Free Cooling Data Center Business Challenges High Investment Costs for Non-Conventional Cooling Systems Technical Challenges to Cooling Systems Air and Free Cooling Systems Adaption Complexities Reliability Limitations with Immersion Liquid Cooling Lack of Synergy between Hardware and Cooling Vendors Infrastructure Development Gap between End Users and Data Centers Business Opportunities Growing Emphasis for Retrofit Data Center Data Center Infrastructure Management for Power Management Increasing Number of Distributed or Edge Data Centers Developing Innovative Cooling Technologies Market Strategies and Developments Business Strategies Product Launches Business Expansions Corporate Strategies Mergers and Acquisitions Partnerships, Collaborations, and Joint Ventures Key Start-Ups in the Global Data Center Cooling Market For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rfhay8 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. Attachment U.S. President Joe Biden shakes hands with Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., Jan. 13. AFP-Yonhap U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held "very productive" talks last week on semiconductor-related export controls on China, White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said on Tuesday. The Biden administration in October published a sweeping set of export controls, including measures tightly restricting Chinese access to U.S. chipmaking technology, as part of an effort to slow Beijing's technological and military advances. But it has not yet convinced key allies to put in place similar equipment curbs seen as essential to making the restrictions effective, since Japanese and Dutch firms Tokyo Electron and ASML Holding NV also are top producers of chipmaking equipment. Campbell told a think-tank event that Biden had broached the issue with Kishida during their meeting on Friday in Washington, where the two leaders hailed their countries' long-standing alliance amid concern about security threats from Beijing. "I think it would be fair to say that when President Biden raised the issue with Prime Minister Kishida, he indicated that he was studying it carefully and that he would be responding appropriately," Campbell told the Center for Strategic and International Studies event. "And I think we are satisfied and believe that the consultations have been very productive." Japan's Ambassador to the United States, Koji Tomita, said at the same event it was a complicated issue that required coordination with industry, but that both Japan and the United States expected progress in coming weeks. Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivers remarks during a visit with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other U.S. and Japanese officials to NASA headquarters in Washington, Jan. 13. Reuters-Yonhap DENVER, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CryoMass Technologies Inc. (the Company or CryoMass) (OTCQX: CRYM) is pleased to announce the signing of a multi-state license agreement with California-based RedTape Core Partners LLC (RedTape) following the successful market launch of the Companys patented cryogenic Trichrome Separation system. On December 12th, 2022, CryoMass delivered the Companys first Trichome Separation unit to RedTapes Coastal Refinement Solutions cannabis extraction and processing center in Monterrey, California, and continued intensive beta testing of its high-volume, continuous throughput, biomass processing system. The results of this testing have demonstrated that the patented CryoMass process is truly revolutionary. CryoMass' Trichome Separation system installation in California. CryoMass patented solventless liquid nitrogen processing system enables processors to substantially reduce the number of steps in the pre- and post-extraction processes, which translates into important efficiencies and cost savings of up to 30-40%. The process results in an output of superior purity that captures practically all the active compounds present in the biomass at the time of harvest. Up to now, there has not been any viable process that have performed extraction directly from trichomes on a commercial scale because the technology to separate trichomes from biomass on a large scale simply did not exist. We are identifying post-processing methods of extraction from trichomes that have never been used or even been tested by the industry, that are much more efficient and less costly than existing extraction methods. Teams at both RedTape and CryoMass have been busy focusing on identifying and testing the best post-processing procedures to get the separated trichomes to a final product more efficiently and the results we are seeing are extremely encouraging. Under the terms of a multi-state license agreement, RedTape agreed on the terms to license the patented process and deploy 12 Trichome Separation systems for a total upfront investment of US$10.2 million payable in installments to CryoMass throughout 2023. CryoMass has agreed to deliver the units to RedTape according to a schedule that extends over 24 months. In addition to the installments, RedTape will pay CryoMass 50% of all net revenue generated by the units over the life of the agreement. The license agreement grants RedTape the exclusive right, subject to agreed-upon distribution and licensing milestones, to distribute the Trichome Separation units and develop the hemp and cannabis processing and extraction markets with CryoMass in states where RedTape has extensive affiliate business operations and alliances. The five states covered by the agreement are California, New York, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania. CryoMass Director and CEO Christian Noel stated, "Over the course of the past several months, we have taken important steps to improve the operational efficiency of our technology. Although the decision caused delays in our initially forecasted product release timeline, we are now confident our long-term manufacturing capabilities will prove to be resistant to supply chain delays and disruptions. This should translate into a more controllable production environment thats scalable to market demand." Noel added, "RedTape was selected for their detailed understanding of the CryoMass process and their ability to convey their understanding to other processing facilities in their vast network of business alliances within these key states. RedTapes Monterrey-based team at Coastal Refinement Solutions possesses tremendous processing and extraction expertise that should prove to be extremely valuable for us both in terms of advancing and fine-tuning our technology and in rapidly expanding our US market licensing network. We are extremely optimistic about what lies ahead for us in 2023 and beyond. We are now ready." RedTape Director and CEO Michael Tanzer stated, This technology is a prime example of invaluable intellectual property developed within the cannabis industry that stands to substantially benefit other consumers and markets. CryoMass process accomplishes an extremely difficult feat of separating a tiny fragile trichome from a fresh wet flower at scale. We are honored to work alongside CryoMass sophisticated executive and engineering teams to help further advance this revolutionary process by making this technology available to farmers and processors throughout the United States. We couldnt be more excited about this partnership because when a group of this many good people come together you know something great is about to happen! About RedTape RedTape Core Partners LLC develops, accelerates and invests in startups in the US Cannabis industry. The companys vertically integrated portfolio consists of licensed manufacturing and retail operations, as well as proprietary software and hardware companies that work synergistically as a supply chain. The RedTape ecosystem utilizes WebJoint's ecommerce software to power its delivery service Lakeside Remedys which is the largest retailer of its brand CaliStripe Concentrates that are stored in Curidor's climate-controlled systems to preserve terpene content. RedTapes ecosystem has an annual gross market value that is more than $100 million across 500 000+ consumers throughout California, New York, New Mexico, Michigan, Massachusetts and Utah. About CryoMass CryoMass Technologies Inc. designs, manufactures and licenses field-mobile equipment for the handling of harvested cannabis, hemp and other high-value plant material. The company owns patented technology that utilizes liquid nitrogen to fully separate, collect and protect the high-value compounds from the harvested plant. Building on that technology, the company has designed and built its first Trichome Separation unit. CryoMass patented liquid nitrogen Trichome Separation system is optimized for the rapid capture of fully intact cannabis and hemp trichomes, as well as terpenes. The system empowers processors to operate more efficiently by reducing the number of steps in the pre- and post-extraction processes which translates into important cost savings. The process results in a purity processed end product that captures practically all the active compounds present in the biomass at the time of harvest. The resulting CryoSift (trichomes) can be warehoused for extended periods, or further processed into consumer products. The company believes that efficiencies delivered by the system will trigger industry-wide changes in the handling and processing of harvested cannabis and hemp. It also is exploring the application of the underlying technology to a broad range of industries that handle high-value materials that could benefit from precision capture methods. The common stock of CryoMass Technologies Inc. trades on the OTC QX market under the symbol CRYM. For further information, please contact the Company by email at investors@cryomass.com or by telephone at 303-222-8092. This press release is not an offer of securities, or a solicitation for purchase, subscription or sale of securities in the United States of America or in any other jurisdiction in which it would be unlawful to do so. Forward-looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including risk factors identified in the Company's SEC filings, and which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, changes in the regulatory environment affecting the sale and use of cannabis or hemp products and of other, potential lines of businesses that the Company will consider entering at a given time, demand for the Company's products, internal funding and the financial condition of the Company, product roll-out, competition, our dependence upon our commercial partners, variations in the global commodities markets and other commercial matters involving the Company, its products and the markets in which the Company operates or seeks to enter, as well as general economic conditions. The forward-looking statements in this press release are made only as of the date hereof, and unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Caution Regarding Cannabis Operations in the United States Investors should note that there are significant legal restrictions and regulations that govern the cannabis industry in the United States. Marijuana, as defined in the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, remains a Schedule I drug under the respective act, making it illegal under federal law in the U.S. to, among other things, cultivate, distribute or possess cannabis. Financial transactions involving proceeds generated by, or intended to promote, cannabis-related business activities in the U.S. may form the basis for prosecution under applicable U.S. federal money laundering legislation. Please carefully review the Company's SEC filings with respect to related risk factor. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2125aa9e-12ff-49b0-bbf7-153f99a4ef97 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c4c35eb6-d4b1-43d8-94fe-b8e4f14bba73 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/37a28391-b756-453c-b4b4-38e90f7b7c10 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/78342262-5e49-436d-83e5-38771049db1d SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH ) ("GBT or the Company), is pleased to provide an update about its Intellectual Properties (IP) portfolio: In April 2020, GBT was forced to make the decision of changing the Companys direction by developing a portfolio of intellectual property within the area of microchips technology and design*). The years 2019 and 2020 were compounded with recuring legal issues and COVID-19 restrictions creating extremely difficult times and challenges. GBT focused on its core competency in the area of Research & Development (R&D) creating an IP portfolio combined of patents, trade secrets and prototypes further defining GBTs new mission. GBT is now developing IP in areas which will leverage its competencies and experience with the goal of diversifying in various fast-growing semiconductor industries in todays leading, growing market segments. GBT currently holds 10 patents and has 25 submissions within in the following domains: tracking, 3-D Microchip Design (semiconductors), EDA Software Tools and subsets with, cyber security, ID, telehealth, AI, computer vision, IoT, mesh networks and sectors which it believes are in demand. The Company has been delivering a steady stream of new IPs for portfolio expansion developing new ideas and successful patents, over the past two years. In 2020, GBT set a milestone goal of 25 patents by the end of 2023, and it exceeded the original timeline already. The following graph will visualize the progress GBT has made on the IP side. 2020 2021 2022 GBT Technologies, Inc. Visual Progress Chart Tech IP, Prototypes and Patents from 20202022 Going forward, GBT will focus on expanding the families of various patents and concentrating on strategic potential partnerships with the goal of integrating these technologies into a broad marketplace, one that will potentially diversify the risk within these areas: Build a portfolio pipeline of IP related to microchip technology. Seek to actively introduce this new technology to strategic partners, large companies and VCs creating market opportunities. Using market diversification to create access to new fields and future growth. GBT Technology Inc IP Portfolio information About US GBT Technologies, Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) (GBT) (http://gbtti.com) is a development stage company which considers itself a native of Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Enabled Mobile Technology Platforms used to increase IC performance. GBT has assembled a team with extensive technology ability and is building an intellectual property portfolio consisting of many patents. GBTs mission, to license the technology and IP to synergetic partners in the areas of hardware and software. Once commercialized, it is GBTs goal to have a suite of products including smart microchips, AI, encryption, Blockchain, IC design, mobile security applications, database management protocols, with tracking and supporting cloud software (without the need for GPS). GBT envisions this system as a creation of a global mesh network using advanced nodes and super performing new generation IC technology. The core of the system will be its advanced microchip technology; technology that can be installed in any mobile or fixed device worldwide. GBTs vision is to produce this system as a low cost, secure, private-mesh-network between all enabled devices. Thus, providing shared processing, advanced mobile database management and sharing while using these enhanced mobile features as an alternative to traditional carrier services. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements because of various important factors as disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission located at their website (http://www.sec.gov). In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, governmental and public policy changes, the Companys ability to raise capital on acceptable terms, if at all, the Companys successful development of its products and the integration into its existing products and the commercial acceptance of the Companys products. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release. Contact: Mansour Khatib, CEO press@gopherprotocol.com *) As disclosed in the Companys Form 8-K Current Report filed March 2, 2020, and in subsequent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Discover Growth Fund, LLC (Discover) has asserted that it has sold all the Companys assets** including potentially the assets, or some of it discussed in this Press Release letter. The Company is pursuing various legal remedies challenging Discovers position that is has sold the Companys assets of which there is no guarantee the Company will be successful in such challenge. A graph accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/554f0144-058c-4716-9bc1-c669dde7d42d TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- We are advised by Labrador Uranium Inc. that journalists and other readers should disregard the news release, "Labrador Uranium Announces Grant of Stock Options" issued January 18th, 2023, over GlobeNewswire. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clarity Metals Corp. (Clarity or the Company) (CSE: CMET, OTC: CLGCF, FSE: 27G0) is pleased to report it has submitted a drill permit application after receiving positive preliminary resistivity results from a recently completed IP/Resistivity survey over a portion of the Lithium381 property (see Clarity news release dated January 17, 2023) (the Property) located in Quebec adjacent to Allkem Limiteds James Bay Lithium Property. The drill permit includes locations for 27 drill pads. The Company has begun planning a drilling program which will be further constrained as results of additional geophysical and remote sensing surveys are received. The drilling permit is laid out to test a target interpreted from preliminary results from a recently completed IP/Resistivity survey which identified a 1.5 km EW-oriented area of relative high resistivity values (Figure 1). James Rogers CEO of Clarity comments: We are please to be progressing our exploration efforts and to have filed a permit application that would enable us to drill test the recently identified resistivity target on the Lithium381 project. Figure 1 Preliminary resistivity results on Lithium381 Project and Allkem Limiteds 2008 IP Resistivity survey in the area of their open pit. Note the surveys are at different scales. The Lithium381 Property The Property is located in Northern Quebec, Canada, approximately 3 km from the James Bay Road and the service station at KM381 which provides infrastructure to the local area. The 21 mineral claims comprising the 1107 ha property are contiguous with Allkem Limiteds James Bay Lithium Property hosting a deposit with Indicated resources of 40.8 Mt @1.40% Li 2 O. The James Bay Lithium deposit is a lithium bearing pegmatite, which is slated to start construction in Q1 2023. (Source: Allkem Feasibility Study filed by Allkem on SEDAR on January 11, 2022). See Figure 2. The Property has not previously been explored for lithium bearing pegmatites but is underlain primarily by amphibolite facies metasedimentary and minor metavolcanic rocks of the Lower Eastmain Group of the Eastmain Greenstone belt in the northeastern part of the Superior Province; the same host rocks of the adjacent James Bay Lithium Deposit. Quebec has become a favourable jurisdiction for critical mineral exploration investment with its 2030 Plan for a Green Economy targeting a reduction in carbon emissions as well as its Plan for Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals (2020-2025) which includes commitments to share financial risk and plans to improve infrastructure for projects in Northern Quebec. Clarity recently entered into an option agreement to earn an undivided 50% right, title, ownership and beneficial interest of the Lithium381 Property from Genius Metals Inc., an arms length public company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) (See Clarity news release of Dec 7, 2022). Figure 2 Location of Lithium381 Project showing nearby properties and total pit outline on Allkems James Bay Lithium Project from the Allkem Feasibility Study. Qualified Person Mr. Rory Kutluoglu P. Geo., a member of the advisory board and a consultant of the Company, is a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects and has reviewed the technical information in this news release. About Clarity Clarity Metals Corp. is a Canadian mineral exploration project generator company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of precious and base metals projects. Claritys exploration mandate is global and focused on countries with established legal and regulatory systems supporting mining investment. The Company is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is listed on the CSE under the symbol CMET. Clarity recently entered into an option agreement to acquire 50% of the Lithium381 Project adjacent to Allkem Limiteds (Allkem) James Bay Lithium feasibility stage project. See Clarity news release dated December 7, 2022. The Company was also recently assigned an option to acquire 100% of the Fecteau project located in the prolific Abitibi gold belt adjacent to Osisko Minings Windfall project. See Clarity news release dated November 22, 2022. Additionally, Clarity has title on several early-stage projects in British Columbia and Newfoundland: Empirical Gold Copper Molybdenite Property (10,518 ha) Lillooet, B.C. Tyber Gold Copper Silver Property (928 ha) Southeast Vancouver Island, B.C. Gretna Green Gold Copper Silver Property (1,331 ha) - Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, B.C. Harp Lake Nickel Property (3,452 ha) Labrador, NL Eddies Cove MVT Property (450 ha) NW Newfoundland Hare Bay Nickel Property (750 ha) NW Newfoundland To learn more about Clarity Metals Corp. and its projects please visit www.claritygoldcorp.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD James Rogers Chief Executive Officer Tel: 1 (833) 387-7436 Email: info@claritygoldcorp.com Website: www.claritygoldcorp.com This news release contains forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding: the exploration program on the Property; targets that may be generated from the exploration program and the fact the Lithium381 property is a project with favourable underlying geology adjacent to Allkems world class lithium deposit and that it hosts the same rocks and geological structure. The forward-looking statements reflect managements current expectations based on information currently available and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements including: that the Property may not host any lithium at all or any commercially viable grades of lithium; that the Property may not host any lithium resources like Allkems adjacent property; that the Company may not complete the exploration or a drilling program on the Property as proposed; adverse market conditions; and other factors beyond the control of the parties. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, accordingly, undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to their inherent uncertainty. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include general market conditions and other factors beyond the control of the Company. The Company 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 applicable law. The Canadian Securities Exchange (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release. Images accompanying this announcement are available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e986cd7b-a004-4d5b-aa54-b5fe41e051ac https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/841108c7-cd44-4f8e-8cfe-92e727085ddc BOISE, Idaho, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PlexTrac, the penetration test reporting and collaboration platform making security teams more efficient and effective, today announced that cybersecurity industry leader Stuart (Stu) Solomon has joined the Board of Directors. Solomon brings nearly 20 years of industry experience to the Series B funded startup. Stu Solomon is the president of Recorded Future, the world's largest provider of intelligence. In this role, he is responsible for leading the intelligence research, analysis, sales and marketing, services, enterprise and product security, and client delivery functions. Prior to his current role, Solomon led the product, R&D, and strategy functions for Recorded Future. Of the appointment to PlexTrac's board, Solomon said, "PlexTrac is on an exciting trajectory and fulfilling a much-needed gap in the industry. What excites me most is that this is just the beginning. The continued evolution of the platform to hone in on tangible risk reduction through optimized workflows will be a game changer. I'm honored to lend my experience to their board to support their critical mission of helping cybersecurity professionals win the right security battles." Prior to joining Recorded Future, Solomon served as the chief technology officer, chief strategy officer and the executive vice president of Services for Optiv and held various senior leadership legal, security and risk roles at iSIGHT Partners and Bank of America, as well as spending time as an active duty Air Force officer. He is an advisor, board member and investor across the cybersecurity industry and currently a senior officer in the Air National Guard focused on cyber operations. Solomon holds a juris doctorate from Rutgers University School of Law and is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. "I am beyond excited to gain Stu as a member of the PlexTrac Board," said Dan DeCloss, founder and CEO of PlexTrac. "His experience at every level and aspect of the security industry makes him an invaluable asset as we work together to continue to achieve rapid growth." About PlexTrac, Inc. PlexTrac, Inc. is the premier penetration test reporting and proactive cybersecurity management platform driven by a mission to help teams win the right cybersecurity battles. PlexTrac makes security data aggregation, red and blue team reporting, purple team collaboration, and remediation tracking more effective and efficient so security teams can become more proactive and demonstrably improve security posture. To learn more, visit plextrac.com. ### Contact Information: Angie O'Hara Director of Marketing angie@plextrac.com (208) 867-5377 Related Images Image 1: PlexTrac Logo PlexTrac, Inc. logo This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment Collaborative study with Fox Chase Cancer Center Trial will assess the safety and efficacy of iadademstat in pulmonary and extrapulmonary NECs Part of a broad collaboration with The Cancer Epigenetics Institute (CEI) MADRID, Spain and BOSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Oryzon Genomics, S.A. (ISIN Code: ES0167733015, ORY), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging epigenetics to develop therapies in diseases with strong unmet medical need, announced today the enrollment of the first patient in a Phase II collaborative study with iadademstat in patients with relapsed/refractory high grade neuroendocrine carcinomas (NEC). This trial is conducted under a collaborative clinical research agreement entered between Oryzon and the Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC), under which FCCC will be conducting different collaborative combination clinical trials with iadademstat, with Oryzon providing funding, the drug and technical expertise. NET (NCT05420636) is an open-label basket study conducted by FCCC as the sponsor, with Dr. Namrata Vijayvergia, MD, Assistant Chief, Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, member of the Cancer Epigenetics Institute, and Nuclear Dynamics and Cancer program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, as the principal investigator. The trial will assess the safety and efficacy of iadademstat in combination with paclitaxel in patients with relapsed/refractory small cell lung cancer or extrapulmonary high grade NECs. Neuroendocrine neoplasms are rare and heterogeneous cancers arising from neuroendocrine cells, representing 0.5% of all newly diagnosed malignancies, with a prevalence of 100,000 cases in the US. 22-27% of NETs are pulmonary (i.e., small cell lung cancer, SCLC), and the remainder are extrapulmonary, with gastrointestinal tract as the most common presentation followed by genito-urinary tumors. Some of these cancers are poorly differentiated NECs, which are very aggressive. Patients often rapidly develop progressive disease after first line cytotoxic chemotherapy and lack clearly efficacious second line treatment options. Response rates for NECs and SCLC in second line are generally less than 5% and 20%, respectively, and survival is measured in months. Dr Douglas Faller, Oryzons Global Chief Medical Officer said: Relapsed and refractory NECs and Small Cell Lung Cancer carry an unfortunately dismal prognosis and represent a major unmet medical need in oncology. We are very pleased to be collaborating with Dr. Vijayvergia and her colleagues at FCCC, a center of excellence for research in both NECs and in epigenetics, to work towards improving the outlook for patients suffering from these diseases. Achieving First-Patient-In in the study is an important milestone in our plan to utilize our epigenetic therapeutic drug, iadademstat, in combination with selected other agents, as a new approach to the treatment of NECs, with the potential to provide meaningful benefit to these patients. Iadademstat is an orally active, highly potent and selective inhibitor of the epigenetic enzyme LSD1, currently under clinical development for the treatment of hematologic cancers and certain solid tumors. In a recently completed Phase IIa study (ALICE trial) in elder/unfit acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients sponsored by Oryzon, iadademstat demonstrated robust efficacy in combination with azacitidine, with 81% ORR in the evaluable patients, of which 64% were CR/CRi. Final data were presented as an oral communication at the 64th ASH annual conference (see here for more details). The company is now initiating an FDA-approved Phase Ib trial (FRIDA trial, NCT05546580) of iadademstat in combination with gilteritinib in FLT3-mutant relapsed/refractory AML patients and is preparing a new Phase Ib/II trial (STELLAR trial) of iadademstat in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors in SCLC. Iadademstat has orphan drug designation for SCLC in the US and for AML in the US and EU. About Oryzon Founded in 2000 in Barcelona, Spain, Oryzon (ISIN Code: ES0167733015) is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company considered as the European leader in epigenetics. Oryzon has one of the strongest portfolios in the field, with two LSD1 inhibitors, iadademstat and vafidemstat, in Phase II clinical trials, and other pipeline assets directed against other epigenetic targets. In addition, Oryzon has a strong platform for biomarker identification and target validation for a variety of malignant and neurological diseases. For more information, visit www.oryzon.com. About Iadademstat Iadademstat (ORY-1001) is a small oral molecule, which acts as a highly selective inhibitor of the epigenetic enzyme LSD1 and has a powerful differentiating effect in hematologic cancers (see Maes et al., Cancer Cell 2018 Mar 12; 33 (3): 495-511.e12.doi: 10.1016 / j.ccell.2018.02.002.). A FiM Phase I/IIa clinical trial with iadademstat in R/R AML patients demonstrated the safety and good tolerability of the drug and preliminary signs of antileukemic activity, including a CRi (see Salamero et al, J Clin Oncol, 2020, 38(36): 4260-4273. doi: 10.1200/JCO.19.03250). In a recently completed Phase IIa trial in elder 1L-AML patients (ALICE trial), iadademstat has shown encouraging safety and efficacy data in combination with azacitidine (see Salamero et al., ASH 2022 oral presentation). The company has obtained approval from the U.S. FDA for its IND for FRIDA, a Phase Ib trial of iadademstat plus gilteritinib in patients with relapsed/refractory AML with FLT3 mutations. Beyond hematological cancers, the inhibition of LSD1 has been proposed as a valid therapeutic approach in some solid tumors such as small cell lung cancer (SCLC), neuroendocrine tumors (NET), medulloblastoma and others. In a Phase IIa trial in combination with platinum/etoposide in second line ED-SCLC patients (CLEPSIDRA trial), preliminary activity and safety results have been reported (see Navarro et al., ESMO 2018 poster). Iadademstat is being evaluated in a collaborative Phase II basket study with the Fox Chase Cancer Center in combination with paclitaxel in R/R neuroendocrine carcinomas, and the company is preparing a new trial in combination in SCLC. Oryzon has also entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) to collaborate on potential further clinical development of iadademstat in different types of solid and hematological cancers. In total iadademstat has been dosed so far to more than 100 cancer patients in four clinical trials. Iadademstat has orphan drug designation for SCLC in the US and for AML in the US and EU. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This communication contains, or may contain, forward-looking information and statements about Oryzon, including financial projections and estimates and their underlying assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future operations, capital expenditures, synergies, products and services, and statements regarding future performance. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally identified by the words expects, anticipates, believes, intends, estimates and similar expressions. Although Oryzon believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors and holders of Oryzon shares are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Oryzon that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include those discussed or identified in the documents sent by Oryzon to the Spanish Comision Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), which are accessible to the public. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and have not been reviewed by the auditors of Oryzon. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they were made. All subsequent oral or written forward-looking statements attributable to Oryzon or any of its members, directors, officers, employees or any persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statement above. All forward-looking statements included herein are based on information available to Oryzon on the date hereof. Except as required by applicable law, Oryzon does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forwardlooking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release is not an offer of securities for sale in the United States or any other jurisdiction. Oryzons securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration. Any public offering of Oryzons securities to be made in the United States will be made by means of a prospectus that may be obtained from Oryzon or the selling security holder, as applicable, that will contain detailed information about Oryzon and management, as well as financial statements. WOODSTOCK, ONTARIO, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In new lithium-related news, Joshua Gold Resources Inc. (OTC Pink: JSHG) has acquired full ownership of a series of 30 mining claims south of Timmins, Ontario, Canada, comprising approximately 1200 acres of potential mineral resources. The company has named it Lithium Two, partly for its proximity to its Lithium One property, in which the company holds a 50% ownership stake. The claims, located in Northrup and Robin Townships, sit atop what is known to be a granite-rich area. This is important because lithium minerals (particularly Spodumene) occur in granite pegmatites. According to JSHGs Chief Geologist Fred Sharpley (QP) the 30 contiguous claims are underlain by granite, which requires prospecting and sampling for lithium. Lithium Two sits in the area of Gogama, Ontario, and shares a similar type of terrain where pegmatite outcrops containing spodumene have been identified on other potential lithium properties. Gogama itself continues to be a hotbed of activity and has experienced a recent staking rush following findings of spodumene, a lithium-bearing mineral derived from pegmatite. Much of the activity in Gogama is due to the increasing demand for lithium, which is a critical component in electric car batteries. Meeting the worlds lithium requirements means utilizing multiple sourcing methods, like deriving spodumene from pegmatite rock. Like Lithium One, this makes JSHGs new property potentially very important to the lithium industry. Joshua Gold Resources CEO Ben Fuschino commented, "Our teams continue to do very important work as the world recognizes the need to shift to more renewable energies. We look forward to conducting sampling on our Lithium One and Lithium Two properties in the near future, in hopes of enabling their development as sources of this valuable mineral. About Joshua Gold Resources Inc. Joshua Gold Resources Inc. (OTC Pink: JSHG) is a publicly traded American gold and mineral exploration company headquartered in Canada, home to the 3 billion-year-old Canadian Shield which contains a wealth of minerals from nickel, gold, copper, lithium, cobalt, niobium, lithium to chromium. Safe Harbor Statement: This press release contains forward-looking statements of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and results, and will not be accurate indications of the times, or by, which such performance will be achieved. Investor Relations Contact: Peter Nicosia, President of Bull In Advantage, LLC Phone: (585) 703-6565 Email: investors@joshuagoldresources.com Attachments NEW YORK and HELENA, Mont., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cedar, an enterprise healthcare engagement platform that improves the end-to-end consumer financial journey, was recently endorsed by the Montana Hospital Association's shared services division MHA Ventures (MHAV) as their preferred choice in patient financial engagement technology. Through this endorsement, Cedar will be listed as the MHAV's only preferred patient financial engagement technology. The MHAV is a hospital member organization that nominates vendors through a rigorous and lengthy vetting process, identifying relevant technologies for their hospital members in the region. The association collects organizational background, testimonials, references, offerings and other essential company details. Cedar was selected based on its ability to drive results in a time when health systems face significant financial pressures. Cedar's flagship solution, Cedar Pay, generates an average 30% lift in patient payments for clients, with 89% of patients reporting an exceptional financial experience. "MHA is excited to launch a partnership with Cedar. This proven, impactful patient engagement solution is making a big difference for a rural state like Montana. In fact, several MHA members are already seeing positive results. Cedar is a great solution that simplifies the patient experience, saves employee time and improves cash flow," said Rebecca Schauf, Sales & Marketing Manager, MHA Ventures. Cedar is excited about the MHAV partnership and looks forward to improving financial outcomes for both patients and providers in Montana. "We commend the Montana Hospital Association for its commitment to improving the patient financial experience, particularly in light of the challenging economic times that both patients and health systems are facing," said Florian Otto, CEO and Co-founder of Cedar. "We look forward to bringing the same consumer-centric approach to financial engagement to Montanans that we've delivered for health systems across the country." Cedar is on a mission to empower individuals to easily and affordably pursue the care they need, transforming the patient financial experience through a unique end-to-end solution. To learn more about Cedar's innovative platform, visit https://www.cedar.com/. About Cedar Cedar is committed to improving the healthcare billing experience for all. With an innovative platform that connects providers and payers, Cedar empowers healthcare consumers with a personalized journeyall powered by data science and interactive design. For Cedar clients, this leads to improved financial outcomes, more efficient operations and greater consumer loyalty. To learn more about why leading U.S. healthcare organizations trust Cedar to manage the end-to-end financial experience from pre-registration to post-visit billing, visit www.cedar.com and join us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. About Montana Hospital Association The Montana Hospital Association is a nonprofit organization with more than 80 members, including 100% of Montana's hospitals, that provide the full spectrum of healthcare services. This includes hospital inpatient and outpatient services, skilled nursing facilities, home health, hospice, physician services, assisted living, senior housing, and insurance services. MHA Ventures, Inc. is the for-profit subsidiary of MHA, created to deliver solutions that improve patient care, reduce operating costs and strengthen the financial viability of Montana's hospitals. Learn more at MTHA.org. Contact Information: Jenny Fiegoli Cedar jenny@cedar.com Rebecca Schauf Montana Hospital Association rebecca.schauf@mtha.org Related Images Image 1 This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment BETHESDA, Md., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Castellum, Inc. (NYSE-American: CTM), a cybersecurity, electronic warfare, data analytics, software, and IT services company focused on the federal government, announces that it has signed a non-binding letter of intent to acquire an East Coast based government contractor which focuses on cybersecurity, data analysis, and other IT services for federal civilian agencies. Subject to customary due diligence and the execution of a definitive purchase agreement, Castellum expects to close the transaction within the next 90 days. The potential acquisition, when combined with Castellums other, previously announced, pending non-binding LOI is expected to boost Castellum to over a $60 million annualized revenue run-rate versus a current $44 million run-rate based on announced Q3 2022 results . We are pleased to announce the execution of another LOI to extend our buy-and-build strategy, said Mark Fuller, President and CEO of Castellum . This additional work in Federal Civilian agencies, will further broaden Castellums customer base, while adding new capabilities and leveraging past performance enjoyed by our Department of Defense (DoD) customers with whom we have strong and growing relationships. We also are talking with other companies that have business with DoD and Federal Civilian agencies, about potential acquisition as we are working to double our top line run rate in 2023. About Castellum, Inc.: Castellum Inc. (NYSE - American: CTM) is a technology company focused on leveraging the power of information technology to help solve our Nations most pressing national security challenges. We provide US government and commercial clients with Cybersecurity, Software Development, Systems Engineering, Information / Electronic Warfare, Program Support, and Data Analytics services. We also offer subject matter expertise in artificial intelligence / machine learning, 5G technologies, model-based systems engineering, program management, information assurance, intelligence analysis, and CMMC compliance. In addition to constantly innovating and enhancing our organic capabilities, Castellum is executing strategic acquisitions of firms that share our passionate commitment to US national security and have a history of bringing exceptional value to their clients - http://castellum u s.com/ . 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 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters disclosed at www.sec.gov. These risks and uncertainties could cause the companys actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Specifically, Castellum may not close on the LOI announced today which would cause future revenue to be less than anticipated. Contact: Skyline Corporate Communications Group, LLC Lisa Gray, Senior Account Manager One Rockefeller Plaza, 11th Floor New York, NY 10020 Office: 646.893.5835 x1 Email: lisa@skylineccg.com ; info@castellumus.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b62b73b9-e445-459d-9cb0-6bd0c492dfa9 NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Investing online is easier, faster, and safer with the new KoreID Mobile App. Launched by KoreConX, this mobile online passport for investments works on iOS and Android and is 100% free. All a user needs is an account on the KoreConX All-In-One Platform and their mobile number to enable the 2-factor authentication. How it works All current shareholders will receive an email guiding them to download the KoreID Mobile App. After they download it and log in with their email and password, a 2-factor authentication key will be texted to their mobile phone. They will have immediate in-hand access to their personal dashboard and their whole portfolio, including their individual or company's pending investments, reports, and updates, allowing them to: Manage current investments. Manage pending investments. Re-Invest in companies when an offering is open. View company news releases, reports, meetings, messages. Manage personal information. "We are continually working to strengthen the trust and compliance infrastructure in private capital markets. This capability forges a new era in shareholder-company relationships, offering both parties the ability to communicate and allowing shareholders to reinvest in companies in a secure and compliant way," explains Dr. Kiran Garimella, Chief Scientist and Technology Officer at KoreConX. The KoreID Mobile App is now available in app stores on Jan. 18, 2023. All users must have the 2-factor authentication security feature enabled in order to log in. About KoreConX Founded in 2016, KoreConX provides the first secure online infrastructure for private companies to conveniently and compliantly manage every aspect of their capital market activities, from issuing securities to shareholder relations. Investors, broker-dealers, law firms, accountants and investor acquisition firms all leverage our ecosystem solution. KoreConX also maintains a large online library of educational content to help companies navigate their capital-raising journey. Contact Information: Rafael Goncalves Communications Coordinator rafael@koreconx.com Carolina Casimiro Marketing Manager carolina@koreconx.com Related Images Image 1 This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment President Joe Biden meets with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17. AP-Yonhap U.S. President Joe Biden and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte held wide-ranging talks on Tuesday that included a discussion on Dutch concerns about new U.S. restrictions on exporting chip-making technology to China. "It did come up in their conversation," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters after the talks. Rutte told Biden of Dutch plans to offer the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine, working together with Germany on an initiative to help Ukraine defend itself from a barrage of missile attacks from Russia. "I think that it's important we join that and I discussed it also this morning with Olaf Scholz of Germany," Rutte said. Biden told Rutte he looked forward to discussing ways to strengthen the supply chain as he welcomed the prime minister to the White House. Biden also thanked Rutte for being "very very stalwart" on its support for Ukraine. Rutte said the Netherlands has decided to spend an additional 2.5 billion euros ($2.70 billion) supporting Ukraine, an announcement the government made previously. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte speaks as he meets with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17. AP-Yonhap Westford, USA, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Increasing ICT usage across industries and the corresponding necessity to secure service users' private data has resulted in higher demand for encryption software, which is likely to fuel market revenue growth. Organizations employ encryption software to protect their data while sharing it from one remote place to another. The encryption software's primary goal is to protect data from unauthorized users. Furthermore, many enterprises worldwide adopt encryption to address their growing worries about data security and privacy compliance standards. Cyber-attacks and data losses have escalated due to increased reliance on mobile technologies. According to SkyQuest's market insight, 4G technology occupied 61% of the mobile technology market in 2021, and 5G technology has already started rolling out in several countries. As a result, the integration of encryption software has become a critical component of data security and secure data transfer in the twenty-first century. Get sample copy of this report: https://skyquestt.com/sample-request/encryption-software-market Large Enterprise Segment to Drive High Software Adoption Due to Need for Robust Strategy to Mitigate Security Threats As per SkyQuest's market insights, the large enterprise segment accounted for a dominant share of 34.5% in 2021 and is predicted to post a higher CAGR of 17.3% during the forecast period. Encryption software is expected to gain high traction among large enterprises due to increased digitalization coupled with growing online banking services and e-commerce operations. In addition, large enterprises and leading government infrastructures are more resilient to cyber assaults than SMEs, thanks to a sophisticated risk-mitigation plan. Large organizations are early encryption users because they employ many personal consumer data and have various business applications vulnerable to cyber-attacks. In addition, a diverse workforce's widespread use of company data has also increased the risk of data misuse, unlawful access, and data theft. North America held the dominant position in the category and is projected to continue in the same position in the coming years. SkyQuest's most recent encryption software market report thoroughly examines the industry's major drivers, restraints, segmentation, trends, competitive landscape, and other critical elements. The report comprehensively analyses the entire market and its segments and sub-segments using accurate classifications. Furthermore, thorough analysis and evaluation are carried out utilizing trustworthy primary and secondary data sources and feedback from industry professionals. Solution Segment's Growth to Take a Giant Leap in the Encryption Software Market As per SkyQuest's estimates, the solution segment held 54% of revenue share in 2021 and is expected to witness a high revenue share growth to surpass 63% by 2028. The solutions segment is likely to grow at a high rate throughout the forecast period due to the growing requirement to ensure the privacy and data protection of service users and organizations' information. The solutions provide that enterprises can secure sensitive data while protecting digital information privacy. It is implemented by using complicated algorithms to scramble the data being delivered. After the data has been received, it can be decrypted with the help of a key provided by the originator. Browse summary of the report and Complete Table of Contents (ToC): https://skyquestt.com/report/encryption-software-market Solutions for securing extremely sensitive data are widely used in the BFSI and healthcare industries. Furthermore, solutions boost client trust by boosting the integrity of stored data and protecting it from fraudsters. Europe and North America, as IT hubs, are particularly vulnerable to cyber-attacks. As a result, they have made more data security investments to mitigate such disasters. The encryption software market research examines segment growth. It assists you in identifying different pockets of growth and market approaches to discover your primary application areas and the difference in your target markets. Market research evaluates complex data in simple terms and presents the industry's past and current position and predicted market size and trends. Key Developments in Encryption Software Market SandboxAQ, a provider of artificial intelligence and quantum computing solutions, announced the acquisition of Cryptosense SA, a provider of cyber security and encryption analysis tools, for an unknown sum. Cryptosense's service handles compliance issues before deployment, including detecting and remedying potentially dangerous flaws. In addition, the system integrates into continuous integration/continuous delivery and supports software, hardware, and cloud cryptographic services. IronCore Labs, the premier provider of data security for modern cloud applications, has announced the release of Cloaked Search 2.0, an encrypted search proxy that safeguards data in Elasticsearch and OpenSearch. Cloaked Search encrypts sensitive information before it is sent to the search service. Only those who have the correct key can search the data. The search index is worthless to unauthorized users who do not have the key, including cloud platform administrators. Echoworx, the market leader in cloud-based email and statement encryption, announced a collaboration with Saepio Information Security to provide next-generation safe delivery of confidential and sensitive information to any email recipient. Cybercrime and data breach dangers are continuously evolving; having cyber and information security that changes with it is critical for keeping data safe and meeting client needs and regulatory obligations. Dropbox has announced intentions to deliver end-to-end encryption to its corporate users by acquiring "critical assets" from the German cloud security company Boxcryptor. Dropbox can access the keys and view any content that passes through. In addition, Boxcryptor adds an extra layer of protection on the client side with so-called "zero knowledge" encryption, allowing the user complete discretion over who can decode their data. The research report on the encryption software market includes accessible prospects for stakeholders to invest in micro markets and a complete analysis of key companies' competitive landscape and product offerings. Furthermore, the researchers conducted a comparative study of the market growth rate with product sales to help business owners identify the success or failure of a particular product or service. Key Questions Answered in Encryption Software Market Report What is the projected market size and CAGR for the encryption software market for the forecast period? Which region's market is likely to take a dominant market share during the forecast period? What recent industry developments will impact the market's future growth? What are leading participants considering as the best strategy for their business expansion? Speak to Analyst for your custom requirements: https://skyquestt.com/speak-with-analyst/encryption-software-market Prominent Players in Encryption Software Market Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) Cisco System, Inc. F-Secure Check Point Software Technologies IBM Corporation Fortinet, Inc. Oracle Corporation Microsoft Corporation Trend Micro Incorporated Palo Alto Networks, Inc. Related Reports in SkyQuests Library: Global Speech and Voice Recognition Market Global Tunnel Sensor Market Global Disinfection Robots Market Global Film Capacitor Market Global Industrial Automation Sensors Market About Us: SkyQuest Technology is leading growth consulting firm providing market intelligence, commercialization and technology services. It has 450+ happy clients globally. Address: 1 Apache Way, Westford, Massachusetts 01886 Phone: USA (+1) 617-230-0741 Email: sales@skyquestt.com Washington, D.C., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cultural intelligence leader, Collage Group, today announced that it has welcomed Pat McGlynn as its new Chief Revenue Officer to oversee company-wide commercial functions and accelerate growth. With 20 years of leadership experience in high-growth Research & Advisory Services firms, as well as SaaS/ Enterprise Software businesses, McGlynn is a unique fit for this stage of growth at Collage. Pat has held a successful career in leading high-performing teams and has chalked up achievement after achievement at prestigious growth organizations, said Collage Group CEO and Co-Founder, David Wellisch. We are honored to bring him aboard, and confident his expertise and excellence will help accelerate our growth as we support Americas leading brands in their path to Cultural Fluency the organizational ability to use culture to efficiently and effectively connect across consumer segments. McGlynn is well-versed on membership organizations and business intelligence technology from his 12 years in increasingly senior roles at CEB and at The Advisory Board Company, leading large commercial teams to high achievement. Prior to joining Collage Group, McGlynn served as General Manager at Togetherwork, managing a $50M business unit responsible for product strategy, all commercial functions, and customer success. He joined Togetherwork via the acquisition of membership software leader, Fonteva, where he was the companys Chief Revenue Officer. Previously, Pat had a successful 4-year stint as Chief Revenue Officer at another SaaS provider, Education Brands, which was ultimately acquired. Mid 2022, Collage Group acquired $25 million in growth capital, with the funds earmarked to secure top-tier talent like McGlynn, who are leading advancements in technology infrastructure, product innovation, and corporate growth. I am beyond honored to become a part of the Collage family, said McGlynn. David and the team have built an incredible business and strong culture, and Im eager to take on the challenge of building on this foundation and accelerating the next phase of growth. About Collage Group Collage Group is the leading source of cultural intelligence about diverse consumers to more than 250 of Americas iconic brands across 15 industries. Through our consumer insights, data, tools and best practices we work with marketing and insights professionals to help them more effectively and efficiently understand, reach and engage diverse consumers in the midst of Americas seismic cultural transformation. For more than 10 years, we have provided brands with the tools needed to build the Cultural Fluency necessary to activate consumers across race, ethnicity, generation, sexuality, gender and parent-child relationships. Learn more about why Americas iconic brands turn to Collage Group for diverse consumer insights and best practices. Attachment Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Digital Identity Management Solutions Market by Type, Offering, Application, Identity Type, Authentication Type, Organization Size, Deployment Mode, Sector - Global Forecast to 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global digital identity management solutions market is expected to reach USD 70.8 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 15.4% during the forecast period of 2023 to 2030. The growth of this market is mainly attributed to the increasing frequency & sophistication of authentication & identity frauds in the BFSI sector, government initiatives encouraging the adoption of digital identity management solutions, and the integration of biometric capabilities into mobile devices. Based on type, the global digital identity management solutions market is segmented into identity verification & authentication solutions, digital KYC & onboarding solutions, zero trust security solutions, and digital ID wallet solutions. In 2023, the identity verification & authentication solutions segment is expected to account for the largest share of the global digital identity management solutions market. Based on authentication type, the global digital identity management solutions market is segmented into single-factor authentication and multi-factor authentication. In 2023, the multi-factor authentication segment is expected to account for the larger share of the global digital identity management solutions market. Based on organization size, the global digital identity management solutions market is segmented into small & medium-sized enterprises and large enterprises. In 2023, the large enterprises segment is expected to account for the larger share of the global digital identity management solutions market. Key questions answered in the report Which are the high-growth market segments in terms of the type, offering, application, identity type, authentication type, organization size, deployment mode, and sector? What is the historical market for digital identity management solutions across the globe? What are the market forecasts and estimates for the period of 2023-2030? What are the major drivers, restraints, and opportunities in the global digital identity management solutions market? Who are the major players in the global digital identity management solutions market and what share of the market do they hold? Who are the major players in various countries and what share of the market do they hold? How is the competitive landscape? What are the recent developments in the global digital identity management solutions market? What are the different strategies adopted by the major players in the global digital identity management solutions market? What are the geographical trends and high-growth countries? Who are the local emerging players in the global digital identity management solutions market and how do they compete with the other players? Scope of the Report Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Type Identity Verification & Authentication Solutions Digital KYC & Onboarding Solutions Zero Trust Security Solutions Digital ID Wallet Solutions Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Offering Hardware Scanners & Readers Cameras Smart Cards Tokens Software Services Professional Services Managed Services Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Application Workforce Identity Management Customer Identity Management Citizen Digital Identity Management Machine Identity Management Other Digital Identity Management Applications Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Identity Type Biometric Solutions Non-biometric Solutions Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Authentication Type Single-factor Authentication Multi-factor Authentication Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Organization Size Small & Medium-sized Enterprises Large Enterprises Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Deployment Mode On-premise Deployment Cloud-based Deployment Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Sector IT & Telecommunications BFSI Government & Defense Manufacturing Retail & E-commerce Healthcare Energy & Utility Education Tourism & Hospitality Other Sectors Market Dynamics Drivers Increasing Frequency & Sophistication of Authentication & Identity Frauds in the BFSI Sector Government Initiatives Encouraging the Adoption of Digital Identity Management Solutions Integration of Biometric Capabilities into Mobile Devices Restraints High Capital Requirements for Deploying Digital Identity Management Solutions Opportunities Growing Adoption of Cloud-based Digital Identity Management Solutions Increasing Utilization of Contactless Biometric Solutions Challenges Misconceptions & a Lack of Knowledge Regarding Digital Identity Management Solutions Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 2. Research Methodology 3. Executive Summary 4. Impact of COVID-19 on the Digital Identity Management Solutions Market 5. Market Insights 6. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Type 7. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Offering 8. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Application 9. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Identity Type 10. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Authentication Type 11. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Organization Size 12. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Deployment Mode 13. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Sector 14. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market, by Geography 15. Digital Identity Management Solutions Market-Competitive Landscape 16. Company Profiles (Business Overview, Financial Overview, Product Portfolio, and Strategic Developments) 17. Appendix Companies Mentioned Thales Group (France) NEC Corporation (Japan) IDEMIA (France) GB Group plc (U.K.) ForgeRock Inc. (U.S.) Samsung SDS Co. Ltd. (South Korea) ImageWare Systems Incorporated (U.S.) Signicat (Norway) Syntizen Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (India) HashCash Consultants(U.S.) Jumio Corporation (U.S.) Vintegris S.L. (Spain) Daon Inc. (U.S.) Cloudflare Inc. (U.S.) Refinitiv Limited (a part of London Stock Exchange Group Plc). For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fihb0t 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. Los Angeles, CA, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NorthStar Moving Company, the leading eco-luxury mover in California, is pleased to announce they have been ranked on Americas Best Customer Service 2023 list by a leading magazine. In the moving company category, NorthStar Moving ranks #3 in the nation. To compile the list the magazine partnered with a global data research firm to identify U.S. companies that consistently provide the best customer service. This year, the ranking encompasses 676 awards across 166 categories, ranging from retailers to airlines, restaurants, moving services and much more. All of the ranked companies put the customer first. From day one, our mission has been to move service back into what should be the ultimate service industry, the moving industry, said NorthStar Moving Co-Founder Laura McHolm. Each and every day we work hard to exceed our clients expectations. No move is the same. Whether a client is moving across the country while they are caring for a new baby, or starting a new job while still trying to find a place to live, we customize our services to care for each client. Moving is stressful. It always occurs with a big life change. We understand that and do everything we can to alleviate the stress by streamlining the process. We are thrilled to be recognized as one of Americas Best Customer Service providers. The honor goes to our entire remarkable team, who always put kindness first. About NorthStar Moving Founded in 1994, Los Angeles-based NorthStar Moving Company has redefined the moving industry as the first to offer eco-luxury moving services, elevating basic moving and storage services to a new unparalleled level of customer service, customized care and environmental consciousness. Woman-owned, NorthStar Moving has earned more awards for service than any other moving company: A+ rated by the Better Business Bureau, consistently earns five-star reviews on Yelp & Google and recipient of dozens of awards for corporate culture, green practices, community outreach and growth including ten Best Places to Work awards, the 2022 Social Responsibility Award by the Los Angeles Business Journal and ranked on the Inc. 5,000 list for seven consecutive years. The company's local, long distance and international moving, storage services and eco-luxury packages have been featured in leading magazines including The Robb Report Collection and on multiple home and design television shows. NorthStar Moving has proven the state-of-the-art way to move is with its red carpet service, recommended by Coldwell Banker Concierge, MovingInsurance.com and an impressive list of celebrity clientele. NorthStar Movings mission is to exceed their clients expectations with graceful customer care and to move service back into what should have always been the ultimate service industry: the moving industry. For more information please visit www.NorthStarMoving.com and www.northstarfranchising.com or call (800) 275-7767. CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Addison Group, a national leader in professional services specializing in talent solutions and consulting, announces today that it has fully incorporated Beacon Resources, an Addison Group company, to move forward under the Addison Group brand name. For current clients of Beacon Resources, its brand integration to Addison Group includes access to a robust network of talent with significantly greater reach and opportunities to secure highly qualified professionals. Beacon Resources' clients will also gain access to the full portfolio of Addison's recruiting capabilities beyond finance and accounting, including information technology, non-clinical healthcare, human resources, administration, and digital marketing. In 2014, Beacon Resources, headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, was acquired by DLC group to make the larger more established finance and accounting professional services firm an ideal acquisition. Addison Group, seeking to expand its West Coast presence and grow its market share, acquired the group in 2019. Throughout the past decade via strategic partnerships and alignments, Addison Group has blended a multitude of relationship-based staffing and consulting firms into what is now a major market contender, and viable award-winning professional services consortium. Beacon Resources' Managing Directors and team retain their roles within the expanded organization: "The entire Beacon Resources team is excited about the tremendous opportunities it gives to our clients. Our team remains committed to facilitating ideal connections between our clients and our candidates, and now formally as Addison Group, our recruiting experts will have access to even more resources to perform exceptional services on a larger scale." ~ Odeh Haddad, Managing Director, Beacon Resources "Our transition to Addison Group has been completely synergistic because our motto and our methodology are aligned with our passion for people. While the Beacon Resources brand has officially retired, our commitment to building and maintaining meaningful relationships has only been strengthened with the increased reach and additional resources of Addison Group. Completely integrating with Addison will allow us to nurture existing connections and expand offerings into newly emerging markets." ~ Dana Carr Brown, Managing Director, Beacon Resources Under the integration, the Beacon Resources brand will officially retire. All of its existing business relationships and activities continue under the Addison Group name while providing the same unparalleled level of service. About Addison Group Addison Group, a leading talent solutions and consulting company, provides expertise with a national reach and a localized touch. Addison offers a full suite of consulting and recruiting capabilities across multiple sectors, including information technology, finance and accounting, non-clinical healthcare, human resources, administrative, and digital marketing. Addison has been repeatedly recognized by the media as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States by Forbes' Top 200 America's Best Professional and Specialist Search Firms, America's Best Recruiters and Executive Search Firms, and America's Best Temporary Staffing Firms, SIA Top 100 Staffing Bold Leaders, and Inc. Best 100 Places to Work. Known for its people-first culture, Addison combines deep expertise, client and candidate relationships, and a growing network of offices across the U.S. to provide national reach with a localized touch. Contact Information: Mindy Konczal Media & Public Relations Manager media.relations@addisongroup.com Related Images Image 1: Addison Group Addison Group logo, various greens, blue, and white pinwheel This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment LEHI, Utah, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DeepPower, Inc., the developer of a breakthrough geothermal drilling technology to access the Earths unlimited source of clean energy, today announced that CEO Andrew Van Noy discussed geothermal energy as a sustainable renewable energy source with Dr. Ricardo Barcelona, a current lecturer and former investment banker and energy-sector executive. Ricardo G. Barcelona, who has a PhD in Management from Kings College London, United Kingdom, is a current lecturer at leading business schools. He served in senior leadership roles at Royal Dutch Shell, in the Netherlands and London. As an investment banker, he was a top rated equity analyst and adviser whilst at SBC Warburg and ABN Amro/Rothschild. During the discussion, Dr. Barcelona shared an optimistic outlook on the future of geothermal energy as a renewable energy resource. Regarding sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, Dr. Barcelona noted that in his book, Dynamic Decisions: Energy PIVOT, Adaptive Moves, Winning BOUnCE, he discusses how Slim Hole Drilling Technology can take a 30-million-dollar project and turn it into a 5-million-dollar one: You have to make them better, make them cheaper, and make them commercially viable. The pair discussed the benefits of geothermal energy compared to often subsidized alternatives. A significant benefit is geothermal's economic viability as a long-term renewable energy source. Dr. Barcelona noted that with its high conversion rate, geothermal might surpass less-sustainable, low-conversion rate alternatives like solar energy over the next ten years. Andrew Van Noy, CEO of DeepPower, commented, I was excited to discuss Slim Hole Drilling Technology and geothermal energy as a viable alternative to other forms of renewable energy. Given Dr. Barcelonas expertise in the field, it was reassuring to share a positive outlook on our advances in geothermal drilling technology over the years to come. This CEO Chat can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9T8I5HUwhw For more information about DeepPower, Inc., please visit our website at www.DeepPower.com About DeepPower, Inc. Deep Power is developing a breakthrough drilling technology to access Earths unlimited source of green geothermal energy. The Earths molten core is as hot as the Sun and harnessing just 0.1% of that heat energy can power humanity for 2 million years. Previous generations of drilling technology cannot go deep enough to make geothermal cost effective. We are developing a suite of advanced low-cost, high-temperature and high-pressure drilling systems to boldly go where no humans have gone before. The deeper we go the more energy we can unleash. Unlike large area solar and wind farms, a 9-inch hole by 5 miles deep can produce the same amount of power as 320 acres of solar panels. Like a power plug into the Earth, we aim to provide every city, state, and country direct and independent access to this holy grail source of eternal green energy. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, they are based only on our current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding the future of our business, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the economy and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Our actual results and financial condition may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by us in this release is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of the date on which it is made. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable law. Press Contact: 1 (800) 347-0589 London, UK, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Becoming a Venture Capitalist is no easy task. Professional VCs are typically former financial advisors, business experts, or sometimes academics. Joining a Venture Capital investment firm often comes with minimum investment capabilities and a long registration process. Typically, VCs go beyond just investing in startups. They also act as mentors, leaders, and advisors to the startups that they fund, helping them in every step of the way. ZeroQT is a Venture Capital Fund that anyone can get involved in. They specialize in investing in blockchain focused start-ups and are operated by Zero Cute Ventures Ltd. This community driven fund allows regular investors to participate in early funding rounds usually reserved for banks, larger financial institutions, and family funds. With 2 million in assets and 100K+ users, the ZeroQT platform has been growing rapidly since its inception in September of 2022. Powered by the Zero protocol this EVM compatible chain will launch the ZQT token publicly this quarter. ZeroQT is operated by a registered British fund management company located in Purley, England. Their platform is permissionless providing instant payment processing without the need for approval from a central authority. They offer flexible staking options, equity investments with real time dividends, and a crypto mixer to process multiple payments in a single transaction and provide an extreme level of privacy. ZQT, launching soon, is an ERC-20 token that powers the platform and can be swapped for BTC, LTC, and DOGE at any time. What sets the entire protocol apart is the ability for retail investors to open anonymous accounts and become venture capitalists. The companys revenue is deposited into a zero-vault liquidity pool and those that participate through borrowing shares become eligible for the VC turnover in the form of ZQT tokens. Stablecoins Power Stable Bets in the First ZeroQT Backed Project They already successfully launched and incorporated two projects into the ecosystem. The first, StableBet is a Web3 crypto casino powered by stablecoins. Established in 2022, StableBet averages 10k new users per month and was provided startup funding of 1.5M. The popularity of crypto casinos is well known but removing the KYC requirements and providing simple logins broadens the reach to new players that normally wouldnt undergo the tiring registration process simply to play some games. Add in immediate transfers and the security of blockchain technology and users are safe to play. As a bonus, half of the casino revenues are distributed to shareholders. Optimise APRs with Tropical Finance Their second venture, Tropical Finance, is a Web3 decentralized exchange (DEX) with farms, pools, and more. Established in 2021 there is $150K TVL with 1K+ daily users. This platform provides new ways for the crypto community to optimise APRs. As an automated market maker (AMM) it incentivizes users with yield farming, uses an algorithm to provide a constant price, and automatically swaps assets using smart contracts. An Alternative to Investing Amongst High Volatility The ecosystem stablecoin, ZUSD Money, can be used for collateralizing the ecosystem's assets as well as a payment method for their casino and partners. Pegged by the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio and backed by ZeroQT reserves, ZUSD provides investors with a transaction alternative to high volatility cryptocurrencies. They expect to launch the stable coin in Q1 Of 2023 on several EVM compatible chains. The ZeroQT ecosystem will be an entire DeFi suite of products, and the first investments are just the start. The anonymity once associated with cryptocurrency is slowly coming to light as a myth. With ZeroQT not only can clients register anonymously, but they will also have access to anonymous swaps through the crypto mixer. These swaps make transactions and coins more difficult to trace back to the spender, ultimately protecting investors. Becoming a venture capitalist is as easy as creating an account. Not only can new account holders invest in early blockchain start-ups, but they can now earn ZQT tokens by claiming dividends regularly. This is done through borrowing shares of ZQT. Users can also withdraw liquidity at any time or transfer it to an exchange. Investors ready to become a venture capitalist can join now. ZeroQT also has created an application form for blockchain startups seeking to raise capital which can be found at zeroqt/apply. PR Contact 442-263-9244 Disclaimer: This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies (including product offerings, regulatory plans and business plans) and may change without notice. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Attachment NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP (Scott+Scott), an international securities and consumer rights litigation firm, continues investigating whether certain directors and officers of Wells Fargo and Company (Wells Fargo) (NYSE: WFC) breached their fiduciary duties to Wells Fargo and its shareholders. If you are a Wells Fargo 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 Wells Fargos board of directors or senior management failed to manage Wells Fargo in an acceptable manner, in breach of their fiduciary duties to Wells Fargo, and whether Wells Fargo and its shareholders have suffered damages as a result. On December 20, 2022, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced it had ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion in penalties and consumer payments for charging illegal fees and interest on auto and mortgage loans. What You Can Do If you are a Wells Fargo shareholder, you may have legal claims against Wells Fargos 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 MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Magstim, a global leader in neuroscience research and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) solutions for mental health, announced today that the FDA has cleared the Horizon 3.0 (with or without StimGuide+) and E-z Cool Coil to treat adult patients diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as well as Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). This indication offers non-invasive treatment for OCD in adult patients as an adjunct treatment to MDD. Magstims FDA clearance is welcome news for physicians and TMS providers who work to elevate care for patients with both OCD and MDD, said Marianne Bernadino, M.D., Camden Interventional Psychiatry. I am excited to share this news with my patients. TMS technology has helped our patients improve their mental health and quality of life. This indication will expand treatment options. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the lifetime prevalence of OCD among U.S. adults was 2.3%, or 1 in 40 adults. The American Psychological Associations definition of OCD is a disorder characterized by recurrent intrusive thoughts (obsessions) that prompt the performance of neutralizing rituals (compulsions). These obsessions and compulsions are time consuming, cause significant distress, and interfere with functioning. Ronnie Stolec-Campo, Magstim CEO, says, This FDA clearance is vital for those who suffer from OCD as well as those who treat them. Our non-invasive outpatient neuromodulation therapies enable patients with diverse mental health conditions to receive life-enhancing treatments. We are excited to provide another advanced solution to our research and clinical partners. This clearance is for the Magstim Horizon 3.0 (with or without StimGuide+) and E-z Cool Coil, the only navigated TMS system that integrates and enhances clinical workflows with treatment pulse quality scores to ensure patients precision treatment needs are met. The Magstim E-z Cool Coil can deliver back-to-back treatments for MDD and OCD using targeted mapping and built-in protocols. Unlike other cooling technologies, the advanced air-cooled coil does not require regular maintenance and allows reliable continuous use. Clinical practices in the USA which utilize the Horizon 3.0 have realized optimized patient treatments and tracking of patient and clinical outcomes using enhanced workflows and advanced data analytics. Magstim developed the first TMS system for medical researchers more than 30 years ago. More than 16,000 studies utilizing Magstim TMS equipment have been published worldwide. About Magstim EGI Globally, Magstim technologies have supported thousands of research labs, clinics, hospitals and universities that focus on mental health, brain disorders, cognitive neuroscience and neuromonitoring. Key brands include Magstim Magnetic Stimulation, MagstimEGI high-density EEG, Technomed Clinical Neurophysiology and Neurosign Interoperative Nerve Monitoring. Welcony is backed by Telegraph Hill Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity company. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/34a8b65a-b9be-41e0-941c-fc11e7e22794 SAN DIEGO, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP announces that purchasers or acquirers of Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) publicly traded securities from June 13, 2020 to December 31, 2022, inclusive (the Class Period) have until March 13, 2023 to seek appointment as lead plaintiff in the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit. Captioned Teroganesian v. Southwest Airlines Co., No. 23-cv-00115 (S.D. Tex.), the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit charges Southwest Airlines and certain of its top executives with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. If you suffered substantial losses and wish to serve as lead plaintiff of the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit, please provide your information here: https://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases-southwest-airlines-co-class-action-lawsuit-luv.html You can also contact attorney J.C. Sanchez of Robbins Geller by calling 800/449-4900 or via e-mail at jsanchez@rgrdlaw.com. CASE ALLEGATIONS: Southwest Airlines is a major U.S.-based airline carrier. The Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit alleges that throughout the Class Period defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Southwest Airlines continuously downplayed or ignored the serious issues with the technology it used to schedule flights and crews, and how it stood to be affected worse than other airlines in the event of inclement weather; and (ii) Southwest Airlines did not discuss how its unique point-to-point service and aggressive flight schedule could leave it prone to greater cancellations in the event of inclement weather. During the 2022 winter season, storms disrupted the holiday travel season. As a result, Southwest Airlines cancelled thousands of flights, accounting for the vast majority of domestic flight cancellations. Thereafter, on December 26 and December 27, 2022, several news outlets published various articles detailing Southwest Airlines operational meltdown. For example, Business Insider published an article entitled US Department of Transportation says it plans to look into Southwest Airlines following the airlines unacceptable holiday flight cancellations. On this news, Southwest Airlines stock price dropped more than 12%. Then, on December 31, 2022, The New York Times published an article entitled The Shameful Open Secret Behind Southwests Failure, which discussed how it was an open secret within Southwest Airlines that it needed to modernize its scheduling systems. On this news, Southwest Airlines stock price declined, further damaging investors. THE LEAD PLAINTIFF PROCESS: The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 permits any investor who purchased or acquired publicly traded Southwest Airlines securities during the Class Period to seek appointment as lead plaintiff in the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit. A lead plaintiff is generally the movant with the greatest financial interest in the relief sought by the putative class who is also typical and adequate of the putative class. A lead plaintiff acts on behalf of all other class members in directing the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit. The lead plaintiff can select a law firm of its choice to litigate the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit. An investors ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff of the Southwest Airlines class action lawsuit. ABOUT ROBBINS GELLER: Robbins Geller is one of the worlds leading complex class action firms representing plaintiffs in securities fraud cases. The Firm is ranked #1 on the most recent ISS Securities Class Action Services Top 50 Report for recovering nearly $2 billion for investors in 2021 more than triple the amount recovered by any other plaintiffs firm. With 200 lawyers in 9 offices, Robbins Geller is one of the largest plaintiffs firms in the world, and the Firms attorneys have obtained many of the largest securities class action recoveries in history, including the largest securities class action recovery ever $7.2 billion in In re Enron Corp. Sec. Litig. Please visit the following page for more information: https://www.rgrdlaw.com/services-litigation-securities-fraud.html Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Services may be performed by attorneys in any of our offices. Contact: Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP 655 W. Broadway, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101 J.C. Sanchez, 800-449-4900 jsanchez@rgrdlaw.com Hong Kong: Sun Dong views national space tech Secretary for Innovation, Technology & Industry Prof Sun Dong continued his Beijing visit today, with a tour of the China Science & Technology Museum. Prof Sun viewed exhibitions on the structural component of the China Space Station's Tianhe core module, 5G connection application, robot arm and robot with man-machine synchronisation and carbon neutrality as well as the Explorations & Discoveries Gallery. He said the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government will make use of the city's two science museums and their educational facilities to organise more and different popular science activities, especially those in aerospace to enhance technology literacy in the community. Prof Sun then met Cyberspace Administration of China Vice Minister Cao Shumin to discuss support for Hong Kong's digital economic transformation and participation in the "Digital China" development. Both sides agreed to establish a close communication mechanism and the tech chief extended an invitation to the cyberspace administration's management to visit Hong Kong to join the Digital Economy Summit in April. He also called on Hong Kong & Macao Affairs Office (HKMAO) of the State Council Deputy Director Yang Wanming to introduce to him the Hong Kong I&T Development Blueprint. Prof Sun was pleased to learn that the HKMAO supports the blueprint for establishing a clear path for Hong Kong's innovation and technology development, making use of the motherland's strong backing and the citys close connection to the world. The office supports the blueprint as it proactively integrates into the overall development of the country and brings new opportunities to Hong Kong, he added. This story has been published on: 2023-01-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Common prosperity 14:20, January 18, 2023 By Paul Tembe ( People's Daily Online The world is going through a crisis of a dwindling middle class where income gap and wealth disparities have come to reflect tendencies towards down spiral economic and social development. Developed nations have for the last century managed to sustain their economies through a strong middle class that served as a buffer between the super-rich and those living on the poverty line. However, as a strong middle-class is threatened into oblivion of poverty, these economies are no longer stable as income disparities pervade previously strong economies. China as the new economic leader with 1.4 billion citizens has to fight the scourge of a dwindling middle-class. How will China manage to close the effects of huge income gaps and disparities between the rich and poor as witnessed all over the world? Since the 18th CPC National Congress held in 2012, the Central Committee has kept a firm grasp on new changes in our stage of development, and given greater weight to gradually achieving the goal of prosperity for allOnly by promoting common prosperity, increasing urban and rural incomes, and improving human capital, can we raise total factor productivity and build a strong base of momentum for high-quality development. We are now living in a world in which income inequality is a glaring problem. These remarks are part of a speech by President Xi Jinping during the 10th meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Commission on August 17, 2021. As China marches towards the Second Centenary Goal, the country has spared no efforts in preventing polarization and promoting common prosperity in order to safeguard social harmony and stability. The Second Centenary Goal refers to building China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by 2049, the centenary of the People's Republic of China. During the speech, President Xi added that the latest round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation has not only given a strong push to economic development, but also exerted a profound impact on employment and income distribution. These circumstances present an array of negative tendencies and impacts that the government needs to take effective steps to address. Efforts towards common prosperity in China are meant to benefit both material and non-material needs of every member of society. It is not prosperity aimed at enriching a select few, nor is it rigid egalitarianism. In fact, it consists of an important feature of Chinese-style modernism. China has undertaken thorough research in its implementation of achieving common prosperity for all. It has planned out targets in different stages and aims to advance common prosperity in phases with the aim to make solid progress toward common prosperity for all. President Xi has pointed out that by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China will have made solid progress toward bringing prosperity to all. Xi also reiterated that China will ensure that gaps between individual incomes and actual consumption levels are gradually narrowed. By 2035, China will have made more notable and substantive progress toward common prosperity, and equitable access to basic public services will be ensured. In order to achieve these goals, China promises to promptly formulate an action plan for promoting common prosperity, and devise rational and workable systems of targets and methods of evaluation that suit Chinas national conditions. President Xi pointed out that there are four principles aimed at the delivery of common prosperity for all. The first principle is to encourage people to pursue prosperity through innovation and hard work. China is in the process of creating more inclusive and equitable conditions for people to further their education and enhance their capacity for self-development. China regards education as part and parcel of common public goods and a foundation for establishing robust and long-term common prosperity. The aim is to ensure a boost in human capital and improvement of specialized skills throughout society, build up peoples capacity to find jobs and start businesses, and make people better able to achieve prosperity. Xi has urged leadership throughout the country to prevent rigidified social strata by maintaining clear channels for upward social mobility and creating opportunities for more people to become better-off. By doing so, China will foster a development environment that encourages everyone to participate and dissuades them from getting lost in the ideas of lying flat and involution. The second principle aims to uphold Chinas basic economic system, that is, socialist market economy. Xi reaffirms Chinas commitment to the development of both the public and non-public sectors of the economy as a means to allow common prosperity for all. He reiterated Chinas pledge to uphold the predominance of public ownership while also allowing various forms of ownership to develop side by side, so as to leverage the important role of the public sector in advancing common prosperity. Meanwhile, China should also promote healthy growth of the non-public sector of the economy and of people working in this sector. While allowing some people to become prosperous first, China should lay more stress on pushing these people to give a helping hand to those following in their wake. In particular, China ought to encourage people to inspire others to pursue prosperity through diligent work, entrepreneurship, and legitimate business activities. Improper means of acquiring wealth must not be encouraged, and breaches of laws or regulations must be handled in accordance with the law. The third principle was defined by Xi as peoples need to do their utmost while working within their means. He expressed the need to set up a rational public policy framework and form a reasonable pattern of distribution in which everyone gets a fair piece of the pie. China needs to make greater efforts and adopt more effective measures to see that the people have a greater sense of fulfilment. However, China must also be aware of the gap between China and developed countries in terms of level of development. President Xi warned that the government cannot take on everything. Instead, its main responsibility should be strengthening the development of projects related to public well-being that are fundamental, inclusive, and focused on meeting basic needs. He concluded by stating that China must not aim too high or go overboard with social security, and steer clear of the idleness-breeding trap of welfarism. South Africa has fallen into some of the lacunas that President Xi warns against. Despite the majority support for a type of state ownership based on primordial African traditions of ubuntu, South Africa has insisted on applying a type of economic system that only benefits a few members of society. In turn, the majority has been left at the periphery of economic gain. It would serve South Africa well to adopt and apply a type of economy that has a people first approach as a rationale for development and establishment of common prosperity as was promised at the dawn of South African democracy. Second, attempts at welfarism in the form of social grants has had an adversary effect than intended. President Xi warns against the idleness-breeding trap of welfarism. Proactive stance and willingness for South Africa to learn from China during the anti-Covid fight would also serve it well in regards to establishing a robust framework for common prosperity for all as enshrined in the Freedom Charter, a blueprint for the envisaged South African equal society. Launching of the National Development Plan 2030 beyond the perpetual research stage would benefit the country and lead to common prosperity for all. Xi has defined the fourth and last principle towards establishing common prosperity for all in China as pursuit of incremental progress. He points out that as a long-term goal, achieving common prosperity will take time. China must have a full picture of the long-term, complex, and onerous nature of this goal, and recognize that to realize it we can neither wait around nor be too hasty. Xi points out that some developed countries began industrializing centuries ago, yet as a result of deficiencies in their social systems, they have not only failed to crack the problem of common prosperity, but are facing increasingly severe disparities between rich and poor. China has identified Zhejiang Province as a demonstration zone for common prosperity. He urged that other areas of the country must be encouraged to explore effective paths tailored to their own conditions. These experiences will later be drawn together to gradually apply further in order to establish and promote the establishment of common prosperity around the country. The general guidelines in this regard are to adhere to the people-centered philosophy of development, promote common prosperity through high-quality development, and properly balance the relationship between equity and efficiency. China is set to establish basic institutional arrangements enabling coordination and complementarity between primary, secondary, and tertiary distribution. China aims to intensify its efforts to regulate distribution through taxation, social insurance, and transfer payments while also working to make these efforts more precise. The exercise is aimed at expanding the relative size of the middle-income group, raising incomes among low-income earners, properly adjusting excessive incomes, and prohibiting illicit income, so as to create an olive-shaped distribution structure that is larger in the middle and smaller at each end. The concrete and final stage of establishing common prosperity in China consist initial stages towards a bigger goal of building a community with shared future for mankind. Paul Tembe is a South African expert on China. (Web editor: Hongyu, Wu Chengliang) Police officers carry Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg away from the edge of the Garzweiler II opencast lignite mine during a protest action by climate activists after the clearance of Luetzerath, Germany, Jan. 17. AP-Yonhap Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg was detained alongside other activists on Tuesday during protests against the demolition of a village to make way for a coal mine expansion but was released after an identity check, according to police. Thunberg was held while protesting at the opencast coal mine of Garzweiler 2, some 9 km (5.6 miles) from the village of Luetzerath, after police warned that the group would be removed by force if they did not move away from the edge of the mine. The village in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia is being cleared to allow for the expansion of the mine. The mine's owner, RWE, agreed with the government that it could demolish Luetzerath in exchange for its faster exit from coal and the saving of five villages originally slated for destruction. Activists have said Germany should not be mining any more lignite, or brown coal, and should focus on expanding renewable energy instead. Riot police backed by bulldozers removed activists from buildings in the abandoned village last week, with only a few left in trees and an underground tunnel by last weekend, but protesters including Thunberg remained at the site staging a sit-in into Tuesday. Police officers detain climate activist Greta Thunberg on the day of a protest against the expansion of the Garzweiler open-cast lignite mine of Germany's utility RWE to Luetzerath, in Germany, Jan. 17, that has highlighted tensions over Germany's climate policy during an energy crisis. Reuters-Yonhap HAMILTON, Ontario, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lawrie Insurance Group, a leading Canadian insurance brokerage, is pleased to announce that in recognition of its 40th Anniversary as a fiercely independent and proud local business, it is committing $40,000 to provide direct financial support to students within the Insurance and Business Administration programs at Mohawk College. As one of the college's Premier Future Ready Companies, CEO Bob Lawrie announced the donation at an alumni reception in front of the Lawrie team, many of whom are proud Mohawk graduates. (Video Link: https://youtu.be/3bPEF9uVdcI) (Left to right) Bob Lawrie (President & CEO, Lawrie Insurance Group), Ron J. McKerlie (President & CEO, Mohawk College), Dan Lawrie (Founder & Chairman, Lawrie Insurance Group) "For forty years, Lawrie Insurance has remained fiercely independent. We are proud of our talented team, the value we bring to our customers across North America and the trust we have built as a community partner and an industry leader," said Bob Lawrie, CEO of Lawrie Insurance Group. "We are ready to support the future again by donating forty-thousand dollars to help Mohawk College students achieve success." This college-company relationship goes back many years. In 2007, in recognition of its 25th Anniversary, Dan Lawrie, Founder & Chairman, made a significant donation to help fund the new Mohawk College Centre of Excellence in Insurance and Financial Services. "We are grateful to Lawrie Insurance for marking this impressive 40-year milestone by generously supporting Mohawk College students," said Ron J. McKerlie, President & CEO of Mohawk College. "Lawrie has been a valued college partner for more than two decades, helping students succeed in the classroom and beyond. This generous announcement will continue that strong tradition for years to come." Lawrie Insurance Group is also a benefactor of the Mohawk College Insurance Founders Lounge. In addition to its financial support of the college, a company representative sits on the Program Advisory Committee, offering guidance and feedback to keep the courses current in a fast-changing field. (Digital Press Release: https://bit.ly/3V7HwOs) About Lawrie Insurance Group Lawrie Insurance Group Inc. is a leading privately-owned, multi-disciplined Canadian insurance brokerage specializing in commercial and personal insurance, employee benefits, life and living benefits and group retirement solutions. With a staff of over 125 dedicated professionals, Lawrie Insurance Group has become one of the largest and most trusted insurance organizations and ranks in the top 5% of independent insurance brokerages in Canada. Lawrie Insurance Group is a member of the Canadian Broker Network (CBN), Intersure and Globex International with affiliated offices across Canada, the United States, and the world. Please visit us online at www.lawriegroup.com. Media contact: Dennis Harrington Director of Marketing & Communications dharrington@lawriegroup.com 365-675-0387 (direct) A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b56b9cc3-b767-4a23-bc62-7cd9b056ff70 San Antonio, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As a dedicated Endeavors employee for over 5 years, Ben Miranda, Jr. previously served as Director of Business Operations where he played a pivotal role in expanding the mission and vision of the nonprofit to help vulnerable people in need, not only in Texas but all over the country. Moving forward, Ben will continue to build relationships and closely work with federal and nonprofit partners, as well as various community stakeholders. Hell focus on the development, implementation, operation, and expansion of Endeavors many lines of service to ensure the military community, homeless and other vulnerable populations are heard, supported, and successful. Ben shares, It is a tremendous privilege to serve in an organization where everyone from our CEO, President, directors, and staff at all levels have the passion to serve vulnerable people in crisis with a servant's heart. I am honored to be entrusted with these responsibilities and look forward to continuing to work with Endeavors and all our local, state, and federal stakeholders across the communities we serve. Military & Professional Experience: As a 24-year Veteran of the United States Air Force, Ben rose to the Air Forces highest rank of Chief Master Sergeant. He deployed in support of Operations ENDURING FREEDOM, IRAQI FREEDOM, NEW DAWN, and UNIFIED RESPONSE, as well as to multiple counter-drug operations in Latin America. Ben holds a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from Walden University and serves as a Commissioner for the Texas Military Preparedness Commission (appointed by the Texas Governor). He also sits on the Board of Directors for the El Paso Homeless Coalition-Continuum of Care and is the Co-Chair for the 151st Veteran Affairs' Community Veterans Engagement Board. Ben is a lifetime member of the Disabled American Veterans and the Air Force Sergeants Associations. Additionally, he has been recognized externally on a national level through his selection and leadership in the George W. Bush Institutes Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program. ### Headquartered in San Antonio, Endeavors is a national service organization that has been assisting vulnerable populations since 1969. Endeavors offers an array of services and programs supporting children, families, migrants, Veterans and those struggling with mental illness, disabilities, disasters or emergencies. Endeavors serves people in crisis with personalized services. For more information, visit endeavors.org. Attachment MONSEY, N.Y., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The law firm of Wohl & Fruchter LLP is investigating whether the directors of Volta, Inc. (NYSE: VLTA) (Volta) acted in the best interests of Volta shareholders in approving the sale of Volta to Shell USA Inc (Shell) for $0.86 cents per share in cash. If you remain a Volta shareholder and have questions about your legal rights, you may contact our firm at the following link to discuss your options at no charge: https://wohlfruchter.com/cases/volta/ Alternatively, you may contact us by phone at 866-833-6245, or via email at alerts@wohlfruchter.com. Why is there an investigation? On January 18, 2023, Volta announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Shell for $0.86 cents per share in cash. The agreement has been approved by the Volta board of directors (Board). Our investigation concerns whether Voltas Board acted in the best interests of Volta shareholders in approving the sale, explained Joshua Fruchter, one of the firms name partners. This includes whether the acquisition price adequately compensates Volta shareholders, and whether all material information regarding the transaction has been fully disclosed. Notably, the 52-week high for Voltas stock is $5.81 per share. Moreover, according to an analysis of Wall Street price targets for Volta in the last 90 days published on Seeking Alpha, there is an average price target of $0.95 cents per share, and a high price target of $2.00 per share, both of which are above the deal price. About Wohl & Fruchter Wohl & Fruchter LLP, with offices in New York City and Monsey, has for over a decade been representing investors in litigation arising from fraud and other corporate misconduct, and recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for investors. Please visit our website, www.wohlfruchter.com, to learn more about our Firm, or contact one of our partners. Contact: Wohl & Fruchter LLP Joshua E. Fruchter Toll Free 866.833.6245 alerts@wohlfruchter.com www.wohlfruchter.com SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Thunderbird Field II Veterans Memorial, Inc. (Tbird2") announced a 2023 Aviation Scholarship has been awarded to Payson Duane (Duane), an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) junior earning a Bachelor of Science in Aviation with a minor in Spanish Communications. Tbird2 is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving the history of aviation in Scottsdale, Arizona, honoring all military veterans, creating unique educational opportunities for Arizona students studying all aspects of aviation, and supporting Dogs4Vets. Duane joined the U.S. Marine Corps at age 17. He was deployed to the Middle East combat zone in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve. He served in several leadership roles and obtained the rank of Sergeant E-5. For his efforts, Duane was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal. After serving 4+ years, Duane chose to transition into ERAU to earn a professional pilot license; he earned his private pilot license previously. He maintains a high GPA and anticipates graduating in 2024. His next objective is to become a flight instructor at ERAU and his final goal is to fly for a regional airline or become a corporate pilot. Steve Ziomek, Chairman and President of Tbird2, stated, Duane has been and is a quintessential student, leader, Marine, and is passionate about his career goals. There is no doubt that he will continue to utilize his many skills to achieve those dreams. We are proud to have awarded the Thunderbird Field II Veterans Memorial scholarship to such a deserving individual. Rudy R. Miller, Chairman of Tbird2 Advisory Board and Scholarship Committee, remarked, As a former member of the U.S. Armed Forces, who also spent many years in the airline aviation industry, I respect Duane enormously for his service and sacrifice for our country. It is a privilege and HONOR to announce, in concert with Steve Ziomek (Zio), a decorated aviation Veteran, this coveted Tbird2 ERAU Aviation Student Scholarship. Miller continued, Duane made a strong impression on Zio and me in our interview with him. His focus and determination regarding his future in aviation, including his leadership skills he developed in the military were undeniable. Plus, he was independent since being a teenager. This young man is resolute in his pursuit of his objectives! Embry-Riddle is extremely proud of Duane being recognized for this Tbird2 scholarship. He is a great example of our veteran community having transitioned from the Marine Corps to ERAU in pursuit of his professional pilot certifications. commented Parker Northrup, ERAU College of Aviation Flight Department Chair. About Thunderbird Field II Veterans Memorial, Inc. Thunderbird Field II Veterans Memorial, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed in 2014 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. During World War II, an airfield named Thunderbird Field II was built for the sole purpose of training U.S. Army Air Corps pilots in 1942. Thunderbird Field II graduated over 5,500 men and women pilots, many of whom saw military action in Europe and the Pacific. The field and school were deactivated on October 16, 1944, sold to Arizona State Teachers College (ASU), then to the Arizona Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and finally to the City of Scottsdale in 1966 and is now known as Scottsdale Airport (KSDL). Tbird2 has a permanent memorial at the entrance of the Scottsdale Airport, located at 15000 N. Airport Drive, Scottsdale, AZ, and a historical display inside the facilities honoring the service of men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces as well as POW-MIAs. The Aviation Scholarship Program provides scholarships to veteran and non-veteran Arizona resident students who meet specific criteria and are attending Arizona State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Cochise College, Pima Community College, or Yavapai College. For more information, please visit www.tbird2.org. About Dogs4Vets American Service Animal Society, dba Dogs4Vets, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to enabling disabled veterans live a more productive life through the use of service animals. Dogs4Vets offers lifetime support and service dog training for over 100 Arizona veterans each year, at no cost to the veteran. Thunderbird Field II Veterans Memorial, Inc. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Contacts: Contact: Steve Ziomek Mike Cavaliere Chairman & President Director of News & Media Relations ziomek.steve@gmail.com cavalim2@erau.edu 480.664.6604 386.226.4838 Rudy R. Miller Chairman, Advisory Board & Scholarship Committee rrmiller@themillergroup.net 602.225.0505 Photos accompanying this announcement are available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fe00a586-e80c-4556-b83f-14e05241e67e https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bd5d6ccc-5d5b-481c-b420-a0c3ccb32a02 Richardson, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Its not just a year of resolutions, but also the Year of the Rabbit! At International Leadership of Texas (ILTexas), our students are excited to celebrate the Chinese New Year, commonly referred to as, Lunar New Year. At ILTexas, all students learn English, Spanish and Chinese as part of their everyday curriculum. These charter-wide Lunar New Year celebrations allow students to immerse themselves deeper into the Chinese culture, while showing off their language and performance skills. Our campuses will come alive this weekend with events showcasing the traditional and bright Chinese culture. Activities and games for b-roll and interviews will include: Dragon Dance, Loop the Rabbit, Beijing Opera Mask Painting, Chinese Calligraphy, Handmade Chinese Paper Lanterns, Dumpling-Making, and much more! We invite members of the media to join us at whichever location is most convenient. If you plan to attend, please call or text Ally Crutcher or Caitlin Madison and we will arrange for interviews. Please find event locations and corresponding times below: UT Arlington (UTA) Saturday, January 21, 2023 11:00 AM to 5:30 PM (Art Festival with UTA Department of Modern Languages and ILTexas Global) UTA Texas Hall 701 Nedderman Dr., Arlington, TX 76019 * Note: This event is separate from our scheduled campus Lunar New Year celebrations. All ILTexas families are encouraged to participate in both. Tarrant Area Campuses Saturday, January 21, 2023 ILTexas North Richland Hills K-8 9:00 AM 4131 Rufe Snow Dr., North Richland Hills, TX 76180 ILTexas Arlington-Grand Prairie High School 9:00 AM to 12 Noon 2851 Ragland Rd., Grand Prairie, TX 75052 College Station Saturday, January 21, 2023 ILTexas College Station K-8 10:00 AM to 12 Noon 3610 Longmire Dr., College Station, TX 77845 Liberty Saturday, January 21, 2023 ILTexas BG Ramirez K-8 10:00 AM 4114 Road 5200, Cleveland, TX 77327 ### About International Leadership of Texas International Leadership of Texas (ILTexas) is a free public charter school serving more than 22,000 K-12 students at 21 campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Cleveland and College Station areas. Our mission is to prepare students for exceptional leadership roles in the international community by emphasizing servant leadership, mastering the English, Spanish, and Chinese languages, and strengthening the mind, body, and character. At ILTexas, education is taught from a global perspective, where all students are given the opportunity to learn the English, Spanish, and Chinese languages, and graduate with the necessary tools for future leadership and success in Texas, the U.S., and internationally. Highlights Significant Drill Intercepts The widest, highest grade lithium drill intercept returned to date at the CV5 Pegmatite drill hole CV22-083 156.9 m at 2.12% Li 2 O (176.4 m to 333.4 m), including 25.0 m at 5.04% Li 2 O or 5.0 m at 6.36% Li 2 O (CV22-083) Drill hole CV22-083 continues to extend mineralization eastwardly at the CV5 Pegmatite, and is interpreted to have intersected part of a large, high-grade zone within the overall pegmatite that now has been defined by several drill holes, including CV22-017, 042, 066, and 083 over a strike length of at least 250 m Extension of the high-grade zone eastwardly to be tested with the first series of drill holes as part of the 2023 winter drill program Additional significant drill intercepts in the most recent results follow; 45.3 m at 1.72% Li 2 O (205.8 m to 251.0 m), including 31.0 m at 2.11% Li 2 O (CV22-069) 31.2 m at 1.95% Li 2 O (163.0 m to 194.2 m), including 9.0 m at 2.78% Li 2 O (CV22-070) 49.5 m at 1.33% Li 2 O (80.6 m to 130.1 m) (CV22-080) 41.3 m at 1.01% Li 2 O (96.5 m to 137.7 m), including 12.0 m at 1.59% Li 2 O (CV22-075) The spodumene mineralization at the CV5 Pegmatite has been traced over a strike length of at least 2,200 m through the 2021 & 2022 drill programs. The mineralization remains open along strike at both ends and to depth along most of the pegmatites length Core assay results for twenty-four (24) drill holes from the 2022 drill campaign remain to be reported ten (10) at the CV5 Pegmatite cluster and fourteen (14) at the CV13 Pegmatite cluster Darren Smith, Vice President of Exploration of the Company, comments: It is hard to find words to adequately describe the impressive nature of the lithium mineralization in drill hole CV22-083. Visual estimates of spodumene abundance may give you a sense, but assays are the true measure and have certainly astounded with this hole. As we move east, we are defining a significant high-grade zone at a coarse drill spacing of 50 to 100 m. The recently commenced winter drill program will continue to probe and delineate this area ahead of an initial mineral resource estimate planned for the first half of 2023. Drill hole CV22-083 has raised the bar ever higher with respect to the considerable potential at CV5 as we continue to delineate it, and by extension, the rest of the CV lithium district held by the Company that has yet to be drill tested. SYDNEY, Australia, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Patriot Battery Metals Inc. (the Company or Patriot) (TSX-V: PMET) (ASX: PMT) (OTCQB: PMETF) (FSE: R9GA) is pleased to announce core assay results for fourteen (14) additional drill holes from its 2022 drill campaign at its wholly owned Corvette Property (the Property), located in the James Bay Region of Quebec. The primary drill area is focused at the CV5 Pegmatite, located approximately 13.5 km south of the regional and all-weather Trans-Taiga Road and powerline infrastructure. The fourteen (14) drill holes (NQ core size 47.6 mm inside diameter) reported herein targeted mineralization at the eastern and western areas of the currently defined CV5 Pegmatite (Figure 1). Drill hole CV22-083 returned the strongest lithium mineralized interval to date at the CV5 Pegmatite with 156.9 m at 2.12% Li 2 O, including 25.0 m at 5.04% Li 2 O or 5.0 m at 6.36% Li 2 O, and was completed as a 100 m step-out along strike of drill hole CV22-066, which intersected 113.1 m of 1.61% Li 2 O (see news release dated December 13th, 2022) (Figures 2, 3, and 4). The step-out drilling at the eastern end of the CV5 Pegmatite, which remains open in both directions along strike, is targeting a near-surface, high-grade zone that has been intersected in CV22-017 (40.7 m at 3.01% Li 2 O), CV22-042 (37.0 m at 3.04% Li 2 O), and CV22-066 (38.0 m at 2.17% Li 2 O, including 2.0 m at 6.41% Li 2 O) see news releases dated May 24th, August 31st, and December 13th, 2022, respectively. Drill hole CV22-083, as announced herein (25.0 m at 5.04% Li 2 O), has intersected the interpreted extension of this high-grade zone, returning the highest lithium grades to date from the CV5 Pegmatite. This includes forty-five (45) individual core samples over 3.0% Li 2 O, twenty-five (25) over 4.0% Li 2 O, eighteen (18) over 5.0% Li 2 O, and seven (7) over 6.0% to a peak of 6.87% Li 2 O. To date, this high-grade zone, as confirmed by assay, has been traced over a strike length of approximately 250 m from drill hole CV22-017 to 083. Drill hole CV22-093 was completed as a 100 m step-out easterly along strike of drill hole CV22-083, targeting an extension of the high-grade zone (based on logged spodumene content). The assays for CV22-093 remain to be reported; however, the hole intersected spodumene pegmatite over 52.2 m (core length). Additionally, drill hole CV22-069 undercut drill hole CV22-066 (113.4 m at 1.61% Li 2 O, see news release dated December 13th, 2022) and returned 45.3 m of 1.72% Li 2 O, including 31.0 m at 2.11% Li 2 O, thereby extending the high-grade mineralized zone at depth at this location, which remains open. The first series of drill holes at the recently commenced winter drill program (see news release dated January 5th, 2023) will continue to probe this high-grade zone moving eastwards. Drill hole CV22-074 is the most westerly drill hole completed to date at the CV5 Pegmatite and returned a well-mineralized interval of 16.9 m at 2.00% Li 2 O (Figure 5). The Company intends to continue step-out drilling along strike westwardly as part of the current winter drill program to test for the extension of the spodumene pegmatite. The pegmatite is interpreted to continue for at least another 125 m in this direction based on a mineralized outcrop present along strike (Figure 1). It is possible that the CV5 Pegmatite may extend under the relatively thin glacial till cover to the CV13 Pegmatite cluster, situated approximately 4.3 km to west-southwest, which is anticipated to be drill tested during the 2023 drill campaign. Further, strong intersections continue to be retuned over the western portions of the drill area at CV5, including 41.3 m at 1.01% Li 2 O (CV22-075), 31.2 m at 1.95% Li 2 O (CV22-070), and 49.5 m at 1.33% Li 2 O (CV22-080). Visually, the spodumene pegmatite is very similar at both the eastern and western extent of the drill area, emphasizing the scale and robustness of the lithium mineralizing system at CV5. For the drill holes reported herein, core assays for pegmatite intervals greater than two (2) m are presented in Table 1 and drill hole locations in Figure 1. Drill hole coordinates and other attributes are also available in Table 1 and the Companys website, which has a downloadable excel spreadsheet listing assay results from prior drill holes. Core assay results for twenty-four (24) drill holes from the 2022 drill campaign remain to be reported ten (10) at the CV5 Pegmatite cluster and fourteen (14) at the CV13 Pegmatite cluster. The 2022 drill campaign at Corvette has significantly expanded lithium mineralization at the CV5 Pegmatite. The drilling to date has largely been completed at approximately 100 m spacing (down to ~50 m in some places) with the principal spodumene pegmatite body (CV5), flanked by several secondary lenses, currently traced by drilling over a distance of at least 2,200 m, remaining open along strike at both ends and to depth along most of its length. Through 2022, the Company has completed ninety-five (95) NQ core size drill holes, totalling 27,470 m, at targets along the CV Lithium Trend eighty (80) drill holes totalling 24,709 m at the CV5 Pegmatite and proximal lenses, fourteen (14) drill holes totalling 2,647 m at the CV13 Pegmatite cluster, and one (1) drill hole totalling 114 m at the CV12 Pegmatite cluster. Figure 1: Drill hole collar locations at the CV5 Pegmatite for holes completed through 2022 Table 1: Mineralized drill intercept summary for drill holes reported herein as part of the 2022 summer-fall program Figure 2: High-grade drill core intersection (25.0 m at 5.04% Li 2 O) in CV22-083 (red box), including 5.0 m at 6.36% Li 2 O (dashed blue box) Figure 3: Spodumene mineralization in drill hole CV22-083. Gangue minerals include a mix of mica and tourmaline (black flecks) and quartz (smokey-brown) Figure 4: High-grade core from drill hole CV22-083 at ~292 to 295 m depth (core length) Figure 5: Well mineralized spodumene pegmatite intersection from drill hole CV22-074 (16.9 m at 2.00% Li 2 O), the most westerly drill hole completed to date at the CV5 Pegmatite Quality Assurance / Quality Control (QAQC) A Quality Assurance / Quality Control protocol following industry best practices was incorporated into the program and included systematic insertion of quartz blanks and certified reference materials into sample batches, as well as collection of quarter-core duplicates, at a rate of approximately 5%. Additionally, analysis of pulp-split and coarse-split sample duplicates were completed to assess analytical precision at different stages of the laboratory preparation process, and external (secondary) laboratory pulp-split duplicates were prepared at the primary lab for subsequent check analysis and validation. All core samples collected were shipped to SGS Canadas laboratory in Lakefield, ON, for standard sample preparation (code PRP89) which includes drying at 105C, crush to 75% passing 2 mm, riffle split 250 g, and pulverize 85% passing 75 microns. The pulps were shipped by air to SGS Canadas laboratory in Burnaby, BC, where the samples were homogenized and subsequently analyzed for multi-element (including Li and Ta) using sodium peroxide fusion with ICP-AES/MS finish (codes GE_ICP91A50 and GE_IMS91A50). About the CV Lithium Trend The CV Lithium Trend is an emerging spodumene pegmatite district discovered by the Company in 2017 and spans more than 25-km across the Corvette Property. The core area includes an approximate 2.2 km long spodumene pegmatite (the CV5 Pegmatite) and multiple proximal secondary spodumene pegmatite lenses. This corridor has returned drill intercepts of 159.7 m at 1.65% Li 2 O and 193 ppm Ta 2 O 5 (CV22-042), 152.8 m at 1.22% Li 2 O and 138 ppm Ta 2 O 5 (CV22-030), 86.2 m at 2.13% Li 2 O and 163 ppm Ta 2 O 5 (CV22-044), and 70.1 m at 2.22% Li 2 O and 147 ppm Ta 2 O 5 , including 40.7 m at 3.01% Li 2 O and 160 ppm Ta 2 O 5 (CV22-017). To date, six (6) distinct clusters of lithium pegmatite have been discovered across the Property CV5 Pegmatite and associated lenses, CV4, CV8-12, CV9, CV10, and the recently discovered CV13. Given the proximity of some pegmatite outcrops to each other, as well as the shallow till cover in the area, it is probable that some of the outcrops may reflect a discontinuous surface exposure of a single, larger pegmatite outcrop subsurface. Further, the high number of well-mineralized pegmatites along the trend indicate a strong potential for a series of relatively closely spaced/stacked, sub-parallel, and sizable spodumene-bearing pegmatite bodies, with significant lateral and depth extent, to be present. Qualified/Competent Person The information in this news release that relates to exploration results for the Corvette Property is based on, and fairly represents, information compiled by Mr. Darren L. Smith, M.Sc., P.Geo., who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, and member in good standing with the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec (Geologist Permit number 1968), and with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (member number 87868). Mr. Smith has reviewed and approved the technical information in this news release. Mr. Smith is Vice President of Exploration for Patriot Battery Metals Inc. (the Company) and Nevada Lithium Resources Inc., Vice President of Exploration and Director for Ophir Gold Corp, and a Senior Geologist and Project Manager with Dahrouge Geological Consulting Ltd. Mr. Smith holds common shares and options in the Company. Mr. Smith has sufficient experience, which is relevant to the style of mineralization, type of deposit under consideration, and to the activities being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as described by the JORC Code, 2012. Mr. Smith consents to the inclusion in this news release of the matters based on his information in the form and context in which it appears. About Patriot Battery Metals Inc. Patriot Battery Metals Inc. is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of mineral properties containing battery, base, and precious metals. The Companys flagship asset is the 100% owned Corvette Property, located proximal to the Trans-Taiga Road and powerline infrastructural corridor in the James Bay Region of Quebec. The land package hosts significant lithium potential highlighted by the 2.2 km long CV5 spodumene pegmatite with drill intercepts of 159.7 m at 1.65% Li 2 O and 193 ppm Ta 2 O 5 (CV22-042), and 70.1 m at 2.22% Li 2 O and 147 ppm Ta 2 O 5 , including 40.7 m at 3.01% Li 2 O and 160 ppm Ta 2 O 5 (CV22-017). Additionally, the Property hosts the Golden Gap Trend with grab samples of 3.1 to 108.9 g/t Au from outcrop and 7 m at 10.5 g/t Au in drill hole, and the Maven Trend with 8.15% Cu, 1.33 g/t Au, and 171 g/t Ag in outcrop. The Company also holds 100% ownership of the Freeman Creek Gold Property in Idaho, USA which hosts two prospective gold prospects - the Gold Dyke Prospect with a 2020 drill hole intersection of 12 m at 4.11 g/t Au and 33.0 g/t Ag, and the Carmen Creek Prospect with surface sample results including 25.5 g/t Au, 159 g/t Ag, and 9.75% Cu. The Companys other assets include the Pontax Lithium-Gold Property, QC; and the Hidden Lake Lithium Property, NWT, where the Company maintains a 40% interest, as well as several other assets in Canada. For further information, please contact us at info@patriotbatterymetals.com Tel: +1 (604) 279-8709, or visit www.patriotbatterymetals.com. Please also refer to the Companys continuous disclosure filings, available under its profile at www.sedar.com, for available exploration data. This news release has been approved by the Board of Directors, BLAIR WAY Blair Way, President, CEO, & Director Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking statements and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as will, may, should, anticipate, expects and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Companys expectations include the results of further exploration and testing, and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators, available at www.sedar.com. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by applicable law. No securities regulatory authority or stock exchange has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. Appendix 1 JORC Code 2012 Table 1 information required by ASX Listing Rule 5.7.1 Section 1 Sampling Techniques and Data Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Sampling techniques Nature and quality of sampling (eg cut channels, random chips, or specific specialised industry standard measurement tools appropriate to the minerals under investigation, such as down hole gamma sondes, or handheld XRF instruments, etc). These examples should not be taken as limiting the broad meaning of sampling. Include reference to measures taken to ensure sample representivity and the appropriate calibration of any measurement tools or systems used. Aspects of the determination of mineralisation that are Material to the Public Report. In cases where industry standard work has been done this would be relatively simple (eg reverse circulation drilling was used to obtain 1 m samples from which 3 kg was pulverised to produce a 30 g charge for fire assay). In other cases more explanation may be required, such as where there is coarse gold that has inherent sampling problems. Unusual commodities or mineralisation types (eg submarine nodules) may warrant disclosure of detailed information. Core sampling protocols met or exceeded industry standard practices. Core Sampling is guided by lithology as determined during geological logging (i.e., by a geologist). All pegmatite intervals are sampled in their entirety (half-core), regardless if spodumene mineralization is noted or not (in order to ensure an unbiased sampling approach) in addition to ~1-3 m of sampling into the adjacent wallrock (dependent on pegmatite interval length) to bookend the sampled pegmatite. The minimum individual sample length is 0.3 m and the maximum sample length is 3.0 m. Targeted individual pegmatite sample lengths are 1.0 m. All drill core is oriented to maximum foliation prior to logging and sampling and is cut with a core saw into half-core pieces, with one half-core collected for assay, and the other half-core remaining in the box for reference. All core samples collected were shipped to SGS Canadas laboratory in Lakefield, ON, for standard sample preparation (code PRP89) which includes drying at 105C, crush to 75% passing 2 mm, riffle split 250 g, and pulverize 85% passing 75 microns. Due to capacity issues, SGS forwarded several sample batches to alternate preparation labs in Sudbury, ON, and Burnaby, BC. The pulps were shipped by air to SGS Canadas laboratory in Burnaby, BC, where the samples were homogenized and subsequently analyzed for multi-element (including Li and Ta) using sodium peroxide fusion with ICP-AES/MS finish (codes GE_ICP91A50 and GE_IMS91A50). Drilling techniques Drill type (eg core, reverse circulation, open-hole hammer, rotary air blast, auger, Bangka, sonic, etc) and details (eg core diameter, triple or standard tube, depth of diamond tails, face-sampling bit or other type, whether core is oriented and if so, by what method, etc). NQ size standard core drilling was completed for all holes. Core is not oriented; however, downhole OTV-ATV surveys have been completed on a subset of holes to assess structure. Drill sample recovery Method of recording and assessing core and chip sample recoveries and results assessed. Measures taken to maximise sample recovery and ensure representative nature of the samples. Whether a relationship exists between sample recovery and grade and whether sample bias may have occurred due to preferential loss/gain of fine/coarse material. All drill core was geotechnically logged following industry standard practices, and includes total core recovery, fracture recording, ISRM rock strength and weathering, and RQD. Core recovery is very good and typically exceeds 90%. No relationship between sample recovery and grade, or sample bias, has been observed nor is expected based on the nature of the mineralization and sampling protocols. Logging Whether core and chip samples have been geologically and geotechnically logged to a level of detail to support appropriate Mineral Resource estimation, mining studies and metallurgical studies. Whether logging is qualitative or quantitative in nature. Core (or costean, channel, etc) photography. The total length and percentage of the relevant intersections logged. Upon receipt at the core shack, all drill core received is pieced together, oriented to maximum foliation, metre marked, geotechnically logged (including structure), alteration logged, geologically logged, and sample logged on an individual sample basis. Core box photos are also collected of all core drilled, regardless of perceived mineralization. Specific gravity measurements are also collected at systematic intervals for all drill core. These logging practices meet or exceed current industry standard practices and are of appropriate detail to support a mineral resource estimation. The logging is qualitative by nature, and includes estimates of spodumene grain size, inclusions, and model mineral estimates. Sub-sampling techniques and sample preparation If core, whether cut or sawn and whether quarter, half or all core taken. If non-core, whether riffled, tube sampled, rotary split, etc and whether sampled wet or dry. For all sample types, the nature, quality and appropriateness of the sample preparation technique. Quality control procedures adopted for all sub-sampling stages to maximise representivity of samples. Measures taken to ensure that the sampling is representative of the in situ material collected, including for instance results for field duplicate/second-half sampling. Whether sample sizes are appropriate to the grain size of the material being sampled. Drill core sampling follows industry best practices. Drill core was saw cut with half-core sent for geochemical analysis and half-core remaining in the box for reference. The same side of the core was sampled to maintain representativeness. Additionally, several intervals over several holes have had quarter-core samples collected for mineral processing programs, thus leaving only a quarter-core in the box for reference over these intervals. Sample sizes are appropriate for the material being assayed. A Quality Assurance / Quality Control protocol following industry best practices was incorporated into the program and included systematic insertion of quartz blanks and certified reference materials into sample batches, as well as collection of quarter-core duplicates, at a rate of approximately 5%. Additionally, analysis of pulp-split and course-split sample duplicates were completed to assess analytical precision at different stages of the laboratory preparation process, and external (secondary) laboratory pulp-split duplicates were prepared at the primary lab for subsequent check analysis and validation. All protocols employed are considered appropriate for the sample type and nature of mineralization and are considered the optimal approach for maintaining representativeness in sampling. Quality of assay data and laboratory tests The nature, quality and appropriateness of the assaying and laboratory procedures used and whether the technique is considered partial or total. For geophysical tools, spectrometers, handheld XRF instruments, etc, the parameters used in determining the analysis including instrument make and model, reading times, calibrations factors applied and their derivation, etc. Nature of quality control procedures adopted (eg standards, blanks, duplicates, external laboratory checks) and whether acceptable levels of accuracy (ie lack of bias) and precision have been established. All core samples collected were shipped to SGS Canadas laboratory in Lakefield, ON, for standard sample preparation (code PRP89) which includes drying at 105C, crush to 75% passing 2 mm, riffle split 250 g, and pulverize 85% passing 75 microns (i.e., pulps). The pulps were shipped by air to SGS Canadas laboratory in Burnaby, BC, where the samples were homogenized and subsequently analyzed for multi-element (including Li and Ta) using sodium peroxide fusion with ICP-AES/MS finish (codes GE_ICP91A50 and GE_IMS91A50). The assay techniques are considered appropriate for the nature and type of mineralization present, and result in a total digestion and assay for the elements of interest. The Company relies on both its internal QAQC protocols (systematic quarter-core duplicates, blanks, certified reference materials, and external checks), as well as the laboratorys internal QAQC. For assay results disclosed, samples have passed QAQC review. Verification of sampling and assaying The verification of significant intersections by either independent or alternative company personnel. The use of twinned holes. Documentation of primary data, data entry procedures, data verification, data storage (physical and electronic) protocols. Discuss any adjustment to assay data. Assays are reviewed and compiled by the VP Exploration and Project Managers prior to disclosure, including a review of the Companys internal QAQC samples. No twinned holes have been completed, as all of the drilling in the area of interest is within the last two years. Data capture utilizes MX Deposit software whereby core logging data is entered directly into the software for storage, including direct import of laboratory analytical certificates as they are received. The Company employs various on-site and post QAQC protocols to ensure data integrity and accuracy. Adjustments to data include reporting lithium and tantalum in their oxide forms, as it is reported in elemental from in the assay certificates. Formulas used are Li2O = Li x 2.153, and Ta2O5 = Ta x 1.2211 Location of data points Accuracy and quality of surveys used to locate drill holes (collar and down-hole surveys), trenches, mine workings and other locations used in Mineral Resource estimation. Specification of the grid system used. Quality and adequacy of topographic control. Each drill hole is collar surveyed with a Topcon GR-5 tool to obtain the X, Y and Z coordinates of each drill hole (precision of +/- 2.5 cm), and a downhole deviation survey completed using a gyro tool (DeviGyro or SPRINT IQ). The coordinate system used is UTM NAD83 Zone 18. The Company completed a property-wide LiDAR and orthophoto survey in August 2022, which provides high-quality topographic control. The quality and accuracy of the topographic controls are considered adequate for advanced stage exploration and development. Data spacing and distribution Data spacing for reporting of Exploration Results. Whether the data spacing and distribution is sufficient to establish the degree of geological and grade continuity appropriate for the Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimation procedure(s) and classifications applied. Whether sample compositing has been applied. Drill hole spacing is dominantly at ~100 m; however, tightens to ~50 m in some places. Based on the nature of the mineralization and continuity in geological modelling, it is believed that a 100 m spacing will be sufficient to support an inferred mineral resource estimate. Core sample lengths typically range from 0.5 to 1.5 m and average ~1 m. Sampling is continuous within all pegmatite encountered in drilling. Sample compositing has not been applied Orientation of data in relation to geological structure Whether the orientation of sampling achieves unbiased sampling of possible structures and the extent to which this is known, considering the deposit type. If the relationship between the drilling orientation and the orientation of key mineralised structures is considered to have introduced a sampling bias, this should be assessed and reported if material. No sampling bias is anticipated based on structure within the mineralized body. The mineralized body is relatively undeformed and very competent, although likely has some meaningful structural control. The mineralized body is steeply dipping resulting in oblique angles of intersection with true widths varying based on drill hole angle and orientation of pegmatite at that particular intersection point. i.e. The dip of the mineralized pegmatite body has variations in a vertical sense and along strike, so the true widths are not always apparent until several holes have been drilled in any particular drill-fence. Sample security The measures taken to ensure sample security. Samples were collected by Company staff or its consultants following specific protocols governing sample collection and handling. Core samples were bagged, placed in large supersacs for added security, palleted, and shipped by third party transport to SGS Lakefield, ON, being tracked during shipment. Upon arrival at the laboratory, the samples were cross-referenced with the shipping manifest to confirm all samples were accounted for. At the laboratory, sample bags are evaluated for tampering. Audits or reviews The results of any audits or reviews of sampling techniques and data. A review of the sample procedures for the Companys 2021 drill program (CF21-001 to 004) and 2022 winter drill program (CV22-015 to 034) was completed by an Independent Qualified Person and deemed adequate and acceptable to industry best practices (discussed in an NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Corvette Property, Quebec, Canada, Issue date of June 27th, 2022.) Additionally, the Company continually reviews and evaluates its procedures in order to optimize and ensure compliance at all levels of sample data collection and handling. Section 2 Reporting of Exploration Results (Criteria listed in the preceding section also apply to this section.) VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Almadex Minerals Ltd. ("Almadex" or the "Company") (TSX-V: DEX) is pleased to discuss its plans for a 2023 exploration program on its 100% owned San Pedro gold-silver project, Jalisco, Mexico (see Figure 1). The San Pedro project covers an area of high-sulphidation acid sulphate lithocap alteration (north area) as well as an area of brecciation and sulphide development with elevated base and precious metals on the southern portion of the project (Figure 2). In 2022 the Company drilled four holes, three of which have been reported (holes SP-22-003, 4 and 5). These three holes all intersected broad zones of brecciation and locally significant base and precious metal values. Hole SP-22-003 intersected 4.51 metres of 656.8 g/t silver and 0.03 g/t gold (see news release of December 6th, 2022), SP-22-004 intersected 1.3 metres of 846.0 g/t silver (see news release of December 12th, 2022) and hole SP-22-005 intersected 1.05 metres of 18.65 g/t gold and 20.5 g/t silver (see news release of January 9th, 2023). All four holes drilled in 2022 including SP-22-006 (see Figures 3 and 4) reported today help with interpreting the shape of the breccia body which appears to have a sub horizontal distribution. Hole SP-22-006 is interpreted to have been drilled underneath the breccia and did not intersect mineralisation and precious metals values. Further surface mapping is planned to confirm and refine this interpretation in order to optimise the next drilling program. The elevated base metals and copper seen in the breccia, along with acid sulphate altered fragments suggests that the breccia and related mineralisation may be a late feature in the lithocap environment. Acid sulphate altered lithocaps have been seen to form above porphyry copper deposits around the world and Almadex interprets the San Pedro project to have potential for both high sulphidation gold mineralisation in the lithocap, late gold-silver mineralisation in the southern breccia and deep copper porphyry potential beneath the lithocap. A more detailed surface mapping and sampling program is planned, and geophysical surveys may be undertaken as well. Once this work is complete Almadex intends to initiate a further round of drilling to test the targets generated. Almadex looks forward to reporting its progress as exploration work proceeds and results are available. About the San Pedro Project The San Pedro project covers a large area of acid sulphate alteration, including zones previously described as vuggy silica. Recent Terraspec analysis indicates sericitisation superimposed on propylitic alteration in the mineralised zones with acid sulphate alteration occurring at the north end of the project. Elevated base metals and silver have been returned from outcrop sampling and previous soil sampling surveys. Previous RC drilling by past operators, (shown on attached figures) including Cominco, returned anomalous gold, silver and base metals. Including the hole reported here, four holes have now been completed by Almadex in this Phase 2 program, following on the two completed in 2021 (Figure 2). The breccia zone intersected in the recent drilling by Almadex is likely to be part of this large high sulphidation system as confirmed by the observation of vuggy silica textures in a breccia fragments. Elevated copper in the form of chalcopyrite may reflect the potential for an underlying porphyry copper system as well. Further interpretation including alteration and fluid inclusion studies will be conducted to help better define additional drilling. The Company plans to recommence drilling when this is complete. Qualified Persons Jocelyn Pelletier, P.Geo, a qualified person as defined by 43-101 reviewed and approved the scientific and technical contents of this news release. The analyses reported were carried out at ALS Chemex Laboratories of Guadalajara, Mexico using industry standard analytical techniques. For gold, samples are first analysed by fire assay and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). Samples that return values greater than 10 g/t gold using this technique are then re-analysed by fire assay but with a gravimetric finish. Silver is first analysed by Inductively Coupled Plasma - Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES). Samples that return values greater than 100 g/t silver by ICP-AES are then re-analysed by HF-HNO3-HCLO4 digestion with HCL leach and ICP-AES finish. Of these samples those that return silver values greater than 1,000 g/t are further analysed by fire assay with a gravimetric finish. About Almadex Almadex Minerals Ltd. is an exploration company that holds a large mineral portfolio consisting of projects and NSR royalties in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. This portfolio is the direct result of many years of prospecting and deal-making by Almadex's management team. The Company owns a number of portable diamond drill rigs, enabling it to conduct cost effective first pass exploration drilling in house. About the San Pedro Project Almadex acquired the San Pedro project by staking. The property comprises approximately 1,000 hectares with multiple targets, located approximately 18 kilometers southeast from Juchitlan, 93 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara and 85km from the Barqueno project (Guachinango) of Agnico-Eagle. On behalf of the Board of Directors, J. Duane Poliquin J. Duane Poliquin, Chairman Almadex Minerals Ltd. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within it, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Forward-looking statements in this news release relating to the Company include, among other things, the current geological interpretations and the planned exploration activities at San Pedro. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, permitting, continued availability of capital and financing, equipment availability, relationships with third-party clientele and their willingness or ability to continue to use the Companys drills for exploration, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, other than as required pursuant to applicable securities laws. Contact Information: Almadex Minerals Ltd. Tel. 604.689.7644 Email: info@almadexminerals.com http://www.almadexminerals.com/ Figures accompanying this announcement are available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0ec0b95c-ad12-4dff-8fb5-0aff2898e5e5 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/342713ce-bda5-4eb6-b584-c42225d59df0 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fb7676fd-1020-4d61-b1f5-dbe73843c1b4 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/dda665e0-ea97-442b-a6b0-daceb97c4247 English French MONTREAL, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Goodfood Market Corp. (Goodfood or the Company) (TSX: FOOD), held its annual meeting of shareholders virtually at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 17, 2023. Election of Directors All of the nominees for directors listed in the Companys Management Proxy Circular dated December 1, 2022 were elected by a majority of shareholders. The voting results for each nominee are as follows: Nominees Votes For Votes Against Percentage of Votes For Percentage of Votes Against Jonathan Ferrari 31,374,736 401,572 98.736% 1.264% Neil Cuggy 31,376,742 399,566 98.743% 1.257% Donald Olds 31,507,000 269,308 99.152% 0.848% Terry Yanofsky 31,380,706 395,602 98.755% 1.245% John Khabbaz 31,709,874 66,434 99.791% 0.209% Appointment of Auditors KPMG LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants, were appointed as auditors of the Company by a majority of shareholders for Fiscal 2023. The voting results are as follows: Result Votes For Votes Withheld Percentage of Votes For Percentage of Votes Withheld Carried 32,499,996 25,679 99.921% 0.079% Share Consolidation The shareholders adopted a special resolution authorizing an amendment to the Companys certificate of incorporation to effect a share consolidation of all of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company on the basis of 1 post-consolidation common share for every 10 pre-consolidation common shares and to grant authorization to the board of directors to determine, in its sole discretion, the timing of the share. The votes cast were as follows: Result Votes For Votes Against Percentage of Votes For Percentage of Votes Against Carried 32,419,612 106,064 99.674% 0.326% Addition of a Class of Preferred Shares to Goodfoods Authorized Share Capital The shareholders adopted a special resolution authorizing an amendment to the Companys certificate of incorporation to create an authorized class of an unlimited number of preferred shares, issuable in series, with the rights and restrictions of each series to be determined by the directors of the Company. The votes cast were as follows: Result Votes for Votes Against Percentage of Votes For Percentage of Votes Against Carried 29,406,330 2,369,978 92.542% 7.458% ABOUT GOODFOOD Goodfood (TSX: FOOD) is a leading digitally native meal solutions brand in Canada, delivering fresh meals and add-ons that make it easy for customers from across Canada to enjoy delicious meals at home every day. The Goodfood team is building Canadas most loved millennial food brand, with the mission to create experiences that spark joy and help our community live longer on a healthier planet. Goodfood customers have access to uniquely fresh and delicious products, as well as exclusive pricing, made possible by its world class culinary team and direct-to-consumer infrastructures and technology. We are passionate about connecting our partner farms and suppliers to our customers kitchens while eliminating food waste and costly retail overhead. The Companys administrative offices are based in Montreal, Quebec, with production facilities located in the provinces of Quebec and Alberta. For further information: Investors and Media BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just Funky, one of the top Licensed merchandise manufacturers, has been named to the Inc. 2022 Best in Business list in the General Excellence category. Inc.'s Best in Business awards honor companies that have made an extraordinary impact and influence in their fields, communities, the environment, and on society as a whole. The list, which can be found in the Winter issue of Inc. magazine (on newsstands Dec. 13), recognizes the most dynamic companies of all sizes and industries that have had an outstanding influence on their communities or their industries. "Just Funky is honored to be included in the Inc. Best in Business list," said Raj Arora, CEO, Just Funky. Just Funky is growing at an unstoppable pace with more than 20,000 independent retail partners across North America and now the European Union. The company has more than 110 employees with offices in Columbus, Ohio, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London, Boca Raton and New Delhi. Just Funky manufactured goods can be found at big-name retailers like Gamestop, Spencer's, Target, Hot Topic, and more. "Inc. magazine is dedicated to showcasing America's most dynamic businesses and the great things they do," said Scott Omelianuk, Editor-in-Chief of Inc. "The Best in Business awards shine a light on those that have gone above and beyond their original mission to make a social, environmental or economic impact, benefiting those around them." "I am so proud of our team's ability to innovate and provide our customers with the best products and service to help them demonstrate the value of quality and innovation to the consumers" said Pranav Arora, Head of Division of Just Funky. About Just Funky Just Funky is a global lifestyle company that is deliberately different, as it continues expanding with a growing presence in over 10,000 stores across the globe. It maintains partners with several global retailers, including Spencer's, Target, GameStop, Hot Topic, Box Lunch, and more, including e-commerce partnerships with Stunned Mind. Beyond that, Just Funky is rapidly becoming the established authority on everything pop-culture with a growing variety of products created for fans, by fans. About Inc. The world's most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community they need to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com. Alexa H Just Funky +1 234-249-0145 email us here Visit us on social media: Facebook LinkedIn Contact Information: Alexa H Marketing p@justfunky.com 2342490145 Related Images Image 1: Just Funky Best in Business Pranav Arora Just Funky Best in Business Pranav Arora Image 2 This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk attends a forum on startups in Hong Kong, China, Jan. 26, 2016. Reuters-Yonhap The World Economic Forum says billionaire Elon Musk wasn't on the guest list for the annual meeting of business executives, global leaders and cultural trend-setters in Davos, Switzerland despite what the Twitter owner claims. Notables from European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen to actor Idris Elba are gathering in the ritzy Alpine town this week to talk about global issues ranging from war to climate change and technology's effects on security. Musk wasn't there, though he says he was invited. Forum spokesman Yann Zopf knocked that down Tuesday, saying the last time the Tesla CEO got an invitation was ''not this year and not recently last time in 2015.'' Musk said in a tweet Dec. 22: ''My reason for declining the Davos invitation was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring af lol.'' He didn't specify when he got the invitation, but the tweet's timing suggested it was for this year. Musk did not immediately respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment Tuesday. Organizers did extend invitations to Musk, as the boss of Tesla, to join a few times in the 2010s the last being in 2015 but he never registered or attended the annual meeting, Zopf said. The gathering has been criticized for a lack of concrete action that emerges after a series of sessions and speeches, while the forum itself has been the target of online conspiracy theories from those who believe the meeting involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit. Multibillionaire Musk, one of the world's richest people, can certainly afford to attend Davos. Forum members pay between 120,000 to 850,000 Swiss francs ($130,000 to $921,000) for annual memberships depending on the level of affiliation they want. Many executives trek to Davos to ride the coattails of the meeting and hobnob with corporate executives who flock to town, at times taking potshots at the forum from the sidelines. For example, Richard Branson, the British tycoon behind Virgin, has reputedly come to town several times without attending the meeting itself. Musk might be a bit busy to be palling around with the powerful in snowy Switzerland anyway. While still grappling with the fallout from buying Twitter last year for $44 billion, Musk is facing trial over his tweet about taking Tesla private in 2018. Jury selection begins this week and he'll have to explain his actions under oath in court in San Francisco after tweeting that he had lined up the financing to pay for a $72 billion buyout of the electric carmaker, which never happened. It culminated in a $40 million settlement with U.S. securities regulators that also required him to step down as the company's chairman. He's also planning to step down as CEO but remain owner of Twitter, which he succeeded in taking private last summer but has alienated some users and advertisers with chaotic job cuts and changes to content moderation policies. (AP) Subscribe to The Freeman today! DIGITAL: JUST $10 PER MONTH PRINT+DIGITAL: AS LOW AS $21 PER MONTH A trusted news source since 1859 Delivered Tuesday-Saturday SUBSCRIBE TODAY Seen above is the scene of a helicopter crash in Brovary, near Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday. At least 18 people died, including three children, after a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten and a residential building in the city of Brovary, Oleksiy Kuleba, the head of Kyiv Regional Military Administration wrote on telegram. / EPA-Yonhap At least 18 people, including Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, were killed when a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten outside the capital Kiev on Wednesday, according to local authorities. Three children were among the dead and 29 were injured, including 15 children, the Interior Ministry said. Also among the dead in the crash in the town of Brovary just to the north-east of Kiev were Monastyrsky's deputy Yehvheniy Yenin and a state secretary. It emerged on Wednesday that the helicopter involved - an Airbus H225 - had been temporarily grounded by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in 2016 over safety concerns. Its predecessor, the AS332, had previously been involved in several aviation accidents. The cause of the crash was initially unclear and a commission would investigate, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said. "This will not take just one or two days, because investigating an air disaster takes time," Ihnat said. The interior minister and other top officials were on their way to the battle front of the war with Russia, the deputy head of the president's office told journalists in Brovary. Meanwhile, the first condolences came from Brussels. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Charles Michel expressed their sympathies with the victims' families on Twitter. "We are mourning with you," von der Leyen wrote. Michel said Monastyrsky was a "great friend of the EU." Michel expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that the crash showed "how dangerous the situation in Ukraine has always been," the PAP news agency reported. Ukraine has been fighting against a Russian invasion for almost 11 months. There have been repeated air alerts in the country over Russian missile and drone attacks. The capital Kiev, like other parts of the country, has also been a repeated target. (DPA) U.S. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, right, and China's Vice-Premier Liu He react during a bilateral meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, Jan. 18. EPA-Yonhap Close communication between the United States and China on economic issues is vital, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday ahead of a meeting with a top Chinese official in Zurich. "Amid a complicated global economic outlook, there is a pressing need for the two largest economies in the world to closely communicate on global macroeconomics and financial conditions," Yellen said at the start of her first face-to-face meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. The countries also needed to "exchange views on how we are responding to various challenges," she said. Yellen voiced hope that the pair, who have already met virtually on three occasions, would on Wednesday "delve deeply into topics of mutual concern, including macroeconomic cooperation and climate finance." Speaking through an interpreter, Liu also called for "serious communication and coordination on macroeconomic affairs, climate change and other issues of mutual interest." "In our view the China-U.S. relationship is highly consequential," he said. Keeping tensions in check Wednesday's meeting comes amid heightened diplomatic efforts to keep high tensions in check between the two behemoths. A U.S. official confirmed Tuesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would visit Beijing in early February. He will be the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to China since a brief visit in October 2018 by his Republican predecessor Mike Pompeo, known for his blistering criticism of Beijing. Long-simmering disputes between the two countries flared during the Donald Trump presidency and have continued if less acutely under President Joe Biden. The United States and China, which are locked in a fierce strategic competition, spend more on their militaries than any other nation. But both Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have said they want to reduce tensions. When the two leaders met in November on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, both voiced guarded hope at preventing disputes from spiralling out of control. They pledged "to continue responsibly managing the competition between our two countries and to explore potential areas of cooperation," the State Department said in November. 'Seek common ground' Referring to the Bali meeting, Yellen said that "we share a responsibility to show that China and the United States can manage our differences and prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict." "We have areas of disagreement, and we will convey them directly," said Yellen, who was on a brief stop in Zurich before an 11-day trip to Africa, aimed at deepening economic ties on a continent where China has become a key player. But "we should not allow misunderstandings, particularly those stemming from a lack of communication, to unnecessarily worsen our bilateral economic and financial relationship," she said. Liu, who on Tuesday told the World Economic Forum in nearby Davos that it was time to end a "Cold War mentality", seemed to agree. "Right now, it seems that we do face some problems," he acknowledged Wednesday. "But as President Xi said, we all have one planet Earth, and there are always more solutions than problems." "We must always bear in mind the bigger picture, try to manage our differences appropriately and seek common ground," he added. "No matter how the circumstances change, we should always maintain dialogue and exchanges." (AFP) 80% of debt swap needed to get IMF deal - Ken Ofori-Atta Kester Aburam Korankye Business News Jan - 18 - 2023 , 18:44 The government says it is optimistic of achieving 80 percent of the bond debt swap under the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme by January 31, 2023. An 80 per cent participation by individual bond holders, according to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta would help the government to get into the perimeters of 55 percent debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), essential to achieve an IMF deal. The government is seeking a US$3billion IMF bailout to balance its books as its debts have over swallowed its income. Speaking to the media after a meeting with individual bond holders on Wednesday evening, (Jan 18), Mr Ofori-Atta said, "this is a voluntary exercise and we made some changes to extend it to January 31st to give us time to incorporate all ideas that has come up. We anticipate 80 per cent participation to ensure that we are within the parameters. IMF Bailout under threat Government is racing against time to conclude a US$3 billion facility that is hoped to stabilise the economy which is currently choked with debts, with total debt currently at GH467 billion as of December 2022. Analysts have warned that if the deadline for all creditors to sign up the governments DDE programme was not met, it would have dire consequences on the economy. Individual bond holders have rejected governments overtures to be roped onto the DDE programme and have threatened legal action which could put the whole programme into jeopardy. Already, the currency speculators are beginning to gain a head-start with regard to the countrys cedi. It has shown signs of picking up the pace again with regard to depreciation. At the turn of the year, the cedi was trading at GH7.9 to US$1. However, as of yesterday, it had reached over GH9 to the US$1 tumbling almost 20 per cent since December. Read: Govt, individual bond holders set up technical team This evening, the government reached an agreement with individual bondholders to have a technical team to review its petition on the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP). At a closed door meeting with the leadership of the Individual Bondholders Forum, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta said the government was opened to discussing alternative means of making the DDEP successful. Ethiopian Airlines increases flight frequencies in China Business Desk Report Business News Jan - 18 - 2023 , 08:00 Ethiopian Airlines, the leading airline in Africa, has announced that the frequency of its flights to Chinese cities will increase as of February 6, this year. It is an indication of a return to the pre-COVID-19 levels following the lifting of restrictions by the Government of China. From February 6, 2023, Ethiopian Airlines will operate daily flights to Guangzhou while increasing its weekly flights to Beijing and Shanghai to four each and maintaining the thrice weekly operation to Chengdu. Likewise, from March 1, 2023, the flights will surge back to the pre-COVID-19 levels, with daily flights to Beijing and Shanghai, as well as ten and four weekly flights to Guangzhou and Chengdu respectively. Accordingly, Ethiopian Airlines will operate a total of 28 weekly passenger flights to China when the services are fully restored. Revamping frequency The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ethiopian Group, Mesfin Tasew, said: We are glad that we are ramping up the frequencies of our flights to Chinese cities; thanks to the easing of flight restrictions by the Government of China. China is one of the largest markets for Ethiopian Airlines outside Africa, and the increase in flight frequencies will help revive the trade, investment, cultural and bilateral cooperation between Africa and China in the post-Covid era. Thanks to our large network across Africa, the increase in the number of flights to Chinese cities will bring Africa and China closer. We are keen to further expand our service to China going forward. In addition to its passenger flights to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu, Ethiopian Airlines is also operating freighter flights to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Changsha and Wuhan. Jobs AI is likely to replace in few years: How to keep yours (I) Shirley Nzeh Business News Jan - 18 - 2023 , 06:00 The topic of automation and artificial intelligence replacing jobs is one that seems to come up again and again. In this three-part series, we will be exploring AI, ChatBot GPT and the risk (opportunities and threats) posed by an increasingly automated world of work. In the last few weeks, the topic of AIs ability to steal jobs has reemerged as centre-stage with the launch of ChatBot GPT (Chat GPT) by OpenAI. Co-founded by billionaire Elon Musk and former Y Combinator president, Sam Altman, Chat GPT broke the internet in early December as millions of people took to the internet to share its many capabilities - from writing essays, love letters, recipes, job descriptions, code and decoding, testing and fixing code vulnerabilities as well as querying databases and returning feedback in seconds - queries that would otherwise take hours or perhaps even days. In its first week, Chat GPT gained over a million new users and led to Google issuing a code red for the impact of the application on its Search business. So what is AI? AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a broad term used to refer to the ability of machines to perform tasks that would typically require human-like intelligence. It includes language processing, coding, research, recognising images, decision-making and problem-solving. Common examples of everyday AI tools that we use include: self-driving cars, voice assistants like Siri or Alexa, and language transcription and translation software. There are three main stages of AI, including: ANI: Artificial Narrow Intelligence AGI: Artificial General Intelligence ASI: Artificial Super Intelligence ANI refers to machines that are trained to perform specific singular tasks, such as playing chess. The AGI stage will refer to machines who are able to view and understand the world as humans do. For example, entering a home and knowing how to make a cup of coffee autonomously. The third and final stage is ASI, which is self-explanatory. Oxford Philosopher, Nick Bostrom, described ASI as any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest. We are seeing great developments in ANI now and are not quite at the AGI or ASI stage, which many fear may offer great opportunity, but also great risk to human existence. What is Chat GPT? Chat GPT is a chatbot application built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 family of language models which is fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. Via an interface, users can interact with the language models by making a manner of requests that are quickly actioned. Since its launch, it has been noted by some that the range of requests the application can respond to has been limited due to the nature of questions users were asking in its nascent stages. Prompts deemed dangerous, unethical or illegal have been blocked. Are concerns over AI new? Concerns around AI taking jobs are not new. Much has been said over the past decade about this prospect. Lets look at one role in particular; a role in the creative sector. A sector initially considered "safe". The role of the Content Writer. About 10 years ago, content writers were people who simply wrote articles for your blog. You would then have to search for someone else to produce images and video. Over time and with increasing access to free stock image files and video, the expectation of content writers changed and the call was answered by forward-thinking content writers who self-styled as content creators - stacking value and providing the whole package, from text, to audio, images and video. These most innovative content creators stayed abreast of things by seeking-out the latest tools to make their work easier and increased production quality and speed. They could only be beaten by business owners who knew and had ready access to some of the tools they were using. This is just on the production side. There was also money to be made on the scheduling side - these were mainly social media agencies who added automation to their value stack. Sadly, soon after scheduling became a thing, so too did the tools that helped automate scheduling. One such app is Canva, which went from image generation to scheduling directly from the asset generation tool. Canva since inception, has evolved rapidly into a powerhouse that conveys incredible advantage to its users and the ability to generate media assets such as videos websites and product mockups in just a few clicks - something that would previously have required numerous people to participate in the value chain, project management effort and funds. We now also have incredibly powerful tools, such as Semrush not only to conduct research and schedule posts, but also now using AI to identify the best times to post to reach your most loyal and engaged audiences in a way that provides positive reinforcement to platform algorithms to highlight your account as relevant. Where does this leave content creators? Well until about a month or so ago, content creators could still hold their ground, especially in niche content areas. However, now and with the advent of OpenAIs Chat GPT, which can generate great content in a matter of seconds, content creators are going to be faced with a tough choice to really get on top of their game to stay ahead or get left behind. Much like when image repositories and generators started popping up, innovative content creators will need to learn how to use these emerging tools to improve their work. People have already started creating marketing agencies based on a number of discrete jobs for which they have mastered commands on Chat GPT with their USP being quicker turnaround times and quality. Those who do not understand and utilise these emerging technologies will eventually be pushed out by smarter content creators and business owners with direct access to the tools. Just think for a second about the cost associated with hiring a content creator for a month to generate one article per day, which is circa $800/Month, compared to a free or subscription-based tool for circa $20/Month for upgraded features and unlimited options for generating a whole range of information. On the content creation side alone, this represents a 97.5 per cent saving. Lets consider the role of the Blockchain Developer. In recent years, the demand for Blockchain Developers has soared as businesses and innovators alike have clamoured to build applications that support Web 3 and the decentralised web. Given the sudden rise in demand versus the supply, Blockchain developers have been able to command salaries north of $100,000 even from countries such as Ghana, because of the growth of decentralised workplaces and changing attitudes to remote work. It has been a sellers market and one where it was not uncommon for developers to hear name your price. Now, it is possible to issue a simple two-line prompt in chat GPT requesting it to build a Solidity contract for you. This concludes part I of the article. Tune in for section II, which will delve deeper into the business case and financial incentives for businesses to keep abreast of developments such as Chat GPT. The writer, LL.B (Hons), Prof.PGDip (GRC) Founder and CEO Web 3 Africa (W3A) The law courts in 2022: Supreme Court clashes with Parliament, Ato Essien, more Emmanuel Ebo Hawkson & Justice Agbenorsi Opinion Jan - 18 - 2023 , 14:10 The law courts in the country were very busy in the year 2022 with many prominent civil and criminal cases taking centre stage throughout the year under the review. While the Supreme Court dealt with some contentious constitutional cases that affected the governance of this country, the High Court was the venue of some high-profile criminal cases that had significant impact on some key sectors of the country. Deputy Speakers can vote Perhaps the most contentious law issue last year was whether the Supreme Court had the power to interfere with the work of Parliament. That played out in two key constitutional cases in which the highest court of the land declared two critical decisions of Parliament as unconstitutional and therefore null and void. The first case was a decision on March 9, 2022 in which the seven-member panel of the Supreme Court unanimously declared that it was constitutional for a Deputy Speaker presiding over proceedings in Parliament to vote on matters for determination and also be counted as part of the quorum decision making. Consequently, the highest court of the land ruled as valid, the passage of the 2022 budget by Parliament on November 30, 2021 during which the First Deputy Speaker, Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu, who was presiding, counted himself as part of the quorum that made that decision. Also, the Supreme Court declared as unconstitutional, Order 109 (3) of the Standing Orders of Parliament which barred a Deputy Speaker, who is presiding over proceedings, from voting on any issue for determination. The court gave the judgment after it had dismissed a writ by a lawyer and law lecturer, Justice Abdulai, who challenged the constitutionality of Mr Osei-Owusus decision to be part of the quorum that passed the 2022 budget. The decision generated heated public discussions about the sovereignty of Parliament vis-a-vis the power of the Supreme Court to strike down certain acts as unconstitutional. Wee law unconstitutional Four months after that landmark decision, the Supreme Court again touched the nerves of Parliament by declaring as unconstitutional, a section of the Narcotic Control Commission Act, 2020 (Act 1019) which allows licence to be granted to an entity to cultivate a small quantity of cannabis, popularly referred to as "wee" in Ghana for industrial and medicinal purposes. In a 4-3 majority decision, a seven-member panel of the apex court held that Section 43 of Act 1019 violated Article 106 of the 1992 Constitution, which details the processes a bill must go through before it is passed into law by Parliament, and was therefore null and void. According to the court, there was no debate on that particular bill in Parliament before its passage into law, as stipulated by Article 106 (5) (6) of the 1992 Constitution. Again, the apex court was of the considered opinion that the explanatory memorandum attached to the bill placed before Parliament did not set out in details the policy change, the defects in the existing law and the necessity to introduce a law to license the cultivation of cannabis. Such an omission, it held, was a violation of Article 106 (2) of the 1992 Constitution, and therefore the law was unconstitutional. The decision by the court was met with criticisms from many sections, especially from Parliament. First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu, expressed surprise that the Supreme Court had questioned Parliaments failure to debate Section 43 of the Narcotic Control Commission Bill, 2020 as basis for striking out the law on licence to grow cannabis. He was emphatic that Parliament indeed debated on the entire bill before passing it into law. Ato Essien convicted If there is an individual who symbolises the criminal justice system of the country in 2022, that person should be William Ato Essien, the Founder of the defunct Capital Bank, who was convicted by the Accra High Court for stealing GH192.5 million of funds from the bank. After almost three years of trial, Essien faced the judgment where he was found guilty on his own plea. The former local entrepreneur in the financial sector however avoided custodial sentence after he reached an agreement with the state to pay GH90 million to the state. The agreement was pursuant to Section 35 of the Courts Act, 1993 (Act 459), which allows accused persons standing trial for causing financial loss to the state to pay the money and possibly avoid a custodial sentence. By virtue of pleading guilty, the court also barred Essien from being appointed as a director or holding any key management position in any bank or financial institution in line with the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930). Expedite action on gender equality Panellists urge govt Juliet Akyaa Safo Jan - 18 - 2023 , 12:27 PANELLISTS at a forum in Accra have urged the government to expedite action on gender equality in the countrys economic and political space. They said the issue of womens representation at all levels was long overdue, and that the delay in ensuring gender equity was pushing the country away from achieving its political and economic transformation agenda. They, therefore, called for the passage and implementation of the Affirmative Action Bill to ensure gender parity in government appointments, high-level decision-making positions and in corporate institutions. They added that the legislative instrument on Land Act should also be developed immediately and an education campaign mounted on its contents to enable women take advantage of the security it provides.The panellists were Director, ABANTU for Africa, Rose Mensah-Kutin; the Executive Director, Henry Djaba Memorial Foundation, Otiko Afisah Djaba, and a Gender and Disability Advocate, Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame. The rest were the Executive Director, The Widows and Orphans Movement (WOM), Fati Abigail Abdulai, and a Development Practitioner, Peace Building, Gender and Local Governance, Magdalene Kannae. The gender experts were speaking during a technical consultation meeting on a Compact for Ghana's Political and Economic Transformation (Ghana Compact) initiative. The meeting was organised by African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), in partnership with NETRIGHT, all NGOs in Accra yesterday. Political will Ms Djaba called for a strong political will and aggressive lobbying by stakeholders to push for the rights of women. Mrs Mensah-Kutin also said there was the need for a new character of leadership to achieve gender equality, while Ms Fefoame suggested that disability issues should be included at every level of society for necessary action. For her part, Ms Abdulai called for a psychological support system for widows and orphans, while stressing the need for institutions in charge of social protection to be well resourced and decentralised. Ms Kannae emphasised the need for the development of a Legislative Instrument on the Disability Act 2006, ACT 715, to ensure its effective implementation. Meeting The President and Founder of ACET, Dr Kingsley Y. Amoako, said the compact was a well-articulated and agreed-upon goals and targets for the countrys governance, political processes, economic management and policies of inclusion for the second quarter of the 21st Century. We want to set some goals and targets for the nation and also help build consensus about the fundamental changes that need to be done to secure the future of this country, particularly for our children, he said. Dr Amoako further said the compact was an agreement between the citizenry and the government on the development direction of the country, regardless of the party in power. As we move to the next election we want to make sure that issues such as gender equality are picked up by our political parties in their manifestos, he said. Other issues contained in the compact borders on youth, employment, the role of the private sector and economic transformation. The Convenor of NETRIGHT Steering Committee, Akosua Darkwah, also called for gender budgeting training for metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs), adding that gender budgets developed at the district, regional and national levels must be vetted for compliance prior to submission to the Ministry of Finance. Govt committed to building resilient mining sector Mireku Duker Timothy Ngnenbe Jan - 18 - 2023 , 13:55 The Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in charge of Mines, George Mireku Duker, says the government is determined to implement reforms on responsible mining to help build a mining sector that is robust to stand the test of any global crisis. Mr Duker said the negative impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war on all sectors of the economy, including the mining sector, had provided useful lessons to the government on the need to build resilience in the sector "to repel the shocks of the next global crisis." The deputy minister, who is also the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Member of Parliament (MP), stated this in an address at the opening session of the 5th West African Institute of Mining Metallurgy and Petroleum (WAIMM) Annual Industry Conference yesterday. "The mining industry plays a key role in the resilience of the local economy, so we have taken the lead in the reformation drive through the promotion of responsible and sustainable mining practices. These reforms will yield fruits very soon and put Ghana on a sound footing," hesaid. Conference The WAIMM Industry Conference is a platform that provides an opportunity for stakeholders in the mining industry to network and find innovative solutions to teething challenges in the mining industry and fashion measures that would ensure sustainable industry practices and operations. It explores technological and technical avenues to promote the industry through knowledge sharing with experts at both local and international levels. The conference featured industry leaders and experts in a packed programme that included presentations, panel discussions on investment strategies, diversity, inclusion, global exploration and commodity trends and industry sustainability. Apt theme Mr Duker described the theme for the two-day conference: Building a resilient and sustainable natural resources industry beyond global pandemic as apt and timely. He said the theme tied in perfectly with the new direction being pursued by government in the extractive sector. The conference seeks to provide the platform for discussing appropriate and innovative ways of addressing global and national challenges confronting national development through mining, and this is a great initiative, he said. The deputy minister said he was, particularly, happy the conference was dedicated not only to knowledge sharing and the dissemination of innovations, but also to developing business interest in the country and promoting new opportunities in the extractive sector value chain. Critical industry Mr Duker said to the extent that the mining sector had been the bedrock for Ghanas socio-economic development over the years, it was important to safeguard it from all shocks. He said it was in that recognition that policy initiatives were being rolled out to fight illegal mining and sanitise the small-scale mining sector. The Ghanaian legislator observed that when the mining industry was purged of illegalities, it would ensure the protection of the environment and enhance the country's revenue generation. He said the government was pursuing a drive to diversify the mining sector by creating a refinery hub for bauxite and iron in the country. More fishers trapped in forced labour ILO Zadok Kwame Gyesi Jan - 18 - 2023 , 11:56 GLOBALLY, about 128,000 fishers are trapped in forced labour aboard fishing vessels, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has disclosed. These trapped fishers are mostly used in excessive overtime and also receive very low or no wages at all. The ILO has, therefore, urged member states of the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) to ratify the ILO Convention 188 to help promote decent work and prevent forced labour in the fisheries sector. Conference The 14th session of the Conference of the Ministers of the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea, which was organised in-person and online, was on the theme: Supporting effective fisheries management for a sustainable blue economy. The conference was attended by the fisheries ministers of the six FCWC member states or their representatives, as well as representatives of development partners of FCWC, including ECOWAS, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), African Union and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). They deliberated on the theme, reviewed past years results, and agreed on a work plan and budget for the 2023-2024 period. Labour issues The Global Coordinator of ILOs 8.7 Accelerator Lab, Alix Nasri, said many of the labour infractions on fishing vessels occurred due to weak monitoring of labour conditions. She said ratifying the ILO Convention 188 would, therefore, help prevent such labour infractions that occurred on fishing vessels in the FCWC region. Ms Nasri expressed concern that labour infractions, particularly fishers aboard fishing vessels, were growing and needed to be stemmed. The ILOs work in Fishing Convention (ILO 188) came into force on November 16, 2017 and applies to all fishermen working on fishing vessels of any size, with more prescriptive standards for vessels over 24 metres or operating on longer voyages, three days or more. The convention entitles all fishermen to written terms and conditions of employment (a fishermans work agreement), which include decent accommodation and food, medical care, regulated working time, repatriation, social protection and health and safety on board. It also provides minimum standards relating to recruitment and placement and includes a mandatory requirement to have a certificate of medical fitness to work onboard a fishing vessel. The FCWC was established in 2007 to promote and facilitate cooperation in fisheries management between member countriesGhana, Togo, Nigeria, Liberia, Benin and Cote d'Ivoire. Measures The Secretary-General of the FCWC, Seraphin Dedi, said many labour infractions aboard fishing vessels could be prevented when Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing was stopped. He said the FCWC was working with the ILO to help address the issues on fishing vessels in member states. Mr Dedi said in line with that, some journalists in the FCWC countries had been trained on ILO Convention 188 to enable them report accurately on the subject. Pastor, businessman caged 8 years for over $2 million fraud Elizabeth Konadu-Boakye Jan - 18 - 2023 , 06:59 A pastor and his accomplice, a businessman, have been sentenced to eight years each for failing to refund an investment worth over $2 million to more than 100 people. This was after the court, presided over by Evelyn Asamoah, convicted Rev. Edward Buabeng, Head Pastor of the Liberty Vineyard International Ministries at Dansoman in Accra and his accomplice, Aubrey des-Bordes Mends, on multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit crime and defrauding by false pretence. Meanwhile, the court acquitted and discharged Wilfred Brown, an accountant, who had been charged alongside the two. Rev. Buabeng and his accomplice both pleaded not guilty to the charges but were found guilty by the court after a full trial. 40 per cent interest The facts of the case as presented in court by the prosecution were that the complainant, John Osei-Safo Kumi, and his wife, Brenda Adolphine Appia, who reside in Dansoman in Accra, invested $7,000 and $6,000, respectively in cash in July 2018 at the Career Link Markets Company Limited in Dansoman, owned by Rev. Buabeng and Mr Mends for a three-month period, with a 40 per cent interest per month. The investment matured at the end of October 2018, but the company failed to refund both the principal and the interest to the complainant and his wife. Several efforts made to retrieve the monies proved futile, and the pastor went into hiding. A formal complaint was lodged at the Dansoman Police Station. Subsequently, more customers numbering over 100 who also invested various sums of money amounting to GH1,193.136 and $185,408 with the company came to lodge similar complaints against the two persons, the prosecution said. The prosecution said Rev. Buabeng and Mr Mends were later arrested and detained for investigation, and they admitted to the offence in their caution statements, stating that they had enough funds to refund to their customers but failed to honour their promises. Investigations by the police further revealed that even though the company was registered at the Registrar Generals Department, it was not given a licence by the Security and Exchange Commission to operate such a business, the prosecution stressed. The police again, during investigation, were able to retrieve GH115,000 from the two, which was disbursed to the first two complainants and six others. Increase allowances of cleaners - Mpraeso MP appeals to govt Daily Graphic Politics Jan - 18 - 2023 , 13:45 The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Mpraeso Constituency in the Eastern Region, Davis Ansah Opoku, has appealed to the government to increase the allowances paid to sanitation workers of Zoomlion. He also appealed to the government to prioritise the payment of the allowances to ensure that the cleaners receive it on time. I want to appeal to the government to increase the allowances paid the cleaners and also ensure that they get their monies on time to enable them to sort out their challenges. We all know that their allowances are quite small and delaying makes their plight worse, he stated at a New Year party organised by the MP for the cleaners. Commendation The MP praised the cleaners for their commitment and dedication to duty despite the difficult challenges they have faced and presented food items and some money to the workers as a token of appreciation for their efforts in the constituency. We owe a lot to these workers who keep our environments clean and help prevent diseases. When people visit our communities and praise us for our clean and beautiful environment, we have to acknowledge that it is because of the efforts of these hardworking sanitation workers, he stated. He noted that usually, the cleaners worked at dawn so their hard work was usually not seen by many people in the communities, adding that they should be celebrated for their selflessness and dedication to duty. The MP assured the workers of his continuous support and appealed to other organisations and individuals to support them in order to motivate them to do more. Sanitation is very important as it helps prevent some diseases and it is important to acknowledge the efforts of these workers, he stated. NDC set May 13 to elect flagbearer, parliamentary candidates Kester Aburam Korankye Politics Jan - 18 - 2023 , 13:49 The National Democratic Congress (NDC) will on May 13 conduct the final leg of internal elections to elect a Flagbearer and 276 nominees to contest Parliamentary elections for the party in the 2024 elections. The General Secretary of the NDC, Fifi Kwetey who announced the time table for the elections at a press conference in Accra today (Wednesday) said persons interested in becoming parliamentary candidates of the party would pay a filing fee of Gh40,000 while flagbearer aspirants would be required to pay GH500,000. Present at the press conference were the National Chairman of the party, Johnson Aseidu Nkethia, National Communications Officer, Samuel Gyamfi, Member of the NDC legal team, Baba Jamal and former flagbearer aspirant, Sylvester Mensah among other leading members of the party. Time table Per the time table, nominations for aspiring parliamentary candidates would open on February 22 to 24 to make room for interested persons to pick nomination forms via the NDC website at a cost of GH5000 which must be paid via Mobile Money. Although nomination for presidential candidates would also commence on February 22 to 24, interested candidates are required to pick nomination forms directly from the office of the General secretary of the party and pay a fee of GH30,000 via bankers draft. However, female aspirants and persons with physical disabilities would be required to pay only 50 per cent of the fee charged. Aspiring presidential and parliamentary candidates would be required to submit the completed forms between March 20 to 22 before vetting would commence on March 27 to 29. There would also be a window for appeals on the outcome of the vetting process between March 30 to April 6 before the election on May 13. The two elections would be held on the same day in all the voting centres in all the 276 constituencies including SALL, and the NDC headquarters would also constitute a voting centre, Mr Kwetey said. Qualification To qualify to become a parliamentary candidate aspirant, Mr Kwetey said a person must first satisfy the 1992 requirements for Members of Parliament. The individual must also be a paid up member of the NDC in good standing and must not be a dual citizen or owe allegiance to any other country aside from Ghana. With regards to flagbearer aspirants, the NDC General Secretary explained that persons interested must be a member of the NDC for at least 10 years and in good standing and also satisfy the 1992 constitutions requirement for a President. Electoral college Mr Kwetey explained that an electoral college would be constituted by the party to elect the flagbearer. The college, he said, would comprise executive members of the party from the branch to the national level. It would also include Members of the NDC parliamentary group, former MPs who are members of the party, former presidential staffers, former members of the Council of State who are members of the NDC and former Ambassadors who are members of the party. He said all contestants would be given access to delegates in all branches and constituencies without any hindrance to campaign and sell their messages to ensure a peaceful and transparent election. However, he said there would be no campaign on the election day and executives of the party are not allowed to openly commit any groups support for any of the contestants. Individuals have the right to support candidates but cannot commit their offices to any candidate because those who do so would be punished, he said. NPP presidential primary: Kwabena Agyepong advocates generational leader Chris Nunoo Politics Jan - 18 - 2023 , 13:25 AN ASPIRING flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, has said the party currently needs a new generational leader to chart a path for the growth of the NPP. Such a visionary leader is needed to create a new dawn of understanding and purpose for public service. I think it is time for a new generation leader, a leader who will create a new dawn, a new understanding of what public service means and what party politics should deliver for Ghanaians. This election is a watershed. The NPP has had 16 years of the same ticket, we need to have a clear departure from that which means we need fresh set of ideas and all will be premised on our cherished values of service, sacrifice and selflessness, he stressed. Leadership Describing himself as the only candidate with the skillset to bring that kind of leadership to the party, Mr Agyepong, who spoke exclusively to the Daily Graphic in Accra last Friday said, the time has come for this country to look at a new dimension to recalibrate our values and to reorient ourselves so we have leadership that thinks, cares and loves people. That, he explained, was because the centrality of party politics and governance was the welfare of the ordinary citizen and said politics should be anchored on service, sacrifice and selflessness. Mr Agyepong indicated that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia had since 2008 been at the helm of affairs of the party and there was a crying need by the party faithful and Ghanaians for an injection of new ideas and energy to impose order and discipline in the country. He, therefore, reiterated his call for the downsizing of government which he said made it more efficient and effective and allowed the President to have a handle on how things were happening and also demand more from his team. It is those character traits that I bring to the table, being visionary and decisive, being prepared to take difficult decisions and making sure that there is compliance in all aspects of our national life, he stated. Message Mr Agyepong, who was the press secretary to former President Kufuor and also a former General Secretary of the NPP, said his message was resonating positively with the party faithful wherever he had been and called on the other aspirants to submit themselves for enquiry so that their ideas, policies and records would be scrutinised. He said: The clarion call is to go into government to serve society, not to be served. Responding to a question on the confusion which characterised his tenure as General Secretary of the NPP, Mr Agyepong said my tenure as General Secretary was unfortunately curtailed unceremoniously due to concocted allegations and vile propaganda which up to now has never been proven by anybody. He said it was not for nothing that President Akufo-Addo invited him to support his re-election, an action he said goes to show that what happened was all orchestrated and calculated to destroy my political career. In this country, when you are upright, strong and firm, you will come under a lot of persecution and I am happy that till date nobody can accuse me of misappropriation or misapplication of party resources or funds. I have a clean record, genuine motives and I want to serve this party and our country to the best of my ability, Mr Agyepong added, pointing out that the difficulty in our politics now is we have become enablers meaning people hero-worship leaders and political appointees. He observed that there was too much sycophancy, praise-singing and hero-worshipping and said we need to revive the confidence people must have in the political architecture because we do not have to endanger our democracy, which he said was the best option to govern ourselves. Take lead role in AfCFTA - Bawumia challenges enterprises Chris Nunoo & Emelia Ennin Abbey Politics Jan - 18 - 2023 , 01:26 The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has charged empowered Ghanaian enterprises to be frontline actors of the new journey in the economic history of the continent under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). He said the government was fully committed to the implementation of AfCFTA and would assist the process by fashioning and implementing a comprehensive set of policies that would empower the private sector to achieve its goal. Dr Bawumia, who was speaking at the opening of the 74th Annual New Year School and Conference (ANYSC) at the Great Hall of the University of Ghana in Accra yesterday, said AfCFTA would provide a new impetus and dynamism for the rapid growth of African economies and deepen the integration process. Annual New Year School The three-day ANYSC, which is on the theme: Positioning the African Market for Sustainable Economic Development through AfCFTA, is being organised by the College of Education and the School of Continuing and Distance Education of the University of Ghana. The ceremony was attended by the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare; a member of the Council of State, Sam Okudzeto; the Chairman of the McDan Group of Companies, Daniel McKorley; members of the diplomatic corps, traditional rulers and members of academia. The Vice-President declared: We owe it to generations unborn to ensure that the biggest trading bloc on the globe, whose outcomes will be rewarding to all and which will assist in attaining the Africa we want, does not falter. There is a new Africa emerging, with a sense of urgency and purpose and an aspiration to become self-reliant and move the continent to a situation of self-sufficiency, progress and prosperity, the Vice-President added. We must succeed together and do so resoundingly for the benefit of current and future generations. A new dawn of trading and investment across Africa, for Africans, has just begun, Dr Bawumia emphasised. The Vice-President stated that the overarching aim of the measures to harness the benefits of the AfCFTA were to develop and expand the economy of the country and create sustainable jobs for the youth. To do that, Dr Bawumia said, the private sector must take advantage of agreements such as the AfCFTA to expand production both in industry and agriculture and take the lead in the socio-economic transformation of the country. We have succeeded in creating a conducive business climate that is spurring on the growth of the private sector. Indeed, Ghana is now acknowledged as the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in West Africa, he said. The Vice-President stated that the objective was to unleash the innovative and entrepreneurial talents of the Ghanaian private sector to drive rapid growth and job creation, and take advantage of the opportunities that would be presented by AfCFTA. Intra-regional trade While touting the potential of the continent in terms of its trade area, Vice-President Bawumia also expressed concern at the low levels of intra-African trade, which he said, currently stood at about 16 per cent of a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared to other parts of the world, such as the European Union (EU) which had 75 per cent. He said it was obvious that the very low levels of intra-regional trade could not improve the prospects of bringing prosperity to the people and pointed out that a large part of the growth and prosperity that we seek on the continent will come from us trading more among ourselves. To that end, Dr Bawumia indicated that appropriate fiscal, monetary, financial, energy and digitalisation policies must be coordinated to enable Ghanaian enterprises to be competitive, possibly achieve comparative advantage and make the country very attractive to investors. Operational instruments In a virtual address, the Secretary-General of AfCFTA, Wamkele Mene, said a number of operational instruments such as the Pan-African Payments and Settlement System (PAPSS), Non-Tariff Barrier tools and AfCFTA Adjustment Fund had been developed to lower trade barriers and promote regional economic integration. He said AfCFTA would serve as a driver of Africa's economic transformation and reduce Africa's reliance on export. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, for her part, said the ANYSC had over the years brought together stakeholders from all sectors to discuss issues of national interest. She said there was an awakening that the various countries and their peoples were connected with African leaders in championing the need for regional economic cooperation, particularly in terms of trade and investment. "The launch of the AfCFTA in 2021 is, therefore, highly touted as a global game-changer. It is a crucial milestone for Africa as it constitutes a significant endorsement of the economic potential in the intra-African trade," Prof. Amfo said. She cited a recent World Bank report which had indicated that AfCFTA would boost regional income by seven per cent, representing $450 million, and deliver 30 million people from extreme poverty by 2035. The Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Mary Chinery-Hesse, who chaired the function, was hopeful that the AfCFTA operational instruments would ease the cost of trading and the movement of goods across the continent. She, therefore, urged the participants to examine how the current national policies and practices impacted on players in the informal sector of the economy. Mrs Chinery-Hesse also expressed the hope that the resolutions communique at the end of the conference would be a credible guide for the promotion of intra-African trade and also accelerate economic development on the continent. Raven SR signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) to supply sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to All Nippon Airways (ANA) and to Japan Airlines (JAL) for major global routes. Each MOU provides for an initial 50,000 tons of SAF supply in the first year, 2025, with annual incremental increases to 200,000 tons for year 10. The supply will be produced by Raven SR at facilities planned for major global markets outside Japan to serve specific international routes of each airline. Raven SRs strategic partner Itochu introduced the company to ANA and JAL. ITOCHU is one of several strategic investors in privately held Raven SR, and the two companies maintain a strong partnership, including plans for commercial production and sales of renewable fuels worldwide. By converting various types of local waste, such as green waste, municipal solid waste, organic waste, and methane from municipal solid waste, into clean fuels, Raven SR offers a sustainable solution for the reliable and long-term production of SAF. The Japanese airline industry is required by the countrys General Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to reach a goal of achieving net-zero CO 2 emissions from aircraft by 2050. Starting in 2024, Japanese airlines must reduce or offset 15% of emissions from 2019 levels. Global SAF supply currently comprises 0.03% of total jet fuel consumption due to a limited supply of feedstock like used cooking oils and tallow. Raven SR plans to begin commercial production of SAF by 2025 in California, and expand SAF production by 200,000 tons/year until 2034 in the US and Europe. rvp Raven SRs use of waste as feedstock for its SAF production is expected to stabilize both the supply and pricing of SAF. Additionally, the third-generation synthetic SAF produced using Raven SRs proprietary technology is projected to reduce CO 2 emissions compared to conventional jet fuel and extend the lifespan of jet engines. Third-generation (SAF) refers to synthetic aviation fuels that are produced from non-traditional feedstocks, such as agricultural waste, forestry residues, and algae. These feedstocks are considered to be more sustainable and environmentally preferable than traditional feedstocks, such as fossil fuels, as they do not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions or deplete finite resources. Third-generation SAFs also have the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation industry significantly, as they emit lower levels of GHGs during fuel production and use process compared to fossil fuels. The Raven SR technology is a non-combustion thermal, chemical reductive process that converts organic waste and landfill gas to hydrogen and Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuels. Unlike other hydrogen production technologies, its Steam/CO 2 Reformation does not require fresh water as a feedstock. The process is more efficient than conventional hydrogen production and can deliver fuel with low to negative carbon intensity. Additionally, Raven SRs goal is to generate as much of its own power onsite as possible to reduce reliance on the power grid and be independent of the grid. Its modular design provides a scalable means to produce renewable hydrogen and synthetic liquid fuels locally from local waste. These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. HMD Global kicks off 2023 with a budget Android 12 Go Edition phone, the Nokia C12. Based on the model number, this is a sequel to the Nokia C10 from early 2021, though it is actually smaller than most phones in the C-series. This is due to the 6.3 display, an LCD with HD+ resolution. The C12 measures 160.6 x 74.3 x 8.75mm and weighs 177.4g. For comparison, the C10 is 169.9 x 77.9 x 8.8mm and 191g and it has a 6.52 display. A more recent example is the Nokia C31, but that one is even larger with a 6.75 display. Anyway, the Nokia C12 is powered by the Unisoc SC9863A1, a chipset built on an ancient 28nm node. It has eight Cortex-A55 cores (4x 1.6GHz + 4x 1.2GHz) and a PowerVR IMG 8322 GPU. The phone comes with 2GB of RAM but has an option to enable another 2 gigs of virtual RAM. Go Edition can run on as little as 1GB of RAM, though some models come equipped with up to 4GB, so the C12 is somewhere in the middle. It is equipped with 64GB of storage (eMMC 5.1), however, there is no microSD expansion available as far as we can tell. The phone has two cameras one 8MP module on the back (with autofocus and an LED flash) and one 5MP selfie camera on the front (in a notch). They have Night and Portrait modes. The Nokia C12 is a 4G phone, other wireless connectivity options include Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 5.2. You can also plug in wired headphones into the 3.5mm jack. Thats all good, but we are not pleased to see a microUSB connector for data and power. Speaking of, the phone has a 3,000mAh battery (with all-day battery life) and charges at a measly 5W. Cheap though it may be, the C12 is built to last. It has a polycarbonate body with a grippy texture, but the phone is protected against drops too and it has toughened glass on the front. And it is rated IP52 (protected against dust and dripping water). HMD has committed to 2 years of quarterly security updates (no word on OS updates, but that is typical of Go Edition models). Nokia C12 in Light Mint, Dark Cyan and Charcoal The Nokia C12 comes at a price of 120 ($130/105/10,500) with a single configuration (2/64GB). It will be available in Germany and Austria first and will expand to other markets soon after. Source | Via Apple unveiled new MacBook Pro and Mac mini models yesterday. The laptops feature the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets, while the mini gets the base M2 as well as the M2 Pro. We checked several regions around the world for the pricing and shipping dates. The shipping dates are easy January 24, except for the US, which lists the 23rd. However, the press release claimed January 24 as the start of shipping, so lets go with that (i.e. Tuesday next week). Note that the prices listed in the tables below are only for the base configurations. Apple solders the RAM and storage to the board and the unified memory model has minimums, e.g. you cant have an M2 Pro with less than 16GB of RAM or an M2 Max with less than 32GB. The new MacBook Pro 14" Lets start with the new MacBook Pro. These replace the 14 and 16 Pros with the M1 chips from October 2021. The 13 model remains unchanged. Be careful when picking out a chipset - there are different CPU and GPU core configurations available A note about the chipsets the base 14 configuration has an M2 Pro with a 10 core CPU and 16 core GPU. You can get the fully-enabled 12/19 core M2 Pro for $300 extra. The 16 version only uses the 12/19 core chips. The base 14 M2 Max models start with a 30 core GPU, the 38 core GPU is $200 extra (both have 12 core CPUs). The 16 M2 Max model only comes with 38 core GPUs. Yes, its confusing, so pay attention to the options. Model Chipset Memory US Canada UK Germany India MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro 16/512GB $2,000 C$2,600 2,150 2,400 200K M2 Max 32GB/1TB $3,100 C$4,100 3,350 3,700 310K MacBook Pro 16 M2 Pro 16/512GB $2,500 C$3,200 2,700 3,000 250K M2 Max 32GB/1TB $3,500 C$4,500 3,750 4,150 350K Moving on to the new Mac mini, you can have an M2 or an M2 Pro. There is no M2 Max option, Apple is probably saving that for the new Studio. Like with the laptop, the M2 Pro based mini comes with the 10/16 core chip as standard and it is a $300 upgrade to get the 12/19 core chip. The new M2-powered Mac mini M2 mac mini with 2 Thunderbolt ports 4 ports on the M2 Pro mini Another thing to note is that the M2 version only has 2 Thunderbolt ports, the M2 Pro version has four. Both can have 10GB Ethernet, but it is a $100 extra. Chipset Memory US Canada UK Germany India Mac mini M2 8/256GB $600 C$800 650 700 60K Mac mini M2 Pro 16/512GB $1,300 C$1,700 1,400 1,550 130K That $600 Mac mini sounds like a steal. However, you might want extra memory and you will be paying through the nose for that going from 8GB to 16GB RAM costs $200, from 256GB SSD to 512GB is another $200. Again, the memory is soldered, but attaching external storage is easy enough, so you could skip the SSD upgrade. Craig Santos Perezs sanlagu migration story had all the usual drama and trauma of a teenager leaving Guam for a new life in the San Francisco Bay Area with his parents and his older brother and younger sister. What was unique for this 15-year-old from Mongmong was that he found solace in words writing stories and poems to cling to his memories growing up CHamoru. Those early beginnings of giving voice to his mahalang and his unwavering commitment to continually write about things closest to his heart led this diasporic CHamoru on a journey where now his critically acclaimed literary works are giving chorus to the CHamoru and Pacific Islander narrative to the world. I personally did not want to move and I wanted to finish high school in a place I grew up and to be around my friends and other relatives, the Hawaii-based author, poet and university professor recalled. It was definitely traumatic and disorienting to have to leave everything I knew behind. But it was the beginning of me writing poetry, I was very homesick and poetry became a way for me to stay connected to Guam and to those memories and to that place. He had just finished his freshman year at Chief Gadao Academy of Arts Science & Chamorro Culture, a Guam charter school which had about 20 students at the time, according to Perez when he packed up and started his sophomore year at James Logan High School, a Union City, California, school of 4,000 students. I remember being at Gadao Academy and it was the first time I was really introduced to our culture in school, Perez said. When I went to high school in California, we had really good English teachers that introduced us to a lot of different kinds of literature and writing, and encouraged all of us to write about our identity and culture. He did just that. For many years I felt unmoored, drifting and lost while trying to navigate a new city, school and continent. Poetry helped me remember and maintain connections to home; poetry also helped me navigate my new surroundings. These early poems felt cathartic because they created a space to emotionally cope with the traumas of migration, he wrote in his preface to Wayreading Chamorro Literature from Guam, his 2015 doctoral dissertation. In the beginning Perez, 42, is the middle child of three children born to Helen Milan Santos Perez, familian Portusach, from San Diego, California, and Tom Perez, familian Gollo, from Hagatna. Both my parents are very, very voracious readers and growing up on Guam, they are always reading books, he said. One thing that was nice as a kid is that they would always take me to the bookstore, Hafa Books. They would take me there every weekend and buy me some kids books or comic books. I always had something to read as a kid. He attributes his love of reading and curiosity to his parents, but its his parents storytelling that has endured for him. Both my parents are really good storytellers, they like to talk stories. And one thing I love growing up is the fiestas and parties when family would come over sitting in a circle or around the dinner table and just talking story for hours, he said. I always love just listening, listening to all my relatives, telling stories all day and all night. I guess thats where my love of stories comes from and my own desire to write stories as well. Spurred by his high school English teachers and the support of his parents, he pursued a degree in literature and creative writing from the University of Redlands in California. He followed his bachelors degree with a masters in creative writing from the University of San Francisco in 2006, and then a masters in 2009 and a doctorate in 2015 in comparative ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley. I became a poet, as I said, to stay connected to home, but I really got my Ph.D. so I could learn more about Guam and the Marianas, he said. I am like most indigenous scholars, were studying our own cultures because colonialism has taken away a lot of that knowledge from us. Were getting our Ph.D. degrees and becoming teachers, but also were doing it to learn about our own history and politics while staying close and staying connected to our culture. Throughout his 20s and 30s, he continued to write stories and poetry from his CHamoru roots even when it seemed like nobody cared. When I first started sending my work out for publication it was a struggle to find publishers who are interested in the work I was writing about, about Guam and CHamoru culture, he said. No one knew where Guam was, or what CHamoru people are. So theres that feeling of being invisible, because Guam was kind of the blank space on everyones map. So I had to work really hard to kind of educate people about Guam and CHamoru culture and history and to try to keep publishing my work, even if I was really on the far margins of the literary world, he added. A collection of his poetry from unincorporated territory [hacha] was published in 2008 and in the preface he wrote, On some maps, Guam doesnt exist; I point to an empty space in the Pacific and say, Im from here. On some maps, Guam is a small, unnamed island; I say, Im from this unnamed place. On some maps, Guam is named Guam, U.S.A. I say, Im from a territory of the United States. On some maps, Guam is named, simply, Guam; I say, I am from Guam. Writing the same stuff Since then, the tide has shifted and demands for his writing, his poetry and his time grew. He added four more books of poetry from unincorporated territory [saina] (2010), from unincorporated territory [guma] (2014), from unincorporated territory [lukao] (2017), and Habitat Threshold (2020) to his literary canon. They were even translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. His monograph, Navigating CHamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization (2022) was recently awarded the Modern Languages Association Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures and Languages a few weeks ago in San Francisco. His other awards include the Pen Center USA/Poetry Society of America Literary Prize (2011), the American Book Award (2015), the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship (2016), the Hawaii Literary Arts Council Award for an Established Artist (2017), and a gold medal Nautilus Book Award (2021). He has also been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2010), the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry (2019), and the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK-I) Book Prize (2022), and he was long-listed for a PEN America Literary Award (2021). I was so used to being invisible at the margins and all of a sudden I am winning these national awards, when, literally 15 years ago, no one would even publish my work, he said. Im still writing the same stuff. Its trending now. I never felt like I had to change who I was or hide who I was to be a writer, but more so that the power of my writing would come from being rooted in my cultural identity. Author, editor, professor Early in our interview, I asked Perez how he wanted to be referred to. Author, editor and professor are my three main identities, he replied. I think they all weave together in my life. Obviously, I was a writer first, and so thats my closest passion and allows me to write about cultural stories and family stories and whatever Im thinking and feeling, he said. With the editing and publishing, that allows me to support other writers, especially those who maybe didnt have as many opportunities as I did. To give them publications and increase the visibility of CHamoru and Pacific literature. With the teaching, I could inspire my students to write their own stories about their own cultures and families. Ive been lucky, where, to the point, Ive been teaching for 11 years, said Craig Perez, who is a professor in the English Department at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where he teaches creative writing, eco-poetry and Pacific literature. And so some of my students now have gone on to write and publish their own books and some of them have become professors and teachers as well. So every generation hopefully will keep growing and inspire the next generation. He has no intentions of slowing down as he is contemplating a collection of short stories, a novel of fiction, a childrens book and working with filmmakers to transform his poems into film. And then beyond that, Im just doing a lot more like international work collaborating or giving talks and readings and lectures across the world raising awareness of Pacific and CHamoru literature, he said. Poetry as a conduit In 2010, at the age of 30, he returned to the homeland to share his poetry as part of the Humanities Guahan series of community conversations on the military buildup titled, 8,000 How Will It Change Our Lives? It was really great to be back home to spark those conversations through poetry. It was very powerful because the military is a very controversial and emotional topic back home. Everyones impacted by it and we all have family members in the military as well, Perez said. To me, it was also very empowering, to know that the words or the poems I was writing were able to spark conversation and dialogue. It was also very transformative and solidified what I had always believed in the power of poetry and literature and put it in action. And it encouraged me to become an activist as well, he added. I asked him if he thinks being a poet is cool again, referencing the popularity of Amanda Gorman after she read her poem The Hill We Climb at the 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden. It is becoming cool and feels a little retro too, he said with a laugh. The poet is like a figure from the past thats come back and speaks the deeper truth of the world. It does feel like there is much more desire for storytelling. And poetry is a very ancient form of storytelling. Poetry is like a conduit for history, culture and identity and all these other stories, even if its just about me or my family. The cultural repository at the University of Guam, which was built to provide appropriate storage and curation for archaeological material found during military-related construction, does not yet contain any items, according to Monique Storie, who is in charge of the facility as dean of the UOG libraries. The $12 million military-funded Guam Cultural Repository held a ribbon-cutting event last October. It was built in connection with the ongoing $8 billion military buildup, which involves transferring thousands of Marines from Okinawa and elsewhere to the new Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz, in Dededo. A two-hour open house, hosted by the military, is scheduled to start 5 p.m. Thursday at the repository to provide more information about the facility and how archaeological material found during the military buildup will be handled according to the militarys 2011 programmatic agreement with Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. DOD recognizes the long and unique history of CHamorus on Guam and the importance of protecting and preserving the record of that history under federal law, the agreement states in part. Storie said the university still is hiring for the repository. The employees already on board are working on policies and procedures for repository operations, she said. The programmatic agreement states that all archaeological material found on military-controlled land during the buildup, including man-made items or items which are evidence of human activity, shall be transferred to the cultural repository after it is built. The repository will not have human remains. What goes into the (Guam Cultural Repository) is what has been determined from (the State Historic Preservation Office) and the Guam Museum as having been documented and ready for placing into the repository, Storie said. Repository personnel are working on the forms that would need to be filled out in order to receive any collections, as well as working with the Guam Museum as to what needs to go in. Museum curator Michael Bevacqua said the museum does not have any of the archaeological material. It is being held elsewhere until it can be placed in the repository, he said. Storie said the repository is a collection and care facility, and access will be primarily for researchers. The curator will outline what the level of accessibility will be, she said. Nothing has moved in yet, Storie said. We are now just initiating conversations with all of the parties to solidify the process and the schedule of when materials will go. She said the facility also will accept archaeological items unrelated to the military projects. The facility design was for materials to come in over the next 25 years It was recognized that a facility that can assist with all of the archaeological collections would be of the best interest for the island, she said. Thursdays Cultural Resources Open House is being hosted by Joint Region Marianas, in response to expressed community interest in learning more about the Department of Defenses efforts to preserve cultural resources on Guam, according to the Navy. While the nearly three-year COVID-19 public health emergency ended Jan. 6, people still can pay government of Guam taxes and non-tax payments using credit cards without incurring credit card fees. GovGuam will continue to waive the credit card convenience fee until Sept. 30, with Adelup citing healthy returns, or increased tax collections, as the likely result of the extended waiver. For GovGuam tax payments, the credit card convenience fee for processing is equivalent to 3.7% of the amount to be paid. For non-tax payments, the savings would be from $2.45 to $4.45 per credit card transaction of up to $150. For transactions over $150, the savings would be 2.75% of the amount to be paid, based on data from the Department of Revenue and Taxation. Absorbing So far, GovGuam has spent nearly $13 million to absorb the credit card convenience fee cost that residents would have otherwise paid since April 2020, based on a review of the latest American Rescue Plan funding status report. It shows GovGuam has so far spent $12.85 million for credit card fees, exceeding the initial ARP fund allocation of $6.4 million. Theres still $1.9 million available for the purpose. The credit card fee waiver was supposed to be a three-month Adelup initiative, from April to June 2020, to provide financial relief to small businesses and individuals adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The waiver is going on nearly three years. The program will run for three-and-a-half-years by the time it ends on Sept. 30. Extensions On Wednesday, Adelup shared an Oct. 1, 2022, memo from then-acting Gov. Josh Tenorio to the Department of Administration, authorizing the continued coverage of credit card fees. Tenorio said GovGuam collections had either stabilized or increased, which he said was likely due to the elimination of costs associated with the payment of convenience fees, so the waiver was extended a few times. Consistent data, he said, reflects the same healthy returns. Prior to that, the waiver was supposed to end on Sept. 30. 2022. Tenorios memo extended it for another year. Our community is presently engaged in aggressive efforts to recover our economy from the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenorio wrote in his memo. I believe that extending the directive for government coverage of customer credit and bank card convenience fees will assist in this effort. Theres still $245 million left in ARP funds as of Dec. 31, out of $586.91 million that the federal government made available to Guam, based on the first ARP funding status report of the Bureau of Budget and Management Research to newly sworn in senators of the 37th Legislature. Thomas Tanaka Jr., who operates a ranch on about 19 acres of government land in Dededo, plans to sell as many as 1,000 fresh chickens and ducks to local consumers each year through the Farmers Cooperative Association of Guam. Because Guam doesn't have a federally approved slaughterhouse to process locally raised pork and beef, federal regulations allow ranchers to process and sell only poultry here, with an annual cap on the number of birds. Tanaka, who built a poultry slaughterhouse at the ranch about two years ago, said he processed one batch of chickens, sold under the Uncle Ma label. But stray-dog attacks, thieves and additional government inspection requirements have delayed the next batch, he said. Tanaka, who slaughters mature laying hens, said he hopes to have more fresh chicken for sale in a few months. Local prices The locally raised chicken is more expensive than imported frozen chicken about $15 for a three-pound or four-pound bird but customers are willing to pay the extra cost, Tanaka said. Tanaka recently gave a tour of his ranch to a visiting animal science professor and University of Guam officials, who held a food safety and meat processing workshop for about two dozen residents. The workshop was organized because of the growing interest in promoting food security in Guam and to help residents produce meat for personal consumption or sale, according to the university. We hope to equip more people on island with the knowledge to rely more on Guams local food resources and to do so safely, said Jian Yang, a food science specialist at the university. Tanakas ranch along Chalan Palauan, which operates through a lease under the local governments old Arrendu program, is home to about a dozen cattle, along with hundreds of laying hens that produce nearly 1,000 eggs per week. Im just trying to get the system going, Tanaka told the visitors, including eventually raising ducks for eggs and meat. The cattle are raised for personal consumption, he said. Quality During a workshop session at the university, Gary Sullivan, an associate professor of meat science at the University of Nebraska, talked about meat quality and taught residents how to cure their own bacon from pork belly and to make pork sausage. He encouraged the workshop participants, who were divided into three groups, to add local flavors to their standard sausage mixes. They added mango, calamansi and finadenne denanche to batches of sausage, fried it, tasted the results, then adjusted their recipes to make final batches. Sullivan provided imported ground pork butt for the workshop, purchased at one of the islands Pay-Less Supermarkets. USDA roadblocks One of the big roadblocks is getting that (USDA) inspection, Sullivan said about the inability to buy locally raised pork. Theres been discussions on being able to bring in a small slaughterhouse and getting some USDA-inspected local products in it and that would really open it up. Until then, Sullivan said, there is an opportunity for Guam to manufacture value-added food products, such as sausage, using imported items. Workshop participant Marvin Crisostomo owns Local Jerk, which manufactures food products in Guam, including denanche and beef jerky. Crisostomo said he attended the workshop to learn more about meat handling and to make contact with university experts who can assist with new federal food regulations. Crisostomo said Local Jerk has been selling beef jerky for about five years, using imported USDA beef, and is considering adding other meat products to its inventory. We dont use any local meats or locally caught meat, Crisostomo said, adding his business would purchase locally slaughtered meat if it was available. Then we dont have to wait for air freight, so well always have a supply, he said. That was one of the biggest problems we were having during the pandemic, was supply. The Department of Public Works, which provides busing services for the Guam Department of Education, was awarded a $9.87 million federal grant to buy 25 all-electric buses and charging systems for its fleet. The money comes from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided $5 billion over five years to subsidize the purchase of low-emission or zero-emission school buses. Public Works applied for a grant, according to Director Vince Arriola. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which awarded the grant as part of its Clean School Bus Program, Guams public schools met the priority criteria for low-income, high-need, rural or tribal schools. U.S. EPA approved 403 applications nationally, awarding a total of $948.8 million. According to the award list, Puerto Rico is the only other territory to be awarded a grant. It also received $9.87 million to buy 25 electric buses. Replacements According to the program rules, Public Works must replace one working diesel-burning school bus model year 2010 or older for each new electric school bus it buys with the grant. Public Works must buy not lease electric buses and operate them for at least five years after they are delivered, the rules state. This investment will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money for Guams schools, protect childrens health, drive demand for American-made batteries and vehicles, boost domestic manufacturing, and create good-paying jobs, according to the U.S. EPA. According to Blue Bird Corporation, one of the nations top school bus manufacturers, its electric buses have a range of up to 120 miles and can be charged within three to eight hours. An electric school bus costs about $400,000 on average, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Resiliency Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero, in a written statement issued by U.S. EPA, thanked the president for the infrastructure law and thanked the U.S. EPA administrator for quickly and equitably issuing the grant awards. In 2019, Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio and I created the Climate Change Resiliency Commission on Guam, which was geared toward developing an integrated strategy to build resiliency against the adverse effects of climate change and reduce contributing factors such as greenhouse gas emissions, the governor stated. Thousands of our islands school children will benefit from the cleaner fleet this award will provide, granting us a tremendous opportunity to fortify our capacity for climate change resiliency through improved air quality and reduced air emissions. By William Schwartz | Published on 2023/01/17 On January 18th, Netflix confirmed that part 2 of "The Glory" starring Song Hye-kyo would begin airing worldwide on the streaming platform this coming March 10th. Like the first part of the revenge drama, the second part will have eight episodes. In a statement released alongside the announcement, screenwriter Kim Eun-sook claimed that no one who had seen the first part would want to miss the second part. Director Ahn Gil-ho echoed this confidence, calling the story dynamic. Advertisement The first part of "The Glory" was released on December 30th. According to figures release by Netflix, through January 15th it has earned 14.8 million viewed hours from Netflix subscribers worldwide. "The Glory" is currently the second most popular non-English language serial drama on Netflix, and the seventh most popular if English titles are included. The only other South Korean title in the Netflix non-English top 10 is "Alchemy of Souls: Light and Shadow" in seventh place. Written by William Schwartz ___________ "The Glory" is directed by Ahn Gil-ho, written by Kim Eun-sook, and features Song Hye-kyo, Lee Do-hyun, Lim Ji-yeon, Yeom Hye-ran, Park Sung-hoon, Jung Sung-il-I. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2022/12/30, Fri on Netflix. Published on 2023/01/18 | Source Korean movies opening today 2023/01/18 in Korea: "The Point Men", "Phantom", "Winter Story", "CARRIE and SUPERKOLA" and "SUPER JUNIOR: The Last Man Standing" Advertisement "The Point Men" (2020) Directed by Yim Soon-rye With Hwang Jung-min, Hyun Bin, Kang Ki-young, Jeon Sung-woo, Park Hyoung-soo, Ahn Chang-hwan,... Synopsis Based on the true events of the Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan. A group of Korean tourists is taken hostage by an extremist Taliban group in Afghanistan. The Korean government dispatches Jae-ho (Hwang Jung-min), known as one of Korea's most skilled diplomats, in order to handle the situation. Once he arrives, he asks for the Afghan government's cooperation and uses every means possible to free the hostages. However, his efforts go in vain. Due to his failure, he's forced to work with Dae-sik (Hyun Bin), a special agent who is an expert on the Middle East. As they begin making their move to get to the Taliban, the first hostage death occurs. With nowhere else to turn, the two become unlikely allies in a race against time to save the rest of the hostages. "Phantom" (2023) Directed by Lee Hae-yeong With Sol Kyung-gu, Lee Hanee, Park So-dam, Park Hae-soo, Kim Dong-hee, Seo Hyun-woo,... Synopsis An action, spy film set in the backdrop of the Japanese colonial era. "Winter Story" (2004) Directed by Shin Sang-ok With Shin Goo, Kim Ji-sook, Kim Seon-dong, Moon Hyuk, Lee Myung-hee, Min Kyung-jin,... Synopsis The last movie left by a great Korean movie star! Now that the aging population is rapidly growing, the life of the elderly is being driven into the precipice. An elderly (Shin Goo) suffered from dementia due to the shock from his wife's death, and his daughter-in-law (Kim Ji-sook) takes care of him. Every moment they're in pain... The only thing that keeps them going through is their family. The unreleased posthumous work of the late director Shin Sang-ok will finally be unveiled! "CARRIE and SUPERKOLA" (2022) Directed by Lee Chun-baek, Oh Seong-yoon Voiced by Choi Ha-ri, Um Sang-hyun, Lee Da-eun-II, Won Ok-hwa,... Synopsis My friend 'Cola' has a superpower... ?! The alien "Master", who was being chased by the space villain 'Spector', accidentally makes an emergency landing on Earth and gets into the body of 'Kola', the most precious doll of 'Carrie'. 'Super Kola' became Carrie's one and only secret friend, thanks to her psychic ability to move objects freely! But the peace is short-lived. Due to the excessive use of superpowers, 'Super Cola' caught on the radar of the 'Spector' gang and is eventually captured by the villain's spacecraft! Brave Carrie's Super Power Kola Rescue Operation! "SUPER JUNIOR: The Last Man Standing" (2022) With Leeteuk, Kim Heechul, Yesung, Shindong, Donghae, Choi Si-won,... Synopsis SUPER JUNIOR: The Last Man Standing captures the story of SUPER JUNIOR's birth and debut, from the intense trainee days, through the beginning of the super-large project group 'SUPER JUNIOR 05' that has never been seen before, to today, arousing questions. In addition, the members of SUPER JUNIOR, who are heading towards the 20th anniversary of their debut, will honestly reveal their true and inner feelings that they have never brought out to the world, revealing their days of growing up together in joy, pain, happiness, and despair. In particular, through the growth story of SUPER JUNIOR, the global representative of Korean idols, both in name and reality, you can get a glimpse of the K-Pop industry and is expected to arouse admiration from viewers. Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up New Ad-free Subscriber Login Email Password Password Username Subscribe to our daily NewsLetter Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password or receive our NewsLetter. Stay logged in Lost password Contact The Industrial Union on Tuesday stated that its strike would take place at 50 workplaces, with a combined headcount of 7,200, in the key export industries on 13 February. THE INDUSTRIAL UNION , Trade Union Pro and Federation of Professional and Managerial Staff (YTN) have issued strike warnings after breaking off collective bargaining negotiations in the chemical and technology industries. Both Pro and YTN have scheduled their strikes for the same three-day period, the latter revealing that roughly 5,000 senior managerial staff would be participating. All three unions also announced extensive overtime bans that came into effect yesterday or today. Employee representatives broke off negotiations on new collective bargaining agreements in the chemical and technology industries on Monday, citing unbridgeable disagreements about wage increases. Negotiations in the technology industry, in particular, are relevant for all wage earners as the industry typically sets the so-called general pay rises that are adopted also in other industries. Riku Aalto, the chairperson of the Industrial Union, said employer representatives have refused to take soaring consumer prices into account when scaling wage increases. Our patience has been exhausted. It is obvious at this point in the round of collective bargaining negotiations that we cannot make progress through negotiations, he commented in a press release on Monday. Rising prices are challenging the ability of workers to cope with day-to-day costs. Wage increases are needed because living is more expensive. People must be able to get by on their wages. The Industrial Union, along with other member unions of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), in December declared that they are seeking wage increases in the ballpark of five per cent for this year. Attempts to settle the differences between employer and employee organisations will resume under the guidance of the National Conciliator on Wednesday. Jarkko Ruohoniemi, the CEO of Technology Industry Employers, told Helsingin Sanomat on Monday that employers have made all possible concessions in the negotiations without undermining the competitiveness of businesses excessively. Were talking about our concern for the competitiveness of companies. We cant make more concessions to move forward without endangering it. The demands of the other side are so harsh that we cant give in to them. Further strike warnings are expected perhaps as soon as this week, according to the daily newspaper. Service Union United (PAM) and Finnish Transport Workers Union (AKT) have already announced they are preparing to take industrial action in co-operation with the Industrial Union. Aleksi Teivainen HT Excise taxes on fuels are the most effective way to mitigate road transport emissions in Finland, as they create continuous incentives to reduce annual mileage. According to a background report for the Finnish Economic Policy Council, lump-sum transfers are better at improving the equity of fuel taxation compared to reductions in income or fuel taxes. Tax reductions would disproportionately benefit high-income households. Furthermore, reductions in fuel taxes could create harmful incentives to increase driving. However, the burden of the tax is higher on low-income car-owning households. The new background report for the Economic Policy Council analyses various models of compensation. The report is written by doctoral researcher Selina Clarke and the empirical analysis conducted by researcher Kimmo Palanne. To sum it up, a lump-sum transfer would compensate costs to low-income households, while not encouraging more driving, says Clarke. Low-income car-owners carry relatively high fuel tax burden When looking at all households, fuel expenditure as a share of income is relatively small, approximately below 4 percent, and is the highest for households in the 6th-8th income deciles. However, when we only look at car-owning households, fuel expenditure as a share of income is considerably higher for low-income households fuel expenses are over 10 percent for the lowest income decile and below 3 percent for the highest income decile. A lump-sum transfer is the most effective way to reduce fuel costs Compensation can effectively even out differences in tax burdens between income deciles. A lump-sum transfer is the most effective way to reduce the burden of taxation in the lowest income deciles. Furthermore, lump-sum transfers are expected to generate fewer environmentally harmful incentives compared to, for example, reductions in fuel taxes. The latter would make driving relatively cheaper. Conversely, reductions in income or fuel taxes would disproportionately benefit high-income households who drive more and pay more tax. Based on a comparison of different compensation measures, lump-sum transfers to households appear to be slightly better at reducing distributional effects across income deciles compared to transfers proportional to household size. The more strongly the compensation is tied to household size, the more households in higher income deciles benefit, because they tend to be larger. Furthermore, lump-sum transfers are also likely to involve lower administrative costs. As an example of the lump-sum transfer, households in some Canadian provinces receive a state tax refund four times per year. The refund is paid from the province's carbon dioxide tax revenue, says Palanne. The analysis utilises the Finnish Transport Safety Agency Traficoms data (2016) to determine vehicle owners and each cars annual distance driven in kilometres. Secondly, using Statistics Finlands FOLK-dataset, it was possible to assign car owners to households and calculate each households total fuel costs and their ratio to household disposable income. In 2016, a total of 1,295 million petrol excise taxes and 1,362 million diesel excise taxes were collected. The estimated revenue from the carbon tax components was 809.7 million euros.The tax refunds modeled in the report are based on distributing this carbon tax revenue. The Council publishes an annual report for 2022 evaluating recent economic policy decisions on Wednesday February 1st. Green transition is one of the of the topics of the report seminar. HT Source: Finnish Economic Policy Council Israel discovers 1,300-year-old colored silk fabrics from China Xinhua) 14:45, January 18, 2023 JERUSALEM, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Israeli archaeologists have discovered hundreds of 1,300-year-old imported colorful fabrics, the University of Haifa (UH) said in a statement on Tuesday. The findings include silk fabrics originating in China, as well as cotton fabrics imported from India, Iran and Sudan, all found in excavations carried out in the southeastern Arava valley by UH, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority and other universities. "The findings indicate that there was a previously unknown Israeli silk road, branched off from the famous Silk Road network that connected ancient China to the rest of the world," Guy Bar-Oz, a senior archeologist at UH and head of the research, told Xinhua. "At that time, there was a strong monopoly of Chinese silk worldwide," he said, adding after molecular genetic research on the silk remains, it will be possible to identify the silkworm species and thus know from which part of China the fabrics originated. The fabrics' colors have been preserved well and include various colors and shapes in indigo blue, red from the Rubia tinctorum plant, brown, and other shades, UH noted. Some of the Indian cotton fabrics bear ikat designs, in which the warp is tied and colored before weaving according to a pre-prepared model. Other fabrics found at the site were made with complex weaving, which is still used today to make carpets in Iran and other countries in Central Asia. The team also found a wide range of other imported items at the site, including leather straps, belts, socks, shoe soles, combs, backgammon dice, hygienic products like ear swabs and bandages, and more. The richness and abundance of the finds indicate the high demand for luxury products from the Far East, as well as step progress in technological developments, and globalization that influenced the Middle East, UH concluded. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) THE Henley Choral Society has celebrated its 50th anniversary. Seven founders were among the members who came together at the d:two centre, where the choir rehearses, on Monday evening to mark the occasion. They enjoyed refreshments, a cake made by Pavilion in Henley and a speech by society chairman Dr Tim Wilson. He gave a special welcome to Angela Whitehead, the societys accompanist for 31 years, Chris Walker, who was musical director from 1987 to 1983, and fellow founders Di Jones, Ann Law, Geraldine Myer and Wendy and Andrew Hawkins. Dr Wilson said: A golden anniversary is a real accomplishment. Consider what that signifies 50 years of people coming together to learn, practise and perform music. Think of all the members, old and young, the committee members and volunteers, the professional musicians, conductors, accompanists, soloists, orchestras and organists. Above all, think of all the audience members from our local community. Weve had the privilege of inspiring and entertaining them with some of the greatest music ever written. Over 50 years, choral music has been the uniting bond to create friendships, make connections, foster and support talent and give us purpose and bring joy. The society will mark the anniversary with a series of events, including a gala concert at St Marys Church on April 1 where the choir will perform a specially commissioned choral work called The Ice is Listening by Cecilia McDowall, an award-winning composer. Dr Wilson said: Starting with the favourite poems and texts the choir provided on the topic of rivers and water, Cecilia and her librettist, Oxford poet Kate Wakeling, were inspired to go with the important and prescient theme of mans relationship with water, ice and the environment. It is a 15-minute choral composition in three movements. On May 20 there will be an open workshop led by composer and conductor Bob Chilcott and on June 24, there will be a summer concert involving Henley Youth Choir which will be followed by a party. On October 14, the society will host two new free events, the Henley Big Sing and the Henley Kids Big Sing, to get the community singing. The first and last events are funded by a grant from Henley Town Council. Dr Wilson thanked the council as well as Susan Edwards, Angela Law, Felicity Bazell, Jane Edwards and Liz Ware, who worked on the anniversary programme. Mayor Michelle Thomas, who attended the event, said: Congratulations for this magnificent achievement. When I was a little girl, my mother sang in a choir and went on for 30 years. When I was little, I didnt really appreciate it but as I got older, I started really getting it. Music, especially live music, brings you so much joy. I remember that wall of sound coming towards me which was so impressive and gave me goosebumps all over my body. Thats what choirs can achieve. I went on to sing with Barts Choir in London for nearly four years and I got to perform in all sorts of wonderful places like the Royal Albert Hall. They were some of the best years of my life. Mrs Hawkins said: It is amazing that weve reached 50 years. When you start something like this, you dont know who will ring you up. Me and my first husband, Graham Gooder, put an advert in the Henley Standard. We had looked around and seen no sign of a choir so we started this to see what would happen. It just grew from there. We had 30 people at our first ever meeting in the Henley Grammar School music room and by 1976 we had about 80 members. It blossomed very quickly and has stayed that number or above ever since. You get such a good feeling from singing. It lifts your heart and spirit and its good for the brain. Im very proud of the society. Teachers from across Central Bucks School District gathered outside of two schools Tuesday protesting a recently approved policy restricting political and social policy discussions in classrooms. The demonstration at Central Bucks High School East and Holicong Middle School came as administrators were scheduled to meet with staff about Policy 321, a controversial policy supporters say creates a politically neutral learning environment but one that teachers and students say is an attempt to silence discussions about LGBTQ issues. Keith Willard, a Holicong Middle School teacher, led a crowd of teachers and students out of the middle school around 3 p.m. Tuesday, joining about 20 other teachers already gathered nearby. He said the policy was a step backward and could hurt efforts to support students, including those in the LGBTQ community. This policy is a roadblock to that progress. It attempts to make LGBTQ support invisible, he said. Make no mistake, this is a policy borne out of bigotry and discrimination and one only needs to look at the previous revisions to see symbols of pride targeted. Policy 321 on Partisan, Political or Social Policy Advocacy Activities passed with a 6-3 vote Jan. 10, but Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh and staff have to hash out specifics through administrative regulations before the rules can be enforced. Flags, banners and photographs and other similar items expressing a political or social stance are prohibited in classrooms under the general rules of the new policy. The only exceptions are if the displays are part of that teachers specific lesson plan. Shortly after last weeks meeting, Lucabaugh scheduled several voluntary town hall meetings with staff at district schools through the end of the month to discuss the impact of Policy 321. It is not lost on me that this policy has engendered concern, uncertainty, and even fear, Lucabaugh wrote in an email provided by multiple sources in the school district. Over the next several weeks, I will be hosting six town-hall forums for our teachers, paraprofessionals, and administrators to listen, ask questions, and open a dialogue to better understand how we can position you to engage in your work within the context of the policy, and to do so with confidence and impact, Lucabaugh continued. For some, the meetings were too little, too late in seeking educator input. Since there were no opportunities to share concerts prior to the passing of this policy even though many did and were ignored many staff are feeling that this town hall is performative, states text message among the teachers shared with this news organization. An earlier draft of Policy 321 was officially introduced at a committee meeting in September, but that draft would see multiple changes after it was reviewed by attorneys from Duane Morris LLP. Officials hired the firm in November to defend the district against a federal LGBTQ discrimination complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of several students. In addition to investigating numerous claims made in the 72-page complaint, the firm was also tasked with reviewing current and new policies to avoid discriminatory language. The district paid Duane Morris $114,106 for legal services in December, according to January public meeting documents. The draft voted through at a first-read vote in October had five references to sexual orientation and gender identity, but the new draft cut those terms entirely. A water main break Wednesday morning caused Northern Lehigh School District officials to send some students home to complete classes. About 7 a.m., a water main broke in Slatington, according to a note on the districts website. School officials said they arent sure when itll be repaired. Due to this, the main campus will operate on a flexible instructional day, according to the notice. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation. Students already on the campus could walk home, while those who take a bus would be bused back to their stop, according to the note. Peters Elementary School students will attend school as usual. Morning Call reporter Molly Bilinski can be reached at mbilinski@mcall.com. The city of Bethlehem is not backing down on its bid to buy three churches and a parking lot in the city, officials said Tuesday. At a council meeting Tuesday evening, Mayor J. William Reynolds read a letter addressed to the congregations of St. Johns Windish Lutheran Evangelical Church, Light of Christ Lutheran Church and St. Peters Evangelical Lutheran, urging them to consider the citys bid for the properties. The three churches announced plans to sell their properties and merge into one congregation late last year. The joint congregations were set to vote on the sale Jan. 8. But their plans were put on hold after the Bethlehem Parking Authority threatened to seize the parking lot of St. Johns Windish by eminent domain, reasoning that the loss of that public parking in south Bethlehem could have devastating consequences for the neighborhood. The parking authority has since backed down on the threat, but church officials said a final sale is now on hold as the congregations formulate a new plan. The three churches received bids from Lehigh University and the city to buy the properties. Bethlehem originally bid $3.5 million while Lehigh University bid $3.7 million, but the city later announced it would match Lehighs offer. Reynolds said the citys mission to use the properties for the communitys benefit has been lost in the process or misunderstood. As a local government, the city is best suited to ensure a transparent community planning process takes place, Reynolds said. A city answers to its citizens in a way that a private institution does not. Reynolds said the city, if it wins its bid to buy the churches, will begin a community engagement initiative to solicit residents feedback on how the spaces should be used. The city is likely to use the church spaces for affordable housing, he said, which community advocates have called for more of in Bethlehem. Reynolds said the citys housing situation is at a crisis point as rent and property sale prices have soared over the past few years. Acquiring the churches and converting them into affordable housing could be the first step toward alleviating the problem, he argued. Lehigh University officials, although they have not detailed how they plan to use the space, said the school is committed to a community-driven process if it acquires the properties. Several city council members echoed Reynolds comments and urged members of the congregation, who were not present at the meeting, to sell the buildings to the city. Several referred to Lehigh Universitys expansion into south Bethlehem, which they said hurt residents of the city. In the 1950s, Lehigh University took advantage of the federal governments urban renewal policies to raze a south Bethlehem neighborhood and expand its campus. I see the great benefit they do for the community, said Council Vice President Grace Crampsie Smith, referring to the university. But when we talk about the lost neighborhood, my childrens grandparents and great grandparents were part of the lost neighborhood, they lost their home on Vine Street and Summit Street when Lehigh made them move. I hope whoever does get to purchase the churches will keep the community in mind both in their heart and their head and do what is right for the community, she added. Church officials have not yet announced a new timeline for the properties sale. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has announced the appointment of Christian Dolenc as General Manager of Mandarin Oriental, Shenzhen. Christian brings a wide range of experiences to his new role in South China, having joined Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group at its flagship property, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong in 2010. Following experiences in Jakarta, Indonesia, and later returning to Hong Kong, where he was Hotel Manager for both the group's Excelsior and Landmark Mandarin Oriental properties, he was appointed General Manager at the group's award-winning Macau property in 2019. Prior to joining Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, he gained a wide range of experiences at leading landmark hotels in Europe and Hong Kong with Rocco Forte Hotels and The Peninsula Hotel Group. This is already a landmark destination property which, despite being only open for one year has been well positioned and already achieved much success. I look forward to building on the strong foundation together with my dynamic team to further strengthen our positioning as a destination property in South China and the Greater Bay Area. Christian holds a MBA in International Hospitality and Service Industries Management by Glion Institute of Higher Education and completed Executive Education Programmes at EHL Lausanne, Switzerland and Cornell University, Ithaca, USA and INSEAD. A German national born and raised in Munich, Germany, Dolenc speaks German, English and conversational Cantonese. He is married with three children and enjoys traveling and playing the saxophone in his leisure time Voter ID has again taken center stage in Pennsylvania. Republicans are pushing stricter voting rules against the objections of Democrats, led by Gov. Tom Wolf, who last week vetoed an election overhaul that, among other major changes, would have required that all voters show identification at the polls. Republicans are now turning their focus to a constitutional amendment that would go straight to voters for approval. But understanding the effects of voter ID laws is complicated. While the political debate often devolves into shouting matches about security and suppression, research into ID requirements has yielded a contradictory array of results. We waded through the research and interviewed experts to make sense of it. Voter ID laws potentially have small negative effects on net turnout but the research is muddy, allowing politicians to cherry-pick data or make broad generalizations. Plus, some experts said, turnout might not be an appropriate way to think about something as fundamental as voting rights. Preventing fraud? The justification for tightening voter ID rules is to prevent fraud. But significant voter fraud, especially voter impersonation, is virtually nonexistent. We have tremendous evidence that voter ID laws do absolutely nothing to prevent voter fraud, because there is no systematic voter fraud to prevent, said Bernard Fraga, an Emory University political scientist. State Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, who authored the bill Wolf vetoed, has even acknowledged the ID rules dont address an existing problem. Its not to say that there has been any fraud, he told The Inquirer, describing the current rules as a loophole that can be exploited in the future. Small differences in law and implementation can matter a lot. The 2012 Pennsylvania voter ID law that courts struck down was one of the strictest in the nation. The version in Groves bill would have been more flexible, including giving every registered voter an ID and allowing voters without one to sign an affidavit affirming their identity. But the proposed constitutional amendment would be much stricter, requiring any valid government-issued identification and not providing for free IDs. New election laws dont take effect in a vacuum. Restrictions can anger and energize voters, while civic groups and campaigns often mobilize to counteract them. Pennsylvania experienced a version of this last year, said Dan Hopkins, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor, in response to the state Supreme Courts decision that naked ballots missing their secrecy envelopes must be rejected. The Democratic Party then did extensive voter education, Hopkins said. It looks like the effect of that education was to really reduce the number of naked ballots cast. Whether an individual voted is a straightforward question, but it can hide the costs of voting. Think about long lines at polling places: If a Black voter waits for hours while a white voter waits only a few minutes, both voted, but the cost for the Black voter was much higher. People might ultimately manage it. That doesnt mean that its costless, said Ariel White, an MIT political scientist. We are still imposing very serious costs on people who are trying to vote. Marginalized groups affected Black and Hispanic citizens are less likely than others to have the necessary identification these laws require. So while the impact is hard to measure, its likely to fall more on those groups, said Hakeem Jefferson, a Stanford political science professor: When it does matter, it matters disproportionately for people of color. Its also likely to disproportionately affect other already marginalized groups, including poor and low-income voters, voters with disabilities, and the youngest and oldest voters. That disparate impact is one reason turnout might not fall when ID requirements are implemented: The groups most likely to be affected already have lower turnout rates and face other barriers. So instead of blocking existing voters, ID rules might raise additional barriers that deter new or future voters. A lot of the people who would be voting are the kind of people who already have ID, said Emily Rong Zhang, a political science graduate student at Stanford studying voter ID. But we also know theres a large pool out there who dont have ID, and theyre disinclined to vote in the first place. And if you care about democracy, its not the number of votes cast that you need to be concerned about, its losing voters. Confusion at the polls Many people wont know the details of the rules, but will hear about new ID requirements, especially the most controversial ones. These narratives scare people away from voting, and they make people think maybe theres going to be a problem when they get to the polls, Fraga said. For groups who already feel like their voice doesnt matter in politics they hear about a voter ID mandate and it reinforces their worldview, even if they have an ID. And research suggests that even attempts to cut through the confusion can be met with unequal response. In an experiment, White found that local elections officials were more likely to respond to emails sent from what appear to be non-Hispanic white names than Hispanic ones. Theres this extra layer of challenges to getting your questions answered and get that help that you need to vote, White said. Some experts said people should take a step back from thinking about turnout and partisan impact, and instead adopt a more fundamental framing of voting rights. In a democracy, the right to vote is sacred, Jefferson said, adding that we should simply be bothered by the burden placed on voters, period, irrespective of whether the thing works or not, whether the restrictive voting law works to suppress turnout. The challenge is figuring out what to do in negotiating legislation. Chris Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University, got pushback from Jefferson and others when he tweeted last month that preventing partisan gerrymandering is worth the trade-off of new ID rules. Ultimately, Warshaw said in an interview, he opposes ID requirements but worries about other issues even more. In isolation, I would never in a million years support voter ID. But as part of a comprehensive plan, you have to make trade-offs, he said. I just think theres not clear evidence that voter ID rises to that level of being so bad for democracy that it should never be part of a deal. Like so much about voter ID, theres no one clear answer, White said. There are a lot of potential threats to the functioning of U.S. democracy right now, so I can understand why some legislators would be looking to potentially deal to make some compromises, she said. In some ways, this is a moral and a philosophical question and not just an empirical one. Cordish Gaming Group, the gaming division of The Cordish Companies, today announced key executive appointments as the company prepares for the expansion of the Live! Casino brand. As Executive Vice President & General Manager of Live! Casino & Hotel Philadelphia, located in the heart of the Philadelphia Stadium District, Craig Clark will assume oversight of all day-to-day management and operations of the property. He is also committed to maintaining and further elevating Live! Philadelphia's profile in the community through expanded partnerships and support of all business, tourism and non-profit organizations. Mr. Clark brings over 30 years of diversified experience within the gaming industry to his new role. He joined the Live! team in 2020 as Vice President of Finance for the opening of Live! Casino Pittsburgh, and then served as COO of Seneca Gaming Corporation. Mr. Clark has additional experience in the Commonwealth having served as General Manager for Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he won the 2014 Diamond Award from the Pittsburgh Business Times honoring top CEOs. His career also includes leadership roles as President of Hard Rock Ottawa; General Manager of Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California; and Senior Vice President and General Manager of Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, New York. Sortis Holdings, Inc. (OTC: SOHI) (the Company or Sortis) an ecosystem of innovative, experiential hospitality brands has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ace Group International, along with its management company, Atelier Ace. With the acquisition, Sortis Holdings, Inc. will be ushering in a new chapter for the iconic brand in an era of cultural collaboration, innovation, and conscious growth, for both the company and the Ace Hotel brand at large. The purchase consideration is comprised of $85 million in an all-cash transaction pursuant to the terms of the purchase agreement. The transaction is expected to close at the end of Q1 2023, subject to customary closing conditions. From award-winning restaurants to cult coffee to the worlds first sustainable sushi bar and now adding the Ace Group, the Sortis platform is an evolving ecosystem of idiosyncratic brands united in their vision and innovation. Equal parts incubator, operator, and development platform, Sortis helps these brands amplify their unique voices through strategic guidance and value-adding resources, like optimized capital access, real estate growth strategies, co-location opportunities, as well as our in-house digital team for data and analytics, and e-commerce capabilities. The Sortis platform is rooted in innovation, purpose, and impact, and aims to foster consumer brands that are at the forefront of culture. Our acquisition of the storied Ace Hotel brand, long known for embodying and celebrating the unique culture of each of its destinations worldwide provides us with an opportunity to advance this vision by scaling the legacy brand in a thoughtful way. Paul Brenneke, Executive Chairman of Sortis Sortis Holdings hospitality partner Kelly Sawdon led the acquisition. Prior to joining Sortis in 2021, she was a partner at the Ace Hotel Group and has been a key player in the Ace Hotel brand since shortly after its inception, leading its boundary-breaking creativity and success. With the Sortis teams robust experience in innovative hospitality and intuitive brand development along with decades of seasoned market acumen Sortis is uniquely poised to amplify the Ace Hotel brand as a series of spirited cultural hubs that ignite neighborhoods and foster collaboration. From the very beginning, Ace has had evolution built into its DNA. This acquisition marks an exciting turning point for the brand tapping some original key players to usher in Aces next chapter of growth. Armed with a team that boasts nearly two decades of experience with the brand, Sortis can help evolve Aces position as the hospitality powerhouse it has always been, synonymous with community, creativity and culture. Kelly Sawdon The acquisition of the Ace Group International includes 12 hotels - 10 Ace Hotel properties in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Seattle, Kyoto, Sydney, New York and beyond as well as the innovative hospitality brands Sister City and Maison de la Luz. These strategic additions build upon Sortis Holdings existing hospitality portfolio, which includes the Ace Hotel Portland, Woodlark Hotel in Portland, Mayflower Park in Seattle, the ALUM brand, and several hotels under development including Hollywood, Seattle, Nashville and Carpinteria. The combined entity of Ace Group International and Sortis Holdings will have 15 hotels under management and a robust pipeline. About Sortis Holdings, Inc. From award-winning hospitality to cult coffee to the worlds first sustainable sushi bar, Sortis Holdings is an ecosystem of idiosyncratic brands that live at the intersection of radical vision, cultural relevance and expansive potential. Through decades worth of seasoned market acumen, intuitive brand development and creative business strategy, we empower brands to become more of themselves, amplifying unique voices and moving culture forward in the process. www.sortisholdings.com About Ace Group International Founded by three friends in 1999 in Seattle, Ace Hotel redefined the hotel as a community gathering space for locals and visitors alike. Today, Ace finds its home in vibrant cities around the globe with its newest locations in Toronto, Canada, Kyoto, Japan and Sydney, Australia celebrating the culture, history, and humans that bring them to life. Everybody is welcome. HVS Hodges Ward Elliott brokers sale of The Standard Ibiza to Schroders Global investment manager Schroders Capital has acquired The Standard Ibiza, a 67-room luxury lifestyle hotel located in the centre of Ibiza Town. The property, which opened in May 2022, includes the very popular Jara restaurant and bar fronting the islands main square, as well as a stunning rooftop terrace with a swimming pool, bar and restaurant, offering views of the marina and Ibiza Castle. HVS Hodges Ward Elliott represented the sellers in the transaction, having also negotiated the operating agreement with Standard International in 2021. Abu Dhabis ADQ fund acquires Reykjavik EDITION Hotel from Stefnir A company owned by Abu Dhabi's Sovereign Wealth Fund ADQ has acquired a 70% stake in The Reykjavik EDITION hotel, located in Icelands capital city, for an undisclosed price. The majority of the shares were held through a structure ultimately owned by Stefnirs SIA III enterprise fund. US developer Carpenter & Co. has retained its 30% interest in the hotel. The hotel will continue to be operated by Marriott International. Opened in 2021, The Reykjavik EDITION has 253 rooms, including 27 suites and a 128 sqm penthouse. HVS London carried out the commercial due diligence on behalf of ADQ for this transaction. Invel and Prodea acquire the White Coast Pool Suites in Milos, Greece Invel Real Estate and Greek real estate investment firm Prodea Investments have acquired the five-star luxury hotel White Coast Pool Suites through the Invel Eudora Fund 1LP, which is held 51% by Invel and 49% by Prodea. Located near Sarakiniko Beach on Milos Island, the hotel contains 30 luxury suites, each with a private pool, and is currently part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World collection. The hotel is now set to be operated by Greek luxury operator Domes Resorts, and the new owners are planning to expand the property. Prodea and Invel launched the fund in June 2021 and also recently invested in the Hotel Bellevue in Cortina dAmpezzo in Italy. Memmo Hotels acquires Hotel Paul do Mar Sea View in Madeira, Portugal Memmo Hotels has acquired the former four-star 60-room Hotel Paul do Mar Sea View in the Calheta district on the island of Madeira. Memmo is expected to carry out refurbishment work on the property, however, details on the value of the investment or possible opening date have not been disclosed. Affiliated with Design Hotels, Memmo Hotels currently has three properties in its portfolio, Memmo Baleeira in Sagres on the south coast of Portugal, and two hotels in Lisbon: Memmo Alfama and Memmo Principe Real. About HVS HVS is the world's leading consulting and valuation services organization focused on the hotel, restaurant, shared ownership, gaming, and leisure industries. Established in 1980, the company performs more than 4,500 assignments per year for virtually every major industry participant. HVS principals are regarded as the leading professionals in their respective regions of the globe. Through a worldwide network of over 50 offices staffed by 300 experienced industry professionals, HVS provides an unparalleled range of complementary services for the hospitality industry. For further information regarding our expertise and specifics about our services, please visit www.hvs.com. In the past few years, the world witnessed an explosion of research partnerships between universities and business organizations. Statistics from the National Center for Universities and Business (NCUB) say that there were over 100,000 corporate partnerships between businesses and universities across Europe in 2017. This figure has undoubtedly increased, but why? Limited by their organizational goals or budget, businesses are reducing their expenditure on early-stage research. Instead, higher education institutions are filling the research gap. The academic-business partnerships are a welcome change for universities. These partnerships provide funds for academic research, which are difficult to come by when there's no government support. Both universities and business organizations ultimately benefit from forging long-term collaborations rather than one-off projects. These partnerships matter now more than ever, considering how they impact students of the modern era. This article dives deep into why university partnerships are vitally important and how they benefit students. Universities need effective academic-industry networking to gain a competitive edge and empower learners In the past, universities competed independently for the brightest students, teaching staff, and academic prowess. Then, their main goal was to boost research and ensure learners graduated with extensive academic knowledge. Today, these goals are still paramount to higher education institutions, but how universities achieve them has significantly evolved. Students in the digital era have more options than ever when choosing higher education. They can easily join a certificate, bachelor's, or graduate program from an international school, online or on-campus, in a partner institution of their preferred school. This ensures students who can't physically move abroad to join their dream university can still enroll in the institution's programs. In short, international study is rapidly rising. Academic institutions are not only competing on the local scale but also globally. Networking enables academic institutions to prepare students for an international career so that they remain competitive when working in different parts of the world. Partnerships provide institutions with research funds and offer students job opportunities University education in its fullest, truest, and greatest form serves three primary purposes: Help students gain a decent employment Assist learners in achieving personal growth and take their skills to the next level Make the world a better place through research and innovation Through partnerships and networking, universities stick to these three purposes. Higher education institutions and corporations have long worked together to enjoy mutual benefits. Students access experiential learning, mentorship, and real-time industry jobs. Students can also leverage internship opportunities with the university's partners. Learners involved in incubator projects can get a role within the partner company after graduation. If these students become full-time workers because of the partnership, it can be a powerful PR tool for higher education institutions. Universities can use the placement numbers to attract prospective students and potential corporate partners. On the other hand, partnerships allow corporations to tap into a talent pool that helps solve business problems. Additionally, university-corporate partnerships in the sponsored research arena are a source of funds that promote discoveries and innovations in academic institutions. An open exchange of ideas between partners also helps modernize higher education and set students up for success. In addition to corporate partnerships, universities can work with government entities and other higher education institutions to strengthen their academic programs and expose students to opportunities. University partnerships help students improve their skills, even post-graduation Part of ensuring students succeed involves equipping them with the relevant skills in the workplace. Partnering with the right organization not only offers job opportunities for students but also helps them flourish in the long term after graduation and in their careers. Let's say you land a job in one of the organizations your university has partnered with. The free flow of ideas between the academic institution and partner firm can mean sharing knowledge that helps the business organization upskill its employees. This could be through exchanging publications, research material, and educational resources between the business's employees and the university students. In short, a university-corporation partnership allows academic support to the corporation's employees, who can update their skills using the university's programs. Such networking ensures your skills remain relevant as the industry evolves. University partnerships promote innovation Globally, there's a focus on bridging the knowledge gap to support innovation. Collaboration between universities and businesses can help achieve this. By working together, higher education institutions and businesses can create new solutions to solve problems. That could mean developing new commercially-viable technology based on the most recent discoveries. It could also mean using academic insights to build more efficient business models. These innovations allow university students to use their academic knowledge to invent new solutions. Strong university partnerships rely on compatibility and common goals For university partnerships to work seamlessly, higher education institutions should build high-quality connections with other organizations. Achieving this requires compatibility between the partners to ensure they are working towards common goals and missions. Effective communication and trust are also critical. If you want an institution with effective networking, check the goals and compatibility between the school and its partners. Academic-corporation partnership is a win-win for both parties University-business partnerships are a hotbed of valuable ideas and talent. Businesses looking to innovate can leverage a wealth of knowledge from world-class academic researchers and brilliant university students. On the other hand, universities need to work with industry partners to source funds and support for research. So, collaborating is often a win-win for both parties, and the results of such partnerships are mostly groundbreaking. EHL Knows the Value of Academic Partnerships Our partnerships with the University of Houston and Hong Kong Polytechnic University allows students to access our Master in Global Hospitality Business program from different continents. We've also partnered with a top-ranking business school in Asia (CEIBS) to allow students to get a joint degree in our Hospitality Executive MBA program. We also collaborate with businesses in different industries on research, talent development, innovation projects, and thought leadership. The Student Business Project (SBP) allows final semester Bachelor students to put their academic knowledge to practice, with many resulting in projects which come to fruition in the real world and job offers following graduation. This 20-year-old scheme is highly sought after by hospitality businesses around the world who know they will benefit from the consultative advice of EHL students with their expertise and pioneering spirit. Further more, the EHL Alliance is a membership program which leverages the power of the EHL Group to give member businessess privileged access to exclusive services and activities focus on business development, brand awareness, talent acquisition, networking, knowledge sharing and innovation. Each EHL Alliance member can also benefit from the EHL Alliance ambassadors program in which one or several students support them in various projects. And likewise those student ambassadors benefit from the exposure and networking links the business offers them. Members include the likes of Coca-Cola, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Laurent-Perrier, and Chopard. Discover the full list of founding members in this article. We know that academic-industry partnerships have a significant impact on students. Our institution welcomes collaborative opportunities that expose students to jobs and a vast external network. About EHL Group EHL Group is the global reference in education, innovation and consulting for the hospitality and service sector. With expertise dating back to 1893, EHL Group now offers a wide range of leading educational programs from apprenticeships to master's degrees, as well as professional and executive education, on three campuses in Switzerland and Singapore. EHL Group also offers consulting and certification services to companies and learning centers around the world. True to its values and committed to building a sustainable world, EHL Group's purpose is to provide education, services and working environments that are people-centered and open to the world. www.ehlgroup.com EHL Hospitality Business School Communications Department +41 21 785 1354 EHL View source Wait! Before you go Please sign up for our Evening Digest and Breaking Newsletters Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Click here for a Print Subscription with Online Digital included. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. Below you will see test that reads Print Subscribe Access. Click this to then Get Started attaching your account number and zip code to you online user account. Click on the banner above if you would like to become a print subscriber with digital access. If you simply want online access without print click get started below. Subscribers to Register-Star or The Daily Mail are eligible to receive full access to HudsonValley360. If you have an existing print subscription, please make sure your email address on file matches your HudsonValley360 account email. New governors use their first moments in office to give people a taste of what is to come for the next four years. When Josh Shapiro spelled out his vision for Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon, he kept it simple. Our democracy is not a given, the 49-year-old Democrat said about halfway through his inaugural address outside the state Capitol in Harrisburg. Rather, he said, our democracy is a constant work in progress. He couldnt have summed it up any better. As I lamented recently on the second anniversary of the Capitol riot, Americas democracy remains under attack. The attacks include book bans. The attacks include attempts to roll back voting rights. The attacks include the refusal to protect gay and transgender people from discrimination. The attacks include demands that women bear the children of rapists. Pennsylvania needs someone committed to fighting for democracy. And Shapiro wisely noted he cannot do it alone. We are all stewards of our democracy, and Im mindful that as we celebrate this peaceful transition of power, we are proving again that our democracy endures and the collective work to strengthen it continues, he said in a nod to the apostles of Donald Trump who still contend he was cheated out of the election in 2020. Shapiro continued: This work is more important now than ever before, because we have seen over the last several years, weve been reminded over the last several years, of the fragility of our democracy. How we have to keep working at it, how we have to keep fighting to protect it. Protecting it means making wise choices on Election Day, both when we choose candidates and when we vote on referendums that propose changes poor changes to our constitutional rights. Shapiro took office Tuesday with a political backdrop not seen for nearly a generation. He is the first governor since 1966 to be elected to succeed a member of the same party, a path made easier because of the pitifulness of his Republican opponent, state Sen. Doug Mastriano. Shapiro replaces Tom Wolf, who served the maximum of two terms. During his campaign, Shapiro stressed his ability to govern in a bipartisan fashion and get things done with a politically divided government. Tuesday, he doubled down on his desire to get things done. Previous incoming governors have, too. Its easy to say. Its not so easy to pull off, as some of his predecessors can attest, including Wolf. Shapiro will work with a divided Legislature that does not all share his definition of what it means to protect democracy. Republicans who refuse to pass anti-discrimination laws and who want to rewrite our state Constitution so it says there is no right to an abortion have a solid grip on the state Senate. In the state House, the GOP now holds a slim majority, but Democrats are expected to end up with a slim advantage after special elections are held next month to fill three vacant seats. Shapiro staked out some common ground with Republicans, including his desire to respect and invest in law enforcement and public safety. Among the guests he invited to sit on the stage Tuesday were Stephanie Mack and Brittany Sisca, the wives of state Troopers Martin Mack and Branden Sisca, who were killed in the line of duty in March. It was inspiring to hear Shapiro stress the importance of beefing up vo-tech, apprenticeships and job training programs for young adults to start careers in fields such as construction. Not all careers begin with spending a fortune for a college degree. And he wisely noted that clean air and water not only make communities healthier, but they strengthen economies as well. For too long, the debate over environmental issues has been framed as having either robust business or a clean environment. Both can prosper. We assume this obligation to defend democracy not merely to honor the work of our ancestors but rather to build on a foundation so we can make progress for our children, Shapiro said. That progress will be measured not only in any advancements that occur during his term, but in the refusal to relinquish an inch of the previous progress. Morning Call columnist Paul Muschick can be reached at 610-820-6582 or paul.muschick@mcall.com. Columbia-Greene Media has recently teamed up with the US Postal Service to provide same-day delivery of your local newspaper with your mail. Our expanded daily delivery of your local news reaches into the following areas: Hudson, NY (12534) Today Sunny. Near record high temperatures. High 87F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 54F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. How much Spotify is paying per stream in 2023 With the industry now gone full-fledged digital, releasing music to DSPs like Spotify is a necessary step for getting it into the ears (and spheres) of the everyday listener. But how much do you really earn? by DITTO MUSIC But how many bucks are you making for your streams? Lets find out. How much does Spotify pay per stream? Spotify pays artists between $0.003 $0.005 per stream on average. That works out as an approx revenue split of 70/30 so thats 70% to the artist/rights holders and 30% to Spotify. REMEMBER: The rights holders of a song can include; the publisher, songwriter and the master recording owners (i.e. the artist and/or label if theyre signed to one). Spotify Royalty Calculator So how can you work out how much you could earn from Spotify streams? Well, exact amounts artists can generate via streams of their music is closely guarded, off the records info. But if you want to get a general idea how much you could potentially earn off the back of Spotify streams, let our Spotify Royalty Calculator do the math for you! IMPORTANT: THE ROYALTIES PREDICTED BY THIS CALCULATOR WILL NOT BE 100% ACCURATE. IT IS A ESTIMATE BASED ON FIGURES FROM THE USA. MANY FACTORS AFFECT STREAMING ROYALTIES AND THIS CALCULATOR SHOULD ONLY BE USED AS A GUIDE. As we mentioned before its impossible to work out exactly how much you should or could be earning per stream based on Spotifys own confidentiality and the vast number of factors influencing your stream rate. So dont get too caught up on the exact calculations, and instead, focus on how you can boost the amount of money you do make from online streams once you upload your music to Spotify . How do Spotify streaming payouts work? Spotify, like many other on-demand streaming services, follows whats known as a pro-rata or platform-centric distribution model. This means the revenue generated and paid out to individual artists releasing on the platform is divvied up based on the following 4 factors: 1. Spotifys total streaming revenue pool 2. The negotiated global payout as a percentage of that revenue 3. Total number of streams on the platform 4. The number of your streams on the platform So in the streaming world, theres no such thing as an all-in-one revenue pool. Instead, theres loads of separate buckets for every kind of subscription, every local market, country and so on. And different types of streams can only mean one simple thing not all streams are created equal. For every artist releasing music, the pay per stream rate will be in constant flux simply because there are hundreds of factors affecting the overall revenue. Lets dive a bit deeper and take a look at the 3 main ones for Spotify. What is a Spotify pay per stream? Basically what it says on the tin. A pay per stream is the amount of money or rate of pay, generated every time someone streams a song on any kind of digital streaming platform. Music streaming generates 2 kinds of royalties; 1. Mechanical royalties 2. Performance royalties So for artists releasing their music on these platforms, the pay per stream is essentially the amount of money the artist makes for a single stream of one of their tracks or songs. And with the no.of streaming service subscriptions up by almost 25% in the US between 2019 2020, its now more important than ever for artists to release their music to every major platform, including Spotify, Deezer, Amazon and Apple Music. Check out how much Apple Music pays artists per stream . What can affect Spotify royalty rates? How much you get paid per stream on Spotify varies from artist to artist. Heres why. Spotify stream rates are influenced by 3 main factors: 1. Who you distribute with Spotify doesnt pay artists royalties based on any kind of rights agreement between Spotify and the artist. Instead, the music royalties youll receive as an artist on the platform are based on your agreement with your music distributor or label. Which means the amount of money youll get paid per stream on Spotify is influenced directly by the music distributor youre working with (and how big a piece of the pie that distributor takes!). At Ditto Music, we want you to see as much buck for your stream as possible. Which is why we work on a 0% commission rate basis, meaning youll keep 100% of all the royalties for every stream of your music. 2. Your listeners country of origin Believe it or not, where your listeners are tuning in from matters. Not every country pays the same amount of money for streaming on Spotify. So for example, listeners in the US will pay $0.0039 per stream, while listeners in Portugal will only pay $0.0018. So if you already know youve got a global base of listeners from across the world, chances are this will heavily influence your pay per stream rate. 3. Your listeners Spotify account plan Spotify operates 2 types of subscription plans for users streaming music on the platform; a Free account and a Premium account (which requires a paid subscription). As paying listeners, Spotify Premium listeners bring in more money to the platform while they listen, compared to Free listeners. Which also means, Spotify offers better royalties when Premium users stream your music. How to earn more money Spotify streams Getting your music streamed on Spotify is just one form of streaming income. While Spotify might be the most popular music streaming service among listeners, millions of people use other streaming services too. Which means youll maximise the money you can make from streaming by releasing music to as many platforms and online stores as possible. Being present on more than one music streaming platform is always a sure way to build your following and reach new listeners too! Playlists are also the main way listeners consume music on streaming services whether thats using editorial playlists curated by the app itself, or user-generated playlists too. Which means getting your music playlisted is another way to make more money from Spotify streams, by putting your tracks in prime place to get picked up by the algorithm and more listeners. And ultimately, the more streams and fans you can generate on Spotify, the more revenue youll return in the form of music royalties. Check out the vid below to hear 11 different ways you can get more streams on Spotify as an unsigned artist. On top of making money from streaming royalties, selling your music online presents other opportunities too like building a global listener-base, getting playlisted, or even getting discovered for a sync opportunity making it a huge pool of uncapped potential for new, aspiring artists! Share on: Brothers Chris and Matt Masiero are training a new generation to take over Guido's Fresh Marketplace as they plan for retirement. Next Generation to Lead Guido's Fresh Marketplace Luke, Nick and Anna Masiero are ready to juggle the needs of Guido's Fresh Marketplace. GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. The future of Guido's Fresh Marketplace has been assured with a new generation preparing to take on the family business. Chris and Matt Masiero started with a roadside produce stand in 1979 on Route 7 in Pittsfield with a $2,500 loan from their father after whom the store is named and shuttled fresh produce from Chelsea Market in Boston. Forward 44 years and two grocery stores later, the brothers are looking at retirement and to handing off the enterprise they've built to their children Luke and Nick (Matt's sons) and Anna (Chris' daughter). "I would say I'm excited to see what our minds from a different generation can bring to the store as well," Nick Masiero said recently during a photo shoot to introduce the new Guido's team to the store's patron. "We have all these great things that they started and we'll carry on forever, but also some new age things that we want to bring in. I'm excited to look into that." The Masieros' two stores in Great Barrington and Pittsfield employ approximately 300 people and feature about 150 local vendors who provide healthy and specialty food for their patrons. The next generation has already started to build upon the foundation laid by their fathers with new additions and renovations at the Great Barrington store. These include the new Cafe Rena, which is projected to open by the end of March. The cafe will provide a place to gather and enjoy a positive vibe while having a meal in a newly renovated beautiful space, Anna said. "[Chris and Matt] got excited for the beginning of Guido's and now we have that in this bran- new renovation in a way," she said. "I work in the deli, and I love the people I work with. We have an amazing chef Bob Turner, who has impressed me so far. So I'm excited for people to come in, get food and sit in the cafe, which I hope I can bring a really positive great vibe to it. So that's what I want to do. That's what I'm excited about." They renovated the Pittsfield marketplace in 2015, adding a couple of amenities, including a cafe, while the Great Barrington was considered the "mom and pop, old-timey vibe," Nick said. Both of the stores provide an old-world marketplace vibe and the renovations to the Great Barrington location are bringing what they already offer to the Pittsfield location in a larger square footage. "I've actually had customers say they prefer the tightness of Pittsfield over the wider aisles of Great Barrington. I mean, this store is a 40,000 square foot store and Pittsfield is 25,000 square feet. So you have the same products in a different square footage. So that to me feels like it has an old world feel to it as well," Chris said. The fact that they are able to have a second generation is fortunate for the Masierios' legacy. Chris said he knows a lot of business owners who do not have that opportunity because their children are not interested in leading and furthering their businesses. Matt has confidence that the next generation of leaders will carry on what he and Chris have built the last 45 years and hopes they continue their work in community service. Even after they eventually retire, they will always be there to help and guide their children when they come to run the marketplace on their own. The passion that the brothers have for the market is what inspired their children to take over when they retire. The decision was an organic one that was made without pressure, Nick said. Their fathers allowed them to learn in their own ways and take their own paths in life. They worked in the store growing up and they considered it a fun place where they would be able to see their cousins and family members. The brothers' passion is ingrained in the walls and demonstrated in the quality of the merchandise on the shelves of both their stores. "I think the example both of these guys set every day, from how they work, how they communicate with people, the passion that bleeds out of them for the stores. It is contagious," Luke said. "And you can see from the outside looking in, but when you're embedded in it Anyone can buy crackers and put them on the shelf but we really have people that are going to shows looking at all these new different products and they find a passion in it, too." This atmosphere that the brothers have set has created a positive working environment for the workers and is reflected in the products and services that they provide, they said. "What Matt and I have left was beyond my wildest imagination. I never thought that I would ever be in this position that I'm in. Selling the types of quality products that we sell. Having the type of customer base that we have. It's amazing," Chris said. The consumer today has changed substantially in terms of their preference toward locally grown food, he said. "What has changed is everybody wants their food coming from a certain radius from where they live that to me is sharing in the growth of the community, because we're all supporting one another," Chris said. Berkshire County has a lot of great farmers that often go under appreciated, Matt said. "We're very fortunate to have these younger people who are farming and they don't get the recognition that they deserve. I just hope they make enough money to continue," Matt said. "That's my biggest fear that they don't make enough money to keep going. We got to make sure that they keep going." The market gets applications from local vendors weekly because of how it is known for its specialty and local products, Anna said. The stores also house three tenants Bella Flora, owned by their sister and brother-in-law Annie and Chris Whalen; Mazzeo's Meat and Seafood owned by Mike, Mark and Rudy Mazzeo, and, most recently, the Chef Shop, owned by Rob Navariono. Thes partnerships provide the patrons a one-stop shop for cooking appliances, flowers, knick-knacks, meats, cheeses, and more. "When you love what you do, you put one foot in front of the other every single day, you come to work, and you make it happen. You know, things go your way," Matt said. "And I know I can speak for my brother, too, on that. Every day that I get up I look forward to coming into work. I really do. After 45 years, it's amazing. I feel blessed." Chris agreed with this sentiment adding that they are continuing to build something great at their Great Barrington location and continuing their expansion with their kids. "We're building something really unique here in Great Barrington. I don't think there's anything like it around, especially when we finish. But the quality of the products that we have, the services that we provide, the vendors that are here, you're not going to find better products anywhere," Chris said "I think that's what attracts a lot of people as well. So we're really creating something special. And I know that these guys, the three of them together, will bring it even a step further. So it's gonna be great." Berkshire Athenaeum to host 'Digital Literacy for All' Series PITTSFIELD, Mass. The Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield's public library, will be hosting the "Digital Literacy for All" course series starting Jan. 23 and continuing through March. All sessions will be held in the Athenaeum Room on the library's second floor. The courses are free, and registration is not required. Attendees are invited to bring their own laptops, but a computer is not necessary to attend. Two attendees at each session will win a Chromebook, and all attendees will receive tech-related takeaways. The courses include the following: Intro to email: 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23 Intro to the internet: 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 10 Intro to cybersecurity: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28 Intro to iPhones and iPads: 2 p.m. Thursday, March 9 Intro to video chat (Zoom): 2 p.m. Wednesday, March 15 The courses are funded through a grant from AT&T and the Public Library Association. "Our goal in offering these courses is to help people develop critical computer skills, and to put these skills into practice," said Technology Engagement Librarian Sydney Anderson. The library is open 9 a.m. 9 p.m. Monday Thursday; 9 a.m. 5 p.m. Friday; and 10 a.m. 5 p.m. Saturday and is located at 1 Wendell Ave. Auction of Williamstown's Orchards Hotel Postponed to February WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The real estate auction of a closed Main Street hotel again was postponed late Tuesday, fewer than 24 hours before the scheduled sale. The 49-room Orchards Hotel has been closed since March 2020 and did not reopen for business after the economy restarted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Boston's Daniel P. McLaughlin and Co. Auctioneers has advertised public auctions several times starting in the summer of 2021. The most recent, for Wednesday at 10 a.m., still was on the auctioneers' website at midday Tuesday. But currently, the auction is listed as being rescheduled to Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 10 a.m., at 206 Adams Road; the Orchards' 2.7-acre property lies between Main Street (Route 2) and Adams Road. Attempts to reach the Boston auctioneer on Wednesday morning were unsuccessful. The office phone number listed on its website is out of service. According to the advertisement for the auction, the Orchards property includes a 32,000 square foot building and a full service restaurant and gym. The property has an assessed value of $1.857 million, according to the town's fiscal 2023 tax roll. The terms for the auction listed on the McLaughlin website indicate that the successful bidder at auction will be required to deliver a $25,000, non-refundable deposit at the conclusion of the auction and that "all sales are final." A March 2021 article in the Williams College student newspaper reported that the school had an interest in acquiring the defunct hotel property for the purpose of adding to its faculty housing stock. A college administrator told the Williams Record at the time that the owner of the hotel had "every intention" of reopening as a hotel. Lender MountainOne Bank filed a foreclosure notice against HCC Orchards LLC in spring 2021. Williamstown Rural Lands to Purchase Oblong Road Parcel WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation has finalized a purchase and sales agreement for a 10-acre parcel on Oblong Road. "We put some money down [Tuesday], and we will put a bigger deposit down on Friday," WRLF President Greg Islan said on Wednesday afternoon. "Basically, it's a done deal. Both sides have signed the purchase and sales agreement." The non-profit conservation trust succeeded in November in convincing the Select Board to assign the town's right of first refusal on the property, which has been conserved under the commonwealth's Chapter 61 program since the 1980s. Under Massachusetts General Law, a landowner whose property is conserved under Chapter 61 can sell that property only after allowing the municipality to either purchase the land at the market price or assign its right of first refusal to a qualified non-profit. "We are grateful for the support of our public servants on the town's boards and committees in their recognition of the importance of farmland conservation," Rural Lands Executive Director Robin Sears said in a news release. "In the midst of the climate crisis, food security issues, and a biodiversity crisis, the permanent conservation of diverse habitats and working landscapes is crucial." The land in question is adjacent to Sweet Brook Farm and is used by the Lipinski family to graze its 25-head black Angus cattle herd. The town's Agricultural Commission strongly supported WRLF's request to the Select Board, which weighed the issue in meetings over the course of several months. "With about a dozen farms remaining in town, and many of these intending to go out of business within the next 5-10 years, Sweet Brook Farm may be one of the few farms left in 2030," the Ag Commission wrote in a letter to the Select Board in the fall. The 10 acres at 0 Oblong Road will be become part of a decades-long effort to preserve the town's rural landscape, according to the WRLF news release. "The farm is situated between the Mount Greylock Reservation and the Taconic Crest, an area designated a 'Distinctive Landscape' by the state's Department of Environmental Management (now DCR), which cites the impressive vistas and the most picturesque mountain scenery in the Commonwealth," the release reads. "The parcel is bordered on its south side by Sweet Brook, a priority habitat for cold-water fisheries. If this land were to be developed, the soil disturbance from building and subsequent lawn management and interventions might have imperiled the brook and the wetlands it feeds below the property." The seller of the property, Beth Phelps, last summer reached an agreement with a buyer who was interested in developing residential housing lots. Through her attorney, Phelps told the Select Board in the fall that she had no objection to selling the land to Williamstown Rural Lands instead if the board decided to assign the town's right of first refusal. Islan said on Wednesday that the non-profit had commitments from donors across town to support the purchase of the land. The majority of the donations come from people in the neighborhood, but at least a quarter of the funds committed come from people who do not live on Oblong Road, he said. "People come from all over town and other towns to enjoy the views on Oblong Road," Islan said. "It's a safe, beautiful road to walk on." The fundraising efforts are not over. Islan said Williamstown Rural Lands is pursuing state and federal grant money to support the purchase, but those grant requests can take years to come to fruition. "If we get that, we should be in great shape," he said. "If we don't get that, we will really need to do some fund-raising." In addition, Islan said Rural Lands has told donors who already made multi-year commitments to support the purchase that they will be released from those commitments, if government grants make the donations unnecessary. The WRLF hopes, if that happens, that the donors will allow their donations to support other activities of the non-profit, which owns nearly 1,000 acres of forest, meadow and farmland and holds easements on an additional 300 acres of privately-owned land. In appearances before the Select Board, Islan told the panel that he personally walked the length of Oblong Road to knock on doors and ask residents to support the effort to preserve the 0 Oblong Road property. "I enjoyed greatly getting to know the people on Oblong Road," he said on Wednesday. "There are people with deep pockets and people who don't have deep pockets. And people on both sides have said this is property that should be protected." Islan said Rural Lands plans to close on the property on April 7. HK set to write new chapter of development in 2023 14:53, January 18, 2023 By Tian Feilong ( China Daily Photo taken on July 14, 2020 shows the Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong. [Photo/Xinhua] Hong Kong's adherence to "one country, two systems" helped it achieve healthy economic growth last year. In 2023"one country, two systems" not only helps maintain the prosperity and stability of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, but also ensures the city continues to play its role as a global financial and logistics hub and a bridge connecting the Chinese mainland and the world. Based on "one country, two systems", the central government's support for Hong Kong is in line with the rule of law and will promote economic growth in the SAR. As a result, the city will better integrate into the motherland's development plan while engaging with the outside world. First, Hong Kong now has a complete system of democracy and rule of law, and it is making progress in institutionalizing "patriots administer Hong Kong". In the third year of its implementation, the National Security Law has gained the understanding and recognition of Hong Kong residents, a fact that was clearly reflected in media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying's national security case. Also, thanks to the interpretation of the National Security Law by the National People's Congress, judges and counsels in Hong Kong, too, have a better understanding of the law and become better at putting it into practice. Upholding the rule of law, human rights and procedural justice, the National Security Law has become an important part of Hong Kong's laws and legal system. Still, the Hong Kong SAR government should rigorously promote the judicial practice of the National Security Law. The new electoral system that ensures patriots administer Hong Kong has also made progress. But the social division, political realignment, and voters' perspective are still testing democracy in Hong Kong and the sense of responsibility of all local political parties. Second, Hong Kong has taken measures to strengthen social justice and improve people's livelihoods. The new SAR government is paying greater attention to the economy, because boosting the economy is necessary to ensure Hong Kong remains an international financial center, while improving people's livelihoods will help plug the loopholes in social justice and resolve the deep-seated socioeconomic problems. Sufficient improvement in people's livelihoods can not only help achieve fairer wealth distribution in the SAR, but also safeguard the credibility of the SAR government, which will strengthen the rule of law and social stability. The SAR government also has to effectively solve the housing problem for the poor, take measures to increase employment and create opportunities for youths to launch or expand their own business. Third, Hong Kong should integrate its development policy with that of the Chinese mainland, because it will promote innovation in the SAR and help it proactively engage in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Also, according to the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the central government will continue to support the "four traditional centers" of Hong Kong international financial center (including global offshore renminbi business center), international transportation center, international trade center, and center for international legal and dispute resolution services in the Asia-Pacific region. It will also provide more support for Hong Kong to enhance, establish and develop the "four emerging centers" for international aviation, innovation and technology, regional intellectual property trading, and arts and cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world. Beijing will continue to support Hong Kong to remain globally important, and engage in and benefit from the national policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Under the "one country, two systems" principle, the city will continue to make new and unique contributions to the country's high-level reform and opening-up and high-quality development. With the easing of COVID-19 restrictions and reopening of border crossings, Hong Kong can make better use of its advantages as a cosmopolitan city and promote dynamism. In fact, by providing legal services for dispute resolution in the Asia-Pacific region, the International Arbitration Centre in Hong Kong will boost the city's international reputation. Fourth, given the changing world order and increasing global conflicts, Hong Kong has no choice but to better integrate its development plan with that of the motherland to realize sustainable development. Along with laws at the national and international levels, Hong Kong has to promulgate local laws against foreign interference, so as to improve the "one country, two systems" framework. The central government has laid a solid foundation and provided policy support for Hong Kong to strengthen the rule of law. And the SAR government and society are working together to forge consensuses on democracy, the rule of law, and the city's development strategy. All this will help Hong Kong gain a distinct edge in development and write a new chapter of "one country, two systems". The author is an associate professor at the School of Law, Beihang University. (Web editor: Cai Hairuo, Liang Jun) Ten international organizations were named winners of the prestigious US$3 million 2023 Zayed Sustainability Prize during the awards ceremony held yesterday (Monday), coinciding with the beginning of the 2023 Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW). The US$3 million Prize is the UAEs pioneering global award in sustainability that recognizes and rewards small and medium-sized enterprises, nonprofit organizations and high schools around the world that are delivering impactful, innovative and inspiring solutions in health, food, energy and water. President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, President of the UAE, presented the awards to the 10 winners across five categories, in the presence of various heads of state, ministers, and other senior-level dignitaries from the UAE and abroad, in addition to past winners, and the 2023 finalists. Attending the ceremony were H.H. Lt. General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior; H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Presidential Court; H.H. Sheikh Theyab bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council; H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan; Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, Advisor for Special Affairs at the Ministry of Presidential Court; Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence; along with a number of Sheikhs and senior officials. In congratulating the winners, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed reasserted the Prizes role as a global catalyst for sustainability and humanitarian action. He said: The UAE continues to lead on important global initiatives at the heart of our mission to create a better future for all, both within the UAE and beyond our nations borders. The bold ambition of the Zayed Sustainability Prize remains at the forefront of these efforts. It creates a pathway for delivering life-changing humanitarian aid and solutions to communities around the world. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan underscored how this year, which marks 15 years of the Prize, will also be a historic year for the UAE as it prepares to host the 28th session of the Conference of Parties (COP 28) to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Against this backdrop, this years awards serve as an important reminder of the need for greater international collaboration to mobilise climate action and create sustainable economic and social development opportunities across all nations, including the global south. His Highness continued: Over the last 15 years, the Zayed Sustainability Prize has successfully built upon the legacy of the UAEs Founding Father, Sheikh Zayed, and carried forward his bold humanitarian vision, ensuring that the resources of our great nation are fully used to the benefit of all people. Today, the Zayed Sustainability Prize stands an internationally recognized award that mobilizes innovators, social entrepreneurs and young people to accelerate positive change for our planet and all people. Through its 96 former winners, the Prize has transformed the lives of more than 378 million people around the world since 2008, including in Vietnam, Nepal, Sudan, Ethiopia, Maldives and Tuvalu. In the Health, Food, Energy, and Water categories, each winner receives US$600,000, while the Global High Schools category has six winners, representing six world regions, with each winner receiving up to US$100,000. His Highness also emphasized the need to develop bright young people into the critical thinkers and sustainability leaders of tomorrow, and praised the Prizes Global High Schools category, which empowers youth to play an active role in supporting their communities socio-economic development. In the Health category, Brazils Associacao Expedicionarios da Saude (EDS) was awarded the Prize for its Mobile Hospital Complex, which provides specialized medical and surgical care for indigenous communities geographically isolated within the Amazon. The objective of the Mobile Hospital Complex is to reach the most difficult areas in the Amazon, guaranteeing the safety and comfort of patients and excellence in the quality of services provided. Over the course of six expeditions from 2015 - 2022, the nonprofit organization performed more than 1,900 surgeries that improved health outcomes, including improved vision after cataract surgery. Ynsect from France was the Food category winner for its important work in insect-based protein and natural fertilizers. The SME produces insect protein and natural insect fertilizers at Europes first-of-its-kind insect factory equipped with innovative vertical farming and integrated biorefining setup. Ynsect processes two insect species (molitor and buffalo mealworms) into high-end, high-value ingredients for the entire food chainplants, fish, farmed animals, pets, and humans. Ynsect is currently building a new factory in France and operates two other sites in France and the Netherlands. By 2025, Ynsect will be able to produce more than 1,500 tonnes of protein per month. In the past five years, Ynsect has improved the lives of 30 million people by delivering sustainable, natural, premium nutrition products for fish farming (as an alternative fish feed to meet aquacultures food supply needs) and human nutrition. The demo plant currently operated by the company produces 30 tonnes of protein production per month. In the Energy category, the Jordan-based NeuroTech developed Al-based algorithms with a blockchain-based transaction system to bring reliable energy access to refugee camps. The SME employs the concept of energy sharing by separating electrical loads into low- and high-priority streams. Thus, beneficiaries are guaranteed to receive their lifesaving energy, and extra energy goes to low-priority feeders, according to energy availability. Sophisticated energy management and control reduces electricity stress and increases consumer awareness about electricity. During its pilot phase, NeuroTech helped deliver electrical power to more than 10,000 Syrian refugees in Azraq. By optimising energy usage and distribution, NeuroTech has helped reduce the pressure on the camps main hospital respiratory section by making electricity available 24/7. Patients now can use a personal nebulizer, a medical device used during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for people with a chronic breathing illness. LEDARS (Local Environment Development and Agricultural Research Society), an NPO from Bangladesh, secured the Water category win for its integrated water resource management model that solves water scarcity issues in disaster-prone areas. Their combination of technologies help transforms communities in Bangladesh so people can have access to safe drinking water and climate smart livelihoods. With the support of LEDARS, 5,250 bio-sands-filters, 65 pond-sand-filters, 185 rainwater harvesting systems, and 69 protective ponds were installed in communities in Bangladesh, supporting cultivation of paddies and vegetables throughout the year on lands that were previously barren. LEDARS initiatives created access to safe drinking water for at least 15,881 families. As a result of this solution, more than 12 million gallons of water have been saved. The Chair of the Jury and former President of the Republic of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, said: This years winners have demonstrated a new level of creativity and ambition in their solutions to tackle pressing global challenges. We are confident that these winners will provide meaningful and scalable impact in communities across the world, and in turn accelerate important climate action goals to help secure a sustainable future for all. H.E. Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Director General of the Zayed Sustainability Prize said: Since our nations wise leadership established the Zayed Sustainability Prize 15 years ago, the Prize has become a key supporter of the UAE's vision to drive inclusive climate action and international sustainable development. By providing real-world solutions in sustainability to vulnerable communities around the world, the Prize honors Sheikh Zayeds contribution towards social good and elevates humanity on a global scale." Our 106 winners are driving action to solve the worlds most pressing challenges. Through their commitment to championing positive action, millions of people who were living without access to energy, water, healthcare, or food in the developing world, now have sustainable economic and social development opportunities, including access to quality education, decent work, economic growth and improved livelihoods. H.E. Al Jaber added: As the UAE prepares to host COP28 later this year, the Zayed Sustainability Prize stands as a critical reminder of the UAEs commitment to accelerating practical solutions needed to help societies mitigate and adapt to climate change. Since 2013, the Prize has awarded 46 high schools under its Global High Schools category from countries around the world. Students at these schools won for their self-led project proposals that have since been implemented by the youth. Collectively, they have generated 7.2 million kWh of electricity, saved 5,700 tons of CO2 and positively impacted 427,408 people in their communities. The recipients of the 2023 Global High School awards are Fundacion Bios Terrae - ICAM Ubate (Colombia), representing The Americas; Romain-Rolland-Gymnasium (Germany), representing Europe & Central Asia; Gifted Students School (Iraq), representing the Middle East & North Africa region; UWC East Africa - Arusha Campus (Tanzania), representing Sub-Saharan Africa; Dhaka Residential Model College (Bangladesh), representing South Asia, and finally, Kamil Muslim College (Fiji) from the East Asia & Pacific region. The winners were selected from a pool of 4,538 a record number of submissions chosen by a panel of more than 40 experts. The Jury members include H.E. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Former President of the Republic of Iceland, UAE ministers, Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group, Dr. Andreas Jacobs, Chairman of INSEAD, Jacobs Family Council, among others. On November 29, education tech (edtech) solutions provider Anthology partnered up with the U.S. Embassy in Manila for a Higher Education Leadership Forum in Grand Hyatt Manila, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. The forum aimed to look at the pain points the education sector faces in the aftermath of the pandemic, how these pain points have affected the Philippines in particular, and what new solutions in edtech can do to solve them. Discussions during the forum specifically focused on combating learning loss, enabling learning accessibility, and the provision of in-demand skills for students and educators. The forum is especially timely as educational institutions make their way into the new normal of teaching. The aim of the forum dovetails perfectly with Anthologys mission of supporting learners and educators with the worlds largest edtech ecosystem. Anthology currently supports over 150 million users in 80 countries, providing them with a learning management system, server intelligent storage, and customer relationship management tools. Moderated by Senior Solutions Engineer Nick Benwell, the forum kicked off with a welcome note by Anthology's Regional Vice President for Asia Phillip Murray. Murrays note pointed out that the use of tech in education has now entered its holistic era: meaning rather than forcing technology to fit education or using it as an afterthought, educational institutions today must leverage technology to create a richer educational experience for all. For Murray, educators must understand the value of leveraging data analytics and learning management systems to better answer student needs. With data, you can look beyond just what students are doing in the classroom, explained Murray. You can look at how engaged they are, what they do, and how much support they get in their education. It enables institutions to better answer student needs. It is the mission of answering student needs that the opening note speaker, Senior Commercial Officer Hanes Roberts of the U.S. Embassy Manila, also addressed. Roberts reiterated that it was the embassys mission to help US companies thrive and contribute to Philippine society, noting that Anthology was a perfect example of a business accomplishing social good in the country. Roberts noted that cooperation with Anthology was especially apt given the embassys past work furthering tertiary education in the country and partnerships with institutions like Silliman University. Keynote speaker Dr. Mary Sylvette Gunigundo of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) gave a thorough overview of the challenges and opportunities facing Philippine higher education. For example, Dr. Gunigundo revealed that higher education participation rates have improved in the country. However, attrition rates still remain high with students dropping out of school. Another problem plaguing the Philippine education landscape is the learning loss that occurred when schools shut down for two years during the pandemicaffecting all levels of education from primary to tertiary. Yet Dr. Gunigundo also revealed blended learning initiatives from CHED were being deployed to enable to make education more accessible. In fact, CHED has worked hard to shape regulations like Republic Act 10650 or the Open Distance Leaning Act tasking the University of the Philippines Open University with helping develop distance education programs throughout the country. Dr. Gunigundo herself is keenly aware of the evolving role distance learning plays in education. In the past, distance learning was mostly used to access higher education. Then during the pandemic it was used to ensure the continuation of higher learning, said Dr. Gunigundo. Using distance learning today gives us an opportunity not only to address pandemic learning loss, but also make sure students are learning relevant skills in a way that suits them. Dr. Gunigundos call to leverage distance learning is just part of CHEDs overall agenda to revolutionize education in the country. According to Dr. Gunigundo, CHED aims to address gaps in digital transformation among higher education institutions (such as helping out schools without proper equipment, funds, or internet connectivity), upgrade the departments information and communications technology infrastructure, and even work to make sure Philippine credentials are recognized abroad. As many challenges there are, said Dr. Gunigundo. There are also plenty of opportunities to improve. The forums final speaker was Anthologys Principal Strategic Consultant Dr. Caroline Steel. Dr. Steel focused on the emerging field of microcredentials, which are mini-qualifications that demonstrate skills, knowledge, and/or experience in a given subject area or capability. Microcredentials have proved particularly popular among young people taking short courses enabling them to reskill/upskill for better job opportunities. Despite the practicality of microcredentials however, Dr. Steel noted there are still pain points to solve before microcredentials reach mainstream adoption. For example, there is still no one widely-accepted definition of what microcredentials really are. There is even the argument that microcredentials are only gig credentials for a gig economy, taking away the focus from holistic education to focus only on employability. Yet Dr. Steel also noted microcredentials have the power to change higher education by giving students a flexible way to learn practical skills in a short time. The popularity of skills-based, short duration courses is already quantifiable: during the pandemic, 62% of Americans looked to non-degree and skills programs for the purpose of reskilling. The event concluded with a panel consisting of Dr. Steel, University of Mindanao Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Ronnie V. Amorado, and Lyceum of the Philippines University Officer-in-Charge for Academic Affairs Ms. Jennifer Tucpi. The panelists fielded questions on the changes they anticipate for Philippine higher education institutions in the near future and even what kind of changes they personally wanted to see. Universities these days have to stay relevant, concluded Tucpi. The way to do that is to keep up with advancements in technology. In todays digital world, organizations have been continuously embracing and adopting modern technologies in their business practices to stay competitive. With this reality, businesses require digital skills not only from their current workforce but from the next generation of IT professionals. SAP helps bridge skills gaps for the next generation of leaders through its University Alliances Program According to a recent study by Asian Development Bank (ADB) and LinkedIn, basic computer knowledge and skills are required from eight out of 10 hired applicants, and four out of 10 with extensive digital literacy in Asia and the Pacific. This situation is also the same in the Philippines. Simple digital skills were needed from six out of 10 hired Filipino jobseekers and two out of 10 with advanced skills. Meanwhile, with the plans laid by the current administration, promoting digital literacy through upskilling young Filipinos, particularly their digital skills, is also deemed critical since the country continues to strengthen its digital transformation initiatives. As the demand for digital skills increases, we believe that education is the key to achieving the countrys digital transformation goals. Educational institutions must be able to equip their students with the right knowledge and digital skills before they enter the workforce. Not only will it help them have more opportunities in the professional world, but it will also give them the ability to help public or private organizations innovate for business success, said Rudy Abrahams, Managing Director of SAP Philippines. To assist in bridging the gap and build the next generations digital skills for more opportunities in the professional world, SAP SE continues its mission to help the world run better and improve peoples lives by helping strengthen the future IT workforce through its University Alliances (UA) program in the country. With more than 160 university members across the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), this initiative aims to enable faculty and teachers to hone the youths' digital skills by introducing the latest technologies and methodologies with SAP solutions. Membership in this program grants access to SAP software. It also helps University partners learn best practices for integrating UA resources into teaching SAP to their students and collaborate with the SAP ecosystem of customers and partners who are keen to hire these digital youths as early talents. In the Philippines, there are now at least 23 universities that are part of the program. Among these institutions is Mapua University, one of the top IT schools in the country. Mapua University has been a member of the SAP UA Program since 2010. Our membership to this program allows us to equip our students with necessary digital skills that they can use to jumpstart their career and thrive as IT professionals, said Ariel Kelly Balan, Dean of the School of Information Technology Mapua University. Empower faculty members skills and knowledge with Train-the-Trainer workshops For universities to educate students with the latest digital skills, faculty members in the Philippines can attend the Train-the-Trainer workshops conducted by members of the Philippines Next-Gen University Alliances Council. This Council comprise of lighthouse educational institutions selected to be multipliers of the University Competence Centers (UCCs) and Academic Competence Centers (ACCs). These universities mentor other UA educators with the best practices for teaching students when it comes to educating SAP software and curriculum. Gain access to the Student Zone of SAP Learning Being a member of SAP UA also provides students and educators free access to the SAP Learning Student Zone where they can learn and be certified as like SAP professionals. This is where they can get an overview of all SAP solutions with dedicated learning journeys for newcomers or coding learning journeys (for developers) and consultant learning journeys. Many of the learning journeys lead to records of achievement and some of them to certification. Syed Badrul Ahsan is one of Bangladeshs foremost public intellectuals and the author of several books. He is no stranger to India. He has been visiting India regularly since at least 1987, both in official and personal capacity. He was a Fellow at Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and his upcoming volume is a comparative study of the nationalisms of Deshbandju Chittaranjan Bose, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. Currently visiting India on an invitation by India Narrative, Ahsan spoke to Aditi Bhaduri on India-Bangladesh ties, the personal chemistry between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladeshs journey towards a democratic, secular state, its fight with religious radicalism, and the upcoming Bangladesh elections. Excerpts: IN: When the Narendra Modi-led BJP government first came to power there were apprehensions in some quarters that ties with Bangladesh may face a setback. How would you characterise bilateral relations over almost a decade now with the Modi government in power in India? SBA: The ties between our two countries progressed rather well, contrary to our apprehensions. When the Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power, many amongst our intellectuals and in general Bangladeshi society felt ties would deteriorate. Because throughout generations, the Awami League and the Indian National Congress had built-up and pursued close ties as secular parties. Happily, that did not happen. Modi and Hasina quickly established good ties and there was much movement forward. For instance, the Land Boundary Agreement, which had been signed by both Bangladesh and India many years ago but successive Indian governments could not ratify it, was sorted. Modi, however, had the strength in Parliament to get the agreement ratified. Next, Modis encouraging statements about the sharing of the Teesta River waters. Of course, we know there are sensitivities involved. Hasina also has good ties with [West Bengal Chief Minister] Mamata Banerjee, so it may take a while but things look positive. Eight agreements have been signed between the two sides in different areas of cooperation, including defence. Prime Minister Modi has visited Bangladesh and Hasina has visited India, so bilateral ties have been very good and look promising. The Ukraine war has impacted the Bangladeshi economy negatively. For instance, the Rooppur nuclear power plant needs supplies from Russia which were to be delivered at the Chittagong Port. But because of the US sanctions and fear of these sanctions the Bangladesh government had to approach India which has played a pro-active role. India got the Russian ships to come to Haldia port and then shipped the supplies from there to Bangladesh. IN: What do the youth of Bangladesh think of India? SBA: Fifteen years ago, I would have said negatively, but that was an impression created by governments of the day. Today the youth see India differently and positively. India is a rising global power and we benefit from cooperation with India. Moreover, we are also seeing a tendency of viewing South Asia as a common home. Our people watch Indian serials and Indian films. The government of India gives scholarships to at least 2,000 Bangladeshi students to study in India each year. Trips are organised which take Bangladeshi youth to different parts of India, and so many of our people come to India for medical treatment. All this has created a very positive image of India amongst our people. IN: When Prime Minister Modi visited Bangladesh, we saw many protests by groups like Hefazat-e-Islam. We have also seen many attacks on the Hindu minority community in Bangladesh over the recent past. Just a few days ago a delegation of minority groups submitted a petition to Sheikh Hasina to ramp up security for minorities and ensure their rights. Are religious minorities not safe in Bangladesh? SBA: This violence against minorities is the handiwork of fringe elements, not of the majority of the Bangladeshi people. In Durga Puja season we see a lot of such vandalism taking place against Hindus. We intellectuals, journalists, the press, we all condemned the violence. The government of Sheikh Hasina has condemned it, the violence has been condemned at the level of local governments too. The government has made attempts to stop such violence and we have to all reassure that the Hindu community, all minorities, can live in peace and without fear. Bangladesh is their country and they are citizens of Bangladesh. We can see that this last Durga Puja was much more peaceful. Definitely a lot more needs to be done, and it is important for authorities to crack down on the Islamists, the fanatics to ensure this. Because our struggle was a Bengali struggle, our war was fought on the basis of the Bengali language, on the basis on Bengali nationalism and we need to restore this ethos. We need to enshrine secularism in the constitution. Although our people are 90 per cent Muslim, most of us have a secular outlook and we are always sad when we see such violence against minorities happening. There is, however, a background to this violence. It dates back to Bangladeshs history in the 1970s. After the murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, and during two military dictatorships one led by Gen. Zia ur Rehman and the other by Lt. Gen. Mohammed Ershad there was a tendency to treat non-Muslim minorities in the manner that Pakistan did. This meant putting religion at the top; Islam was made the State religion, and was a throwback to the two-nation theory. This is something that we have tried to reverse. The Awami League came to power first in 1996 and in 2001 the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) came to power and their supporters went on a rampage harassing minorities. We are trying to reverse the trend. After liberation our 1972 constitution had secularism enshrined in it and we are trying to restore that constitution. IN: Why is it taking so long? SBA: There are sensitivities involved. Many of us would like secularism to be restored but with groups like Hefazate-Islam around, though they are small groups, this government has to be careful. It has already taken some commendable steps in bringing the war criminals to justice, in trying the genocide participants. The Jamaat-i-Islami has been deregistered, it cannot contest elections. So, we are hoping that the Awami League will win the next elections and will be able to restore secularism to the constitution. Nevertheless, most of us in Bangladesh are secular in our outlook, although Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country. We need to consolidate our country on the basis of Bengali identity. Unfortunately, our journey which began in 1971 to full-fledged democracy and securalism was hijacked by the generals. Efforts were made to drag the country to another path. However, we do not believe in Bangladeshi nationalism. We are citizens of Bangladesh, which is a piece of territory and has always existed. But as a race or a nation we are Bengalis and the majority of our people believe in Bengali nationalism because we remember 1971a war fought on the basis of the Bengali language and identity. IN: So, groups like Hefazat though small, would seem to exert significant pressure on Bangladeshi society then? SBA: We have pockets of fanatics and Islamists in the country. After Friday prayers they often come out and start protests on some issue. Since 2016, after the attack on the Artisan Cafe, the government has been cracking down on these pockets of fanatics. Since then they have not made any headway. IN: What are the main issues for the upcoming general elections in Bangladesh? SBA: Well, it would be to see no violence, every political party should exercise tolerance. The government needs to come down hard on corruption. Our GDP has had a setback due to the Ukraine crisis, but while the country has overall been progressing economically, we have a widening gap between the rich and the poor. The middle class took a bad hit during the COvid-19 pandemic. Urban development has progressed fast but such development should also percolate to the poorer and rural areas too. Education also needs to be developed in a way so as to offer employment opportunities to the people. IN: The US recently indicated that it might lift sanctions imposed on the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and six Bangladeshi officials because of alleged human rights violation. Has India played any role in this? SBA: I think yes. I would not be surprised if India has approached the US government and this would be regarded as a degree of cooperation between India and Bangladesh. US Assistant Secretary of State David Lu was in Delhi recently and then in Dhaka where he has indicated that the sanctions will soon be lifted. IN: How is Bangladesh balancing its relations with China? SBA: Bangladesh has good relations with China but it has to be very careful. It knows it needs to develop relations with countries like China, Russia, but in a careful diplomatic way. We need to balance our relations with China and with India. It is also out of consideration of Bangladeshs needs to be friendly with India. IN: And with Pakistan? SBA: While we would want to have good relations with Pakistan too, we have not made any headway because of its refusal to recognise and apologise for the 1971 genocide. Textbooks in Pakistan still teach that the 1971 uprising was a conspiracy by India and that we committed atrocities on them. IN: Finally, what are the areas for further cooperation between India and Bangladesh? SBA: We need greater space for exports to India. Bangladesh suffers from a huge trade deficit with India. Indian exports to Bangladesh amount to $14 billion, while Bangladeshi exports to India amount to only $1.26 billion. We are Indias largest trading partner in South Asia. Then the India Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline should be taking off next month hopefully. I would personally like to see more intellectual exchanges between our two countries. Teachers from Bangladesh should be able to come and teach in institutions in India. We should have more people to people exchange, more cultural exchanges. A frequent Bangladeshi complaint is about the Indian visa process. It is very long and arduous. Also, Indian TV channels are freely accessible in Bangladesh but not vice versa. These gaps need to be eliminated. Also Read: Indo-Bangladesh relations under Modi and Hasina are spurring the rise of South Asia: Syed Badrul Ahsan Trustees with the Upper Canada District School Board (UCDSB) met on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. Some of the items discussed in the public session are as follows. Student Transportation of Eastern Ontarios (STEO) General Manager and Chief Administrative Officer Janet Murray, along with Operations Manager Marc Gossett reported to the Board an update on the bus driver shortage and other initiatives. Murray shared that the bus driver shortage continues to affect STEO along with most areas across Ontario and throughout North America. STEOs service area is being impacted by a school bus driver shortage, resulting in an increase in bus delays and cancellations. When shortages happen, bus companies work with STEO to look for alternatives to avoid cancellation, such as route modification doubling a single route to provide service or running the bus late. If a route has to be cancelled for multiple days, STEO works to combine the route with other existing routes to minimize the impact on families. Gossett noted that since the beginning of this school year, 320 UCDSB bus runs have been cancelled. With 19 routes currently without a driver and 26 drivers in training. Murray advised Trustees that STEO has plans to mitigate the shortage, which includes a targeted recruitment campaign following a demographic assessment. STEO continues to connect with the ministries of education and transportation regarding driver shortage constraints, cancellations, licensing and medical considerations and driver engagement. Murray also provided an update on the school bus stop arm camera initiative. STEO continues to investigate the initiative in consultation with local municipalities and is monitoring ongoing pilot projects throughout Ontario. Superintendent of Schools Susan Rutters reported to Trustees an update on the district-wide timetable for the 2022-2023 school year. Rutters reported that all UCDSB secondary schools have the same daily bell times of 8 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. and each school maintains a common district-wide schedule to ensure that students taking eLearning courses can access synchronous enhancements offered by the teacher during the scheduled period. The common schedule includes a repeat period which provides dedicated classroom time for the consolidation of learning and a focus on ensuring student success. The number of eLearning courses offered within UCDSB for the 2022-23 school year is 77, an increase of 16 over last year to account for increased interest in eLearning as a result of the newly introduced eLearning graduation requirement and to support programming for remote learners. Rutters explained that for the 2022-2023 school year, UCDSB is piloting a mini-consortium opportunity to be responsive to specific course needs that are common to several schools using eLearning to liberate in-person sections at each school for hands-on course options for students. Fifty-nine students are enrolled in the secondary remote learning program. Plus, three high-interest eLearning course offerings for students to act as an educational enhancement Cellphone Photography, History of Oppression in Canada, and Film Studies. Rutters noted that the District-Wide Timetable provides structure in UCDSB that gives secondary students greater choice and access to courses of interest. Moving forward, Rutters explained that the UCDSB continues to build on existing strategies and create new options for secondary students, including Real-World Learning, Pathway-Specific Compulsory Courses and Continuing Education. Superintendent of Special Education and Student Wellness Jennifer Perry presented to Trustees an update on how the Directors Work Plan goal related to her portfolio is progressing. Perry shared that a new pilot is beginning in the second semester that addresses key action items in the Directors Work Plan. Skills 4 Life (S4L) is linked to the Ontario Civics and Careers curriculum. This pilot supports the development of a student success toolbox and provides a resource for staff, students and parents to help students learn to manage stress. Perry shared that the S4L pilot is a series of eight curriculum-aligned lessons to support instruction related to mental health and social-emotional skill development in Grade 10 Career Studies. The lessons include mental health and mental illness, strategies for mental wellness, identifying thoughts and managing emotions, and managing controllable and uncontrollable stressors. These lessons help students build on their existing strengths and strategies to enhance the skills they can use throughout their lives. The resources are evidence-based and created in partnership with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation and materials align with the curriculum to support instruction related to mental health education and social-emotional development. For the next steps on the pilot, Perry noted that this month staff will connect with secondary administration and teachers for commitment to participate and from February to June, implementation support will be provided by UCDSBs mental health team and School Mental Health Ontario staff. Spy movies have been a staple in cinema since the silent era, and it could be argued they keep improving. Secret agents, fancy gadgets, thrilling action, and shady organizations are some of the best parts of these movies. There are various stories in the spy genre, from historical dramas to action thrillers to serious biopics. Here is a list of the best spy movies of all time that you should watch next. 1. BlacKkKlansman IMDb Detectives Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) and Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) go undercover in the Ku Klux Klan for Spike Lees darkly hilarious BlacKkKlansman. Based on Stallworths 2014 memoir of the same name, this 2018 Best Picture contender won Best Adapted Screenplay, earning Lee his first competitive Oscar 30 years after Do The Right Thing. (Lee won an honorary Oscar for his body of work in 2015). Set in 1970s Colorado, BlacKkKlansman might not be a spy movie in the most traditional sense of international espionage. But it manoeuvres perspective and dramatic irony with enough panache characteristics of the genre to overpower any classification technicalities. 2. Bridge Of Spies IMDb Among Tom Hanks best roles is his performance in Bridge of Spies as the real James B. Donovan, a Cold War-era attorney tasked with negotiating the release of U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell). The 2015 historical drama not only stirringly re-enacts the events of the 1960 U-2 crisis but also sees the Best Picture nominees staggeringly skilled team combine their megawatt talents for some of the most memorable beats in spy cinema. Steven Spielberg directs with a script from Matt Charman and the Coen brothers. Mark Rylance won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. 3. The Imitation Games IMDb Directed by Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game tells the compelling true story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a brilliant mathematician and computer scientist who worked as a code-breaker for the British during World War II. This poignant spy drama offers a fascinating glimpse into Turings most salient innovations and discoveries and a heartbreaking espionage story that fearlessly interrogates what generations of LGBTQ people have been asked to sacrifice and hide. The Imitation Game was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Actor for Cumberbatch and Best Supporting Actress for Keira Knightley, who plays code-breaker Joan Clarke. Screenwriter Graham Moore won Best Adapted Screenplay, having based the project on Andrew Hodges biography Alan Turing: The Enigma. 4. Enemy Of The State IMDb Bobby Dean (Will Smith) finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time in director Tony Scotts Enemy of the State. When Bobbys old friend from college (Jason Lee) witnesses a murder involving high-level government officials, the pairs chance meeting at a shopping centre leaves the ill-fated labour lawyer with critical evidence. Soon, hes on the run with the head of the NSA (Jon Voight) and a congressman (Gene Hackman) in hot pursuit. 5. The Hunt For Red October IMDb Still, the best adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel to date, The Hunt for Red October, chronicles the search for a hard-to-detect submarine off the east coast of the U.S. The powerful ballistic missile sub may be captained by Soviet captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery), but the CIA must find and stop it. Alec Baldwin leads as agent Jack Ryan, alongside Tim Curry, Peter Firth, James Earl Jones, Joss Ackland, and more. The 1990 spy thriller earned three Oscar nominations, winning Best Sound Effects Editing. IMDb Released at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, director John Frankenheimers The Manchurian Candidate redefined the double-cross with the story of a soldier, played by Laurence Harvey, who foreign enemies unwittingly weaponize. The concept comes from author Richard Condons gripping 1959 novel but is made even more compelling by the onscreen talents of a cast that boasts Harvey, Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury, who got her first Best Actress nomination for her part. The Manchurian Candidate was also nominated for Best Film Editing. 7. Three Days Of The Condor IMDb In Sydney Pollacks 1975 espionage masterclass, CIA bureaucrat Joe Turner (Robert Redford) leaves the office to get lunch, only to return and find all six of his colleagues murdered. Afraid for his life, Joe enlists the help of a woman off the street named Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway). Together, the pair attempt to piece together what to do and who they can trust in a dizzying spectacle of spy tropes. Max Von Sydows moustachioed Joubert offers an all-time great antagonist. 8. The Spy Who Came From The Cold IMDb Directed by Martin Ritt, this 1965 espionage staple follows MI6 agent Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) through a harrowing steeplechase of betrayal and brilliance. When the jaded Leamas, nearing retirement, is asked to sell British secrets to the East German Intelligence Service, his decision to defect sets off a mesmerizing feat of deception that places him and colleague-turned-love interest Nan Perry (Claire Bloom) in grave danger. The dark tale earned Burton an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and accolades for Best Art Direction. 9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy IMDb Based on John le Carres novel of the same name, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sets forth a seemingly straightforward puzzle: Who is the mole at the top of British intelligence? Directed by Tomas Alfredson, this thorny espionage drama stars Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Stephen Graham, Tom Hardy, and more in a circuitous plot set against the backdrop of the Cold War. At the Oscars, Oldman earned a Best Actor nod, while screenwriters Bridget OConnor and Peter Straughan were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Composer Alberto Iglesias was also nominated for Best Original Score. 10. No Way Out IMDb In director Roger Donaldsons No Way Out, a naval lieutenant commander (Kevin Costner) makes a terrible mistake when he accidentally begins an affair with the mistress (Sean Young) of his new boss, the U.S. secretary of defence (Gene Hackman). That would-be basis for a Washingtonian rom-com doesnt sound too bad. But when the secretary murders his lover in cold blood, evidence linking both men to the victim begets a cover-up that reaches the Pentagon. Based on author Kenneth Fearings The Big Clock, this 1987 political thriller may be the most outright entertaining on this list. 11. North By Northwest Britannica In the upper echelon of the all-too-masterful Alfred Hitchcock catalogue, North by Northwest is in contention for cinemas most compelling case of mistaken identity. When ad exec Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) lands in the crosshairs of a mysterious espionage organization helmed by the villainous Vandamm (James Mason), hes forced into a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase that takes him across numerous states, magnificent set-pieces, and sweeping American scenery. Shiromani Pradhan Sir Nyapathi Madhava Rau (8 June 188728 August 1972) was the Diwan of Mysore from 1941 to 1945. He was an Indian civil official and administrator. He was a participant in the Indian Constitution's drafting committee. Education Wikipedia Rao obtained degrees from two colleges: Government Law College in Madras and Noble College in Masulipatnam. Madhava Rau was successful in the Mysore Civil Service examination and was awarded the Carmichael Medal for securing the first position. He joined the Mysore Civil Service as an Assistant Commissioner in the Gubbi taluk of the Tumkur district. He was then selected to be a member of a commission to investigate an uprising that took place in the Kollegal Taluk of the former Coimbatore District. He served as the Bhadravathi Steel Works' secretary from 1921 until 1924. He was then named Chief Secretary to the Government of Mysore and represented the Mysore State as the Trade Commissioner in London, England. He then advanced to the position of Member of the Council before being named the Diwan of Mysore. He spent a lot of time working in the Princely States, especially Mysore. He joined Mysore in 1907 and held the position of Dewan between 1941 and 1946. Services to the nation During the Second World War, there were severe food shortages in the State of Mysore. It is said that Madhava Rau managed the crisis during this time successfully and devised a strategy for a quick recovery. After a lightning strike damaged the Sivasamudram Electric Power Station in 1944, Madhava Rau was able to successfully repair the damage. During Madhava Rau's tenure as Diwan, the Mysore Legislative Council and the Mysore Representative Assembly were combined to form a new Legislative Council. The first elections for the newly elected Council were held in February 1941. Role in the Drafting committee Constitution of India N Madhava Rao was a part of the Round Table Conferences. He was also involved in the drafting of the Government of India Act, 1935. He served as the Princely States of Orissa's constitutional adviser in early 1946. He eventually entered the Constituent Assembly from the Orissa Princely States in July 1947. As a member of the Drafting Committee, he laid emphasis on issues relating to village panchayats and federalism. Opposition to Hindi Madhava Rau favoured maintaining English as the Indian Union's official language and vehemently opposed making Hindi as the national language of the country. Honours Madhava Rau was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the year 1943, a title he gave up in the year 1947. He was also given the titles "Rajamantra Pravina" and "Pradhana Shiromani" by the Maharaja of Mysore. On April 14, 1891, at the Mhow cantonment, where his father was serving in the Army, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar was born into a low-caste Mahar family. However, it was he who was instrumental in drafting the nation's Constitution. His radical proposals based on justice and equality were met with open resistance from the upper Castes, making his life a relentless struggle. In addition to being a renowned political figure, Dr Ambedkar donned many hats: an unparalleled jurist, passionate Buddhist activist, philosopher, anthropologist, historian, orator, writer, economist, scholar, and editor. Early life Wikimedia Commons Discrimination and humiliation followed Ambedkar from his time as a school student in the British government-run Army school. Prejudice was a constant companion. Ambedkar moved to Mumbai in 1908 to attend Elphinstone College. Sayaji Rao III, the Gayakwad king of Baroda, granted Ambedkar a scholarship worth 25 rupees per month. Education In 1912, he received a degree in political science and economics from Bombay University. Afterwards, he travelled to the US to further his education. The great Doctor not only persevered in his studies despite all societal and institutional pressures but also graduated with a doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1917. Ambedkar was chosen to serve as the King of Baroda's secretary of defence after returning from the United States. Even at Baroda, he had to endure the humiliation of being an Untouchable. He travelled to England on his own dime in 1920 to finish his education. Return to India Globalcenters.columbia Bhimrao Ambedkar returned to India and chose to fight against caste discrimination because he knew the detrimental effects of the regressive institution on the country. Ambedkar supported the idea of giving Dalits and other religious communities reservations. He started a publication called "Mooknayaka" (leader of the silent) in an effort to educate the public about the negative effects of the caste system and other entrenched social evils. Laurels The youngster who endured excruciating caste humiliation rose to the position of first Minister of Law in independent India and helped draft the Constitution.Ambedkar was adamant that everyone in society should have access to education. The Andhra Pradesh State Legislature passed a law establishing the B. R. Ambedkar Open University on August 26, 1982.A movie about Ambedkar's life and teachings was produced by well-known director Jabbar Patel and afterwards dubbed into Hindi and other Indian languages. Dr Ambedkar passed away on December 6, 1956, at his Delhi home. But his name became synonymous with the resistance and triumph of the oppressed. Contribution For Education Dr. Ambedkar's challenge to the status quo is made clear by his fight against Brahmanical Patriarchy; his bold ideas for the Hindu Code Bill and his prescriptions for a drastic reorganisation of property relations didnt sit well with the politically independent people, but feudal hearts. Constitution of India In the fight against British colonialism, Dr Ambedkar, one of India's most radical thinkers, changed the social and political climate by raising the political consciousness of the oppressed. Ambedkar famously advised Dalits to "Educate, Agitate, and Organize," which is still very important today. The West remembers him He placed a lot of focus on education, especially in areas where it was traditionally denied. In fact, it is well known that he once declared that for the poor, education was more important than temple entrance. He believed that education was a powerful tool that could empower each individual to create a society that is egalitarian and assist in removing the long-standing social practices that are discriminatory.Columbia Global Centres mentions Dr Ambedkar on their website as the first highly educated, politically prominent member of the Hindu "untouchable" caste. He is best remembered today for leading colonial India's only autonomous struggle for Dalit rights and social recognition; for his extensive writings that reprised caste as a form of inequality and historical injustice; and for his role as Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution, which allowed him to leave a profound and enduring mark on Indian trajectories of democratic justice and affirmative action policy. N Madhava Rau was born in 1887. His father, B.R. Rau, was a well-respected physician in the city, and he grew up in a family of intellectuals. Benegal Rama Rao, one of his brothers, went on to become Independent India's second Reserve Bank Governor. Education Wikipedia Earning a scholarship, Rau was able to pursue his education at the prestigious Trinity College in Cambridge. Later, he passed the competitive Indian Civil Service Examination (ICS) in 1909 and received his first posting in Bengal. He worked for the ICS and the judiciary for the next 20 years, including being a judge at the Calcutta High Court. He was appointed to serve as the Prime Minister of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir in 1944- which he eventually left after disagreements with Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. Drafting Committee Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent Assembly, said Rau was the person who visualised the plan and laid the foundation of the Indian Constitution. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, before signing the Constitution on 26th November, 1949, thanked Rau for having worked honorarily all the time that he was here, assisting the Assembly not only with his knowledge and erudition but also enabled the other members to perform their duties with thoroughness and intelligence by supplying them with the material on which they could work. The Constitution as an all-inclusive document Constitution of India Writing for the Star of Mysore, Dr. C. D. Sreenivasa Murthy writes, Before his tenure as Constitutional Advisor, he served as a Secretary in the Governor-Generals Office working on the subject of Constitutional reforms. After his retirement, Nehru and Patel persuaded him to work as Constitutional Advisor and head the CAS Secretariat. When he took over the position of Constitutional Advisor and led the establishment of the CAS in July 1946, he laid down firm conditions before the Constituent Assembly. The whole organisation is non-political and non-party in character. Its services are equally available to every member, irrespective of party and creed, he(Rau) wrote. Comparing the Indian constitutions to other nations We know that the Indian Constitution borrows heavily from Constitutions of other nations. Soon after taking Office as Constitutional Advisor, Rau and his team travelled to the USA, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom, where he had personal consultations with scholars, Judges and authorities on Constitutional Law. Before the Constituent Assembly prepared its first draft of the Constitution in October 1947, he wrote Constitutional Precedents an in-depth analysis comparing the basic elements of the Constitutions of different nation States. Dr Prasad on Rau Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent Assembly, said Rau was the person who visualised the plan and laid the foundation of the Indian Constitution. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, before signing the Constitution on 26th November, 1949, thanked Rau for having worked honorarily all the time that he was here, assisting the Assembly not only with his knowledge and erudition but also enabled the other members to perform their duties with thoroughness and intelligence by supplying them with the material on which they could work. Universal adult franchise todaypoint A firm believer of universal adult franchise, Rau believed that no Indian voter should be left behind in the process of election process. He was the leading authority in guiding the process of making the universal franchise from a Constitutional perspective. He took up the responsibility of preparing all India electoral rolls since its inception in 1946 till 1948. The Consitution was to reflect the diversity of Indias ethos and the proverb Unity in Diversity was not only a metaphysical concept mentioned in philosophical thought but under the aegis of learned men who conceived and delivered a document whose spirit embodies the adage above. The Drafting Committee was to reflect the spirit of the constitution and the design of the independent state. And Syed Mohammed Saadullas involvement and contribution made the constitution an inclusive and fair document. Twitter Lawyer and founder of the Muslim League in Assam, Sir Syed Mohammed Saadulla was awarded a Knighthood by the British government in 1928. In 1936 he joined forces with non-Congress parties 1936 to become the first Chief Minister of Assam in pre-independent India. Birth Syed Mohammed Saadulla was born in Sibasnagar and his family claimed lineage to the renowned holy man Azan Pir, who travelled to Assam in the 17th century to spread the word of God. The father of Saadulla, Syed Md. Tayebbullah relocated to Gauhati where he worked as an Arabic and Persian teacher at Cotton Collegiate High School in Gauhati town. Education He received his elementary education at Sonaram High School in Gauhati. He went on to be awarded a post-graduate degree in chemistry from the Presidency College in Calcutta. Saadulla added another laurel to his name when he received a graduate degree at the Earle Law College in Gauhati in 1907. Besides being fluent in his native Assamese and Bengali he was also fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu in addition to Bengali and Assamese. Career Constitution of India Saadulla briefly worked as an assistant chemistry lecturer at Cotton College in 1908 before beginning his legal career at the Gauhati Bar. He conducted his training at the Calcutta High Court. He quickly rose to prominence as a lawyer. In 1913, he entered politics and was elected to the first Legislative Council; he was reelected a decade later in 1923. Under the Diarchy system of government, courtesy of the Government of India Act 1919, he was given the portfolios of Education and Agriculture from 1924 to 1929. In 1928, the British government knighted Syed Saadulla in honour of his public work and the honorary Sir was prefixed to his name. In his capacity as a member of the Governor of Assam's Executive Council, he also held the positions of Minister for Finance and Law and Order from 1929 to 1930 and again from 1930 to 1934. From 1933 to 1934, he also served as the Public Accounts Committee's chairman. Tryst with the Muslim League Elections for the Assam Legislative Assembly were held in 1937. And upon Muhammad Ali Jinnah's request, Sir Saadulla officially joined the Muslim League in the same year. Sir Saadulla maintained a close relationship with the All India Muslim League during his latter political career. He was a member of the committee that negotiated the Lucknow Accord between the Muslim League and the Congress, and he attended the League's 10th session in Calcutta in December 1917. Choosing to stay in India Wikipedia In response to the All-India Muslim League's request in line with the "Direct Action" appeal to establish Pakistan, he surrendered the knighthood. But when Assam chose to leave Pakistan after partition, he opted to choose his home state in India instead of the ideology that asked him to emigrate beyond the border. The forgotten hero Saadulla, despite his notable political achievements, is currently the least recognised politician in the state because he backed the two-nation doctrine and was a member of Jinnah's All India Muslim League. The Milli Gazette describes him as a well-known for his generosity, honesty and ability... In his first cabinet itself, he included a tribal leader, J.J.M. Nichols Roy as one of his ministers. He was regarded as an outstanding personality both on account of his experience, ability and honesty he was in a class different from any other politician in Assam. Hundreds of people were seen today waiting along the National Highway connecting Kolkata with Bhubaneswar to have a glimpse of the dismantled Dakota aircraft used by legendary leader Biju Patnaik. The iconic Dakota DC-3 Patnaik, once flown to rescue the then-Indonesian Vice President and Prime Minister, is making its journey back to the state capital from Kolkata. plane Aircraft was lying dilapidated and abandoned in Kolkata Sources said the DC-3 aircraft, lying dilapidated and abandoned at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata for years, is being moved to the capital for its public display at Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) after the completion of its dismantling process recently. Three vehicles carrying the dismantled parts of the plane crossed the Laxmannath toll plaza on the Odisha-West Bengal border and reached Jaleswar in the early hours today. The lorries, escorted by the Odisha Police, are scheduled to reach the state capital by late evening. biju patnaik It will be reassembled and then positioned at BPIA The dismantled Dakota (DC-3) VT-AUI aircraft will be reassembled and then positioned at a designated place at the international airport here named after Biju Patnaik, the father of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. It will be kept outside the operational area of the BPIA, for which the AAI has approved 1.1-acre land. The aircraft weighed over 8 tonnes and was around 64 feet 8 inches long. bpia Decks for shifting the iconic aircraft to the city, however, were cleared after the Airport Authority of India (AAI) agreed to hand over land for its public display in 2022. An official from Commerce and Transport department said the fuselage and wings of the aircraft have been moved to the truck and will be transported to the State shortly. For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News. There was something distinctly different about this year's medal award ceremony for the Indian peacekeepers in South Sudan. For the first time, the parade of the large contingent, consisting of infantry, engineers and medical staff, was led by a woman, Major Jasmine Chattha. 1,171 Indian peacekeepers receive UN medals This comes as over 1,000 Indian peacekeepers, including Major Chattha and four other female Army personnel, have been honoured with UN medals for their outstanding service in the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). "Take a bow, #India. Exactly 1,171 of your finest sons and daughters have received UN medals for their vital UNMISS work in Upper Nile, South Sudan. Major Jasmine Chattha and a couple of her female colleagues tell us more about their experiences," the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said in a tweet on Thursday. Take a bow, #India ! Exactly 1,171 of your finest sons & daughters have received @UN medals for their vital #UNMISS work in Upper Nile, #SouthSudan. Major Jasmine Chattha and a couple of her female colleagues tell us more about their experiences: https://t.co/DqLZYMrnCm #A4P pic.twitter.com/cG1qQwthJf UNMISS (@unmissmedia) January 12, 2023 "It has been an honour" "It has been an honour to represent my regiment on this special day. By positioning women as leaders, we are sending a strong message to the citizens of South Sudan in general and its women in particular. In our work, for example when we repair roads or try to mitigate floods, we are in contact with the local population and they can see that we, women, are leading a team and we are both respected and listened to," she said. While it is true that men dominate Indias peacekeeping contingent in Upper Nile, this year 5 women Army personnel bagged the award, including Captain Karishma Kathayat, an engineer. UNMISS "We take great pride" "It is a great feeling to contribute to a better standard of living of the people we are here to serve. Our engineering work is something we take great pride in," she said. The Indian contingent serving with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) may be best known for its efforts to build and repair critical infrastructure. However, protecting civilians is also a vital and sometimes dangerous part of their mandate. Deadly violence in Adhidiang and Kodok, where some 11,000 displaced persons are still gathered adjacent to a UNMISS military base, has caused untold suffering and injuries. Since September last year, Indian medical staff have performed critical emergency surgeries that have saved the lives of five children. UNMISS "Priceless experience" "Without these interventions, the children could have died, or would have grown up with disabling limb deformities," states Major Amanpreet Kaur, who is also a doctor. "We have already learned a lot by providing healthcare to both UNMISS staff and our South Sudanese hosts who come for emergencies or special treatment they cannot find elsewhere. Seeing previous patients coming back in good health is a priceless experience, she added. For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News. In India, food is our love language. Feeding people and cooking for people we love is a part of our culture and a way of expressing love. Indian festivals and accompanying celebrations aren't complete without the customary feasting. unsplash The wide variety of foods associated with each holiday only enhances the celebration's spirit. unsplash Celebrations of Makar Sankranti were recently held all around the country, and of course, a lot of delicious food was involved. Jaipur Makar Sankranti evening scenes pic.twitter.com/nrMQk82sUR Shubh (@kadaipaneeeer) January 14, 2023 However, one family in Andhra Pradesh appears to have gone to extraordinary lengths to celebrate the occasion. Unsplash According to official reports, an Eluru district couple named Bheema Rao and Chandraleela celebrated Sankranti by hosting a lavish feast for their newlywed daughter and son-in-law. screenshot Also, how many different kinds of food did you think were served? Well, the massive spread had 379 food items for the newlywed couple. Muralidhar, the couple's son-in-law , uploaded a video of the occasion to Instagram along with the accompanying caption: Instagram "We had a very great West Godavari Vindu Bajanam for our first Sankranthi! In lunch, we had 379 items in total." He also claimed that there were forty different kinds of flavored rice, twenty different roti chutneys, forty different curries, forty different kinds of fries, ninety to one hundred different kinds of desserts, seventy different kinds of hot items, juices, drinks, and more. screenshot The video went viral within minutes, and comments began pouring in. While some were taken aback, others responded with expressions of affection and heart emojis. According to reports, during his engagement with Chandraleela's daughter, her future son-in-law asked about the cuisine of the Godavari region. They wanted to show him how much they loved him, so they planned this elaborate meal as a surprise. She said that they spent eight months planning the spread and nearly two weeks putting it all together. (For the latest trending stories, keep reading Indiatimes) Can developers trust extensions downloaded for Microsofts popular Visual Studio Code editor? Researchers at Aqua Nautilus say they have found that attackers could easily impersonate popular extensions and trick unknowing developers into downloading them. Some extensions may already have taken advantage of this, Aqua security researcher Ilay Goldman wrote in a January 6 blog post. It can be challenging to distinguish between malicious and benign extensions, and the lack of sandbox capabilities means that extensions could install ransomware, wipers, and other malicious code, Goldman wrote. A users code also could be accessed. VS Code extensions, which provide capabilities ranging from Python language support to JSON file editing, can be downloaded from Microsofts Visual Studio Code Marketplace. Aqua Nautilus uploaded an extension masquerading as the Prettier code formatter and saw more than 1,000 installs in less than 48 hours, from around the world. The spoof extension has been removed. Goldman noted that the Visual Studio Code Marketplace runs a virus scan for each new extension and subsequent updates, and removes malicious extensions when it finds them. Users can report suspicious-looking extensions via a Report Abuse link. Microsoft released a statement on the precautions it takes with the Marketplace: To help keep customers safe and protected, we scan extensions for viruses and malware before they are uploaded to the Marketplace and we check that an extension has a Marketplace certificate and verifiable signature prior to being installed. To help make informed decisions, we recommend consumers review information, such as domain verification, ratings and feedback to prevent unwanted downloads. Social engineering techniques have been used to persuade victims to download a malicious extension, Microsoft said. Visual Studio Code also has a Workspace Trust feature to help users decide whether code in a project or folder can be executed by the editor or by extensions without a users explicit approval. Folders can be left in Restricted Mode to prevent execution if code is not trusted. Nevertheless, Goldman warned that the threat of malicious Visual Studio Code extensions is real. VS Code extensions also can be downloaded from NPM, which faces security threats as well, Goldman noted. As sustainability and ESG continue to quickly move more central into insurers strategic and operational thinking, were seeing increased attention from companies in the sector into how they can better manage human rights due diligence processes and wider ESG issues such as climate change, said Matt Moshiri, president of Verisk Maplecroft. Munich Re is one of the first movers in this space and we are delighted to be working with them in their efforts. Global Best In Insurance 2022 How we choose the best Each year, our research team sends out thousands of surveys to the insurance industry, that it then follows up with phone interviews to find out just who the industry thinks is worthy of recognition. Shortlisted finalists are then put in front of our judging panel to help make a final decision on who to include in the list of award winners. 1,686,345 Pageviews of the 'Best In' page 232 Surveys we sent out globally in 2022 189 Special reports we produced globally in 2022 CARPENTERS GROUP Carpenters Group is a family business at heart, founded in 1994 by chairman John Carpenter with director Donna Scully joining three years later. Their values-led approach and culture of openness and inclusion have shaped the business to become what it is today. The firm has grown significantly and now has over 1,000 employees spread across multiple locations in the UK, providing legal and insurance services to insurers, brokers and MGAs via a successful hybrid-working model. Carpenters Group has the scale and strength to work with any partner. Since the beginning, the company has focused both on its people and clients. Carpenters Group's programmes exist in different forms, but it recently invested in diversity and inclusion, along with bolstering its well-being and charity agenda. Donna Richards, CEO, says, We are more than ever committed to listening to our people and clients so that they can help shape and drive forward our strategic objectives. Carpenters Group prides itself on delivering excellent customer service within an environ-ment that fosters innovation. This is evidenced by the firms ongoing technological investments, allowing it to continue maintaining its high standards and first-class service.Whilst we believe in artificial intelligence, we believe the best outcome is where artificial and emotional intelligence combine. Our people make us what we are, says Richards. Over the course of 2022, Carpenters Group has continued to win new work using its technology to operate more efficiently, both for new clients and long-standing partners. To further improve its performance, the business has put over 100 managers through a formal management development and leadership programme which is already paying dividends in terms of results. The firm continually revises its talent acquisition, resource and succession planning agenda to ensure the correct people are being located at the correct levels, to deliver what is required by clients. This is all with the goal of commercial longevity at the forefront. Richards comments, We have worked very hard to future-proof our business by being transparent about what our business and people objectives are, and what and who we need to be able to deliver them with success. Being featured in Key Medias Global Best in Insurance 2022 is a mark of how well Carpenters Group is regarded and they acknowledge the recognition whilst reaffirming their ambition and vision. Were very proud of all our people and our business, for what we have achieved to date but also looking forward to what we will achieve in the future," says Richards. We are ambitious and driven and we go into 2023 full of enthusiasm and innovation for making it a great year for us and our people. Always putting the customer at the heart of everything we do." SUPPORTING ASSOCIATION ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL INSURANCE WOMEN (APIW) FOUNDED IN 1976, the Association of Profes-sional Insurance Women (APIW) is the premier organization committed to the career advance-ment of women insurance professionals. As an inclusive national association, APIW aims to provide women insurance professionals with unparalleled opportunities for professional development and networking. APIWs regular programs address the latest developments and issues affecting our industry, helping members prepare for leadership roles within their organizations by providing a broad, comprehensive view of the insurance business. Additionally, on an annual basis, APIW celebrates the accomplishments of outstanding woman in the insurance business through a variety of acknowledgments, including honoring annually the APIW Insurance Woman of the Year and providing scholarship aid to young women studying insurance. APIW encourages all members to actively participate in the organization, assume leadership roles and work on collaborative projects. Whether women insurance professionals are looking to expand their network of professional contacts, hone their leadership skills, or advance their career, APIW is here to help members achieve their goals. APIW originated in New York and over the years has continually expanded its reach to a number of cities including Chicago, Atlanta, Hartford, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami and San Francisco (Bay Area). SUPPORTING ASSOCIATION LATIN AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF INSURANCE AGENCIES (LAAIA) The Latin American Association of Insurance Agencies (LAAIA) was founded in 1969 as The Voice for the Independent Insurance Agents. The LAAIA works to ensure a healthy insurance environ-ment by providing continuing education, legislative advocacy representation, networking resources and community outreach as a plat-form for Latinx professionals. Additionally, the LAAIA serves as a medium for emerging insurance professionals to find mentors to guide their career paths. The LAAIAs unique mix of incorporation insurance expertise, diversity and inclusion strategies and value-added events makes it the premier Latino-centric association of its kind. The LAAIA has chapters in Atlanta, Houston, Miami and Broward counties in South Florida. The consensus among independent agents is that, with the LAAIAs support, independent agencies are able to form stronger relationships with vendors, provide educational opportunities to their agents, and receive assistance in managing day-to-day operations. The LAAIAs expansion is vital to the growth of small independent agencies; growth fueled by the LAAIAs leadership and guidance, as well as its ability to share smarter approaches to deliver better services. A modest-sized tract of land thats new to the market in West Cork is one that should interest a wide number of prospective buyers for the opportunity and value that it represents. While were used to the top-class acres of perfection garnering hot competition between bidders, it is interesting to see that land in need of refurbishment work can also elicit healthy interest. The farm in question is a 31.5-acre holding in the townland of Cooranig, just 10km north of Dunmanway and half a kilometre west of the village of Togher. Its listed with Clonakilty-based auctioneers Hodnett-Forde Property Services. The land is of mixed quality, says selling agent John Hodnett, and it will require reclamation in parts. With the public road running along its southern boundary, access is good and there is a forestry planation bounding its western edge. There is good interest in it, says John, and its currently under offer. The agent doesnt reveal what level offers are at the moment but the price expectation is in the region of 5,000 per acre. Were looking for something in the region of 150,000 to 170,000, confirms John. There are no entitlements which, I would say, makes it attractive in one way for a young farmer, purchasing what we would call bare ground. Such a young farmer could be entitled to concessions, making it an attractive place to start, purchasing land at an affordable price and improving it with additional work. Its suitable for forestry or its suitable for adding to an existing holding, says John. Such holdings are also in strong demand for young entrants to the market. Recently named as 2022s biggest beauty trend, retinol accumulated over 1.2 billion views on Tiktok and 9.2m Google searches last year a great achievement for an ingredient that is anything but new. The most evidence-supported topical ingredient for reducing the visible signs of ageing, sales of retinols in department stores and specialty retailers increased 27% last year and yet, despite their rising popularity, many still find retinols confusing and hard to use. Retinoids can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where liver (which contains retinoids) was used to treat night blindness. Retinoids were then introduced into the cosmetics industry via photoaging treatments over two decades ago. Now, retinol is a powerful rockstar ingredient that promises skin results aplenty if you start slow and steady. A topical derivative of vitamin A, retinol has been clinically proven to stimulate the fibroblast cells, which are responsible for collagen, hydration and cellular turnover helping the skin to look more youthful. Despite their many merits, we understand that embarking on your retinol journey can seem daunting when youre faced with the side effects that might arise with misuse especially if you have sensitive skin. Our philosophy when it comes to retinol is that less really can be more. Going in too hard with a strong formula can disrupt your delicate moisture barrier, which is why a progressive and skin-respectful approach is key to introducing vitamin A into your skincare routine. Knowledge is also power when it comes to retinol and to help you tackle your retinol roadblocks head-on, today we will be confronting the major areas of misinformation surrounding the ingredient and its uses. Myth 1: All types are the same Head to any skincare counter and you are likely to be presented with many different products with the word retin emblazoned across the packaging. To assume all retinoids are the same would be an easy mistake to make, but what is the difference and how do you select which type is for you? The term retinoid is an umbrella term used for all derivatives of retinol. Topical retinol and retinaldehyde are precursors of retinoic acid the most potent version of retinol. Before they can work on the skin, they need to be converted into retinoic acid. Prescription formulas contain retinoic acid, the most potent strength of the ingredient but requires medical assistance to use. With consistent use, milder, non-prescription alternatives like retinyl palmitate can also give incredible results over time. Myth 2: I am too young to start This depends on your skin, but as retinol can be ideal for addressing problematic skin it is often recommended to those in their 20s for reasons other than anti-ageing. One thing to consider when it comes to timing is that retinols are not recommended for those that are pregnant or breast-feeding by some brands, always check with manufacturers guidelines before use. Myth 3: Retinol can only be applied at night All forms of retinol (apart from esters) have been shown to cause photosensitivity and so I suggest keeping these for nighttime use and always using a broad-spectrum SPF during the day (which I am sure you are doing anyway). Retinoids can also break down in sunlight, which is another reason they are most effective when used at night. If you do want to wear one during the day, choose a formula containing retinyl palmitate such as Skingredients Skin Protein Anti-Ageing Retinoid Serum (49, theskinnerd.com) and remember to apply SPF every two hours throughout the day. Myth 4: Retinol weakens skin Many people are put off retinol as they are worried that it will thin their skin. Now this is true, BUT it only thins the stratum corneum (the very top layer) which is comprised of dead skin cells. This is seen as positive as unhealthy skin can be overthickened or too thin and therefore retinol helps to stabilise it. A major plus point (which helps to counteract this) is that retinol has been scientifically proven to build up and thicken the collagen layer in the dermis, which makes the skin stronger and healthier. Myth 5: Irritation means you need to stop Along with the plethora of skin benefits, retinol also poses some challenges due to its potential for skin irritation, sometimes referred to as a retinoid reaction. When applying vitamin A to non-acclimatised skin, the skin cells can renew themselves too quickly for the skin to catch up, leading to peeling skin and an impaired barrier. It is normal (and quite expected) to get a mild reaction such as some redness and dryness. The best way to minimise side effects is by building up usage slowly. Acclimatise your skin by beginning with once a week use and consider using any acids (such as salicylic) in your routine on alternative nights. Like all skincare, it is all about paying attention to your skin and doing what it needs everyones skin and reactions to ingredients are different. Eventually, though (and often within three weeks) your skin should calm down and adapt to this new, faster rate of renewal. Do note I am talking about mild discomfort think flushed, slightly uncomfortable, or lightly peeling skin. If your skin is very uncomfortable, stop using it and discuss with your skincare specialist. Myth 6: Results are instant It can be hard to say how long it will be before you see visible results as every persons skin is different. The normal persons skin cell cycle is 28 days, which is why youre most likely to notice a difference in your skin around the one-month mark. However, you might see visible skin results sooner or later than that it also depends on the type of vitamin A and how consistently you use the active. You might be surprised to learn that with prolonged usage, itll be clear to a facialist if you have been using vitamin A due to noticeable skin clarity. A man who died after an alleged assault in Carrigaline had helped save multiple people from drowning at sea and was described as 'kind and caring' at his requiem mass in Cork. Matt ONeil, 29, from Glenwood, Carrigaline, Co Cork, was allegedly assaulted in Glenwood Estate in the town on December 28. Matt O'Neill. Picture provided by family He died in Cork University Hospital on January 8 with his heartbroken parents, Pat and Eileen, at his side. His father Pat spoke movingly about his only childs love of water and said that he had saved people from drowning when he was just 13 years old. In the water was Matts favourite place," Mr O'Neill said. On more than one occasion, because we were in the water so much, he ended up saving someones life. "One afternoon we were surfing in Derrynane in Kerry. There were six people in serious trouble in the water. Together we pulled the six of them out Eileen, Matt, myself. One of them was in a particularly bad way and Matt took specific action going to him in the middle of all the panic. The coastguard helicopter landed and took that man to hospital. Matt was 13 years old. Matt was born to Eileen and I in Brisbane [Australia] in 1993. The three of us, almost from the minute he was born, we had a life of so many adventures. Swimming, surfing, climbing, kayaking, camping. Matts name was saved on his fathers phone as Body and Soul because that is what he was to his family. His name was in my phone as Body and Soul. Thats what came up every time he rang me and thats what he was our body and soul. During the week, one of Matts lovely friends sent us a message and I think it really said it Matts a real sweetheart, hes kind and caring, he was gentle'." Hundreds of mourners Hundreds of mourners gathered for his requiem mass at Church of the Real Presence, Curraheen Road. Shoulders shook in the pews as people cried throughout the service. Others glanced around with tear-filled eyes at friends and neighbours as if still in shock. Fr James McSweeney told mourners that Mr ONeil was precious, special and unique. His family had been "walking through a nightmare" but amid the horror of recent weeks, there had also been so many beams of light and hope from people supporting them and sharing their own precious memories of Matt. He said that the ONeills were amazing parents and could have done no more. Two males in their late teens have been arrested in relation to the alleged assault and charged with assault causing harm. Last week, tensions surrounding the right to protest were once more under the spotlight. Protests outside an accommodation centre in Ballymun where asylum seekers are being housed were among a string of protests that took place across Dublin and in Co Cork. They have been roundly condemned for having caused fear and distress. Fr Peter McVerry said he did not believe protests outside refugee or asylum seeker centres were representative of the Ballymun community, but rather were being led by anti-immigrant, right-wing parties. He and many others have called for exclusion zones around asylum centres to prevent protesters from getting too close and from acting in an intimidatory manner. Gardai the entrance to the Travel Lodge, where activists were protesting against the housing of refugees in Ballymun. Picture: Sam Boal / RollingNews.ie Last year, exclusion zones surfaced in the context of abortion clinics. Gardai were called to various protests and demonstrations at premises which provide abortion services. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly announced a proposal to legislate for 100m safe access zones around facilities providing abortion services. Critics of safe access zones in the abortion context called them a danger to free speech, saying the 100m rule was too draconian. A cross-party group of senators, TDs, and campaigners from Together For Safety in support of the Safe Access To Termination of Pregnancy Bill at Leinster House. Picture: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos They also said the minister had been unduly influenced by a small number of non-government organisations, and that the process leading to the framing of the proposal wasnt democratic enough. Mr Donnelly subsequently announced the proposal required further legal consideration. Accordingly, the Oireachtas health committee is continuing its pre-legislative scrutiny and discussion on Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services (Safe Access Zones)) Bill 2022. Certainly, the principle of proportionality comes into play here, meaning how you balance the rights of the protesters versus the rights of the women looking to access the abortion clinic in peace. Or how you balance the rights of protesters versus the rights of asylum seekers from a demonstration outside what is effectively their home. Plenty of us will instinctively hate the idea of protesters hurling abuse at vulnerable asylum seekers who have already been through so much and whom we have a moral right to defend. Ditto protesters standing outside a clinic with explicit and upsetting signage when somebody is facing the trauma of terminating a crisis pregnancy. However, restricting the right to protest is not small beer, because the right is a core condition of democracy. And in Ireland, its a constitutional one. Its not explicitly named in our Constitution, but derives from three separate rights, which are the right to freedom of expression; the right to freedom of assembly (the right to gather and meet); and the right to freedom of association (the right to take organise and take part in groups). The right is also protected under the European Convention On Human Rights (ECHR). In Ireland and other democratic countries, the right to protest may be restricted when it poses a threat to public order. This raises the thorny question of when a peaceful protest escalates into a threat to public order. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Picture: PA Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said detectives are probing links between recent sinister Irish protests and extremist groups overseas, and are liaising with international colleagues to learn lessons on how to handle such far-right agitation. Presumably, where an infraction of the law has occurred, it can be criminally prosecuted. Thats not to say we shouldnt curb protests outside asylum centres or abortion clinics, but its a case of how we do it and how far any curb goes. Fundamental rights given away can be difficult to claw back, or can open the door to rights being incrementally further eroded. The flip side of the law is state power. The voice of the people matters, even when the exercise of that voice sticks in the craw. And its worth noting that, generally, there has been a narrowing of the right to protest in Europe. Right to protest eroding This week, British prime minister Rishi Sunak signalled his determination to give new police powers to shut down protests before any disruption begins. These proposed new measures are aimed at preventing tactics such as slow marching which have been deployed mainly by environmental protesters. The British government has characterised their methods as guerrilla tactics. British civil liberty campaigners have described the new anti-protest measures as outrageous and, on the face of it, they sound worryingly draconian. Most of us would take it badly if, say, an ambulance carrying a critically ill loved one was impeded en route to the hospital by slow-marching protesters, but that doesnt mean that there isnt a right worth protecting or valuing. The French, who have always seemed to have a remarkable tolerance of, if not appetite for, demonstrations, riots, and protests, have been gradually curbing the right to protest. In 2015, the right was restricted when a state of emergency was called due to terrorist attacks. But in 2019 it was restricted more controversially as a result of the gilet jaunes protests against economic inequality which led to violent scenes, after which prime minister Edouard Philippe vowed that rioters would not have the last word. A 'Yellow vest' (gilet jaune) protestor gestures as he stands along the Champs-Elysees on December 31, 2018. Picture: by Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP French constitutional lawyers have since argued that legal solutions inherited from what was once the legitimate state of emergency have progressively been incorporated into ordinary law and used illegitimately to limit the freedom to protest. Or, to put it more bluntly, the French authorities got used to wielding more power so that the emergency-style powers have become a sort of problematic baseline and now that the stable door has been opened, its proving difficult to close. Here, Fianna Fail senator Malcolm Byrne introduced a bill in 2021 to prohibit targeted picketing outside the residential homes of publicly elected representatives when anti-vaccine demonstrators protested outside the homes of the then Tanaiste Leo Varadkar and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. Last Friday, he suggested on Drivetime that this bill be extended to include where the principal private residence is a direct provision centre or what could be defined as a temporary home, which is an interesting idea. Its never the case that everyone agrees. Somebody always gets the rough end. It would be highly preferable that it wasnt asylum seekers or those making the difficult decision to have an abortion. This isnt some backdoor nimbyist or nativist argument for not honouring our obligations to asylum seekers simply a reminder that restricting this fundamental right requires careful consideration. And it should be done in the most democratic way possible, with public submissions to a review group. Realistically, any kneejerk rushing through of restrictions on the right to protest will inevitably lead to test constitutional cases challenging the legislation. But lets not be part of the incremental backsliding on fundamental civic rights that seems to be under way elsewhere. French nun Sister Andre, the world's oldest person, has passed away at the age of 118 in France, her retirement home told Reuters on Tuesday. Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister Andre when she joined a Catholic charitable order in 1944, had survived COVID last year. Burma Myanmar Junta Leaked Memo Shows Resistance Growing Beyond Control -- Leaked minutes from a top-level counterterrorism meeting led by Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant-General Soe Htut show the junta is at its wits end after failing to drum up public support to crush the shadow National Unity Government (NUG). The leaked document, which comes from a December meeting of the Central Committee for Counter-Terrorism, was shared online by Khit Thit Media. The meeting was joined by more than 50 senior regime officials including deputy ministers for home affairs, defense, and border affairs, senior police officers, military intelligence officials, and security and border affairs officials at the regional and state levels. The meeting arrived at the conclusion that resistance forces known collectively as Peoples Defense Forces (PDFs) had expanded beyond control, and PDF attacks are expected to intensify this year. None of the officials present at the meeting was confident the regime will be able to successfully hold the election planned in August. Generals ignorant of public fury The home affairs minister and his deputies expressed concern that PDFs had escalated from sneak attacks to artillery assaults using makeshift 107mm rocket launchers. Some 75 percent of weapons and explosive material used by PDFs to attack junta targets had passed through junta security checkpoints, said the home affairs minister. Keep in mind that all checkpoints [where weapons] have passed through must be held responsible in the future, Lt-Gen Soe Htut warned. Generals present expressed consternation that Myanmar people as well as the international community were supporting the NUG and PDF, whom they consider to be terrorists. They can commit terrorist acts because they are favored by the international community for being elected [in the 2020 general election]. They also have an upper hand in media warfare, said deputy home affairs minister Major General Zin Min Htet, who is also the police chief. Lt-Gen Soe Htut, a former military intelligence chief, lamented that the military had failed to extract information from the people about the NUG, its parliamentary body the CRPH, and the PDF. We still cant get the information we need despite offering rewards and promising secrecy. We are not doing enough to gain information in areas that we control, he said. He also called for deployment of technology to collect intelligence. Deputy home affairs minister Major-General Soe Tint Naing said a budget was granted last year to recruit a network of informants, but much of the fund remained unspent indicating people are reluctant to take the job. Generals insisted the NUG, its parliament and PDFs would collapse if their flow of finances could be cut off. The regime had frozen more than 18,000 accounts in 18 months, a police brigadier-general told the meeting. It had also imposed restrictions on mobile payment services in a bid to stem the flow of donations to resistance forces. Police Brigadier-General Kyaw Lin of the Crime Department said that more than 17,000 cases of violence had been logged since the February 2021 coup, but only 7,000 had resulted in prosecutions. Perpetrators could not be identified in the other 10,000 cases, he said. Failures across the country The juntas security and border affairs ministers, reporting on the situation in their respective regions and states, indicated that the resistance movement was growing beyond control. Kachin States security and border minister reported that the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is training PDFs at its headquarters in Laiza, where it is also manufacturing weapons to supply resistance forces in Sagaing, Magwe and Mandalay regions. The security and border minister for Sagaing, a resistance stronghold in central Myanmar, said PDFs were growing from a small armed organization into a large fighting force. They were also using social media to implement new initiatives to drum up public support, he added. Neighboring Magwe Region had seen 87 attacks on police stations since the coup, said its security and border affairs minister. Resistance fighters would use large forces to attack police stations and security outposts this year, he forecast. His counterpart in Mandalay, the capital of Upper Myanmar, said the region was now home to more than 50 PDF groups whose network was spreading to Sagaing and Magwe regions and Shan State. Frequent power outages had eroded the ability of the citys CCTV surveillance system to spot PDFs, the minister lamented. Apparently alarmed by the threat of PDFs, he asked for bulletproof vests to protect security forces in the town. Kayahs security and border affairs minister said PDFs were fighting alongside local ethnic armed groups in the eastern border region. Forested terrain was causing logistical and operational problems for junta troops in Kayah, he said, with regime forces increasingly forced to rely on air transport. Resistance forces were also targeting government offices in neighboring Karen State, said its security and border affairs minister. Junta troops were facing difficulties because they dont know the terrain and local language, he added. Myanmars oldest ethnic armed group, the Karen National Union, is fighting alongside PDFs in Karen State. Myanmars military is also finding it difficult to quell PDFs in KNU-controlled areas in Bago, adjacent to Karen State, said Bago Regions security and border affairs minister. Regime forces were also being restricted in the west by the Arakan Army in Rakhine State, said its security and border affairs minister. His counterpart in neighboring Chin State said locals were refusing to cooperate with junta authorities for fear of retaliation by terrorist organizations, meaning PDFs. Elsewhere, Yangons security minister said the commercial capital had seen more than 900 bomb attacks despite tightened security. Regime vents anger on strikers, migrant workers The home affairs minister also warned attendees that hundreds of government employees made jobless and barred from leaving the country could resort to attacking the regime. Lt-Gen Soe Htut also mentioned tight surveillance had been imposed on some 500 Myanmar migrant workers denied entry by their destination countries over the past two months. The meeting also discussed using surveillance technology to get more information on the resistance. Criminal Investigation Department (CID) police chief Nyunt Wai said his department had put in a request to the Transportation and Communications Ministry for high-end technological gadgets. Another participant, deputy border affairs minister Lt-Gen Khun Thant Zaw Htoo, proposed intercepting phone calls and hacking social media accounts to get resistance intelligence. If CID and military intelligence could form a team to hack them, we could get more information, he said. Deputy transport and communications minister U Aung Kyaw Tun confirmed we will collaborate but said he could not discuss all the details as some technology was still being procured. Deputy home affairs minister Maj-Gen Soe Tint Naing proposed using community policing to combat terrorism, apparently ignorant of the fact that regime officials cant even bribe people to give information. The home affairs minister also instructed participants to exploit the ongoing census to gather information about the NUG, its parliament, and PDFs. Junta-appointed election officials and immigration department employees have been visiting wards to count voters ahead of the regimes planned poll. The NUG has warned administrative officials not to cooperate in the census. There have already been several blasts and attacks targeting census teams. The leak of the home affairs ministers plan is likely to make census takers an even bigger target. Burma Myanmar Junta Supporters Protest UN Resolution Calling for end to Violence Ma Ba Tha members and pro-regime supporters join a protest against the UN resolution on Myanmar in Hpa-an on January 17, 2023. Myanmars military regime has organized a series of protests against the United Nations (UN) Security Councils resolution on Myanmar which demands an end to violence and calls on the junta to release all political prisoners, including ousted leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The latest demonstration was held on Tuesday in Karen States Hpa-an, with members of the ultranationalist Association for Protection of Race and Religion, better known by its Burmese acronym Ma Ba Tha, joining military sympathizers at the protest. The UN Security Councils resolution is the first adopted on Myanmar in 74 years. China and Russia, who have backed Myanmars junta since the coup, abstained from the vote on Wednesday, along with India. The remaining 12 members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution. Although the Hpa-an demonstration purportedly targeted the UN resolution, protesters held placards showing United States (US) President Joe Biden and stating US, the worlds shit bag, while shouting US, the worlds troublemaker, dont interfere and We oppose foreign countries interfering in the internal affairs of Myanmar. Junta media reported that some 1,800 people took part in the peaceful protest. Demonstrators wearing yellow t-shirts emblazoned with Ma Ba Tha Karen welcomed prominent firebrand nationalist monk U Wirathu, the former leader of Ma Ba Tha, who spoke at the protest. The monk was recently awarded the title of Thiri Pyanchi by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing. The regime has accused the UN of adopting the resolution to create instability in Myanmar. Demonstrations against the resolution have since taken place in townships in Yangon, Mandalay and Tanintharyi regions and Mon, Kachin, and Karen states, with junta forces providing security for protesters. A total of 26 political parties, including the militarys proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), released a joint statement strongly condemning the UN resolution. Ma Ba Tha supporters did not publicly participate in previous protests. But Ma Ba Tha monks and supporters in Ma Ba Tha t-shirts dominated the latest protest in Karen State. Military supporters also took to the streets several months ago to show their support for the regimes execution of four democracy activists, including Ko Jimmy and former lawmaker Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw. The pro-junta demonstrators even stoned the homes of the families of the two men after they were executed. There were similar demonstrations under previous military regimes. Then, such protests were orchestrated by the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the forerunner of the USDP, and military-backed vigilante groups including the notorious Swan Arr Shin. Burma Myanmars Acting President Demands Protection For Civilians Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the National Unity Government, visits a frontline resistance camp last year. Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of Myanmars National Unity Government (NUG), says protecting civilians is as important as eliminating the military regime, amid attacks on junta election preparations. Resistance groups in Yangon, Mandalay, Monywa in Sagaing Region, Launglon in Tanintharyi Region and Thaton in Mon State have attacked voter registration sites where junta administrators are compiling household registrations for the planned general election. Five junta personnel, including two police officers and a ward administrator, have been killed. While most attacks were non-lethal, resistance groups warned that future attacks will be bloody and urged the public to stay away from regime officials. However, junta forces have been summoning the public to submit their details. Duwa Lashi La said he bows down when he thinks of the revolutionary spirit and peoples determination to resist the dictatorship each day. The NUG sees the elimination of the military regime as the first priority but the protection of the lives and property of the public is our first priority too, he told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He urged revolutionary leaders to use the correct tactics to oppose the juntas planned election. The election is widely seen as an attempt by the junta to tighten its grip on power following the 2021 coup. The NUG, revolutionary forces and democracies around the world have denounced any election as a sham. The United States and United Nations have said any election held by the regime will be neither free nor fair. Ethnic armed organizations, including the Taang National Liberation Army, Karen National Union and Kachin Independence Army, rejected the planned election and warned administrators not to take part. Burma Myanmars Civilian Govt to Grant Mining Licenses for Ruby Land An aerial view of Mogok. Myanmars civilian National Unity Government (NUG) is planning to raise funds through mining licenses, according to its planning, finance and investment minister U Tin Tun Naing. The minister revealed the plan to grant licenses for local and foreign businesses to operate gem mines in Mandalays Mogok Township, also known as Ruby Land, during a press conference on Sunday. We are doing this to bring justice after [gem mining] was monopolized by a handful of ruling elites in successive periods. Those businesses only served the interests of military dictators, so we are fixing this to serve the interests of the people, and to ensure the country and its citizens get what they deserve, said the minister. The NUGs national resource management body will invite expressions of interest from local and foreign investors, said U Tin Tun Naing. The move is among NUG projects scheduled for implementation between September 2022 and September 2023 to support the revolution against military rule, he said. The NUGs resource management body will consult with environmental and legal experts and refer to international procedures in granting mining licenses, said the minister. Mining companies awarded licenses thanks to their ties to the Myanmar military have never implemented environmental management plans for their mines in the area, said NUG electricity and energy minister U Soe Thura Tun. This was partly because the companies were mostly granted short-term licenses, encouraging them to exploit resources to the maximum while ignoring environmental impacts, he added. The NUG on the other hand plans to grant long-term contracts to help encourage more systematic and less environmentally harmful mining, he said. While we aim to raise funds for the revolution, we also want to systematize the mining of natural resources, said U Soe Thura. The mines will be operated as public-private partnerships with a 51 percent stake for the government and 49 percent for the private partner. He added that the licensed mines will start operating after the military dictatorship is ousted, with more details of the project to be released soon. A gems merchant in Upper Myanmar said no registered mining companies are currently operating in Mogok due to the lack of security and rule of law, but individuals and groups of miners are working on a small scale. The Taang National Liberation Army, and the NUGs Peoples Defense Force armed wing are active in areas surrounding Mogok, but junta troops control the town, said residents. Known locally as the Land of Gems, the area comprises Mogok, Moemeik, Twin Nge, and Thabeikkyin where mines produce rubies, sapphires, peridot and other precious stones. The parallel civilian government has so far raised more than US$100 million to fund its revolution against the military regime, according to the NUGs planning and finance ministry. The funds were raised by selling treasury bonds, auctioning off military-linked properties including two mansion residences of junta boss Min Aung Hlaing, and selling yet-to-be-built apartments on military-linked land. The NUG said buyers will be handed keys to their properties once the junta is toppled. The NUG has also collected tax revenue totaling 3 billion kyats in the areas of the country it controls. War Against the Junta At Least Eight Myanmar Regime Forces Killed in Tanintharyi Fighting A resistance fighter from the Palaw Regional Defense Force. /PRDF Eight Myanmar junta forces, including pro-regime Pyu Saw Htee militia, were killed on Monday in a clash with ethnic Karen-led resistance groups in Palaw Township in southern Myanmars Tanintharyi Region. A fierce firefight erupted on Monday afternoon when fighters from the Karen National Defense Organization, one of the armed wings of the Karen National Union, the Palaw Peoples Defense Force (PDF) and other local resistance groups raided military regime forces based in Shat Pon Village in Palaw Township. During the raid, the resistance forces mined military vehicles, as well as shooting dead junta-appointed village administrator Nyein Chan Aung, who was also the leader of Shat Pons Pyu Saw Htee militia, said Palaw Regional Defense Forces (PRDF). A spokesperson for the Myeik District PDF told The Irrawaddy that they had received reports from Shat Pon residents detailing how they were being oppressed by Pyu Saw Htee militia in the village. PRDF claimed to have killed eight junta forces in the clash. The group submitted photos of dead soldiers and captured weapons, ammunition and military kit as evidence. There were no resistance casualties, said PRDF. However, two villagers were killed in the fighting after regime forces opened fire at random. After the clash, a 33-year-old Shat Pon man was reportedly killed after being arrested by regime soldiers while returning from fishing. The mans throat was cut, reported local media The Tanintharyi Times, citing residents of Shat Pon. Regime forces also stole a gold chain from the victim, the report added. Later on Monday night, further fighting broke out in Palaw as the combined resistance forces raided Myanmar military battalion 285, said PRDF. Casualties from that clash are currently unknown. War Against the Junta Nearly 50 Myanmar Junta Forces Killed in Three Days of Resistance Attacks PDF fighters of Paungde and Bago Region PDF during an operation / Bago Region PDF At least 48 Myanmar junta forces including pro-regime militia members and regime-appointed administrators were killed in the last three days as Peoples Defense Force (PDF) groups continued to attack regime targets across the country. A resistance fighter was killed in a fierce clash with regime forces in Sagaing Region and two civilians were also killed during a shootout in Tanintharyi Region. Incidents were reported in Sagaing, Mandalay, Magwe, Bago and Tanintharyi regions. The Irrawaddy has collected the following reports of significant attacks from PDFs. Some military casualty figures could not be independently verified. Twenty regime forces killed, injured in PDF ambush in Sagaing Resistance forces engage in a clash with regime forces in Salingyi Township on Monday. / SSTF At least 20 regime forces are believed to have been killed or injured in Salingyi Township, Sagaing Region on Monday when several PDF groups jointly ambushed a military detachment of 70 troops heading to Sar Htone Village, according to the PDF groups and the Defense Ministry of Myanmars parallel National Unity Government (NUG). After suffering heavy losses in two hourlong shootouts, a Russian-made Mi-35 regime helicopter gunship conducted air strikes against resistance forces to evacuate troops on the ground. In the shootout, a resistance fighter was also killed, the PDF forces told The Irrawaddy. Regime vehicles ambushed in Sagaing A regime soldier was killed in Monywa Township, Sagaing Region on Sunday when Area 71 PDF-Monywa ambushed regime forces clandestinely traveling in civilian vehicles in the township, the PDF group said. After conducting a surveillance operation for several days, they ambushed the regime forces stationed at the Technology University in the township while the latter were traveling in three civilian vehicles. After being ambushed, regime forces responded with both automatic firearms and heavy explosives, but all PDF fighters retreated from the ambush site without casualties, the resistance group claimed. Three regime troops killed in PDF land mine ambush in Sagaing Three regime forces were killed and five injured in Yinmabin Township, Sagaing Region on Monday when two PDF groups used 14 improvised land mines to ambush regime forces from Bantbwe Village, said Dragon Brother Task Force, which took part in the ambush. Twenty regime forces including pro-regime Pyu Saw Htee militia members stationed at the village were ambushed while going out to obtain rations in nearby villages. Eight regime forces killed in PDF raid in Tanintharyi Eight regime forces including pro-regime Pyu Saw Htee militia members were killed by combined resistance forces during their raid targeting a junta-appointed village administrator in Shat Pon Village in Palaw Township, Tanintharyi Region on Monday, said Palaw Regional Defense Force, which coordinated the attack. The shootout erupted when PDF forces attempted to arrest the administrator at his house just as regime forces were about to escort him to another location. During the clash, two civilians were shot and killed. There were no PDF casualties, however. Two military weapons and ammunition were seized, the PDF group said. Junta outpost torched in Tanintharyi Launglon Peoples Defense Force, along with the allied Special Guerrilla Force, claimed to have torched an abandoned junta police outpost on Monday night in Launglon Township, Tanintharyi Region. The outpost was abandoned by 50 regime forces last Friday after repeated attacks by resistance forces. Regime forces bombed by PDF drone in Mandalay Local resistance group Nway Oo Takhon claimed it and five other PDF groups killed two regime forces and injured three others as they used a drone to drop a bomb on 20 regime forces stationed at a village in Ngazun Township, Mandalay Region on Monday. The PDF group said it had to call off the aerial mission after dropping one bomb, as regime forces were armed with an anti-drone gun. An aerial video shot by the PDF shows a drone dropping a bomb on regime targets. All resistance forces retreated from the area without any casualties despite regime forces randomly responding with firearms. Junta-run township General Administration Office attacked in Mandalay Urban resistance group General Z Power claimed it and other PDF groups used an M79 grenade launcher to attack the junta-run township General Administration Department office of Amarapura Township in the city of Mandalay on Monday. Some regime forces are believed to have been injured or killed, the PDF group said. Four junta soldiers killed in Bago Paungde PDF group claimed to have killed four regime soldiers and injured three others as they used a cluster of three land mines to attack a military detachment of 33 troops traveling in the forest in Paungde Township, Bago Region on Monday. After suffering casualties, regime forces randomly responded with both firearms and heavy explosives and burned down seven civilian farm huts nearby. All PDF fighters retreated from the area without any casualties, the PDF group said. Junta-appointed administrator killed in Bago Bago Region PDF said one of its resistance groups, Kyaukgyi PDF, assassinated junta-appointed ward administration member U Thein Lwin in the town of Kyaukgyi in Bago Region on Monday. The administrator was notorious for oppressing and extorting money from civilians. Recently, the administrator had been actively collaborating with junta officials to organize the regimes coming sham election. Following the assassination, regime forces randomly shelled nearby villages with 120-mm artillery rounds, injuring a resident, Bago Region PDF said. Nine junta soldiers killed in PDF ambush in Magwe At least nine regime troops were killed in Natmauk Township, Magwe Region on Sunday when two PDF groups ambushed 12 soldiers on six motorbikes on a road, according to local media reports citing the PDF groups. A representative of Galone Force-Natmauk, which coordinated the attack, told the media that the groups attacked the regime forces after conducting mine ambushes. All resistance forces retreated when regime reinforcements arrived in the area. After the clash, regime forces torched some houses in nearby Phattawya Village. Guest Column Kokang: Caught Between Myanmar and China MNDAA troops parade in Mongla in 2022. / The Kokang One of the most unexpected developments in the struggle against Myanmars latest military dictatorship is the support for the resistance that has come from the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). An ethnic armed organization (EAO), the MNDAA is based in Kokang in the far northeastern corner of Shan State in eastern Myanmar. More than 90 per cent of Kokangs population of approximately 150,000 people are ethnic Chinese of Yunnan descent, and the regions cultural, personal and even political ties with China have always been strong. Given Beijings support for the junta that was installed after the February 2021 coup, it may seem surprising that the MNDAA is getting away with supporting the resistance to the regime. But, as a long-time observer of Myanmar politics, put it: It looks to me as if the Chinese are working, as they often do, to keep a foot of some sort in all camps. The MNDAA has trained several groups of fighters from the pro-democracy resistance, which are loosely-banded together and known as Peoples Defense Forces (PDF). Arms for the resistance have also been provided through the MNDAA and its close ally the Taang National Liberation Army, a powerful EAO that is active in Palaung-inhabited areas of northern Shan State. The weapons, in turn, are Chinese-made and come from the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which has had a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military since 1989, and therefore cannot be directly involved in the fight. The flow of guns and the fact that no Chinese-made FN-6 Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS), of which the UWSA has many, have been provided seems to indicate that the China is giving its tacit approval to the arms supplies, but with certain limitations. The PDFs need MANPADS urgently to protect themselves against the increasingly frequent airstrikes that the military regime has unleashed against resistance strongholds. But it wouldnt look good if any of the Chinese-made planes in service with the Myanmar Air Force were shot down by Chinese-made MANPADS. In this rather complicated context, it should also be remembered that this is not the first time that the MNDAA has been engaged in a conflict with the Myanmar military. The group was one of four EAOs that emerged from a mutiny among the rank-and-file of the once powerful Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in 1989. The others were the UWSA, the National Democratic Alliance Army in eastern Shan State, and the New Democratic Army in Kachin State. All four entered into, but did not sign, ceasefire agreements with the then junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), but fighting broke out between the MNDAA and the Myanmar military in 2009. The MNDAA lost most of its territory, and an estimated 30,000 Kokang people fled across the border to Yunnan. Most of them were able to return but, in February 2015, fighting resumed and between 40,000-50,000 refugees ended up in Yunnan. Massive airstrikes and artillery barrages were used. In a May 2015 article for Janes Defense Weekly, writer Anthony Davis described the offensive as the largest war since Myanmars independence. China cannot have been pleased with what happened in 2009 and 2015, and probably thought it wise to maintain good relations with the MNDAA. With its ethnic Chinese population, Kokang has always served as an unofficial buffer zone between China and Myanmar, as well as gateway for Chinas influence in Shan State and beyond. Consequently, Kokang is of the utmost strategic importance to Beijing. Kokangs exact status has always been somewhat ambiguous. Prior to the arrival of the British in the then Burma, Kokang maintained a dual relationship between local chieftains and the Shan saohpa [sawbwa in Burmese] of Hsenwi to the west of the Salween River and with Chinese rulers to the east of the Salween. But under an 1894 agreement between Britain and China, Kokang was recognized as Chinese territory. However, a new agreement was reached in 1897 under which China had to cede Kokang to the British, who placed the region under the jurisdiction of North Hsenwi State and a local myosa, literally a town eater, or local tax collector, who also had other duties. During World War II, Kokangs status was changed again and, in 1951 it became a separate entity within the Shan States ruled by its own saohpa. His name was Yang Kyein-sai and he belonged to the Yang clan, the most powerful family in Kokang. His sister Yang Kyin-hsui, better known as Olive Yang, is perhaps the best-known of his siblings. She had her own armed militia and, in the 1950s, became involved in the opium trade, although her role in business and politics has been grossly exaggerated and even glamorized, perhaps because she was openly lesbian. Some contemporary writers have elevated her to the status of an early LGBT activist and, even more imaginatively, as a superspy connected with various foreign intelligence agencies. In fact, Olive Yangs main and only real claim to fame was that she was the first person to send opium in truck convoys down to the Thai border, rather than by the usual mule caravans. She traded opium with the remnants of the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces on the Thai-Shan State border, but had hardly any other significant connections with the outside world. In 1960, Olive wanted to assume the title of saohpa of Kokang, a title still held by her brother, but she was detained by Myanmars central authorities from 1963 to 1968. She lived quietly in Yangon and Shan State after her release until 1989, when the then military intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt appointed her, ex-opium warlord Lo Hsing-han and Aung Gyi, a Sino-Burmese former army officer, to negotiate with the CPB mutineers in Kokang. She died in 2017 in Muse in northern Shan State. Another Yang sibling, Yang Kyein-sein, aka Jimmy Yang, was far more important than Olive. He was elected MP for Kokang in 1950, a position he held until General Ne Wins coup in 1962 and the end of Myanmar democracy. Jimmy Yang also founded the Burma Bank and was a prominent personality in politics and business throughout the 1950s. He went underground after the coup and formed the Kokang Revolutionary Force which, in 1964, merged with two Shan groups to form the Shan State Army, led by Sao Nang Hearn Hkam, the widow of Myanmars first president Sao Shwe Thaike. But Jimmy soon broke away and served for a while as a manager of the long-gone Rincome Hotel in Chiang Mai. He later allied himself with the KMT in the opium business and with ousted Prime Minister U Nu in exile politics. Jimmy Yang left for Paris in 1973, but returned to Myanmar during a general amnesty in 1980. He died in Yangon in 1985. Meanwhile at home in Kokang, crucial events took place which became a turning point in the modern history of the territory. In 1967, two of Jimmy Yangs officers, Pheung Kya-shin and Pheung Kya-fu, traveled to China to ask for help. The Chinese introduced them to CPB exiles, who for several years had been planning a major push into Myanmar. On January 1, 1968, heavily-armed CPB units crossed into Myanmar at Mong Ko in northern Shan State. Five days later, the Pheung brothers and the force they commanded crossed into Kokang, which was overrun within days. Kokang and large parts of northern Shan State soon came under CPB control. By the mid 1970s, the CPB had extended its liberated area to encompass 20,000 square kilometers of land along Myanmars border with China. The problem, though, was that the CPBs soldiers consisted almost exclusively of people from the mountains of northern and eastern Shan State, while orthodox, Maoist Bamar dominated the CPBs political leadership. People like Pheung Kya-shin didnt even join the CPB; he was content to be an army commander and local administrator in Kokang. Almost inevitably, this led to a mutiny, which began in Kokang in March 1989 and, in April, spread to the Wa Hills and other CPB-controlled areas. At first it was believed that the CPB mutineers would link up with Myanmars other EAOs. But the SLORC was faster, and made the mutineers an offer they accepted without hesitation: keep your armies but dont share your guns with the other EAOs, and you can also retain control over your respective areas and get involved in any kind of business. In the beginning that meant the trade in opium and its derivative heroin, but now commercial pursuits are more diversified and include tin and rare earth mining with China being the main market for exports. Since the mutiny, Kokang has been transformed into a center for cross-border trade with China. Whereas during the CPB days there were only bamboo huts and a few bigger houses made of stone, high-rise buildings now loom over market places and shopping centers. There are even talks about building a high-speed railroad from China through the southern part of Kokang to Hsenwi, and then all the way to Mandalay and, eventually, Yangon and the port of Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State. Needless to say, Kokangs recent development is more in tune with what the leaders in Beijing want, as China no longer exports communist revolution. Today its a question of trade, commerce and all kinds of influence over Myanmars internal affairs, be it the insurgencies and military affairs or mainstream politics and, most important, geopolitical concerns. Pheung Kya-fu died in June 2017 at the age of 81 and Pheung Kya-shin on February 16, 2022. He was 94. With those old warlords gone, a new generation of Kokang leaders have taken over, but little is known about them. It is also not known how and when they invited PDF fighters to their area. But with Kokang commanders in charge it is certain that relations with China are bound to be strong. And will the PDFs be able to maintain their independence? Their main weakness is that the PDFs have no central command and no common strategy. They can easily end up being totally dependent on the stronger groups that train and equip them. That means that the struggle for Myanmars future is as uncertain as it always has been: a never-ending civil war with more suffering for the people, who are now being bombarded by the Myanmar Air Force and ruled by an incompetent junta that has pushed the country close to an economic abyss. And much of it has to do with Chinas desire to secure its control over the vital Myanmar corridor, which gives it access to the Indian Ocean and markets across the world. As for Kokang, it will not be an easy task for anyone in power in Naypyitaw to establish some semblance of authority over that virtually autonomous territory. Like the Wa Hills to the south, it is a part of Myanmar that has never been under any effective, central governmental control but which for a very long time has had much closer ties to China. Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday unveiled an initiative to permanently ban mask requirements across Florida and permanently block COVID-19 vaccine requirements at schools and businesses. During a press conference in Panama City Beach, the Republican governor announced a proposal on those issues, including prohibiting employers in Florida from firing employees who arent vaccinated. The proposal would have to be in the form of a piece of legislation during the 2023 legislative session. DeSantis was joined by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and others at the news conference. The proposal also pushed for protection of medical freedom of speech. That would mean allowing physicians to disagree with the preferred narrative, of the medical community, according to a poster-like flier that had limited information about the initiative. Earlier, DeSantis had banned whats called vaccine passports. But now, he is pushing for a broader ban across Florida. The governor said that he is confident lawmakers will pass legislation to protect freedom of speech from the medical community. The state wants to prevent medical professionals from discrimination based on their personal views and ensure no one loses their job or medical license for voicing their professional opinions in Florida, according to a press release from the governors office. They will pass it this year; Ive already talked to the leadership, DeSantis said. But we want to have our medical practitioners, particularly our physicians, be protected with the freedom to be able to speak the truth. In 2021, DeSantis called members of the Legislature to convene a special session to protect workers from vaccine mandates by employers. And the state had also blocked through legislation a mask requirement for children at public schools, among other provisions, as previously reported by the Florida Phoenix. We also called a special session of the Florida Legislature to ensure that Floridians livelihoods were protected, DeSantis said. We banned mandates in the workplace for COVID shots because nobody should have to choose between a job they need and a shot they dont want. We banned mandates in the workplace for COVID shots, DeSantis said. Later Tuesday, Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said it was important to address remarks made about COVID safeguards during the governors press conference, calling DeSantis rhetoric dangerous to the health of Florida residents. She also pushed for Floridians to get booster doses. The governor had questioned the effectiveness of bivalent boosters during the news conference. So, Ron DeSantis, what we witness today, hes become the number one peddler of a dangerous message from the anti-vax establishment. It is a fake ideology with real consequences, she said. So many false and half-true things were said and so much misinformation spread, Driskell said. Masks work, the CDC has proven that. The mRNA vaccines work. No one ever promised total immunity, but those vaccines do lessen the chance of infection and they increase the likelihood of a milder case if you do get sick, Driskell. Driskell also pointed to when the state did shut down due to COVID-19 under the DeSantis administration. He seems to forget that he locked down the state in 2020, Ron DeSantis locked down Florida in 2020. He, like many other Republican and Democratic elected officials understood that we needed to do whatever we could to slow the spread and save lives. But now he runs from that history. This report first appeared on the website of the Florida Phoenix, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to coverage of state government and politics from Tallahassee. January 17, 2023 The ISU Gender Resource Center will host its 2023 Anti-Human Trafficking Symposium on January 24, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the Wood and Little Wood River Rooms of the Pond Student Union. Human trafficking spans the United States and occurs in every state, including Idaho. There is a network of people that target individuals and can reach victims through a variety of means. The industry is growing in profitability, making human trafficking appealing to many and increasing the number of young people falling victim to traffickers. The symposium will feature presentations from a variety of experts and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Pocatello Police Department, Family Service Alliance, and ISU to collaborate on strengthening the response to the crimes of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, and human trafficking on campus. A full agenda may be viewed at isu.edu/anti-human-trafficking. The Pocatello and Chubbuck communities are invited to join this important conversation about the very real and growing threat that human trafficking poses to human rights. This event is free and open to everyone, including service providers and community members. Parking will be free in Lot #1, next to the Pond Student Union. Register at https://forms.gle/31pVCCANwPyJ2pMZ7 to attend. GUEST OPINION: Digital trust is what gives businesses and users the confidence to engage in a connected world, knowing that their interactions will remain secure. Digital trust provides freedom to engage with the digital world without worrying about your data or information being compromised. DigiCerts State of Digital Trust Survey for 2022 shows customers are ready to change their loyalties if trust is broken. The challenge of data safety has been laid bare in 2022. Breaches at major Australian telecommunications and health insurance firms have demonstrated how vulnerable every business can be, raising big questions once again about the need for extreme vigilance in the fight to maintain digital trust. The DigiCert 2022 State of Digital Trust survey explores the latest thinking on how enterprises, employees and consumers around the world have progressed in their embrace of digital trust. The survey of hundreds of enterprises and consumers, selected for diversity of views and perspectives, shows how questions of digital trust now form part of key decisions around which businesses and consumers will choose to work with. Growing Data, Growing Threats The growth in data increases at an incredible rate. In the 70 years to 2021, the world amassed 97 Zettabytes of data. By 2025 it is expected we will almost double that, resulting in 20,000 Gigabytes of data for every person on Earth. Critically, it is how much of this data contains personally identifiable information (PII) that has become such a key question in the battle for digital trust. As recent breaches have shown, we need to trust some companies with deeply personal data around health and finances and in the event of a breach, there is no remedy for this loss of privacy. For the new hybrid era, every enterprise has an increased attack surface that makes it harder than ever to manage network security. There is no edge to protect anymore, making proactive protective action for every device, every cloud and every sensor an essential part of maintaining digital trust. The Australian Cyber Security Centre annual report declares the digital world is now a battleground, with 76,000 cybercrime reports received in the year to June 2022 a 13% increase. Average costs per cybercrime report were over $39,000 for small business, $88,000 for medium business, and over $62,000 for large business. Verdict: Loyalty and Trust Go Hand in Hand The DigiCert 2022 State of Digital Trust survey shows universal agreement on the importance of digital trust. 100% of enterprises say digital trust is important, with 90% saying it is extremely important. 99% of enterprises believe it is possible that customers would switch to competitors if they lost trust, with 47% feeling this outcome would be likely. Enterprise employees also 100% agree on the importance of digital trust, with 99% saying they would consider switching vendors if they lost trust in their products or services. While consumers were less universal, still more than two-thirds of consumer respondents (68%) feel digital trust is important. But almost half (47%) say they have stopped doing business with a company that lost their trust in the past. The wealthier the consumer, the more likely their feeling that digital trust is important 58% of above-average income consumers feel digital trust is extremely important. Looking ahead, 84% of consumers say they would consider switching their business if they lose digital trust. Analysis: What Sets Enterprise Leaders Apart In asking enterprises across the world where their digital trust priorities and investments were focused, we found their top goals and challenges aligned closely with these questions of customer loyalty. Companies were typically one to two years into their digital trust journey, with all agreeing customer loyalty was an important goal. The biggest challenges in achieving trust goals related to managing certificate lifecycles, achieving regulatory compliance, the massive scope of protection required, the complexity of security needs, and a lack of staff expertise in the right areas. At a practical level, only three technical initiatives see more than 50% of companies achieving full implementation: device identity and operations security (74%), Zero Trust policy (58%), and certificate lifecycle management (55%). When separating the top third of organisations from the middle and bottom third, some interesting trends emerge as to what sets their priorities apart. We found the top-tier of organisations were typically further along in their digital trust journey and had started much earlier, which in turn showed they took threats and safeguards more seriously than other enterprise organisations. Our analysis of responses found that top-tier organisations versus bottom-tier were: 5x as likely to believe losing customer trust will lead to lost customers 0x better at managing ecommerce website performance and availability 0x more likely to be engaged with implementing PKI 9x better at prevention of phishing or other email-based attacks 4x more likely to be using zero trust policies 3x more concerned about social engineering attacks 2x more concerned about spyware 1x more likely to be engaged with PKI automation Top-tier organisations also overwhelmingly say that the CIO should run digital trust, whereas the bottom tier believe it should sit within security operations. We feel this is an acknowledgement that leading organisations see that the CIOs visibility into the broader technology footprint of an organisation is important to success in digital trust strategy. DigiCert Advice For 2023 DigiCert, the leading global provider of digital trust, enables individuals and businesses to engage online with confidence. Reflecting on the results of this years State of Digital Trust survey, we see some key takeaways for those eager to emulate the success of leading organisations. Make digital trust a strategic imperative: A clear differentiator with top-tier enterprises was recognising the importance of digital trust in achieving business outcomes for brand, customer loyalty, revenue and margins. Establishing a Digital Trust Office can help drive this mission, as well as better clarity on the importance of digital trust to B2B and B2C customers. Enlist expert help: A lack of staff expertise does not have to be an impediment to success. Finding a partner that can deliver unified trust management for your organisation can give you the tools you need to move forward. Establish clear lines of digital trust communication: Customers care deeply about digital trust. Explaining not only your commitment to digital trust but also your progress on achieving it will grow their confidence and their brand loyalty. Today Windy with a mix of clouds and sun. High 77F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Tonight A clear sky. Low 52F. Winds W at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. Tomorrow Sunny. High 81F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Today A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High 78F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Tonight Clear skies. Low 52F. Winds W at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. Tomorrow Sunny. High 81F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Johnston Community College Welcomes New President Dr. Vern Lindquist Dr. Lindquist begins his tenure as JCCs fourth President. Dr. Vern Lindquist officially assumed his duties as President of Johnston Community College on January 12, 2023. A faculty/staff reception to welcome him was held the same day. Dr. Lindquist attended the Board of Trustees meeting that evening. I am thrilled to be here in North Carolina and on JCCs campus. The College is on a positive trajectory and I am excited to help move this institution along that path, Dr. Lindquist said. We had a great Spring enrollment period and have plans to expand both programs and locations. We are going to be very busy, he added. Dr. Lindquist comes to JCC from Lincoln Land Community College in Springfield, Illinois where he served as Vice President of Academics for five years. Lindquist has nearly 30 years of experience in higher education. The Board of Trustees would like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Lindquist. We expect great things and know he will make you proud, said Lyn Austin, Board of Trustees Chair. JCC will host a series of events to introduce Dr. Lindquist to various members of the community throughout the coming weeks. Countries politicizing COVID-19 response harm others without benefiting themselves 15:05, January 18, 2023 By Zhong Sheng ( People's Daily After China enters a new phase of COVID response, many countries welcome its optimization and expect visits by Chinese tourists. Thai Deputy Prime Minister and other senior officials greeted the first group of Chinese tourists with flowers and gift bags at the airport. Maldives' foreign ministry published a statement on its website, saying the country welcomes China's adjustment of exit and entry measures and looks forward to receiving Chinese tourists soon. Switzerland, New Zealand and some other countries made clear that they would not impose new restrictions on visiting Chinese tourists. China has always optimized its COVID-19 response in light of the evolving situation in a science-based and targeted manner. Its provisional measures on cross-border travel were formulated based on the decision to manage COVID-19 with measures against Class-B infectious diseases. The measures can better coordinate COVID-19 control and socioeconomic development, and make cross-border travel more convenient, safe, orderly and efficient. With the utmost sincerity and in a fact-based manner, China has carried out adequate communication with relevant countries, introducing in detail the current COVID-19 situation in China and that its optimization of the COVID-19 response is science-based and reasonable. However, a few countries, turning a blind eye to science, facts and even their COVID-19 situations at home, have arbitrarily imposed discriminative entry restrictions on travelers from China, which is completely politicizing COVID-19 prevention and control. Health experts from multiple international organizations and countries have pointed out that no new variant or dangerous mutation of the novel coronavirus has been detected in China, so tightening the entry policy towards travelers from China is neither science-based nor necessary. Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said UN member states should follow WHO guidelines and it is very important that all decisions regarding screening of passengers and so on be taken on scientific grounds and only on scientific grounds. Singaporean health minister noted that infections entering the country from China accounted for less than 5 percent of Singapore's total imported cases in the last 4 weeks of 2022, far lower than figures from some other countries and regions. There's no need for Singapore to tighten the entry policy towards travelers from China, the minister added. Countries imposing entry restrictions on China travelers should listen to these voices and adopt a fact-based manner, make their COVID-19 response scientific, avoid political manipulation and discriminative measures, and maintain normal cross-border exchanges and cooperation. China's COVID-19 control policies have to the largest extent protected people's lives and health, and minimized the pandemic's impacts on economic and social development. As the world is facing increased downward pressure on the global economy, China's optimization of the COVID-19 response has facilitated cross-border travel and boosted confidence in global growth. Heads of many international organizations, including the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, are optimistic about China's economic prospects, believing the country's optimization of the COVID-19 response will assist global recovery and development. It is believed by the international community that China's adjustment of exit and entry measures is a key point in the global tourism recovery process and will inject strong impetus into the comprehensive recovery of the tourism industry in relevant countries. Thai newspaper Bangkok Post said a total of 5 million Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand this year, which will forcefully drive the recovery of Thai tourism and economic development. A few countries' discriminative measures that undermine the normal flow of people will only hurt others without benefiting themselves. Respecting science and facts is a piece of valuable experience for the international community to unite and cooperate in the fight against COVID-19. China will keep adapting prevention and control protocols to the evolving situation and work with relevant parties to safeguard safe and orderly cross-border travel, so as to maintain the stability of global industrial and supply chains and to promote the healthy recovery of the world economy. Countries politicizing China's COVID-19 response should follow the science-based principle and the spirit of mutual respect, change their discriminative measures imposed on Chinese travelers as soon as possible, and create favorable conditions for normal personnel exchanges and cooperation. (Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People's Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.) (Web editor: Chang Sha, Liang Jun) Monticello, IL (61856) Today Plentiful sunshine. High around 80F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. Low 53F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. 01/18/2023 Birmingham's Sloss Furnaces at sunset in July 2022. Photo by Buffy Lockette. The latest documentary from JSU's Emmy-winning Longleaf Studios, "Building Birmingham: The Sloss Story," will premiere on Alabama Public Television on Jan. 19 at 8 p.m. The new film explores the story of Col. James Withers Sloss and his descendants, who have continued to shape life in the Magic City to the present day. The Sloss familys impact began over 150 years ago. Col. Sloss and his vision helped move the railroad to Birmingham, birthing the city. Generations later, the Sloss sisters have followed in the visionary footsteps of their ancestors and continue to inspire investment into Birminghams urban core. Cathy Sloss Jones, president and CEO of Sloss Real Estate, said, We are very honored for Alabama Public Television and Jacksonville State University to tell our story. Our company mission is simple and has remained constant: to lift up Birmingham, repurpose its best assets and draw individuals to the City Center. We strongly believe in Alabamas potential and are proud to continue the work of connecting and strengthening our communities. Sloss Real Estates continued impact and development efforts focus on linking neighborhoods along Birminghams central corridor to draw people downtown. Projects such as Sloss Docks, Pepper Place and Lakeview all downtown-adjacent areas along the Jones Valley Trail encourage traffic and pedestrian flow into downtown Birmingham. Having known the Sloss sisters and their parents for over 30 years, it was concerning that so many people have come to think of Sloss as a place, instead of a family, said Pete Conroy, director of strategic partnerships and special projects at JSU and a member of APTs board of directors. This documentary makes it clear; it is both. And, wow, what an influential family it continues to be! Executive Producer Seth Johnson, who serves as a distinguished professor of graphic design and assistant dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at JSU, remarked, Working on the Sloss family documentary was a rewarding experience that allowed us all an inside look at the significant impact this family has had on Birmingham and the surrounding area. The official trailer for the documentary is available on YouTube. After the public release on Jan. 19, the full documentary will be available at aptv.org/watch. Isn't it mind-blowing how K-dramas always give us the most unexpected yet memorable characters? In particular, villains who turn good and vice versa. Vincenzo Cassano and Kim Je Ha are some of the antagonists-turned-protagonists who made an impression on the audience. Without further ado, these are the 7 K-drama recommendations where villains end up realizing they were wrong and acknowledge it. 'Vincenzo' This dark-comedy series is one of the most-watched shows of Song Joong Ki in 2021 as he made an amazing transformation as a mafia consigliere named Vincenzo Cassano. He shows angst and cruelty to his enemies but remains soft to the Geumga Plaza residents. Babel Group's leader Jang Han Seok played by Ok Taecyeon also impressed many with his incredible performance. 'The K2' Ji Chang Wook plays Kim Je Ha, a bodyguard who is dedicated to his country, but gets betrayed by it. When seeking revenge, he becomes involved with a woman named Go An Na (Lim YoonA), who is the secret daughter of a high-ranking official. 'Flower of Evil' This follows the story of Baek Hee Sung (Lee Joon Gi), who hides his cruel past and changes his identity, while his detective wife, Cha Ji Won (Moon Chae Won) tracks down his previous cases. 'Taxi Driver' Kim Do Gi (Lee Je Hoon), whose mother was killed when he was young plans for revenge. In order for him to find the culprit behind the murder, he works as a taxi driver for a company that offers a 'revenge-call' service to its clients who have been wronged and helps them. 'The Devil Judge' Set in a dystopian version of South Korea, where people have hatred towards their leaders and live in chaos. Kang Yo Han (Ji Sung), is a chief judge who punishes the dishonest with no mercy, thus earning himself a reputation as a hero of the people. 'Mouse' This features the story of Jeong Ba Reum (Lee Seung Gi), a righteous police officer, whose life changes when he encounters a psychopathic serial killer. Due to the discovery, he and his partner Gu Moo Chi (Lee Hee Joon) join forces to unveil who the real psychopath is. 'Tale of the Nine-Tailed' Lee Yeon (Lee Dong Wook) has become more careful since his arrival, as he has a penchant for cleansing human spirits. He is fully aware that Ji Ah (Jo Bo Ah) is tracking him, but he does little to confuse her suspicion. However, his blood-thirsty step-brother, Lee Rang (Kim Bum)-appears, things get a bit more complicated. 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. Woo Do Hwan teases fans with his amazing transformation for Netflix's "Bloodhounds." After completing his military duty, the 30-year-old heartthrob is back on-screen with an interesting project. Woo Do Hwan's Instagram Features Still Cuts from Netflix's 'Bloodhounds' The actor took to social media to update fans with his upcoming K-drama. On Woo Do Hwan's Instagram, he shared a sneak peek of the Netflix series as he transformed into a promising boxer named Kim Gun Woo. In one of the teasers, he is with co-star Lee Sang Yi who plays Hong Woo Jin, Gun Woo's rival boxer. In the comment section, fans can't help but gush over Woo Do Hwan's visual and are looking forward to the K-drama's premiere. 'Bloodhounds' Cast and Release Date Helmed and written by Jason Kim of "Midnight Runner," and "Divine Fury," "Bloodhounds" is based on the webtoon of the same name that follows the story of two men who were entangled in huge debt. In pursuit of money, the duo was caught up in a complicated situation involving loan sharks. It is a noir action drama starring Woo Do Hwan, Lee Sang Yi, and Jung Da Eun, who replaced Kim Sae Ron as the lead star due to her DUI issue. Apart from the trio, veteran actors Park Sung Woong of "Snowdrop" and Heo Joon Ho of "escape from Mogadishu" will also be joining as lead stars. Set to premiere in the second quarter of this year exclusively on Netflix, viewers will get to see Woo Do Hwan's versatility as he took the role of Kim Gun Woo. Once a promising boxer who won the Rookie of the Year award, his world turned upside down after meeting President Choi, played by Heo Joon Ho, and becoming his bodyguard. As mentioned, Lee Sang Yi plays Gun Woo's rival who then becomes his partner after working with a private loan business. On the other hand, the antagonist of "Bloodhounds" will be played by Park Sung Woong as Myeong Gil. Described as a vicious man, he is a loan shark who is only driven by money. The upcoming series will also feature an intense conflict between Myeong Gil and President Choi. Interestingly, "Bloodhounds" will be Woo Do Hwan's comeback to the small screen after 2020 hit K-drama "The King: Eternal Monarch" with Lee Min Ho and Kim Go Eun. In addition, this is also his first on-screen project after he was officially discharged in January 2022. Apart from the Netflix series, Woo Do Hwan will also appear as the lead star in the soon-to-be-released historical romance drama "Joseon Lawyer" together with Bona and Cha Hak Yeon. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Korean Actors With Stunning Monolids: Park Seo Joon, Gong Yoo, More KDramastars owns this article Written by Geca Wills Protesters are seen outside the retirement home of Johannes Rivoire in Lyon, France on Monday Jan.16, 2023. A group of activists are calling on France to extradite the retired priest to Canada to face allegations that he sexually abused Inuit children in Nunavut more than three decades ago. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Amandine Sanvisens-Be Brave France **MANDATORY CREDIT** Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! In this episode, we speak with Elizabeth LaRusso, a psychiatrist who shares her experiences and insights on the importance of cultivating meaningful connections and holding space for others. She discusses the challenges of learning to hold space for oneself in the face of suffering and offers advice for fellow doctors on how to honor vulnerability, empathize with emotions, and support each other through shared acceptance. Join us as we explore the power of authentic connection in healing and growth. Elizabeth LaRusso is a psychiatrist. She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, Leaving The House of God. The Podcast by KevinMD is brought to you by the Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience. With so many demands on their time, physicians today report record levels of burnout. Burnout is caused by many factors, one of which is clinical documentation. Studies indicate physicians spend two hours documenting care for every hour spent with patients. At Nuance, we are committed to helping physicians do what you love care for patients and spend less time on clinical documentation. The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience, or DAX for short, is an AI-powered, ambient clinical intelligence solution that automatically captures patient encounters securely and accurately at the point of care. Physicians who use DAX have reported a 50 percent decrease in documentation time and a 70 percent reduction in feelings of burnout, and 83 percent of patients say their physician is more personable and conversational. Rediscover the joy of medicine with clinical documentation that writes itself, all within the EHR. VISIT SPONSOR https://nuance.com/daxinaction SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast RATE AND REVIEW https://www.kevinmd.com/rate FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/kevinphomd FOLLOW ON TIKTOK https://www.tiktok.com/@kevinphomd GET CME FOR THIS EPISODE https://earnc.me/nsl3c0 Powered by CMEfy. Every year, thousands of applicants in the United States register for the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). Many graduate medical education (GME) programs receive thousands of applications that are reviewed by recruitment teams with fewer than ten faculty members. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of applications for GME programs and an overwhelming number of interviews for ERAS applicants, even though only a few hundred applications may be selected for interviews. After the interviews, most or almost all interviewees are ranked in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). Interestingly, more than 90 percent of U.S. MD/DOs are matched through NRMP into GME programs, and less than 10 percent of U.S. MD/DOs may be inadvertently deemed ineligible (unmatched through NRMP) during the annual recruitment season for GME programs. This suggests that the job performed by medical school recruitment teams, which find almost 60 percent of Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) applicants ineligible for admission to medical school, may be more important in shaping the future physician workforce in the U.S. Time and resource constraints may also play a role in the natural selection process, as only a few hundred thousand out of the millions of the U.S. population apply to take the MCAT. Are student loan debts and societys expectations for a return on investment in medical education unconsciously holding back less than 10 percent of U.S. MD/DOs from being matched through the NRMP into GME programs? It may be interesting to quantify how many of the more than 90 percent of U.S. MD/DOs who are matched fail to graduate from GME programs, as not all GME graduates become or remain board certified under the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). These questions raise the relevance of board certification. Unlike medical students, who are required to pass the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) before graduating from many medical schools in the U.S., almost all GME program matriculants can begin practicing their specialty as board-eligible specialists for up to seven years after graduating from GME programs, while still awaiting board certification from ABMS. They may even choose to continue practicing their specialty after the seven-year period of board eligibility has lapsed, as they may still be reimbursed at the same rates as board-certified specialists by third-party payers. This leads to a few more questions: Are we unconsciously worried about finding funds to extend the tenures of GME program matriculants on remediation and probation? Are there any unconscious concerns about defending against litigation by dismissed GME program matriculants? Given that in-training exam (ITE) scores are strongly associated with subsequent success on the board certification exam, shouldnt GME programs only be accountable for the ITE performance of their matriculants, rather than the board certification success of their graduates? GME program graduates may take a long time to get their time-limited board certification, or may choose not to become board certified at all by letting their board eligibility lapse, as they can independently practice their specialty in a time of never-ending specialist shortages in the U.S. We believe that, just like the USMLE used by many medical schools, the in-training exam (ITE) should be used as a graduation tool by GME programs. This would allow GME programs to make objective, high-stakes decisions about delaying or voiding the graduation of their matriculants based on their performance on nationally standardized ITE and future nationally standardized in-training exams, such as the standardized oral exam (ITSOE) and the objective structured clinical exam (ITOSCE). As a result, GME programs would not have to err on the side of caution and graduate almost all of their matriculants to avoid litigation from anyone. Alternatively, the U.S. system could be inspired by other countries where specialists must become board certified before they are eligible to graduate from GME programs and practice their specialty independently. This is especially relevant given that research has shown that board certification can reduce medical errors and deaths in the U.S. In the meantime, the Swiss cheese model may already be ensuring the success of the health care system for patients in the U.S., as compared to most other countries, because the health care team approach in the U.S. often makes board certification irrelevant for U.S. physicians who are naturally selected through imperfect processes to lead health care teams. Deepak Gupta is an anesthesiologist. Sarwan Kumar is an internal medicine physician. Kilkenny LEADER Partnership (KLP) opens its community consultation on the design of the new LEADER rural development programme this Friday, January 20 at noon. The LEADER consultations will provide all the available information on the new LEADER programme to commence later this year and run to the end of 2027, and will invite contributions from communities, businesses and other stakeholders in the county on the overall design and focus of the programme that will be worth 6.1 million in supports to Kilkenny over the five-year period of the programme. KLPs Board of Directors has already submitted its formal Expression Interest to the Department of Rural and Community Development to continue as the local action group (LAG) for LEADER. Kilkenny Local Community Development Committee (LCDC) is among the stakeholders and interest groups that KLP will consult over the next few weeks. Following extensive consultations, KLP hope to submit their final Local Development Strategy for LEADER in March with a view to having the new programme operational in the spring. The formal opening of the consultations will be followed in the afternoon (1pm to 3 pm) by the first of a short series of workshops for community groups interested in optimising the Smart Village process to the benefit of their community. As the Smart Village concept is a key part of the new LEADER programme guidelines and is being supported by KLP in its draft proposals, the training workshop will be of benefit to those groups and small businesses seeking to avail of LEADER support. Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform Malcolm Noonan will be the guest of honour at the event. This initial Smart Village workshop for those who could not attend the launch, will be repeated on the morning of the following day, Saturday, January 21, from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm in Thomastown Concert Hall. Lunch will be included for registered attendees at both training events. Registration by Eventbrite link is required for either event. Kilkenny Smart Village workshop: Fri 20th-1 to 3 pm https://SmartVillagesSpringHillKilkenny.eventbrite.com. Thomastown Smart Village workshop: Sat 21st 10.30 am to 12.30 pm https://SmartVillagesThomastown.eventbrite.com. European Union politicians are set to vote on Wednesday on a candidate to replace a disgraced former parliament vice president. It comes after a key suspect in the cash-for-influence corruption scandal rocking the assembly made a plea bargain with prosecutors, raising the prospect that more names might surface. Former European Parliament vice president Eva Kaili was removed from her post after she was taken into custody early last month facing charges of corruption, money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation. Belgian prosecutors suspect that Kaili, former parliamentarian Pier Antonio Panzeri, Kailis partner and Panzeris friend Francesco Georgi, and Niccolo Figa-Talamanca, head of the charity group No Peace Without Justice, were paid by Qatar and Morocco to influence decision-making at the assembly. Both countries deny the allegations. The federal prosecutors office said on Tuesday that Panzeri has agreed to become an informant and reveal more information about the scandal in exchange for a lighter sentence. He has pledged to tell investigators the names of those involved and what financial arrangements were made with other countries. Several EU politicians and officials have said the corruption allegations are the most damning to have hit the parliament. The centre-left Socialist and Democrats, the second biggest political group in the assembly, has been the prime target, and its members are wary that things might get worse. The S&D group has nominated Marc Angel, a Luxembourg member of the EU Parliament, to replace Kaili. He has received the backing of the two other biggest groups and seems almost certain to be endorsed in a vote in Strasbourg, France, later on Wednesday. Panzeris lawyer avoided reporters as he left the main Brussels courthouse on Tuesday but later, in an interview with Belgian broadcast RTBF, said the 67-year-old Italian will probably now only receive a five-year suspended sentence, with one year to be served in detention. The lawyer, Laurent Kennes, said Panzeri is also likely to be fined 80,000 euros (70,700), and will have to give up the estimated 1 million euros (883,750) that prosecutors suspect he earned from his corrupt dealings. Mr Kennes said Panzeri wants to talk, to get things off his chest. He is vulnerable, hes locked up, hes depressed. Under those circumstances he wants to be able to see light at the end of the tunnel. The scandal came to public attention on December 9 after police launched more than 20 raids, mostly in Belgium but also in Italy. Hundreds of thousands of euros were found at a home and in a suitcase at a hotel in Brussels. Mobile phones and computer equipment and data were seized. Prosecutors also suspect Panzeris wife and daughter of taking part in the scheme and have issued arrest warrants to have them handed over by Italian authorities. A 15-year-old boy has been found guilty of murdering a shopper who was knifed to death after challenging him for messing around in a supermarkets toilets. Jurors convicted the youngster of the killing after hearing how 53-year-old Ian Kirwan was knifed in the heart by the youth then aged 14 acting as a part of a masked gang which terrorised members of the public in Redditch. The killer, from Birmingham, travelled with four other boys by train to the Worcestershire town on March 8, last year, where Mr Kirwan was subjected to a minute-long attack near the entrance of an Asda store. Jurors cleared three of those other youths two aged 14 and one aged 16 of murder and manslaughter but found them guilty of violent disorder. A fifth boy, aged 16, was acquitted of murder, manslaughter and violent disorder, having claimed he was not involved in the fatal confrontation and could not have predicted it. A ten-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, was told Mr Kirwan, an artificial intelligence engineer who worked at Jaguar Land Rovers Coventry headquarters, was an unfortunate member of the public in the wrong place at the wrong time. All those convicted will be sentenced, at the same court, on February 15. Its very much sparkle season at Kilkennys four-star Newpark Hotel, where a winter wedding showcase has just taken place. The free entry event was an opportunity to glean everything about wedding planning, with expert panels on hand to share style and inspiration for anyone getting hitched. Renowned as one of Irelands top wedding venues Newpark showcased their stellar wedding offering at the event, organised by the hotels passionate team of wedding experts and hosted by fashion and beauty influencer Bonnie Ryan. It featured panel discussions, hair and makeup tips and food and wine tastings. PLANNED The special day was thoughtfully planned for early in the New Year to facilitate couples who plan to tie the knot in 2023 or 2024, and for all those love-struck pairs who got engaged over Christmas and the New Year who are understandably excited to start planning and looking at prospective venues. Newpark weddings are tailored to suit your vision for your day, be it small and intimate or grand and illustrious with adaptable reception spaces that can seamlessly cater to your guestlist. Newpark Hotel has been helping couples celebrate their nuptials since 1966 and are proud to welcome back families time and time again. The I Do Crew at Newpark are happy to tailor wedding packages to meet guests requirements, whether they wish to hold a civil, humanist, or spiritual celebration on the grounds of the hotel or host a post-wedding reception. The Newpark Hotel is an Irish and family-owned establishment, part of the Flynn Hotel Collection and their expert team headed up by General Manager Paul Beehan and Weddings Manager Sinead Fortune are available to talk to anyone interested in finding out more. To make an enquiry contact the Newpark Wedding team on 056-7760593 or email weddings@newparkhotel.com. Shenandoah, IA (51601) Today A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High near 85F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Clear skies. Gusty winds during the evening. Low 57F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Feature: Chinese shoemaker in Bangladesh successfully rides out pandemic tide Xinhua) 15:40, January 18, 2023 DHAKA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an economic shock to industries and businesses worldwide and the Bangladeshi shoe-making industry was also dealt a serious blow. Panda Shoes Industry Ltd. was no exception. Thousands of households in the Gazipur district on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have become better off after the Chinese-invested shoe-making factory opened there in 2012. The factory overcame many difficulties, including those related to the pandemic and its local employees. Panda Shoes Industry Ltd. has not only brought investment and development opportunities to the Gazipur district, but also provided jobs at local Mazukhan villagers' doorsteps. Moreover, its shoe production has paid special focus on protecting the environment. Cai Chunlei, managing director of Panda Shoes Industry Ltd., told Xinhua recently that the pandemic in the past three years has resulted in the stagnation of many enterprises, which has brought great inconvenience to their business in Bangladesh. Especially, he said, factors such as the poor flow of people and goods caused by the pandemic and the difficulties of entry and departure from China have caused unusual difficulties in doing business abroad. As the pandemic gradually subsides, he said, "I hope that we can strive to open this people-and-trade flow as soon as possible, and eliminate inconveniences in all aspects." Cai said China has addressed recovering from the pandemic step by step and it's now more convenient for overseas Chinese to enter and depart the country, so as to recover losses incurred over the past two or more years soon. "Our Panda Shoe Industry has been developing in Bangladesh for more than 10 years, from less than 100 people at the beginning, to more than 2,000 local employees now," said Cai, hoping the factory will promote the development of the whole village of Mazukhan as well. "Our goal is also to be the best local enterprise in Bangladesh. We have been working hard to have more local workers, use locally appropriate management models and local materials," he said, noting that the company has given special attention to the living environment for employees. "We also improve the quality of our products while improving ourselves, try to control the cost of our products, and strive to provide the people of Bangladesh with high-quality and affordable Panda shoes going into the future," he added. Mosammat Mauri Akhter is a factory worker. She said there has been a lot of improvement in their lives since the Panda Shoes factory was established. Because of this, she said poverty has been reduced greatly. "Thanks to this Chinese company, our area has improved greatly. Roads and shops have been built and we can pay our house rent, thus previously poor families are becoming more prosperous," Akhter said. Akhter is satisfied with her job and life now. "Unemployment is decreasing, we are being given medical benefits, we are being given holidays on two Eids in a year, bonuses are being given during the two Eid festivals and holiday money is being given annually," she said. Saiful Islam Khadem is a senior executive of the factory. He said they had achieved their desired goal of production when the whole world came to a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meantime, he said their enterprise has been building an effluent treatment plant (ETP) as a 100 percent ETP plant is needed to dispose of all factories' waste, he said. "About 70 percent of our ETP plant project has been completed. We hope that the environment of our factory, and the surrounding environment will be beautiful and orderly." Suman Kumar Chakraborty is the manager of Panda Shoes. During the pandemic, he said they had done everything successfully to control the disease, starting from the vaccination of all workers. "Having overcome this situation, we at Panda Shoes Industry Ltd. are in a very good position in terms of production," he said. Susan, a Chinese national who came to Bangladesh four years ago, also works for the Panda Shoes Industry Ltd.. "I love Bangladesh, I Iove Bangladeshi people and I love the environment here very much," she said. "Panda Shoes believes in saving the environment," said the Chinese factory staff member. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) American attorney found dead in Mexico was 'the victim of a brutal crime,' his family claims Unification Minister Kwon Young-se has met with chiefs of international organizations in Switzerland to discuss North Korea's humanitarian situations, his office said Wednesday. Kwon held talks with Catherine Russell, executive director of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), and David Beasley, head of the World Food Program (WFP) on Tuesday (Swiss time) on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, according to the unification ministry. Kwon is currently on a visit to Switzerland, accompanying President Yoon Suk Yeol on his eight-day overseas trip, which also included a stop in the United Arab Emirates. Kwon and the chiefs of the international agencies agreed on the need to swiftly resume humanitarian projects in the North, according to the ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs. "In particular, the officials shared the understanding that it is very urgent and important to provide medical and nutrition assistance to North Korean infants on humanitarian grounds," the ministry said. International organizations and non-government agencies have withdrawn their staff members from North Korea in recent years, as the North tightened border controls over the COVID-19 pandemic. The ministry added it will closely cooperate with international organizations to help North Koreans improve their quality of life through humanitarian assistance. (Yonhap) President Yoon Suk Yeol speaks during his visit to the Akh Unit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sunday (local time). Yonhap Seoul seeks to defuse controversy By Kang Seung-woo President Yoon Suk Yeol's description of Iran as the "enemy" of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has provoked protest from Tehran as it calls Yoon's remark undiplomatic and asks for Seoul's explanation. The government is stepping up to prevent the issue from creating diplomatic problems with Iran. Yoon made the remarks during his visit to the Akh Unit, which trains the UAE's special operations forces, Sunday (local time), as part of his efforts to encourage its soldiers. "You are here because the UAE is our brother nation," Yoon told the troops. "And (defending) our brother nation's security is as important as that of South Korea's. The UAE's enemy the most threatening nation is Iran and our enemy is North Korea We are in a very similar position to the UAE." He was on a four-day state visit to the Middle Eastern country when he made the comment. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the ministry is looking into and following up on the comments of the Korean president on relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the UAE, which are neighboring countries with established diplomatic relations. The spokesman also said Yoon's remarks show he is totally unaware of the historical and friendly relations between Iran and the Persian Gulf littoral states, including the UAE, as well as positive developments quickly taking place in this regard. Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Lee Chang-yang, left, talks to Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State Assets Jacek Sasin, right, in a meeting room at Polish House in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday (local time). Yonhap By Lee Kyung-min Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Lee Chang-yang held a series of bilateral meetings with his Polish and Czech counterparts at the World Economic Forum, otherwise known as the Davos Forum, held in Switzerland from Monday through Friday (local time), the ministry said Wednesday. At the top of the agenda items were ways to solidify and advance cooperation in the nuclear energy sector, forming grounds for a stronger partnership in green and sustainable energy businesses. Lee met with Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State Assets Jacek Sasin to fortify stronger nuclear energy sector cooperation. The meeting was a follow-up to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between the energy authorities and private firm executives of the two countries last October in Seoul to facilitate the construction of a nuclear power plant in Patnow, central Poland. Sheryl Prentice is a reporter for KPC Media Group, based at the News Sun. Full disclosure: she has been a member of the Auburn Arts Commission since 1998. Share your news tips and story ideas with her at sprentice@kpcmedia.com or call 347-0400, extension 1134. BIGBANG Taeyang is reportedly chosen as Givenchy's brand new global ambassador! Read for further details. BIGBANG Taeyang Chosen As Givenchy's New Global Ambassador, Becomes First Korean Male Artist To Achieve Feat On January 17, Givenchy announced that Taeyang of BIGBANG will be their new global ambassador. Moreover, this will mark Taeyang as the first South Korean male artist for the role. Givenchy is pleased to announce the appointment of @Realtaeyang as 2023 global ambassador. pic.twitter.com/0VjsHhzro4 Givenchy (@givenchy) January 17, 2023 Givenchy's creative director Matthew Williams commended Taeyang, praising his artistry. He added how the idol's way of expression is perfectly fitting with Givenchy's current aesthetic. "Taeyang is an inspiring artist - a music pioneer with an authentic, barrier-breaking way of expressing his own personal style, which fits perfectly with today's Givenchy aesthetic." Taeyang also shared his enthusiasm about working with Givenchy. He expressed gratitude directly to Givenchy, as the opportunity is a meaningful one for him. The idol also added how Givenchy's brand has become an inspiration for him in his career. Furthermore, Taeyang voiced out his excitement with working with Matthew Williams. He spoke well of the director, mentioning Matthew's steadfast leadership in the fashion industry and culture. "I am grateful to be able to start this new chapter of my life with Givenchy. It holds a special meaning to me, as Givenchy is a brand that has inspired me in many ways over the years." "Matthew has also been a leader in both fashion and culture for many years. I look forward to the exciting ways to collaborate with Givenchy through this partnership." Taeyang made his professional debut in 2006 with the boy group BIGBANG, one of K-pop's legendary acts. He has subsequently gone on to release several solo albums, capturing fans' hearts worldwide. The selection of Taeyang is the third major declaration from a fashion brand this week, following the appointment of BTS' Suga by Valentino, and Jimin's signing as a global ambassador on Dior. BIGBANG Taeyang Radiates 'Vibe' Featuring BTS Jimin On January 13, Taeyang collaborated with BTS Jimin on the smash hit "Vibe." The MV for "Vibe" has currently garnered a total of 47,775,437 views on YouTube. The single established a great chart performance in Korea, and quickly rose to the top of iTunes charts in 60 countries. ARMYs and VIPs flocked on the post, delighted to see two of the most prominent K-pop stars in one video. They expressed their excitement over the song, since they started 2023 with a bop. "We can all feel the VIBE. New Year is starting out great with Taeyang and Jimin!" "Oh my god! It wasn't really what I imagined. This was even better than I expected! Taeyang, Jimin, thank you so much for this." "I knew that I would never be ready for the day when Taeyang makes a comeback." "Let's support this collaboration for Jimin! He deserves to break records and goals!" See the full music video for "Vibe" here! Congratulations to Taeyang for being Givenchy's new global ambassador! Read KpopStarz for more K-pop news. KpopStarz owns this article Written by Israel Monte Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Raj Kumar Singh, Minister of Power; and Minister of New and Renewable Energy (Image: WEF) Davos-Klosters [Switzerland], January 18 (ANI): Developed countries should walk the talk on transforming food systems by helping smallholder farmers in developing countries with cheaper access to irrigation, fertilizers and markets, said union Minister for New and Renewable Energy, in a session on "Interplay of Food, Energy and Water" at the ongoing World Economic Forum meeting. India is providing millions of solar water pumps to farmers, and will soon produce enough green ammonia to stop imports of ammonia-based fertilizers, which form a big chunk of its import bills, Singh said on Tuesday, as per a WEF release. Also Read | Andhra 300/5 in 101.3 Overs #SAUvAP #RanjiTrophy Scorecard:. Further, asked why India is continuing to import cheap Russian gas despite international opprobrium, Singh said India imports less gas from Russia in a month than Europe does in a day, adding that "India had a conflict with its northern neighbour; did the West do anything about it? Stop importing from it?" The five-day World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 convenes the world's foremost leaders under the theme, 'Cooperation in a Fragmented World'. It calls on world leaders to address immediate economic, energy and food crises while laying the groundwork for a more sustainable, resilient world. Also Read | When Is Vasant Panchami or Saraswati Puja 2023? Know Date, Shubh Muhurat and Tithi, Significance, Puja Rituals and Celebrations Related to Basant Panchami. What is India's climate action plan and what did it announce at COP? At the COP26 summit in Glasgow in late 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to an ambitious five-part "Panchamrit" pledge, including reaching 500 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity, to generate half of all energy requirements from renewables, to reduce emissions by 1 billion tons by 2030. India also aims to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 45 per cent. Finally, India commits to net-zero emissions by 2070. Walking the talk, India had gone ahead and banned the use of several single-use plastics from July 1, 2022. The adverse impacts of littered single-use plastic items plastic on both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, including in marine environments are globally recognized. Addressing pollution due to single-use plastic items has become an important environmental challenge confronting all countries. Besides, India has time and again raised matters related to climate finance for the developing world where per capita emissions are comparatively quite low against the developed world in order to address carbon mitigation. Earlier this month, Union Cabinet approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission, which aims to make India a global hub for the production, utilization, and export of such technologies. The initial financial outlay for the mission is pegged at Rs 19,744 crore, which includes research and development activities. Under this mission, the government aims to raise annual green hydrogen production to 5 million tonnes.The green hydrogen mission will gradually lead to the decarbonization of industrial, transport, and energy sectors; a reduction in dependence on imported fossil fuels, among others. India meets a sizable portion of its energy needs through imports, and this green hydrogen mission is seen as an avenue to reduce the dependence on imported fuel. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Ghatota (Himachal Pradesh) [India], January 18 (ANI): The Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Congress leader and MP Rahul Gandhi which entered Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday resumed from Gatota village in the Indora Assembly constituency of Kangra district on the Mukerian-Pathankot national highway. The foot marchers entered the hill state from Milwan village in the Indora area of Kangra district around 6.30 am with the flag handover ceremony. Also Read | As Far as I Know,its Being Built in Chhattisgarhs Area. With This People on Latest Tweet by ANI. Braving the biting cold, several people, including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu joined Rahul Gandhi in the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The Yatra will take a break near Kshatriya College of Education, Nadaun, on Kathgarh Road at 11 am before resuming at 3 pm. Also Read | Fog in Delhi: Several Flights, Trains Delayed in National Capital Due to Low Visibility. The yatra would resume from Nadaun at 3 pm. At 5.30 pm, it would have a halt in Malot village of Indora where Rahul Gandhi would address corner meetings. The Himachal leg of the foot march will conclude on the same day with a public meeting at Malot on the border of Punjab's Pathankot. While addressing the gathering after the flag handover ceremony, Rahul Gandhi said that he started the yatra because the ruling government was not letting the opposition raise issues in Parliament. He further said that the judiciary in the country is under the pressure of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party. "Before the yatra, we tried to raise issues in Parliament. But they don't let us raise issues there. We couldn't do it through other institutions, be it the judiciary or press, as they all were under pressure by BJP-RSS. So, we started this yatra. They (BJP-RSS) are spreading hatred," Gandhi said. Notably, the Bharat Jodo Yatra will enter Jammu & Kashmir on January 19. J-K Congress In-charge of Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rajni Patil on Tuesday said that NC leaders Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, along with Sanjay Raut, MY Tarigami, and Mehbooba Mufti will join the yatra at different locations. (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], January 18 (ANI): Retired Director General of the Border Security Force (BSF) Pankaj Kumar Singh has been appointed as the Deputy National Security Adviser in National Security Council Secretariat for a period of two years. As per a National Security Council of Secretariat order issued on January 15, Singh a 1988-batch Indian Police Service officer of the Rajasthan cadre has been appointed on a re-employment contract, for a period of two years with effect from the date of assumption of charge of the post, or until further orders, whichever is earlier. Also Read | Deen Dayal Upadhyaya University in Gorakhpur Gets A++ Ranking by NAAC. Singh retired as the BSF chief on December 31, 2022. The government decision followed the approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet as conveyed through communication by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoP&T). Also Read | Mumbai Shocker: Woman Befriends Man, Threatens to Show Their Private Video to His Wife and Extorts Rs 33 Lakh From Him. "In pursuance of approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet as conveyed vide DoP&T communication dated January 14, 2023, Pankaj Kumar Singh, IPS (Retd.) (RJ:1988) is appointed in National Security Council Secretariat as Deputy National Security Adviser (DNSA), on re-employment on contract basis, for a period of two years with effect from the date of assumption of charge of the post, or until further orders, whichever is earlier," the order mentions. When Singh took charge of the BDF on August 31, 2021, he had created a history of a son and a father holding the top post of a paramilitary force during their services. His father and retired IPS officer of the 1959 batch, Prakash Singh, had also headed the BSF from June 1993 to January 1994. Singh had earlier served with the Union government as Inspector General of the CRPF in Chhattisgarh and IG (Operations) at CRPF headquarters in Delhi. Before becoming BSF DG, he also served in the BSF. When he became DG of the BSF, he had to negotiate the contentious amendment to BSF jurisdiction which was increased to 50km from the border as many states opposed it. He was also instrumental in pushing women soldiers of the BSF into the acrobatic show of motorcycle riding in the Republic Day parade. A countrywide tour by women motorcycle riders of the BSF followed this. His idea to celebrate the Raising Day of the BSF in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, in 2021, appealed to the government so much that it has now directed all paramilitary forces and even the Army to celebrate their foundation and raising days out of Delhi. Holding LLB and MPhil degrees, besides MBA from the IIM, Ahmedabad, Singh has served in the Rajasthan Police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and is considered a crusader for police reforms in the country. (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, Jan 18 (PTI) Ghulam Nabi Azad's DAP on Wednesday accused Congress of making false claims that hundreds of its leaders have rejoined the national party, saying it faces "acute leadership crisis" in Jammu and Kashmir. Only few people have rejoined Congress after quitting DAP and they have "no existence" on the ground, the DAP said in a statement. Also Read | PM Narendra Modi To Inaugurate, Lay Foundation of Development Projects in Karnataka, Maharashtra Tomorrow. The statement came a day after two former DAP leaders including former MLC Nizamuddin Khatana along with 60 others joined Congress here. Earlier this month, three prominent leaders including former deputy chief minister Tara Chand and former minister Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed had returned to the Congress fold . "Congress is making false propaganda that hundreds of leaders from DAP have re-joined it. The propaganda is unleashed due to the frustration in the Congress party which faces acute leadership crises not only at national level but in Jammu and Kashmir also," DAP general secretary R S Chib said here. Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Shocker: BJP District General Secretary Ashish Shukla Booked for 'Abducting' Samajwadi Party Leader's Daughter. J&K Pradesh Congress Committee president Vikar Rasool Wani on Tuesday said "with today's joining of 60 activists, mostly basic and founding members of DAP, about 70 to 80 per cent of the workers who had switched to the newly floated party under some influence have returned to the Congress fold". The DAP member said the only leader who had a constituency, Manohar Lal Sharma, rejoined the Azad-led party, the other few who went back to Congress have no constituency. "These so-called leaders cannot even fight the DDC (District Development Council)elections since they have no existence on ground...DAP will not accept any political leader who is unacceptable to people and is not connected at the grassroots level," Chib said. He said DAP is building a team of leaders with mass appeal. "We have successfully cultivated the crop and it has started bearing fruits and that is why Congress is feeling frustrated, the DAP leader 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 (Maharashtra) [India], January 18 (ANI): The Bombay High Court on Tuesday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a culpable homicide charge against gynaecologist Dr Anahita Pandole in industrialist Cyrus Mistry's death case. Anahita Pandole has been accused in the death of Cyrus Mistry as she was driving the latter's car when the accident took place near Mumbai on September 4, 2022. Also Read | Joshimath Land Subsidence: Uttarakhand Government To Allow Board Students To Pick Exam Centre of Choice. Balasaheb Patil, Superintendent of Police, Palghar on January 6 said that police had submitted 152-page evidence in the Cyrus Mistry death case. The Palghar Police in Maharashtra had registered a case against Dr Pandole for negligence and rash driving on the day of the accident. Also Read | Mercedes Catches Fire on Delhi-Meerut Expressway in Ghaziabad, Passengers Safe (Watch Photos and Video). According to Palghar Police, Mistry was travelling from Ahmedabad to Mumbai when his car hit the divider. There were four people in the car. Two died on the spot, including Mistry, while the other two were shifted to hospital. Apart from Mistry, another deceased was identified as Jahangir Dinsha Pandole. The car in which Cyrus Mistry was travelling lost control due to overspeeding and rammed into the divider said Palghar Police then. Mistry, who was the sixth chairman of Tata Sons, was ousted from the position in October 2016. He had taken over as the chairman in December 2012 after Ratan Tata announced his retirement. N Chandrasekaran later took over as Executive Chairman of Tata Sons. (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, Jan 18 (PTI) Tech company Esri India on Wednesday launched Policy Maps, an initiative that presents openly available data across a range of sectors in the form of interactive maps to facilitate data-driven decision-making in the country. Unveiling Policy Maps here, Esri India Managing Director Agendra Kumar said this unique feature will help policy-makers analyse progress of government initiatives from national to the district level. Also Read | US: Woman Stabs Boyfriend After He Peed in Bed While Sleeping Following Night of Drinking in Louisiana. The feature has been designed to provide meaningful insights for various government functions with a special focus on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Kumar told reporters here. "These maps, which have a distinct focus on SDGs, can help in measuring progress as well as identifying relationships between the SDGs. By bridging the gap between data and action, the Policy Maps have the potential to help administrators take smarter decisions for sustainable development," he said. Also Read | Tejasvi Surya Himself Reported, Apologised for Accidentally Opening Emergency Exit of IndiGo Plane: Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. Established in 1996, Esri India is an end-to-end Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions provider with more than 6,000 customers for applications in land management, utilities, disaster management, telecommunications, urban development, smart cities. Kumar said Esri India's Indo ArcGIS includes more than 630 data layers about road networks, especially in rural areas, railway stations, railway tracks that can help movement of goods through railways. "We have also put together accurate information about the boundaries at different levels by working with various government organizations," he said. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) New Delhi, Jan 18 (PTI) Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra kicked off a three-day visit to Bhutan on Wednesday with the focus expected to be on boosting cooperation in hydel-power sector, defence ties and reviewing the situation in the strategically-sensitive Doklam tri-junction. Kwatra will hold bilateral consultations with Bhutanese Foreign Secretary Aum Pema Choden and co-chair the fourth 'India-Bhutan Development Cooperation Talks', the Indian embassy in Thimphu said. Also Read | Hit-and-Run Case: IIT-Delhi Student Killed, Another Injured After Being Hit by Car. It said Kwatra will also call on the Bhutanese leadership. "Welcomed Foreign Secretary @AmbVMKwatra on his arrival at Paro, for an official visit to Bhutan from 18-20 January. He will hold bilateral consultations with Foreign Secretary of Bhutan Aum Pema Choden and co-chair the 4th India-Bhutan Development Cooperation Talks," the embassy tweeted. Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Education Board Announces Change in Pattern for Class 10 Examination in 2023, Introduces OMR Sheet. It said the visit is "in keeping with the tradition of regular high-level exchanges between India and Bhutan and will provide an opportunity to the two sides to discuss the entire gamut of bilateral ties". In a statement, the Bhutanese foreign ministry said Kwatra will call on the prime minister and the foreign minister, besides holding talks with Choden. "During the visit, Foreign Secretary Kwatra will call on the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and also meet his counterpart Foreign Secretary Pema Choden to discuss issues of mutual interest," it said. Kwatra's trip to Bhutan came two-and-a-half months after Royal Bhutan Army's Chief Operations Officer Lt Gen Batoo Tshering visited India. Tshering's visit was focused on various key dimensions of India-Bhutan defence cooperation. It is learnt that the situation in the Doklam tri-junction is expected to figure in the talks between Kwatra and his Bhutanese counterpart. The Doklam plateau is considered an important area for India's strategic interest. The Indian and Chinese armies were locked in a 73-day stand-off at the Doklam tri-junction in 2017 after China tried to extend a road in an area that Bhutan claimed belonged to it. India had strongly opposed the construction as it would have impacted its overall security interests. The India-China face-off was resolved following several rounds of talks. In October 2021, Bhutan and China signed an agreement on a "three-step roadmap" to expedite negotiations to resolve their festering boundary dispute. Bhutan shares an over 400-km-long border with China and the two countries have held over 24 rounds of boundary talks in a bid to resolve the dispute. China has been ramping up infrastructure development in the region. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Hyderabad, January 18: The ruling Bharat Rashtra Samiti's first public meeting in Telangana would be held on Wednesday in Khammam town and a host of leaders, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are set to take part in it. Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI General Secretary D Raja and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav would attend the BRS meet. The meeting assumes political significance as it is the first public meeting after the TRS decided to go national by renaming itself as BRS and also because leaders of different opposition parties -- BRS, Aam Admi Party (AAP), Samajwadi Party and the Left -- would be seen together. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Left Leaders to Attend BRS Public Meeting in Telangana. BRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and the visiting leaders would go to the Lord Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple at Yadadri near Hyderabad which has been renovated on a grand scale by the Rao government, before proceeding to Khammam. At Khammam, about 200 km from Hyderabad, they would attend the launch of the second phase of 'Kanti Velugu', the Telangana government's eye screening programme. Speaking after hoisting the pink colour flag of BRS after the Election Commission approved the name change of TRS as BRS in December, 2022, Rao, also known as KCR, exuded confidence that the "pink flag would fly high on the Red Fort one day." Addressing his party leaders then, he gave the slogan of 'Ab ki baar kisan sarkar' (farmers' government this time) and said new economic, environment, water, electricity and women empowerment policies are needed in the country. (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, Jan 18 (PTI) A 26-year-old man died after allegedly jumping in front of a train at the Mandi House metro station here on Wednesday, police said. The deceased has been identified as Ravi, a resident of Poornia in Bihar, they said, adding that no suicide note has been recovered from him. Also Read | President Murmu Has Delegated Two Fresh Powers to Delhi LG, VK Saxena Under the Industrial Latest Tweet by ANI. A senior police officer said a call was received at around 2:30 pm stating that a man had jumped in front of train at Mandi House metro station. The injured man was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead, he said. Also Read | Republic Day 2023 Parade Tickets: Know Where And How to Book Ticket For R-Day Event at Kartavya Path in Delhi. (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], January 18 (ANI): Union Home Minister Amit Shah took a sharp dig at the previous governments at the Centre and said that, unlike the predecessors whose every step was ruled by vote bank politics, the policy-making principles of the Centre under Narendra Modi is not dictated by the need "to please people" rather their betterment is the BJP government's only aim. The Home Minister noted that some decisions of the Central government might appear to be "tough" but were for "people's good". Also Read | I Thank the Government of Afghanistan and the Government of India for Facilitating the Latest Tweet by ANI. "There has been a big change in this country after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. Earlier, policies were made with a view at the vote banks. The Narendra Modi government has never made policies to please the people, but for the good of the people," Shah said addressing a function. Citing the instances of some of the moves by the government including Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Direct Benefit Transfer, the Home Minister said that opposition to these decisions was obvious and understood. Also Read | Amid Boycott Pathaan Controversy, PM Narendra Modi Asks BJP Workers to Refrain From Making 'Unnecessary' Comments About Films. "When we bring GST, our opposition is natural. When we brought DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer), there was big opposition. It was obvious as the middlemen would not like it. Similarly, all the decisions which have been taken, they might be tough, but were for the good of the people," he said. "I'm saying this because if you have to understand the policy, the basic principles will also have to be understood while making policies. We have never thought about vote bank while making policies but solutions to the problem," Shah added. The Home Minister further said that the Modi government has changed the method of governance from 'Rule-Based Learning' to 'Role-Based Learning'. Shah took note of the previous administrations and said that earlier policies were not made keeping solutions to the basic problems at the centre stage and said that the Modi government has changed the scale and size of policies. "The Modi government has never seen the problems in pieces. Earlier, policies were not made keeping in view complete solutions to the basic problems. The Modi government has changed the scale and size of the policies," he said. "As far as the public facilities are concerned, our administration works in the hierarchy. Every level has different challenges. Officers will also have to look at the suggestions received from different levels from their point of view as well as from a bird's eye view, after that they will have to make mantras of good governance in their area," Shah added. Referring to the media, the Home Minister said that good things of any government should be accepted irrespective of personal ideology. "Good things should be accepted irrespective of any government. Be it the government of any ideology, if a journalist does not accept the results with an open mind, then he is not a journalist but an activist. An activist cannot be a journalist and a journalist cannot be an activist. Both are different jobs. Both are good at their respective places. But if both start doing each other's jobs, there would be a problem. This is seen a lot these days," he said. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) By Aashique Hussain New Delhi [India], January 18 (ANI): BJP's Gujarat president CR Paatil gave a PowerPoint presentation on how the 'Modi magic' worked in the Gujarat Assembly elections at the party's two-day National Executive meeting, which concluded in te national capital on Tuesday. Also Read | Nagaland | Were Hopeful That People Will Respond Positively as NPF is One of the Oldest Latest Tweet by ANI. A top party source said, "Our Gujarat state president gave a detailed presentation on how the 'Modi magic' worked wonders and took us to a landslide win in the Gujarat Assembly elections last year. It could serve as a template for us in the other poll-bound states." "During the presentation, CR Paatil showed how the 35 rallies and roadshows of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the key to us winning 156 seats, including the 65 constituencies that the BJP lost in 2017. He also showed us how India's biggest roadshow, spanning 50 kms, drew a massive public response and helped us win the polls by a landslide margin," the source said. Also Read | Nitish Kumar Hits Out at PM Narendra Modi, Voices Displeasure Over Bihar 'Not Getting Special Status'. "He told National Executive members that the Gujarat elections were fought on the agenda of development. Infrastructure development of the state also contributed significantly to our victory," the source added. Among the other factors that propelled the BJP to its seventh straight mandate in PM Modi's native state were extensive campaigning by the BJP's top national leaders, booth strengthening and expansion of the party's cadre network, constant interaction, training and monitoring of cadre, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel's proactive and decisive governance, comprehensive 360-degree campaigns to take PM Modi's message of development to every voter of Gujarat, and targeted cohort campaigns. Despite losing the Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls in a close finish on December 8 last year, BJP's biggest-ever mandate in Gujarat has prompted the party's top bosses to already shift focus to the nine states that will go to polls this year. Also the native state of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP broke all previous electoral records in the state. The Congress finished a distant second with 17 seats while the AAP, the new entrant in Gujarat, won five seats, and the Samajwadi Party won a lone seat. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Bhubaneswar, Jan 18 (PTI) Two minor girls were allegedly raped by two persons near an overbridge of a desolate railway station here, police said on Wednesday. The incident took place on Monday night when the girls, in the age group of 12-14 years, were walking near the Patia railway station, they said. Also Read | Ahmedabad Woman Alleges NRI Husband Forced Her Into Unnatural Sex, Abandoned Her Over Refusal; FIR Lodged. The accused forcibly took them near the overbridge of the railway station and raped the minors after tying their hands and legs, a senior police officer said, quoting the FIR lodged by one of the girls. The incident came to the fore when the girls reached home on Tuesday morning and informed their family members. Police have arrested a 23-year-old man in connection with the crime, he said. Also Read | Earthquake in Karnataka: Quake of Magnitude 3.4 On Richter Scale Hits Kalaburagi. Railway SP Kumar Acharya said search is underway to nab the other accused. (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], January 18 (ANI): A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been moved in Delhi High Court praying for calling for the records of funds sanctioned in January 2019 to the Delhi government by the Central government for the sterilization of monkeys and the manner in which such fund has been utilized. The plea stated that the New Delhi region has seen an alarming infestation of the simian population and a consecutive increase in the cases of monkey bites. Also Read | Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul Gandhi May Curtail Distance on Foot in Jammu and Kashmir, Says Jairam Ramesh. The plea also seeks directions to Delhi Government and NDMC to set up a committee that may, apart from senior bureaucrats and wildlife experts, also comprise of members of the Bar who have worked extensively for animal rights, to ensure the implementation of directions which have earlier been passed by the High Court to curb the monkey menace in the national capital and particularly the New Delhi region. The plea moved by practising advocate Shashwat Bhardwaj alleged that the serious issues regarding the menace of monkeys have been completely mismanaged by the authorities and the authorities kept only dilly-dallying instead of implementing reproductive control techniques within time. Also Read | Joshimath Land Subsidence: Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami Gives Detailed Information of Situation to Amit Shah, Says 'Char Dham Yatra' To Begin Soon. The Delhi High Court earlier had passed a Judgement and issued certain directions while dealing with the issue of monkey menace in Delhi, these directions have shockingly, still not been effectively implemented, stated plea. Monkeys are usually seen, amidst screams of surprise from unsuspecting passers-by, roaming around the centres of power in the national capital. The New Delhi region which comprises of not only the Supreme Court of India and this High Court but also residences of senior bureaucrats, judges and cabinet ministers and also important religious places such as the Hanuman temple at Connaught Places are visited everyday by all strata of society including the most powerful people as well as the most common citizens alike, read the plea. (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], January 18 (ANI): Manpreet Singh Badal on Wednesday resigned from the primary membership of the Congress party and alleged that the Punjab unit of the Congress supported "factionalism." In the resignation letter issued to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Badal said, "It is with deep sadness that I am writing to tender my resignation from primary official membership of the Indian National Congress." Also Read | Online Sources Such as Wikipedia Are Based On User Generated Editing Model, Not Completely Dependable, Says Supreme Court. He further wrote, "I merged the People's Party of Punjab seven years ago with your party. I did so with immense hope, and an expectation of being integrated into an organisation with a rich history, that would allow me to serve the people of Punjab and its interests to the best of my ability. Initial enthusiasm gradually gave way to disappointing disillusionment." He further stated, "the task of the Finance Minister of Punjab is never easy. I inherited an exchequer in shambles: it was truly on the brink of total collapse. I essentially had two options." Also Read | PDA on Two-Wheeler: Youth Arrested for Romancing on Running Scooty in Lucknow, Watch Viral Video. "I could either choose to continue to ignore numerical realities and pursue populist policies - that would unequivocally exacerbate Punjab's problems to the point where a financial emergency would be imminent - or I could accept the fact that difficult decisions were desperately needed, and assiduously adhere to fiscal discipline. I chose the latter," he stated. "In doing so, I convincingly pleaded Punjab's case to the 15th Finance Commission and the GST Council, and prevailed upon them to treat the state favourably." He further said that he did not believe he is exaggerating in saying that he almost single-handedly succeeded in garnering an additional Rs 50,000 crore for the state exchequer, which would not ordinarily have been acquired. "However, far from being acknowledged or appreciated for my efforts, I was vilified in the Punjab Congress for failing to display what can only be described as fiscal recklessness," he stated. He added that he does not see the point in elaborating extensively on all the particular proceedings that led to his ultimate and irrevocable disaffection. Suffice it to say, that the manner in which the Congress party has conducted its affairs and taken decisions, specifically with regard to Punjab, has been disheartening, to say the least. The coterie of men entrusted with the authority to dictate Delhi's writ to the Punjab unit of the Congress is far from sound, he stated. "Instead of striving to reduce internal disagreement in an already divided house, these men acted to further increase factionalism, and almost as a matter of policy strengthened the very worst elements within the party," he stated in the letter. He further stated he devoted every ounce of energy to every office he had the honour of holding, both in the party and the government. "I thank you for having provided me with these opportunities, and for the kindness and courtesy you have shown me in the past. Regretfully, given the prevailing culture within the party and the defiant desire to persist in the present course, I no longer wish to be a part of the Indian National Congress," he further stated. (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, Jan 18 (PTI) Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday described the Election Commission's proposal on remote voting as a "work in progress" saying it was not an easy subject and reaching decisions in a democracy takes time. Responding to questions on the recent all-party consultations on remote voting, he said it was "successful" with representatives of recognised parties sitting through the entire day. The issue of 30 crore "missing voters" came to limelight. Also Read | #Meta-owned Messaging Platform #WhatsApp is Reportedly Rolling out a New voice Status Latest Tweet by IANS India. He said urban voters, youth and domestic migrants form part of the 30 crore voters who did not participate in the last Lok Sabha elections. "It is not an easy subject. Taking decision in a democracy takes time. But everyone agreed that this is an area where we need to work to bring all our voters, to the extent possible, to the booth (to cast vote)... it is a work in progress," he said. Also Read | Joshimath Land Subsidence: Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami Gives Detailed Information of Situation to Amit Shah, Says 'Char Dham Yatra' To Begin Soon. The CEC noted that on the demand of political parties, the deadline to respond to the EC's concept note has been extended to February 28 from January 31. At the meeting held on Monday, opposition parties had stayed away from the demonstration of prototype of remote electronic voting machine (RVM). They had also questioned the need for RVM, saying issues such as definition of migrants should first be cleared. Each RVM can handle up to 72 constituencies, allowing migrant voters to cast their votes from a remote polling booth. The commission has maintained that RVMs, developed by the public sector undertaking Electronics Corporation of India, will be a standalone device not connected to the internet in any way. The initiative, if implemented, can lead to a "social transformation" for migrants, the EC had said last month. In a letter to political parties last month, EC had said that domestic migrant/ internal migrant does not form a uniquely identifiable and countable class in the existing norms and standard definition. "There is no central database available for migration within the country for the purpose as required for the matter under discussion (remote voting). The Registrar General of India, the Ministry of Labour and Employment and National Sample Survey Organisation lay different meanings to the term 'migrant'," it said. "In the existing multiple meanings of 'migrant', periodicity and purpose of 'absence from the place of origin lacks clarity. As per Census 2011, 45.36 Crore Indians (37 per cent) in India are migrants i.e., now settled in a place different from their previous residence, however, 75 per cent of such migrations are on account of marriages and family related reasons," the letter said. "It is also to be noted that internal out migration is predominant among the rural population and it is mostly intra-state (approximately 85 per cent)," it said. In a recent statement on the issue, the poll panel had pointed out that the voter turnout in Lok Sabha elections 2019 was 67.4 per cent and the Election Commission was concerned about the issue of over 30 crore electors not exercising their franchise and also differential voter turnout in various states/Union Territories. EC had also been flagging the issue of "urban apathy" where people do not turn up to vote in cities. (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, Jan 18 (PTI) Restricting glorification of revenge plots in movies, making district magistrates the only authority to grant acid selling licences and setting up a corpus for acid attack victims through CSR funds were among the suggestions made during a meeting Wednesday of stakeholders with the National Commission for Women. The meeting was attended by 23 nodal officers and representatives from states across the country. The stakeholders recommended treating victims of petrol and diesel attacks in the same way as victims of acid attacks in terms of compensation. Also Read | Bihar Hit-and-Drag Case: Biker Dragged by Auto Driver for 1.5 km After Collision in Saharsa. They also suggested providing financial support to private hospitals for free medical care for acid attack victims, reservation in government jobs for survivors, and setting up a corpus fund for them through corporate social responsibility. Calling on the Censor Board to restrict glorification of revenge plots in movies, streamlining the compensation process for victims, enabling more rehabilitation and employment opportunities for survivors were also some of the suggestions made during the meeting. Also Read | UNGA Adopts Resolution on 'Education for Democracy' Co-Sponsored by India. Some of the other recommendations were conducting an extensive campaign to raise awareness about gender sensitivity in schools, universities, and among law enforcement and other institutions; imposing strict regulations on sale of acid, with DMs being the only authority to grant licences, and requiring regular reporting on the sale of acid. The NCW said it will be taking all the recommendations discussed during the meeting forward to ensure that necessary steps are taken to help women affected by acid attacks and for prevention of such cases. In her inaugural address, NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma emphasised on the urgent need to bring an end to unregulated sale of acid and other corrosive substances and proper rehabilitation of survivors. "Despite the Supreme Court's ban, the truth is that acid still remains available for sale. It must be ensured that strict provisions are kept in place to stop the unregulated sale of acid. No society can be considered civilised if it does not act to prevent such a heinous atrocity on women," said Sharma. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Patna (Bihar) [India], January 18 (ANI): The RJD on Tuesday sent a show cause notice to Bihar MLA Sudhakar Singh for his remarks against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. "As per the instructions of the National President, this show cause notice is being issued to you. It has come to their notice that once again you have violated the decorum of coalition rules. It was unanimously passed in the RJD National Convention that only the respected National President of the party or the honourable Deputy Chief Minister Mr Tejashwi Yadav is authorized to talk about the issues of the alliance and the top leadership of the involved parties," said the show cause notice by the National Head General Secretary of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. Also Read | Deen Dayal Upadhyaya University in Gorakhpur Gets A++ Ranking by NAAC. The notice further read that Sudhakar Singh's alleged remarks can strengthen the forces against the ruling coalition government in Bihar. "You have consistently violated this resolution. Your statements continuously strengthen those forces who want to end the advocacy of justice, harmony and equality by trampling on the Constitution. Your objectionable statements are hurting a large section of the country, state and RJD," it said. Also Read | Mumbai Shocker: Woman Befriends Man, Threatens to Show Their Private Video to His Wife and Extorts Rs 33 Lakh From Him. The party has further sought an explanation from the Bihar MLA under the Rule-22 of Section-33 of Rashtriya Janata Dal's constitution within 15 days as to why strict disciplinary action should not be taken against him. Former Agriculture Minister Sudhakar Singh had described Nitish Kumar as "Shikhandi", a character in the Mahabharat. Singh slammed Nitish over the illicit liquor and alleged that there is a "home delivery" service of the liquor underway in the state. "Everyone knows that illicit liquor is done by home delivery in Bihar. If this can be done, can't the state government do home delivery of fertilizers to the farmers?" he said while addressing a gathering. Earlier, Tejashwi Yadav had said on Sudhakar that if someone talks like this while being in the Grand Alliance, it means that he supports the policies of the BJP. On October 2 last year, Bihar agriculture minister Sudhakar Singh submitted his resignation to the government. Sudhakar resigned over 'injustice' to the farmers of the state. Taking a dig at Sudhakar Singh's resignation, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said that the second wicket of the 'Mahagathbandhan' has fallen within two months. The allusion was to Singh's resignation which came about a month after another RJD minister Kartikeya Singh resigned from the Cabinet. (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, Jan 18 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard the matter related to alleged fake encounter cases in Gujarat from 2002 to 2006 for whose monitoring it had set up a committee under former apex court judge H S Bedi. Justice Bedi was appointed as the chairman of the monitoring committee probing 17 alleged fake encounter cases from 2002 to 2006 and had submitted a report to the top court in a sealed cover. Also Read | Global #smartphone Shipments Fell by 17 Per Cent in Q4 2022, with Entire Latest Tweet by IANS India. The committee, which submitted its report in 2019, recommended prosecution of police officials in three out of the 17 cases it probed. The matter came up for hearing on Wednesday before a bench comprising Justices S K Kaul, A S Oka and J B Pardiwala. Also Read | US: Woman Stabs Boyfriend After He Peed in Bed While Sleeping Following Night of Drinking in Louisiana. The bench recalled that in its November 9, 2022 order in the matter, it had observed that the limited contours which have now to be examined involved whether any directions were required to be issued pursuant to the report of the Justice Bedi committee. The bench, which posted the matter for resumed hearing in March, observed that upon hearing the parties, it had emerged that "ultimately the issue now revolves around three encounters". The top court was hearing the pleas filed in 2007 by senior journalist BG Verghese and lyricist Javed Akhtar seeking a probe into the alleged fake encounters. Verghese passed away in 2014. In its final report filed in the apex court, the Justice Bedi committee said three persons -- Sameer Khan, Kasam Jafar and Haji Ismail -- were prime facie killed in fake encounters by Gujarat Police officials. The committee indicted a total of nine police officials, including three inspector rank officers. It, however, did not recommend prosecution of any IPS officer. On January 9, 2019, a bench headed by then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had rejected the Gujarat government's plea to maintain confidentiality of the final report of the committee and ordered that it be given to petitioners. The panel had also dealt with 14 other cases which related to alleged fake encounter killings of Mithu Umar Dafer, Anil Bipin Misra, Mahesh, Rajeshwar, Kashyap Harpalsingh Dhaka, Salim Gagji Miyana, Jala Popat Devipujak, Rafiksha, Bheema Maanda Mer, Jogindrasinh Khatansing, Ganesh Khunte, Mahendra Jadav, Subhash Bhaskar Nayyar and Sanjay. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Kolkata, Jan 18 (PTI) National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development on Wednesday said it has projected a credit target of Rs 2.70 lakh crore for the priority sector lending in West Bengal in 2023-24 fiscal, which is 9.3 per cent higher than the previous year's estimate. Also Read | Rewarding Information Sharing on Social Media Platforms Like Facebook and Twitter Leads to Spread of Misinformation: Study. The bank had estimated Rs 2.47 lakh crore of credit potential under the priority sector lending in the state for the current financial year. Also Read | Republic Day 2023 Parade Tickets: Know Where And How to Book Ticket For R-Day Event at Kartavya Path in Delhi. Of the total credit potential under the priority sector for 2023-24 fiscal, the share of agriculture, including agri-infrastructure and ancillary activities, is 39.54 per cent and that of MSME is 44.26 per cent, Nabard Chief General Manager Usha Ramesh said. Noting that 'Duare Sarkar' (government at your doorsteps) scheme of the West Bengal government is one of the best programmes for enhancing financial outreach, she said the state authorities have taken a number of initiatives in recent past for fostering multi-dimensional growth in the state's economy. "However, these initiatives have to be supplemented through adequate credit deployment and coordinated efforts of all the stakeholders for a faster and holistic development of West Bengal," Ramesh said. She also stated that small-holding farmers representing 96 per cent of the total farming community in West Bengal are faced with challenges of low investment, poor productivity, inadequate post-harvest facilities and weak market orientation coupled with an adverse impact of climate change. In this scenario, the collectivisation of agricultural produce through Farmers' Producer Organisations (FPOs) is imperative to leverage the economies of scale by conferring greater bargaining power, better market and price discovery, and access to credit and insurance. She also emphasised agriculture term loans for capital formation in the sector. "Agriculture term loan has to grow. I think there is a phenomenon across India where the stress is more on short-term loans rather than long-term advances. Through the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, I hope there will be improvement in long-term agriculture loans," Ramesh said on the sidelines of a seminar. In the Nabard-organised credit seminar, the 'State Focus Paper: 2023-24' along with 'Financial Inclusion Outreach in West Bengal 2022-23' was released. West Bengal is one of the leading producers of rice, jute, tea, vegetables and fruits. Therefore, crop loan constitutes 64.28 per cent of the total agriculture credit and 25.42 per cent of the total priority sector credit potential, Nabard said in a statement. Of the Rs 2.70 lakh crore credit potential for FY24, the share of self-help groups and joint liability groups (SHG-JLG) is 7.69 per cent, the housing sector 4.67 per cent, education loans 1.68 per cent, social infrastructure 1.07 per cent and the 1.09 per cent constitutes export credit and renewable energy. The developmental bank prepares a potential-linked credit plan (PLP)annually for each district through a consultative process for planning and dispensation for priority sector activities. Nabard in West Bengal is working towards strengthening rural financial institutions, which serve the farming community, the statement said. The bank is also planning for telemedicine and smart education projects under the rural infrastructure promotion fund in Sundarbans, a UNESCO heritage site, in West Bengal, which is expected to launch by March this year, Ramesh said. Some of the major initiatives, like the creation of an agriculture infrastructure fund, animal husbandry, dairy, fisheries infrastructure schemes, formalisation of micro food processing units, incentivising MSMEs, production of ethanol and renewal energy, could be strategically leveraged for accelerating growth in investment credit in the state, she added. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Washington, January 18: A US lawmaker has introduced a legislation in the US House of Representatives that seeks to terminate Pakistan's designation as a major non-NATO ally, and require annual certification from the president with certain conditions for Islamabad to be given such a designation. The bill (HR 80) was introduced by Congressman Andy Biggs, who represents the fifth Congressional district of Arizona. Pakistan Has Learnt a 'Lesson', Wants Peace With India, Says PM Shehbaz Sharif. It needs to be passed by the House and the Senate before it can be signed into law by the US President, and has been sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for necessary actions. Normally, such bills do not fructify, but the present bill reflects the sentiments of the lawmakers against Pakistan, which is known for harbouring terrorism and using it as a matter of State policy. For any further continuation of Pakistan's designation as a major non-NATO ally, the bill asks the US president to issue a certification that the country has shown progress in arresting and prosecuting Haqqani Network senior leaders and mid-level operatives and has taken steps to demonstrate its commitment to prevent the Haqqani Network from using any Pakistani territory as a safe haven. Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif Seeks 'Sincere' Talks with PM Narendra Modi to Resolve 'Burning' Issues; Says UAE Can Play an Important Role. Both conditions are seen to be a tall order for Pakistan given that many in the US believe the Haqqani network to be a veritable arm of the ISI. The bill also wants a certification from the US President that Pakistan actively coordinates with Afghanistan to restrict the movement of militants, such as the Haqqani Network, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Colombo [Sri Lanka], January 18 (ANI): China has opposed Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama's official visit to Sri Lanka, as per The Island. Taking to Twitter, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, on Tuesday, said, "Chinese Charge d'affaires Hu Wei called on Malwathu Mahanayake: Chinese government and people strongly oppose any foreign country to receive the Dalai Lama in any name, because the 14th Dalai Lama is absolutely not a "simple monk" as he self-claimed." Also Read | Pakistan Blast: Police Patrol Vehicle Damaged After IED Explosion in Dera Ismail Khan. On January 11, the Chinese embassy released a statement which stated, "They had a friendly conversation about the millennia close exchanges between the two peoples and Buddhist communities of the two countries, as well as China's firm support to all walks of life in Sri Lanka to fight against COVID-19 epidemic and the economic crisis. The issue of the 14th Dalai Lama's intention to visit Sri Lanka was also discussed." Calling the spiritual leader a "political exile", Charge d'affaires in Sri Lanka, Hu Wei said that he disguised himself as a religious figure that has been engaging in anti-China separatist activities and attempting to split Tibet from China, as per The Island. Also Read | Pakistan Terror Attack: Four Soldiers Killed After Terrorist Attack on Security Forces in Balochistan. Hu said that China including those in the Tibet Autonomous Region strongly oppose any foreign country receiving the Dalai Lama in any name because the 14th Dalai Lama is absolutely not a "simple monk" as he claimed, but the head of the feudal serfdom and the theocracy in Tibet prior to 1951, a political exile disguised as a religious figure who has long been engaging in anti-China separatist activities and attempting to split Tibet from China, The Island reported citing the statement. This statement came after Chinese Charge d'affaires in Sri Lanka, Hu Wei met with Chief Prelate of Malwatte chapter of Siam Nikaya, Thibbatuwawe Siddhartha Sumangala Thero. During, Hu and Chief Prelate's meeting, the Charge d'affaires briefed that in the Dalai Lama era, about 1 million people were serfs accounting for 95 per cent of Tibet's population. Its GDP was only 129 million RMB and the Life Expectancy was only 35.5 years (in 1951). Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Tibetan people are now enjoying a prosperous economy with a GDP of 210 billion RMB (31 billion USD) and a GDP per capita of USD 8,000 (twice of Sri Lanka and 4 times of India where he resides now), the longevity of 72.19 years on average and freedom of religion with 46,000 monks and nuns in over 1,700 temples in Tibet, The Island reported. Hu emphasized that China and Sri Lanka have been firmly supporting each other on issues concerning each other's core interests, including the Tibet-related issue. Both sides especially the Buddhist communities must prevent a visit of the Dalai Lama to the island to promote "Tibetan independence" and safeguard the China-Sri Lanka historical relations from being damaged. Charge d'affaires Hu Wei also paid courtesy calls to Ven. Dimbulkumbure Wimaladhamma Thera, Anunayake of Malwatte chapter and Ven. Wendaruwe Upali Thera, Ven. Anamaduwe Dhammadassi Thera, Anunayakes of Asgiri chapter on the same day, reported The Island. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Greta Thunberg detained by German police detained during protests against the expansion of a coal mine in Luetzerath. (Photo Credit - Reuters) Berlin [Germany], January 18 (ANI): Climate activist Greta Thunberg was among climate activists detained during protests against the expansion of a coal mine in Luetzerath on Tuesday, according to German police, reported CNN affiliate N-TV. Hundreds of climate activists resumed their demonstrations across western Germany on Tuesday against the ongoing destruction of a village to make way for a coal mine expansion of the Garzweiler lignite coal mine, which is owned by European energy giant RWE, German news agency dpa reported. Also Read | Pakistan Has Learnt a 'Lesson', Wants Peace With India, Says PM Shehbaz Sharif. Once the eviction is complete, RWE plans to build a 1.5-kilometre perimeter fence around the village, sealing off the village's buildings, streets and sewers before they are demolished. It comes just two days after the last two activists holed up in a tunnel beneath the village were removed from the site. Also Read | Nepal Plane Crash: Death Toll Rises to 71 As Authorities Handover Victims' Bodies to Family Members. Activists were evicted from the tiny hamlet of Luetzerath last week after occupying it in protest of the demolition. It has since been sealed off, roadblocks removed and treehouses and buildings bulldozed. The expansion of the coal mine is significant for climate activists. They argue that continuing to burn coal for energy will increase planet-warming emissions and violate the Paris Climate Agreement's ambition to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Lignite is the most polluting type of coal, which itself is the most polluting fossil fuel, reported CNN. Thunberg tweeted on Friday that she was in Lutzerath to protest the expansion, and asked others to join. "Climate strike week 230. We are currently in Lutzerath, a German village threatened to be demolished for an expansion of a coal mine. People have been resisting for years. Join us here at 12 or a local protest tomorrow to demand that #LutzerathBleibt !#ClimateStrike," tweeted Thunberg. Clashes between the activists and police have been ongoing this month, and photos from the protests have shown police wearing riot gear to remove the demonstrators. Some of the protesters have been in Lutzerath for more than two years, CNN has previously reported, occupying the homes abandoned by former residents after they were evicted to make way for the mine. More than 1,000 police officers have been involved in the eviction operation. Most of the village's buildings have now been cleared and replaced with excavating machines. Ministers and energy company RWE say that the lignite from the mine will ensure Germany's short term energy security following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Activists say this is the most polluting form of coal and want the government to take immediate action on fossil fuels, reported euronews. An August report by international research platform Coal Transitions found that even if coal plants operate at very high capacity until the end of this decade, they already have more coal available than needed from existing supplies, reported CNN. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], January 18 (ANI): At the outset of the first Health Working Group meeting taking place in Kerala under India's G20 Presidency, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar on Wednesday called health an integral part of G20 agenda and said that New Delhi's chairmanship will aim to build on the efforts and proposals laid down by previous health working groups and G20 leaders. The MoS also stated during her address that G20 countries have consistently worked to promote coordinated efforts among its members to achieve good and equitable health for all. Also Read | COVID-19 Surge: China Stares at 36,000 Coronavirus Deaths A Day During Lunar New Year Holidays. "During the once-in-a-century crisis of the pandemic, G20 countries consistently worked for promoting coordinated efforts among its members to achieve good & equitable health for all. Health is an integral part of G20 agenda," MoS Pawar said during the address at the first G20 Health Working Group meeting in Kerala on Wednesday. She added further that health became an integral part of the G20 agenda with the establishment of the health working group under the German presidency in 2017 and G20 countries that exhibited commitment to mitigating health emergencies. Also Read | World Economic Forum: Global Recession Likely in 2023, Say Chief Economists. "Health became an integral part of the G20 agenda with the establishment of the health working group under the german presidency in 2017 and G20 countries have exhibited a long-standing commitment to mitigating health emergencies ever since the inception of the health working group in 2017," she said. We know now that pandemic prevention, preparedness and response require diverse, multistakeholder and multisectoral coordination under the leadership of PM Modi, the minister added. Bharati Pravin Pawar also stated that India's presidency will aim to build on previous health working groups' and G20 leaders' efforts and proposals, such as strengthening our healthcare systems and prioritising one health. The first Health Working Group meeting under G20 India Presidency is held from January 18-20 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. In a significant milestone, India assumed the presidency of the G20 on December 1, 2022. India is currently part of the G20 Troika comprising Indonesia, India and Brazil, marking the first time that the troika is consisting of three developing and emerging economies. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Health Track of the G20 India Presidency will comprise four Health Working Group (HWG) Meetings and one Health Ministerial Meeting (HMM). The meetings will be held in different locations across the country including Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Goa, Hyderabad (Telangana) and Gandhinagar (Gujarat), highlighting India's rich and diverse cultures. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) London [UK], January 18 (ANI): London's Metropolitan Police Service dismissed officer David Carrick on Tuesday (local time) who admitted to 49 sex offences, including 24 counts of rape, over an 18-year period, reported CNN. His dismissal sparked calls for an inquiry into the United Kingdom's largest police service as questions mount over trust in the police. Also Read | Pakistan Has Learnt a 'Lesson', Wants Peace With India, Says PM Shehbaz Sharif. He was dismissed during a misconduct hearing on Tuesday morning, a press officer for the Met Police told CNN, adding that Carrick himself did not attend or have any legal representation at the hearing. Word of Carrick's offences sent shockwaves throughout the country on Monday, with women's rights groups criticizing the Met Police's failure to intervene earlier. Also Read | Nepal Plane Crash: Death Toll Rises to 71 As Authorities Handover Victims' Bodies to Family Members. "This is an institution in crisis. That Carrick's pattern of egregious behaviour was known to the Met and they failed to act speaks more loudly than their empty promises to women," UK organization End Violence Against Women tweeted. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said someone like Carrick "should never have been a police officer," according to a readout of Tuesday's Cabinet meeting. Sunak acknowledged that the case has undermined "public confidence in the police" and stressed the need for "real change quickly." The prime minister called on the police force to "address the failings" that took place in the case and strive to "do everything possible to ensure women and girls are safe in their communities and homes," the readout added. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley issued an apology to Carrick's victims Monday, acknowledging that the force had let them down. "I do understand that this will lead to some women across London questioning whether they can trust the Met to keep them safe. We have failed," Rowley said in a clip posted on the Met Police official Twitter account. A series of scandals in recent years has eroded public confidence in the force and prompted former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick to resign from her post in 2022. The force is now investigating as many as 1,000 sex offences and domestic abuse claims involving approximately 800 of its officers, Rowley admitted Monday. "We are going to turn all those stones over, we're going to come to the right conclusions and we'll be ruthless about rooting out those who corrupt our integrity. You have my absolute assurance on that," he said in an interview with UK media. The offences mostly took place near where he lived in Hertfordshire, outside of London, and spanned a period of 18 years. During that time, he worked for the Metropolitan Police safeguarding diplomatic and parliamentary premises, reported euronews. Carrick met some of his victims through online dating sites, or in social situations, and used his job as a police officer to gain the trust of the women he went on to abuse. He admitted to raping women on multiple occasions, over months or years, with some of the attacks involving violence that would have left the women physically injured, reported euronews. Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Barbara Gray told Britain's Sky News that they are "truly sorry" for missing opportunities to identify Carrick when numerous complaints were made about his conduct over the years. "He abused that power that he had as a police officer and used that to control the women who were his victims, and I'm so sorry that will have prolonged the suffering that those women will have had and I'm in awe of them coming forward now and seeing him to a successful conviction," said Gray. After initial guilty pleas in December, the Metropolitan Police stopped Carrick's salary and launched an accelerated misconduct process. (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], January 18 (ANI): Union Minister of State (MoS) Muraleedharan is set to embark on a visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from January 19-21. The MoS will meet UAE ministers and a broad cross-section of the Indian community in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Emirates of the UAE, according to an official statement by the Ministry of External Affairs. Also Read | Elon Musk-Owned Twitter Selling Bird Statue, Hundreds of Office Assets on Online Auction. The minister will also enage with Indian businesspersons, professionals, teachers and students. MOS will also interact with Indian blue-collar workers and social leaders in the UAE. India and UAE have continued to maintain close coordination in the spirit of their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Also Read | Layoffs: Merchant Commerce Platform Lightspeed Fires 300 Employees. This year will be special for both India and UAE as they have taken over their respective presidencies of G20 and COP28, the official release said. Earlier, in December 2022, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar paid a visit to UAE while UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited India in November 2022. UAE Foreign Minister also participated in a G20-related session of the Voice of Global South Summit hosted by India on January 13. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Washington, Jan 19 (AP) The United States and Turkey looked to brush aside differences that have strained relations for years but were unable to report progress in resolving disagreements over Russia's invasion of Ukraine and NATO expansion that have soured ties between the allies. At a meeting in Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu sought to bridge those gaps, but there was no immediate sign that they had, even though both men lauded the partnership between their countries. Also Read | WATCH: A Group of Lebanese Men Dressed in Traditional Clothes Reenact the Old Days in Latest Tweet by Reuters. They played up cooperation on Ukraine, with Blinken in particular praising Turkey's leadership in securing a deal with Russia for the transport of Ukrainian grain. But in brief remarks before their meeting, neither specifically mentioned their differences over the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, which the Turks have so far blocked despite strong support from the US and other allies. Turkey is demanding that the Swedes do more to rein in Kurdish groups that Ankara sees as a threat to its security before approving the alliance's expansion. Also Read | Ukraine Helicopter Crash: Shocked to Learn About Tragic Chopper Mishap in Kyiv, Says Indian Mission. "We are close allies and partners," Blinken said. "That doesn't mean we don't have differences, but when we have differences, precisely because we are allies and partners, we work through them in that spirit." Cavusoglu made no mention of Finland and Sweden in his comments, but did make a point of stressing the importance Turkey places on winning US approval to buy advanced F-16 fighters, something the Biden administration supports but that faces significant congressional opposition. Cavusoglu called the F-16 deal a "significant topic" in US-Turkey defence cooperation. "As we have said before, this is not only about Turkey but also for NATO and the United States as well. So we expect approval in line with our joint strategic interest." Cavusoglu's visit is a rare one to Washington by a top Turkish official as President Joe Biden's administration has kept its distance from Turkey because of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian direction and policies curbing rights and freedoms. Positioned at the crossroads between East and West, Turkey remains strategically important for Washington. And, as Blinken pointed out, Turkey was key to the agreement between Russia and Ukraine that allowed millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to be transported to world markets, averting a food crisis during the war. NATO allies, however, frequently find themselves at odds over a number of issues, with the biggest disputes centering on Turkey's purchase of Russian-made missiles and support for Kurdish militants in Syria. Turkey's acquisition of the S-400 air defence system from Russia in 2017 led to sanctions and Turkey being removed from the development programme for the next-generation F-35 fighter plane. After losing out on the F-35, Ankara is trying to restock its F-16 fleet. US concern over Ankara's cosy relationship with the Kremlin has been reinvigorated by the war in Ukraine. Despite Turkey's ties with Moscow producing breakthroughs such as the grain deal and prisoner swaps, Washington is worried about sanctions-busting as Turkish-Russian trade levels have risen over the last year. And, Ankara's feet-dragging over ratifying bids by Sweden and Finland to join NATO has added to friction between the allies. Turkey's recent attempts at rapprochement with Syria after a decade of bitter enmity have caused another break with the US. Following a meeting of Syrian and Turkish defence ministers in Moscow last month, the US State Department reiterated its opposition to countries normalising relations with Damascus. The US military has also warned that a threatened Turkish operation against the Kurdish YPG in northern Syria could destabilise the region and revive the Islamic State group. (AP) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Thiruvananthapuram [Kerala], January 18 (ANI): The first out of the four Health Working Group Meetings under India's G20 presidency was held on Wednesday at Thiruvananthapuram, according to a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release. The event was attended by Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar and Union Minister of State for External Affairs, S V Muraleedharan, it said. Also Read | Elon Musk-Owned Twitter Selling Bird Statue, Hundreds of Office Assets on Online Auction. "Pandemic Policy must be a defining part of our Health Policy as any health crisis today leads to an economic crisis due to the multisectoral nature of our inter-connected world. Learnings from the pandemic must form the agenda for our preparedness and response together. We need to diversify our capabilities and ensure that collectively, we preserve ourselves in the face of any health crisis", Pawar said at the event. The Health Track of the G20 India Presidency comprises Health Working Group (JWG) meetings and one Health Ministerial Meeting (HMM). The other three meetings will be held in Goa, Hyderabad (Telangana) and Gandhinagar (Gujarat), highlighting India's rich and diverse cultures. Also Read | Layoffs: Merchant Commerce Platform Lightspeed Fires 300 Employees. Pawar, in her address related to the Pandemic preparedness also noted that preparedness and response require "diverse multi-sectoral, multi-agency coordinated efforts." She also stressed that there is a need to strengthen and empower communities so that they become resilient for future health emergencies. She also noted that "COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic. The learnings must form the agenda for our preparedness and response together. We need to diversify our capabilities and ensure that collectively, we preserve ourselves in the face of any health crisis". She also emphasized that it is important to build a resilient health system and invest in lifesaving vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. In the same event, Muraleedharan noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for "One Earth, One Family, One Future" is a pro-planet approach, one that is in harmony with nature for an increasingly globalized world, according to the same PIB press release. He further stressed that the delegates "need to align our agenda for preparedness and response together to be able to effectively meet any health emergencies". The country should be prepared to collectively meet any health challenges in the future, he stated. Further, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan highlighted India's aim to achieve convergence in discussions across various multilateral fora engaged in health cooperation, as chair of the G20 Presidency. Indonesia's and Brazil's Troika members of the G20 appreciated India's presidency for setting up the three health priorities. They stated that the pandemic has given an opportunity to strengthen health systems and the need today is to "accelerate our efforts to ensure universal health coverage." (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 York, January 18: The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday adopted a resolution titled 'Education for Democracy' that reaffirms the right of everyone to education. The resolution, which was co-sponsored by India, recognises that "education for all" contributes to the strengthening of democracy. "BREAKING #UNGA has adopted the resolution on '#Education for #Democracy' by consensus, co-sponsored by India. This resolution reaffirms the right of everyone to education and recognizes that #EducationForAll contributes to the strengthening of democracy," the Indian mission in the UN tweeted. India Abstains on UNGA Resolution Calling for Russia to Pay Reparations to Ukraine. Denmark thanked Mongolia for putting forward this important resolution. "The #GeneralAssembly just adopted the resolution Education for #Democracy by consensus, recognizing the importance of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education - and lifelong learning opportunities for all. Thank you Mongolia for putting forward this important resolution," the Denmark mission at the UN said. India Vows Full Support to United Nations General Assembly; Commitment to Multilateralism: S Jaishankar to President of 77th UNGA Session. Earlier in March 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a similar resolution encouraging all UN entities to use education to promote peace, human rights, and democracy. The resolution encourages member states to integrate education for democracy into their education standards. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked BJP workers to refrain from making "unnecessary" comments about films. He made the observation while addressing the last day of the two-day National Executive meet here on Tuesday. During his address, Modi also asked BJP members to reach out to every section of society, including minorities such as Bohras, Pasmandas and Sikhs, and work for them without electoral considerations. Suniel Shetty Urges UP CM Yogi Adityanath to Help Get Rid of Boycott Bollywood Trend. The Prime Minister's statement comes amid the recent protests against Shah Rukh Khan's film Pathaan, with several BJP leaders like Ram Kadam and Narottam Mishra criticising the makers over Deepika Padukone's saffron costume in the song "Besharam Rang". The song has been in news for a saffron coloured bikini worn by Deepika along with a few shots that several politicians and trolls found 'vulgar'. Boycott Bollywood Trends: From Aamir Khans PK to Shah Rukh Khans Pathaan; Films Targeted by Fringe Outfits. As per reports, Hindu sentiments have been hurt and people have also criticised the makers as they find an "overdose" of the sexually appealing look of the actress. Protests are on with the social media campaign seeking boycott of the movie. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 10:36 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Lucknow, Jan 18: Renowned Urdu poet Wasim Barelvi was injured in a road accident in Uttar Pradesh's Hapur, police said. The 82-year-old is out of danger and is being treated at BLK Hospital in Delhi. Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot Appeals PM Narendra Modi To Restore Old Pension Scheme in Country. His family members said that Barelvi had gone to Bahrain to attend a 'Mushaira' a few days ago. On his return, he was heading to Bareilly from Delhi when, while passing through Hapur, his car collided with a dumper. Barelvi has received injuries on his left hand and shoulder. According to the X-ray report, there are two fractures in his left hand. Joshimath Land Subsidence: Uttarakhand Government To Allow Board Students To Pick Exam Centre of Choice. A family member said that his condition has shown improvement, adding he will be discharged from the hospital soon. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 08:11 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Mumbai, January 18: This year on January 26th, India will celebrate its 74th Republic Day with much fervour and grandeur. Every year, 26th January is celebrated as Republic Day in order to mark the day when the constitution of the world's largest democracy came into effect. Republic Day celebrations include annual parade at Rajpath in Delhi and numerous events across the country. While Republic Day or 26th January will be celebrated with full energy and spirit of patriotism, the highlight of the day will be the Republic Day parade, which is held ever year. The Republic Day parade, which is an annual affair will begin at Rajpath in New Delhi and end at India Gate. While people from across the country will arrive at Kartavya Path to watch Republic Day parade, we tell you where and how you can watch Republic Day parade this year. Republic Day 2023 FAQs: Who Will Be the Chief Guest? When Is Flag Hoisting? When Does R-Day Parade Start? Know Everything Here. Republic Day Parade 2023 Live Streaming: One can enjoy the Republic Day parade and the annual events from the comfort of their homes. Various media channels will live stream the event. Besides the live streaming of the parade will be available on RDC website https://indianrdc.mod.gov.in/. The annual parade will also be live streamed on Doordarshan and the Press Bureau of India and their handles on social media platforms. Republic Day 2023: Know How And Where To Book Tickets For Parade At Kartavya Path In Delhi Meanwhile, the government has also launched a portal where citizens can visit and purchase tickets to watch and witness the Republic Day parade in Delhi. One can book tickets for various events on Republic Day by visiting the official website of Aamantran at aamantran.mod.gov.in/login. Republic Day Parade 2023: 50 Aircraft to Take Part in R-Day Celebrations at Kartavya Path, Says Indian Air Force. Steps To Book Tickets for Republic Days Grand Parade Online: Visit the official website of 'Aamantran' at www.aamantran.mod.gov.in Register on the platform using a mobile number Fill out details of the number of people attending the R-Day event Enter the OTP and proceed to choose the tickets you want to book Now, pay the fee to purchase and confirm the tickets You will receive the tickets digitally via email or SMS This year, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, President of Egypt is the chief guest of the Republic Day celebrations. The theme for this year's Republic Day celebrations is 'Nari Shakti' or 'Women Power'. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 05:02 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). San Francisco, January 18 : Elon Musk-owned Twitter has placed hundreds of items from its San Francisco headquarters up for auction online, including the bird statue and other office assets. In December 2022, after Musk revealed that Twitter spends $13 million a year on food service, the company said it will be selling at least 265 kitchen appliances and office furniture online, and the bidding will start at just $25. Twitter Update: Elon Musk-Owned Micro-Blogging Platform Shifts View Count Tab to the Right On Users Complained, Twitterati Still Angry. Now, the auction is online on the Heritage Global Partners' website, the company administering the auction. The company's neon Twitter Bird light electrical display is currently priced at $22,500 with just under 10 hours left to bid. A 190 cm planter in the shape of an @ symbol is already fetching $8,000. Moreover, the blue bird statue is currently priced at $20,500. The auctions also include some of the kitchen appliances, including several high-end La Marzocco espresso machines and a fizzy drink fountain complete with an ice dispenser. The microblogging platform is also offloading a pair of Herman Miller coffee tables, which currently cost $2,200. Elon Musk Says if You Love Trashing Twitter Accounts That You Hate, You Will See More of Those. Last week, Musk, who failed to pay the rent for Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, asked its remaining staff in Singapore to stop coming to the office and work remotely as the company has reportedly failed to pay the monthly rent. Twitter has been sued as it failed to pay $136,250 rent for its office space in San Francisco. Additionally, the company is reportedly looking to shed its co-working spaces in Delhi and Mumbai after having already done so in Bengaluru. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 03:11 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). New Delhi, January 18 : The habit of rewarding users for habitually sharing information by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter has led to spread of misinformation and fake news, researchers have discovered. The study by University of Southern California (USC) of more than 2,400 Facebook users suggests that platforms, more than individual users, have a larger role to play in stopping the spread of misinformation online. Elon Musk Says if You Love Trashing Twitter Accounts That You Hate, You Will See More of Those. According to the findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, just 15 per cent of the most habitual news sharers in the research were responsible for spreading about 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the fake news. Frequent, habitual users forwarded six times more fake news than occasional or new users. "Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that gets recognition from others," the researchers wrote. Samsung Galaxy S23 Vanilla and Galaxy S23 Plus Price and Specifications Leaked, Check Out All Details Here. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering critical response outcomes, such as spreading misinformation, they wrote. Posting, sharing, and engaging with others on social media can, therefore, become a habit. "Our findings show that misinformation isn't spread through a deficit of users. It's really a function of the structure of the social media sites themselves," said Wendy Wood, USC emerita Provost Professor of psychology and business. The habits of social media users are a bigger driver of misinformation spread than individual attributes. Prior research that some people don't process information critically, and others form opinions based on political biases, which also affects their ability to recognise false stories online. "However, we show that the reward structure of social media platforms plays a bigger role when it comes to misinformation spread," said Gizem Ceylan, who led the study. The study noted that users could be incentivised to build sharing habits that make them more sensitive to sharing truthful content. "Effectively reducing misinformation would require restructuring the online environments that promote and support its sharing," it added. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 05:44 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). New Delhi, January 18 : South Korean tech major Samsung is all ready to launch the premium Galaxy S23 series of smartphones. The upcoming new Samsung Galaxy S23 series will comprise of three handsets - Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23 Plus and the Galaxy S23 Ultra. The official launch date of the Samsung Galaxy S23 series is already known, aside the innumerable leaks and speculations. Now, the entire specs list and prices of the Galaxy S23 and the Galaxy S23 Plus models have been revealed just ahead of the imminent official launch of the devices. Read on to know the details. iPhone 15 Pro Max: Apple's Upcoming iPhone Likely To Feature Folding Periscope Zoom Camera. Samsung Galaxy S23 and Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus - Leaked Specifications : As per the leaked specifications, the Samsung Galaxy S23 will be featuring a 6.1-inch Super AMOLED screen, while the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus will offer a larger 6.6-inch display. Both the screens would come with FHD+ resolution and a 48Hz-120Hz variable refresh rate. Moreover, both the smartphones are also said to feature HDR10+ support along with the protection of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. When optics are concerned, both the smartphones will reportedly get a primary 50MP OIS lens at the rear that will be teamed with a 12MP ultra-wide and a 10MP telephoto snapper with 3x optical zoom support. The Galaxy S23 vanilla and the Galaxy S23 Plus would feature a new 12MP front facing camera with up to 4K 60fps HDR10+ video support. The selfie camera is also said to come with a dual-pixel autofocus feature. Under the hood, all the three devices of the Samsung Galaxy S23 will be getting powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset backed by 8GB RAM and 128GB/256GB of internal storage. The Samsung Galaxy S23+ will also be available in a 512GB memory variant. Both the devices are expected to run on the latest Android 13 OS topped with the OneUI 5.1 skin. The Samsung Galaxy S23 is expected to pack in a 3,900mAh battery with 25W fast charging support, while the Samsung Galaxy S23+ will likely feature a larger 4,700mAh battery with up to 45W fast charging. Oppo A78 5G Smartphone Launched in India; Find Specs, Features and Price Details Here. Samsung Galaxy S23 Series Leaked Price Details : Both the Samsung Galaxy S23 and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus are said to be coming in the colour options of Black, Cotton, Purple and Green. The leaked information on the Samsung Galaxy S23 series Australian prices report that the Galaxy S23 vanilla will have a starting price of AUS $1,350 (about Rs 77,140), while the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus would have a starting price tag of $1,650 (approx. Rs 94,280). The top-of-the-line Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is expected to be priced starting at $1,950 (around Rs 1.11 lakh). All the specs and price details will be officially revealed during the Samsung Galaxy S23 series launch ceremony during the Galaxy Unpacked event, scheduled on February 1. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 04:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). New York, January 18: A woman allegedly stabbed her boyfriend for urinating in their bed in his sleep in Louisiana, United States. The assaulter was later charged with attempted murder for stabbing her boyfriend. A local hospital where the man was admitted for treatment informed the East Baton Rouge Sheriffs Office about a stabbing incident. Sex Game Ends With Death! Woman Murders Lover in a Drug-Fuelled Sexual Encounter Before Putting Decapitated Head & Penis in Bucket. According to the report published by Fox News, the victim told police that his girlfriend, Briana Lacost (25), became "extremely enraged" after he urinated on the bed that they shared for the past year and a half. As per the victim's statement, the woman woke him up after the "urinating incident" and started thrashing him. He tried to get away from her, but the woman allegedly ran at him with a kitchen knife and stabbed him. UK Shocker: Woman Obsessed With Serial Killers and BDSM Sex Stabbed Boyfriend to Death, Showed Body to Friend on Video Call, Prosecution Tells Court. According to the reports, the couple was reportedly out drinking that night and were intoxicated. When the woman was presented before the cops, she admitted that she was upset that her boyfriend urinated in bed. The woman alleged that during the altercation that followed after the "incident", her boyfriend started choking her during the fight, and she defended herself by stabbing him under his left arm. Meanwhile, the woman was arrested soon after and the victim is being treated for a stab wound on the left side of his torso and a punctured lung. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2023 06:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). A 12-year-old girl from Argentina passed away after undertaking a fatal "TikTok choking challenge." "We are inconsolable [because] we gave her so much love," the victim's aunt, Laura Luque, told Jam Press of the tragedy that happened on January 13 in Capitan Bermudez, Santa Fe Province in Argentina. An autopsy report acquired by the Argentine daily El Litoral indicates that Milagros Soto's father found her dead Friday with a rope around her neck when he returned home from work. It has been reported that she was fatally injured while live streaming the challenge to her fellow students, per Fox News. After being victimized at school, Soto received a link to the challenge via WhatsApp, according to his aunt. "I believe someone encouraged her to do it," the bereaved relative stated. "She suffered a lot with bullying." READ NEXT: TikTok Challenge Gone Wrong The Dangerous 'TikTok Challenge' The "TikTok choking challenge," often known as the "blackout challenge," is a risky act in which participants suffocate themselves until they pass out online. The strange viral fad has been called "potentially dangerous" by experts, who say it can cause fainting, brain damage, seizures, and even death, according to the New York Post. Milagros Soto, the girl from Argentina, had attempted and successfully removed the noose on two previous occasions but failed to do so on his third try, reports said. However, on the third try, Luque claimed that her niece could not take the rope from her neck, and the fatal event was reportedly caught on video. The little girl's aunt said she still had many questions about everything that occurred to her niece despite the kid's earlier explanation since "she was a very smart girl." The death of the preteen has prompted an investigation by authorities who hope to uncover the truth. Many Kids Have Died From 'Choking Challenge' Aside from the Argentina girl, several children, including a 9-year-old Wisconsin girl and an 8-year-old Texas girl, died in 2021 after participating in the "TikTok choking challenge" or "blackout" challenges similar to those made famous on the TikTok app. The two families sued the social networking company separately in 2022, claiming that the app was "an addictive product that is not safe for users." A mother in Pennsylvania filed a similar complaint after seeing her 10-year-old daughter dangling from a purse strap in May 2022. After a few days, her daughter passed away. However, a federal judge sided with the app's developers and rejected the claim in October, citing the Communications Decency Act's Section 230, which states that social media platforms are immune from liability for content posted by third parties. "Choking challenge," like the "TikTok challenge," has been around, in some form, for decades. Between 1995 and 2007, the most recent year for which data is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 82 children and young adults (aged 6 to 19) have died while participating in some form of the challenge, The Washington Examiner noted. Experts have cautioned people against taking part in such challenges and urged social media users to report content that could put them in harm's way. According to TikTok's Community Guidelines, anything with such challenges is not allowed on the app's platform. Users who look for the "blackout challenge" on the TikTok app will now be taken to the site's Safety Center. "Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss," a spokesperson for TikTok stated. "The safety of our community is our priority, and we take any claim about a dangerous challenge very seriously. Content of this nature is prohibited on our platform and would be removed if found." READ MORE: Miss Universe CEO Denies Rigging Allegations This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Bert Hoover WATCH: Girl, 12, dies after sick TikTok choking challenge: 'Someone encouraged her' - From New York Post The homes of democratically elected officials from the Democratic Party were shot up by an unknown assailant in New Mexico. Police suspected these New Mexico shootings were politically motivated attacks, and they were right as a losing Republican candidate was the one behind all these attacks. The suspect was identified as Solomon Pena, a Republican who ran for office back in November but lost to his Democratic opponent. Like many other Republicans, he repeated former President Donald Trump's debunked claims that the elections were rigged. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Pena was an ardent Trump supporter and even went to Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. He also claimed that he lost the elections because they were rigged against him and other Republicans, even though such claims have been proven false in multiple court cases and investigations. Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina sent a SWAT team to arrest Pena, believing him to be armed and dangerous. The suspect was arrested within an hour of the police sending drones and telling him to surrender. Failed Republican Candidate Hired Gunmen to Shoot at Homes and Offices Belonging to Democrats Kyle Hartsock, deputy commander of the Police Department's homicide unit, stated that Pena was not the only suspect as he hired others to carry out at least two of the shootings. He stated that the Albuquerque police are continuing their investigations which would now involve "more warrants and interviewing more persons." The New York Times reported that one of the other suspects has been identified as Jose Trujillo, who has an unrelated felony arrest warrant. He allegedly served as the driver during the attack on the house of State Senator Linda Lopez on January 3. The car he drove belonged to Pena. READ MORE: Supreme Court Rejects Donald Trump Again The shooting hit several areas in Senator Lopez's home, including the bedroom of her young daughter. Nobody was hit at the time of the attack. A handgun was allegedly used to shoot up the home as the automatic rifle they brought malfunctioned, according to a police report. Trujillo was previously arrested on January 3 during a routine traffic stop. He was driving Pena's Nissan Maxima and police were able to search the vehicle after the arrest. They found 800 fentanyl pills, as well as two handguns. One of the handguns matched the bullet casings found at the state senator's home that same day, according to NBC News. New Mexico Politicians Praise Police for Arrest of Disgruntled Politician Mayor Tim Keller held a news conference soon after Pena's arrest. He confirmed that the attacks were politically motivated and said that they were dangerous to democracy. Meanwhile, New Mexico's Democratic Governor Lujan Grisham condemned the violence, saying, "There is no place in our society or our democracy for violence against any elected official or their families." Grisham also praised the actions of law enforcement for Pena's swift capture. Republicans also condemned Pena, with House Republican Leader Ryan Lane stating that he was grateful that nobody was injured in the attacks. The first attack happened in December at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa. Other Democrats were also attacked, including Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O'Malley, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, and finally, State Senator Linda Lopez. READ MORE: Republicans Investigated for Fake Elector Scheme in Michigan This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Rick Martin WATCH: GOP, embracing extremists and facing investigations, attacks law and ethics enforcement - MSNBC Brazil has indicted the people involved in Brazil riots, with some of the thousands of people storming government buildings in an attempt to overturn the October presidential election results. The prosecutors have requested that 39 defendants who allegedly ransacked the government buildings of Brazil be imprisoned as a preventive measure, as reported by The Guardian. Participants of the Brazil riots are facing charges such as criminal association, violent attempts to subvert the democratic state of law, staging a coup, and damage to public property, according to the prosecutor general's office statement. They also called for the seizure of their assets worth $7.7 million to help cover damages. Meanwhile, the people charged in light of the January 8 Brazil riots have yet to be named publicly. The charges alleged the protesters of attempting to install an "alternative government regime" as the "ultimate object" of their breach of government buildings. The Senate's president of Brazil, Rodrigo Pacheco, provided a list of people accused of attacking the Congress A week after, the prosecutor-general's office sent its charges to the Supreme Court. More Brazilian rioters are expected to be charged. Meanwhile, the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has voiced his regrets but denied that he caused the unrest. READ NEXT: Brazil Riots: Anderson Torres, Jair Bolsonaro's Former Security Chief, Arrested Over Alleged Collusion With Rioters Brazil Riots Probe Newly seated Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that the security force members were part of letting the mob of supporters storm the government buildings in Brazil. Lula recently removed 400 guards guarding the presidential residence after his open distrust of the military for failing to prevent demonstrators from breaching government buildings. However, the office of the president has yet to address questions on who would guard the residence amid the removal of the 400 troops. Investigations into the Brazil riots have shown intentional lapses in security, allowing the unrest to occur. Lula also told the press that there were several people from the armed forces who were complicit and allowed people in as they did not see "that the door was broken." More than 1,000 people were arrested on the day of the Brazil riots on January 8, which draws points of similarities from the United States January 6 Capitol riot. The Brazilian rioters were not charged with terrorism as such a charge would have to involve xenophobia or prejudice based on race, ethnicity, or religion, under Brazilian law. Jair Bolsonaro on Brazil Riots Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied any implied participation he had in the riots. However, Bolsonaro has consistently sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the votes, resulting in the win of Lula. Brazil's electoral court's head rejected Bolsonaro's petition to annul ballots and called the outgoing President's accusations "ludicrous" and "illicit." Bolsonaro has accused that some of the electoral court's voting machines had "malfunctioned." The Ministry of Defense in Brazil did not find any evidence of fraud or inconsistency in the electoral process report, which was published in November. Bolsonaro then fled to the country on the eve of Lula's inauguration and has been staying in Florida. READ MORE: Parts of Amazon Rainforest in Brazil Are Being Illegally Offered for Sale on Facebook Marketplace This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: Brazil congress: New CCTV footage of Bolsonaro rioters smashing up inside of presidential building - from The Telegraph Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger reportedly messaged one of the four victims on Instagram weeks before the killings. One account, which authorities believed to have belonged to Kohberger, sent a greeting to one of the female victims in late October, according to one source. However, Kohberger did not get a reply, which led to him sending several more messages to her, as reported by People. The source said that the message Kohberger sent to the victim was just, "hey, how are you?" but was sent over and over again. Authorities said that the victim may have missed Kohberger's message completely as they were into message requests. The source said that they are still trying to pinpoint how aware the victims were of his existence. Instagram users are not notified when they receive a message from someone they do not follow. The messages are then sent into a message request folder, which is separated from the original folder where messages are usually seen. The source said that there were no signs that Kohberger was getting frustrated with the lack of response from the victim's end, but that the accused suspect was "definitely persistent." READ NEXT: Idaho Murder Suspect Bryan Kohberger Says He 'Felt No Emotion,' 'Little Remorse' in Old Forum Posts Showing Troubled Past Bryan Kohberger Connection to Victims The source said that it was unclear whether the lack of response from the girl was a motive for the Idaho murder. One former Federal Bureau of Investigator said he believes Kohberger suffers from a symptom of the "incel complex." Security expert Pete Yachmetz said that the Idaho killings may have been an effort "to assert some type of dominance," according to The New York Post. Yachmetz went on to say that he believes Kohberger continued stabbing the victims as a sign of "uncontrollable rage and extreme anger." The messages were sent from Kohberger's account at the same time that the detectives claim the suspect was stalking the victims. In addition, his cellphone data pinged in the same location as the four students in the weeks leading to their murders. Kohberger was pursuing a criminology Ph.D. at Washington State University, which is 10 miles away from the University of Idaho. He has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and a county of felony burglary. Idaho Murder Case There were speculations that Kohberger attended the vigil for the four victims. It has now been debunked by new footage, showing the face of the man that online commenters mistook as Kohberger. Meanwhile, Kohberger's public defender, Anne Taylor, requested on Thursday that his next court date be pushed back until June. The prosecution agreed and the judge scheduled the preliminary hearing in June. Families of Kaylee Gonclaves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin would have to wait six more months to see Kohberger in court. The accused suspect will be housed at Latah County Jail after he was ordered to be held without any bail for a second time. READ MORE: Idaho Murders: Surviving Roommate Did Not Call 911 After Chilling Encounter With Killer Suspected to Be Bryan Kohberger This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: What Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger's online posts reveal - from ABC 7 Chicago China saw robust farm produce online retail sales in 2022 Xinhua) 16:41, January 18, 2023 BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- It is estimated that China's online retail sales of farm produce achieved a rise of about 10 percent in 2022, as the agriculture sector further embraced the booming e-commerce market. The robust agriculture e-commerce business is being built upon the country's growing farm produce processing industry. This industry is estimated to log an increase of about 4 percent in the revenue of major firms in 2023, Zeng Yande, an official with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, told a media conference Wednesday. Over 16,000 facilities for refrigerating and preserving agricultural products were built last year, Zeng said. Official data showed Tuesday that China's online retail sales expanded 4 percent year on year in 2022 to nearly 13.8 trillion yuan (about 2 trillion U.S. dollars) -- consolidating its status as the top online retail market on the planet. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for a Texas Walmart shooter who killed nearly two dozen people, including some Latinos, in 2019. During the August 3 shooting rampage, Patrick Crusius, who targeted Mexicans, went to a Walmart store in El Paso, killed 23 people, and left dozens wounded. In a one-sentence notice filed Tuesday with the federal court in El Paso, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that they will not be seeking capital punishment against the Texas Walmart shooter. However, Crusius, 24, is facing various federal hate crimes and firearms violations in addition to the murder case he is facing in state court. He has pleaded not guilty. The Associated Press reported that while federal prosecutors did not seek the death penalty for Crusius, he could still get capital punishment if convicted in state court. Federal prosecutors did not reveal why they are not pursuing the death penalty against the Texas Walmart shooter. READ NEXT: Gunmaker Sued For Selling Gun That Uvalde Shooter Used Texas Walmart Shooter Faces 90 Hate Crime Charges Patrick Crusius is reportedly facing 23 counts of committing a hate crime resulting in death and 23 counts of using a firearm to commit murder, among other charges, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. In 2020, the Texas Walmart shooter pleaded "not guilty" to 90 federal hate crime charges in the case, according to Reuters. The proceedings for his case were then delayed as prosecutors decided whether to pursue the death penalty against him. That same year, Crusius' lawyers argued that he should not face execution if convicted as he was diagnosed with severe, lifelong neurological and mental disabilities. When he was arrested minutes after the shooting, the jail's mental health professionals said the Texas Walmart shooter was in a 'psychotic state" and was treated with "anti-psychotic medication." Crusius previously posted in the now-defunct online message board, 8chan, that the Texas Walmart attack was "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas." El Paso Prosecutor Resigns for Mishandling Texas Mass Shooting Case The decision not to pursue the death penalty against the Texas Walmart shooter came less than two months after an El Paso prosecutor was forced to resign amid the rising criticism of her handling of the case. According to NPR, then-El Paso County District Attorney Yvonne Rosales, a Democrat, agreed to resign following allegations of incompetence in handling hundreds of criminal cases in El Paso, including the Texas Walmart shooting case. As for Crucius, prosecutors said that to commit his act of hate and violence against Latinos, he drove 11 hours to El Paso from his hometown of Allen, near Dallas. He used an AK-47 rifle inside the Walmart and targeted those of Mexican descent, killing 23. After officers confronted him outside, he surrendered and admitted that he was targeting Mexicans. Eight of the victims were reportedly Mexican nationals. READ MORE: Texas Woman Arrested After Randomly Firing Gun at Houses This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Rick Martin WATCH: El Paso Walmart Shooting Leaves at Least 20 Dead; Suspect in Custody - From TODAY A new allegation against George Santos has surfaced after a disabled veteran said the New York lawmaker took $3,000 from the GoFundMe campaign for his dying dog. According to the Patch, Richard Osthoff was living in a tent in an abandoned chicken coop on the side of Route 9 in New Jersey with his dog Sapphire in May 2016. A veteran's charity gave the dog to Osthoff, a disabled veteran honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2002. Osthoff told the outlet that he learned that his dog had developed a life-threatening stomach tumor and that the surgery would cost $3,00. The veterinary technician told the disabled veteran they knew someone who could help, referring to Anthony Devolder and his pet charity. Santos used the name Anthony Devolder years before he entered the political arena, and he has a pet charity called Friends of Pets United. Osthoff noted that Santos promised to raise funds for a lifesaving surgery for his service dog. He said Santos closed the GoFundMe page he set up for Sapphire after it raised $3,000 on social media and disappeared. The disabled veteran noted that Santos stopped taking his calls and texts. Another New Jersey veteran and retired police Sgt. Michael Boll helped Osthoff contact Santos. Boll told him he needed to give back the money or use it "to get Oshtoff another dog." Boll said Santos was "totally uncooperative on the phone," adding that the now New York representative told him he planned to use the money to help other animals. The retired Marine Corps veteran noted that he could not do that as the money was specifically raised for Osthoff and his service dog Sapphire. Osthoff said Sapphire died on January 15, 2017, and he even could not afford the dog's euthanasia and cremation after being out of work with a broken leg for more than a year. The New York Times reported in December that the nonprofit was unregistered. READ NEXT: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Says He Won't Force George Santos to Resign George Santos Roommate George Santos' former roommate also came forward and said the newly elected representative showed signs of "delusions of grandeur" while they were living together in New York City. Gregory Morey-Parker told "CNN This Morning" that Santos made claims about his life and personal finances that did not seem feasible. He noted that Santos would go to bars with "rolls of hundred dollar bills" and would end up having no money three days later. He also accused Santos of stealing his Burberry scarf, saying he misses his "stone check Burberry scarf." However, what concerned him was people needed to focus more on the issues. The alleged stolen scarf was seen worn by George Santos during a rally and speech on January 5, 2021. George Santos Scandal The New York attorney general's office announced in December that it is reviewing some of the issues about George Santos after he admitted to fabricating his biography details, including his education, career background, and financial disclosures. However, the office did not announce whether it had opened an official probe into Santos and declined to comment further on the issue. In an email to NBC News, Joe Murray, Santos' lawyer, said they had "not been contacted by anyone." Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres recently joined members of Santos' district in calling Federal Election Commission for an investigation into the lawmaker's campaign finances. Torres asked where did all the money come from for his campaign. Watchdog groups have also accused Santos of using campaign funds for personal purposes while hiding the source of donations and failing to submit disclosure reports in an accurate and timely manner. READ MORE: Brazil Renews 2008 Fraud Charges Against George Santos This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: Ex-Roommate Says He Never Knew George Santos by That Name - From CNN A week after Prince Harry's controversial memoir "Spare" was officially released, its sales reportedly broke official records for the fastest-selling nonfiction book in the United Kingdom. According to The Guardian, "Spare" became the fastest-selling nonfiction book since records began after it sold nearly half a million copies in the U.K. after its release on January 10. In its first week on sale, Nielsen reported that U.K. retailers sold a total of 467,183 print copies of the book, making it No. 1 on the book charts. The publisher of the most sought book, Penguin Random House (PRH), said Spare had sold 750,000 copies in the U.K. in all formats, such as hardbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks, during its first week. Out of the total number, 400,000 copies were sold on its first day of sale. Second place in this week's U.K. chart is reportedly Nathan Anthony's "Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book," which sold 31,928 copies. Larry Finlay, managing director of Transworld, noted that aside from being the fastest-selling, Spare is also the "biggest-selling memoir ever in its first week of publication." Finlay said that even the Guinness World Records had confirmed that the book was the fastest-selling nonfiction book ever on its first day of publication. Transworld is the PRH division that published the book in the U.K. Since Nielsen BookData's official printed book sales records started in 1998, Spare has reportedly been the fastest-selling nonfiction book in the U.K. The previous record was held by the first Kay Allinson's "Pinch of Nom" cookbook, which sold 210,506 copies in its first three days of release in 2019. John Cotterill, nonfiction category manager of bookstore chain Waterstones, said the sales of Spare "have been exceptional." He noted that seven days after publication, the book is still one of the fastest-selling books in Waterstones in a decade. Spare also reportedly remains No. 1 on the Amazon bestsellers chart and is the bestselling nonfiction title on the site. PRH said the book sold a combined 1,430,000 copies in the U.K., United States, and Canada during its first day of sale. It overtook former President Barack Obama's "A Promised Land," which previously recorded the publishing company's biggest first-day sales. READ NEXT: Taliban Accuses Prince Harry of 'War Crimes,' Killing Innocent People in Afghanistan Prince Harry's "Spare' Memoir Part of the memoir's popularity was the controversial issues it covered, including the Duke of Sussex's relationship with the other royal family members. Prince Harry also talked about the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and the morning after, when his father woke him up and told him what had happened. He said he remembered with "startling clarity" that his father did not cry and he did not embrace him. He also revealed in the memoir that he asked to see the secret police files related to Princess Diana's car crash years after her death. Harry wrote in the memoir that he saw many paparazzi photos of his dying mother and nobody offered help and that they were "just, shooting, shooting, shooting." The duke also claimed in his memoir that King Charles III and his wife, now Queen Consort Camilla, wanted the spotlight. Harry wrote: "Pa and Camilla didn't like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes. They'd openly scolded Willy about it many times. He noted that his father and sometimes Camilla approved damaging press leaks about him and his brother, Prince William. In 2019, William was "seething" because Charles and Camilla's people planted stories about him, Kate, and the children, the duke said in the book. Harry further noted that a news report detailing "that we'd offered to relinquish our Sussex titles" can only be found on one document: his private and confidential letter to his father. He said they did not mention it to their closest friends, but that detail was still part of a news report about them. Royal Family on Prince Harry's 'Spare' Nonfiction Book Royal expert Christopher Anderson told Us Weekly that the late Queen Elizabeth II would likely not have ignored Prince Harry's memoir. Anderson said the late Queen would probably be calmed and carry on. However, he noted that she would have probably taken some action. A palace insider told Bazaar that there was a feeling that whatever the duke said in his memoir "would just be news today, gone tomorrow." However, the source admitted that Harry's revelations have left Prince William "devastated," but he will not ignore the things his brother has shared. A former longtime palace aide believed that despite the silence of the royal family, there are several conversations about what to do about Prince Harry's Spare and what the next step could be. READ MORE: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Royal Titles Could Be 'In Danger' With New Monarch as King Charles - Royal Expert This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: Prince Harry's memoir Spare Is 'Fastest-Selling Nonfiction Book Ever' - From ITV News Ecuador's most populous city, Guayaquil, is in crisis at present as the port town has become the nation's murder capital, with drugs on the street causing major concern. Authorities earlier in the year, after one particularly destructive night, declared the situation a "declaration of war on the state" by organised crime, with a number of people killed and many more injured. This is largely down to a rise in drug-related violence, which is impacting the country in a number of different ways. For those consuming the drugs, the country is seeing higher levels of addiction, with the number of people entering private rehab significantly higher than previous years, while the number of homicides due to violent crime rising 180% from 2020 to 2021 with a total of 3,538 deaths. That's the highest number ever recorded and a staggering 80% of those murders are being attributed to gangs trying to control the importing and exporting of drugs, primarily cocaine. The violence is getting significantly more advanced and headline-grabbing, with news stories each day around decapitations, car bombs, hangings and even drones dropping explosives in areas, including prisons. Prison murders has risen dramatically, intrinsically linked to the controlling of drugs in Ecuador, while it's in the city's poorer areas where innocent people are suffering most. It's become a harrowing life for many locals, and many young people are being drawn into it due to a lack of education, healthcare and work in such areas, with the money available through drugs feeling like the only option to provide for their family. Poverty and addiction feed one another, and the lack of jobs see many turn to drugs in order to cope, which means many of the poorest areas in Ecuador now are awash with drug problems, with no real way out. According to a recent report on the subject, which interviewed a man called David, living in Guasmo, said, rather harrowingly, "there is simply no other way to survive." Today, more and more families are depending on the drug business to make ends meet in Ecuador and while men are typically on the street dealing, many women and children are also involved, packing cocaine in what feels like a produce line, with many claiming the police are either too scared to control the streets or are being bought off. The situation is only escalating and it's only expected to get worse before there's any form of light at the end of the tunnel. However, under the current legislation, the panel would be increased to 11 members, and each appointment would require only a simple majority of six votes to be approved. Parliamentarians and Cabinet ministers would be raised to three each, and attorneys would be replaced by two "public personalities," only one of whom would be a lawyer. With 7 of the panel members belonging to or associated with the ruling coalition, the government could be assured of an automatic majority. While the proposed rule change will make it simpler to approve a judge's nomination, removing those on the bench will be far more difficult because it will take at least 9 votes from what critics call a 'skewed' panel. To overturn essential laws - Israel's quasi-constitution - passed by parliament, the legislation would require a unanimous judgment by the Supreme Court. It would also eliminate "reasonability" as a basis of review for Supreme Court verdicts against government officials. 'Regime change, not legislative improvements,' Critics argue that the amendments are intended to strengthen the government's control over the Supreme Court, thus undermining the country's democratic institutions. "This is not a case of legal reform. "It is a fundamental regime shift," Yair Lapid tweeted on Sunday after details of the planned law were leaked to Israeli media. Proponents of the change, on the other hand, accuse the Supreme Court of overreach. "I am advocating for a cooling of public dialogue," Netanyahu said in televised remarks. "Respect for civil rights is the essence of democracy, beyond the separation of powers and, of course, majority rule." According to draft legislation, Netanyahu intends to reshuffle the group that selects Supreme Court justices. Thousands of protestors went into the streets of three major Israeli cities in the cold winter weather to oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu's judicial reform plan. Those opposed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the country's Attorney General. The appointment of new judges to Israel's Supreme Court Netanyahu intends to reorganize the body that selects Supreme Court justices, according to proposed legislation released. The panel now consists of nine members: three supreme court judges, two cabinet ministers, two legislators, and two lawyers. A 7-2 vote is required to ratify a judge's appointment to the Supreme Court under a compromise agreement. Laurel, MS (39440) Today Heavy rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 63F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch. Locally heavier rainfall possible.. Tonight Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 54F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%. A planning appeal has been lodged against plans to build holiday homes and farm worker accommodation beside a historic Laois house. Newshore Limited were granted permission to build eight houses for holiday rentals and two houses to accommodate farm workers at Tinnakill, Raheen. The plans, which include demolishing some existing haysheds, were approved by Laois County Council in December subject to 22 conditions. In November 2022, Tenakill House owner Kevin Lalor-Fitzpatrick lodged a submission with the council objecting to the plans. The farm buildings in question were part of the family farm on which I grew up and are part of the long and illustrious history of the Lalor family. This family included Patrick Lalor, the first Catholic MP for the Queen's County after Catholic Emancipation, and his three sons, the revolutionary writer James Fintan Lalor, the Australian rebel and national icon Peter Lalor, and the nationalist MP Richard Lalor, he wrote. He sold the land but thought the old buildings would remain in agricultural use. I did not envisage that they would be used for residential development and am strongly opposed to this idea. The new buildings which are proposed are unsuited to this rural place, and the restoration of the buildings changes the look of the fine stone buildings, which are visible from Tenakill House. I have been working with the Tenakill Lalor House Restoration Committee to preserve and restore Tenakill House. This house and the Lalor family are a very important part of the history of Co Laois. The importance of this family was acknowledged by the Australian ambassador to Ireland when he launched our programme of restoration in 2015. This development will detract from our plans to create a heritage attraction and should not be granted, he stated in his submission to Laois County Council. The Tenakill Lalor House Restoration Committee also objected to the proposal in a submission to the council. Through their architect, the committee said they had not been consulted during the design of the development. The proposed development is entirely new-build, is of suburban character and is of larger scale than the existing historic outbuildings which it would replace, they argued. The Tenakill Lalor House Restoration Committee is a community group set up with the aim of creating a visitor attraction at the birthplace of James Fintan Lalor and his brother Peter Lalor, two of the most famous and influential historical figures to have been born in the county. Great progress has been made over the past number of years to secure the structure and to rebuild lost features, and a feasibility study is currently in preparation with funding from Laois Partnership, they committee stated. The restoration of the house will be of great benefit to the cultural heritage and economic welfare of the local area, and of the wider county. To succeed, it is essential that the curtilage and setting of Tenakill House be protected from inappropriate or ill- considered development. For the reasons outlined above we urge you to refuse permission for this proposal, they added. Despite the objections, Laois County Council approved the plans and the Tenakill Lalor House Restoration Committee has now appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanala. It is due to rule on the matter on May 18. Pressure is mounting on Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe to give a statement in the Dail over his failure to declare expenses for hanging election posters. Mr Donohoe has indicated he is willing to take part in the Oireachtas process as early as possible. The statement marks a tumultuous beginning of the Dail term for the Government, after the resignation of a junior minister last week and as the senior Fine Gael minister comes under pressure to explain himself. Over the weekend it emerged that Mr Donohoe had not declared a payment made by an individual to six people to hang up his election posters ahead of the 2016 general election. The minister said he had believed the services were voluntary, but has learned in recent weeks that they were paid for, to the value of 917 euros. Mr Donohoe also admitted to learning in 2017 that a corporate van had been used to hang up posters, worth an estimated 140 euros, which had not been declared as an election expense. The minister apologised for the error, and said he had made a submission to amend his official expenses declaration. He has also argued that the expenses are within rules on maximum expenses allowed during a general election campaign. Ethics watchdog Sipo is reviewing the matter, with Mr Donohoe saying he would consider the consequences after a decision is made. Mr Donohoe has also recused himself from making decisions on ethics legislation and Sipo, which he is in charge of as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. Government ministers have backed their colleague, arguing that he has explained his actions and that the matter lies with Sipo. On Monday, opposition party whips wrote a letter to Ceann Comhairle Sean OFearghail asking that Mr Donohoe appear before the Dail at the earliest opportunity to make a statement, and to take questions over his failure to declare poster expenses. As it stands, the minister is already scheduled to take parliamentary questions at 10.30am on Thursday. Sinn Feins public expenditure spokesperson Mairead Farrell argued that the donation was not within the maximum limits, and that it should not have been accepted. The minister must come clean and thoroughly answer all of the outstanding issues, she said. The three-party coalition Government has stumbled into the new year, after junior enterprise minister Damien English was forced to resign following revelations that he did not declare already owning a property in a planning application to Meath County Council. Another junior minister for enterprise, Fianna Fail TD Robert Troy, resigned in August after he did not correctly declare properties on the parliamentary register of members interests, nor register a rented property with the Residential Tenancies Board. Following an underwhelming reshuffle in December, the Government is focusing on responding to the escalating housing crisis, after five consecutive months of record-breaking homeless numbers, rising house prices and unaffordable rents. Efforts to bolster supply have been squeezed further by a slowdown in commencements and the influx of thousands of Ukrainian nationals and other asylum seekers fleeing to Ireland. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he understands how the housing sector is holding the country back in so many different ways, and pledged that 2023 would be a year of delivery when it comes to housing. Among the other challenging issues the Government is facing are hospitals buckling under unprecedented demand for emergency care; whether the Government will extend cost-of-living measures beyond February; and a road map on PRSI increases needed over the next 10 years, which is due after the Government committed to keeping the pension age at 66. A community funded suicide prevention centre in Laois is inviting supporters to go greyhound racing. SOSAD Ireland has organised a race night at Dundalk Greyhound Stadium in Louth. The Laois branch is asking locals to go along in support. The Greyhound Race Night takes place on Sunday, February 4 on the first St Bridget's Bank Holiday weekend. "The evening would be perfect for a night out with friends, colleagues and family while supporting a local charity," says Grace Ennis, co-ordinator of SOSAD Laois. It is a family friendly event and under 14s go free with each ticket holder. Admission is 20 and includes entry to the races, a chance to win 1000, a race card, and most importantly, a donation to SOSAD Ireland. If you want to support the charity but cannot attend, you can still get a ticket to be in with a chance to win 1000. Each admission ticket includes a unique number combination. If your unique combination matches the finishing order of the feature race you have won 1000. The winner will be announced on February 4th. For information and to get tickets, check the SOSAD Ireland website. "We also have tickets for sale in the Laois office if anyone is interested," Grace added. The SOSAD Laois office is based in Shamrock House on the Abbeyleix road in Portlaoise, near the Garda station. They provide free counselling to people undergoing mental health stress, as well as group supports like mindfulness training. SOSAD also offers a webchat for teenage group support. Their office number is 083 029 1706 Email laoisoffice@sosadireland.ie A man who carried out hundreds of thefts from his supermarket app employer in the course of a month, stealing about 29,000, has been given a two year suspended sentence. Vasile Muntean was working for grocery shopping company Buymie when he took his company debit card and bought thousands of euro of items, including One4All cards, at 23 supermarkets in Dublin and Kildare. Muntean (28) with an address at Kilcronan Drive, Clondalkin, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 32 sample counts of theft from his employer on dates between February 1 and February 25, 2021. Garda Sarah Barry told Jane Horgan-Jones BL, prosecuting, that Muntean carried out 204 thefts on the dates in question, stealing a total of 29,000. About 15,000 of this was spent on One4All gift vouchers, which the court heard Muntean sold for cash to fund his drug habit. The court heard Muntean worked as a shopper for Buymie, a supermarket app which allows customers to purchase groceries online and have them delivered. As part of his work, Muntean had an assigned debit card which he used to carry out the grocery shopping for customers. However, in February 2021, he started using the card in supermarkets for his own purposes. The thefts soon came to light when the company discovered his expenditure was not tallying with the orders placed. One4All was able to reimburse Buymie almost all of the money Muntean spent on vouchers, but the company remains at a loss of 14,000. A victim impact statement from Buymie's CEO was handed into court but not read out. When arrested, Muntean was genuinely embarrassed and remorseful, Gda Barry said. He told gardai he had been struggling with a drug habit. He carried out the thefts in a period of madness, the court heard. He has no previous convictions. Muntean has since undergone drug counselling and is trying to reconcile with his partner, with whom he has three children. He now works as a food delivery driver and has saved 6,000 to give to his former employer, defence counsel said. Sentencing him today/yesterday (TUES), Judge Martin Nolan said the theft had a big impact on the company, which was a fledgling business. He noted Muntean has made efforts to deal with his drug issues and wishes to repay his former employer in full. The judge handed down a two year sentence which he suspended on a number of conditions, including that Muntean hand over the 6,000 to Buymie and save a further 8,000 to repay to the company within two years. An author will host a launch event in Newbridge to commemorate the release of her new book. Writer Maria McDonald is set to release 'The Devils Own', a historical crime fiction novel published by Bloodhound Press. Maria was born in Belfast, but lives in County Kildare, close to the military camp on The Curragh, in which this story is set. It is one of two books by Maria due to be published by Bloodhound Press in 2023, with the second, 'Tangled Webs,' due out this coming September. 'The Devil's Own' follows Brian, a former soldier who is looking forward to retiring and spending time with his wife, although he worries about adjusting to civilian life. While clearing the attic before they move house, he makes a discovery: three journals dating back to the early twentieth century. One was written by Arthur, an ex-Connaught Ranger, another by Arthurs wife, Edith, who is also a colonels daughter, and the third journal was written by Henry, a British soldier and Arthurs best friend. Brian and his wife are soon engrossed in reading the diaries and following the intertwined stories of these three people from the past. However, it soon becomes chillingly clear that these diaries contain more than the daily adventures of ordinary lives, as it soon becomes evident that one of the three is a killer. The official launch will take place at the Riverbank Arts Centre this Friday, January 20, from 6pm to 7pm. Ray Goggins, Author of 'Ranger 22', and also of 'RTE's Hell Week' fame, will feature as a guest speaker. The MC on the night will be Mario Corrigan, Kildare County Council executive librarian, author and historian. Paperback copies will be available on the night. Sales by Farrell and Nephew Bookshop. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Maria McDonald Maria McDonald, was born in Belfast but arrived in Kildare with her family in 1976, as her family fled the escalating war in Northern Ireland. Maria is an avid reader who loves to write, but only indulged in her passion for writing fiction after retirement. Since then, her short stories and articles have been published in Womans Way and Irelands Own, as well as numerous anthologies. Maria is a founder member of Ink Tank Writing Group, which is based in Newbridge Library, and contributed to their anthologies: 'Timeless in Kildare' (released in 2019) and 'Let Me Tell You Something' (released in 2020). She is married to her husband Gerry, and after raising four children to adulthood, they are having a great time with their grandchildren. Bord Gais Energy, and its parent company Centrica, is set to develop two new power plants at a cost of 250 million. Clearance works have already started at the two sites in Athlone, Co Roscommon and Profile Park in Co Dublin. Both plants are expected to be completed by the end of 2024 and full construction and design tender competitions are in progress. The plants will also be hydrogen enabled, to be ready for running on renewable gas when it is available. The plants can react to the peaks and troughs of electricity generation from renewable generators and the relative speed with which they can be switched on and off will be a key benefit. The production of green hydrogen is one of the key priorities in the governments National Energy Security Framework, which was developed to address the challenges of ensuring the long-term security of affordable energy supply. The two new plants are set to provide a combined 200 megawatts of gas fired power generation, which will provide enough power for 100,000 Irish homes all year round. The company currently has one power station in operation here which is located in Whitegate, Cork. Speaking about the investment today, Dave Kirwan, Managing Director of Bord Gais Energy said: We recognise the current difficulties facing consumers all across Ireland in relation to energy costs. Our focus is on protecting our customers as much as we can right now, while also using our financial strength to make investments that will protect them in the future. In 2022 we will make no profit in residential energy supply and have instead sought to protect customers through absorbing some of the worst increases in energy prices, supporting the most vulnerable and investing in our customer service teams and training. We have put in place an energy support fund and committed 10% of operating profit from other parts of our business to further support customers who need it most right now. Taking a longer-term view, we are committing over 250m to the construction of the two flexible gas fired generation plants in Athlone and Dublin. In addition to our existing Whitegate power station, the construction of these two new plants will help the penetration of renewables on the system while also supporting Irelands journey to net zero, Mr Kirwan said. A Bill criminalising the grooming of children into a life of crime has been approved by the Cabinet. The interim Minister for Justice, Simon Harris, today (January 18) secured approval to publish the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023, in the hopes of breaking the link between gangs and youth. The Bill will, for the first time, create specific offences where an adult compels, coerces, induces or invites a child to engage in criminal activity, the penalty for which will be up to five year's imprisonment. Speaking today, Minister Harris said, "The government is committed to building stronger, safer communities and breaking the link the link between gangs and the vulnerable young people they seek to recruit. "This legislation is aimed at preventing criminal networks from exploiting children to commit crime. Some children and teenagers are being deceived by criminal networks into believing crime can bring wealth, bling and a party lifestyle but in reality it brings debts, fear and potentially worse." He continued: "Criminal behaviour and conviction can alter the course of a child or persons life damaging employment, education, travel prospects, damaging social connections and overall leading to more negative life outcomes. "Children and teenagers can be more vulnerable to coercion or encouragement to get involved in crime and we need to protect against this. "This Bill will outlaw the grooming of children into crime by making it an offence for an adult to compel, coerce, direct or deceive a child for the purpose of engaging in criminal activity, or for an adult to induce, invite, aid, abet, counsel or procure a child to engage in criminal activity." The new offence will be a separate, prosecutable offence on top of the provisions in current law, where an adult who causes or uses a child to commit a crime can be punished as though they committed the crime themselves. The minister believes that one of the main benefits of this new legislation will lie in the ability it will give to An Garda Siochana to intervene locally to prevent offences taking place. Todays Cabinet approval comes after Minister Helen McEntee's work on the draft law in recent years, including commitments in the Justice Plans to break the link between gangs and the children they try to recruit into crime. Minister Harris intends to enact the legislation by the summer recess. According to the minister, the legislation has also been informed by the Greentown Project, which is being implemented by the University of Limerick in partnership with the Department of Justice and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. The project investigates the involvement of children in criminality and to establish interventions to tackle the problem, and has shown that criminal networks in many areas operate coercive control over young children. Minister Harris added: "This legislation will send a strong message to communities that grooming children into criminal activity is not acceptable and can be tackled, and I hope to enact it by the summer recess. "The Bill will provide an effective tool to help break that link between these children and the adults who control their offending, which in turn is likely to reduce offending by children in these circumstances." Dear Editor, It is high time we all decided to stand up and be counted in relation to our hospital crisis and thank goodness we have the opportunity to do this next Saturday with the countrywide protests planned. When Paul Reid was appointed as head man of the HSE in 2019, I felt optimistic that he might sort out the sorry mess that is the HSE. Covid got in the way and he led the HSE through that crisis. Sadly, he resigned after a very tough stint, which he was entitled to do of course. When has there not been a hospital trolley and overcrowding crisis? Is there nobody in the government or HSE with the brains and common sense to sort it out? Our politicians tell us about how much money they are spending on health, but the crisis is going from bad to worse. Health care workers are worn out and patients are suffering needlessly in the very places where they should be guaranteed a quality of care and comfort. Why are we educating and training nurses, doctors and health care workers, only to export them to countries where they have regular working hours and proper working conditions? Who can blame them for leaving Ireland? Good luck to them! Savita Halapanavar, Vicky Phelan, Aishling Murphy, all R.I.P. and Luke ONeill, all became the faces of various campaigns in this country in the past few years. I wonder if 16-year-old Aoife Johnston and 4-year-old Ahana Singh, who both died last month, will become the faces of the hospital crisis? How many people even know their names or know of the tragic facts surrounding their deaths? If the same vim & vigour, money, effort, time and national media investigation was put into the hospital crisis as was put into those other campaigns, the hospital crisis would be long sorted! Shame on our government politicians and the HSE! Everyone should be shouting from the rooftops all around the country this Saturday at 1pm, at the nationwide protests outside their local hospitals. There will be one at Sligo University Hospital. We cant afford to get sick, so can we afford to be silent? Yours sincerely, Mags Bradley, Carrick-on-Shannon. If you are one of those people who experienced the on-going overcrowding and waiting on trolleys for hours on end at Sligo University Hospital why not contact the Leitrim Observer and tell us your story. You can email editor@leitrimobserver.ie or you can contact us though our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/leitrimobserver Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has questioned a charitys report on wealth inequality saying some billionaires are all fur coat and no knickers. The Fine Gael leader was responding to questions in the Dail from People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, who raised concerns about Mr Varadkar attending the Davos summit and a report from Oxfam about wealth inequality. Mr Boyd Barrett accused Mr Varadkar of swanning around with some of the worlds richest people, some of the worlds most profitable and wealthy corporations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week. And he said the Oxfam report published on Monday revealed the absolutely gross, grotesque and growing inequality that exists between the super rich in this country and across the world. The richest 1% in Ireland hold 27% of the countrys wealth, the report said. Responding, Mr Varadkar said it would be remiss of him not to attend the World Economic Forum this week, though he is only attending for a day and a half. There are so many politicians, so many world leaders, so many business leaders in the one place for two or three days that itd be remiss not to be there, he said. Ill be able to do maybe 10 meetings, 15 meetings over the course of the next day and a half, which would otherwise take weeks to organise, and thats the advantage of the meeting. I know there are some people that believe its part of some form of world government and were all going off there to make decisions on behalf of the elites that secretly run the world. I guarantee you, deputy, if that was the case Id go for the whole thing. Mr Varadkar then defended Irelands approach to tax, arguing its income tax system is regarded to be one of the most progressive in the world. He also said Ireland has an inheritance tax of 33% compared to two-thirds of countries that do not have a tax on passing money on to descendants. He raised concerns about the methodology of a recently published Oxfam report on poverty, asking if it was net wealth or gross wealth that was measured. Because we all know from past experience some people who are billionaires on paper, or appear to be billionaires, are actually fur coat and no knickers. They have a lot of money. They have a lot of assets on paper. They also have a lot of debts and liabilities and their actual net wealth is negative or small, he said. It seems this report takes their gross wealth and that is somewhat inaccurate to me. And the second thing is they specifically refer to eight Irish billionaires. But when you look at the names of the eight Irish billionaires, most of them would be names that are familiar to you and me and most people in this house, most of them dont live here, most of them dont have their businesses based here and most of them dont keep their assets here. Why do you think that is, deputy? Its precisely because we have a tax regime that taxes wealth, much more so than other countries. How did Oxfam know how much people owe and what their debts are and what their assets are? So I would wonder about the accuracy of that and whether or not it is gross wealth or net wealth. He added: But one thing you are right about: we have seen a major increase in corporate profits around the world and in Ireland in recent years. And as a consequence of that, we in Ireland have benefited from massive receipts in corporation profit tax from those companies on a per-head basis. We get more in corporation profit tax than almost any other country in Europe; I think only Luxembourg is maybe up there and one or two others. So our low-tax regime on corporations means that we take in billions more than other countries do and that is money we use to help people, he said, adding that cost-of-living measures, such as the three energy credit and lump sum social welfare payments, were funded using these revenues. Responding to the Taoiseachs comments, Oxfam said: We can confirm that all the wealth statistics in the report are based on net wealth (assets minus debt) and not gross wealth. This is made clear throughout the report and its methodology note available here, and for the statistics used in our Irish press release. The Taoiseach was correct in saying that existing capital taxes in Ireland are relatively high by international standards (though not at higher marginal rates aimed at the richest sectors of society). However, the question of taxing unrealised capital gains is discussed in detail in the report and this is now up for debate in countries around the world. An undated photograph made available by the family of Bernard Phelan on January 18, 2023, shows French-Irish citizen Bernard Phelan in an undisclosed location. HANDOUT / AFP A French-Irish citizen held in Iran since October 2022 and now on a dry hunger strike to protest his detention will survive no more than a few days unless he is freed, his sister said on Wednesday, January 18. Bernard Phelan, a Paris-based travel consultant and one of seven French nationals held by Iran, was arrested in October while traveling and is being held in Mashhad in northeastern Iran. The 64-year-old's family has said he started a dry hunger strike on Monday, refusing water, in addition to the food hunger strike he had been on since the start of the year. His sister Caroline Masse-Phelan told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that her brother was an innocent man detained for reasons "beyond our comprehension." She said his health condition meant he had to be released urgently. "It's a matter of days," she said. "He's an innocent man caught in the middle of I don't know what. He loves Iran, he is 64, sick, and wants to go home." "He is showing serious signs of physical and psychological exhaustion," said a French diplomatic source, adding he was in a "critical state". Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes Iran: 'A regime that kills its children, rapes youngsters and massacres minorities has no legitimacy' Prisoner's 'only weapons' The Iranian authorities have so far refused to release Phelan on medical grounds despite repeated requests from the French and Irish authorities, the source said. "I think he is part of a group of Europeans imprisoned for political reasons... of which I know nothing," his sister added. "We have nothing to do with this story." Phelan is one of two dozen foreigners currently held in Iran, according to activists, who describe the detainees as "hostages" seized to extract concessions from the West. Phelan was traveling through Mashhad during the ongoing protests against Iran's clerical regime when he was arrested. He is being held in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. His sister said he suffers from a heart condition that requires medical treatment. The hunger and thirst strikes are putting his life in danger but "he is doing this because he can't take it anymore," she said. "These are the only weapons," she added, saying that it was on his urging that she had moved to make the case public. Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes Iran protests: Two more men hanged in campaign to silence dissidents 'Demand basic rights' Fellow French national Benjamin Briere, who was sentenced last year to eight years in prison on spying charges, is being held in the same jail. "Bernard Phelan is in contact twice a day with the crisis unit of the French foreign ministry, which passes on the messages from his family," the source said. But requests for direct communication with the family have been turned down by the Iranian authorities. Phelan received his first French consular visit only on January 9, after repeated requests, the diplomatic source added. Activists fear that the current downgrading of contact between Western governments and Iran over the protest crackdown has lessened the prospect of the foreign detainees being released soon. US citizen Siamak Namazi, who is of Iranian descent and was arrested in October 2015, this week started a seven-day hunger strike as he implored President Joe Biden to put greater priority on his case. "Today the whole world is witnessing how atrociously this regime can respond to those who dare demand their basic rights," Namazi said. Le Monde with AFP On January 8, several thousand right-wing rioters devastated Brazil's main institutions, located in the Three Powers Plaza in Brasilia. A specialist in the history of Brazil, Laurent Vidal is a research professor at La Rochelle University. He has devoted several books to the construction of this futuristic capital, including Les Larmes de Rio ("Rio's Tears"). His next book, Villes et histoire au Bresil ("Cities and History in Brazil"), is due to be released in March. For those who aren't familiar with it, what is the Three Powers Plaza? As its name suggests, this is the square that houses the headquarters of Brazil's three main constitutional powers: the legislative branch, with Congress; the executive branch, with the Planalto Presidential Palace; and the judiciary, with the Supreme Federal Court. It is located at the end of the Monumental Axis, an 8-kilometer-long avenue where most of the official government buildings are located. Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes In Brazil, an 'unprecedented' attack on democracy This square was conceived in a very particular context. It was 1956, and Juscelino Kubitschek (1902-1976) had just been inaugurated as president, despite serious threats of a military coup. The idea of building a new capital, which he supported, was supposed to reunify a torn society. At the time, Brazilian city planner Lucio Costa met architect Frank Lloyd Wright when he was on a trip to the United States. "Democracy hasn't built anything yet," Wright told him, suggesting that monarchies and authoritarian regimes had all built capitals, unlike modern democracies. This reflection stirred Lucio Costa and convinced him to compete to draw the master plan for Brasilia. How did this manifest itself in the Three Powers Plaza? The idea is to represent democracy in a concrete way, that is to say first of all the balance of power, hence the use of the equilateral triangle for the layout of the three buildings. On the square, these rectangular buildings resonate with each other. They look at each other and in a certain way watch and control each other. But for Lucio Costa, it was also a question of promoting the parliamentary form of democracy. Congress is the largest of the three buildings. The ground was raised so that the legislative visually dominates the legal and governmental buildings, which were placed below it. Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes A shocked Brazil shifts to the offensive after attempted insurrection Other characteristics can also be highlighted. Firstly, the monumental aspect of the buildings conveys the idea of a strong and powerful democracy. Second is the predominant use of glass facades, which were broken on January 8. In a democracy, they obviously symbolize transparency. Finally, there is the symbolism of water, which is present in numerous ponds around the buildings, allowing political life to be inscribed in a form of timelessness. You have 56.47% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only. REVENUE have seized over 210,000 worth of herbal cannabis at Shannon Airport. On Wednesday, as a result of routine operations, Revenue officers seized over 10.5kgs of herbal cannabis with an estimated value of over 210,000 at Shannon Airport. The illegal drugs were discovered concealed in a parcel that had arrived in an air cargo consignment from the United States and was destined for an address in Cork. Separately on Monday in Waterford City, Revenue officers, as a result of an intelligence led operation, seized almost 1,800 cigarettes and 5.92kgs of roll your own tobacco. The cigarettes and tobacco, originating in Turkey, were discovered following the search, under warrant, of a residential premises and have a combined retail value of almost 5,900, representing a potential loss to the Exchequer of approximately 4,500. A woman in her 30s was questioned and nvestigations into both seizures are ongoing. These seizures are part of Revenues ongoing operations targeting the shadow economy and smuggling. If businesses, or members of the public, have any information regarding smuggling, they can contact Revenue in confidence on our confidential phone number 1800 295 295. LIMERICK star Diarmaid Byrnes is likely to miss a large part of the early season after manager John Kiely confirmed that he is currently away on a 'pre-arranged' trip. The Patrickswell man was not part of the panel for Limerick's Munster Hurling League clash with Cork last weekend and won't be available for their fixture with Kerry on Sunday. He is also due to miss several of Limerick's Allianz Hurling League games due to travels. It's an absence that the Limerick manager is fully behind. "Diarmaid is away for a while and hopefully we will see him in a few weeks time again. Thats all pre-arranged. These guys have to live their lives as well. We dont own them. Hurling is a pass time for these guys, not a profession. "He is gone for a short little while but will be back again. We had other guys go away before Christmas as well. We have to have a very open mind to that side of fellas' lives. "You cant inhibit them from having life experiences outside of hurling. All the more important for us to have other experiences outside of hurling and when they come back to us they come back all the fresher and all the happier. "Thats really important for me, that these boys would have great lives outside of hurling as well." Limerick play Kerry this Sunday at Austin Stack Park, Tralee at 1pm in their last Munster Hurling League game. Kiely's men then get their Allianz Hurling League campaign underway against Cork in Pairc Ui Chaoimh on February 4. THE MUNICIPAL district of Cappamore/Kilmallock will host their monthly meeting in a more scenic location than normal in January. Councillors will hold their monthly meeting at Lough Gur Visitor Centre on Thursday, January 19. This is the first time a council meeting will be held at the site of international significance. Dara O'Brien, Senior staff officer at Limerick City and County Council said that councilors are hoping to get out to different places in the district more now that social distancing restrictions have been lifted. "During the pandemic, elected members wouldn't have been in a position to hold meetings outside of Kilmallock really due to social distancing measures. "Now that restrictions have been lifted the councillors are interested in getting out to visit more places in the municipal district. "In December we held at a meeting at Pallasgreen Community Centre which was great. Now this month we are holding one in Lough Gur as one of the main amenities in the district. "This is the first time in my time with the council anyway that a meeting has been held there, I think it might be the first time ever". The local beauty spot was awarded the first first Green Heritage Flag for Limerick in last year. The flag is in recognition of exceptional work carried out by Limerick City and County Council, the Office of Public Works and the National Monuments Service at the scenic lakeshore park and wider areas over the previous three years. The park was also officially conferred with a second Green Flag for 2022/2023 as the international mark of quality for parks and green spaces. NEW FIGURES show that the Local Enterprise Office in Limerick supported companies that created 177 jobs in 2022. According to the annual results from the offices for 2022, the LEO Limerick financially supported 305 small businesses in their portfolio across the county and these companies in turn employ 1815 people. The Local Enterprise Offices located in the local authorities and funded through Enterprise Ireland support thousands of small Irish businesses and entrepreneurs nationwide. They are the first stop shop for entrepreneurs and small businesses and provide a range of supports including financial, mentoring, training and sector specific expertise to help guide businesses at any stage of their development. The total national figures for the Local Enterprise Offices across the country were announced with the LEOs now supporting 37,863 jobs across 7,221 companies. In 2022 there were 7,870 new jobs created by LEO clients companies with a net jobs creation figure of 3,447. This was up 10% nationally on 2021. From the jobs created, 84% were outside of the Dublin region. The LEOs also provide substantial funded supports to thousands of other small businesses across the country with programmes such as the Trading Online Voucher, Lean for Micro and Green for Micro along with training and mentoring. Vincent Murray Director of Economic Development acknowledged the important role the LEO places in supporting the SME sector in Limerick city and county and congratulated the team at LEO for their excellent work during the year and the positive job figures achieved by Limerick LEO clients. The Local Enterprise Offices support small businesses, helping thousands to pivot online or adapt their products and services through a large suite of supports. LEOs offer training and mentoring in a range of areas from financial skills and product innovation to starting your own business and maximising your presence online. THE HIGH Court has been urged to fast-track any appeals to be heard over a 450m Limerick road. The judiciary is being asked to intervene on the Limerick to Foynes road project, which will include a bypass of Adare village. An Bord Pleanala granted approval for the project last summer, which will see a 35km stretch of national road constructed. However, according to national reports the permission is under challenge from two individuals, with the pair given permission to progress their case by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys this week. They are seeking to quash the approval from the national planning authority. The multi-million euro project is seen as being vital for the Ryder Cup, which is being staged at Adare Manor just four years from now. But the delay brought about by the likely High Court challenge will throw into doubt whether it will be complete in time for the showpiece event. It is for this reason, councillor Bridie Collins, who chairs Limerick's economic and planning committee and represents Adare on the local authority is hopeful the case can be "expedited". "There was an expectation there would be reviews taken against this case. It is a statutory process people are allowed to engage in and unless the law changes, we are not going to be able to change it," she said. She said it's "ludicrous" some High Court cases can take up to two years to come before a judge. "That worries me, there are no two ways about it. I respect the fact people have the right to take a review. It's well within the Irish law and needs to be protected. But why should it be taking 18 months to two years to get this? If there is a way to expedite this process, we need to be focused on that. Every single government department able to speed up this process should be doing so, and not delaying this any further," Cllr Collins said. It's a bigger issue than the Ryder Cup, the councillor stated. "The Ryder Cup is a month's installation in the life of Adare village. It's a welcomed event, and will bring huge investment and huge numbers of visitors. But it's not a long-term thing. We are dealing every day with a minimum of 17,000 vehicles coming through the village each day. There are delays on both sides. We are dealing with 25,000 vehicles on a bank holiday Friday or a Bank Holiday Monday. We need this bypass for every day living in the village. It's been choked by the traffic. It's hard to plan, tghere are huge safety issues, there are huge climate action issues because of all the traffic coming through the vilage," Cllr Collins added. She said many local people will only now come into Adare village out of absolute necessity due to the tailbacks at peak times. "We need these appeals as heard as quickly as possible, so we can crack on with the process," she concluded. A NEW MULTI-MILLION euro student village which will bring more than 200 bed spaces to the doorstep of University of Limerick (UL) has been given permission. Developers sought the green light for a development of 26 new apartments at Old Dublin Road, in a move which will see 202 beds distributed across three blocks rising up to five-storeys. An infill site was identified, with representatives of the applicants, Kearock Investments, previously warning that even with other developments under way, Limerick is facing a deficit of 2,200 student bed spaces by the academic year 2024/2025. Kearock Investments sought permission under the large scale residential development scheme, a newly introduced fast-track planning process designed to alleviate the housing crisis. Planning consultant on the project Adam Kearney hailed the "positive planning news", and described the scheme as "much-needed". "Two-hundred and two bed spaces that will serve to lessen the deficit in the coming years," he added in a tweet. Positive Planning news in Limerick today! @LimerickCouncil granted permission for a much needed Student Accommodation Scheme on the the Old Dublin Rd. We acted as Planning Consultants for the project. 202 bed spaces that will serve to lessen the deficit in the coming years. pic.twitter.com/msc7aPVqZ8 Adam Kearney (AK Planning) (@planning_ak) January 18, 2023 Previously, Mr Kearney had told LimerickLive: The scheme provides for much-needed purpose-built student accommodation in close proximity to the UL campus at Plassey. At present, there is a substantial deficit in the quantum of student accommodation available. Dedicated facilities like this one will serve to free up traditional housing for the private rented sector. In planning documents to the local authority, the developer stated that outside of the college academic year, the facility may be used for tourist accommodation, and those studying at summer schools in Limerick. In a bid to eliminate traffic congestion, Clarisford, which has done a student management survey, added when selecting occupants for the facility, prospective residents without cars will be given priority. Eighteen groups and individuals wrote to council in opposition to the project, including a joint submission from Fianna Fail councillors Kieran O'Hanlon and Catherine Slattery. They expressed concern the size of the building would "set an undesirable precedent for future development of suburban locations in Limerick," adding the shadow generated by the complex would be "stark and disturbing". The councillors said they would be willing to engage with the developer to "agree a suitable approach while also protecting the residential amenity of the local residents." Despite this, council planners gave the development the go-ahead subject to a number of conditions. LIMERICK'S longest-established and largely successful university Mary Immaculate College (MIC) will be host its first Open Day of 2023 this Saturday between 10am and 1pm. The college, at South Circular Road in the city, has a long-standing reputation for offering some of the best arts and humanities and educational courses in the country. Aoife Gleeson, President of the Student Union at MIC, is encouraging potential students to attend this weekend's event. MIC has so much to offer on both our Limerick and Thurles campuses. There is a range of great programmes, clubs and societies, and student supports that make MIC a fantastic place to study, she said. On the Open Day the college will present an overview of their 13 different undergraduate programme options, over 30 postgraduate programme options at all diploma levels and expansive facilities. Prospective students will also get an opportunity to meet the lecturers and students of the campus. The college's expansive Bachelor of Arts course (MI002) boasts 13 subjects ranging from Philosophy to Mathematics and Computer Studies, and all that is in between. The popular Bachelor of Education degree is famous nationwide and beyond for its excellence and is also on offer along with the new Bachelor of Science in Psychology degree and plenty more. A range of postgraduate degrees are also on offer and bolster the expansive roster of courses available in the college. These courses connect the ever-growing need of combining the needs of workplaces all over the world and the knowledge of students and can be an excellent bridge for students between scholarship and the workplace. Dr Emma O'Brien, Director of Taught Postgraduate Studies in Education said Our postgraduate programmes in the Faculty of Education strive to proactively consider the contemporary needs of our educators now and into the future. We provide a learning experience that is inclusive flexible to our students needs, it aims to connect students to a wide postgraduate and professional community national and internationally and their learning with the professional contexts in which they work. Funding and scholarships are also available for students including the new Ashling Murphy Scholarship awarded by MIC and the Irish National Teachers Association in remembrance of the late Ashling Murphy who passed away tragically last year. This is awarded for excellence in the field of traditional Irish music for first year Bachelor of Education students. Registration for the Open Day at MIC is open on the MIC website. THE UNIVERSITY of Limerick (UL) has launched an energy research project offering the opportunity for people in Limerick to install free smart sensors to monitor and reduce building energy use. The research, led by principal investigator, Professor Stephen Kinsella of UL, and funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, is part of the SmartLab project which adopts a living lab approach to examine financial and technical barriers to the use of smart technologies in Irelands buildings. The project was launched this Wednesday at the Citizen Innovation Lab, a collaborative space hosted by Limerick City and County Council (LCCC) and UL at the UL City Centre Campus. The initiative will test new ways to make buildings smart-ready, so they can better respond to the needs of occupants, cost less to run, and be ready to interact with a future decarbonised energy grid. Local building owners and occupants are invited to join the project, receiving free energy monitors and environmental sensors to install in their buildings, and free expert analysis of how healthy and energy efficient their building currently is. Up to 100 building owners and occupants in Limerick city will be installing sensors provided by SmartLab to monitor their buildings temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels. The project team will support participants to understand far more about how their buildings use energy, giving them more power to lower energy costs and make good decisions about their buildings future. This is a cutting-edge project that places Limerick at the forefront of collaborative approaches to empowering smart energy citizens, said Professor Kinsella at the launch. We are looking forward to working with people in Limerick city centre to explore how they can use smart sensor technology in their buildings and be part of the clean energy transition. The knowledge we develop together will be shared widely with policymakers at national and international levels, Professor Kinsella said. Head of Climate Acti Innovation at LCCC Rosie Webb also commented: As we embark on preparing a Climate Action Plan for Limerick it is important that we empower owners and occupiers to understand how they can reduce their energy use immediately by using sensor data through behavioural change in the first instance and then energy retrofitting subsequently. This project will provide participants an opportunity to explore where the best opportunity lies, she added. How are law enforcement departments improving diversity? Many are turning to HBCUs, according to "In an Effort to Diversify, Cleveland Police Look to HBCUs," a January 9, 2023, article from the Marshall Project, which quotes Lincoln University of Missouri Police Chief Hill (in feature photo) and the Lincoln University Law Enforcement Academy (LULETA). "HBCU graduates are described by professors and administrators as highly educated, culturally competent, critical thinkers, and trained to be servant-leaders individuals who prioritize their communitys success, and could help change negative attitudes toward policing in communities of color. Those are crucial skills for departments with demographics like Cleveland, with a history of mistrust between Black residents and police," according to the article. The article highlights how Lincoln was the first HBCU in the country to start a police academy. "'Our academy is different from most academies,' Hill said. We teach the required Peace Officer Standards and Training, but we also talk about things that we can do to make our neighborhoods better.' 'You can find crime anywhere, but can you solve problems within your neighborhoods? To me, that is true policing.' Read the full article. BENGALURU: GoMechanic has made errors in judgement in financial reporting and as a result is laying off 70% of its staff as part of a restructuring process, according to a LinkedIn post by Amit Bhasin, founder of the Sequoia-backed firm. We take full responsibility for this current situation and unanimously have decided to restructure the business while we look for capital solutions. This restructuring is going to be painful and we will, unfortunately, need to let go of approx. 70% of the workforce. In addition, a third-party firm will be conducting an audit of the business. While the situation is far from anything we could have ever imagined for GoMechanic, we are working on a plan which would be most viable under the circumstances," said Bhasin in the post. The layoffs will be across functions, including those who work on-site. GoMechanic was in talks to raise $75 million to $80 million in a funding round led by SoftBank, but the deal was called off due to accounting irregularities. SoftBank was in talks to invest about $35 million in the company through its vision fund, with participation from the Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional. The deal is said to have been called off due to financial irregularity and market conditions where investors tightened the due diligence process, according to people familiar with the deal. News outlet The Morning Context first reported the layoffs and a forensic audit on Tuesday. According to Tracxn data, 25.5% of the stake is owned by founders while the largest shareholder Sequoia owns 26.8%, Tiger Global has 10% and Orios Venture Partners own 17.1% of the company. This is not the first time that a portfolio company of Sequoia India has landed in a controversy. On previous occasions, Sequoia has also undertaken forensic audits at multiple portfolio startups including big names such as BharatPe, Trell, and Zilingo. Three workshop franchisees Mint spoke to in Bengaluru said they have not received any communication from GoMechanic. All three workshops confirmed GoMechanic has not paid the dues in the last few months stating a cash crunch. GoMechanic competes with competitors like Pitstop, GoBumpr, Carpathy, and Mahindra First Choice in the aftermarket automotive service scene. The company does not have a franchisee-led model, nor does it charge franchisee fees from workshops. Instead, it operates on a revenue share model so the amount of business that they do per month is recorded at the workshop management system. In June 2021, GoMechanic raised $42 million as part of its Series C funding round led by Tiger Global. Before this funding, GoMechanic raised $14.7 million in a Series B funding round in December 2019. In January 2019, the startup raised $4.9 million (around 35 crore) in its Series A funding round, which was led by Sequoia and Orios Venture Partners. In December 2016, it raised $250,000 (nearly 1.68 crore) from seed investment and innovation platform Venture Catalysts. In 2017, GoMechanic acquired car servicing and repair startup VOW CarClinic. THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES sits on a rich fossil bounty. ADNOC, the national oil company, is one of the worlds top hydrocarbon producers. Two months ago the uae hosted some 140,000 delegates at the planets largest oil-and-gas jamboree. Against the backdrop of the worst energy crisis in decades, you might have expected much gloating about how the Persian Gulfs carbon-spewing exports helped avert a bigger shock. That made the keynote address by Sultan Al Jaber, the UAEs minister of industry, all the more remarkable. Mr Al Jaber repeatedly highlighted the importance of greening this brownest of industries. ADNOC is making todays energy cleaner while investing in the clean energies of tomorrow," he intoned. In the past the grandees of the Gulfs energy industry limited themselves to defending fossil fuels. Now many, like Mr Al Jaber, profess a commitment to decarbonisation. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have announced targets of net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2060. The UAE and Oman say they will get there by 2050. Qatar has no net-zero target, but says it will cut emissions by a quarter by 2030 relative to a scenario that assumes business as usual. All the Gulf countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge, which commits them to reduce emissions of that potent greenhouse gas. The UAE will even host the annual UN climate summit in 2023. Some suspect this is greenwash: all soothing noises and toothless targets after years of denying climate science and obstructing efforts to tackle global warming. On this view, the Gulfs governments are too reliant on the revenues generated by the national energy firmswhich account for a big share of state budgets (see chart 1)to be serious about decarbonisation. Yet an examination of the leading companies investment plans reveals a genuineand in some cases rather largebet on green technologies. View Full Image (Source: The Economist) This is worth scrutinising, because the firms behind the effort matter beyond their region. National energy companies in other parts of the world look to the Gulf behemoths, and especially to ADNOC and Saudi Aramco, the Arab kingdoms oil colossus, as examples to emulate. Where two of the worlds biggest energy firms go technologically and strategically, their state-run peers elsewhere often follow. The Gulf oil champions approach rests on two pillars. The first is deep brown: it involves doubling down on oil and gas. Bolstered by high crude prices, the regions energy firms are investing heavily to expand output. Aramcos capital expenditure in 2022 will come to $40bn-50bn. It is promising even bigger sums in the next few years, as it aims to lift its oil-production capacity from roughly 12m barrels per day (b/d) to 13m by 2027. ADNOC will spend $150bn on capital projects by 2027 with the goal of boosting capacity from roughly 4m to 5m b/d. Qatar Energy will plough $80bn between 2021 and 2025 into expanding production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by two-thirds by 2027. For most energy firms, doubling down on fossil fuels during the transition to a carbon-constrained world would be financial folly. Every national oil company in the world wants to be the last one standing", observes Patrick Heller of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, an American NGO. Naturally, not all of them can be." The Gulf giants, with their vast, low-cost reserves, are the likeliest to prevail. As such, their huge investments in new production could pay off, Mr Heller thinks, even if global demand declines dramatically in the years to come". Oilmen betting on oil is nothing new. But the Gulf giants latest wagers suggest they no longer have their heads in the sand about the future of oil demand. They are keenly aware that their best customers in the developed world are going to crack down on carbon emissions, argues Mariam Al-Shamma of S&P Global, a research firm. Policies like the EUs carbon border tax, the details of which member states approved on December 18th, are a sign of things to come. To be the last producer standing, you need more than just the lowest cost," Ms Al-Shamma says. To ensure their longevity, the Gulfs oil champions also intend to be the cleanest producers of fossil fuels. They enjoy a natural advantage. Their hydrocarbon reserves are among the least carbon-intensive to extract (see chart 2). The Emiratis and the Saudis have also made an effort to reduce this carbon intensity further with high operational efficiency and low gas flaring, notes Olga Savenkova of Rystad Energy, a research firm. ADNOC is spending $3.6bn on subsea power cables and other kit to replace natural gas burned at its offshore facilities with clean energy from onshore. This is both green and, potentially, good business. Ms Al-Shamma reckons that grades of crude made with fewer emissions will fetch a premium, a trend already seen in the LNG market. View Full Image (Source: The Economist) The second pillar of the Gulfs strategy is more intriguing. It involves investing part of todays fossil windfall in the clean-energy technologies of tomorrow. The regions governments are making some of the worlds biggest bets on carbon capture and storage, renewables and hydrogen. A wave of low-carbon projects is building in the Middle East," marvels one analyst. Saudi Arabia holds major advantages in decarbonisation," says Jim Krane of Rice University in Texas. He points to vast tracts of empty, sunny land with a geology tailor-made for storing carbon emitted in adjacent industrial areas. Aramco plans to develop capacity to capture, store and utilise 11m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and to install 12 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar power by 2035. Overall, Saudi Arabia aims to build 54GW of renewable capacity by 2032. Not to be outdone, the UAE is eyeing 100GW of renewable-energy capacity by 2030, at home and abroad, up from a cumulative investment in 15GW-worth in 2021. That would make Masdar, a state-controlled clean-energy outfit in which ADNOC has a stake, the worlds second-biggest developer of clean energy. It recently bought a British firm developing energy-storage technology. The Gulfs biggest green bets concern hydrogen. If it is made using renewables as opposed to natural gas, hydrogen is a clean fuel. Investments in the needed infrastructure are proliferating the world over, from Gujarat to Texas. In 2021 the UAE inaugurated its regions first such green hydrogen" plant. ACWA Power, a Saudi utility, has almost completed financing for a $5bn green-hydrogen project. Oman, whose oil reserves are smaller and costlier to exploit than those of its bigger neighbours, is talking of a $30bn investment in what could be the worlds largest hydrogen plant. It has launched a state-owned hydrogen entity to offer green-hydrogen projects concessions in its special economic zones. The Saudis and Emiratis are also looking abroad. Masdar is investing in a $10bn hydrogen venture in Egypt; developing 4GW of green-hydrogen and renewables projects in Azerbaijan; and has invested in a firm working on green hydrogen in northern England. ACWA Power is eyeing multibillion-dollar green-hydrogen projects in Egypt, South Africa and Thailand. By 2030 both the UAE and Saudi Arabia want to control a quarter or more of the global export market for clean hydrogen. Ben Cahill of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, sees the two countries moving aggressively on hydrogen and ammonia (which can serve as a less fiddly medium to transport the gas). They want to acquire first-mover advantage by securing deals with buyers from Asia and Europe. Qatar is spending more than $1bn on a plant to make blue ammonia" from natural gas. It is scheduled to open in 2026. If the hydrogen economy takes off, estimates Roland Berger, a consultancy, it could produce between $120bn and $200bn in annual revenues for Gulf countries by 2050. That is far less than they now make from oil and gas; Aramco alone had sales of more than $300bn in the first half of 2022. But it is serious moneyand, given the real risk of an end to the oil bonanza, suggests that the Gulfs green efforts ought to be taken seriously. 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com Tata Motors Ltd and Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd are locked in a price war as they battle for dominance in Indias electric sport utility vehicle (e-SUV) market, in which Tata currently holds nearly 80% share with its Nexon EV range. Mahindras recent launch of the electric XUV400 has put pressure on Tata, prompting it to cut prices across the Nexon EV range and introduce lower-priced trims in the long-range variant of the SUV, Nexon EV Max. View Full Image Graphic: Mint Tata Motors sells the Nexon EV in two variants: Prime, with a 30.2 kWh battery, and Max, with a larger 40.5 kWh battery. The Prime variant has a 312km range on a single charge, and the Max variant, with an upgraded range of 453km, will be available to customers starting on 25 January. Existing owners can also upgrade through an over-the-air software update. You might also like How covid hit basic reading and maths skills Why India needs a fresh fertilizer policy New nano-urea plants will offset burden of mounting subsidy The base variant of the Nexon EV Prime will now be sold at 14.49 lakh ex-showroom, down from 14.99 lakh, whereas the top trim of the Nexon EV Max has seen the steepest price cut, from 19.84 lakh to 18.99 lakh. Moreover, Tata Motors has introduced two new trims in the long-range Nexon EV, which accounts for nearly half of Nexon EV sales. Tata Motors has cut the price of its Nexon EV to match Mahindras XUV400 extended-range variant. The XUV400 EC starts at 15.99 lakh ex-showroom and offers a 375km range on a single charge with a 3.3 kW charger, whereas the same trim with a 7.2kW charger is priced at 16.49 lakh. The XUV400 EL, with a 475km range, is priced at 18.99 lakh. Mahindra plans to raise prices for the XUV400 after receiving its first 10,000 bookings. It will start deliveries in March for its extended-range variant, while the XUV400 EC will come to the market around the festive season. Tatas move to cut prices comes as lithium-ion cell costs rise and new battery safety standards are set to increase EV costs by 1-1.5% in April. Because we have the lions share of the market, we are also expanding the market. There may be an impact on margins, but we arent taking a hit because we are passing on the benefits of localization, incentives under the PLI scheme, and our efforts on smart engineering, which has enabled us to achieve a rationalization in our costs", Vivek Srivatsa, head of marketing and sales, Tata Motors. We took a price increase in the second half of last year in response to the cost increases we were seeing and the burden we anticipated going ahead. Now, we wanted to revisit our costs with a comprehensive view because we have not only a wide range within the Nexon EV model line but also models such as the Tiago EV, which sit below the Nexon EV, so we wanted to achieve the correct relative positioning." Tata Motors will also hike the prices of the Tiago EV once it fulfils its first 20,000 orders. If costs go up in the coming months, whether due to the new battery rules or battery prices, we will have to respond. We are not ruling it out," Srivatsa said, responding to whether the company will look to hike prices in the coming months as cost pressures build up. Srivatsa is confident in Tata Motors market positioning as he views any competition as perceived" until the products are delivered to the customers. All our products are immediately available for booking, and we are delivering the new variants as early as April. We arent asking the customer to wait for 8-9 months," he said. Elsewhere in Mint In Opinion, Rahul Jacob says forecasts of Chinas manufacturing fall are foolhardy. Manish Sabharwal & Sunil Chemmankotil write on the software sectors Antyodaya approach. Parmy Olson says Facebooks Zuckerberg could soon face the threat of prison. Long Story narrates the breakdown of Auto Expo. U.S. authorities designated cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato Ltd. as a primary money-laundering concern and charged its founder for allegedly facilitating money laundering for criminals. India has told the International Monetary Fund that it strongly supports Sri Lanka's debt restructuring plan as the island nation seeks a $2.9 billion loan from the global agency, according to a letter seen by Reuters. "We hereby confirm our strong support for Sri Lanka's prospective (loan) program and commit to supporting Sri Lanka with financing/debt relief consistent with restoring Sri Lanka's public debt sustainability," wrote Indian finance ministry official Rajat Kumar Mishra to the IMF chief. According to Bloomberg, Sri Lankas debt negotiations with China and India 'are successful,' according to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, thus bringing the bankrupt nation closer to clearing a major hurdle to unlock $2.9 billion from the International Monetary Fund. President Ranil Wickremesinghe who is also finance minister, spoke before the parliament Tuesday, without providing details. Before that, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News that India formally notified that it would support Sri Lankas debt restructuring plan late Monday. Sri Lanka still needs similar assurances from China, Japan and so-called Paris Club members before the IMF board can approve the loan program. Sri Lanka concluded debt restructuring talks with Japan, Wickremesinghe said last week, without sharing details. A delegation from China is scheduled to be in Sri Lanka through January 18 and Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar is expected to visit from January 19 ahead of the island nation celebrating 75 years of Independence . Until recently, debt negotiations yielded little progress since Sri Lanka defaulted in May, with creditors bickering on the size of losses they are willing to accept and whether local debt should be included in the restructuring. Sri Lankas end-2022 target for IMF board approval has already been missed. The IMF bailout will help Sri Lanka whcih needs funds to continue helping its economy that has fallen deeper into recession amid high inflation and elevated borrowing costs. While the government has made some progress, with basic goods like food and fuel becoming more available in the past months, Sri Lanka is still is a long way from recovery. It has relied on repurposed funds from multilateral lenders and aid from friendly nations for relief. (with inputs from agencies) Tuesdays headlines of a decline in Chinas population for the first time in six decades stood like neon billboards above articles that predicted huge economic challenges ahead for the country. The government said that 9.6 million people were born in China last year while 10.4 million died. That the news coincided with Beijing confirming that GDP advanced by just 3% in 2022 seemed to underline such gloomy forecasts. Certainly, Chinas inadequate health and social services spending will be under siege as its population ages; we already see a foreshadowing of this in its inexplicable inability during the pandemic to adequately vaccinate its above-60 population. You might also like How covid hit basic reading and maths skills Electric price war erupts as Tata, M&M fight for SUV edge Why India needs a fresh fertilizer policy New nano-urea plants will offset burden of mounting subsidy Chinas challenges in the medium term, however, are actually more about reducing its addiction to property and infrastructure-led growth and engineering a soft landing from the excessive debt build-up in the economy. Domestic private sector debt as a percentage of GDP was a staggering 183% in 2020, according to World Bank data. Even this understates the scale of the problem as local government debt is counted separately. The leap of logic from pointing to Chinas population decline and arguing that it can no longer be the factory of the world may make for catchy investment bank research reports, but does not stand up to scrutiny. As it happens, the news that China saw a drop in its population last year coincided with the publication of an in-depth study of Apples overwhelming dependence on China for manufacturing its range of products, from iPhones to Macs, on the very same day. According to an article in the Financial Times, Apple still depends on China for more than 95% of its output of these flagship products. Research firm Centrepoint forecast that even by 2024, China will account for about 90% of iPhone production. So much for friend-shoring as the world deals with an aggressive Beijing. Apple knows it has an overdependence problem and that lawmakers in Washington will not look kindly at these staggering statistics. But the worlds most complex supply chain is in effect semi-permanently embedded in China. To radically change that would be akin to asking CEO Tim Cook to swap his DNA. China accounts for 70% of smartphone production globally. The FT article used ISO 9001 certification as a proxy to gauge Chinas dominance" in global manufacturing. China has more than 426,000 enterprises with that certification or 42% of the global total. For India, the equivalent figure was 36,505. Manufacturing experts say the issue is not as simple as moving assembly plants for these products out of China. The problem is that component manufacturers and other vendors are concentrated in south China. This regionthe province of Guangdong especiallyalso has among the most efficient ports and customs clearance, thus enabling components and products to cross borders easily to tap into supplies from South Korea or Taiwan, and makes it difficult for global multinationals to diversify. Between 2010 and 2013, I was a reporter based in Hong Kong with access to factories run by its incredibly nimble entrepreneurs. As the Guangdong government pushed up wages by double-digit levels every year from 2010 to drive out low-value firms, Guangdongs role as factory to the world remained resilient even as its factories became more focused on electronics. I found myself on occasion outside the factory owned by Taiwans Foxconn where Apples products are made. It resembled a township more than a manufacturing plant; it then had 250,000 workers. It was hard not to feel overawed. Even garment and toy factories started using robots to stay in southern China despite its higher costs. A report from the International Federation of Robotics confirms that China is the only developing country among the worlds top 10 countries in terms of deploying robots in factories. South Korea leads the pack, based on 2020 data, with 932 robots installed per 10,000 employees; China is ninth with 246 robots. Even this appears to be an undercount, as Hong Kong is listed with 275 robots per 10,000 employees but the vast majority of these are almost certainly in south China. This record of increasing automation and rising productivity well ahead of other developing countries make it delusional to write off China as a global manufacturing powerhouse just because its population is declining and its belligerence has left it with fewer friends in the world. Conversely, simplistic claims about the 2020s being Indias Decade" partly because of offshoring of production need to be treated with scepticism. We have heard for 20 years now that Indias demographic dividend somehow makes it inevitable that it will rival China as an offshore base. Instead, Vietnam, with less than 100 million people, is well ahead in that race. Amita Batra, a professor of economics at JNU, uses foreign value added (FVA) as a proportion of gross exports as a proxy to calculate a countrys integration with global value chains used by multinationals. Between 2010 and 2018, Vietnam registered an annual increase of 17.3% in the FVA component of its gross exports," she wrote in Business Standard earlier this month. The equivalent figure for India and the rest of Asia was less than 5%. In addition, Vietnam grabs every chance it can of joining a major free trade agreement, while New Delhi takes years to negotiate its so-called early harvest" or preliminary agreements with such supply-chain nonentities as the UK and Australia. It should be clear by now that manufacturing supply chains are centred in North Asianot where India fancifully wishes them to be. Rahul Jacob is a Mint columnist and a former Financial Times foreign correspondent. Elsewhere in Mint In Opinion, Manish Sabharwal & Sunil Chemmankotil write on the software sectors Antyodaya approach. Parmy Olson says Facebooks Zuckerberg could soon face the threat of prison. Long Story narrates the breakdown of Auto Expo. If you do not have a current print subscription to the Lodi News-Sentinel, but want to view unlimited articles for the month, please choose this option. A father of 16 who has turned a corner in his life after racking up 118 previous convictions was given the benefit of a suspended prison sentence at Longford District Court. William McDonnell (49) of 34 College Park, Longford was before Judge Bernadette Owens on five charges. The defendant entered a plea of guilty to engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour on January 25, 2021 at Mullingar General Hospital and failing to comply with Garda direction on the same date. Pleas were also entered for driving without a divers licence on December 5, 2021 at Congress Terrace, Longford, the theft of men's clothing valued at 37 from Penneys, Longford on July 30, 2022 and the theft of clothes valued at 70 from Dunnes Stores Longford on October 20, 2022. Addressing the judge Mr McDonnell said: I have been in and out of jail for the best part of my life and I am very, very sorry. I've had enough of it. I have lost my future and have done wrong, but I don't want to be here ever again. Solicitor John Connellan described his client as being particularly down on his luck. Mr Connellan added: His son died last year and this has had a profound effect on Mr McDonnell. Sergeant Mark Mahon told the court the defendant has 118 previous convictions, primarily for road traffic and drug possession offences. Mr Connellan said, My client does have a history of drug use, but he has turned a corner in his life. Longford senator feared for family's safety in wake of online threats A Fine Gael senator has told of how a "faceless" tirade of online social media abuse ended with threats being made to sterilise his children. The court was told Mr McDonnell has previously lived in a caravan at Ballyminion, Athlone Road, Longford, but now engages with St Vincent de Paul and lives in St Martha's Hostel in Longford town. Acknowledging his appalling record Mr McDonnell said he no longer takes drugs, but added: I'll be honest, I do still smoke a bit of weed, before asking Judge Owens for a 'final chance'. Mr Connellen put forward the case for giving his client getting an opportunity to stay away from crime and be an upstanding member of society. This is the first time we have had a report from any care worker who has a positive thing to say about Mr McDonnell, the solicitor said regarding a care workers report on the defendant. Mr Connellan said the father of eight sons and eight daughters was endeavouring to establish a relationship with his children. He acknowledged that the defendant's wife received a three month custodial sentence for her part in one of the offences before the court. Referring to his health status Mr McDonnell said: If I get jail, I won't be able for it. Judge Owens referenced the defendant's extensive previous conviction and also his significant health issues in her summation of the case. She said: I know Mr McDonnell has made considerable progress with regard to the role he should be playing in the lives of his children, because of this I am prepared to give him one final opportunity. The judge registered a conviction and and sentence the defendant to six month in prison for the public order charge at Mullingar Hospital, but suspended it for 18 months on the defendant own bond of 250. A further suspended sentence of four months was imposed concurrent to the first convictions for the insurance charge which also attracted a disqualification from driving for a period of 20 years. All other matters were taken into consideration. Judge Owens concluded by saying: You should be going to jail. You are getting a suspended sentence, this is your one chance. If you return before this court you will most likely be going into custody. Some of Longfords best up and coming craft and design businesses will attend Showcase 2023, taking place in the RDS in Dublin on January 22-24. The event will be attended by international buyers and over 100 companies from across Ireland. County Longford will be represented by local businesses showcasing their products and services. Wendy Knight of Wendy Louise Designs, a local milliner producing bespoke hats and headpieces with excellent craftmanship, and traditional skills will attend. Annarita Monaldi of Craft Around the Clock will show their knitted, crocheted and textile jewellery, accessories and home furnishings at the event. Alison Bray of Sonas Aromas, producers of natural aromatherapy products including candles, reed diffusers, wax melts and pulse points will also represent County Longford. Showcase 2023 is one of the countrys largest international trade shows and is the pinnacle event in the global design and crafts calendar. It will open its doors to thousands of buyers from across the world, including the USA, Europe and Asia. Showcase is presented on behalf of Design and Crafts Council Ireland, with support from Enterprise Ireland and the Local Enterprise Offices. Sales orders of over 20 million are generated during the Showcase tradeshow. Recent participants from Longford include the likes of Kilteel Coppercraft, Gene Rhatigan Art and Wendy Louise Designs. In 2022 there were thousands of buyers from 25 countries in attendance at the event in the RDS and it is expected this will increase again in 2023 following the lifting of Covid restrictions that were still in place early last year. Local Enterprise Office, Longford Head of Enterprise Michael Nevin believes this is an opportunity like no other for up-and-coming craft and design clients looking to make that break through. He said. To be exposed to this many high-quality buyers in one place is an incredible opportunity for any business. If things go well at this event, a business could fill their book for the year and may well establish a partnership that could extend longer than that and help them grow. While that wont happen for every business, just to be here, see other clients, get new ideas and develop their skills in marketing and sales will stand to them. For further information on Showcase contact Anna Lane at the Local Enterprise Office Longford on 043 334 3349 or alane@leo.longfordcoco.ie. Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases, Seasonal & Current Events, Politics By Jacob Alvear Published: January 16 2023 13 State Landmarks To Be Lit the Evening of Monday, January 16 Lighting Commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life, Legacy, and Impact on Creating a More Just and Equal Society Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that New York State landmarks will be lit red, green and black tonight, January 16, 2023, to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Governor Hochul proclaimed January 16, 2023 as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to commemorate the 94th birthday of one our our country's most influential leaders. "Amidst the recent rise in bigotry, division, and hate across this country, it is more important than ever that we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachings on justice, peace, equality and love," Governor Hochul said. "Here in New York, we must recommit ourselves to these same principals and work towards a more united New York where all residents can live and thrive in peace." The landmarks to be lit in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day Include: One World Trade Center Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge Kosciuszko Bridge The H. Carl McCall SUNY Building State Education Building Alfred E. Smith State Office Building Empire State Plaza State Fairgrounds - Main Gate and Expo Center Niagara Falls The "Franklin D. Roosevelt" Mid-Hudson Bridge Grand Central Terminal - Pershing Square Viaduct Albany International Airport Gateway MTA LIRR - East End Gateway at Penn Station New York State's annual commemoration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will be presented as a statewide broadcast event, "New York State Celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Paths to Change," which will be screened on Friday, January 13 at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center and will be streamed at empirestateplaza.ny.gov/ nyking. The one-hour tribute to Dr. King showcases people and organizations from across New York State that embody the principles of one of America's most significant leaders for social justice, freedom, and equality. Program times will vary by region, and viewers are encouraged to check their local TV listings. New York State is also hosting several service-related programs to fulfill Dr. King's vision of community, including the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Statewide Food Drive, which concludes February 10, and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Statewide Book Drive, which runs February 20 through April 21. People are also encouraged to view the New York State Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Art and Essay Exhibition, which features submissions from K-12 students throughout the state that are inspired by Dr. King's Six Principles of Nonviolence. The virtual gallery is available at empirestateplaza.ny.gov/ nyking. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a federal holiday in the United States, observed on the third Monday of January each year to honor the legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Here are 10 interesting facts about this important holiday: Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first observed as a national holiday in 1986, after legislation was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. However, it wasn't until 2000 that all 50 states officially recognized the holiday. The holiday was established to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., who was born on January 15th, 1929. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is one of only four federal holidays in the United States that are officially designated as "national holidays" rather than "legal holidays." The holiday is also observed as a state holiday in some states, such as California and New York, and as a civic holiday in some cities and municipalities. The holiday is marked by a variety of events and activities, including parades, community service projects, and educational programs. Many organizations and schools also use the day to highlight King's contributions to the civil rights movement and his message of nonviolence and social justice. The holiday is also a day of service, where many people participate in community service projects and volunteer work. This is a way of honoring King's message of social justice and civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is also observed as a day of remembrance and reflection, with many churches and religious organizations holding special services and ceremonies to honor King's legacy. The holiday was celebrated for the first time on January 20, 1986, three years after King's death. It was the first national holiday to honor an African American. Police Bust Suspect Who Attempted to Phone Scam Elderly Long Beach Man Out of Over $5,000 Crime By Chris Boyle Published: January 18 2023 Detectives arrested Defendant Larry Urtarte, 28, of 953 E. 28th Street Paterson New Jersey. The Fourth Squad reports a Grand Larceny arrest that occurred on Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 3:10pm in N. Long Beach. According to Detectives, the male victim, 88, while inside his residence, received a telephone call from an unknown male stating that his grandson was in an accident and needed money. The caller instructed the victim to put $5500.00 US currency in a package, label it with M2125 and that a person named Richard wearing a brown hat would come to pick it up. The Victim confirmed that his grandson was not in an accident and contacted the Police. When Richard arrived and asked for the package, the victim handed it to him. At that time Detectives identified themselves and the subject began to flee the scene. As the Detectives were placing the subject into custody he began to resist being handcuffed. No injuries were reported. Crime By Chris Boyle Published: January 18 2023 Following an investigation, Lan Li, 35, was charged with Unauthorized Practice of a Profession. Suffolk County Police on Tuesday, January 17, 2023 arrested a Flushing woman for unlawful practice of a profession during a massage parlor raid in Mount Sinai. In response to community and quality of life complaints, Suffolk County Police Sixth Precinct Crime Section officers and the Town of Brookhaven Fire Marshal and Building Inspector conducted an investigation into New Blue Sea Relaxing Spa, located at 331 Route 25A, at approximately 4 p.m. Following an investigation, Lan Li, 35, was charged with Unauthorized Practice of a Profession. She will be released on a Desk Appearance Ticket and is scheduled to appear in First District Court in Central Islip on a later date. (Alliance News) - Harbour Energy PLC on Wednesday told staff it is planning to cut jobs, according to sources, as the business confirmed it was reviewing its organisation in the country. Harbour Energy is the biggest independent oil and gas producer in the UK North Sea and is largely based in the country, although it has some overseas operations. It employs around 1,500 people in the UK and said that it was reassessing its activity levels in the country after the hiking of the windfall tax late last year. The business said that the changes meant that it must scale back investment in oil and gas exploration, among other things. The business is also understood to have told staff that redundancies might come, although a spokesperson would not provide any numbers. "Following changes to the [Energy Profits Levy], we have had to reassess our future activity levels in the UK," Harbour Energy said to the PA news agency. "We will continue to support investment on the many attractive opportunities within our existing portfolio, but we are scaling back investment in other areas such as new exploration licensing. "As such, we have initiated a review of our UK organisation to align with lower future activity levels." Harbour Energy recently said to trade publication Energy Voice in December that it would not bid for new licences in the North Sea in the ongoing licensing round due to the windfall tax. In November, UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt added another 10% on the tax that oil and gas producers have to pay on their windfall profits, taking it to 75%. The companies can offset most of this extra tax if they invest enough in the UK. Shares were 0.1% higher at 324.07 pence each in London on Wednesday afternoon. source: PA Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved. (Alliance News) - Luxury fashion house Burberry Group PLC on Wednesday said comparable store sales grew by just 1% in its financial third quarter, following significant lockdown disruption in China and the reopening of the nation. Retail revenue in the 13 weeks to December 31 grew by 4.6% to GBP756 million from GBP723 million in the 13 weeks to December 25, 2021. Comparable sales growth outside of China was 11%, while sales in Mainland China fell by 23%. Europe in particular continued to perform well, Burberry said, driven by strong trading over the festive period, with leather goods delivering another quarter of double-digit growth. In Europe, Middle East, India & Africa, sales jumped 19%, while falling 7% in the Asia Pacific and 1% in the Americas. The company noted that Japan, South Korea and South Asia Pacific showed double-digit growth, with comparable sales climbing 28%, 10% and 15% respectively. Chief Executive Jonathan Akeroyd said Burberry remains confident in its ability to reach its medium-term targets, despite the current macro-economic environment. For financial year 2023 ending April 1, the company expects a currency tailwind of GBP160 million on revenue and GBP70 million on adjusted operating profit. Regarding its ongoing GBP400 million share buy-back programme, Burberry said it had completed GBP363 million by the end of 2022. The company will release its financial year 2023 results on May 18. Burberry shares were 1.3% higher at 2,273.00 pence each in London on Tuesday morning. By Tom Budszus, Alliance News reporter Comments and questions to newsroom@alliancenews.com Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved. (Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Tuesday and not separately reported by Alliance News: ---------- Future Metals NL - Perth-based platinum exploration company - Enters into a farm-in and joint venture deal with Octava Minerals Ltd's on its Panton North and Copernicus North projects in the East Kimberley region, Western Australia. "This joint venture farm-in arrangement significantly increases Future Metals' exploration position in the East Kimberley, thereby providing further scope, to explore what is highly prospective ground for [nickel, copper and platinum group elements] sulphide mineralisation. Panton North and Copernicus North have been subject to only limited, shallow drilling despite compelling geochemical and EM anomalies. There is a significant opportunity to apply modern geophysical techniques, such as those being applied at Future Metals' Panton project, to identify high-quality targets for economic accumulations of Ni-Cu-PGE sulphides at depth," Managing Director Jardee Kininmonth comments. ---------- Cobra Resources PLC - South Australia-focused gold, rare earth, and iron-oxide-copper-gold explorer - Discovers a strike of intersected gold mineralisation at Clarke prospect of its Wudinna gold project that now exceeds 600 meters and sits outside of the defined 211,000 ounces JORC gold resource. Says that the rare earth elements mineralisation intersected are peripheral to expanded gold strike further supports the company's dual resource strategy. "These intersections demonstrate the growth potential of our unique dual resource at the Clarke prospect, where results suggest a significant gold system, overlain by an expanding rare earth resource. The results of this programme provide an exceptional platform for further exploration success in our upcoming - much larger - drilling programme, which is aimed at expanding both gold and rare earth JORC resources," Chief Executive Rupert Verco comments. ---------- Gunsynd PLC - London-based investment firm - Disposes of 197,940 shares in its investee Charger Metals NL at a price of AUD0.58 each for AUD115,686 in total, or GBP65,964. Disposes of 1.9 million shares in Pacific Nickel Mines Ltd at a price of AUD0.07 per share for a total of AUD135,702. Sells 465,333 shares in First Tin PLC at a price of GBP0.11 each for GBP50,724 in total. ---------- United Oil & Gas PLC - London-based oil and gas company with projects in Egypt, Italy and the UK - Signs an asset purchase agreement with Quattro Energy Ltd to sell its UK Central North Sea Licence P2519 for the Maria discovery in Block 15/18e for a maximum consideration of up to GBP5.7 million. ---------- Kinovo PLC - London-based property services company focused on safety and regulatory compliance, land regeneration and energy efficiency - Says that it was awarded the "highest-ranking" regional contractor status from the National Housing Maintenance Forum Framework. This means that the company is the lead contractor to be selected for new work within certain frameworks in key regions. ---------- Permanent TSB Group Holdings PLC- Dublin-based personal and small business bank - Appoints Julie O'Neill as chair, following "a comprehensive and competitive selection process." He will succe ed Robert Elliott who will step down in March. Says O'Neill has extensive executive and board experience and held a number of senior government positions, including secretary general of both the Department of Transport and the Department of Marine & Natural Resources. ---------- Hydrogen Utopia International PLC - London-based developer of mixed plastic waste-to-fuel technology - Signs a memorandum of understanding with Romgos Gwiazdowscy to work together to deploy HUI facilities in Poland and Europe. The companies also agreed to work together to identify potential sites for HUI facilities, to negotiate and obtain appropriate property interests in those sites, to secure the necessary additional grants, loans or equity funding necessary to finance special purpose vehicles, in the planning, permitting, development and construction of HUI facilities. ---------- Great Western Mining Corp PLC - Nevada-focused gold, silver and copper project developer - Raises GBP800,000 from the placing of 1.00 billion shares at 0.08 pence per share. SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP acted as broker in the placing. Plans to use the net proceeds to accelerate the construction of a mill for the production of gold and silver concentrate, as well as the next phase of exploration and appraisal of gold and silver prospects. ---------- Ncondezi Energy Ltd - Solar and energy storage project in Mozambique - Says its Non-Executive Director Scott Fletcher bought 7.3 million shares worth GBP56,063 on Friday and Monday. Says that he also converted GBP83,129 of outstanding convertible loans to shares on Monday. ---------- ValiRx PLC - Hatfield Heath, England-based life sciences company focused on early-stage cancer therapeutics and women's health - Says that its broker offer granted to Turner Pope Investments Ltd received applications for more than GBP500,000. Says that a further 327,273 shares will be issued under the broker offer to the company's nominated adviser Cairn Financial Advisers LLP. The broker offer shares will be issued at a price of 11 pence per share. ---------- Ondine Biomedical Inc - Vancouver, Canada-based life sciences company focused on photodisinfection-based therapies - Notes that a new study published in the journal Antibiotics found that proprietary methylene blue-based photosensitizer, in combination with a specific wavelength of light, effectively eradicated pathogen biofilms commonly associated with periprosthetic joint infections. Adds that the photodisinfection achieved 100% kill of the key pathogens in biofilms associated with PJIs. Periprosthetic joint infections are life-threatening and extremely hard-to-treat, the company says. Says that the annual cost of treating periprosthetic joint infections in the US is USD1.62 billion, with costs projected to rise to USD1.85 billion by 2030 for hip and knee replacements. ---------- nanosynth group PLC - Nottingham, England-based digital monitoring and safeguarding systems manufacturer formerly known as Remote Monitored Systems - Says it transitioned to a business with "viable commercial opportunities in fast-growing markets" from a university spin-out. Believes that it has a clear direction and a detailed execution plan now. Says it was focused on establishing itself in seven vertical markets with a total value of over GBP3.6 billion and strengthening its intellectual property portfolio. Believes that it is well-placed to deliver necessary products for the future, due to its increased resources and skills within its labs. "2022 was a year of substantial progress and we are excited by the opportunities that have been developed," CEO Mark Duffin says. ---------- Borders & Southern Petroleum PLC - oil and gas exploration company focused on Falkland Islands - Designs a phased development concept for a large gas condensate discovery, Darwin, located to in the south of the Falkland Islands. Says that the preliminary development would focus on Darwin East. Believes that this new phased development concept with accelerated payback presents an attractive opportunity for industry and will help attract the necessary funding to advance this exciting project. ---------- By Abby Amoakuh, Alliance News reporter Comments and questions to newsroom@alliancenews.com Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved. BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday sent a message of condolence to Nepali President Bidya Devi Bhandari over a plane crash in the country. In his message, Xi said that upon learning of the plane crash in Nepal, which caused heavy casualties, he would like to express deep condolences over the fatalities and offer sincere sympathies to the bereaved families on behalf of the Chinese government and people. Also on Monday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a message of condolence to Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here Commodity & Logistics Manager - DR Congo RFSA Description Title: Commodity Manager and Logistics Manager Reports to: Chief of Party Supervises: Commodity and Logistics Staff Revised: January 2023 _________________________________ The Adventist Development and Relief Agency is a global humanitarian organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that demonstrates Gods love and compassion. ADRA works with people in poverty and distress to create just and positive change through empowering partnerships and responsible action. The successful candidate must understand, respect and honor the mission, purpose and identity of ADRA. _________________________________ SUMMARY ADRA International is seeking a Commodity Manager for an anticipated USAID/BHAfunded Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The project aims to reduce and prevent chronic malnutrition in the regions with severe, chronic food insecurity and malnutrition. For over 20 years, ADRA has implemented relief and development activities in DRC with funding from major international donors, including USAID. The Commodity Manager will be responsible for the logistical management of commodities for the project. This position will be based in Kasai Region in DRC. It is contingent upon receipt of funding and requires donor approval. _________________________________ PRE-REQUISITES Required Bachelors degree in a relevant area such as supply chain management, food science, etc. Minimum of 7 years of relevant experience. Minimum of 5 years experience in the field Demonstrated extensive experience in managing in-kind food commodity supply chains from origin to distribution points and end recipients in developing countries. Experience maintaining commodity quality and safety Experience managing warehouses, coordinating transportation, monitoring and reporting experience. Experience in Title II programming desired. Actively oversee the engagement with program managers and/or budget holders in procurement plans formulation, reviews, and tracking progress Play an active role in preparing for internal and external audits; ensure recommendations related to logistics and supply chain operations are followed and take all necessary measures to address audit findings. Ensure good communication process and satisfactory levels within the projects Manage the supply sections at coordination level: order processing, procurement, warehouse (log and med), and transport and customs activities Support in the preparation and the submission of timely, accurate and clear donor reports and other reporting requirements Demonstrated ability to network and engage with necessary stakeholders to manage food commodity supply chains. Experience within DRC preferred. Knowledge and familiarity with USAID/BHA funding. Written and spoken command of English and French languages. Knowledge in Congolese language specific to the region preferred. _________________________________ BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES Persuading and Influencing Makes a strong personal impression on others; gains clear agreement and commitment from others. Presenting and Communicating Information Speaks clearly and fluently; expresses opinions, information, and key points of an argument clearly. Formulating Strategies and Concepts Works strategically to realize organizational goals; sets and develops strategies. Planning and Organizing - Sets clearly defined objectives; plans activities and projects well in advance and takes account of possible changing circumstances; identifies and organizes resources needed to accomplish tasks; manages time effectively; monitors performance against deadlines and milestones. _________________________________ RESPONSIBILITIES Manage the timely ordering and delivery of commodities warehouses, distribution sites, other destinations Manage storage and warehousing of commodities as necessary Contribute to budget preparation, monitoring and revision of delivery ensuring adherence to processes and procedures compliant with ADRA Create and manage policies and procedures for commodity management and distribution Manage accounting data quality and integrity Manage the logistics of vendors and other partners including performance monitoring, measurements and reporting Process documentation of logistics operations and take action to resolve operational issues Collect and compile data, produce reports, ensure accurate in systems, recommend any changes or adaptations necessary Liaise with internal and external stakeholders to support the efficient management of commodities and logistics operations for the project Perform other duties as assigned. _________________________________ TRAVEL Travel required. Must have the ability to travel on short notice if necessary. _________________________________ MENTAL/EMOTIONAL REQUIREMENTS: Must be able to work in a fast-paced and customer service-oriented environment; to perform duties under pressure and meet deadlines in a timely manner; to work as part of a team as well as to complete assignments independently; to take instructions from supervisors; to exercise problem-solving skills; and to interact with co-workers, supervisors, network employees, donors and the public in a professional and pleasant manner. ***If interested in applying please go to www.adra.org/careers Deadline: February 28, 2023 A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. More than 80% of families surveyed in the wake of a massive spill of jet fuel that contaminated the drinking water in thousands of homes in Hawaii in 2021 reported ongoing health problems nearly one year after the leak. Surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January and February 2022 and again in September 2022 found that military personnel, their spouses and children suffered headaches, skin irritation and rashes, diarrhea, fatigue and dizziness they believe were caused by using contaminated drinking water at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. More than half sought medical treatment for their illnesses, including 152 children whose parents reported ongoing symptoms 10 months after the spill. Read Next: Navy Training Plane Crashes in Alabama; Pilots Eject The surveys, conducted by the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the request of the Hawaii Department of Health, were meant to assess the health impact of a November 2021 leak of up to 5,000 gallons of petroleum at the U.S. Navy's Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility near Honolulu. The leak contaminated the drinking water supply to the base, affecting schools, offices and 9,694 homes and displacing thousands of military and civilian families. Research is available on petroleum fume exposure and those who have ingested kerosene, but "almost nothing is known of the long-term health effects" of jet fuel exposure, said Stacey Konkle, an epidemic intelligence service officer with the CDC, during a public informational session on Jan. 11. The surveys were designed to study the scope of the issues among those affected and help build up data on such exposures, Konkle said. The first survey, conducted online roughly two months after the spill, received responses from about 14% of the affected households. Nearly 90% of respondents said they developed health problems after using the water -- issues that included headaches and nausea, vomiting, burning eyes and throats, skin rashes and respiratory systems. Thirty-seven percent said they sought medical care, and 17 people said they were hospitalized overnight. The second survey, conducted six months later in September, was answered by 961 people. Roughly 80% reported having persistent health issues, while 79% said they had children who had consumed the water and were still sick. Nearly 50% said they had a pet who had gotten ill after exposure. Of 20 military personnel or family members who delivered babies during the time frame for the survey, eight said they had health problems such as preterm delivery, low birth weight and, in one case, congenital defects. CDC officials said, however, that the small numbers limit drawing any conclusions about any potential tie between the fuel spill and difficulties during pregnancy. Konkle said the strength of the survey results lies in the highly motivated community that responded and the engagement with area organizations, including the Hawaii Department of Health. But, she noted, the surveys also have their limitations, including sampling bias -- those who were compelled to take the surveys may have been among the most concerned about their health, which could skew the results. The surveys also were only given in English and were self-administered, meaning that no one was monitoring input as it was given. Most notably, CDC officials said, surveyors had limited access to those who may have been most affected. While they posted notifications about the survey in public spaces and attended community events to promote the surveys, there were "barriers to outreach" that included the U.S. Navy. "We were not military affiliated. We had to get permission and be escorted into base areas," explained Maureen Orr, an epidemiologist with the CDC, during the webinar. The initiative prompted several recommendations from the CDC to the Defense Department, to include suggesting that the DoD review all medical records of those involved and provide environmental sampling data so the CDC can conduct public health assessments. Konkle also recommended the creation of a third-party "Flint, Michigan-style registry" to identify and characterize long-term health effects in affected individuals. The Flint Registry was created for the roughly 99,000 people who were exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water for more than a year in Flint after the city switched water systems in April 2014. The voluntary register is designed to monitor health, child development, ongoing exposure and utilization of services. More than 100 military families have filed a lawsuit against the DoD seeking compensation for illnesses and economic hardship they attribute to exposure to the contaminated water. The Defense Department is moving forward with plans to remove all fuel from Red Hill and close the facility. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department will hold a town hall Wednesday in Honolulu on the plans for defueling and closing Red Hill, as well as Navy requirements for providing safe drinking water to residents of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime. Related: A Year After Red Hill Crisis, Navy to Open Hawaii Clinic Amid Claims of Long-Term Health Problems In late September, the Air Force and Space Force announced a new pilot program that would grant certain applicants who test positive for THC, the main psychoactive component in marijuana, a chance to retest and possibly join the ranks. Air Force recruiting officials told Military.com that they anticipated 50 cases annually, based on previous years. But in the first three months the program was in place -- between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31, 2022 -- the Air Force Recruiting Service granted waivers to 43 applicants who tested positive for THC. Those numbers "could mean as more states adopt more leniency toward cannabis and THC derivatives, we anticipate a continued increase" in waiver requests, Air Force Recruiting Service spokeswoman Chrissy Cuttita told Military.com in an email. Read Next: Air Force Moves F-16s from Europe to Japan as Ukraine War Lingers and Pacific Tensions Simmer Marijuana, although becoming less of a taboo and legalized on a state-by-state basis, remains outlawed on the federal level as a Schedule I drug. While the military has zero tolerance for other Schedule I drugs such as ecstasy, heroin or methamphetamines, recruits in many service branches have received waivers for marijuana as it has grown in popularity. Beth J. Asch, a senior economist at the nonprofit Rand Corp. who has researched marijuana waiver policies in the services, told Military.com that two decades of a trend towards legalization is having an impact on potential recruits. "What we're seeing is that the number of states that have legalized marijuana either for medicinal use or recreational use has been rising since about 2000-2001," Asch said. "Not surprisingly, as more states are doing this, the number of people who are coming from states or potentially coming from states with legalized marijuana has increased." The vast majority of states have legalized marijuana for medical use, recreational use or both. Only 11 states currently do not allow marijuana use in any form: Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas, according to MJBizDaily, a trade publication that follows the industry. Prior to the pilot program, Air Force and Space Force applicants were barred from joining the services if they tested positive for THC on the initial test. Under the new program, which was inspired by previous efforts by the Army and Navy, prospective applicants are given the opportunity to retest after 90 days if given a waiver. To be considered for the waiver, applicants have to score well on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, have graduated high school, and not have any other potential barriers to joining the service like a medical or past legal issue, according to the Air Force. Notably, more than 50% of all new recruits come from states where marijuana is now legal, at least for medicinal use, according to a 2021 study by Rand. That study, which examined the Army specifically, found little difference in performance by recruits who enlisted with marijuana waivers. "Recruits who make it into the U.S. Army despite low-level histories of marijuana use perform no worse, overall, than other soldiers," the Rand study said. "That should be welcome news in recruiting offices nationwide." The waiver program arrived as the military service struggle to find young Americans who are fit enough, healthy enough and sober enough to enter the ranks. A Pentagon study first reported by Military.com last year shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs, or having mental and physical health problems. Asch said it may be too early to tell whether the Air Force will see a sharper trend in THC-positive applicants, but added that it's smart of the service to look into adjusting its waiver policy. "It certainly behooves the services to take a close look at their waiver policy and that distinction between the federal and state laws," she said. -- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly. Related: Smoked Pot Recently? New Waiver Means You Might Still Be Able to Join the Air Force or Space Force The rules governing where -- and, in many cases, if -- military members and their spouses pay state income taxes are changing thanks to a new law signed early this year. The Veterans Auto and Education Improvement Act of 2022, which became law Jan. 5, makes amendments to the tax residency rules in the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a law that gives financial and legal protections to troops and their families. Tax experts I consulted agree that how and when the new law is implemented by both states and the IRS is unclear. They even declined to speculate on the record about what the impact of the law might be. But according to the text of the law itself, one thing is clear: Changes are here, and they could mean thousands of dollars more, or less, in taxes for military families. The new law opens the door to service members and their spouses to pick the state in which they pay income taxes from three options: the legal residence or domicile of the service member; the legal residence or domicile of the spouse; or the current permanent duty station of the service member. It also expands to spouses a residency protection already offered to service members that allows them to remain tied to a former legal residency, even if they no longer physically live there. The change could effectively mean that if the service member and spouse are ever stationed in a state that has low income tax rates or no state income tax they can continue to claim that state as their legal residency after moving away, so long as they met legal residency requirements while living there. An important caveat: Always consult with a tax professional or tax attorney before deciding how and where to file your taxes. What the New Law Says About State Taxes and Military Section 18 of that new law includes: "A spouse of a servicemember shall neither lose nor acquire a residence or domicile for purposes of taxation with respect to the person, personal property, or income of the spouse by reason of being absent or present in any tax jurisdiction of the United States solely to be with the servicemember in compliance with the servicemember's military orders." And: "For any taxable year of the marriage, a servicemember and the spouse of such servicemember may elect to use for purposes of taxation, regardless of the date on which the marriage of the servicemember and the spouse occurred, any of the following: (A) The residence or domicile of the servicemember. (B) The residence or domicile of the spouse. (C) The permanent duty station of the servicemember." What Makes a Place a Legal "Residence or Domicile?" To understand the implications of this law, it's important to first understand how a location becomes a legal "residence or domicile." According to tax attorney and military spouse Candice McPhillips, "domicile" is where you've established official connections to a place, through actions like owning property, registering your car, holding a driver's license and registering to vote. A residency, on the other hand, is where you physically live. Different states have different rules as to what actions prove domicile. What the Previous Law Said About Military Residency and Income Taxes In the past, service members paid income taxes on their military pay to their state of legal residence. If that state had no income taxes, the service member didn't pay any. Under those rules, military spouses could pay income taxes in the state where they physically resided, or choose to "borrow" the service member's state of legal residence for taxes. But those rules created a lot of confusion, since a variety of different state and federal laws dictated when a military spouse could retain a previous state of legal residency after relocating on military orders. For example, a previous version of the law said that for a military spouse to keep their old state of legal residence "for purposes of taxation" when they moved, that state of residency being retained by the spouse had to be the same state of residency as the active-duty service member. Yet just what actions constitute "legal residence" is a state issue, and the old federal law only offered minimal guidance and protection. For example, some states require that the spouse claim residence in the same state as the service member, while others don't have that restriction. The result was confusion, inconsistency and a lot of unintentional rule-breaking. What the New Law Says About Military Residency and Income Taxes While tax professionals are still waiting for more official clarification on how the new law will work, it seems to do two sweeping things. First, it says that both service members and spouses "shall neither lose nor acquire a residence or domicile for purposes of taxation." That means that if you are a legal resident of a state, you can keep your legal residence "for purposes of taxation," if you move to a new state due to military orders. That rule previously only existed for service members. The change means that, for example, a spouse who establishes residency in Washington state -- through registering to vote, voting in an election, holding a driver's license or owning property -- can keep that Washington state residency for tax purposes even after moving elsewhere as part of a PCS. But the second change is more sweeping. Under the new law, both the service member and the spouse can elect to pay taxes in either the service member's state of legal residence, the military spouse's state of legal residence, or the place where the service member is located on PCS orders. This opens all kinds of options. For example, both the spouse and the service member could easily choose to retain their residency in an income tax-free or low income tax state. A spouse who PCSes to a higher income tax state could instead choose from either their previous legal residency or their spouse's previous legal residency and file there. But there are a variety of questions floating around this new change that have yet to be clarified. For example, the law does not indicate the tax year for which the change is effective. Can service members and their spouses use these new options for their 2022 tax returns? What if they've been deployed and haven't filed 2021 yet? The law also seems to create the possibility that the military spouse and service member can elect to file their income taxes in different locations. Will the military spouse and the service member be required to file their taxes in the same state, or can they pick and choose as suits them? And will taxpayers be able to switch the states in which they file year to year? Issues that Weren't Addressed in the Change but Maybe Should Have Been As long as Congress was going to the effort of improving this section of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), I wish they'd cleaned it up a bit more. Here are a few issues that remain unresolved: The SCRA says that military members can use their state of legal residence for taxation of their "military income," but spouses may use their state of legal residence for taxation of all their income. That means that a military spouse who drives for Uber Eats at their duty station can attribute that income to their state of legal residence. But if a military member drives for Uber Eats at their duty station, they need to attribute that income to the state where they are stationed and doing the driving for Uber Eats. That creates a situation where the service member needs to file in two states, but the military spouse is only filing in one. Because the law clearly states that the spouse residency protections are tied to them being physically with the service member "in compliance with the servicemember's military orders," a military spouse who is geographically separated from their active-duty service member loses the residency protections of the law. This means a spouse will lose their legal residence protection if, for example, they want to stay in Maryland for a kid to finish high school while their service member moves ahead to Texas. It remains difficult to show a state that you are a legal resident. Driver's licenses, vehicle registration and other actions typically show that you mean to make a state your legal residence -- but none of these proof methods are protected by federal laws. That's problematic when a state asks you to prove you're a resident elsewhere, but doesn't necessarily accept the other state's standard as acceptable. In fact, the new change will likely make this even more problematic. That brings me to my last point of advice. Be Consistent About Your State of Legal Residence Wherever you maintain your state of legal residence, one thing remains constant: You need to be clear and consistent in your actions. To the greatest extent possible, maintain all your legal ties and documentation in that one state. While there is no single indicator of intent, many actions contribute to proving that you're a legal resident. But one of the biggest indicators of state of legal residence is where you file taxes. If you're jumping to different states from year to year, you could make it even more unclear. For example, don't get a local driver's license because it's easier than renewing in your home state. But do get a local driver's license if state law requires it. Don't sign an affidavit that you are a local area resident, because it saves you a few hundred bucks on your property taxes. Strive to stick to your one state in all your actions, whenever possible. If you change your legal residency to a state with simpler or no state income tax filing, change everything -- and work to keep it that way. That way, when State X says, "Prove you're a resident of State Y," you can show them your driver's license, vehicle registration, wills, tax returns and voter registration card. And, again, always consult with a tax professional or attorney before making major decisions that could have a long-term impact. BRUSSELS Russia is preparing for an extended war so NATO must get ready for the long haul and support Ukraine for as long as it takes, the alliance's deputy secretary general told military chiefs from across Europe on Wednesday. Speaking at the opening of the military chiefs' meeting in Brussels, Mircea Geoana said NATO nations must invest more in defense, ramp up military industrial manufacturing and harness new technologies to prepare for future wars. As Russia's war on Ukraine nears the one-year mark, NATO chiefs are expected to discuss how allies can expand the delivery of weapons, training and support to Ukraine in the coming months, and how they can further shore up their own defenses. We have no indication that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's goals have changed," said Geoana, noting that Russia has mobilized more than 200,000 additional troops. "So we must be prepared for the long haul. 2023 will be a difficult year and we need to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Separately on Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraines Western backers will gather this week to discuss ways to supply heavier and more advanced weapons to help the war-ravaged country in its fight against Russia. The so-called Ukraine Contact Group will meet at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. It consists of about 50 top defense officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who work to coordinate military contributions to Ukraine. The main message there will be: more support, more advanced support, heavier weapons and more modern weapons, Stoltenberg said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This is a fight for our values, this is a fight for democracy, and we just have to prove that democracy wins over tyranny and oppression. U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met quietly on Tuesday with Ukraines chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border. And he is expected to relay Zaluzhnyis concerns to the other military leaders at the meeting. Milley's meeting with Zaluzhnyi was quickly arranged when it became clear Monday that the Ukrainian chief would not be able to attend the NATO sessions in person. He's expected to attend by video conference on Thursday. Army Col. Dave Butler, Milley's spokesman, said the chairman planned to describe to the NATO chiefs the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that." Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, told the gathering of chiefs on Wednesday that the alliance must continue to transform to meet future fights. The war has also shown us that you have to be able to fight tomorrows battles, as well as yesterdays battles, today, said Bauer, who is with the Royal Netherlands Navy. Modern warfare is just as much about bits and bots as it is about mud and blood. He noted that about a year ago, the NATO Russia Council held its last meeting. Back then we were still able to sit around the same table, he said, adding that now, after Russias brutal invasion and war in Ukraine, the world is a different place. NATO, he said, has proven it can quickly increase and shift its military presence when and where needed. And he echoed the commitment that the alliance is prepared to support Ukraine for as long as needed. Putin, he said, underestimated the scale and bravery of Ukrainian people, armed forces and leadership, and underestimated our unity and our solidarity with Ukraine. That alliance support, he said, has made a difference on the battlefield, and it will continue. Stoltenberg told the Davos conference that its important that Putin doesnt win the war and by supplying more equipment long-term the West will help to force him to the negotiating table. It is very dangerous to underestimate Russia, he warned. Weapons, they are the way to peace, Stoltenberg said, but he added that they must come quickly. There is an urgent need. Time matters, he said, shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the forum by video-link. ___ Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Strasbourg, France, contributed to this report. The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration. A few nights ago, I did something I rarely do. I met up with a buddy from my soldiering days. We had a good time, drank a few too many beers, and did what soldiers do best. We told stories. We laughed about the stupid things our Joes did in Iraq, how they got in trouble and saved our asses. We joked about events and people we never could have imagined finding funny then -- the incompetence and cruelty of some of our unit leaders, the way incoming alarms shook us from sleep and filled us with fear. It felt good catching up, the war now nothing but memories imprinted on my mind like desert sand. It seemed healthy, two friends looking back. But then he said it. To be fair, I asked. "Yeah, to be honest, man, some 4th ID guys said some stuff after you left," he said. "You know, the normal dumb stuff, like, I heard one of your LTs had to go home because he was being a b----.'" Cameron McMillan served as a C-RAM (counter rocket, artillery, mortar) battle captain in al-Anbar province, Iraq. (Photo courtesy of the author) I didn't think it would sting, but it did. Even after hours of therapy, personal reflection, and the gifts of time and maturity, the soldier in me -- that Redleg, howitzer-shooting artillery officer -- couldn't stand being called a "b----." It's a word all combat arms soldiers fear. You hear it in the field with an 80-pound ruck on your back, on the firing line with a 100-pound howitzer round in your hands, on the PT field as you struggle for that last pushup, and in the barracks when a conversation crosses the line into emotions. Don't be a b----. The Army has gone to great lengths to erase the stigma of mental health with countless programs, PowerPoint presentations, and trainings. The Department of Veterans Affairs has spent billions on mental health treatment. But when I needed help, I was just another "b----" who couldn't handle it, a "p---y" who didn't have what it takes. The people who say these things usually have not stared down the rockets and drones that sought our deaths, an irony not lost on me. I've found that people who have not seen such things need to proclaim their Spartan virtues. They talk about CABs and their desire to get shot at. I can't speak for everyone who has had that wish granted, but I would trade it back for anything. Yet the hardest thing I did in the Army wasn't getting shot at. It was being honest. It was asking for help in a culture that makes it a sin instead of a strength. Midnight. My 127th day in Iraq. I couldn't sleep. I hadn't slept well for a month. All the old tricks had stopped working -- no amount of NyQuil, Benadryl, or melatonin could get the thoughts out of my head that kept me from sleep. I was caught in a storm of my own brain chemistry and neurological demons. I saw the rockets coming in, heard them exploding, smelled the smoke in the air, and felt the tightening in my chest. My hands were clammy with sweat. I breathed heavily. The rockets and drones and unit drama all seemed to implode on top of me at once until the only image left was more disturbing than all those that came before it -- a rifle in my mouth and the four pounds of pressure on the trigger that would end it all. Cameron McMillan, pictured with his fiance and their puppy, served as a field artillery officer in the Army National Guard for four years. (Photo courtesy of the author) I felt the cool steel in my mouth and wondered if I'd feel the lead as it struck through my skull. I wondered if I'd feel the flash on my cheeks or the cordite on my tongue. I sat in my CHU, staring at the walls of the tin can that had been my home for five months, and wondered what my roommate would think when he awoke to a loud bang and my blood and brains. I thought about my soldiers finding me the next day. I thought of my girlfriend and my family, of never seeing them again. I thought about all the people and things that make me who I am. I thought about sleep. I thought about being called a b----. Thankfully, I got away from the rifle. For five hours, I walked the perimeter of the FOB with a chaplain. I endured a borderline interrogation from a behavioral health captain. And then finally I said the words that took me out of Iraq forever. I was suicidal. The tears that streamed down my face when I said those words surely rivaled the Euphrates that flowed five miles to the east. It was the first time I had ever cried in uniform. One of the only times someone saw me cry. The walls came down, and I was terrified. I wasn't an officer anymore, not even a soldier. I was a patient, an involuntary one. In the eyes of friends and family, I was brave for asking for help. In the eyes of the Army, I was another successful intervention in a long line of statistics that ended tragically more often than not. But in the eyes of those who actually mattered in my life at the time -- the eyes of soldiers -- I was a b----. A p---y. A coward. The toxic culture and environment of my unit drove me to suicide as much as any rocket or drone. My battery commander was incompetent on his best day and downright cruel on his worst. My battalion leadership was no better, scared of their own shadows and addicted to the near-intoxicating effect of berating their subordinates. In that vacuum of moral leadership, the unit was reminiscent of Lord of the Flies where the strong and the vindictive thrived and the meek did anything but inherit the Earth. The Army instilled in us ideals and values of servant leadership and selfless service. I experienced anything but those things. We were no Band of Brothers. When I came within four pounds of pressure from ending my own life, the only things that kept me on this Earth were a couple of well-placed friends, a family, and a woman who loved me back home. So, a year later, when a friend told me about the rumors that swirled after I left Iraq on a C-17, I wasn't shocked. But I was surprised that it worked. I felt embarrassed again. The shame and guilt I had overcome seeped back. The old thoughts returned. They were right, I thought. I was weak. I let my soldiers and my friends down. I was a b----. As we sat there, completely removed from the Army and Iraq, with beers in our hands at a favorite restaurant in Boston, I felt the Army suddenly pulling me back. I remembered what it was like to feel subhuman, to be judged by the emblem on your chest and shoulders, to replace every emotion with the perverted stoicism of fake courage. I remembered that I once lived my life afraid of being called a name, like a teenage boy in a locker room. All the old feelings bubbled back -- the anger and resentment that had anchored into my chest for so many years. I felt how one word could undo all the progress I had made since that night in Iraq. Then I looked to my right and saw the smile of a woman that I love, completely removed from the conversation by loud music and voices. I saw the joy in her eyes as she glanced over at me, felt her hand on my knee as she reminded me of her presence, and heard the beauty in her laugh. I took a moment to consider how happy she was that I was there, that I was alive. I thought about how literally nothing in my world or hers would be better if I had pulled that trigger. I thought about the soldier from 4th ID who killed himself shortly after I left Iraq. I thought about his family and wondered if he had a partner he loved. I wondered if he would still be alive if we took care of each other as much as we say we do. The Army didn't save my life. A friend did. He took my rifle from me when he knew what I wanted to say but couldn't. He sought out the chaplain, and it was his patience and insistence that convinced me to go to the behavioral health officer -- it would not be a betrayal to my friends and soldiers or an act of weakness, the chaplain told me. Even on that plane, I was suicidal. And I had plenty of opportunities to go through with it. But I didn't. The woman I love saved my life, too. So did my family. The Army -- they were nowhere to be found. To them, I was just another b----, a p---y. I still wonder sometimes: What would they call me if I were dead? The truth is, I am happy I'm alive. I'm grateful for good friends who intervene in a system of chaos and dysfunction. I feel blessed that the woman I love sticks by my side through it all. I smile during barbecues with family and games of fetch with my dog. I know that life is better than death. I know it's okay to ask for help. That it takes courage. Most of all, I know that being called a b---- is a small price to pay for living to see a day when I could sit at a bar telling stories. Cameron McMillan served as a field artillery officer in the Army National Guard and is an Iraq combat veteran. He is a graduate student at Northeastern University studying international relations. He lives in Boston with his fiance and their black lab, where he enjoys watching the Bruins and Red Sox and getting up to Maine as much as possible to be by the ocean. Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration. This month marks 20 years since I, as a newly minted marine brigadier general, watched from the bridge of an Air Force C-17 as we began our approach toward the Guantanamo Naval Station Airfield. Our mission was to set up a detention facility for prisoners captured in Afghanistan; we were tasked with preparing to secure at least 100 prisoners within 96 hours. The missions duration was to be 60 days, at which time we would be relieved by an Army-led Joint Task Force. No one expected the detention facility to be around more than a year. Twenty years and four administrations later, it is time to finally shut down the facility. Though Guantanamo has long been used by U.S. administrations to house Caribbean migrants until their situations could be sorted out, the decision to use it as a detention facility for Islamic terrorists was hurried and ignored longstanding U.S and international norms for handling prisoners. The American people were angry and afraid, and the Bush administration was responding to political pressure to do something when the temporary holding facility in Afghanistan was reaching capacity with captured fighters. Some of those held were Afghan, but many were from other countries, and some had been turned over by their fellow Afghans to collect the bounty we offered on bad guys. These people, soon dubbed detainees, needed to go somewhere, but the administrations guidance regarding our handling of detainees was limited. We were to be guided by, but not necessarily required to follow, the Geneva Conventions, and it soon became clear that the primary purpose for sending prisoners to Gitmo was not simply to remove combatants from the fight. Many in the administration were convinced that these detainees were an intelligence goldmine, notwithstanding that most of them were being held in a way that offered ample opportunities to develop plausible cover stories. Of the roughly 780 prisoners sent to Gitmo, most were found to have no intelligence value. After languishing in cells for years, they were sent home or to countries willing to take them. Military commissions established to punish those accused of war crimes proved an abject failure. Of the eight convictions finally obtained, three were completely overturned by the Supreme Court and one was partially overturned. At the same time, our legal system, with its constitutionally mandated rights for defendants, worked. Federal courts obtained more than 500 convictions. Over 440 convicted terrorists are in U.S. prisons. None have escaped. Still, 35 prisoners remain at Gitmo. They have been largely forgotten by the American people, though not by the rest of the world, which sees their incarceration as a renunciation of the values for which we profess to stand. Twenty of these prisoners have been recommended for release. But remain locked away at a cost of $540 million a year. The cost we incur to our reputation and credibility is harder to quantify but much more damaging. Future elected leaders, diplomats and service members will all have to deal with the legacy of Guantanamo. The other 15 prisoners at Gitmo have not been cleared for release. There is no doubt that their crimes are significant, nor any doubt that the evidence against them was tainted by torture and coercion in violation of our own laws. Ironically, these are the prisoners who hold hostage Americas reputation as a nation of laws. We can restore that reputation, but doing so demands making some hard choices. We must recognize the inadequacy of the military-commission process, shut it down and trust our federal courts to deliver justice. We must take the death penalty off the table as a possible outcome of any criminal proceedings. The world has changed since 9/11. Concerns over Islamic terrorists still exist but have been supplanted in priority by domestic terrorism, Russian aggression and Chinese influence. Guantanamo no longer serves a purpose, and the resources expended and the damage to our international reputation are not worth keeping Gitmo open. Every military officer takes an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and we renew that oath each time we are promoted. The promises contained in that oath are applicable wherever we are in the world. They dont end at the waters edge and are not amended in a place like Guantanamo. As one who helped open the detention facility at Guantanamo, I believe it is time to close it. Doing so will go a long way toward restoring our honor and reestablishing ourselves as a nation of laws. Major General Michael Lehnert, USMC (retired) served as the first Joint Task Force Commander in GITMO after 9/11. 2023 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit mcclatchydc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. When people think of World War II Marines, they probably think of John Basilone, "Pappy" Boyington or Chesty Puller. It's unlikely anyone thinks about Earl Hancock "Pete" Ellis. It's most likely because Ellis died in 1923, but he should be counted, because he accurately predicted everything about the coming war with Japan, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the island-hopping campaign that led to Japan's final defeat. Ellis was inspired to join the Marine Corps after reading about the 1st Marine Battalion during the Spanish-American War. He enlisted as a private in 1900, where he took military training from Civil War veterans. He worked to take a test available to non-commissioned officers so they could receive commissions. He passed the test and, by 1902, was a second lieutenant, stationed in the Philippines. Ellis rose in rank over the next few years, assuming small commands in the Pacific Fleet, China, Japan and Washington before coming back to the Philippines and serving under then-Maj. John Lejeune. In 1911, Ellis found himself serving under George Barnett, who would later become the 12th Commandant of the Marine Corps, as his intelligence officer. Intelligence work is where Ellis would make his mark on history, but World War I would interrupt that work. After the U.S. entered the Great War and Marines were sent overseas, Ellis was critical in planning the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives, both of which became Allied victories. He left the war with a Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Cross and the French Legion d'Honneur, but he was still an intelligence officer and the Navy had missions for him. Earl Hancock "Pete" Ellis. IU.S. Navy) He was sent to the Dominican Republic, where he conceived of ways to end the insurgency there. On the Mexican border, Ellis assessed the likelihood of German agents seizing Mexican oil fields. In 1920, there was a new empire on the rise in the Pacific, and the Marine Corps wanted to know what to do in case of war with Imperial Japan. They sent Pete Ellis to find out. Ellis worked around the clock on his projects, often with little sleep, and his assessment of the Japanese was no different. He departed for the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands, which were then (along with Peleliu) occupied by Japan. Posing as an imports executive at his father's company, he visited Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and even Yokohama, Japan, trying to get access to the Marshall Islands. The Japanese suspected he was conducting an intelligence operation, but Ellis still managed to reach Saipan in the Marianas, and ultimately the Carolines, Marshalls and even Peleliu. He visited Indonesia and New Guinea as well. Japanese intelligence followed him wherever he went, and when he helped the crew of a civilian liner during a storm, they knew he was in naval intelligence. When Ellis arrived in Palau, he was gravely ill. For much of his career, Ellis was an alcoholic. The symptoms of his alcoholism finally caught up to him in Palau. He refused to stop drinking, despite his worsening condition. Japanese police, fully aware of his addiction, sent him two bottles of whiskey. Ellis died after consuming the whiskey, but his work was done. Ellis completed "Operations Plan 712: Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia," before he died, and it would be the plan used by the Americans to defeat Japan in World War II. Twenty-one years later, this work would make Ellis seem prophetic. The introduction of the plan explicitly stated "we cannot count upon the use of any bases west of Hawaii except those which we may seize from the enemy after the opening of hostilities... the enemy will, during the first phase of the operations, hold his main fleet in home waters, and endeavor with torpedo, mine and aircraft to reduce our superiority to a limit where he believes he can safely risk a main fleet action." The extent of Japanese occupation. Many of the names match up with Ellis' predictions. (National World War II Museum) In describing the enemy, he noted the United States' post-World War I policy of non-aggression, saying Japan would no doubt strike first, believing it could defeat the American fleet. Japan, he said, would also defend certain points and bases at all costs, and those points would be the ones of most value to the U.S., foreshadowing the American island-hopping strategy that would target Guam, Iwo Jima, Saipan and other Japanese bases. Ellis was interred on Palau after his death, but the Marine Corps traveled to the island, exhumed the body and cremated his remains. His urn eventually made its way back to the U.S. and was buried in Ellis' hometown of Pratt, Kansas. In 2004, his remains were moved to Arlington National Cemetery. -- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook. Want to Learn More About Military Life? Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox. Every time someone buys a Super Soaker, it's an investment in the future. An Air Force veteran and inventor of the Super Soaker, Lonnie Johnson receives a residual from the sale of the toy squirt guns, which he uses to develop new ideas at his facility in Atlanta. So far, he's developed a ceramic battery with three times the charge of a lithium ion battery and an efficient hydrogen engine with no moving parts. It's the kind of technological innovation we might expect from someone who engineered the Galileo spacecraft, developed the stealth bomber and revolutionized the summertimes of Millennial children. Johnson is the son of a World War II veteran and was raised in Mobile, Alabama. His father taught him about electricity at a young age, and he was soon able to repair simple electronics. He became known among the neighborhood kids as "The Professor" and built his first engine (from junkyard scraps) to power a go-kart -- just one of his many projects as a youth. In 1968, one of the most turbulent years for race relations in the United States, Johnson entered the University of Alabama Junior Science Fair. His entry was a working, remote-controlled 3.5-foot robot named Linex, powered by compressed air and reel-to-reel tape. In spite of the racial tensions of the time and place, Linex and Johnson won first place. He attended Tuskegee University, where he received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's in nuclear engineering. His first job was working on cooling systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. In 1975, the Air Force called on him to head the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. Johnson worked for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he identified a flaw in the coming Galileo mission, an unmanned spacecraft that would be sent to study Jupiter. To correct it, he was tasked to attach the craft's nuclear power source to its electrical systems, which he did. The Galileo spacecraft would orbit Jupiter until it was intentionally destroyed in 2003. Johnson would work for NASA by day and tinker with his own projects by night. One of those extracurricular activities was an air conditioning system that used water instead of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were widely known to have a harmful effect on the Earth's ozone layer at the time. After hooking up a self-created nozzle to his bathroom sink, a stream of water burst out. It was his first inkling that the idea of a powerful stream of water could be fun. In the early 1980s, the Air Force sent him to Nebraska, where he worked on the B-2 Stealth Bomber for the Strategic Air Command. It was there he began to forge the plastic parts of what would become the Super Soaker in his basement, not really knowing whether the idea would work. It did, and he gave it to his 7-year-old daughter, who used it against the other kids on the Air Force Base. His idea was right; it was fun. His daughter dominated the other kids with their squirt guns. He tried to manufacture the guns himself, but the production costs were much too high. So he approached Larami, a toy company that made knockoffs of already popular toys. Larami was interested in it, so Johnson went home and made a new prototype, this time with different materials that included a two-liter soda bottle as a reservoir. (Johnson R&D) In 1990, Johnson met with the toy company representatives and fired the Super Soaker (originally called the "Power Drencher") across the board room. They were rightfully amazed. In the summer of 1991, America purchased 20 million Super Soakers. Since then, there have been 170 different Super Soaker designs. He also developed the N-Strike Line of Nerf weapons. His work in creating Super Soakers and Nerf weapons is what allows him to create game-changing technologies like the ceramic battery and Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter (JTEC), which efficiently converts waste heat to electrical energy and can be run in reverse as a cooling device. He holds more than 100 U.S. patents and tries to collect one of every item in which those patents are used, but has trouble keeping up. Johnson was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022, not just as the creator of the Super Soaker, but for his contributions that "extend far beyond the realm of toy design." -- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook. Want to Know More About Veteran Jobs? Be sure to get the latest news about post-military careers as well as critical info about veteran jobs and all the benefits of service. Subscribe to Military.com and receive customized updates delivered straight to your inbox. Ghanaian actor and YouTuber Kwaku Manu has affirmed the past notorious behaviour of his colleague, Dr. Likee, also known as Ras Nene. The former gangster, now an actor and YouTuber, Ras Nene, in an interview with Deloris Frimpong Manso, popularly known as Delay, opined about his past life. The comic skit maker disclosed that he used to be a very fearful street lord and drug smuggler before crossing the carpet to filmmaking. Dr. Likee also recounted how he became close to smoking at the tender age of 8, saying he used to smoke cigarettes and later joined his friend to smoke all manner of hard drugs. Amid his revelation, Kwaku Manu has corroborated how deadly the repented street lord looked in his prime days. According to him, no one dared look at Ras Nene twice during that time for fear of being brought down. "Since I started working in the film industry, Ive known Nene. You cant look the Tafo Boys in the eye while they are congregated along the street, including Nene, Tutu, and company. "Everyone dreaded their team because they were lethal. They were a notorious group of people who enjoyed smoking. When you pass them, you dare not glance at them," Kwaku Manu said. Recounting his personal experience with Ras Nene and his gang, the actor said in a video posted by ZionFelix, "Each time you use that stretch, you have to keep your neck rigid and go fast past them. I can think of a time when I was with them and was forced to smoke cigarettes. I started acting strange after I smoked, and he told me to quit acting like Mr. Beam." He spoke about them being introduced to acting at the same time: "At Jones Agyemang (JA) Films, we all met. Even though I gained recognition with him, it looks like I did so first. I can attest to the fact that he has previously assisted me." Controversial Ghanaian reggae-dancehall musician Shatta Wale has advised his colleagues to seek help from their Nigerian counterparts for their growth. Courting their collective attention for the move, the self-acclaimed dancehall king explained that the argument over superiority is baseless. In a tweet on Wednesday, January 18, Shatta Wale argued that the type of music done in Ghana recently is nowhere near their counterparts in Nigeria. Is better we stop arguing with Nigerian fans, promoters, etc and ask for help. Me sef I need a record label. Ghana music is a disgrace. Mek nobody lie you .. Shouts to Naija Ghana ppl too deh like talk with no action. Yes, I have said it, his tweet reads. This comes as a U-turn since the artist has, for the past year, been beefing with top Nigerian artists like Wizkid and Burna Boy refusing to accept the impact of Nigerian music on the African musical soil. Speaking on why he always beefs with Nigerian artists, Shatta explained that it is for the purpose of trying to push his Ghanaian colleagues into the Nigerian market. I have created the space for many. And nobody can come and tell me otherwise. Even when I am beefing with Nigerians, I am doing it because of the next generation. Now everybody is getting the opportunity. Everybody is going to Nigeria because that awareness is there. I have done things that even if I cant go to Nigeria I want to see the Black Sheriffs, the Medikals entering there now. This is because we now see Nigeria as our America. So we must get the Nigerians attention that is why I have sacrificed my life for the industry, he said in an interview with Accra-based Hitz FMs Daybreak Hitz. One of the sons of Equatorial Guinea's veteran ruler has been arrested on suspicion of illegally selling a plane owned by the national airline, state TV said Tuesday. Ruslan Obiang Nsue, whose iron-fisted father President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled since 1979, was detained on Monday and placed under house arrest, TVGE said. The channel said authorities opened an inquiry in late November "after discovering that an ATR 72-500 belonging to the national airline (Ceiba Intercontinental) had gone missing". The plane had been sent to Spain in 2018 for routine maintenance, TVGE said. Obiang is suspected of selling it to Binter Technic, an aircraft maintenance company based in Las Palmas on the Spanish island of Grand Canary, it said. The ATR 72-500 is a turboprop developed in the late 1980s by the French-Italian maker ATR with a capacity of up to 74 passengers. Obiang is a former junior minister for sport and youth and previous head of the airline who is today chief of airport services companies, Ceiba Aeropuertos. His half-brother, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, said on Twitter, "Ruslan Obiang has admitted that he was the one who sold Ceiba's ATR." "I am not going to let myself be swayed by family ties or favouritism, and this is why I ordered his immediate arrest and for him to be handed over to justice." The two men's 80-year-old father, President Obiang, is the longest-serving head of state alive today, excluding monarchs. He seized power in August 1979, toppling his uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, who was then executed by firing squad. Firmly suppressing dissent and surviving a string of attempted coups, Obiang has remained at the helm of the oil-rich central African state ever since. But the wealth is concentrated in the hands of just a few and four-fifths of the population of 1.4 million live below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures. The country also has a reputation for graft, ranking 172 out of 180 nations on Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index. News about the disappearance of the airliner, and its suspected sale, emerged in December, trigging a wave of indignation. Obiang has long been viewed as grooming Teodoro as his successor. Speculation grew he would hand over the reins last year at presidential elections as his public appearances became rarer. Equatorial Guinea. By AFP (AFP) But those expectations were quashed after Teodorin was enveloped in scandals abroad over assets suspected to have been acquired illegally. France, Britain and the United States have ordered him to forfeit millions of dollars in assets, from mansions to luxury cars, while France also handed him a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 30 million euros (dollars). President Obiang ran for a sixth term in the November vote, and was credited with 94.9 percent of the ballot. A prominent Kenyan LGBTQ campaigner whose body was found dumped in a metal box about two weeks ago was buried at the family home in the west of the country on Tuesday. The grisly death of Edwin Kiprotich Kipruto, popularly known as Edwin Chiloba, has drawn condemnation and calls for justice from friends and rights groups in Kenya and abroad. Hundreds of people gathered at his parents' home in Sergoit, a village in Elgeyo Marakwet county, some 300 kilometres (190 miles) northwest of Nairobi. Family and friends wept as they paid homage to the 25-year-old model and fashion designer, who has been targeted by online abuse since his death. Joel Onteri, who attended high school with Chiloba, appealed for the vilification of his former classmate to end. "Despite all that is being said, Chiloba has a family and those close to him. If we continue mocking him on social media, the family is being stigmatised," Onteri said. "Let's leave judgement to God." Others made similar calls on Twitter, where his name was the top trending topic in Kenya. "Today, a peaceful person is buried. Rest in Power Edwin Chiloba. Salute your courage to authentically live your life," Irungu Houghton, the executive director of Amnesty International's Kenya branch, said on Twitter. "May your love for life inspire all who now know you. Deepest condolences again to family, friends + the LGBTIQ+ community." Last week, the chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor said Chiloba had been smothered to death. He said after a post-mortem that a piece of denim had been tied around Chiloba's mouth and nose and that socks had also been stuffed in his mouth. Chiloba's body was discovered about 40 kilometres (25 miles) outside the Rift Valley town of Eldoret after it was reportedly dumped from a moving car. The killing was initially suspected to have been a hate crime, as members of Kenya's LGBTQ community have faced harassment and physical attacks in the predominantly conservative Christian nation. Freelance photographer Jacktone Odhiambo, who was reportedly a lover of Chiloba, is the prime suspect in his death and is in police custody along with four other people. A court in Eldoret has allowed police to detain the five until January 31 as they pursue their investigations into the killing. Rights campaigners have condemned Chiloba's violent death and called for heightened efforts to protect members of the LGBTQ community. Homosexuality is taboo in Kenya and across much of Africa. Despite attempts to overturn British colonial-era laws banning homosexuality in Kenya, gay sex remains a crime with penalties including prison terms of up to 14 years. According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Chiloba's death came after the unsolved murders of several other rights advocates for sexual minorities. President Nana Akufo-Addo has wished Hon. Joe Ghartey well in the upcoming New Patriotic Party's flagbearer race. Hon. Ghartey, New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for the Essikado-Ketan Constituency and former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice on 13th January, 2023, paid a courtesy call on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House to officially inform him of his intention to contest in the NPP Presidential Primaries slated for later this year. The President in a discussion with Hon. Ghartey said he saw his role as ensuring a fair playing field. According to the President, he was prepared to support anyone who emerged victorious in the Primaries. The President however cautioned that the campaign should be conducted with decency. The President emphasized that it was his desire to ensure that NPP retains power in 2025 and beyond. On his part, Hon. Ghartey, thanked the President for the confidence he reposed in him during his first term of office when he found him worthy to serve as the Minister for such a critical Ministry as the Railways Development. Hon. Ghartey assured the President that he and his team will conduct themselves in with decency during the campaign for the flagbearership position and promised to work very hard for the party to retain power beyond 2024. Hon. Ghartey made it clear that he would not sit idle and that he would take immediate action if any member of his team became wayward and started attacking others. He thanked the President for taking time of his busy schedule to meet with him and wished he and the government well. Some of the world's top banks, including some French ones, continue to fund new oil and gas projects while being part of industry groups aimed at reaching carbon neutrality, NGOs have warned. Nine NGOs found that many lenders in the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero are continuing to fund new oil projects, incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Glasgow Alliance has emerged as the key climate alliance for finance industry firms committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. US lenders, French banks At the top of the list of banks not meeting their own pledges and continuing to fund and invest in fossil fuel projects are two lenders based in the United States: Citigroup and Bank of America. In third place is Japan's MUFG. French banks BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole are 15th, 16th and 17th respectively on the list, with six to seven billion dollars in funding. In their report published Tuesday, the climate groups point to asset managers who continue to hold stocks of oil and gas firms that are developing new projects. They found the top 58 asset managers in the alliance held 847 billion dollars in shares and bonds of companies developing new fossil fuel projects. "There is now broad agreement ... that there is no room in a 1.5-degree carbon budget for the carbon that would be brought into the atmosphere from new fossil fuel supply," said Paddy McCully, an author of the report and an analyst for Reclaim Finance. Banks and asset managers are regularly scolded for financing the fossil fuel sector, but say they work to finance the energy transition. Read also: (with AFP) In information revealed by RFI, 49 Ivorian soldiers who were arrested last year in Mali and accused of being mercenaries were part of the UN's Minusma mission and had been deployed at the request of the German contingent. The Ivorian military personnel were pardoned and released to return home earlier this month. Arrested on their arrival in Bamako in July, 2022, they were convicted by a Malian military court last December of "plotting against the government" and "undermining the external security of the state". Cote d'Ivoire insisted that the soldiers were part of a so-called National Support Element (NSE) to reinforce Minusma operations, in accordance with a communique from the Ivorian National Security Council on 12 July. The UN Mission itself had already revealed this on 11 July, before a UN spokesperson mysteriously back-tracked on the announcement three days later in a statement from UN headquarters in New York. This turn around led to Bamako's expulsion of Minusma's spokesman less than a week later, and paved the way for Mali's military junta to accuse the Ivorians of having come to destabilise the country. UN agreement with Cote d'Ivoire The affair lasted six months, with the UN calling for the release of the 49 soldiers without clearly specifying their status. According to several internal UN documents seen by RFI, it was indeed Minusma, more precisely, the German contingent of the UN mission, that brought in the Ivorians. The flights that allowed the Ivorian soldiers to carry out their rotations on 10 July were submitted to the Malian authorities as being for the transport of troops from the German contingent. Since July 2019, when an agreement was signed between Cote d'Ivoire and the United Nations, seven Ivorian contingents had flown to Bamako and were considered as NSEs. The 49 soldiers arrested by the junta were the eighth rotation. It was also at the request of the German contingent that the predecessors of the 49 were decorated by the UN force commander himself on 10 June, just one month before the arrival of the soldiers who were to succeed them. Support for Minusma German contingent From the outset of the affair, Cote d'Ivoire mentioned a contract linking its army to a private company Sahel Aviation Service which had specified that it was "mobilised" in the case of the Ivorian soldiers, without giving further details. According to the Ivorian authorities, the contract dealt with the security and logistics of a site at Bamako airport. The UN says this site houses the German contingent's NSEs and is not managed by Minusma itself. Last June, the German contingent declared to the UN mission that 471 soldiers were supporting its activities with NSE status, without specifying their nationality. This is a particularly high number, much higher than the 50 theoretically authorised by the UN rules, except under exceptional circumstances. Neither confirmed nor denied by the UN The Ivorians have acknowledged "shortcomings and misunderstandings" regarding the arrival of its 49 soldiers in Mali, without further details. Last September, three female soldiers among the 49 arrested were released. These three soldiers were sentenced to death in absentia last month by the Malian justice system. Asked for a response, UN headquarters in New York said that "it would not be appropriate for the UN to transmit information relating to internal operational and administrative matters." The German authorities, both the embassy in Bamako and Ministry of Defence in Berlin, refused to answer questions. (Source: David Bache, RFI Afrique) Two French journalists have gone on trial in France on charges of trying to blackmail the king of Morocco allegedly demanding money to hush purportedly damaging revelations about him. Eric Laurent, 75, and Catherine Graciet, 48, are accused of demanding 2million in 2015 in exchange for halting the publication of a book about the Moroccan royal family. Both writers, who face up to five years in jail and 75,000 in fines if found guilty, have denied any wrongdoing and say it was a lawyer representing the Moroccan royal family who first offered them the money. In court on Monday Laurent admitted to an "ethical error", a "disaster" in having accepted to "let myself be caught up in this affair", but denied having committed "any criminal offence". Co-author Graciet said that the Moroccan envoy "seduced me with his financial offer, I took the plunge and I regret it". 'Embarrassing revelations' The writers had already published a highly critical book on King Mohammed VI in 2012 titled "The Predator King", which was banned in Morocco. Ahead of the planned publication of a second volume, Laurent met a lawyer representing the monarchy at the bar of a Parisian hotel in August 2015 and warned him it contained potentially embarrassing revelations for the monarchy. Morocco accuses the journalist of offering to halt the book's publication, originally due in early 2016, in exchange for 3million. He allegedly later reduced that amount to two million following negotiations. However, Laurent maintains the lawyer representing Morocco was the one who suggested a financial deal to prevent the information from getting out. Taped conversations After the first meeting, Morocco filed a complaint and an investigation was opened in Paris. This time under police surveillance, the lawyer and Laurent then met again at the same hotel later that same month. They met a third time in late August 2015 at another hotel, where they were joined by Graciet and both writers purportedly signed a deal to receive two million euros in exchange for not bringing out the book. They were arrested afterwards in the possession of two envelopes each containing 40,000 in cash, which Morocco has claimed was the first instalment of the agreed larger sum. During the investigation, both writers admitted to having agreed to a deal to halt the book's publication over geopolitical concerns, but denied the charge of blackmail. Laurent's lawyer, Serge Portelli, has said both journalists fell into a "trap set up by the Moroccan services". After their arrest, it emerged that the Moroccan king's representative had secretly made recordings of all meetings, and passed them on to investigators. "This recording is a fake," Laurent said on Monday, when confronted with a transcript of certain passages in which he appears to actively suggest a sum of money. An expert assessment previously found that the copies of the recordings handed over to investigators seemed to have undergone some kind of "post-treatment, impossible to define". But a court in 2017 rejected the defence's argument that the tapes were inadmissible. 18.01.2023 LISTEN The Chief of the Dagbon Students Association (DASA) of the Tamale Technical University, Chief Nurudeen Ibrahim has appealed to the Akufo Addo government to review the monthly allowance paid to National Service Personnel. According to him, Ghana's economic challenge had made life unbearable to the service personnel at their respective post following the low income they receive as monthly allowance. Chief Nurudeen revealed that most of the personnel have become professional begers, whilst others depend on relatives for food and transportation to work. The amount the service personnel receive every month under this economy is sickening and unfortunate, everything in the market and even on table top is soaring each day due to the economic crisis that had bedeviled the country, for the past eight years, Service Personnel in Ghana still survive on Gh559.04 as monthly allowance, some of them are posted outside their regions, Municipality and districts, how can this people feed themselves, pay utility bills, rent and trek to work everyday, just this week, PURC announced increment of utility bills which will take effect next week, why is the State bent in making living difficult for we the youth, the allowance of this people remain the same, Chief lamented. According to him, the State authorities are failing the youth of this country, indicating that none of the political class and technocrats seem bothered about the plight of the service personnel. Addressing journalists at his TaTU palace, Chief Nurudeen appealed to the government through the Ministry of Education, National Service Secretariat to humanly increase the allowance to Gh1,000. The reason for the Gh1,000 proposal is that, at list the National Service Personnel can save some monies to start their own small business after the one year period he added. He further encouraged the leadership of the personnel to petition the relevant authorities, and continue to remain the government the need for the increment. About NSS allowance increments Government in December 2016 approved GHC559.04 to be paid to National Service Personnel as a monthly allowance (starting January 1, 2017). The reviewed amount represented a 60 per cent increment of GHs350 which personnel were receiving at the time. In January 2014, the National Service Scheme allowance increased to GHS350.00 from GHS243.48. The facial expression of the people depicted that an age-old prayer, desire, hope, and expectation has been granted the coronation of Alhaji Abubakar Abdulai. Chief Alhaji Abubakar Abdulai was officially out doored on Saturday, 14th January 2023, at the Kyekyewere Okunini Palace an indeed a day to be remembered by residents of Kyekyewere Zongo, when Alhaji Abubakar Abdulai was outdoored. The staff of the office is a symbol of recognition by Kyekyewere to fully take over the mantle of leadership in Kyekyewere Zongo to lead the people in the preservation of their customs and traditions and draw the people closer to the Government for the sustenance of peace, unity, and development in the community. The colorful coronation was graced by the National Chief Imam in the person of Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, DCE - Hon. Josephine Ansah Inkoom, His Eminence Okunini Gyebi Kwame Ababio II, and other dignitaries. The DCE of Ayensuano, Hon. Josephine Ansah Inkoom in her speech, gave good remarks and applauded His Eminence Okunini Gyebi Kwame Ababio II, Kyekyewere Chief, and his cabinet for the great and massive achievements and change. She added that, based on his great leadership, they had the presence of the National Chief Imam in Ayensua and it is the first in history. On behalf of the President, thanked him and said, it is their prayer that during his reign, there would be great leaders in Ayensuano that will unite all Christians, Muslims and Traditionalists. "Ghana has a great history that Christians and Muslims living together in harmony to the extent that Muslims marry Christians," she added. His Eminence Okunini Gyebi Kwame Ababio II noted that unity amongst themselves would go a long way to build the community. He further encouraged all to work hard to build the community because development is not solely for the Government. He then pledged his support to peaceful co-existence with Nananom for development of the area. Observers have truly explained that it will take a long time in the history of the Kyekyewere Zongo to witness such mammoth durbar. A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in reclamation and rejuvenation is calling on government put in place measures to stop the incidence of innocent persons, especially children, dying in abandoned galamsey pits. Operations Director of Partners of Nature Africa (PONA), Forster Amofah, who made the call-in reaction to the death of two brothers in an abandoned pit filled with water at Manso Watereso in the Amansie South District of the Ashanti Region on January 9, lamented that such preventable deaths are becoming rampant. If government could mobilize resources, together with the small-scale miners to reclaim and rejuvenate such pits, these deaths could be avoided, Mr. Amofah stated in a sad tone. He recalled how PONA had made similar calls to government to ensure small scale miners covered and reclaimed mined pits after their operations, expressing regret that if the call were heeded, We wouldnt be mourning the loss of these innocent brothers going to their farms just to get something for their families. Mr. Amofah noted that reclamation is one of the best ways not only to restore degraded lands and forests to their agricultural or vegetative use after mining activities but also to prevent such unfortunate deaths. He expressed condolences to the bereaved family and called on chiefs, District Assembles, assembly members, community leaders and members to insist on the restoration of depleted lands and galamsey pits in their areas after mining operations. He appealed to government to support PONAs programme of action to reclaim depleted lands in mining areas. Partners of Nature Africa, an NGO in reclamation, has for the past seven years been working with small scale miners and community leaders in the restoration of depleted sites in ten regions in the country. The Organization has entered into partnership with the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Crop Research Institute (CRI) to introduce the planting of economic crops on reclaimed lands in some galamsey areas, as an alternative livelihood programme. Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyepong, a flag bearer hopeful of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has pledged to re-imbibe the apparent loss of patriotism, honesty, and discipline among Ghanaians if he becomes the President of Ghana. Mr Agyepong also he Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin Central and said the country could only make a quantum leap in its development drive if the citizenry eschewed corruption that had become widespread, dishonesty and other serious attitudes that stifled investments and wealth creation. Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the Central Regional Reconciliation Engagement put together by the party on Sunday, Mr. Agyepong said, it is about time we encourage Ghanaians to love their country. We must be resolute in promoting positive ethical values and practices among Ghanaians to create a better society for all. The forum brought together scores of party stalwarts including national, regional, and constituency executives, former appointees, and Chief Executive Officers among many party faithful. It was the theme: Reconciling the rank and file of the NPP in Central Region to break the eight. Disheartened by the recent moral decadence, Mr. Agyepong recollected the beautiful experiences in the olden days when the Ghanaian rushed to help an injured person or someone in trouble and noted that, it was that fellow feeling for one another that enabled Ghanaians to dwell together peacefully in times of difficulties. He pointed out that ensuring clean environment at all timed was not the preserve of sanitation workers alone but a collective responsibility. It is a misnomer and until we, as a people, take it upon ourselves not only to ensure good environmental sanitation and cultivate habits that restrain us from littering the environment, we will always find ourselves in messy surroundings compounded by the plastic waste, particularly at the beaches, he noted. Touching on the party's call for internal peace and harmony, Mr. Agyepong commended the leadership for leading the peace deliberations and urged all to bury their differences and embrace reconciliation. Breaking the eight, he indicated hinged on several ingredients but key among them was unity, adding; until we present a united front, it will just be a mantra, a mirage. We need to look beyond our differences and think about the success of the party, the reason we need to stick together as a family. Let us unite to retain power, he added. GNA US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is heading for an 11-day trip to Africa starting this week, aimed at deepening economic ties on the continent where China has become a key player. Yellen's travel to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa from Wednesday onwards comes after a detour to Switzerland where she is set to meet Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on macroeconomic issues. The extended visit follows a US-Africa summit in Washington last month, where the United States laid out billions in projects over the coming years along with private sector investment. With rivals China and Russia competing for influence and opportunity in Africa, the US has been working to stave off an erosion of its once-powerful position in the region. Yellen's visit will begin in Senegal, where she will meet on Friday with President Macky Sall, who is also the current chair of the African Union. She is expected in Senegal to highlight US efforts to boost economic ties with the region "by expanding trade and investment flows," the Treasury said in a statement previewing her trip. Yellen will then travel to Zambia to meet President Hakainde Hichilema as well as other finance officials. Hichilema, who took office in 2021, has promised to restore the copper-rich nation's credibility and creditworthiness after inheriting a cash-strapped economy. Yellen is also expected to speak on efforts to improve global health and prepare for future pandemics, as well as on food production. In South Africa, which recently assumed the chairmanship of the BRICS emerging economies group, Yellen will meet Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and South Africa Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago. While in Africa, Yellen is also to stress the importance of accelerating clean energy access and "underscore the spillover effects" of war in Ukraine, the Treasury said. Former US ambassador Susan Page told AFP that despite positive developments like the major summit in Washington last year, "the proof is in the pudding" when it comes to pledges of support for African countries. "Are they really going to come up with the serious money... Or is it going to be a trade-off?" asked Page, now a professor at the University of Michigan. She added that while US moves have been largely framed as countering China's advances, it "is a shame because African countries want to be treated as Africa, and not as a wedge between great power competition." The Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament has hinted that management of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will appear before the house to answer questions on why electricity tariffs should be increased. The committee contends that Ghanaians demand an explanation for the proposed tariff increment. This follows an announcement by PURC that utility tariffs will go up in the first quarter of 2023 effective February 1, 2023. The information indicated that the end-user tariff for electricity and water has been increased by about 30 and 8.3 percent respectively following the conclusion of the PURC's regulatory processes for quarterly adjustments. Speaking to Citi News, Chairman of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament, Samuel Atta Akyea said PURC and ECG must explain the rationale behind the increment. They should be able to explain to us why they think despite these difficulties, there should be an increase. I have not seen any rationalization for this increase, so I want to keep quiet until we as a committee find out from them what really is going on. As members of the committee, we do not have the underpinnings of this arrangement. So we need to call them, so we sit and engage them. Mr. Attah Akyea added that ECG must seal all revenue loopholes in order to generate more income. Some people are enjoying electricity at the expense of others that is why their books do not look good. We need to look at some of these things because in trying to come out of the doldrums, you dont squeeze people too much. Rather, you do not sit down for people to enjoy free electricity. Go ahead and fix it. citinewsroom A tiger who escaped from a farm and roamed the countryside outside of Johannesburg for four days, attacking a man and killing several animals, was euthanised on Wednesday, a local community leader said. The eight-year-old female Bengal tiger was put down just before dawn after it killed a dog, the latest in a series of attacks that followed its escape from an enclosure at a private farm on Saturday, Gresham Mandy, a member of a local safety volunteer group in Walkerville, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Johannesburg, told AFP. Tigers are not native to South Africa, but in recent years their breeding has become common in the country. Following its escape, the tiger named Sheba, attacked a 39-year-old man, who survived the assault and was hospitalised with injuries to his legs. It also killed a dog and a deer and mauled another dog so badly that it had to be put down, Mandy said. Dozens of people, including animal experts and members of the community group tracked the big cat using drones and helicopters. The decision to put her down was made after her latest kill. "She killed the dog in a private farm with dwellings where six families reside, it was becoming too much of a risk," Mandy said. "In that moment there was no other option but to put her down," said Mandy. A report by global animal rights charity, Four Paws, said that 359 tigers -- almost a tenth of the world's population -- were exported from South Africa from 2011-2020, most of them sold to zoos. Mackenzie McDonald enjoyed the biggest win of his career on Wednesday at the Australian Open with a straight sets defeat of the top seed and defending champion Rafael Nadal. The 27-year-old American - ranked 65 in the world - won 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 in two hours and 32 minutes against the 36-year-old Spaniard who had been struggling with a hip injury to advance to the third round in Melbourne. He's an incredible champion," said McDonald. "He's never going to give up, regardless of the situation, so even closing it out against a top guy like that is always tough. I kept focusing on myself in the end and got through. It was Nadal's earliest exit at any Grand Slam tournament since bowing out in the first round in Melbourne in 2016 against the world number 45 Fernando Verdasco. Call for physio McDonald won only four games when he last played Nadal at the French Open in 2020. But he blazed into their second encounter. He opened up a 4-1 lead and held off Nadal's fightback to clinch the set 6-4 after 46 minutes. McDonald broke early in the second set but was quickly pegged back to 2-2. However Nadal's errors - provoked by McDonald's flat drives - returned and Nadal lost his service again before pulling up after trying to chase a forehand. The physio was called and he could be heard saying "hip" in Spanish before leaving the court for a medical timeout. He returned but was a diminished entity. Good start "I'm really happy with how I started that match," said McDonald. "I thought I was playing really well, serving great, returning well, too. So I was really taking it to him. The last time we played, he kicked my butt. While Nadal nurses his wounds and fends off the inevitable questions about retirement after nearly two decades on the professional circuit, McDonald will take on either the qualifier Dalibor Svrcina from the Czech Republic or the 33rd seed Yoshihito Nishioka for a place in the last-16. It's a tough moment. It's a tough day, lamented Nadal who had been seeking a record-extending 23rd Grand Slam singles title. I can't say that I am not destroyed mentally at this moment, because I would be lying. A member of the communications team of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has revealed that the issues surrounding the construction of the National Cathedral are giving many of his colleagues sleepless nights. According to Mr Albert Ababio Kumi, popularly known as Adenta Kumi, the construction of the said house of God is haunting him and many of his colleague communicators of the party. Adenta Kumi made this revelation while discussing the National Cathedral as a panellist on Accra100.5FM's morning show (Ghana Yensom) hosted by Odehyeeba Kofi Essuman on Tuesday, 17 January 2023. What is happening with the National Cathedral is a major source of worry for many of the party's supporters, he said. I went somewhere to have lunch [and] when a guy saw me at the base, he started pestering [me] with issues of the National Cathedral, particularly concerning some of the revelations being made by the National Democratic Congress' Member of Parliament for the North Tongu Constituency in the Volta Region, Mr Samuel Okudjeto-Ablakwa, he added. He said the issues with the National Cathedral are demoralising to the support base of the party. Meanwhile, one of the board members of the National Cathedral Secretariat, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, has questioned the fund-raising techniques being used by the National Cathedral Secretariat as non-effective yet expensive. According to him, some of the programmes the Board of the National Cathedral Secretariat has held have cost more than the monies they have raised from them. To this end, he observed that the Boards fundraising method had not yielded much and, therefore, they needed a change in strategy. I do believe that the fund-raising methods we have attempted have not yielded much. Indeed, some of the programmes we have held have cost more than the monies we have raised from them. I suggest another form of fund-raising where we would be guaranteed more donations from denominations, churches, individuals, businessmen and corporate bodies. I would be happy to discuss these if the committee is interested in that, he said in his resignation letter as a trustee of the Board of the National Cathedral. Bishop Heward-Mills, the founder and leader of the Lighthouse Group of Churches, bemoaned that six years after President Nana Akufo-Addo cut sod for the construction of the National Cathedral, all that has been done is the excavation of a huge pit at the centre of the city using $30 million of public funds. I am a firm believer in the presidents vision. I believe that the public can see and is questioning the fact that we have spent almost six years since the sod-cutting of this project as well as over $30m (thirty million dollars) of public funds, to excavate a massive pit in the centre of the city, he noted. He said he believes that many of the questions that are being asked and hurled at the National Cathedral Project are reasonable and legitimate questions by objective citizens who just want answers to their questions. In his resignation letter which has been copiously quoted by Accra-based Citi FM, he noted that continuing to pay contractors $40,000 (forty thousand dollars) a month, as we wait to procure a huge loan in this hostile atmosphere sounds dicey to me. I do believe that almost six years down the line, we need to look at a different approach to achieve our goal of building Gods house in Ghana. Bishop Heward-Mills, who resigned in August 2022, said in his letter that he felt certain concerns and opinions he had expressed about the project were trivialised and set aside. I feel that the treatment of the issues I have raised in my several letters has been unfortunate, he said in his resignation letter, explaining: My letters have been ignored in the past, not attended to for years, and, at best, addressed flippantly. You may recall I have spoken passionately and written extensively about the costs, the design, the location, the fundraising, the mobilisation of the churches, and the role of the trustees. These, if heeded, would have made our project more achievable. Generally speaking, my inputs, my opinions, and my letters have been trivialised and set aside. Bishop Heward-Mills also complained that despite his appointment by President Nana Akufo-Addo as a trustee, he was never registered as a Director of the Company of the National Cathedral of Ghana, a company limited by guarantee. I do not believe this is an oversight but a deliberate exclusion from the Board, he noted, pointing out: Six years is a long time to correct this failure to register me if it was indeed an administrative lapse. l have, therefore, accepted for some time now that I am not a trustee of the National Cathedral, but I have still sought to help with the Cathedral because I believe in the Presidents vision and I do not have to be a legally registered trustee to do so. I refer to myself in this letter as a trustee because even though l am not privy to most of the weighty decisions of the Board I am referred to as such. This lack of clarity is robbing our vision of the validity it needs. Over and over, I have asked that we address this appropriately and urgently because there are many dire implications to the trustees and the individuals involved in this project. I have been a reachable and available trustee and attended every single meeting of trustees since the pandemic began, in person and by zoom, and the records will show that. If I say that I, as a trustee, do not know many of the financial and technical issues concerning the Cathedral, it means the discussions about the National Cathedral were held by some people outside the trustees meeting or perhaps in a forum that I was not present or invited to. On the one hand, the National Cathedral is said to be a government of Ghana project, with the government taking financial decisions. Yet, on another hand, at meetings, it is implied that the trustees have taken or participated in taking some decisions. I would like to state clearly that if in the future, there is more clarity to my role and function in the building of the Cathedral, I remain open, available and willing to serve at the pleasure of the President and the nation. Regardless of your response to my resignation and inputs, I remain a supporter of the National Cathedral project and will endeavour to be present to rejoice with the nation when this project is completed. Bishop Heward-Mills said he did not wish the media or general public to construe my withdrawal as a sign of a lack of support or belief in the building of the National Cathedral. The National Cathedral project has been the subject of one controversy after another. Just recently, the secretariat jumped to the defence of one of its board members, Rev Victor Kusi Boateng, who, according to opposition lawmaker Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, had the board pay some GH2.6 million to a company he owns JNS Talent Centre Ltd, which allegedly runs a creche in Dawhenya. Source: Classfmonline.com The Majority Chief Whip in Parliament, Mr. Frank Annoh-Dompreh has reiterated his support for Vice President H.E Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for the flagbearer position of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). In a post on Twitter on Wednesday, January 18, the Parliamentarian believes the Vice President is a gift to Ghana. According to him, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia should be cherished because he will rescue Ghana from its current woes. He is a gift to this Nation, let's not take it for granted. Do away with your 'Hatred' for him.. He will rescue us, certainly. Dr.Bawumia, ever proud of him, Mr. Frank Annoh-Dompreh shared on social media on Wednesday, January 18. While it is no secrete that the Vice President is among the top officials of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) set to contest the flagbearer race, he is yet to announce his intent. Should Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia join the race eventually, he will be contesting in a tough contest that will have former Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Alan Kyerematen and former Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Akoto Afriyie among others pose as a threat to his political chances. Attacks in Burkina Faso have increased since October and now especially target civilians, according to junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore, who took power last year on a vow to quell jihadist violence. The extremists are switching tactics to focus on civilians, Traore said in remarks on Tuesday, days after dozens of women were kidnapped in the country's insurgency-hit north. "Today, another phase has been launched by the terrorists," Traore said at a meeting at the University of Ouagadougou with students from around the country. "Militarily, our men are determined to confront them, so they are starting to attack civilians, innocent people, humiliate them, kill them. Traore admitted: "Since October, the number of attacks has multiplied." "We are determined to resolve this terrorist issue," he said. "We did not choose this war. Burkina did not attack anyone. We were attacked and we have been defending ourselves ever since." Traore, 34, on September 30 led Burkina's second military coup in little more than eight months -- a takeover stoked by anger within the army over the mounting toll from the insurgency. Thousands have been killed in the landlocked West African country since jihadists began launching cross-border raids from neighbouring Mali. Some two million people out of a population of 21 million have fled their homes and more than a third of the country is outside government control. Assaults on the security forces and civilians have increased in recent months, especially in northern and eastern regions bordering Mali and Niger. Around 50 women were kidnapped last week as they foraged for food near the northern town of Arbinda. Arbinda lies in the Sahel administrative region -- an area under blockade by jihadist groups and difficult to resupply. Burkina Faso. By (AFP) A security source contacted by AFP said an airlift to resupply Arbinda began on Tuesday morning. "It was about time -- we have had nothing to eat for months. Just leaves which are also becoming scarce," Souleymane, a resident contacted by AFP, said. Amadou, another resident, also expressed relief. "The ideal thing would be to organise a road convoy quickly because we have a big population here." The Burkinabe general staff late Tuesday asked transport companies to make available "free of charge or at a reduced price" trucks with drivers to help the resupply. The United Nations says nearly one million people live in blockaded areas in the north and east. In many areas, crops can no longer be grown because of the security risk. The Vice President of the Republic, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia has hinted at plans by government to introduce 'paperless textbooks' in Senior High Schools across the country. The Vice President said all SHS students as part of the digitalization agenda, will be given free tablets. Speaking at the University of Ghanas campus in a New Year's school program, Dr. Bawumia explained that the tablets would be loaded with textbooks to improve teaching and learning in schools. The "game-changing tablets," as the Vice President described it, will also be preloaded with past questions to prepare students ahead of their final year exams. "This year, we are on course to provide all Senior High School students in Ghana with tablets which are loaded with textbooks on them for their studies. That's a very game-changing development. We will have past questions preloaded on these tablets that will be distributed." He stressed that, There are also plans to make free internet access to Senior High Schools and Tertiary institutions to improve teaching and learning. David Adjaye has been sued in Ghanas High Court by a former Adjaye Associates director who claims she was sacked after more than a decade at the practice. Alice Asafu-Adjaye who is no relation to David Adjaye is claiming $61,903 (50,000) for unfair termination following her dismissal in 2015 as associate director of African projects, according to a suit filed at the Labour Division of the Accra High Court. The senior architect says she was handpicked to set up and run the office in the Ghanaian capital and relocated from London with her young daughter in 2012, according to a witness statement filed in support of the writ issued in May 2021. But three years later, the claim stated, Asafu-Adjaye was told the Ghana office was closing and was let go with no redundancy pay or offer of relocation costs back to the UK where she had studied and lived since the mid-80s. The claimant, a former Bartlett student and Foster + Partners architect, said she was given just four weeks notice instead of the required 11 for senior staff. Listing David Adjaye and the Ghanaian company Adjaye Associates Ghana Ltd as defendants, the claim said her dismissal amounted to a redundancy but that no redundancy procedures were followed, in breach of Ghanas 2003 Labour Act. A statement of defence lodged with the courts denies all the allegations against Adjaye and the company. It states that Asafu-Adjayes employment was terminated lawfully in accordance with the new contract signed when she moved to Ghana. It states that she was only entitled to four weeks notice which was duly paid to her. Asafu-Adjayes witness statement, filed alongside the claim, also alleged that Adjaye did not wind up the Ghana company and instead continued to bid for work, including the National Cathedral project, through another newly incorporated company, Sir David Adjaye & Associates (SDAA). She alleges this was done to avoid paying her redundancy. The defence counters that SDAA is a separate company with no bearing on the lawsuit. The claim also alleges that David Adjaye who last November was appointed by King Charles to Britains prestigious Order of Merit used employees in his Ghana office to work on personal projects without paying any fees to the company. The claim said one architect brought over from the UK spent most of his time working on Adjayes private residence in eastern Ghana. This claim is also denied in the statement of defence. Asafu-Adjaye was recruited from Foster + Partners by David Adjaye in the early 2000s and she considered him a mentor and a friend at the time, her witness statement said. It was an opportunity to be involved in growing a minority-owned business led by a talented Ghanaian and focused on projects I considered culturally important, she said in her witness statement. Asafu-Adjaye rose through the ranks and had so much faith in the AAUK project that when the London office experienced financial difficulty in 2008, she agreed to forgo her salary for over a year to ensure other employees were paid, she said. This led her to experience extreme hardship and leave Asafu-Adjaye relying on credit cards and child support payments, the witness statement alleged. According to the claim, Asafu-Adjaye was chosen to launch the Ghana practice as she had dual Ghanaian and UK citizenship and was the only senior staff member with experience working in Africa. After the establishment of Adjayes Ghana company, of which Asafu-Adjaye was second director and company secretary, the office won a number of high-profile projects, including the Alara Concept Store creative hub in Nigeria and the International Finance Corporation headquarters in Senegal. Yet in 2015, Asafu-Adjaye was informed that the office was being closed due to its failure to generate sufficient funds, and all staff contracts were being terminated with one months notice. Asafu-Adjaye is claiming $61,903 in redundancy pay and compensation, costs and damages, plus an order for the defendants to pay the Ghanaian authorities around 3,000 in social security and national insurance (SSNIT) contributions she claims are owed on her wages. Adjayes defence denied Asafu-Adjayes termination was based on the intention to close the Ghana office. It also rejected the accusations over SSNIT, arguing she had refused to register for the scheme. In the most recent hearing on 20 December, David Adjayes counsel informed the court they had been instructed to settle with Asafu-Adjaye out of court. At the time of publication, no settlement has been reached. If a settlement is not reached, the judge has ruled that the case will be heard at the next court hearing on 19 January. Adjaye Associates and Asafu-Adjaye declined to comment. Story by Ella Jessel with additional reporting by Zubaida Mabuno Ismail. Source: Architects' Journal Health workers and other stakeholders are calling on government and the Ministry of Health to put in clear measures to fight kidney-related diseases as young people are dying of kidney failure in the Upper East Region. According to the health workers, from March to September 2022 alone, 15 young people died of kidney failure out of the 30 cases that were recorded. The situation according to them is worrying and needs urgent measures to curb it, especially among young people. Dr Emmanuel Akatibo, a Physician Specialist, made this known to Class 91.3 FMs regional correspondent in an interview. He said this has made the demand for a dialysis center in the region urgent. Dr Akatibo stressed that "since I started working in the regional hospital in March 2022 as the only Physician Specialist, the department of internal medicine has recorded over 30 kidney failure cases that needed dialysis, either as a long-term renal replacement therapy or a short course of dialysis to allow time for the kidneys to recover." He added that "Unfortunately, this service is not available at the regional hospital which serves as the main referral centre for the whole of Upper East, parts of North East, Burkina Faso, and Togo Out of those who had end stage kidney failure and needed long-term haemodialysis, only a few could afford to travel to Tamale, the nearest centre for dialysis. This didnt come easy for them at all, so some dropped along the way because they couldnt keep up, he disclosed. He admitted that aside the cost of the dialysis and medications which are expensive, these patients had to travel two to three times a week with a caregiver to Tamale for the dialysis. This, he said, puts extra burden on their families because some had to stop working in order to be able to travel almost every other day for dialysis. Source: Classfmonline.com Reverend Victor Kusi-Boateng, Secretary to the Board of Trustees, National Cathedral of Ghana, says corruption allegations levelled against him by Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongu, are twisted narration of events. A statement issued and signed by the Rev Kusi-Boateng said there had never been any criminal intent nor any crime committed in his dealings with the Government of Ghana or the National Cathedral. I have taken note of some defamatory publications and allegations made against my person by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu. I am also informed that Mr. Ablakwa has petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the said allegations he has levelled against me, he said, adding that he looked forward to the CHRAJ enquiry during, which he would present his side of the matter to the Commission. Rev Boateng said he would subsequently address the matters fully in public without first seeking to prejudice the public mind as Mr Ablakwa had allegedly done. Additionally, when all is done, I will seek redress against Mr. Ablakwa for his deliberate defamatory statements against me. I will continue to contribute my quota to the National Cathedral project and offer my services to the Country to the best of my ability, he said. Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu, in a post on social media on Monday, called for the immediate resignation of Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng. The MP alleges that Rev Boateng as the Secretary of the Board created multiple identities on the blind side of the State; an act he deemed as criminal. In a Facebook post on Monday, the MP alleged that the Man of God had disguised his identity as Kwabena Adu Gyamfi; a name he used in registering a company (JNS Talent Centre Limited), which received payments from the National Cathedral Secretariat. In his view, that amounted to a conflict of interest, hence the need for the Minister of God to resign to pave the way for investigations into what he called a fraudulent act. For the avoidance of doubt, there is no distinct Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. Kwabena Adu Gyamfi is a criminal creation of Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng. The two are, therefore, one and the same, he wrote. GNA Richard Ahiagba, National Communications Director of the NPP 18.01.2023 LISTEN Richard Ahiagba, the National Communications Director of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has slammed the opposition NDC for what he describes as their "fear-mongering" posture amid the countrys economic predicament. According to Mr. Ahiagba, the NDC, if allowed to rule the country at this juncture where the countrys economy has been facing challenges caused by global factors, will perform abysmally. He stated that the opposition party is only good at making unnecessary criticisms with no alternative solutions to help Ghana out of the current economic situation. The NPP spokesperson assured Ghanaians that their pains are being felt by the government, which is working tirelessly to restore the country. "There's no denying the difficulties of our predicament, brought on by the global misfortune of COVID-19 and the R-U war. The NPP & govt recognizes the pain. But what is hard to fathom is the excessive fear-mongering of the NDC, as thou they have alternative proposals. Nothing!" read his tweet on Wednesday, January 18. Richard Ahiagba, the National Communications Director of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has reiterated governments desire to see the country out of its current economic crisis. He has disclosed that government and the NPP feel the pains Ghanaians are going through. He noted that government is working tirelessly to change the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia and Ukraine war. Mr. Ahiagba slammed the opposition NDC for what he describes as their "fear-mongering" posture. According to Mr. Ahiagba, the NDC is only good at making unnecessary criticisms with no alternative solutions to help Ghana out of its economic challenges. "There's no denying the difficulties of our predicament, brought on by the global misfortune of COVID-19 and the R-U war. The NPP & govt recognizes the pain. But what is hard to fathom is the excessive fear-mongering of the NDC, as thou they have alternative proposals. Nothing!" read his tweet on Wednesday, January 18. H.E Nan Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana 18.01.2023 LISTEN The President of the Republic, H.E. Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo has persuaded investors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to invest in Ghana. Though the country is facing an economic crisis, the President believes Ghana which became one of the fastest-growing economies in the world remains the best place to do business. Speaking at the UAE-Ghana Investment Summit in Dubai as part of his 10-day visit, Nana Addo intimated that the Ghana government has put in place several incentives for investors to help boost their businesses. "In spite of our present challenges, I maintain that its an exciting time to be in Ghana to do business. I will urge the private sector in the UAE to take advantage of the business-friendly climate in the country to invest in Ghana. Regardless of where you choose to invest in Ghana, the government has instituted a number of fiscal and investment incentives depending on the nature of activity or location of the investment," he said. He continued that his government "made the Ghanaian economy not only one of the most business-friendly economies in Africa but also one of the fastest growing economies in the world between 2017 and 2020, averaging 7% GDP annual rates of growth, up from the 3.4% rate we inherited in 2016." Speaking on Ghanas IMF bailout, the President said the move forms part of his governments zeal "to repair, in the short run, our public finances, and give credibility to our balance of payments, which have taken a severe hit in very recent times as a result of these developments." "I am confident that we will emerge from this with a stronger and more resilient economy, and advance towards our goal of reaching a Ghana Beyond Aid. Not only is Ghana the best place for doing business in West Africa, but she is also the preferred destination for a perfect blend of mineral resource potential, stable regulatory environment, favourable fiscal regime, and socially responsive mining in Africa," the President added. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has admitted that indeed Ghana is in moments of difficulties. The party however wants Ghanaians to recognise that the predicaments have come about due to the impacts of the global Coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. In a post on social media, the Communications Director of the NPP, Richard Ahiagba has assured Ghanaians that government is aware of the hardship and acknowledges their pain. He shares the view that despite excessive fear-mongering of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), the party has no proposal to make and for that matter should not be taken seriously. There's no denying the difficulties of our predicament brought on by the global misfortune of Covid-19 and the R-U war. The NPP & govt recognizes the pain. But what is hard to fathom is the excessive fear-mongering of the NDC as thou they have alternative proposals. Nothing, Richard Ahiagbah shared in a post on Twitter. Government is currently under pressure from Individual Bondholders who are rejecting its Domestic Debt Exchange Programme. This has attracted backlash from the Minority who believe government must suspend the programme and address the concerns of the aggrieved individual bondholders. An Accra Circuit Court presided over by Evelyn Asamoah, has sentenced Reverend Minister, Edward Buabeng, to a total of 519 years imprisonment. Rev Buabeng was handed down the sentence Tuesday, after having been found guilty on 173 counts of conspiracy to commit a crime and defrauding by pretenses. The convict would serve eighty years on each count but the sentences are to run concurrently. Mrs. Asamoah acquitted and discharged the second accused, Wilfred Brown, aged 58, and an Accountant, on all of the charges. The third accused person, Aubrey des-Bordes Mends, absconded just after her plea was taken and granting of bail at the commencement of the case. A bench warrant was issued by the court for Aubrey's arrest. Nonetheless, the case came to its conclusion after a three-year trial, in which 12 witnesses from over 100 defrauded victims were called to testify against the accused persons. Chief Inspector Benson Benneh, prosecuting the case, informed the court that the complainants in the case were a husband and a wife, John Osei-Kumi and Brenda Adolphine Appiah. He said the complainants work as a marketer and a banker respectively. The court was also told that the accused persons and the complainants all live at Dansoman Community in Accra. He said John and Brenda invested an amount of US$7, 000.00 and Brenda US$6,000.00 into the convict's company, Career Link Marketers Company Limited, with the expected interest of 40 percent (40%) each for three months. The complainants invested somewhere in July 2018 but when the period elapsed in October of the same year for the convict to pay their principal and interest, he failed. Meanwhile, several attempts made by the complainants to compel the convict to pay their money were unsuccessful, and by which the latter went into hiding. The complainants, therefore, complained with the Dansoman Police Station. The police subsequently received over 100 complaints from others who have been defrauded by Rev. Buabeng. The police investigation had it that about GH1,193,136 and US$185,408.00 were invested into the convict's company by the complainants. The convict was arrested and detained for investigation by the police. According to the prosecuting officer, Rev. Buabeng admitted the offense in his caution statement to the police but promised to refund the monies to the complainants, since the company has enough resources to do so. C/Insp Benneh added that the convict did not honor his promise. Although police checks established that Career Link Marketers Company Limited is registered with the Registrar General Department, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) had not issued it with a license to operate. He added that during the investigation, the convict paid a sum of GH115,000.00, and the same was disbursed to the complainants. DGN online Ghanaian broadcast journalist, Bridget Otoo, has taken a swipe at the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo-Dampare over allegations of some policemen framing innocent citizens with marijuana and cocaine substances. An audio recording making the rounds on social media is a certain man who gave his name as Dr. Patrick Asiedu accused some policemen of planting cocaine and marijuana in his vehicle in an attempt to extort GHS20,000 from him or go jail. The security agency on Tuesday, January 17, released a statement saying their investigation into the matter so far proves no evidence of the said allegations. "The attention of the Police Service has been drawn to an audio tape in which it is alleged some Police officers planted substances suspected to be narcotics in a vehicle of a member of the public and attempted to extort money from him," the five-point police statement began. It continues, "The Police Administration immediately launched investigations into the matter, and our initial checks at the stations mentioned in the audio, East Legon and the Accra Central Police Stations, have revealed that no such complaint had been made there." According to the police, "As part of the investigation, the police have also contacted the Narcotics Control Commission and the Ghana Armed Forces, and both institutions have indicated that no such incident has come to their attention." It was also noted that the victim, Dr. Patrick Asiedu, is nowhere to be found to assist them in their findings. "The investigation is still ongoing, and so far, all efforts to identify the victim of the alleged incident, the said Dr. Patrick Asiedu, have been unsuccessful. We, therefore, wish to entreat the victim and any other person with relevant information on the incident to contact telephone number 0200416540 to assist the Police investigations. This is a temporary number dedicated solely to this investigation." In reaction, the vocal broadcaster slammed the IGP for looking unconcerned while his officers dragged innocent people to court and jail. "Your men are going round planting cocaine and weed in people's cars, and instead of dealing with it, you care about the word "some!! Dont take the word of Ghana Police Service over the victim. IGP should be ashamed of himself. You know the victim; your men have spoken to the victim," she said in a tweet. According to Bridget Otoo, the victim, Dr. Patrick Asiedu refused to answer the IGPs call because he doesnt see them as trustworthy. "IGP tried to contact and the victim declined cos he doesnt trust you and your men. Shouldnt you be worried that it exists? That a policeman would frame an innocent victim for GHS20,000 (negotiable)? Who else is involved in this police crime?" he asked. "We know from the experience of Patrick Timbillas recruitment scam that it goes all the way up! He was a potential IGP and yet was involved in a recruitment scam. So imagine police officers boldly planting cocaine and weed? I wont hold my breath over who else is involved!" she stressed. 18.01.2023 LISTEN Fishmongers at Asafo in the Kumasi Metropolis say high electricity and water tariffs coupled with a multiplicity of taxes are negatively impacting their businesses. According to them, the high cost of utility bills will collapse their businesses. The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) on Monday, January 16, 2023 announced an increase in utility tariffs. According to PURC, the average end-user tariff for electricity will go up by 29.96% across the board for all consumer groups, while the average end-user tariff for water has also been increased by 8.3% But cold store operators and fishmongers in the Kumasi Metropolis say the decision is a serious albatross on their neck which may even lead to major layoffs of their employees. A leading member of cold store operators at the Kumasi Asafo Market, Mr Kofi Owusu on Wednesday, January 18, 2023 spoke to this reporter. "I pay an average of GH 5000 every month which to me is already an astronomical bill received monthly, so to think of paying an additional 15 per cent to the one I already pay will make it difficult running the business. The PURC ought to have been mindful of the current difficult economic circumstances and consider some of us before they decide to increase tariffs," he stated. Mr Owusu noted that the increment wills have deleterious implications on jobs and livelihoods particularly those colds store operators in the region and called on the government to intervene. A protest against an east African force deployed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was violently dispersed by police in Goma on Wednesday, AFP correspondents saw. About 100 demonstrators gathered near a roundabout to march against the East African Community (EAC) force, which they said was ineffective. Several thousand soldiers from Kenya and Burundi have recently been deployed to reinforce the Congolese army and the United Nations to fight armed groups in the east of the DRC. South Sudan's contingent of 750 soldiers is expected to arrive soon. "The population is tired of seeing this useless EAC force turn into an observer mission that watches how they massacre us," said Espoir Mwinuka, an activist with the Lucha, a group of young activists, who co-organised the march. "On the ground, they are doing nothing but serving as a shield for the enemy, so this force has no reason to be here," said Josue Wallay, another Lucha activist. On arrival in Goma city centre, the march was stopped by police who fired tear gas. Journalists were threatened by police and an officer threw a tear gas grenade at the group of reporters, hitting an AFP correspondent in the head. A journalist was injured while fleeing. Two others were arrested along with six protesters and released after three hours in custody. The mainly Tutsi M23 rebels took up arms again in late 2021, prompting the deployment of the the regional force. Since the end of October and despite declarations of a ceasefire and troop withdrawals, M23 has continued to clash with the Congolese army and other armed groups. Some youth in Kumasi are languishing in prison custody in the Ashanti region for their inability to pay GHC250 court fines. According to the management of Ghana Prisons Service in the Ashanti region, the situation has contributed to the congestion at the Kumasi Central Prisons facility. Public Relations Officer for the Ashanti Regional Prisons Command, ASP Richard Bukari made the disclosure on Otec FMs Nyansapo show hosted by Captain Koda on Wednesday, January 18, 2023. Some youth are serving various jail terms at the prison facilities in the region for not being able to settle court fines as low as GHC250, a situation creating congestions at some facilities, he said. He then appealed to philanthropists to settle some of these fines to release them to decongest the facilities that pose health hazards to the inmates. He said though the government has rolled out programs to decongest the facilities, the situation is still bad at the various prison facilities in the region. I will then appeal to individuals and organizations to assist the Prisons Service by paying fines of these inmates to allow those serving longer jail sentences to have breather spaces, he told Captain Koda. He also disclosed that the Kumasi Central Prisons built to accommodate 450 inmates now contain over 3,000 inmates, creating discomfort to the inmates. In response to news reports that authorities in the northern Ethiopian state of Tigray recently released three employees of the broadcaster Tigrai TV but continue to hold two more in custody, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement calling for the remaining staffers release: While it is a great relief that authorities recently released three Ethiopian journalists imprisoned over their work with the broadcaster Tigrai TV, it is unacceptable that two of their colleagues remain behind bars, said CPJs sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. Authorities in Tigray should unconditionally release Hailemichael Gesesse and Dawit Mekonnen without delay and ensure that members of the media are not imprisoned for their work. Authorities arrested five Tigrai TV employeesHailemichael and Dawit, along with Haben Halefom, Misgena Seyoum, and Teshome Temalewin May and June 2022, and accused them of collaboration with the enemy, amid a civil war between the federal government and Tigray forces, as CPJ documented at the time. The High Court in the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle acquitted and released Haben on December 5, 2022, and acquitted and released Misgena and Teshome on January 11, according to those news reports. On January 12, the court adjourned Hailemichaels case to February 23, and Dawits case to February 25, during which state witnesses are expected to make statements, those news reports said. Former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and NPP Presidential aspirant, Hon. Joe Ghartey has stated that he will appoint 60 Ministers when elected as President of Ghana. He made this known in an interview with Umara Sanda on Citi FM's Eyewitness News. He said emphatically that the total number of Ministers in his government would not exceed 60, which would include 19 Cabinet Ministers and 16 Regional Ministers. This was in response to a question which described President Akufo-Addos first-term government of 111 Ministers as bloated. Hon. Ghartey disagreed with claims that the Akufo-Addo government was bloated, said in the first term, President Akufo-Addos philosophy of the size of government led to 9% growth of the economy by the end of his first term. He explained further that when he was Attorney-General in President Kufuors era he asked President Kufuor why he was creating a Ministry of Aviation when he was asked to draft the legal document that would create the new Ministry. He said the ex-President answered by explaining that one of the ways a government can focus on a particular sector was to isolate the sector and create a Ministry with someone in charge. Hon. Ghartey stated that clearly, this was what President Akufo-Addo had in mind when for example he created the Ministry of Railways Development and had it remained as part of the Ministry of Transport it may not have received the attention it is receiving under President Akufo-Addo. The former 2nd Deputy Speaker of Parliament added that since independence no regime had seen so much construction in the railway sector with over 200kms currently under construction. However, the Presidential Aspirant stressed that he had a different philosophy and would have a much smaller size of government because of current circumstances. Far-right MP Marine Le Pen is in Senegal for three days her first trip abroad since failing to clinch the French presidency in April last year. The visit is an opportunity to hone her international profile, but why Senegal? Le Pen arrived in Dakar on Monday evening. The head of the National Rally (RN) parliamentary group had reportedly planned her visit for some time, but it was kept secret until the last minute. Precise details of her agenda have not been made public and only a few hand-picked media are in attendance. Aides say she will meet members of civil society, business people and politicians to discuss issues including economic development, agriculture, food autonomy and security in Africa. Her entourage insists she will meet President Macky Sall, though this has not been confirmed by the presidency according to RFI's correspondent Charlotte Idrac. Political analyst Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for European Perspective and Security Studies, believes the meeting will take place. "She would not have gone to Senegal if she risked being snubbed by Macky Sall," Dupuy says. Le Pen outlined her vision for global North-South relations in an open letter published in L'Opinion magazine ahead of the trip. "To improve stability in the world, we must stop denying Africa, with its 1.5 billion inhabitants, its legitimate place in the international community's organisations," she wrote. Le Pen also highlighted her support for Senegal to become the first African country to hold a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. International profile This is Le Pen's first trip abroad since losing out to Emmanuel Macron in the April 2022 presidential elections. "She hopes to enhance her status on the international scene as she sets her sights firmly on the 2027 presidential election," wrote Africa specialist Nicolas Beau in Mondeafrique. Dupuy agrees it marks "the start of carving out an international profile", describing her choice of Senegal as "shrewd". Senegal is a relatively stable country compared to neighbouring Guinea, Mali or Burkina Faso, which have all witnessed recent coups d'etat. It has more than 5 percent economic growth, Dupuy points out, and has a long history of friendship with France. "Senegal shares French values which to an extent Marine Le Pen wants to claim as her own," Dupuy says. Values such as the original spirit of Gaullism, francophonie and the model of Franco-African cooperation defended by former French minister and writer Leopold Senghor the first president of Senegal after independence. The fact that Sall is one of President Macron's closest political allies also made Senegal a judicious choice, argues Dupuy. "It makes it complicated for Macron's party to criticise Le Pen's visit." Sovereignty and development Le Pen's anti-immigration stance, while less extreme than that of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen who has been fined for using racist language has earned her few friends on the African continent. Her last trip was to Chad in 2017, when she talked of an end to francafrique in reference to the continuing interdependence between France and its former African colonies. She also spoke of increased sovereignty and boosting the cooperation budget to back education and agriculture in order to stem emigration. She may employ similar rhetoric in Senegal. But relations between France and some of its former colonies in West Africa have worsened since 2017, with anti-French sentiment spilling onto the streets of Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. Given the tensions, Nicolas Beau says Le Pen's discourse in Senegal may not be audible. "At best it will encounter indifference," he wrote. The trip entails an element of risk, compounded by the fact the Senegalese president "faces strong opposition from within the country in the lead up to elections in 2024". But Dupuy says Sall has little to lose. "Le Pen is visiting as an MP, the leader of the National Rally group in parliament and a member of the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs," he says. "I can imagine Sall saying he is simply receiving a member of the French political spectrum as he would any other". A question of timing Le Pen's entourage says the trip was in place for a while. However the timing appears opportune. Sall is president of the African Union, but only until early February when he hands over to the Comoros archipelago off Africa's east coast. "Le Pen would not have been able to go to the Comoros given all the tensions" says Dupuy, referring to Comorans trying to reach the French overseas territory of Mayotte. Closer to home, her trip comes during a time of heightened tension over the French government's controversial pension reforms, with unions calling for widespread strikes on Thursday. Le Pen will be following protests from afar. "So what?" quipped an RN spokesperson. "If we had to count the number of times Emmanuel Macron has been absent during a crisis, there'd be no end to it." Macron will indeed be in Barcelona on Thursday signing a bilateral friendship treaty with Spain. Beau says the turbulence in France may see Le Pen's Senegal trip slip by unnoticed. But for Dupuy it means the far-right MP can show she's interested in the "big political issues" while leaving the smaller party politicking to RN president Jordan Bardella. An influential figure in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Northern Region and former Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Development Authority, Dr. Suleimana Anamzoya Alhassan has declared his support for Hon. Kennedy Agypong for the flagbearership position. Dr. Anamzoya's decision has been welcomed by the rank and file of the support base in the region. Some leading members of the party in Tamale noted that the choice of the former CEO is right because the candidate has all the credentials to lead the party in the 2024 general elections. Dr. Anamzoya is a senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana and was appointed by President Akufo-Addo in 2019 as the CEO of the NDA. As CEO, Dr Anamzoya introduced many innovations and creative approaches in the management of the NDA, which has seen a massive improvement in the Authority in terms of development projects in its operational areas. Dr Anamzoya also succeeded in uniting the staff of the NDA which hitherto was an old versus new staff conundrum. So far, about seven stalwarts of the party including Vice President Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia have shown interest to lead the ruling party when nominations are opened. Constituency Chairmen of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Greater Accra Region have declared their support and endorsement for former President John Dramani Mahama, should he decide to contest the partys presidential primaries. With the party expected to announce the details and modalities for the presidential and parliamentary primaries on Wednesday, the Greater Accra Chairmen Caucus during a courtesy call on Mr. Mahama asked him to lead the party to the 2024 election. According to the thirty-three (33) chairmen, it is only President John Mahama who can lead and win the elections for the NDC in 2024. The Amasaman constituency is yet to elect a chairperson. The caucus, led by Dome Kwabenya Chairman, Isaac Lamptey, has promised that they will raise and pay the filing fee of GH500,000 for Mr. Mahama to contest the primaries. The chairmen also urged the members of the party, its rank and file to continue the process of uniting each other and get ready to start the hard work until victory is achieved in December 2024. The caucus chairmen also urged Mr. Mahama to promote aggressively and encourage members to adopt a branch or constituency to help contribute to an emphatic win for the party. President Mahama thanked the Greater Accra NDC Constituency Chairmen for their visit and declaration. The former President was joined by former chief of Staff Julius Debrah, 2020 Running Mate Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman and the 2020 Campaign Manager Professor Joshua Alabi to receive the chairmen. International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised. Every moral condemnation of a regimes conduct is bound to be shown up as an exercise in double standards, often implicating the accusers. In the case of the military regime in Myanmar, double standards are not only modish but expected. A number of international declarations and measures have targeted Myanmars regime for its blood-soaked brutality, its genocidal practices against the Rohingya, and its general contempt for the human rights of its citizenry. In a statement last November, US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken took note of the militarys brutal campaign of violence against the people of Burma, carrying out lethal air strikes against the political opposition and the broader civilian population. In response, the US Department of Treasury designated Sky Aviator Company Limited and its owner and director, Kyaw Min Oo for operating in the defense sector of the Burmese economy. The company in question had received multiple arm shipments from sanctioned entities, while Kyaw had been responsible for facilitating foreign military officers visits to Burma as well as the import of arms and other military equipment and provided assault helicopter upgrades. Despite such seemingly bold responses, Myanmars military junta is not short of business partners. Indeed, business, notably in the arms market, continues unabated and with some energy. Such conduct has also done much to make a mockery of the suite of sanctions and injunctions being imposed by the EU, United States and other states upon the countrys entities and its military personnel, notably since the February 2021 coup. Last year, for instance, the Indian company Sandeep Metalcraft supplied 3000 fuses to Creative Exploration Ltd, Myanmars arms broker formerly known as MySpace International). This is despite India being a signatory to the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, which obliges it to apply export controls on ammunition and associated products. This becomes particularly important where the supply of such material might be used in violation of the Geneva Conventions, or to aid and abet the commission of crimes and atrocities. In August that same year, Justice for Myanmar also noted that as many as 116 Myanmar and Singapore companies with 255 directors and shareholders brokered deals involving the furnishing of weapons and other equipment to the regime, including the period since the February 1, 2021 coup. In a report from three former United Nations experts as part of the Special Advisory Council on Myanmar (SAC-M), the verdict about companies in the United States, Europe and Asia is distinctly negative. Such entities are officially domiciled in thirteen states, including France, Germany, China, India, Russia, Singapore and the United States. Using source materials comprising leaked budget documents from the Ministry of Defence, interviews with contacts with the Myanmar military, and statements from witnesses of human rights violations showing security forces armed with various weapons, a dark picture emerges. The authors note that Myanmars military has progressively moved towards becoming more self-sufficient in weapons manufacturing in a number of areas. The state, however, is not entirely weaned off foreign assistance. The Directorate of Defence Industries (DDI) remains reliant on international supplies, including for a variety of raw materials, parts and components and end-items, as well as machinery and technology, for the sustained production both licensed and un-licensed of the weapons in its arsenal. The DDI has also, whether through production taking place under license or not, obtained the technology and know-how to produce a variety of its weapons through various types of transfer of technology (ToT) deals. Such deals have involved the receipt of whole weapon production plants, also known as turn-key projects, accompanied by engineer support for those supplying the technology. These include State-owned companies from Italy to Ukraine. The report identifies the role played by automated machines, including Computer Numerical Control machines, manufactured by companies with domiciles in Austria, Germany, Taiwan and the United States. These are currently being used by the Myanmar military at factories responsible for its weapons production. To accompany this are software programs made by companies which have their legal domicile in France, Israel and Germany. The authors are keen to point out the role played by Singapore, which functions as a strategic transit point for potentially significant volumes of items including certain raw materials that feed Myanmar militarys weapon production. Companies legally domiciled in Singapore have played significant roles in brokering deals and exporting military related items to the DDI or relevant civilian front companies for the Myanmar military. Not to be outdone, Taiwan also fulfills an important role as transit point for the DDIs purchase of high precision CNC machines, including those from European manufacturers, that aid KaPaSa arms manufacturing, a country-wide complex which involves some 25 entities. The authors are direct and unequivocal about their grisly findings. In short, weapons produced by the Myanmar military in-country at its KaPaSa factories have been used in the militarys widespread and systematic attacks against civilian targets, prior to, during and after the 2021 attempted military coup, and continue to do so. A statement from the SAC-Ms Yanghee Lee, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, recapitulated the point: Foreign companies are enabling the Myanmar military one of the worlds worst human rights abusers to produce many of the weapons to commit daily atrocities against the Myanmar people. Lee went on to make the obvious point that such companies and their home states had moral and legal responsibilities to ensure their products are not facilitating human rights violations against civilians in Myanmar. Not doing so made the parties complicit in the Myanmar militarys barbaric crimes. It is a complicity that continues to be lightly worn in capitals from Washington to Brussels. Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: [email protected] 18.01.2023 LISTEN The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has announced the imposition of sanctions on four Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) in the country. This was after NPA noticed that the OMCs have been engaging in illicit third-party trading of petroleum products. The sanctioned companies include Finest Oil, Petro XP, Glasark Oil, and Lilygold Resources Ltd. The NPA in its release confirming the sanctions on the four OMCs stressed that any company that fails to comply with the rules and guidelines stipulated by the National Petroleum Authority will be subjected to further sanctions. The affected companies and accompanying sanctions are as follows; 1. That Finest Oil will pay a fine of GHS160,000.00 comprising of GHS10,000.00 for engaging in Third Party Supplies for the first time and GHS150,000.00 for the unlawfullifting of petroleum products. Failure to comply will attract an additional one (1) month's suspension of its operations. 2. That Petro XP will pay a fine of GHS340,000.00 comprising of GHS10,000.00 for engaging in Third Party Supplies for the first time and GHS330,000.00 for the unlawful lifting of Petroleum products. Failure to comply will attract an additional one (1) month's suspension of its operations. 3. That Glasark Oil will pay a fine of GHS95,000.00 comprising of GHS10,000.00 for engaging in Third Party Supplies for the first time and GHS85,000.00 for the unlawful lifting of Petroleum products. Failure to comply will attract an additional one(1)month's suspension of its operations. 4. That Lilygold Resources Ltd will pay a fine not exceeding five (5) times the License/Permit fee for breaking the Authority's seals and failure to pay will result in the suspension of its operating license in addition to paying the Penalties meted out to it. Agona Tawora, a farming community in the Agona East District of the Central Region will be connected to the national grid, DCE for Agona East, Hon. Janet Odei Painstil has said. He said the move will boost the local economy and improve the livelihood of the people. "For the first time in many years, Agona Tawora will be connected to the national grid to boost small scale businesses and industries. The transformer for the project is being kept safely waiting for the contractor to begin work soon. "This is part of programmes, policies and social interventions that have been put in place by His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo led NPP Government's Rural Development agenda aimed at improving the standard of living of the citizenry. "Am extremely grateful to President Akufo Addo for this project which is going to open up for smooth transportation of goods and services," Hon. Janet Odei Painstil noted. The Agona East DCE said this when she commissioned a 3-unit classroom block for Tawora D/A Basic School last Monday. Accompanied by the Agona East District Coordinating Director, Mr. Mohammed Alhassan, the DCE was happy that at long last children in the vicinity were going to have access to Junior High School education. "Before this commissioning, Primary 6 graduates had to walk long distances to Agona Nantifa, Asafo, Kwanyarko, Kwansakrom or even as far as Agona Swedru to further their education at the Junior High School level. This explains why am extremely happy today. "In addition to the classroom block, the Assembly is also going to construct teachers' bungalow to accommodate teachers to enhance effective teaching and learning. I came with enough school uniforms for children who don't have prescribed uniforms and many a time discouraged them from going to school for fear of being teased by their peers. "It is free for the deserving children," Hon. Janet Odei Painstil stressed. Hon. Janet Odei Painstil further disclosed that the Assembly was reshaping the road that links Tawora and its surrounding communities to Swedru-Bawjiase main road at Agona Nantifa to enable farmers and traders transport their goods to market centers to boost the local economy. The Agona East District Director of the Ghana Education Service, Mr. Thomas Koffie who received the keys to the classroom block lauded the Assembly for its prompt response to the plight of the people in the nearby communities. The District Director of Education encourages parents to enrol their children to increase the population of the school, concluding that more teachers would be posted to the school. The Headteacher of Tawora D/A Basic School, Madam Florence Korkor in an interview with newsmen appealed to GES to post more teachers to the school. She noted that the school with a population of over 140 from Kindergarten to Primary 6 has only three teachers saying it was putting pressure on the teachers. "We need about 10 teachers to enable us teach effectively. As it stands now, teaching has become extremely difficult through a combination of classes, we are however doing our best to produce quality human resources for the development of the country," the headteacher stated. Nananom from the various communities in the area expressed their appreciation to the DCE, Hon. Janet Odei Painstil, the District Coordinating Director, Mr. Mohammed Alhassan and the Assembly for the various interventions that would improve the lives of the people. Born in South Africa and exiled to neighbouring Eswatini, Regina Twala was one of southern Africa's most important intellectuals: a pioneering writer, academic, political activist and feminist. Why, then, has she been all but forgotten? That's the question a new book sets out to answer. In the process Written Out: The Silencing of Regina Gelana Twala restores Twala to her rightful place in history. We spoke with the book's author, historian Joel Cabrita. Who is Regina Twala and why is she important? Regina Gelana Twala was a writer, anthropologist, social worker and political activist who lived in both South Africa and Eswatini (then Swaziland). She died in 1968 at the age of 60. Twala broke the mould of what black women were meant to represent. She was just the second black woman to graduate from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand (in 1948) and the first to graduate in social science in South Africa. In a period dominated by male intellectuals, she was a formidable writer and thinker. One of few female contributors to southern African newspapers, she wrote hundreds of articles. Her prolific output includes as many as five book manuscripts, almost all lost as Twala struggled to be published due to the racist gatekeeping mechanisms of apartheid -era South Africa. Twala stood at the forefront of politics in both South Africa and Eswatini. She spoke out loudly, braving the censure of men who preferred women to be quiet and in the home. Her personal life was as noteworthy as her public persona. Twice married, she bucked the shaming conventions of the day that stigmatised divorced women. She rejected her unfaithful first husband and sought a love union with sporting figure Dan Twala . Disillusioned after 20 years of marriage, she chose to live separately as an independent woman until her death from cancer. Twala, moreover, left a uniquely intimate record of her life. She exchanged hundreds of love letters with Dan over 30 years, one of the most remarkable collections of letters in African history. They are filled not only with personal details but also political commentary. She was close to figures like former South African president Nelson Mandela , who represented her in her divorce. Can you tell us about her time in South Africa? Twala was born in 1908. The Natives Land Act was passed in 1913, dispossessing black South Africans of their land and forcing an exodus to towns and cities. She herself followed a similar pattern, moving from rural Natal to Johannesburg in her 30s to work as a teacher. She moved in the highest circles of Johannesburg's intelligentsia, mingling with politicians, academics, philanthropists and social workers. She was part of the pioneering class of the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work (political leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela would graduate from there too). She established her reputation as one of Johannesburg's most popular columnists. Among her topics were racial disparities and the misogyny of her society. Ohio University Press Twala's life exemplifies the fortunes of an elite black class in South Africa whose aspirations were squashed as the century wore on. For a brief period, unable to find employment, she worked as a domestic servant in a white household. When the racist apartheid government was voted into power in 1948, Twala became involved in anti-apartheid politics. She joined the African National Congress and was arrested in 1952 for her part in the Defiance Campaign , a non-violent resistance movement. Two years later she exiled herself to neighbouring Eswatini (her husband, Dan Twala, was from there). What impact did she have in Eswatini? Twala moved to Eswatini at a key moment in the country's life. She had received a prestigious Nuffield Fellowship that allowed her to pursue anthropological research into how women were responding to the country's massive cultural shifts. The monarch Sobhuza II was increasing pressure on Britain for independence. Swaziland's middle class (in whose company Twala found herself) allied with Sobhuza. The country's first political party, the Swaziland Progressive Party , was formed by them in 1960. Twala was a founding member and its first women's secretary. She attended pan-African gatherings in Ghana with then-president Kwame Nkrumah . Her career reminds us that women were also key players in early anti-colonial politics. Beyond formal politics, she advocated for women's education and self-help, starting a crafts organisation and founding the first library for black readers in her home town. Eswatini has one of the largest gender disparities in the world and Twala's vision remains as sadly relevant today as in the 1950s. Twala's graduation photo. Courtesy Ohio University Press As an anthropologist, she was critical of those who weaponised African culture to keep women in their place. Her relationship with Sobhuza soured in the 1960s as she became disillusioned with his suppression of the democratic process. She used her pen for scathing critiques of the powerful and wealthy in Eswatini, mobilising the press to advocate for ordinary people most of all women. Why has history forgotten her? Twala's radical politics undoubtedly contributed to her erasure. Her criticism of the Swati monarchy meant she was steadily sidelined from politics. On her deathbed, she pushed hard to have her final work a study of Swati women published to coincide with Eswatini's 1968 independence. Figures close to the king blocked it. Eswatini became if anything even more repressive and outspoken anti-royalist women weren't going to be celebrated as pioneering anti-colonial figures. She's also been forgotten due to the gatekeeping exercises of territorial white academics. Prominent anthropologists and historians taught and mentored her but were less supportive once she outgrew their patronage. With Dan Twala, 1940. Courtesy Ohio University Press A case in point is renowned anthropologist Hilda Kuper . Their close relationship soured as Twala became increasingly critical of white liberal academics and their pretensions to own their research sites and subjects. After Twala's death, Kuper effectively squashed the publication of Twala's final manuscript, declaring it of little intellectual value. It gathered dust in Kuper's archives in the US until I discovered it 60 years later. Swedish historian Bengt Sundkler paid Twala to research African religion. Her work on indigenous Zionist churches was diligently sent. Two decades later, Sundkler would publish these notes as his own in an act of plagiarism. He is remembered as a leading scholar; her contribution was erased. Why is it important that we remember her? Twala reminds us that we should not take the seeming absence of women from the historical record at face value. Silences have their own story to tell. The story as to why women are not numbered among the luminaries of their times is complex and deserves careful unpacking. Read more: Juby Mayet, legendary South African writer and journalist, remembered through new book Finally, Twala was the author of her own life. My hope is that my biography paves the way for her work to finally find a publisher. The next step is for Twala to speak for herself, to the world. Joel Cabrita received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. By Joel Cabrita, Associate Professor of History, Director of the Center for African Studies, Stanford University For at least 14 years now, the militant group Al-Shabaab has terrorised the southern region of Somalia. Its ambition is to impose a tyrannical dictatorship over the entire country through fear and brutality. To achieve its aims, it has sought to oust the Somali government and its foreign military allies. I have been a student of Somali political economy for over three decades. I predicted the collapse of the Somali state and political order 33 years ago. That analysis foretold the miserable conditions Somalis have endured since. The political and humanitarian catastrophe predates the terrorist group's rise thus, Al-Shabaab is a symptom rather than the cause of Somalia's misfortune. There are two main forces responsible for the catastrophe that is Somalia. The dominant faction of the Somali political class is the chief culprit. Their agenda has been to attain power and loot the country's resources for private gain. Second is the international community, who are the junior partners of the political class. Based on my observations, representatives of western and African governments fear that Somalia could become a base for terrorists, which might destabilise the strategic Horn of Africa. But they are unwilling to engage with civic and independent-minded Somalis. Most of the expatriate people I have encountered in my research and interacted with in my civic activities see tribalism as a Somali's defining political character. Such a view dates back to the colonial era when colonisers segmented African people into ethnic camps to divide and rule them. Out of this has emerged a strange marriage of convenience between the Somali political class and the diplomatic community. Each pretends progress is being made. The truth is that little progress has been made in reforming the political disorder. And much less has been done to tackle the country's urgent human and development needs. It's likely that the terrorist group will be defeated one day. But there are no signs that the political elite is willing or capable of changing, short of a radical shift in international pressure or a determined public. As I argue in my recent book , unfortunately the tragedy might fester for decades, with or without Al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab's midwife In its first decade of independence, Somali leaders stood out in Africa for democratic rule by respecting the rule of law, the independence of public institutions and electoral terms. Nevertheless, Somalia's first president, Aden Abdulle Osman, was deeply concerned about the behaviour of a segment of the political class. He registered his worries in his diary on 5 July 1964: God save Somalis from the scavenging beasts in human form that are the so-called representative of the people. The democratic project ended when those who defeated President Osman in the 1967 election turned the country into a quasi single-party state. The mess they generated led to the murder of President Abdirashid Sharmarke by one of his bodyguards in 1969. The military quickly seized power, and foreclosed a return to a representative and accountable system of government for the next 21 years. After half a decade in power, the dictatorship intensified the tribalisation of public power. The political opposition followed suit. Civil service and promotions in the military, and access to state resources, became based on an individual's genealogical identity or loyalty to the regime. From the late 1970s to 1990, the military dictatorship confronted a fragmented and equally tribalised and armed political opposition. The state became the agent of terror . Whole communities were punished and towns destroyed because of their cultural pedigree. This was long before Al-Shabaab's rise. The military regime collapsed in January 1991, but opposition groups failed to agree on a common civic agenda. The opposition group most active around Mogadishu, the United Somalia Congress, forced out the dictator. Among the consequences of the factional bloodletting that followed was the destruction of livelihoods and the making of the first famine in the country since independence in 1960. This was long before Al-Shabaab appeared on the horizon. Warlords and tribalistic political fiefdoms replaced the dictatorship, and much of the educated elite fled. The balkanisation of the country and society impoverished everyone except the very few who controlled the means of violence. Illiteracy rose dramatically and the population's state of health took a nosedive, depriving the young majority of a productive future. Most of the country's current population were born after the fall of the military; few therefore know what civic politics and leadership look like. That makes them easy pawns of the sectarian elite. It took almost 16 years for a religious group known as the Union of the Islamic Courts to defeat the warlords. This event gave hope to the population that a more inclusive and accountable system of authority would be restored. But America and its regional allies were alarmed by the possibility of an Islamist foothold in the Horn of Africa. Consequently, Ethiopia invaded Somalia and installed in Mogadishu the tribal-based Somali Federal Government, formed in Nairobi . The Union of the Islamic Courts forces broke into smaller units, adopted guerrilla tactics and successfully resisted the invasion. America and its allies recognised that the Ethiopian occupation was doomed and subsequently engineered a split among the Union of the Islamic Courts. This schism marked the birth of Al-Shabaab as an autonomous organisation dedicated to take revenge on their former allies, western supporters of the Somali governments, and anyone who opposed them. A devil's pact Al-Shabaab is only the latest manifestation of the consequences of 50 years of exclusivist political ideology and inept leadership. It is estimated that the Somali defence force is about 20,000 strong. But several factors have prevented it from taking the challenge to Al-Shabaab's militias. The lack of necessary resources and quality leadership is partly to blame. Another problem is the prominence given to tribal identity over patriotism and competence in the running of the national force. In addition, tribalised provinces have their own armed forces because they mistrust the federal government and each other. Finally, Somalia has been under a UN arms embargo since the civil war began nearly three decades ago. The embargo has limited the capacity of the Somali government to sustain the war against Al-Shabaab. The current governing leadership has not learned any lesson from past failures. The regime is using the National Security Agency to demonise the business community, under the cover of the war with Al-Shabaab. And it has mobilised tribal militias in the fight. These acts deepen divisions among Somalis at a time when when the regime should be unifying the population for a common cause. Finally, such strategy bodes ill for the establishment of a post Al-Shabaab inclusive civic dispensation. Abdi Ismail Samatar is Extraordinary professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Pretoria, a professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota. He is also a senator in the Somali Parliament. By Abdi Ismail Samatar, Research Fellow, University of Pretoria A Senegalese judge has ordered a prominent opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, to face trial for alleged rape, lawyers for Sonko and his accuser said on Wednesday. Sonko -- who came third in Senegal's presidential election in 2019 -- has enjoyed a rapid political rise thanks in part to his popularity with young people and has declared himself a candidate for the 2024 elections. However, he has also suffered legal troubles. Most notably he has been accused of rape by an employee of a beauty salon where he went for a massage. Sonko, a 48-year-old former tax inspector, has denied the charge and says he is the victim of a plot by President Macky Sall. The judge on Tuesday signed an order to send Sonko's case to a criminal court for alleged crimes he was charged with in 2021, including rape and death threats, the plaintiff's lawyer El Hadji Diouf said. "She is satisfied. She appreciates the fact that, despite the campaign of lies and manipulation by Sonko's supporters who are afraid of the trial, the judge stood firm," he said. One of Sonko's lawyers, Cheik Khoureyssi Ba, confirmed the move. Ba stressed that the order was subject to legal challenge and said Sonko's legal team intended to appeal. Sonko has described the rape accusation as part of a scheme to torpedo his 2024 candidacy. The polarising politician is considered a populist firebrand by his critics. Sonko's supporters hail his efforts to speak up on corruption and social elitism, as well as slamming the economic and political grip of multinational firms and Senegal's former colonial power, France. His indictment in March 2021 triggered violence in which around a dozen people were killed. Senegal has a general reputation for stability in a region where political turbulence is widespread. In recent years, several other prominent opponents of the president have had their political careers cut short by legal cases. Authorities have denied any misuse of state institutions in the legal proceedings against Sonko. 18.01.2023 LISTEN Municipal and District Chief Executives in the Bono East region have congratulated Kwasi Adu-Gyan for emerging as the Best Performing Regional Minister in a 2022 survey of the performance of Ministers of State, Regional Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Members of Parliament and Chief Executive Officers of state institutions. The survey, conducted by FAKS Investigative Services between the months of October and December 2022 saw Mr. Kwasi Adu-Gyan emerge as the best performing regional minister. FAKS Investigative Services team is made up of researchers, media practitioners and academia that do the assessment based on the outcome of the findings they received. Respondents to the survey were civil society organizations (CSOs), teachers, students, business owners, drivers, traders, Journalists, traditional rulers and others. About 71% of the respondents were between the ages of 18 and 53 while the remaining 29% were between the ages of 54 and 73. Corporate governance In a congratulatory message signed by the Dean of Municipal and District Chief Executives (MDCEs) in the Bono East region, Daniel Yaw Owuredu noted that Mr. Adu-Gyan perfectly combines politics with corporate governance and has brought glory to the political leadership of the Bono East region. His leadership suffices political tolerance, religion, and chieftaincy. He has been seen building bridges among political parties, facilitating solutions for protracted chieftaincy disputes, and aggressively creating opportunities for the unemployed youth, the congratulatory message said in part. It further noted that Mr. Adu-Gyan's avidity to make the Bono East, the preferred destination for agribusiness is conspicuously seen in the number of both local and foreign investors visiting the region, especially in the area of commercial rice production. We are of the view that it is not just a mere coincidence that the office of the Local Government Secretariat in their latest performance assessment scored the region as excellent and the third best performing region after two old regions Volta and Eastern, with none of the Eleven (11) assemblies scoring below the pass mark, it added. Internal Audit The statement also said the Bono East Regional Coordinating Council has also been adjudged the overall best Internal Audit practices in the whole country in the year under review, adding that Currently, we are aware that a Five-Year Strategic Plan for the region has been developed, a step so unique in recent body politics. Considering the foregoing, and the recent report by FAKS, an independent investigative and research body rating Hon Kwasi Adu-Gyan, the Bono East Regional Minister as the Best Regional Minister; coupled with the fact that, he has been leading as our mentor, we the MMDCEs and on behalf of our various Assemblies congratulate him and wish him all the best in the days ahead, it stated further. Please find below the full copy of the congratulatory message Ref. Date: 17/01/2023 For Immediate Release: BONO EAST MMDCEs CONGRATULATE HON KWASI ADU-GYAN We, the eleven (11) Municipal and District Chief Executives in the Bono East Region with our respective Assemblies wish to send a message to send a congratulatory message the best performing Regional Minister, Hon. Kwasi Adu-Gyan. Hon. Adu-Gyan has effectively combined politics with corporate governance and has brought glory to the political leadership of the Bono East Region. His leadership suffices political tolerance, religion, and chieftaincy. He has been seen building bridges among political parties, facilitating solutions for protracted chieftaincy disputes, and aggressively creating opportunities for the unemployed youth. Hon. Adu-Gyan's avidity to make the Bono East, the preferred destination for agribusiness is conspicuously seen in the number of both local and foreign investors visiting the region, especially in the area of commercial rice production. We are of the view that it is not just a mere coincidence that, the office of the Local Government Secretariat in their latest performance assessment scored the region as excellent and the third best performing region after two old regions Volta and Eastern, with none of the Eleven (11) assemblies scoring below the pass mark. The Bono East Regional Coordinating Council has also been adjudged the overall best Internal Audit practices in the whole country in the year under review. Currently, we are aware that a Five-Year Strategic Plan for the region has been developed, a step so unique in recent body politics. Considering the foregoing, and the recent report by FAKS, an independent investigative and research body rating Hon Kwasi Adu-Gyan, the Bono East Regional Minister as the Best Regional Minister; coupled with the fact that, he has been leading as our mentor, we the MMDCEs and on behalf of our various Assemblies CONGRATULATE him and wish him all the best in the days ahead. AYEKOO. HON. DANIEL YAW OWUREDU DEAN, MMDCEs BONO EAST REGION Top seed Iga Swiatek waltzed into the last-32 at the Australian Open on Wednesday with a 6-2, 6-3 destruction of the unseeded Colombian Camila Osorio. The Pole was joined in the third round by her victim in the 2022 French Open final Coco Gauff who dispatched the 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu in straight sets. In her second round clash on Rod Laver Arena, Swiatek raced into a 4-0 lead in the opening set against her fellow 21-year-old. Swiatek, seeking her first title at Melbourne Park, served for the opener at 5-1 but fluffed her lines. However, she snaffled Osorio's service to claim the first set after 38 minutes. Swiatek won four consecutive games to lead 5-1 in the second set and the chance to serve for the match. But she choked. However, on the second opportunity to conclude proceedings, she made no mistake. The top seed will take on the Spanish qualifier Cristina Bucsa for a place in the last-16. Gauff, 18, claimed her first meeting with 20-year-old Raducanu 6-3, 7-6. Handling the pressure "I just told myself to hang in there towards the end," said Gauff who saved two set points in the second set. "We both started off rocky but the match was good quality for the most part considering the circumstances. "When you go into the tournament you have to beat the best," Gauff added. "Obviously you hope it's not the second round, but what can you do? I'm glad both of us handled the pressure pretty well." Elsewhere in the women's draw; the 2012 and 2013 champion Victoria Azarenka pulverised Nadia Podoroska 6-0, 6-1. The 25-year-old Argentine was dispatched in 57 minutes. The 20th seed Barbara Krejcikova, who reached the quarter-finals last year in Melbourne, got past the French qualifier Clara Burel 6-4, 6-1. In the men's tournament, following the shock departure of top seed Rafael Nadal, third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas and fifth seed Daniil Medvedev advanced to the third round following straight sets wins over the local heroes Rinky Hijikata and John Millman respectively. By Cheng Anqi NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed the Joint Declaration on NATO-EU Cooperation at NATO headquarters in early January. Public opinion generally believes that this declaration looks like an "official announcement of partnership" between the EU and NATO. It actually reflects the embarrassment and helplessness of Europe because it is difficult to conceal the huge differences in interest appeals of the two sides. After the end of the Cold War, the contradictions between the US and Russia has not only did not fundamentally be resolved, but continued to intensify due to NATO's continuous eastward expansion. As a result, Europe has increasingly become a background board for people to smear in the intensified confrontation. The Ukrainian crisis is ostensibly an armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but in fact it is the result of a carefully planned scheme of "killing many birds with one stone" by the US. The US-led NATO has been adding fuel to the fire and stimulating Russia's security nerves since the outbreak of the conflict. In response to the increasingly severe security situation and military pressure, Russia has no choice but to strengthen its military power and frequently demonstrate its strategic deterrence capabilities. Today, Europe is shrouded in the cloud of a "new cold war", and its economic warning lights are also flashing. However, the US is taking advantage of Europe with huge industrial subsidies and overbearing clauses to curb competition, which seriously damages the interests of European countries and pushes its already precarious economy to the verge of collapse. Many professional analyses pointed out that for European countries seeking security and development, strengthening ties with NATO may plunge them into a vortex of conflict and confrontation. The EU is an important pole in the international landscape, which advocates peace, stability, and development. NATO, on the other hand, was originally a tool built by the US to coerce European countries to the east for continuous geopolitical squeeze and military deterrence. There are conflicts and turmoil throughout the regions where NATO has intervened. This is contrary to the original intention of the establishment of the EU. In fact, European countries do not have a strong desire for Ukraine to join NATO. However, after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, many European countries have increased their defense investment. This shows that the US has successfully sold anxiety. Strengthening Europe's dependence on NATO will undoubtedly greatly strengthen the US's strategic grip on Europe. Europe has been pushed to the front line of confrontation with Russia while the US is watching the show at a safe distance. The US passed on the cost of confrontation with Russia to Europe, which is to pass on the risks and contradictions to Europe. Under such circumstances, Europe should really evaluate the decision of signing a joint declaration of cooperation with NATO and further concentrate European defense dominance in the hands of the US based on its own real interests. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has bemoaned the non-payment of an amount of GH77,006 mortuary fees embezzled by a mortuary attendant of the Effia Nkwanta Government Hospital in the Western Region. Stephen Kwabena Bartels embezzled the funds between June 2019 and July 2020. The Ghana Health Service said although the accused health officer who has been transferred to a different facility within the region assured of a payment plan to settle the debt, he is yet to make any payment since the year 2020. The funds are revenue for 554 bodies that were deposited in the Regional Hospital morgue during the period. The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers Ghana (COPEC) has proposed a solution it describes as the funnel arrangement to help control fuel prices in the long term. Under the arrangement, the Chamber suggested that instead of Bulk Oil Distributors (BDCs) importing petroleum products in fragments, the country should rather aggregate the volumes required over a period and import in bulk. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Duncan Amoah, Executive Secretary, COPEC, said the proposed policy would also ease the demand for forex on the part of the BDCs and help to reduce the depreciation of the Cedi. We should aggregate our volumes and auction it to the oil traders. Once the oil trader knows that for this quarter Ghana is requesting for a million tonnes, if you ask them to give you quotations, you are likely to get a more efficient pricing system, Mr Amoah said. He added: Aggregated importation would help to price fuel for at least in the next three months at a constant figure instead of the current fluctuations in prices. After weeks of recording consistent decline, fuel prices shot up again on Monday, January 16, 2023, owing to the about 10 per cent depreciation of the Cedi in the last two weeks. Currently, petrol is selling at an average GHS13.90, from GHS12.40, whilst diesel is selling at about GHS15.60 per litre, from about GHS13.70. On Monday, the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) took delivery of the first consignment of petroleum products delivered under the Government's Gold for Oil Policy. The about 41,000 metric tonnes of petroleum products are valued at about $43 million. The Government announced the Gold for Oil Policy in November last year as an innovative measure to exchange gold for petroleum products instead of US Dollars. The Government said the move was intended to reduce the demand for dollars for the importation of petroleum products and by extension reduce the rate of depreciation of the Cedi. It is estimated that the country required about $400m to import petroleum products monthly. Mr Amoah said the Gold for Oil Policy was not the solution to the instability in fuel prices, adding that the Policy may create additional layers in the value chain that could compound the problem. He urged the Economic Management Team and the Bank of Ghana to use the sale of the gold to rather stabilise the Cedi so that every sector that relied on Dollars would benefit. Every single active actor that we are introducing along the chain in the Gold for Oil deal is likely to come out with one cost or the other and that would probably add to the cost of the oil, he said. GNA A Moroccan court on Wednesday handed rapper ElGrande Toto a suspended eight-month prison term for "insults, defamation and threats" against a Belgium-based journalist, the artist's lawyer told AFP. The Casablanca-born 26-year-old, whose real name is Taha Fahssi, was accused of threatening the journalist in an online row after the Arab star made controversial comments about cannabis. "We'll meet in Belgium and you won't know what happened to you," the rapper had said in a comment on Instagram. As well as the prison sentence, he was ordered to pay 50,000 dirhams ($4,900) in damages. ElGrande Toto's lawyer Abdelfattah Zahrach said he was "partly satisfied" by the ruling but objected to the requirement to pay compensation. The rapper "has not committed any criminal act against the plaintiff", he said, adding that they would discuss whether to appeal. The artist sparked controversy in September by telling reporters after a concert: "I smoke hash -- so what?... It doesn't mean I set a bad example." His remarks triggered anger in conservative Morocco, which bans recreational use of the drug despite being its biggest producer, according to the United Nations. He was accused of "inciting drug use" and defamation, and publicly apologised to people "offended" by the comments. ElGrande Toto, who is currently on tour in Senegal, has a huge following in the Arab world. He is the region's second-most streamed artist on Spotify, after Egyptian rapper Wegz. Former General Secretary of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), James Kwabena Bomfeh aka Kabila has reiterated calls for the dismissal of the embattled Finance Minister, Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta. Mr. Bomfeh stated that the minister is the cause of the problems in the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government. Contributing to a discussion about the recent impasse between individual bondholders and the government over the Domestic Debt Exchange programme, he noted that people have lost trust in the minister. "The issue of trust is key to communication. If you talk about transparency, sincerity, and open conversation, then trust or the confidence of people is very significant. "I don't know, but whatever it is, the overwhelming verdict of Ghanaians, which is not scientifically established, is that the President must change this Finance Minister," he said. Speaking on Accra-based Peace FMs Kokrokoo morning show, the former CPP chief scribes asked why President Akufo-Addo would still make Mr. Ofori-Atta lead the conversation on the programme (DDEP). "The Finance Minister, who is leading this conversation, is an issue because the trust issue is major. Parliament, both the Majority and Minority and many Ghanaians have registered their displeasure. So, are we saying we can't find any person in Ghana to lead this process apart from Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta?" Kabila finds it very difficult to comprehend why the minister, despite all the massive calls for his dismissal by Ghanaians, is still adamant. "Mr. Minister, so all that is going on, are you okay? Are you comfortable with it?" he quizzed. 18.01.2023 LISTEN Founder and leader of the Ghana Union Movement (GUM), Rev. Christian Kwabena Andrews, popularly known as Osofo Kyiri Abosom has urged Ghanaians to put an end to the NPP-NDC rule in the country. According to him, the ruling NPP and the opposition NDC are lazy parties that have ruled the country for the past 31 years yet have nothing better to show. The 2020 presidential aspirant, addressing the media at his partys office in Accra promised that his outfit will cut down the size of government and re-strategize the educational system with a new curriculum, among other policies when voted into power. We have had enough of these lazy leaders under the current NPP government, and with the way things are going if we don't give them the alternative measures for them to listen and implement, the nation will soon be thrown into a serious mess. Look at all the major sectors and nothing is working due to the bad leadership of these parties, the NPP and NDC, especially the current handlers of the economy," he lamented. We plan to revive all state-owned enterprises to help solve unemployment among the youth and also review our educational curriculum and most importantly run a minimal size of government, and I believe some of these things will help us solve most of our current problems facing us as a country," Osofo Kyiri Abosom promised. The Minister of Education, Dr Osei Yaw Adutwum has disclosed that a new curriculum for Senior High School students will have no room for integrated science. According to him, students offering science courses with major in biology, chemistry and physics will no longer do integrated science as one of their core subjects. The minister observed that the new change is expected to begin by 2024. The Member of Parliament for Bosomtwe constituency said engagement with stakeholders in the educational sector is ongoing to ensure that, the process becomes successful. "Our transformational efforts on the curriculum are focused on ensuring that we have the dream Ghanaian child who is competent and able to match up to any of their counterparts anywhere in the world. "We needed to review the present school curriculum to respond to the national priority of shifting the structure and content of the education system from merely passing examinations to building character, nurturing values, and raising literate, confident and engaged citizens, with emphasis on science and mathematics as building blocks for success in either tertiary education or early entry in the workplace," the sector minister stated. Dr Osei Yaw Adutwum said this on Wednesday, January 18, 2023 when he paid an unannounced visit to the staff of Labone Senior High School in Accra. The visit was part of the Minister's regular tour of schools to get first hand information about issues in the schools. It also aims and interacting with authorities at various schools and also motivate them to do more. The Government has paid arrears to service providers and suppliers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) up to April 2022, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Health Minister, has informed Parliament. He said this month (January 2023), the Ministry was still reimbursing claims for May 2022. However, there are still about seven months outstanding arrears to settle. Mr Agyeman-Manu made the revelation in Accra at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament. The Minister was at the Committees sitting to respond to issues concerning his Ministry that were raised in the in the 2020 Report of the Auditor-General on Public Accounts of Ghana: Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for the Year Ended, 31 December, 2020. Regulation 38 of the National Health Insurance Regulations requires a claim of payment of health service submitted to the scheme shall be paid within four weeks after receipt of the claims from the health care facility unless there is legal impediment. According to the report, contrary to the above provision, the auditors noted that as of 31 August 2020, the NHIS owed 46 owed 46 Budget Management Centres (BMC) GH 20,999,551.10 for services rendered between June 2019 and August 2020. The auditors recommended that the Heads of the BMCs should engage the CEO, NHIA for reimbursement of the outstanding amount. Mr Iddie Kofi Adams, a Member of PAC, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Buem, asked the Minister what the current status of reimbursement of payment was to accredited health institutions, especially for the 2019 and 2020 period. The Minister responded that all the claims for the 2019/2020 period had been settled. He noted that the Government was working hard to settle all outstanding arrears. GNA The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament on Wednesday asked the Management of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital to refund GH36,000 paid as unearned salaries to some staff in 2020. Mr Ebenezer Prince Arhin, the Deputy Human Resource Director, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, appearing before the PAC, said efforts made towards retrieving the funds from relatives of some of the deceased staff, in the last two years, had proven futile. The unearned salaries are GH115,889,12, and Korle-Bu has been able to recover GH79, 000 plus and the outstanding is GH36,000. We have made frantic efforts to recover that amount but some of them are deceased. We have gotten to their next of kin and we are pursuing them for the money, he said. Mr Arhin, therefore, pledged that management would do all it could to retrieve the monies as directed by the Committee. Mr James Klutse Avedzi, the Chairman, PAC, rejected the explanation of the Hospital and charged the Management to refund the unrecovered amount to the Hospital's accounts. PAC commenced sittings on Monday, January 16, 2023, to examine the Auditor General's Report on public accounts of the Government for the year 2020 and also scrutinise the accounts of the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies per the recommendations of the Report. The accounts of public boards, corporations, and other statutory institutions would also be considered. Proceedings of the almost two-week sitting are expected to be concluded on Friday, January 27, according to a statement issued by the Public Affairs Directorate of Parliament, and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra. GNA 18.01.2023 LISTEN In formal celebration of the ECOWAS Human Rights Day on January 16, 2023, ECOWAS Radio rolled out exciting programs to commemorate the Day. January 16, 2023, marks 17 years since H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as the first woman to be elected as president of an African country. In recognition of this achievement, in 2016, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) designated January 16 as Human Rights Day, to be observed in the region annually in former President Sirleafs honor, for her unwavering support to the regional goal of the advancement of the promotion and protection of human rights for the benefit of ordinary ECOWAS citizens. Following the tradition of the Sub-regional body, ECOWAS Radio hosted series of on-air programs with personalities from the medical sector, legal community, the physically-challenged, the media, youth, womens groups, civil society and the labor sector. The guests also paid glowing tributes to ECOWAS for selecting a specific day to focus on human rights issues in the community. The day was celebrated under the theme: Guaranteeing the Elderly and Disabled Rights to Access Food Amid Food Crisis. Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in a special interview with ECOWAS Radio, termed the naming of the Human Rights Day in her honor, as a befitting tribute to the contributions of women to peace, democracy and development in the sub-region. We all must work together as leaders and citizens of the community to help ensure dignity for the elderly and the disabled, former President Sirleaf noted. And we can do that by working collectively to create an environment where access to food for the elderly is a priority, former President Sirleaf added. The public also had an opportunity to participate in the various programs by calling in and making contributions, with many celebrating ECOWAS for its pivotal role in promoting the human rights and dignity of citizens and residents of the community. Source: ECOWAS (CEDEAO) Anglogold Ashanti on Tuesday, 17th January 2023 presented a brand new 44 vehicle to the Ashanti South Regional Police command to support their operations. The Toyota Hilux - 4WD DC DLX vehicle which cost GH453,500 was presented after a request by the newly created Regional Command in collaboration with the Member of Parliament for Bekwai constituency Joseph Osei- Wusu, to support their operations. The Ashanti South Police Regional Headquarters is located at Bekwai. The Command is made up of four (4) Police Divisions, fourteen (14) Districts, and sixty-three stations and posts. During a short presentation ceremony, the Managing Director of Anglogold Ashanti Eric Asubonteng said the donation was in response to a appeal by the Police command which is also in sync with the company's 10 year Socio-economic Development Plan which talks about assisting public institutions like the police. He added that this was not the first time the company was coming to the aid of the Police. He said, " this is the second time in about 3 years that AGA is supporting the Police. In 2019, we presented two brand new vehicles to the Obuasi Divisional Police command to support their activities ". Mr. Asubonteng laid emphasis on the resolve of Anglogold Ashanti to support in improving security in Obuasi and its environs. He said the company recently cut sod for the construction of a District Police headquarters in Obuasi and it is keen on ensuring that the Police is well resourced to carry out its mandate successfully. The Member of Parliament for Bekwai and the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament Hon Joseph Osei- Wusu who received the vehicle on behalf of the Police said it became necessary for the Regional Command to be tooled following the creation of the Ashanti South Regional Police command. He said having been tasked by the IGP to spearhead the drive to resource the command, he liaised with the Police to petition Anglogold Ashanti as a key stakeholder to support the provision of vehicles. He lauded AGA for heeding their request. Ashanti South Regional Police command to ease police operations Hon Joseph Osei- Wusu on the re-demarcation of the Ashanti Regional Police command said it became necessary for the Regional Police Command to be re-demarcated into Ashanti ( Kumasi), Ashanti North (Mampong) and Ashanti South (Bekwai) after it emerged that the size of the region was putting pressure on the workload of the Police. He said the move will enhance police efficiency and increase access to Police in the Ashanti Region. The Chief of Gauso, a suburb in the Obuasi Municipality Dramani Karim Gauso has emphasised that the people of Gauso are not violent contrary to the perception among a cross-section of the people of Obuasi. He was speaking at a community durbar to brief members of the community about recent attacks by a gang on some residents of the Gauso community. The meeting also presented an opportunity for the Chief and his elders to sensitize the people, especially the youth to stay out of trouble. It would be recalled that last week a group of gun-wielding men allegedly from Estate also a suburb of Obuasi attacked some people at Gauso in what is suspected to be a reprisal attack. In the process, one man was injured whiles properties were destroyed. The Police acted swiftly by arresting three (3) members of the group who are currently facing trial. There has been reported long-standing feud between some groups of young men in Gauso and their counterparts at Tutuka and other areas in Obuasi. This has resulted in deaths whiles others have suffered various degree of injuries. This development has however compelled the Chief of the area to meet with his people to admonish them to stay out of crime and other violent behaviour since he has resolved not to shield anybody involved in such acts. Speaking with the media after the well-attended meeting, Nana Dramani Karim Gauso said "we will not sit aloof as Gauso's name is drag in the mud, which has the potential of scaring away people from visiting our community and even preventing our youths from getting jobs." He added that the community has formed a taskforce to complement the efforts of the Unit Committee to fish out criminal elements in the community who have been fomenting trouble. The Chief said the elders of the community have resolved not to beg on behalf of recalcitrant individuals or groups who will be arrested by the Police. Alhaji Yunusah Baba Iddrisu Ouro-ifa II Adansi Kotokoli Chief also added his voice to the issue of bad press which the community has been attracting. He said Gauso community is not a violent community hence appealed to the people to demonstrate good behaviour to vindicate his claim. He again advised residents of the community not to shield any criminal who finds refuge in their homes. "I urge you to go by this principle; 'if you see something, say something.' Kindly report criminals to the Police and don't shield them." The Assembly member for the area Dauda Tahiru was of the view that it was about time the youth realised the enormity of the bad name the community has been associated with. He charged the youth to acquire employable skills and stay out of trouble. The youth in the area also pledged to abide by the advice of their elders and said most of the people who commit crimes in the area are not indigenes of Gauso but hide behind the name to perpetuate their criminal activities. Ex-Attorney General and Minister of Justice and New Patriotic Party's presidential candidate aspirant, Hon. Ghartey has flatly dismissed media reports claiming that he blamed the ruling NPP Government for failing to execute the Accra Sky Train Project. Following Hon. Ghartey's interview with Umara Sanda Amadu on Citi FM's Eyewitness News, there were false media reports accusing him of blaming the NPP for the failure of the Accra Sky Train Project. But the veteran politician who was the Minister of Railways Development at the time negotiations were held for the Sky Train Project, has set the records straight, reiterating clearly that President Nana Akufo-Addo's Government was never to blame for the non-execution of the project. Below is his statement reacting to the fake reports: Statement by Joe Ghartey on wrong reportage on Sky Train Project arising out of an interview with Citi FM on various News Portals My attention has been drawn to various headlines concerning the Sky Train in my interview on Citi FM, Eyewitness News, on January 17th 2023. It is alleged that I said that the said project was not realised because of budgetary constraints. One headline states that I said, That it was not constructed because of lack of funds. Another stated that I blamed NPP for the project not being done. There is nothing further from the truth. I stated that it was Build Operate and Transfer and the investors were the ones funding the project not government. Furthermore, I stated that after the agreement was signed in November 2019, the investors were to bring a team from South Africa in 2020 to complete all the engineering designs etc, which would have determined the exact cost of the project. This. I said would enable us determine the term of the concession agreement. I said futher that even after the agreement had been signed. there were a number of Conditions Precedents that had to fulfilled before the agreement became effective. For example, it needed Parliamentary Approval, approval from the Public Procurement Authority, approval from Cabinet, approval from the Ministry of Finance and other approvals such as a Value for Money Audit. All this was premised on the investors coming back to conduct a full detailed study and costing. The agreement was signed in 2019, November and early 2020 due to COVID both Ghana, the destination of the investment and South Africa,where the experts to conduct the detailed study were coming from, were locked down. I never blamed government or said the project was not executed because of lack of government funding. It was never to be funded by government, in any event. I have attached a copy of a recording of the interview. Joe Ghartey January 18th 2023 January 18, 2023 Losing In Ukraine Some people in the U.S./UK government, NATO lobbyists and a number mainstream media writers will end up with egg on their faces. Here is an incomplete short list of them: There is more than one person who disagree with the above. But only one of them is really decisive: President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia's powerful military-industrial complex was ramping up production and was one of the main reasons why Russia would prevail in Ukraine. Putin, speaking to workers at a factory in St Petersburg that makes air defence systems, said overall military equipment output was rising even as demand for it was growing because of what he calls Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine. "In terms of achieving the end result and the victory that is inevitable, there are several things ... It is the unity and cohesion of the Russian and multinational Russian people, the courage and heroism of our fighters ... and of course the work of the military-industrial complex and factories like yours and people like you," said Putin. "Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it." Putin said Russian arms companies manufactured about the same number of anti-aircraft missiles as the rest of the world combined, and three times more than the United States. Posted by b on January 18, 2023 at 16:31 UTC | Permalink Comments next page Notice to Creditors Sumner County Chancery Court, 100 Public Square, Room 401, Gallatin, TN 37066 Case Number 83CH1-2022-PR-742 Johnnie Lee Jennings, Deceased Notice is Hereby Given that on December 27th of 2022, letters testamentary (or of administration as the case may be) in respect to the estate of Johnnie Lee Jennings, who died 10/21/2022were issued to the undersigned by the Sumner County Chancery Court of Sumner County, Tennessee. All persons, resident and non-resident, having claims, matured or unmatured, against the estate are required to file the same with the Clerk of the above-named Court, on or before the earlier of the dates prescribed in (1) or (2) otherwise their claims will be forever barred: (1) (A) Four (4) months from the date of the first publication (or posting, as the case may be) of this notice if the creditor received an actual copy of this notice to creditors at least sixty (60) days before date that is four (4) months from the date of the first publication (or posting); or (B) Sixty (60) days from the date the creditor received an actual copy of the notice to creditors, if the creditor received the copy of the notice less than sixty (60) days prior to the date that is four (4) months from the date of the first publication (or posting) as described in (1) (A); or (2) Twelve (12) months from the decedent s date of death. Tanya Jennings Executor Philip C. Kelly Attorney Mark T. Smith Clerk & Master January 10, 2023 & January 17, 2023 | Notice to Creditors Sumner County Chancery Court, 100 Public Square, Room 401, Gallatin, TN 37066 Case Number 83CH1-2022-PR-765 Phyllis C. Jones, Deceased Notice is Hereby Given that on January 10th of 2022, letters testamentary (or of administration as the case may be) in respect to the estate of Johnnie Lee Jennings, who died 12/03/2022were issued to the undersigned by the Sumner County Chancery Court of Sumner County, Tennessee. All persons, resident and non-resident, having claims, matured or unmatured, against the estate are required to file the same with the Clerk of the above-named Court, on or before the earlier of the dates prescribed in (1) or (2) otherwise their claims will be forever barred: (1) (A) Four (4) months from the date of the first publication (or posting, as the case may be) of this notice if the creditor received an actual copy of this notice to creditors at least sixty (60) days before date that is four (4) months from the date of the first publication (or posting); or (B) Sixty (60) days from the date the creditor received an actual copy of the notice to creditors, if the creditor received the copy of the notice less than sixty (60) days prior to the date that is four (4) months from the date of the first publication (or posting) as described in (1) (A); or (2) Twelve (12) months from the decedent s date of death. Jason Jones Executor John M. McDonald Attorney Mark T. Smith Clerk & Master January 17, 2023 & January 24, 2023 | PUBLIC NOTICE THE CITY OF PORTLAND MUNICIPAL ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS WILL HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING ON February 7, 2023 HELD IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS (CITY HALL), 100 SOUTH RUSSELL STREET, PORTLAND TN 37148. 1. A request by Kyle Schneider (applicant) for a building setback variance Location: 516 South Broadway (Map 033I, Parcel 021.00) Zoned GCS (General Commercial Services) A COPY OF THIS NOTICE IS ON FILE AT THE PLANNING OFFICE IN PORTLAND CITY HALL LOCATED AT 100 SOUTH RUSSELL STREET PORTLAND TN 37148. ANYONE HAVING AN INTEREST OR DESIRING TO ASK QUESTIONS CONCERNING THIS REQUEST CAN CONTACT Nate Heisler (CITY PLANNER) AT 615-325-6776 Ext 227. | In December 2022 Maxar Technologies, the largest (since 2017) supplier of satellite photos and other imagery to commercial and government customers, went private. Stockholders of Maxar accepted $6.4 billion to become a private company owned by U.S. based private equity fund Advent International. Going private gives Maxar more flexibility in making business decisions and it is no longer dependent on stock markets for additional capital. The commercial space imagery business is booming because it gets its data from OSINT (open sources) whose costs are spiraling downward as technology advances. Maxar wants to hold onto its dominant and profitable position in the industry. There is growing competition in this business sector. Ten days before Maxar and Advent announced their deal, rival SpaceX (another private company) announced a new subsidiary called Starshield to use enhanced versions of Starlink technology plus larger earth-imaging satellites with sensors to provide whatever sensing capabilities a national security customer wants. This includes photos, real-time video and all manner of data which satellite sensors can collect. Potential users include the NSA, CIA and equivalent agencies of American allies. While Starlink has achieved market dominance in space-based communications for personal and commercial users, that largely consists of high-speed Internet datalinks and inexpensive ground links that can be stationary or moving in a vehicle or ship. Starshield plans to do that same with classified data government agencies collect. Starshield satellites are designed to accept many types of capabilities provided by user-supplied modules, including those loaded with secret government equipment, that are designed to use the Starshield interface. Starshield data and control links use much more robust encryption. Starshield will use larger SpaceX SLVs (satellite launch vehicles) to put new Starshield satellites in orbit. Starshield is organized to take business away from commercial firms like Blacksky and Maxtar that already have billions of dollars in government contracts to provide persistent imaging, including real-time video, of specific areas on earth. The United States provides these specialized imaging services to Ukraine and that provides far superior satellite data on Russian forces than what the Russians can provide to their own troops. Starlink has developed a generation 2 (or gen2) of its current Starlink satellite ahead of schedule. Because gen2 is larger and five times heavier than the current satellite, it requires a larger SLV (satellite launch vehicle). That is also being developed and is on schedule, not ahead of schedule. The gen2 satellites are described as nearly ten times more capable than the gen1 (original) Starlink satellites. Gen2 are designed to work with gen1 satellites and gradually replace them. Gen1 birds are designed to last for about seven years. At that point the satellite gradually loses altitude until it burns up reentering the atmosphere. The true capabilities of gen2 wont be known until some of them are in orbit. Gen1 satellites proved more effective than expected but the list of suggested improvements indicated that a larger gen2 sat would be the way to go. Eventually this will mean fewer Starlink satellites in orbit but there will still be thousands of them. The main function of Starlink is to provide cheaper, more powerful and globally available access to the Internet or any other communications network that can pay to use the Starlink network, including armed forces and governments which are friendly to Starlink and not considered a threat. The threat nations include China, Russia and several smaller countries like Iran, North Korea and Cuba that are hostile to Internet access they cannot control. China estimates that Starlink is able to increase the speed and throughput of military communications over a hundred times what it is now. The values of commercial space imagery became obvious to a lot of people because of what happened in Ukraine during 2022. Ukraine, more than Google Earth in 2005, demonstrated the usefulness of commercial satellite photos. Google Earth was made possible by a U.S. government decision to rely more on commercial communications satellites because it was too expensive to put up enough government satellites to deal with the demand during conflicts, especially once UAVs like Predator entered service using high-resolution digital cameras that streamed their video back to the U.S. and later to local American military users. Commercial communications satellites led the military in terms of technology because they served so many commercial users and did not have to comply with government secrecy regulations. That led to allowing commercial photo satellites and sharing some of the older government tech and giving a lot of business to one of the first commercial satellite firms, DigitalGlobe in the late 1990s. In 2005 Google used DigitalGlobe services to run Google Earth. Other American and European firms followed and in 2017 DigitalGlobe merged with SSL to create Maxar; the largest and best equipped commercial satellite photo provider in the world. Maxar is profitable with sales of nearly two billion dollars a year from clients like Google, news organizations and governments needing a steady and reliable supply of satellite photos covering customer specified areas. Over half that revenue comes from government contracts, Commercial photo satellite firms continue to have an impact on government users. In 2021 the U.S. NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), which supervises the design, construction and operation of photo and other satellite imagery space satellites needed by the U.S., decided to embrace their commercial competitors. NRO wanted to take advantage of growing competition and technical advances in the commercial imagery satellite industry. This became particularly important since 2017, when the NRO took over the NGAs (National Geospatial Intelligence Agency) job of finding and purchasing commercial satellite imagery that the NRO satellites were unable to obtain because of a shortage of satellites or because some commercial satellites were able to obtain forms of imagery that NRO satellites were not yet capable of. This new commercial satellite imagery procurement program is open to all major operators of commercial satellites who want to supply the Department of Defense with their products on a timely basis. Until 2017 NRO depended on two of the largest commercial satellite operators for this, but those two firms recently merged to form Maxar, eliminating the competition that kept prices low and quality high. That merger was not a problem, because there were also many new commercial satellite operators eagerly seeking to get a share of the market with new, innovative, and less expensive imagery. To take advantage of this, the NRO had to go about procurement more effectively in order to get the most for their imagery budget. The new NRO system is largely automated to allow many vendors to list what they can do and at what cost. Commercial imagery providers will provide special services to large customers and the NRO has become one of the largest. The only problem with NRO procurement was that there was a lot of bureaucracy involved that slowed down the process. Military users often found out about new satellite imagery developments from the trade publications and websites that report on new types of imagery or services available. NRO was criticized for delays in obtaining these new capabilities. The NRO has long been criticized for this and chronic failure to get military users what they could obtain as private users and do it in a timely manner. Government regulations and the NGAs protection of its imagery providing turf require the military to obtain expensive and specialized commercial imagery services via the government agency with the money and authority to procure these new, and often expensive, commercial imagery products, i.e., the NGA. The military wanted this cumbersome and expensive procedure to improve once all imagery purchasing authority was concentrated in the NRO. Changes like the automated selection process should have sped things up but so far, its hard to tell. Once the vendor for a new imagery product the military wants is selected, the bureaucrats still must sign off on purchase orders and ensure prompt delivery to the military users. What got all these reforms going was the NGA admitting in 2016 something everyone already suspected, that it obtained most of its satellite photos from commercial satellites. This was no secret inside the military. Thats because since the late 1990s, when commercial photo satellites began to show up, military users were quick to buy and use this unclassified data. The commercial photo satellites gradually caught up with their military counterparts in most capabilities. Military photo satellites first appeared in the 1960s and their images were meant for intelligence agencies, not combat commanders in the field. These military photo satellites were long the leader in the tech that delivered higher resolution photos and other forms of imagery. The military got most of the imagery but more and more went to other government agencies, like the NGA and government departments that supplied unclassified imagery to businesses. There was an unmet demand from commercial firms and military units who could use this imagery if they received it in time. Commercial firms created a demand for unclassified satellite photos and these eventually appeared, but you had to pay for them. The U.S. military then had no cash or authority to buy commercial satellite imagery. What changed all this was the 2005 appearance of Google Earth. This easy-to-use web-based app revolutionized military intelligence. The military didn't like to admit it at first. Google Earth was putting so much satellite photography at the disposal of so many people, in such an easy-to-use fashion that anyone could take advantage of new opportunities. In addition to the target audience of travelers, one could explore the world from anywhere. This revolutionized operations for the military professionals as well as terrorists, other criminals and academics. Military users quickly appreciated what a splendid new tool they had with freely available unclassified commercial satellite imagery. To the U.S. Department of Defense, Google Earth's major problem was not it's low cost and ease-of-use, but the way it showcased the shortcomings of the NGA/NRO, which was responsible for taking the satellite photos, spiffing them up as needed, and getting them to the troops. Trouble was, the government stuff still wasn't getting to the troops that needed it, when they needed it. This was made obvious when Google Earth showed up, and demonstrated how you can get satellite images to anyone, when they need them and do it with minimal hassle. The NRO, NGA and other government agencies liked to keep all their satellite (and aerial) imagery in classified archives, just in case they contained some secrets a potential enemy could use. Google Earth did great damage to this attitude. Changing minds in the military intelligence community isnt easy. Restricted access to satellite photos is an old problem. Since the 1980s, when lots more satellite images became available, often on very short notice, generals, and other officers with access to "satellite imagery" have been complaining about the difficulty they had in getting their hands on this stuff or permission to pass it on to the officers and troops in combat zones who need it most. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on photo satellites since the 1960s, and the troops always seem to get leftovers, if anything, and usually too late to be of any use. At the same time the NRO regularly conned Congress out of more money so they could build more satellites, and neat systems that would get the satellite imagery "to the troops." The goods never arrived, or never arrived in time. Generals gave angry testimony before Congress about this non-performance after the 1991 Kuwait War. The satellite people seemed contrite and said they would make it right, if given the money to do it. They got the money and the troops still got nothing. Then the troops got access to Google Earth in 2005 and saw firsthand what they have been missing. To make matters worse, the software Google Earth used to get the job done was first developed for the NGA. But the way the NGA operated, you had to worry about security considerations and all manner of bureaucratic details before you could deploy a useful tool so they really couldnt use the Google interface on a wide scale. Mention that the troops are fighting a war and the NGA will point out that you still must deal with security and keeping the paperwork straight. Soon after 2005 the troops were beating NGA over the head with Google Earth and Congress took notice. However, NGA bureaucrats were close at hand and the angry troops were far away. Progress was still slow. But at least the troops had Google Earth. Unfortunately, so did the enemy. Nevertheless, over the next decade the army was able to go directly to commercial satellite photo providers who, every year, were putting up more capable photo satellites. Many of the photos from these new satellites were higher resolution and not available on Google Earth. But the army could afford to buy them, as could other commercial customers and give the troops instant access because all these commercial satellite photos were unclassified. After a while the NGA stopped pouting and got on board with the use of lots of unclassified satellite photos. This also spurred the NGA to make the high quality (high resolution and with other enhancements) spy satellite photos more easily available to the troops, or at least the army intel and planning specialists who worked out the details of how battles would be fought. This led to other intel agencies making their data (especially from electronic data collection satellites) available quickly, often in real time, to the troops who needed it. While Google Earth opened the floodgates and gave the troops instant access, what happened first was the availability of high-resolution satellite photos that could be of use to combat troops. This began in the 1960s with the first appearance of the KH (Key Hole) series of photo satellites. The first film camera satellite, KH 1, went up in 1959 but the first successful one was in 1960. Thus, until the 1970s, only film-using satellites supplied coverage of hostile nations. The KH 1 through 9 series satellites sent film back in canisters (for high resolution pictures), to be developed. The Keyhole 9, the first of which went up in 1971, was not only the last of the film satellites but the largest and most capable. Its basic design was used by the subsequent digital camera birds. The KH 9 could cover large areas at high (for the time) resolution of .6 meters (24 inches). This was more than adequate to spot and count tanks, aircraft, and even small warships. The 19th, and last, KH 9 went up in 1984. The KH-9 was a 13-ton satellite with multiple cameras and 4 or 5 reentry vehicles for returning the film for developing and analysis. The KH-9s were nicknamed Big Bird. The age of film began to fade when the first digital satellite, the KH 11, was launched in 1976. These birds were large, nearly 15 tons, and the digital cameras could obtain better resolution and broadcast the photos back to earth. The resolution was such that objects 70mm (a few inches) in size could be identified from 200 kilometers up. Digital cameras were more flexible than film and eventually surpassed film in all categories. The KH-11 telescopic cameras operated like a high-resolution TV camera. Images were captured continuously and transmitted to earth stations. Computers were used to finish the process and produce photos identical to those taken by a conventional film camera. You could even have motion pictures, as well as indications of heat and the nature of the various items. KH-11 could often tell what kind of metal an object on the ground was made of. All this did not come cheap. These birds cost over (in current dollars) over $3 billion to build and launch and lasted three or four years, depending on fuel usage. Moreover, you needed two of them up at the same time in order to guarantee coverage and save the birds from having to change orbit too frequently. The most recent KH-11, the 18th, was launched in 2021. There have been at least four models of the KH-11 since the first of five "Block 1s" was launched in 1976. Since the 1960s over a hundred KH series satellites have been launched. The next generation, the KH-12, was supposed to have been launched in 1987. That was delayed because of problems with the space shuttle after one exploded during launch. A belated KH-11 was launched in October, 1987. The KH-12 was delayed, even though it had several advantages over the KH-11. Along with improvements in ground data processing equipment, the KH-12 could send back data in real time. You could watch events on a large, high-resolution screen as they were happening. This also allowed military headquarters and other users to get their satellite information directly, without going through a CIA or NRO processing center. Data from the more esoteric sensors would still have to be studied by the specialists elsewhere. The KH-12 was expected to make users even more enthusiastic about satellite reconnaissance. It did, in the form of a much-upgraded KH-11 which were called KH-12s but are still officially known as KH-11. The flood of photographic and electronic data was growing far larger than the force of analysts needed to make something of it. In addition to the KH series birds, there were radar and SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) satellites constantly broadcasting data. Then there are the Defense Support Program satellites, which use heat sensors to locate the hot plumes of missile launches. There still isn't a real (new design) KH-12, and that's partly because commercial photo satellites have become cheaper and more convenient for military use. Many KH-12 features were simply added to subsequent KH-11 models. This was cheaper than building the new KH-12 design and involved less paperwork. Thus, those in charge of American space operations were asking that less money be spent on developing new satellites and more spent on building up a reserve of GPS and communications satellites that can quickly be launched to replace wartime losses. The Department of Defense has already been buying more commercial satellites, rather than much more expensive, usually late, and sometimes canceled, custom designed military birds. Contributing to this change were bumbling bureaucrats who mismanaged development projects and journalists who headlined the failures. It has long been suggested that the government just rely on commercial photo satellites for their low resolution (able to detect vehicles and buildings) photo satellite needs. But the military and intelligence agencies often need more photo satellite time than the commercial companies can provide. The government also wants to ensure secrets are kept by having complete control over a pair of commercial grade satellites. The troops and military planners continue to be enthusiastic users of Google Earth, which annoys the people running the military satellite program. But for many military satellite needs, Google Earth does the job. The two military commercial-grade photo satellites eliminated the potential for information leaks (about what the military is buying images of) and provide much more capacity to do low resolution jobs. Another bonus of Google Earth was the appearance of crowd-sourcing. This is what happens when a large number of people scrutinize open-source satellite photos and find useful military information before the professionals do. The people who run the military satellite system are increasingly concerned with wartime needs, and that is what brought out the request for spare GPS and communications satellites. These are relatively cheap, compared to the spy satellites, and most needed if a future war spreads to the orbital zone and puts some American birds out of action. There is also growing concern about the debris in orbit and the increasing risk of satellites being damaged, or destroyed, by these small fragments of older satellites and the rockets that put them there. The smaller, cheaper and lighter, but very capable commercial satellites became the model for a military program to have some ballistic missiles (including those in submarines) equipped with one or more of these smaller satellites for use in wartime when most of the military and commercial satellites have been disabled. This is something the NRO could get behind because they knew that the commercial satellites had taken the lead in satellite design innovation. There were few special military applications left that commercial satellites had not usurped. In late 2022 Russia declared that commercial space satellite-based services might be considered a legitimate target because Starlink provides Ukrainian forces with superior communications than what Russian troops have, while Maxar commercial photo satellites have documented Russian failures in Ukraine in embarrassing detail. What the Russians dont discuss openly is the fact that Russian EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment and ASAT (anti-satellite) systems have both proved incapable of shutting down Starlink and Maxar electronically (EW) or physically (ASATs). Empty threats is all Russia has left in its efforts to eliminate the threat Starlink and Maxar have been to the Russian military effort in Ukraine. Until the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian EW capabilities were considered formidable. This was because Russian Cold War EW capabilities were superior to many Western systems and, after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, a smaller Russia continued developing new EW gear. After encountering some of this in Syria and Donbas (Eastern Ukraine) after 2015, it appeared that the post-cold war Russian EW equipment was not as effective as previously suspected. That was because in Syria both Israel and Turkey found the new Russian EW dangerous, but vulnerable to countermeasure. The Ukrainians came to the same conclusion. Ukraine was, even when part of the Soviet Union before 1991, a source of impressive new military tech. That did not change after 1991, when Ukrainian was more successful than Russian in converting technical talents from military to commercial applications. All this meant that Russian efforts to disrupt communication with and control of Starlink and Maxar satellites, while theoretically possible, did not work for long because the two American firms involved (SpaceX and Maxar) had ample technical resources and capabilities for countering EW attacks. Physical attacks on satellites turned out to be a more theoretical than practical threat. This was especially the case with Starlink, which used thousands of small satellites to provide its services. Maxar uses hundreds rather than thousands of satellites but is also testing use of smaller satellites and more of them. This is a trend on satellite tech and Starlink was the first such large network to deploy and enter service. Russian and Chinese ASAT tech has not yet caught up. WALLINGFORD After three decades, Probate Judge Philip Wright Jr. has adjudicated his final case. Wright officially retired on Jan. 3 from the elected position hes held since 1993, and while he plans to continue to practice law, hes also relishing the thought of having free time. Im only just getting used to it, Wright said Friday. Its been only a little more than a week, and not having the schedule that Ive always had for 30 years is taking some getting used to. The judge of probate position is commonly known to handle estates, but the position includes other matters commonly involving the most fragile segments of society children, the elderly and those unable to handle their own affairs. Being able to help our children and families navigate some of the most difficult and emotional times in their lives has been an honor that I have always cherished, Wright said in a letter to residents announcing his intention to retire last April. Wright, a Democrat, won his first term as probate judge in November 1993, and took office the following January. He easily won the next 14 elections, some running unopposed, a testament to his popularity. He was eligible to serve one more two-year term before hitting the mandatory age of retirement at 70, but opted to forgo that final term. He instead handed over the courts reins to newly seated Judge Patrick Birney, a Republican, who defeated Democratic candidate Nicole Barillaro last November. Birney said he is appreciative of Wrights efforts since November to facilitate the transition. Judge Wright leaves a tremendous legacy and big shoes to fill. He is a true gentleman and has served our town with great distinction, Birney said. Judge Wright has worked tirelessly since November to ensure a seamless transition and because of him I was able to hit the ground running. I look forward to continuing leading such an effective and well respected court. The Wallingford probate court has not been Wrights only job over the past 30 years. He served as the administrative judge for the Central Connecticut Regional Childrens Probate Court since 2007 where he oversaw matters involving the care and guardianship of children; as the President-Judge for the Connecticut Probate Assembly, the statewide association of probate judges, since 2018; as a past chairperson of the Connecticut Probate Assemblys Procedures Review and Planning Committees, and as a member of the Connecticut Probate Assemblys Executive, Ethics, Legislative, and Statistic Committees. I am looking used to having some time on my hands, Wright said of his retirement. Im looking forward to that. But he isnt giving up the law altogether, he said. I intend to continue to practice law, he said. In the future Ill start practicing law again. Im going to take some time off, a little bit of time, but its my intention to continue to practice law at a certain level. About 200 people came out Thursday to a reception thanking Wright for his years of service at the Elks Hall, where guests included Sen. Richard Blumenthal. I offer my congratulations to Judge Wright on the retirement from his very distinguished tenure as Wallingfords probate judge, said Town Councilor Sam Carmody, who was one of several hosts of the reception. Under his leadership, he and his staff have run a compassionate, attentive and effective Probate Court for the last 30 years. His respect as a probate judge is unparalleled and his service to the town will certainly be missed. kramunni@record-journal.com The winter weather in Ukraine has made it possible for Ukraine to send more of their troops to NATO bases for training. The United States has set up a training program that trains up to 800 Ukrainian troops a month. Until now the Americans were only training about 300 Ukrainian soldiers each month. Since February 2022 the U.S. has trained 3,100 Ukrainian soldiers. All this training concentrates in teaching Ukrainian troops to use weapons or equipment sent to Ukraine. For example, this program trained 610 Ukrainian artillerymen on how to use the HIMARS vehicle that carries and launches six GMLRS missiles. The fire control system of the HIMARS vehicle is somewhat complex. This HIMARS training enabled the Ukrainian crews to use the GMLRS missiles with devastating effect. The new expanded program will train infantry units to handle more complex battlefield tactics. From 2015 to February 2022, American instructors trained 0ver 27,000 Ukrainian troops at a Ukrainian army base. After the invasion the American trainers withdrew and the training continued, on a smaller scale, in NATO bases in Germany. Britain has used a thousand trainers to train nearly 10,000 Ukrainian troops in the last six months. Britain will train another 20,000 Ukrainian troops in Britain this year. Other nations have also contributed trainers to this effort. The Ukrainians appreciate this training effort and it makes a difference on the battlefield. This is especially true because Russia is sending more troops to Ukraine who have had little or no training. That means the Russians suffer higher casualties and the Ukrainian lose far fewer men. The training program continues as Ukraine receives more complex weapons and equipment. This includes increasingly complex air defense systems like Patriot. More complex armored vehicles are on the way, including the M2 Bradley IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle), the successor to the M113 battle taxi that was a lot simpler to operate. The M2 weighs 27-30 tons and not only weighs twice as much as the M113, but has far more onboard equipment you must master to get the most out of what amounts to a mini-tank that weighs half as much as an M1 tank. In peacetime the training courses for M2 operators and maintainers last several months. In wartime the training can be reduced to a few weeks, especially if you select students who have experience operating or repairing similar commercial or military equipment. There are also documents about operation or repair that can be viewed on a cell phone. Ukrainian troops have been quick learners and know that success learning this material is a matter of life or death. The NATO nations have been making notes of how well and quickly the Ukrainians absorb this training, and used it to improve NATO training methods. NATO has long been getting useful feedback from Ukrainian troops about how well the training and the equipment works. Britain is sending Ukraine some tanks and several countries are sending IFVs. NATO and the Ukrainians develop shorter courses enabling troops familiar with one model of tank or IFV to transition to another similar vehicle. All this training gives Ukrainian forces a major advantage over the Russians, where most of the troops have little training or advanced tech and suffer from low morale and poor leadership. That sort of thing makes a big difference in combat but is often discounted during peacetime. Yves here. The Hayekian fantasy, and Isaiah Berlins closely aligned belief, that the measure of freedom is the ability to take unfettered individual action, shows how Industrial-Revolution created infrastructure and material comforts have made us stupid. One of the most severe punishments in ancient Greece was exile. Citizens knew they could either not live at all outside their city, or would have a life not much living. Hannah Arendt is keenly aware of those realities and hence her notions of freedom explicitly rest on communities and well functioning institutions. By KLG, who has held research and academic positions in three US medical schools since 1995 and is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Associate Dean. He has performed and directed research on protein structure, function, and evolution; cell adhesion and motility; the mechanism of viral fusion proteins; and assembly of the vertebrate heart. He has served on national review panels of both public and private funding agencies, and his research and that of his students has been funded by the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and National Institutes of Health When trying to make sense of troubled eras, a perpetual state with ours certainly included, I have found that one way to understand the world is to through collective biographies. I read my first of these near the beginning of my career as a scientist: The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists of the 1930s (1978), by Gary Werskey. Of course, that book fit my priors very well since I was already familiar with the work of Joseph Needham, J. D. Bernal, and J.B.S Haldane, and Lancelot Hogben (but not Hyman Levy) from my wanderings in the open stacks of the Science Library at my university. The idea of a visible college committed to science in the public interest was one reason I wanted to be a scientist in the first place, instead of the more familiar invisible college of academics who above all keep their heads down while tending to their laboratories, grants, and narrowly focused publications, with students as an afterthought.[1] Joseph Needham et al. made a difference. A similar book is The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003) by Paul Elie, which interleaves the lives and work of four American Catholics of the 20th century: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery OConnor, and Walker Percy. Each of these writers is worthy of as much attention as we can give to them, with the Southerner in me gravitating to the Ms. OConnor and Mr. Percy. Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind (2018) by Michael Massing illuminates an essential conflict of early modern Europe, one that continues. Aaron Sachss recent Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times (2022) sits on my table staring back at me, half-finished but well worth the time, not least because it rescues Lewis Mumford from, if not oblivion, something of an eclipse. Technics and Civilization is one of the most important books of the 20th century. Mumford was still read when I was a student at a university with a bookstore worthy of the name; we would do well to pay him attention again as technics continues to threaten civilization, as described by Justin E.H. Smith in The Internet is Not What You Think It Is, for example; also sitting half-read on my table. And, well, Melville remains Melville. Two recent delightful and fascinating collective biographies of four women Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Phillipa Foot, and Iris Murdoch who helped rescue moral philosophy from a cul de sac are The Women are Up to Something (2021) by Benjamin J.B Lipscomb and Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (2022) by Claire Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman. Prior to reading these books, I was most familiar with the work of Mary Midgley, whose first book Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1978) was tour de force and an unintentional if much needed though not hostile counterpoint to Sociobiology: The New Synthesis by E.O. Wilson (1975)[2]. Mary Midgley (b. 1919) was 59 when Beast and Man was published and her final book, What is Philosophy For?, (2018) was published when she was 99 years old. Most of her books are still in print and well repay the effort. The same is true of her other three friends from Oxford of the early 1940s. These last two collective biographies bring me to the subject for today, a consideration of two essential historians, intellectuals, and philosophers of the 20th century who remain important as we continue to act in and adapt to the world of technics and late capitalist neoliberalism, with civilization thrown somewhere into the mix: Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin through the lens of Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity (2022), by Kei Hiruta of Aarhus University. The contributions of Berlin and Arendt hold up well against those of our current honking gaggle of public intellectuals, whose names left, right, muddled middle I shall leave to the imagination. Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was born in Hanover to a secular Jewish family and grew up in Konigsberg, then the major city of East Prussia and now Kaliningrad. She earned a PhD in philosophy at the University of Marburg with the title The Concept of Love in Augustine in 1929 while still in her early 20s. The Reichstag Fire (1933) served as her political awakening. She was arrested and interrogated for eight days, after which she fled illegally to Paris. She and her husband Heinrich Blucher were interned as enemy aliens at the start of World War II. After their release they were reunited by chance and emigrated to New York in 1941. Arendt established herself as one of the most consequential writers of the mid-20th century with The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Between Past and Future (1961), the controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), which led to a civil war among the New York Intellectuals, and Men in Dark Times (1968). She worked as an editor at Schocken Books and later taught and the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research through the early-1970s. Her books are still in print, and appreciation of her work is undergoing a renascence. She died in New York in 1975 at the age of 69. Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was born in Riga, then a provincial capital of the Russian Empire, to a wealthy Russian-speaking Jewish family that maintained their timber business through the October Revolution. The Berlin family moved to London after the October Revolution. Young Isaiah attended St. Pauls School in London (1922-1928) and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he obtained Firsts in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) and PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) in 1932. Immediately after graduation at the age of 23 Berlin became a lecturer in philosophy at New College and shortly thereafter was made a fellow at All Souls College (an academic Olympus). His colleagues at Oxford included J.L. Austin, Stuart Hampshire, and A.J. Ayer, wrote Language, Truth, and Logic, a founding text of logical positivism, from which philosophy is still trying to recover (see Metaphysical Animals). Berlins first book was Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1938, the final edition of which was the first biography of Marx that I read). During World War II he was a British diplomat in the US and served for a short time in the British Embassy in Moscow in 1946. After the war he returned to Oxford, where until his death at age 88 he was a much sought after public intellectual and President of the British Academy, 1974-1978. His works include The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953), Two Concepts of Liberty (1958), The Age of Enlightenment (1958), Four Essays on Liberty (1969), and several collections compiled and edited by Henry Hardy beginning in the 1970s plus a 4-volume collection of letters from 1928-1997 (Cambridge and Chatto & Windus, 2004-2015). The Proper Study of Mankind, Henry Hardy and Robert Hausheer, eds. (1997) is perhaps the best one-volume collection of Berlins essays. As Stefan Collini has written, Isaiah Berlin was the equivalent of an academic saint. (p. 13). It has been said that Isaiah Berlin did not like Hannah Arendt. This is certainly true based on his collected letters. He constantly refers to her as Miss Arendt (I have all four volumes and could not resist this rabbit hole). She has index entries in the final three covering the 1950s through 1997; the index entries in the final volume have a section called Arendt, Johanna (Hannah): IBs contempt for. Well, OK then. At first, I gave Berlin the benefit of the doubt because Ms. had not appeared yet as a neutral courtesy title for a woman equivalent to Mr. No, actually. In a list of people, the men are often identified by their last names plus Miss Arendt. Mary McCarthy, who was Arendts friend and defender, especially after Eichmann in Jerusalem was published in 1963, is referred to as Mary McCarthy. From a 1985 letter: I must admit that Miss Arendt is a bete noire of mine I see nothing in her writings of the slightest value or interest and never have. Uncharitable, but charity from Mt. Olympus has often been in short supply. In 1986 he refers to her as the late, sainted Hannah Arendt. No matter. If Hannah Arendt knew of the depth of his antipathy she did not care, much. And in any case, their work was the important thing, and both are essential to understanding the 20th century and our responses to the most destructive period in our history Still, he could have called her Dr. Arendt because she did have the degree he lacked, and of course did not need in the prewar Oxford in 1932. But that would probably have had a double meaning, too. Something about German punctiliousness, perhaps. The key to Kei Hirutas book is the subtitle: Freedom, Politics and Humanity, with emphasis on Freedom here. Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt necessarily responded to the overwhelming Inhumanity, Evil, and Judgment of the 20th century. Their different perspectives on these issues are clearly the origin of much of Berlins antipathy to Arendt as a writer, scholar, and intellectual.[3] Nevertheless, they shared their generations discontent with the main rationalist current of Western political thought and its failure to do justice to the complexity of human life. They further shared deep skepticism about what they both regarded as a recent manifestation of that rationalist tendencythe over-application of scientific methods to the study of human affairs (p. 47). Yes, scientism is a bane of our existence and something to return to. Still, there was a fundamental difference in their concepts of what it means to be free. Two Concepts of Liberty and The Hedgehog and the Fox are perhaps Isaiah Berlins most well-known essays.[4] The title of the second is from a surviving fragment of the Greek poet Archilochus, which says: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. The subtitle of the essay is An Essay of Tolstoys View of History, which perhaps telegraphs the lesson. In any case, about some things it is better to be a hedgehog and others the fox; the key is to know which at the right time and place. Berlins Two Concepts of Liberty are negative liberty and positive liberty.[5] In the first, One is negatively free if one is not prevented by others from doing what one could otherwise do (p. 53). True, and this resonates widely. But despite what Berlin seems to mean, the conditions of the exercise of any freedom cannot be separated from the conditions of its exercise. Nevertheless, this is a default position of classical Liberals (uppercase L, valid for current conservatives and liberals, such as they identify themselves). A sick and starving citizen who has no shoes of clothes to wear is unlikely to go to a voting booth until his or her basic needs are fulfilled. This, however, does not mean that the citizen does not have the freedom to vote. What he or she lacks is a set of conditions for exercising that freedom; the citizencan exercise the freedom to vote that he or she already has(when) basic needs, such as food, shelter, and security, are fulfilled. (p. 55). This is a distinction with a difference. Although Berlin is being analytic rather than social or political, the argument falls flat. The right to vote without the means to exercise that right is no right at all. This also applies to any other right. One is reminded of Anatole France: The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. Actually, where I live and all across the US, the law mostly ignores the first two but will enforce the third with vigor. That people need to beg for their food or steal it and live under bridges seems to be a given. In general, Isaiah Berlin has little to say about economic inequality or the destructive forces of Neoliberalism that has developed out of Liberalism, with its attendant austerity[6] as the default response to any and every economic crisis, real or imagined. Neoliberalism is a protean concept that can nevertheless be summarized as: The market is the true measure of all things, even those that cannot be measured. It is true that during most of Berlins professional life, neoliberalism was not yet a pressing concern. But in 1986 he did lament, What Im accused of is always the same, which is some kind of dry, negative individualism. Well, if the Liberal shoe fits The critical reading of Hiruta shows Berlin to be marginally left-wing version of Friedrich Hayek of Mont Pelerin, whose seemingly rigorous analysis of liberty effectively disguises the denial of liberty to the economically disadvantaged. Indeed. Isaiah Berlins conception of positive liberty, which he sees as inferior to negative liberty, is characterized by the answer to the question, By whom and I governed? The answer from an advocate of positive liberty is, of course, By myselfthrough self-mastery. All well and good, and this comports with what we all like to think about ourselves and our lives. But according to Berlin positive liberty can be susceptible to political abuse, by would-be interferers such as tyrants in the broader sense that includes advertising, propaganda, politicians, and (all) governments that lie who claim to be helping one realize true freedom but instead coerce one into doing something he or she would not otherwise do. This also allows interferers to claim that they are merely blocking the exercise of ones false liberty when they in fact prevent one from doing what one actually and expressly wants to dopositive liberty can in this way be appropriated by external interferers to deprive one of negative liberty in the name of true freedom (as) self-mastery gives way to mastery by others. Yes, of course it does, as described in the classic Land of Desire (1994) by William R. Leach. This dovetails with the Neoliberalism described by many critics, my favorite of which is Wendy Brown in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalisms Stealth Revolution. As a choice-making creature above all, human beings are said to have the liberty to open the doors they desire: Positive liberty is one of the many open doors one many walk through if one chooses to, whereas negative liberty is the prior condition of having various open doors in the first place. The life of a person who does not exercise positive liberty may be impoverished. But the life of a person who does not have a measure of negative liberty is unbearable in fact it is inhuman. (p. 64). Thus, negative liberty has primacy over positive liberty. Yes. But the apparent Liberal belief that these doors will be present, accessible, and unlocked is not supported by the actually existing human condition. Which brings us to Hannah Arendt on freedom, for which her concept is derived from her philosophical predecessors; of course, the same is true for Isaiah Berlin. For Arendt, negative liberties are inadequate. To be free is to exercise an opportunity for political participation(in Berlins imagery) a free person is not somebody standing in front of numerous open doors (or doors that can be opened by that someone) but somebody actually walking through a door to politicsfreedom is a state of being manifest in action. (p. 66) And just as important, for Arendt freedom requires a set of preconditions, including: Biological needs Stable and durable communities and institutions Laws and customs regulating political conduct Means to institute democratically chosen choices Moreover, men and women must enter into this societal network as citizens who are equal political actors, and laws must be compatible with a matching political culture. Precisely! And each of these attributes are sorely lacking under our late capitalist neoliberal dispensation. Which is why the current hysteria about our democracy being in mortal danger from any particular or general threat is absurd. What democracy would that be, in a world in which the ideal of a citizen has been replaced by that other c-word, consumer? One citizen-one vote or one dollar-one vote. Take your pick. Only one is compatible with any reasonable concept of democracy. Citizens who are free require that in-between, or the space that simultaneously relates and separates peoplethe space where women and men gather together, show the courage to speak and act in public, express the willingness to hear what others have to say and see what others have to dohuman beings have the built-in potential to speak and act and in this way meet their potential for human plurality, which is the sine qua non of political life (p. 67). This brings to mind Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam, but the better description of a healthy community may be found in The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community[7] by Ray Oldenburg, which is more human, less academic, and well, more earthy. Unless and until we return to or make anew such places in which the human condition manifests itself, we as a society and a culture will continue on this neoliberal road to perdition. Which brings us to Hannah Arendts theoretical masterpiece, The Human Condition. I confess that have not finished my current re-reading, but I did read it along with The Origins of Totalitarianism long ago. Isaiah Berlin most certainly did not appreciate The Human Condition when it was published: From a footnote to a letter of 6 February 1959: In 1958 IB had written a relentlessly negative report for Faber and Faber, who were considering publishing the book in the UKI could recommend no publisher to buy the UK rights to this book. There are two objections to it: it will not sell and it is no good. A separate UK edition has never appeared. (Isaiah Berlin, Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960, Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, eds., p. 676). Well, we all miss the point sometimes. The book has been in print since 1958. It did sell and it is good. It goes without saying that Arendt has little sympathy for those who refuse to act, in whatever way they can. A liberal society musthave many open doors of various kinds, including the bourgeois door to withdrawal from politics and enjoyment of privacy and family life. However, there is only one door to chooseif a person is to be genuinely free and to lead a fulfilling life. That is the door to the political way of life.(p. 72). To be politically active can take many forms, including paying close attention to politics, especially when it is not theatre. This lack of effective political action, among the PMC in particular, is performative in and of itself and describes most of Liberal politics these days among both politicians and their erstwhile constituents. By not acting as man or woman, the political animal, we grant the powers that be their fondest wish and allow them to take care of their true constituents, which are identified here, here, here, and here (apologies for the linkstorm, but this is a target-rich environment). As I have said on many occasions to my scientific colleagues who dismiss something as only politics and therefore obviously beneath them (e.g., the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which has made a few rich but at great cost to science, scientists, and society): You may not be interested in politics but, believe it or not, politics is very interested in you (with apologies to the shade of Pericles). So, where do we go from here? Both Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin agree that freedom is essential. Both are essential to understanding our politics and our history. However, they disagree on the most satisfactory meaning of this freedom. Their views of the human condition differ significantly, and what lies beneath their disputeis overwhat it means to be human. One proposes the vision of the human being as a political animal conditioned by natality[8] and plurality. The other proposes an alternative vision of the human being as a choice-making creature who must enjoy a large measure of negative liberty (p.80) Both are certainly correct, but it is the actually existing human condition that Classical Liberals, both conservative and liberal, seem conditioned to ignore. Perhaps because it confounding factor, because life is messy? Hannah Arendt claimed that her aim in The Human Condition was very simple: it is nothing more than think what we are doing. (Hiruta, p. 85; The Human Condition, p. 5) And on that note, perhaps we can pause to reflect that Liberalism, in the guise of its Neo-successor, is destroying Creation through the actions of Homo economicus, that imaginary cognate species of H. sapiens who nevertheless ignores the true human condition at every opportunity. H. economicus has been described very well by many, Wendy Brown, for example. It will be our undoing if we let it be. I wrote last month about Salvador Luria, who died in 1991, as a scientist for our time. Perhaps another European who fled the European conflagration of the mid-20th century and also made her way to New York can be a political and philosophical guide for our time, one who directs us away from the abyss we have created, an abyss from which the monster stares, whether we have the courage to meet its gaze, or not. ________ [1] The biologists among us may want to read the somewhat specialist The Life Organic; The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics (2016) by Erik L. Peterson, a history professor at the University of Alabama. Another treatment of how scientists working together, while sometimes competing with one another at the margin, make progress on the most important subjects. In this case the concerns of the Theoretical Biology Club led to some of the most important discoveries of biology in the past 90 years, although current synthetic biologists, who sometimes reflect the engineering ideal of biology espoused by Jacques Loeb in the early 20th century, would do well to listen to them more closely. A photograph of Joseph Needham, Dorothy Moyle Needham, and the Belgian molecular biologist Jean Brachet is on the dust jacket. [2] For those interested in modern sociobiology and its quite interesting history, the sketchiness of E.O. Wilsons primary argument, protestations to the contrary, during his mid-career interlude as a human sociobiologist may have been confirmed by recent evidence of Wilsons solicitude for J. Philippe Rushton, who appeared here last month. This stuff is a perennial, primarily because it reinforces the Liberal/Neoliberal/Professional Managerial Class (PMC) consensus in which a legitimate meritocracy reigns. No one seems to realize that Michael Youngs novel by that name was dystopian fiction. [3] The controversy over Eichmann in Jerusalem is addressed by Arendt in On Lying and Politics (2022), a little book from Library of America, which also contains her essay on The Pentagon Papers. [4] Both essays are included in The Proper Study of Mankind (1997). [5] Or freedom; the terms are interchangeable. [6] I cannot resist noting that the blurb on the cover of my paperback edition of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is Blyth writes in the style of Keynesvalid and compelling from one Lawrence Summers. Somewhere at OUP works an editor with a sense of humor. [7] A heartfelt elegy and call to action from a genuine sociologist. [8] In response to Heidegger, a contrast of natality with mortality: Like Heidegger, Arendt considers human beings to be fundamentally conditionedand she wants them to become appropriately responsive to human finitude. But the responsiveness she wants them to cultivate is the responsiveness to natality, rather than mortalitythough (humans) must die, (they) are not born in order to die but in order to begin. (p. 74-75). A good way to live! Yves here. Wellie, if you read our earlier post on sentiment at Davos, you would have noticed that the Financial Times decided to flog an IMF economic upgrade very hard as a proof of rising animal spirits among the super rich. The Wall Street Journal, which actually talked to attendees, had a much more downbeat take. Nevertheless, speculators are running with the upbeat IMF/Financial Times spineven though the World Bank had just slashed its 2023 forecast to just above economic stall speed. In fairness, a related OilPrice story contends that the Saudis are also bullish on oil prices based on signals they are getting from China. Mind you, we have said that China rebounding would have a big impact on oil prices and growth generally. Your humble blogger is discounting optimistic talk from China for the moment. The Xi government has to depict its abrupt about turn on Zero Covid as a big success until it actually does succeed or cannot be denied to have been a belly flop, or worse. By Tsvetana Paraskova, a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. Originally published at OilPrice Oil prices extended Tuesdays rally early on Wednesday morning, climbing by more than 1% in early European trade. Bullish sentiment is building as forecasts from OPEC and the World Economic Summit suggest major economies may avoid recession. While oil prices are rallying, analysts have warned that the rally might soon meet significant technical resistance. Oil prices extended Tuesdays gains into Wednesday, rising by 1% in early European trade, as market sentiment turned bullish on hopes that Chinas reopening would boost demand growth and major developed economies may avoid recessions. The U.S. benchmark, WTI Crude, was trading up by 0.95% at $81.00 as of 9:05 CET. Brent Crude, the international benchmark, was rising by 0.76% at $86.60, building on the gains from Tuesday, which saw the strongest settlement in Brent since early December. On Tuesday, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais said that signs of cautious optimism about a recovery in economies and oil demand had started to emerge, thanks to the Chinese reopening. The most recent GDP data out of China, while pointing to the lowest economic growth since the 1970s, beat the consensus estimate. The good outweighs the bad with the outlook for Chinas economic future. Chinas latest swathe of economic data points provide significant optimism that their reopening momentum could impress throughout the year, Ed Moya, Senior Market Analyst, The Americas, at OANDA, said on Tuesday. Yet, Moya warned that The China reopening optimism induced oil rally might have a little more in it, but it should stall out soon. Energy traders are probably a couple dollars away from massive technical resistance. Much of the latest optimism was fueled by headlines out of the World Economic Forum in Davos. OPECs monthly oil market outlook report released on Tuesday lent support by maintaining global demand growth forecast for 2023 unchanged from December, Vanda Insights commented on Wednesday. The International Monetary Funds First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath signaled that the IMF could soon upgrade its economic growth forecasts. Global growth will improve in the second half of this year and into 2024, Gopinath said in a message from Davos. Assuming that OPEC+ production remains at levels similar to those in December, OPEC numbers in its latest monthly report on Tuesday pointed to the global market in balance to a small surplus over the first half of 2023, ING said. However, the group does see a tighter market over the second half of 2023 if OPEC production policy remains unchanged, ING strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said on Wednesday. Yves here. While this article usefully points out how police abuses of power continue to increase, simple-minded solutions like give them less money provides no assurance that behavior will change. The problem is that police engage in a behavior that is common in unions and even more so in the police biz: closing ranks and defending brothers even when known to be abusive hotheads. Any officer who tries not going along risks signing his own death warrant, for instance that fellow cops wont come when someone perceived to be disloyal is in a bad spot and calls for backup. Many years ago, Malcolm Gladwell (who does have his moments) wrote up a study of violent behavior in the Los Angeles Police Department, notorious for its frequency of unjustified beatings and worse. The LAPD went through all of the usual types of additional training to no effect. Gladwell argued that training the average LA cop would do nothing because the average cop was no problem. The overwhelming majority of police officers had not engaged in unwarranted use of force. The LA data shows that police violence was a classic power curve: the bad behavior was concentrated among a very few officers, whod repeatedly beaten up civilians on at best weak pretexts. Yet they were still on the force. They hadnt even been taken off the street.1 Gladwell said these uncontrollable cops needed to be removed entirely from police forces. Yet that seems to be an institutional impossibility, and it reflects that police are too often not subject to civilian control. Using money to try to tell cops who is the boss isnt likely to improve outcomes. For instance, cops can get their revenge by neglecting key neighborhoods and getting them to scream for more policing and therefore a restoration of funding. In other words, as they say in Maine, You cant get there from here, or at least in an easy manner. By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Womens Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute The year 2022 was the deadliest year on record in the United States for fatalities at the hands of law enforcement. According to the Washington Posts police shootings database, law enforcement officers shot and killed 1,096 people last year. In comparison, there were 1,048 shooting fatalities at the hands of police the year before, 1,019 the year before that, 997 the year before that, and so on. These numbers are most likely underestimated. According to Abdul Nasser Rad, managing director of research and data at Mapping Police Violence, the Post only captures incidents where a police officer discharges their firearm and the victim is killed. This means that it doesnt count events like the 2014 killing of Eric Garner in New York and the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, as both deaths resulted from asphyxiation. In contrast, Mapping Police Violence includes any action that a law enforcement officer takes that results in a fatal encounter. For example, Rads project concluded that police killed 1,158 people in 2021 compared to the Posts figure of 1,048 (final results for 2022 are not yet available). There are other databases of police violence like Fatal Encounters, run by the University of Southern California, that have their own criteria for counting police-related killings. Such projects track police violence because the federal government refuses to, in spite of a 1994 law requiring the Justice Department to keep records. Moreover, there is evidence that biased reporting by medical examiners and coroners in individual cases is helping significantly to cover up the extent of police violence. I will not attempt to pick apart the authors use of statistics or treatment of correlation as causation. I leave that to readers. The upshot is that in spite of the huge public attention on police violence since 2020, every year cops kill more and more people. We can expect 2023 to be even deadlier if the years-long trend continues. Another clear conclusion is that police violence is dramatically focused on communities of color. According to the Washington Post, Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans, while Mapping Police Violence finds that Black people are 2.9x more likely to be killed by police than white people in the U.S. Police killings of Latinos and Indigenous people are similarly disproportionate. Recall that in the aftermath of Floyds murder in 2020 at the hands of officer Derek Chauvin, activists demanded a defunding of the police. The well-documented assumption underlying that demand was that generously funded police departments were using their resources to kill people, especially poor people of color whose needs in turn were not being funded. Rad explains that the disproportionate police killings of people of color are due to historical disinvestment and how the U.S. state has used punitive and carceral responses to social problems, specifically to Black and Brown communities. Therefore, the only just conclusion is to divert tax revenues from fueling death to fueling life. Instead of city governments embracing the life-affirming idea of diverting money away from murderous police, media pundits and politicians led a reactionary backlash. President Joe Biden, in a clear clapback at the defund movement, promised to fund the police, and even begged local governments to use federal stimulus funds to bolster their police departments in 2022. In Minneapolis, which became the focus of international attention in the wake of Floyds murder, lawyers Doug Seaton and James Dickey opined in a piece titled Minneapolis Needs a Fully-Funded Police Department, that the citys most vulnerable have suffered from the demand to defund police. One might conclude that Minneapolis police are struggling for funding, but in fact more than a third of the citys entire general fund is poured into police coffers. Mother Jones Eamon Whalen rightly concluded that The Police Are Defunding Minneapolis. According to Rad, In 2022, funding actually continued to increase across U.S. cities into law enforcement agencies. He adds, what might be the media narrative actually doesnt match up to what is actually going on. Does giving police more money result in greater public safety, as Seaton and Dickey claim, and as Biden assumes? One recent study analyzing funding of hundreds of police departments over nearly three decades concluded that new police budget growth is likely to do one thing: increase misdemeanor arrests. One of the studys authors, Brenden Beck, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado Denver, writing in Slate about his teams results, said, The trend was clear: When cities decreased the size of their police departments, they saw fewer misdemeanor arrests and when they increased them, they saw more. According to Beck, misdemeanor enforcement is concentrated in poor neighborhoods and in communities of color. He is confident that, One thing [increased police funding] is likely to do, even if paired with community policing, is generate more misdemeanor arrests. Arrests that will disproportionately hurt poor and Black people. It is during such arrests that police tend to kill Black and Brown people. Those cities that specifically took steps to reduce arrests for petty crimes saw a decrease in police killings, according to data scientist and cofounder of Campaign Zero Samuel Sinyangwe. He also concluded that crime rates in those cities did not increase. There is so much data bolstering the fact that more police funding means more violence and death at the hands of police. And yet, police departments remain flush with cash. How can we simply accept that police will continue to kill more and more people each year? Not everyone accepts this deadly status quo. In spite of the backlash, police abolitionists are continuing to organize. They have created a powerful internet tool, DefundPolice.org, to help communities put police spending into perspective and reimagine their city budgets. The site includes a detailed video tutorial on how to use tools like a peoples budget calculator. In Los Angeles, whose police budget receives massive infusions of private foundation cash on top of generous public funding, activists have been using the idea of a peoples budget to reimagine public safety. Vocal critics of police funding like Eunisses Hernandez and Kenneth Mejia have won elections to powerful local offices. Its not enough to call out police when they kill people. Its not enough to march in the streets or write op-eds. Police will continue to murder more people every year with impunity, their violence nurtured by powerful allies. If we want to see a significant reversal to the ruthless march of police savagery, were going to need to put our money where our mouths are: toward peoples needs, not polices deadly deeds. ____ 1 One has to consider that a reason for the continued survival of some, perhaps all, of these dirty cops is that they have kompromat on higher ups in the police force and city government. (Natural News) Millions of Americans face the threat of federal felony charges over guns they purchased legally thanks to a new rule released by the ATF. (Article by Stephen Gutowski republished from TheReload.com) The agency announced plans to publish the final version of their rule reclassifying pistol braces, a popular firearm accessory, on Friday. The rule, which President Joe Biden requested as part of his efforts to unilaterally reform gun laws, would effectively ban the use of braces unless registered with the ATF. Anyone who does not comply with the rule could be subject to upwards of ten years in federal prison despite the agency previously ruling the braces were legal multiple times over the past decade. While firearms equipped with stabilizing braces or other rearward attachments may be submitted to ATF for a new classification determination, a majority of the existing firearms equipped with a stabilizing brace are likely to be classified as rifles because they are configured for shoulder fire based on the factors described in this rule, the ATF said in the rule. Because many of these firearms generally have a barrel of less than 16 inches, they are likely to be classified as short-barreled rifles subject to regulation and registration under the [National Firearms Act (NFA)] and [Gun Control Act]. The agency says that nearly everyone with a pistol-brace-equipped gun is violating the NFA by possessing an unregistered rifle with a barrel of less than 16 inches. The rule has wide-ranging implications for many American gun owners as pistol braces have exploded in popularity since the ATF first determined they did not convert pistols into heavily-regulated short-barrel rifles back in 2012. The exact number of braces already in circulation is unclear, but the number is well into the millions. The ATF itself estimates three to seven million of the devices exist. The Congressional Research Service puts the number much higher at somewhere between 10 and 40 million. The Biden Administrations decision to move forward with the ban comes after hundreds of thousands of comments opposing the regulation were left during its public comment period. It also comes in the immediate aftermath of the Fifth Circuit ruling against the Trump-era bump stock ban. That policy was implemented through the same rulemaking process and after the ATF had also previously declared bump stocks to fall outside the NFAs purview, which could foreshadow legal problems for the new pistol brace rule. Attorney General Merrick Garland (D.) defended the rule change and said it was necessary to prevent crimes committed with guns he believes should be subject to NFA regulations. Keeping our communities safe from gun violence is among the Departments highest priorities, he said in a statement. Almost a century ago, Congress determined that short-barreled rifles must be subject to heightened requirements. Todays rule makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles. The NFA requires Americans to register all rifles that have barrels shorter than 16 inches and pay a tax of $200, a process that can take nearly a year, or face federal felony charges. However, the law defines rifles as guns that are designed and intended to be shouldered. The ATF initially determined firearms equipped with pistol braces, which are designed to be strapped to a shooters forearm instead of pressed against their shoulder, are not rifles and, therefore, not subject to NFA regulations. For the next decade, the agency issued often vague or contradictory determinations on different versions of pistol braces that were subsequently created. At one point during the Obama Administration, the agency claimed the act of pressing a pistol brace against a shooters shoulder constituted a redesign of the product turning it into an illegal unregistered short-barrel rifle only to later rescind that declaration under the Trump Administration. The inconsistency led to increasing complaints the agency doesnt use any objective measure for determining the legality of the devices. Now, under the Biden Administration, the agencys new rule purports to be more objective but still relies on subjective measures, including whether the agency believes indirect marketing of a brace shows it is meant to be shouldered. Ultimately, it classifies nearly all pistol-brace-equipped firearms as unregistered short-barrel rifles. The agency gave Americans who own pistol-braced guns a few options to avoid potential prosecution. Any weapons with stabilizing braces or similar attachments that constitute rifles under the NFA must be registered no later than 120 days after date of publication in the Federal Register, the agency said, or the short barrel removed and a 16-inch or longer rifle barrel attached to the firearm; or permanently remove and dispose of, or alter, the stabilizing brace such that it cannot be reattached; or the firearm is turned in to your local ATF office. Or the firearm is destroyed. The rule faces substantial political opposition. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of public comments opposing the rule, nearly every member of the Senate Republican caucus sent a letter to Attorney General Garland demanding he withdraw of the rule during the summer. The way the proposed rule is written makes clear that ATF intends to bring the most common uses of the most widely possessed stabilizing braces within the purview of the NFA, the senators said in the letter. Doing so would turn millions of law-abiding Americans into criminals overnight, and would constitute the largest executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history. Gun-rights groups have promised to fight the rule in court. Erich Pratt, Gun Owners of America senior vice president, said his group is already writing up a lawsuit. This administration continues to find new ways to attack gun owners, and this time their target is brace-equipped firearms that allow persons with disabilities to safely and effectively use pistols, he said in a statement. We will continue to work with our industry partners to amplify the disapproving voices in the firearms industry, and the Gun Owners Foundation, our sister legal arm, will be filing suit in the near future. Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said they will update their active case against the agency over its handling of braces. The Second Amendment Foundation already has a lawsuit filed against ATF over arm braces and will amend it to include their new attack, he told The Reload. Read more at: TheReload.com (Natural News) Cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra took the BBC and the medical establishment by surprise when he ditched the script and called for an end to the covid-19 vaccine program. In a live BBC broadcast, Dr. Malhotra said that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines pose a cardiovascular risk and are the most likely contributing factor to the excess cardiovascular death that is being observed in the young and in the old. Cardiologist who lost his father to the covid jabs is now speaking out As the visiting Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health in Brazil, Dr. Malhotra was a respected voice during the vaccine rollout. As an honorary council member of the Stanford University School of Medicines Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic and cardiology examiner at the U.K.s University of Hertfordshire, Dr. Malhotra was expected to get the vaccine first and promote the jabs every chance he got. And thats what he did, until he lost his father to the vaccines in July of 2021. Dr. Malhotra lost his father Dr. Kailash Chand who died from an unexplained cardiac event, suddenly and unexpectedly after taking the covid-19 vaccines. Dr. Chand was a very eminent doctor in the U.K., considered one of the most prolific advocates for the National Health Service. He too advocated for the vaccines, but they did not save his life. Since then, Dr. Malhotra has publicly suggested that the covid vaccines were a contributing factor in his fathers tragic, sudden death. In an October 20, 2022 tweet, Dr. Malhotra wrote: How did my father die? Its very likely that the mRNA products cause rapid acceleration of coronary artery disease. The evidence is clear & overwhelming for complete suspension of these vaccines pending an inquiry. Today I take this to parliament. Lets end this! Before he lost his father, Dr. Malhotra followed the script, promoting covid-19 vaccines on television and proudly stating he was one of the first to take the Pfizer jab. Today, after reviewing the scientific data, he is calling for the covid-19 vaccine program to be shut down. He said live on the BBC: What is almost certain if I can just say this my own research has found, and this is something that is probably a likely contributing factor, is that the COVID mRNA vaccines do carry a cardiovascular risk. And Ive actually called for the suspension of this pending an inquiry, because theres a lot of uncertainty at the moment over whats causing the excess deaths. The networks presenter, Lukwesa Burak, was caught entirely off guard. Burak followed up with, So what youre saying in terms of the mRNA link to cardiovascular risk is that thats been proven medically, scientifically? BBC deploys propagandist to denigrate those who lost a loved one to the covid jabs A BBC spokesperson tried to cover up the truth by having another doctor come on and rebuke Malhotras claims. Dr. Aseem Malhotra was invited on to the BBC News Channel to talk about the latest NICE [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] recommendations on statins. During the discussion he made unprompted claims about the COVID mRNA vaccine. We then asked Professor Peter Openshaw, who represents the overwhelming scientific consensus on the vaccine, to be interviewed on air on this topic and he challenged and rebutted the claims that had been made. Dr. Openshaw is a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London. This is the same institution that conjured up models in March 2020 predicting mass infection and death if lockdowns and social distancing were not implemented worldwide. Dr. Openshaw was essentially used as a propagandist to denigrate those who lost a loved one to the covid jabs. To make matters worse, the medical establishment and the corporate media are now trying to paint the grieving Dr. Malhotra as an antivaxxer who spreads misinformation even after he got the vaccines, promoted the vaccines, and grieved the loss of his father after he died from the vaccines. Sources include: ChildrensHealthDefense.org Bitchute.com Yahoo.com (Natural News) The classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement (PBC) outline the misdeeds of the Biden crime family, according to Freedom Force Battalion host Melissa Red Pill. She put forward this claim during the Jan. 11 episode of her program on Brighteon.TV. I think a lot of this top secret stuff is their crimes. Theyre like, Were [going to] hide any evidence of any crimes. Were [going to] make sure to hide all of that,' she explained. If you were a criminal, youd want to cover your tracks. Thats what the whole point is about them trying to take these documents. Now, our president is taking their documents, proving their crimes. According to the Freedom Force Battalion host, all the Biden crime familys secret deals were likely documented in the papers. Red Pill played footage of Fox News host Sean Hannity, who gave his comments about the classified documents discovered at the PBC. Hannity said the PBC was made possible by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Following its establishment in 2018 and the appointment of Joe Biden as the centers head, the PBC received a $54 million anonymous donation. I think some of it is about the classified documents that they were giving, likely to the CCP, Red Pill commented. She pointed out that alongside Hannitys disclosure that the PBC was backed by Beijing, Bidens status as a CCP operative is a huge revelation. Former President [Donald] Trump rightfully took all his classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, [but] Biden as a former vice president did not instead taking them to the PBC in Washington, D.C. Unsecured PBC office holds sensitive secrets In the footage shared by Red Pill to her audience, Hannity mentioned that a government watchdog demanded an investigation on the $54 million donation, citing national security concerns. (Related: A look back at the Biden familys China business ties.) The host of Hannity on Fox News said Americas most sensitive secrets were floating around in an unsecured office bought and paid for by the CCP all thanks to Biden. The political commentator also slammed Biden for being irresponsible. According to Red Pill, the donation is possibly linked to the Biden familys crimes, which the documents contain. The CCP would want documents as leverage, she pointed out. Red Pill continued that aside from his ties with China, Biden is likely trying to hide the secret deals he and his family made with Iran and Ukraine during the Obama administration. She ultimately remarked that Biden is not going to keep the truth from coming out. The documents, Red Pill added, are just the tip of the iceberg for Biden and the criminal network that is the intelligence community. They are in it. They know it and they dont want any of this truth to hit the light of day and the American people. Thats why thats what were going to do. Whatever they dont want us to do, thats exactly what were going to do. BidenCrimeFamily.news has more stories about Joe Biden and his familys misdeeds. Watch the Jan. 11 episode of Freedom Force Battalion below. Freedom Force Battalion with Melissa Red Pill airs every Wednesday at 11 a.m.- 12 p.m. on Brighteon.TV. More related stories: Biden is compromised: Leaked emails reveal Hunter Biden was happy to introduce business partners to top CCP official. Emails indicate Joe Biden was assisting and benefiting from son Hunter Bidens global business ventures. Biden administration sold close to one million barrels of strategic reserve petroleum to Chinese corporation connected with Hunter Biden. Biden Center at UPenn Received $54.6M from anonymous Chinese donations. Sources include: Brighteon.com FoxNews.com (Natural News) You thought the Titanic sinking was an astounding spectacle? Looks like the ship of the Deep State got some holes ripped in its hull and may be fixing to go down sometime in 2023. The fun-and-games about voting for Speaker of the House are over. Time to get down to bidness and compel some folks to do some splainin under oath. You dont know for sure who will be chair of exactly which congressional committee, but there will be several of them running investigations at the same time, looking to shake out some verifiable truth from the dumpster of misrule, sedition, and perfidy that America fell into the past decade. Here are a bunch of my top outlines for inquiries. (Article republished from Kunstler.com) Covid-19. Forget about Fauci for the moment. First, subpoena the various deputies working under him going back as far as the twentieth century and see what they know about the twisted path that gain-of-function research on coronaviruses traveled from the DODs DARPA to the labs of Dr. Ralph Baric at the U of North Carolina, to labs in Canada, Ukraine, and finally to Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Then put Dr. Faucis ass in the witness chair and wring out the splainin. Ask about the patents on the various parts of C-19 and on the mRNA vaccines cooked up to fight it, and who got the royalties emanating from all of that. Ask him how and why he continued gain-of-function research post-2014 after the White House directed it to stop. Ask him to splain his relations with one Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance. Ask Deborah Birx to splain exactly what was going on in that White House C-19 task force. Why did the public health officers demonize early treatments with known, safe drugs and censor anyone who spoke out against their insane policies? What did the task force know about Pfizer and Modernas vaccine trials? Ask Rochelle Walensky how come she and the CDC kept pushing mRNA shots and boosters long after a broad array of injuries and deaths presented from their use. Put Bill Gatess ass in the chair and have him splain the labyrinth of funding mechanisms he set up to push vaccines all over the globe and how his tentacles happen to penetrate into the World Health Org (WHO). Ask him if he ever had conversations with the leadership of the WHO and the World Economic Forum (WEF) about population reduction and methods for achieving it. Weaponization of Government. Time for FBI Director Christopher Wray to splain how come he sat silently in possession of the Hunter Biden laptop stuffed as it was with deal memoranda about payoffs from Ukraine and other foreign lands through the first impeachment of Mr. Trump in late 2019 and early 2020, from the initial House hearings into the Senate trial when said laptop was full of exculpatory evidence (Brady material) proving that Mr. Trump had a good reason to inquire about those matters in a phone call with V. Zelensky. Ask Mr. Wray what he knows about the roles of whistleblower (CIA agent) Eric Ciaramella and Intel Agency Inspector General Michael Atkinson and their relations with former House Intel Committee chair Adam Schiff. Ask Mr. Wray how many federal agents were involved in the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, both inside and outside. Ask him why one Ray Epps was never indicted for incitement captured on video. Ask him why the FBI never made a murder or manslaughter referral in the death of Ashli Babbitt. Dont let him bullshit the committee about ongoing investigations blah blah. Ask Mr. Wray if he directly ordered his agents to monitor and censor social media companies, and, if not him, who did? Summon the ghost of James Comey to splain the finer points of RussiaGate: how he fell for Hillary Clintons Steele Dossier prank; how he used Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman to leak info about confidential meetings with Mr. Trump; whether he ordered Peter Strzoks sandbagging operation on Gen. Mike Flynn, the FISA court shenanigans, the hiring of CrowdStrike instead of using FBI forensic experts to vet evidence; the run-up to Crossfire Hurricane the roles of international men of mystery Stefan Halper and Josef Mifsud in the operations to incriminate Trump appointees, Nellie Ohrs role as a DOJ-FBI go-between with the Fusion GPS company. Lets hear from former CIA director John Brennan about the 17 Intel Agencies who swore Russia was behind 2016 election interference and then about the 50-odd distinguished intel officers and other high officials who swore that Hunter Bidens laptop was a Russia put-on job. Ask former Attorney General Bill Barr to splain if he was informed about the Hunter Biden laptop when the FBI got it in 2019. Bring back former AG Jeff Sessions to splain how the Mueller Special Counsels office was stuffed with Democratic Party activist Lawfare cadres, and how he determined that Mr. Mueller was mentally up to the job. Bring in Mr. Mueller to splain how he testified that in the two-year course of his inquiry he never heard of the company Fusion GPS. Find a special booster chair for Merrick Garland to splain how come so many January 6 suspects are being held indefinitely pre-trial in the DC lockup on rinky-dink charges under the harshest conditions (solitary confinement, denial of medical care) in defiance of due process of law, in particular the constitutional right to a speedy trial. Ask Mr. Garland why hes devoting vast resources of the DOJ to pursue ever more January 6 protesters on Mickey Mouse charges. Ask him to splain how it came to pass that he went after parents protesting at school boards about indecent sex ed for little children and racist anti-white indoctrination. Ask him about sending SWAT teams on predawn raids to the homes of investigation targets whose lawyers volunteered to deliver them to the FBI offices. Ask him why he appointed a RussiaGate-involved lawyer, one Robert K Hur, as Special Counsel in the Joe Biden classified document matter. Thats just my short list of areas to begin excavations. The Biden Family influence-peddling operation would be a fertile ground for a dedicated inquiry of a special committee. So would the adventures of Democratic Party Lawfare election engineer Marc Elias, along with the election funding activities ($400-million) of Mark Zuckerbergs Center for Technology and Civic Life in 2020. Im sure readers can think of a thousand other matters worth airing in the public arena. Lets see if The New York Times, The WashPo, and the cable news networks actually report any of this accuratelyor if they just turn up the gaslight. One somewhat disconnected thought, a sort-of postscript: The World Economic Forums annual jamboree at Davos, Switzerland, opens this coming Monday. Der Schwabenklaus, Bill Gates, and an international cast of global Big Machers will be in one room for the opening plenary session all at the same time. Think about it. Just sayin. Read more at: Kunstler.com (Natural News) Organized demolition gangs mostly made up of Moroccan migrants have blown up 500 automated teller machines (ATM) in Germany in 2022 a new record. In comparison, 414 terminals were attacked in 2020 and 381 in 2021. Cash is still a popular mode of trade in Germany, so banks have to address the demand for physical currency. They operate nearly 100,000 cash-dispensing machines throughout the nation that routinely contain between 50,000 ($53,965) and 100,000 ($107,930). Organized criminal groups have taken advantage of this, meticulously planning their operations from initial surveillance to demolition and the getaway. News website REMIX reported that migrant gangs have been blowing up these banks and destroying entire buildings. In some cases, they have blown bank vault doors up to 30 meters away. Police say the danger facing Germans is unprecedented as many of these banks are located in residential buildings. The record-high cases have prompted Germanys interior ministry to hold high-level meetings. Authorities said the gangs are most active in the west of Germany, with North-Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony as the most popular targets. They attack banks close to major motorways for a quick getaway, with most banks targeted in the early morning hours when the roads are mostly empty. According to reports, in a robbery case near the small town of Heusenstamm in Hesse, the gang doused garbage bins in gasoline and set them on fire in the middle of the road to block both lanes of traffic. This roadblock would later hinder the police from pursuing the getaway vehicle. Two men wearing face masks and tracksuits were filmed breaking open the ATMs cash slots and then using a hose to fill the machine with acetylene and oxygen. Another robber, who was in a BMW 320d behind the bank, detonated the bomb. The men worked with the precision and speed of a racing team at a pit stop, according to the German daily newspaper Die Welt. Explosions have been rocking the country almost nightly. Some attacks already led residents to evacuate from their homes. Videos of explosions on buildings, supermarkets and other public spaces routinely run on German news. Its a miracle that there havent been any deaths yet, said Swen Eigenbrodt, the lead investigator of a special new unit in the Hessian State Criminal Police Office (LKA). Gang boss sets up training school for bank heists Dutch criminologist Cyrille Fijnaut has been looking into these ATM blowing-up crews for 20 years and actively advises the Dutch government. According to him, the criminal group consists of about 200 to 400 young men, most of them with Moroccan roots. (Related: Dutch Police Union head: The Netherlands is now a NARCO-STATE with a parallel economy.) A few years ago, one of the top gang bosses set up his own training center for ATM demolition crews. He rented out a factory building, ordered discarded ATMs online and began training members in what served as a sort of school for gang members. Vito Shukrula, a famed Dutch defense lawyer, said these types of robbery operations are actually used as seed money to enter into the Dutch cocaine trade. He described it as easy money for these teams. The news portal previously reported that the Moroccan mafia earns billions in revenue every year from the drug trade in the Netherlands. The criminal group has assassinated not only rivals but also state witnesses and even journalists. The group has become so feared that 18-year-old Dutch Princess Amalia went into hiding over credible kidnapping and assassination threats just months ago. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has also beefed up his security due to threats from the group. Watch the video below that talks about a Texan rapper who rapped about robbing ATM and got arrested for robbing a Tennessee cash terminal. This video is from the zolnareport.com channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Flash mob of looters ransack a convenience store in Los Angeles. Beverly Hills residents flocking to buy guns for self-defense as violent crime soars in L.A. Shocking photos show sea of discarded boxes from train robberies as thieves steal items bound for consumers, worsening supply chain crisis. Mexico considers deploying national guard troops to defend high-crime highways and put a stop to cargo theft. Sources include: RMX.news News.am Welt.de Brighteon.com (Natural News) We have two important findings to share today about potential nutritional solutions against clotting and spike protein particles. First, a study published in 2021 has suddenly gone viral over the last two days as someone realized it showed how the combination of bromelain and acetylcysteine (both commonly known in the supplement industry) may inactivate the spike protein by altering its morphology, rendering it unable to attack cells in the body. Im not sure who first started publicizing this study, but I found it widely posted on Brighteon.social. The study is titled, The Combination of Bromelain and Acetylcysteine (BromAc) Synergistically Inactivates SARS-CoV-2. It was published in the journal Viruses and appears on Researchgate.net as well as other science article indexing hubs. The full text of the article is available to the public for free. Authored by a group of researchers with Ahmed Mekkawy the lead researcher the study looked at how bromelain and acetylcysteine also known as the supplement form NAC alters the glycoproteins of the spike protein. The following chart shows changes in the opacity of SARS-CoC-2 cell cultures upon exposure to different concentrations of the BromAc nutrition combination: (note that the micrograms per mL means ppm, so these are fairly low concentrations yet still have a measurable impact): Figure 2.Cell lysis assays demonstratedin vitroinactivation potential of Acetylcysteine and Brome-lain combined (BromAc) against SARS-CoV-2. Cell viability was measured by cell staining withNeutral Red, where optical density (OD) is directly proportional to viable cells. Low OD wouldsignify important cell lysis due to virus replication. The conclusion of the study explains how this combination of Bromelain and Acetylcysteine alters the structure of the SARS-CoC-2 glycoproteins, rendering them unable to attack human cells: (emphasis added) The combination of Bromelain and Acetylcysteine, BromAc, synergistically inhibited the infectivity of two SARS-CoV-2 strains cultured on Vero cells. Protein con?rmation and its molecular properties are dependent on its structural and geometric integrity, which are dependent on both the peptide linkages and disul?de bridges. Acetylcysteine, as a good reducing agent, tends to reduce the disul?de bridges and hence alter the molecular properties of most proteins. This property has been widely exploited in the development of several therapies (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, allergic airways diseases,cystic ?brosis, pseudomyxoma peritonei, etc.) [20,2327]. More recently, Acetylcysteine has been used in the development of therapies for respiratory infections such as in?uenza and COVID-19 [2830], where the integrity of the spike protein is vital for infection [12,13]. A hypothesized mechanism of action could be the unfolding of the spike glycoprotein and the reduction of its disul?de bonds. A direct mechanical action against this spike protein is a different treatment strategy in comparison to most of the existing antiviral drugs, which prevents viral entry in host cells rather than targeting the replication machinery. BromAc acts as a biochemical agent to destroy complex glycoproteins. Bromelains multipotent enzymatic competencies, dominated by the ability to disrupt glycosidic link-ages, usefully complement Acetylcysteines strong power to reduce disul?de bond. The potential of BromAc on SARS-CoV-2 spike and envelope proteins stabilized by disul?de bonds was examined and found to induce the unfolding of recombinant spike and envelope proteins by reducing disul?de stabilizer bridges. BromAc also showed an inhibitory effect on wild-type and spike mutant SARS-CoV-2 by inactivation of its replication capacity in vitro. Hence, BromAc may be an effective therapeutic agent for early SARS-CoV-2infection, despite mutations, and even have potential as a prophylactic in people at high risk of infection. Importantly, it should be noted that these tests were carried out in vitro, and there have not been any human clinical trials on this combination that Im aware of, since the NIH would never fund anything other than Big Pharma drugs and vaccine research. Consider the information presented here as a theoretical route action that warrants further exploration. Nevertheless, given that bromelain and acetylcysteine are widely consumed as nutritional supplements right now and are readily available and affordable these solutions warrant consideration as low-cost, low-risk interventions that may prove to help save lives. Dr. Bryan Ardis reveals a potential solution to halt artificially induced fibrinogen clotting Yesterday I joined Dr. Bryan Ardis on the Baal Busters show to talk about solutions. About 30 minutes into the show, Dr. Ardis unveiled a short presentation that shows how glycyrrhizin, an active constituent of licorice root, was found to strongly impede venom peptide-induced fibrinogen clotting (which can happen in blood). You can watch that full interview at this link on Brighteon.com. As I pointed out in the interview, glycyrrhizin is also known to protect the liver from Tylenol toxicity (acetaminophen). It is one of the most potent molecules in both western herbal medicine as well as Traditional Chinese Medicine. I cover all this and much more in todays Situation Update podcast: Dr. Bryan Ardis reveals nutritional solution against fibrinogen clotting Published scientific study reveals nutritional combo that UNFOLDS spike proteins WSJ admits CBDCs are coming, whether youre ready or not suddenly its no longer a conspiracy mRNA vaccine push into animal herds is another globalist effort to destroy the meat supply The truth about PureBlood bull semen and sustainability of animal herds Whistleblower reveals US government is running attacks on Americas food infrastructure Leftists believe COAL mining is bad, but MINERAL mining for green energy is good The green energy infrastructure needs 15+ minerals mined from all over the world New special report released with Steve Quayle and Mike Adams: GRID DOWN What Now? College professor claims astrophysics is RACIST Scotland pushing globalist concept of 20 minute neighborhoods where you are a prisoner 90% of online content to be generated by AI in just a few years Rise of AI systems underscores the importance of being a creative, conscious HUMAN Interview with Daisy Luther from The Organic Prepper about FRUGAL LIVING Brighteon: Brighteon.com/e726275b-0566-4d5f-baf9-a0e5e8ba69b4 Rumble: Rumble.com/v25z5z8-situation-update-11723-breakthrough-nutritional-solutions-to-halt-clotting..html Bitchute: Bitchute.com/video/uD9bQ1V2R9J3/ Banned.Video: Banned.video/watch?id=63c699689c97e3192587d704 iTunes podcast: Healthrangerreport.com/situation-update-jan-17-2023-breakthrough-nutritional-solutions-to-halt-clotting-and-unfold-spike-proteins Learn more about herbal solutions and remedies at Herbs.news Discover more interviews and podcasts each day at: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/HRreport Follow me on: Brighteon.social: Brighteon.social/@HealthRanger (my breaking news gets posted here first) Telegram: t.me/RealHealthRanger Substack: HealthRanger.substack.com Banned.video: Banned.video/channel/mike-adams Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@healthranger Twitter: @MikeAdamsHR Gettr: GETTR.com/user/healthranger Parler: Parler.com/user/HealthRanger Rumble: Rumble.com/c/HealthRangerReport BitChute: Bitchute.com/channel/9EB8glubb0Ns/ Clouthub: app.clouthub.com/#/users/u/naturalnews/posts Join the free NaturalNews.com email newsletter to stay alerted about breaking news each day. Download my current audio books including Ghost World, Survival Nutrition, The Global Reset Survival Guide and The Contagious Mind at: https://Audiobooks.NaturalNews.com/ Download my new audio book, Resilient Prepping at ResilientPrepping.com it teaches you how to survive the total collapse of civilization and the loss of both the power grid and combustion engines. (Natural News) Swedish state-owned mining company LKAB announced on Thursday, Jan. 12, that it has identified a deposit of more than one million metric tons (1.102 million tons) of rare earth elements, by far the largest known deposit of such minerals in Europe. LKAB announced that the deposit was found in Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, and that the find is good news not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate, according to LKAB CEO Jan Mostrom. Rare earth minerals like the ones found in Kiruna are essential to many high tech manufacturing processes and are instrumental in the production of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, magnets, glass screens, microphones, speakers and various other portable electronics. (Related: Your green energy may not be so green after all: Rare earth elements used in solar panels and wind turbines are highly polluting.) Mostrom added in his statement that the Kiruna deposit could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition. But LKAB noted that the road to actually mining the Kirnuna deposit is long. The company still needs to submit an exploitation concession application. This will allow the company to conduct deeper and more widespread explorations to figure out the full extent of the deposit. This entire process will take years as the company will have to address potential risks to local water resources and biodiversity. If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10 to 15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market, said Mostrom. Erik Jonsson, a senior geologist at the Geological Survey of Swedens Department of Mineral Resources, further noted that Europe currently lacks the full-scale capacity to process rare earth metals and turn them into intermediary products. So, we also need to focus on the entire value chain of these metals, products like high-efficiency magnets that we want to use for wind turbines or traction engines in EVs and so on, said Jonsson. Europe to use deposit to reduce reliance on rare earth imports Europe does not mine rare earth minerals like the ones found in Kiruna. Ninety-nine percent of the rare earth elements that enter the European Union (EU) are imported from outside the bloc, mostly from China, which dominates the global rare earth minerals market. The EU expects demand for products with rare earth elements to increase fivefold by 2030 as the continent accelerates its use of electric vehicles and renewable energy products like wind turbines and solar panels. Being able to control a rare earth element deposit closer to the EU, if not within the EU itself, has been identified as a key goal for the bloc. In fact, in her 2022 State of the Union address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said rare earth elements, along with lithium, which is also used in electric vehicles and smartphones, would soon be more important than oil and gas. Learn more about the expansion of electric vehicles and renewable energy at GreenNewDeal.news. Watch this clip from InfoWars exposing how the U.S. military runs security for Chinese rare earth mineral mines. This video is from the InfoWars channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Wind turbine manufacturers losing BILLIONS as orders decline despite turmoil in natural gas markets. Lithium batteries used in EVs and other green technology are anything but clean. New deep-sea mining operation of rare earth minerals will be catastrophic for our oceans. Scientists may have discovered a new source of rare earth elements and an environmentally friendly way to gather them. Why ending combustion engines would unleash a global environmental and humanitarian ctastrophe linked to rare earth elements. Sources include: CNBC.com Reuters.com Brighteon.com (Natural News) Social media freedom activist Jason Fyk claimed Big Tech and American courts misunderstood Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. During his appearance on the Health Ranger Report, Fyk told the Health Ranger Mike Adams that Section 230 protects internet companies from any liability when they fail to take down potentially harmful content. It also authorizes them to take down content. However, Big Tech has used Section 230 to silence voices it does not like. (Related: Why its time to REPEAL Sec. 230 of the CDA that allows social media giants to selectively ban voices they dont like.) Fyk, founder of the Social Media Freedom Foundation (SMFF), recounted the story of how Facebook used its authority under Section 230 to silence him. After making a lot of money in advertising and gaining an audience of almost 38 million Facebook followers, the social media platform owned by Mark Zuckerberg saw him as a threat and took his pages down. A few months later, Fyk contacted another advertiser he was close to in a bid to get his pages reinstated. The SMFF founder discovered that said pages would only be restored if his close associate owned them. Ultimately, they ended up wiping my business, he said, adding that he and his attorney Jeff Greyber caught Facebook red-handed. Fyk also pointed out that the same content taken down was essentially the same that was restored. He mentioned the clear double standard the same content that supposedly violated the rules while in his hands was perfectly acceptable in the hands of another person. So we knew that it had nothing to do with my content. Weve made that very clear to the courts that my case has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of improper immoral content at all, he told Adams, adding that he went to court and sued Facebook in 2018. Unfortunately, the court dismissed his case. Fyk: Courts had own interpretation of Section 230 Fyk further explained: The protections that were given under Section 230 were to remove offensive content. The problem with that is that the courts have kind of interpreted [it] so that they can remove anything objectionable. [But] thats what a portion of the law says. Adams was not surprised by Fyks revelations, noting that many other laws have been misinterpreted on purpose and abused through the years. The Natural News and Brighteon.com founder also said that Big Tech has unlimited funds and can pressure courts and bribe judges to get what it wants. According to Fyk, Section 230(c)(1) which talks about the treatment and not the immunity of the publisher or the content provider was misinterpreted by the courts. He mentioned how the courts said, a publisher instead of the publisher. Fyk mentioned that in the English language the word the is called a definite article and it defines who the publisher is, but most courts have been stuck on what a publisher does. He noted that the actual law doesnt say a publisher but the publisher. They converted it. They changed the actual text and law. But if you change it back, it makes sense. Again, they didnt quote the actual law. They went off on their own path. They made a mistake and in doing so, they created this mountain of questionable precedent, Fyk explained. [The judges] did not do what Congress intended. They didnt read the law for what is says, they just went off in their own sort of direction. Visit Censorship.news for more stories related to censorship. Watch the full conversation between Mike Adams and Jason Fyk regarding Section 230 below. This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Its about time! GOP introduces legislation to reform Section 230 of Communications Act to reign in Big Tech censorship. Commerce Department says that tech companies should stop editorializing if they want to keep their Sec. 230 protections. Tech giants, fake news media in PANIC over Trumps targeting of Sec. 230; ending viewpoint censorship would crush fake news medias propaganda monopolies on vaccines, 5G and GMOs. Evidence shows that its not just Twitter and the FBI, the State Department, CISA, Facebook. YouTube and Google are also working to censure and ban the information you receive. DOJ: Heres our plan to hold online platforms accountable for unlawfully censoring speech. Sources include: Brighteon.com SocialMediaFreedom.org (Natural News) California is set to experience a series of mega earthquakes that will permanently change the states geography, according to a prophecy first revealed 10 years ago. The warning followed an unusual parade of cyclones that recently hammered the Golden State. The prophecy from the late John Paul Jackson, founder and minister of Streams Ministries International, warned of a storm of incredible force that will be followed by an earthquake that has been predicted to devastate California. He added: Skyscrapers are going to fall that the shape of the U.S. will change after that earthquake. Jacksons prophecy also warned that the Golden States geography will be changed by these two cataclysms. He prophesied the formation of an inland ocean, with its mouth appearing between San Diego and Los Angeles. The inland ocean formed after the earthquake will isolate the Mexican state of Baja California, which is located below the Golden State. Science appears to lend credence to the late preachers prediction. California is extremely tectonically active due to the San Andreas Fault, the border section between two massive tectonic plates under the Earths surface. The plates remain relatively static, which translates to large pressure building up over time that eventually leads to destructive earthquakes. (Related: Overlooked strand of the San Andreas Fault may be primed for a major earthquake, study determines.) Moreover, intense rain has triggered earthquakes before in other parts of the world. The magnitude 7.5 earthquake that ravaged Haiti in 2010 happened 18 months after torrential rainfall and hurricanes battered the Caribbean country. A year earlier in Taiwan, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake took place seven months after a typhoon. According to research done by Florida International University professor Shimon Wdowinski, huge earthquakes were five times more likely to occur after serious storms. He explained that while heavy rain can trigger earthquake activity, this phenomenon only happens in certain tectonic environments, not anywhere. California is already at the storm phase California is currently dealing with an onslaught of atmospheric river storms that triggered torrential rain and life-threatening flooding, mudslides and debris flows to many parts of the state. These storms, which are far from over, will continue to pour more rain into the Golden State for at least several days. Widespread flooding was reported across California on Jan. 9 and 10, prompting the evacuation of thousands of residents. The Monterey County Sheriffs Office declared a new evacuation order for people living in the low-lying areas of the Salinas River. The said evacuation order announced on Jan. 10 will remain in effect until further notice. The Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties saw more than 15 inches of rain falling at the three counties areas located at higher elevations. Coastal foothills of the three counties saw rainfall of about five to 10 inches. The Fresno, Mariposa and Tulare counties located at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range reported 10 inches of rain. Several National Weather Service (NWS) offices across California received more than 300 reports of flooding. It added that numerous rivers also reported record highs including Sespe Creek and the Ventura, Salinas and Sisquoc rivers. NWS Los Angeles, meanwhile, reported 2.73 inches of rainfall in downtown LA, while Bel-Air had 5.27 inches of rainfall. According to the office, the latest atmospheric river storm that has been bringing persistent rain across the area is now the most impressive storm to strike the area since Jan. 5 to 7, 2005. We want to make sure everyone takes action of what is still yet to come. Were not out of the woods, and we expect these storms to continue until the 18th, in many different shapes and forms, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a recent press conference. Follow Disaster.news for more news about earthquakes and other natural calamities. Watch Martin Brodel discuss the impending mega earthquake in California below. This video is from the Martin Brodel channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Scientists on alert as earthquake may be imminent along the San Andreas Fault. Hurricane Nicole leaves at least 5 people dead in Florida. Scientists warn a massive earthquake is on the horizon for California. Sources include: NewsFromThePerimeter.com StreamsMinistries.com Newsweek.com FoxWeather.com Brighteon.com (Natural News) Washington, D.C. Today, in their latest assault on the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, the Biden ATF issued their final rule to reclassify millions of commonly-owned pistol braced firearms as illegal short-barreled rifles and shotguns under the antiquated and draconian National Firearms Act of 1934. President Bidens executive action will force gun owners to register guns with the federal government and will infringe on the Second Amendment. The rule has faced significant opposition within the firearms industry and Second Amendment community, as the independent Congressional Research Service estimates that up to 40 million of these braces are currently in civilian circulation. (Article by Caroline Thorman republished from GunOwners.org) Erich Pratt, GOAs Senior Vice President, issued the following statement: This administration continues to find new ways to attack gun owners, and this time their target is brace-equipped firearms that allow persons with disabilities to safely and effectively use pistols. We will continue to work with our industry partners to amplify the disapproving voices in the firearms industry, and the Gun Owners Foundation, our sister legal arm, will be filing suit in the near future. Aidan Johnston, GOAs Director of Federal Affairs, added: President Biden just initiated the largest federal gun registration scheme in our nations history without even the passage of a new law. GOA is actively working with Congress to pass a resolution blocking this rule under the Congressional Review Act, and we continue to lobby lawmakers to support Rep. Clyde and Sen. Marshalls Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today (SHORT) Act. If President Biden will not sign such legislation, then Congress must defund this rogue agency. GOA spokesmen are available for interviews. Gun Owners of America is a nonprofit grassroots lobbying organization dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms without compromise. GOA represents over two million members and activists. For more information, visit GOAs Press Center. Read more at: GunOwners.org (Natural News) A growing number of sheriffs in the state of Illinois have publicly vowed not to enforce provisions of a new gun control law passed by the states Democrat supermajority and signed by a Democratic governor who has 24/7/365 protection provided him at taxpayers expense. Sheriffs from Kankakee County, Boone County, Winnebago County and McHenry County all posted similar messages on social media that they specifically will not comply with or enforce the portion of the law that requires lawful gun owners to register their firearms with the state highway patrol; while the new law bans so-called assault weapons, residents who own them can keep them but they must be registered, according to NBC Chicago. The recently passed law, HB 5471, will outlaw the sale, manufacture, possession and purchase of assault-style weapons, while also limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns, The Daily Caller reports. Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey posted his message on Facebook last week, noting that one of his jobs is to protect and defend the Constitution, which includes the Second Amendments guaranteed right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property. As the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for Kankakee County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance of this Act, Downey noted further in his post, calling the law a clear violation of the Second Amendment. McHenry County Sheriff Robb Tadelman, meanwhile, also said his office wont be enforcing the gun registration portion of the new law. Neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state, nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance with this act, Tadelman noted in his own social media post, according to NBC Chicago. According to The Epoch Times: The Democrat-controlled state legislature imposed a ban on a variety of semiautomatic guns, magazines, and devices that allow a weapon to fire more quickly on Monday. The Protecting Illinois Communities Act passed the Illinois Senate on Monday night by a vote margin of 3420. The bill makes it illegal for Illinois residents to purchase, transfer, or manufacture assault weapons and extended magazines. According to the bills language, an assault weapon is a semiautomatic rifle that can accept a detachable magazine and has a pistol grip or thumbhole stock, a flash suppressor, a grenade launcher, a barrel shroud, or other characteristics. In a letter posted to Facebook, Greene County Sheriff Rob McMillen wrote that he plans to follow his morals, beliefs, and obligations concerning protecting the rights of the citizens of his county. These types of laws put law enforcement officers and prosecutors in a very precarious box, with us having to decide to not enforce laws that were passed by government bodies, McMillen wrote. But, as your Greene County Sheriff, I cannot sit back and let laws strip Greene County citizens of their constitutional rights, and not take a stance supporting the citizens against a government that wants to trample on their rights. Iroquois County Sheriff Clinton J. Perzee noted in a letter of his own, The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people. I, among many others, believe that HB 5471 is a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. His letter followed a Dec. 13 vote by the Iroquois County Board implementing a measure that forbids the use of county funds, appropriation, personnel, or property to enforce the law, The Epoch Times noted further. Sources include: TheEpochTimes.com NBCChicago.com (Natural News) On March 25, 2010, a jury in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts found Pfizer Inc. guilty of violating both the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and Californias Unfair Competition Law by advertising off-label uses of the epilepsy drug Neurontin. The jury awarded Kaiser $47.6 million for the RICO violations, which according to that law, are automatically tripled. The federal jury ordered Pfizer to pay the amount for damages its incorrect marketing inflicted on patients and for violating the law in its marketing of Neurontin. Complainants Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals accused the pharmaceutical company of promoting the medication for uses not cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including treatment for migraines, neuropathic pain and bipolar disorder. Judge Patti Saris presided over the Kaiser lawsuit, and ruled in 2009 that fraud findings against Pfizer in the Kaiser case could be binding against it in future trials. Kaiser said in a statement following the decision that it was pleased that justice has been achieved for members and physicians, pharmacists and staff who care for them. It lauded the jury and said the verdict was a victory for evidence-based medicine. According to Kaiser, it was forced to pay $90 million more than it should have for Neurontin because of Pfizers illegal marketing of the drug. Kaiser is the first insurer to try a Neurontin case against Pfizer. Pfizer still advertised off-label use of Neurontin following the 2010 jury verdict As of 2014, the total amount Pfizer has agreed to pay for lawsuit settlement for illegally marketing Neurontin for non-FDA-approved uses is already at $945 million. The company paid $325 million to wrap up claims, costing healthcare payers millions in unnecessary spending. This was Pfizers second round of off-label Neurontin settlements. In 2004, the company shelled out $430 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice (DoJ). Warner-Lambert, a Pfizer-acquired company, pleaded guilty to two violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and paid civil and criminal penalties for promoting the said medicine. On April 21 of the same year, Pfizer said it would pay $190 million to settle a federal antitrust lawsuit claiming that the company did some questionable maneuvering to keep cheaper generics off the market. In addition to Pfizers DoJ settlement involving Neurontin, Pfizer was also fined $2.3 billion in 2009 involving the false advertising of their other medicines. The pharmaceutical giant pled guilty to misbranding the painkiller Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead, promoting the drug to treat acute pain at dosages the FDA had previously deemed dangerously high. That same year, Pfizer paid $750 million to settle 35,000 claims that its drug, Rezulin, was responsible for 63 deaths and dozens of liver failures. (Related: NEVER FORGET: Pfizer agreed to settle lawsuit after jury awarded $43M to Texas woman whose liver was destroyed by Rezulin.) In 2013, Pfizer said it would pay $491 million to resolve claims that its Wyeth unit, acquired in a 2009 megamerger, touted the transplant-rejection drug Rapamune for a variety of off-label uses. The drug manufacturer has also been involved in criminal charges for withholding information about the risks of medicines it produces. Also in 2013, it paid $55 million for failing to warn patients and doctors about the risks of kidney disease, kidney injury, kidney failure and acute interstitial nephritis caused by its proton pump inhibitor Protonix. Meanwhile, in 2013, the firm set aside $288 million to settle claims by 2,700 people that its drug Chantix caused suicidal thoughts and severe psychological disorders. Visit BigPharmaNews.com for more news related to Pfizers fraudulently advertised medicines. Watch the video below that talks about how Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla committed federal crimes by peddling Paxlovid off-label. This video is from the High Hopes channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: PFIZER FLASHBACK: Pfizer sued by 30 Nigerian families for using children as human guinea pigs in illegal clinical trial. NEVER FORGET: Blue Cross Blue Shields 2010 lawsuit named several Pfizer execs involved in kickback scheme. PHARMA FLASHBACK: Pfizer shelled out $2.3B to settle civil and criminal charges in 2009. Remember when Pfizer paid out $2.3 billion to settle the largest healthcare fraud case in history? Sources include: YourLawyer.com News.BloombergLaw.com FiercePharma.com BizNews.com Brighteon.com (Natural News) The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department is taking verbal fire from some of his own officers after he caved on a demand from a single L.A. resident to remove the Thin Blue Line flag denoting respect and honor for law enforcement from all precinct offices in the city. Chief Michel Moore said that while he disagreed with the community members complaint, he went on to say that the flags display in our public lobbies can be divisive, according to a report by Fox11 in L.A. In a statement, Moore said the public was being brainwashed by leftists into seeing the flag and law enforcement in general as negative influences in society, despite facts to prove otherwise. Its unfortunate that extremist groups have hijacked the use of the Thin Blue Line Flag to symbolize their undemocratic, racist, and bigoted views, the statement read. Flags serve as powerful symbols with specific meanings. The Thin Blue Line Flag to me presents the honor, valor, dedication, and sacrifice of law enforcement to protect our communities. Tragically, that view is not universally held and others have been able to persuade the public it symbolizes racist, bigoted and oppressive values. The chief went on to say that LAPD officers and staff will still be permitted to keep Thin Blue Line Flag materials and symbols in their workspace, locker door, and personal vehicles, according to the local outlet, which added: Memorials for fallen officers will also be authorized in all public spaces. Given our lobbies should be places that people feel safe, free of political ideology, and welcoming, it remains our long-standing policy that only official items be displayed, Moores statement noted further. Just the News also reported: Moore also said the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) expressed disappointment in his decision to remove the flag. The union group, which represents police officers, called the decision political pandering and said people like the one who lodged the complaint have far too much power over the many, and for all the wrong reasons. It is difficult to express the level of utter disgust and disappointment with Chief Moores politically pandering directive to remove Thin Blue Line flags and memorials for fallen officers from all public areas within our police stations, the Board of directors for the Los Angeles Police Protective League wrote in a statement, according to Fox News Digital. This direction came as a result of complaints from anti-police, criminal apologists, and activists who hold too much sway over our city leaders and, unfortunately, our Chief. This comes as many cities, including Los Angeles, have become inundated with a rise in criminal activity, thanks to the election of far-left district attorneys backed by billionaire leftist and destroyer of societies George Soros, who helped finance Los Angeles County DA George Gascons successful candidacy. In a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Soros said he wont be cutting back funding anytime soon. I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform. I have done it transparently, and I have no intention of stopping, he wrote. Our system is rife with injustices that make us all less safe. The idea that we need to choose between justice and safety is false, he claimed, in spite of hard evidence that crime has gone up significantly in cities whose DAs he helped put into office that have reduced law enforcement by curbing prosecutions and seeking far less jail time for a range of offenses, all of which have encouraged more lawbreaking and mayhem. They reinforce each other: If people trust the justice system, it will work. And if the system works, public safety will improve, he wrote. Some politicians and pundits have tried to blame recent spikes in crime on the policies of reform-minded prosecutors. The research Ive seen says otherwise, Soros lied. Sources include: WSJ.com FoxLA.com JustTheNews.com (Natural News) New York City (NYC) Mayor Eric Adams criticized the Biden administration for its inaction toward illegal immigration, which has strained the Big Apples housing and employment. During a Jan. 15 visit to the border city of El Paso in Texas, Adams remarked that President Joe Biden has failed to enact immigration policy reform at the southern border. He declared that there is no more room in NYC for illegal aliens. According to the mayor, migrants are being given a false impression though internet advertisements about what to expect in the city. The ads claim that migrants will be given automatic employment opportunities and will be housed in high-end hotels. This is far from the truth, as the Big Apple only provides sheltered housing units which are already running out. Theres a conversation among those who are asylum seekers and migrants who are given the false impression that if you come to NYC, everything is fine. We have to give people accurate information, Adams said. That is what some of the centers are doing here. They are truly explaining to people that this is what is happening in [NYC] right now. In [NYC], you go there, youre going to be living in congregate settings, and there is no more room. That should be coordinated by our national government. He also called for a coordinated response to the crisis within cities seeing an increase in the arrival of illegal aliens. According to Adams, the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be lending a hand in the matter. This is a national emergency and crisis that must be addressed, said the NYC mayor. (Related: NYC Mayor declares emergency over migrants, 12 months after campaigning for more migrants.) NYC, other cities being undermined with illegals Busloads of illegal aliens have been shipped to sanctuary cities with Democratic mayors such as NYC, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. The busing efforts were spearheaded by Republican governors such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In response, several Democrat mayors, such as Chicagos Lori Lightfoot and Washington, D.C.s Muriel Bowser, have complained about the influx of migrants in their cities. Adams himself lamented the influx of illegals in the Big Apple. Our cities are being undermined. Migrants dont deserve this, and the people who live in the cities dont deserve this, Adams said. We are now seeing more people arrive than we have ever seen averaging over 400 people each day this last week, with 835 asylum seekers arriving on one single day alone, the largest single-day arrival weve seen to date. All this is pushing NYC to the brink. Adams previously stated that the influx could cost the city as much as $2 billion. Currently, NYC is already housing around 26,000 illegal aliens. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the border has surged during Bidens first two years of presidency, with border patrol agents making more than 2.2 million arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2022 fiscal year that ended in September. Follow OpenBorders.news for more updates about the influx of illegal aliens. Watch former U.S. Marshal Robert Almonte remark about Adams getting a dose of reality after visiting El Paso. This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Infrared camera catches small army of migrants illegally entering U.S. as Republicans consider impeaching DHS chief. Video shows camouflaged illegal aliens easily crossing southern border wall to enter US. So-called Sanctuary City declares public emergency over migrants being bused to DC. Sources include: NTD.com NYPost.com TheEpochTimes.com FoxNews.com Brighteon.com (Natural News) Russian President Vladimir Putin has discovered the hard way that military operations come at great cost. The war has essentially lapsed into a stalemate now, with Russia even losing ground that its troops had managed to gain during the wars early phases after fierce Ukrainian counterattacks using Western-supplied weapons, mostly from the U.S. Entire Russian units have been decimated, and Putin has already issued a general call-up of reserves and conscripts to refill depleted ranks, though reports now say that the replacement troops are not getting much training or equipment and are being sent forward in a manner suggestive of a belief among the Russian high command that sheer numbers will eventually overwhelm Ukraine. But Putin isnt taking any chances that his own country could fall under an invasion, though no one from NATO or Ukraine has any designs on Russian territory, with the exception of expelling Russian forces from the Crimea, which Putin illegally annexed in 2014. According to a new report, he has ordered the manufacture and deployment of a batch of nuclear-armed Poseidon high-speed drones that are essentially autonomous mini-subs capable of generating massive tidal waves upon detonation enough to bathe entire coastlines in radiation-tinged seawater. As reported by the UKs Daily Mail: The weapon, which could reportedly cause a 1,640ft tsunami, is alleged to have a unlimited range, although details of its unique 125mph underwater propulsion system have been a closely guarded Russian secret. The development came as a Vladimir Putin loyalist called on state TV for Britain to be demolished from the face of the Earth as it prepares to supply Ukraine with Challenger 2 tanks. Retired general Andrey Gurulev claimed on Rossiya 1 that the deployment of British and German tanks to kill us amounts to crossing a red line. He accused the UK of getting cocky, and warned the country could be wiped off the map without resorting to nuclear weapons We have to remember about London so they dont try to steal our victory. If it did not exist, there will be victory, he noted in a threatening tone. Earlier, Natural News reported on the Russian submarine that was going to be carrying Poseidon nuclear drones. Belgorod, the modern doomsday vessel commissioned by the Russian Navy, is finally home more than three years following the end of construction, the report noted in July. It is a modified version of the Oscar II-class guided-cruise missile submarine produced during the Soviet Union-era. The construction of the Belgorod was completed in 2019, with the vessel floated out of the shipyard later that year, the report added. After going through sea trials under the secretive Main Directorate of Undersea Research, the submarine was brought to the Russian Navys Northern Fleet headquarters on July 8. Constructed by Sevmash in the port city of Severodvinsk, the submarine was built under Project 09852 and officially named the K-329 Belgorod. The vessel is the longest in the world and weighs around 30,000 tons. It was designed to hold six Poseidon nuclear torpedoes, each of which are armed with a warhead of up to 100 megatons and have an unlimited range. In April 2021, we reported that the sub was to be deployed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, meaning that its drones would be more of a threat to the West Coast than to our nations capital, Washington, D.C. What is clear now, however, is that despite where these weapons are currently deployed, if Putin continues to lose ground and troops in Ukraine at the hands of Western weapons, which seems likely, his desire to use these superweapons to punish us will only grow. Sources include: NaturalNews.com DailyMail.co.uk (Natural News) Journalists working with Twitter boss Elon Musk are continuing to expose the deep state lefts diabolical use of that platform (and others, no doubt) to suppress conservative and independent thought and viewpoints, with the latest Twitter Files dump taking place late this week. Once again, investigative reporter Matt Taibbi was tapped to expose the lies instigated by Democratic lawmakers and left-wing mainstream media outlets and figures on the platform attempting to debunk a report filed by then-House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes revealing the Trump-Russia collusion claim was a hoax. At a crucial moment in a years-long furor, Democrats denounced a report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation, saying it was boosted by Russian bots and trolls,' he began. https://t.co/0PUOm212iv a crucial moment in a years-long furor, Democrats denounced a report about flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation, saying it was boosted by Russian bots and trolls. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023 He noted: Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence: We are feeding congressional trolls. Not anysignificant activity connected to Russia. Putting the cart before the horse assuming this is propaganda/bots. 3.Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence: We are feeding congressional trolls. Not anysignificant activity connected to Russia. Putting the cart before the horse assuming this is propaganda/bots. pic.twitter.com/r8O21QacME Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023 Twitter warned politicians and media [they] not only lacked evidence, but had evidence the accounts werent Russian and were roundly ignored, Taibbis Twitter thread continued. On January 18th, 2018, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee detailing abuses by the FBI in obtaining FISA surveillance authority against Trump-connected figures, including the crucial role played by the infamous Steele Dossier,' he wrote. 5.On January 18th, 2018, Republican Devin Nunes submitted a classified memo to the House Intel Committee detailing abuses by the FBI in obtaining FISA surveillance authority against Trump-connected figures, including the crucial role played by the infamous Steele Dossier: pic.twitter.com/uhl7TXYsBC Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023 He went on to note that nearly everything that Nunes claimed in his report was verified by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December 2019. 6.The Nunes assertions would virtually all be verified in a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December 2019. pic.twitter.com/uLFHwbsiJe Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023 Nonetheless, national media in January and early February of 2018 denounced the Nunes report in oddly identical language, calling it a joke,' Taibbi continued in a tweet providing several examples. 7.Nonetheless, national media in January and early February of 2018 denounced the Nunes report in oddly identical language, calling it a joke: pic.twitter.com/IkTXRGrfaH Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023 Not long after, however, a hashtag, #ReleaseTheMemo, began to trend, and it was roundly debunked without any proof or evidence as a Russian disinformation campaign by Democrats and the media. Then-Twitter safety boss Yoel Roth couldnt find any Russian connection to #ReleaseTheMemo at all. I just reviewed the accounts that posted the first 50 tweets with #releasethememo and none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia,' Taibbi reported. We investigated, found that engagement as overwhelmingly organic, and driven by VITs Very Important Tweeters, including Wikileaks and congressman Steve King, Taibbi noted, citing Roth. Twitter officials reached out to some of the Democratic lawmakers making the false claim that the hashtag was a Russian misinformation campaign and that Nunes had fallen in to a Russian disinfo trap. But it didnt help; those Democrats continued to make their false claims, likely because they all knew that Nunes conclusions were spot-on: The left-aligned deep state had fabricated the collusion narrative and officials involved in creating it were about to get publicly identified. Russians werent just blamed for #ReleaseTheMemo but #SchumerShutdown, #ParklandShooting, even #GunControlNow to widen the divide, according to the New York Times, Taibbi noted further. All of it was pure propaganda, however a lie. Literally fake news. This #ReleaseTheMemo episode is just one of many in the #TwitterFiles. The Russiagate scandal was built on the craven dishonesty of politicians and reporters, who for years ignored the absence of data to fictional scare headlines, Taibbi concluded. Sources include: ThreadReaderApp.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Is the United States government or some other malicious entity behind the dozens of mysterious food processing plant fires that occurred over the past year? EcoHealth Alliance whistleblower and bioterrorism expert Dr. Andrew Huff seems to think so. The military veteran and scientist recently came forward as a whistleblower to present evidence of what appears to be an inside job: a simulated food supply attack operation that apparently went live. Information contained in the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Food and Agriculture Sector Criticality Assessment Tool (FASCAT) clearly shows or showed, since it has now been deleted that all of the sites that went up in flames are the same ones the federal government had on a watchlist of vulnerable targets. One of them, as we reported, occurred at a Minnesota chicken farm this being one of dozens of other similar attacks in the United States. All around the world, there have actually been about 200 such attacks, all of a similar nature. The FASCAT data showing this was officially deleted once Huff caught wind of it, but fortunately he saved a copy. Upon analysis, Huff discovered that the targeted locations match nearly all of the most critical systems in the dataset meaning the food plants outlined on the watchlist are the very same ones that ended up being attacked in real life. Huff tried to present these findings to DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but to no avail: they did not want to hear it and his concerns were completely ignored. Despite the fact that these are clear terrorist attacks, possibly carried out by the likes of the World Economic Forum (WEF), nobody in any formidable position of power in the U.S. seems to care or want to do anything about it. Someone wants Americas food infrastructure to collapse Huff recently spoke with Emerald Robinson on her The Absolute Truth program about the matter you can watch a roughly 10-minute clip of that interview at the RAIR Foundation website. In that interview, Huff explained in further detail that the government data he retrieved matches nearly to a T every single food facility that caught fire or was otherwise attacked last year. How can this be a coincidence? Huff wants to believe that the U.S. government is not the responsible entity, and that someone else possibly a globalist group like the WEF simply retrieved the now-deleted data and used it to wage war on Americas food systems. There is a chance, though, that this really is a malicious inside job. By the government, this would have been classified as top secret without a doubt, Huff says about the dataset. But because academics did the work, it wasnt classified. So who could do this? Well, it could be an inside job. You could say it might be a false flag by the CIA I dont believe that; I dont want to believe that. My belief is that a state-sponsored actor, or a group of people like the World Economic Forum, got a hold of these data and they could be working with a number of groups that are aligned against the United States to attack our infrastructure. Unfortunately, Americas food infrastructure is highly vulnerable. Because it lacks guns, gates and guards, virtually anyone with an agenda and the means could overtake and destroy it with less effort than you might think. This is commonly known info since those attacks commenced, wrote a commenter. Someone needs to bring this issue to the floor of the Peoples House. They now are going to deprive us of food. Stocking up if you can, seems a prudent course of action. More related news can be found at Terrorism.news. Sources for this article include: RAIRFoundation.com NaturalNews.com A global team of experts has hypothesized that the abrupt global warming event that occurred 56 million years ago may have been caused by changes in the Earth's orbit that led to hotter circumstances. t is thought that this occurrence, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is comparable to current climate change. Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum According to Lee Kump, professor of geosciences at Penn State University, "the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is the closest thing we have in the geologic record to anything like what we're seeing now and may experience in the future with climate change." Our research tackles significant issues about what caused the event and the rate of carbon emissions. There has been a great deal of interest in better understanding that history. The scientific team used astrochronology, a technique for dating sedimentary layers based on orbital patterns that occur over long periods of time, known as Milankovitch cycles, to examine core samples from a well-preserved record of the PETM close to the Maryland shore. They discovered that the eccentricity-a measure of the curvature of Earth's orbit-and the precession-a measure of its rotation-favored hotter circumstances during the start of the PETM and that both orbital configurations may have had a role in setting off the event. Also Read: UN Warns that Major Glaciers May Disappear by 2050 Orbital Trigger According to Kump, the John Leone Dean in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, "An orbital trigger may have led to the carbon release that caused several degrees of global warming during the PETM as opposed to what's a more popular interpretation at the moment that massive volcanism released the carbon and triggered the event." Tens of thousands of years have been put up as estimations. According to the experts, the timing is crucial to comprehend the pace at which carbon is released into the atmosphere. The study's lead author, Mingsong Li, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University and a former assistant research professor of geosciences at Penn State, said that it "allows us to refine our carbon cycle models to understand better how the planet reacts to an injection of carbon over these timescales and to narrow down the possibilities for the source of the carbon that drove the PETM." One and a half gigatons of carbon were released annually, according to a 6,000-year beginning and estimate that 10,000 gigatons of carbon were released into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide or methane. According to Kump, there should be some worry since such rates are almost an order of magnitude slower than the current pace of carbon emissions. In comparison to our estimations of emissions during this geological event that occurred 56 million years ago, we are now generating carbon at a 5 to 10 times greater pace. The researchers utilized data from a time series examination of the magnetic susceptibility and calcium content in the cores, which are indicators of changes in orbital cycles and may be used to infer the pace of the PETM. Impacting Climate Change Because of gravitational interactions with the sun and other planets in the solar system, Earth's orbit fluctuates in predictable, calculable ways. The climate is affected by these variations in the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth and its geographic distribution. The fact that these orbital variations impact climate, according to Kump, explains why they are reflected in the geologic record. And that impacts the productivity of both marine and terrestrial creatures, the amount of rainfall, the rate of continental erosion, and ultimately the amount of sediment transported into the ocean. Related Article: "We Are Nearing Irreversible Climate Breakdown," Alarming Climate Study Claims For Environmental News, don't forget to follow Nature World News! Greenhouse gas concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane has severely increased in 2022, according to a preliminary report led by researchers in Germany. The accumulation of the gases in the atmosphere is gradual. However, the latest findings show that the climate crisis could worsen as the concentrations heads toward dangerous levels. Prior to 2023, the United Nations (UN) spearheaded several conferences tackling human-induced greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and inter-governmental cooperation to address the climate emergency issue. The latest gathering was the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference held in Canada between December 7 and 19. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations The chemical compounds carbon dioxide and methane are some of the most climate-damaging greenhouse gases in the world. Frequently targeted by climate change mitigation efforts, the said compounds accelerate the planet-warming greenhouse effect when suspended in the atmosphere for prolonged periods of time and in large concentrations. This January, researchers from the University of Bremen in Germany conducted preliminary analyses of global satellite data, showing that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4 continued to rise sharply in 2022. The increase of both gases similar to previous years. However, methane is below its record levels in 2020 and 2021. Environmental physicist Dr. Michael Buchwitz said methane increase remains very high at around 0.6%, while carbon increase is over 0.5% in 2022, as cited by Phys.org. The university's Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) was involved in the said analysis. IUP is one of the leaders in the field of evaluation and interpretation of global satellite measurements of atmospheric trace gases. Also Read: Meat Production Results to Harmful Greenhouse Gases; Nearly 60% in Food Production Greenhouse Gas Emissions While the absolute removal of these gases in the atmosphere is both impossible and also detrimental to the planet, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and other international initiatives work on to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the burning of fossil fuels. However, the objective is easier said than done based on previous reports which suggests some countries are far from their goals. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), greenhouse gases are capable of trapping heat and make the planet warmer, adding humans activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in these climate-damaging particles in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. In the US, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic activities is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation, says the EPA; which stated transportation accounts for 27% emissions followed by industry with 24% and electric power with 25%. While reducing emissions seems plausible, other measures have also been given importance as well to alter the effects of a changing climate and a warming planet. In a recent announcement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated 2023 should be a 'no-nonsense' climate ambition summit, emphasizing that 2023 should be "a year for peace" and "year of action." The UN chief also highlighted that the world needs practical solutions against a myriad of problems facing the planet. Related Article: A Massive New Source of Greenhouse Gases is Rapidly Warming Up the Planet Research demonstrating that catastrophic weather occurrences were made more probable by climate change is described by scientists as "quite frightening." Global Weirding According to a recent study via The Guardian, the climate crisis has made some of the world's most catastrophic weather occurrences far more probable. These events include record heat in China, excessive rainfall in the UK, and California's unrelenting drought. The examiner reported that many extreme occurrences that occurred in 2021 and 2022 were made worse by global warming and, in some instances, would have been almost unthinkable given how severe they were if people hadn't changed the climate by burning fossil fuels. Also Read: More than 10% of Species Could Face Extinction Threat by the End of the Century A Worrying Situation According to Stephanie Herring, a climate scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "the severe magnitude of these occurrences is worrying" (Noaa). "We must determine if these incidents indicate that things are heating up more quickly than anticipated. We anticipate that the severity of high heat will increase, and further study will enable us to predict future changes more accurately." All around the world, the fingerprint of climate change is being found. Contrarily, the extreme rainfall that inundated parts of the UK in May 2021 was 1.5 times more likely as a result of global warming, while the risk of severe drought that affected California and Nevada from October 2020 to September 2021 was made six times worse by the climate crisis and a strong periodic La Nina climate event. Due to human-caused climate change, a severe heat wave in China in February 2021 was made between four and twenty times more probable. The acute drought Iran suffered in 2021 is now 50% more likely due to the greenhouse gases humans have pumped into the sky. A wide range of other severe effects can be partly or fully attributed to the climate crisis, such as the persistent cloud cover over the Tibetan plateau that inhibited vegetation growth and the weather that made a dangerous wildfire in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2021 90% more likely than it would have been otherwise. These effects result from increased global temperatures, abnormal winds, and localized pollution. The compilation of studies, which NOAA presented at a meeting on Monday, gathers some of the most recent climate attribution instances. Researchers could identify the precise role that human-induced climate change had in certain weather occurrences and catastrophes. According to Herring, the message has "developed over time as the evidence has expanded" into more precise attribution techniques. Previously, scientists were highly reticent to discuss the effect of climate change on individual occurrences, preferring a broader probabilistic framework. Scientists can now offer a more accurate and timely evaluation of the impact of the climate problem on specific catastrophes using ever-more-powerful climate models and historical evidence. One research revealed that the climate crisis increased the likelihood of heavy rain by roughly 80 times, which led to deadly floods in Nigeria, Niger, and Chad last year. Issuing a Dire Warning Herring issued a dire warning, claiming that many of the temperatures being seen are beyond any recent historical averages and are driving humanity into a dangerous new condition. For instance, a heatwave in South Korea in October 2021 was so extreme that it would be thought to occur once every 6,250 years, with temperatures about 7F higher than average. However, if planet-heating emissions are not drastically reduced, the climate models indicate that by 2060, this will become the new normal for South Korea. Take Warning The US Pacific Northwest, with typically mild temperatures, may suffer the same fate as in 2021 when a scorching heatwave claimed 600 lives. Later analysis showed that the heatwave was 43 times more probable due to the climate problem. According to Paul Higgins, associate executive director of the American Meteorological Society, the Earth's system is being severely disrupted by human-caused climate change. As this latest study demonstrated, we should anticipate it to result in more severe incidents. Despite this risk, we must do all we can to ensure that humans and all other forms of life prosper. Related Article: Novel Technology May Help Combat Climate Crisis For similar news, don't forget to follow Nature World News! Drug clearance no longer requires animal testing. But there have yet to be any high-tech alternatives. Just before Christmas, Congress repealed the rule requiring all new medications to be tested in two species first, often mice and a "higher order" animals like rabbits or primates. The ban will take effect after some time. There still needs to be more research instruments and computer algorithms created during the last 10 to 15 years. Regulators also won't suddenly abandon their tried-and-true method for demonstrating efficacy and safety. Removed by Congress According to USA Today, Congress removed the need for all new medications to undergo animal testing in the latter part of last year. Although the rule represents a victory for animal rights campaigners, what will take the place of mice, rabbits, and primates? The phrases "lab rat" and "guinea pig" have long been connected to scientific study. Drug approval has historically been needed and continues to require animal testing. However, the bill, known formally as the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, is the result of 40 years of campaigning by animal rights advocates and represents a victory in a scientific study on human cells and technology. Also Read: Experts Says to Give Legal Rights to Animals, Trees, and Rivers Technology is Past Animal Tasting According to Benjamin Freedman, a bioengineer at the University of Washington School of Medicine, "there's sort of a period right now when the technology has progressed enough, and the understanding has also developed enough to make this conceivable." Animal studies ensure that medicine can work and is not very hazardous, but they are not infallible. Approximately 90% of medications that have been shown safe and efficacious in animals fail to function as intended in humans. Drugs that seem harmless in animal research can turn out not to be. According to Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has long opposed animal research, "the failure of the existing system that depends on the use of animals for the initial testing phase is an open secret," as reported in Nature. Rachael Anatol, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory relations for the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), a trade association, said that the Food and Medication Administration wouldn't let pharmaceutical companies abruptly discontinue using animals in drug research. According to Anatol, a former employee of the FDA who just left the organization, drug firms will need to demonstrate to the FDA that they are not losing safety or efficacy by substituting animal research. One bottleneck, according to her, will be ensuring the agencies feel safe and at ease with the situation. Numerous inquiries to the FDA for comments on the modification still need to be answered. According to her, the "me too" medications comparable to those currently on the market are the first medicines likely to see a change. According to Danilo Tagle, director of the Office of Special Initiatives at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health, testing of the botulinum toxin, known as Botox, which is used for medical and cosmetic treatment, is likely to result in another immediate benefit from Congress' action. One of the deadliest known chemicals, botulinum toxin, may infect food. According to Tagle, millions of mice are given a fatal dosage of botulinum toxin every year to evaluate the potency of each batch of the poison. He is now collaborating with the Food and Drug Administration to swap out those mice for dish-grown cells. The replacement procedure will start for another year or two, and there won't be millions more mice worldwide since the animals won't be bred for this. Looking for Alternatives However, he added that replacing animals with a test on a lab plate would save time and money, present less danger to lab staff, and eliminate the need to discard the affected animals. According to Anatol, technology is "not there yet" to completely replace animal experimentation. However, scientists can now produce skin or blood cells from a patient with the target ailment in the lab and test hundreds of medications quickly on the cells to see if any may correct whatever is wrong. Related Article: Arguments About Climate Justice Finally Cutting Through, Says Climate Activist For more news update about Environmental Action, don't forget to follow Nature World News! The impending flooding in various California Counties prompts the NWS to issue numerous Flood Warnings as well as numerous Winter Weather Advisories for the Sierra Nevada. Mariposa County will remain under a flood warning until 9 o'clock tonight. The warned area is experiencing flooding brought on by several factors. Rivers, streams, creeks, and other low-lying areas are currently being flooded or will soon be flooded. Some sandbagging efforts are still underway and many roads remain closed, as severe flooding persists. There will likely be a lot of still or slowly moving water. Sierra Nevada and Snow According to Mark Truppner, a contributor for MyMotherlode.com, for the period from 4 p.m. on Wednesday until 4 a.m. on Thursday, the National Weather Service has released a Winter Weather Advisory covering the northern Sierra Nevada western slope. The snowiest weather is predicted for Wednesday night when accumulations of up to an inch per hour are possible. A snowfall of between half a foot and a foot is predicted. Up to 35 mph gusts of wind are expected in the area, MyMotherlode.com reports. California Weather Alerts According to National Weather Service, a long list of weather alerts are up for different parts of California. (All mentioned time is in the PST time zone.) Flood Warning. In areas including Monterey, Riverside, Sonoma, Mariposa, and Merced, the Warning is currently in effect until further notice. Creeks, rivers, and streams, and other low-lying areas that are subject to flooding are about to or have already experienced flooding. High Surf Advisory. In areas including Catalina and Santa Barbara Islands, Los Angeles County Beaches, Malibu Coast, and Santa Barbara County Southeastern Coast, the Advisory will last until 10 PM today. San Luis Obispo County Beaches, Santa Barbara County Central Coast Beaches, and Ventura County Beaches, the advisory will be in effect until 10 PM tomorrow. Around the time of high tide, vulnerable low-lying coastal areas like parking lots, beaches, and walkways are likely to be flooded by seawater. The chance of drowning in the ocean has increased. Surfers and swimmers may be dragged out to sea by rip currents. Large breaking waves have the potential to injure people, wash them off of cliffs and beaches, and sink small boats close to the shore. Coastal Flood Advisory. In areas including Catalina and Santa Barbara Islands, Los Angeles County Beaches, Malibu Coast, Ventura County Beaches, and San Luis Obispo County Beaches, the advisory will be in effect until 10 PM tomorrow. With only sporadic road closures anticipated, this will result in flooding of parks, lots, and roads. In areas susceptible to tidal flooding, the interaction of onshore winds, high tide cycles, and significant runoff will probably result in coastal flooding. This possibility might last through this weekend's high tide cycles, particularly during the high tide each morning. Also Read: Most Active Regions of Sun to Face Earth, Expect Increased Chances of Various Space Weather Events, Experts Say Winter Weather Advisory. Western Plumas County and Lassen Park will have the advisory until 12 AM January 19, while West Slope Northern Sierra Nevada will have the advisory until 4 AM January 19. The potential for extremely difficult travel led to the advisory. The daytime or nighttime commute may be impacted by the hazardous conditions, according to National Weather Service forecasts. Small Craft Advisory. For areas of inner waters from Point Mugu to San Mateo Point, including Santa Catalina and Anacapa Islands, the advisory will be in effect until 9 PM only. The advisory was triggered by hazardous sea conditions, according to The Weather Channel. Related Article: Multiple Winter Storm Advisories in Effect over Parts of Colorado, Drivers Put Chains on Tires as 2-Foot Snow Expected Until Wednesday Yosuke Tanaka and his wife Miki encountered an enormous sea monster, an 8-foot giant squid with terrifying thick arms, last Friday evening while scuba diving close to the Nekozaki Peninsula, Toyooka, in western Japan. The enormous sea animal was swimming in a seaweed-filled area near the water's surface. It is extremely unusual, rare even, to see them alive, according to Tanaka. A couple diving near the Sea of Japan coast have captured rare images of a giant squid.https://t.co/TVZ88XRJOe NHK WORLD News (@NHKWORLD_News) January 12, 2023 Excited and Terrified Yosuke's video shows the enormous squid swimming just beneath the surface of the water while its long tentacles are extended behind it. Yosuke claimed that because it had extremely thick arms, he was simultaneously extremely excited and terrified. He imagined that if he was caught in the thick long arms of the giant squid, he would be unable to flee, Newsweek reports. The Tanakas saw it swimming and moving its long tentacles slowly, according to NHK News. About 30 minutes later, they claim, it vanished in deeper waters farther out to sea. Such creatures, according to him, are occasionally seen along the Sea of Japan coast, but it is unusual to see pictures of one swimming. Tanaka and his wife run the scuba diving business, Dive Resort T-style, in Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture. Tanaka claimed in a blog entry on their website, Dive Resort T-Style, that a nearby ferryman had informed him of the unusual animal. Still Small for the Species Tsunemi Kubodera, a National Museum of Nature and Science honorary researcher in Tokyo, estimated the age of the squid to be between one and two years old based on its size, as he told NHK News. Tanaka asserted that the squid was relatively small for its species despite being over 8 feet long. The giant squid can reach a length of 39 feet, according to Jon Ablett, the senior curator of mollusks and cephalopods at the Natural History Museum of London. According to Ablett, although no fully mature specimens have been discovered, it is believed that the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, may grow even larger than the giant squid in terms of mass and even possibly in length. Also Read: Photographer Spots 10-Foot-Long Preserved Giant Squid Floating Off the Tenerife Coast Giant Squid Rarity It is challenging to estimate the number of giant squids because, despite their enormous size, they are notoriously hard to locate. The primary predator of the giant squid, sperm whales, was used to study the stomach contents to make the best assumption. According to Ablett, a study by Clyde Rober and Elizabeth Shea, published in BioOne Complete, estimated that sperm whales consume up to 131 million giant squids annually. Although giant squid can be found throughout all of the oceans of the world, they are most frequently seen in the waters off of Africa, the North Atlantic, and the islands of New Zealand and Japan. However, because they are so elusive, only relatively little is known about this species right now. Tanaka expressed his gratitude for even having the opportunity to interact with the enormous squid once. He hopes that this will help to clarify the mystery surrounding this squid and that many divers will travel to the region, Newsweek reports. Related Article: Tourists Find 13-Foot Giant Deep-Sea Squid Carcass Beached in New Zealand A multi-hazard winter storm is threatening central and southern US region, according to a storm alert of the National Weather Service (NWS). The weather forecast suggests a storm system moving through the Four Corners region could develop into a large-scale winter storm by midweek. Several weather threats like heavy snow, severe thunderstorms, and heavy rain are possible across the said regions. The looming weather system comes after the Pacific storm train, driven by atmospheric rivers, finally ended in California and several areas of the West Coast, which was battered by heavy rain, flash flooding, mudslides, and hurricane force winds for several weeks. The latest storm threat could disrupt travel and pose life-threatening risks to the Four Corners and its surrounding regions. Multi-Hazard Winter Storm The NWS, through its Weather Prediction Center (WPC), on Tuesday, January 17, issued a weather alert for potential severe storms and flash flooding from the lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley on Wednesday, January 18. The short-range forecast also said a winter storm will impact the central High Plains into the upper Midwest until Thursday morning, January 19. The WPC also mentioned the continuance of light to moderate rainfall or snowfall from the Pacific Northwest into Northern California on Wednesday or Thursday. With an emphasis in the Four Corners, the US weather agency explains the storm system over the region will move into the Great Plains starting Tuesday evening, spreading snow into the central High Plains. The snow will then develop over northeastern Colorado and to the north of a developing surface low, which will take place in a east-northeastward pattern within the next 12 to 36 hours. Heavy snow is possible from northeastern Colorado, to Nebraska, and northwestern Iowa. Freezing rain is also expected south of the snowfall from southeastern Nebraska into central-southern Iowa. In general, travelers may experience difficulty across portions of the Plains or Midwest due to the multi-hazard winter storm, the NWS says. According to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), winter storms can generate snow for days, which makes weather conditions too risky for travel and regular daily activities due to the cold air. Also Read: Winter Storm Watches Issued for Central US Due to Heavy Snow and Chill Winds California Sunshine Returns Previous reports said the final storm has departed from California and has now been moving into the Four Corners. However, recovery for California will be a challenging task after the storm onslaught caused infrastructural damage, power outages, and casualties in its wake. On Tuesday, sunshine returned to the state which signifies the end of the extreme weather event that drenched the Golden State, where nine powerful atmospheric rivers occurred consecutively from December 26, 2022, to January 11, The Guardian reported. The destructive weather system killed at least 20 people, submerged streets, and caused flash floods with mudslides that covered homes and highways. Its powerful winds also downed power lines and trees, leaving hundreds of thousands without power, the UK newspaper adds. Related Article: US Winter Storm Could Intensify Into a Bomb Cyclone; Blizzard and Winter Storm Warnings Remain in Effect Spring in California's Central Valley is ideal for breeding songbirds because it is not too hot or too wet. However, climate change models predict that the region will receive more rainfall during the breeding season, and days of extreme heat will increase. According to a study from the University of California, Davis, both changes endanger songbird reproductive success. Climate change presents a mismatch for songbirds' breeding season The study, which was published in the journal Biological Conservation on January 16th, details how extreme heat and rainfall patterns have impacted songbirds along the Putah Creek Nestbox Highway in Yolo County. While the study focuses on the Central Valley, it serves as a warning for other Mediterranean ecosystems. "The changes occurring in California's Central Valley - rising temperatures, wetter springs, increased variability - these impacts are occurring across Mediterranean landscapes," said lead author Jason Riggio, a postdoctoral scholar at the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology. In areas where birds already face extreme climate variability, small changes will make a big difference. The study also showed that some birds adapt to altered systems. Western bluebirds and tree swallows, for example, are having as much reproductive success in orchards near Putah Creek as they do in their natural habitat. The orchards are not the ecological traps that researchers predicted they would be for these species. Other species prefer riparian forests and grassland habitats for their homes. Climate models predict that regional precipitation will decrease from October to January and increase from February to April, extending the breeding season for birds. Furthermore, an estimated 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) increase in average maximum temperature by 2100 will put species that are already at their temperature limits under strain. The researchers analyzed 11 years of data collected by Nestbox Highway project staff and its cadre of undergraduate interns from the UC Davis Museum of Fish and Wildlife to study the effects of these changes on songbirds. This included 2,305 nesting attempts and over 7,100 nestlings from four cavity-nesting songbird species, including western bluebirds, house wrens, tree swallows, and ash-throated flycatchers. Melanie Truan, a research ecologist with the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, started the Nestbox Highway as a graduate student in 2000 in an effort to reintroduce songbirds to Putah Creek. Many native cavity-nesting songbirds have lost nesting opportunities as the number of non-native birds has increased and large trees with the holes they prefer have been replaced by agricultural and other land uses. Western bluebirds, which were once common in the area, had become nearly extinct. They discovered that bird fitness declined in the presence of extreme precipitation or temperature. House wrens, tree swallows, and western bluebirds had lower reproductive success and nestling weight during wetter nesting periods. Higher breeding season temperatures also resulted in lower reproductive success and nestling weight for all four species. That first year, one hundred nest boxes were installed, attracting a family of bluebirds and other birds. More than 200 boxes now attract hundreds of bluebirds and other bird species to Putah Creek and the surrounding area. Weekly, staff and undergraduate interns inspect the boxes to track the progress of nesting attempts, eggs, and nestlings. All nestlings are measured and banded before they fly. According to Truan, the Nestbox Highway project is the most uplifting and encouraging aspect of his work. Also Read: Songbird Population Decline Associated with Early Spring How weather and climate affect songbirds Weather, as we all know, changes from year to year, and climate is the long-term trend of weather patterns, as per the National Park Service. Songbirds, like many other species, are affected by both short-term and long-term weather patterns. But what are these effects, and how do they react? The researchers used songbird counts (the abundance of passerines or perching birds) from 1995 to 2019 in Denali National Park and Preserve to assess how the previous year's weather impacted the current year and how climate has shifted bird locations in elevation over the last 20 years. They discovered that weather and climate can exert complex and sometimes contradictory forces on songbirds and that not all songbird species respond in the same way. For example, in songbirds that use shrub habitats, they discovered that their numbers increased in the year following a warm nesting season, but decreased over time and shifted upslope as shrubs shifted to higher elevations. The temperature during the previous year's nesting period had the greatest short-term impact on the number of songbirds observed. The amount of rain and snow, as well as the timing of snowmelt, influenced different songbird species in different ways, but researchers discovered that drier and earlier snowmelt resulted in greater songbird abundance. Understanding how climate impacts songbird populations over time and on an annual basis will help experts understand the changes seen in subarctic songbirds. Related article: This Tiny Traveling Songbird Crosses Entire Oceans Without Rest The early week in portions of Atlantic Canada recorded a storm that unloaded heavy rainfall and freezing conditions on Monday. The forecast said that the weather conditions could be challenging until this week. Motorists planning to travel and prepare for outdoor activities should consider the weather conditions in portions of Atlantic Canada. The freezing rain and conditions could result in cold-related health risks and significant travel commutes. Although some residents are used to frigid conditions in Atlantic Canada, the weather conditions could still be problematic. Freezing conditions According to the recent weather from the The Weather Network, the report explained that heavy rainfall persisted in residents in Atlantic Canada. In addition, freezing rain was forecasted to unfold in Edmundston, Miramichi, Gaspe, Fredericton, Moncton, Saint John, Chevery, Anticosti, Corner Brook and Burgeo. The Weather Network added that the freezing rain will continue until this week. Therefore, residents in the affected areas should observe the weather conditions. According to the forecast, the freezing rain conditions would continue in portions of north and southern Labrador from Tuesday to Wednesday. Meanwhile, rain showers could unload in Atlantic provinces from Wednesday to Thursday. Residents in the Newfoundland and portions of the Maritime could expect rain and snow until the end of the week. Portions of Nova Scotia could expect thunderstorms. The Guardian reported that heavy rain and snow could unleash this week in the United Kingdom. Although portions of Europe recorded the warmest January this year, the weather in the UK would still experience temperatures drop. Portions of the United Kingdom are on cold weather alert as snow and ice warnings alerted residents and motorists of extreme cold temperatures. Ice pellets and Flooding in Atlantic Canada Meanwhile, the weather report added that the stormy conditions in Atlantic Canada resulted in power outages, significant travel delays and school class suspensions. Based on the The Weather Network's report, class cancellations occurred in New Brunswick and Newfoundland due to storm threats (as of Monday) Meanwhile, power outages were recorded: 6,000 in Nova Scotia and 11,000 in portions of New Brunswick. The report also said that ice pellets occurred in the affected areas, especially in portions of the Maritimes, northern Newfoundland and northern New Brunswick. Also Read: More Rain to Unload in Los Angeles Next Week; Motorists Advised of Difficult Travel Meanwhile, the forecast also said rain could stay until Wednesday or Thursday morning. Rain is expected to unload in Yarmouth, Halifax, New Glasgow, Sydney, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, Miramichi, Saint John, Gaspe, Corner Brook, Burgeo, Grander, Marystown and St. John. Frigid conditions and road safety The weather report said that the freezing rain would continue until Thursday. Therefore, motorists should be careful with untreated road pavements and roadways. Driving slowly is advisable as icy conditions are prone to road accidents. According to the CDC advisory on cold weather, it is best to stay warm and be updated with weather alerts. If the weather worsens, rescheduling your trip could be the best option. However, driving at night could be difficult due to road visibility. Meanwhile, the cold conditions could be challenging for vulnerable people. Cold-related health risks could emerge. Checking temperatures, especially at night, would be important. Related Article: Freezing Conditions With Ice, Snow Warnings to Unload in UK This Week; Warm January to Continue in Europe For more similar stories, don't forget to follow Nature News. Chicago's weather conditions will remain mild, which is perfect for many outdoor activities. However, the NWS said that cloudy weather is expected until the week's end, and that people in Chicago would experience cloudy and rainy weather conditions until Friday. The mild weather conditions are right enough for outdoor activities or people planning to travel this week. While some residents in Chicago expected mild weather conditions, parts of the United States in the South would experience severe weather risks, unloading flooding downpours and possible isolated tornadoes. According to the latest NBC Chicago weather forecast, the weather in Chicago would unfold clouded skies with a high chance of rain. However, the forecast also added that there could be storms to unload in the region. Although the rain would not cause travel concerns, commuters should bring an umbrella and raincoat jackets, as rounds of rain could unfold. On Monday, the weather forecast said Chicago had light rain showers during the night. The forecast explained that rain showers could continue from Tuesday to Thursday, but the rain would become severe. On Thursday, there is also a chance that wet snow could unload. On Friday, the forecast said that the conditions could again return to mild with cloudy skies. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service Chicago added that rain is expected on Wednesday evening, adding that the southeast storm could unload snow in Northern Illinois. Chicago's weather conditions will remain mild, which is perfect for many outdoor activities. However, NWS said that cloudy weather is expected until the week's end. Warm Weather in Chicago On the other hand, the Chicago Tribute's latest report this January 18, said that the temperatures in Chicago have been abnormally warm, which could stay until this week. According to Chicago Tribune and National Weather Service, residents in Chicago have felt an average of 36.6 degrees since January began. The unseasonably warm weather in Chicago could affect the weather. Unfortunately, the winter in some parts of the United States, including Chicago, has been warm. Also Read: Weather Forecast: Severe Weather Conditions To Unload in Portions of Southern United States; Isolated Tornadoes, Damaging Wind Gusts Possible Heavy Snow in High Plains On the other hand, the National Weather Service added that the Pacific storm could help bring heavy snow to High Plains. The same storm could unleash wintry mix weather in the Northeast. The forecast monitored the storm in the Four Corners that could unload heavy snow and rain in the region. Meanwhile, the NWS' latest key message explained that the winter storm would impact eastern Colorado and Great Lakes until Thursday. The weather advisory warned that intense snowfall and heaviest snow would unleash in Central Wisconsin and northeast Colorado. Portions of Northern Kansas could expect ice wintry mix this week. The weather conditions in the affected areas would result in travel difficulty and hazards. The forecast added that motorists should monitor the weather reports, as road visibility and blowing snow could occur. Related Article: More Rain to Unload in Los Angeles Next Week; Motorists Advised of Difficult Travel For more similar, don't forget to follow Nature World News. Because most previous research has focused on population numbers, studying wolves at the pack level is critical. This study looked at the effects of human-caused mortality on wolf pack social dynamics, taking a novel approach to analyzing species impacts based on group structure. Humans impact wolf packs in national parks The study, which was published today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, was led by Kira Cassidy, a research associate at Yellowstone National Park, and included co-authors from five national parks as well as University of Minnesota Voyageurs Wolf Project researchers Thomas Gable, Joseph Bump, and Austin Homkes. "We wanted to focus on the impacts of human-caused mortality to the pack, a finer-scale measure than population size or growth rate," Cassidy explained, as per ScienceDaily. They've discovered that the likelihood of a pack persisting and reproducing decreases as human-caused mortalities increase. While many studies have looked at how humans affect wolf populations, this study took a different approach and looked at how human-caused mortality affects individual wolf packs. Cassidy and her colleagues compared what happened to wolf packs after at least one pack member died from human causes to packs where no members died from human causes. When a pack member died of human causes, the researchers discovered that the likelihood of the pack remaining together until the end of the year decreased by 27%, and the likelihood of the pack reproducing the following year decreased by 22%. When a pack leader died, the chances of the pack surviving until the end of the year dropped by 73% and reproduction dropped by 49%. Although the researchers did not investigate whether human-caused mortality affects the size of wolf populations in national parks, this study demonstrated that humans are clearly altering certain aspects of wolf ecology in national parks, even if they do not affect overall population size. Humans are a disproportionate cause of mortality for wolves that live primarily in national parks, which is one reason for this. In other words, wolves die from human causes more frequently than would be expected given the amount of time they spend outside of park boundaries. The wolves in Voyageurs National Park spent the most time outside of the park boundaries of any national park studied. Wolves with territories in or overlapping with Voyageurs spent 46% of their time outside the park. As a result, people were responsible for 50% of these wolves' deaths, with poaching being the most common cause of death. Human-caused mortality accounted for 36% of collared wolf mortality in all five parks studied, including Denali National Park and Preserve, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, with human-caused mortality accounting for 36% of collared wolf mortality in all five parks. During hunting and trapping seasons, legal hunting and trapping of wolves outside of national park boundaries accounted for 53% of all human-caused mortality for wolves from national parks. These findings highlight the importance of collaboration between various state and federal agencies in conserving and managing wildlife that enters and exits protected areas such as national parks. Also Read: Makings of an Alpha: Parasite in Grey Wolves Triggers Risk-Taking Behavior, Study Shows Gray Wolf Conservation Although wolf packs once roamed from the Arctic tundra to Mexico, habitat loss and extermination programs resulted in their extinction across the majority of the United States by the early 1900s. In 1973, the United States, as per the National Park Service. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) designated the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) as one of three recovery areas for the northern Rocky Mountain wolf (Canis lupus). 41 wild wolves from Canada and northwest Montana were released in Yellowstone from 1995 to 1997. Wolves from the expanding population, as expected, dispersed to establish territories outside the park, where they are less protected from human-caused mortalities. The park contributes to the species' long-term viability in GYE by providing a location for research on how wolves may affect various aspects of the ecosystem. The 25th anniversary of wolves returning to Yellowstone was on January 12, 2020. Wolves eat a wide range of prey, both large and small. They effectively hunt large prey that other predators are unable to kill. In Yellowstone, elk account for 90% of their winter prey, and deer account for 10-15% of their summer prey. They also slaughter bison. Wolf kills benefit many other animals. When wolves kill an elk, ravens, and magpies appear almost immediately. Soon after, coyotes appear and wait nearby until the wolves are satisfied. Bears will usually be successful in chasing the wolves away. Many other animals, ranging from eagles to invertebrates, consume the carcasses. Related article: Canine Distemper Virus Outbreaks Are More Likely To Kill Black Wolves Across North America According to new research, bees may be at risk from glyphosate - an active ingredient in some of the EU's most commonly used weedkillers - through contaminated wildflower nectar. Glyphosate residues have previously been found in nectar and pollen collected by bees foraging on weedkiller-targeted plants, but this time it has been found in unsprayed wildflowers growing near sprayed fields. Bees exposed to common weedkiller via wildflower nectar Although glyphosate is only intended to kill plants, it has been shown to harm the digestive systems of honeybees and bumblebees, making them more susceptible to infections, among other things, as per ScienceDaily. Elena Zioga, a Ph.D. candidate in Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences, is the first author of the study, which was recently published in the journal Heliyon. This is the first time glyphosate has been found in unsprayed wildflowers under conventional farming conditions, and while more research is needed to determine how much higher glyphosate concentrations would be indirectly sprayed on plants, they know wild bees and honeybees will visit the contaminated wildflowers to collect pollen and nectar, exposing them to glyphosate and potentially affecting their health and the critical pollination service they provide. Glyphosate is the most widely used weedkiller in the European Union, and it is also widely used elsewhere in the world. The residues found in nectar in this study exceeded the European maximum allowed levels of glyphosate in honey and honey bee products, implying that they could be harmful to honeybees and those who consume the honey. Zioga collected samples from farmed oilseed rape fields and nearby growing blackberry wildflowers in seven different locations across East and South-East Ireland. Within a week of spraying, glyphosate residues were found in pollen and nectar of blackberry flowers in three of these locations. No residues were detected when the weedkiller was used as a pre-or post-emergence spray on an oilseed rape crop, which is two months before sampling. Knowing that bees may be exposed to glyphosate residues in the environment necessitates additional research to assess the impact of glyphosate on more bee species. As an additional priority, they recommend that glyphosate be investigated as a desiccant before harvesting crops to better understand how this impacts non-target flowering plants growing near crop fields, allowing for a larger evidence base for evaluating the renewal of glyphosate market authorization in the European Union. Also Read: Social Bees Travel Greater Distances for Food than Their Solitary Counterparts Destructive effects of glyphosate on bees Glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide and one long touted as animal-safe, may be harming honey bees, as per Science. The chemical appears to disrupt the bees' digestive microbial community, making them more susceptible to infection. The discovery added to the alarming decline of honey bees in some parts of the world, as well as other pollinators that live in colonies, such as bumble bees. Glyphosate kills plants by inhibiting an enzyme that the plants use to produce several key amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. This enzyme is not produced by animals, but it is used by some bacteria. This piqued the interest of Nancy Moran, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has spent the last decade studying the gut microbiome of honey bees. Moran and her colleagues took about 2000 bees from a hive and fed some sugar syrup and others glyphosate-laced syrup at levels comparable to what they might encounter in the environment while foraging for food. The guts of glyphosate-fed bees had lower levels of a bacterium known as Snodgrassella alvi three days after returning to the hive than those of non-exposed bees. Some of the findings were perplexing; bees exposed to the most glyphosate had a more normal-looking microbiome after three days than those exposed to lower doses. Moran said it's unclear whether this is because more bees died with the higher dose, leaving behind those that were more resistant to the herbicide. In recent years, commercial beekeepers in the United States have seen nearly one-third of their hives fail during the winter, which is more than double the historical rate. Pesticides, pathogens, parasites, and nutritional issues are all thought to play a role. "A major strength of the new paper is that it points to a mechanism-the disruption of gut microbes-for how a pesticide could affect the bees," he said. The discovery also raised concerns about whether glyphosate is affecting the microbiome of other animals, including humans. According to Moran, the role of microbes in the human gut is very similar to that of bee guts. More research is needed because humans have different microbes in their guts, have much larger bacterial populations, and are most likely exposed to much lower glyphosate doses than bees. Related article: Taal Wipes Out Bee Farm in Laguna By Guo Xiaobing Some American media recently reported that Asia has come to a period of massive arms race thats never seen before, which is at risk of getting out of control as the region is splitting into two major blocs the US-Japan-ROK bloc and the China-Russia-DPRK bloc. Well, it was half right on the issue of bloc formation and aggravated confrontation in Asia that the US is indeed up to something big. For starters, the US is trying to revamp the hub-and-spoke alliance system in the Asia Pacific into a networked architecture with the aim of creating a mini version of NATO in the region. The US-Japan-ROK alliance is just one of the many micro multilateral systems it is operating. The Nuclear Posture Review issued by Washington last year suggested forming the trilateral (US, Japan, ROK) or quadrilateral (plus Australia) extended deterrence consultation mechanism and establishing multilateral nuclear protection in the Asia Pacific following the NATO pattern. Taking this opportunity, Japan has overhauled its defense policy and planned to significantly increase the military budget and develop missiles and other non-nuclear strategic aggressive capabilities, aiming to substantially break away from the exclusively defense-oriented strategy. However, hindered by the historical conflicts and divergence of interests between Japan and the ROK, the trilateral mechanism isnt likely to function as the new US-led pillar of Asian Pacific security architecture just yet. Its the other two mechanisms that the US has pinned its hopes on. One is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) that geographically surrounds East Asia. The other is the AUKUS, whereby the three Anglo-Saxon countries are more daring to try the red line by sharing and collaborating in sophisticated military technologies, as Washington and London plan to help Canberra build nuclear submarines while intensifying cooperation in such areas as hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare, cyberspace, AI, and quantum technology. Moreover, Americas National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2023 granted a US$10 billion military aid for Taiwan island and vowed to build a regional response depot there, showing an undisguised intention to continue curbing China with Taiwan within the Asian Pacific security system. At the same time, Washington is working hard to expand NATO to the Asia Pacific by doing two things. One, it brought its Asian Pacific allies into NATOs coordination mechanism. Last year, NATO invited Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand to participate in the Madrid Summit to discuss the so-called Europe-Asian coordination. Two, it convinced NATOs European members, such as Britain, France and Germany, to dispatch troops to the Asia Pacific, where its members may become more active if NATO feels less pressure from the Ukraine crisis in the future. The latest issue of American magazine Foreign Affairs published an article titled The Roots of Washingtons Addiction to Military Force, which pointed out that after the Cold War and especially following the 9/11 attacks, Americas adversaries are provoking it less frequently, and yet Washington is intervening with armed forces more than ever, so much so that more than half of the worlds population now views it as a threat. One of the reasons why the US is so bellicose is its tremendous military superiority over other countries. Will it be able to control the impulse to resort to force if such superiority had been bolstered by a more powerful alliance system in the Asia Pacific? If not, will the region, like the Middle East and East Europe in the past, fall from a locomotive of world economic development to pandemonium burning in the flames of war? Even American scholars are worried that the US may not be able to contain itself. All countries, including China, that uphold and pursue peaceful development will play their due part and remind the US that Asia Pacific is no place for it to run amuck. Meanwhile, the US must do some serious self-reflection and ask itself why it failed to form the so-called Southeast Asian Treaty Organization against China, and why it couldnt win the Korean War or the Vietnam War. More importantly, it should get its head around the idea that sovereign equality and mutual respect must also be upheld in preventing a crisis or conflict. (The author is the director of the Center for Arms Control Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations) Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn. Its only two years late, but the fourth generation of Xeon Scalable processors, aka Sapphire Rapids, is hitting the ground running, with every major OEM offering new servers featuring the chips. The 4th Gen Xeon Scalable is notable because it contains a number of specialty computing engines in addition to its x86 cores, and it also has lots of cores as well; up to 60. One of the special engines is for AI acceleration, as Intel is determined to make the CPU viable as an AI processor instead of GPUs. So not surprisingly, many of the new servers are built with AI processing in mind. All of the servers support the latest technologies found in the 4th Gen Xeon Scalable: DDR5 memory, PCI Express 5 interconnects, and CXL 1.1 memory pooling. Here's the list. Dell Technologies Dell Technologies introduced a total of 13 PowerEdge servers, covering enterprise data centers, large-scale public clouds, and edge locations in rack, tower, and multi-node designs. They come with Dell Smart Flow, a new feature in the Dell Smart Cooling suite to increase airflow and reduce fan power by up to 52% compared to previous generation servers. Dell claims its PowerEdge R760 delivers up to 2.9x greater AI inferencing with the new Xeon Scalable processors, while the PowerEdge R760 also offers up to a 20% increase in VDI users and over 50% more SAP Sales & Distribution users on one server, compared to the previous generation. In addition to updating existing lines, Dell introduction the PowerEdge HS5610 and HS5620 servers delivers optimized solutions tailored for cloud service providers managing large-scale, multi-vendor data centers. They are two-socket servers that come in both 1U and 2U form factors. All of the servers come with updated Dell CloudIQ, which combines proactive monitoring, machine learning and predictive analytics while offering a comprehensive view of servers wherever they reside. They also come with Dell ProDeploy services for rapid deployment of the hardware and Dell iDRAC9 for simplified deployment and diagnostics. HP Enterprise HPE announced a major update to its Alletra line of enterprise storage products. Alletra is a rebranding of its Primera and Nimble storage arrays with a storage-as-a-service model for its 9000 and 6000 series, respectively. The Alletra 4000 is a rebranding of its Apollo 4000 data storage server line, with two new products: the Alletra 4110 and 4120. The Alletra 4110 is a 1U, dual CPU server with up to 3TB of DDR5 memory and up to 307.2TB capacity with 20x 15.36TB SSDs. The Alletra 4120 is a hybrid NVMe/HDD higher capacity 2U chassis with up to 6TB of DDR5 memory. It supports a mix of NVMe, SAS, or SATA drives. Both systems are aimed at large enterprises with a range of data-centric workload use cases from data lakes and archives to high-throughput and in-place analytics and AI/ML, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), and cache-intensive workloads like databases. Lenovo One thing about Lenovo, they do things in a big way. The company introduced 25 new ThinkSystem, ThinkAgile servers and hyperconverged solutions running the new Xeon Scalable processors. They are sold under the banner of the Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions V3 portfolio and span uses like in-memory and large transactional databases, real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, and virtualized and containerized workloads. Some systems are updates to existing lines, while others are new, such as the ThinkSystem SR850 V3, a four-socket 2U design for high-intensity workloads. The new Lenovo ThinkAgile V3 HX, MX and VX hyperconverged infrastructure products come with Microsoft, Nutanix, and VMware software pre-installed for a HCI environment. Some systems are cooled by the fifth generation of Lenovos Neptune direct water-cooling technology, which it claims can reduce power consumption by up to 40% vs. using fans. Lenovo also said select models support liquid cooling for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), a first in the industry. HBM sits next to the CPU or GPU, and air cooling them is a challenge. But Lenovo says it will support Intels Xeon Max Series CPUs and Intels GPU Max, which are not yet shipping. Supermicro Supermicro launched more than 50 servers and storage systems across 15 families collectively known as X13. They cover the gamut of AI, HPC, cloud computing, media, enterprise, and 5G/telco/edge workloads. They range from single-socket to eight socket designs and support GPU cards along with the CPU. Among the families: SuperBlade (high-performance, density-optimized blades), Hyper (high-performance rackmount servers), BigTwin (for cloud, storage, and media workloads), GrandTwin (an all-new architecture for single-processor performance) SuperEdge (single-processor nodes in a 2U, short-depth form factor for the edge) CloudDC (meant for cloud environments) Petascale Storage (all-flash NVMe storage systems) Inspur Information The Chinese ODM Inspur Information, popular with hyperscale cloud providers, announced that its G7 server platform would support Xeon Scalable processors with a total of 16 different types of servers. Inspur said performance is up to 61% faster, and power consumption is up to 30% less compared with the previous generation of Intel-based products. The servers are designed around a variety of use cases, such as general-purpose computing, critical computing, and AI. The G7 design is focused on green energy, with both cold plate and immersion cooling schemes. Inspur also claims its intelligent fault diagnosis has an accuracy rate up to 95%. The G7 server family ranges from the high-end TS860G7 with eight sockets in a 6U space and 128 DIMM slots of DDR5 memory, to the NF5180G7 general-purpose 1U rack server, which supports immersion. Other servers come in two- and four-socket designs. There is also the NF5266G7 high-density storage server with a three-tier storage architecture in a 2U space. Inspur says its computing performance is up to 60% faster than the previous generation. Giga Computing Giga Computing, the enterprise spin-off of consumer component maker Gigabyte Computing, announced servers and server motherboards based around the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor as well as the Intel Xeon Max Series. Giga is targeting AI, cloud computing, advanced analytics, HPC, and networking, as well as storage applications. Giga Computing has 14 new series of servers with a total of 78 configurations for customers to choose from. The new lines include: The latest on a long-anticipated bridge upgrade, Champaign Unit 4s use of pandemic-related grant funding, and both good and disappointing news about flights at Willard Airport. Also, if youve gone to a movie lately and felt a little creeped-out in the parking lot, well illuminate you on plans to fix that. Download Now The News-Gazette mobile app brings you the latest local breaking news, updates, and more. Read the News-Gazette on your mobile device just as it appears in print. A novel peptide designed by University of California, Irvine researchers has been found to suppress the damaging lung inflammation seen in acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. Their study, which appears in iScience, describes the first specific treatment designed to prevent the deadly disease, which can appear in patients with severe lung injury from infections with bacteria and viruses, like pneumonia, flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19. The mouse study revealed how the C6 peptide blocks voltage-gated Hv1 proton channels in white blood cells called neutrophils, suppressing the production of damaging reactive oxygen species, proteases and cytokines. This inhibited infiltration of the lung tissue by these cells that trigger uncontrolled inflammation and fluid buildup seen in severely damaged lungs. The study was led by Dr. Steven A.N. Goldstein, distinguished professor of pediatrics, physiology & biophysics and pharmaceutical sciences at UC Irvine; Ruiming Zhao, assistant project scientist at UC Irvine; and Dr. Andreas Schwingshackl, associate professor of pediatrics at UCLA. ARDS occurs when the lungs become inflamed following injury or infections. Inflammation and fluid buildup damage the lung tissue, decreasing how much oxygen can reach the bloodstream. People with ARDS have shortness of breath and failure of oxygenation that is so severe that they are often require support from a ventilator. Numerous studies over the past decade show that ARDS affects approximately 200,000 adults and 8,000 children each year in the U.S., causing 75,000 and 1,500 deaths, respectively. ARDS survivors often have long-lasting adverse outcomes, including cognitive dysfunction, mental health issues and physical impairments. In fact, only 50 percent of ARDS patients discharged from the hospital return to their jobs in the first two years. Despite five decades of effort, there are no disease-modifying drugs that can treat patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. The C6 peptide shows promise as a therapy for this damaging lung disease, giving hope to patients where so little exists now." Dr. Steven A.N. Goldstein, Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs at UC Irvine In an established mouse model, the researchers administered the C6 peptide in a clinically relevant manner to mice to suppress disease. In addition, they showed that C6 inhibits Hv1 in human neutrophils the predominant inflammatory cell type accumulating in the lungs of ARDS patients shutting down the same inflammatory signaling pathways that it did in mice. The absence of apparent toxic side effects in the mice suggests that targeting Hv1 will be tolerated in humans as a therapeutic approach to ARDS and that C6 may also be useful in treating other inflammatory diseases. The UC Irvine researchers first created the novel C6 peptide in 2018 and found in 2022 that it could become a more potent therapeutic when linking together two of the peptides. Peptides are small chains of amino acids and are becoming more widely used as drugs in recent years. They constitute a subset of medications called biologics that are proving desirable for drug discovery. They differ from proteins like antibodies, which are made from longer, more complex amino acid chains. Goldstein said the next steps include further study of C6, C6 derivatives, and small molecule mimetics his team has isolated to treat inflammatory diseases of the lungs and other tissues, including assessment of how long the peptide stays in the body and how it gets eliminated. Benjamin Lopez of UCLA was also a crucial contributor to the design and execution of the experiments, which received support from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation. Infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causal agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has claimed more than 6.72 million lives worldwide. Towards the end of 2022, the number of COVID-19 cases increased significantly in China, which led many countries to increase testing and genomic surveillance. In a new Eurosurveillance study, researchers document COVID-19 screening results in Italy of 556 flight passengers from two Chinese provinces in late December 2022. Study: Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 positive passengers on flights from China to Italy, December 2022. Image Credit: Hananeko_Studio / Shutterstock.com The current study China relaxed its 'zero-COVID' policies in September 2022, significantly increasing COVID-19 cases. As a result, recent estimates indicate that the proportion of the Chinese population infected since November 1, 2022, known as the attack rate, was 43.1% and rose to 75.7% by December 22, 2022. Owing to this rise in case numbers, many countries now require a negative SARS-CoV-2 test from passengers arriving from mainland China. Additionally, some countries are testing incoming passengers and conducting genomic surveillance of travelers to monitor emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. In the current study, researchers document the results of screening conducted in Italy between December 26-29, 2022. Moreover, a total of 556 passengers from China arriving at Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome and Malpensa airport in Milan were screened. Geographic distribution by province of Omicron a sub-lineages among sequences with case date after 1 September 2022 deposited from China in GISAID as of 11 January 2023 (n = 627 sequences) an Omicron (Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak (Pango) lineage B.1.1.529). b In the respective metadata, the deposited sequences were not labeled as imported. Other lineages include BA.5.2 (n = 9), BF.21 (n = 3), BF.7 (n =1), BA.5.1 (n = 8)in Beijing, BA.2 (n = 4), BA.5 (n = 1), BA.5.1 (n = 1), BA.5.2.1 (n = 4), other BA.5.2.* (n = 34), BE.1.4.2 (n = 1), BF.7 (n = 3), BQ.1 (n = 1), BQ.1.1 (n = 4), BQ.1.1.4 (n = 1), BQ.1.23 (n = 1), CH.1.1 (n = 1) in Shanghai, BA.5.2 in Gansu (n = 2), BA.5.2 in Huanan (n = 2), BA.5 (n = 1) and BA.5.2 (n = 1) in Guangdong, and BA.5.1 (n = 1) in Sichuan. The disks (pie charts) are subdivided according to the proportion of each sub-lineage found. The numbers at the centers of the disks represent the total number of characterized viral sequences originating from the provinces in question. Key findings Of the 556 screened passengers, 61 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Whole genome sequencing revealed Omicron variants, which included sub-lineages BA.5.2, BF.7, and BQ.1.1, each with additional mutations. This observation was in line with data released from China. The BF.7.14 sub-lineage, which contains the BF.7 mutations in addition to ORF7a:H47Y and S:C1243F, requires particular attention. BF.7 is characterized by the S:R346T immune escape mutation, which makes it resistant to cilgavimab and tixagevimab and sensitive to bebtelovimab and convalescent plasma from vaccinees. To date, COVID-19 waves have been driven by SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) linked to significant changes in the spike protein's receptor binding domain (RBD). However, immune evasion is unlikely to be driven by mutations in the S2 subunit of the spike protein, such as C1243F. ORF7a is an accessory cysteine-rich, zinc-binding type I transmembrane protein structurally conserved in various SARS-CoV-2 VOCs. An N-terminal signal sequence, an ectodomain with an immunoglobulin (Ig)-like fold, a short transmembrane domain, and a C-terminal cytoplasmic tail constitute the separate domains of ORF7a. Notably, ORF7a interacts with the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-I heavy chain, potentially limiting cell-mediated immune responses. The ORF7a:H47Y mutation was previously reported in Oceania and North America in 2020. More recently, this mutation was reported in the BF.5 lineage, which was dominant in Japan at the end of 2022. In addition, many other mutations, such as S44P in BA.5.11 and T61S in XAY, around the F59 position, have also recently emerged. The BF.7 variant has been circulating in Inner Mongolia since September 2022 and in the United States and Europe since August 2022. The high prevalence of BF.7.14 in China is possibly due to the founder effect. In China, the contribution of previous infection-elicited immunity is less relevant, which limits the ability of BQ.1* and XBB* to become dominant circulating strains in this nation. Concluding remarks The study findings emphasize the importance of genomic surveillance to detect the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants that are replacing previously dominant circulating strains. Importantly, these findings are consistent with sequencing data recently released from China. The current study has a few limitations that could be addressed in future research. For example, the sample size is small, and the clinical presentation could appear biased, as only asymptomatic or mildly infected patients are likely to embark on intercontinental flights and pass security checks. The study was also limited to flights originating in the East of China, a restriction that could be relaxed in the future. University of Queensland researchers have developed a long lasting surface spray that has the potential to kill viruses such as COVID-19 and potentially deadly bacteria. The spray contains a protein that allows it to stick to surfaces and remain effective for 24 hours and is being assessed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for commercial cleaning use. A team led by Dr Heather Shewan from UQ's School of Chemical Engineering set out to create a spray for use on various surfaces to kill COVID-19 and bacteria such as E. coli and staphylococcus aureus. We used hydrolysed gelatine which essentially helps create a thin film that allows the spray to stick on surfaces and can stay there for at least a day and potentially longer. This durability means it is over a longer period than a standard cleaner and has the potential to be used in high-use areas such as in public transport, kitchens, hotels, retail outlets, hospitals and public areas." Dr Heather Shewan from UQ's School of Chemical Engineering The research has been undertaken in partnership with Australian cleaning product manufacturer OzKleen, with the protein supplied by Beaudesert company GELITA Australia. Dr Shewan enlisted the help of virologist Dr Kirsty Short and microbiologist Dr Deirdre Mikkelsen to provide the multi-disciplinary expertise required. The team used several methods to test the spray, which is cost-effective to manufacture, and is not harmful to the environment. "In one test we sprayed glass surfaces with the cleaner and left it dry on the surface, and after 24 hours we added the COVID virus and further testing showed it did not survive," Dr Short said. "We also conducted other tests that showed even after rinsing surfaces with water, the spray significantly reduced the amount of virus that was able to survive on stainless steel." OzKleen CEO Mark Quinn said the spray would be manufactured and produced in Queensland and potentially exported across the world. "This is a very exciting initiative and the results show this product can be used in public places across the globe and will help to make the world a safer place," Mr Quinn said. "Not only will this product create jobs and grow the state's economy, it will put Queensland on the world map as an innovator and manufacturer of world-class products." Queensland Innovation Minister Stirling Hinchliffe said the research was made possible through an Advance Queensland Industry Fellowship grant of $90,000. "The Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowships have a track record of translating research to practical uses for industry, creating good, secure jobs and attracting investment to Queensland," Minister Hinchliffe said. "Since 2016, we have invested $45 million in six rounds of Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowships with funding for 197 fellowships. "Each fellowship creates an average of three jobs per research project and forecasts an average of 12 additional jobs to be created post completion of the project. "The partnership between the UQ research team, Queensland cleaning product manufacturer, OzKleen and Beaudesert company, Gelita Australia (Gelita) is now gaining international attention. "Once approved, it will be manufactured at the Gold Coast and has the potential to create up to 30 good, secure jobs for Queenslanders." An adequate amount of sleep and physical activity helps alleviate several health conditions, such as obesity, depression, and cardiovascular disease. However, the recommended amount of sleep and physical activity is not achieved in most cases. A previous United States-based report indicates that more than one-third of American adults do not get the recommended seven hours of sleep every night. Moreover, only one in four achieves the 150 minutes of recommended moderate physical activity each week. Study: Effectiveness of gamified team competition as mHealth intervention for medical interns: a cluster micro-randomized trial. Image Credit: BlurryMe / Shutterstock.com Background Medical internships provide intense training to physicians for one year. During this period, interns are typically sleep-deprived and get less physical activity, which affects their health and mental condition. Often, medical interns are overwhelmed by constantly working in a highly stressful environment during residency. However, time-intensive intervention strategies to monitor and alleviate these effects in medical interns are non-existent. Recent technological advancements in wearable devices and smartphones provide an opportunity to deliver user-friendly interventions with minimal expense. Additionally, these devices obtain real-time measurements of the user's physical activity and record geographical locations to provide personalized, just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI) while offering temporal and spatial flexibility. The effectiveness of smartphones and wearable-based interventions in analyzing health outcomes has been evaluated in many studies. In addition, these studies have introduced gamification, a strategy used to increase users' enjoyment and engagement through game mechanics in a non-game environment. Gamification strategies have advanced self-monitoring that includes progress monitoring and performance feedback. Moreover, a social comparison was found to inspire an individual to change certain behaviors. During the design of mHealth-related apps, eight archetypes of gamification were developed, including team competition. The effectiveness of this program on residents has not been assessed. However, the gamified competition was speculated to be effective in physicians' groups, which are a highly competitive population compared to other contestants. About the study In a recent npj Digital Medicine study, micro-randomized trials (MRTs) were conducted to assess the effectiveness of JITAI components based on the principles of health behavior change and gamification. More specifically, the mHealth intervention was evaluated to determine its impact on an individual's sleep duration and physical activity, particularly among first-year medical interns. A total of 2,286 interns enrolled in this study, 84.7% of whom were grouped into a team of at least five interns, with 191 teams formed. All interns represented 12 specialties. The mean age of the participants was 27.6 years, with both genders almost equally represented. The interns were subjected to the competition arm for 5.8 weeks. The effectiveness of the mHealth intervention on medical interns was assessed based on self-reported mood scores. Previous studies have indicated that an individual's mood score improves with increased sleep and better physical activity. Study findings The gamified team competition administered through smartphones of U.S.-based medical interns significantly improved daily step counts by about 106 steps/day. In addition, a positive effect of competition on the participants' sleep duration and mood score was observed. The competition was found to be a beneficial component of mHealth intervention. However, the moderator analysis indicated a decline in the effect of competition over time. Intra-institutional competition might have reduced the efficacy of competition. This indicates the need to improve strategies in assigning opponent teams to enhance the effectiveness of team competition. Due to constantly working under highly intense and stressful working environments, medical interns were less responsive than individuals exposed to less stressful working conditions. A previous study using obese participants indicated a greater willingness to use mobile-based gamification to promote physical activity than the current cohort, which included healthier participants. More studies are needed to enhance the mHealth intervention effect. For example, novel competition-related elements, such as the scoreboard, levels, and prizes, could be introduced to improve the motivation of interns so that they use mHealth app more consistently. The strategy regarding the pairing of opponents to achieve maximum health-related benefits must also be improved. In this study, a negative impact of intra-institutional competition was observed, as the participants regarded each other as colleagues and, therefore, were less competitive. The effectiveness of introducing breaks for a brief period between competition assignments to decrease fatigue must also be evaluated. Conclusions The smartphone/wearable-based prospective MRT on medical interns revealed a positive causal effect of team competition on proximal step count. Thus, the effectiveness of incorporating gamified competition in the mHealth intervention was confirmed in this study. In the future, more strategies must be established to optimize the benefits of mHealth. However, the current study provided a benchmark for future trials to determine the effectiveness of other competition-related app features. A simple nasal spray significantly reduced snoring and breathing difficulties in children and halved the number needing to have their tonsils removed, according to a new study. The research, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and published in JAMA Pediatrics, found a saline (salt water) nasal spray was just as effective as an anti-inflammatory steroid nasal spray at easing sleep-disordered breathing in children after six weeks of treatment. The findings stated both nasal sprays cleared symptoms while asleep in about 40 per cent of cases and those assessed by a surgeon as needing their tonsils and/or adenoids removed was reduced by half. The randomized-controlled "MIST" trial of the sprays involved 276 children, aged 3-12 years, and was carried out at The Royal Children's Hospital and Monash Children's Hospital. Tonsillectomy is the most common pediatric elective surgery for children in Australia with more than 40,000 performed each year. Commonly used to treat children's snoring, the procedure is costly, painful and a significant burden on hospital resources. Murdoch Children's Dr Alice Baker said Victorian children typically waited more than a year in the public system for surgery to remove tonsils and adenoids, prompting a need to look for an alternative treatment for sleep disordered breathing. Some children may also be having their tonsils and adenoids out unnecessarily, she said. Nasal sprays work by cleaning the nose and/or reducing inflammation not just in the nose but all the way down the back of the throat to the adenoids and tonsillar tissue to alleviate the symptoms." Dr Alice Baker, Murdoch Children's Snoring and breathing difficulties during sleep affect about 12 per cent of children and can cause significant long-term issues impacting cognitive function, behavior and cardiovascular health. Murdoch Children's Associate Professor Kirsten Perrett said the study found a substantial number of children with sleep-disordered breathing could initially be managed by their GP and may not require referral to specialist services as currently recommended. "A large proportion of children who snore and have breathing difficulties could be managed successfully by their primary care physician, using six weeks of an intranasal saline spray as a first-line treatment," she said. "Using this cheaper and readily available treatment would increase the quality of life of these children, reduce the burden on specialist services, decrease surgery waiting times and reduce hospital costs." Stephen Graham and Emily Tuner-Graham said their son, Thomas, 7, had stopped snoring and no longer needed his tonsils removed since taking part in the trial. "From three years of age Thomas started snoring and we were concerned that he would eventually need surgery," they said. "Prior to joining the trial, a specialist recommended having his tonsils out. It's a such huge relief that by just using a nasal spray his breathing difficulties have cleared." Researchers from the University of Melbourne, The Royal Children's Hospital, Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow, Monash Health and Monash University also contributed to the findings. In a recent article published in Scientific Reports, researchers performed immunoglobulin (Ig)M and IgG epitope mapping against 487 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) peptides. These peptides encompassed four main structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2, viz., spike (S) glycoprotein, envelope (E), nucleocapsid (N), and membrane (M) proteins. Background Investigating humoral immune responses in ethnically diverse populations accounting for varying coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) clinical profiles could help better define the correlates of protection. Further, it could aid the development of more effective serological diagnostic assays and COVID-19 vaccines adapted for such populations. Due to their limited availability and inefficacy against novel SARS-CoV-2 variants (e.g., Omicron), the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc globally after almost three years since it began. About the study In the present study, researchers performed an extensive antibody epitope mapping study among reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infected patients from two African countries, Senegal and Madagascar. They also determined the primary B cell epitopes recognized by these SARS-CoV-2-infected African patients. The study population comprised 65 and 16 (total 82) SARS-CoV-2-infected patients and 32 and 10 (=41) uninfected individuals from Senegal and Madagascar, respectively. The researchers collected serum samples from these two groups and assessed whether their varying IgM and IgG epitope distributions explained their different COVID-19 clinical profiles. Further, they compared the results with previous studies from Europe, Asia, and the United States of America (USA). The serum samples used in the study belonged to patients of distinct ethnic origins and varying disease profiles, viz., asymptomatic, symptomatic, and severe COVID-19. Study findings The study analysis confirmed that all the identified IgG epitopes represented immunodominant epitopes. Previous studies from different continents have similarly identified five and eight IgG epitope regions in the N and S domains. Most immunodominant IgG epitopes were nested outside the receptor-binding and N-terminal domains (RBD and NTD) regions of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein, the known hub for most SARS-CoV-2 mutations. Interestingly, many of these immunodominant peptide epitopes are proven targets of neutralizing antibodies, e.g., S139/140, S165, S204, and S287/288. Likewise, the researchers found several immunodominant epitopes for IgM, perhaps because they collected serum samples 10 to 12 days after symptom onset. However, they found no immunodominant epitopes in the SARS-CoV-2 E protein in this study, as in previous studies. Furthermore, the observed humoral responses to SARS-CoV-2 in people from Madagascar and Senegal were quite comparable, with some differences due to varying patient profiles at sampling time. Samples belonged to patients with early or late-stage SARS-CoV-2 infections. Accordingly, asymptomatic patients had more IgM epitopes, and those with severe COVID-19 shifted towards IgG epitopes due to prolonged SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Based on IgG and IgM scores, even previous studies have demonstrated a stronger immune response by severely ill COVID-19 patients compared to their asymptomatic or symptomatic counterparts. Another important observation made by the researchers was that some severely ill patients no longer had detectable SARS-CoV-2 load at the time of study sampling. Also, those with a higher score of neutralizing antibodies had a lesser viral load, suggesting their humoral response perhaps eliminated the virus but could not help them survive. Patients from the severe group were older than the symptomatic and asymptomatic groups, with higher susceptibility to COVID-19. Conclusions Overall, the present study analysis confirmed that the landscape of the humoral immune response of African patients to SARS-CoV-2 was comparable to that in other continents, indicating minimal or no effect of the diversity in ethnicities and genetic background of these populations. A pool of 36 peptides nested inside the SARS-CoV-2 S and N structural proteins exhibited the highest reactivity to neutralizing antibodies. In particular, patients IgM, IgM/IgG, and IgG were mapped to nine, two, and 25 SARS-CoV-2 peptides, respectively. The identified IgG immunodominant epitopes were similar to those described in Asian, European, and USA studies. These immunodominant epitopes could aid the development of novel and more effective vaccine candidates and rapid serological diagnostic assays. The present study did not determine the role of the T cells, a critical component of the humoral immune response to SARS-CoV-2. The lack of adequate T-cell response induction led to the death of some severely ill patients who mounted a suitable humoral response. It could be interesting if future studies identify peptides recognized by T cells in these African patients. In a recent article published in Scientific Reports, researchers performed an observational study among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients and their close contacts registered with the Bangkok home health care services in Thailand. They assessed their T-cell and neutralizing antibody responses six months after exposure to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Background By late 2022, 75% of Thailand's population had been vaccinated, mostly with viral vector and messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-technologies-based COVID-19 vaccines. Yet, the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant infected 5% of the country's population, but thankfully the death rate was lower than the observed death rate during Delta predominance era (120 vs. 300 per day). Researchers expected people in Thailand would develop herd immunity following mass vaccination via vaccine- or prior infection-induced hybrid immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection. They also hypothesized that the lower death rate during the 2022 Omicron outbreak in Thailand might have been due to herd immunity, hybrid immunity, and the lower virulence of Omicron. Moreover, close contacts of infected cases developed T-cell immunity against SARS-CoV-2, which kept COVID-19-related death rates in Bangkok low, even among cases treated at home care centers. However, reluctance to receive the vaccine and the advent of new immune-evading SARS-CoV-2 variants hindered meeting the herd immunity threshold. About the study In the present study, researchers collected blood samples from all 79 participants from 15 families invited randomly from different metropolitan areas of Bangkok. Of these, 34 individuals had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 approximately four weeks before recruitment into this study, whereas 45 COVID-19 cases were their close contacts. A minimum of one SARS-CoV-2-infected patient in each participating family had to be a registered member of a home health care center in Bangkok between 1 and 31 August 2021, having at least one asymptomatic close contact living in the same care center. The researchers analyzed the T-cell response using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot (ELISpot) assay. Study findings During SARS-CoV-2 exposure, COVID-19 patients and their close contact(s) in each family coinhabited the same healthcare home, with an area of approximately 200 m2. The study population comprised 15 families with 11 members in each family, and 58% were females. Over 90% of members were under 60, and 81% had a body mass index (BMI) of less than 30. In addition, one-fifth of the study participants, 26.5% of the patients and 15.5% of their close contacts, had comorbidities that increased their risk of progression to severe COVID-19. The researchers observed a positive T-cell response to the Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO) antigen in 11 of 45 cases, i.e., 24.4% of close contacts, indicating prior infection. Strikingly, these 11 cases that exhibited T-cell responses were most likely asymptomatic. Furthermore, the researchers noted a substantial drop in receptor-binding domain (RBD) immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels of unvaccinated patients at six months after SARS-CoV-2 exposure, and that of close contacts was comparable. Interestingly, RBD IgG levels increased in a dose-dependent way, but the T-cell response did not, a state termed "T-cell exhaustion." Conversely, the researchers noted a decrease in T-cell responses against the S antigen increased as vaccine doses, i.e., with the third or fourth booster. Thankfully, studies have demonstrated T-cell responses against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant rapidly reactivated three months after boosting. Vaccine type might have confounded these responses. Notably, 75% of the study participants had received an inactivated or viral vector vaccine approximately three-and-a-half months before recruitment into this study. On the other hand, less than one-third of the participants had received a booster dose of an mRNA vaccine around a month before study recruitment. Therefore, clinicians should closely monitor infection early after boosting and administering multiple vaccine doses with special considerations, especially in cases with a poor T-cell response. Conclusions Overall, the observed T cell and antibody responses indicated hybrid immunity among vaccinated patients with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection and herd immunity among unvaccinated patients with prior COVID-19. Likewise, vaccinated close contacts with no history of COVID-19 had herd immunity. Most importantly, nine unvaccinated close contacts also showed a T-cell response against the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) antigen. Perhaps, they developed herd immunity from an episode of asymptomatic infection. More importantly, with reduced neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant, a T-cell-based vaccine is needed that could generate diverse memory B cells against SARS-CoV-2. A new coronavirus variant is circulating, the most transmissible one yet. Hospitalizations of infected patients are rising. And older adults represent nearly 90% of U.S. deaths from covid-19 in recent months, the largest portion since the start of the pandemic. What does that mean for people 65 and older catching covid for the first time or those experiencing a repeat infection? The message from infectious disease experts and geriatricians is clear: Seek treatment with antiviral therapy, which remains effective against new covid variants. The therapy of first choice, experts said, is Paxlovid, an antiviral treatment for people with mild to moderate covid at high risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus. All adults 65 and up fall in that category. If people can't tolerate the medication potential complications with other drugs need to be carefully evaluated by a medical provider two alternatives are available. "There's lots of evidence that Paxlovid can reduce the risk of catastrophic events that can follow infection with covid in older individuals," said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University. Meanwhile, develop a plan for what you'll do if you get covid. Where will you seek care? What if you can't get in quickly to see your doctor, a common problem? You need to act fast since Paxlovid must be started no later than five days after the onset of symptoms. Will you need to adjust your medication regimen to guard against potentially dangerous drug interactions? "The time to be figuring all this out is before you get covid," said Dr. Allison Weinmann, an infectious-disease expert at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Being prepared proved essential when I caught covid in mid-December and went to urgent care for a prescription. Because I'm 67, with blood cancer and autoimmune illness, I'm at elevated risk of getting severely ill from the virus. But I take a blood thinner that can have life-threatening interactions with Paxlovid. Fortunately, the urgent care center could see my electronic medical record, and a physician's note there said it was safe for me to stop the blood thinner and get the treatment. (I'd consulted with my oncologist in advance.) So, I walked away with a Paxlovid prescription, and within a day my headaches and chills had disappeared. Just before getting covid, I'd read an important study of nearly 45,000 patients 50 and older treated for covid between January and July 2022 at Mass General Brigham, a large Massachusetts health system. Twenty-eight percent of the patients were prescribed Paxlovid, which had received an emergency use authorization for mild to moderate covid from the FDA in December 2021; 72% were not. All were outpatients. Unlike in other studies, most of the patients in this one had been vaccinated. Still, Paxlovid conferred a notable advantage: Those who took it were 44% less likely to be hospitalized with severe covid-related illnesses or die. Among those who'd gotten fewer than three vaccine doses, those risks were reduced by 81%. A few months earlier, a study out of Israel had confirmed the efficacy of Paxlovid the brand name for a combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir in seniors infected with covid's omicron strain, which arose in late 2021. (The original study establishing Paxlovid's effectiveness had been conducted while the delta strain was prevalent and included only unvaccinated patients.) In patients 65 and older, most of whom had been vaccinated or previously had covid, hospitalizations were reduced by 73% and deaths by 79%. Still, several factors have obstructed Paxlovid's use among older adults, including doctors' concerns about drug interactions and patients' concerns about possible "rebound" infections and side effects. Dr. Christina Mangurian, vice dean for faculty and academic affairs at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, encountered several of these issues when both her parents caught covid in July, an episode she chronicled in a recent JAMA article. First, her father, 84, was told in a virtual medical appointment by a doctor he didn't know that he couldn't take Paxlovid because he's on a blood thinner a decision later reversed by his primary care physician. Then, her mother, 78, was told, in a separate virtual appointment, to take an antibiotic, steroids, and over-the-counter medications instead of Paxlovid. Once again, her primary care doctor intervened and offered a prescription. In both cases, Mangurian said, the doctors her parents first saw appeared to misunderstand who should get Paxlovid, and under what conditions. "This points to a major deficit in terms of how information about this therapy is being disseminated to front-line medical providers," she told me in a phone conversation. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, agrees. "Every day, I hear from people who are misinformed by their physicians or call-in nurse lines. Generally, they're being told you can't get Paxlovid until you're seriously ill which is just the opposite of what's recommended. Why are we not doing more to educate the medical community?" The potential for drug interactions with Paxlovid is a significant concern, especially in older patients with multiple medical conditions. More than 120 medications have been flagged for interactions, and each case needs to be evaluated, taking into account an individual's conditions, as well as kidney and liver function. The good news, experts say, is that most potential interactions can be managed, either by temporarily stopping a medication while taking Paxlovid or reducing the dose. "It takes a little extra work, but there are resources and systems in place that can help practitioners figure out what they should do," said Brian Isetts, a professor at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy. In nursing homes, patients and families should ask to speak to consultant pharmacists if they're told antiviral therapy isn't recommended, Isetts suggested. About 10% of patients can't take Paxlovid because of potential drug interactions, according to Dr. Scott Dryden-Peterson, medical director of covid outpatient therapy for Mass General Brigham. For them, Veklury (remdesivir), an antiviral infusion therapy delivered on three consecutive days, is a good option, although sometimes difficult to arrange. Also, Lagevrio (molnupiravir), another antiviral pill, can help shorten the duration of symptoms. Many older adults fear that after taking Paxlovid they'll get a rebound infection a sudden resurgence of symptoms after the virus seems to have run its course. But in the vast majority of cases "rebound is very mild and symptoms usually runny nose, nasal congestion, and sore throat go away in a few days," said Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious-disease physician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Gandhi and other physicians I spoke with said the risk of not treating covid in older adults is far greater than the risk of rebound illness. Side effects from Paxlovid include a metallic taste in the mouth, diarrhea, nausea, and muscle aches, among others, but serious complications are uncommon. "Consistently, people are tolerating the drug really well," said Dr. Caroline Harada, associate professor of geriatrics at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine, "and feeling better very quickly." We're eager to hear from readers about questions you'd like answered, problems you've been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit khn.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips. Financial Secretary Paul Chan gives a speech at the Davos-Caixin CEO Luncheon on Unleashing the Full Potential of Asia: Scenarios and Opportunities at Davos, Switzerland. Financial Secretary Paul Chan said that the economy would pick up growth this year during a luncheon at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting at Davos in Switzerland. At the WEF Annual Meeting yesterday, Mr Chan participated in the Special Address delivered by State Council Vice Premier Liu He. He then attended the Davos-Caixin CEO Luncheon and delivered a speech on Unleashing the Full Potential of Asia: Scenarios and Opportunities. Mr Chan pointed out that Hong Kong is quickly returning to normalcy from the pandemic, and as the Mainland has speeded up its opening, the economy this year will pick up growth. With the advantages of one country, two systems and the firm support of the country, Hong Kong is the only place where the China advantages and the international advantages converge. In many different areas such as financial services and innovation and technology, Hong Kong plays the role of connecting the Mainland and the world, thereby actively contributing to the prosperity and sustained development of Asia. Mr Chan also had a breakfast meeting with the senior management of financial institutions in Europe and Japan, during which he elaborated on Hong Kong's latest developments, systemic strengths and bright prospects. The Financial Secretary also met Lenovo Chairman Yang Yuanqing, as well as Envision Group Chief Executive Officer Zhang Lei. Mr Chan explained the prevailing economic situation and opportunities, and Hong Kong's latest policies in innovation and technology as well as attracting strategic enterprises and talent. Mr Chan also met the Bloomberg Chairman Peter Grauer, explaining in detail Hong Kong's new opportunities at a new phase of development. Additionally, Mr Chan attended a dinner reception hosted by WEF Founder & Executive Chairman Prof Klaus Schwab. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Around 5,300 workers have been deported from October to December 2022 for violating Bahrains residency laws. This is the result of intensified joint inspection campaigns carried out by the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) and Ministry of Interiors Nationality, Passports and Residence Affairs (NPRA), as well as other relevant government entities, against illegal practices to preserve a competitive, fair and stable labour market. In the same period, more than 7,153 inspection campaigns and visits were conducted, where 731 criminal violations were referred to the Public Prosecution, including 257 violations committed by employers, and 474 by workers. LMRA referred 62 forced labour cases to the Public Prosecution. The total penalties collected from these violations amounted to BD253,000. Inspection visits increased by 33% in comparison with the same period in 2021, reaching 7,037 visits. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The Labour Market Regulatory Authority and the Ministry of Interior continue joint efforts to intensify inspection campaigns against illegal practices to preserve a competitive, fair and stable labour market. LMRA conducted an inspection campaign in Muharraq in coordination with the General Directorate of Crime Detection and Forensic Evidence and the General Directorate of Verdict Enforcement and Alternative Sentencing It also conducted another campaign in the Southern Governorate in coordination with the General Directorate of Crime Detection and Forensic Evidence of the Ministry of Interior. A third campaign was carried out in the Northern Governorate in coordination with the Nationality, Passports and Residence Affairs (NPRA) and the Governorates respective Police Directorate, in addition to a campaign conducted by LMRA Enforcement sector in the Capital Governorate. The campaigns resulted in reporting violations related to the Labour Market and Residency laws. The reported cases were referred for legal action. LMRA stressed its commitment to report violations through an intensive inspection plan, in coordination with the relevant government entities. It renewed its call to all members of the society to support the efforts of government agencies in addressing illegal labour practices, by reporting violations via the electronic form on the authoritys website www.lmra.bh or by calling the authoritys call centre on 17506055. Agencies | New York The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Some 40 countries have called on Israel to lift sanctions it imposed on the Palestinian Authority earlier this month over its push to get the UNs top court to issue an advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation. On December 30, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution requesting an opinion from the International Court of Justice on the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. In retaliation, Israel announced a series of sanctions, including financial ones, on January 6 against the Palestinian Authority to make it pay the price for pushing for the resolution. In a statement to journalists Monday, some 40 United Nations member states, reaffirming their unwavering support for the ICJ and international law, expressed deep concern regarding the Israeli governments decision to impose punitive measures against the Palestinian people, leadership and civil society following the request by the General Assembly to the court. Regardless of each countrys position on the resolution, we reject punitive measures in response to a request for an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and more broadly in response to a General Assembly resolution, and call for their immediate reversal, the members said. Agencies | Davos The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The strong partnership between Saudi Arabia and the US in ensuring energy market stability will be a key factor in global economic recovery, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Kingdoms foreign minister, told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday. Discussing the global energy and cost-of-living crises, Prince Faisal also said that the Kingdoms position on an OPEC+ decision last year to reduce oil output targets was correct, despite opposition from the US. However, the Saudi minister said that the Kingdom still has a strong relationship with Washington, even if the two do not always agree. As the worlds top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia has a responsibility to continue providing stability to oil markets, Prince Faisal said, adding that the Kingdom and US will continue to engage in dialogue to work toward that goal. Shizuka visits Northern Tohoku region and spends a day in Yamagata, where she explores the stunning scenery and makes friends with locals. She visits the scenic temple Yamadera. 1000 stones step lead to the top of the mountain where the visitors are rewarded with some of the most breathtaking views of the autumn foliage in Japan. After the hike, Shizuka stops by Enzou, a local restaurant, where they serve Yamagata's specialty: Ita soba aka soba on a board. The adventure continues in Yamagata city, where Shizuka sets out to explore the city's nightlife. She visits three authentic izakaya restaurants in Hottonaru Yokocho, where visitors can truly get a grasp of Yamagatas flavors after dark. Diving into Yamagatas scrumptious seasonal specialties and locally brewed sake, Shizuka meets some of the friendliest locals and together, they enjoy an exciting night full of laughter and good food! ...continue reading Repairing the Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt will improve visitor experience, increase resiliency to flooding, and help protect nearby fish habitat. RADIUM HOT SPRINGS, BC, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - The network of protected areas administered by Parks Canada is a gateway to nature, history, and 450 000 km of memories from coast to coast to coast. Investing in these locations helps support the protection of natural and built heritage, increases climate resiliency and creates jobs in local communities, while providing visitors with high-quality, safe and meaningful experiences across the country. Radium Cool Pool Facility, Kootenay National Park. Credit: Parks Canada (CNW Group/Parks Canada) Today, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, announced approximately $13 million for the restoration of the Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt in Kootenay National Park, a Classified Federal Heritage Building. Through this investment, Parks Canada will conserve the heritage value of this popular cultural resource, ensure high quality, meaningful visitor experiences and contribute to the country's world-class tourism offer. This project is part of the Government of Canada's recently announced funding of $557 million over three years to ensure the continuation of infrastructure projects and maintenance work for Parks Canada's assets, supporting the critical function they provide to Canadians and visitors. The cool pool and foundations of the building at Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt will be repaired to improve visitor experience and increase the site's resiliency to flooding by installing culverts under the building to direct water flow and protect the foundation, in addition to other upgrades. This project will also aid in Parks Canada's conservation efforts by adding erosion protection to safeguard nearby fish habitats. As well, the cool pool will be improved for visitor and staff safety and accessibility through a number of improvements. These include: installation of a surface level gutter system to allow visitors to easily enter and exit the pool, allow lifeguards to safely execute rescues, and to provide a smoother, faster swim experience for users; renovation of hand rails for improved stability when entering and exiting the pool; and, installation of a new lift for improved accessibility. Parks Canada's wide-ranging infrastructure portfolio includes more than 18,500 built assets such as highways, bridges, dams and other marine infrastructure, historic buildings and fortifications, water and wastewater treatment facilities, campgrounds, visitor centres and operational buildings and compounds. Since 2015, the federal infrastructure investment program has enabled Parks Canada to improve the condition of approximately 5,000 assets across the country. These upgrades help ensure public safety, quality and reliability in visitor offers, incorporate green technologies and climate resilience, while connecting Canadians with nature and history. Quote "The Government of Canada is committed to investing in Parks Canada places to ensure the sustainability of these treasured assets. Critical infrastructure upgrades to the Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt, a Classified Federal Heritage Building, will improve service quality and accessibility, resulting in tangible benefits for visitors, local communities and businesses and the nation's tourism industry, while including conservation efforts that safeguard nearby fish habitats." Steven Guilbeault Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada Quick Facts The Aquacourt at Radium Hot Springs in Kootenay National Park was one of the first major post-war building projects in the western national parks and opened to the public in 1951. The Aquacourt is a Classified Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations and architectural and environmental values. in was one of the first major post-war building projects in the western national parks and opened to the public in 1951. The Aquacourt is a Classified Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations and architectural and environmental values. Kootenay National Park was established with the signing of an agreement to build the Banff-Windermere Highway (Highway 93 South) connecting British Columbia and Alberta on April 21, 1920 . When the road opened in 1923, more than 4500 vehicles travelled the highway that year. Today, more than 500,000 people visit Kootenay National Park every year. Highway 93 South has wildlife mitigations including 15 km of wildlife exclusion fencing and nine underpasses. was established with the signing of an agreement to build the Banff-Windermere Highway (Highway 93 South) connecting and on . When the road opened in 1923, more than 4500 vehicles travelled the highway that year. Today, more than 500,000 people visit every year. Highway 93 South has wildlife mitigations including 15 km of wildlife exclusion fencing and nine underpasses. From January 30 to February 13, 2023 , the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, is inviting Canadians to participate in the 2023 Minister's Round Table on Parks Canada's national historic sites, national parks, and national marine conservation areas. An online engagement portal will be available and will welcome input from the general public at letstalkparkscanada.ca. Related Product Related Links SOURCE Parks Canada For further information: Kaitlin Power, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-230-1557, [email protected]; Media Relations, Parks Canada, 855-862-1812, [email protected]; Lindsay McPherson, External Relations Manager, Lake Louise, Yoho, Kootenay Field Unit, Parks Canada, 867-678-5667, [email protected] Priority road and bridge improvements in Gros Morne National Park and L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site to ensure safe travelling experiences. ROCKY HARBOUR, NL, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - The network of protected areas administered by Parks Canada is a gateway to nature, history, and 450 000 km of memories from coast to coast to coast. Investing in these locations helps support the protection of natural and built heritage, increases climate resiliency and creates jobs in local communities, while providing visitors with high-quality, safe and meaningful experiences across the country. Construction site at Western Brook Bridge, Darren Fitzgerald, Parks Canada (CNW Group/Parks Canada) Today, the Honourable Gudie Hutchings, Minister of Rural Economic Development and Member of Parliament for Long Range Mountains, on behalf of Steven Guilbeault, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, announced approximately $25 million over three years for projects related to critical infrastructure roadway improvements in Gros Morne National Park and L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site to ensure a safe travelling experience. The projects are part of the Government of Canada's recently announced funding of $557 million over three years to ensure the continuation of infrastructure projects and maintenance work for Parks Canada's assets supporting the critical function they provide to Canadians and visitors. With this funding, Parks Canada will soon begin critical roadway improvements including upgrades to Highway 436 that leads into L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, as well as upgrades to Highway 431 from Woody Point to Trout River in Gros Morne National Park. A full replacement of the Western Brook Bridge along Highway 430 in the national park is currently underway. Once complete, the new bridge will result in reduced environmental impacts, as the in-water centre pier from the existing bridge will be removed from the brook. These roadway improvements are important since these are transportation corridors for the public and local communities, as well as a significant part of the visitor experience providing opportunity to safely travel to and through these treasured places. In addition to these projects, there will be parking lot renovations and expansions taking place at L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site and the Tablelands trailhead of Gros Morne National Park. Today's announcement was made at Gros Morne National Park's Visitor Centre, which has been undergoing a $10 million federal infrastructure renewal project since 2021. Providing welcome to tens of thousands of visitors annually from around the globe to this UNESCO World Heritage Site, Parks Canada is upgrading the Visitor Centre to enhance the sense of arrival to Gros Morne National Park. The building construction will be completed this year with work on the interior exhibits continuing into 2024. When the site reopens, visitors will be welcomed with a design that showcases the viewscape and historical interpretation of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Centre's design includes objectives to meet federal greening and sustainability targets, and will support a safer, inclusive and barrier-free environment for visitors. Parks Canada's wide-ranging infrastructure portfolio includes more than 18,500 built assets such as highways, bridges, dams and other marine infrastructure, historic buildings and fortifications, water and wastewater treatment facilities, campgrounds, visitor centres and operational buildings and compounds. Since 2015, the federal infrastructure investment program has enabled Parks Canada to improve the condition of approximately 5,000 assets across the country. These upgrades help ensure public safety, quality and reliability in visitor offers, incorporate green technologies and climate resilience, while connecting Canadians with nature and history. Quote "The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring the sustainability of Parks Canada assets so the cultural, environmental and economic vitality that national heritage places bring to Canada can continue into the future. Parks Canada's robust roadway improvements through Gros Morne National Park and to L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site will provide safer traveling experiences for Canadians to connect with nature and history. The renewal of the Visitor Centre in Gros Morne National Park will be significant in supporting tangible benefits for visitors, local enclave communities and businesses and the province's west coast tourism industry." Gudie Hutchings Minister of Rural and Economic Development and Member of Parliament for Long Range Mountains Quick Facts Parks Canada's ability to meet its mandate of conserving and presenting national heritage places in Canada is founded on its assets. More than just supporting visitors as cornerstones of Canada's tourism industry, these assets play critical functions, such as transportation, water management, public safety, and services to residents and businesses, while being a source of shared pride for Canadians. ability to meet its mandate of conserving and presenting national heritage places in is founded on its assets. More than just supporting visitors as cornerstones of tourism industry, these assets play critical functions, such as transportation, water management, public safety, and services to residents and businesses, while being a source of shared pride for Canadians. The Government of Canada recognizes the significance of these treasured places in Canada and, since 2015, has invested more than $170 million in infrastructure work at Parks Canada administered sites in Western Newfoundland and Labrador. recognizes the significance of these treasured places in and, since 2015, has invested more than in infrastructure work at Parks Canada administered sites in and Labrador. Ecological integrity is Parks Canada's first priority. Impact assessments are used to manage the impact of infrastructure projects, and when possible, increase ecological gains for park ecosystems. Gros Morne National Park consists of 1,805 square kilometres of wilderness on Newfoundland's west coast. Its natural beauty and unique geology earned the park UNESCO World Heritage status in 1987. It stretches inland from the Gulf of St. Lawrence coastline through lowlands where waterways meander towards the Long Range Mountains and Tablelands. consists of 1,805 square kilometres of wilderness on Newfoundland's west coast. Its natural beauty and unique geology earned the park UNESCO World Heritage status in 1987. It stretches inland from the Gulf of coastline through lowlands where waterways meander towards the Long Range Mountains and Tablelands. At L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site - at the tip of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula - lies the first known evidence of European presence in the Americas. Here, Norse expeditions sailed from Greenland , building a small encampment of timber-and-sod buildings over 1000 years ago. Against a stunning backdrop of rugged cliffs, bog, and coastline, discover the fascinating archaeological remains of the Viking encampment, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. , building a small encampment of timber-and-sod buildings over 1000 years ago. Against a stunning backdrop of rugged cliffs, bog, and coastline, discover the fascinating archaeological remains of the Viking encampment, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. From January 30 to February 13, 2023 , the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, is inviting Canadians to participate in the 2023 Minister's Round Table on Parks Canada's national historic sites, national parks, and national marine conservation areas. An online engagement portal will be available and will welcome input from the general public at letstalkparkscanada.ca. Related Products Related Links SOURCE Parks Canada For further information: Kaitlin Power, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-230-1557, [email protected]; Media Relations, Parks Canada, 855-862-1812, [email protected]; Ellen Gormley, A/Public Relations and Communications Officer, Western Newfoundland and Labrador Field Unit, Parks Canada, 709-458-8627, [email protected] OTTAWA, ON, Jan. 17, 2023 /CNW/ - Note: All times local Davos, Switzerland Private meetings. 5:15 p.m. (11:15 a.m. ET) The Deputy Prime Minister will participate in a panel discussion entitled "Restoring Security and Peace" at the World Economic Forum. The event will be streamed live at: https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023/sessions/restoring-security-and-peace The Deputy Prime Minister will hold meetings with business leaders and other participants at the World Economic Forum. This document is also available at https://deputypm.canada.ca SOURCE Deputy Prime Minister's Office For further information: (media only), please contact: Adrienne Vaupshas, Press Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, [email protected]; Media Relations, Privy Council Office, 613-957-5420, [email protected] Sesh+ nicotine replacement therapy gum now available at Metro, Circle K, Shell, and others TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - Next-generation smoking cessation brand Sesh+ is now available at a variety of major retailers throughout Canada. The Vancouver-based brand, which has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) industry, is making a powerful contribution to one of the major ongoing public health crises of our time, just in time for National Non-Smoking Week. Sesh+ nicotine replacement therapy gum now available at Metro, Circle K, Shell, and others (CNW Group/Sesh+) Although cigarette use throughout North America has largely declined, vaping has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among younger Canadians. Health Canada has shown that vaping predisposes youth to nicotine addiction, increasing users' chances of becoming long-term tobacco smokers. To combat the isolation and discouragement that many vape users experience when they try to quit , Sesh+ offers smokers the tools and community they need, this week and every other week. Sesh+ smoking cessation products improve on current nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) strategies to meet the unique needs and wants of a new generation. For Sesh+ Founder and CEO Max Cunningham, NRT products are essential for achieving Health Canada's aim of reducing the smoking rate below 5% by 2035. "We can't approach the current smoking and vaping epidemic the way we tackled nicotine use in the past," says Cunningham. "The landscape is fundamentally different nowvaping has changed the way people think about both using and quitting nicotine, and we need a solution that is keeping up with these developments." Sesh+'s NRT products were created using the latest research, with an emphasis on making the quitting process enjoyable by providing 3 mouth-watering flavorspomegranate, wintergreen, and cinnamonconveniently available in single unit packaging. Their gum contains a low dose of nicotine which is authorized by Health Canada as a Natural Health Product for smoking cessation, reducing nicotine cravings and withdrawal symptoms to increase users' chances of quitting successfully. The gum is now available at many major retailers across Canada, including: Over 490 nationwide Shell locations, All Metro Pharmacy and Circle K locations throughout Ontario , , 290 Jean Coutu Pharmacies in Quebec , , And all 87 nationwide MacEwen/Quickie locations (except in QC). Sesh+ can also be ordered through the brand's website. The product costs $8.99 per pack and is the only flip tab single pack format available in Canada. "We are thrilled to be working with some of Canada's most well-known, trusted retailers," says Cunningham. "Ease of access makes all the difference, as you never know when or where a nicotine craving might hit. We want to empower smokers to pick up a pack of gum from the convenience store so that they can beat the craving when it's at its strongest." Since launching in April, Sesh+ has secured over $1.2M in funding, is approaching $1M in revenue, and has been sold in 1500+ stores. Beyond expanding further, the company plans to launch its signature Sesh+ Plus App this year. The app provides virtual cessation support through personalized content and nicotine usage tracking, creating a tangible record of the user's progress. When used alongside Sesh+'s products, these programs offer life-changing support for all users, from those who recently started to those who have been trying to quit for years. Sesh+'s holistic ecosystem makes it the only truly modern approach to curbing tobacco dependency available on the market today. "Tobacco use is such a big problem that it can be difficult to imagine a solution," says Cunningham. "Sesh+ starts by thinking about how to help a single, unique individual, and expands out from there. We want every nicotine user to be able to find a convenient, effective way to integrate Sesh products into their lives." Sesh+ is committed to transparency and is able to provide further information about the research used in writing this press release upon request. About Sesh+ Products Sesh+ Products is a smoking cessation brand dedicated to helping smokers take control over their nicotine usage through a holistic combination of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products and app-based cessation programs. Carlin Domi DOMI Co. +1 647-968-6113 [email protected] SOURCE Sesh+ Premium hybrid work solution to be previewed at Interior Design Show '23 in Toronto RICHMOND HILL, ON, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - With hybrid work as a new work standard, many Canadians still lack the proper tools and equipment they need to reach their potential. Staples Canada has once again partnered with its gry mattr collection, designed by Joe Mimran and ergoCentric, North America's premier manufacturer of high-quality ergonomic furniture to introduce the new Longevity Height Adjustable Desk which will be launched at this week's Interior Design Show (IDS) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building. Staples Canada launches Longevity, Canadas best ergonomic desk, in collaboration with gry mattr and ergoCentric. Premium hybrid work solution to be previewed at Interior Design Show 23 in Toronto. (CNW Group/Staples Canada ULC) "Through our research with Angus Reid Group, we know hybrid workers lack comfortability and a sense of well-being in their home office set-up with 55 per cent saying they are missing an ergonomic chair or desk altogether," said John DeFranco, Chief Commercial Officer, Staples Canada. "That's why we've partnered with leading experts in the field of ergonomics to create future-focused hybrid work solutions to help our customers succeed in the new world of work." The Longevity Height Adjustable Desk is one of Staples' first Hybrid Certified products and the next evolution in workspace innovation, stylishly designed to reduce stress and raise productivity for a healthier way to work, crafted by a team of ergonomic experts and engineers to enhance workspace wellness. The desk allows users to effortlessly change between seated and standing positions, reducing stress and tension and improving circulation throughout the body. It offers easy-to-use up/down controls with three-position memory and quiet motors to ensure a smooth, quiet transition, with a thoughtfully minimal and sleek design. "We all know the challenges associated with keeping a balanced and healthy lifestyle no matter where or how you work," said Joe Mimran, president and creative director, Joseph Mimran & Associates Inc. and lead creative director, gry mattr. "We wanted to design something that would help Canadians find that balance effortlessly, in fashion that can be custom-fitted to your needs - all in a stylish and minimal design to further promote the sense of wellness." The Longevity Height Adjustable Desk will be previewed at the 2023 IDS flagship trade show from January 19 22 at the Staples Canada booth 723. IDS Toronto will explore design for a complex world with its 2023 theme, Moving Parts, reflecting how contemporary designers are creating, sourcing, producing and distributing products in an ever-changing landscape. The Longevity Height Adjustable Desk is available nationally via staples.ca for $899.99 immediately; it'll be available in select Staples Canada stores as well through Staples Professional representatives in February. Discover a suite of thoughtfully curated innovative hybrid work solutions and ergonomically designed equipment at staples.ca/workfromanywhere. About Staples Canada Staples Canada is The Working and Learning Company. With a focus on community, inspiration and services, the privately-owned company is committed to being a dynamic, inspiring partner to customers who visit its 300+ locations and staples.ca. The company has two brands that support business customers, Staples Preferred for small businesses and Staples Professional for medium to large-sized enterprises, as well as seven co-working facilities in Toronto, Kelowna, Oakville, Ottawa and Calgary under the banner Staples Studio. Staples Canada is a proud partner of MAP through its Even the Odds campaign, which aims to tackle inequities in communities across Canada and helps make a future that's fair for everyone. Through Solutionshop, customers can access a variety of pack and ship options with the ability to help pack items safely and securely for a flat-rate fee. More information on Staples' shipping options and carrier partnerships can be found at Staples.ca/Ship. Visit staples.ca for more information or get social with @StaplesCanada on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. SOURCE Staples Canada ULC For further information: Pamela Kennedy, Staples Canada, 905-737-1147 Ext. 578, [email protected]; Meg Murphy, Golin, 647- 475- 4495, [email protected] The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has responded to a recent claim by Dr Oby Ezekwesili, a former Minister of Education, under the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, that Atiku Abubakar was not in charge of the economy when he was vice president. Ezekwesili had called on Atiku, the presidential candidate of the PDP, to stop misleading the public by saying he headed the Economic Management Team during his time as Vice president. Ezekwesilis statement is coming on the heels of the claim by Atiku that he was instrumental in designing a private sector revival strategy and opening the economy for private sector investments while heading the economic management team as a Vice President. Atiku wrote, As head of the economic management team while I was Vice President, I was instrumental in designing a private sector revival strategy and advocated for the opening of the economy for private sector investments in several sectors. And we made tremendous progress. However, the former Minister has described Atikus claim as false. She also warned the former Vice President to stop misleading the public. She wrote, Dear former Vice President Atiku, please ask the handlers of your @Twitter account to stop misleading the public. You were never the Head of the Economic Management Team. This absurd Lie does you no good at all. Please ask your Team to stop it. Happy New Year. Wish you well. But Daniel Bwala, spokesperson of the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign, dragged Peter Obis presidential project into the mix. He said that Obis project is Obasanjos third term agenda, and Obi Ezekwesili was one of those working on a third term project for the former President. First of all I respect Ezekwesili. Shes a very intellectual woman but everyone knows she supports Peter Obi, he said on Arise Televisions The Morning Show on Wednesday. Peter Obi is supported by most of the people that worked in Obasanjos government because Peter Obis project is a third-term agenda for Obasanjo if you see the people endorsing him, including lawyers and elder statesmen. It is not surprising she could say that, but let us talk on the issue. Who is the Chairman of the Economic Council? The Vice President. The head and members of the economic team come with proposals. They come to discuss policy issues, and not a single one of them can bypass the Vice President and meet the President on the subject of the economy except if the President independently summons them. Let her just come out and say shes supporting Peter Obi and campaign for him. What shes saying has no place in fact, logic and reality. Atiku Abubakar was Chairman of the Economic Council and even scouted most of them. So let her just say Im supporting Obi. All these people that worked with Obasanjo that are masquerading themselves as neutrals meanwhile theyre carrying out the same agenda of the third term that cannot stand. The spokesperson of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo has given a condition to withdraw from the campaign of the All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu. Keyamo said he would quit his role if Tinubu asked him to withdraw his court case against Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Keyamo said Atiku should be arrested and prosecuted for alleged breach of the Code of Conduct Act, Money Laundering, Criminal Breach of Trust and Conspiracy. Keyamo was reacting to a viral video by a whistleblower, Michael Achimugu, who indicted Atiku. Achimugu claimed that the former Vice President used Special Purpose Vehicles to usurp funds while in office between 1999 and 2007. However, appearing on Channels Television programme, Politics Today on Tuesday, Keyamo said: In the case when they challenged my principal (Bola Tinubu), when they brought up dead documents from the US, I said go to court. Come out with your full chest and go to court. Up until today, they ran away. Im proceeding to court. And if Asiwaju says, Festus, youre diverting from my campaign, just campaign for me. I will say take your campaign because this is in national interest. I have taken it personal. Dino Melaye, the former senator representing Kogi west, has threatened to sue a blogger for implying he had an affair with two popular female skit makers. The politician took to social media on Wednesday to share the post from the blog while also threatening a lawsuit against the platforms publisher. Melaye denied knowing Amarachi Ashmusy Amusi and Chinonso Ukah, the female skit makers. He also gave the blogger a 24-hour ultimatum to apologise or face the consequences. I will sue you this time. Will locate you. I dont know any of these ladies. Agent of APC, he wrote. You will not get away with your lies and unfounded story this time. You just dialed the wrong number. Apologize within 24 hours or face the consequences. I will sue you this time. Will locate you. I dont know any of these ladies. Agent of APC. You will not get away with your lies and unfounded story this time. Yiu just dialed the wrong number. Apologize within 24 hours or face the consequences. pic.twitter.com/Lj6I0XmhKU Senator Dino Melaye. (SDM) (@_dinomelaye) January 18, 2023 The drama started a few days ago after Nedu Wazobia, the on-air personality (OAP), on his podcast, said he met two influencers having a threesome with someone that I know at the Transcorp Hilton hotel in Abuja. Moments later, the blog uploaded a collage photo of the former lawmaker alongside the female skit makers. I like fine fine pictures Sha. HARD WORK UNDER DINO NO BE SMALL WORK OO. I DEY COME, it captioned the post. Also reacting to the blog post, Ashmusy described it as false, adding that I have never met Dino. LIES UPON Lies !!!!!! I dont even know DINO Personally. Never ever met him in my lifetime!!!!!! Ashmusy wrote. God forbid blogs and lies. Mahmood Yakubu, the chairperson of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Monday, delivered an address at the Chatham House in United Kingdom. The address was titled Nigerias 2023 Elections: Preparations and Priorities for Electoral Integrity and Inclusion. See the full text of the address below. INTRODUCTION I am highly honoured to lead this discussion today and to share this illustrious platform which has over the years welcomed exceptional intellectuals, celebrated public servants and renowned statesmen. Today is exactly thirty-nine days to the next general election in Nigeria, which I have both the privilege and challenge of leading its proper delivery. Elections in Nigeria have become events that attract extensive international attention and concern, not only because of the sheer size of the deployment, which usually draws extensively on both national and international resources, but also because of the importance of Nigeria in Africa and particularly the West African sub-region. Although it is true that elections should normally be routine, programmed events, each election in Nigeria invariably presents its own unique context and therefore distinct challenges and prospects. Overall, therefore, there are enormous expectations, both within Nigeria and internationally, about the conduct and management of elections in the country. The 2023 general election is no exception. These expectations place a great responsibility on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a responsibility that we do not take lightly. We appreciate that there are challenges and concerns. But we also realise that there is enormous goodwill and support, both in Nigeria and beyond. Consequently, we believe that by forthrightly sharing our experiences and discussing the challenges openly, we can surmount them and ensure that each succeeding election in Nigeria shows marked improvement over the preceding ones. This is what I hope that the exchanges we are going to have here today would achieve. The general election will start on Saturday 25th February 2023 with the national elections, i.e. the Presidential election and elections for the two Houses of the National Assembly the Senate and House of Representatives. On that day, legislators for 109 Senatorial Districts and 360 House of Representatives constituencies will be elected. The State elections, i.e. election of Governors, as well as 993 members of the State Houses of Assembly, will hold two weeks later, on Saturday 11th March 2023. Only 28 out of 36 Governors will be elected on that day. The other eight do not fall due because of past electoral litigations that misaligned the tenures of the affected Governors. Given the geographical expanse of the country, the number of registered voters, electoral constituencies and polling units, conducting a general election in Nigeria is a huge undertaking. The delimitation details are staggering: 93,469,008 registered voters expected to elect their representatives for 1,491 constituencies in 176,846 polling units. Based on the figures we compiled from the websites of various Electoral Commissions and Interior Ministries in West Africa, Nigerias current voter population is 16,742,916 higher than the 76,726,092 registered voters in the other 14 countries put together. This means that a general election in Nigeria is like conducting elections in the whole of West Africa and beyond. Since 1999, Nigeria has been conducting regular general elections following the restoration of civilian-democratic rule governance after many years of military rule. The 2023 general election will be the seventh consecutive general election in Nigeria. This fact makes this the longest period of electoral democracy in the countrys history. Previous periods of electoral democracy were relatively short, repeatedly truncated by military interventions. However, the quantity of elections is one thing, but their quality is another. As Zavadskaya and Garnett aptly note, the question of integrity of elections is relevant for all elections, whether in new democracies or jurisdictions that have held election for decades, because they are all vulnerable to malpractice. However, good elections are not only about curbing malpractices, but also about ensuring inclusivity. Inclusive elections constitute an essential part of democracy. This is the reason why in our Commission we regularly speak of our commitment to free, fair, credible, transparent, verifiable and inclusive elections. To be sure, credible and inclusive elections in the final analysis depend on adequate preparations and my main preoccupation today is to share with you how we are preparing for a general election of high integrity and inclusiveness in Nigeria in 2023. LESSONS FROM THE 2019 GENERAL ELECTION Preparations for the 2023 general election are largely being concluded and preliminary deployments are already underway. Indeed, our preparations began quite early, learning from some of our experiences in 2019, particularly the sore experience of having to postpone that election a few hours before it commenced. One important lesson from 2019 is that great planning and preparations are important, but unfortunately these are often at the risk of what Pippa Norris calls simple human errors, technical malfunctions and logistical failures. However, early preparations provide opportunities for adequate planning, resourcing, and testing of systems that will reduce these risks to a minimum. A second lesson from 2019 is that early choice of election management tools, especially the main election technology. Their proper pilot-testing and deployment are exceedingly important for a successful election. For election technology, early decision is central to maintaining its integrity, popularising it among voters and addressing any challenges that could arise. We know that political actors often try to undermine the process by attacking the technology, casting doubts on its suitability, bypassing its use or indeed seeking to undermine its security. This informed the early choice of a new voter accreditation technology using an electronic device we call the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). We have tested it in several bye-elections and off-cycle Governorship elections. In addition, the decision to make polling unit election results available for public viewing, which has always been a major demand by citizens and election observers, falls into this early choice of election technology. The INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal is a dedicated web portal for the public to view polling unit results as soon as they are finalised on election day. This has been employed in several elections conducted by the Commission in the past few years. In particular, the uploading of Polling Unit results on the IReV portal has been deployed 105 constituencies where the Commission conducted off-season elections since August 2020. The result can still be viewed on the portal, making the IReV an invaluable repository of elections results in Nigeria. A further lesson from the 2019 general election, which is helping us immensely in our preparations for the 2023 general election, is that an early finalisation of changes to the Electoral Act, the principal legal basis for elections, is critical to proper organisation of elections. In the build-up to the 2019 general election, there was an unending back and forth between the Executive and Legislative arms of government on the Electoral Act, and in the end the amendment of the Act was stalled. One consequence of this was that INEC could not conclude work on the Regulations and Guidelines for the election, which are meant to derive from, and be consistent with, the Electoral Act as early as we intended. Since the Commission has no say as such in the passing of the Act, it had to wait for a final document to emerge from the process, which ultimately did not materialise. The several recommendations that the Commission made to the National Assembly to include in the amended Act to improve the quality of elections, such as the strengthening of the use of technology, early conclusion of candidates nominations, as well as timely funding of elections, never became law. It is noteworthy that this time around, the Electoral Act 2022 was passed in good time, and it has addressed some of these issues. The last noteworthy lesson from the 2019 general election is that adequate funding and early release of funds to the Commission is also very important to well-organised elections. Partly because of delays in finalising the electoral legal framework for the 2019 general election, finalising the budget for the election and arranging a good schedule of fund releases to the Commission was rather tardy and challenging. To add to the pressure on the Commission, there were over 14 million more voters to cater for in 2019 compared to 2015. It required painstaking and prolonged engagements between the Commission and both the Executive and Legislative arms of government. Given that practically all the activities for the elections depended on funds, from printing of ballot papers and results sheets to hiring of election staff and transport providers, the Commission could not meet many of its targets in preparing for the 2019 general election. PREPARATION FOR THE 2023 GENERAL ELECTION Election Planning Learning from all these, the Commission has worked with all concerned government agencies and stakeholders to ensure that the challenges of preparing for the 2019 general election are minimised this time around. A great deal of forward planning and engagements has been done, and many aspects of our preparations attest to that. First, we concluded a new four-year Strategic Plan and Strategic Programme of Action (SP & SPA), as well as the 2023 Election Project Plan (EPP), over 18 months prior to the date set for the election. The 2023 EPP identifies all the specific activities to be implemented for the general election. Each of these activities has a specific timeline based on which it is implemented and tracked. Among other things, the Plan reflects the new technological innovations that will be used in 2023, the increase in the number of voters from 84,004,084 to 93, 469,008 as well as increase in Polling Units from 119,974 to 176,846, following the Commissions expansion of voter access to Polling Units in 2021. ELECTORAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK Elections are essentially anchored in law. Unlike the case with the 2019 general election, new Electoral Act was signed into law on Friday 25th February 2022 exactly one year ahead of the general election, giving time for both the Commission and all stakeholders to fully acquaint themselves with any changes in their responsibilities and functions. As an affirmation of our readiness for the general election, the Commission released the Timetable and Schedule of Activities the following day, Saturday 26th February 2022. The new law contains some very important changes that hold potentials for improving the quality of Nigerias elections. Perhaps the ten most important provisions in the new law are: 1. Early appropriation and release of funds. INEC to get its funds at least one year to the general election. 2. Early release of notice of election. INEC is now required to issue the Notice of Polls 360 days to the general election. This also entails an early release of the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for general elections by the Commission. When these are added to the fixed dates for general elections established by INEC, which is the 3rd Saturday in the month of February of the election year for the national election and State elections coming two weeks later, stakeholders now have ample time for forward planning, which will greatly benefit the quality of general elections in Nigeria. 3. Use of electronic device for accreditation of voters. The debates over the legality or otherwise of the Smart Card Readers now appears to be settled by Section 47 of the Act which empowers INEC to use the Smart Card Reader or any other device for accreditation. 4. Early primaries by political parties. They must now complete their primaries and submit the names of candidates 180 days to the general election. This gives the Commission enough planning time to produce the materials for the elections, particularly the sensitive materials. 5. Type of Primaries. There are now three types of primaries in the law namely, Direct, Indirect and Consensus, giving political parties a wider range of options for selecting their candidates. 6. Electronic transmission of results. The Act now empowers INEC to determine the form of transmission or transfer of election results. 7. Ensuring inclusive elections. INEC is now mandated to ensure that persons with disabilities and other vulnerabilities are properly assisted to participate in the process. 8. Election finance. Various new limits have been set for amounts of money that political parties and candidates can spend in elections, as well as the amounts that can be donated to them. 9. Redefinition of over voting. Unlike the 2010 Electoral Act which defined over voting in terms of registered voters, the new Act defines it in terms of accredited voters. This will greatly reduce the challenge encountered by the Commission whereby elections are easily declared inconclusive because they were tied to the number of registered voters, even where turnout is low. 10. Power of the Commission to review results. The law now empowers the Commission to review the result of elections to ensure that declarations are made voluntarily and that results emerge in accordance with the law, regulations, guidelines and manuals for elections. Related to the Electoral Act are the Regulations and Guidelines which derive from them. These Regulations and Guidelines, together with the Electoral Act and Constitution, constitute the core of the electoral legal framework. The early passage of the Electoral Act enabled the Commission to finalise the Regulations and Guidelines for the election. The review of the Regulations and Guidelines brought them in line with the Electoral Act. The Regulations and Guidelines will subsequently form the basis for the actual operational deployment for the general election, training of electoral staff and managing the entire election. VOTER REGISTRATION AND PERMANENT VOTERS CARDS (PVC) The has been a major component of our preparations for the 2023 general election. The law in Nigeria requires the Commission to conduct voter registration on a continuous basis. However, the law also provides dates for suspension of the process to prepare for general elections. Consequently, the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), as we call it, recommenced on 21st June 2021, following its suspension for the 2019 general election. The CVR continued until 31st July 2022 when we again suspended it for the 2023 general election. In the one-year period of the CVR, 12,298,944 new voters were registered out of which 9,518,188 were validated after a thorough clean-up of the data. We believe that the enthusiasm, especially among young people, was partly driven by the innovation of online pre-registration introduced by the Commission. This enabled intending registrants to commence the process online from a dedicated portal, book an appointment on the same portal and finally appear in person at an INEC office to have their biometrics taken. The clean-up of the register was painstakingly conducted by the Commission because the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) that we used to check the data, detected many multiple registrants. It seemed that many voters, probably out of ignorance, re-registered when they were already in the register from previous CVR. For two weeks from 12 25 November 2022, the Commission displayed the entire register online and physically in the 8,809 Wards and 774 Local Government Areas for claims and objections as provided by law. This included identifying persons who should not be in the register and making requests for various corrections. It was the first time the Commission would be displaying the register online for this purpose and it yielded fruits. Many claims and objections were made by citizens, which the Commission addressed, such as cases where many alien and unusual names were identified in a Local Government Area of the country. Expectedly, several other claims could not be backed by evidence for verification, as provided by law, thereby making it difficult for the Commission to take any further action. However, the Commission believes that it has a solid register for the election, which remains that largest database of Nigerians in existence. In any case, in every jurisdiction, improvement of the voter roll is a continuous process, and ours is no exception. Once the backbone is already there, as it is at present, future claims and objections will continue to perfect the register. Nigerian electoral law provides that voters require voters cards (Permanent Voters Cards PVCs) to be able to vote. Following the clean-up of the register, the cards of new voters and old voters who transferred their voting locations or made corrections to their personal details such as names, dates of birth, addresses etc. have been reprinted and made available for collection. The collection of PVCs commenced on 12th December 2022 and is scheduled to terminate on 22nd January 2023. It commenced at the 774 Local Government Areas of the country between 12th December 2022 and 5th January 2023. Thereafter, we devolved it to the 8,809 Wards across the country to run until 15th January 2023. Then from 16th January, we returned to the Local Government Areas, and this will last until 22nd January, when collection will be suspended for the election. However, given the enthusiasm of registered voters to collect their PVCs and the concerns expressed about the procedure and duration of the exercise, the Commission announced an extension of the collection at Ward level to end on 22nd January 2023 and subsequently revert to the Local Government level until 29th January 2023. State offices of the Commission have also been directed to review the procedure and remove any bottlenecks and deal with sundry allegations of extortion by staff, inducement of officials by registered voters seeking to collect their cards and discriminatory issuance of PVCs. ELECTION TECHNOLOGY In order to avoid the usual challenges with the application of new election technologies, the Commission introduced and tested our innovations for the election early enough. There are three critical components namely, the INEC Voter Enrollment Device (IVED) for improved registration of voters, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for both voter accreditation and e-transmission of results for collation and the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal to offer the public access to view Polling Unit results. The IVED has been deployed for recent registration of voters, which saw the inclusion of 9,518,188 new voters in the register of voters after a thorough clean-up, thereby bringing the total number of registered voters for the 2023 general election to 93,469,008 of which 37,060,399 (39.65%) are youth between the ages of 18 and 34, closely followed by 33,413,591 (35.75%) middle aged voters between 35 and 49. Together, they account for 70,473,990 (75.39%) of the total number of voters. Already their PVCs, which every voter requires for identification on election day, have been printed and are being collected nationwide. The collection of PVCs will end on 29th January 2023. For the BVAS and IReV, we initially deployed it on pilot basis in several bye-elections and off-cycle governorship elections. The IReV was used in the governorship elections in Edo State (September 2020) and Ondo State (October 2020). A combination of both BVAS and IReV was used in Anambra State (November 2021), Ekiti State (June 2022) and Osun State (July 2022). The BVAS was also used in the Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in February 2022. Deploying this technology in these major elections afforded the Nigerian public and the Commission opportunities to get acquainted with the device and to review its performance with a view to enhancing it towards the general election. For the Commission, several lessons have been learnt from these deployments and we believe that we are ready to deploy these technologies for the general election. EXPANSION OF VOTER ACCESS TO POLLING UNITS Election is about actualising the fundamental democratic right to vote. However, if one has the right to vote but has nowhere to vote, then that right is only nominal. This was the principle that made the Commission to work with a broad range of stakeholders to expand voter access to Polling Units in 2021. At the end of the exercise, the first in 25 years since 1996, Nigeria now has 176,846 Polling Units as against 119,974 previously. However, recent governorship and FCT elections indicate that voters did not take advantage of the establishment of these new Polling Units. There are still many crowded and sparsely populated Polling Units, sometimes in close vicinity of each other. The Commission has worked out modalities for addressing this problem. When the Commission embarked on the programme of expanding voter access to Polling Units, one of the objectives was the relocation of the Polling Units to better facilities, where necessary and available. Prior to this exercise, some Polling Units were in forests, shrines, dilapidated buildings and the homes of big men. This oftentimes curtailed access for certain politically-targeted voters. Many of the locations were also unsuitable for people with disability. I am glad that most of these problematic Polling Units have been relocated and voters will have a much better voting experience in 2023 than before. INCLUSIVE ELECTION Our Commission remains fully committed to making Nigerian elections inclusive. Over the years, we have worked with various stakeholders to increase the participation of young people and women. The work that the Not too Young to Run movement did in reducing the age requirement for contesting in some electoral positions has been underscored by the Commissions youth policy. In addition, the Commission produced a Gender Policy to serve in 2012 as a guide to a fairer working environment for women in the Commission and to increase the role of women in the electoral process. We remain committed to these policies. Apart from young persons and women, the Commission continues to work with the community of persons with disability to ensure that they are fully part of the electoral process. For instance, over the last two electoral cycles, the Commission has been working with partners such as Inclusive Friends Association (IFA) and The Albino Foundation (TAP) to provide braille ballot guides for visually impaired voters and magnifying classes for albino voters. Just last week, the Commission met with the community of persons with disability. We are working together for the launch of a data dashboard that captures all registered voters with disability in all Polling Units nationwide, disaggregated by type of disability. This will further ensure that we are able to better serve this community of voters. ELECTION STAFF RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING This is essential to the success of any election. For the 2023 general election, the Commission requires at least 707,384 Presiding and Assistant Presiding Officers, about 17,685 Supervisory Presiding Officers, 9,620 Collation/Returning officers, as well as 530,538 Polling Unit security officials, making a total of 1,265,227. These are not staff of the Commission and must be painstakingly recruited and trained to ensure that they are both fit-for-purpose and non-partisan. However, the greatest number of election officials in Nigeria are these temporary or ad hoc staff recruited principally from the among young Nigerian University and Polytechnic graduates enrolled in the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), students of tertiary institutions, staff of federal agencies and university lecturers. Preparing them adequately for their roles as polling officials, supervisors and result managers is central to a successful election. This has become even more critical given the growing deployment of technology in our elections. It has consistently been observed in previous elections that some ad hoc staff were unable to use devices for accreditation and result management. As a Commission, we continue to explore more effective and efficient ways of training this very diverse group within the usually short period of time available. Therefore, we have the Electoral Institute of the Commission, which is dedicated to election staff training. They have already finalised the training methodologies and manuals for the election to ensure that training commences early. INTER-AGENCY COLLABORATION AND SUPPORT What other agencies do in support of the Commission is very important to the quality of elections. In its work, the Commission depends a lot on especially the judiciary, security agencies and media organisations. Inter-agency collaboration and support are therefore key in the conduct of the 2023 general election. To this end, INEC has established a long-standing collaboration with key agencies. We interfaced with different levels of the judiciary in the run up to the 2019 general election, and that engagement was very fruitful. For the last three electoral cycles, the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) has been in existence and has supported the Commission. A lot of progress has been made in recent times through ICCES, especially regarding the production of a common code of conduct for security officials during elections, establishment of common situation rooms, expanding the Committee to include other agencies, the most recent being the involvement of agencies working on financial crimes. In addition, the Commission holds regular interactions with political parties, civil society organisations, the media, security agencies and development partners. Such engagements, collaborations and partnerships are critical to the success of the general election. The most recent inter-agency stakeholder initiative of the Commission relates to the problem of vote selling and vote buying at polling units on election day. The Commission, in conjunction with security agencies, anti-corruption agencies, media regulatory agencies, political parties and the civil society organisations launched this major initiative in December 2022. The aim is to ensure a more robust monitoring and reporting of the illegal business of vote buying and to strengthen control and enforcement. ELECTORAL OPERATIONS, PROCUREMENT AND LOGISTICS This is proceeding satisfactorily. On 4th January 2023, we received the final batch of the BVAS to be used for the election. That puts us on course to perform functional and integrity tests on every BVAS to be deployed for the election, which has been concluded in many States nationwide. In addition, we plan to conduct a series of mock trials of the BVAS with actual voters in real-time in parts of the country to further ascertain their functioning in actual election situations. Other sensitive materials, such as the ballots and result forms, are being printed. The Commission is progressively taking delivery of them and deploying them to location across the country. Logistics has often been a major Achilles heel of elections in Nigeria. We are determined to solve the challenge. We have established a Logistics Management System, which uses an Android application and web dashboard to track election materials from procurement through storage to delivery. For the first time, we have a comprehensive Election Logistics Framework (ELF) to guide logistics for the general elections from planning, through deployment to retrieval. This is the first deployment of an end-to-end logistics framework for elections. On election day transportation, the Commission recently signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the umbrella bodies of road transport and marine unions. We are presently working with the unions to deal with all the noticed bottlenecks to ensure a more efficient and timely delivery of materials to Polling Units. The Commission is happy with the extent of preparations for the 2023 general election. This is borne out by the timelines in our election timetable of which 11 of 14 activities have been accomplished. However, despite our extensive preparations, there are still some outstanding issues and challenges of concern, some of which are beyond the remit of the Commission, to which I will now turn. INSECURITY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ELECTION The perennial insecurity in many African countries remains a source of concern to election managers. Recently, heads of Electoral Commissions from nine countries in West and Central Africa, including Nigeria, met in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (7 9 December 2022), to discuss the impact of insecurity on elections and measures to mitigate the risk to election personnel, stakeholders, materials and processes. For many years, Nigeria has been grappling with its own insecurity. In the North-East, the long-standing Boko Haram insurgency has continued, albeit with attacks now more intermittent than regular. In the North-West and the North-Central, banditry, terrorism and the herder-farmer conflicts remain major challenges. In the South-South, the threat of renewed insurgency by groups demanding more share of petroleum revenue to the Niger Delta continues to simmer. In the South-West, although an earlier surge by a group demanding independence for the region has considerably dissipated, recent violent attacks on places of worship, rise in the activities of violent cults and kidnapping groups, as well as a history of violence involving groups seeking to control markets and motor parks remain strong. In the South-East, the lingering agitation for separatism championed by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) pose a major security threat. Not only have violent attacks by a number of armed groups increased, the long-standing weekly lockdown of the five States in that geo-political zone, continue to disrupt social and economic activities. There is no doubt that violence and threat of violence are major challenges to credible election in 2023. Violence makes deployment for elections difficult, particularly where some of the attacks are targeted at the electoral process and participants. However, the Commission has been working with security agencies and other stakeholders to establish mechanisms to understand, track and mitigate security challenges. We are working collaboratively in the context of ICCES, and we also have the Election Violence Mitigation and Advocacy Tool (EVMAT), which is a research and diagnostic tool for predicting and mitigating election violence prior to elections. In addition, there is the Election Risk Management Tool (ERM), which tracks and reports general risks to elections. In all, we feel assured by the actions we have taken and our collaboration with the security agencies. The 2023 general election will proceed as planned. There is no plan to postpone the election. A more pertinent issue for the Commissio9n is the fate of displaced voters. In 2015, an estimated 2 million voters were displaced by conflict in the North-East and North-Central part of the country. In response, the Commission worked with the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act to support voting by Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). This entailed making additional provisions for enumeration of IDP voters and for voting in their camps. In response to the IDP problem, the Commission recently revised its Policy on IDP Voting, which it has been using since 2015, to cater for new realities of displaced populations. Unfortunately, in some States it is difficult to identify the IDPs because they are not in camps but rather settled among extended family members, relations and good Samaritans within safer communities where they are not registered voters. As a result, it is very difficult for the Commission to provide necessary electoral services to such IDPs. However, those in camps within Nigeria will be catered for in line with the Commissions policy. ATTACKS ON INEC FACILITIES Related to the problem of insecurity is the rising attacks on INEC facilities, materials and staff. In four years (2019 2022), the Commission experienced fifty attacks on its facilities, mostly in the form of arson and vandalisation. In these attacks, buildings, election materials and vehicles were destroyed. Sometimes, these attacks have even targeted staff. For instance, during the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), some staff of the Commission in Imo State were attacked, resulting in injuries and death. However, the 2022 attacks constitute the deepest concerns for the Commission. This is so not only because they are increasingly happening closer to the general election, but also because some of them seem to be coordinated. Detailed account of these attacks has been published on the Commissions website. The implication of the attacks is that facilities must be rebuilt and several election materials must be replaced. Further, the Commission and security agencies must have to increase the number of their personnel to these facilities. Nevertheless, the Commission is determined to continue its preparations for the general election despite these attacks. So far, all the destroyed facilities will be rebuilt, or alternatives found, and the materials lost are being replaced. However, the Commission has repeatedly called for more concerted efforts to control the attacks. In December 2022, the National Assembly (House of Representatives) held a public hearing on these attacks, and we hope that authorities now have them under control since they appear to have abated. CAMPAIGN VIOLENCE One important provision of the new Electoral Act is the extension of campaign period from 60 to 180 days before the date of election. Campaign periods have traditionally seen increases in violent actions by political actors. These range from verbal attacks, hate speech, destruction of campaign materials by opponents such as billboards, to overt violence, sometimes leading to fatalities. We have seen some of these during the ongoing campaigns. Although the situation appears to be under control, yet the concerns still exist as we come closer to election day. The Commission believes that a peaceful electioneering campaign heralds a peaceful election. That is why we continue to engage with political actors and the security agencies to ensure that violence on the campaign trail does not snowball into major violence on election day or afterwards. Partly in consequence, the Commission issued specific guidelines on the Conduct of Political Rallies, Processions and Campaigns in November 2022. We are also closely monitoring and tracking compliance as we come closer to election day. A major contributory factor to violent campaigns is also a high degree of disinformation, misinformation and fake news. During the recent Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections held in June and July 2022 respectively, many observers noted the rise in fake news and disinformation. This has also been noticeable in the general election campaigns. Deeply worried about this, the Commission has been engaging with civil society organisations, media executives, oversight bodies, law enforcement agencies and owners of social media platforms to track and curtail the spread of fake news. CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND VOTE BUYING This is one important undermining factor of our elections to which the Commission is increasingly turning its attention. The Nigerian Constitution gives the Commission enormous responsibilities to oversight campaign fundraising and expenses of both candidates and political parties. The Electoral Act, in turn, specifies various limits to campaign spending and also empowers the Commission to set other limits. Experience however shows that political parties and candidates often observe these limits in the breach. Consequently, INEC is working on strengthening enforcement of these limits, including the use of a web-based application and dashboard for political parties to submit their expenditure for verification. Working with one of our development partners, we have developed the Political Parties Financial Reporting and Auditing System (PFRAS) for this purpose. We shall be deploying it soon and will train both our staff and political parties on its use. In the past, the reporting system had been tardy and unorganised, making it difficult to effectively oversight campaign finances. Vote buying or voter bribery by political parties and candidates provide a different, but related, set of challenges. It is not only illegal within the electoral legal framework, but also affects election administration. In the past, vote buying has been linked to disruption of elections at the polling units and even violent conduct. The practice takes several forms, one of which is the so-called mark and show technique in which a voter marks his/her ballot paper and shows it to the party agents present and later goes to an agreed location to collect the payment. In response to this, the Commission reorganised the Polling Units to ensure that the voting cubicle and ballot box are placed away from the party polling agents such that they are unable to see the marked ballots. In reaction, the vote buyers modified their approach to mark, snap and show. This time around, a voter takes his/her cellphone to the voting cubicle, marks the ballot, snaps it with the camera of the phone for presentation later for payment. Again, the Commission responded by banning the use of cellphones at the voting cubicles. However, voters are allowed to take their cellphones to the Polling Units, but they are not allowed to take them to the voting cubicles while marking their ballots. ELECTORAL LITIGATION AND ADJUDICATION While the Commission has the core responsibility to conduct free, fair and credible elections based on the law, the Judiciary is responsible for the interpretation of the law and adjudication of electoral disputes. In the discharge our responsibilities, few public institutions in Nigeria are subjected to more litigations than INEC. In the 2019 general election, the Commission was involved in 1,689 cases, made up of 852 pre-election, 807 post-election and 30 electoral offences cases. The Commission is committed to the rule of law without which democracy cannot thrive. Towards the 2023 general election, the Commission has been joined in 791 Court cases as at Friday 6th January 2023 involving intra-party elections and nomination of candidates by political parties. These are not cases involving elections conducted by the Commission or litigations initiated by it, but purely intra-party matters involving candidates and their political parties mainly due to the absence of internal democracy within parties. In fact, the Commission is only a nominal party in these cases but nevertheless has to be represented by lawyers in all court proceedings. The Commission will continue to obey clear orders of Courts because of the plethora of conflicting judgements from Courts of coordinate jurisdiction on the same subject matter, particularly those involving the leadership of political parties or the nomination of candidates for elections. PROSECUTION OF ELECTORAL OFFENCES Although the Commission is empowered by the Electoral Act to prosecute electoral offences, it lacks the power and resources to make arrests and thoroughly investigate electoral offences. While we will continue to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies for the arrest, investigation and prosecution of electoral offenders, most of those that are arrested, tried and convicted so far are the foot soldiers rather than the sponsors of electoral violence and other violations. Efforts at mitigating electoral malfeasance can only become effective with the arrest, prosecution and sanctioning the mother spiders to end their reign of impunity. It is for this reason that INEC supports the establishment of the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal imbued with the responsibility of prosecuting electoral offences as recommended in the reports of various committees set up the Federal Government, notably the Uwais Committee (2009), the Lemu Committee (2011) and the Nnamani Committee (2017). This will enable the Commission to focus on its core mandate of organising, supervising and conducting elections and electoral activities. While appreciating the considerable work already done, the Commission once again appeals to the National Assembly to expedite action on the conclusion of the legislative work on the Bill. It will be another enduring legacy of the 9th Assembly that will strengthen Nigerias democracy just like the passage of the Electoral Act 2022. DIASPORA VOTING Voting by millions of Nigerians living outside the country remains a recurrent issue for the Commission. Nigeria is said to have one of the largest diaspora communities in the world. Our quest for a fully inclusive electoral process in Nigeria will not be complete as long as these Nigerians are unable to vote. However, the Commission only acts in accordance with the electoral legal framework, which remains the main reason why we cannot implement diaspora voting for now. Both the 1999 Constitution and the 2022 Electoral Act provide that voters can only be registered and vote within the country. For instance, Section 77(2) of the Constitution provides that every citizen of Nigeria, who has attained the age of eighteen years residing in Nigeria at the time of the registration of voters for purposes of election to a legislative house, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter for that election. Sections 132(5) and 178(5) tie the eligibility to register and vote in executive elections (Presidential and Governorship) to the requirement of residency as in the case of legislative houses. The Commission hopes that these legal obstacles will be cleared at some point to enable Nigerians in the diaspora to vote in elections. CONCLUSION We have promised Nigerians and friends of Nigeria that the 2023 general election will be free, fair, credible and inclusive and we have left no stone unturned in preparing for it, despite several challenges. But all elections, especially those involving the type of extensive national deployment like we do in Nigeria, will naturally come with challenges. We have worked closely with stakeholders and development partners to confront these challenges and we are satisfied with our preparations so far. Our Commission does not take the pledge that we have repeatedly made to Nigerians lightly. We are leaving no stone unturned in our preparations. Our commitment remains only to Nigerians and not to any political party or candidate. That is what the law requires of us. We cherish the institutional independence and integrity of the Commission. With the enthusiasm of Nigerians, the goodwill of stakeholders and partners, and the commitment of the Commission, we believe that the 2023 general election will be among the best conducted in Nigeria. I thank you very much for the kind invitation and audience. Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says if elected, his administration will meet every demand of the residents in Ekiti state. Abubakar spoke on Tuesday while addressing residents of Ekiti at the presidential rally of the party in Ado Ekiti, the state capital. The former vice-president said he nearly shed tears of joy when he saw the crowd at the rally. When I came here today, what I saw almost brought tears to my eyes. When we came here, some people said we are not going to see anybody in Ekiti. We realised what they meant was to cripple public transportation in Ado-Ekiti and the whole of Ekiti state, he said. Again they did not stop there. They also caused an artificial scarcity of petroleum products so that even if you have your motorcycle or car, you will not be able to move; so that they can stop people from coming here. But you braved all their challenges. When I came into this arena, I almost shed tears of joy. What I can assure you is that if you vote PDP to power next month the way you have made us happy today we will also make you happy in Ekiti state. We will go out of our way to provide everything that you want us to provide. Some people are talking about the road from here to Akure we will do it. Not only that, all the roads that connect you to other states we shall construct them. Ekiti state is a centre of intellectual discourse. You have more educated people in this state than in any other state in the country. I can assure you that the PDP federal government will make use of the human capital that God has endowed you in Ekiti. It is your God-given gift. We shall utilise the human resources that God has given you. Abubakar added that women and youths in Ekiti will benefit from the fund he has planned to set aside to tackle unemployment. Young men and women who want to get involved in enterprises will be given loans and capital so that they can achieve their lifetime ambitions, he added. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) says the population of Nigeria is critical for Britain. Nigeria has an estimated population of about 200 million people. In an interview published by Sky News on Tuesday, Obi described the high population of Nigeria as a huge market for Britain. Obi said it is time for necessary changes to occur in the country. Were trying to say, and everybody can see, especially the youth, that somethings wrong and everyone can see that the country cannot continue on this trajectory leading to nowhere, he said. We have 200 million people, which is a huge market for Britain. And its critical for Britain as they leave the European Union they need Commonwealth members. The LP candidate was in the UK on Monday, where he spoke at the Chatham House on his plans for the country if elected in the forthcoming elections. Obi is one of the leading candidates for the coming presidential election alongside Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The former Anambra governor enjoys huge popularity on social media courtesy of a massive support base known as the Obidients. The elections are less than eight weeks away. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the presidential and national assembly elections will hold on February 25. The governorship and state house of assembly polls will take place on March 11. Wife of All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate, Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, has advised Nigerians to drive out her husband after four years if he is elected and fail to perform. Tinubu made the call at the South-East women rally for Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign in Owerri, Imo State capital. Lets leave religion aside; I am a Christian. Have you ever thought that one day a Christian-Christian candidate would emerge? What would be the reference point? We have tried the Muslim-Christian ticket, let us try this one too and after four years if they dont do well, you can drive them out, she said. She said Nigerias election should not be about faith but about voting a candidate who has the fear of God. I have true identity and credentials, Bakare fires back at Tinubus camp When you have a person who fears God, not a person who is a Christian or Catholic or Muslim, but a God fearing person. When a man who fears God is in power, he will treat you right, she said. Tinubu, who noted that she had served Nigeria as a governors wife and senator, assured the women that they would form a major percentage of the Tinubu/shettima administration. This is work time for Nigeria. We are not playing games. Women, we will remember you and I can assure that Asiwaju for sure will remember you. The Tinubu/Shettima have a big package for our youth. We will sit down and work with every region on their needs, she further assured the women. She stressed that the election was about a renewed hope of a country that is safe, progressive and possible, with investment in entrepreneurship and human capital. In his remarks, Gov. Hope Uzodimma urged the South East women to take a wise decision by voting the APC presidential candidate. Uzodimma said: I have decided to embark on political evangelism. I will continue to preach. I will continue to speak to my people to shine yours eyes because this is the time for us to take vital decision. We have decided that you are better off being in a united Nigeria. A united Nigeria will best accommodate the population of Ndigbo. The geographical strength in the South East is not enough to accommodate us, the governor said. He said the majority of successful men and women from the South East have their businesses in Lagos and Abuja, who would not want to experience abandoned property like after the civil war. I am talking of positive change in the South East. We must no longer talk about ourselves for the sake of our children, brothers and sisters. It is clear we have decided to be part and parcel of Nigeria, he added. The governor said the party in the zone was running a unified campaign for all the candidates of the party. Six-day (Tuesday through Sunday) print subscribers of the Watertown Daily Times are eligible for full access to NNY360, the NNY360 mobile app, and the Watertown Daily Times e-edition, all at no additional cost. If you have an existing six-day print subscription to the Watertown Daily Times, please make sure your email address on file matches your NNY360 account email. You can sign up or manage your print subscription using the options below. New Orleans North Shore neighbors plan to present several parades in 2023. Heres a list. Titans Friday, Feb. 3, 6:30 p.m., Slidell Rolling a night earlier than in past years, the co-ed krewe is devoted to the most ancient gods of Greek mythology. The parade proceeds from the corner of Spartan Drive and Berkely Street near Salmen High School, turns right on Pontchartrain Drive, merges onto Front Street, and turns right again on Gause Boulevard, ending near Kensington Boulevard. Krewe of Bilge Saturday, Feb. 4, noon, Eden Isle, Slidell Founded in 1978, the parade features decorated boats, cruising the canals of the Eden Isle maritime neighborhood, passing bars, restaurants, and docks where fans await. The route amid the canals is complicated, but the krewe website recommends Good spots for the public to see the parade and catch throws are The Northshore Blue Crab off Lakeview Drive, at various restaurants, bars and businesses along Highway 11, including The Landing and GilliGil's Island, and at the Firehouse on Marina Drive. For a map, visit the krewe website. Poseidon Saturday, Feb. 4, 6 p.m., Slidell Billed as The largest coed Krewe on the North Shore, with 850 members, Poseidon is named for the Greek god of the sea. The parade begins at the corner of Spartan Drive and Berkely Street, near Salmen High School, turns right on Pontchartrain Drive, merges onto Front Street, turns right on Gause Boulevard, and ends near Kensington Boulevard. For more information, visit the Poseidon website. Antheia New Krewe! Sunday, Feb. 5, 1 p.m., Slidell The all-female krewe rolls for the first time in 2023, with the theme Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Appropriate to coastal Louisiana, Antheia was the Greek goddess of wetlands and blossoming vegetation. Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), presents a certificate of order at a ceremony to promote Huang Ming, commander of the Central Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army, to the rank of general in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 18, 2023. The event was held by the CMC. (Xinhua/Li Gang) BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), on Wednesday presented a certificate of order at a ceremony to promote Huang Ming, commander of the Central Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army, to the rank of general. Xi extended his congratulations to Huang, who saluted Xi and all the attendees of the event. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the CMC, announced the order of promotion, which was signed by Xi, at the ceremony. The ceremony was presided over by He Weidong, another vice chairman of the CMC. The event was held by the CMC in Beijing. General is the highest rank for officers in active service in China. MBABANE Human Rights Lawyer Maxwell Nkambule has reported fresh threats on his life to the police. On December 7, 2022, Nkambule escaped unhurt after gunshots were fired at his car while returning from Big Bend to consult some of his clients. After the incident, the human rights lawyer described it as an assassination attempt, linked to his work as a legal representative of a number of suspects facing charges under the Suppression of Terrorism Act of 2018. In an interview yesterday, Nkambule said this month a drone was flown over his homestead for hours at night. Survey Such threat has been followed by nightly visits by unknown men. It started with a double cab bakkie and now it is a sedan, which arrives in the middle of the night, parks at the gate and the four men split in double and survey the place and come to casually and comfortably camp at the gate for an hour or two before leaving, said the human rights attorney. He said he had since alerted the police on this. What I fear most is vigilantism. If my neighbours would be caught in the crossfire, I would not be happy. I have been assured by concerned friends that they will keep watch and I am afraid if my worst fears are proven right on the identity of the people who are threatening my life and that of my family, said the lawyer. Nkambule went on to state that he kept on asking himself if it was a crime to defend certain people in the Kingdom of Eswatini. I repeat to the nation, that my only sin is to defend certain figures, who in the eyes of the perpetrators are already guilty even before the court pronounces. I appeal that we let the law take its course, said Nkambule. He said most disturbing was that the charges levelled against his clients were allegedly politically motivated. He said his clients remained innocent until proven guilty. Asked whether he was still representing the accused persons who were allegedly found in possession of explosives and the others, Nkambule responded to the affirmative. He said he was still representing the accused persons in all of the matters. He said he was working with an equally capable team which advised and assisted him. I can safely state that I am within the country, in a place of safety. I was ready to attend the trial of one of the various contentious matters. It was set for three days, unfortunately the parties received the correspondence late yesterday (Tuesday) that the trial will not be proceeding. I cannot deny, however, that I still have to take instructions from my clients and have a full discussion around issues of security for myself as the threats escalate and remain real since last months assassination attempt, he said. He alleged that what remained clear was that the Kingdom of Eswatini was in some form of an undeclared war. Nkambule was not present when the duo of Musa Clement Kunene and Msindiso Ntshalintshali appeared at the High Court on Tuesday. They were in court for their third remand hearing before Judge Nkosinathi Maseko. The situation was saved by another well-known Human Rights lawyer, Sipho Gumedze, as he stood in for him (Nkambule). The pair was allegedly found in possession of two grenades, 20 live rounds of ammunition and an Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force (UEDF) pair of trousers. Arrested Kunene and Ntshalintshali were arrested by members of the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) on November 8, 2022 at Mbhuleni, Matsapha. Nkambule also represents the three men who are alleged to have killed members of the security forces. The accused in this matter are Ncamiso Mabuyakhulu, who is a member of the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO), Philani Sihlongonyane, a member of the Swaziland Liberation Movement (SWALIMO) and their co-accused, German Robert Dlamini, whose political home is uncertain. They are facing 29 counts under the Suppression of Terrorism Act. He also represents the three men who are accused of burning the Ngudzeni Inkhundla building. These are Bongani Goodman Mamba, Bongumusa Kenneth Kunene and Sibongiseni Hoshoba Shongwe. Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati only confirmed that Nkambule reported the threats and they were currently investigating same. MANZINI A soldier is accused of using army resources, including other soldiers, in his personal battle after he called colleagues on his family and community members, claiming they were members of the solidarity forces. In the process, about 11 community members of Ludzeludze, where the incident took place, had to be rushed to hospital with serious injuries, while others managed to escape from members of the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force (UEDF), who were heavily armed. The incident took place last Friday night at the soldiers parental home at Ludzeludze (Mhlaleni), in the Manzini Region. The military man, who is based at Ngabezweni Royal Residence, is said to have allegedly called his colleagues and informed them that he was being attacked by members of the solidarity forces at his parental home, yet he and his gang were fighting with some of his siblings and community members. It is alleged that he also told his colleagues that the solidarity forces were those who also torched a house belonging to the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, Prince Sicalo, at Mbekelweni. According to a source close to the matter, the military man in question was involved in a family dispute over land and on Friday night, he allegedly called some gang members from Matsapha (Mbhuleni, Mbikwakhe and Mhlaleni, among other areas), to come and deal with his family members, whom he was fighting with. The source said at around 8:30pm, while one of his siblings was enjoying alcoholic beverages at a nearby shop, he received a call, informing him to rush home as there were people who were throwing stones at their mothers house. He said the sibling asked some of his friends to accompany him to his home and when they arrived, they found an armed group of men making noise and throwing stones at their mothers house. He claimed that they approached his soldier brother, who was in his house and he responded with harsh words and told them that he was ready to fight for the land. Danger Upon seeing that their lives could be in danger as the group of men were armed with knives and bush knives, they called out for help and community members from the neighbouring homesteads arrived. He said the community members assisted them to fight off the group of men and they managed to apprehend two of them, whom when they assaulted, claimed that they were asked by their brother (soldier) to come and fix them (siblings). He said after the soldier had called for back-up, towards 10pm, a team of about eight soldiers arrived in a white Ford Ranger double cab, with foreign registration numbers. He said they found another group of community members by the shop and they surrounded them. He said they ordered them to go back to where they were coming from and when they dispersed - going to their respective homes, the soldiers assaulted them. However, he said some of them managed to flee from the soldiers and disappeared into the thick of the night. In the process, he said the soldiers fired warning shots. They forced them (at gunpoint) to go to the parental home of the soldier in question and along the way, they were assaulting and insulting them, the source said. When they arrived at the soldiers parental home, the source disclosed that the community members (about 10) were ordered to lie facing down and the soldiers used an assortment of weapons, mainly a log, to assault them. Anyone who dared lift his face was assaulted with either a stone or kicked, the source alleged. For every move they made, the resident detailed that they were assaulted and at times, the soldiers would shoot on the ground, in-between them. We were kicked while lying on the ground while the soldier was using his phone illuminating our faces to see who we were. He was also calling out names of the people he wanted, but he realised that none of them were there, he said. Nonetheless, the attacked residents said the soldier claimed that they knew where his enemies were, and that they should reveal them. Puzzled, one of the residents disclosed that they asked how that was possible, since they were unaware about what was going on. Meanwhile, the community member shared that they were heavily assaulted. Our explaining did not yield any results because the assaults persisted. This time, some of us were already heavily bleeding. I tried looking up and one of the soldiers assaulted me. Frustrated, we tried fighting them off but they fired shots until we ended up giving in to the assault, he said. The community member mentioned that the soldiers took stones and hit each one of them on the head and they were badly injured in the process. He said they were beset with fear of not being aware if some of them were still alive as the soldiers allegedly kept on using stones and logs to assault them on their heads and all over the body. Later on, he said some of the family members called the police, who came some hours later (after midnight), after they had been heavily assaulted by the fully armed soldiers. He said the police rushed the injured community members to hospital. Gun After the police had left, the source said the soldiers allegedly gave their colleague in question a gun, supposedly to protect himself. He alleged that they also broke into some of the houses searching for other family members and they later went back to their workstation. However, the source claimed that the military man then terrorised his neighbours as he allegedly went house to house looking for those who had come to his home. In the process, he would fire gunshots in the air and in one homestead, he dragged a man out of his house and assaulted him, the source alleged. Meanwhile, it was gathered that about a few metres away from the shop where the locals were collected by the soldiers, was the army commanders church. It was revealed that some of those attacked were congregants in the church. On Saturday morning, the source alleged that the soldier threatened to shoot some of the community members, who had returned from hospital and went to his parental home to look for their shoes. He said later on, the soldier learnt that the community members had called the police and reported that he was allegedly threatening them with a gun. Therefore, he claimed that the military man called his colleagues and handed over the gun. Later on in the day (Saturday), the source said they saw the military man loading all his belongings into a truck and left his parental home, together with his family (two wives and children). They said they did not know where he went to and the family members had not communicated with him since the incident. As such, this publication could not get a comment from him as even the family members who were found in the area yesterday, claimed that they did not have his mobile number. Meanwhile, Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said the matter was reported to the police and it was under investigation. The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 specifications have been leaked, as have the screen sizes for the numerous laptops that will be joining the Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 at the ironically packed Unpacked event. The Galaxy Book3, Galaxy Book3 Pro, Galaxy Book3 360, and Galaxy Book3 Ultra are all expected to make an appearance. 4 Reviews As if Samsung wasnt already preparing enough for the February 1 Galaxy Unpacked event with the Galaxy S23 smartphone series, there will also be quite a range of Galaxy Book laptops on show, with five SKUs from the Galaxy Book3 family to be launched along with the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Go series. We have reported on a leak concerning the Galaxy Book3 range in the past, and it seems the details contained in it were accurate. A report from MySmartPrice, with assistance from noted leaker Ishan Agarwal, has seemingly confirmed that Samsung will unveil the Galaxy Book3, Galaxy Book3 Pro, Galaxy Book3 360, Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, and the Galaxy Book3 Ultra. There are scant details on offer for four out of the five laptops, with the source only providing available display sizes for the time being. So, the Galaxy Book3 and Galaxy Book3 360 will come in 15-inch forms while the Galaxy Book3 Pro will offer users a choice of either a 14-inch or 16-inch display. As for the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra and Book3 Pro 360, these will come in the larger 16-inch forms only. Fortunately, full specifications are given for the 2-in-1 Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, and it appears to be a shortlist of useful upgrades in comparison to the current Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 convertible. Therefore, the predecessors Alder Lake chip gets boosted to either an Intel Core i5-1340P or i7-1360P (both with Iris Xe graphics), and as mentioned above the screen is lengthened to 16 inches from a previous maximum of 15.6 inches. The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 will also offer up to 16 GB DDR5 RAM, up to 1 TB NVMe PCIE Gen4 SSD, a 76-Whr battery, 65 W charging support, and it will supposedly come with an S-Pen in the box. The Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, which should dazzle with a Super AMOLED panel (2880x1800 resolution), will apparently weigh just 1.6 kg and be 13 mm thick. In addition, the Windows 11 laptop will reportedly be fitted with quad speakers that have been optimized by AKG. Buy the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro on Amazon If the unpaid labor of human breast milk were to be monetized, it would contribute to an increased GDP while increasing nutritional intake from infants in rewarding... Read More SPRINGFIELD Legal challenges to Illinois' semiautomatic-weapons ban began Wednesday with a federal complaint that the 8-day-old law prohibits "commonly possessed" and constitutionally protected guns. A state court pleading was also filed Wednesday, questioning the law's exemptions based on a person's employment. The state lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to stop enforcement of the law, which was inspired by the mass shooting that killed seven and injured 30 at the July Fourth parade in Highland Park. The lawsuit was filed by Accuracy Firearms of Effingham, about 100 miles northeast of St. Louis, and other plaintiffs. The law bans dozens of specific types of rapid-fire handguns and rifles, .50-caliber guns and attachments; it also limits cartridges to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for pistols. An emergency hearing on the restraining order was scheduled for Wednesday morning in Effingham County Circuit Court. Attorney Thomas DeVore, last fall's unsuccessful Republican candidate for Illinois attorney general, said the law is unconstitutional because of its exemptions. The ban on semiautomatic weapons does not apply to people in certain positions, such as prison guards or other law enforcement officers. "It violates the equal protection clause because it carves out a whole section of people," DeVore said. "They are free to do what they will based on their employment." Jordan Abudayyeh, spokeswoman for Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who signed the law Jan. 10, said the Democrat is confident of its constitutionality. "This legislation was the result of hundreds of hours of collaboration and cooperation between legal experts, legislators and advocates and it makes Illinois a safer place for every resident," she said in a statement. "Despite political grandstanding from those more beholden to the gun lobby than to the safety of their constituents, this law is in effect and protecting Illinoisans from the constant fear of being gunned down in a place of worship, at a parade or on a street corner." Dane Harrel, a southern Illinois gun store owner, is the lead plaintiff in the federal test of the ban. Backed by the Illinois State Rifle Association and two other nonprofit gun-rights groups, Harrel contends that the new law unconstitutionally bans commonly used weapons, not dangerous or unusual guns, which is the only justification for government regulation, according to the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case known as Heller. "The rifles that Illinois bans as 'assault weapons' are, in all respects, ordinary semiautomatic rifles," the lawsuit says. "To the extent they are different from other semiautomatic rifles, their distinguishing features make them safer and easier to use. But even if they are considered as a separate group of 'assault weapons,' they cannot be banned because they are not dangerous and unusual." The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, where gun-rights advocacy is strong. The federal court's northern district base is Chicago, where gun violence produces a much stronger attitude toward regulation. In recent years, tin mills have been idled around the country, including in Gary and East Chicago. Now a major steelmaker and the United Steelworkers union are asking the federal government to take action to protect domestic producers of tin products, which is used in canned foods, paint buckets and other packaging applications. Cleveland-Cliffs and the USW filed trade cases with the International Trade Commission against imported tin mill products they say were unfairly traded. They are asking for countervailing duties on tin products from China and antidumping tariffs on tin imports from China, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom. "The United States is still the largest importer of steel in the world, despite being the most environmentally friendly steel-producing nation," Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, CEO and President Lourenco Goncalves said. "As our filing shows, there has been a significant surge in unfairly priced tinplate imports flooding the United States over the past two years, and we cannot let this persist. We welcome competition with any and all imported steel as long as our U.S. trade laws are respected, and we will use all the tools at our disposal to remedy the situation. Cleveland-Cliffs makes tin products at its mill in Weirton, West Virginia, which employs 900 people. It sells about 300,000 tons a year of tin products, or about 2% of its total volume. The company is charging that eight countries are subsidizing tin products or selling their products for less than normal value in the United States, with an aim toward gaining long-term market share by undercutting domestic producers. Cleveland-Cliffs is asking for tariffs of 78.29% on Canada, 130.88% on China, 43.64% on Germany, 124.17% to 294.27% on the Netherlands, 13.46% to 110.84% on South Korea, 47.22% to 60.12% on Taiwan, 96.51% to 106.43% on Turkey and 110.81% on the United Kingdom. Imports of tin products from those countries rose 21% between 2019 and 2021 and by another 21% through November 2022. The International Trade Commission will hold judicial proceedings, decide if domestic steelmakers have suffered provable injury from imports and then potentially impose duties to make imports from the offending countries more costly, allowing domestic producers to sell tin products at more profitable price points. U.S. Steel just idled its tin plant at Gary Works after idling East Chicago Tin a few years ago, citing a weak market for tin in both instances. MBABANE Who are the foreign men in the company of a police tactical unit? This question has been widely asked by those who have occasionally seen two men in the company of the police squad during operations and roadblocks. As the questions grew, so have speculations and rumours surrounding their presence. Government Spokesperson Alpheous Nxumalo said the State felt obliged to dispel certain rumours alleging that the men were hit men or mercenaries. Nxumalo was responding to allegations made on social media that men of foreign origin had been seen armed, in the company of local police officers. When the Times of Eswatini asked him on Monday to respond to these allegation, he could not give a clear response, calling upon this newspaper to furnish him with the names of emaSwati who were killed by the men as insinuated in the social media reports. Statement However, yesterday morning, Nxumalo issued a public statement where he refuted the issue of hit men. Government wishes to strongly refute the false information currently circulating across social media platforms with regard to the alleged involvement in Eswatini of government-hired foreign hit men and mercenaries, he said. Nxumalo assured the nation that no hit men had been hired to attack emaSwati, saying such sentiments had no basis whatsoever and should be rejected by all peace-loving emaSwati. Ordinarily, government is not in the habit of addressing State security matters as this is highly classified information that may be detrimental to national security. However, in this case, government is compelled to respond in order to dispel the circulating rumours, he said. The allegations gained momentum when the banned Swaziland Solidarity Network spoke on the SABC-owned Ligwalagwala FM about the alleged presence of the hit men. The organisation spoke through its Spokesperson Lucky Lukhele. The SSN also circulated a press release in which a South Africa-based security company was named as the employer for the alleged men. The Times investigated the said company named in the SSN statement and found that it had stopped working in 1994 after it was bought by another security company. A manager, who said he worked for a company known as Excel Security Services that used the same phone number as the one named in the social media report, said his company did not take over from the said security company. That company was sold to another company in 1994. I dont even know if the company that bought them still exists itself. We are a completely different company to the one you are asking about, he said. Meanwhile, another company also named as the employer of the hit men refuted ever having a contract with Eswatini Government or assisting the State with anything. Meanwhile, social media groups continued to unveil names of two men accused to be working with the police. Details When Nxumalo was asked to provide the finer details of these operations as had been alleged on social media, he said: Government has issued a statement, thats all and I can assist no more than that. Earlier on, he had also suggested that questions be referred to the national security services. and I hope they will assist you, he said. Questions were forwarded to the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati on Monday, but she said there had been no answers prepared by late yesterday. Vilakati had been asked to state the role of the men seen in the company of police officers. When Lukhele was asked to comment on Nxumalos rebuttal, he did not revert by late yesterday. Social media sites said the foreign men were seen at work a week before the Main Incwala Ceremony in the company of the police during roadblocks and operations. Prince Harry's memoir, "Spare," has been a smash hit that's driven business to Northwest Indiana bookstores, sparking more interest in reading about the royals. The memoir filled with explosive revelations about the royal family sold 1.4 million copies in its first week in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, crushing Penguin Random House's first-day sales record. It's already in its second run. It's led to a rush at Region bookstores like Barnes & Noble in Valparaiso, Books-a-Million in Hobart, and Miles Books and 2nd and Charles in Highland. It also set single-day sales records at Barnes & Noble. It is thrilling as a bookseller to have a massive release like this to start our new year, said Shannon DeVito, director of books at Barnes & Noble. We are experiencing the most extraordinary first-day sales, buoyed by the explosive headlines and litany of press. The leaking of extracts has only heightened the frenzy and is drawing customers into our bookstores in amazing numbers. "The appeal of 'Spare' is vast, piquing the interest of fans and followers of the Sussexes, as well as their critics, and anyone interested in the British royal family. Penguin Random House did a print run of 2 million copies for what's expected to be one of the biggest books of the year. Prince Harry partnered with J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former newspaper reporter and author of "The Tender Bar" who helped Andre Agassi write his autobiography, "Open," and Phil Knight with his memoir, "Shoe Dog" two of the best-selling memoirs ever. "We have had a fair share of inquiries and sales," Miles Books owner Jim Roumbos said. "People seem to be willing to read his version of things. It has spurred a renewed interest in books on the royals." Customers have been seeking out more books about the royal family and past kings and queens at Miles Books in downtown Highland. "I'm almost sold out on books on" Queen Elizabeth II, he said. "I still have some Diana books in the store." The much-anticipated bestseller "Spare" has captivated the public imagination with its behind-the-scenes tales of palace intrigue that have lifted the veil on how the royals really live. "It is a continuation of the fascination with the tragic marriage and untimely death of Princess Diana," Roumbos said. "It's similar to when people see flashing lights, which creates a gawkers' delay." People are still fascinated with Princess Diana, said Jonathan W. Thomas, the LaPorte-based writer behind the Anglotopia web publications about all things Great Britain. "It really all has to do with their obsession with Princess Diana. He's her legacy and they simply can't get enough of him. The book is massively indiscreet, airing dirty laundry that we otherwise wouldn't be privy to," he said. "It helps that he married an American, who has seemingly been cast out of the Royal Family. Americans love a celebrity story that they have no stake in. They enjoy the drama and the speculation. Whereas in Britain, it's a more serious thing that is going on - he's still an heir in line for the throne and his brother will be King and this family drama has a long timescale on it. In America, he's just another celebrity trying to make a name for himself and get Hollywood money, which the British view with suspicion and don't approve of." Already the most commercially successful memoir since Michele Obama's, "Spare" has been published in 16 languages. Lines formed outside some bookstores around the country on the day of its publication. While many books by public figures can be fairly categorized as celebrity memoir, 'Spare' is not that," Random House Group President and Publisher Gina Centrello said. Vulnerable and heartfelt, brave and intimate, 'Spare' is the story of someone we may have thought we already knew, but now we can truly come to understand Prince Harry through his own words. "Looking at these extraordinary first-day sales, readers clearly agree, 'Spare' is a book that demands to be read, and it is a book we are proud to publish. VALPARAISO A 37-year-old Kouts man pleaded guilty this week to repeatedly molesting a young Kouts girl beginning nearly three years ago, court records show. Cody Jeralds pleaded guilty to a felony count of child molesting in return for a 4-year sentence with all but time served suspended and to be served on formal probation, according to the proposed plea taken under advisement by Porter Superior Court Judge Mike Fish. The plea came just ahead of a Jan. 31 trial scheduled in the case. If the plea is accepted by the judge, Jeralds will be required to register as a sex offender and comply with those requirements, records show. He will also be designated as a sexually violent predator and will be required to surrender all firearms to the Kouts Police Department for destruction. Jeralds will further undergo a psychosexual evaluation and participate in recommended therapy, records show. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 13. The incidents are alleged to have occurred between March 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021. The young girl had returned home from a "good touch, bad touch" program at her school to inform her mother that Jeralds had been sexually abusing her a few times a month for the past year, according to charging documents. She knew Jeralds. The girl, who was 8 and 9 at the time, told police that Jeralds would have her give him "thumb massages" over the outside of a blanket, police said. "Victim 1 stated that she realized that even though Cody was not touching her, having her touch him in his private area felt wrong," charging documents say. She also said Jeralds would have her sit on his lap with her back to him during some of the incidents, police said. The girl's mother said she confronted Jeralds about the allegations and he claimed that the girl was massaging his hand, police said. CHICAGO Just more than a year after former Republican Portage Mayor James Snyder was granted the right to remain out of prison while appealing his federal bribery and tax violation convictions, the 44-year-old was given his day in court. Defense attorney Andrea E. Gambino argued Wednesday morning that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago should vacate Snyder's convictions, in part, because of what she claims was a government intrusion into the attorney-client relationship as it pertains to the seizure of Snyder's personal and professional email accounts as part of the criminal investigation. "What's the harm here?" one of the judges asked. Gambino did not have a specific response, agreeing instead to the judge's suggestion that the panel presumes harm was done. Federal prosecutor Debra Bonamici defended the government's multilayer screening process to combat the alleged intrusion. When asked by a judge what would stop the government from future breaches if Snyder's conviction is allowed to stand, Bonamici said the filtering teams are motivated to maintain the integrity of prosecutions. "It doesn't help the government ... to make mistakes," she said. The court took the appeal under consideration and made no mention of how long a ruling would take. Snyder, who has a 21-month prison sentencing hanging over his head, was found guilty twice most recently in March 2021 of soliciting and accepting a $13,000 bribe in 2014 in return for steering a $1.125 million contract for the purchase of garbage trucks for the city of Portage to the local Great Lakes Peterbilt company. Federal prosecutors said he also obstructed the Internal Revenue Services efforts to collect unpaid taxes on a private mortgage company he ran. "The evidence at trial did not support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Snyder had accepted a bribe or reward," Snyder's defense team argues. Snyder further claims that his rights under the speedy-trial rules were violated and insufficient evidence was presented at trial. Bonamici argued Wednesday that "ample evidence" was presented to prove the bribery charge. She asked the court to affirm Snyder's conviction and sentence. State lawmakers are considering changing Indiana's fundamental governing document to give judges greater authority to keep individuals accused of crimes locked in jail even before they've been convicted. The Indiana Constitution currently declares that any person accused of a crime, except murder or treason, automatically is eligible for pre-trial release provided sufficient bail is paid to guarantee the defendant's appearance at trial. Bail also is required in cases of murder or treason except "when the proof is evident, or the presumption strong," according to the 1851 Constitution. State Sen. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, wants to amend the Constitution to permit judges to additionally deny bail in any case where "the accused poses a substantial risk to the public," and the evidence leading to a potential conviction is strong. "There are times when it is simply too dangerous to public safety to release a defendant before trial," Koch told the Senate Committee on Corrections and Criminal Law on Tuesday. Koch's Senate Joint Resolution 1 does not define "substantial risk to the public" or limit a judge's ability to deny bail to individuals accused of specific offenses. Rather, judges would have the discretion to keep any individual accused, but not convicted, of a felony or misdemeanor crime locked up until trial potentially for years so long as the judge asserts the person is a substantial risk to the public. Critics of the measure said that idea undermines the presumption of innocence at the core of America's criminal justice system, including the notion that it's better for 100 guilty individuals to go free than to take away the liberty of a single innocent person. Bernice Corley, executive director of the Indiana Public Defender Council, said changing the Constitution in this way also threatens to disrupt decades of case law and will create massive uncertainty as mostly elected judges in all 92 counties work out what "substantial risk" means. She said Indiana courts already "can absolutely do what they need to do to help the public feel safe" using high bail amounts or restrictive bail conditions for individuals released from jail to await and help their attorney prepare for trial. That argument resonated with state Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, whose concerns about the broad language of the proposed amendment prompted her to vote against it, alongside state Sens. Rodney Pol Jr., D-Chesterton, and Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis. However, five committee Republicans, including state Sen. Mike Bohacek, R-Michiana Shores, voted to advance it to the full Senate for further action. A constitutional amendment must be endorsed by a majority in both the Indiana House and Senate, and re-approved by both chambers following election of all 100 House members, to be placed on a general election ballot for possible ratification by Hoosier voters. Meet the 2023 Northwest Indiana legislative delegation State Rep. Carolyn Jackson, D-Hammond State Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago State Rep. Ragen Hatcher, D-Gary State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso State Rep. Pat Boy, D-Michigan City State Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-Portage State Rep. Mike Aylesworth, R-Hebron State Rep. Mike Andrade, D-Munster State Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary State Rep. Hal Slager, R-Schererville State Rep. Kendell Culp, R-Rensselaer State Rep. Julie Olthoff, R-Crown Point State Rep. Jim Pressel, R-Rolling Prairie State Sen. Dan Dernulc, R-Highland State Sen. Lonnie Randolph, D-East Chicago State Sen. Eddie Melton, D-Gary State Sen. Rodney Pol Jr., D-Chesterton State Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso State Sen. Rick Niemeyer, R-Lowell State Sen. Mike Bohacek, R-Michiana Shores U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., is part of a congressional delegation touring Taiwan this week to reinforce America's support for the island nation located southeast of China. The two-term Hoosier lawmaker is meeting with senior Taiwan government officials and business leaders through Wednesday to discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade and investment, global supply chains and other significant issues of mutual interest. "Taiwan is a friend to the United States and to Hoosiers," Young said. "Republicans and Democrats in Congress intend to do whatever we can to support, broaden, strengthen and deepen the U.S.-Taiwan relationship." China has become increasingly aggressive toward Taiwan in recent years by repeatedly sending ships and military jets toward the island, which China considers part of its territory. In response, Congress has stepped up American aid to Taiwan, including appropriating in December $10 billion in military grant assistance to Taiwan through 2027. The Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Young to the country and said his visit "underlines the importance of a robust Taiwan-U.S. partnership." "We look forward to constructive conversation about multi-faceted collaboration over our valued supporters 3-day stay," it said. In addition to military aid for Taiwan, the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act contained a Young-backed provision authorizing the State Department to further counter Chinese expansionism by bolstering U.S. diplomatic outposts in other Pacific Island nations. Back home in Indiana, state Rep. Mike Andrade, D-Munster, recently was named co-chairman of the General Assembly's Taiwan Friendship Caucus, which aims to grow long-standing diplomatic and business ties between Indiana and Taiwan. "While there may be a language barrier and an ocean between our two countries, the values we share democracy, freedom, and equality transcend any outward differences," Andrade said. "By working together, Indiana and Taiwan can attain economic prosperity and mutual cultural respect." Gallery: Take a virtual tour of Indiana's state parks Brown County State Park Chain O' Lakes State Park Charlestown State Park Clifty Falls State Park Falls of the Ohio State Park Fort Harrison State Park Harmonie State Park Lincoln State Park McCormick's Creek State Park Mounds State Park O'Bannon Woods State Park Ouabache State Park Pokagon State Park Potato Creek State Park Prophetstown State Park Shades State Park Shakamak State Park Spring Mill State Park Summit Lake State Park Tippecanoe River State Park Turkey Run State Park Versailles State Park White River State Park Whitewater Memorial State Park The continuing existence of township assessors may again be put on the ballot nearly two decades after citizens in 13 Indiana townships across nine counties voted to retain the local government office. Legislation advanced 9-2 by a House committee Tuesday directs a question be placed on the 2024 general election ballot asking all voters in counties that still have township assessors including Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties whether the office should be abolished and its duties transferred to the county assessor on Jan. 1, 2026. The sponsors of House Bill 1035, state Reps. Jim Pressel, R-Rolling Prairie, and Karen Engleman, R-Georgetown, pointed out the costs of operating the remaining township assessor offices already are borne by their counties, so eliminating the elected township assessors will reduce the size of government, bolster efficiency and potentially save money. "I just think the process is better when we just have a county assessor," Engleman said. "I don't see a reason to elect two people to do the job." The role of the county or township assessor is to calculate the value of all the real and personal property in their jurisdiction. Property taxes then are collected by the county treasurer based on the property values determined by the assessor. State Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, who opposed the measure, said township assessors often possess specialized knowledge of local property values and influencing factors, particularly in large counties like Lake County. He said that maintaining township assessors also enable property owners to pursue appeals close to home without having to make a trip to the county assessor's office in Crown Point. Smith also read the committee a letter from Merrillville-based Ross Township Assessor Angela Guernsey who claimed that getting rid of township assessors will save no money since the county assessor will need to hire additional staff, may lead to inaccurate assessments and produce poorer government service. "I don't think the bill is necessary at this point. I'm not hearing any complaints from anyone," Smith said. "I have not seen this as a concern of the public. This is something one person has decided should be done, and I don't think it's good for these areas." Lake County has the greatest number of township assessors remaining in the state, serving Calumet, Center, Hobart, Ross and St. John townships. Portage Township in Porter County and Michigan Township in LaPorte County also still have township assessors. Lake County Assessor LaTonya Spearman said she's keeping an eye on the proposal but is not at the time taking a position on whether township assessors should be eliminated. "We've worked hard over the past several years to bridge the gap between our offices and build positive working relationships to which I believe weve had some success," Spearman said. Under the proposal, which now goes to the full House, the question of eliminating township assessors and transferring their duties to the county assessor would be posed to voters as: "Shall the county discontinue paying for the cost of township assessors in the county?" State Rep. Pat Boy, D-Michigan City, said that question is misleading since the county still will be paying the cost of carrying out the duties of township assessors. She also believes only voters in townships with assessors should be asked the question, instead of every voter in a county with a township assessor. Engleman said because everyone in the county currently is paying for township assessors all county voters should get to weigh in on whether the office continues to exist. Meet the 2023 Northwest Indiana legislative delegation State Rep. Carolyn Jackson, D-Hammond State Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago State Rep. Ragen Hatcher, D-Gary State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso State Rep. Pat Boy, D-Michigan City State Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-Portage State Rep. Mike Aylesworth, R-Hebron State Rep. Mike Andrade, D-Munster State Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary State Rep. Hal Slager, R-Schererville State Rep. Kendell Culp, R-Rensselaer State Rep. Julie Olthoff, R-Crown Point State Rep. Jim Pressel, R-Rolling Prairie State Sen. Dan Dernulc, R-Highland State Sen. Lonnie Randolph, D-East Chicago State Sen. Eddie Melton, D-Gary State Sen. Rodney Pol Jr., D-Chesterton State Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso State Sen. Rick Niemeyer, R-Lowell State Sen. Mike Bohacek, R-Michiana Shores EAST CHICAGO An excavator rumbled through the narrow streets of the Marktown planned worker housing community designed to resemble a traditional English village, cutting a path of muddy tread marks through the lawn and chomping into the gable roof duplex. It tore away at the century-old building until nothing was left but a pile of rubble, a basement overflowing with heaping debris, crumbled brick and twisted metal. A contractor razed two city-owned homes in the oasis of worker housing designed by the noted architect Howard Van Doren Shaw that's nestled amid vertically integrated steel mills, oil refineries and some of the heaviest industry on earth. East Chicago said the homes were deemed unsalvageable as the city is about to embark on a renovation project in which homeowners can get up to $40,000 to fix up their properties. Residents were caught by surprise when the homes at 410 and 412 Prospect St. came down on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. They said four other houses were demolished in the last few weeks across from the community center at the corner of Spruce Avenue and Grove Street, where a sign on temporary fencing around a vast dirt lot warns people not to trespass. "We were promised homes would be restored or renovated. Instead, they're being torn down," said Paul Myers, president of the Marktown Historic District, whom a former East Chicago mayor dubbed the "unofficial and unindicted mayor of Marktown." "These are stable cast-concrete homes with basements. There's no reason to do this. There's a house on the corner with a hole in the roof big enough to drop my car in that they haven't re-roofed, and they're tearing down homes instead," Myers said. The houses that were razed were long vacant. They're part of a neighborhood that's listed on the National Register of Historic Places and that was featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not, which noted it's a place where residents park on the sidewalks and walk in the streets since the village-like roads are so narrow. In 1917, industrialist Clayton Mark built Marktown in soggy marshland just south of Lake Michigan for steelworkers at Mark Manufacturing Co., which is today part of the biggest Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor steelmaking complex. Though the businesses, bars and boarding houses shuttered over the years, the buildings remained intact, if in some cases dilapidated, until the 2010s when BP started acquiring and tearing down some of the properties in acquired in the shadow of its hulking refinery. "These are solid fine properties, and they're tearing them down," Myers said. "These are all original buildings from the first year of construction when Marktown was built. Our neighborhood went on the National Register of Historic Places the same year as Pullman on the South Side of Chicago and after city and state preservation that was declared a National Monument and is now a federal park. That's pretty impressive. All we get here is water bills." East Chicago's Marktown neighborhood is still of such historic note that documentary filmmakers from Lake Forest, Illinois, visited Myers on Tuesday to discuss shooting footage for a documentary on Van Doren Shaw, a distinguished architect who also designed many buildings in Chicago. "When you lose houses, you lose the continuity and design," Myers said. "It doesn't look right. You lose the neighbor-to-neighbor proximity you had with open porches when people still walked to work at the steel mills." Mayor Anthony Copeland said he was establishing a renovation program similar to the one at the Sunnyside neighborhood Inland Steel built as a planned community for worker houses. Residents in owner-occupied homes will be able to get up to $40,000 to fix up the exterior of their houses, in some cases up to $50,000 if they do work on awnings and other architectural features. Marktown residents will be able to start signing up in a few weeks at a public meeting with the project's consultant at the community center. "The consultant went in a did an analysis of the whole community, and we used their guidelines to initiate the program," Copeland said. "These homes were unsalvageable. We couldn't rehab them. They were properties that were abandoned for years and years. This program will focus on owner-occupied units. We can't squander these dollars on ones that are not worthy. These are precious dollars." The city secured $7 million in Hardest Hit funds to pursue demolitions across the city. Copeland said it was urgent to move forward to raze blighted buildings as soon as possible. "Time is of the essence," he said. "We have gaming dollars, but that's shrinking every month. The funding is shrinking." The city retained Urban Design Ventures LLC as a consultant to come up with a plan to revitalize the neighborhood that will soon be unveiled at a community meeting in February. President and Principal Walter J. Haglund said that the renovation program should be able to save around 40 homes but that a few homes were too badly deteriorated to be saved. "Basically, it's economically cost-prohibitive," he said. "There was water infiltration. Houses were stripped. Whole buildings would need to be reconstructed from the interior with new clay tile roofs, plumbing and electrical. They were unsalvageable." Haglund said he believed the six homes that were already demolished were the only ones slated to come down in Marktown. "The city has several properties it intends to rehab and resell," he said. "This is a rehabilitation program, not a demolition program. But not every house has structural integrity. Some have water pouring in and are warped inside." The city is eyeing infill housing that would be designed to resemble the existing homes. However, it would likely not be built with the same building materials used a century ago stucco, for instance, was deemed too high maintenance and too hard to work on. "You see stucco in California," Copeland said. "You don't see stucco around here." The hope would be to maintain the character of the neighborhood, Haglund said. "People will be able to get funds to paint, put in new windows and doors, do roof repairs, you name it," he said. "The neighborhood should be able to keep its charm. It's pretty unique." Residents said they were concerned and frustrated after the homes came down without warning Monday. "I've lived here my whole life," David Rodriguez said. "What's upsetting is, if you go down East Chicago and Guthrie, they built a new community center. You go behind City Hall, they built a new community center. They took away the worker from our community center. Then you see them knocking our buildings down, our homes. What are you trying to accomplish? It seems like you're trying to push everything aside and get rid of it. That doesn't sit well with me." He said he believed the city was tearing down homes that could still be restored and bring more life to the community. "We have homes that should be condemned. There's a home with a hole in the roof that looks like a meteorite hit it. It's falling in," he said. "These homes are structurally sound." His wife, Samantha Rodriguez, and Myers spent much of the day Monday calling the city and the contractor to try to get a fence put up around the demolition site so that it wouldn't pose a hazard to outdoor pets and neighborhood kids who were off school. "We're not part of the East Chicago everyone sees. A lot of people don't know we're back here unless they drive back here," she said. "What are you doing for the residents who are out here?" It's a neighborhood where families have lived for generations. "My husband is a lifelong resident," she said. "He is three generations here. His mom still lives here. Some of his siblings still live here. It's generations and generations, and it's getting lost. They're wiping away the history." She said Marktown should be celebrated as a historic site, such as by bringing school kids out for field trips to learn more about the city's storied past as the "Workshop of the World." "It's the more houses we knock down, the less we have to be out there, the less police presence we have to have out there," she said. "They deem this neighborhood as an eyesore and as nothing. I'm a college graduate with a master's degree. My husband is a steelworker for 12 years. My brother-in-law across the street is a college graduate who works for NIPSCO. There's a lot of hard-working families in this community. The reason they stay is the longevity and the history of the community. We're normal people. We have normal lives. We're not people who don't care about themselves or their well-being. We want the same respect others get and we're not getting it." SLIDESHOW: The small village of Marktown, East Chicago, turns 100 Marktown Founder, Clayton Mark Marktown Still Stands Marktown Turns 100 National Register of Historic Places Marktown Preservation Society Marktown Tours Directions to Marktown Marktown Architect, Howard Van Doren Shaw Marktown, A European Style Village Building Marktown Marktown Cottages Marktown Amenities Marktown, Surrounded by Industry Marktown Community Marktown, Unknown Yet Well-known Marktown, "SOLD!" HOBART Carol Heikema hopes she never has to call 911 for emergency services to her home. But if she does, she now feels a sense of comfort. Last fall, the Hobart Fire Department installed a lockbox containing a spare house key on her front door. The department has a universal key to unlock the box if she calls 911 but is unable to open the door. I thought it was the right thing to do, Heikema, 83, said. She has since walked around her neighborhood to encourage other residents to have one installed. I wanted to set an example for my neighbors who are skeptical of firemen coming into their home," she said. "I believed if I did it, my neighbors would feel better. Fire officials introduced the lockbox program to residents in October after receiving donations from civic organizations, Assistant Chief John Reitz said. Instead of keeping the money, the department wanted to return it to the community. This program gives us secured access to a residents home if theyre unable to come to the door after theyve contacted 911, he said. It can make our response time to a victim a lot faster since we dont have to get tools to force entry. Residents interested in having a lockbox installed are charged a one-time rental fee of $37. However if the resident no longer wants it, they will be reimbursed. Accommodations can be made if a resident cannot afford the fee, Reitz said. In addition to the lockbox, residents are given a File for Life envelope. Inside is a form listing their medical information and emergency contacts. After residents fill out the form, theyre asked to place it in an envelope and stick it to their refrigerator using the provided magnet. This way if residents are unable to communicate, the on-duty firefighter can read over the file for any medical problems. Reitz has installed almost 50 lockboxes. The department has also partnered with the Red Cross to give free smoke alarms to Hobart residents. At first we received an abundance of requests. I was installing these almost every day, said Reitz, whos been with the department for 26 years. Carol helped us quite a bit by going around her neighborhood. Heikemas goal is to get all of her neighbors on board, especially regarding File for Life. If someone calls 911, their name comes up in the Fire Departments system, she said. They know what to do before arriving to the house. Its a program thats saving lives. Maria Guillen has lived in Hobart since 1976 and was grateful to have a lockbox installed. Guillen was eager to get one after her husband, Louie, had a stroke in November. Guillen also lives with her daughter and her daughters husband, but someone isnt constantly home to be with her husband. This is really a great program, the 73-year-old said. My family lives close by, so I told them about it and they got one too. A third program to assist residents, Narcan Leave-Behind designed to reverse opioid overdoses was introduced last week. Generally, men who are 45 and older in Hobart overdose inside a home, Reitz said. For this program, the department has teamed up with Geminus Corp. in Merrillville, which provides social services in Northwest Indiana. This is about substance use and prevention. Its discrete and private, Reitz said. We can leave behind a dose of Narcan and literature to people. We leave our number as well. HOBART The families of slain Hobart residents Destiny Jackson and Nazirah Muhammad made an emotional plea for help to the community Wednesday morning and announced a $5,000 reward for anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of a suspect in the murder of their loved ones. "My sister did not deserve this," Dominique Coleman, Jackson's sister, said tearfully during a press conference at the Hobart police station. "She was a big teddy bear. She wasn't a fighter." Around 3:30 p.m. Nov. 4, 2022, Hobart police responded to an apartment building in the 400 block of Ruta Drive for a wellness check after Jackson's sister told them she hadn't heard from her sister in two days and had attempted to reach her repeatedly without success, according to the police department. When officers entered her apartment, they found Jackson, 20, and Muhammad, 19, dead. The Lake County coroner's office determined that each woman had been shot multiple times. "We need people to come forward," Coleman said, urging anyone with information to "turn this person in." Coleman was surrounded by other family members of the deceased. "Destiny was our baby," she said. "My sister didn't even make it to 21." Coleman said that Jackson's 21st birthday was Jan. 11 and that her family was planning a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate. At one point during the press conference, Coleman addressed the killer directly. "If you're watching this, we won't stop until you are caught," she said. "We will catch you." Kevin Gower, Muhammad's father, chastised the killer for stealing "opportunity" from his daughter. "You can run. You can hide," he said. "I'm never gonna stop searching. She got three brothers you took her from." Also at the press conference, Hobart police Capt. James Gonzales provided additional details about the incident. "Since Nov. 4, there hasn't been a day that's gone by in this investigation that myself or the investigators haven't discussed this investigation," Gonzales said. Gonzales said police believe the murderer stood on a table to reach the women's second-floor balcony where they climbed up and entered the living room through a sliding glass door. Gonzales said they don't have a suspect or any evidence that could explain a motive. He also said there was no surveillance footage inside the apartment complex and that they could not get clear footage of any potential suspects from nearby cameras outside the complex. Gonzales did not know whether the murderer was someone that knew the victims, but he did say that the two didn't seem to be involved in any sort of criminal activity prior to their deaths. "By all accounts, (it) didn't appear as if they were living a high-risk lifestyle," he said. "I will say this, with the layout of the apartment complex, somebody had to have known that was their apartment." The reward comes from Chicago Crime Stoppers, an organization run by Andrew Holmes that seeks to solve crimes throughout the Chicago area and serve as a liaison between police and the community. "I believe with every tragedy, there is a silver lining," Gonzales said. "The deaths of Destiny and Nazirah have brought all of us here today for a common goal, and that is to get the person or persons responsible for their deaths off the streets so that this doesn't happen to other families." After the press conference, a group of family and friends of the deceased, representatives of Chicago Crime Stoppers and other community organizations went to the crime scene. There, they looked at the apartment and handed out flyers to neighbors. Police ask anyone with information to call Hobart Detective Michael Gallagher at 219-942-4991 or the FBI at 219-942-4485. Callers can remain anonymous. PHOTOS: Hobart police hold press conference on murders of Destiny Jackson and Nazirah Muhammad MICHIGAN CITY An incarcerated man was found dead after a fire broke out in the Indiana State Prison on Saturday morning, according to the Indiana Department of Correction. The fire occurred in A cell house just before 11 a.m. Saturday, an IDOC spokesperson wrote in an email to The Times. Michael W. Smith, 48, died and two other individuals were treated at nearby hospitals, the IDOC spokesperson said. Both individuals have been released from the hospital. The incident is currently under investigation. According to the IDOC, Indiana State Police, the state fire marshal and the Michigan City Fire Department are all assisting with the investigation. This is not the first fire that has occurred at the Indiana State Prison, which is located in Michigan City. In April 2017, 30-year-old Joshua Devine was burned to death while incarcerated. According to previous Times' reports, Indiana State Prison Superintendent Ron Neal said Devine's death was ruled an accident. Neal said reports from both the Indiana State Fire Marshal's office and LaPorte County coroner's office stated, "the decedent may have been altering electrical equipment in his cell." Devine's family members have filed a federal lawsuit against the IDOC. The lawsuit alleges state prison staff ignored Devine and other incarcerated individuals' cries for help, not opening Devine's cell door until it was too late. A trial is scheduled for July. Gallery: Protesters circle Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery: Protest outside Westville Correctional Facility Gallery Emirates Water and Electricity Company (Ewec) has issued request for proposals (RFP) to qualified companies and consortiums that had expressed interest in developing the Al Ajban solar photovoltaic (PV) independent power project at Ajban in Abu Dhabi. A leading company in the integrated coordination of planning, purchasing, and supply of water and electricity across the UAE, Ewec said a total of 43 companies and consortiums had submitted expressions of interest (EOIs), while 19 of them had made it to the RFP stage after submitting statements of qualification. Al Ajban is a greenfield solar PV plant with a capacity of 1,500 MW that can generate enough electricity to power approximately 160,000 homes across the UAE. Once commercially operational, it is expected to reduce Abu Dhabis CO2 emissions by up to 2.4 million metric tonnes per year besides increasing the solar energy capacity on the Abu Dhabi system to approximately 4GW. According to Ewec, the winning developer/developer consortium will be responsible for the financing, construction, operation, maintenance and ownership of the plant, and associated infrastructure. It will also get to own up to 40% of the entity, while the remaining equity will be held indirectly by the Abu Dhabi government, it stated. Together with the two previous large-scale solar projects tendered by Ewec - Noor Abu Dhabi and Al Dhafra projects - the Al Ajban solar PV will play a pivotal role in enabling the UAE Net Zero by 2050 strategic initiative as well as UAE Energy Strategy 2050. Ewec CEO Othman Al Ali said: Increased solar power generation is a key pillar in our strategic plan to fundamentally transition our energy generation to a low carbon system. There has been a strong level of interest expressed in this key project so far, and we look forward to seeing proposals from pre-qualified companies and moving to the next stage of development." "Al Ajban will become the third world leading solar power project created by Ewec, making Abu Dhabi and the UAE home to the three largest single-site solar power plants in the world," he added. According to him, the developer will enter into a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Ewec, the single buyer of power and water capacity and output in Abu Dhabi. The PPA will be structured as an energy purchase agreement whereby Ewec will pay only for the net electrical energy supplied by the plant, he added. The deadline for submitting RFPs has been set at end of March-TradeArabia News Service Three New York City correction officers were charged on Tuesday with covering up an assault on a Rikers Island inmate, another sign of the problems plaguing the troubled jail complex. The officers, Carl Williams, Roy Dewar and Jatan Das, were arraigned in State Supreme Court in the Bronx on charges of official misconduct, offering a false statement for filing and falsifying business records, prosecutors said. Officer Williams, who is accused of carrying out the attack, was also charged with third-degree assault, prosecutors said. We must hold correction officers to a high standard, Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, said in announcing the charges. These defendants violated the trust put in them by allegedly filing false instruments about an officers assault on an inmate. Ms. Clark added: Just as the alleged violence will not be tolerated, neither will the cover-up, especially in this turbulent time in Rikers Island. Even as calls grew for investigations into Representative George Santos and for his resignation, House Republican leadership on Tuesday gave the first-term congressman from New York seats on the Small Business and the Science, Space and Technology Committees, according to a person briefed on the assignments. The committee placements are the clearest indication yet of the restrained approach with which Republican leaders are treating Mr. Santos amid a growing controversy over falsehoods on the campaign trail and questions about his fund-raising and spending reported last month in The New York Times. Neither of Mr. Santoss two committees are seen as plum seats for lawmakers hoping to boost their profile on Capitol Hill, and they are not as highly regarded as the committees he had initially sought: either the House Financial Services or Foreign Affairs Committees. The person briefed on his assignments said that Mr. Santos had requested those positions from Republican leaders. But the likelihood of Mr. Santoss getting those posts diminished after he acknowledged misrepresenting his work in finance and after reports cast doubt on aspects of his background, including claims of Jewish ancestry. The Manhattan district attorneys office on Tuesday took a significant step forward in its investigation of Donald J. Trump, meeting with his former personal lawyer about hush money paid to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The questioning of the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, offered the clearest sign yet that the district attorneys office was ramping up its investigation into Mr. Trumps role in the $130,000 hush money deal. Mr. Cohen has said publicly that Mr. Trump directed him, in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, to buy the silence of Stephanie Clifford, the actress known as Stormy Daniels. While the hush money was an impetus for the district attorneys investigation, which began in 2018, prosecutors had shifted in recent years to a broader examination of Mr. Trumps business practices. In recent months, however, the prosecutors returned to the payments, seeking to breathe new life into the investigation, The New York Times reported in November. There is no indication that prosecutors are close to making a decision about whether to seek charges against the former president, but the interview of Mr. Cohen could portend a flurry of investigative steps. If I could get a memo onto President Bidens desk about the new Israeli government, I know exactly how it would start: Dear Mr. President, I dont know if you are interested in Jewish history, but Jewish history is certainly interested in you today. Israel is on the verge of a historic transformation from a full-fledged democracy to something less, and from a stabilizing force in the region to a destabilizing one. You may be the only one able to stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition from turning Israel into an illiberal bastion of zealotry. Id also tell Biden that I fear that Israel is approaching some serious internal civil strife. Civil conflicts are rarely about one policy. They tend to be about power. For years, the fierce debates in Israel about the Oslo Accords were about policy. But today, this simmering clash is about power who can tell whom how to live in a highly diverse society. The short story: An ultranationalist, ultra-Orthodox government, formed after the Netanyahu camp won election by the tiniest sliver of votes (roughly 30,000 out of some 4.7 million), is driving a power grab that the other half of voters view not only as corrupt but also as threatening their own civil rights. Thats why a 5,000-person anti-government demonstration grew to 80,000 over the weekend. The Israel Joe Biden knew is vanishing and a new Israel is emerging. Many ministers in this government are hostile to American values, and nearly all are hostile to the Democratic Party. Netanyahu and his minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, had plotted with Republicans to engineer Netanyahus 2015 speech in Congress against Bidens and President Barack Obamas wishes and policies. They would like to see a Republican in the White House and prefer the support of evangelical Christians over liberal Jews and that of M.B.S. over A.O.C. MILAN It is nearly 72 years since Giovanni Battista Giorgini, a descendant of an old Florentine family, telephoned a group of American buyers attending the spring haute couture shows in Paris and invited them to attend a fashion show in his home. Five accepted. They were the Seventh Avenue designer Hannah Troy and the buyers for B. Altman and Bergdorf Goodman of New York, I. Magnin of San Francisco and Morgans of Montreal. So successful was Giorginis experiment that the shows were soon moved to the Pitti Palace, attendance grew by exponents and the cornerstone of a postwar Italian fashion industry was laid. It is doubtful Giorgini could have imagined that seven decades later, Italian fashion shows would attract thousands of guests, an equivalent number of press and mobs clamoring for glimpses of fashion show attendees like the members of the K-pop boy band Enhypen. As much as any trend or runway spectacle (or personnel guessing game; we see you, Gucci), it is the continuity of Giorginis vision that struck an observer this week and how durable and robust Italys claim on fashion primacy remains. Finally Finding Peace Anxiety has been a lifelong companion. When my new boyfriend booked us a trip to Santa Barbara, I worried he would murder me on the beach. When we bought our first house, I worried it would catch fire while we slept. And when he pulled out a ring after years together, I worried: Is he the one? But looking up at his face, I felt calm for perhaps the first time in my life. As we approach our fifth wedding anniversary, my anxiety is still present. But not once have I questioned saying, Yes, Ill marry you. Kylan Coats The monster is nestled in a glacier when the villagers dig him out, frozen but not dead, because he was undead already. Tall, broad-shouldered, hulking in his platform boots, he is instantly recognizable, and once he thaws, proves unpretentious despite his Hollywood fame. It is 1946 in a tiny European village, and he is the most endearing of monsters: awkward, uncertain, just wanting to help out. And in Frankensteins Monster Is Drunk and the Sheep Have All Jumped the Fences, a winsome cartwheel of a show thats part of the Origin Theater Companys 1st Irish festival, he finds lasting romance with a local outcast who falls in love with him at first sight. Never mind that by his own account he is constructed from the dismembered body parts of a number of different corpses; their sex life is fabulous. Written and directed by Zoe Seaton for her Big Telly Theater Company, from Northern Ireland, this quick-witted frolic is adapted from Owen Booths short story of the same name. On the smallest stage at 59E59 Theaters, with a nimble and inventive cast of four, it is a fast-moving comedy that dares to tip into poignancy. The soulful, well-meaning monster (Rhodri Lewis) and his brisk, nameless wife (Nicky Harley) spend years finding a way to fit into their tiny village, whose populace is represented by the much-doubling Vicky Allen and Chris Robinson. With a large wooden cupboard as the movable centerpiece of its no-frills set (by Ryan Dawson Laight, who also designed the costumes), the play is the story of their marriage: passion, heartbreaks and all. Also mishaps inevitable where a slightly bungling monster is involved. Hamline University officials made an about-face on Tuesday in its treatment of a lecturer who showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class, walking back one of their most controversial statements that showing the image was Islamophobic. They also said that respect for Muslim students should not have superseded academic freedom. University officials changed their stance after the lecturer, who lost her teaching job, sued the small Minnesota school for religious discrimination and defamation. Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep, said a statement from Ellen Watters, the chair of the universitys board of trustees, and Fayneese S. Miller, the president. In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term Islamophobic was therefore flawed. The statement added, It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students care does not supersede academic freedom, the two coexist. The authorities in Peoria, Ill., are investigating a reported firebombing that they said caused extensive damage to a Planned Parenthood clinic on Sunday, just days after sweeping abortion protections were signed into law in Illinois. The fire at the Peoria Health Center was reported to the police by a bystander, who noticed an unknown suspect throwing a flammable item into a public building, said Semone Roth, a spokeswoman for the Peoria Police Department. Police officers and firefighters arrived at the clinic, in the 2700 block of Knoxville Avenue, just after 11:30 p.m., but the suspect had already fled, Ms. Roth said. In a statement on Tuesday, the police said that firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the blaze, which was contained to one room, and that one of them had sustained non-life-threatening injuries. A truck used by the person who had set the fire was identified in footage obtained by the police, the department said, but they had been unable to locate it. The Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Middle East has announced the launch of a monthly Thirsty Thursday in Abu Dhabi, and two Power Breakfasts in Makkah set to take place in March and September. The launch of these new events will add to the already successful series of events in KSA & UAE that are aimed at accelerating the industries growth in 2023 and offering a platform for knowledge sharing and networking. HSMAI Middle Easts Thirsty Thursdays in the UAE is a networking event for hospitality leaders, peers and industry partners. In 2023, the event is coming back with TT Dubai at Orange Feels Hotel Indigo Downtown and TT Abu Dhabi at The Warehouse, Pearl Rotana, both on January 19 from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm Open to members and non-members, the event brings together influential leaders and hospitality professionals every third Thursday of the month. Looking at Saudi Arabia, after launching Power Breakfast in the Kingdom in 2022 over eight successful mornings in Riyadh and Jeddah, the event is back in 2023. HSMAI Middle Easts Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Chapter is kicking off the year with two Power Breakfasts in Riyadh and Jeddah with the topic of Growth Mindset versus Fixed Mindset. In an agile world where decisions need to be made instantaneously, how can an individual develop a growth mindset? What are the advantages of constant change? During this session, participants will be encouraged to step outside their comfort zone and brace for ideas for constant growth. A Power Breakfast will be held in Riyadh at Fairmont Hotel on January 23 from 9 am to 12 pm and in Jeddah at the Hilton on January 25 from 9 am to 12 pm. HSMAI plans to launch its Makkah Power Breakfast from March onwards. KSA Power Breakfasts are attended by the regions leading industry professionals and partners, gathering to share challenges, insights and best practice on a given topic. The event provides the perfect opportunity to inspire collaboration and spark ideas over the most important meal of the day. Following a successful year in 2022 with over 50 educational and networking events, and a mammoth 5th Annual Commercial Strategy Conference ROC ME, 2023 is expected to be an even bigger, momentous event. HSMAI continues to be the association of choice for industry professionals to network, strategize and discuss upcoming trends through specially curated events in UAE and KSA. By joining the association, members can gain access to workshops, training, peer network and leadership opportunities, unlocking a competitive edge for success in the hospitality industry. TradeArabia News Service WASHINGTON Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands said on Tuesday that his country was considering sending a Patriot missile system to Ukraine, a move that would bolster Kyivs air defenses and help repel Russian strikes. Mr. Rutte, seated next to President Biden in the Oval Office, said that a Russian attack on the city of Dnipro, which killed dozens of people in one residential building, had strengthened our resolve to stay with Ukraine amid deepening concerns over the Ukrainians ability to withstand another possible offensive by Moscow. We have the intention to join what you are doing with Germany on the Patriot project, so the air defense system, Mr. Rutte told Mr. Biden. I think that its important we join that, and I discussed it also this morning with Olaf Scholz of Germany. It was unclear whether the Dutch had formally committed to sending the system. The Defense Department and the White House did not say whether a firm commitment had been made, though one administration official said a formal decision was expected. The Dutch Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. WASHINGTON The Pentagon is tapping into a vast but little-known stockpile of American ammunition in Israel to help meet Ukraines dire need for artillery shells in the war with Russia, American and Israeli officials say. The stockpile provides arms and ammunition for the Pentagon to use in Middle East conflicts. The United States has also allowed Israel to access the supplies in emergencies. The Ukraine conflict has become an artillery-driven war of attrition, with each side lobbing thousands of shells every day. Ukraine has run low on munitions for its Soviet-era weaponry and has largely shifted to firing artillery and rounds donated by the United States and other Western allies. Artillery constitutes the backbone of ground combat firepower for both Ukraine and Russia, and the wars outcome may hinge on which side runs out of ammunition first, military analysts say. With stockpiles in the United States strained and American arms makers not yet able to keep up with the pace of Ukraines battlefield operations, the Pentagon has turned to two alternative supplies of shells to bridge the gap: one in South Korea and the one in Israel, whose use in the Ukraine war has not been previously reported. ALBUQUERQUE A former Republican candidate accused of orchestrating attacks on the homes of Democratic rivals cited the need to threaten civil war to achieve political change, according to police investigators, who said that a bullet fired in the attacks passed close enough to a sleeping girl to leave her face spattered with dust. The series of shootings in the wake of the November elections followed other episodes of politically motivated violence across the country in recent months including an attack on the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and rattled the political establishment in New Mexico, where Democrats hold both chambers of the Legislature and the governors office. After seeking a state legislative seat, Solomon Pena, 39, a supporter of Donald J. Trump who attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to concede, despite losing by 48 percentage points to an incumbent in a district that has long voted for Democrats. He was arrested on Monday in connection with the shootings at the homes of four Democratic officials. He had a belief process that he was cheated, Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque Police Department said in an interview on Tuesday. The police filed a rash of charges against Mr. Pena, including criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated battery, shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting from a moving vehicle and conspiracy. MANILA The journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa was acquitted of tax evasion on Wednesday, a rare victory after numerous setbacks in her fight to keep publishing her news site Rappler, whose run-ins with the authorities have become emblematic of the Philippines declining press freedoms. A Philippine court acquitted Ms. Ressa on all four charges against her. She would have faced a maximum sentence of 34 years if convicted. Rappler had also faced four charges and was acquitted. Outside the courthouse in Manila, the capital, Ms. Ressa was visibly relieved and emotional after the verdict. Asked what it meant to her, she replied: Hope. That is what it provides. We need independent media to hold power to account, she added. The case was the first high-profile test of whether the legal troubles facing Ms. Ressa and Rappler would continue under the Philippines new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has benefited from online disinformation and tried to play down the brutality of his fathers dictatorship decades ago. Advocates had urged Mr. Marcos to demonstrate his stated commitment to a free press by intervening in Ms. Ressas favor. BRUSSELS Ukraine is redoubling its pleas for more advanced weapons like tanks and air defense missiles in a pivotal week of diplomacy involving its American and European allies, as they debate how best to help Kyivs forces take the battlefield initiative ahead of an expected new Russian offensive. Ukraines new push began in earnest on Tuesday, when General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, held his first face-to-face meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, in Poland, nearly 11 months after the Russian invasion. And in Davos, Switzerland, Ukrainian officials and Olena Zelenska, wife of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, attended the World Economic Forum to lobby global leaders and opinion makers to use their influence to help their country. On Wednesday and Thursday, NATO defense ministers will meet in Brussels to take stock of the fight to help Ukraine, and on Friday, they will be joined at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany by officials of a broader group of nations that has coordinated aid to Ukraine. The U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, will lead those discussions, focusing on the types and amounts of weaponry to supply, including the crucial question of whether to send Western tanks. There is a growing consensus among Kyivs main Western supporters that time is wasting to enable the Ukrainian military to break the bloody, brutal deadlock with Russian forces in the east and south and drive them back, while also defending against Russian missile attacks that have devastated much of Ukraines infrastructure. The Equality of Night and Day, a New York premiere by the choreographer Ronald K. Brown and his company, Evidence, essentially starts out mid thought. A voice says, And finally. Its so no-nonsense that it practically sounds like a complete sentence. Spoken by the activist Angela Davis in a tone verging on weariness, the and finally urges the crowd at least the one you imagine standing before her to think about the larger picture, as she talks about issues that ail the United States, like the assault against affirmative action and the increasing conservatism. The dancer Joyce Edwards, a silky powerhouse full of drama whether seemingly motionless or rippling her body with fervor, is poised center stage: She bends forward and rises back up with crossed wrists until her arms lift and bloom out like glorious wings. The lighting evokes the faded radiance of a sunset. As the other dancers gather around her, she clasps her hands, and we hear Davis ask that the people before her think very deeply about what you can do to make a difference. Daviss speeches are heard throughout this 2022 work, performed at the Joyce Theater, but better is its sparkling score by the jazz pianist Jason Moran. The music starts out spare and contained, but gradually builds with blistering, tinkering speed to get at, sonically, the urgency of not just one, but multiple generations that have faced oppression. Her colleagues say that Stasevska is eager to challenge the status quo both in the artistic realm and in life. Claire Chase, a prominent flutist and educator, described her as a supernova, praising her collaborative and commanding style. She is courageous on and off the podium, Chase said, the kind of person who will, under any circumstances, speak her mind, and I just have so much admiration for her. Stasevska, the daughter of painters, grew up in Estonia and Finland, where her mother is from. But her relatives also nurtured her connection to Ukraine, her fathers home country. She learned Ukrainian, practiced folk songs and studied the countrys poetry, history and literature with her father and grandmother. She recalled being teased in school for her Ukrainian surname, but always felt proud of her identity. Ukraine was always this beautiful place in my mind, she said. The way my family spoke of it, the apples were much bigger there than anywhere else in the world. It was this dream country filled with possibility, and with wonderful people. When Stasevska was 8, her parents gave her a violin, telling her she could make a profession out of playing an instrument. But, she said, she didnt feel emotional about music until she was 12, when a school librarian lent her a recording of Puccinis Madama Butterfly. She had never heard an orchestra before, and was amazed by the power and drama of the score. A post-Woodward administration further complicates Whipples task. The author is not interviewing fresh arrivals but folks who seem to have been taking notes in the margins for decades. Sometimes the strain to get history just right shines through: One White House senior adviser looks right at the camera and says, This sounds like something that Aaron Sorkin would want to write. As that example proves, Whipple shines when, like the documentarian he is, he lets people talk. This is most effective with true insiders (Christopher Liddell, Trumps deputy chief of staff, tells of trying to ensure a transition come hell or high treason). Interviews with journalists and talking heads, on the other hand, add all the insight of a cable news panel. The result is not a lot of newsy nuggets about, for example, the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. But in conversations with a talkative Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others, Whipple proves adept at getting members of a relatively opaque administration to play the blame game in print. No one is interviewed as extensively as Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, who appears in the book more than anyone other than the president and his predecessor. Whipple has managed what seems to be a first: a two-year running conversation with a White House chief of staff, including real-time email reaction to events in Afghanistan. In many stories, Klain gets the last word, and readers get a front-row seat even better than that accorded by Klains much-discussed Twitter feed if not for the action, then at least for a spirited presentation of the White Houses case. So what is the fight of Joe Bidens life? The more accurate word might be fights. Whipple lists many, including Bidens own battle for the soul of the nation, as his campaign had it, though the author highly ranks the confrontation with Russia. Without a unified theory on what rates as the primary skirmish of this presidency, Whipple works with what hes got: the outputs executive orders, speeches, spending bills of the slow boring of hard boards. And the ultimate outcome of many of these is still in doubt. HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE, by Grady Hendrix Grady Hendrixs horror novels are a gateway drug to the genre, bridging the warm and cozy book clubs, female support groups, undying friendships, sibling rivalries and lots of home cooking with the harder stuff. Hes explored vampires and exorcisms, the trauma of surviving a serial killer, recombinant demons and now, in perhaps his greatest creation, a haunted puppet named Pupkin. When her parents die unexpectedly, Louise a single mother living in San Francisco who has spent her adult life fleeing a family that functions on secrets returns to Charleston for the funeral, where she has agreed to help her deadbeat brother Mark sell their childhood home. But when she arrives, something seems very wrong. The house, permeated by a weird vibe, feels off, especially the living room, which is packed with hundreds of her mom Nancys creepy dolls clown dolls, German dolls, life-size dolls; a swarm of dolls stared through the glass doors of the doll cabinet. While this coterie of babies is unnerving enough, the real horror begins when Louise finds Nancys favorite puppet, Pupkin, sitting in an easy chair in front of the TV watching the Home Shopping Network. A song Louise hasnt heard in years suddenly begins playing in her head: Pupkin here! Pupkin here! Everybody laugh! Everybody cheer! For years, American politicians have warned that China could challenge the U.S. as the worlds top superpower. As Chinas growth regularly outpaced Western rivals, it seemed on track to become the worlds biggest economy. But even the most bullish assessments of Chinas rise always anticipated its growth would eventually slow. That slowdown has arrived sooner than expected, as a result of poor decisions by Chinese leadership. Two developments yesterday highlighted the risks for China. Chinese officials announced that the countrys population declined last year for the first time in more than 60 years. They also released data showing that the countrys economy grew only 3 percent last year, well below the governments target of 5.5 percent. Both these outcomes are closely linked to Chinese policy. Decades-long government efforts to reduce birthrates nationwide, including the policy of allowing most families to have only one child, sped up the population decline. And the economic slowdown is in part tied to the zero-Covid policy that China backed away from only last month, which left the country unprepared to reopen. How the pandemic changed you Last week, we let you know that this newsletter is winding down and will be paused at the end of this month. We also asked you one final question: How has the pandemic changed you? Thank you to everyone who wrote in. (If youd like to send us a response, you can do so here. We may use your response in the final edition of the newsletter next week.) There is no easy way to build up to the answer to this question so Ill just say it: the pandemic years have made me so much more fearful. I lost people during these years, and now I think about death so much more often, and feel afraid my time is somehow coming soon too. I feel scared and anxious just leaving my apartment. I fear that I am retreating into some sort of shell that I will never be able to fully come out of again. We have all experienced a huge, collective trauma and its as if the world wants us to forget it all and somehow be normal again. I dont think I can be, or want to be. Kellye R., New York, N.Y. I caught Covid on March 3, 2020. It turned into pneumonia, then a bewildering array of symptoms nobody understood and many doctors didnt believe were real. I was one of the first wave of long Covid sufferers, and it has completely destroyed my life. I had been self-employed as a freelance translator, but I havent been able to work for almost three years, or do much of anything beyond trying to manage countless medical appointments and treatments. I used to be a dancer, and now I am lucky to manage a slow walk of a few blocks. I have lost almost all of my friends, as I am no longer fun and dont have the energy to do anything social. I dont recognize myself anymore. Tascha Babitch, Portland, Ore. Three years ago this March, I met my husband on a Hinge date. We barely knew each other two weeks when the world ground to a halt, but we both knew (well, hoped) that we had something special. We decided to spend the lockdown together. For everyone in our lives, the pandemic accelerated relationships, for better or for worse. Some broke up; others shacked up. We (1) moved in together; (2) got engaged; and (3) got married inside of a year and a half. As we saw it, we were spending 24 hours a day together, and a 1.5-year-long relationship during Covid was easily equivalent to a three, nay, five-year relationship in normal times. Hes my soul mate, and I can thank the pandemic for giving us more hours together than I couldve ever dreamed possible. Cayman Mitchell, New York, N.Y. WASHINGTON The United States hit a cap on how much money it can borrow, a development that resulted in the Treasury Department employing what are known as extraordinary measures to ensure that the federal government has enough money to pay its bills. The United States runs a budget deficit, which means it does not take in enough money through taxes and other revenue to fund its operations. As a result, the country sells Treasury debt to finance its operations using borrowed money to fund military salaries, retiree benefits and interest payments to bondholders who own U.S. debt. But Congress limits the amount of money the federal government can borrow whats known as the debt limit and the United States is hit the current cap of $31.4 trillion last week. As a result, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told Congress last week that the administration would try to keep the country under that debt cap and able to finance its operations as long as possible by using extraordinary measures. Since his company imploded, Mr. Bankman-Fried has repeatedly denied accusations that he tried to manipulate cryptocurrency markets. In a text message, he compared his companys efforts to bolster the price of FTT by publicly announcing that it would buy large quantities to share buyback schemes at public companies. And he said his firms trading of FTT was designed to keep the market running smoothly by buying coins when people wanted to sell and selling when they wanted to buy. What to Know About the Collapse of FTX Card 1 of 5 What is FTX? The now bankrupt company was one of the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It enabled customers to trade digital currencies for other digital currencies or traditional money; it also had a native cryptocurrency known as FTT. The company, based in the Bahamas, built its business on risky trading options that are not legal in the United States. Who is Sam Bankman-Fried? He is the 30-year-old founder of FTX and the former chief executive of FTX. Once a golden boy of the crypto industry, he was a major donor to the Democratic Party and known for his commitment to effective altruism, a charitable movement that urges adherents to give away their wealth in efficient and logical ways. How did FTXs troubles begin? Last year, Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, the worlds largest crypto exchange, sold the stake he held in FTX back to Bankman-Fried, receiving a number of FTT tokens in exchange. In November, Zhao said he would sell the tokens and expressed concerns about FTXs financial stability. What led to FTX's collapse? Zhaos announcement drove down the price of FTT and spooked investors. Traders rushed to withdraw from FTX, causing the company to have a $8 billion shortfall. Binance offered a loan to save the company but later pulled out, forcing FTX to file for bankruptcy on Nov. 11. Why was Bankman-Fried arrested? FTXs collapse kicked off investigations by the Justice Department and the S.E.C. focused on whether FTX improperly used customer funds to prop up Alameda Research, a crypto trading platform that Bankman-Fried had helped start. On Dec. 12, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas for lying to investors and committing fraud. Neither I, nor to my knowledge Alameda, ever intended to manipulate markets, he wrote. Signs that Mr. Bankman-Fried was orchestrating trades to his firms benefit werent all that hard to see in the crypto world, according to crypto developers who shared their stories on public forums and investors interviewed by The New York Times. The trades at the center of many of these schemes were openly visible on the blockchain, the digital ledger that records every transaction made in the public sphere of cryptocurrencies. Mr. Bankman-Fried also created FTT to facilitate the trading of other coins on FTX. But according to fraud charges filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Dec. 13, he kept FTTs value artificially high and then used it as collateral to borrow funds from lending firms. In the 40-page complaint, the commission said Alameda had borrowed as much as $10 billion from various digital lenders against FTT and other holdings. At one point, Mr. Bankman-Fried became concerned about the psychological effect of the price of FTT dropping below a specific threshold and ordered Alameda to buy FTT to push the price back up, according to separate fraud charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The question always was: How does FTX have so much money? said Haseeb Qureshi, a managing partner at Dragonfly, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm to which Mr. Bankman-Fried and his team pitched investment deals, including coin launches. Despite a field of candidates who regularly bash the news media and a continuing tussle with the Commission on Presidential Debates, Republican leaders sat down last week with television executives in New York and posed a question: Do you want to host a debate? In an intriguing show of detente, the Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks including CNN, a regular Republican boogeyman to consider sponsoring debates, an early sign that the party is making plans for a contested presidential primary. The debates would probably begin this summer, and Republicans are casting a wide net: Party officials are also in talks with executives from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, along with more-niche networks like Newsmax and NewsNation, according to several people who requested anonymity to describe discussions intended to be private. Political debates are highly prized in the TV news industry, and the networks are expected to present proposals next month. Our goal is to have incredibly successful debates that allow Republican primary voters to see, without any kind of bias, a full picture of what these candidates stand for, David Bossie, the chairman of the partys presidential debates committee, said in an interview. The conversations, led by Mr. Bossie and Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chairwoman, have moved forward even as the Republicans slate of presidential contenders remains uncertain. They underscore a delicate balancing act for Republican leaders, who are reviewing media and messaging strategy after a poor showing in last years midterm races. Still, just appearing at Sundance is not the endgame. The true standard for success for these financiers will be how these movies perform at the festival and if distributors buy them. Alexis Garcia, who leads the film group at the independent studio Fifth Season, previously known as Endeavor Content, said distributors had told him that the festivals lineup of films this year didnt look commercial and that it could be a soft year for acquisitions. Should that be the case, that could be a setback for the financiers who are just getting started. When you are working with directors who are from an underrepresented group, there is actually more at risk, because if it doesnt work, it just perpetuates the mythology, said Kevin Iwashina, Fifth Seasons senior vice president of documentaries, who helped finance the Sundance doc Going Varsity in Mariachi and fully financed AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, a documentary about the cult responsible for the 1995 sarin gas subway attack in Tokyo. And so decisions become that much more precise. There is more at risk than just financial capital. Mr. Oliver is staking a lot in the four films he has headed to Sundance, in something of a coming-out party for Confluential Films. Mr. Oliver began the operation in 2013 as a label for his own productions he is also a writer and director but has recently expanded his ambitions. He hired Charlotte Koh, formerly of Searchlight Pictures, as Confluentials president in 2021 and has dedicated the company to financing projects by creators of color. Goldman Sachs helped raise $100 million to $150 million that Confluential will use for operating and production costs. Best known for creating the popular OWN series Black Love with his wife, Codie Elaine Oliver the two own the show and all its ancillary products: podcasts, live events and merchandising Mr. Oliver has ambitions that run from indie films to prestige pictures to helping finance studio movies. In addition to Fancy Dance, the producer has invested in Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, a documentary about Ms. Giovanni, the American poet, and the narrative features Young. Wild. Free. and To Live and Die and Live. The upcoming Netflix movie The Perfect Find, starring Gabrielle Union, is also being produced by Confluential after the company optioned the novel by Tia Williams. The news start-up Semafor began operating late last year with big ambitions backed by deep-pocketed investors. But the company soon found itself in a pickle: how to handle its biggest outside investment, roughly $10 million, from Sam Bankman-Fried after his crypto company collapsed and the federal government accused him of fraud. Now, Semafor is planning to buy out Mr. Bankman-Frieds ownership while it explores raising new money. We are planning to repurchase Sam Bankman-Frieds interest in Semafor and to place the money into a separate account until the relevant legal authorities provide guidance as to where the money should be returned, said Justin Smith, Semafors co-founder and chief executive. The companys fund-raising conversations havent resulted in any investments yet, according to several people with knowledge of the companys operations. What does hope mean to you? BASTIDA Well, Ill first describe the type of hope I dont like, because I dont think Ive ever experienced such a telling moment. I was recently on a Washington Post panel for the womens summit. I was onstage with Alexandria and my friend Wawa [Wanjiku Gatheru]. I said, By the end of this 20-minute panel, the fossil fuel industry will have gotten this many subsidies. They get $11 million of subsidies per minute, so that amounts to, I think, $221 million. And I said, By the end of the day, the fossil fuels industry will have made $2.8 billion in profit. I was trying to instill this feeling in people that the climate crisis is not slow, and its all about things that can happen by the minute. And that means that the changes can be implemented with effects that can happen by the minute. At the end of the panel, 15 people came up: You give me so much hope. [McKibben bends over, laughing.] Not any other comment. Even a climate denier gives you more conversation. So that is the type of hope that I dont like. I like the kind of hope that inspires you to change. A hope that inspires you to act. A hope that inspires you to realize that if other people are doing it, it means that I must be doing that as well. And Ive seen people get that type of hope. I was invited to a Vogue panel. The person who invited me, after the panel, said that they have never felt so hopeful, and they were actually going to change a lot of the way that Vogue operated. Its very different to say, Im going use my power and my influence in the space that I occupy to change things because of something you said, versus, You give me so much hope. McKIBBEN When they say, You give me hope, part of what theyre saying is, I dont want to feel so bad about myself. The thing that drives me crazy is when people say, Well, its up to the next generation to deal with these problems, and theyre so good. That is a cop-out of major proportions. I accepted a long time ago that a large part of my job was just going to be to be a professional bummer-outer of other people, because Ive had to bring this message for a long, long, long time that things were going very badly. And now, happily, theres lots of other people bringing that message, and its sinking in. One of the things that makes me feel hopeful is that I no longer feel lonely in this work which I did, through some decades. But I dont think we owe anyone hope. The job of activists is not to make people feel psychologically improved and more hopeful. Theres days when I dont feel particularly hopeful. But Xiye is absolutely right: If there is hope, it lies in people deciding to join together to do this work. One of the things thats important is to keep reminding ourselves all the time that weve got to find some joy in this work as were doing it. Because its going take our whole its already taken my whole life, and its going take all of Xiyes life to come to terms with this. So we might as well figure out some ways to make it joyful along the way. Tadakazu Yuki, a manager in another section of the manufacturing technology department, and Masaki Nakano, a general staff member of the same department, led me around the area. The assembly begins inside the G and follows shape of the letter, Mr. Nakano said. About 30 women in their early 20s to 40s, all wearing protective suits, were standing at the G-shaped table. As I walked around, I saw them performing the various steps that go into assembling the MTG-B3000 model: module assembly (the seven screws that are screwed in the movement), solar panel and dial installation, adding the hands to the movement (there are eight hands on that model), hand positioning and angle adjustment, hand height adjustment, installation of the hands and fitting of the case. Assembling G-Shock is a combination of human skills and machines, Mr. Nakano said, and the teams production capacity is said to average about 8,000 watches a month. Once assembled, a G-Shock still isnt ready for sale, as it must be tested for things like water resistance, airtightness and durability, depending on the model. If the watch fails a test, it will be repaired, Mr. Nakano said. Each high-end G-Shock watch also is inspected; lower-grade ones are not. After a staff member attaches the strap, there is a final check and the watch then is ready for shipping. Back to 1983 Last came the real treat: one of the first 1983 G-Shocks (there are only a few of them, kept in the Hamura office, but one was brought over for my visit). I wore it on my wrist and was surprised to see it didnt look old or much different than current G-Shock models the definition of timelessness. In 2017, the company produced its 100 millionth G-Shock (the empty sake barrel from the celebration is in the Yamagata lobby). By 2021, that number had reached 140 million. G-Shock is so popular, its often imitated, said Mr. Shinichi, the president of Yamagata Casio, as we finished the tour. But in the shape of G-Shock there is a beauty that cannot be imitated. ALBANY, N.Y. Gov. Kathy Hochuls embattled nominee to become New York States top judge was rejected on Wednesday, an unprecedented repudiation that underscored a deep division among Democrats on the direction of the states judicial system. After a combative hourslong hearing, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 against the nomination of Justice Hector D. LaSalle, whose nomination was strongly opposed by progressives who saw him as too conservative. The committees rejection the first time that New York lawmakers have voted against a governors choice for chief judge laid bare how vulnerable Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo-area Democrat, may be to a challenge from her own party. All 10 senators who voted against the judge were Democrats; two Democrats voted in favor of Justice LaSalle, while one Democrat and all six Republicans on the committee voted in favor without recommendation. The rejection does not necessarily mean that the LaSalle saga is over. The governor has not ruled out taking legal action to force a vote on Justice LaSalles nomination on the full Senate floor, raising the specter of a constitutional showdown. A subcontractor texted Robert Baselice, an executive at a Secaucus, N.J., firm helping a developer find construction companies for a project. He told Mr. Baselice that he had quoted the developer a price as high as $3.3 million for a job. We definitely priced it to the higher side, the subcontractor wrote. Go in with $2,975,000, Mr. Baselice replied. You will go down from there. The plan, according to Manhattan prosecutors, was for Mr. Baselice to express shock at the high estimate, and then pretend to strong-arm the subcontractor into lowering the price to make the developer believe he was working to get a fairer price. In reality, Mr. Baselice, then an employee of the Rinaldi Group, and two associates were steering $100 million in subcontracts and change orders to dozens of handpicked subcontractors in return for kickbacks, according to court papers. 13 Apr 2023 | 8:05 PM Vijayawada, Apr 13 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday directed the Housing Department officials to nail the Opposition campaign over TIDCO houses and send across the message to the people that the Government has spent over Rs 21,000 crore so far on construction. At a review meeting on Housing held here, the Chief Minister said that a lot of bad propaganda is being carried out by the TDP which abandoned construction of the TIDCO houses for the poor during its rule while the present Government is completing their construction and handing them over to the beneficiaries along with basic infrastructure. Representative George Santos of New York has said consistently that his mother, Fatima Devolder, was working at her office in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Even as he altered his official biography to remove other false claims, Mr. Santoss account of ties to the tragedy remained. But official immigration documents reviewed by The New York Times on Wednesday directly contradict that claim, too. In an application for a visa to enter the United States filed in 2003, Ms. Devolder said that she had left the country for Brazil in June 1999 and had not returned since. In earlier paperwork filed in June 2001, three months before the attacks, Ms. Devolder said that she had been unable to return to the United States since 1999 because her green card had been stolen in Brazil. A spokeswoman for Mr. Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. She said she would have agreed to the project had Mr. Teitelbaum agreed to include more homes that were affordable to people with lower incomes making a fifth of the apartments available to families of four earning $40,020 per year, for example, and reserving half of the apartments for families of four earning up to about $80,040. Lets be clear, that is already an extreme compromise and is still quite awful and would be a total financial windfall for this developer making him and his investors plenty of profit, she said. And he should have taken it. At a time when New York City faces a housing shortage, the tug of war over the Harlem project appears to be a case study in how the powerful whims of developers and the morass of local politics can make it difficult to build new homes. It also provides a unique look into the high-stakes nature of housing in New York City. By choosing to park trucks on the lot, Mr. Teitelbaum has raised the cost to the community of rejecting his vision, raising the question of whether other developers might follow suit and use publicity-driven tactics to influence local politics. At the same time, the drama of the Harlem case, and perhaps the threat that developers might try similar tactics elsewhere, has helped prompt a new spirit of cooperation among real estate executives and elected officials to find ways to make deals. Left-leaning City Council members recently backed two new affordable housing projects in Queens after negotiating with developers for more benefits for the community. When Covid was raging across the world a couple of years ago, I came across a picture online of an American woman wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed, I refuse to co-parent with the government a response to perceived government overreach regarding school mask mandates. I laughed out loud: My own kids were, in a way, co-parented by the Chinese government. My work in the fashion industry took my husband and me to Shanghai in 2006, where we spent the next 16 years and started a family. In China, government co-parenting begins in the womb. Chinese citizens have faced limits on how many children they were allowed under birth control policies that have since been relaxed. People in China are still legally barred from determining the gender of their unborn babies unless medically necessary, because of a history of sex-selective abortions. As foreigners, we were exempt from such rules. But I had to accept that my growing belly had become community property, subject to unsolicited rubbing and sidewalk commentary (Its a boy. I can tell!), and that restaurants would refuse to serve me cold beverages. Chinese people ascribe medicinal properties to simple hot water, rooted in hygiene concerns and the belief that it maintains a healthy balance in yin and yang. I dreaded the earful I would get each time I ordered an iced latte though it was usually served with a warm smile. In 2008 and 2010 we delivered two healthy daughters in Shanghai and faced the choice of all expatriate parents in China: between pricey international schools and enrollment in local schools, overseen by the government and with an immersion in Chinese culture and values. Byrne: The reality is, in the past four years, tons has changed in terms of public awareness and engagement. Shifting from climate change to climate emergency was a radical shift when we first came onto the scene. But even as people become more and more aware, the reality is, as youve just said, emissions are still rising. And here in the U.K., certainly, the government is backpedaling on climate progress. I think we have a responsibility as sort of climate communicators in this space to be radically honest and true to that first principle, which is to tell the truth. And the truth is, four years later, nothing much has changed, even though people are more aware than ever. We know from polling that people across the U.K. are terrified of the climate crisis, but the reality is that those people arent showing up theyre not coming out on the street. So I think we have to say to ourselves, if people arent going to come and put their arm in a lock or glue themselves to something, how do we create a space where people can show up? Theres also a big question about demands, isnt there? What I mean is its not just a matter of whether there are more people who are willing to go to a protest outside of Parliament than there are who are willing to lie down in a busy intersection; undoubtedly there are. Its also a matter of how many people want a 1.5-degree Celsius pathway and how many people would be satisfied with a two-degree pathway, and how many people would be satisfied just knowing that policy is moving in the right direction even if it points somewhere north of two degrees. Farrell: The tell the truth demand was never about having a declaration of emergency with nothing to follow it up. It was about working really hard to get the public to actually understand the position that they find themselves in and playing enormous amounts of catch-up, because of the obfuscation that the fossil fuel industrys perpetuated, because of the failure of the media, because of a media that actually helped the most deadly campaign of disinformation, in my opinion, in all human history. Because of all that, what was required was a major effort on public information. If people dont understand why they need to make these drastic policy changes, obviously theyre not going to advocate for them. But if they have the full facts about where they find themselves sitting in the context of human history, where were going, how soon were headed there, then they will back those policies. And to me that has a lot to do with advocating for a democracy that isnt just more inclusive and more representative and more just but also wanting to have a democratic society where more people have better access to the truth and to information and to really understand what needs to happen and why. There have been stories in the past year about medication shortages in Germany, Canada and despite those full shelves my friend found in London the United Kingdom. And though it may seem as if its recent media coverage thats making it appear as if there are more shortages of childrens medications than adult ones, a perusal of current and resolved shortages reported to the Food and Drug Administration shows just how prevalent shortages can be, and how many types of medication it affects. So whats going on? To start, our markets are really fine tuned with a certain demand level, said Dr. Mariana Socal, a physician and an associate scientist in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. So when there is an increased, unexpected demand, as there has been for childrens medications in certain parts of the country because of the recent confluence of flu, R.S.V. and Covid, pharmaceutical companies and retailers arent poised to respond very quickly. Thats coupled with the outsourcing of production of most active pharmaceutical ingredients in drugs, something thats been connected to the current amoxicillin shortage. The production of many of these active ingredients takes place in India and China, as well as European Union countries, noted Socal. If there are holdups getting those active ingredients into the global supply chain, she said, that can lead to shortages of essential medications. The maker of Childrens Tylenol and Childrens Motrin, Johnson & Johnson, told The Times there isnt a nationwide shortage. Whats frustrating, though, is that currently theres not an efficient way to redistribute childrens medications to parts of the country where stocks are low, said Socal. Thats because our drug distribution is highly concentrated among just three wholesalers, and they each have their own proprietary way to allocate their inventory, she said. As Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a physician and a vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Bloomberg School (and a colleague of Socals), put it: The system has evolved to become very efficient, but not very resilient. People are focused on doing what they can do at the lowest cost for their part of the chain. The companies at each stage do their own thing, but theyre not building extra capacity because thats expensive. Theyre not holding on to huge stores, because that would be expensive, too. It is enraging but not particularly surprising that our health care system is failing the most essential of its workers. Nurses are the keystone holding up our rickety and raggedly uneven health care system. We desperately need more of them, but we have created a health care system indeed, a broader society that, as if by design, devalues them and takes them for granted. Like workers in other female-dominated professions in the care economy, nurses are spoken of, often with a whiff of condescension, as heroes. But just like teachers, social workers, health aides, day care workers and mothers, we sure dont treat them that way. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Americas nurses were rightly praised for the central role they played. But nurses are burned out. Many are simply leaving the profession. Thousands across the country are doing what the nurses at Montefiore and Mount Sinai in New York City did on Jan. 9: going on strike. Their No. 1 demand is not more pay or better benefits, the traditional stuff of labor negotiations. Instead, they want hospitals and nursing homes to hire more nurses and commit to set ratios of patients to nurses, in order to reduce their workload and increase patient safety. Institutions have long resisted both measures. In a major victory for the nurses union, Mount Sinai and Montefiore, two of the biggest medical centers in New York, agreed last week to do just that, ending the strike in three days. Donovan: The most reliable and transparent narrator in the conference is Chip Roy of Texas, who isnt part of leadership or even a likely ambassador to the White House. He is the sort of person with a lot of credibility right now and will be instrumental to finding any sort of offramp that would be acceptable to a broad swath of the House G.O.P. Byrd Wilt: I agree that Roy is the most effective spokesman for that flank, but Id expect someone like Tom Cole of Oklahoma, whos been a senior appropriator for a while, to be involved in conversations with the White House and congressional Democrats. Thats part of the challenge that Liam alluded to: What are House Republicans actually going to be fighting for with this leverage? They dont seem to quite agree yet. Donovan: The other part of this is that any palatable solution is more likely to come out of the Senate, where there still is a productive working relationship between the center right and center left. At the end of the day the House Republicans will have to swallow what is for them a bitter pill, so the ideas that are socialized by senators like Joe Manchin, Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney and ultimately Mitch McConnell may prove to be the difference. Douthat: OK, forcing you both to play prophet: Whats your best guess as to the specific nub of debate when we get to the brinkmanship stage, the ask of the House conservatives, the fig leaf they get in the end? Donovan: Working backward from what might be a conceivable fig leaf something that Republicans would want that Biden could give without being seen as paying a ransom I look at the TRUST Act, which is a bipartisan Senate bill with support from precisely the sorts of dealmakers you might expect, that would be a meaningful nod toward the nations fiscal trajectory without setting up automatic reductions in spending, i.e., Sequester 2.0. Van Bavel pointed to the structural aspects of the contemporary political system that reward the adoption of extreme stances: In the immediate political context, where there is extremely high polarization driven by partisan animosity, there are strong social media incentives to take extreme stances and an unwillingness for moderate Republicans to break ranks and strike a compromise with Democrats. In this context, the Freedom Caucus can get away with dogmatic behavior without many serious consequences. Indeed, it might even benefit their national profile, election prospects and fund-raising success. Along similar lines, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U., stressed the rapid change in audience and incentives that social media has engineered for congresspeople. The case of Ted Cruz, caught checking his mentions as he sat down from giving a speech on the Senate floor, is illustrative. Why is he making himself so responsive to strangers on Twitter, rather than to his constituents or to his colleagues in the Senate? Haidt wrote by email that he agrees with Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, that: Social media has contributed to the conversion of our major institutions from formative (they shape character) to performative (they are platforms on which influencers can perform to please and grow their audiences). When we add in the primary problem that few congressional races are competitive, so all that matters is the primary, which gives outsized influence to politically extreme voters we have both a road into Congress for social media influencers and the ultimate platform for their performances. Plus, Haidt added: The influence economy may give them financial and career independence; once they are famous, they dont need to please their partys leadership. Theyll have opportunities for money and further influence even if they leave Congress. Leanne ten Brinke, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, wrote by email: My research on power and politics focuses on the role of psychopathic personality traits, which is characterized by callousness, manipulation/coercion, impulsivity and a desire for dominance. When people think of psychopathy they often think of criminals or serial killers, but these traits exist on a continuum, so people can be high in these traits without meeting any kind of clinical cutoff, and it will impact the way they move through the world. People with high levels of these traits tend to gravitate toward powerful roles in society to fulfill that desire for dominance and to bully others when in these roles. Brinke noted that she has no data on the personalities of those in the House Freedom Caucus, but in previous research we actually found that U.S. senators who display behaviors consistent with psychopathy were more likely to get elected (they are great competitors!) but are less likely to garner co-sponsors on their bills (they are terrible cooperators!). In addition, Brinke continued, they enjoy having power over others but dont use it to make legislative progress. They tend to be more self-interested than other-interested. In a separate 2020 paper, Light and Dark Trait Subtypes of Human Personality, by Craig S. Neumann, Scott Barry Kaufman, David Bryce Yaden, Elizabeth Hyde, Eli Tsukayama and Brinke, the authors find: The light subtype evidenced affiliative interpersonal functioning and greater trust in others, as well as higher life satisfaction and positive self-image. The dark subtype reflected interpersonal dominance, competitiveness and aggression. In both general population samples, the dark trait subtype was the least prevalent. However, in a third sample of U.S. senators (N =143), based on observational data, the dark subtype was most prevalent and associated with longer tenure in political office, though less legislative success. In a separate 2019 paper, The Light vs. Dark Triad of Personality: Contrasting Two Very Different Profiles of Human Nature, Kaufman, Yaden, Hyde and Tsukayama wrote that dark personalities are not associated with exclusively adverse and transgressive psychosocial outcomes and may, instead, be considered adaptive. Those with the more forbidding personal characteristics showed positive correlations with a variety of variables that could facilitate ones more agentic-related goals and they positively correlated with utilitarian moral judgment and creativity, bravery and leadership, as well as assertiveness, in addition to motives for power, achievement and self-enhancement. In contrast, more sunny and cooperative dispositions were correlated with greater reaction formation, which consisted of the following items: If someone mugged me and stole my money, Id rather he be helped than punished and I often find myself being very nice to people who by all rights I should be angry at. While having such loving kindness even for ones enemies is conducive to ones own well-being, these attitudes could potentially make these people more open to exploitation and emotional manipulation. In March 2022, Richard Pildes, a law professor at N.Y.U., warned in Political Fragmentation in Democracies of the West: The decline of effective government throughout most Western democracies poses one of the greatest challenges democracy currently confronts. The importance of effective government receives too little attention in democratic and legal theory, yet the inability to deliver effective government can lead citizens to alienation, distrust and withdrawal from participation and, worse, to endorse authoritarian leaders who promise to cut through the dysfunctions of democratic governments. For the Republican Party, the empowerment of the Freedom Caucus will face its first major test of viability this month. According to Janet Yellen, secretary of the Treasury, the United States will hit the $31.4 trillion statutory debt limit on Jan. 19. The Treasury, she continued, would then be forced to adopt stringent cash-management procedures that could put off default until June. This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Wednesdays. For two months now, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland has been investigating former President Trump in part for retaining hundreds of classified documents at his private Florida residence long after he left the White House. So when it came to light last week that classified documents dating to the Obama administration had been found in President Bidens home and former private office, many observers commented that Garland had no choice but to appoint a special counsel to investigate him, too. Fair is fair, and in this instance, fair is also fraught. While the cases differ significantly given what we know so far, their confluence raises the prospect that the 2024 election will be a face-off between two men who have both been president and are both under investigation by a federal prosecutor. How did special counsel investigations become such a prominent feature of American politics, what purpose do they serve, and where might these two lead? Heres what people are saying. The long and troubled history of special counsels How should a government investigate potential crimes committed by its own executives? The question has bedeviled Washington since at least 1875, when Ulysses S. Grant appointed the first special prosecutor to investigate the theft of whiskey taxes by federal officials only to fire him when the evidence implicated Grants personal secretary. The scandal foreshadowed Richard Nixons dismissal in 1973 of the special prosecutor in charge of the Watergate probe, an incident that came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Marcia L. Fudge, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, announced the new review process on Friday during a screening of Our America: Lowballed, a new ABC documentary on appraisal bias in the United States, co-hosted by the Brookings Institution and the National Fair Housing Alliance. For decades, the appraisal complaint process has been one-sided, Ms. Fudge said at the event. Having a system that is a check on itself is not working, and we are looking to change it. This would be the first time that HUD has specifically cited bias or violations of fair housing laws as a legitimate cause for flagging, and potentially scrapping, an appraisal a major step that follows widespread allegations from Black homeowners that their homes values were lowballed because of their race. Dozens of homeowners have come forward in recent years to allege discrimination, and many have tried to prove bias in their homes valuations through what is known as the whitewashing experiment. Homeowners scrub their property of any signs that Black people are the occupants. In some cases, the gulf in valuations amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars. After a white appraiser gave their Baltimore-area house a value of $472,000 in 2021, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, both professors at Johns Hopkins University, conducted a whitewashing experiment, removing family photos, posters and books from their home and asking a white friend to stand in for them. Months later, a second appraiser, unaware a Black family lived in the home, gave the property a value of $750,000. A November study from two respected sociologists the first ever to analyze millions of home appraisal records by race supported what scores of homeowners have said: There is a widespread practice in the home appraisal industry to give higher values to homes when the occupants are white, and devalue them if the owners are people of color. That study, as well as dozens of high-profile whitewashing experiments that have revealed questionable valuations, has put an uncomfortable spotlight on the appraisal industry. The dream of homeownership is one of the most direct avenues for building generational wealth, yet Black Americans continue to be shut out of the opportunity for upward mobility. They are denied mortgages at disproportionate rates, and although Black homeownership has been inching forward since the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, discrimination continues to seep into every aspect of the home buying process. Hong Kong: Ingrid Yeung visits observatory Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung today visited the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) for an update on its latest developments and thanked colleagues for their hard work. Mrs Yeung was briefed by HKO Director Cheng Cho-ming and directorate staff on the departments latest work. They also met staff representatives of various grades to exchange views on matters of concern. She visited the Earthquake Monitoring & Tsunami Warning Centre where she was briefed on the procedures for the collection and analysis of real-time seismic data in Hong Kong and across the globe as well as the dissemination of earthquake and tsunami information to the public. Mrs Yeung also toured the Central Forecasting Office to learn about its forecasting and warning services, and the Radiation Monitoring & Assessment Centre to inspect the citys environmental radiation monitoring and accident consequence assessment. She then stopped by HKOs TV studio to view the in-house production of TV weather programmes and the procedures for giving weather briefings under inclement weather. The civil service chief encouraged staff to stay united and continue to put into practice the values of Innovate with Science, Serve with Heart by protecting lives through science and providing people-oriented quality services. She said: Apart from shouldering responsibilities for disseminating regular and round-the-clock weather information and various warnings on inclement weather, the HKO plays an important role in the event of emergency and maintains close communication with emergency co-ordination centres of other departments to provide them with the latest weather information for their prompt formulation of disaster preventive measures or arrangements to reduce loss of life and damage to property and minimise disruption to economic and social activities. I hope that colleagues, with dedication and professionalism, will continue to keep up with the times, strengthen communications with members of the public and tell the good stories of the HKO. This story has been published on: 2023-01-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Washington, Jan 18 (UNI) US Senator Todd Young and Taiwanese Foreign Minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu expressed hope for an even stronger partnership between the United States and Taiwan, the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said. Young is on a visit to Taiwan from January 16-18. He has already met with Taiwan's leader, Tsai Ing-wen, and Joseph Wu, and exchanged views on security, trade and economic issues. "They reiterated Taiwans pivotal role in regional security and the global economy at this critical geopolitical juncture and eagerly anticipated ever stronger partnership between our countries," the ministry said on Twitter. The situation around Taiwan escalated after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in early August. Beijing condemned Pelosi's trip, which it regarded as a gesture of support for separatism, and launched large-scale military exercises in the vicinity of the island. Despite this fact, several countries, including France, the US, Japan and others, have since sent their delegations to the island, further increasing tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan a territory with its own elected government maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence. Beijing opposes any official contacts of foreign states with Taipei and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable. UNI/SPUTNIK GNK Its rare for a scientist to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries made close to the age of 60, or for work done shortly before the prize is announced. But K. Alex Muller, a Swiss physicist, was 59 when he made his breakthrough, and he had to wait only 16 months before he received his Nobel Prize, in 1987, sharing it with a colleague for discovering that some ceramics can be superconductors, opening up a world of scientific and practical possibilities. Dr. Muller died on Jan. 9 at an assisted living facility in at 95, according to an announcement on Tuesday by IBM, where he had worked as a researcher. The University of Zurich, where Dr. Muller was once a professor and where he maintained an office after retirement, said he died in Zurich. A superconductor is a material, generally black in color, that is able to convey electricity without resistance; a current running through it will never dissipate. Superconductors have another useful property: They create powerful magnetic fields. Superconductivity was discovered accidentally in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, a Dutch physicist, who received the Nobel Prize in 1913 for cooling a series of gases down to the point that they become liquids. That temperature is usually near absolute zero, defined as minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 Kelvin. In 2021, privacy consultants working for two Dutch universities issued a critical report card on Googles education apps, a set of classroom tools like Google Docs that are used by more than 170 million students and educators worldwide. The audit warned that Googles tools for schools lacked a number of privacy protections like narrow limits on how the company could use students and teachers personal data that were required by European law. Although the company addressed some of the concerns, the report said, Google declined to comply with Dutch requests to reduce a number of high risks cited in the audit. It took a threat from the Dutch Data Protection Authority, the nations privacy regulator, to help break the deadlock: Dutch schools would soon have to stop using Googles education tools, the government agency said, if the products continued to pose those risks. Two years later, Google has developed new privacy measures and transparency tools to address the Dutch concerns. The tech giant now plans to roll out those changes to its education customers later this year in the Netherlands and elsewhere around the world. This dimly lit, moody prelude is quietly unsettling quite a theatrical feat since nothing much is happening. Eventually, Schaal climbs a steep metal ladder to part-declaim, part-lip-sync a speech. This part of KLII, before the show makes a sharp turn in terms of artistic approach and content, is cobbled together from sources like Mark Twains satirical King Leopolds Soliloquy, from 1905, and a 1960 address from the independence leader Patrice Lumumba, but Camila Ortiz and Ian Askews sound is so blurred by industrial-strength reverb and booming echo that little besides stray words and sentences emerge from the sonic murk. There is something Leni Riefenstahl-esque about the vision of a despot authoritatively spouting unintelligible either by design or accident verbiage, but a little goes a long way, and the scene overstays its welcome. After climbing down from her perch, Schaal, who conceived KLII and directed it with the designer Christopher Myers, takes off her makeup literally wiping Leopold off her face and tells us, in a conversational voice now free of distortion, about her young daughters passion for Fiddler on the Roof. Other topics in that monologue (which is credited to Myers) include a brief on what happened when soap manufacturers transitioned from animal fat to palm oil and a peek at her family history with the tale of her Grandpa Murara, who fled Rwanda and opened a guesthouse in Burundi. In a note, Schaal describes KLII as an exorcism, in theater. This implies a certain amount of release, but even in its intimate, more directly autobiographical second half, the show does not deliver, or even aim for, easy catharsis. Avoiding the obvious is to be commended, but Schaal does not connect the dots into a convincing whole. KLII is most effective on a purely aesthetic, visceral level, down to small details that linger, like the cups of hibiscus tea that are handed to theatergoers on their way out. Printed inside the cups is a hand, which feels like a symbol of extended hospitality, until you remember that Leopold would casually order Congolese folks limbs to be hacked off. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI Seoul gleams with glass towers and brims with centuries-old architecture, but beyond the bright lights, it has a hidden intimate side, if you know where to look. Miles of winding back streets can lead you to a tucked-away cafe, a delicious new restaurant or an entire enclave ripe for exploring. All you have to do is take the first step. Locals flock to two under-the-radar neighborhoods in particular for their insider cachet: the downtown industrial hub Euljiro, which is dotted with back-alley bars and eateries, and Sinheung Market, an old street mall thats getting a well-deserved makeover. (Both enclaves are within a few miles of the site of last Halloweens tragic crowd crush in Itaewon, but neither typically draws the large numbers of revelers for which Itaewon has been known.) In these two areas, getting off the main roads to explore will reward visitors with cocktail bars, restaurants and other nightspots whose outsize personalities defy their cozy confines. LANSING, Mich. For the first time in 40 years, a legislative session began in Michigan last week with a Democratic governor, Democratic control of both the House and Senate, and a plausible path for decades worth of liberal policy goals to become law. Within hours of being sworn in, Democrats in the Legislature announced plans to codify L.G.B.T.Q. rights, repeal an abortion ban that is unenforceable but still on the books, and get rid of a so-called right-to-work law loathed by labor unions. The new Democratic power in Michigan comes as the party will also take charge in Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota, restoring Democrats control of statehouses to a level not seen since 2009, during the first months of Barack Obamas presidency. Democrats will have a so-called trifecta control of the governorship and both legislative chambers in 17 states, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures and Ballotpedia. That is still fewer than the 22 states where Republicans have full control, but it is a major comeback from a lost decade for state-level Democrats, who were bludgeoned in the 2010 and 2014 midterms and, as recently as 2017, had sole control at only six capitols. Slightly more people will now live in states with full Democratic control than in those with full Republican control. You may have heard chatter recently about gas stoves: whether theyre bad for your health, or the planets, and whether theyre soon going to be banned in your city or state. Last week, a suggestion that gas stoves may one day be regulated by the federal government started a rumpus in Washington. Theres growing recognition that gas stoves release hazardous chemicals into homes, contribute to global warming and produce emissions that may be linked to rates of childhood asthma. Bans on gas appliances are unlikely to advance in Washington anytime soon because of fierce opposition from the gas industry and its political allies. But what about in California? For the past few years, our state has been on the leading edge of gas-stove bans. Republicans tend to be the loudest defenders of natural gas, but gas-powered stoves tend to be most common largely in Democratic-controlled states, my colleagues Elena Shao and Lisa Friedman report. In fact, the state with the highest percentage of households using natural gas for cooking (70 percent) is California, according to a 2020 analysis from the Energy Information Administration. I keep looking out the front door and Im like, oh, water is getting higher and higher, he said. This is the highest Ive seen it here, because its the most rain weve had since Ive been here, but looking out my window and looking at my neighbor directly across the street, their driveway is starting to get flooded. He loves his neighborhood, with its midcentury single-family houses and its magnolia trees. Besides, the likelihood of a flood is slim, because were usually in a drought in California, he said. And the L.A. River helps to channel a lot of the water away. And then, again, its about, you know, what I could afford. I guess it was like a calculated risk. Cathy Castro, a 78-year-old retired language teacher, lives in the Mertz Del Amo Estates mobile home park, near the western bank of Compton Creek. During the rainstorms that blanketed California this month, the streets of her low-lying community looked like rivers, she said. Even so, she said, most of her neighbors in the 500-unit park were more concerned about leaking roofs than the threat of flooding. As for Ms. Castro herself, she was keeping a close eye on the puddles growing ever deeper in the brick planters outside her home. If they overflowed, the water could seep down and damage her foundation. A polar bear killed a woman and her year-old son in a remote village in western Alaska on Tuesday after it chased multiple residents, officials said in one of the few fatal polar bear attacks to take place in the past century. The attack occurred near a school in the remote village of Wales, Alaska, which is on the western edge of the Seward Peninsula that juts into the Bering Sea toward Russia. About 170 people live in Wales, according to the Census Bureau, and most residents are Inupiaq. A spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers identified the victims as Summer Myomick, 24, and her son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, 1. Ms. Myomick was a resident of St. Michael, Alaska, about 230 miles southeast of Wales, the spokesman, Austin McDaniel, said. A local resident shot and killed the polar bear as it was attacking the pair, the Alaska State Troopers said in a statement. State troopers said that they were notified of the attack at 2:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday. WASHINGTON A Russian citizen who ran a cryptocurrency exchange that federal prosecutors say transmitted at least $700 million in illicit funds has been arrested in Miami and charged with evading U.S. money-laundering safeguards, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday. The Russian citizen, Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, oversaw the exchange based in Hong Kong, Bitzlato, which knowingly enabled criminals to profit from their wrongdoing, including ransomware and drug trafficking, Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general of the Justice Departments criminal division, said during a news conference on Wednesday. The move was part of an intensifying effort by federal law enforcement agencies, in conjunction with European partners, to combat international cryptocurrency schemes and illegal transactions. In particular, they have sought to crack down on the activities of companies and people based in China and Russia operating in the unregulated corners of cyberspace known as the darknet. Five other men, of Russian and Ukrainian nationalities, were arrested in Spain, Portugal and Cyprus in connection with the investigation, officials in Paris told Agence France-Presse. WASHINGTON For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russias invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes. Now that line is starting to soften. After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases. White House officials insist there is no change in position. Crimea, they say, belongs to Ukraine. We have said throughout the war that Crimea is Ukraine, and Ukraine has the right to defend themselves and their sovereign territory in their internationally recognized borders, said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. Privately, military and administration officials had questioned the utility of Ukraine focusing attacks on Crimea, arguing Kyivs military had better targets elsewhere on the battlefield. UW and Wyoming SBDC Network Continue State Trade Expansion Program Webinar Series The Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network continues its six-part webinar series about the State Trade Expansion Program that will guide small-business owners through the steps to expand into international trade and to provide real-world examples from successful Wyoming small-business exporters. Multiple speakers will explain how small-business owners can learn how to write a business plan for personal financial growth during the second webinar in the series titled Planning Your Export Strategy from noon-1 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25. To register, go here. Registration is free. Speakers are Patty Brewer, Small Business Association (SBA) export finance manager for Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming; and David Fales, founder and CEO of Wyoming Gourmet Beef. Fales will share the story of starting his company in Wyoming, with a mission to make Wyoming beef not only available in Wyoming, but also around the world. Hell share the good, the bad and the ugly of his experiences opening up the Canadian market for his products. In 2019, Wyoming companies exported more than $1.37 billion in goods to the world. Of the companies that export, 97 percent are small businesses. The webinar training series is presented in collaboration with the Wyoming Business Council, the U.S. SBA, U.S. Department of Commerce and the Wyoming Procurement Technical Assistance Center. This series will help small businesses evaluate whether exporting might be right for them; help them develop an initial exporting plan; and explain how to access grant funding that may be available in Wyoming to help offset some of the costs of becoming export ready. Future webinars in the series are scheduled Feb. 8 and 23, and March 8 and 22. For more information, call Maureen Johnson, marketing, communication and database manager for the Wyoming SBDC Network, at (307) 343-0925 or email mjohn125@uwyo.edu. The Wyoming SBDC Network offers business expertise to help Wyoming residents think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their business. The Wyoming SBDC Network is hosted by the University of Wyoming with state funds from the Wyoming Business Council and funded, in part, through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. SBA. Chinas leaders have long known that the country is nearing a demographic crossroads. Policymakers have warned that China must prepare for a slowly shrinking population and an era of fewer workers and more retirees. State media have urged young couples to seize the opportunity to have two or three children under relaxed family-size rules, to soften the looming economic crunch. And yet the sense of incipient crisis grew on Tuesday, when the government confirmed that the nations population shrank last year for the first time in six decades, sooner and sharper than many experts had forecast. Even if Chinese officials have warned that a demographic Rubicon was approaching, their preparations have not kept pace with the long-term needs of an aging society, in the eyes of many experts and Chinese people. Chinas abrupt abandonment of zero Covid controls exposed a government ill prepared for an explosion in infections. And, similarly, the mounting population pressures may reveal a government that has not done enough to avoid tough choices in coming decades over rival priorities. Between the demands of caring for young and old. Between paying for social welfare and building up Chinas technological and military might. When Ruchita Chandrashekar decided to move to Bengaluru in November for a new job, she thought she had the perfect plan for avoiding the problems that come with house hunting as a single woman in India. She would find an apartment with a married friend whose husband was working in Paris and they would say they were sisters. They were both professionals, in their 30s, with a sizable budget. Alas, they were still women unattached to men. Brokers asked if they could promise to never bring men over. To never drink. To never, really, have a room of ones own. Several places they thought theyd secured fell through into the arms of families. Sometimes, this is a nice life, Ms. Chandrashekar said over a light lunch in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, where she works in organizational development for a tech company. But then you meet all of these structures, like your landlords. BERLIN Within hours of being sworn into office, Germanys new defense minister will be expected to hold talks with the U.S. defense secretary. A day later, he will represent Germanys armed forces at a meeting with European allies awaiting critical decisions on the war in Ukraine. That would not be an easy first week for any new government official, let alone one familiar only with local politics, with no experience on the national or world stage. But that is the stage on which Boris Pistorius will soon find himself. Though Mr. Pistorius has won praise for his nine years running the interior ministry of Lower Saxony, he has no background in foreign affairs or global security. For Germanys allies, the transition may be just as disconcerting. Little is known of his views on the biggest questions of the day, from military spending on NATO to his vision on Germanys future approach toward Russia. A small city in northern France is turning to an unlikely source in an effort to reclaim a painting that it lost more than a century ago: Madonna. In 1872, the Louvre lent the painting, Diana and Endymion by Jerome-Martin Langlois, to the Picardy Museum in Amiens, France, where it remained until disappearing at some point by the end of World War I. On Monday, the mayor of Amiens, Brigitte Foure, said in a video that she recently learned Madonna owned a painting that looked just like the missing one. While acknowledging that Madonna is probably unfamiliar with Amiens, Ms. Foure nevertheless claimed a special connection between her city and the pop star. She went on to suggest that the painting that disappeared from the Picardy and the painting belonging to Madonna were one and the same, a possibility that art experts, including the museums current curator, have discounted. Israels Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a politician convicted of tax fraud was not fit to serve as a senior minister in Benjamin Netanyahus new right-wing coalition, a move likely to accelerate a looming showdown between the government and the judiciary over control of the countrys highest court and one that could destabilize the government. Ten of the 11 judges on the panel ruled against the appointment of the minister, Aryeh Deri, the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party and a close Netanyahu ally, on grounds of extreme unreasonability, primarily because of his recent conviction and suspended prison sentence, and said the prime minister should remove him from his posts. The decision came as Mr. Netanyahu, who is himself on trial on corruption charges, and the judiciary are locked in a battle over the Supreme Court, with the prime minister and his coalition partners seeking to assert more control over legal matters, including the appointment of judges. Those efforts have prompted street protests in cities across Israel in recent weeks, with many Israelis fearing that the judicial changes could undermine the countrys democratic institutions. Mr. Netanyahu now has to decide if he will respect the court ruling or defy it and head a government that opposition leaders said would be illegal. Thats an important addition to the usual story of civil rights, which has tended to focus on public protests and resistance techniques in the South, such as the Montgomery bus boycott, lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides and the large-scale marches. To be clear, those actions were extremely important: in particular, the photographs and footage of police brutality during the nonviolent protests became a scandal that helped turn public sentiment against the segregationist system. And leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. provided moral direction that connected civil rights to Americans political identity and the countrys core values. But the book shows that it would be a mistake to miss the broader political context, and how the civil rights movement used big societal shifts to its advantage. In South Africa, forcing compromise on apartheid That message clicked into even sharper relief as I worked to understand the end of the apartheid system in South Africa. There, once again, the most common version of the story is one about public protests, shifting moral sentiment and top-down pressure: that the nonviolent resistance led by Nelson Mandela and others drew attention to the injustice of white rule, the international community ratcheted up pressure through sanctions and ostracism of the white regime, and eventually justice prevailed. But Elisabeth Wood, a Yale University political scientist, tells a different story in her book Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. She argues that South Africas system had developed a powerful class of Afrikaner economic elites who were extremely dependent on Black labor for their profits, and became even more so as the South African economy grew and modernized. So when anti-apartheid mobilization brought its political demands into the workplace, through labor organizing and strikes, the economic elite eventually put pressure on the political elite to change. There were other pressures, too. Foreign sanctions also put pressure on the economy, for instance, and there were often high levels of civil unrest, particularly in Black townships. But white South Africans, who did not live or work in the townships, were relatively insulated from violence there. And other scholars have found that sanctions tended to follow domestic mobilization, rather than the other way around. Labor mobilization, particularly by miners and metal workers, drove the economic elite to see that their future depended on compromising, Wood told me. Black labor forced compromise through the economic elites, who then put pressure on the political elites. Bolivias state airline has become the target of ridicule after hiring an interspecies communicator to track down a passengers missing pet cat. The disappearance of Tito the cat has been a matter of state business in Bolivia for about a month, ever since the feline was lost by staff of Bolivias state-owned airline. Titos owner, a woman working in Ireland, was taking the feline from Tarija to Santa Cruz to have it certified as a therapy animal, but was told that the cat had to go into the cargo hold. When the plane landed, she was shocked to see Titos cage empty. Airline staff admitted to losing Tito prior to takeoff and the cats disappearance became the number one news story in Bolivia. Recently, the Ministry of Justice even hired a self-proclaimed interspecies communicator in hopes of finding the cat. Photo: Andrea Iturre Boliviana de Aviacion (BoA), Bolivias state airline, was founded in 2007 and has since taken over most internal flight routes in the Andean country. It has also racked up a record number of complaints regarding delays, canceled flights, and lost baggage, so the loss of Tito was the hair that broke the camels back, in a way. Still, the way in which the Government handled the situation has been described as laughable. First, there was the press conference held by Bolivias Minister of Consumer Affairs, in which the official explained how Tito the kitten liked tuna, so cans of tuna and water had been distributed in areas around the airport where the feline was lost, to make sure he didnt go hungry. He also added that firefighters and the managers of all airline transport organizations had been asked to join forces to find the cat. #ANF I El ministro de Obras Publicas, Edgar Montano, informo que las direcciones de la ATT, DGAC, BoA y NAABOL se sumaron a la busqueda del gato Tito que fue extraviado por la aerolinea estatal en el aeropuerto de #Tarija. Tenemos la esperanza que Tito aparecera, dijo. pic.twitter.com/9CND11Ud8b Agencia de Noticias Fides (@noticiasfides) December 12, 2022 Despite the efforts of the Bolivian Government and other state-controlled organizations to locate poor Tito, the cat was nowhere to be found, so in a desperate effort, the Ministry of Justice announced that it had hired an interspecies communicator who claimed to be able to establish an energy connection with Tito and learn details about his whereabouts and wellbeing. With his techniques, he can communicate with Tito to find out where he is, if he is scared or hidden, or if something more serious has happened, Bolivian Vice Minister Jorge Silva told reporters. So far he has told me that he is still alive, that he is hiding, obviously scared, but that his energies are going down because of lack of food and water. Photo: Andrea Iturre The interspecies communicator has apparently been keeping in touch with the cats owner, who has lost their job in Ireland and has remained in the town of Tarija to continue looking for Tito. They have not lost hope of finding the feline, but the chances of that go down with each passing day. The Governments hiring of this special communicator which most people consider a fraud has attracted a lot of criticism from the general public, with some simply mocking officials and others accusing them of wasting valuable resources. Se pierde un gato en el vuelo de una aerolinea. El gobierno: Hemos contratado una comunicadora interespecies para que lo encuentre pic.twitter.com/KNgkQsvm44 Edmundo Paz Soldan (@edpazsoldan) January 6, 2023 If the animal psychic actually finds Tito the cat, Ill eat my Tweets about the genius behind the idea, one person tweeted. Public Health Solutions, which is the largest public health nonprofit serving New York City, is looking for a PR partner to boost awareness of its work in under-resourced communities across the five boroughs. Dan Kelley A few months ago, when the ideas just werent flowing and I needed some creative defibrillation, I started experimenting with AI-generated content. I was hoping that AI would make writing easier. But the results fell well short of the level of professional copy that any of us would share with clients. The results were too generic, often off-point and sometimes bizarre. But I came to the conclusion that, despite this, AI-generated content is already quite pervasive. Take, for example, a chicken soup recipe. A search on Google or Bing will return thousands of results. The algorithms decide what appears at the top. They prioritize articles that are long and articles where readers scroll deeply into the page. These signal to the algorithms not that the recipe is good, or even edible, but that the content itself is useful. Im convinced that a good amount of this copy has been generated by AI. Its repetitive, vapid, and bland. But if a creator can slap a chicken soup recipe at the bottom of a 2,000-word behemoth and readers scroll past it, search algorithms confuse this for quality. It isnt meant to be read. Its merely meant to fool a search engine into believing that the content was useful. OpenAIs ChatGPT changes everything. The copy it generates is actually pretty good. Its still bland, but its far more serviceable than previous generations of AI. Framing the Discussion Its time for the PR industry and its clients to think about what the AI content future could look like: The big question first. Will AI come for our jobs? Im not worried. The most likely scenario for content creators is one in which humans and tools like ChatGPT work in tandem. When it comes to AI-generated content in the future, we might rely on AIs to offer a competent first draft. Our role will be to give voice and personality to content that can only be informed by a close working relationship with companies. Our clients hire us for our communications and messaging expertise, industry experience and judgment, and AI cant replicate that. Well retain our roles as trusted advisors. What about copyright and originality? A big question in the world of AI content is whether its just plagiarism by another name. Because a lot of AIs are black boxes, the real answer is that we dont know how it arrives at the results it offers, and therefore cant entirely rule out a claim that the work is less-than-original. There are a lot of other legal and ethical considerations along these lines. But these issues will likely get ironed out over the next three to 10 years. For most agencies, I think well see an environment in which AI is deployed selectively, while developing competencies in this area. On reputation. Assume for a moment that the legal and ethical challenges have been resolved. There remain other challenges. Compliance with OpenAIs content policy requires an acknowledgement of its use. Would there be reputational issues associated with that? Would CEOs on whose behalf we craft thought leadership want to share a byline with an AI? Would publications accept articles that contain AI-generated content? What it means for search and news. Over the past few years, news organizations and blogs have devoted significant resources toward answering simple, frequently searched questions like What is ChatGPT? or How can I lose weight? Even the New York Times does it. While evergreen articles may not have the immediate traffic juice of a Kardashian exclusive or political scandal, they have long-term search value against which to sell advertising. Evergreen content strategies are probably headed for extinction. ChatGPT makes content so easy, and so inexpensive to produce that the coming years will see a flood of it. There will almost certainly be a change in search algorithms to account for it. And theres nothing stopping search engines from simply answering these questions themselves using ChatGPT (or even generating chicken soup recipes without making readers slog through a 2,000-word Sumerian history lesson). Users would almost certainly benefit. On style. AI produces content that is, for the most part, generic. There are contexts in which commodity content is completely appropriate. At the same time, content that is authentic, has a clear and distinctive voice, that delights and surprises, that includes details and expertise from human experience will rise in importance. Ironically, the folks working on search algorithms will likely need to train an AI to recognize content as such. Humans will still have to decide which situations call for creativity, and which call for commodity. AI cant provide the value that we provide. In our work with businesses, we become extensions of our clients. We know their industries and their nuances. We build strong relationships with executives, knowing their voices, and their values. We help shape their messages and thought leadership to best be received by the audiences they need to reach. None of this can be farmed out to an AI. Where Ive used AI. Ive never used AI in client content. ChatGPT is certainly capable of providing client-ready copy, but the legal and ethical issues make me wary. One area where its been useful, however, is in brainstorming questions for subject matter experts. I recently asked ChatGPT to come up with six questions for a briefing. Four of them were usable, and only one required a little bit of editing. I have tried to coax blog post ideas from it, but the results were still too generic. I imagine that AI might be good for more complex tasks in the not too distant future. A Bland Conclusion I toyed briefly with offering my grandmothers chicken soup recipe as proof that this essay was not written by an AI. But my grandmother wasnt a great cook. So I put the headline of this piece into ChatGPTs interface. I offer you this essay, as written by ChatGPT and completely unedited: The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate content is expected to have a significant impact on the PR industry. AI-generated content, such as news articles and social media posts, can be produced quickly and at a large scale, potentially making it a cost-effective alternative to human-generated content. This technology could also be used to personalize content for specific audiences, making it more engaging and effective. However, the use of AI-generated content raises concerns about the potential loss of jobs in the PR industry, as well as the potential for the spread of misinformation. It will be important for PR professionals to stay informed about the development and use of AI in content creation, and to consider the ethical implications of this technology. Additionally, PR professionals will need to adapt their skills and expertise to continue to provide value in an industry that is being transformed by AI. Its bland like raw tofu. You could swap PR with the name of almost any other content-dominated industry and the results would be just as accurate. But its also absolutely pitch perfect for certain situations, and it took less than 20 seconds to produce. Its a starting pointone we all need to think about. *** Dan Kelley is content director at FINN Partners. THE former convent in Kilcormac could soon be used to accommodate people leaving Ukraine, a local councillor has said. Cllr John Leahy said he has spoken to the owner of the building on Main Street about the plan to develop a refugee centre there. A previous proposal to locate a residential addiction rehabilitation centre in the former Convent of Mercy fell when An Bord Pleanala refused to grant permission to the developer, Serenity Home Ltd. In August 2021 Offaly County Council had given the go-ahead for a 13-bedroom facility with counselling rooms and other ancillary accommodation. That decision was appealed by a group called Concerned Residents of Kilcormac and in May last year An Bord Pleanala overturned the planning consent, saying the proposed rehabilitation centre would have a serious and detrimental impact on the interior of the convent, which is a protected structure. For more than a year the building has been home to a bicycle maintenance and manufacturing training centre run by the Bicycle Engineering Academy but it will soon be moving its activities to another centre it has in Portlaoise. Cllr Leahy said this evening (Wednesday, January 18) that he had told the objectors to the rehabilitation unit that if they succeeded in blocking the rehabilitation centre, the convent might instead be used to house asylum seekers or refugees. I pleaded with these people on a couple of occasions and I said the alternative for a convent sitting in the middle of a town was going to maybe bring about an asylum seeker or refugee centre. Either that or it's going to fall to the ground, he said. I personally put a lot of time into trying to get the bicycle hub into it, in which we succeeded. The Independent councillor said he could understand why private businesspeople would look at other options when there's a market there at the moment. He said he believed an opportunity had been wasted because the rehabilitation centre would have created between eight and 12 jobs locally. I can't see that being the case now and unfortunately the convent, be it right or wrong, is going to be forever and a day now, until it's sold on again, some sort of Ukrainian centre or refugee centre or homeless shelter. The councillor added that when he told the Concerned Residents of Kilcormac that the convent could be turned into a refugee centre they told him they would fight that as well. He said: What I'm doing is I'm calling them out now and asking them to do what they said they would do at the start and for them to take the campaign on. I personally am not because at the end of the day, number one it's a private enterprise, and another thing is I'm not going to publicly come out and stop people coming from a war stricken country coming into this country. If they're so concerned about Kilcormac they need to come to the fore now because they're the ones that started this. I as a public representative would not stand for a protest. According to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, 553 people arrived from Ukraine to Offaly by November 6 last. The figure is based on PPSN applications and comprises 386 in the Tullamore Electoral Area, 105 in the Birr Electoral Area and 62 in the Edenderry Electoral Area. The national total was 62,425. Questions put this afternoon to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which has responsibility for accommodating refugees, were not answered by this evening. There are 7,203 people across County Tipperary suffering from Long Covid, according to a survey by leading polling company Ireland Thinks. As many as 1,152 of these are significantly impacted by what are often debilitating health issues, long after they have had the Covid-19 virus. So much so that The Lancet, the well-known independent, international general medical journal, has stated that Long Covid could be the next public health disaster in the making. This is not surprising as the survey, carried out in November, revealed that 230,559 across Ireland have symptoms of Long Covid, with 36,889 of these people deemed to be significantly impacted. Long Covid is an umbrella name given to a broad range of some 200 post-Covid symptoms which include conditions such as chronic fatigue and brain fog, which are experienced at least three months after the initial infection for significant periods of time, in some cases for over two years. While most people will make a full and quick recovery from Covid-19, some adults and children can continue to experience ongoing symptoms or can have a relapse after an initial recovery. These symptoms can persist for several months, or even years, Tipperary Independent TD, Deputy Lowry told the Tribune. In November last, Deputy Lowry and members of the Regional Group of TDs brought forward a Motion calling for the rollout of specialist services to support those who have failed to make a full recovery after being infected with the SARS- CoV-2 virus. This was the first major Parliamentary debate on the impact of Long Covid in Ireland. The current reality is that a large number of Long Covid patients are presenting to hospitals with complex health conditions at a time when the system is already bursting at the seams. These patients, many of whom are chronically ill, are adding to our already ridiculously long waiting lists as there are insufficient dedicated clinics established to deal with their medical needs, Deputy Lowry said. Long Covid needs to be acknowledged with the same degree of importance as the initial wave of infections. People are suffering and are crying out for help. The findings released from this first comprehensive survey on the prevalence of Long Covid in Ireland, stresses the need to urgently address the health care requirements of those who are suffering with this illness, Deputy Lowry said. Most Common in Leinster Meanwhile, Long Covid is more than twice as common in Leinster than other areas in Ireland, causing delays in specialist clinics, a survey has found. People suffering the condition in Leinster can wait up to a year to see a specialist and face lengthy waiting times in clinics. The Ireland Thinks poll earlier referenced by Deputy Lowry revealed 1,300 people found the self-declared incidence of long covid was 9.36% in Leinster, 5.4% in Munster, and 3.78% in Connacht and Ulster. Six percent of adults in Ireland reported symptoms of long covid for more than 12 weeks and a further 3% had symptoms for less than 12 weeks. The most common symptoms are fatigue (86%), shortness of breath (59%), sleep problems (44%), memory problems (43%), and muscle ache (39%), and women are twice as likely to experience shortness of breath and muscle ache than men who are diagnosed. Two asylum seekers from Zimbabwe living in Sean Ross spend every morning volunteering in the Vincent's SVP shop on Church Street in Roscrea - helping with donations and providing much needed support for Dimma's Books, the boutique bookshop now thriving in Church Street. Samson Mawarire and Codney Mbiri had to flee the country some seven months ago and seek asylum in Ireland. Currently their application for refugee status is being assessed. Samson was a professional accountant working as an insurance assessor and his wife and two daughters are in hiding in South Africa. Codney was a butcher. Rather than do nothing they decided to become volunteers at the SVP shop and have been doing so almost since they arrived in Roscrea", famed bibliophile, author and currently the SVP Hon. Librarian, George Cunningham told the Tribune "Not alone have they fitted in well with the other volunteers but by their professionalism and willingness to help in every way possible have endeared themselves to all who come in contact with them. Pictured above are George with the two men holding two of his publications. "How apt it is that the two books displayed by them reflect the Roscrea Christian heritage which had its cradle at their place of residence, Sean Ross", George said. Dimmas Books has over 3,500 volumes available and is open every day from 10am to 4pm and on alternate Saturdays. (Closed next Sat). "What an example they give to others who might follow in their footsteps. And what a contribution they make giving back to the community and trying to integrate as best as is possible, George Cunningham told the Tribune. OFFALY County Council offers a number of grant schemes to assist in the development and promotion of the Arts across the county. The application process for a variety of grants offered to professional artists, communities and festivals for 2023 has been open for a couple of months and the deadlines are fast approaching. The grants include the Arts Acts Grants 2023, the Festival Arts Scheme and the Professional Artists Support Award. The Arts Acts Grants are for Offaly voluntary arts organisations, schools, drama & musical groups, town bands, voluntary community groups (not festivals) intending to host arts events or projects in Offaly in 2023. The Festival Arts Scheme is designed for festivals taking place in Offaly that are either dedicated arts festivals or have a strong professional arts element to the festival. The Professional Artist Support Award offers a support scheme for professional artists, including the categories, continuing professional development, creation of new work, audience development and materials assistance. The grant schemes fund many great projects every year, and with the pandemic restrictions lifted in 2022, many groups and artists developed fantastic projects and events to develop their own work and created inspiring events for their local communities. Some community projects supported included drama workshops at Coolderry Central School, a number of visual art workshops with professional artists including with graffiti artist SUMS at St Marys Secondary School, the Waterford Walls project held with Rath Eglish Foroige Club and sculpture workshops with Siobhan Bulfin at St Brendans Community School. Tullamore Gramophone Society held their Summer Concert at Charleville Castle with renowned clarinettist, John Finucane, along with the 2022 Outstanding award-winning String Quartet from The Royal Irish Academy of Music. All the funding schemes are competitive and applicants are encouraged to ensure that proposed projects are innovative and ambitious, and for the Arts Acts and Festival grants, provide maximum impact in the community within the objectives. Application process opened in November and the deadline for the Arts Act Grants and Professional Artist applications is this Thursday January 19th 2023 at 3pm. The deadline for the Festival Arts Scheme is Thursday February 16th at 3pm. Please note that this year all applications will be made online via submit.com Further information on all of the scheme is available on https://www.offaly.ie/eng/Services/Arts-and-Culture/Grants_Awards/ The Arts Office welcomes queries and reminds potential applicants to read the guidelines carefully before applying. Email arts@offalycoco.ie The Government has tabled amendments to controversial legislation to deal with the legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles in an attempt to address concerns raised by victims. One of the changes proposed by the Government would see a proposed new truth recovery body able to conduct criminal investigations where it judges that to be appropriate. The move comes ahead of the committee stage of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, scheduled to proceed in the House of Lords next week. The Government has said the legislation aims to deliver better outcomes for those most impacted by the Troubles, including victims, survivors and veterans. But the proposed legislation has proven to be deeply unpopular since it was first unveiled, drawing opposition from all of the major political parties in Northern Ireland, the Irish government and victims groups. The draft legislation had proposed a new approach to dealing with the legacy of the conflict in the region, with more focus on truth recovery rather than criminal justice outcomes. The most controversial aspects of the legislation were the promise of immunity from prosecution for perpetrators who agreed to provide information to a new truth body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), and a move to end conflict-related civil cases and inquests. The Government said its amendments would seek to address some of the principal concerns raised since the Bills introduction. The amendments include: Confirmation that the ICRIR established by the legislation will be able to conduct criminal investigations where it judges that to be appropriate; Ensuring that individuals who knowingly or recklessly provide false information to the ICRIR can be prosecuted and have their immunity revoked; Disapplying the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 for individuals who choose not to tell the commission what they know and are then convicted of an offence so that they face a full, rather than reduced, sentence. Increasing the fine for non-compliance with the commission. Strengthening the commissions independence by making clear that the Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris should consult individuals before appointing the chief commissioner. The UK Government has today formally tabled amendments to legislation seeking to address the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.https://t.co/IxWngGGpuH Northern Ireland Office (@NIOgov) January 17, 2023 Mr Heaton-Harris said: These amendments reflect the extensive engagement that has taken place, and demonstrates the Governments commitment to working with all interested parties regarding their concerns, and how these might be addressed. The Government remains absolutely committed to delivering better outcomes for those most impacted by the Troubles. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has defended his party colleagues during a tense exchange in the Dail chamber, rounding on Sinn Fein to explain a 1,000 euro donation from Jonathan Dowdall. Mr Varadkar also questioned the legitimacy of an Oxfam poverty report, saying that billionaires in Ireland are all fur coat and no knickers, and defended attending Davos. Taking the first Leaders Questions of the Dail term since returning to the office of Taoiseach, Mr Varadkar was forced to defend public expenditure minister Paschal Donohoe, as well as Damien English, who resigned as a junior minister last week. At the weekend, Mr Donohoe admitted to not declaring 1,057 euro paid by an individual to hang up his posters ahead of the 2016 general election, while Mr English resigned last week after he admitted to not declaring owning a property on a planning application to a local authority. Mr Varadkar rebutted concerns raised by the opposition and shot back at them querying whether the costs of paying for taxis during elections had been fully declared. Kicking off the first Leaders Questions of 2023 this afternoon. A busy Dail session ahead with 38 bills progressing for priority publication and drafting. Tune in live here https://t.co/YqKpxlv5bF pic.twitter.com/B3AupOmw2g Hildegarde Naughton (@1Hildegarde) January 18, 2023 He repeated his governments commitment to transparency and confirmed and that oversight of ethics legislation would be transferred to finance minister Michael McGrath, after Mr Donohoe had recused himself from those duties. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald accused Mr Varadkars Cabinet of being mired in scandal. There are tens of thousands of people who were not able to build a one-off home because, unlike deputy English, they were honest in filling out their forms, but he believed that those rules did not apply to him. She added: Despite his best efforts, Minister Donahoe cannot escape the fact that he broke the rules by receiving this donation. Mr Varadkar responded that he believes Mr Donohoe, calling him a man of the highest standards. And I believe hes somebody who you can trust and somebody who I believe. This is how Fine Gael does business. Two Ministers caught out breaking the rules on planning and donations. More examples of cronyism and favours for insiders. Its time for change. @MaryLouMcDonald pic.twitter.com/0J0JsYJiKd Sinn Fein (@sinnfeinireland) January 18, 2023 And I think deep down everyone in this house knows that, that Pascal is a man of integrity and somebody who tells the truth. He said that it was up to the ethics watchdog Sipo to make a judgment as part of its review, to take it out of the political cut and thrust, and to look at the information independently. Hitting back at the opposition party, Mr Varadkar raised the issue of a 1,000 euro donation from former Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall, who has been jailed for four years for facilitating the 2016 murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel. Theres a not dissimilar situation here in relation to a donation that you accepted, a 1,000 euro donation that you accepted from (Jonathan) Dowdall, your friend, he said. On your declaration deputy, (in 2011), you claimed it as a personal donation to you. It has since been claimed by (Sinn Fein TD Louise) OReilly and by you and by others, that it was a donation to Sinn Fein. Do you not now need to correct that declaration? Was it a donation to you, which you took and spent? Was it a donation to your party? There is a difference, deputy I dont know if there is a Sipo complaint in about this, but somebody might consider doing that, because youve questions to answer in that regard too. Labour leader Ivana Bacik said that the issues faced by Mr English and Mr Donohoe raise fundamental questions about the standards in public life. One minister has already resigned without answering any questions, and further, the minister responsible for ethics reform is now under investigation for undisclosed election donations. She said that this was particularly unwelcome as attempts are being made by a fringe minority to sow distrust and attack elected representatives. Mr Varadkar responded that it was not yet an investigation, and that the matter was currently being reviewed. I imagine there are plenty people in this house who are wondering: is it possible that somebody could have done something similar in their circumstances? Mr Varadkar contended. Maybe thats not the case, but say for example weve all seen (in) election campaigns, taxi drivers bringing people to the polling station, a taxi is a commercial vehicle. Was that declared? Lots of people in this house have amended their declarations retrospectively, in all parties, when they became aware of an omission and (Mr Donohoe) deeply regrets that he didnt do that at the time. The White Houses own clumsy PR strategy, which lacked transparency and made the US president look like he had something to hide, may yet help derail his re-election. Macaus ex-junket king Alvin Chau, who once had branded Suncity high-roller rooms at Crown in Melbourne and Star in Sydney, has been found guilty of charges including criminal association, illicit gambling and fraud. 2008-2023 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. This train service from Berlin to Wroclaw is more than a means of transportation it also offers a culture program. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is touring Quebec as he tries to assemble a coalition of voters ahead of the next election campaign. Former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri agreed to cooperate with Belgian prosecutors, in exchange for a more lenient sentence. He reportedly received money from Morocco to promote its interests in the EU parliament. Dani Dayan, head of the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israel, is traveling to Germany for the first time in his life. He spoke to DW about his view of the special trip and on the fight against antisemitism. Emma Raducanu has "no doubts" she can compete with the very best after pushing seventh seed Coco Gauff in a gallant defeat at the Australian Open. Poland has sent a large delegation of representatives from politics and business to the World Economic Forum. President Duda is highly sought after, placing the venue known as "Polish House" at the center of talks. The International Atomic Energy Agency is placing teams of experts at all four of Ukraine's nuclear power plants to reduce the risk of severe accidents as Russia's war against the country rages on, agency head Rafael Grossi said Wednesday. Ukraine's interior minister and other officials were among the 14 killed in the crash beside a nursery. The Border Patrol union on Tuesday criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her handling of the border crisis, which has exploded since the Biden administration assumed office. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the Biden administration is to blame for the influx of illegal immigrants crossing the border. A coalition of Republican lawmakers from Texas urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to change the way he is approaching the migrant crisis, saying he has "failed." New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in discussing the surge of migrants into the Big Apple, demanded a border "national czar" be appointed -- a job Vice President Kamala Harris already has. Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate are requesting that Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu rescind his appointment of Robert Spindell to the state's elections commission. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has been accused of violating an open records law by denying a request for communications related to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harvey Elliotts sensational strike helped Liverpool put their Premier League woes to one side as they moved into the FA Cup fourth round by edging out Wolves at Molineux. Tamworth Herald 18 Jan 2023 Home Office rules make it unlikely for him to lose out on the 22k pot. He could get the sum whenever he gets out of prison. The Greenland ice sheet was warmer in the first decade of this century compared to all other periods in the past 1,000 years, study suggests. Scotlands chief constable has condemned the actions of a Metropolitan Police officer who was revealed as one of Britains most prolific sex offenders. Eurasia Review 24 Jan 2023 By C. Todd Lopez The U.S. and Israel on Monday kicked off Juniper Oak 23.2, a bilateral, live-fire exercise that takes.. The partys over for us. Where do we go now? USATODAY.com 30 Jan 2023 Here's the latest for Monday, January 30: Suicide bomber kills at least 59 in Pakistan; Blinken urges restraint by Israel and.. The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. The White House brushed aside criticism Tuesday of its fragmented disclosures about the discovery of classified documents and official records at President Joe Biden's home and former office, Russias war in Ukraine has wrought a devastating toll on civilians and shattered civilian life in much of the country, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2023. Russian forces have committed apparent war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, summary executions, and enforced disappearances.... African heads of state and global CEOs at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting backed the launch of the first of its kind report on how public-private partnerships can support the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). AfCFTA: A New Era for Global Business and Investment in Africa outlines... USATODAY.com 12 Apr 2023 It's disturbing watching some NHL players resist Pride Night celebrations, which are meant to show the LGBTQ community they're not.. If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now! Submit Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Charge d'Affaires of the Chinese Embassy, Ang Zhimin, has expressed his country's support for the national reconciliation project in Libya, welcoming the convening of its preparatory forum, with the participation of representatives of all political parties, to end the political crisis Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Following the latest meeting of rival military leaders in Sirte, Libya, the head of the UN Mission in the country (UNSMIL) has called upon the national authorities to recommit to fully supporting the implementation of the 2020 ceasefire agreement New York, US (PANA) - Some 50 women and girls in Burkina Faso who were abducted last week while looking for food must be released immediately, the United Nations said on Tuesday K-pop stars, White Lotus actors, throngs of screaming fans Milan once again brought the energy and chaos to Fashion Week for the men's shows that just wrapped up. JW Anderson, who revisited some of his most seminal fashion moments, was a new addition to the Milan men's schedule and he plans to keep showing there for good. Gucci showed its first collection without Alessandro Michele, Fendi turned the Baguette bag into a meme and Dsquared2 went raunchy with some Y2K slogan tees. Loverboy was another fresh new addition to the calendar. See all the biggest moments from the Milan men's shows, below. The 'White Lotus'-ification of Fashion Week Photos via Getty It was only a matter of time. Much like how Gossip Girl became the cast du jour to take over Fashion Week last year, the cast of White Lotus Season 2 has become this season's front row flavor of the month. It started with Will Sharpe at Emporio Armani followed by Adam DiMarco at Prada. Italian starlets Simona Tabasco and Sabrina Impacciatore were both at the JW Anderson show and Theo James closed things out at Giorgio Armani (Sharpe and James said it was their first time attending a runway show). Expect more cameos from the cast come NYFW next month. Fendi's Baguette Bags Look Like Actual Baguette Bread Photos courtesy of Fendi After years of tweaking and updating their classic Baguette bag, Fendi decided to go the literal route, sneaking in a bag made to look like the actual baked goods: one model had theirs peeking out of a tote picnic style, another clutched one in their hands and another had theirs in the shape of an umbrella. (This is very much for the French market, Silvia Venturini Fendi told Vogue those Parisians do love their bread after all.) Gucci's First Show Since Alessandro Michele's Departure Photo courtesy of Gucci Gucci was arguably the most anticipated show of the week with fashion insiders eager to see what direction the brand would take following Alessandro Michele's departure at the end of last year. What they got was one of those "transitional" collections that are viewed as a sort of placeholder until someone is named creative director. That's not to say there weren't any standouts: the boxy blazers, simple tees and elongated coats all with a tinge of indie-sleaze, making for some perfectly fine wardrobe staples. Unlike the last time Gucci showed a men's collection following a designer exit, no one stepped out for the final bow, leaving the guessing games to continue until an announcement is finally made. Dsquared's Sexy Y2K Rebels Photos courtesy of Dsquared2 The trashy teen vibes at Dsquared2 were rampant at the brand's co-ed show featuring TikTok stars and a collegiate dorm room set on the runway. It was signature Dsquared2 a sexy, raunchy mashup of eclectic Y2K-style references (shoutout to Haley Wollens who styled the hell out of this show. A section of ironic slogan tees ("Choke" in the Coca Cola font and "Emo" in bold against "Demon" were some viral hits) and accessories like tiara caps and "I love beer" belts made for one of the more memorable (and best) Dsquared2 shows in years. Parcel service provider Hermes Germany is building a new sorting and distribution center near Dresden, Saxony, that will be capable of processing more than 200,000 shipments a day once fully operational. ') } // --> ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Designed by Bremen-based Peper & Sohne Group, the new facility will cover a total area of approximately 68,500m2 and will be built to achieve a gold rating from the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB). It will include a 3,100m2 photovoltaic system that will supply around 40 charging points for a fleet of electric vehicles. Around 100 employees will work at the site which is scheduled to be completed in time for the 2023 peak season. ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Marco Schluter, chief operations officer, Hermes Germany, said, As the easternmost logistics center, our new building near Dresden will be a strategically important hub for Hermes Germany. I am very pleased that our logistics network will be enriched by a powerful and future-oriented location this year just in time for the 2023 Christmas season. The parcel delivery of the future must be made as low-emission as possible. For Hermes Germany, a holistic sustainability concept is therefore just as decisive a factor in the development of new locations as the location itself, the performance of the plants and having committed employees, he said. An 8,850m2 logistics hall with high-performance conveyor and sorting technologies will sit at the heart of the facility and will initially be capable of processing 15,000 shipments per hour. This will eventually be increased to 25,000 shipments per hour following further expansion. Hermes Germany had previously worked with the Peper & Sohne Group for the realization of its distribution center in Weyhe near Bremen, which opened in 2020. Christoph S Peper, managing partner, Peper & Sohne Group, said, We are proud to work with Hermes Germany again and to accompany the construction of a modern and sustainable logistics center as an investor and project developer. Photo: (Photo : Pexel/Pixabay) Parents in Colorado can enroll their kids to free preschool starting today. The new Universal Preschool in Colorado launches today, allowing every child in the state a free preschool experience a year before they start kindergarten. With Colorado believing that early learning is a critical part of public education, their lawmakers passed a state-funded preschool called the Universal Preschool Program. It will provide Colorado children a half day or 15 hours a week of pre-kindergarten instruction, aiming to prepare them better for success as they officially go to school the next year and reduce achievement gaps. What's more, is that parents need not pay for anything. Their children can have an early learning experience for free as the state will fund the program yearly for up to 29,360 children, allowing families to save an average of $6,000 annually on child care. Parents are excited Part of Gov. Jared Schutz Polis' value statement expressed support for how every child in Colorado should start school with the same shot at success, and the new program would do just that. "High quality preschool programs are known to aid in a child's development and to have social, academic, and economic benefits that are carried with that child throughout their life. The launch of this program builds on Colorado's long-standing commitment to children and families and helps ensure that they are valued, healthy and thriving," the state's Department of Early Childhood stated. Numerous research has documented the benefits of high-quality early learning, CBS News reported. Data have shown that children are more likely to read earlier, be more academically proficient, seek and eventually attain higher education, and earn more throughout their lives. Parents and staff of Escalante Biggs Academy in Denver, one of the schools that signed up to offer their services for the program, know all these benefits by heart. Thus, both are excited about the program. Preschool teacher and mother Connie Trujillo has been preparing to enroll her son in the program. This will be her first time having a preschooler, yet she "sings the praises of preschool" to other parents. As a preschool teacher, she knows its positive impact on her son and other Colorado children, emphasizing social skills and the opportunity to connect and build friendships, which COVID has robbed from other kids. Read Also: Indiana's Top Education Official Proposes Free Preschool to all Students in State by 2020 What parents need to do Parents and children must apply on the state portal (https://upk.colorado.gov/) and through their school district or early childhood provider to receive the free preschool benefit. According to The Denver Gazette, parents will find a list of the schools that have signed up to participate in the program on the portal. They can choose up to five preschool options, from licensed community-based, school-based, to home-based preschool settings, and rank them based on their preferences. The kids will be matched with more or less 850 providers coming mid-February. There is no deadline for the submission of applications. However, parents are encouraged to sign up early. Children with "certain qualifying factors" are eligible for additional 15 hours on top of the program's regular schedule, allowing these kids to experience full-day programming. Three-year-olds with qualifying factors can also have part-time or ten hours of preschool programming. The Universal Preschool is expected to serve 30,000 children for its first year of service, serving about 50 percent of its four year old's population. Related Article: How to Choose the Best Preschool for Your Child Photo: (Photo : Getty Images/JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP) Two separate proposed bills are causing parents distress. One would give children 13 years old and up the ability to make vaccination decisions without their parents' consent, and the other would allow religious exemptions for school immunization requirements. Democrat Rep. Kevin Ryan, the representative of Connecticut's 139th District of Bozrah, Montville and Norwich, proposed Bill No. 5480 in this year's legislative session. It would give children from ages 12 and older the right to be vaccinated for COVID, HPV, and others, even without the permission of their parents and guardians, Eyewitness News 3 reported. Ryan stated that the issue is an important concern of his constituents. Thus, as a representative, he is doing his duty to "express their requests and ensure their concerns have been taken seriously," especially since the issue is on health care. An 'overreach' Republican Minority Leader in the House Rep. Vinnie Candelora believes that the bill is a step too far and is a "disturbing" intervention in parent and child relationships. "It's a road that Connecticut keeps trying to push, the Democrats keep pushing this issue and I think it's really important to have parents involved in their child's lives so I find the proposal very disturbing," Candelora emphasized. Parents agree with her. Parent Brenda C. expressed that the bill is not a good idea. Another parent, Chanti Carter, stated that children should not be making those kinds of big decisions. Tymeir Williams declared that parents need to be notified, and parents need to permit something if it involves touching the children. Parent Maribeth Marchi also proclaimed that 12-year-olds have "no business making a decision," regardless if it is about vaccination or other health-related concerns. However, according to NBC Connecticut, other community members are expressing support for the bill, stating that children should be given the right to make decisions about their health. Brenna Zysk of Windsor expressed that it is suitable for kids to have the option to be vaccinated if they want to, especially if their parents are against it. Thulani David of Hartford also said that it is important for kids to have and make their opinions and be heard. Read Also: North Carolina Family Enraged as Newborn Vaccinated Without Consent for Hepatitis B Religious exemption from immunization On another note, a separate bill proposed in this year's legislative session is one introduced by Rep. Mark DeCaprio. Proposed H.B. No. 5191 would allow students to "assert" religious exemption from the attending school's requirement for immunization. According to DeCaprio, he is proposing the bill to support his constituents who had older children excluded from having the religious exemption but have younger ones who are not eligible. It could be recalled that Gov. Ned Lamont signed a new law in 2021 that removed the exemptions if they were non-medical. While other parents worry about the health risk that unimmunized students will bring due to the bill, parent Maribeth Marchi expressed support saying that people having their own beliefs deserve to be "recognized as they have been for years beforehand." The two bills are now under the General Assembly's Committee on Public Health. It has been reported that there are over 3000 bills proposed yearly, and most of them do not even make it to a hearing. Thus, it depends on the Public Health Committee whether these proposals move forward. Related Article: California Decides Not To Expand Teen Vaccination Without Parental Consent This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions Yesterday the Financial Times reported on Apple's history of developing a sophisticated supply chain in China that would be close to impossible to replicate anywhere else in the world. In the big picture, that remains true to today, but India is now going all out to assist Apple in developing a new supply chain outside of China. According to a new Bloomberg report, "More than a dozen of Apple Inc.s Chinese suppliers are receiving initial clearance by the Indian government to expand in their country, assisting Apple's efforts in diversifying its assembly network beyond China. AirPods and iPhone assembler Luxshare Precision Industry Co. and a unit of lens-maker Sunny Optical Technology Group Co. are among the companies gaining approval. The clearances from key Indian ministries are a step toward full approval for expansion in India, and the companies will still likely to be required to find local Indian joint venture partners, sources confirm. Apple and other US electronics brands are seeking to reduce their reliance on China after trade restrictions and COVID-related production disruptions laid bare the risks of too much concentration in one country. The clearances signal that India is allowing more Chinese companies in to build out its tech manufacturing sector, even as political tensions between the Asian neighbors have intensified. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it a national priority to grow Indias manufacturing sector, providing financial incentives and government support for companies expansion projects. Apple has played a central role in that effort, with partners such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. producing more iPhones in the country for the latest generation than ever before. About 14 Apple suppliers are receiving green light from India, after the company named them as companies whose services it needs to increase its presence in India, sources say. While the vast majority of Apple products are still assembled in China, the company has in recent years started making more of them in India through Taiwanese partners. Apple wields tight control over its supply chain that comprises hundreds of component makers. Some Indian companies, such as the Tata Group, already provide Apple with parts, and the country is pushing hard to add more local providers into the supply chain to boost and diversify its electronics industry. Joint ventures with Chinese component makers are a way of achieving that. For more, read the full Bloomberg report. By now, you may perhaps have heard of this outrageous case from Hamline University in Minnesota. (Ive already mentioned it here in my blog entry for 30 December 2022, noting that I myself have used precisely the same image see immediately above in lectures that I have delivered, accompanied by exactly the same explanation about varieties within Islam and about differences of Muslim opinion with regard to images of the Prophet Muhammad.) Here is an octet of articles that Ive noted about the matter, in no particular order and with no claim or pretense to completeness: New York Times: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job. After an outcry over the art history class by Muslim students Hamline University officials said the incident was Islamophobic. But many scholars say the work is a masterpiece. National Review: Old-World and New-World Illiberalism Team Up at Hamline University Amna Khalid, of Carleton College, in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Most of All, I Am Offended as a Muslim: On Hamline Universitys shocking imposition of narrow religious orthodoxy in the classroom Kenan Malik, in The Guardian: An art treasure long cherished by Muslims is deemed offensive. But to whom?: An academic spat over a depiction of Muhammad reveals how the language of diversity is eviscerating its very meaning Christiane Gruber, Professor of Art, University of Michigan: Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad are an important piece of history heres why art historians teach them Jill Filopovic, in Slate: Hamline Universitys Controversial Firing Is a Warning: Insistence that others follow ones strict religion is authoritarian and illiberal no matter what the religion is. Mark Silk, Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Connecticut, where he also serves as the Director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life: Who says you cant show students a portrait of Muhammad? A multiple-choice quiz to help college administrators navigate religious freedom on campus. Hamline University under fire for art professors dismissal Hamline Universitys administration should be ashamed of itself for its ignorant pandering, its gross injustice, and its crude violation of academic freedom, and it should reinstate Erika Lopez Prater immediately and with (at the very least) an apology. It is true that the Islamic artistic tradition has devoted far more attention to calligraphy and to more or less abstract representations than to, say, landscape painting or other forms familiar in the West. It has tended to shy away from portraiture, and especially from portraying saints and prophets. In particular, there has been, in many circles, a reluctance to depict the Prophet Muhammad. You will, so far as Im aware and Ive been in more mosques than I can count never, ever, see a portrait of Muhammad in a mosque, and certainly not in the specific space set aside for worship. Moreover, there are absolutely no illustrated Qurans in the manner of the illustrated Bibles, for both children and adults, with which many of us are well acquainted. Even when the Prophet is depicted, it is not uncommon for his general bodily form to be indicated while, at the same time, his face is either left blank or covered with a cloth veil. There is a real fear among many Muslims, both historically and still today, of falling into idolatry. Today, extreme sects of Sunni Islam e.g., the Wahhabis of the Arabian Peninsula are vociferous in their opposition to visual representations of the Prophet Muhammad. But, although they would fain claim that they speak for Islam as a whole, they dont. Not historically and not today. And it seems inappropriate, to say the least, for the administration at an American university to give those extreme sects veto power over how Islam should be depicted and portrayed in the West and even, in a sense, over how other Muslims (a substantial minority, if not indeed the majority) express their own faith. A once-famous case of the reluctance to show Muhammad is the 1976 film by the Syrian-American director Moustapha Akkad entitled The Message (Ar-Risalah or ; originally, Mohammad, Messenger of God), which I saw when it appeared and remember quite liking. (Of course, I really liked Anthony Quinn.). Although it is a narrative of the life of Muhammad as seen from the perspective of his uncle Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib (played by Anthony Quinn) and his adopted son Zayd ibn Harithah, it never shows Muhammad himself. Rather, the camera is Muhammad, and we watch events unfold through his eyes. But that is absolutely not to say that there is no artistic tradition among Muslims of representing the Prophet. In fact, I offer four examples of precisely that here in this blog entry see above and I could easily have multiplied them many times over. It would be an oversimplification to say that such representations are characteristic solely of the Iranian and/or Shii regions of the Islamic world (e.g., modern-day Iran and Afghanistan), but it wouldnt be altogether misleading, either. It seems like we just finished the Winter Solstice, but Imbolc will be here in two weeks. Imbolc on February 1st is the first holy day on the modern Pagan Wheel of the Year first on the secular calendar, anyway. Imbolc has several themes. Its a time of cleansing and purification. Its the earliest you can do spring cleaning in much of the Northern hemisphere. Its also a full month into the new year its time to sweep away any of the residue from the old year, especially those things wed like to leave behind. Imbolc is also the promise of Spring. On Groundhog Day well see if Spring will be here soon or if well have six more weeks of Winter. We are likely to see some more bad weather (the Winter storm that destroyed the Texas electric grid was in the middle of February in 2021), but by now the days are noticeably longer and we know that Spring will be here before too many more weeks. These are ancient and important traditions. But for me, Imbolc is first and foremost a time to honor the Goddess Brighid. Goddess of Poetry, Smithcraft, and Healing Brighid (Bridget, Brigid, Brid, or any one of what seems like a million variations of Her name) is an Irish Goddess who is generally associated with poetry, smithcraft, and healing. She may or may not be an earlier incarnation of the Christian Saint Brigid. She is one of the more active deities of our time, though Shes generally more quiet about it than some others. Cernunnos has been with me all my life. Danu came to me early on my Pagan journey and is still here. Ive told my story with the Morrigan before. I met Brighid in a rather common way through Her followers. Meeting Brighid in Denton The Pagan and polytheist communities are fighting a near-constant battle against those who argue that religion is transmitted by blood, and only those with the right DNA can worship certain Gods. This idea is factually wrong and often promoted with harmful intent. Rather, religion is transmitted by human interaction and of course, by the workings of the Gods. Parents pass their religion down to their children through practice. But also, they pass it to neighbors and strangers who gather around their fire and while theyre there, have an experience so powerful it stays with them when they return home. Theres a local group of Pagan and Pagan-adjacent people in Denton who celebrated what they call the Brigidantia Bardic Bash for over 30 years. It was a celebration of the bardic arts by bardic folks. A party, yes, but a party that honored Brighid as their patron, in Her role as a Goddess of Poetry. I was honored to attend a few times and shared a couple pieces from the modern Druid tradition. Covid and then the complications of life ended their streak theyre hoping to restart next year. Im hoping to be there. Several of my friends are priests or priestesses of Brighid (theres no functional gendered difference, but some call themselves priests and others call themselves priestesses and I want to call them what they call themselves). Ive learned a lot from them. Brighid was always the Deity of the Occasion at the Texas Imbolc Retreat, which I attended annually from 2014 through 2019. Her presence was unmistakable and strong. Gradually I got to know Her. I led and co-led rituals in Her honor, both with Denton CUUPS and with small private groups. At some point I added Her statue to my altar-shrine, and began including Her in my nightly prayers. It was Brighid who asked (told) me to write my first book The Path of Paganism. She helped me with it and also held me to my promise to get it finished. The love of Brighid I have experienced Her presence on many occasions. On one occasion I experienced Her in ecstatic communion. I have never felt such a pure and complete expression of love in my entire life. Like all such experiences, it is ineffable. Not because Im forbidden to speak of it quite the contrary but because words are completely inadequate to describe what happened, and what it felt like. But I need to try, because the word love gets thrown around rather loosely in our contemporary society. What I experienced was a deep and genuine concern for the well-being of myself, of the people gathered with me that night, of our community, and of the whole world. It was the hope that we would be happy and well. Not a cheap, idle hope but an empowering hope. It was an honest regret that such well-being can never be fully realized, because of our conflicting desires and competing interests. It was a not-so-gentle reminder that while perfection is not possible, better is and that we have an obligation to move as far in that direction as we possibly can. Whatever else She may be, Brighid is a Goddess of Smithcraft. She has a forge, and an anvil, and a hammer. And She is quite happy to place each of us on that anvil, to rework and shape us into something beautiful and useful. Gold and silver are inherently beautiful, but how much more beautiful are pendants and rings and chalices? That experience of Her was almost eight years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I imagine I always will. Imbolc is Brighids Day I am not serving as Her oracle in this post. Its not written at Her direction, though I hope its clear its written with Her inspiration. I have no message to relay, no calls to action, no invitations to the Forge. For now. My public celebration of Imbolc will be a little late this year. Denton CUUPS is holding our Imbolc circle on Saturday, February 4. But on February 1st Ill go outside (usually not a difficult thing here in Texas), pour an offering of good Irish whiskey in front of a rather special tree, and offer my thanks to Brighid for another year of Her presence and blessings. And then Ill listen. I may hear something important. I may hear something routine. I may hear nothing at all. What I may or may not hear isnt important (unless it is, but thats a different post for a different time). Whats important is that I pay honor to Brighid. Because whatever else Imbolc may be, for me it is always Brighids Day. For Further Reading Imbolc A Solitary Ritual 8 Things to do for Imbolc as a Solitary Pagan Imbolc The Promise of Spring Imbolc: A Time For Cleansing Solas Bhride: A Goddess Speaks Softly in Many Forms A Pilgrimage to Kildare Denton CUUPS Online Imbolc Ritual 2021 A lot of people have written already about the recent case in which Hamline University decided not to continue to employ an adjunct art history professor, Erika Lopez Prater, after a student took offense at her showing (with due warning in advance) of a Medieval Muslim work of art depicting the prophet Muhammad. Prater is now suing Hamline. Below is my effort to articulate my stance on the matter. Inclusivity and respect on the one hand, and freedom of expression/academic freedom on the other, are positive values. Sometimes the pursuit of one of our important values is in tension with another. Then we have to choose which to prioritize. If more institutions would indicate up front what they put first when these values conflict, there would be less shock and less public outcry when they apply their clearly-stated prioritization, even from those who might disagree with their stance. Ultimately, for me there are two key concerns. One is that history includes things that some people find offensive. Whether one is dealing with individuals who want to believe that the historical Jesus thought of himself as fully God as per the later creeds, or individuals who want to believe that their nation never committed any atrocities, history presents inconvenient data. To hide that information is to put ones teaching in the service of an ideologies that educators should not be required to subscribe to or promote. Of course, thats not strictly analogous with the case of Islam and the depiction of Muhammad, since there is nothing in conservative Christianity that constitutes a prohibition of hearing or seeing something you disagree with. In some streams of Islam, however, there is a prohibition against depicting the Prophet, and some would say that depiction of any living thing is prohibited. I think theres more to be gained by making analogies with Judaism. Most Jews wont pronounce the divine name, but they dont expect others to share that scruple. If you are serving food that isnt kosher you alert Jews and they abstain or you come to some arrangement for an alternative. The particular Muslim student who objected to the art being shown was equivalent to saying you shouldnt have served pork even though you announced the menu in advance and offered an alternative, because my religion prohibits me from consuming pork. The student was demanding that no one see the image because of her scruples, in essence, wasnt she? In a pluralist society you should not be obligated to make an image of Muhammad if you find that objectionable, but neither should you be able to prohibit others from seeing such images if they choose. There isnt a perfect balance that will make everyone happy, but there is a tried and true approach in the United States that, however imperfect, seems to work better than alternatives. The other major concern I have is that over-prioritizing not causing offense puts the professor in the role of deciding which voices within a tradition get to speak for that tradition and impose their values on everyone else. Not all religious people agree on what it is appropriate to see or to say. In the recent case in which an adjunct art history professor was not hired again to teach, the school did not take the side of respecting Islam, they took one side in a debate internal to Islam, the more conservative and restrictive side. To my way of thinking, more important than the issue of whether you think that is the side they ought to take is the question whether you think universities and other educational institutions ought to be taking sides in such debates at all. When I first started teaching I subscribed to the view that I should try to keep my values and my own personal opinions out of the classroom. I eventually realized that was impossible. The very basis of what I do is value-laden. I believe that it is a positive thing for religious people (whether within my own tradition or any other) and non-religious people to critically examine their assumptions, wrestle with history as we are best able to reconstruct it, and to hear opinions different from their own. Those are values that are embraced by most who support liberal education. There are certainly instances at least on occasion when other important things should be elevated above these educational aims. However, if we prioritize other values above them as a rule, we dilute and diminish our commitment to education with all its life-transforming power. No university and no professor should do that lightly. I also wrote the following on Facebook in response to Kate Blanchards article siding with Hamline against the decision and actions of the art history professor: I am troubled by some of what you wrote in the article, as a religious studies professor. Is it really condescending professor-splaining if I say that most of my students who happen to be Christian have big gaps in their knowledge of their own tradition and its history, and have little prior exposure to historical-critical study of their scriptures? A Christian student who adheres to the creeds and affirms the divinity of Christ may find many conclusions of scholarsincluding the majority of Christian scholarsoffensive. Some Protestants will be offended on the other hand if most of church history before the Reformation is taught as the history of ChristianityI was shocked to discover that in Indiana many people talk about Christians and Catholics as though the former denotes Protestants and Catholics are not Christians. Should we forego teaching history relevant to these controversial topics that should challenge students perception of their own religion? Or is that inherent in the very nature of education? See also Jacques Berlinerblaus and Christiane Grubers articles on the topic, and a statement from art history professors. Inside Higher Ed has covered the incident and shared opinion pieces. There is more background information here, including that the image below of a work of art in University of Edinburghs library was at the heart of the controversy. Many others have shared things that are relevant to this topic. What are your thoughts about this? Please feel free to share them! Context This post is a follow-up to Cultivating Verification: A New Shushogi for Now . Near the top of page 3, just before Dogen praises the koan Zhaozhous Mu, he says, When you meet a teacher, first ask for a koan, just keep it in mind, and study it diligently. This sentence was selected from Dogens Extensive Record, Volume 8, Dharma Discourse 14 (EK V8.14), trans. Taigen Leighton and Shohaku Okumura. The alternate translation offered below includes a bit more of the passage, so Ive underlined the sentence shared above in my version below. Ive long been curious about this passage and recently dug into the original, translating my own version. In this post, Ill make a few observations about this teaching of Dogen, including a point about how the perspective of the translator (strongly) influences the translation a point thats certainly been made before, but I think is particularly clear in this case. Click here to support my Zen teaching practice at Patreon of which translations and writings like this are one facet. You will also find an advertisement free version of this post there too. First, though, a bit about the eighth volume of Dogens Extensive Record or Eihei koroku, or simply The Record, as Ill refer to it here. Volume 8 includes twenty informal talks Dogen gave to students in his room and fourteen dharma discourses (hogo ) addressed to a variety of individual students. The passage thats in the spotlight here occurs deep in the fourteenth such dharma discourse so near the end of the volume. Leighton and Okumura note this hogo was probably written for Dogens main patron, Hatano Yoshishige (d. 1258), who was an official on a level comparable to ministers and generals. Yoshishige, a nobleman with land in Echizen, later provided the land for Dogens monastery, Eiheiji. Note that this was a hogo for a householder audience, including his main patron and probably associates of his main patron. If, indeed, it was offered by Dogen to Yoshishige and friends before the move to Eiheiji, it highlights the effectiveness of the discourse. It may have led Yoshishige to saving Dogen from a difficult situation in the big city with a large land grant and funds for a monastery in the mountains. Also note that it was written out by Dogen himself, rather than a talk that his attendant listened to and then recorded after-the-fact, as is the case for much of The Record . Both the audience to whom it was intended and how the discourse was recorded by Dogen himself should add, I would think, to the reliability of the passage. This hogo is one of the longest passages of any kind in The Record , coming in at ~1500 words in translation. The main themes include the dangers of selecting a bad teacher, the importance of finding a good teacher, and then advice for how to proceed once one has found a good teacher. Ill be returning to this hogo and offering other snippets of translations here in the future. Translation Honored bodhisattvas, when you meet a dharma master, first ask for a single koan case, then you must straightforwardly pay attention, diligently keep it in mind, and practice vigorously. The mountain exhausted, the ocean dried up, you will penetrate perfectly with nothing lacking. Standing in the snow [like Huike], attaining the dharma, and negotiating the Way for eight years without being lazy. Pounding rice [like Huineng], transmitting the robe, doing diligent, vigorous practice for eight months. Thoughts on the Translation First, Dogens advice, find a teacher, take up a koan, and work with it diligently in order to break through or exhaust delusion , is fully consistent with the teaching of almost every other thirteenth century Zen master, regardless of lineage. In fact, I know of no counter examples and say almost to acknowledge that there are many that Im not familiar with. What might be surprising is that this message is being delivered by Dogen. You see, were told by the Post Meiji Soto Orthodox folks that Dogens message was not in alignment with the mainstream of Chinese Chan, especially in that he was not an advocate of koan work or kensho. Thats all you need is just this one paragraph to see that this is clearly false. Its kinda hard to cherry-pick your way around a passage like this one. In addition, nowadays it is said that the Soto style is gentle and gradual, while basking in original awakening. A vigorous passage like the above, though, reveals those prejudices for what they are an inaccurate attempt to recreate Dogens teaching to satisfy the perceived needs and perspectives of nineteenth and twentieth Japanese householders, but they do not accurately reflect Dogens teaching. Nor are they in tune with whats needed now. One dynamic that might be in play here is that Dogens novel expression is confused for a novel meaning. However, in all of Dogens works, he clearly and repeatedly aligns his message with that of all the buddhas and ancestors. In this passage and others in EK V8.14, he uses general terms for teacher and does not say find a Zen master. In this passage, its something like dharma master ().The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism says these characters refer to an eminent monk, a Buddhist teacher, an exemplary practitioner with whom one is intimate. Second, Dogen not only connects koan work with the root of the Zen transmission in China with the selfless and wholehearted practice of Huike and Huineng, but he also centers their awakening experiences and their post-kensho training those eight years and eight months mentioned above. There is a little historical issue here in that the full development of the koan method, and keyword Dogen recommends, was uttered long after Huikes and Huinengs time. Still, Dogen equates breaking through the keyword with the heart of these two essential Zen ancestors. So here Dogen employs the mythical source of the tradition to make his points. Third and finally, a point about translation. As I mentioned above, the perspective of the translator influences the translation. For a case in point, lets look at just the last sentence, Pounding rice [like Huineng], transmitting the robe, doing diligent, vigorous practice for eight months. For this sentence, Leighton and Okumura have The eight-month effort of [Dajian Huineng] pounding rice had the power for [receiving] transmission of the robe. Although more could be said, Id like to compare just one phrase within this sentence. My rendition is doing diligent, vigorous practice and they have had the power. The Chinese characters are and form two binomials. The first, , pronounced gongfu in Chinese and kufu in Japanese, is a common expression in Zen texts and an essential method including in the great Dahuis teaching. I usually translate kufu as diligent practice or diligent effort. The second binomial, , means to possess power. So rather than the very vigorous phrase, Pounding rice [like Huineng], transmitting the robe, doing diligent, vigorous practice , Leighton and Okumura offer, pounding rice had the power for [receiving] transmission of the robe. It seems that they leave out kufu/diligent effort and in so doing tamp down the vivid and vital vigor of Dogens expression. Now, Im not imputing intend. Buddha knows that Ive certainly dropped characters in my own work. Another possibility is that they felt that including both diligent effort and possessing power was redundant. But given that Dogen wrote all four characters, and given the importance of both diligent effort and possessing power, Im called to highlight that for you here. The point being, if a translator sees Dogens teaching as gentle and gradual, then it takes very little for a translation to lean that way. In any case, like the man said, find a good teacher, receive a koan, do your utmost to break through, and then integrate the breakthrough within the vertiginous vicissitudes of daily life. Youd think this was the year of the Linux desktop or something given how many people want a VPN for downloading free and open source software through torrents. Yep, thats what you want torrents for, and if theres one thing you need when torrenting free and open source software, its a secure and private internet connection. Seriously though, besides privacy, you also need to consider speed, and whether a VPN has torrent-friendly servers and services. We go in to more detail on what to look for in a VPN for torrenting below our picks. (To learn even more about all the VPN services weve tested, see our roundup of the best VPNs for all sorts of uses.) So whats the best VPN for torrenting your favorite flavor of Linux and maybe a little Open Office? Here are our top picks. Updated 01/11/2023: Check out our review of the latest version of Windscribe VPN. The latest version builds upon its already strong feature set with increased speeds, a more robust browser extension, and of course their already impressive free version. 1. ProtonVPN The best choice hands down Pros Fantastic speeds Easy-to-use multi-hop feature Supports TOR over VPN connections Cons Expensive Best Prices Today: ProtonVPN has some of the fastest speeds around, both upstream (1st place) and down (2nd place), which is helpful when you want to spread the Open Office love as quickly as possible. It also has excellent privacy promises, and it has a bunch of servers in a friggin bunker, which is pretty cool. ProtonVPN has an excellent interface, its ownership is well known, its based in Switzerland, and did we mention the speeds are solid? Read our full ProtonVPN review 2. OVPN Best for diskless servers Pros Privacy and anonymity are top priorities Accepts cash payments for added anonymity Cons Smaller number of servers Limited country selection While its not as well known as other services, OVPN is one of the, if not the, earliest pioneers to deploy diskless servers across its network, keeping everything in RAM. (That has since become common among VPN providers.) OVPN is based in Sweden, it makes the right privacy promises, and while its not in our top 10 for speeds, OVPNs speeds were very good on the whole. It just had a few weak spots, but if you stick to European servers (or North American ones for non-torrent uses) the speeds should be outstanding. Read our full OVPN review 3. Mullvad Best for anonymity Pros Good speeds Higher level of anonymity possible than with most VPN services Windows desktop is easy to use Cons Not guaranteed to work with Netflix Lacks the extra services that some VPNs offer No password protection for your account Best Prices Today: Mullvad is the ultimate VPN when it comes to privacy and anonymity. The Sweden-based company appreciates your business, but its not interested in finding out who you are. Instead of using an email and password combo, Mullvad randomly generates an account number that functions as your username and password. Mullvad is in the top 10 for speeds, and of course its privacy promises are top notch. Read our full Mullvad review 4. ExpressVPN Best all-purpose option Pros Consistently good speeds Easy-to-use desktop program Broad device support Cons Logs data transfer amounts More expensive than many competitors ExpressVPN is our favorite VPN so its no surprise that its landing in the top picks for torrents. ExpressVPN makes most of the right privacy promises, and its speeds are very good. It also has a lot of other features beyond being good for torrents that make it worth your while, such as the smart DNS feature. ExpressVPN is officially based in the British Virgin Islands, it has an absolute ton of servers, but it does monitor bandwidth usage to get rid of bandwidth hogs, which might be a problem if youre constantly downloading nightly builds of various Linux distros. Read our full ExpressVPN review 5. AirVPN Honorable mention Pros Excellent speeds Detailed real-time information about the network Good pricing with many subscription options Cons Team is largely anonymous AirVPN is either an excellent VPN for privacy, or the ultimate honey pot to attract online trouble makers, like free and open source software torrenters. The reason we say that is that AirVPNs team is largely anonymous so its not clear whos running the show. Still, this Italy-based VPN does have a good reputation and its speeds put it in our top 10. Its desktop interface is very bare bones, but its usable. Its network isnt huge, but it is very economical and works well. Read our full AirVPN review How we tested If youve read a number of these VPN articles, you know the drill by now. We test on three different days taking the average speeds we find in five different countries (each country is tested three times per day). Then we take all those daily averages to get an overall global average in megabytes per second. Then we compare that to the base speed without a VPN, and then express the result as a percentage how much of the base speed the global average maintains. If there are particularly standout speeds in a certain country or region we will generally call those out too. The reason we dont quote specific speeds is that these can vary by all kinds of factors such as your location, ISP, home network load and equipment, and so on. The percentages, however, give you a generally good idea of how much of a dip to expect when you connect to a VPNtheres always a dip. One other factor torrent users will want to know about is that we read the privacy policy for each and every VPN we cover. Yes, it is painful. The reason we do that is a VPN may promise up front that it doesnt track your web browsing, but then you find that actually it does log IP addresses, timestamps, and bandwidth used. So we dig into the details so you can know exactly what the VPNs we review promise. With that knowledge, however, you can be sure youre getting good value for your money. Most VPNs will likely be fine for torrents, but if you want the best of the best, these are our recommendations. How to pick a VPN for torrenting There are a few hard-and-fast rules you need from a VPN when downloading torrents. Heres what to look for: Blocking First of all you want a VPN service provider that allows torrenting on their network. Most do, but there are a few notable exceptions such as Tunnel Bear, which actively blocks torrents. Then there are VPNs that partially block torrents, especially on U.S. servers such as TorGuard. This VPN service recently settled a lawsuit brought against it by a consortium of Hollywood production companies after users of TorGuard were found torrenting files that werent free and open source software. As a result, TorGuard promised to no longer allow torrents on its U.S. servers. TorGuard isnt the only company that refuses torrents on its U.S. servers. Keep Solid recently promised to block torrents and piracy sites like The Pirate Bay, YTS, and RARBG on the U.S. servers of its service VPN Unlimited. A number of other VPN services are also involved in pending legal action, including ExpressVPN and ZenMate, as reported by TorrentFreak. On top of that, many other VPN services dont want to end up in a lawsuit like their competitors and actively disallow torrenting on their American servers. Service location For that reason, we recommend using VPN services that are based outside the U.S., and from those VPNs you should use servers based in countries that are friendlier to torrents. This avoids the issue of dealing with torrents being blocked outright when all you want to do is load up Ubuntu on that new laptop. Most VPN services will specify which servers allow torrents, but a popular and easy choice is Sweden. The speeds are usually good, and most services include Swedish servers in their networks along with many other countries that are torrent-friendly. No-logs policy The next thing you want is a VPN that has an ironclad no-logs promise from the service provider, because nobody wants to be exposed downloading free and open source software. That means that the service should include a promise not to maintain logs of any kind, with everything going to /dev/nulla non-existent directory on Linux systems that means all logs are permanently lost. We say promise since theres no real way to know for sure that a VPN isnt logging your activity. You ultimately have to trust that theyre not doing it. This trust can come from a few factors, in order of reputability: The companys no-logs promise has been proven by a court challenge, numerous third-party audits have verified the services claims, or you might just take the company at its wordyikes. Speed Finally, after those details have been verified, you want a VPN with solid speeds. Torrents can take a long time to download as it is, depending on how many people are sharing the file. The last thing you want is to see your download slowed down by shoddy VPN speeds. To get the VPN you need for torrenting, just put all those attributes together: allows torrents, absolute no-logs promise, torrent-friendly services and servers outside the U.S., and excellent speeds. The National Chairman of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), Nana Ofori Owusu, has admonished the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to shut down Databank. Nana Ofori Owusu wondered why Databank is still operating following their challenges to protect the investments of their customers, hence incurring the wrath of their customers. The government late in December last year announced an amendment to the initial Domestic Debt Exchange programme (DDEP), under which individual bondholders are being asked to submit to a voluntary exchange of their domestic bonds for new bonds. Individual Bondholders Forum (IBF), a voluntary group of individual bondholders have meanwhile kicked against this. Databank Closes Offices Last year, some angry customers were said to have threatened the staff of Databank compelling them to resort to remote operations and working from home. The fund management company further announced a closure of its offices and remote work for its staff effective December 22, 2022 following the physical and verbal attacks on them by some of its clients. The company in an email to its clients said it had been affected by the liquidity challenges that have rocked the fund management industry owing to the "macro-economic crisis" facing the country. "We are currently engaging with the Ministry of Finance, our Regulator (The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)), and the Ghana Securities Industry Association regarding the impact of the debt exchange on Databanks mutual funds as well as other Collective Investment Schemes," the email said. SEC To Support Databank The statement also indicated that "as part of these discussions, the SEC issued a notice to Market Operators (SEC/CIR/005/12/22) on December 9, 2022, indicating its intent to support the market with much-needed liquidity relief, including access to the Financial Stability Fund as a last resort". "Therefore, we are hopeful that once the Debt Exchange Program has been concluded (expected settlement date: January 5, 2023), we will be able to access the necessary funds to once again pay withdrawal requests. We are totally reliant on the Government of Ghana to pay us, so we can in turn pay clients", it added. Collapse Databank But Nana Ofori Owusu has dissented to the SEC action to support Databank with the Stability Fund, questioning why they didn't create the same fund to cushion Gold Coast Securities, another fund management company, in 2019 before opting to shut it down when it was saddled with difficulties in resolving the plight of investors who placed funds with the company. SEC halting the operations of BlackShield Capital Management (formerly Gold Coast Securities) triggered angry reactions from the public but SEC Boss, Rev Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh turned deaf ear to the management, customers and the public. Nana Ofori Owusu argued that at the time Gold Coast Securities' licence was revoked, it had invested 67 percent in government bonds and businesses but SEC went ahead to end their operations despite their pleas for time to address the problem of their investors. "Today, we are learning that the Finance Minister's company, Databank, has invested 90 percent of their money with government bonds and government securities . . . So, you collapse one company for supporting government business, bonds and securities; contractors, local Ghanaian contractors, were given money and they completed the project. They raise interim payment certificates, [some of them] about 8 of them, theirs were 30 million, some 50 million and others 5 million but [a company] one company has invested about GHC 4 billion in government securities and you're saying you won't pay the money and in not paying their money, you took away their licence. "Now, Databank has come out to say they too are unable to pay investors their liquidity challenge but with them, it was 67 percent that they give into government bonds and securities. They say it is 90 something plus percent of their portfolio was used to do this thing but with them, you have created a stability fund to bail out your companies; about 15 billion we are being told, to bail out your companies . . . So, how come that we live in a country where, on one hand, when you do something and I don't like you or I think you are not beautiful to me, then I will destroy your company?", he contended. He couldn't fathom why Databank will be supported with a fund to revamp their operations when Gold Coast Securities didn't get equal privileges. "The conditions that were there for Gold Coast Securities is the same conditions prevailing for Databank. Databank has done worse than what Gold Coast was going in at the time. They have used 90% of their portfolio to do government securities. Now, the safest investment you can do in the whole world is buying government bond; it used to be. The safest investment is buying government bonds, investing in government business and if someone has invested 67% in government business, you question why he has invested so much of his portfolio in government business. "Now, some other person is telling you he has invested 90% in government bonds, you won't tell him it is too much...They should collapse Databank. They should take their licence. They should do the same thing they did to other security companies," he said while discussing the financial sector challenges during Peace FM's morning show "Kokrokoo". Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A self-professed phone trader, Mustapha Hamidu, has appeared before an Accra Circuit Court for allegedly selling packed broken tiles as phones. He has been charged with two counts of attempting to commit crime and defrauding by false pretence. Hamidu, who is also known as Abulley, appeared before the court presided over by Kwabena Kodua Obiri-Yeboah yesterday (January 16). His plea was however not taken by the court and is set to reappear on January 18 this year for his plea to be taken. Facts The facts of the case as read in court by the prosecutor, Chief Inspector Samuel Ahiabor, were that Abulley who lives at Odorkor, had consistently swindled unsuspecting victims by introducing them to observe original phones he displays for sale. After agreeing to specific prices through bargains, the defendant ends up changing the actual phones to phone cases packaged with pieces of broken tiles. The prosecutor said, victims who bought the phones got home and, in their attempt to use the newly acquired phones, came to the realisation that they had been made to exchange their money for decorated phone covers stacked with pieces of broken tiles. "Police on December 22, 2022, met accused at a place along a section of the Achimota overpass close to the old station with an original Tecno Camon 19 cellular phone in a phone cover, and two similar phone covers all packaged with broken tiles in his usual business, attempting to lure some victims to express interest in his business," he said. Chief Inspector Ahiabor said by introducing customers to his business, the accused would in the end make them to part with cash ranging from GHc500.00 to GHc1,000.00 in exchange for his packaged broken tiles. He added that a search on him revealed the fraudulent packages which caused his instant arrest to assist police investigations. "Accused was therefore arraigned before this Honourable Court while efforts are underway to apprehend his accomplice, currently at large," Chief Inspector Ahiabor said. Source: graphiconline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has opened the 74th edition of the annual New Year School and Conference by the University of Ghana in Accra. The New Year School and Conference, which brings together stakeholders from academia, business and political leadership to discuss issues of national significance, has been held annually since the inception of the University of Ghana 75 years ago. Opening the 74th edition, Vice President Bawumia, who represented President Nana Akufo-Addo, commended the University of Ghana for sustaining the New Year School, which he said, "has always been a source of national discourse and for transforming our nation." The theme for the 74th New Year School is: "Positioning the African Market for Sustainable Economic Development through AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area), and Dr. Bawumia noted that the theme provides an important barometer for Ghanas quest to boost economic development through regional trading. "While recent domestic and global economic challenges have negatively impacted our economy, it is important that we promote AfCFTA efforts of key stakeholders such as industry, the private sector, academia and government to reposition Ghana through trade," Dr. Bawumia noted. The Vice President expressed concerns over the low level of trade between African countries, adding that Africa must take advantage of the opportunities AfCFTA offers to avert the worrying situation of low intra-Africa trade. "Madam Chairperson, when you consider the fact that trade between African countries remains low, currently standing at some 16% of our combined GDP, compared to other parts of the world, like the European Unions 75%, it is obvious that these very low levels of intra-regional trade cannot improve our prospects of bringing prosperity to our peoples " Dr. Bawumia observed and listed a number of opportunities the AfCFTA provides. "A large part of the growth and prosperity that we seek on the continent will come from us trading more among ourselves. The coming into force of the AfCFTA means that Africa now has the worlds largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organisation," he said. "The Free Trade Area will cover a market of 1.2 billion people, with a combined GDP of $3 trillion, across the fifty-four (54) Member States of the African Union that have signed up to the Agreement. It will provide the vehicle for us to trade among ourselves in a more modern and sophisticated manner; it will offer a huge opportunity to exploit the abundant wealth and resources of our great continent for the benefit of all our people; and it would give us protection in how to deal with other trading blocks." Dr. Bawumia added that the coming into force and successful implementation of the AfCFTA ties in perfectly with the vision of moving Ghana to a self-reliant country, "that has freed herself from a mindset of dependence, charity and handouts, and is determined to make intelligent, disciplined use of her considerable resources the basis for her growth and prosperity. " "This vision can be better realised if we can leverage the trade and investment opportunities the AfCFTA presents." TRANSFORMATION OF ECONOMIC ARCHITECTURE TO MAXIMISE AfCFTA Dr. Bawumia further obeserved that, Ghana, like many African countries, is blessed with an abundance of resources, but, has, over the years, not been able to translate this into the much-needed growth and development the country and continent desire, thus leaving the economy in a fragile and unfulfilled state. To avert this and also to realise the full benefits of AfCFTA, Dr. Bawumia called for the transformation of the economic architecture, in order to meet the demands of the emerging global economies post covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war. "In order to maximise the benefits of the AfCFTA the structural transformation of the economy has to be accelerated," Dr. Bawumia urged. "We are still overly reliant on the production and export of raw materials, and not sufficiently on the things we make and grow." "That is why Government is firmly committed to addressing productive capacity issues through initiatives such as the One-District One Factory (1D1F) policy, the development industries like the integrated bauxite and aluminum industry, the iron and steel industry and the programme for agricultural renewal and enhancement that we have dubbed Planting for Food and Jobs. "It is this transformation that will give us the best opportunity to derive maximum benefit from our abundant natural resources, and from our participation in the AfCFTA, and help bring progress and prosperity to our people, fortified by the deliberate steps we are taking to educate our children to be responsive to the needs of the 21st century world of work." Dr. Bawumia also cited Governments digitalization initiative, which has catapulted Ghana to one of the leading digital economies in Africa, as an example of how the government is transforming the economic architecture of the Ghanaian economy ahead of the impending global economic revolution. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Dr Michael Agyekum Addo, the founder of the Kama Group of Companies, has deeply lamented about the attitude and work ethics of Ghanaian employees in an exclusive interview with Abeiku Santana on Okay FM's "Ekwanso Dwoodwoo" drive time. According to the accomplished entrepreneur with vast experience in business, the behavior of many Ghanaian employees towards work, especially when it is their fellow Ghanaian who owns it, is extremely appalling and a major disincentive to establishing a business in Ghana. Dr. Michael Agyekum Addo intimated to Abeiku Santana how some of his own employees treated his company and how they were executing their duties in a careless manner until Kama Group partnered with a foreign company majorly run by White people. "When it is 8:00 am and I look at my workers who were reporting to work at 8:20 and would sign that they came at 8 O'clock but now that the Whites are their bosses because it was the white people who were the biggest shareholder, therefore running the company now; this time they (employees) run to work when it is even 5 minutes to 8:00 because the ownership and management of the company has changed and been placed in the hands of a white person. I begin to wonder if it is the colonization that has is still working from the past till date that Ghanaians pay respect to anything a foreigner is handling more than their own", he bemoaned. He believed Ghanaian workers value foreign businesses because the foreign employers are strict. "They are strict. He will lay you off right now. But, with the Ghanaian, when you sack a worker, he/she will bring his Chief, Pastor, relatives, members of your church to beg you" but "if you leave the job for a Ghanaian thinking he is your relative or you hail from the same hometown, then they will indeed collapse your business for you." When asked why some Ghanaian businesses do not thrive well, the pharmaceutical pioneer answered it is due to indiscipline, jealousy and envy from fellow Ghanaians. "From my experience and knowledge, the employees are mostly the ones collapsing the businesses. This is why I will advise the youth to be selfless, open-minded and willing to work wholeheartedly. You don't take things for granted that the progress of the company or the business mainly depends on me, so now I will bluff the owner or the founder or CEO. I see there is jealousy and envy that the company belongs to a Ghanaian." He called for a change in attitude towards work. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Executive Chairman of McDan Group of Companies, Dr. Daniel Mckorley said the global downturn, and the ripple effect on some Africas economies, may be the wakeup call that Africa needs to move AFCFTA forward. According to him, there are great opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa trade, in the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) and as such, Private sector in multiple countries in Africa thriving because there has been a boost in international trade. Dr. Daniel Mckorley was speaking as the Guest Speakers at the 74th Annual New Years School where he averred that there is the need to create an enabling environment for large businesses and competent Ghanaian industries must be given first right opportunities for them to carry small businesses along for growth. He said, when the big businesses lead, small businesses rally around and push plug in growth and become the true engine of growth. Both the large and SME businesses will use AFCFTA as their export vehicle and then income flows into the economy, taxes are paid, and everyone wins. Giving his thoughts and contributions on how to leverage AFCFTA for a mutually beneficial impact across academia, industry, and government, Dr. McKorley said, it sometimes takes looking beyond, perceptions, politics, and predators to choose the lonely path of Industrialism, believing that when competent Ghanaian Industries are given first right opportunities, especially in the growth industries they will execute, and the SMEs will thrive as well. He listed some keys to succeeding and indicated that Immersion, Solid Partnerships and The Youth are keys to growth. The key to succeeding at anything requires knowledge. The Private Sector must educate themselves comprehensively about AFCFTA from policy context to concept execution. That is why events such as the Afrexim forum in Cairo, this platform here at the University of Ghana and the upcoming Africa Prosperity Dialogues 2023 are going to be critical education and structured platforms for immersion with specific action items which are streamlined. This will go far to minimize and eliminate concerns and strengthen the bases. He also mentioned that the private sector must get actively involved with support whilst key stakeholders have taken the lead in logistics, there are other segments within AFCTA that need specialist expertise be it country specific, or across the region. According to him, the main drivers of Agenda 2063 will be the youth and there must not only be an effort and a keen interest in their participation, but also specific participatory roles and a platform to build their human capital. He however mentioned that there is no doubt that Africa and for that matter Ghana is deeply in challenging times and the effects of Covid -19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine conflict shouldnt be brushed aside. One of the industries that has been greatly affected by this has been the logistics industry and recovery is slow; he said. Dr. McKorley said some countries in the west and Asia, such as the US, Germany, and Japan had their economies built buy a few indigenous Industrialists who controlled certain sectors of the economy and set the path for SMEs to follow deliver services and products and become the engine of growth. Industries such as Iron, Steel, Rail, and Banking in the US were controlled by Americans. 4 or 5 indigenous companies in Japan built their nationNow lets look at Ghana. Ghanaian businessmen dont control many sectors rather we contribute. banking is controlled by Nigerians and South Africans, Retail is controlled by Lebanese and Indians, Telecom Sector is controlled by British and South Africans, Oil and Gas, Mining, trading, you name it; They are controlled by foreigners. He wondered how, with this development, can the private sector thriven and what would a local SME look up to. Talking a little about his decision to mine salt, McDan enumerated that he was questioned, distracted and discouraged but he pushed because he wanted to see a Ghanaian control a large part of an industry too. Why? Because the entire value chain of the industrial salt business will be developed by SMEs. I believe local businesses who manufacture detergents, pharmaceuticals, and food processing companies to name a few will plug into the salt sector as it is a raw material for their businessAs an Entrepreneur & Philanthropist who has been on a 25plus year journey of both failure and success; I can boldly say that AFCFTA is the future of the impact of Economic Development in Africa, and I also ask the question, are we ready to do whatever it takes? For me it is a resounding yes because it truly is Africas time. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is a convention-defying politician in more ways than one. His signature policy since taking office, the digitalisation agenda, is one that has raised many eyebrows as it is out of the box. Recently, his gold-for-oil policy is another unconventional idea he pulled out of a box to deal with a persistent problem. This unconventional nature appears to be paying dividends in more ways than one for Bawumia. At a point where the country is facing numerous challenges and politicians remain unpopular, Bawumia appears to buck this trend. Over the weekend, the Vice President managed to unwittingly turn a funeral into a rally ground as he was mobbed unendingly by attendees at the funeral of the late mother of Dr Dominic Eduah. The Executive Director of the GNPC Foundation held the final funeral rites for his late mother at Ajumako in the Central Region. The Veep appeared at the funeral with some other NPP members, but the crowd visibly went wild when his presence was announced. He was unendingly mobbed by excited funeral attendees as the program was temporarily turned into a rally ground. Samira Bawumia, who was in the company of her husband, also received tons of cheers. The cheering throng signalled approval of Dr Bawumias expected Presidential bid. Dr Bawumia has become accustomed to cheering crowds of late. A few weeks ago, Bawumia was similarly hailed by the cheering masses in Tamale after single-handedly funding the renovation of Tamales Central Mosque. Bawumia handed over the completed project to the leadership of the mosque including the Regional Chief Imam, Shaykh Abdul Salam. During the ceremony, the leadership of the mosque expressed gratitude to the Veep over his selfless act whilst the gathered masses hailed him as a hero. Bawumia is expected to run for the NPP flagbearer position although he is yet to formally announce his intentions. He is expected to face stiff competition from former Trade Minister, Alan Kyeremanten, Assin Central Member of Parliament, Kennedy Agyapong and others. However, whilst Bawumia has yet to formally announce his bid, many political observers place him as the firm frontrunner for the position and videos such as this prove how he evokes completely different reactions in the electorate than most of his other competitors. Source: https://theghanaianvoice.com/ Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Managing Editor of the National Forum newspaper, James Kwabena Bomfeh, a.k.a Kabila, has slammed the Member of Parliament for North-Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa over his recent allegations regarding the National Cathedral. The one-man crusader, Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa, has been on a mission to unearth the rot that is going on with the construction of the National Cathedral. The MP has accused Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng, founder of the Power Chapel Worldwide in Kumasi who is also the Secretary of the National Cathedral Board of Trustees, of engaging in conflict of interest and being in possession of multiple identities among other alleged criminal dealings. According to him, Rev. Kusi-Boateng reportedly transferred GH2.6million from the National Cathedral Secretariat to JNS Talent Centre Limited, a company owned by him under his second name, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. Kwabena Adu Gyamfi is the same person bearing the name Victor Kusi Boateng, the MP said in an interview on Peace FM News bulletin. He has filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the matter. In response to the accusations, Rev. Kusi Boateng, in a statement released to the press, says he will seek redress over the "defamatory statements" by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa. I wish to assure the general public that the statements made by Mr. Ablakwa are a twisted narration of events to pursue a malicious political agenda. There has never been any criminal intent nor any crime committed in my dealings with the Government of Ghana or the National Cathedral", parts of the statement read. The National Cathedral Secretariat has jumped to the defence of Rev Victor Kusi Boateng saying as a normal verification expected of a Member of Parliament would have revealed, this was not an illegal payment but rather a refund of a short-term interest-free loan made by JNS to top up the payments to the contractors of the National Cathedral. Speaking to Nana Yaw Kesseh on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" morning show, James Kwabena Bomfeh questioned the approach that Mr. Ablakwa used to allegedly expose the religious leader. He asked why he (Okudzeto Ablakwa) would take to Facebook to make the allegations when Parliament has the authority to summon him or any person whose actions are questionable. "You have the authority to call the Finance Minister. You have the authority to call the Attorney General. You have the authority to summon any person who is the Head of Secretariat of a State-owned enterprise or project. You didn't call him but discussing it on Facebook. Should we sing for you? Is this how to fight corruption?", he said. He also advised them to resort to the law court to resolve issues of corruption and criminal-related actions. "Whether we like it or not, by acquiescence, the National Cathedral is a national project endorsed by Parliament, endorsed by the Supreme Court of Ghana. Let's stop the hypocrisy. Let's tell the truth and stop these diatribes. In executing the project, if some financial impropriety is going on, resort to the court. Nobody is above the law," he said. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Atik Mohammed has lambasted Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng, founder of the Power Chapel Worldwide in Kumasi and the Secretary of the National Cathedral Board of Trustees, over allegations made against him by the Member of Parliament for North Tongu constituency, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa. The MP has accused Rev. Kusi Boateng of engaging in conflict of interest and being in possession of multiple identities as well as engaging in other alleged criminal dealings. He revealed in a Facebook post that a whopping GH2.6million was transferred National Cathedral Secretariat to JNS Talent Centre Limited owned by Rev. Kusi Boateng under his second name, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi. He also alleged that the religious leader has been issued with a diplomatic passport which he finds very disturbing. "I will want the Foreign Affairs Ministry to justify why Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng qualified for a diplomatic passport to begin with. Otherwise, everybody will be eligible to hold a diplomatic passport in this country," he said in an interview on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme.. "On 25th November, 2021 the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration granted Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng a diplomatic passport. The diplomatic passport which expires on 24th November, 2026 rather carries the name Kwabena Adu Gyamfi and not Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng". "Theres no indication it is for the use of a reverend minister. Its diplomatic passport number is: DX006845," he added. Contributing to Peace FM's panel discussion programme "Kokrokoo", Atik Mohammed insists that Rev. Kusi Boateng must step aside for investigations into these allegations. "Something done for and in the name of God should be far away from, in fact, should be very distant from any form of reproach . . . In that spirit, he might as well resign or step aside pending the conclusion of this matter at CHRAJ," he asserted. He also directed a message to those who throw diatribes at people who are raising serious concerns about the Cathedral. He said; "Some people are making it look like when you raise these concerns, it's an attack on Christianity. How could this be? It is just an individual whose role in a problematic and controversial Cathedral that we are talking about." Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A 99-year-old Kenyan man, Johana Maritim Butuk, has married his girlfriend, Alice Jemeli, 40, after 20 years of dating. The lovebirds tied the knot in a colorful wedding ceremony in Soy, Uasin Gishu County on Saturday, January 14, 2023. When they first met in 2003, Jemeli was only 20 years old and Butuk was 69. Despite their age differences, their love blossomed as they dated. The nonagenarian proposed to Jemeli in December 2022 and plans of a wedding ceremony started. According to The Standard, it was Butuk's first marriage since he has never dated a woman for the 99 years he has lived. However Jemeli has three children from a previous relationship and is happy Butuk has accepted them. The couple celebrated the nuptial at their mud-walled house in Tuiyobei Soy B village. They were walking around the unfenced homestead, with a few relatives present. The couple exchanged their marriage vows at the nearby St Marks Soy B Catholic Church, and locals who attended the ceremony described it as very colourful. Residents say they had never seen a 99-year-old man marrying a woman the age of his granddaughter. When The Standard arrived at their home, they found the love birds discussing plans to build a grandiose house for themselves, their financial inadequacy notwithstanding. "I did not marry my entire life because I have always wanted peace of mind. I was also busy with menial jobs, and when I decided to marry all my friends were already grandfathers. But when I met my wife, I discovered that I found what I wanted in life. Alice talks less and helps navigate challenges in life, Butuk says. He adds: She was young when we first met, and I loved her because of her humility. I was first introduced to her by a woman called Tabasei, and we connected well despite the age differences. I am happy because my wife is now mature and responsible. "I loved him when we first met in 2003. I had quit an abusive relationship, but when I met Mzee (Butuk) through a woman, I loved him because he was humble and listened to me. He was old, and I decided to be his helper because I knew that I would become a married woman like other women, Jemeli says She says Butuk was homeless and unkempt when they first met, and she prides in changing his life. Butuk lived with one of his brothers, only identified as Arap Kenei, who died in 2010. After his brother died, Jemeli said her husbands troubles increased and she had to move in. They later built the mud-walled house they currently live in. Butuk, a man of few words, was a herder in his younger days. He often fled quarrels and confrontations commonly associated with relationships and courtship. Residents say he loved eating guava leaves and never interacted with girls. "I have been late in many things, but today I am happy because I am a married man. I was initiated in 1943, way after my age mates had been circumcised. I am confident that the happiness in my marriage will make me live longer, says Butuk. Jemeli, his wife, says she earns Sh3,000 a month as a house girl in a neighbouring home. Their colourful wedding was made possible by contributions from neighbours and well-wishers who heard of their plan to walk down the aisle. Our wedding was colourful, and we are celebrating it at our humble home. We have no money because even our wedding ceremony was financed by neighbours and our friends in the Church. We cant even go to the nearby Soy Club for a meal," she says. The couple says they plan to build a bigger and more comfortable house despite their financial challenges. "Many people did not approve of our marriage because they thought I was after Mzee's wealth. But it is not true because my husband has no wealth. Compared to young men that I dated before falling in love with my husband, I chose mzee because he gives me the freedom to work and take care of my children in peace, Jemeli explains. "What makes me even happy is that mzee is now happier, she adds. Butuks nephew Sally Chepkoech says all of her uncles siblings are dead. He was the eldest. Another nephew, Roseline Mutai says Butuk is healthy because of eating raw traditional vegetables and wild fruits. He eats just one meal a day, and he hates food cooked with refined oils. He was never married or dated his entire life. We thank his new wife for helping him. We want him to live many more years, she says. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The coal mining town of Sparwood, B.C., is shown on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016. A British Columbia First Nation is celebrating a deal with a coal mining company that it says gives them veto power over a proposed development on its land.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre holds a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023. Experts say reforming Canada's bail system to keep certain offenders behind bars will not reduce crime, but it will lead to more people waiting in jails contrary to what Poilievre says. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick Ontario's integrity commissioner says he will investigate a complaint against Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark and his decision to open the Greenbelt to housing development. A hiker starts on a high graded hill climb at the Rouge Urban National Park, in Toronto, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Giordano Ciampini analysis Nouakchott After a decade of confronting terrorism, what reform for the security sector in particular armed forces? Should priority be given to national or regional and international approaches? What role for the private sector and also for youth education in confronting the new challenges? A few observations. The above items are on the Dakar Forum agenda and will be debated there on 23 and 24 October 2022. However, the issue in this paper is addressing the consequences for the Sahel structural conflict and how to end it. Ending the Sahel long lasting domestic war, grounded on militant programs and ethnic hostilities, calls for more than the mere signing of a peace agreement. As an example, Mali situation, years after the signing of Algiers peace agreement on 15 June 2015, is a perfect illustration. Addressing conflicts horrendous consequences calls for more than a signature: return of refugees and internally displaced persons, healing of relationships between communities, economic reconstruction and transitional justice if any, etc. In that generally chaotic process, one first step is to establish a credible Committee to follow up and monitor the effective implementation of the Peace Agreement. Mali, its allies, friends and neighbors may need to bear that on mind. In Burkina Faso, the situation is ever fragile and it is elsewhere in the Sahel. Some telling reminders. Over the last two decades, before the 2012 new vague of terrorism, the Sahel has been facing endless violence. Violence, murders, destruction and various illegal traffics were the prevalent background in the region. Contrary to a number of political statements, that situation started before the fall of Colonel Gadhafi regime. A regime that stimulated instability - financially and militarily - particularly in northern Chad, Niger and Mali. If it were not for Algeria pressure, Tripoli would have further disorganized the entire region as it did in invading northern Chad (the Awzou band) in the 1980's. Unfortunately, the 2002 US pioneering project - the Pan Sahel Initiative - didn't last long to meet its ambitions of preventing the spread of terrorism in the Sahel and trafficking, its real funding. Worse, at that time, effective security cooperation between Paris and Washington was weak in the field. A cooperation that could have deterred terrorists from moving southwards to the Sahel. Worldwide, the presence of terrorists and armed groups creates favorable conditions to a prosperous illegal economy and specially traffics and trafficking in drugs, cigarettes and irregular migrations. The Sahel was no exception and corruption became pervasive. Worse, with the strong prevalence of tribal systems, ethnicity offered solid bases for terrorism to take roots and to expand easily. A dilemma for fragile states with frail national cohesion as combatting, earnestly radical groups and traffics, is often divisive when governments are exposed to hard choices due to ethnicity considerations. Impasses: civilian or military coups? The more a civil war lasts, the more it survives on its own. This is particularly true when the conflict is taking place in fragile states similar to a number of those in the Sahel. Central governments are often perceived by people as not nationals but only representatives of an ethnic community. Same for security forces including police and customs services. Rebel groups and interested foreign entities often benefit largely from these volatile environments. Security forces setbacks, in their confrontation with terrorists' groups, are used as a justification for regime change through military coups. At the same time, civilian leaders may also use the pervasive insecurity contexts to delay or postpone elections and to remain in power. While having similar consequences, on security and national cohesion, military and civilian coups are not addressed in the same manner by the international community. However, there is no doubt that such an approach weakens the credibility of its deterrence especially where societies are traditionally resilient and prone to rebellions. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines West Africa Conflict Mali By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. In fine, Sahel terrorism still has a bright future ahead. Its root causes, including especially bad governance, remains solid. Moreover, the war in Ukraine multiple significances for and in the region are strong. Large segments of the populations feel helpless when they hear or watch, on the social networks, the continued massive humanitarian and military assistance provided by the international community to Kiev government. Its illustration is the policy statement attributed to the EU head of foreign policy, Joseph Borrel: "Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world otherwise the rest of the world will invade us". An awkward consequence of all this is that terrorists, thanks to their handling of social networks, might be increasingly seen with lesser animosity. Ahmedou Ould - Abdallah, President centre4s analysis Central Africa is host to the largest community of internally displaced persons in Africa. The countries in this region include Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. Just four of these account for more than 7 million internally displaced people. At the top of the list, the DRC alone hosts more than 5.5 million. The main cause of these high numbers is conflict, both national and international. Conflicts have tormented the region for decades. For example, the protracted armed conflicts and rebellions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic have contributed to the instability of the region, with serious effects on their neighbours, some of which have been directly involved in the conflicts. In addition, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram has emerged as a major threat in Central Africa. And Burundi faces persistent political tension and violence. The internal displacement crisis is further driven by natural disasters, such as flooding. Displaced people are a highly vulnerable group. They're forced to live in crowded and unsanitary camps. They're also fleeing violence and are surrounded by active fighting situations. For example, in February 2022, in Plaine Savo camp (DRC), a militia group killed more than 60 civilians. All over the world, the management of internally displaced people can be a challenge. It requires resources (for example, food and tents) and political will. As a scholar with expertise in the legal promotion and protection of the rights of the people "on the move" in Africa, I argue that adopting a specific regional protocol could ease the management of displaced people in the region. A protocol is an instrument that creates legally binding obligations to international law. In this case, the protocol would, among other things, legally bind countries to respect not only the new provisions contained in it but also the provisions of the Kampala Convention. This is a continent-wide treaty which the African Union (AU) adopted in 2009 to protect and assist internally displaced people in Africa. The mechanism of enforcement established in the protocol should complement and help to enforce the provisions of the Kampala Convention. The Kampala Convention The Kampala Convention provides solutions for the return, relocation or resettlement of the internally displaced. It also provides for displaced people to seek redress for housing, land and property losses. Physical, mental and other types of harms are included too. But it's not clear whether these services are accessible in practice. The problem is that the Kampala Convention is for the whole continent and lacks clear enforcement mechanisms. The Central African region has a massive problem with displaced people. Currently, the main actor to provide assistance in the region is the UN refugee agency - UNHCR. And its regional budget for 2023 already looked insufficientby late October 2022, repeating a pattern seen in the past three years. A sub-regional treaty, or protocol, could focus on this specific situation and create a better management plan. There's no subregional regime for internally displaced people anywhere in Africa. Countries are focusing on other problems or consider the plight of displaced people to be a domestic affair. My proposal is an attempt to do something concrete to change this. What it should say The protocol must include a number of articles dedicated to stringent enforcement of the provisions of the Kampala Convention. To do this, it should create an institution that monitors and ensures the implementation of the Kampala Convention specifically for the Central African region. For instance, the Kampala convention states that though states bear the primary duty and responsibility for providing assistance and protection to internally displaced people within their territory, they must cooperate with each other in doing so. The proposed institution should ensure that states in the subregion share the financial and material burden of managing displacement situations. Who should drive it Drafting such a protocol requires a big effort and the strong political will of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), made up of 11 countries. The regional community should lead on the protocol. It is easier for 11 actors of the region to reach agreement than to include 55 AU members in discussions. For example, at the continental level discussions on free movement of people which started in 1991 are still going on. Only four countries have ratified the 2018 Free Movement Treaty. By contrast, in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) area, a Protocol on Free Movement has existed since 1979, and it has been implemented for the most part. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Central Africa Refugees By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. The protocol could enter into force after ratification by a number of ECCAS members and a "committee" of politicians and magistrates could be created to enforce its provisions. This committee would hold primary responsibility for the enforcement of the protocol. Funding for the protocol's activities should come from the ECCAS Commission, which is financed by its member countries. Member countries must turn conversations about regional solidarity into solid obligations. These include financial commitments and assistance. A special fund to assist internally displaced people could be created. This isn't a far-fetched suggestion. Recently, quests for solidarity and responsibility sharing have been high on political agendas, especially in the aftermath of emergencies triggered by political tension in several ECCAS countries. The DRC, for example, acceded to the Kampala Convention only on 3 February 2022 - the day after the killing in Plaine Savo. Cristiano d'Orsi, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), University of Johannesburg Damage to the Contamines-Montjoie nature reserve. Image provided by ASTERS. Words: Matt Wragg Damage to the Contamines-Montjoie nature reserve. Image provided by ASTERS. Justice: A historique decision for the nature reserves of Haute Savoie. In summer 2020, an eMTB race, the eTour du Mont Blanc, was organised in Haute Savoie with the authorisation from the prefect and traversed the national nature reserve Contamines-Montjoie. The racers, in teams of two high-level athletes, passed through the heart of two rare and protected peat bogs, destroying the roots of a delicate carnivorous plant, the protected and emblematic: the round-leafed drosera. The management team of the nature reserve (Aster, Conservatoire dEspaces Naturels de Haute Savoie) discovered significant and probably irreversible damage in the area and drew up a dossier on the organiser. At the end of the preliminary investigation, the state prosecutor decided to press charges against the event organiser and its representative. Asters-CEN74, as managing agency for the reserve, also filed civil charges with the court, alongside a landowner whose property the race crossed without notification and where several trees were damaged with indelible paint. The Bonneville court delivered its judgement 21 November 2022. The event organiser and their representative were sentenced with: The legal representative: - 3 months suspended prison sentence - 15,000 damages and 1,000 criminal fine - Banned from organising events in France for one year The event organiser: 50,000 damages and 1,000 criminal fine Banned from organising events in France for one year In terms of damages, as manager of the nature reserve, Asters-CEN74 will be compensated for damage caused to the peat bogs and protected species in the Contamines-Montjoie nature reserve. The defendants were also ordered to compensate the landowner whose property was used by the race without his agreement. This ruling sets an example for cases in protected natural areas with very high heritage value. It is part of Bonneville public prosecutor's office firm stance against attacks on the environment. The message is clear: organising a sporting event in a nature reserve is possible with proper consultation and authorisation to avoid irreparable damage to nature, as was unfortunately the case in 2020. A French court has prosecuted organisers of Verbier eBike Festival for causing damage to a nature reserve during their 2020 event, the eTour du Mont Blanc.The CEO of the event organiser, Nicholas Hale-Wood, was sentenced to three months suspended prison sentence, a 1,000 criminal fine, a 15,000 civil fine and a one-year ban from organising events in France. The event organisation, Bike Freeride, was sentenced to a 1,000 criminal fine, a 50,000 civil fine and a one year ban from organising events in France.During the 2020 Verbier eBike Festival, their marquee race, the eMTB Tour of Mont Blanc, passed through the Contamines-Montjoie nature reserve, and during this passage two peat bogs were damaged and trees permanently marked by course directions.Although Verbier is in Switzerland, the eTour du Mont Blanc crosses the border between Switzerland and France as it traverses the mountain. The Contamines-Montjoie area is designated a nature reserve, specifically containing peat bogs that are home to the rare, carnivorousflower. In two places during the race, riders left the marked trail and rode through this peat bog, damaging them and the flowers that grow there. Race markings painted on trees proved to be permanent, damaging the trees.The court in Bonneville found the organisers guilty on all charges. The prosecutor asked for six months suspended sentence and a two year organisation ban, but the sentence handed down was a suspended sentence of three months and a single year organisation ban.The race organisers do not dispute the facts of the damage, but are appealing the sentence as they feel it is not proportionate to the offense.Here is the full text of the decision translated by me from French:You can see the full text in French Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print President Biden is already reaching out to moderate House Republicans to get a deal on raising the debt ceiling, but if the far right doesnt get the standoff that they crave it could be curtains for Kevin McCarthy. Politico reported: The White House is already working behind the scenes to work around Speaker Kevin McCarthy, including dispatching its top advisers to meet with moderate Republicans particularly those who won in districts President Joe Biden won in 2020 in hopes Democrats can count on those GOP lawmakers to cross the aisle and lift the debt ceiling. I think there is a real chance of that, said one senior House Republican. Kevin would probably love for that to happen because it gets him out of it wasnt me. Subscribe To Our Newsletter For The Top Stories From PolliticusUSA: Since House Republicans have only a four-seat majority, Biden could negotiate a debt ceiling deal with moderate Republicans in districts that the president won in 2020. If Biden got five moderates, House Democrats would be able to use a discharge petition to force a vote on raising the debt ceiling. If the bill passed the House, McCarthy and the far right would be defeated, and a crisis avoided. The worst-case scenario for McCarthy is that the far right doesnt believe that it wasnt him, or that he couldnt stop Biden from working around him, and then bring up a motion to vacate that ends his speakership. The White House doesnt need to negotiate with McCarthy if they can go around him. The right has had the debt ceiling circled as their moment of big confrontation with Biden. If they dont get the showdown and spending cuts that they crave, the fringe of the GOP House caucus will grow angry and McCarthy is likely to be the one to pay the price. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print The Biden White House is calling on Kevin McCarthy to reveal the secret deals that he made to get the votes to become Speaker of the House. The White House is not playing games with Kevin McCarthy. Spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement, An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members to end this months chaotic elections and claim the gavel. It is well past time for Speaker McCarthy and the ultra MAGA Republican House members to come out of the dark and tell the American people, in-full, what they decided in secret. Speaker McCarthy has looked compromised by his refusal to answer questions on whether he made a deal with the Freedom Caucus to cut defense spending, and his quick changing of the subject anytime Rep. George Santoss name comes up in conversation. McCarthy is proving to be as weak as expected after the bruising nearly week-long fight to get him elected speaker. Rep. McCarthy hasnt told his Republican caucus what he promised the far-right in exchange for the dropping of their opposition to him. President Biden and his administration are painting a picture of a dysfunctional House majority that is full of secrets and unfit to govern. If Kevin McCarthy wants to play hardball, the White House is showing that they are ready to get tough. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has defended and advocated for the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol on 1/6. Now she will serve on the Homeland Security Committee. Via CNN: Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona have been given committee assignments for the new Congress after being booted from their committees by Democrats and some Republicans for their incendiary remarks, sources told CNN. The House GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday agreed to place Greene on the House Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over the border and will likely play a role in potentially impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Kevin McCarthy apparently promised Greene a seat on the the Homeland Security Committee, which could be dangerous for national security given that Greene has been one of the vocal members of the House in support of the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol on 1/6. Rep. Greene is also desperate to impeach Biden administration officials and have a perch where she can attack the President and claim that he has jeopardized national security. Trump is giving serious consideration to choosing Greene to be his running mate if he wins the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, so it makes that she would want a seat on a committee where she can both whitewash Trumps record and attack President Biden. Marjorie Taylor Greene who is thought of in many circles as a threat to national security will be conducting oversight over those who keep America safe. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Republicans demanded that a special counsel be appointed to investigate Bidens handling of classified docs, but now House Republicans are blocked from getting info by the special counsel investigation. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) wants all sorts of documents, but according to the Punchbowl AM Newsletter, there is a problem, Comers investigation is just one of a number of House GOP queries into Bidens document handling, along with efforts from Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio). But due to Attorney General Merrick Garlands decision to appoint a special counsel to look into the matter, many of the requests for information about the documents scandal are likely to be turned down while the DOJ probe unfolds. Most of the current Republican chairs have never run committees or conducted investigations, so they are sabotaging themselves to score political points and hopefully get a primetime segment on Fox News. The special counsel investigation will likely clear President Biden of any wrongdoing. Biden followed the law when the classified documents were discovered. In contrast, Trump chose to break the law. House Republicans wanted a special counsel to even the score between Biden and Trump. They got what they wanted, but in the process, they sabotaged their own effort to smear the president with an investigation. Blantyre, Malawi There was visible excitement among students when schools reopened Tuesday in Malawi's two biggest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre, after a two-week suspension caused by a cholera outbreak. The bacterial illness has killed close to 800 people, more than 100 of them children, and affected more than 25,000. Malawi's government announced measures to prevent cholera from spreading in schools but warned it will shut down the schools again if needed. To many students, especially those who are preparing to take national examinations this year, the closure doomed their hope of passing the exams. Ronnie Lutepo, a teenaged student at Michiru View secondary school in Blantyre, said returning to the school was the best thing he hoped for. "Yes, as I was at home my mum was telling me to study, but being in an examination class affected me badly," he said. "We are all supposed to be here and ready for the exams and if we are not ready, we are not going to get good grades." The reopening comes after the government announced that it has put into place preventive measures against the spread of cholera, which is transmitted mainly through dirty water. These include fixing broken boreholes and water taps in the schools and banning the sale of cooked food around school premises. Malawi is battling its worst cholera outbreak in a decade. Government statistics show that as of Monday it had registered 25,458 cases since the start of the outbreak last March, with 550 cases reported on Monday alone. The disease has so far killed more than 800 people with around 1,000 hospitalizations as of Tuesday. Justin Rice Phiri, the deputy head teacher at Michiru View secondary school, told VOA that the school has put in place measures to prevent students from contracting the disease. "At the same time our support staff; the cleaners and the cooks have been trained on how best to prevent the cholera and also giving them the protective wear; the gloves, the work suits and the like," he said. On Tuesday, the U.N.'s children's agency, UNICEF, started distributing anti-cholera supplies in schools in areas most affected by the outbreak. Government authorities, however, have warned that they may close the schools again should the outbreak spread among students at an unmanageable level. opinion United Nations At the end of a five-minute newscast from a makeshift studio in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the venue of COP27, Cotonou-based journalist Ghyslaine Florida Zossoungbo was able to provide real-time information to her compatriots back home in the Republic of Benin. Zossoungbo reports for Benin ODD Television, an online platform dedicated to promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in her country. On this day, she had found a small corner in one of the pavilions at COP27 sat on a high stool behind a laptop while a camera perched on a tripod a few feet away. At the conference, Zossoungbo and other journalists, even those from big established media institutions such as CNN or bloggers clutching an iPhone but with a large social media following, ran briskly after celebrities and world leaders or just about anyone who had anything significant to say about climate change. And at the end of each day, they immediately churned out climate change content to audiences globally. Yet, despite Zossoungbo's best effort to report on the climate crisis, buoyed by new public information technology, she says climate change reporting in her country--perhaps also in rest of Africa-- is fraught with challenges. "We are the only media institution that regularly reports on the climate crisis because we are focused on SDGs," Zossoungbo says. "Other media concentrate on politics and other issues." She adds: "People can see that there is something happening to the weather because of the floods and drought, but they don't yet understand what it is in its full context. So we keep talking and talking about it." In Cameroon, explains Killian Chimton Ngala, a journalist with multiple accreditations, "Climate change doesn't often make the front pages of newspapers or lead in television or radio news." Reporting context Ngala's experience is that "Climate reporting often lacks context. When journalists report on flooding, for example, they don't necessarily link it to climate change. They usually focus on the event and the impact." Without a perspective, climate change reporting becomes a complex concept for many, particularly the grassroots population. Ngala provides an example of such reporting: "Not long ago, fighting broke out in communities in Cameroon's far North Region, between Choa-Arab cattle herders and Mousgoum farmers, over dwindling water resources. Many people died in the conflict, and a top government official decided to visit the area. "Do you know how journalists reported the story?" Ngala asks rhetorically. "They all reported that the minister had admonished the communities and asked them to be peaceful. "Yet, when you look at it, why were the communities fighting? It's because the village stream was drying up, and community dwellers and cattle herders had to fight for the limited water, a consequence of changing weather patterns. "If you ask many people in Africa why their lake is drying up or why they are experiencing frequent droughts, some will not even know, let alone advocate for solutions. "Take the drying up of Lake Chad, which is forcing herders in northern Nigeria and Cameroon to migrate down south. The farmers in the south believe the herders are coming to take over their lands. The resulting fight has claimed many lives," he laments. Why then is the media not robustly telling the climate story as it should be? Need for training Ngala blames it on lack of resources and training. "Environment reporting is expensive; it needs a lot of traveling and risk-taking. It does not come cheap. Many media organisations in Africa find it unaffordable. For instance, they cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars to sponsor reporters to cover COP27," says Ngala. There are very few trained environment reporters in newsrooms, he says. As a result, climate change reporting does not yet receive the attention it deserves. "Media managers would rather send reporters to cover politics, which drive sales, than to report on issues related to the environment, unless it is a major disaster. They would rather send reporters to cover our President's trip to Addis Ababa than to COP27," she says. External sponsors Ngala was one of several African journalists sponsored to cover COP27 by climate-focused organisations particularly in Europe and North America. For example, the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) fellowship programme, an Earth Journalism Network (EJN) project managed by Internews and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, brought Ngala and five other African journalists to Sharm El Sheikh to cover COP27. They were among 20 journalists (out of over 500 who applied) from low and middle-income countries sponsored under the fellowship. The fellowship package comes with training on "quality reporting on developments at COP27," according to an EJN announcement, adding that Africa accounts for 2-3 per cent of global emissions but bears the brunt of the climate crisis. Therefore, African journalists must continue to report on the impact of the crisis and hold governments accountable. "It was a rigorous application process," says Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh of the Liberia-based Power FM and Television, also a fellow. "But for the fellowship, I would not be here [COP27]. I applied for the fellowship because coming here for two weeks would have cost thousands of dollars, which my organization may not afford." Climate content The symbiotic relationship between media content producers and content consumers is complex. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Climate Africa Media By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. The perceived interest of the audience may influence content production even as the agenda-setting role of the media involves guiding audiences to focus on particular issues. It leads to the point that African journalists have not yet effectively linked climate change issues to citizens' socioeconomic well-being. "That's the point," retorts Ngala. "Journalists report on the environment in isolation of other economic development sectors. You can see why, in many countries, the economic affairs ministries do not consider the climate crisis a part of their portfolio. It is often the preserve of underfunded environment ministries." "There is a lack of appreciation of the seriousness of the climate crisis," explains Mwika Bennet Simbeye, acting Managing Editor of the Times of Zambia. "Journalists tend to instinctively focus on day-to-day problems--all the political drama and bread and butter issues," says Simbeye. Agreeing that training and increased financing resources will boost climate reporting, Paul Omorogbe, the Chief Correspondent of the Tribune of Nigeria, is optimistic. "I believe the situation is gradually changing. In Nigeria, climate crisis reporting is slowly but steadily gaining prominence in the media. We are getting there." Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations IPS UN Bureau Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau Why should someone adopt an animal from a shelter? That was the question posed to second-grade students at Graniteville Elementary School on Tuesday when they received a visit from Kathy Cagle, the Friends of the Animal Shelter programs coordinator and Nova, a 4-year-old pit mix. The duo came to visit the kids and help provide information for them for their persuasive writing assignment. We are doing our persuasive writing unit and we just had the idea to let the kids try to persuade people to adopt an animal, said Jordan Barrett, a second grade teacher at GES. So I emailed the Aiken County Animal Shelter to see if they could send me a list of the animals that were available so that it could be more meaningful for the kids because it's actually local animals and Ms. Kathy offered to bring a dog in and talk to the kids to kind of give them a better understanding. +4 Gifting Tree Foundation gives to Graniteville Elementary School Shocked and happy faces filled the cafeteria at Graniteville Elementary School on Friday, Aug. 12. Cagle talked to the students about what FOTAS does, how animals end up at the shelter and how they take care of them. She said there are many cats and dogs up for adoption, but the shelter has also had other animals including cows, pigs, horses and other stray animals. In one year the shelter will take in approximately 5,000 stray animals. After writing their persuasive letter it will be sent to the shelter so they can be put on display for community members to read and hopefully adopt an animal, Barrett said. This was the first time the second grade at Graniteville Elementary School welcomed FOTAS for their persuasive writing assignment, but Barrett said they would have them out again. I think they loved it, Barrett said. When we told them about it they were already excited before they came in. I think they were super excited. Visiting the school was part of the Be Their Voice Program offered by the shelter, Cagle said. This program encourages people to visit the shelter, meet a dog that has been there a while and write a paragraph about them. This is so important that we get young people involved in the animal shelter, Cagle said. We really have seen more numbers coming in than we have in a long time. Young people, their voice is really powerful, so we're trying to encourage children to relate to one of the dogs or cats at the shelter, write a little bit about them and see if it can encourage others to maybe see that pet through a child's eyes. For more information on FOTAS, visit fotasaiken.org or find FOTAS on Facebook. Action taken by Aiken Countys Judicial and Public Safety Committee on Tuesday night has paved the way for the county to examine in-depth the ongoing issues with its Emergency Medical Services Department. During a meeting at the Aiken County Government Center, the committee voted unanimously to recommend hiring an outside consulting firm to evaluate EMS operations and management. We have got to put the finger on this problem, said Phil Napier, who is on the committee. The other members are Sandy Haskell, who is the chairman, and Danny Feagin. Following the meeting, County Administrator Clay Killian said that he would start the process of finding and procuring a firm. The committees action followed a presentation by Dennis Jackson, chief of the New Holland Volunteer Fire Department, that addressed a variety of concerns about EMS. Unfortunately, I have to be here again, Jackson said. I was here in 2020 to discuss the very same thing. I thought there was some understanding of moving forward and things were going to get better, he continued. And they did. They got better for about a year, and now were back in the same boat. Actually, were in worse condition now than we were back in 2020. Jackson provided some recent examples of people in need who had to wait a long time for an ambulance. I know of two calls personally where CPR was in progress by the fire department and the ambulance was 45 minutes to an hour out, he said. Another involved a patient who fell outside when it was cold and suffered a spinal injury. It started raining, Jackson said. The fire department members had to hold a sheet over the patient to prevent them from getting soaked. They did this for over 45 minutes while waiting for an ambulance. Those fire department members were exposed to a communicable disease and were sick for more than a week, according to Jackson. Their family members also became ill. You are once again holding the lives of the citizens of our county and the people traveling through our great county in the balance, Jackson said. No one should ever have to wait 45 minutes or longer for an ambulance to get to them. Long waits also create difficulties for volunteer fire departments, Jackson explained, because when their personnel are assisting people in distress, they cant, by law, leave the scene before an ambulance arrives. As a result, they arent available to help fight a fire that might occur during that time. In addition, Jackson discussed the series of raises County Council has given to EMS employees in recent years. He suggested that more money might not always be the best solution because nearby counties paying less than Aiken County are having better success recruiting and retaining EMS workers. Jackson also urged the committee to talk to EMS employees and find out why they are leaving. After Aiken County Council Chairman Gary Bunker, who attended the meeting, pushed Jackson to provide more information, he said local EMS workers are facing a management problem and are being treated unfairly. Mike Kellems, another County Council member who attended the committee meeting, recommended that an outside consulting firm be hired to take a closer look at the situation in the EMS Department. During the first 16 days of January, there were 69 incidents in Aiken County of status zero and on 152 occasions there were calls pending. Status zero is when every truck (ambulance) is on a call, and while theyre all tied up, we dont get any other calls for service, Killian explained previously to the Aiken Standard. If we get a call for service, and theyre all tied up, that becomes a pending call. The local EMS Department also soon will be facing another challenge. Gold Cross EMS and SouthStar EMS both recently notified Aiken County that they no longer would be providing supplemental ambulance services as of March 11. The only stated reason, I think, was the rising cost of operations, Killian said. Based on their contracts, Gold Cross EMS and SouthStar EMS each are expected to make two of their ambulances available to answer calls in the county per day. Combined, the most they provided during the first 16 days of January was two, according to county records. Aiken Countys EMS Department currently has 17 staff vacancies. Right now our goal is to get them filled, Killian said. Weve got a [basic emergency medical technician] class of nine folks that are on our payroll. Our plans are for them to come on board when they finish their certification process, which hopefully be sometime this March. In addition, Bunker expressed hope that the county would be able to hire more EMT workers in the near future because the latest pay raise (10%) for the department takes effect this month. In addition, the minimum annual starting salary for all EMS positions is increasing 10%. Aiken, SC (29801) Today A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by increasing clouds with showers developing this afternoon. High near 75F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 61F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the purchase history of the properties. Aiken Mayor Rick Osbon will outline a vision for the future of the Project Pascalis properties during his State of the City address Monday. Osbon, a Republican who's been the city's mayor since 2015, said in response to several questions from concerned residents at a special-called city council meeting Tuesday evening that his address would feature the beginnings of a plan for the properties. The properties are located in the block surrounded by Richland Avenue, Laurens Street, Newberry Street and Park Avenue. The plans for the $75 million-plus downtown development project called for the demolition of the Hotel Aiken and another building south along Laurens Street and their replacement by a modern hotel. Most of the C.C. Johnson Building and the structures from there to Bee Lane and as far south on Newberry Street as the former State Farm office would be demolished and replaced with an apartment complex and parking deck. The former city building would be converted into a conference center run by Newberry Hall. The project was stopped in September. The council considered and voted 6-0 Tuesday evening Gail Diggs was absent from the meeting to approve the first reading of an ordinance taking the first step in the vision: get the properties back under the control of the city. The Aiken Chamber of Commerce accepted assignment of a contract on the properties seven parcels under two contracts and then assigned the contracts to the Aiken Municipal Development Commission, which then purchased the properties. But resignations, a lack of appointments and membership requirements have reduced the number of commissioners from nine to two: former city councilman Philip Merry and Marty Gillam. It is debatable whether the Municipal Development Commission can meet and transfer the properties to the city. There is a conflict in the quorum how many members a board needs to be present before it can meet requirements of state law statute allowing the City Council to create the Municipal Development Commission (the South Carolina Community Development Law) and the bylaws created by the Municipal Development Commission. State law, specifically S.C. Code Ann. 31-10-60, establishes that a majority of commissioners in office at the time are enough to hold a meeting. However, the by-laws through Article III Section 2 and Article III Section 11, arguably establish that in a majority of nine commissioners, at least five, are needed to hold a meeting. Assuming the by-law requirements govern, the Municipal Development Commission can't meet and no plan can be developed for the properties. All the members of the council said at the meeting the second step will be to work more closely with the community to refine the vision into a workable plan that is palatable for the whole city. All the council members pledged to do so during the meeting. The State of the City address is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday in the Amentum Theater located at 126 Newberry Street. COLUMBIA The S.C. Supreme Court will soon be all male for the first time in 35 years after the two women vying to replace the high court's only female justice withdrew from the race. The Jan. 17 withdrawals of Stephanie McDonald and Aphrodite Konduros, both current judges on the Court of Appeals, leave fellow appellate Judge Gary Hill as the only candidate in the election. Both women notified the Legislature's judicial screening committee of their exits within hours of the race's official start, the committee's attorney confirmed. It was a race between friends, Hill told The Post and Courier, noting he's not elected yet. "Judge Konduros and Judge McDonald are not only accomplished colleagues on the Court of Appeals, they are fine people and friends for whom I have great respect," said Hill, first elected to the bench as a circuit judge in 2004. "If elected, I will continue to serve the citizens of South Carolina with an unwavering commitment to the rule of law, as I have for nearly 20 years," he added. The three were running to replace Supreme Court Justice Kaye Hearn, who by law had to retire from full-time work Dec. 31 after turning 72. The election to pick Hearn's replacement by a joint assembly of the Legislature all 170 lawmakers is scheduled for Feb 1. But the vote-counting started at noon Tuesday, when candidates could legally seek legislators' pledges. "I don't think the votes were going to be there, so this seemed like the best thing to do," McDonald said about her withdrawal. It is common for judicial candidates to leave the race when the eventual winner becomes clear, but this one wasn't expected to wrap up so quickly. The candidates were being intensely scrutinized following the court's Jan. 5 split-decision that tossed out the Legislature's 2021 law banning abortions at roughly six weeks into a pregnancy. Hearn authored the majority's lead opinion. She wrote that the law, which banned abortions once an ultrasound detects fetal activity, violated a clause inserted in the state constitution in 1971 that barred unreasonable invasions of privacy. The ruling stunned GOP leaders, who accused justices of overstepping their authority and creating a connection that legislators and voters at the time never intended. However, Justice John Few, who agreed with the majority conclusion but not Hearn's analysis, wrote in a separate opinion that for him, it wasn't about privacy rights in the constitution but rather a badly written law. The Legislature's abortion foes are still trying to figure out how to respond legislatively, but justices are certain to weigh in again on some future abortion case. Questions about how South Carolina judges would come down on abortion was never a factor before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade last June and tossed the issue back to states to decide. Recognizing judicial candidates can't say how they'll rule on a given case, Republican lawmakers have said judicial candidates can and will be questioned about their approach to constitutional questions. That prediction saw some lawmakers warn that future screenings will be more focused on candidate leanings. "I believe this is the beginning of a litmus test of judges based on whether they're pro-life or pro-choice," said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia. As for GOP legislators lining up behind Hill, he added, "this would be based on the belief that he is the pro-life candidate." Rutherford is also a member of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, a group of six legislators and four attorneys outside the Statehouse who screen judicial candidates and advance the names of up to three qualified candidates. In this election, a fourth candidate was also found qualified but not forwarded for election. The abortion ruling has prompted calls for changing that process entirely. The state's high court hasn't been all male since 1988, when former Chief Justice Jean Toal was initially elected an associate justice. Hearn, formerly the Court of Appeals' first female chief judge, became the second woman on the state Supreme Court in 2009. "I think that sets a bad precedent for South Carolina that we have an all-male Supreme Court," said Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, who was the only female in the Senate when she was first elected in 2012. All three candidates were good choices, she said, "but we need to look at the makeup of the court. I'm very disappointed." Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, R-Murrells Inlet, said he was supporting McDonald because she brought diversity to the court in both gender and geography. Both Hill and Konduros are from Greenville County. McDonald is from Charleston. Hill's election will mean four of the five justices hail from the Upstate. "Qualifications should be first and foremost. I found them to be equally qualified, so then you move to diversity and regionalism. Judge McDonald met both of those for me," said Goldfinch, who was counting votes for McDonald. However, he said, "I think Judge Hill will do a fantastic job for us. He is fair, contemplative, everything you would want in a justice, so I'm happy for him. I think diversity on the court matters, and I hope we can move in the direction of further diversity in the next race." Hill, who is in his late fifties, was born in Greenville and graduated from Wofford College before receiving his law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1989. He was in private practice in Greenville before legislators first elected him to the bench in 2004. He was elected to the Court of Appeals in 2017. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said he had decided to vote for Hill after questioning all three candidates. "I'm persuaded that Judge Hill understands the role of a judge that he will call balls and strikes, that he will not seek to impose his own policy preferences such that he's making law," said the Edgefield Republican. But, he added, "I am sensitive to the lack of female representation on the court. I think we should have that. And I am very hopeful we will have a strong female candidate who has similar points of view going forward." The next election will likely bring even more scrutiny. Chief Justice Don Beatty, who voted with the majority on abortion, turns 72 next year and will have to retire Dec. 31, 2024. He is the only minority on the high court. According to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, South Carolina would be the only state in the nation with an all-male Supreme Court. However, Oklahoma's Court of Criminal Appeals that state's highest court for criminal cases is all male. There are no minority justices on 20 states' supreme courts. Alexander Thompson contributed to this report. An exhibit gallery at Charleston's International African American Museum will be named for longtime South Carolina lawmaker and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, courtesy of a $1 million donation. The dedication gift announced Jan. 18 was made by Lynne Dobson and husband Greg Wooldridge of Austin, Texas, whose Tejemos Foundation supports social justice and civil rights causes, constitutional freedoms and education. Clyburn, 82, was the first chair of the IAAM board of directors and a long-term museum supporter. Cyburn, a Sumter native and Democrat who has served 15 successive terms in the U.S. House for the states 6th Congressional District, said he was honored. My hope is that those who visit will leave with a more complete understanding of African American and American history, he said in a written statement. Dobson is a philanthropist, photojournalist and member of the family who started the Whataburger restaurant chain. She said she met Clyburn last spring at an event in Austin. Rep. Clyburn has always inspired me with his many years of devoted public service for our country, especially his tireless work to ensure that the needs of Black Americans are heard, and their contributions are recognized," Dobson said in the statement. "We are passionate about supporting people and institutions like IAAM, who are dedicating resources to exposing injustice and telling the whole truth of our history. The gallery being named for Clyburn will include the "Carolina Gold Exhibit," centered on a variety of African rice that was grown in the Palmetto State from the late 1700s until the late 1920s, and the "Memories of the Enslaved Exhibit." It will offer "a look at the transformative impact of enslaved people whose labor shaped and built the lucrative rice industry," according to the museum. The IAAM was scheduled to open later this week, but its board postponed the long-awaited debut in December after issues arose with the building's heating and cooling systems that could affect temperature-sensitive artwork and artifacts. A new opening date and schedule of events will be "announced soon," according to the website. More than $100 million in private and public money has been raised to build and fund the museum. The waterfront site off Concord Street near the S.C. Aquarium was once part of Gadsdens Wharf, a major port of entry during the transatlantic slave trade. Its stated mission is to honor the untold story of the African American journey at one of Americas most sacred sites. NORTH CHARLESTON A large mixed-use commercial development is in the works where construction on a new I-26 interchange is slated to begin later this year. Weber USA Corp. is proposing 580,100 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 850 apartment units, 390 hotel rooms and a 45,000-square-foot parking deck on part of a large tract between Interstate 26 and Norfolk Southern Railroad in the Ingleside tract, according to plans presented to the Army Corps of Engineers. The development site encompasses parts of Bluehouse Road and Ingleside and Weber boulevards at the future Palmetto Commerce Interchange and the extension of Weber Boulevard at I-26. Charleston County, which is overseeing the new $54.5 million interchange project, anticipates construction to begin by this summer, with final completion in three years, according to spokeswoman Kelsey Barlow. The developer is proposing to build the town center-type development on about 184 acres of the 352-acre tract. Nearly half of the parcel 168 acres is made up of wetlands. Weber USA is seeking to fill or excavate about 19 acres of wetlands near McChune Branch, which flows toward Goose Creek Reservoir and eventually the Cooper River, and offset the loss by buying credits from a Berkeley County mitigation bank. Site plans show three hotels, three apartment developments and nearly two dozen retail buildings, including two large structures near I-26. Ten years ago, outdoor retailer Bass Pro Shops announced plans to open a 130,000- to 150,000-square-foot store in Ingleside where the new interchange has long been on the drawing boards. A Bass Pro Shops representative did not immediately respond for comment Jan. 17 on its current plans, but the property owner said the company is no longer part of the development. "We do not have a contract with them," said Eric Meyer, president of Weber USA Corp., which owns much of the sprawling Ingleside tract at U.S. Highway 78 and I-26. Meyer also said site plans are preliminary for what Weber wants to build on the site, and the company has not signed contracts with any future tenants. Sign up for our real estate newsletter! Get the best of the Post and Courier's Real Estate news, handpicked and delivered to your inbox each Saturday. Email Sign Up! "We are continuing to search for prospective users," he said. "We would really like to have a supermarket out there." The closest grocery store to the property is a Piggly Wiggly on U.S. Highway 78 near College Park Road. Weber doesn't have a planned time frame for when it wants to start construction on the town center, according to Meyer. He also noted the county has started condemnation proceedings against the land Weber and an affiliate own to build the interchange. He declined to say why condemnation was initiated and referred questions to Weber's attorney, Rick Bybee. Bybee did not immediately respond for comment Tuesday. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, a longtime supporter of the new interchange to spur development and create an alternate traffic artery for motorists using Highway 78 and Ashley Phosphate Road, said condemnation proceedings usually follow disagreements over the price. Last summer, the county went to court to acquire three properties totaling about 15 acres that Weber USA and an affiliated company own at the proposed interchange site. The buyout offer is for $234,630, according to the condemnation documents. Weber has requested a jury trial. In 2008, a 20-year plan, pegged at the time at $750 million to develop the Ingleside tract, was unveiled. Since then, a mix of apartments, hotels and offices have been constructed close to Highway 78 while heavier industrial users line Palmetto Commerce Parkway. The road system, too, has been expanded throughout the tract. Summey called the interchange "the final connector we need to handle traffic created from the development of Ingleside." The interchange design does not extend Weber Boulevard into the residential neighborhoods on the eastern side of I-26. On- and off-ramps from the westbound lane will direct traffic to and from the Ingleside development via Weber Boulevard. Summey said a pond will be created on the western side of I-26 to ease flooding problems in the residential areas. IRMO The only two full-time workers at a Dollar General store location in Irmo launched a strike on Jan. 17, saying the retailer is falling short on safety, staffing and providing promised pay increases. The two employees were supported by the Union of Southern Service Workers, which vowed at a November event in Columbia to work to improve pay and conditions for those working in restaurants, stores and other service industry jobs. Understaffing was a major complaint raised by the two employees, who were striking on Jan. 17 and 18. They frequently are asked to run the store alone for long periods, making it difficult to take breaks, said store assistant manger TyBrianna Shaw, who has worked for Dollar General for three years. "The hours that we work are insane," Shaw said at a rainy but raucous demonstration, backed by union supporters. The workers often cannot take lunch breaks because there is no one else on duty, worker Miranda Moss said. In addition to the duo, the location has a manager and a part-time staffer, they said. Often, they said, there's no help available to help with handling boxes on high shelves. "One person is expected to be the cashier, the stocker, the vendor check-in," Moss said. In a statement, Dollar General did not specifically address issues raised by workers but encouraged employees to speak up about any issues through company channels instead. "We are committed to listening to this and other employee feedback and working collaboratively to address concerns," the statement said. "We respect our Irmo store employees right to express their opinions." During the labor action, the store remained open. Shaw said the store has had several robberies, and employees often are closing up alone at the end of the day and exiting into a dark parking lot. The store also has sanitation problems including rats and feces, mold and improperly stored chemicals, the employees said. A fire exit in the store's back has been locked regularly, Moss said. Moss said she has been promised a pay increase of 75 cents to her $11 per hour salary, but the company has not provided it after weeks of waiting. Raising the pay and other issues with management has not helped, Moss said. "If it takes the two of us to start that and make change, then that's what we're here to do," she said. South Carolina had a 1.7 percent union membership rate in 2021, compared with 10.3 percent nationwide, U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics show. The new union intends to stage protests to improve conditions at different companies across the Southeast in the service sector. It is pushing for $15 per hour pay for workers and improved conditions. A different organization, the Service Employees International Union, is working with Starbucks workers to organize and gain company recognition. It has organized more than 250 Starbucks stores nationwide, according to the union's website, including locations in Columbia and Greenville. Dollar General has more than 18,000 U.S. stores, and locations in more than 200 South Carolina towns and communities. Workers staged a one-day strike in July at the discount retailer's Holly Hill location in Orangeburg County over wages, workplace safety and other issues. COLUMBIA Richland County School District Two Superintendent Baron Davis resigned after the board met behind closed doors for nearly six hours during a special called meeting Jan. 17. A vote to accept Davis's resignation, which came immediately and without public discussion after the board returned from the lengthy private session, was unanimous. Davis, who was named superintendent in 2017, was the first Black leader of South Carolinas fifth-largest school district. His resignation is effective Jan. 17. He had earned $254,681 a year under a contract lasting through June 2026. Davis declined to comment about his resignation for a job where he led the 28,000-student district in northeast Richland County. He left the meeting almost immediately after the vote. The motion to accept Daviss resignation gave Board Chair Lindsay Agostini the authority to execute a settlement agreement with Davis regarding his resignation. Agostini and other board members declined to comment on the details of the boards agreement with the former superintendent or his exit. The bulk of the board also left immediately after the meeting was over, flanked by Richland County Sheriffs Office deputies on the way to the parking lot. The board did not name an interim superintendent, but Agostini said the districts practice is for the deputy superintendent to step in when the superintendent is unavailable. Marshalynn Franklin is the districts current deputy superintendent. South Carolina districts have paid large settlements to superintendents leaving under pressure in recent years. Charleston County paid Gerrita Postlewait $500,000 after her resignation a year ago. Lexington Two agreed to pay Nicolas Wade $240,000 last spring after he left during his first year with the district. Lexington-Richland 5 paid Christina Melton, the state's reigning superintendent of the year, got $226,000 to leave in 2021. Under his contract, Davis is supposed to receive 18 months pay if the board agrees to "terminate" the agreement. That would be $382,021. analysis African Arguments is excited to announce two big changes. Firstly, the leading pan-African platform is delighted to welcome Parselelo ole Kantai as its new Politics & Society Editor. In this new role, Parselelo will oversee the website's coverage of politics, social issues, culture and more. He will explore opportunities to deepen African Arguments' reporting and seek new partnerships to enhance its impact. Parselelo brings with him a wealth of journalistic experience. Since beginning his career in the magazine world of 1990s Nairobi, he has reported from numerous African capitals for various media houses and edited several publications. Notably, he was East Africa correspondent for The Africa Report and editor-in-chief of the New African. He was most recently a recipient of a Miles Morland Fellowship grant, through which he is writing a book on exiled liberation movements in 1960s and '70s Dar es Salaam. "I'm delighted to be joining African Arguments. At a time when independent media is in deep retreat globally, African Arguments will continue to provide a platform for in-depth reporting and critique on thought-provoking subjects from the whole spectrum of Black life. Consolidating a platform that not only explores African issues, but also provides a forum for African people from across the planet to speak, and to speak to each other, has never been more important," says Parselelo. Secondly, African Arguments is pleased to announce that it will soon be launching a new climate section that will provide in-depth original coverage of issues related to the climate crisis. This new project will be led by James Wan who will go from being African Arguments editor - a role through which he has driven the magazine's development since 2015 - to Managing & Climate Editor with continuing responsibility for overall strategic direction. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Africa Climate By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "The climate crisis is the defining challenge of this epoch and touches on every aspect of our lives. It affects people's ability to eat, breathe and subside; it redraws the contours of economies, conflicts, and the land itself; it shapes our cultures, our relationships to ourselves and nature, and our imaginations of the future. And yet there remains far too little understanding, analysis, and coverage of the topic, especially as it relates to Africa, where the crisis is hitting especially hard especially soon," says James. "I look forward to developing this new section dedicated to climate change's multi-faceted dimensions on the continent whilst also supporting Parselelo to take our politics and society coverage to the next level." The new climate section was also inspired by African Arguments readers who, in a 2022 survey, identified climate change/environment as they foremost topic on which they would like to see more coverage. People are migrating because of rising waters. The term "climate migration" is commonly used to describe this phenomenon of moving away, and often changing residences, after a major flood. In 2017, Hurricane Florence prompted many longtime residents of South Carolina's Gullah-Geechee coastal corridor to move inland. Ten million were displaced in 2022 after devastating floods hit Pakistan. A new study points to early signs that Americans are doing it on a national scale, too. Two University of South Carolina researchers recently published a study in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management that found patterns of human migration away from U.S. coastal towns after major flooding disasters. "There are not many empirical studies out there that speak to human migration following natural disasters in developed countries," said Tamara Sheldon, an associate professor of economics at USC and co-author of the study. By using census data from 2005 to 2017, Sheldon and her co-author were able to develop the first study to examine households across the Eastern Seaboard, from Maine to Texas. On average across the East Coast, people are choosing safer places to live in the first few years after a major event. But people with lower incomes are less likely to move. If you take into account all of the household incomes across the East Coast, people making the lowest 25 percent of incomes are far less likely to move to safer areas after surviving a dangerous disaster. This finding emphasizes the injustices in U.S. post-disaster recovery programs, said Sheldon. To be sure, the census does not track Americans' movement in response to climate change. But it does provide insights into where Americans live today compared with where they lived in the past. The researchers analyzed these changes in relation to location data for flooding events declared federal disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The researchers were able to determine which residents that moved to a new county or a new state may have been exposed to a FEMA-declared flood disaster. The governor of an impacted state must first declare an emergency and, then, formally ask FEMA and the president to declare a disaster, prompting the availability of federal disaster recovery funds. In South Carolina, this process played out most recently in 2022 in the wake of Hurricane Ian. Longtime residents will remember that FEMA was key in providing disaster relief and funds for rebuilding the Charleston area after it was hit by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Hugo caused $6 billion in damages. Still, Charleston saw an explosion of growth as people migrated to the area in the years that followed. The city has continued its dramatic growth in the 21st century, mostly fueled by affluent White residents, even in the face of repeated flooding events and storms that ramped up in frequency since 2015. Some costly flooding events in 2015, 2016, and 2019 did not receive FEMA designations. Charleston could be an outlier that bucks the trend of out-migration that the USC researchers found up and down the Atlantic Coast. Experts says there's another explanation for why Charleston's population seems to rise as the flood waters do: ignoring the "counterfactual." In other words, Charleston might have an even larger population today had it not been for the hurricanes and chronic flooding that plagued the recent past. "You don't know what the counterfactual is. You're basing it on a trend," said Craig Landry, a professor at the University of Georgia. "And if I were to do a simulation (of the Charleston area), I might find out that your population would be, say, a million people more had it not been for 2015 flooding events." Landry was not involved in the study but carries out ongoing research on how people perceive flood risk and how flooding affects property costs. The USC study looked at national trends and large disasters, detecting an overarching pattern of migration away from the ocean. "We find stronger effects of (people moving away) from larger, more damaging disasters ... because that's going to be a larger, more salient, signal to people about their future risk," Sheldon said. But one thing the study doesn't address, she said, is repeat disasters. It's wrong to blame all floods on the forces of climate change. Flooding is caused by a number of things that dictate its frequency and intensity, including rainfall. Multiple studies agree that climate change is intensifying the amount of rainfall during storm events on the East Coast. In September, Hurricane Ian smashed into the South Carolina coastline near Georgetown, causing millions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses. Scientists haven't yet determined whether climate change influenced the intensity of Ian, but there's evidence that the kind of storms that FEMA responds to are indeed getting worse. With this study on large flooding disasters now completed, Sheldon is interested in researching the small stuff: a little drywall damage here, some basement flooding there. Those home repair costs accumulate over time. Under human-made sea level rise, many South Carolina residents are getting hit continuously over time during flooding events. Sheldon also mentions the question of how people are reacting to "an increasing rate" of repeat flood disasters. "What is the threshold for changing people's behavior? ... Is it big events, is it a lot of small flooding events? This paper couldn't speak to these things," said Sheldon, but she hinted that answering such questions, and looking at both sides of the climate disruption coin, is the next thing on her agenda. From hurricane wallops to ongoing flood fatigue, residents of the Lowcountry feel both sides. And for people with lower incomes, the study shows that not everyone will have the means to move when it all becomes too much. Sometimes federal funds can serve as a disincentive for people who are contemplating a move to safer areas. For example, residents of Charleston, Georgetown and Horry counties who still have property damage from Hurricane Ian can apply for federal loans to "build back stronger." The program is aimed at allowing residents to stay in flood-prone areas but increase their resilience. For example, the funds can help raise a house on pilings. S.C. residents have until Jan. 23 to apply for these disaster loans. Sheldon is generally skeptical of the overall benefit of these kinds of programs given climate change: "I think a smarter policy is to get people to move away from high-risk areas. I mean, build back better? Are they going to rebuild a similar structure that is going to flood again?" At the same time, Sheldon realizes that places have meaning so do people. "Community ties ... your family, your support network ... the value of those things are really high," Sheldon said. "Sometimes becoming more resilient is just better." The decision to leave or stay is complicated. And, she added, it will only get more complicated from here. Georgetown, SC (29440) Today Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 74F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Low 62F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. GREENVILLE A longtime marketer has transformed a co-working space along the Swamp Rabbit Trail near Unity Park in Greenville into a members-only social lounge. Ryan Alford launched Social House a members-only, 21-plus, bring-your-own-drinks club. The membership rates start at $99 per month, gaining one 24/7 access, a discount on conference rooms and additional access for three guests along with other perks. Entry is controlled by codes sent to members' smartphones. The Greenville native and Clemson graduate started his ad agency career at Erwin Penland, now known as EP+Co. After 12 years, he left to serve as chief marketing officer for a few companies before starting his own digital marketing agency, Radical. Radical is heading into its sixth year and started out at the former co-working space Wheelhouse at 25 Delano Dr. in Greenville. Alford took over Wheelhouse in 2019 from the previous owners and renamed it Camaraderie, still operating it as a co-working office. Alford envisioned making a members-only club for years but focused on growing Radical instead. In the past six months, Alford and his core team took the leap to reimagine Camaraderie into a social club, officially launching Social House in early January. Hints toward Social House's co-working past linger rustic-style cubicles still line the back of the 5,000-square-foot space but changes have been made to move the business's identity from being about 95 percent co-working to only 30 to 40 percent, Alford said. Some changes include adding more cozy furniture, removing about 15 cubicles and installing a new sound system and 200-inch screen that can play up to four unique games at once. There will also be events held like comedy or live music nights. By mid-afternoons especially on Fridays Alford expects the music to be turned up louder than one might expect in a traditional office setting. He wanted to create a space that fosters community and adapts to hybrid work schedules. Were providing an environment that gives people way more than a desk to work at, Alford said. Lockers can be rented for $40 for people to store items, such as wine or spirits. A bar will soon be installed in the kitchen. While alcohol is not served at the lounge, the kitchen will have general mixers, glassware and ice available. Use the space however you like, Alford said. You can co-work in the morning and you can socialize at night. Social House is partnering with Southernside for food delivery through special QR codes on the clubs tables. Member-only private clubs like Social House can more often be found in major metropolitan cities like the SoHo House in New York or Birch Road in Chicago. We need to make money and it needs to be self-sustaining eventually but its more important to me to leave a legacy of creating something that has never been done in Greenville but has a lot of benefits for people," Alford said. Social House is located at 25 Delano Dr. near Southernside Brewing Co, Swamp Rabbit CrossFit and across the Reedy River from The Commons. N.C.-based car wash brand transforms three Upstate washes A family-owned, Charlotte-based car wash brand acquired three preexisting Upstate wash locations and transformed each into a Autobell Car Wash. The new locations are at 620 NE Main St. in Simpsonville, 1536 Woodruff Rd. in Greenville and 401 S. Buncombe Rd. in Greer. Each runs 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Sunday. The car wash brand which offers a number of interior and exterior cleaning options runs 12 locations in South Carolina and has 85 locations in the Carolinas, Maryland and Virginia. Across the three new locations, Autobell intends to employ around 150 workers. Prisma opens new primary care practice in downtown Greenville Prisma Health opened a new primary care practice at 1 E. Stone Ave. in Greenville in a former Rite Aid building. The 7,600-square-foot facility offers family, internal and pediatric care with plans to open a pharmacy later this year. Within the same facility, the health care system launched its first direct primary care office, "a new business-to-business option in which employers pay a flat monthly rate or annual fee that offers their employees comprehensive primary care," according to a news release. Prisma will be the first employer to sign-up for the direct program with it opening to other Upstate business as early as the spring and the Midlands this summer. Companies can learn more about the services at Prisma's website. Three former Spartanburg mayors, former Dennys CEO revive Unity Week Humanitarian Awards Three former Spartanburg mayors and the former CEO of Dennys are recipients of the City of Spartanburgs 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Week Humanitarian Awards. The awards were presented to former Dennys CEO John C. Miller and former Spartanburg mayors James Talley, Bill Barnet and Junie White on Jan. 16 during the citys Unity Week celebration at the Spartanburg District 7 Fine Arts Center, according to a news release. During Millers 11 years as CEO of Dennys, he facilitated the creation of a new public play space on the companys downtown Spartanburg campus, supported Spartanburgs annual International Festival and became a critical partner in the citys Unity Week celebration activities. Former Spartanburg mayors James Talley, Bill Barnet and Junie White have led efforts to revitalize downtown Spartanburg and build up the citys neighborhoods. Spartanburg Community College expanding HVAC program to to Cherokee campus With the help of a $50,000 grant from The Duke Energy Foundation, Spartanburg Community College is expanding its heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) program to the colleges Cherokee County Campus. "We are extremely proud to partner with Duke Energy to invest in a new innovative HVAC education program that will support and strengthen adaptive energy efficiencies in Cherokee County and beyond as well as strengthen Duke Energys mission to power the vitality of the communities we collaboratively serve, said SCC President Michael Mikota in a news release. The first courses for the new program will begin in the upcoming fall 2023 Semester, according to a news release. Thats all for this week. Email your thoughts, tips, releases and newsy bits to smirah@postandcourier.com. GREENVILLE Lessons can be learned from the pain and triumphs of the civil rights movement on how to improve personal finances, panelists said during a forum held at The Phillis Wheatley Community Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Greenville Racial Equity and Economic Mobility Commission hosted the event, which included Palmetto Community Developers founder Alyssa Richardson, who has also served as the deputy chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Tim Scott. About 200 people attended the public town hall, which also honored King's legacy. REEM was founded in the summer of 2020 to address matters of racial inequities, social justice and disparities in areas that impact the Black community in Greenville County. Richardson said King's message continues to resonate and encouraged others to pursue economic independence. She said home ownership, access to capital markets and entrepreneurship are driving economic factors in upward mobility. Growth in the Greenville County market continues while access to the resources needed to advance remain elusive for some in the Black community, Richardson said, and communities, businesses and governments must work even harder together to ensure more Black residents have access to the tools needed for economic mobility. "In Greenville the capital is coming in," Richardson said. "We need to make sure families and communities that have been there somehow they get access to the money." The panel discussion included members of Greenville's faith-based community. The Rev. Vinson Royal of Springfield Baptist Church said the church has a responsibility to educate and promote financial responsibility among its members to promote economic mobility. "If we don't teach economic structure and finances in our membership then we won't have a place to make changes in our society," Royal said. "For the church to have a voice, it has to be economically stable." Rabbi Sam Rose of the Temple of Israel encouraged a spirit of cooperation and collaboration to foster more racial equity and economic mobility in the community. Liz Bebber of United Ministries, S.C. said while some in Greenville County are prospering others are struggling. United Ministries serves about 4,000 people annually, of which 90 percent are living below the poverty rate in Greenville County, which is $28,000 or under for a family of four, Bebber said. She said more needs to be done by community leaders to focus on the economically disadvantaged. State Rep. Wendell Jones, D-Greenville, said during the panel discussion the issue of economic mobility should not be a racial issue. Instead, the focus should be on how groups can join together to push for change. Staying involved in the voting process is also key to have a voice, he said. "What we have in Greenville is not a Black or White issue but an affordability issue that effects all households," Jones said. "If we realize we are in this fight together, all of a sudden it becomes personal." Summerville, SC (29483) Today Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to occasional showers during the afternoon. High 77F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. Kingstree, SC (29556) Today Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 78F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Low 61F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. Mount Pleasant, SC (29464) Today Some sunshine with a thunderstorm or two possible this afternoon. High around 75F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Low 64F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. GEORGETOWN Months after being found not guilty in her husband's death, a Murrells Inlet woman pleaded guilty on Jan. 17 to obstructing justice during the investigation into his death. Irene Clodfelter, 78, pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice in Georgetown County. Circuit Judge George McFaddin sentenced her to two years in prison and eight years on probation for each charge. The sentences will run concurrently, according to officials. Clodfelter had faced up to 10 years in prison for the charges, which stemmed from the death of her husband, Hubert Lee Clodfelter. Hubert Clodfelter's remains were found by his daughters in June 2019 in a garbage bag at the Myrtle Beach Travel Park north of Myrtle Beach where the Clodfelters had a beach house. "This was a very unique case. Someone, somewhere, at some point murdered Hubert Clodfelter," said Seth Oskin, assistant solicitor who prosecuted the case for the 15th Circuit Solicitors Office. We can suspect, but we could not prove by a reason (and) we could not tell what jurisdiction the murder occurred," he added. "We did remain diligent in seeing that justice was served for Mr. Clodfelter, his surviving family and that justice be served on this defendant." After her husbands remains were found, Irene Clodfelter was charged with accessory after the fact to murder and desecration of human remains in Horry County, as well as the two counts of obstructing justice, according to warrants. Clodfelter was charged with obstructing justice after she lied to police about her husbands whereabouts and deleted information from a cellphone, which might have shown communications between her and her husband. These events took place in mid-2019 during the police investigation into her husbands disappearance, shortly before his remains were found, according to officials. Last June, she was found not guilty of the Horry County charges by Judge Steven DeBerry, who believed there was insufficient evidence to convince a jury of the charges. Warrants for Clodfelter said that she found her husbands body around May 28, 2019, under their home and believed her son was responsible for his death, though no charges were filed. In an effort to conceal the crime, she wrapped the body in plastic and left it under the porch. Clodfelter lied and misled investigators several times and used money from her husbands business to "support her lifestyle, even after finding the body, according to the warrants. No suspects have been named in the killing of Hubert Clodfelter. Former Criminal Investigations Department (CID) officer, Jaison Muvevi, who shot and killed three people in Wedza last Friday before his arrest in Mozambique Tuesday, is now custody of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). State media reports that Mozambique has handed over the fugitive to Mutare CID offices where he is currently being held. Muvevi, who was on the run since last week Friday, had escaped a shootout with the police in Rusape on Saturday before he fled into a mountain. In a video that circulated on social media, Muvevi was seen being apprehended by the public in Mozambique. Muvevi shot dead an apostolic sect prophet before fatally shooting Officer in Charge of Wedza police station, Inspector Maxwell Hove (43) and a bar tender. ZRP has identified the other two victims as Crispen Mubvana (62) and Munashe Mujanhi (20). Muvevi also injured one Detective Constable Tendai Mugova. Prior to Muvevi's arrest a memo by police in Manicaland province, had revealed that he had on January 13, 2022 tried to kill one Raphael Nyahwema at Mutare Boys High following a misunderstanding. The ZRP CID homicide details from Harare who later attended the scene managed to recover three 9mm cartridges. COLUMBIA The message was pretty simple. It was written in all-capitalized white letters on blue shirts: "NULLIFY." About 50 people, many of them wearing those shirts, gathered in the S.C. Statehouse to back the nullification doctrine, a controversial theory with deep ties to South Carolina that argues states can void federal law and court rulings as unconstitutional within their boundaries. The U.S. Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected the idea. That did not deter the advocates and supportive state lawmakers, many of them members of the newly emboldened House Freedom Caucus, advocating for the South Carolina Sovereignty Act on Jan. 17. The legislation, while not exactly nullification in the strictest sense, would bar the state government from using its resources to implement any federal act unless the state's Legislative Council, made up of legislative leaders, and the state Attorney General ruled them constitutional. "We have to do as our forbearers did and reject tyranny," Rep. Josiah Magnuson, R-Campobello, told the crowd to applause. The Spartanburg Republican and other lawmakers rallying behind the legislation pointed to federal gun legislation and potential executive orders pertaining to gay and transgender rights as targets of the legislation. It is an effort to push back against the overreach of federal power, Magnuson said in an interview. Its unclear how much impact the extreme long-shot passage of the effort would have, as most federal laws are already enforced by federal agencies like the FBI and ATF or are conditions of federal funding. It is also unclear whether there's any appetite in the House to pass the sovereignty legislation, much less in the Senate, but the push shows once again the House's enlarged ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus and right-wing flexing their muscles to shape the agenda. Three conservative freshmen, Rep. Jay Kilmartin, R-Columbia; Rep. Thomas Beach, R-Piedmont; and Rep. Rob Harris, R-Wellford, all spoke in favor of the legislation at the Jan. 17 event. "I'm excited about it because it's a reassertion of the authority of the state of South Carolina," said Daniel Natal, 49, of Greer, while sporting a "NULLIFY" shirt. "You may be witnessing the start of a grassroots movement." The history of nullification and the history of South Carolina are intimately intertwined. The Constitution's supremacy clause clearly establishes that the federal constitution and federal law takes precedence over state laws, and the Supreme Court's seminal Marbury v. Madison decision established the federal courts as the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality in 1803. But in 1832, South Carolina voided two protectionist federal tariffs as unconstitutional in an "Ordinance of Nullification" and worked to block their implementation in the state, leading to a high-stakes confrontation with the federal government. In response, Congress passed a law allowing President Andrew Jackson to make South Carolina comply with the law by force. The "Nullification Crisis" was resolved when a more moderate compromise tariff was passed and South Carolina rescinded its nullification ordinance. Segregationists floated nullification during the 1950s as a way to resist federally passed civil rights legislation and court rulings. When the state of Arkansas tried to delay the implementation of Brown v. Board, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled the state could not defy the federal ruling and rejected the nullification doctrine as unconstitutional in the 1958 Cooper v. Aaron decision. Just because some local official may think a law is unconstitutional does not give them the right not to follow the law, said Derek Black, the director of the Constitutional Law Center at the University of South Carolina School of Law. If they think theres a constitutional problem with the law, the normal procedure is to file a lawsuit. Magnuson said the Statehouse bill is not exactly like the nullification efforts of the past. In 1830, South Carolina said this law is illegal and is void and of no force. Thats not what were saying here, Magnuson said. Were holding it to be unconstitutional and it wont be enforced with state resources. But were not trying to block the federal government from enforcing whatever they choose to do with their resources. In 2013 the state House of Representatives passed a measure seeking to nullify the Affordable Care Act, but, skeptical of its ability to pass a federal court challenge, the state Senate killed the effort the next year. Magnuson said the current notion relies not on the nullification doctrine, but the anti-commandeering doctrine, which argues that the federal government cannot coerce states into using their resources to implement or enforce federal laws, he holds. The Supreme Court has endorsed that theory recently, but on narrow grounds, Black said. Magnuson isnt worried about a court challenge. I guess well just have to let that play out, he said. Mount Pleasant residents are pretty specific about all the things they really detest apartments, density, sprawl, traffic. In the past few years, theyve replaced most of the towns elected officials over stuff like that. The backlash to a mixed-use development called The Boulevard comes to mind, as do those traffic islands in the middle of Coleman Boulevard and all the high-rises on the harbor. Dont even get them started on that parking garage/office building near Shem Creek. Trouble is, the things that cause all this East Cooper consternation are connected. Get rid of one, the others get worse. Less density leads to more sprawl, higher real estate prices and, yes, more traffic. Reducing traffic which, in fairness, may be an ancient myth certainly isnt an option without greater density and more affordable housing. Like that. All thats to say, Mount Pleasant Town Council is about to go through some things. Again. As The Post and Couriers David Slade reports, council is considering stricter land-use rules to severely limit the ability to build residential units in commercial areas you know, the kind of development with ground-floor businesses that have apartments or townhouses above them. The town now allows 12 units per acre, although such a development has been built only once in the past two decades. Still, council members want to cut down that limit from 12 to four units or maybe eight, if half qualify as affordable housing. Yes, they want this on top of the current apartment moratorium. Real estate professionals say this will cause more sprawl (and they would know), which means Mount Pleasant continues creeping toward Awendaw. But council members say theyre just giving the people what they want. I dont know why we are compromising, or feeling pressure to up those numbers, because residents dont want more density, Councilwoman Brenda Corley said recently. Shes absolutely right less density is what many residents want. But then, a lot of them would just as soon roll up the bridges and close Mount Pleasant to any growth. Which is about as likely as limiting apartments and density and also reducing traffic. Mayor Will Haynie whos moved mountains, or at least moratoriums, to give the people what they want is a tad concerned about this change. He notes that this zoning has hardly been overused; the one development that did take advantage, Shelmore Village, is quite popular. Town Council has gone out of its way in recent years to stop the sort of development most voters dont like. Mount Pleasant is never going to get another Boulevard. The Atlantic was a fluke, the result of a lawsuit. But this may be different. If you want to see what the states fourth-largest municipality looks like when even its health care workers have to live in Georgetown, Haynie says just look at the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge any afternoon at rush hour. Theres a line of cars headed out, for Interstate 26 and destinations beyond. Whats the old saying? Drive 'til you can buy, the mayor says. And that model doesnt work. When a town's first responders, teachers and the people who staff its businesses and restaurants cant afford to live there, well, traffic is going to stink. With median home prices somewhere between a half-million and the moon, Mount Pleasant is already there. Point is, the town needs more affordable housing, and Haynie thinks councils vote last week may not reflect where it ends up. That may be because the airspace above businesses is just about the last place available to build in Mount Pleasant. And some of it must be affordable or, as they now say, attainable. Which is short for attainable to mere mortals. We just have to figure out what the ratio is going to be, Haynie says. Yep, thats the question. Some council members say theyd keep the number of units the same if half were affordable. The towns citizen-led Planning Commission has landed on 10 units per acre, with two market-rate units for every eight affordable ones. Real estate professionals say 20% is about the ceiling on affordable units, since they cost just as much as market-rate ones to build. So even though the chasm is wide, it looks like theyre negotiating. They'd better hope they come up with something, because Mount Pleasant migration shows no signs of abating. That is, until somebody really does find a way to roll up those bridges. Charleston, SC (29403) Today Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. High around 75F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.. Tonight Thunderstorms. Low 64F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. COLUMBIA When former President Donald Trump holds his first public campaign event in South Carolina later this month, he'll be taking a page out of Ronald Reagan's playbook. Sort of. In 1980, when Reagan delivered a 45-minute speech on the Statehouse steps in Columbia, he had already clinched the GOP presidential nomination. Red, white and blue balloons floated through the air as the former movie star turned and smiled at the cameras while an estimated 10,000 people cheered him on. But paperwork filed with state government officials this week shows Trump's planned Jan. 28 rally on steps at the Statehouse will be a decidedly smaller affair, with organizers saying that they are planning for 500 attendees. The reduced crowd size, a departure from Trump's large-scale campaign rallies, suggests there will be a layer of exclusivity when the former president rolls out his South Carolina leadership team. Already, the guest list is shaping up with some high-profile names. The Trump campaign announced Jan. 17 the former president will be joined by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Henry McMaster, two of his most loyal supporters in the Palmetto State. Other attendees for Trump's first public campaign event of his 2024 White House bid include members of South Carolinas congressional delegation, as well as state lawmakers. Trump is expected to give remarks around 4 p.m. on Jan. 28, a Saturday. U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-Surfside Beach, has already endorsed Trumps reelection campaign. Last summer, with Trumps endorsement, Fry defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, who had voted to impeach Trump, in a nationally watched Republican primary. Through his spokeswoman, Fry confirmed his plans to attend Trump's rollout. According to the S.C. Department of Administration, the Trump campaign has blocked off 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. for a press conference and rally, listing on the application a variety of sites both inside and outside the Statehouse building, including the steps on multiple sides of the building and inside the foyer area where bill signings regularly occur. While Trump's name does not appear on the application, event reservation information obtained and reviewed by The Post and Courier promotes the forthcoming appearance as "an opportunity to exemplify the strong support from elected officials in the state as we approach the one year mark to South Carolinas Republican Presidential Primary." South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson said he takes the size of the event as a sign that Trump's influence isn't what it used to be. "The people of South Carolina would probably prefer to hear from Nikki Haley instead of Donald Trump," Robertson said, before raising concerns about the mixing of public resources for political campaigns. "We've seen throughout Donald Trump's presidency and in his professional life that he does not believe that laws and ethics play a part in his life," Robertson said, promising to take action if public tax dollars or government staff are used for a political campaign. Robertson said government staff should be "on personal time or using annual leave, because it is illegal to use tax dollars for campaigns." The event will be Trump's first visit to a state that is expected to factor heavily in his push for the Republican nomination. The state is also home to former Gov. Nikki Haley and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, two popular national GOP figures weighing presidential bids of their own. Like Trump, both Haley and Scott hit the stump in the 2022 midterms to boost Republican candidates. Scott has no plans to attend Trump's South Carolina event, but that could change, according to his spokesman. Haley has said she would take the recently passed holiday season to weigh a future White House bid. Last year, the Palmetto State saw several potential 2024 Republican presidential contenders spending time in the influential state, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. SPARTANBURG New details have emerged in the October death of a Spartanburg County Detention Center inmate, who investigation records show didn't receive medical attention for at least 20 minutes after a deputy saw him collapse in his cell. John Miller died in the hospital Oct. 28 nearly a week after suffering cardiac arrest in the detention center, according to State Law Enforcement Division documents received through a public records request by The Post and Courier. According to multiple incident reports, a deputy identified as "Bishop BM" and a medicine technician witnessed Miller collapse in his cell around 7:50 a.m. on Oct. 22 but continued medication rounds before calling the medical unit. When a nurse ultimately arrived, she administered an insulin shot to another inmate before attending to Miller. According to the approximate timeline from the report, Miller was left for 20 to 25 minutes after he collapsed and before the nurse arrived. Miller's death was among three inmates who died in people being held at the detention center who died within a 30-day span October and November. The Sheriff's Office, which operates the detention center, declined to comment on SLED's findings, including a request to provide the deputy's full name. "Because of a potential pending litigation, this agency has no comment," sheriff's spokesman Lt. Kevin Bobo said Jan. 17. According to the investigation reports, the deputy on the previous shift had told Bishop that Miller had been vomiting throughout the night and was possibly detoxing. Bishop and the nurse found Miller lying on the floor without a pulse and began CPR, according to the reports. Around 8:15 a.m., Bishop called in a medical emergency over the radio, and another deputy began using an AED, a device used to deliver an electric shock to restore the hearts rhythm. They called 911. During the call, a deputy told the dispatcher that the nurse said she and Bishop had been performing CPR for about three minutes. Emergency medical services took over at 8:26 a.m. About 30 minutes later, EMS restarted Millers heartbeat and took him to Spartanburg Medical Center, where he died six days later. The Sheriff's Office requested SLED conduct the death investigation. The Spartanburg County Coroners report said there was no trauma involved in Millers death, and instead was due to complications of a perforated, or pierced, peptic ulcer, which is a sore on the lining of the stomach. According to the coroners report, a CT scan showed that cardiac arrest gave Miller an anoxic-hypoxic brain injury, a condition in which the brain is deprived of oxygen. In addition to Miller's death, 54-year-old Ronald Edward Watkins died at the facility Nov. 1. A month earlier, 29-year-old Lavell Najah Lane died in the facility on Oct. 3, prompting his family to protest and demand answers. SLED is investigating those two deaths. Some residents of Kogi have decried the non-availability of the new Naira notes in the state. This is because some of the residents complained that some of the banks operating in the state were still dispensing the old notes through their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and on the counters. Some of the residents, who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lokoja, expressed worry over the scarcity, with only two weeks to the CBN deadline of Jan. 31 to phase out the old notes. Hajia Lami Audu, a Kogi-based businesswoman, said the way CBN and the manner commercial banks were going about the release of the New Naira notes of 1000, 500 and 200, could breed a crisis unless there would be an extension of the deadline. "If you go to withdraw money either at the counter or ATM in the bank, what you will be given are old notes instead of the new notes as directed by the CBN," she said. Mrs Jumai Agada, a fish seller at New Market, Natako, said, "I get more of the old notes from customers that pay me and I don't know why it's so. "Again, I have my fear and dislike for the new Naira notes because each time we go to buy fish by the river bank with the new notes, they wash or fade as soon as water touches them. "The new notes are not as good as the old notes, which are water resistant. I'm sure when one is beaten by rain during the rainy season, the notes will end up staining one's clothes if kept in the pocket," she said. Mr Abdullazeez Musa, a meat seller at Adankolo Market, said most of his customers used more of the old notes to buy meat than the new notes. Musa wondered why the new notes were not very much in circulation, considering the directive of the Apex Bank to the banks to ensure reasonable flow and circulation in society. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Currencies By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. A check around of some of the banks' ATMs showed that few of them were dispensing old notes. Some of the Operation Managers of the defaulting banks, who spoke to NAN in anonymity, said that the fault was not theirs since their branches were not being supplied with enough mints. "You can see that our two ATM machines outside are not even dispensing any money because we don't have the supply of the new naira notes to stock the machines. "CBN has warned us to stop stocking the machines with old notes and we don't want to disobey, so we have left them empty till when we get the supply," an Operation Manager explained. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), through its Director of Currency Operations, Mr Ahmed-Umar, had on Jan 9, mandated commercial banks to stop putting old Naira notes in their ATMs. Ahmed-Umar claimed that the apex bank had enough of the new notes to meet the demand of the public as It also promised to monitor commercial banks, to ensure compliance with the directive. He said that the directive was to implement the Jan. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of old notes in circulation. "We, CBN management, have mandated banks to stop putting old notes in their ATMs. They should only put the new notes. "There is the serialisation of the policy that they can put either N500, N1000 or N200 notes whichever the denomination they have, or a combination of the notes," he said. But a medical doctor, Adeiza Mathias said, "Nevertheless, as good as the Apex bank's intention is, the situation here in Kogi deserves more pragmatic action to ensure that people don't lose their hard-earned monies, especially the villagers." Access Holdings Plc expects to expand its operations to France and Hong Kong by 2027, Nigerias biggest lender by assets said in a five-year strategy document issued on Monday. As part of a broader plan to be Africas gateway to the world, the lender said the expansion move also involves the group branching out into markets including Malta, Dubai (UAE), Lebanon, China and Mumbai (India). Access Holdings is expecting its clientele to reach 125 million by 2027, with retail clients expected to make up 100 million of its customer base by then. Currently, the lender has over 52 million retail customers in the 17 countries in which it operates. The financial services group has unveiled several grand aspirations it wants to accomplish in the next half a decade and wants its retail banking business to have evolved into a digital sales and service provider by 2027. It expanded the value of its digital lending from N2 billion in 2017 to N146 billion in 2021. Access Holdings disclosed in the document posted on the Nigerian Exchanges website that it is setting sights on becoming one of the top two pensions players across the markets where it operates. Last year, the holdco acquired a controlling stake in First Guarantee Pension Limited and an indirect equity stake in Sigma Pensions Limited. It is anticipated that Access Bank Nigeria, the local unit of the groups commercial banking division, will account for 52 per cent of gross revenue and one-third of pre-tax profit. Access Holdings wholesale business is seen contributing 63 per cent to gross revenue and half of profit before tax while retail business is expected to account for a quarter of gross revenue and 31 per cent of pre-tax profit. The banking subsidiary, the document said, will act as the nexus to drive transformation for the group and will help drive financial inclusion and digital customer solutions. By the end of 2027, we expect to be in at least 26 countries and in at least 3 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries supporting trade (United Kingdom, France & United States of America), the corporation said. Divisions The holdco is broadly divided into five subsidiaries namely retail, commercial & corporate banking; insurance brokerage; payment and switching services; consumer lending and agency banking; as well as asset management and pension fund administration. The group said its share of total transactions in Africa will rise to 33.3 per cent by 2027. Access Holdings gross earnings for the first nine months of 2022 grew 25 per cent to N906.9 billion, while its profit before tax for the period stood at N148.7 billion. It expects gross revenue for the year to surpass N1 trillion. The group sees tapping Africas unbanked population of 370 million as integral to its five-year growth plan. It has said its international subsidiaries will be anchored out of Access Bank UK. Access Holdings was established as Access Bank in 1989 and became a public limited liability company in 1998, the year its shares were listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange. It acquired Intercontinental Bank Plc in 2012, enabling it to become one of Nigerias five biggest banks. A merger with Diamond Bank in 2019 shot the customer base to 42 million, the largest by any lender in Africa. Last March, it completed a transformation to a financial holding company, allowing it to set up other businesses within financial services outside its core commercial banking operation. As of last September, its assets totalled N13.5 trillion. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday hailed the renowned culture and arts advocate Jahman Anikulapo as he turned 60. The President, in a statement signed by his Special Adviser, Femi Adesina, Lauded the culture activist for his sustained advocacy and celebration of the traditional, iconic, and unique identity of Nigeria and Africa in writing. He also commended his strides in film, drama and discussions and for intentionally documenting the history and inspiring generations. The President affirmed that Mr Anikulapos tutelage under some of the best dramatic and literary critics in the world, with many living and teaching in Nigeria, shows his dedication to creativity, especially in the narrative styles. READ ALSO: As the journalist, director, actor, and critic uses his creative talent to keep the spotlight on arts and culture as integral aspects of development, President Buhari believes his zeal and knowledge will continue to be relevant in a dynamic world where values and virtues will shape the future of leadership, the President noted. President Buhari also prayed for the well-being of the former Guardian newspaper Editor. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Emmanuel Enoidem, a close political associate of Godswill Akpabio when the latter was the governor of Akwa Ibom State, is set for an epic battle with Mr Akpabio if the former minister of Niger Delta Affairs becomes the APC candidate in the Akwa Ibom North-West District for the 2023 general elections. Mr Akpabio has gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeals judgment which nullified his election as the partys candidate. Mr Enoidem is the PDP candidate in the Akwa Ibom North-West District. Both men fell apart when Mr Akpabio left the PDP for the APC in 2018. Akpabio has no history of loyalty, not to God, not to any political party or any man, Mr Enoidem said in this interview with Cletus Ukpong. Excerpts: PT: You were asked to contest for Senate in 2019 but you declined. Why? ENOIDEM: Let me take you a little bit back. In 2010, I was in my house when (Godswill) Akpabio sent for me. He was a governor then and I was his commissioner for Housing. He said he wanted me to go to the Senate, to take over from Senator Aloysius Etok. Actually, it was the turn of my (Abak) federal constituency to go to the Senate at that time. So I set out, I did the campaign, visited the local government areas and consulted all the people I needed to consult. Everybody was waiting to vote for Enoidem to go to the Senate in the (PDP) primary. A month to the (primary) election, Akpabio called me and said he didnt want me to go to the Senate again, he said I was one of the pillars of his administration, and that he wanted me to remain as his commissioner. That wasnt what he wanted, really. He wanted to lay a foundation for a second term for his Senate ambition. He wanted Aloysius (Etok) to do a second term so that when he finishes Akpabio would take over in 2014, which was our plan to send him to the Senate. If Akpabio wanted a second term we would have given it to him if he were in the PDP. He didnt need to deceive me, he didnt need to lie to anybody. At that 2010, Akpabio and Aloysius were fighting dirty. I and some other persons from Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District were planning to recall Aloysius from the Senate. We had finished our plan to recall him only for Akpabio to come up with an intervention that we should allow Aloysius Etok to return to the Senate. PT: Are you talking about Akpabio seeking a second term as governor or..? ENOIDEM: No, for the Senate. The Senate used to be one term for every person in our senatorial district. Senator Ibokessien started it, handed over to Itak Bob Ekarika. Itak Bob Ekarika handed over to Aloysius Etok. Aloysius Etok was supposed to hand over to another person from the Abak Federal Constituency because all the other federal constituencies would have taken their turn at that time. In 2014, we, Akpabios close political associates, already had the plan to send Akpabio to the Senate after his second term as governor, although it wasnt the turn of his federal constituency. But what Akpabio did in his usual way of being smart was for him to foresee that if he doesnt set a second term history in another person, if he goes to the Senate he too may be hurried out after one term. But even if there were no such history we would have given him a second term in the Senate if he were still in the PDP. We loved him, he was our leader when he was in the PDP. PT: Is that why you didnt want to contest against him? ENOIDEM: 27 December 2017 was when Akpabio told me he wanted to go to the APC. I went to pay him my normal Christmas homage, only for me to meet him talking to a group of people, telling them that he wanted to leave PDP for the APC. (He said) that things were not working well in the PDP in Akwa Ibom State. I went into the meeting, I told him, sir, this is not the kind of thing you should discuss here. If you want to discuss this kind of thing, call the leadership in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District and discuss it and let us know what your grouses are. Somehow, my voice was a bit raised because I was surprised at the discussion. So he (Akpabio) said, Are you coming to insult me in my house? I left his house. But before I left, I told Prince Akpabio and Emmanuel Inyangetor to tell him not to discuss this matter here, and not to go to the APC because he would fail election. That was 27 December 2017. Akpabio went to APC on 8 August, 2018. When he left, everybody the governor, the deputy governor, and the entire leadership of Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District agreed that I should go to the Senate. Two reasons I didnt want to contest the election against Akpabio. I knew Akpabio was going to fail, but I didnt want it to be me that would take over from him, he was my boss. The second one was that we should create a balance in politics; since the history of a second term had already been established, it was proper we get someone from Ikot Ekpene Federal Constituency to succeed Akpabio in order to complete the second term. PT: But that sounds contradictory because you are now standing in the election against him? ENOIDEM: Akpabio is not in the Senate as we speak. PT: So if he was still in the Senate, you wouldnt have contested against him? ENOIDEM: I am not saying I wouldnt have contested. Akpabio is not in my party. He has moved to the APC, so I dont owe him that allegiance. But at the time he was still in the Senate, I didnt want to be that person that would remove him from the Senate. PT: But he says you are his boy, and he feels insulted that you are standing in the election against him? ENOIDEM: If Akpabio says that, then he is a very dishonest person. If Akpabio feels insulted by my ambition to the Senate, then he is a very dishonest person, one who doesnt have regard for God. He thinks he is God. I have two reasons for saying so. One, I got my ticket on 23 May 2022. At that time, Akpabio wanted to be the president of Nigeria. So the whole world will wait for Akpabio because his name is Akpabio, so that when he chooses what he wants everybody will now pick whatever is available. It would be the height of dishonesty and lack of integrity for him to say that. If anybody is contesting election against anybody it is Akpabio that is contesting the election against me. I hope he wont say that in public because I would insult him in a way he wouldnt love. Two, Akpabio is not in the PDP, he is in the APC. PDP must have a candidate. So are we saying that because Akpabio wants to contest the election, PDP wont field a candidate? PT: He feels Udom Emmanuel is pushing you against him? ENOIDEM: Udom Emmanuel is not pushing me! Is it not Akpabio who wanted me to go to the Senate in 2010, was Udom Emmanuel in politics then? Akpabio knows that I have the competence to be in the Senate. It is part of his lame excuses to blame everybody, instead of blaming himself for where he has put himself. I am not a child. If Akpabio is older than me it is just for two years. It just happened that Akpabio was a governor and I was a commissioner under him. But Akpabio was a commissioner under (Victor) Attah! He contested the governorship election against Attahs wishes, was he insulting Attah? Attah wanted Udoma Bob Ekarika. Akpabio has no history of loyalty, not to God, not to any political party or any man. Akpabio did everything to rig the (2007 governorship) election in Akwa Ibom, against the wishes of Attah. If Akpabio had loyalty to our party that made him a commissioner for six and a half years, made him a governor for eight years, and a senator for four years, he wouldnt have crossed over to APC. I knelt down for Akpabio, one of the first persons I have ever knelt down for in my life, to beg him not to go to APC. I told him plainly you dont have a future in APC. APC is a house that was built by some group of people, you cant go there and dominate. PT: But we learnt that he was frustrated out of the PDP? ENOIDEM: Who frustrated him? PT: Yeah, that there was a conspiracy against him by Udom Emmanuel and others? ENOIDEM: Akpabio is a liar if he goes through that route. For the first time in the history of Nigeria, a sitting governor lent the name of the state through the office of the attorney general of the state to go to the court to defend Akpabio that Akpabio did not get himself involved in corruption, that Akpabio did not steal the money of Akwa Ibom State. Udom Emmanuel did it for Akpabio. So what was the conspiracy? Akpabio doesnt want to stay without power. If you remember in the 2015 election when we were campaigning for Jonathan, all that Akpabio was saying was that Akwa Ibom should support Jonathan so that Jonathan should win the centre because Akwa Ibom does not want to stay without the centre. That was a bad political campaign. Nigeria is a federation. You dont run your campaign on that kind of basis, what happens if the centre is taken by another party? Akwa Ibom is a state among the comity of states in Nigeria. For you to campaign that you dont want us to stay out of power means that you yourself it means that you must be in power forever. So when Buhari won the election, the morale of Akwa Ibom people was very low because the plank of Akpabios campaign had fallen. It took me to go to the media houses to talk to our people that we, as a federating state in Nigeria, can stay without the centre. Akpabio could not imagine himself staying without being in the federal government. Akpabio couldnt be a minister in an APC government while he was still in the PDP. So he escaped in order to go and be a minister. He did everything, both noble and ignoble, to get a ministerial appointment. PT: Are you saying that Akpabio had no issues with Governor Udom Emmanuel? ENOIDEM: Akpabio had not a single issue with Udom Emmanuel. All the agreements they had, Udom Emmanuel fulfilled them, including all the laws Akpabio made to be paid this and that, to be given this and to be given that. PT: But it is said that Akpabios wife was prevented from entering Akwa Ibom Government House? ENOIDEM: Who said it? PT: Ata Ikiddeh, a former aide to Akpabio, said it. ENOIDEM: Ata Ikiddeh is not a normal human being, he thrives on controversy. I know him. PT: But the government hasnt refuted it? ENOIDEM: Government does not need to come out and refute a junk report. PT: Akpabio too hasnt come out to say the report was false? ENOIDEM: I dont think Akpabio needs to say that. I am telling you that as an insider there was no real problem between Akpabio and Udom Emmanuel by the time Akpabio left PDP. Akpabio left because he said EFCC was harassing him. Tell him I say so. PT: Akpabio, while he was governor, significantly changed the infrastructures in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District, including in your own local government area. And he appears well-loved by the people in the district. Just yesterday, I spoke with someone in the district who said you are part of a conspiracy to humiliate Akpabio. ENOIDEM: The person who told you that is daft, he doesnt know the elementals of politics. I and Akpabio are not in the same political party. All the things you said Akpabio did, he did them under PDP. When Akpabio left PDP and became the minister of Niger Delta Affairs under APC, what did he do for the Annang people? No, he did nothing. If the people love him that much he wouldnt have failed the 2019 election. PT: He said they rigged him out? ENOIDEM: Nobody rigged the election, it was Akpabio who was trying to rig people out. Ask Akpabio if he beat up the PDP chapter chairman in Essien Udim with his own hands. Ask him if he used the military to terrorise the collation centre in Essien Udim. Ask him whether he got people to write results for him at the INEC centre in Essien Udim. Akpabio thought he could use all the votes in Essien Udim to win the election in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District. Akpabio doesnt think very well. If he has deep thought, he wouldnt dare contest election in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District. The qualification to go to the Senate is not because you did roads. We are talking about justice, fairness, equity and good conscience here. If Akpabio cannot see that Abak Federal Constituency has not gone to the Senate in 63 years of Nigerias independence, then Akpabio is a very wicked man. We cannot wait for Akpabio to become everything before anybody will become something. Akpabio has been a commissioner, a governor, and a senator. When he was in the Senate what did he do for us? I heard he is telling people he wants to be Senate President. Who contests elections because he wants to be Senate president? Is that reasonable? Who even told him that APC would form the majority in the Senate? If Akpabio is reasonable, he would know that Nigeria has rejected APC after what Nigerians have been passing through. PT: Whats the focus of your campaign? ENOIDEM: To give my people proper representation. Nigeria is being negotiated. It has been like that since 1960. I am going to make sure what is being shared to other parts of Nigeria gets to my people too. PT: Like what? ENOIDEM: The Federal government cannot give us electric power, we need to sit down and agree that the states should provide electric power for themselves. Nigerians are very enterprising people, if you give them electric power they will fend for themselves. Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District has the largest belt of palm trees. Palm trees are one of the most important revenue-yielding businesses in the world. Dont forget that the Malaysians came to Abak here to get their palm seedlings. We can return to that history when Nigeria was the highest producer and exporter of palm produce. That has been the message of my campaign. If you get to any village in my place, the first business of every woman is palm produce, to produce palm oil. They sell this oil at cheap rates to people from Aba, Abia State. We are looking at refining the oil for export and sale across Nigeria. A barrel of palm oil is more expensive than a barrel of crude oil. The beauty is that we are going to provide off-takers for our people. We are also going to make sure we provide palm mills in each of the 10 local government areas in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District. PT: But the Akwa Ibom State Government has established mills in some of these areas and they appear not to be working. ENOIDEM: What I am talking about here is not a state government matter, it is going to be private-sector driven. The Central Bank of Nigeria has a lot of money to fund agriculture. So if we get a loan for 10 per cent interest, we can share it to our people. Our people are honest enough to return the loan. I will leverage palm produce as much as God will give me the strength. We are also endowed with clay, some of the best qualities in the world. If we get an investor to set up a clay refinery, we would have empowered our people. We can set up ceramics factories. PT: But must you be a senator before you do these things? You have been part of the government for several years as a powerful commissioner. ENOIDEM: I dont know what you mean by a powerful commissioner. There are certain things I wouldnt want to say here. But this will be my focus. PT: But people would like to have you tell them why you didnt do these things for all the years you have been in government. ENOIDEM: A commissioner is like a messenger, you dont have your own policies, you depend on the policies of the chief executive who is your boss. When I was the commissioner for investment, I was the one who rejuvenated the Peacock Paints factory in Ikot Ekan, Etinan, with the cooperation of the governor. PT: Have you ever been involved in electoral violence in Akwa Ibom? ENOIDEM: Never. Never. Every journalist that came to my polling unit from 1999 to till the last election would see that that is the most orderly polling unit. PT: You have never been part of election rigging? ENOIDEM: How do you mean? Me, carrying ballot boxes? PT: You encouraging people to do it? ENOIDEM: Not Emmanuel Enoidem. I will never encourage rigging elections. PT: Some people out there think you are. ENOIDEM: (Cuts in) But you cant stop them from enjoying their thoughts. But I am telling you the reality about me. I challenge anybody to say that they have caught Enoidem rigging election. Let me give you an example. In 2019, we had a man called (Mike) Igini. I was the PDP state agent for all the elections presidential, governorship elections, in Akwa Ibom State. This man called Igini, may he live long. This man said INEC had a server, INEC had the capacity to do what they are saying they want to do now in the 2023 elections. And they were doing it. The only person in this country that held onto this policy was Igini. And because I knew how serious he was, what I did was in my ward, I made sure every vote passed through the card reader. You know what? When we got to the local government INEC office my ward was number one. The votes in Etim Ekpo reduced to less than 10,000 from the 20,000 plus that we used to have. Because I wanted to show people that we could make a difference, I ensured that the votes in my ward passed through the card reader. My prayer is, God as I am going to the Senate, let me have partners that will be ready to change things in Nigeria, to give hope to Nigerians. PT: Akpabio and his rival in the APC, Udom Ekpoudom, are still in court over who should be the APC candidate in the district. Who between the two would you prefer to stand against in the election? ENOIDEM: Anybody. I have paid my dues in politics. I supported Akpabio to be governor, I bought (the PDP nomination) form for Akpabio to go to the Senate. There is nobody that went for election in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District as a senator that I was not at the forefront of his campaign. PT: Do you think you can defeat Godswill Akpabio in a free and fair election? ENOIDEM: This election is going to be free and fair. Godswill Akpabio is on the wrong side of history. Godswill Akpabio is on the offside of God. God is justice, equity and of good conscience, and therefore he cannot win this election (that is if he becomes the APC candidate). He is a greedy man who wants to be in power every day. Cant Godswill Akpabio be (Bola) Tinubu that he went and surrendered to at Eagle Square? Am I not better than Tinubu whom he surrendered to? Dont I have more energy than Tinubu? He will surrender to me or I will win him in this election. Tinubu left government in 2007 as the governor of Lagos State and was raising people across the western states. When he was satisfied with the west, he went to the north and raised people he made people governors, ministers, sent people to the Senate, House of Representatives. Godswill Akpabio thinks he can be a leader without having strong men, without encouraging other people to be strong. God will not allow that to happen. Tinubu waited for long, raised men and he strategised to win the 2015 presidential election (for the APC), and then Godswill Akpabio jumped boat to go and join him because he must eat food is ready. Godswill Akpabio is a food-is-ready politician. In a free and fair election, I will win Godswill Akpabio 10 times. PT: You have been part of the PDP leadership in the state. Otu Ita Toyo, who was the PDP chairman in Akwa Ibom, is one man with great intellect. How come your party prevented him from becoming a part of the leadership of the PDP in the South-south zone? ENOIDEM: The leader of our party was Godswill Akapbio at the time Toyo wanted to go to. As a matter of fact, he (Akpabio) was the one who told Toyo to go for the South-south zonal chairman. He is also the one that stopped him because he doesnt want anybody that has a voice. PT: But you were there as a powerful party man and a close associate of Akpabio, did you advise him against that? ENOIDEM: What would I have done as a commissioner? Toyo is my friend till tomorrow, he is a very cerebral guy and I respect him. Go and ask him what happened, I would have allowed him to go to anywhere he wanted to go to because I believe in his capacity. I was the state treasurer of PDP when he was the chairman of the party. Akpabio doesnt want anybody that has a strong voice. When Akpabio left PDP for APC, how many people followed him? How many people are with him now? They went and discovered the Akpabio that we already knew. Mention everybody that left with him, how many of them are still with him? Nse Ntuen, Emmanuel Akpan, Otobong Ndem, Emmanuel Ekon, Gabriel Tobby, Godwin Afangideh. All of them have left Akpabio. PT: At some point, you wanted to be a deputy governor (to Udom Emmanuel)? ENOIDEM: There is no sane person that would sit down in his house and say he wants to be a deputy governor, you dont buy a form to become a deputy governor. Akpabio said he wanted to make me a deputy governor. He didnt and I didnt quarrel with him because I know he is not God. You see, why I am a different politician is that if a man promises you something, just know that he is a man and may not keep to his promise. I know that if God wanted me to be deputy governor, he would have made me. Akpabio doesnt want any strong voice around him. PT: You were the PDP treasurer in Akwa Ibom at that time, where did you get Edet Mkpubre to fill the position of the PDP national vice chairman, South-south zone? ENOIDEM: Akpabio brought him. PT: Was Mkpubre involved in the PDP politics of that time? ENOIDEM: Of course, he wasnt. Akpabio wanted somebody who wasnt very strong. PT: But how can he survive in politics without having strong people around him? ENOIDEM: Oh, there are things I would have loved to say but not today. Ask me this question next year, I will tell you a lot of things. PT: Is it true Akpabio stopped you when you wanted to be the PDP national legal adviser? ENOIDEM: He wanted to stop me but God stopped him. If Udom Emmanuel was not a man of integrity Because Akpabio doesnt want strong people, when he wanted to leave the government, before he handed over, he said that those of us who were in his (Akpabios) government should not last more than one year in Udom Emmanuels government. The man (Udom Emmanuel) wasnt ready to honour the deal. So after one year, he (Akpabio) went to him and said this deal must be observed. Thats why I keep saying that Udom Emmanuel wasnt the problem, it was Akpabio that was the problem. He wanted to force Udom Emmanuel to drop all of us who were up to five years in government. So when he told the governor to remove me, the governor said how can I remove this man that is productive? Akpabio said no, that that was the agreement. The governor asked where he would keep me. So Akpabio went and negotiated for the position of the PDP national legal adviser to be zoned to Akwa Ibom. He was the Senate minority leader then, dont forget. When the governor said whos going to tell Enoidem about this, Akpabio left Uyo and flew to the US where I was attending the Akwa Ibom State Association of Nigeria (US) conference in Virginia to come and tell me that the governor wanted me to resign as commissioner and contest for the PDP national legal adviser. It was his game, not the governors game. Since it was his game the governor asked him to manage it. When they told me that Akpabio was in the US to see me, I said how can Akpabio travelled all the way to see me when I had only three days to stay in the US. I told Akpabio I would give him my response later. When I got back to my hotel room, I called the governor, the governor told me that it was Akpabios proposal, not his. I said okay, I would resign when I come back from the US. When I came back I resigned as commissioner. For almost one year the PDP did not have its election because of the Ali Modu Sheriff issue. In between that one year, the governor said instead of being redundant I should go to the London Business School. In between that time, Akpabio went and conspired with Emmanuel Ekon that the APC has a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) as their legal adviser, how can they bring Enoidem that is not a SAN, what if there is a case between PDP and APC? They took the story to (Governor) Wike (of Rivers State), but Udom Emmanuel said no, that that is his choice and that there is no provision in the PDP constitution that you must be a SAN before you become the partys legal adviser. He (Akpabio) didnt want me to occupy any position. That was how I became the partys legal adviser. Before we went to Eagle Square, they called a meeting of national assembly members across the South-south in Akpabios house to decide whether they will support me or not. Fight broke out in Akpabios house in Ikoyi because of me. Akpabio and Emmanuel Ekon brought those people to come and say they dont want Enoidem. Mike Enyong and Bassey Albert told Emmanuel Ekon who are you to come and say you dont want Emmanuel Enoidem when the governor says he wants him. When I became the national legal adviser, I performed very well because I didnt want to let Udom Emmanuel down. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Extant copyright laws in Nigeria prohibit the conversion of books to readable formats for visually impaired persons. This has resulted in limited access to books for people who are visually impaired and who live with print disabilities, resulting in a situation tagged Book Famine Kassim Lawal is visually impaired. Against all odds, he bagged his law degree from the University of Lagos, Akoka in 2016. Afterwards, he enrolled and waded through the exerting waters of the Nigerian Law School, graduating in an enviable robe. The journey for the 38-year-old lawyer, as expected, was herculean. The voluminous law books, the case notes and several large-volume materials whose reading came at a price for even sighted colleagues were all studied by him. I had to record all my textbooks with the assistance of my classmates, he said. It didnt matter the volume of the books; I got them captured on tape recorders and cassettes to listen to them later on, he told this reporter. He noted that he couldnt use braille because the materials were very bulky. He recalled soliciting the help of his sighted colleagues to use the library and submit assignments. Now a solicitor at Yusuf O. Alli Chambers, Abuja, Mr Lawal acknowledged that visually impaired undergraduate students of Nigerian tertiary institutions go through extremely tough times studying, as compared to pupils at the basic and secondary school levels such as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) School for the Blind. Mr Lawal, who is the Chairman of the Abuja chapter of Lawyers with Disabilities, explained that universities in Nigeria are neither inclusive nor specialised. Provisions are usually made for primary and secondary school pupils in terms of adapting books unlike those at the tertiary level of education, he said. For Mr Lawal and numerous visually impaired students and professionals in Nigeria, the silver lining in the dark cloud would be Nigerias ratification, implementation and enforcement of Marrakesh Treaty- an international agreement that seeks to help end the global scarcity of books. Braille expensive, time-consuming Grace Atewe is a current law student at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, who, like Mr Lawal, holds so much optimism about the prospects of the Marrakesh Treaty coming fully into effect. She shared her experiences navigating through university education with this reporter. Difficulty in accessing books for study is one of the main issues facing people with visual impairment in universities in Nigeria, she said. Miss Atewe, who is 27 years old, explained that a good number of law books and materials are available but only for sighted people. Getting access to those books and materials as a visually impaired or partially sighted person is a major hurdle. Most of the time, these books are not put into electronic formats that blind people can access. Like many of my other colleagues, we are at the mercy of our sighted friends and mates, she said. Miss Atewe, now in her final year in the university, suggested that when the Marrakesh Treaty comes fully into use, law reports and other materials can be made in formats that can talk or be read in braille. She said this would significantly ease their struggle. She added: We are the ones who do all the conversion of books ourselves. We have to get these books, then go through the rigorous process of converting them into readable formats and it takes a lot of time and money and as struggling students, we can hardly afford these. Getting those books in braille is extremely expensive, so all these hurdles should be looked into, so that when we want to get access to these materials, we can easily get them on the internet. Grim statistics Checks by this reporter revealed that small-volume braille printers cost between $1,800 and $5,000 while large-volume ones may cost between $10,000 and $80,000. According to an international development organisation, Sightsavers, there are estimated 24 million people with vision loss, with about 1.3 million becoming blind in the year 2020. The Nigeria National Blindness and Visual Impairments also reports that the North Eastern part of the country has the highest prevalence of blindness with about 6.1 per cent while the South West Zone of the country has the lowest prevalence with about 2.8 per cent prevalence. Blindness and lack of accessible book formats may be a factor why many visually impaired people in Nigeria do not go to school or drop out of school. In Jigawa State, North-west Nigeria, 66 pupils formally registered at the Jigawa State School for the Blind but only 10 showed up for school, this is according to a report by PREMIUM TIMES. In its World Disability Report published in 2011, the World Health Organisation identified inappropriate teaching materials and methods of assessment as one of the barriers to education for children with disabilities. Studies have also revealed that braille is the most preferred source of information for persons with visual impairments with about 58.3 per cent level of interest, followed by talking books (audiobooks) with about 38.2 per cent while only 3.4 per cent source their information from large print. About Marrakesh Treaty The treaty was adopted in 2013 and signed in Marrakesh, Uganda, to facilitate access for people with print disabilities by removing barriers in national copyright laws that hinder the reproduction, distribution and sharing of books in accessible formats for use by people with print disabilities. The treaty has been ratified by 23 African countries and Nigeria is a signatory to it. Administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, it advocates the creation of accessible formats which start after the source publication is released in the market, and once all the legal requirements are met to transform the source publication into an accessible publication, an alternative format of a book in braille or large print is often made available much later than the release of the print book. A direct response to the call of the (Sustainable Development Goals) of leaving no one behind, Marrakesh Treaty seeks to reach those furthest behind first as it acknowledges that one of the factors that consistently recur when talking about quality education for people with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairment, is the availability of educational materials in formats they can use. However, It is important to note that some alternate formats mentioned above may be suitable or easy to use for a particular disability only. For example, a person with Dyslexia may not prefer a book in Braille, and persons with low vision may not use an audiobook as it omits all pictures and text. What Marakesh Treaty domestication could mean to Nigerias blind community John Assein, the Director General of the Nigerian Copyrights Commission, said the process of ratifying the Marrakesh Treaty in Nigeria has now passed the concurrence stage and that it has reached the Presidential Assent stage which is the final stage before it finally becomes law and binding. Speaking to the reporter in his office, Mr Assign said he has been having a series of meetings with the leadership of the National Association of the Blind and other requisite organisations to ensure they are carried along. He said the domestication of the treaty would mean more books in accessible formats, and that the needs of persons with visual impairments would be addressed, helping to significantly increase the literacy level of blind persons. People with visual impairment can also walk into any of the authorised entities instead of waiting for years to have some of these books in accessible formats. So it would seem like a sighted person walking into a regular bookshop, he said. He added that the provisions of the treaty have been incorporated into the revised Copyrights Amendment Bill which has been passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and awaiting presidential assent. We are hopeful that before the year runs out or before the end of this current administration, it comes into effect, Mr Assien said. According to the Marrakesh Treaty Advocacy Course, the right to literacy is a fundamental human right for all persons and it should include reading books for education and leisure. But Mr Lawal, who is also the Secretary General of the Joint Association of Persons with Disabilities, Abuja chapter, said the current situation does not encourage visually impaired persons in Nigeria to read for leisure. He said: The domestication would mean that I can go to get literature books by Soyinka or Achebe. It would mean I dont have to get the books first, go to Lagos to get it braille. There would be a level playing for visual impairments. For a person with disabilities to be able to access books the same way sighted people would be able to access it. Findings revealed that the bill provides for authorised entities which can either be government-owned or private establishments will be licenced to produce these books in accessible formats. Doubting Thomas? Meanwhile, Martin Kieti, who works at the Inclusion Resources for Africa in Kenya, noted that the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty and its implementation in national law does not necessarily guarantee the enjoyment of the right to read by people with print disabilities. He said: It is a well-known fact that, in many African countries, international treaties have been ratified and national laws have been enacted or revised and policies have been developed but their implementation has always not been fully realised. The poor implementation of such treaties, laws and policies has been attributed to, among other reasons, lack of resources, political goodwill and legal remedies and mechanisms to enforce the provisions of such treaties, laws and policies. He said for people with print disabilities to enjoy their right-to-read and to access information through increased availability of accessible books, it is essential that the Marrakesh Treaty is realised not only on paper but also in practice. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The International Press Centre (IPC) on Tuesday, conducted a one-day capacity-building workshop for bloggers and online journalists on conflict-sensitive reporting. This virtual training is in the build-up to the 2023 elections. Participants were trained on conflict sensitive reporting skills and methodologies in covering campaigns and elections, hate speech election in reporting, the Nigerian media code on election coverage, safety of Journalists and 2023 elections and the imperatives of professional reporting online. In his opening remarks, the Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Rotimi Oyekanmi, indicated how fake news have affected the operations of the commission. He appealed to the media practitioners to remove religious and ethnic impressions from their stories because it puts INEC in a difficult situation. One of the trainers, Ruqayyah Aliyu, a communication lecturer at Bayero University, Kano noted that the medias role in entrenching democracy has made it an integral part to reduce to the nearest minimum violence usually seen during elections. Responsible journalism should be in place so that our conflict does not emanate to something very big and destructive which will have negative effect on the nations development, she said. Mrs Aliyu advised the media to be highly ethical on what they report or not because they are tje gatekeepers and this she said can be done by detaching one self from the story and report the facts. She also appealed to the media to stop accepting monetary inducements from politicians as it influences their reports. The content should be peace-oriented. The report should propagate peace. Avoid name calling of political parties in an incitingful manner so as not to trigger conflicts, she added. Another trainer, Yunusa Yau who taught on hate speech in election report said hate speech can manifest in form of incitingful comments against religion, ethnic group or linguistic affiliations or the intimidation of women and girls and persons living with disability. He listed five parameters to identify hate speech which include a powerful speaker with a great influence on the audience, an audience with greviances, a call to action urging the audience to accept, condone or commit violence, a social or history context to the violence and a credible channel of information to disseminate the hate speech. The Executive Director of IPC, Lanre Arogundade, charged journalists and online bloggers to imbibe the Nigerian media code of election coverage. In doing this, he told the participants to ask politicians to provide evidence to accusations made during campaigns or choose not to report the story. He also suggested that the media ask political candidates to sign an anti-hate speech memorandum before interviewing them. To provide equitable access for candidates, Mr Arogundade also advised media practitioners to devote a space for political candidates to talk about their parties programmes on different issues. On journalists safety during elections, he told them to envisage threats and prepare, manage information in their possession through data security tools and protect your mobile phones, have emergency contacts like editors and security officials and avoid being alone. The virtual workshop was held as part of activities under Component 4 (Support to media) of the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EUSDGN II) project, of which IPC is the lead partner. The aim of the training is to strengthen the media for fair, accurate, ethical and inclusive reporting of the electoral processes and elections and in particular, to mitigate perceived and anticipated issues of spread of hate speech Online and other forms of non-conflict sensitive reporting. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmoud Yakubu has said Nigerians living in internally displaced persons camps would vote in the 2023 general elections. Mr Yakubu, who was speaking about Nigerias preparedness for the elections Tuesday at Chatham House London, said violence would be a major challenge to credible elections this year. He said the commission worked with the National Assembly to amend the Electoral to ensure displaced persons in camps can also vote. Mr Yakubu said the decision was informed by the high number of estimated IDPs noted in 2015 in the North East and North Central. In 2015, an estimated 2 million voters were displaced by conflict in the North-East and North-Central part of the country. In response, the Commission worked with the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act to support voting by Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). This entailed making additional provisions for enumeration of IDP voters and for voting in their camps. In response to the IDP problem, the Commission recently revised its Policy on IDP Voting, which it has been using since 2015, to cater for new realities of displaced populations, he said. The boss of the electoral commission however said in some states, the IDPs are not in identified camps which would be difficult to coordinate. Unfortunately, in some States it is difficult to identify the IDPs because they are not in camps but rather settled among extended family members, relations and good Samaritans within safer communities where they are not registered voters. As a result, it is very difficult for the Commission to provide necessary electoral services to such IDPs. However, those in camps within Nigeria will be catered for in line with the Commissions policy, Mr Yakubu said. Insecurity in Northern Nigeria Northern Nigeria has been witnessing series of attacks in all the three sub-regions. In the North East, the activities of Boko Haram insurgency and terrorists loyal to ISWAP have led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people but more alarmingly, the displacement of millions of residents with several of them fleeing to Chad, Cameron and Niger Republics to seek refuge. In the North-central, farmers herders clashes, banditry and ethno religious violence has led to the displacement of others. In the North-western states, terrorists, loosely called bandits, have been unleashing mayhem on residents. Schools have been attacked, farmers scared away from going to farms, local traders stopped patronizing local markets with federal, states and local highways endangered. The act of terrorism has led to the displacement and death of millions of people. PREMIUM TIMES, in a special report discovered a rise in rural urban migration due to the activities of the. terrorists. A local journalist in Katsina, who reports politics for ALFIJIR RADIO 91.5, Abdurahman Jani, said the act should have allowed IDPs not in designated camps to vote. When you look at it, most of the governors have shut down the IDP camps, so where would the INEC officials go to conduct the voting? Most of the camps you see in the North West are not official because the governors have shut down the camps. So, since these people are Nigerians and most of them most have forgotten their PVCs while leaving their villages or didnt have the chance to settle in their new environment and even make effort to register for a new PVC when it was being done, the appropriate thing is to allow those in Nigeria to vote, he said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso, has explained why the hopeful alliance between his party and the Labour Party (LP) failed. Speaking at Chatham House on Wednesday in London, Mr Kwankwaso said the much-talked-about alliance did not work because the LP did not see the reason to work with him. Last year, both the NNPP and the LP hinted at a possible alliance for the coming general election. Many believed the alliance between Mr Kwankwaso, who has a large followership known as Kwankwasiyya in the northern part of the country and Mr Obi who commands a large following of young people, especially in the south, would be a game changer in the coming election often dominated by two parties. Let me say that I was one of those initially wanting to work together with the labour party, he said. But unfortunately at that time, the Labour Party was under very serious media hype and therefore, they could not see (the) reason. When asked if he would be willing to withdraw his ambition to support the LPs candidate, Mr Kwankwaso said it was not an option as he believed he is more qualified than all other candidates contesting in the election. What I told them is what I will tell you. If anybody wants Kwankwaso to withdraw, just bring criteria and select the best. Anytime I have a better candidate, I am ready to talk to him, he said. Boasting over 30 years of experience in the civil service, the NNPP presidential candidate claimed that his party is the one growing in Nigeria, describing the LPs media buzz as a bubble. I want to say that our party NNPP is the only growing party in Nigeria today. We have seen the maximum of any party, especially the Labour Party, he said. To us, (Labour Party) its like Andrew Liver Salt that just do prrrrr (fizzled out) and now its just coming down. Thats the reality of it. He insisted that the NNPP is successful in locking down votes and support in the northern part of the country and is currently working and gaining more support from the south. READ ALSO: For us, the difference between North and South is that North knows us more than the southern part of the country. Other leading candidates in the 25 February election, namely the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu, LPs Peter Obi as well as the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, have spoken about the coming elections at the Chatham House. The London-based think tank said on Monday that the PDP Candidate, Atiku Abubakar had not responded to the invitation to speak. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, on Tuesday, appealed to judges presiding over sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) cases to quicken proceedings in such suits. Ms Tallen said out of a total of 3,754 pending cases of SGBV, only 33 convictions were recorded as of 16 January. This is unacceptable and efforts must be made to strengthen coordination of multi-sectoral response to address this trend, Ms Tallen said on Tuesday in Abuja at a capacity building programme for designated judges handling SGBV proceedings. The judges were drawn from across the federation for the two-day event being hosted by the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja. Referencing statistics from the National Situation Room and a Dashboard set up by the women affairs ministry, the minister said not much has been happening in the area of prosecution. As of 16 January 2023, the total number of (SGBV) cases reported was 11,918; the fatal cases were 419, closed cases 609, Ms Tallen said. Survivors concerns Drawing the attention of the judges to the plight of SGBV survivors concerns, the minister highlighted lack of survivor-sensitive approaches in court procedures, challenges in court proceedings and delay in all stages of proceedings. Ms Tallen also enumerated secondary victimisation and culture of impunity as some of the problems confronting survivors. But she noted that some gains have been achieved in tackling the menace. The minister said following the declaration of a state of emergency by state governors on SGBV, 35 States and the FCT Abuja have domesticated the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act. She said 17 States have established the family courts specialised courts to adjudicate on SGBV matters as provided by the Child Rights Act. In a keynote address, the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami, said the federal government initiated far-reaching policy measures to curb the growing menace of SGBV offences in our communities. Mr Malami mentioned the establishment of the Inter-Ministerial Management Committee (IMC) on the Eradication of SGBV, the setting-up the SGBV Response Unit of the Federal Ministry of Justice to facilitate access to justice to victims of SGBV related offences and the Prosecution Hub as some of the critical interventions to tame the scourge. The Solicitor-General of the Federation and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Justice, Beatrice Jeddy-Agba, was represented at the event by the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation, Mohammed Abubakar. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print According to Mr Yakubu, the 2023 pre-election lawsuit is 61 less than the 852 recorded in the build-up to the 2019 general elections. Ahead of the general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it was joined in 791 intra-party lawsuits in different courts of law as of 6 January. Speaking at the Chatham House on Tuesday, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, a professor, said the lawsuits involved the nomination and election of candidates by political parties. INEC published the final list of candidates on 20 September 2022 for presidential and National Assembly elections and 4 October, for governorship and state assembly elections. The elections are coming up in less than 40 days with the presidential and National Assembly polls holding first on 25 February and the governorship and state assembly elections on 11 March. Except with a court order, no party or candidate can request the alteration of the list, INEC's National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, once told PREMIUM TIMES. According to Mr Yakubu, the 2023 pre-election lawsuit is 61 less than the 852 recorded in the build-up to the 2019 general elections. "In the 2019 general election, the Commission was involved in 1,689 cases, made up of 852 pre-election, 807 post-election and 30 electoral offences cases," he said. He, however, clarified that all of the lawsuits are purely from elections conducted by political parties. "These are not cases involving elections conducted by the Commission or litigations initiated by it, but purely intra-party matters involving candidates and their political parties mainly due to the absence of internal democracy within parties," he said. "In fact, the Commission is only a nominal party in these cases but nevertheless has to be represented by lawyers in all court proceedings." Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe The Nigerian government has finalised the registration process of two recently registered academic unions in Nigerian universities- Congress of Nigerian University Academics (CONUA), and National Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA). The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, presented the unions with certificates of registration and an official gazette on Tuesday. The minister also said the government is already working on modalities to release the withheld eight-month salaries of their members. Mr Ngige had previously announced the registration of both unions on 4th October 2022, while the dispute with the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was at an industrial court. He had said CONUA and NAMDA shall exist side by side with ASUU in Nigerian universities. CONUA is a splinter group of ASUU that was formed at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), following a leadership crisis that rocked the institutions chapter of ASUU during the selection process of OAUs 12th substantive vice-chancellor in 2016. Following irreconcilable differences, some aggrieved ASUU members, led by the current National Coordinator of CONUA, Niyi Sunmonu, formed CONUA and applied for registration with the government in 2018. In doing this, both unions are officially recognised and have been registered to unbundle the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) as well as the National Association of Resident Doctors(NARD), Mr Ngige told the leadership of CONUA and NAMDA on Tuesday. He said both unions have been officially gazetted, hence entitled to all labour rights as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution and International Labour Organisation(ILO) convention. Justification for registration Mr Ngige said the alleged lack of democracy, transparency and failure to render proper account of check-off dues by ASUU, both to her members and the government, culminated in the emergence of the new unions. Prior to 2020, CONUA had approached the ministry complaining of lack of democracy, transparency in the leadership of ASUU, especially in rendering proper account of their check-up dues remitted from government, he said. Based on these grievances the ministry decided to register the members of CONUA to operate as a full-fledged union for which we have issued a certificate of registration and gazetting which is part of section 3:2 of the ITUC. On withheld salaries The minister also said that the federal government was working out modalities for payment of withheld salaries of CONUA and NAMDA members for the duration of the ASUU strike. Mr Sunmonu had confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that the union received a letter from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, requesting the list of its members for payment of their withheld salaries. The minister said it would amount to injustice if they were victimised because they never partook in the strike in the first instance. Speaking, the CONUA National Coordinator, Mr Sunmonu, commended the minister for the presentation of the certificate, saying now that CONUA has been given official backing through the presentation of the certificate, the era of incessant strikes in the university system was over. Mr Sunmonu, who claimed that the highhandedness of ASUUs leadership was what gave birth to CONUA, also protested the continued remittance of its members check-off dues to ASUU. Mr Sunmonu said: Today is a historic day and it is exciting to be back to this great Ministry in conclusion of the final phase of the registration of CONUA, which is marked by the collection of certificates, he said. We appreciate the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, and his remarkable team for finalising the registration of CONUA with the issuance of the certificate of registration of the union to us today. In CONUA, our primary purpose at all times has been to promote the welfare of our members, while being constantly conscious of the overriding national interestWith this complete registration, we assure Nigerians that we shall embark on meaningful and realistic discussions and negotiations with the federal government and all other stakeholders on how we can get a better deal for university lecturers. NAMDA President, Ali Ramat, also commended the minister and his team for the presentation of the certificate. Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A Federal High Court in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, on Monday sentenced a beautician, Williams Kingsley, to four months imprisonment for internet fraud. The judge, Maurine Onyetenu, did not give the convict an option of fine, according to a statement on Monday by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) which prosecuted the case. The Uyo Zonal Command of the EFCC arraigned Mr Kingsley on a lone-count charge of possessing fraudulent documents. The charge reads: That you, Kingsley Williams M sometimes in 2022, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court did possess documents containing false pretences and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 6 of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud- Related Offences Act 2006 and punishable under Section 1 (3) of the same Act. Mr Kingsley pleaded guilty to the charge when it was read to him. Counsel to the EFCC, Enobong Ubokudom, reviewed the facts of the case and tendered the confessional statements of the defendant, his laptop and the fraudulent documents, which were all admitted in evidence and marked as exhibit A, B, C and D. Mr Ubokudom urged the court to convict Mr Kingsley as charged. Defence counsel, Francis Ezike told the court that his client was a first-time offender. He prayed the court to temper justice with mercy and give him a lesser sentence. Justice Onyetenu sentenced Mr Kingsley to four months imprisonment. The sentence is to run from the date of arrest. The court further ordered that the laptop, used in committing the crime, be forfeited to the federal government. Mr Kingsleys journey to jail started on 4 November, 2022 when he was arrested by EFCC operatives, following intelligence concerning his online criminal activities. The EFCC investigations revealed that the convict specialised in employment scam. His modus operandi includes luring his victims with job opportunities which never existed and deceiving them into paying for fraudulent working tools for the phony jobs. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The police in Delta State, South-south Nigeria, said they have killed a notorious leader of a robbery gang in the state. The police spokesperson in the state, Bright Edafe, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday. Mr Edafe, a deputy superintendent of police, said the suspect was killed on Friday when police operatives intercepted him and his gang around a palm plantation in Unukpo-Orogun, a community in Ughelli North Local Government Area of the state. The police spokesperson said the divisional police officer in-charge of Orogun Police Division led a team of the operatives to the area following a receipt of information that the gang planned to carry out a robbery attack in the area. As they (police operatives) were approaching the scene, the hoodlums opened fire on the police which they equally responded to. During the ensuing gun duel, the gang leader, Bobo Ononibe, male and aged 26 years old, sustained serious gunshot injuries. He was taken to the hospital where he was later certified dead by the doctor on duty, Mr Edafe said, adding that other members of the gang fled the scene. Efforts are on to arrest the fleeing members of the gang, he added. One locally made cut-to-size rifle, three cartridges, one machete, one dagger, and charms, were among the items recovered from the hoodlums during the operation, according to the police. The police spokesperson said the suspect had been on the wanted list of the police over a foiled robbery attack on 23 June 2022 in the state. Lynching of another suspected armed robber Mr Edafe said the divisional police officer of Agbarho Police Division deployed police operatives in Ewherhe Community following receipt of information on Monday, that some members of the community in the council area were lynching a robbery suspect. The divisional police officer detailed patrol teams to proceed, on getting to scene, the mob escaped leaving the suspect badly beaten. Although the suspect was rescued and taken to the hospital, he died while receiving treatment, the police spokesperson said. The robbery suspect was caught with arms and weapons as well as some cash and electronic devices believed to have been stolen, the police said. Mr Edafe identified the items seized from the suspect by the villagers to include one local made cut-to-size double barrel gun, and one live cartridge, one I phone 11 pro-max, one HP laptop, one MP3 player and N8,000 cash. The Commissioner of Police in Delta State, Muhammed Ali, has applauded the gallantry of the operatives of the division for the bravery during the operations, Mr Edafe said. Mr Ali, who condemned jungle justice, urged residents of the state to desist from it. The police commissioner urged the residents to hand over criminal suspects to the police for diligent investigation and prosecution rather than engage in jungle justice. Jungle justice is not the right thing to do, he said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Professor Adedayo Ladigbolu Abah, one of the daughters of respected Yoruba leader and reverred Methodist cleric, Archbishop Emeritus Ayo Ladigbolu, has been named a beneficiary of the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme (CADFP). The fellowship will see Mrs Abah, a professor of journalism and mass communications and head of department of Journalism and mass communications at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, US, embark on research work in Tanzania starting from June 2023. According to a report published on Washington and Lee University website, Mrs Abah will work with the faculty at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to help establish a masters degree programme in communications. It adds that she will serve as a disinterested party, reviewing the courses and requirements, and lending guidance as necessary, while also collaborating on research projects with her Tanzanian colleagues. I am excited about the opportunity to learn about communication in Eastern Africa, work with graduate students, and engage and interact with communication scholars from Tanzania, said Mrs Abah, while reacting to the development. Together, we can contribute to building capacity at African universities and contribute to development goals, she added. Mrs Abah has been a member of the Washington and Lee faculty since 2002. She earned her bachelors degree in English and Literary Studies at the University of Ado-Ekiti, a masters degree in media studies from Texas Christian University, and a doctorate in journalism and mass communications from the University of South Carolina. The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship is a scholar fellowship programme for educational projects at African higher education institutions designed to facilitate research collaboration, graduate student teaching and mentoring, and curriculum co-development. READ ALSO: The competitive Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship programme is managed and administered by the Institute of International Education and funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. A total of 566 Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship beneficiaries have been selected since the CADFP was established in 2013. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Supreme Court on Wednesday affirmed Solomon Ahwinahwi as the duly nominated candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for Ughelli North, Ughelli South and Udu Federal Constituency of Delta State, for the 2023 general election. Mr Ahwinahwi, a former member of the House of Representatives, defeated four other aspirants in the contest. He was declared winner of the PDP primary held at the Ughelli Township Stadium in Ughelli North Local Government Area of the state after securing 80 valid votes. But one of the aspirants, Talib Tebite, a former state lawmaker, challenged the outcome of the primary election. At the hearing of the appeal on Wednesday, Mr Tebites lawyer, John Okoriko, told a five-member panel of the Supreme Court that the PDP failed to comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act. Mr Okoriko argued that the PDP breached its own guidelines on the conduct of primaries. But Mr Ahwinahwis lawyer, Mahmud Magaji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), told the Supreme Court that the appellants suit was statute-barred. Mr Magaji said Mr Tebite filed the suit outside the statutory 14 days of the conduct of the partys primaries. After listening to Messrs Okoriko and Magajis arguments, the Supreme Court panel led by Inyang Okoro asked the former to withdraw his clients appeal for being statute-barred. READ ALSO: As Mr Okoriko laboured to sway the court to consider his clients appeal on its merit, the panel lampooned him for failing to give the appropriate legal guidance to Mr Tebite. Capitulating to the Supreme Court, Mr Okoriko withdrew the appeal and it was subsequently dismissed by the panel. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has called on the people of the state to vote for the All Progressives Congress APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, for the development of the state. Mr AbdulRazaq made the call Tuesday in Ilorin during the APC presidential campaign in the state, according to a statement by Rafiu Ajakaye, the governors Chief Press Secretary. He said with the support of President Muhammadu Buhari, his administration has tackled problems bedevilling the state, especially in the education and healthcare sectors. However, Mr AbdulRazaq said with Mr Tinubu as president, the people of state would enjoy more dividend of democracy. The governor said the presidential candidate has been supportive of the state government. Party faithful, I urge you to support and vote for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The progress we have in this state will be continued with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We thank him for the support he gave us in 2019. He gave us full support in throwing out the termites in this state. We still want to thank Mr President, who is away in Mauritania. He couldnt be here but he will come back here. We appreciate his efforts and the support he has been giving this government for the progress of the state. You all know what we have been doing in this state from healthcare. Dont allow the party of people of dubious characters to come back into this state. Dont allow people who stole the UBEC funds to come back to this state. They could not even pay salaries. What are they coming to do? You need to continue to support this party at all levels. President Muhammadu Buhari has done well. We need to build on his success. No person could have done what he has done, despite the economic downturn, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the global economic crisis. We must sustain this growth consistently. That will be continued by our incoming team led by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he said. He said people of the state came out to welcome the presidential campaign train because of the giant strides his administration has achieved. Mr Tinubu, in his remarks, said the people of the state would not elect Peoples Democratic Party PDP again because they have tasted freedom for four years. Kwara people, I congratulate you on your freedom four years ago. It was a thunderbolt across the country. You deserve great congratulations, APC presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu told thousands of party supporters and chieftains who attended the rally in Ilorin, the state capital. Today, we are just celebrating freedom. We are re-assessing and re-asserting our freedom in democracy. Yesterday, they never believed that today would happen, but it is happening in your lifetime. We thank you for believing in (Governor) Abdulrahman AbdulRazaq. He knows how to behave. He is a very honest and genuine, hardworking man, Mr Tinubu said. By tasting freedom, Mr Tinubu was obviously referring to the O To Ge (enough is enough) movement that brought an end to the Saraki Dynasty in the state in 2019. Bukola Saraki, who took over his fathers political dynasty that held sway in Kwara for decades, was defeated during the 2019 election. He was the senate president at the time. Mr Saraki was also a two-term governor of the state. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Nigerian troops deployed under Operation Forest Sanity killed at least two terrorists during clearance operations in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The Kaduna States Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, said in a statement that the troops prevailed over the terrorists during a firefight along the Kaboresha-Rijana Forest-Kuzo-Kujeni-Gwanto-Kachia axis. The troops set up an ambush position along the Gwanto-Kwasau Road, and thus engaged bandits approaching the location on motorcycles. The troops killed two bandits and recovered three motorcycles. The troops also raided bandits camps in the Kutura-Rijana general area. The bandits fled into the forest on sighting the troops, who then destroyed the camps and recovered three motorcycles. Other items recovered include several sets of military uniforms and bandoliers. The onslaught against bandits is in progress and the government appeals to the general public to continue to volunteer useful information, he said. Meanwhile, Mr Aruwan said while receiving the report, the states Governor Nasir El-Rufai expressed satisfaction and commended the troops for their committed efforts which resulted in the latest success. Chikun Local Government Area is one of the most terrorised towns in Kaduna State. Terrorists commonly called bandits have carried out relentless attacks on communities in the area. The gangs of criminals have killed or kidnapped hundreds of people in the area. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A police inspector was on Tuesday shot dead in Aba, Abia State, South-east Nigeria, by gunmen suspected to be members of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Two of the gunmen were killed during a shootout with the police, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). The police spokesperson in Abia State, Geoffrey Ogbonna, who confirmed the killing, said the incident happened at about 12:30p.m. Mr Ogbonna, a superintendent of police, said some police operatives from a local station were on patrol when the gunmen opened fire at them. He said the gunmen stole a rifle from the slain police officer. A witness told NAN in Aba the slain officer was killed when he ran after the fleeing gunmen. We were going to the market when we saw these boys, who were inside a tricycle with very powerful guns as they passed us. It was not long when they passed by us that some policemen on patrol followed them. The policemen engaged them and killed two of them, while the others ran away and one ran into the back of a nearby building. The inspector ran after the robber that ran to the back of a nearby building unknown to him that the other robber was waiting for him. The robber shot at the inspector at close range and killed him on the spot, the witness said The police spokesperson said police operatives were on the trail of the gunmen who escaped. He urged residents to volunteer information that would lead to the arrest of the suspects. The upsurge in deadly attacks in the South-east have been linked to the Biafra agitation in the region. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Olisa Agbakoba, has written the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), requesting the correct interpretation of certain sections of the 1999 constitution ( as amended) that determine who wins a presidential election. The Electoral Act, 2022 states that the result (in an election to the office of the President or Governor) shall be ascertained by counting the votes cast for each candidate and subjected to the provisions of sections 133, 134 and 179 of the Constitution, the candidate that receives the highest number of votes shall be declared elected by the appropriate returning officer. But in the letter shared with this newspaper, Mr Agbakoba said he worried there can be multiple interpretations of section 134 of the 1999 Constitution, which prescribed the requirements to be met by a presidential candidate to become the president of Nigeria. Section 134 In case of an election with only two candidates, Section 134 (1) of the 1999 Constitution states that a presidential candidate shall be deemed to have been duly elected where he has the majority of votes cast at the election, and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. But in a case where there are more than two presidential candidates, Section 134 (2) states that a candidate shall be deemed to have been duly elected where he has the highest number of votes cast at the election and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Arising questions First, Mr Agbakoba said the constitution describes the winner in two different languages. One, the winner must score the majority of votes [in section 134 (1)] and the other, the winner must score the highest number of votes [ in section 134 (2)]. This is confusing, he wrote in the letter addressed to the INEC Chairman. The Senior Advocate of Nigeria also said this section of the law wasnt explicit enough as to whether the two-thirds votes a candidate must secure as mentioned in the law, would include or exclude the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. He asked if, to be declared winner of the presidential election, a candidate must win a quarter of votes in 24 states which makes up the two-thirds as well as the FCT, or without the FCT. does this mean that the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja is incorporated in the 24 States? Ordoes it mean that the presidential candidate must also score not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja? he queried. Can a candidate that scored not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in 36 States of the Federation but fails to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the election at the Federal Capital Territory, be duly elected as President of Nigeria? Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, says the presidential candidate of his party, Bola Tinubu, cannot stop him from prosecuting the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, over a new corruption allegation against him. Mr Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, while appearing on Politics Today, a political programme on Channels TV on Tuesday, vowed to take Atiku to court in his capacity as a concerned citizen and member of the APC PCC. Background to the SPVs scandal Michael Achimugu, who claimed to be a former aide to Atiku, recently made some allegations of corruption against the former vice president. He alleged that Atiku used Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to siphon public funds when he served as vice president between 1999 and 2007. SPV, according to trade finance global, is used to break down the risk associated with a pool of assets held by a parent company. These are legal entities created by a parent company to isolate the financial risk of certain assets, projects, or ventures. Mr Achimugu also released audio records of discussions between him and Atiku, in which the latter was admitting to creating SPVs to hide slush funds. However, the Atiku campaign team denied the allegations and accused the ruling party of sponsoring Mr Achimugu to make the allegations. Dino Melaye, one of the spokespersons of the Atiku campaign, said the audio evidence was produced by the opposition to derail its campaign. On Monday, Mr Keyamo wrote a petition against Atiku to three anti-graft agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) to investigate Atiku. He also gave the agencies 72 hours to arrest the PDP candidate. Even Tinubu cannot stop me In the course of the interview, Mr Keyamo disclosed that he is willing to drop from the Tinubu campaign and prosecute Atiku if he is presented with the choices. He added that Mr Achimugus revelations corroborate evidence in the public domain, adding that he has interrogated the evidence and the credibility of the source to take legal actions. If Asiwaju says Festus, you are diverting from my campaign, dont campaign for me again I will say please take your campaign because this is national interest. I have taken it as a personal issue, he said. Speaking on the credibility of the accuser, Mr Keyamo said We have seen his pictures with Atiku Abubakar all over the world, we have seen private e-mails between Abubakar Atiku and himself, private emails that they exchanged over the years. We have seen letters of appointment which of course one of the campaign spokespersons denied. The letter of appointment was signed by Raymond Dokpesi, another one by Atiku Abubakars son, Mohammed, and Gbenga Daniel in 2018. Mr Keyamo said, Marine Float, one of the companies mentioned in the recording, is not new. He said that in 2006, at the height of his public quarrel with Obasanjo over the sharing of money, the same PDP officially asked Atiku Abubakar to refund N500 million taken from that account. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print To mark the 100-year milestone of the Baptist Boy's High School, Abeokuta, Nigeria, the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) president, Akinwumi Adesina, delivered a keynote address on "The Role of Education in 21st Century Nigeria. Vice President Osinbajo says the political, religious and business elites must agree that Nigeria will fail completely if they do not accept and implement an ethical revolution. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has warned that Nigeria will "fail completely" if the leaders do not "accept and implement an ethical revolution". Mr Osinbajo gave the warning on Tuesday in a lecture titled: "Values: the difference between success and failure" which he delivered at the 100th anniversary of the Old Boys Association of Baptist Boys' High School, Abeokuta, Ogun State. While imploring Nigerians to change their perception of their country as corrupt, he said no modern society is free of corruption. He called on the government at all levels to lead the ethical revolution by rewarding good ethical behaviours and ensuring speedy punishment for misconduct. Mr Osinbajo listed Obafemi Awolowo, Moshood Abiola, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Bola Ajibola, who were all old students of the school, as exceptional Nigerians who recorded great achievements in public service as a result of the training and values they got from the school. "There is a need for a national consensus or at least an elite consensus. The political elites, the religious elites and the business elites must agree that our country will fail completely if we do not accept and implement an ethical revolution. "One where we establish a national work ethic of honesty, of hard work. It is what is taught and learned that shapes the character of individuals and nations. But it is not just teachings, the government must also lead this ethical revolution by rewarding ethical behaviours and ensuring speedy punishment for misconduct", the vice president said. "Every modern society has had to deal with corruption. Corruption is not a Nigerian thing, sometimes we deceive ourselves. It is Nigerian, no, many countries, in fact, most countries of the world have been more corrupt than us, but their elites sat down and decided they have to deal with it because if they do not deal with it, it will deal with them. "There is no modern society today that has not had to deal with corruption and they deal with it by their elites sitting down and saying we have to agree this is the way forward, we cannot continue to repeat the same thing, we must enthrone minimum ethical standards to succeed", he stressed. Nigerias former minister of education and co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls movement, Oby Ezekwesili, has criticised the former Vice President of Nigeria and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, over claims that he led the Economic Management Team during the administration of former president Olusegun Obasanjo. In a series of tweets posted on her official Twitter page Tuesday, Mrs Ezekwesili asked Mr Abubakar to stop misleading the public, adding that the PDP presidential flagbearer was never the head of the Economic Management Team when he was vice president. Mr Abubakar served as vice president of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007 when Mr Obasanjo held office as Nigerias president. As part of his campaign messages, the PDP presidential flagbearer in the 2023 general elections claimed that he was instrumental in the designing of a private sector revival strategy that impacted the nations economy at the time. He also said that he advocated the opening of the economy for private sector investments, which spurred socio-economic growth. As head of the economic management team while I was Vice President, I was instrumental in designing a private sector revival strategy and advocated for the opening of the economy for private sector investments in several sectors. And we made tremendous progress, Mr Abubakar tweeted. As head of the economic management team while I was Vice President, I was instrumental in designing a private sector revival strategy and advocated for the opening of the economy for private sector investments in several sectors. And we made tremendous progress. #AtikuAtNESG Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) January 16, 2023 But Mrs Ezkwesilis in her reaction described the claims as false and urged the former vice president to stop misleading Nigerians. Dear former Vice President Atiku, please ask the handlers of your @Twitter account to stop misleading the public. You were never the Head of the Economic Management Team, the former education minister tweeted. Criticism The former minister of education, who was also part of the economic management team, described the former vice presidents claim as an absurd lie that will do you no good at all. Please ask your Team to stop it, she advised. Mrs Ezekwesili explained further in another series of tweets that there is a difference between the Economic Management Team set up for the first time in 2003 by Mr Obasanjo and the National Economic Council (NEC) established by the 1999 Constitution as amended. According to her, the Presidential Economic Management Team, which they referred to as The Economic Team for brevity, was a technical team of 12 persons from a range of expertise whom Mr Obasanjo constituted to drive Nigerias Economic Reform Agenda during his second term in office (2003-2007). In constituting the Economic Team, Mrs Ezekwesili said they designed it at two levels of leadershipPolitical Leadership as headed by Mr Obasanjo, and Technical Leadership, led by the then Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. At the Political Leadership level of the Economic Team, the former education minister said that Mr Obasanjo who was the chairman instituted a weekly meeting before the Federal Executive Council where he would meet with his Economic Team to discuss the Economic Reform Agenda. As Chair of the Political Leadership Level of the Economic Team, the then President decided (usually with the counsel of his Economic Team) which sectoral Ministers, or Heads of Agencies, Parastatals and Departments joined this Weekly Wednesday meeting held before the FEC meeting, she tweeted. Also, she explained that the then Minister of Finance, Mrs Iweala, as the chairman of the Technical Level Leadership, was the Head of the Technocratic Team of 12 persons which met in her office at the Ministry statutorily weekly and as often as necessary daily as the team designed and began implementing the Economic Reforms. There is no sincere basis for confusing the work of the Presidential Economic Management Team that I described in the previous tweets with the National Economic Council, provided for in the Constitution and chaired by a Vice President. The functions are not the same at all. None, Mrs Ezekwesili said. She said the National Economic Council consists of the Vice-President as the Chairman; the Governor of each State of the Federation; and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria established under the Central Bank of Nigeria Decree 1991 or any enactment replacing that Decree. Constitutionally, Mrs Ezekwesili said the National Economic Council advises the president concerning the economic affairs of the federation, and in particular, on measures necessary for the coordination of the economic planning efforts or economic programmes of the various governments of the federation. Likewise, she noted that the National Economic Council which former Vice President, Mr Abubakar, constitutionally chaired is an advisory organ that provides the opportunity for the Federal Government and States of the Federation to discuss the economy for coordination purposes. Reaction In response to Mrs Ezekwesilis tweets, Paul Ibe, Media adviser to the PDP presidential candidate, in a series of tweets on his page, said some things should be considered too low. Dear @obyezeks, I know its political season and people resort to all sorts of antics in support of their preferred candidates. But some things should be considered too low, he tweeted. Mr Ibe said: It is an established history that @atiku as Chairman, National Economic Council headed the nations Economic Management Team between 1999-2007, during which Nigeria had some of her best economic growth. In trying and failing to weaken his standing in public, let us not resort to this sort of jaded aproko pettiness. If Atiku wasnt head of the Economic Management Team as VP, so who was? You? he queried. In trying and failing to weaken his standing in public, let us not resort to this sort of jaded 'aproko' pettiness. If Atiku wasnt head of the Economic Management Team as VP, so who was? You? Paul Ibe (@omonlakiki) January 17, 2023 This matter is a constitutional provision and you will do well either to bury your ignorance or advertise your apparent mischief. Enjoy the rest of your day but not in a bliss of ignorance, madam, Mr Ibe said. In a swift response, Mrs Ezekwesili pointed out that there are differences between both teams. You do need to be educated on the difference between the Presidential Economic Management Team and the National Economic Council. Please check for the Thread on my TL, she tweeted Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A Nigerian politician and spokesperson of Northern Elders Forum, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed wants Nigerias next president to convene a National Conference within his first year in office to address fundamental issues affecting the country. Mr Baba-Ahmed stated this on Thursday while featuring on a live television programme, Focus Nigeria, aired on the African Independent Television and monitored by PREMIUM TIMES. The administrations of President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan had convened National Conferences between 2005 and 2014 respectively. The recommendations of both conferences were not implemented. Mr Baba-Ahmed, a former Secretary to Kaduna State Government said previous conferences did not solve Nigerias problems and warned against becoming hostages to past failures. The world is not going to solve this problem for us. Fighting, arguing, cynicism about the fact that we did it before and it failed is not going to solve the problem for us. What is going to solve the problem is to have an administration that is open and that is willing to allow Nigerians to discuss their country and enough Nigerians who will step forward to say we have some ideas on how to move the country forward, he said. Mr Baba-Ahmed said the issues in Nigeria were beyond state police and security reconfiguration. Nigeria, he said, has to discuss and take a decision of inclusiveness, and integration, allocation of resources, creation and distribution of wealth. He noted that some of the issues have to pass through the national and state assemblies. Those things whether we want it or not we have to sit down ideally in the first one year of the next administration, call it whatever you want, call it national conference, consultative body, but Nigerians must sit down and put Nigeria on the table and say what is wrong in this country, he said. President Nigeria needs Mr Baba-Ahmed said Nigerians do not want an ethnic president or a president voted on the basis of faith. We dont need a president who is voted for because Nigerians are scared that if they dont vote for him the country will finish, we dont want that kind of president, he said. He said the country needs a courageous president that will take decisions which may not be popular among the people. Do you negotiate with Boko Haram, do you negotiate with bandits, should you just continue to fight them and they will fight you, what do you do with people like Namdi Kanu, should you speak with him, should you negotiate, is there basis for negotiating, if there isnt one, those decisions regarding this about yes or no is fine. We must have a president who will weather the storm, face problems and deal with them. We need the president who will insist that questions must be raised and answers must be found for them. We need a president who understands where resources should go and shouldnt go, he said. He also said Nigerians have to pay attention to the legislature since the needed changes that the country is yearning for cannot be achieved by the president alone without going to the national and state assemblies. Whoever becomes the president will go to the National Assembly with a majority and then at the State level governors who have become monsters will understand the need for change and will move and do that because they have their State Assemblies in their pocket, he said. Endorsement Mr Baba-Ahmed said the Northern Elders Forum, unlike other groups, was yet to endorse any candidate, an action he said was deliberate. He, however, said the group would endorse a candidate before the election as they cannot afford to leave the north hanging. He said the forum was looking beyond just a presidential candidate to governorship and National Assembly candidates since, according to him, one person cannot change the country. The Northern Elders Forum supported President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and he won but it worked with other groups against Mr Buharis reelection in 2019, Mr Baba-Ahmed said, adding that the forum was not able to convince other Nigerians to believe them not to support Mr Buhari. This time we are taking precautions we are saying be careful, dont rush into judgment. We still have about six weeks to take a decision. We are doing a lot of good things in terms of following them around and accessing what they (candidates) are doing, what they are saying, not just at the presidential level but governors and National Assembly. We believe governance is not just about one person and that is why we have not rushed to say this is our candidate because one person cannot change this country, he said. On the concerns raised by some Nigerians about the electronic transmission of results, Mr Baba-Ahmed said the Northern Elders Forum was happy with the progress made by the Independent National Electoral Commission to improve the integrity of the electoral process. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print David Umahi of Ebonyi State has inaugurated a nine-man Commission of Enquiry to investigate the crises in Ekoli and Amoso Edda, Afikpo South Local Government area of the state. This is contained in a statement by Mr Umahis media aide, Chooks Oko, on Wednesday in Abakaliki, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). PREMIUM TIMES reported how a police officer and two others were killed during a recent clash between supporters of two rival stalwarts of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the council area of the state. The clash happened on 26 December in Ekoli-Edda Community. The clash was reportedly between supporters of the APC State Chairperson, Stanley Emegha and the partys House of Representatives candidate for Afikpo North and Afikpo South Federal Constituency, Eni Uduma. One of those killed in the clash was a 39-year-old man, Eseni Egwu, while the other was Eme Orji, a brother to Mr Emegha. Both Messrs Emegha and Uduma hail from the community and are loyalists of Mr Umahi. They have, however, been political foes for a long time. Mr Umahi had ordered the arrest and prosecution of the duo over the incident. Commission of enquiry The commission will be headed by a former Nigerian Senator and indigene of Ebunwana Community in the council area, Sonni Ogbuoji, while Nkama Nkama, a former commissioner of investment in the state, will serve as the secretary. Other members of the commission include Mike Okoro, Etta Uka, Kalu Mba, John Igwe, Ibiam Ekpe, Ufere Okoroafor and Ama Kalu-Ikwor. Mr Umahi, during the inauguration, urged members of the commission to carry out their responsibilities without sentiments. Responding, Mr Ogbuoji assured the governor that they would discharge their duties diligently and without fear or favour. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The World Health Organisation (WHO) has disclosed plans to establish a Vaccine Accelerator Council to speed up the licensing and use of effective novel vaccines against Tuberculosis (TB). According to WHO, TB is the 13th leading cause of death and the second leading infectious killer after COVID-19 (above HIV/AIDS). The creation of the TB council was announced Wednesday by the WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus at a high-level panel at the World Economic Forum, according to a news release published on the official WHO website. The new council is intended to bring together funders, global agencies, governments and end users in identifying and overcoming barriers to TB vaccine development, the global health agency said. Impact of COVID-19 During his opening remarks, Mr Ghebreyesus noted that one of the most important lessons from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic is that innovative health interventions can be delivered fast if they are prioritised politically and financed adequately. The challenges presented by TB and COVID-19 are different, but the ingredients that accelerate science, research and innovation are the same: urgent, up-front public investment; support from philanthropy; and engagement of the private sector and communities, he was quoted to have said, We believe the TB field will benefit from similar high-level coordination, the director general said. While the disease is curable and preventable, WHO noted that despite global commitments to end TB by 2030 and the 2018 political declaration on the fight against TB, the epidemic shows no sign of slowing down. In 2021, roughly 10.6 million fell sick with the disease, and 1.6 million died from it. Drug resistance continues to be a major problem, with close to half a million people developing drug-resistant TB every year, it added. Sole vaccine The global body further said that the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, developed in 1921, is the only licensed TB vaccine. It noted that while the BCG provides moderate efficacy in preventing severe forms of TB in infants and young children, it does not adequately protect adolescents and adults, who account for nearly 90 per cent of TB transmissions globally. It also cited a WHO recently commissioned study on investing in new TB vaccines, which estimates that over 25 years, a vaccine that is 50 per cent effective in preventing disease among young people and adults could avert up to 76 million TB cases. Meanwhile, a vaccine with 75 per cent efficacy could avert up to 110 million new TB cases and 12.3 million deaths. The study further suggests that every US$1 invested in a 50 per cent effective vaccine could generate an economic return of US$ 7 in terms of averted health costs and increased productivity. WHO noted that countries will meet later this year for a UN High-Level Meeting to review progress on commitments made in a 2018 political declaration on the fight against TB, describing the event as an important opportunity to correct setbacks in the response to the virus. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Bilateral relations and trade between Israel and Nigeria will rise with the commencement of direct flights between the two countries in March, according to Israeli authorities. The Deputy Director-General, African Department, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sharon Bar-Li, said this while meeting with some Nigerian journalists on a media tour to Jerusalem on Wednesday. Mr Bar-Li said that the direct flights would further cement the relations between Africa and the Middle East. Once we are able to inaugurate direct flights between Nigeria and Israel we are going to see a boost because right now, there is no gateway for Israel into Africa. As a former Ambassador to Ghana, I can tell you that it is very difficult once you do not have a direct flight. Once this route starts working, we are going to see a huge change. We are going to see business flourishing; people will be able to come and go easily. We will see a pilgrimage, she said. The director-general said Nigeria was a very religious country and the citizens, both Christians and Muslims, went to Israel on pilgrimage. Do not forget that Jerusalem is a sacred place for free religions, not just to Christianity, not just to Judaism, but also to Islam where people come to mount to do little hajj. By March, I really hope to be able to welcome to Israel the Minister who will come on the first flight to inaugurate this route. It will be a very profitable route with a high demand for it. The eagerness to open this new route is a good sign for post-COVID-19 recovery, Ms Bar-Li said. She said that the operation of a direct flight between Israel and Nigeria would break all trade barriers, lamenting the minimal trade between both countries which had been on the low in recent years. The trade is very minimal and I am hopeful that with this direct flight, we will have no more excuses, she added. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The President, Paediatric Association of Nigeria (PAN), Olufemi Ogunrinde, has debunked the claim that best hands in the nations health sector have moved out of the country in search of greener pastures. Mr Ogunrinde, who spoke on Wednesday in Akure, Ondo State capital, at a news conference to announce the 54th Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the association, said there are still many excellent medical practitioners in the country, whom he said are committed to serving humanity despite the multifarious challenges confronting the nation as a whole and the health sector in particular. The theme of the conference is: Optimising Child Healthcare in Nigeria Despite Current Socio-Economic Challenges. He said: I want to salute the health workers that are staying behind to continue offering services and I want to say that it is not the best brains that are leaving. We still have best and fantastic brains who are not leaving, who are committed to stay in this country despite everything. Mortality rate The associations president, however, lamented the infant mortality rate in the country and advocated optimal performance of stakeholders for the well-being of children in Nigeria Mr Ogunrinde said: We at PAN are not so happy with poor health indices of Nigeria, though we have made some gains in recent years compared to 1990, but we still have some number of children dying. The last statistics show 74 children die per 1000 births and neonatal deaths almost double that number, about 100. So, to every 1,000 children that are born, about 100 die. That is about 10 per cent. That is a loss to any nation. When you compare it to what other people are getting in other climes, it is about three to 1000. Also we still have a number of children that are malnourished. They are stunted, they are not growing well. And from experience, these children constitute a social problem. They hardly develop well. They may grow up well with adequate nutrition, but damage has been done to the brain especially in the first to three years when they are supposed to get the nutrients, but they were not given. The paediatrician added that such damage could be permanent, saying that this would invariably affect the trajectory of the nation. Can you imagine a nation that is full of defective adults? It is not going to function very well, he said. Counsel The PAN President asked mothers to adhere strictly to exclusive breastfeeding and necessary vaccination, adding that they should access good healthcare services for their children. We ask mothers to give exclusive breastfeeding to their children and husbands should encourage their wives and let them have vaccination and others as directed. Let us protect ourselves so that our children will not become orphans. I believe in the popular saying that health is wealth. There should be a demand from the people for good quality health. We have made ourselves available despite poor welfare and salary, but it is like people are not demanding our services. May be you say you cannot afford them, which may be true or because you have faith in the so-called alternative medicine or for other reasons, but I think there is need for re-orientation of people to seek health in the appropriate place. When your child is sick, you go to appropriate place and when you do that continuously, and you create a demand, everybody in government will see that health is wealth and they will do the needful, he said. Mr Ogunrinde said the association was collaborating with everybody to ensure that children survive, live a quality life and achieve maximal development. For me Nigeria has great potential, so when we treat our children well and they grow up, we will have a fantastic country. Everything will just fall into place, but we need to start now, he said. READ ALSO: According to him, the Ondo and Ekiti state governments should tap into the pool of paediatricians that are available in their states for quality healthcare of children. They should approach and harness their (paediatricians) potentials regularly and they can give advice on the way forward: our children need to survive, he said. He said the 3-day conference in Akure would discuss sickle cell anaemia, pneumonia and other factors that could impact negatively children, and proffer solutions. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the recommendation for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC Ltd) to invest N1.9 trillion in the reconstruction of 44 federal roads under the tax credit policy. The council gave the approval at its meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Mr Osinbajos spokesperson, Laolu Akande, briefed State House correspondents on behalf of the Minister of Works and Housing, The Federal Executive Council approved the recommendation to invest in the reconstruction of selected federal roads under the Federal Government Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Policy Phase 2 by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Limited and its subsidiaries. So, the council approved the proposal by the Ministry of Works and Housing for the reconstruction of 44 proposed federal roads with a total length of 4,554 kilometres in the total sum of N1.9 trillion. Mr Akande said the council also approved the concession of nine federal roads. He said that roads were spread across the country. In another memo, the Minister for Works and Housing also got the approval of the council for concessionaires for nine road corridors under the pilot phase of the value-added section of the Highways Development and Management Initiative following the issuance of the requisite full business case compliance certificate by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission for a period of 25 years for each road corridor as follows. The roads that will be under this first phase are the Benin-Asaba corridor, Abuja-Lokoja-Onitsha-Owerri-Aba, Shagamu-Benin, Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga-Makurdi, Kano-Maiduguri, Enugu-Port Harcourt, Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta and Lagos-Badagry-Seme. Moreover, Mr Akande said the minister of works and housing got the councils approval for the augmentation of the contract for the rehabilitation of the Osogbo-Ilesha road phase 1 in Osun State in the sum of N1.2 billion. The approval thereby revises the subsisting contract sum from N3 billion to N4 billion representing an increase of 33 per cent of the original sum, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Supreme Court has slated 20 January (Friday) for judgement in a dispute over the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket for the Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District election. The APC is challenging the decision of the Court of Appeal, Abuja, which sacked Godswill Akpabio as its candidate for the senatorial seat election holding on 25 February. Mr Akpabio is a former governor of Akwa-Ibom State and ex-minister of Niger Delta. In Mr Akpabios place, the appellate court ordered INEC to recognise Udom Ekpoudom, a retired deputy inspector general of police, as the authentic candidate of the party. When the appeal came up on Wednesday, a five-member panel of the Supreme Court led by Kudirat Kekere-Ekun fixed the date for judgement after taking arguments from lawyers to the APC and Mr Ekpoudom. Ume Kalu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who argued the APCs appeal, urged the apex court to nullify the appellate courts decision of 14 November 2022, and affirm Mr Akpabios candidacy for the poll. But Mr Ekpoudoms lawyer, Solomon Umoh (SAN), prayed to the Supreme Court to dismiss the appeal and uphold his clients candidacy. The case was the only one out of the three appeals that emanated from the dispute heard by the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It said the outcome of the one chosen would be binding in the other two cases. The court said it was pressed for time owing to the deluge of pre-election suits that have flooded the court. Background The Akwa-Ibom North-West senatorial district ticket of the ruling APC has been the subject of intense litigation following the partys declaration of Mr Akpabio as its flagbearer. Mr Akpabio had lost out in the APC presidential primary in Abuja. But APC had nominated him as its candidate for the senatorial election despite that he did not participate in the partys senatorial primary election. INEC had refused to recognise Mr Akpabio as a candidate on the grounds of his not participating in the partys primary election that he monitored. In September 2022, the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered INEC to accept and publish Mr Akpabios name as the APC candidate for the Akwa Ibom North-West District for the 2023 elections. In the judgement, the judge, Emeka Nwite, held that INEC acted illegally by declining to accept and publish Mr Akpabios name when it was submitted to it by the APC as its candidate. The judge said INEC is bound by the provisions of Section 29 (3) of the Electoral Act to publish only the personal particulars of the candidate of the first plaintiff for the Akwa-Iborn North/West Senatorial District elections in the person of the second plaintiff (Akpabio) as received from the first plaintiff. Mr Nwite said the INEC cannot publish any other name or particulars of any other candidate as the candidate of the APC for the Akwa-Ibom North/West Senatorial District elections, except as nominated, submitted and received from the first plaintiff (APC). The judge faulted INECs claim that its refusal to monitor the primary poll conducted by the APC on 9 June 2022, which led to Mr Akpabios emergence as a senatorial candidate was because it had supervised the one conducted on 27 May, which produced Mr Ekpoudom as APC flagbearer. The Court of Appeal had subsequently upturned the Federal High Courts decision and affirmed Mr Ekpoudom as the partys authentic candidate. Displeased with the decision, the APC and Mr Akpabio appealed against it at the Supreme Court. READ ALSO: The Supreme Courts decision slated for Friday will finally lay to rest the dispute over the rightful holder of the APCs ticket for the 25 February senatorial election. Mr Akpabio stepped down for a former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, who emerged as the party presidential candidate. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print the frontrunners are also becoming desperate to get as many groups and voters generally to themselves. This is further exacerbated by our agelong divisive issues of ethnicity and religion, which are rearing their heads again. In an attempt to sway support, candidates are appealing to the sentiments of: Im your own, give me your votes, and Ill treat you specially, reminiscent of the provincial and cabalistic government of President Buhari. Last week, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), disclosed that it has 93.4 million voters in its voters register. Not all these people will vote due to some intervening forces or the other, but it marks a significant leap in the registration of voters, in comparison to previous elections. It also shows that voter consciousness is improving day by day, in addition to other factors that will make the next presidential election the most competitive and dramatic. With improved technology, as allowed by the 2022 Electoral Act, came the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), which have made rigging nearly impossible, on paper, so far with the exception of some governorship elections, even though the presidential election is hugely different from governorship elections. In the past, massive rigging was perpetuated by politicians who used all means fair and foul to help themselves to power. Those so elected are still in power lording it over us, but in the course of time and with improved technology, the bad eggs masquerading as leaders will be weeded out. Im that optimistic. Already there are indications that it is no longer business as usual. The days of writing results in private residences or election results changing enroute collation centres are over. This election means a lot to those contesting and voters. It has turned former friends into foes; that is Atiku Abubakar and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; and Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, all tearing themselves apart to get ahead of the other, and voters are eager to see their votes count. The social media and burgeoning youth population are huge reservoirs of voters to draw from. The youth, who now constitute a quarter of the voting populace of 37 million according to INEC, are eager to exercise their franchise, which they had been systematically denied over the years. The Peter Obi factor has been a big push in the ongoing presidential campaign. Obi, who is turning out to be a disruptor, has also become a rallying figure for the youth, who are vociferous on social media and aggressive on the field. It is not a surprise that he is also receiving pot-shots from the conventional political parties and gladiator-candidates like Atiku and Tinubu. At no time since the return of civil rule in 1999 has the nation seen a pragmatic candidate giving established figures a run for their money in political campaign, as it is today. Obi is the real game-changer, the real deal that may upset the apple cart. Not to talk of the Kwankwasiyya movement giving the Northern political establishment reasons to rethink its campaign strategy. By this time in 2015, pundits could predict where victory was tilting towards. That was the era of the Buhari phenomenon. However, with this election, no one has a crystal ball clarity to categorically predict the winner. As such, while the leading candidates are scrambling to outdo one another in a desperate bid to become president, they are utilising everything at their disposal, including patronage, material things and monetary inducements to court and draw voters and influencers to themselves. Understandably, the frontrunners are also becoming desperate to get as many groups and voters generally to themselves. This is further exacerbated by our agelong divisive issues of ethnicity and religion, which are rearing their heads again. In an attempt to sway support, candidates are appealing to the sentiments of: Im your own, give me your votes, and Ill treat you specially, reminiscent of the provincial and cabalistic government of President Buhari. In this category, many of them have been caught pants down. From Tinubus emilokan to Atikus alleged rhetoric to Northern sentiment during his Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) engagement to Peter Obis subtle appeal to Christian voters. All of them, without exception, are guilty by association. Therefore, for the players in the industry, the 2023 election is a make or mar one. Atiku has been contesting for the presidency since 2003 or since he was in his 50s. Now as an old man in his 70s, this is probably the last chance he has before he throws in the towel and bows out. So, for him, it is either now or never, supposedly. The same thing applies to Tinubu, who claimed the presidency has been his lifelong ambition, has thrown a lot of money into it and is equally advanced in age. Although, Obi is relatively young, there is no candidate from the South-East that has a fanatical following and is as acceptable across the country as he is. As such, while the leading candidates are scrambling to outdo one another in a desperate bid to become president, they are utilising everything at their disposal, including patronage, material things and monetary inducements to court and draw voters and influencers to themselves. While their campaigns are about personal attacks, whose corruption is bigger and direct insults, the slippery slope of the economy, the sky-rocketing costs of food and reduction in the quality of lives, against the impunity around us, do not matter much to them or so it seems. Look at the embarrassing revelations by a so-called former Atiku associate, Mike Achimugu, about diverting contracts and that of Tinubus Support Group Coordinator in Kano State, Baffa Dan Agundi, on how Tinubus daughter gave him the sum of N10 million as appreciation for the success of Tinubus outing in Kano. There is no length the candidates and their henchmen would not go to win hearts and minds. So, if you think the election is about the progress of Nigeria or good governance, think twice. With what we are seeing now, the patriotic ones are not yet born, and national interest is still a mirage. Meanwhile, none of these candidates has spoken about the resurgence of insecurity in the country, such as the recent Edo train attack, the Zamfara kidnapping spree, and the bestial incineration of a reverend father in Niger State. While their campaigns are about personal attacks, whose corruption is bigger and direct insults, the slippery slope of the economy, the sky-rocketing costs of food and reduction in the quality of lives, against the impunity around us, do not matter much to them or so it seems. Zainab Suleiman Okino is Editorial Board chair of Blueprint Newspaper and a syndicated columnist. She can be reached via zainabokino@gmail.com. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The candidates of the three leading political parties in Kaduna on Wednesday during a debate organised by the BBC Hausa Service discussed their plans for the state if elected governor of the state in March. The candidates who tussled with one another during the debate held at the Kaduna State University Auditorium, were the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Uba Sani, the candidate of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Isah Ashiru, and the candidate of the new Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) Suleiman Hunkuyi. Jonathan Asake of the Labour Party and Sani Shaaban of the African Democratic Party (ADP)who was earlier scheduled to attend the event were absent. The candidates were asked about how they plan to solve the security challenges in the state, improve the provision of healthcare and tackle poverty. The debate, which is the second in a series of governorship debates across northern Nigeria, witnessed a large turnout of supporters of the political parties. The debate was stopped at several intervals to appeal to supporters of the candidates who were chanting their names to be silent. Mr Sani of the APC said if elected, he will continue the good work of the incumbent governor, Nasir El-Rufai. I will continue from where the present governor stopped. I believed in the achievement recorded so far and the only good thing I will do for the people of Kaduna state is to continue the good work started. I will improve on school enrolment for our children, I will prioritize agriculture and skill acquisitions and also pay attention to women and vulnerable people. Mr Ashiru of the PDP said he would introduce a distinct style of learning in all primary and secondary schools in the state. If elected, I will design a system where schools will introduce skill acquisition for children. A child will graduate with a skill right from primary school. The candidates spoke on how to tackle insecurity in the state and improve healthcare delivery and unify the state. The PDP candidate, Mr Ashiru, said I will take healthcare delivery to communities. First, I will build three diagnostic centres in the three senatorial districts of the state. People should know what is wrong with them before taking medication. I will prioritise the employment of doctors and nurses and will be sent to the local communities to attend to our people at local levels. Mr Sani of the APC while applauding governor El-RufaIs effort on healthcare delivery in the state, said he would continue from where the government has stopped. What El-Rufai met was a disaster. With the state having less than 40 doctors to treat all citizens of the state, he employed additional doctors. The state has well over 400 doctors now and I will improve on it. Mr Hunkuyi of the NNPP spent most of his time criticising the policies of the government of Mr El-Rufai. He promised to reverse all policies started by the outgoing administration, if elected. The debate ended with a vote of thanks from all the three contestants while calling on citizens of the state to vote wisely for their preferred candidate. Some attendees who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said they were excited about the policies proposed by their preferred candidates. This debate has exposed the candidates to the people. People have heard them and the choice remains ours. Hassan Mohammed Said. For me, I think there will be an election in Kaduna in March. I mean a very tough one. It will not be one-way traffic, as the APC always thinks it is. The other parties will give everyone a good bite. I think the PDP candidate did well more than the other candidates. Lauratu Iliya Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Both former governors urged the Nigerian electorate to track party manifestoes and scrutinise campaign promises. A former governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has explained why political campaign promises are hard to fulfil in Nigeria. He attributed the challenges of unmet political promises to unnecessary bureaucracy. Mr Fayemi spoke on Tuesday at the NPO Reports' one-day dialogue on campaign promises in Abuja. "There are times that a candidate genuinely wants to fulfil a promise but for the exigencies of office," he explained. Citing an instance of a deplorable federal government road he had promised to repair in Ekiti State when he was in office, Mr Fayemi said the central government's insistence to rehabilitate its roads by itself prevented him from fulfilling the pledge he made to fix the road after he had secured a loan from the African Development Bank (ADB). He disagreed with speakers at the event who said elective officeholders do not track campaign promises. "Tracking campaign promises should happen at the level of government and the citizens," the ex-governor suggested. Calling for "synergy and partnership between civil society organisations and the public", Mr Fayemi urged the electorate to track the manifestoes of political parties to ensure they are fulfilled. Speaking in a similar vein, former Kwara State governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, advised Nigerians to scrutinise campaign promises being made by office seekers in the forthcoming elections. Mr Ahmed asked the electorate to examine candidates for office to know if they possess the capability to deliver on their pledges. In a welcome address, Semiu Okanlawon, convener of the dialogue and publisher of NPO Reports, an online publication, founded in 2010, said journalists must investigate happenings in society. "The electorate must take note of promises made by political office seekers, and hold them to account," Mr Okanlawon, a former assistant editor (politics) of Punch newspapers, advised. Panellist advocates legal liability for unmet political promises A panellist at the dialogue, Angela Agoawike, said it was high time politicians were held legally accountable for their campaign promises. In Nigeria and across the globe, political campaign promises are not justiceable. Ms Agoawike, founder of Omalicha FM - a radio station in Owerri, Imo State, said her stance was informed by the many unfulfilled promises made by political office seekers to Nigerians. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Other panellists - Azubuike Ishiekwene, Waziri Adio and Hamza Lawal, feasted on a presentation by the event's guest speaker, Lai Olurode. Mr Olurode, a professor of sociology and former INEC national commissioner, spoke on the theme: '2023 & Beyond: Tracking Campaign Promises for Good Governance.' Mr Adio, former executive secretary of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), noted that a collaboration between the media, CSOs and citizens "can compel political office seekers to deliver on their campaign promises." Mr Ishiekwene, editor-in-chief of the Leadership Newspapers, who chaired the panel session, said journalists have a role to play in the actualisation of campaign promises by holding politicians accountable. Mr Lawal, chief executive officer, Connected Development, called for accountability journalism at subnational levels to address issues of unmet campaign pledges. The event was attended by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola and some heads of security agencies. The publisher of PREMIUM TIMES, Dapo Olorunyomi, was represented at the occasion by Bisi Abidoye, an assistant managing editor of the paper. A yet-to-be-identified trader was Tuesday shot dead during a clash between police officers and traders at the Alaba Rago market in the Ojo area of Lagos. The police spokesperson in Lagos, Benjamin Hundeyin, made this known Tuesday via his Twitter handle. The shooting occured on the day of the burial of the Lagos-based lawyer, Bolanle Raheem, who was fatally shot on Christmas day by Drambi Vandi, a police officer. The deceased, an expectant mother, was shot days after Gafaru Buraimoh, a resident of Lekki, was also gunned down by a police officer. Mr Hundeyin in his tweets did not reveal the name of the police officer who fired the fatal shot in the latest incident. Policemen of Okokomaiko Division today went into Alaba Rago Market to effect an arrest of a suspect but came under heavy attack from a large number of traders, Mr Hundeyin wrote. In a bid to tactically retreat from the armed mob attack, one of the officers fired his weapon, resulting in fatal injury to one of the attackers. He, however, said that a detailed investigation has commenced into the immediate and remote causes of the incident. Contacted, Mr Hundeyin said he did not have the name of the officer. However, an official at the Alaba Rago market, Alli Ibrahim, said the police came into the market to arrest a suspect when they didnt see the suspect they started pursuing people. As the people were running, they started searching phones and whatever. Then some people gathered and resisted and thats how the thing started. According to Umaru Sokoto, Seriki of Alaba Rago, the traders reacted in self-defence. I was not in the market when that incident happened, he said. But I learnt that some police officers wanted to arrest somebody and some boys followed the police officers and started stoning them. They wanted to kill that policeman, according to what I heard. Then the police shoot. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Only subscribers with PAID Print or E-Edition subscriptions please enter here to gain access. If you are not already a Paid subscriber do not go through this portal. Please return to the subscription page to purchase one of our offers. Thank you! In information revealed by RFI, 49 Ivorian soldiers who were arrested last year in Mali and accused of being mercenaries were part of the UN's Minusma mission and had been deployed at the request of the German contingent. The Ivorian military personnel were pardoned and released to return home earlier this month. Arrested on their arrival in Bamako in July, 2022, they were convicted by a Malian military court last December of "plotting against the government" and "undermining the external security of the state". Cote d'Ivoire insisted that the soldiers were part of a so-called National Support Element (NSE) to reinforce Minusma operations, in accordance with a communique from the Ivorian National Security Council on 12 July. The UN Mission itself had already revealed this on 11 July, before a UN spokesperson mysteriously back-tracked on the announcement three days later in a statement from UN headquarters in New York. This turn around led to Bamako's expulsion of Minusma's spokesman less than a week later, and paved the way for Mali's military junta to accuse the Ivorians of having come to destabilise the country. UN agreement with Cote d'Ivoire The affair lasted six months, with the UN calling for the release of the 49 soldiers without clearly specifying their status. According to several internal UN documents seen by RFI, it was indeed Minusma, more precisely, the German contingent of the UN mission, that brought in the Ivorians. The flights that allowed the Ivorian soldiers to carry out their rotations on 10 July were submitted to the Malian authorities as being for the transport of troops from the German contingent. Since July 2019, when an agreement was signed between Cote d'Ivoire and the United Nations, seven Ivorian contingents had flown to Bamako and were considered as NSEs. The 49 soldiers arrested by the junta were the eighth rotation. It was also at the request of the German contingent that the predecessors of the 49 were decorated by the UN force commander himself on 10 June, just one month before the arrival of the soldiers who were to succeed them. Support for Minusma German contingent From the outset of the affair, Cote d'Ivoire mentioned a contract linking its army to a private company - Sahel Aviation Service -which had specified that it was "mobilised" in the case of the Ivorian soldiers, without giving further details. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Mali West Africa International Organisations By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. According to the Ivorian authorities, the contract dealt with the security and logistics of a site at Bamako airport. The UN says this site houses the German contingent's NSEs and is not managed by Minusma itself. Last June, the German contingent declared to the UN mission that 471 soldiers were supporting its activities with NSE status, without specifying their nationality. This is a particularly high number, much higher than the 50 theoretically authorised by the UN rules, except under exceptional circumstances. Neither confirmed nor denied by the UN The Ivorians have acknowledged "shortcomings and misunderstandings" regarding the arrival of its 49 soldiers in Mali, without further details. Last September, three female soldiers among the 49 arrested were released. These three soldiers were sentenced to death in absentia last month by the Malian justice system. Asked for a response, UN headquarters in New York said that "it would not be appropriate for the UN to transmit information relating to internal operational and administrative matters." The German authorities, both the embassy in Bamako and Ministry of Defence in Berlin, refused to answer questions. (Source: David Bache, RFI Afrique) CALCUTTA, India, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- iMerit, a leading AI data solutions company, today announced the appointment of Parthasarathy NS as its new board member. Parthasarathy spearheads Mela Ventures, an early-stage VC fund as its Managing Partner and leads WeLive Foundation as a Director. Parthasarathy NS joins iMerit's board. Parthasarathy NS brings more than 35 years of technology experience to iMerit's board. A veteran in the IT service industry, Partha has played various roles in his professional journey - from software development and leading engineering teams to driving product development and customer service initiatives. Prior to his work as Managing Partner for Mela Ventures, he was a Co-Founder at Mindtree Limited and was instrumental in building the company from a start-up to a billion-dollar enterprise. He is an alumnus of BITS Pilani, IIT Kharagpur, and Harvard Business School. "We're elated to have Partha join iMerit's board," said Radha Basu, founder & CEO, iMerit. "Partha's expertise as a key leader in the startup ecosystem will help iMerit accelerate our path to become the world's most innovative AI data solutions company. Partha brings more than three decades of experience in India's technology sector and will work closely with iMerit to help accelerate innovation and growth." "I am thrilled to be associated with iMerit as its new board member. AI and machine learning will be key drivers for growth across not only the technology sector, but other industries as well. Data is the lifeblood of effective AI, and iMerit is uniquely positioned to help companies manage data in the most effective and efficient way possible to get the most out of their AI and ML projects and accelerate time to delivery," said Parthasarathy. For more information on how iMerit leverages technology, talent, and technique to help AI and machine learning teams around the world manage and annotate data to ensure faster time to market and stronger ROI for AI and ML projects, please visit www.imerit.net . About iMerit iMerit is a leading AI data solutions company providing high-quality data across computer vision, natural language processing, and content services that power machine learning and artificial intelligence applications for large enterprises. iMerit provides end-to-end data labeling services to Fortune 500 companies in a wide array of industries including agricultural AI, autonomous vehicles, commerce, geospatial, government, financial services, medical AI, and technology. iMerit employs more than 5,500 full-time data annotation experts in Bhutan, Europe, India, and the United States. Raising $23.5 million in funding to date, iMerit investors are British International Investment, Khosla Impact, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and Omidyar Network. For more information, visit imerit.net . Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985596/Parthasarathy_NS.jpg SOURCE iMerit CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- 3Cloud, LLC. ("3Cloud") today announced that it has entered a non-binding letter of intent ("LOI") to acquire People Global Solutions Inc., ("PGSI"). PGSI, headquartered in Makati City, Philippines, operates a Global Delivery Center exclusively for 3Cloud offering Azure consulting services in Application Modernization and Data Platform. With the acquisition of PGSI, 3Cloud will expand its international reach and formalize a partnership that has provided quality global delivery to clients. "With the acquisition of PGSI, 3Cloud will have over 700 full-time Azure experts helping clients migrate their Applications and Data Platforms to Azure," said Mike Rocco, 3Cloud Co-Founder and CEO. "In October 2021, 3Cloud formed a Global Delivery Center in Metro Manila (operated by PGSI) to serve our clients with hybrid teams of US and Philippine-based cloud consultants. Since that launch, we have delivered dozens of successful engagements with our global team, providing an enhanced client experience." "The 3Cloud and PGSI partnership is seamless and desirable to clients," added Kit Claparols, PGSI CEO. "We are thrilled to formally join the 3Cloud family and more aggressively expand the Global Delivery Center's capabilities." 3Cloud expects to announce additional details regarding the acquisition of PGSI when a definitive agreement is executed, which is expected later this month. About 3Cloud As the leading Microsoft services partner focused 100% on the Azure platform, 3Cloud (www.3cloudsolutions.com) helps clients build, migrate, modernize and manage their applications, infrastructure, data and analytics in the cloud. Recently 3Cloud, was selected from over 3,900 Microsoft partners, awarded 4 Worldwide and 2 U.S. Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. Founded by Microsoft executives, 3Cloud combines a team of highly experienced cloud architects and technologists with a strong network of Microsoft sales and engineering relationships to deliver the ultimate Azure experience for clients. About People Global Solutions People Global Solutions provides outsourcing services to clients wanting to setup IT offshore operations in the Philippines (peopleglobalsolutions.godaddysites.com). People Global Solutions is headquartered in Makati City, in the heart of the premiere business and financial district. The firm offers cloud consulting services focused on Managed Services, Infrastructure & DevOps, Application Development, and Data & Analytics. About Gryphon Investors Based in San Francisco, Gryphon Investors (www.gryphoninvestors.com) is a leading private equity firm focused on profitably growing and competitively enhancing middle-market companies in partnership with experienced management. The firm has managed over $9 billion of equity investments and capital since 1997. Gryphon targets making equity investments of $50 million to $300 million in portfolio companies with enterprise values ranging from approximately $100 million to $600 million. Gryphon prioritizes investment opportunities where it can form strong partnerships with owners and executives to build leading companies, utilizing Gryphon's capital, specialized professional resources, and operational expertise. SOURCE 3Cloud Acquisition adds a proven digital solution for Tier 3 instruction, expanding 95 Percent Group's offerings to support more students NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- 95 Percent Group today announced the acquisition of the Hill Reading Achievement Program (HillRAP) from Hill Learning Center, a non-profit dedicated to serving students with learning differences based in Durham, North Carolina. HillRAP is a technology-based, structured literacy intervention solution for students who persistently struggle to learn to read, including those with dyslexia. HillRAP represents the first acquisition for 95 Percent Group, a mission-driven provider of comprehensive, proven literacy curriculum and related professional development training for teachers. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. "This begins an exciting chapter for 95 Percent Group. We are entering a new market and opening up greater opportunities to serve more schools and students who need us," said Brad Lindaas, Chief Executive Officer. "HillRAP not only provides us with a mission-aligned product that supports our overall vision for offering schools a comprehensive phonics ecosystem, but it also provides us with a proven digital solution. 95 Percent Group will invest in the ongoing development and innovation of HillRAP, expanding its capabilities to improve the literacy skills and lives of more students." Scott VanHoy, Partner of Leeds Equity Partners, said "We are excited about the acquisition of HillRAP given its track record of increasing student literacy levels. HillRAP's Tier 3 intervention instruction, with evidence-based methodologies and digital innovation, supports learners with the greatest needs. This is particularly important as reading is necessary for students to succeed in all school subjects and is critical for success later in life." Schools and districts have long relied upon 95 Percent Group's teacher-centric resources and robust professional learning to support Tiers 1 and 2 literacy instruction grounded in the science of reading. As a Tier 3 intervention program, HillRAP provides direct, explicit, mastery-based instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. As a digital solution, it supports learning that can be delivered in-person or remotely, while equipping teachers with data-driven insights into student learning and progress. In line with all product offerings in the 95 Percent Group product ecosystem, HillRAP has a strong basis in evidence. "HillRAP enhances 95 Percent Group's ability to serve educators in assisting struggling readers and driving improved literacy levels," said Eric Geveda, Managing Director of Leeds Equity Partners. "We intend to continue to expand 95 Percent Group's product offering to more holistically address the needs of early education reading and writing instruction through both organic investment and acquisitions." Polsinelli served as legal counsel to Leeds Equity Partners. Schell Bray served as legal counsel to Hill Learning Center. About 95 Percent Group Founded in 2005, 95 Percent Group is an education company whose mission is to help educators identify and address the needs of all readers. Using an approach that is aligned with structured literacy, the company focuses on providing educators with whole-class and small-group literacy solutions as well as developing foundational knowledge about The Science of Reading to deliver evidence and research-based instructional strategies. The company's professional development, diagnostic assessments, skill continua, and explicit instructional materials strengthen MTSS/RTI frameworks and ensure that students receive targeted intervention instruction to close skill gaps. For more information, visit https://www.95percentgroup.com/. About Hill Learning Center Founded in 1977, Hill Learning Center's mission is to transform students with learning differences into confident, independent learners. Named in honor of founder George Watts Hill, Hill Learning Center began as a program of Durham Academy, becoming an independent nonprofit in 1998. It pursues its mission through a range of K-12 student and educator programs, providing equitable and differentiated, research-based practices for supporting students with learning differences and/or attention challenges. For more information, visit https://www.hillcenter.org/ . About Leeds Equity Partners Leeds Equity is a New York-based private equity firm dedicated exclusively to partnering with management teams in the education, training, and information services industries (the "Knowledge Industries"). The firm was founded in 1993 and currently manages over $4 billion of capital across a broad spectrum of companies within the Knowledge Industries. Leeds Equity seeks to leverage its sector-focused expertise and market insights to create long-term value for its partner companies and investors. For additional information on Leeds Equity Partners, see http://www.leedsequity.com/. For More Information: Scott VanHoy Tel. 212-835-2000 Fax: 212-835-2020 www.leedsequity.com SOURCE Leeds Equity Partners, LLC VOTE 2023: THE RACE FOR CHICAGO MAYOR: THE CANDIDATES DEBATE, LIVE AT 7 P.M. ON ABC 7.2, STREAMING ON ABC7CHICAGO.COM AND ABC 7'S CONNECTED TV APPS ** Debate Available to Media on Chicago Switch excerpt Excerpts limited to 2-minutes with following credit: "ABC 7 Chicago" CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- WHO: ABC 7 Eyewitness News, in conjunction with the Leagues of Women Voters of Chicago/Illinois and Univision Chicago WHAT: VOTE 2023: THE RACE FOR CHICAGO MAYOR: THE CANDIDATES DEBATE, LIVE, 90-MINUTE, COMMERCIAL FREE The nine candidates running for Chicago mayor will participate in a live, 90-minute, commercial free debate on ABC 7 from 7-8:30 P.M. moderated by ABC 7 Anchor Judy Hsu. ABC 7's Political Reporter Craig Wall and Univision Anchor Enrique Rodriguez will also question the candidates. WHEN: THURSDAY, JANUAR 19 7-8:30 P.M. ABC 7 Chicago (Arrive at 6:30 p.m.) DEBATE: Airs Live on ABC 7.2 and streamed live on www.abc7chicago.com and the ABC 7 Chicago News app and ABC 7 Connected TV Apps on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV and Roku, as well as ABC7 YouTube account and Facebook. ABC7 Chicago's Main Channel, 7.1 To Air Debate on Sunday, Jan. 22, 10:30 p.m.-Midnight The debate will also be available on-demand at www.abc7chicago.com and the ABC 7 Chicago News app. The commercial-free debate will be simultaneously translated and aired live on Univision's digital platforms (univisionchicago.com, app, YouTube channel and Facebook page) and on UNIMAS (WXFT-TV) on Sunday Jan. 22, at 4 p.m. *Audio feed can be taken from live stream on abc7chicago.com or on-demand. WHERE: ABC 7 Chicago, 190 N. State Street WHY: ABC 7 Chicago is partnering with the Leagues of Women Voters of Chicago/Illinois and Univision Chicago in an effort to give voters a close-up look at the issues and concerns facing Chicagoans and the next mayor. **Candidates have been offered an opportunity to speak to the media after the debate. **Media will not have access to debate studio prior and during the debate. SOURCE WLS Television Two open houses to feature food, games, fun during School Choice Week HOMESTEAD, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Local youth and parents are invited to Homestead's one-of-a-kind public library, the Cybrarium, for music, games, and refreshments celebrating School Choice Week from 3 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 24 and Thursday, Jan. 26. Both celebrations at the Cybrarium will kick off with board games and tabletop challenges. Students can show off their school spirit by wearing their school's apparel, while parents can learn about local K-12 learning options including public, magnet, public charter, private, virtual, and homeschooling from guest speakers including Redland Christian Academy Principal Daniel Carrillo. The open houses will also feature music, crafts for teens, snacks, and a photo booth. They will wrap up with a raffle, group photo opportunity, and swag bag handout from 5:30 to 6 p.m. The goal of the events? To celebrate learning and encourage awareness about the many school options in Homestead. From neighborhood public schools to learning pods, Miami-Dade County is one of the most expansive areas in the nation for school types and scholarship opportunities. The events are planned to coincide with the celebration of National School Choice Week (Jan. 22-28, 2023), which will feature tens of thousands of school choice celebrations across all 50 states, including student showcases and landmark light-ups. These open houses are organized by the Cybrarium and are expected to draw more than 100 students. Opened in March 2021, the Cybrarium is a public library that breaks the mold of traditional learning, offering an exciting blend of cutting-edge technology and service delivery in downtown Homestead. The Cybrarium is located at 80 W. Mowry Dr. National School Choice Week (NSCW) informs, inspires, and empowers parents to discover the K-12 education options available for their children, including traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home schooling. Every January, tens of thousands of schools, organizations, and individuals plan unique events and activities to shine a positive spotlight on effective education options in their communities. The Week is a project of the nonpartisan, nonpolitical National School Choice Awareness Foundation. SOURCE National School Choice Week The English Language Arts program from Benchmark Education Company received top ratings from EdReports using their newest v1.5 Review Tools for Grades K5. NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading educational publisher Benchmark Education Company (BEC) has announced that its core English Language Arts program, Benchmark Advance 2022, received an "all-green" rating from EdReports for Grades K5. A "green" rating is the highest band of scoring awarded by the independent, nonprofit, and highly respected curriculum reviewer. The "green" scores for Benchmark Advance 2022 indicate that the program meets expectations in every Gateway, or specific area measured by EdReports, for Grades K5. In reviewing the program, EdReports used its new version 1.5 Review Tools. In its review of Benchmark Advance 2022, EdReports measured the following Gateways: Text Quality & Complexity and Alignment to Standards; Building Knowledge with Texts, Vocabulary, and Tasks; and Usability. The review found strong evidence to support all three Gateways in Grades K5. Benchmark Advance 2022 Receives "All-Green" in All Gateways for Grades K5 Using EdReports' Newest v1.5 Review Tools Tweet this Benchmark Advance 2022 is a knowledge-based program that aligns with state standards and Science of Reading research, and provides a cohesive structure for the development of literacy skills and content knowledge. It is designed to empower students to build skills within and across grades; to expand both general and academic vocabulary in support of reading, writing, and constructive conversation; and to provide inclusive resources that meet the needs of each learner through culturally responsive content. Benchmark Adelante 2023 is also available as a parallel and fully equitable program alongside Benchmark Advance 2022. "EdReports' objective and independent reviews offer educators and communities essential information to help them make important curriculum decisions," BEC founder and CEO Tom Reycraft said. "The all-green rating for Grades K5 further conveys the effectiveness of Benchmark Advance 2022 and our commitment to cutting-edge literacy resources of the highest quality that advance knowledge, growth, and achievement." To learn more about Benchmark Advance 2022, visit www.BenchmarkAdvance.com. ABOUT BENCHMARK EDUCATION COMPANY Benchmark Education Company (BEC) is a leading publisher of core, supplemental, and intervention literacy and language resources in English and Spanish. BEC is also a provider of exceptional professional development to educators. Founded in 1998, BEC is an innovative publisher that offers equally rigorous and engaging digital, print, and hybrid learning materials in effective and research-validated programs that support and empower each unique learner to grow and achieve. BEC's content-rich and authentic texts offer instruction in close reading and analysis, multiple perspectives, and authentic literature that reflects the individuality of every student in each diverse classroom and gives them the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in an equally dynamic world. BEC is committed to partnering with teachers to provide the best for all students through resources of exceptional quality, world-class professional development, and effective and dedicated support for educators. SOURCE Benchmark Education Company In Celebration Of Lunar New Year, The At-Home Instant Boba Kit Leader Leans Into New Innovations For Boba Lovers LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- BobaBam, the frozen instant boba kit that lets consumers make boba shop-quality drinks at home in about a minute, is unveiling a new variety pack at over 200 club locations across the Northeast and West Coast. This launch follows the brand's recent success at club warehouses in the US where BobaBam's Brown Sugar packs sold out in a record of three days. The new variety pack will feature two of BobaBam's newest flavors: Milk Tea and Taro, containing 14 packs (7 of each flavor) with eco-friendly, paper straws included at $12.99 MSRP. BobaBam With Milk Tea and Taro flavors being among the best-selling flavors at boba shops nationwide, BobaBam is making it easier for fans of the delicious drink to get more bam for their buck. Each pack is vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, nut-free, Kosher, and Halal. With over 40 million drinks sold to date, boba lovers have discovered that they can make all-natural bubble tea drinks, with the authentic taste and texture of boba shops, from the convenience of home. Consumers can add these sweet and chewy boba pearls to any beverage, including traditional milk, plant-based milks, coffee, or tea making it the perfect addition to any Lunar New Year celebration. "Since its introduction into the market in 2021, BobaBam has been flying off of shelves and we're excited to be adding our newest flavors to warehouses across the nation," said Brian Khoddam, CEO of BobaBam. "Partnering with influential retailers is a great opportunity for our brand to connect with families that enjoy boba together. This variety pack was curated based on consumer demand and we're committed to continuing to deliver offerings designed to delight." Both flavors provide a delicious new option for everyday boba fans. The brand's additional flavors are sold at Giant, Schnucks, and Market Basket. BobaBam is the one-stop-shop for those who love boba and enjoy the ease of making it at home. About BobaBam BobaBam is a well-funded, high-growth food company that focuses on trends at the intersection of taste, culture, convenience, and value. BobaBam was conceived in 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when residents were self-quarantining at home, many boba shops were closed and those that were open had lengthy lines. Bob Yau, the company's Taiwanese-born founder and chairman, returned home from an exhausting experience to get boba for his kids and thought there had to be a better way to satisfy the craving. BobaBam was then created and was quickly brought to mass retail with more than 40 million Boba drinks sold to date. To learn more about BobaBam, visit www.bobabam.com or follow the company's journey on social media at @bobabamofficial. About BEK Foods BEK Foods pioneers new food categories supported and validated with data. The company is the first food brand to successfully bring frozen instant boba to the mass retail market. With a combined total of 75 years of experience in food logistics (ambient, refrigerated, and frozen), wholesale food distribution, supply chain management, business consulting, technology and food marketing. The company specializes in food curation through retail and foodservice channels. BEK Foods' mission is to make the global food system broadly available to new markets, enriching its supply chain and delighting its customers. To learn more about BEK Foods, visit www.bekfoods.com . MEDIA CONTACT: Sonja Melin | Elly Kellner 5158648780 [email protected] www.startrco.com SOURCE BobaBam Reports Annual Revenue of US$31.6 Million & Highlights Recent Developments LAS VEGAS and VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Body and Mind Inc. (CSE: BAMM) (OTCQB: BMMJ) (the "Company" or "BaM"), a multi-state operations-focused cannabis company, is pleased to announce financial results for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2022 and to provide shareholders with an operational update. All financial information is provided in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated. FY 2022 Summary & Comparison to FY 2021 FY 2022 FY 2021 Revenue $31.6 $26.9 Net Income/(Loss) ($28.2) ($2.0) Adjusted EBITDA* ($1.4) $3.9 FY 2022 Highlights: Announced two Illinois retail license wins. (See the Company's July 27, 2022 press release for further details.) retail license wins. (See the Company's press release for further details.) Completed acquisitions of The Reef dispensary in Seaside, California and the Body and Mind-branded dispensary near Cleveland, Ohio . and the Body and Mind-branded dispensary near . Commenced Ohio processing operations to bring Body and Mind branded products to the Ohio medical cannabis market. Subsequent to the end of FY 2022: Closed a $3 million unsecured convertible debt financing with Bengal Capital and Mindset Capital, two experienced cannabis-focused funds, and announced that Bengal Capital partner Josh Rosen would be joining the Company's Board of Directors. unsecured convertible debt financing with Bengal Capital and Mindset Capital, two experienced cannabis-focused funds, and announced that Bengal Capital partner would be joining the Company's Board of Directors. Closed a merger with CraftedPlants NJ, an entity that leases a New Jersey retail location with local cannabis-use approval for a retail location and is currently working on attaining final state licensure in New Jersey , with nearly all merger consideration tied to attainment of specific licensing and operational milestones. (See the Company's December 22, 2022 press release for further details.) Management Commentary "As we report the highest annual revenue in BaM's history, we are excited and focused on the next stage of our development. Specifically, as we start calendar 2023, we are focused on the following priorities: Augmenting Core Accounting Team: As cannabis operators first and foremost, we are intentionally spendthrift with respect to overhead expenses. In order to improve the timeliness of our financial reporting we are in the process of making modest additions to our accounting team. Focus Resources on Successful Launch of New Markets: We believe that our best return on capital projects in the near to medium term are our two recently issued retail cannabis licenses in Illinois and our New Jersey retail project. Remain Operations-Focused in Existing Markets: We believe our core operating ability, both in retail cannabis and craft cultivation, is an under-appreciated asset which we are capitalizing on by entering new markets in capital efficient ways. We also plan to continue to drive operating efficiencies in our existing, more mature markets to hone our battle-tested capabilities and to improve our cash flow generation. Prudently Evaluate Complementary Opportunities: We remain open to augmenting our platform with capital efficient opportunities that map to our capabilities, particularly within our newer markets. Given the attractiveness of our current projects, we plan to stay patient and only pursue opportunities that we believe meet high return thresholds. " I look forward to updating investors on our advances in line with these priorities as the year progresses," stated Michael Mills, CEO of Body and Mind Inc. FY 2022 Financial Highlights: Revenues for FY 2022 were $31.6 million , a 17.6 % increase over FY 2021 revenues of $26.9 million . , a 17.6 % increase over FY 2021 revenues of . Gross profit of $ 10.9 million for FY 2022 compared to a gross profit of $ 12.0 for FY 2021. for FY 2022 compared to a gross profit of for FY 2021. FY 2022 net operating loss was $3.5 million compared to FY 2021 net operating income $0.6 million . The change in net operating income was primarily impacted by increased business development, license applications, new operation startup and a decrease in flower pricing in Nevada . compared to FY 2021 net operating income . The change in net operating income was primarily impacted by increased business development, license applications, new operation startup and a decrease in flower pricing in . FY 2022 other expenses totalled $22.1 million in expenses compared to $0.4 million in FY 2021. The largest component of FY 2022 other expenses were asset impairment charges related to the Company's carrying value of certain goodwill, intangible assets, and right of use assets totalling $20.5 million , including impairments of: (1) $10.0 million of all of the Company's goodwill related to previous acquisitions; (2) $7.9 million to the carrying value of a Company subsidiary's Nevada cannabis licenses; and (3) $2.3 million to the right of use assets associated with leased Michigan property related to the Company's cancelled plans to enter the Michigan cultivation and processing market due to price compression in Michigan . in expenses compared to in FY 2021. The largest component of FY 2022 other expenses were asset impairment charges related to the Company's carrying value of certain goodwill, intangible assets, and right of use assets totalling , including impairments of: (1) of all of the Company's goodwill related to previous acquisitions; (2) to the carrying value of a Company subsidiary's cannabis licenses; and (3) to the right of use assets associated with leased property related to the Company's cancelled plans to enter the cultivation and processing market due to price compression in . FY 2022 net loss was $28.2 million (or basic and diluted loss per share of $0.25 ) compared to a FY 2021 net loss of $2.0 million (or basic and diluted loss per share of $0.02 ). The large difference is mostly attributable to the asset impairments discussed above. (or basic and diluted loss per share of ) compared to a FY 2021 net loss of (or basic and diluted loss per share of ). The large difference is mostly attributable to the asset impairments discussed above. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.4 million for FY 2022 vs. Adjusted EBITDA of $ 3.9 million in FY 2021*. for FY 2022 vs. Adjusted EBITDA of in FY 2021*. Total Current Assets were $8.0 million , Total Assets were $31.0 million , Total Current Liabilities were $6.6 million and Total Liabilities were $20.9 million at July 31, 2022 . The Company had 146,636,974 common shares outstanding as of January 13, 2023. For further details, please see the Company's recent Form 10-K filing on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar/search, and the annual audited financial statements filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. *Adjusted EBITDA is a Non-GAAP metric used by management that does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by U.S. GAAP and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Management defines the Adjusted EBITDA as the Income (loss) from operations, as reported, before interest, taxes, and adjusted for removing other non-cash items, including the stock-based compensation expense, gain on settlement, loss on impairment, depreciation, and further adjustments to remove acquisition related costs or gains. Management believes Adjusted EBITDA is a useful financial metric to assess its operating performance on a cash adjusted basis before the impact of non-cash items and acquisition activities. The most comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP is net operating income (loss), which was presented above prior to the Adjusted EBITDA figure. Net Profit/Loss ($28,228,104) Interest Income ($72,000) Interest $1,372,208 Tax $2,593,165 Depreciation/Amortization $1,490,516 EBITDA ($22,844,215) EBITDA ($22,844,215) Gain on settlement $460,001 Loss on impairment $20,517,192 Stock-based compensation $435,266 Adjusted EBITDA ($1,431,756) Q1 FY2023 Financial Reporting Update The Company anticipates filing Q1 FY2023 financials during the week of January 23rd, 2023. About Body and Mind Inc. BaM is an operations-focused cannabis company with active retail operations in Ohio, Arkansas, Michigan and California, pending retail operations in Illinois and New Jersey, and craft cultivation and/or processing operations in Nevada, Ohio and Arkansas. We work daily to increase our market share through delighting customers while also continuing to hone our operational efficiencies to drive profits. We are primarily guided by the metric of return on investment. Currently, we believe the most significant return on investment projects in front of us are successful retail cannabis store launches in Illinois and New Jersey, which augment our existing retail footprint. We also believe that our team's core operational skillsets will create significant future shareholder value as the cannabis industry matures. Please visit www.bodyandmind.com for more information. Instagram: @bodyandmindBaM Twitter: @bodyandmindBaM Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Safe Harbor Statement Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, the information presented in this news release constitutes "forward-looking statements" as such term is used in applicable United States and Canadian laws. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any other statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans, "estimates" or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as "forward-looking statements". Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors include, among others, the actual results of activities, variations in the underlying assumptions associated with the estimation of activities, the availability of capital to fund programs and the resulting dilution caused by the raising of capital through the sale of shares, accidents, labor disputes and other risks. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this news release and in any document referred to in this news release. Certain matters discussed in this news release and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company may constitute forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Many of these factors are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and that could impact the Company and the statements contained in this news release can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities. SOURCE Body and Mind Inc. School offers extraordinary teaching, exceptional academic programs, and a nurturing community while improving predictability and affordability for families ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Browne Academy, a diverse, independent day school for students in preschool through 8th grade, is leading the region by introducing a new, lower flat rate tuition structure that will go into effect for the 2023-2024 school year. This innovative approach to tuition will allow Browne Academy to continue to create a community of learning that prioritizes the child. "At a time when tuition rates are skyrocketing across the country and pricing families out of a quality education, we wanted to refocus and get back to our roots," said Peggy Otey, Browne Academy Head of School. "This new tuition structure allows us to expand our mission of developing the whole child through extraordinary teaching, exceptional academic programs, and a nurturing community, to more families." Founded in 1941, Browne Academy began as one of the first integrated schools in Virginia. Today, that spirit of inclusion endures, as the school's core values excellence, diversity, character, and community prevail with the decision to increase the accessibility, predictability, and affordability of a quality education. The move reflects Browne's commitment to those values and to serving the Browne community by simplifying and equalizing the cost of a great education in a small, nurturing environment. With no cuts to the operating revenue and equally distributing the cost of tuition, Browne Academy will offer the same high level of programming while moving forward with new initiatives and maintaining small class sizes. The announcement comes after in-depth conversations and listening sessions with parents, staff, faculty, and students that highlighted Browne's unique, supportive learning environment and after thorough research by the Head of School, Board of Trustees and staff. Under the new tuition structure, Browne tuition will be $25,000 for Preschool and Junior Kindergarten and $27,000 for Kindergarten through 8th Grade. Browne Academy understands that tuition is an investment decision that not every family has the privilege of making, which is why financial aid is still available to eligible families. Visit the school's website for more information. Browne Academy is a diverse, independent day school committed to developing the whole child through extraordinary teaching, exceptional academic programs, and a nurturing community. We empower students to be critical thinkers, inspired innovators, engaged peers, and ethical leaders prepared with the confidence to thrive in a dynamic world. Visit browneacademy.org to learn more. SOURCE Browne Academy SACRAMENTO, Calif., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The California Fire Foundation announced today it will pledge up to $1 million in disaster relief to under-resourced communities heavily impacted by the recent deadly storms ravaging the state. The California Fire Foundation is partnering with Community Based Organizations (CBOs) on the ground to assess needs and directly distribute the $1 million in aid to those hardest hit and in need of support. California Fire Foundation's Supplying Aid to Victims of Emergency (SAVE) provides on-the-spot relief for fire victims through $250 SAVE Card Whether impacted by an unprecedented wildfire, mudslide, flood, earthquake or a global pandemic, the California Fire Foundation stands ready to help Californians when they need it most. "Here at the California Fire Foundation, our mission is to support survivors, firefighters and communities affected by natural disasters," said Rick Martinez, Executive Director of the California Fire Foundation. "These unrelenting storms we are all experiencing across every inch of California have a devastating and disproportionate impact on already under-resourced communities. This $1 million in relief supports the critical needs of those most impacted by these catastrophic storms." The initial disbursement in aid will be 500 SAVE cards totaling $125,000 in disaster relief aid, distributed in partnership with Cal OES at the Merced County Fairgrounds starting January 18th. The California Fire Foundation's wide variety of programs, from immediate assistance to long-term recovery, supports vital needs of those affected by natural disaster, while being committed to the mission of providing emotional and financial assistance to families of fallen firefighters, firefighters, and the communities they protect across the state. For more information on California Fire Foundation's Disaster Relief Fund and how to support this vital program, visit www.cafirefoundation.org/programs/disaster-relief-programs. The California Fire Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, provides emotional and financial assistance to families of fallen firefighters, firefighters, and the communities they protect. Formed in 1987 by California Professional Firefighters, the California Fire Foundation's mission includes survivor and victim assistance programs and a range of community initiatives. cafirefoundation.org. Media Contact: Fera Dayani, CA Fire Foundation; (916) 921-9111; [email protected] SOURCE California Fire Foundation King Mohammed VI of Morcoco speaks at the United Nations COP22 conference in 2016. Two French journalists have gone on trial in France on charges of trying to blackmail the king of Morocco - allegedly demanding money to hush purportedly damaging revelations about him. Eric Laurent, 75, and Catherine Graciet, 48, are accused of demanding 2million in 2015 in exchange for halting the publication of a book about the Moroccan royal family. Both writers, who face up to five years in jail and 75,000 in fines if found guilty, have denied any wrongdoing and say it was a lawyer representing the Moroccan royal family who first offered them the money. In court on Monday Laurent admitted to an "ethical error", a "disaster" in having accepted to "let myself be caught up in this affair", but denied having committed "any criminal offence". Co-author Graciet said that the Moroccan envoy "seduced me with his financial offer, I took the plunge and I regret it". The trial of French #Journalists #CatherineGraciet and #EricLaurent who attempted to blackmail King #MohammedVI opened in #ParisThe case dates back to 2015 when they threatened to publish a book about the King unless they were paid 2 million.Read More: https://t.co/XYhtMr62QW pic.twitter.com/BkCswOnCfp-- Morocco World News (@MoroccoWNews) January 16, 2023 'Embarrassing revelations' The writers had already published a highly critical book on King Mohammed VI in 2012 titled "The Predator King", which was banned in Morocco. Ahead of the planned publication of a second volume, Laurent met a lawyer representing the monarchy at the bar of a Parisian hotel in August 2015 and warned him it contained potentially embarrassing revelations for the monarchy. Morocco accuses the journalist of offering to halt the book's publication, originally due in early 2016, in exchange for 3million. He allegedly later reduced that amount to two million following negotiations. However, Laurent maintains the lawyer representing Morocco was the one who suggested a financial deal to prevent the information from getting out. C'est un proces peu banal qui se tenait a Paris.Deux journalistes renommes, Catherine Graciet et Eric Laurent, sont soupconnes d'avoir voulu obtenir de l'entourage de #MohammedVI, 2 millions pour ne pas publier un livre embarrassant. Point M. Meddeb #RFImatin pic.twitter.com/ka1ePBh9kH-- RFI Afrique (@RFIAfrique) January 17, 2023 Taped conversations After the first meeting, Morocco filed a complaint and an investigation was opened in Paris. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Morocco Legal Affairs Europe and Africa By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. This time under police surveillance, the lawyer and Laurent then met again at the same hotel later that same month. They met a third time in late August 2015 at another hotel, where they were joined by Graciet and both writers purportedly signed a deal to receive two million euros in exchange for not bringing out the book. They were arrested afterwards in the possession of two envelopes each containing 40,000 in cash, which Morocco has claimed was the first instalment of the agreed larger sum. During the investigation, both writers admitted to having agreed to a deal to halt the book's publication over geopolitical concerns, but denied the charge of blackmail. Laurent's lawyer, Serge Portelli, has said both journalists fell into a "trap set up by the Moroccan services". After their arrest, it emerged that the Moroccan king's representative had secretly made recordings of all meetings, and passed them on to investigators. "This recording is a fake," Laurent said on Monday, when confronted with a transcript of certain passages in which he appears to actively suggest a sum of money. An expert assessment previously found that the copies of the recordings handed over to investigators seemed to have undergone some kind of "post-treatment, impossible to define". But a court in 2017 rejected the defence's argument that the tapes were inadmissible. EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cambrex, a leading global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) providing drug substance, drug product, and analytical services across the entire drug lifecycle, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Snapdragon Chemistry, a leading US-based provider of chemical process development services to a broad range of emerging and established biopharma customers. "Today, we welcome our new colleagues from Snapdragon to Cambrex," said Tom Loewald, CEO of Cambrex. "With Snapdragon's depth of scientific expertise in API process development, I'm certain our customers will see the benefits of this combination and be delighted to work with Snapdragon's team." "I am extremely proud of what our team at Snapdragon has built over the years," said Matt Bio, CEO of Snapdragon. "With Cambrex, we have found an ideal home for our customers and employees, and I look forward to continued success as part of Cambrex." Snapdragon Chemistry specializes in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) batch and continuous flow process development, utilizing state-of-the-art automation technology and proprietary equipment to solve complex process and analytical development challenges. With R&D and manufacturing headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Snapdragon's 70+ employees come with strong ties to the local scientific community, with 31 PhD scientists on staff. Cambrex continues to expand its portfolio of specialized solutions for pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, with Snapdragon bolstering its depth of expertise in continuous flow manufacturing and complementing recent investments in continuous flow process development capabilities at its High Point, North Carolina facility. About Cambrex Cambrex is a leading global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) that provides drug substance, drug product, and analytical services across the entire drug lifecycle. With over 40 years of experience and a growing team of over 2,300 experts servicing global clients from North America and Europe, Cambrex is a trusted partner in branded and generic markets for API and finished dosage form development and manufacturing. Cambrex offers a range of specialized drug substance technologies and capabilities, including continuous flow, controlled substances, solid-state science, material characterization, stability storage, and highly potent APIs. In addition, Cambrex can support conventional dosage forms, including oral solids, semi-solids, and liquids, and has the expertise to manufacture specialty dosage forms such as modified-release, fixed-dose combination, pediatric, bi-layer tablets, stick packs, topicals, controlled substances, sterile, and non-sterile ointments. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1198585/Cambrex_Logo.jpg SOURCE Cambrex LAS VEGAS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A report from pingwest: Premium electric vehicle brand ZEEKR has made a big splash on the global stage after two years of rapid development. The Geely-owned EV maker brought two models to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year. ZEEKR is an up-and-coming EV manufacturer owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, one of the biggest automakers in China. ZEEKR and Waymo's robotaxi on the road. The robotaxi features rotatable front seats, foldable tables, and large screens to create a homey ambiance. ZEEKR 001, a shooting brake and the first model produced by ZEEKR. People were drawn to the Mobileye booth, where the ZEEKR 001 is located. The most stunning part about this vehicle is the absence of steering wheels. The Waymo customized model of ZEEKR M-Vision was jointly made by Waymo and ZEEKR. The robotaxi has already made its premiere in Los Angeles and will soon operate commercially in the U.S. The futuristic-looking M-Vision was created in ZEEKR's R&D center, the China Euro Vehicle Technology AB(CEVT), in Gothenburg, Sweden. Mats Fagerhag, the CEO of CEVT, described the Waymo robotaxi as a combination of "the best driver and the best car." The other model, the ZEEKR 001, came to the show with Mobileye's latest Eye Q5 chip technology. The Intel subsidiary and the Chinese automaker is expanding their strategic technology partnership to develop a new all-electric consumer vehicle with L4 autonomous driving capabilities, which is anticipated to debut in 2024. Although ZEEKR is not yet available for sale in markets outside of China, it certainly turned a few heads at CES. Some even said ZEEKR's cars "don't look like a typical car from a Chinese company." The newborn EV innovator is a force to be reckoned with As a latecomer to the EV race, ZEEKR catches up quickly. ZEEKR was established in March 2021. With full support from its mother company, Geely, ZEEKR has been a hotshot in the Chinese EV world since its inception. By 2023, the brand will have accumulated more than 250 stores and over 600 charging stations in 110 cities. Records show that EV buyers are actively responding to the ambitious brand. In 2022, the brand delivered 71,941 units. In addition, with its impressive numbers, the brand has been acknowledged as the consecutive sales champion among luxury EVs in China. As a consumer-driven brand, ZEEKR also prides itself on consumer satisfaction. The ZEEKR 001 has over 1.57 million configuration combinations. The brand expects to deliver more than 140,000 cars in 2023, which not only hints at the car's popularity but also the company's manufacturing power and technological capabilities. One of the technological backbones of ZEEKR is the Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), on which Geely has been working for years. In short, SEA is industry's most flexible and first open-source architecture for a new generation of electric vehicles. It can be adapted to multiple platforms covering various vehicle types. It is seen as a one-size-fits-all architecture that can work seamlessly after some fine-tuning to cater to specific needs. In November last year, ZEEKR has announced its SEA-M (Modular Mobility Architecture). Refined from the original SEA, SEA-M supports a range of future mobility products including robotaxis, multi-purpose vehicles, and logistics vehicle. SEA-M lays a solid and flexible ground for global autonomous driving technology or ride-sharing companies to develop. The SEA-M architecture has been demonstrated on US-based autonomous driving technology company Waymo's newly launched robotaxi. After one year of collaboration between the two companies, the robotaxi developed based on ZEEKR M-Vision (the concept car of SEA-M) has been revealed. In addition to collaborating with Waymo, ZEEKR has developed an assisted driving system called NZP (Navigation ZEEKR Pilot) in collaboration with Mobileye, which is most applicable in highway scenarios. The NZP solution has just been revealed and opened for leading customers on January 6, 2023. ZEEKR's NZP solution incorporates the 7nm Mobileye EyeQ5H chip, and the company is the first use case of the chip. Without a doubt, it takes a lot of guts to be the first customer. For ZEEKR (again, a company merely two-year-old), being the pioneer of the EyeQ5 chip means tweaking algorithms which is a testament to its technological abilities and revolutionary spirit. Speaking of technological abilities, the company has a whopping 4,500 people in its R&D team, spanning 30 countries in the world. Out of the 4,500, 65% focus on software development. The company positions itself as more than an EV maker, and more like an EV innovator. It prides itself in research capabilities in five key areas: development of application algorithms, middleware development, underlying software design and development, system architecture design, and hardware development. ZEEKR answers the market's call with its Europe expansion After ZEEKR's collaboration with Waymo was made public, the EV maker's global ambition became apparent. Just recently, it filed for an IPO in the U.S. -- If it succeeds, it will become the ninth public company under the Geely umbrella. Answering the call of overseas markets, in 2023, ZEEKR will be coming to Europe. In 2013, it already founded CEVT, to provide product development support to car brands. Before CEVT, Geely, the mother company of ZEEKR and one of the most prominent Chinese carmaker, already has numerous ties to Europe. Geely's link to Europe starts with acquiring Volvo in 2010. The car-making giant also runs several vehicle brands including Lynk & CO, Polestar, and the London Electric Vehicle Company. According to ZEEKR, it has set up a marketing team in Europe that is actively exploring its commercialization model. The team will be collaborating with the company's headquarters in China and its R&D team in Gothenburg. Interested onlookers won't have to wait too long for the brand's next steps, as their Europe strategy will be announced later this year. SOURCE pingwest CMIT Solutions Ranked as a top provider in 'Tech Businesses' Category as a MSP AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CMIT Solutions was recognized as one of the top 500 franchises on Entrepreneur's Franchise 500, the world's first, best, and most comprehensive franchise ranking. For the 12th year in a row, the IT services company has found itself earning a spot on this list. This achievement by CMIT Solutions highlights the successful growth of the company in 2022. "Our goal is to continue supporting businesses by providing them with the best-in-class IT services and cybersecurity solutions," said Roger Lewis, CEO of CMIT Solutions. "With an expansive network of trusted franchise locations across the country rallying around our 200M MSP vision, we have been able to achieve rapid growth and we are flourishing in the tech industry. We provide a proven system for an entrepreneur to open a business and maximize their chances of success." In Entrepreneur's continuing effort to best understand and evaluate the ever-changing franchise marketplace, the company's 44-year-old ranking formula also continues to evolve. The editorial team researches and assesses several factors that go into the evaluation, including costs and fees, size and growth, support, brand strength, and financial strength and stability. Each franchise is given a cumulative score based on an analysis of more than 150 data points, and the 500 franchises with the highest cumulative scores become the Franchise 500 in ranking order. "The past year has been really transformative for franchises, shining a light on the unique challenges and changes that have shaped the franchise industry; this list is reflective of the franchisors who have adapted and evolved to meet those obstacles," says Entrepreneur Editor in Chief Jason Feifer. "Each company on this year's list embodies what it means to be a successful franchise built upon entrepreneurial-forward individuals." CMIT Solutions offers a broad spectrum of IT services including computer monitoring, help desk, back-up and recovery, and cybersecurity, along with quick response onsite services when unexpected IT issues occur. CMIT Solutions has carved out its niche as an industry innovator that specializes in working with the small to mid-sized business community. Combining this with the company's leading technology partners gives the SMB community an edge in today's increasingly challenging marketplace. Over its 44 years in existence, the Franchise 500 has become both a dominant competitive measure for franchisors and a primary research tool for potential franchisees. CMIT Solution's position on the ranking is a testament to its strength as a franchise opportunity. To view CMIT Solutions in the full ranking, visit www.entrepreneur.com/franchise500. Results can also be seen in the January/February 2023 issue of Entrepreneur, available on January 10th. For more information about available franchise opportunities, visit cmitfranchise.com/. About CMIT Solutions CMIT Solutions LLC (CMIT) is a leading Managed Services Provider (MSP) franchisor delivering information technology (IT) and cybersecurity solutions to businesses. Through a large network of enterprise-class technology resources, the company supports businesses anywhere in the United States and Canada, and its locally owned franchise model enables CMIT to serve customers through high-trust, direct relationships. CMIT offers a wide variety of services and products, including IT management and maintenance, cybersecurity monitoring, help desk support, data backup and recovery, and more. The organization has ranked in Entrepreneur magazine's Franchise 500 list for eight consecutive years and is designated as a World Class Franchise by the Franchise Research Institute. For more information on CMIT, please visit cmitsolutions.com. About Entrepreneur Media Inc. For 43 years, Entrepreneur Media Inc. has been serving the entrepreneurial community providing comprehensive coverage of business and personal success through original content and events. Entrepreneur magazine, Entrepreneur.com, and publishing imprint Entrepreneur Press provide solutions, information, inspiration and education read by millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners worldwide. To learn more, visit entrepreneur.com. SOURCE CMIT Solutions Call for Applications MIAMI, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ --BH Compliance is now accepting applications for qualifying ethics and compliance officers to join Compliance Dialogues in the Metaverse. The program gives a select group of industry experts an opportunity to discuss current and potential risks and other issues relevant to the compliance sector in the metaverse and related technological innovations. Compliance Dialogues in the Metaverse is a series of six peer-to-peer conversations that meet once per month and are designed to advance our knowledge of the metaverse and to assist ethics and compliance experts in identifying new challenges and learning new skills that they can apply in their roles. Each session provides a forum to explore potentially risky, illegal, and otherwise questionable practices that could flourish in or in relation to the metaverse. The sessions also discuss the legal remedies for corrupt practices taking place in the metaverse, which jurisdictions would govern, how to draft compliance anti-corruption policies applicable to the metaverse and virtual reality ("VR") universe, and talk about future trends in ethics and compliance that could be unique to the metaverse, among other topics. Each meeting lasts about 90 minutes and is divided into two parts: the first 45 minutes is dedicated to a collaborative conversation focused on compliance challenges in the metaverse and how companies can address any issues that may arise in their compliance programs. In the remaining 45 minutes, explores the metaverse together and learn from those interactions. Each meeting will be recorded so we can share the takeaways and, hopefully, use that information to develop compliance programs and inspire policies and regulations. The 2023 schedule will be announced in January. Each participant will be responsible for having their own VR equipment (Oculus Quest 2 or equivalent) to participate. Compliance Dialogues in the Metaverse is hosted by Manuel A. Gomez , Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Global Engagement at Florida International University College of Law, and Susana Sierra , CEO of BH Compliance and a distinguished leader in compliance and anticorruption. The VR series is designed to build a community of ethics and compliance officers who are ahead of what is coming. Companies are already selling, buying, and closing all sorts of transactions in the metaverse. Compliance officers need to understand this new reality so they can advise their organizations accordingly, to minimize and prevent compliance risks. To apply visit: https://forms.gle/7euxyQzp7SckFFZv9 Media contact: Paola Iuspa-Abbott [email protected] 3057265848 SOURCE BH Compliance CureLab Veterinary addresses a $207 billion global pet cancer market, and Elenavet, the company's lead drug, has successfully treated 10 out of 11 dogs with breast cancer; this is an equity crowdfunding opportunity for early equity investment where one can own part of a promising biotech company BOSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CureLab Veterinary, an emerging animal health biotech company, has launched its crowdfunding campaign via Netcapital, a leading investment crowdfunding platform. CureLab Veterinary's lead product, Elenavet (a supercoiled circular DNA called a plasmid), has successfully treated 10 out of 11 dogs with breast cancer. Following a recent angel investment of $2.5 million, CureLab Veterinary is targeting a significant market opportunity with its therapeutic. There are 85 million dogs and 103 million cats in Europe. For the USA, these numbers are 96 and 90 million respectively. 43% of dogs and 32% of cats over the age of 10 will suffer from cancer, and many pet parents willingly pay at least $2,000 for a course of cancer treatment to help their beloved pet. "After the success of our early clinical trials, we are anxious to start the approval process with the USDA and production in the United States to help reduce the pain and suffering of pets," said Robert Devlin, DVM, MBA, of CureLab Veterinary. "Studies have shown that when pets have cancer, their owner's health is also compromised. Pets are integral family members for most US households, and CureLab Veterinary wants to help save their lives. We are looking to the larger pet-loving community to invest in our company. For as little as $100, investors can make an enormous positive social impact for pets and participate in an opportunity for financial upside." In veterinary clinics outside the United States, Elenavet has demonstrated encouraging initial results for both dogs and cats with different types of cancer. Whether prescribed alone or in conjunction with additional chemotherapeutic agents, Elenavet, once approved, could capture and expand a significant share of the cancer therapy market. As a secondary market after cancer, CureLab Veterinary is planning to treat diseases of aging in dogs, cats, and horses. The company has a comprehensive patent portfolio in over 20 countries both for cancer and for diseases of chronic inflammation. Osteoarthritis, for example, debilitates 80% of elderly dogs and 90% of cats. CureLab Veterinary has already established a constructive dialog with regulators in the United States (USDA-CVB) and the European Union (CVM). The company wishes to attain conditional licensure in the US within 36 months after conclusion of the investment round. The conditional licensure will provide the company with a right to sell leading to profitability. An alternate business strategy may be to license the product to a pharmaceutical company. "There are many ways to raise money, but most of them involve a gatekeeper between our talents and the everyday people who want to invest," said CureLab Veterinary Founder Dr. Alexander Shneider. "That gatekeeper is known collectively as Wall Street the VCs, underwriters, or other form of institutionalized 'wisdom' that stand between us, the innovators, and people we are committed to helping. We are leveling the playing field with a Reg CF crowdfunding offering. Anybodyfrom a student to a Fortune 500 CEOcan become a part of CureLab Veterinary's success. To me, this is the highest form of economic democracy and is why we chose to crowdfund over other types of fundraising." CureLab Veterinary's equity crowdfunding campaign is now live. Anyone can invest through the Netcapital platform. About CureLab Veterinary Today, our four-legged family members are living longer than ever. Unfortunately, with this longer lifespan, our furry friends now are experiencing many of the same cancers and diseases due to chronic inflammation as their pet parents. CureLab Veterinary, a sister company of CureLab Oncology, is dedicated to bringing advanced therapies to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases to support better pet health and longevity. To learn more, visit curelabveterinary.com. Media contact: Tim Cox, ZingPR, [email protected] SOURCE CureLab Veterinary Wildfires are becoming increasingly more frequent and severe all over the world with the climate crisis. Led by Koc Holding in cooperation with the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and guided by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the AI-based FireAId initiative was displayed at the Davos Annual Meeting 2023, where it was hailed as a model for wildfire-risk mitigation. Koc Holding CEO Levent Cakroglu said: "We are willing to work with all interested stakeholders, international organizations, and especially countries, which are vulnerable to wildfire risks. To protect our forests, we will continue to deploy and share Koc Group's AI capabilities for the common good of our world." ISTANBUL, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Koc Holding CEO Levent Cakroglu is taking part in the Davos Summit hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on January 16-20, 2023. The summit , which will be the WEF's 53rd annual meeting of its kind, will see 2,700 leaders from 130 countries gather under the theme of 'Cooperation in a Fragmented World' and will focus on solutions and public-private cooperation to tackle the world's most pressing challenges. Levent Cakroglu Project Screenshot WEF Report Cover The technology, which was highlighted at this year's Davos Summit, FireAId, is an AI-based initiative developed jointly by Koc Group subsidiary KocDigital and the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry under the guidance of WEF. It was cited as an exemplary initiative on a global scale, serving as a space for global climate technology leaders in both industry and government to share, learn and accelerate new, sustainable, data-driven AI for wildfire efforts. In conjunction with FireAId, a detailed report titled The Next Frontier in Fighting Wildfires: FireAId Pilot and Scaling, has been published on the FireAId project to provide further context and information and includes a foreword by Koc Holding CEO Levent Cakroglu together with a statement from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's General Director of Forests Bekir Karacabey. A special panel discussion held to provide information about the project at the Davos Summit was moderated by World Economic Forum's Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Kay Firth-Butterfield and was attended by Koc Holding CEO Levent Cakroglu. Levent Cakroglu: "FireAId is a non-commercial product. Koc Group is ready to share algorithms and source codes for further improvements through cooperation." Noting that FireAId made it possible to intervene more rapidly in wildfire outbreaks through the development of a dynamic fire-risk map, Levent Cakroglu said: "For this unique effort, more than 400 variables from 14 different datasets were analyzed using a sophisticated AI-based model that now helps public bodies to conduct more precise decision making, saving them precious time. Successful results achieved during the pilot implementation in 2022 have encouraged us to further develop the model, scaling it to different parts of the world in partnership with more stakeholders. On behalf of our country as well as of Koc Group, we're proud that WEF has pointed to FireAId as a worldwide example initiative. We will continue to deploy and share our group's AI capabilities for the common good of our world." As the FireAId project progresses, Koc Holding have signaled a willingness to work with all interested stakeholders, international organizations, and especially countries, which are vulnerable to wildfire risks. According to Levent Cakroglu, Koc Group is ready to share algorithms and source codes for further improvements through cooperation. Underlining that this is a non-commercial product, Cakroglu continued: "The FireAId pilot project covered an area of 44,000 square kilometers in Turkey's southern Aegean and western Anatolian regions. After a detailed discussion with the Turkish Forestry General Directorate, we've begun efforts to scale the pilot to cover all regions in Turkey as the next step. In line with this, we are eager to work with data providers and piloting partners all over the world; if we can bring together and orchestrate the technological know-how of the private sector, the experience of the public sector, and the knowledge of the academia and expand international cooperation so as to focus on the common good, we believe that it's possible to come up with long-term, enduring solutions to every problem that requires global coordination." The original WEF special report is accessible from this link. About Koc Holding Koc Holding is Turkey's leading investment holding company and the Koc Group is Turkey's largest industrial and services group in terms of revenues, exports, number of employees, taxes paid and market capitalization on Borsa Istanbul. Being the only Turkish company to be ranked in the Fortune Global 500 List, Koc Holding has leading positions with strong competitive advantages in the energy, automotive, consumer durables and finance industry sectors. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985680/Levent_Cakiroglu.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985681/Project_Screenshot.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985682/WEF_Report_Cover.jpg SOURCE Koc Holding LONDON and HUDSON, Ohio, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Diebold Nixdorf, a world leader in automating, digitizing and transforming the way people bank and shop, recently was named Best Banking Technology Solutions Provider Europe 2022 by Global Banking & Finance Review. The company won the prestigious award for its contributions to the technology sector for the second time in three years, having previously won the honor in 2020. In addition, Diebold Nixdorf was presented with the Next 100 Global Awards 2022 Technology Solutions Provider award, which recognizes exciting, innovative and promising businesses from around the world that are at the forefront of strategy, achievements, dedication and leadership. Diebold Nixdorf helps banks connect with customers by providing self-service solutions for modern challenges. The company designs and develops a range of products and software, accompanied by comprehensive managed services, allowing customers to engage in the banking experience through self-service solutions. Wanda Rich, editor of Global Banking & Finance Review, said: "Diebold Nixdorf continues to excel on multiple levels, and that is why it has won two awards in recognition of its work. The company continues to impress us with innovate technology solutions, allowing banks to create seamless experiences for their customers, improve operational efficiency and increase revenue." Global Banking & Finance Review found Diebold Nixdorf to stand out among its contemporaries in advanced automation, operational efficiency, end-to-end banking service solutions and innovation. Finally, the company's digital-first solutions, including the DN Series ATMs, show the product line's ability to adapt to an ever-changing world of banking and finance. Joe Myers, executive vice president, global banking, at Diebold Nixdorf said: "We are extremely proud to receive these awards, and for Diebold Nixdorf to be recognized as a leader in technology that supports financial institutions to create consumer journeys that delight existing customers and attract new ones. We are passionate about supporting the global banking industry to elevate the services and solutions they offer and providing technology that delivers for both today and tomorrow." About Global Banking & Finance Review Global Banking & Finance Review is the leading online and print magazine for the banking and financial sector. The website receives over 7 million page views each year thanks to its balanced views and informative, independent news centered on the financial sector. The Global Banking & Finance Awards was created to recognize companies of all sizes that are prominent in particular areas of expertise and excellence within the global financial community. The awards are known throughout the global banking and financial community. They reflect the innovation, achievement, strategy, progression, and inspirational changes taking place within the financial sector. About Diebold Nixdorf Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated (NYSE: DBD) automates, digitizes and transforms the way people bank and shop. As a partner to the majority of the world's top 100 financial institutions and top 25 global retailers, our integrated solutions connect digital and physical channels conveniently, securely and efficiently for millions of consumers each day. The company has a presence in more than 100 countries with approximately 22,000 employees worldwide. Visit www.DieboldNixdorf.com for more information. Twitter: @DieboldNixdorf LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/diebold Facebook: www.facebook.com/DieboldNixdorf YouTube: www.youtube.com/dieboldnixdorf DN-B SOURCE Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated -Film Features The GRAMMY(R) Nominated Song "Stompin' Ground" From Musician Aaron Neville And The Dirty Dozen Brass Band- LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- TAKE ME TO THE RIVER NEW ORLEANS , which celebrates the rich musical history, the heritage, legacy, and influence of New Orleans and Louisiana music through live sessions with local artists, will be released digitally on iTunes, GooglePlay, Amazon and more beginning on February 3rd, just ahead of the 65th GRAMMY Awards, it was announced today by Director/ Producer Martin Shore. The film and soundtrack feature the GRAMMY nominated song "Stompin' Ground," a collaboration between Aaron Neville and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and produced by Martin Shore and Eric Krasno. The song is nominated under the Best American Roots Performance. TAKE ME TO THE RIVER NEW ORLEANS is the second in the franchise of the award-winning TAKE ME TO THE RIVER films. The new movie celebrates the rich musical history, the heritage, legacy, and influence of New Orleans and Louisiana. A true collaboration and melting pot of influences from around the world, that came together and formed one of the world's most unique cultural jewels. Our adventure shows the resiliency of surviving disaster to a formidable rebirth while pairing legacy musicians with stars of today, and how this unique cultural jewel came to exist. Featuring New Orleans artists such The Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Ledisi, G-Eazy, Snoop Dogg, WIlliam Bell, Galactic, Mannie Fresh, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, George Porter Jr., Christian Scott, Donald Harrison, Big Freeda, Ani DiFranco, PJ Morton of Maroon 5, Rebirth Brass Band, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Soul Rebels, Voice of the Wetlands, The Givers, Dumpstaphunk, Cheeky Blakk, Lost Bayou Ramblers, Big Sam, Terence Higgins, Walter Wolfman Washington, Dee-1, Davell Crawford and many others, and is narrated by New Orleans local and actor, John Goodman. The film was directed by Martin Shore, produced by Martin Shore, Cody Dickinson, Dan Sameha, Eric Heigle, Eric Krasno, Ian Neville, and Ted Chung and co-produced by John Goodman and Lawrence "Boo" Mitchell. "After a successful theatrical run and GRAMMY chapter screenings across the country I'm so excited that now all the Take Me to the River fans will be able to experience Take Me to the River New Orleans whenever convenient," said director Martin Shore. "The film is a love letter to New Orleans history, legacy, culture, music, and people, and hopefully after viewing the film, fans will book a trip to New Orleans and experience it live!" TAKE ME TO THE RIVER NEW ORLEANS originally opened in theaters nationwide beginning on April 22, 2022, and simultaneously, the TAKE ME TO THE RIVER ALL-STARS LIVE performances featuring musicians from the film including Ivan Neville, Ian Neville, Jon Cleary, Robert Mercurio, Terence Higgins & more traveled to select cities around the nation holding live concerts that coincided with the films opening in select markets. TAKE ME TO THE RIVER LIVE featuring Dumpstaphunk, Geore Porter Jr., and Jon Cleary will continue to hit the road starting February 24th in Portland, and continuing on to other locations. For more information on dates and locations, check out www.takemetotheriver.org/tour . For more information on the film, please visit: http://www.takemetotheriver.org/ Or follow TAKE ME TO THE RIVER NEW ORLEANS on social at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tmttrfilm/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmttrfilm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tmttr_film/ SOURCE TAKE ME TO THE RIVER NEW ORLEANS TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- EasySend today announced the availability of the EasySend app for Microsoft Dynamics 365 on Microsoft AppSource, an online cloud marketplace providing tailored line-of-business solutions. For any organization that needs to intake data and signatures from customers, EasySend's no-code digital transformation solution delivers an easy and quick way to transform complex forms into digital experiences so that they can automate their workflows, streamline customer interactions and ensure data accuracy. By integrating EasySend's no-code platform, Microsoft users can now easily pre-populate fields, collect eSignatures, launch journeys, and optimize results securely all from the Microsoft ecosystem. The solution empowers organizations to quickly transform their manual customer data intake processes and PDF forms without the need for lengthy and expensive development projects. By leveraging no-code technology, organizations can go live with their digital transformation fast and at a fraction of the cost and internal resources. By using EasySend's, users can: Build digital customer journeys in the cloud right from Dynamics 365, using native fields and objects. Track customer progress, see how journeys are performing, and optimize every step based on real data. Manage all customer journeys in one place. When it comes time to launch, click send from Dynamics. Make it easy for customers to fill out the right answers with pre-populated fields and a two-way database that automatically syncs. "We are excited to announce that EasySend has integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365," said Tal Daskal, CEO and Co-Founder, EasySend. "Now, EasySend users will be able to create and manage their data collection forms within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM interface and seamlessly integrate their customer data collection journeys. We believe that this integration will provide a significant value add for our customers and help us to achieve our goal of transforming the way organizations collect customer data." Toby Bowers, General Manager, Business Applications Group, Microsoft Corp., said, "We're happy to welcome EasySend to Microsoft AppSource, which gives our customers access to the best solutions available from our extensive partner ecosystem. Microsoft AppSource offers partner solutions such as EasySend to help customers meet their needs faster." Learn more about EasySend at its page on Microsoft AppSource. About EasySend: EasySend is a no-code platform that empowers organizations to transform complex forms, customer data intake and signature collection processes into easy digital experiences. By collecting customer data and signatures in a way that seamlessly integrates into internal systems and processes, EasySend empowers organizations to automate workflows and streamline customer interactions. Learn more at easysend.io . For more information, press only: Elyssa Bloom, EasySend, (+972 54 320 9898), [email protected] SOURCE EasySend Today and tomorrow the Conference "Vibrant Cross-Border Labour Markets", organised by the European Commission takes place in Brussels. The EU internal border regions cover 40% of the EU territory, 1,3 million people are cross-border workers and 1/3 of Europe's population lives at the border1. Despite that they produce 30% of Europe's GDP2, cross-border commuting (working and residing on different sides of a border) does not come without challenges for individuals and organisations. The Border Effect (the negative impact of the border on economic development) is enormous. Should 1/5 of the obstacles they face be removed, an additional increase of 2% in their GDP3 could be expected. This would lead to the creation of one million jobs4. There is thus an enormous potential and the ambition to realise it is within hand's reach. BRUSSELS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today is the first time the Conference "Vibrant cross-border labour markets" takes place. This event is the result of DG REGIO's Cross-border review[5] in 2015 which led to the Commission's Communication "Boosting Growth and Cohesion in EU Border Regions" followed by the report "EU Border Regions: Living labs of European Integration" in 2021 on the gained knowledge and on the areas where action is needed. Action is indeed necessary as different challenges arise in multiple areas of frontier-workers their lives. Living in one country and having a job just across the border, implies different challenges like linkages of social security systems and with the new reality of recurring teleworking it poses furthermore new issues to social security access as the exact location of the job becomes less defined. Access to the labour market (e.g. finding vacancies) poses specific questions in cross-border markets. In communities with strong cross-border ties, different opportunities and challenges, appear in education, due to their cross-border potential that have a clear impact on local labour markets. Today education in these areas is often rigid and ineffective as it's designed from a national perspective which rules out synergies. The labour markets in cross-border communities could however greatly benefit from collaboration in the form of joint education. Employees and employers encounter difficulties with their taxation when work is conducted on both sides of a border (e.g. people having two jobs, regularly teleworking, companies with activities on both sides). Lack of clarity and an abundance of administrative procedures lead to situations of unfair taxation and increased red tape. Karl-Heinz Lambertz (former president of the European Committee of the Regions and current President of the Parliament of the German-speaking Community of Belgium), will in this light be discussing his report Fair distribution of taxes in transfrontier areas during the Conference. Additionally, The Fair Taxation Package will be examined during a panel discussion. This is an array of proposals, suited and geared towards a local approach to allow citizens to have access to wider job opportunities, to let individuals live in the territories they call home, to resolve taxation imbalances and to answer challenges faced by cross border workers. Elisa Ferreira, European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms confirms the importance of the cross-border labour markets ambitions: "Since the coronavirus outbreak and the current crisis, we have become even more aware of the importance of the European borders. We need a closer cooperation among border regions to tackle the challenges and remove the obstacles. The European Commission is committed to working hand-in-hand with border regions to fulfill its enormous potential and make sure no-one is left behind." Key speakers will be tackling the different challenges in practically-oriented sessions. Karl-Heinz Lambertz will be discussing the report Fair distribution of taxes in transfrontier areas, Tue David Bak, Managing Director of Greater Copenhagen, will be presenting the Scandinavian case and the local solutions to obstacles, and Christian Dupessey, President of the Mission Operationnelle Transfrontaliere (MOT), will dive into the implications of taxes in a border area from a regional perspective. The closing of the conference will be in attendance of European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights Nicolas Schmit (tbc). All information about the event can be found here: http://crossborderlabour.regio-events.eu/ 1 European Commission (2017) "Boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions", COM(2017) 534 final, Brussels, 20.9.2017, p.2. 2 European Commission (2017) "Boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions", COM(2017) 534 final, Brussels, 20.9.2017, p.2. 3 Camagni, R., Capello, R., Caragliu, A., & Toppeta, A. (2017). Quantification of the effects of legal and administrative border obstacles in land border regions. Politecnico di Milano, Milano. doi, 10, 25579. 4 https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/evidence-and-data/quantification-effects-legal-and-administrative-border-obstacles-land-border 5 https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/cooperation/european-territorial/cross-border/review/ SOURCE Interreg Europe Mr Yakubu says INEC is in support of diaspora voting but explains why it won't be allowed in the 2023 elections. Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of Nigeria's Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), on Tuesday, explained why Nigerians in the diaspora cannot vote in the upcoming February 2023 elections. Responding to a question about diaspora voting at a speaking appearance at Chatham House, London, United Kingdom, he said although the electoral body subscribes to it, the Nigerian law makes it impossible for such category of citizens to vote in the nation's elections. PREMIUM TIMES had earlier published Mr Yakubu's full speech which he delivered during his session at the Chatham House. "The position of law remains; unless you are resident in Nigeria, you cannot register and you cannot vote," he said. However, "I am absolutely convinced that it is only a matter of time when this will be achieved," Mr Yakubu added. He narrated that the commission maintains an open-door policy and has collaborated with different diaspora groups to the point when the proposition for diaspora voting was sent to the National Assembly for deliberation where it was defeated. Efforts at getting legal framework The issue of diaspora voting has been an ongoing conversation and was among the issues thrown up for deliberation at the constitution review hearings last year. In March 2022, the National Assembly struck out the proposal for diaspora voting even when INEC said it was ready. The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) in September of the same year said it would continue to canvas it. Diaspora voting allows non-resident Nigerians to vote and choose who leads the West African country. "Voting by those in the diaspora should be a settled issue and if you ask me, I will say you are preaching to the converted but the commission does not have the power to make it happen. The enabling law will have to be provided for it to happen," Mr Yakubu noted. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "Not just because of the remittances as people would argue, but because they are citizens and citizens must enjoy rights," he added. Nigeria has about 15 to 17 million of its citizens in the diaspora who, according to data from the World Bank and Budget Office of the Federation, remitted $60.22 billion in the last three years to boost economic activities and the nation's external reserves. Although not all of them have attained the voting age of 18 in Nigeria, the number constitutes 16 to 18 per cent of the total 93 million voters registered by INEC to vote in this election cycle. Mr Yakubu joins the list of persons directly connected to the upcoming elections to speak at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. Others who had had speaking sessions there are the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi. Two other candidates, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) are also expected to speak there. The Nigerian presidential election will be held on 25 February and a total of 18 candidates are scheduled to take part in next month's election but only four of them are believed to have a chance of victory. The four are Messrs Obi, Tinubu, Kwakwanso and Abubakar. FF Global Partners LLC ("FFGP"), the founding shareholder and a partnership of former and current key Faraday Future management team members, shall have the right to nominate four out of seven directors on the Board of Faraday Future Upon FFGP's request, shareholders will be asked to approve Charter amendments, including immediately increasing the voting power of FFGP's Class B Common Stock to 10 votes per share, and to 20 votes per share upon FFIE's market cap reaching $3 billion FFGP looks forward to moving past the Company's previous turmoil and towards a positive and successful future LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- FF Global Partners LLC, the founding shareholder and a partnership of former and current key Faraday Future ("FF", "FFIE", "the Company") management members, today announced that on January 13, 2023, FF Top Holding LLC ("FF Top"), an entity controlled and managed by FFGP, signed an Amended and Restated Shareholder Agreement (the "Shareholder Agreement") with the Company. FFGP hopes the Shareholder Agreement will provide much-needed stability and forward-looking, shareholder-focused leadership to the Company. Additionally, FFGP is pleased by the news that the Company and the China Huanggang Government ("City of Huanggang") have entered into a non-binding Cooperation Framework Agreement ("Framework Agreement") to promote the Company's US-China dual-home market strategy. FFGP shall have the right to nominate four out of seven directors on the Board of FFIE The newly signed Shareholder Agreement requires the Company, upon FF Top's request, to submit to shareholders binding proposals to amend the Company's charter in order to provide, among other things, 10-to-1 super voting rights to FFGP immediately upon shareholder approval, and 20-to-1 super voting rights upon the Company reaching a market capitalization of $3 billion. The Shareholder Agreement also provides that FF Top will have the right, but not the obligation, to nominate four directors (the "FF Top Designees") to the Company's seven-person board of directors (the "Board") until FF Top has ceased to beneficially own at least 21,333,530 shares of Common Stock for at least 365 consecutive days, of which two directors will be independent. FF Top will thereafter have the right to nominate a number of directors proportionate to its share ownership. In the event that an FF Top Designee fails to be elected at any meeting of FFIE's shareholders, then, upon FF Top's request in writing, the Company shall promptly expand the size of the Board by a number of seats equal to the number of non-elected FF Top Designees and FF Top shall have the exclusive right to fill the vacancy or vacancies on the Board created by such expansion (provided the individual or individuals who shall fill such vacancy or vacancies shall not be the same FF Top Designees who failed to get elected). The Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of the Board will verify and/or approve the appointment or nomination for election of any FF Top Designees (except for those for the 2023 annual meeting of shareholders, which are governed by the Heads of Agreement and the Amended Shareholder Agreement) according to the criteria in the Amended Shareholder Agreement. As a result of the Amended Shareholder Agreement, FFGP and FF Top may be deemed to control the Company. The FFIE governance chaos since listing has been resolved Prior to FFGP and FF Top's advocacy efforts on behalf of shareholders, the Company had repeatedly failed to meet its operational goals, poorly allocated its resources and attention (including with respect to the now-resolved governance dispute) and allowed its core business to stagnate and its financial position to deteriorate to the point where the Company faced a risk of delisting and even potential bankruptcy. Over the past year, FFGP has worked to successfully attract and identify investors to help stabilize the Company's position, at significant expense to its own economic and other rights and sought the appointment of directors and the hiring of executives focused on the best interests of shareholders and the future of the Company. FFGP believes that the FFIE Special Committee investigation conducted by the former FFIE Board, including the findings and remediation plan were inadequate, misguided and inaccurate. Rather than serving the interests of FFIE shareholders, the investigation was used, without factual basis, to harm FFGP and individuals associated with FFGP. The investigation and resulting remediation plan and corporate decisions have caused disruption to the business of FFIE since the company went public. The signing of the Shareholder Agreement signifies not only the end of a protracted, costly and unnecessary dispute but also the start of a promising new phase for the Company. FFGP believes, by securing FFGP's continued engagement with and contribution to the Company as the founding and key management team members, it will allow the Company to continue to build on its recently achieved promising developments, including the reorganization of the Board, the appointment of a new management team, the crucial financing obtained with the assistance of FFGP, and the progress made in developing the Company's business in both the US and China. This has led to what FFGP believes to be a positive development trajectory for FF's various businesses and ended the turmoil in FFIE's governance since its listing. FFGP feels that it and its partners, including current and former core executives of the Company, have the proven commitments to and key knowledge regarding the Company, and will provide the crucial support and guidance for the Company to help it to achieve its short, medium and long-term goals and be successful. The Shareholder Agreement is a major benefit to FFIE's global business development and future financing The Shareholder Agreement and changes to the governance structure also play a significant role in implementing FF's global business strategy. Under the Framework Agreement between FFIE and Huanggang City, both parties will collaborate to achieve mutual benefit and common development by leveraging their respective advantages in areas such as investment, technological innovation, industrial transformation, location and policy. Huanggang will support FF's business ventures in the city, including financial and policy support, and actively assist with deploying relevant resources and the industrial layout in the city. Faraday Future plans to relocate its China headquarters to Huanggang City while maintaining its global headquarters in Los Angeles, California. The Huanggang Government guide fund, industrial fund and FF will jointly fund the China headquarters. FFGP believes that the governance model reflected in the Shareholder Agreement aligns with industry best practices, such as the Alibaba Partnership model, and will help promote and maximize the interests of FFIE shareholders, investors, employees, suppliers and external partners. This structure has been endorsed by major shareholders of and investors in FFIE, including potential new FFIE investors. FFGP also believes that this model will help accelerate the financing progress of FFIE and help in the production of the FF 91 Futurist. "We are pleased that FFIE has completed the adjustment to its governance structure. This makes us confident in the stabilization of the Company, mass production of the FF 91 Futurist and the long-term success of FF", said FFGP President, Jerry Wang. FF Global Partners is comprised of dozens of core management members of FF from various professional fields such as AI, internet, IT, and the automotive industry who share the same vision and values and are also referred to as a "Futurist Alliance." Our governance structure is modeled after the Alibaba Partnership, where all partners share in entrepreneurship, ownership, risks, governance, and decision-making for FF. This approach has been a proven industry best practice and has given FF a unique competitive advantage, particularly in company culture, governance structure, and talent system. All partners represent the best interests of the company. NO OFFER OR SOLICITATION This communication shall neither constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. This communication is not a solicitation of proxies in connection with any matter to be voted upon by stockholders. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release includes "forward looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words "estimates," "projected," "expects," "anticipates," "forecasts," "plans," "intends," "believes," "seeks," "may," "will," "should," ""future," "propose", "potential" and variations of these words or similar expressions (or the negative versions of such words or expressions) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, many of which are outside the control of FF Top, that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Important factors, among others, that may affect actual results or outcomes include the Company's ability to satisfy the conditions precedent and close on the various financings referred to in this press release, the failure of any which could result in the Company seeking protection under the Bankruptcy Code; the failure of the conditions to the full implementation of FF Top's governance agreement with the Company to be satisfied and other factors. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and FF Top does not undertake any 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. Media Contact Stephen Rice, [email protected] SOURCE FF Top Holding LLC Bush will continue his record of success for the people of Texas and across the country AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Former Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush is excited to announce he is joining the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich LLP as a Partner and Michael Best Strategies LLC (Strategies) as a Principal. Bush will lead efforts to bolster the firm's corporate, litigation and consulting practices in Texas. He will serve as a strategic advisor on a variety of issues, including commercial real estate; investment fund formation and compliance; administrative law, public-private partnerships, and economic development. George P. Bush "I'm thrilled to continue my work in service to fast-growing and dynamic clients in Texas and the rest of the nation as part of Michael Best's team," Bush said. "Michael Best's focus on the critical issues facing Texas and the nation at large combined with their exceptional team of talented lawyers and advisory experts make for the perfect platform to continue serving the American people." David Crass, Managing Partner of Michael Best & Friedrich in Washington, D.C., said, "Michael Best is focused on bringing in the top talent to secure wins for our clients. We're thrilled to welcome George P. Bush to our team and excited to get to work for our clients across the country." Rob Marchant, President of Michael Best Strategies, said, "The Michael Best team gets results for clients in Washington D.C. and across the country because we understand business, law, and public policy. We are thrilled that George has decided to join us. He is a dedicated public servant and successful attorney and businessperson. I am excited to see the success he drives for our clients, whether in Texas, Washington D.C. or elsewhere." Bush is a native-born Texan, a graduate of Rice University and the University of Texas Law School. A military veteran, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve for 10 years and completed an 8-month tour in Afghanistan. A former businessman, Bush cut his professional teeth in the oil and gas and real estate industries. In 2014, Bush was elected as the 28th Texas Land Commissioner and overwhelmingly re-elected in 2018. During his two terms in office, he built a track record of success collaborating with local, state, and federal officials to make government work better for the citizens of Texas. Through his leadership of the Texas General Land Office, Bush helped thousands of Texans recover from natural disasters, funded Texas public education through the Permanent School Fund, provided benefits to Texas veterans, and preserved the Alamo, vast Texas coastline, and other state-owned lands for future generations of Texans. He also fought to protect the oil and gas industry from federal overreach and bureaucratic rulemaking and won. Bush is the grandson of President George H.W. Bush, the son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the nephew of President George W. Bush. He lives in Austin with his wife, Amanda, and their two sons. About Michael Best & Friedrich and Michael Best Strategies Michael Best is dedicated to our client's success. We're a full-service law firm with more than 350 lawyers and technical professionals who work in collaborative, interdisciplinary practices to serve clients around the world. Our Strategies team is a full service firm helping clients accelerate their success through a combination of strategic business consulting, lobbying, government relations, public affairs, communications and legal representation. The firm has thrived by providing a diverse team of professionals with experience, skills and relationships necessary to help each client achieve their goals more quickly and fully. Michael Best has nationwide reach with offices across several states and the District of Columbia. SOURCE Michael Best LLP and Michael Best LLC DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Advanced Wound Care Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global advanced wound care market size reached US$ 9.32 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 13.56 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 6.45% 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 on different end use sectors. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor. Advanced wound care is a standard medical solution that provides specialized treatment for chronic infections and non-healing wounds by removing dead and inflamed tissues. It includes medications, equipment, and several products that help treat acute and chronic wounds, such as burns, ulcers, and post-operative wounds. Advanced wound care products comprising silver and alginates are extensively used to remove excess fluids from wounds and protect them from infections. They include hydrogels, hydrocolloids, film and foam dressings, and alginates. They help retain skin moisture and facilitate quick healing of wounds internally and externally by promoting the growth of body cells. The increasing global geriatric population and the rising prevalence of pressure ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers, and other chronic wounds are among the key factors positively influencing the market. Chronic wounds are complex and non-healing infections that fail to progress through the healing phases in an orderly sequence. In addition, the increasing occurrence of diabetes, obesity, and a significant surge in the need for surgical procedures across the globe are catalyzing the demand for advanced wound care products as they help absorb necrotic tissues, which are highly effective in the rapid healing of surgical site infections. In line with this, the rising awareness among individuals about the proven benefits and effectiveness of these products is increasing their sales worldwide. Apart from this, technological advancements in advanced wound care products are contributing to market growth. For instance, nanoparticle-based wound healing and skin regeneration bioactive molecules over the applied area maintain the drug release and improve the therapeutic effects of drugs. Furthermore, the expansion of Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCs) that provide diagnostics, preventive procedures, and surgical care for pain management, orthopedics, urology, restorative, organ transplantation, and reconstructive surgeries, is propelling the market growth. Competitive Landscape: The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being 3M Company, B. Braun SE (B. Braun Holding GmbH & Co. KG), Cardinal Health, Inc., Coloplast A/S, Convatec Group plc, Essity AB, Integra LifeSciences, Medline Industries, LP, Medtronic plc, Molnlycke Health Care (Investor AB), Organogenesis Holdings Inc. and Smith & Nephew plc. Key Questions Answered in This Report: How has the global advanced wound care market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global advanced wound care market? What are the key regional markets? What is the breakup of the market based on the product? What is the breakup of the market based on the application? What is the breakup of the market based on the end user? What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry? What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry? What is the structure of the global advanced wound care 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 Advanced Wound Care Market 5.1 Market Overview 5.2 Market Performance 5.3 Impact of COVID-19 5.4 Market Forecast 6 Market Breakup by Product 6.1 Infection Management 6.1.1 Market Trends 6.1.2 Key Segments 6.1.2.1 Silver Wound Dressings 6.1.2.2 Non-silver Dressings 6.1.2.3 Collagen Dressings 6.1.3 Market Forecast 6.2 Exudate Management 6.2.1 Market Trends 6.2.2 Key Segments 6.2.2.1 Hydrocolloids Dressings 6.2.2.2 Foam Dressings 6.2.2.3 Alginate Dressings 6.2.2.4 Hydrogel Dressings 6.2.3 Market Forecast 6.3 Active Wound Care 6.3.1 Market Trends 6.3.2 Key Segments 6.3.2.1 Skin Substitutes 6.3.2.2 Growth Factors 6.3.3 Market Forecast 6.4 Therapy Devices 6.4.1 Market Trends 6.4.2 Key Segments 6.4.2.1 Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) 6.4.2.2 Oxygen and Hyperbaric Oxygen Equipment 6.4.2.3 Electromagnetic Therapy Devices 6.4.3 Market Forecast 6.5 Others 6.5.1 Market Trends 6.5.2 Market Forecast 7 Market Breakup by Application 7.1 Chronic Wounds 7.1.1 Market Trends 7.1.2 Key Segments 7.1.2.1 Pressure Ulcers 7.1.2.2 Diabetic Foot Ulcers 7.1.2.3 Venous Leg Ulcers 7.1.2.4 Arterial Ulcers 7.1.3 Market Forecast 7.2 Acute Wounds 7.2.1 Market Trends 7.2.2 Key Segments 7.2.2.1 Burns and Trauma 7.2.2.2 Surgical Wounds 7.2.3 Market Forecast 8 Market Breakup by End User 8.1 Hospitals 8.1.1 Market Trends 8.1.2 Market Forecast 8.2 Community Health Service Centers 8.2.1 Market Trends 8.2.2 Market Forecast 9 Market Breakup by Region 10 SWOT Analysis 11 Value Chain Analysis 12 Porters Five Forces Analysis 13 Price Analysis 14 Competitive Landscape 14.1 Market Structure 14.2 Key Players 14.3 Profiles of Key Players 14.3.1 3M Company 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 B. Braun SE (B. Braun Holding GmbH & Co. KG) 14.3.2.1 Company Overview 14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.3 Cardinal Health, Inc. 14.3.3.1 Company Overview 14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.3.3 Financials 14.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis 14.3.4 Coloplast A/S 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 Convatec Group plc 14.3.5.1 Company Overview 14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.5.3 Financials 14.3.6 Essity AB 14.3.6.1 Company Overview 14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.6.3 Financials 14.3.7 Integra LifeSciences 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 Medline Industries, LP 14.3.8.1 Company Overview 14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.8.3 SWOT Analysis 14.3.9 Medtronic plc 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 Molnlycke Health Care (Investor AB) 14.3.10.1 Company Overview 14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.10.3 SWOT Analysis 14.3.11 Organogenesis Holdings Inc. 14.3.11.1 Company Overview 14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.11.3 Financials 14.3.12 Smith & Nephew plc 14.3.12.1 Company Overview 14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.12.3 Financials 14.3.12.4 SWOT Analysis For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/234lqt 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 PUNE, India, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a recent market study published by Growth Market Reports, titled, "Alloy Aluminum Forged Wheel Market by Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, Light Commercial Vehicles, and Heavy Commercial Vehicles), Distribution Channel (OEM and Aftermarket), and Region: Size, Share, Trends and Opportunity Analysis, 2023-2031", the market size was valued at USD 8.6 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 13.3 billion, expanding at a CAGR of 5.2% by the end of 2031. The global market growth is attributed to the increasing adoption of lightweight alloy wheels. Key Market Players Profiled in the Report CITIC Limited Forgeline Schott Wheel Howmet Aerospace Enkei International, Inc. BORBET GmBH RONAL GROUP Superior Industries International Inc Download PDF Sample here: https://growthmarketreports.com/request-sample/4927 The report covers comprehensive data on emerging trends, market drivers, growth opportunities, and restraints that can change the market dynamics of the industry. It provides an in-depth analysis of the market segments which include vehicle type, distribution channel, and competitor analysis. This report also includes a complete analysis of industry players and covers their latest developments, product portfolio, pricing, mergers, acquisitions, and collaborations. Moreover, it provides crucial strategies that are helping market players to expand their market share. Highlights on the segments of the Alloy Aluminum Forged Wheel Market Based on vehicle type, the alloy aluminum forged wheel market is fragmented into passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, and heavy commercial vehicles. The passenger cars segment is expected to expand at a rapid pace in the coming years owing to the increasing demand for performance-based vehicles. For Any Questions on This Report: https://growthmarketreports.com/enquiry-before-buying/4927 On the basis of distribution channels, the global market is bifurcated into OEM and aftermarket. The OEM segment is anticipated to hold a higher revenue share of the market during the forecast period. Increasing preference for OEM wheels among consumers is likely to propel the growth of the market. In terms of region, the global alloy aluminum forged wheel market is classified into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. However, the market of North America and Europe is projected to grow at a significant CAGR in the coming years. To Buy the Complete Report: https://growthmarketreports.com/report/alloy-aluminum-forged-wheel-market-global-industry-analysis Key Takeaways from the Study: Aluminum forged wheels are produced without voids, shrinking, and porosity, which makes them durable and light in weight by reducing around 20-25% weight compared to others. These wheels are strong and dense. Therefore, they are widely installed in high-end vehicles and high-performance cars. Adoption of lightweight alloy wheels increased in electric vehicles as it helps to increase the efficiency and performance of the vehicles, which drives the market growth. Thermal conductivity of aluminum alloy wheels easily dissipates the heat produced by the tire and vehicle chassis. Increasing investments in high technology and rising disposable income in developed and developing economies creates an immense growth opportunity in the coming years. Passenger cars such as luxury cars, supercars, SUV, sedans, and electric vehicles demand innovative designs and lightweight wheels. OEM wheels gaining traction due to their high quality and precise dimension. OEM wheels are designed for the specific model of vehicle. Rising research activities to develop innovative products create growth opportunities for the aftermarket manufacturers, which gaining market share. Technological growth in automotive wheels manufacturing drives the market of Asia Pacific . . It is anticipated that the market in North America grows quickly during the projected period, due to the wide presence of leading manufacturers in the US. However, the market in Europe is driven by the growing consumer preference for upgraded alloy wheels. Read 200 Pages Research Report with Detailed ToC on "Alloy Aluminum Forged Wheel Market by Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, Light Commercial Vehicles, and Heavy Commercial Vehicles), Distribution Channel (OEM and Aftermarket), and Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa) - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Share, Size, Trends, and Forecast, 2023 2031" Get Full Access to this Report: https://growthmarketreports.com/checkout/4927 Key Segments Covered Vehicle Type Passenger Cars Light Commercial Vehicles Heavy Commercial Vehicles Distribution Channel OEM Aftermarket Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East & Africa Other Related Reports: Global Aluminum Alloy Extrusion Profile Market by Type (Forward Extrusion, Backward Extrusion, Composite Extrusion, and Others), By Application (Automotive, Construction, Manufacturing, and Others), and Region ( North America , Latin America , Europe , Asia Pacific , and Middle East & Africa ) Global Truck Aluminium Alloy Wheel Market by Type (Casting, Forging, and Others), Application (OEM and Aftermarket), and Region ( North America , Latin America , Europe , Asia Pacific , and Middle East & Africa ), Forecast From 2022 To 2030 Global Automotive Aluminum Alloy Wheel Sales Market by Type (Casting, Forging, and Others), Application (Passenger Vehicle and Commercial Vehicle), and Region ( North America , Latin America , Europe , Asia Pacific , and Middle East & Africa ), Forecast To 2028 Global Aluminium Alloy Wheel Market by Type (Casting, Forging, and Others), Application (Passenger Vehicle and Commercial Vehicle), and Region ( North America , Latin America , Europe , Asia Pacific , and Middle East & Africa ), Forecast From 2022 To 2030 About Growth Market Reports: Growth Market Reports provides global enterprises as well as small & medium businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Industry Intelligence Solutions". Growth Market Reports has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients in making strategic business decisions and achieving sustainable growth in their respective market domains. Our key analysis segments, though not restricted to the same, include market entry strategies, market size estimations, market trend analysis, market opportunity analysis, market threat analysis, market growth/fall forecasting, primary interviews, and secondary research & consumer surveys. Contact: Alex Mathews 7th Floor, Siddh Icon, Baner Road, Baner, Pune. Maharashtra 411045. India. Phone: +1 909 414 1393 Email: [email protected] Web: https://growthmarketreports.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/growth_reports LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/growth-market-report/ Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1980656/Growth_Market_Reports_Logo1.jpg SOURCE Growth Market Reports CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- GTCR, a leading private equity firm, announced today that it has become a signatory of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment ("UN-supported PRI" or "PRI"). The UN-supported PRI is recognized as the leading global network for investors which are committed to integrating Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG") considerations into their investment practices and ownership policies. Formed in 2005 and launched at the New York Stock Exchange in 2006, the UN-supported PRI brings together an organization of the world's leading investors which share a dedication to implementing responsible investment practices. On behalf of GTCR, Co-CEOs Dean Mihas and Collin Roche stated: "GTCR has long worked to invest responsibly and with integrity, and we believe those components of our investment culture have contributed to our success. Our approach of partnering with management to drive transformational change also creates opportunities to implement ESG initiatives that can improve a business and drive better performance, while contributing to society in a positive way. As a firm, we believe that building better businesses drives long-term value creation and enhanced returns. We are pleased to join the PRI to extend our commitments to ESG integration in our strategy and to uphold these core Principles of responsible investing." David Atkin, CEO at the PRI, commented: "We're incredibly pleased to welcome GTCR as a signatory to the PRI. Firms that integrate ESG into their investment activity are demonstrating the strongest possible level of commitment to investing for the long-term benefit of their clients. We welcome GTCR's commitment to ESG and responsible investment and look forward to working with the firm as a valued signatory in the future." GTCR continues to prioritize its initiatives related to both ESG and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ("DEI") and it has taken a cross-organizational and collaborative approach to this work. Central to this strategy has been the establishment of its ESG-DEI Steering Committee, made up of functional and investment team senior leadership, which meets regularly to help guide these initiatives across the firm. The firm has also created a DEI Council, comprised of representatives at every level of the organization, working to promote an inclusive work environment. As investors, GTCR has a data-based approach and has developed underwriting and ongoing portfolio company monitoring processes related to ESG-DEI. The firm has eight topical working groups that address ESG-DEI in all areas of our business. In becoming a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment, GTCR will further extend its initiatives related to ESG. The firm recognizes the commitment and fiduciary duty to address these issues that can positively affect the performance of its investments. The six key Principles that GTCR is committing to are: Incorporate ESG issues into investment analysis and decision-making processes. Be active owners and incorporate ESG issues into our ownership policies and practices. Seek appropriate disclosure on ESG issues by the entities in which we invest. Promote acceptance and implementation of the principles within the investment industry. Work together to enhance our effectiveness in implementing the principles. Report on our activities and progress towards implementing the principles. GTCR looks forward to partnering with its peers to further enhance the content of the Principles over time, as well as encouraging other investors to adopt these principles. About GTCR Founded in 1980, GTCR is a leading private equity firm that pioneered The Leaders Strategy finding and partnering with management leaders in core domains to identify, acquire and build market-leading companies through organic growth and strategic acquisitions. GTCR is focused on investing in transformative growth in companies in the Business & Consumer Services, Financial Services & Technology, Healthcare and Technology, Media & Telecommunications sectors. Since its inception, GTCR has invested more than $24 billion in over 270 companies, and the firm currently manages over $26 billion in equity capital. GTCR is based in Chicago with offices in New York and West Palm Beach. For more information, please visit www.gtcr.com. Follow us on LinkedIn. About Principles for Responsible Investment The Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) is the world's leading proponent of responsible investment. Supported by the United Nations, it works to understand the investment implications of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and to support its international network of investor signatories in incorporating these factors into their investment and ownership decisions. The PRI acts in the long-term interests of its signatories, of the financial markets and economies in which they operate and ultimately of the environment and society as a whole. Launched in New York in 2006, the PRI has grown to more than 4,900 signatories, managing over $121 trillion AUM. For more information, visit www.unpri.org. Contact: Kellie Kennedy 312-933-4903 [email protected] SOURCE GTCR Haivision Hub for Government allows agencies to securely share live content between government teams, and safely deliver live broadcasts to teams, facilities, and the public MONTREAL, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Haivision Systems Inc. ("Haivision") (TSX: HAI), a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual collaboration solutions, today announced that Haivision Hub for Government achieved FedRAMP "In Process" designation and is the only video network service available through the FedRAMP Marketplace. The fully managed cloud solution enables public sector government agencies to communicate together with live video content or distribute live broadcast video securely to the public using CDNs, OVPs, EVPs and social media outlets. The Haivision process of obtaining FedRAMP authorization was sponsored by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Today, government agencies are increasingly sharing live video to succeed in their mission. However, traversing networks can open agencies to cyber risks and security challenges. Even organizations with the best security profiles are at risk of evolving cyber exposures. Haivision Hub for Government helps shield public sector organizations from network exposure (their largest risk) when sharing live video streams. Scalable and easy to use, Haivision Hub for Government is ideal for CIOs looking to implement secure live video streaming in compliance with federal information assurance requirements. FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is a U.S. government program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. The FedRAMP Authorization Act is a codified part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). FedRAMP is mandatory for all executive agency cloud deployments and service models. "Our FedRAMP milestone is a powerful example of Haivision's longstanding commitment to ensuring the security of our customers' deployments," said Mirko Wicha, President and CEO of Haivision. "In the FedRAMP process, we've worked rigorously to make Haivision Hub for Government an ideal solution to help government agencies stream securely via the cloud. We're very proud to be the first video network service to achieve this important FedRAMP milestone and to be among the few technology companies to achieve this authorization." Haivision Hub for Government offers a range of features that can help agencies quickly and securely share live video content with internal and external audiences. Key features include: Real-time live visual content distribution: Share live video in real-time, providing up-to-date information and events and enabling collaboration in real-time on mission-critical common operating pictures. Share live video in real-time, providing up-to-date information and events and enabling collaboration in real-time on mission-critical common operating pictures. Secure: Designed to meet the strict security requirements of government agencies (Achieved FedRAMP supporting Department of Defense Impact Level 2 (DoD IL2)). Designed to meet the strict security requirements of government agencies (Achieved FedRAMP supporting Department of Defense Impact Level 2 (DoD IL2)). Scalability: Scale to serve multiple internal and external audiences. Scale to serve multiple internal and external audiences. Flexibility: Leverage direct high-performance connectivity and cloud delivery options. Leverage direct high-performance connectivity and cloud delivery options. Simplification: Easily overcome network challenges and the technical debt typically encountered when enabling digital transformation. Haivision is committed to providing high-performance video network solutions with the highest levels of security for mission-critical applications. Progressing through rigorous third-party assessments and implementing the appropriate controls in accordance with FedRAMP to protect data and systems of federal customers demonstrates that commitment. For more information about Haivision Hub for Government, visit the FedRAMP Marketplace or the Haivision Hub for Government webpage on the Haivision website. About Haivision Haivision is a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual collaboration solutions. Our connected cloud and intelligent edge technologies enable organizations globally to engage audiences, enhance collaboration, and support decision making. We provide high quality, low latency, secure, and reliable live video at a global scale. Haivision open sourced its award-winning SRT low latency video streaming protocol and founded the SRT Alliance to support its adoption. Awarded four Emmys for Technology and Engineering from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Haivision continues to fuel the future of IP video transformation. Founded in 2004, Haivision is headquartered in Montreal and Chicago with offices, sales, and support located throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, visit Haivision at haivision.com. SOURCE Haivision Systems Inc. Denver plumbing company continues year-over-year growth heading into 2023 DENVER, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- High 5 Plumbing, a family-owned and operated plumbing company serving residents in the greater Denver metropolitan area, has demonstrated its excellence in the plumbing industry after reporting 334% revenue growth since 2020. The company showcased 64% growth from 2021 to 2022. High 5 Plumbing has demonstrated its excellence in the plumbing industry after reporting 334% revenue growth since 2020. "I have been speechless at the rate we've grown since 2020," said Levi Torres, co-owner of High 5 Plumbing. "When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many companies struggled to stay afloat. Our team displayed resilience and made the necessary changes that allowed us to not only tread water but flourish. Without an excellent team and the Denver community, things could've been different. I couldn't ask for a better group of individuals to work with." Over the past year, High 5 Plumbing has been recognized for its excellence on numerous occasions. In August 2022, the Denver-based company landed its first placement on the annual Inc. 5000 ranking 3,153 overall, 100th in Colorado and 50th in consumer services. In May 2022, High 5 Plumbing was named Small Business of the Year by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce. The award was determined by a panel of judges as well as a community vote. "Receiving these awards is a testament to how hard our team works daily," said Cassi Torres, co-owner of High 5 Plumbing. "Your company can't grow if you don't have a team behind you that buys into your goals and vision. From our tremendous growth over the past three years to receiving the awards, none of it would be possible without our High 5 family." High 5 Plumbing offers a variety of plumbing services to residents in the Denver area, including repair and installation, drain cleaning, pump plumbing, piping, garbage disposal services, sewer line repair, gas plumbing, water heater installation and much more. In addition, the company offers 24/7 emergency services. To learn more about High 5 Plumbing, visit https://high5plumbing.com/. About High 5 Plumbing Founded in 2012, High 5 Plumbing is a local, family-owned company serving residents in the greater Denver metropolitan area. With a professional team that has extensive experience and a commitment to service, High 5 Plumbing offers comprehensive plumbing, sewer and drain services. The company was built on the values of solving plumbing problems and serving every customer with professionalism and respect. For more information about High 5 Plumbing, visit https://www.high5plumbing.com/. MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Ripley Ripley PR (865) 977-1973 [email protected] SOURCE High 5 Plumbing BATESVILLE, Ind., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillenbrand, Inc. (NYSE: HI) will hold a conference call and simultaneous webcast Thursday, February 9, 2023, at 8:00 a.m. ET. They will discuss the results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, which ended December 31, 2022. The live webcast, including a slide presentation, will be available at http://ir.hillenbrand.com under the "News & Events" tab and will be archived on the company's investor relations website through Friday, March 10, 2023. To access the conference call, listeners in the United States and Canada may dial +1 (877) 407-8012, and international callers may dial +1 (412) 902-1013. Please use conference call ID number 13735372. A replay of the call will be available until midnight ET, Thursday, February 23, 2023, by dialing +1 (877) 660-6853 toll free in the United States and Canada or +1 (201) 612-7415 internationally and using the conference ID number 13735372. Hillenbrand will issue a press release reporting its results after the market closes on Wednesday, February 8, 2023. The full text of the release and financials will be available at http://ir.hillenbrand.com. About Hillenbrand Hillenbrand (NYSE: HI) is a global industrial company operating in over 40 countries with over 10,000 associates serving a wide variety of industries around the world. Guided by our Purpose Shape What Matters For Tomorrow we pursue excellence, collaboration, and innovation to consistently shape solutions that best serve our associates, customers, communities, and other stakeholders. Hillenbrand's portfolio includes brands such as Coperion, Milacron Injection Molding & Extrusion, and Mold-Masters, in addition to Batesville. To learn more, visit: www.Hillenbrand.com. SOURCE Hillenbrand, Inc. Approaches Commercialization of First Product NANJING and SHANGHAI, China and SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- IASO Biotherapeutics (IASO Bio), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in discovering, developing, and manufacturing innovative cell therapies and antibody products, today announced the completion of nearly US $75 million ($500 million RMB) in Series C1 funding. Eleven investment organizations participated in this investment round, including Shanghai Guoxin Investment & Development, Efung Capital, Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone Group, Nanjing Jiangbei New Area State-owned Asset Management, Housen Care Brothers, and Hongcheng Investment. The funding will support research and development of the company's pipeline products, and the commercial launch of its core product Equecabtagene Autoleucel. "Despite the current challenging investment climate, greater competitive pressures, and increasingly strict regulatory policies, IASO Bio has been able to attract investors' attention. For this we are extremely grateful," said Dr. Alan Fu, IASO Bio's CFO. "The successful fund raising is strong proof of IASO Bio's outstanding research and development in cell therapy and superior execution capabilities. During the past year, our company has achieved numerous milestones and is on the transition to commercialization. The new funding will help accelerate development and commercialization of innovative drugs, enable us to keep working toward our vision of 'bringing hope to patients in China and around the world." According to Jianhua Zhao, COO of Shanghai Guoxin Investment, "Cell therapy is curable therapies for patients suffering from hematological tumors. IASO Bio is dedicated to bringing hope to these patients by fulfilling the unmet medical needs. The company has developed a rich and balanced product pipeline and established itself as one of China's leading cell therapy companies. Despite a late start, IASO Bio has taken the lead and become the first company to receive New Drug Application (NDA) acceptance of a fully in-house developed CAR-T product, Equecabtagene Autoleucel for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (r/r MM), in China. Its outstanding research and highly effective execution capabilities, and the team's global vision, have all deeply impressed us. Guoxin will leverage our industry resources to help IASO Bio in its journey to further develop innovative medicines and to benefit patients in China and worldwide." About IASO Bio IASO Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel cell therapies for oncology and autoimmune diseases. Leveraging its proprietary fully human antibody discovery platform (IMARS), high-throughput chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) drug screening platform, and proprietary manufacturing processes, IASO Bio is developing a rich clinical-stage pipeline of multiple autologous and allogeneic CAR-T and biologics product candidates. This pipeline includes a diversified portfolio of over 10 novel products, including IASO's leading asset, Equecabtagene Autoleucel (CT103A), a fully human BCMA CAR-T injection. Equecabtagene Autoleucel received New Drug Application (NDA) acceptance from China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (r/r MM) and obtained the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Investigational New Drug (IND) approval. The company also received Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the NMPA in February 2021 and Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) from the FDA in February 2022. In addition to multiple myeloma, NMPA has accepted its IND application for the new extended indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD). The company's in-house developed fully human CD19/CD22 dual-targeted CAR-T cell therapy has received two IND clearances for treating relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (r/r B-NHL) and relapsed/refractory acute B-lymphoblastic leukemia (r/r B-ALL). It is currently in Phase I clinical trial for r/r B-NHL. It was also granted ODD by the FDA in October 2021. IASO Bio aims to be the partner of choice around the world by collaborating with innovative companies in the field. The company has signed licensing or research agreement with oversea cell-therapy companies such as Sana Biotechnology, Cabaletta Bio and Umoja Biopharma with respect to its clinically validated fully human CAR construct or sequences, to actively explore the development of next-generation cell-therapy products. Leveraging its strong management team, innovative product pipeline, and integrated manufacturing and clinical capabilities, IASO aims to deliver transformative, curable, and affordable therapies that fulfill the unmet medical needs of patients in China and worldwide. For more information, please visit www.iasobio.com or www.linkedin.com/company/iasobiotherapeutics. SOURCE IASO Biotherapeutics PLEASANTON, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Inscripta, a global leader in genome engineering technology, announced today the acquisition of two pioneers of synthetic biology Infinome Biosciences and Sestina Bio, which advance Inscripta's strategy to develop and commercialize bio-manufactured products for a broad spectrum of industrial and consumer markets. The acquisitions demonstrate Inscripta's confidence in the commercial potential of the bioeconomy and the power of genome engineering to accelerate biomanufacturing innovation. "Tackling the unprecedented opportunity to improve global health and sustainability through biomanufacturing requires a strong combination of talent, experience, technology, and commercial assets," said Sri Kosaraju, CEO, Inscripta. "Infinome and Sestina Bio allow us to advance our strategy and complement our technological innovation and capabilities needed for creating the next generation of biobased manufacturing products and processes." Inscripta is applying its cutting-edge technologies to biomanufacture products for industrial and consumer markets. Tweet this Prior to the acquisition, Infinome was closely affiliated with Inscripta. Infinome developed the GenoScaler platform, a proprietary strain engineering platform designed to rapidly optimize microbes for biomanufacturing, using Inscripta's genome engineering technology. "With our platform, we are able to create industrially optimized strains faster and at a fraction of the resource and infrastructure costs traditionally required for commercialization of precision fermentation solutions," said Infinome co-founder and CEO/CTO Dr. Richard Fox. "Combining Infinome with Inscripta brings together a shared vision of creating lean, scalable, and sustainable solutions for biomanufacturing through technology." Sestina Bio brings an innovative, data-driven approach for building and identifying strains that make it out of the lab and withstand the rigors of commercial scale-up. "The proprietary methods we are developing enable us to produce and understand orders of magnitude more biological data than other synbio platforms," said Ted Tarasow, CTO, Sestina Bio. "Our approach to minimal strain design combined with Inscripta's unique genome editing capabilities will enable dramatic reductions in the time and cost of bringing products to market," added Andrew Horwitz, Vice President of R&D, Sestina Bio. With the addition of Infinome and Sestina Bio, Inscripta is building on its history of technological innovation and has already begun applying its cutting-edge technologies to develop products for a diverse set of large industrial and consumer markets. Inscripta has several partnered and proprietary products in various stages of development. Kalsec Inc., a food and beverage ingredient solutions company, represents one example of an announced partnership to develop and commercialize multiple bio-manufactured products. Separately, Inscripta is engaging in commercial conversations around the previously announced development of a ready-to-scale microbial strain producing Bakuchiol, a natural retinol replacement. About Inscripta, Inc. Inscripta is a life science technology company committed to creating a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable world through biomanufacturing. A global leader in genome engineering, our innovations are designed to unlock the full potential of the bioeconomy. We are committed to the continued development of critical technologies that enable scientists to bolster and expand domestic biomanufacturing, and spur new, safe, and secure biotech innovations. Inscripta supports customers around the world from facilities in Pleasanton and Burlingame, California. To learn more, visit Inscripta.com or contact us directly at: Michael B. Gonzales Vice President, Marketing [email protected] 415.308.6467 SOURCE Inscripta Thirty-Eight days to the February/March general election, the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC is now faced with at least, 791 court cases, a geometric rise from the 600 cases it was confronted with as of November last year. Although, the electoral umpire is only joined in the suits as a "nominal party", it nonetheless declared that it would only obey "clear" orders of courts in the light of conflicting orders by courts of coordinate jurisdiction. In spite of the development, the commission has expressed satisfaction with its preparations so far, saying it is determined to deliver a free, fair, credible and inclusive election to Nigerians. INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this on Tuesday in a paper he delivered at Chatham House, London. The theme of the session was Nigeria's 2023 Elections: Preparations and Priorities for Electoral Integrity and Inclusion. He said; "We have promised Nigerians and friends of Nigeria that the 2023 general election will be free, fair, credible and inclusive and we have left no stone unturned in preparing for it, despite several challenges. "But all elections, especially those involving the type of extensive national deployment like we do in Nigeria, will naturally come with challenges. We have worked closely with stakeholders and development partners to confront these challenges and we are satisfied with our preparations so far. "Our Commission does not take the pledge that we have repeatedly made to Nigerians lightly. We are leaving no stone unturned in our preparations. Our commitment remains ony to Nigerians and not to any political party or candidate. That is what the law requires of us. We cherish the institutional independence and integrity of the Commission. "With the enthusiasm of Nigerians, the goodwill of stakeholders and partners, and the commitment of the Commission, we believe that the 2023 general election will be among the best conducted in Nigeria". 791 court cases "While the Commission has the core responsibility to conduct free, fair and credible elections based on the law, the Judiciary is responsible for the interpretation of the law and adjudication of electoral disputes. "In the discharge of our responsibilities, few public institutions in Nigeria are subjected to more litigations than INEC. In the 2019 general election, the Commission was involved in 1,689 cases, made up of 852 pre-election, 807 post-election and 30 electoral offences cases. The Commission is committed to the rule of law without which democracy cannot thrive. "Towards the 2023 general election, the Commission has been joined in 791 Court cases as of Friday 6th January 2023 involving intra-party elections and nomination of candidates by political parties. These are not cases involving elections conducted by the Commission or litigations initiated by it, but purely intra-party matters involving candidates and their political parties mainly due to the absence of internal democracy within parties. In fact, the Commission is only a nominal party in these cases but nevertheless has to be represented by lawyers in court proceedings. "The Commission will continue to obey clear orders of Courts because of the plethora of conflicting judgements from Courts of coordinate jurisdiction on the same subject matter, particularly those involving the leadership of political parties or the nomination of candidates for elections", said Yakubu. On the all-important issue of electoral operations, procurement and logistics, Yakubu said, "this is proceeding satisfactorily". He recalled that INEC had on 4th January 2023, received the final batch of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS to be used for the election. "That puts us on course to perform functional and integrity tests on every BVAS to be deployed for the election, which has been concluded in many States nationwide. In addition, we plan to conduct a series of mock trials of the BVAS with actual voters in real-time in parts of the country to further ascertain their functioning in actual election situations. "Other sensitive materials, such as the ballots and result forms, are being printed. The Commission is progressively taking delivery of them and deploying them to locations across the country", he stated. While noting that logistics has often been a major challenge during elections in Nigeria, he said the commission is determined to solve the puzzle. "We have established a Logistics Management System, which uses an Android application and web dashboard to track election materials from procurement through storage to delivery. "For the first time, we have a comprehensive Election Logistics Framework (ELF) to guide logistics for the general elections from planning, through deployment to retrieval. This is the first deployment of an end-to-end logistics framework for elections. "The Commission is happy with the extent of preparations for the 2023 general election. This is borne out by the timelines in our election timetable of which 11 of 14 activities have been accomplished", he added. Yakubu however conceded that despite INEC's extensive preparations, there are still some outstanding issues and challenges of concern, some of which are beyond the remit of the Commission. According to him, the perennial insecurity in many African countries remains a source of concern to election managers. He lamented that in the North East, there is the longstanding Boko Haram insurgency, while in both the North West and the North Central, banditry, terrorism and the herder-farmer conflicts remain major challenges. "In the South-South, the threat of renewed insurgency by groups demanding more share of petroleum revenue to the Niger Delta continues to simmer. In the South West, although an earlier surge by a group demanding independence for the region has considerably dissipated, recent violent attacks on places of worship, a rise in the activities of violent cults and kidnapping groups, as well as a history of violence involving groups seeking to control markets and motor parks remain strong. "In the South-East, the lingering agitation for separatism championed by the Indigenous People of Biafra IPOB poses a major security threat. Not only have violent attacks by the number of armed groups increased, but the long-standing weekly lockdown of the five States in that geopolitical zone continues to disrupt social and economic activities. "There is no doubt that violence and threat of violence are major challenges to the credible election in 2023. Violence makes deployment for elections difficult, particularly where some of the attacks are targeted at the electoral process and participants. "However, the Commission has been working with security agencies and other stakeholders to establish mechanisms to understand, track and mitigate security challenges. We are working collaboratively in the context of ICCES, and we also have the Election Violence Mitigation and Advocacy Tool (EVMAT), which is a research and diagnostic tool for predicting and mitigating election violence prior to elections. In addition, there is the Election Risk Management Tool (ERM), which tracks and reports general risks to elections. "In all, we feel assured by the actions we have taken and our collaboration with the security agencies. The 2023 general election will proceed as planned. There is no plan to postpone the election", he added. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. The INEC boss explained that the over two million voters who are internally displaced would be allowed to participate in the polls insofar as they are in the Internally Displaced Persons IDPs Camps and not in private homes where they cannot be tracked. Campaign finance Noting that the Electoral Act has specified various limits to campaign spending and also empowers the Commission to set other limits, the INEC boss said the experience has however shown that political parties and candidates often observe these limits in the breach. Consequently, he said INEC is working on strengthening enforcement of these limits, including the use of a web-based application and dashboard for political parties to submit their expenditures for verification. "Working with one of our development partners, we have developed the Political Parties Financial Reporting and Auditing System PFRAS for this purpose. We shall be deploying it soon and will train both our staff and political parties on its use. In the past, the reporting system had been tardy and unorganized, making it difficult to effectively oversight campaign finances", he explained. On the issue of ad hoc staff for the polls, Yakubu disclosed that the Commission requires at least 707, 384 Presiding and Assistant Presiding Officers, about 17, 685 Supervisory Presiding Officers, 9,620 Collation/Returning officers, as we as 530, 538 Polling Unit security officials. "These are not staff of the Commission and must be painstakingly recruited and trained to ensure that they are both fit for purpose and non-partisan", he stated. Complaint Asserts Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten Unlawfully Retained Control of Private Assets and Orchestrated the Sale to Notorious Money-Launderer Tied to Central Bank Official LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Nina Ansary, an internationally recognized women's rights advocate and award-winning Iranian American author and historian today filed a complaint against the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten for its illegal expropriation of her equity stake in Parman International B.V. (PIBV) a Curacao company owned by U.S. investors. According to the complaint, since seizing control of PIBV's insurance subsidiaries and related businesses in 2018 under the guise of an "emergency restructuring" allegedly necessary to bring the insurance subsidiaries into regulatory compliance, the Central Bank has been engaged in a scheme to systematically loot the assets of the enterprise for the economic and political benefit of its officials, including orchestrating the unnecessary sale at a steep discount of Banco di Caribe to an internationally known money-launderer and crony of the former head of the Central Bank. Now, buoyed by its success, the Central Bank has put plans in place to seize 160 acres of prime real estate in Sint Maarten held by PIBV, even after numerous public attestations by Central Bank officials to the restored fiscal health of the enterprise. "Long after determining that there is no longer any fiscal 'emergency' or danger of insolvency, the Central Bank of Curacao continues to loot the assets of American investors. It's abundantly clear that this ongoing seizure is not about the health of the enterprise or accountability to policyholders, but only about greed and opportunism by officials at the Central Bank," said Dennis Hranitzky of Quinn Emanuel, Urquhart and Sullivan, an attorney for Dr. Ansary. Mr. Hranitzky continued, "The thuggish behavior by officials of the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten toward Dr. Ansary, an internationally known author and women's rights activist, goes far beyond the theft of her personal investments and includes an audacious campaign of legal and personal intimidation that extends to targeting even her primary residence for seizure. While such behavior is unsurprising given Curacao's reputation as an infamous haven for money-laundering and criminal activity, it is in clear violation of existing treaties between the United States and the Netherlands as well as Dr. Ansary's human rights." The U.S. State Department categorizes Curacao as a country/jurisdiction of Primary Concern with respect to money-laundering and financial crimes. SOURCE Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP Index includes the most powerful people in the residential real estate industry IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- loanDepot, Inc.'s ("LDI" or "Company") (NYSE: LDI) Founder and Executive Chairman Anthony Hsieh and President and CEO Frank Martell were recognized on Inman's inaugural 2023 "Power Player" list, which salutes the most innovative and influential leaders "whose ingenuity, strength, conviction and persistence are driving change across the real estate industry." This year's class was selected from across the residential real estate universe featuring the executives, founders, innovators and visionaries playing a key role in shaping the industry's future. Hsieh, a 35-year trailblazer who revolutionized the contemporary mortgage lending journey said, "In such a pivotal year for the industry, this honor is a true reflection of the hard work and dedication of Team loanDepot to provide best-in class products and service to our customers." Martell, who joined the Company as president and CEO in April 2022, added, "The successful execution of our Vision 2025 plan has positioned us to lead from a position of strength, and our recognition as Power Players is a testament to the strides loanDepot is making to create opportunities for all families to seize the dreamand recognize the financial benefitsof homeownership." Inman is the leading news source for real estate agents, brokers, executives and technology leaders. Inman Awards recognize outstanding accomplishments across the residential real estate industry with six distinctive categories. About loanDepot loanDepot (NYSE: LDI; NMLS # 174457) is an equal housing lender and digital commerce company committed to serving its customers throughout the home ownership journey. Since its launch in 2010, loanDepot has revolutionized the mortgage industry with a digital-first approach that makes it easier, faster and less stressful to purchase or refinance a home. Today, as one of the nation's largest non-bank retail mortgage lenders, loanDepot enables customers to achieve the American dream of homeownership through a broad suite of lending and real estate services that simplify one of life's most complex transactions. With headquarters in Southern California and offices nationwide, loanDepot is committed to serving the communities in which its team lives and works through a variety of local, regional and national philanthropic efforts. Media Contact Jonathan Fine VP, Public Relations (781) 248-3963 [email protected] SOURCE loanDepot, Inc. The Two Companies Bring Together Leading AI Solutions to Improve Emergency Vehicle Preemption and Transit Signal Prioritization SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- LYT, a leader in intelligent connected traffic technology solutions, announced today it has signed a partnership agreement with Yunex Traffic, a global leader in intelligent traffic systems. Under the partnership, the companies will leverage both companies' intelligent transportation technologies to ease congestion for commuters and emergency responders. Cities today are getting larger and more complex, especially in a post-pandemic world. This entails the right urban mobility with forward-looking and sustainable infrastructure and transport solutions that enable the movement of commuters and first responders more efficiently. Traffic management systems, simulation, tunnel management, AI-powered digital solutions, and infrastructure for autonomous driving are benefitting from the use of digitalization to transform cities into places where people can live, work, and move more freely. As one of the world's most respected traffic management companies, Yunex Traffic develops innovative mobility systems and services for smart cities, all designed to build safer, more efficient and more sustainable transportation networks. Paired with Yunex Traffic's suite of solutions including Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS), Connected Vehicle applications, and advanced traffic controllers, traffic agencies can now leverage LYT's Emergency Vehicle Preemption solution, known as LYT.emergency, which grants a consistent and reliable green light for every emergency vehicle more affordably than other products on the market. These solutions together harness the power of a single secure edge device installed in Traffic Management Centers that enable emergency vehicles to speak directly to networked traffic signals in cities through the LYT.speed cloud platform. LYT is a cloud-based software platform that uses state-of-the-art connected vehicle and machine learning technologies to prioritize the flow of vehicles in a city and across a corridor. By optimizing public transport, emergency and other vehicles it enables shorter travel times, less congestion, improved air-quality, longer lives and more reliable mass transit. "At Yunex Traffic, we are committed to innovation and creating the technologies to push transportation forward," said Michael Gaertner Head of Product & Systems, DOP for Yunex Traffic US. "LYT is a perfect partner. Their vision parallels ours, focused on solving issues with impactful solutions rather than creating problems to solve. We couldn't be more excited." "By shifting from line-of-sight detection systems to LYT's bird's-eye-view optimization system, traffic signals turn green well in advance of emergency vehicles producing safer intersections for everyone." said Tim Menard, CEO and Founder of LYT. "Along with Yunex Traffic and their leading technologies, our combined solutions will serve as a new benchmark for the way in which cities leverage data, technology and AI in a budget-affordable way to better understand the flow of traffic and also the ways in which machine learning can quickly adapt to new traffic flow for better urban quality of life." About Yunex Traffic Yunex Traffic is a separately managed company of the Atlantia Group. It is a global leader in the field of intelligent traffic systems, offering the widest end-to-end portfolio of solutions for adaptive traffic control and management, highway and tunnel automation, as well as smart solutions for V2X and road user charging/tolling. Yunex Traffic has 3100 employees from 58 nations and is active in over 40 countries worldwide. Its intelligent mobility solutions are currently being used in major cities across the world, including Dubai, London, Berlin, Bogota, and Miami. Yunex Traffic has successfully concentrated its efforts on mastering technologies in the three segments of hardware, software, and service, and is subsequently the only supplier who is capable of meeting all major regional standards in Europe, UK, Asia and America. Further information is available at: www.yunextraffic.com About LYT LYT is an intelligent connected traffic technology provider that offers a cloud-based platform that orchestrates today's Intelligent Transportation Systems. LYT's AI-powered machine learning technology enables a suite of transit signal priority and emergency vehicle preemption solutions that utilize pre-existing vehicle tracking sensors and city communication networks to dynamically adjust the phase and timing of traffic signals to provide sufficient green clearance time while minimally impacting cross traffic. LYT is headquartered in Silicon Valley and serves municipalities across the US. Learn more at LYT.ai. Media Contact: John Richard 954-592-1201 SOURCE LYT NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The global mild hybrid vehicles market size is estimated to increase by 5,196.97 thousand units. The market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 31.04% between 2022 and 2027- request a sample report Global mild hybrid vehicles market Vendor analysis Vendor offerings - Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Mild Hybrid Vehicles Market 2023-2027 Bayerische Motoren Werke AG - The company offers a mild hybrid vehicle named BMW 48 V Mild Hybrid Technology with auto and start-stop functions. The company offers a mild hybrid vehicle named BMW 48 V Mild Hybrid Technology with auto and start-stop functions. Ford Motor Co. - The company offers mild hybrid vehicles such as the Fiat FireFly series with 70hp 3-cylinder engine paired with a 3.6kW belt integrated starter generator electric system and 11 aH lithium battery. The company offers mild hybrid vehicles such as the Fiat FireFly series with 70hp 3-cylinder engine paired with a 3.6kW belt integrated starter generator electric system and 11 aH lithium battery. General Motors Co - The company offers mild hybrid electric vehicles, namely Puma SUV, Fiesta, Focus, Kuga SUV, and mild hybrid vans. The company offers mild hybrid electric vehicles, namely Puma SUV, Fiesta, Focus, Kuga SUV, and mild hybrid vans. Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd. - The company offers mild hybrid vehicles, with Orlando variants featuring 48V mild hybrid technology with Auto Start, Eboost, Smart Charge, Brake Energy Regeneration, and Eidle facilities. The company offers mild hybrid vehicles, with variants featuring 48V mild hybrid technology with Auto Start, Eboost, Smart Charge, Brake Energy Regeneration, and Eidle facilities. For details on vendors and their offerings Buy the report! Vendor landscape The global mild hybrid vehicles market is concentrated. A few prominent vendors that offer mild hybrid vehicles in the market are Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, China FAW Group Co. Ltd., FCA Italy S.p.A., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co, Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd., Honda Motor Co. Ltd, Hyundai Motor Group, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd., Mercedes Benz Group AG, Renault SAS, Stellantis NV, Suzuki Motor Corp., Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd., Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG, Volvo Car Corp., BYD Electronic Co. Ltd., and Mitsubishi Corp. and others. Vendors in the market compete on the basis of several factors, such as quality, price, service, brand image, distribution, and marketing. Major vendors are focusing on acquiring small brands to expand their market presence. The increasing competition among the vendors may lead to a decline in product prices, which can negatively impact profit margins and the growth of the market. Moreover, technological advances by one player in the market can render existing or future vendor products obsolete or uneconomical. The market revenue is expected to increase during the forecast period owing to the rising demand for mild hybrid technology. Global mild hybrid vehicles market - Customer landscape To help companies evaluate and develop growth strategies, the report outlines Key purchase criteria Adoption rates Adoption lifecycle Drivers of price sensitivity Global mild hybrid vehicles market - Segmentation assessment Segment overview Technavio has segmented the market based on type (passenger vehicle and commercial vehicle) and capacity (48V and above and less than 48V). The passenger vehicles segment will grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. The passenger vehicles segment dominates the automotive industry, which is driving the growth of this segment. The implementation of stringent emission and fuel economy norms and government incentives that promote the purchase and adoption of mild hybrid vehicles are also driving the segment's growth. Mild hybrid vehicles are more fuel-efficient than traditional passenger vehicles, as they use electricity from automotive batteries for start-stop functions or to attain cruising speeds. Hence, the segment is projected to grow rapidly throughout the forecast period. Geography overview Based on geography, the global mild hybrid vehicles market is segmented into APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global mild hybrid vehicles market. APAC is estimated to account for 46% of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. China , India , South Korea , and Japan are leaders in automobile sales and manufacturing. Developments in infrastructure and industrialization have led to significant demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in APAC. The discretionary income of people has grown in APAC, as the economic conditions of nations such as China and Japan have improved. This, in turn, has increased automobile sales. Such factors will drive the market's growth during the forecast period in APAC. Download a sample report Global mild hybrid vehicles market Market dynamics Leading drivers - Stringent emission control regulations are driving the market growth. Concerns about environmental pollution have led to strict emissions regulations in the US and European countries. The US EPA has revised its vehicle emissions regulations. This is fueling the growth of the global mild hybrid vehicle market. Growing consumer awareness and strict emission regulations are compelling automotive OEMs to produce light hybrid and electric vehicles that emit fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline and diesel vehicles. These factors will drive the market's growth during the forecast period. Key trends - Recent developments are a key trend in the market. In 2021, General Motors launched its Buick GL8 Classic with a 48V mild hybrid powertrain in China. In 2020, Chevrolet launched five new Orlando variants in China, which feature 48V mild hybrid technology. As of 2021, Nissan was working on a mild-mild hybrid GT-R model, which would have a 48-volt mild-mild hybrid system. In 2021, Mercedes-Benz unveiled two models of diesel mild hybrids, namely GLE and GLE Coupe. Such developments will increase the demand for mild hybrid vehicles during the forecast period. Major challenges The rising demand for BEVs and FCEVs is challenging the market's growth. The demand for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is increasing. Automakers such as Tesla Inc. (USA), and Volkswagen AG (Germany) are focusing on the development of BEVs. In addition, governments are implementing measures and encouraging the use of fuel-cell vehicles in the transportation sector, which will increase the demand for fuel cells in the automotive and transportation industries. Such factors are expected to limit the growth of the market during the forecast period. Drivers, trends, and challenges have an impact on market dynamics, which can impact businesses. Find some insights from a sample report! What are the key data covered in this mild hybrid vehicles market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the mild hybrid vehicles market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the mild hybrid vehicles market and its contribution to the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the mild hybrid vehicles market across APAC, North America , Europe , Middle East and Africa , and South America , , and , and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of mild hybrid vehicles market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports: The hybrid electric vehicle market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 30.88% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecasted to increase by 17,098.51 thousand units. This report extensively covers market segmentation by propulsion (full HEVs, mild HEVs, and PHEVs), vehicle type (passenger cars and commercial vehicles), and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and Middle East and Africa). The hybrid vehicle market size is expected to grow by USD 722.82 billion from 2021 to 2026 at an accelerating CAGR of 26.37%. This report extensively covers segmentation by vehicle type (passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, and heavy commercial vehicles) and geography (APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America) Mild Hybrid Vehicles Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 161 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 31.04% Market growth 2023-2027 5,196.97 thousand units Market structure Concentrated YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 29.32 Regional analysis APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 46% Key countries US, China, Germany, France, and UK Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, China FAW Group Co. Ltd., FCA Italy S.p.A., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co, Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd., Honda Motor Co. Ltd, Hyundai Motor Group, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd., Mercedes Benz Group AG, Renault SAS, Stellantis NV, Suzuki Motor Corp., Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd., Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG, Volvo Car Corp., BYD Electronic Co. Ltd., and Mitsubishi Corp. Market dynamics Parent market analysis, market growth inducers and obstacles, fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, and 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. 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. Browse for Technavio's consumer discretionary market reports Table of contents 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Type Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Capacity Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market- Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market- Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global mild hybrid vehicles market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global mild hybrid vehicles market 2017 - 2021 (thousand units) 4.2 Type Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Type Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand units) 4.3 Capacity Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Capacity Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand units) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand units) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand units) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Type 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Type Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Type Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Type 6.3 Passenger vehicle - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Passenger vehicle - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Passenger vehicle - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 36: Chart on Passenger vehicle - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Passenger vehicle - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Commercial vehicle - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Commercial vehicle - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 39: Data Table on Commercial vehicle - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 40: Chart on Commercial vehicle - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Commercial vehicle - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Market opportunity by Type Exhibit 42: Market opportunity by Type (thousand units) 7 Market Segmentation by Capacity 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 43: Chart on Capacity - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 44: Data Table on Capacity - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Capacity Exhibit 45: Chart on Comparison by Capacity Exhibit 46: Data Table on Comparison by Capacity 7.3 48V and above - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 47: Chart on 48V and above - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 48: Data Table on 48V and above - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 49: Chart on 48V and above - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 50: Data Table on 48V and above - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Less than 48V - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Less than 48V - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Less than 48V - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 53: Chart on Less than 48V - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Less than 48V - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Market opportunity by Capacity Exhibit 55: Market opportunity by Capacity (thousand units) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 56: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 57: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 59: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 60: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 61: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 62: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 63: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 64: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 66: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 67: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 70: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 71: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 74: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 75: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 78: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 79: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 82: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 83: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 86: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 87: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 90: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 91: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 94: Data Table on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 95: Chart on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 98: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand units) Exhibit 99: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 101: Market opportunity by geography (thousand units) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 102: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 103: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 104: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 105: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 106: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 107: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 Bayerische Motoren Werke AG Exhibit 108: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG - Overview Exhibit 109: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG - Business segments Exhibit 110: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG - Key news Exhibit 111: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG - Key offerings Exhibit 112: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG - Segment focus 12.4 FCA Italy S.p.A. Exhibit 113: FCA Italy S.p.A. - Overview Exhibit 114: FCA Italy S.p.A. - Key offerings 12.5 Ford Motor Co. Exhibit 115: Ford Motor Co. - Overview Exhibit 116: Ford Motor Co. - Business segments Exhibit 117: Ford Motor Co. - Key news Exhibit 118: Ford Motor Co. - Key offerings Exhibit 119: Ford Motor Co. - Segment focus 12.6 General Motors Co Exhibit 120: General Motors Co - Overview Exhibit 121: General Motors Co - Business segments Exhibit 122: General Motors Co - Key news Exhibit 123: General Motors Co - Key offerings Exhibit 124: General Motors Co - Segment focus 12.7 Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd. Exhibit 125: Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 126: Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd. - Key offerings 12.8 Honda Motor Co. Ltd Exhibit 127: Honda Motor Co. Ltd - Overview Exhibit 128: Honda Motor Co. Ltd - Business segments Exhibit 129: Honda Motor Co. Ltd - Key news Exhibit 130: Honda Motor Co. Ltd - Key offerings Exhibit 131: Honda Motor Co. Ltd - Segment focus 12.9 Hyundai Motor Group Exhibit 132: Hyundai Motor Group - Overview Exhibit 133: Hyundai Motor Group - Business segments Exhibit 134: Hyundai Motor Group - Key offerings Exhibit 135: Hyundai Motor Group - Segment focus 12.10 Mercedes Benz Group AG Exhibit 136: Mercedes Benz Group AG - Overview Exhibit 137: Mercedes Benz Group AG - Business segments Exhibit 138: Mercedes Benz Group AG - Key offerings Exhibit 139: Mercedes Benz Group AG - Segment focus 12.11 Mitsubishi Corp. Exhibit 140: Mitsubishi Corp. - Overview Exhibit 141: Mitsubishi Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 142: Mitsubishi Corp. - Key news Exhibit 143: Mitsubishi Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 144: Mitsubishi Corp. - Segment focus 12.12 Renault SAS Exhibit 145: Renault SAS - Overview Exhibit 146: Renault SAS - Product / Service Exhibit 147: Renault SAS - Key news Exhibit 148: Renault SAS - Key offerings 12.13 Suzuki Motor Corp. Exhibit 149: Suzuki Motor Corp. - Overview Exhibit 150: Suzuki Motor Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 151: Suzuki Motor Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 152: Suzuki Motor Corp. - Segment focus 12.14 Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. Exhibit 153: Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 154: Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. - Business segments Exhibit 155: Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. - Key offerings Exhibit 156: Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. - Segment focus 12.15 Toyota Motor Corp. Exhibit 157: Toyota Motor Corp. - Overview Exhibit 158: Toyota Motor Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 159: Toyota Motor Corp. - Key news Exhibit 160: Toyota Motor Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 161: Toyota Motor Corp. - Segment focus 12.16 Volkswagen AG Exhibit 162: Volkswagen AG - Overview Exhibit 163: Volkswagen AG - Business segments Exhibit 164: Volkswagen AG - Key offerings Exhibit 165: Volkswagen AG - Segment focus 12.17 Volvo Car Corp. Exhibit 166: Volvo Car Corp. - Overview Exhibit 167: Volvo Car Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 168: Volvo Car Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 169: Volvo Car Corp. - Segment focus 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 170: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 171: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 172: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 173: Research methodology Exhibit 174: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 175: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 176: 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 BUFFALO, N.Y., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE: MTB) ("M&T") announced today the election of Carlton J. Charles, Senior Vice President, Treasury and Risk Management at Hearst, to its Board of Directors, effective January 18, 2023. Upon his election, Mr. Charles was appointed as a member of the Nomination and Governance Committee of M&T's Board. Mr. Charles was also elected to the Board of Directors of M&T Bank, M&T's principal banking subsidiary. Carlton J. Charles Mr. Charles serves as Corporate Treasurer for Hearst, a leading global, diversified information, services, and media company with operations in 40 countries. He oversees the company's risk management activities as chairman of the Risk Working Group, which he helped establish at Hearst. Mr. Charles also leads insurance operations for the company, serves as Chairman of Level Up Ventures, a venture capital unit within Hearst focused on Black and Latino entrepreneurs, and is currently guiding an effort to further diversify Hearst's roster of vendor partners. Mr. Charles serves on the Hearst Board of Directors and the Board of Advisors for HearstLab, Hearst's platform for nurturing the growth of early-stage, women-led companies. "Carlton's financial acumen, commitment to innovation, and purpose-driven leadership have strengthened the operations of global enterprises, empowered teams to deliver meaningful results, and uplifted traditionally underrepresented communities," said Rene F. Jones, M&T Chairman, and CEO. "His election to the M&T board adds to the valuable and diverse perspectives in our boardroom as we work to ensure our growing company meets the evolving needs of our communities, customers, employees, and shareholders." During his tenure at Hearst, Mr. Charles developed an operational risk management program and has focused on the company's cybersecurity and data privacy needs as chair of the Risk Working Group. Additionally, he launched the Hearst Risk Summit, an annual convening of Chief Financial Officers and Chief Technology Officers from across Hearst's businesses to discuss the enterprise's critical risks. "I'm excited to join M&T's Board of Directors and help the company continue to deliver on its purpose of making a difference in people's lives," Mr. Charles said. "M&T's robust capabilities and caring, empathetic approach to serving customers and communities have positioned the company for sustained growth." Before Hearst, Mr. Charles served as Senior Vice President and Chief Operational Risk Officer at Moody's Corporation, where he was an early architect of Moody's Enterprise Risk Management program. His prior career experiences included roles with International Paper and Viacom. A resident of New York City, Mr. Charles serves on the board of BUILD. This organization helps children in underserved communities develop critical skills such as entrepreneurship to achieve future economic empowerment. He is a member of the Executive Leadership Council and the National Association of Corporate Directors. Mr. Charles earned his MBA in finance from the University of Chicago and holds a master's in public policy, and a bachelor's degree in quantitative economics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. About M&T Bank M&T Bank Corporation is a financial holding company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. M&T's principal banking subsidiary, M&T Bank, provides banking products and services in 12 states across the eastern U.S. from Maine to Virginia and Washington, D.C. Trust-related services are provided in select markets in the U.S. and abroad by M&T's Wilmington Trust-affiliated companies and by M&T Bank. Media Contact: Maya Dillon (646) 735-1958 2023 M&T Bank. Member FDIC SOURCE M&T Bank Corporation WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Following is a statement by Jen Judson, President of the National Press Club and Gil Klein, President of the National Press Club Journalism Institute on the action tonight by a Philippine court in the case of journalist Maria Ressa. "We are overjoyed tonight to learn that Maria Ressa and her news site Rappler were acquitted in a case of tax evasion by a Philippine court. The case was an example of harassment by government prosecutors who were trying to stop Ressa and the journalism of Rappler. This is huge victory for journalism and for one of its most determined and inspiring leaders. We are overjoyed for Maria Ressa and we know she will press forward." Maria Ressa was the National Press Club's 2020 John Aubuchon Award Winner, the Club's highest honor for press freedom. She was not allowed to travel to the U.S. at the time to accept her award because of this court case. She later became the 2021 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Founded in 1908, the National Press Club is the world's leading professional organization for journalists. The Club has 3,000 members representing nearly every major journalism organization and is a leading voice for press freedom worldwide. The National Press Club Journalism Institute promotes an engaged global citizenry through an independent and free press and equips journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire a more representative democracy. As the non-profit affiliate of the National Press Club, the institute powers journalism in the public interest. Contact: Bill McCarren for the National Press Club, 202-662-7534 SOURCE National Press Club Investment to bolster manufacturing capabilities, enhance sustainable packaging efforts and generate new local jobs EAU CLAIRE, Wis., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Nestle Health Science today announced a $43 million investment to expand its manufacturing facility in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The investment will add two new production lines to increase manufacturing of high-demand ready-to-drink consumer products. The facility produces an array of medical nutrition products, such as tube feeding formulas, and nutritional drinks from brands such as BOOST and Carnation Breakfast Essentials. "With this investment, Nestle Health Science will expand and enhance our manufacturing facilities to better meet the needs of patients and consumers," said Gaetan Sion, Vice President of Manufacturing, Nestle Health Science U.S. "Also, as a member of the Eau Claire community since 1987, we're proud to help strengthen the local economy by generating more job opportunities that offer competitive pay and benefits." Generating Local Job Opportunities The investment will bring approximately 60 jobs to the local community, ranging from processing, packaging and filling lines to mechanics and engineers. Those interested in applying for a role should visit https://www.nestlejobs.com/nestle-health-science. To help team members thrive, Nestle Health Science offers industry-leading benefits, including an inclusive, gender neutral Parental Support Policy that applies to all employees at every level of the business, and a Lifestyle Spending Account, which gives all employees $500 each year to spend on their emotional, physical, financial and social wellbeing. "Nestle Health Science's additional investment in Wisconsin is great news for the Eau Claire community and our state," said Missy Hughes, Secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the state's lead economic development organization. "Their commitment to innovation, sustainability, and economic wellbeing makes them a leader not only in Wisconsin but in the global marketplace, and we welcome their expansion in our state." Making an Impact on People and the Planet Eau Claire is a global leader in the company's sustainability efforts and newly B CorporationTM Certified. B Corp Certification requires an organization to meet high standards of social and environmental responsibility and transparency across five areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers. As a zero waste-to-landfill facility, Eau Claire strives to make a net positive impact on people and the planet. The new production lines will manufacture ready-to-drink nutrition products in Tetra Pak cartons made with responsibly sourced material. The site is also investing in water optimization that will ensure over 90% of total factory water usage is fully recovered by the end of 2023. In 2022, the facility was recognized by the U.S. Dept. of Energy Better Plants initiative for reaching its energy reduction goal more than two years ahead of schedule. Eau Claire, along with all Nestle Health Science factories and sites, is also committed to being powered by 100% renewable electricity by 2025. About Nestle Health Science (NHSc) Nestle Health Science, a leader in the science of nutrition, is a globally managed business unit of Nestle. We are committed to redefining the management of health, offering an extensive portfolio of science-based consumer health, medical nutrition, pharmaceutical therapies, and vitamin and supplement brands. Our extensive research network provides the foundation for products that empower healthier lives through nutrition. Headquartered in Switzerland, we have more than 11,000 employees around the world, with products available in more than 140 countries. www.nestlehealthscience.com. Contact: Nestle Health Science U.S. Media Relations [email protected] SOURCE Nestle Health Science LAKELAND, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent analysis linking college majors to high-paying careers concluded that technology-driven and engineering positions are among the most immediately lucrative. As the only state institution with an all-STEM curriculum, Florida Polytechnic University is preparing its students to enter the top field on the list, as well as many other high-paying careers listed. Florida Polytechnic Universitys slate of all-STEM majors and areas of study was shown to prepare graduates for some of the countrys highest-paying early-career fields in an analysis released by CBS News. The analysis released by CBS News showed that the top-paying careers go to students who major in electrical engineering and computer science. The early-career median salary nationally for these graduates is $119,200. Computer science is the top major among Florida Poly students, with electrical engineering not far behind. "The unique 100% STEM education, project-based learning, small class sizes, and specialized student support are attracting the brightest minds to our campus," said Dr. Ben Matthew Corpus, vice provost for enrollment management. "The word is out that we are a strong producer of graduates ready to fill the high-wage, low-supply jobs of today and tomorrow." Florida Poly's computer science degree program allows students to specialize in several other areas of study identified in the CBS analysis, including software engineering, which has a median early-career pay of $81,800 nationally. Meanwhile, the electrical and computer engineering majors showed to have an early-career median pay of $87,400 nationally, while the applied mathematics degree's early-career median salary is $83,200. Mechanical engineering majors have a median early-career pay nationally of $77,300. Other Florida Poly majors included in the analysis are engineering physics ($76,900), and physics ($72,700). In early 2022, Florida Poly graduates earned the highest salaries one year after graduation among all Florida public colleges with an average salary of $57,900, according to MyFloridaFuture, the State University System's tool for career research and comparison. "The University is showing great success in meeting its vision of becoming a premier STEM university," said Dr. Randy K. Avent, Florida Poly's president. "We continue to drive that forward with our commitment to engineering and applied sciences, robust industry partnerships, and a project-based curriculum designed to be nimble and responsive to the needs of industry." SOURCE Florida Polytechnic University SAN DIEGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- OmniSync has been awarded a 5-year Phase III commercialization contract by the Office of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science for the development of the SBIR Partnering Platform aimed at improving the outcomes of both research and commercialization within the DOE SBIR/STTR programs. OmniSync has partnered with the Department of Energy to build the SBIR Partnering Platform to enhance the commercialization potential of SBIR-funded technologies. The Federal SBIR/STTR programs provide over $4B in early-stage, non-dilutive funding annually to qualified US-based small business startups to encourage the development of innovative technologies. The DOE participates in the SBIR/STTR program, awarding over $300M annually to startups developing transformative energy technologies. An objective of the SBIR/STTR program is that technologies developed using these designated taxpayer funds ultimately benefit Americans, whether it be in the form of taxable revenue, jobs, or other societal or scientific impact. Despite being awarded SBIR/STTR funding at the R&D phases (Phase I and Phase II) of technology development, awardees often find it challenging to progress into Phase III (commercialization). This funding gap is often termed the 'valley of death' for federally funded startup technologies if they are unable to secure additional capital or revenue. The SBIR Partnering Platform will utilize best-in-class artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to connect SBIR/STTR applicants and awardees with relevant stakeholders, such as industry partners, private/investor capital sources, service providers, subject matter experts, etc., as well as equip them with comprehensive innovation landscape data that can greatly accelerate commercialization progression of new technologies. "Bringing innovators and innovation seekers together has always been at the core of OmniSync's mission. Being at the right place, at the right time, can do wonders for any young small business startup a chance encounter with a venture capitalist, finding a niche prototyping group, or that potentially game-changing email inquiry from a strategic partner that got buried in a busy founder's inbox. Our goal with the platform is to orchestrate more opportunities for such fruitful interactions to occur predictably to increase the chances of commercialization success, and we are thrilled to support the DOE on its mission to address the country's energy, environmental and nuclear challenges," said Dr. Rupak Doshi, CEO of OmniSync. OmniSync's Phase III award with the DOE is an outcome of the Phase I and II SBIR contracts that OmniSync was awarded through the AFWERX program from Department of Air Force (DAF), which connects innovators across government, industry, and academia. The DAF began offering 'The Open Topic' SBIR/STTR program in 2018 which expanded the range of innovations the DAF funded. OmniSync's Phase III award utilized the cross-agency sole source contracting authority afforded by the SBIR program, which significantly reduces the contracting process and timeline. OmniSync aims to continue expanding its impact across US Federal agencies that are addressing our nation's toughest challenges, through the implementation of modern software capabilities that dramatically enhance deep innovation intelligence within large organizations. About OmniSync Incorporated OmniSync is a San Diego-based dual use technology startup that uses a combination of best-in-class AI/NLP-powered innovation discovery tools, process automation software, and expert-driven support services to democratize access to public/private innovation funds. Its flagship product, TurboSBIR is used by commercial deep tech and life science startups to access Federal SBIR/STTR programs to fund product development. OmniSync is backed by strategically aligned venture capital firms, Govtech Fund, Longley Capital, and General Inception, family offices, such as Keshif Ventures, and other angel investors. The company receives support from the ex-Googler founded venture studio, Launch Factory, and accelerators, Capital Factory and EvoNexus. Learn more about OmniSync and TurboSBIR. Media Contact: Rupak Doshi 1.858.264.6546 [email protected] SOURCE OmniSync Incorporated Coast-to-Coast Network Retains Boutique Culture Amid Significant Growth DALLAS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Prospera Financial Services, Inc. ("Prospera"), a boutique wealth management firm supporting a nationwide network of independent advisors, capped five years of significant growth as it reached its 40th year in operation in 2022. Prospera revenue has increased 113% over the past five years, reflecting both organic growth and an active M&A focus, including the $1 billion-plus acquisition of Dorsey & Company which joined the firm in 2021. Along with these acquisitions and recruiting efforts, Prospera has also seen an increase in existing advisors' growth, with an average growth of 15% annually over the last 36 months. "We're thrilled to be celebrating this milestone," said Co-CEO and Managing Partner Tim Edwards. "The tremendous growth we've seen at the firm over the past few years confirms that our Success Your Way culture continues to resonate with independence-minded advisors across the country." Innovative New Services and Programs Enhance Advisor and Client Service The firm's recent focus on innovation has yielded several new services and programs that support its advisors and their clients. Advisor Practice Exchange Program : The proprietary Advisor Practice Exchange Program platform facilitates advisor acquisition and succession within the Prospera family. This service empowers advisors to take control of this process, and eases what had been a complex and time-consuming exercise while also supporting retention. : The proprietary Advisor Practice Exchange Program platform facilitates advisor acquisition and succession within the Prospera family. This service empowers advisors to take control of this process, and eases what had been a complex and time-consuming exercise while also supporting retention. Fixed Income Offerings: Through the Dorsey & Company acquisition, Prospera enhanced its fixed income offerings with a robust and systematic municipal bond program. Through the Dorsey & Company acquisition, Prospera enhanced its fixed income offerings with a robust and systematic municipal bond program. Protect Engagement Score: This new reporting system helps advisors understand best practices around risk and compliance. This tool was named winner of the WealthManagement.com Industry Awards (Wealthies) in 2022 in the Practice Management category for broker-dealers with fewer than 1,000 advisors. Boutique Culture Maintained Through Significant Growth Prospera's leadership team puts a premium on listening to and acting upon advisor feedback. Even through its recent expansions, the team remains committed to a 2.4:1 rep-to-home office ratio to ensure every advisor receives the personalized support they deserve. Prospera was awarded the CEO of the Year for its Co-CEOs David Stringer and Mr. Edwards at the Wealthies in 2022, largely due to the continued focus on the advisor experience. Thanks to its investment in internal staff growth and career development, the firm saw a record number of internal promotions in 2022, most notably in the naming of the firm's first president, Tarah Williams. Ms. Williams, a 26-year industry veteran, has been with the firm for 15 years and has held various leadership roles including Senior VP of Marketing, Chief Administrative Officer, and most recently, Chief Operating Officer, a title which she still maintains today. "When we invest in our people, innovative technologies and additional services, we're really investing in our advisors," said Ms. Williams. "As we head into our next decade, our advisor-centric approach and how we live it every day continues to inform all we do. Its success is a testament to the enduring value financial advisors place on personalized service and the freedom to define their own success." About Prospera Financial Services Founded in 1982, Prospera Financial Services, Member FINRA, SIPC and a registered investment advisory, offers the flexibility and resources only found at some of the nation's largest broker-dealers. Headquartered in Dallas, TX, Prospera was named Broker-Dealer of the Year by Investment Advisor Magazine in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2019. Prospera is a 5-time winner and 7-time finalist for WealthManagement.com's Industry Awards as well as a ThinkAdvisor Luminaries award winner in its inaugural year. The firm supports independent financial advisors nationwide. For more information about Prospera, visit www.joinprospera.com. Media Contacts Donald Cutler or Lorene Yue Haven Tower Group LLC 424 317 4864 or 424 317 4854 [email protected] or [email protected] SOURCE Prospera Financial Services The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said a presidential run-off is possible after voters cast their ballot on February 25, 2023 for their preferred candidates. Chairman of the commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, who stated this yesterday while delivering a lecture at London-based Chatham House, however, stressed that INEC is prepared to conduct the run-off in the event where no winner emerges after the polls. Speaking on the topic, 'Nigeria's 2023 Elections: Preparations and Priorities for Electoral Integrity and Inclusion', Yakubu stated that INEC had over the years prepared for the possibility of a presidential run-off in the last three elections and this year's presidential election won't be an exception. He said, "The truth of the matter is that for every general election, the commission prepares. At least for some time now in the last three electoral cycles, we also prepare for that possibility. "The reason is until the constitution was amended, there was only one week for a presidential run-off in case it happens. "With the number of registered voters we have, it is almost impossible to print the ballot papers required and the result sheet and deliver them to locations and conduct the elections as required. "So, every election since the last three electoral cycles, we also make provisions for the possibility of a presidential run-off in case it happens. If it happens, then we'll have no issues, and this year is no exception." He said with the amendment of the constitution, INEC now has three weeks between the presidential election date and the run-off date. He said available data indicates that Nigeria has 16.7 million more voters than the rest of West Africa. According to him, "Based on figures compiled from electoral commissions and interior ministries in West Africa, Nigeria's current voter population is 16.7 million higher than the 76.7 million registered in all the other countries put together - and there are 14 other elections in the sub-region. "This means that a general election in Nigeria is like conducting an election in the whole of West Africa and beyond." He dismissed any speculation of plans to put off the elections scheduled for February 25 and March 11, saying INEC is not contemplating, let alone planning, to postpone the 2023 general election. He stressed that the commission is not considering the postponement of the presidential poll amid attacks on its offices nationwide. "We are going ahead to conduct the election as scheduled," he said, noting that though there are "tremendous" challenges and expectations of INEC, the commission is a beneficiary of "enormous" goodwill in Nigeria and beyond. "We can surmount the challenges and ensure elections continue to get better," he added. Yakubu again made a case for the establishment of a new commission to deal with electoral offenders. He lamented previous attempts to pass the bill for the establishment of the commission, saying the failure to do so had frustrated efforts to get justice against offenders in Nigeria's courts over the years. Yakubu said work on the country's electoral process would remain incomplete if electoral offenders continue to walk freely. Yakubu argued that via the powers given to the commission in the recently signed Electoral Act 2022, INEC can't make an arrest or investigate offenders. He said the establishment of a new commission will help to enhance efforts to prosecute offenders. Yakubu noted that though the Senate has passed the bill, it is still before the House of Representatives Committee. He also said everybody in the queue by 2:30 pm on election day will vote. On diaspora voting, the INEC chairman was optimistic that the legal obstacles preventing foreign-based Nigerians from voting will be cleared eventually. He said Diaspora Voting by millions of Nigerians living outside the country remains a recurrent issue for the Commission, just as he added that Nigeria is said to have one of the largest diaspora communities in the world. "Our quest for a fully inclusive extensive national deployment like we do in Nigeria will naturally come with challenges. "We have worked closely with stakeholders and development partners to confront these challenges and we are satisfied with our preparations so far. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "Our commission does not take the pledge that we have repeatedly made to Nigerians lightly. We are leaving no stone unturned in our preparations. "Our commitment remains only to Nigerians and not to any political party or candidate. That is what the law requires of us. We cherish the institutional independence and integrity of the Commission. "With the enthusiasm of Nigerians, the goodwill of stakeholders and partners, and the commitment of the Commission, we believe that the 2023 general election will be among the best conducted in Nigeria," he said. Yakubu reassured voters that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) has come to stay, saying there are plans to ensure it works perfectly. He noted that the 2023 election will be among the best polls in the country, insisting that only votes counted during the election will determine the winner of the elections. Yakubu said elections is a multi-stakeholders' activity, adding that the commission has demonstrated it in previous elections. NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA) (OTC: AVYAW) between November 22, 2021 and November 29, 2022, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), of the important March 6, 2023 lead plaintiff deadline. SO WHAT: If you purchased Avaya securities 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 Avaya class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=8033 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 March 6, 2023. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually handle securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers. DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, throughout the Class Period, defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the Company's internal control over financial reporting ("ICFR") was deficient in several areas; (2) as a result of these deficiencies, the Company had failed to design and maintain effective controls over its whistleblower policies and its ethics and compliance program; (3) the Company's deteriorating financial condition was likely to raise substantial doubt as to its ability to continue as a going concern; and (4) as a result, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages. To join the Avaya class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=8033 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/. Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Contact Information: Laurence Rosen, Esq. Phillip Kim, Esq. The Rosen Law Firm, P.A. 275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor New York, NY 10016 Tel: (212) 686-1060 Toll Free: (866) 767-3653 Fax: (212) 202-3827 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.rosenlegal.com SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A. STOCKHOLM, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandvik has signed a EUR 500 million loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB). The loan will support Sandvik's investments in research and development (R&D), which include advanced solutions in component manufacturing as well as solutions for electrification and automation in mining and infrastructure. "We have a strong strategic focus on developing solutions that improve sustainability, productivity and safety in our core industries of mining, component manufacturing and infrastructure. The EIB cooperation will support our R&D initiatives and our aim to stay at the forefront and develop our technology leadership," says Stefan Widing, President and CEO of Sandvik. The loan has a seven-year tenor and will support Sandvik's R&D investment plans until 2025. Stockholm, January 18, 2023 Sandvik AB For further information, contact Louise Tjeder, VP Investor relations, phone: +46 (0) 70782 6374 or Johannes Hellstrom, Press and Media Relations Manager, phone: +46 (0) 70721 1008. The following files are available for download: https://mb.cision.com/Main/208/3699228/1788982.pdf Sandvik signs EUR 500 million loan agreement with the European Investment Bank SOURCE Sandvik BEIJING, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SANY Group, ("SANY"), a globally leading enterprise of the high-end equipment manufacturing industry, has announced record high overseas operating performance figures for 2022. In the first three quarters of the year, SANY Heavy Industry, a subsidiary of the group, headquartered in Changsha, Hunan, saw international sales revenue of 25.88 billion yuan, a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 43.7%. 12 overseas markets saw particularly notable growth, it capped off a hugely successful 2022 for SANY, with its other significant achievements listed below. Liang Wengen, Chairman of SANY Group SANY Plant 18 SANYs intelligent battery swapping station The cumulative export value of SANY Heavy Equipment reached 1.77 billion yuan, a YoY growth of 99%. Among them, SANY excavators' overseas sales revenue was 12.13 billion yuan, a YoY growth of 62.8%, whose overseas market share exceeded 8%, achieving rapid growth of more than 60% in key markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Canada. For concrete machinery, SANY retained the spot for the world's number one manufacturer, while retaining dominance in other export industries such as piling machinery, large-tonnage lifting machinery, and port machinery. Liang Wengen selected as one of Fortune China's 50 Business Leaders On April 8th, Fortune released China's 50 Most Influential Business Leaders in 2022, and Liang Wengen, Chairman of SANY Group, was included on the list. Under the leadership of Liang, SANY has comprehensively promoted digitalization, electrification and globalization transformation, and had some excellent achievements: the operation performance hit a record high, which broke through a number of key technologies of intelligent manufacturing, accelerated the intelligent and unmanned development of series products, and comprehensively led the electrification transformation. SANY Heavy Equipment joins the "10 billion club" On November 30th, the sales of SANY Heavy Equipment Department broke through 10 billion yuan for the first time, smashing the annual target and became another department of the company to achieve 10 billion annual sales besides the pumping circuits, heavy machinery, heavy lifting and heavy energy departments. The data shows that since 2017, SANY Heavy Equipment's annual sales have increased by about 6 times in 5 years, demonstrating spectacular growth. SANY Plant 18 awarded Lighthouse Factory status On October 11th, the World Economic Forum released the new list of global manufacturing lighthouse factories, and SANY Heavy Industry No. 18 Plant in Changsha industrial park was successfully selected, which is the second certified lighthouse factory in the global heavy industry after SANY Pile Machine Factory in Beijing. SANY is building 46 lighthouse factories around the world as of now, cementing the company's status as a "Lighthouse Enterprise" and driving forward efforts to position China's construction machinery industry as the world leader in lighthouse factories. SANY leads the electrification track. In 2022, SANY won a number of "market first and technology first" honors in the electrification industry, among which, SANY electric cranes sold more than 1,000 sets, with a market share of nearly 90%, retaining the No.1 spot throughout the country for 16 consecutive months. Also, SANY electric heavy trucks achieved the highest sales in its respective category and took the lead in entering the era of electrification 2.0. In addition, SANY electric mixer were sold more than 1,300 sets this year, winning half of the market share. Lastly, SANY also launched the world's first fully battery-powered telehandler crawler crane SCE800TB-EV, China's first electric mixer which entered the European market, and the iONTRON408P, China's first electric construction truck to gain access to the European market. Contact: Di Wu, [email protected] SOURCE SANY Group CLEVELAND, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Austin Company announced that Sean Barr, former National Accounts Manager and Director of Project Planning, will assume the position of Vice President. "Our clients find Sean to be a valued partner in the design-build process. He brings decades of food industry experience to every project, primarily focusing on the meat and poultry sector. We look forward to his growth potential in this core market," said President and CEO Mike Pierce. Sean Barr, former National Accounts Manager and Director of Project Planning, will assume the position of Vice President. Tweet this Sean Barr, Vice President "I am thrilled to move into the position of Vice President at The Austin Company. This is a role that I have been working towards for decades, and I am excited to take on the new responsibilities and challenges that come with it," said Barr. As Vice President, Barr will work closely with leadership and the market teams to help drive the growth of Austin's meat and poultry, alternative meat, and related food markets to ensure that Austin continuously improves and evolves to meet the needs of its customers. "When Sean joined Austin, we created a vision to become a preferred service provider to the meat and poultry industry and increase Austin's presence in that market. Through Sean's passion, perseverance, and his team's "Results, Not Excuses" mindset, Austin is now a design-builder of choice for many of today's leading meat and poultry producers," explained Sr. Vice President of Operations Matt Eddleman. Barr has worked in the food industry for over 35 years and has been with The Austin Company for 13 years. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Mississippi State University and obtained his master's degree in Project Management from Keller Graduate School of Management, DeVry University. He also holds Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute and Professional Project Executive (PPE) certification from Prodevia Learning. Barr is a sought-after speaker and thought leader within the food industry. Austin is a full-service, design-build company offering site location consulting, design, engineering, and construction. Headquartered in Cleveland, Austin has offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Irvine, California; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Merritt Island, Florida; San Luis Potosi, Mexico; and London, United Kingdom. The Austin Company is a subsidiary of Kajima. To learn more about Austin www.theaustin.com . SOURCE The Austin Company Combining microbiome science and epithelial immunology, the platform powers a multi-category innovation pipeline LOS ANGELES and DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Seed Health , a microbiome science company, and the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF) today announced the launch of a new platform to develop the next generation of non-toxic, non-inflammatory, microbiome-safe home and personal care products. Image courtesy of Seed Health Led by globally renowned immunologist and physician-scientist, Cezmi A. Akdis, MD, the venture combines Seed Health's microbiome science expertise with SIAF's novel immunology platform (EDAPS-I) to evaluate the toxicity and pro-inflammatory impact of commonly-used surfactants, emulsifiers, and preservatives on epithelial barriers to power a new standard of products that may preserve or even enhance immunological health. The Evolution of 'Clean'Redefining 'Toxic' With the rise of industrialization and urbanization, 350,000 new chemicals have been introduced to "modern life" since 1950. Many of these compounds including preservatives, emulsifiers, nanoparticles, and microplastics are known to affect the epithelial barrier of the skin, upper and lower airways, and the mucosa of the digestive system, causing microbial dysbiosis and 'microinflammation'. Dr. Akdis' Epithelial Barrier Theory posits that this increase in barrier-damaging agents (found in common consumer products like laundry and dishwasher detergents, cosmetics, household cleaning products, shampoo, toothpaste and processed foods) underlies the epidemic-level rise in allergic, autoimmune and other chronic conditions, which affect more than two billion people worldwide. "Until this point, we've lacked the technology and methods to establish the toxicity threshold of compounds in everyday products, resulting in population exposure in excess," stated Raja Dhir, Seed Health Co-Founder. "Our platform uniquely combines host and microbial immunology to reimagine the future of products in the built environment." Novel Immunology Platform to Develop A New Standard of Products Powered by the proprietary EDAPS-I platform, the two teams are screening more than 200 commonly used compounds to understand their impact on the epithelial barriers of the skin, gut, respiratory tract, and mucosas of the vagina and mouth. The teams are applying this data to develop formulations that repair or protect epithelial barriers impacted by environmental disruptors. The first phase of this work will focus on surfactants for skin (face, body, scalp, infant) and the home. The screening employs organ-on-a-chip, a microphysiological model designed to precisely replicate specific biological environments with features such as tissue-tissue interfaces, blood flow, and mechanical forces, providing a more human-relevant system for product development. Building on Decades of Immunological Research This collaboration builds on nearly three decades of research from Dr. Akdis and his research group at the University of Zurich, which has driven substantial progress in understanding mechanisms of immune regulation in allergy, asthma, autoimmune disease and other chronic conditions. Dr. Akdis has published over 520 peer-reviewed papers, many of which were foundational to the development of the EDAPS-I platform. In a recent study co-authored by Dr. Akdis and Raja Dhir, the EDAPS-I platform helped to reveal that commercial dishwashing detergents destroy the protective layer in the gut. Specifically, the study revealed that alcohol ethoxylates, an ingredient class used in commercial rinse aids, remains as residue on washed and ready-to-use dishware following the commercial rinse cycle, risking unconscious consumption and internal exposure in public dining settings. Analysis showed that even a small amount of this compound, as in the residue, induces cell death and inflammation that result in epithelial barrier defects. "A defective epithelial barrier can facilitate the entry of allergens and induce an inflammatory response that can initiate or aggravate many chronic inflammatory diseases. This makes the need to further evaluate the health hazards of these barrier-damaging compounds, and the search for safer alternatives, all the more urgent," said Dr. Akdis. "We're inspired to partner with Seed Health and leverage the team's expertise in microbiome science, product development and commercialization as we collaborate to translate this research into a new generation of products that can protect and restore these critical barriers." Dr. Akdis' Epithelial Barrier Theory is a call to action to fully understand the compounding consequences of chronic exposure to barrier disruptors in our modern world. "We are experiencing the climate change of our insides. Ecological disruption is now mirrored in our health," said Ara Katz, Seed Health Co-Founder. "Through our work with Dr. Akdis and SIAF, we can use fine-scale immunology to reimagine the evolution of everyday products for our selves, our families and our environment." About Seed Health Seed Health is a microbiome science company pioneering innovations in probiotics and living medicines to impact human and planetary health. Founded to realize the potential of microbes, our platform enables the translation of breakthrough science across a portfolio encompassing both indication-specific and preventive applications for gastrointestinal and digestive health, women's health, skin and oral care, pediatrics, mental health, metabolic function, and nutrition. Our consumer innovations are commercialized under Seed with a mission to bring much-needed precision, efficacy, education and perspective-shifting science communication to the global category of probiotics. Environmental research is conducted under SeedLabs , which was founded to advance novel bacterial interventions to enhance biodiversity and restore ecosystems impacted by human activity. LUCA Biologics , Seed Health's biotech company co-founded with Dr. Jacques Ravel, develops living medicines targeting the vaginal microbiome for urogenital and reproductive health. seedhealth.com seed.com luca.bio About The Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF) The Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF) is a department of the foundation Swiss Research Institutes for High Altitude Climate and Medicine Davos (SFI) and an affiliated institute of the University of Zurich and member of the Life Science Zurich Graduate School. The institute in its current form arose from the medical department of SFI in 1988. Since this time the research activities at SIAF are focused on basic research in the field of allergies and asthma. About Cezmi A. Akdis, MD Ph.D. Cezmi Akdis is the Director of the Swiss Institute for Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF). His major research areas include studies on immune regulation and allergen tolerance: Plasticity of antigen-specific T cells, 1995, human T regulatory cells, 1996, immune suppressive role of histamine receptor 2, 2000, human Type 2 NK cell subset, 2001, human regulatory NK cells, 2007, regulatory innate B cell subsets, 2017, regulatory innate lymphoid cells 2019, Epithelial barrier studies: Mechanisms of eczema 2000, mechanisms of epithelial apoptosis in allergic diseases 2000-2010, epithelial barrier hypothesis for the development of allergic and autoimmune diseases 2006-, major environmental changes after the 1960s and their effects on the immune system 2015-2020, Immune system and epithelial cell interaction 2000-2022. Role of the microbiome in allergy development and the possibility of interventions 2010-2022. Development of a rapid skin barrier detection device 2010. In 2002, he received the Venia Legendi from the University of Zurich, where he became a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in 2006. Professor Akdis is the author of numerous publications. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Allergy, a co-editor of the Journal of Allergy Clinical Immunology, and a member of the editorial board of other international specialist journals. Cezmi Akdis is the founder and organizer of several international congresses, including the World Immune Regulation Meeting (WIRM) and the EAACI-Davos Meeting, both in Davos. He is also active as a scientific expert for many journals and foundations and is a member of several specialist committees. Professor Akdis has been awarded numerous international prizes for his work. Media Contact: [email protected] SOURCE Seed Health NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Juan Monteverde, founder and managing partner of the class action firm Monteverde & Associates PC (the "M&A Class Action Firm"), a national securities firm rated Top 50 in the 2018-2021 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report and headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City, is investigating Volta Inc. (NYSE: VLTA), relating to its proposed sale to Shell USA. Under the terms of the agreement, VLTA shareholders are expected to receive $0.86 in cash per share they own. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/volta-inc. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. About Monteverde & Associates PC We are a national class action securities litigation law firm that has recovered millions of dollars and is committed to protecting shareholders from corporate wrongdoing. We were listed in the Top 50 in the 2018-2021 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. Our lawyers have significant experience litigating Mergers & Acquisitions and Securities Class Actions. Mr. Monteverde is recognized by Super Lawyers in 2013 and 2017-2019 as a Rising Star and in 2022 as a Super Lawyer in Securities Litigation. He has also been selected by Martindale-Hubbell as a 2017-2021 Top Rated Lawyer. Our firm's recent successes include changing the law in a significant victory that lowered the standard of liability under Section 14(e) of the Exchange Act in the Ninth Circuit. Thereafter, our firm successfully preserved this victory by obtaining dismissal of a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted at the United States Supreme Court. Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019). Also, we have recovered or secured over a dozen cash common funds for shareholders in mergers & acquisitions class action cases. If you own common stock in VLTA and wish to obtain additional information and protect your investments free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 971-1341. Contact: Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC The Empire State Building 350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4405 New York, NY 10118 United States of America [email protected] Tel: (212) 971-1341 Attorney Advertising. (C) 2023 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. SOURCE Monteverde & Associates PC Company invests US$55 million to date toward empowering nearly 3,000 emerging fashion talent in launching their own fashion collections SINGAPORE, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SHEIN, a global e-retailer of fashion, beauty and lifestyle products, is celebrating this month the second anniversary of its flagship incubator program, SHEIN X. Over the last two years, SHEIN has invested more than US$55 million to empower nearly 3,000 aspiring designers and artists from more than 20 countries, supporting them in their journey to launch their own fashion collections to global audiences. The SHEIN X incubator program guides designers through the end-to-end process, from product development, to manufacturing, to marketing and supply chain logistics. Designers are offered masterclasses, mentorship, and unique tools, such as SHEIN's real-time analytics site where they can view the overall process and respond to consumer demands in real-time. The SHEIN X program also funds the entire production and logistics process, ensuring that designers do not undertake the financial risk or burden of producing and launching their fashion collections. SHEIN respects the intellectual property of all designers, and SHEIN X designers own the rights to their SHEIN X designs. The SHEIN X program has also disbursed over US$5.37 million in commission to these designers, which is the vast majority of profits from the sale of SHEIN X products end of 2022. From only seven designers when the program launched in January 2021, the SHEIN X incubator program has grown to almost 3,000 designers and artists from around the world, launching nearly 2,000 collections with more than 25,000 original creations. The SHEIN X program has a dedicated production line, involving dozens of professional manufacturing suppliers, to produce SHEIN X products. SHEIN X designers can also enjoy the benefit of the extensive global reach of SHEIN's social media platforms, as well as various marketing activities and resources, to increase visibility and brand awareness for SHEIN X designers and their creations, helping them grow their influence within the industry. Many SHEIN X designers also feature prominently at SHEIN's physical events, such as pop-ups, and fashion shows, like the SHEIN X fashion show in Paris, as well as global fashion weeks, which provide an international spotlight for the designers. The SHEIN X program also elevates its designers and artists at national level events, such as the Art Discovery Program, which aims to help draw visitors outside smaller communities in metro areas, by creating new shopping and shareable art destinations for a limited time. "A core pillar of SHEIN's business model is to empower entrepreneurs. The SHEIN X program nurtures designers, helping them elevate their brands on the global stage", said Molly Miao, Chief Operating Officer of SHEIN. "SHEIN is dedicated to continuing our SHEIN X outreach and efforts amongst designer and artist communities around the world, taking another step forward in making the beauty of fashion accessible to all." In 2023, SHEIN hopes to identify and onboard an additional 1,000 aspiring designers and artists from around the world to join SHEIN X. Newly onboarded SHEIN X designers will be offered unique opportunities to collaborate with world-renowned designers, participate in exclusive events, as well as travel the world on global exchanges. Starting this month, SHEIN is partnering with the Graduate Fashion Foundation to support the SHEIN X fashion design competition where emerging European designers will vie for spots to be featured in the SHEIN X Fashion Show in Paris in June 2023. More details can be found here . To learn more about the SHEIN X incubator program, please visit https://discoversheinx.com/ and check out how we empower SHEIN X designers here. About SHEIN SHEIN is a global fashion and lifestyle e-retailer committed to making the beauty of fashion accessible to all. We use on-demand manufacturing technology to connect suppliers to our agile supply chain, reducing inventory waste and enabling us to deliver a variety of affordable products to customers around the world. From our global offices, we reach customers in more than 150 countries. To learn more about SHEIN, visit www.SHEIN.com. Press Contact: [email protected] About Graduate Fashion Foundation: Graduate Fashion Foundation (GFF) is a charitable organization and an essential part of the fashion industry. It is the springboard for new talent, the lifeforce the whole industry relies on. Over the past 31 years, more than 100,000 newly graduated and undergraduate students have been supported and guided by the charity. GFF aims remain the same today; dedication to encouraging young people, helping them find employment and get the best start possible in the fashion industry. An unrivalled platform for the promotion of new talent, Graduate Fashion Foundation bridges the gap between graduation and employment. www.graduatefashionweek.com | www.graduatefashionfoundation.com SOURCE SHEIN BOTHELL, Wash., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Strix Group plc, the global leader in the design, manufacture, and supply of kettle safety controls as well as water filtration products, is expanding its foothold in the U.S. with the introduction of a new product collection focused on its mission to 'Innovate Safety and Design for a sustainable future'. STRIX, THE GLOBAL TECH LEADER ENTERS US MARKET WITH AQUA OPTIMA AND BEST IN CLASS PARTNERS Tweet this STRIX, THE GLOBAL TECH LEADER ENTERS US MARKET WITH AQUA OPTIMA AND BEST IN CLASS PARTNERS Harry Kyriacou, Chief Commercial Officer, made the announcement. "We are excited to announce the expansion of our consumer goods group into the American market. We've partnered with best-in-class partners, including over 25 local sales experts, and backed by the exceptional operational support provided by the Englewood Marketing Group, we expect our technologies to be in the hands of consumers across the country in 2023." With a history of excellence and continuous growth and ambition for further development, Strix is deploying its world class technology into simple sustainable solutions in the U.S. The expansion will unveil a number of products under its Aqua Optima brand, highlighting cost effective water solutions. Strix is a British company whose journey dates back to the 1950s, developing temperature control flight suits for RAF pilots. Today its technology is used in an estimated 70% of electric Kettles in the USA. Its range of heating and filtration technologies are efficient and eco-friendly, most notably the Strix True Boil technology that allows consumers to save money by filtering and heating only the water they need on demand, with accurate temperatures. Consumer awareness of water contamination issues and the impact of single-use plastics continues to grow at a rapid rate. In line with these trends, the group will unveil their range of Perfect Pour filtered water pitchers / dispensers, an SCAA certified coffee / hot drinks machine, and more, that all feature the same award-winning technology and water filters that compete against the leading brands by offering convenient solutions with more value. "It's the perfect combination of macro trends and award-winning technology." Said Justin Howard, Director of Americas and Commercial Strategy. "As US consumers continue adopting tea as a healthy alternative, their awareness of water contamination grows, and they acknowledge their impact on the environment. Throughout the year Strix will unveil new innovations that continue to offer water solutions and alternatives to single-use plastics. The company has been delivering water expertise for over 20 years to ensure that everyone can access faster and more sustainable ways to enjoy better, healthier water." You can find "Powered by Strix" on display by major brands in the USA. About Strix Group PLC: Aqua Optima is a water filtration technology and appliance brand, and is part of Strix Group, which prides itself on innovating safety and design for a sustainable future. Established in 1982 and headquartered in the first UNESCO biosphere on the Isle of Man, Strix Group develops award winning technologies that power leading brands to deliver unrivalled safety and helps reduce energy consumption, single-use plastics and water contamination around the world. Strix trades on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange (AIM: KETL). SOURCE Strix Group JACKSON, Miss., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Mississippi loves school choice, and next week, more than 750 students, parents, and educators will gather at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson for an inspiring, excitement-filled celebration designed to spotlight the state's growing portfolio of school choice options. The event will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023, from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM on the steps of the Mississippi Capitol (400 High Street in Jackson). More than 750 participants are expected to attend. Hosted by Empower Mississippi, organizers are looking forward to returning to the steps of the state capitol for the first since the COVID pandemic. The celebration will include students representing schools across the state, as well as a cheerleader performance by Ambition Prep and a musical performance by Clinton Christian Academy show choir. The celebration is open to the press and the public. Organizers hope that as a result of the event, additional parents from across the Magnolia State will discover and explore the education options available for their children. "When Mississippi parents are empowered to actively choose how and where their children learn and inspired to select schools that best meet their children's needs students are better positioned to succeed in school and in life," said Grant Callen, founder and CEO of Empower Mississippi. "This celebration will bring the excitement, energy, and enthusiasm of school choice to life, so that more families across the state can discover new schools and learning environments that meet their children's needs." Empower Mississippi is a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on educating citizens about issues including K12 education, work and job creation, and ensuring an equitable justice system. Participating schools include Obama Magnet School, First Presbyterian Day School, Midtown Charter School, Ambition Prep Charter School, and Clinton Christian Academy Show Choir. For more information, visit empowerms.org or schoolchoiceweek.com . National School Choice Week (NSCW) informs, inspires, and empowers parents to discover the K-12 education options available for their children, including traditional public, public charter, public magnet, online, private, and home schooling. Every January, tens of thousands of schools, organizations, and individuals plan unique events and activities to shine a positive spotlight on effective education options in their communities. The Week is a project of the nonpartisan, nonpolitical National School Choice Awareness Foundation. SOURCE National School Choice Week NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The tapioca market is fragmented, characterized by the presence of many global and regional vendors. The increasing demand for foods and beverages in developing countries, such as China, India, Indonesia, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, has led to the growth of regional vendors. The major players focus on expansions and collaborations to expand their businesses. Collaborations and acquisitions help vendors leverage technology and product portfolios to increase their market shares. Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Tapioca Market 2023-2027 The tapioca market size is forecasted to grow by 6,972.08 thousand tons from 2022 to 2027. However, the growth momentum of the market is estimated to decelerate at a CAGR of 1.88%, according to Technavio - Request latest PDF sample report Why buy? Add credibility to strategies Analyze competitor's offerings Get a holistic view of the market Grow your profit margins with Technavio- Buy the Report Tapioca market 2023-2027: Scope The tapioca market report also covers the following areas: Tapioca market 2023-2027: Segmentation Type Fresh Dried Application Animal feed: The animal feed segment will grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. Tapioca is less expensive when compared to other starches. It is fed to animals such as swine and poultry in the form of pulp, meal, and pellets. The demand for cassava and tapioca feeds has increased due to a rise in the price of maize and other animal feed raw materials. Thus, the increasing use of tapioca in animal feed will drive the growth of the animal feed segment during the forecast period. will grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. Tapioca is less expensive when compared to other starches. It is fed to animals such as swine and poultry in the form of pulp, meal, and pellets. The demand for cassava and tapioca feeds has increased due to a rise in the price of maize and other animal feed raw materials. Thus, the increasing use of tapioca in animal feed will drive the growth of the animal feed segment during the forecast period. Food and beverage Industrial Region APAC: APAC is estimated to account for 55% of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. China is one of the world's largest importers of tapioca products, such as tapioca chips and tapioca flour. Thailand and Vietnam are the largest exporters of tapioca globally. China , Thailand , Indonesia , Vietnam , and India are the leading countries in the region. Moreover, the demand for tapioca products is increasing in countries such as Japan , Cambodia , and the Philippines . All these factors will drive the growth of the tapioca market in the region during the forecast period. is one of the world's largest importers of tapioca products, such as tapioca chips and tapioca flour. and are the largest exporters of tapioca globally. , , , , and are the leading countries in the region. Moreover, the demand for tapioca products is increasing in countries such as , , and . All these factors will drive the growth of the tapioca market in the region during the forecast period. China India North America US Canada Europe UK Germany France Rest of Europe Middle East and Africa and Africa Saudi Arabia South Africa Rest of the Middle East and Africa and South America Chile Brazil Argentina Tapioca market 2023-2027: Vendor Analysis American Key Products Inc., Authentic Foods, Cargill Inc., Ciranda Inc., Ekta International, Emsland Starke GmbH, Hunan Kang pharmaceutical Ltd., Ingredion Inc., Jayavel Sago Factory, KengSeng Group of Co., Malt Products Corp., Parchem Fine and Specialty Chemicals Inc., PT Budi Starch and Sweetener Tbk, Royal Ingredients Group BV, Sonish Starch Technology Co. Ltd., SPAC Starch Products India Pvt. Ltd., Tapioca Vietnam, Tereos Group, Venus Starch Suppliers, and Tate and Lyle Plc are among some of the major market participants. Request a PDF sample now What are the key data covered in the tapioca market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the tapioca market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the tapioca market and its contribution to the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the tapioca market across APAC, North America , Europe , Middle East and Africa , and South America , , and , and Thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of tapioca market vendors Subscribe to our "Basic Plan" billed annually at USD 5000 that enables you to download 5 reports and view 100 reports every month Related Reports Potato Protein Market by Type, Application, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2023-2027: This report extensively covers market segmentation by type (isolate, concentrate, and hydrolyzed), application (meat, supplements, animal feed, and others), and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa). North America is estimated to contribute 35% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The market share growth by the isolate segment will be significant. Fruits and Vegetables Market by Product, Product Type, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2023-2027: This report extensively covers market segmentation by product (vegetables and fruits), product type (fresh, processed, and frozen), and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and Middle East and Africa). APAC is estimated to contribute 69% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The market share growth by the vegetable segment will be significant. Tapioca Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 159 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Decelerate at a CAGR of 1.88% Market growth 2023-2027 6,972.08 thousand tons Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 1.88 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution APAC at 55% Key countries US, China, Thailand, Indonesia, and France Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled American Key Products Inc., Authentic Foods, Cargill Inc., Ciranda Inc., Ekta International, Emsland Starke GmbH, Hunan Kang pharmaceutical Ltd., Ingredion Inc., Jayavel Sago Factory, KengSeng Group of Co., Malt Products Corp., Parchem Fine and Specialty Chemicals Inc., PT Budi Starch and Sweetener Tbk, Royal Ingredients Group BV, Sonish Starch Technology Co. Ltd., SPAC Starch Products India Pvt. Ltd., Tapioca Vietnam, Tereos Group, Venus Starch Suppliers, and Tate and Lyle Plc 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, and 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. Browse for Technavio's consumer staples market reports Table of contents 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Application Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Type Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market- Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market- Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global tapioca market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global tapioca market 2017 - 2021 (thousand t) 4.2 Application Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Application Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand t) 4.3 Type Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Type Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand t) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand t) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 (thousand t) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Application 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Application - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Application - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Application Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Application Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Application 6.3 Animal feed - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Animal feed - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Animal feed - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 36: Chart on Animal feed - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Animal feed - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Food and beverage - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Food and beverage - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) 61 Exhibit 39: Data Table on Food and beverage - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 40: Chart on Food and beverage - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Food and beverage - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Industrial - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 42: Chart on Industrial - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 43: Data Table on Industrial - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 44: Chart on Industrial - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 45: Data Table on Industrial - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.6 Market opportunity by Application Exhibit 46: Market opportunity by Application (thousand t) 7 Market Segmentation by Type 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 47: Chart on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 48: Data Table on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Type Exhibit 49: Chart on Comparison by Type Exhibit 50: Data Table on Comparison by Type 7.3 Fresh - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Fresh - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Fresh - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 53: Chart on Fresh - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Fresh - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Dried - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 55: Chart on Dried - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 56: Data Table on Dried - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 57: Chart on Dried - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Dried - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Market opportunity by Type Exhibit 59: Market opportunity by Type (thousand t) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 60: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 61: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 62: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 63: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 64: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 66: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 67: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 70: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 71: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 74: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 75: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 78: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 79: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 82: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 83: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 86: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 87: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 90: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 91: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 94: Data Table on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 95: Chart on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 Thailand - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on Thailand - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 98: Data Table on Thailand - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 99: Chart on Thailand - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on Thailand - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 Indonesia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 101: Chart on Indonesia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 102: Data Table on Indonesia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 (thousand t) Exhibit 103: Chart on Indonesia - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 104: Data Table on Indonesia - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 105: Market opportunity by geography (thousand t) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 106: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 107: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 108: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 109: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 110: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 111: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 American Key Products Inc. Exhibit 112: American Key Products Inc. - Overview Exhibit 113: American Key Products Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 114: American Key Products Inc. - Key offerings 12.4 Authentic Foods Exhibit 115: Authentic Foods - Overview Exhibit 116: Authentic Foods - Product / Service Exhibit 117: Authentic Foods - Key offerings 12.5 Cargill Inc. Exhibit 118: Cargill Inc. - Overview Exhibit 119: Cargill Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 120: Cargill Inc. - Key news Exhibit 121: Cargill Inc. - Key offerings 12.6 Ciranda Inc. Exhibit 122: Ciranda Inc. - Overview Exhibit 123: Ciranda Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 124: Ciranda Inc. - Key offerings 12.7 Ekta International Exhibit 125: Ekta International - Overview Exhibit 126: Ekta International - Product / Service Exhibit 127: Ekta International - Key offerings 12.8 Emsland Starke GmbH Exhibit 128: Emsland Starke GmbH - Overview Exhibit 129: Emsland Starke GmbH - Product / Service Exhibit 130: Emsland Starke GmbH - Key offerings 12.9 Hunan Kang pharmaceutical Ltd. Exhibit 131: Hunan Kang pharmaceutical Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 132: Hunan Kang pharmaceutical Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 133: Hunan Kang pharmaceutical Ltd. - Key offerings 12.10 Ingredion Inc. Exhibit 134: Ingredion Inc. - Overview Exhibit 135: Ingredion Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 136: Ingredion Inc. - Key news Exhibit 137: Ingredion Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 138: Ingredion Inc. - Segment focus 12.11 KengSeng Group of Co. Exhibit 139: KengSeng Group of Co. - Overview Exhibit 140: KengSeng Group of Co. - Product / Service Exhibit 141: KengSeng Group of Co. - Key offerings 12.12 Parchem Fine and Specialty Chemicals Inc. Exhibit 142: Parchem Fine and Specialty Chemicals Inc. - Overview Exhibit 143: Parchem Fine and Specialty Chemicals Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 144: Parchem Fine and Specialty Chemicals Inc. - Key offerings 12.13 PT Budi Starch and Sweetener Tbk Exhibit 145: PT Budi Starch and Sweetener Tbk - Overview Exhibit 146: PT Budi Starch and Sweetener Tbk - Product / Service Exhibit 147: PT Budi Starch and Sweetener Tbk - Key offerings 12.14 Royal Ingredients Group BV Exhibit 148: Royal Ingredients Group BV - Overview Exhibit 149: Royal Ingredients Group BV - Product / Service Exhibit 150: Royal Ingredients Group BV - Key offerings 12.15 Sonish Starch Technology Co. Ltd. Exhibit 151: Sonish Starch Technology Co. Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 152: Sonish Starch Technology Co. Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 153: Sonish Starch Technology Co. Ltd. - Key offerings 12.16 SPAC Starch Products India Pvt. Ltd. Exhibit 154: SPAC Starch Products India Pvt. Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 155: SPAC Starch Products India Pvt. Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 156: SPAC Starch Products India Pvt. Ltd. - Key offerings 12.17 Tapioca Vietnam Exhibit 157: Tapioca Vietnam - Overview Exhibit 158: Tapioca Vietnam - Product / Service Exhibit 159: Tapioca Vietnam - Key offerings 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 160: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 161: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 162: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 163: Research methodology Exhibit 164: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 165: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 166: 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 Children from a dozen countries met with the President of the General Assembly and toured the United Nations on a federal holiday in the United States honouring the late civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martin Luther King Jr. Swarming the office of President Csaba Korosi, the children - who ranged in age from toddler to high-school teen - pulled on the UN and Hungarian flags that flank a UN seal in the office and ran around to look at the skyline outside of the balcony. Meanwhile, parents tried to keep them from touching anything and nervously eyed a glass table that usually holds talking points for meetings with Heads of State and Government. "Will there still be a world by the time we have kids," one of the children asked the President. "That's what the work of the General Assembly tries to guarantee," replied Mr. Korosi, who sometimes mentions his now adult daughter in speeches, recalling the motivation she has given him to keep pushing for a sustainable transformation in the world. UN Tour Guide Jonathan Mishal explains the UN to a group of young children.Inspiring the next generation The next stop for the group was a tour of the United Nations, led by UN Tour Guide Jonathan Mishal who helps to lead the UN's children's tours twice a week. Sitting the multilingual group in front of world flags pinned into a wooden tree, Mr. Mishal discussed the importance of the UN for global cooperation: "This is the one place in the world where countries that are at war sit right next to each other, go downstairs for coffee, and discuss why they disagree." The group then visited the General Assembly, where they sat in the Member States' seats and posed for photos at the podium where world leaders and invited guests speak. Mr. Mishal noted also the importance of young people's involvement in the UN, referring to Malala and Greta Thunberg - both of whom addressed the chamber. Bringing Dr. King's dream to life The setting was known to the older children, whose parents work for the UN, and have grown up in international settings speaking Arabic, French, English, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Mandarin, Romanian, and Spanish. Comfortable in their surroundings, the children made suggestions for improving world affairs on the local stage - "my parents don't always listen to me" - to improving the actual General Assembly - Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines International Organisations Africa By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. bigger translation ear pieces to accommodate big earrings. Mr. Mishal continued the tour, with a nod to MLK Day, by discussing discrimination. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the UN in 1967, meeting to discuss the situation of civil rights in the United States with senior UN official and also Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ralph Bunche. In a tweet for the Day, President Korosi said Dr. King's vision aligns with UN ideals of human rights, economic and social justice, and peace around the world: "As we look to crisis management and transformation, the work of the General Assembly is inspired by his courage and conviction." Earlier in the day, President Korosi welcomed the second cohort of the Youth Fellows - six young women and men from developing countries who will work within his office through September. Proprietary Technology Launch Sets Momentum for the Future. ANAHEIM, Calif. , Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Even though it may still be mysterious like something out of a movie, new intelligent technology has proven to be extremely helpful to recruiters. In 2022, RealREPP's team of Expert Recruiters doubled in size while the company took its first steps in developing its own search and hire technology. Celebrating its eighth year in business, RealREPP improves upon traditional recruiting practices with the introduction of "TJ," its proprietary technology. RealREPP's team of Expert Recruiters doubled in size while developing new proprietary search and hire technology. Tweet this Celebrating the launch of "TJ," RealREPP's proprietary search and hire technology, in Anaheim, CA. The RealREPP team doubled in size in 2022 and is on track to continue growing. Connect with their team on LinkedIn or at RealREPP.com. RealREPP's Technology Launch Celebration in Anaheim, California. Connect with their team on LinkedIn or at RealREPP.com. (Pictured from left to right) Johnny Renaudo, CEO + Peter Tan, Director of Technology + Paige Embleton, Director of Recruitment and Operations + Kendra Lester, President Director of Technology, Peter Tan, explains, "There are so many ways our intelligent technology and AI streamlines search, which makes the experience of our recruiters, candidates, and clients better. What we have achieved is just the beginning of this revolutionary process. We are very excited about our current roadmap and enhancements we will be rolling out this year." RealREPP's top priority is freeing up time for its growing team to devote to building meaningful candidate and client relationships. Built on the core value that, "People Are Your Foundation," RealREPP's culture of kindness ensures a positive experience with their dedicated recruiters. TJ facilitates that by systematically governing and streamlining the recruiting process. An added perk includes the launch of "TJ Mobile" which allows RealREPP Expert Recruiters to check in from the mountaintops of Peru or the beaches of Hawaii, which they have. A large majority of employees are currently working remotely or with flexible schedules, according to RealREPP's recent LinkedIn poll. This has made in-person hiring more difficult for employers. President, Kendra Lester, responded, "We knew we had to improve the candidate search to hire speed, so we set out to do just that. We launched TJ 1.0 this past year and are very proud of what we have accomplished with Peter and our entire RealREPP team." As for what's next, said, CEO, Johnny Renaudo shared, "the next iteration of TJ 1.0 is already in development where we responsibly dive further into the use of AI and ML to enhance the hiring and search experience." TJ, paired with the expertise of RealREPP Experts Recruiters, makes the recruitment process fair, quick, and accurate. RealREPP is now accepting applications for experienced recruiters. ABOUT RealREPP RealREPP is a people-first recruiting company led by Expert Recruiters & powered by TJ, their proprietary technology. Guided by the principle that "People Are Your Foundation," clients enjoy working with dedicated Expert Recruiters who take the time to listen and learn about their hiring and search goals. RealREPP utilizes its proprietary technology to improve the hiring process and enhance the human experience. Headquartered in California since 2015, RealREPP's team of nationwide Expert Recruiters is now servicing all areas and sectors of business. Connect with RealREPP through Linkedin, and at RealREPP.com Media Contact Alyssa Tomfohrde Communications Director Phone (415) 603-8690 [email protected] Download Images SOURCE RealREPP Ward, Smith & Hill attorneys help secure win for patent owners LONGVIEW, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- An Eastern District of Texas jury has returned a $166.3 million verdict in a patent infringement lawsuit against AT&T for infringing two Finesse Wireless LLC patents. Utah-based Finesse filed the lawsuit in August 2021 alleging that AT&T's 4G LTE and 5G networks infringed its patents for reducing interference from unwanted signals in wireless communications. The trial went before U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap where jurors deliberated for three hours before finding on Friday that AT&T infringed a total of 10 claims across U.S. Patent Nos. 7,346,134 and 9,548,775. Jurors also found that AT&T failed to prove that any of the claims were invalid. "Our team is very proud that the jury saw that our client's technology was being used by AT&T without permission," said Ward, Smith & Hill partner Andrea Fair. "We were honored to assist a very talented team of lawyers from Susman Godfrey, including lead counsel Joe Grinstein, Meng Xi and Meg Griffith." Mr. Grinstein, Ms. Xi and Ms. Griffith from Susman Godfrey presented Finesse's corporate representative, examined the technical experts in the case and presented opening and closing arguments, along with Ward, Smith & Hill co-founder Johnny Ward. Mr. Ward and Ms. Fair cross-examined AT&T's and Nokia's corporate representatives and fact witnesses, and Ms. Fair presented the damages side of the case, including presenting and cross-examining both sides' damages experts. The case is Finesse Wireless LLC v. AT&T Mobility LLC, case number 2:21-cv-00316, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. For more information about Ward Smith & Hill's patent litigation practice, visit: http://wsfirm.com/practice-areas/patent-litigation/. Longview, Texas-based Ward, Smith & Hill, PLLC, has tried more than 350 cases to verdict, earning a national reputation in high-stakes claims involving complex commercial litigation, intellectual property law, oil and gas matters, bad faith insurance claims, and serious personal injury claims. The firm frequently assists lawyers nationwide in complex cases before Texas juries. To learn more about the firm, visit http://www.wsfirm.com. Media Contact: Alyssa Woulfe 800-559-4534 [email protected] SOURCE Ward, Smith & Hill, PLLC BEIJING, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Here comes a convenient and inexpensive accelerator called "Quickback", launched by Beijing Guanyue Technology, which will make the Spring Festival holiday happier. The Spring Festival is coming, and various TV programs are coming too. How to enjoy the Spring Festival Vacation once you are overseas? Whichever apps users use to watch movies with their computer or cell phone, they can install the app "Quickback". First CLICK "start", open those apps on the PC or cell phone and then users will be able to watch lots of movies. Quickback is designed for overseas Chinese (specially for overseas students) and those often on overseas business trips. With its help, users can visit domestic audio and video, live broadcast, national service games and other applications and websites as if they are in China. Why use Quickback instead of other accelerators? Users can choose which app to speed up, while other applications are not disturbed. Imagine that when people are in the United States, they only want to speed up the access to WeChat, while goofing around on Facebook. If they can't choose only speeding up WeChat, the way they visit Facebook will be this: from USA to China and then return to the United States. The speed to visit Facebook will decline, which we call "disturbed". Besides, Intelligent selection of acceleration path, high-quality and low-latency network bring smooth acceleration experience to overseas users. Official website: https://quickback.gy-idc.com SOURCE Beijing Guanyue Technology The iconic brand selected Creatio to help cater to the ever-evolving needs of its customers BOSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Creatio, a global vendor of one platform to automate workflows and CRM with no-code and a maximum degree of freedom, today announced that The Cheesecake Factory Bakery, a global brand dedicated to creating some of the most innovative and irresistible desserts in the world, is leveraging Creatio technology to bolster its omnichannel transformation and support data-driven decision making. The Cheesecake Factory Bakery produces quality cheesecakes, layer cakes, and specialty items for leading-edge foodservice operators, retail and grocery, as well as The Cheesecake Factory restaurants worldwide. As The Cheesecake Factory Bakery evolves, so, too, does its need for a relevant omnichannel strategy where its customers can have a more connected, customized experience. The Cheesecake Factory Bakery selected Creatio's one platform to automate customer relationship management workflows with no-code. The Cheesecake Factory Bakery will use Creatio to enable marketing, sales, and service teams to increase customer engagement with a unified customer view. In tandem, Creatio's product will allow The Cheesecake Factory Bakery to integrate quickly and easily with other legacy infrastructures. Manual and paper-based workflows will also be automated to better track demand planning, share production information, and assist in resource allocation and budgeting. As a result, Creatio's no-code technology is also enabling The Cheesecake Factory Bakery to become more data-driven and to step away from manual tracking of product and customer data spreadsheets. With better decision-making tools at its fingertips, The Cheesecake Factory Bakery can stay committed to understanding their customers better and providing higher levels of service. "The Cheesecake Factory Bakery is a great example of an iconic company that is prioritizing its transformation of customers' digital brand journeys," said Andy Zambito, Chief Sales Officer, America, Creatio. "With Creatio's no-code platform, the brand possesses a maximum degree of freedom to continue accelerating and supporting their transformation to deliver customized and seamless customer experiences." About Creatio Creatio is a global vendor of one platform to automate workflows and CRM with no-code and maximum degree of freedom. Millions of workflows are launched on our platform daily in 100 countries by thousands of clients. Genuine care for our clients and partners is a defining part of Creatio's DNA. For more information, please visit www.creatio.com . Media Contact: Vera Mayuk +1 617-765-7997 [email protected] SOURCE Creatio DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Power Management IC Packaging Market (2022-2027) by Type, Solution, Applications, and Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Power Management IC Packaging Market is estimated to be USD 46.84 Bn in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 60.35 Bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 5.2%. Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the Global Power Management IC Packaging 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 growth and reducing risks. Company Profiles The report provides a detailed analysis of the competitors in the market. It covers the financial performance analysis for 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 3D Plus, Inc., Hana Micron, Inc., , NXP Semiconductors N.V., Texas Instruents, Inc., Toshiba Corp., Wuxi China Resources Microelectronics Co. Ltd., 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 Power Management IC Packaging Market. Ansoff Matrix, also known as the 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 analyst analyses the Global Power Management IC Packaging 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 Power Management IC Packaging Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies. The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry. The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 forces model and the Ansoff Matrix. In addition, the impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report. The report also includes the regulatory scenario in the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules and regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies. The report also contains a competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's competitive positioning tool. Key Topics Covered: 1 Report Description 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Market Dynamics 4.1 Drivers 4.1.1 Increasing Demand for Energy-Efficient Battery-Powered Devices 4.1.2 Advancements in Technology 4.1.3 Rising Trend of Energy Harvesting Technologies 4.2 Restraints 4.2.1 Complex Integration Process for Multi-Power Domain Socs of PMICs 4.3 Opportunities 4.3.1 Increasing Application Areas of Power Management ICs 4.3.2 Development of 2.5DIC and 3.0DIC Technologies 4.3.3 Investment in 3D Packaging Process Design of Next-Generation Smart Devices 4.4 Challenges 4.4.1 Make PMICs Highly Efficient Along with Reducing their Size 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 5.5 PESTLE Analysis 6 Global Power Management IC Packaging Market, By Type 6.1 Introduction 6.2 BGA 6.3 HSOP32 6.4 HVNON10 6.5 HVQFN 6.6 QFN 6.7 WLCSP 7 Global Power Management IC Packaging Market, By Solution 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Configurable PMICs 7.3 DC-to-DC Solutions 7.4 Linear Voltage Regulators 7.5 PMICs for Networking 7.6 PMICs for i.MX Application Processors 7.7 Switching Regulators 8 Global Power Management IC Packaging Market, By Applications 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Automotive Infotainment & Telematic Devices 8.3 Digital Cameras 8.4 Digital TV Processor 8.5 Fitness Trackers & Wearable Devices 8.6 Portable Industrial & Medical Devices 8.7 Portable Media Players & Readers 8.8 Smartphones 8.9 Tablets & PCs 9 Americas' Power Management IC Packaging Market 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Argentina 9.3 Brazil 9.4 Canada 9.5 Chile 9.6 Colombia 9.7 Mexico 9.8 Peru 9.9 United States 9.10 Rest of Americas 10 Europe's Power Management IC Packaging Market 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Austria 10.3 Belgium 10.4 Denmark 10.5 Finland 10.6 France 10.7 Germany 10.8 Italy 10.9 Netherlands 10.10 Norway 10.11 Poland 10.12 Russia 10.13 Spain 10.14 Sweden 10.15 Switzerland 10.16 United Kingdom 10.17 Rest of Europe 11 Middle East and Africa's Power Management IC Packaging Market 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Egypt 11.3 Israel 11.4 Qatar 11.5 Saudi Arabia 11.6 South Africa 11.7 United Arab Emirates 11.8 Rest of MEA 12 APAC's Power Management IC Packaging Market 12.1 Introduction 12.2 Australia 12.3 Bangladesh 12.4 China 12.5 India 12.6 Indonesia 12.7 Japan 12.8 Malaysia 12.9 Philippines 12.10 Singapore 12.11 South Korea 12.12 Sri Lanka 12.13 Thailand 12.14 Taiwan 12.15 Rest of Asia-Pacific 13 Competitive Landscape 13.1 IGR Competitive Quadrant 13.2 Market Share Analysis 13.3 Strategic Initiatives 13.3.1 M&A and Investments 13.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations 13.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements 14 Company Profiles 14.1 3D Plus, Inc. 14.2 Ablic, Inc. 14.3 Analog Devices, Inc. 14.4 Dialog Semiconductor PLC. 14.5 Good-Ark Semiconductor USA Corp. 14.6 Hana Micron, Inc. 14.7 Infineon Technologies Ag 14.8 Jilin Sino-Microelectronics Co. Ltd. 14.9 Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. 14.10 Microchip Technology, Inc. 14.11 Mitsubishi Group 14.12 Nxp Semiconductors N.V. 14.13 On Semiconductor Corp. 14.14 Renesas Electronics Corp. 14.15 Semtech Corp. 14.16 Shenzhen Electronics Group Co. Ltd. 14.17 STMicroelectronics N.V. 14.18 Texas Instruents, Inc. 14.19 Toshiba Corp. 14.20 Wuxi China Resources Microelectronics Co. Ltd. 15 Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/myzebs 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 Lt. Governor Pamela Evette, State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, Sen. Greg Hembree and Rep. Shannon Erickson to Participate COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Thousands of students, parents, and educators will march from the USC Alumni Center to the steps of the South Carolina Capitol next week to raise awareness of K12 school choice in the Palmetto State. The march and subsequent Capitol rally will be the largest school choice celebrations in the state's history. The event will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 25. Starting at 11:15 AM, more than 1,500 participants will march from the USC Alumni Center (900 Senate Street in Columbia) to the outdoor steps of the South Carolina Capitol (1100 Gervais Street in Columbia) for a celebratory rally at 11:45 AM. South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, along with state representatives and senators. Hosted by My SC Education, the rally will feature remarks, band performances, cheers, and from students representing more than 25 traditional public, public charter, public magnet, private, virtual, and home education options. Participants will travel from Aiken, Anderson, Beaufort, Belton, Charleston, James Island, Meggett, Myrtle Beach, North Charleston, and Orangeburg to attend. The celebration is open to the press and the public. Organizers hope that as a result of the event, additional parents from across the Palmetto State will discover and explore the education options available for their children. "Usually, when you see thousands of people gather at the state capitol, it's for a protest. This event is just the opposite: it's a fun, enthusiastic, energetic, celebration designed to let even more families know about the choices available for their children's education," said Shaunette Parker, Outreach Director of My SC Education. "Our goal is simple: to show every parent in South Carolina that school choice can change their children's lives for the better, and to shine a spotlight on the students who are succeeding thanks to our state's school choice programs." My SC Education is a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on giving students across South Carolina the opportunity to succeed in school, empowering parents with education options, empowering teachers and principals, and creating a fair and open marketplace for innovation. The Jan. 25 event is timed to coincide with National School Choice Week (NSCW), which will feature more than 26,000 school choice events across all 50 states to raise equal and positive awareness of the traditional public, public charter, public magnet, private, online, and home education options available for families. In addition to this event, 344 public and private schools in South Carolina will host independent events and activities during NSCW. These schools enroll an estimated 148,482 students across all grade levels. To help raise awareness of the education options available for South Carolina families, Gov. Henry McMaster recently issued a ceremonial proclamation recognizing January 22-28, 2023, as "South Carolina School Choice Week." For more information, visit mysceducation.org or schoolchoiceweek.com . National School Choice Week (NSCW) informs, inspires, and empowers parents to discover the K-12 education options available for their children, including traditional public, public charter, public magnet, online, private, and home schooling. Every January, tens of thousands of schools, organizations, and individuals plan unique events and activities to shine a positive spotlight on effective education options in their communities. The Week is a project of the nonpartisan, nonpolitical National School Choice Awareness Foundation. SOURCE National School Choice Week LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- National probate inheritance dispute law firm, RMO LLP, announced today that Founding Partner Scott Rahn, Managing Partner Sean Muntz, and Senior Attorney Mathew Wrenshall have been selected by their peers for inclusion in the 2023 Southern California Super Lawyers lists as "Top Rated Estate & Trust Litigators," with Rahn listed in the exclusive 'Top 100: Southern California Super Lawyers List' for the seventh year in a row. "We are honored to be selected by our peers for such a prestigious recognition," said Rahn. "This honor is a tribute to our firm's commitment to bringing peace of mind to our clients." California attorney Scott Rahn resolves contests, disputes and litigation related to trusts, estates and conservatorships, creating a welcome peace of mind for clients. He represents heirs, beneficiaries, trustees and executors. He utilizes his experience to develop and implement strategies that swiftly and efficiently address the financial issues, fiduciary duties and emotional complexities underlying trust contests, estate conflicts and probate litigation. Driven by a commitment to provide relief to people grieving the loss of a loved one, Scott collaborates closely with clients. He pursues and defends claims involving incapacity, incompetence, undue influence, breach of fiduciary duty, and other similar areas of dispute. His advice and counsel also include prevention and remediation of financial elder abuse. Sean Muntz serves as Managing Partner of RMO LLP. Muntz is an experienced trial and appellate lawyer, with litigation experience spanning a broad range of subject matters, including banking, general commercial, employment, probate, real estate, securities, intellectual property, maritime and environmental disputes. Sean has litigated matters in state and federal courts throughout California, and in alternative dispute resolution forums, including AAA and JAMS, and before the NASD/FINRA and Pacific Stock Exchange. Muntz's practice focuses on representing beneficiaries, and professional and corporate fiduciaries (administrators, executors, trustees, conservators, and guardians) in contested trust, estate and probate litigation. Mathew Wrenshall is a Senior Attorney in the Los Angeles and Pasadena offices of RMO LLP. He handles disputes over contested wills, trusts, and conservatorships in probate court. Using his lengthy experience as a litigator, Wrenshall works closely with clients to resolve complex disputes that often involve complicated family dynamics. Wrenshall has experience with claims relating to disinheritance, elder abuse, and undue influence, and is experienced at finding creative solutions to what are often fraught and emotional situations. RMO LLP provides personal, cost-effective inheritance dispute services to individual and institutional clients. The firm's attorneys focus on probate litigation involving contested trust, estate, probate, and conservatorship matters. RMO has offices serving clients with probate disputes throughout California, Florida, Texas, Kansas and Missouri. For more information, please visit https://rmolawyers.com/ SOURCE RMO LLP CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Producers of the Chicago Auto Show have partnered once again with the Chicago Area Runners Association (CARA) to host Miles Per Hour, an indoor run that guides participants through a 2.4-mile loop during the 2023 Chicago Auto Show on Sunday, Feb. 12. Sponsored by Toyota, Miles Per Hour appropriately describes the premise of the run: participants will cover as much distance as possible within a one-hour timeframe. After the race, runners will gather in the South Hall's Toyota display for awards, photos and refreshments. The inaugural Miles Per Hour run was held during the 2020 Chicago Auto Show and attracted hundreds of participants. Organizers hope to increase the participation this year and along with increasing interest in the show. Runners will compete on a 2.4-mile loop through the show & receive early access to the Chicago Auto Show that morning. Tweet this "We're thrilled to bring Miles Per Hour back indoors at the Chicago Auto Show and partner again with CARA to reach the vast Chicago runner community who may not already be thinking about attending," said Chicago Auto Show Co-General Manager David Sloan. "This is a great opportunity for us to tap into a new audience, and we're confident once they see all the show has to offer, they will become loyal fans." "Miles Per Hour provides a unique way to break a sweat before watching the Big Game later in the day, when not-so-healthy food and beverages tend to be consumed! It's a fun way to start the day," continued Sloan. Held on the opening Sunday of the show, Feb. 12, runners will compete on a 2.4-mile loop through the halls of McCormick Place where they will receive special early access to the Chicago Auto Show that morning. Participants will have first-rate views of the city skyline as they cross over the Grand Concourse bridge and access to wide glimpses of Lake Michigan through the Lakeside Center's expansive window walls. The loop will include a variety of long straightaways, some zig-zags and even an incline as runners ascend the indoor the bridge over Lake Shore Drive. "The Toyota Miles Per Hour Run provides one of the most unique running experiences in the country," said CARA Executive Director Tim Bradley. "Running indoors during the winter and finding out how many miles you can run in an hour, is a fun and exciting fitness challenge for runners of all ability levels. The amazing Chicago Auto Show displays make the hour fly by!" Registration includes a race entry, a ticket to the Chicago Auto Show with early access on race day, a participant t-shirt, a finisher medal, free digital photo downloads, discounted early access tickets for friends and family, a goodie bag and gear check. For more information or to register for the Toyota Miles Per Hour, visit https://www.milesperhourrun.com/. For more information on the 2023 Chicago Auto Show, visit http://www.ChicagoAutoShow.com. Media can visit http://www.ChicagoAutoShow.com/media for more information or to register for media credentials. About the Chicago Auto Show First staged in 1901, the Chicago Auto Show is the nation's longest running auto exposition in North America. The show is produced by the Chicagoland's new-car dealer association, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, which has staged the show since 1935. The 2023 public show is Feb. 11-20 at McCormick Place. For more information and the latest updates, visit ChicagoAutoShow.com or Facebook.com/ChicagoAutoShow.com. About the Chicago Automobile Trade Association Founded in 1904 and located in Oakbrook Terrace, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association is comprised of more than 400 franchised new-car dealers and an additional 150 allied members. The group's dealer members employ about 19,000 people in the metropolitan area. The association has produced the world famous Chicago Auto Show since 1935. For more information, please visit www.CATA.info. SOURCE Chicago Auto Show Horatio Alger Association names 13 outstanding individuals, each of whom has overcome adversity to achieve professional and personal success, to its Member Class of 2023 WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. , a nonprofit educational organization honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals and encouraging youth to pursue their dreams through higher education, today announced that Trevor D. Rees-Jones, founder and CEO of Chief Oil & Gas, has been selected for membership in this prestigious organization. Mr. Rees-Jones joins 12 other exceptional business, civic and cultural leaders from across North America in receiving 2023 honors. For 76 years, the Horatio Alger Award has been annually bestowed upon esteemed individuals who have succeeded despite facing adversities, and who have remained committed to education and charitable efforts in their communities. Mr. Rees-Jones was born and raised in University Park, Texas to humble parents who worked as a lawyer and a housewife. He majored in history at Dartmouth College and earned a law degree from Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law. Following in his father's footsteps, Mr. Rees-Jones began a career in law working as a bankruptcy attorney specializing in oil and gas reorganization law. After a few years he found himself much more interested in the oil and gas business than the legal work. So, in 1984 he left a stable law career with a consistent paycheck to search for oil and gas on a speculative basis. At the time of this decision, Mr. Rees-Jones had only $4,000 in the bank but had talked a local Dallas bank into extending him a $48,000 line of credit, so he had 13 months of living expenses covered. Over the next ten years, Mr. Rees-Jones persevered as a small independent in the oil and gas business, putting prospects and deals together, raising money from investors and getting a lot of wells drilled; however, with no major breakthroughs. At one point, he drilled 17 dry holes in a row. During this period, his household was surviving month-to-month and Mr. Rees-Jones feared for how he was going to feed his family. Several times throughout those early years his small earnings would dry up and he'd be broke again. After a decade of this uncertain work, he founded Chief Oil & Gas in 1994 to pursue a lower risk strategy. Mr. Rees-Jones was the company's sole employee in 500 square feet of office space. After several more years of less than stellar drilling results, his luck turned around in 2000-2001 when he successfully expanded the Barnett Shale field pioneered by George Mitchell onto a large acreage position he had established. By 2006, Chief Oil & Gas had nine rigs working and was the second largest producer in the Barnett Shale field in North Texas. That year, Chief sold its natural gas production, leases and associated pipeline assets for $2.64 billion. By 2021, Chief Oil & Gas had become one of the largest privately owned independent producers of natural gas in the country. In March 2022, Chief Oil & Gas sold to Chesapeake Energy for $2.7 billion, the last of eight sales conducted by Chief from 2006 to 2022 aggregating over $10 billion. "Mr. Rees-Jones exemplifies the importance of believing in yourself and refusing to give up when success isn't happening quickly or easily," said Terrence J. Giroux, executive director. "He took a risk leaving a steady law career because he knew his passion was elsewhere and showed tremendous dedication. By trusting his intuition and following a dream, he founded one of the most successful natural gas companies in the world. Mr. Rees-Jones will serve as a great source of inspiration to our Scholars and we are delighted to welcome him as a Member." In 2006, Mr. Rees-Jones and his wife, Jan, founded the Rees-Jones Foundation to support youth programs in North Texas. The Foundation has a particular interest in youth character development and improving living conditions for children and youth suffering from abuse, neglect, mental health issues, disabilities and other challenges. Today, the Foundation awards $50 million annually to people in need and has contributed over $500 million in grants, including $10 million in need-based scholarships at Dartmouth College. Mr. Rees-Jones was the second recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from D CEO Magazine and was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame and the Junior Achievement's Dallas Business Hall of Fame. He is a past president of the Dallas Petroleum Club and is a member of the All-American Wildcatters. "It is an honor to be inducted into the Horatio Alger Association and be surrounded by other dedicated individuals who have persevered through adversity and believe deeply in the power of education," said Trevor Rees-Jones. "I look forward to sharing my story with Scholars, learning about their passions and showing them what's possible when you take chances." Since 1984, the Association has awarded annual need-based scholarships to high school students who have displayed dedication to pursuing higher education despite significant obstacles throughout their lives. The Association also aims to educate young people about the endless opportunities available by the free-enterprise system through commitment, honesty, and diligence. The scholarships are made possible through the Association thanks to the generosity of its Members, who will have collectively provided more than $245 million to 35,000 students by 2023. "Each year, it is our utmost honor to present outstanding leaders who have displayed extraordinary perseverance in overcoming challenges with the Horatio Alger Award," said James F. Dicke II, chairman, Horatio Alger Association and 2015 Horatio Alger Award recipient. "Each of these incredible leaders has also shared their success with others, giving generously to important causes and communities in need. The 2023 awardees exemplify the Association's mission and are proof that the American Dream is within reach for all who seek it." Mr. Rees-Jones and the Member Class of 2023 will be formally inducted into the Association during the Horatio Alger Award Induction Ceremonies in Washington, D.C. from March 30 through April 1, 2023. The three-day event is an annual ceremony to honor both the achievements of Members and National Scholars, who will have multiple opportunities to meet, interact and exchange stories of perseverance. For more information about Horatio Alger Association and its Member Class of 2023, please visit www.horatioalger.org and follow the organization on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . About Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans: Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. is dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles. The Association honors the achievements of outstanding leaders who have accomplished remarkable successes in spite of adversity by bestowing upon them the Horatio Alger Award and inducting them as lifetime Members. Horatio Alger Members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuit of their dreams through higher education. Through the generosity of its Members and friends, in 2022, the Association awarded more than $18 million in undergraduate and graduate need-based scholarships to over 1,800 students across the United States and Canada, and provided college support and mentoring services to its Scholars. By the 40th anniversary of the Association's scholarship program in 2024, more than $247 million will be awarded in undergraduate, graduate, military veteran and career and technical education scholarships to more than 37,000 deserving students. For more information, please visit www.horatioalger.org. CONTACT: Carly Colombo [email protected] SOURCE Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Technavio, the global used car market size is estimated to grow by USD 703.33 billion from 2022 to 2027. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.7% during the forecast period. Moreover, the growth momentum will accelerate. APAC will account for 41% of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. For more insights on market size, Request a sample report Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Used Car Market 2023-2027 Global used car market - Five forces The global used car market is fragmented, and the five forces analysis covers Bargaining power of buyers The threat of new entrants Threat of rivalry Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of substitutes For interpretation of Porter's five forces model buy the report! Global used car market Customer landscape The report includes the market's adoption lifecycle, from the innovator's stage to the laggard's stage. It focuses on adoption rates in different regions based on penetration. Furthermore, the report also includes key purchase criteria and drivers of price sensitivity to help companies evaluate and develop their growth strategies. Global used car market - Segmentation assessment Segment overview Technavio has segmented the market based on vehicle type (compact car, SUV, and mid-size) and channel (organized and unorganized). The compact car segment will grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. The compact segment in the market is driven by the increasing specifications of compact cars and the rising need for personal mobility. In the current scenario of increasing traffic congestion, compact cars are easier to drive than large cars. Also, they emit significantly fewer harmful gases and are, therefore, witnessing high adoption. Moreover, the fluctuating prices of fuel and the growing preference for fuel-efficient personal mobility solutions drive the compact car segment in the global market. Geography Overview By geography, the global used car market is segmented into APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global used car market. APAC is estimated to account for 41% of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. APAC is home to some of the largest automotive markets in the world. In APAC, the high demand for four-wheelers, especially in China , is contributing to revenue generation in the regional market. In addition, the growing popularity of used car retailing in emerging markets, such as India , is driving the growth of the regional market. Download a sample report Global used car market Market dynamics Key factor driving market growth The declining ownership cycle of vehicles among urban consumers in emerging countries is notably driving the market growth. The ownership duration of cars is shortened owing to new technological advances in automotive which attract customers to buy new cars. The ownership duration of cars is shortened owing to new technological advances in automotive which attract customers to buy new cars. The factors determining the prices of used cars are the number of years the vehicle was driven, the distance driven, and the number of damages caused due to accidents and other faults. In India , a used car having no major faults can fetch up to 70% of its actual price after one year of ownership and about 62% of its actual price after three years of ownership. , a used car having no major faults can fetch up to 70% of its actual price after one year of ownership and about 62% of its actual price after three years of ownership. Such convincing values encourage car owners to sell their cars at the earliest convenience to get back most of the car value. Hence, these factors will drive market growth during the forecast period. Leading trends influencing the market Growing demand for car subscription services is an emerging trend in the market. The alternative to owning or leasing a vehicle is a car subscription. The alternative to owning or leasing a vehicle is a car subscription. These consumers are allowed to use a car for an all-inclusive monthly fee, which includes roadside assistance, insurance, and maintenance. Such programs also allow the subscriber to change cars at a notice of a few days. Several such services are provided by various auto manufacturers in major regions across the globe. Additionally, consumers that find high-priced cars unaffordable due to their high cost of ownership or leasing prefer such car subscription services to get the experience of driving a luxury car. Major challenges hindering market growth The increase in the number of on-demand taxi operators is a major challenge impeding the market. Owing to the financial constraints of some users on-demand taxi services have emerged as a convenient alternative to purchasing a new car. Owing to the financial constraints of some users on-demand taxi services have emerged as a convenient alternative to purchasing a new car. On-demand taxi services provide convenient and comfortable means of transport as well as save time and energy on finding suitable parking. On-demand taxi operators are also focusing on introducing on-demand bike taxis to tap into more customer segments. Hence, these factors will hinder the global market growth during the forecast period. Drivers, trends, and challenges have an impact on market dynamics, which can impact businesses. Find more insights in a sample report! What are the key data covered in this used car market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the used car market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the used car market size and its contribution to the market in focus on the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the used car industry across APAC, North America , Europe , Middle East and Africa , and South America , , and , and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of used car market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports: The electric car rental market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.64% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 11,246.65 million. This report extensively covers market segmentation by type (economy cars and luxury cars), distribution channel (offline and online), and geography (Europe, North America, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa). The used car market share in the US is expected to increase by 3.91 million units from 2020 to 2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 1.98%. Furthermore, this report extensively covers used car market segmentation in the US by product (mid size, full size, and compact size) and distribution channel (third-party channel sales and OEM channel sales). Used Car Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 168 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 6.7% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 703.33 billion Market structure Concentrated YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 6.18 Regional analysis APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 41% Key countries US, China, Germany, UK, and France Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Asbury Automotive Group Inc., AutoNation Inc., Autotrader Inc., Berman Auto Group, CarGurus Inc., CarMax Inc., Cars24 Services Pvt. Ltd., DriveTime Automotive Group Inc., eBay Inc., Group 1 Automotive Inc., Hendrick Automotive Group, Hertz Global Holdings Inc., Lithia Motors Inc., Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd., Penske Corp., Scout24 AG, Sonic Automotive Inc., Toyota Motor Corp., and TrueCar Inc. 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, and 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. 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. Browse for Technavio's consumer discretionary market reports Table of Contents: 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market Overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Vehicle Type Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Channel Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market Definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global used car market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global used car market 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.2 Vehicle type Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Vehicle type Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.3 Channel Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Channel Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Vehicle Type 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Vehicle Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Vehicle Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Vehicle Type Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Vehicle Type Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Vehicle Type 6.3 Compact car - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Compact car - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Compact car - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 36: Chart on Compact car - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Compact car - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 SUV - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on SUV - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 39: Data Table on SUV - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 40: Chart on SUV - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on SUV - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Mid size - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 42: Chart on Mid size - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 43: Data Table on Mid size - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 44: Chart on Mid size - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 45: Data Table on Mid size - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.6 Market opportunity by Vehicle Type Exhibit 46: Market opportunity by Vehicle Type ($ billion) 7 Market Segmentation by Channel 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 47: Chart on Channel - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 48: Data Table on Channel - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Channel Exhibit 49: Chart on Comparison by Channel Exhibit 50: Data Table on Comparison by Channel 7.3 Organized - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Organized - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Organized - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 53: Chart on Organized - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Organized - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Unorganized - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 55: Chart on Unorganized - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 56: Data Table on Unorganized - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 57: Chart on Unorganized - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Unorganized - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Market opportunity by Channel Exhibit 59: Market opportunity by Channel ($ billion) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 60: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 61: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 62: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 63: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 64: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 66: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 67: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 70: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 71: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 74: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 75: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 78: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 79: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 82: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 83: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 86: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 87: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 90: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 91: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 94: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 95: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 98: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 99: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 101: Chart on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 102: Data Table on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 103: Chart on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 104: Data Table on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 105: Market opportunity by geography ($ billion) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 106: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 107: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 108: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 109: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 110: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 111: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 Alibaba Group Holding Ltd Exhibit 112: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd - Overview Exhibit 113: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd - Business segments Exhibit 114: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd - Key offerings Exhibit 115: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd - Segment focus 12.4 Asbury Automotive Group Inc. Exhibit 116: Asbury Automotive Group Inc. - Overview Exhibit 117: Asbury Automotive Group Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 118: Asbury Automotive Group Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 119: Asbury Automotive Group Inc. - Segment focus 12.5 AutoNation Inc. Exhibit 120: AutoNation Inc. - Overview Exhibit 121: AutoNation Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 122: AutoNation Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 123: AutoNation Inc. - Segment focus 12.6 Berman Auto Group Exhibit 124: Berman Auto Group - Overview Exhibit 125: Berman Auto Group - Product / Service Exhibit 126: Berman Auto Group - Key offerings 12.7 CarMax Inc. Exhibit 127: CarMax Inc. - Overview Exhibit 128: CarMax Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 129: CarMax Inc. - Key news Exhibit 130: CarMax Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 131: CarMax Inc. - Segment focus 12.8 DriveTime Automotive Group Inc. Exhibit 132: DriveTime Automotive Group Inc. - Overview Exhibit 133: DriveTime Automotive Group Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 134: DriveTime Automotive Group Inc. - Key offerings 12.9 eBay Inc. Exhibit 135: eBay Inc. - Overview Exhibit 136: eBay Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 137: eBay Inc. - Key news Exhibit 138: eBay Inc. - Key offerings 12.10 Group 1 Automotive Inc. Exhibit 139: Group 1 Automotive Inc. - Overview Exhibit 140: Group 1 Automotive Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 141: Group 1 Automotive Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 142: Group 1 Automotive Inc. - Segment focus 12.11 Hendrick Automotive Group Exhibit 143: Hendrick Automotive Group - Overview Exhibit 144: Hendrick Automotive Group - Product / Service Exhibit 145: Hendrick Automotive Group - Key offerings 12.12 Hertz Global Holdings Inc. Exhibit 146: Hertz Global Holdings Inc. - Overview Exhibit 147: Hertz Global Holdings Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 148: Hertz Global Holdings Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 149: Hertz Global Holdings Inc. - Segment focus 12.13 Lithia Motors Inc. Exhibit 150: Lithia Motors Inc. - Overview Exhibit 151: Lithia Motors Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 152: Lithia Motors Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 153: Lithia Motors Inc. - Segment focus 12.14 Penske Corp. Exhibit 154: Penske Corp. - Overview Exhibit 155: Penske Corp. - Product / Service Exhibit 156: Penske Corp. - Key offerings 12.15 Scout24 AG Exhibit 157: Scout24 AG - Overview Exhibit 158: Scout24 AG - Business segments Exhibit 159: Scout24 AG - Key offerings Exhibit 160: Scout24 AG - Segment focus 12.16 Sonic Automotive Inc. Exhibit 161: Sonic Automotive Inc. - Overview Exhibit 162: Sonic Automotive Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 163: Sonic Automotive Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 164: Sonic Automotive Inc. - Segment focus 12.17 Toyota Motor Corp. Exhibit 165: Toyota Motor Corp. - Overview Exhibit 166: Toyota Motor Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 167: Toyota Motor Corp. - Key news Exhibit 168: Toyota Motor Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 169: Toyota Motor Corp. - Segment focus 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 170: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 171: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 172: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 173: Research methodology Exhibit 174: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 175: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 176: 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 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 More than a year after the military coup in Sudan, political parties began talks this month aimed at restoring a civilian-led transition, which the UN has hailed as an important step towards peace and democracy. The coup ended a power-sharing agreement between military and civilian leaders established following the April 2019 overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled for 30 years. "After almost 15 months after the coup of 25 October 2021, returning to the transition path would be a major, major step forward for all Sudanese whether they are civilians or in the military," said Volker Perthes, the UN Special Representative for Sudan, speaking recently to UN News. Aspirations for peace The talks mark the second and final phase of a political process that began in December with the signing of a Political Framework Agreement for a two-year transition leading to elections. They are being facilitated by the UN, the African Union (AU) and the East African bloc IGAD, together known as the Tripartite Mechanism. In a statement issued following the 8 January launch in the capital, Khartoum, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the development as "another important step forward towards realizing the aspirations of the Sudanese people for democracy, peace and sustainable development." Results-oriented discussions Representatives from civil society, academia, the private sector, youth, and women rights groups, as well as traditional and religious leaders, are also taking part in the talks. Five workshops will be held, the first of which focused on a road map for the dismantling of the old regime, said Mr. Perthes, who also heads the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS). Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Sudan Conflict International Organisations By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "I was able to witness quite a number of sessions, some meetings and workshops, and I was personally impressed by the level of discussions and sincerity with which the Sudanese talked to one another, interacted with one another," he continued. "It was very result-oriented, and that is important in this context." Accountability a priority Last month, the envoy briefed the UN Security Council on the framework agreement, saying it could signal a way out of the uncertainty and insecurity sparked by the coup. Some factions have criticized the deal for neglecting issues such as accountability, but Mr. Perthes refuted these claims. "Accountability is being mentioned in the framework agreement, but it is true that it needs to be spelled out further," he said. "There will be a workshop - probably one of the most important of the five workshops - on transitional justice, which of course is about accountability and how to practice it in a difficult context," he added. In a better place now With the talks underway, Mr. Perthes was asked about the next steps, expressing hope for the future. "I am more optimistic, much more optimistic than I was a year ago," he revealed. "I think there is a real chance to get to a political solution, which of course means that a government has to be formed very, very soon." He also urged the Sudanese people not to lose hope. "We are in a better place than we were a year ago and support those who try to find a solution. No solution is ideal, but having a solution is better than having none." RICHMOND, Va., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Citing the widespread and deceptive practices of Energix Renewable Energies, multiple Virginia communities have petitioned state and municipal authorities to withhold permits from Energix, a foreign company headquartered in Ramat Gan, Israel. Because of this pushback, Energix has been denied permits or forced to withdraw applications in five Virginia counties: New Kent Solar Helios Solar in Pulaski County Racehorse Solar in Caroline County Lily Pond Solar in Dinwiddie County in Dinwiddie County Westlake Solar in Franklin County According to one IRmep estimate using 2023 EIA electricity price forecasts , $1.8 billion in 35-year Energix revenue has been stalled or canceled. To perhaps avoid investor and community backlash, Energix is misleading communities about its track record by filing materially misleading Notices of Intent (NOI) or filing them so late in the state permitting process they raise no stakeholder awareness. In order to rectify this, the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) submitted public comments to a Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) petition to tighten regulations and to eliminate deficient Notices of Intent (NOI), the document that DEQ suggests must be submitted as soon as practicable in the development process. In the lead petition filed by Rockingham County Citizens for Responsible Solar (RCCRS), VCHR also petitioned that future NOI's identify the parent company (Energix) rather than only anonymous LLC shell companies. Comments from three counties appeared on the petition: Rockingham County residents requested that DEQ cancel the Permit-by-Rule for Endless Caverns North and South because of years of misleading Energix filings. Rockingham petitioners documented how Energix "weaponized" DEQ and municipal orders that mandated mitigation of stormwater runoff. Energix refused to pay the contractor that performed the work resulting in a hefty mechanics lien against the property owners who leased land to Energix. residents requested that DEQ cancel the Permit-by-Rule for Endless Caverns North and South because of years of misleading Energix filings. petitioners documented how Energix "weaponized" DEQ and municipal orders that mandated mitigation of stormwater runoff. Energix refused to pay the contractor that performed the work resulting in a hefty mechanics lien against the property owners who leased land to Energix. RCCRS also claimed that Energix has no plan to manage the estimated 800 pounds of toxic Cadmium e-waste from the solar panels to be placed at both sites. Caroline County residents supported a DEQ rule change to require NOIs be submitted before county zoning votes and to prohibit "ghost" LLC filings. residents supported a to require NOIs be submitted before county zoning votes and to prohibit "ghost" LLC filings. Carroll County residents stated that Energix, in a public notice published in the Galax Gazette, falsely claimed its River Trail Solar project had already received county approval. VCHR's Jeanne Trabulsi [email protected] presented a 2022 information overview at the National Press Club in Washington that addressed Energix importation of its worst overseas practices into the U.S. SOURCE Virginia Coalition for Human Rights ATLANTA, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Military veterans and supporters will run, walk, ruck, push, and cycle to move a single American flag across the country as part of the Old Glory Relay. The Old Glory Relay is an annual event hosted by Team Red, White & Blue (Team RWB), a nonprofit organization forging America's leading health and wellness community for veterans. The event kicks off April 1 in Seattle, WA and will conclude on May 21 in Atlanta, GA. Military veterans and supporters will move a single American flag across the country as part of the Old Glory Relay. Tweet this Team Red, White & Blue members pass the Old Glory Relay flag from one runner to the other. 2023's event will mark the 9th Old Glory Relay. The event was first hosted in 2014 along various routes with a hiatus in 2019 and 2020. For the first time since 2018, the Old Glory Relay spans the entire country in one of its longest routes ever. "America's veterans know firsthand that life is a team sport. There's no better demonstration of that concept than the Old Glory Relay," said Mike Erwin, Team RWB Founder and Executive Director. "As we pass the flag from one great American to the next over its 4,000-mile journey, we are reminded that together we can show America's veterans that their best days are ahead." Supporters can register to complete a segment of the relay in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico,Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia. Participants may also move an American flag in their local community by registering as a virtual participant. Learn more about the Old Glory Relay at teamrwb.org/ogr. About Team Red, White & Blue Team Red, White & Blue (Team RWB) is a nonprofit organization forging America's leading health and wellness community for veterans. Founded in 2010, Team RWB supports veterans through their health and wellness journeys by offering real-life and virtual opportunities to build a healthier lifestyle. For more information about Team RWB and its 200,000 members visit teamrwb.org. Media Contact: Margaret Britten [email protected] SOURCE Team Red, White & Blue Horatio Alger Association recognizes esteemed individuals who have overcome significant adversities to achieve great personal and professional success WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals and encouraging youth to pursue their dreams through higher education, today announced the 13 recipients of its 2023 Horatio Alger Award. Bestowed annually for the last 76 years upon exceptional corporate, civic and cultural trailblazers from across the country who have succeeded despite facing challenges, this award recognizes the new Members' commitment to education and their continued philanthropic efforts in their communities and beyond. The Horatio Alger Association will honor the following individuals, all of whom embody its core values of perseverance, integrity and a commitment to excellence, with lifetime membership into the organization: "Each year, it is our utmost honor to present outstanding leaders who have displayed extraordinary perseverance in overcoming challenges with the Horatio Alger Award," said James F. Dicke II, chairman, Horatio Alger Association and 2015 Horatio Alger Award recipient. "Each of these incredible leaders has also shared their success with others, giving generously to important causes and communities in need. The 2023 awardees exemplify the Association's mission and are proof that the American Dream is within reach for all who seek it." Through its Members, Horatio Alger Association aims to teach young people about the endless opportunities available by the free-enterprise system through resolve and integrity. Since 1984, the Association has awarded annual need-based scholarships to high school students who have overcome significant obstacles throughout their lives and showcase a commitment toward continuing their education. In 2021, the Association restructured its scholarship programs to award students one year earlier in support of early intervention. The scholarships are made possible thanks to the generosity of Association Members, who will have collectively provided more than $245 million to over 35,000 students by the 2023 Awards. "This is our first class of new Members following the restructuring of our scholarship programs, and we are delighted to have such a strong group to represent the Association this year," said Terrence J. Giroux, executive director, Horatio Alger Association. "These 13 individuals will serve as a great source of inspiration to our Scholars as they make important decisions about their futures, both through their professional endeavors and their impact on their communities." The 2023 Horatio Alger Award recipients will be formally inducted into the Association during the 76th Horatio Alger Award Induction Ceremonies in Washington, D.C. from March 30 through April 1, 2023. The annual three-day event honors the achievements of both Members and National Scholars, who will have multiple opportunities to meet, interact and exchange stories of perseverance. For more information about Horatio Alger Association and its Member Class of 2023, please visit www.horatioalger.org and/or follow the organization on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. About Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans: Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. is dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles. The Association honors the achievements of outstanding leaders who have accomplished remarkable successes in spite of adversity by bestowing upon them the Horatio Alger Award and inducting them as lifetime Members. Horatio Alger Members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuit of their dreams through higher education. Through the generosity of its Members and friends, in 2022, the Association awarded more than $16 million in undergraduate and graduate need-based scholarships to over 1,600 students across the United States and Canada, and provided college support and mentoring services to its Scholars. By the 40th anniversary of the Association's scholarship program in 2024, more than $259 million will be awarded in undergraduate, graduate, military veteran and career and technical education scholarships to more than 37,000 deserving students. For more information, please visit www.horatioalger.org. CONTACT: Carly Colombo [email protected] SOURCE Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. "If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger." -Buzz Aldrin COVINGTON, Ky., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mardi Gras for Homeless Children always brings people and excitement for this fabulous culinary experience, and this year will mark the 32nd Year Anniversary Celebration. The event will again be at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center on Tuesday, February 21, 2023. The proceeds from the Mardi Gras go to three area agencies that provide essential care to homeless women and children. They are Bethany House Services of Cincinnati, and Brighton Center's Homeward Bound and Welcome House, Inc. in Covington. Together these agencies serve more than 40,000 needy individuals in our community each year. Pat O'Callaghan, Chairman of the event, said, "It is imperative that we as a region come together again to support this fundraiser which has raised more than $2.35M for homeless children." "When we hear that Cincinnati ranks 2nd in the nation with the number of homeless children", O'Callaghan said, "what more do we need to say about the importance of another successful Mardi Gras that has been known to feed so many of our area's homeless children throughout each year." Mercedes Benz of Fort Mitchell & The Wyler Family Foundation in partnership with Northern Kentucky Restaurant Association (NKRA) present the 32nd Annual Mardi Gras for Homeless Children on Fat Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center. Mardi Gras is an annual tradition that dates back over 32 years. Each year, over 2,000 guests celebrate Fat Tuesday at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center with all you can eat and drink from over fifty top local food and drink vendors, a marching band parade, amazing silent and live auction prizes, celebrity guests, and more! Why it all began 33 years ago, in Cincinnati, a tragic incident occurred that touched the hearts of our residents. Four homeless children were living in an abandoned garage and were locked in when their father left them alone. A fire broke out in the garage, unable to escape, all four children perished. Realizing children are not always visible behind the homeless adults, the Northern Kentucky Restaurant Association wanted to help. So, Mardi Gras for Homeless Children was born 32 years ago. Today, Homeless Children continues to be a major challenge in our community. Desperate area children in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati have benefited immensely from the actions of so many who have volunteered, donated, and attended in support of this annual event that can feed so many local children for an entire year. "The Mardi Gras for Homeless Children event is truly making a huge impact for its community," said Don Paparella, Managing Partner for Mercedes-Benz of Fort Mitchell. "We appreciate all the local businesses and individuals that have supported this momentous cause over the years, and we encourage everyone to come join us for the FAT TUESDAY, February 21st celebration," Paparella said. Mardi Gras features more than fifty booths of fantastic food and beverages furnished by the members of the Northern Kentucky Restaurant Association. A highlight of the upcoming celebration is a Royal Court parade featuring Scott Sloan of 700 WLW as King, Sheila Gray of Local 12 as Queen and back by popular demand Giovani Bernard as the Grand Marshal, complete with Beechwood High School Marching band and a float. Live and silent auctions offer a remarkable selection of items at amazing savings. In addition, the event includes live music by Tickled Pink. The February 21st, Fat Tuesday event at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center is from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Purchase a VIP Ticket or Sponsorship for early entrance at 5:30PM. What a great way to start off the new year and help our local area homeless children too. Act fast as this popular annual event may sell out. For more information on how you can help call 859-291-NKRA (6572) or check us out at www.mardigras2023.org. SOURCE Commonwealth Hotels, Inc. CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Arizton's latest research report, the global orthopedic splints and casts market will grow at a CAGR of 6% from 2021-2027. Growing demand for 3D printed casts & splints, availability of a wider product portfolio of splints & casts by vendors, and introduction of spray-based form splints are significant growth opportunities in the orthopedic splints & casts market. Orthopedic Splints And Casts Market 3D printing is an evolving technology that has a potential application in treating pediatric forearm fractures. The clinical outcomes were excellent at the latest follow-up, at least one-year post-injury. 3D-printed casts may allow for greater patient satisfaction and reduced complications in adult and pediatric patients as this technology becomes further integrated into medicine, specifically orthopedics. Orthopedic surgeons may benefit from familiarizing themselves with the potential of 3D printing technology and its current applications and devising future applications for clinical practice. Many emerging companies are developing 3D-printed splints & casts. For instance, ActiveArmour, a leading global company in 3D printed casting/splinting, designs a wholly individualized and fitted splint based on the physician's specific positioning and instructions for each patient's unique needs. Another company in the 3D printed splints & casts market, Fix It, designs 3D printed splints made from biodegradable plastic as an alternative to traditional casts. Thus, emerging 3D printed splints/casts products will accelerate the orthopedic splint & casts market. GLOBAL ORTHOPEDIC SPLINTS AND CASTS MARKET REPORT SCOPE Report Attributes Details Market Size (2027) USD 3.34 Billion Market Size (2021) USD 2.34 Billion CAGR (2021-2027) 6.06 % Base Year 2021 Forecast Year 2022-2027 Market Segments Product, Material, Body Part, End User, and Geography Geographic Analysis North America, Europe, APAC, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa Key Leading Countries China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the UK, the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, South Arabia, Egypt, and Nigeria Key Prominent Players Essity Medical Solutions, 3M, Enovis, Breg, DeRoyal Industries, Bauerfeind, ALCARE, Frank Stubbs Company, Weber Orthopedic LP. DBA Hely & Weber, medi, Carolina Narrow Fabric, Thuasne Group, Trulife, Tynor, Orthosys, DUK-IN, Performance Health, AliMed, Lohmann & Rauscher, Elite Orthopaedics, Allard USA, BraceAbility, VISSCO REHABILITATION, Bird & Cronin, Datt Mediproducts, and Prime Medical Page Number 292 Market Dynamics Increasing Target Patient Population Rising Adoption of Fiberglass Casts & Splints Paradigm Shift Towards Outpatient Orthopedic Care Customization Request If our report does not include the information you are searching for, you may contact us to have a report tailored to your specific business needs https://www.arizton.com/customize-report/3642 Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report APAC TO OBSERVE FASTEST GROWTH IN THE ORTHOPEDIC SPLINTS AND CASTS MARKET APAC is leading the orthopedic splints & casts market, contributing to increased MSDs incidence, a growing aging population, and related health conditions. APAC accommodates many regional and local orthopedic splints & cast manufacturers actively developing innovative orthopedic splints & casts at affordable costs. China, Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea are major countries contributing to the exponential growth of the market in this region. APAC has become an appealing market for global players and expansionary private investments that can effectively support innovation while driving consumption and capitalizing on demographic and emerging consumer trends. Overall, the rapidly growing life expectancy, economic growth, and more effective treatment procedures offer long-term growth opportunities for the APAC orthopedic splints & casts market. Moreover, introducing innovative concepts around orthopedic medicine in the orthopedic splints and casts market can be a game changer because of several benefits over conventional orthopedic splints and casts. The emergence of the spray-based form splint is offering leading players and start-ups the opportunity to develop orthopedic splints & casts with the help of polyurethane spray. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE GLOBAL ORTHOPEDIC SPLINTS AND CASTS MARKET In early 2019, Enovis (formulary known as Colfax ) completed the acquisition of DJO for around USD 3.15 billion . With this acquisition, Colfax aimed to create a new platform for itself in the orthopedic market, as DJO was one of the leading companies in braces and support devices. ) completed the acquisition of DJO for around . With this acquisition, aimed to create a new platform for itself in the orthopedic market, as DJO was one of the leading companies in braces and support devices. Breg, a leading orthopedic and billing services company, partnered with its UK distributor, Joint Operations, to expand the supply of high-quality orthopedic products to the UK/ Ireland market in July 2020 . COMPETITIVE OVERVIEW The orthopedic splints & casts market is pursuing various strategies to provide the impetus for growth over the next few years. These market participants adopt cooperation, partnerships, mergers & acquisitions, and product launches. Due to these strategies, the orthopedic splints & casts market has the potential to have significant growth opportunities. For instance, Breg partnered with the Australian distributor Club Warehouse to expand its supply of high-quality orthopedic products to the Australian market. KEY COMPANY PROFILES Essity Medical Solutions 3M Enovis Breg DeRoyal Industries Bauerfeind ALCARE Frank Stubbs Company Weber Orthopedic LP. DBA Hely & Weber medi Carolina Narrow Fabric Thuasne Group Trulife Tynor Orthosys DUK-IN Performance Health AliMed Lohmann & Rauscher Elite Orthopaedics Allard USA BraceAbility VISSCO REHABILITATION Bird & Cronin Datt Mediproducts Prime Medical MARKET SEGMENTATION Product Casts Splints Material Synthetic Splints & Casts Plaster of Paris Splints & Casts Body Part Upper Body Lower Body End User Orthotic & Orthopedic Clinics Hospitals Others Geography APAC China India Japan South Korea Australia Europe Germany Italy Spain France UK North America US Canada Latin America Brazil Mexico Argentina Middle East & Africa Turkey South Africa South Arabia Egypt Nigeria Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report CHECK OUT SOME OF THE TOP-SELLING RELATED RESEARCH REPORTS: Bone Growth Products Market - The global bone growth product market is expected to reach USD 1.4 billion in 2027. Orthopedic Braces and Supports Market - The orthopedic braces & supports is expected to reach USD 4.42 billion by 2027. Interbody Spinal Implants Market - The interbody spinal implants market is estimated to reach USD 2.1 billion by 2027. Medical Exoskeleton Market - The global medical exoskeleton market size is expected to reach USD 3.81 billion by 2027. TABLE OF CONTENT 1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 3 RESEARCH PROCESS 4 SCOPE & COVERAGE 4.1 MARKET DEFINITION 4.1.1 INCLUSIONS 4.1.2 EXCLUSIONS 4.1.3 MARKET ESTIMATION CAVEATS 4.2 BASE YEAR 4.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 4.3.1 MARKET SEGMENTATION BY GEOGRAPHY 5 REPORT ASSUMPTIONS & CAVEATS 5.1 KEY CAVEATS 5.2 CURRENCY CONVERSION 5.3 MARKET DERIVATION 6 MARKET AT A GLANCE 7 PREMIUM INSIGHTS 7.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 7.1.1 MARKET DYNAMICS 7.1.2 MARKET SEGMENTATION 7.1.3 VENDOR ANALYSIS 8 INTRODUCTION 8.1 OVERVIEW 8.1.1 MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS STATISTICS 9 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES & TRENDS 9.1 GROWING DEMAND FOR 3D-PRINTED CASTS & SPLINTS 9.2 AVAILABILITY OF WIDER PRODUCT PORTFOLIO OF SPLINTS & CASTS BY VENDOR 9.3 INTRODUCTION OF SPRAY-BASED FORM SPLINTS 10 MARKET GROWTH ENABLERS 10.1 INCREASING TARGET PATIENT POPULATION 10.2 RISING ADOPTION OF FIBERGLASS CASTS & SPLINTS 10.3 PARADIGM SHIFT TOWARD OUTPATIENT ORTHOPEDIC CARE 11 MARKET RESTRAINTS 11.1 COMPLICATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH THE USE OF SPLINTS AND CASTS 11.2ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT OPTIONS FOR ORTHOPEDIC DISORDERS & CONDITIONS 11.3 LACK OF PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION COUPLED WITH PRICING PRESSURE 12 MARKET LANDSCAPE 12.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 12.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 12.2.1 INSIGHT BY PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 12.2.2 INSIGHT BY MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 12.2.3 INSIGHT BY BODY PART SEGMENTATION 12.2.4 INSIGHT BY END-USERS SEGMENTATION 12.2.5 INSIGHT BY GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 12.3 FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS 12.3.1 THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS 12.3.2 BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS 12.3.3 BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS 12.3.4 THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES 12.3.5 COMPETITIVE RIVALRY 13 PRODUCT 13.1 MARKET SNAPSHOT & GROWTH ENGINE 13.2 MARKET OVERVIEW 13.3 CASTS 13.3.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 13.3.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 13.3.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 13.4 SPLINT 13.4.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 13.4.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 13.4.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 14 MATERIALS 14.1 MARKET SNAPSHOT & GROWTH ENGINE 14.2 MARKET OVERVIEW 14.3 SYNTHETIC SPLINTS & CASTS 14.3.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 14.3.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 14.3.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 14.4 PLASTER OF PARIS SPLINTS & CASTS 14.4.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 14.4.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 14.4.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 15 BODY PART 15.1 MARKET SNAPSHOT & GROWTH ENGINE 15.2 MARKET OVERVIEW 15.3 UPPER BODY 15.3.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 15.3.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 15.3.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 15.4 LOWER BODY 15.4.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 15.4.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 15.4.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 16 END-USER 16.1 MARKET SNAPSHOT & GROWTH ENGINE 16.2 MARKET OVERVIEW 16.3 ORTHOTIC & ORTHOPEDIC CLINICS 16.3.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 16.3.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 16.3.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 16.4 HOSPITAL 16.4.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 16.4.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 16.4.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 16.5 OTHERS 16.5.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 16.5.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 16.5.3 MARKET BY GEOGRAPHY 17 GEOGRAPHY 17.1 MARKET SNAPSHOT & GROWTH ENGINE 17.2 GEOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW 18 APAC 18.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 18.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 18.3 APAC: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 18.4 APAC: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 18.5 APAC: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 18.6 APAC: END USER SEGMENTATION 18.7 KEY COUNTRIES 18.7.1 CHINA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 18.7.2 INDIA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 18.7.3 JAPAN: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 18.7.4 SOUTH KOREA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 18.7.5 AUSTRALIA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 19 EUROPE 19.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 19.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 19.3 EUROPE: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 19.4 EUROPE: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 19.5 EUROPE: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 19.6 EUROPE: END-USER SEGMENTATION 19.7 KEY COUNTRIES 19.7.1 GERMANY: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 19.7.2 FRANCE: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 19.7.3 THE UK: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 19.7.4 ITALY: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 19.7.5 SPAIN: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 20 NORTH AMERICA 20.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 20.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 20.3 NORTH AMERICA: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 20.4 NORTH AMERICA: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 20.5 NORTH AMERICA: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 20.6 NORTH AMERICA: END-USER SEGMENTATION 20.7 KEY COUNTRIES 20.7.1 US: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 20.7.2 CANADA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 21 LATIN AMERICA 21.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 21.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 21.3 LATIN AMERICA: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 21.4 LATIN AMERICA: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 21.5 LATIN AMERICA: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 21.6 LATIN AMERICA: END-USER SEGMENTATION 21.7 KEY COUNTRIES 21.7.1 BRAZIL: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 21.7.2 MEXICO: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 21.7.3 ARGENTINA: MARKET SIZE & FORECASTS 22 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA 22.1 MARKET OVERVIEW 22.2 MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 22.3 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 22.4 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 22.5 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 22.6 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: END-USER SEGMENTATION 22.7 KEY COUNTRIES 22.7.1 TURKEY: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 22.7.2 SOUTH AFRICA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 22.7.3 SAUDI ARABIA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 22.7.4 EGYPT: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 22.7.5 NIGERIA: MARKET SIZE & FORECAST 23 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE 23.1 COMPETITION OVERVIEW 23.2 MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS 24 KEY COMPANY PROFILES 24.1 ESSITY MEDICAL SOLUTIONS 24.1.1 BUSINESS OVERVIEW 24.1.2 ESSITY MEDICAL SOLUTIONS IN ORTHOPEDIC SPLINTS & CASTS MARKET 24.1.3 PRODUCT OFFERINGS 24.1.4 KEY STRATEGIES 24.1.5 KEY STRENGTHS 24.1.6 KEY OPPORTUNITIES 24.2 3M 24.3 ENVOIS 24.4 BREG 24.5 DEROYAL INDUSTRIES 24.6 BAUERFEIND 25 OTHER PROMINENT VENDORS 25.1 ALCARE 25.1.1 BUSINESS OVERVIEW 25.1.2 PRODUCT OFFERINGS 25.2 FRANK STUBBS COMPANY 25.3 WEBER ORTHOPEDIC LP. DBA HELY & WEBER 25.4 MEDI 25.5 CAROLINA NARROW FABRIC 25.6 THUASNE GROUP 25.7 TRULIFE 25.8 TYNOR 25.9 ORTHOSYS 25.10 DUK-IN 25.11 PERFORMANCE HEALTH 25.12 ALIMED 25.13 LOHMANN & RAUSCHER 25.14 ELITE ORTHOPAEDICS 25.15 ALLARD USA 25.16 BRACEABILITY 25.17 VISSCO REHABILITATION AIDS 25.18 BIRD & CRONIN 25.19 DATT MEDIPRODUCTS 25.20 PRIME MEDICAL 26 REPORT SUMMARY 26.1 KEY TAKEAWAYS 26.2 STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS 27 QUANTITATIVE SUMMARY 27.1 MARKET BY PRODUCT 27.1.1 APAC: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 27.1.2 EUROPE: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 27.1.3 NORTH AMERICA: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 27.1.4 LATIN AMERICA: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 27.1.5 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: PRODUCT SEGMENTATION 27.2 MARKET BY MATERIAL 27.2.1 APAC: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 27.2.2 EUROPE: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 27.2.3 NORTH AMERICA: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 27.2.4 LATIN AMERICA: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 27.2.5 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: MATERIAL SEGMENTATION 27.3 MARKET BY BODY PART 27.3.1 APAC: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 27.3.2 EUROPE: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 27.3.3 NORTH AMERICA: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 27.3.4 LATIN AMERICA: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 27.3.5 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: BODY PART SEGMENTATION 27.4 MARKET BY END-USERS 27.4.1 APAC: END USER SEGMENTATION 27.4.2 EUROPE: END USER SEGMENTATION 27.4.3 NORTH AMERICA: END USER SEGMENTATION 27.4.4 LATIN AMERICA: END USER SEGMENTATION 27.4.5 MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: END USER SEGMENTATION 27.5 GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.1 CASTS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.2 SPLINTS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.3 SYNTHETIC SPLINTS & CASTS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.4 PLASTER OF PARIS SPLINTS & CASTS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.5 UPPER BODY: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.6 LOWER BODY: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.7 ORTHOTIC & ORTHOPEDIC CLINICS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.8 HOSPITALS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 27.5.9 OTHERS: GEOGRAPHY SEGMENTATION 28 APPENDIX 28.1 ABBREVIATIONS ABOUT US: Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovative and quality-driven firm that offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients worldwide. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services. We offer comprehensive market research reports on consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals, materials, I.T. and media, logistics, and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts. Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports. Click Here to Contact Us Call: +1-312-235-2040 +1 302 469 0707 Mail: [email protected] Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985732/ORTHOPEDIC_SPLINTS_AND_CASTS_MARKET.jpg Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/818553/Arizton_Logo.jpg SOURCE Arizton Advisory & Intelligence International Centre for Dispute Resolution Remains Dedicated to Providing Thought Leadership that Increases Transparency & Improves Arbitration Processes NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Arbitration Association (AAA), the global leader in arbitration and mediation services, announces that its international division, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), has released a set of comprehensive guidelines for the use and appointment of tribunal secretaries in arbitration. Tribunal secretaries, many of whom have a professional background in law, can assist arbitrators and parties in complex proceedings where the use of a tribunal secretary would improve the arbitration process and lower costs. "We have collaborated with many experts, internally and externally, to create guidelines which reflect best practices and address the main concerns of parties regarding the use of a tribunal secretary," said Eric P. Tuchmann, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the AAA-ICDR. "These guidelines clarify the role and responsibility of tribunal secretariesincluding confirmation that they do not have any decision-making authorityand contribute to our efforts to strengthen transparency, economy, and efficiency within the international arbitration process." The ICDR Arbitral Tribunal Secretary Guidelines, effective December 1, 2022, underscore that: Arbitrators retain all decision-making authority and may not delegate it to tribunal secretaries. Tribunal secretaries work under the supervision of arbitral tribunals, which may also dismiss them, and must coordinate with the administrator throughout the proceedings. The tribunal secretary is bound by the same standards of ethical conduct which bind the arbitral tribunal under applicable rules, including disclosure, communication, and confidentiality obligations. The tribunal secretary may be proposed for appointment on a particular case on the written request of the arbitral tribunal, following consultation with the parties involved. All parties must agree to the appointment of the tribunal secretary, and any objections or questions made by any party regarding a secretary's disclosure, will be brought to the administrator anonymously by the case manager. Prior to the tribunal secretary's appointment, and as early in the process as possible, the arbitral tribunal must provide the administrator with the proposed secretary's role, curriculum vitae, and rate of compensation. Parties may review and comment on any aspect of the proposed secretary's role, rate, and suitability for the case to the administrator, who may then consult with the tribunal. The ICDR Arbitral Tribunal Secretary Guidelines were prepared by the ICDR in consultation with arbitrators, counsel, and case administrators from multiple jurisdictions, as well as professionals who have served as tribunal secretaries. "With input and feedback from a variety of international arbitration professionals, we have crafted guidance that spells out exactly how tribunal secretaries can contribute to an arbitration proceeding," said Steve K. Andersen, Esq., Vice President of the International Centre for Dispute Resolution. "We are proud to be able to optimize international dispute resolution through robust thought leadership and industry cooperation, and we look forward to hearing from parties about the impact of these latest rules on their case proceedings." Unless parties agree otherwise in writing, these rules apply in all ICDR-administered cases. Tribunals, with agreement of the parties involved, may also adopt these guidelines in cases not facilitated by the ICDR. Multiple ICDR committees from various jurisdictions were involved in interviews and research for the rules, and in drafting them. The organization will continue to review and update the guidelines to ensure they remain aligned with ICDR goals. About the American Arbitration Association The not-for-profit American Arbitration Association (AAA) is the leading provider of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services for parties in commercial disputes, having administered more than seven million ADR cases since its founding in 1926. With 29 offices in the United States, in addition to Singapore, the AAA provides organizations of all sizes in virtually every industry with ADR services and products. For more information, visit www.adr.org. About the International Centre for Dispute Resolution The International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) is the international division of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the largest international provider of dispute resolution services. Established in 1996, the ICDR serves parties from over 100 countries with multilingual staff experienced in international dispute resolution proceedings, and a roster of over 725 arbitrators and mediators. For more information, visit www.icdr.org. Media Contacts: Michael C. Clark Laura Simpson American Arbitration Association JConnelly +1.212.716.3978 +1.973.713.8834 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE AAA-ICDR WESTCHESTER, Ill., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- After an election year where House members saw the most contested races in history, Democrats for the Illinois House and re-elected House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch have closed strong with 14 newly elected members and $1.7 million total. During the quarter, the Speaker's caucus reported raising over $14 million. The House Democratic Caucus raised over $12 million. Speaker Welch's total for the year was over $45 million. The result the House's historic supermajority and a unanimous demand for a second term of leadership for Speaker Welch. "We raised funds, we worked together, and we really dug into the fight for the people of Illinois," said Speaker Welch. "I am extremely thankful to each of our supporters and every single member of our caucus. We are bringing the most Democrats to the legislature in modern history to fight for working families in all 118 districts from Chicago to Cairo, from Winnetka to Washington Park, and from Westchester to Savanna. I am thankful to our caucus for trusting me to continue to lead us forward. Now we have to get to Springfield and continue doing the work of the people." With 14 newly elected members of the Illinois House, Democrats are the most diverse in their representation of the people. In addition to re-electing the first African-American Speaker of the House, the general assembly welcomed the first Vietnamese American, two of the first Muslim Americans, and the first Korean American to serve and represent downstate. The diversity of heritage, race, gender, age, and ideology further solidifies the House Dems as the caucus that looks like Illinois. About Democrats for the Illinois House: Democrats for the Illinois House is the official political arm of the Illinois House Democratic Caucus. We support Democrats for the Illinois House in fighting for equality, justice, and opportunity for all. Under the leadership of House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch, Democrats for Illinois House (DIH) is dedicated to promoting the excellent work of the caucus, protecting incumbents, winning competitive races, and serving Illinoisans with integrity. The Illinois House Democratic Caucus is one of the most diverse in the nation representing African American (22), Latinx (10), Asian American (4), Women (39) and LGBTQ+ (4) members. DIH is committed to creating an environment across the state that is inclusive and welcoming to all people. SOURCE Democrats for the Illinois House NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Rowley Law PLLC is investigating potential securities law violations by Volta Inc. (NYSE: VLTA) and its board of directors concerning the proposed acquisition of the company by Shell (NYSE: SHEL). Stockholders will receive $0.86 for each share of Volta stock that they hold. The transaction is valued at approximately $169 million and is expected to close in the first half of 2023. If you are a stockholder of Volta Inc. and are interested in obtaining additional information regarding this investigation, please visit us at: http://www.rowleylawpllc.com/investigation/vlta/. You may also contact Shane Rowley, Esq. at Rowley Law PLLC, 50 Main Street Suite 1000, White Plains, NY 10606, by email at [email protected] , or by telephone at 914-400-1920 or 844-400-4643 (toll-free). Rowley Law PLLC represents shareholders nationwide in class actions and derivative lawsuits in complex corporate litigation. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://www.rowleylawpllc.com . Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. SOURCE Rowley Law PLLC Strengthening its position as a customer journey development and management leader DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Allant Group LLC, a data-driven journey orchestration solution provider, and a VntCap Technologies LLC company, is pleased to announce Michael D. Fisher Ed.D. has been appointed President and CEO of Allant Group where he will lead the organization in the delivery of data-driven journey orchestration, mapping, and management, while leveraging Allant's 20 years of proven success in the deployment and utilization of analytics, data, and technology. "Allant Group is in the perfect position to expand its capabilities in marketing technology, data, and analytic strategies to further serve the evolving needs of marketers and their audiences," said Michael D. Fisher Ed.D., President and CEO, Allant Group. "My job is to facilitate centers of excellence that will leverage effective digital experiences, consented data capture, journey mechanics, and effective data analysis and insights to drive results for our customers." Michael specializes in helping companies build collaborative, connected, cohesive cultures, with a commitment to personal and professional development and success. Most recently, Michael was CEO at 3radical, a journey development and consented data capture solution provider. Michael has also held senior leadership roles at Yes lifecycle Marketing (now Data Axle), Alterian, Epsilon, DoubleClick (formerly Protagona Worldwide), and Unisys Corporation. "We are thrilled to have Michael bring his 25+ years providing MarTech and data solutions to Allant Group," said Norm Beles, Allant Group Chairman. "As we embark on this very exciting phase in our advancement, Michael's experience will be key to our client growth and success." About Allant Group Allant Group supports mid-market and emerging brands through holistic offerings for customer engagement and journey orchestration needs. Delivering faster third-party data integration, improved analytical insights, crisp data visualizations and cutting edge MarTech implementation, Allant's expertise drives effective marketing orchestration via personalized communications to acquire, retain, and enhance our clients' market penetration. Allant is a privately held company headquartered in the Chicago area. For more information, visit https://www.allantgroup.com/. About VntCap Technologies, LLC VntCap Technologies, LLC provides its subsidiary companies with a unique blend of viewpoints and experiences that deliver comprehensive guidance and oversight to its leadership teams. Unlike other investment firms that seek quicker financial returns from their investments, VntCap actively operates the companies within its investment portfolio for longer periods of time to achieve maximum valuation. Founded by a group of entrepreneurs from a cross-section of industries, the varied background of its members is what continues to create value in subsidiary companies such as Allant Group. For more information about VntCap Technologies, LLC visit http://www.vntcaptech.com/. Contact: Linda Vetter [email protected] 1-800-367-7311 SOURCE Allant Group IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpha Motor Corporation (Alpha) has just announced its EV campaign for 2023, "Electric Vehicles That Move Humanity." At present, Alpha is actively developing its EVs to enter the mass market and contribute to mass adoption trends. Copyright 2023 Alpha Motor Corporation. All rights reserved. "As fossil fuels dominate our energy sources today, we have been living beyond our ecological means. Since Alpha's introduction in 2020, the demand for our cars has continuously increased because EVs are needed by people around the world. We are committed to bringing our EVs to the market and helping to ensure a sustainable future for humanity," said Alpha Motor Corporation. In a recent announcement by Alpha, the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office granted multiple design patent allowances and an issuance for Alpha's electric vehicle system technology. With its EVs gaining significant popularity, Alpha is well-positioned to achieve mass commercialization. Through its award-winning EVs, Alpha has consistently demonstrated its execution ability. Alpha's team carries decades of OEM experience and supported by an Advisory Board of top executive leaders from automotive and semiconductor industries. Just last year, the company announced its partnership with UHI, to manufacture Alpha's production ready vehicles from its 406,000-acre plant situated in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Beyond just the creation of mobility solutions, Alpha has joined forces with OEM-level partners including engineering powerhouse, HTI, to boost speed-to-market efficiency, which gives Alpha a unique advantage to swiftly fulfill market demand. Alpha is collaboratively bringing focus to a greener and healthier future for both the industry and consumers worldwide. "Simply put at Alpha, we build EVs because we love seeing people enjoy them, and we are passionate about every step of our process. We look forward to moving humanity together with our supporters," continued Alpha Motor Corporation. As part of Alpha's campaign to raise support for electrification of cars, the company released a set of Limited-Edition Prints of its electric vehicles, now available at https://www.alphamotorinc.com/gallery. ABOUT Alpha Motor Corporation (Alpha) is an American automobile and mobility technology company focused on manufacturing electric vehicles in Utility, Sport, and Adventure categories. Creator of the ACE Coupe Series, JAX Crossover, WOLF Truck Series, SAGA Sedan Series, REX Utility Vehicle Series, and MONTAGE Coupe, Recipient of The 2021 LA Auto Show THE ZEVAS Top EV Award, and featured at The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles - Alpha's vision is to "Move Humanity." Alpha's differentiated go-to-market strategy targets streamlined deployment of EVs by implementing modular vehicle technology, disruptive optimization methods, and sustainable manufacturing practices. Founded in 2020 and based in Irvine, California, Alpha is led by an experienced team of automotive industry professionals and partners from top e-mobility engineering and manufacturing companies in the US. Please contact [email protected] for more information. Related Links https://www.alphamotorinc.com SOURCE Alpha Motor Corporation Maroua, Cameroon Activists in Cameroon are urging more women candidates to enter races for Senate seats before a January 28 deadline. Only 26 members of Cameroon's 100-member senate are women, a number advocates want to see doubled. But patriarchal beliefs and a lack of political support are preventing more women from contesting the March election. Female activists have been visiting political party leaders in northern Cameroon to push for greater representation for women in Cameroon's upper house of parliament, the Senate. Cameroon's president, Paul Biya, announced last week that senate elections will be held March 12 with a registration deadline of January 28. The announcement prompted activists to push for more women candidates. Aissa Doumara Ngatansou is with the Association for the Fight Against Violence on Women and Girls. She says only 2 of the 10 former senate members from Cameroon's Far North region, where Maroua is located, are women. Ngatansou says she is visiting political parties that will contest the elections to tell them activists want gender parity among their candidates - half women and half men. She says it's delightful that many women who were quiet in the past now want to take part in politics. Cameroonian women have long raised complaints of low participation in politics ahead of elections. Activists say patriarchal attitudes still prevail in many parts of Cameroon, where women are expected to get their husband's permission before running for office. Funding campaigns is also a challenge, as many women candidates cannot afford the $1,650 deposit required to run for the Senate. Justine Diffo is coordinator of the group More Women in Politics. She says women's associations, wealthy donors, and political parties should assist women candidates with such campaign fees. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Women Governance Cameroon By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Diffo says it is the wish of Cameroonian women to see political leaders including President Paul Biya respect promises they made on several occasions to give equal chances (in politics) to men and women. She says the March 12 Senate elections provide an opportunity for Cameroon to prove to the world that parity is not just a slogan.Political leaders have not responded to calls by rights groups for political parties to pay the deposit for women candidates. The ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM) party said in a press release it is examining issues raised by women activists and will do all it takes to have more women run for the Senate. The CPDM says four out of every ten candidates for the elections are expected to be women. Marie Theres Abena Ondoua is Cameroon's minister of women's empowerment and the family. Speaking on Cameroon's state broadcaster CRTV Tuesday, she says government training for women who register as candidates has made progress in gender parity. Ondoua says from just one female lawmaker 30 years ago, Cameroon today counts 61 in the National Assembly out of 180 members. She says 30 years ago, Cameroon had fewer than three female mayors but today there are 39 out of 360 in the country. Ondoua says Cameroon is determined to assist women who are hard working to gain political positions.About 15,000 councilors in 60 divisions across Cameroon make up the electoral college that will vote for 70 of the senator seats. The remaining 30 are directly appointed by President Biya. Former Air Wisconsin COO Positions Company for Continued Growth PROVO, Utah, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpine Air Express, Inc. ("Alpine" or "the Company"), a leading regional air cargo carrier providing critical air infrastructure supporting a wide range of integrated logistics operations throughout North America, announced today that Robert Frisch, an experienced leader with decades of expertise in aviation operations, regulation, and planning, has joined the Company as Chief Operating Officer (COO) effective January 31, 2023. Mr. Frisch will be based in the Company's corporate headquarters in Provo, UT. In this newly created role, Mr. Frisch will be responsible for overseeing the Company's operations and aircraft maintenance management team, as well as leading Alpine's 119 positions. Alpine is a leading Part-135 air cargo operator with blue-chip customers including UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, DHL and others including a growing direct point-to-point charter capability supporting express supply chain deliveries. Alpine is a portfolio company of AE Industrial Partners, a U.S.-based private equity firm specializing in aerospace, defense & government services, space, power & utility services and specialty industrial markets. "Bob's deep experience in aviation operations and employee management plus his success in building companies make him the perfect choice to support our expanding team and growth strategy," said Michael Dancy, CEO of Alpine Air. "Alpine now has a growing fleet of more than 80 active aircraft, and Bob will be a great asset as we look to further enhance our maintenance performance and operations. I welcome Bob to Alpine and look forward to working with him." Prior to joining Alpine, Mr. Frisch was Chief Operating Officer at Air Wisconsin Airlines Corporation, which currently performs flying services for United Airlines as United Express. In that role, he was responsible for oversight of all the company's operations functions for its 400 daily flights and 1,600 employees, as well as ensuring compliance with FAA regulations, managing labor relations, and serving as a liaison to regulatory agencies, industry trade groups, and law enforcement. Previously he served as Vice President for Flight Operation and Labor Relations at Air Wisconsin, where he began his career as a Chief Pilot 20 years ago. Mr. Frisch holds a BS degree in Business Accounting from the University of North Dakota, and a JD degree from Concord University School of Law and is type rated pilot in numerous aircraft, including the Beechcraft 1900D, which is at the center of Alpine's fleet strategy. "I'm excited to work with Michael and the outstanding Alpine team to help the Company continue to grow strategically, deliver enhanced performance, and better serve its new and existing customers," said Mr. Frisch. About Alpine Air Express Headquartered in Provo, Utah, Alpine is a leading regional air cargo carrier providing critical air infrastructure supporting a wide range of integrated logistics operations throughout North America. Alpine operates a growing fleet of aircraft and owns a proprietary Supplemental Type Certificate ("STC") to convert the Beechcraft 1900D aircraft from passenger configuration to cargo configuration, making it the largest single pilot cargo aircraft in the world. For more information, please visit www.alpine-air.com. About AE Industrial Partners AE Industrial Partners is a private equity firm specializing in aerospace, defense & government services, space, power & utility services, and specialty industrial markets. AE Industrial Partners invests in market-leading companies that can benefit from its deep industry knowledge, operating experience, and relationships throughout its target markets. AE Industrial Partners is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment and the ILPA Diversity in Action initiative. Learn more at www.aeroequity.com. CONTACT: Lambert Jennifer Hurson (845) 507-0571 [email protected] 845.507.0571 Or Beth Wiegard [email protected] 616.258.5777 SOURCE Alpine Air Express, Inc. DENVER, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Arrive Health, the leading provider of real-time benefit tools and integrated solutions that improve patient affordability, today announced the acquisition of a suite of innovative patient engagement and automation technologies developed by UPMC Enterprises and the UPMC Pharmacy Network. Arrive Health will add AI-driven virtual assistant technology and a robust patient management system to its affordability offerings, expanding support for more than 200 million patients on their journey to fill and refill their medications. The combined assets will for the first time empower providers, care teams, and patients with shared clinical and cost information to achieve improved outcomes and patient access. "With these capabilities, we will support patients more holistically from the exam room to the pharmacy counter." Tweet this "We have a long-standing relationship with UPMC and I'm grateful their belief in our company led them to seek Arrive Health as the right partner to scale these capabilities. With these additions, we will support patients more holistically from the exam room to the pharmacy counter," said Kyle Kiser, chief executive officer of Arrive Health. "Presenting real-time medication options empowers patients throughout their journey and is an essential step in reducing costs for patients and risk-bearing entities. With UPMC's adherence tools and our market-leading network, we will create a digital experience similar to what consumers experience outside of healthcare." For the past five years, UPMC Enterprises and UPMC pharmacy experts have developed and deployed technology to support medication adherence. The AI virtual assistant and integrated workflow tools allow care teams to prioritize patients who are at risk of skipping their medications and drive continuous engagement through automated conversation flows. With these tools, UPMC has demonstrated meaningful results, including a 200% improvement in refill-rate, a 32% reduction in 7-day readmissions, and the elimination of thousands of pharmacy calls per month. "Technology is essential in transforming pharmacy and clinical operations, while improving patient outcomes. With these tools, we communicate with over 60,000 UPMC patients annually and make a meaningful difference in their lives, while streamlining processes for pharmacy staff," said Rebecca Taylor, PharmD, MBA, senior director of pharmacy at UPMC. "Our goal is to take challenging problems and turn them into innovative technology-enabled solutions that help our patients as well as our provider, pharmacy, and health plan partners," said Brenton Burns, executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises. "This development effort is a great example of what makes UPMC and UPMC Enterprises unique. UPMC's clinical insights across all three spectrums allow us to create a scalable solution with proven results. Combining our two teams and strategically partnering with Arrive Health allows us to bring this solution to more providers and improve care for more patients." Arrive Health has built the industry's leading cost and coverage network, delivering patient-specific data from over 200 million insured members into the prescribing workflows of over 300,000 providers. With the integration of the UPMC pharmacy technology, Arrive Health will further support pharmacy teams and the patients they serve by combining automated patient access resources with the power of consumer-facing real-time benefit checks. UPMC has invested in Arrive Health as a part of this transaction, with a strong belief that the expanded solution suite is meeting an important need for patients across the country. Health systems interested in improving patient engagement, medication adherence, and pharmacy automation should reach out to learn more about activating these solutions. About Arrive Health Arrive Health is a healthcare technology company dedicated to putting the needs of patients and providers first. We improve access to the most affordable, quality care by delivering accurate, patient-specific cost and coverage data to providers, care teams, and patients. Collaborating with premier health systems, pharmacy benefit managers, payers, and healthcare IT vendors, Arrive Health is clearing the way for better health by reducing friction in care workflows and enabling meaningful conversations about access to care. To learn more, please visit ArriveHealth.com. About UPMC A $24 billion health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates more than 92,000 employees, 40 hospitals, 800 doctors' offices and outpatient sites, and a more than 4 million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical insurer in western Pennsylvania. In the most recent fiscal year, UPMC contributed $1.5 billion in benefits to its communities, including more care to the region's most vulnerable citizens than any other health care institution, and paid more than $900 million in federal, state and local taxes. Working in close collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, UPMC shares its clinical, managerial, and technological skills worldwide through its innovation and commercialization arm, UPMC Enterprises, and through UPMC International. U.S. News consistently ranks UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside among the nation's best hospitals in many specialties and ranks UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh on its Honor Roll of America's Best Children's Hospitals. For more information, go to UPMC.com. SOURCE Arrive Health Webinar Features Strategic Insights from Asep Inc.'s Senior Executives, including Founder and CEO Dr. Robert E. W. Hancock, CSO Dr. Evan Haney and COO Mr. Timothy Murphy VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Asep Medical Holdings Inc. ("Asep Inc." or the "Company") (CSE: ASEP) (OTCQB: SEPSF) (FSE: JJ8) is pleased to announce that it is holding an online webinar on January 24, 2023, at 1:00 pm EST to provide essential and exciting updates on the company's global market developments, scientific advances and investment-related milestones. Dr. Evan Haney Chief Scientific Officer (CNW Group/ASEP Medical Holdings Inc.) Dr. Robert E. W. Hancock Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer (CNW Group/ASEP Medical Holdings Inc.) Mr. Timothy Murphy Chief Operations Officer (CNW Group/ASEP Medical Holdings Inc.) Interested parties are invited to register for the webinar (here) to discover historical milestones and the Company's concrete plans for the future. Members of Asep Inc.'s executive team will present information and answer questions from attendees on the following, Global market developments Updates on the company's recent acquisition of medical instruments innovator SafeCoat Medical Inc. Exciting information on a joint venture definitive agreement signed with the Kingdom of Bahrain and its healthcare investment firm, Seaspring W.L.L. Scientific advances Details on advances of Asep Inc.'s next-generation sepsis diagnostic test kit, Sepset ME (molecular endotype), that shows promise in determining sepsis endotypes (specific levels of severity) for patients in the emergency room (molecular endotype), that shows promise in determining sepsis endotypes (specific levels of severity) for patients in the emergency room Essential information about a joint venture with China -based Bohai Biomedical for a feasibility study focused on an antibacterial mouthwash for the Chinese dental market -based Bohai Biomedical for a feasibility study focused on an antibacterial mouthwash for the Chinese dental market Recent details on Asep Inc.'s antibiofilm/anti-inflammatory peptide technology for wound bandages under development by New York -based iFyber LLC and partially funded by the US Army -based iFyber LLC and partially funded by the US Army Dr. Hancock's installation as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors on June 25, 2023 , in Washington, DC Investment milestones Updates on Asep Inc.'s recent acquisition of SafeCoat Biomedical Current information on the Company's success on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE) ABOUT ASEP MEDICAL HOLDINGS INC. Asep Medical Inc. (asepmedical.com) is dedicated to addressing antibiotic failure by developing novel solutions for significant unmet medical needs. The Company is a consolidation of two existing private companies (Sepset Biosciences Inc. and ABT Innovations Inc.) that are both in the advanced development of both proprietary diagnostic tools, enabling the early and timely identification of severe sepsis as well as broad-spectrum therapeutic agents to address multidrug-resistant biofilm infections. Sepset Biosciences Inc. (sepset.ca) is developing a diagnostic technology that involves a patient gene expression signature that predicts severe sepsis, one of the significant diseases leading to antibiotic failure, since antibiotics are the primary treatment for sepsis. Despite this, sepsis is responsible for nearly 20% of all deaths on the planet. The SepsetER test is a blood-based gene expression assay that is straightforward to implement, and results are obtained in about an hour in the emergency room or intensive care unit. This proprietary diagnostic technology differs from current diagnostic tests in enabling diagnosis of severe sepsis within 60-90 minutes of initiating the test, while other diagnostics provide a diagnosis after ~15 hours but can be as long as five days. Asep Inc. believes this will enable critical early decisions to be made by physicians regarding appropriate therapies and reduce overall morbidity and mortality due to sepsis. ABT Innovations Inc.'s (abtinnovations.ca) peptide technology covers a broad range of therapeutic applications, including bacterial biofilm infections (medical device infections, chronic infections, lung, bladder, wound, dental, skin, ear-nose and throat, sinusitis, orthopaedic, etc.), anti-inflammatories, anti-infective immune-modulators and vaccine adjuvants. The company is in the pre-clinical development phase with promising data. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of such statements under applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "anticipates," "plan," "continue," "expect," "project," "intend," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "may," "will," "potential," "proposed," "positioned" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements include but are not limited to the successful clinical testing of our Sepsis diagnostic test and its intended filing for regulatory approval; the Company not receiving regulatory approval as planned or at all; the undertaking of pre-clinical studies on our lead therapeutic, with the expectation that this will lead to fast-track clinical trials; the timeframe for diagnosis of sepsis with the company's products; the potential opportunities for generation of revenue; the therapeutic benefits of the company's products; and other statements regarding the company's proposed business plans. Various assumptions were used in drawing conclusions or making the predictions 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 the risk that the company's products may not perform as expected; that the company may not receive the requisite regulatory approvals or results of testing; the Company's testing of the products may not be successful and approvals may not be obtained in the estimated timelines or at all; the company may not be able to generate revenue from its products as expected or at all; the market for the company's products may not be as described in this news release; and various other risk factors identified in the Asep Medical Inc.'s prospectus dated November 9, 2021, and in the company's management discussion and analysis, available for review under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Asep Medical Inc. is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law. SOURCE ASEP Medical Holdings Inc. GENOA, Italy, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ASG Superconductors (ASG) and Siemens Healthineers signed a partnership agreement to synergistically develop UHF MRI systems of unprecedented dependability for ground-breaking brain research. First project under the partnership shall be the delivery of a 10.5T MRI system to a University in China. The magnet will be built and comprehensively tested at ASG's premises in Genova. Upon its arrival in Hefei, Siemens Healthineers is responsible for the integration and installation of the system. ASG SUPERCONDUCTORS AND SIEMENS HEALTHINEERS JOIN FORCES TO DELIVER 10.5T ULTRA HIGH FIELD MRI SYSTEMS FOR GROUND-BREAKING BRAIN RESEARCH "In the past, customers looking for a system above 7T had to order the magnet and the electrical integration separately" says Arthur Kaindl, Head of Magnetic Resonance at Siemens Healthineers. "With the new partnership, we are happy to offer these UHF systems on a turnkey basis for the first time. This will lead to a tremendous improvement in project execution for our customers and take a decisive step towards pushing the limits of MRI beyond 7T." Based on their relevant legacy of technical and scientific successes and undisputed reputation of loyalty to the customer, Siemens Healthineers and ASG join competences in order to deliver to the UHF MRI market imaging systems, with field strengths above 7T, that are thoroughly tested and delivered with clear operative prescriptions and an overarching warranty to match. The reduced complexity of realizing an MRI project beyond 7T will help customers take the step toward extremely high field MRI and to enable new discoveries. Sergio Frattini ASG Superconductor Chief Executive Officer declares "We're very proud to have signed this agreement with Siemens Healthineers. Superconducting technologies and magnet systems of very high performances are increasingly finding application in medical diagnostics and therapies. Capitalizing on skills and experiences derived from research and industrial collaborations, ASG is constantly improving its superconducting competences and is able to design a complete range of magnets for medical diagnostics with magnetic field strengths ranging from fractions of one Tesla up to UHF. We therefore think that this partnership will help us make the most of our technology for the good of our customers". ASG Superconductors is a leading superconducting company and usually works in partnership with clients in definition and development of products, through assistance in designing, prototyping and optimizing magnetic system, shortening time to market and improving overall system competitiveness. ASG provides standard, preventative and emergency maintenance activities. www.asgsuperconductors.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1984999/ASG_SIEMENS_MRI_Systems.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1949000/ASG_Logo.jpg SOURCE ASG Superconductors S.p.A Avantor and Avantor Foundation grantmaking and volunteerism advances "Science for Goodness" with focus on STEM education and healthcare access RANDOR, Pa., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Avantor Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Avantor, Inc. (NYSE: AVTR), today announced that it has surpassed $7 million in giving since its inception in 2009, supporting its mission of advancing science education and providing healthcare to those in need. In 2022, the Foundation granted more than $1 million to 15 organizations around the world. In addition, Avantor Inc. donated products to support education and disaster relief efforts valued at more than $1.3 million. "Over the past year we deepened integration of employee volunteer opportunities and engagement and were proud to see how our colleagues around the world took action to set science in motion to create a better world in their local and global communities," said Allison Hosak, Senior Vice President, Global Communications and Brand. "We look forward to partnering with grantees and employees around the globe to extend our impact in 2023." During 2022, Avantor Foundation grants supported: Engineering Development Trust delivering various STEM activities to over 2,000 young people in the UK. Project HOPE The People-to-People Health Foundation, providing medical services to more than 5,000 children with asthma in the Shanghai, China region; region; Good Samaritan Health Center expanding its offering by providing same day medical care to grow its outreach by over 45% (353 new patients) to neighboring communities in Atlanta, Georgia . As part of Avantor's commitment to serving communities, Avantor Foundation recently expanded community engagement programming for Avantor employees to include matching gifts for both financial donations and volunteer time. Avantor employees across 15 countries participated in expanded volunteer opportunities ranging from the creation of STEM and hygiene kits to panel discussions and mentoring students to encourage and support the next generation of scientists. More details will be highlighted in Avantor's 2023 Sustainability Report later this year. To learn more about Science for Goodness, visit the Company's sustainability website. To learn more about the Avantor Foundation, visit avantorfoundation.org. Avantor Avantor, a Fortune 500 company, is a leading global provider of mission-critical products and services to customers in the biopharma, healthcare, education & government, and advanced technologies & applied materials industries. Our portfolio is used in virtually every stage of the most important research, development and production activities in the industries we serve. Our global footprint enables us to serve more than 300,000 customer locations and gives us extensive access to research laboratories and scientists in more than 180 countries. We set science in motion to create a better world. For more information, please visit www.avantorsciences.com and find us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook . Media Contact Petro Kacur Director, PR and External Communications Avantor M: 404-408-0663 [email protected] SOURCE Avantor and Financial News SAN NICOLAS DE LOS GARZA, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- AXTEL, S.A.B. DE C.V., (the "Company") announced today that it has commenced an offer to purchase (the "Tender Offer") up to U.S. $75,000,000 aggregate principal amount (the "Tender Cap") of its outstanding 6.375% Senior Notes due 2024 (CUSIP/ISIN Nos. 05462G AJ3 / US05462GAJ31 and P0606P AC9 / USP0606PAC97) (the "Notes"), upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase (as defined below). The Tender Offer The Tender Offer will expire at 11:59 P.M., New York City time, on February 13, 2023 (such time and date, as the same may be extended, the "Expiration Time"). Holders who validly tender Notes at or prior to 5:00 P.M., New York City Time, on January 30, 2023 (such time and date, as the same may be extended, the "Early Tender Deadline"), unless the Tender Offer is earlier terminated or withdrawn by the Company, will be eligible to receive the Total Consideration (as described below). Holders who validly tender Notes after the Early Tender Deadline, but at or prior to the Expiration Time, unless the Tender Offer is earlier terminated or withdrawn by the Company, will be eligible to receive the Tender Offer Consideration (as described below). Notes tendered may be withdrawn at any time at or prior to 5:00 P.M., New York City Time, on January 30, 2023 (such time and date, as the same may be extended, the "Withdrawal Deadline") but not thereafter. Holders of Notes who validly tender Notes in the Tender Offer, and whose tenders are accepted by the Company, will receive, in addition to accrued and unpaid interest, for each U.S. $1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered, an amount in cash in U.S. dollars equal to: in the case of Notes tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Deadline, an amount equal to US $863.75 (the "Total Consideration"), consisting of (i) an amount equal to US $813.75 (the "Tender Offer Consideration"), plus (ii) an amount equal to US $50 (the "Early Tender Payment") and (the "Total Consideration"), consisting of (i) an amount equal to US (the "Tender Offer Consideration"), plus (ii) an amount equal to US (the "Early Tender Payment") and in the case of Notes tendered after the Early Tender Deadline, but at or prior to the Expiration Time, the Tender Offer Consideration. If the purchase of all validly tendered Notes would cause the Company to purchase a principal amount greater than the Tender Cap, then the Tender Offer will be oversubscribed and, if the Company accepts Notes in the Tender Offer, it will accept for purchase tendered Notes on a prorated basis. No consideration will be payable with respect to any Notes returned due to proration. So long as the terms and conditions described in the Offer to Purchase are satisfied, the Company intends to accept for payment all Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Early Tender Deadline, and will only prorate such Notes if the aggregate amount of Notes validly tendered and not withdrawn exceeds the Tender Cap. If the Tender Offer is not fully subscribed as of the Early Tender Deadline, holders who validly tender Notes after the Early Tender Deadline and at or before the Expiration Time may be subject to proration, whereas holders who validly tendered Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Deadline will not be subject to proration. Furthermore, if the Tender Offer is fully subscribed as of the Early Tender Deadline, holders who validly tender Notes after the Early Tender Deadline may not have any of their Notes accepted for payment, unless the Company decides to (i) extend the Tender Offer or (ii) increase the Tender Cap, subject to applicable law, in its sole discretion. In any scenario, Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Deadline and not validly withdrawn will have priority in payment over Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Deadline and at or before the Expiration Time. The Company will announce the results of proration, if any, by press release promptly after the Early Acceptance Date or the Final Acceptance Date (each as defined below), as the case may be. The terms and conditions of the Tender Offer are set forth in an Offer to Purchase dated the date hereof (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Offer to Purchase"). Subject to applicable law, the Company may amend, extend, terminate or withdraw the Tender Offer. The table below summarizes certain payment terms of the Offer: Description of Notes CUSIP/ISIN No. Outstanding Principal Amount of Notes Tender Cap Tender Offer Consideration(1) Early Tender Payment(1) Total Consideration (1)(2) 6.375% Senior Notes due November 14, 2024 144A: 05462G AJ3 / US05462GAJ31 Reg S: P0606P AC9 / USP0606PAC97 U.S. $402,223,000 U.S. $75,000,000 U.S. $813.75 U.S. $50 U.S. $863.75 (1) Per U.S. $1,000 principal amount of Notes that are validly tendered and accepted for purchase. (2) Includes the Early Tender Payment. Settlement Subject to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer being satisfied or waived, the Company reserves the right, at any time following the Early Tender Deadline but prior to the Expiration Time (the "Early Acceptance Date"), to accept for purchase the Notes validly tendered on or before the Early Tender Deadline and not validly withdrawn before the Withdrawal Deadline, subject to any required proration. If the Company elects to exercise this option, it will pay the Total Consideration for the Notes accepted for purchase at the Early Acceptance Date on a date (the "Early Payment Date") promptly following the Early Acceptance Date. Such Early Payment Date is expected to be on or about February 1, 2023, but is subject to change without notice. Also, on the Early Payment Date, if any, the Company will pay accrued and unpaid interest to, but not including, the Early Payment Date, on Notes accepted for purchase at the Early Acceptance Date. The Company reserves the right, in its sole discretion, subject to applicable law, to increase or decrease the Tender Cap; however, there can be no assurance that the Company will do so. Subject to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer being satisfied or waived, and to the Company's right to extend, amend, terminate or withdraw the Tender Offer, it will, after the Expiration Time (the "Final Acceptance Date"), accept for purchase all Notes validly tendered at or before the Expiration Time and not validly withdrawn before the Withdrawal Deadline (or if the Company has exercised its early purchase option described above, all Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Deadline and at or before the Expiration Time). The Company will pay the Total Consideration or Tender Offer Consideration, as the case may be, for Notes accepted for purchase at the Final Acceptance Date on a date (the "Final Payment Date") promptly following the Final Acceptance Date. Also, on the Final Payment Date, the Company will pay accrued and unpaid interest to, but not including, the Final Payment Date, on Notes accepted for purchase at the Final Acceptance Date. The Company's obligation to accept for purchase and to pay for Notes validly tendered and not withdrawn pursuant to the Tender Offer, or to make any Early Tender Payment, is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions, which are more fully described in the Offer to Purchase. HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. and Scotia Capital (USA) Inc. are the dealer managers for the Tender Offer. D.F. King & Co., Inc. has been appointed as the tender agent and information agent for the Tender Offer. Persons with questions regarding the Tender Offer should contact HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. at (212) 525-5552 (collect) or (888) HSBC-4LM (toll-free) and/or Scotia Capital (USA) Inc. at (212) 225-5501 (collect) or (800) 372-3930 (toll-free). The Offer to Purchase will be distributed to holders of Notes promptly. Holders who would like additional copies of the Offer to Purchase may call the information agent, D.F. King & Co., Inc., toll-free at (800) 870-0653. (Banks and brokers may call collect at (212) 269-5550 or email [email protected]). This announcement is not an offer to purchase, a solicitation of an offer to sell or a solicitation of tenders with respect to any Notes or other securities. The Tender Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Offer to Purchase. Neither the Offer to Purchase nor any documents related to the Tender Offer have been filed with, and have not been approved or reviewed by any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority of any country. No authority has passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Offer to Purchase or any documents related to the Tender Offer, and it is unlawful and may be a criminal offense to make any representation to the contrary. The Tender Offer does not constitute, and may not be used in connection with, an offer or solicitation by anyone in any jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation is not permitted by law or in which the person making such offer or solicitation is not qualified to do so or to any person to whom it is unlawful to make such offer or solicitation. In any jurisdiction in which the Tender Offer is required to be made by a licensed broker or dealer and in which the dealer managers, or any affiliates thereof, are so licensed, the Tender Offer will be deemed to have been made by such dealer managers, or such affiliates, on behalf of the Company. Forward-Looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements relate to our future prospects, developments and business strategies and are identified by our use of terms and phrases such as "believe," "could," "would," "will," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "predict," "strategy" and similar terms and phrases, and may include references to assumptions. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. We caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are based on numerous assumptions and that our actual results of operations, including our financial condition and liquidity and the development of the information and communications technology market, may differ materially from (and be more negative than) those made in, or suggested by, any forward-looking statements contained in this release. In addition, even if our results of operations, including our financial condition and liquidity and the development of the industry in which we operate, are consistent with the forward-looking statements contained in this release, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information or future events or developments. More detailed information about these and other factors is set forth in the Offer to Purchase. About the Company Axtel is a Mexican information and communication technology company that serves the enterprise, government and wholesale segments through Alestra, its services business unit, and Axtel Networks, its infrastructure unit. Axtel adhered to the UN Global Compact in 2011, the world's largest social responsibility initiative. It has received recognition from CEMEFI as a Socially Responsible Company since 2008. Axtel shares, represented by Ordinary Participation Certificates, or CPOs, trade on the Mexican Stock Market under the symbol "AXTELCPO" since 2005. Axtel is currently undergoing a partial spin-off from former parent company Alfa, S.A.B. de C.V., who is in the process of contributing all of its shareholding in the Company to Controladora Axtel, S.A.B. de C.V., a company which will be listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange. Source: Axtel, S.A.B. de C.V. Av. Munich 175, Colonia Cuauhtemoc, San Nicolas de los Garza, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, 66250 SOURCE Axtel, S.A.B. de C.V. CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Barcodes Group today released the results of a survey that found one-third of organizations expect their ID badging program to increase in 2023, while less than 5% anticipate a slight decrease. The nationwide State of ID Badging survey was conducted from November 22nd December 9th, 2022. The survey received over 250 responses across industries such as education, health care, manufacturing, and government. Reasons for badging program growth included the desire for increased security, an acceleration in hiring, new hardware purchases, and policy changes. "We are well positioned to serve our customers as they grow their ID badging programs in 2023," says Jeff Bill, EVP and GM of ID & Access Control for Barcodes Group. "As the largest supplier in the industry, we are very competitive across our deep product selection, satisfying the most important factors mentioned by survey respondents that determine supplier selection. With warehouses across the country, we are well aligned to serve our customers that order when they are about to run out of supplies, as the data indicates." Other survey outcomes showed: In over one-third of organizations, ID badging is handled by Operations, including facilities and office management staff. More than other industries, educational institutions purchase when budget becomes available, or when needs for the year have been determined. Over 40% of respondents are interested in using mobile devices to access their building(s) or are doing so already. "We are excited that nearly one-third of the audience is interested in using mobile devices to access their buildings, with over 10% already offering this convenience to their employees," adds Barcodes Group CEO, Dan Nettesheim. "This aligns with our emphasis on providing affordable solutions for building access control and keyless entry with our SimpleAccess brand." ABOUT BARCODES GROUP Barcodes Group provides end-to-end technology solutions that improve mobility, visibility, and automation for organizations across the globe. With 25+ years of experience and partnerships with leading technology manufacturers, Barcodes Group delivers exceptional products, software, and services to help businesses navigate a world in motion. Barcodes Group brought together the leading identification solutions retailers in North American and Europe, including ID Wholesaler, AlphaCard, and Digital ID. For more information, please visit www.idwholesaler.com. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Todd Muscato, Chief Digital Officer Barcodes Group 312-765-6869, [email protected] SOURCE Barcodes Group MUSCAT, Oman, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On the evening of Tuesday 17th January, fintech company Beehive, a Capital Market Authority (CMA) regulated crowdfunding platform, officially celebrated launching in Oman with an event at the Crowne Plaza, Muscat. Deputy Head of Public Authority for SME Development, Mr. Abdul Aziz Al Reesi, was present to inaugurate the event. The company, that partners with Ahlibank on its Tamkeen product, soft-launched in June 2022 bringing an alternative finance solution for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the Sultanate. Deputy Head of Public Authority for SME Development, Mr. Abdul Aziz Al Reesi; Oman Country Manager of Beehive, Mayan Al Asfoor; and CFO & COO of Beehive, Peter Tavener. Beehive, headquartered in the UAE, uses its fintech platform to connect a crowd of investors with small businesses looking for finance. It has funded over USD 400 million in total in the GCC since its inception in 2014. In partnership with Ahlibank, the company has funded twenty businesses and a total of OMR 1.4 million in finance since launching in Oman. Peer to peer lending is an established source of funding for SMEs in many countries and is becoming increasingly widespread across the GCC. The finance is unsecured, meaning businesses don't have to provide physical collateral for security, and instead the approval is based on the business's creditworthiness, which is assessed using Beehive's robust credit decisioning engine. Amongst the first companies to receive funding from Beehive and Ahlibank were Charisma Clinic and Al Naamani. Dr. Ghaith Sleman, Co-Owner of Charisma Clinic said, "We chose to use Beehive for our funding because of the lack of tangible securities needed. The process was quick and easy and was used to purchase new machines, as well as making us cash-rich which was instrumental in speeding up our expansion plans." Mazin Al Mahrooqi, Owner of Al Naamani said, "From the start, getting finance from Beehive was a smooth process. To my knowledge there is nothing else like this in Oman, it is collateral free, and they do not ask for unnecessary documents to get approved." Craig Moore, CEO and Founder of Beehive commented, "There is much potential for SMEs to bring economic growth to Oman. Improving their access to finance supports this, and we are excited to be part of that journey." Please contact Marketing Manager for Beehive, Bryony Pospodinis, for further details. [email protected] +971 585871300 Beehive.om Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985150/Beehive.jpg SOURCE Beehive TOKYO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A Belgian economic mission visited the West Japan Pharmaceutical Center in Neyagawa, Osaka Prefecture, of Nippon Express Co., Ltd. (hereinafter "Nippon Express"), which is a group company of NIPPON EXPRESS HOLDINGS, INC., on Friday, December 9. Logo: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/img/202301051847-O1-1486Ita7 Photo1: West Japan Pharmaceutical Center visited by the mission https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M103866/202301051847/_prw_PI2fl_H6b6kl5L.jpg Photo2: Scene from presentation https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M103866/202301051847/_prw_PI3fl_0Day05Kl.jpg The mission, led by Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid of the Kingdom of Belgium, engaged in economic exchanges with numerous companies, universities, and research institutions with the aim of further deepening friendly relations between Belgium and Japan. As part of these economic exchanges, 14 members of the mission visited Nippon Express' West Japan Pharmaceutical Center, a dedicated hub for handling pharmaceutical products in accordance with Good Distribution Practice (GDP) standards for the proper distribution of pharmaceuticals. Nippon Express gave a presentation on the Nippon Express Group's safe and secure pharmaceutical supply network, and the mission participants showed great interest in and appreciation for the Nippon Express Group's preparedness for natural disasters in addition to its security and health/safety management. The Nippon Express Group will continue expanding its logistics services to meet the logistics needs of the pharmaceutical industry and other customers around the world. Nippon Express website: https://www.nipponexpress.com/ Nippon Express Group's official LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nippon-express-group/ SOURCE NIPPON EXPRESS HOLDINGS, INC. TORONTO and CHICAGO, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - BMO Financial Group (TSX: BMO) (NYSE: BMO), and its subsidiaries BMO Financial Corp. and BMO Harris Bank N.A. (together, "BMO"), today announced it has received all regulatory approvals required to complete its acquisition of Bank of the West from BNP Paribas (XPAR: BNP). BMO anticipates the acquisition will close on February 1, 2023, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. "We are excited to be bringing BMO and Bank of the West together to continue building a leading North American bank with a shared focus on progress for our customers, employees, communities and the planet," said Darryl White, CEO, BMO Financial Group. "We've been providing banking services to BMO customers for over 200 years, helping them make real financial progress, expand their businesses and drive economic growth. We look forward to working with communities across our expanded U.S. footprint to help drive meaningful change at the local level through a strong combination of financial and community-driven investment," said David Casper, U.S. CEO, BMO Financial Group. Upon closing, BMO will welcome the nearly 1.8 million commercial, retail, wealth management and business banking customers and provide increased convenience with access to over 1,000 U.S. branches in 32 states and nationwide fee-free access to over 42,000 ATMs. BMO also looks forward to over 9,300 Bank of the West employees joining the BMO family. After closing and until conversion of the combined banks' systems, expected in early September 2023, customers will continue to receive service through their respective Bank of the West and BMO branches, websites and mobile applications. BMO will provide Bank of the West customers with key information about how the combined bank will serve them, including the plan for the conversion of their accounts. In addition, BMO Financial Group announced that two new leaders are expected to be appointed to the Board of Directors of BMO's U.S. holding company, BMO Financial Corp., effective as of closing: Nandita Bakhshi , currently Director of BancWest Holding Inc. and of Bank of the West. Ms. Bakhshi is also currently President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of the West and co-Chief Executive Officer and a Director of BNP Paribas USA , Inc. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Grameen America; the Supervisory Board of The Clearing House; The U.S. India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF); and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Ms. Bakhshi has devoted her career to inclusive, transformational and forward-looking leadership with a particular emphasis on placing women in leadership roles. Ms. Bakhshi will also be appointed Special Advisor on Integration to BMO's Senior Leadership team upon closing. , currently Director of BancWest Holding Inc. and of Bank of the West. Ms. Bakhshi is also currently President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of the West and co-Chief Executive Officer and a Director of BNP Paribas , Inc. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Grameen America; the Supervisory Board of The Clearing House; The U.S. India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF); and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Ms. Bakhshi has devoted her career to inclusive, transformational and forward-looking leadership with a particular emphasis on placing women in leadership roles. Ms. Bakhshi will also be appointed Special Advisor on Integration to BMO's Senior Leadership team upon closing. Claudia Fan Munce , currently Director of Bank of the West. Ms. Munce retired in 2016 from a distinguished 30-year career at IBM as the Managing Director of the IBM Venture Capital Group and Vice President of IBM Corporate Development. Ms. Munce is a venture advisor at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), sits on the Board of Directors of Best Buy Corporation and Arteris I.P. and is an appointed faculty member at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. "We look forward to welcoming these two exceptional leaders to our Board of Directors," said John Rau, Chair of the Board, BMO Financial Corp. A link detailing the composition of the full BMO Financial Corp. Board of Directors can be found here: https://www.bmoharris.com/us/about/corporate-information/board-of-directors. BMO Financial Corp. is the U.S. holding company for BMO Harris Bank N.A. The Board of Directors of BMO Financial Corp. provides governance and oversight for the bank, as well as for BMO Capital Markets and BMO Private Bank. BMO Financial Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of Montreal and is BMO's top tier holding company in the U.S. About BMO Financial Group Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America. With total assets of C$1.14 trillion as of October 31, 2022, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets. Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements. All such statements are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under, the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and any applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the expected closing of the proposed transaction, BMO's plans for the combined operations of BMO and Bank of the West and the financial, operational and capital impacts of the transaction, and include statements made by our management. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as "will", "would", "should", "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "project", "intend", "estimate", "plan", "goal", "commit", "target", "may", "might", "schedule", "forecast" and "could" or negative or grammatical variations thereof. By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific in nature. There is significant risk that predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections will not prove to be accurate, that our assumptions may not be correct, and that actual results may differ materially from such predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections. We caution readers of this press release not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements, as a number of factors many of which are beyond our control and the effects of which can be difficult to predict could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the targets, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward-looking statements. The future outcomes that relate to forward-looking statements may be influenced by many factors, including, but not limited to: the possibility that the proposed transaction does not close when expected or at all because conditions to closing are not satisfied on a timely basis or at all or are received subject to adverse conditions or requirements; the anticipated benefits from the proposed transaction, such as it growing our U.S. operations are not realized in the time frame anticipated or at all as a result of changes in general economic and market conditions, interest and exchange rates, monetary policy, laws and regulations (including changes to capital requirements) and their enforcement, and the degree of competition in the geographic and business areas in which Bank of the West currently operates; the business of Bank of the West may not perform as expected or in a manner consistent with historical performance; the ability to promptly and effectively integrate Bank of the West; diversion of management time on transaction-related issues; increased exposure to exchange rate fluctuations; and those other factors discussed in the Risks That May Affect Future Results section, and the sections related to credit and counterparty, market, insurance, liquidity and funding, operational non-financial, legal and regulatory, strategic, environmental and social, and reputation risk, in the Enterprise-Wide Risk Management section of the BMO 2022 Annual Report, all of which outline certain key factors and risks that may affect our future results and our ability to anticipate and effectively manage risks arising from all of the foregoing factors. We caution that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all possible factors. Other factors and risks could adversely affect our results. Investors and others should carefully consider these factors and risks, as well as other uncertainties and potential events, and the inherent uncertainty of forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the organization or on its behalf, except as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is presented for the purpose of assisting shareholders and analysts in understanding the proposed transaction and may not be appropriate for other purposes. SOURCE BMO Financial Group An armoured personnel carrier is seen through a rifle hole of another on January 20, 2012, during a firefight following an advance with the Somali National Army (SNA) to capture Mogadishu University in insurgent Al-Shabaab territory on the outskirts of Mogadishu city. Mogadishu, Somalia Somalis are hailing the capture of the port town of Haradhere as a major victory in the fight against the Islamist militant group al-Shabab. The port, once a base for Somali pirates, was a key revenue source for the militants. But analysts say holding onto Harahere and other territories seized from the militants while winning over locals will be a challenge. The capture of Harardhere is perhaps the single biggest trophy for the Somali army and clan militia who have been waging a ground offensive against al-Shabab since July. At the height of piracy in Somalia in 2011, Harardhere was the main operating port for pirates hijacking ships at seas for ransom. But it was seized by al-Shabab, which has used it since then to generate revenue by taxing imported goods. Somalia's Defense Minister Abdulkadir Nur lauded the capture of Harardhere which adds to a growing list of towns and villages falling into government hands. He said, we want to thank all the armed forces, particularly the Somali army which made it possible to dislodge the enemy from the two districts which are Gal'ad and Harardhere districts. Shoki Hayir, a lecturer at SIMAD University and a conflict researcher, told VOA the capture of Harardhere was a significant step for the military campaign which has been running for close to eight months. He said it is a historic victory achieved by Somali and the local forces. It is a victory that boosts the morale of the troops and a significant achievement registered by the government led by Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and this will speed up operations to liberate the country. Despite this series of victories by the Somali army, Hayir says government will need to build the confidence of the local communities and quickly establish a presence to ensure these newly liberated areas do not fall back into al-Shabab hands. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Somalia Conflict By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. He said it is good for the top government leaders to visit the liberated areas urgently to boost the morale of the locals and engage with them as the areas were under al-Shabaab control for a long time. He said, it is also important for the armed forces and the local militias to establish bases in the liberated areas to avoid the loss of those areas once again. Ahmed Hadi, the director of Somali Civic House, a policy and governance think tank in Mogadishu, says the capture of Harardhere is not only a victory for the military but for the locals. He said, the recapture of Harardhere is an important move as it is part of a plan to decentralize the administration. The town is also crucial for the movement of people and goods because those areas had been locked off from the rest of the country for a long time. Hadi also said the government will need to be ready for possible local conflicts over resources. Last year, President Mohamud declared an "all-out war" against al-Shabab, which has been fighting Somali governments for the past 15 years. The government says it is also waging financial warfare against the group. President Mohamud told a gathering in Mogadishu last week that the government has closed 250 bank accounts and 7 mobile money accounts suspected to be linked to al-Shabab. This move, he said, is denying the militant group money to fund its operations. The new feature enables firms and consumers to make real-time transfers using BNY Mellon | Pershing's portal. NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- BNY Mellon | Pershing announced today that it is integrating Real-Time Payments (RTP) technology into its NetXInvestor platform, an investor portal used by broker-dealer and registered investment advisor firms to help clients manage their portfolios. RTP is a new form of electronic money transfer that enables real-time deposits and withdrawals, giving broker-dealers and investors instant, 24/7/365, on-demand access to irrevocable and secure funds (subject to funds availability). "Automation and efficiency are high priorities for investment professionals and consumers, so we are continually innovating and adding to our suite of digital payables and receivables functions for NetXInvestor, like this BNY Mellon-developed RTP technology," says Ram Nagappan, CIO of BNY Mellon | Pershing. BNY Mellon has been at the forefront of innovating in the digital payments space, including launching the first-of-its-kind real-time electronic billing and payment solution. The pioneering capability enables U.S. businesses to present digital bills to consumer clients in real-time and receive instant payment via their preferred online and mobile banking channels. "We've seen incredible progress in client satisfaction since the launch of Real-Time Payments, plus it helps protect the environment by reducing the negative impacts of paper-based processes," says Carl Slabicki, Co-Head of Global Payments, Treasury Services, BNY Mellon. "This new application allows BNY Mellon to bring easy and accelerated money transfers to more of our clients and their investors." Media Contact Liz Ozaist Email: [email protected] Phone: +1 347-528-3559 ABOUT BNY MELLON | PERSHING BNY Mellon | Pershing is a leading provider of clearing and custody services. We are uniquely positioned to help complex financial services firms transform their businesses, drive growth, maximize efficiency, and manage risk and regulation. Wealth management and institutional firms outsource to us for trading and settlement services, investment solutions, bank and brokerage custody, middle and back-office support, data insights, and business consulting. Pershing brings together high-touch service, an open digital platform and the BNY Mellon enterprise to deliver a differentiated experience for every client. Pershing LLC (member FINRA, NYSE, SIPC) is a BNY Mellon company. With offices around the world, Pershing has over $2 trillion in assets and millions of investor accounts. Pershing affiliates include Albridge Solutions, Inc. and Lockwood Advisors, Inc., an investment adviser registered in the United States under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Additional information is available on pershing.com, or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter @Pershing. SOURCE Pershing, LLC IG Wealth Management will leverage Broadridge's R.Broker solution to optimize advisor team productivity and enrich client experience NEW YORK and TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- As the wealth management industry furthers its digital transformation journey, global Fintech leader, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR), today announced IG Wealth Management ("IG"), part of the IGM Financial Inc. (IGM) (TSX: IGM) family of companies, has signed a multi-year contract extension to IG's use of Broadridge's R.Broker solution, a component of the Broadridge Wealth Platform. "Building on a successful five-year partnership, Broadridge is thrilled to expand our relationship with a company that shares our commitment to digital transformation," said Karin Yorfido, General Manager, Global Technology and Operations Canada, at Broadridge. "The Broadridge R.Broker Wealth solution provides IG with enterprise-wide benefits through streamlined operations, timely access to market product advantages and the ability to consistently offer products and services across any channel. IG is well positioned to continue to grow its business with the continuous wealth innovation provided through the Broadridge solution." With a flexible, scalable platform powered by an aggregated data layer, the Broadridge Wealth Platform is an open, component-based ecosystem designed to help firms drive innovation, perform more effectively at scale and deliver a digital, modernized client and advisor experience. Broadridge's R.Broker solution provides digital, front-to-back full-service capabilities for IIROC and MFDA advisors on a single unified platform. The solution optimizes financial advisor productivity by creating an enriched client experience and digitized enterprise-wide operations. IG will continue to expand its deployment of Broadridge's capabilities, including core record keeping, regulatory and innovative capabilities for STP processing across currencies, dealers, regulations and jurisdictions. "This extended partnership furthers IG's ongoing digital transformation as we advance our technology infrastructure to best serve the financial needs of Canadians and engage with industry-leading organizations to provide best-in-class technology solutions for our clients," said Mike Dibden, Chief Operating Officer, IGM Financial Inc. With Broadridge's R.Broker solution as a foundational enabler of its wealth management business, IG will continue to transform the way in which it provides investment solutions, product offerings and customer service excellence across its family of companies. About Broadridge Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR), a global Fintech leader with more than $5 billion in revenues, provides the critical infrastructure that powers investing, corporate governance and communications to enable better financial lives. We deliver technology-driven solutions that drive business transformation for banks, broker-dealers, asset and wealth managers and public companies. Broadridge's infrastructure serves as a global communications hub enabling corporate governance by linking thousands of public companies and mutual funds to tens of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world. Our technology and operations platforms underpin the daily trading of more than U.S. $9 trillion of equities, fixed income, and other securities globally. A certified Great Place to Work, Broadridge is part of the S&P 500 Index, employing over 14,000 associates in 21 countries. For more information about us and what we can do for you, please visit www.broadridge.com. Investors: W. Edings Thibault Investor Relations [email protected] Media: Gregg Rosenberg Corporate Communications [email protected] SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. STOCKHOLM, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, 18 January 2023, MAG Interactive AB (publ) held its Annual General Meeting with Jonas Eriksson as chairman. The Annual General Meeting resolved upon, inter alia, the following: Adoption of balance sheets and income statements The Annual General Meeting adopted the parent company's income statement and balance sheet, as well as the consolidated income statement and the consolidated balance sheet for the financial year 2021/2022. Allocation of profit or loss The Annual General Meeting resolved, in accordance with the Board of Directors' proposal, that no dividend is paid and that the loss for the year is carried forward. Board of Directors The Annual General Meeting resolved to discharge the board members and the CEO from liability for the financial year 2021/2022. The Annual General Meeting resolved that the number of board members shall be six and re-elected the board members Daniel Hasselberg, Taina Malen, Asbjrn Sndergaard and Jonas Eriksson. Britt Boeskov and Asa Linder were elected as new board members. The board members Teemu Huuhtanen and Andras Vajlok had informed the nomination committee that they were not available for re-election. The Annual General Meeting re-elected Jonas Eriksson as chairman of the Board of Directors. Fees to the Board of Directors The Annual General Meeting resolved that a fee amounting to SEK 450,000 shall be paid to the chairman of the Board of Directors and that a fee amounting to SEK 220,000 shall be paid to each of the other board members not employed by the company. Auditor The Annual General Meeting resolved that the registered auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers AB shall be re-elected as the company's auditor for the period until the end of the next Annual General Meeting. Authority for the Board of Directors to issue new shares The Annual General Meeting resolved, in accordance with the Board of Directors' proposal, to grant the Board of Directors the authority, on one or more occasions for the period until the next Annual General Meeting, to issue new shares, either applying or disapplying the shareholders' pre-emption rights. The number of shares issued by virtue of the authority may not exceed an increase of ten (10) percent of the share capital based on the total share capital of the company on the date of the Annual General Meeting 2023. If the Board of Directors resolves to issue new shares disapplying the shareholders' pre-emption rights, the reason for this must be to implement an acquisition agreement or, alternatively, to procure capital for such acquisition. Adoption of a long-term share savings program and resolution regarding an issue of warrants and transfer of shares and/or warrants The Annual General Meeting resolved, in accordance with the Board of Directors' proposal, to implement a long-term share savings program for employees of MAG interactive. Participation in the program requires that the participant makes an investment in the company's shares or allocate already held shares to the program. For each share invested or allocated to the program, the participant may receive two additional shares ("share rights") free of charge in MAG Interactive after a performance period of three years, whereof one is conditional upon retained employment and one is conditional upon retained employment and the fulfilment of a performance criteria concerning the company's annual revenue growth during the program. In order to enable the company's delivery of shares under the share savings program the Annual General Meeting resolved, in accordance with the Board of Directors' proposal, to issue not more than 130,000 warrants to a wholly owned subsidiary of MAG Interactive, and to approve that the subsidiary transfers shares and/or warrants to the participants of the share savings program in connection with exercise of the share rights. Adoption of amended articles of association The annual general meeting resolved, in accordance with the Board of Directors' proposal, on the adoption of updated articles of association, wherein a new provision on the collection of powers of attorneys and postal voting is inserted. The Board of Directors MAG Interactive AB (publ) For additional information, please contact: Daniel Hasselberg / CEO / +46 (0)8 644 35 40 / [email protected] Magnus Wiklander / CFO / +46 (0)8 644 35 40 / [email protected] SOURCE MAG Interactive Hakim brings more than 25 years' experience leading finance and exponential growth at both large and small companies THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Capsida Biotherapeutics Inc. ("Capsida") today announced the appointment of Julie Hakim to the role of chief financial officer (CFO). Ms. Hakim will join Capsida's leadership team and be responsible for directing the company's financial strategy. Ms. Hakim is a seasoned life sciences executive with more than 25 years' experience shaping, scaling, and optimizing companies, accelerating both research and development (R&D) and commercialization, and paving the way for exponential growth at both large and small companies. Julie Hakim Capsida CFO "In her very successful career as a financial executive, Julie has demonstrated expertise in many areas of finance and business including R&D, product launches, revenue growth, acquisitions, integrations, and workforce expansions," said Peter Anastasiou, chief executive officer of Capsida. "We are thrilled that Julie is joining Capsida as our CFO, where she will direct strategies that help us grow our business and help us unlock the potential of gene therapy for all patients." "Capsida is a company that puts patients ahead of everything else, and I am honored to be joining this world-class team as CFO," said Ms. Hakim. "I look forward to working with the Capsida leadership team and board on the financial and strategic aspects of programs that bring therapies to patients in need." Prior to joining Capsida, Ms. Hakim was CFO at Sequoia Vaccines, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, where she worked to raise capital to transform the organization for its next phase of growth. Prior to Sequoia, Ms. Hakim spent 16 years in roles of increasing responsibility at Lundbeck, starting at Ovation Pharmaceuticals, prior to its acquisition by Lundbeck. Most recently she served as senior vice president and head of human and financial resources for North America, which at its peak had approximately $3 billion in gross revenues and more than 1200 employees across several sites with commercial, R&D, and general & administrative staff. During her tenure at Lundbeck, she led teams focused on accounting, finance, human resources, business planning, and operations. She also served on Lundbeck's board of directors for all its North American legal entities from 2019 to 2022. Ms. Hakim holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from North Central College in Naperville, Ill. She was a certified public accountant (CPA) in the state of New Jersey. About Capsida Biotherapeutics Capsida Biotherapeutics is the only fully integrated gene therapy platform company that through IV delivery of a single engineered capsid can target single or multiple organs simultaneously, while limiting exposure to non-targeted organs. Capsida's approach unlocks the potential to treat both rare and common diseases across all ages. The company is exploring using the technology across a broad range of rare and more common genetic and sporadic disorders. Its initial pipeline consists of multiple neurologic disease programs. The company has strategic collaborations with AbbVie, Lilly, and CRISPR, which provide independent validation of Capsida's technology and capabilities. Capsida is a multi-functional and fully integrated biotechnology company with proprietary adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineering, multi-modality cargo development and optimization, translational biology, process development and state-of-the-art manufacturing, and broad clinical development expertise. Capsida's biologically driven, high-throughput AAV engineering and cargo optimization platform originated from groundbreaking research in the laboratory of Viviana Gradinaru, Ph.D., a neuroscience professor at the California Institute of Technology. Visit us at www.capsida.com to learn more. SOURCE Capsida Biotherapeutics Recent " eDiscovery Innovation of the Year " winner clears rigorous StateRAMP standards. TYSONS, Va., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Casepoint the industry leader in legal discovery technology for litigation, investigations, and compliance today announced the company has achieved StateRAMP Authorization, becoming the first cloud-based Legal Hold and eDiscovery software company to meet the stringent cybersecurity standards for state and local government agencies. The announcement further solidifies Casepoint's industry-leading commitment to securing its clients' mission-critical data, adding to an already impressive list of security and compliance requirements. Last year, Casepoint became the first cloud-based Legal Hold and eDiscovery software company to achieve DoD Impact Level 5 (IL5) Authority to Operate (ATO) from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Casepoint is still the only such provider to hold the distinction. In 2020, the company also became the first cloud-based eDiscovery software company to achieve FedRAMP Moderate Authorization . Casepoint Becomes the First Cloud-based Legal Hold and eDiscovery Platform to Achieve StateRAMP Authorization Tweet this StateRAMP certification was the next natural step for Casepoint, given the emergence of the StateRAMP cybersecurity verification program, which provides a standardized approach to security and risk assessment for cloud technologies employed across state and local governments. Casepoint's strong security credentials, including its existing FedRAMP Authorization, fast-tracked the certification process. "This announcement marks just the latest instance of Casepoint's commitment to achieving the highest possible cybersecurity posture for our government clients' data," said Sundhar Rajan, Casepoint's Chief Information Officer. "We take great pride in becoming the first company in our industry to achieve DoD IL5 ATO, FedRAMP, and StateRAMP Authorization." StateRAMP Authorization further differentiates Casepoint from its competitors as the most trusted partner in government for eDiscovery, enforcement, FOIA/Public Record Requests, and congressional inquiries. Casepoint's current state and local government clients will continue to benefit from not only the best cybersecurity posture in the industry, but also the most advanced technologies on the market, including built-in AI and advanced analytics . "Our StateRAMP Authorization helps streamline the security authorization process for state and local agencies and gives them another reason to trust Casepoint to process, store, and transmit their sensitive data," said Amy Hilbert, Executive Vice President of Government Solutions at Casepoint. "This is a tremendous achievement and a testament to the dedication of our government team to ensure that security informs everything we do." As more government agencies look to migrate from on-premise eDiscovery solutions, Casepoint's configurable, cloud-based platform paired with its extensive experience working with government agencies , forms a reliable best-in-breed solution. The platform's role-based access, which supports single sign-on and multifactor authentication, enables secure cross-team collaboration. The platform also features built-in legal hold capabilities, customized workflows, and powerful AI to automate the analysis of large volumes of complex data for increased cost savings and efficiency, all while fulfilling the agency's critical need for data security. About Casepoint Casepoint is the legal technology platform of choice for corporations, government agencies, and law firms to meet their complex eDiscovery, investigations, and compliance needs. Powered by cutting-edge AI and advanced analytics, Casepoint helps teams cut through large volumes of data to quickly identify insightful and actionable information. Casepoint's secure and scalable cloud-based platform is designed to help organizations take control of their data and processes to maximize efficiency, mitigate risk, and lower overall legal spend. Casepoint's easy-to-use and intuitive interface provides legal hold, cloud collections, powerful data processing, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, review, and production. CONTACT: Carolyn Depko, [email protected] SOURCE Casepoint, LLC Strategic capital expands Chord's data capabilities, ushering in new features and customer insights NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Chord, a Platform as a Service for modern commerce, announced a $15M Series A extension today. The round was co-led by new investor Bright Pixel Capital and existing investor Eclipse, with new investors GC1 Ventures, TechNexus Venture Collaborative, and Anti Fund VC joining existing investors Imaginary Ventures, Foundation Capital and White Star Capital as participants. Chord's modern technology stack, which combines headless commerce and data infrastructure, solves a fundamental problem in commerce: access to the most sophisticated technology that doesn't require a massive and costly team to build and operate.The infrastructure integrates into a brand's system and is pre-configured and instrumented for best-in-class data collection and modeling, as well as synthesized insights. "The next wave of brands and startups deserve powerful, enterprise-grade technology that can be managed by a small, focused team," says Bryan Mahoney, CEO & Co-Founder at Chord. "Brands need easy access to the accurate data and key features that modern commerce requires, minus the vast expense and operational pain to attain it. We're giving them the freedom and ability to work on their companies building, growing, and perfecting them without stressing over the technical side. We are excited about the fact we've brought together new investors like Bright Pixel Capital and GC1 with our existing partners who believe in our vision. This gives us the financial strength to grow and support more brands." The funding will be used to expand the product's data capabilities and to support the product's availability to larger customers. One of many steps in achieving this includes the launch of their ML-powered data infrastructure, which allows brands to make critical decisions based on an understanding of how key customer metrics will change over time. "At Bright Pixel Capital, our goal is to identify distinctive and industry-changing opportunities across industries like retail, cyber and digital infrastructure," says Miguel Bagulho, Investment Director at Bright Pixel Capital. "Chord's ability to uplift commerce brands with a unique product, backed by a top-tier management team, were the critical factors which led us to select it as our long-awaited investment in headless commerce. We're excited to be working alongside Chord as they enter their next phase as a business and continue growing for years to come." "Since inception, Eclipse has been on a mission to invest in and build companies that transform physical industries," said Lior Susan, Founding Partner at Eclipse. "Chord's commerce-as-a-service platform makes more sophisticated, comprehensive commerce, and data infrastructure solutions available that modern commerce requires. Eclipse believes the Chord team is building the technical infrastructure that will revolutionize ecommerce and we look forward to continuing our partnership to help make their vision a reality." Additionally, Chord has recently expanded its leadership team to include David Dewey, CTO (Former Chief Data Science Officer, Mailchimp), Susie Korb, VP of Finance (Finance, Toast; Head of Legal Entity Strat, Morgan Stanley) , and Jamie Deveney, VP of Data (Former VP of Data at Imperfect Foods). Chord's current customers includes Caraway, Loverboy, and Joopiter, among others. About Chord Chord's Platform as a Service offers commerce businesses technology and data products that help enhance their businesses by giving them cutting-edge headless commerce technology and access to meaningful first-party data. Chord's unique offering of scalable headless tech software, paired with its sophisticated data management, insights, and governance tools, is made for commerce entrepreneurs by commerce entrepreneurs. Based in New York, Chord's software democratizes access for the next wave of brands and startups with best-in-class technology and data by giving them tools that don't require them to hire huge tech teams. To learn more about Chord, or how to sign up for yourself, visit https://chord.co/. About Bright Pixel Capital Bright Pixel Capital, formerly known as Sonae IM, is the technology investment arm of the multinational group Sonae. With special focus on cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, and retail technologies, it has a portfolio of more than 50 companies, from early to growth stages. Bright Pixel Capital acts as a partner that brings specialized know-how, global footprint, and a wealth of experience in helping companies from early stage to IPO. Find out more at brpx.com. About Eclipse With over $2.7 billion in assets under management, 70-plus portfolio companies, and a team of investors with deep operating expertise in technology, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, healthcare and consumer products, Eclipse is a leading U.S. venture capital firm. Its leadership team has the experience necessary to create and scale complex operations. Eclipse partners with exceptional companies that make physical industries more efficient, resilient, and profitable. For more information, visit www.eclipse.vc. Contact: Kathy Osborne [email protected] SOURCE Chord NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Technavio, the global coaxial cables market size is estimated to grow by USD 2,855.62 million from 2022 to 2027. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 4.68% during the forecast period. APAC held the largest share of the global market in 2022, and the market in the region is estimated to witness an incremental growth of 44%. For more Insights on market size, Request a sample report Coaxial cables market - Five Forces The global cloud data warehouse market is fragmented, and the five forces analysis covers Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Coaxial Cables Market 2023-2027 Bargaining Power of Buyers The threat of New Entrants Threat of Rivalry Bargaining Power of Suppliers Threat of Substitutes Interpretation of porter's five models helps to strategize the business, for entire details buy the report! Coaxial cables market Customer Landscape The report includes the market's adoption lifecycle, from the innovator's stage to the laggard's stage. It focuses on adoption rates in different regions based on penetration. Furthermore, the report also includes key purchase criteria and drivers of price sensitivity to help companies evaluate and develop their growth strategies. Coaxial cables market - Segmentation Assessment Segment Overview Technavio has segmented the market based on end-user (telecommunication, transportation and military, CATV providers, and others), application (video distribution, internet data transfer, and radio frequency transfer), and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America). The market share growth by the telecommunication segment will be significant during the forecast period. The growth in the number of consumers using mobile and wireless devices and the development of next-generation technologies have increased the demand for telecommunication services. Hence, telecom operators are investing heavily in expanding the reach of their networks across all geographic areas. This is increasing the demand for coaxial cables in the telecommunications industry. Geography Overview By geography, the global coaxial cables market is segmented into APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global coaxial cables market. APAC will account for 44% of the market's growth during the forecast period. The growth of the regional market can be attributed to factors such as the digitization of CATV networks, the growth of mobile telecommunication networks, and the replacement of slow DSL Internet with high-speed cable networks. Download a Sample Report Coaxial cables market Market Dynamics Key factor driving market growth The market is driven by the digitization of television networks in developing countries. Developing countries across the world are introducing initiatives to encourage the digitization of TV networks. This is leading to the phasing out of analog services. For instance, China has implemented the Next Generation Broadband Initiative (NGB). The implementation of NGB will be followed by a gradual shutdown of analog services across the country. This will give the subscribers access to high-definition multimedia content and two-way transmission of data over a single coaxial cable network. has implemented the Next Generation Broadband Initiative (NGB). The implementation of NGB will be followed by a gradual shutdown of analog services across the country. This will give the subscribers access to high-definition multimedia content and two-way transmission of data over a single coaxial cable network. Similarly, in 2012, the Government of India passed a mandate which forced cable operators to use set-top boxes at consumer premises. The move enabled high-quality content delivery to the subscribers while reducing the cost of cable service and allowing broadcasters to monitor content consumption patterns. passed a mandate which forced cable operators to use set-top boxes at consumer premises. The move enabled high-quality content delivery to the subscribers while reducing the cost of cable service and allowing broadcasters to monitor content consumption patterns. Such developments are creating huge growth opportunities for vendors operating in the market. Leading trends influencing the market One of the key trends identified in the market is the regulations on the development of cable TV infrastructure. Governments across the world are introducing various regulations to improve transparency and provide more options to consumers. For instance, in 2018, the Conference of Belgian Telecom Regulators introduced a new fiber access regulation for the retail broadband and broadcasting market in Belgium . The new regulation was aimed at increasing the customer base of cable TV by offering a large number of choices at reduced prices. . The new regulation was aimed at increasing the customer base of cable TV by offering a large number of choices at reduced prices. Similarly, in 2018, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced a new tariff regime for broadcasters. The new tariff regime was focused on improving the transparency between Pay-TV operators and broadcasters. (TRAI) introduced a new tariff regime for broadcasters. The new tariff regime was focused on improving the transparency between Pay-TV operators and broadcasters. The introduction of such regulations has been crucial in expanding the consumer base of cable TV, which is driving the growth of the market. Major challenges hindering market growth Increasing competition from wireless and fiber optic standards is the key challenge in the market. Conventional TV networks have their entire systems connected by coaxial cables. These cables have certain limitations in carrying data. The theoretical limit for at-home coaxial cable is 10 Gbps. With ever-increasing data loads, users are switching to either fiber or wireless mediums as they provide higher utility at lower costs. This is leading to the replacement of traditional TV networks with hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC), all-optical fiber to the home (FTTH), and, more recently, optical-wireless hybrid systems. This will reduce the growth potential in the market. Driver, Trend, and Challenges are the factors of market dynamics that state about consequences & sustainability of the businesses, find some insights from a sample report! What are the key data covered in this coaxial cables market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the coaxial cables market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the coaxial cables market size and its contribution to the market in focus on the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the coaxial cables market industry across APAC, Europe , North America , Middle East and Africa , and South America , , and , and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of coaxial cables market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports: The cables and accessories market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.46% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 43.66 billion . The rising adoption of smart grid technology is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the volatility in raw material prices may impede the market growth. is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.46% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by . The rising adoption of smart grid technology is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the volatility in raw material prices may impede the market growth. The submarine fiber cable market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 4852.77 million . The rapid developments in telecommunication networks are notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the fiber damage caused by human activities and fish attacks may impede the market growth. Coaxial Cables Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 178 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 4.68% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 2855.62 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 4.26 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 44% Key countries US, China, Japan, South Korea, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled Alpha Wire Inc., Amphenol Corp., Belden Inc., Coleman Wires and Cables, CommScope Holding Co. Inc., Habia Cable AB, Hengxin Technology Ltd., HUBER SUHNER AG, Infinite Electronics Inc., Infinite Electronics International Inc., Kingsignal Technology Co. Ltd., Leoni AG, LS Cable and System Ltd., Prysmian Spa, Southwire Co. LLC, Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., TE Connectivity Ltd., Trigiant Group Ltd., W. L. Gore and Associates Inc., and Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. 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, and 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. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized. Table of contents: 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by End-user Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Application Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global coaxial cables market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global coaxial cables market 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.2 End-user Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size End-user Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.3 Application Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Application Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by End-user 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on End-user - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on End-user - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by End-user Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by End-user Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by End-user 6.3 Telecommunication - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Telecommunication - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Telecommunication - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 36: Chart on Telecommunication - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Telecommunication - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Transportation and military - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Transportation and military - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 39: Data Table on Transportation and military - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 40: Chart on Transportation and military - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Transportation and military - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 CATV providers - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 42: Chart on CATV providers - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 43: Data Table on CATV providers - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 44: Chart on CATV providers - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 45: Data Table on CATV providers - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.6 Others - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 46: Chart on Others - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 47: Data Table on Others - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 48: Chart on Others - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 49: Data Table on Others - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.7 Market opportunity by End-user Exhibit 50: Market opportunity by End-user ($ million) 7 Market Segmentation by Application 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 51: Chart on Application - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Application - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Application Exhibit 53: Chart on Comparison by Application Exhibit 54: Data Table on Comparison by Application 7.3 Video distribution - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 55: Chart on Video distribution - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 56: Data Table on Video distribution - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 57: Chart on Video distribution - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Video distribution - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Internet data transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 59: Chart on Internet data transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 60: Data Table on Internet data transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 61: Chart on Internet data transfer - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 62: Data Table on Internet data transfer - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Radio frequency transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 63: Chart on Radio frequency transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 64: Data Table on Radio frequency transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 65: Chart on Radio frequency transfer - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 66: Data Table on Radio frequency transfer - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.6 Market opportunity by Application Exhibit 67: Market opportunity by Application ($ million) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 68: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 69: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 70: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 71: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 72: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 74: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 75: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 78: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 79: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 82: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 83: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 86: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 87: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 90: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 91: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 94: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 95: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 98: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 99: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 101: Chart on Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 102: Data Table on Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 103: Chart on Japan - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 104: Data Table on Japan - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 105: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 106: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 107: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 108: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 South Korea - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 109: Chart on South Korea - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 110: Data Table on South Korea - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 111: Chart on South Korea - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 112: Data Table on South Korea - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 113: Market opportunity by geography ($ million) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 114: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 115: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 116: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 117: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 118: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 119: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 Amphenol Corp. Exhibit 120: Amphenol Corp. - Overview Exhibit 121: Amphenol Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 122: Amphenol Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 123: Amphenol Corp. - Segment focus 12.4 Belden Inc. Exhibit 124: Belden Inc. - Overview Exhibit 125: Belden Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 126: Belden Inc. - Key news Exhibit 127: Belden Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 128: Belden Inc. - Segment focus 12.5 Coleman Wires and Cables and Cables Exhibit 129: Coleman Wires and Cables - Overview and Cables - Overview Exhibit 130: Coleman Wires and Cables - Product / Service and Cables - Product / Service Exhibit 131: Coleman Wires and Cables - Key offerings 12.6 CommScope Holding Co. Inc. Exhibit 132: CommScope Holding Co. Inc. - Overview Exhibit 133: CommScope Holding Co. Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 134: CommScope Holding Co. Inc. - Key news Exhibit 135: CommScope Holding Co. Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 136: CommScope Holding Co. Inc. - Segment focus 12.7 Habia Cable AB Exhibit 137: Habia Cable AB - Overview Exhibit 138: Habia Cable AB - Product / Service Exhibit 139: Habia Cable AB - Key news Exhibit 140: Habia Cable AB - Key offerings 12.8 Hengxin Technology Ltd. Exhibit 141: Hengxin Technology Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 142: Hengxin Technology Ltd. - Business segments Exhibit 143: Hengxin Technology Ltd. - Key offerings Exhibit 144: Hengxin Technology Ltd. - Segment focus 12.9 HUBER SUHNER AG Exhibit 145: HUBER SUHNER AG - Overview - Overview Exhibit 146: HUBER SUHNER AG - Business segments - Business segments Exhibit 147: HUBER SUHNER AG - Key news - Key news Exhibit 148: HUBER SUHNER AG - Key offerings - Key offerings Exhibit 149: HUBER SUHNER AG - Segment focus 12.10 Infinite Electronics Inc. Exhibit 150: Infinite Electronics Inc. - Overview Exhibit 151: Infinite Electronics Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 152: Infinite Electronics Inc. - Key offerings 12.11 Infinite Electronics International Inc. Exhibit 153: Infinite Electronics International Inc. - Overview Exhibit 154: Infinite Electronics International Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 155: Infinite Electronics International Inc. - Key offerings 12.12 Leoni AG Exhibit 156: Leoni AG - Overview Exhibit 157: Leoni AG - Business segments Exhibit 158: Leoni AG - Key news Exhibit 159: Leoni AG - Key offerings Exhibit 160: Leoni AG - Segment focus 12.13 LS Cable and System Ltd. Exhibit 161: LS Cable and System Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 162: LS Cable and System Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 163: LS Cable and System Ltd. - Key offerings 12.14 Prysmian Spa Exhibit 164: Prysmian Spa - Overview Exhibit 165: Prysmian Spa - Business segments Exhibit 166: Prysmian Spa - Key offerings Exhibit 167: Prysmian Spa - Segment focus 12.15 Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. Exhibit 168: Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 169: Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. - Business segments Exhibit 170: Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. - Key news Exhibit 171: Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. - Key offerings Exhibit 172: Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. - Segment focus 12.16 Trigiant Group Ltd. Exhibit 173: Trigiant Group Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 174: Trigiant Group Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 175: Trigiant Group Ltd. - Key offerings 12.17 Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. Ltd. Exhibit 176: Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 177: Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 178: Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. Ltd. - Key offerings 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 179: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 180: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 181: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 182: Research methodology Exhibit 183: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 184: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 185: List of abbreviations About Us Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com/ SOURCE Technavio Rise in the accessibility of cold storage construction installation, the increase in global traffic for perishable goods, the rise in demand for online grocery, and the rise in food takeaways from restaurants drive the growth of the global cold storage construction market. PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Cold Storage Construction Market by Storage type (Production Stores, Bulk Stores, Ports, Others), by Warehouse Type (Private and semi private warehouse, Public warehouses), by End User (Food and Beverages, Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2031". According to the report, the global cold storage construction industry generated $9.1 billion in 2021, and is anticipated to generate $26.2 billion by 2031, witnessing a CAGR of 10.6% from 2022 to 2031. Download Free Sample Report (300 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, Figures): https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/13855 Prime determinants of growth Rise in the accessibility of cold storage construction installation, the increase in global traffic for perishable goods, the focus of various governments on improving healthcare infrastructure and insurance coverage, the rise in demand for online grocery, the wider blending of retail & industrial space, and the rise in food takeaways from restaurants drive the growth of the global cold storage construction market. Moreover, major players have adopted various strategies such as expansion and acquisition to sustain the competition and improve the product portfolio, which presents new opportunities in the coming years. Covid-19 Scenario The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the global cold storage construction market, owing to temporary closure of the construction of cold storage spaces during the lockdown. However, the slowdown of the pandemic in 2021 restarted the construction of cold storage spaces, and the market recovered by the end of 2021. The production stores segment to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period Based on storage type, the production stores segment held the highest market share in 2021, accounting for nearly half of the global cold storage construction market, and is estimated to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period. This is owing to tangible items protection throughout the production process including raw material, semi-finished products. However, the others segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 10.8% from 2022 to 2031, due to rise in demand for frozen food stores and controlled atmosphere (CA) cold stores. Buy This Research Report @ https://bit.ly/3XBaCXl The public warehouse segment to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period Based on warehouse type, the public warehouse segment held the highest market share in 2021, accounting for more than three-fourths of the global cold storage construction market, and is estimated to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period, owing to rise in disposable income of masses, and introduction of favorable government policies related to the e-commerce industry. However, the private and semi-private warehouses segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 10.9% from 2022 to 2031, due to rise in demand for cold storage construction to keep the food, medicine and chemicals at right temperature. The food & beverage segment to maintain its lead position during the forecast period Based on end user, the food & beverage segment accounted for the largest share in 2021, contributing to more than two-fifths of the global cold storage construction market, and is projected to maintain its lead position during the forecast period. This segment is expected to portray the largest CAGR of 11.0% from 2022 to 2031, owing to numerous factors such as, increase in disposable income of people, availability of a large number of food & beverage options, rise in retail shops, and rise in the e-commerce industry. Asia-Pacific to maintain its dominance by 2031 Based on region, Asia-Pacific held the highest market share in terms of revenue in 2021, accounting for nearly two-fifths of the global cold storage construction market, and is likely to dominate the market during the forecast period. This region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 11.2% from 2022 to 2031, owing to its strong economic growth, rapid urbanization, and presence of large population base. Purchase Inquiry: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/13855 Leading Market Players: - VersaCold Logistics Services, Tippmann Group, Americold Realty Trust, Burris Logistics, Primus Builders, Inc., Emergent Cold LatAm Management LLC, NewCold, Lineage Logistics Holdings, LLC, United States Cold Storage, Inc., Hansen Cold Storage Construction The report provides a detailed analysis of these key players of the global cold storage construction market. These players have adopted different strategies such as new product launches, collaborations, expansion, joint ventures, agreements, and others to increase their market share and maintain dominant shares in different regions. The report is valuable in highlighting business performance, operating segments, product portfolio, and strategic moves of market players to showcase the competitive scenario. Trending Reports in Foldable Houses Industry (Book Now with 10% Discount): Global warehouse automation market growing at a CAGR of 15.3% from 2022 to 2031. Smart cooling system market with a CAGR of 52.4 % from 2016 to 2022. Global industrial cooling systems market is projected to reach $27,210.2 million by 2030 Warehouse Racking Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2018 - 2025 Food Industry Vacuum Cooling Equipment Market: Global opportunity analysis and industry forecast, 2021-2031 Cooling Towers Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2031 About Us: Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain. We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry. Contact: David Correa 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States USA/Canada (Toll Free): +1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1(855)550-5975 [email protected] Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/reports-store/construction-and-manufacturing Follow Us on Blog: https://www.marketinshort.com Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg SOURCE Allied Market Research NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Technavio, the global contract life-cycle management software market size is estimated to grow by USD 2,922.58 million from 2022 to 2027. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 18.8% during the forecast period. However, the growth momentum will progressing. North America held the largest share of the global market in 2022, and the market in the region is estimated to witness an incremental growth of 44%. For more Insights on market size Request a sample report Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Contract Life-cycle Management Software Market 2023-2027 Global contract life-cycle management software market - Five forces The global cloud data warehouse market is fragmented, and the five forces analysis covers Bargaining power of buyers The threat of new entrants Threat of rivalry Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of substitutes Interpretation of porter's five models helps to strategize the business, for entire details buy the report! Global contract life-cycle management software market Customer landscape The report includes the market's adoption lifecycle, from the innovator's stage to the laggard's stage. It focuses on adoption rates in different regions based on penetration. Furthermore, the report also includes key purchase criteria and drivers of price sensitivity to help companies evaluate and develop their growth strategies. Global contract life-cycle management software market - Segmentation assessment Segment Overview Technavio has segmented the market based on component (Software and Services), and deployment (On-premise and Cloud-based). The market share growth by the Software segment will be significant during the forecast period. The software is a tool for ensuring that the intent of every contract in an organization is fully realized. It can maximize contract performance, ensure the enforcement of commercial terms, accelerate cash flow and time-to-revenue, and reduce the risk of non-compliance. With advanced contract life-cycle management software, users can auto-build contracts based on defined business rules and bulk data upload. These advantages associated with the segment will fuel the market growth during the forecast period. Geography Overview By geography, the global contract life-cycle management software market is segmented into North America, Europe, APAC, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global contract life-cycle management software market. North America is estimated to contribute 44% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The rise in regulatory legislation in various industries in North America leads to the increased adoption of contract life-cycle management software to address the need for compliance adherence. The increased adoption of digital technology across all industry verticals is helping the contract life-cycle management software market to grow in the region, mainly in the US and Canada . Prominent vendors such as Corcentric, IBM, and Coupa are based in the US. These vendors have a huge customer base for contract life-cycle management in the US. Download a Sample Report Global contract life-cycle management software market Market dynamics Key factor driving market growth One of the key factors driving growth in the market is the pricing strategies of vendors. To thrive in a competitive market environment, software vendors are adopting customer-centric pricing strategies enabled by advances in technology. Several vendors in the contract lifecycle management market are focusing on providing value-based pricing models depending on the customer's needs and value perception. The pricing of the software is based on varied features of the software solution and the value-added features provided to the customers. The high price of the software and constrained IT budgets have led the vendors to re-evaluate the software pricing and delivery models. Therefore, vendors are providing SaaS, commercial open-source models, and term licensing to be in sync with the changing demands. Varying pricing structures of the legal practice management software will increase its adoption among end-users. Leading trends influencing the market The emergence of analytics in contract life-cycle management is another factor supporting the market share growth. Enterprises across all domains are increasingly adopting contract life-cycle management built-in analytics to understand and interpret historical data points. This helps them to immediately access any contract information for comparisons, potential risks, and future performance estimates within the supply chain as it provides reporting and analytical capabilities across all aspects of the contracts and compliance life-cycle. With built-in analytics, it helps to manage risk and optimize performance. Enterprises gain a better understanding of the patterns that are most valuable and useful in their contracts. They can use the derived insights from analytics tools to enhance their existing business relationships and accordingly pick the optimum contractor during contract renewals or while making new contract decisions. Major challenges hindering market growth The high implementation and maintenance costs will be a major challenge for the market during the forecast period. The price of the contract lifecycle management includes the cost of software licensing, system design and customization, implementation, training, and maintenance. An organization that has purchased the software requires IT staff with the relevant skillset for successful implementation of the software. Implementation of the contract life-cycle management requires self-assessment, planning, adequate funding, a clear vision, and cooperation at all managerial levels. These factors lead to an increased cost of implementation of the contract life-cycle management, which adversely affects its adoption among the end-users, especially small enterprises. Driver, Trend, and Challenges are the factors of market dynamics that state about consequences and sustainability of the businesses, find some insights from a sample report! What are the key data covered in this Contract Life-cycle Management Software Market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the contract life-cycle management software market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the contract life-cycle management software market size and its contribution to the market in focus on the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the contract life-cycle management software market across North America , Europe , APAC, Middle East and Africa , and South America , , APAC, and , and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of contract life-cycle management software market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports: The quality management software market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 10% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 5,897.6 million . The increase in the adoption of cloud-based quality management software offerings is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the threat from open-source quality management software providers may impede the market growth. is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 10% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by . The increase in the adoption of cloud-based quality management software offerings is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the threat from open-source quality management software providers may impede the market growth. The workspace management software market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 17.5% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 2,293.64 million . The increased need for optimized space planning is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as reluctance to adopt workspace management software may impede the market growth. Contract Life-cycle Management Software Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 165 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 18.8% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 2,922.58 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 18.6 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution North America at 44% Key countries US, Canada, China, India, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled Contract Logix Llc, Corcentric Inc., Coupa Software Inc., DocuSign Inc., ESM Solutions Corp., Great Minds Software Inc., Icertis Inc., Infor Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Ivalua Inc., JAGGAER Llc, Newgen Software Technologies Ltd., Optimus BT Inc., Oracle Corp., Robobai Pty Ltd., SAP SE, Scanmarket AS, Thoma Bravo LP, Wolters Kluwer NV, and Zycus Inc. 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. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized. Table of content 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Component Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Deployment Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global contract life-cycle management software market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global contract life-cycle management software market 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.2 Component Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Component Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.3 Deployment Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Deployment Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Component 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Component - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Component - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Component Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Component Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Component 6.3 Software - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Software - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Software - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 36: Chart on Software - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Software - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Services - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Services - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 39: Data Table on Services - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 40: Chart on Services - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Services - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Market opportunity by Component Exhibit 42: Market opportunity by Component ($ million) 7 Market Segmentation by Deployment 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 43: Chart on Deployment - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 44: Data Table on Deployment - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Deployment Exhibit 45: Chart on Comparison by Deployment Exhibit 46: Data Table on Comparison by Deployment 7.3 On-premise - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 47: Chart on On-premise - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 48: Data Table on On-premise - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 49: Chart on On-premise - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 50: Data Table on On-premise - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Cloud-based - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Cloud-based - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Cloud-based - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 53: Chart on Cloud-based - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Cloud-based - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Market opportunity by Deployment Exhibit 55: Market opportunity by Deployment ($ million) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 56: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 57: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 59: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 60: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 61: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 62: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 63: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 64: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 66: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 67: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 70: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 71: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 74: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 75: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 78: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 79: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 82: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 83: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 86: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 87: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 90: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 91: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 India - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on India - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 94: Data Table on India - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 95: Chart on India - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on India - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 Canada - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on Canada - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 98: Data Table on Canada - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 99: Chart on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 101: Market opportunity by geography ($ million) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 102: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 103: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 104: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 105: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 106: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 107: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 Contract Logix Llc Exhibit 108: Contract Logix Llc - Overview Exhibit 109: Contract Logix Llc - Product / Service Exhibit 110: Contract Logix Llc - Key offerings 12.4 Corcentric Inc. Exhibit 111: Corcentric Inc. - Overview Exhibit 112: Corcentric Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 113: Corcentric Inc. - Key offerings 12.5 Coupa Software Inc. Exhibit 114: Coupa Software Inc. - Overview Exhibit 115: Coupa Software Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 116: Coupa Software Inc. - Key offerings 12.6 DocuSign Inc. Exhibit 117: DocuSign Inc. - Overview Exhibit 118: DocuSign Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 119: DocuSign Inc. - Key offerings 12.7 ESM Solutions Corp. Exhibit 120: ESM Solutions Corp. - Overview Exhibit 121: ESM Solutions Corp. - Product / Service Exhibit 122: ESM Solutions Corp. - Key offerings 12.8 Great Minds Software Inc. Exhibit 123: Great Minds Software Inc. - Overview Exhibit 124: Great Minds Software Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 125: Great Minds Software Inc. - Key offerings 12.9 Icertis Inc. Exhibit 126: Icertis Inc. - Overview Exhibit 127: Icertis Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 128: Icertis Inc. - Key offerings 12.10 Infor Inc. Exhibit 129: Infor Inc. - Overview Exhibit 130: Infor Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 131: Infor Inc. - Key news Exhibit 132: Infor Inc. - Key offerings 12.11 International Business Machines Corp. Exhibit 133: International Business Machines Corp. - Overview Exhibit 134: International Business Machines Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 135: International Business Machines Corp. - Key news Exhibit 136: International Business Machines Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 137: International Business Machines Corp. - Segment focus 12.12 Ivalua Inc. Exhibit 138: Ivalua Inc. - Overview Exhibit 139: Ivalua Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 140: Ivalua Inc. - Key offerings 12.13 JAGGAER Llc Exhibit 141: JAGGAER Llc - Overview Exhibit 142: JAGGAER Llc - Product / Service Exhibit 143: JAGGAER Llc - Key offerings 12.14 Newgen Software Technologies Ltd. Exhibit 144: Newgen Software Technologies Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 145: Newgen Software Technologies Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 146: Newgen Software Technologies Ltd. - Key offerings 12.15 Oracle Corp. Exhibit 147: Oracle Corp. - Overview Exhibit 148: Oracle Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 149: Oracle Corp. - Key news Exhibit 150: Oracle Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 151: Oracle Corp. - Segment focus 12.16 SAP SE Exhibit 152: SAP SE - Overview Exhibit 153: SAP SE - Business segments Exhibit 154: SAP SE - Key news Exhibit 155: SAP SE - Key offerings Exhibit 156: SAP SE - Segment focus 12.17 Wolters Kluwer NV Exhibit 157: Wolters Kluwer NV - Overview Exhibit 158: Wolters Kluwer NV - Business segments Exhibit 159: Wolters Kluwer NV - Key offerings Exhibit 160: Wolters Kluwer NV - Segment focus 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 161: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 162: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 163: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 164: Research methodology Exhibit 165: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 166: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 167: List of abbreviations About Us Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com/ SOURCE Technavio NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coverall Market by Type, Distribution Channel, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2023-2027 report has been published by Technavio. Market size is forecast to grow by USD 2,254.93 million between 2022 and 2027 at a CAGR of 8.42%. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of growth opportunities at regional levels, new product launches, the latest trends, and the post-pandemic recovery of the global market. Download A PDF Sample Report Regional Analysis Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Coverall Market 2023-2027 By region, the global coverall market is segmented into North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa. Europe is estimated to contribute 33% to the growth of the global market over the forecast period. Factors such as the growing number of occupational accidents and the strict implementation of worker safety regulations are driving the growth of the coverall market in Europe. Buy the report Company Profiles The coverall market report includes information on the key products and recent developments of leading vendors, including: 3M Co. - The company offers coverall such as Protective Coverall 4535 and Protective Coverall 4520. - The company offers coverall such as Protective Coverall 4535 and Protective Coverall 4520. Alliance linen - The company offers coverall such as Scrub Suit. - The company offers coverall such as Scrub Suit. Anbu Safety Industrial Co. Ltd. - The company offers coverall such as Safety Coverall and FR Coverall. - The company offers coverall such as Safety Coverall and FR Coverall. Ansell Ltd. - The company offers coverall such as BioClean-D Drop-down Sterile Garment with Hood S-BDSH, BioClean-D Hood BDHD-L, and BioClean-D Coverall with Hood Sterile S-BDCHT. Market Dynamics The market is driven by factors such as the increasing number of accidents due to hazardous work environments, the growing need for workplace safety, and growing innovation. However, the lack of awareness is hindering market growth. Competitive Analysis The competitive scenario categorizes companies based on various performance indicators. Some of the factors considered include the financial performance of companies over the past few years, growth strategies, product innovations, new product launches, investments, and growth in market share among others. Request a Sample Market Segmentation By product, the market is segmented into integrated coveralls and stand-alone coveralls. The integrated coveralls segment accounted for the largest share of the market in 2022. By geography, the market is segmented into North America , Europe , APAC, South America , and Middle East and Africa . Europe held the largest share of the market in 2022. Related Reports: The healthcare equipment leasing market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.82% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 25,026.35 million . The growing demand for equipment leasing from low-budget healthcare facilities is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the growing popularity of refurbished equipment may impede the market growth. is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.82% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by . The growing demand for equipment leasing from low-budget healthcare facilities is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the growing popularity of refurbished equipment may impede the market growth. The lateral flow assay components market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.22% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 97.76 million . The rising efforts in research and development are notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the increase in regulations and inconsistency in test results may impede the market growth. Technavio's library includes over 17,000+ reports, covering more than 2,000 emerging technologies. Subscribe to our "Basic Plan" at just USD 5,000 and get lifetime access to Technavio Insights What are the key data covered in this coverall market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period. Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the coverall market and its contribution to the parent market. Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior. Growth of the market across North America , Europe , APAC, South America , and Middle East and Africa . , , APAC, , and and . A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors. Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of coverall market vendors. Coverall Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 160 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 8.42% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 2,254.93 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 7.14 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution Europe at 33% Key countries US, Canada, Australia, Germany, and UK Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled 3M Co., Alliance linen, Anbu Safety Industrial Co. Ltd., Ansell Ltd., ASATEX AG, Ballyclare Ltd., Cortex Products India Pvt. Ltd., Derekduck Industries Corp., DuPont de Nemours Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Kimberly Clark Corp., National Textile and Apparel Inc., Plasti Surge Industries Pvt. Ltd., Samarth Industries, Sioen Industries NV, Trimax Coverall Sdn Bhd, Universal Overall Co., Uvex Winter Holding Gmbh and Co. Kg, Wearce, and Workwear Outfitters 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, and market condition analysis for the forecast period. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized. Table of contents: 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Type Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Distribution Channel Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global coverall market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global coverall market 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.2 Type Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Type Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.3 Distribution Channel Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Distribution Channel Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Type 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Type Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Type Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Type 6.3 Durable - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Durable - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Durable - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 36: Chart on Durable - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Durable - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Disposable - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Disposable - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 39: Data Table on Disposable - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 40: Chart on Disposable - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Disposable - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Market opportunity by Type Exhibit 42: Market opportunity by Type ($ million) 7 Market Segmentation by Distribution Channel 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 43: Chart on Distribution Channel - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 44: Data Table on Distribution Channel - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Distribution Channel Exhibit 45: Chart on Comparison by Distribution Channel Exhibit 46: Data Table on Comparison by Distribution Channel 7.3 Offline - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 47: Chart on Offline - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 48: Data Table on Offline - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 49: Chart on Offline - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 50: Data Table on Offline - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Online - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Online - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Online - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 53: Chart on Online - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Online - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Market opportunity by Distribution Channel Exhibit 55: Market opportunity by Distribution Channel ($ million) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 56: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 57: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 59: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 60: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 61: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 62: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 63: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 64: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 66: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 67: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 70: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 71: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 74: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 75: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 78: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 79: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 82: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 83: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 Canada - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on Canada - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 86: Data Table on Canada - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 87: Chart on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on Canada - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 90: Data Table on Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 91: Chart on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on Germany - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 94: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 95: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 Australia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on Australia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 98: Data Table on Australia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 99: Chart on Australia - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on Australia - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 101: Market opportunity by geography ($ million) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 102: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 103: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 104: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 105: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 106: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 107: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 3M Co. Co. Exhibit 108: 3M Co. - Overview Co. - Overview Exhibit 109: 3M Co. - Business segments Co. - Business segments Exhibit 110: 3M Co. - Key news Co. - Key news Exhibit 111: 3M Co. - Key offerings Co. - Key offerings Exhibit 112: 3M Co. - Segment focus 12.4 Alliance linen Exhibit 113: Alliance linen - Overview Exhibit 114: Alliance linen - Product / Service Exhibit 115: Alliance linen - Key offerings 12.5 Anbu Safety Industrial Co. Ltd. Exhibit 116: Anbu Safety Industrial Co. Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 117: Anbu Safety Industrial Co. Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 118: Anbu Safety Industrial Co. Ltd. - Key offerings 12.6 Ansell Ltd. Exhibit 119: Ansell Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 120: Ansell Ltd. - Business segments Exhibit 121: Ansell Ltd. - Key news Exhibit 122: Ansell Ltd. - Key offerings Exhibit 123: Ansell Ltd. - Segment focus 12.7 ASATEX AG Exhibit 124: ASATEX AG - Overview Exhibit 125: ASATEX AG - Product / Service Exhibit 126: ASATEX AG - Key offerings 12.8 Ballyclare Ltd. Exhibit 127: Ballyclare Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 128: Ballyclare Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 129: Ballyclare Ltd. - Key offerings 12.9 Derekduck Industries Corp. Exhibit 130: Derekduck Industries Corp. - Overview Exhibit 131: Derekduck Industries Corp. - Product / Service Exhibit 132: Derekduck Industries Corp. - Key offerings 12.10 DuPont de Nemours Inc. Exhibit 133: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Overview Exhibit 134: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 135: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Key news Exhibit 136: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 137: DuPont de Nemours Inc. - Segment focus 12.11 Honeywell International Inc. Exhibit 138: Honeywell International Inc. - Overview Exhibit 139: Honeywell International Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 140: Honeywell International Inc. - Key news Exhibit 141: Honeywell International Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 142: Honeywell International Inc. - Segment focus 12.12 Kimberly Clark Corp. Exhibit 143: Kimberly Clark Corp. - Overview Exhibit 144: Kimberly Clark Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 145: Kimberly Clark Corp. - Key news Exhibit 146: Kimberly Clark Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 147: Kimberly Clark Corp. - Segment focus 12.13 Samarth Industries Exhibit 148: Samarth Industries - Overview Exhibit 149: Samarth Industries - Product / Service Exhibit 150: Samarth Industries - Key offerings 12.14 Sioen Industries NV Exhibit 151: Sioen Industries NV - Overview Exhibit 152: Sioen Industries NV - Business segments Exhibit 153: Sioen Industries NV - Key offerings Exhibit 154: Sioen Industries NV - Segment focus 12.15 Universal Overall Co. Exhibit 155: Universal Overall Co. - Overview Exhibit 156: Universal Overall Co. - Product / Service Exhibit 157: Universal Overall Co. - Key offerings 12.16 Uvex Winter Holding Gmbh and Co. Kg Exhibit 158: Uvex Winter Holding Gmbh and Co. Kg - Overview Exhibit 159: Uvex Winter Holding Gmbh and Co. Kg - Business segments Exhibit 160: Uvex Winter Holding Gmbh and Co. Kg - Key offerings Exhibit 161: Uvex Winter Holding Gmbh and Co. Kg - Segment focus 12.17 Wearce Exhibit 162: Wearce - Overview Exhibit 163: Wearce - Product / Service Exhibit 164: Wearce - Key offerings 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 165: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 166: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 167: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 168: Research methodology Exhibit 169: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 170: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 171: 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 Addis Ababa A court in the Tigray regional state capital Mekelle has released three of the five Tigray Television journalists who were detained for the past eight months accused by local authorities of "collaborating and disseminating enemy propaganda." Misgna Syoum, one of the journalists who was freed last week, told Addis Standard that they were assigned to their works by the Tigray interim regional administration that was appointed by the federal government when it was in control the Tigray region including Mekelle between 28 November and 28 June 2021. The TPLF-led regional authorities, took over most parts of the region on 28 June 2021, and a month short of a year on 26 May 2022, detained the five journalists; some of them were at their workplace and others were suspended from their work before their detention. Two of the five journalists, Teshome Temalew and Misgena Seyoum, were freed last week on 11 January 2023, whereas the third, Haben Halefom was released a few weeks before. However two journalists, Hailemichael Gesesse and Dawit Meknonnen, who were detained at around the time and accused of the same allegations remain in local police custody. Misgena Seyoum, who served for 16 years in Tigray Television, said that they were detained in Mekelle, North sub-city police station and were taken to a local court eight days later. "Having kept us for eight days in detention, we appeared in the court and then the police began its investigations", which lasted four months before charges were fielded. The accused then began to appear in a court to follow the charges, he said, adding that "we were forced to spend the [remaining] four months in the detention during the [court proceeds.]" According to him, all five of them were accused of the same case, but their cases were fielded in different charge files. Misgena,Teshome Temalew and Hailemichael Gesesse, were facing charges in one file; whereas, Haben Halefom and Dawit Meknonnen were charged in a different file. The court released two of the defendants in Misgena et.al file: himself and Teshome Temalew; whereas the third, Hailemichael Gesesse remains in custody. Dawit Meknonnen is the other journalists who was in the same file as Haben but remained in police custody. The court adjourned until 18 February 2023 to defend themselves with witness accounts. Abrha Kahsay, a defense lawyer for Hailemichael Gesesse, told Addis Standard that the court has failed to respect the right procedures in the legal process against the journalists including not respecting the Ethiopian media law, or international media law that prohibits detention of journalists by police without charges for such a long time. "In contrary to the law, my client spent four months before the charge [were established] and four more months after the charge were read, which is unfair", Abrha said, adding that adjournments of hearing were also "delayed, which violates the procedure of the court." He said that he had pleaded with the court to droop the charges but the local judges kept the case open in parallel with the cases of "defendants accused of serious crimes." Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Ethiopia Legal Affairs Media By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "It is normal for any suspect of anything to be charged but we faced injustice that we have been held for eight months without any crime," Misgena reflected. "Although there was no any mishandling and harassment in the police station where we have arrested for eight months, there was sanitation problems mainly in the toilets and the shower." The global press freedom watchdog, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has called on their immediate release last year. "Journalists operating in Tigray should be allowed to live and work freely, without fear that they will be targeted in politically motivated cases," said CPJ's sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. "The five Tigrai TV journalists behind bars for their work should be released, and Tigray authorities should cease harassing and detaining members of the press. Ethiopian authorities should also work to end telecommunications disruptions that have hampered journalists' abilities to do their jobs." During their stay in Tigary Television, Haben and Hailmichael worked as a senior journalist and anchor/online editor respectively. Whereas, Misgena and Teshome were serving as education program director, and international and local languages desk director respectively; in addition, Dawit was serving as a field reporter. AS Currently no FDA-approved therapy for this serious condition Initiation of Phase 2 clinical trial expected to occur in Q2 2023 DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyrano Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing medicines for patients with hyposmia (smell loss), announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for CYR-064, paving the way for the company to initiate a randomized, placebo-controlled multi-dose Phase 2 clinical trial of its soft mist nasal spray therapy to treat patients who have lost their sense of smell following recovery from a viral infection. There is currently no FDA-approved drug therapy to treat post-viral smell loss. "Clearance of the IND for CYR-064 brings us one step closer to our goal of developing medicines with the potential to benefit post-viral hyposmia patients, especially those affected by COVID-19," said Rick Geoffrion, Chief Executive Officer of Cyrano Therapeutics. "Our clinical team has been diligently preparing for this moment and is now laser focused on enrolling our first patient, which we expect will occur in the second quarter of 2023." "Loss of the sense of smell has a significant impact on quality of life and presents safety issues for all who are affected. As a practicing otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon, the inability to offer any proven intervention for patients with this common condition is very frustrating," said Ron Kuppersmith, MD, Chief Medical Advisor of Cyrano Therapeutics and Past-President of the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. "While the inability to administer any therapy that can help is a challenge for physicians, the situation is even more frustrating for patients suffering with the condition. The potential for CYR-064 to help patients with post-viral hyposmia will represent a major breakthrough for these patients and address a major unmet clinical need." The Phase 2 clinical trial is designed to assess the local safety, tolerability, and effectiveness of treating post-viral hyposmia. The study is expected to enroll patients at twenty clinical sites in the United States and will evaluate treatment over a six-month time period. About Post-Viral Hyposmia Post-viral smell loss is a growing global issue. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 8 million patients in the U.S. and EU suffered from long-term post-viral smell loss. This has grown to more than 40 million patients since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 15% of 2020-era COVID-19 patients and ~5% of 2021 and 2022-era COVID-19 patients suffer from long-term smell loss. At current rates, >10,000 patients each day in the U.S .and >10,000 patients each day in the EU are contracting long-term smell loss. About Cyrano Therapeutics Cyrano Therapeutics is a private, venture-backed clinical stage regenerative medicine company. Since our foundation, we have been working diligently to develop therapies for people struggling with the loss of smell and flavor. To learn more, please visit cyranotherapeutics.com. SOURCE Cyrano Therapeutics Recognized for Exceptional People Practices and Employee Engagement MAUMEE, Ohio, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Dana Incorporated (NYSE: DAN) announced today that the company was recognized as a "Top Employer 2023" in 12 countries in which it operates. The company was also selected as a Top Employer across Europe due to the number of countries earning honors in the region. This prestigious award by the Top Employers Institute recognizes excellence in people practices with a particular emphasis on exceptional human resources programs including diversity and inclusion, work environment, talent acquisition, learning, and well-being. Dana's operations in Belgium, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States were recognized as being a Top Employer for creating an empowering environment. The company's operations in Mexico were separately honored by Great Places to Work. In total, these countries represent more than 80 percent of the company's employees and sales. "Dana is a company founded on strong values that place our people at the heart of everything we do," said Maureen Pittenger, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Dana. "Earning top employer awards across so many different countries is a true testament to a culture of collaboration and inclusivity. At Dana, we value others, inspire innovation, grow responsibly, and win together. These values spotlight our passion and center our actions around a common vision of powering innovation to move our world." About Dana Incorporated Dana is a leader in the design and manufacture of highly efficient propulsion and energy-management solutions that power vehicles and machines in all mobility markets across the globe. The company is shaping sustainable progress through its conventional and clean-energy solutions that support nearly every vehicle manufacturer with drive and motion systems; electrodynamic technologies, including software and controls; and thermal, sealing, and digital solutions. Based in Maumee, Ohio, USA, the company reported sales of $8.9 billion in 2021 with 40,000 people in 31 countries across six continents. Founded in 1904, Dana was named one of "America's Most Responsible Companies 2023" by Newsweek for its emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility. The company is driven by a high-performance culture that focuses on valuing others, inspiring innovation, growing responsibly, and winning together, earning it global recognition as a top employer. Learn more at dana.com. SOURCE Dana Incorporated Investment will advance data-driven agriculture through actionable soil insights ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- EarthOptics, a leader in soil measurement and insights, today announced a round of strategic investments from both existing and new investors. The $27.6 million round of funding, led by Conti Ventures, will further build out EarthOptics' GroundOwl sensor suite capabilities, accelerate acreage growth and scale service providers. This increase in funding for product and service offerings to farmers and ranchers works to meet growing customer demand. In addition to Conti Ventures, Rabo Food & Ag Innovation Fund (RFAIF), CNH Industrial, Louis Dreyfus Company Ventures, and CHS and Growmark's Cooperative Ventures join current EarthOptics investors Leaps by Bayer, FHB Ventures, S2G Ventures, iSelect Fund, Route 66 Ventures, and Middleland Capital's VTC Ventures. "We believe EarthOptics has a clear advantage in soil measurement technology, as they improve the scalability of measurement while helping to reduce extrapolation error," said Chris Abbott, Co-Head of Conti Ventures. "As we look for technologies that can verify critical soil measurements for growers, we believe EarthOptics stands out in providing agronomic value as well as verification for initiatives like carbon credits." EarthOptics uses a combination of ground-based sensors, satellites, physical soil samples, machine learning models and agronomic expertise to help farmers and ranchers make better data-driven decisions about their land. This groundbreaking technology delivers insights to help farmers optimize fertilizer applications, make informed tillage decisions, quantify carbon sequestration and more. "Our industry-leading technology has huge potential for farmers and agribusiness," Lars Dyrud, EarthOptics CEO, said. "This funding will propel our growth and enable us to scale the SoilMapper platform." The Series B funding will expand access to valuable tools and deliver hyper-accurate soil insights, providing immediate cost savings for farmers, who recognize the importance of having comprehensive data about their soil. "The revival of interest in soil is highly encouraging and much needed. Given the fundamental importance of soil health to the food and agriculture systems, we are excited to support Lars and his team in bringing EarthOptics' truly disruptive solution to our bank's global network of farmers, corporates, as well our ecosystem services teams of The Carbon Bank and ACORN," according to Pieter van der Meche, Head of RFAIF. "With small margins and unpredictable input prices, farmers are looking for ways to improve productivity," Dyrud said. "Our product does that in a way that fits seamlessly into individual operations. Farmers no longer must rely on expensive soil analysis from labs. Powerful soil insights from EarthOptics can transform the way decisions are made on the farm." "EarthOptics is a leading agriculture platform that accurately measures key aspects of soil health," according to James Ramey of Middleland Capital's VTC Ventures. "Ranging from compaction levels and nutrients through carbon sequestration, the company is perfectly positioned to deliver strong ROI for growers while advancing climate resilience initiatives." Recently, the USDA announced EarthOptics as a partner in their Climate Smart Partnership for six separate proposals. With this new momentum, EarthOptics continues to evaluate additional partnerships and work. The announcement comes on the heels of a successful 2022 for EarthOptics, which saw ten times growth in acres covered and partnerships with global food companies. About EarthOptics At EarthOptics, we see soil. Differently. GroundTruth Ag, Inc., dba EarthOptics, was founded in 2018 and has offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Arlington and Blacksburg, Virginia; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Fayetteville, Arkansas. EarthOptics is an agricultural technology company developing next-generation soil-sensing technologies that give growers revolutionary insights into the physical characteristics of their soil. EarthOptics beat out three finalists and more than 100 international agtech startup entries to win the AGCO Innovation Challenge Award during the 2021 World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit. We believe that below-ground precision and innovation in the soil space is long overdue. Our ultimate goal is to deliver point-of-care soil health insights related to physical, chemical, and biological attributes of soil in real time. To achieve this goal, we have assembled a team with diverse backgrounds in engineering, software development, geospatial analytics, data science, machine learning, and logistics and operations. About Conti Ventures Conti Ventures is an investment team within Continental Grain Company and manages the investment vehicle that is leading this round of financing. Conti Ventures makes venture capital and growth equity investments in early-stage businesses that are using cuttingedge technology to define the future of food and agriculture. Continental Grain Company ("Conti") is a privatelyowned global investor, owner and operator of companies with more than 200 years of history across the food and agribusiness spectrum. Conti creates longterm value by applying deep industry knowledge, capital and talent to businesses ranging from established market leaders to promising innovators. Visit www.continentalgrain.com to learn more. To learn more, visit www.earthoptics.com or connect with us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/earthoptics/. Media Contact Erika Poppelreiter (785) 458-2953 [email protected] SOURCE EarthOptics WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Embraer today announced that Daniel J. Hickey has joined the company as the new Vice President of Government Relations for North America, effective immediately. Hickey will report to Jose Serrador, as Global Vice President of Institutional Relations of Embraer. In this position, Hickey will oversee long and medium-term objectives, directions, strategies, and guidance related to Embraer's government and external affairs office located in Washington, D.C. With more than two decades of professional experience, Hickey will continue to build relationships with members on Capitol Hill and related government agencies, in line with Embraer's company value system. "Throughout my career, it has been a pleasure to work in the transportation industry with much of my experience focused specifically on aerospace & defense markets," said Hickey. "I am pleased to join Embraer and bring my previous knowledge to a renowned company, which is uniquely positioned for continued growth over the next several years." "Hickey's experience and knowledge of the aviation industry will be instrumental in supporting Embraer's business strategy and expanding its presence in the North American market," said Jose Serrador, Global Vice President of Institutional Relations of Embraer. Most recently, Hickey served as the Director of Government Affairs at the 3M Company. He joined 3M with the acquisition of Federal Signal Technologies, where he held the position of Director of Government Relations. Previously, Hickey worked at the Department of Transportation, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration. Other experience in the aviation industry includes his role as Director of Government Affairs at US Airways and Director of Federal Affairs at the Air Transport Association of America. He also served as a Legislative Assistant in the United States Senate and as a Professional Staff Member for the Committee of Transportation & Infrastructure in the United States House of Representatives. Link to images: https://eej.imagerelay.com/share/fc9027a765274b19bc299cfa0160e226 About Embraer A global aerospace company headquartered in Brazil, Embraer has businesses in Commercial and Executive aviation, Defense & Security and Agricultural Aviation. The company designs, develops, manufactures, and markets aircraft and systems, providing Services & Support to customers after-sales. Since it was founded in 1969, Embraer has delivered more than 8,000 aircraft. On average, about every 10 seconds an aircraft manufactured by Embraer takes off somewhere in the world, transporting over 145 million passengers a year. Embraer is the leading manufacturer of commercial jets up to 150 seats and the main exporter of high value-added goods in Brazil. The company maintains industrial units, offices, service, and parts distribution centers, among other activities, across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Media Contact: Elisabeth Denil [email protected] SOURCE Embraer PARIS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Viktor&Rolf announces today that American New York Times best-selling author, actress, model, activist and entrepreneur Emily Ratajkowski will be the face of the new FLOWERBOMB campaign worldwide from January 20, 2023. To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/9132851-emily-ratajkowski-new-face-viktor-rolfs-flowerbomb/ Emily Ratajkowski for Flowerbomb by Viktor&Rolf Ratajkowski is a multi-faceted, modern day feminist icon, challenging current biases to construct a space of true empowerment, redefining what it means to be wholly and wonderfully female. Her debut essay collection "My Body" was released by Metropolitan Books, solidified by her New York Magazine essay - the magazine's most read story of 2020 - entitled "Buying Myself Back," which led to widespread discourse around copyright and image ownership. Intimately connected with an engaged generation of women and female-identifying audiences, Ratajkowski is a woman that is both powerful and empowered, using her platform to promote a greater understanding of the changing face of femininity. Uninhibited and unapologetically authentic, Ratajkowski owns her unique femininity, sexuality and sensuality, redirecting the male gaze and reframing it for the woman who holds it. Launched 18 years ago, FLOWERBOMB is a worldwide best seller, remaining in the Top 10 US women's fragrances and the Top 15 UK women's fragrances since its launch in 2005. The fragrance has single-handedly disrupted the perfume world, setting the standard for floral gourmand fragrances and signaling a new chapter of fragrance femininity. "So much of what represents femininity is delicate. I like that FLOWERBOMB is about strength as much as it is about femininity." - Emily Ratajkowski, Model, Author and Activist "We have admired Emily Ratajkowski for a long time and we're happy to welcome her to the Viktor&Rolf family. As her work clearly testifies, Emily is a multifaceted talent. Her wide range of qualities and talents make her into the perfect embodiment of FLOWERBOMB." - Viktor Horsting & Rolf Snoeren, founders and artistic directors of Viktor&Rolf "As an author, activist, actress and entrepreneur, Emily Ratajkowski broke the model mold to express every facet of her nature. She expresses a new type of femininity, one that tempers sensitivity with strength, perfectly embodying the FLOWERBOMB ethos." - Sandrine Groslier, Luxe Fragrance Brands President, L'Oreal Ratajkowski, in her first collaboration with the brand, appears in the fragrance's film short directed by filmmakers Torso Solutions, featuring imagery artistically directed and captured by photographers Inez & Vinoodh. In it, Ratajkowski explores the extraordinary power of transformation pushed to the extreme. A story of metamorphosis unfurls through a glitchy explosion of flowers and a call to 'Unleash your fem-power'. @viktorandrolf_fragrances #UnleashYourFemPower Contact: [email protected] Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1983040/Viktor_Rolf_Flowerbomb.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1983041/Viktor_Rolf_Flowerbomb_Logo.jpg SOURCE Viktor&Rolf Fragrances DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of the campaign "Legumes from Europe" promoted by ANICAV the Italian Association of Canned Vegetables Industries, and co-funded by the European Union, the competition is open to Professional and Amateur Chefs alike. To enter, simply submit a recipe preparation video featuring Canned Legumes from Europe. First place prize of the competition is a trip to Italy. The rules of the competition: Any professional chef or amateur cook may enter Show all the ingredients at the start of the video, highlighting delicious, healthy, and convenient, Canned Legumes from Europe Include the recipe, ingredients, and method in English on the format supplied by organizers Video should be between 4 -7 minutes Prepare 1 portion of your recipe The dish can be a starter, meze, salad, main course, pasta, side dish, soup, sandwich or wrap Canned Legumes from Europe must be at least 50 % of the recipe: the main ingredient. These include Chickpeas, Cannellini beans, Red kidney beans (also organic), Lentils, Green peas Canned Legumes from Europe may be purchased at quality supermarkets, specialty shops and online Video can be made by either mobile phone or DSLR camera Make sure there is sufficient lighting to enhance the finished video Film in landscape for YouTube Channel Music is not required, but if you use background music make sure the music is free to use Here is where to register: [email protected] Chosen videos will be posted on the Emirates Culinary Guild YouTube Channel Extra points will be awarded for the most viewed and liked videos. By sending videos and recipes, it is agreed that the ECG and ANICAV and Partners reserve the right to use them freely. Registration is open for two months, from 15th January 2023. Entering multiple times is encouraged. Awards will be announced on April 25th, 2023. Discover more on: www.legumesfromeurope.com Follow us on: https://www.facebook.com/LegumesFromEuropeUAE/ https://www.instagram.com/legumesfromeuropeuae/ Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1983977/Legumes_from_Europe.jpg SOURCE ANICAV CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - enCore Energy Corp. ("enCore" or the "Company") (TSXV: EU) (OTCQB: ENCUF) today announced that its common shares (the "Common Shares") have been approved for listing and trading on the NYSE American. The Company expects that its Common Shares will commence trading at market open on the NYSE American on January 23, 2023 under the symbol "EU" and will be delisted from the OTCQX. The Common Shares will continue to trade on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX.V) under the symbol "EU". William M. Sheriff, enCore Energy Executive Chairman stated: "Listing on the NYSE American stock exchange, part of the world's most prestigious securities market group, is a major achievement for the Company. This listing provides access to the world's largest and most liquid equity market while increasing our exposure to a vastly larger, substantially more diverse audience of institutional and retail investors. enCore Energy, which has 100% of its uranium production assets within the United States, is dedicated to providing the U.S. nuclear utility market with much needed domestically produced uranium and reducing reliance on foreign sources of energy. This listing is an acknowledgement of our progress as we will continue to focus on delivering exceptional value to our shareholders and customers." About enCore Energy Corp. enCore Energy is the most diversified In-Situ Recovery uranium development company in the United States and recently announced it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Alta Mesa In-Situ Recovery (ISR) uranium project (the "Transaction"). The Transaction will position enCore as a leading US-focused ISR uranium company with the proven management expertise required to advance multiple production opportunities within its portfolio. enCore is focused on becoming the next uranium producer from its licensed and past-producing South Texas Rosita Processing Plant by 2023. The South Dakota-based Dewey-Burdock project and the Wyoming Gas Hills project offer mid-term production opportunities, with significant New Mexico uranium resource endowments providing long-term opportunities. The enCore team is led by industry experts with extensive knowledge and experience in all aspects of ISR uranium operations and the nuclear fuel cycle. enCore is committed to engaging and working with local communities and indigenous governments to create positive impact from corporate developments. 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: Certain information contained in this news release, including: any information relating to the Company being a leading uranium company; the Company's expectations as to longer term fundamentals in the market and price projections; scalability, and the Company's ability to be able to restart or increase production at any of its processing facilities as market conditions warrant; the ability of the Company to complete the acquisition of Alta Mesa and to realize the expected benefits of the acquisition; the expected timelines for the development and recommencement of production at Rosita or other processing facilities; estimates relating to current mineral resources; expectations regarding exploration potential; statements relating to the listing on the NYSE and associated benefits and any other statements regarding future expectations, beliefs, goals or prospects; constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements in this news release that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words "expects", "does not expect", "plans", "anticipates", "does not anticipate", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "scheduled", "forecast", "budget" and similar expressions) should be considered forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to important risk factors and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the companies' ability to control or predict. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks, including, without limitation, risks associated with general economic conditions; adverse industry events; risks associated with accessing additional funding required for the transactions and operations discussed in this news release; future legislative and regulatory developments; the ability of enCore to implement its business strategies; and other risks. A number of important factors could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such forward-looking statements, including without limitation factors relating to forward looking statements listed above which include risks as disclosed in the companies' annual information form filings. The Company assumes no obligation to update the information in this communication, except as required by law. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in filings by the Company with the various securities commissions which are available online at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about the current expectations, beliefs and plans of management. Such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes and readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, that speak only as of the date hereof, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. SOURCE enCore Energy Corp. New WorkForce Pro WF-C5890 Color MFP and WF-C5390 Color Printer with Replaceable Ink Pack Systems LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Epson America, Inc. today announced two additions to its collection of A4 business printers, the WorkForce Pro WF-C5890 color MFP and the WorkForce Pro WF-C5390 color printer. The WF-C5890 and WF-C5390 are ideal options for busy work environments and designed to tackle the pain points of troubleshooting and frequently replacing ink and paper. Engineered to minimize interventions, the WF-C5890 and WF-C5390 are built with Replaceable Ink Pack Systems, allowing businesses to print up to 5,000 ISO pages with replacement ink packs1 and save up to 25 percent on replacement ink vs. color laser toner.2 "The WF-C5890 has been a stress-free replacement for one of our office's laser MFPs that had consistent issues and service troubles," said K. Austin Taylor, hospital administrator, Vista Animal Hospital. "We have roughly 20 employees using the Epson printer and it has been a reliable MFP for our office, producing high-quality surgical discharge paperwork, certificates and related documents for clients." Powered by PrecisionCore Heat-Free technology, the new color MFP and color printer are built for reliability and powerful productivity and have the lowest power consumption in their class.3 Both models have a recommended monthly print volume of 5,000 pages, print speeds of 25 ISO ppm (black/color) with virtually no warmup time and a fast first page out for quick and seamless printing. "These new desktop printers are designed to help businesses overcome the challenges associated with conventional printers, including the required interventions that can slow down productivity," said Kaila Murphy, product manager, Business Imaging, Epson America, Inc. "The WF-C5890 and WF-C5390 are built with few moving parts for low-maintenance, easy, high-volume color printing." Feature-Rich for Small Offices For small businesses or small workgroups that need to print hundreds or thousands of color pages per month, the WF-C5890 and WF-C5390 have up to 1,830-sheet capacity with three optional trays. Producing professional-quality results, the new models use DURABrite Ultra Ink to achieve razor-sharp text and brilliant colors on a wide variety of media. For busy workgroups with dynamic document management needs, the WF-C5890 has a 50-page duplex Auto Document Feeder, auto 2-sided print, copy, scan and fax, and an intuitive 4.3" color touchscreen. Easy Integration into Existing Environments The WF-C5890 is compatible with enterprise applications such as PaperCut MF, PrintFleet, ECi (FMAudit) and other workflows to enable remote printer data collection for MPS solutions. The printers also support PCL4 and PostScript for seamless integration into a universal print environment. They are also compatible with Epson Solutions Suite, including Epson Remote Service, Epson Device Admin and Epson Print Admin. Availability The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5890 color MFP and the WorkForce Pro WF-C5390 color printer are now available through authorized BusinessFirstSM dealers. For more information, visit epson.com/business-inkjet-printers. About Epson Business Inkjet Epson's portfolio of high-performance business inkjet printing solutions forges the future of office printing and set the new standard for minimal intervention, affordability and low energy consumption. Engineered with Epson's innovative PrecisionCore Heat-Free technology, Epson's groundbreaking business printing solutions from Supertank, WorkForce, WorkForce Pro and WorkForce Pro HC for hybrid work-from-home and in-office small businesses to WorkForce Enterprise deliver high performance with few moving parts to exceed market needs. To learn more about Epson's portfolio of business inkjet printing solutions, visit Epson.com/BusinessInkjet. To learn more about Epson PrecisionCore Heat-Free technology, visit Epson.com/Heat-Free. About Epson Epson is a global technology leader whose philosophy of efficient, compact and precise innovation enriches lives and helps create a better world. The company is focused on solving societal issues through innovations in home and office printing, commercial and industrial printing, manufacturing, visual and lifestyle. Epson's goal is to become carbon negative and eliminate use of exhaustible underground resources such as oil and metal by 2050. Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, the worldwide Epson Group generates annual sales of more than JPY 1 trillion. global.epson.com/ Epson America, Inc., based in Los Alamitos, Calif., is Epson's regional headquarters for the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. To learn more about Epson, please visit: epson.com. You may also connect with Epson America on Facebook (facebook.com/Epson), Twitter (twitter.com/EpsonAmerica), YouTube (youtube.com/epsonamerica), and Instagram (instagram.com/EpsonAmerica). *This product uses only genuine Epson-brand packs. Other brands of ink packs and ink supplies are not compatible and, even if described as compatible, may not function properly or at all. Black and color print speeds are measured in accordance with ISO/IEC 24734. Actual print times will vary based on factors including system configuration, software, and page complexity. For more information, visit www.epson.com/printspeed 1 Replacement ink pack yields are estimated based on ISO/IEC 24711 test in Default Mode printing continuously. Ink pack yields vary considerably for reasons including images printed, print settings, temperature and humidity. Yields may be lower when printing infrequently or predominantly with one ink color. All ink colors are used for printing and printer maintenance, and all colors have to be installed for printing. For print quality, part of the ink from the included ink packs is used for printer startup and a variable amount of ink remains in the ink pack after the "replace ink pack" signal. For details, see www.epson.com/inkinfo 2 Actual savings will vary based on print tasks, print volumes and usage conditions. Savings comparison based on the purchase cost of replacement ink packs and the cost of enough color toner cartridges to achieve the total page yields of the ink packs using the manufacturers' online prices and yields for the highest-capacity toner cartridges for the best-selling similarly featured color laser printers with speeds of 30 ppm or less per industry-available data as of March 2022. 3 Compared to similarly featured color laser printers with speeds of 30 ppm or less based on industry-available data as of March 2022. Actual power savings will vary by product model and usage. 4 Not all media types are supported for PCL printing. EPSON, DURABrite, PrecisionCore, PrecisionCore Heat-Free, and WorkForce are registered trademarks, EPSON Exceed Your Vision is a registered logomark and Better Products for a Better Future is a trademark of Seiko Epson Corporation. BusinessFirst and Epson Preferred are service marks of Epson America, Inc. All other product and brand names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Epson disclaims any and all rights in these marks. Copyright 2022 Epson America, Inc. SOURCE Epson America, Inc. ATLANTA, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Feeling financially secure and saving more money are common New Year's resolutions. Georgia's Path2College 529 Plan offers a variety of resources to help families learn more about how to save for college, and how to start a Georgia state tax-deductible college savings plan. "Saving more money is high on many New Year's resolutions lists and for good reason. Saving even small amounts over time is a good way to build a solid financial foundation," said Lynne Riley, President of the Georgia Student Finance Commission. "The resources available at Path2College529.com will help families with everything from researching college savings options, the benefits of savings versus borrowing, creating a college savings plan to easily opening an account online. The website is user-friendly to help make saving simple for everyone." Path2College529.com offers a college savings calculator that looks at the age of your child, when he/she will start college, your savings goals, and the estimated future cost of college to help families set an ideal investment amount. Families can start an account with as little as $25. Funding the account is easy with a few clicks via online funds transfer, bill pay at the bank, or even through payroll direct deposit from work. Account holders can also send in a check or request gifts from loved ones. The account can be opened online at Path2College529.com , or by calling (877) 424-4377 for assistance. As with any financial decision, families should research their savings and investment options before determining the best plan of action. This includes analyzing risk tolerance, looking at the portfolio options and considering the tax benefits. Path2College529.com has a short video on the website that explains how the plan works. Additionally, families should look at the fees associated with saving. "Path2College is the nation's lowest cost 529 plan1," said Riley. "It is the only 529 plan that offers a Georgia state income tax deduction for saving." About Georgia's Path2College 529 Plan The Path2College 529 Plan was established in 2002 and has over $4.5Billion in assets and more than 222,000 accounts. Additionally, families have used more than $1.8 billion from their Path2College 529 Plan accounts to pay for education expenses2. Contributions to the plan are deductible for Georgia income tax purposes up to $8,000 per year, per beneficiary, for those filing a joint return and up to $4,000 for those filing a single return. Any earnings on those contributions in the Path2College 529 Plan are federal and Georgia income tax-deferred. Withdrawals for qualified higher education expenses such as tuition, books, supplies and many other items are federal and Georgia income tax-free. Funds within the Path2College 529 Plan may be used at schools in the United States, and some abroad, for eligible education-related expenses. 1 Source: ISS Market Intelligence 529 College Savings Fee Analysis 4Q 2022. Path2College 529 Plan's average annual asset-based fees are 0.09% for all portfolios compared to 0.51% for all 529 plans, 0.87% for advisor-sold plans, and 0.35% for direct-sold plans. 2 Source: As of 1/12/23 TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing, Inc. internal records. To learn more about Georgia's Path2College 529 Plan, its investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses please see the Plan Description at path2college529.com. Read it carefully. If the funds aren't used for qualified higher education expenses, a federal 10% penalty tax on earnings (as well as federal and state income taxes) may apply. Investments in the Plan are neither insured nor guaranteed and there is the risk of investment loss. Consult your legal or tax professional for tax advice. Check with your home state to learn if it offers tax or other benefits such as financial aid, scholarship funds or protection from creditors for investing in its own 529 plan. TIAA-CREF Individual & Institutional Services, LLC, Member FINRA, is the distributor and underwriter for the Path2College 529 Plan. SOURCE Path2College SHENZHEN, China, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ESY SUNHOME ("ESYSH"), a new energy storage product company, successfully held a product launch event on Jan. 14. The most important partners of ESYSH-- EAST (300376), Ganfeng Lithium (002460) and Veken Technology (600152) all attended the conference. Both the chairmen of EAST and the Veken Technology delivered important speeches, expressing their high affirmation of corporate culture and team capabilities of ESYSH. ESYSH HM6 The company's first order for the newly launched product, came from Belgium on the launch day, with processing starting immediately. And bulk shipments to its branches in Sydney, Australia, and Munich, Germany are also already on their way. "We believe the ESYSH can shine as photovoltaic power generation enters a golden age based on our solid technical prowess and collaboration with our partners to fuel the company's future development," said Mr. Lee, the CEO. "By 2050, photovoltaic power generation will account for 40% of all energy generation globally, with power generation reaching 440GW per year and the optical storage-charging system market set to reach over 250 billion dollars every year. Our company's solutions will wholly benefit consumers globally as the average annual storage based on solar soars in markets worldwide." Integrated with 6 KW inverter, 5~30 kWh batteries, the ESYSH HM6 essentially serves as a new-generation home appliance capable of enhancing people's quality of life through a clean and reliable power supply. The product aims to bring more convenience to the households, like refrigerators and washing machines. This home power storage appliance delivers extremely simple installation for end users. They merely stack the battery modules together for immediate use without any error and saving users on labor fees for guided setups. The system connects directly to the power grid or photovoltaic panels with cellphone-based IoT features providing electricity for homes, small supermarkets, farms, and other places. The ESYSH HM6 boasts IP 66 waterproof and dustproof features, meaning that users' power supply will be uninterrupted by extreme weather conditions or violent storm conditions. The product can also automatically heat up and function normally in conditions under minus 20 degrees Celsius. If there is a sudden failure in the system, the HM6's smart energy storage system automatically comes into play, ensuring a seamless power supply without interruptions. ESYSH has also developed a handy mobile APP so that users can harness the power of IoT to conveniently monitor the product's working status at any time of the day and from anywhere. It features three levels of early warnings in addition to an alarm, the users can feel confident about the safety of their appliance and their homes as a whole. After-sales services and maintenance is another area in which ESYSH shines. Should anything go wrong with the product, the ESYSH team is available always to provide guidance to all customers. As part of the company's commitment to providing the best service experience, customers can enjoy ten years of warranty coverage. For more information, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/@esysunhome SOURCE ESYSUNHOME interview Addis Abeba In the last four or five years, human rights violations in Ethiopia have significantly deteriorated with mass massacres, civilians being burned alive, and stoned to death, extrajudicial executions perpetrated both by security forces, armed groups and even civilians becoming frequent occurrences. The trend has put Ethiopia on a global; spotlight special attention to human rights issues in the country. Addis Standard's Molla Mitiku interviewed Rakeb Melese, Deputy Chief Commissioner of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Rakeb had her first and second degrees in law and in human rights, respectively, and served for 25 years in different organizations working on democracy, rights of women and children. She talked on the independence, impartiality, and various complaints against EHRC, as well as human rights violations in Ethiopia. Excerpts Addis Standard: - Could you briefly explain the activities of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission? Rakeb: - The Human Rights Commission is one of the institutions that have been earmarked for reform. For the past three years, one of the major tasks done was electing independent leadership or commissioners who are not members of any political party and have no political affiliation, [and] having leaders who are qualified in the field with ample working experience in human rights protection. Then, the new leadership identified the strengths and weakness and designed a strategic plan that could help to staff the commission, to reinforce previously existing strengths and put ways forward [to address] the problems. So, it has organized various independent sectors that could monitor the human rights violations on women, children, elderly and the disabled. Many human rights violations are committed in conflicts in different parts of the country. The commission has been investigating these violations, and working for the victims to get solutions. Moreover, the commission has been giving the necessary recommendations to protect citizens and prevent the incidents from happening again. Having brought stakeholders around the table, discussions are being held in connection with the respect for human rights. Especially the northern parts of our country where the conflicts took place, recommendations were given in the joint investigation that was conducted with the collaboration of United Nations Human Rights Organization. In fact, we have still lots of work to do. Currently, peace agreement has been signed and the recommendations started to be implemented. At this level, many monitoring and capacity building activities are being undertaken in line with the recommendations. We will also make follow up efforts so that the rest recommendations will be implemented. Addis Standard: - Has the investigation and the report that you mentioned the EHRC conducted with the collaboration of the United Nations been acceptance by the two sides? Rakeb: - Not by the two parts. But most of the recommendations forwarded in the document should be carried out by the ruling government. "... . the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Eritrean government who participated in the conflict did not accept the recommendations. We were pushing them to accept the proposal."Rakeb A lot of work should be done by the prosecutors like criminal investigations and prosecutions; following the report, we have monitored the government's performance and some of the recommendations got attention. However, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Eritrean government, which had roles in the conflict, did not accept the recommendations. We are pushing for the proposal to be accepted. Now that peace agreement has been signed and transitional justice is also included in the peace accord, we will proceed attempting to push them to accept the recommendations. Addis Standard: - Is there anything you did to find out why your recommendation failed to get acceptance by all parties? Rakeb: - As I said, getting an acceptance by the government in power is considered as a big positive process for us because it is the government that has to implement most of the recommendations. But one among their reasons is the question of independence. They considered the report not independently done and argued that the investigation should be done by another body. But now the implementation of the peace pact is undergoing, which was also one of the recommendations in that report. In this sense, the recommendation is being implemented and transitional justice is also incorporated in the agreement. Now, it is difficult to say that they are completely rejected to be implemented. Addis Standard: - On the investigations you have already done, what are the major human rights violations in the country? Rakeb: - The human rights violations that are being committed in the country are numerous, complex and multi-faceted. It is not easy to distinguish one from the other or to say one is huge [over the other]; but the human rights violations that are committed in relation to conflicts are so severe. Deaths of many people, physical maiming, property losses, infrastructure destruction, disruptions of the rights to education and health, service interruptions, movement restrictions, obliteration of communication infrastructure and many other human rights violations. In particular, the one that even make us to stand first worldwide is the internal displacement of people. "... . there are many human rights violations against women and children in those (conflict) places. Sexual assault, which was widely discussed in relation to the conflict, was widely committed."Rakeb A large number of displaced people from their villages are being subjected to many human rights violations in places they are sheltered. In addition to their displacement, they have been subjected to prolonged problems without getting permanent solution. In addition, there are many human rights violations against women and children in those places. Sexual assault, which was widely discussed in relation to the conflict, was widely committed. Victims are being further harmed by not being able to access the services they need. As I told you, the number of disabled people has also increased due to the conflict. In fact, we do not exactly know the number of disabled people in the country, but now have additional disabled population and they are not receiving services to recover from the injuries they suffered. Likewise, the elderly have been subjected to many human rights violations, all these need to be improved. Addis standard: - There are complaints on the lack of independence of the commission. Some argue that the commission is dependent on the government that it does not act independently and responsibly. What is your reaction? Rakeb: - One of the possible actions for neutrality is having leaders who are not members of any party. In that regard, all the commissioners are free from political affiliations. It was also one of the criteria during the election. Secondly, the commissioners were elected based on their experience and education. They have experiences in the field of human rights as leadership. All of us at the leadership level have come through election so that our starting point and destination is only to protect human rights. In our investigations and reports one party may not be happy at a time while the other part enjoys it. We are not biased. If we are biased, it is to take the voice of the victims of human rights violations and make their voices heard by presenting documents showing they are [hurt], they have suffered; but we are not biased to anyone that our main work is the reality on the ground. We are doing our work based on the information on the ground and international assessment. That's why when we issue a report, we don't make a report as soon as we hear it. Our work is determined by the reality on the ground. Addis Standard: But there are complaints that you report on some issues quickly, and delay others. Why does that happen? Rakeb: - It is the situation on the ground that causes us to issue a report quickly and delay it. Most of the time, if it is in conflict areas, there will be a delay because we have to arrive at the place and conduct an investigation and issue the report. We don't issue a report just because it's posted on social media without properly investigating the situation on the ground. The biggest reason for the delay is that it will be difficult to reach the place immediately. The other factor is the issue of our institutional capacity. Currently, our total staff, including the supporting section, is around 360. It is difficult for us to investigate, verify and issue a report on human rights violations in all areas so that we delay the reports. Addis Standard: Multiple reports show that Eritrean soldiers are committing human rights violations against civilians in the Tigray region after the peace agreement was signed. What did EHRC do in relation to this? Rakeb: - We couldn't verify that as we couldn't be there, so I can't say anything at the moment. "We believe that a fair transitional justice process should be implemented in Ethiopia"Rakeb Addis Standard: - Many argue that there should be an effective transitional justice in the process of implementing the peace agreement signed between federal government and Tigrayan. What do you think should be done in this regard? Rakeb: Transitional justice is clearly stated as a recommendation in our investigation. We believe that a fair transitional justice process should be implemented in Ethiopia. It was recommended that a legal framework should be tailored and implemented at the national level and this idea is included in the peace agreement and the government is working on it. Transitional justice has four components. The first one is letting victims get compensation, the second is creating a situation where human rights violations are investigated and the perpetrators are punished according to the law. The third component is bringing out the truth, the cause for that situation and reaching an agreement by holding discussion with the victims and the party that started the conflict. The fourth one is of course the process of building the necessary policy [frameworks] to prevent such acts from happening again. So, this takes a lot of work and a lot of components that need to be handled and wrapped together as a comprehensive package. Based on this, there is a document issued by the government recently. It is being discussed on how it can be done, whether there is any experience in our country regarding the process of fair transition or to cascade from outside. In this regard, there is a lot of work to be done. There should be a comprehensive discussion with the community. By continuing the discussions on this document at the national level, there will be a condition under which the transitional justice should be carried out. And that document will serve as recommendation to the government to include these voices in a decision and when designing a policy or strategy. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Ethiopia Legal Affairs By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Addis Standard: - What are the major challenges EHRC has faced in carrying out its work impartially and effectively? Rakeb: The vision of the commission is to see respect for human rights as a culture. To do that, our society needs to know, understand, and apply human rights values. This is a big job. Ensuring human rights, teaching and providing capacity building so that the people and officials will be aware of their responsibilities and be able to implement them accordingly. "... we call on both the executive body and the society to understand the responsibility and authority of the commission and accomplish recommendations as well as facilitate conditions when we need investigation"Rakeb It is also necessary to teach all stakeholders that the responsibility of the commission is to ensure whether measures are taken to prevent human rights violations in police stations, prisons, and other areas where human rights are being violated [including] schools. One of the challenges we face in some places is that we are prohibited from visiting places and talking to certain people. In some cases, we are talking to the superiors to facilitate the situation, but it is still somewhat challenging. The other is in carrying out the recommendations we issue. In general, we call on or both the executive body and the society to understand the responsibility and authority of the commission and accomplish recommendations, as well as facilitate conditions when we need investigation. I call on the society and the executive body to contribute their parts in order to enable all of us to see a culture of respect for human rights in Ethiopia. AS Allen brings a wealth of experience in hyper-growth, software-as-a-service companies OAKLAND, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Everlaw , the cloud-native investigation and litigation platform, today announced that Scott Allen has joined the company's leadership team as its first chief financial officer (CFO). Allen will be responsible for leading the financial and business operations functions as Everlaw transforms the legal industry with its innovative ediscovery platform and pricing model. Tech veteran Scott Allen was appointed Everlaw's first CFO Allen brings more than 30 years of financial experience supporting high-growth companies. Most recently, Allen served as CFO of Airship, a mobile marketing platform, where he was instrumental in scaling the operational infrastructure and helped drive 3x revenue growth including mergers and acquisitions. He served as CFO at Intermedia where he helped scale the business over 4x, ultimately leading to a successful sale. As CFO of Citrix Online, he helped scale the division top line 7x to become one of the largest SaaS business providers. Allen spent 18 years at ADP in senior finance and product roles. "Nothing proves more exciting than joining a strong company during a pivotal phase of growth," said Allen. "As the CFO I'm here to build a path to scale the business." Allen will drive Everlaw's business by helping develop long-term strategy, continuing to deliver financial integrity and scaling operational excellence. He'll build on the success of the company's predictable and transparent billing model based on the amount of data hosted, with unlimited user licenses, processing and productions, and access to advanced features. "A good CFO impacts every part of the business," said AJ Shankar, founder and CEO at Everlaw. "Scott will be instrumental as we continue to grow and deliver on our mission of pursuing justice by illuminating truth." Allen joins Shankar in the C-Suite alongside Chief Revenue Officer Rich Liu , Chief People Officer Anna Meyer and Chief Legal Officer Shana Simmons to meet the extraordinary opportunities in the legal industry's digital transformation. Everlaw earned a top 10 position in Glassdoor's Best Places to Work 2023 list in the U.S. and other industry accolades . To learn more, please read the blog, "Anticipation is Key: a Q&A with Everlaw's First Chief Financial Officer Scott Allen." About Everlaw Everlaw helps legal teams navigate the increasingly complex ediscovery landscape to chart a straighter path to the truth. Trusted by Fortune 100 corporate counsel, 91 of the Am Law 200, and all 50 state attorneys general, Everlaw's combination of intuitive experience, advanced technology, and partnership with customers empowers organizations to tackle the most pressing technological challengesand transform their approach to discovery and litigation in the process. Founded in 2010 and based in Oakland, Calif., Everlaw is funded by top-tier investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, CapitalG, HIG Growth Partners, K9 Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and TPG Growth. To learn more about Everlaw or view current job openings, visit www.everlaw.com and follow us on LinkedIn . Media Contact: Colleen Haikes [email protected] SOURCE Everlaw ABILENE, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- First Financial Bank, N.A. Board of Directors elected Mike Parker as Executive Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer. Parker brings more than 15 years of compliance experience to First Financial, including his most recent post as a director of compliance governance with USAA Federal Savings Bank. The announcement was made by Randy Roewe, Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, First Financial Bankshares, Inc. Mr. Mike Parker "Mike's extensive background and experience and successful record of developing compliance programs at some of the nation's largest financial institutions will make him an invaluable asset to our company," Roewe said. "His experience will be critical to the continued evolvement of the bank's compliance management program as the regulatory landscape changes and First Financial Bank continues to grow." Parker, who has worked with USAA since March 2020, has also held positions with Capital One and Ocwen Financial Corporation in compliance and audit director roles. He also provided support to community banks on compliance matters with Capco. Parker began his banking career in 2005 as an examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, where he specialized in compliance. A native of western New York, Parker earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from Virginia Commonwealth University and holds the Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) designation. About First Financial Bank, N.A. First Financial Bank, N.A. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of First Financial Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIN). Headquartered in Abilene, Texas, First Financial Bankshares is a financial holding company that through its wholly-owned subsidiary, First Financial Bank, N.A., operates multiple banking regions with 79 locations in Texas, including Abilene, Acton, Albany, Aledo, Alvarado, Beaumont, Boyd, Bridgeport, Brock, Bryan, Burleson, College Station, Cisco, Cleburne, Clyde, Conroe, Cut and Shoot, Decatur, Eastland, El Campo, Fort Worth, Fulshear, Glen Rose, Granbury, Grapevine, Hereford, Huntsville, Lumberton, Keller, Kingwood, Magnolia, Mauriceville, Merkel, Midlothian, Mineral Wells, Montgomery, Moran, New Waverly, Newton, Odessa, Orange, Palacios, Port Arthur, Ranger, Rising Star, Roby, San Angelo, Southlake, Spring, Stephenville, Sweetwater, Tomball, Trent, Trophy Club, Vidor, Waxahachie, Weatherford, Willis, and Willow Park. The Company also operates First Financial Trust & Asset Management Company, N.A., with ten locations and First Technology Services, Inc., a technology operating company. The Company is listed on The NASDAQ Global Select Market under the trading symbol FFIN. For more information about First Financial, please visit our website at http://www.ffin.com. SOURCE First Financial Bankshares, Inc. Fluent Pensacola Broadens Access for Florida Medical Cannabis Patients; Company Also Announces Plans to Open Up Three Additional Florida Retail Locations in First Half of 2023 MIAMI, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Cansortium Inc. (CSE: TIUM.U) (OTCQX: CNTMF) ("Cansortium" or the "Company"), a vertically-integrated, multi-state cannabis company operating under the Fluent brand, announced the grand opening of its 29th medical cannabis dispensary in Florida and 32nd retail location nationwide, along with plans to open three additional store locations in Florida in the first half of 2023. On January 20, 2023, Fluent will host its official grand opening of Fluent Pensacola , which will feature deep storewide discounts such as 50% off all Fluent products for the entire grand opening weekend[1]. The new 2,500 sq. ft. medical cannabis dispensary will carry Fluent's full house of brands, including: Smokiez edibles ; BLACK Line, MOODS and Fluent Care tinctures and vape cartridges ; raw cannabis flower and pre-rolls from Fluent Flower and Freedom Town Holdings ; and Fluent capsules , extracts and topicals . The store will also carry a wide selection of consumption devices such as approved vape batteries, along with daily rotating doorbusters and deals Monday through Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. With an emphasis on convenience for patients, Fluent Pensacola's online ordering platform makes shopping for medical cannabis smooth and easy. In addition to ordering through the website, medical patients can also place orders over the phone with the Fluent Pensacola staff. Patients on-the-go can bypass stepping into the store and utilize the dispensary's convenient drive-thru express pickup window for their medical cannabis orders. The new medical cannabis dispensary is conveniently located in the Drummond Park neighborhood in northern Pensacola at 301 East Nine Mile Road and just blocks from The Home Depot and Walmart Supercenter off of Pensacola Boulevard. It is also well positioned near a bustling retail strip and multitude of restaurants, and sits across East Nine Mile Road from the Winn-Dixie grocery store. "Our new Pensacola store, located on a major thoroughfare in the city, not only broadens patients' access to high-quality flower and medical cannabis products, but also delivers a first-class retail experience to customers and expands the number of Floridians we employ to more than 540," said Fluent Cannabis Care Director of Sales Victor Bindi. "Just a mile from Pensacola Boulevard, this location is in a quickly developing area of the city that provides easy access to a number of communities, and can service the needs of Escambia residents all the way from Ferry Pass to Century. With the fastest-gaining market share in Florida and plans to open three additional retail locations across the Sunshine State including one additional location in south Pensacola on Chase Street we will continue to prioritize our Florida strategy as we look to provide the best cannabis and service to more patients, create good-paying jobs in local communities and bring value to our investors." About Cansortium Inc. Cansortium is a vertically-integrated cannabis company with licenses and operations in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Texas. The Company operates under the Fluent brand and is dedicated to being one of the highest quality cannabis companies for the communities it serves. This is driven by Cansortium's unrelenting commitment to operational excellence in cultivation, production, distribution and retail. The Company is headquartered in Miami, Florida. Cansortium Inc.'s Common Shares trade on the CSE under the symbol "TIUM.U" and on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol "CNTMF". For more information about the Company, please visit www.getfluent.com. Forward-Looking Information Certain information in this news release may constitute forward-looking information. In some cases, but not necessarily in all cases, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "targets", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "an opportunity exists", "is positioned", "estimates", "intends", "assumes", "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", "will" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections, or other characterizations of future events or circumstances contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information are not historical facts but instead represent management's expectations, estimates, and projections regarding future events. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on a number of opinions, assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company as of the date of this news release, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to the factors described in the public documents of the Company available at www.sedar.com. These factors are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect the Company; however, these factors should be considered carefully. There can be no assurance that such estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements containing any forward-looking information, or the factors or assumptions underlying them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. For further information, please contact: Investor Relations Contact: Sean Mansouri, CFA Elevate IR 720-330-2829 [email protected] Media Contact: Patrick Maddox 501-680-5220 [email protected] _______________________ 1 Some exclusions may apply. SOURCE Cansortium Inc Leading Fast-Casual Concept Announces Latest Multi-Unit Deal Signings on the Heels of Entrance to Canada WICHITA, Kan., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Fast-casual restaurant concept Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers announced today that it achieved significant development success in 2022 with over 140 new restaurant commitments added to its growth pipeline, and 37 new locations opened throughout the year including the brand's debut in North and South Dakota. This announcement comes on the heels of Freddy's entrance to Canada, with plans to open new restaurants across nine of the country's provinces over the next several years. Additionally, as a result of the brand's 2022 agreement signings with both new and existing franchisees, Freddy's will expand in prime markets throughout Illinois, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, among others. Freddy's Storefront "2022 was a milestone year for Freddy's as we celebrated our 20th anniversary, and we are extremely proud of the strong development momentum we've been able to maintain from start to finish. Growing to 450 locations in the time that we did is a testament to our proven business model and our network of franchisees who continue to operate their restaurants the Freddy's Way," said Chris Dull, President and CEO of Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers. "Our system and product remain consistent and will continue to stand the test of time because of our three brand pillars quality, hospitality and cleanliness. We are excited about the future of Freddy's and look forward to celebrating the next 20 years of growth." Along with the chain's 2022 growth in traditional-formatted locations, Freddy's opened its second casino location in Friant, California's Table Mountain Casino. Freddy's wide variety of traditional and non-traditional restaurant designs has consistently earned the brand recognition as a leading fast-casual concept and franchise system. Most recently, the brand ranked #70 on Entrepreneur Magazine's highly competitive Franchise 500 ranking of the top franchise brands, QSR Magazine's esteemed QSR 50 list at #46, as well as being awarded North America's Best New National Brand Concept by Airports Council International for the opening of Freddy's first airport location in 2021 in Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport. Building off its recent success, Freddy's is entering 2023 with a robust development pipeline of nearly 20 units slated to open in the first quarter. The brand is also projected to open over 60 total locations in more than 15 states including Louisiana, Virginia, California, and Wyoming, among others. The brand's exceptional commitment to franchisees, team members, and one-of-a-kind Freddy's guest experience help support the greater development goal of bringing the Freddy's footprint to more than 800 units by 2026. Franchise opportunities remain in nine of Canada's provinces, excluding Quebec, and in the U.S. including the Northeast, Upper Midwest, California, Florida, Oregon, and Washington, and large metro areas such as Pittsburgh. For more information about development opportunities, contact Mary Coots, Vice President of Franchise Development, at [email protected] or 316-719-7854; or contact Gregg Most and Jim Werschler at [email protected] for Canadian inquiries. Prospective franchisees can also visit freddysfranchising.com for the latest information regarding available opportunities. About Freddy's Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers is a leading fast-casual franchise concept with more than 450 locations across 36 states nationwide. Founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 2002, the brand offers a unique combination of cooked-to-order steakburgers, all-beef hot dogs, shoestring fries and other savory items along with freshly churned frozen custard treats. Known for operating the Freddy's Way, Guests experience genuine hospitality and food prepared fresh with premium ingredients. This signature approach has fueled Freddy's ongoing growth throughout the U.S. and garnered national recognition from industry-leading rankings, including being named No. 1 on Forbes Best Franchises to Buy and No. 70 on Entrepreneur's Franchise 500. For more on Freddy's, visit the Newsroom and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For more information about development opportunities, visit https://freddysfranchising.com/. Contact: Hayden Rome, Fish Consulting [email protected] | 956-893-9150 SOURCE Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers The company ranks in the top 25 out of 300 top businesses recognized for incorporating social and environmental impact alongside profits BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Freedom Mortgage, one of the largest full-service independent mortgage companies and a top Veterans Administration (VA) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lender in the U.S., has been honored with the Real Leaders Impact Award, which recognizes companies around the worldof all sizes, and from a variety of industriesfor being as aware of their impact on employees, society, and the planet as they are on their bottom line. "This is our fifth annual ranking, and the number of award winners has tripled. It's encouraging to see how this movement is going mainstream with businesses all over the world," said Mark Van Ness, Founder of Real Leaders. "We are excited to welcome new and past company winners to the impact movement, and into the Real Leaders Impact Awards community." "It's an honor that our philanthropic programs are recognized by Real Leaders," said Stan Middleman, Freedom Mortgage. Tweet this Stanley C. Middleman, Freedom Mortgage president and CEO, said, "It's an honor that our philanthropic programs are recognized and deemed important by Real Leaders among other companies with similar values. Freedom Mortgage will continue to give back to the communities where we live and work with a focus on programs that support our veterans and those currently serving in the military." The 2023 list of 300 Top Impact Companies award winners features a mix of respected impact brands with companies such as: Advantage Capital, CVS, FuelCell Energy and Outsource Access as well as Patagonia, Tesla, Danone, and Allbirds. Click here to review list of impact award ranking. Freedom Mortgage holds four annual philanthropic campaigns through its employee engagement and philanthropic arm, Team Freedom Cares: Project Gratitude - A service appreciation campaign that has collected over 7,500 handwritten and video messages of thanks for active-duty service members (sent through USO Centers across the globe). Feeding America Food Drive - A canned good collection and online fundraiser to help fight food insecurity in our communities. To date, over 132,000 cans of food and $1,482,521 (or over 14 million meals) have been donated to the Feeding America network of food banks. Rucksacks to Backpacks - A collection drive and online fundraiser that has helped provide nearly 26,000 new backpacks and over 68,000 school supplies to children of military families through the USO. Holiday Toy Drive A toy collection for underserved youth to brighten the spirits of families during the holiday season. To date, nearly 63,000 toys have been donated to various charities such as Children's Hospital of Philadelphia , Salvation Army, and Toys for Tots. Real Leaders will host a virtual ceremony on February 16, 2023, to honor the winners, which will feature several high profile keynote speakers. One of the nation's largest independent mortgage companies, Freedom Mortgage is committed to fostering homeownership and financial betterment across the country. For more information on Freedom Mortgage, please visit FreedomMortgage.com. For more information on Freedom Mortgage's philanthropic programs, please visit www.teamfreedomcares.org About Freedom Mortgage Corporation Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, Freedom Mortgage is an independent mortgage company that provides mortgage loans through wholesale and correspondent channels. One of the nation's largest non-bank mortgage lenders/servicers, the company is licensed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Freedom Mortgage is a top VA and FHA (government-insured) lender in the U.S. (Inside Mortgage Finance, Jan-June 2022), and one of the mortgage industry's largest philanthropic supporters of the USO of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The company is also renowned for its vibrant work environment where all team members can thrive. In 2022, Freedom Mortgage was honored once again as a Top Workplaces USA and made it back on the Inc. 5000 Honor Roll for the eighth time as one of the fastest-growing companies across the country. Freedom Mortgage's mission is to foster homeownership for all consumers across America. Lender NMLS ID: 2767. Equal Housing Opportunity. For more information, please visit FreedomMortgage.com. ABOUT REAL LEADERS Real Leaders is a membership community for impact leaders with a global media platform dedicated to driving positive change. It's on a mission to unite farsighted leaders to transform our shortsighted world. Founded in 2010, Real Leaders recognized early on that businesses bore a responsibility to be as cognizant of their impact on employees, society, and the planet as they are on their bottom line. Real Leaders is a B Corporation, member of the UN Global Compact, and is independently owned. FREEDOM MORTGAGE CONTACT: Ellen Longo 609-678-0968 [email protected] REAL LEADERS CONTACT: Julie Van Ness, CEO [email protected] SOURCE Freedom Mortgage Corporation Modesto Site Fleet Operations' Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cut by More than 90 Percent Thanks to Zero- and Near Zero-Emission Technologies MODESTO, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Frito-Lay, a leading food manufacturer and division of PepsiCo, today announced the near completion of its Modesto, California, facility's transformation into a first-of-its-kind showcase for sustainable manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution technologies. The project was started in 2019 and supported by the California Climate Investments (CCI) initiative, in conjunction with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB), to demonstrate the sustainability benefits of zero-emission (ZE) and near zero-emission (NZE) technologies. Frito-Lay logo California Climate Investments logo Frito-Lay celebrated its Modesto, Calif., facilitys transformation into a first-of-its-kind showcase for sustainable manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution technologies. Frito-Lay transformed its Modesto, Calif., site by replacing diesel fleet assets with ZE and NZE alternatives and installing fueling and charging infrastructure for the new fleet as well as on-site renewable energy generation and storage. The Frito-Lay Modesto site is one of the largest Frito-Lay manufacturing facilities in the United States at 500,000 square feet, sitting on 80 acres and employing more than 1,100 associates. The facility is the first Frito-Lay manufacturing facility to implement site-wide alternative fuel vehicles, on-site renewable energy generation, energy storage equipment and employee electric vehicle charging stations. "At Frito-Lay and PepsiCo, we are dedicated to operating within our planetary bounds and inspiring positive change. The transformation at Modesto is in direct support of our PepsiCo Positive (pep+) commitment to building a circular and inclusive value chain and achieving net zero emissions by 2040," said Steven Williams, CEO of PepsiCo Foods North America. "To date, the Frito-Lay Modesto transformation has resulted in a 91 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from direct fleet operations, or 5,250 metric tons of GHG emissions. If the standard 4-person compact SUV drives on average 15,000 miles per year with an average MPG of 25.5, this reduction is the equivalent of removing just over 1,000 standard compact SUVs from the road." Now near completion, the transformation at Modesto is a template for and can help accelerate the continued proliferation of large-scale commercialization of ZE and NZE technologies at freight facilities and warehouses, magnifying emissions reduction benefits on a broad scale. The upgrades in Modesto employ the latest in sustainable technology to reduce environmental impact, while also offering employees on-the-job training to maintain and operate the new high-tech equipment. These updates include the replacement of diesel fleet assets with ZE and NZE alternatives, fueling and charging infrastructure for the new fleet, and on-site renewable energy generation and storage. These technology upgrades are another step in achieving our pep+ goals: Three BYD 8Y electric yard tractors improve operations efficiency, and the associated tailpipe emission reductions contribute to our commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain. Each yard tractor operates 20 hours per day and moves more than 150 trailers while only charging for two hours every day. improve operations efficiency, and the associated tailpipe emission reductions contribute to our commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain. Each yard tractor operates 20 hours per day and moves more than 150 trailers while only charging for two hours every day. 1- megawatt solar carport with energy storage, which doubles the amount of solar generation capacity at the facility by supplementing the site's 1-megawatt of rooftop solar panels. which doubles the amount of solar generation capacity at the facility by supplementing the site's 1-megawatt of rooftop solar panels. 12 Crown Li-ion forklifts powered by lithium-ion batteries to improve energy and time efficiency. powered by lithium-ion batteries to improve energy and time efficiency. 2.7 megawatt-hours of on-site battery storage to help reduce the site's electricity costs and support grid capacity by reducing the facility's electricity load on the grid during peak times. to help reduce the site's electricity costs and support grid capacity by reducing the facility's electricity load on the grid during peak times. Electric Tesla over the road semis and four Tesla 750kW charging stations to provide the semis with up to 400 miles of range in 1 hour of charging. PepsiCo and Frito-Lay are now the first company to have a commercial fleet featuring the electric semi. to provide the semis with up to 400 miles of range in 1 hour of charging. PepsiCo and Frito-Lay are now the first company to have a commercial fleet featuring the electric semi. 38 Volvo VNL compressed natural gas (CNG) tractors fueled by CNG with RNG attributes from a nearby, public access CNG fueling station owned and operated by Beyond6. fueled by CNG with RNG attributes from a nearby, public access CNG fueling station owned and operated by Beyond6. Six Peterbilt 220EV electric box trucks that provide zero emission last mile delivery into the Modesto community, reducing tailpipe emissions and allowing Frito-Lay to deliver products directly to retail customers. that provide zero emission last mile delivery into the community, reducing tailpipe emissions and allowing Frito-Lay to deliver products directly to retail customers. Seven dual-head employee electric vehicle charging stations capable of charging up to 14 vehicles at one time. Additionally, in 2021 the Frito-Lay Modesto site achieved sourcing 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. On-site solar power provides up to 20 percent of the Modesto facility's energy use daily. "CARB's approach to fighting local air pollution is to work with industry and other partners on projects that demonstrate how a fleet can protect public health by shifting to clean vehicle technologies and equipment. This includes zero-emission trucks and related charging infrastructure," said CARB Executive Officer, Dr. Steven Cliff. "The transformation of the Frito-Lay facility in Modesto is a notable example of this approach. It also makes the case to other fleets and freight facilities in California and throughout the nation that a shift by companies and fleets to the cleanest trucks and equipment directly improves the air for communities adjacent to these facilities." The Frito-Lay Modesto project was supported by the "California Climate Investments" (CCI) initiative in conjunction with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD), and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The total grant for $15.4 million covered a portion of the Frito-Lay transformation and the placement of a publicly accessible CNG station, owned by Beyond6, formerly known as American Natural Gas. The grant share for Frito-Lay was $12.2 million and the match funding required $13.5 million in cash and in-kind services. Other project participants include Cafe Coop, CALSTART, Project Clean Air, University of California and Riverside CE-CERT. Equipment and technology suppliers for the project include BYD Motors LLC, ChargePoint, Crown, Meritor, Peterbilt, Tesla and Volvo. California Climate Investments is a statewide initiative that puts billions of cap-and-trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment particularly in disadvantaged communities. For more information, visit the California Climate Investments website at: caclimateinvestments.ca.gov. To take a virtual tour of the Frito-Lay Modesto facility, visit here. Media assets for this project are available for download at fritolay.com/newsroom. About Frito-Lay North America Frito-Lay North America is the $19 billion convenient foods division of PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ: PEP), which is headquartered in Purchase, NY. Frito-Lay snacks include Lay's and Ruffles potato chips, Doritos tortilla chips, Cheetos snacks, Tostitos tortilla chips and branded dips, SunChips multigrain snacks and Fritos corn chips. The company operates 30+ manufacturing facilities across the U.S. and Canada, more than 200 distribution centers and services 315,000 retail customers per week through its direct-store-delivery model. Learn more about Frito-Lay at the corporate website, www.fritolay.com, on Twitter (@fritolay), on Instagram (@fritolay) and on Facebook (Frito-Lay). SOURCE Frito-Lay North America NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A latest research report [115+] pages with 360-Degree visibility, titled "Automotive Charge Air Cooler Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Product Type (Air-cooled and Liquid-cooled); By Vehicle Type; By Design Type; By Position Type; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2023-2032" published by Polaris Market Research in its research repository. According to the research report, the global automotive charge air cooler market size was valued at USD 3,094.96 Million in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 6,162.61 Million by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period. What is Automotive Charge Air Coolers? How Big is Automotive Charge Air Cooler Market Size & Share? Overview The charge air cooler is an intermediary between the turbocharger and the engine. It pacifies the engine air after it has progressed through a turbocharger and before it goes into the combustion chamber of the engine. The rapidly rising demand for the automotive charge air cooler market can be attributed to the fact that this intermediary enhances engine performance noticeably and reduces emissions. The air with lesser temperature and enhanced density assists in achieving the best power for the combustion procedure in the engine. It also reduces the fuel consumption needed. The supreme usage is in commercial and passenger vehicles. Demand for curtailment in fuel consumption and extended engine power and reduced emissions, increasing usage of turbochargers in machinery, and growth in demand for passenger and commercial vehicles are the elements responsible for the growth of the industry. Request Sample Copy of Automotive Charge Air Cooler Market Research Report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-charge-air-cooler-market (The sample of this report is readily available on request. The report sample contains a brief introduction to the research report, Table of Contents, Graphical introduction of regional analysis, Top players in the market with their revenue analysis and our research methodology.) Our Sample Report May Includes: 2032 Updated Report Introduction, Overview, and In-depth industry analysis. 115+ Pages Research Report (Inclusion of Updated Research). Provide Chapter-wise guidance on Request. 2023 Updated Regional Analysis with Graphical Representation of Size, Share & Trends. Includes Updated List of table & figures. Updated Report Includes Top Market Players with their Business Strategy, Sales Volume, and Revenue Analysis. Key Highlights of the Report: Air-cooled segment accounted for over largest market share in 2022 on account of various benefits offered by these products including reliability and simplicity Passenger vehicles segment held the largest market revenue share in 2022 owing to increased prevalence of charge coolers to enhance the efficiency of turbo-charge combustion engine Fin & tube design type segment dominated the global market and accounted for significant market share due to high integration among high-pressure applications Standalone segment accounted for the maximum market share in 2022, which can be attributed to integration of developed and advanced mechanism of separate components North America is expected to grow at a high CAGR over the projected period on account of the increase in vehicle sales Some of the Top Market Players Are: Dana Ltd. T.RAD Co. Ltd. Modine Manufacturing Hanon Systems Banco Products Radicon Company Kelvin Holding Delphi Technologies Dura-Lite Heat Transfer Valeo MAHLE AKG Group Sterling Thermal Technology Vestas Aircoil To know an additional revised list of top market players, request a sample report, 2023-2032: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-charge-air-cooler-market/request-for-sample Growth Driving Factors Increasing the acquisition of turbocharger technology to push the market The turbocharger assists in lessening the vehicle's emissions. Utilizing a turbocharger reduces the displacement volume of the cylinder, which lessens the volume of the fuel needed for similar power, thus lessening the vehicle's exhaust emissions. It also escalates fuel efficiency. Therefore, these reasons have advanced the acquisition of turbocharger technology, specifically in passenger cars. The automotive charge air cooler market size is expanding as emission regulations, remarkably those impacting diesel engines, have hastened the integration rate with turbochargers. Stringent fuel economy regulations with outstandingly higher mpg targets and severe restrictions and greenhouse gases that include carbon dioxide from engine exhaust discharge have prompted the shift of a performance segment towards a conventional fuel-saving presence. Automotive charge air cooler market sales are soaring globally; car builders have robustly tracked gasoline engine downsizing and, to a lesser extent, diesel downsizing. Directly Purchase a copy of report with TOC @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/checkouts/19501 Recent developments In September 2022 , Novamax, a leading air cooler and components brand, declared the initiation of its contemporary range of durable and premium quality industrial air coolers. The newly advanced air cooler range comprises several inventive features involving consistent airflow technology, unique padding, and shockproofing. Segmental Analysis The air-cooled segment accounted for the largest market share By product type, the air-cooled segment accounted for the largest market share and is anticipated to sustain its position over the forecast period. This is due to comprehensive utilization in the automotive industry and the many advantages offered by these products, such as design simplicity, improvised dependability, and lesser performance expenditure. Automotive charge air cooler market demand is on the rise due to the easy installation of these charge coolers in several vehicles, and ample cooling makes them an OEM's preferred option and influences the growth of the segment market. The passenger vehicle segment dominated the global market Based on vehicle type, the passenger vehicle segment dominated the global market and will likely record an appreciable growth rate over the coming years. Automotive charge air cooler market trends include the growing pervasiveness of air charge coolers to enhance the efficacy of turbocharged conventional engines and decrease the extent of pollutant emission globally are the key factors propelling the market growth. Inquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-charge-air-cooler-market/inquire-before-buying (Inquire a report quote OR available discount offers to the sales team before purchase.) Automotive Charge Air Cooler Market Report Scope Report Attribute Details Revenue forecast in 2032 USD 6,162.61 Million Market size value in 2023 USD 3,312.84 Million Expected CAGR Growth 7.1% from 2023 2032 Base Year 2021 Forecast Year 2023 2032 Top Market Players Dana Ltd., T.RAD Co. Ltd., Modine Manufacturing Company, Hanon Systems, Banco Products Ltd., Radicon Company Ltd., Kelvin Holding GmbH, Delphi Technologies, Dura-Lite Heat Transfer Products Inc., Valeo, MAHLE GmbH, AKG Group, Sterling Thermal Technology, C, G, & J Inc., and Vestas Aircoil. Segments Covered By Product Type, By Vehicle Type, Be Design Type, By Position Type, By Region Customization Options Customized purchase options are available to meet any research needs. Explore customized purchase options Geographic Overview Increased product and demand for passenger vehicles to drive the Asia Pacific market Asia Pacific held the most significant automotive charge air cooler market share due to increased product and demand for passenger vehicles and many directives linked with emissions, particularly in advanced countries such as China, India, and Indonesia. The Asian countries are generating gainful demand for products, including automobiles, with the appearance of some biggest producers in the world, which is further augmenting the market growth. North America is anticipated to emerge as a speedily growing region in the global market during the expected period, which is mainly propelled by an escalating number of research and development activities in the automotive division to invent highly advanced products and escalated consumer consciousness toward the detrimental effects of greenhouse gas emissions on their health and environment too. Browse the Detail Report "Automotive Charge Air Cooler Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Product Type (Air-cooled and Liquid-cooled); By Vehicle Type; By Design Type; By Position Type; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2023-2032" with in-depth TOC: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-charge-air-cooler-market For Additional Information OR Media Enquiry, Please Mail At: [email protected] Polaris Market Research has segmented the automotive charge air cooler market report based on product type, vehicle type, design type, position type, and region: By Product Type Outlook Air-cooled Liquid-cooled By Vehicle Type Outlook Passenger Vehicles Light Commercial Vehicles Heavy Commercial Vehicles Others By Design Type Outlook Fin & Tube Bar & Tube By Position Type Outlook Integrated Standalone By Region Outlook North America (U.S., Canada ) (U.S., ) Europe ( France , Germany , UK, Italy , Netherlands , Spain , Russia ) ( , , UK, , , , ) Asia Pacific ( Japan , China , India , Malaysia , Indonesia . South Korea ) ( , , , , . ) Latin America ( Brazil , Mexico , Argentina ) ( , , ) Middle East & Africa ( Saudi Arabia , UAE, Israel , South Africa ) Browse More Related Reports: Automotive Ambient Lighting Market: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-ambient-lighting-market https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-ambient-lighting-market Autonomous Mobile Robot Market: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/autonomous-mobile-robot-market https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/autonomous-mobile-robot-market Drone Logistics and Transportation Market: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/drone-logistics-and-transportation-market https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/drone-logistics-and-transportation-market Automotive Traction Motor Market: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-traction-motor-market https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-traction-motor-market Supply Chain Management Market: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/supply-chain-management-market About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for PMR's clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve PMR's diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide PMR's customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to PMR's customers. Contact: Likhil G 30 Wall Street 8th Floor, New York City, NY 10005, United States Phone: +1-929 297-9727 Email: [email protected] Web: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com Follow US: LinkedIn | twitter Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1316207/Polaris_Market_Research_Logo.jpg SOURCE Polaris Market Research A latest research report [115+] pages with 360-Degree visibility, titled "Green Mining Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Type (Surface Mining and Underground Mining); By Technology; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2023-2032" published by Polaris Market Research in its research repository. NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the research report, the global green mining market size was valued at USD 10.96 Billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 27.76 Billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 9.8% during the forecast period. What is Green Mining? How Big is Green Mining Market Size? Report Overview Green mining is chronicled as the application of technologies and mining procedures that are targeted at lowering any probable environmental influence that can take place following the extraction or processing of metals and minerals within a mine. The rapid rise in the demand for the green mining market can be attributed to the improvements in how power is supplied to and used by mines are essential in lessening the environmental influences in mining. The prominent factor propelling the market during the forecast period include government regulation and consciousness toward battling climate change and global warming. Also, an escalation in interest in the context of energy-efficient alternatives and affiliated technology globally offers momentum for the market's growth. Request Sample Copy of Green Mining Market Research Report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/green-mining-market/request-for-sample (The sample of this report is readily available on request. The report sample contains a brief introduction to the research report, Table of Contents, Graphical introduction of regional analysis, Top players in the market with their revenue analysis and our research methodology.) Key Highlights of the Report Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the market based on segmentation involving both economic as well as non-economic factors Provision of market value data for each segment and sub-segment Indicates the region and the element that is anticipated to witness the fastest growth as well as dominate the market Analysis by geography highlighting the intake of products or services in the region as well as indicating the factors that are impacting the market within each region A competitive landscape that incorporates the market ranking of major players along with new product or service launches, partnerships, business expansion, and acquisitions. Some of the Top Companies Are: BHP Billiton Anglo American Tata Steel Limited Jiangxi Copper Dundee Precious Metals Liebherr VALE S.A. Rin Tinto Saudi Arabian Mining Doosan Infracore Shandong Gold Mining Green Twirl Energy Deloitte Australia Wirtgen Group Glencore Safe Green Mining Freeport-McMoRan To know an additional revised list of top market players, request a sample report, 2023-2032: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/green-mining-market/request-for-sample Growth Driving Factors Strict regulations to lessen carbon footprints to push the market The increasing environmental concerns about the pessimistic influence of traditional mining procedures are essentially driving the demand for eco-friendly and viable mining solutions. The green mining market size is expanding as government bodies are implementing strict regulations for lessening carbon footprints during mineral and metal extraction procedures. In agreement with these, several environmental protection agencies have assigned ecological assessment procedures owing to the safe development and reclamation of the mines, reinforcing the need for green mining techniques. The rising shift from fuel-based mining components towards electrical options is also supplementing the market for green mining practices. Green mining market sales are soaring due to the appearance of hybrid diesel-electric loaders for regulating carbon emissions and preserving ecological sustainability is additionally catalyzing the market growth. In agreement with this, the growing adoption of clean and renewable energy sources such as solar and wind for electrifying the mining processes is also pushing the market for green mining. Directly Purchase a copy of report with TOC @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/checkouts/19391 Recent developments In June 2022 , Metso Outotec declared a partnership with Dynamox to use its monitoring platform in their mining and aggregating procedures. With this association, the company is reinforcing its flexibility and digital scalability and offering its customers handy and digital service solutions. Segmental Analysis The surface mining segment is projected to witness the fastest growth Based on type, the surface mining segment is projected to witness the fastest growth at a significant CAGR throughout the forecast period. Green mining market demand is increasing as higher productiveness, lesser production costs, improvised safety, and cost-effective equipment as contrasted to underground mining equipment. Further, open-pit is known to offer a vast scale of production and consists of providing the capacity of options for mass production. The power reduction segment is expected to hold a significant revenue share The power reduction segment is anticipated to hold a significant revenue share based on technology. Green mining market trends include the growing prevalence of procedures linked with lessening solid materials from the standard particle size by cutting, vibrating, and crushing. These are significant factors likely to fuel the demand and growth of the segment market. Inquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/green-mining-market/inquire-before-buying (Inquire a report quote OR available discount offers to the sales team before purchase.) Green Mining Market: Report Scope Report Attribute Details Revenue forecast in 2032 USD 27.76 Billion Market size value in 2023 USD 12.01 Billion Expected CAGR Growth 9.8% from 2023 2032 Base Year 2021 Forecast Year 2023 2032 Top Market Players BHP Billiton, Anglo American PLC, Tata Steel Limited, Jiangxi Copper Corporation, Dundee Precious Metals, Liebherr, VALE S.A., Rin Tinto, Saudi Arabian Mining Corporation, Doosan Infracore, Shandong Gold Mining Co. Ltd., Green Twirl Energy Ltd., Deloitte Australia, Wirtgen Group, Glencore, Safe Green Mining Technology Pvt. Ltd., and Freeport-McMoRan. Segments Covered By Type, By Technology, By Region Customization Options Customized purchase options are available to meet any research needs. Explore customized purchase options Geographic Overview Rapid economic growth to drive the Asia Pacific market Asia Pacific held the largest green mining market share on account of rapid economic growth and a high consumer base and demand for tasteful and agreeable materials, predominantly in advancing nations such as India, China, and South Korea. In addition, the speedy augmentation of feasible practices and the growing need to safeguard the environment with progressive technology is likely to provide affirmatively to the market growth in the region. The European region dominated the global market. The development of the regional market can be credited to continuing digital mine innovation, growing investment, and increasing government reinforcement through several capabilities and development programs. Further, the consolidation of AI in mining equipment which enhanced the efficacy and productivity of miners while guaranteeing their safety, is further boosting the market growth. Browse the Detail Report "Green Mining Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Type (Surface Mining and Underground Mining); By Technology; By Region; Segment Forecast, 2023-2032" with in-depth TOC: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/green-mining-market For Additional Information OR Media Enquiry, Please Mail At: [email protected] Polaris Market Research has segmented the green mining market report based on type, technology, and region: By Type Outlook Surface Mining Underground Mining By Technology Outlook Power Reduction Fuel and Maintenance Reduction Emission Reduction Water Reduction Others By Region Outlook North America (U.S., Canada ) (U.S., ) Europe ( France , Germany , UK, Italy , Netherlands , Spain , Russia ) ( , , UK, , , , ) Asia Pacific ( Japan , China , India , Malaysia , Indonesia . South Korea ) ( , , , , . ) Latin America ( Brazil , Mexico , Argentina ) ( , , ) Middle East & Africa ( Saudi Arabia , UAE, Israel , South Africa ) About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for PMR's clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve PMR's diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide PMR's customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to PMR's customers. Contact: Likhil G 30 Wall Street 8th Floor, New York City, NY 10005, United States Phone: +1-929 297-9727 Email: [email protected] Web: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com Follow US: LinkedIn | twitter Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1316207/Polaris_Market_Research_Logo.jpg SOURCE Polaris Market Research Shares Outstanding: 296,097,011 Trading Symbols: TSX: GGD OTCQX: GLGDF 4,209 g/t AgEq over 1.2m within 19.9m of 436 g/t AgEq at El Favor HALIFAX, NS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - GoGold Resources Inc. (TSX: GGD) (OTCQX: GLGDF) ("GoGold", "the Company") is pleased to release the results of 8 drill holes from the El Favor East deposit within Los Ricos North property. Hole LRGF-22-147 intersected 1.2m of 4,209 g/t silver equivalent ("AgEq") contained within 19.9m of 436 g/t AgEq. Figure 1: El Favor Drill Hole Locations (CNW Group/GoGold Resources Inc.) Figure 2: Favor Long Section (CNW Group/GoGold Resources Inc.) "The holes which we have been drilling in El Favor, along with our large resource and the data which we've collected over the last two years of drilling, will be invaluable when included with our upcoming preliminary economic analysis ("PEA") study," said Brad Langille, President and CEO. "We believe the investment we've made in Los Ricos North will return tremendous value to our shareholders." Table 1: Drill Hole Intersections Hole ID Area / Vein From To Length1 Au Ag AuEq2 AgEq2 (m) (m) (m) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) LRGF-22-142 El Favor 5.4 7.6 2.3 0.38 125.7 2.05 153.9 including 14.5 15.2 0.7 1.17 330.3 5.58 418.2 and 25.9 28.5 2.6 0.49 212.8 3.33 249.8 LRGF-22-143 El Favor 5.3 93.0 84.5 0.24 78.6 1.28 96.3 including 51.0 54.0 3.0 0.72 274.0 4.37 328.0 LRGF-22-144 El Favor East 239.6 284.4 44.8 0.30 110.8 1.78 133.6 including 243.2 260.5 17.3 0.71 225.5 3.71 278.6 including 258.1 259.5 1.4 3.61 1,136.8 18.76 1,407.2 LRGF-22-145 El Favor 17.4 19.0 1.6 0.45 202.0 3.15 236.0 and 26.7 29.1 2.4 0.36 143.5 2.27 170.5 LRGF-22-146 El Favor - Salomon 31.2 36.0 4.9 0.29 99.1 1.61 120.5 and 54.0 60.0 6.0 0.03 119.8 1.63 122.3 LRGF-22-147 El Favor 50.6 51.5 0.9 0.70 202.8 3.41 255.4 and 95.5 103.3 7.8 0.45 189.6 2.98 223.2 including 101.1 102.5 1.4 2.04 609.8 10.17 763.1 El Favor - Salomon 126.7 146.5 19.9 0.59 392.0 5.82 436.3 including 138.5 143.5 5.0 1.97 1,300.1 19.30 1,447.6 including 138.5 139.7 1.2 6.48 3,722.2 56.11 4,208.5 LRGF-22-148 El Favor 49.5 50.4 0.9 0.13 130.5 1.87 140.0 and 149.3 152.8 3.5 0.26 97.2 1.55 116.3 El Favor - Salomon 218.9 237.1 18.3 0.21 97.4 1.51 113.5 including 219.5 228.1 8.7 0.26 142.2 2.16 162.0 including 221.5 222.1 0.6 1.69 969.1 14.61 1,095.5 LRGF-22-149 El Favor 78.5 113.7 35.2 0.18 129.5 1.91 143.1 including 99.1 107.0 8.0 0.43 388.2 5.61 420.4 including 104.3 105.8 1.5 1.41 1,409.5 20.21 1,515.5 1. Not true width 2. AgEq converted using a silver to gold ratio of 75:1 at recoveries of 100% Figure 1: El Favor Drill Hole Locations In early 2022, the exploration team began a systematic stepout drilling program to test the eastern strike extension of the El Favor deposit in the area between Discovery Hole 48 and the underground workings at the Constancia Mine. This area is known as the El Favor East zone, and the mapping and drilling program has extended the presence of mineralization 900m to the east of hole 48 (El Favor East zone discovery hole), as shown in Figure 1. To date, approximately 800m of El Favor East has been drilled showing the strong mineralization. The drill holes in this release were not included in the initial Mineral Resource Estimate for Los Ricos North released on December 7, 2021, hole LRGF-21-094 was the final drill hole included in that resource. Table 2: Drill Hole Locations Hole ID Easting Northing Elevation Azimuth Dip Length LRGF-22-142 585675 2336753 1172 180 -45 54 LRGF-22-143 585675 2336754 1171 180 -53 93 LRGF-22-144 586476 2336711 1345 180 -45 317 LRGF-22-145 585675 2336754 1171 180 -70 123 LRGF-22-146 585376 2336508 1315 180 -45 72 LRGF-22-147 585253 2336549 1317 180 -45 214 LRGF-22-148 585927 2336902 1262 180 -50 341 LRGF-22-149 585155 2336496 1310 180 -50 117 El Favor is located approximately 800 meters along strike to the east of the El Orito deposit. The combined systems cover approximately 2.9km in mineralized strike length over a 3.7km distance. At El Orito, wide zones of precious and base metal mineralization were cut by drill holes at El Orito at elevations between 600 to 900m. The drill holes at El Favor have cut primarily silver-gold mineralization with trace to minor amounts of base metals at a higher elevation in the system, between 1,050m to 1,400m, compared to the semi-massive to massive base metal sulphide mineralization seen deeper in the El Orito deposit. Figure 2: Favor Long Section VRIFY Slide Deck and 3D Presentation VRIFY is a platform being used by companies to communicate with investors using 360 virtual tours of remote mining assets, 3D models and interactive presentations. VRIFY can be accessed by website and with the VRIFY iOS and Android apps. The VRIFY 3D Slide Deck for GoGold can be viewed at: https://vrify.com/companies/gogold-resources-inc and on the Company's website at: www.gogoldresources.com. Los Ricos District Exploration Projects The Company's two exploration projects at its Los Ricos Property are in Jalisco state, Mexico. The Los Ricos South Project began in March 2019 and an initial Mineral Resource was announced on July 29, 2020 which disclosed a Measured & Indicated Mineral Resource of 63.7 million ounces AgEq grading 199 g/t AgEq contained in 10.0 million tonnes, and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 19.9 million ounces AgEq grading 190 g/t AgEq contained in 3.3 million tonnes. An initial PEA on the project was announced on January 20, 2021 indicating an NPV 5% of US$295M. The Eagle Concession was acquired in October 2022 and is adjacent to the Main Area which contains the initial Mineral Resource. The Los Ricos North Project was launched in March 2020 and an initial Mineral Resource was announced on December 7, 2021, which disclosed an Indicated Mineral Resource of 87.8 million ounces AgEq grading 122 g/t AgEq contained in 22.3 million tonnes, and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 73.2 million ounces AgEq grading 111 g/t AgEq contained in 20.5 million tonnes. The Company has a drill program for an additional 100,000 metres of drilling for 2022 in place. Procedure, Quality Assurance / Quality Control and Data Verification The diamond drill core (HQ size) is geologically logged, photographed and marked for sampling. When the sample lengths are determined, the full core is sawn with a diamond blade core saw with one half of the core being bagged and tagged for assay. The remaining half portion is returned to the core trays for storage and/or for metallurgical test work. The sealed and tagged sample bags are transported to the ActLabs facility in Zacatecas, Mexico. ActLabs crushes the samples and prepares 200-300 gram pulp samples with ninety percent passing Tyler 150 mesh (106m). The pulps are assayed for gold using a 50-gram charge by fire assay (Code 1A2-50) and over limits greater than 10 grams per tonne are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code 1A3-50). Silver and multi-element analysis is completed using total digestion (Code 1F2 Total Digestion ICP). Over limits greater than 100 grams per tonne silver are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code 8-Ag FA-GRAV Ag). Quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") procedures monitor the chain-of-custody of the samples and includes the systematic insertion and monitoring of appropriate reference materials (certified standards, blanks and duplicates) into the sample strings. The results of the assaying of the QA/QC material included in each batch are tracked to ensure the integrity of the assay data. All results stated in this announcement have passed GoGold's QA/QC protocols. Mr. David Duncan, P. Geo. is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and is responsible for the technical information of this release. About GoGold Resources GoGold Resources (TSX: GGD) is a Canadian-based silver and gold producer focused on operating, developing, exploring and acquiring high quality projects in Mexico. The Company operates the Parral Tailings mine in the state of Chihuahua and has the Los Ricos South and Los Ricos North exploration projects in the state of Jalisco. Headquartered in Halifax, NS, GoGold is building a portfolio of low cost, high margin projects. For more information visit gogoldresources.com. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT: The securities described herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy of any of GoGold's securities in the United States. This news release may contain "forward-looking information" as defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Los Ricos South and North projects, and future plans and objectives of GoGold, including the intention to undertake further exploration at Los Ricos North, and the prospect of further discoveries there, constitute forward looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information is based on a number of factors and assumptions which have been used to develop such information but which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to, assumptions in connection with the continuance of GoGold and its subsidiaries as a going concern, general economic and market conditions, mineral prices, the accuracy of mineral resource estimates, and the performance of the Parral project. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from GoGold's expectations include exploration and development risks associated with GoGold's projects, the failure to establish estimated mineral resources or mineral reserves, volatility of commodity prices, variations of recovery rates, and global economic conditions. For additional information with respect to risk factors applicable to GoGold, reference should be made to GoGold's continuous disclosure materials filed from time to time with securities regulators, including, but not limited to, GoGold's Annual Information Form. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date of this release. SOURCE GoGold Resources Inc. New Hampshire families to hold more than 80 events during the twelfth annual celebration of school choice CONCORD, N.H., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Gov. Chris Sununu has officially declared Jan. 22-Jan. 28 to be School Choice Week in New Hampshire. During the Week state, city, and county leaders nationwide will join parents, students, and educators to raise awareness of the importance of customizable education options. Gov. Sununu's proclamation comes on the heels of a year of historic school choice expansions nationwide. The proclamation highlights the importance of high-quality education options for the success of New Hampshire kids. It also recognizes the importance of parents knowing all the types of schools available in their state in order to identify the best educational option for their child. "School Choice Week in New Hampshire" is timed to coincide with National School Choice Week, a weeklong national celebration of K-12 education that takes place during the last week of January. The full text of the proclamation can be found on the School Choice Week website at schoolchoiceweek.com/proclamations-2023 . For the Week, parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 88 activities across the state of New Hampshire rallies, in-school celebrations, and a school fair in Manchester all of which aim to spark conversations about the opportunities parents have, or want to have, for their children's education. More than 25,000 events have been independently planned for the week nationwide, raising awareness about school choices of every type. "New Hampshire continues to shine with its enthusiasm and devoted commitment to expanding opportunities for children," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Gov. Sununu's proclamation recognizes how important options are to families across the state, and we are excited about the different activities planned across the state this year." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/new-hampshire SOURCE National School Choice Week WALKING THE TALK: BUILDING A PROSPEROUS TANZANIA THE government has a dream to transform the agriculture sector. And, the dream is fast becoming a reality, thanks to massive infrastructure development, the government is undertaking to uplift the key sector. Tanzania, like other countries in the world, has committed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 - to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. Agriculture has always been a prominent feature on the country's agenda to avert incidence of food and nutrition insecurity and increase the capacity to export the surplus. In a meeting with editors in Dodoma recently, Agriculture Minister Mr Hussein Bashe, expressed the government's resolve and commitment to ensure the country attains its agenda 10/30. The government's aim is to achieve more than 10 per cent growth for the agriculture sector by 2030. Other goals are ensuring food security and supply to cater for domestic demand and export, increasing the value of export of agricultural produce from 1.2 billion US dollars to more than 5 billion US dollars by 2030. The government intends to increase sales of horticulture produce from current 750 million US dollars per annum to 2 billion US dollars per annum by 2030 and this will largely rely on stable and reliable irrigation infrastructures. Minister Bashe underlined the government's zeal to stimulate productive agriculture, which he is well aware will require massive investment in terms of infrastructure and financing. "Productive agriculture is crucial and it requires extensive and sustainable research, reliable agriculture inputs, extension services, suitable infrastructure, financing and effective public, private partnership. "Productivity also demands for reliable capital, guarantees, subsidies, stakeholders' engagement, off takers, support from agriculture ministry and support from financial institutions," said the minister. With this objective among others, the government has come out full throttle to transform agriculture sector with allocation of budget going up four folds, much of the amount going to finance new irrigation projects, provision of fertiliser subsidy, controlling post-harvest loss, construction of warehouses, engage youth in block farming, construction of biological control unit in Kibaha, Coast Region and securing reliable markets for agricultural produce among others. Budget allocation for the agriculture sector has increased to a whopping 954bn/- for the financial year 2022/2023 up from 294bn/-, which was allocated during the previous fiscal year. Minister Bashe insisted that a large chunk of the budget is directed towards improving infrastructures and already some are taking shape, including a state-of-the- art Post-harvest Centre of Excellence for Grains at Mtanana B, Kongwa District in Dodoma and Chinangali Block Farming in the same region. Minister Bashe said that the post-harvest centre project which is being set up just a few kilometres away from Kibaigwa township, well known for maize and groundnuts production, will cost 18bn/- upon completion. This project is being executed as part of the financing the government had received from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP) toward the cost of Tanzania Initiatives for Preventing Aflatoxin Contamination (TANIPAC) Project. The TANIPAC project has three components -- infrastructure development for prevention of pre- and post-harvest contamination, awareness creation and institutional strengthening as well as project coordination and management. According to the minister, lot one of the Mtanana B project includes construction of a market centre, which contains administration building, market administration building, warehouse, market shed building, public toilet, external works and electrical, ICT and mechanical installations. Lot II includes construction of an agro-processing facility, containing milling plant, metal silos, warehouse, workshop building, public toilet, external works as well as electrical, ICT and mechanical installations. Lot III involves construction of a technology transfer centre, comprising a training centre building, hostel, laundry, canteen, residential building, guard house, external works as well as electrical, ICT and mechanical installations. He said such facilities will be set up in various other parts of the country, objective being to check post-harvest loss that currently stands at 35 per cent to 5 per cent by 2030. "This is why the government is investing heavily in infrastructure," he said, adding that the initiative will boost processing of both cash and food crops, so as to enhance the value chain. Currently, the country's capacity to process agricultural produce stands at only 10 per cent but with the initiatives being taken by the government, such figure will swell up to 50 per cent come 2030. He said by working jointly with the private sector, the country expects to cut importation of sugar to zero by 2025 from the current 20 per cent. The same is expected in other products--edible oil, wheat and fertiliser which its importation currently stands at 60, 90 and 90 per cent respectively will drop to 30, 50 and zero respectively by 2030. The same is being done in irrigation projects, where minister Bashe said several schemes are well underway and will soon be accomplished. Over the years, the irrigation schemes in some parts of the country have created the necessary resilience to rainfall variability, mitigation against drought and climate change and enhanced food security through all year crop production. Yet, the country has not explored irrigation to its full potential but this is changing, following the government's commitment to invest heavily in the irrigation sector, to increase agricultural productivity. According to Mr Bashe, budget allocation for irrigation has been increased from 57bn/- in the financial year 2021/2022 to 416bn/- in the current fiscal year. Out of the 416bn/- allocated for irrigation, a total of 361bn/- will be raised from internal sources of revenues, he explained. Explaining the implementation of the ministry's strategic activities in the 2022/2023 financial year, minister Bashe said construction of 25 new irrigation schemes covering 53,234 hectares and 14 dams to harvest rainy water are well on track. The dams will have the capacity of storing 131,535,000 cubic metres. He said by December last year, 21 contracts were signed, of which 18 were specific for irrigation schemes and construction of nine water dams. The projects will cover 12 districts in seven regions and are expected to create 121,059 jobs. The total cost of the projects according to the minister stands at 182bn/- upon completion "The 182bn/- earmarked for the 21 contracts represent 51 per cent of funds allocated in the budget for irrigation during the current financial year," Mr Bashe stated Contractors are already executing the projects, while process to secure contractors for the remaining four irrigations schemes and five dams were on going The minister also said rehabilitation of 20 irrigation schemes out of 30 covering 16,646 ha is ongoing, while at least 1,659 employment opportunities have been created by the projects. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Tanzania Agribusiness By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "Implementation of the irrigation schemes are expected to increase production of rice to 97,300 tonnes of rice," he explained. The minister explained further that implementation of the irrigation schemes in total will cover 26,700 hectares. He added that plans also involved expanding the irrigation area to 8.5 million hectares equivalent to 50 per cent of the total area cultivated in the country by 2030. He insisted, however, that the efforts that the government is taking to transform agriculture is based on attaining long term benefits, meaning the fruits will not be realised in a fortnight. "All the efforts we are making now, to transform this sector are geared towards having a long-term impact in the economy of the country and for farmers. We want to commercialise our small holder farmers, we want them to reap big from their engagement in agriculture, unlike now, where their output and earnings remain meager," insisted minister Bashe. According to the Third Five-Year Development Plan (FYDP-III) the country intends to employ effective application of science, technology and innovation to improve productivity and yields in the agriculture sector. Given the structure of Tanzanian economy, it is undoubtedly that the growth of the sector is directly proportional to socioeconomic development, prosperity and poverty reduction. In order to increase productivity and efficiency in the agricultural sector, FYDP III will focus on the following areas; Crops: The prioritised products are maize, rice, cotton, cashewnut, tea, coffee, tobacco, sisal, palm, wheat, soybean, cocoa, cassava, sugarcane, horticulture and sunflower. DENVER, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Gravity Haus has announced a strategic partnership with EPR Properties , the leading diversified experiential net lease REIT focused on experiential real estate. EPR is providing approximately $64.5 million of debt refinancing for Gravity Haus' current portfolio of six properties. Additionally, EPR and Gravity Haus have entered into a relationship agreement to finance future acquisitions. "Our mission is to enable modern adventure for everyone," said Gravity Haus Founder and CEO Jim Deters, "we've built a category-leading brand, and are delivering a new model of hospitality for our members and guests. Given their track record investing in experiential real estate brands, we are thrilled to partner with EPR, fueling new growth, bringing the Gravity Haus platform to new locations and continuing to build our community of members." Gravity Haus, based in Colorado, is built on an innovative membership model where members can access all Gravity Haus properties, whether they are guests or not, and enjoy modern coworking spaces, gyms; complete with functional and personalized fitness classes; world-class dining options, spas and a community of like-minded members. Members get discounts on hotel stays, on-demand gear rentals and access to events and programming. Non-members are able to book and stay at the hotel properties and enjoy most amenities. In the four years since its inception, Gravity Haus has assembled an impressive portfolio of locations in Breckenridge, Vail, Winter Park, Truckee, Aspen and Steamboat Springs. Looking ahead, the company plans to add new locations in adventure destinations, as well as urban outposts intended to support its growing community of more than 4,500 members. "We've built a great relationship with EPR Properties over several years, and we are excited to work together to build a real estate platform that will continue to deliver new offerings for our members," said Gravity Haus Partner and Chief Investment Officer Bryan Fitzgerald. "Our members are looking for a different way to travel and experience amazing places and this is the next step in helping them do just that." Gravity Haus contributed its existing real estate assets into a newly created platform fund, GH Platform 1. In addition to the existing real estate assets, the new platform has improved access to additional equity capital from existing and new investors which is further supported by the potential for additional capital from EPR to capture the growth opportunity and execute future property acquisitions. The platform fund will continue to acquire properties and manage assets that offer attractive risk-adjusted returns supported by Gravity Haus' operating business model. With a track record of assisting experiential brands scale, EPR is an ideal partner to fuel the next phase of Gravity Haus' growth. "We are excited to launch our partnership with Gravity Haus," stated Greg Silvers, Chairman and CEO of EPR Properties. "Gravity Haus is bringing thought leadership to experiential real estate, and continues to demonstrate strong execution of their concepts. We look forward to growing with them as they expand their brand." About Gravity Haus Gravity Haus is a social club for the modern adventurer. Founded in 2019 with a mission to enable modern adventure for everyone, the company operates six locations across Colorado and California. Guided by the fundamental pillars: Good for you. Good for the planet. An amazing experience, Gravity Haus' offers an unrivaled experience and authentic mountain lifestyle by seamlessly fusing work, play, travel and sustainability. Gravity Haus solves the problems of where to play and where to stay by offering members substantial hotel savings, on-demand outdoor gear access, functional co-working spaces, innovative restaurant concepts, home bases to meet like-minded outdoor enthusiasts, community events, amenities and a variety of expert-led group fitness and recovery programs; all accessed by Gravity Haus members and hotel guests using the easy-to-use Gravity Haus Mobile App . In addition to branded Gravity Haus locations, members also have access to exclusive members pricing at partner hotels in Telluride, Silverton, Crested Butte and Denver, Colorado; Moab, Utah; and Nosara, Costa Rica and travel van rentals. About EPR EPR Properties (NYSE:EPR) is the leading diversified experiential net lease real estate investment trust (REIT), specializing in select enduring experiential properties in the real estate industry. We focus on real estate venues which create value by facilitating out of home leisure and recreation experiences where consumers choose to spend their discretionary time and money. We have approximately $6.6 billion in total investments across 44 states. We adhere to rigorous underwriting and investing criteria centered on key industry, property and tenant level cash flow standards. We believe our focused approach provides a competitive advantage and the potential for stable and attractive returns. Further information is available at www.eprkc.com. SOURCE Gravity Haus Investment Positions Company for Accelerated Growth and Expansion in Highly Fragmented Residential Services Market NEW CANAAN, Conn., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Gridiron Capital, LLC ("Gridiron Capital"), an investment firm focused on partnering with founders, entrepreneurs, and management teams, today announced a growth investment in Legacy Service Partners, LLC ("Legacy" or the "Company"), a leading provider of residential heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC), plumbing, and electrical services. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. Legacy offers replacement, repair, and maintenance services, with a large and growing installed base across the United States. Founded in 2021 by Jake Sloane, Frank Zhang, and Rob Millock, Legacy has united exceptional brands with strong operators and leading local market competitive positions under a national platform. Through its partnership model, Legacy provides guidance and support through a strategic division of functions to integrate local operational expertise with centralized platform scale and sophistication. Legacy provides top-notch customer service to customers across 16 states and 28 brands throughout the U.S. The Company's diversified business mix, premier acquisition engine, and best practice playbooks differentiate Legacy as a uniquely positioned platform. This partnership builds on Gridiron's successful experience working closely with and supporting great residential services and products businesses, including Leaf Home and Erie Home. Legacy CEO and Co-Founder Rob Millock commented, "We couldn't be more excited to partner with Gridiron as we rapidly scale our operations. The Legacy platform is well positioned to continue to distinguish itself as a leader in the residential services space and we look forward to working with the Gridiron Centers of Excellence to build a playbook that will benefit all our partners and end clients." Legacy Co-Founder Jake Sloane added, "We are excited to leverage Gridiron's experience within the residential services space to expand our capabilities and drive this next phase of growth. Our shared strategic goals and vision for Legacy are aligned and this partnership with Gridiron will allow us to continue to enhance our service offerings to meet the needs of our customers and communities." Kevin Jackson, Managing Partner of Gridiron, said, "We are proud to partner with Rob, Jake, Frank, and the entire Legacy team. The Company has a strong employee-centered culture, a shared vision of partnership, and a relentless focus on providing a superior customer experience. We are excited to support a best in-class operator and leverage our successful track record of investing in residential services businesses, an area of Gridiron's Thematic Areas of Expertise, to drive accelerated growth in a highly fragmented market." Bradley Skaf, Principal at Gridiron Capital, added, "With a leading position across attractive geographies, exceptional local brands, a proven M&A track record, and strong leadership, Legacy is a differentiated platform with multiple avenues for continued growth. We look forward to working alongside the Legacy team to continue to grow their existing partner companies and add additional brands under the national platform." Gridiron's legal counsel was Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP and lending partners were Churchill Asset Management (lead left arranger), JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Audax Private Debt, accounts managed by Hamilton Lane and Jefferies Credit Partners. Solomon Partners served as financial advisor and Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal counsel to Legacy Service Partners. About Gridiron Capital Gridiron Capital is an investment firm focused on partnering with founders, entrepreneurs, and management teams and creating value by building middle-market companies into industry-leaders in branded consumer, B2B and B2C services, and niche industrial segments in the United States and Canada. They help transform growing companies by winning together through hard work, partnerships grounded in shared values, and a unique culture that comes from hands-on experience building and running businesses. As a team led by former operators and entrepreneurs, we know what it takes to run successful businesses on a day-to-day basis. About Legacy Service Partners Legacy Service Partners was founded in 2021 to offer entrepreneurs and business owners in the home service sector the ability to realize immediate financial value for the companies they've built, while partnering to continue to grow their business long into the future. Our capital is patient and flexible, and we provide our local partners with dedicated, bespoke support that helps them navigate the changing competitive dynamics of the home services industry. We are guided by our four core values ethics, transparency, alignment, and service and aspire to build the highest quality network of home service companies in the United States. Learn more at legacyservicepartners.com. Contacts Gridiron Capital Jonathan Keehner / Erik Carlson Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher 212-355-4449 Legacy Service Partners Rob Millock | Legacy Service Partners [email protected] SOURCE Gridiron Capital, LLC Limited-Edition Anniversary Models Plus Four New Motorcycles MILWAUKEE, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A year-long celebration of 120 years of Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG) pride and craftsmanship was launched today with the introduction of the first release of new models in the 2023 Harley-Davidson motorcycle lineup, including the CVO Road Glide Limited Anniversary model and six additional limited-edition motorcycles featuring exclusive 120th Anniversary commemorative paint, finishes and details. The 2023 offering from the world's most desirable motorcycle brand includes a refreshed Harley-Davidson Breakout performance cruiser model, the exciting Road Glide 3 trike model, the new Nightster Special middleweight sport motorcycle, and a restyled and blacked-out Freewheeler trike model. Since 1903, Harley-Davidson has pioneered American motorcycle design, technology, and performance, and today marks the beginning of a year-long celebration of Harley-Davidsons 120th Anniversary, said Jochen Zeitz, Chairman, President and CEO of Harley-Davidson. The very limited-edition, super-premium CVO Road Glide Limited Anniversary model celebrates 120 years of craftsmanship with one of the most intricate paint schemes ever offered by Harley-Davidson. The complete line of 2023 Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Genuine Harley-Davidson Accessories and Harley-Davidson MotorClothes gear and apparel are now available at authorized Harley-Davidson dealerships and can be viewed at H-D.com. "Since 1903, Harley-Davidson has pioneered American motorcycle design, technology, and performance, and today marks the beginning of a year-long celebration of Harley-Davidson's 120th Anniversary," said Jochen Zeitz, Chairman, President and CEO of Harley-Davidson. "We're excited to share the first release of 2023 Harley-Davidson motorcycles, with more to come later in the year. 2023 is going to be an unforgettable milestone for the Company, celebrating the history, culture and community of Harley-Davidson we hope you can join us." 120th Anniversary Models The very limited-edition, super-premium CVO Road Glide Limited Anniversary model celebrates 120 years of craftsmanship with one of the most intricate paint schemes ever offered by Harley-Davidson. Panels of Heirloom Red are applied over a base coat of Anniversary Black, each outlined with a bright red pinstripe and a hand-applied gold paint scallop. Subtle details added within the panels portray the head and wings of a soaring eagle. The gold-plated tank medallion depicts an Art Deco rendition of the eagle, an iconic Harley-Davidson design element. Additional details include luxurious Alcantara seat surfaces with gold and red contrast stitching accents, gold-tone powertrain inserts and bright red rocker boxes and pushrod tube collars. Only 1,500 examples of this fabulous motorcycle will be produced for global distribution, each serialized with a laser-etched panel on the fuel tank console. Special 120th Anniversary paint in a different scheme will be offered on six additional limited-production Harley-Davidson models, with color and design combinations inspired by early Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Each features a classic paneled paint scheme with gleaming Heirloom Red as the base color. Panels are outlined with a bright-red pinstripe and filled with a darker Midnight Crimson fade. Additional details include an Art Deco eagle tank medallion, seat covers with red side panels and gold embroidered Harley-Davidson logo, and red fade powertrain inserts. This commemorative design will be offered on the following serialized models: Ultra Limited Anniversary (production limited to 1,300 examples globally) Tri Glide Ultra Anniversary (1,100 examples) Street Glide Special Anniversary (1,600 examples) Road Glide Special Anniversary (1,600 examples) Fat Boy 114 Anniversary (3,000 examples) Heritage Classic 114 Anniversary (1,700 examples) Breakout is Back The Breakout model returns to the North America model line, flexing more muscle and flashing bright new styling over its long-and-lean chopper profile. The muscle is provided by the Milwaukee-Eight 117 V-Twin engine, the pinnacle of torque and displacement in a factory-installed, regular-production Harley-Davidson powertrain that gives the Breakout rider instant bragging rights on the street. Other new features include: A five-gallon fuel tank topped with a low-profile chrome console shaped to lengthen the motorcycle profile and extend riding range. A new handlebar riser and polished stainless steel handlebar is -inch taller than previous model for improved rider reach to controls. A dazzling chrome finish is applied to the rear fender supports, side covers, muffler shields, turn signals, mirrors, Heavy Breather intake, and new 26-spoke cast-aluminum wheels are finished in gloss black with machined details. A Harley-Davidson Softail chassis maintains classic hard tail lines without sacrificing thoroughly modern ride and handling performance. The Breakout model is designed to rule the street with style and power. More Cruise Control and Traction Control Electronic cruise control will be a standard feature for the Fat Boy, Fat Bob, Breakout, Low Rider S models, and remains standard on Low Rider ST and Heritage Classic models. Traction Control System will be offered as a new option for the Breakout, Low Rider S and Low Rider ST models. Traction control is designed to prevent the rear wheel from excessive spinning under acceleration. The rider may turn traction control off using a button on the hand control. Own the Fast Lane on the New Road Glide 3 Trike The all-new Road Glide 3 model combines the advantages of three wheels and a load of hot rod attitude with the comfort, convenience and style of the frame-mounted Road Glide fairing. The rider will enjoy wind-and-weather protection for the long haul plus BOOM! Box GTS infotainment, with Milwaukee-Eight 114 on-demand performance available with a twist of the throttle. The Road Glide 3 is a first for Harley-Davidson, and a new reason to never stop riding. Key Road Glide 3 features include: A frame mounted aerodynamic fairing features triple splitstream vents to help reduce rider helmet buffeting for improved comfort at highway speeds, dual Daymaker LED headlamps for outstanding style and performance, and a low-profile windscreen for hot rod style. The Boom! Box GTS 6.5-inch color TFT touch screen navigation/infotainment system powers two 5.25-inch fairing speakers, and supports standard Bluetooth connectivity to a mobile device that enables hands-free calling (requires Bluetooth headset). Gloss Black cast aluminum wheels with machined details with exposed lug nuts on rear wheels and bobtail rear fenders. Choose menacing black or brilliant chrome finish in each color. Weather-proof rear trunk with top-mounted door; capacity is two cubic feet. Electric reverse gear Trike-specific Rider Safety Enhancements by Harley-Davidson: Cornering Enhanced Electronic Linked Braking, Cornering Enhanced Antilock Braking System (ABS), Cornering Enhanced Traction Control System and Cornering Enhanced Drag-Torque Slip Control System. Exhilarating New Nightster Special Model This new middle-weight contender amplifies the Nightster motorcycle riding experience with a host of style, convenience and technology upgrades. Exhilarating performance is delivered by the Revolution Max 975T liquid-cooled V-Twin engine, tuned to make tremendous torque at low RPM. To minimize overall motorcycle weight the engine is integrated into the vehicle as the central member of the chassis. Key Nightster Special model features include: Passenger pillion and foot pegs enable two-up adventure. Cast aluminum wheels with Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). Handlebar and 5-inch handlebar riser move hand controls two inches up and one inch back to put the rider in a commanding position on the motorcycle. Four-inch round TFT screen displays all instrumentation and infotainment functions managed using buttons on the hand control array. The display supports infotainment generated by the rider's Bluetooth-equipped mobile device. Most infotainment functions also require a Bluetooth headset and speakers worn within a helmet. Using voice commands through the headset, the rider can receive or place calls through a mobile device. Navigation is supplied by the Harley-Davidson App for iOS or Android downloaded into the rider's mobile device. When navigation is enabled, the rider may select a moving map display or turn-by-turn map displayed on the screen, assisted by audio instructions through the headset. Premium Brembo braking components provide outstanding braking feel and performance for added rider confidence. Single front brake with axial-mount four-piston caliper and 320mm rotor. The single rear brake features a floating single-piston caliper and 260mm rotor. A 3.1-gallon fuel cell located below the seat moves the weight of fuel low in the chassis, which lowers the center of gravity for improved handling and easier lift off the side stand. The fuel fill is reached by lifting the hinged locking seat. Selectable Ride Modes: Road, Sport, Rain or create a set of custom modes Rider Safety Enhancements by Harley-Davidson: Antilock Braking System (ABS), Traction Control System, and Drag-Torque Slip Control System. All-LED lighting Standard cruise control and USB charging port. Freewheeler Model Goes Dark The Freewheeler model, an attitude-soaked, cruiser-inspired trike, gets a blacked-out restyle for 2023. The front end, headlamp nacelle, tank console, hand and foot controls, powertrain and exhaust all have black finishes in place of previous bright finishes. The result is a dramatic change in appearance that reinforces this model's raw, hot-rod attitude. New Gloss Black cast aluminum wheels feature exposed rear-wheel lug nuts for performance styling. Rear 18-inch wheels replace 15-inch wheels to give the Freewheeler model a dramatic new stance. Riding on three wheels has never been so awesome. Other features include: Milwaukee-Eight 114 powertrain for on-demand power. Electric reverse gear Mini-ape handlebar for fists-in-the-wind attitude. Classic custom bobtail rear fenders. Weather-proof rear trunk with top-mounted door for easy loading; capacity is 2 cubic feet. Dual mufflers with slash-down tips Trike-specific Rider Safety Enhancements by Harley-Davidson: Cornering Enhanced Electronic Linked Braking, Cornering Enhanced Antilock Braking System (ABS), Cornering Enhanced Traction Control System and Cornering Enhanced Drag-Torque Slip Control System. Harley-Davidson stands for the timeless pursuit of adventure and freedom for the soul. Go to H-D.com to learn more about the complete line of 2023 Harley-Davidson Grand American Touring, Sport, Adventure Touring, Cruiser and Trike motorcycles, Harley-Davidson Certified pre-owned motorcycles, Harley-Davidson Genuine Motor Parts & Accessories, Harley-Davidson MotorClothes gear, and Harley-Davidson Financial Services. About Harley-Davidson Harley-Davidson, Inc. is the parent company of Harley-Davidson Motor Company and Harley-Davidson Financial Services. Our vision: Building our legend and leading our industry through innovation, evolution and emotion. Our mission: More than building machines, we stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure. Freedom for the soul. Since 1903, Harley-Davidson has defined motorcycle culture with an expanding range of leading-edge, distinctive and customizable motorcycles in addition to riding experiences and exceptional motorcycle accessories, riding gear and apparel. Harley-Davidson Financial Services provides financing, insurance and other programs to help get Harley-Davidson riders on the road. Learn more at www.harley-davidson.com. SOURCE Harley-Davidson Motor Company HOUSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Harvest Midstream (Harvest) announced the execution of a long-term agreement with Interior Gas Utility (IGU) to construct a natural gas treating, liquification, and truck loading facility near Deadhorse, Alaska. "We are pleased to be investing in a project that utilizes North Slope gas to bring reliable energy to the interior" Harvest CEO Jason C. Rebrook said, "There is still a lot of work to be done to bring this project to completion, but we are excited about the partnership with IGU that will give Alaskans greater long-term energy security." Harvest Midstream Logo Pending regulatory approvals, construction of the facility is expected to begin in the summer of 2023 and operations starting in late 2024. The facility will be capable of producing 150,000 gallons of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) per day with an ability to expand. "We look forward to continuing our work with IGU," said Andrew Limmer, Vice President of Harvest Alaska. "By finding an innovative way to use a small portion of natural gas already being produced at Prudhoe Bay, we will be able to deliver a reliable source of energy to IGU customers nearly 500 miles away in Fairbanks." The amount of feed gas for the facility will be approximately 15 million cubic feet per day and will be supplied from existing production at Prudhoe Bay. After processing at the facility, the LNG will be transported by truck to Fairbanks and distributed through IGU's existing infrastructure. Harvest Midstream: Harvest Midstream is a privately held midstream service provider based in Houston, TX that operates various crude oil and natural gas gathering, storage, transportation, treatment and terminalling assets across the United States. To learn more visit www.harvestmidstream.com. SOURCE Harvest Midstream Company ST. LOUIS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Hicuity Health, the nation's leader in delivering provider-to-provider telemedicine services, announced the hiring of Young Ahn, MD as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Ahn will join Hicuity's senior leadership team. Dr. Ahn brings to Hicuity Health clinical experience that spans large health system, academic, and entrepreneurial organizations. He has served as Chief of Service and medical director in the Kaiser Permanente system, as Deputy Chief Medical Officer in a private hospital system venture operated in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital, and as clinical assistant professor at UCLA. Dr. Ahn earned his MD at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, trained at Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School in anesthesiology and completed a fellowship in critical care at UCSF. He remains board certified in both specialties. "I am excited to welcome Dr. Ahn as our Chief Medical Officer at Hicuity Health," said Lou Silverman, CEO. "His broad experience and vision support our continuing drive to innovate acute care telemedicine and meet the critical clinical and operational needs of the patients, providers, and organizations that we serve across our multiple service lines. About Hicuity Health For more than 17 years, Hicuity Health has pioneered telemedicine innovations. Serving a diverse range of clients and care venues including health systems, hospitals, and post-acute care facilities with its expanding line of services that includes virtual nursing, tele-ICU, remote inpatient telemetry, virtual sitter, smart device monitoring, and shared services, the company is the leader in delivering expert care on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis to high-acuity patients in high-acuity environments. Our innovation is highlighted by our proprietary HUB workflow management technology platform, which enables seamless care delivery and informs patient management across our 12 clinical care centers that serve our more than 145 hospital partners located in 33 states nationwide. Hicuity Health cares for 160,000 patients per year, delivering enhanced patient outcomes, tangible ROI, and expert clinical support for the bedside teams at our partner hospitals. Caring Edge Insights | LinkedIn |Twitter SOURCE Hicuity Health SAN DIEGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday January 6th, Kneron received the Corporate Innovation and Leadership Award from the Consumer Technology Society (CTSoc) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at its 41st International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), an event adjunct to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held annually in Las Vegas. Concurrently, Frank Chang, Kneron's co-founder and UCLA professor, is also set to receive the IEEE James Clerk Maxwell Medal at an award ceremony that will take place this May in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 2021, Kneron has received several awards from the IEEE that continually recognize the academic and commercial value of the company's work. With members in both industry and academia, the IEEE is the world's largest professional association for electronic and electrical engineers with the stated mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Whereas Kneron co-founders have previously received the 2021 IEEE Darlington Best Paper Award for the theoretical invention of a breakthrough neural processing unit architecture that stands as the core of the company's technology, the 2023 Corporate Innovation and Leadership Award further validates the commercial impact of the invention. According to the IEEE, the award recognizes the company for its "outstanding innovation and leadership in consumer technology." Since the company's founding in 2015, Kneron has become a trusted solution provider for an extensive range of industry applications across automobiles, edge servers, security, and AIoT. In the meantime, Kneron co-founder Professor Frank Chang has been selected as the recipient of IEEE's James Clerk Maxwell Medal in 2023 for further technical breakthroughs contributing to "heterojunction device technology and CMOS System-on-Chip realizations with unprecedented re-configurability and bandwidth." According to Kneron founder Albert Liu: "It is our honor to be recognized yet again by the IEEE within a short span of two years. As always, Kneron will continue striving to enable safer and smarter living by accelerating the proliferation of decentralized, collaborative AI everywhere." About Kneron Founded in 2015 and based in San Diego, Kneron has developed full-stack hardware and software products for AI applications. Kneron's energy-efficient reconfigurable solutions resolve three major problems faced by edge devices running AIlatency, security, and costthereby enabling AI everywhere. To date, Kneron has raised over $140 million, backed by Horizons Ventures , Qualcomm , Foxconn , and more. For further information about Kneron, please visit: https://www.kneron.com/about SOURCE Kneron RADNOR, Pa., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (www.ktmc.com) informs investors that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed against The Gap, Inc. ("Gap") (NYSE: GPS). The action charges Gap with violations of the federal securities laws, including omissions and fraudulent misrepresentations relating to the company's business, operations, and prospects. As a result of Gap's materially misleading statements and omissions to the public, Gap's investors have suffered significant losses. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR GAP LOSSES. YOU CAN ALSO CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK OR COPY AND PASTE IN YOUR BROWSER: https://www.ktmc.com/new-cases/the-gap-inc?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=gps&mktm=r TO VIEW OUR VIDEO, PLEASE CLICK HERE LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 3, 2023 CLASS PERIOD: NOVEMBER 24, 2021 THROUGH JULY 11, 2022 CONTACT AN ATTORNEY TO DISCUSS YOUR RIGHTS: Jonathan Naji, Esq. at (484) 270-1453 or via email at [email protected] Kessler Topaz is one of the world's foremost advocates in protecting the public against corporate fraud and other wrongdoing. Our securities fraud litigators are regularly recognized as leaders in the field individually and our firm is both feared and respected among the defense bar and the insurance bar. We are proud to have recovered billions of dollars for our clients and the classes of shareholders we represent. GAP'S ALLEGED MISCONDUCT After market hours on November 23, 2021, Gap issued a press release announcing it results for the third quarter ended October 30, 2021. In that release, Gap also touted the success of its sales related to its BODEQUALITY launch at Old Navy. On April 21, 2022, Gap announced that Nancy Green, CEO of Old Navy, had stepped down. Following this news, the price of Gap stock fell nearly 18%. Then, on May 20, 2022, The Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that Gap had improperly managed its inventory of plus size clothing at its Old Navy stores, causing material declines in margins and business results. Specifically, the article stated that "Old Navy set out to make clothes shopping more inclusive for women of all body types. It ended up with too many extra-small and extra-large items and too few of the rest, a mismatch that frustrated customers and contributed to falling sales and a management shake-up." Further, the article stated that "Gap warned that sales for the spring quarter would fall short of expectations in part due to troubles at Old Navy[,]" but that "[t]he extended sizes were the culprit, according to current and former employees." Finally, the article indicated that "Old Navy's stumbles don't bode well for Gap Inc. In 2021, Old Navy accounted for 54% of the company's sales and roughly 80% of profits[.]" Following this news, the price of Gap stock fell approximately 7% over the next two trading sessions. Thereafter, on May 27, 2022, Gap admitted that execution missteps in size and assortment of inventory at Old Navy adversely impacted Gap's financial results. Following this news, the price of Gap stock fell nearly 5%. Finally, on July 11, 2022, Gap announced that its President and CEO, Sonia Syngal, was stepping down from her position as President and CEO of Gap and had resigned from the Board of Directors. Following this news, the price of Gap stock fell an additional 5%. WHAT CAN I DO? Gap investors may, no later than February 3, 2023, move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff for the class, through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP encourages Gap investors who have suffered significant losses to contact the firm directly to acquire more information. The class action complaint against Gap, captioned Diaz v. The Gap, Inc. et al., Case No. 1:22-cv-07371, is filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York before the Honorable Diane Gujarati. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE CASE WHO CAN BE A LEAD PLAINTIFF? A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. The lead plaintiff is usually the investor or small group of investors who have the largest financial interest and who are also adequate and typical of the proposed class of investors. The lead plaintiff selects counsel to represent the lead plaintiff and the class and these attorneys, if approved by the court, are lead or class counsel. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff. ABOUT KESSLER TOPAZ MELTZER & CHECK, LLP Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country and around the world. The firm has developed a global reputation for excellence and has recovered billions of dollars for victims of fraud and other corporate misconduct. All of our work is driven by a common goal: to protect investors, consumers, employees and others from fraud, abuse, misconduct and negligence by businesses and fiduciaries. The complaint in this action was not filed by Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP. For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP please visit www.ktmc.com. CONTACT: Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP Jonathan Naji, Esq. (484) 270-1453 280 King of Prussia Road Radnor, PA 19087 [email protected] SOURCE Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP LIAOCHENG, China, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- This is a report from the Information Office of Liaocheng Municipal Government. With the arrival of the Spring Festival in the Year of the Rabbit, Liaocheng has become more and more lively, shopping on the "Yellow River Bazaar", buying foods and special snacks for New Year. After the Laba Rice Porridge Festival, the taste of the New Year will become stronger. On January 9, the "Yellow River Bazaar" in Dong-e County, Liaocheng, Shandong Province was very busy. People from all over the county went to the bazaar, tasted delicious food, and bought New Year's goods, looking for the New Year's flavor hidden in the bazaar. Spring Festival couplets, dried fruits, clothes and hats, vegetables, fruits, meat, seafood, free range eggs and other commodities are all in a wide variety. When going around the bazaar, villagers can always buy cheap and cheerful "New Year goods". Putting up Spring Festival couplets and buying "Fu" characters are the traditional customs of Chinese New Year. Steamed flower cakes and dumplings are indispensable traditional delicacies for Chinese New Year. As the Spring Festival approaches, every family begins to fry lotus root sandwich, steam crispy meat, buy food and prepare a sumptuous feast. People are jubilantly preparing for the Chinese New Year. The intangible heritage highlights in the Year of the Rabbit. As the new year approaches, Dough figurines (national intangible cultural heritage Langzhuang dough figurine project) artists in Langzhuang Village, Bei Guantao Town, Guanxian County, Liaocheng, Shandong Province, China welcome the arrival of the Spring Festival by creating cute and lifelike dough figurines rabbits. During the Spring Festival, Liaocheng also launches various tourism products to create a festive and peaceful holiday atmosphere. Dong-e E-jiao City held the activity of "celebrating the New Year in Shandong Time-honored Ejiao City", which combined with the activities of intangible cultural heritage skill displays, such as writing "Fu" characters, sending Spring Festival couplets, cutting window flowers, etc., to create an atmosphere to encourage shopping and celebrating the New Year. SOURCE Information Office of Liaocheng Municipal Government Michelle Aselta Brings Beauty and Wellness Expertise to Expanding Strategic Communications and Investor Relations Agency NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- KCSA Strategic Communications , an integrated strategic communications firm specializing in public relations, media relations, social media and investor relations, announced the addition of Michelle Aselta as Senior Vice President in its Public Relations practice. As SVP of Beauty and Wellness, Ms. Aselta will build a new division and help expand the service offerings at KCSA. She will focus on innovative communications strategies, as well as thought provoking narratives that will make industry leaders out of brands and their founders, thereby developing strong footholds in an increasingly complex consumer market environment. Michelle Aselta joins KCSA from Jennifer Bett Communications, where she was the Head of Strategy/SVP of Beauty + Wellness, specializing in business development, agency growth, brand development and media strategy. Michelle has more than 18 years of experience and has cultivated and grown brands both in house and at the agency level. "Michelle brings a strong blend of consumer brand strategy and business development," said Todd Fromer, Managing Partner at KCSA. "She has a substantial track record driving agency growth and expansion, as well as catapulting startups and young brands into industry leaders. We are honored to have her join our growing bench of talent; she will be a key asset to the agency and our clients as we continue to provide best-in-class strategic communications and brand evolution." About KCSA Strategic Communications KCSA is a fully integrated communications agency specializing in public relations, shareholder communications and social media, with expertise in cannabis, financial and professional services, technology, healthcare, digital media and energy. Since 1969, the firm has demonstrated strategic thinking and program execution that drives results for its clients in the ever-changing communications and digital landscape. The firm's clients are its best references. For more information, please visit www.kcsa.com . SOURCE KCSA Strategic Communications CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - (NYSE: KFS) Kingsway Financial Services Inc. ("Kingsway" or the "Company") today announced a new investor presentation has been published to the Company's website. The presentation, which provides an overview of the Company's business, industry, financials and other relevant information, can be accessed and downloaded by visiting the investor relations section of the Company's website at: http://bit.ly/3iNeEgz About the Company Kingsway is a holding company that owns or controls subsidiaries primarily in the extended warranty, business services, asset management and real estate industries. The common shares of Kingsway are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "KFS." The Company serves the extended warranty industry through its operating subsidiaries IWS (iwsgroup.com), Penn Warranty (pennwarranty.com), Preferred Warranties (preferredwarranties.com) and Trinity Warranty Solutions (trinitywarranty.com). The Company serves the business services industry through its operating subsidiaries CSuite (csuitefinancialpartners.com), Ravix (ravixgroup.com) and Secure Nursing Service (securenursing.com). The Company serves the asset management industry through its operating subsidiary Argo (argo-partners.com). For Further Information: Hayden IR James Carbonara (646)-755-7412 [email protected] OR Kingsway Financial Services, Inc. Kent Hansen, CFO 312-766-2163 [email protected] SOURCE Kingsway Financial Services Inc. A Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE) Senior lecturer in Geography and Economics Department, Dr Emiliana Mwita has urged the fishermen in Somanga, Kilwa district of Lindi region to use the skills they have to help the society around them and the government in preserving the environment. Dr Mwita made the call recently when she was handing over the Global Positioning System (GPS) to Somanga fishermen to assist their coral planting activities that will enable an increase in fish in the sea. The GPS was handed over after DUCE visited the fishermen's activities in Mwamba Fisi and witnessed the challenges they faced. "We are handing over this GPS to help them in their wealth production activities. They have shown great patriotism for their country and are doing activities to help deal with climate change by volunteering without waiting for the government to do it for them," said Dr Mwita. She noted that before handing over GPS they used it with fishermen when surveying the sea to see the activities of planting corals and found that the GPS is very important. "Today we set where we started and we have been able to go one kilometre from where they go to take the corals and plant them," said Dr Mwita, adding it is a big area so we have seen the challenges, especially when using canoes. She said that the community has become an example because it has been able to know the problems they face and solve them together. She added although they are researchers (DUCE), they have learned a lot and continue to learn more from the Somanga people. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Tanzania Environment By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. On his part, a Somanga fisherman, Mr Hamis Basha who also used to teach other fishermen, commended DUCE for providing them with the equipment as well as funds to enable them to fulfill their duties to fight climate change. He said that they cannot hide the knowledge they have from other people since they want to catch fish and do business. Once they hide knowledge, it may cause the fish from other areas to decline, where they will come to compete with them at Kilwa. "This education really cannot be greedy. For example, if fish are missing from here (Kilwa) or other places, fishermen cannot rest because it is their business. They will be struggling on the islands and other places so that they can earn income and so they can reach Kilwa where we will strive to catch each other. So, we are ready to provide education to our colleagues who want so that fish can reproduce in abundance," Basha said. RAYMORE, Mo., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- URBN, a worldwide lifestyle and retail company with a portfolio of global consumer brands including Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People and Nuuly, is planning to open a new fulfillment center in Raymore, Missouri, pending completion of all state and local approvals and agreements. The new 604,000 sq. ft. facility will be used for its clothing rental brand, Nuuly. Missouri is winning more large-scale projects than ever before, and were carrying that tremendous momentum into 2023." Tweet this URBN's new fulfillment center will be located at the Raymore Commerce Center in Raymore, Missouri. Photo credit: Jacia Phillips | Arch Photo KC "Missouri is a strategic choice for companies like Nuuly that are searching for a location in the middle of America for their expansion projects," said Missouri Governor Mike Parson. "Missouri is winning more large-scale projects than ever before, and we're carrying that tremendous momentum into 2023. We look forward to welcoming URBN to the long list of global powerhouses in Missouri." "Nuuly has experienced significant growth since our launch in 2019," said Dave Hayne, Chief Technology Officer of URBN and President of Nuuly. "We are excited to open our second U.S. fulfillment center to support our next phase of growth, and proud to work with the State of Missouri and the City of Raymore to bring new jobs to the Kansas City region." The planned facility represents $60 million in capital investment and is expected to create 750 jobs within five years in the Kansas City region. "We are excited to begin 2023 with this outstanding win for Missouri," said Subash Alias, CEO of Missouri Partnership. "URBN is a creative and unique worldwide retailer. Companies like URBN can locate facilities anywhere in the world, and they chose Missouri. We are proud of our state's pro-business environment, and we sincerely thank URBN for recognizing the benefits of doing business here and selecting Missouri for this impactful project." Nuuly is a subscription rental clothing service for women who love fashion and exploring how to wear, buy and sell it in ways that are gentler on the planetand their wallets. Nuuly offers 15,000+ styles from 300+ designer and contemporary brands. "As URBN's second fulfillment center in the KC region, the Nuuly facility reinforces our area as a top U.S. logistics hub," said Chris Gutierrez, President of KC SmartPort, an affiliate of the Kansas City Area Development Council. "Global supply chain demand is ever-increasing, and the KC region's central location, robust infrastructure and access to skilled workforce continue to attract leading brands to our region. We are excited to see URBN's ongoing growth here." "Since our initial contact and conversations with URBN, we knew they would be great community partners," said City of Raymore Mayor Kris Turnbow. "We are excited for the opportunity to continue our strong relationship and have them be a part of Raymore's continued success." Missouri is a key location for distribution and e-commerce. Companies in the state are within 600 miles of 135+ million potential customers. Nuuly's new facility is planned to be located at the Raymore Commerce Center, which was developed by VanTrust Real Estate. About URBN Urban Outfitters Inc. (URBN) is a leading lifestyle products and services company which operates a portfolio of global consumer brands comprised of Anthropologie, BHLDN, Free People, FP Movement, Terrain, Urban Outfitters, Nuuly and Menus & Venues brands. The Company's brands offer lifestyle-oriented general merchandise and consumer products through 644 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe, global websites, and catalogs. Free People, FP Movement and Urban Outfitters wholesale sell their products through department and specialty stores worldwide, digital businesses and the Company's Retail segment. www.URBN.com About Nuuly Nuuly is a curated destination for anyone who loves fashion and is exploring how to wear, buy and sell it in ways that are gentler on the planetand their wallets. Customers can choose to engage with the Nuuly brand in multiple waysthrough a monthly rental subscription with Nuuly Rent, which offers 1,000s of styles from more than 300 designer and contemporary brands, including Free People, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie; by buying or selling secondhand through Nuuly Thrift, a peer-to-peer resale marketplace; or both. www.nuuly.com About Missouri Partnership Missouri Partnership is a public-private economic development organization focused on attracting new jobs and investment to the state and promoting Missouri's business strengths. Since 2008, Missouri Partnership has worked with partners statewide to attract companies that have created 31,000+ new jobs, $1.6 billion+ in new annual payroll, and $6 billion+ in new capital investment. Some recent successful projects that led to major investment in Missouri include Accenture Federal Services LLC, American Foods Group, Casey's, Chewy, Inc., James Hardie, Meta, Square, Swift Prepared Foods, USDA, and Veterans United. Media Contact: Janelle Higgins | [email protected] | 314.541.4911 SOURCE Missouri Partnership NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Dechert LLP announced today that accomplished private equity lawyer Nick Marchica will join its New York office as a partner in the corporate group. Mr. Marchica's arrival continues Dechert's U.S. private equity and private credit expansion over the past year, following the additions of David Cosgrove in Charlotte; Nicole Macarchuk in San Francisco; William Robertson, Kevin Zaragoza and En-Min Chua in New York; and including 12 of the firm's 17 recently promoted partners. Nick Marchica Mr. Marchica, whose clients are based throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, has extensive experience advising private equity firms and their funds on domestic and cross-border M&A transactions, divestitures and joint ventures. Prior to joining Dechert, Mr. Marchica was a partner in the private equity practice at another international law firm. He received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law. Mark Thierfelder, firm co-chair elect, chair of Dechert's corporate and securities group and chair of the global private equity practice, said, "Nick's decades of experience advising leading private equity players on complex deals makes him an exceptionally valuable addition to our team." "I am excited to be joining Dechert's elite global practice," added Mr. Marchica. "The firm's impressive depth of talentboth globally and across tax, finance, employee benefits and all of the ancillary areas that are so critical to a leading, global private equity practiceis a perfect complement to both my skill set and my clients' needs." Recognized as an international powerhouse, Dechert's private equity practice has been on a fast-track growth trajectory, advising approximately 300 private equity and other private investment clients worldwide. The firm's global team of more than 350 lawyers represents all types of private equity sponsors and other private investment firms, including sovereign wealth funds and family offices, and their portfolio companies, as well as institutional and corporate investors looking to invest in private equity funds. Dechert LLP's excellence and deep bench in dealmaking has inspired numerous accolades including recognition in The American Lawyer's 2022 Corporate Practices of the Year Awards; and having individual attorneys named as MVP (Law3602022, 2020) and Dealmaker of the Year (ALM-2022) for their roles leading teams in headline-making market transactions. About Dechert Dechert is a leading global law firm with 21 offices around the world. The firm advises on matters and transactions of the greatest complexity, bringing energy, creativity and efficient management of legal issues to deliver commercial and practical advice for clients. SOURCE Dechert LLP Premier mixing brand marks its centennial with highlights of innovation and partnerships CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SPX FLOW, Inc., a leading provider of process solutions for the nutrition, health and industrial markets and the world's largest industrial mixing company, is honored to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Lightnin , one of its premier mixing brands. The milestone marks a century's worth of finding ways to serve its customers through advancements in mixing, from lowering the total cost of ownership to innovating mixer technology. Lightnin team members pride themselves on their expertise and the ability to collaborate with partners to solve ever-evolving mixer technology challenges. Over its history, the Lightnin brand has seen many accomplishments, including introducing cutting-edge technologies like the invention of the flat-bladed radial turbine and the continuous mixing column. "Lightnin is a crucial part of our large suite of mixing brands, which combined has more than 300 years of experience in serving customers," said SPX FLOW President of Mixing Solutions Wendy Malone. "We are proud of the legacy of Lightnin and the impressive history its team members have built." See the accompanying timeline for more on the history of the brand . Here are some of the highlights from the past century: The company started in 1923 when MIXCO was incorporated in New York . The company then introduced the Lightnin brand, named for the quick turnaround in delivering the products to customers. . The company then introduced the Lightnin brand, named for the quick turnaround in delivering the products to customers. In 1944, MIXCO was awarded the coveted Army-Navy "E" Production Award for its mixing technology advancements to support World War II efforts to produce antibiotics, synthetic rubber and high-octane gasoline. The A310 hydrofoil impeller was released in 1981 and quickly became the standard for hydrofoils, which it remains to this day. Several impeller designs were released in the 21st century leveraging the latest computer modeling with final validation via the LDV system. In 2021, Lightnin delivered mixers to pharmaceutical manufacturers at an unprecedented pace that increased the speed of COVID-19 vaccine production. More recently, Lightnin is known for its mixers and agitators serving the challenging waste and water treatment sector, as well as the processing of solvents, fertilizers, foods and beverages, pharmaceuticals and biofuels. "Lightnin and all our mixing brands have built a reputation based on trust, partnership and reliability," Malone said. "We celebrate this milestone while looking forward to plans to offer the same outstanding customer service for years to come." To see the complete, comprehensive timeline of Lightnin's history, click here: https://www.spxflow.com/lightnin/100/ To learn more about Lightnin, visit: https://www.spxflow.com/lightnin/ . About SPX FLOW, Inc. Based in Charlotte, N.C., SPX FLOW, Inc. improves the world through innovative and sustainable solutions. The company's product offering is concentrated in process technologies that perform mixing, blending, fluid handling, separation, thermal heat transfer and other activities that are integral to processes performed across a wide variety of nutrition, health, and industrial markets. SPX FLOW has operations in more than 25 countries and sales in more than 140 countries. To learn more about SPX FLOW, please visit www.spxflow.com . Media Contact: Melissa Buscher, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer [email protected] SOURCE SPX FLOW, Inc. New Open Metaverse Foundation sets the stage for practical, powerful progress in building immersive, global, scalable worlds, together SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization focused on fostering innovation through open source, has established the formation of the Open Metaverse Foundation (OMF) with a mission to provide a collaboration space for diverse industries to work on developing open source software and standards for an inclusive, global, vendor-neutral and scalable Metaverse. New Open Metaverse Foundation sets the stage for practical, powerful progress in building immersive, scalable worlds. Tweet this Open Metaverse Foundation. Many thought-leading organizations and open source communities have joined as founding members to support the effort to bring this vision to life. These include the ChainHub Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Futurewei, GenXP, Guangdong Digital Industry Research Institute, Hyperledger Foundation, LF Edge, LF Networking, OpenSDV, Open Voice Network and Veriken, among others. Together, these constituents bring years of knowledge and experience to address initiatives spanning artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and edge computing, digital assets, transactions, identity, networking, simulations, security and more. "We're still in the early days of the vision for an open Metaverse, and we recognize that many open source communities and foundations are working on vital pieces of this iterative puzzle," said Royal O'Brien, executive director of the OMF. "While the challenges may seem daunting, I'm energized by the opportunities to collaborate with a broad, global community to bring these pieces together as we transform this vision into reality." OMF Foundational Interest Groups The Open Metaverse Foundation is organized into Foundational Interest Groups (FIGs) that enable a focused, distributed decision structure for key topics. FIGs provide targeted resources and forums for the identification of new ideas, getting work done and onboarding new contributors. They are comprised of members from specific disciplines committed to advancing projects or scalable technologies within their topic as well as ensuring that code ownership of every identifiable subpart of projects (e.g., GitHub.org, repository, subdirectory, API, test, issue, PR) is addressed and managed. The eight Foundational Interest Groups of OMF are: Users Transactions Digital Assets Simulations and Virtual Worlds Artificial Intelligence Networking Security and Privacy Legal and Policy Learn more about the Open Metaverse Foundation by visiting the website or contacting us. Connect with the community on Discord, and join the community at upcoming events, including the Open Source Summit North America, May 10-12 in Vancouver. Supporting Quotes: Taylor Dolezal, Head of Ecosystem, Cloud Native Computing Foundation "The Metaverse brings exciting possibilities in revolutionizing the way we interact and engage, but with it comes immense technical challenges. Through the power of open innovation, the Open Metaverse Foundation will foster collaboration and community-driven development to realize this promise. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation looks forward to contributing its deep expertise to evolve cloud technologies and infrastructure in tackling these challenges. Together, we'll build a truly open, accessible virtual world, where anyone can participate." Anni Lai, Head of Open Source Operations and Marketing, Futurewei "Our industry needs innovation through interoperability driven by open source and open standards to realize the promise of the Metaverseif we're to build something that benefits everyonejust as was the case with the early architecting of the Internet. Futurewei believes in the power of open source and open collaboration, and we're excited to engage in building the Open Metaverse Foundation community to extend initiatives we already have underway in XR, Web3, mobile gaming and more." Vince McMullin, CEO, GenXP "The Metaverse isn't some expensive VR headset. It isn't NFTs. It isn't even Web3. The Metaverse is an open set of data standards that enables shared, accessible, persistent 3D experiences. The Open Metaverse Foundation provides a vehicle for industry-wide, community driven collaboration to develop open standards and open source implementations for an open Metaverse. As leaders in delivering tools and technology, we enable new and extraordinary ways to experience, engage and excite our users through interactive, immersive 3D experiences. GenXP is excited to join the Foundation to help make these experiences possible." Daniela Barbosa, Executive Director, Hyperledger Foundation and General Manager, Blockchain and Identity, Linux Foundation "We are just starting to see the potential of the Metaverse. The impact of combining the Internet of place and value will be enormous if we work together to build open, scalable, decentralized technologies. The OMF brings the proven Linux Foundation open development model to this complex but exciting new opportunity and gives the companies and developers shaping it a neutral home to fulfill their vision. Hyperledger Foundation's distributed ledger and digital trust expertise and technologies will be critical building blocks for the effort." Ranny Haiby, CTO, Networking, Edge & Access Technologies, Linux Foundation "The Metaverse is presenting unprecedented challenges for edge computing and networks. We expect the Open Metaverse Foundation to become the platform for defining the required technological solutions. Industry-wide collaboration is the only way to embark on such complex endeavors. The LF Edge and Networking communities are well suited to deliver the open source technologies defined by the Open Metaverse Foundation. We are looking forward to close collaboration with the new Foundation and foresee many potential synergies between it and our projects." Jon Stine, Executive Director, Open Voice Network "At its core, the Open Metaverse Foundation is all about bringing a diversity of industry experts and open source communities together to transform the concept of the Metaverse from promise to reality, while ensuring it delivers an amazing, immersive experience for all users. This is about optimal choice, a rich development ecosystem, safety and ease of use. That's why the Open Voice Network a Linux Foundation community developing open standards and ethical use guidelines for the inevitable interface for the metaverse, conversational AI is delighted to link arms with the Open Metaverse Foundation." Chris Clason, Founder and CEO, Veriken "The Metaverse will drive the demand for innovative digital products while providing the frameworks to connect creators directly with consumers, setting the stage for a disruptive opportunity not seen since the early days of the Internet. Veriken is excited to work with the Open Metaverse Foundation to create the open standards for digital commerce and property ownership necessary to accelerate the initial adoption of the Metaverse and protect the long term interests of all stakeholders, including consumers, individual artists and enterprises." About the OMF The mission of OMF is to foster a strong community of developers, engineers, academics and thought leaders who will solve the difficult challenges of building the open Metaverse through open source software and open specifications that enable portability and interoperability for an open, global, scalable world, which supports interactive and immersive experiences for the benefit of any individual or industry. For more information, please visit us at https://www.openmv.org/. About the Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDX, OpenChain, and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org. Contact: Noah Lehman, [email protected] SOURCE The Linux Foundation Peer support provider connects humans to humans to improve employees' mental wellness, based on shared life experiences DALLAS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Listeners On Call, the Dallas-based HR technology company that offers individualized, empathetic peer support for millions of employees, announced today that it has rebranded as Kindly Human. The Kindly Human mental well-being platform provides 24/7 preclinical support to help employees navigate the life stressors that so many people experience, such as financial, relationship, work and health concerns. Employees can quickly connect with a supportive trained peer without having to navigate a complicated, time-intensive benefits program or health care system. Most importantly, Kindly Human matches users with supportive peers who have similar life experiences and truly understand the situation each employee finds themselves in. "We discovered that most employees are looking for support within 24 hours," says CEO and co-founder Cole Egger. "Yet our nation's shortage of therapists has resulted in delays of 48 days or more for employees seeking clinical care. In response to that crisis, we've designed Kindly Human to offer employees the preclinical support they need immediately. At Kindly Human, it's all about humans helping humans and giving employees the fastest path to support through shared connection." Kindly Human has expanded its strategic direction to help employees navigate the right next steps for them, no matter what life challenges they face, from becoming a new parent to workplace stress to struggles with loneliness. Kindly Human's platform can easily integrate with a company's existing employee assistance program and well-being resources, including referring employees to counseling, crisis services and telehealth care when needed. In addition, Kindly Human offers solutions to help employers address Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives by providing peer listeners who share an employee's unique cultural and social context. Kindly Human also allows employers to incorporate peer listeners from their own unique populations, such as first responders, veterans, caregivers, college students, teachers and other affinity groups. "Eighty-four percent of employees we surveyed agreed that talking with a peer was a healthy starting point in dealing with personal issues," says Egger. "Ninety-four percent of employees said it was important to talk with someone like themselves. Unlike other technology solutions, Kindly Human is built around true human connections and engagement with peer listeners chosen by the employee themselves." About Kindly Human Kindly Human is the leading provider of peer-based mental well-being solutions for employers. Through authentic, human conversations and on-demand technology, our platform connects individuals dealing with everyday life struggles to empathetic, professionally trained peers who share the same experiences and cultural characteristics. Our members have access to 24/7 preclinical support, helping humans in the moment of need without waiting or navigating a complicated system of scarce mental health resources. For more information, visit kindlyhuman.com and follow us on LinkedIn . MEDIA CONTACT: Paul Maccabee, 612-366-5287 SOURCE Kindly Human Joining the cohort in Cambridge, MA, Perceiv AI will receive direct funding and mentorship from Merck, Northpond Ventures, and McKesson Ventures to advance its prognostic platform focused on multimodal data in neurodegenerative diseases. BOSTON, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Perceiv AI announced that the company has been selected by Merck ( NYSE: MRK ) for the inaugural Merck Digital Sciences Studio (MDSS) cohort, along with eight other early-stage biomedical startups from a pool of 152 applicants. The program started in November to fuel innovative digital technologies for drug discovery and development. "Being selected for the Merck MDSS program is a major accomplishment for Perceiv AI and a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team. This partnership is a huge step forward for us and we are grateful for this opportunity," said CEO and co-founder Dr. Christian Dansereau. "We are excited to work alongside such a renowned and respected company in the healthcare and life sciences industry and to use our cutting-edge AI technology to make a real impact in the field to advance pharma R&D innovation for clinical development, patient identification, clinical trial optimization, and trial de-risking." MDSS is a collaboration between Merck and the New Jersey Innovation Institute, with investments from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Northpond Ventures, and McKesson Ventures. The accelerator provides direct investment from Merck, access to powerful Azure Cloud computing, and technology support provided by Microsoft for Startups. Additionally, participating companies are provided opportunities to collaborate with discovery and clinical scientists at Merck for pilots, where appropriate. Perceiv AI intends to expand upon its proprietary multimodal prognostic platform ForesightTM through the program. The ForesightTM platform, which integrates longitudinal clinical data with imaging and genetics to forecast disease progression, supports the development of prognostic biomarkers for neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, for clinical trials and clinical use. Perceiv AI joins Andson Biotech , Deep Forest Sciences , Gesund.ai , Magna Labs , IndyGeneUS AI , SciMar ONE , Stem Pharm , and Pepper Bio in the 10-month accelerator program. The program will begin with the company's exploration of where its technology can augment Merck's existing focus areas with the goal of transitioning into a pilot project with Merck. This announcement comes on the heels of Perceiv AI's closing of its financial round at the end of last year. Along with strategic partners and investors like the one in this program, Perceiv AI will be able to further develop its ForesightTM platform. To learn more about Perceiv AI, please visit www.perceiv.ai . About Perceiv AI Perceiv AI is an AI-driven precision medicine company developing a powerful multimodal prognostic platform to forecast disease progression in age-related diseases like Alzheimer's. By providing a window into individual patients' disease progression, Perceiv AI aims to accelerate and de-risk the development of new therapies while enabling timelier diagnoses. About Merck Merck, also known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, strives to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company through a diverse and inclusive global workforce. For over 130 years, Merck has been using the power of leading-edge science to deliver innovative health solutions to save and improve the health and wellness of people and animals worldwide with important medicines and vaccines. About New Jersey Innovation Institute New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), a 501c3 subsidiary of NJIT, combines the resources of the university, strong industry and government relationships, and proven methods to drive innovation and deliver transformative products and services that make a direct impact on the economy and the health and welfare of its participants. To achieve this, NJII is organized into four divisions that help turn ideas into workable solutions: healthcare, entrepreneurship, defense and homeland security, and professional and corporate education. More at njii.com . About Northpond Ventures Northpond Ventures is a multi-billion-dollar science-driven venture capital firm based in Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; and Bethesda, MD. Northpond has consistently been named one of the most active lead life science investors by both Crunchbase and Silicon Valley Bank. It is deeply engaged in the academic ecosystem, having founded The Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at Harvard's Wyss Institute; launched the MIT-Northpond Program - Advancing Life Science & Engineering Innovation; and sponsored a prize for women entrepreneurs at MIT. It has led or co-led over 60 financings over the past several years and sits on the board of the vast majority of these businesses. Learn more at npv.vc . SOURCE Perceiv AI PERTH, Australia, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The global risk environment for mining companies improved marginally last year, despite concerns about potential tax hikes and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a new report by Mining Journal Intelligence (MJI). The MJI World Risk Report 2022, featuring MineHutte ratings, showed a slight improvement in its global Investment Risk Index (IRI) score, to 60 from 59 in the 2021 report. The IRI is built on a combination of 10 'Hard Risk' metrics taken from established risk-related indices including MineHutte's Regulatory Risk Ratings and Corruption Exposure Risk index and an accompanying 'Perceived Risk' score, from the MJI's World Risk Survey of over 800 mining professionals. A higher score means lower risk. The metrics fall within five categories: Legal, Governance, Social, Fiscal and Infrastructure. This year's report includes scores from 109 jurisdictions. The marginal improvement in 2022 follows previous declines in global IRI scores from 61 in the inaugural World Risk Report in 2017 and a high of 62 the following year. The figures were 61 in 2019 and 59 in 2020. "Overall risk faced by mining companies globally has improved marginally, in part driven by a more stable economic backdrop following global COVID-19 lockdowns and a better average energy security performance among the 109 jurisdictions," Mining Journal Intelligence editor Sam Williams said. "But there is some way to go for risk to recede to the levels seen prior to the start of the pandemic." TAXES, UKRAINE WAR One positive for the sector was in corporate and mining-specific taxes, which make up two of the three metrics measured in the Fiscal category. While many governments have threatened to increase tax revenues from mining in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid continued strong prices of many metals, little changed in the 2022 report, with scores for both metrics increasing by a point to 72 and 66, respectively. "Mining companies may be relieved that despite much debate globally, tax and royalty hikes appear to have been largely avoided, although this does not rule out higher taxes in the coming years," Williams said. While Russia's invasion of Ukraine will have a big impact on risk within those jurisdictions, some metrics measured including those relating to conflict and political stability reflect the reality prior to the start of the war. The full effects of the invasion will be fully reflected in the in the 2023 World Risk Report, due out later this year. Canada was the highest ranked region in the report, with an average score of 78, followed by the US with 73. Mining Journal Intelligence is part of by UK-based Aspermont, publisher of the Mining Journal and other titles. Contacts For research enquiries or commentary, please contact Sam Williams, editor, Mining Journal Intelligence: [email protected] For subscription enquiries, please contact +44 (0) 208 187 2299 or +61 8 6263 9100 About Aspermont Aspermont (ASX: ASP) (FRA: 00W) (TDG: 00W) is the leading media services provider to the global resource industries. For more information please see: www.aspermont.com. SOURCE Mining Journal Intelligence Mitsubishi Motors Canada launches verified customer reviews on their website using Feefo's award winning reviews and customer insight technology LONDON and BOSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada, Inc. has selected Feefo, a leading global customer reviews and insights platform, to transform their product reviews in Canada. The reviews solution is now live in both English and Canadian French on www.mitsubishi-motors.ca and will allow potential owners to explore the most trusted source of information about the company's outstanding range of vehicles the opinions of verified Mitsubishi owners. Feefo's AI-powered and totally transparent customer feedback platform provides Mitsubishi Motors with a next-generation system fit for a fast-changing global automotive market. The company will use the Feefo platform to customise how it requests feedback from genuine customers, promoting their honest and transparent ratings next to each model on their websites. Insight around customer sentiment which is generated from this will be used to drive product and service enhancements. "In our 20th year in Canada, we are building a stronger brand from product rejuvenation, a digital shopping experience through ClickShop, to an enhanced dealer training. At the heart of our transformation is building a better customer experience and the Feefo platform helps us do that with transparency and credibility." Steve Carter, Director of Marketing Mitsubishi Motors are utilising Feefo's Smart Themes tool which gives customers immediate access to the most relevant feedback insights as they decide which vehicle or specification to buy. The tool provides Mitsubishi Motors with critical insights, revealing trends in what purchasers think about any aspect of a vehicle. Feefo's CEO, Tony Wheble, says "We are excited to be partnering with Mitsubishi Motors Canada. The automotive sector is a hugely important sector for us and the fact that Mitsubishi Motors Canada trust us to manage their customer reviews is a fantastic endorsement of our capabilities. Our cutting-edge platform will provide Mitsubishi Motors with verified and independent customer feedback and insight which both they, and their customers, can trust." Feefo provides businesses with the tools to collect real, purchase-verified reviews and data-driven insights that build closer relationships with customers. Feefo ensures that all feedback is authentic by matching it to a legitimate transaction, in order to increase consumer confidence and enable businesses to make smarter business decisions from fast access to real customer insights. Get in touch with us today to find out how verified reviews could benefit your business. Media contacts: Jenlynn Thompson [email protected] +1 617-410-9748 About Feefo Feefo is a leading global customer reviews and insights platform on a mission to empower its clients to fully understand how their customers experience their product or service. The Feefo suite of software, combined with its technical solutions expertise, enables its clients to gain a deeper understanding of customer sentiment, behaviour and intent, empowering them with insights to make better business decisions and improve their return on investment. With 96% of customers relying on reviews to purchase, Feefo also creates trust between consumers and businesses by adopting a unique approach to only collect verified reviews from real people. Feefo's agile platform is trusted by more than 6,000 brands globally who rely on it to supply smart insights that transform their customer experiences and ultimately see better outcomes. Contact us: Call +44 203 362 4209 Email: [email protected] About Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada, Inc. Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada, Inc. (MMSCAN) is the sales, service, parts and marketing arm for Japan's Mitsubishi Motors. MMSCAN has a product range consisting of the sub-compact hatchback Mirage, RVR sub-compact crossover, Eclipse Cross, the all-new Outlander, and Outlander PHEV. MMSCAN supports its dealerships with a head office team and parts distribution centre both located in Mississauga, Ontario. Established in 2002, MMSCAN celebrates 20 year strong in 2022. The company and its dealerships employ over 1,200 people in communities large and small. SOURCE Feefo Holdings Solution Based Innovation & Creative Tent International Partner to Offer Expeditionary Medical Capabilities LAS VEGAS and VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. , Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Solution Based Innovation and Creative Tent International announced today a partnership to produce the most advanced, fully-integrated mobile hospital solution on the market that supports Department of Defense and Department of State missions. CTI and SBI partnership to provide deployable mobile hospitals to our U.S. military, federal agencies and allies. Tweet this CTI-SBI Team L-R: Micah Butler, CTI Project Mgr.; Paul Wilcox, CTI VP of Sales; Jacob Furbee, CTI CEO; Brad Stewart SBI CEO; Dr. Tim Coakley, SBI CSO CTI & SBI announce strategic partnership to deliver innovative, fully integrated and scalable mobile hospitals to our U.S. military, federal agencies and allies. "We're excited to integrate our expeditionary medical capabilities with Creative Tent International," said Brad Stewart, CEO of Solution Based Innovation, LLC. "Our expeditionary medical solutions create a capability within the deployable medical space that currently doesn't exist. With CTI and SBI working collaboratively, we can design, develop, integrate, deliver, and train personnel how to use a true turnkey solution." "CTI is excited to welcome SBI as our partner to deliver expeditionary medical capabilities to our customers. This partnership complements our current product portfolio and will enable us to better serve our large, diverse customer base, aligning with our purpose as an organization to provide shelter to the world," said Jacob Furbee, CEO of Creative Tent International. For the last two decades, CTI has led the engineered fabric structure industry in providing the warfighter with rapidly deployable, modularly configured shelters that deliver safe, reliable turnkey solutions for every mission including billeting and storage to sunshades and hangars for aircraft, from the MH6M up to the C-5 Super Galaxy. With SBI's experience deploying UN Level 2 mobile hospitals, the companies will partner to provide engineered, proven structures and shelters systems for use in extreme, austere environments to the defense, aerospace, humanitarian, and healthcare markets. The SBI-CTI partnership adds the capability to integrate customized container systems, like the MeDConeX; expands its LAMS offerings; and creates a larger U.S.-based manufacturing footprint enabling both companies to better serve its customers. About Solution Based Innovation Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Va., SBI is widely recognized for its industry-leading experts that founded and created the first expeditionary mobile hospitals. With real world experience in military and civilian medicine, SBI's portfolio includes over 20 fully integrated UN Level 2 mobile hospitals currently in use around the world that were designed, built, and deployed by SBI personnel. SBI's fully integrated medical solutions include proven healthcare products designed for field use, integration of soft- and hard-sided shelters, austere power management and training. For more information, visit www.sbiva.com. About Creative Tent International Headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, CTI is a proud ISO 9001:2015 certified, American manufacturer. CTI is a global leader and premier provider of engineered, tensioned fabric structures and shelter systems that range from small to extra large and beyond for use and deployment in extreme and austere environments across defense, aerospace, and commercial market segments. CTI designs, engineers, manufactures, sells, and maintains superior, high-tension fabric, semi-permanent, clear-span structures. CTI's shelter systems actively serve as mobile dining facilities, warehouses, maintenance facilities, classrooms, medical facilities, offices, and training/fitness facilitiesall constructed of the highest-grade aluminum and heavy-duty woven coated fabric. For more information, visit https://creativetent.us. Media Contact: Ramona Layne Mueller +1-214-803-0526 mobile Solution Based Innovation 2641 Quality Court Virginia Beach, VA 23454 www.sbiva.com SOURCE Solution Based Innovation LISLE, Ill., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Tobias Glitterstam has been named Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Navistar. This new role will report to Mathias Carlbaum, President and CEO. As a member of Navistar's executive leadership team, Glitterstam will be the steward for strategy implementation and he will accelerate sustainability efforts. He will lead corporate strategy, communications, and government relations, as well as a newly established team for mobility solutions. Mobility solutions will capture market opportunities in the future of zero-emissions transportation, with an immediate priority on charging solutions. The team will emphasize Navistar's position within the transportation value chain, as well as define the company's role in the autonomous ecosystem. Glitterstam will be the steward for strategy implementation and accelerate sustainability efforts for the company. Tweet this "Tobias has led market expansion and strategic business growth initiatives with companies across North America. His background in green energy, sustainable commercial transportation and logistics solutions makes him well-suited to guide the Navistar team in implementing our strategy and furthering our progress on our journey to accelerate the impact of sustainable mobility," said Carlbaum. Most recently, Glitterstam served as Vice President and Head of the Americas Region for Business Sweden and the Swedish Trade Commissioner to the U.S. He consulted enterprises on new markets and segments, strategic innovation, market partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. In addition, he steered government affairs, investment programs and business promotion efforts, in areas such as Smart Cities, Industry 4.0, future transportation and sustainability. Prior to Business Sweden, Glitterstam spent 16 years at the global consulting firm Accenture. During this time, he served in many roles including as Managing Director, Management Consulting with a focus on the communications and technology industry. He has a track record of leading complex transformation programs and improvement efforts in several disciplines, including go-to-market, product management, sales, supply chain and aftersales. "I am inspired by and aligned with Navistar's sustainability vision and can see that the team is well-positioned to accelerate change," said Glitterstam. "I'm looking forward to playing an important role in the transformation of the historic International brand and nearly 200-year-old company." Glitterstam holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Lund School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Sweden. About Navistar Navistar, Inc. ("Navistar") is a purpose-driven company, reimagining how to deliver what matters to create more cohesive relationships, build higher-performing teams and find solutions where others don't. Based in Lisle, Illinois, Navistar or its subsidiaries and affiliates produce International brand commercial trucks and engines, IC Bus brand school and commercial buses, all-makes OnCommand Connection advanced connectivity services, and Fleetrite, ReNEWeD and Diamond Advantage brand aftermarket parts. With a history of innovation dating back to 1831, Navistar has more than 14,500 employees worldwide and is part of TRATON SE, a global champion of the truck and transport services industry. Additional information is available at www.Navistar.com. SOURCE Navistar International Corporation The World Economic Forum (WEF) supported by more than 45 partners yesterday launched the Giving to Amplify Earth Action (GAEA), a global initiative to fund and grow new and existing public, private and philanthropic partnerships (PPPPs) to help unlock the $3 trillion of financing needed each year to reach net zero, reverse nature loss and restore biodiversity by 2050. A statement from the ongoing WEF in Davos, noted that with the energy and cost of living crises, the ambition of steering the planet towards a 1.5-degree Celsius warming pathway hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, the recent agreement at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP15) in Montreal to conserve 30 per cent of all earth and sea looks bold, but fragile in the face of a rising biodiversity crisis. Current funding is slow and inadequate, and a new approach is needed to get capital flowing. Philanthropic giving can address this, with unique qualities not found in other financing: it is nimble, more tolerant of risks and is driven by values and long-term outcomes rather than quarterly returns. "We are at a tipping point in our efforts to put the planet back on track to meet our climate ambitions. To reach the speed and scale required to heal the Earth's systems, we need to unlock not only private capital and government funds, but also the philanthropy sector as a truly catalytic force to achieve the necessary acceleration," Founder and Executive Chairman, WEF, Klaus Schwab said at the forum. It revealed GAEA's growing body of philanthropic partners to include: Active Philanthropy, the African Climate Foundation, Andre Hoffmann Family Office, the Arab Foundations Forum, Bezos Earth Fund, BMW Foundation, Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the Clean Air Fund, Climate Leadership Initiative, ClimateWorks Foundation, Eleven Eleven Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Growald Climate Fund, IKEA Foundation, Laudes Foundation, Noa's Ark Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Pearl Initiative, Philanthropy Asia Alliance (by Temasek Trust), Philea, The Rockefeller Foundation, Trottier Family Foundation, United Nations Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, WINGS, Workday Foundation. Individuals, academic institutions, companies and public sector organisations supporting the initiative include: Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Capital for Climate, Carbon Direct, Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge, Climate-KIC, Crescent Enterprises, Government of Egypt, HCLTech through their chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra, McKinsey Sustainability, Ocean14, Prince Maximilian von und zu Liechtenstein - Chairman of the Board LGT Group, Salesforce, Singapore University for Social Sciences, Stanford University Center for Ocean Solutions, Strategic Philanthropy Initiative at NYU Abu Dhabi, UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, We Mean Business Coalition, World Association of PPP Units & PPP Professionals. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Climate By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "Philanthropic financing for climate mitigation has risen in recent years, but still represents less than two per cent of total philanthropic giving, estimated at $810 billion in 2021. Greater philanthropic funding for climate and nature will support, not detract from, existing social priorities. "As recently noted by Rajiv Shah, President, The Rockefeller Foundation: "Climate change poses a singular threat to humanity ... we must directly confront climate change, even as we redouble efforts in our traditional program areas: health, power, food, and equity." Julie for All to partner with over 20 organizations nationwide, providing access to the more than 19 million women living in contraceptive deserts across the United States NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- New women's healthcare company, Julie Products, Inc. , today announced a donation of approximately 200,000 units of emergency contraception to a national network of partners . The donation is the single largest in the United States and part of Julie for All, Julie's inaugural donation program focused on increasing access to emergency contraception. The shipments are being sent to Julie's more than 20 local, state, regional, and national organizations creating a partner network of community health clinics, domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, sexual assault prevention organizations, mobile clinics, and more with the goal of reducing and eventually eradicating barriers to access. Julie Products, Inc. announces a donation of 200,000 units of emergency contraception to a national network of partners. Tweet this "Julie's mission is to provide an emergency contraception option that is easy to find, easy to take, easy to relate to, and easy to understand - and Julie for All is a direct reflection of that," said Amanda E/J Morrison, Julie co-founder and President. "We hope that Julie for All will create a world where access to sexual health is the standard, not the exception." Over 19 million women in the U.S., who are in need of publicly funded contraception, live in contraceptive deserts. Contraceptive deserts are regions where there is a lack of reasonable access to the full range of contraceptive options. Of these 19 million, approximately 1.2 million live in a county without a single health center offering the full range of methods. This is according to research from Power to Decide . The new healthcare company pledges to donate one unit of Julie emergency contraception for every Julie purchased. Donations will happen on a quarterly basis; this week's donations match sales from 2022. Based on available records, this week's donations make Julie the largest donor of emergency contraception in the country. Donations will go to vulnerable and marginalized communities who are disproportionately impacted by health inequities, including people who are uninsured or underinsured; members of the BIPOC and LGBTQ communities; immigrants and non-English speaking people; and those living in states with strict laws governing reproductive health. "Our ever growing list of incredible and inspirational partners will help us tackle these contraceptive deserts by getting emergency contraception into the hands of people who otherwise would not have access to safe, FDA-approved options," continued Morrison. "One of our partners is the first nonprofit pharmacy serving Appalachia. Another will provide Julie to immigrants who are often fearful of the hospital system. Yet another will distribute it throughout homeless and domestic violence shelters. Whatever the focus, these partners are doing critical work to serve the millions of women who lack basic access to sexual and reproductive health services simply because of where they live." As of today, Julie's nationwide partners include: All-Options Black Women's Blueprint Frontera Fund Grace Healthcare Services Corp Idaho Abortion Rights Indiana Family Health Council Just the Pill Kentucky Health Justice Network National Alliance to End Sexual Violence National Institute for Reproductive Health New Morning Our Justice Plan A Health Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Safe Harbor Crisis Center SHERo Mississippi, Inc. SIRUM SisterReach South Texans for Reproductive Justice TBA Fund, Inc. Triangle Abortion Access Coalition UCLA Sexperts Voice Amplified Yellowhammer Fund YWCA Kalamazoo Additional partners who wish to remain anonymous Julie emergency contraception is Levonorgestrel 1.5mg, an FDA-approved, progestin-only emergency contraceptive that helps prevent pregnancy by temporarily delaying or stopping ovulation. The pill is neither a form of birth control nor an abortion pill; rather, it helps the body stop a pregnancy before it starts and is most effective when taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse. The healthcare company launched in September with its namesake emergency contraception product. The company's mission is to increase education and understanding about emergency contraception, and rewrite the narrative around the experience of using it. SOURCE Julie Life science leaders say the time is finally right for healthcare systems, employers, and governments to establish genome-informed clinical decision-making as the new standard of care PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Human Genome Project, completed nearly 20 years ago, promised an era of personalized healthcare. Now, new research reveals that precision prescribing using genetic testing has finally reached a global tipping point for adoption. "We're now entering a new age where barriers have transformed into boons for PGx-enabled precision medicine." Tweet this Precision prescribing using genetic testing has reached a global tipping point for adoption thanks to advancements across the healthcare ecosystem Published by Cambridge University Press, the peer-reviewed researchauthored by life science leaders at Coriell Life Sciences examines the maturation of critical factors required for the use of clinical genetics at scale. These advancements pave the way in enabling genome-informed clinical decision-making to be established as the new standard of care. "The stage is set for leaders around the world to change healthcare as we know it," says co-author Scott Megill, President and CEO of Coriell Life Sciences, an international leader in precision medicine. "Studies have shown that using genetic information to provide more targeted therapeutic care significantly improves patient outcomes and reduces the overall cost of healthcare. This is especially true for pharmacogenomics (PGx), which uses an individual's DNA to determine if medications are likely to be unsafe or ineffective for them specifically. We're now entering a new age where barriers have transformed into boons for PGx-enabled precision medicine." The research tracks and analyzes global readiness for the large-sale implementation of PGx-enabled precision medicine based on five key factors: Clinical Utility : The ability for meaningful clinical interpretations, recommendations, and guidelines, based on existing research and clinical understanding, to positively impact health outcomes : The ability for meaningful clinical interpretations, recommendations, and guidelines, based on existing research and clinical understanding, to positively impact health outcomes Laboratory Technology : Genotyping and sequencing technologies, and the standardization, regulation, and efficient production of laboratory data and rapid delivery of results at scale : Genotyping and sequencing technologies, and the standardization, regulation, and efficient production of laboratory data and rapid delivery of results at scale User Acceptance : The degree to which patients, healthcare providers, and payers understand, embrace, and engage with genomic testing and the resulting insights : The degree to which patients, healthcare providers, and payers understand, embrace, and engage with genomic testing and the resulting insights Implementation Models : The methods, processes, and practices employed to utilize PGx within health delivery systems : The methods, processes, and practices employed to utilize PGx within health delivery systems Economic Value : The demonstrated real-world benefits of cost savings and patient health improvement directly attributable to the application of PGx-enabled precision medicine The paper also explores other important factors fueling readiness for PGx, including: How PCR testing infrastructure built to support the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive global investment in point-of-care testing can be re-tasked toward population-scale deployment of PGx-enabled precision medicine The paper emphasizes that, "Genetically informed prescribing offers one of the few realistic mechanisms to effectively reduce overall healthcare system costs while also improving individual patient care and outcomes." The authors conclude, "The time is now for healthcare systems, employers, and governments to partner and establish genome-informed clinical decision-making as the new standard of care." These findings are supported by the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC), a group representing 220 member organizations comprised of innovators, scientists, patients, providers, and payers. PMC promotes the understanding and adoption of personalized medicine concepts, services, and products to benefit patients and health systems. "This research details significant industry progress toward the clinical utilization of pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine on a population scale. Thanks to these advancements, which represent the work of multiple stakeholders, a new standard of care is finally within reach," says Daryl Pritchard, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Science Policy, Personalized Medicine Coalition. Jay G. Wohlgemuth, M.D., Board Chair of the Personalized Medicine Coalition and SVP R&D and Chief Medical Officer for Quest Diagnostics, adds, "Pharmacogenomics provides insights, based on a patient's unique genetics, to help identify the best therapy in advance, reducing the risk of adverse side effects and wasted time and dollars on an ineffectual treatment. As additional research shows, when delivered as part of a consumer-centric medication management program that includes informatics and pharmacy services, pharmacogenomics is scalable to large populations and can deliver actionable insights for a majority of individuals. The field has matured to a stage where the many payers of healthcare servicesincluding employers and health planscan confidently embrace pharmacogenomics in their population health programs to optimize medical spend and outcomes." To learn more, read the full paper, "Maturing pharmacogenomics factors deliver improvements and cost efficiencies." About Coriell Life Sciences Coriell Life Sciences (CLS) uses innovation in precision medicine to reduce healthcare costs and empower a healthier world. With scientific expertise that spans six decades, CLS bridges the gap between genetic knowledge and clinical application and offers the most comprehensive medication risk management program on the market. Visit coriell.com . Media Contact: Pamela Caruolo For Coriell Life Sciences [email protected] 484.574.2946 SOURCE Coriell Life Sciences Technology provides great value for patients, staff, and the healthcare system and should become standard of care, study authors say WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Vasc-Alert, a pioneer in vascular access surveillance, today announced the publication of a study in the Journal of Vascular Access validating its Vasc-Alert surveillance technology for dialysis patients. The study shows that the technology reliably predicts which patients may suffer from stenosis, or blockage, in their access and may even be better than clinical monitoring alone. "We knew the Vasc-Alert technology was effective, but these results showed that it performs even better than we anticipated," said study co-author Dr. Robert Provenzano, a nephrologist at Ascension St John Hospital. "Because of what it can do, it should get into the clinical practice yesterday," Dr. Kumbar said. Tweet this Not only does the study confirm the benefits of the surveillance technology to both patients and medical providers, added Vasc-Alert's President John Kennedy, it's also part of a new wave of analytic methods "that can reduce medical costs by avoiding high-cost vascular access complications." The study, at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, examined 38 patients who were receiving dialysis through an arteriovenous (AV) access. Researchers performed a physical and ultrasound exam on all these patients, comparing the results to the Access Risk Score produced by Vasc-Alert's proprietary algorithm that predicts how likely the patients were to suffer from access complications. The technology works by using data that's already collected by the dialysis machines, such as arterial and venous pressures, to derive the pressures in the vascular access. These results are then reduced to a simple 1 to 10 Access Risk Score. The higher the score, the more likely it is that patients will experience stenosis and require an intervention to prevent complications. In the study, half of the patients had scores of 1,2, or 3 (meaning low risk) and half had scores of 8,9, or 10 (high risk). The researchers evaluated both groups of patients for access stenosis by both physical and ultrasound examinations, or what is called clinical monitoring. The results were clear and striking. Patients identified with high-risk scores were seven times more likely to experience stenosis than patients with low-risk scores. Dr. Lalathaksha Kumbar, a nephrologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, who was the lead author of the study, estimates that the technology can decrease the incidence of thrombosis by "at least 30 to 40 percent," he said. Since problems related to vascular access, including failure due to stenosis, cause about 20% of the hospitalizations and many deaths among the more than half a million Americans on dialysis, and also result in an estimated $2.8 billion in healthcare costs, the use of Vasc-Alert can bring substantial benefits to the entire healthcare system, Dr. Kumbar said. "Because of what it can do, it should get into the clinical practice yesterday," Dr. Kumbar said. Moreover, because the Vasc-Alert technology uses data collected automatically during dialysis, it requires no additional staff effort or time to test the access, reducing the burden on overworked dialysis personnel. "The technology really is good," said Terry Litchfield, a nationally recognized kidney patient advocate. She compares the risk score to a warning light in a carwhen the light flashes an alert, it shows that there's a potential problem that needs checking out. Vasc-Alert's technology also fits into a larger trend in healthcarethe use of analytics to provide new value by improving care and reducing overall costs. A recent McKinsey report predicts the emergence of a $1 trillion "value-based care market" in which providers are willing to pay for data-driven preventive care and analysis in order to keep their patients healthy and out of the hospital. Payers and providers are eager to adopt predictive analytic solutions that address major areas of costs in new data-driven value-based care world. Healthcare providers can begin using Vasc-Alert's surveillance technology simply by subscribing to the service at a nominal cost per patient. "Compared to the total costs associated with access complications such as loss of the AV access, the cost of Vasc-Alert is a rounding error," said Kennedy. Given the technology's potential to save thousands of dollars in access replacements, "I think more and more providers are going to see that as having a value to them rather than being a cost," said Dr. Provenzano. About Vasc-Alert Founded in 2002, Vasc-Alert, LLC was formed to commercialize dialysis vascular access surveillance software developed by Henry Ford Health in Detroit. The company's FDA-cleared automated surveillance system also known as Vasc-Alert is the digital health market leader. The subscription-based service is used by hundreds of dialysis centers across the US and the technology has analyzed and provided an access risk score for more than 18 million dialysis treatments. The first Vasc-Alert customer, who still uses the service, began their subscription in 2004. For more information, go to Vasc-Alert.com , follow us on LinkedIn or like us on Twitter @Vasc-Alert . Contact: Liz Dowling, (415) 388-2794 Dowling & Dennis PR [email protected] SOURCE Vasc-Alert Georgia-Built Products, Domestic Workforce to be Celebrated Throughout 2023 JOHNS CREEK, Ga., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Nichiha USA, a premier provider of innovative building material solutions, is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the United States, commencing the banner year with a robust appearance at the 2023 International Builders' Show (IBS). Held this year in Las Vegas, NV, the annual trade show is hosted by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). At IBS 2023, Nichiha will occupy the SU807 exhibitor's booth near the entrance of the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Attendees are welcome and encouraged to touch and feel Nichiha products in person, see how the company continues to innovate in the building products industry, and meet the Nichiha professionals. "Since 1998, Nichiha has been a proud domestic manufacturer of lasting fiber cement products for both commercial and residential applications," said Jason Monday, vice president of sales and marketing at Nichiha. "Our IBS attendance not only showcases our work, but also the lessons we've learned over this quarter century. We look forward to continuing this momentum, building the very best cladding products for any project." Thanks to its committed workforce, Nichiha has introduced a variety of innovative building envelope products that provide superior design options and reliable protection from the elements. Because they're available in a kaleidoscope of custom colors, Nichiha products afford architects and home builders with endless avenues for expression without additional cost or lengthy lead times. Nichiha's signature products will be on display at their IBS 2023 booth. Among accomplishments from the company's 25 years of development, several hallmarks have emerged as industry-shaking innovations: Architectural Wall Panel (AWP): Made from robust fiber cement, Nichiha's AWP systems are built as a budget-friendly series of cladding products that mimic the look and feel of materials like wood and cement, but without drawbacks like rot or pest damage. Ultimate Clip System: Thanks to a clever installation system, Nichiha installations are simple and do not require specialized labor or equipment, saving developers and builders money and time. Color Diversity: Builders and architects alike are provided with significant freedom of expression with many Nichiha products. Available in limitless custom color choices, such Nichiha product purchases are not subject to a set up charge or minimum quantity. Personalized Project Approach: Nichiha's seasoned professionals offer technical design reviews, project takeoffs, on-site training and more to assist buyers from a project's concept through its creation. Home builders are encouraged to find inspiration and creativity in Nichiha's Modern Home and Custom Home lookbooks. Similar materials are also available for commercial developers in Nichiha's Commercial and Multifamily lookbooks. EDITOR'S NOTE: A host of Nichiha subject matter experts are available for interviews during IBS at Nichiha's booth. To secure an appointment, please contact Sean McFarland at [email protected]. About Nichiha USA Nichiha USA, a subsidiary of Nichiha Corporation, is a leading manufacturer of high-functioning cladding for commercial and residential building applications. Founded in Japan in 1956, Nichiha now employs over 2800 employees at 13 locations worldwide. Nichiha creates long-term value for architects, builders and contractors through building material solutions that are durable and available in a breadth of colors, styles and textures, with customized support to meet any specification and help customers get the most out of their projects. To learn more, visit www.nichiha.com. Media Contact: Sean McFarland, MA 412-851-3242 [email protected] Photos: http://www.bldpressroom.com/nichiha/IBS2023 SOURCE Nichiha USA The Confess Project of America trains Barbers to be Mental Health Advocates with the goal of raising Mental Health Awareness in the Black Community ATLANTA, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Confess Project of America, "America's First Mental Health Awareness Movement" that trains barbers in Black communities to be Mental Health Advocates announced today that they are officially launching their Beauty Coalition on Monday, January 30th from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. EST at the Health and Style Institute (HSI) at 2450 Piedmont Rd, Suite 100 Atlanta, GA 30324. The purpose of the Beauty Coalition is to continue to raise Mental Health Awareness for the Black community in the place where Black women have always felt comfortable - in the beauty salon. Trained members of the Beauty Coalition will be armed with Mental Health Advocate tools and techniques to better serve their clients and ultimately have a positive impact on their communities. The Confess Project of America - The Barbers Leading a Mental Health Revolution Register at theconfessprojectofamerica.org/tcpevents Why should Women in the Beauty Industry become trained Mental Health Advocates? There is a huge lack of mental health resources available to the Black community, and The Confess Project of America is working to change that. The organization trains barbers across the U.S. to be Mental Health Advocates, so they can effectively support their clients and community. Dating back to even before the Civil Rights Movement, Black barbershops and beauty salons have always been a safe haven for people in the Black community to come together and be themselves. To date, The Confess Project of America has trained over 2,000 barbers across the country to be Mental Health Advocates using a therapeutic-based framework that educates barbers on 4 key points that reduce negative thoughts and stigma around discussing mental health topics. With the launch of the Beauty Coalition, The Confess Project of America will now be reaching even more people and can begin to impact those in beauty salons and beyond, equipping them with crucial tools for their mental health. What should I expect from the Beauty Coalition? In partnership with the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, The Confess Project of America will begin providing beauty salons with free Mental Health Advocacy training specifically catered towards women in the Black community. At the launch event, we will have a free Mental Health Advocacy training, resources, lunch, vendors, networking opportunities, and a panelist discussion with various Mental Health Advocates and Women in the beauty industry. The training is not limited to only salons, The Confess Project of America offers their training to all kinds of technicians and women in the beauty industry. Not only will Beauty Coalition members become trained Mental Health Advocates at no cost, they will also receive a certificate, access to our private network, media opportunities, and on-going support through monthly coalition calls! Those interested in joining The Confess Project Project of America's Beauty Coalition Launch Event can register here. Additional information about The Confess Project of America and other ways to support the organization in its fight for Mental Awareness in the Black Community can be found at https://www.theconfessprojectofamerica.org/ , or Instagram or Facebook . About The Confess Project The Confess Project of America is America's first mental health awareness movement servicing the Black community that turns barbers into advocates. The organization has trained over 2,000 barbers across the country to become certified Mental Health Advocates. The Confess Project of America uses therapeutic-based frameworks that train barbers to listen to their clients, validate their feelings, positively communicate and reduce the stigma around mental health in the Black community. The organization is run by therapists, scientists, academics and community advocates who are all singularly focused on helping everyone better understand and navigate the challenges of mental health. For more information, please visit https://www.theconfessprojectofamerica.org/ or visit on Instagram or Facebook . SOURCE The Confess Project of America DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Norway Data Center Market - Investment Analysis & Growth Opportunities 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Norway data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.25% during 2022-2027. - Norway is among the prominent locations across the region regarding the availability and usage of renewable energy sources. The government has taken several initiatives to grow renewable energy adoption, such as setting targets for achieving net zero emissions by the year 2050. The district heating system is among the major initiatives the country has significantly adopted toward a sustainable economy. For instance, in February 2021, the Norwegian government announced a proposal to demand data center operators connect their facilities to the district heating system. Norway data center market is a significantly growing industry in the Nordic region aided by factors that include government initiatives, growing cloud data center regions, adoption of advanced technology, growth in subsea & inland connectivity, and district heating systems. The country's government is working towards the digital transformation of government operations and the economy. The government of Norway has established its Norwegian Digitalization Agency, which aims to coordinate digitalization in the country strategically. data center market is a significantly growing industry in the Nordic region aided by factors that include government initiatives, growing cloud data center regions, adoption of advanced technology, growth in subsea & inland connectivity, and district heating systems. The country's government is working towards the digital transformation of government operations and the economy. The government of has established its Norwegian Digitalization Agency, which aims to coordinate digitalization in the country strategically. The government of Norway has established several industrial business parks that offer spaces for business for sustainable operations. Mo Industrial Park, Heroya Industrial Park, Haugaland Business Park, and Raufoss Industrial Park are some of the business parks in Norway . The Norway data center market is well connected to several major markets with around 11 submarine cables followed by upcoming cables such as Celtic Norse, Leif Erikson , and N0r5ke Viking, which will be ready for services in coming years. Key Highlights The Government of Norway is actively working to support the growth of the data center industry in the country. For instance, in 2018, the government introduced a Data Center Development Strategy (DCDS) to establish Norway as a Data Center Nation. is actively working to support the growth of the data center industry in the country. For instance, in 2018, the government introduced a Data Center Development Strategy (DCDS) to establish as a Data Center Nation. In June 2021 , the Norwegian data center industry announced the establishment of Norsk Datasenterindustri (Norwegian Data Center Industry) to strengthen the industry in Norway . , the Norwegian data center industry announced the establishment of Norsk Datasenterindustri (Norwegian Data Center Industry) to strengthen the industry in . Global cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Microsoft Azure have a presence in the country. In September 2021 , Microsoft announced the launch of three availability zones in its Norway East Azure Cloud region in Oslo . In addition, in October 2022 , Google plans to establish the new Google cloud region in Norway . , Microsoft announced the launch of three availability zones in its Norway East Azure Cloud region in . In addition, in , Google plans to establish the new Google cloud region in . In Norway , several sectors, such as BFSI, healthcare, education, hospitality, government, and transport, have migrated their resources to the cloud region. For instance, Moss Municipality has shifted some applications to Microsoft Azure. , several sectors, such as BFSI, healthcare, education, hospitality, government, and transport, have migrated their resources to the cloud region. For instance, Moss Municipality has shifted some applications to Microsoft Azure. In terms of 5G connectivity, telecom operators such as Telia, Nokia, Telenor, Ice, Ericsson, and Equinor, are involved in deploying the 5G network services across the country. For instance, in July 2022 , Eltel Norway signed an agreement with Telenor to upgrade Telenor's telecommunication network with 5G network technology. , Eltel Norway signed an agreement with Telenor to upgrade Telenor's telecommunication network with 5G network technology. The Government of Norway has established The Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO), which offers Norwegian industrial development and promotion of economic growth. This is expected to increase further availability of area and opportunities for industrial investment in the country. Vendor Landscape Norway data center market has several local and global operators, such as Green Mountain, LEFDAL MINE DATACENTER, Bulk Infrastructure, Basefarm (Orange), and STORESPEED are some of the major colocation operators in the country. data center market has several local and global operators, such as Green Mountain, LEFDAL MINE DATACENTER, Bulk Infrastructure, Basefarm (Orange), and STORESPEED are some of the major colocation operators in the country. In addition, the country also witnessed investments from new entrants such as AQ Compute, STACK Infrastructure, and Namsos Datasenter. The country witnessed the entry of new global service providers through acquisitions. For instance, in March 2022 , IPI Partners announced operating its recently acquired DigiPlex's data centers in Norway under the name of STACK Infrastructure EMEA unit. , IPI Partners announced operating its recently acquired DigiPlex's data centers in under the name of STACK Infrastructure EMEA unit. The increase in the deployment of the 5g network connectivity is aiding the Edge data centers investments that offer low latency and easy connectivity to tier II and tier III cities. For instance, in February 2022 , Namsos Datasenter, in partnership with Keysource, a service provider, announced the deployment of an edge data center in Norway , which is expected to be operational in 2023. , Namsos Datasenter, in partnership with Keysource, a service provider, announced the deployment of an edge data center in , which is expected to be operational in 2023. Most of the facilities developed in the country adopt the district heating concept to supply the excess heat generated by the facilities to the local commercial and residential buildings. For instance, Green Mountain announced the expansion of its RJU1-Rjukan facility and plans to share waste heat from the facility with a nearby land-based fish farm. Several operators in the country are investing in sustainable operations for their data centers. For instance, Green Mountain's upcoming project Kalberg site is powered by the Statnett substation, which is powered by three hydropower production projects. The site will have a 100% renewable energy supply from wind and hydro sources. Norway data center market has a significant presence of local and global vendors regarding IT, support, and general construction services. For instance, CTS Nordics have been selected to provide design & build services for Green Mountain's data center expansion project in Oslo . Major Vendors IT Infrastructure Providers Arista Networks Cisco Systems Dell Technologies Hewlett Packard Enterprise Huawei Technologies Hitachi Vantara IBM Juniper Networks Lenovo NetApp NetNordic Oracle Pure Storage Super Micro Computer Data Center Construction Contractors & Sub-Contractors Coromatic COWI CTS Nordics Designer Group Keysource RED Engineering YIT Support Infrastructure Providers ABB Alfa Laval Carrier Caterpillar Cummins Eaton FlaktGroup HITEC Power Protection KOHLER-SDMO Legrand Piller Power Systems Rittal Rolls-Royce Schneider Electric Socomec STULZ Trane Vertiv Data Center Investors Bulk Infrastructure Green Mountain Green Edge Compute STORESPEED New Entrants AQ Compute Namsos Datasenter STACK Infrastructure (DigiPlex) Key Questions Answered 1. How much is the Norway data center market investment expected to grow? 2. What is the growth rate of the Norway data center market? 3. How many data centers have been identified in Norway? 4. What are the driving factors for Norway data center market? 5. Who are the key investors in the Norway data center market? Key Topics Covered: 1. Existing & Upcoming Third-Party Data Centers in Norway 1.1. Historical Market Scenario 1.2. 25+ Unique Data Center Properties 1.3. Data Center It Load Capacity 1.4. Data Center White Floor Area 1.5. Existing Vs Upcoming Data Center Capacity by Cities 1.6. Cities Covered 1.6.1. Oslo 1.6.2. Other Cities 1.7. List of Upcoming Data Center Projects 2. Investment Opportunities in Norway 2.1. Microeconomic and Macroeconomic Factors for Norway 2.2. Investment Opportunities in Norway 2.3. Investment by Area 2.4. Investment by Power Capacity 3. Data Center Colocation Market in Norway 3.1. Data Center Demand Across Industries in Norway 3.2. Colocation Services Market in Norway 3.3. Retail Vs Wholesale Data Center Colocation 3.4. Colocation Pricing (Quarter Rack, Half Rack, Full Rack) & Add-Ons 4. Market Dynamics 4.1. Market Drivers 4.2. Market Trends 4.3. Market Restraints 5. Market Segmentation 5.1. It Infrastructure: Market Size & Forecast 5.2. Electrical Infrastructure: Market Size & Forecast 5.3. Mechanical Infrastructure: Market Size & Forecast 5.4. Break-Up of Construction Cost 5.5. General Construction Services: Market Size & Forecast 6. Tier Standard Investment 6.1. Tier I & Ii 6.2. Tier Iii 6.3. Tier Iv 7. Key Market Participants 7.1. It Infrastructure Providers 7.2. Construction Contractors 7.3. Support Infrastructure Providers 7.4. Data Center Investors 7.5. New Entrants 8. Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/qjgtg7 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 TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Nurosene Health Inc. ("Nurosene" or the "Company") (CSE: MEND) (FSE: 8TV) (OTC: MNNDF) a company that is focused on being a leader in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) solutions targeted at the pharmaceutical industry through its wholly owned subsidiary NetraMark, is pleased to announce an advisory relationship with RARE-X, the Global Genes collaborative platform for rare disease patients to share their data to accelerate the development of diagnoses and treatments. "I am pleased to announce that NetraMark has agreed to an advisory role with RARE-X. As part of the relationship, Dr. Joseph Geraci will join RARE-X's Advisory Board for Xcelerate RARE: An Open Science Data Challenge and RARE-X will provide NetraMark access to their world class rare disease data sets." President of NetraMark, Josh Spiegel. Core to this advisory role is the RARE-X Open Science Data Challenge which brings together industry leaders, such as the RTW Charitable Foundation, Roche, the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and includes expert advice from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as sited at https://rare-x.org/open-science-data-challenge/. The Open Science Challenge presents a unique opportunity for NetraMark to further validate its proprietary NetraAI technology, its capabilities to find unique insights from small datasets and the opportunity to connect with pharmaceutical companies working towards cures for rare diseases. "We are excited to partner with RARE-X and contribute to their mission of accelerating the search for cures for rare diseases," said Dr. Joseph Geraci. "Our NetraAI technology has a proven track record of finding valuable insights in small datasets, and we believe it will be a valuable asset to RARE-X's efforts to bring hope to patients with rare diseases." "We are thrilled that Netramark is partnering with us in this Open Science Data Challenge," said Karmen Trzupek, Senior Director of Scientific Programs for Global Genes. "Together, our goal is to leverage Netramark's technology and apply it to patient-owned data on the RARE-X platform to accelerate the generation of therapeutic hypotheses for rare neurodevelopmental disorders and to advance research to benefit rare disease patients." About Nurosene Nurosene is a company focused on being a leader in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) solutions targeted at the Pharmaceutical industry, through its wholly owned subsidiary NetraMark. For further details on the Company please see the most recent investor update presentation, found on the Company's Investor page at: https://nurosene.com/investors About RARE-X RARE-X is a program of Global Genes focused on supporting the acceleration and development of life-altering treatments and future cures for patients impacted by a rare disease. Enabled by best-in-class technology, patients, researchers, and other technology vendors, RARE-X gathers structured, fit-for-purpose data to share broadly, benefitting from 21st-century governance, consent, and federated data-sharing technology. Through RARE-X, Global Genes is building the largest collaborative patient-driven, open-data access project for rare diseases globally. For more information, visit www.rare-x.org. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation including statements regarding our strategic focus going forward, the validation of the NetraAI technology, its capabilities to find unique insights from small datasets and the value it might bring to RARE-X's efforts to advance research to benefit rare disease patients and the opportunity to connect with pharmaceutical companies working towards cures for rare diseases, which are based upon Nurosene's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, and views of future events. Forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "expect", "likely", "may", "will", "should", "intend", "anticipate", "potential", "proposed", "estimate" and other similar words, including negative and grammatical variations thereof, or statements that certain events or conditions "may", "would" or "will" happen, or by discussions of strategy. Forward-looking information includes estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, targets, guidance, or other statements that are not statements of fact. The forward-looking statements are expectations only and are subject to known and unknown, risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause actual results of the Company or industry results to differ materially from future results, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and, except as required by law, Nurosene does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for Nurosene to predict all such factors. When considering these forward-looking statements, readers should keep in mind the risk factors and other cautionary statements as set out in the materials we file with applicable Canadian securities regulatory authorities on SEDAR at www.sedar.com including our Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended September 30, 2021 along with the risk factors set out in the corporate presentation. These risk factors and other factors could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking information. The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Nurosene Health Inc. LACHEN, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Replacement therapy with factor VIII has been the mainstay of care for patients with severe haemophilia A for over 30 years, with proven benefits in terms of bleed prevention and protection of joint health. The availability of emicizumab, a non-factor therapy, in recent years has broadened the scope of management options for these patients, raising questions over how to most effectively and safely use factor VIII together with emicizumab. Treatment decisions need to consider the perspectives of both the patient and the clinician to find the ideal approach for each patient. The interactive Octapharma symposium at the 16th Annual Congress of EAHAD in Manchester, UK, will present the perspectives of three clinicians and three patients on key treatment decisions encountered during the lives of people with haemophilia A. "Understanding the viewpoints of both clinicians and patients is a key component of developing treatment approaches personalised to the lifestyle and clinical condition of each patient" commented Larisa Belyanskaya, Head of IBU Haematology at Octapharma. "We're committed to providing the best treatment options for people with haemophilia A to enable them to live healthy and active lives." The Octapharma symposium "Concomitant use of factor VIII and emicizumab in haemophilia A: Patient cases and clinical trials" will use a highly interactive format to take a close look at three real patient cases. Together with the audience, the international faculty of Dr Guy Young, Dr Carmen Escuriola Ettingshausen and Dr Steve Austin will discuss clinical and patient-related aspects of the diverse cases. The three patients and their families will share their experiences, the challenges they have faced, and decisions that they have taken. In addition to providing their clinical perspectives on the cases, the faculty will present new data and provide updates on ongoing and planned clinical studies of concomitant use of factor VIII and emicizumab in previously untreated patients, patients with factor VIII inhibitors, and patients undergoing major surgery. In addition to this symposium, new data on the binding of Nuwiq (simoctocog alfa) to platelets in vitro will be presented during the Congress poster sessions on February 810, 2023. PO030: In vitro differences in platelet binding among recombinant factor VIII products, presented by Anja Strebel "At Octapharma we're dedicated to providing new health solutions advancing human life," commented Olaf Walter, Board Member. "We appreciate the importance of bringing together the perspectives of both clinicians and people with haemophilia A in order to provide individualised care and improve the lives of patients." About Haemophilia A is an X-linked hereditary bleeding disorder caused by a deficiency of factor VIII (FVIII) which, if left untreated, may lead to haemorrhages in muscles and joints and consequently to arthropathy and severe morbidity. The disorder affects around one in every 10,000 males worldwide. Prophylaxis with replacement FVIII therapy reduces the number of bleeding episodes and the risk of permanent joint damage. Headquartered in Lachen, Switzerland, Octapharma is one of the largest human protein manufacturers in the world, developing and producing human proteins from human plasma and human cell lines. Octapharma employs around 10,000 people worldwide to support the treatment of patients in 118 countries with products across three therapeutic areas: Immunotherapy, Haematology, and Critical Care. Octapharma has seven R&D sites and five state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Austria, France, Germany and Sweden, and operates more than 180 plasma donation centres across Europe and the US. Nuwiq (simoctocog alfa) is a 4th generation recombinant factor VIII (rFVIII) protein, produced in a human cell line without chemical modification or fusion with any other protein1. It is cultured without additives of human or animal origin, is devoid of antigenic non-human protein epitopes and has a high affinity for von Willebrand factor2. Nuwiq treatment has been assessed in nine2-4 completed clinical trials which included 201 previously treated patients (190 individuals)2 and 108 previously untreated patients3 with severe haemophilia A. Nuwiq is available in 250 IU, 500 IU, 1000 IU, 1500 IU, 2000 IU, 2500 IU, 3000 IU and 4000 IU presentations5. Nuwiq is approved for use in the treatment and prophylaxis of bleeding in patients with haemophilia A (congenital FVIII deficiency) across all age groups5. References Lissitchkov T et al. Ther Adv Hematol 2019; 10:2040620719858471. Liesner RJ et al. Thromb Haemost 2021; 121:1400-8. Octapharma AG, data on file. Nuwiq Summary of Product Characteristics. Stadler M et al. Biologicals 2006; 34:281-8. Octapharma press releases are specifically for health specialist/medical media and are not for consumer press. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1802873/Octapharma_Logo.jpg SOURCE Octapharma AG TULSA, Okla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of Oklahoma, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma State University, and Tulsa Innovation Labs has announced the launch of Canopy HealthTech, a new multi-year initiative to accelerate the commercialization of virtual health innovations from Oklahoma universities. The program will catalyze start-up growth and improve healthcare outcomes by supporting the development of critical virtual health technologies that address regional healthcare delivery gaps. "Oklahoma innovators have developed technologies with the potential to positively impact human health via emerging virtual and hybrid in-person care models, but to reach their potential, these technologies need business, regulatory and marketing expertise," said Shawna Khouri, director of the Virtual Health portfolio at Tulsa Innovation Lab and architect of Canopy HealthTech. "Canopy will surround clinical and technical faculty members with the necessary funding and business, regulatory and quality systems expertise critical to bridging these innovations from bench to business." A key feature of the program is the unique multi-university partnership, leveraging the strength of each institution to develop technologies that will expand healthcare access to traditionally underserved patient populations. "Through the vision and leadership of OU's Tom Love Innovation Hub, OSU's Center for Health System Innovation, and the University of Tulsa, as well as the support of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, we will catalyze startup formation across the state that will address gaps in health care delivery, particularly in rural, indigenous and inner-city communities," Khouri said. "Canopy will connect Oklahoma researchers to industry experts to support the development of virtual health technologies that address these pressing regional health-delivery needs." Canopy HealthTech is led by Executive Director Rachel Lane, Ph.D., RD and senior staff member of OU's Price College of Business Tom Love Innovation Hub. Lane joins OU from BIO Alabama, where she served as CEO. "Canopy will meaningfully impact health and economic outcomes in Oklahoma and beyond with funds and mentoring that support startup formation from Oklahoma ideas," Lane said. "As these companies choose to stay and grow in Oklahoma fortified by the supportive environment Tulsa Innovation Labs and the George Kaiser Family Foundation have built the state will gain a critical mass of business and workforce that differentiates and distinguishes our industry with a competitive economic edge." Requests for proposals for funding through Canopy HealthTech are now open and must be submitted by 5 p.m. on March 1, 2023. To learn more about Canopy HealthTech, or the RFP process, visit www.canopyhealth.tech or contact [email protected]. About OU's Tom Love Innovation Hub Founded in 2016, the Tom Love Innovation Hub, a part of the OU Michael F. Price College of Business, originated as a cutting-edge facility to foster the creation, development and implementation of innovative ideas. For more information about the Innovation Hub, visit ou.edu/innovationhub About The University of Tulsa Founded in 1894, The University of Tulsa is Oklahoma's top-ranked private college.TU provides educational opportunities to 4,000 students in the arts and humanities; social and natural sciences; business; engineering and technology; nursing and applied health sciences; and law. To learn more about TU please visit https://utulsa.edu. About Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University is a modern land-grant university that prepares students for success. OSU improves the lives of people in Oklahoma, the nation, and the world through integrated, high-quality teaching, research, and outreach. For more information visit https://go.okstate.edu. About Tulsa Innovation Labs Recognizing that the jobs of the future are rooted in a thriving innovation economy, the George Kaiser Family Foundation pioneered Tulsa Innovation Labs (TIL) to develop a city-wide strategy that positions Tulsa as a tech hub and leader in the future of work. Through a diverse coalition of public and private partners, TIL creates economic and workforce development initiatives within four industry areas -- Virtual Health, Cyber and Data Analytics, Advanced Mobility, and Energy Tech -- to make Tulsa the nation's most inclusive tech community. To learn more about TIL please visit www.tulsainnovationlabs.com. SOURCE The University of Oklahoma Price College of Business WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Mohamed Farah, CEO of Rising Nomads, appeals to United States, The Security Council, and the Presidential Administration at Villa Somalia to immediately open dialogue to end the violence in in North Somalia. I am calling for an emergency Summit of key local and international stakeholders to address the current violence and ongoing standoff in Las Anod that risks catastrophic and potentially irreversible escalation. The Summit should include all the leaders in North Somalia, key members of international community as well as the Federal Government of Somalia. Rising Nomads believes that it is the interest of all Somalis, and the broader region to deescalate, engage in dialogue, and avoid a prolonged conflict that will only cause hunger, deprivation, and death. I strongly believe it is possible to unite Somali people of good faith and find common ground on which to build a lasting peace. I do not want to see another live lost due to a situation that we can address immediately. I call on all parties to immediately cease hostilities as an essential first step to facilitate peace. All the tribes, clans and individuals living in North Somalia should be allowed to develop and prosper without being subject to threats, violence, or reprisal. The current crisis is an opportunity for all interested parties, including the Somali diaspora around the world, to come together address the immediate needs, and agree upon a pathway towards lasting peace for of all people in North Somalia. It is the interest of citizens like me in the United State and the national community to make sure every region within Somalia thrives and prosper to the best it can. I truly believe a solution can be found, and that is why I am calling for an emergency Summit on North Somalia to be held in Somalia, Kenya, or Washington D.C. with the involvement of the international community, the US State Department, the UN Security Council in support of negotiated settlement and ceasefire. We have an opportunity to address this armed conflict in North of Somalia, but only if we act immediately and decisively to forge a pathway towards lasting peace. Sincerely Mohamed Farah CEO Rising Nomad SOURCE Rising Nomads The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has said the general election will be held in spite of the various attacks on the commission's facilities across the nation. Yakubu said INEC was satisfied with the preparations done so far ahead of the elections. Addressing an audience at Chatham House, London, yesterday, Yakubu decried the increasing spate of attacks on INEC's facilities in form of arson but reassured the audience that the commission would go ahead with the elections as scheduled. The electoral umpire chairman, while noting that 50 facilities of the commission had been attacked in four years, said the implications of the attacks were that the commission would need to continue to rebuild the burnt facilities and replace materials. He, however, assured Nigerians and the international community that INEC, in collaboration with security agencies, had increased security presence in some of the attack-prone locations. He noted that the last attack on the commission's facilities happened last Sunday, saying the commission was able to respond quickly with the help of the military, thereby minimising the extent of damage done to that attacked facility. "In four years, 50 facilities (have been) attacked in various parts of the country. The implications of the attacks is that we have to rebuild facilities and replace materials. The commission and security agencies have increased their presence in some of these locations. "The last attack happened on Sunday last week but because of the cooperation between the military and the electoral commission, we were able to respond and the damage was limited to just a section of the building in a local government office. "The commission has repeatedly called for concerted efforts to control and check these attacks and in December last year the National Assembly held a public hearing on these attacks and we hope that authorities have these attacks under control and the response by the security agencies is more coordinated. "But in spite of these attacks we will rebuild facilities and replace damaged and lost items, the elections will hold," Yakubu said. Speaking further, he reiterated the promise to Nigerians and friends of Nigerians that the 2023 general election would be free, free and credible, "and we have left no stone unturned in preparing for it." "But like with all elections, especially those requiring the extensive national deployment like we do in Nigeria, it will naturally come with challenges. "We have worked closely with stakeholders and development partners to confront these challenges and we are satisfied with our preparations so far," he added. According to the INEC boss: "Since 1999, Nigeria has been conducting regular general elections following the restoration of civilian-democratic rule governance after many years of military rule. The 2023 general election will be the seventh consecutive general election in Nigeria. "This fact makes this the longest period of electoral democracy in the country's history. Previous periods of electoral democracy were relatively short, repeatedly truncated by military interventions. However, the quantity of elections is one thing, but their quality is another. As Zavadskaya and Garnett aptly note, the question of integrity of elections is relevant for "all elections, whether in new democracies or jurisdictions that have held election for decades," because they are all "vulnerable to malpractice." "However, good elections are not only about curbing malpractices, but also about ensuring inclusivity. Inclusive elections constitute an essential part of democracy. This is the reason why in our Commission we regularly speak of our commitment to free, fair, credible, transparent, verifiable and inclusive elections. "To be sure, credible and inclusive elections in the final analysis depend on adequate preparations and my main preoccupation today is to share with you how we are preparing for a general election of high integrity and inclusiveness in Nigeria in 2023," he added. Lamenting the continuous attacks on its facilities nationwide, the INEC Chairman said despite the attacks, elections would hold. He said: "The commission has repeatedly called for concerted efforts to control and check these attacks and in December last year, the National Assembly held a public hearing on these attacks and we hope that authorities have these attacks under control and the response by the security agencies is more coordinated. "But in spite of these attacks, we will rebuild facilities and replace damaged and lost items, the elections will hold." Giving a breakdown of voter registration and collection of Permanent Voter Cards in Nigeria, Yakubu said the general election would be an exercise for the young people in Nigeria. He added that records on the ground showed that the election would be dominated by the Nigerian youth. Yakubu, who said he was encouraged by the turn-out of registered voters to collect their PVCs, said over 600,000 eligible voters collected their PVCs in Lagos alone within the last one month. The INEC boss stated that there are currently 93.4 million registered voters in Nigeria, out of which 37 million, that is 39 per cent, are young people between the ages of 18 and 34. "And then they're closely followed by 33.4 million or 35.3 per cent middle-age voters between the ages of 35 and 49. "Put together, these two categories constitute 75.39 per cent of registered voters in Nigeria. So, actually the 2023 election is the election of the young people, because they have the numbers. Even the majority of the PVCs collected are collected by young people. "So, out of the 93.4 million, 70.4 million registered voters are between the ages of 18 and 49," Yakubu stated. He reminded the audience that the collection of the PVCs would end on January 29, 2023, adding that, "we have to end it because before the election we will publish number of PVCs collected on polling unit by polling unit basis nationwide." "Voting by millions of Nigerians living outside the country remains a recurrent issue for the Commission. Nigeria is said to have one of the largest diaspora communities in the world. Our quest for a fully inclusive electoral process in Nigeria will not be complete as long as these Nigerians are unable to vote. "However, the Commission only acts in accordance with the electoral legal framework, which remains the main reason why we cannot implement diaspora voting for now. Both the 1999 Constitution and the 2022 Electoral Act provide that voters can only be registered and vote within the country. "For instance, Section 77(2) of the Constitution provides that "every citizen of Nigeria, who has attained the age of eighteen years residing in Nigeria at the time of the registration of voters for purposes of election to a legislative house, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter for that election," he added. The INEC boss revealed that the commission would conduct mock accreditation nationwide ahead of the 2023 general election. He said the mock accreditation would be carried out across selected polling units to ascertain the integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), before the main elections begin in February. Yakubu further revealed that every BVAS machine deployed across the 774 local government had been tested, adding that the functionality of the machines was impressive. He also stated that back up machines have been readily provided in case of system glitches. He added that with all preparations on ground, the commission was really "comfortable and happy." He said: "We have the machines for the 2023 elections but we didn't want to take chances. Each and every machine has been tested and confirmed functional. For the last two weeks our officials were in the 36 states of the federation testing these machines, and the functionality is simply encouraging. "The second thing we're going to do, and pretty soon, is to conduct mock accreditation exercise nationwide ahead of the elections. We won't wait until the main elections come, we will test the integrity of these machines with real life voters in selected polling units across the country. "We did so in Ekiti and Osun, it was fantastic and we're going to do so nationwide. Increasingly our people are becoming more excited about the deployment of this technology and we're really happy. "Also in terms of the numbers of these BVAS machines, we always make provision in case of malfunction or glitches. There is always a backup. We have IReV technical support that will fix the machines in the unlikely event of any glitches. "However, where it fails to function completely in a polling unit, from previous experience there were isolated polling units, the law has a remedy that the commission should re-mobilise and re-conduct elections in the affected polling units within 24 hours, so we are really, really comfortable where we are." Agbakoba Tasks INEC on Clarification of Section 134 Meanwhile, with less than 40 days to the presidential election, foremost lawyer, Chief Olisa Agbakoba, has raised concern about provisions of Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution. In a letter to Yakubu, the senior lawyer who raised concern about the confusing nature of the law, wants the electoral umpire to make clarification before the elections. Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution provides specific requirements a presidential candidate must meet before he or she would be declared winner of an election. It reads: "A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected, where, there being only two candidates for the election: he has the majority of votes cast at the election; and he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. "A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election- (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja." However, in the letter dated January 17, 2023 and titled: 'Re: Clarification on Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution,' Agbakoba stated that he and, "many concerned Nigerians are worried about the correct interpretation of the said section." According to Agbakoba, while the section in one breath says a candidate could only be declared winner of a presidential election by scoring majority of votes cast in the election; in another it says a candidate could only be declared winner after scoring the highest number of votes cast in the poll. "I reviewed section 134 carefully, specifically, subsections 134 (1) (b) and (2) (b), and wondered if "two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja" means either of the following: a) that a presidential candidate must score not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the federation which means 24 states, the 24 States will include the Federal Capital Territory Abuja as a "State", or (b) that a presidential candidate must score not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation which means 24 states and in addition to meeting the one-quarter requirement in 24 states, a candidate must also win one-quarter of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja". Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. From the above he said one could deduce that a presidential candidate must have one-quarter of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in addition to scoring not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in 24 states of the federation, to be duly elected. "The above possible interpretations raise three major questions: (1) is the requirement that a presidential candidate must score not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of the 36 States of the Federation; does this mean that the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja is incorporated in the 24 States? Or (2) is the requirement that a presidential candidate must score not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of the 36 States of the Federation; does it mean that the presidential candidate must also score not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja? (3) can a candidate that scored not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in 36 States of the Federation but fails to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the election at the Federal Capital Territory, be duly elected as President of Nigeria?" Agbakoba further observed that while Section 134(1)(a) provides that a candidate for an election to the office of president shall be deemed to have been duly elected, where, there being only two candidates for the election, the candidate has the majority of votes cast at the election, Section 134(2) provides that a candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election, the candidate has the highest number of votes cast at the election. He said, "The constitution describes the winner in two different languages. One, the winner must score the majority of votes and the other, the winner must score the highest number of votes. This is confusing. "To be honest, I am not quite sure of the right answers to my questions. I just thought to bring this to your attention as something you might wish to clarify to the public." The 'next-generation digital front door,' Blaze understands and responds to patient queries with natural language processing and conversational AI BOSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Orbita, a leading provider of intelligent virtual assistants and workflow automation for healthcare, introduced Orbita Blaze to revolutionize provider websites by combining an intuitive and user-friendly "find care" experience with the convenience of a healthcare-specific chatbot. Blaze uses conversational AI to pose questions and probe for details that help patients find what they are looking for, then guides them to the most appropriate provider and facility. Most healthcare websites are fraught with functionality shortfalls. In fact, 78% of people who said they switched providers in 2021 did so because of poor healthcare navigation, including difficulty using digital tools like the website. While 43% of patients prefer to use a provider's website search function, the process can be overwhelming and frustrating. Often, patients do not know where to start or what terminology to use to ensure an accurate search (e.g., a traditional search feature may not be able to interpret "stomachache" if it expects the more clinical "abdominal pain" descriptor). "Patients want a healthcare experience that mimics the convenience they enjoy in other areas of their lives finding information through predictive search on Google, for instance, or scheduling an appointment as easily as they make dinner reservations on OpenTable," said Orbita CEO Patty Riskind. "Representing the next-generation digital front door, Orbita Blaze triggers hyper-personalized dialogs to ensure patients find what they're looking for, thus improving the patient experience, increasing conversions and reducing leakage." Blaze eliminates barriers to care by transforming the entire website into an intuitive virtual assistant to improve navigation and patient access. It takes the chatbot out of the bottom right-hand corner and initiates a conversational interaction from the search bar or any link on the website. Blaze empowers patients to ask their questions in layman's terms and delivers precise results that account for a variety of factors and provide the best possible care options based on the individual's circumstances. The technology features a symptom checker that determines the level of urgency, while an algorithm identifies and suggests locations for timely care based on distance, wait times and the patient's insurance. Blaze engages and educates patients throughout this entire process thanks to an extensive knowledge base and advanced cognitive search technology that can decipher a vast range of vocabulary and phrases. ABOUT ORBITA Orbita is the connective tissue between providers and patients, to make navigating healthcare easier. We partner with healthcare organizations to implement smart virtual assistants, powered by conversational AI, that engage patients across web, text and voice channels. Our solutions which meet critical privacy and security standards help providers improve operational efficiency by automating workflows as they face the challenges of labor shortages, while also capturing revenue generated by routine, chronic and preventative care. Visit Orbita.ai. MEDIA CONTACT Karina Stabile Senior Account Executive, Aria Marketing [email protected] (m) 516.317.5835 SOURCE Orbita, Inc. BRAINTREE, Mass., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Pallas Capital Advisors, LLC ("Pallas Capital"), a leading independent financial planning and investment advisory firm, today announced the launch of Pallas Institute, an intensive two-day financial literacy and investment education program. Pallas Institute's inaugural class completed the Institute's first-ever program sessions on January 12, and included 22 women and 19 men from 28 different colleges participating in 20 sessions on topics ranging from stock analysis to financial planning. Pallas Capitals inaugural student intern class of 2023 Pallas Capitals interns gained insights on the future of investing at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology The primary objective of the program is to help each generation of college learners be financially literate and acquire a favorable introduction to the investment industry. "Given today's increasingly complex financial world, we designed an innovative curriculum that goes beyond the basics to demystify investment jargon," said Greg Boyle, Pallas Capital's Chief Growth Officer "We thought it was important, for example, to offer a session on alternative investments to expose students to risk and return profiles of assets like private equity, private credit, and venture capital." A secondary objective of the program is to encourage diverse populations to pursue investment careers. In the wealth management field, according to CFP Board of Standards, fewer than 25% of advisors are women and less than 18% are non-white. "Without dedicated and proactive diversity initiatives, the industry is likely to continue to skew," said Boyle. To attract participants, Pallas collaborated with organizations known for their track records championing diversity, including; Girls Who Invest, ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals), Boston Collegiate, Bridging the Gap, Invest in Girls, and Strong Women Strong Girls. The inaugural Pallas Institute program filled all available seats in just two weeks demonstrating the high demand for such training. Recruiting was done through Pallas' client roster, Linked-In promotions and other networking. "The program was timed to align with winter college breaks, and we required that students attend in-person," said Taylor McCormack, the Pallas Institute Program Director. "We really wanted students to gain practical experience formulating, discussing, and debating the merits of potential investments with peers and investment professionals." Rachel Friedland, a Cornell University sophomore affiliated with Girls Who Invest, traveled from New York to participate. "What I was able to learn at Pallas in just two days was remarkable. By hearing from successful voices spanning the financial services industry, I not only gained the financial crash course of a lifetime, but also authentic, transparent insight for breaking into a finance careerstarting from step one." During the design phase of Pallas Institute, internal team members from across Pallas' five offices volunteered to leverage their financial expertise and design and teach a portion of the curriculum. Shannon Smith, Pallas Capital's Director of Financial Planning, saw her role as an opportunity to debunk myths about the skills required to pursue a career in her industry. "Among the students I talked to, there was a misconception that you have to be an expert in math to be a financial advisor. That's no longer the case. People skills and emotional intelligence are now the top skills to possess," said Smith. "Modern financial planning firms like Pallas build investment platforms and hire dedicated investors to do the number crunching that frees up time for financial advisors to more deeply partner with families and business owners to map out their goals and dreams, identify and align financial solutions, and plan for growing their wealth." Pallas also collaborated with several peers, including Fidelity Investments, Prudential Global Investment Management (PGIM), and Impax Asset Management, who eagerly offered to host "day in the life" sessions to introduce potential career paths. Fidelity additionally offered tours of their trading floor and Center for Applied Technology. "Fidelity is always thrilled to provide the next generation with hands-on investment education," says Lillian Peros, head of Eastern Region Relationship Management at Fidelity Investments. "Our hope is that by sharing our expertise and resources, we can help young investors build their financial future with confidence." To partner with Pallas Capital in the future with their mission to promote financial literacy and investment education, please contact Taylor McCormack at [email protected]. To learn the additional ways that Pallas Capital is innovating the art and science of modern financial planning, and why Pallas Capital is a top-ranked RIA by Forbes and the #1 Advisor to Watch per AdvisorHub, please visit: https://pallascapitaladvisors.com . Important Disclosures Advisory services offered through Pallas Capital Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Pallas Capital Advisors and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Fidelity Investments is an independent company, unaffiliated with Pallas Capital Advisors. Fidelity Investments is a service provider to Pallas Capital Advisors. There is no form of legal partnership, agency affiliation, or similar relationship between your financial advisor and Fidelity Investments, nor is such a relationship created or implied by the information herein. Fidelity Investments has not been involved with the preparation of the content supplied by Pallas Capital Advisors and does not guarantee, or assume any responsibility for, its content. Fidelity Investments is a registered trademark of FMR LLC. Fidelity Institutional provides clearing, custody, or other brokerage services through National Financial Services LLC or Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Members NYSE, SIPC. eReview 1067685.1.0 Media Contact and Interview Requests: Taylor McCormack, Marketing & Communications 781-971-5052 [email protected] SOURCE Pallas Capital Advisors SAN CARLOS, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- PANDORUM International Inc. has engaged EVOLUTION Life Science Partners to assist the company in raising capital to fund the ongoing development of its assets, primarily Bioengineered Liquid Cornea, advanced therapeutics to promote cornea regeneration. The capital would support the clinical translation of the first in class, first in human tissue regenerative reprogramming treatment via Phase 1/2a studies, along with advancing Pandorum's proprietary technology platform that enables production of advanced regenerative therapeutics with control, scalability and consistency, for cornea and beyond. While PANDORUM is currently engaged with USFDA for the clinical translation of its Cornea pipeline, the broader objective is to move from therapeutics for single tissue regeneration (such as, Cornea, Liver and Lung) to multi-tissue regenerative therapy, with the potential to extending healthy lifespan. The company is also exploring licensing and M&A opportunities of its assets with various pharmaceutical organizations, with the assistance from EVOLUTION. PANDORUM's cofounder and CEO, Tuhin Bhowmick stated, "We are excited with this new partnership with EVOLUTION. Pandorum has reached an inflection point in its journey which will require a larger fund raise and capital market expertise. We believe that the partnership with EVOLUTION would help us achieve our immediate objective as well as the broader vision to make Regenerative Medicine a scalable, efficacious mainstream reality to treat millions in need across the world." Neal Fischer, Managing Director at EVOLUTION stated, "The partners at EVOLUTION are excited about Pandorum's unique engineered exosome platform technology and we look forward to assisting the company in getting access to capital and exploring other strategic options to advance their pipeline." EVOLUTION Life Science Partners is a life science investment bank that specializes in licensing, strategic advisory, M&A, and capital raising. To learn more about EVOLUTION, visit www.evolutionlsp.com PANDORUM International Inc. is a regenerative medicine company with proprietary tissue regeneration platform. Founded in 2011 by academic entrepreneurs, PANDORUM has labs in San Carlos, USA and Bangalore, India. To learn more about PANDORUM, visit www.pandorum.com SOURCE PANDORUM International Inc Pre-Negotiated, Expedited Restructuring Expected to Substantially Reduce Debt and Optimize Liquidity Party City Stores Open, Serving Customers as the "Go To" One-Stop-Shop for All Things Celebration $150 Million Financing Commitment to Support Ongoing Operations Across All Divisions WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Party City Holdco Inc. (NYSE: PRTY) ("PCHI" or the "Company"), a global leader in the celebrations industry, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with an ad hoc group of holders of more than 70% of the Company's senior secured first lien notes (the "Ad Hoc Group") to support an expedited restructuring that would substantially reduce PCHI's debt and optimize its capital structure and liquidity. This would ensure that PCHI is best equipped to continue to advance its transformational initiatives and enhance its market leadership in all things celebration from a strengthened financial position. To implement the Company's pre-negotiated restructuring, PCHI and certain of its domestic subsidiaries filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions for relief in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The Company's subsidiaries outside of the U.S., its Party City franchise stores, and its Anagram business, which is the global market leader in foil balloons, are not part of the Chapter 11 proceedings and will continue as core components of the PCHI enterprise. "In the face of pandemic headwinds, a global supply chain crisis, and other macroeconomic challenges that have faced our industry, we have made significant strides in PCHI's ongoing transformation establishing a solid foundation for long-term growth and continued success as the market leader in the celebrations space," said Brad Weston, Chief Executive Officer of PCHI. "Today's action to strengthen PCHI's balance sheet will bolster our ability to further advance our strategic priorities and continue to innovate and elevate the customer experience." Mr. Weston added, "As we take this important step to put our business on stronger financial footing for the future, we are as committed as ever to inspiring joy by making it easy for our customers to create unforgettable memories. We appreciate the commitment of our team members and the continued support of our partners as we further enhance our position as the 'go to' one-stop-shop for celebrating life's special moments." The Company continues to welcome shoppers at the more than 800 Party City stores and online at www.partycity.com. Retail and wholesale customers across all of the Company's businesses and brands can expect the same amazing product selection and service. PCHI will continue to advance its key initiatives underway, including the further conversion of Party City stores to next-generation prototypes, evolving its Halloween City pop-up stores to drive performance in this channel, building out a best-in-class online shopping experience, establishing localized marketplaces to revolutionize one-stop-shopping in the celebrations space, and delivering more compelling assortments and innovation for customers. PCHI has secured a commitment from the Ad Hoc Group for $150 million in debtor-in-possession financing. Subject to Court approval, this "new money" financing will provide ample liquidity to support continued operations during the process across the Company's retail and consumer products divisions while maintaining momentum on its transformation. The Company is filing with the Court a series of customary motions seeking to maintain business-as-usual operations and uphold its commitments to its valued stakeholders. These "first day" motions, which PCHI expects to be approved in short order, include requests to continue to pay wages and provide benefits to the Company's employees as usual as well as honor customer programs and policies. The Company intends to pay suppliers in the ordinary course for authorized goods received and services provided after the filing. The restructuring is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2023. Additional Information Court filings and other documents related to the Company's financial restructuring are available at https://cases.ra.kroll.com/PCHI. Suppliers with questions can call a dedicated hotline at (888) 905-0493 (toll-free) or +1 (646) 440-4580 (international) or email [email protected]. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is serving as legal counsel, Moelis & Company LLC is serving as investment banker, AlixPartners, LLP is serving as financial advisor, and A&G Realty Partners is serving as real estate advisor to the Company. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP is serving as legal counsel and Lazard is serving as investment banker to the Ad Hoc Group. About Party City Holdco Inc. Party City Holdco Inc. (PCHI) is a global leader in the celebrations industry, with its offerings spanning more than 70 countries around the world. PCHI is also the largest vertically integrated designer, manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of party goods in North America. PCHI team members demonstrate a daily commitment to the company's Brand Purpose: to inspire joy by making it easy for customers to create unforgettable memories. PCHI operates across multiple businesses within its Retail Division and Consumer Products Division. On the retail side, Party City (partycity.com) is the leading omnichannel retailer in the celebrations category, operating more than 800 company-owned and franchise stores as well as Halloween City (halloweencity.com) seasonal pop-up stores. The Consumer Products Division includes design and manufacturing entities Amscan, an industry leader in celebration decor, tableware, costumes, and accessories, and Anagram, the global market leader in foil balloons. PCHI is headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, N.J. with additional locations throughout the Americas and Asia. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Some of the forward-looking statements in this press release can be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as "believes," "expects," "projects," "forecasts," "may," "will," "estimates," "should," "would," "anticipates," "plans" or other comparable terms. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and, except for the Company's ongoing obligations under the U.S. federal securities laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether to reflect actual results of operations; changes in financial condition; changes in results of operations and liquidity, changes in general U.S. or international economic or industry conditions; changes in estimates, expectations or assumptions; or other circumstances, conditions, developments or events arising after the date of this press release. You should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The Company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain risks and other factors, which could include the following: risks and uncertainties relating to the Chapter 11 cases, including but not limited to, the Company's ability to obtain bankruptcy court approval with respect to motions in the Chapter 11 cases, the effects of the Chapter 11 cases on the Company and on the interests of various constituents, bankruptcy court rulings in the Chapter 11 cases and the outcome of the Chapter 11 cases in general, the length of time the Company will operate under the Chapter 11 cases, risks associated with any third-party motions in the Chapter 11 cases, the potential adverse effects of the Chapter 11 cases on the Company's liquidity or results of operations and increased legal and other professional costs necessary to execute the Company's reorganization; finalization and receipt of the debtor-in-possession facility, the conditions to which the Company's debtor-in-possession facility is subject and the risk that these conditions may not be satisfied for various reasons, including for reasons outside of the Company's control; whether the Company will emerge, in whole or in part, from Chapter 11 cases as a going concern; the consequences of the acceleration of the Company's debt obligations; trading price and volatility of the Company's common stock, and the ability of the Company to remain listed on the New York Stock Exchange, trading price and volatility of the Company's indebtedness and other claims, as well as other risk factors set forth in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10Q filed with the SEC. The Company therefore cautions readers against relying on these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on the Company's behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. Media Contact Kekst CNC Sherri L. Toub / Wendi Kopsick [email protected] SOURCE Party City Holdco Inc. CARY, N.C., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- PeriGen , the innovator in perinatal early warning systems, is providing commercial support to Synova Associates, a nurse leader education company and the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), membership organization on a Virtual Learning Day. PeriGen is proud to share the mission with these organizations of empowering and supporting nurses caring for women, newborns, and their families through research, education, and advocacy. The Virtual Learning Day "Partners in Practice: Uncovering Solutions and Strategies for Staffing and Reproductive Justice" will help participants gain a better understanding of AWHONN Staffing standards and implementation strategies, reproductive justice through a respectful maternity care lens, and implementation strategies and principles of respectful care across the perinatal and neonatal care settings. The impressive lineup of speakers includes: Cheryl Roth , PhD, WHNP-BC, RNC-OB, RNFA, Nurse Practitioner Coordinated Care Center for Complex Moms and Babies Honor Health Scottsdale Shea & Osborn , PhD, WHNP-BC, RNC-OB, RNFA, Nurse Practitioner Coordinated Care Center for Complex Moms and Babies Honor Health Scottsdale Shea & Osborn Dana Sussman , JD, MPH, Deputy Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) Case study presentations include: Bobbie Smith , MSN, BSN, RN, Obstetric Nursing Operations Manager, Intermountain Healthcare , MSN, BSN, RN, Obstetric Nursing Operations Manager, Nancy Travis , MS, RN, BC-PED, CPN, C-ONQS, Director Women's Services, Lee Health Cape Coral Hospital , MS, RN, BC-PED, CPN, C-ONQS, Director Women's Services, Lee Health Cape Coral Hospital Shawana Burnette , DNP, RNC-OB, NEA-BC, CLNC, Nurse Manager, Atrium Health's Carolinas Medical Center , DNP, RNC-OB, NEA-BC, CLNC, Nurse Manager, Atrium Health's Carolinas Medical Center Rose Horton, MSM , RNC-OB, NEA-BC, Specialty Director Women Infant Services, Emory Decatur Hospital PeriGen is passionate about supporting clinicians by providing advanced technology tools to promote the optimal outcomes for moms, babies, and families. PeriGen believes in supporting nurses' continued education and is a year-round partner with both organizations as a Synova Industry partner and AWHONN Alliance Member. Commercial support of the Virtual Learning Day is provided by PeriGen. To learn more and register for the event, click here! About PeriGen PeriGen Inc., a Halma company, offers innovative perinatal software solutions that incorporate advanced statistical analysis features to enhance clinical efficiency and standardization of care during childbirth. Led by skilled OB practitioners and IT visionaries, PeriGen has created the PeriWatch platform to provide consistent analysis and efficient display of complex data to promote better human recognition and communication about impending problems during labor. With PeriWatch, clinicians can spend more time on direct patient care and less time on manual calculations and data manipulation. To learn more, visit www.perigen.com; visit us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook; or email [email protected]. Media Contact Grant Evans Amendola for PeriGen 215-582-8146 [email protected] SOURCE PeriGen New one-of-a-kind cereals give Disney fans even more ways to celebrate Disney100 starting at the breakfast table LAKEVILLE, Minn., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Disney (Disney100), Post Consumer Brands is participating in the Disney 100 Years of Wonder celebration with the launch of multiple, limited-edition offerings. As a staple at the breakfast table, Post worked together with Disney to create a one-of-a-kind themed fruity cereal, a new-to-market confetti cake flavored cereal and a special edition collector's cereal item. New one-of-a-kind cereals give Disney fans even more ways to celebrate Disney100 starting at the breakfast table Tweet this POST CONSUMER BRANDS COLLABORATES WITH DISNEY TO LAUNCH NEW CEREAL OFFERINGS IN CELEBRATION OF DISNEY 100 YEARS OF WONDER The themed fruity cereal features Disney Mickey Mouse head-shaped silhouette cereal pieces with beloved Disney and Pixar characters on the box. Consumers can purchase this item throughout 2023 to experience the celebration of Disney 100 Years of Wonder at the breakfast table throughout the year. In addition, the new confetti cake flavored cereal will have updated packaging throughout the year to celebrate three different Disney and Pixar characters during specific periods of time. Consumers are invited to collect these unique limited-edition boxes. Both offerings will be available at major mass and grocery retailers nationwide. For those looking for a premium collector's item, the main attraction from the Post x Disney cereal collaboration is a special edition of the new confetti cake cereal in a Mickey Mouse-themed collector's metal tin. Inside the metal case, fans will find a special edition cereal box featuring a retro design inspired by Post and Disney's first collaboration on Post Toasties cereal in 1934. The metal tin, which retails for $40, represents a time capsule that inspires fans to remember and appreciate the start of Disney. Fans are encouraged to follow the brand on Instagram (@Post_Cereals) for more details about the exclusive item launch, which will be available exclusively at Walmart.com in limited quantities. "Post Consumer Brands is honored to join in the celebration of Disney100 alongside other manufacturers creating unique offerings this year," said Logan Sohn, Senior Brand Manager at Post Consumer Brands. "We are inspired by Disney and the wonder they've unlocked for consumers over the past 100 years, and we hope these themed cereal offerings help bring the celebration to life at the breakfast table." For more information, follow Post Cereals on Facebook (@PostCereals), Instagram (@Post_Cereals) or Twitter (@PostCereals) and visit www.postconsumerbrands.com. About Post Consumer Brands Post Consumer Brands is a business unit of Post Holdings Inc., formed from the combination of Post Foods and MOM Brands in May 2015. Headquartered in Lakeville, Minn., Post Consumer Brands today is the third-largest cereal company in the United States, with a broad portfolio of products spanning all segments of the category from iconic household name brands and value ready-to-eat cereals to natural/organic and hot cereal varieties. As a company committed to high standards of quality and to our values, we are driven by one idea: To make better happen every day. For more information about our brands, visit www.postconsumerbrands.com. Media Contact: Kelsey Zibell HUNTER: on behalf of Post (407) 766-2394 [email protected] SOURCE Post Consumer Brands Finance software startup Quartr signs an API deal with Lightyear, an online broker based in London, serving customers in 20 countries across Europe. Lightyear will, through this integration, get access to Quartr's database of earnings calls, accompanying documents, reports, and slide decks. This partnership also means that public companies get a completely new distribution channel for their information. STOCKHOLM and NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Quartr (www.quartr.com) continues to move forward on its mission to bring the financial community closer together by signing an API deal with Lightyear, an online broker based in London with customers in 20 countries all across Europe. The integration enables Lightyear's customers to find crucial information such as earnings calls, accompanying documents, reports, and slide decks directly through its online brokerage platform, which gives investors a strong foundation to make informed investment decisions. "We are very pleased to announce this Europe-focused partnership with Lightyear just a week after signing a deal with Sweden's largest online broker. We are convinced that our API will create a lot of value for both investors and online brokers worldwide, and not least for public companies as this enables them to get their equity stories told to a much wider audience", comments Sami Osman, CEO & Co-founder of Quartr. "Easy access to stock market data is crucial for new and experienced investors alike to build out their investment strategies and successfully carry them out over the years. Historically, earnings calls and the discussions within them have not been easily accessible for retail investors; yet keeping up with companies' quarterly results is a key part of staying up to date with your portfolio performance. We are excited to partner with Quartr and bring earnings calls, as well as reports and transcripts into the Lightyear app, for our customers all across Europe", comments Mihkel Aamer, CTO & Co-founder of Lightyear. Sami Osman, Co-founder & CEO at Quartr [email protected] +46 7029 70248 Tessa Bryant, Head of Communications at Lightyear [email protected] +44 7899 840237 The following files are available for download: https://news.cision.com/quartr---investor-relations-made-accessible/i/1156x708-quartr-lightyear,c3134808 1156x708 Quartr Lightyear https://news.cision.com/quartr---investor-relations-made-accessible/i/1156x1156-quartr-lightyear,c3134809 1156x1156 Quartr Lightyear https://mb.cision.com/Public/21895/3699233/978a0e4c646f1ac8.pdf Press Release Quartr Lightyear SOURCE Quartr - Investor Relations made accessible Horatio Alger Association names 13 outstanding individuals, each of whom has overcome adversity to achieve professional and personal success, to its Member Class of 2023 WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. , a nonprofit educational organization honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals and encouraging youth to pursue their dreams through higher education, today announced that Rajesh Subramaniam, president and CEO of FedEx, has been selected for membership in this prestigious organization. Mr. Subramaniam joins 12 other exceptional business, civic and cultural leaders from across North America in receiving 2023 honors. For 76 years, the Horatio Alger Award has been annually bestowed upon esteemed individuals who have succeeded despite facing adversities, and who have remained committed to education and charitable efforts in their communities. Mr. Subramaniam grew up in Trivandrum, India and graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. After winning a scholarship, Mr. Subramaniam immigrated to America to attend Syracuse University, where he earned a master's degree in chemical engineering. In 1991, he graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a master's in business administration and joined FedEx as an associate analyst later that year. Over the next 30 years, Mr. Subramaniam served in a variety of executive-level positions and became known as a strategic leader who confidently saw the company through a period of tremendous growth. In 2022, Mr. Subramaniam was selected to serve as president and CEO of the $94 billion transportation company. "Mr. Subramaniam embodies the power of the American Dream," said Terrence J. Giroux, executive director, Horatio Alger Association. "His commitment to education and building a better life for himself is admirable, and he will undoubtedly serve as an inspiration for our Scholars." A highly respected corporate leader, Mr. Subramaniam serves on the board of directors of FedEx Corporation, the Procter & Gamble Company, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's China Center Advisory Board, FIRST, U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, and the U.S.-China Business Council. He is a member of the U.S.-India CEO Forum. "I strongly believe that through hard work and perseverance, one can overcome adversity to achieve success," said Mr. Subramaniam. "It is a privilege to accept membership into the Horatio Alger Association, an organization whose mission reflects this ideal. I'm honored to join an incomparable list of Members and look forward to meeting the Scholars and supporting them through their college years and beyond." Since 1984, the Association has awarded annual need-based scholarships to high school students who have displayed dedication to pursuing higher education despite significant obstacles throughout their lives. The Association also aims to educate young people about the endless opportunities available by the free-enterprise system through commitment, honesty, and diligence. The scholarships are made possible through the Association thanks to the generosity of its Members, who will have collectively provided more than $245 million to 35,000 students by 2023. "Each year, it is our utmost honor to present outstanding leaders who have displayed extraordinary perseverance in overcoming challenges with the Horatio Alger Award," said James F. Dicke II, chairman, Horatio Alger Association and 2015 Horatio Alger Award recipient. "Each of these incredible leaders has also shared their success with others, giving generously to important causes and communities in need. The 2023 awardees exemplify the Association's mission and are proof that the American Dream is within reach for all who seek it." Mr. Subramaniam and the Member Class of 2023 will be formally inducted into the Association during the Horatio Alger Award Induction Ceremonies in Washington, D.C. from March 30 through April 1, 2023. The three-day event is an annual ceremony to honor both the achievements of Members and National Scholars, who will have multiple opportunities to meet, interact and exchange stories of perseverance. For more information about Horatio Alger Association and its Member Class of 2023, please visit www.horatioalger.org and follow the organization on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . About Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans: Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. is dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles. The Association honors the achievements of outstanding leaders who have accomplished remarkable successes in spite of adversity by bestowing upon them the Horatio Alger Award and inducting them as lifetime Members. Horatio Alger Members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuit of their dreams through higher education. Through the generosity of its Members and friends, in 2022, the Association awarded more than $16 million in undergraduate and graduate need-based scholarships to over 1,600 students across the United States and Canada, and provided college support and mentoring services to its Scholars. By the 40th anniversary of the Association's scholarship program in 2024, more than $259 million will be awarded in undergraduate, graduate, military veteran and career and technical education scholarships to more than 37,000 deserving students. For more information, please visit www.horatioalger.org. CONTACT: Carly Colombo [email protected] SOURCE Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. NORWALK, Conn., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- RISMedia has announced a new partnership with BeachesMLS, a multiple listing service serving over 42,000 Broward, Palm Beaches and St. Lucie REALTORS to bring its best-in-class articles and need-to-know information to its subscribers' via RISMedia Premier News Service. BeachesMLS will deliver a selection of RISMedia content to its subscribers, including breaking news, industry updates, business development articles, as well as access to RISMedia's Premier premium content channel, featuring investigative journalism, one-of-a-kind special reports and proprietary industry data and competitive intelligence. As part of the partnership, all BeachesMLS subscribers also have access to all RISMedia educational events, including the virtual Real Estate's Rocking in the New Year and live CEO & Leadership Exchange, Newsmakers Reception & Dinner and Power Broker Reception & Dinner. RISMedia's exclusive Premier content is currently included free of charge as part of BeachesMLS agent subscriptions. To access RISMedia Premier content on RISMedia.com, subscribers will simply need to be logged into their BeachesMLS Dashboard. "The real estate industry is constantly evolving, so equipping our members with breaking stories across the nation and in South Florida is a valuable benefit," says Dionna Hall, CEO of BeachesMLS and Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie REALTORS. "This partnership allows our members to receive industry trends and news straight from RISMedia so they can continue to provide qualified expertise to homeowners. Having our own MLS allows BeachesMLS subscribers to provide their clients comprehensive, current, accurate property information while customizing details based on specific and unique wants and needsa service that South Florida homeowners deserve." "In today's challenging real estate environment, information is currency, providing real estate professionals with a critical competitive edge," said RISMedia Founder, President and CEO John Featherston. "Through our partnership with BeachesMLS, members will now have access to information that equips them to succeed in the current market. From economic analysis and research to insights on key trends and business development strategies, our award-winning editors will bring BeachesMLS subscribers the information they need to compete and win." For more information about RISMedia Premier, visit: www.rismedia.com/premier . About Broward , Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors and BeachesMLS Broward, Palm Beaches and St. Lucie Realtors is South Florida's premier REALTOR association. More than 42,000 members in eight locations are equipped to sell real estate along 130 miles of coastline in South Florida and the Treasure Coast. To learn more, visit rworld.com . SOURCE RISMedia OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Oklahoma's seventh annual School Choice Expo returns to Tulsa and Oklahoma City this year, welcoming families across the state for a celebration of K-12 education. The Oklahoma City event takes place 4:30-7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25 at the Oklahoma City Convention Center. Families will explore booths representing school options across the Oklahoma City area, and watch lively student musical and dance performances. The goal of the event? To support parents in understanding and navigating the marketplace of schools: traditional public, public charter, public magnet, private, and online, alongside homeschooling and learning pod leaders. The expo will also share information on transfer laws and state-run scholarship opportunities in Oklahoma, like the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship and Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship program. Resources will be available in both English and Spanish. This event is planned to coincide with the celebration of National School Choice Week (Jan. 22-28, 2023), which will feature tens of thousands of school choice celebrations across all 50 states. "The School Choice Expo is a free event that's a one stop opportunity for parents to learn about and visit with many different school types and options. This event is designed for the convenience of parents. Families and kids can enjoy free food, giveaways and door prizes too," said Renee Porter, ChoiceMatter's founder. The Oklahoma City School Choice Expo is planned by ChoiceMatters and Every Kid Counts Oklahoma (EKCO). ChoiceMatters provides Oklahoma parents free information, resources and support to help them navigate their child's pre-k through 12 education offerings. EKCO's mission is to provide a quality education to all Oklahoma students. Both organizations share a vision that one day, every child will have access to a high-quality education that best fits their needs and allows them to reach their full potential regardless of where they live or their parent's income level. Join families and other community members and attend this free event at the Oklahoma Convention Center, located across from Scissortail Park downtown. National School Choice Week (NSCW) informs, inspires, and empowers parents to discover the K-12 education options available for their children, including traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home schooling. Every January, tens of thousands of schools, organizations, and individuals plan unique events and activities to shine a positive spotlight on effective education options in their communities. The Week is a project of the nonpartisan, nonpolitical National School Choice Awareness Foundation. SOURCE National School Choice Week The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has advised youths that it was more sensible for them to learn from history than experience. According to him, young people needed to learn from history rather than repeat it or allow it to jeopardise a better future. This was just as the Liberian President, his deputy and different Liberian groups welcomed and decorated him with traditional recognitions and awards at a youth forum held in Monrovia on Monday. The vice president, who was the special guest of honour at a youth forum to mark the 60th birthday of his Liberian counterpart, Dr. Jewel Howard-Taylor, spoke extensively about learning from past experiences. According to a statement yesterday, by media aide to the Vice President, Laolu Akande, Osinbajo spoke while fielding questions during the conversation with Liberian youths. According to him, "every sensible person learns from history rather than from experience, because if you wait to learn from experience, you will suffer. What you are supposed to do with history and your past, is to learn from it and never let it repeat itself. "One of the most important things for young people is that you must bear in mind all the time that your history is not your destiny, it is just part of your story. "Your destiny is what you have decided, where you are going and you will get there as long as you don't allow the tyrant and oppressor of history to hold you back." Encouraging the young people in the hall, the vice president urged them to leverage opportunities offered by emerging technologies to improve themselves educationally and economically, noting that the benefits of technological innovations are numerous. When asked about the impact and prevalence of Social Media, Osinbajo said: "I think that social media is a blessing for everyone, not just for politicians but the electorate and others. The platforms are so crucial in being able to communicate and it is also important to recognise that every generation has its own technology. "It has its abuses and downsides, but you must make sure you maximise its real advantages. One of the main advantages is that for people like us born decades ago, to do simple research, you'd have to actually go to a library. "Today, I can do all my research with just my iPad, while I am sitting down practically anywhere, as long as I have Internet connectivity," he added. The vice president added that, "young people are at the most advanced moment in human history. One of the interesting things is that your smartphones have more computing power than all the computing power that took the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon. "In terms of advancement, this generation doesn't compare to any before it. We, who are older than you, are enjoying your generation's technology, and I hope and pray that you would take full advantage of it to expand your knowledge, and scope of activities, and for broadening enterprise and your communication with other people." At the youth forum with the theme: "Conversation with the Vice President and Young People," Howard-Taylor, in her welcome remarks, described her Nigerian counterpart as a humble and selfless leader who inspires hope for a better Africa. Howard-Taylor commended Osinbajo saying, "he is the most humble politician in Africa," noting that emerging leaders across the continent have so much to learn from his humility and commitment to service. Also at the event, the vice president was honoured with an award of Distinguished Service to Humanity - for his exemplary service to the development of Nigeria, Liberia, West Africa, and the rest of the continent - by Liberian youths, about 400 of whom were part of the event. Presenting the award plaque to Osinbajo, the co-host of the event and youth activist, Mr. Benjamin Sanvee, said the award was in appreciation of, "all your service, everything that you have done and will continue to do." According to him, "this is in deep appreciation for years of stellar service to Nigeria, Liberia, to the ECOWAS region, the continent of Africa and the world at large. We, the youth of Liberia, and by extension, the youth of Africa, are proud to present to you this symbol of appreciation. "You are a shining example of an exceptional, selfless and exemplary leader, who is quietly and steadily, not just a source of inspiration for Africa's youths, but you have impacted the lives of millions around the continent in so many ways. "You are a rare and outstanding leader and we thank you for all that you do and will still continue to do. I present this plaque to you, on behalf of young Africans, as one of Africa's most outstanding leaders," the youth leader added. Osinbajo was also decorated at the event with the traditional title of "Chief Flomo Barwolor" meaning "the light to the people." The traditional title was presented by a Liberian Cultural group led by Ambassador Madam Julee Endee. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. The forum was also attended by the First Lady of Sierra Leone, Madame Fatima Maada Bio, who commended Osinbajo for his exemplary leadership, especially in promoting the cause of a better Africa for all. Earlier on Monday, Osinbajo was received in Monrovia by President George Weah, who held talks with him and welcomed him to the West African nation, expressing appreciation for the one-day visit. Also, while in Monrovia, the vice president made a brief stop at the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women Development, to participate in the programme for the ECOWAS Human Rights Day, which also coincided with the 5th anniversary of Ms. Sirleaf's post- presidency. In his remarks there, Osinbajo applauded the contributions of the former Liberian President to the development of the country both in and outside office, noting that "one of the things you have been able to show is not just that it is possible to serve well, but also to serve out of office and to do perhaps more. "What you have done since you left office, has had perhaps more impact, especially around Africa, and we are really proud of the work you have done and your achievements. We pray that there will even be greater achievements in the future," the Vice President added. MILWAUKEE, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Ademi LLP is investigating Volta (NYSE: VLTA) for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law in its transaction with Shell. Click here to learn how to join the action https://www.ademilaw.com/case/volta-inc or call Guri Ademi toll-free at 866-264-3995. There is no cost or obligation to you. Ademi LLP alleges Volta's financial outlook and prospects are excellent and yet Volta shareholders will receive only $0.86 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $169 million. The transaction agreement unreasonably limits competing bids for Volta by imposing a significant penalty if Volta accepts a superior bid. Volta insiders will receive substantial benefits as part of change of control arrangements. We are investigating the conduct of Volta's board of directors, and whether they are (i) fulfilling their fiduciary duties to all shareholders, and (ii) obtaining a fair and reasonable price for Volta. If you own Volta common stock and wish to obtain additional information, please contact Guri Ademi either at [email protected] or toll-free: 866-264-3995, or https://www.ademilaw.com/case/volta-inc. We specialize in shareholder litigation involving buyouts, mergers, and individual shareholder rights throughout the country. For more information, please feel free to call us. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Contacts Ademi LLP Guri Ademi Toll Free: (866) 264-3995 Fax: (414) 482-8001 SOURCE Ademi LLP VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Silver Valley Metals Corp. (TSXV: SILV) (OTCQB: SVMFF) ("Silver Valley" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the appointment of Douglas Dobbs, Corporate Development Director. Mr. Dobbs brings more than 25 years of experience in senior leadership and board positions including Mines Management, Inc. (acquired by Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL), Avista Labs Corp. (NYSE: AVA), Idaho North Mines, and investment firms Piper Jaffray Co. and National Securities Corp. Mr. Dobbs is a graduate of Hillsdale College with a bachelor's degree in Economics, and he has been a speaker at numerous investment conferences throughout North America and Europe discussing the topics of gold, silver, investing and economics. "We welcome Doug at this very important juncture in Silver Valley's development where the Company is now transitioning from the acquisition of its flagship Ranger-Page project 13 months ago, followed by a now completed comprehensive exploration campaign from 2022 which is starting to deliver excellent results that will be announced over the upcoming weeks. Exploration activities conducted in 2022 included ground geophysics, geochemical sampling, other field work, structural analysis, and 3D modeling, which is providing valuable data to establish quality drill targets. An inaugural drilling program in 2023 is planned to build upon the historic high-grade resources, existing mineralization that remains open at four shallow historic mines and importantly, new high priority targets outside the areas of historical production," says CEO, Brandon Rook. Douglas Dobbs will provide business advisory, corporate development, and investor relations services to the Company through his company Doug Dobbs Consulting LLC ("Dobbs Consulting") pursuant to a consulting agreement which is to take effect immediately and which has an initial twelve-month term subject to the right of either party to terminate on 30 days' notice and subject to renewal by mutual consent after the initial term (the "Consulting Agreement"). Under the terms of the Consulting Agreement Dobbs Consulting will be paid US$5,000 per month plus certain approved expenses from the Company's working capital and be issued 200,000 five-year stock options (which will vest as to 25% each three months going forward) at an exercise price of $0.15. Financing: The Company has closed its previously announced $0.075 Unit Private Placement Financing for aggregate gross proceeds of $967,283.55. The Company has issued 12,897,114 Units, each Unit consisting of 1 common share and 1 common share purchase warrant, each warrant being exercisable at $0.15 for 2 years. The Financing was effected with 3 insiders, for a total of 576,667 Units or $43,250, each insider subscription being a "related party transaction" as such term is defined under MI 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions. The Company is relying on exemptions from the formal valuation requirement of MI-61-101 under sections 5.5(a) and (b) of MI 61-101 in respect of the transaction as the fair market value of the transaction, insofar as it involves the interested party, is not more than 25% of the Company's market capitalization. The Company paid cash finder's fees totaling $62,261 and issued 830,147 broker warrants exercisable at $0.15 for 2 years. All securities issued pursuant to the Financing will be subject to a 4-month hold. The Company also announces that it has issued 1,900,000 stock options to various Officers, Directors, and Consultants, with an exercise price of $0.15, expiring January 13, 2028. About: MexiCan lithium - potassium (sulphate of potash) project: Silver Valley owns a 100% interest in a lithium and potassium bearing salar complex comprising 4,059 hectares on three mineral concessions (the "Mexican Projects") located on the Central Mexican Plateau in the states of Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The NI 43-101 inferred mineral resource contains 12.3Mt of Sulfate of Potash (SOP) and 243,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and remains open in all directions for expansion. About: Ranger-Page project: The Ranger-Page Project ("The Project") is in the Silver Valley, northern Idaho, USA, 60 kilometres east of Coeur d'Alene and 1 kilometre from the I-90 freeway. In 2020 Idaho was ranked the first in the world in policy perception and 9th best mining jurisdiction (Fraser Institute Annual Mining Survey). The Project borders the famous Bunker Hill Mine to the east and for the first time consolidates the western extent of the prolific Silver Valley mining corridor by one operator in the past 100+ years. The Project comprise 6 historical mines on patented claims, without royalties. The largest of these, the Page Mine, was a top ten producer in the Silver Valley yielding over 1.1 billion pounds of zinc and lead and 14.6 million ounces of silver. The Page Mine has high grade silver-zinc-lead historic reserves and remains open at depth and along strike beyond what has been identified to date. Historical mining on the properties shared underground infrastructure which connected the larger Page mine with five shallow historic mines within the larger Project area. The Company has underground mining data and surface geological data that supports high grade silver-zinc-lead mineralization present within the shallow, undeveloped mines. These mines remain open at depth, and laterally along strike. Exploration potential beyond the historical mines is considered significant as modern systematic exploration is being applied to the project for the first time. About: Silver Valley Metals: Silver Valley is a Canadian exploration company comprised of a group of experienced exploration, mining, and financing specialists focused on the pursuit of mineral discovery and development. We are focused on the advancement of strategic and precious mineral properties including Lithium-Potash in Mexico and Silver-Lead-Zinc in northern Idaho, USA. On behalf of the Board of Directors of Silver Valley Metals, "Brandon Rook" Brandon Rook, President & CEO, Director THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections. SOURCE Silver Valley Metals Corp. LITTLETON, Colo., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The sixth Global Positioning System III (GPS III) satellite designed and built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has been launched and is propelling to its operational orbit approximately 12,550 miles above Earth, where it will contribute to the ongoing modernization of the U.S. Space Force's GPS constellation. GPS III satellite at Lockheed Martin facility outside of Denver, Colorado GPS III Space Vehicle 06 (GPS III SV06) launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:24 a.m. EST today. About 83 minutes after liftoff, U.S. Space Force and Lockheed Martin engineers at the company's Denver Launch & Checkout Operations Center confirmed signal acquisition of GPS III SV06 and now have the space vehicle "flying" under their control. GPS III SV06 is the 25th Military-Code satellite introduced to the constellation. The satellite will provide advanced technology to aide Space Force operators in their mission by providing positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) data to military and civil users worldwide. "Lockheed Martin is incredibly proud to support the Space Force's GPS team as it continues to add world-class capabilities that underpin U.S. national security with enhanced performance and accuracy," said Andre Trotter, Lockheed Martin vice president for Navigation Systems. "With the last GPS III satellite complete and ready to launch, production of the first GPS IIIF vehicle is underway." GPS is a satellite-based radio navigation system that delivers the gold standard in PNT services to America's military, U.S. allies and civil users. The satellites serve as a crucial technological foundation for internet, financial, transportation and agricultural operations, with more than 4 billion users depending on the PNT signals. GPS III vehicles provide three times greater accuracy and eight times greater anti-jamming capability over existing satellites in the constellation. To better address mission needs and emerging threats, Lockheed Martin intentionally created GPS III with a modular design, allowing new technology and capabilities to be added in the future. Lockheed Martin has completed production on its original GPS III SV1-10 contract, with the Space Force declaring SV10 Available for Launch on Dec. 8, 2022. GPS III SV06 will soon join SV01-05 in orbit. GPS III SV07-10 are completed and in storage at the company's facility waiting for the U.S. Space Force to call them up for launch. Lockheed Martin is also designing and building the GPS III Follow On (GPS IIIF) for the Space Force, which will feature even more innovative capabilities than its predecessors. GPS IIIF satellites will feature an accuracy-enhancing laser retroreflector array, a new search and rescue payload, a fully digital navigation payload and more next-generation technology. In November 2022, Space Systems Command announced it exercised the third production option valued at approximately $744 million for the procurement of three additional GPS IIIF satellites from Lockheed Martin, meaning the company is now contracted to build SV11-20. For additional GPS information, photos and video visit: www.lockheedmartin.com/gps. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 114,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. Please follow @LMNews on Twitter for the latest announcements and news across the corporation, and @LMSpace to learn more about the latest technologies, missions and people driving the future of space. SOURCE Lockheed Martin DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Small and Midsize Biopharma Perspective on the Highly Potent API Manufacturing Market" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Small and Midsize Biopharma Perspective on the Highly Potent API Manufacturing Market report explores motivations for outsourcing HPAPI, the number of small molecule assets that require high containment manufacturing that are in respondents' pipelines and portfolios, and what percentage of high containment manufacturing activities are outsourced. Highly potent active pharmaceutical ingredients (HPAPIs) are a growing area for biopharmaceutical companies. HPAPI manufacturing is often more complicated and resource intensive than traditional API manufacturing. High containment facilities must be segregated, personnel must be trained and provided personal protective equipment, and employee exposure time-limits must be enforced. As a result, some sponsors are more likely to outsource HPAPI manufacturing compared to traditional small molecule drug substance because they need access to high containment facilities or scientific expertise not possessed in-house. Key statistics include respondents' categorizations of their companies' high containment assets and the proportion of their small molecule portfolio that requires high containment manufacturing, the number of compounds requiring high containment that are in respondents' development pipelines and on the market, which therapeutic areas they are designed to target, and the outsourcing prevalence of each type of high containment asset This report provides an overview of the current market dynamics for high containment manufacturing from the perspective of small and midsize biopharmaceutical companies as well as an outlook on what our survey respondents All HPAPI manufacturing decision-makers at sponsor organizations Predict the marketplace will look like five years from now What you will learn: Drug Developers: Discover how industry peers are using service providers and which aspects of the manufacturing process have been most challenging Selection criteria for engaging a contract manufacturer for highly potent development and manufacturing The timeline for engaging a CDMO for commercial high containment manufacturing, and what really drives project satisfaction CMOs: Determine how your capabilities and marketing messaging stack up against what highly potent manufacturing outsourcers regard as important Uncover the main reasons CDMOs lose the bid for an HPAPI project Better position your company to win business by understanding the dynamics of different buyer groups and develop targeted marketing to speak directly to their needs Major Topics: Market Dynamics Outsourcing Practices Provider Selection and Perceptions Highly Potent Manufacturing Complications Study Data Key Topics Covered: How to Use this Report Analysis Note: High Containment Requirement Introduction Methodology Respondent Demographics and Qualifications Participant Geography Participant Company Size by R&D Spend Major Sections Market Dynamics Primary Section Takeaways High Containment Pipeline and Portfolio Proportion of Small Molecule Assets that are Highly Potent Types of Highly Potent Assets Highly Potent Product Requirements Top 10 Therapeutic Areas Targeted Dosage Forms Occupational Exposure Limits Outsourcing Practices Primary Section Takeaways Outsourcing Drivers CDMO Use by Stage Likelihood of Outsourcing High Containment Manufacturing Outsourced High Containment Manufacturing Current and 5 Years Out Highly Potent Assets Outsourced Highly Potent Outsourced Manufacturing Activities CDMO Usage Rates for HPAPI Annual Outsourcing Expenditure Provider Selection and Perceptions Primary Section Takeaways CDMO Selection Timing Department Influence on CDMO Selection Use of Preferred Providers Top 5 CDMO Selection Attributes CDMO Satisfaction Drivers Reasons CDMOs Lose Bids Highly Potent Manufacturing Complications Primary Section Takeaways Areas of Difficulty Biggest Outsourcing Challenge - Unprompted Study Data Likelihood of Outsourcing High Containment Manufacturing Proportion of Small Molecule Assets that are Highly Potent Highly Potent Assets Projection Highly Potent Assets Outsourced OEL Limit Highly Potent Classification Highly Potent Product Requirements Process Analytical Technology Highly Potent Dosage Forms Therapeutic Areas Targeted Outsourcing Drivers Outsourced High Containment Manufacturing Current and 5 Years Out Highly Potent Outsourced Manufacturing Activities CDMO Usage Rates for HPAPI Use of Preferred Providers CDMO Use by Stage CDMO Selection Timing Importance of Using the Same CDMO for Development and Commercial CDMO Selection Attributes CDMO Satisfaction Drivers Biggest Outsourcing Challenge Areas of Difficulty Department Influence on CMO Selection Technology and Infrastructure Investments Reasons CDMOs Lose Bids Annual Outsourcing Expenditure Demographics Company Size and Revenue Office Location Molecule Involvement and Assets Decision-making Responsibility Highly Potent Compounds in Development Highly Potent Compounds on Market Involvement by Molecule Type For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/vqbpvy 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 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg SOURCE Research and Markets BEDFORD, Mass., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Soft Robotics Inc. announced that they will be showcasing m GripAI in multiple booths at the International Processing and Production Expo (IPPE), January 24-26, 2023, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Advancements in machine vision, soft grasping, and AI are helping food producers navigate post-covid labor challenges. Tweet this By combining 3D vision, artificial intelligence, and Soft Robotics industry-proven, IP69K-rated soft grasping, mGripAI enables system integrators and OEM machine builders to automate complex production processes in the food and consumer packaged goods industries. Debuted at IPPE in 2022, mGripAI provides industrial robots with the ability to tackle complex food processing tasks traditionally performed by human labor. By combining 3D vision, artificial intelligence, and Soft Robotics' industry-proven, IP69K-rated soft grasping, mGripAI enables system integrators and OEM machine builders to automate complex production processes in the food and consumer packaged goods industries. At this event, Soft Robotics will demonstrate tray packing of chicken drumsticks from bulk infeed in their booth (BC-9109). mGripAI will also be on display in the CHL booth (BC-9709) demonstrating high-speed picking of chicken and beef and in the Schmalz booth (C-13653) picking, sorting, orienting and case-packing sausages. "We're excited to show mGripAI to the protein and poultry industry once again," said Paul Kling, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at Soft Robotics. "Our advancements in technologies such as machine vision, soft grasping, and artificial intelligence software are helping protein producers navigate post-covid labor challenges. Small footprint, food-grade singulation and packaging equipment are key to the success of the industry, and we are happy to be able to bring these to market for some of the largest food producers in the world." Soft Robotics' flagship soft gripper, mGrip will also be featured during IPPE in partner booths: Fanuc, JLS Automation, Quest and Ossid (a ProMach brand), Premiere Tech, and Staubli Robotics. About Soft Robotics Soft Robotics is an industry-leading technology company that designs and builds automated high-speed picking solutions using proprietary soft robotic grippers, 3D machine vision, and artificial intelligence software. The company's transformational robotic automation solutions enable System Integrators, OEM machine builders and End Users to automate complex production processes in the food and consumer packaged goods industries. Soft Robotics is backed by leading venture capital firms and strategic investors that include ABB Technology Ventures, Calibrate Ventures, FANUC, Honeywell Ventures, Hyperplane Venture Capital, Johnsonville, Marel, Material Impact, Scale Venture Partners, Tekfen Ventures, Tyson Ventures and Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. Learn more at www.softroboticsinc.com . Media contact: Julie Collura Director, Marketing Communications Soft Robotics Inc. [email protected] SOURCE Soft Robotics Inc. ST. LOUIS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Spire Inc. (NYSE: SR) will host a conference call and webcast on Wednesday, February 1 to discuss our fiscal 2023 first quarter results. We will issue our earnings news release before the market opens that day, and it will be available on our website at Investors.SpireEnergy.com under the News tab. To access the call, please dial the applicable phone number 5-10 minutes prior to the start time. Date and Time: Wednesday, February 1 8:00 a.m. CT (9:00 a.m. ET) Phone Numbers: U.S. and Canada: 844-824-3832 International: 412-317-5142 The call will be webcast in a listen-only format for the media and public. The webcast can be accessed at Investors.SpireEnergy.com under the Events & presentations tab. A replay of the call will be available from 10 a.m. CT (11 a.m. ET) on February 1 until March 1, 2023, by dialing 877-344-7529 (U.S.), 855-669-9658 (Canada) or 412-317-0088 (international). The replay access code is 9462673. A replay of the webcast will be available on our website at Investors.SpireEnergy.com under the Events & presentations tab. About Spire At Spire Inc. (NYSE: SR) we believe energy exists to help make people's lives better. It's a simple idea, but one that's at the heart of our company. Every day we serve 1.7 million homes and businesses making us one of the largest publicly traded natural gas company in the country. We help families and business owners fuel their daily lives through our gas utilities serving Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri. Our natural gas-related businesses include Spire Marketing, Spire STL Pipeline and Spire Storage. We are committed to transforming our business through growing organically, investing in infrastructure, and advancing through innovation. Learn more at SpireEnergy.com. SOURCE Spire Inc. SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Swift Engineering announced its Japanese Subsidiary, Swift Xi, signed an agreement with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in a project called "Digital Infrastructure Development Project for Digital Transformation of Industries: Research and development on 3D spatial information infrastructures." Both Swift Tactical Systems and Swift Engineering will support the project. Three-dimensional spatial information infrastructure "As the Swift family, we are excited to be a part of this predominant and innovative project conducted by NEDO. And we would like to be the very first team in the world to establish a safe 3d Spatial Information Infrastructure System," says Hiro Matsushita, Group Chairman/CEO at Swift Group. Swift Tactical Systems and the Swift group are collaborating with Zenrin Co. Ltd., LocationMind Inc., Intelligent Style, and Space Service Innovation Lab (SSIL) to develop a 3D spatial information infrastructure using the spatial ID. There needs to be a platform for understanding and identifying flight safety information. NEDO's Basic plan for this project is to use the spatial ID as a standard index, making it easier and more efficient to search, integrate, and utilize a wide variety of spatial information and provide spatial information in a machine-readable format. By providing this service, we aim to realize the safe and efficient operation of autonomous mobile robots such as drones, automatic delivery robots, and self-driving cars and create new value using spatial ID. Furthermore, by 2030, the Japanese government wants unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and urban air mobility (UAMs) to fly in urban areas within Japan. "Data integration of autonomous mobility, including drones, which will connect the digital and virtual worlds, is essential in creating the next generation of services. We have high expectations for this project, as it will be a milestone in this direction," says Hiroshi Senzoku, Managing director at SSIL. Each company collaborating on this endeavor brings a unique skill set to develop 3D spatial information infrastructure: SSIL will design specifications and build the 3d spatial information infrastructure. Intelligent Style will create the database architecture and prototype the system infrastructure. LocationMind will provide the dynamic data (people-flow analyses) to decrease flight risks in Zenrin's system and test the usefulness of its spoofing protection system. Zenrin will develop a "flight risk management system" prototype, which will automatically make flight plans using its algorithms to maintain flight safety. Swift Tactical Systems, alongside the rest of the Swift Group, will advise, fly and make flight routes of UAVs under the guidelines of the "flight risk management system" developed by Zenrin to improve safe operations of UAVs under the 3D spatial information infrastructure. Swift will use its transitional Vertical Take Off and Landing UAV and other platforms to support flight operations. "This project, with its goal of creating a 3D spatial information infrastructure, will establish safe flight paths for UAVs and UAM corridors in urban areas. We are proud to be a part of this project, driving the development of new infrastructure that will enable the safe and efficient operation of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles and create new value using spatial ID. By leveraging the capabilities of our partners, we are confident in our ability to create a platform that will revolutionize how we fly in urban environments," says Alex Echeverria, President of Swift Tactical Systems. About Swift Tactical Systems: Swift Tactical Systems provides unmatched capabilities utilizing disruptive unmanned systems technologies and operational expertise for military and government applications. Headquartered in San Clemente, California, the company delivers fully integrated unmanned systems solutions for collecting, processing, and providing real-time intelligence and data, enabling governments and organizations to make informed decisions. About Swift-Xi: Swift Xi is a Japanese joint venture by Swift Engineering, Inc., headquartered in San Clemente, California, USA, and the Kobe Institute of Computing in Kobe, Japan. Swift Xi provides data and IT services, logistics, and full-service operations of autonomous and robotic technologies in Japan and worldwide. About Swift Engineering: Swift Engineering is an innovation company based in San Clemente, California, with 40 years of experience solving complex problems for sophisticated clients. Swift is a leading designer, developer, and manufacturer of unmanned systems, helicopters, spacecraft, submarines, robotics, and advanced composites for military and commercial applications. Swift is globally recognized for creating high-impact solutions. The team's passion and talents continue to fuel the next generation of intelligent systems and advanced vehicles, making Swift a dominant force across numerous industries. Media Contact: William Schneider 714-866-8404 [email protected] SOURCE Swift Tactical Systems Integration Connects Talos Clients to Industry's Most Advanced Back-Office Platform for Institutional Digital Asset Investors NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Talos , the premier provider of institutional digital asset trading technology, today announced it has partnered with leading digital assets fund administrator Formidium. As a result of this partnership, Talos end users worldwide - institutional investors on the buy-side and the sell-side, including traditional finance and crypto-native firms - can now leverage Seamless Digital , Formidium's advanced digital assets and tax accounting platform. Formidium will join Talos's robust and trusted partner network comprised of OTC desks, crypto exchanges, FX and settlement providers. The partnership comes as Talos scales its presence globally. Formidium's web-based Seamless Digital consolidates and automates all fund administration and tax accounting functions for timely reporting of portfolio, fund, and investor accounting. Originally a multi-asset class platform that was developed for alternative investment funds, including hedge funds, private equity, and real estate, the solution is now also one of the most advanced digital assets general ledger accounting systems on the market, bringing accounting best practices into the crypto ecosystem. Commenting on the partnership, Formidium's EVP, Amit Arora said: "We are thrilled to partner with Talos, one of the leading names in digital asset trading technology, to offer their client base access to our award-winning cloud-based fund administration application. This partnership is directly in line with our commitment to innovation and we are proud to support a new generation of cutting-edge digital asset and crypto companies." "As one of the market's most trusted trading technology providers, it's vital that Talos partner with service providers of a similar pedigree," said Anton Katz, Co-Founder & CEO of Talos. "Formidium's deep familiarity working with crypto-specific reporting and fund administration coupled with its advanced technology results in an invaluable integration that further strengthens our all-in-one institutional platform to support the complete trade lifecycle." About Talos Talos powers digital asset trading strategies globally. Engineered by a team with unmatched experience in building intuitional trading systems, the Talos platform is trusted by the largest and most sophisticated market participants and their end clients for its performance, reliability, and security. Its growing network of services trading platform, lending marketplace, data and analytics, and portfolio and settlement tools, all offered directly or through service providers on a white-label basis enable clients of all types to transact end-to-end without concern for unnecessary intermediary risk or potential conflicts of interest. Talos has offices in New York, London, Sweden, and Singapore. For additional information visit www.talos.com . About Formidium Formidium is a vertically integrated global fund administrator based in Chicago, Illinois that leverages its proprietary Seamless Software, an award-winning, full-scale, and cloud-based fund administration application integrating portfolio, fund accounting and investor reporting to provide best-in-class and cost-efficient solutions to both the traditional and alternative investment fund management community. Seamless processes high-frequency trading volumes to deliver timely NAV for hedge funds, cryptocurrency funds, SPVs, mutual funds, quant funds, private equity funds, Venture Capital funds, impact funds, commodity pools and mortgage funds. Formidium's operations and technology are SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 audited, and it currently has over 1,200 staff across its eight global offices. Media Inquiries For Talos: Jed Hamilton Forefront Communications [email protected] For Formidium: Shivangini Yadav +1 630-828-3520 [email protected] SOURCE Talos Alternatives to in-hospital care and education initiatives on choosing care settings were the focus of the presentations. TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Peter Chang, vice president of Healthcare Design at Tampa General Hospital (TGH) and assistant professor in the Division of Cardiology in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and Dr. Jason Wilson, director of the Division of Emergency Medicine in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and medical director of Transitions of Care for Emergency Medicine at Tampa General Hospital, briefed members of the Florida Senate Committee on Health Policy Tuesday at the invitation of Chair Colleen Burton. Their presentations featured innovative programs launched at Tampa General Hospital that aim to strengthen the quality of patient care and increase access to care while reducing the overall costs to patients. Dr. Jason Wilson, director of the Division of Emergency Medicine in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and medical director of Transitions of Care for Emergency Medicine at Tampa General Hospital (TGH) and Dr. Peter Chang, vice president of Healthcare Design at Tampa General Hospital and assistant professor in the Division of Cardiology in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine briefed members of the Florida Senate Committee on Health Policy Tuesday. Chang provided an update on TGH at Home, a program created in July 2022 to provide world-class clinical hospital-level care to lower-acuity patients in the comfort of their own homes. The approach combines twice-daily visits at the patient's home with advanced technology to monitor vital signs and conduct telehealth visits. Based on the same standards used at the hospital, the model has proven to reduce exposure to infection or infectious disease and reduce the risk of readmission as well as improve the patient experience. "TGH at Home is the intersection of high technology and personalized care," Chang said. "We're able to treat patients in the comfort of their own homes, while creating efficiencies, lowering costs and improving patient outcomes." The presentation by Chang was part of an update to the committee on efforts in Florida to provide acute and post-acute hospital care in a home setting. Chang implements innovations and new technologies to transform patient care at Tampa General. Wilson briefed committee members about Tampa General's efforts to direct patients to the most effective and efficient care options available, which can be a better choice for the patient than the Emergency Department (ED). Using alternatives, such as urgent care or telehealth, patients benefit from receiving the right service at the right time. Some of the pathways that Wilson discussed better connect the ED to the community so health care delivery flows more smoothly across each care area and ensures that the ED has the capacity and space to always treat patients in emergency situations. "The ED serves as the hub of modern health care and unscheduled care," Wilson said. "It is critical that emergency medicine participates in coordinated approaches to improving health care in Florida by helping patients get to the right place for their care." Wilson was part of a panel discussion on efforts to ensure patients receive care in the best place possible, whether virtually or physically, in the ED, an office, a mobile unit or via telemedicine. I greatly appreciated the unique perspective and insight offered by Dr. Peter Chang and the entire Tampa General team," said Chair Burton. "Innovation in the health care industry is vital to ensure top-class patient care, and I'm proud to say that Florida leads the way in innovative health care solutions through strategic partnerships with providers like Tampa General Hospital." The hearing Tuesday marked the first meeting of the Senate Committee on Health Policy this year. Tampa General has become a valuable resource to the Florida Legislature on health care policy issues. In 2021, the Florida Senate turned to Tampa General Hospital to develop and implement health guidelines and infectious disease protocols for the safety of members of the Senate, staff, media and visitors. Also in 2021, then-Senate President Wilton Simpson participated in a celebration of Florida's health care heroes at the Capitol, hosted by Tampa General Hospital. In addition, several Tampa General team members have been appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on state boards. Dr. Seema Weinstein, manager of Psychology and Neuropsychology Services at Tampa General Hospital, serves on the Board of Psychology. Annmarie Chavarria, chief nursing officer at Tampa General, serves on the Florida Center for Nursing Board. Maja Gift, director of Pharmacy Services at Tampa General, was recently reappointed to the Board of Pharmacy. Nicole Justice, senior director of Patient Safety at Tampa General, serves on the Board of Medicine. ABOUT TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL Tampa General Hospital, a 1,040-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 2022-23 Best Hospitals, and is tied as the third highest-ranked hospital in Florida, with seven specialties ranking among the best programs in the United States. Tampa General Hospital has been designated as a model of excellence by the 2022 Fortune/Merative 100 Top Hospitals list. The academic medical center's commitment to growing and developing its team members is recognized by two prestigious Forbes magazine rankings first nationally in the 2022 America's Best Employers for Women and sixth out of 100 Florida companies in the 2022 America's Best Employers by State. Tampa General is the safety net hospital for the region, caring for everyone regardless of their ability to pay, and in fiscal year 2021, provided a net community benefit worth more than $224.5 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 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 21 TGH Imaging powered by Tower outpatient radiology centers throughout Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Palm Beach counties. Tampa Bay area 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 provides real-time situational awareness to improve and better coordinate patient care at a lower cost. For more information, go to www.tgh.org. Media Contact: Beth Hardy, APR Senior Communications Specialist (813) 510-6363 (cell) [email protected] SOURCE Tampa General Hospital Tanishq intends to tap into the sizable Indian diaspora through its flagship store in New Jersey NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Tanishq, an Indian jewelry brand, today announced the launch of its first store in the United States. Senator Robert Menendez, Senior United States senator from New Jersey and Randhir Jaiswal, Consul General of India in New York, along with John E. McCormac, Mayor Woodbridge, Sam Joshi, Mayor Edison, Wesley Mathews, Choose New Jersey Inc., Vin Gopal, New Jersey State Senator and Congressman Frank Pallone, New Jersey, were the chief guests at the inauguration of the store. Tanishq, Jewelry Brand by the Tata Group, Launches first US store In New Jersey Tweet this Tanishq Showroom in Iselin, New Jersey Interior of Tanishq Showroom in New Jersey The brand aims to meet the evolving needs of Indian Americans, who comprise 4.35 percent of the state's total population and are 387,000 strong. According to US Census Bureau, jewelry store sales were estimated at $33.2 billion in 2020, which was a 25% increase over the previous decade. Tanishq has been in the US market through e-commerce for over a year and has received positive community feedback. The launch is a part of Tanishq's retail business expansion strategy. The 3750+ square foot, two-story showroom on New Jersey's Oak Tree Road, Iselin, offers 6500+ unique designs in 18 and 22 KT gold and diamond jewelry, as well as solitaires and colored stones. The store displayed its most recent collections at the inaugural event, including Color me joy, a cocktail jewelry collection, Romance of polki, Rhythms of rain, Moods of earth, and Alekhya. Tanishq is also offering a free gold coin* with jewelry purchase or up to 25%* off on diamond jewelry value as a launch promotion from January 18-22, 2023. *T&C Apply. The chief guests were hosted by CK Venkataraman, Managing Director; Kuruvilla Markose, CEO, International Business; and Amrit Pal Singh, Business Head North America at Titan Company Limited. "We are on a mission to establish Tanishq as a global brand, and our retail showroom expansion in the United States is a significant step in that direction. Tanishq has been balancing the elegance of tradition with the brilliance of modernity for decades and we want to bring it to New Jersey," said C K Venkataraman, Managing Director at Titan Company Limited, the parent company of Tanishq. Kuruvilla Markose, CEO International Business Division, Titan Company Limited, said, "Tanishq already has a significant online presence in the US market. The high demand and interest shown by the Indian American community encouraged us to have an on-ground presence for them. This showroom will have our latest collections and masterpieces designed to suit all jewelry needs of the Indian Americans." The company launched its first international brick-and-mortar store in Dubai in November 2020. It now has eight international stores, seven in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) and the first in the United States of America. The company intends to collectively open 20-30 stores in North America and the Middle East over the next 2-3 years. While in India, Tanishq has a presence of 400+ stores across 240 cities and indents to add 100+ stores in the next year. About Tanishq Tanishq, India's most-loved jewelry brand from the Tata Group, has been synonymous with superior craftsmanship, exclusive designs, inimitable customer service, and guaranteed product quality for over two decades. At Tanishq, jewelry is not just a product, but a manifestation of artistry and our exquisite range of gold and diamond jewelry strikes the perfect balance between traditional charm and contemporary appeal. With designs that capture the beauty and celebration of special occasions, Tanishq aims to be an integral part of every woman's journey. Attesting to this commitment toward excellence, in 2019, Tanishq has been awarded the title of The Most Trusted Jewelry Brand in India by the Trust Research Advisory. Tanishq currently has a presence of 400+ stores and is India's most trusted jewelry brand with an extremely high brand recall. Website: www.tanishq.co.in Instagram and Facebook: tanishqusa Contact Number: +1(848)999-2587 Store Address: Tanishq Showroom, 1429 Oak Tree Road, Iselin, New Jersey 08830 Media Contact: Keeret Singh Heer [email protected] (917) 940-3294 Aditi Mallick [email protected] Saumya Bharadwaj [email protected] SOURCE Tanishq press release The Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Home Affairs and External Communications, Minister for Rodrigues, Outer Islands and Territorial Integrity, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, chaired, today, at the New Treasury Building in Port Louis, the High-Level Committee on Private Investment Project. The Committee, which aims at facilitating and streamlining the various investment processes and removing the bottlenecks impeding the projects' realisation, examined some 33 private investment projects to the tune of some Rs 31 billion, with an implementation timeline spanning over the next three years. The High Level Committee comprised the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Housing and Land Use Planning, Minister of Tourism, Mr Louis Steven Obeegadoo; the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Local Government and Disaster Risk Management, Dr Mohammad Anwar Husnoo; the Minister of Land Transport and Light Rail, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, Mr Alan Ganoo; the Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, Dr Renganaden Padayachy; the Minister of Energy and Public Utilities, Mr Georges Pierre Lesjongard; the Minister of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change, Mr Kavydass Ramano; the Attorney General, Minister of Agro-Industry and Food Security, Mr Maneesh Gobin; and the Minister of National Infrastructure and Community Development, Mr Mahendranuth Sharma Hurreeram. Various senior officials of governmental and private bodies were also present. In a statement following the meeting, the Chief Executive Officer of the Economic Development Board (EDB), Mr Ken Poonoosamy, highlighted that the projects examined pertained to manufacturing, tourism, real estate, ocean economy and health sectors. He pointed out that these projects were being implemented with the aim of pursuing the economic recovery of the country. He recalled that out of some Rs 110 billion invested in Mauritius last year, private sector investment accounted for around Rs 88 billion, with an economic growth of 7.9%. He also stressed the need to maintain this momentum, and underscored the importance for investors to obtain the relevant licence, permit, authorisation or clearance on time so as not to lose money. As such, Mr Poonoosamy reminded that the High-Level Committee provided support to advise on policy clearance, while ensuring institutional coordination for the implementation of projects. NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Technavio, the global tank trucking market size is estimated to decline by USD 97.06 billion from 2022 to 2027. The market is estimated to decline at a CAGR of 7.29% during the forecast period. However, the growth momentum will decelerate. North America held the largest share of the global market in 2022, and the market in the region is estimated to witness an incremental growth of 30%. For more Insights on market size Request a sample report Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Tank Trucking Market 2023-2027 Global tank trucking market - Five forces The global cloud data warehouse market is fragmented, and the five forces analysis covers Bargaining power of buyers The threat of new entrants Threat of rivalry Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of substitutes Interpretation of porter's five models helps to strategize the business, for entire details buy the report! Global tank trucking market Customer landscape The report includes the market's adoption lifecycle, from the innovator's stage to the laggard's stage. It focuses on adoption rates in different regions based on penetration. Furthermore, the report also includes key purchase criteria and drivers of price sensitivity to help companies evaluate and develop their growth strategies. Global tank trucking market - Segmentation assessment Segment overview Technavio has segmented the market based on ownership (for hire and private), and capacity (medium-duty, heavy-duty, and light-duty). The for-hire segment will grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. It is essential to hire tank trucks for businesses operating in the global tank trucking market since it enables them to keep their fleet up-to-date and involves lower upfront costs than purchasing them. Although the small-scale and mid-scale vendors are generally unable to spend their limited resources on purchasing tank trucks there is a rise in the sales of this segment. The reason behind this is the increase in demand for tank trucking for short-term transport operations. This is a major factor that is expected to boost the growth of this market segment during the forecast period. Geography overview By geography, the global tank trucking market is segmented into North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global tank trucking market. North America is estimated to account for 30% of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The large-scale investments in infrastructure development and construction activities are the major reasons behind the market's growth in North America. High capital investments have been made in constructing many oil and gas pipelines in the US. As per the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the natural gas pipeline network in the country is a highly integrated transmission and distribution network that can transport natural gas from and to nearly all the states in the country. In addition, increased oil and gas production due to a surge in unconventional exploration and production (E&P) activities in the region over the last five years has facilitated the availability of cheap feedstock for refineries. Such factors will increase the market growth during the forecast period. Download a Sample Report Global tank trucking market Market dynamics Key factor driving market growth The growing demand for oil and natural gas is notably driving the market growth. The global consumption of natural gas over the past decade has increased significantly. The major factor behind the widespread use of natural gas is that it is used as a fuel in heating applications. Growing consumption of fuel in developing countries such as India is also expected to increase the demand for natural gas during the forecast period. is also expected to increase the demand for natural gas during the forecast period. In addition, the gradual recovery of global crude oil prices will also bring new investments into the oil and gas sector. These factors will boost the global market during the forecast period. Leading trends influencing the market Technological advancements are an emerging trend in the market. The new developments in technology lead to changes in the proportion, size, and structure of tank transport. The new developments in technology lead to changes in the proportion, size, and structure of tank transport. Nowadays, the focus of tanker manufacturers is on lightweight components and parts that are reliable and durable and help improve the performance of their vehicles and also fuel economy. Significant investments are being done by vendors in M&A to expand their product portfolio. Lucrative growth opportunities will be created with the integration of artificial intelligence into tankers for vendors in the global oil market. Hence, the rapidly growing global oil and gas industry and continuous technological advancements are expected to play a major role in boosting the growth of the global market during the forecast period. Major challenges hindering the market growth Leakage issues during the transportation of oil and gas are major challenges impeding the market growth. The transportation, storage, and distribution activities of the oil and gas industry involve moving oil and gas from oil wells to refineries and ultimately to fuel retail stores for consumption. The transportation, storage, and distribution activities of the oil and gas industry involve moving oil and gas from oil wells to refineries and ultimately to fuel retail stores for consumption. After crude oil is refined, the final products and transported from refineries by tank trucks and by rail to fuel retail stores. In general, all modes of transportation used to transport oil and gas are at risk of oil spills. It is during loading and unloading that the oil leaks. Various regulations are in place to ensure effective oil spill prevention. Under the FRP rule, facilities that store oil and gas must have an action plan and be prepared to respond to potential oil spill disruptions. Such factors will hinder the global market during the forecast period. Drivers, trends, and challenges have an impact on market dynamics, which can impact businesses. Find some insights from a sample report! What are the key data covered in this tank trucking market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the tank trucking market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the tank trucking market size and its contribution to the market in focus on the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the tank trucking market industry across North America , Europe , APAC, South America , and Middle East and Africa , , APAC, , and and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of tank trucking market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related reports: The military aerial refueling tanker market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.13% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecasted to increase by USD 4,709.07 million. This report extensively covers market segmentation by technology (probe-and-drogue and boom-and-receptacle), type (manned and unmanned), and geography (North America, APAC, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America). The tank container shipping market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.06% between 2021 and 2026. The size of the market is forecasted to increase by USD 195.98 million. This report extensively covers market segmentation by end-user (Oil and gas, chemical, and others), and geography (Europe, APAC, North America, MEA, and South America). Tank Trucking Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 144 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Decelerate at a CAGR of 7.29% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 97.06 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 7.18 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution North America at 30% Key countries US, China, Singapore, UK, and France Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled Amthor International, Dupre Logistics LLC, Eagle Transport Corp., Florida Rock and Tank Lines Inc., Groendyke Transport Inc., Kenan Advantage Group Inc., Littlejohn Inc., Mac Trailer Manufacturing Inc., Martin Transport Inc., Miller Transporters Inc., Quest Liner Inc., Ruan Transportation Management Systems, Shiny Shipping and Logistics Pvt. Ltd., Superior Bulk Logistics Inc., Superior Industries Inc., Tankstar USA Inc., TFI International Inc., Trimac Transportation Services Inc., and Burch Tank and Truck 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, and 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. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized. Table of contents 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Ownership Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Capacity Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global tank trucking market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global tank trucking market 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.2 Ownership Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Ownership Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.3 Capacity Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size Capacity Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ billion) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Ownership 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Ownership - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Ownership - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Ownership Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Ownership Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Ownership 6.3 For hire - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on For hire - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 35: Data Table on For hire - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 36: Chart on For hire - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on For hire - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Private - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Private - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 39: Data Table on Private - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 40: Chart on Private - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Private - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Market opportunity by Ownership Exhibit 42: Market opportunity by Ownership ($ billion) 7 Market Segmentation by Capacity 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 43: Chart on Capacity - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 44: Data Table on Capacity - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by Capacity Exhibit 45: Chart on Comparison by Capacity Exhibit 46: Data Table on Comparison by Capacity 7.3 Medium duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 47: Chart on Medium duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 48: Data Table on Medium duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 49: Chart on Medium duty - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 50: Data Table on Medium duty - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Heavy duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Heavy duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Heavy duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 53: Chart on Heavy duty - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Heavy duty - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Light duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 55: Chart on Light duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 56: Data Table on Light duty - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 57: Chart on Light duty - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Light duty - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.6 Market opportunity by Capacity Exhibit 59: Market opportunity by Capacity ($ billion) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 60: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 61: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 62: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 63: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 64: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 66: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 67: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 70: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 71: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 74: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 75: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 78: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 79: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 82: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 83: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 86: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 87: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 90: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 91: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 94: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 95: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 Singapore - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on Singapore - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 98: Data Table on Singapore - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 99: Chart on Singapore - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on Singapore - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 101: Chart on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 102: Data Table on France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ billion) Exhibit 103: Chart on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 104: Data Table on France - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 105: Market opportunity by geography ($ billion) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 106: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 107: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 108: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 109: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 110: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 111: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 Amthor International Exhibit 112: Amthor International - Overview Exhibit 113: Amthor International - Product / Service Exhibit 114: Amthor International - Key offerings 12.4 Dupre Logistics LLC Exhibit 115: Dupre Logistics LLC - Overview Exhibit 116: Dupre Logistics LLC - Product / Service Exhibit 117: Dupre Logistics LLC - Key offerings 12.5 Eagle Transport Corp. Exhibit 118: Eagle Transport Corp. - Overview Exhibit 119: Eagle Transport Corp. - Product / Service Exhibit 120: Eagle Transport Corp. - Key offerings 12.6 Florida Rock and Tank Lines Inc. and Tank Lines Inc. Exhibit 121: Florida Rock and Tank Lines Inc. - Overview and Tank Lines Inc. - Overview Exhibit 122: Florida Rock and Tank Lines Inc. - Product / Service and Tank Lines Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 123: Florida Rock and Tank Lines Inc. - Key offerings 12.7 Groendyke Transport Inc. Exhibit 124: Groendyke Transport Inc. - Overview Exhibit 125: Groendyke Transport Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 126: Groendyke Transport Inc. - Key offerings 12.8 Kenan Advantage Group Inc. Exhibit 127: Kenan Advantage Group Inc. - Overview Exhibit 128: Kenan Advantage Group Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 129: Kenan Advantage Group Inc. - Key offerings 12.9 Littlejohn Inc. Exhibit 130: Littlejohn Inc. - Overview Exhibit 131: Littlejohn Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 132: Littlejohn Inc. - Key offerings 12.10 Mac Trailer Manufacturing Inc. Exhibit 133: Mac Trailer Manufacturing Inc. - Overview Exhibit 134: Mac Trailer Manufacturing Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 135: Mac Trailer Manufacturing Inc. - Key offerings 12.11 Martin Transport Inc. Exhibit 136: Martin Transport Inc. - Overview Exhibit 137: Martin Transport Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 138: Martin Transport Inc. - Key offerings 12.12 Miller Transporters Inc. Exhibit 139: Miller Transporters Inc. - Overview Exhibit 140: Miller Transporters Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 141: Miller Transporters Inc. - Key offerings 12.13 Quest Liner Inc. Exhibit 142: Quest Liner Inc. - Overview Exhibit 143: Quest Liner Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 144: Quest Liner Inc. - Key offerings 12.14 Ruan Transportation Management Systems Exhibit 145: Ruan Transportation Management Systems - Overview Exhibit 146: Ruan Transportation Management Systems - Product / Service Exhibit 147: Ruan Transportation Management Systems - Key offerings 12.15 Superior Bulk Logistics Inc. Exhibit 148: Superior Bulk Logistics Inc. - Overview Exhibit 149: Superior Bulk Logistics Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 150: Superior Bulk Logistics Inc. - Key offerings 12.16 Tankstar USA Inc. Inc. Exhibit 151: Tankstar USA Inc. - Overview Inc. - Overview Exhibit 152: Tankstar USA Inc. - Product / Service Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 153: Tankstar USA Inc. - Key offerings 12.17 Trimac Transportation Services Inc. Exhibit 154: Trimac Transportation Services Inc. - Overview Exhibit 155: Trimac Transportation Services Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 156: Trimac Transportation Services Inc. - Key offerings 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 157: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 158: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 159: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 160: Research methodology Exhibit 161: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 162: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 163: 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 focusized analysts, Technavio's repoprovidery 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, exteesearch, 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 Amazon is world's most valuable brand, despite losing US$51 billion in value in value Tech brands fall in value, Apple loses its top ranking, down US$57.6 billion Tesla and BYD are amongst the world's fastest-growing brands as sustainability-focused brands win big Inaugural Sustainability Perceptions Index measures value of brands' reputation for sustainability The full Brand Finance Global 500 report is at https://brandirectory.com/global LONDON, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Amazon has reclaimed top spot as the world's most valuable brand despite its brand value falling 15% from US$350.3 billion to US$299.3 billion, according to a new report from leading brand valuation consultancy, Brand Finance. Every year, leading brand valuation consultancy Brand Finance puts the world's biggest brands to the test, ranking brands across all sectors and countries. The 500 most valuable and strongest brands are included in the annual Brand Finance Global 500 ranking. The worlds top ten most valuable brands 2023 Amazon's brand value has fallen by over US$50 billion this year, with its brand strength rating falling from AAA+ to AAA as consumers evaluate it more harshly in the post-pandemic world. Brand Finance's research has found that customer perception of service at Amazon has fallen at the same time as delivery times have lengthened and consumers have become less likely to recommend Amazon to others. Concurrently, some people are returning to shopping in-person, reducing the need for online retail. David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance, commented: "Technology brands across the world have lost significant value in response to shifting demand patterns. As consumer habits partially revert to pre-pandemic patterns, demand for the services of tech brands has been hit particularly hard. Additionally, disrupted supply chains, labour shortages, and greater obstacles to financing have left their mark." Tech brands fall in value, Apple loses its top ranking, down US$57.6 billion Apple (brand value down 16% to US$297.5 billion) has fallen to be the world's second most valuable brand. This year's fall in brand value relates to a fall in forecast revenue as a disrupted goods supply chain and a constrained labour market are expected to limit supply of its marquee hardware products. There was a total of 48 tech brands that featured in the ranking, two down from the 50 in 2022, after Snapchat and Twitter dropped out. Other tech-focused brands to lose brand value include Samsung Group (down 7% to US$99.7 billion), Alibaba.com (down 56% to US$10.0 billion), Facebook (down 42% to US$59.0 billion) and WeChat (down 19% to US$50.2 billion). On the positive side, Instagram (up 42% to US$47.4 billion) and LinkedIn (up 49% to US$15.5 billion) have grown in the tech sector, with the brand value of each growing due to well-executed strategy to commercialise their services. Tesla and BYD are amongst the world's fastest-growing brands as sustainability-focused brands win big Some of the big winners in brand value include electric car manufacturers Tesla (brand value up 44% to US$66.2 billion) and BYD (brand value up 57% to US$10.1 billion) as demand grows for electric cars as part of a broader transition a to low carbon economy. Inaugural Sustainability Perceptions Index measures value of brands' reputation for sustainability In addition to the Global 500 2023 ranking of the world's most valuable brands, Brand Finance is also launching the Sustainability Perceptions Index, in association with the International Advertising Association at Davos. This report reveals major global brands such as Amazon, Tesla, Apple and Google each have billions of dollars contingent on carefully managing a reputation for commitment to sustainability. The full Sustainability Perceptions Index report is available at https://brandirectory.com/sustainability The full Global 500 report is available at https://brandirectory.com/global Contact Michael Josem +447624488557 [email protected] Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985245/World_top_10_brands_2023.jpg SOURCE Brand Finance The three-day scientific program takes place live and in-person on February 9-11, 2023 in San Diego with an optional Body Cosmetic Surgery Cadaver Workshop on February 8 CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS), the world's largest multi-specialty home for physicians dedicated to cosmetic surgery and aesthetic medicine, will present its Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) on February 9-11, 2023, with an optional Body Cosmetic Surgery Cadaver Workshop offered on February 8. AACS President, J. Kevin Duplechain, MD, FAACS, provides a welcome to the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery #AACS2023. Themed "Focus on Mastery," this hallmark AACS continuing medical education program will take place live and in-person at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego, CA. The pre-meeting Cadaver workshop will be conducted at the University of California San Diego Center for the Future of Surgery (UCSD CFS). Offering 32 educational sessions, the 2023 AACS ASM features leading subject experts with diverse background specialties such as dermatology, otolaryngology, general surgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery, ophthalmology, and plastic and reconstructive surgery. The dynamic, well-rounded program includes keynote presentations and didactic sessions on the latest techniques and procedures in cosmetic surgery, such as: body contouring, face lift surgery, Brazilian butt lift, breast, rhinoplasty, liposuction surgery, skin rejuvenation, hair restoration, and male and female genitourinary. Professor Peter A. Everts, PhD, FRSM, internationally recognized educator, scientist, and contributor in the area of chronic complex wound healing and regenerative medicine, will deliver the keynote presentation at the opening session on Thursday, February 9. Jeffrey Alan Klein, MD, MPH, inventor of the tumescent technique for liposuction, will deliver the prestigious Webster Lecture on Friday, February 10. Dr. Klein's lifetime work of developing tumescent techniques for liposuction improved the safety of liposuction beyond measurable terms. Author Hope Timberlake will serve as featured speaker during the Women in Cosmetic Surgery session that day, presenting, "Speak Up, Dammit! Best Practices for Communicating in a Compelling Manner." Attendees can partake in several master sessions plus specialized offerings for Allied Health, New Surgeons, and the popular Residents Forum, along with various social and networking opportunities. Featuring nine educational sessions, the special Allied Health 2-day program offers opportunities to enhance skills in social media, accreditation, and soft tissue filler injection techniques. Geared primarily toward cosmetic office surgery staff, physicians may be particularly interested in sessions on designing an office-based surgery center, malpractice issues and switching from opioid pain medicine to safer alternatives. Alex W. Sobel, DO, FAACS, AACS Vice President and Program Chair, comments, "The AACS is all about educating for patient safety, and this year's program theme, 'Focus on Mastery' recognizes that mastery requires safety. We're proud to focus on the safe adoption of best practices and new techniques into the cosmetic surgeon's toolbox to ensure best outcomes for our patients." J. Kevin Duplechain, MD, FAACS, FACS, AACS President adds, "We are delighted to bring together cosmetic surgery practitioners from around the world to share new findings, new research, new techniques, and new ideas, with such an exciting array of educational offerings from leading experts in the field of cosmetic surgery and aesthetic medicine." The full AACS ASM program can be viewed by visiting here. The pre-meeting Cadaver Workshop will help participants better understand and implement the latest techniques in cosmetic surgery and will also cover the most anticipated complications. This special workshop includes a section on Safe Brazilian Butt Lift using ultrasound-assisted technique. For more information, visit here. Register here for the AACS ASM. About the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS) The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS) is committed to advancing the multi-specialty, global disciplines of cosmetic surgery and aesthetic medicine for the benefit of patients and practitioners. Since its inception in 1985, the AACS has become the leading educational provider for cosmetic surgery practitioners from a diverse array of medical specialties, including dermatology, oral & maxillofacial surgery, otolaryngology, general surgery, ophthalmology, and plastic/reconstructive surgery. AACS is composed of over 1,600 members who pursue educational and training opportunities in cosmetic surgery to ensure consistently high quality patient care. SOURCE American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS) Anniversary marks the appointment of new co-chairs on the board of directors and an exciting calendar year of activities to promote the region. NAPA, Calif. and SONOMA, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Carneros Wine Alliance, a non-profit association of wineries and grape growers in the Carneros American Viticultural Area (AVA), is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the AVA throughout 2023. In light of this noteworthy milestone, Carneros Wine Alliance is also announcing new co-chairs on the board of directorsScott Billeci, ZD Wines, and Alison Crowe, Plata Wine Partnersrepresenting both wineries and growers within the AVA. Hilary Berkey, director of sales and marketing at Emeritus Vineyards, will step down as chair and will join Anne Moller-Racke, Blue Farm Wines, as Chair Emeriti. Napa native Scott Billeci has worked in hospitality for years, spending a decade at Thomas Keller Restaurant Group and Nickel & Nickel Winery, and now as the regional sales manager for ZD Wines. "I am humbled and honored to co-chair the Carneros Wine Alliance with Alison Crowe as we commemorate Carneros' 40th anniversary as an AVA," says Billeci, "We look forward to expanding awareness of this great appellation." The new program year activities are expected to highlight the anniversary of the AVA, while supporting the overarching mission to promote vineyards, wineries, and visitor destinations of the Carneros region. The 2023 activities will include a masterclass led by Erin Kirschenmann, managing editor of Wine Business Monthly, on the "Retrospective of the Historical Vineyards," participation in the World of Pinot Noir in Santa Barbara, the annual Spring Barrel Tasting, and an anniversary celebration in October to toast the end of this monumental year. Alison Crowe, vice president of winemaking for Plata Wine Partners, has been involved with the Carneros Wine Alliance for over 10 years and looks forward to her new role: "Carneros is a special place filled with history, heritage, vistas, and, of course, world-class vineyards, wineries and resort destinations. Scott and I, along with the rest of the Carneros Wine Alliance board, look forward to bringing an exciting series of tastings and events to the trade, media, and public to celebrate the appellation's anniversary." With a history that dates back to the 1800s, Carneros received its AVA status in 1983 and the Carneros Wine Alliance was formed shortly thereafter in 1985. Carneros was the first wine region in California to be defined by its climate characteristics rather than political boundaries, in large part due to the San Pablo Bay that straddles both Sonoma and Napa. Thanks to its cool to moderate climate variations, the Carneros AVA offers some of the most versatile wines in the valley, from crisp sparkling chardonnay to bold merlot and now comprises over 45 wineries. For more information about Carneros Wine Alliance, please contact Rebecca Johnson by email at [email protected]. About Carneros Wine Alliance The Carneros Wine Alliance is a non-profit association of wineries and grape-growers in the Carneros American Viticultural Area (AVA). Carneros is located at the crossroads of two major wine regions, the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. A cool-climate appellation influenced by the waters of the San Francisco Bay, Carneros has long been known for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and sparkling wine production. The Carneros Wine Alliance is committed to promoting the distinction, diversity and above all, quality, of grapes and wines from Carneros. Visit carneros.com. Follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram - @carneroswine. SOURCE Carneros Wine Alliance DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Third-party Banking Software Market Size, Share & Industry Trends Analysis Report By Deployment, By Application (Risk Management, Business Intelligence and Information Security), By End-use, By Product, By Regional Outlook and Forecast, 2022 - 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Third-party Banking Software Market size is expected to reach $40.6 billion by 2028, rising at a market growth of 8.0% CAGR during the forecast period. A multi-channel program that handles several essential banking tasks, private wealth management, and business information are referred to as third-party banking software. The end-to-end omnichannel administration of banking operations is provided through an integrated and tailored software system. Commercial, retail, and trade banks utilize it largely to expand their interbank network and streamline their business processes. The software helps to reduce losses brought on by human error, retain operational flexibility, enhance client satisfaction, and provide banks a competitive edge over rival financial institutions. The Core Banking, Multichannel, and BI segments make up the three major subgroups of the third-party banking software industry. Banks can offer their core banking services via a variety of channels due to third-party banking software providers. As a result, banks are utilizing the advantages provided by third-party banking to transition to automated systems. Banks are becoming more and more reliant on mobile and internet channels as a result of their branch network contraction. As a result, it is becoming crucial for banks to give their consumers the choice to conduct financial operations quickly and securely using smart devices. This modernization process heavily relies on third-party banking software. Positive growth effects are being produced by the increasing use of technologically sophisticated analytical tools like big data analytics. Large amounts of data must be processed effectively to make business decisions, spot market trends, and boost profitability. Being a data-driven enterprise, the banking sector relies on the use of third-party software connected with numerous analytical tools to manage data effectively. The market for third-party banking software is expanding as a result of a transition from manual to computerized techniques for tracking and documenting financial transactions and bookkeeping. In keeping with this, the BFSI sector's increasing demand for process standardization and core banking systems is driving market expansion. COVID-19 Impact Analysis Particularly creating chances for the incorporation of third-party banking software is the increased demand for online banking solutions following the pandemic. Additionally, the development of online payment systems is enhancing the expansion of the sector. Digital financial services have been under the focus as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the requirement for social distance. Social isolation is made possible by digital financial services, which also enable governments to quickly and effectively provide money to people in need and give many households and businesses easy access to online transactions and financing. Market Growth Factors Analytics Integration With Third-Party Banking Software The addition of analytics to third-party banking software is a significant component fostering the market's expansion. Due to the development of digital technology, consumers in the banking sector are altering how they access banking services. To communicate with businesses and obtain financial services, they are adopting mobile devices and digital technology. Due to this, the amount of client data held by businesses in the banking sector has increased exponentially. These businesses can examine the data they collect, enabling them to take quicker, more informed decisions that is expected to increase efficiency across the board. Financial Institutions Are More Likely To Become Third Party Banking People worry about how reliable third-party software is. This is true if users seeking a program that will let them access every bank account they have. For many years, financial institutions have already earned the community's trust. Therefore, it is clear that financial organizations stand a higher chance of gaining customers' trust when viewed from the viewpoint of a bank user. For much third-party banking software, the hardest element is expected to be attracting bank users and getting their permission to execute banking activities on their behalf. Market Restraining Factors Inadequate Internet Access In Poor Nations It is one of the major obstacles preventing the market for third-party banking software from expanding. The main prerequisite for third-party banking software to provide highly effective and efficient operations is a powerful and high-quality network. Businesses using this software must have a reliable internet connection that enables them to function effectively in real-time. Furthermore, transferring data from connected devices like servers requires a lot of bandwidth. Additionally, businesses may suffer significant financial losses if the technology is unable to update real-time transactions, particularly in the investment banking industry. Key Topics Covered: Chapter 1. Market Scope & Methodology Chapter 2. Market Overview 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Overview 2.1.1.1 Market composition & scenarios 2.2 Key Factors Impacting the Market 2.2.1 Market Drivers 2.2.2 Market Restraints Chapter 3. Competition Analysis - Global 3.1 Cardinal Matrix 3.2 Recent Industry Wide Strategic Developments 3.2.1 Partnerships, Collaborations and Agreements 3.2.2 Product Launches and Product Expansions 3.2.3 Acquisition and Mergers 3.3 Top Winning Strategies 3.3.1 Key Leading Strategies: Percentage Distribution (2018-2022) 3.3.2 Key Strategic Move: (Partnerships, Collaborations and Agreements: 2020, May - 2022, Jun) Leading Players Chapter 4. Global Third-party Banking Software Market by Deployment 4.1 Global On-Premise Market by Region 4.2 Global Cloud Market by Region Chapter 5. Global Third-party Banking Software Market by Application 5.1 Global Risk Management Market by Region 5.2 Global Business Intelligence Market by Region 5.3 Global Information Security Market by Region Chapter 6. Global Third-party Banking Software Market by End-use 6.1 Global Retail Banks Market by Region 6.2 Global Commercial Banks Market by Region Chapter 7. Global Third-party Banking Software Market by Product 7.1 Global Core Banking Software Market by Region 7.2 Global Wealth Management Software Market by Region 7.3 Global Omnichannel Banking Software Market by Region 7.4 Global Business Intelligence Software Market by Region 7.5 Global Others Market by Region Chapter 8. Global Third-party Banking Software Market by Region Chapter 9. Company Profiles 9.1 Microsoft Corporation 9.1.1 Company Overview 9.1.2 Financial Analysis 9.1.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.1.4 Research & Development Expenses 9.1.5 Recent strategies and developments: 9.1.5.1 Partnerships, Collaborations, and Agreements: 9.1.6 SWOT Analysis 9.2 IBM Corporation 9.2.1 Company Overview 9.2.2 Financial Analysis 9.2.3 Regional & Segmental Analysis 9.2.4 Research & Development Expenses 9.2.5 Recent strategies and developments: 9.2.5.1 Acquisition and Mergers: 9.2.6 SWOT Analysis 9.3 Oracle Corporation 9.3.1 Company Overview 9.3.2 Financial Analysis 9.3.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.3.4 Research & Development Expense 9.3.5 SWOT Analysis 9.4 SAP SE 9.4.1 Company Overview 9.4.2 Financial Analysis 9.4.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.4.4 Research & Development Expense 9.4.5 SWOT Analysis 9.5 Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. 9.5.1 Company Overview 9.5.2 Financial Analysis 9.5.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.5.4 Research & Development Expenses 9.5.5 Recent strategies and developments: 9.5.5.1 Partnerships, Collaborations, and Agreements: 9.5.5.2 Product Launches and Product Expansions: 9.5.6 SWOT Analysis 9.6 Accenture PLC 9.6.1 Company Overview 9.6.2 Financial Analysis 9.6.3 Regional Analysis 9.6.4 Research & Development Expense 9.6.5 Recent strategies and developments: 9.6.5.1 Partnerships, Collaborations, and Agreements: 9.6.5.2 Acquisition and Mergers: 9.6.6 SWOT Analysis 9.7 Capgemini SE 9.7.1 Company Overview 9.7.2 Financial Analysis 9.7.3 Regional Analysis 9.8 Infosys Limited 9.8.1 Company Overview 9.8.2 Financial Analysis 9.8.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.8.4 Research & Development Expense 9.8.5 Recent strategies and developments: 9.8.5.1 Partnerships, Collaborations, and Agreements: 9.8.5.2 Product Launches and Product Expansions: 9.8.5.3 Acquisition and Mergers: 9.8.6 SWOT Analysis 9.9 Fidelity Information Services (FIS), Inc. 9.9.1 Company Overview 9.9.2 Financial Analysis 9.9.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.9.4 Recent strategies and developments: 9.9.4.1 Product Launches and Product Expansions: 9.9.4.2 Acquisition and Mergers: 9.10. Fiserv, Inc. 9.10.1 Company Overview 9.10.2 Financial Analysis 9.10.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis 9.10.4 Recent strategies and developments: 9.10.4.1 Acquisition and Mergers: 9.10.5 SWOT Analysis For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/d8jb06 Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg SOURCE Research and Markets DENVER, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Thomas Wolf mayoral campaign (The committee to elect Thomas Wolf Denver Mayor) announces its comprehensive plan on the encampment crisis in Denver. "When elected, we will confront and control encampments by delivering city-provided shelter within vacant city buildings and land" said Wolf. "Doing so acknowledges the humanitarian crisis on our streets and is the most immediate and compassionate way to stop neglecting our city's most needy. Your city will step up and address the problem head-on versus side-stepping this alarming reality." According to data from the first phase of Metro Denver Homeless Initiative's (MDHI) annual point-in-time (PIT) count for 2022, the survey found an encampment population of 2,073 in 2022, compared to 1,561 in 2020. In reality, that number is likely much higher due to the difficulty in taking an accurate census. "Even one encampment is wholly unacceptable. I hope that Denverites can understand that continuing to ignore this crisis has a massively negative and compounding impact on our city's mental, physical and financial well being." Specific to the financial, funding for public schools, city programs and services, affordable housing, capital improvements and maintenance are in decline because of this crisis. Commercial real estate values in our central business district are plummeting. Our commercial property tax rate is four times our residential rate and a rapid decline in commercial property value drives rapid declines in tax revenue. Similarly, declines in recreational and business visitors means declines in sales tax revenue for the city budget. According to data from the Downtown Denver Partnership, visitor numbers have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels and the common complaint and rationale for not returning to Denver is that our urban core is unsafe and filthy due to encampments. "Our plan has several key components that I am uniquely qualified to implement compared to most of my opponents who are in office and have let this problem get out of hand," said Wolf. Repurpose existing city buildings and land to provide shelter. Identify and diagnose these citizens and offer rehabilitative services and care. Enroll this population in Denver's municipal health insurance. Sharing the load with a private company that has an incentive to manage costs means a much higher quality of care for our neediest citizens. Systematize a pathway for better accommodations tied to improved life choices. The only thing the city provides is shelter and access to rehabilitative services and care, we will not act in any other manner to enable, but we will be at the ready once individuals decide to make better choices and behavioral changes. It has been proven that we can't eliminate their fall, but we can aid in recovery if/when they make that decision. to rehabilitative services and care, we will not act in any other manner to enable, but we will be at the ready once individuals decide to make better choices and behavioral changes. It has been proven that we can't eliminate their fall, but we can aid in recovery if/when they make that decision. The Wolf "Pledge to Zero" - zero encampments will be tolerated, and within my first year in office all encampments will be confronted. "Pledge to Zero" will allow Denver to redirect approximately 500 million dollars in city spending once this crisis is under control. One of the top priorities will be to subsidize or fully provide health insurance for other deserving Denver groups that are so additive to our community but have gone wanting NGO's, daycare workers, those who work in the creative fields, and others without the means to access affordable health insurance. We believe this redirection is a much better investment relative to the current hemorrhaging expense of not confronting encampments and only the start in making Denver safer, cleaner and smarter. About Thomas Wolf for Mayor The Thomas Wolf for Mayor campaign has a mission to end encampments under a Wolf Administration in Denver using economic principles. The idea is simple. A safer, cleaner and smarter Denver is achieved when focus is applied to solving fewer issues rather than promising many things for Denver. Media Contact Thomas Wolf Phone: 303-884-8806 SOURCE The committee to elect Thomas Wolf Denver Mayor PHOENIX, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Technical Institute, Inc. (NYSE: UTI), a leading workforce solutions provider of transportation, skilled trades and healthcare education programs, today announced that it plans to report results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, after market close. Jerome Grant, chief executive officer, and Troy Anderson, chief financial officer, will host a conference call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on the same day to discuss the financial results and operating performance. To participate in the live call, investors are invited to dial (844) 881-0138 (domestic) or (412) 317-6790 (international). A live webcast of the call will be available via the Universal Technical Institute investor relations website at https://investor.uti.edu . Please go to the website at least 10 minutes early to register, download and install any necessary audio software. The conference call webcast will be archived for fourteen days at https://investor.uti.edu . Alternatively, the telephone replay can be accessed through February 22, 2023, by dialing (877) 344-7529 (domestic) or (412) 317-0088 (international) and entering passcode 5718590. About Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Universal Technical Institute, Inc. (NYSE: UTI) (the "Company") was founded in 1965 and is a leading workforce solutions provider of transportation, skilled trades and healthcare education programs, whose mission is to serve students, partners, and communities by providing quality education and support services for in-demand careers across a number of highly-skilled fields. The Company is comprised of two divisions: Universal Technical Institute ("UTI") and Concorde Career Colleges ("Concorde"). UTI operates 16 campuses located in 9 states and offers a wide range of transportation and skilled trades technical training programs under brands such as UTI, MIAT College of Technology, Motorcycle Mechanics Institute, Marine Mechanics Institute and NASCAR Technical Institute. Concorde operates across 17 campuses in 8 states, offering programs in the Allied Health, Dental, Nursing, Patient Care and Diagnostic fields. For more information, visit www.uti.edu or www.concorde.edu, or visit us on LinkedIn at @UniversalTechnicalInstitute and @Concorde Career Colleges or on Twitter @news_UTI or @ConcordeCareer. Media Contact: Mark Brenner Vice President, Corporate Affairs & External Communications Universal Technical Institute, Inc. (623) 445-0872 Investor Relations Contact: Robert Winters or Davis Snyder Alpha IR Group (312) 445-2870 [email protected] SOURCE Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Supercar Blondie partners with Vantage Markets for financial education GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Multi-asset broker, Vantage International Group Limited ("Vantage" or "Vantage Markets") is pleased to unveil Alexandra Mary Hirschi, of Supercar Blondie, as its Brand Ambassador. This partnership marks a milestone between an online brokerage with a social media publisher, aimed to use their respective expertise to provide accessible and relevant financial education both on Vantage's platforms and on Supercar Blondie's online education channel, Xplained. Alexandra Mary Hirschi from Supercar Blondie, and Nadine Azzam, Head of MENA for Vantage, at the signing ceremony and press conference held on 18 January in Dubai. Marc Despallieres, Chief Strategy and Trading Officer at Vantage, says, "We are truly excited to work with Supercar Blondie once again, in a greater capacity as our brand ambassador. Her adventurous attitude, tech-savvy, and global appeal makes her a perfect fit for us to raise Vantage's brand awareness among younger and more discerning audiences. I know her unique presentation style will help demystify trading, and make it approachable and relevant for all." The social media publisher draws over 1 billion views per month across the group, with over 85 million followers globally. As a leading voice and influence in a traditionally masculine industry, Supercar Blondie engenders Vantage's beliefs in female empowerment, alongside a shared commitment of Vantage towards innovation, and climate action, which is aligned with Vantage's partnership with NEOM McLaren Extreme E. Alexandra Mary Hirschi says, "I am all for bringing exciting and transformative content to our audience. One of our key goals in 2023 is to empower our audience by providing accessible financial education materials. With that, I'm thrilled to partner with a market leader like Vantage to raise the bar on financial education and strengthen financial literacy for all. Vantage is a company with a big heart, and It's exciting to see the impact we can make together." This announcement marks a strengthening of the partnership between the two organisations that was first established in 2022 when Supercar Blondie participated in the Blue Carbon initiative in Sardinia, Italy, to formally launch Vantage's corporate ESG journey, and bring awareness to climate change. About Vantage Vantage (Vantage International Group Limited) is a multi-asset broker offering clients access to a nimble and powerful service for trading CFD on Forex, Commodities, Indices, Shares, ETFs and Bonds. With more than 13 years of market experience, Vantage entities now have over 1,000 employees across more than 30 global offices. Vantage is more than a broker. It provides a trusted trading ecosystem, an award-winning mobile trading app, and a user- friendly trading platform that enables clients to take advantage of trading opportunities. Download the Vantage App on App Store or Google Play. trade smarter @vantage. SOURCE Vantage Supercar Blondie partners with Vantage Markets for financial education GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Multi-asset broker, Vantage International Group Limited ("Vantage" or "Vantage Markets") is pleased to unveil Alexandra Mary Hirschi, of Supercar Blondie, as its Brand Ambassador. This partnership marks a milestone between an online brokerage with a social media publisher, aimed to use their respective expertise to provide accessible and relevant financial education both on Vantage's platforms and on Supercar Blondie's online education channel, Xplained. Alexandra Mary Hirschi from Supercar Blondie, and Nadine Azzam, Head of MENA for Vantage, at the signing ceremony and press conference held on 18 January in Dubai. Marc Despallieres, Chief Strategy and Trading Officer at Vantage, says, "We are truly excited to work with Supercar Blondie once again, in a greater capacity as our brand ambassador. Her adventurous attitude, tech-savvy, and global appeal makes her a perfect fit for us to raise Vantage's brand awareness among younger and more discerning audiences. I know her unique presentation style will help demystify trading, and make it approachable and relevant for all." The social media publisher draws over 1 billion views per month across the group, with over 85 million followers globally. As a leading voice and influence in a traditionally masculine industry, Supercar Blondie engenders Vantage's beliefs in female empowerment, alongside a shared commitment of Vantage towards innovation, and climate action, which is aligned with Vantage's partnership with NEOM McLaren Extreme E. Alexandra Mary Hirschi says, "I am all for bringing exciting and transformative content to our audience. One of our key goals in 2023 is to empower our audience by providing accessible financial education materials. With that, I'm thrilled to partner with a market leader like Vantage to raise the bar on financial education and strengthen financial literacy for all. Vantage is a company with a big heart, and It's exciting to see the impact we can make together." This announcement marks a strengthening of the partnership between the two organisations that was first established in 2022 when Supercar Blondie participated in the Blue Carbon initiative in Sardinia, Italy, to formally launch Vantage's corporate ESG journey, and bring awareness to climate change. About Vantage Vantage (Vantage International Group Limited) is a multi-asset broker offering clients access to a nimble and powerful service for trading CFD on Forex, Commodities, Indices, Shares, ETFs and Bonds. With more than 13 years of market experience, Vantage entities now have over 1,000 employees across more than 30 global offices. Vantage is more than a broker. It provides a trusted trading ecosystem, an award-winning mobile trading app, and a user- friendly trading platform that enables clients to take advantage of trading opportunities. Download the Vantage App on App Store or Google Play. trade smarter @vantage. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985738/image.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1745281/Vantage_Logo.jpg SOURCE Vantage KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtualtech Frontier (VTF) , a metaverse development company, has secured seed round funding from Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF) , joining forces with seed investor 500 Global in support of VTF's journey to introduce the future of digital engagements by enabling the metaverse for everyone. The funds will be allocated towards growing the team, supporting marketing activities and further developing their platform, Mitoworld.io . Virtualtech Frontier Secures Funding Led by Blockchain Founders Fund to Further Develop Metaverse Platform Since 2020, the company has been at the forefront of creating an interoperable and accessible metaverse; by allowing companies to leverage virtual environments to achieve business objectives. Since then, the strong momentum they have achieved in metaverse solutions has enabled them to more than triple their revenue in 2022 compared to the previous year. "VTF is reimagining the way that businesses interact with customers in the metaverse. We are delighted to be supporting them in this endeavour and look forward to helping them scale this solution." said Tobias Bauer, Partner at Blockchain Founders Fund. "We are thrilled to have the support of Blockchain Founders Fund," said VTF's CEO Jason Low. "Getting invested during the bear is the greatest signal that we are on the right track. We are all about long term value creation and this funding will help us continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with Mitoworld and provide the best possible experience to everyone." VTF believes that the metaverse has the potential to revolutionise the way that communities interact and engage with each other. The metaverse will bring new opportunities for creative output, as existing marketing solutions and platforms on the market are severely outdated. Together with the support of their investors, VTF is looking forward for companies to come together and explore exciting methods of brand expression as they transform their branding in the metaverse with Mitoworld.io Mitoworld.io is a metaverse platform that allows communities to easily create and share their very own metaverse. With cutting-edge technology, interoperability and user-friendly interface, Mitoworld's platform is set out to become the go-to solution for brands and communities looking to engage and connect with their potential clients in the virtual world. Visit the Mitoworld.io website to try it out for yourself, or visit social media via the links below to check out their updates. About Virtualtech Frontier Virtualtech Frontier is a leading Metaverse and virtual spaces development company in Asia. The team is at the forefront of creating an interoperable and accessible metaverse; enabling companies and brands to make their way into the metaverse ecosystem. Virtualtech Frontier is currently working on an Integrated Virtual World Platform (IVWP) called Mitoworld.io that focuses on simplifying the creation and connection of purpose driven metaverses. About Blockchain Founders Fund Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF) is a leading early stage (seed and pre-seed) Web3 Venture Capital fund which invests in top-tier founders globally. Backers include a strategic mix of the leading firms in the crypto and traditional finance world. They invest in highly-promising startups taking a go-to-market focus and a hands-on approach to drive value. BFF helps curate strategic partnerships, hire talent, accelerate growth and ensure portfolio founders are well capitalised. The team comprises builders and operators that have scaled many of the leading Blockchain startups and are on a mission to support all-star teams shaping the Web3 industry. Virtualtech Frontier Links Facebook | Instagram | Mitoworld Links Website | Twitter | LinkedIn Marketing & PR Team Virtualtech Frontier Email: [email protected] Tel: (60) 16 - 9000 862 SOURCE Virtualtech Frontier Over 130 cattle in the Midlands province have succumbed to Theileriosis better known as the January disease in the first week of January with Shurugwi district being the most affected by the outbreak, provincial Vet Officer, Dr Martin Sibanda has said He said farmers should invest in chemicals that fight the disease which is caused by ticks. Dr Sibanda said the diseases has become a perennial problem across the region and urged farmers to make necessary preventative measures. "The problem with Theileriosis disease is that its becoming a career disease which recurs over time. In this province, Shurugwi is the most affected and we have also been advised of other areas like Mvuma, Lalapansi, Zvishavane and Mberengwa around the Neta area. We recommend that farmers do intensive dipping as a way to control the disease," said Dr Sibanda. Dr Sibanda said government has since dispatched vet officers in problematic districts to work hand in hand with the farmers to contain the disease. "On our part we have dispatched the required medicine which will last the next two months. "However we urge farmers to invest in the medicine to deal with this disease all the time. Farming is a business and as such we need to put in place mechanisms to protect such wealth," he said. Last year, the Midlands province lost over 700 cattle due to the January disease and government and some development partners have since put in place mechanisms to minimise the deaths. NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The global wallcovering market size is estimated to increase by USD 5,493.96 million between 2022 and 2027. The market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 4.7% during the forecast period - request a sample report Global wallcovering market Vendor analysis Vendor offerings - Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Wallcovering Market 2023-2027 Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj - The company offfers several wallcoverings under various brands such as Wallstar Digital, Wallwise, Wall liners, and Wallstar. The company offfers several wallcoverings under various brands such as Wallstar Digital, Wallwise, Wall liners, and Wallstar. Asian Paints Ltd. - The company offers wallcovering under various brands, such as Sabyasachi collection, Signature, and Good Earth for Nilaya. The company offers wallcovering under various brands, such as Sabyasachi collection, Signature, and Good Earth for Nilaya. BRADLEY USA LLC - The company offers various wallcoverings such as Red wallcovering, Ivory Cobalt wallcovering, Blue grey wallcovering, Coral grey wallcovering, Grey Ivory wallcovering, and pink wallcovering. The company offers various wallcoverings such as Red wallcovering, Ivory Cobalt wallcovering, Blue grey wallcovering, Coral grey wallcovering, Grey Ivory wallcovering, and pink wallcovering. Brewster Home Fashions - The company offers wallcoverings such as floral, geometric patterns, and concrete patterns under various brands, namely, Advantage, AS Creation, Astreet prints, and Coloroll. The company offers wallcoverings such as floral, geometric patterns, and concrete patterns under various brands, namely, Advantage, AS Creation, Astreet prints, and Coloroll. For details on vendors and their offerings Buy the report! Vendor landscape The global wallcovering market is fragmented, with the presence of several global as well as regional vendors. A few prominent vendors that offer wallcovering in the market are Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj, Asian Paints Ltd., BRADLEY USA LLC, Brewster Home Fashions, C Brewer and Sons Ltd., Curran Group Inc., F. Schumacher and Co., Fathead LLC, Fine Decor Wallcoverings Ltd., Len Tex Corp., Marburger Tapetenfabrik JB Schaefer GmbH and Co KG, Muraspec Decorative Solutions Ltd, Prime Walls US, RPM International Inc., SAINT GOBAIN Group, Sangetsu Corp., The Sherwin Williams Co., U.S. Wallcovering, Wallquest Inc., and York Wallcoverings Inc. and others. The global wallcovering market is evolving. However, it is expected to grow at a slow rate during the forecast period. The market offers numerous growth opportunities owing to the increase in the construction of residential buildings in regions such as APAC, South America, and MEA. The number of infrastructure projects related to residential buildings is increasing at a significant rate due to population growth and support from various government bodies, which can increase competition among vendors. Several regional and local vendors have started manufacturing wallcoverings such as wallpapers, which poses tough competition to their international counterparts in terms of cost. Global wallcovering market - Customer landscape To help companies evaluate and develop growth strategies, the report outlines Key purchase criteria Adoption rates Adoption lifecycle Drivers of price sensitivity Global wallcovering Market - Segmentation assessment Segment overview Technavio has segmented the market based on type (wall panel, tiles, and metallic wall covering) and end-user (residential and commercial). The wall panel segment will grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. A wall panel acts as the exposed covering of a wall. It is typically flat and cut into a rectangular shape. Wall panels can provide depth to a space. Wall panels are mainly used for interior decoration but can also be employed in exterior applications. They are used for a variety of purposes, such as concealing existing walls, extending an old wall, and repairing structural problems. These factors will fuel the growth of the segment during the forecast period. Geography overview Based on geography, the global wallcovering market is segmented into APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global wallcovering market. APAC is estimated to account for 63% of the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The growth in residential and commercial construction activities and the trend of wall decoration, particularly among the millennial population, will fuel the growth of the regional wallcovering market during the forecast period. Some of the major contributors to the wallcovering market in APAC are China , India , and Japan . Download a sample report Global wallcovering market Market dynamics Leading drivers - The growth of the global construction industry is driving the growth of the market. The increase in public expenditure, population, per capita income, and economic growth in developing countries such as India are fueling the growth of this industry. The demand for wall coverings is increasing globally due to the increasing demand for the construction of residential and commercial buildings. Governments of various countries, such as India, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, are investing significantly in the development of smart cities. The growth of construction projects globally increases the demand for wall coverings that give an aesthetic look to building walls. These factors will positively impact the growth of the global wallpaper market during the forecast period. Key trends - The availability of personalized and customized wall decor products is a key trend influencing the market growth. The trend of customizations encourages retailers to focus on personalized services. Print-on-demand (POD) is generally used for personalization services. Vendors offer the product customization option to their customers at both macro and micro levels. Customers can choose their products based on their requirements. Retailers such as Walmart and Amazon also offer customization services. Thus, the increasing demand for personalized wallcoverings will support the growth of the market during the forecast period. Major challenges - The rising competition is challenging the market growth. Manufacturers compete on parameters such as product mix, premium, differentiation, and pricing. The entry of new players and brands into the market makes the competition more intense, which leads to price wars. Moreover, market competition and price wars increase the need for cost optimization and operational efficiency. Some retailers are also closing their stores due to poor performance and an inability to streamline operations. All these factors are expected to negatively impact the growth of the global wallpaper market during the forecast period. Drivers, trends, and challenges have an impact on market dynamics, which can impact businesses. Find some insights from a sample report! What are the key data covered in this wallcovering market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the wallcovering market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the wallcovering market and its contribution to the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the wallcovering market across APAC, North America , Europe , Middle East and Africa , and South America , , and , and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of wallcovering market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports: The size of the wallcovering market in the US is expected to increase by USD 9.21 billion from 2021 to 2026, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 5.44%. This report extensively covers segmentation by end-user (residential and commercial) and product type (wall panel, tiles, and metallic wall covering). The size of the wall decor market in the US is expected to grow by USD 11.98 billion from 2021 to 2026 at an accelerating CAGR of 10.43%. This report extensively covers segmentation by product (wall art, picture frames, wall clock, and other decorative accents) and distribution channel (offline and online). Wallcovering Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 153 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 4.7% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 5,493.96 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 4.56 Regional analysis APAC, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 63% Key countries US, China, India, Japan, and UK Competitive landscape Leading vendors, market positioning of vendors, competitive strategies, and industry risks Key companies profiled Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj, Asian Paints Ltd., BRADLEY USA LLC, Brewster Home Fashions, C Brewer and Sons Ltd., Curran Group Inc., F. Schumacher and Co., Fathead LLC, Fine Decor Wallcoverings Ltd., Len Tex Corp., Marburger Tapetenfabrik JB Schaefer GmbH and Co KG, Muraspec Decorative Solutions Ltd, Prime Walls US, RPM International Inc., SAINT GOBAIN Group, Sangetsu Corp., The Sherwin Williams Co., U.S. Wallcovering, Wallquest Inc., and York Wallcoverings Inc. 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, and 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. 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. Browse for Technavio's consumer discretionary market reports Table of contents 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Market overview Exhibit 01: Executive Summary Chart on Market Overview Exhibit 02: Executive Summary Data Table on Market Overview Exhibit 03: Executive Summary Chart on Global Market Characteristics Exhibit 04: Executive Summary Chart on Market by Geography Exhibit 05: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by Type Exhibit 06: Executive Summary Chart on Market Segmentation by End-user Exhibit 07: Executive Summary Chart on Incremental Growth Exhibit 08: Executive Summary Data Table on Incremental Growth Exhibit 09: Executive Summary Chart on Vendor Market Positioning 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem Exhibit 10: Parent market Exhibit 11: Market Characteristics 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition Exhibit 12: Offerings of vendors included in the market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis Exhibit 13: Market segments 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 Exhibit 14: Chart on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 15: Data Table on Global - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 16: Chart on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 17: Data Table on Global Market: Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global wallcovering market 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 18: Historic Market Size Data Table on Global wallcovering market 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.2 Type Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 19: Historic Market Size Type Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.3 End-user Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 20: Historic Market Size End-user Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 21: Historic Market Size Geography Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 Exhibit 22: Historic Market Size Country Segment 2017 - 2021 ($ million) 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary Exhibit 23: Five forces analysis - Comparison between 2022 and 2027 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers Exhibit 24: Chart on Bargaining power of buyers Impact of key factors 2022 and 2027 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers Exhibit 25: Bargaining power of suppliers Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.4 Threat of new entrants Exhibit 26: Threat of new entrants Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.5 Threat of substitutes Exhibit 27: Threat of substitutes Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.6 Threat of rivalry Exhibit 28: Threat of rivalry Impact of key factors in 2022 and 2027 5.7 Market condition Exhibit 29: Chart on Market condition - Five forces 2022 and 2027 6 Market Segmentation by Type 6.1 Market segments Exhibit 30: Chart on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 31: Data Table on Type - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 6.2 Comparison by Type Exhibit 32: Chart on Comparison by Type Exhibit 33: Data Table on Comparison by Type 6.3 Wall panel - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 34: Chart on Wall panel - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 35: Data Table on Wall panel - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 36: Chart on Wall panel - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 37: Data Table on Wall panel - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.4 Tiles - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 38: Chart on Tiles - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 39: Data Table on Tiles - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 40: Chart on Tiles - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 41: Data Table on Tiles - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.5 Metallic wall covering - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 42: Chart on Metallic wall covering - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 43: Data Table on Metallic wall covering - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 44: Chart on Metallic wall covering - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 45: Data Table on Metallic wall covering - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 6.6 Market opportunity by Type Exhibit 46: Market opportunity by Type ($ million) 7 Market Segmentation by End-user 7.1 Market segments Exhibit 47: Chart on End-user - Market share 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 48: Data Table on End-user - Market share 2022-2027 (%) 7.2 Comparison by End-user Exhibit 49: Chart on Comparison by End-user Exhibit 50: Data Table on Comparison by End-user 7.3 Residential - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 51: Chart on Residential - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 52: Data Table on Residential - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 53: Chart on Residential - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 54: Data Table on Residential - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.4 Commercial - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 55: Chart on Commercial - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 56: Data Table on Commercial - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 57: Chart on Commercial - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 58: Data Table on Commercial - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 7.5 Market opportunity by End-user Exhibit 59: Market opportunity by End-user ($ million) 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview Exhibit 60: Analysis of price sensitivity, lifecycle, customer purchase basket, adoption rates, and purchase criteria 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation Exhibit 61: Chart on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 62: Data Table on Market share by geography 2022-2027 (%) 9.2 Geographic comparison Exhibit 63: Chart on Geographic comparison Exhibit 64: Data Table on Geographic comparison 9.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 65: Chart on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 66: Data Table on APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 67: Chart on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 68: Data Table on APAC - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.4 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 69: Chart on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 70: Data Table on North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 71: Chart on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 72: Data Table on North America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.5 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 73: Chart on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 74: Data Table on Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 75: Chart on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 76: Data Table on Europe - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.6 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 77: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 78: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) and - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 79: Chart on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) and - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 80: Data Table on Middle East and Africa - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 81: Chart on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 82: Data Table on South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 83: Chart on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 84: Data Table on South America - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.8 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 85: Chart on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 86: Data Table on China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 87: Chart on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 88: Data Table on China - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.9 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 89: Chart on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 90: Data Table on US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 91: Chart on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 92: Data Table on US - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.10 India - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 93: Chart on India - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 94: Data Table on India - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 95: Chart on India - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 96: Data Table on India - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.11 Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 97: Chart on Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 98: Data Table on Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 99: Chart on Japan - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 100: Data Table on Japan - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.12 UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 Exhibit 101: Chart on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 102: Data Table on UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 ($ million) Exhibit 103: Chart on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) Exhibit 104: Data Table on UK - Year-over-year growth 2022-2027 (%) 9.13 Market opportunity by geography Exhibit 105: Market opportunity by geography ($ million) 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges Exhibit 106: Impact of drivers and challenges in 2022 and 2027 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape Exhibit 107: Overview on Criticality of inputs and Factors of differentiation 11.3 Landscape disruption Exhibit 108: Overview on factors of disruption 11.4 Industry risks Exhibit 109: Impact of key risks on business 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered Exhibit 110: Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors Exhibit 111: Matrix on vendor position and classification 12.3 Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj Exhibit 112: Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj - Overview Exhibit 113: Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj - Product / Service Exhibit 114: Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj - Key news Exhibit 115: Ahlstrom Munksjo Oyj - Key offerings 12.4 Asian Paints Ltd. Exhibit 116: Asian Paints Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 117: Asian Paints Ltd. - Business segments Exhibit 118: Asian Paints Ltd. - Key offerings Exhibit 119: Asian Paints Ltd. - Segment focus 12.5 BRADLEY USA LLC LLC Exhibit 120: BRADLEY USA LLC - Overview LLC - Overview Exhibit 121: BRADLEY USA LLC - Product / Service LLC - Product / Service Exhibit 122: BRADLEY USA LLC - Key offerings 12.6 Brewster Home Fashions Exhibit 123: Brewster Home Fashions - Overview Exhibit 124: Brewster Home Fashions - Product / Service Exhibit 125: Brewster Home Fashions - Key offerings 12.7 C Brewer and Sons Ltd. Exhibit 126: C Brewer and Sons Ltd. - Overview Exhibit 127: C Brewer and Sons Ltd. - Product / Service Exhibit 128: C Brewer and Sons Ltd. - Key offerings 12.8 F. Schumacher and Co. Exhibit 129: F. Schumacher and Co. - Overview Exhibit 130: F. Schumacher and Co. - Product / Service Exhibit 131: F. Schumacher and Co. - Key offerings 12.9 Fathead LLC Exhibit 132: Fathead LLC - Overview Exhibit 133: Fathead LLC - Product / Service Exhibit 134: Fathead LLC - Key offerings 12.10 Prime Walls US Exhibit 135: Prime Walls US - Overview Exhibit 136: Prime Walls US - Product / Service Exhibit 137: Prime Walls US - Key offerings 12.11 RPM International Inc. Exhibit 138: RPM International Inc. - Overview Exhibit 139: RPM International Inc. - Business segments Exhibit 140: RPM International Inc. - Key offerings Exhibit 141: RPM International Inc. - Segment focus 12.12 SAINT GOBAIN Group Exhibit 142: SAINT GOBAIN Group - Overview Exhibit 143: SAINT GOBAIN Group - Product / Service Exhibit 144: SAINT GOBAIN Group - Key offerings 12.13 Sangetsu Corp. Exhibit 145: Sangetsu Corp. - Overview Exhibit 146: Sangetsu Corp. - Business segments Exhibit 147: Sangetsu Corp. - Key offerings Exhibit 148: Sangetsu Corp. - Segment focus 12.14 The Sherwin Williams Co. Exhibit 149: The Sherwin Williams Co. - Overview Exhibit 150: The Sherwin Williams Co. - Business segments Exhibit 151: The Sherwin Williams Co. - Key news Exhibit 152: The Sherwin Williams Co. - Key offerings Exhibit 153: The Sherwin Williams Co. - Segment focus 12.15 U.S. Wallcovering Exhibit 154: U.S. Wallcovering - Overview Exhibit 155: U.S. Wallcovering - Product / Service Exhibit 156: U.S. Wallcovering - Key offerings 12.16 Wallquest Inc. Exhibit 157: Wallquest Inc. - Overview Exhibit 158: Wallquest Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 159: Wallquest Inc. - Key offerings 12.17 York Wallcoverings Inc. Exhibit 160: York Wallcoverings Inc. - Overview Exhibit 161: York Wallcoverings Inc. - Product / Service Exhibit 162: York Wallcoverings Inc. - Key offerings 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist Exhibit 163: Inclusions checklist Exhibit 164: Exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ Exhibit 165: Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology Exhibit 166: Research methodology Exhibit 167: Validation techniques employed for market sizing Exhibit 168: Information sources 13.5 List of abbreviations Exhibit 169: 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 VERO BEACH, Fla., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Forbes Health has released their selections of Top Assisted Living Communities in the Orlando area and at the top of the list sits Watercrest Winter Park Assisted Living and Memory Care in Winter Park, Florida. Watercrest Winter Park Assisted Living and Memory Care was recently named a Top Assisted Living Community in Orlando by Forbes Health. Research and guidance from the Forbes Health Advisory Board weighed into the selections for Forbes Top Assisted Living Communities in Orlando with a focus on options based on health, levels of care, and budget needs. Forbes noted the luxury senior living community's plentiful amenities, high-end dining options, and diverse offerings. The article highlights that, "with a smaller number of residents relative to some other local facilities, the Watercrest staff can get to know the residents on a more personal level." "It is of great distinction for Watercrest Winter Park to once again be recognized by an esteemed organization such as Forbes for excellence in care, service and amenities honoring seniors," says Marc Vorkapich, principal and chief executive officer of Watercrest Senior Living Group. Watercrest Winter Park is a multi-award winning luxury senior living community operated by Watercrest Senior Living Group. Watercrest Winter Park was recently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as a 2022-23 Best Assisted Living Community and Best Memory Care Community; earning "Best" status by achieving the highest possible rating for both Assisted Living and Memory Care. Watercrest Winter Park is a signature Watercrest product offering 75 assisted living and 32 memory care apartments with premium accommodations, exceptional amenities and world-class care. Ideally located at 1501 Glendon Parkway, the community boasts a stunning promenade, pool, fireplace, signature water wall, multiple dining venues, children's play space, grand balconies and Southern style outdoor living spaces. Additionally, Watercrest's uniquely designed Market Street Plaza, showcases an 'outdoor' streetscape with numerous LifeBUILT programming touches; a highlight and crucial element of their multi-sensory memory care programming. For information, please contact the community at 321-730-2666. About Watercrest Senior Living Group Watercrest Senior Living Group was founded to honor our mothers and fathers, aspiring to become a beacon for quality in senior living by surpassing standards of care, service and associate training. Watercrest senior living communities are recognized for their luxury aesthetic, exceptional amenities, world-class care, and innovative memory care programming offering unparalleled service to seniors living with Alzheimer's and dementia. A five-time certified Great Place to Work, Watercrest specializes in the development and operations of assisted living and memory care communities and the growth of servant leaders. For information, visit www.watercrestseniorliving.com. SOURCE Watercrest Senior Living Group HOUSTON and FARMINGTON, Conn., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Work & Mother Services, Inc. ( Work & Mother ), a full-service lactation suite with an associated support app, and Nest Collaborative , the nation's first and largest virtual lactation consultation platform, announced a partnership to guide parents through the breastfeeding and parenting journey by providing telehealth access to Nest Collaborative's nationwide network of International Board-Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs). According to the 2021 Maternity Leave Experience Report by Moms at Work, a professional association for working mothers, 95 percent of women reported that they received no formal support during their transition to and from parental leave. Another 40 percent of mothers surveyed considered quitting when they went back to their jobs. The partnership between Work & Mother and Nest Collaborative will make it easier for parents to return to work after childbirth by providing them access to Nest Collaborative's IBCLCs through the app associated with Work & Mother's office lactation suites. The collaboration is expected to encourage optimal performance and greater retention among the fastest-growing segment of the nation's workforce. The groundswell around parental offerings is leading employers to seek office spaces that support their efforts to attract and retain talent. Work & Mother provides a turn-key commercial lactation suite amenity with an associated app and resource center called the HUB, built to support working parents, who make up one-third of the female workforce. This new amenity for commercial buildings makes it easy for employers to outsource their mothers room, satisfying legal obligations while providing a higher quality facility and a much better way to support their employees. With Work & Mother, employees can book private rooms within the lactation suite via the Work & Mother app. Each private room is equipped with a hospital-grade pump, milk storage bags, sanitizing wipes, and other supplies while the full Work & Mother Suite lounge area includes cleaning stations and refrigerated milk storage. In addition, Work & Mother's HUB puts a network of health and wellness experts, like Nest Collaborative's IBCLCs, right at parents' fingertips. Nest Collaborative provides virtual support and evidence-based resources that address common concerns among working parents ranging from prenatal planning for breastfeeding to balancing life with breastfeeding and pumping tutorials. Nest Collaborative's IBCLCs are available for same-day appointments in all 50 states and 11 languages, without a copay, out-of-pocket costs, or deductibles for any families with any active insurance or Medicaid coverage. Now, families will be able to quickly book appointments and have direct access to Nest Collaborative IBCLCs, right through the Work & Mother HUB. "We're excited to partner with Nest Collaborative and further expand access to premium lactation support services for Work & Mother Suite users and their employers. It's important to understand that while breastfeeding is natural, that doesn't mean it's necessarily easy or intuitive, so it's extremely crucial that we provide resources for every parent," said Abbey Donnell, Founder and CEO of Work & Mother. "The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusively breastfeeding newborns for at least six months, yet working parents face many barriers to successful long-term breastfeeding, from a lack of prenatal education to a lack of employer support for pumping in the workplace," said Judith Nowlin, CEO of Nest Collaborative. "We're excited to collaborate with Work & Mother to help solve these problems for working parents and, in the process, enhance workforce loyalty for participating employers." Nest's team of highly skilled IBCLCs, considered the gold standard in lactation care, work with families to meet their breastfeeding goals and resolve any concerns that may arise. The flexibility and accessibility of this service is key in achieving a positive work-life balance. "We are confident that our partnership with Nest Collaborative will have a measurable impact on the breastfeeding success rates of parents who work outside the home," Donnell said. "I'm looking forward to broadening our ability to support working parents at any time, anywhere." About Work & Mother: Work & Mother is a full-service lactation suite amenity and associated app to support working parents. This new commercial building amenity makes it easy for tenants to outsource their mother's rooms, satisfying legal obligations while also providing a better way to support working moms, ultimately supporting talent retention following maternity leave for tenant employees. Work & Mother Suites have everything needed to pump, including hospital-grade equipment, cleaning and sanitizing stations, refrigeration and storage, immediate community, and much more. The Work & Mother App puts additional support resources and health and wellness experts right at moms' fingertips. By bringing professional lactation suites to the commercial office space, Work & Mother is fundamentally changing the landscape for working mothers, enabling them to succeed in both of their roles. For additional information on Work & Mother, visit workandmother.com , or follow us on Facebook , Instagram, or LinkedIn . About Nest Collaborative: Nest Collaborative, Farmington, CT, is the creator of the nation's first virtual lactation platform. The company's nationwide network of lactation consultants is available to families for same-day virtual consults, meaning more parents and their health providers have access to the help that creates successful breastfeeding journeys. Nest Collaborative was recognized by Verywell Family as the Best Online Lactation Consultant of 2021 and 2022, beating out competitors by offering insurance-covered appointments, same-day availability, and group sessions through their offering of Latch Lounge. For more information, visit www.nestcollaborative.com . Contacts: Mia Humphreys [email protected] Michelle Hillman [email protected] SOURCE Work & Mother DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Essential Oils Market By Product Type, Application (Food & beverages, Cosmetics & Toiletries, Aromatherapy, Home Care, and Health Care), Source (Fruits & Vegetables, Herbs & Spices, Flowers), Method of Extraction and Region - Global Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global essential oils market size is estimated to be valued at USD 8.8 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 15.3 billion by 2027, recording a CAGR of 11.8% in terms of value. By application, the aromatherapy is projected to grow rapidly during the forecast period The rising popularity of aromatherapy and other alternative medicine is increasing in demand, as are the relaxing effects of essential oils when applied through a massage. The health industry has begun to incorporate essential oils in aromatherapy applications to treat Alzheimer's, bronchitis, and various cardiovascular problems. Changing lifestyles and their consequences, such as high stress and depression, along with increasing disposable incomes, results in an increase in demand for aromatherapy. Ginger oil, pine oil, oregano oil, and wintergreen oil are some of the essential oils used on a large scale in alternative therapies. The National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy (NAHA), the Alliance of International Aroma Therapists, and The Canadian Federation of Aroma Therapists have established standards for aromatherapy certification in the US and Canada. This would allow the essential oil industry to use different oils for various aromatherapy products, globally. By type, the orange essential oil is widely used in all the domains due to the presence of the high amount of vitamin C and appealing fragrance Oranges are full of vitamin C and offer several health advantages. The rind of the sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, is used to make orange essential oil. Cold pressing, a technique used to extract the oils from the rind, is used to accomplish this. Brazil is the leading orange producer in the world producing about 30% of the world's output. Orange oil, which is energetic, is one of the most widely used options in aromatherapy. The oil can decrease various kinds of pain such as inflammation, muscle spasms, tissue damage, pain from bone fractures, headache, etc. The Asia Pacific market is being driven by an increase in demand for domestic products brought on by an expanding middle class The Asia Pacific region is mostly segmented into India, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and Rest of Asia pacific. The improving standard of living and high per capita income in the region, along with higher expenditure, are driving up the demand for essential oils, which has been significantly influenced by the growth of the wellness and leisure sectors. The demand for citrus-based essential oils like orange and lemon has also attracted a lot of consumer interest in some of nations. The product is becoming more widely used in the personal care and household products sectors, and the usage of citrus essential oil in tastes, odorants, and pharmaceutical substances has lately increased. With emerging economies, growing industrialization, increasing demand for processed foods, and consumer preference for quality products, ingredient suppliers are becoming increasingly optimistic about the growth of the food & beverage industry. Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Premium Insights 4.1 Attractive Opportunities for Players in Essential Oil Market 4.2 Essential Oils Market: Major Regional Submarkets 4.3 Asia-Pacific: Essential Oil Market, by Source & Country 4.4 Asia-Pacific: Essential Oil Market, by Application 4.5 Essential Oil Market, by Methods of Extraction 4.6 Essential Oil Market, by Application & Region 5 Market Overview 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Macroeconomic Indicators 5.2.1 Rise in Depression and Anxiety Disorders 5.2.2 Increasing Demand for Organic Food 5.3 Market Dynamics 5.3.1 Drivers 5.3.1.1 Increase in Demand for Aromatherapy 5.3.1.2 Increasing Demand for Natural Ingredients and Clean Label Products 5.3.1.3 Increased Use of Essential Oils in Homecare Products 5.3.1.4 Use of Essential Oils as an Additive in Feed 5.3.1.5 Demand for Essential Oils in Cosmetic & Fragrance Industry 5.3.2 Restraints 5.3.2.1 Depletion of Natural Resources 5.3.2.2 Side Effects Associated with Specific Essential Oils 5.3.3 Opportunities 5.3.3.1 Powdered Essential Oil to Create New Opportunities 5.3.4 Challenges 5.3.4.1 Prevalence of Synthetic/Adulterated Products 6 Industry Trends 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Value Chain 6.2.1 Research and Product Development 6.2.2 Raw Material Sourcing 6.2.3 Production 6.2.4 Packaging, Storage, and Distribution 6.2.5 End-Users 6.3 Supply Chain Analysis 6.4 Market Map and Ecosystem of Essential Oils Market 6.4.1 Demand Side 6.4.2 Supply Side 6.4.3 Ecosystem Map 6.5 Trends/Disruptions Impacting Customers' Businesses 6.5.1 Revenue Shift and New Revenue Pockets in Essential Oil Market 6.6 Technology Analysis 6.6.1 Ultrasonic Hydro Distillation 6.6.2 Pressurized Hot Water Extraction 6.6.3 Drying Technology 6.6.4 Encapsulation 6.7 Pricing Analysis 6.7.1 Selling Prices Charged by Key Players in Terms of Application 6.8 Essential Oils Market: Patent Analysis 6.8.1 List of Major Patents 6.9 Trade Analysis: Essential Oil Market 6.9.1 Export Scenario: Essential Oils for Citrus Fruits 6.9.2 Import Scenario: Citrus Fruit Essential Oils 6.9.3 Export Scenario: Essential Oils 6.9.4 Import Scenario: Essential Oils 6.10 Case Studies: Essential Oil Market 6.10.1 Rocky Mountain Oils: Sustainable Packaging 6.10.2 Doterra: Increase Operations Efficiency 6.11 Key Conferences and Events, 2022-2023 6.12 Tariff and Regulatory Landscape 6.12.1 Regulatory Bodies, Government Agencies, and Other Organizations 6.13 Porter's Five Forces Analysis 6.14 Key Stakeholders and Buying Criteria 7 Essential Oils Market, by Type 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Orange Oil 7.2.1 Increased Use in Aromatherapy 7.3 Peppermint Oil 7.3.1 Europe and Asia-Pacific to Have Significant Impact on Market 7.4 Lemon Oil 7.4.1 Rise in Demand for Nutraceuticals with Natural Flavor 7.5 Lavender Oil 7.5.1 Improves Skin Health 7.6 Lime Oil 7.6.1 Effective for Skin Infection Treatments 7.7 Rosemary Oil 7.7.1 Increased Usage in Healthcare Products due to Antioxidant Properties 7.8 Cornmint Oil 7.8.1 Powerful Antibacterial and Antiseptic Oil 7.9 Spearmint Oil 7.9.1 Extensively Used in Food & Beverage Industry as Flavoring Ingredient 7.10 Geranium Oil 7.10.1 Primary Floral Component in Fragrance and Cosmetics 7.11 Clove Leaf Oil 7.11.1 Used for Oral Health due to Germicidal Properties 7.12 Rose Oil 7.12.1 Widely Used in Aromatherapy 7.13 Coriander Oil 7.13.1 Use in Seasonings due to Flavoring Properties 7.14 Tea Tree Oil 7.14.1 Therapeutic Benefits to Increase Demand in Skincare and Cosmetics Industry 7.15 Citronella Oil 7.15.1 Large-Scale Use in Aromatherapy to Treat Migraine and Headaches 7.16 Eucalyptus Oil 7.16.1 High Demand in Dental Care due to Germicidal Properties 7.17 Jasmine Oil 7.17.1 Extensively Used for Health Benefits 7.18 Other Types 8 Essential Oils Market, by Method of Extraction 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Distillation 8.2.1 Steam Distillation Method Used Extensively to Obtain Essential Oils Economically 8.3 Cold Press Extraction 8.3.1 Citrus Fruits Extracted Via Cold Press 8.4 Carbon Dioxide Extraction 8.4.1 Aroma and Bioactive Components of Essential Oils Effectively Retained 8.5 Other Extractions 9 Essential Oils Market, by Source 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Fruits & Vegetables 9.2.1 Cold Press Method Preferred for Essential Oil Extraction from Fruits and Vegetable 9.3 Flowers 9.3.1 Essential Oils Represent an Upstream Business Opportunity for Floriculture Market 9.4 Herbs & Spices 9.4.1 Herb-Derived Essential Oils as Natural Replacers of Compounds of Synthetic Origin 10 Essential Oils Market, by Application 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Food & Beverages 10.2.1 Extensive Use of Citrus Essential Oils in Food & Beverage Industry 10.3 Cosmetics & Toiletries 10.3.1 Extensive Use of Essential Oils due to Fragrance and Functional Properties 10.4 Aromatherapy 10.4.1 Therapeutic Potential of Essential Oils 10.5 Homecare 10.5.1 Demand for Natural Ingredients to Boost Demand 10.6 Healthcare 10.6.1 Mental Well-Being to Drive Healthcare Industry 10.7 Other Applications 11 Essential Oils Market, by Region 12 Competitive Landscape 12.1 Overview 12.2 Market Share Analysis, 2021 12.3 Segmental Revenue Analysis of Key Players 12.4 Key Player Strategies 12.5 Company Evaluation Quadrant (Key Players) 12.5.1 Stars 12.5.2 Emerging Leaders 12.5.3 Pervasive Players 12.5.4 Participants 12.5.5 Product Footprint 12.6 Essential Oils Market, Evaluation Quadrant for Start-Ups/Smes, 2021 12.6.1 Progressive Companies 12.6.2 Starting Blocks 12.6.3 Responsive Companies 12.6.4 Dynamic Companies 12.6.5 Competitive Benchmarking of Key Start-Ups/Smes 12.7 Competitive Scenario 12.7.1 New Product Launches 12.7.2 Deals 12.7.3 Others 13 Company Profiles 13.1 Introduction 13.2 Key Player 13.2.1 Dsm 13.2.2 Givaudan 13.2.3 International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (Iff) 13.2.4 Sensient Technologies Corporation 13.2.5 Cargill, Incorporated 13.2.6 Symrise 13.2.7 Robertet, Sa 13.2.8 Mane 13.2.9 Doterra 13.2.10 Now Foods 13.2.11 Synthite Industries Ltd. 13.2.12 Lebermuth, Inc. 13.2.13 Biolandes 13.2.14 Norex Flavours Private Limited 13.2.15 India Essential Oils 13.3 Other Players (Smes/Start-Ups) 13.3.1 Falcon 13.3.2 Farotti S.R.L. 13.3.3 Vidya Herbs 13.3.4 Young Living Essential Oils, Lc. 13.3.5 Essential Oils of New Zealand Ltd. 13.3.6 Veda Oils 13.3.7 Hcp Wellness 13.3.8 Vital Herbs 13.3.9 Cv Rasayana Wangi 13.3.10 Alchemy Chemicals 14 Adjacent & Related Markets 15 Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/zsul0 Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg SOURCE Research and Markets DUBLIN, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Refurbished Medical Equipment Market - Global Outlook & Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global refurbished medical equipment market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.76% during 2022-2027. The global market is growing due to the increasing number of healthcare settings and increased access to healthcare services. The industry is growing due to the high prevalence of several acute and chronic diseases across the globe. Refurbishment is the systematic process of making used equipment equal to or better than new. Refurbishment is rebuilding or updating with all new materials, components, or parts to restore their original (or better) working condition and appearance. The global refurbished medical equipment market grew significantly during the pre-pandemic times. However, outbreaks of diseases like bird flu, COVID-19, and Monkeypox create a massive demand for used medical equipment. Small & medium-sized hospitals, typically doctor-owned and with less than 100 beds, often cannot afford to buy new high-end equipment. These facilities prefer refurbished equipment of reputed brands that will cost less but perform well for a few years without complaints. These could be young doctors who become self-employed after using such devices in large hospitals. They may be familiar with the equipment models, but they are short on a budget in the early stages of the business. Also, tier 3 cities may have enough patients without enough ability to pay. Such locations cannot provide sufficient return on investment (ROI) for new equipment. Nearly one-third of the medical equipment industry in developing countries is part of the refurbished medical equipment market. Besides important environmental benefits, refurbishing provides sustainable economic benefits by creating business and employment in the refurbished medical equipment market. Even existing equipment owners may consider refurbishing their machines rather than disposing of old ones and buying new ones if their users are comfortable using the specific model. A refurbished asset can be re-capitalized on a depreciation schedule at half the value of new equipment. Refurbishment typically costs about half as much as buying a new one and can bring a machine back to like-new. In addition to the initial cost savings, refurbishment increases resale value and can provide tax benefits to a business, depending on how it's structured. Apart from cost savings, user comfort with the machines they've been using is a bonus. The global refurbished medical equipment market eliminates the annoying problems faced in using a worn-down machine and avoids the learning curve associated with new equipment. Users often grow fond of their devices and love to see their trusted old machines returned to life in better shape than before. The refurbishment also sometimes allows upgrading to the newest available technology. Market Trends and Opportunities Increasing Demand for Medical Equipment in Developing Countries The dearth of access to medical equipment in developing countries has attracted global interest in the refurbished medical equipment market for disease diagnosis. Healthcare systems in low-and middle-income countries often have limited access to medical equipment that appears to be in routine use. Implementing medical equipment refurbishment in a developing country would provide employment, increase the knowledge of medical technology among the people, and thus, provide a sustainable supply of skilled personnel for the healthcare industry. High Capital and Procurement Costs of Medical Equipment Medical equipment typically consists of complex machines that are expensive to purchase and operate and require significant maintenance. Smaller clinics and local medical centers may not be inclined to spend many resources purchasing new equipment that can easily deplete their entire annual budget for just a few devices. Purchasing refurbished medical equipment allows healthcare providers to maximize their budget while providing quality treatment options to each patient. By investing in refurbished equipment, hospitals and clinics can free up much-needed funds for other uses, such as staff, disposables, and medicines, further contributing to the growth of the refurbished medical equipment market. Growing Preference for Eco-friendly Products The environmental benefits of refurbished medical equipment are also worth touting. By extending the useful life of medical equipment from 5-7 to 10-14 years or even more, refurbishment is a form of reuse and waste prevention, contributing to an environmental economy. Refurbishment saves energy, and the materials are used to produce new equipment. Refurbishing medical equipment and extending its service life maximizes the return on the initial investment of energy and materials. Approximately 90% of the material for a system undergoing refurbishment can be reused; only 10% of the material must be recycled, which is done using environmentally friendly processes. Hospital Budget Cuts Preparing the hospital's capital budget is an interesting time because it often puts its executives at odds. There are two crucial points where refurbished medical equipment options can assist in this process. The first: relying on refurbished equipment in the development of capital budgets, as pricing options for refurbished equipment early in the process allow to push the price further while allowing for significant upgrades. Second, refurbished equipment can fill the capital budget gap with low-cost options for equipment. In the UK, hospitals are struggling to afford the most advanced scanners and surgical equipment to treat patients who have cancer and other diseases because of multibillion-pound cuts to the NHS's capital budget. In such cases, the refurbished medical equipment market becomes an ideal choice for hospitals to get the requirements at affordable prices. Increasing Number of Diagnostic Centers & Hospitals Diagnostic players are entering into outsourcing contracts with hospitals, whereby they would handle the entire diagnostic operations for them. Newly started small hospitals, diagnostic centers, and clinics have a financial burden and cannot dedicate to the new equipment. A few types of medical equipment could easily take up an entire annual budget for a small medical facility. Purchasing refurbished medical equipment is a viable solution contributing to the refurbished medical equipment market. The refurbished medical equipment is upgraded to current standards, ensuring updated equipment for a reasonable price. Large Inventory of Used or Old Medical Devices Medical equipment inventory is an accepted cost of doing business for manufacturers and is often the most significant cost category. Since medical equipment is typically a high-value product, any efficiencies or cost reductions can quickly contribute to the bottom line. Older equipment does not last forever, and this equipment eventually will need to be replaced and refurbished. It is expected that many facilities will be eager to replace their older systems with the resolution of global supply chain problems. These factors contribute to the rising sales of medical devices, which reflects a large inventory of used medical equipment in the refurbished medical equipment market. Vendor Landscape The global refurbished medical equipment market is exceptionally active, with fewer global, regional, and local players offering a wide range of medical equipment. The industry is less competitive, as the key players have gained significant refurbished medical equipment market share compared to other prominent players. The market provides the avenue for cheaper access to healthcare delivery and reduces costs in developing countries where these equipment are purchased for use. The three major manufacturers in the refurbished medical equipment market, GE Healthcare, Koninklijke Philips, and Siemens Healthineers, have implemented the refurbished process and sold their refurbished medical equipment under distinct brand names. In 2021, North America was the largest regional refurbished medical equipment market. It was primarily attributed to the presence of many private healthcare facilities, the increasing aging population, the high prevalence of various diseases, ongoing reimbursement cuts, and regulatory scenarios for the sale and use of refurbished medical equipment in the US. Key Vendors General Electric Company Koninklijke Philips Siemens Healthineers Other Prominent Vendors Amber Diagnostics Apt Medical Systems Avante Health Solutions Block Imaging EverX Future Health Concepts Medirays Meridian Medical PACIFIC HEALTHCARE IMAGING Radiology Oncology System Soma Tech Intl US Med-Equip's US Medical Systems Venture Medical ReQuip Key Questions Answered: 1. What is the expected refurbished medical equipment market size by 2027? 2. What is the growth rate of the global refurbished medical equipment market? 3. Who are the key companies in the global refurbished medical equipment market? 4. What are the latest refurbished medical equipment market trends globally? 5. Which region holds the largest refurbished medical equipment market share globally? Key Topics Covered: 1 Research Methodology 2 Research Objectives 3 Research Process 4 Scope & Coverage 4.1 Market Definition 4.1.1 Inclusions 4.1.2 Exclusions 4.1.3 Market Estimation Caveats 4.2 Base Year 4.3 Scope of the Study 4.3.1 Market Segmentation by Product 4.3.2 Market Segmentation by Application 4.3.3 Market Segmentation by End-Users 4.3.4 Market Segmentation by Geography 5 Report Assumptions & Caveats 5.1 Key Caveats 5.2 Currency Conversion 5.3 Market Derivation 6 Market at a Glance 7 Premium Insights 7.1 Market Overview 8 Introduction 8.1 Overview 9 Market Opportunities & Trends 9.1 Increasing Demand for Medical Equipment in Developing Countries 9.2 High Capital & Procurement Costs of Medical Equipment 9.3 Growing Preference for Eco-Friendly Products 10 Market Growth Enablers 10.1 Increasing Hospital Budget Cuts 10.2 Increasing Diagnostic Centers & Hospitals 10.3 Large Inventory of Used or Old Medical Devices 11 Market Growth Restraints 11.1 Negative Perception About Refurbished Medical Equipment 11.2 Stringent Standards & Approval Mechanisms for Refurbished Medical Equipment 11.3 Growing Ease of Leasing Medical Equipment in Lmics 12 Market Landscape 12.1 Market Overview 12.2 Market Size & Forecast 12.2.1 Insights by Geography 12.2.2 Insights by Product Segmentation 12.2.3 Insights by Application Segmentation 12.2.4 Insights by End-User Segmentation 12.3 Five Forces Analysis 13 Product 14 Application 15 End-User 16 Geography 16.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine 16.2 Geographic Overview 17 North America 18 Europe 19 APAC 20 Latin America 21 Middle East & Africa 23 Key Company Profiles 24 Other Prominent Vendors 25 Report Summary 26 Quantitative Summary 27 Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/z2d67n 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 Orlando and Las Vegas land in the top five Travel & Tourism city destinations by GDP contribution in 2022 Cities Economic Impact Report analyzed 82 cities around the world DALLAS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- New research from the World Travel & Tourism Council ( WTTC ) reveals the French capital Paris, as the world's most powerful city destination in 2022 but predicts it will be overtaken by Beijing by 2032. The report, sponsored by Visa and researched in partnership with Oxford Economics, analyzed key indicators such as Travel & Tourism's contribution to GDP, employment and traveler spend. COVID-19 had a devastating impact on Travel & Tourism and in particular major cities around the world as countries closed their borders in response to the pandemic. As borders reopened, many leisure travelers swapped city visits for less-populated destinations such as coastal and rural destinations, but the latest research from WTTC shows that city holidays are back and growing in popularity. Paris takes the crown as the world's most powerful city destination with a Travel & Tourism sector worth almost $36 billion in 2022, in terms of direct GDP contribution to the city. Over the next 10 years, WTTC predicts it will drop down to third place, although its value will rise to over $49 billion. Often dubbed the theme park capital of the world, Orlando's Travel & Tourism sector was valued at $31 billion in 2022, but despite predictions suggesting it will grow by almost 50% to $45 billion by 2032, it will drop down to become the fourth biggest city destination. Las Vegas is the only city in the top 10 list that holds its place, firmly staying as the 5th largest city destination. Last year, Las Vegas's Travel & Tourism sector was worth nearly $23 billion and is predicted to grow to over $36 billion by 2032. Beijing is currently the second biggest city destination in the world with a Travel & Tourism sector worth nearly $33 billion. However, WTTC predicts it will leapfrog Paris within the next 10 years, growing to a staggering $77 billion. China's national Travel & Tourism sector has seen phenomenal growth over the last decade as the country has invested in new hotels, transport infrastructure and new tourist destinations. This investment in Travel & Tourism sees Shanghai's sector, worth nearly $30 billion last year, predicted to more than double to almost $71 billion by 2032, to become the world's second most powerful city destination. Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: "Major cities such as London, Paris and New York will remain global powerhouses but over the next few years, Beijing, Shanghai, and Macau will be moving up the list of top city destinations. "Tourists will always have favorite cities that they will return to, but as other countries prioritize Travel & Tourism, we are going to see new and emerging destinations challenging the traditional favorites." Other cities outside the top 10 showing promising growth as emerging destinations include the Polish capital of Warsaw which has seen a 14.4% increase in its GDP contribution in 2022 versus 2019. Sanya, the Chinese coastal city which has become a popular tourist destination in recent years as holidaymakers visited its stunning beaches witnessed a 10.2% growth during that same period. Its Travel & Tourism sector represents an incredible 43.6% of the city's total economy. Macau's Travel & Tourism sector represents 40.4% of the city's total economy. Orlando and Las Vegas are the only cities currently in the top 10 most powerful city destinations based on the sector's value, which rely heavily on the sector as a share of the city's overall economy. Travel & Tourism represents 20.4% of Orlando's economy and 16.3% of Las Vegas's economy. In comparison, Paris's Travel & Tourism sector represents just 3.5% of the capital's economy in 2022. The top ten cities with the biggest international traveler spend in 2022 were: Dubai - $29.42BN Doha - $16.79BN London - $16.07BN Macau - $15.58BN Amsterdam - $13.59BN Istanbul - $13.13BN Barcelona - $12.73BN New York - $12.45BN Singapore - $10.97BN Paris - $9.76BN In 2032, WTTC predicts the top ten cities with the biggest international traveler spend will become: Hong Kong - $52.06BN (up 38 places from 2022) Macau - $43.14BN (up two places from 2022) Dubai - $42.98BN (down two places from 2022) Singapore - $37.43BN (up five places from 2022) Bangkok - $33.45BN (up seven places from 2022) Doha - $31.63BN (down four places from 2022) Tokyo $25.44BN (up 30 places from 2022) New York $21.73BN (no change from 2022) Amsterdam $21.53BN (down four places from 2022) Shanghai - $21.3BN (up 11 places from 2022) Over the next decade, Travel & Tourism is on track to become a key driver of economic growth once again, with faster GDP growth than other sectors, generating 126 million new jobs around the world. To access the WTTC report sponsored by Visa, please visit wttc.org About the World Travel & Tourism Council The World Travel & Tourism Council ( WTTC ) represents the global travel & tourism private sector. Members include 200 CEOs, Chairs and Presidents of the world's leading travel & tourism companies from all geographies covering all industries. For more than 30 years, WTTC has been committed to raising the awareness of governments and the public of the economic and social significance of the travel & tourism sector. Editors Notes Top Ten Cities Based on Direct Travel & Tourism GDP in real terms for 2022: Paris - $35.65BN Beijing - $32.62BN Orlando - $31.1BN Shanghai - $29.69BN Las Vegas - $22.99BN New York - $21.09BN Tokyo - $17.97BN Mexico City - $16.76BN London - $14.92BN Guangzhou - $13.15BN Top Ten Cities Based on Predicted Direct Travel & Tourism GDP in real terms for 2032: Beijing - $77.28BN (up one place from 2022) Shanghai - $70.88BN (up two places from 2022) Paris - $49.15BN (down two places from 2022) Orlando - $45BN (down one place from 2022) Las Vegas - $36.55BN (no change from 2022) Guangzhou - $34.94BN (up four places from 2022) New York - $34.28BN (down one place from 2022) Macau - $33.33BN (up four places from 2022) Bangkok - $31.52BN (up eight places from 2022) Tokyo - $29.94BN (down three places from 2022) SOURCE World Travel & Tourism Council The new joint project with the Israel Ministry of Defense DDR&D will see XTEND's XOS human-guided autonomous operating system enable operators to control dozens of human-guided semi-autonomous drones simultaneously Future applications of scalable, affordable, and infinitely flexible XOS planned in public safety, inspection, and homeland security TEL AVIV, Israel and WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- XTEND the developer of XOS, a human-guided autonomous operating system that is revolutionizing 'human to machine' interaction, has been awarded a $20M contract by Israel Ministry of Defense, for the development and supply of a first-of-its-kind multi-drone operating system. Future applications of scalable, affordable, and infinitely flexible XOS planned in public safety, inspection, and homeland security Aviv Shapira, co-founder and CEO of XTEND XTEND team The new joint project with MAFAT and the Israeli Ministry of Directorate of Defense Research & Development, will see XOS enable the remote, safe, and intuitive operation of dozens of human-guided semi-autonomous drones simultaneously, utilizing the latest virtual reality, edge processing and AI technology. XOS will allow XTEND's drones to be deployed remotely by military units in various scenarios precisely, intuitively, and immersively. The unique and groundbreaking joint initiative, which embodies the IDF and XTEND's shared vision of enabling drones to become more than just another "eye in the sky", enable operators to control, interact, and run 3rd party applications on the drones remotely, keeping forces out of danger, while fusing an operator's expertise with machine autonomy, VR and AI. The deal is based on performance and deliverable milestones. "We're witnessing a revolution on the modern battlefield," says official source, at the IDF. "Working with XTEND over the last three years, we have already been able to field systems that are now in daily use, and we are confident that this new program will provide a tremendous leap in our operational capabilities. Putting the best of civilian technology into the hands of our soldiers. One of the greatest challenges for a program office working with cutting-edge technologies is to find the right industry partners. Along with very few other vendors, we see XTEND as such partner." "We are very honored and excited to have been chosen once again by MAFAT, and to collaborate with them on this game-changing project," says Ido Bar-On, VP BD & Sales, XTEND. "Our continued partnership reflects the trust of the Israeli Ministry of Defense has in our company's team and technology. XTEND's deep collaboration with MAFAT in recent years has already been operationally proven time and again, reducing the risk to operators and providing them with best of breed technology to give them an operational edge. XTEND and the Ministry of Defense are working to secure the cooperation of other ally countries in this development program." XTEND's new contract with Israel's Ministry of Defense is the latest in over 20 major contracts secured by the company in the last three years, including a multi-million-dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, which will see XTEND's technology enabling US military drone operators to interactively operate multiple smart machines from a remote, safe distance, with minimal training. XOS is easily programmable and configurable to suit different needs outside defense, as Aviv Shapira, co-founder, and CEO at XTEND, explains: "Scalable, affordable, and infinitely flexible, XOS's unique operating system allows humans to connect and interact with drones, robots, vehicles, smart devices, and smart machines remotely, safely, and intuitively. Letting almost anyone to control multiple remote machines simultaneously - using advanced VR technology, on top of an AI layer. Alongside defense, XOS is providing a new way for public safety, inspection and homeland security professionals to interact with machines virtually in various civilian scenarios." Notes for editors: About XTEND and XOS: XTEND provides revolutionary human-guided autonomous machine systems that enable any operator to perform extremely accurate maneuvers and actions, in any environment with minimal training. The company's patented XOS operating system fuses the best of human intelligence and machine autonomy to enhance the operator's abilities, and simultaneously reduce the need for physical confrontation, thereby minimizing casualties and injuries. Hundreds of XTEND's systems are already operationally deployed worldwide, and the company is continuously developing its XOS operating system and platforms to deliver the future of human-machine teaming to defense, HLS, and security professionals worldwide. Find out more here. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985078/XTEND_firefighter.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985079/Aviv_Shapira_XTEND.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985080/XTEND_team.jpg SOURCE XTEND Zimbabwe yesterday commemorated the 10th anniversary of the death of former Vice President John Landa Nkomo. He died on January 17, 2013 aged 79 and was buried at the National Heroes Acre. In a statement yesterday, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda described the late VP Nkomo as an astute leader. "An astute politician, an ardent nationalist and a veteran of the liberation struggle, Cde John Landa Nkomo served the people and Government of Zimbabwe in various portfolios from 1980 until his demise on 17th January 2013. A true national builder, the late former Vice President belonged to the rare breed of our freedom fighters who believed in the power of the people to determine their destiny, in accordance with today's mantra of building the nation brick by brick, stone upon stone and leaving no one and no place behind," said Dr Sibanda. "As the leadership of the Second Republic preaches peace and harmony ahead of the 2023 harmonised elections, we are all reminded that 'Peace begins with Me, Peace begins with You and Peace begins with us all." Veteran politician and former Minister, Cde Angeline Masuku told the ZBC TV last night that former VP Nkomo was tolerant and a nation builder. "His legacy will live on," she said. His son, Jabulani Nkomo said their family and the country commemorated a life well lived. "He was determined to develop his community and the country at large," he said. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Zimbabwe Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Former VP Nkomo held various positions both in Government and the ruling Zanu-PF that include Cabinet posts. He also became Speaker of Parliament and national chairperson of Zanu PF and head of the National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration. Born on August 22, 1934 in Tsholotsho District, Matabeleland North province, Cde Nkomo died of cancer at a local private hospital in Harare. He succeeded Vice President Joseph Msika who had died in August 2009. He was one of the founding members of the African National Congress between 1958 and 1959. In 1960, he joined the National Democratic Party (NDP) before joining the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) in 1961. He was arrested on several occasions by the Ian Smith regime and detained at Gonakudzingwa restriction camp. Cde Nkomo attended the Geneva Conference as part of the PF-Zapu delegation led by Father Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo in 1976. Residents of Jos and Bukuru metropolis are worried over incessant kidnappings of high profile people in the area. From first week of January till date, over five kidnap cases were reported in Jos, Plateau State. Recall that recently the community security and security personnel attached to the Speaker of the State House of Assembly Rt. Hon Yakubu Sanda, foiled a kidnap attempt on the speaker. Again, not long after, the police also rescued the permanent secretary, Ministry of Works, Engr. Alexander Plangnan, who was kidnapped in his official Hilux vehicle at the gate of his residence in Jos by four unknown gunmen. It was gathered that the scene of the incident was visited by the DPO Rantya, SP Ayuba Iliya and his team. Through joint collaboration of Rantya, Jengre Police Divisions and the Anti-Kidnapping unit of Plateau State Command, the victim was rescued and his vehicle was recovered at Mistali village of Bassa LGA same day. Similarly, the Plateau State Police Command has recorded another feat when they arrested a Pastor and his accomplices for staging his kidnap in the state. According to the Police Public Relation Officer (PPRO) DSP Alfred Alabo, Pastor Albarka Bitrus Sukuya of Jenta Apata, Jos, had on several occasions staged his own kidnap with his cohorts and received ransom from members of his congregation. He said following Sukuya's kidnappings on 14 of November 2022 and 30 November 2022, where the sums of N400,000 and N200,000 were respectively paid by his sympathisers as ransom for his release, the incidents triggered suspicion and through credible intelligence, the clergyman was invited by the DPO of Nassarawa Gwong Police Division, CSP Musa Hassan, and investigation commenced immediately. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Legal Affairs By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. He revealed that in the course of the investigation, it was established that the suspect had been conspiring with his gang to stage his kidnap and fraudulently collect ransom saying the operatives arrested two of the accomplices namely, Baruk Mailale and Nathaniel Bitrus. Furthermore the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Pankshin Division in Plateau State has also been reportedly kidnapped by gunmen. He was since rescued unhurt by the combined efforts of Police vigilante group and hunters and is reunited with his family members . Worried over the tragic incidences, North Central Zonal Coordinator of Civil Liberties Organisation, Comrade Steve Aluko, said the police need to build a regional intelligence gathering network, adding that some of those kidnapped are sometimes taken out of Plateau to neighbouring states. Aluko also advised that the police should ensure they investigate all kidnap cases, because in some cases proper investigations are not carried out once the victims family has paid ransom and secured their release, it ends there. Speaking to our correspondent in Jos, the commissioner of Police, Plateau State Command, CP Bartholomew Onyeka, said he has refined the operational template of the command so criminals are at a disadvantage and can hardly escape when they commit any crime. The Senate has accused the minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, and the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, of delaying the passage of the N23.7 trillion Ways and Means Restructuring forwarded to it in December by President Muhammadu Buhari. The Red Chamber, during its plenary after resumption from the Christmas and New Year recess, noted that Ahmed and Emefiele had failed to supply the required details to enable the lawmakers consider for passage the N23.7 trillion Ways and Means. It, therefore, ordered the two government officials, to within three days, supply the required information on the presidential request to the Special Committee set up for that purpose before going on break last year. The Senate warned that in view of Presidential and National Assembly elections coming up next month, it would adjourn plenary this week or latest by Tuesday next week, to enable members participate in campaigns. It took these decisions sequel to the request made by the chairman of the Special Committee and Senate Leader, Senator Ibrahim Gobir (APC, Sokoto East). Gobir had raised a Point of Order motion, citing Order 40 of the Senate Standing Rules, under personal explanation, drawing the attention of the Senate that series of attempts made by the Committee from 28th December, 2022, to Tuesday, 17th January, 2023, to meet the finance minister and CBN governor for the required details had been fruitless. He said: "As a special committee, for urgent and thorough assignment, we hit the ground running immediately after composition on 28th of December last year. For required details on the N23.7 trillion Ways and Means Restructuring, six vital questions were raised, five for the CBN governor and one for the finance minister, but their trips abroad prevented us from asking them the questions. "Now that they are around, we request the Senate to give us additional three days for thorough work on the assignment and submission of the report." Angered by the submission, the president of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, in his response said the Ways and Means request from the president was a very serious issue that must not be treated with levity by all those concerned. He said the Senate was ready to approve the request after thorough scrutiny which could only be done if required details were provided by relevant officials from the Executive arm of government. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Governance By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "We must have necessary information for passage of the N22.7 trillion request, and time is not on our side in the Senate now in view of the coming general elections. "If there is need for the Senate to sit up to Friday this week for thorough consideration and passage of the request, it will be done but the affected officials from the executive must also expedite action on provision of required information as regards documents authorising approval and disbursement of the monies totalling N22.7 trillion", he said. President Muhammadu Buhari had, in separate letters to both Chambers of the National Assembly on December 21, 2022, sought approval for restructuring of N23.7 trillion Ways and Means. The efforts made by the Senate to approve the request during passage of the N21.83 trillion 2023 budget on 28th of December last year failed, thereby compelling the Chamber to set up the Senator Gobir-led Special Committee to liaise with the Executive arm for necessary information. Moscow, Jan 18 : Russia has expanded its entry ban list of EU citizens and officials in response to the EU's ninth package of sanctions against Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. "In response to the hostile actions of the EU, Russia expanded the list of representatives from European institutions and EU member states who are prohibited from entering Russian territory," the Ministry added in a statement on Tuesday. According to the statement, officials from EU law enforcement agencies involved in providing military assistance to Ukraine's armed forces, European government and commercial structures that supply military equipment to Ukraine, and EU citizens engaged in promoting anti-Russian sentiment, as well as individual members of the European Parliament, have been included in the expanded list, Xinhua news agency reported. "The EU is continuing to pressure Russia through its unilateral restrictive measures," the statement said, calling the latest sanctions package "illegitimate". The EU adopted the ninth package of sanctions against Russia on December 16. It said the sanctions were meant to further increase collective pressure on Russia to end its military operation and withdraw its troops from Ukraine. Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War The Hague, Jan 18 : A man suspected of being an IS Security Chief has been arrested in the Netherlands, Dutch authorities said. The 37-year-old suspect is believed to have held senior positions in the security services of the terrorist groups IS and Jabhat al-Nusra between 2015 and 2018 during the Syrian war, said the Dutch public prosecutor's office on Tuesday. He claimed asylum in the Netherlands in 2019. The public prosecutor's office said that the man is suspected of contributing to war crimes committed in Syria, Xinhua news agency reported. He was arrested in Arkel, a town in the Dutch province of South Holland, and will be brought before an examining magistrate in the Hague on January 20. Lucknow, Jan 18 : Eight years after his death, clashes broke out between two student groups at Lucknow University over an event to commemorate the death anniversary of Rohith Vemula. The two student organisations got into a heated argument and raised slogans against each other. However, the police and the university administration intervened and separated both the groups. Rohith Vemula, a Dalit Ph.D scholar, hanged himself in his hostel room on January 17, 2016, 12 days after he was expelled from the hostel. He was one among the five research scholars suspended by the Hyderabad Central University administration. All five of them were accused of assaulting an ABVP student leader. His death triggered widespread protests across India as a case of discrimination against Dalit students. The student groups, belonging to different ideologies, clashed when one group blamed the other for driving the Dalit student to end his life. Tehran, Jan 18 : A top Iranian security official has suggested establishing "joint and synergetic" bodies to counter unilateral sanctions, Iranian Students' News Agency reported. Making the remarks in a meeting with Igor Levitin, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Iran, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani on Tuesday warned that the unilateral sanctions system disrupts targeted countries' development and exacerbates regional and international crises. Commenting on Iranian-Russian bilateral relations in all areas, Shamkhani stressed the need to implement joint economic projects within the frameworks of the agreements previously reached between Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Putin, Xinhua news agency reported. Levitin, for his part, said Russia's main priority is to swiftly begin construction of the rail route in Iran that would be integrated into the International North-South Transport Corridor and complete Rasht-Astara railway given the two projects' strategic importance. He pointed to Iran's unique capacities and advantages in the energy and transport sectors, expressing Russian companies' willingness to make large investments in Iranian infrastructure projects. Highlighting the agreements between Russia and Iran on developing trade through using national currencies and barter, Levitin added that the necessary mechanisms have been activated for removing the restrictions resulting from the sanctions imposed on the two countries' banking sectors. Both targeted by sanctions, particularly those of the US, Iran and Russia have recently expanded their bilateral political and economic relations to counter embargoes. Jerusalem, Jan 18 : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that an Israeli held captive in Gaza is alive, a day after Hamas released a rare video of him. "Yesterday we received additional confirmation of what we have known all along -- that Avera (Mengistu) is alive," Netanyahu said in a statement after a meeting with Ronen Bar, the Chief of the Shin Bet internal security agency on Tuesday. In a rare video released on Monday by Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian group that runs the Gaza Strip, Mengistu is seen seated against a white background, appealing for Israel's help to free him, Xinhua news agency reported. Mengistu has been held in the Gaza Strip since he crossed into the Palestinian enclave in 2014. His family said in the past that the man, now 36, is suffering from mental health problems. Mengistu "is a young man, not in the best of health, and Hamas is entirely responsible for his fate," the Israeli Prime Minister said. Israel has "not ceased its efforts to bring back Avera Mengistu and our other captives and missing persons," he added. Hamas is reportedly seeking a prisoner swap deal in which Palestinian prisoners would be released in exchange for Mengistu's freedom. Lucknow, Jan 18 : The Lucknow police are now frantically searching for a young couple, seen romancing on a moving two-wheeler in the busy Hazratganj area, police said. The video, apparently taken from a vehicle moving behind the couple, has gone viral on the social media. As soon as the video went viral, the police started investigating the footage. The Deputy Commissioner of Police in Lucknow Central Zone, Aparna Rajat Kaushik, confirmed that the video is from Lucknow and was taken in the Hazratganj area. Two police teams have been deployed to look for the couple. The police are also checking the CCTV footage from nearby cameras to nab the duo. The police said action will be taken against the couple under the Motor Vehicles Act and also for spreading obscenity. "The behaviour of the couple not only transcend the boundaries of decency and social behaviour but is also an offence under the Motor Vehicles Act," said a senior police official. Lucknow, Jan 18 : Renowned Urdu poet Wasim Barelvi was injured in a road accident in Uttar Pradesh's Hapur, police said. The 82-year-old is out of danger and is being treated at BLK Hospital in Delhi. His family members said that Barelvi had gone to Bahrain to attend a 'Mushaira' a few days ago. On his return, he was heading to Bareilly from Delhi when, while passing through Hapur, his car collided with a dumper. Barelvi has received injuries on his left hand and shoulder. According to the X-ray report, there are two fractures in his left hand. A family member said that his condition has shown improvement, adding he will be discharged from the hospital soon. Ankara, Jan 18 : The Turkish Foreign Minister has slammed as "absurd" a Swedish prosecutor's decision not to investigate a protest in Stockholm in which Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's puppet was hung. "The decision by the (Swedish) prosecutor's office not to probe the incident is extremely absurd, and we all know what the rule of law means," Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a press conference with his visiting Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in the capital Ankara on Tuesday. The incident was a "racist, hateful, hate crime act" and therefore is also against universal values and is a crime according to international law, the Turkish Foreign Minister added. Sweden should not try to fool Turkey by calling the incident a freedom of speech, Cavusoglu noted. Either the Nordic country will "fall victim to these mines laid by terrorists" or will walk forward by meeting the requirements of the deal reached with Turkey, the Turkish Foreign Minister warned. Last week, a group of protesters hung a puppet likened to Erdogan by its feet in Stockholm and shared its video footage on social media. Ankara says the protesters were supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Sweden, together with Finland, applied to join NATO in mid-May last year. But Turkey, a NATO member, objected to the bids by the two Nordic countries, citing their ties with the PKK, Xinhua news agency reported. On June 28 last year, Turkey, Sweden and Finland reached a memorandum of understanding (MoU) before Ankara lifted its veto ahead of the NATO Madrid summit. The Turkish parliament has not ratified the Nordic countries' NATO bids yet, citing that they have not met Turkey's requests. The PKK, listed as a terror organisation by Turkey, the US and the EU, has been rebelling against the Turkish government for more than three decades. The senate yesterday declared that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has no excuse to give as far as required credibility of the coming general elections is concerned, stating that all their demands have been met. According to the senate, funds and materials needed for smooth conduct of the elections have been provided by the executive in collaboration with the legislature adding that there should be no room for any excuse from the electoral body. The senate president, Ahmad Lawan stated this in his remarks before commencement of plenary on Tuesday. He charged the electoral umpire to be on top of its game to ensure that the February 2023 polls meet the expectations of Nigerians. "INEC has gotten everything it has asked for, from the legislature to aid the conduct of a credible election and as such excuses will not be condoned ", he said. He said security agencies have assured everyone that the environment will be safe and secured for citizens to go out and cast their votes without any hindrance. He, however, added that the National Assembly is ever ready to support INEC and other agencies of Government that will work to ensure free , fair and credible elections in February. He urged Nigerians to leverage on the window of collection of Permanent Voters Cards ( PVC) as stated by INEC, to collect them for exercise of their franchise . "2023 will redefine the future of the country as Nigerians prepare to elect officers to the various positions both in the National and state levels," he added. Davos, Jan 18 : With the immense potential of India's transitioning energy systems, industry leaders have emphasized the need to forge partnerships across private, public and philanthropic entities to aid the country in attaining its net-zero targets. At a fireside chat organised by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and Invest India in association with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday, Girish Sethi, Senior Director, TERI, drew attention to the commitments made by India towards its net-zero targets at COP26 in Glasgow, and underscored the array of initiatives undertaken since at the government level, with the National Green Hydrogen Mission being the latest, to make the targets attainable. Taking part in a panel discussion moderated by Sethi on 'The Path to Net Zero for India: The role of Public-Private Partnerships' with industry leaders and other stakeholders, Jeremy Oppenheim, Senior Partner, SYSTEMIQ and Member of Board of Directors, Mission Possible Partnership, said strong government commitments in India have translated into large-scale investments, which, in turn, is beginning to change the economics of how the energy systems in the country work. "There are technologies coming through, with solar being an obvious example. These are not only unlocking immense potential for the transformation of the energy system in India, but the economy as a whole, and that is feeding through into green hydrogen, green steel, green cement and into a whole lot of industries and technologies. India has a chance to be world class," said Oppenheim. During the chat that brought together leaders from global businesses and coalitions to explore innovative technologies and business models for accomplishing India's net-zero vision and help find solutions through public-private cooperation, Paul Marriott, President, SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), said regulations are one of the barriers in making the transition to renewables swifter and smoother. "India can be the world platform for green energy but regulation needs to be accelerated," he added. Markus Solibieda, Managing Director, BASF Venture Capital GmbH, highlighted the company's investments in India's local start-up ecosystem with particular focus on digitalization as well as sustainability. "We find companies in India that win global recognition," said Solibieda. Noting that the momentum on issues such as decarbonisation and net-zero is heartening, Anthony Hobley, Executive Fellow (Strategic Engagement), Center for Nature and Climate, World Economic Forum (WEF), asserted that unless the momentum is "catalysed, we are not going to get to the low-carbon, net-zero world on time and at the speed and scale required." Underscoring the need for a public-private-philanthropic partnership in moving towards a decarbonised world, Hobley said philanthropy is most effective when it works alongside the government and the private sector. "Of the total philanthropy in the world, less than 2 per cent of that goes to climate mitigation," he said, adding the biggest growth in philanthropy is in places like India, Middle East and South East Asia. Agreeing with Hobley, Carl Brinton, Managing Director, The Rockefeller Foundation, too emphasized the significant role philanthropy can play in aiding the world towards net-zero. "We would like to work with philanthropies across the world and then connect it with public and private sector so that we can take on these challenges that are well beyond us individually," said Brinton. Bringing in the entrepreneurial and technology perspective to the discussion, Pankaj Agarwal, CEO, Panitek Power AG, asserted that renewable energy is an existential issue and digitalization is a key element in making the transition smooth. "Integrating technology, bringing all stakeholders together is important," said Agarwal. Asa Persson, Research Director and Deputy Director, Stockholm Environment Institute, focussed on the need for co-development of technology between developed and developing countries. "Mobilizing finance, de-risking, supporting market creation, green public procurement and developing common standards and definitions and providing data for global transitions and reducing information asymmetry" are critical to moving towards a net-zero world, said Persson. Noting that India and the world are undergoing major transitions, Prem Barthasarathy, Managing Partner, Pontaq, said "there needs to be a careful balance between the current demand that is on India, by India and by the world, five years and 10 years on the line due to macro-economic changes". Bengaluru, Jan 18 : A Congress leader from Chitradurga has been arrested in connection with the alleged suicide of contractor here two years ago, police said on Wednesday. Jayaramaiah, the accused, is also managing director of Ishwaryagiri Construction Company. The police have launched a manhunt for another accused G. Shivakumar, the director of the company. The accused Jayaramaiah had sub-leased the contract work allotted to him through a tender to deceased V.M. Mallikarjun, a resident of Peenya in Bengaluru. The victim had spent Rs 2.54 crore to complete the work and despite getting the money released from the government, the accused refused to pay him back. On being questioned, the accused abused and threatened him. It is further alleged that accused Jayaramaiah had cheated Mallikarjun's brother Basavaraju of Rs 1.20 crore. Unable to take in the pressure, Mallikarjun had committed suicide two years ago, naming the accused Jayaramaiah in the death note. Investigations have shown that accused Jayaramaiah used to get contract from the Sewarage Board attached to the government of Karnataka. He used to give the allotted work as sublease to other contractors. Mallikarjun was introduced to the accused through one of his friends. Rajagopalanagar police arrested the accused and took up further investigation. Bengaluru, Jan 18 : Karnataka police have launched a manhunt for a jilted lover who stabbed a 19-year-old college student to death near Yelahanka Layout here, police said on Wednesday. According to police, the special team of police is tracking down the accused Madhuchandra, a private company employee in connection with the case. Rashi, a resident of Shanubhoganahalli near Dibbur, was stabbed in the neck by the accused on Tuesday evening. The accused had followed Rashi when she went to bring back cows from the farm. After stabbing her in the neck, the accused Madhuchandra has escaped from the spot. The incident had come to light very late and though Rashi was shifted to a hospital, she was declared brought dead. Rashi was staying with her mother and sister and had lost her father four months ago. Her mother worked as an assistant in a private college. Madhuchandra and Rashi were in a relationship but after learning that he was a married man with a kid, the now-deceased severed all ties with him. Pestering her to marry him, the accused had created a ruckus near her house earlier. An investigation is underway. New York, Jan 18 : India is a "great example" of countries that the US is discussing arms purchases from it to wean them away from Russia and is ready for a response, says Pentagon spokesperson Pat Ryder. The US understood that some countries that bought Russian or Soviet-era weapons want to maintain some type of relationship with Moscow, he said on Tuesday at a briefing in Washington. But, he said, "from a security cooperation standpoint, certainly from the US perspective, I think that the types of security assistance the US provide to include capabilities is much more dependable and also maintained". "We continue to discuss with various partners and allies around the world on would they -- should they -- choose to purchase those kinds of systems, we're certainly all ears, India being a great example," he added. Ryder made those remarks in response to a question about South Africa holding joint naval exercises with Russia and China and if there were concerns about the information Washington shared with Pretoria. Defence cooperation is "a sovereign decision for individual countries to make", he added. India has been diversifying its defence sourcing and purchases from the US have increased ten-fold between 2016 and 2021, according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute. According to the institute in the five-year period ending 2021, India's imports of arms from Russia dropped by 47 per cent compared to the previous five-year period. A dilemma for the US is that some of India's arms purchases like the S-400 missile defence system makes it liable for sanctions and it has withheld sanctions so far. On the other hand, India also faces a dilemma with continuing arms purchases from Russia because of the performance of its weaponry's performance in the Ukraine war. (Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis) New Delhi, Jan 18 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked BJP workers to refrain from making "unnecessary" comments about films. He made the observation while addressing the last day of the two-day National Executive meet here on Tuesday. During his address, Modi also asked BJP members to reach out to every section of society, including minorities such as Bohras, Pasmandas and Sikhs, and work for them without electoral considerations. The Prime Minister's statement comes amid the recent protests against Shah Rukh Khan's film 'Pathaan', with several BJP leaders like Ram Kadam and Narottam Mishra criticising the makers over Deepika Padukone's saffron costume in the song 'Besharam Rang'. The song has been in news for a saffron coloured bikini worn by Deepika along with a few shots that several politicians and trolls found 'vulgar'. As per reports, Hindu sentiments have been hurt and people have also criticised the makers as they find an "overdose" of the sexually appealing look of the actress. Protests are on with the social media campaign seeking boycott of the movie. Melbourne, Jan 18 : Jannik Sinner earned his second straight-sets victory of the Australian Open fortnight on Wednesday, breezing past Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 in John Cain Arena. While some first-round matches have yet to be completed due to rain, the 21-year-old Italian took full advantage of his opportunity on one of three roofed courts at Melbourne Park where he raced into the third round in one hour, 44 minutes. "I am very happy to be in the next round," Sinner was quoted as saying by atptour.com. "Very happy to play again here on this court, especially today, with the roof. Outside it's raining a lot, so hopefully it's not going to rain in the next days. "For sure the level today was good. I served well. I returned very good also today because I think he's a very good server." The 15th-seeded Sinner cruised to victory by converting on all five of his break points, while not allowing a break chance on his own serve. Dictating the bulk of the rallies both on serve and return, firing 32 winners, he drove home his advantage by attacking the net 22 times, winning 20 of those points. A six-time champion on the ATP Tour, Sinner reached the AO quarter-finals for the first time last year before falling to Stefanos Tsitsipas. The pair is seeded to meet again in this year's fourth round, though the Italian must first beat Lloyd Harris or Marton Fucsovics and Tsitsipas must also battle into the last 16. With Matteo Berrettini's five-set defeat to Andy Murray in the first round, Sinner is now the top-ranked Italian in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings. Holding firm at No. 16 this week, Sinner is one place ahead of countryman Lorenzo Musetti, who lost to Harris in the opening round. Argentina's Etcheverry, 23, was bidding to reach the third round at a Grand Slam for the first time in five attempts. The World No. 79 finished the 2022 season with the second-most match wins on the ATP Challenger Tour (41), winning his third title at that level and reaching four additional finals on the year. Los Angeles, Jan 18 : China has lifted its unofficial ban on Marvel titles, setting release dates for two major superhero tentpoles, 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' and 'Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania'. 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever', which was released everywhere else in the world last November, will open in China on February 7. Shortly after, 'Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania' will be released on February 17, the same day the sequel touches down in the U.S. and the U.K. The dates were released via Marvel's Chinese social media accounts. Those movies will be the first Marvel adventures to play in China since 2019's 'Avengers: Endgame' (which made a staggering $632 million in the territory) and 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' (which brought in $198 million in the territory). In the past, Marvel movies have been extremely popular in China, with 'Black Panther' grossing $105 million and 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' earning $121 million in the country. It's not just Marvel that's been getting the cold shoulder from Disney. Very few Hollywood movies have gotten access to screen in Chinese movie theatres in the pandemic era. The thaw towards Disney films in the Middle Kingdom began late in 2022 with James Cameron's magnum opus 'Avatar: The Way of Water', which got permission to play in the country from China's Film Bureau. So far, the science-fiction tentpole has earned some $220 million in the territory. It's not clear why recent titles from Disney and other major studios have been denied release in China. But it is most likely sabre rattling directed towards the US during a period of increased tensions, especially with jingoistic political events like the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and the 20th National Congress happening in 2021 and 2022 respectively. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed Athens, Jan 18 : Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called for a mechanism for the relocation of asylum seekers and urged better cooperation between the European Union (EU), Turkey and his country in combating human trafficking. The handling of migration is an "ongoing wager" that demands European solidarity and preparedness, Mitsotakis said at an event organised by the Greek Migration and Asylum Ministry, Xinhua news agency reported. "The handling of this problem can and must only be European," he said. "Steps have been taken, but much more needs to be done. ... In a period of international instability, immigration turns into an ongoing wager." Mitsotakis reviewed the progress achieved in recent years and called for more effective cooperation to tackle the remaining challenges. "Strict but fair border protection is ultimately a policy that protects human lives. The more these flows are prevented, the fewer people will be at sea statistically." In recent years, Greece's Coast Guard has rescued tens of thousands of people in the Aegean Sea, he recalled. In 2015, 75 per cent of the illegal migrants headed for Europe arrived in Greece. By 2022, this figure had dropped to 5 per cent, he said. Last year, 250,000 illegal migrants were prevented from entering Greece via its land borders and 45,000 via its sea borders, he noted. According to Mitsotakis, in 2015, 900,000 people entered Greece fleeing war zones and extreme poverty. In 2022, only 17,000 arrivals were recorded. Following the implementation of voluntary repatriation and relocation programs, the number of migrants hosted in state-run facilities across Greece declined from 92,000 in 2019 to fewer than 15,000 today, and their living conditions have dramatically improved, he said. Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 18 : Union Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan on Wednesday delivered the keynote address at the first G20 Health Working Group meeting here. In his address, he said the G20 theme is based on universal brotherhood or 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'. "It reminds us to see the world as a family in working towards a healthier tomorrow. It is in the interest of human kind that we should be prepared for any health emergency in the future," said Muraleedharan. The Union Minister said that 3,000 years ago, a great poet of India, Kaniyan Poongundranar wrote in Tamil, "Yaadhum Oore Yaavarum Kaelir.." "It means 'we belong to all places, and everyone'. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that adding this sense of belonging beyond borders was unique to India." Delving into history, he pointed out that even before Independence, Kerala had a strong public health tradition. "In 1813, a vaccination department was established here in Thiruvananthapuram by the Travancore queen Rani Gowri Lakshmi Bayi. It was against smallpox. As people showed signs of fear against vaccination, the queen set an example by getting all members of the royal family vaccinated first, to reassure her subjects," added Muraleedharan. Aden, Jan 18 : Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) has welcomed efforts to revive the stalled political process in the war-torn Arab country, affirming its commitment to the peace approach that ensures the cooperation of all factions. PLC Chairman Rashad al-Alimi made the remarks during a meeting with the European Union's (EU's) Ambassador to Yemen Gabriel Munuera Vinals at the temporary Yemeni Presidential office in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh, Xinhua news agency reported. While welcoming the ongoing efforts by regional countries and the EU to support the revival of the political process in his country, al-Alimi confirmed the commitment of the PLC and the Yemeni government to a comprehensive and lasting peace that ensures cooperation among all people and factions. "Exerting utmost pressures upon the Houthi militia is the best way to bring the rebels back to the peace track and push them to make concessions for the interest of the Yemeni people and end the humanitarian suffering," he was quoted as saying. He praised the EU's support for the Yemeni government's reforms, highlighting the need for Europe to provide sustainable economic and development support to mitigate the world's worst humanitarian crisis. For his part, the EU ambassador confirmed the EU's continuing support for the PLC and the Yemeni government to improve Yemenis' living conditions and rebuild the state institutions. The EU diplomat also voiced his support for "the ongoing efforts of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg to renew the expired truce and build-up on that to reach a comprehensive peace settlement". On Monday, Grundberg reported via video link to the UN Security Council on his ongoing mediation efforts with the Yemeni government and Houthi militia, after their failure in October last year to extend a landmark truce that lasted for six months. "Yemen needs an agreement that includes a shared vision for the way forward, in order to avoid a return to full-blown conflict. I, therefore, urge the parties to make the most of the space for dialogue provided by the absence of large-scale fighting," said the UN envoy. In October 2022, the Yemeni government and the Houthi militia failed to extend a six-month national truce, raising concerns about the return of violent conflicts to the Arab country. The civil war erupted in Yemen in late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of some northern cities and forced the Saudi-backed government out of the capital Sanaa. The war has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis, displaced 4 million, and pushed the country to the brink of famine. The 25 detained Citizens Coalition for Change's (CCC) activists are likely to spend more time behind bars after their bail hearing was delayed when issues of privacy arose regarding a minor who is among the accused arose. The activists are accused of gathering with intent to commit public violence. Their lawyers could not apply for bail Tuesday after Justice for Children lawyers who are representing the 17-year-old asked to have the matter heard in camera. On the other hand, legal representatives for the other 24 activists insisted the matter was of public interest and should be heard in an open court. Now the group awaits the magistrate's ruling on whether the matter should be heard in a public court or not. Pamela Musingwa representing the minor said her client is a Form four student as such should be protected from public criticism and scrutiny. The activists were arrested at CCC legislator, Costa Machingauta's house in Budiriro, where they were having their private meeting. Hoards of CCC supporters attended in solidarity. Case returns Wednesday. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Winters in India are not the same throughout the country. While the northern parts do have colder winters, the south is usually more tropical and does not see extreme temperature variations. Nowadays, this situation is changing; the extreme climate change that has been gripping the globe has not left the country untouched. On one hand, the winter has become colder, foggier, and more polluted in the northern parts whereas the south is experiencing drastic temperature variations with colder nights and comparatively warmer days. This unbalanced climate outside has led to many health problems in the population. A few such issues are the frequent cold, cough,s and chest congestion that affect the respiratory system. These are more common in small babies and school-going children as they have a weaker immunity. The symptoms may include a blocked nose, running nose, cough with or without expulsion of sputum, sore throat, hoarseness of voice, wheezing, rhonchi sounds while breathing, chest congestion, and sometimes sinus headaches. The general relief mantra is keeping warm and taking hot potency medicines. Minor cases of cold and related respiratory problems can be effectively managed at home, but if the symptoms are severe consulting a doctor is always advisable. Home Remedies: . Gargling repeatedly with hot water added with salt, turmeric or Triphala Choorna is very beneficial in case of throat pain and hoarseness of voice. . In babies below six months of age, medication is not really advised but the medicines can be given through breast milk by medicating the mother who in most cases may also be suffering from the same symptoms. . A really effective herb that can help in improving immunity, digestion, and intelligence in babies and one that can be given even to the newborns is Vacha (Vach)/ Sweet Flag (Acorus calamus). The very small quantity of this dried herb is rubbed on a rough surface and the paste can be given with a little amount of ghee. . Dry ginger is also a very effective herb in cases of cold and congestion. It can be used as an ingredient in masala tea, boiled with drinking water, or chewed in small quantities by both children and adults. . Another very important plant for cold, fever, and chest congestion in both children and adults is the Parnayavani (Sanskrit)/ Panikoorka (Malayalam)/ Karpooravalli (Tamil)/ Doddapatre (Kannada)/ Pathar Choor (Hindi)/ Indian borage/Mexican mint. The leaves of this plant are slightly warmed and crushed to extract their juice. This juice can be given along with honey. The leaves can also be used in drinking water. . Tulasi is also a very handy solution for this set of symptoms. Water boiled with Tulasi reduces fever, cold, and congestion and improves immunity. Tulasi leaves can also be eaten directly after washing them. . Trikatu is a combination of three dry spices that is usually given in diseases that occur during the winter. It consists of dry ginger, dry black pepper, and dry long pepper powdered together. This polyherbal is used in many formulations in ayurveda and is the major component of Dashamoolakatutraya Kashaya that is specifically given in conditions of cough, cold, and chest congestion. . The most effective method of unblocking the nose and giving relief to the congested chest is exposure to steam. This process of steaming and induction of sweat is called sudation. Steaming can be done by exposing the chest and face to the vapours coming from hot water. For better liquefaction of the sputum herbs like Tulasi and Parnayavani can be added to the water. Precautions Even though many effective treatments are available for respiratory issues during the winter, it is always better to prevent such symptoms. Here are a few precautionary measures that can keep you healthy during cold spells. . Always try to stay warm with a proper winter wardrobe. . Especially cover the ears during travelling and at night. . Do not drink cold water or eat anything refrigerated. . Drink hot water preferably boiled with beneficial herbs. . In places with high pollution and fog, it is essential to wear a mask for protection. . Do not take a shower in cold water and do not sleep with wet hair. . Children should be taught personal hygiene ethics so that they do not get infected by contact with sick kids at school. (Dr. Lakshmi Varma K is a [BAMS, MD(Ayu)] Consultant & Advisor at LYEF Wellness) (IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text London, Jan 18 : A 25-year-old Sikh has man has been fined and banned from roads for 22 months by a UK court for driving under the influence of alcohol. Police found open cans of alcohol in Sukhpreet Singh's car after he was followed through a Derbyshire town swerving across lanes in November last year, the Derbyshire Live reported. The Southern Derbyshire Magistrates' Court heard that Singh, a Pizza Hut worker and a resident of Higher Albert Street, Chesterfield, was driving without a license. According to prosecutor Becky Allsop, a witness informed that Singh's car was swerving in and out of the zig-zag lines in the centre of the road, and vehicles travelling in the opposite direction had to flash their lights at him. The witness, a driver, was following Singh's car and had informed the police about him. The witness described the vehicle as coming to a stop in the middle of the road for no reason and then drove off again, still swerving all the way down the road, the report said. "The road he turned into had two lanes in each direction and Singh crossed both the carriageways, went over the central raised pavement and came to rest facing the opposite direction to the way he should have been," Allsop was quoted as saying in Derbyshire Live. Singh had a breath test reading of 77 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath -- almost twice the legal limit of 35, the court was informed. Sajid Majeed, mitigating, said Singh has pleaded guilty, and had no previous convictions of any kind. Majeed told the court that his client had moved to the UK with his wife from India and still takes care of the financial needs of his elderly parents back there. The court fined Singh 250 pounds, ordered him to pay 85 pound costs, a 100 pound victim surcharge and disqualified him from driving for 22 months, according to Derbyshire Live. The report added that the ban will be reduced by 25 per cent on the successful completion of a drink-drive awareness course, which Singh has agreed to undergo. Melbourne, Jan 18 : World No 1 Iga Swiatek of Poland has soared into the third round of the Australian Open, overcoming a pair of late-set stumbles here at Rod Laver Arena to dismiss Colombian Camila Osorio. Swiatek closed out a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Osorio in 84 minutes to win her 12th straight second-round match at a major. The Pole star hasn't lost before the third round of a major since the 2019 US Open. Swiatek has now won 53 of her first 65 main-draw Grand Slam singles matches. In the Open Era, only six players had more such wins after their first 65 matches in majors: Margaret Court (61), Monica Seles (60), Chris Evert (57), Martina Hingis (56), Billie Jean King (56) and Tracy Austin (54). Osorio's abilities to hyperextend rallies and change the direction of the ball down the line at a moment's notice allowed her to hang with the World No.1 in a number of close games. She even broke Swiatek three times, including when the Pole served for the match at 6-2, 5-1. But in the end, the Swiatek power game which has led her to the top of the rankings was the determining factor. She used her forehand to great effect, with 13 rally winners from that side. "It was really intense, and pretty physical. I think it was much tougher than what the score says. I know Osorio is gonna fight till the end and she's not going to give anything for free," Swiatek said in a press conference. "She made some good decisions as well. I'm pretty happy that I was solid, and that's the most important thing for me." On the other hand, the No.3 seed Jessica Pegula edged Aliaksandra Sasnovich 6-2, 7-6(5) here at Rod Laver Arena to reach the last-32 for the ninth time in the last 10 majors. This was the second time in five months that the American beat Sasnovich at a Grand Slam. Having just played her at the last hard-court Grand Slam (2022 US Open), Pegula said she was ready for the challenge that World No.38 Sasnovich posed, a player who just missed out on the Top 32 seeds. "At the Open, I won 4 and 4, but I definitely felt like it easily could've been the other way," Pegula was quoted by WTA. "So, I was definitely ready for her to get streaky, to get hot, and I'm just glad that I was able to close it out in two (sets). Even though it seemed like I was cruising, I had a lot of tough services games, a lot of long return games as well. It toughens you up." Kolkata, Jan 18 : A special three-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court constituted to hear the suo motu contempt of court rule by Justice Rajasekhar Mantha on the matter of ruckus in front of his court on January 9 and January 10 by a section of the lawyers, has received a separate complaint holding a total of 12 persons responsible for the fiasco. The complaint filed by Tapas Maiti, an advocate by profession, has named a total of 12 persons in his complaint, including 11 lawyers and Trinamool Congress's state general secretary and the party spokesman in West Bengal Kunal Ghosh. However, the three-judge bench of Justices T.S. Sivagnanam, Indra Prasanna Mukerji and Chittaranjan Dash refused to act immediately on the complaint. The bench observed that it would not immediately issue any contempt of rule against the persons named in the complaint letter. "Everything is subject to proof. We do not want to get the name of any innocent person not involved in the ruckus be dragged in the matter," Justice Mukherjee observed. On Tuesday, the three-judge bench had sought the CCTV footage of the ruckus and said that on the basis of that the offending lawyers would be identified and sued. The short reaction from Ghosh was that the law will take its own course and anyone has the liberty to name anyone in the matter. The bench also ruled that till the time the hearing in the matter is completed there should be no public meeting or rally or fresh postering in the matter. To recall, on December 15 last year, Kunal Ghosh launched a scathing attack against Justice Mantha after the latter gave protection to the Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari against FIRs. Ghosh also alleged that because of the protection provided by Justice Mantha, the leader of the opposition has become reckless. And legal sections of the state started linking Ghosh's salvos on that day, the boycott of Justice Mantha's bench on Monday morning and the recovery of posters at his residence. IANS src/shb/ New Delhi, Jan 18 : Homegrown online vehicle repair platform GoMechanic, backed by Sequoia India, has laid off 70 per cent of its workforce as the startup struggles to raise funds amid serious concerns of accounting troubles, the media reported. The company has asked the remaining staff to work without pay for three months, reports TechCrunch, citing sources. For over a year, GoMechanic has been struggling to raise funds, despite advanced-stage discussions with several investors. Moreover, the startup was in talks to raise a round of funding via Tiger Global (an American investment firm) at a valuation of over $1 billion early last year, according to the report. However, the talks did not result in a deal after a discrepancy was discovered during the due diligence process, the report mentioned. Later, the startup worked with a number of investors, including Malaysia's Khazanah (a wealth fund firm), to raise a large round of funding. GoMechanic was founded in 2016 by Amit Bhasin, Kushal Karwa, Nitin Rana, and Rishabh Karwa that connects car owners with repair service providers in their area, also it sells original spare parts and accessories for automobiles on its website. Earlier this week, Homegrown social media company ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd) laid off 20 per cent of its workforce due to uncertain market conditions. Dunzo, a quick-grocery delivery provider, also laid off 3 per cent of its workforce amid cost-cutting measures. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Two students pursuing their PhD at the IIT here were hit by a car outside the institute's gate number 1, leading to the death of one, a police official said on Wednesday. Police has identified the victim as Ashraf Nawaz Khan (30), while the injured was named as Ankur Shukla (29). The official said that around 11.15 p.m. on Tuesday night, an accident took place near gate number 1, IIT Delhi in which two persons, Ashraf and Ankur were hit by a car while they were crossing the road. "Both the victims were pursuing their PhD from IIT Delhi. During treatment Ashraf succumbed to his injuries at Safdarjung Hospital while Ankur is undergoing treatment at Max Hospital Saket. He has a fracture on his leg," said the officials. "Both of them went to a restaurant in SDA market opposite IIT Delhi and were crossing the road after dinner. One car which was coming from the Nehru Place side hit both of them while crossing the road," said the official. The car was found abandoned at some distance in an accidental condition. "The driver of the car has been identified and further investigation is going on," said the official. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The Centre on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to consider referring the issue of control of services in the national capital to a larger bench against the backdrop of the 2018 judgment in the GNCTD vs Union of India case. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, submitted before a five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, "I have filed an application for reference". The Chief Justice replied, "We did not hear arguments on reference. It was never argued, now we are in rejoinder...". Mehta pressed that reference is needed and added that they do not want to be remembered in history for "handling over capital to complete anarchy". The bench - also comprising justices M.R Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli, and P.S. Narasimha - said that reference to a larger bench has to be argued at the outset and pointed out that hearing in the case is nearing end. Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, representing the Delhi government, opposed Mehta's submissions. Mehta argued that when he filed the application seeking reference to the larger bench Delhi government opposed and the court told him that it can be argued during submissions. "Reference is essentially on the ground that contours of federalism between Union and Union Territory require relook. It is covered in my arguments", said Mehta. Chief Justice Chandrachud said, "We would have looked at the matter differently, reference was never argued..". Mehta requested the bench to allow him to submit the application. The bench replied, "we will consider...". However, the Chief Justice told Mehta that the aspect of reference was not covered in his arguments. Mehta said all points were covered without using the word "reference". Opposing Mehta's arguments, Singhvi submitted that this matter was listed for hearing at least 10 times, first it went to a three-judge bench, and reference was not mentioned. He added that when the matter was listed for hearing recently, then reference was raised. Singhvi said it is an "ambush" argument and not a whisper was made regarding reference during long arguments. Mehta said it is not a delaying tactic but adjudication of a very important issue relating to the national capital. The top court allowed Mehta to file submissions on reference to the larger bench in the Centre-Delhi dispute over control on 'services'. The top court is hearing a case between the Delhi government and Centre in connection with the administrative control over transfers and postings of civil servants. In July 2018, a constitution bench had held that the executive power of the Union government in respect of NCT of Delhi is confined to land, police and public order under subsection 3 of Article 239AA. Amaravati, Jan 18 : Another tragedy hit the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati district on Wednesday after a woman committed suicide a day after her husband Sub-Inspector of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) shot himself dead. Priya Singh (27), who had rushed to Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota on Tuesday from Uttar Pradesh, hanged herself in Narmada Guest House early Wednesday. This was the third suicide at the Indian spaceport in as many days. According to police, Priya Singh along with his brother and three children had reached SHAR on Tuesday after they were informed about the suicide by her husband Vikas Singh. Police had recorded the statement of Priya Singh and she along with family members stayed in the guest house. On Wednesday morning, she hanged herself to the fan in a room at the guest house. Her body was shifted to Sullurupeta hospital for autopsy. Vikas Singh's body was also preserved at the same hospital after autopsy and it was to be handed over to the family members on Wednesday. Police believe that Priya Singh took the extreme step due to the shock of her husband's death. Sub-inspector Vikas Singh shot himself in the head with his pistol on Monday night. The 30-year-old was on duty at the gate one of SHAR. The reason for the extreme step is not known. Police said they registered a case and took up the investigation. The sub-inspector's suicide came a day after a constable ended his life. Chintamani (29) hanged himself on Sunday night while discharging his duty on Sunday evening at PCMC Radar-1 area. Hailing from Chhattisgarh, he had returned to the duty on January 10 after a month-long leave. Preliminary investigation by the police revealed that the constable ended his life due to some family problem. Chennai, Jan 18 : Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi, who is on a confrontationist path with the state government, on Wednesday left for a two-day Delhi visit. Governor Ravi's remark that the state is addressed as 'Thamizhagam' instead of Tamil Nadu has triggered a controversy with the ruling DMK and its allies even burning the Governor in effigy. Sources told IANS that the Governor would be meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah and brief him on the recent happenings in the state Assembly, including his walkout from the House. Notably, during the customary address of the Governor, he had deviated from the written text and omitted certain portions eulogizing the DMK stalwarts, including C.N. Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi as well as the Dravidian ideologue, Periyar and the framer of the Indian constitution Dr B.R. Ambedkar. A day after, on January 13, a group of DMK parliamentarians led by T.R. Baalu met President Droupadi Murmu and submitted a petition stating that the Governor had been violating the constitution. A memorandum was also submitted to the president on behalf of the Chief Minister M.K. Stalin. Ever since R.N. Ravi assumed office as the Tamil Nadu Governor of, there have been regular confrontations with the state government. The DMK and its allies have been spreading stories that the Governor was trying to force the central government's dictum on the Tamil Nadu government which was uncalled for in a federal system of governance. KCR holds breakfast meeting with CMs of three states, other leaders. Image Source: IANS News KCR holds breakfast meeting with CMs of three states, other leaders. Image Source: IANS News KCR holds breakfast meeting with CMs of three states, other leaders. Image Source: IANS News KCR holds breakfast meeting with CMs of three states, other leaders. Image Source: IANS News Hyderabad, Jan 18 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday had breakfast meeting with chief ministers of three states and leaders of various political parties who will be attending Bharat Rashtra Samithi's inaugural meeting at Khammam later in the day. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Uttar Pradesh's former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, CPI national general secretary D.A Raja and other leaders attended the breakfast meeting at the chief minister's official residence Pragati Bhavan. The leaders had reached Hyderabad on Tuesday night to attend the BRS public meeting. Chief Minister KCR welcomed the guests when they reached his official residence and presented them bouquets and shawls. The BRS chief is understood to have discussed national politics with his counterparts from three states and other leaders. Chief Minister KCR, along with other leaders, later left for Yadgirigutta to offer special puja at Yadagiri Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple. Telangana ministers Vemula Prashanth Reddy, Talasani Srinivas Yadav, MP Joginapally Santosh Kumar and MLC Kavitha also accompanied them. After landing at Yadagirigutta, all the leaders drove to the Presidential Suite at the renovated temple. They later visited the temple where priests accorded them traditional welcome. The trial in which Vice President, Constantino Chiwenga's estranged wife Marry Mubaiwa is accused of attempting to kill the former army general failed to start Tuesday after prosecutors failed to bring in witnesses. Mubaiwa's trial was due to kickoff before Harare regional magistrate Feresi Chakanyuka. She postponed the hearing to January 20. This was despite the pleas of Mubaiwa's lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa who indicated that she will not be available until March 13. " Your worship I anticipate that this case will take up a week and the only free week I have is from the 13th of March, that is, outside High Court cases and other travel arrangements" said Mtetwa while the magistrate walked away without listening to her pleas. Meanwhile, Mtetwa challenged the State's claim over the issue of witnesses claiming this was a delaying tactic. "There is no good reason as is required by the law before you will justify the postponement of the matter. The prosecution remains insensitive to my client's plight. "Instead of a postponement can she be removed on remand as is and when the prosecution is ready will summon her," said the lawyer. However the magistrate dismissed her application ruling that failure to summon a witness was not a basis to challenge further remand. Prosecutors accuse Mubaiwa of trying to kill Chiwenga back in 2019 when he was hospitalised and critically ill in Pretoria, South Africa. She denies the charges. Rajkot, Jan 18 : The parents of a class 8 student who passed away due to a severe cardiac arrest have blamed the school management for her death, saying the sweaters prescribed by the authorities amid the cold wave were not enough to protect the victim. In a letter address to the Rajkot District Primary Education officer (DPEO), principal of the Shree Amritlal Virchand Jasani Vidyamandir school said: "On Tuesday morning, English medium class VIII student Riya Soni complained of uneasiness at 7.23 a.m.. Her parents were called, who took her to hospital, where the doctor declared her brought dead." According to the principal Smitaben, when the victim fell, her classmates and teachers rubbed her arms and legs in an effort to help her recover. On the other hand, Riya's parents have alleged that their daughter was healthy and not suffering from any disease. They further said that had the school changed their timings as per DPEO's instruction, from 7.30 a.m. to 8.30 a.m., she would not have died, adding that the sweaters prescribed by the management was not enough to protect children in the cold wave. It is too early to say that Riya died because of the cold wave, DPEO B.S. Kaila told IANS, adding that the dctor's primary diagnosis is that she died because of a severe cardiac arrest. Her blood samples have been sent to the FSL The FSL will also carry out a vicera test and only after that the real reason behind death can be confirmed, he added. As per school safety rules, school managements are supposed to take calls about imings as per requirement be it cold wave, heavy rains, or heat wave, the officer said. He added that education inspectors and staff will increase visits to schools to check on winter clothing of students. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Amid heavy ruckus on the third day of the ongoing Winter Session of the Delhi Assembly, Aam Adami Party (AAP) MLA Mohinder Goyal on Wednesday waved a bundle of currency notes alleging corruption in recruitment for nursing at the Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital. Addressing the House on the issue of alleged corruption, the MLA from Rithala said that a tender had been floated for recruitment for many posts including nursing in Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital. He then alleged that contractors were taking money for recruitment to these posts. Waving the note bundle, the MLA said that the contractors had attempted to strike a deal with him as well. Goyal said that the government has a clause for recruitment to various posts in the hospital that 80 per cent of the old employees have to be retained, but this does not happen. "There is corruption on a large scale in the recruitment. Even after getting the job, the employees do not get the full amount of salary. The contractors take a lot of money from the employees as share. The employees sat on strike in the hospital over the issues and they were assaulted," he alleged. "The contractors collect the money from staffs. I complained to the DCP, CS and L-G. Despite the complaint, no action has been taken so far. I am risking my life to unearth the corruption. They are musclemen and there is a threat of life for my family from them. The matter must be probed." Lucknow, Jan 18 : A 23-year-old youth has been detained for public display of affection on a two-wheeler in Hazratganj area in the Uttar Pradesh capital. The youth has been identified as Vicky and the girl with him is a minor. A video of the young couple indulging in PDA on the two-wheeler had gone viral on the social media. The Hazratganj police said that a case under Section 294, 279 had been registered in the matter. The police spokesman said that the scooty has been seized. "We are taking necessary action in the matter," the spokesman said. Hyderabad, Jan 18 : Tollywood actors N. Balakrishna, Junior NTR, Kalyan Ram and other family members of former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao paid rich tributes on his 27th death anniversary on Wednesday. NTR's sons Balakrishna, N. Ramakrishna, daughter N. Bhuvaneswari, grandsons Junior NTR, Kalyan Ram, Suhasini and other family members paid floral tributes at NTR Ghat on the banks of Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad. Talking to media persons on the occasion, Balakrishna said he considers his good fortune to be born as son of NTR. He described the late leader as a great personality who would always be remembered by the people. He termed Telugu Desam Party (TDP) as an asset given by NTR to the coming generations. "TDP is not merely a political party. It is an institution. No other party has workers like the TDP," he said. Balakrishna recalled the contributions of NTR for economic empowerment of women and welfare of backward and weaker sections of society. The actor, who is a member of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, said everyone should take NTR as an inspiration. He called on the TDP cadres to work hard to regain the glory for TDP. Balakrishna said NTR worked tirelessly to serve the poor and the needy. "He strived for self-respect of Telugus and brought glory for them all over the world," he said. Suhasini demanded that the government of India should confer Bharat Ratna on the late leader in recognition of his outstanding contributions both in the fields of cinema and public life. NTR, a popular Telugu actor, had launched TDP in 1982 on the slogan of Telugu self-respect and created a record of sorts by coming to power within nine months, ending the single party rule of Congress in the undivided Andhra Pradesh. He died on January 18, 1996, a few months after his son-in-law N. Chandrababu Naidu led a revolt against him and became the chief minister. Los Angeles, Jan 18 : Indian director S.S. Rajamouli is open to experimentation and said it is a dream of every filmmaker to make a film in Hollywood. Last Monday, his crossover sensation 'RRR' turned Los Angeles's colossal TCL Chinese IMAX into a dance party, with hundreds of audience members rushing the screen. On Tuesday, Rajamouli's epic musical drama won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, triumphing over such nobodies as Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Lady Gaga. Later in the week, directors like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron fawned over the filmmaker casually known as 'SSR', praising him in public. "I don't have words to explain the kind of exhilaration that we are having," Rajamouli, 49, told EW's Awardist podcast. "It's why I make films - to extract that kind of joy, to give that kind of joy to an audience." In a wide-ranging conversation, the director touched on his own favourite films, how he cuts an action sequence, and his preference for screenwriting over other phases of production. Will he come to America to make a movie? "I think it is the dream of every filmmaker across the world to make a film in Hollywood," he said. "I am no different. I'm open to experimentation." But, he also admits, the decision is causing him a "bit of confusion." At home, Rajamouli enjoys final cut and an unusual amount of creative power: "Back in India, I am the dictator. No one tells me how to make a film." Modestly, he speculates that a Hollywood project might be an opportunity for a co-credit. "Very probably, my first step will be collaborating with someone," he said. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed New Delhi, Jan 18 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday told BharatPe's former Managing Director Ashneer Grover to file an undertaking in a week's time in connection with a suit filed by the fintech company's co-founder Bhavik Koladiya along with an interim application, restraining Grover from creating any third party rights in respect of the shares. To that, Grover informed that subject to further directions from the court, he will not make any third party interest in the 16,110 shares that Koladiya transferred to him and in any rights that accrue to him as a consequence thereof. A single-judge bench of Justice Prateek Jalan ordered that Grover will be bound by his statement and directed him to file the undertaking. The court also served summonses on Grover and the fintech company, giving the former four weeks to respond to the application for an ad interim injunction and two weeks for a rejoinder to the same. The bench noted: "D1 (Grover) is bound to the aforesaid statement and is directed to file an undertaking to this effect within one week from today. Reply to application in four weeks, rejoinder in two weeks thereafter." The court listed the matter for hearing on March 16. When Grover's advocate requested to view a photocopy of a letter agreement signed by Koladiya and the defendants, Koladiya's Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi responded that Grover's attorney could view the document after coordinating with him. Koladiya should be given his shares back, according to Rohtagi, since the title in the same has not been passed to Grover. According to him, Koladiya was in the category of an unpaid seller under the Sale of Goods Act. Rohtagi said: "Property in the goods title did not pass to him (Grover). Even in 2021, this man on WhatsApp chat showed that shares are still mine. I am an unpaid seller. When title has not passed, you're entitled to get your goods back. "What has happened is, a transaction without consideration. Indication is clear, I'll give with one hand and take from the other. This is simultaneous. I've done whatever. My client was gullible. There are gullible people, what can I say?" Citing two agreements, Grover's advocate said that Koladiya had added a part of the deal he signed with him to the other agreement he signed with other investors. He argued: "With me the consideration was supposed to be different, 88 lakhs." After hearing the arguments, the benchA said it is not possible to legally render a final finding now, allegations of fraud will have to be proven at trial. Furthermore, Rohatgi refuted the Grover advocate's claim that as part of the Rs 88 lakh transaction in question, Grover's wife had transferred a sum of Rs 8 crore to Koladiya's wife. "There can't be a lie on a lie on a lie," Rohatgi said. Koladiya in 2017 along with another co-founder Shashvat Nakrani, found the fintech company. In 2018, Grover joined the company as the third co-founder. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Marching contingent of IAF for the Republic Day parade will be led by a woman officer of the Indian Air Force, Sqn Ldr Sindhu Reddy. Comprising four officers and 144 air warriors marching in a box formation, the contingent will be led by Sqn Ldr Reddy, along with three supernumerary officers -- Flt Lt Ayush Agarwal, Flt Lt Tanuj Mailk and Flt Lt Pradhan Nikhil. According to the Indian Air Force on Wednesday, the fly-past will comprise 45 IAF aircraft, including 9 Rafal Jets and four helicopters from the IA. The IL 38 Jet of the Indian Air Force will take part for the last time in the parade. The fly past would comprise formations of Dhwaj, Rudra, Baaz, Tiranga Garuda Bheem Amrit Thriul and Vijay. The IAF had won the Best Marching Contingent trophy in the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2020. The award of the Best Marching Contingent in the popular choice category in 2022 was also won by it. The marching tunes for the contingent will be played by the Air Force Band contingent consisting of 72 musicians and three drum majors. The band would be led by Warrant Ashok Kumar who has the distinction of participating in the RD Parade Airforce band contingent for the past 26 Years, and of leading the contingent for the past 16 years. As per the IAF, the famous martial tune, 'Sound Barrier' composed by MWO J.A. George V.S.M. and Ladakoo composed by Flt Lt L.S. Rupachandra would be played on 'Quick March' while the contingent marches past the President. The Band would also play other martial tunes like Astronaut, Vijay Bharat, Space Flight, Vayu Shakti, Benihal, Saare Jahaan Se Accha, Northern Border, Tiger Hill and Nidar Yodha. The theme of the IAF Tableau is 'Indian Air Force Power, Beyond Boundaries'. A Rotating Globe placed on the Tableau highlights the IAF's expanded reach whereby it has been able to render humanitarian aid across borders, as also flying exercises conducted with Air Forces of Friendly Foreign Countries. 'Netra' is an Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft that carries indigenous payloads. Having enmeshed linkages with the GSAT-7A, the IAF's IACCS (as depicted by the operator on the console) and other flying platforms depicts truly how well the IAF has embraced NCW across multiple domains. The LCA Tejas MK-II is a single engine canard Delta wing, Multi role Combat Aircraft designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency. The Fighter which will have a more powerful engine & more potent sensors is being designed and developed to replace fighter aircraft of the IAF. LCH Prachand recently inducted into the IAF is capable of high altitude operations and is armed with Anti-Tank Guided Missiles which can be carried along with a 20 mm turret gun, air-to-air missiles and 70 mm rockets. Airbus C-295 aircraft will be a replacement of the Avro aircraft and will bolster the logistics capability of the IAF. All aircraft are planned to be fitted with indigenous electronic warfare suites. The Manufacturing facility in India would not only cater for IAF's requirement but would also make India a net defence exporter. The IAF has also transcended traditional boundaries by inducting women who undertake all tasks equally with their male counterparts. In doing so, the IAF has become the lead Service in promoting Naari Shakti in its true spirit. The Special Forces (Garuds) and their specialist equipment have added strength to the IAF's combat capability. Their performance proved crucial in the safe recovery of Indians from a disturbed country in the recent past, the IAF said. After the Republic Day parade, the Beating the Retreat ceremony will be held at Vijay Chowk 29 January 29. As many as 120 musicians of the IAF will participate in the event. The Conductor for the ceremony will be the IAF's Director of Music, Flt Lt L.S. Rupachandra. Lucknow, Jan 18 : Additional CCTV cameras have been installed in 30 jails of Uttar Pradesh where security is being upgraded. DG, prisons, Anand Kumar said that it is being done following directives of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to monitor activities of notorious criminals and mafia dons languishing in jails. All the prisons in the state will have upgraded security arrangements by February, he added. Last year, the Jail department had sent a proposal to the government to release a budget of Rs 9.76 crore for the upgradation of prisons' security. Kumar said that all the 30 jails in the state would have 933 CCTV cameras by February. In all, 670 new CCTVs have been installed and the defective ones are being replaced. "The highest number of 46 cameras have been installed in Agra District Jail. All these cameras are directly connected to the prison headquarters so that the prisons can be monitored 24 hours through a video wall at the command centre operating in the prison headquarters," the DG said. Cameras are also being replaced in the Banda jail where mafia don Mukhtar Ansari is lodged. CCTV cameras have been installed in central prisons in Agra, Bareilly, Fatehgarh, Naini and Varanasi. District jails in Agra, Firozabad, Aligarh, Sultanpur, Kanpur, Kanpur Dehat, Bulandshahr, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, Varanasi, Etawah, Ghazipur, Mirzapur, Faizabad, Barabanki, Kannauj, Azamgarh, Sitapur, Chitrakoot, Gorakhpur and Moradabad have got additional CCTV cameras. New CCTV cameras have been installed in Unnao, Banda and Pratapgarh, while defective ones are being replaced. The Chief Minister had recently sanctioned Rs 6 lakhs for replacing defective CCTV cameras and increasing the number of cameras in 20 more jails in the state. Anand Kumar said that the bidding process for the purchase of additional cameras has been started from the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal which will be completed by April. New Delhi, Jan 18 : IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath has cautioned that India needs to work on labour markets and land, even as she hailed the country for doing better than many global economies. In an interview on the sidelines of the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting at Davos on Wednesday, Gopinath cautioned against growing fragmentation globally, saying it hurt the global growth rate. The Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war has made countries much more concerned about national security and economic security, which is causing them to undertake policies that could lead to greater fragmentation, she was quoted as saying in the interview. India though, she said, has been receiving lots of positive sentiments but at the same time added that greater reforms are needed for foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector. A lot of businesses and companies are looking towards India as an investment destination as they try to diversify away from countries including China, Gopinath further said. Commenting on India's growth rate, the top IMF official said that in the current fiscal, it is 6.8 per cent while it would be 6.1 per cent for the next financial year. Kathmandu, Jan 18 : A team of experts from the France-based ATR aerospace company has launched a probe to find out the reasons behind the plane crash in Nepal's Pokahara. A team of experts from France has reached the crash site and started an initial probe, the District Administration Office, Kaski said. Suresh Adhikari, Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, said: "All stakeholders within the country and abroad have shown keen interest after the plane crash." There are a total of 11 foreign experts -- four from the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), an agency of the French government, responsible for investigating aviation accidents and incidents. Similarly, six are from the aircraft manufacturer ATR, a Franco-Italian joint venture headquartered in Blagnac, France, and one expert from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), an agency of the European Union (EU) responsible for civil aviation safety. They travelled to Pokhara on Tuesday evening and were accompanied by another 11-member Nepali team -- five of whom were from the investigation commission formed by the Nepal government. "The experts will support Nepal's investigation team," said Buddhi Sagar Lamichhane, joint secretary at the Civil Aviation Ministry. According to him, the commission has received both the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR). "We will examine the CVR in Kathmandu, while the FDR will be sent abroad as we don't have the facility to examine the recording here," according to Lamichhane. "We have not yet decided to which country we should send FDR." "The foreign experts will make safety recommendations based on what is learned from those investigations," said Lamichhane. Lamichhane is the member secretary of the government-led probe committee. The expert team will observe the scene and discuss with the officials linked with the flights, and find out the cause of the accident. This is the first time that an ATR plane has crashed in Nepal. After the plane crash, the government has formed a five-member accident investigation commission under the coordination of former secretary Nagendra Ghimire. The voice recorder would be analysed locally, but the flight data recorder would be sent to France, said Jagannath Niraula, spokesperson for Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority. So far, 71 bodies have been recovered from the crash site. One remains missing. The plane plummeted into a cliff of the famous Seti River when it was about to land at Pokhara International Airport. Two experienced pilots were flying the plane and there was hardly any weather and technical issues, according to the aviation experts. Experts in Kathmandu have said the accident was a terrible disaster because the plane plunged in clear weather for no apparent reason. Among the passengers were three infants, three children and 62 adults. According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the passengers included 53 Nepalis, five Indians, four Russians, one Irish, one Australian, one Argentinian, two Koreans and one French. The whereabouts of one missing passenger is not known while the bodies of 22 people who died in the plane crash have been handed over to their family and relatives, according to the District Administration Office, Kaski. The bodies of 48 people have brought to Kathmandu for post-mortem whose dead bodies are hard to identify and need the DNA test. As the bodies of some of them could not be identified, it is said that they will be handed over to the families and relatives of the deceased after identification on the basis of DNA. Zimbabwe international midfielder Marvelous Nakamba could be edging closer to a return in the Aston Villa starting lineup after recently returning to the match day squad during the team's 2-1 victory against Leeds United at Villa Park last Friday. The recall to the match-day squad is a significant positive step for Nakamba having been confined to the terraces for two months. The 28-year-old defensive midfielder is yet to make an appearance in the 2022/23 English Premiership as he was an unused substitute during Villa's latest win. It was the ninth time this season out of the 19 league games this season that Nakamba has been an unused substitute which has led to reports that he could be on his way out at the Birmingham-based club. Nakamba has not made an appearance for Aston Villa since May 5 when he came off the bench in a 3-2 loss to Manchester City on the final day of the 2021/22 season Premier League season. Then, Nakamba replaced Brazilian Phillipe Coutinho in the 72nd minute with Aston Villa leading 2-0; before Manchester City went on to win the tie 3-2 after scoring all their goals inside five minutes. Many pundits have called for Nakamba to leave Villa Park to breathe new life in his career but it appears that the midfielder is unlikely to move during the January transfer window period. In the event that he is not given a new contract at Villa as is largely expected, Nakamba could leave the club as a free agent when his contract lapses in June 2024. Last week, Birmingham Mail ran an online poll titled "keep or sell" with fans voting for Coutinho, Nakamba and Morgan Sanson to go. Coutinho polled 44, 2% of the votes, with Sanson second on 38% while Nakamba got 29, 3%. Nakamba has previously been linked with moves to Newcastle, Everton and Crystal Palace. Chennai, Jan 18 : Tamil Nadu Governor R. N. Ravi on Wednesday said that he had used the word 'Thamizhagam' in a historical and cultural context, and an interpretation or inference that it was a suggestion to change the name of the state was "erroneous and far-fetched". The Tamil Nadu Governor is in the midst of a controversy after he referred to Tamil Nadu as 'Tamizhagam' post which the ruling DMK and its allies burnt his effigy in many areas of the state. The Governor in a statement said that in an event at Rajbhavan on January 4, to felicitate the volunteers of the Kashi -Tamil sangamam, he had used the word 'Thamizhagam'. He said that the Kashi- Tamil sangamam was a month-long programme that celebrated the age-old cultural connect of the Tamil people with Kashi and that there was no 'Tamil Nadu' during those times. He said that without understanding the basis of his speech, arguments have surfaced that the Governor was against the word 'Tamil Nadu' and hence, the clarification from his part. Governor R.N. Ravi is meeting Union Home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi today and will be briefing him on the recent controversies. Jaipur, Jan 18 : Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said that bars and clubs across the state will have to shut before midnight. He made the remark while addressing the media on the last day of the two-day Chintan Shivir on Tuesday. The Chief Minister expressed concern that clubs and bars have opened in every street these days. "Next we will think about how to regulate them, but now stop from 11.30 p.m. to 12 noon. They should close their shops before 12 o'clock in the night so that people can stay at home comfortably," he said. Regarding the last budget of this term, Gehlot said: "The session is starting on January 23. The budget of the Rajasthan government will be presented on February 8. This time the focus will be on the youth." He also said that officers and employees who are stalling public development work will be dismissed. "Strict action will be taken against the officers who deliberately obstruct public schemes. The administration had a target of giving 10 lakh land pattas however we saw a few officers of the municipalities were not cooperating in many places. We have decided that if someone is doing this intentionally, then such people should be dismissed from government service," he added. Gehlot further demanded the Central Government to implement the Right to Social Security. His cabinet had passed a resolution in this regard and this proposal will be sent to the central government. Gehlot said that the implementation of the Social Security Act is the need of the hour. "Just as money is given every week to the elderly and needy in developed countries, in the same way now the Central Government should implement the Social Security Act in the entire country." During the Chintan Shivir, many ministers raised the issue of farmers not getting electricity on time and said that it would cause loss in the election year. Gehlot has asked to take all possible steps to ensure that the farmers get sufficient electricity. Instructions have been given to replace the burnt transformer immediately. Lucknow, Jan 18 : Theatre lovers in Lucknow, who are normally starved for activity on stage, can now look forward to a bonanza next month. A month-long comedy play festival, "30 Days, 30 Plays" , will unfold from February 3 in Lucknow. The organisers of the comedy festival are also set to bid for the Guinness World Records. All the plays, directed by theatre veteran Sangam Bahuguna will be staged at UP Sangeet Natak Academy. The actor-director has played the role of antagonist in film 'Youngistan' and has featured in projects like 'Madam Chief Minister' and 'Dosti Zindabad'. Bahuguna, who founded Manchkriti Samiti in 1990, said, "They are all original Hindi plays penned by stalwarts from the theatre industry. The genre we opted for is comedy to bring some cheers around. The festival will open with legendary writer Bharatendu Harishchandra's play Andher Nagri. All the stories selected for the fest are by ace writers including K P Saxena, Urmil Kumar Thapliyal, Daya Prakash Sinha, Ramesh Mehta and Mani Madhukar." The team has been preparing for the event since May last year. "I am directing all the plays but to make the process a bit smooth, I have appointed team leaders who are assisting me with direction and practice sessions. We have a good support from almost everyone from Lucknow's theatre fraternity and are also contributing in one form or other be it for acting or in other departments," he said. Veteran theatre personality Lalit Kumar Pokhariyal, who is acting in two of the plays, says, "I am acting in popular plays Behrupiye and Dularibai. The festival is surely one of its kind and will be remembered for a long time." Pokhariyal has done films like 'Kaagaz', 'Raat Akeli Hai', 'Wah Taj' and 'Bamfaad'. With the festival, the team is looking forward to enter into record books. "We have already got acknowledgement from India Book of Records and have also applied to Guinness World Records for 30 plays by the same director in a row." The festival will be inaugurated by Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel. Patna, Jan 18 : The JD(U) on Wednesday claimed that there is no decision to make Tejashwi Bihar Chief Minister in the near feature. Interacting with mediapersons in Ranchi, Bihar minister and JD(U) leader Ashok Chaudhary said: "Nitish Kumar has become chief minister because of his own capacity and not because of the mercy of any other party or leader." Chaudhary, who is also Construction Minister of the state, said: "Nitish Kumar has the ability to become chief minister of state whether in the NDA or the Mahagathbandhan governments." He trumpeted the increased budget allocations compared to pre-2005 state budget of the Lalu government. When asked whether the 2025 assembly election will be contested under the leadership of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Chaudhary said: "After few hours I am returning to Patna and I am not sure whether I would reach there or not, so how can we say anything about 2025." Nitish Kumar had recently announced that the 2025 assembly election will be contested under the leadership of Tejashwi Yadav. However, the RJD leaders are not satisfied with it and are demanding that Nitish Kumar should step down to make way for Tejashwi Yadav. The RJD's recent attacks on the Nitish Kumar government over its minister's controversial statement on Ramcharitmanas has given an edge to the BJP, the lone opposition party in the state. Sources said that it is RJD's strategy to "pressurise" Nitish Kumar to step down as the chief minister. Mumbai, Jan 18 : Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who plays a spy in the upcoming release 'Pathaan', may have been idolised as the king of romance by his countless fans across the globe, but the actor personally loves the action genre and always wanted to be an action hero. In a video released by the producers, Yash Raj Films, SRK said: "I came to the film industry 32 years ago to be an action hero but I missed the boat because they made me a romantic hero instead. I've only wanted to be an action hero. I mean I love DDLJ and I love Rahul and Raj and all these good sweet boys but I always thought I was an action hero, so for me it's my dream come true." The 'King', as he is known, is returning to the silver screen after a wait of four long years, and his fans are certainly waiting with bated breath to watch him in action on screen. Talking about his character in 'Pathaan', the superstar shared: "Pathaan is an easy guy, doing a lot of tough things and I think he's naughty, he's tough but doesn't wear it on his sleeve. He's trusting. He's honest and I think he very single-mindedly thinks of India as his mother." For the film, he has teamed up yet again with Deepika Padukone, together they have doled out epic blockbusters like 'Om Shanti Om', 'Chennai Express' and 'Happy New Year'. Commenting on this reunion, Deepika and her impact in 'Pathaan', Shah Rukh said: "You need someone of the stature of Deepika to be able to pull off a song sequence like 'Besharam Rang' and then you know, to be able to do action, where she takes a guy and pulls him right over herself and beats him, she's tough enough to do that too. That kind of a combination could have only been achieved with someone like Deepika. It's a quite a layered character for an action film heroine so to say." 'Pathaan', which also stars John Abraham as the antagonist, is set to release on January 25, 2023 in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed Vadodara, Jan 18 : A woman constable has allegedly gone missing in Vadodara, officials said, adding that a search is underway to locate her. Deputy Superintendent of Police A.M. Patel told IANS: "A woman constable, Maniben Chaudhary's parents have informed the police that their daughter has not returned home and has been out of reach since Monday evening." On the same day, she took an eight-day leave and left the Dabhoi police station. Soon after, a search operation was launched to trace the missing 24-year-old constable, the officer said. According to police sources, the missing constable had an affair with a Muslim youth, and possibility of eloping with him has not been ruled out. The Muslim youth is married. The officer told IANS that police are also exploring and investigating this angle as well. Tunis, Jan 18 : Tunisia's tourism revenues grew by 110.4 per cent during the first 10 days of 2023, compared to the same period last year, said the Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts. "In the first 10 days of this year, the number of tourists visiting Tunisia is up 147.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2022," said a Ministry statement. For the whole year of 2022, tourist revenues increased by 83.3 per cent compared to those of 2021, and nearly 6.5 million foreign tourists visited Tunisia, recording an increase of 160 per cent compared to the number in 2021, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying. Tunisian tourism is an important sector of the economy, representing 14 per cent of the gross domestic product and offering nearly 400,000 direct and indirect job opportunities. The Tunisian tourism sector has experienced the worst crisis in the past decade, as it was hit by the political crisis, called the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, and the terrorist attacks at the Bardo Museum in the capital Tunis in March 2015 and at a beach resort in Sousse in June 2015. Since 2020, the crisis has been aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. New Delhi, Jan 18 : On justifying the eighth successive ban on the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the Centre told the Supreme Court that some members/activists of SIMI are working under the umbrella of frontal organisation or having links with a number of other terrorist groups like the Al Qaeda, LeT, JeM, ISIS, IM, and added any organisation that has the objective of establishing Islamic rule in India cannot be permitted to exist. The Ministry of Home Affairs, in an affidavit, said SIMI is against Indian nationalism and has the aim to replace it with the international Islamic order. "Their stated objectives are contrary to the laws of our country. Especially their object of establishing Islamic rule in India can, under no circumstances, be permitted to subsist. "It is also evident that they are continuing to receive funds within India and also through foreign funding despite SIMI having been declared a banned organisation in the year 2001 which ban is still continuing till date, except for a very brief period," it added. The Centre emphasised that SIMI continues to exist despite the continuous proscription since 2001. It further added that the 2019 order of five-year ban was necessitated as "there are over three dozen other front organisations through which SIMI is being continued. These front organizations help SIMI in various activities including collection of funds, circulation of literature, regrouping of cadres, etc". The Centre's response came on a plea filed by a former SIMI member challenging the 2019 ban order of a tribunal constituted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The Union Ministry refuted the legal proposition that SIMI should be presumed to have ceased to exist because of continuous ban orders since 2001. "Despite the ban on SIMI, its sympathisers have continued to carry on their unlawful activities under the garb of various cover organizations. They have indulged in radicalizing and brainwashing the minds of Muslim youth by jihadi propaganda and through provocative Taqreers. It is stated that the arrest of various SIMI activists has revealed their plans to eliminate targeted individuals and establish nexus with like-minded jihadi outfits in India and abroad," said the affidavit. "Despite being banned since September 27, 2001, except for a brief period in between, the SIMI activists are associating, meeting, conspiring, acquiring arms & ammunitions, and indulging in activities which are disruptive in character and capable of threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India. They are in regular touch with their associates and masters based in other countries." On the aspect of repeated orders banning an organisation under the UAPA, the MHA contended that a ban can be renewed if the grounds continue to exist. Ahmedabad, Jan 18 : A woman, along with her mother, has been booked on charges of illegally selling oocytes. The complainant husband has alleged that his wife has entered this business to meet her lavish expenses. Commercial trade of oocytes is not allowed in India. In his complaint with the Amraiwadi police station on Tuesday, Rashik Chavda stated that his wife Anita has sold her oocytes numerous times to a private hospital between January 2019 and June 2022. In this, she was helped by her mother Hansaben. According to the complaint, accused Anita had changed her date of birth and got a fake Aadhar card, so that she could sell her eggs. In one of the hospitals, the accused had forged her husband's signature as a witness, though the complainant was never present at the hospital, when she committed the offence. In his complaint, the man said that his wife and mother-in-law Hansaben had threatened to kill him, if he dared to approach the police. Police have lodged complaint against Anita and her mother Hansa for forgery and criminal intimidation. Chennai, Jan 18 : The absence of the US and India from the Asia Pacific (APAC) region's major trade agreements is likely to limit their ability to reap economic benefits while China will increase its role as the regional focus for trade, said Moody's Investors Service in a report. "While APAC trade has flourished under the auspices of a rules-based international order, the inception of major regional trade agreements and the absence of the US and India from these accords will increase China's centrality to regional trade," Moody's said. The global credit rating agency in a report said, the rising geopolitical tensions in APAC against the backdrop of increased competition between China and the US and its allies in the region will create "fault lines" that could carry long-lasting credit effects. Increased US-China polarization and military competition, exemplified by tensions in the Taiwan Strait and increased military expenditure by governments in the region, have reactivated new and existing security alliances that may drive shifts in international business strategies over time. These fault lines, which reflect the formation of new security and political pacts and the reconfiguration of Asia's established economic, trade and financial relationships, may put pressure on international companies, investors and financial institutions to reshape or build redundancy into their operations. These risks come on top of existing credit challenges such as weaker global growth and tightened liquidity, Moody's said. According to Moody's, alliances and initiatives will likely ebb and flow with changes in governments and considerations of economic relations with China, but the overall direction is clear: governments including the US, Australia, India, Japan and others in Europe seek to form a security and economic counterweight to China. It also said semiconductors and renewable energy technology will face increased government curbs on access to sensitive technologies. Closer scrutiny of foreign investments and data localization efforts could become prevalent, raising regulatory and operational costs for multinational companies. Geopolitical alignments are also leading to an increase in defence expenditure for governments across the region including China, India, Taiwan and most notably Japan, Moody's said. Through its participation in the Quad, India has more overtly shifted its security posture though it retains elements of its historically "nonaligned" foreign policy, which has preserved space for it to maintain positive relations with Russia despite the latter's war with Ukraine, the report notes. Central banks in APAC have also proposed financial and transaction data localization for foreign financial institutions operating within their borders to support bank supervision and macro-prudential surveillance. In India, for example, both the central bank and capital markets regulator have either finalised or proposed data localization requirements that affect banks, payment providers, foreign investors and asset managers. Further capital and banking flows will align with geopolitical norms, said Moody's. "The US dollar remains central to international trade, particularly in APAC, thus driving efforts to diversify into other currencies. Meanwhile, geopolitical considerations may alter strategies for globally active financial institutions with significant regional operations," the report notes. Millions of learners returning to school for the 2023 academic year are getting a nasty surprise: four to six hours of education lost because of rolling blackouts. Stage 4 to Stage 6 load shedding, now being implemented indefinitely, cuts electricity for eight to 12 hours sending the learners out to recess for hours. In most of the country's 24,900 schools, this means loitering on the school grounds as no-fee schools cannot afford electricity generators. With load shedding at school during the day and at home in the evenings, learners battle to do homework while others get up at 3am to bathe just before the 4am to 8am schedule. Nomusa Cembi, the spokesperson for SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), told Scrolla.Africa that schools that do not get natural sunlight are forced to stop functioning during load shedding. "It has become quite urgent that Eskom resolves the load shedding problem because not all schools can afford generators and backup power. "We are asking the government to pilot the introduction of solar power and other green energy solutions in schools." So far in 2023, Eskom has implemented rolling blackouts every day in South Africa, and there are over 350 days of load shedding projected for the year. This week, President Cyril Ramaphosa cancelled his scheduled trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos and assembled his National Energy Crisis Committee to find an immediate course of action to scale down load shedding. The committee said at least 14 power generators are expected to return to service this week, while load shedding was scaled down to Stage 4 on Tuesday and then back up to Stage 5 on Wednesday. At least 16,173 megawatts of generation capacity has been lost to breakdown in the national grid while a further 12 generators representing 5,804MW are on planned maintenance. Necom announced the following measures to end load shedding; Approve the introduction of new power plants quicker Finish incomplete plants and refurbish others More money resources to be injected in six of Eskom's 14 coal fired power stations to ensure reliability 2,000 megawatts of power to come into the national grid (1000MW from neighbouring countries and 1,000MW from private producers) Fast track construction of renewable energy plants expected to produce 2,800MW The first of 100 private power stations is due to be completed this year. Together these plants are expected to produce 9,000MW. Patna, Jan 18 : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday ducked the question about his absence in the rally called by K. Chandrashekher Rao (KCR), the Chief minister of Telangana. KCR has called for a mega rally in Telangana for the opposition unity against the BJP ahead of Lok Sabha election 2024 where big leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, leaders of the left parties are in attendance. "What would you say on it," Nitish Kumar said and smiled. Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, the finance minister of Bihar said: "If we are here then how would you say all opposition parties are going for the rally in Telangana." "I want to say that everyone is making efforts and if the efforts are honest, BJP will not come in power in 2024," Chaudhary said. Earlier, Nitish Kumar said that after the Samadhan Yatra, he will attend the budget session of Bihar Vidhan Sabha and go for the opposition unity in the country. Though KCR visited Bihar in September 2022 but he did not give clear cut answers on the opposition prime ministerial candidates. The leaders of JD(U) and RJD were projecting Nitish Kumar as a prime minister of opposition for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. KCR was asked several times then, but he had not given a clear cut answer on it. He said that the opposition leaders will sit together to decide the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition parties. Bengaluru, Jan 18 : The 'Digital India' theme has emerged as an incredible wealth-generation opportunity for retail investors, investment technology platform WealthDesk said on Wednesday. The 'WealthDesk Year-end Bulletin' underscored that the country has made significant progress in terms of digital friendliness since 2017. As per the bulletin, ITC Ltd., ICICI Bank, Coal India, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and State Bank of India were the most popular stocks among the 'WealthBasket Curators'. ITC Ltd had the highest WealthBasket count with the stock being included in 19 WealthBaskets. ICICI Bank followed suit with 12 WealthBasket counts. Coal India had a WealthBasket count of 11, while Sun Pharma and SBI were included in 10 WealthBaskets, respectively. Additionally, Alpha Bluechip emerged as the most trending WealthBasket of 2022 with an absolute return of 13.21 per cent and Gulaq Gear 6 was the best WealthBasket in terms of outperforming the index with 16.4 per cent absolute returns. "Securities Market regulator SEBI has created a great incubation ground to enable innovation in capital markets keeping the investor interest at the epicentre. This builds a lot of confidence and empowers many first-time Investors in Equities to start their investment journey," said Ujjwal Jain, Founder and CEO, WealthDesk. "Owing to a strong macroeconomic environment India will continue to grow at a better pace than many emerging markets. There will be opportunities in specific sectors from time to time, however, investors can look to invest with WealthBasket curators who align their stock bets accordingly," Jain added. The government aims to enhance the digital economy's contribution to 20 per cent of GDP by FY25. As the country inches closer to the $5 trillion mark for GDP by 2025-26, $1 trillion in GDP from the digital economy is a highly promising projection for the government and businesses to aim towards, said the bulletin. If this is achieved, the country may witness exponential growth opening several wealth-generating possibilities that an investor should look forward to pursuing. Going forward, "anything that is a government-associated play from a policy perspective will be good investment and it can be infrastructure, PSU banks, cement, or defense," according to Sagar Lele, WealthBasket Curator and Founder, Rupeeting. While Rajesh Kothari, WealthBasket Curator and Founder, AlfAccurate Advisors, chose banking and finance, Capex, consumerism and China+1 strategy (diversify business into other countries besides China), Sumit Singh, WealthBasket Curator and MD, Xumit Capital, said that banking, FMCG, construction materials and capital goods will perform well in 2023. The WealthDesk Year-End Bulletin can be downloaded here: https://wealthdesk.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/WealthBasket-Bulletin-2023.pdf Kyiv, Jan 18 : The three main figures in Ukraine's interior ministry have been killed in a helicopter crash beside a nursery in an eastern suburb of the capital Kiev. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, 42, died alongside his first deputy minister and state secretary, BBC reported. Nine people were killed when the helicopter came down in Brovary and another nine died on the ground, including three children. Monastyrsky is the highest profile Ukrainian casualty since the war began, BBC reported. The deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said the minister had been en route to a war "hot spot" when his helicopter went down. There is no indication the crash was anything other than an accident, although witnesses said Russia's war was to blame for the disaster. "It was very foggy and there was no electricity, and when there's no electricity there are no lights on the buildings," local resident Volodymyr told the BBC. The 42-year-old interior minister was a prominent member of President Volodymy Zelensky's cabinet. He played a key role in updating the public on casualties caused by Russian missile strikes since Ukraine was invaded. Ukrainian reports said that those on board the helicopter included six ministry officials and three crew. First deputy minister Yevhen Yenin died along with state secretary Yurii Lubkovich, whose task was to organise the work of the ministry. Before he moved to the interior ministry, Yenin helped represent Ukraine's government abroad. National police chief Ihor Klymenko wrote on Facebook that the helicopter belonged to Ukraine's state emergency service, while other officials said that it appeared to a be a French Super Puma aircraft. "There was a huge flash," said a woman described as a kindergarten teacher, BBC reported. "Before that there was the sound of something flying in the air, and we all went quiet. Then, after the flash, we heard an explosion. We lay down, and then quickly evacuated to a shelter." New Delhi, Jan 18 : The search for text-based artificial intelligence tool called ChatGPT on Google has hit a record high and China is leading in the demand, despite reports indicating that local tech giants have expressed opposition to the tool. Social media giant Tencent opted to remove ChatGPT-related programmes from the WeChat platform. It's worth mentioning that ChatGPT has yet to be officially available in the country. According to data acquired by Finbold, global Google searches for the word aChatGPT' have spiked to hit a popularity score of 92. "The score peaked at 100 for the week ending January 11. Notably, the term recorded a score of less than 1 as of November 30, 2022, when the tool was launched," the report mentioned. Regarding regional breakdown, China ranks top with a peak score of 100 as of January 13, followed by Nepal at 35, while Norway is third with a score of 28. With a score of 27, Singapore is in the fourth spot, while Israel is in the fifth position at 26. Notably, the US States has failed to feature among countries recording increased demand for ChatGPT, the report informed. The high demand in China can be attributed to various factors like users opting to leverage virtual private networks (VPNs). At the same time, users are likely to establish mirror sites to access the tool. In general, there is a likelihood that local Chinese tech giants will be unveiling similar products, the report mentioned. The AI chatbot, developed by Microsoft-owned OpenAI, is able to understand and give feedback on diverse human inputs that have elevated ChatGPT to handle different tasks, such as writing code, and generating content, among others. The tool can also be leveraged in the financial markets for tasks such as offering trading insights. "In this line, the tool can also be used to offer price projections of different financial assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) for the end of 2023 and beyond," the report noted. Despite the initial success of ChatGPT, the technology still needs to overcome several headwinds on its path to growth and adoption. "For example, ChatGPT needs more information on current events as its knowledge is limited up to 2021. Consequently, search engines have the upper hand over the ability to offer real-time information," the report said. Bhopal, Jan 18 : Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan took to Twitter to express anguish over the abusive video against him and family at a recent Karni Sena protest in Bhopal, and said he has "no grudge against anyone', but leaders of his BJP, on the other hand, are making headlines for using abusive language and insulting public servants publicly. The latest incident was reported from Satna district, where a local BJP leader was seen hitting a policeman with slippers, as per a video on on social media. As per the reports, Chitrakoot police (under Satna district) had received information about illegal mining at village, and therefore, a team along with revenue officials reached the spot. Upon reaching the village, the police team spotted a few people performing illegal mining and when they tried to stop them, locals started abusing the police team. After a few minutes, BJP leader Sadhna Patel, who also happens to be the Municipal Council president of Satna district, arrived there and she also started abusing and she beat up police personnel with slippers. Some of her supporters were also seen arguing with the police officers, one of whom snapped back, asking, "Do you want us to take you to the police station? We will begin our investigation from there." However, Patel was not arrested even then for assaulting a government official. On Wednesday, when IANS sought a reply on this issue, a senior police official in Satna said: "They had no information about the case against her in Chitrakoot." However, a revenue official told IANS that a case has been registered against Sadhna Patel and nine other people at a local police station. BJP MLA from Maihar constituency under Satna district Narayan Tripathi, around two months back, had claimed that illegal mining has been operating in the area. Tripathi had alleged that illegal mining was happening with involvement of a strong nexus of local politicians and revenue officials. He had also written to Chief Minister Chouhan regarding the same. Now, the district revenue department and the police too have accepted that illegal mining was happening in the district. Before this slipper incident, Union Minister and senior tribal leader Faggan Singh Kulaste used a highly abusive word, while slamming the erstwhile Kamal Nath-led Congress government's 15 months period in MP. Kulaste made the abusive statement while talking to journalists on camera during a public program in his native Mandla district on Sunday. Similarly, another senior BJP leader and former minister, Gaurishankar Bisen, who is now the state OBC Welfare Commission head, with a cabinet minister's status, was caught on camera, addressing the local RTO in abusive language at a public hearing in Lalbarra police station of his native Balaghat district. Bisen, who is a multi-term MLA from Balaghat, is infamous for even using indecent language publicly for his own party leader and ex-MP Bodh Singh Bhagat, used abusive language against RTO Abhinesh Gadhpale in presence of other government staff inside the police station in full public view. Mumbai, Jan 18 : Actor Ali Fazal, who has been making waves on the international platform with films such as 'Death on the Nile' and the soon to release 'Kandahar', will now be seen in another interesting project titled 'The Underbug'. The film, directed by Shujaat Saudagar, has been officially selected for the upcoming edition of Slamdance Film Festival which is set to take place from January 20 through January 26 in-person, in Salt Lake City and Park CIty, Utah and virtually between January 23 to January 29. Talking about the film, Ali said: "It's unlike any other film I have ever done in my career so far. The film was shot under confusing circumstances at a time in my life which was already a test of patience and an emotional turmoil right in the middle of the pandemic. The hardest part was to gain the weight and the heaviness that was required for this character as the two characters are visually poles apart. Yes it's harder to gain weight when you're fit." The film, also stars Hussain Dalal, and was shot during the small respite of time of covid lockdowns in late 2020. The film was extensively shot in one house somewhere in the interiors of Maharashtra and touted as a mind bending psychological thriller. "The script was a collaboration of sorts between the actors and the writers and our director. For that matter, even our DOP whose eyes and lenses were totally in sync with the story we all were trying to tell," Ali added. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed Mumbai, Jan 18 : The Mumbai Police have booked former Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik's son Faraz Malik, and his second wife Hamleen F. Malik for allegedly submitting fake papers for her visa application, officials said here on Wednesday. The purported fraudulent documents came to light during a scrutiny of the papers submitted by Faraz and his wife Hamleen - who is reportedly a French national - conducted by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), which informed the Kurla police station. Based on this, the police late on Tuesday lodged an FIR against Faraz Malik and his second wife Hamleen Malik under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Foreigners Act, pertaining to cheating, forgery, etc. No arrests have been made so far and a detailed probe is currently underway into the matter, officials said. Meanwhile, a former BJP leader Mohit Kamboj-Bharatiya slammed the Malik family for "accusing others while they are themselves full of frauds". Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik was nabbed by the Enforcement Directorate in February last year and is currently in custody for the past 11 months in an alleged money-laundering case arising out of a tainted land deal linked to absconding mafia don, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar. Prior to his arrest, Malik Sr. had shot into the limelight after he ran a campaign targeting former Narcotics Control Bureau Mumbai zonal chief Sameer Wankhede. Wankhede came under flak after he carried out an alleged drug party bust on a luxury cruise ship in October 2021 in which Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan, several glam world personalities and some foreigners were among those nabbed. Surat, Jan 18 : Surat police have stopped a family from burying their 17-year-old daughter and sent the body for post-mortem. The family was apparently burying the body without intimating the police. Hazira Police Inspector G.S.Patel told media that a samaritan had informed that a family is carrying a girl's body in a tractor for burial, and that they plan to bury it in an isolated place near Nyco company premises. Police team reached the spot, stopped the burial and sent the body for post-mortem. On questioning, the girl's father Chandan told police that he works in a factory in Hazira. He said that on Tuesday afternoon while he was at work, his family informed him that their daughter had hung herself. As they did not suspect anyone, they did not inform police and since as per their custom, minors are buried, they had decided to bury her. Only the post-mortem report will ascertain the reason for the death. If there are any injury marks, then action will be taken accordingly and a fresh investigation started, said the officer. Chennai, Jan 18 : The Special Investigation team of Tamil Nadu Police's Crime Branch-CID was on Wednesday conducting a lie-detector tests on the 12 accused in the murder of Ramajayem, brother of Tamil Nadu Minister K.N. Nehru. The accused were undergoing polygraph tests by a team deputed by the Chennai Forensic Science Laboratory. Police sources in told IANS that the accused are from Dindigul, Tiruchi, and Thanjavur areas. A senior CB-CID official told IANS that the consent of all the 12 accused for a polygraph test was taken earlier and the accused are being subjected to the test presently. Ramajeyam was found murdered after he left home for a morning walk and his body was found near the banks of the Cauvery river at Tiruvalarcholar in Tiruchi district. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, claimed on Wednesday that Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena is acting like a 'tribal chieftain to appease his big boss'. While addressing the winter session of Delhi Assembly, Sisodia said, "Baba Saheb (B.R. Ambedkar) had mentioned municipal governance in the fifth entry in List II in the Constitution. Local governance is a transfer subject. But the L-G is neither following democracy, nor the Constitution." Referring to the L-G, Sisodia said, "He is acting like the chieftain of a tribe who is told that it is your job to oppress the people of this tribe. We have seen in movies that the chieftain of the clan obeys his elder chieftain to please him." The Supreme Court had told in 1998 that administrator means that the L-G will work on the advice of the elected government, Sisodia added. "Vijendra Gupta ji (BJP MLA), your party does not give respect to the educated people. Your party only gives respect to those who open emergency gates in airplanes," Sisodia said. Blaming the L-G over the appointment of presiding officer for the Mayoral polls for Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Sisodia said, "The L-G is lying that I sent six names for the presiding officer. I had sent only one name. The L-G needed to give his opinion, not take a decision." "Similarly, in the appointment of aldermen, the names came from the BJP and by putting pressure on the officials, they (BJP) got the notification done," Sisodia claimed. Rwanda has set up an emergency refugee camp in Rubavu District amid rising numbers of arriving refugees from eastern DR Congo. Nkamira Transit Centre located in Kanzenze Sector was opened on Monday, January 16 and there were 670 Congolese refugees as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management. ALSO READ: Rwanda says has no intention of expelling Congolese refugees The centre was set up in anticipation of a possible influx of refugees in the coming weeks amid fears of renewed fighting in eastern DR Congo between government forces and the M23 rebels. Some of the arriving refugees are hosted at Kijote Transit Centre in Nyabihu. So far, of the nearly 3,000 Congolese refugees that have arrived in Rwanda since November 2022, 1,760 have been taken to Mahama refugee camp in Kirehe District in Eastern Province. Inside Nkamira Transit Centre, government and aid agencies have already connected water supply channels and electricity. A health facility is ready to offer medical services while several site operators and staff from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organisations are on the site. As of Monday, nearly 3,000 Congolese had crossed into Rwanda since November 2022. The ministry said they are ready to host all arriving refugees. ALSO READ: 'We want justice': Stories of DR Congo's 'tired' refugees Rwanda is already home to more than 72,000 Congolese refugees, who fled ethnic violence and persecution targeted at Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese communities. Some of them have lived in refugee camps since 1996. Eastern DR Congo is home to more than 120 armed groups, who are accused of various abuses. Analysts say that the arrival of refugees and setting up of new camps is proof that Rwanda has no intention of expelling Congolese refugees as some international actors and DR Congo officials had previously implied. In fact, Government spokesperson, Yolande Makolo recently issued a statement stating the record straight. "We always welcome people fleeing insecurity, persecution, and violence. We are asking for the international community to take responsibility for finding a durable solution for this forgotten group of refugees from the DRC," she tweeted. She emphasized that nothing will change until the international community and the Congolese government stop evading responsibility and begin tackling the true causes of the crisis. The fleeing Congolese mainly come from North Kivu province where developments in the past week have raised red flags about the intentions of the Congolese government and military, and their sincerity in sticking to the roadmap agreed in Luanda. There are fears of renewed fighting between the M23 rebels and the coalition including the Congolese army and armed militia groups such as the FDLR, a genocidal militia from Rwanda. Congolese Tutsi communities are especially subjected to widespread hate speech, discrimination, hostility, and violence rooted in the genocide ideology spread by the genocidal militia, FDLR, and embraced by the Congolese leadership and security organs. The first group of Congolese refugees fleeing the current conflict arrived in Rwanda on November 13, 2022, when the M23 offensive approached Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, which neighbours Rubavu District, in Western Province. Over the past two decades, the government of Rwanda has facilitated 22,000 Congolese refugees to relocate to other countries in Europe, North America and Australia. Kigali says Kinshasa remains unwilling to initiate a voluntary repatriation mechanism. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Rwanda Refugees Burundi By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Except for the voluntary return of around 4,000 Congolese refugees in 2003, no other organized voluntary repatriation facilitated by Kinshasa and the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has happened. Despite that, a tripartite agreement on the repatriation of Congolese refugees was signed between the Government of Rwanda, the DR Congo, and UNHCR on February 17, 2010. Kinshasa, by and large, denies the existence of Congolese refugees in Rwanda, something seen as an attempt by the Congolese government to divert attention from the real reasons why these refugees exist in the first place. According to Kigali, there is also an unwillingness on the part of the international community to face up to the root causes of conflict in eastern DR Congo, and to demand true accountability from the state and non-state actors who are responsible for the resulting legacy of failure. Mumbai, Jan 18 : Streaming giant Netflix on Wednesday has announced its new K-content slate with titles like 'Black Knight', 'Song of the Bandits', 'Sweet Home', 'D.P.' and more. Looking ahead at 2023, Netflix is debuting a diverse array of Korean TV series, films and unscripted shows. After a global success with 'Squid Game', Netflix will launch a total of 34 Korean titles on its platform, including returning with the series 'Sweet Home', 'D.P.', and 'The Glory', a press release stated. Survival has become a recurring theme across some of the top series, whether it's battling monsters during the dark days of 1945 in 'Gyeongseong Creature', struggling to breathe in the dystopian future of sci-fi series Black Knight, or fighting to protect Joseon during Japanese colonial rule in action drama 'Song of the Bandits'. Other new series this year run the gamut of romance (A Time Called You, Behind Your Touch (WT), Crash Course in Romance, Destined With You, Doona!, King the Land, Love to Hate You, See You In My 19th Life), social commentary and intrigue (Bloodhounds, Celebrity, Mask Girl), drama (Daily Dose of Sunshine, Queenmaker, The Good Bad Mother), and apocalyptic (Goodbye Earth). Don Kang, VP of Content (Korea), said: "The global popularity of K-content has continued apace over 2022, with Netflix bringing a wider variety of stories and genres to fans around the world. Over the last year, Korean series and films have regularly featured in our Global Top 10 list in more than 90 countries, and three of Netflix's most-watched shows ever are from Korea." "This year, we're pushing the envelope even further with the stories we tell and how we tell them. With this lineup of Korean titles, Netflix will continue to be the ultimate destination for compelling, diverse and must-watch Korean storytelling." This year, Netflix is expanding its film offering with six Korean movies, kicking off with sci-fi thriller 'JUNG-E' on January 20, followed by 'Kill Boksoon', which depicts a professional killer with conflicting maternal instincts, and 'Believer 2', a sequel to a crime action thriller revolving around drug gangs. Other films explore the topics of revenge (Ballerina), teacher-student rivalry (The Match), and hacking (Unlocked). Meanwhile those who love living vicariously will be spoilt for choice with a dazzling lineup of reality shows, spanning endurance (Physical:100, Siren: Survive the Island), zombie survival (Zombieverse) coming of age (Nineteen to Twenty), and mind games (The Devil's Plan). There are also two new documentaries coming out. Yellow Door: Looking for Director Bong's Unreleased Short Film (working title) traces the quest for Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho's debut film while true-crime documentary In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal explores the self-proclaimed 'messiahs' in modern Korean history. "We are very excited over the variety of the titles that we're sharing with our members," said Kang. "There's truly a series, a film or an unscripted show for everyone, and we look forward to our Korean shows connecting to fans both overseas and at home." -- Syndicated from IANS Surat, Jan 18 : The government has declared Kakrapar Nuclear power plant in Surat as no-drone zone. Surat's Additional Executive Magistrate Y. B. Zala, in an executive order released on Tuesday, declared the Kakrapar Nuclear power plant area, 21.14 North Latitude and 73.22 East 1NM Longitude, a total of 1.852 nautical miles as 'No Drone Zone'. If any one is found violating the order, a criminal complaint will be filed against the person, Zala added. Colombo, Jan 18 : While sending positive news on restructuring of Sri Lanka's debts, China has strongly opposed the news of the "sneaky" visit of the Dalai Lama to the predominantly Buddhist country. A top level delegation from the Chinese Embassy in Colombo met the head monk of one of the influential Buddhist chapters in the country and told him that China strongly opposes any foreign country receiving the Tibetan spiritual leader, who is exiled in India. China's Charge d'Affaires Hu Wei, who visited Most Venerable Thibbatuwawe Sri Siddhartha Sumangala Thero, the chief prelate of the Malwathu chapter, told him that China strongly opposed the 14th Dalai Lama's intention to visit Sri Lanka. "The government and people of China including in the Tibet Autonomous Region strongly oppose any foreign country to receive the Dalai Lama in any name, because the 14th Dalai Lama is absolutely not a 'simple monk' as he self-claims, but the head of the feudal serfdom and the theocracy in Tibet prior to 1951, a political exile disguised as a religious figure who has long been engaging in anti-China separatist activities and attempting to split Tibet from China," a Chinese Embassy statement, quoting Hu, said. "Hu emphasised that China and Sri Lanka have been firmly supporting each other on issues concerning each other's core interests, including the Tibet related issue. Both sides especially the Buddhist communities must prevent a sneaky visit of the Dalai Lama to the island to promote 'Tibetan independence' and safeguard the China-Sri Lanka historical relations from being damaged," it added. "Commenting on the rumour of several monks inviting Dalai Lama to visit the island, the Chief Prelate stressed that China is the closest friend of Sri Lanka. Our relations with China must not be hurt. It is better that government also understand the importance of contribution rendered by China for the upliftment of Sri Lankan economy," the Chinese Embassy release stated. A group of senior Buddhist monks including the Chief Prelate of another Buddhist Chapter, Ramanna, Most Ven Makulewe Wimala Mahanayake Thero who had met the Dalai Lama at India's Bodh Gaya on December 27, has invited him to visit Sri Lanka. "I believe like His Holiness has been to Bodh Gaya. If he goes to Sri Lanka, many thousands of tourists will come to Sri Lanka which will boost the economy because we are in a crisis situation. And, if His Holiness goes to Sri Lanka, many tourists will come here similar to Bodh Gaya. We will be blessed and the economy will also be boosted," Most Venerable Waskaduwe Mahindawansa Mahanayake Thero, one of the senior Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who met the Dalai Lama, was quoted as saying. Awaiting the $2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to relieve its crisis-hit economy, the Sri Lanka President on Tuesday announced that the discussion with China and India on debt restricting, one of the main prerequisite to obtain IMF assistance was "successful". Chennai, Jan 18 : The student wing of the opposition AIADMK will organise 'Veeravanakkam Naal' across Tamil Nadu to honour the martyrs who died for the Tamil language. These people sacrificed their lives in anti-Hindi agitations on January 25, 1965. C. N. Annadurai had announced that 26, January 1965 was the 'Day of Mourning' in response to the Government's decision to replace English with Hindi from January 26 onwards. The then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M. Bhaktavalsalam had taken a stern position that it was blasphemous to declare the Republic Day as the Day of Mourning and called upon the paramilitary forces to curtail any violence. A strong student protest came up and the police and students clashed across the state. Several people immolated themselves and many consumed poison and died in protest to the imposition of Hindi in the state. Many died in police firing and two policemen were also killed. According to official estimates, 70 people died in the violence that commenced on January 25 and extended for two weeks. Unofficial estimates take the death toll to 500. The AIADMK student wing will be conducting the programme for all those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the Tamil language and against the imposition of Hindi in Tamil Nadu. The party will conduct public meetings in all districts of the state in remembrance of those who died during the anti-Hindi agitations. AIADMK interim general secretary K. Palaniswami has directed the party district leaders to provide full support to the student wing of the AIADMK to conduct the programme across the state. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Ahead of Republic Day, the Punjab Police's State Special Operation Cell has arrested two alleged Babbar Khalsa International operatives, planning to carry out attack on prominent Hindu leaders, from Mohali, officials said. According to official sources, the two, identified as Yuvraj and Nishan, were arrested on Tuesday night, and a pistol was recovered from their possession. Both were in touch with UK-based Khalistani supporter Amritpal Singh and BKI's top leader Paramjeet Pannu. "During the interrogation, we have learnt that a few prominent Hindu leaders were on their radar. They were planning to carry out target killings and had conducted recee of the premises of Hindu leaders," a source said. "Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal leaders were on their radar. Both were in touch with Amritpal Singh alias Amrit Bal, a Kapurthala resident, who is currently based in England. Currently both have been booked under the UAPA. We have got their custodial remand to unearth their entire conspiracy. We are trying to know what was the actual plan of the BKI," the source added. The State Special Operation Cell had recently filed a case against gangster Awaz who is associated with the BKI, and police received inputs that Khalistani outfits were planning to carry out attack on Hindu leaders with the help of gangsters. (Atul Krishan can be approached at atul.k@ians.in) New Delhi, Jan 18: Pakistani police opened fire on Sindh nationalists who had gathered to celebrate the 119th birth anniversary of Sindhi nationalist leader GM Syed in his hometown Jamshoro, on Tuesday. Three policemen and two activists were injured while two police vehicles were burnt down in the violence. Videos show people calling for 'azadi' -- freedom from Pakistan. The protestors clashed with the police after which dozens of people were arrested. Hundreds of activists, workers, and leaders visited Syed's grave to pay honours and pray for his peaceful afterlife. Organisations like Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM), Jeay Sindh Mahaz (JSM), Jeay Sindh Freedom Movement (JSFM-Zafar Sahito) and the SUP, headed by Syed Munir Haider Shah -- the great grandson of Syed, led the protests asking for an independent Sindh. Zafar Sahito of the JSFM told India Narrative that Pakistan Rangers and intelligence agencies fired at the peaceful rallies. He added that hundreds of people are arrested and the forces clamped curfew in Sann in Sindh. Pakistani newspaper Dawn quoted DIG Pir Mohammad Shah as saying that the police had information Sindhi nationalist organisations will "raise anti-state slogans and display such banners during the programmes to appease India". Sindh has been rocked by a nationalist movement as the Sindhi identity still resonates with that of India. The Sindhi nationalists say that they do not want to accept Islamist agenda peddled by successive Pakistani governments. They hold Pakistan responsible for decades of poor governance, suppression of people, arbitrary enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings of the Sindhi community. Many Sindhi people say they feel proud of their culture and traditions lie in the roots of the Indus Valley civilization. The result is that the Sindhi people have resurrected the legacy of Maharaja Dahir Sen -- the last Hindu ruler of Sindh. The people have cleverly pitched forward the identity they derive from the pre-Islamic history of their region. The Sindhi diaspora in the West is not far behind in this movement. They been holding protests across the world for an independent Sindhudesh nation wherein they have mustered support from the Baloch, Afghan and Pashtoon groups who too are seeking freedom from Pakistan. (The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative New Delhi, Jan 18 : Homegrown conversational messaging platform Gupshup on Wednesday announced the launch of Auto Bot Builder, a powerful tool that harnesses the power of GPT-3 to automatically and effortlessly build advanced chatbots tailored to enterprise requirements. A user can instantly build a chatbot using content from their website, documents, message logs, product catalogues, databases, and other corporate systems of record with the Auto Bot Builder tool. "GPT-3 represents a massive improvement in language and conversational abilities. We're excited to help enterprises harness the power of LLMs to enhance their customer experience," Gupshup CEO Beerud Sheth said in a statement. The Auto Bot Builder tool accepts the content of any size, processes it and fine-tunes the Large Language Model (LLM) to the specific context. Moreover, the company said that the tool is capable of handling really large content sets, which need special pre-processing. The chatbots build on large language models (LLMs) and demonstrate a high level of language capabilities that are truly engaging for the end user. They can handle virtually any natural-language query posed by the user and provide meaningful responses in almost all scenarios, said the company. Further, the company mentioned that the chatbots built using Auto Bot Builder already come pre-integrated with Gupshup's comprehensive conversational engagement product stack. With this, it can be instantly deployed across dozens of channels, with built-in analytics, tracking, logging, billing, and more. They are instantly capable of handling messaging volumes at scale. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The top telecom industry body on Wednesday urged the government to exempt the levy of basic customs duty (BCD) charges in the upcoming Union Budget, which will further help in the deployment and smooth roll-out of 5G in India. Higher customs duty on telecom equipment is disrupting the cost effectiveness of the telecom companies as around 85 per cent of the telecom equipment in the country is imported. "BCD of 20 per cent is levied on import of most of telecom equipment like optical transport equipment/networks, IP radios, MIMO/LTE products, soft switches, VoIPs, PTN, MPLS -TP, etc. which is disrupting the cost effectiveness of the telcos," said the Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI), the apex body that represents the telecom sector. The industry body suggested to exempt the levy of BCD charges as it will be beneficial towards importing essential equipment to boost 5G roll out. "Telcos are constantly upgrading infrastructure to keep up with the new- age technologies. However, the required facility to manufacture the equipment has not yet been set up in India. Therefore, telcos are dependent on imports," COAI Director General, Lt. Gen. Dr S.P. Kochhar (retd) said. Considering the financial health of the industry and the huge investments,"relaxation in import duties will go a long way in helping us realise our dream of an aAtmanirbhar Bharat", he added. The apex telecom made several recommendations for the Union Budget 2023-24 to the Ministry of Finance. The COAI requested that the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund contribution of 5 per cent of adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) may be suspended till the existing USO corpus is exhausted and license fee be brought down from 3 per cent to 1 per cent at the earliest to cover only administrative costs by the DoT/government. For facilitating ease of doing business, a centralised registration process is recommended for the industries having spread in all 36 States/UTs. "As an alternative, a centralised jurisdiction may be formed to govern the day-to-day affairs of the taxpayers," said the body. The COAI also requested the government to facilitate centralised assessment, and audit procedure for large taxpayer units with turnover of over Rs 500 crore and presence in over 12 states/UTs. This would limit this facility to less than 1 per cent of all corporates and ensure ease of doing business with no corresponding loss of revenue to the government, it said. Kochhar said that given the huge burden of taxes and regulatory levies on telecom operators, and the critical nature of the service to drive 'Digital India', "a special benefit may be provided to telecom operators by way of exemption of GST on regulatory payments of LF, SUC and spectrum assigned under auction". New Delhi, Jan 18 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to examine a plea of the Andhra Pradesh government against the recent order of the high court suspending the government's order which prohibited conduct of public meetings and rallies on roads, including national highways. A counsel mentioned the Andhra Pradesh plea before a bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and comprising Justice P.S. Narasimha, stating that the high court has stayed its order on public meetings and rallies. The top court agreed to hear the plea on January 19. The Andhra Pradesh High Court, earlier this month, suspended, till January 23, the operation of the Government Order (GO) that prohibited conduct of public meetings and rallies on roads, including national highways. The state government, in its plea, said recently on December 28, 2022, 8 people died during a stampede in a political roadshow held in Kandakuru in Nellore district. "The state was thus prompted to issue the Impugned GO, wherein it clarified/emphasised the considerations to be taken by the police while regulating public meetings/ demonstrations under Section 30 of the Indian Police Act, 1861," said the plea. The Andhra Pradesh Police Department was advised to refrain from granting permissions for such public meetings unless adequate and exceptional reasons were provided by the person seeking permission to conduct such a meeting. The state government said: "The Impugned GO is merely a set of clarificatory guidelines regarding exercise of power by the police under Section 30 of the Police Act. It does not ban public assembly, either directly or indirectly. Instead, it merely reasonably regulates it. The recent instances of both fatalities and public inconvenience indicate that public safety and interest mandate that such meetings be avoided, unless in exceptional circumstances, and the Impugned GO merely advises the police to ideally act accordingly." The interim order was passed by the high court on a plea challenging the GO. It scheduled the matter for further hearing on January 20 and sought the state government's response. It was argued before the high court that the order was passed to stifle the opposition voices against the government. On January 2, the AP government issued the order against the backdrop of a stampede at a rally held by the main opposition Telugu Desam Party at Kandukuru on December 28. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday made light of former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal quitting the party to join the BJP, saying "clouds" ("badal") have cleared from the state unit. "A man who left Akali Dal to make his own party and then joined the Congress, was made Finance Minister for 5 years, then lost by a record margin of over 60,000 votes and thereafter went into hibernation, now joins BJP," he said. Manpreet Badal, who left the party after differences with state chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, joins the long list of Congress leaders who have joined the BJP, including former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, former state President Sunil Jakhar, and former national spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill. In a letter addressed to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Manpreet Badal, the nephew of Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, said that a coterie of men in Delhi is running the affairs in Punjab and this has only increased factionalism. The management of the University of Kigali has come out to clarify the reasons behind the postponement of their seventh graduation ceremony, which had earlier been slated for December 2, 2022. Speaking to The New Times, Felix Maringe, the university's Vice Chancellor said that the delay arose from a statutory requirement by the Higher Education Council obliging Higher Learning Institutions to submit for verification all graduating students before they can be conferred upon their degrees. "University of Kigali is undergoing this process and upon completion which is expected in a very near future, a new date for graduation will be communicated to the students and other respective stakeholders," said the Vice Chancellor. He added: "As a compliant entity, the University of Kigali since its inception has always held its graduation ceremonies after HEC's complete verification and approval and will continue to do so." Over 1,800 students from the private university were supposed to graduate in different disciplines and had earlier said that the graduation was called off without any reason given to them. Students who spoke to The New Times had earlier said the university did not communicate reasons for the postponement or give them the next date for graduation. One of the students, Charles Gakwerere who is also a former president of the students' guild said, "I tried getting information on what happened since everything was ready, but no one gave me feedback." The university last held its graduation in December 2021, where over 2,000 graduands were conferred upon their degrees in a highly attended ceremony held at Kigali Arena. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a review meeting of Directors General of Police (DGPs) of all states between January 20-22, where the focus is likely to be on measures to curb threats emanating from cross -order terrorism and arms smuggling, improving internal security, ensuring greater coordination between Centre and state police forces, as well as modernisation of the forces through greater usage of technology. The meeting is also likely to discuss measures for combating extremism in Jammu and Kashmir, terrorist outfits in the northeast, and curbing Left-Wing Extremism, highly-placed sources said. The three-day meeting would be presided over by Modi at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) Pusa campus here. DGPs of all the states are expected to be present in the meeting, sources said, where top police officials are likely to make presentations before the Prime Minister on the law and order situations prevailing in their respective states. This meeting comes three months after the Prime Minister had virtually addressed a 'chintan shivir' of state Home Secretaries and Directors Generals of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and Central Police Organisations (CPOs), which was held between October 27 and 28, 2022 at Haryana's Surajkund. In that meeting, issues like modernisation of police forces, cyber crime management, increased use of IT in the criminal justice system, coastal security and land border management were discussed. Chandigarh, Jan 18 : The vehicle of Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) president Harjinder Singh Dhami was attacked by miscreants in Mohali near here on Wednesday, police said. However, Dhami escaped unhurt but the windscreen of the SUV was damaged. The SGPC chief was on his way to meet protestors at 'Kaumi Insaaf Morcha' on the Mohali-Chandigarh border when his vehicle was attacked. Terming it part of a conspiracy to weaken the SGPC and Panthic institutions, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal said such acts were born out of frustration at failure to subdue and subjugate the Khalsa Panth. "Now attempts are being made to create anarchy and civil war in the Panth. The Panth will not allow such acts of cowardice and resolves to do everything in its power to seek the early release of all Bandhi Singhs. "The SAD and the SGPC will continue with programmes in this regard, including the ongoing signature campaign in right earnest." Badal demanded an independent judicial probe into the entire incident. He said the probe needed to be taken out of the ambit of the AAP government as the latter had failed in its duty to provide necessary security to the head of the representative body of Sikhs worldwide "This incident is also reflective of the total collapse of the law and order situation in the state," he added. Washington, Jan 18 : China's population has decreased for the first time in over 60 years, signalling the start of long-term decline that will bring demographic challenges for the world's second-largest economy as well as the world, media reports said. It was the first decline since 1961, the final year of the famine brought on by failing economic policies during Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward", the campaign to transform China from a mostly agrarian society into an industrial one that ended in disaster, RFA reported. The long-term outlook for China, according to UN experts, is that the population will continue to decrease by about 109 million people to 1.3 billion by 2050. The turning point puts China in a similar situation as regional neighbour Japan, whose population has been shrinking, and South Korea, where birth rates are declining after rapid economic growth, leaving fewer young people in the workforce to support a swelling number of retirees. That has put a larger tax burden on workers and could lead to economic stagnation. Already, China's economy is slowing. From a peak of 14.2 per cent growth in 2007, its 2022 figure was a mere 3 per cent, less than half the growth rate of 2021 and the lowest in almost 40 years. The demographic shift reflects both the results of China's one-child policy and a pessimism about the future, experts said, RFA reported. An unintended consequence of the one-child policy, which lasted from 1980 to 2015, combined with a cultural preference for boys, has led to a major gender imbalance, resulting in fewer possible families being formed, especially in rural areas. This policy "broke the normal ecological balance of China's population", said Chen Guangcheng, a civil rights activist. But there is also an economic and psychological element contributing to this trend. Combined with skyrocketing housing and education prices that come with robust economic growth, many young Chinese today simply do not envision children in their future, RFA reported. "A decline in the willingness to have children reflects the hardships of Chinese people's daily lives," Wu Qiang, a Beijing-based scholar who focuses on population, said. "This is a reflection of their pessimism about the future." Moscow, Jan 18 : Russia has deployed its lethal anti-aircraft systems around Moscow in a sign that President Vladimir Putin is taking precautions against potential strikes from Ukraine, media reports said. Putin has now deployed Russia's fearsome S-400 defence missiles to two locations in the capital amid fears Kyiv could launch attacks on the city, the Daily Mail reported. The S-400 'Triumf' air defence system is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range missiles. It can also be used against ground objectives. Its deployment to Moscow comes after two suspected Ukrainian drone strikes hit two air bases deep inside Russia in December, damaging two nuclear-capable bombers that were thought to be preparing for an attack on Ukraine, Daily Mail reported. One S-400 air defence system, which has a range of 248 miles, has been deployed in fields belonging to the Russian State Agricultural University in the northwest of Moscow. Another has been deployed to the Losiny Ostrov National Park near Sokolniki district in the northeast of the city. The S-400 is capable of shooting down up to 80 targets simultaneously and is said to be able to travel at a speed of more than 10,000mph. Residents say the deployments are new in Moscow, and highlights Putin's fears of a hit on his largest city, Daily Mail reported. It comes after two suspected Ukrainian drone strikes hit two air bases in Saratov and Ryazan in December. Bengaluru, Jan 18 : A Hindu woman -- mother of four children, has allegedly eloped with a Muslim man in Karntaka's Gadag district, her husband has claimed, urging the state government to initiate an action in the matter. Prakash Gujarati, a resident of Gadag, who works as a goldsmith, has alleged that his wife had left him and married Maqbool Bayabadaki, a resident of Savanur. Prakash, terming the development a case of 'Love Jihad', said when he tried to contact his wife, Maqbool's family did not allow him, and also threatened him, adding his wife had been converted to Islam and she also took one of their daughters with her. Meanwhile, Sri Rama Sena has warned that the woman should be reunited with her husband and children. If suitable action is not taken, it would launch large scale agitation. Maqbool was introduced to the family of Prakash in Goa. Since Maqbool also hailed from Karnataka, Prakash became close to him and got a rented house near his room. After some time, Maqbool developed friendship with his wife and took her to Ajmer dargah. He converted her to Islam and married her. Prakash said that he pleaded with Maqbool not to break his family and his wife came back to him. He came back to Gadag and started living with his family. However, his wife disappeared and was again seen with Maqbool. Prakash claimed that he had also approached the police and women's organisations and "none could give him any relief". He also said that he suffered a heart attack and two of his sons have fallen sick. Pune, Jan 18 : Visiting G-20 delegates went around some of the historical and heritage sites of Pune including the Aga Khan Palace, learning about the history and importance of various locations, officials said here on Wednesday. The G20 team went around the famed Aga Khan Palace where Mahatma Gandhi was incarcerated for nearly two years during the Quit India Movement (1942) along with his Kasturba Gandhi, and his secretary Mahadev Desai, besides Sarojini Naidu. The delegates were provided information about Gandhiji and Kasturba's childhood and their life, their pivotal role in the freedom struggle, etc, how Mahadev Desai passed away a few days after he was jailed here (August 15, 1942), and then the passing of Kasturba (February 22, 1944), and their 'samadhis' are there. They went around the museum there, viewed the exhibits displayed there, learnt about Gandhiji's legacy, the 'Charkha' and the 'samadhis' in the palace complex. At the historical Lal Mahal, built by Shahaji Raje Bhosale in 1630, the delegates learnt about the history and life of his son and later the great Maratha warrior-king, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and viewed the statues of 'Bal Shivaji' who lived here for many years during his childhood along with his mother Rajmata Jijamata Bhosale, and saluted them. The visitors were thrilled by the grandeur of the Shaniwar Wada built in 1732, an erstwhile fort complex with 5 imposing 'darwazas'(gates) within which over a thousand people lived, but most of the fort was destroyed in fires and other calamities, though the remnants are still awe-inspiring. The G20 delegation went around the Nana Wada, believed to be built around 1780 as the residence of the legendary Nana Phadnavis, the chief administrator of the Peshwas and labelled by the British as 'the Maratha Machiavelli' and learnt about his contributions to the state history. The G20 delegates were accompanied at various locations by the Municipal Commissioner Vikram Kumar, top officials like Vikas Dhakne, Santosh Deshmukh, Supriya Karmarkar, Neelam Mahajan, Ajit Apte, Sandeep Godbole, Chandrakant Dalvi, and others. An official coordinating the trip told IANS that the excited delegates learnt a lot about all these historical or heritage sites, asked many questions, clicked photos and selfies at different venues and returned feeling enriched by the outing. Khammam : , Jan 18 (IANS) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was using Governors to harass the Chief Ministers of states ruled by non-BJP parties and to create hurdles in the progress of these states. Addressing the inaugural public meeting of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) here on Wednesday, he said that the Prime Minister is not bothered about the problems faced by people like price rise and unemployment but he only thinks how to create problems for Chief Ministers and topple state governments by buying the MLAs. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader said the Governors/Lt Governors of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Delhi, and Punjab were harassing the Chief Ministers in their respective states. "It is not Governors who are doing it. It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is creating problems. The Governors have nothing to do with this. They get a big bungalow, air-conditioned car and all other facilities to live luxurious life for five years," he said. The Delhi Chief Minister alleged that the governors get phone calls from Modi to create problems for the Chief Ministers and halt their work. "If the Prime Minister thinks 24 hours which Chief Minister he should target next, how will the country develop," he asked. He also alleged that the PM was using the CBI, the IT, the ED and other agencies to target political opponents. Stating that the country needs a change, Kejriwal called on people to throw the BJP out of power and elect a new government which thinks of the country's problems like unemployment, price rise, education of their children and healthcare. He said the people gave mandate to BJP twice. "They have not come to power to bring a change in the country but they have come to destroy it. 2024 elections is a chance to bring a change," he said. Kejriwal described the coming together of the Chief Ministers of various states to discuss the problems faced by the people as a ray of hope for the country. He said the Chief Ministers of Telangana, Kerala, Punjab and Delhi and leaders of other parties discussed issues like health, education and farmers' problems throughout the day. He pointed out that the states were learning from each other by replicating successful programmes. He said Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao visited Delhi to see Mohalla clinics and started Basti Dawakhanas in Telangana. Similarly, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin visited Delhi to see government schools and he is now trying to improve government schools in his state. New Delhi, Jan 18 : A Delhi court on Wednesday granted bail to businessman Ratul Puri, the nephew of Madhya Pradesh Congress leader Kamal Nath, in a money laundering case in connection with an alleged fertiliser scam. Puri, who is also an accused in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper and Moser Baer bank-related cases is currently on regular bail in these two alleged scams. Special Judge, Rouse Avuene court, Vikas Dhull granted him bail on a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh and a surety of like amount. The court noted that Puri was not arrested during the investigation and said no purpose will be served by sending him to custody at this stage. On December 23, the court had issued summons against Puri while taking cognisance of a supplementary charge sheet in the case. Special Public Prosecutor, Enforcement Directorate, Nitesh Rana opposed Puri's bail plea claiming that if he is released, he may flee from justice and may also influence the witnesses and tamper evidence. Based on the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) case dated May 17, 2021, against the Managing Directors, Presidents, and Vice Presidents of various companies for criminal conspiracy, cheating, and criminal misconduct, the ED initiated a money laundering investigation in the fertiliser scam. It had alleged illegal commission from overseas suppliers through a complex web of fake commercial transactions through multiple entities registered outside India (controlled by the accused persons) to camouflage the fraudulent transactions as genuine. New Delhi, Jan 18 : A contractual employee in the Finace Ministry was arrested by the Delhi Police's Crime Branch for leaking classified data to foreign countries, an official said on Wednesday. The accused has been identified as Sumit, who worked as a data entry operator with the ministry. According to police, Sumit was arrested on Tuesday for espionage activities in lieu of money and during search, a mobile phone which was used by him to share secret information related to the Ministry of Finance was recovered from his possession. "A case under section 3/9 of the Official Secrets Act has been registered at the Crime Branch police station and further investigation is going on," said the official. New Delhi/Noida, Jan 18 : In a relief to the Noida Authority, the Supreme Court has dismissed the contempt of court filed by the DLF while ordering the real estate group to pay Rs 235 crore to the civic body. The Authority in its arguments said that as per the terms of the lease deed signed between the mall management and the Noida Authority, it was stated that if additional compensation is given to anyone related to the land, that amount will have to be paid by the management. After hearing arguments of both sides, the contempt of court filed by the DLF was dismissed, Noida Authority OSD Kumar Sanjay said. The matter is related to the land at Sector 18 in Noida on which the DLF Mall of India is built. The land was bought from a farmer by Reddy Veeranna of Bengaluru 25 years ago. The authority had 'wrongly' acquired the land and gave it to the mall management following which Reddy filed and contested a case. A few months ago, the Supreme Court, while ruling in Reddy's favour, had ordered the Authority to pay Rs 361 crore. When the officials of the Authority spoke to Reddy, he agreed to take an amount of Rs 295 crore from it. Following the orders, the Authority had paid the amount to Reddy. Later, as compensation for the paid amount, the Noida Authority sent a notice of Rs 245 crore to DLF Mall. On this, the Mall had filed contempt of court. The lawyer was left with a broken hand after the assault while attending to Citizens Coalition for Change activists and the party's organising secretary, Amos Chibaya. Among the 25 were three senior citizens aged 83, 72 and 61, a minor girl and a member of parliament Amos Chibaya. The activists were arrested for violating the Maintenance of Peace and Order Act (MOPA) after they held an internal party meeting at another CCC legislator Costa Machingauta's house in Budiriro. The accused persons appeared at court Monday and were remanded in custody after the State opposed bail. A statement from the SADC-LA said: "SADC-LA deeply regrets and strongly condemns the attack on lawyer Mr Kudzai Kadzere in Harare, Zimbabwe by members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) on the 14th of January 2023.' SADC-LA further implored the government to swiftly ensure the protection of lawyers and other key stakeholders such as journalists in the discharge of their mandate. It called on the responsible authorities to hold to account those responsible for the unsanctioned violation of Kadzere and his clients' constitutionally enshrined rights. ALSO ON 263Chat: O-Level internship a pipe line dream The country is facing an increase in the amount of violence at a time when elections are on the horizon. To this end, SADC-LA called on SADC and the AU to provide swift and adequate support to the Government of Zimbabwe, and relevant stakeholders to ensure a neutral environment for the enforcement and enjoyment of all human rights. "This is in accordance with the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG), the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers as well as Zimbabwe's own constitution," the statement. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) here will house the precious 'Maharaja Collection' of Air India artworks. The art collection includes paintings by eminent artists such as Jatin Das, Anjali Ela Menon, M.F. Hussain and Radhaji. For handing over the artworks to NGMA, an MoU was signed at a programme on Wednesday, which was attended by Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and G. Kishan Reddy, Union Minister of Culture. Speaking on the occasion, Scindia said that India has a 5,000-year old history that has been powered by spiritual forces and moral values. He said that the Prime Minister has been stressing not only on India becoming an economic powerhouse, but also leading a cultural resurgence on the global stage. Scindia suggested that the exhibition of the art pieces should not be confined to Delhi only, but should be taken worldwide as well as in various parts of the country, showcasing India's rich cultural heritage. The minister said that Air India has been a pioneer of its own kind, as he applauded J.R.D. Tata for his forward thinking and being a pioneer. He said the showpieces being handed over to NGMA not only contain modern art masterpieces, but also include a wide range of exquisite handlooms, sculptures and other artworks. Reddy said that through the MoU, the priceless art collection of Air India since 1953 is being transferred to the NGMA under the Ministry of Culture. The paintings and artworks will now find their rightful place, he added. The MoU was signed by Joint Secretary, Culture, Mugdha Sinha, and Joint Secretary, Civil Aviation, Satyendra Kumar Mishra; NGMA Director Temsunaro Tripathi; Air India Asset Holding Limited (AIAHL) CMD Vikram Dev Dutt, and representative of Air India Ltd, Kalpana Rao. New Delhi, Jan 18 : A drug supplier, absconding for last two years in a NDPS Act case, was arrested from Odisha by the Delhi Police's Special Cell, an official said on Wednesday. The accused, Badakulu Ludu alias Sushant (29), a resident of Odisha's Ganjam district, had a reward of Rs 50,000 on information leading to his arrest. Police said that Ludu was indulging in supplying of marijuana (ganja) in Delhi and its peripheral areas for the last five years. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Cell, Alok Kumar, police had received information that Ludu, the kingpin of the inter-state narcotic drug syndicate, was absconding in a case of supply of ganja in Delhi. Police also received specific inputs that he was still indulging in supplying narcotic drugs from Odisha to various parts of the country including Delhi-NCR. "Surveillance was mounted on the activities of Ludu and other members of his crime syndicate. Multiple teams were sent to different areas of Odisha to track the movements of the fugitive," the DCP said. "After collecting requisite intelligence, a team was sent to Digapahandi from where Ludu was finally nabbed on January 15 at 1.15 p.m He was arrested under appropriate sections of law. He was produced in the local court in Digapahandi, Odisha and brought to Delhi on four days transit remand," said the official. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Michael A. Tibollo, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Canada, who recently visited the All India Institute of Ayurveda in Delhi, feels that propagation of ayurveda in Canada can help ease the burden of hospitals in that country as ayurvedic therapies, principles and lifestyle can keep many diseases at bay. The Canadian delegation led by Michael Tibollo and the Canada India Foundation (CIF) visited the All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) on Tuesday. The delegation also took a round of the institute and hospital as well as the laboratories and other facilities to understand the integrative model adopted by AIIA. The official delegation from Canada was also facilitated by the Ministry of Ayush. Michael Tibollo, Ontario's Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, showed his keen interest to know about the research and public health activities of AIIA as well as the Ayurveda Research Council in the area of mental health and addiction. Impressed with the facilities of AIIA, Tibollo said, "It feels great to be welcomed at the All-India Institute of Ayurveda in Delhi. The institute helped me to deepen my knowledge and understanding of the importance of East and West medicines and saw here the two can work together for the betterment of mankind. In Canada, we are much focussed on quick results. "Many a times, we forget about prevention, education and doing things that lead us to a better lifestyle. Many doctors over here shared their time with me today. They explained to me how interventions using ancient techniques that are tried and proven and have been around for millions of years can reduce the need for acute medicine and acute care in a hospital setting." Speaking about his province Ontario in Canada, he said, "One of the things that we have always talked about in the province of Ontario is bringing services into the community to relieve the pressure of the hospitals and I think I have found one of the solutions and it is right here in India. I want to thank All India Institute of Ayurveda for providing me with the opportunity for being here and showing me the amazing work that is being done. And yes, that is evidence-based and there is a research facility that is being attached to the hospital. And they are demonstrating the impact of ayurveda and yoga in treating individuals." AIIA Director Tanuja Manoj Nesari greeted the minister and explained the functioning of the different departments, including OPDs, the tertiary care unit, the academic block and the research centre of the institute. A team from AIIA also showcased the facilities around the academic and the hospital wings of the institute before the delegation. "With the help of the Canada India Foundation, we believe that the day is not far when an institution propagating the knowledge of ayurveda will be set up in Canada. We are happy to share data-based evidence with Tibollo and wish that he can present it to the government there," said Nesari. Satish Thakkar, Chairman of Canada India Foundation, Ritesh Malik, National Convenor of Canada India Foundation, and others were part of the delegation led by the minister. AIIA Dean (Ph.d) Mahesh Vyas, Dean (PG) Anand More, HoD of Kaumarbhritya department Rajagopala, Medical Superintendent Ananthraman Sharma, HoD of Kayachikitsa S. Jonah, and other members of AIIA family were also present on the occasion. Melbourne, Jan 18 : World No.7 American Coco Gauff defeated 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu 6-4, 7-6(4) in a scratchy first-time meeting with the Brit to enter the third round of the Australian Open, here on Wednesday. Gauff will face either Chinese Zheng Qinwen or Croatian-born American Bernarda Pera next, with the winner advancing to the Round of 16. The 18-year-old Gauff is the youngest-seeded player in the tournament and has now won seven consecutive matches to start her 2023 season. She opened her year with a dominant run to her third career title at the ASB Classic in Auckland, losing just 22 games across five matches. The opening set saw Gauff's match-toughness come through, as the American was better on the critical points. She saved six of seven break points to stifle Raducanu's momentum, winning the first set 6-3 after 43 minutes. Raducanu settled into the match in the second set. The 20-year-old Brit began to serve better and rallied from 4-2 down to get back on serve. Her backhand proved the dangerous wing, with 10 of her 13 groundstroke winners coming from that side. Serving down 5-4, Gauff was forced to save two set points to hold, but after forcing the tiebreak, the American played a cleaner decider to seal the win after 1 hour and 42 minutes. Panaji, Jan 18 : Steps are being taken to prevent erosion at the famous Coco beach in North Goa, which European tourists stopped visiting ever since it got washed out, Water Resources Minister Subhash Shirodkar informed the Assembly on Wednesday. BJP MLA Kedar Naik had raised the issue of Coco beach, which was believed to be a good source of income for the locals. Coco beach is at a distance of 10 km from state capital Panaji, which was earlier preferred by foreign tourists. "It is proposed to protect the eroded Coco beach for a length of 394m by providing concrete blocks revetment and accordingly an estimate has been prepared for which administrative approval has been accorded," Shirodkar said. According to Shirodkar, Coco beach has got severely eroded and the rubble stone revetment along the beach is in a dilapidated condition. Last year during the monsoon session of the Assembly, Goa Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte had said that sea erosion has become a major threat for the tourism industry, which needs to be tackled with new concepts. "There is the challenge of sea erosion. It is a threat (to the tourism industry) the way it is taking place. Beaches are getting washed out," Khaunte had said. Naik had then expressed concern that European tourists have stopped visiting the famous Coco beach due to soil erosion and hence locals are facing issues of income source. Shillong, Jan 18 : West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday termed the MDA government in Meghalaya as a "BJP proxy corrupt government", which did nothing for the people of the state. "The BJP is a double-faced party which promises something at the time of elections and does something else after polls," she said while addressing a public meeting in North Garo Hills district in Meghalaya, which will go to polls on February 27. Claiming that her Trinamool is the only party that has the mindset and ability to provide better governance in Meghalaya, which according to her has enormous potentiality and scope to develop tourism and to solve unemployment problems, she said: "What has this MDA government done in the past five years? We challenge them to show their report card on what they did in the past five years. Why is it that after so many years, electricity hasn't reached most parts of Meghalaya? Why is the younger generation not getting any employment opportunities?" Banerjee said that in the upcoming Assembly elections, the Trinamool would come to power to empower the people, uphold the culture, celebrate the sacred land of Meghalaya, and remove the proxy BJP government, which is corrupt and hasn't done anything for the people. The BJP, with two MLAs (including a minister), is part of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government led by National People's Party (NPP) headed by Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma. Trinamool General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee, in his speech, said looking at the love, appreciation, and enthusiasm of the people for his party, the NPP would not be able to win a single seat from Garo Hills. "This public gathering would be the death knell for the corrupt NPP-MDA government," he said and said that if voted to power, the people of the soil would run the government in Meghalaya, unlike those leaders who run governments from the ivory towers of Guwahati and Delhi. "If you want to change this corrupt and proxy BJP government, then Trinamool is the only credible alternative. Our party can provide better governance, as it fulfils the dreams of the youth, women, students and farmers. We want a government for the people, by the people and of the people in Meghalaya." Mamata Banerjee's Wednesday visit to Meghalaya was the second in little over one month. In December, she was on a two-day visit to Shillong where she promised to launch Trinamool's Meghalaya Financial Inclusion for Women Empowerment (MFI-WE) if the party is voted to powers. The Trinamool is the first party in Meghalaya that recently declared their candidates for 52 of the total of 60 seats. Twelve MLAs, led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma (2010-2018) who had won in the 2018 Assembly election as Congress nominees joined the Trinamool in November 2021, making the West Bengal-based party the main opposition in the northeastern state overnight. However, of the 12 Trinamool MLAs, five so far quit to join other parties. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Delhi Police Commissioner, Sanjay Arora held an inter-state coordination meeting with his counterparts from various states with the aim to strengthen cooperation and to address various issues related to preparation for the forthcoming Republic Day-2023 celebrations, an official said on Wednesday. The meeting was attended by senior officers from Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Rajasthan, Chandigarh and J&K, along with senior officers of Delhi Police, the NIA, the NCB, and the IB. "The officers shared intelligence related to terror inputs and the anti-terror measures including border checking, verifications of suspicious elements, etc. Issues related to movement of para-gliders, drones, and other flying objects from the open areas were discussed. Advance information about the movement of any suspicious elements and vehicles was stressed upon. Interstate gangs operating in the NCR and incidents related to supply of illegal firearms and narcotics were also discussed," Delhi Police spokesman Suman Nalwa said. "Traffic restrictions during Republic Day celebrations and steps to check unauthorised intrusion at borders have been planned and officers of other states were requested to cooperate for ensuring the effective implementation of the same," he said. During the meeting the CP also emphasized on various measures for the smooth organisation of Republic Day, more so in view of the upcoming G-20 Summit. The officers present resolved to have increased coordination for policing in the NCR region with emphasis on real time sharing of relevant information and close interaction at all levels in order to ensure a peaceful and incident-free Republic Day. Cupertino : , Jan 18 (IANS) Apple on Wednesday announced second-generation HomePod that delivers next-level acoustics in a gorgeous, iconic design. Packed with Apple innovations and Siri intelligence, HomePod offers advanced computational audio for a groundbreaking listening experience, including support for immersive Spatial Audio tracks. HomePod (2nd generation) is available for Rs 32,900, with availability beginning February 3. The smart speaker is is compatible with iPhone SE (2nd generation) and later, or iPhone 8 and later running iOS 16.3 or later; or iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation) and later, iPad Air (3rd generation) and later, or iPad mini (5th generation) and later running iPadOS 16.3. "Leveraging our audio expertise and innovations, the new HomePod delivers rich, deep bass, natural mid-range, and clear, detailed highs," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With the popularity of HomePod mini, we've seen growing interest in even more powerful acoustics achievable in a larger HomePod. We're thrilled to bring the next generation of HomePod to customers around the world," he added. HomePod is available in white and midnight, a new colour made with 100 per cent recycled mesh fabric, with a colour-matched woven power cable. The S7 chip is combined with software and system-sensing technology to offer even more advanced computational audio that maximizes the full potential of its acoustic system for a groundbreaking listening experience. Users can listen to a catalog of over 100 million songs with Apple Music, enjoy Spatial Audio with a single HomePod or as a stereo pair, or create a captivating home theater experience with Apple TV 4K. Two or more HomePod or HomePod mini speakers unlock a variety of powerful features, said Apple. HomePod can also recognise up to six voices, so each member of the home can hear their personal playlists, ask for reminders, and set calendar events. HomePod easily pairs with Apple TV 4K for a powerful home theatre experience. Users can also intuitively navigate, view, and organise accessories with the redesigned Home app, which offers new categories for climate, lights, and security, enables easy setup and control of the smart home, and includes a new multicamera view. Kohima, Jan 18 : Hours after the dates for Assembly polls in three northeastern states, including Nagaland were announced, the influential Konyak Union on Wednesday, rejecting the state government appeal, reiterated to boycott the February 27 elections until the Central government grants the demand for a separate 'Frontier Nagaland' state. Claiming that the six districts -- Mon, Tuensang, Kiphire, Longleng, Noklak and Shamator -- have been neglected for years, the influential Eastern Nagaland People's Organisation (ENPO) has been demanding a separate state since 2010. A statement of the Konyak Union, on Wednesday evening said that in its emergency meeting, it resolved and reiterated to remain steadfast and firm to the August 26, 2022 ENPO resolution to abstain from participating in the 2023 Nagaland Assembly election until the Centre grant the demand of a separate statehood befittingly. "The house further resolved to permanently expel those individuals filing nomination to participate in the Assembly election from the Konyak soil and the village of the person filing nomination shall be held solely responsible. The KU has also fully endorsed and empowered the Konyak Nyupu Sheko Khong (KNSK), Konyak Students' Union (KSU) and Village Councils to fully implement and act upon the resolution," the statement said. The meeting was attended and signed by the chairman of Konyak villages, apex civil society organisations, Konyak Union Executive Council members, KU advisory board members, senior leaders and intellectuals, the statement added. The United Democratic Alliance (UDA) government, led by Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and including the Bharatiya Janata Party, had on a number of occasions asked the ENPO to reconsider their demand for a separate state and not to boycott the Assembly elections. Nagaland state Congress President K. Therie said that his party strongly opposed the demand for the creation of separate state of 'Frontier Nagaland', raised by the ENPO. "We do not want further division of Nagaland. However, the areas falling under the proposed 'Frontier Nagaland' are backward due to the misgovernance of the present government," Therie told IANS. ENPO Secretary W. Manwang Konyak said that they are firm on boycotting the assembly polls if their demand is not met before the elections. To a question about the Nagaland government's appeal, the ENPO leader told IANS: "We are waiting for the response from the Central government. The Union Home Minister will again come to Tuensang in Nagaland at the end of this month and is expected to visit our region to discuss the separate state demand." Khammam : , Jan 18 (IANS) Telangana Chief Minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday said Agnipath scheme for army recruitments will be scrapped if his party comes to power at the Centre or plays a key role in formation of the next government at the Centre. Criticising the Agnipath scheme announced last year by the BJP government at the Centre, he said this was disintegrating the defence system. He promised that the next government would scrap the scheme and restore the old system saying the army should have a standard. KCR, as Chandrasekhar Rao is popularly called, was addressing the mammoth inaugural public meeting of BRS, which was also addressed by Chief Ministers of Delhi, Punjab and Kerala and leaders of different political parties. Claiming that the public meeting marks the beginning of a new change in the country, he said BRS would soon announce its agenda. KCR gave a glimpse of BRS' vision for India. He promised that if BRS is voted to power in 2024, it would make India free from power cuts in two years. He also promised supply of clean drinking water, free power to all farmers across the country, implementation of Rythu Bandh, a scheme of Telangana government under which farmers are provided investment support of Rs 10,000 per acre every year, and also replication of Dalit Bandhu which provides Rs 10 lakh assistance to every Dalit family to start any business or economic activity of its choice. Stating that India has lost direction, he said there was politics on every issue. He urged people to ponder what is the aim of India and why it is lagging behind despite having abundant natural and human resources to progress. "Today India is seeking loans and help from the USA and others. India is full of assets and abundant resources. But the country is seeking assistance from others. Geographically, USAA is big but it has only 29 per cent ofA farmland while China has only 16 per cent farmland. In India, out of 83 crore acres of land, 41 crore acres is cultivable. 4,000 billion cubic/1.40 lakh TMC water is available in India. 50 per cent of available water evaporated. Still, we have 70 TMC of water for utilisation. We have land, water, solar power, humid weather in coastal and land-locked states like Telangana. India also has cold areas like Punjab. We also have 139 crore hard working manpower," he said. Citing the figures of Central Water Commission, he said 70,000 TMC is available in India but the country is using only 20,000 TMC. "After 75 years of independence, India is still facing a drinking water crisis. The country is lacking aims and objectives. Only a few projects have been taken up. Tribunals were constituted but no action was taken in resolving water disputes. When will we complete the projects and provide irrigation water and improve agriculture," he asked. "Only question to the nation is shall we not utilise all the water available to address the drinking water crisis and irrigation. To achieve this, the BRS has been created. Like the Telangana movement, BRS will take up another movement in India to achieve the goal," he said. KCR said all states except Telangana were experiencing power cuts. The total installed power capacity in India is 10 lakh MW but the country is not using more than 2 lakh MW. He promised to make the country free from power cuts in two years. He blamed both BJP and Congress for incompetency of their governments to address basic issues. He remarked that they engage only in verbal fights. Lashing out at the BJP government at the Centre, KCR remarked that its slogan is socialisation of losses and privatisation of the profit. "You policy is privatisation and our policy is nationalisation," he said, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will go home and the next government will save LIC which has assets of Rs 42 lakh crore. KCR also alleged that the Modi government is selling Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and declared that the BRS will save the plant from privatisation. The BRS chief also promised that 25 lakh families across the country will be given Dalit Bandhu benefits every year. Stating that women empowerment helps to grow the country, he said the BRS proposed 35 per cent reservation to women in legislative bodies. Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) vice president Tendai Biti has blasted the Zanu PF led government for paying lip service to the constitution, democracy and rule of law while using repressive state apparatus to infringe civil liberties. Biti's sentiments come at a time opposition members are facing a fierce clamp down from the new regime led by Emmerson Mnangagwa who took over from the late long time ruler Robert Mugabe in a military in 2017. Tension has already gripped the nation as cases of political violence soar ahead of this year's general elections. Commenting on the latest arrest of CCC organising secretary Amos Chibaya alongside 24 party activists, Biti said Zanu PF was clearly exhibiting its fascist tendencies. "The arrest of CCC champions including our organiser Amos Chibaya at a private meeting over the weekend reflects the fascist paranoia arresting the regime," said Biti on Twitter. "With our meetings being banned and our leaders being jailed, the regime no longer pays any pretense to democracy and rule of law," he added. Pro-democracy activist Makomborero Haruzivishe labelled the recent arrest of his fellow party members as state sanctioned political terror. "The weaponisation of criminal procedures to persecute those exercising their basic rights, such as activists participating in protests/opposition organising political activities amounts to state sanctioned political terror," said Haruzivishe. Of late, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP)have been instrumental in the banning of CCC rallies and gatherings across the country. Chibaya and company were arrested at fellow legislator, Costa Machingauta's residence in Budiriro while in a private meeting. They are being accused of breaching the Maintenance of Peace and Order Act (MOPA) and still in detention awaiting bail determination. The arrest came barely a week after a video of alleged Zanu PF supporters bashing CCC elderly members in Murewa went viral on social media. Events in Murewa were part of an ogre of political violence that have rocked the nation since last year when more than 2000 incidents of political disturbances including two deaths were recorded. Violence against opposition CCC members in 2022 resulted in the death of party members Moreblessing Ali and Mboneni Ncube. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said on Wednesday that it has registered four fresh cases on the request of the Uttarakhand government and the government of India in a case pertaining to encroachment of government lands and carrying out illegal constructions on them. After lodging the cases, the CBI is now conducting searches at around 20 places in the state, including in Dehradun, at the premises of the accused persons. Earlier, cases were registered in this respect at the Rajpur police station in Dehradun before the CBI took over the probe. The accused in conspiracy with others allegedly encroached on government land and carried out illegal constructions and further grabbed the land of others by falsification of sales deeds. Thus, made illegal gains and caused losses to the government and other private individuals, the CBI said. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Days after the Delhi High Court granted interim bail to former Uttar Pradesh BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, who was sentenced to imprisonment for life for raping a minor girl in Unnao in 2017, the survivor has opposed the decision. The high court, on January 16, granted two weeks' interim bail to Sengar from January 27 to February 10 in view of his daughter's marriage. The survivor, via a video and written statement, has expressed her apprehensions to President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, claiming that her and her family members' lives are in threat. In her letter shared on social media, she claimed that her uncle could not get an interim bail for her sister's marriage due to a conspiracy hatched by Sengar's family members. The HC on the same day of granting bail also adjourned Sengar's bail plea in the custodial death case of the survivor's father. Counsel representing Sengar had requested Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma's bench to impose the same condition as Justice Mukta Gupta and allow the bail application. The victim's counsel had submitted before the court that a copy of the application may be supplied. The court had then directed the counsel for Sengar to supply a copy of the application to the victim and adjourned the matter for January 19. In the rape matter, Justice Gupta had raised a concern saying that Sengar daughter's wedding ceremonies have been scheduled for so many days and everything can be completed in a few days. Counsel representing Sengar had submitted before the court that he is the father and the ceremony dates are given by the priest. Two senior advocates, namely N. Hariharan and P.K. Dubey, who appeared for Sengar, had informed the court that as Sengar is the only male member in the family, he has to make all the wedding arrangements, which are going to be held in Gorakhpur and Lucknow. Meanwhile, counsel representing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had said that a status report has been filed by the agency and it was found that two halls have been booked for the wedding rituals. The HC, on December 22, 2022, had issued notice and directed the CBI to verify the facts of Sengar's bail plea and place a status report on record. On December 19, Sengar had sought two months' interim bail from the court for attending his daughter's wedding, which is scheduled on February 8, 2023, and ceremonies will start on January 18. Sengar's plea against the trial court's order in the rape case is pending in the high court, with him having sought reliefs like quashing of the trial court's December 16, 2019 judgment, which convicted him, and the December 20, 2019 order sentencing him to imprisonment till the rest of his life. The trial court had convicted Sengar under various provisions, including Section 376 (2) (rape committed by a public servant) of IPC and also imposed an exemplary fine of Rs 25 lakh on him. The trial started on August 5, 2019, after the Supreme Court on August 1 directed to transfer all five cases related to the matter from Unnao to Delhi. The top court had directed to hold trial on a daily basis and complete it within 45 days. New Delhi, Jan 18 : India has reiterated its position as a resilient economy providing stable policy to the global investors at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos. India's focus areas at WEF this year are investment opportunities, infrastructural landscape and its inclusive and sustainable growth story. Taking forward the strategy and presence of India during WEF Annual Meeting in May 2022, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has taken the initiative to further strengthen India's presence through three lounges with focus on investment opportunity, sustainability and inclusive approach to compliment economic growth official sources said. In addition, the presence of state lounges of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana along with business lounges of HCL, Wipro, Infosys and TCS have added strength to India's presence on the Davos promenade. The entire India contingent of the central government, state government, businesses and officials have put together a common front to present India at the global state. The three lounges were inaugurated by women and child development minister Smriti Irani, power minister R.K. Singh and health minister Mansukh Mandaviya. San Francisco, Jan 18 : Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has claimed that hackers stole nearly $415 million from its platform. FTX CEO John J. Ray III said that about $323 million was hacked from its international exchange and $90 million from its US platform. "We are making important progress in our efforts to maximise recoveries, and it has taken a Herculean investigative effort from our team to uncover this preliminary information," he said. "We ask our stakeholders to understand that this information is still preliminary and subject to change. We will provide additional information as soon as we are able to do so," he added. A total of approximately $5.5 billion of liquid assets have been identified, comprising $1.7 billion of cash, $3.5 billion of crypto assets, and $0.3 billion of securities. With respect to FTX.com, the company identified approximately $1.6 billion of digital assets associated with FTX.com, $323 million "of which was subject to unauthorised third-party transfers post-petition". With respect to the FTX US exchange, the company identified approximately $181 million of digital assets associated with FTX US, "$90 million of which was subject to unauthorised third-party transfers". Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has pleaded not guilty to fraud and money laundering charges. San Francisco, Jan 18 : Streaming giant Netflix is reportedly hiring for a flight attendant for one of its private jets -- with a salary of up to $3,85,000 (about Rs 3 crore) a year. The company says it is looking for candidates with "independent judgement, discretion and outstanding customer service skills", reports BBC. "The overall market range for this role is typically $60,000-$385,000. This market range is based on total compensation (vs only base salary), which is in line with our compensation philosophy," Netflix said in a job listing on its website. Moreover, Netflix mentioned that salary is determined by a number of compensation factors, including an employee's skills and experience. The role will be based in San Jose in the US which will require travel in and beyond the country, the report mentioned. "The Netflix Aviation department provides exceptional, safe, confidential air transportation," said the company. Further, the advertisement states, the team helps Netflix reach more people more efficiently and effectively so that the company can continue to bring joy to the world. Meanwhile, Netflix added a new game to its mobile game lineup titled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge" which is a modern take on the classic TMNT arcade games. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) wrote to Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud on Wednesday, raising the issue of non-hearing of two matters pertaining to the "lives and livelihood" of its members. Senior advocate and SCBA President Vikas Singh, in the letter, said the two matters are concerning the " the lives and livelihood of the members of the SCBA and non-hearing of these matters is a serious concern". "We are now getting a feeling that the SCBA, since it has never resorted to strike in its history, is not being given its due importance. Given this unfair treatment, we hope and trust that a situation will not be created to force us to resort to some dignified way of protest," he said. In the letter, Singh said he is expressing the aspirations of the Bar which only wants to be treated like any other litigant without being accorded any priority. One of the matters is a plea filed by the Bar body seeking a direction to the Ministry of Urban Development to grant permission for conversion of 1.33 acres allotted to the apex court near ITO as chamber blocks for lawyers. The letter added, "The SCBA being an equal stakeholder in the institution of justice dispensation cannot be construed as stranger in asserting the listing and hearing of a matter related to welfare of its members, in ordinary course. However, by declining the request made by the SCBA for hearing of the matters, the SCBA is being treated worse than an ordinary litigant". The other case is connected with the urgent repair of 'Supreme Towers', constructed for the SCBA Multi-State Group Housing Society Ltd in Noida, where over 700 lawyers reside with their families. Kolkata, Jan 18 : A day after a row erupted in Bengal over the recently-released compilation of test-papers for secondary examination released by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Examination (WBBSE) having a question on 'Azad Kashmir', the Centre on Wednesday sought an explanatory report from the state government on this count. WBBSE releases the test-paper compilation every year, which contains Class 10 final test examination (pre-board) questions of some leading schools. The compilation acts as a suggestion for the candidates appearing for the Class 10 board exams. However, page 132 of this year's test-paper carried a question paper of Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Vidyamandir, Malda, with a question that asks the students to point out 'Azad Kashmir' on the map. Sources in the state government said that a communique from the Union Education Ministry has reached the state secretariat, seeking an explanatory note from the West Bengal education department on this count. In the communique, it has been stated that the matter of 'Azad Kashmir' is an extremely sensitive issue and the Union government does not recognise 'Pakistan occupied Kashmir' as 'Azad Kashmir'. "The Education Ministry has sought clarification from the state government as to how such a sensitive issue managed to find a place in the test-paper," said a state education department official, who refused to be named. Meanwhile, sensing the gravity of the matter, the state education department has already initiated an internal probe into the matter. Sources said that a total of nine teachers have been identified and cautioned in the matter by the WBBSE. Out of the nine teachers cautioned, six are members of the board's history syllabus committee. A letter of caution has also been forwarded to the headmaster of Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Vidyamandir, whose question paper carrying the controversial question on 'Azad Kashmir' featured in the test-paper. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The National Commission for Women (NCW) on Wednesday sought a complete ban on the sale of unregulated acid in open market and compensation for survivors of acid attacks at a meeting of nodal officers. At the meeting, there were discussions, and sharing of suggestions to resolve the issues regarding sale and purchase of acid and other corrosive substances, compensation for survivors, and their treatment and rehabilitation, among other topics. NCW Chairperson Rekha Sharma emphasised on the urgent need to bring an end to unregulated sale of acid and other corrosive substances and the need for proper rehabilitation of survivors. "Despite the Supreme Court ban, the truth is that acid still remains available for sale. It must be ensured that strict provisions are kept in place to stop the unregulated sale of acid. No society can be considered civilised if it does not act to prevent such a heinous atrocity on women," she said. Some of the recommendations given during the meeting are conducting an extensive campaign to raise awareness about gender sensitivity in schools, universities, and among law enforcement and other institutions, imposing strict regulations on sale of acid, with District Magistrates being the only authority to grant licenses, confirming stocks after 15 days, and requiring regular reporting on the sales of acid. It also recommended treating victims of petrol and diesel attacks in the same way as victims of acid attacks in terms of compensation. The panel also suggested providing financial support to private hospitals for free medical care for acid attack victims, reservation in government jobs for acid attack survivors, and setting up a corpus fund for them through corporate social responsibility. Calling on the Censor Board to restrict glorification of revenge plots in movies, streamlining the compensation process for victims, enabling more rehabilitation and employment opportunities for survivors of acid attacks were also some of the suggestions made during the meeting. The Commission said that it will be taking all the recommendations discussed during the meeting forward to ensure that all necessary steps are taken to help women affected by acid attacks and for prevention of such cases. New Delhi, 18th Jan 18 : The Editors Guild of India on Wednesday expressed its deep concern on amendment to IT Rules 2021 made by the IT Ministry, giving authority to PIB to determine veracity of news reports, and directing online intermediaries and social media platforms to take down content deemed as "fake", terming it akin to censorship. "The Editors Guild of India is deeply concerned by the draft amendment made to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MEITY) that gives authority to the Press Information Bureau (PIB) to determine the veracity of news reports, and anything termed 'fake' will have to be taken down by online intermediaries, including social media platforms. The amendment was uploaded on the Ministry's website on January 17, 2023," it said in a statement. "At the outset, determination of fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government and will result in the censorship of the press. Already multiple laws exist to deal with content that is found to be factually incorrect. This new procedure basically serves to make it easier to muzzle the free press, and will give sweeping powers to the PIB, or any 'other agency authorised by the Central Government for fact checking', to force online intermediaries to take down content that the government may find problematic," it added. Further, the Guild said that the words "in respect of any business of the Central Government" seems to give the government a carte blanche to determine what is fake or not with respect to its own work. "This will stifle legitimate criticism of the government and will have an adverse impact on the ability of the press to hold governments to account, which is a vital role it plays in a democracy," it said. The Guild had raised its deep concerns with the IT Rules when they were first introduced in March 2021, claiming that they empower the Union government to block, delete, or modify published news anywhere in the country without any judicial oversight. Various provisions in these rules have the potential to place unreasonable restrictions on digital news media, and consequently media at large, it said. The Guild urged the Ministry to expunge this new amendment, and to initiate meaningful consultations with press bodies, media organisations, and other stakeholders, on the regulatory framework for digital media, so as to not undermine press freedom. Hyderabad, Jan 18 : New Zealand off-spin all-rounder Michael Bracewell produced a stunning counter-attack through a 78-ball 140 but his fightback went in vain as India won by 12 runs in the first ODI to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, here on Wednesday. After Shubman Gill produced a magnificent display of batsmanship to make 208 off 149 balls, laced with 19 fours and nine sixes, and becoming youngest batter to hit a double century in men's ODIs as India made a massive 349/8, New Zealand were in trouble at 131/6. Bracewell, who hit 12 fours and ten sixes in his 78-ball knock, took charge of the chase and added 162 off just 102 balls for the seventh wicket with Mitchell Santner, who made 57 off 45 balls. India were put into massive pressure and it needed wickets from local lad Mohammed Siraj, who took 4/46, apart from Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur taking out a wicket each at the end to give the hosts' 1-0 lead in three-match series. Bracewell slashed, pulled and swept well against spinners while Santner gained momentum by dispatching anything overpitched and short to the boundary rope off Hardik and Washington Sundar. Shardul was brought back in the 37th over and Bracewell hammered over extra cover for four, before getting his fifty with a pull over mid-wicket for six. He continued to be severe on Shardul and Kuldeep Yadav, playing with the field and getting his boundaries with ease, with Santner joining in the fun too. Bracewell then attacked Washington, hitting him for sixes over long-off and wide long-on as New Zealand needed 103 off the last ten overs. Mohammed Shami was brought back to end the partnership, but Bracewell moved across to scoop over fine leg for six. He then brought up his century in 58 balls with a six smoked cleanly over long-on off Shami in the 43rd over. Santner crunched three boundaries off fast bowlers to get his fifty. Siraj brought India back in the match by having Santner miscue pull to deep mid-wicket and on the very next ball, got one to nip back in to rattle Henry Shipley's stumps in the 46th over. But Bracewell was standing tall, swinging off Hardik for sixes over mid-wicket and square leg in the 47th over, before taking a four and six off Shami in the 48th over. Hardik kept hopes of an Indian win high by getting Lockie Ferguson to hole out to long-off in the 49th over, conceding just four runs. With 20 needed off the final over, Bracewell hammered a short ball from Shardul over wide long-on for six before conceding a wide. Shardul finished things for India by trapping Bracewell plumb lbw with a dipping yorker. As DRS confirmed the ball hitting the stumps, India took a sigh of relief. Chasing 350 was always going to be an uphill task for New Zealand. Devon Conway and Finn Allen got going with a couple of boundaries. Siraj, playing an international match at his home ground for the first time, provided the breakthrough by having Conway pull a short ball to fine leg. Henry Nicholls got runs by smashing a brace of boundaries off Shami while Allen feasted on Hardik short balls, pulling through vacant mid-wicket region for three fours and a six. Eventually, Shardul took out a dangerous Allen with a short ball pulled straight to deep mid-wicket. After Nicholls swept off Kuldeep, the left-arm wrist-spinner bounced back on the very next delivery by castling him with a googly. He then took out Daryl Mitchell in his next over, with the ball spinning in and trapping the right-hander lbw in his crease. Some tight, disciplined bowling from both ends and asking rate climbing meant New Zealand continued to crumble. Glenn Phillips looked to slog off Shami, but the ball seamed back in and hit the stumps after ricocheting off the batter's back leg. Siraj struck on the fourth ball of his second spell, getting some extra bounce and forcing Tom Latham to pull towards a sliding deep square leg. From there, Bracewell and Santner fought back in stunning fashion, only for it to fall short. Brief Scores: India 349/8 in 50 overs (Shubman Gill 208, Rohit Sharma 34; Daryl Mitchell 2/30, Henry Shipley 2/74) beat New Zealand 337 all out in 49.2 overs (Michael Bracewell 140, Mitchell Santner 57, Mohammed Siraj 4/46, Kuldeep Yadav 2/43) by 12 runs New Delhi, Jan 18 : India's Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday lauded the efforts of life sciences organisations during the Covid-19 pandemic in a Round Table on R&D and Innovation Opportunities in Life Sciences Sector at Davos. He also underlined India's role in driving better health outcomes across the world, being a large and reliable supplier of aiordable and high-quality drugs. While reiterating India's strong and growing life sciences ecosystem and its proud moniker of "the pharmacy of the world", he stated that India provided about 60 per cent of global vaccine supplies and 20-22 per cent of generic exports and further supported the global battle against the Covid-19 pandemic by providing essential drugs to about 185 countries. Giving an elaborate account of developed ecosystem of pharma sector including bio-pharmaceuticals and biosimilars and developing ecosystem for sunrise medical devices sector and growing Indian traditional medicines sector, he expressed confidence that the intervention of the government through production-linked incentive schemes will give the desired boost in the domestic manufacturing to make the country a global champion of reliable supplier of quality medicines and medical devices. Mandaviya shared three major focus areas of government that will make the country a global destination for R&D in pharma and medtech sector in 2047 - strengthening the regulatory framework that facilitates innovation and research in product development and expanding the traditional regulatory objectives of safety and quality; incentivising investments (both government and private) in innovation through a mix of fiscal and non-fiscal measures, thereby matching risks with remunerative financing options; and creating a facilitatory ecosystem designed to support innovation and cross-sectoral research as a strong institutional foundation for sustainable growth in the sector such as robust industry-academia linkages, collaborating across institutions and sectors and building innovation infrastructure. He remarked that the commitment to Universal Healthcare and the attention to schemes such as Ayushman Bharat - Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) and Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) etc., will create the required demand to indigenously develop cutting-edge products and technologies. He cited the view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that focus on innovation and research in pharma and medtech sector is very critical for Atma Nirbhar Bharat. He requested the Indian pharma-medtech firms to move out of their comfort zone and adopt innovation as a driving feature of their development strategies. He stated that the industry, academic institutions, and the government should work in tandem to create an ecosystem for innovation in both sectors in order for India to become a leader in drug discovery and innovative medical devices. Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla lauded the Indian government's extensive response in delivering reforms in the Indian healthcare ecosystem. "We must highlight and market the different initiatives and reforms, including different investment promotion schemes such as production-linked incentives on forums such as World Economic Forum at Davos," he said. Valsad : , Jan 18 (IANS) A second year student at the H.P. Shroff Arts College in Gujarat's Valsad collapsed in the campus on Wednesday and was rushed to hospital by college professors, where he was declared dead of severe cardiac arrest. This was the second such case after a Class 8 student died in Rajkot due to the same reason. College Principal informed the trustees of Shree Nutan Kelavani Mandal that "our college's S.Y.B.A's fourth semester student Aakash Patel had died today". A Valsad Town police station officer told IANS, according to the statement of college professor Chetan Aahir and Mukesh Chauhan, Aakash collapsed and they rushed him in their private vehicle to the Kasturba Hospital, where doctors declared him dead. The student's father Dinesh Patel, in his statement to the police, said that his son suffered from no health issues, but, he does not intend to register any complaint. The doctors' primary diagnosis is that the student died of severe cardiac arrest, and the body was sent for a post-mortem examination, the police officer said. Glimpses of rehearsal of Republic Day 2023 parade on KartavyaPath, New Delhi on Wednesday, 18 Jan 2023. Image Source: IANS News Glimpses of rehearsal of Republic Day 2023 parade on KartavyaPath, New Delhi on Wednesday, 18 Jan 2023. Image Source: IANS News Glimpses of rehearsal of Republic Day 2023 parade on KartavyaPath, New Delhi on Wednesday, 18 Jan 2023. Image Source: IANS News Glimpses of rehearsal of Republic Day 2023 parade on KartavyaPath, New Delhi on Wednesday, 18 Jan 2023. Image Source: IANS News New Delhi, 18 Jan : The nation will celebrate its 74th Republic Day on January 26. And this year, the celebrations have been planned reflecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Jan Bhagidari'. The Republic Day celebrations are going to be a week-long affair commencing January 23, the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and culminate on January 30, which is observed as Martyrs' Day to commemorate the death of Mahatma Gandhi, said Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane. Twenty-three tableaux from 17 states and Union Territories and six from various ministries and departments, depicting the nation's rich cultural heritage, economic and social progress and strong internal and external security, will roll down the Kartavya Path during the Republic Day parade. Reflecting the Janbhagidari theme, 'Bharat Parv' will be organised on the Gyan Path in front of Red Fort from January 26-31 by the Ministry of Tourism. It will showcase Republic Day tableaux, performances by the military bands, cultural performances, food courts and crafts bazaar. The celebrations will be a tribute to Indian National Army (INA) veterans, and the tribal communities that participated in the freedom movement. Aramane said that many new events are being organised as part of the Republic Day celebrations this year. These include military tattoo and tribal dance festival; Veer Gatha 2.0; second edition of Vande Bharatam dance competition; performances by military and Coast Guard bands at the National War Memorial; an all-India school band competition; a drone show, and projection mapping during the Beating the Retreat ceremony. The details of the events are as follows: A military tattoo and tribal dance festival will be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on January 23 and 24. The Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs are jointly organising the event, with Indian Coast Guard being the coordinating agency. It will witness 10 military tattoo performances and 20 tribal dances. The Indian armed forces will showcase horse show, khukri dance, gatka, mallakhamb, kalaripayattu, thang-ta, motorcycle display, air warrior drill, and martial arts. Twenty tribal dance troupes from all across the country will perform during the military tattoo event. Agartala, Jan 18 : Responding to the influential tribal-based party Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance's (TIPRA) appeal, the ruling BJP's ally, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) agreed to hold discussions on contesting the February 16 Assembly election together for the all-round development and protection of the tribals. IPFT's working President and state minister Prem Kumar Reang, in a letter to TIPRA supremo and former royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman, said: "I express my sincere gratitude for the proposal to unite IPFT and TIPRA in any form for solving the question of survivability and existence of the Tiprasas with an endeavour of achieving our demand for Tipraland and Greater Tipraland state." TIPRA sources said that the leaders of the two parties would soon meet and discuss the strategies to contest the elections together. Deb Barman said that the TIPRA, the IPFT, and all other like-minded parties can fight the upcoming Assembly polls together in a common symbol for the greater cause of the tribals, who constitute one third of Tripura's little over four million population. "Most political parties and their leaders are fighting the elections for the posts and power, we are fighting to develop and protect the indigenous tribals and their future," Deb Barman said. Talking to IANS over phone from Shillong, the TIPRA chief said that for the greater cause of Tripura in general, and tribals in particular, all like-minded communities must come together to achieve the goal. "After elections, the leaders would go back to Delhi, but the backward and poverty stricken people of Tripura have to suffer. Assam, Mizoram, and other northeastern states have been developed but Tripura remains backward," Deb Barman said. Indicating fielding candidates in 40 of the state's total 60 seats, he is very optimistic to secure a win in maximum seats in the elections. The IPFT, since 2009, has been demanding to make the areas under the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) as a full-fledged state while the TIPRA, since 2021, has been demanding elevation of the TTAADC areas by granting of 'Greater Tipraland State' under Article 2 and 3 of the Constitution. The TIPRA is now ruling the politically-important 30-member TTAADC, which has jurisdiction over two-third of Tripura's 10,491 square km area and is home to over 12,16,000 people, of which around 84 per cent are tribals, making the autonomous council a mini-Assembly. The BJP, in alliance with the tribal-based party IPFT, came to power in the 2018 assembly polls thrashing the CPI-M led Left, which governed the northeastern state for 35 year in two phases (1978-1988 and 1993-2018). Jaipur, Jan 18 : BJP National President J.P. Nadda is scheduled to arrive here on January 23 to address the State Working Committee meeting. This would be Nadda's first visit to Rajasthan after getting extension as the party's national president. As the Assembly elections are to be held in Rajasthan after 10 months, the visit of the BJP chief is being seen as a preparation for the polls. According to a source, since Nadda is in charge of the elections to be held here, his visit is considered to be a quite important one. Nadda will stay in Jaipur on 24 and 25 as well. Sources said that strengthening the BJP in Rajasthan and getting all the big faces together in the elections is one of the prime objectives of the party, and keeping this in mind, Nadda will meet the leaders in the State Working Committee. Also, the message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be shared with the leaders of Rajasthan. Sources said that state in-charge Arun Singh, V. Satish, former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje along with Union Ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Arjun Meghwal, Kailash Chowdhary, and all office bearers of the party in the State Working Committee meeting will be present on the occasion. New Delhi, Jan 18 : The announcement of elections in Nagaland has evoked strong reactions from various tribal groups and civil society leaders. The Konyak Union, a key group of Konyak tribe in Mon district in Eastern Nagaland, on Wednesday threatened to "permanently expel" those individuals filing nominations to participate in the ensuing assembly elections. As per the schedule announced by the Election Commission on Wednesday, January 18, Nagaland goes to voting on February 27 along with Meghalaya. CEC Rajiv Kumar said that Tripura will go for polls on February 16 and counting of votes for all three states will take place on March 2. On the other hand, within four days of issuing a joint statement with the umbrella body, NNPG, the NSCN-IM said today -- "The Nagas do not acknowledge any agreements signed under the Indian Constitution". The NSCN-IM statement issued on Wednesday, January 18, negates the January 14 so-called joint statement and the 'pledge' to work together. On January 14, the joint statement signed by NSCN-IM chairman Q Tuccu and N Kitovi Zhimomi had declared "unconditional commitment to collaborate on the basis of our respective agreements (Framework Agreement of 2015 and the Agreed Position of 2017) for the resolution of the Naga historical and political rights with Govt of India". In 1998, the NSCN-IM had favoured a boycott of polls but this year it has not said anything publicly. But the group allegedly has a nexus with some state politicians. The Eastern Nagaland Students Federation has asked any 'official/office bearer/member of ENSF, Federating units and its units 'holding any designated post to resign or withdraw from any political entity and affiliation' at the earliest. The term of Legislative Assemblies of three states - Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura are due to expire on March 12, March 15 and March 22, 2023, respectively. Elections will be held for all 60 assembly segments in all three states. The BJP is in power in all three states. It heads the coalition government in Tripura while it shares power with regional partners NDPP and NPF in Nagaland and Conrad Sangma-led NPP in Meghalaya. The CEC announced that as many as 376 polling stations across the three states will be managed by women staff and even security will be catered to by women personnel. In Nagaland and Meghalaya, the last day of filing nominations is February 7 while in Tripura, it will be January 30. Counting of votes takes place in all three states on March 2. In Meghalaya, both NPP and BJP are going to contest the polls separately. In Nagaland, BJP has agreed to play second fiddle and contest only 20 candidates as against 40 by the NDPP in the 60-member assembly. Analysts say many in these north eastern Christian dominant states such as Nagaland and Meghalaya will prefer BJP hoping to accelerate development. In fact, the Nagaland unit leaders have repeatedly urged the party high command to review the 20-40 arrangements. The just concluded polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and this year's elections in three northeastern states and also Mizoram and later in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and also in Karnataka will set the ball rolling for 2024 general elections. In Tripura, which was once a communist forte, the saffron party will hope for an easier contest with rivals Congress and CPI-M marginalised. A new tribal-based party, however, may make a difference in about 20 seats. The BJP's mega promise in the northeast is to provide a corruption-free government focused on people's socio economic development. The hilly state of Meghalaya has nearly 3 million people with 75 per cent Christian population. The NPP of Conrad Sangma in Meghalaya is faced with an anti incumbency and a series of corruption allegations. The Congress was in power for 15 years till it was ousted in 2018; but the grand old party has lost veterans such as Mukul Sangma to Trinamool and the party base has crumbled too. Christians, who make up 90 per cent of Nagaland's 1.95 million people, in 2018 showed preference to the BJP when the party could win 12 seats out of 20 seats it fought. In fact, BJP's strike rate was better than NDPP led by incumbent Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio. The NDPP had contested 40 but could win only 18 seats. The Central Nagaland region comprising 25 seats and especially Mokokchung district is at present witnessing a pro-saffron wave even for this year's polls. However, the announcement of poll schedules will be shocking for a large section of civil society in Nagaland and also pro-Solution NNPG. Now that the moral code of conduct will come into play in Nagaland and two other states, there could be issues about demand for a separate state in Eastern Nagaland as despite talks being held the centre may not be able to make any policy announcement. There are as many as 20 assembly seats in the Eastern Nagaland region and the influential Eastern Nagaland People's Organisation (ENPO) had earlier threatened to boycott the polls in their region. (Nirendra Dev is a New Delhi-based journalist. He is also author of books, 'The Talking Guns: North East India' and 'Modi to Moditva: An Uncensored Truth'. Views are personal) Bengaluru, Jan 18 : Members of State Contractors Association staged a big protest on Wednesday here ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Karnataka visit on Thursday, alleging harassment by the BJP ministers for commission and demanding release of their pending bills amounting to Rs 25,000 crore. Thousands of contractors from across the state have slammed the ruling BJP over "40 per cent commission", saying that they are staging symbolic protests to send a warning signal to the government. If the pending bills are not cleared by the end of this month, contractors will stop all work in the state and stage a protest, the agitating contractors warned. The government's assurance during the last protest has remained only as an assurance, as it has not kept the promises regarding payment of bills, and not a single rupee has been cleared in the pending bills, the protestors alleged. If questioned on corruption, the ruling BJP establishment will send the whistle blower to jail, they alleged, adding that the clearance of pending bills is delayed by seeking unnecessary technical details. State Contractors' Association President Kempanna stated that he had handed over all documents relating to 40 per cent commission scandal being handed over to the advocate and, in turn, they will be submitted to the court. Apart from the pending bills, local contractors are not getting work under the ruling BJP in the state, he alleged. New Delhi, Jan 18 : Actor Jacqueline Fernandez on Wednesday told a Delhi court in the Rs 200 crore extortion case involving conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar, that he had played with her emotions and made her life "hell". In the case being heard in the Patiala House courts, she claimed that her instincts told her that she is being taken for a ride when his aide Pinky Irani introduced him to her as "a government official". According to Jacqueline's statement, he had introduced himself as the owner of Sun TV and claimed (late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister) J. Jayalalithaa was his aunt. "Chandrashekhar said he was a big fan, and said I should do films in south India too, and as the owner of Sun TV, they had many projects lined up. We should try to work together in south Indian movies. "Sukesh misled me, ruined my career and my livelihood," she said. Jacqueline said that she only later got to know he was arrested for impersonating senior officials of the Home and the Law Ministries. She claimed that she got to know that his real name only after she got aware of his criminal background. The actor said that she was cheated by Irani as she never disclosed his background to her. "Pinky Irani was aware of Chandrashekhar's activity and background. But she never disclosed this to me," she said. The same court, on January 16, had issued notice to Enforcement Directorate (ED) on an application moved by the actor asking permission to fly to Dubai post January 27 for professional work. She had made an urgent request for hearing. The court, hence, listed the matter for next hearing on January 25. Jacqueline, in December last year, had moved a plea seeking to travel abroad to visit her ill mother in Bahrain. Howbeit, she withdrew it as the court wasn't willing to allow her to travel abroad. Chandrashekhar allegedly extorted money from politicians, celebrities and businessmen. He duped former pharma company Ranbaxy owner Shivinder Mohan Singh's wife Aditi Singh of Rs 200 crore. He had allegedly sent super expensive gifts to Jacqueline, while he also booked a chartered flight for her from Mumbai to Chennai during his bail period. Moreover, according to the ED, it is suspected that alleged conman had sent huge chunks of money extorted from Singh to her. New Delhi, Jan 19 : On the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the office bearers' meeting last year, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) will held a 'Village Sampark Yatra' in few states across the country from January 20. According to a source, "BJYM is going to start 'Village Sampark Yatra' from January 20. Our young karyakartas will go to the border villages in Gujarat, Rajastan, West Bengal, Assam and Tripura to study the development works carried out by the Narendra Modi-led Central government." "BJYM will talk to the youngsters there on social and economic development issues. It will also hold small gatherings, seek people's suggestions and participation, and make them part of the G20 summit," the source added. New Delhi, Jan 19 : The best-selling author of mythological fiction, Amish Tripathi, on Wednesday took to Twitter to announce that he is getting engaged to Shivani, whom he met in London. Amish is the Director of the Nehru Museum in London and was married previously to Preeti Vyas, who is the President and CEO of Amar Chitra Katha, the publishers of the iconic comic books, apart from National Geographic India. "I have been given a second chance -- a good beyond my expectations," Amish writes in his two-page personal statement he shared on Twitter. "As you know I have been divorced for many years and was single," he adds. Amish, incidentally, is speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival, which opens on Thursday. Continuing about his new relationship status, Amish writes: "I always thanked Lord Shiva for his blessings in my career. After a long time, I thanked him for his blessings in my personal life as well. I am thanking him for my son, Neel, and my fiance, Shivani." In the first part of his statement, Amish talks about how "very hard" the last seven to eight years of his life have been. "The untimely loss of even one person in the family breaks you; I lost too many, one after another ... There is only so much grief that one can bear," Amish says. He was obviously referring to the death of his father and, more tragically, his brother-in-law, the celebrated Mumbai police officer and former Chief of Maharashtra's Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), Himanshu Roy, committing suicide. "And. having suffered, I now see how good good is, when it does happen," Amish says before introducing Shivani. Tehran, Jan 19 : The Iranian Nuclear Chief has stressed that there is no undeclared nuclear activity or site in Iran, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency. Making the remarks to reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting, Mohammad Eslami, President of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), said on Wednesday that the IAEA has also announced the same thing repeatedly. Eslami gave the assurance that the interaction between Iran and the IAEA is continuing, noting that the agency's Director General Rafael Grossi announced his readiness to visit Iran, Xinhua news agency reported. He said removing the agency's ambiguities about Iran's nuclear programme and responding to the hostile anti-Tehran accusations have been on the AEOI's agenda, while the IAEA has carried out its inspections and all the stages have been gone through. On November 17, 2022, the IAEA's Board of Governors passed a resolution, proposed by the US, Britain, France, and Germany, that called on Tehran to collaborate with the agency's investigators regarding the alleged "traces of uranium" at a number of its "undeclared" sites. Iran has repeatedly rejected all the allegations. The talks on reviving the nuclear deal began in April 2021 in Vienna. No breakthrough has been achieved after the latest round of talks in August 2022. Ottawa, Jan 19 : Canada will donate 200 Senator Armoured Personnel Carriers to Ukraine as a new package of military assistance, Defence Minister Anita Anand announced. According to a statement issued by the Defence Ministry on Wednesday, Anand made the announcement during her visit to Kiev and these vehicles, which are being purchased from Roshel, a Canadian company based in Ontario, are valued at more than 90 million Canadian dollars ($72 million), Xinhua news agency reported. The armoured personnel carriers, which are easily maneuverable and adaptable, are security task vehicles and offer state-of-the-art, best-in-class technology, and weapons can easily be mounted on them. The vehicles allow for the safe transport of personnel and equipment, and medical evacuations, the statement said. Canada's military assistance committed to Ukraine since February 2022 includes a National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System with associated munitions, 39 armoured combat support vehicles, anti-tank weapons, M777 Howitzers and associated ammunition, according to the statement. Nearly 230 Canadian Armed Forces personnel are currently deployed on Operation UNIFIER, Canada's training mission for Ukrainian personnel, which has trained more than 35,000 Ukrainian security forces personnel since its launch in 2015, the statement added. Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War Addis Ababa, Jan 19 : The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement should be expedited as the free trade zone will boost intra-African trade and accelerate industrialisation, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Acting Executive Secretary Antonio Pedro has said. "While the AfCFTA's promise is high, that promise can be realised only if the agreement is implemented efficiently," a UNECA statement issued on Wednesday quoted Pedro as saying. He said that implementing the AfCFTA Agreement and supporting African economies, particularly Least Developed Countries (LDCs), "was no small task". The AfCFTA holds great promise to help LDCs recover and accelerate growth, Pedro said, citing a recent UNECA empirical assessment that reveals the successful implementation of the continental free trade pact will positively impact Africa's GDP, trade and welfare. He said with the AfCFTA agreement in place, intra-African trade could be 34 per cent higher in 2045 than without the AfCFTA in the same year, Xinhua news agency reported. According to Pedro, the effective implementation of the AfCFTA agreement will help Africa industrialise and diversify away from the energy and mining sectors. The UNECA said it is facilitating the deepening of Africa's participation in the battery and electric vehicle value chains through current investment projects in Congo and Zambia. It said work on the transboundary agro-industry park and special economic zone involving Zimbabwe and Zambia was promising and it would equip the two land-locked and least developed countries to become bread baskets for Southern Africa and possibly Africa. Pedro said the successful implementation of the AfCFTA agreement would help build Africa's resilience and potentially reduce its current trade dependence on external partners. This was critical in light of the vulnerabilities exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. Africa needs to mitigate the potential negative impacts of future external shocks, he added. Aden : , Jan 19 (IANS) A military officer and three soldiers from Yemen's government forces were killed by a roadside bomb in the country's southern turbulent province of Abyan, a government official said. The bomb, which was planted by al-Qaida terrorists, detonated near a vehicle in the Mudiyah district of Abyan, killing a military officer, three soldiers and wounding two others onboard, the local government official said on condition of anonymity on Wednesday. The government soldiers were carrying out an operation to hunt down al-Qaida militants in a rugged area, the official added. In November 2022, military units of the Southern Transitional Council, which is a part of the Yemeni government, announced they were launching "a qualitative anti-terror operation and succeeded in raiding a key hideout of al-Qaida in Abyan". Al-Qaida militants hiding out in rocky terrains and mountainous areas of Abyan and other neighbouring provinces frequently use hit-and-run tactics against Yemeni government forces, Xinhua news agency reported. The Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula network has exploited years of deadly conflict between the Yemeni government and the Houthi militia to expand its presence in the war-ravaged Arab country. It has carried out many high-profile attacks against the security forces in the country's southern provinces. Dar Es Salaam, Jan 19 : Tanzanian Vice-President Philip Mpango has directed defence and security agencies to hunt down and arrest dishonest police officials who are colluding with citizens to vandalise the standard gauge railway (SGR) project. "Some police officials are colluding with citizens to vandalise infrastructure of the SGR project. They must be arrested and prosecuted," said Mpango on Wednesday. The Vice-President made the order when he launched the construction of the 165 km Tabora-Isaka SGR at Isaka railway station in the Shinyanga region, northern Tanzania, Xinhua news agency reported. Of late, police have arrested scores of people in connection with vandalising the infrastructure of the SGR project, including stealing fuel, cement and iron bars. Mpango said the vandals included drivers and machine operators in the project and people living close to the project areas, who are protected by dishonest police officials. "Vandalising the project is economic sabotage. This malpractice must be stopped forthwith," Mpango added. Tanzania has signed agreements with construction companies from various countries, to construct a total of 2,102 km of SGR from the Dar es Salaam port linking with Burundi, Rwanda and Congo with a view to making the East African nation a business and transportation hub. United Nations, Jan 19 : UN peacekeepers have discovered mass graves in Congo containing the bodies of 42 civilians, a UN spokesman said. The victims, including 12 women and six children, were discovered in the village of Nyamamba in the country's eastern Ituri province, said Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Peacekeepers found another grave with the bodies of seven men in the village of Mbogi. Both locations are about 30 km east of Bunia, capital city of Ituri province, Xinhua news agency reported. The Spokesman said the UN mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, received reports that CODECO militias attacked civilians in the area over the weekend and launched a patrol to investigate. "This is when they made the gruesome discoveries," he added. The mission is supporting the Congolese judicial system to investigate the attacks, Haq said, and it called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. "These incidents occurred amid a significant deterioration of the security situation in Djugu and Mahagi territories," he said, adding that since December 2022, the UN mission reports that at least 195 civilians have been killed, 68 injured and 84 others abducted during several incidents attributed to CODECO and Zaire armed groups. Haq said the recent attacks have increased the number of displaced people to more than 1.5 million in Ituri and reduced access for humanitarians to those in need of assistance. The acronym CODECO describes a loose coalition of armed, ethnic militias, which is regarded as one of the most deadly militias operating in the mineral-rich eastern Congo. The Vanguard Accelerator grant program will make investments of $5,000 each to three businesses in the Twin Cities region. In addition, the grant recipients will receive a scholarship to the Founders First esteemed Zebra Leadership Program to provide continued education and leadership development. Today, the Center for Economic Inclusion (Center), in partnership with Founders First CDC and NEOO Partners, Inc., announced the finalists of its inaugural Vanguard Accelerator grants, forgivable loans, and site redevelopment. The Vanguard Accelerator and Fund represent a multi-sector effort committed to maximizing wealth-building and job creation with Black, Indigenous, and Latina-owned businesses in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. This initiative will help to impact the local economy, support higher wages, and provide the human capital needed for businesses to grow and expand. Each Accelerator grant, loan, and redevelopment finalist met specific eligibility requirements: Company founder is Black, Indigenous, or Latina, and the business is Twin Cities-based with a minimum of three years in business, annual revenues between $75,000-$3M, and employ a minimum of three, full-time employees. The Vanguard Accelerator grant program will make investments of $5,000 each to three businesses in the Twin Cities region. In addition, the grant recipients will receive a scholarship to the Founders First esteemed Zebra Leadership Program to provide continued education and leadership development. Recipients of the Vanguard Accelerator grants, powered by Founders First CDC: Wendy Sullivan, WENRICH PD Construction LLC, Plymouth, MN Edna McKenzie, Midwest Select Contracting LLC, Minneapolis, MN D. Tomme Beevas, Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, LLC, Minneapolis, MN The challenges of yesterday remain the challenges of today for diverse-led businesses, said Shaylon Scott, executive director of Founders First CDC. The educational programming, community resources, and funding opportunities we provide for Black, Indigenous, and Latina business owners are crucial toward leveling the playing field. Todays announcement of the finalists of this inaugural accelerator and its positive impact will continue to grow the Twin Cities regional economic outlook. Maya Angelou said, Nothing will work unless you do, said Tawanna A. Black, founder and CEO of the Center for Economic Inclusion. Every encounter with our hard-working local business owners and founders reminds me of this quote. Each of our accelerator finalists and semi-finalists, forgivable loan, and main street grant finalists are beating the odds and changing the face of what it means to be a job creator in Minnesota by doing the work. Im grateful for the Center to be able to invest with our partners in their vision, innovation, and work through the Vanguard Accelerator and Fund. The Center and its partners are investing forgivable loans and grants ranging from $25,000-$250,000 based on need, project scope, and goals for a total of $465,000. The funds will grow each businesss scale and range of services, talent, and physical space, deepening its sustainability and capacity to service Minnesotas business ecosystem. The finalists of the Vanguard Forgivable Loans program: Jasmine Russell, Monicat Data, LLC, Saint Paul, MN LaShawna Rhodes, Earth Beauty Supply, Saint Paul, MN Junita Flowers, Junitas Jar, Minneapolis, MN Georgia Fort, BLCK Press, Minneapolis, MN Kim Folsom, founder, chairperson, and CEO of Founders First said: The partnership with the Center is much more than the sum of its parts. The opportunity to bring proven and successful strategies to underrepresented founders in the Twin Cities is a significant step in the right direction. The Vanguard Accelerator Fund and Main Streets grant winners will receive redevelopment support from NEOO Partners to explore options for acquiring or redeveloping a brick-and-mortar property to expand their business. Additionally, based on growth and need, these businesses may be supported to spur commercial development and redevelopment within specific areas in the Twin Cities. Historically, many roadblocks have prevented people of color from owning and understanding the benefits of owning commercial property, said DAngelos Svenkeson, CEO of NEOO Partners, Inc. Its one of the leading factors contributing to the wealth gap and something NEOO was founded to solve. Therefore, our ability to provide site selection, acquisition, redevelopment services, and in particular, funding support for these diverse owners through the Vanguard Accelerator Fund, is paramount. The Vanguard Accelerator site redevelopment finalist is: D. Tomme Beevas, Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, LLC, Minneapolis, MN JPMorgan Chase's Annual Challenge initiative has generously contributed investments for the Vanguard Accelerator Fund, and GHR Foundation has facilitated funding. Founders First CDC is an Accelerator operating partner. Since launching in 2021, Founders First CDC has awarded more than $595,000 to minority and underserved business owners throughout the United States. Investments for the Redevelopment portion of the Vanguard Accelerator Fund have been generously supported by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), which allocated $1 million to the Center for Economic Inclusion for the revitalization of several corridors in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The Minnesota Main Street Revitalization Program provides 30 percent matching grants and guaranteed loans for economic and redevelopment needs that have arisen since the March 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses must have or secure the remaining 70 percent of funding. JPMorgan Chase is proud to support the Centers accelerator through the Annual Challenge, said Joanna Trotter, Executive Director, JPMorgan Chase. The initiative invests in solutions to drive inclusive growth. Just a few short months ago, this accelerator was a concept, and today it is a reality. Providing the Twin Cities with immediate impact is a testament to the power of collaboration and what the Annual Challenge strives for. The Main Street Economic Revitalization Program funding remains critical to Minnesotas recovery from COVID-19, said DEED Commissioner Steve Grove. These funds put into the community through local partners like the Center for Economic Inclusion help create more equitable opportunity and energize economic revitalization across Minnesota. In addition to naming the finalists of Vanguard Accelerator today, the Center and Founders First CDC announced the launch of their next business grant opportunity. The 2023 Vanguard Accelerator, also for Black, Indigenous, and Latina business owners, will begin accepting applications today through May 8, 2023. Apply at the Centers website: https://www.centerforeconomicinclusion.org/accelerator-grant-application. ### Center for Economic Inclusion The Center for Economic Inclusion (Center) is committed to closing racial employment, income, and wealth gaps and building racially inclusive and equitable regional economies. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Saint Paul, Minn., the Center is the nations first Black woman-founded and led organization dedicated exclusively to strengthening public- and private-sector employers and policymakers capacity and accountability to take anti-racist actions that close racial employment, income, and wealth gaps and build regional economies that work for everyone. The Center elevates applied research, proprietary, data-informed tools, education and training, advocacy, and consulting to equip employers for action in an environment of shared accountability. Learn more: https://www.centerforeconomicinclusion.org/ Vanguard Accelerator and Vanguard Fund The Center for Economic Inclusions Vanguard Accelerator and Vanguard Fund are fueled by a multi-sector collaboration to maximize wealth-building opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and Latina-owned businesses in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. Vanguard offers bank-ready businesses in high-growth industries proven tools and resources to scale while building racially inclusive and equitable corporate and government supply chains. The Vanguard Accelerator and Fund complement the diverse array of business development programs for start-ups by intentionally arming Black and Brown business owners with the tools, including financial and human capital, necessary to scale those businesses to become job creators and wealth builders by competing for and securing corporate and government contracts for revenue growth. Learn more: https://www.centerforeconomicinclusion.org/accelerator-grant-application. Founders First CDC Founders First CDC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that was founded in 2015 and has received significant support from the regional community reinvestment banks to empower diverse founder-led, revenue-generating small businesses through three primary programs: (1) Founders Challenge; (2) Founders Bootcamp; and (3) Founders FastPath. By building recurring revenues, tech-enablement, and essential solution focus, Founders First is a catalyst for positive change for underserved entrepreneurs and founders to become leading employers in their communities. Learn more: http://www.foundersfirstcdc.org. NEOO Partners, Inc. NEOO Partners, Inc. is celebrating five years in business in 2023, is headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is a growing national place-based solutions firm focused on providing creative urban planning and real estate development strategies for public and private sector project leaders. NEOO Partners has grown to over 20 professionals and now has a presence in over 15 cities in Minnesota and Mississippi, with expansion offices in Chicago, Nashville, and Charlotte coming in 2024. To learn more, visit http://www.neoopartners.com. accsense In todays threat landscape, Cloud Identity Access Management systems are a single point of failure and highly vulnerable to security breaches, human error and insider threats, - Muli Motola, accSenSes co-founder and CEO. accSenSe, the first and only enterprise ready business continuity platform for Okta, today announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding. Joule Ventures, a US-based partner-only seed fund led the round, which included participation from Gefen Capital, Fusion, and independent investors. accSenSe will use the funding to expand to other IAM vendors and to accelerate new market expansion and hiring. Recent high-profile data breaches, human error and insider threats plaguing Okta and other end user authentication solutions has shined a spotlight on the gap in IAM that exists between disaster recovery and business continuity. accSenSe, founded in 2020 by Dell EMC veterans, closes this gap by helping organizations maintain secure access to critical SaaS applications following any cyberattack or misconfiguration. In todays threat landscape, Cloud Identity Access Management systems are highly vulnerable to security breaches, human error and insider threats, said Muli Motola, accSenSes co-founder and CEO. It is our mission to ensure that every IAM solution has optimal accessibility, maximum uptime and next-level operational efficiency. Thanks to our investors, we can accelerate our journey to ensure organizations have the secure access to critical SaaS applications they need for access and business continuity. The Need for IAM Resilience According to The Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA), a new study Reveals 84% of Organizations Experienced an Identity-Related Breach in the Last Year. Yet, most Identity Access Management systems dont provide out-of-the-box backup and disaster recovery features or options. The accSenSe platform is designed to make systems secure and resilient, with features such as: One-click FULL tenant recovery Fail-over access to a secondary tenant Identify and investigate changes between different PiTs (Points in Time) Low RTO and RPO ~10 mins Infinite retention The accSenSe Platform provides an air-gapped, reliable architecture. This enables organizations to protect their data assets and ensure business continuity, even in the face of sophisticated attacks. accSenSes business continuity solution for Okta is changing how organizations think about disaster planning and recovery, said Brian Rosenzweig, co-founder and partner at Joule Ventures. With technology built to harden systems, mitigate downtime, and reduce costs, were extremely bullish on accSenSes potential to break into the mainstream cybersecurity market and become an essential solution for organizations of all sizes. Earlier this year, accSenSe was recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Identity-First Security. For more information on accSenSe, visit accsense.io and follow them on social media. About accSenSe Hailing out of Tel Aviv, Israel, the team at accSenSe, former EMC veterans have been exposed to the most challenging IT and security ecosystems in the world. Our mission is to protect and recover critical IAM systems with our state-of-the-art continuous access and business continuity platform. We provide Okta customers with both workforce and customer IAM needs with a single platform for continuous protection and real-time access management. The accSenSe platform is designed to make your IAM system resilient, with features such as one-click recovery, constant verification of backed-up data, periodic testing for keeping the backup up-to-date and the ability to identify changes between different PiTs (Points in Time). About Joule Ventures Joule Ventures is a U.S.-based partner-only seed fund providing best-in-class structural and commercialization support to Israels most compelling enterprise-focused entrepreneurs. Our dedication to founders is evident in the efficiency of our operations, the value we deliver starting well before the investment, and our commitment to day one relationship building between key stakeholders. In an increasingly transactional market, we remain a steadfast people-first, principles-driven investor.Via our presence in Tel Aviv, New York, and Atlanta we bring to bear a vast network of corporate and financial decision-makers willing to partner with dynamic products and platforms aimed at digitizing legacy industries, securing ever-expanding networks and devices, and providing decision-makers with better operational intelligence. CSM Sales Rebrands as Align Sales Group "Over the years, as brands evolved and technologies emerged, we saw an opportunity to invest in a more robust business model. As planning took off, we realized the changes we were making werent just upgrades they were game changers. And thats how CSM Sales evolved into Align Sales Group." Effective immediately, CSM Sales, a regional food brokerage firm headquartered in Brighton, MI, rebrands as Align Sales Group. After nearly 20 years, the company now provides services far beyond the scope of a traditional food brokerage firm. Align offers five major service categories: Market Analysis, Strategic Sales Consulting, Marketing & Promotion, Merchandising, and Business Process Management. Pushing toward innovation, expansion, and growth, the name CSM Sales no longer reflects an image consistent with stakeholder vision. Therefore, the name has changed to Align Sales Group. Motivated by stakeholders desire to share a more inclusive vision of the brand's future, the 'Align' brand was born. The name change represents collaboration and creativity as the brand moves into grocery, value, and special market channels. CEO, Bryan Drangin, commented, Over the years, as brands evolved and technologies emerged, we saw an opportunity to invest in a more robust business model. As planning took off, we realized the changes we were making werent just upgrades they were game changers. And thats how CSM Sales evolved into Align Sales Group. We are ecstatic to introduce our new brand and confident that our commitment to innovation will keep us thriving over the long haul. As part of the rebranding initiative, Align Sales Group has introduced new branding, logos, and a new website. The sleek new website features a user-friendly interface, responsive design, and a company blog. Align also plans to revamp social media platforms and introduce a company newsletter later this year. Long-time client, David Brinkley, Regional Manager at Cheyenne International, was thrilled to hear of the rebranding news, stating, We couldnt be happier for our friends as they celebrate the growth and innovation taking place within their organization. Align Sales Group has excellent communication when it comes to executing and delivering sales goals and objectives. They go above and beyond for Cheyenne International to exceed client expectations. Align plays an important role in growing our business, and we look forward to maintaining our relationship for years to come. Visit our website to learn more about our brand, services, and meet our team. About Align Sales Group Align Sales Group is a sales and marketing organization that strives to increase manufacturers sales volume while achieving the greatest possible product distribution. As visionaries in the food brokerage industry, Align is committed to building synergistic relationships between manufacturing clients, and distribution and retail partners. The TASC Group CEO Lawrence Kopp Lisa has amplified our mission and exemplified what it means to be a true professional in a socially driven PR firm. Lisas mission-driven work has resulted in incredible wins for our clients, and we look forward to her growing career here at TASC. The TASC Groups (TASC) Lisa Burkert has been recognized as one of Ragans 2023 Top Women in Communications. Burkert is a Senior Account Executive at TASC, an award-winning public relations and communications firm focusing on mission-driven, socially progressive clients such as the Trayvon Martin Foundation and United Way of New York City. The TASC Group is elated to have Lisa, a remarkable and skilled team member, recognized for her successful work this last year, said The TASC Group CEO Lawrence Kopp. Lisa has amplified our mission and exemplified what it means to be a true professional in a socially driven PR firm. Lisas mission-driven work has resulted in incredible wins for our clients, and we look forward to her growing career here at TASC. The 2023 Top Women in Communications Awards, presented by Ragan Communications, honors prestigious, innovative, and inspiring women who have made a significant impact on their organization, built community relations, navigated crises, given back to the community, engaged new audiences and mentored other colleagues. Nominated by TASC team members, Lisa is recognized for her contributions to sustaining and developing The TASC Groups client portfolio. Over the past year, she led six client accounts to major victories and supported junior staff growth. Most recently, Lisa has been fighting on behalf of cancer victims to expose Johnson & Johnsons efforts to skirt financial repayments to individuals fatally harmed by the companys asbestos-laced talcum powder. Lisa and the team's efforts have landed coverage in Reuters, Bloomberg Law, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and other top-tier publications all of which have criticized J&Js practices. Additionally, Lisa has spearheaded a media relations campaign centered on broadcasting the mission and services of national Black Trans-led LGBTQ+ center, Destination Tomorrow, while positioning its founder, Sean Ebony Coleman, as a national expert and thought leader. Lisas efforts have generated over 1,150 media hits on a national and local level including media hits in top-tier publications. Due to the national reputation built by Lisas team, the organization was awarded $8.7M in New York City funding to open a new LGBTQ+ housing project and a new center in Atlanta in April 2023. The TASC Group works with socially motivated clients to bring positive impact to a diverse array of clients through a creative public relations strategy. For more information on TASC career opportunities and clients please visit:http://www.thetascgroup.com For media inquiries regarding The TASC Group, please reach out via: https://www.thetascgroup.com/contact/ ABOUT THE TASC GROUP The TASC Group (TASC) is an independent, full-service nonprofit communications and public relations firm. TASC was built on a foundation of progressive values and a passion for public service, which are reflected in the work that TASC does for client partners every single day. The company exists to help make a meaningful difference for nonprofit organizations, social advocacy causes and campaigns, and mission-driven businesses that are committed to building stronger communities and making the world a better place. TASC's services include media relations, crisis communications and issues management, corporate social responsibility campaigns, thought leadership development, cause-related marketing, red carpet and celebrity events, SEO and online reputation management and social media. For more information, visit http://www.thetascgroup.com. Media Contact: Jennifer Lawrence The TASC Group 512-516-2138 Jennifer@thetascgroup.com 360Civic, a company that has provided online privacy protection for judges, police officers, social workers and the general public for more than ten years, has added NordVPN service to its enhanced security protection. Recently recognized by TIME magazine as one of the best inventions of 2022, the virtual private network (VPN) service is available at no charge to 360Civics IronWall360 premium clients, and to basic subscribers for a nominal fee. Our online privacy protection solution removes our clients personal information from the internet, but we also work with clients to lower their online footprint through other means, said Ron Zayas, CEO at 360Civic. Strategies like stealth emails, unlisted mobile numbers, and now the security of a VPN can make a big difference in keeping clients and their families safe. And to make sure they are getting the best possible service, we have chosen NordVPN, the premier provider in the market. 360Civics privacy team and proprietary online monitoring system for their IronWall360 service scan the internet every day for places online where the addresses and phone numbers of those under the companys protection are displayed and when discovered takes action to have them removed. Those websites that refuse to comply are referred to the Attorney Generals office, or sued in court one way or another, that content disappears. Both NordVPN and 360Civic strongly support the idea of safe and private internet and create products that help to ensure privacy for everyone. Especially for those whose work is so important for the stability of society and whose online privacy and security is crucial, like journalists, activists, judges, and police officers, said Laura Tyrylyte, Head of Public Relations at Nord Security, the parent company of NordVPN. A VPN is typically used to encrypt the Wi-Fi network and stop third parties from spying on a users online activity and sharing or monetizing that data. However, NordVPN provides much more. Its Threat Protection feature not only keeps a user private by blocking ads and trackers but also protects a device from malware by helping a user avoid suspicious websites and infected files. With our industry-leading privacy protection and the security provided by NordVPN, 360Civic clients can now enjoy even greater security, Zayas added. We come to work every day proud to help protect those who protect and serve us, while also providing these important privacy services to the general public as well. Everyone deserves the peace of mind that comes with online privacy protection. About 360Civic IronWall360, provided by 360Civic, works with superior courts, social work departments, and law enforcement agencies as a legally-contracted agent, to search and remove any personal information from any website in violation of state and federal privacy restrictions. For more information, visit 360civic.com/ironwall360 About NordVPN NordVPN is the worlds most advanced VPN service provider, used by millions of internet users worldwide. NordVPN provides double VPN encryption and Onion Over VPN and guarantees privacy with zero tracking. One of the key features of the product is Threat Protection, which blocks malicious websites, malware, trackers, and ads. NordVPN is very user friendly, offers one of the best prices on the market, and has over 5,000 servers in 60 countries worldwide. For more information: nordvpn.com ProJet Aviation GM Julie O'Brien, CEO Shye Gilad, and Executive Administrator Courtney DesMarais receive FBO of Member of the Year Award from Paragon Aviation Group President & Cofounder Megan Barnes "It is an incredible honor to be recognized as Paragon's FBO of the Year, and we are so grateful for our dedicated employees who make it all possible!" - Shye Gilad, ProJet Aviation CEO ProJet Aviation received recognition as Paragon Aviation Group's 2022 FBO Member of the Year. More than 90 Paragon FBO members and thousands of flight departments had the opportunity to cast their votes for the award. Customer feedback surveys submitted throughout the year also played a role in determining ProJet Aviation as the 2022 winner. Paragon's President, Megan Barnes and her colleague surprised ProJet's operations team at Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO) where ProJet was hosting a sold out Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce event of almost 200 people. Barnes presented the ProJet team with a personalized crystal trophy, a custom banner to display in the airport lobby, and other memorabilia to commemorate their hard work. Paragon will also make a legacy scholarship donation to ProJet's Aviation Education & Career Expo in 2023, one of the largest and most successful aviation events for young adults exploring careers in flight. The scholarship will honor the memory of Fury Gilad, a life-long Expo advocate and recently deceased mother of ProJet CEO Shye Gilad, who started the scholarship program. "It is an incredible honor to be recognized as FBO of the Year by our Paragon Network colleagues and customers," said Gilad. "The legacy of taking care of people and creating opportunities for others means a lot to my family and our company, and we are so grateful for our dedicated employees who make it all possible." ### About ProJet Aviation ProJet Aviation is the DC metro regions premier aviation hospitality company, dedicated to helping people accomplish extraordinary things through the wonder of flight. The company operates ProJet Center, a Fixed Base Operation (FBO), at Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO), general aviations gateway to Washington DC, Dulles, and Virginias Horse & Wine Country. Established in 2007 as a partnership between former airline pilot, educator, and entrepreneur Shye Gilad, and noted entrepreneur and philanthropist Sheila C. Johnson, Founder & CEO of Salamander Hotels and Resorts, ProJet Aviation combines the operational integrity of the worlds best airlines with the refined service of a world-class resort. ProJets numerous accolades include recognition as a Washington Business Journal Best Place to Work, Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce Service Business of the Year, and an Inc. 500/5000 Fastest Growing Company. About Paragon Network The Paragon Network is a distinguished membership of over 90 elite FBOs and international handling agents that provide world-class service to general aviation travelers around the globe. Paragon Aviation Group performs a comprehensive audit of the facilities and services offered to ensure the quality of the member base before any FBO joins The Paragon Network. Each member FBO must comply with a set of strategically developed core standards to remain in the group. Paragon Aviation Group facilitates The Paragon Network. About The Aviation Education & Career Expo The Aviation Education & Career Expo is one of the largest and most successful aviation education events in the United States, awarding to date, over $1.5 million dollars in scholarships to high school and college students pursuing careers in the aviation and aerospace industry, since its inception in 2005. Cofounded by aviation professionals Julie OBrien and Sarah Thompson, the Expo is committed to helping students explore the many career opportunities available to them through the world of flight. The Aviation Education & Career Expo is hosted by ProJet Aviation at Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO), in Leesburg, VA. Participants learn how to create their own video, are honored at an awards celebration, and most importantly, are making a difference in raising awareness and changing attitudes towards these dangerous issues facing young adults. The Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA) Education Foundation is happy to announce they will be bringing back the nationwide Courageous Persuaders Scholarship for the 2022-2023 school year. Submissions will open in mid-December 2022 and the deadline is March 10th, 2023. An Award Ceremony to announce winning videos will be held at Emagine Theaters in Royal Oak, Michigan on May 10th, 2023. Courageous Persuaders (https://courageouspersuaders.com/)is a competition-based scholarship program that invites high school students to create a 30-second television commercial about the dangers of distracted driving with two categories: drunk driving and distracted driving. The commercials are targeted toward middle school-aged children, with the winning entries aired on television and via streaming video on courageouspersuaders.com. The Michigan Department of State, led by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, will also show the winning commercial in select Michigan Secretary of State (SOS) branch offices as well as SOS-sponsored drivers training courses. Winners are selected after several rounds of judging. During the first round, a panel from the DADA views the entries and identifies the top 60 contenders. Those entries are then reviewed by students at Michigan middle schools who complete questionnaires to determine the most persuasive entries. The results of the questionnaires determined the winners. To view past winning commercials and/or enter the 2022/23 competition, visit the website at courageouspersuaders.com. For more information, please contact Sophia Lorenzetti at slorenzetti@dada.org. The Courageous Persuaders program was created in 2000 by former Oakland County District Judge Michael A. Martone and John Barczyk, a local McCann-Erickson advertising executive (retired). In 2007, the DADA became the primary sponsor and administrator of the Courageous Persuaders program through its DADA Education Foundation. After 15 years, DADA Education Foundation has awarded almost $300,000 in scholarships to students across 48 states. Winning entries are eligible for the following scholarship awards across two categories: Video of the Year: $2500 (National) Dangers of Drinking and Driving: Grand Prize: $2,000 (National) First Place: $1,500 (MI Only) Second Place: $750 (MI Only) Third Place: $500 (MI Only) Lindsey Renee Cianciolo Family Memorial Scholarship: $3,000 - two @ $1,500/ea. (MI Only) Dangers of Distracted Driving: Grand Prize: $2,000 (National) First Place: $1,500 (MI Only) Second Place: $750 (MI Only) Third Place: $500 (MI Only) Additionally, special awards are also presented by Courageous Persuaders partners: College for Creative Studies Award: $325 Certificate for Summer Program - based on the creativity of the commercial (MI Only) Courageous Leader Award: $500 Visa Git Card - presented to a special teacher for his or her extraordinary support of the Courageous Persuaders program (National) Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, Inc. (ACTS): $1,500 (National) Delta Goes to Hollywood Award: 2 flight vouchers to be used at Delta Airlines Top 60 videos will be entered in a raffle for a chance to win (National) With more scholarships to be announced at a later date! About the DADA Education Foundation The mission of the DADA Education Foundation is to promote excellence in education through quality programs and leadership. In addition to the Courageous Persuaders program, the Foundation also administers Education Day at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) and the NAIAS Poster Contest. About Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA) The DADA was founded in 1907 by 17 local car dealers and has grown to more than 220 member car and truck dealers who donate their time and resources to a host of community activities. Currently, the DADA members collectively employ more than 16,000 people. Many members participate in the NAIAS, LLC, which is responsible for the production of the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). The most significant charitable venture of DADA is the annual NAIAS Charity Preview, which has raised more than $44 million for childrens charities in southeastern Michigan since 1976. To find out more, visit http://www.dada.org and http://www.naias.com. The Project Haystack Organization (https://www.project-haystack.org), a collaborative community addressing the challenge of utilizing semantic modeling and tagging to streamline the interchange of data among different systems, devices, equipment and software applications, today announced the next issue of the Project Haystack Connections Magazine is in development and is issuing a Call for Contributed Articles and Advertisers from the community providing Haystack-compatible products and solutions around the world. Connections Magazine published bi-annually, documents how the Project Haystack community is applying or implementing the Haystack 4 Tagging methodology in the building and facilities management industry. Facility owners, operators, managers, system integrators, and service companies recognize that making data self-describing with a standardized approach to semantic data modeling is key to overcoming the hurdles related to effectively using the data produced by the built environment. In addition, the Spring issue will provide a look into the upcoming seventh Haystack Connect Conference (https://www.haystackconnect.org), to be held in Nashville, Tennessee, June 5 - 7, 2023. Haystack Connect is a unique, open-forum event where the Haystack community and anyone interested in making data interoperable convene to learn and share the latest technologies and techniques for connecting systems and utilizing the ever-increasing amount of device data in applications including intelligent buildings, energy management, remote monitoring, and other IoT devices and applications. For 12 years now, the members of Project Haystack have been developing the widely accepted standard for semantic modeling methodology and building our tagging libraries for more and more applications, said Marc Petock, Executive Secretary of the Project Haystack Organization. Since our organizations formation in March 2011, Project Haystack has played the leading role in making device data interoperable, providing the industry with a standard metadata model, tools, reference implementations and educational materials, all developed by a true open-source community. Articles in past issues of Connections Magazine are submitted by end users, design consultants, commissioning experts, system integrators, smart building consultants, property managers and developers all of whom are meeting the demand for smarter, interoperable solutions. Project Haystack Working Groups provide updates to their work and as always, there will be sections dedicated to Tools for Developers and Integrators, How to Get Involved, a curation of social media about Project Haystack Member Projects, Practices and Products, and a directory of all Project Haystack Members. Connections Magazine is also a valuable advertising vehicle for companies looking to reach the growing, world-wide Project Haystack community and the smart building ecosystem. The Project Haystack Organization consists of Founding Member and Board Member companies Clockworks Analytics, Conserve It, J2 Innovations, Legrand, Lynxspring, Siemens and SkyFoundry, and Associate Member companies 75F, Accu-Temp Systems, Altura Associates, Automated Logic, BASSG, Bernhard Connect, Brainbox AI, Bueno Systems, BuildingFit, Buildings IOT, CABA, Coster Group, e-Magic, Energy Management Association, Intellastar, Intellienergy Tech, Intelligent Buildings, IoT Warez, KMC Controls, KNX Association, Nanjing Chinwell Technology, Switch Automation, Tridium, WideSky and Yorkland Controls, as well as numerous Haystack supporters involved in the Project Haystack Forums and Working Groups. More information about the Project Haystack Connections Magazine and how to submit an article abstract or to Advertise is available at https://marketing.project-haystack.org/connections-magazine/contribute-an-article and https://marketing.project-haystack.org/connections-magazine/advertise. About Project Haystack Since its formation in March of 2011, the Project Haystack Organization, a 501(c) non-profit trade association, has been providing the industry with an open-source, collaborative environment to address the challenge of making data self-describing using semantic modeling, also known as data tagging. The work developed by the Project Haystack member companies and community streamlines the process of managing, presenting, and analyzing the vast amount of data produced by smart devices and equipment systems. The Haystack methodology can be used with any type of system and device data and is not tied to any vendor or communication protocol. More information about the Project Haystack Organization for Developers, the Discussion Forums and Working Groups can be found at: https://www.project-haystack.org. Contacts: Robin Bestel Editor, Connections Magazine Project Haystack robin@haystackconnect.org Marc Petock Executive Secretary, Project Haystack Vice President, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Lynxspring, Inc. marc.petock@lynxspring.com With Manifest Vegas set to kick off on January 31st it is expected to be a momentous occasion for several companies, specifically those that are planning to unveil a new product or announce a groundbreaking partnership while there! 20+ companies are doing just that - including Azarc, Cargobase, Daimler Truck North America, DHL Supply Chain, Dronamics, EasyPost, Emerge, Enveyo, FreightPOP, Hangar A, Maersk, Mujin, OneRail, OnFleet, OPTIFLOW, Orderful, Port of Ashdod, project44, SemiCab, Spartan Radar, Terraline, Veconinter and Ware. Maersk North America is excited to sign our collaboration agreement with the Port of Ashdod, Israel at Manifest. As one of the logistics industry's most important global events - Manifest is the ideal setting to introduce our new partnership said Erez Agmoni, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Growth, Maersk North America. Onfleets CEO was on a panel for Manifest last year and identified it as a key strategic show for 2023. Key reporters from business and trade attend Manifest from all over the country and we think it's an opportune time to share our upcoming news about our company's future, said Katherine Lehman, Onfleets Director of Digital Marketing. Press releases from the companies making announcements will all appear in the Manifest Virtual Press Room starting at 9:00 am EST on January 31st, with some releases being embargoed for February 1st and 2nd. Manifest Vegas attendees will have the opportunity to meet with all news making companies in the Expo Hall! Attendees will also have access to sessions across all 3 days, gain access to an Expo Hall with 200+ exhibitors on hand, the innovation stage, unlimited 1-to-1 meetings and 3 receptions followed by an Official After Party headlined by a Grammy-Award winning performance! Visit https://www.manife.st to view the full list of sponsors & exhibitors and plan ahead for the on-site activities! About Manifest: Manifest is brought to you by the same team that created Blueprint, HR Transform and The Future of Logistics Tech Summit. Manifest will offer unparalleled access to a comprehensive gathering of entrepreneurs, investors and executives from BCOs/Shippers. This years event will bring together over 3,000 executives on January 31st - February 2nd, 2023 at Caesars Forum, Las Vegas. We have been following the evolution of EV vehicles and waiting until the time is right. Our deep expertise in building world-renowned expedition vehicles makes it easier for us to roll into electric platforms compared to competitors, said Lance Gillies, founder of EarthCruiser. EarthCruiser, a globally recognized brand behind the most accomplished 4x4 expedition vehicles available in the world, announces the expansion into overlanding products specifically for electric vehicles. This includes the official launch of a pre-order deposit program for slide-in campers engineered for the next generation of EV trucks. EarthCruiser has a proven track record of over fifteen years of building light, aerodynamic overlanding products designed to be efficient and capable and work off-grid for extended use. This requires deep knowledge of complex energy systems, weight distribution and aerodynamics. EarthCruiser is taking this unparalleled expertise and applying it to develop new approaches and designs to pave the way for electric vehicles in the overlanding sphere. The shift to EVs is a certainty EarthCruiser has seen coming and been talking about for years. Industry stats and new government regulations demonstrate the momentum EV has with automakers and consumers. EarthCruiser is uniquely positioned to design products that excel within EV parameters We have been keenly following the evolution of EV vehicles and have been waiting until the time is right and the time is now. We are a company that loves to discover, innovate, and test, over and over until we get it right. Our deep expertise in building world-renowned expedition vehicles makes it easier for us to roll into electric platforms compared to competitors, said Lance Gillies, founder of EarthCruiser. As electric vehicles enter the overlanding space, domestic automobile manufacturers require a partner with expertise in maximizing overland vehicle efficiency, and ensuring critical systems fit within a limited footprint and usage envelope. With impressive features that offer a smooth ride, breathtaking power, and unbelievable off-road capabilities, electric vehicles open a new world of possibilities to the overlanding community. EarthCruisers innovation division, ECI (EarthCruiser Innovations), is currently developing products for the electrification of overlanding, including the slide-in truck camper for domestic EV trucks. EarthCruiser Innovation is currently in collaboration with key domestic automotive manufacturers and looks forward to expanding that division of the company. Further details to be announced at future dates in 2023. There are many similarities with our current EarthCruiser habitat and one that would be required to function with an electric platform. Its critical to maximize efficiency in order to allow vehicles to go further. Managing limited storable on-board energy capacity, operating within acceptable range envelope and staying safe and comfortable is the essence of an overlanding vehicle and we have been doing that for years. EarthCruiser is extremely good at energy efficiency and the amount of energy required to move an EC down a road is significantly less than our competitors, added Lance Gillies. EarthCruiser EV Camper Pre-Order Program The future is charged. Redefine your off-road mission. Introducing a new class of lightweight slide-in campers from the go-anywhere, do-anything adventure leader. Bred for everything that comes after it, this adventure-ready slide-in takes the most advanced EV, hybrids and conventional gas-powered trucks to places others wouldnt dream. Customers can place a fully refundable $100 deposit to reserve their exclusive EarthCruiser slide-in camper. EarthCruiser recognizes that the customer voice and travel requirements are critical to the success towards the transition to renewable energy. As part of this deposit program, EarthCruiser Innovation will gather customer platform preferences for this product as it finalizes the development. EarthCruiser understands that consumers will adopt electric vehicles at different rates and has designed our new slide-in truck camper to transition with them. For customers that are not quite ready for an EV truck, the camper will work flawlessly with internal combustion engine vehicles. When customers are ready to transition to EV, after a few simple software updates, the camper will be ready for life on the back of an electric vehicle. Reserve the EarthCruiser EV Camper: https://earthcruiser.com/reserve-your-ev-camper/ About EarthCruiser EarthCruiser USA (https://earthcruiser.com/) designs, engineers and manufactures the world's most accomplished overland adventure vehicles based in Bend, Oregon. We are a company built on integrity and the pursuit of relentless quality and innovation in everything we do which is reflected in our products. The John W. Nason Award for Board Leadership "We are grateful for these boards contributions in creating a more just, equitable, and inclusive environment for all students, and we hope that their efforts will inspire more boards to hone their strategic thought partnership with chief executives and leadership teams." - Henry Stoever The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), in partnership with TIAA, today announced that it has selected five higher education governing boards to receive the 2023 John W. Nason Award for Board Leadership. Established in 1992, the Nason Award is presented to higher education governing boards that demonstrate exceptional leadership and initiative. The recipients of this years award addressed pressing issues related to transformational student success efforts. AGB is the premier organization advocating strategic board governance in higher education. TIAA is a Fortune 100 financial services organization dedicated to helping its clients pursue financial well-being. This years honorees were chosen from a diverse array of nominations illustrating the essential work of boards from four-year public and private colleges and universities, two-year institutions, and institutionally related foundations. Each recipient was recognized for its justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion-related programs and initiatives as well as its efforts to enhance student success. This years Nason Award recipients are: Colorado Mountain College (CMC) Board of TrusteesThe CMC Board of Trustees, an elected board, committed itself to serving the needs of students and the community through multiple institutional initiatives. These included $60 million in university and locally raised funds for affordable housing; expanded funding for academic programming and technology for high-demand fields like nursing; broad concurrent enrollment opportunities for high school students across Colorado; and concentrated board advocacy for critical public policy changes that strengthened CMCs financial health and its support for underserved students. These targeted approaches bolster student outcomes as well as the states economic health. Holyoke Community College (HCC) Foundation, Inc. Board of Directors (Massachusetts)Amidst a fluctuating market, the HCC Foundation Board of Directors invested in community essentials to shape a strong future. Namely, the Board of Directors prioritized equity by increasing its Student Emergency Fund, establishing the Bienvenidos Scholarship for Latinx students, and securing support from philanthropic partners to combat food insecurity on campus. The board also intentionally prioritized its racial makeup; developed onboarding and mentor programs for board members; and created a strategic memorandum of understanding to align its efforts with the needs of the community college it supports. Texas Christian University (TCU) Board of TrusteesAs part of its responsibility to advance TCUs mission, strategic goals, and student and community success, the TCU Board of Trustees has prioritized an inclusive environment that fosters belonging for all students, faculty, and staff. With the Boards leadership and championing, the University developed the Race & Reconciliation Initiative (RRI)an academically based, historically focused initiative designed to explore research and document the Universitys 150-year history and develop recommendations to build a more inclusive community. Trustees also helped develop the Universitys DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) goals, which helped establish an intercultural center on campus; increased goals and training related to diversity, equity, and inclusion education; increased diversity among mental health counselors, faculty, and administrators; and led to the appointment of the Universitys first Senior Advisor to the Chancellor and Chief Inclusion Officer. Simultaneously, the Board commissioned the Study/Advisement on University Social Issues Subcommittee, which engaged Board members with ongoing DEI initiatives and strategic planning for equitable student success. Utah State University (USU) Foundation BoardAfter celebrating a more than $110 million record-breaking fundraising year in 2021, the USU Foundation Board is championing the Create Your Aggie Impact initiative-driven fundraising campaign that matches donor passions with university priorities and focuses on gift impact. The board was instrumental in earning legislative and financial support for the universitys newly founded, and Utahs only, College of Veterinary Medicine, and advancing efforts in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Many successful outcomes included creating a collaborative partnership between USU (a historically White university) and Fort Valley State University (a historically Black university); supporting the creation of the inaugural USU Vice President of DEI position; approving budgets that prioritize equitable pay; building an inclusive environment that encourages dialogue and interaction on diverse views; and proudly planning to welcome its first female chair in July 2023. Xavier University of Louisiana Board of TrusteesThe Board of Trustees of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically Black and Catholic institution in the United States, led and contributed to several strategic initiatives including modernizing campus housing and addressing deferred maintenance needs precipitated by Hurricane Katrina; supporting plans to bolster student retention through data collection and early at-risk detection; overseeing the optimization of Xaviers faculty search, hiring, and training processes to increase diversity and preparedness to address student needs; and raising $65 million through its Centennial Campaign. The board is also in the planning phase of founding a medical school, which would greatly complement Xaviers national rank as the number-one institution for Black graduates who go on to complete medical school. Strategic governing boards play a vital role in assuring the value and vitality of higher education, said Henry Stoever, AGB president and CEO. We are grateful for these boards contributions in creating a more just, equitable, and inclusive environment for all students, and we hope that their efforts will inspire more boards to hone their strategic thought partnership with chief executives and leadership teams. I am impressed by the achievements of our honorees, and I look forward to their future strides in promoting student successfor all students. Recipients of the 2023 awards will be honored at AGBs Foundation Leadership Forum (January 2931) and National Conference on Trusteeship (April 24). Effective board governance is a commitment that can result in monumental shifts, said Liz Morse, head of associations at TIAA. It is essential to empower boards to strategically navigate their institutions through higher educations challenges. AGB and TIAA are excited to highlight and share the success stories of boards for others to emulate. I am pleased to contribute to the AGB Nason Award and offer heartfelt congratulations to this years honorees. The Nason award is named for higher education leader John W. Nason, who served as the chair of the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council and helped more than 4,000 interned students continue their college studies across the nation during World War II. AGB would like to thank TIAA for its support of the Nason Award. Learn more about AGBs Nason Award at AGB.org/Award. About AGB The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) is the premier membership organization that strengthens higher education governing boards and the strategic roles they serve within their organizations. Through our vast library of resources, educational events, and consulting services, and with 100 years of experience, we empower 40,000 AGB members from more than 2,000 institutions and foundations to navigate complex issues, implement leading practices, streamline operations, and govern with confidence. AGB is the trusted resource for board members, chief executives, and key administrators on higher education governance and leadership. About TIAA TIAA is a leading provider of secure retirements and outcome-focused investment solutions to millions of people and thousands of institutions. It is the #1 not-for-profit retirement market provider,[1] paid more than $6.4 billion in lifetime income to retired clients in 2021, and has $1.2 trillion in assets under management (as of 6/30/2022)[2] [1] As of July 21, 2022. Based on data in PLANSPONSOR's 403(b) 2022 DC Recordkeeping Survey, combined 457 and 403(b) data. [2] As of September 30, 2022, assets under management across Nuveen Investments affiliates and TIAA investment management teams are $1,179 billion. Yelp Advertising Partner network welcomes Soda Spoon Marketing Agency based in Salt Lake City, Utah Were excited to be the first Yelp Advertising Partner in the state of Utah, said Richard Ricketts, President of Soda Spoon Marketing Agency It is an exciting time for businesses in Utah, as the popular local advertising agency, Soda Spoon, has been chosen to be the first official Yelp Advertising Partner in the state. This partnership will allow Salt Lake City businesses to reach more customers and increase their online visibility and engagement with potential customers. Yelp is a powerful tool for businesses looking to reach their target audience. With access to millions of reviews and the ability to list key facts, promotions, and other content, businesses can quickly increase their presence and reach more people. Yelp is one of the top search engines in the country, especially for small and medium-sized local businesses. The leads are here; it's just up to you to go get them. This new partnership with Soda Spoon will allow Salt Lake City businesses to make the most of Yelps advertising capabilities. Soda Spoon is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Salt Lake City. With a team of experienced professionals, the company offers a wide range of services such as website design, search engine optimization, content marketing, social media management, and more. Soda Spoons team is dedicated to helping businesses in Utah create and manage successful digital marketing campaigns that enable them to reach their goals and objectives. Now, with the new partnership with Yelp, Soda Spoon will be able to help businesses in Salt Lake City get the most out of Yelps advertising capabilities. With the help of this new partnership, local businesses will be able to leverage Yelps review system and increase their visibility and engagement with potential customers. The partnership between Soda Spoon and Yelp is great news for businesses in Utah. With the help of this new partnership, businesses in the Salt Lake City area can now take advantage of the powerful capabilities of Yelps advertising platform. This will undoubtedly help businesses in the area to grow their customer base and increase their online visibility. This is an exciting time for businesses in Utah and the beginning of a wonderful partnership between Soda Spoon and Yelp. Were excited to be the first Yelp Advertising Partner in the state of Utah, said Richard Ricketts, President of Soda Spoon Marketing Agency, Yelps platform is a great way for local businesses to get in front of their target audience and increase their sales. We look forward to helping our clients unlock the power of Yelp and maximize their return on investment. Business owners are always looking for ways to get their name out there. Yelp Ads puts your business above the search results and on your competitors pages, helping you stand out from the crowd. This means customers are more likely to find you while searching for the services you offer. Yelp Ads has a lot to offer businesses looking to get noticed. For example, ads are targeted to local customers, so youll get more conversions from the people who actually live in your area. Yelp Ads also comes with a variety of features, such as the ability to add photos and videos, create custom content, and track performance with analytics. While Yelp is a much smaller search engine than Google, the leads that come through Yelp are generally of much higher quality since they're already interested in what you have to offer. With Yelp Ads, youre guaranteed to get more eyes on your business and increase brand recognition. Every time someone searches for what you offer, your ad will be right at the top with a call to action. Youll also be able to track analytics in order to optimize your campaigns and maximize their potential. Overall, Yelp Ads is a great option for businesses that want to get noticed and stand out from their competitors. With its targeted tracking and analytics, youll be able to see exactly how successful your campaigns are and make the necessary adjustments. Start advertising on Yelp today to get more customers and increase brand awareness. It is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the scores of competitors in this day and age. It is essential to have an online presence to attract customers and engage with themYelp is one of the most popular review sites and is used by millions of people every day. To ensure you stay ahead of the competition and attract more customers to your business, an upgraded Yelp page built by Soda Spoon is the perfect solution. Soda Spoons Yelp page upgrade service covers everything from design and content curation to content optimization and customer engagement strategies. By taking advantage of this service, you can showcase your work with professional-looking images, attract more attention in search results, convert more leads, and much more. This service also helps increase your online visibility on the Yelp platform. Instead of your page getting buried in an endless stream of competitors, your profile will be easily noticeable in search results. Furthermore, it also helps you engage with your customers in an efficient manner. You can answer questions, respond to reviews, and have a direct line of communication with your customers. All in all, an upgraded Yelp page built by Soda Spoon is a great way to differentiate your business from the sea of competitors. You can show off your work, get better visibility on Yelp, and convince leads to choose you over the competition. With such an effective strategy, your business is sure to attract more customers and stay ahead of the competition. Yelp is popular for all kinds of businesses, including home service businesses, retail stores, spas and salons, professional services like lawyers and mortgage brokers, and much more. If you're a plumber, solar company, or another type of local business, Yelp Ads can be a great way to reach new customers. In fact, restaurants make up less than half of Yelp's total advertising revenue. There are many benefits of working with a Yelp Advertising Partner. Yelp Advertising Partner's do not charge any percentage of fees on your ad spend. ### About Soda Spoon Marketing Agency Soda Spoon Marketing Agency is committed to helping businesses succeed in the digital marketing space. Through their knowledge and experience, they aim to make the process of online marketing simpler and more efficient so that businesses can reach their target audiences and achieve their revenue goals. To learn more, you may contact Soda Spoon Marketing Agency via phone call or text message at 385-275-9822, or via email at hello@sodaspoon.com. Visit their website at http://www.sodaspoon.com to learn more about their services. Downtown Dental Los Angeles supports your Boys and Girls Clubs! Dr. Mungcal, having served his community for many years, was quoted as saying, This is an outrage! Only someone who doesnt care about this city and our children would keep this quiet. Something should be done about this! During a special leadership event held in Florida, several business owners joined forces and decided to band together to do something about this. They started by sending over 1,000 books to Boys and Girls Clubs in their communities. The mission of Boys and Girls Clubs is to enable all young people to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens, especially those in need. These leaders support the vision of this national network of world-class clubs putting hope and safety within reach of every young person, and putting them on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, learning good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle. Reading is a cornerstone skill for our youth! Dr. Mungcal said, We want to do our part. And we want everyone in this city to know about this program and support it. Boys and Girls Clubs are leading the way in showing us that something can be done about it; something can be done about illiteracy by everyone pitching in. and further stated I believe that children and young adults who are shown whats possible through literature can achieve their dreams. Whats more, receiving the gift of reading really makes them happy and ignites their imagination. I love making giving them this opportunity. About the Doctor Mungcal: Dr. Don Mungcal is a native of the Los Angeles area and loves serving his neighbors dental Dr. Mungcal provides care with the goal of helping his patients keep their natural teeth for as long as possible, hopefully for life! This does not merely mean that natural teeth are present, but that they look good, feel good, and function well because of excellent care. Dr. Mungcal, having served his community for many years, was quoted as saying, This is an outrage! Only someone who doesnt care about this city and our children would keep this quiet. Something should be done about this! During a special leadership event held in Florida, several business owners joined forces and decided to band together to do something about this. They started by sending over 1,000 books to Boys and Girls Clubs in their communities. The mission of Boys and Girls Clubs is to enable all young people to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens, especially those in need. These leaders support the vision of this national network of world-class clubs putting hope and safety within reach of every young person and putting them on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, learning good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle. Reading is a cornerstone skill for our youth! Dr. Mungcal said, We want to do our part. And we want everyone in this city to know about this program and support it. Boys and Girls Clubs are leading the way in showing us that something can be done about it; something can be done about illiteracy by everyone pitching in. and further stated I believe that children and young adults who are shown whats possible through literature can achieve their dreams. Whats more, receiving the gift of reading really makes them happy and ignites their imagination. I love making giving them this opportunity. About the Doctor Dr. Don Mungcal: Dr. Don Mungcal is a native of the Los Angeles area and loves serving his neighbors dental needs. Raised in the San Fernando Valley, he completed undergrad studies at UCLA. He received his degree with honors in 1990 after completing the dental program at University of the Pacific Dental School in San Francisco. His post-graduate experience came in part from his role as an instructor at USC Dental School. Within a few short years, Dr. Mungcal established his practice right in his hometown of Los Angeles. Manhattan Beach Dental has been serving patients since 1992. He has been honored as a Best Dentist in Downtown in Los Angeles Downtown News for four consecutive years. Dr. Mungcal stays abreast of cutting-edge dental technologies and techniques through activity in the California Dental Society. He is also a member of several other prestigious dental organizations. He stays up to date with the latest dental implants, general dentistry, and cosmetic dentistry advancements by investing hundreds of hours in continuing education courses each year. Dr. Mungcal provides care with the goal of helping his patients keep their natural teeth for as long as possible, hopefully for life! This does not merely mean that natural teeth are present, but that they look good, feel good, and function well because of excellent care. Dr. Don Mungcal Beachside Smiles Family & Cosmetic Dentistry 1590 Rosecrans Ave Ste. N Manhattan Beach, CA 90266 310-643-6004 info@beachsidesmiles.com The Southeastern Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons and Northside Hospital are hosting the 38th annual Breast Surgery Symposium from January 27th through January 29th, 2023 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead. This year three top surgeons from Atlanta Plastic Surgery, Program Chair James Namnoum, M.D., and Program Co-Chair Franklyn Elliott, M.D. and Jonathan Nguyen, M.D (board-eligible). will have prominent roles in the three-day scientific program. The late Dr. Carl Hartrampf, the co-Founder of Atlanta Plastic Surgery, originated the three-day Breast Surgery Symposium in 1984. Since then the Symposium has grown to include nearly 500 registrants from 15 countries and has become internationally synonymous with innovations in reconstructive and cosmetic breast surgery. This year Dr. Robert J. Allen, M.D., Clinical Professor of Plastic Surgery at Louisiana State University, will deliver the Honorary Hartrampf Lecture on "The Marriage of Beauty and Blood Supply." The Atlanta Breast Surgery Symposiums agenda will begin with live demonstrations of the most advanced surgical techniques transmitted from Northside Hospital to meeting attendees at the Intercontinental Hotel. Other live telecast surgeries will feature secondary breast augmentation with mesh and trans abdominal breast augmentation. Dr. Nguyen (board-eligible) from Atlanta Plastic Surgery will assist in one of the Symposium's two live surgery telecasts. This telecast features gender affirming mastectomy by Dr. Loren Schechter, Director of Gender Affirming Surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Nguyen(board-eligible)is Atlanta Plastic Surgery's newest surgeon. The symposium will also feature comprehensive panels discussing autologous fat grafting, prosthetic based breast reconstruction, and revisional breast surgery. Symposium panels will discuss current trends and techniques in breast surgery, breast implants, breast augmentation, mastectomy, oncoplastic surgery, and breast reconstruction. Other panels will discuss reduction Mastopexy, moderated by Dr. Elliott with a presentation by Dr. Namnoum on Mastopexy: Breast Transformation by a Comprehensive Approach. Dr. Elliott will also moderate a Breast Implant Panel. About Atlanta Breast Symposium: An educational three day conference geared toward advancing the knowledge and skill of all aesthetic and reconstructive breast surgeons, the Atlanta Breast Surgery Symposium was formed in 1984 by the late Dr. Carl Hartrampf, co-Founder of Atlanta Plastic Surgery. It is hosted every January by the Southeastern Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (SESPRS) and sets the precedence for breast surgery advancements. Visit sesprs.org for symposium details. About Atlanta Plastic Surgery: Atlanta Plastic Surgery, P.C. was founded in 1968 by the late Dr. Carl Hartrampf. Our staff of surgeons have achieved international reputations in their specialties through published books, papers, lectures and live surgical demonstrations. Because each of Atlanta Plastic Surgery's physicians have different areas of concentration, they can provide unparalleled scope, expertise and specialization in cosmetic and plastic surgery procedures. For more information, visit their website at atlplastic.com. Transcard is very excited to open its EMEA headquarters in London and looks forward to working with its international clients and business partners in this dynamic multicultural environment Transcard opened the new office after achieving tremendous growth over the past several years, with a current headcount of more than 100 employees in the United States and more than 170 employees worldwide. The company has seen rapidly increasing demand for its suite of embedded payment and finance solutions, particularly from the insurance, freight and logistics, and banking sectors. Transcard helps banks, businesses, and Fintechs modernize their payment tech stacks with solutions for accounts payable, accounts receivable, account-to-account (A2A) transactions, and supply chain financing. Transcards cloud native payment platform seamlessly connects with any accounting software, ERP application or system of record as well as bank APIs and card payment gateways. Transcard is very excited to open its EMEA headquarters in London and looks forward to working with its international clients and business partners in this dynamic multicultural environment, commented Transcard President Chris Fuller. Opening our London office is a natural next step for Transcard as we build upon our record growth and expand across the United Kingdom and Europe. Rajesh Agrawal, Deputy Mayor for London said, "London is Europe's leading tech hub, so I am thrilled Transcard has chosen to expand their team in our city as we work towards building a better, more prosperous London for everyone. The capitals vibrant mix of clients, partners, investors, regulators, and top tech talent makes London an ideal location for fintech companies like Transcard to grow and thrive. Transcard already has invested close to $3 million in foreign direct investment in the United Kingdom. Transcards investments in the United Kingdom will increase as the company acquires its Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulatory license, grows its UK staff across all business functions, and expands its partnerships with international financial institutions. Transcard currently employs 16 full-time team members in the United Kingdom and is planning to hire 100 additional employees in the United Kingdom over the next three years. Transcard recently hired its first two executives based in the United Kingdom: David John, Transcards vice president of global business development, and Daniel Callis, Transcards executive vice president of global financial institutions. John and Callis will be based out of Transcards London office. About Transcard Transcard makes frictionless payments a reality with comprehensive global payment solutions designed for banks, Fintechs, and businesses of any size and in any industry. Transcard delivers solutions for business-to-business (B2B) payments, consumer-to-business (C2B) payments, business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) payments, account-to-account automation, Banking as a Service (BaaS), and freight. Our solutions combine unmatched multi-rail capabilities, embedded workflows, best-in-class integration, effortless reconciliation, and bank-grade security. These are some of the reasons that many Fortune 500 businesses and banks trust Transcard with their payments. Learn more at http://www.transcard.com. It has been a goal of our executive team to have headquarters in a central location. This allows the team to be nimbler with decisions in a flourishing town that offers top talent from Rowan University to support our growing company. RLS Logistics, a leading cold chain solutions provider, announced today that its headquarters office has moved to Glassboro, NJ, providing optimal team growth in the thriving town. The 3pl company has been headquartered out of its Newfield, NJ location for 55 years alongside its cold storage warehouse and frozen fulfillment center. The opportunity to transition its headquarters offices to Glassboro comes to combine offices from their Newfield, NJ, and Mount Laurel, NJ offices, ensuring agility for decision making and delivering high levels of customer experience. Additionally, it allows for growth and wellness space for the team members working at the Newfield, NJ, facility. It has been a goal of our executive team to have headquarters in a central location. This allows the team to be nimbler with decisions in a flourishing town that offers top talent from Rowan University to support our growing company, said Russell Leo, CEO of RLS Logistics. The headquarters office will accommodate the companys accounting, human resources, marketing, and business development team members. We look forward to making roots in the Glassboro community and building a partnership with Rowan University in the coming years, says Leo. ABOUT RLS LOGISTICS: Headquartered in Glassboro, NJ, RLS Logistics is a family-owned, third-party logistics provider specializing in value-added cold chain solutions, including LTL and FTL transportation, cold storage warehousing, and direct-to-consumer fulfillment. Founded in 1968, the company has been owned and managed by the Leo family for over 50 years and has grown into a leading integrated cold chain 3PL. For more information, visit https://www.rlslogistics.com/. ### American Vision Partners Welcomes Dr. Shaun Brierly as new Chief Medical Officer I am very excited to be joining the American Vision Partners family. I hope to continue to ensure that patients who choose American Vision Partners are cared for with skill and compassion by the highest quality doctors and clinicians," said Dr. Brierly. American Vision Partners (AVP), one of the largest and fastest-growing eye care management organizations in the nation, announced the hire of Dr. Shaun Brierly, M.D. as their new Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Brierly is board certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in marine biology from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo before earning his Doctorate of Medicine from University of California, Davis Medical School. He completed an Internal Medicine internship at St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, OR, followed by Ophthalmology residency at University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where he was Chief Resident. He is currently on track to complete his Master of Business Administration from University of Michigan, Ross School of Business in April, 2023. Dr. Brierly also comes to American Vision Partners with more than two decades of experience developing his clinical and leadership skills across diverse environments. He led Kaiser Permanentes multi-subspecialty ophthalmology group in northern Californias wine country, where in 2019 he was voted Top Doctor by his peers in Sonoma Magazine. As a U.S. Army Medical Corps officer, he was responsible for military eye care across five Middle Eastern countries during Operation Inherent Resolve. After a short stint in concierge private pay ophthalmology as founder and President of Copper Eye Surgery, Dr. Brierly broadened his skillset with Cigna Medical Group as Medical Director of Specialty & Ancillary services with responsibility for Ophthalmology, Optometry, Optical, General Surgery, Dermatology, Podiatry, Audiology, Ambulatory Surgery, and Imaging. I am very excited to be joining the American Vision Partners family. I hope to continue to ensure that patients who choose American Vision Partners are cared for with skill and compassion by the highest quality doctors and clinicians," said Dr. Brierly. Dr. Brierly will become a primary member of American Vision Partners Medical Executive Committee and will help promote the success of more than 180 recognized doctors and health care providers across AVPs 12 practices. We are extremely fortunate to have a clinical leader of Dr. Brierlys caliber, said Shane Armstrong, CEO of American Vision Partners. I know hes up to the task and will be an exceptional complement to our already stellar group of doctors. About American Vision Partners American Vision Partners is one of the nations largest and fastest growing eye care physician services organizations. AVP serves communities throughout Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and Nevada with more than 180 nationally recognized doctors and 120 locations. We partner with the most respected ophthalmology practices in the country and share a best-in-class management system, infrastructure and technology to provide the highest-quality patient care. Our partner practices, including Barnet Dulaney Perkins Eye Center, Southwestern Eye Center, Retinal Consultants of Arizona, M&M Eye Institute, Abrams Eye Institute, Southwest Eye Institute, Aiello Eye Institute, Moretsky Cassidy Vision Correction, Wellish Vision Institute, West Texas Eye Associates, Laser Eye Center of Lubbock, and Vantage Eye Center have on average been in practice for more than 30 years. For more information, please visit http://www.AmericanVisionPartners.com. In the concurrent session, which is geared to K-12 administrators, Wills will share how her district is reshaping academic support for its students using high-impact tutoring. To counter ongoing unfinished learning, many districts are seeking evidence-based interventions such as high-impact tutoring programs. But what is high-impact tutoring and how can administrators find the right program for their district and schools? Lisa Wills, executive director of curriculum and instruction for Ector County Independent School District (ISD) in Odessa, Texas, will answer these questions and more in a 45-minute session at the 2023 National Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) in New Orleans. Wills session, 10 Questions to Ask Before Choosing an Online Tutoring Partner, will be held Jan. 25 from 3 to 3:45 p.m. in room 201 of the New Orleans Convention Center. In the concurrent session, which is geared to K-12 administrators, Wills will share how her district is reshaping academic support for its students using high-impact tutoring. She will review design principles for effective tutoring, identify potential red flags, and share a checklist for evaluating evidence-based tutoring programs. In her 34 years with Ector County, Wills has worked in all areas of education, from classroom teacher, curriculum specialist, assistant principal, principal, and director of literacy to executive director of curriculum and instruction. In her current role, she works directly with the districts online tutoring programs, including FEV Tutor, to accelerate learning for students. Educators interested in learning more about FEV Tutor, a comprehensive, research-based, virtual tutoring solution for K-12, can visit booth 1401 in the FETC Expo Hall. The Expo Hall is open Jan. 24 from 12 to 5:30 p.m., Jan. 25 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Jan. 26 from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. About FEV Tutor Based in Boston, FEV Tutor is the leading Level 2 ESSA research and evidence-based online tutoring platform working nationally to effect change in K-12 education. Its intervention programs are strategically designed in close collaboration with each partner school, district, charter school, and other organizations to accelerate learning for every student. FEV Tutor leverages technology to deliver 1:1 high-impact and transformative personalized learning pathways through live, virtual tutoring sessions. For more information on FEV Tutor, visit fevtutor.com or follow on Twitter ### J.J. Rodriguez, a foreign-language teacher and Christian pastor from Mexico who has established two Hispanic churches, one in Lexington, North Carolina and one in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he presently resides, has completed his new book Subdue the Earth! The Principle of Authority: an intriguing examination of modern American culture and the role of the Christian Church in the lives of its followers. What happens to a system where the chain of command is not observed? A countrys armed forces may have different branches which, in turn, control various specialties, like Navy or Air Force. Given the importance of these organizations duties and the huge responsibility on their shoulders, they cannot allow any disruptions to the chain of command. Insubordination cannot be tolerated. Police forces, fire departments, ambulance services, and other like groups have similar responsibilities, and considering their duty to protect and serve the community, they function in a similar manner. How does the church of the twenty-first century operate, the army of the Lord of Hosts? What is its leadership like? Subdue the Earth studies and describes the principle of authority from many different perspectives but especially from the core of the Christian Church of our time. Published by Page Publishing, J.J. Rodriguezs engrossing book is a thought-provoking discussion of the role of faith in twentieth-century Christian life. Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase Subdue the Earth! The Principle of Authority online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708. About Page Publishing: Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing understands that authors should be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com. Flying Dreams was written to make the world a better place, said Udejiji. I want every man, woman and child to have equal rights, as thats the only way to find out who we are and where we come from. The newly released book, Flying Dreams, is author Obu Udejijis attempt to explain his dreams as well as share his thoughts and ideas with the world about the power of love. From a young age, Udejiji has had a recurring dream that hes flying. The dream has changed over the years, and hes spent plenty of time thinking about the meanings and different iterations. After reflecting on them for the better part of his lifetime, he describes that they universally represent the importance of the power of love and the importance of world unity. Flying Dreams was written to make the world a better place, said Udejiji. I want every man, woman and child to have equal rights, as thats the only way to find out who we are and where we come from. Udejiji explains that his book is all about the awareness of dreams and to help readers understand that the real world is not too far off from the dream world. Humans need to recognize the world beyond their dreams to appreciate the subconscious of that dreamer, including their full story and how it connects to what they see in the real world. Imagine if you can choose where to go when you go to sleep, wouldn't that be amazing? asked Udejiji. It would be tremendous to have a place to catch a break for a moment and find peace and happiness, then awaken with a positive mindset and self-fulfillment of inner desires. Flying Dreams By Obu Udejiji ISBN: 9781665570237 (softcover); 9781665570220 (hardcover); 9781665570213 (electronic) Available at AuthorHouse, Amazon and Barnes & Noble About the author Obu Uderjiji was born in the Enugu State, in the southeastern part of Nigeria. He later emigrated to Canada, where he graduated from Ontario Real Estate College in Toronto in 2010. Uderjiji currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where he owns PPS Paining Inc. and is a contractor for the oil and gas industry. To learn more, please visit http://www.udejijiobuflyingdreams.com. Beckman Scholars Program "Each of our awarded institutions have committed to hosting unique and engaging research programs for their diverse and talented undergraduate researchers and it will be exciting to see their progress during the award." - Dr. Anne Hultgren The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation announced today the selection of its 2023 class of Beckman Scholars Program awardees, U.S. colleges and universities which underscore the Foundations mission of supporting basic research in the chemistry and life sciences. The institutions were selected after a rigorous application process which included a two-part review led by a panel of scientific experts. Each awardee institution will receive funding to support six Scholar-Mentor pairs, with two Scholars named per year for the three-year award term. This years award is comprised of more than $2.1 million in funding for 84 undergraduate Scholars at the following 14 institutions (alpha ordered): California State University, East Bay Fort Lewis College Louisiana State University Miami University Mount Holyoke College Oklahoma State University Pomona College Smith College Tufts University University of California, Irvine University of Michigan University of Richmond University of Rochester Washington University in St. Louis Historically, the applicant pool for this exceptional program has been very competitive, and this year was no exception. We look forward to meeting the 2023 cohort of Scholars at our upcoming annual Beckman Symposium and learning more about their research projects, shared Dr. Anne Hultgren, Executive Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Each of our awarded institutions have committed to hosting unique and engaging research programs for their diverse and talented undergraduate researchers and it will be exciting to see their progress during the award. The Beckman Scholars Program is a 15-month mentored research experience for exceptional undergraduate students in chemistry, biological sciences, and interdisciplinary combinations thereof. About the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Located in Irvine, California, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation supports researchers and nonprofit research institutions in making the next generation of breakthroughs in chemistry and the life sciences. Founded in 1978 by 20th century scientific instrumentation pioneer Dr. Arnold O. Beckman, the Foundation supports United States institutions and young scientists whose creative, high-risk, and interdisciplinary research will lead to innovations and new tools and methods for scientific discovery. For more information, visit beckman-foundation.org. Hello Gorgeous Salon & Boutique will be celebrating its grand opening Saturday January 21, 2023 starting at 10:00am with a ribbon cutting, and other celebratory treats and specials until 2:00pm and we invite you to come join us for the celebration! Hello Gorgeous Salon opened in 2008 in neighboring Braddock Heights focusing on hair services. As business grew, the salon expanded in October 2013 into a new, larger location in the heart of the historic downtown of Middletown, Maryland, a National Main Street Community. At our new home, 4 West Main Street, we were able to expand the salon services and add natural nail services. The shop in Middletown is conveniently located at the corner of West Main Street and South Church Street and its large bright windows and warm wood floors creates a relaxing atmosphere for our salon. Over the years, we found that many of our local customers yearned for a downtown clothing store with easy to style pieces. Thinking of our customers needs, and looking at our space, inspiration hit that the next step for Hello Gorgeous Salon was to create a new boutique within the salon. In October of 2022, we were able to transform the entire space by moving make-up services to the lower floor, consolidating spa services to previously unused space, and use the larger upstairs room for the boutique. We are now selling a mix of women's clothing, from jeans to luxuriously soft sweaters, silky shirts, super-cute dresses for dinner out, accessories that make your wardrobe pop with style, great little gift ideas for your girlfriends, as well as hand crafted items. With a consistently revolving inventory there will always be something new to see and try on in the comfy and large dressing room. In 2023, our ten-year milestone of locating to Middletown, we invite you to please join us in celebrating the bigger, better, Hello Gorgeous Salon & Boutique! For Data Privacy Week 2023, the ITRC will release its Annual Data Breach Report exploring shifts in the root causes of identity-related crimes. "Our Annual Data Breach Report is a tool that highlights some troubling trends and provides meaningful data and information that can lead to positive changes in data practices and a reduction in identity crimes," said Eva Velasquez, President and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. Today, the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a nationally recognized nonprofit organization established to support victims of identity crime, announced its commitment to Data Privacy Week 2023. The ITRC supports the principle that all organizations share the responsibility of being conscientious stewards of personal information. As part of Data Privacy Week 2023 on January 22-28, the ITRC will unveil the 17th edition of our Annual Data Breach Report on Wednesday, January 25, at the Identity, Authentication and the Road Ahead Cybersecurity Policy Forum, presented by the Better Identity Coalition, the FIDO Alliance and the ITRC. The ITRC will also have a session featuring the Centers work on identity crimes in the Black community. The policy forum will bring together leaders from government, industry and nonprofits to discuss what can be done to drive better identity infrastructure in America, what to expect from the new Congress and the Biden Administration in 2023, the findings in the ITRCs 2022 Annual Data Breach Report and more. The 2022 Annual Data Breach Report will explore fundamental shifts in the root causes of identity-related crimes. Interested media, public policy and business leaders may register for the forum on the ITRC's website idtheftcenter.org under the Events tab. "The ITRC is happy to take part and be a Champion of Data Privacy Week 2023," said Eva Velasquez, President and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. "The speed and scope of data breaches are far too high, making data collection best practices that respect privacy and promote transparency more important now than ever. Our Annual Data Breach Report is a tool that highlights some troubling trends and provides meaningful data and information that can lead to positive changes in data practices and a reduction in identity crimes." For Data Privacy Week 2023, the ITRC will also reveal additional details on our notified Business data breach alert service, coming later in Q1 2023. Notified Business is the most comprehensive repository of publicly reported, U.S.-based data breaches. Data Privacy Week is an annual expanded effort from Data Privacy Day with the goal of spreading awareness about online privacy among individuals and organizations. The purpose is twofold: to help citizens understand that they have the power to manage their data and to help organizations understand why it is important to respect their users' data. For more information about Data Privacy Week and how to get involved, visit staysafeonline.org/programs/data-privacy-week/. For more information on the ITRC's 2022 Annual Data Breach Report, email media@idtheftcenter.org. About the Identity Theft Resource Center Founded in 1999, the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) is a national nonprofit organization established to empower and guide consumers, victims, business and government to minimize risk and mitigate the impact of identity compromise and crime. Through public and private support, the ITRC provides no-cost victim assistance and consumer education through its website live-chat idtheftcenter.org and toll-free phone number 888.400.5530. The ITRC also equips consumers and businesses with information about recent data breaches through its data breach tracking tool, notified. The ITRC offers help to specific populations, including the deaf/hard of hearing and blind/low vision communities. About Data Privacy Week Data Privacy Week began as Data Privacy Day in the United States and Canada in January 2008 as an extension of the Data Protection Day celebration in Europe. Data Protection Day commemorates the January 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. NCA, the nation's leading nonprofit, public-private partnership promoting cybersecurity and privacy education and awareness, leads the effort in North America each year. For more information, visit staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-week/. About the National Cybersecurity Alliance The National Cybersecurity Alliance is a nonprofit organization on a mission to create a more secure, interconnected world. We advocate for the safe use of all technology and educate everyone on how best to protect ourselves, our families, and our organizations from cybercrime. We create strong partnerships between governments and corporations to amplify our message and to foster a greater "digital" good. For more information, please visit staysafeonline.org. Media Contact Identity Theft Resource Center Alex Achten Director of Communications & Media Relations 888.400.5530 Ext. 3611 media@idtheftcenter.org Today, Klue, the category leader in competitive enablement, announced the acquisition of DoubleCheck Research. DoubleCheck is an established leader in win-loss analysis, which helps organizations improve win rates by examining why they are winning and losing business. Klues platform will now be the premiere source of truth for buyer intelligence and competitive insights by acquiring DoubleCheck and win/loss capabilities, Klue moves one step closer to its vision of becoming the all-in-one compete platform for its customers. With the acquisition, Klue adds new win-loss capabilities to its offering, allowing customers to capture and analyze in-depth intelligence around why they win and lose deals. The addition makes Klues platform even more mission critical by offering a solution that can deliver tactical insights to help close deals today, while also enabling executive leadership with insights they need to make informed decisions for tomorrow. With an uneasy economy and declining tech budgets, companies need all-in-one solutions to share information across the organization, not just in the sales silo. From day one, Klues mission has been to help our customers win more with actionable competitive and market insights. Now, our acquisition of DoubleCheck further expands these valuable insights in our all-in-one platform, said Klue co-founder and CEO Jason Smith. No other provider in the market offers win-loss as part of their solution. We are excited for DoubleCheck to join Klue and enable sales, marketing, and leadership teams for success, which will only help us strengthen our position as a category leader. Klues platform empowers customers by combining competitive intelligence with market intelligence. By adding win-loss analysis, companies can now also propel the entire organization with insights from buyer intelligence, enabling their teams to create stronger go-to-market strategies. This acquisition of the top win-loss provider reaffirms Klues market leadership in competitive enablement, demonstrated by customers, such as Adobe, Dell Technologies, Hubspot, and Shopify, who are changing how enterprise companies compete today. More and more formal win-loss analysis programs are becoming required by leadership teams who need to go beyond their CRM data and gut instinct to truly understand why theyre winning and losing business against key competitors, said Ryan Sorley, DoubleCheck CEO and founder. With this acquisition, customers can now combine competitive, market, and win-loss intelligence into a complete story that informs and influences company strategy. Bringing win-loss into Klues enablement platform also ensures these insights dont just live with leadership, but make their way to teams across the entire organization to help them win more. About Klue Klue is a competitive enablement and win-loss platform. Using Klue, product marketing and competitive intelligence teams collect and analyze intel from across the web, inside their company, and from their buyers to distribute actionable insights across their organization. From sellers needing actionable battlecards, to product management needing competitive and buyer insights, to executive leadership looking to make strategic go-to-market decisions. Klue has over 200,000 users and is a leader in all Competitive Intelligence, Market Intelligence, Sales Enablement, and Win-Loss categories on G2, receiving over 142 G2 badges in 2022 alone. Klue was named one of Canada's top 15 startups by LinkedIn in 2022, one of Deloitte's Fast 50 and Fast 500 Technology fastest-growing companies in 2021 and 2022, and has been included in the Globe & Mail's Top Growing Companies three years in a row. Learn more about Klue at: https://klue.com/ About DoubleCheck DoubleCheck Research delivers win-loss research and analysis services and technology to the world's most progressive B2B technology companies. They leverage DoubleCheck to better understand their buyer's journey while identifying key win, loss, and churn trends. This enables these companies to make more informed go-to-market decisions across product marketing, sales, product management, customer success, and the C-suite with the ultimate goal of improving win rates, increasing wallet share, and gaining market share. Learn more about DoubleCheck at: https://doublecheckresearch.com/ Lightbridge Academy, the leading early education and child care franchise, was recognized as one of the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneurs Franchise 500, marking the brands eighth consecutive time achieving this highly sought-after honor in the franchise industry. The 2023 Franchise 500 ranks Lightbridge Academy at No. 192 on the list. We are extremely proud to be ranked as one of the best franchise opportunities in the world, said Lightbridge Academy CEO Gigi Schweikert. Lightbridge Academys business model, strong support infrastructure and growing demand explain not only why new owners are joining but also why existing franchisees continue to invest in the brand and expand to multiple territories. We are excited to build on the momentum weve experienced this past year and continue to support children, parents, team members, franchise owners and the communities we serve. There are several factors Entrepreneur takes into account when performing a thorough evaluation of a franchise concept, including costs and fees, size and growth, support, brand strength and financial strength and stability. Each franchise is given a cumulative score based on an analysis of more than 150 data points, and the 500 franchises with the highest cumulative scores become the Franchise 500 in ranking order. Lightbridge Academy, established in 1997, was founded as a family business based on core values and a Circle of Care philosophy that places equal importance on the needs of children, their families, teachers, center owners and the community. Lightbridge Academy provides quality early education and child care programs to children aged six weeks through kindergarten. The company currently has over 140 child care centers either open or in development throughout Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia. In 2022, the franchise sold 27 units and expanded into several new markets, including Michigan, Ohio, and Texas, allowing entrepreneurs to introduce an essential service to their local community. Learn more about franchise opportunities at https://lightbridgeacademyfranchise.com/. About Lightbridge Academy: Established in 1997, the company was founded as a family business based on core values and a Circle of Care philosophy that places equal importance on the needs of children, their families, teachers, center owners and the community. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, Lightbridge Academy provides quality early education and child care programs to children aged six weeks through kindergarten. The company currently has over 140 child care centers either open or in development throughout Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. In response to COVID-19, Lightbridge Academy launched The Lightbridge Promise as the Gold Standard for health & safety in the child care industry. In 2020, the company was featured on the Inc. 5000 ranking, Franchise Times Top 200+ awards, and on Newsweeks 2021 list of Americas Best Customer Service. In 2022, Lightbridge Academy was featured for the 8th year on Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500 and for the 2nd year on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies. MDFB received the AFBFs Award of Excellence, which recognizes state Farm Bureaus that demonstrated outstanding achievements in 2022. We know we share many of the same concerns and goals for conservation as other Farm Bureau states; coming together and sharing our policy goals will help our voice be heard federally. Last week, the American Farm Bureau Federations 104th Convention gathered over 300 farmer and rancher delegates to adopt policies to guide the organizations work in 2023. The key topics of interest ranged from expanding risk management programs and improving dairy pricing transparency to battling hunger. Besides Maryland counties and Young Farmer members being honored for their hard work and skill, Maryland now has a member on the American Farm Bureau (AFBF) board, and put forth approved policy changes at the convention. Delegates demonstrated the strength of Farm Bureau by coming together to represent hard-working farm families from all 50 states and Puerto Rico, said AFBF President Zippy Duvall. Theres a lot of work to do in 2023 as Congress drafts the next farm bill, and the policies set forth today will guide AFBF as we work to ensure farmers and ranchers can continue to meet the growing needs of families in America and around the world. Maryland Farm Bureau successfully advanced the definition of regenerative agriculture that AFBF will promote to Congress for the next farm bill. Regenerative agriculture was defined as a production system that minimizes environmental impacts, maximizes production and increases the productivity of the soil over time. As a result of MDFBs effort, the national organization will argue for farm bill conservation programs that target production agriculture and directly benefit farmers. We know we share many of the same concerns and goals for conservation as other Farm Bureau states; coming together and sharing our policy goals will help our voice be heard federally, said Wayne Stafford, president of MDFB who was elected to the AFBF Board of Directors to represent the Northeast Region for a one-year term. I look forward to helping promote the needs of farmers in our region and recognizing ags challenges elsewhere in the country, as well. Im proud to be part of our Maryland contingent, and of the contest participants and delegates who represented Maryland at this convention so well. Chris Hoffman from Pennsylvania was also elected to the board for the Northeast Region. MDFB received the AFBFs Award of Excellence, which recognizes state Farm Bureaus that demonstrated outstanding achievements in 2022. The bureau was recognized in all four categories: Advocacy Coalitions & Partnerships Engagement & Outreach Leadership & Business Development The bureau was also awarded the Scholar Award from the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture. The Scholar Award is given to six states one from each member group and is awarded to the state Farm Bureau with the highest total donations in that member group. Marylanders participated in the following individual competitions: Katie Stevens: Made the Top 10 in the Excellence in Ag competition. Alston Shipley: Competed in the first and second rounds of the Discussion Meet. Emmy Dallam: Competed in the Achievement Award competition. Frederick County received a County Activities of Excellence award for its Soil-Smart Farm Tour, a one-day tour of four agricultural operations. These were attended by the county executive and council members and elected state government representatives. In addition, 15 state Farm Bureau presidents were re-elected to two-year terms to represent their regions on the board. Maryland is in the Northeast Region, and will be represented by David Fisher from New York and Joe Tisbert from Vermont. The 2024 convention will be January 19 24 in Salt Lake City, Utah. # # # The Excellence in Agriculture Award recognizes young farmers and ranchers who do not derive the majority of their income from an agricultural operation, but who actively contribute and grow through their involvement in agriculture, leadership ability and participation in Farm Bureau and other organizations. The Discussion Meet simulates a committee meeting in which active discussion and participation are expected. Participants are evaluated on their ability to exchange ideas and information on a predetermined topic. The Achievement Award recognizes Young Farmers & Ranchers who have excelled in their farm or ranch and have honed their leadership abilities to superiority. Participants are involved in production agriculture with a majority of their income subject to normal production risks. Judges evaluate competitor's excellence in management, growth and scope of their enterprise and self-initiative that have been displayed throughout the farm or ranch. County Activities of Excellence winners participated in the County Activities of Excellence program and demonstrated a commitment to offering quality programming to their counties, often in the form of service for members and those around them. MARYLAND FARM BUREAU, INC. is a 501(c)(5) federation that serves as the united voice of Maryland farm families. Our organizational strength comes from the active participation of over 9,500 individual and family members who belong to the states 23 local county Farm Bureau organizations. Since 1915, Maryland Farm Bureau has been committed to protecting and growing agriculture and preserving rural life. Maryland Farm Bureau is a proud member of the American Farm Bureau Federation. For more information, visit MarylandFB.org. We look forward to even more opportunities for our team in Mexico to grow and thrive as we continue building our business across the region. Smith, a leading global distributor of electronic components and semiconductors, today announces the relocation of its sales office in Guadalajara, Mexico. Known as the Silicon Valley of Mexico, Guadalajara hosts a booming technology sector and is home to many major component manufacturers. Smiths new office space, located in the citys financial district, is 30 percent larger and offers a beautiful, panoramic view of Guadalajara. The state-of-the-art building complex features a central office tower as well as other conveniences, including a shopping mall, a hotel, a movie theater, and several restaurants. The new office is strategically located for our employees, as well as visiting colleagues and customers, to enjoy the numerous and convenient amenities, services, and parking available, said Renato Souza, Vice President of Business Development. We look forward to even more opportunities for our team in Mexico to grow and thrive as we continue building our business across the region. The new office address is: Av Adolfo Lopez Mateos 2405 Torre Corporativa Midtown, 19th Floor, Office 2 Italia Providencia Guadalajara, JAL, MX 44648 About Smith Founded in 1984, Smith sources, manages, and distributes the electronic components that go into everything from mobile phones and computers to appliances and automobiles. In 17 cities around the world, Smiths legion of employees communicates in 50 languages and dialects and buys and sells components 24 hours per day, generating global annual sales in excess of $3.4 billion in 2021. Smith is always moving: helping manufacturers navigate market shifts; customizing supply chain solutions; testing components using cutting-edge technology. The support of Smiths flexible Intelligent DistributionTM model optimizes customers supply chains from beginning to end, including offering customized options for IT asset disposition that deliver maximum ROI, sustainability, and security. Smiths testing and logistics hubs in Houston, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, and Singapore cover critical areas like quality management, counterfeit prevention, and environmental safety. Smiths operations, purchasing, and sales worldwide are seamlessly integrated with the companys global IT infrastructure, offering real-time, global inventory and logistics visibility. Smith is the leading independent distributor of electronic components and ranks number seven among all global distributors. For more information, please visit http://www.smithweb.com or reach out to a Smith representative any time of day at +1 713.430.3000. ### URBN has selected Raymore, Missouri, for its new 604,000-square-foot fulfillment center, investing $60 million and creating 750 jobs. "Global supply chain demand is ever-increasing, and the KC regions central location, robust infrastructure and access to skilled workforce continue to attract leading brands to our region. We are excited to see URBNs ongoing growth here," said Chris Gutierrez, president of KC SmartPort. The Kansas City Area Development Council announced that URBN, a multinational lifestyle retail corporation, has selected Raymore, Missouri, for its new 604,000-square-foot fulfillment center. The company is expected to invest $60 million in the Nuuly fulfillment center and create 750 jobs within five years. The company plans to locate its fulfillment and laundry facility at the Raymore Commerce Center, developed by VanTrust Real Estate and marketed by Colliers, pending completion of all state and local approvals and agreements. "Nuuly has experienced significant growth since our launch in 2019, said Dave Hayne, Chief Technology Officer of URBN and President of Nuuly. We are excited to open our second U.S. fulfillment center to support our next phase of growth, and proud to work with the State of Missouri and the City of Raymore to bring new jobs to the Kansas City region." Nuuly is a subscription rental clothing service for women who love fashion and exploring how to wear, buy and sell it in ways that are gentler on the planet and their wallets. Nuuly offers over 15,000 styles from over 300 designer and contemporary brands, including Free People, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. Missouri is a strategic choice for companies like Nuuly that are searching for a location in the middle of America for their expansion projects, said Gov. Mike Parson. Missouri is winning more large-scale projects than ever before, and were carrying that tremendous momentum into 2023. We look forward to welcoming URBN to the long list of global powerhouses in Missouri. URBNs new Nuuly facility represents a growing presence in the Kansas City region. In 2020, the company announced its plans to establish a $403 million, 1.5 million-square-foot omni-channel fulfillment center in Kansas City, Kansas, which celebrated a ribbon cutting in October 2022. As URBNs second fulfillment center in the KC region, the Nuuly facility reinforces our area as a top U.S. logistics hub, said Chris Gutierrez, president of KC SmartPort, an affiliate of the Kansas City Area Development Council. Global supply chain demand is ever-increasing, and the KC regions central location, robust infrastructure and access to skilled workforce continue to attract leading brands to our region. We are excited to see URBNs ongoing growth here. The Kansas City region is a leading North American logistics hub and key location for distribution and e-commerce, with abundant access to rail, air, water and road transportation. As the crossroads of North America, 85% of the U.S. population can be reached from a Kansas City location in two days or less. About URBN Urban Outfitters Inc. (URBN) is a leading lifestyle products and services company which operates a portfolio of global consumer brands comprised of Anthropologie, BHLDN, Free People, FP Movement, Terrain, Urban Outfitters, Nuuly and Menus & Venues brands. The Companys brands offer lifestyle-oriented general merchandise and consumer products through 644 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe, global websites, and catalogs. Free People, FP Movement and Urban Outfitters wholesale sell their products through department and specialty stores worldwide, digital businesses and the Companys Retail segment. http://www.URBN.com About Nuuly Nuuly is a curated destination for anyone who loves fashion and is exploring how to wear, buy and sell it in ways that are gentler on the planetand their wallets. Customers can choose to engage with the Nuuly brand in multiple waysthrough a monthly rental subscription with Nuuly Rent, which offers 1,000s of styles from more than 300 designer and contemporary brands, including Free People, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie; by buying or selling secondhand through Nuuly Thrift, a peer-to-peer resale marketplace; or both. http://www.nuuly.com About the Kansas City Area Development Council (KCADC) Serving the 18-county, two-state Kansas City area, the Kansas City Area Development Council is an economic development nonprofit that promotes the regions business and lifestyle assets to companies and talent around the world. Working closely with its two states, and 50-plus county and community partners, the region has attracted more than 60,000 new jobs over its 40-year history. KCADC also leads the efforts behind the KC Animal Health Corridor, KC SmartPort and TeamKC. http://www.thinkKC.com About Greater Kansas City Home to 2.5 million people, Kansas City is a vibrant metro in the heart of the U.S., known as the KC Heartland. The KC region is a center for leading industries including technology, logistics, animal health and entrepreneurship, and is home to a renowned arts community. http://www.KC.org InScribe's digital communities cut across the traditional support silos in higher education, giving students a single place to turn when they need helpno matter the topic or time of day. "With InScribe, we are building the sense of community our online students crave while also giving them the tools they need to dig in and problem-solve with each other. InScribe's platform is agile; it works with us and not against us," said Peterson. InScribe, which delivers game-changing digital community solutions, is expanding student support and engagement in the College of Information Technology at Western Governors University (WGU). InScribe's platform integrates directly into WGU's digital curriculum, seamlessly connecting their online students with an active support network of peers and faculty so they can ask questions, find information, share ideas, and problem-solve anytime, anywhere. "Not only do our students learn in a self-paced manner, but our degree programs require some pretty complex interactions. We needed a support model that allowed students to collaborate effectively and tackle these notoriously complicated concepts," said Mike Peterson, Associate Dean and Program Director, Computer Science and Software at WGU. "With InScribe, we are building the sense of community our online students crave while also giving them the tools they need to dig in and problem-solve with each other. InScribe's platform is agile; it works with us and not against us. Information is easily shareable and searchable, and we can keep better track of everything that is being posted." WGU's College of Information Technology successfully piloted InScribe's digital community platform in its Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (BSCS) program over the last year and now is expanding its use across a larger student population. Over the course of the pilot, WGU found that peer support sped time to answer and reinforced learning. "Learning is not only taking place within each course but also within each community. We are seeing students genuinely wanting to help each other. They respond quickly and posts are thoughtful, diverse, and well-rounded," said Peterson. Using InScribe to connect students in its competency-based courses, WGU is eliminating time and place restrictions that sometimes make supporting self-paced learners more difficult. Students can seek help from their peers anywhere, anytime, especially after hours when faculty might not be available. Moreover, students who accelerate through the materials at a faster pace can act as resources for students who are still working through initial concepts. Students in WGU's College of Information Technology can seamlessly access their digital communities directly from WGUs digital curriculum via a need help link on each activity in the students learning path. This powerful approach allows students to easily see what questions and comments their peers and faculty have already posted about that topic and to quickly seek support when they need it. "Traditional support mechanisms can limit students' ability to get the help they need when they need it, regardless of what time of day it is and where they are within the curriculum," said Katy Kappler, CEO of InScribe. "WGU's vision to create a digital community that emphasizes active and ongoing peer-to-peer support encourages students to more deeply interact and engage. Even when learners move at different paces through the material, they know that they have a team of people they can count on to help them understand and master the curriculum." About InScribe InScribe is a digital student support platform that leverages the power of community and artificial intelligence to connect students with the answers, resources, and individuals they need to succeed. InScribe's digital communities cut across the traditional support silos in higher education, giving students a single place to turn when they need helpno matter the topic or time of day. Students benefit from on-demand, peer-to-peer, and student-to-expert collaboration which helps them feel more connected, increasing student engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Learn more about InScribe at https://www.inscribeapp.com/. About WGU Established in 1997 by 19 U.S. governors with a mission to expand access to high-quality, affordable higher education, online, nonprofit WGU now serves more than 130,000 students nationwide and has more than 300,000 graduates in all 50 states. Driving innovation as the nations leading competency-based university, WGU has been recognized by the White House, state leaders, employers, and students as a model that works in postsecondary education. In just 25 years, the university has become a leading influence in changing the lives of individuals and families and preparing the workforce needed in todays rapidly evolving economy. WGU is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, has been named one of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies, and has been featured on NPR, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and in The New York Times. Learn more at http://www.wgu.edu. As the HarperCollins labor dispute rolls into a new year, the company's unionized employee strike is now the longest in the union's more than 80-year history at the top publisher. Since the initial employee walkout on November 10, the dispute has caught the attention of all publishing sectors, with many anticipating the outcome as a test case for how labor unions could change business operations. But for many publishing industry veterans, whether that change is positive or negative remains to be seen. Indeed, some smaller independent publishersmostly outside of New York Cityare concerned that the public nature of the strike, with wage demands made public, is raising unrealistic financial expectations. Smaller publishing operations can't afford to match wages at the Big Five publishing companies. Moreover, despite the double-digit profit margins that the publicly-traded publishers have posted in recent years, publishing is generally a low margin business. Sales gains during the initial years of the COVID-19 outbreak notwithstanding, the industry typically has marginal growth in annual sales, and flat is the new up has long been an unofficial business slogan. A lengthy, very public strike only adds to the industry's challenges, with many agents and authors wanting the dispute to be resolved quickly and immediately so the industry can get back to business. As of January 18, unionized employees have missed 50 work days, amid numerous stories about HarperCollins' low pay, particularly for entry-level employees. Inside HarperCollins, staff members have anonymously shared that they are frustrated by the lack of communication from management about the dispute. Others have grown weary of how the labor dispute has created a hostile work environment for non-union employees, pointing to social media posts that suggested books have been released in a slapdash fashion due to the absence of unionized labor. As one employee put it, The entire situation is just so sad. This is what happens when you publish a book where the publicity team is on strike. https://t.co/ugT6qODpok HarperCollins Union on strike since 11/10/22 (@hcpunion) January 9, 2023 Then there is HC's parent company, News Corp, which many publishing insiders believe could be the force stalling further labor negotiations based on the corporation's history of anti-union business practices. With negotiations at HarperCollins seemingly at a stand still, the HC union organized a January 18 rally outside News Corp's Manhattan headquarters to point the finger at the company in a public way, said Olga Brudastova, president of Local 2110 UAW, the union that more than 250 HarperCollins employees in the design, editorial, legal, marketing, publicity, and sales departments. "We haven't heard from the company," said Brudastova. "They haven't expressed any desire to restart negotiations so we just have to continue with the pressure tactics." In general, the union has attracted widespread support. A rally on December 16 was co-hosted by HarperCollins bestselling authors Rebecca F. Kuang and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Other speakers included New York City council member Chris Marte, comptroller Brad Lander, and New York State Senator Brad Hoylman. Adding to the union's support, a number of agents have expressed that they are not submitting manuscripts to HarperCollins until the labor dispute is settled, with one agent sharing that she would withhold submitting to HC if an author asked her. Stephanie Delman of Trellis Literary, was more definitive. In solidarity with the HarperCollins Union, our whole agency is withholding new submissions to union-eligible imprints at HarperCollins until the strike is over, she said, explaining that some imprints, like those at Harlequin, arent union eligible. Because HC union employees went on strike during a period that is generally slow on submissions, it has been difficult to judge the impact of agents boycotting submissions to publisher. But as the strike drags on, charges and counter-charges have mounted. Brudastova shared that the union, which has been working without a contract since April 2022, is requesting higher pay and greater contractual protections and benefits packages for workers. We're persistent, pissed, and prepared to take things to the top Raise your voice in support and join us at the News Corp HQ! pic.twitter.com/Hl8CIbXemp HarperCollins Union on strike since 11/10/22 (@hcpunion) January 11, 2023 After the union demonstrated outside of the National Book Awards, HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray issued an open letter to authors and agents to clarify where negotiations stand. Addressing the union's demands"which are many and far reaching," said Murrayhe explained that the union failed to "account for the market dynamics of the publishing industry, and our responsibility to meet the financial demands of all our business stakeholdersincluding all employees, authors, and booksellers." He also accused the union of mischaracterizing its negotiations with the company. In a January 17 statement from a HarperCollins spokesperson reiterating the same points, the company shared that negotiations have been in "good faith" with the United Autoworkers Union for a more than a year and the company has "agreed to numerous proposals that the UAW sought to include in a new contract." The statement concluded that "the door remains open for the union to come back to the table." Legally, private employers are not obligated to resolve employee strikes and walkout can go on indefinitely, explained labor law expert, J. Michael McGuire, Esq, of the Baltimore, Maryland-based Shawe Rosenthal LLP. "There is also no obligation for a union to agree to a employer's proposal to end a strike," he said, explaining that there is no obligation in the private sector for any party to agree to binding arbitration. "You may see binding arbitration from time to time in the public sector, such as firemen, school teachers, police officers, etc., but that is because the state or local legislation that gave collective bargaining rights to those public sector employees also called for some kind of binding arbitration," McGuire added. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law that governs collective bargaining negotiations and strikes involving private employers, is designed to balance the rights of both employers and employees. Both are legally within their right to exercise pressure tactics, McGuire explained but the law does not compel any side to come to an agreement. "According to the NLRB, an employer has an obligation to meet with the union that represents its employees, to negotiate about wages, hours and working conditions, and, if the parties agree, 'to put into writing any agreement reached,'" explained McGuire. "If the union were to make unreasonable bargaining demands upon the employer, or demands which the employer feels are not in the companys interest, they have a right under the law to say no." Although firing or threatening to fire union employees would be a violation of the NLRA, the employer also has the right to continue fulfilling the operational needs of the company, including hiring temporary employees or full-time employees to completely replace union workers. "If the employer has hired bona fide permanent replacements for employees who are striking over things such as wages, benefits, or improvements in working conditions, the strikers are not necessarily entitled to their job back when the strike ends if the employer is still employing the permanent replacements," said McGuire. "The replaced strikers are entitled to be put on a preferential hiring list for when future openings occur. But the striking employee who has been permanently replaced is not entitled, when the strike ends, to displace the worker who was hired as a permanent replacement for the strike." He added, "Striking employees have the right to find other employment during a strike without forfeiting their legal rights to return to work when the strike ends if they have not been permanently replaced." While on strike they remain an employee, he explained, but employees are not entitled to any exit benefits by virtue of going on strike or finding alternative employment during the strike. Brudastova shared that the HC union sustained its number of striking employees and are committed to seeing the conflict through to a resolution. As one tweet from the union reads, "We're persistent, pissed, and prepared to take things to the top." With the publishing world watching on, whatever comes next could have implications for more unions in the publishing industry for years to come. Journalist Katie Hafners marvelous fiction debut, The Boys, centers on a socially awkward mans neuroses about fatherhood. While working as the chief technology officer at a startup in Philadelphia, Ethan meets Barb, a University of Pennsylvania grad student, and the two soon marry. After discovering that Ethan is sterile, they decide to foster two young boys, but when the Covid-19 pandemic hits and Ethan develops an overbearing attachment to them, his relationship with Barb disintegrates. She leaves him and he takes the boys on a bike trip to Italy, where a jaw-dropping twist ensues. Starting out as a lighthearted romance before taking an unsettling turn, this upsets expectations in the best way. One of the funniest scenes in the history of cinema occurs in Nora Ephrons Sleepless in Seattle, when Suzy (Rita Wilson) grows weepy with sentiment as she describes the end of An Affair to Remember to her brother (Tom Hanks) and husband (Victor Garber). The two men roll their eyes, then Hanks pipes up. I cried at the end of The Dirty Dozen, he says. Jim Brown is throwing these hand grenades down these air shafts. Hanks starts choking up. And Richard Jaeckel and Lee Marvin are sitting on top of this armored personnel carrier, parachuting down behind the Nazi line. By now both men are fake crying. That pretty much sums up what I thought was the emotional capacity of men for literature (or, in this case, film). How wrong I was. Since The Boys was published, Ive been getting a steady stream of emails from men who want to report the deep impact the book had on them. Many are in their 60s, in the midst of reckoning with their lives. Others, much younger, tell me they related to the books main character, whos in his 30s. Few just say, Great story. They go on at far greater length than do any of the women I hear from. Theres a church scene, in particular, that seems to resonate with a special poignancy, even for men who tell me they arent religious. One told me he sobbed. For real. All of which put me in mind of books through the years that men love. In no particular order, here are 10 books that feed and fray mens souls. 1. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien This meditation on war and imagination tells the often wrenching, always evocative story of Alpha Company in Vietnam, among whose members is OBrien himself. My favorite parts are less about the war itself and more about tricks of memory and the interplay of fact and fiction. As one male friend of mine who loves this book put it, "emotional truth trumps factual truth in this story of barely beyond adolescence during the Vietnam War." It can be a tough read at times, so graphic are the descriptions of wartime killing. But the payoff is huge. 2. Stoner by John Williams Heres one Im sure youve never heard of, wrote one friend. Actually, Stoner is one of my all-time favorite novels. William Stoner is the son of undereducated, dirt-poor farmers who goes off to college in 1910 to study agriculture but falls head over heels for literature when he encounters Shakespeares Sonnet 73. The book follows Stoner through two world wars and a series of profound disappointments in life. As relentlessly sad as this story is, there is hope in Stoners persistent striving to be good. 3. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner For years I adored everything about this 1971 novel: the love story; the raw depiction of the American West; the elemental struggles. This, no doubt, is why so many men love it, too. In solidarity with Mary Foote, the woman from whom Stegner apparently stole entire swaths of prose, I recently banished this tome from my shelf. Still, I understand its enduring appeal: Stegners leaps of the imagination into the troubled marriage of Susan and Oliver Ward; their confrontations with the frontier and its perilous terrain; the American dream turned rancid, then tragic. 4. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay No, not the self-help book by the same title, but Courtenays dazzling story of Peekay, a young South African boy sent to boarding school in the 1930s. Peekay embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice, while learning, along the way, the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one. The book contains all the classic Greek elements: protagonist, antagonist, and the odyssey itself. 5. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis Faith, Grace, and Redemption are among the great Christian themes in the seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia. Told in fairytale form that borders on science fiction, the series reveals truths (without, mind you, a single open reference to Christ) that are profound. One male friend wrote these beautiful lines to me: The last paragraphs of the last book are about the England inside the heart of England there was something magical about that pristine vision that gave one hope. 6. Endless Love by Scott Spencer This novel captures obsessive love in a way that is at once very real and truly frightening. It centers on an adolescent relationship that ends in tragedy. I read it when I was 16 and remain haunted by the ending. As one male admirer of the book suggested, the enduring lesson is this: If there is a small probability that your actions will result in a very bad outcome, rethink. A bonus: Its the sexiest sex book ever, at least from a 16-year-olds point of view. 7. Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner This book, a young friend tells me, perfectly tapped into so many of my internal monologues and my worries. Its a coming-of-age novel about a young American poet spending a fellowship year in Madrid. The protagonist, such as he is, seeks to reconcile social, romantic, familial, personal, and professional expectations. Its also a story about the peculiar type of modern, existential anxiety that so many young men feel these days. Ever self-critical, the main character feels like an imposter wherever he goes; his self-esteem and -image are, to his mind, always on the verge of crumbling. Its also a book about love, and the excruciating paradox of wanting to be vulnerable and honest to another person, but without understanding how to create such a relationship. 8. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead An emotionally devastating story of boys in a reform school (a euphemism at best) in Florida in the early 1960s. Its based on a real place and the beatings, torture, and suspicious deaths that took place there. This wrenching book, all of whose characters are men, is a searing reminder that not even our past is past. 9. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel In 1995, the year this book came out, it was deemed the perfect gift for the man who has everything. Three generations of the Harrison family developed spring-driven clocks for shipboard use because pendulums didn't work. They finally won a large cash prize. At the same time, the scurrilous Astronomer Royal did everything he could to prevent them from winning because he wanted an astronomical solution to longitude navigation. One friend, a computer scientist, told me he loved this book because the engineers win in the end. Non-binary, bisexual cartoonist MariNaomis graphic memoir I Thought You Loved Me, which will be published February by Fieldmouse Press, marks a continuation of their career-long fascination with the vagaries of friendships and identity. They also show off an expansive new visual repertoire. While clear, simple lines and uncomplicated backdrops defined their prior probing, nakedly honest memoir comics, this latest story is told through an offbeat, innovative mix of photo collage, prose, and comics. The narrative takes a deep dive into MariNaomis friendship with a peer, Jodie, which began in their teenage years in the late 1980s and carried on into the early aughts. When Jodie suddenly cut Mari off without explanation in 2001, Mari was left bewildered. Years later, Mari discovered Jodies apparent motivations for ending the friendship, and their emotions shifted to anger and a sense of betrayal. Still haunted by questions of what went wrong, they began sifting through memories for answers, pored through old letters and diary entries, and eventually confronted some surprising revelations. MariNaomi employs a scrapbooky, mixed media aesthetic throughout. For example, on one page they pair the artifact of an old letter from Jodie with a backdrop photo of the flowering greenery that always appears whenever memories of Jodie take center stage. When you come right down to it, MariNaomi, 49, tells PW from their home in the East Bay area of California, this book is about memorymemory both true and faulty. I Thought You Loved Me endured a rollercoaster journey to publication. The book was first acquired by Amble Press and announced for a 2022 release, but in a familiar post-Covid pattern, the publisher ran into budget issues and canceled publication. Coming to the rescue, small independent Fieldmouse Press picked it up, successfully running a crowdfunding campaign to finance publication. MariNaomi describes the experience as fraught: I hate asking people for money. I felt that if it didnt fund, I would probably quit making books. Its just gotten too hard. But then I watched as the community, including the publisher that had to let go of my book, propped me up on social media. MariNaomis community building has been a strength throughout their career. In 2014, in an effort to increase visibility and cross-communication for marginalized creators, they founded the Cartoonist Database for Cartoonists of Color, which expanded to two more databases: one for queer cartoonists and the other for disabled cartoonists. These resources are supported and utilized by artists, academics, and publishers. I realized that if we're going to have any visibility, I didnt want to wait for someone else to do it, says MariNaomi. They grew up in a tiny town in North Texas. My folks told me that San Francisco had a park twice the size of where we lived, which blew my mind," MariNaomi says. "The town was surprisingly diverse, though. My mom had a Japanese best friend there, with a half-Japanese daughter like me. The first boy I kissed was Black. I played with Latinx girls. Race barely occurred to me. MariNaomi eventually moved to the Bay area and began to draw comics and self-publish zines as a fun hobby in 1997, inspired in particular by the autobiographical comics of Mary Fleener. Estrus, which catalogued MariNaomis sexual and romantic experiences, eventually comprised the bulk of their first published memoir, Kiss and Tell: A Romantic Resume 0 to 22 (Harper Perennial, 2011). In simplest terms, it was all about my love life, they say with a laugh. MariNaomis readership was bolstered by work featured online at Buzzfeed and The Rumpus, and by their joining Michelle Teas traveling road show of writers and artists, Sister Spit, in 2011, a crash course on stage readings. I became an overnight star in 14 years, they joke. After debuting with a major trade house, their vibrant publishing career has since been built primarily through relationships with smaller independent presses. As MariNaomi puts it, Ive found Indies are more likely to take a chance on something different. Theyve been instrumental in pushing the medium forward. The autobiographical shorts in Dragons Breath and Other Stories (2D Cloud with Uncivilized, 2014) garnered an Eisner nomination. Turning Japanese (2D Cloud, 2016), a memoir about trying to learn Japanese by working in a hostess bars, had a longer gestation period while MariNaomi found the narrative. Eventually, I realized that the real story was me searching for the Japanese part of my identity, which Id never embraced as a kid, they explain. I Thought You Loved Me picks up on themes of their fourth graphic memoir, I Thought YOU Hated ME (Retrofit, 2017), a lighter work which tracks the ups and downs of a childhood friendship that did, in that case, last into adulthood. Aesthetically, the two books could not be more different, but I wanted to tie them together, says MariNaomi. In a break from depicting their own youth, MariNaomi moved into creating comics to be read by the young adult market. The Life on Earth trilogy: Losing the Girl (2018), Gravitys Pull (2019) and Distant Stars (2020), published by Graphic Universe, explores the lives of a diverse group of high school students navigating romance and friendships, caught up in the mystery of a classmates disappearance. Though they received critical praise, the series ran into some unexpected trouble. First MariNaomi had to cancel all in-person promotional efforts due to the Covid pandemic, which deflated their momentum. Then in 2022, Losing the Girl was banned by a school board in Katy, Texas, due to relatively minor LGBTQ content. I always joked that I wanted to be a banned book authorfor the publicitybut when it happened, it was a punch in the gut. Warming up to the experimentation with form found in I Thought You Loved Me, MariNaomi drew each of the Life on Earth characters in their own unique visual style. And in detailing a painful collapse of friendship between two of the kid characters, MariNaomi confesses, I was really writing about Jodie. I still wasnt ready to write about her directly. Once they got going however, MariNaomi found working on I Thought You Loved Me fun, as they were finally ready to excavate this one old wound, adding I wonder if I'd had a therapist back when I was going through all this, if the book would even exist today. You could turn to any page of I Thought You Loved Me and every image is a visual metaphor for something, everything has meaning. I took every picture in the book except for some of the ones that are of me. This lilac image that I used to represent memoryevery time you see the lilac on a page, that represents my faded memories returning. In fact, I made a whole outfit of that lilac image that I'm going to be wearing on tour when the book comes out. The rocky road traveled by both their YA trilogy and I Thought You Loved Me took their toll, but MariNaomi remains cautiously optimistic about the future. The arts have never been easy, but these pandemic times have felt especially bumpy and unsure. I've never felt so close to abandoning comics as I have in the last few years, but my beloved community and my love for the medium keeps pulling me back in. They have several new projects on the horizon, including a return to a major trade house with a middle-grade graphic novel in collaboration with Trung Le Nguyen (The Magic Fish), slated to be published by Little, Brown in 2026. If not for comics, they say, where would I go? Newbery Medalist Meg Medina has been named the eighth National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature, a position established in 2008 by the Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader to promote lifelong literacy in children and teens. Medina, who is Cuban American, is the first author of Latina heritage to step into the role. She told PW, Its a beautiful honor. It feels like Ive been entrusted with the reading and writing lives of Americas children. On a personal note, Id say its a little surreal. The inauguration will take place at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., at 10:30 a.m. on January 24, attended by local school groups and Medinas predecessor Jason Reynolds. The ceremony will also be livestreamed. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement, I am delighted Meg Medina will serve as the next National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature. Megs warmth and openness, coupled with her long-running commitment to young readers, libraries, and librarians, is extraordinary. I look forward to the ways she will invite young peopleespecially Spanish and bilingual speakersto share their favorite books and stories. The recipient of the 2019 Newbery Medal for her middle grade novel Merci Suarez Changes Gears (Candlewick), Medina is not so much changing gears with this appointment as shifting into a higher one. I have moved through my publishing life with advocacy and with community-building as part of my career, she said, so its not a completely new way of thinking. For her two-year platform as ambassador, Medina has chosen Cuentame!: Lets Talk Books, which will focus on bringing children and their families and communities together, both inside and outside the classroom, by discussing books. Fittingly, the idea emerged during a conversation with her daughter Sandra. Medina explained, When Spanish-speaking people meet and they havent seen each other for a while, it always starts with the gentle expression cuentamehow are you? So tell me! Literally, she said, the awkward, clunky direct translation is story me. That really seemed to resonate for me with how children think about books and stories and connection. Centering this Spanish word in her platform, Medina celebrates her bilingual and multicultural identity and her commitment to reaching both English and Spanish-speaking readers. Im the ambassador for all kids in the country, but its exciting to represent someone who moves through reading and literacy in different languages, she said. If you look out into any school, there is every kind of kid sitting in front of you. And all of those experiences come with stories. In her own work, Medina said, I incorporate lots of Spanish and lots of translanguaging and opportunities for children who are familiar with Spanish to feel seen and to hear the language of their families on the page. But also, its a way for folks who are not necessarily Spanish speakers to be able to use decoding skills and clues from the text to connect. Literacy in any language will help kids move forward. Medina is conscious that reading has become a school subject that kids learn and get a grade on. Part of her mission is to reclaim it and return it to families and kids and communities. Over the next two years, she envisions working with kids in their schools, but also in their libraries and with their families, on how we choose the books that speak to ushow we think about them and, more importantly, how we talk them up to each other. When asked about the role models who inspired her own love of reading, Medina credited her elementary school teachers for giving her and her classmates opportunities for free-reading every day after lunch, a vital chance to choose books for themselves. She also expressed gratitude for her mothers steady encouragement. She was a recent immigrant with very little money, but she always let me order books from the Scholastic Book Fair. I was allowed to order any book I wanted that we could afford, Medina reflected. She also bought the World Book encyclopedia, complete with the Childcraft volume, which was a very hard thing for her to do at the time. She had been a teacher in Cuba and she knew the value of knowing about the world and imagining a bigger world than the one that you were currently occupying. Medina went on to acknowledge the authors themselves: the Judy Blumes, the beautiful voices that were creating books that helped me to grow. In her work as ambassador, she said, she hopes to shine the light on the many contemporary authors writing from diverse perspectives for todays young readers. Medina joins the ranks of previous ambassadors Jon Scieszka (20082009), Katherine Paterson (20102011), Walter Dean Myers (20122013), Kate DiCamillo (20142015), Gene Luen Yang (20162017), Jacqueline Woodson (20182019), and most recently Jason Reynolds (20202022), whom she counts as a friend and colleague. Jasons words ring in my ears, she said. Its an honor, but its also a job. Im really hopeful and excited to travel the country and meet readers. Of course, Medina will also continue writing and releasing books throughout her tenure. She is currently working on a middle-grade fantasy and has a picture book in production. I fully anticipate that these two years are going to be very, very full. These two years are about service to a larger vision about kids and reading and our literate lives. So its okay if I pause a bit and produce a little less while Im doing this important work. I think I just have to stay limber and keep my knees from locking, and see where it takes me. The National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature is appointed by the Librarian of Congress, based on the nominations of professionals in the childrens book community, as well as members of the 20232024 selection committee: Cathy Berner, childrens and young adult specialist and events coordinator at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston; Klem-Mari Cajigas, family literacy coordinator for Bringing Books to Life! at the Nashville Public Library; Nicole A. Cooke, the Augusta Baker endowed chair for childhood literacy and associate professor at the University of South Carolina; Saraciea J. Fennell, founder and CEO of The Bronx Is Reading, and executive director of the Bronx Book Festival; Kathy Ishizuka, editor in chief and partnerships and innovation director at School Library Journal; Brein Lopez, general manager at Childrens Book World in Los Angeles; Jason Reynolds, author and 20202022 National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature; Diane Roback, senior v-p and childrens book editor at Publishers Weekly; and Deborah Taylor, youth literature specialist and retired coordinator of school and student services at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Digital Book World, a conference focusing on publishing innovation, offered insight into how technologists, and some publishers, are planning to implement AI into their workflow. Asked about AI and the use of ChatGPT, which automates writing, Mary McAveeney, CEO of Abrams, was skeptical of its ability to write books. She conceded, It might be good for catalog copy. Earlier in the conference, organizer Bradley Metrock asked publishers Laini Brown, director of Publicity for the Nashville office of Hachette Book Group, and Lisa Lucas, senior vice president and publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books, what they thought of the news that the next iteration of ChatGPT will be able to produce a 60,000 word book in 20 seconds. Brown replied, "nope," indicating her disinterest in the potential results; Lucas offered, "commercial" as her response, implying it would produce something that would not be of much value to literary publishers. The conference has demonstrated that technologists, absent of input from publishers, are keen to co-opt the practice of publishing as much as possible. ChatGPT in particular is being touted as tool to revolutionize writing, or as it might better be described, the production of content. Numerous speakers throughout the conference touted the potential benefits of using AI to streamline writing. At the moment, the technology is primarily being implemented by academic writers, many of whom employ AI to conduct research and produce citations. Some writers are also using the tech as a way of creating a basis for articles. Metrock used the tech to produce one of the panel descriptions in his conference catalog and challenged the audience to figure out which one. Others warned against relying too heavily on AI without human intervention. For example, Madeleine Rothberg, senior subject matter expert for WGBH National Center for Accessible Media in Boston, warned against posting AI-generated subtitles for YouTube videos without first reviewing them. Its not a good idea, because we have found the AI doesnt always get the words right and makes mistakes, she said, citing instances of unintended vulgarity. Or, as Ashok Giri, CEO of Page Magik put it, primary research human beings are [still] needed. Giris company offers automation tools and data to help streamline editorial and production workflow. Others are more skeptical. One attendee, who wished to remain anonymous so as not to offend others in the room, noted that Chat GPT and AI is limited by what is put into it and, for this, it needs to absorb vast swaths of existing information. Much of that comes from print books, e-books, and internet writing protected by copyright. It sounds exactly like that Google hoped to accomplish with the Google Books program, they said. What happened there? Lawsuits. Bradley Metrock, conference organizer, acknowledged that the owners of copyrighted material incorporated will likely challenge the use of their content by AI. There are going to be a lot of lawsuits before this is sorted out, said Metrock, who owns several companies that invest in various AI and voice related projects. The point here is that good technology challenges, citing the lack of innovation in the ebook space over the past 15 years, he said. Everything stays the same, he added, until it doesnt. Backlist Audio Audiobooks are now a $5 billion market worldwide, and they continue to experience double digit growth. According to the Association of Audiobook Publishers, the U.S. market is growing at a rate of 25% per year ,and reached $1.6 billion in sales for 2021. The increasing availability of titles is the biggest driver of audiobook growth, said Videl Bar-Kar, global head of audio for Frankfurt-based Bookwire. The best way to grow the catalog of available titles is through backlist. Here, the use of AI generated voices to narrate audiobooks offers publishers who cannot afford human narrators the opportunity to turn backlist into audiobooks for low cost. And if the book sells and becomes a success, Bar-Kar added, they can always go back and re-record the book with a human narrator. Bar-Kar called the audiobook market a once in a generation opportunity, noting: There are new people discovering audio for the first time year-on-year, not because of the heavy consumers, but because there are new people coming into the market. He described it as a business opportunity, and one that needs to be demystified: Have the courage and confidence to stop selling your audiobook rights and develop your own audio program, he said. One company that is not sleeping on the opportunity is Swedish audio streaming service Spotify, which launched audiobooks on its site last year. Nir Zicherman, v-p and global head of audiobooks has big plans. We are currently offering audiobooks in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Zicherman said, and described this as the first iteration of Spotifys audiobooks platform. He told attendees to expect advances on the platform soon, including experiments with various business models that Zicherman implied would compete with Audible.com. Taxpayers got a rare win at the end of last year when a Massachusetts court struck down a bizarre cookie nexus law that the state had enforced for years. Unfortunately, because of the heads I win, tails you lose way that tax disputes so often work out for the taxpayer, theres not likely to be much in the way of refunds for businesses that were strong-armed into paying this unconstitutional tax. For context, in 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedent that states could only require businesses with physical presence in that state to collect and remit sales taxes on that states behalf. Instead, they allowed states to enforce these obligations on the basis of economic nexus, or a significant enough economic presence in the state. Long before this 2018 Supreme Court decision, states had tried to come up with workarounds to this physical presence restriction. Massachusettss effort was its cookie nexus law, which considered the digital cookies, tiny files that websites store on a users device to do things like save passwords or remember the contents of a users shopping cart from a previous session, to constitute physical presence. This was, to put it mildly, a stretch. But with the outcome of the Wayfair decision, battles over the scope of physical presence appeared to be moot. After all, states had what they wanted the power to compel out-of-state businesses to collect sales taxes on their behalf and most states with workaround laws on the books simply transitioned to more constitutionally sound economic nexus laws. But not Massachusetts. Massachusetts continued to claim that its cookie nexus law was valid under the old physical presence standard, and enforced it as such. This meant that taxpayers were expected to abide by it not only going back to 2018, but even before. In December of last year, Massachusettss Supreme Judicial Court finally considered the merits of the states position. Unsurprisingly, it found them wanting, and struck it down. One would expect that this would mean that Massachusetts is on the hook for repaying all the taxpayers it swindled with this half-baked legal position. Unfortunately, it does not seem that that is the case. Theres a couple of reasons for this. The first reason is that taxpayers are only eligible for refunds going back during the period covered by the three-year statute of limitations in other words, essentially only businesses that registered during the last three years are eligible. Businesses that were pressured into complying before this time are out of luck. The other reason is that many businesses in disputes with Massachusetts over its cookie nexus law entered into settlement agreements. Those settlements generally bar the taxpayer from seeking any post-settlement refunds, even in cases like this where the Department of Revenues position is found to have been legally unsound. The result is that the only taxpayers likely to receive any refund are those who never buckled to the Department of Revenues pressure and either refused to pay any tax under the law or paid and then filed a refund claim soon after, before the statute of limitations expired. Under this status quo, businesses are expected to be constitutional law experts as well as soothsayers, recognizing that Massachusettss stance is legally unsound and knowing that it would eventually be struck down. Those who failed to demonstrate such fortune-telling abilities are left holding the bag. Unfortunately, tax officials are often indifferent to the unfair position that this puts businesses in, viewing and presenting to courts any challenge to the legality of a tax assessment as a direct threat to their governments ability to operate. To receive relief, taxpayers usually have to pay first just to even get in the door to challenge an assessment, no matter how specious the legal argument being used to justify it is. This is just one example of the Catch-22 taxpayers are often left in. But it speaks to a larger standard that prioritizes tax revenue over taxpayers, rather than the other way around. Lifetime By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/01/2023 ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS! Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! Which couples are still together and which MAFS couples have split up and divorced? And where are they now? 's first fifteen seasons followed 59 couples who got married at first sight -- so which couples are still together, who split up and divorced, and where are they all now?Each season of -- which premiered in the United States nine years ago and is based on a Danish series -- features couples (previously three couples, but four couples on Seasons 8 and 9, and five couples beginning with Season 10) being matched together by relationship experts and agree to marry when they first meet.Complete strangers become husband and wife in a matter of minutes, and the couples' lives are then documented by TV cameras over the course of the next four to eight weeks (eight weeks, in the case of 's most recent seasons).The couples typically enjoy their first night together in a hotel after exchanging vows -- with some couples deciding to consummate their marriage immediately -- and then embark on a honeymoon, move in together, and simply attempt to deal with the struggles of daily life as man and wife.At the end of the extreme marriage experiment, each couple must decide whether they'd like to stay married or get a divorce on "Decision Day."has experienced very mixed results over the years. While a significant number of couples decide to stay together and continue their new marriage at the end of their season, the real world seems to hit them hard after the cameras leave, resulting in the couple splitting up only months later.Do cast members see a different side of their spouses once cameras are gone, or do the romances naturally fizzle over time?Some couples are still together to this day and are extremely happy. Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner from Season 1, for example, have had two children.Several other couples have also had children -- including Ashley Petta and Anthony D'Amico Shawniece Jackson and Jephte Pierre Danielle Bergman and Bobby Dodd Deonna McNeill and Greg Okotie , and Jessica Studer and Austin Hurd However, there are also relationships that ended badly. Jessica Castro from Season 2, for instance, accused Ryan De Nino of alleged death threats, and she went on to file a restraining order and lawsuit against him.Some couples have also never even made it to "Decision Day" and ended their marriage prematurely, including Season 4 couple Heather Seidel and Derek Schwartz as well as Season 6 couple Molly Duff and Jonathan Francetic Are the remaining couples now lovers, friends or enemies?! What about early season couples like Cortney Hendrix and Jason Carrion, Jaclyn Methuen and Ryan Ranellone, Vanessa Nelson and Tres Russell, Sonia Granados and Nick Pendergrast, and Lillian Vilchez and Tom Wilson?And how about more recent season couples like Danielle DeGroot and Cody Knapek Sheila Downs and Nate Duhon Jaclyn Schwartzberg and Ryan Buckley Dave Flaherty and Amber Martorana , and Tristan Thompson and Mia Bally Keith Dewar and Kristine Killingsworth , and AJ Vollmoeller and Stephanie Sersen Click thelink below to see photos of each couple and find out! BEGIN GALLERY >> Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. Katie Thurston / Instagram By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 01/17/2023 ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. alum Katie Thurston has revealed she's looking for a guy who won't be "intimidated" by her career and celebrity status.Katie, 32, was briefly engaged to her seventeenth-season winner Blake Moynes in 2021, and then she dated one of her Week 2 eliminees from the show, San Diego bartender John Hersey , for about six months until she announced their split in June 2022.Katie has been single ever since, and she apparently knows what she wants in her next boyfriend."[I want] someone who isn't [intimidated] by my life or personality," Katie wrote during a Friday Q&A session via Instagram Stories, according to Us Weekly."I'm pretty independent so bonus points if I feel taken care of by him, that's when my feminine energy shines."Katie played coy about her current relationship status.When an Instagram user asked if she's "dating," Katie replied with a selfie of herself shrugging her shoulders.Katie sparked rumors she's hooking up or romantically involved with The Circle Season 3 alum Nick Uhlenhuth after the pair posted photos on social media of them celebrating New Year's Eve together and with friends."I used to hate having a birthday so close to the New Year but now I love it! It's this full circle moment each year that marks a brand new chapter," Katie captioned a slideshow of black-and-white photos from her big night out in San Diego, CA, including one with Nick."Im excited to be 32 in 2023. In my gut, I just know, this is going to be one hell of a year and I'm so excited! My 2023 mantra: Watch me."Nick, for his part, also uploaded several pictures from the party, and one image featured Nick and the former star dancing together."#NewYearsEve I couldn't be more stoked for 2023. I truly think it's gonna be an incredible year of personal growth and adventure. Buckle up!!!" Nick wrote at the time.Katie noticeably commented on Nick's post, "Starting off 2023 with a bang."According to a TikTok user, Katie and Nick shared a kiss in one photo that wasn't posted on either of their Instagram accounts."My thirties and being single have truly been my favorite," Katie told another follower in her Instagram Q&A. "My only timeline is happiness and I do that well on my own."Katie reportedly said on Friday that she's not "worrying" about outside pressure to settle down by a certain age."Timelines don't exist," Katie noted. "It's your universe. Own it."In August 2022, Katie shared during an episode of the "Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe " podcast that she had no interest in looking for love on another reality dating show, whether it be on ABC or any other channel or streaming platform."I don't think so," Katie noted. "I think reality TV can be fun, but dating in reality? No."Katie added, "The Bachelor franchise, I am not dipping into that pool anymore.""Why?" asked Kaitlyn Bristowe , who got engaged to Shawn Booth at the end of 's eleventh season and is now engaged to 14 alum Jason Tartick "I don't want to generalize that much, but it's a certain type, you know what I mean?" Katie explained."They're all, to a certain extent, they're either a certain type or the show changes them a little bit -- and then they become a certain type."Kaitlyn's co-host suggested men in Bachelor Nation are "thirsty," and Katie agreed, "You said it!""But, you know, I've already done it twice. I'm just not interested," Katie elaborated. "There have been some that have slid into my DM's, and talking to them, it's so cringy."Katie refused to share who had DM'd her in order to "respect their boundaries and privacy."Katie said she knows "for sure" that the people mixed up with The Bachelor franchise are "too interchangeable.""I can't explain it," Katie admitted. "I feel like I'm so open [otherwise]."Katie also revealed she was actually "very, very excited" to be single "I'm just focusing on myself, truly. Am I open to finding someone? Sure, I hope so. But it's not a priority," Katie shared at the time.Katie also told Kaitlyn that her future partner must love animals and be confident and secure in who he is and what he brings to the table, especially given her background of having dated 30 guys on television.Katie's season ended with her getting engaged to Blake, a wildlife manager, but the pair announced their breakup in October 2021 after less than six months together.Katie and John, who were very close friends before they became lovers, then went Instagram official in November 2021.Katie had faced backlash for moving on from Blake too quickly with a "rebound," but both Katie and John denied any wrongdoing in the press, and Katie insisted she never emotionally or physically cheated on Blake.John even posted a long Reddit message to fans in late 2021 defending his romance with Katie, saying their connection was innocent and they had the best of intentions and utmost respect for Blake.Katie allowed John to move into her apartment in Spring 2022, and then Katie announced a couple of months later in June that their relationship was over."Statement: no we aren't together ," Katie wrote on Instagram Stories, declining to provide any details or specifics.John confirmed his split from Katie shortly afterwards.He wrote in an Instagram statement: "I love being able to share special moments with you all -- the funny ones. The happy ones. The outrageous, embarrassing, and heartfelt ones. But I don't know if it will ever get easier to share the sad ones.""As Katie stated earlier, we are no longer dating. This decision was not made lightly, and it was obviously not an easy one to make," he continued."I appreciate every one of you that has supported us throughout this journey. We could not (and would not) be here without you."Katie later shared in a Q&A session with fans how her breakup was "complicated," adding, "At the end of the day, you just want the person you love to be happy and you support whatever path they want to take to find that."Katie told Kaitlyn on her podcast that John was actually the one who dumped her , and she suggested it was going to be difficult for them to remain friends after the split.Prior to starring on , Katie competed on Matt James ' season of The Bachelor.Interested in more The Bachelor news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. Rep. Mike Collins, who represents Georgias 10th congressional district, hosted a Meet with Mike listening session Thursday morning in Jefferson. According to a press release, Collins' goal behind this session was to gain insight from his constituents to help guide [his] work in Washington by allowing an open floor for constituents to share their thoughts on policy issues they want to be addressed. Matthew Tesvich, a senior at the University of Georgia, has always had a passion for baseball. When the career path he expected didnt pan out the way he wanted it to, he took his inspiration from his love for the sport and started OX SOX, an odorless sock business that he hopes will help change peoples lives. A mothers plea to lawmakers on the second anniversary of her daughters murder. You are the owner of this article. Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Abundant sunshine. Near record high temperatures. High around 85F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few passing clouds. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable. To the editor: As a property manager in Brattleboro, I feel compelled to send this letter to the supporters of banning landlords ability to have no-cause evictions. First, it would be nice and more accurate if they stop using the term eviction when attached to the no-cause. Its a no-cause termination, also known as a non-renewal. I think with them using the word eviction it makes non-renters, tenants and voters look at it differently and that may be also why they obtained the needed amount of signatures. The word eviction is most often associated with a court process and an order, etc. An eviction goes on your credit report and hinders you in finding decent housing in the future. Non-renewals or no-cause terminations do not. Brattleboro considers just-cause evictions BRATTLEBORO Without cause, tenants can be evicted from their residences with proper notice. Property managers oppose just-cause eviction proposal BRATTLEBORO Property managers say a proposal for the town to amend the town charter to req If they succeed with this ban, we will have to look at every applicant as Do I want you forever? There is more to being a good tenant than just paying rent. It is not unusual for a landlord to have a tenant who seems to exist to complain about everything, and sometimes complaining to agencies, costing a landlord a bunch of money to prove that an apartment is in compliance over and over. It is also not unusual for a tenant to slide to almost the end of a violation notice period, make amends to whatever violation, and then turn around and commit the same lease violations the next month. A landlord would not get to court with these, because the tenant manages to comply in time. It is a huge waste of time and money for landlords with these types of tenants over and over. I would choose to non-renew someone like this. In Vermont, we do not get many rights as landlords, but losing our right to non-renew tenants is allowing the law to tell us what to do with our real estate and imposes further reasons why being a landlord in Vermont is becoming more and more less desirable. Respectfully, Chrys Peck Property Manager Jason Cooper Management Brattleboro, Jan. 11 Note all articles are independently researched and written by myself. However, if you buy via one of the links it may be an affiliate and I may earn a small commission. If you are a fan of the man and his music, then Nick Drake The Authorised Biography is likely to be an essential purchase. Essential because, although Nick Drakes story has been told many times, I dont think it has ever been told in the kind of detail you have here. If you arent familiar with Nick Drake, let me give you a brief introduction. In 1968, Nick Drake was just 19 years old and had both a Cambridge education and a record deal with Island. On the face of it, nothing could stop him. But just three years later, he was overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness, retreating to his family home and eventually dying in obscurity and despair in 1974. How album sales might have been poor on release, but the appeal of Nick Drake has grown and grown as the years have passed. Combined sales of his records now stand in the millions, his songs are frequently heard on TV and in films, and his influence cannot be underestimated on so many that have followed. According to the pre-publicity of the book, Nick Drake: The Authorised Biography will be the only life of Nick to be written with the approval and involvement of his estate. Based on in-depth and original research, new interviews with close family friends, schoolfellows and musical contemporaries and collaborators with writer Richard Morton-Jack, as well as deeply personal archive material unavailable to previous biographers (including his fathers diaries, his Cambridge essays and letters home from school, university and elsewhere) this book is said to be the most comprehensive and authoritative account possible of this beloved figures short and enigmatic life. And thats why you probably want to own a copy. It lands on 8th June 2023 in hardback, with a cheaper paperback to follow, both of which are available to pre-order now. The hardback is 22, and the paperback will sell for 9.99. Find out more at the Amazon website The raided stallholder had said they were offering a graphic novel about the 2019 protest movement for sale. A stall in a Lunar New Year market in Hong Kong was raided Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, by security police who said it was selling "seditious publications that incited people to overthrow the government. Hong Kong's national security police have arrested six people in connection with a raid on a stall at a Lunar New Year market they said had been selling "seditious publications" inciting people to overthrow the government. Three people were arrested at the Ginza Plaza New Year pop-up fair selling pro-democracy memorabilia on Tuesday evening, while the rest were detained elsewhere in the city. According to the China-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper, Alan Keung, who heads the independent news organization Free HK Media, was among those arrested. A stallholder who gave only the surname Wong told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday that the police had rushed straight to the stall in question, and spent about two hours at the scene. "I'm sure they came here with a purpose," she said. "They didn't look at every stall to see what they were selling, but rushed over [to that particular stall] as soon as they came in." "They filed away the materials and asked very in-depth and detailed questions," she said. "The funniest thing is that I don't know why this was such a big event." "They had four police cars blocking the whole street to arrest this group of people is that a bit over the top? I can only say that I don't know what to say," Wong said. Some people turned out to support the market in the wake of the raid, including a shopper surnamed Ho. "After reading the news yesterday, I am planning to come back later to see what I can buy to support them," she said. A stallholder who gave only the initial M said he didn't think he had broken the law, but could be arrested anyway. "You need to be mentally prepared to run a stall here," Wong said. "But the entire government has information about everyone in Hong Kong, even if you don't run a market stall." The Ming Pao newspaper said the stall had been selling a graphic novel depicting the 2019 protest movement. Content "glorifying" the movement has been banned in the city since Beijing imposed a draconian national security law from July 2020. The police said in a statement late on Tuesday that the six arrestees, aged 18 to 62, were "members of an anti-government organization." Police also seized 43 books in the raid, saying that the market organizers were suspected of publishing them, the online news site Dim Sum reported. Some of the books on sale had content relating to Hong Kong independence, the incitement of others to overthrow the central government and the Hong Kong government, as well as incitement to violence and to disobey the law, Dim Sum quoted police as saying. Police said they also found other products that glorified violence or opposed the government being sold at the same stall, it said. The raided stall was run by Shame On You Grocery Store, while the fair was organized by Dare Media and the Be Water Alliance, and carried banners and other paraphernalia supporting jailed former pro-democracy lawmakers Andrew Wan, Woo Chi Wai and Lam Cheuk-ting. Long-running tradition Prior to the ongoing crackdown on public dissent under the national security law, Hong Kong once had a long-running tradition of political content and satirical T-shirts on sale at its Lunar New Year fairs. After the protests ended, many local businesses displayed paraphernalia denoting support for the protests, and were quietly supported by local people as part of the "yellow economic circle" movement. But such businesses have increasingly been targeted by police, with children's clothing chain Chickeeduck raided by national security police in May 2021. Some of the stalls at the Ginza Plaza basement were run by "yellow circle" business owners. The organizers ran a "Hidden Market" last July that was raided by customs officers claiming that T-shirts bearing the image of Winnie the Pooh had violated trade descriptions law. Winnie the Pooh is banned from China's internet as a satirical reference to Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, who is said to resemble the fictional bear. Political commentator Chung Kim-wah said such raids are intended to have a chilling effect on Hong Kong. "This kind of random law enforcement is actually harmful to Hong Kong, to the government and to the whole of society," Chung said. "The whole place has been in a state of fear and tension for a long time." "There are no guidelines to follow ... Nobody could have known in advance that this book was listed as a seditious publication." The raid came as Hong Kong leader John Lee said his administration will soon press ahead with more "national security" laws under Article 23 of the city's Basic Law. Lee told the China-backed Commercial Daily newspaper that he had recently sent back a first draft of the legislation for revision after finding "loopholes" linked to "disguised organizations, new media and new technologies." He said he hopes the legislation will be completed by the end of the year. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Experts say change reflects results of one-child policy and a pessimism about the future Women walk with their children as they head to the Forbidden City in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. Chinas population has decreased for the first time in over 60 years, signaling the start of long-term decline that will bring demographic challenges for the worlds second-largest economy as well as the world. Last year, 9.56 million babies were born in China, while 10.41 million people died, a yearly decrease of 850,000 to 1,411,750,000 people, according to data published by Chinas National Bureau of Statistics. It was the first decline since 1961, the final year of the famine brought on by failing economic policies during Mao Zedongs Great Leap Forward, the campaign to transform China from a mostly agrarian society into an industrial one that ended in disaster. India may now be the most populous country on Earth, Reuters reported, with an estimated population of 1.42 billion, though pandemic-related delays in that countrys census have yet to confirm the actual total. The long-term outlook for China, according to U.N. experts, is that the population will continue to decrease by about 109 million people to 1.3 billion by 2050. The turning point puts China in a similar situation as regional neighbor Japan, whose population has been shrinking, and South Korea, where birth rates are declining after rapid economic growth, leaving fewer young people in the workforce to support a swelling number of retirees. That has put a larger tax burden on workers and could lead to economic stagnation. Already, Chinas economy is slowing. From a peak of 14.2% growth in 2007, its 2022 figure was a mere 3%, less than half the growth rate of 2021 and the lowest in almost 40 years. Policy and pessimism The demographic shift reflects both the results of Chinas one-child policy and a pessimism about the future, experts said. An unintended consequence of the one-child policy, which lasted from 1980 to 2015, combined with a cultural preference for boys, has led to a major gender imbalance, resulting in fewer possible families being formed, especially in rural areas. This policy broke the normal ecological balance of Chinas population, said Chen Guangcheng, a civil rights activist. But there is also an economic and psychological element contributing to this trend. Combined with skyrocketing housing and education prices that come with robust economic growth, many young Chinese today simply do not envision children in their future. A decline in the willingness to have children reflects the hardships of Chinese peoples daily lives, Wu Qiang, a Beijing-based scholar who focuses on population, told RFAs Mandarin Service. This is a reflection of their pessimism about the future. And the recent surge in COVID-19-related deaths has driven home Chinas demographic dynamics. Almost every family is mourning the loss of loved ones, Wu said. To most citizens its not just a statistical figure; its a deep, painful cut." As fewer Chinese enter the workforce and more age out, the result will be that economic growth will be dependent on productivity increases, Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, told Reuters. China, whose rapid growth as the worlds factory floor led it to surpass Japan as the worlds second-largest economy in 2010, is bound to see its economic growth decline, said Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I predict that by 2030 to 2035, China's economic growth rate will be lower than that of the United States, he said. How to stimulate population growth? Since the end of the one-child policy, China, like South Korea and Japan, has enacted policies meant to encourage young people to have children, including housing and tax incentives and longer parental leave, but these have not proved effective. Yi said that Chinas attempts to stimulate birth rates will be even less successful than they have in Japan, because Chinas government has fewer resources. I predict that if the Chinese government does not carry out earth-shaking reforms, in the next few decades or even hundreds of years, Chinas population will continue to shrink, said Yi. Chen Guangcheng believes that the party may indeed enact extreme policies to increase the population. The problem now is that the declining population will expand rapidly in the future. Therefore, if it were not for the Chinese Communist Partys intervention and violent destruction, todays [population problems] would not be possible, Chen said. [These] various methods that can be imagined or unexpected, changing [the Partys] violent family planning into violent forced birth policy. It is very possible, Chen said. The population decline may have started earlier than 2022, and Chinese authorities are only now acknowledging it, Gao Yang, an independent journalist who reports on population and family planning policies, told RFA. Gao suspects the authenticity of Chinese government population statistics, especially with a rapid increase in deaths during the coronavirus pandemic. I personally think population decline began several years ago and gradually developed to its current very serious extent before finally having to be admitted, said Gao. A sharp population decline is not nine years down the road, as some experts predicted, but will in fact begin this year, he said. 2023 could mark the start of serious, long-term population decline." Translated by Shen Ke, Jerry Zhao, Tian Li, and Laura Huang. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster. 'If you are all watching this video, then I have been taken away by police, just like my other friends.' Protesters hold up blank sheets of paper and chant slogans as they march in protest against strict anti-COVID measures in Beijing, Nov. 27, 2022. Dozens of young Chinese -- many of them women -- are being quietly detained for taking part in Novembers "white paper" protests, Radio Free Asia has learned. Sources familiar with the crackdown in Beijing say at least 40 people are missing and believed detained following a protest at the city's Liangmahe district on the night of Nov. 27, according to a woman who gave only the surname Chen for fear of reprisals. Chen was watching video posts on social media about the "white paper" anti-lockdown protest in her hometown of Beijing in which people held up blank sheets of paper to express their frustration over restrictions on freedom of speech and to show solidarity with victims of a fatal lockdown fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang's regional capital of Urumqi. "Within three minutes, I'd decided to go down to join them, Chen, a former journalist at a commercial media organization, told RFA Mandarin. Chen, who narrowly avoided detention because she was unable to arrive at the protest, said she knows of around 20 people who are missing or detained after taking part. She has been trying to raise public awareness of the detentions. A prerecorded video made by detained protester Cao Zhixin details more than a dozen detainees, while U.S.-based rights activists said at least 40 have been quietly detained for their part in the protests, likely not just in Beijing. "I had told people that morning that if anyone took to the streets in Beijing, that I didn't know if I would dare to go too," Chen said. "But once I found out they did, I made the decision to go in three minutes. I went down there at about 10:45 pm that night, but there were roadblocks everywhere on the streets, so I couldn't find them. "The Communist Party made me unemployed, then imposed so many lockdowns that I could not go to [job] interviews," she said. "Shouldn't I be doing something to lift these restrictions on me?" Collective mourning, protest Footage of the Liangmahe protest was soon circulating on social media, as mostly young people turned out in a collective act of mourning for the victims of a fatal lockdown fire in Urumqi and to protest the zero-COVID policy they saw as being the cause of suffering as the economy stalled and travel bans left many confined to their neighborhoods and apartments. Chen has never been a fan of Western political thought, preferring to focus on Chinese history, which she credits with giving her a finely honed sense of political persecution, from ancient times right through to the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) instigated by late supreme leader Mao Zedong. She doesn't see herself as a rebel, but came to political awareness through her following of feminist news online, she said. "It was because I started going online from a very young age, in 2008, around the time that [jailed rights activist] Wu Gan and [now-shuttered] Gongmeng [public interest law center] were helping Deng Yujiao with her legal case," Chen said, in a reference to the 2009 homicide trial of a beauty therapist who allegedly stabbed a government official to death after he sexually assaulted her. Police round-up One of those who did get to the Liangmahe protest was Cao Zhixin, an editor at the Peking University Publishing House, who said police started rounding up everyone at the protest quietly from Dec. 18, using criminal detention notices with a blank space where the suspected crime was supposed to be, and with no information on where the detainees were being taken. "Our mothers have been running around in the middle of a pandemic ... trying to find out why we were taken away, and where we are being held," Cao said. "But our mothers won't even be able to bring us clothing for the coldest time of year in Beijing, because they don't know where we are." Cao cited 13 people she knew had been taken away, with dozens of other young people reported missing by Twitter account @CitizensDailyCN. Protesters hold up blank sheets of paper and chant slogans as they march in protest in Beijing on Nov. 27, 2022. Credit: Associated Press Of the names listed by the Twitter account, which RFA has been unable to verify independently, a large proportion are women, many of them journalists, with musicians, bar owners and DJs also listed. "Feminists, LGBT groups, and other subcultural circles that gather in Beijing bars are really vulnerable groups in China," Chen said. "They have a strong sense of injustice and discrimination." "Everyone is well-educated and works in the media, so they have some empathy for other people's misfortunes," she said. Raise their voices Some of the detainees were taken to the Chaoyang Detention Center, and include Cao, Yang Liu and Li Siqi, Chen said, adding that there are plenty of other detainees who nobody has heard of, and whose families have chosen to remain silent due to intimidation from the authorities. Any information about them tends to trickle through friends and other associates, she said. U.S.-based feminist Xiang Li said she knows the kind of people who would have turned up at the Liangmahe protest. "They have a very strong desire to express themselves; they represent the awakened voice of Chinese women, and they're not afraid to pay the price," she said. Xiang said many of these Generation Z young people already see themselves as the last in their family line, with little to lose. "They want to raise their voices to call for their rights and freedoms," she said. Cao's prerecorded video would appear to bear testament to that desire. A friend released it after she was detained, and it has gone viral on social media. "We pay attention to what goes on in our society," Cao said. "If you are all watching this video, then I have been taken away by police, just like my other friends. Cao Zhixin, an editor at the Peking University Publishing House, was arrested after attending a protest in Beijings Liangmahe district. She says police quietly started rounding up people who were at the protest on Dec. 18, 2022. Credit: Screenshot from video We were full of sympathy for those who lost their lives, and, with heavy hearts, we joined the crowd mourning at Liangmahe that night," she said. "Why are they enacting this revenge [on us]?" Cao said. "Why are the lives of ordinary young people being used to pay the price?" "We don't want to vanish into thin air," she said. "What are we to be convicted of, and on what evidence? Why is there no room in this society for us to express our emotions?" Cao listed the names, occupations and time of disappearance of 13 missing young people, and displayed a photo of her holding up a blank sheet of paper at the protest. Living in fear A person familiar with the crackdown told Radio Free Asia that at least 40 people had been detained after police broke into the phones and iPads of Cao and Yang, the first to be detained for the Liangmahe protest. Former 1989 student leader Zhou Fengsuo said there were likely far more detentions than that across China. Major "white paper" protests took place on Urumqi Road, Shanghai, Haizhu Square in Guangzhou, Wanping Street in Chengdu, and Zhongshan Avenue, Wuhan. "They have been detained by the Chinese Communist Party on trumped-up charges, with only half of them publicly named," he said. "So many people must be living in fear, and their family members don't know what to do." U.S.-based veteran rights activist Yang Jianli said the detentions are related to the fact that the "white paper movement severely dented President Xi Jinping's personal prestige. "The power of those blank sheets of paper was quite considerable, because it reduced people's fear of the regime, and of Xi Jinping," Yang said. "Even though [Xi] may have been forced to accept [an end to the zero-COVID policy], he still can't condone the way these opinions were expressed through protest." "He has to restore that state of fear in which nobody dares to raise anything, and I think he is using these disappearances ... to recreate that atmosphere of political terror." Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster. Citizens who resent police abusing their power revel in the news that the cops are being punished. North Korea has punished five policemen for attacking a superior officer during a departmental review, with leader Kim Jong Un personally ordering them to hard labor sentences, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia. The five officers were part of the traffic corps in the northern city of Hyesan, in charge of safety at major intersections that lead to the citys downtown area from the outskirts. Sources said that during the review meeting in October, their commanding officer took offense to some of them attending the meeting while inebriated and scolded them harshly. The drunk officers confronted their superior, telling him that he was making an issue out of a common occurrence that really wasnt that big of a deal, a resident of Hyesan told RFAs Korean Service on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. Their emotions flared and they rushed to their chief and beat him, the source said. One day later, the five officers were suspended from their duties and sent to the Ministry of Political Affairs for an intensive investigation that included a review of their ideology, according to the source. The results of the investigation were reported to the Social Security Department and then delivered to Kim Jong Un. Kim Jong Un then issued a special order to punish all who were involved, and the five officers were expelled from the party, lost their jobs, and exiled to the coal mines, the source said. Another Hyesan resident told RFA that it wasnt only the drunk officers that were punished; their superior officer, and his boss also lost their jobs. Resentment toward traffic cops Though the authorities had hoped to suppress news of the lower-level officers rising up together against their superiors, despite their best efforts to keep it under wraps, word got out over time. Many of the citizens of Hyesan took interest in news of the incident, because they have come to resent the traffic cops frequent abuses of authority, the second source said. Traffic safety officers are known nationwide for arbitrarily cracking down on passing cars and motorcycles under obscure regulations and threatening to revoke licenses so they can extort money and gasoline, he said, adding that they often use the collected fines and bribes to treat each other to a night on the town. Citizens believe that the five officers who now toil in the mines deserved to be punished, because police are always abusing their power, according to the first source. The people of Hyesan who have complaints against the police are saying that they liked the way things turned out with the police being punished. Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster. My sons cried and begged but they went on kicking them with their military boots. Daw Aye was cooking rice when junta troops quietly entered her village in Myanmars northern Sagaing region a stronghold of armed resistance against the military since the 2021 coup and grabbed her three sons. She dropped everything and ran out to find that the soldiers had forced her sons to lie facedown in the dirt with their hands tied behind their back. The soldiers then began kicking them Aung Ko, 35, San Naing, 21, and Nay Myo Aung, 17 as they begged for mercy. I cried out that my sons hadnt done anything illegal and begged to let them go, Daw Aye told Radio Free Asia on video camera in a first-hand account of the attack on Khin-U townships Ah Lel Sho village on Dec. 28. It was the start of a six-day nightmare that left several homes burned to the ground and nine civilians killed. My sons cried and begged but they went on kicking them with their military boots, she said, but they ignored her. I was about to get up when the other two women did and I was told not to. They were taken a little distance away and then I heard two gunshots, she said. They were killed on the spot. The soldiers then inexplicably let Daw Aye go, and told her not to turn back toward the village. Some time later, after the soldiers left, she returned to find the charred remains of her three sons bodies. Over the course of the next five days, until Jan. 2, junta troops killed four other residents, all men. They were identified as Aung Myint Than, 38, Kyaw Soe Aung, 43, and Tun Min and Chit Khin, both 65. Footage of the village obtained by Radio Free Asia shows the remains of the village, with husk of burned out house and debris strewn everywhere. Khin-U townships Ah Lel Sho village is seen Jan. 2, 2023, after a raid by Myanmar junta forces. Credit: Khin-U Township True News Targeted before Khin-U township, which includes Ah Lel Sho and several other villages, has been targeted by the military multiple times since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup. Over the past two years, junta troops have killed at least 254 civilians and members of the rebel Peoples Defense Force, in addition to destroying nearly 3,000 houses in 59 of the townships villages. Around 15,000 people have been left homeless in the attacks. One elderly woman whose house was destroyed by arson said that she was left with nothing and now must rely on the charity of others. I couldnt salvage anything. Five cupboards [of kitchenware], five clay pots, three brick-walled water tanks, and all of our blankets are all gone. I couldnt even retrieve the dirty dish towel from the kitchen. About 200 sacks of rice are gone too, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity. I am really crushed to have become someone waiting for food shared by donors like this. Another woman from the village said that when the column came, she was forced to flee with her two children. She said she left with only the clothing on her back and later discovered that all her belongings had been destroyed by fire. I have nothing left, she said. Not even pots and pans. I am shaken and I cant even speak straight. My living situation suddenly turned completely upside down. Khin-U is just one of the townships in Sagaing region that has faced the brunt of the juntas offensives. Independent research firm ISP Myanmar said in September that at least 1,512 civilians were killed in Sagaing region alone since the coup, while Data for Myanmar, which monitors junta destruction of civilian properties, said in November that at least 27,496 homes had been destroyed by arson in the region since the takeover. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as of the end of last year, more than 650,000 people in Sagaing had been displaced from their homes due to insecurity and conflict. Calls to Sagaing regions junta spokesman and social affairs minister Aye Hlaing went unanswered on Tuesday. Junta Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun previously claimed the military does not kill civilians or burn down their buildings, blaming anti-junta Peoples Defense Forces. Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Josh Lipes and Malcolm Foster. One of the three people injured when a shell exploded in Loilen Lay town, is taken from an ambulance at Loikaw Hospital, Loikaw township, Kayah state on Jan. 15, 2023. A 33-year-old woman died and three men were injured when junta troops fired heavy artillery at an internally displaced persons camp in Myanmars eastern Shan state. A mortar shell landed on the camp near Moebye township on Monday evening, residents told RFA. An official from the anti-junta Moebye Peoples Defense Force said the woman, named Mulin, came from Don Du Ta village but fled to the camp in Kaung Hsawng village due to fighting between junta troops and PDFs. He said troops from Pekon, 18 kilometers (11 miles) north of Moebye, were constantly shelling the camp. About 50 displaced people are gathered there. They come there because they cant go anywhere in urban neighborhoods, said the official, who didnt want to be named for security reasons. Locals said the three injured men were being treated at a secret clinic because it was too dangerous to take them to local hospitals. They said one man, aged 65, was seriously injured. The previous day junta troops fired artillery on homes in Kayah state, neighboring Shan to the south. Two women and a man were injured when a shell exploded in Loikaw townships Loilen Lay town, according to an official of the Shwe Loikaw Charitable Association. The man was hit in the arm. The two women were only hit by shrapnel, said the official who also wished to remain anonymous. The two women have been discharged. The man is still in the hospital. None of them are in a serious condition. The junta has not released any information about civilian casualties caused by shelling. RFA contacted Khun Thein Maung, junta spokesman for Shan state, and Aung Win Oo, spokesman for Kayah state, but the calls went unanswered. More than 27,000 civilians have been killed by junta forces since the military seized power nearly two years ago, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn. Veer Guardian 2023 is the first air combat exercise between the 2 members of the Quad alliance. Members of the Indian Air Force and Japanese Air Self Defense Force at Hyakuri Air Base in Japan during the Veer Guardian 2023 exercise in Japan, Jan. 2023. The first joint combat air drills between Japan and India are underway, signaling a deepening of the two countrys security ties as China continues to exert power and influence in the Asia-Pacific. Beijing is watching the development closely, with a spokesman calling on Tokyo and Delhi to do more to enhance mutual trust in the region. The maiden Veer Guardian 2023 exercise, delayed for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is taking place from Jan. 16-26 at Hyakuri and Iruma air bases outside Tokyo. In 2019, Japanese and Indian air forces conducted a joint exercise codenamed Shinyuu Maitri in India, but it focused on mobility and tactical interoperability rather than combat. The Indian Air Force has brought to Veer Guardian a contingent of four Su-30 MKI, two C-17 Globemasters and an IL-78 tanker, it said in a Twitter post. Japan contributed three Hikotai Mitsubishi F-2A/B fighters in addition to a number of F-15J/DJ Eagles and Hiko Kyodogun Eagles. An Indian Air Force Su-30 MKI takes off during the Veer Guardian 2023 exercise in Japan, Jan. 2023. Credit: Japan Air Self-Defense Force Shunji Izutsu, chief of staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), told a news conference that the exercise would improve the tactical skills of the JASDF, promote mutual understanding between the Japanese and Indian air forces, and further deepen defense cooperation. Japan and India are in a special strategic global partnership relationship, he said, adding that India is a like-minded country to Japan. The two countries are part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a security grouping between the U.S., Australia, India and Japan. Beijing has repeatedly criticized the grouping, calling it an attempt to create a NATO-style alliance in Asia- Pacific. Chinese Foreign Ministrys spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday that both Japan and India should do more to enhance mutual trust in the security sphere between regional countries and act in the interest of peace and stability in the region." Indian pilots posing in front of a C-17 Globemaster at the Veer Guardian 2023 exercise in Japan, Jan. 2023. Credit: Indian Air Force Ambitions instigated by U.S. Chinas hawkish media outlet the Global Times quoted Chinese observers as saying that both Japan and India are being lured by the U.S. to join its Indo-Pacific strategy in containing China. The Chinese analysts played down both India and Japans capabilities, saying if a conflict breaks out involving either Japan or India, neither country is likely to have the strategic will or sufficient capability to enter combat. Japan has grown increasingly aware of Chinas expanding clout in the region. Last month, Tokyo released its national security and defense strategies, in which China was identified as an unprecedented strategic challenge. Japan also supports the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy which points out that Chinas coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific. Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada was in Washington last week to take part in the first Japan-U.S. Security Consultative Committee to discuss further strengthening deterrence and response capabilities of their military alliance. Tokyo plans to boost its counterattack capabilities, especially because of the potential risks of conflict over Taiwan, the situation on the Korean Peninsula and territorial disputes in the South China Sea. China has increased its air incursions into areas in the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea, making air deterrence one of the priorities for, said Collin Koh, a regional military analyst based in Singapore. China has become more and more a common threat for countries in the region, noted Koh, Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He added that since the Shinzo Abe administration, Japan has reached out further eastward, and to India, with more bilateral joint exercises in the pipeline. The most recent exercise Dharma Guardian-2022 was conducted between the two armies in Belgaum, India. Since 2012, Indian and Japanese maritime forces have also trained together in a series of Japan-India Maritime Bilateral Exercises (JIMEX). An Indian Air Force Su-30MKI lands during the Veer Guardian 2023 exercise in Japan, Jan. 2023. Credit: Japan Air Self-Defense Force This time two air forces are conducting various aerial combat drills, said the Indian Ministry of Defense. They will undertake multi-domain air combat missions in a complex environment and will exchange best practices, it said. The combat exercise would also help Japan to learn more about the Russian-origin Su-30MKI aircraft that India has brought to the drills, according to Collin Koh. Chinas J-16 fighter jet is also a developed version of Russias Sukhoi Su-30, so the exercise would offer a valuable opportunity for the JASDF, as well as for the U.S. and NATO partners, to simulate Russian and Chinese fighter aircraft. Chinas Global Times, however, quoted experts as saying that the Su-30MKI is specially customized for India, and the versions imported by China are different from the Indian version. Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan will serve as acting president until parliament elects a replacement in May. Vietnams President Nguyen Xuan Phuc was removed from office Wednesday over COVID-19 bribery scandals that took place during his term, state media reports. Vietnams parliament on Wednesday approved the removal of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc over COVID-19 bribery scandals that took place during his term, state media in the communist country reported. In a widely expected move, the National Assembly rubber-stamped a decision the previous day by the Communist Party of Vietnam to relieve Phuc of the presidency, membership in the Politburo and Party Central Committee, and chairmanship of the National Defense and Security Council. The reshuffle sets the stage for more infighting in the run up to the 2026 party leadership contest in the country of 98 million people with a fast-growing economy. State media said 465 out of 482 delegates of the National Assembly voted to approve Phucs dismissal and the appointment of Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan as acting president until a leadership election in May. The ouster of Phuc, whose future has been a trending topic on Vietnamese social media, came amid corruption scandals involving COVID test kits and rescue flights of citizens stranded overseas that had already toppled two deputy prime ministers and three ministers. The party announced last year that ministers, top officials and diplomats were among the more than 530 party members who were prosecuted or disciplined for corruption or other wrongdoings. In addition to assigning political blame to Phuc for the major COVID scandals, the shake-up also reflected the victory of security hawks over business friendly leaders in a deeper power struggle at the top of the one-party state, analysts said. Although the position of president in Vietnam is largely ceremonial, Phuc was seen as a reassuring presence for Vietnamese business and foreign investors, and his ouster reveals cracks at the top of the communist leadership that has prided itself on collective leadership. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang inspects an honor guard in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2021. The United States and Vietnam have been seeking to bolster ties. Credit: VNA via AP Key Vietnamese policies, including Hanois policy of cautiously deepening ties with the United States without alienating powerful neighbor China, would not be affected by the reshuffle, Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert and professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, told Radio Free Asia. Vietnams foreign policy towards the major powers is made collectively by the Politburo in which the influence of its most senior members is paramount, he said. Vietnamese analysts told RFA the Communist Party was being characteristically opaque about the closed-door top personnel decisions, raising questions about the reasons for the ouster of Phuc and his deputy ministers and cabinet members. The CPV has a tradition of covering up internal affairs, especially the wrongdoings by high-level party members such as members of the Central Party Committee and Politburo, as well as the countrys top four leaders, said journalist Vo Van Tao from the central city of Nha Trang. Tao pointed to social media commentary saying that Phucs family and friends were involved in running so-called backyard businesses and enmeshed in the scandal in which healthcare company Viet A admitted bribing officials for contracts to sell substandard COVID test kits to hospitals. Over the past few months, social media have been talking about the wrongdoings in which his wife, children and his wifes friends had been involved, he said. RFA has not confirmed reports and social media accounts about Phuc's family. Foreign and Vietnamese analysts see the ouster of Phuc and other technocrats as part of jockeying for the next party congress in 2026, with General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong lining up allies to replace him as the partys top leader when he must retire due to age limits. Internally, there was a political reason, which is the competition for the state president seat, preparation for the general secretary position, said independent journalist Nguyen An Dan. Among scenarios for replacing Phuc after Mays vote, analysts say Trong could serve as party boss and state president concurrently, a step he took when a president died in office five years ago. Other senior figures seen as candidates are Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang and Minister of Public Security To Lam. Translated by Anna Vu. Written by Paul Eckert. A former Vietnam Register director is among those accused of taking money to certify faulty vehicles. Former Vietnam Register Director Tran Ky Hinh (R) and other defendants listen to the arrest warrant being read on Jan. 17, 2023. UPDATED AT 1:25 a.m. ET ON 1-18-2022 Vietnam police are continuing their investigation into corruption at the national agency responsible for vehicle registration. On Tuesday, Ho Chi Minh City Police Departments investigation agency said it arrested Tran Ky Hinh, former director of the Vietnam Register, for taking bribes from registration center directors across the country between 2014 and 2021, the Bao Giao Thong news site reported. Police said 62-year-old Hinh, either directly or through the acting head of the Motor Vehicle Inspection Department Tran Anh Quan, took money in return for signing registration certificates for vehicles that werent roadworthy. Also Tuesday, police in Hoa Binh province charged Trinh Thanh Cong, the director of a local motor vehicle registration center, and nine subordinates with accepting bribes. Police said they forced vehicle owners to pay the equivalent of U.S.$4 to U.S.$13 to inspectors, who then overlooked faults in order to pass the vehicles. Last year, Cong received as much as U.S.$427 a day from his subordinates, police said. The Vietnam Register has suspended operations at 30 registration and inspection centers across the country due to the ongoing investigation. Register Director Dang Viet Ha was charged with bribery on Jan. 11. Five days later, Transport Minister Nguyen Van Thang spoke at a conference called to review the work of the Vietnam Register. He described the widespread corruption as painful, calling the monthly bribes criminal protection. Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn. Updated to source Bao Giao Thong. When the Taliban returned to power in 2021 in a lightning military insurrection that toppled Afghanistans internationally recognized government, the country immediately fell into diplomatic isolation. Two of Kabuls neighbors to the north, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, chose a different route, putting the hard-line groups fractious history with the former Soviet Central Asian republics aside and prioritizing engagement over criticism and pressure. But a giant canal project in Afghanistan now taking shape that the Taliban is pursuing at a rapid pace is giving the two water-stressed countries doubts about whether strategic patience with the Islamic fundamentalist group will yield rewards. If you look at other projects that have involved Afghanistan and Central Asia somehow, there has often been a win-win element, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh, told RFE/RL. But the Qosh Tepa Irrigation Canal, which will divert large volumes of water from the dwindling transboundary Amu Darya River, is a very different case. This is very much zero sum, because water is a finite good and there dont seem to be any benefits for Afghanistans neighbors here, said Murtazashvili, adding that she expects the Central Asian countries to pursue a lot of quiet diplomacy on the project that will add to the pressures faced by outsized agricultural sectors already battling climate change and historical mismanagement. But the Taliban will be probing to see how far it can go, Murtazashvili said, something she suggested its downstream neighbors will have to get used to. If the first Taliban [regime that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001] was weighed down by insurgency and in some ways never really behaved like a state, Taliban 2.0 seems to really like the idea of projecting state power, Murtazashvili said. Old Project With New Momentum The stated dimensions of the irrigation canal that workers started digging last spring are enough to understand why the downstream countries have concerns. With a length of 285 kilometers and a width of some 100 meters, experts believe it could draw a significant portion of the Amu Daryas flow while irrigating 550,000 hectares of land. An Afghan civil servant with knowledge of the project told RFE/RLs Uzbek Service that work on the second of three stages of the project that began in the spring of 2022 is expected to begin in the coming months, with more than 100 kilometers already dug and visible from space. The plan to irrigate land in northern Afghanistan is not new. Farid Azim, an official at the National Development Company overseeing its construction, pointed out last year that Afghanistans first president, Mohammad Daud Khan, had a similar vision in the 1970s. The project was most recently pursued by the U.S.-backed administration of President Ashraf Ghani -- which the Taliban overthrew less than two years ago. A press release issued by the United States Agency for International Development from 2018 marking the launch of a Washington-funded feasibility study for Qosh Tepa described a 200 kilometer-long canal serving a cultivated catchment area of 500,000 hectares. Developing Afghanistans agriculture sector provides great potential for employment and economic growth, then-U.S. Ambassador John R. Bass said in the release. But the project was not a pressing concern for neighbors, primarily because political infighting and chronic instability in northern Afghanistan had made it impractical. Bismellah Alizada, a researcher at Londons School of Oriental and African Studies, told RFE/RL that Rashid Dostum, who was the Afghan first vice president from 2014 to 2020, was among the influential politicians with concerns about the project. One of those concerns was that it would be used to benefit and resettle members of the politically dominant Pashtun group to which President Ashraf Ghani belonged, Alizada said. Dostum -- an ethnic Uzbek warlord -- long enjoyed strong ties to the regime in Uzbekistan and was even reported to have fled there when the Taliban captured Mazar-e Sharif, overwhelming forces jointly under his command before the group advanced on Kabul. Members of Dostums exiled Junbish-e Milli party have reiterated these concerns more recently, but the reality is that the Taliban has no opponents capable of preventing it from forging ahead with giant public works projects, Alizada said. More obvious obstacles are technical capacity and cash, with billions of dollars in funds belonging to Afghanistans central bank frozen after the Taliban takeover. That would make it hard for the cash-strapped Taliban to finance a project whose first phase cost nearly $100 million, according to reports. But Graeme Smith, a senior consultant for the International Crisis Groups Asia Program, said the Taliban has a strong political will to finish off projects begun by the former government with Qosh Tepa the biggest that the group has revived so far. With their very limited resources, the Taliban have prioritized [Qosh Tepa], said Smith, expressing skepticism that the Islamic fundamentalist group would pay attention to its neighbors concerns. The Taliban is a nationalist movement intensely focused on their domestic constituencies, Smith said. I think its fair to assume they will continue governing with a strong focus on issues inside the country and less regard for concerns outside, he told RFE/RL. Games Of Leverage Taciturn Turkmenistan has so far said nothing about the canal project. But a Turkmenistan-based hydrologist speaking in March to RFE/RLs Turkmen Service on condition of anonymity called the project not a problem, but a disaster. RFE/RL correspondents in the closed authoritarian country reported this year about severe water shortages in Turkmenistans Soviet-built Karakum Canal, which is four times the length of the one the Taliban is seeking to complete. The World Resources Institute in 2019 ranked Turkmenistan as one of 17 countries in the world with extremely high water stress. Uzbekistan and Afghanistan were placed in the next highest category. Central Asia as a whole depends on rivers that rise in mountains, where many glacier stocks are being depleted by climate change. Tashkent, whose own Moscow-imposed, cotton-growing legacy is one of the chief causes of the Amu Daryas demise, has been more proactive on Qosh Tepa. According to the Talibans deputy prime minister for economic affairs, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the topic was among those broached by Uzbek presidential envoy and former Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov when he was in Kabul last month for talks on economic cooperation. Komilov was cited by Baradars office as saying that Uzbekistan was ready to work with the Islamic emirate (the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan) through technical teams in order to maximize the benefits of the Qosh Tepa canal project. Uzbekistan provided no comment to that effect in its release on the talks, but President Shavkat Mirziyoev -- in a national address in December -- flagged Qosh Tepa as a concern as he touched on the problem of desertification. At the moment, we consider it necessary to conduct practical talks on the construction of a new canal in the Amu Darya basin with the interim government of neighboring Afghanistan and the international community based on international standards and taking into account the interests of all countries in the region, he said. We believe that this approach will be supported by our neighbors. Mirziyoevs preference for dialogue over threats on transboundary water use has been welcomed by the neighborhood since predecessor Islam Karimov passed away in 2016. This appears to have worked with upstream Kyrgyzstan, where successful border negotiations saw Uzbekistan granted de facto control of a strategic reservoir located inside Kyrgyz territory, albeit not without a rash of political discontent in Kyrgyzstan. And although authoritarian Karimov virulently opposed the construction of giant hydroelectric dams in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Mirziyoev has given both his blessing, with Tashkent even attaching itself to Kyrgyzstans Kambar-Ata-1 project as a partner -- a move that will give it a hand in upstream management. Qosh Tepa, however, is becoming a source of public anxiety in Uzbekistan. With the volume of the Amu Darya water [already] decreasing, Afghans will take a quarter of its water through this canal, complained Uzbek academic and outspoken government critic Khidirnazar Allakulov in an interview with RFE/RLs Uzbek Service. Instead of solving the problem, the Uzbek government takes the Taliban to Samarkand, dressing them and presenting them with gifts. The government bows to Afghanistan.. Not only the current generation, but also future [Uzbek] generations can be endangered by the water problem, Allakulov said. Regular exchanges between the Turkmen and Uzbek governments and the Taliban predated the fall of the Ghani government, and Turkmenistan was among the first countries in the world to accept a Taliban-appointed ambassador. But in line with the international community as a whole, neither has recognized the new regime in Kabul. This only complicates what Alizada calls the legal lacuna between Afghanistan and its former communist neighbors, since Kabul had not previously signed treaties with them on transboundary management. And while Afghanistan is keen for more trade opportunities and relies on its northern neighbors for supplies of electricity for several provinces, there are other areas of these bilateral relations where the Taliban feels it has real leverage, Alizada argued. For the Central Asian countries, I think the number one concern is hard security, especially with the regions history with transnational extremist groups. The Taliban will continue to use assurances on security in negotiations with these countries going forward. Welcome back to The Farda Briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter that tracks the key issues in Iran and explains why they matter. To subscribe, click here. I'm RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari. Here's what I've been following over the past week and what I'm watching for in the days ahead. The Big Issue On January 14, Tehran announced the execution of British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, a deputy defense minister under the current head of Iran's top security body. Akbari, deputy to Ali Shamkhani during the administration of reformist former President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), moved to Britain in 2008 after being detained in Iran. He was arrested upon his return to Tehran in 2019 and was sentenced to death last week for allegedly spying for Britain. Akbari was also accused of playing a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which Tehran has blamed on Israel. Akbari's death was announced just hours after British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called on Iran not to follow through "with their brutal threat of execution." In an audio message obtained by the BBC, Akbari denied the charges against him and said he had been tortured to confess to unidentified "false and corrupt claims." Why It Matters: The execution of Akbari is a major escalation by Iran, which has a record of jailing foreigners and dual nationals and using them as pawns in its disputes with Western countries. The "barbaric act" was swiftly condemned by Britain, France, and the United States. Some observers, however, have suggested Akbari's execution is evidence of factional score-settling within Iran's clerical regime and an attempt to undermine National Security Council head Shamkhani. By executing Akbari, who was described as "a super spy," Tehran could also be attempting to save face following embarrassing security lapses, including Fakhrizadeh's killing in broad daylight near the Iranian capital. What's Next: Akbari's hanging has deteriorated already strained ties with Britain, which subsequently recalled its ambassador and blacklisted Iranian Prosecutor-General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri. The execution also came amid reports that London is reconsidering its support for the 2015 nuclear deal and reviewing whether to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization, a move that could prompt retaliation by Tehran and a further escalation of tensions. As Iran has continued its brutal crackdown against antiestablishment protests around the country, exiled opposition members and activists have called on Britain and the European Union to follow the example set by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, which designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. Stories You Might Have Missed Detained U.S.-Iranian businessman Siamak Namazi has launched a seven-day hunger strike at a Tehran prison, imploring U.S. President Joe Biden to bring him home to the United States. Namazi was arrested in October 2015 and sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges that have been dismissed by Washington as baseless. "When the Obama administration unconscionably left me in peril and freed the other American citizens Iran held hostage on January 16, 2016, the U.S. government promised my family to have me safely home within weeks," Namazi wrote in an open letter to Biden that was released by his lawyer. "Yet seven years and two presidents later, I remain caged in Tehran's notorious Evin prison." Iran plans to change the content of textbooks in foreign languages used in private schools. The censorship of content that the authorities deem out of line with the Islamic republic's values follows sharp criticism of such materials by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What We're Watching Several days of gas cuts in Torbat-e Jam in northeastern Iran led to a protest in front of the governor's office on January 16, during which angry protesters accused authorities of inefficiency. Iranians have faced gas shortages during a sharp drop in temperatures that forced the government to briefly close schools and government offices in several cities, including the capital, Tehran, to reduce consumption. What's Next: The gas shortages in Iran -- a country that boasts the world's second-largest reserves -- could add to public anger against the clerical establishment, which has employed lethal force to contain mass protests against its rule. Until next time, Golnaz Esfandiari If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your inbox every Wednesday. A tennis complex built in just six months in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a tournament organized by the family of world No. 1 Novak Djokovic officially opened on April 12. The facility, burdened by irregularities during construction and criminal charges over the bidding process, opened in Banja Luka just ahead of the scheduled start on April 16 of the Srpska Open, which is expected to draw several top players from the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour, including top-seeded Djokovic. Hundreds of people attended the opening ceremony, including members of the Djokovic family, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, and Banja Luka Mayor Drasko Stanivukovic. The government of Republika Srpska, one of Bosnias two entities, and Banja Luka, it administrative center, invested about 30 million Bosnian marks ($16 million) in the construction of the tennis complex, which has both outdoor and indoor clay courts, each with seating for several hundred people. Transparency International in Bosnia in February filed a complaint against Banja Luka and the Republika Srpska government because money for the construction of the court was allocated to the Tennis Association in the form of a grant. The complaint said the maneuver got around the legal procedure for seeking bids for construction projects. Questions also were raised about the permit for the project. Construction began in November, but a permit was not issued until January and covered only preparatory work. The tennis complex received a valid building permit only a few days ago. Authorities two weeks ago conducted searches in the Banja Luka City Hall, based on charges of abuse of official position against Stanivukovic and Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic. The two were reported on February 9 by a member of the Republika Srpska National Assembly, Nebojsa Vukanovic, who has accused them of misusing budget funds for the construction of the tennis complex. The Prosecutor-General's Office did not respond to RFE/RLs request for information about the search, including whether a case had been opened. Stanivukovic told RFE/RL in February that he assessed the construction of the tennis complex court to be in the national interest. "You have to be brave to do things that are on the edge of legal norms but still in accordance with them and morally correct," he said. Djordje Djokovic, brother of the tennis star and one of the principal organizers of the Srpska Open -- previously known as the Serbian Open -- visited the complex while it was under construction on several occasions but never commented on the criminal accusations or the lack of a building permit for construction. "As far as we are concerned, we are the organizers of the tennis tournament. We do not deal with building permits or politics," he said at a press conference on March 7. He founded the company Legacy International, a branch of his Belgrade-based company with the same name, in Banja Luka at the beginning of November. The tournament is usually held in Belgrade but has been moved to Banja Luka for 2023 while the existing grounds in the Serbian capital are renovated. The tournament, which is scheduled to run from April 16-23, is part of the ATP 250 series. Aside from Djokovic, other current and former ATP top 10 players registered are Andrei Rublev, Stanislas Wawrinka, and Gael Monfils. With reporting by Milorad Milojevic A Ukrainian helicopter has crashed near a kindergarten and a residential building just outside of Kyiv, leaving 14 dead, including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy and other senior ministry officials, as well as one child in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called "a terrible tragedy." Monastyrskiy's first deputy minister, Yevhen Yenin, and State Secretary Yuriy Lubkovych were also among the dead. Ihor Klymenko, the chief of Ukraine's police, said nine of those killed were aboard the emergency services helicopter. Klymenko was later named acting interior minister and said the Interior Ministry was functioning. "Despite the internal devastation that we all feel, the leadership team of the Interior Ministry is working confidently and steadily," he said, according to the ministry's press service. "Our duty: to fulfill all the tasks planned by Minister Monastyrskiy. And most importantly to protect people and Ukraine." It was not immediately known if the crash was caused by an accident or if it was a consequence of the war. Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Monastyrskiy, said that an investigation had been opened into the incident. There was no immediate comment from Moscow and Ukrainian officials made no reference to any Russian attack in the area at the time. But the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said investigators were focusing on three possible causes for the crash: a violation of flight rules, the technical malfunction of the helicopter, or deliberate actions to destroy the vehicle. The SBU did not elaborate on the third potential cause. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ihnat, said the helicopter was a Super Puma supplied by France. A French defense official quoted by the AP news agency said the helicopter was sold to Kyiv in 2019 and was not part of equipment that France has provided since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be named, according to ministry policy. Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensives, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here. Monastyrskiy is the most senior Ukrainian official to have died since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February. A trained lawyer and a key member of Zelenskiy's party, the 42-year-old had served as interior minister from July 2021. "Today, a terrible tragedy occurred in Brovary, Kyiv region. An [emergency services] helicopter crashed, and a fire broke out at the crash site. The pain is unspeakable," Zelenskiy said in a statement on Facebook. European Council President Charles Michel decried the deaths, calling Monastyrskiy "a great friend of the EU." "We join Ukraine in grief following the tragic helicopter accident," the president of the European Council said in a message posted on Twitter. U.S. President Joe Biden offered condolences to the families of the people killed, reiterating that the United States has an "unfailing partnership" with Ukraine amid Russia's invasion. "We grieve with all those who are mourning this heartbreaking tragedy," Biden said in a statement, calling Monastyrskiy a "reformer and patriot." The incident came as Russian forces kept focusing their offensive efforts on Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donetsk and as Kyiv again urged its Western allies to speed up approval for the delivery of advanced heavy weaponry including modern tanks. Ukraine's General Staff said in its daily report that Bakhmut and Avdiyivka, where heavy fighting has been going on for months, remained Moscow's main targets in Donetsk, while the settlement of Bilohoryvka in the neighboring Luhansk region has also come under intensified attacks over the past 24 hours. Russian troops carried out six missile strikes over the same interval, three of which hit civilian infrastructure targets in the cities of Kupyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as 14 air strikes and 95 rocket system salvoes, the General Staff said. It also warned that the threat of Russian air and missile strikes on civilian objects remains high throughout Ukraine. Over the past several months, Russia has relentlessly targeted civilian settlements and energy infrastructure networks, leaving millions of Ukrainians in the dark and cold in the middle of winter. Meanwhile in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at his annual news conference on January 18 that the Kremlin will achieve its objectives in Ukraine despite what he said was a hybrid war waged by the West against Russia. Lavrov said Russia saw no prospects of peace talks and there could be no negotiations with Zelenskiy. Moscow has said talks are possible only if Kyiv recognizes Russia's claims to parts of Ukrainian territory, while Ukraine says it will not stop fighting until all its lands are liberated. NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana told military chiefs from across Europe gathered in Brussels on January 18 that there are indications Russia is preparing for an extended war. "We have no indication that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's goals have changed," said Geoana, noting that Russia had mobilized more than 200,000 additional troops. "So we must be prepared for the long haul; 2023 will be a difficult year and we need to support Ukraine for as long as it takes." Speaking at the opening of the military chiefs' meeting in Brussels, Geoana also said NATO nations must invest more in defense, ramp up military industrial manufacturing, and harness new technologies to prepare for future wars. With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and The Washington Post The Ukrainian military continues its counteroffensive around the area of Kreminna, a strategic logistics hub in Ukraine's Luhansk region. Russian forces are said to be dug in deep in the area. Western-supplied weapons, including self-propelled howitzers, are helping Ukrainian troops in their efforts to recapture territories occupied by enemy troops. At their monthly meeting last Tuesday, the Robertson County School Board recognized a total of 15 students that recently participated in a Model United Nations gathering last November in Murfreesboro. The Model United Nations program, sponsored by the YMCA Tennessee Center for Civic Engagement, hosted over 800 middle school and 900 high school students from public, private, and magnet schools across Tennessee. Students from Robertson County schools that attended the event were part of RISE, a program designed for intellectually gifted students in the county. Students who have met certain requirements are served by highly qualified Gifted Teachers. Beth Stokes, Gifted Teacher Leader in Robertson County who attended the Model UN conference with RISE students, presented to the school board details of their work and the many awards they received. At the conference, students learned about the real-world operation of the United Nations by participating in a re-enactment of the organizations activities. Most students formed delegations and represented member countries interests in the general assembly by drafting and debating resolutions. These resolutions covered a wide variety of topics of international concern. Teams were required to do expert level research into a problem in their country, write a resolution using the advanced language and required formatting for a real United Nations resolution, deliver a persuasive speech to a large group of their peers, and then defend the resolution in five rounds of debate. According to Stokes, Robertson County had several teams and students who received awards from this program. Those included the Outstanding Resolution Awards. In order to receive an Outstanding Resolution award, written resolutions are judged by specific standards. They must be in keeping with the nations character, be feasible, have a significant impact, be innovative, have correct formatting with evidence of research, and be in keeping with the YMCA core values of honesty, caring, respect and responsibility. For middle school, out of 283 teams, 19 received an Outstanding Resolution Award, with Robertson County Innovation Academy receiving two of those awards. A seventh-grade team representing the country of Uzbekistan included Katie Hall, Chesley Holcomb, Cooper Oeschel, and Karez Omer, whose resolution was to establish a biohazard decontamination support program for the K2 Air Base in Uzbekistan. An eighth-grade team represented Burundi, and included Audry McCants, Alex Martinez Hernandez, Caralee Stokes, and J.C. Bradley. They presented their resolution to provide clean drinking water to Burundians. Its interesting, some of the stuff they came up with I had no idea about and Ive been through almost every degree program you can think of and been teaching a very long time, Stokes said. While the middle school Model United Nations program was a one-day program that took place on Monday, Nov. 14, the high school Model UN was in intensive three-day program from Nov. 18-20, where students endured two different rounds of presentations. The Robertson County Innovation Academy high school group, representing the country of Colombia, included Addie Cook, Maya Atkins, Luis Ascencio Garcia, and Tegan Williams. They presented a speech on cartel violence in Colombia, which earned them an Outstanding Resolution award. Im always impressed year to year with what these students come up with. This organization is totally student-led, from top bottom, Stokes said. These students are going to be running for office next year and hopefully well have some officers both there and in Youth In Government, which we will actually go to in February. In addition to Outstanding Resolution Awards, students could also earn an individual award for their debating and speaking skills, known as an Outstanding Delegate Award. Standards for this award include cooperative and respectful in his or her approach to legislation and peers, the ability to stay in the nations character, use of proper parliamentary procedure, evidence of preparation and research, positive attitude, poise and maturity, excellent communication, and behavior in keeping with YMCA core values. Robertson County received four individual Outstanding Delegate Awards, two in middle school and two in high school. Thirty-two of these awards were given out of 800 delegates in middle school and 36 were given out of the 900 delegates in high school. Middle school winners for Outstanding Delegate were seventh grader Taylor Love and eighth grader Alex Martinez Hernandez. High school winners were 10th grader Brynlee Massey and ninth grader Callie Bishop. Weve got the best Model UN program, I believe, in the state, Director of School Chris Causey said. It just seems like every year were adding new students to the team that continuously does some pretty amazing things at the state level. (rapaport.com) - De Beers plans to allocate more of its rough to manufacturing units in Africa next year, according to sightholders, resulting in less supply for other cutting operations amid a drop in the miners overall output. A greater proportion of De Beers diamonds will go to manufacturers in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa in 2023, the sightholders told Rapaport News, noting that the move rerouted goods that would previously have gone to international manufacturers mainly India. The change is part of the miners efforts to boost producing countries local diamond industries a system known as beneficiation. Officer-worn body cameras are coming to the La Mesa Police Department. The department expects to start trying three brands of cameras by the end of next month. Cities across the nation are outfitting officers with cameras in an effort to be more accountable. Advertisement There are many reasons were looking into (body-worn cameras), said La Mesa Police Chief Walt Vasquez. Its obviously about maintaining public trust and for gathering evidence at the scene, capturing police and public encounters. Vasquez says use of the cameras is fully supported by officers and their union, the La Mesa Police Officers Association. El Cajon rolled out 87 chest-mounted cameras in 2016 after officers took part in a two-hour, department-wide training class and a 30-minute training session in smaller groups. The San Diego County Sheriffs Department started a program for body-worn cameras last year. The La Mesa City Council approved spending $83,830 in June 2017 for the cameras, but some infrastructure challenges delayed the program. After budgeting for the cameras, the city found out its internet connection lacked proper bandwidth for the high-security video files associated with the cameras. Finance Director Sarah Waller-Bullock said those computer issues have been worked out, but there are a few other infrastructure upgrades and cloud storage details that are being looked at. She said there will be more costs involved with that, about an additional $50,000, that the City Council will have to approve in the near future. We dont want to rush it, we want to make sure that its all working, Waller-Bullock said. Vasquez said testing of the devices should come toward the end of May. The Taser-brand of body-worn cameras called Axon have been a hit in neighboring El Cajon, according to Police Chief Jeff Davis. Typically, El Cajon Police Department policy requires officers to turn on the cameras before interactions with citizens. The cameras technology stores 30 seconds of pre-recorded footage without audio the moment the camera is activated sound is recorded once the camera is turned on. Footage captured by officers cameras can become evidence during investigations. Overall, the officers are feeling more comfortable with cameras, Davis said. It has taken awhile to get used to. Its a whole new structure, infrastructure and costs associated with it. We think its worth it. Overall, were pleased with the product, pleased with what were seeing. I dont want to say its foolproof, but its one of the easier programs to jump into. Davis said a turning point for him came during a department training day when officers were being tested and evaluated. One of the officers raised his hand and asked, When are we getting our cameras, Davis recounted. That was even before we had implemented the cameras. The officers had already accepted it and were ready. The younger crew is embracing it. Other police departments in the county that have adopted the technology include the cities of San Diego, Chula Vista, Escondido, Carlsbad and Coronado. karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com Statement of Senator Risa Hontiveros on the acquittal of Maria Ressa and Rappler Holdings Co. by the Court of Tax Appeals I welcome and commend the decision of the Court of Tax Appeals First Division acquitting Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and Rappler Holdings Corp. of tax evasion charges. The dismissal of these trumped up cases is an important win for free and defiant journalism in the Philippines. I hope that the other charges against Maria Ressa and Rappler will soon be similarly dropped, as these were only intended to silence and intimidate members of the media from reporting on and speaking against the excesses of the previous administration, particularly on the bloody, abusive and failed war on drugs. This ongoing campaign of harassment against Maria Ressa and Rappler, as well as other independent and critical journalists, only wastes government funds, resources and attention. These vindictive efforts should end immediately. In a democracy, truth telling and sharing independent views is not a crime - even if it irks and annoys the powers that be. I am one with our nation's free press in continuing to hold the line and in fighting for a truly free and democratic nation. As always, courage on. Takeaway: A time-keeping policy using neutral rounding will not shield an employer from liability for failing to pay employees for all time worked. Page Content When an employer tracked the exact time in minutes that employees worked, and those time-keeping records showed that an employee was not paid for all the time he worked, the employer could not simply rely on its neutral rounding policy as a defense to the employee's wage and hour claim, a California court of appeals recently ruled. The employee was entitled to a trial to determine whether he was paid for "all hours worked," as required by California law. Although the employer acknowledged that the employee had lost a total of 470 minutes over approximately 4 years due to the rounding policy, it contended it was still entitled to dismissal of the employee's claim for unpaid wages because its rounding policy was neutral on its face and neutral as applied. Therefore, the employer argued, its rounding policy should serve as a defense to the wage and hour claim, based on the standards established in a previous California court of appeals case (See's Candy Shops Inc. v. Superior Court, 210 Cal. App. 4th 889 (2012)). The trial court agreed and dismissed the lawsuit. The employee appealed. On appeal, the employee claimed that neither the state Labor Code nor the relevant wage order authorizes time rounding that results in an individual employee failing to receive compensation for all time worked. The appeals court agreed and ruled that the employee could take his claim to trial. General Wage and Hour Principles Under California Law Wage and hour claims in California are governed by the Labor Code and by wage orders adopted by the Industrial Welfare Commission, the appeals court explained. The purpose of the Labor Code and wage orders is the protection of employees. The wage order applicable to this case, Wage Order No. 7, defines "hours worked" as "the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer," including "all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so." The phrase "suffered or permitted to work" includes the time during which the employer knew or should have known that the employee was working on its behalf. Wage Order No. 7 sets the minimum wage for employees and requires that wages must be paid to an employee "for all hours worked." The Labor Code also contemplates that employees will be paid for "all work performed." At issue in this case, the appeals court said, was whether the employee could go forward with his claim for unpaid wages when the employer could and did capture the exact number of minutes that he worked each shift but, due to the employer's quarter-hour time-rounding policy, the employee was not paid for all the time he worked, according to the employer's own time-keeping records. Impact of California Supreme Court Cases In reaching its decision, the appeals court examined two recent California Supreme Court cases: Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 5 Cal. 5th 829 (2018), and Donohue v. AMN Services LLC, 11 Cal. 5th 58 (2021). The court explained that in Troester and Donohue, the California Supreme Court made clear that the Labor Code and wage orders mandate that employees be paid for "all" work performed and that California's regulatory scheme for employee compensation is concerned with "even small amounts of worktime." A few extra minutes of work time periodically lost due to a purportedly neutral time-rounding policy can add up over time, the court noted. The appeals court stressed that the California Supreme Court appeared to call into question the efficiencies historically attributed to time rounding, given that advances in technology have enabled employers to more easily and more precisely capture time worked by employees. Because of the growing availability and use of electronic time-keeping systems (such as the one used by the employer in this case) that capture exact time records and work directly with payroll systems, the benefits formerly gained by time rounding are less apparent, the court noted. It concluded that based on these two California Supreme Court cases, if an employer can capture and has captured the exact amount of time an employee has worked during a shift, the employer must pay the employee for all the time worked. The court acknowledged that its holding called into question the continuing validity of See's Candy and with it the formerly "well-settled" principle that neutral time rounding is lawful under California law. It "invited" the state Supreme Court to step in to review the issue of neutral time rounding by employers. Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A. Inc., Calif. Ct. App., No. H049033 (Oct. 24, 2022). Joanne Deschenaux, J.D., is a freelance writer in Annapolis, Md. Additional financial assistance and incentives for state governments to implement urban reforms are anticipated to be included in the budget for FY24. The Center allocated Rs 11,000 crore for FY23 as funding support for the states, of which Rs 6,000 crore (which is a portion of Rs 1 trillion, 50-year interest-free capital expenditure loans to states in FY23) was allocated for urban reforms like drafting building bylaws, town planning plans, transit oriented development, and transferable development rights. States have put aside Capex loans of Rs 5,000 crore for the sale of assets in FY23. The Centre will likely further expand the incentives for states for undertaking asset monetization and urban reforms planning as part of the long-term interest-free Capex loans in FY24 too, sources said. The Centre might continue the special Capex loan scheme for states in FY24 with an outlay of Rs 1 trillion or thereabouts. Most urban bodies are plagued with problems such as inefficient planning, poor project structuring, land and clearance delays, restrictive regulatory framework, and inadequate financing. The Centre will extend necessary support, including financial and technical support, the states need to take the lead. According to United Nations projections, the urban population in India is projected to increase from 461 million in 2018 to 877 million in 2050. Since 2014, the Narendra Modi government has launched several centrally sponsored schemes such as Smart Cities Mission, Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) and Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U). During these nine years, these schemes have yielded a total investment of Rs 16.4 trillion ($23.5 billion) including government (in a 6:4 ratio between the Centre and states) and private sector investments, according to government data. As per a recent World Bank report, to efficiently meet the demand of the growing population, India will need approximately $840 billion in investment in urban infrastructure over the next 15 years. Of this, $450 billion investment needs are in basic municipal services such as water supply, sewerage, municipal solid waste management, stormwater drainage, urban roads and streetlighting). A balance of $300 billion is needed for mass transit systems. For FY23, the Centre has provided Rs 28,000 crore for PMAY-U, Rs 8,300 crore for the Smart Cities Mission, Rs 7,600 crore for AMRUT and Rs 2,300 crore for SBM-U. Given that these funding requirements are significantly higher than current levels of investment, the Centre wants to intensify collaboration and partnership with states and local bodies to rope in the private sector through a public-private partnership, sources said. The Centre launched PMAY-U in 2015 to provide housing for all. It assists implementing agencies through States/ UTs in providing houses to eligible economically weaker section, low-income group and middle-income group beneficiaries. Out of Rs 2 trillion in central assistance committed, it has already released Rs 1.28 trillion since 2015 for 12.27 million housing units. With a rising urban population, there is a proportionate rise in the demand for urban services such as urban transport, sanitation, drinking water, housing, urban amenities, etc. While urban areas constitute only about 3% of the total land area, they contribute to over 70% of the GDP. Hitachi Vantara, the modern infrastructure, data management and digital solutions subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., today announced a new global partnership with Model9, a leader in cloud data management for mainframe, providing significantly greater access, visibility, and value from critical data for enterprises with mainframes as their core business platform. This partnership is key for enterprises that utilize hybrid cloud environments. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of Fortune 500 companies host their critical core IT on a mainframe, and a recent report found that as more businesses undertake mainframe modernization, the most important IT operating factor for businesses was to create a single point of data management across hybrid environments. However, as mainframe modernization becomes increasingly more critical to enterprise customers, moving data to the cloud can be difficult and risky. Businesses have an array of concerns including securing data in transit, the volume of data involved, the ability to fully access and gain value from that data, and the fear of breaking applications that are functioning well. The unique Hitachi Vantara and Model9 collaboration enables enterprises to gain greater data-driven value through the cloud, making mainframe data available and accessible for both cloud applications and predictive analytics services, accelerating business cloud transformation in a low risk, low cost, and fast way. Bringing additional capabilities to the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series and Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) object storage portfolio, Model9s software connects the mainframe, so customers can transfer current or historical mainframe data, whether stored on disk or tape, without interim disk storage. Additionally, the technology allows customers to securely unlock mainframe formatted data for use in any private or public cloud. The dilemma for many organizations is that on-premises data is siloed, and access to legacy data on tape backups is difficult. said Mark Ablett, President, Digital Infrastructure, Hitachi Vantara. Combining our VSP 5000 series and HCP storage portfolio with Model9s software provides many benefits including protected backup copies, recovering and restoring data quickly and replacing costly virtual tape hardware with affordable cloud storage. This is also a great example of how our strong partner network is able to drive trusted solutions and profitable outcomes for customers. "The reality is that mainframe modernization takes time, and its critical that businesses are able to access and gain value from their mainframe data while undergoing that transition, said Gil Peleg, Chief Executive Officer, Model9. By leveraging Hitachi Vantara and Model9's collective expertise in secure data governance and management, we provide a unique offering that provides a streamlined approach that enables customers to protect, access, and monetize their data. To be successful, a partner program must be a strategic vehicle for both vendors and their partners, allowing them to leverage specific skills and expertise from each side to address market challenges together, said Steve White, Program Vice President, Channels and Alliances, IDC. This better together direction should enable both to focus on adding value to the mutual customers they serve and support joint business growth as they expand across specific industries and geographical areas. The Hitachi Vantara VSP 5000 series is a next-generation storage infrastructure designed to provide a modern foundation for digital transformation and data center modernization. Supporting block, file, and containerized workloads, VSP is among the highest performing, scalable, and resilient data storage platforms on the market, supporting any workload from open systems to mainframes. HCP offers a broad ecosystem of solutions including comprehensive, intelligent data management that spans beyond object storage alone to unlock the full value of data assets. A leader in the GigaOm Radar for Unstructured Data Management Business Solutions and a DCIG Top 5 On-premises SDS Object Storage Solution, Hitachis HCP portfolio has been rated as exceptional for metadata analytics, big data analytics, and compliance and security. HCP delivers comprehensive data management for IoT, big data, and unstructured data whether it is on premises or in the cloud. The Model9 patented software solution performs data set backup, full volume dump, aggregate backup, data migration and automatic recall. The software runs simultaneously with data management products and simplifies implementation by allowing some data to be redirected to cloud storage. A Think-20 session on inclusive growth under the G20 summit was held at the Kushabhau Thackre Convention Center on Monday in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The chairperson of the session was Elizabeth Sidiropoulos from Institute of International Affairs, South Africa. She said the world today requirements global financial architecture, innovation and inclusive growth. Jawaharlal Nehru University Prof. Gulshan Sachdeva said that India will make a new development agenda for the world. Prof. Ashok Khosla of Development Alternatives Institute, Delhi, stated that G-20 is the platform through which we can solve terrorism, pollution, lifestyle, climate change, extinction of species, recession etc. Abul Kalam Azad of CVF organisation from Bangladesh said that the world will have to adopt the Climate Prosperity Plan, where employment opportunities are created while conserving nature. The scheme fulfils the G-20 concept of one Earth , one family, one future. Prof. Thomas Pogge of Yale University, USA, appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's global vision, the Indian way of life for the environment, innovation and planning. He mentioned the need for creating an international green fund and inclusive finance. David White, senior political adviser, British High Commission in India, congratulated the Government of India for the commendable work done on G-20 issues, both at the official and non-official levels. First Secretary of Geneva, Akindeji Adenipo said that the world will become the voice of India in the resolution of G-20 issues. India's Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Tuesday invited all stakeholders to look at his country as a land of opportunities and take advantage of these by partnering with it, adding that this endeavour would lead towards making India and world a healthier place. "We are working towards augmenting health infrastructure and have initiated multiple schemes to strengthen health systems and improve health service delivery with focus on quality, accessibility and affordability of healthcare services," he said while participating in Health & Healthcare Community Dinner organised by World Economic Forum (WEF) at its meet in Switzerland's Davos. He reiterated the vision of India of according the topmost priority to healthcare as seva (service). "Be it launch of the world's biggest government funded health assurance scheme, PM Jan Aarogya Yojana covering approximately 500 million people or establishment of 150,000 Health & Wellness Centres, we have put the vision of 'Antyodaya', that is, 'Rise of the last person' into action in healthcare and a key facet of ensuring Universal Health Coverage," he added. Lauding India contribution in pharmaceutical sector, the Health Minister said: "India has highest number of USFDA manufacturing plants outside US, besides being a world leader in generic medicines. It has emerged as a hub for R&D activities and is one of the leading destinations for high-end diagnostic services. To create an enabling framework for providing health services to world at large, the government is institutionalising medical tourism through a soon to be launched Heal in India initiative." Mandaviya is attending multiple sessions in the ongoing World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. In the series of such sessions, he also participated in the bilateral meeting with German Federal Health Minister, Karl Wilhelm Lauterbach where he lauded the co-operation shown by the German counterparts and was hopeful of continuing and strengthening this co-operation in future as well. San Mateo, CA (94402) Today Sunny with gusty winds developing this afternoon. High around 60F. WNW winds at 10 to 15 mph, increasing to 20 to 30 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy. Windy this evening. Low 47F. Winds WNW at 20 to 30 mph. Biotech giant Moderna is edging closer to launching a new vaccine to fight respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the company is hopeful of getting the product approved for older Australians as soon as next year. The $US73.2 billion ($104.8 billion) global vaccine maker revealed on Wednesday morning that a phase 3 trial for its vaccine against the respiratory disease showed it was 83.7 per cent effective in preventing at least two symptoms of the virus in adults aged over 60. Moderna is working to advance a pipeline of vaccines that go well beyond its initial COVID-19 product. Credit: AP RSV is a seasonal virus that can cause coughing, congestion and a sore throat, but can also lead to serious illness in infants and older adults. It was first identified in the mid-1950s, and researchers have been working on a vaccine for the product ever since. Cases of RSV climbed during the winter months last year, with the virus responsible for more paediatric admissions to Victorian hospitals than COVID-19 or the flu last July. This argument carries powerful adjectives like undemocratic and un-Australian and claims of a referendum making race-based laws. The truth is there are already race powers in the Constitution, a legal reality unknown to most. The suggested Voice amendment does not introduce race into the Constitution because its already there. That is, the parliament has the power to make laws for people of any race under Section 51. Powers which are anachronistic, controversial, and thankfully tempered by more recent racial anti-discrimination laws. Will the Voice operate as a separate parliament? The answer is an emphatic no. Credit: Matt Davidson These powers are also arguably necessary if parliament is to address more than two centuries of discrimination and disadvantage for First Australians. Thus, if democracies are about ensuring power is used properly and given the Australian historical context the Voice amendment serves a democratic purpose by better informing the makers of the laws of the land and the users of these powers. Second, why shouldnt every race or, for that matter, religion have their own separate voice to parliament? This is a fair question demanding a practical response. The reality is that no people face the same level of entrenched and multi-generational disadvantage as Indigenous Australians. The uncontested indicators suggest poorer health, shorter life expectancy, a lower level of education and employment and higher infant mortality rates. If you are a male Indigenous Australian, there is a one-in-six chance you are in prison or have spent time in prison, often with parents and in some cases grandparents. Loading Such is the impact of 235 years of settlement: of pre-Federation ruling practice ranging from near genocide to convenient terra nullius, to later governments stealing children from their families, to more recent normalised de-prioritisation and ignorance of the importance of the right to speak for oneself. Third, will the Voice operate as a separate parliament? The answer is an emphatic no. The Voice will be a small group of advisers with no powers to pass laws, allocate funds or to veto either. In respect of the issue of function, the Voice is then not unlike standing ethics advisers used by parliaments as is the case in NSW or the federal Parliamentary Budget Office function in Canberra. Advisory, not determinative. Those concerned about the prospect of radical change can be assured that decisions about law or about money remains exclusively the role of parliament a parliamentary factory in all of its inglorious politicking, necessary compromise, and wondrous practicality will continue to churn out the sausages, only this time with higher quality ingredients. The Voice simply means future parliaments, in addition to all other sources of advice, will have direct advice from Indigenous Australians on matters impacting Indigenous Australians: the first advice of this kind since an Australian Parliament was convened by the Duke of Cornwall and York (and later King George V) in Melbourne in May 1901. Loading Finally, and if this is true, are we voting for something benign or even tokenistic and if so, why bother? After all, wont future parliaments be run by the same rules of electoral mathematics as all others the same calculus which has processed majority voices of uninformed disinterest into inadequate investment in Indigenous health, education and employment and overinvestment in incarceration? This would be true if Australia was a static place and home to unfair people. Thankfully, we are neither. The national electoral equation is constantly changing, and the opportunity exists for the Voice and future parliaments to impact the equation: to both serve as platforms from which the growing ranks of Indigenous leaders can share untold stories of the oldest continuous culture in human history and the challenges it now faces. And do so at a time when Australia, and the parliament it produces, is already more receptive than at any time in modern history. Indeed, after the Morrison years when government listened with its mouth, this portends to be a parliament capable of listening with its ears. Thus, better understanding the Voice proposal and speaking to the arguments against it tends to make it a more compelling proposition. Loading The Voice does not fit into the category of being a solution looking for a problem, like so many initiatives from big modern intrusive government. Nor is it a radical leap forward. It is both safe and utterly necessary. A chance for Indigenous Australians to share. For parliaments and people to listen and learn. And actions to be more considered and so longer lasting. Meaning, the government should confront the apocryphal devils in the detail with confidence that the Voice has many more angels in its arsenal. While not my normal genre, today I noticed one of those ubiquitous church message boards at Nelson Bay, says Seppo Ranki of Glenhaven. It read Adam and Eve were the first people to not read Apples terms and conditions. Paul Hunt of Engadine writes: When George Manojlovic won C8s first most prolific contributor competition, the column published some of his best efforts. One of those concerned the just-deceased film legend Gina Lollobrigida. George was on the same plane when she was travelling from Canberra to Sydney many years ago. There was a baby constantly crying and Gina asked the mother if she could rock and cuddle the child. Gina did just that and soothed the baby. A wag sitting next to George leaned over and whispered Start crying. Simply wonderful item. Very modest of Paul in not mentioning that he missed out on the gong that year on a recount. Continuing on from Bob Phillips (C8) sampling of gun culture, Ian Norrie of Avalon Beach recalls that At the check-in at a regional airport in Idaho was a sign: Please unload your guns before boarding. Also a quiet flight. According to Carole Baxter of Woodgate Beach (Qld), some passengers deserve a bagging: I watched at Perth Airport as a man took my bag and despite me calling out, he kept racing away, so I chased him (Im old and unfit). Even when I told him my name was on the bag, he still insisted it was his. I grabbed it from him and was angry because chasing him meant my granddaughters shoe I was waiting for on the carousel (C8) was missed, never to be seen! Hopefully, she wasnt still wearing it. A word to Jack Dikian from Judy Jones of Thornleigh: On cordless extension leads (C8) they are called batteries. Chris Minns pokie trial is a transparent, ineffective attempt to appear to be taking action. We are not fools, we are sick of political doublespeak, and we want action to neuter the toxic poker machine industry. Pokies destruction of families is well documented. The only solution is to remove these machines from clubs and pubs. Credit: John Shakespeare Ironically, if Minns doesnt immediately change tack, poker machines could also destroy him. Perrottet has read the mood of the electorate; Minns is fiddling while poker machines burn. It is Perrottet who holds the hose. Gerardine Grace, Leura Minns so-called cashless trial for 500 pokies reminds me of the Liberal Partys response to Labors NBN with fibre to the premises. They had to oppose it and made a hash of it. This is an opportunity for bipartisanship on gambling reform but Labor has now come up with a dogs breakfast. Looks familiar? Minns should scrap his plan and give full support to the government to introduce its policy. If Labor wins in March, the lobbyists will claim victory and cement their influence and power over any gambling reform. I live in the Kogarah electorate and voted for Minns last time. Not this time. John Lo, Bexley North While I realise that problem gambling is a real issue that needs to be addressed, I am concerned that we are focusing solely on this one issue. Some letter writers have even stated that they will be voting on this one issue alone. Can we please take a step back and look at the bigger picture? We have crises in affordable housing, public hospitals, schools, roads, public transport etc. We need to address the many problems that we are facing and not just focus on one particular issue. Christine Bentley, Goulburn Of course the banks are ready (Banks ready to help with cashless pokies cards, January). If the interest rate charged is as usurious as on credit cards they stand to make a motza while the problem gamblers struggle to repay their loses. Graham Short, Cremorne It has always struck me that VIP lounge for gambling is such an oxymoron (Letters, January 18). Dianne Brims, Morpeth Ban Russian, Belarussian players from Open, not just flags Ban all flags at the Australian Open? Credit: AP Australia is totally committed to supporting Ukraine against the brutal Russian invasion (Russian fans support sparks a grand slam diplomatic row, January 18). So, why are we watching and cheering Russian and Belarussian tennis players at the Australian Open? Great viewing propaganda for Russian/Belarussian TV. Depressing viewing for Ukrainians, especially those who have lost everything. Its a nonsense that sport and war should not be mixed. Banning flags is not enough. It is shameful. Jacqueline Smith, Bellingen The war in Ukraine is an obscenity, a crime against all of humanity. That such savagery perpetrated against the innocents of a sovereign nation is able to be perpetuated is an affront to us all. Of course, it is the government of Russia and not its citizens which bear responsibility for this outrage. But even in tyrannies it is the people who, through the ballot box or otherwise, ultimately determine their government. In demonstrating its disgust over the unconscionable barbarity the war, the world in all its institutions should prohibit the participation by any Russian citizen in international competitions or forums. Alan Haselden, West Pennant Hills The mere sight of national flags at the tennis is provocation enough to incite and encourage those who believe that sport and politics are intertwined to actions beyond just raucous cheering or jeering. Ban all national flags at the Australian Open. George Zivkovic, Northmead Points of contention The rolling out of gimmick policies is a sure sign that there is an election in the offing (Drivers with good record to skip fines if Perrottet returned to power, smh.com.au, January 18). So you cant find an affordable rental, youve been waiting years for social housing, your childrens school is overcrowded with insufficient staffing, your bus route has been removed, you are waiting ages for that surgery in a public hospital, your GP doesnt bulk bill etc. Dont worry, were waiving your demerit points and some fines. There, doesnt that feel better? Eric Scott, Bondi Junction Chinas silver lining Perhaps Chinas sluggish growth will have a positive impact on the environment (China hit threatens to derail economy, January 18) John Temple, Rose Bay Right or wrong Delusions that The extreme right is no less of a threat to world peace than the extreme left reaffirm that modern conservatives cannot base their arguments on verifiable facts and/or observable reality, instead resorting to banal cliches about wokeness (Letters, January 18). Chris Roylance, Paddington (QLD) As usual the solution to fascism seems to be that schools do more to solve societys problems. It seems that every time a failing is found the easy answer is to flick to schools, in between all the other bits like teaching subjects, sport, health, safe sex etc. Decades ago schools started to replace welfare agencies and parents seemed happy to shrug off responsibilities to someone else. New ideas for what schools should do seem to never end. Teaching about climate is important and especially so in any study of environmental or geographic issues, but then the reactionaries deplore it and want to go to back to basics, whatever that means and whatever they are. In many parts of USA books which open the mind and depict uncomfortable ideas are under attack because the conservatives dont want open minds and want to preserve their idea of society. Tricky all around, but just how schools can ever solve all the problems in their already overcrowded curriculum is not so easy. Tony Sullivan, Adamstown Heights Dumb and dumber ChatGPT will prepare draft documents and a more senior person will be freed up to merely checking the written document (Now is the prime time for students to cheat, January 18). The downside will be the diminishment for juniors to get the same quantum of experience of researching and drafting documents. Similarly, calculators have dumbed down peoples ability to do number crunching. The memory of mobile phones now remembers all phone numbers. I wonder if lack of brain exercise will create more future dementia issues? For this reason, I challenge my memory by playing bridge, doing number crunching in my head and, of course, this is not written by chatGPT. Graeme Levien, Vaucluse The Herald can relax in relation to AI-sourced cheating. Well, a bit of it can. Chat GPT data feeds are not timely enough to enable relevant letters to the editor. I know. Ive tried. Brian Haisman, Winmalee Thunberg forced to lead Twenty-year-old Greta Thunberg, though young, is fierce, and is in the vanguard of real action to stop fossil fuel extraction, while thousands of (mostly old) politicians either do nothing or sit and talk a long way from where the coal is being extracted (Greta Thunberg detained by police during German coal village protest, January 18). More power to her, but how dare the powerful stay missing in action, when we need them to stand up and act? Tim Dashwood, Killara Abolish health watchdog To see how the national health regulator is on notice for its culture of bullying came as no surprise today, and brought back memories of years of my own bullying by this organisation which was set up to protect the public (Watchdog staff fear public at risk from super toxic culture, January 18). Its my opinion that in many cases it sees its role as protecting the status quo. There is no transparency, natural justice, or timeliness of investigations. Appeal against decisions is usually futile. Its time to follow through on the findings reported, and get rid of this dangerous organisation which has been proven not to be fit for purpose. Jane Tolman, Sandy Bay (Tas) Renee set the stage During the heady 1980s at Sydneys Basement Club I witnessed and experienced the power of, and musical expression in, the voice of the late Renee Geyer (Acclaimed queen of soul and a force of nature dies at 69, January 18). What a loss. It is perhaps still a mans world but nothing without a woman like Renee on stage. Fred Jansohn, Rose Bay Smart money I remain a firm believer that cash is king, and use it in the vast majority of my outlays (Letters, January 17). Im unconcerned at predictions the use of cash will cease. It just wouldnt feel right to bribe a politician with a paper bag with a debit card in it. Andrew McPherson, Kalaru Sticking point Why cant fruit labels be biodegradable (Letters, January 17)? Tim Schroder, Gordon Pity the rich 42 Australians now have a combined wealth of close to $236 billion (Disadvantage grows, economic outlook worsens, January 17). Phew, I am glad Im not among the 42. It cant be easy acknowledging great wealth while so many of ones fellow Aussies are struggling to survive. Kathleen Hollins, Northmead Serial offender After Spare, Harrys next books (Letters, January 17) should be Windsor Knot: How the Ties Have Frayed, Laundry Millionaire How to Get Rich Airing Dirty Linen, and Ill Never Reign in Southern California. Doug Walker, Baulkham Hills Stranger than fiction One would expect given his history that any biography by Boris Johnson will be categorised as fiction (Former PM to publish memoir like no other, January 18). Steve Bright, North Avoca Sydney passed 30 degrees for the first time in 331 days on Wednesday before a dangerous storm moving across south-west and central NSW sent temperatures plummeting. Maximum temperatures have stayed below 30 degrees in the city since February 21 last year a streak only bested by a 339-day record set in 1883. Sydneys Observatory Hill recorded a high of 30.1 degrees at 2.30pm on Wednesday but had dropped to 25.6 degrees by 5.30pm. In Sydneys west, Bankstown reached 33.7 degrees and Penrith got to 35.9 degrees. Campbelltown, in the citys south-west, hit 33.1 degrees. For years, the little boy silently carried his shame and guilt. He was worried his parents would no longer love him if he revealed that the man he once affectionately called uncle had abused him for 12 months. A 28-year-old was sentenced in Brisbane District Court on Wednesday for his predatory and callous abuse. Credit: Toby Crockford In the end, the boy finally told them because he was concerned he may not be able to have children due to what the judge described as gross, deviant behaviour. The boys parents wept when they revisited the moment on Wednesday, when a 28-year-old Queensland man appeared in Brisbane District Court. Four teenagers have been taken into custody after shots were fired in a small Western Downs town, sparking evacuations and specialist police to lock down the streets. Police were called to reports of a shooting in Tara about 3.30pm and declared an exclusion zone covering several blocks in the centre of town at 5.30pm. Tara is the Western Downs town where constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold who died last month during a shootout that killed six people at nearby Wieambilla had been based. Authorities revoked the emergency declaration about 11.30pm and said four local boys, aged 14, 15, 16 and 16, were assisting police with their investigations. Doctors are fighting an uphill battle against misinformation about sexual health and contraception including yoghurt-based thrush remedies, cancer-causing contraception, and requests for genital surgery as young people increasingly turn to social media for medical advice. General practitioner and womens health expert Dr Magdalena Simonis said many teenagers and women in their 20s and 30s are seeing misleading information on social media, at times resulting in unwanted pregnancies and requests for surgery on their genitals. A fertility tracking app. Influencers are seeing themselves as changemakers or social commentators, but they dont realise that the impact theyre having is actually pretty significant, Simonis said. Its so far removed from science. A US study published in Health Communication last week found that popular influencers were promoting unreliable and often inaccurate health advice at an alarming rate, triggering concerns among clinicians that more impressionable young people would suffer adverse health events, including unwanted pregnancies, STIs and self-esteem issues. The Victorian government will miss the latest deadline to establish protocols to prevent torture and inhumane treatment of detained people as the states prisons come under pressure from staff shortages, leading to unrest and reports of stricter conditions. A UN anti-torture treaty ratified by the federal government five years ago asks federal, state and territory governments to set up independent detention oversight, called the National Preventative Mechanisms. The mechanism would have the power to interview inmates and detainees, make recommendations for improvements and publish findings. Victorias prisons are under pressure due to staff shortages, which have led to increased lockdowns of prisoners. Credit: Jason South Victorias failure to meet the UNs January 20 deadline for setting up a mechanism prompted about 20 organisations, including the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) and the Human Rights Legal Centre, to write an open letter to Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes lamenting the lack of progress. In the five years since Australia signed onto OPCAT [the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment], effective independent oversight could have prevented numerous instances of abuse, torture, and even death of people deprived of their liberty, the letter, published on Tuesday, said. Money laundering, addiction and ruined lives: how a powerful lobby group has set up a multibillion-dollar industry. Former deputy prime minister John Anderson has rubbished claims that regional communities will suffer if cashless gaming cards become mandatory for NSW poker machines, saying the proposed reform will move voters at the ballot box. In a significant intervention by the former federal National Party leader, putting pressure on NSW Nationals MPs still opposed to changes proposed by Premier Dominic Perrottet, Anderson said he had too often seen the worst of problem gambling in regional areas. Former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader John Anderson has urged his party to back major gambling reform in NSW. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen Perrottet is yet to release details of his long-awaited pledge to introduce cashless gaming cards for poker machines, but he needs the support of the Nationals to get the proposal through cabinet before the state election. This idea that this [poker machine gambling] is some sort of bonanza for regional development, I simply dont buy it, Anderson told the Herald. It isnt worth the social cost. I dont believe the economic argument. While the 2022 state election was a great result for Labor supporters, those of us with ethnic heritage felt a pang of regret as we watched the Victorian Parliament become the least ethnically diverse parliament weve seen in over a decade. While all political parties are responsible for the parliaments composition, as the party that has driven social progress in Australia, its incumbent on Labor to properly represent the diversity of the Victorian community, as we have done with affirmative action for women, where women make up more than 50 per cent of both the caucus and cabinet. Premier Daniel Andrews celebrates Labors win on election night. Credit: Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images) Labors failure to reflect the community might already be contributing to electoral problems. One theory to account for these swings is the fact that ahead of both the 2018 and 2022 elections, factions chose to preselect predominantly Anglo candidates to represent largely non-Anglo areas. In Labors heartland, predominantly characterised by vibrant multicultural communities of Melbournes northern and western suburbs, we suffered primary vote swings against us that were bad in anyones language: 10 per cent in Point Cook, Tarneit and Thomastown, 11 per cent in Broadmeadows, 12 per cent in Laverton, 13 per cent in Mill Park, 16 per cent in Sunbury, 18 per cent in St Albans and Sydenham, 19 per cent in Greenvale and 20 per cent in Kororoit. London: The Church of England says it will allow blessings for same-sex, civil marriages for the first time but same-sex couples still will not be allowed to marry in its churches. The decision follows five years of debate and consultation on the churchs position on sexuality. It is expected to be outlined in a report to the churchs national assembly, the General Synod, which meets in London next month. The decision to not allow same-sex marriages follows five years of debate within the Church of England. Credit: AP Under the proposals, the Church of Englands stance that the sacrament of matrimony is restricted to unions between one man and one woman will not change. However, same-sex couples would be able to have a church service with prayers of dedication, thanksgiving or for Gods blessing after they have a civil wedding or register a civil partnership. Strasbourg, France: The alleged ringleader of a European Union cash-for-influence corruption scandal linked to Qatar and Morocco has decided to reveal information about the affair in exchange for a lighter sentence. Pier Antonio Panzeri, who was charged last month with corruption, money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation, and his lawyers have signed a memorandum in which he repents for his acts, the federal prosecutors office said in a statement on Wednesday (AEDT). Pier Antonio Panzeri addresses a plenary in Strasbourg, France, in 2019. Credit: AP According to a Belgian arrest warrant issued for his wife and daughter, who are living in Italy, Panzeri is suspected of intervening politically with members working at the European Parliament for the benefit of Qatar and Morocco in exchange for payment. Both countries have denied the allegations. Panzeri, a former Socialist and Democrats member of the European Parliament, set up a campaign group dubbed Fight Impunity that was believed to have been a front for the scheme. Fight Impunity was involved in a number of conferences with parliamentarians in recent years. PHILIPSBURG:--- Police from both sides of the island joined together to apprehend the driver of a white Suzuki SUV around midday on Tuesday, January 17, 2023, in the vicinity of the Salvation Army on Union Road after a cross-border car chase that started in Marigot, the French sides capital. Based on preliminary investigation, the driver of the white SUV had received a signal from French police to stop, but the drivers continued racing toward the Bellevue/Cole Bay border. That prompted the French-side police to start a chase through the roads of Bellevue towards Union road border on the Dutch side. Around 12:50 pm, Central Dispatch of the Police Force of Sint Maarten KPSM was notified by the French police about the pursuit and about their eventual border crossing. Several KPSM police patrols and detectives were dispatched to the area. The cross-border pursuit took the suspect and law enforcement across the Simpson Bay Causeway Bridge through Simpson Bay and back onto Union Road. The driver of the white Suzuki SUV struck several vehicles as he tried to elude officers. However, KPSM and its French counterparts succeeded in blockading the driver on Union Road and subsequently apprehending him. No one was injured in the chase, but several vehicles were damaged. The suspect was taken to the police station and is detained pending further investigation. The reason for the driver's failure to stop is not yet clear to authorities. KPSM Press Release. Alpha Lithium Granted Drilling Licenses for Hombre Muerto Salar in Argentina Alpha Lithium Corporation (NEO: ALLI) (OTC: APHLF) (German WKN: A3CUW1) (aAlphaa or the aCompanya https://www.commodity-tv.com/ondemand/companies/profil/alpha-lithium-corp/ ), a company with two large, undeveloped lithium assets in the Salta region of Argentina, is pleased to report that it has received licenses to commence exploration operations on its properties in the Salar del Hombre Muerto (aHombre Muertoa) in Argentina. The Company is already performing the mandatory health and safety checks of the rig and crew on the initial drilling rig, which it expects to mobilize to commence drilling before the end of this month. Alpha has secured a second drilling rig, which is s expected to join the ongoing operation as soon as possible in 2023. Alpha intends to drill up to 12 wellbores on its 5,000+ hectare Hombre Muerto property over the next 12 months, in addition to implementing several new Vertical Electrical Sounding (aVESa) campaigns (see August 16, 2022 news). Hombre Muerto is recognized as one of the most desirable salars in South America, as it hosts the (i) highest lithium brine grades, (ii) lowest levels of impurities and (iii) highest flow rates in Argentina. Hombre Muerto is Argentinaa?s longest producing salar, with Livent Corp having produced 20,000 tonnes/year of battery-grade lithium for over 25 years. At present, the Company controls over 5,000 hectares in Hombre Muerto. Until now, the salar has been primarily controlled by three large, multinational corporations: (i) Argentinaa?s oldest lithium chemicals producer, Livent Corp; (ii) Korea-based, POSCO; and, (iii)A Australian producer, Allkem Ltd. In 2022, after meeting with local government officials, POSCO announced plans to spend an additional US$4 billion on their 10,000 hectares in Hombre Muerto, signifying their intentions to tap into the rising demand for lithium. The Company intends to increase its land position at Hombre Muerto and will update shareholders accordingly, when progress is made in this regard. Brad Nichol, President and CEO of Alpha, commented, aTo finally commence operations at Hombre Muerto is an incredibly exciting, game-changing moment for Alpha and its shareholders. Having developed Tolillar to a point where it continues to attract significant industry interest, our team can focus on expanding and repeating its past two years of rapid success in Tolillar, now, in Hombre Muerto.a Hombre Muerto is only 10-15 km from Tolillar and, in the short-term, the Company will utilize the recently-enlarged camp at Tolillar as its home base for operations. All operations and assets of the Company are in Argentina and are fully managed by Alpha Lithium Argentina SA (aAlpha SAa) utilizing local employees and consultants. Neither Alpha, nor Alpha SA, have any operations or assets in Canada. Since initiating the first steps of an exploration program in 2020, Alpha SA has drilled more than 20 holes, constructed an in-house brine chemistry research laboratory, developed a proprietary Lithium Carbonate production process that works in Tolillar with remarkable success, started construction of a pilot plant, and employed dozens of highly skilled Argentinian technologists, engineers, geologists, geophysicists and chemists, in addition to several students, accounting, managerial and HR professionals. The Company is grateful for, and reliant upon, the significantly large Argentinian team that has proven instrumental at generating value for shareholders. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF ALPHA LITHIUM CORPORATION aBrad Nichola Brad Nichol President, CEO and Director For more information: Alpha Lithium Investor Relations Tel: +1 844 592 6337 relations@alphalithium.com www.alphalithium.com About Alpha Lithium (NEO: ALLI) (OTC: APHLF) (German WKN: A3CUW1) Alpha Lithium is a team of industry professionals and experienced stakeholders focused on the development of the Tolillar and Hombre Muerto Salars. In Tolillar, we have assembled 100% ownership of what may be one of Argentinaa?s last undeveloped lithium salars, encompassing 27,500 hectares (67,954 acres), neighboring multi-billion-dollar lithium players in the heart of the renowned aLithium Trianglea. In Hombre Muerto, we continue to expand our 5,000+ hectare (12,570 acres) foothold in one of the worlda?s highest quality, longest producing, lithium salars. Other companies in the area exploring for lithium brines or currently in production include Orocobre Limited, Galaxy Lithium, Allkem Ltd., Livent Corporation, and POSCO in Salar del Hombre Muerto; Orocobre in Salar Olaroz; Eramine SudAmerica S.A. in Salar de Centenario; and Gangfeng and Lithium Americas in Salar de Cauchari. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as \will\, \may\, \should\, \anticipate\, \expects\ and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company\-s expectations include the results of further brine process testing and exploration and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by applicable law. No securities regulatory authority has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. Skeena Announces Signing of Eskay Creek Process Charter Skeena Resources Limited (TSX: SKE, NYSE: SKE) (aSkeenaa or the aCompanya https://www.commodity-tv.com/ondemand/companies/profil/skeena-resources-ltd/ ) is pleased to announce the signing of the permitting Process Charter and other key milestones in the approval process for the Eskay Creek gold-silver Project (aEskay Creeka or the aProjecta) located in Tahltan Territory in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia (aBCa). A The Process Charter is a unique collaboration between Skeena, the Tahltan Central Government (aTCGa), and the Government of BC (the aProvincea). This document establishes a workplan for all parties to collaborate on an efficient Environmental Assessment (aEAa) and permitting process for Eskay Creek. The target timelines established in the Process Charter outline the EA Certificate being received in H2 2024 and final permits to be issued in H1 2025. These dates align with the development timeline anticipated for the Project.A Connor Pritty, TCG Lands Director commented, aThe TCG recently finalized the Process Charter for Eskay Creek. This document focuses on the details of regulatory processes related to the Project. It is an example of how Skeena is continually working with the Tahltan Nation to redefine how project approval processes are carried out within our Territory. We are working together to effectively integrate Tahltan knowledge, process requirements and decision-making specific to Eskay Creek. The TCG Lands Department looks forward to continuing to work with the team at Skeena.a Skeenaa?s President & CEO, Randy Reichert, goes on to comment aThe Process Charter is a significant step forward in the approval process for Eskay Creek. The signing of this document demonstrates the commitment from all parties on permitting the Project in an efficient and timely matter. We appreciate the efforts and collaboration shown by both the TCG and the Province in achieving this major milestone.a Environmental Assessment Update Readiness Decision & Federal Substitution Skeena has worked closely with the TCG, Federal and Provincial regulators, Indigenous Nations, and communities to advance the EA process for Eskay Creek. On November 18, 2022, both the EA Office and TCG provided a positive Readiness Decision for the Project which advanced it to the Process Planning stage. Then, on November 29, 2022, the Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change approved the substitution of the impact assessment to the BC Environmental Assessment Office (aBCEAOa). The substitution decision means that instead of doing two separate assessments on Eskay Creek, the BCEAO conducts a single assessment that meets both Provincial and Federal requirements. About Skeena Skeena Resources Limited is a Canadian mining exploration and development company focused on revitalizing the past-producing Eskay Creek gold-silver mine located in Tahltan Territory in the Golden Triangle of northwest British Columbia, Canada. The Company released a Feasibility Study for Eskay Creek in September 2022 which highlights an after-tax NPV5% of C$1.4B, 50% IRR, and a 1-year payback at US$1,700/oz Au and US$19/oz Ag. Cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements Certain statements and information contained or incorporated by reference in this news release constitute aforward-looking informationa and aforward-looking statementsa within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation (collectively, aforward-looking statementsa). These statements relate to future events or our future performance. The use of words such as aanticipatesa, abelievesa, aproposesa, acontemplatesa, ageneratesa, atargetsa, ais projecteda, ais planneda, aconsidersa, aestimatesa, aexpectsa, ais expecteda, apotentiala and similar expressions, or statements that certain actions, events or results amaya, amighta, awilla, acoulda, or awoulda be taken, achieved, or occur, may identify forward- looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Specific forward- looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the results of the Feasibility Study, processing capacity of the mine, anticipated mine life, probable reserves, estimated project capital and operating costs, sustaining costs, results of test work and studies, planned environmental assessments, the future price of metals, metal concentrate, and future exploration and development. Such forward-looking statements are based on material factors and/or assumptions which include, but are not limited to, the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, the realization of resource and reserve estimates, metal prices, taxation, the estimation, timing and amount of future exploration and development, capital and operating costs, the availability of financing, the receipt of regulatory approvals, environmental risks, title disputes and the assumptions set forth herein and in the Companya?s MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2021, its most recently filed interim MD&A, and the Companya?s Annual Information Form (aAIFa) dated March 31, 2022. Such forward-looking statements represent the Companya?s management expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events or circumstances on the date the statements are made, and are necessarily based on several estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company as of the date hereof, are not guarantees of future performance. Actual events and results may differ materially from those described herein, and are subject to significant operational, business, economic, and regulatory risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that may affect the forward-looking statements in this news release include, among others: the inherent risks involved in exploration and development of mineral properties, including permitting and other government approvals; changes in economic conditions, including changes in the price of gold and other key variables; changes in mine plans and other factors, including accidents, equipment breakdown, bad weather and other project execution delays, many of which are beyond the control of the Company; environmental risks and unanticipated reclamation expenses; and other risk factors identified in the Companya?s MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2021, its most recently filed interim MD&A, the AIF dated March 31, 2022, the base shelf prospectus dated November 11, 2020, the prospectus supplement to the Companya?s base shelf prospectus dated September 20, 2022 and in the Companya?s other periodic filings with securities and regulatory authorities in Canada and the United States that are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com or on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and the Company does not undertake any obligations to update and/or revise any forward- looking statements except as required by applicable securities laws. Calibre reports new gold discovery at the Pan Gold Mine in Nevada Calibre Mining Corp. (TSX: CXB; OTCQX: CXBMF) (the \Company\ or \Calibre\ https://www.commodity-tv.com/ondemand/companies/profil/calibre-mining-corp/ ) is pleased to announce assay results from the 2022 discovery and resource expansion drill program at its 100% owned Pan Mine (aPana), located in the prolific Battle Mountain a Eureka gold trend, Nevada. Initial results at the new Coyote target (aCoyotea), which had never been drill tested, located approximately 3 km south southwest of the Pan open pit demonstrate the exploration and discovery potential on the property. Coyote was initially identified through surface geochemistry and rock chip sampling combined with an evolving structural geological interpretation. In addition, several results, as outlined below, also indicate the potential for resource expansion while focusing on the conversion of known zones of mineralization. During 2023, Calibre will advance a 38,400 metre drill program in Nevada including 28,000 metres at Pan focusing on new targets and the expansion of known resources. Highlights from the New Coyote Pan South discovery include: Coyote Target 36 g/t Au over 13.7 metres including 2.78 g/t Au over 4.6 metres in Hole PR22-238; 61 g/t Au over 18.3 metres in Hole PR22-237; Initial results located approximately 3 km south of the Pan South open pit; Open for expansion Highlights from the Pan resource expansion and conversion program within the open pit operation include: North Dynamite 54 g/t Au over 74.7 metres in Hole PR22-211; 0.56 g/t Au over 21.3 metres in Hole PR22-209; 47 g/t Au over 18.3 metres in Hole PR22-210; 1.67 g/t Au over 12.2 metres including 2.12 g/t Au over 9.1 metres in Hole PR22-224; 41 g/t Au over 10.7 metres in Hole PR22-228; 67 g/t Au over 22.9 metres including 1.14 g/t Au over 9.1 metres in Hole PR22-190; Intercepts extend mineralization down-dip and along strike, and are open for further expansion Syncline Target 05 g/t Au over 15.2 metres including 2.12 g/t over 3.0 metres and 1.21 g/t over 6.1 metres in Hole PR22-218; 67 g/t Au over 7.6 metres in Hole PR22-219; Deeper mineralization north of Syncline will be evaluated considering newly interpreted stratigraphy Orpiment Alley Target 53 g/t Au over 15.2 metres in Hole PR22-182; With favorable mineralogy and trace element geochemistry at depth, Orpiment Alley remains the primary target of a deep, sulfide feeder system at Pan Benji Target 45 g/t Au over 18.3 metres in Hole PR22-203; 0.84 g/t Au over 22.1 metres in Hole PC22-017 Note: All holes were drilled at angles of -45 to -90 degrees at azimuths designed to intersect targeted structures as nearly as possible to perpendicular when possible. Some drill holes and intercepts reported here did not cross mineralization perpendicularly, and do not represent exact atrue widths. Darren Hall, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Calibre stated: aThe initial drill results located outside the Pan operating area are encouraging given this target has never been drilled. Additional gold targets have been identified along a 5 km trend south of the resource area and centered on the new Coyote discovery. Calibrea?s priority in 2023 will shift to these new targets with a focus on discovery drilling within the mineral concessions at Pan and Gold Rock.a A Link 1 a Figures Link 2 a Drilling Table Quality Assurance/Quality Control Calibre Mining maintains a Quality Assurance/Quality Control (aQA/QCa) program for all its exploration projects using industry best practices. Key elements of the QA/QC program include the insertion of assay standards, blanks, and duplicates in the sample stream to ensure the assay lab results are within specified performance levels. Down hole deviation surveys are provided by International Directional Services, utilizing a surface recording gyroscope, and by trained drill crews operating a north seeking gyroscope supplied by REFLEX. RC drilling was performed by Boart Longyear of Salt Lake City, Utah and Alford Drilling from Elko, Nevada. Assays were performed by ALS, Reno where fire assays were determined on a 30-gram charge with an AAS finish. An additional cyanide leach assay was also completed. ALS carries ISO/IEC 17025:2017 certification. Qualified Person The scientific and technical information contained in this news release was approved by David Schonfeldt P.Geo, Calibre Mininga?s Corporate Chief Geologist and a \Qualified Person\ under National Instrument 43-101. About Calibre Mining Corp. Calibre Mining is a Canadian-listed, Americas focused, growing mid-tier gold producer with a strong pipeline of development and exploration opportunities across Nevada and Washington in the USA, and Nicaragua. Calibre is focused on delivering sustainable value for shareholders, local communities and all stakeholders through responsible operations and a disciplined approach to growth. With a strong balance sheet, a proven management team, strong operating cash flow, accretive development projects and district-scale exploration opportunities Calibre will unlock significant value. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Information This news release includes certain \forward-looking information\ and \forward-looking statements\ (collectively \forward-looking statements\) within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation.A All statements in this news release that address events or developments that we expect to occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are identified by words such as \expect\, \plan\, \anticipate\, \project\, \target\, \potential\, \schedule\, \forecast\, \budget\, \estimate\, \intend\ or \believe\ and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions \will\, \would\, \may\, \could\, \should\ or \might\ occur. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to: the Companya?s expectations toward higher grades mined and processed going forward; statements relating to the Companya?s 2022 priority resource expansion opportunities;A the Companya?s metal price and cut-off grade assumptions; the Companya?s plans for the Pan Mine for 2022, including production and exploration and its contribution to production growth.A Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond Calibre\-s control.A For a listing of risk factors applicable to the Company, please refer to Calibre\-s annual information form (aAIFa) for the year ended December 31, 2020, and its management discussion and analysis (aMD&Aa) for the year ended December 31, 2021, all available on the Companya?s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect Calibre\-s forward-looking statements. Calibre\-s forward-looking statements are based on the applicable assumptions and factors management considers reasonable as of the date hereof, based on the information available to management at such time. Such assumptions include but are not limited to: the Company being able to mine and process higher grades and keep production costs relatively flat going forward; there not being an increase in production costs as a result of any supply chain issues or ongoing COVID-19 restrictions; there being no adverse drop in metal price or cut-off grade at the Companya?s Nevada properties. Calibre does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management\-s beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable securities laws. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. A The United States Space Force was established as the sixth and newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces on Dec. 20, 2019 when the National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law. Before that, the United States hadn't created a new military branch since 1946, when it stood up the Air Force. The push for a dedicated branch of the armed services devoted to the final frontier gained steam as orbital space became increasingly crowded and contested. As the United States' critical infrastructure became increasingly dependent on satellites for communication, navigation, meteorology and intelligence, the U.S. Department of Defense likewise identified a need for a branch of the military dedicated solely to operating and protecting these assets. Thus, Space Force was created. The service's motto, "Semper supra," is Latin for "Always above," a phrase that encapsulates the Space Force's mission. Its symbol, the Delta, signifies the service's responsibilities and mission while honoring its long history that began long before the Space Force was created in 2019. Related: Trump Officially Establishes US Space Force with 2020 Defense Bill Signing Space Force history The history of the U.S. Space Force dates back to 1954 when the U.S. Air Force created a division tasked with overseeing the U.S. military's ballistic missiles. This division evolved several times throughout the following decades and merged with other organizations as the United States began placing more satellites in orbit for communications and early missile warning systems. In 1982, the Air Force stood up Air Force Space Command, making it the first operational space command in the U.S. Armed Forces. Air Force Space Command continued to grow from the 1980s onward as the Department of Defense (DOD) sought to consolidate its space operations. On Dec. 20, 2019, Air Force Space Command was renamed United States Space Force and was established as an independent service when President Donald Trump signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act , the laws overseen by the U.S. Congress that authorize annual military expenditures. Under the structure signed into law, Space Force would be part of the U.S. Department of the Air Force, in much the same way that the United States Marine Corps is part of the U.S. Department of the Navy. At its creation, 16,000 military and civilian personnel were assigned to the Space Force. As of January 2023, the service consists of 4,286 enlisted service members and 4,314 officers, according to the Air Force Times (opens in new tab), making it the smallest branch of the U.S. military. The U.S. Navy, by comparison, has well over 300,000 active duty members, while the U.S. Army boasts close to 500,000 active service members. Space Force service members are known as Guardians , a name announced in a 2020 ceremony marking the service's first anniversary. The service's service dress uniforms were debuted in a Sept. 2021 ceremony, revealing them to be a six-button double-breasted tunic that drew comparisons (opens in new tab) to the costumes worn in the sci-fi series "Battlestar Galactica." Two U.S. Space Force servicemembers pose in the service's uniforms. (Image credit: USAF photo by Staff Sgt Chad Trujilo) (opens in new tab) What does the Space Force do? According to the U.S. Space Force's mission statement (opens in new tab), the service is responsible for "organizing, training, and equipping Guardians to conduct global space operations that enhance the way our joint and coalition forces fight, while also offering decision-makers military options to achieve national objectives." To accomplish this mission, Space Force is organized into three main divisions: Field commands, Deltas and squadrons. The service's three field commands are Space Operations Command (SpOC), Space Systems Command (SSC) and Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM). Field commands oversee broad mission goals. Space Operations Command, for example, is responsible for providing "combat ready" space capabilities, cyber operations and intelligence in support of U.S. military operations, according to a SpOc fact sheet (opens in new tab). Space Operations Command provids "combat ready" space capabilities, cyber operations and intelligence. (Image credit: U.S. Space Command) (opens in new tab) Space Systems Command, meanwhile, is responsible for the service's development and acquisition of new space technologies and capabilities. The command's website (opens in new tab) writes that SSC is tasked with "developing, acquiring, equipping, fielding and sustaining lethal and resilient space capabilities for warfighters." This mission includes overseeing launch operations and on-orbit maintenance of DOD satellites and other space systems. Space Training and Readiness Command, or STARCOM, as its name suggests, is tasked with educating and training Space Force personnel "to fight and win in a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment through the deliberate development, education and training of space professionals; development of space warfighting doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures; and the test and evaluation of USSF capabilities," according to its website (opens in new tab). Within each field command are various Space Force Deltas. Deltas have a much more specific function, such as operations, training or facility support, according to a 2020 Space Force statement (opens in new tab). For example, Space Launch Delta 45 (opens in new tab) (SLD 45) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida is tasked with overseeing all space launch operations from the U.S. East Coast, including from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SLD 45 manages the Eastern Range, a massive rocket range that stretches out over the Atlantic Ocean into the Indian Ocean, and provides launch support for the DOD, NASA and private space launch providers. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a GPS III-5 satellite into orbit launches from LC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., June 17, 2021. (Image credit: U.S. Space Force/Airman 1st Class Samuel Becker) (opens in new tab) Each Delta is further divided into squadrons, each tasked with a specific purpose that supports the overall mission of its respective field command. The 45th Weather Squadron (opens in new tab), for example, is part of Space Launch Delta 45 at Patrick Space Force Base in Florida and is responsible for performing weather observations and making forecasts in support of launch operations at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center. These squadrons, Deltas, and field commands work together to ensure that the Space Force can protect U.S. space assets as Earth orbit becomes increasingly contested. In recent decades, the United States' peer adversaries such as China and Russia have advanced their own space capabilities to the point where U.S. satellites are under attack daily, according to U.S. Space Force Gen. David Thompson, then vice chief of space operations. Thompson told The Washington Post (opens in new tab) in 2021 that "threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it's really an evolution of activity that's been happening for a long time," adding that "we're really at a point now where there's a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened." More recent statements by U.S. Space Force leadership echo this same sentiment. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the branch's chief of space operations, said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California in December 2022 that protecting United States capabilities in space has become one of the Pentagon's top priorities, SpaceNews reported (opens in new tab). "The capability that space offers has demonstrated its value so much so that both sides are engaged in trying to counter those capabilities and deny those advantages to the opponent," Saltzman said. Space is "clearly a contested domain," he added. The ways in which satellites and other spacecraft can be threatened or countered range from reversible, non-damaging capabilities on one end such as jamming GPS transmission or using lasers to blind satellites' optical sensors , to the other end that includes destructive anti-satellite missiles , tests of which have drawn condemnation from the international community. This image was created for the Space-Based Weapons section of the Defense Intelligence Agency's "Competing in Space" unclassified report, depicting space-based anti-satellite systems that target other space systems. (Image credit: National Air and Space Intelligence Center/Senior Airman Samuel Earick ) (opens in new tab) The U.S. Space Force has units tasked with tracking these threats and engaging in " on-orbit combat ," although the exact capabilities of these units remain classified as do many of the service's assets and technologies. The U.S. Space Force systems and capabilities that are unclassified and known to the public include (but are not limited to) the Global Positioning System (GPS) , overseen by Space Delta 8 at Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado; the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (opens in new tab) (DMSP) that provides weather data to the U.S. military; and a wide variety of intelligence, surveillance and missile early warning systems like the Next Generation Overhead Persistent InfraRed (opens in new tab) system (Next-Gen OPIR), Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program and the Space Tracking and Surveillance System. (opens in new tab) Space Force also tracks objects from low Earth orbit all the way to deep space using a variety of ground-based sensors like the Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (opens in new tab) (GEODSS) system. Perhaps most well-known of all Space Force assets is the X-37B , the Boeing-built space plane whose missions remain largely mysterious despite many high-profile long-duration flights in orbit. Since the creation of the Space Force, the service has largely turned to commercial launch providers to loft its satellites and other assets to orbit. Since 2020, ULA and SpaceX have been the exclusive launch providers for the U.S. Space Force, although the service is looking to partner with more providers from 2023 onward, according to SpaceNews (opens in new tab). Where are Space Force bases? Today, U.S. Space Force operates six dedicated Space Force bases, two of which host orbital launches for the service's many satellites and spacecraft. These include: Vandenberg Space Force Base is home to Space Launch Delta 30 (opens in new tab), which oversees the Western Range and manages launch activities for the DOD, NASA and private space firms. The Western Range stretches from the West Coast of the United States into the Indian Ocean, where it meets the Eastern Range. In addition to these Space Force bases, the service operates eight Space Force stations, which include: Cape Canaveral Space Force Station , Cape Canaveral, Florida , Cape Canaveral, Florida Cape Cod Space Force Station, Bourne Massachusetts Cavalier Space Force Station, Cavalier, North Dakota Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, Colorado Springs, Colorado Clear Space Force Station, Clear, Alaska Kaena Point Space Force Station, Honolulu County, Hawaii New Boston Space Force Station, New Boston, New Hampshire Thule Air Base, Qaanaaq, Greenland Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is home to Space Launch Delta 45 and oversees launches for a variety of space agencies and companies, including NASA's Kennedy Space Center. During the historic launch of NASA's Artemis 1 mission to the moon in November 2022, for example, SLD 45 oversaw radar tracking of the agency's SLS mega moon rocket over the Eastern Range. U.S. Space Force Capt. Mark Conque, 1st Range Operations Squadron assistant director of operations, uses the Range Application Deployment system to assess Space Launch Complex 40 on June 7, 2022, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida (Image credit: U.S. Space Force photo by Tech. Sgt. James Hodgman) (opens in new tab) What is the Space Force symbol? The U.S. Space Force's symbol is known as a delta. It's a triangular or chevron shape featuring elements that represent the service's mission and history. A U.S. Space Force graphic explaining the symbolism in the service's emblem. (Image credit: U.S. Space Force) (opens in new tab) The silver outline of the delta represents the service's commitment to protecting U.S. space assets from adversaries and threats. In the center, a symbol representing the North Star, Polaris , represents the core values that guide Space Force, in much the same way the North Star has guided travelers for millennia. Alongside the North Star are four triangular elements that represent four branches of the U.S. Armed Forces: the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. Finally, in the top of the delta symbol are two bright lines representing a rocket launching into orbit. This element symbolizes the central role of Space Force in overseeing launch operations on behalf of the Pentagon. Additional Resources U.S. Space Force represents the growing role that space plays in all of humanity's endeavors, including military operations. To learn more about the service, visit the Space Force's official website (opens in new tab). Space Force's many operations and facilities are explained in greater detail in a series of fact sheets (opens in new tab) hosted on the service's website. Bibliography United States Space Force History, [Accessed 01/31/23] https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/About-Space-Force/History/ (opens in new tab) United States Space Force Locations, [Accessed 01/31/23] https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Space-Force-Locations/ (opens in new tab) What's the Space Force?, [Accessed 01/31/23] https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/FAQs/Whats-the-Space-Force/ (opens in new tab) New in 2023: Saltzman leads Space Force into its 4th year, [Accessed 01/31/23] https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2023/01/03/new-in-2023-saltzman-leads-space-force-into-its-4th-year/ (opens in new tab) Beyond Space Horizons: A Half Century of Air Force Space Leadership, [Accessed 01/31/23] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA355572 (opens in new tab) About Space Operations Command, [Accessed 01/31/23] https://www.spoc.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/About-Space-Operations-Command (opens in new tab) About Space Systems Command, [Accessed 1/31/23] https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/About-Space-Systems-Command (opens in new tab) Space Training and Readiness Command: Who We Are, [Accessed 1/31/23] https://www.starcom.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Who-We-Are/ (opens in new tab) Comets are defined as icy bodies of frozen gases, rocks and dust left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. They orbit the sun in highly elliptical orbits that can take hundreds of thousands of years to complete. As a comet approaches the sun, it heats up very quickly causing solid ice to turn directly into gas via a process called sublimation, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute . The gas contains water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other trace substances, and is eventually swept into the distinctive comet tail. Scientists sometimes call comets dirty snowballs or snowy dirtballs, depending on whether they contain more ice material or rocky debris according to NASA . Related: How to view and photograph comets According to NASA, as of January 2023, the current number of known comets is 3,743. Though billions more are thought to be orbiting the sun beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt and the distant Oort cloud far beyond Pluto . Occasionally, a comet streaks through the inner solar system ; some do so regularly, some only once every few centuries. Many people have never seen a comet, but those who have won't easily forget the celestial show. The most recent comet to be making headlines is that of recently discovered comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) which will make a relatively close approach to Earth on Feb. 1, 2023, passing within 28 million miles (42 million km). This striking green comet was last in our neighborhood 50,000 years ago, making the last people to look up and witness this visitor from the depths of the outer solar system, likely very early Homo sapiens or Neanderthals. Related: Amazing photos of gorgeously green Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Hoping to observe a comet for yourself? Our guides on the best telescopes and best binoculars can help. You can also check out our guide on how to view and photograph comets as well our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography to get started. What is a comet made of? A comet primarily consists of a nucleus, coma, hydrogen envelope, dust and plasma tails. Scientists analyze these components to learn about the size and location of these icy bodies, according to ESA (opens in new tab). Nucleus The nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko imaged by Rosetta's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera from a distance of 177 miles (285 km). (Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA) (opens in new tab) A comet nucleus is the solid core of a comet consisting of frozen molecules including water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia as well as other inorganic and organic molecules dust. The nucleus of a comet is usually around 6 miles ( 10 kilometers) across or less (opens in new tab). Coma As a comet gets closer to the sun, the ice on the surface of the nucleus begins turning into a gas via a process called sublimation, forming a cloud around the comet known as the coma. According to the science website howstuffworks.com (opens in new tab) the coma is often 1,000 times larger than the nucleus. Hydrogen envelope Surrounding the coma is a hydrogen envelope that can be up to 6.2 million miles (10 million kilometers) long and is made from hydrogen atoms according to ESA (opens in new tab). As the comet gets closer to the sun, the hydrogen envelope gets bigger (opens in new tab). Tails Comet C/1995 01 Hale-Bopp captured on March 14, 1997. In this image you can see the dust tail streaking out to the right whist the blue ion tail points away from the sun. (Image credit: ESO/E. Slawik) (opens in new tab) There are two main types of comet tails, dust and gas. Comet tails are shaped by sunlight and the solar wind and always point away from the sun (opens in new tab). Comet tails get longer as a comet approaches the sun and can end up millions of miles long (opens in new tab). The dust tail is formed when solar wind pushes small particles in the coma into an elongated curved path. Whereas the ion tail is formed from electrically charged molecules of gas. We can see a number of comets with the naked eye when they pass close to the sun because their comas and tails reflect sunlight or even glow because of the energy they absorb from the sun. However, most comets are too small or too faint to be seen without a telescope. Comets leave a trail of debris behind them that can lead to meteor showers on Earth. For instance, the Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when Earth passes through the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle . Comet orbits Astronomers classify comets based on the duration of their orbits around the sun. Short-period comets need roughly 200 years or less to complete one orbit, long-period comets take more than 200 years, and single-apparition comets are not bound to the sun (opens in new tab), on orbits that take them out of the solar system. Recently, scientists have also discovered comets in the main asteroid belt these main-belt comets might be a key source of water for the inner terrestrial planets . Scientists think short-period comets, also known as periodic comets (opens in new tab), originate from a disk-shaped band of icy objects known as the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune's orbit, with gravitational interactions with the outer planets dragging these bodies inward, where they become active comets. Long-period comets are thought to come from the nearly spherical Oort Cloud even further out, which get slung inward by the gravitational pull of passing stars. In 2017, scientists found there may be seven times more big long-period comets than previously thought. Some comets, called sun-grazers, smash right into the sun or get so close that they break up and evaporate. Some researchers are also concerned that comets may pose a threat to Earth as well. Comet McNaught (Comet C/2006 P1) behind Mount Paranal in the Chilean Atacama desert. This image was captured in January 2007. Comet McNaught was the brightest comet seen since 1965 and, in some places, it was even visible to the naked eye during the day! (Image credit: S. Deiries/ESO) (opens in new tab) How do comets get their names? Comets are generally named after their discoverer. For example, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 got its name because it was the ninth short-periodic comet discovered by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. Spacecraft have proven very effective at spotting comets as well, so the names of many comets incorporate the names of missions such as SOHO or WISE. Related: Amazing photos of Comet NEOWISE from the Earth and space Comets through history In antiquity, comets inspired both awe and alarm, "hairy stars" resembling fiery swords that appeared unpredictably in the sky. Often, comets seemed to be omens of doom the most ancient known mythology, the Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh (opens in new tab)," described fire, brimstone, and flood with the arrival of a comet, and the Roman emperor Nero (opens in new tab) saved himself from the "curse of the comet" by having all possible successors to his throne executed. This fear was not just limited to the distant past in 1910, people in Chicago sealed their windows to protect themselves from what they thought was the comet's poisonous tail. For centuries, scientists thought comets traveled in the Earth's atmosphere (opens in new tab), but in 1577, observations made by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe revealed they actually traveled far beyond the moon . Isaac Newton later discovered that comets move in elliptical, oval-shaped orbits around the sun, and correctly predicted that they could return again and again. Chinese astronomers kept extensive records on comets for centuries, including observations of Halley's Comet going back to at least 240 B.C., and historic annals that have proven valuable resources for later astronomers. Missions to comets Several missions have ventured to comets. NASA's Deep Impact (opens in new tab) collided an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 (opens in new tab) in 2005 and recorded the dramatic explosion that revealed the interior composition and structure of the nucleus. The mission also included a flyby of Comet Hartley 2 and the remote sensing of Comet Garradd during an extended mission. Comet Tempel 1 67 seconds after NASA's Deep Impact's impactor spacecraft crashed into the comet. The image was captured by a high-resolution camera on the mission's flyby craft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD) (opens in new tab) In 2009, NASA announced that samples returned from Comet Wild 2 during the Stardust mission revealed a building block of life glycine. It was the first time an amino acid was found in a comet (opens in new tab). In 2014, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Philae lander touched down on Nov 12, 2014. Among the Rosetta mission's many discoveries was the first detection of organic molecules on the surface of a comet; a strange song from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; the possibility that the comet's odd shape may be due to it spinning apart, or resulting from two comets fusing together; and the fact that comets may possess hard, crispy outsides and cold but soft insides, just like fried ice cream. On Sept. 30, 2016, Rosetta intentionally crash-landed on the comet, ending its mission. June 19, 2019, ESA selected the Comet Interceptor mission as the last "fast" or F-class mission. The new mission will intercept an as-yet-undiscovered comet as it enters the inner solar system. The mission consists of three spacecraft that will capture snapshots of the comet from different angles, creating a 3D profile of the object and characterizing its surface, composition, shape and structure. Comet interceptor is due to launch in 2029 (opens in new tab). Famous comets Halley's Comet is likely the most famous comet in the world, even depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry that chronicled the Battle of Hastings of 1066. It becomes visible to the naked eye about every 75 years when it nears the sun. When Halley's Comet zoomed near Earth in 1986, five spacecraft flew past it and gathered unprecedented details, coming close enough to study its nucleus, which is normally concealed by the comet's coma. The roughly potato-shaped, 9-mile-long (15 km) comet contains equal parts ice and dust, with some 80% of the ice made of water and about 15% of it consisting of frozen carbon monoxide. Researchers believe other comets are chemically similar to Halley's Comet. The nucleus of Halley's Comet was unexpectedly extremely dark black its surface, and perhaps those of most others, is apparently covered with a black crust of dust over most of the ice, and it only releases gas when holes in this crust expose ice to the sun. The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided spectacularly with Jupiter in 1994, with the giant planet's gravitational pull ripping the comet apart for at least 21 visible impacts . The largest collision created a fireball that rose about 1,800 miles (3,000 km) above the Jovian cloud tops as well as a giant dark spot more than 7,460 miles (12,000 km) across about the size of the Earth and was estimated to have exploded with the force of 6,000 gigatons of TNT. Scattered fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were captured on May 17, 1994, by the Hubble Space Telescope. The fragments impacted Jupiter in July 1994. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/H. Weaver and E. Smith (STSci)) (opens in new tab) A highly visible comet was Hale-Bopp (opens in new tab), which came within 122 million miles (197 million km) of Earth in 1997. Its unusually large nucleus gave off a great deal of dust and gas estimated at roughly 18 to 25 miles (30 to 40 km) across appeared bright to the naked eye. Comet ISON (opens in new tab) was expected to give a spectacular show in 2013. However, the sun-grazer did not survive its close encounter with the sun and was destroyed in December of the same year. In 2021, scientists found what could be the largest comet ever seen (opens in new tab). Comet C/2014 UN271 or Bernardinelli-Bernstein after its discoverers, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli and astronomer Gary Bernstein, was officially designated a comet (opens in new tab) on June 23. Astronomers estimate this icy body has a diameter of 62 miles to 124 miles (100 km to 200 km), making it about 10 times wider than a typical comet. The comet will make its closest approach to our planet in 2031 but will remain at quite a distance even then. Additional resources Strasbourg, January 18, 2023 (SPS) - The European Parliamentary Group of Solidarity with the Sahrawi People held a meeting in the European Parliament, chaired by Mr. Andreas Scheider, and in the presence of a member of the Polisario Fronts representation in Europe, Mr. Bassiri Moulay El Hassan. The meeting, which was held on the sidelines of the public session of the European Parliament, held in Strasbourg between January 16 and 20, 2023, dealt in particular with Morocco's involvement in corruption scandals within the European Parliament, or what has become known as Maroc Gate, where members of the parliamentary group confirmed that the policy of bribery and the role of the Moroccan pressure groups within the European Parliament had a clear role in the European Parliaments boycott of decisions related to human rights in Western Sahara, as well as in passing illegal agreements between the EU and Morocco, which included Western Sahara lands and territorial waters. The EU Parliamentary Group "Peace for Western Sahara" stressed the need to conduct an investigation into Morocco's involvement, especially with regard to the suspicious vote on the fishing and trade agreement that included Western Sahara, in light of the clear rulings of the European Court of Justice in this regard. Mrs. Ana Miranda, Vice President of the Group, submitted a presentation on the participation of a delegation of the Parliamentary Group in the work of the 16th Congress of the Polisario Front, stressing that the message of the Sahrawi people and their political leadership centered on intensifying efforts at all levels to grab the Sahrawi people right to self-determination and independence. The meeting also focused on evaluating the initiatives and activities that have been undertaken during the recent period. Mr. Bassiri Moulay El Hassan, member of the Polisario Front's representation in Europe, presented briefing on the latest developments of the Sahrawi issue at the national, regional and international levels, especially with regard to the continuation of the war in Western Sahara, once again, the UN Security Council failed to respond to the seriousness of the situation on the ground. It is worth noting that the meeting concluded with developing an action strategy during the next week, in light of the developments taking place in the European Parliament in light of the exposure of corruption scandals, or what is now known as Maroc-Gate. SPS 110/T The National Public Health Institute (INSP) has informed that in the January 9 - 15 week, 43.4% of the COVID-19 cases in Romania were reported by Bucharest City and the counties of Cluj, Timis, Brasov, Hunedoara combined. According to the Weekly Supervision Report, 44% of the confirmed cases were in persons not vaccinated against COVID-19, told Agerpres. Among the vaccinated who got sick, 49% were either immediately after vaccination or more than six months after the last dose. INSP says that 53.1% of the total deaths were reported by the counties of Neamt, Iasi, Constanta, Sibiu and Teleorman combined. Also, 53% of the deaths were in unvaccinated people. As of today, 86.5% of all COVID-19 deaths were in people over 60 years old, and 54.7% - in men, with 93.7% of the deaths having occurred in patients with at least one related comorbidity. Minister of National Defense Angel Tilvar met on Wednesday at the ministry headquarters with Ukrainian ambassador to Romania Ihor Prokopchuk, with talks focusing on current aspects regarding the security situation, as well as on Romania's multidimensional support for Ukraine, told Agerpres. The defense minister reiterated Romania's firm position regarding the importance of the continuation of international support to Ukraine as long as it will be necessary, the Press Office of the National Defense Ministry informs. Minister Tilvar condemned the indiscriminate strikes on civilian infrastructure by the Russian Federation's forces, mentioning the January 15 tragic event in the city of Dnipro that resulted in a large number of civilian victims. Also, the Romanian official reiterated the importance of maintaining a constant dialogue between Romania and Ukraine's Defense Ministries, expressing the openness of the Romanian side to continuing discussions on the complex security and defense issues in the Black Sea region. In the wake of the tragic helicopter incident occurred near Kyiv this morning, Minister Angel Tilvar offered condolences to the Ukrainian government and people on the death of Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky and of others on board the aircraft and on the ground, the Defense Ministry said. The helicopter carrying Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Denys Monastyrsky and several other senior officials was heading towards the front line when it crashed beside a kindergarten in Brovary city, near Kyiv, causing a fire at the site. 18 people were killed and 29 were injured on the ground, including 15 children. There were nine people on board the helicopter, including the minister, his first deputy Yevhen Yenin, and the Interior Ministry's Secretary of State Yuriy Lubkovych. The Development, Public Works and Administration Ministry (MDLPA) is funding, through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), a number of 174 new investments in 94 localities, Minister Cseke Attila announced on Wednesday. The projects, with a total value of 1,243,373,586.46 RON, were submitted within the second round of fundraising for components C5 - Renovation Wave and C10 - Local Fund from the PNRR, a MDLPA press release mentions, told Agerpres. Thus, for the Renovation Wave, 115 new projects have been approved, worth 1,097,756,461.18 RON, filed by 42 localities for the rehabilitation, modernization and energy efficiency of some public institution ( medical, education, cultural, administrative institutions) and of some multifamily residential buildings. For the Local Fund, a number of 59 new projects have been approved, worth 145,617,125.28 RON, filed by 52 localities, for projects targeting the rehabilitation and energy efficiency of some public institutions, the expansion of some integrated traffic management systems, as well as the installation of video monitoring systems and smart urban furniture. The list of funded projects is available at the Territorial Development section, subsection PNRR - National Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Ministry of Development website: https://www.mdlpa.ro/pages/pnrr. Prosecutors with the Iasi National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) detained eight workers and police officers from the Sculeni and Bors border checkpoints in a case in which they are accused of bribe taking and influence peddling, told Agerpres. According to a Wednesday DNA press statement, the prosecutors on Tuesday ordered the initiation of criminal prosecution and taking preventive measures against 23 border customs workers and police officers, and eight people were taken into police custody (four customs workers of the Sculeni Border Customs Office and four police officers of the Bors Border Police). The investigators show that judicial control was ordered against 15 people (five police officers of the Iasi - Sculeni Border Police, one police officer of the Oancea Border Police, two police officers of the Stanca Border Police, two customs workers of the Albita Border Customs Office, two customs workers of the Sculeni Border Customs Office, two customs workers of the Oancea Border Customs and one customs worker of the Stanca Border Customs Office). The 23 persons are standing accused of bribery and influence peddling. The anti-corruption prosecutors say that in 2021-2022, the customs workers and border police officers mentioned above, repeatedly asked for and received sums of money of between 20 and 250 euros, from persons who were carrying passengers or goods from Moldova to European Union countries and vice versa. "In exchange for the money received as a bribe, the defendants would have violated their duties, in the sense that they would have favored the passage of the respective persons and/or parcels without ordering the legal measures for non-compliance with the provisions regarding the transport of certain quantities of excisable goods/products or non-compliance with the periods of stay in the European Union by non-EU citizens," the investigators show. Today, eight people will be brought before the Vaslui Court with a proposal for 30-day preventive arrest. The DNA prosecutors in coordination with judicial authorities of Moldova carried out on Tuesday searches in 31 locations located in the counties of Iasi, Vaslui, Botosani, Galati, Neamt and Bihor, five of which were border checkpoints and the remaining residences of natural persons. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, had a telephone conversation with his Czech counterpart, Jan Lipavsky on Wednesday. According to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE), Minister Aurescu thanked the Czech Presidency of the EU Council for the support and efforts aimed at Romania's accession to the Schengen Area and highlighted the steps taken in the dialogue with the member states and the European Commission to achieve this goal in the coming period. The MAE shows that Minister Jan Lipavsky reiterated the firm and active support that the Czech Republic will continue to give to Romania in this case, stressing that Romania's accession will bring substantial added value to the strengthening of the security of the external borders of the European Union, Agerpres informs. The two foreign ministers also assessed the security situation generated by the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, reiterating the importance of the multidimensional support of the European Union in supporting Ukraine. In this context, they also addressed cooperation within NATO and the need to strengthen the Eastern Flank. Also, the two ministers discussed the use of international law instruments to hold Russia accountable and the creation of an effective and viable mechanism for judging people who have committed crimes of aggression in Ukraine. "The dialogue between the two ministers highlighted the sustained dynamics of the bilateral dialogue and the interest of both parties in deepening and consolidating sectoral cooperation. In this context, Minister Jan Lipavsky accepted the invitation of his Romanian counterpart to pay a visit to Romania during this year", informs the MAE. Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogdan Aurescu had a telephone conversation, on Wednesday, with his Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, on bilateral relations, with the head of the Romanian diplomacy conveying thanks, at the same time, for Poland's "firm" and "active" support for Romania's accession to the Schengen area, told Agerpres. According to a press release sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) to AGERPRES, the two officials emphasized the excellent nature of the strategic partnership relations between the two states, especially on the political and security dimensions. The two ministers also discussed the organization, in the first part of 2023, of the second joint meeting of the Governments of Romania and Poland, after the one in Warsaw, in March last year. Minister Aurescu thanked Poland for its "firm" and "active" support for Romania's accession to the Schengen area. He also showed that Romania would like to intensify the bilateral political dialogue on all components, as well as in the existing trilateral consultation formats, including the Trilateral Romania - Poland - Turkey, reads the MAE release. In his turn, minister Zbigniew Rau reiterated Poland's "strong" and "active" support for the goal of Romania's accession to Schengen as soon as possible, highlighting that his country will continue to support these efforts, including in the dialogue with member states. The Polish Foreign Minister expressed hope for a positive development on this file, "considering that it is fair from all points of view for Romania to join the Schengen area as soon as possible". The two officials also had an exchange of views regarding the current security agenda, in the context of the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine. "In view of the NATO Summit that will be hosted by Lithuania in Vilnius in 2023, as well as the meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs in April 2023, the two ministers discussed the perspectives of cooperation within the Bucharest 9 Format, highlighting the special added value of the format, as well as the importance of maintaining the pace of consultations and cooperation in this format for the promotion of common priorities," MAE also shows. The Government approved, in Wednesday's meeting, the National Strategy on Education for the Environment and Climate Change 2023 - 2030, a document that establishes clear actions in order to increase the level of education and awareness among children and young people regarding development sustainable and environmental responsibility, announced the spokesperson for the Government, Dan Carbunaru. "An important moment for Romanian education, because it is the first time in Romania that a National Strategy dedicated to education for the environment and for climate change is adopted. Through this document, clear actions are established to increase the degree of education and awareness among children and young people regarding sustainable development and responsibility towards the environment. Educational units will become strategic partners to build a sustainable future. As such, students and teachers will benefit from all the support to understand, on the one hand, the gravity of the climate crisis and environment, but also to raise awareness of the causes and effects of these crises, along with ways to improve society's response to these challenges," Carbunaru told a press conference at the Victoria Palace, Agerpres informs. He emphasized that the objective of the strategy is aligned with the principles of President Klaus Iohannis' project, 'Educated Romania', which aims to cultivate respect for the environment, as part of the values promoted and developed through education. "One of the objectives assumed within this project is for the education system to train citizens who are responsible towards society and the environment. Besides, you probably remember, last November during the COP 27 Summit, the President of Romania supported the National Declaration that aims to promote research and innovation to support climate actions, food security, vulnerable communities, adaptations to climate change and effective response to emergency situations generated by them. The strategy is also based on the Presidential Administration Report 'Education on Climate Change and the Environment' in sustainable schools', validated by the public consultation of February 11 last year, a continuation of the 'Educated Romania' project, whose implementation is included as a commitment in the National Defense Strategy of the country," explained Dan Carbunaru. The government approved at its Wednesday meeting the 50 ml euro financing contract with the European Investment Bank intended for priority road safety investments in 89 locations in Romania; among others, underground or above-ground passages and roundabouts will be built under this agreement, the government's spokesman Dan Carbunaru announced. "The bill on the financing contract 'Romania road safety priority investments' was approved today, a 50 million euro contract between Romania and the European Investment Bank. Underpasses, overpasses or roundabouts will be built in 89 locations, and sewerage or signage works will also be carried out. The total cost of the project is approximately 100 million euros, an amount to which VAT is also added," Carbunaru told a press conference at the Victoria Palace of Government, Agerpres informs. He mentioned that the implementation of the contract will be ensured by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure through the National Road Infrastructure Administration Corporation. "It is very difficult at this stage to advance a calendar, but I hope to solve the crisis in 2023," Minister of Migration and Asylum Notis Mitarachi stated with regard to Romania's accession to the Schengen area in an exclusive interview for AGERPRES, on Tuesday, in Bucharest. Asked what would be a realistic timetable for a new enlargement of the Schengen area, the Greek minister said that "first of all we must agree on the concrete steps that must be taken so that Austria and the Netherlands give up their veto". In this sense, he specified, several bilateral meetings will take place in the coming weeks. "We hope to make an announcement at the informal [Justice and Home Affairs - ed.n.] Council in Stockholm about the steps we have taken so far. It is very difficult at this stage to advance a timetable, but I hope to solve the crisis in 2023," Mitarachi told AGERPRES in an interview to be published on Wednesday. Last week, the Greek minister launched an initiative to support the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the free movement area of the European Union, Agerpres informs. He stated that a decoupling of Romania's and Bulgaria's applications to join the Schengen area "would be very difficult for both countries, both practically and politically". "It would mean that there will be a Schengen border established between Bulgaria and Romania for a short period of time, it would be enormously complicated, as a redesign of the entire Schengen process would be necessary for Bulgaria and Romania," he said. Notis Mitarachi also stated that he understands that there are additional concerns regarding Bulgaria, "but these must be resolved and they are being resolved by the European Commission, by the preparation of the necessary documentation regarding the application of the principles of the rule of law in all EU member states". "Therefore, I believe that progress could also be registered in the case of the Netherlands and I would meet with my Dutch counterpart soon," the Greek minister said. Asked what it would mean for Romania and Bulgaria not to join the Schengen area this year either, given that the statements of the heads of the EU institutions once again created a horizon of expectation in this regard, he said that "it would be very negative for the Schengen area itself". "I believe that the fact that we have faced challenges over the years, not only in terms of migration, makes more Europe necessary, makes more institutional and structural cooperation necessary, and the absence of Romania and Bulgaria is a handicap for the Schengen area itself ," said the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum. The General Inspectorate of the Border Police (IGPF) informs that on Tuesday, a number of 56,880 people entered Romania through border points, of whom 7,523 were Ukrainian citizens, told Agerpres. According to a release sent to AGERPRES on Wednesday, approximately 126,400 people, Romanian and foreign citizens, with more than 39,000 means of transportation, completed the control formalities at the border crossing points nationwide, both on the way in and on the way out. As of 10 February 2022 (the pre-conflict period), a number of 3,340,681 Ukrainian citizens have entered Romania. In the relevant areas - the border crossing points and the "green border," the border policemen discovered 51 illegalities (20 offenses and 31 contraventions) committed by both Romanian and foreign citizens, with the amount of fines enforced exceeding 68,500 RON. Assets of an estimated value of approximately 134,000 RON were impounded. On Tuesday, a number of 19 foreign citizens were not allowed to enter the country because they didn't meet the requirements stipulated by the law, while a number of 20 Romanian citizens were not allowed to leave the country for various legal reasons. Senior foreign affairs and international co-operation official with the Italian Foreign Ministry Giorgio Silli paid a visit to Bucharest, where he met officials of the local Italian community and Romanian MP members of the Friendship Group with Italy, told Agerpres. According to a press statement released by the Italian Embassy in Bucharest on Wednesday, Silli visited the Consular Section of the Italian Embassy, as well as the Aldo Moro Italian International School, which activities he said are a "reference point for the Italian community in Romania and a model for the integration of people with disabilities." At his meeting with the members of the Friendship Group with Italy in the Romanian Parliament Silli emphasised strengthening bilateral relationships. "We will make intense efforts to strengthen bilateral relationships starting with the protection of our national communities permanently settled in Italy and Romania, which are a real bridge between our countries." Silli also met officials of the Committee of Italians Abroad (Com.It.Es.), Confindustria Romania, the local Italian Chamber of Commerce, employers and the Italian Assistance Committee (CO.AS. IT.). "In Romania, I have met Italian women and men who offer a first-class added value to the local reality, in its many ways of expression: social, economic-entrepreneurial, artistic and cultural, proudly preserving the indissoluble bond of identity with Italy. (...) The daily commitment of the Italian community in Romania contributes to further enriching and strengthening the relationship between our countries at all levels, starting from the political and institutional level to the deep connection between our civil societies." The Government will approve a state aid scheme worth approximately 100 million EUR for the construction of a a tires factory in Oradea, Bihor county, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca announced on Wednesday, told Agerpres. "We will approve, through a memorandum - a state aid scheme worth approximately 100 million EUR for what means a new tires factory in Oradea, a factory which will have a very high production capacity and which will also ensure jobs for the citizens the Bihor county," Nicolae Ciuca stated within the Gov't meeting. The state aid was requested by the Finnish company Nokian Tyres PLC for the construction of a new tires production factory in Oradea. The government will adopt, on Wednesday, through a draft law, a financing agreement concluded with the European Investment Bank (EIB), based on which investments will be made in road safety projects in 89 localities, stated Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca, told Agerpres. "Taking into account the problems we have in terms of road safety, today we have a very important decision that refers to the financing of investments in road safety. It is about a draft law by which we approve the financing agreement between Romania and the European Investment Bank. We are talking about a project worth 50 million euros, with investments to target 89 localities," said Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca during the government meeting. Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca sent a message of condolences, on Wednesday, on behalf of the Government of Romania to his Ukrainian counterpart, Denis Smihal, for the loss of human lives in the helicopter crash that took place on the territory of the neighbouring country, stressing that in these sad moments, the authorities in Bucharest stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and remain committed to helping the neighbouring country to win the war started by the Russian Federation, told Agerpres. "On behalf of the Government of Romania, I convey my deepest condolences for the tragic loss of human lives following the helicopter crash in Brovari, among whom Interior Minister Denis Monastirski and his team. In this moment of sadness, we are with the Ukrainian people and remain committed to helping Ukraine to win this war," Nicolae Ciuca wrote on the Government's Twitter page. The helicopter carrying Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Denis Monastirski that crashed on the outskirts of Kiev, killing at least 18 people, was heading towards the front line, the Ukrainian presidency announced on Wednesday. The resumption of the rail passenger traffic with Ukraine through the Valea Viseului border crossing point on Wednesday, after a 17-year interruption, will contribute to the strengthening of international trade and the economic development of the Maramures County, stated the president of the Maramures County Council (CJ), Ionel Bogdan, in a post on his Facebook page. According to the him, the reopening of the rail traffic between the two countries on this route comes after he approached the topic with the Romanian ambassador to Ukraine, Alexandru Victor Micula, on the occasion of the reopening of the rail traffic at Campulung la Tisa. The first passenger train on the Romania-Ukraine route through the Valea Viseului border crossing point will take place on Wednesday. Passenger trains will operate round trips daily through this point, each Ukrainian train having 182 seats available. The daily schedule will be as follows: at 7.45 am the train enters the country, stops at the Valea Viseului Station, and at 11.45 am it leaves the station again and exits Romania; the train enters Romania at 3.45 pm, stops at the Valea Viseului Station, and at 6.15 pm it leaves the station and exits Romania, told Agerpres. The passenger transport on a broad-gauge railway line built in the 1950s will be operated by Ukrainian Railways trains. Also, Ukraine operates rail transport of goods through Halmeu border crossing point, the Satu Mare county. Romania has taken over the chairmanship of the Security Committee of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), according to the Romanian Foreign Ministry (MAE). Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu welcomes Romania's take-over of the chairmanship of the OSCE Security Committee, one of the subsidiary bodies of the OSCE Permanent Council, an office Romania will hold in 2023 at the request of the current OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office held by North Macedonia, told Agerpres. "Romania taking over the office reveals, once again, Romania's contribution to the values and fundamental principles of the OSCE being followed in ensuring security and co-operation in Europe, which is particularly important including amid one of the biggest security crisis in Europe since WWII. At the same time, it is a recognition of Romania's active profile within the OSCE regarding the support of the organisation's role, values and fundamental principles in ensuring peace, security and co-operation in Europe," Aurescu is quoted as saying. The duties of the OSCE Security Committee include discussing non-military and political aspects of security, including the implementation of commitments made by the OSCE participating states; addressing multi-sector topics related to non-military aspects of security; supporting the preparations for the organisation of the Annual Security Review Conference of the OSCE; discussing recommendations to the OSCE Permanent Council regarding the work program, including the actions to put into practice and follow up the recommendations of some relevant meetings. While holding the office, Romania will support the achievement of the organisation's objectives in the areas of combatting human trafficking, border management and combating terrorism. Thus, in co-operation with the Chairmanship-in-Office of the OSCE, held in 2023 by North Macedonia, Romania will pay increased attention to fulfilling the commitments made by all participating states and will facilitate the consolidation of international efforts to combat transnational security threats. Previously, Romania held the chair of the OSCE Security Committee in 2015 and 2016. The issue of migration and Romania's accession to the Schengen area were among the topics addressed by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Lucian Bode, and the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Panagiotis Mitarachi, who is visiting Romania. "The subjects we addressed were related to migration issues and Romania's accession to the Schengen area. In this context, I thanked Greece for the constant support offered to Romania, as well as for its active involvement in solving this issue, under the conditions in which Schengen expansion will represented a real and concrete benefit both for Romania and for the rest of the member states", Minister Lucian Bode wrote on Wednesday on his Facebook page, Agerpres informs. According to the minister, accession to the Schengen area remains an extremely important objective for Romania, and discussions on this subject will be continued together with the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council, on the sidelines of the JHA Council in Stockholm, in order to identify a solution as soon as possible. "Regarding the issue of migration, as the main priority of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, I mentioned that the involvement of external partners in migration management efforts is extremely important, and our actions must primarily target the management of this phenomenon at its source, for the promotion of sustainable and efficient solutions", said Bode. During the discussions, the two officials agreed that there is a need for better protection of the EU's external borders, faster and more efficient procedures for the return policy, more effective measures for the fight against traffickers and closer cooperation with third countries. FERGUSON Emerson is trying to push an Austin, Texas-based company to the bargaining table for a $7.6 billion acquisition, the latest in a series of high-profile moves including selling its headquarters here the manufacturer has made over the past two years. Emerson has been making efforts to buy National Instruments since May. After months of spurned advances, and though it said it would have preferred to reach an agreement privately, Emerson on Tuesday took the offer public and appealed to National Instruments shareholders. We have tried repeatedly to privately engage with NI and reach a friendly transaction, CEO Lal Karsanbhai said during a call with analysts Tuesday morning. In recent months Emerson has launched a search for a new headquarters location, sold and donated its corporate retreat property and shifted away from consumer and residential products. Late last year, the company sold its Climate Technologies business, which makes HVAC and refrigeration products under brands like Copeland and White-Rodgers. Emersons interest in National Instruments tracks with the companys aspirations to grow its automation solutions business. But to take its bid public is a relatively aggressive tactic for Emerson. It definitely is a different approach than how theyve typically gone after acquisitions, said Jeff Windau, an industrials analyst with Edward Jones. Generally they remain pretty quiet. ... You dont hear a lot about what theyre pursuing. Emerson was founded in the St. Louis area in 1890 as an electric motor and fan manufacturer. During the last fiscal year it reported $19.6 billion in sales, and nearly 86,000 employees worldwide. On Tuesday, Emerson said it had purchased 2.3 million shares of National Instruments stock, and had regulatory approval to buy more. Karsanbhai said Emerson is prepared to nominate directors for election to National Instruments board. In a statement Tuesday, National Instruments said its board is reviewing its options, including potential buyers. The company said it will evaluate Emersons proposal, but in the interest of a level playing field, it did not negotiate exclusively with Emerson. As part of its announcement Tuesday, Emerson released correspondence with National Instruments, which shows attempts to set up meetings, obtain financial information, and strike a purchase deal moves that were generally met with a cold shoulder. Karsanbhai wrote to National Instruments CEO Eric Starkloff in May, outlining a proposal to buy the company for $48 per share or about $6.67 billion. He told Starkloff that combining the two companies would lead to significant opportunities for both of our teams. He believed the companies could sign and announce an agreement within four to six weeks. Starkloff and Board Chair Michael McGrath responded in June. The board, they said, had reviewed the proposal and were unanimously uninterested in further discussions. I am disappointed in your response, Karsanbhai replied. National Instruments shareholders, he was certain, would be interested in his offer. Starkloff told Karsanbhai the board would discuss the proposal at its meeting at the end of July. In early August, Starkloff and McGrath wrote Karsanbhai a brief response: The board had unanimously agreed that Emersons offer was not in its best interests. Emerson leadership waited until after National Instruments third-quarter earnings and investor meeting to continue. When Karsanbhai wrote again in November, he expressed dismay at the terse response from August. He said Emerson was upping its offer to $53 per share, or $7.6 billion. After two more months of correspondence, National Instruments agreed to a meeting. The two companies met in Austin earlier this month, and then spoke once more over the phone. But by Karsanbhais account, National Instruments was reticent, and only shared limited, high-level information. Following Tuesdays announcement, Emerson may have to manage fears from investors that publicly disclosing its bid for National Instruments will draw competition from other potential buyers. Youve raised the offer price once during that nine months of negotiation, Barclays analyst Julian Mitchell said during the Tuesday call. Lets say ... someone else comes into the picture looking at NI? Karsanbhai promised Emerson would stay disciplined. There will be a point when this doesnt make any sense for the Emerson shareholder, Karsanbhai said. If ultimately it gets to (that) point, we obviously will step away. National Instruments stock rose 11% on Tuesday. Emerson stock fell 7%. SAN FRANCISCO A potential juror in a case brought by Tesla Inc. shareholders over CEO Elon Musks 2018 tweets that he had secured funding to take the electric care maker private said on Tuesday that the billionaire was a little off his rocker. The statement came as U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco attempted to select an impartial jury to decide whether Musks statement that funding was secured amounted to fraud and cost investors billions. Chen homed in on a handful of panelists who said in questionnaires that they viewed Musk as crazy and arrogant. I think hes a little off his rocker, on a personal level, said one juror, referring to Musks management of Twitter, which he took over in October. That potential juror and others said they could set their views aside and judge the case impartially if selected. Panelists were asked ahead of time about their opinions of Musk and whether they own a Tesla vehicle. I truly believe you cant judge a person until you walk in their shoes, said another potential juror, who had said Musk seemed narcissistic. Since rising to prominence as head of Tesla, Musk has gained a reputation for unpredictable behavior, from anointing himself Teslas technoking to naming one of his children with a symbol to his stated dream of colonizing Mars. Investors sued in August 2018, shortly after Musk posted on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Funding secured, he said. In another tweet the same day, he wrote, Investor support is confirmed, adding, only reason why this is not certain is that its contingent on a shareholder vote. Chen has ruled that those statements were untrue and reckless. The jury will decide if Musks words mattered to investors, whether he acted knowingly and whether to award damages and in what amount. The defendants, who also include seven current and former Tesla directors, have denied wrongdoing. They have said in court papers that they will argue that Musk had good reason to believe funding for the deal was secured. The billionaire had met Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the managing director of Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund, on multiple occasions, according to the court filing, which also said Al-Rumayyan had urged Musk to take Tesla private and offered up to $60 billion in backing. Musk may take the stand in the case, according to court documents, along with Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison and James Murdoch, son of Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. The trial is expected to last around three weeks. Additional reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware. History of radioactive waste at airport, related sites In 2000, Post-Dispatch reporter Virginia Gilbert reported on the removal of radioactive waste at the airport. This timeline accompanied the story. 1942 Mallinckrodt begins processing uranium to make the first atomic bomb. 1946 U.S. government acquires a corner of airport property and begins dumping radioactive wastes there. 1948-1952 Mallinckrodt decontaminates two plants in its north downtown facility, trucking much of the waste and debris to the airport site. 1957 Mallinckrodt moves uranium processing from north downtown site to Weldon Spring. The company continues to take waste to the airport site. 1958-1962 Mallinckrodt contracts with Dow Metal Products, a division of Dow Chemical Co., to straighten some uranium rods at Dow's plant in Madison, Illinois. 1966 Mallinckrodt stops uranium processing in the St. Louis area. The Atomic Energy Commission demolishes the buildings on the airport site and buries them, along with at least one contaminated vehicle. Continental Mining and Milling Co. buys some residues to try to recover more uranium. The company moves the waste to 9200 Latty Avenue for storage and shipment to the Cotter Corp. in Canon City, Colorado. 1966-1969 After foreclosure, Cotter ends up owning property and buys the rest of the residues. It dries and ships some tailings to Canon City. Federal authorities say improper handling by Cotter pollutes north St. Louis County roads. 1973 Cotter mixes leached barium sulfate with dirt at the Latty Avenue site and takes it to West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton. The barium sulfate had been used to recover uranium and contained uranium residue. 1974-1977 The federal government promises to clean up nuclear pollution around the nation. Congress sets up various agencies to do the job, with the cleanup assignment eventually going to the newly created Department of Energy. 1979 Jarboe Realty, owner of the Latty Avenue site, moves 13,000 cubic yards from the western half of the site into storage on the eastern half now known as the Hazelwood Interim Storage Site. Jarboe builds a manufacturing facility for Futura Coatings Inc. on the western portion. 1984 Department of Energy performs "remedial actions" at Latty Avenue, creating 14,000 cubic yards of additional waste to be stored onsite. 1986 Department of Energy works with municipal governments of Berkeley and Hazelwood to remove 4,600 cubic yards of contaminated waste during road and drainage improvement projects and takes it to Latty Avenue. 1989 Congress places the airport site and the Latty Avenue sites on a priority list for environmental cleanup. 1990 The Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency reach an agreement on assigning responsibilities for cleanup of St. Louis sites. 1995 Energy Department begins shipping radioactive wastes to a disposal facility in Utah that is run by Envirocare. First to go is 9,500 cubic yards of waste removed from the Mallinckrodt site north of downtown. 1996 Energy Department agrees to remove wastes from the airport and related sites instead of building a storage bunker onsite. 1997 Energy Department digs up 7,000 cubic yards of wastes on the west end of the airport site and ships it to Utah. Congress transfers cleanup duties to the Army Corps of Engineers. 1998 The corps moves 24,000 cubic yards of waste from airport, downtown and Latty Avenue sites to Utah. 1999 The corps moves 50,000 cubic yards of waste from the sites to Utah. 2000 The corps continues cleanup work. Workers begin to scrape dirt from the radium pits at the airport site to ship to Utah. Adults: Spare by Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard by Joan E. Strassmann Healing Through Words by Rupi Kaur Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by RF Kuang Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Im Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy Children/YA: Captain America: The Ghost Army by Alan Gratz & Brent Schoonover Barb the Last Berzerker by Dan Abdo Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria by George Jreije Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Inspiring Young Change Makers by Jess Harriton & Maithy Vu The Stolen Heir by Holly Black A Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Black We Are Here by Tami Charles Heartstopper Vol 1 by Alice Oseman Holler of the Fireflies by David Barclay Moore Two Degrees by Alan Gratz ST. LOUIS Prosecutors on Wednesday charged an East St. Louis man with shooting and killing a man who tried to steal his car at a Soulard gas station. Brett M. Kress, 26, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action after police say he fired his gun while chasing 24-year-old Jesse Lopez. Police said Lopez had tried to steal Kress Honda Pilot around 2 a.m. Jan. 7 at the Conoco gas station, 1314 Gravois Avenue, but Kress pulled out his gun. Surveillance video showed Lopez trying to run away. Kress shot him three times, police said. Police found Kress Honda Pilot crashed in St. Charles County on Tuesday, and he was arrested a short time later. Kress was being held Wednesday in the St. Louis jail. He did not yet have an attorney listed in court documents. SPRINGFIELD, Ill. Legal challenges to Illinois semiautomatic weapons ban began Wednesday with a federal complaint that the 8-day-old law prohibits commonly possessed and constitutionally protected guns. A state court pleading was also filed Wednesday, questioning the laws exemptions based on a persons employment. A central Illinois judge is considering a gun shops request for a temporary restraining order on the law, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed Jan. 10 in response to the mass shooting that killed seven and injured 30 at the Highland Park July Fourth parade. The lawsuit was filed by lead plaintiff Accuracy Firearms of Effingham, about 100 miles northeast of St. Louis, and other plaintiffs. The law bans dozens of specific types of rapid-fire handguns and rifles, .50-caliber guns, attachments and limits cartridges to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for pistols. Effingham County Circuit Judge Joshua Morrison said he would rule on the restraining order by weeks end. Attorney Thomas DeVore, last falls unsuccessful Republican candidate for Illinois attorney general, said the law is unconstitutional because of its exemptions. The ban on semiautomatic weapons does not apply to people in certain positions, such as prison guards or other law enforcement officers. It violates the equal protection clause because it carves out a whole section of people, DeVore said. They are free to do what they will based on their employment. Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh said the Democrat is confident of its constitutionality and accused opponents of grandstanding. This legislation was the result of hundreds of hours of collaboration and cooperation between legal experts, legislators and advocates and it makes Illinois a safer place for every resident, Abudayyeh said in a statement. Despite political grandstanding from those more beholden to the gun lobby than to the safety of their constituents, this law is in effect and protecting Illinoisans from the constant fear of being gunned down in a place of worship, at a parade, or on a street corner. Dane Harrel, a gun owner and retired U.S. Air Force officer who lives in St. Clair County, is the lead plaintiff in the federal test of the ban. Backed by the Illinois State Rifle Association and two other nonprofit gun rights groups, Harrel contends that the new law unconstitutionally bans commonly used weapons, not dangerous or unusual guns, which is the only justification for government regulation, according to the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case known as Heller. The rifles that Illinois bans as assault weapons are, in all respects, ordinary semiautomatic rifles, the lawsuit states. To the extent they are different from other semiautomatic rifles, their distinguishing features make them safer and easier to use. But even if they are considered as a separate group of assault weapons, they cannot be banned because they are not dangerous and unusual. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, where gun rights advocacy is strong. The federal courts northern district base is Chicago, where gun violence produces a much stronger attitude toward regulation. Those who obtained the prohibited firearms before the law took effect must register them with the Illinois State Police by Jan. 1, 2024. Merchants who stocked them prior to the ban may sell them to those who live outside of Illinois or return them to the manufactures. Illinois sheriffs have caused a stir over the law. More than 90 out of 102 county sheriffs have publicly stated that they wont aggressively enforce the law. Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul responded fervently, suggesting that if sheriffs dont take action against illegal weapons, other law enforcement agencies will. The Illinois Sheriffs Association said the group ardently believes the law violates the Constitutions 2nd Amendment, but reaction to the pronouncements is overblown. The statements the sheriffs have released say they wont go door to door to ensure gun owners register their firearms and wont jail anyone charged solely with non-registration until a judge orders incarceration. No one will be strong-arming recalcitrant sheriffs anytime soon, given registration isnt required for nearly a year. Updated at 4:25 p.m. ST. LOUIS A woman was charged on Tuesday after authorities say she fired a shot through her van's window during a dispute with officers in Downtown. City prosecutors charged Jada Davis, 54, with discharging her firearm from her vehicle and armed criminal action. Davis' beige minivan was parked outside of the city's Social Security Administration building on Friday in the 700 block of North 16th Street when one of the building's officers instructed her to move her van. She responded by threatening to shoot one of the officers, triggering a response from city police, whom she also threatened to shoot, charges say. When a sergeant broke the van's window to remove the woman from her vehicle, she fired at least one shot from inside her van through the driver's side window using her .38 caliber revolver, charges say. Police shot back at Davis, but no one was hurt, police said. Witnesses also captured video of the incident. The Circuit Attorney's Office released a statement after charges were filed saying investigations take time and that it was the office's duty to "prosecute criminal cases in a manner that seeks justice rather than just convictions on behalf of the residents of the City of St. Louis." The woman's Toyota Sienna, scribbled with prejudiced language and the phrase "gun on board" had several bullet holes in it, and police said Friday she lives in the van. There were more than 25 evidence markers in the street after the incident. A judge denied bond for Davis after signing off on a warrant for her on Tuesday. Police did not confirm if she was in custody, and no attorney or next court date is listed for Davis. ST. LOUIS Police on Tuesday announced they've arrested a man they believe shot and killed another man this month at a gas station in Soulard. Jesse Lopez, 24, died in the Conoco parking lot at 1314 Gravois Avenue around 2 a.m. on Jan. 7. It was the city's first homicide of the year. Detectives believe a 26-year-old man shot Lopez as Lopez was trying to break into the man's Honda Pilot, St. Louis Maj. Ryan Cousins said on Tuesday. He said police found the Honda crashed on Tuesday morning in St. Charles County. Officers arrested the 26-year-old nearby. Cousins, the commander of the Bureau of Investigative Services, said detectives were finishing an interview with the suspect that morning and would seek charges, including for first-degree murder, on Wednesday. The Post-Dispatch does not identify suspects until they have been charged. The major noted one of Monday night's three homicides was at the same Conoco gas station and said police have determined the two killings are unrelated. "There is a meeting that is scheduled with the owner of that location to see if we can try to get a (cease and desist) and the captain of that district has also put out patrols around that area," Cousins said. "We've had incidents there before but not homicides." In November, the city ordered a Shell gas station in the city's Old North St. Louis to shut down and board up for a year after complaints from neighbors about drug dealing and violent crime at the gas station mounted for years. The gas station is often referred to by residents as the Shoot em up Shell" and was named a public nuisance accused of maintaining a haven for criminal activity. The case is pending. ST. LOUIS Keisha Acres had a message for students returning Tuesday to Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, where her daughter Alexzandria Bell was killed three months ago. Do it because she cant, Acres said. Acres joined other parents, alumni and staff to cheer students across a red carpet and through a black-and-yellow balloon arch back to the school near Tower Grove Park. Acres said she wanted to be there to support Alexzandrias classmates. Shes also raising money for college expenses for the class of 2023. I still have kids here. All these are my kids, Acres said. My child was a part of their family. On Oct. 24, a former CVPA student shot and killed Alexzandria, 15, and P.E. teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, and wounded six other students. Classes have been held online while the school was preparing to reopen. Windows and doors in the school buildings have been fortified, along with other renovations to fix damage from the shooting. Students at Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, which shares the campus, returned to classes after Thanksgiving. After the shooting, St. Louis Public Schools leaders discussed their options including moving the schools to a different location. Ultimately it was decided that the grief and healing take place in the same building. Last month, five local artists painted eight colorful murals across lockers in the schools hallways. On Tuesday, there were armed and unarmed school district security guards on campus along with an increased police presence in the neighborhood. Inside, there were counselors and service dogs on hand for students and staff. Classes will dismiss two hours early this week to ease the transition. An undetermined number of the schools 380 students chose to continue taking classes virtually, a spokesman for SLPS said. But the majority of students returned to the magnet school where they can specialize in music, art or dance performance like Alexzandria. Rae McInerney graduated from the high school when it was in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood, and now serves on the PTA. Everybody is very unique and allowed to express themselves freely, said McInerney, whose child is a sophomore. Im very excited that theyre going back but its also a little nerve-wracking. Jay Mitchell, CVPA class of 2010, showed up before dawn Tuesday to welcome students back with cheers and high-fives. He held a poster with Alexzandrias and Kuczkas pictures. This school has my heart, Mitchell said. We are CVPA strong. Nothing will ever change that. The past three months have been a bad nightmare, said CVPA Principal Kacy Shahid, also a graduate of the school. I cant wait to see my students faces, Shahid said. Im looking forward to connections, reconnections ... post-traumatic growth gives hope and optimism. Photos: Students return in-person at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School JEFFERSON CITY A Senate committee on Tuesday began debate on a plan to lower the states personal property tax, which rose for many motorists last year due to an unusual increase in used car values. The tax has long been a target for state Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, who is considering a run for Missouri governor in 2024. The timing of this bill Senate Bill 8 couldnt be better, Eigel told the Senate Economic Development and Tax Policy Committee on Tuesday. If youre like most every other Missourian in this state, youve seen some pretty dramatic increases in your personal property tax. Multiple local taxing jurisdictions spoke out against Eigels plan Tuesday. And, he faced questions from two fellow Republicans Sens. Karla Eslinger and Lincoln Hough suggesting discomfort with the plan among at least some in the GOP. This would have a significant impact on us, said Chief Kelly Cope of the St. Charles County Ambulance District. Eigels legislation would cut the personal property tax assessment rate as revenues generated from higher property value assessments rise. Currently, personal property is assessed at 33.3% of its real value, which local governments then tax. Cope said the flattening in his budget due to the new law would pose a significant problem for the ambulance district. He acknowledged Eigels phaseout was not an immediate repeal of the personal property tax, but said it will definitely have an impact over time because we wont be able to keep up with the growth that is around. Eigel has said local taxing jurisdictions are experiencing record revenues. Yes, we are at record revenues today, Cope said, adding that the district also had record expenses. The Senate Economic Development and Tax Policy Committee did not take any action on Eigels legislation Tuesday. Last year, a proposal to phase out the personal property tax in St. Charles County advanced out of the Senate. Eigels current legislation would apply statewide. The legislation is Senate Bill 8. WILDWOOD Wildwood Mayor Jim Bowlin on Wednesday announced he will run in 2024 to represent Missouris 15th Senate District, setting up a competitive Republican primary for the seat. Bowlin, a Republican, will face former state Rep. David Gregory, R-Sunset Hills, in the August primary for the 15th, where Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, is term-limited. The 15th district includes the west St. Louis County suburbs of Manchester, Ballwin, Wildwood, Chesterfield, Clarkson Valley, Ellisville, Winchester, Twin Oaks, Town and Country, Country Life Acres, and Crystal Lake Park. In a written statement, Bowlin said he is seeking state office to fight for greater transparency at all levels of government, support law enforcement, punish criminals, and eliminate waste and abuse of Missourians tax dollars. That includes a focus on crime prevention in St. Louis with tougher laws and an effort to give the voters of St. Louis City the right to recall their prosecutor, Kim Gardner, should she let one more murderer go free, Bowlin said. We need tougher laws, but most immediately, we need our prosecutors to enforce the laws already in place, he said. Bowlin said he would also support state GOP efforts to give parents more power to scrutinize and challenge public school curriculum and library content. We need transparency on who is teaching and what is being taught in our schools, how money is being spent and where it is being spent, Bowlin said. Gregory, who last year lost the Republican race for state auditor, did not immediately return a phone call requesting comment. An attorney, Gregory lost the Aug. 2 GOP primary for state auditor to Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick, who easily won election to the post over Democrat Alan Green and Libertarian John A. Hartwig Jr. Bowlins term as mayor of Wildwood, his second, ends in 2024. He was elected to his first four-year term in 2016 and reelected in 2020. A Wildwood ordinance that went into effect in 2018 limits mayors to eight years in office, but exempts service as mayor resulting from a prior election. Bowlin said he opted not to run for a third term so he could seek state office. A new Missouri school-voucher program has already diverted almost $10 million in state tax dollars to private religious schools, which ultimately means less money and support for public education. Its also an apparent violation of Missouris state constitution. Now a lawmaker employed by one of the organizations that operates under the voucher program is pushing legislation to expand the programs eligibility and funding. Thats a clear conflict of interest and another threat to Missouris already-struggling public schools. As the Post-Dispatchs Blythe Bernhard, Jack Suntrup and Josh Renaud report, the MOScholars program, launched last year, has awarded more than 1,300 vouchers for kids to attend private schools most religiously affiliated with each voucher worth up to $6,375 toward tuition. That money comes from people or businesses that receive state tax credits in exchange for the donations. In other words, money that would otherwise go into state tax coffers instead is funding private-school tuition. Regardless of the roundabout way its being done, this is plainly public funding of religious schools which plainly violates Missouris constitution. The Post-Dispatchs reporting found that most of the 140 schools getting those tuition payments are religiously affiliated. They include schools that require being active in the Christian church as validated by a pastor, and schools that appear to bar students from same-sex households. These are, in short, schools that receive financial support from taxpayers whose kids would be barred from attending those schools for religious reasons. The arguments in favor of school-voucher programs like this are familiar and flawed. Public schools arent just for the benefit of the kids who attend them; theyre for the benefit of society, which has a vested interest in children being educated whether they can afford to pay for it or not. Families have the right to send their kids to religious schools, but that doesnt negate their responsibility as citizens to support public education. If that were the case if merely not using public schools was justification for opting out of paying for them then why wouldnt childless couples be able to demand tax refunds under the same rationale? In addition to the philosophical and constitutional problems with this voucher program is a crassly political one: Among the legislators pushing for expansion and added funding of the program is state Rep. Josh Hurlbert, R-Smithville, who is employed by an organization, Herzog Tomorrow Foundation, that is the largest beneficiary of the tax credits, awarding almost half the scholarships. Thats as bad a look as any other situation in which a sitting lawmaker pushes legislation that will directly benefit his own employer. And its an even worse look when the Legislature in question is letting its public school systems languish among the lowest-funded in the nation while siphoning off state funds to religious schools in open violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Now that Eric Schmitt has his U.S. Senate seat which he secured in part with a scorched-earth, tax-funded litigation campaign against public school districts while he was Missouris attorney general his old office would like to just move on. The Lees Summit school district has other ideas. As one of the districts that came under Schmitts litigious, politically driven attacks, the Lees Summit district fought back. It countersued, asking the courts to establish that, no, the attorney general doesnt have the authority to dictate school policy to elected local school boards. The current attorney generals office says its all moot because Schmitts lawsuit has been dropped, and its asking a circuit court to dismiss the districts countersuit. The court shouldnt. The predatory politics that Schmitt employed, at great expense to school districts and at real risk to students and their families, was an unacceptable abuse of power that cannot be allowed to happen again. At the heart of Schmitts Senate campaign was a quest to become the champion of the anti-mask, anti-science right. Using his authority as Missouris top legal official, he sued school districts across the state to rip away their mask mandates and other pandemic policies. Most of those districts were merely following the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as any responsible school district should. Schmitts lawsuits blithely challenged that medical expertise, spreading anti-science disinformation in its place, including the thoroughly debunked claim that masks dont inhibit coronavirus transmission. Schmitt also abused his power by sending threatening cease-and-desist letters to dozens of districts ordering them to rescind their mask mandates, which he had no apparent authority to do. Schmitts suits were dropped as the mask mandates expired with the end of the pandemic. But the threat of local entities coming under the thumbs of statewide officials abusing their power is still very real. Current examples include the antics of Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who is using his office to intimidate public libraries about their book selections, and state Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, who is using his office to intimidate school districts over their curriculum. The office of Schmitts successor, Attorney General Andrew Bailey, is asking Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Marco Roldan to dismiss the Lees Summit countersuit on the rationale that the Schmitt lawsuit that started it is gone. It is asking, in essence, to leave unresolved the question of whether Schmitt had the legal authority to do what he did. How convenient that would be for the next public official who wants to use his state powers as a campaign cudgel against beleaguered school boards, city councils and other local entities. The court should follow through on the districts lawsuit and confirm that the once-cherished Republican principle of local control is still a valid one despite the GOPs current hostility toward it. What The Growth of FAST Really Tells Us About Viewers FAST services have grown considerably since the pandemic. Of course, pioneers of the model, like PlutoTV, existed before the crisis, but it wasnt until everyone was sequestered at home and wanting to stream everything that free ad-supported TV really became important. Why? Perhaps one reason was because people wanted access to more choice and more content without subscribing to additional services. Remember that a lot of streaming viewers grew up in the arms of cable operators, given more channels (and choice) than they really wanted. And before you discount that idea, think about the average number of streaming services to which people subscribe: according to S&P Kagan, it was 6.8 as of March 2022. That is the first thing the growth of FAST shows us. People want choice. Even though they complained about having to pay exorbitant cable or satellite operator fees for channels they never watched, it wasnt the amount of channels they cut the cord to get away from. It was the feeling of being charged for something they didnt use. FAST appeals to that desire for selection but in a much better way. Its free. And if you really think about it, perhaps what truly bothers people about Pay TV operators is that they appear to be double-dipping. They make money monthly from subscribers and also from advertisers. With FAST, the operator, like PlutoTV or Peacock, can make however much money they want from advertising but theres no cost to the viewer. The second thing that FAST teaches us about viewers is how they want to view television content. If you ask anyone in the industry whats really broken with the streaming experience, they will invariably answer, content discovery. Yes, finding what to watch when its just a laundry list of titles is hard. But FAST makes content available to viewers in a manner similar to traditional broadcast. Titles are arranged in a linear fashion. When a user logs into a FAST provider, they watch what is currently showing. Of course, there are also options for finding content, but the most prevalent interface features content in a linear fashion. From a technology perspective, the content isnt live (this used to be called pseudo-live: treating a VOD asset like its a live stream), but it appears to the viewer like it is. The growth of FAST could be attributed to the fact that it provides viewers with a content experience that they are used to. Sometimes people dont want to find content to watch because they dont have a specific title in mind. They just want to be entertained, or informed, or amused. Viewers want to be presented with something. If its not interesting, they can just look at other channels until they find something that is interesting. You can probably see where Im going with this. The popularity and growth of FAST shows us that viewing behaviour, despite the rise of streaming, hasnt really changed much at all. People want choice, but they want it in a way that meets their needs. The FAST experience is a combination of passive (choice is mindless: just flip through channels) and deliberate (search for a specific content title or genre). Thats the true innovation: FAST doesnt scrap the broadcast experience with which so many are familiar; it evolves it in a way that broadcast could never do. And FAST will continue to evolve to improve upon the viewer experience. What might be next? Imagine personalised and individualised linear channels based on data analysis that would also include third-party data in addition to the first-party collected by the viewer choices in the platform. Viewers could channel surf content selected (and stitched together) specifically for them. The ads, of course, would be contextual as well. When you think about it this way, the way viewers behave really hasnt changed. But the means by which they watch is getting better every day. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Related Articles Pros and Cons of Hybrid vs. Digital-First Events What are some common challenges of engaging remote streaming audiences with hybrid events? Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Chair, Streaming Media Conferences, and CMO, id3as, talks with Alex Lindsay, Head of Operations, 090 Media, about this and the advantages of digital-first productions. Schumacher-Rasmussen points out that the past two years have changed everything regarding people's ability or willingness to travel to conference events. Covid altered the way that many people perceived participation in remote production. Previously, many people did not have high-quality home audio-visual setups for remote participation, and physically attending an event was preferable for both participants and hosts. But he notes that professionals like Alex Lindsay have already been well set up for high-quality remote production from their homes. Now, post-pandemic, Lindsay does everything remotely. I admit that I've been doing some version of these events for a decade, Lindsay says. So I had tried to persuade people to let me come in virtually because I've had a pretty good setup at home for quite some time, right? I tried to persuade people to do it, but once Covid hit and I got used to it, I became immovable. Lindsay says that while people have become more accustomed to remote participation in hybrid events, the major challenge is ensuring that the remote participants are as seen and heard as the in-person participants. When you're doing an in-person event, he says, you're cutting out 99.9% of the world. Your market has been shrunk to just a tiny group of people who can attend the event. The problem with hybrid that we found over the last decade is that if you have people in the room, you're fighting a million years of evolution in the sense that the people speaking are going to talk and look at the people who are in the room, [and] that immediately puts the online audience in the back of the room. This is the primary reason Lindsay gives for 090 Media's more recent push towards digital-first productions is that this approach doesnt create a digital divide between in-person and remote participants. What's interesting is that we found over the last decade doing these events not so much in the last two years, but in the last decade was that people wouldn't complain. In fact, they even give us good marks, but they wouldn't come again. He emphasizes that when people feel like they are in the back of the room, they easily fall into passive listening instead of active listening. Now, a lot of us are passive listening even when we're in the room, but it really moves very quickly for the online audienceand they don't even see it, but the event becomes less and less important to them, less and less of a push for them to go. So that's why we really started pushing more towards digital-first events, where they really feel like they're in the front. What we want to do is give them a front-row experience, both to the speakers as well as for the audience. Learn more about hybrid and digital-first productions at Streaming Media East 2023. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. FLORENCE, Italy--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- It has been another successful year for PQE Group, a consulting firm in the Life Sciences industry based in Florence (Italy) with 32 offices worldwide. Recently named "Best Managed Company" by Deloitte, the Group closed in 2022 with a +70% in revenues compared to the previous year, thanks to the tremendous growth in the US and other international markets. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005073/en/ PQE Group, founded and administered by Gilda D'Incerti, reached 2000 employees worldwide in 2022 as a result of the recruitment of more than 500 people, split between recent graduates and senior experts. This trend is expected to continue in 2023 with a further recruiting effort of another 800 talents by the end of the year not only in the Americas, but also in new markets such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Singapore, Ireland and Canada. In addition to its organic growth, PQE Group will further increase the strategic business collaborations (the so-called Federated companies of the Group), creating new joint ventures with entrepreneurs worldwide. Great examples from last year were the shareholding agreements established with Techniconsult Group, a leading engineering company, and Quintian Pharma, a Regulatory and Pharmacovigilance consulting firm, ensuring not just staff augmentation, but also a competitive advantage within the global markets. Awarded Great Place to Work in the US, PQE Group puts its people at the core of its business strategy: the talented and highly specialized workforce of the company can benefit from planned career roadmaps and an associate program aimed to develop young talents to enter the company as partners. Within this framework, the decision-making teams of the company are composed by 43 equity partners and more than 130 young managers, 40% of whom are women and from 16 different countries. 2022 has been a positive year for PQE Group, a private company, made in Italy, with an international dimension, explains Danilo Neri, Vice President Executive & Board Equity Partner, that allows us to be in competition with the biggest consulting companies. Not just due to our internationalization and substantial number of highly specialized talents, we also decided to extend our services portfolio focusing our attention in the clinical studies and medical cannabis, becoming among the top players worldwide within the consulting companies in the Life Sciences sector. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005073/en/ Press Office Laura Piccioli | [email protected] Source: PQE Group TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- SPOT COFFEE (CANADA) LTD. (TSXV: SPP) (SPoT Coffee or the Company) hereby refers to its news release dated October 12, 2021 whereby SPoT Coffee announced that its wholly owned company, SPoT Coffee Park Place, Inc. (SPoT Park Place), has won its case against Concord Adex Investments Limited (Concord Adex), and that the Honourable Madam Justice S. Vella of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found in favour of SPoT Park Place and awarded damages for SPoT Coffee Park Places operating losses of $269,296 and damages for the costs of building the SPoT Park Place cafe of $757,755.34 as well as legal costs and interest on the damages to run from January 29, 2015, the date the claim was filed by SPoT Park Place, until such time Concord Adex makes full payment of the damages to SPoT Park Place. Subsequently, Concord Adex decided to appeal the decision of the Honourable Madam Justice S. Vella. The Court of Appeal for Ontario granted Concord Adex leave to appeal. The appeal was heard on September 19, 2022, by the three presiding judges, namely the Honourable Madam Justice J.A. Pepall, the Honourable Madam Justice Harvison Young and the Honourable Justice Jonathon C. George. SPoT Coffee is pleased to announce that on January 12, 2023, and for reasons outlined in the decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the judges unanimously agreed to dismiss the appeal. Furthermore, the appellant, Concord Adex, agreed to pay SPoT Park Place $20,000 in costs of the appeal on a partial indemnity scale inclusive of disbursements and applicable tax. To view the full decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario to dismiss the appeal by Concord Adex, you can visit SPoT Coffees website or its social media channels on Thursday, January 19, 2023. About SPoT Coffee SPoT Coffee has been designing, building and operating company-owned and franchise community cafes in the northeastern United States for over 25 years. SPoT's cafes provide their customers with the highest quality service, signature made-to-order meals and award-winning micro-roasted coffee. Each SPoT cafe is distinctively designed to suit the local neighbourhood, creating a warm and friendly gathering place for the community. SPoT's commercial business focuses on the sale of roasted coffee beans to food service and grocery chains, business offices, and resellers such as universities and hospitals. We seek Safe Harbor. Forward-Looking Statements Except for statements of historical fact relating to the Company, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information. 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 and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. 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 the release. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005393/en/ [email protected] or Anton Ayoub, President & CEO at (416) 368-2220 Source: SPoT Coffee LOS ANGELES & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Houlihan Lokey, Inc. (NYSE: HLI), the global investment bank, today announced that it will release its third quarter results for the 2023 fiscal year on Tuesday, January 31, 2023, after the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Houlihan Lokey will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. (ET) that same day to review the results. On the call, Scott Beiser, Chief Executive Officer, and Lindsey Alley, Chief Financial Officer, will discuss the fiscal 2023 third quarter results and provide commentary on business performance. A question and answer session with analysts and investors will follow the prepared remarks. Access to the live conference call will be available via telephone or audio webcast. To Participate via Telephone Participants are advised to dial into the call at least 10 minutes prior in order to register. Domestic Toll-Free Dial-In Number: 1-888-394-8218 International Dial-In Number: 1-646-828-8193 To Participate via Webcast Access to the conference call will also be available via audio webcast through the Investor Relations section of the Companys website, www.hl.com. Conference Call Playback A telephonic audio replay of the conference call will be available after 8:00 p.m. (ET) on January 31, 2023 through February 7, 2023, and can be accessed by dialing one of the numbers below and entering the replay pin number. Domestic Toll-Free Dial-In Number: 1-844-512-2921 International Dial-In Number: 1-412-317-6671 Replay Pin Number: 1668989 A replay of the audio webcast will also be archived on the Companys website, www.hl.com. About Houlihan Lokey Houlihan Lokey (NYSE: HLI) is a global investment bank with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, financial restructuring, and financial and valuation advisory. The firm serves corporations, institutions, and governments worldwide with offices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. Independent advice and intellectual rigor are hallmarks of the firms commitment to client success across its advisory services. Houlihan Lokey is the No. 1 investment bank for all global M&A transactions, the No. 1 M&A advisor for the past seven consecutive years in the U.S., the No. 1 global restructuring advisor for the past eight consecutive years, and the No. 1 global M&A fairness opinion advisor over the past 20 years, all based on number of transactions and according to data provided by Refinitiv. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117005478/en/ Investor Relations 212.331.8225 [email protected] Media Relations 212.331.8223 [email protected] Source: Houlihan Lokey, Inc. KKR to support organic and inorganic growth to enhance Clinisupplies leadership position in collecting devices and expand its broader chronic care portfolio Oliver Johansen, former Senior Vice President, Global Research and Development at Coloplast, to join KKR Senior Advisor and former Chief Executive Officer of Atos Medical AB, Claus Bjerre, and industry veteran, Douglas Le Fort on Clinisupplies Board of Directors LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- KKR, a leading global investment firm, announced today the closing of KKRs previously announced investment in Clinisupplies, a market leader in continence care products in the UK, from Healthium. In addition to Claus Bjerre, KKR Senior Advisor and former Chief Executive Officer of Atos Medical AB and former President, North America, of Coloplast, who will serve as Chairman of Clinisupplies Board of Directors, and industry veteran Douglas Le Fort, who brings over 20 years of senior executive leadership experience, including as an Executive Committee Member at ConvaTec Group, the Board will be complemented by Oliver Johansen, formerly Senior Vice President, Global Research and Development at Coloplast. Paul Cook, CEO of Clinisupplies, commented: We are thrilled to form this strategic partnership with KKR, and to be welcoming Claus, Douglas and now also Oliver to our Board. With KKRs global network and market knowledge, and with this strong suite of industry advisors, we will be able to expand into new products and geographies, helping to support more and more people and bringing us one step closer to our goal of becoming an international leader in the chronic care market. Oliver Johansen commented: I could not be more excited to join the Clinisupplies Board and support the company on its ambitious growth journey. I look forward to working together with KKR, Claus, Douglas and Clinisupplies impressive Management team, as the company enters this next phase of growth. KKR invested in Clinisupplies through KKR Health Care Strategic Growth Fund II, a $4.0 billion fund focused on investing in high-growth health care companies. KKR has a long track record of supporting health care companies globally, having invested approximately $19 billion in the sector since 2004. -- ends -- About KKR KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and supporting growth in its portfolio companies and communities. KKR sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKRs insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of Global Atlantic Financial Group. References to KKRs investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds and insurance subsidiaries. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKRs website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co. About Clinisupplies Clinisupplies is a leading UK-based manufacturer and supplier of medical appliances specialising in continence products for managing acute and chronic conditions. The company also offers a portfolio of bandages and garments for the treatment of wounds and chronic skin conditions. Employing over 400 people in the UK, China and India, Clinisupplies supplies its products to the NHS and delivers direct to patients homes through Clinidirect, its dispensing appliance contractor. Clinisupplies is focused on developing products which are simple and discreet to use. Its product development team works with clinicians and patients to develop a strong product pipeline to be manufactured at its CE, ISO, US FDA approved facilities. Please visit www.clinisupplies.co.uk for further information View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005239/en/ FGS Global Alastair Elwen / Sophia Johnston Telephone: +44 20 7251 3801 Email: [email protected] Source: KKR & Co. Inc. SEN. REVILLA GRACES THE INAUGURATION OF SOUTHERN TAGALOG REGIONAL HOSPITAL'S NEW BUILDING Senator Ramon Bong Revilla, Jr. led the inauguration of the new 4-story building at Southern Tagalog Regional Hospital (STRH) in Bacoor City. The new structure was named after the late former Senator Ramon B. Revilla Sr. in remembrance of his generosity in donating a parcel of land where he envisioned to build a medical facility that would cater not only the residents of Bacoor City but would also serve the entire province of Cavite. Revilla was joined by Department of Health (DOH) Officer-in-Charge Dr. Maria Rosario Vergeire in the ribbon-cutting ceremony, together with Cavite 2nd District Rep. Lani Mercado-Revilla, Bacoor City Mayor Strike Revilla, and Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla. "Tiyak na tuwang-tuwa ang Daddy, saan man siya naroon dahil hindi nasayang ang donasyon niyang lupa at patuloy pa itong lumalago at gumaganda pati ang serbisyo", Sen. Bong Revilla said. The lawmaker further said that their family will continue to support the improvement of Southern Tagalog Regional Hospital until it becomes one of the leading medical facilities in the country. He said that apart from the initial budget given for the construction of STRH, P60 million was appropriated for the expansion of facilities and another P110 million for additional hospital equipment, totaling to P170 million. Included in the expansion and upgrade are the following equipment: MRI, Dialysis Machine, C-ARM X-ray, Ultrasound Machine, Cardiotocogram Machine/Fetal Monitor, Infant Incubators, 2D Echo, Echocardiography table, Cardia Monitor with Central Monitor System, Anesthesia Machine with Cardiac Monitor and Capnograph, Defibrillators with adult and pediatrics paddles, Electrocardiogram Machines, Suction Machines, IV Infusion Pumps, Syringe Pumps at Service/Transport Vehicles. "Dahil sa mga bagong kagamitan ay mas makapagbibigay ng maayos na serbisyo ang ating mga doktor at nurses, lalo na sa dialysis dahil magkakaroon na ng dialysis center", the solon further said. Revilla shared that the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the country's healthcare system pushed him to find ways that would help improve and upgrade STRH and its capability to deliver health services. In closing, the veteran lingkod-bayan remarked that he hopes that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and the DOH will further improve and increase the capability of the said hospital. VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- New Found Gold Corp. (New Found or the Company) (TSX-V: NFG, NYSE-A: NFGC) is pleased to announce the results from 51 diamond drill holes that were completed as part of an ongoing systematic and targeted drill program exploring the highly prospective segment of the Appleton Fault Zone (AFZ) from the south end of the Keats Main Zone to the Knob Zone. New Founds 100% owned Queensway project comprises an approximately 1,650km2 area, accessible via the Trans-Canada Highway approximately 15km west of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005370/en/ Figure 1: Photos of mineralization from: Top L: at ~427.5m in NFGC-22-863, Top R: at ~88.2m in NFGC-22-704, Bottom L: at ~23m in NFGC-22-733, Bottom R: at ~380.25 in NFGC-22-774. ^Note that these photos are not intended to be representative of gold mineralization in holes NFGC-22-704, NFGC-22-733, NFGC-22-774 and NFGC-22-863. Keats Main South, TCH and Rocket Highlights: Hole Number From (m) To (m) Interval (m)1 Au (g/t) Zone NFGC-22-733 22.30 24.60 2.30 10.45 421 Including 22.80 23.30 0.50 46.80 NFGC-22-774 364.00 366.45 2.45 25.31 Keats Main S Including 365.00 366.00 1.00 60.50 And 379.80 382.00 2.20 72.66 Including 379.80 380.35 0.55 290.00 NFGC-22-845 115.00 129.90 14.90 4.59 Keats Main S/ 421 Including 120.00 121.00 1.00 26.17 Including 129.00 129.90 0.90 11.50 NFGC-22-642 303.45 305.90 2.45 10.45 TCH Including 303.80 304.35 0.55 14.46 Including 305.40 305.90 0.50 32.43 NFGC-22-703 183.00 193.70 10.70 1.02 TCH NFGC-22-863 427.10 429.10 2.00 79.62 TCH Including 427.10 427.80 0.70 226.46 NFGC-22-704 86.60 91.05 4.45 12.63 Knob (Rocket Vein) Including 88.00 88.45 0.45 118.50 Table 1: Keats Main South, TCH and Rocket Drilling Highlights 1Note that the host structures are interpreted to be steeply dipping and true widths are generally estimated to be 60% to 90% of the reported interval. Infill veining in secondary structures with multiple orientations crosscutting the primary host structures are commonly observed in drill core which could result in additional uncertainty in true width. Composite intervals reported carry a minimum weighted average of 1 g/t Au diluted over a minimum core length of 2m with a maximum of 2m consecutive dilution. Included high-grade intercepts are reported as any consecutive interval with grades greater than 10 g/t Au. Grades have not been capped in the averaging and intervals are reported as drill thickness. Systematic and targeted drilling along the highly prospective AFZ corridor has continued to delineate high-grade gold mineralization now extending 1.5km south of Keats, including the discovery of the new TCH Zone, and new veins and structures around existing zones. Importantly, the high-grade corridor of gold along the AFZ has now been tracked over 4.1km from Lotto North/Zone 36 down to Knob, with much of this area remaining underexplored (Figure 1). with much of this area remaining underexplored (Figure 1). At the southern extension of the Keats Main Zone (Keats Main South) the Company continues to intersect high-grade gold mineralization following up on its October 18, 2022. release. Highlight intercepts include 25.31 g/t Au over 2.45m and 72.7 g/t Au over 2.20m in NFGC-22-774 and 4.59 g/t Au over 14.90m in NFGC-22-845. The high-grade gold associated with the Keats-Baseline Fault Zone, the structure that hosts the Keats Main Zone, has now been traced over a strike length of 1.1km and down to a vertical depth of 400m (Figures 1- 4). extension of the the Company continues to intersect high-grade gold mineralization following up on its October 18, 2022. release. Highlight intercepts include and in NFGC-22-774 and in NFGC-22-845. The high-grade gold associated with the Keats-Baseline Fault Zone, the structure that hosts the Keats Main Zone, has now been traced over a strike length of and down to a vertical depth of (Figures 1- 4). Systematic reconnaissance grid drilling south of the Trans-Canada highway along the eastern side of the AFZ identified a new gold-bearing zone called TCH (Trans Canada Highway) with intercepts of 79.6 g/t Au over 2.00m in NFGC-22-863, 10.5 g/t Au over 2.45m in NFGC-22-642 and 1.02 g/t Au over 10.70m in NFGC-22-703. This structure is located in the footwall to the AFZ and has been intersected over a strike length of 190m and down to a vertical depth of 300m (Figures 1-4). with intercepts of in NFGC-22-863, in NFGC-22-642 and in NFGC-22-703. This structure is located in the footwall to the AFZ and has been intersected over a strike length of and down to a vertical depth of (Figures 1-4). At Knob , a new vein called Rocket has been discovered 100m to the east, with a highlight interval of 12.63 g/t Au over 4.45m in NFGC-22-704 intersected at a vertical depth of 65m . The Knob zone is a historical discovery with mineralization hosted within an east-west striking structure largely constrained to greywacke which has been traced over a strike length of 160m and has seen minimal modern-day drilling (Figures 1, 2 and 4). , a new vein called has been discovered 100m to the east, with a highlight interval of in NFGC-22-704 intersected at a vertical depth of . The Knob zone is a historical discovery with mineralization hosted within an east-west striking structure largely constrained to greywacke which has been traced over a strike length of and has seen minimal modern-day drilling (Figures 1, 2 and 4). Additional drilling into the 421 Zone, a moderately southwest-dipping structure that runs at an oblique angle to the Keats Main Zone has intersected the highlight interval of 10.5 g/t Au over 2.30m in NFGC-22-733. This structure likely plays a role in concentrating high-grade gold where it interacts with the Keats-Baseline Fault (Figures 1 and 4). Melissa Render, VP Exploration for New Found stated: From the Rocket Vein at Knob to Lotto North measures an impressive 4.1km stretch of the AFZ that continues to produce new discoveries both on the east and west side of this regional-scale fault. It is a lot of ground to cover but from a first pass of drilling, results indicate that the systems strength continues. We will persist with aggressive follow-up drilling which involves tracing the structures that are known to host high-grade gold and determining the controls responsible for producing both high and low-grade gold domains from which we can expand on. Drillhole Details Keats Main Zone South: Hole Number From (m) To (m) Interval (m)1 Au (g/t) Zone NFGC-22-712 31.10 36.40 5.30 1.13 421 And 332.50 335.50 3.00 4.01 Keats Main NFGC-22-733 22.30 24.60 2.30 10.45 421 Including 22.80 23.30 0.50 46.80 And 424.40 427.00 2.60 1.76 Keats Main NFGC-22-756 431.50 433.55 2.05 9.14 Keats Main S And 432.85 433.25 0.40 45.20 NFGC-22-774 79.40 81.70 2.30 1.05 Keats S And 364.00 366.45 2.45 25.31 Keats Main S Including 365.00 366.00 1.00 60.50 And 379.80 382.00 2.20 72.66 Including 379.80 380.35 0.55 290.00 NFGC-22-778 439.00 441.55 2.55 2.84 Keats Main S Including 439.80 440.15 0.35 20.10 And 488.00 490.80 2.80 1.40 And 496.00 498.00 2.00 1.13 And 509.00 514.55 5.55 1.45 NFGC-22-790 453.00 455.00 2.00 1.30 Keats Main S NFGC-22-804 439.00 441.45 2.45 2.08 Keats Main S NFGC-22-807 548.45 551.10 2.65 2.01 Keats Main S And 601.00 605.00 4.00 1.08 NFGC-22-821 370.00 372.45 2.45 1.18 Keats Main S NFGC-22-826 132.00 137.65 5.65 1.50 Keats Main S NFGC-22-835 77.85 80.80 2.95 2.18 421 And 162.00 164.85 2.85 3.76 Keats Main S NFGC-22-837 355.35 357.70 2.35 1.37 Keats Main S And 386.00 388.60 2.60 8.73 Including 388.10 388.60 0.50 34.88 NFGC-22-845 52.50 55.00 2.50 1.17 Keats Main S/ 421 And 115.00 129.90 14.90 4.59 Including 120.00 121.00 1.00 26.17 Including 129.00 129.90 0.90 11.50 And 135.00 137.15 2.15 2.89 And 143.00 145.00 2.00 2.05 And 188.00 190.00 2.00 2.42 NFGC-22-853 No Significant Values Keats Main S NFGC-22-871 No Significant Values Keats Main S TCH Results: Hole Number From (m) To (m) Interval (m)1 Au (g/t) Zone NFGC-22-513 246.60 251.00 4.40 1.41 TCH NFGC-22-569 140.00 142.70 2.70 3.70 TCH And 147.00 152.00 5.00 1.78 NFGC-22-604 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-621 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-632 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-642 243.00 245.00 2.00 1.01 TCH And 290.85 293.00 2.15 2.00 And 303.45 305.90 2.45 10.45 Including 303.80 304.35 0.55 14.46 Including 305.40 305.90 0.50 32.43 NFGC-22-671 223.95 226.45 2.50 1.10 TCH NFGC-22-679 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-694 165.90 168.70 2.80 1.16 TCH And 227.00 231.00 4.00 1.21 NFGC-22-703 109.30 111.70 2.40 1.63 TCH And 131.00 133.00 2.00 1.63 And 183.00 193.70 10.70 1.02 NFGC-22-715 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-724 88.00 93.00 5.00 1.29 TCH And 97.40 101.20 3.80 1.05 And 193.40 196.25 2.85 1.44 NFGC-22-737 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-749 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-763 59.00 61.00 2.00 1.09 TCH NFGC-22-782 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-797 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-824 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-831 No Significant Values TCH NFGC-22-863 307.00 309.40 2.40 3.38 TCH And 427.10 429.10 2.00 79.62 TCH Including 427.10 427.80 0.70 226.46 NFGC-22-885 278.60 280.80 2.20 7.06 TCH Including 279.50 280.20 0.70 22.01 Rocket Results: Hole Number From (m) To (m) Interval (m)1 Au (g/t) Zone NFGC-22-638 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-654 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-662 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-670 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-687 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-699 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-704 65.00 67.00 2.00 1.02 Rocket And 86.60 91.05 4.45 12.63 Including 88.00 88.45 0.45 118.50 NFGC-22-713 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-725 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-731 92.25 94.65 2.40 1.13 Rocket NFGC-22-735 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-741 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-745 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-751 No Significant Values Rocket NFGC-22-760 No Significant Values Rocket Table 2: Summary of composite results reported in this press release for Keats Main South, TCH and Rocket 1Note that the host structures are interpreted to be steeply dipping and true widths are generally estimated to be 60% to 90% of the reported interval. Infill veining in secondary structures with multiple orientations crosscutting the primary host structures are commonly observed in drill core which could result in additional uncertainty in true width. Composite intervals reported carry a minimum weighted average of 1 g/t Au diluted over a minimum core length of 2m with a maximum of 2m consecutive dilution. Included high-grade intercepts are reported as any consecutive interval with grades greater than 10 g/t Au. Grades have not been capped in the averaging and intervals are reported as drill thickness. Hole Number Azimuth () Dip () Length (m) UTM E UTM N Prospect NFGC-22-513 299 -45.5 401 657596 5426437 TCH NFGC-22-569 110 -45 257 657512 5426948 TCH NFGC-22-604 300 -45 343 657589 5426614 TCH NFGC-22-621 300 -45 200 657619 5426596 TCH NFGC-22-632 300 -45 293 657588 5426557 TCH NFGC-22-638 300 -45 344 657247 5426118 Rocket NFGC-22-642 300 -45 500 657636 5426511 TCH NFGC-22-654 300 -45 203 657251 5426173 Rocket NFGC-22-662 300 -45 233 657252 5426232 Rocket NFGC-22-670 300 -45 242 657239 5426008 Rocket NFGC-22-671 299 -42 302 657637 5426510 TCH NFGC-22-679 300 -45 191 657193 5425976 Rocket NFGC-22-687 300 -45 338 657186 5425865 Rocket NFGC-22-694 300 -45 284 657539 5426527 TCH NFGC-22-699 70 -50 179 657191 5425870 Rocket NFGC-22-703 300 -45 284 657594 5426495 TCH NFGC-22-704 100 -50 107 657192 5425868 Rocket NFGC-22-712 356 -68 497 657842 5427082 Keats NFGC-22-713 250 -45 323 657288 5426093 Rocket NFGC-22-715 300 -45 281 657536 5426471 TCH NFGC-22-724 300 -45 233 657494 5426496 TCH NFGC-22-725 110 -45 95 657192 5425919 Rocket NFGC-22-731 120 -70 104 657191 5425919 Rocket NFGC-22-733 354 -66 485 657841 5427082 Keats NFGC-22-735 50 -45 155 657192 5425920 Rocket NFGC-22-737 300 -45 215 657489 5426441 TCH NFGC-22-741 5 -45 89 657193 5425927 Rocket NFGC-22-745 45 -45 143 657148 5425948 Rocket NFGC-22-749 306 -55 557 657596 5426436 TCH NFGC-22-751 300 -45 293 657192 5425915 Rocket NFGC-22-756 297 -46 538 657813 5426658 Keats NFGC-22-760 5 -45 122 657146 5425949 Rocket NFGC-22-763 300 -45 329 657397 5426378 TCH NFGC-22-774 300 -45 458 657770 5426683 Keats NFGC-22-778 298 -52 665 657902 5426724 Keats NFGC-22-782 300 -45 290 657350 5426348 TCH NFGC-22-790 300 -45 563 657837 5426702 Keats NFGC-22-797 300 -45 305 657303 5426318 TCH NFGC-22-804 334 -55 575 657599 5426439 TCH NFGC-22-807 297 -45 701 658003 5426722 Keats NFGC-22-821 297 -45 416 657794 5426728 Keats NFGC-22-824 300 -45 251 657295 5426205 TCH NFGC-22-826 330 -45.5 240 657799 5427004 Keats NFGC-22-831 300 -45 572 657426 5426131 TCH NFGC-22-835 300 -45 216 657799 5427004 Keats NFGC-22-837 297 -46 452 657818 5426771 Keats NFGC-22-845 300 -45 216 657767 5426977 Keats NFGC-22-853 297 -46 452 657783 5426791 Keats NFGC-22-863 300 -45 472 657573 5426335 TCH NFGC-22-871 297 -46 548 657786 5426497 Keats NFGC-22-885 120 -70 329 657272 5426509 TCH Table 3: Details of drill holes reported in this press release Queensway 500,000m Drill Program Update The Company is currently undertaking a 500,000m drill program at Queensway. Approximately 51,000m of core is currently pending assay results. Sampling, Sub-sampling, and Laboratory True widths of the intercepts reported in this press release have yet to be determined and further exploration is required. Infill veining in secondary structures with multiple orientations crosscutting the primary host structures are commonly observed in drill core which could result in additional variability in true width. Assays are uncut, and composite intervals are calculated using a minimum weighted average of 1 g/t Au diluted over a minimum core length of 2m with a maximum of 2m consecutive dilution. Included high-grade intercepts are reported as any consecutive interval with grades greater than 10 g/t Au. All drilling recovers HQ core. Drill core is split in half using a diamond saw or a hydraulic splitter for rare intersections with incompetent core. A geologist examines the drill core and marks out the intervals to be sampled and the cutting line. Sample lengths are mostly 1.0 meter and adjusted to respect lithological and/or mineralogical contacts and isolate narrow ( Technicians saw the core along the defined cutting line. One-half of the core is kept as a witness sample and the other half is submitted for analysis. Individual sample bags are sealed and placed into totes, sealed and marked with the contents. NFG submits samples for gold determination by fire assay to ALS Canada Ltd. (ALS) and by photon assay to MSALABS (MSA) since June 2022. ALS and MSA operate under a commercial contract with New Found. Drill core samples are shipped to ALS for sample preparation in Sudbury, Ontario, Thunder Bay, Ontario, or Moncton, New Brunswick. ALS is an ISO-17025 accredited laboratory for the fire assay method. Drill core samples are also submitted to MSA in Val-dOr, Quebec. MSA operates numerous laboratories worldwide and maintains ISO-17025 accreditation for many metal determination methods. Accreditation of the photon assay method at the MSA Val DOr laboratory is in progress. At ALS, the entire sample is crushed to approximately 70% passing 2mm. A 3,000-g split is pulverized. Routine samples do not have visible gold (VG) identified and are not within a mineralized zone. Routine samples are assayed for gold by 30-g fire assay with an inductively-couple plasma spectrometry (ICP) finish. If the initial 30-g fire assay gold result is over 1 g/t, the remainder of the 3,000-g split is screened at 106 microns for screened metallics assay. For the screened metallics assay, the entire coarse fraction (sized greater than 106 microns) is fire assayed and two splits of the fine fraction (sized less than 106 microns) are fire assayed. The three assays are combined on a weight-averaged basis. Samples that have VG identified or fall within a mineralized interval are automatically submitted for screened metallic assay for gold. At MSA, the entire sample is crushed to approximately 70% passing 2mm. For routine samples that do not have VG identified and are not within a mineralized zone, the samples are riffle split to fill two 450g jars for photon assay. The assays reported from both jars are combined on a weight-averaged basis. If one of the jars assays greater than 1 g/t, the remaining crushed material is weighed into multiple jars and are submitted for photon assay. For samples that have VG identified or are within a mineralized zone, the entire crushed sample is weighed into multiple jars and are submitted for photon assay. The assays from all jars are combined on a weight-averaged basis. All samples prepared at ALS or MSA are also analyzed for a multi-element ICP package (ALS method code ME-ICP61) at ALS Vancouver. Drill program design, Quality Assurance/Quality Control and interpretation of results are performed by qualified persons employing a rigorous Quality Assurance/Quality Control program consistent with industry best practices. Standards and blanks account for a minimum of 10% of the samples in addition to the laboratorys internal quality assurance programs. Quality Control data are evaluated on receipt from the laboratories for failures. Appropriate action is taken if assay results for standards and blanks fall outside allowed tolerances. All results stated have passed New Founds quality control protocols. New Founds quality control program also includes submission of the second half of the core for approximately 5% of the drilled intervals. In addition, approximately 1% of sample pulps for mineralized samples are submitted for re-analysis to a second ISO-accredited laboratory for check assays. The Company does not recognize any factors of drilling, sampling or recovery that could materially affect the accuracy or reliability of the assay data disclosed. The assay data disclosed in this news release have been verified by the Companys Qualified Person against the original assay certificates. The Company notes that it has not completed any economic evaluations of its Queensway Project and that the Queensway Project does not have any resources or reserves. Qualified Person The scientific and technical information disclosed in this press release was reviewed and approved by Greg Matheson, P. Geo., Chief Operating Officer, and a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Matheson consents to the publication of this press release dated January 18, 2023, by New Found. Mr. Matheson certifies that this press release fairly and accurately represents the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this press release. About New Found Gold Corp. New Found holds a 100% interest in the Queensway Project, located 15km west of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, and just 18km from Gander International Airport. The project is intersected by the Trans-Canada Highway and has logging roads crosscutting the project, high voltage electric power lines running through the project area, and easy access to a highly skilled workforce. The Company is currently undertaking a 500,000m drill program at Queensway and is well funded for this program with cash and marketable securities of approximately $90-million as of January 2023. Please see the Companys website at www.newfoundgold.ca and the Companys SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Acknowledgements New Found acknowledges the financial support of the Junior Exploration Assistance Program, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Contact To contact the Company, please visit the Companys website, www.newfoundgold.ca and make your request through our investor inquiry form. Our management has a pledge to be in touch with any investor inquiries within 24 hours. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statement Cautions This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, relating to exploration, drilling and mineralization on the Companys Queensway gold project in Newfoundland and Labrador; assay results; the interpretation of drilling and assay results, the results of the drilling program, mineralization and the discovery of zones of high-grade gold mineralization; plans for future exploration and drilling and the timing of same; the merits of the Queensway project;; future press releases by the Company; and funding of the drilling program. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts; they are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," interpreted, "intends," "estimates," "projects," "aims," suggests, indicate, often, target, future, likely, pending, "potential," "goal," "objective," "prospective," possibly, preliminary, and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will," "would," "may," "can," "could" or "should" occur, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made, and they involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include risks associated with possible accidents and other risks associated with mineral exploration operations, the risk that the Company will encounter unanticipated geological factors, risks associated with the interpretation of assay results and the drilling program, the possibility that the Company may not be able to secure permitting and other governmental clearances necessary to carry out the Company's exploration plans, the risk that the Company will not be able to raise sufficient funds to carry out its business plans, and the risk of political uncertainties and regulatory or legal changes that might interfere with the Company's business and prospects. The reader is urged to refer to the Company's Annual Information Form and Managements discussion and Analysis, publicly available through the Canadian Securities Administrators' System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005370/en/ New Found Gold Corp. Per: "Collin Kettell" Collin Kettell, Chief Executive Officer Email: [email protected] Phone: +1 (845) 535-1486 Source: New Found Gold Corp. Firm closes seventh platform in last 12 months and will invest as part of continued growth prospects HENDERSON, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Exit Group, a premier buy-side M&A firm focused on creating and building relationships between private businesses and investors, announced today it completed a transaction with Calibration Technologies, Inc. (CTI or the Company), a leading manufacturer of hazardous gas detection equipment for employee safety and Astor Place Holdings (Astor Place), the private investment arm of Select Equity Group, L.P. (SEG). The Exit Group invested alongside Astor Place, who acquired a majority interest in CTI, and senior members of the CTI management team, who will continue to operate the business. CTIs acquisition was the seventh platform investment facilitated by The Exit Group in the last 12 months. A family-owned business founded in 2004 and headquartered in Columbia, Missouri, CTI manufactures gas detection systems and sensors serving the industrial refrigeration market. The Company serves a diverse customer base across food & beverage, cold storage logistics and other refrigerated end markets. CTIs products are highly engineered and designed to provide reliable gas monitoring in the harshest environments. CTI also manufactures gas detection equipment for carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide to monitor vehicle emissions in warehouse distribution centers. In addition to its product offerings, CTI provides repair and calibration services at end-user facilities nationwide. CTIs fleet of service technicians ensures end-user compliance with applicable regulatory requirements established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The sale of the business needed to be a fit for our family, employees and the community, said Brian EuDaly, CEO of CTI. We were not actively looking for a partner, but The Exit Group team gave us confidence a deal with Astor Place was a unique opportunity, particularly given their understanding of our industry, commitment to CTIs independence, and shared long-term vision for the company. The EuDaly family have built a customer-focused company with a strong brand and industry-leading products, and were excited to be part of their continued growth, said Charlie Durkin, Managing Director of Astor Place. The Exit Group understood the needs of all parties and played an invaluable role in making this transaction a win for everyone. The Exit Group has fostered a relationship with CTI since 2014, providing a long-term perspective on the goals and aspirations of the EuDaly family as well as the company. Given the longstanding relationship weve built with the EuDaly family, were excited to invest alongside Astor Place and partner with CTI/Astor to continue to grow the business, said Dylan Goldsmith, Principle at The Exit Group. Our experience as advisors and investors gives us an understanding of what both sides needed and were looking forward to what the future holds. About Astor Place Holdings Astor Place Holdings is the private investment arm of Select Equity Group, L.P. Astor Place deploys patient capital in partnership with exceptional management teams to drive long-term value creation in lower middle market North American companies. www.astorplaceholdings.com About Select Equity Group, L.P. Select Equity Group manages approximately $36 billion across various strategies that share a fundamental investment philosophy and centralized research effort. SEG is employee-owned and has been located at 380 Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan since the early 1990s. www.selectequity.com About The Exit Group The Exit Group was founded to provide a unique and personal alternative to an M&A deal process for investors and business owners. Our experience as former business owners, and as investors, provides us with the experience to understand both sides of the table in any deal with a mission to maximize value for all parties involved in a proprietary transaction. Private Equity firms and large corporations partner with us to assist in identifying, coordinating, and completing strategic investments or acquisitions. We build long term relationships with our investor clients and the business owners we work with. Our process driven approach employs proprietary tools that creates a bias for strong and profitable transactions. For more information visit exitgroup.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005203/en/ Jeremy Milner BackBay Communications [email protected] (401) 862-9422 Source: The Exit Group DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- UDR, Inc. (the Company) (NYSE: UDR), a leading multifamily real estate investment trust, reported today the tax status of its 2022 distributions paid to shareholders. The following table summarizes the nature of these cash distributions per share and provides the appropriate Form 1099-DIV box number: Record Date Payment Date Distribution Per Share Box 1a Total Ordinary Dividends Box 1b Qualified Dividends1 Box 2a Total Capital Gain Distr. Box 2b Unrecaptured Sec. 1250 Gain2 Box 2e Sec. 897 Ordinary Dividends1 Box 2f Sec. 897 Capital Gain2 Box 3 Nondividend Distributions Box 5 Sec. 199A Dividends1 Common Shares: 1/10/2022 1/31/2022 $0.362500 $0.321614 $0.000015 $0.040886 $0.004195 $0.076774 $0.034225 $0.000000 $0.321599 4/11/2022 5/2/2022 $0.380000 $0.337140 $0.000016 $0.042860 $0.004398 $0.080480 $0.035878 $0.000000 $0.337124 7/11/2022 8/1/2022 $0.380000 $0.337140 $0.000016 $0.042860 $0.004398 $0.080480 $0.035878 $0.000000 $0.337124 10/11/2022 10/31/2022 $0.380000 $0.337140 $0.000016 $0.042860 $0.004398 $0.080480 $0.035878 $0.000000 $0.337124 Total $1.502500 $1.333034 $0.000063 $0.169466 $0.017389 $0.318214 $0.141859 $0.000000 $1.332971 Preferred Shares Series E: 1/10/2022 1/31/2022 $0.392500 $0.348230 $0.000016 $0.044270 $0.004543 $0.083128 $0.037058 $0.000000 $0.348214 4/11/2022 5/2/2022 $0.411400 $0.364998 $0.000017 $0.046402 $0.004762 $0.087131 $0.038843 $0.000000 $0.364981 7/11/2022 8/1/2022 $0.411400 $0.364998 $0.000017 $0.046402 $0.004762 $0.087131 $0.038843 $0.000000 $0.364981 10/11/2022 10/31/2022 $0.411400 $0.364998 $0.000017 $0.046402 $0.004762 $0.087131 $0.038843 $0.000000 $0.364981 Total $1.626700 $1.443224 $0.000067 $0.183476 $0.018829 $0.344521 $0.153587 $0.000000 $1.443157 (1) - These amounts are a subset of, and included in, the amounts in Box 1a. (2) - These amounts are a subset of, and included in, the amounts in Box 2a. Pursuant to Treas. Reg. 1.1061-6(c), UDR, Inc. is disclosing below two additional amounts for purposes of Section 1061 of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 1061 is generally applicable to direct and indirect holders of applicable partnership interests. Record Date Payment Date Form 1099-DIV Box 2a, Total Capital Gain Distr. Per Share One Year Amounts Disclosure Per Share Three Year Amounts Disclosure Per Share Common Shares: 1/10/2022 1/31/2022 $0.040886 $0.014558 $0.014556 4/11/2022 5/2/2022 $0.042860 $0.015261 $0.015259 7/11/2022 8/1/2022 $0.042860 $0.015261 $0.015259 10/11/2022 10/31/2022 $0.042860 $0.015261 $0.015259 Total $0.169466 $0.060341 $0.060333 Preferred Shares Series E: 1/10/2022 1/31/2022 $0.044270 $0.015763 $0.015761 4/11/2022 5/2/2022 $0.046402 $0.016523 $0.016520 7/11/2022 8/1/2022 $0.046402 $0.016523 $0.016520 10/11/2022 10/31/2022 $0.046402 $0.016523 $0.016520 Total $0.183476 $0.065332 $0.065321 Shareholders of record of the Company's common and preferred stock will receive an Internal Revenue Service Form 1099-DIV from EQ Shareowner Services, the Company's 2022 distribution paying agent. The form will report the distributions paid and the amounts designated as total ordinary dividends, qualified dividends, total capital gains, unrecaptured section 1250 gains, section 897 ordinary dividends, section 897 capital gain, nondividend distributions, and section 199A dividends. If shares were held in "street name" during 2022, the IRS form will be provided by a bank, brokerage firm, or nominee. Because the Company's tax return has not yet been filed for the year ended December 31, 2022, the distribution allocations presented herein have been calculated using the best available information to date. The tax treatment of these distributions by state and local authorities varies and may not be the same as the IRS's treatment. Because federal and state tax laws affect individuals differently, the Company cannot advise shareholders on how distributions should be reported on their tax returns. The Company encourages shareholders to consult with their own tax advisors with respect to the federal, state and local income tax consequences of these distributions. About UDR, Inc. UDR, Inc. (NYSE: UDR), an S&P 500 company, is a leading multifamily real estate investment trust with a demonstrated performance history of delivering superior and dependable returns by successfully managing, buying, selling, developing and redeveloping attractive real estate communities in targeted U.S. markets. As of September 30, 2022, UDR owned or had an ownership position in 58,464 apartment homes including 899 homes under development. For over 50 years, UDR has delivered long-term value to shareholders, the best standard of service to residents and the highest quality experience for associates. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005806/en/ UDR, Inc. Trent Trujillo [email protected] 720-283-6135 Source: UDR, Inc. LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The USC Libraries named the finalists for the 35th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Award, which honors the writers of the years most accomplished film and episodic series adaptations, as well as the writers of the works on which they are based. The finalist writers for film adaptation are, in alphabetical order by film title: Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale, and Matthew Robbins for Guillermo del Toros Pinocchio based on the fairy tale The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi Kazuo Ishiguro for Living based on the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Rebecca Lenkiewicz for She Said based on the nonfiction book She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie, and Eric Warren for Top Gun: Maverick based on characters from the 1983 California magazine article Top Guns by Ehud Yonay Screenwriter Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews for Women Talking The finalist writers for episodic series are, in alphabetical order by series title: Peter Morgan, for the episode Couple 31, from The Crown, based on his stage play The Audience Taffy Brodesser-Akner for the episode The Liver, from Fleishman Is in Trouble, based on her book of the same name Will Smith for the episode Failures Contagious, from Slow Horses, based on the novel by Mick Herron J. T. Rogers for the episode Yoshino from Tokyo Vice, based on the memoir Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein Dustin Lance Black for the episode When God Was Love, from Under the Banner of Heaven based on the nonfiction work by Jon Krakauer The 2023 Scripter selection committee selected the finalists from a field of 101 film and 67 television adaptations. Howard Rodman, USC professor and past president of the Writers Guild of America, West, chairs the 2023 committee. Serving on the selection committee, among many others, are film critics Leonard Maltin and Anne Thompson; authors Walter Mosley and Michael Ondaatje; and screenwriters Eric Roth and Erin Cressida Wilson. The studios distributing the finalist films and current publishers of the printed works are: Guillermo del Toro's PinocchioNetflix and Penguin Classics LivingSony Pictures Classics and Penguin Classics She SaidUniversal Pictures and Penguin Press Top Gun: MaverickParamount Pictures and California magazine Women TalkingOrion/MGM and Bloomsbury The networks and streaming platforms broadcasting the finalist episodic series and current publishers of the printed works are: The CrownNetflix and Dramatists Play Service Inc. Fleishman Is in TroubleFX and Random House Slow HorsesApple TV+ and Soho Crime Tokyo ViceHBO Max and Knopf Doubleday Under the Banner of HeavenFX and Anchor Books The USC Libraries will announce the winning authors and screenwriters at a black-tie ceremony on Saturday, Mar. 4, 2023, in the historic Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at the University of Southern California. After being held in a virtual format the past two years amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic, the Scripter Awards are returning to an in-person event subject to up-to-date COVID-19 safety protocols. Since 1988, Scripter has honored the authors of printed works alongside the screenwriters who adapt their stories. In 2016, the USC Libraries inaugurated a new Scripter award, for episodic series adaptation. For more information about Scripterincluding ticket availability, additional sponsorship opportunities, and an up-to-date list of sponsorsplease email [email protected] or visit scripter.usc.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005131/en/ Tyson Gaskill Executive Director, Communications and Events USC Libraries [email protected] Source: USC Libraries Rezolve, a leader in mobile commerce and engagement, and Grupo Carso, today announced a strategic partnership that will see Rezolves technology integrated into Claro Shop and T1 Comercios, one of Mexicos largest online marketplaces, and is expected to transform the mobile shopping experience for millions of consumers. Claro Shop is a leader in Mexicos fast-growing ecommerce sector featuring more than 2,000,000 products in thousands of official stores. The company works with more than 10,000 well-known brands, including global leaders like Levis, Puma, Apple, Samsung, and Nike. Claro Shop reported over 10 million mobile users in 2019. T1 Comercios, owned by Claro Shop, is part of Grupo Carso, which consists of 268 companies. Rezolve, an enterprise SaaS platform designed from the ground up specifically for mobile commerce and engagement, is positioned to become an engine of mobile engagement that enables the transformation of interactions between consumers and merchants on mobile devices. Using the Rezolve platform, merchants can lead consumers directly to special offers by using mobile technology like geofencing, notifications on smartphones, Bluetooth beacons, or watermarked advertisements. With Rezolve Inside powering the Claro Shop App, users will benefit from a truly omnichannel experience, interacting with stores based on location, image, audio, social media and more, allowing users to make an instant purchase with a single click. In addition, merchants will be able to engage with consumers wherever they are bringing Claro Shop into the physical world with online to offline and offline to online engagement. We are delighted to announce this agreement with Claro Shop and Grupo Carso, said Dan Wagner, Rezolves Chairman and CEO. Claro Shop will be the first to offer Rezolves leading mobile commerce and engagement platform in Mexico. Rezolve has enjoyed a strong growth in Asia, and now with this strategic partnership we will be able to grow our presence in Mexico as well. Rezolve currently has go-to-market partner agreements with leading global players that have a combined global reach of over 20 million merchants and over 1 billion consumers across China, Asia, Europe, North America, and now Central America as well. Rezolves platform already serves over 230,000 of those merchants today. About RezolveRezolve is taking retailing into a new era of customer engagement with a proprietary mobile engagement platform. The Rezolve Platform is a powerful set of mobile commerce and engagement capabilities that provide mobile application vendors with a range of valuable commercial opportunities that can be realized without having to develop code, host operations or manage security. The Rezolve Inside SDK allows mobile application vendors to quickly deliver innovation for their consumers into existing or new mobile apps. Rezolve was founded in 2016, is headquartered in London, UK and has offices including: Shanghai, New Delhi, Taipei, Frankfurt, Madrid and New Mexico. (www.rezolve.com). About Grupo Carso Grupo Carso is one of the largest and most important diversified conglomerates in Latin America and is controlled by the family of Carlos Slim. The Group has an important presence in the Mexican economy, where it remains one of the market leaders thanks to an exceptional portfolio of formats, products and services.Since its foundation 41 years ago, Grupo Carso has been characterized by its dynamism, its innovation in processes and technologies, and the sustainable management of resources. Within the sectors that constitute it, operating synergies have been achieved, profitability and constant cash flows have been generated, which has meant a history of creating long-term value for shareholders. About Armada Acquisition Corp. IArmada Acquisition Corp. I is a blank check company whose business purpose is to effect a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses. Armada was founded on November 5, 2020 and is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Important Information About the Proposed Transaction with Armada Acquisition Corp. I and Where to Find It On December 17, 2021, Rezolve Limited, a private limited liability company registered under the laws of England and Wales (Rezolve), entered into a business combination agreement, dated as of December 17, 2021, with Armada Acquisition Corp. I, a Delaware corporation (Armada), Rezolve Group Limited, a Cayman Islands exempted company (Cayman NewCo), and Rezolve Merger Sub, Inc., a Delaware corporation (Rezolve Merger Sub), which was amended on November 10, 2022 by that certain First Amendment to the Business Combination Agreement whereby Cayman Newco is no longer a party to the business combination agreement or the business combination. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Robinhood Markets, Inc. is seen at a pop-up event on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Wednesday said Robinhood Markets Inc must face a lawsuit by customers who accused the online trading platform of fraudulently concealing their actual trading costs while promising "commission free" trades. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, said customers in the proposed class action had standing to sue over securities they bought and sold on Robinhood's platform. Robinhood was accused of concealing how its business relied heavily on "payment for order flow," with the Menlo Park, California-based company collecting "unusually high" fees from outside broker-dealers who processed customer trades. Customers led by Ji Kwon, a Californian, said they ultimately bore these costs and often got worse prices on trades than if they had gone to rivals that charged commissions. They said this "materially undermined" Robinhood's duty to provide the best prices and execution on trades. Citing a recent ruling by the federal appeals court in Manhattan, Robinhood said the case should be dismissed because customers did not allege any misstatements about the issuers of their securities. But the judge rejected that argument in a Jan. 11 decision allowing investors to sue luxury electric car maker Lucid Group Inc and said the same reasoning applied. Robinhood and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The proposed class includes U.S. users of Robinhood from Sept. 1, 2016 to June 16, 2020 who placed trades where the company received payment for order flow. The case is In re Robinhood Order Flow Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-09328. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Stellantis (NYSE: STLA) announced Wednesday that the American vehicle maker has struck a deal with Finnish battery chemical supply company, Terrafame for nickel sulphate. Terrafame will supply Stellantis with nickel sulphate over a five-year period, starting from 2025 onwards. "This agreement is part of the key raw material sourcing to fit with our electrified vehicle battery pack needs, Stellantis Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said in a statement. Stellantis is one of the largest carmakers in the world and includes brands such as Peugeot, Fiat, Chrysler and Jeep. The company is currently aiming to have a 100% battery electric vehicle catalog in Europe and 50% in the U.S. by 2023. The carmaker said the agreement with Terrafame "will cover a significant portion of the needs for sustainable regionally sourced nickel." Last week, Stellantis struck a deal with Australian miner Element 25 for the supply of manganese sulphite. Shares of STLA are down 0.45% in mid-day trading on Wednesday. By Michael Elkins | [email protected] Volta Inc. (NYSE: VLTA) today announced the execution of a definitive merger agreement under which Shell USA Inc., a subsidiary of Shell plc (NYSE: SHEL), will acquire Volta in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $169 million. The transaction brings Volta's powerful dual charging and media network to Shell's established brand and seeks to unlock robust, long-term growth opportunities in electric vehicle ("EV") charging. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Shell USA Inc. will acquire all outstanding shares of Class A common stock of Volta at $0.86 per share in cash upon completion of the merger, which represents an approximate 18 percent premium to the closing price of Volta stock on January 17, 2023, the last full trading day prior to the announcement of the transaction. Vince Cubbage, Interim Chief Executive Officer, said, "The shift to e-mobility is unstoppable, and Shell recognizes Volta's industry-leading dual charging and media model delivers a public charging offering that is affordable, reliable, and accessible. While the EV infrastructure market opportunity is potentially enormous, Volta's ability to capture it independently, in challenging market conditions and with ongoing capital constraints, was limited. This transaction creates value for our shareholders and provides our exceptional employees and other stakeholders a clear path forward." Cubbage continued, "Both Volta and Shell have a demonstrated ability to meet the changing needs of customers, and this acquisition will bring that experience together to provide the options that are needed as more drivers choose electric." This acquisition builds on the momentum in electric mobility by combining one of the leading EV charging and media companies in the U.S. with one of the world's largest energy suppliers. The transaction provides the opportunity to unlock Volta's significant signed pipeline of charging stalls in construction or evaluation and capture the seismic EV charging market opportunity. Following the completion of the transaction, there will be no immediate change in driver experience, Volta Media Network capabilities available to advertisers, or services provided to commercial properties and retail locations. As part of the agreement, an affiliate of Shell will provide subordinated secured term loans to Volta to bridge Volta through the closing of the transaction. Approvals Volta's Board of Directors, having determined that the transaction is in the best interests of the company's stockholders, has unanimously approved the transaction and recommends that Volta's stockholders approve the transaction and adopt the merger agreement at the special meeting of stockholders to be called in connection with the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2023. The closing of the merger is subject to the approval of Volta's stockholders, the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other applicable regulatory approvals, and other customary closing conditions. Upon closing of the transaction, Volta's Class A common stock will no longer be listed on any public market. Advisors Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Barclays Capital Inc. are serving as advisors to Volta, and Shearman & Sterling LLP is serving as Volta's legal advisor. Raymond James & Associates, Inc. provided a fairness opinion to Volta's Board of Directors. UBS Securities LLC is serving as a financial advisor to Shell, and Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP is serving as Shell's legal advisor. FILE PHOTO: Representations of the Ripple, Bitcoin, Etherum and Litecoin virtual currencies are seen on a PC motherboard in this illustration picture, February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic (Reuters) - Cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Capital is planning to file for bankruptcy as soon as this week, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the situation. A bankruptcy filing has been expected for weeks, after the company froze customer redemptions on Nov. 16 following the downfall of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The collapse of FTX in November has claimed several victims including crypto lender BlockFi and Core Scientific Inc, one of the biggest publicly traded crypto mining companies in the United States, both of which filed for bankruptcy protection in the following months. Genesis, its parent Digital Currency Group and creditors have exchanged several proposals, but have so far failed to come to an agreement, the Bloomberg report said, adding that Kirkland & Ellis and Proskauer Rose have been advising groups of creditors. Genesis did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Genesis is also locked in a dispute with Gemini, founded by the identical twin crypto pioneers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Gemini offered a crypto lending product called Earn in partnership with Genesis, and now says Genesis owes it $900 million in connection with that product. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week said it had charged Genesis and Gemini with illegally selling securities to hundreds of thousands of investors through their crypto lending program. (Reporting by Niket Nishant and Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chalice Brands Ltd. (CSE: CHAL) (OTCQB: CHALF) (the Company or Chalice Brands), a premier consumer-driven cannabis company specializing in retail, production, processing, wholesale, and distribution, is pleased to announce that it has appointed Gary Zipfel to the Companys Board of Directors (the Board), effective immediately. The Company has also appointed William Simpson as an Advisor to the Board of Chalice Brands. Jeff Yapp, CEO of Chalice Brands stated, We are privileged to welcome back major shareholder Gary Zipfel to our Board of Directors and major shareholder William Simpson as an Advisor. We look forward to benefitting from their many contributions to Chalice Brands. We believe Gary and Williams backgrounds with Chalice Brands will serve to accelerate broad recognition of the Companys potential. Mr. Zipfel serves as capital partner and board-level advisor for start-up stage companies, providing business planning, strategic direction, and scenario analysis. Mr. Zipfel has worked with companies from a diverse array of industries including cannabis, vertical green space appliances, mountain-home design and construction, commercial real estate, bicycle parts design and manufacturing, digital advertising, jet engine repair, healthcare notification systems, restaurants and breweries. Prior to becoming a start-up investor, Mr. Zipfel spent 15 years in the global financial markets as a technologist and technology leader. Mr. Simpson founded Chalice Brands, formerly Chalice Farms in 2014, turning the Company into one of the leading cannabis brands and retail dispensary chains in Oregon. Mr. Simpson leveraged his early experience in the medical marijuana industry to develop innovative manufacturing, sales and marketing practice for the Chalice Brands portfolio and retail platforms. Mr. Simpson formerly had the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of Chalice Brands. The Company would also like to announce the resignation of Bob McKnight from its Board of Directors, effective immediately. "On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Bob for his contributions to Chalice Brands over the years," commented John Varghese, Executive Chairman. "We wish him the best in his future endeavors." About Chalice Brands Chalice Brands Ltd. is a premier consumer-driven cannabis company specializing in production, processing, wholesale, distribution and retail, with 15 owned dispensaries in and around Portland, Oregon. Chalice Brands is committed to developing a dynamic portfolio built around the recognized brands of Chalice Brands, including Chalice Farms, Left Coast Connection, Homegrown Oregon and Cannabliss & Co., with a focus on health and wellness. Visit investors.chalicebrandsltd.com/ for regular updates. Investor Relations:John VargheseExecutive ChairmanChalice Brands Ltd971-371-2685[email protected] The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Disclaimer: This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Companys future business operations, the opinions or beliefs of management and future business goals. 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 to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. These risks include but are not limited to general business, economic and competitive uncertainties, regulatory risks, market risks, risks inherent in manufacturing and retail operations such as unforeseen costs and production shutdowns, difficulties in maintaining brand loyalty, and other risks of the cannabis industry. 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. Forward-looking information is provided herein for the purpose of presenting information about managements current expectations relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purpose. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States, and such securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration or an exemption from registration. Source: Chalice Brands Ltd. San Antonio, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As a dedicated Endeavors employee for over 5 years, Ben Miranda, Jr. previously served as Director of Business Operations where he played a pivotal role in expanding the mission and vision of the nonprofit to help vulnerable people in need, not only in Texas but all over the country. Moving forward, Ben will continue to build relationships and closely work with federal and nonprofit partners, as well as various community stakeholders. Hell focus on the development, implementation, operation, and expansion of Endeavors many lines of service to ensure the military community, homeless and other vulnerable populations are heard, supported, and successful. Ben shares, It is a tremendous privilege to serve in an organization where everyone from our CEO, President, directors, and staff at all levels have the passion to serve vulnerable people in crisis with a servant's heart. I am honored to be entrusted with these responsibilities and look forward to continuing to work with Endeavors and all our local, state, and federal stakeholders across the communities we serve. Military & Professional Experience: As a 24-year Veteran of the United States Air Force, Ben rose to the Air Forces highest rank of Chief Master Sergeant. He deployed in support of Operations ENDURING FREEDOM, IRAQI FREEDOM, NEW DAWN, and UNIFIED RESPONSE, as well as to multiple counter-drug operations in Latin America. Ben holds a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from Walden University and serves as a Commissioner for the Texas Military Preparedness Commission (appointed by the Texas Governor). He also sits on the Board of Directors for the El Paso Homeless Coalition-Continuum of Care and is the Co-Chair for the 151st Veteran Affairs' Community Veterans Engagement Board. Ben is a lifetime member of the Disabled American Veterans and the Air Force Sergeants Associations. Additionally, he has been recognized externally on a national level through his selection and leadership in the George W. Bush Institutes Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program. ### Headquartered in San Antonio, Endeavors is a national service organization that has been assisting vulnerable populations since 1969. Endeavors offers an array of services and programs supporting children, families, migrants, Veterans and those struggling with mental illness, disabilities, disasters or emergencies. Endeavors serves people in crisis with personalized services. For more information, visit endeavors.org. Attachment Felicia Nino Endeavors [email protected] Source: Endeavors SAN DIEGO, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Judicate West, one of Californias leading providers of private dispute resolution services, has added Justice Cynthia G. Aaron, former associate justice in Californias Fourth District Court of Appeal, to its roster of neutrals. Based in the San Diego office, she is available nationwide for mediation, mock appellate arguments, neutral evaluations, and appellate consultations. We are honored to work with a neutral of Justice Aarons quality and experience and are confident she will be a tremendous asset to our clients, said Mark Kaufman, Executive Vice President of Market Development for Judicate West. Her unique expertise including strong facilitative skills honed during her first eight years as a magistrate judge and top-notch evaluative skills gleaned from the past 20 years on the appellate bench combines to give Justice Aaron a decided advantage in helping to facilitate settlement in mediation. Justice Aaron has nearly four decades of combined legal experience, including serving the last 20 years on the appellate bench. During her judicial tenure, she resolved all types of cases on appeal, including complex civil, probate and family law matters. Prior to her 2003 appointment to the Court of Appeal, she served as a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, a position she held for eight years. Justice Aaron began her legal career as a trial lawyer with the Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. before founding her own firm, Aaron & Cortez, focusing on defending federal criminal cases, including multiple defendant conspiracy cases and white-collar prosecutions. Active in the legal community, Justice Aaron is a member of the Appellate Inn of Court and the San Diego County Judges Association, where she served terms on the board of directors and as president. She is also a past board member for the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program. Additionally, Justice Aaron has been an adjunct professor at both the University of San Diego School of Law and California Western School of Law, teaching trial practice. Justice Aaron is a recipient of the AJC Judge Learned Hand Award in recognition of her leadership and commitment to equity, justice and excellence in the application of law. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School (1984) and her B.A. from Stanford University (1979). About Judicate WestJudicate West is one of Californias leading providers of private dispute resolution services with a distinguished roster of proven neutrals, including retired state and federal court judges plus professional attorney mediators and arbitrators from a wide variety of practice areas. Founded in 1993, the firm prides itself on maintaining the utmost integrity in delivering innovative solutions to all types of civil disputes. The firms successful formula involves top-tier neutrals, a great company culture and an experienced team of ADR professionals dedicated to delivering gold standard service in alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Judicate West has offices in Santa Ana, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. Contact:Traci Stuart / Michael Panelli Blattel Communications415.413.4522 / 415.413.4527[email protected] / [email protected] Source: Judicate West SAINT-SULPICE, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Who: Kandou, an innovative leader in high-speed, energy-efficient chip-to-chip link intellectual property (IP) solutions that improve the way the world connects and communicates What: Will demonstrate Glasswing chip-to-chip link intellectual property (IP) optimized for high-speed, ultra-low power ultra-short (USR) SerDes applications When: Wednesday, January 24, from noon until 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. and Thursday, January 26, from noon until 2 p.m. Where: Chiplet Summit at San Jose Doubletree Hotel, San Jose, Calif. About GlasswingIdeally suited for short links inside a shared MCM package without requiring a silicon interposer, Glasswing is based on Kandous CNRZ-5 Chord signaling architecture that simultaneously sends five bits of data over six correlated wires. The unique coding of the CNRZ-5 chord provides excellent signal integrity and delivers more than double the bandwidth at half the power on a given group of wires as compared to conventional NRZ or PAM signaling. It is the only USR SerDes IP proven in silicon and capable of providing 1Tbps bandwidth at under one watt to advance fundamental architectural shifts in power savings essential for networking, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), aerospace and satellite communications. Email requests for meetings and demonstrations during Chiplet Summit should be sent to [email protected]. Visit the Kandou website for additional information. About KandouKandou is a fabless semiconductor company that offers differentiated and fundamental interconnect technology. In addition to building semiconductors for advanced standards in USB and PCIe applications, Kandou silicon and IP solutions lower power consumption and improve the performance of chip links. Kandous solutions unlock new capabilities for customer systems and devices ranging from consumer electronics to datacenters, AI and machine learning, and high-performance computing. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Saint-Sulpice, Switzerland, with eight offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Connect with Kandou at:Website: www.kandou.comLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kandou-bus-s-a-/Twitter: @kandoubus Kandou acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services. For more information, contact: Jason de KauweDirector of Marketing at Kandou[email protected] Nanette CollinsPublic Relations for Kandou[email protected] Source: Kandou Bus HAMILTON, Ontario, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lawrie Insurance Group, a leading Canadian insurance brokerage, is pleased to announce that in recognition of its 40th Anniversary as a fiercely independent and proud local business, it is committing $40,000 to provide direct financial support to students within the Insurance and Business Administration programs at Mohawk College. As one of the college's Premier Future Ready Companies, CEO Bob Lawrie announced the donation at an alumni reception in front of the Lawrie team, many of whom are proud Mohawk graduates. (Video Link: https://youtu.be/3bPEF9uVdcI) (Left to right) Bob Lawrie (President & CEO, Lawrie Insurance Group), Ron J. McKerlie (President & CEO, Mohawk College), Dan Lawrie (Founder & Chairman, Lawrie Insurance Group) "For forty years, Lawrie Insurance has remained fiercely independent. We are proud of our talented team, the value we bring to our customers across North America and the trust we have built as a community partner and an industry leader," said Bob Lawrie, CEO of Lawrie Insurance Group. "We are ready to support the future again by donating forty-thousand dollars to help Mohawk College students achieve success." This college-company relationship goes back many years. In 2007, in recognition of its 25th Anniversary, Dan Lawrie, Founder & Chairman, made a significant donation to help fund the new Mohawk College Centre of Excellence in Insurance and Financial Services. "We are grateful to Lawrie Insurance for marking this impressive 40-year milestone by generously supporting Mohawk College students," said Ron J. McKerlie, President & CEO of Mohawk College. "Lawrie has been a valued college partner for more than two decades, helping students succeed in the classroom and beyond. This generous announcement will continue that strong tradition for years to come." Lawrie Insurance Group is also a benefactor of the Mohawk College Insurance Founders Lounge. In addition to its financial support of the college, a company representative sits on the Program Advisory Committee, offering guidance and feedback to keep the courses current in a fast-changing field. (Digital Press Release: https://bit.ly/3V7HwOs) About Lawrie Insurance Group Lawrie Insurance Group Inc. is a leading privately-owned, multi-disciplined Canadian insurance brokerage specializing in commercial and personal insurance, employee benefits, life and living benefits and group retirement solutions. With a staff of over 125 dedicated professionals, Lawrie Insurance Group has become one of the largest and most trusted insurance organizations and ranks in the top 5% of independent insurance brokerages in Canada. Lawrie Insurance Group is a member of the Canadian Broker Network (CBN), Intersure and Globex International with affiliated offices across Canada, the United States, and the world. Please visit us online at www.lawriegroup.com. Media contact:Dennis HarringtonDirector of Marketing & Communications[email protected]365-675-0387 (direct) A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b56b9cc3-b767-4a23-bc62-7cd9b056ff70 Lawrie Insurance Group Marks 40th Anniversary by Donating Forty Thousand Dollars to Mohawk College to Support Students (left to right) Bob Lawrie (President & CEO, Lawrie Insurance Group), Ron J. McKerlie (President & CEO, Mohawk College), Dan Lawrie (Founder & Chairman, Lawrie Insurance Group) Source: Lawrie Insurance Group ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quris-AI and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) signed an agreement during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) to develop a world-class Bio-AI center in Abu Dhabi. The state-of-the-art facility will support the development of personalized medications, tailored specifically to the diverse populations of the MENA region. The collaboration will establish a center of excellence in Bio-AI in Abu Dhabi, which will accelerate the development of safer, and more highly personalized medications. MBZUAI provides expertise in the development of predictive AI models, while incentivizing sought-after AI graduates to stay in the UAE as they begin their careers. Quris-AI, a pioneer in AI drug safety, developed the worlds first Bio-AI clinical prediction platform, which makes drug development faster and more efficient, and promises to save hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development costs. With this collaboration, Quris, which has operations in Boston and Tel-Aviv, is now establishing its subsidiary, Quris-UAE, in Abu Dhabi. Targeted drug development Currently, around 90% of clinical trials for new medications end in failure, but Quris proprietary patient-on-a-chip technology promises to reduce failure by predicting which drugs are most likely to work in humans. The Quris system rapidly performs test interactions using predictive AI technologies that simulate genetically diverse patients, eliminating the need for animal testing and avoiding the risk and cost associated with failed clinical trials. We are delighted to be collaborating with Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi, given its strong commitment to advancing AI and significant opportunities for synergy, said Isaac Bentwich M.D., founder and CEO of Quris. We salute the vision of H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, championing the UAE to become a center of excellence in AI as a strong pillar of the economy, and we are honored to contribute to realizing this vision. Quris research operations are led by Nobel laureate, Professor Aaron Ciechanover, and by Moderna co-founder and former FDA Science Board Chair, Professor Robert Langer. Former Pfizer CEO Henry McKinnell now chairs the Quris Advisory Board alongside Dr. Kobi Richter, founder of world-leading companies Medinol and Orbotech. The MBZUAI team is led by Professor Eric Xing, MBZUAI President and University Professor, and co-principal investigator in the Quris-MBZUAI collaboration. One compelling aspect of my discussions with Professor Ciechanover and the Quris team have been about solving UAE-specific health problems faster and more cost-effectively, Dr. Xing said. The organelle systems being developed at Quris are a revolutionary platform for high-throughput drug testing, which can be best served by a similarly high-throughput drug design pipeline using AI. Our unique capacities in computational biology and machine learning at MBZUAI will enhance Quris efforts to accelerate the development of new personalized and potentially life-saving medicines. As part of the collaboration, MBZUAI Deputy Department Chair and Associate Professor of Machine Learning Kun Zhang will drive a project titled: Disrupting Personalized Medicine using Patient-on-a-Chip and Causal Discovery. The project, which will draw on both organizations' resources and personnel, will accelerate discovery of personal, actionable causal effects on drug pharmacokinetics; genetic parameters with causal effect on drug metabolism; organ functional parameters relating to drug metabolism (e.g., liver/kidney/heart functional tests/assays); and ethnic-specific parameters affecting drug metabolism and safety. Additionally, the research will also support development of personalized (patient specific) drug administration protocol, as well as patient-on-a-chip method for causal discovery of patient specific treatments. About Quris-AI Quris, the worlds first Bio-AI clinical-prediction platform, ensures the safety and efficacy of new drugs. Revolutionizing the drug development process, the company is pioneering clinical trials on chips testing thousands of novel drug candidates on hundreds of miniaturized patients-on-a-chip. Its fully automated, self-training AI platform accurately predicts clinical safety and efficacy for novel drugs faster and more cost effectively than ever before all while minimizing animal testing. Dual-headquartered in Boston and Israel and backed by strategic biotech and big data investors, Quris is led by a proven team of AI and medical research powerhouses who are already preparing its lead discovery for clinical trials. For more information, visit www.quris.ai. About Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) MBZUAI is a graduate research university focused on artificial intelligence, computer science, and digital technologies across industrial sectors. The university aims to empower students, businesses, and governments to advance artificial intelligence as a global force for positive progress. MBZUAI offers various graduate programs designed to pursue advanced, specialized knowledge and skills in artificial intelligence, including computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing. For more information, please visit www.mbzuai.ac.ae High-resolution images and videos available here. SOAR PR on behalf of QurisShanti Sadhwani | [email protected] Smita Malwe | [email protected] On behalf of MBZUAINicholas Demille | [email protected]Aya Sakoury | [email protected] Source: Quris Technologies GRAND JUNCTION, Colo., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ProStar Holdings Inc. ("ProStar" or "the Company") (TSXV: MAPS) (OTCQX: MAPPF) (FSE: 5D00), a world leader in Precision Mapping Solutions, is pleased to announce that Pennsylvania based RAVAN AIR adopts ProStars PointMan solution to enhance its operations. "Precision geospatial technologies will play a critical role in the management and construction of underground infrastructure, and we have always embraced the most advanced technologies," stated Mark Sakach, Director of Operations at RAVAN AIR. "We have been looking for an out-of-the-box and easy-to-use mapping solution to help us enhance our field data collection services, and PointMan checked all of the boxes. RAVAN AIR is an industry leader in providing underground and aerial inspections. The company provides probe, camera, and drone services for the oil and natural gas, landfill, utility, and construction industries. RAVAN AIR offers turnkey Advanced Integrated Services to complete even the most complex projects. The critical infrastructure industry is at the precipice of a digital transformation, and geospatial technologies like PointMan are at the center of the digital transformation, stated Page Tucker CEO of ProStar Geocorp. Geospatial technologies like PointMan are at the center of this digital transformation, and it is great to see PointMan has become both a recognized leader and trusted brand name throughout the industry. ABOUT RAVAN AIRRAVAN AIR is a nationwide underground and aerial inspection company that has mastered several technologies and skills to provide the most current, detailed, and reliable inspection services to a range of industries. Their Advanced Integrative Resources include several tools like probes, cameras, lateral launchers, and a dedicated camera truck for underground utility locating, laser profiling, pipeline inspections, 3D mapping, and cross bore and CCTV pipeline inspections. Detailed reports and notated videos are generated in a multitude of formats based on the clients needs. RAVAN AIR has completed countless aerial inspections using their advanced drones for methane detection, GIS mapping, and thermal imaging for the oil and gas, utility infrastructure, industrial, construction, landfill, government, and telecommunications industries. By seeking out these innovative technologies, RAVAN AIR has committed to providing the most cutting-edge tools for their clients. This allows each client to customize and integrate specific services to complete their unique project with precision. The RAVAN AIR team holds many safety and industry certifications. To learn more about RAVAN AIR, visit: www.ravanair.com About ProStar:ProStar is a world leader in Precision Mapping Solutions and is creating a digital world by leveraging the most modern GPS, cloud, and mobile technologies. ProStar is a software development company specializing in developing patented cloud and mobile precision mapping solutions focused on the critical infrastructure industry. ProStars flagship product, PointMan, is designed to significantly improve the workflow processes and business practices associated with the lifecycle management of critical infrastructure assets both above and below the Earths surface. ProStars PointMan is offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) and seamlessly connects the field with the office and provides the ability to precisely capture, record, display, and manage critical infrastructure, including roads, railways, pipelines, and utilities. Some of the largest entities in North America have adopted ProStars solutions, including Fortune 500 construction firms, Subsurface Utilities Engineering (SUE) firms, utility owners, and government agencies. ProStar has strategic business partnerships with the worlds leading geospatial technology providers, data collection equipment manufacturers, and dealer networks. The Company has made a significant investment in creating a vast intellectual property portfolio that includes 20 issued patents in the United States and Canada. The patents protect the methods and systems required to digitally capture, record, organize, manage, distribute, and display the precise location of critical infrastructure, including buried utilities and pipelines. ProStars Executive management team has extensive experience in the management of both early-stage and Fortune 500 technology companies in the private and public sectors. For more information about ProStar, please visit www.prostarcorp.com. On behalf of the Company,Page Tucker on sales / corporate news releases, CEO and DirectorContact:Joel SutherlandInvestor Relations970-822-4792[email protected] Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Such information includes, without limitation, information regarding the terms and conditions of the Companys future plans. Although the Company believes that such information is reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking information is 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. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to: the state of the financial markets for the Companys securities; the state of the technology sector; recent market volatility; the COVID-19 pandemic; the Companys ability to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies; and other risks and factors that the Company is unaware of at this time. The reader is referred to the Companys recent Annual Managements Discussion & Analysis filed on SEDAR on April 14, 2022, for a more complete discussion of applicable risk factors and their potential effects, copies of which may be accessed through the Companys issuer page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Source: ProStar VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Xali Gold Corp. (TSXV: XGC) ("Xali Gold or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has signed a Binding Letter of Intent (the Agreement) with Minera Cinco Reales S.A. de C.V. (MCR) on the San Dieguito de Arriba (SDA) Plant in Nayarit, Western Mexico. We are very excited to be partnering with a local Mexican mining group who will not only provide both the investment and expertise to make the SDA Plant fully operational but also provide the initial gold and silver bearing mineralization to process, says Joanne Freeze, President and CEO of Xali Gold. This new agreement with MCR allows us to follow through with our mandate of putting our assets to work to provide cash flow for our flagship El Oro Hard Rock Project, by giving us two opportunities for profit sharing (see news release from January 4, 2023). Agreement Terms Beginning in the first full month of production, or no later than the fourth month from the signing of this agreement, Xali Gold will have the right to receive 15% of the net profits from any mineral that is processed at the SDA Plant, or minimum payments as follows: US$10,000 in fourth month from signing the Agreement US$20,000 in the fifth month US$30,000 in the sixth month US$40,000 in the seventh to tenth months US$50,000 from month eleven on Before the fourth month, MCR will make advance payments of net profits to Xali Gold of: US$6,500 dated January 30, 2023 US$6,500 dated February 27, 2023 US$6,500 dated March 22, 2023 Upon the execution of this Agreement, MCR will act as the only operator of the plant and will have the exclusive option to obtain permits and refurbish the plant and equipment to operational status and to manage and operate the SDA plant for their benefit for an initial period of 14 months. MCR has the right to renew the agreement every 14 months unless Xali Gold has reason to cancel the Agreement due to non-performance payments or misuse of the plant. About Minera Cinco Reales Minera Cinco Reales operates several mines and processing plants (150 to 300 tonnes per day) in Northern and Central Mexico producing gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc. In business since 2002, the partners include metallurgical and chemical engineers with excellent experience in operations. About the SDA Plant The SDA plant consists of a flotation plant which also includes a precious metals leach circuit - Merrill Crowe system and associated assets, licenses and agreements. The plant has a ten-year operating history at 100 tonnes per day but may be expanded to process mined material at a rate of up to 200 tonnes per day. Historically, its operation has been based on sales of flotation concentrates to smelters, and payment for precious metals content. The plant lies within the rich Sierra Madre Occidental mineralized belt, which historically has yielded millions of ounces of precious metals and offers multiple high-grade gold and silver epithermal vein opportunities. About Xali Gold Xali Gold has a growth strategy to acquire gold and silver projects with near surface exploration potential, near-term production potential and previous mining histories in Mexico. Xali Gold plans to advance our growing bank of gold and silver assets internally and/or with industry partners. El Oro is a district scale gold project encompassing a well-known prolific high-grade gold dominant gold-silver epithermal vein system in Mexico. The project covers 20 veins with past production and more than 57 veins in total, from which approximately 6.4 million ounces of gold and 74 million ounces of silver were reported to have been produced from just two of these veins (Ref. Mexico Geological Service Bulletin Nr. 37, Mining of the El Oro and Tlapujahua Districts. 1920, T. Flores). Modern understanding of epithermal vein systems indicates that several of the El Oro districts veins hold excellent discovery potential, particularly below and adjacent to the historic workings of the San Rafael Vein, which was mined to an average depth of only 200 metres. Xali Gold is dedicated to being a responsible Community partner. Joanne C. Freeze, P.Geo., President, CEO and Matthew Melnyk, CPG., Director Operations, are Qualified Persons as defined by National Instrument 43-101 for the projects discussed above. Ms. Freeze and Mr. Melnyk have reviewed and approved the contents of this release. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking Information This news release may contain forward-looking information (as such term is defined under Canadian securities laws) including but not limited to the mineral resource estimate for the Mexico Mine Tailings and information regarding references to historical resource estimates, the potential for discovery on the El Dorado and El Oro Properties and other statements that are not historical facts. While such forward-looking information is expressed by Xali Gold in good faith and believed by Xali Gold to have a reasonable basis, they address future events and conditions and are therefore subject to inherent risks and uncertainties including those set out in Xali Golds MD&A. Factors that cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking information include, without limitation, gold prices, results of exploration and development activities, regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of materials and equipment, timeliness of government approvals, potential environmental issues, availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. Xali Gold expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. On behalf of the Board of Xali Gold Corp. Joanne Freeze P.Geo.President, CEO and Director For further information please contact:Joanne Freeze President & CEO Tel: + 1 (604) 689-1957 [email protected] NR 118 Source: Xali Gold Corp. (Reuters) - Music streaming service Spotify Technology, along with other media firms such as Deezer, urged the European Commission to take action against Apple Inc for anticompetitive and unfair practices, in a joint industry letter on Wednesday. The letter, addressed to the European Union antitrust regulator's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, demanded the Commission to act fast for the welfare of European consumers. Spotify has for years accused Apple of abusing its market position using its App Store rules to stifle competition. It has previously submitted antitrust complaints against Apple in various countries, alleging the 30% charge Apple requires developers to pay on its App Store has forced Spotify to "artificially inflate" its own prices. "We are writing to you to call for swift and decisive action by the European Commission against anticompetitive and unfair practices by certain global digital gatekeepers, and Apple in particular," read the letter, which was signed by chief executives of media firms Schibsted, Proton and Basecamp. Spotify's Chief Executive Daniel Ek had previously said the iPhone maker "gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers". Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. (Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri) FILE PHOTO: A view shows a board with the logo of Shell at the company's fuel station in Saint Petersburg, Russia May 6, 2022. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/File Photo (Reuters) -Volta Inc said on Wednesday that a unit of Shell Plc would take over the electric vehicle (EV) charging network operator in an all-cash deal valued at about $169 million. Shell USA Inc will acquire all outstanding shares of Class A common stock of Volta for 86 cents apiece in a deal that is expected to close in the first half of the year, Volta said. Volta, which went public in 2021 through a merger with blank-check firm Tortoise Acquisition Corp II, saw its shares rise over 18% to about 86 cents in morning trade. Shell and other companies such as France's EDF and Norway's Statkraft have been investing in EV charging infrastructure to cash in on the growing demand for EVs. The announcement follows other investments in the EV charging infrastructure space, including Mercedes-Benz, which is poised to invest billions of euros to build 10,000 fast-charging points in North America, Europe and China by 2030. As part of the deal, Shell USA will also provide loans to Volta to help the company through the closing of the deal. Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital served as advisers to Volta, while Shearman & Sterling LLP served as its legal adviser. (Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Shailesh Kuber) Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 18, 2023) - Datametrex AI Limited (TSXV: DM) (FSE: D4G) (OTCQB: DTMXF) (the "Company" or "Datametrex")is pleased to provide a corporate update outlining the growth initiatives achieved this past year. 2022 was a pivotal year for Datametrex. The Company recently completed a strategic acquisition with Imagine Health Centres ("Imagine Health"). This acquisition had gross revenues of approximately $5 million from operations last year, with strong gross profit margins ranging from 40-45%. Additionally, this acquisition provides an established client base, better positioning the Company in the healthcare industry. 2022 Highlights: The Company continues to hold a strong cash position. The Company received approval from the TSX Venture Exchange for graduation from Tier 2 to Tier 1 on the TSXV effective February 8, 2022. The Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Nexalogy, successfully completed its first phase of the $40 million AI government contract and announced the continuation of work on the second phase with the Canadian Government to help aid in the defence of Canadian cyber security initiatives into 2023. The company achieved great success with its NexaSMART Artificial Intelligence (" AI ") and machine learning (" ML ") technology bringing in over $2.4 million in AI contracts from a Silicon Valley technology company. ") and machine learning (" ") technology bringing in over $2.4 million in AI contracts from a Silicon Valley technology company. Nexalogy software is being used to stop the spread of global misinformation and was recognized for its AI and ML technology. The Company introduced the Normal Course Issuer Bid (NCIB) program to increase returns to shareholders. The Company's wholly-owned telehealth subsidiary, Medi-Call Inc. (" Medi-Call "), launched on iOS and Apple devices and signed three distribution agreements with International Student Agencies for its telehealth services. "), launched on iOS and Apple devices and signed three distribution agreements with International Student Agencies for its telehealth services. Medi-Call reports working on an AI-driven mental health detection tool. Medi-Call expanded its services to Ontario and Alberta from British Columbia only. The Company launched its Electric Vehicle (EV) subsidiary, Datametrex Electric Vehicle Solutions (" DM EVS "), and introduced partnerships with commercial landlords and developers to install EV charging stations in B.C. "), and introduced partnerships with commercial landlords and developers to install EV charging stations in B.C. DM EVS launched its EV roadside assistance and premium on-demand services and started servicing its mobile roadside assistance to the film and production sites. The Company acquired Imagine Health Centres in Calgary and Edmonton. 2023 Outlook The Company started the new year strong with Medi-Call entering into a new partnership with Lucira Health and expanding healthcare services to British Columbia, Ontario, and Alberta. This 2023, the Company is focused on revenue and profit creation for its healthcare businesses and rebranding Imagine Health. Nexalogy continues down the path of providing cybersecurity services on the public side to various government entities and focusing on increasing its clientele and producing more contracts on the private side through its various AI work. Nexalogy is also exploring new avenues to expand its modular intelligence analytic capability through a potential partnership. On the Smart Factory front, Nexalogy continues to work on developing its Smart Factory AI technology, which is currently undergoing beta testing. Additionally, DM EVS plans to bring in new contracts this year and has a target to install approximately 500 EV chargers across B.C. in 2023. As the EV industry continues to evolve, management plans to introduce additional battery diagnosis and carbon emission reduction technologies and services to ensure the highest standard of customer safety and to reduce environmental impact. "2022 was a fantastic year for Datametrex. The company's work from this past year provides Datametrex with a competitive advantage, offering business solutions in AI, healthcare, and EV. This new year, we are focused on expansion and profitability. The company is dedicated to increasing earnings and revenue growth and looks forward to making its mark in the healthcare space with Medi-Call and Imagine Health while continuing work with our AI and EV initiatives. We have great things in the works and cannot wait to share more soon!" said Marshall Gunter, CEO of the Company. About Datametrex Datametrex AI Limited is a technology-focused company with a prominent footprint in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Through the power of artificial intelligence, Datametrex creates solutions for cyber security, telehealth, and electric vehicles. Datametrex's mission is to provide innovative tools and solutions that accelerate services and support companies in fulfilling their operational goals, including health and safety, with predictive and preventive technologies. By working with companies to set a new standard of protocols through artificial intelligence and health diagnostics, the Company provides progressive solutions to support the supply chain. For additional information on Datametrex and other corporate information, please visit the Company's website at www.datametrex.com. To learn more about how our AI is used in Cyber Security, Telehealth and EV, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApFk3sWAXtg. For further information: Investor Relations & Communications Priya Monique Atwal, Director of Communications Email: [email protected] Tel: 416-901-5611 x 204 Marshall Gunter, CEO Email: [email protected] Tel: 514-295-2300 Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements All statements included in this press release that address activities, events, or developments that the Company expects, believes, or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the acquisition of Imagine Health. These forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions made by the Company based on its experience, perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments, and other factors it believes are appropriate in the circumstances. In addition, these statements involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections, and other forward-looking statements will prove inaccurate, certain of which are beyond the Company's control. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake to revise or update these forward-looking statements after the date hereof or revise them to reflect the occurrence of future unanticipated events. ### To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151663 Leading El Paso web design company Jeremy McGilvrey drives business growth through modern website and sales funnel design El Paso, Texas--(Newsfile Corp. - January 17, 2023) - Top-rated El Paso web design company Jeremy McGilvrey today announced its services to help businesses scale and grow with conversion-focused website and sales funnel design. Jeremy McGilvrey, A Web Design Agency Announces Web Design Services In El Paso, Texas To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8843/151679_4f490974943138c4_001full.jpg Clients requiring profitable websites and sales funnels turn to Jeremy McGilvrey because of the company's extensive experience, results-driven designs, and customer-friendly satisfaction guarantee. The team focuses on crafting innovative website and sales funnel designs that are aesthetically beautiful, user-friendly, and customer-centric, providing each visitor with a personalized browsing experience. Jeremy McGilvrey's El Paso web design company builds user-friendly browsing experiences built on a foundation of clean, straightforward design. This strategy promotes user retention and a better emphasis on client's value proposition and brand messaging, helping them build trust and authority. One way Jeremy McGilvrey's team boosts conversions is through web designs that are optimized for mobile browsing. According to a survey conducted by GoodFirms, 73.1% of web designers cite non-responsive design as the primary cause of users leaving websites. To mitigate such losses, the team is committed to helping clients increase conversions by meticulously testing each site on a number of different devices to guarantee that it is aesthetically pleasing, loads quickly, and operates flawlessly, ensuring more quality leads. The team also focuses on a seamless backend user experience. Jeremy McGilvrey's sites and funnels deliver critical backend data so that clients can receive the insights they need to run marketing campaigns and fully understand the impact of their websites. "Clean, modern website designs that are considerate of users' needs and viewing circumstances are now a must for the company, not merely a competitive advantage," said Jeremy McGilvrey. "Our talented web design and development team is aware of this necessity and uses forward-looking designs that make browsing easier. Our design strategies also help our clients establish their online authority so they can take advantage of an endless stream of leads and sales to expand and scale their enterprises." To create the highest-converting websites and sales funnels, Jeremy McGilvrey works with innovative designers from across the globe. Every designer is vetted to ensure that they understand and employ the best techniques that increase conversions, guaranteeing that every website and sales funnel sells for its clients, even when they are sleeping. Customers also trust the El Paso web design company for its outstanding satisfaction guarantee. If a client is dissatisfied with the results, they receive a full refund of their investment. The company's confidence and success in creating sales funnels and websites that aid in business growth are illustrated in this ironclad guarantee. For more than ten years, Jeremy McGilvery has been a top El Paso web design company, earning praise from thousands of clients. The firm has also received recognition from Forbes, Entrepreneur, ClickFunnels, HuffPost, and NBC for its work. To learn more, visit Jeremy McGilvrey's Top-Rated El Paso Web Design Company. Media Contact: Contact: Jeremy McGilvrey Address: 1 Riverway Ste. 1724, Houston, TX 77056 Phone: (713) 300-3778 Email: [email protected] Website/URL: https://www.jeremymcgilvrey.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/151679 FILE PHOTO: Signage is seen outside The Blackstone Group headquarters in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 12, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly (Reuters) - Blackstone Inc raised a record $25 billion for two funds that dabble in secondaries and co-investments, the asset manager said on Wednesday. Strategic Partners IX raised $22.2 billion, the world's largest secondaries fundraise ever, while Strategic Partners GP Solutions raised $2.7 billion. Blackstone Strategic Partners is its illiquid fund investing arm that provides a range of liquidity solutions to both investors and private equity sponsors. Founded in 2000, Blackstone Strategic Partners had $67 billion of assets under management as of Sept. 30 last year. It has closed over 1,900 transactions across its private equity, infrastructure, and real estate platforms. New York-based Blackstone's unlisted real estate income trust also secured a $4 billion investment from the University of California earlier this month. (Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel) AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Best Place for Working Parents, a community of business leaders that assesses whether businesses are family-friendly, has honored 360training, a leading online regulatory training provider, as one of this year's best places for working parents. We're proud of the environment we've created where team members can succeed and access quality benefits and resources. The Best Place for Working Parents offers a competitive designation that recognizes innovation across the top 10 research-backed family-friendly workplace policies. These businesses prove that "family-friendly is business-friendly." The Best Place for Working Parents recognizes that organizations that promote family-friendly policies are more competitive and innovative in their industries and attract top candidates. In this post-COVID era, employees had to balance work, eldercare, and parenting demands. 360training listened to their needs and created new ways to support them. These policies help working families and increase the company's bottom line. For 360training, they include: Unlimited paid time off Remote working Flexible hours Employer-covered medical, dental, and vision plans Life insurance Short and long-term disability insurance 401k matching Employee assistance counseling Pet insurance "As we strive to perpetually improve, our policies have always prioritized people first." Tom Anderson, CEO of 360training, elaborates, "We are proud of the environment we have created where team members can be successful and have access to quality benefits and resources. When our employees thrive, they are empowered to create a safe, healthy environment for the communities they servewhich is our mission." Ryan Linders, CMO at 360training, adds, "As a parent of four young kids, I'm driven by the culture we've created that allows flexibility to focus on family, all while maintaining a fast-paced and rewarding work atmosphere. We work and play hard, giving us quality time and flexible hours to maintain a healthy work-life balance." About 360training Since 1997, 360training.com, Inc. has provided individuals and businesses with online regulatory-approved training, facilitating a safe, healthy environment for their communities. We have delivered over 11 million training plans across multiple brands, including 360training, Meditec, AgentCampus, VanEd, OSHAcampus, OSHA.com, TIPS, Learn2Serve, and AdvanceOnline. Please visit www.360training.com or their social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to learn more. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/360training-earns-best-place-for-working-parents-award-in-2023-301725320.html SOURCE 360training.com MUSCAT, Oman, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On the evening of Tuesday 17th January, fintech company Beehive, a Capital Market Authority (CMA) regulated crowdfunding platform, officially celebrated launching in Oman with an event at the Crowne Plaza, Muscat. Deputy Head of Public Authority for SME Development, Mr. Abdul Aziz Al Reesi, was present to inaugurate the event. The company, that partners with Ahlibank on its Tamkeen product, soft-launched in June 2022 bringing an alternative finance solution for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the Sultanate. Beehive, headquartered in the UAE, uses its fintech platform to connect a crowd of investors with small businesses looking for finance. It has funded over USD 400 million in total in the GCC since its inception in 2014. In partnership with Ahlibank, the company has funded twenty businesses and a total of OMR 1.4 million in finance since launching in Oman. Peer to peer lending is an established source of funding for SMEs in many countries and is becoming increasingly widespread across the GCC. The finance is unsecured, meaning businesses don't have to provide physical collateral for security, and instead the approval is based on the business's creditworthiness, which is assessed using Beehive's robust credit decisioning engine. Amongst the first companies to receive funding from Beehive and Ahlibank were Charisma Clinic and Al Naamani. Dr. Ghaith Sleman, Co-Owner of Charisma Clinic said, "We chose to use Beehive for our funding because of the lack of tangible securities needed. The process was quick and easy and was used to purchase new machines, as well as making us cash-rich which was instrumental in speeding up our expansion plans." Mazin Al Mahrooqi, Owner of Al Naamani said, "From the start, getting finance from Beehive was a smooth process. To my knowledge there is nothing else like this in Oman, it is collateral free, and they do not ask for unnecessary documents to get approved." Craig Moore, CEO and Founder of Beehive commented, "There is much potential for SMEs to bring economic growth to Oman. Improving their access to finance supports this, and we are excited to be part of that journey." Please contact Marketing Manager for Beehive, Bryony Pospodinis, for further details.[email protected]+971 585871300Beehive.om Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985150/Beehive.jpg View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beehive-celebrates-official-launch-of-crowdfunding-platform-in-oman-301723806.html SOURCE Beehive RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cordance today announced that Sharon Love has been appointed Chief Executive Officer, effective January 3, 2023. Love succeeds John Bennett, who will be assuming an advisory role with the company. Love is a seasoned technology executive with experience across investing and operations. She was previously President & CEO of Community Brands, where she transformed Community's revenue streams to create a high-margin, double-digit growth business, and oversaw improvements to its product portfolio, customer delivery and cloud operations. Before her role with Community Brands, Love held executive roles with Social Solutions Global, CentralSquare Technologies NCR, Lenovo, FedEx and Dell. She also sits on the boards of Karmak and Yellowbird. "I am proud to take on the CEO role and am eager to advance the promising strategy John and his team have put in motion," said Love. "Cordance is a launchpad for great leaders and businesses in the software industry. I look forward to working with the Cordance team and carrying on our mission of enabling these impressive entrepreneurs to build the next generation of category-defining technology companies." "I'm happy to pass the reins of Cordance to Sharon's very capable hands," said John Bennett, outgoing CEO of Cordance. "I am confident she is the right leader at this important time for the company to oversee our continued growth and work with leading software entrepreneurs. I wish her and the entire Cordance team continued success." Cordance (cordance.co) is dedicated to accelerating the growth of vertically focused business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies through acquisition and long-term tactical and financial guidance. Cordance's team of experienced operators and subject-matter experts have a passion for software and building businesses, and partner with founders to help them scale their businesses and realize their companies' full potential. Cordance seeks businesses with strong leadership and high potential for profitable growth to work together to increase year-over-year revenue, company efficiency, and impact. Cordance is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Contact: Andrew Chironna, [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cordance-appoints-sharon-love-as-chief-executive-officer-301724878.html SOURCE Cordance LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Davtyan Law Firm (www.d.law) continues their strong start to the new year by continuing to expand its outreach, this time to help employees in San Jose, California, and surrounding areas. DLaw's flagship office opened over seven years ago to help fight for the rights of the working class in the Los Angeles area. The firm achieved industry-leading stats in 2022 and are only looking to surpass those in 2023. The attorneys focus on supporting all Californians in navigating employment issues, such as workplace harassment, discrimination, unpaid wages, and wrongful termination. Their dedication and determination are what set them apart from other employment law firms in the area. Founder and Managing Attorney Emil Davtyan is eager to see how his firm's experience and skillset will help workers in and around the heart of the San Jose area. The entire team at DLaw will focus to bring approachable and conscientious legal services to all employees in this region. DLaw also has offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Chico, San Luis Obispo, Lake Tahoe, San Bernardino, Monterey, and Stockton to protect all Californians from abusive employers. Since its inception in 2015, DLaw's 80-plus lawyers and staff have helped hundreds of thousands of California workers recover nearly a quarter of $1 billion from their employers. To date, the firm has helped pursue nearly 3,000 cases. DLaw has grown its staff with close to three dozen new hires across a variety of full-time staff positions since the beginning of 2022. The increase in staff further allows DLaw to provide unparalleled support to those who need help. "Hourly and low-wage workers are a collective group of people who make up the backbone of America," said Emil. "These hard-working individuals often don't have the resources and means to pursue their valid claims because employment law projects intimidation. If anyone has experienced unfair workplace treatment, they can look to us as the best place for help. We're always a phone call or online visit away from answering questions and offering free advice." DLaw's newest office is located in the heart of Downtown San Jose, at 99 South Almaden Blvd., Suite 600, San Jose, California, 95113 Are you a California employee who is treated unfairly at work? If so, please call 888-TRY-DLAW, visit the www.d.law website or email [email protected]. A representative is standing by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help with your employment law legal needs. CONTACT: Armen Petrosyan, [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dlaw-brings-their-passion-for-helping-employees-to-san-jose-ca-301725188.html SOURCE Davtyan Law Firm, Inc. Patient Demand for NPs Grows as Underserved Areas Expand AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- As the nurse practitioner (NP) profession looks toward the future, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) has identified five key health care trends to watch. NPs are highly trusted health care providers, and as such, are projected to be the number one fastest-growing profession over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. NPs are at the forefront of diagnosis, research and treatment to ensure patients have access to quality health care. NPs are continuously engaged in education and research to stay on the forefront of diagnosis, treatment, care delivery. "In 2023, we will continue to see an increased demand for NPs. The future of our profession is bright, and we stand ready to deliver the care patients need," said AANP President April Kapu, DNP, APRN, ACNP-BC, FAANP, FCCM, FAAN. "NPs provide exceptional patient care, and our outcomes are reflective of this. We are continuously engaged in education and research to stay on the forefront of diagnosis, treatment and care delivery. We look forward to another year of being the health care provider choice for millions of families." Five Trends to Watch Demand for NPs Is Growing Along With the NP Role With an aging U.S. population, the rising incidence of chronic disease and increasing rates of infectious disease, NPs are in high demand. America's more than 355,000 licensed NPs conduct more than 1 billion patient visits annually including via mobile outreach and telehealth and NPs are trusted by their patients. NPs top the list of professions projected to grow the fastest over the next decade, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the profession projected to grow nearly 46% by 2031. Nearly 100 Million People Now Live in Primary Care Shortage Areas and the Numbers Are Rising According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 99 million Americans lack adequate access to primary care a nearly 20% jump from one year ago and shortages are more severe in rural areas. Rural communities have seen more than 130 of their hospitals close over the past decade, with nearly 20 closing in 2020 alone. A recent survey by AANP found nearly 50% of patients waited longer than one month and 25% report waited more than two months for a health care appointment in the last 12 months. NPs are poised to address this challenge, with almost 90% of these advanced practice providers trained to deliver primary care. NPs represent 1 in 4 primary care providers in rural practices, with an even greater percentage in the states that allow them to practice to the full extent of their education and clinical training. NPs Are Taking on Leadership Roles in Research and the Diagnosis and Treatment of Illnesses NPs served on the front lines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues as communities face a tridemic of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Consistent with AANP's long-standing goal of removing barriers to practice and expanding access to health care providers in every state, NPs are leading the effort to diagnose and treat illnesses of all types, as well as participating in research to develop new treatments and combat emerging diseases. More States Are Giving Patients Full and Direct Access to NPs More and more states are taking steps to expand access to primary care by eliminating outdated restrictions and giving patients full and direct access to NPs. This allows NPs to practice at the top of their education and clinical training and it allows patients to benefit more fully from the care NPs provide. Both New York and Kansas took action in 2022, and now 26 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories have Full Practice Authority (FPA) laws in place. States that have adopted FPA are ranked among those achieving the best health system performance, access to care and patient health outcomes in the nation. In the remainder of states, outdated licensure laws reduce or restrict patient access to NPs. States that have adopted FPA have better access to primary care, better health access for seniors and expanded patient choice. Mental Health NPs Are Increasing Access to Mental Health Services Today, 158 million people live in Mental Health Care Health Professional Shortage Areas. NPs are leading the charge to meet this demand for care and grow the mental health care workforce. Over the last 10 years, almost 100 new psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) programs have been added to schools of nursing in the U.S. PMHNP programs have produced more than 13,000 new providers since 2012, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Enrollment and Graduation Reports 2012-2022. A study published in 2022 found that the number of NPs treating Medicare beneficiaries for psychiatric and mental health conditions grew 162% between 2011 and 2019, compared with a 6% decrease in the number of psychiatrists treating Medicare patients. Results from this study also indicated, " in 2019, these NPs provided 34% and 51% of mental health office visits for [Medicare beneficiaries] in urban and rural areas with full scope of practice regulations," and the study concludes, "PMHNPs are a rapidly growing workforce that may be instrumental in improving mental health care access." The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) is the largest professional membership organization for nurse practitioners (NPs) of all specialties. It represents the interests of the more than 355,000 licensed NPs in the U.S. AANP provides legislative leadership at the local, state and national levels, advancing health policy; promoting excellence in practice, education and research; and establishing standards that best serve NPs' patients and other health care consumers. As The Voice of the Nurse Practitioner, AANP represents the interests of NPs as providers of high-quality, cost-effective, comprehensive, patient-centered health care. To locate an NP in your community, visit npfinder.com. For more information about NPs, visit aanp.org. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/five-health-care-trends-to-watch-in-2023-301725189.html SOURCE American Association of Nurse Practitioners The only AI and blockchain-based tool that removes the complexity and cost of valuing and transacting IP, allowing enterprises to achieve greater ROI for their intangible assets DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- IPwe Inc., a global innovation leader in AI and blockchain-based IP analytics software and services, announced the official launch of its Smart Intangible Asset Management (SIAM) platform today in Davos, Switzerland, during the week of the World Economic Forum. SIAM is a comprehensive SaaS solutionutilizing world-renowned IP datasets from Clarivate and IPwe's certified patent valuation algorithm and AIfor IP management, valuation, and transactions. IPwe announced the official launch of its Smart Intangible Asset Management (SIAM) platform today in Davos, Switzerland. Many businesses continue to struggle with the management of their IP assets, despite the fact that these intangible assets comprise approximately 90% of most companies' balance sheets. SIAM directly addresses these common issues of IP underutilization and undervaluation. By tokenizing IP assets and generating financial metrics with data-driven insights, SIAM helps businesses quickly understand their portfolio's value and prioritize IP management's focus on quality, growth, and ROI. With SIAM, all internal stakeholders are empowered with simple, consistent, relevant financial and performance metrics to further innovation. IPwe developed its dynamic NFT blockchain solutionIPwe Digital Assetsto operate underneath SIAM to increase efficiency, transparency, and trust. Through SIAM and IPwe Digital Assets, enterprise can now manage, value, and transact their portfolios as liquid financial assets, unlocking trillions of dollars in IP revenue generation. "IPwe's launch of SIAM and concurrent deployment of 25 million IPwe Digital Asset patent NFTs, are major milestones for IPwe. These revolutionary tools combined are real game-changers for the IP space, representing a true manifestation of the promise of blockchain for enterprise," said Leann Pinto, IPwe President. "SIAM marks a significant advancement in how IP assets are valued and transacted and how performance will be measured across the business. With our solutions, we are excited to finally enable enterprise to understand and realize the full potential of their portfolios and facilitate the growth of the global IP transaction market." IPwe recently entered into a strategic partnership with Clarivatea global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate innovationfurther strengthening its solutions with best-in-class IP datasets from Clarivate. With enhanced data accuracy, SIAM will allow customers to validate their portfolios with verified information and obtain stronger insights and valuation metrics to finally achieve comprehensive IP management. Gordon Samson, Chief Product Officer at Clarivate, said: "At Clarivate, we challenge the status quo and elevate the ideas that will benefit everyday life. NFT blockchain solutions play a critical role in the digital transformation of the IP industry. The tokenization of patents and the adoption of blockchain technology around smart intangible asset management will unlock the full potential of IP for enterprises. We are proud to partner with IPwe to provide our world-leading patent dataset for this endeavor and advance the success of organizations through transformative intelligence and our trusted partnership." "SIAM is the culmination of almost 15 years of R&D and significant investment. The systems that SIAM is built upon have been used in hundreds of millions of dollars of IP licensing transactions and billions of dollars of IP-related financings and acquisitions. No other IP analytics system can make and verify claims at anything approaching this level," said Erich Spangenberg, Founder of IPwe. Instead of waiting months for subjective written opinions on only a few assets and paying at least 5x the price to answer "What is this patent's worth?", SIAM finally enables every IP owner, investor, and other potential business partners to understand their IP portfolio's potential and decide how to pursue strategic, commercial, or other opportunities based on that potential." To request a SIAM demo, please contact [email protected]. Trademarks IPwe, Smart Intangible Asset Management, and IPwe Digital Assets are trademarks of IPwe. Contact- Mia Mixan, [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ipwe-launches-smart-intangible-asset-managementsaas-solution-for-ip-valuation-management-and-transactions-301724019.html SOURCE IPwe, Inc. Joining the cohort in Cambridge, MA, Perceiv AI will receive direct funding and mentorship from Merck, Northpond Ventures, and McKesson Ventures to advance its prognostic platform focused on multimodal data in neurodegenerative diseases. BOSTON, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Perceiv AI announced that the company has been selected by Merck (NYSE: MRK) for the inaugural Merck Digital Sciences Studio (MDSS) cohort, along with eight other early-stage biomedical startups from a pool of 152 applicants. The program started in November to fuel innovative digital technologies for drug discovery and development. "Being selected for the Merck MDSS program is a major accomplishment for Perceiv AI and a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team. This partnership is a huge step forward for us and we are grateful for this opportunity," said CEO and co-founder Dr. Christian Dansereau. "We are excited to work alongside such a renowned and respected company in the healthcare and life sciences industry and to use our cutting-edge AI technology to make a real impact in the field to advance pharma R&D innovation for clinical development, patient identification, clinical trial optimization, and trial de-risking." MDSS is a collaboration between Merck and the New Jersey Innovation Institute, with investments from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Northpond Ventures, and McKesson Ventures. The accelerator provides direct investment from Merck, access to powerful Azure Cloud computing, and technology support provided by Microsoft for Startups. Additionally, participating companies are provided opportunities to collaborate with discovery and clinical scientists at Merck for pilots, where appropriate. Perceiv AI intends to expand upon its proprietary multimodal prognostic platform ForesightTM through the program. The ForesightTM platform, which integrates longitudinal clinical data with imaging and genetics to forecast disease progression, supports the development of prognostic biomarkers for neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, for clinical trials and clinical use. Perceiv AI joins Andson Biotech, Deep Forest Sciences, Gesund.ai, Magna Labs, IndyGeneUS AI, SciMar ONE, Stem Pharm, and Pepper Bio in the 10-month accelerator program. The program will begin with the company's exploration of where its technology can augment Merck's existing focus areas with the goal of transitioning into a pilot project with Merck. This announcement comes on the heels of Perceiv AI's closing of its financial round at the end of last year. Along with strategic partners and investors like the one in this program, Perceiv AI will be able to further develop its ForesightTM platform. To learn more about Perceiv AI, please visit www.perceiv.ai. About Perceiv AI Perceiv AI is an AI-driven precision medicine company developing a powerful multimodal prognostic platform to forecast disease progression in age-related diseases like Alzheimer's. By providing a window into individual patients' disease progression, Perceiv AI aims to accelerate and de-risk the development of new therapies while enabling timelier diagnoses. About Merck Merck, also known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, strives to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company through a diverse and inclusive global workforce. For over 130 years, Merck has been using the power of leading-edge science to deliver innovative health solutions to save and improve the health and wellness of people and animals worldwide with important medicines and vaccines. About New Jersey Innovation Institute New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), a 501c3 subsidiary of NJIT, combines the resources of the university, strong industry and government relationships, and proven methods to drive innovation and deliver transformative products and services that make a direct impact on the economy and the health and welfare of its participants. To achieve this, NJII is organized into four divisions that help turn ideas into workable solutions: healthcare, entrepreneurship, defense and homeland security, and professional and corporate education. More at njii.com. About Northpond Ventures Northpond Ventures is a multi-billion-dollar science-driven venture capital firm based in Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; and Bethesda, MD. Northpond has consistently been named one of the most active lead life science investors by both Crunchbase and Silicon Valley Bank. It is deeply engaged in the academic ecosystem, having founded The Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at Harvard's Wyss Institute; launched the MIT-Northpond Program - Advancing Life Science & Engineering Innovation; and sponsored a prize for women entrepreneurs at MIT. It has led or co-led over 60 financings over the past several years and sits on the board of the vast majority of these businesses. Learn more at npv.vc. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/merck-selects-perceiv-ai-for-inaugural-digital-sciences-studio-cohort-301724187.html SOURCE Perceiv AI Kara Swisher, Vint Cerf, John Chambers, John Hennessy, Rene Haas, Sanjay Mehrotra, and Indermit Gill are just some of the names to join annual summit taking place on February 13, 2023 SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- TechSurge, Silicon Valley's Global Deep Tech Summit, announced today that it will host its annual event on February 13, 2023, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. TechSurge gathers some of the most prominent and creative minds within global Deep Tech business, investment, and academic research for a series of inspirational fireside chats and forward-looking panel discussions. TechSurge is hosted by Celesta Capital, a Deep Tech venture capital firm led by founding partners Nicholas Brathwaite, Michael Marks, Lip-Bu Tan, and Sriram Viswanathan. The summit brings together leaders and executives for a day-long program of keynote talks and panels examining opportunities and challenges in the development, commercialization, and acceleration of global Deep Tech. Panel discussions will include exploration of AI proliferation, web 3.0 evolution, the global chip wars, emerging innovations within high-tech/biotech convergence, as well as insights into the global macroeconomic and venture investment landscape, and much more. Deep Tech is a cross-cutting sector characterized by technology innovations built upon significant scientific discovery or engineering advancement. Deep Tech companies are often focused on newly integrating advanced technologies into major industries or developing cutting-edge performance improvements which enable mass adoption of emerging applications. "We believe this is a very exciting time for the Deep Tech space," said Sriram Viswanathan, Founding Managing Partner of Celesta Capital. "There has probably never been a period in history where we have seen a greater scale and pace of technology discovery, nor this level of need for new tech-enabled solutions. Celesta is thrilled to host the TechSurge Summit to provide a platform for the network of entrepreneurs, business leaders, technologists, and investors who will meet the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. We are thankful to our incredibly dynamic speakers that we're certain will leave attendees excited and optimistic about the future." TechSurge 2023 speakers include: Kara Swisher, Technology Journalist; Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer; Sanjay Mehrotra, President and CEO of Micron; James Rothman, Nobel Prize Recipient; Rene Haas, CEO of Arm; John Hennessy, Chairman of Alphabet; Ronnie Chatterji, White House CHIPS Act Coordinator; Daniel Dornbusch, CEO of Excision Bio; Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of World Bank; Navin Chaddha, Managing Director of Mayfield; Melanie Matheu, Founder of Prellis; Jaime Montemayor, Chief Digital Officer of General Mills; Kunle Olukotun, Professor, Stanford University and Co-founder of SambaNova Systems; Elissa Murphy, VP of Engineering, Google; Christian Mitchell, EVP, Chief Customer Officer & Head of Strategic Partnerships, Northwestern Mutual; Lareina Yee, Senior Partner and Technology Council Chair at McKinsey & Co.; among others still to be announced. This yearly event brings together thought leaders and disruptors who are dedicated to pushing boundaries across all areas of the deep technology industry. The 2023 Summit is sponsored by Deloitte and Wilson Sonsini. The summit is invite-only, however, invitations can be requested on the event's website. More information can be found at techsurgesummit.com. About Celesta Capital Celesta Capital is a leading deep technology venture capital firm that leverages synergies between leading centers of innovation in the US, India, and Israel to create globally impactful enterprises. The Celesta team, with deep operating experience, has built multi-billion-dollar businesses at companies such as Intel, Cisco, and Flex. The firm has funded over 90 technology companies globally and actively invests in the following verticals: software, semiconductors, intelligent systems, bioconvergence, and industry transformers. Learn more at http://celesta.vc. Media ContactJack Buttacavoli[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/techsurge-global-deep-tech-summit-announces-all-star-roster-of-speakers-from-tech-venture-and-government-301724893.html SOURCE Celesta Capital VASS continues with its growth and expansion plan within the United States. NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- VASS, a digital solutions leading company, has announced the acquisition of Copilot, a US-based consulting firm specializing in Salesforce, cloud and data consulting services. This new acquisition will strengthen VASS's North American expansion started last year as well as increase its capabilities in cloud, data analytics, automation, and user experience design solutions. Founded in 2018, Copilot's team, which includes Salesforce solution architects, data architects, and industry consultants, is recognized for its deep expertise in Salesforce holding more than 90 certifications, within the Financial Services, Real Estate, and Tech Startup verticals, Copilot is headquartered in New York, serving companies across North America. 'This acquisition will not only enrich our strong Salesforce capabilities but also will reinforce our presence in the financial services industry in North America' said Francisco Javier Latasa, CEO and Chairman of VASS. 'We are excited to work together with the talented Copilot team to continue driving growth and innovative solutions to our clients in the region.' 'We are excited to join forces with the VASS team, which will allow us to bring a wider array of skill sets and scale to what Copilot offers to its crew, clients, and partners.' said David Tebbi, Co-Founder of Copilot. Tom Lesnick, Copilot Co-Founder added, 'The synergy between Copilot and VASS will help us build next-level digital experiences for our clients. Our partnership instantly transforms Copilot into a global powerhouse in the Salesforce and data ecosystems, capable of servicing teams of all sizes and tech stacks.' With the acquisition of Copilot VASS completes its 8th add-on, adding distinct capabilities as well as transforming the company into a truly global IT service provider. 'Copilot adds a strong frontend in the US to the existing footprint of VASS, thus enabling the company to service North American customers with the full range of VASS' services from established delivery centers. This will lead to additional growth and diversification of the platform.' said Dr. Jorg Zirener, Senior Managing Director at One Equity Partners. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vass-acquires-us-software-consulting-company-copilot-301725095.html SOURCE VASS Orlando and Las Vegas land in the top five Travel & Tourism city destinations by GDP contribution in 2022 Cities Economic Impact Report analyzed 82 cities around the world DALLAS, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- New research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) reveals the French capital Paris, as the world's most powerful city destination in 2022 but predicts it will be overtaken by Beijing by 2032. The report, sponsored by Visa and researched in partnership with Oxford Economics, analyzed key indicators such as Travel & Tourism's contribution to GDP, employment and traveler spend. COVID-19 had a devastating impact on Travel & Tourism and in particular major cities around the world as countries closed their borders in response to the pandemic. As borders reopened, many leisure travelers swapped city visits for less-populated destinations such as coastal and rural destinations, but the latest research from WTTC shows that city holidays are back and growing in popularity. Paris takes the crown as the world's most powerful city destination with a Travel & Tourism sector worth almost $36 billion in 2022, in terms of direct GDP contribution to the city. Over the next 10 years, WTTC predicts it will drop down to third place, although its value will rise to over $49 billion. Often dubbed the theme park capital of the world, Orlando's Travel & Tourism sector was valued at $31 billion in 2022, but despite predictions suggesting it will grow by almost 50% to $45 billion by 2032, it will drop down to become the fourth biggest city destination. Las Vegas is the only city in the top 10 list that holds its place, firmly staying as the 5th largest city destination. Last year, Las Vegas's Travel & Tourism sector was worth nearly $23 billion and is predicted to grow to over $36 billion by 2032. Beijing is currently the second biggest city destination in the world with a Travel & Tourism sector worth nearly $33 billion. However, WTTC predicts it will leapfrog Paris within the next 10 years, growing to a staggering $77 billion. China's national Travel & Tourism sector has seen phenomenal growth over the last decade as the country has invested in new hotels, transport infrastructure and new tourist destinations. This investment in Travel & Tourism sees Shanghai's sector, worth nearly $30 billion last year, predicted to more than double to almost $71 billion by 2032, to become the world's second most powerful city destination. Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: "Major cities such as London, Paris and New York will remain global powerhouses but over the next few years, Beijing, Shanghai, and Macau will be moving up the list of top city destinations. "Tourists will always have favorite cities that they will return to, but as other countries prioritize Travel & Tourism, we are going to see new and emerging destinations challenging the traditional favorites." Other cities outside the top 10 showing promising growth as emerging destinations include the Polish capital of Warsaw which has seen a 14.4% increase in its GDP contribution in 2022 versus 2019. Sanya, the Chinese coastal city which has become a popular tourist destination in recent years as holidaymakers visited its stunning beaches witnessed a 10.2% growth during that same period. Its Travel & Tourism sector represents an incredible 43.6% of the city's total economy. Macau's Travel & Tourism sector represents 40.4% of the city's total economy. Orlando and Las Vegas are the only cities currently in the top 10 most powerful city destinations based on the sector's value, which rely heavily on the sector as a share of the city's overall economy. Travel & Tourism represents 20.4% of Orlando's economy and 16.3% of Las Vegas's economy. In comparison, Paris's Travel & Tourism sector represents just 3.5% of the capital's economy in 2022. The top ten cities with the biggest international traveler spend in 2022 were: Dubai - $29.42BN Doha - $16.79BN London - $16.07BN Macau - $15.58BN Amsterdam - $13.59BN Istanbul - $13.13BN Barcelona - $12.73BN New York - $12.45BN Singapore - $10.97BN Paris - $9.76BN In 2032, WTTC predicts the top ten cities with the biggest international traveler spend will become: Hong Kong - $52.06BN (up 38 places from 2022) Macau - $43.14BN (up two places from 2022) Dubai - $42.98BN (down two places from 2022) Singapore - $37.43BN (up five places from 2022) Bangkok - $33.45BN (up seven places from 2022) Doha - $31.63BN (down four places from 2022) Tokyo $25.44BN (up 30 places from 2022) New York $21.73BN (no change from 2022) Amsterdam $21.53BN (down four places from 2022) Shanghai - $21.3BN (up 11 places from 2022) Over the next decade, Travel & Tourism is on track to become a key driver of economic growth once again, with faster GDP growth than other sectors, generating 126 million new jobs around the world. To access the WTTC report sponsored by Visa, please visit wttc.org About the World Travel & Tourism Council The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) represents the global travel & tourism private sector. Members include 200 CEOs, Chairs and Presidents of the world's leading travel & tourism companies from all geographies covering all industries. For more than 30 years, WTTC has been committed to raising the awareness of governments and the public of the economic and social significance of the travel & tourism sector. Editors Notes Top Ten Cities Based on Direct Travel & Tourism GDP in real terms for 2022: Paris - $35.65BN Beijing - $32.62BN Orlando - $31.1BN Shanghai - $29.69BN Las Vegas - $22.99BN New York - $21.09BN Tokyo - $17.97BN Mexico City - $16.76BN London - $14.92BN Guangzhou - $13.15BN Top Ten Cities Based on Predicted Direct Travel & Tourism GDP in real terms for 2032: Beijing - $77.28BN (up one place from 2022) Shanghai - $70.88BN (up two places from 2022) Paris - $49.15BN (down two places from 2022) Orlando - $45BN (down one place from 2022) Las Vegas - $36.55BN (no change from 2022) Guangzhou - $34.94BN (up four places from 2022) New York - $34.28BN (down one place from 2022) Macau - $33.33BN (up four places from 2022) Bangkok - $31.52BN (up eight places from 2022) Tokyo - $29.94BN (down three places from 2022) View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wttc-reveals-paris-as-the-worlds-most-powerful-city-destination-301724833.html SOURCE World Travel & Tourism Council HOLLY ENERGY PARTNERS LP 0001283140 false 0001283140 2023-01-13 2023-01-18 UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 ___________________ FORM 8-K CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): January 18, 2023 ( ) ___________________ HOLLY ENERGY PARTNERS, L.P. (Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter) Delaware 001-32225 20-0833098 (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation) (Commission File Number) (I.R.S. Employer Identification Number) 2828 N. Harwood, Suite 1300 Dallas Texas 75201 (Address of principal executive offices) (Zip code) Registrants telephone number, including area code: ( 214 ) 871-3555 Not applicable (Former name or former address, if changed since last report) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions: Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) Securities registered pursuant to 12(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: Title of each class Trading Symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered Common Limited Partner Units HEP New York Stock Exchange Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an emerging growth company as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act of 1933 (230.405 of this chapter) or Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (240.12b-2 of this chapter). Emerging growth company If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers. On January 13, 2023, the Board of Directors (the Board) of Holly Logistics Services, L.L.C. (the Company), the general partner of the general partner of Holly Energy Partners, L.P. (the Partnership) appointed Robert Jamieson as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Company, effective January 18, 2023. In this newly created executive role, Mr. Jamieson will oversee the operations, project management and engineering, integrity management, right-of-way and reliability engineering functions. Mr. Jamieson, 58, served as Vice President, Pipeline Operations of the Company from the time he joined the Company in March 2013 until the effective date of his promotion to the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Jamieson held various roles of increasing responsibility in engineering and plant and pipeline operations over a 25 year period at Eagle Rock Energy Partners, L.P., Enterprise Products Partners L.P., Williams Energy Partners LP (now known as Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P.), and TC Energy Corporation (formerly known as TransCanada Corporation). Mr. Jamiesons 2023 compensation is comprised of: (i) a base salary of $343,365 effective as of January 18, 2023, (ii) an annual cash incentive compensation target bonus of 45% of his base salary earnings (with a maximum limit of 90% of his base salary earnings), for the 2023 performance period that commenced on October 1, 2022 and ends on September 30, 2023, such bonus to be based on the Partnerships performance and his individual performance, and (iii) a 2023 annual long-term incentive award recommended by the Compensation Committee of the Board, approved by the Board and granted pursuant to the Partnerships long-term incentive plan on October 25, 2022 with a grant date value of $315,000 comprised of one-third cash incentive, one-third phantom units and one-third performance share units. The cash incentive and phantom unit awards vest in three equal annual installments on the anniversary of their grant date and the performance share unit award vests upon the attainment of pre-established performance targets over a three-year performance period. All long-term incentive awards are subject to Mr. Jamiesons continued employment with the Company. Mr. Jamieson is a party to the Partnerships previously disclosed form of Change in Control Agreement and Indemnification Agreement, and is eligible for the same plans, policies and programs offered and available to other executive-level employees of the Company. There are no arrangements or understandings between Mr. Jamieson and any other person pursuant to which Mr. Jamieson was named Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Jamieson does not have any family relationship with any director or executive officer of the Company or any person nominated or chosen by the Company to become a director or executive officer. There are no transactions in which Mr. Jamieson has an interest requiring disclosure under Item 404(a) of Regulation S-K. SIGNATURE Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized. HOLLY ENERGY PARTNERS, L.P. By: HEP LOGISTICS HOLDINGS, L.P., its General Partner By: HOLLY LOGISTIC SERVICES, L.L.C., its General Partner By: /s/ Vaishali S. Bhatia Name: Vaishali S. Bhatia Title: Senior Vice President and General Counsel Date: January 18, 2023 ATTACHMENTS / EXHIBITS XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION SCHEMA DOCUMENT XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION DEFINITION LINKBASE DOCUMENT XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION LABEL LINKBASE DOCUMENT XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION PRESENTATION LINKBASE DOCUMENT IDEA: R1.htm IDEA: hep-20230113_htm.xml IDEA: Financial_Report.xlsx IDEA: FilingSummary.xml IDEA: MetaLinks.json UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 SCHEDULE 13G Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Amendment No. 1)* Omega Flex, Inc (Name of Issuer) Common Stock, par value $0.01 per share (Title of Class of Securities) 682095104 (CUSIP Number) December 31, 2022 (Date of Event which Requires Filing of this Statement) Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed: [X] Rule 13d-1(b) [ ] Rule 13d-1(c) [ ] Rule 13d-1(d) * The remainder of this cover page shall be filled out for a reporting person's initial filing on this form with respect to the subject class of securities, and for any subsequent amendment containing information which would alter the disclosures provided in a prior cover page. The information required in the remainder of this cover page shall not be deemed to be "filed" for the purpose of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Act") or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that section of the Act but shall be subject to all other provisions of the Act (however, see Instructions). (Tribune News Service) A threat made to staff at Creech Air Force Base on Tuesday led to U.S. Highway 95 being closed near Indian Springs, Nev. At around 4 p.m., a man pulled up to the base and made verbal threats toward staff. Las Vegas police took the man into custody but several suspicious items were found in the mans vehicle, according to Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Andrew Kelvington. He said a perimeter was set up around the vehicle that affected traffic on U.S. 95. Kelvington said the Department of Defense was making sure the vehicle was safe. The Regional Transportation Commission said U.S. 95 was closed in both directions at Indian Springs. There is no time frame for when the north and southbound 95 lanes will be open, Kelvington said in a text message around 8:15 p.m. No further information was available. dwilson@reviewjournal.com 2023 Las Vegas Review-Journal. Visit reviewjournal.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. CAMP ZAMA, Japan An aerial armada of helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft from the U.S. Army and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force took its 42nd annual lap around Tokyo Bay on Tuesday, a tradition called First Flight. About two dozen aircraft left Camp Zama, headquarters of U.S. Army Japan, and Japans Camp Kisarazu around 2:15 p.m., flew in formation over Kanagawa prefecture, including the cities of Yokohama and Kawasaki, crossed to the east side of Tokyo Bay and returned home by 3:45 p.m. The commander of U.S. Army Japan, Maj. Gen. Joel Vowell, took in the view from one of two Army UH-60L Black Hawks. The Ground Self-Defense Force sent most of the aircraft, including MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors and long-body CH-47 Chinook helicopters, and led the way. This is a symbol of starting the new year for two reasons, Vowell told Stars and Stripes after the flight. Its a symbol of good luck working together, and just like the first jump for the paratroopers, it wishes a safe start to the new year. The annual flight, which began in 1981, also provides practice for soldiers working through a language barrier to coordinate flights involving aircraft from both countries, said Lt. Col. Courtney Kiluk, commander of U.S. Army Aviation Battalion Japan. Making these partnerships, these relationships, with our Japanese counterparts is one of the best experiences youre going to get in the Army, she said after the flight. I dont think theres a better aviation experience in the Army than U.S. Army Japan. The flight was the first in three years in which aircraft numbers were not limited by COVID-19. The pandemic, which began in March 2020, put a damper on many joint exercises by the Army and its Japanese counterparts, Vowell said. Last year when we did this, it was very constrained, he said. There was no face to face and so there were some video calls and telephone calls, and it was harder to do the coordination up front. As coronavirus restrictions eased, coordinating exercises with the Japanese armed forces became easier, Vowell said. Its caused us to be less interoperable, he said. The military often uses the word interoperability to describe the ability of a countrys armed forces to use another countrys training methods and military equipment. Im proud that weve mostly moved past that and were getting back to that normalcy that we need to be able to understand how we can support missions, fight and train together, Vowell said. Meeting mission requirements has also become easier as the pandemic restrictions recede, he said. This battalion is punching way above their weight, Vowell said. The missions they support throughout the year extend beyond just Japan. They fly missions to Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia, so the aviation unit does a lot more than just support and stay interoperable with Japan. The aviation battalion flies missions throughout the Pacific in helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Our reach is unbelievable, but its because these guys work so hard every single day, Kiluk said. The Army will teach you how to be a pilot or a crew chief and those are skills that you can take beyond your Army career, but theres no other place like this. CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea U.S. forces were involved in stopping an unauthorized drone flying Tuesday near a military outpost that hosts a missile-defense system, an Eighth Army spokesman said. U.S. and South Korean troops detected an unmanned aerial vehicle flying near Forward Operating Site Carroll, near Camp Carroll in Seongju County, roughly 130 miles south of Seoul, Eighth Army spokesman Lt. Col. Neil Penttila wrote in an email Wednesday to Stars and Stripes. The troops swiftly acted to deny its entry" and an investigation is ongoing, he said. The site houses a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, also known as THAAD. The United States deployed the anti-missile battery to South Korea in 2017 as a defense against threats from North Korea, U.S. Forces Korea said at the time. A U.S. soldier at the site spotted the drone at 12:54 p.m. Tuesday, according to a Yonhap News report the next day that cited South Korean military officials. The U.S. military used a jamming system to intercept the drone, causing it to possibly crash, the officials reportedly said. A search for the drone was underway Wednesday but military officials do not believe it originated in North Korea, according to Yonhaps report. South Koreas military is attuned to drone incursions after North Korea sent five of them into the countrys airspace on Dec. 26. The South scrambled fighter jets and deployed helicopters to northern Seoul and the western coast, where the drones were spotted. None of the drones were captured and at least one is believed to have returned to North Korea, the Ministry of National Defense said last month. South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time apologized for failing to capture any of the drones and said it was difficult tracking them due to their small size. The South Korean military also responded to reports Dec. 27 of a possible drone near Seongmo Island in the northeast. Incheon city issued an automated text alert, Yonhap reported on the same day, but hours later the South Korean military determined the object was a flock of birds. (Tribune News Service) A former U.S. Marine linked to white supremacy who allegedly conspired to commit mass murder and sexual assault entered guilty pleas in federal court Tuesday for his role in a scheme to set up illegal firearm purchases through a New York police officer. Matthew Belanger, 25, entered a plea of guilty before U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake to one count of conspiring to make a false statement to a federal firearm licensee and one count of making a false material statement during the purchase of a firearm. Belanger joined the Marines in August 2018 and was stationed at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe from October 2019 to May 2021. Belanger, scheduled to be sentenced by Otake at 9 a.m. June 6, faces up to five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 plus three years of federal probation on the first count and up to 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000 plus three years of federal probation on the second count. Belanger's Atlanta attorney, Katryna Lyn Spearman, did not immediately reply to Honolulu Star-Advertiser requests for comment. Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig S. Nolan declined comment. In exchange for his guilty pleas, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a third count of making a false statement of required information to a federal firearm licensee. According to the plea agreement filed Tuesday, during April and May 2020, Belanger entered into an agreement using a straw man that required a police officer from Long Island, N.Y., to buy a Luger 9-mm pistol for Belanger. On March 23, 2019, court documents show, Belanger made the following statement in a conversation via Facebook direct message: "Okay so [officer] is down for being my gun plug ...I showed him what the safe act has done to guns and what he is capable of getting ...So if you boys have any ideas for guns he can get em and when we move have em ready to go for us." When the gun was purchased on May 20, 2020, by someone identified by federal authorities as "Associated 1," Belanger was in Hawaii while the police officer was at Fred's Gun Shop in Port Jefferson, N.Y., according to federal court documents. Both Belanger and "Associate 1" knew using a straw man to buy a gun was a federal offense. On April 21, 2020, Belanger texted "Associate 1" to buy the gun and sent him $975 via Cash App to complete the purchase. While serving at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Belanger allegedly plotted mass murder and sexual assault to "decrease the number of minority residents" in the United States as part of his membership in a far-right neo-Nazi group called Rapekrieg. Belanger has not been charged with crimes related to his alleged membership in the group. He received an "other than honorable" discharge from the Marine Corps in May 2021 for extremist activity after he was investigated by the military and the FBI. He left Hawaii and moved back to New York. Federal prosecutors allege there is also "substantial evidence" that he was planning an attack on a synagogue in New York, has "engaged in live exercises to practice such an attack" and "made plans to engage in widespread homicide and sexual assaults to decrease the number of minority residents in the United States." A July 14 court memo by an FBI agent with Joint Terrorism Task Force Pacific also alleges Belanger intended to rape "white women to increase the production of white children." On Oct. 20, 2020, Marine Corps and FBI officials searched his barracks and seized a laptop and two cellphones. FBI agents allegedly recovered "1,950 images, videos and documents related to white power groups, Nazi literature, brutality towards the Jewish community, brutality towards women, rape, mass murderers," along with "violent uncensored executions and/or rape " and "previous mass murderers such as Dylan Roof." Prosecutors say they also found "instructional documents relating to building explosives and/or illegal firearms" and "communications related to illegally obtained firearms." A Rapekrieg manifesto cited by federal prosecutors speaks approvingly of "rape ideology" as an "effective tool" against the group's supposed enemies. Belanger also allegedly created a Twitter account of a fictitious gay Jewish man named "Israel Shillingstein," which he told fellow Rapekrieg members was meant to make derogatory statements about Black people in order to generate racial animosity between groups. In one of the communications investigators obtained regarding the alleged plot of attack against the synagogue, one of Belanger's associates said, "before you do this, delete all your social media, destroy your hard drives and any evidence that would suggest your motive if you get caught," prosecutors said. (c)2023 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Visit The Honolulu Star-Advertiser at www.staradvertiser.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. NAHA, Okinawa A group of survivors of World War II combat on Okinawa issued a statement recently opposing Japans military buildup in the Nansei Islands to counter Chinas increasing military presence in the South and East China seas. Moto zen gakuto no kai, or group of all the ex-students who participated in the war, expressed fears that Okinawa may again be drawn into war as Japan sites missile batteries and builds new bases throughout the Nansei chain, the groups secretary, Seisaburo Miyagi, 94, told Stars and Stripes at his Naha home Wednesday. The Nansei chain includes Okinawa and stretches from Kyushu, the southernmost of Japans four main islands, to near Taiwan. In 1945, students from 21 teachers schools, junior high schools and girls schools in Okinawa prefecture were ordered into wartime service, according to a report Tuesday in the Mainchi newspaper. The survivors group called on Japan to directly talk with neighboring countries and regions and strive to build peace with diplomacy while emphasizing the war-renouncing Constitution of Japan, based on remorse and lessons learned from its war of aggression, according to the Jan. 12 statement. The group said Japans military buildup is raising tensions in the region and resembles the run-up to World War II, according to the statement. The 82-day Battle of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945. More than 14,000 Americans, about 110,000 Japanese troops and at least 140,000 Okinawan civilians were killed during or after the fighting. Moto zen gakuto no kai was founded in 2018 by the remaining members of Japans former student corps, who were compelled to support military operations and nurse wounded soldiers in the wars waning days, Miyagi said. Nearly 2,000 of them died in the fighting. Its members have worked to educate others about the costs of war, the statement said. A students memorial was erected in March 2017 at Okinawa Peace Memorial Park in Itoman city, Miyagi said. He said the group has 24 board members, but he did not know how many survivors are left in the group. The Chinese military presence is increasing in the seas east of the island chain and around Taiwan with naval drills, overflights and transits of key, narrow straits that give way to the Pacific Ocean. In response, Japan has deployed troops to Yonaguni Island, about 70 miles off Taiwans eastern coast, Miyako Island and two spots on Amami Oshima. Bases are being built on Ishigaki Island, roughly 150 miles east of Taiwan, and on Mageshima, 20 miles south of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japans four main islands. Japans Ministry of Defense has also announced plans to place a surface-to-air missile unit on Yonaguni, joining Amami Oshima, Miyako and Ishigaki as sites for surface-to-air missile defense. The Ishigaki battery may be operational by April 1. Tokyo approved a record defense budget last month of about $51.4 billion for fiscal year 2023 that emphasized counterstrike capabilities and strengthened standoff air and missile defense. Kazakhstan has changed its entry rules for foreigners, in a move that is expected to make entering and staying in the country much harder for Russians fleeing military conscription and other repercussions of President Vladimir Putins war against Ukraine. Under the new rules, expected to come into force on Jan. 26, visitors who do not require a visa because they come from countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Russia, will be prohibited from staying in Kazakhstan for more than 90 days in a 180-day period. Kazakhstan became one of the main destinations for Russians fleeing after Putin announced a partial military mobilization in September, which conscripted 300,000 reinforcements to fight in Ukraine. According to Kazakhstans Interior Ministry, about 100,000 Russians arrived in the country in the first six days following Putins Sept. 21 mobilization announcement. Many Russians then left Kazakhstan for other destinations, but the new rules seem intended to force those who have stayed to obtain residence permits. The new restrictions will target visitors who previously circumvented Kazakhstans migration rules through so-called visa runs by crossing Kazakhstans borders and returning immediately, effectively resetting the clock on the 90-day maximum visa-free stay. Foreigners who arrived in Kazakhstan with a visa or who were issued temporary residence permits will not be affected by the new rules. This measure will affect the Russians the most, Dionis Cenusa, a political analyst, wrote on Twitter. This revision of the visa-free regime will make it possible to prevent the prolonged stay of Russians without a residence permit in Kazakhstan. Cenusa said he believed the Kazakh government was working to prevent Russian migrants from becoming a burden on public resources. If they are not integrated into the legal and labor sphere, they could become a future social problem, he wrote. It was unclear if the Kremlin had any role in requesting the changes. Moscow has faced questions recently about how to handle a historic outflow of its citizens that began even before the military mobilization, as Western sanctions over the war started making life uncomfortable curtailing flights to international destinations and cutting off many financial transactions. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, Russias lower house of parliament, recently suggested punishing Russians who had left the country and criticized the war, potentially by confiscating their property. The scoundrels who have left live comfortably thanks to our country, Volodin posted on his Telegram channel. But the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, urged caution. They are all our citizens, all equally, and all could have different reasons for leaving, Peskov said, according to the Tass news agency. He added, This is a very difficult topic. Kazakhstan was traditionally one of Russias closest allies. But since the invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan has signaled its desire for distance from Moscow and to pursue closer ties with China, Turkey and the West. In recent months, Kazakh officials have become more outspoken on the war in Ukraine. While Russia has sought to put pressure on Europes oil and gas supplies, Astana has made moves to expand its energy cooperation with the European Union and the West. And in several votes about the war at the United Nations, Kazakhstan chose to abstain rather than side with Russia. And in June, during the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that his country did not intend to recognize the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics in eastern Ukraine, breakaway states loyal to Moscow. More recently, Tokayev has condemned Putins claimed annexation of four regions of Ukraine. As waves of Russians entered Kazakhstan in the wake of the September mobilization, Tokayev not only promised to provide them humanitarian assistance but said publicly that those fleeing had been forced to leave Russia due to a hopeless situation. But Tuesdays announcement of the new entry restrictions appeared to mark a bit of calibration, with Tokayev potentially adopting a more cautious approach. In October, Kazakhstans Central Bank reported that the volume of money transfers from Russia to Kazakhstan had increased 13 times compared to the same period a year earlier. KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany Parents and students at Defense Department schools have the opportunity to share their opinions on the quality of education, areas needing improvement and other topics in an online, worldwide survey. The Stakeholder Feedback Survey was launched Tuesday for parents and sponsors of children enrolled in DOD schools from pre-kindergarten through grade 12, the Department of Defense Education Activity announced this week. It will be available through Feb. 4. Students in grades 4 to 12, school-level educators and support staff, both full- and part-time but excluding substitutes, will be surveyed in the coming weeks, DODEA officials said. Feedback from the questionnaire provides us with valuable information to direct our efforts at continuous improvement, Thomas Brady, DODEA director, said in a statement. The anonymous survey is voluntary and takes about 15 minutes to complete. Topics include academic instruction; school psychological support services; whether parents feel welcomed and their children feel cared for at their school; customer satisfaction; and diversity. Most of the survey is multiple choice format. Some areas allow for a written response, such as whether ones child has experienced bias or discrimination at school. Parents are given the options of A or B when asked what grade they would give their childs school. Separate spaces are included for messages to school staff, district leadership and DODEA leadership. The results will be available later this year on DODEAs website, the agency said. Carolyn Pickering, a parent with two students at DOD schools on Camp Humphreys, South Korea, said its important for parents to take the survey, particularly given the size of DODEA and the largely transient community it serves. Without feedback DODEA doesnt know what grades they are earning and where to improve their organizational performance, she said. Pickering advised other parents to not only think about today but about the registration process, how you were welcomed, how the transition went, how your ongoing interactions with the school are, your child (or childrens) teachers, the curriculum, and everything and anything else. Respondents will receive a link to complete a survey using their DODEA Student Information System email address. Parents also can access the survey link at: https://www.dodea.edu/datacenter/2023-sfs.cfm. Those with more than one child in school may fill out more than one survey. The last survey seeking feedback from DODEA stakeholders was in 2021. As the global glitterati schmoozes in Davos, Switzerland, there is one country whose absence is notable, if not a surprise. Russian officials are effectively persona non grata at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain town, while Ukrainian figures like first lady Olena Zelenska speak to packed houses. The symbolism is clear. Russia's invasion of Ukraine almost 11 months ago made President Vladimir Putin and his allies toxic to this global elite. Russia has been showered with sanctions and export controls that seek to cut them off from the global economy, using a kind of systematic might to hinder the Kremlin's war efforts and punish Putin's allies. But in the real world, has it actually worked? Far away from the parties in Davos, Putin on Tuesday used new government data to paint a surprisingly rosy picture of Russia's economy. "The actual dynamics of the economy turned out to be better than many expert forecasts," he said, staring at the screen during a virtual meeting on the economy. Citing data from the Ministry of Economic Development, Putin said that the gross domestic product of Russia had declined between January and November 2022 but only by 2.1 percent. He noted that "some of our experts, not to mention foreign experts, predicted a decline of 10 percent, 15 percent and even 20 percent." Initial calculations suggested that Russia's economy had shrunk by 2.5 percent over the entire 2022, the Russian president said significantly better than the 33 percent contraction in Ukraine's economy last year. "Our task is to support and consolidate this positive trend," Putin added. For many outside of Russia, these numbers are confounding. The scale of economic firepower directed at Russia since Feb. 24 has been unprecedented for a large country, with the country's banks banned from the Belgium-based SWIFT messaging system used in international transactions and sanctions on its central bank. But Russian data does seem to suggest that the scale of the impact was less severe than many expected. Though Putin may not be at Davos, Russia is not completely cut off from the world either. The country's current account balance effectively a record of its trade with the rest of the world surged over the past year in a way that would have implied a boom year in any normal time. It's possible that Russian data is faulty, of course. But many living in Russia or visiting have pointed out that life has continued roughly as normal, even if the departed McDonald's has been replaced with a local burger chain ("Tasty and that's it") and Western luxury goods purchases require a network of foreign buyers. "If this is a crisis for Russia which it is it's nothing like the turmoil of the early 1990s when the state, society and economy were all collapsing at the same time," Alexander Titov, a Russian emigre and lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, wrote for the Conversation after a recent return home. There was disruption, Titov wrote, but it was mild even compared to what was seen early in the pandemic. "There's no shortages, even of western goods such as whisky the supermarket shelves are fully stocked," he wrote. Does this mean that sanctions haven't worked? The short answer is no but it's more complicated than that. Most importantly, remember that Western sanctions and export controls aren't primarily designed to keep bottles of Johnnie Walker off a St. Petersburg shelf (though perhaps that might be a welcome secondary effect): They are designed to hinder Russia's war effort in Ukraine. As The Washington Post's Catherine Belton and Robyn Dixon reported late last year, scratch the surface of Russia's economy and you'll find that sanctions and other measures were hitting Russia where it hurt, "exacerbating equipment shortages for its army and hampering its ability to launch any new ground offensive or build new missiles, economists and Russian business executives said." It's true much of the brunt of sanctions has been cushioned by Russia's still-enormous energy exports, hence the positive accounts balance. But as Putin tried to use these exports to pressure and punish Europe, their power has been blunted. A new price cap that will soon go into effect looks set to hinder Russian exports further. "Russia is still an energy power but its role has dramatically changed," Vladimir Milov, former Russian deputy energy minister now living abroad, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "Russia will have a smaller market share in oil and gas, it will make less profit and it has lost some of its geopolitical leverage as well." That means less income for the Russian state going forward, even as its expenditure surges due to the invasion of Ukraine. Moscow posted a budget deficit of roughly $47.3 billion in 2022, according to official announcements at roughly 2.3 percent of GDP, that's one of the worst financial years in the country's history. Yes, that's a lower deficit than the United States. But Russia doesn't have a globally sought currency like the U.S. dollar, so it can't just print more money without consequences. As its own sanctions on U.S. citizens have shown, Russia doesn't have a ton of leverage in the worldwide economy other than the diminishing power afforded by oil and gas. In the long view, things don't look rosy for Russia's economy. Putin is correct that many predicted things would be far worse in 2022 some economists told The Washington Post in March that they feared Russia's economy could collapse, causing misery to ordinary civilians far outside Kremlin walls and unknown global consequences. But Putin is wrong if he assumes a "positive trend" can easily be continued in the year ahead. The trajectory is more likely headed the other way. It's very possible that sanctions will bite harder, revenue from oil and gas will decline further, the deficit will go deeper, and Russia's battlefield resources will be stretched to breaking point. How quickly that happens will depend on persistence in the West, where lax enforcement and deliberate evasion have helped Russia over the past year. That's perhaps why Ukrainian officials and their supporters are at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where they are pushing against fatigue and apathy among allies. The Russian economy's fate may not be decided in Putin's embattled Moscow, nor even on the battlefield in the Donbas, but over canapes and cocktails in Davos. KHARKIV, Ukraine A 30-year-old former British military captain faced a personal crossroads several months before Russia invaded Ukraine, as he contemplated a desk job at a security firm and a future spent discussing trifles with his sisters and mother in their hometown in southeastern England. He was still struggling with the routines of civilian life when the chance to volunteer to defend Ukraine offered an alternate path. Now, after nearly getting killed in an artillery barrage in Bakhmut, the former officer, who is not being identified for safety reasons, said he is "happier than I have ever been." The Ukrainian fight has given him purpose, and he is thrilled by the danger. "This war has been a terrible, terrible thing for Ukraine," he said in a phone interview last month. "But the last nine months have been the best, most enjoyable of my life. I can't go sit in an office and do PowerPoint for the next 50 years." "There's a part of me that's doing it for the right reasons, and there's part of me that's doing it for the violence," the British veteran said. "It's kind of a bit of both." The complex motivations that pulled him to the blood-soaked trenches of Ukraine reflect the experiences of thousands who answered President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appeal for volunteer fighters after Russia invaded last February. Some went to defend democracy, others to escape their own demons. An estimated 1,000 to 3,000 such foreign fighters are believed to be active, with most serving in three battalions of the International Legion, according to analysts and academics monitoring them, who stressed that the numbers were rough approximations. The Ukrainian military did not reply to requests for details about the volunteers, or estimates of their numbers. Compared with the battlefield contributions of hundreds of thousands of regular Ukrainian troops, the impact of the volunteers is relatively small. But the foreign fighters draw outsize attention in the West, especially when killed or captured, and they raise a thicket of uncomfortable legal, moral and political questions for Ukraine and for the volunteers' home governments. The willingness of tens of thousands to answer Zelenskyy's call speaks to the resonance of Ukraine's cause: a country aspiring to be a free and democratic member of the European Union fighting for survival against a totalitarian regime with a history of violently violating the territorial sovereignty of its neighbors. But some volunteer fighters are breaking the laws of their home countries to fight in Ukraine, and experts have noted a risk that U.S. volunteers could be violating the Neutrality Act, a law enacted in 1794 that intended to prohibit U.S. citizens from potentially embroiling the country in foreign wars. Even if legal, the presence of Western fighters in Ukraine cuts against the concerted effort by the Biden administration and its NATO allies to avoid direct involvement in Russia's war. It is also not clear who is responsible for these volunteer soldiers during and after their dangerous combat service. The choice of many troubled veterans to volunteer in Ukraine also suggests a failure by their own governments to address past trauma and to reintegrate them into civilian life, experts said. Those who are not professional soldiers have posed challenges for Ukraine's military, which has found some fighters to be more cumbersome than helpful. Ukrainian officials said last spring that 20,000 people from more than 50 different countries had volunteered. But the overwhelming majority appear to have returned home before summer, according to academics studying their involvement and interviews with more than a dozen foreign fighters. Many seemed more interested in posing for Instagram than committing to the drudgery of trench warfare. Others seemed too eager to live out fantasies from the Call of Duty video game. And some have faced more serious allegations of theft or sexual assault, or were found to be fleeing criminal cases at home. The realities of the war unnerved many initial volunteers. The intensity of the fighting, and high likelihood of death, stunned even many experienced Western soldiers who found themselves in an artillery war without the air support they relied on in Iraq and Afghanistan. But for many of the fighters, particularly veterans struggling to integrate back into civilian life, the horrors of bloodshed abroad in Ukraine still proved more attractive than the malaise of peace at home. Hundreds of these better-trained volunteers are also integrated into smaller units that operate independently of the International Legion. These include groups led by longtime regional opponents of Moscow, such as the Georgian Legion and Chechen battalions, as well as other units led by Westerners, with names like Alpha, Phalanx and the Norman Brigade. The Quebec-born commander of the volunteer Norman Brigade, who goes by the call sign "Hrulf," said his unit has included fighters from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Jordan, Egypt and Norway, in addition to the United States, Canada and Britain. Before the war, Hrulf, whom The Washington Post is identifying only by his call sign for security reasons, thought that "Russians and Ukrainians were one people, like brothers and sisters," he said. Now, he has a Ukrainian wife and a daughter and is fully committed to Kyiv's cause. "There's no turning back," he said. Joseph Hildebrand, 33, was tilling his family farm in the fields of Saskatchewan, harvesting lentils and durum wheat and tending to his cows, having assured his wife he had made peace with giving up his career in the Canadian military, which included two tours in Afghanistan. In fact, he had not. "He literally could not handle it," Hildebrand's widow, Carissa, said. "He started talking to his friends who went over and just felt he had to do it. It just bothered his soul." Whatever their motivations, the service and sacrifice of foreign fighters is real: Roughly 100 have died and more than 1,000 have been wounded, according to Kacper Rekawek, a researcher at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo. Hildebrand was killed in combat in Bakhmut, and it took his family more than five weeks to recover his body. A former Canadian paratrooper and close friend of Hildebrand's said he had been sent on a "suicide mission." The paratrooper, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Ukrainian government, voiced frustration that the Ukrainian forces were not better prepared. "There are really big issues because a lot of these guys are not trained soldiers," the paratrooper said last month as he was leaving Ukraine after four months of fighting. "It's really hard for me to watch. There's a lot of panic. There's a terrible lack of training." Other volunteers said the criticism of the Ukrainians was unfair. "My biggest frustration has been with foreign fighters who complain about, 'They're sending us on suicide missions.' Yeah, bro: What do you think war is?" said Jason Mann, 37, an American serving in a group called Phalanx. Mann served in Afghanistan, earned a computer science degree at Columbia University and worked as a software engineer at Google before coming to Ukraine. Another British volunteer in Ukraine, who was on a break from fighting north of Kramatorsk in the eastern Donetsk region and goes by the call sign "Swampy," said he had a "pretty up-and-down time" after leaving the British military due to a knee injury. But the war in Ukraine has given him direction, he said. "You know exactly why you're getting up in the morning," said Swampy, who is 38 and is being identified only by his call sign for security reasons. A 28-year-old American who fought in Ukraine for roughly six months said this was a common sentiment. "For a lot of guys, there really was the 'Valhalla Mind-set' of wanting to die a soldier's death while taking out as many Russians as possible," the American said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for his safety. "I don't want to put anybody down, but there was alienation they felt from what was going on in the world, and there wasn't a place, or a system, for them outside of this." He added: "The kind of people that show up everybody there was a romantic in some way, and a lot of them had their hearts broken. But all were also idealists who wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves." With the war now in its 11th month, those volunteers still in Ukraine tend to be highly committed, willing to withstand the winter conditions and to overcome the language barriers and cultural tensions that occasionally flare. For some, the war in Ukraine presented a rare opportunity to make use of their training. A 23-year-old former member of the British army's Corps of Royal Engineers spent five years learning about demining and building trenches and bridges but never put that knowledge to use in a way that felt useful, he said. He spent time in Eastern Europe training foreign troops but found it tedious and pointless. "To be completely honest, my main motivation for coming here really was to shoot at people and get shot up," said the British soldier, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I didn't want to get my pension with never having done anything useful," he said. Now, however, he says he is committed to the Ukrainian cause. Not all the volunteers lacked options at home. When Russia invaded, Zachary Jaynes, 28, a recent graduate of Dartmouth College and former U.S. Army Ranger, was about to start a meditation retreat in the Himalayan mountains. His mother had died, his final year of college was spent during COVID lockdowns and, like many Western veterans in Ukraine, he was disillusioned by his time in Afghanistan. He considered a job in consulting, but it did not seem appealing. "There was this degree of emptiness and existential dread, of trying to move past my military history and yet I found I also could not get beyond those experiences," Jaynes said in an interview in Kyiv, where he was on a break from fighting in the south. When the invasion began, it "felt like the breaking point," he said. "I could either ignore what's happening in Ukraine, and ignore this call for help, or I could dive back into the abyss completely to try to find the light." The Washington Post's Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Ievgeniia Sivorka in Dnipro, Ukraine, contributed to this report. U.S. law enforcement officials have arrested the Russian owner of a cryptocurrency exchange for allegedly failing to implement required anti-money laundering safeguards, enabling criminals who used the platform to traffic drugs and steal people's money and identities, the Justice Department said. Anatoly Legkodymov the 40-year-old majority owner of Bitzlato Ltd. was arrested in Miami on Tuesday evening and has been charged with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business. Legkodymov, who lives in China, was indicted Wednesday afternoon in a Florida federal courthouse. His company allegedly processed more than $700 million of illicit funds from 2018 to 2022. The Justice Department said Bitzlato told its customers and would-be customers that it had lax identification requirements for users and did not ask anyone to submit passports or photos of themselves to participate in the cryptocurrency exchange. That allegedly made Bitzlato a "haven" for criminals, according to officials. The company frequently did transactions with Hydra Market, the world's largest dark net marketplace, which was accused of selling hacked personal information, drugs and hacking services. U.S. and German law enforcement agencies shut down Hydra Market in April 2022. "Institutions that trade in cryptocurrency are not above the law and their owners are not beyond our reach," Breon Peace, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a news release. "As alleged, Bitzlato sold itself to criminals as a no-questions-asked cryptocurrency exchange, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of deposits as a result." Joel DeFabio, an attorney for Legkodymov, said Wednesday he had not yet met with his client but looks "forward to addressing these accusations further at a later time." Global regulators are freshly scrutinizing cryptocurrency exchanges the freewheeling, largely unregulated online marketplaces where digital assets are bought and sold following the recent implosion of FTX, a popular trading platform that authorities say was a years-long scheme to defraud investors. In recent months, Justice Department investigators also sent subpoenas to American investors as part of a long-running investigation into potential violations of money-laundering rules at Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, The Washington Post reported earlier this month. Scott Garland, a former cybercrime prosecutor, said the action against Bitzlato shows the United States is using all of its available tools to hold crypto companies accountable. The Justice Department said it worked with French investigators, and relied on information from a confidential source to build its case. "What is clear is that DOJ is very serious about going after the types of companies, people and organizations who are running crypto exchanges for the purpose of or with the knowledge of facilitating crime," Garland said. One question surrounding the U.S. investigation of Binance is whether the company is subject to American laws. Since 2019, Binance has said it bars Americans from accessing its main offshore exchange where derivatives can be bought and sold; however, some Americans claim they can bypass these restrictions. Binance was founded in China, but since 2020, the company has claimed it has no singular headquarters. Prosecutors emphasized on Wednesday that Bitzlato was subject to U.S. money-laundering rules even though it was based in China and run by a Russian national. Although the company claimed it did not allow U.S. users, prosecutors allege the company did "substantial" business with U.S.-based customers. "Today's actions send the clear message: whether you break our laws from China or Europe or abuse our financial system from a tropical island you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom," Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a news release announcing the arrest. If convicted, Legkodymov faces up to five years in prison. Bizlato's main website had been shut down by midday Wednesday. On the landing page was a formal notice saying that it had been seized by French authorities "as part of a coordinated international enforcement action." The Justice and Treasury Departments have previously gone after larger exchanges they said marketed themselves to criminals looking to avoid identification. In the best-known criminal case, prosecutors charged the founder of BTC-E, a major exchange in Eastern Europe favored by ransomware gangs, with money-laundering. Originally arrested on a Greek beach holiday, Alexander Vinnik was extradited to the United States last year. Russia is considered a capital of ransomware attacks, particularly those involving cryptocurrency. The independent data-firm Chainalysis found that in 2021, 74 percent of all crypto obtained via ransomware attacks went to venues that are "highly likely to be affiliated with Russia in some way." In 2021, the Treasury Department sanctioned the exchange SUEX after estimating that over 40 percent of its volume was for illicit actors, including eight ransomware gangs. The Washington Post's Joseph Menn and Steven Zeitchik contributed to this report. (Tribune News Service) Several teenagers who are participants in a youth academy housed at an area military base were hospitalized after a riot on Tuesday, officials said. The incident involved members of the South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe program at the McCrady Training Center, U.S. National Guard Major Gen. Van McCarty said Tuesday night at a news conference. The facility is on Leesburg Road near U.S. 601. The incident was called riots by the Richland County Sheriffs Department. At the news conference, McCarty said the situation is currently under control. The major general did not provide specifics on what happened, but said multiple law enforcement agencies responded to the National Guard training center, including the Fort Jackson Military Police. McCrady is adjacent to Fort Jackson. Several cadets in South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe were taken to an area hospital for treatment and observation, McCarty said. Information about the number of cadets who were injured and their conditions was not available. In a Tuesday morning statement on its Facebook page, South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe officials said we would like to assure you that your candidate/cadet is safe. In that Facebook post, the official said case managers with the program were making courtesy calls to all guardians, and if your candidate had been injured, you would have received a call. Several people identifying themselves as parents of cadets commented on the programs Facebook page after 8 p.m. that they had not been notified about the status and safety of their children. At his 8:30 p.m. news conference, McCarty said parents are currently being notified of the incident. The South Carolina National Guard will fully cooperate, and support an investigation of the incident, McCarty said. We are committed to ensuring that our cadets are safe at all times. In another Facebook message posted at about 2:30 p.m., South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe Director LaToya Reed again said all cadets were safe, adding that the issue was caused by posts on social media. It came to our attention that a message was posted on social media regarding the safety of our soon to be cadets. We are only in our second week and this is a typical reaction of teenagers who will do and say anything to get back home, Reed said. We expect this kind of behavior, so its not new to us, but it can be alarming to you as a parent and to the community. I assure you that the kids are safe and we are dealing with the same behaviors any other school or other program has to manage when it comes to teenagers. Reed said South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe has been in existence for 25 years, changing and building successful young citizens. Teenagers from 16-18 years old are eligible for South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe, which is geared toward high school dropouts, potential dropouts, or students who have been expelled, according to the programs website. Cadets are required to be free from the illegal use of drugs or substances, alcohol and tobacco products during the program, and will be tested. Additionally, cadets cannot be on parole or probation (for other than juvenile status offenses), awaiting sentencing, not under indictment or charges, or convicted of a crime that is considered a felony if charged as an adult, according to the website. This work is not easy, but it is worth it when it comes to saving lives, Reed said. Our program does not help every child, but it does and has helped many young people throughout the state of South Carolina. When contacted Wednesday with questions seeking to clarify the incident, a spokesperson for the S.C. National Guard said, Our statement is the same from last night as we work to get further information. 2023 The State. Visit thestate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Her mother Aleksandra Wahab (28) and 34-year step-father Abdul Wahab have been charged with murdering her Flowers and tributes at the family home of Nadia Zofia Kalinowska in Newtownabbey flowers and tributes at the family home of Nadia Zofia Kalinowska on Fernagh Drive, Newtownabbey on the day of her funeral A "beautiful and innocent" five-year-old girl was tortured and killed in the Co Antrim home where she should have felt safe and secure, a jury has heard. Nadia Zofia Kalinowska was pronounced dead at the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children in the early hours of December 15, 2019. Her mother Aleksandra Wahab (28) and her 34-year step-father Abdul Wahab have been charged with murdering her in the family home at Fernagh Drive in Newtownabbey. The couple are also suspected of carrying out a campaign of abuse against the schoolgirl in the months leading up to her death, and face multiple charges of child cruelty and causing Nadia grievous bodily harm with intent. They both deny the 14 charges that they each face. As he opened the prosecution's case to the jury of seven men and five women at Belfast Crown Court, Liam McCollum KC outlined a catalogue of injuries noted by medics who tended to the girl, many of which are believed to have been happened prior to her death. As well as sustaining a skull fracture and lacerated liver which caused her death, Nadia had also suffered fractures and re-fractures to her ribs, a fractured collarbone, a broken pelvis and an injury to her bowel. It was heard that many of these wounds would have required "significant blunt force" and caused obvious signs of distress. Nadia also had 70 surface injuries including bruising and abrasions which Mr McCollum said would have been clearly visible. The prosecutor added that Nadia was rushed to hospital after Mr Wahab made a 999 call in the early hours of December 15, 2019. When they arrived, paramedics treated the unconscious child in an upstairs bedroom and observed what they believed to be non-accidental injuries, which prompted them to contact the PSNI. Nadia was rushed to the Royal, and despite extensive medical intervention, she never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 3.40am. The court heard that despite the older injuries, neither Nadia's mother nor step-father sought any medical attention for her prior to her being brought to hospital on December 15. Following Nadia's death, Mr and Mrs Wahab were arrested on suspicion of murder. Mrs Wahab claimed that in the early hours of December 15, she was woken by the sound of something heavy falling. She told police she got up and saw Nadia lying at the bottom of the stairs, and told her mother she was in pain. When he was questioned, Mr Wahab said he was woken by his wife who informed him something had happened to Nadia. He claimed he saw the girl at the bottom of the stairs, then lifted her and took her upstairs. He added that when he observed blood coming from Nadia's head, he washed her in the bathroom before taking her into a bedroom and calling 999. Mr McCollum revealed that both said all the injuries sustained to Nadia were accidental. He described this as a "preposterous claim" given the "sheer weight and magnitude of the injuries" sustained in the lead-up to her death. He told the jury it was the Crown's case that Nadia was subjected to a "campaign of child abuse involving multiple assaults before her death. The trial continues. Roman Shortall continually failed to pay rent for the Dublin house and did not appear in court for an action brought by the landlord A journalist has been ordered by a court to vacate his rented home after building up nearly 50,000 in arrears. Roman Shortall continually failed to pay rent for the Dublin house and did not appear in court for an action brought by the landlord. Judge Marie Quirke ordered Mr Shortall and his wife to vacate the property within seven days and pay the 49,632 in arrears. The action against Mr Shortall, who is a co-founder of The Ditch news website, was brought by landlords Ravensburg, an unlimited company. Neither Mr Shortall nor his wife were present in court last week but the case went ahead in their absence before Judge Marie Quirke at Dublin District Court. The couple had rented the house at Drury Mills, Saggart, Co Dublin, since February 2019, Ravensburg's barrister, Jennifer Purcell BL, told Judge Quirke. The rent due was 2,750 per month, she said. After the respondents fell into significant arrears, a notice of termination of their tenancy was served on June 25, 2021. An application was made to the Residential Tenancies Board's dispute resolution services. It was deemed an appropriate matter to proceed by adjudication and a hearing took place in December that year. The barrister said there was no appearance at that hearing by the respondents who said they were ill. However, it was a remotely-held hearing and they were given notice, she said. Last May, the RTB made a determination order that the notice of termination was valid, and that Mr Shortall and his wife were to vacate the property and pay the arrears due at that stage. The adjudicator's report was forwarded to the applicant and tenant and it was stated that the determination could be appealed, but no appeal was made, the barrister said. The respondents continually failed to pay monthly rent and by July last year that had built up to 33,818, she said. Since then, the amount due had increased to 49,632. The respondents failed or refused to comply with the determination order or vacate the dwelling, or pay rent or arrears, causing loss to the applicant, the barrister said. Judge Quirke said the summons had been served and the respondents had been called in court and did not appear. She ordered them to vacate the premises within seven days and pay the arrears sought. In response to queries, Mr Shortall told the Irish Independent: Over the course of my long-term tenancy a dispute arose with my landlord, an unlimited company, over its repeated failures to address serious issues with conditions in the house. "As a result of this dispute I withheld a percentage of the rent. He said the District Court ruling put an end to that dispute and while he was disappointed" he said: I will of course comply with the decision to vacate and have secured a new home for my family. The Ditch website last week revealed that Fine Gael junior minister Damien English failed to declare ownership of a property when applying for planning permission for another home. Mr English announced his resignation as a minister following the story. Gardai found an imitation firearm in Keith O'Reilly's rucksack after he was arrested for assaulting his former partner A man who broke into the home of his ex-girlfriend, a wheelchair user, before assaulting her and throwing her dog on to the road has been given a three-year suspended sentence. Gardai found an imitation firearm in Keith O'Reilly's rucksack after he was arrested for assaulting his former partner in May 2022, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. Garda Ronan Harris told the court that O'Reilly (31) sent the woman a number of threatening texts the day after they broke up, before he turned up at her home in Harold's Cross, Dublin on May 25 and started knocking repeatedly on the door. In the texts, O'Reilly told the woman he was going to take her dog, smash her face and smash her windows, Gda Harris told Monika Leech BL, prosecuting. He also described her disability in derogatory terms, the court heard. When O'Reilly turned up at the woman's assisted living home, she refused to answer the door and told him to leave. She thought he had gone when he suddenly appeared at a window and broke his way into her home. The woman was part-way through a 999 call and had just told gardai her name and location when O'Reilly pushed her over, causing her to fall out of her wheelchair, and smashed her phone on the ground. The woman managed to get back into her wheelchair, grab her dog and leave the home through the back, but O'Reilly caught up with her and slapped her across the face before he took the dog and threw it on to the road. Gda Harris said it was generally a busy street, but there was no traffic at the time and the dog escaped injury. When gardai arrived and arrested O'Reilly, they found an imitation firearm in his rucksack which he said he used to shoot cans. When the woman went back to her home, she found it had been ransacked and her phone was gone. O'Reilly, with an address at Glenmore House, Swords, County Dublin pleaded guilty to one count of assault, criminal damage and production of a realistic firearm at Harolds Cross, Dublin. He has no previous convictions. The woman's phone was never recovered. Keith Spencer BL, defending, said his client's behaviour on the day was not attractive and uncharacteristic. He said O'Reilly is remorseful for his actions and was somewhat intoxicated on the day in question. He has a history of homelessness and drug abuse, but is now working for a car park company, the court heard. Keith O Reilly Paddy Cummins - PCPhoto.ie Sentencing O'Reilly on Wednesday, Judge Martin Nolan said he had taken into account a letter from the woman which he said was very Christian. She asks me not to send the man to prison by reason of his good behaviour towards her in the past and her belief that everyone is entitled to a second chance, Judge Nolan said. He said what OReilly did was very serious and he obviously lost control but he said he is taking the womans request very seriously. Judge Nolan said he felt it unlikely that OReilly will re-offend and took into account his lack of previous convictions before he suspended a three-year term of imprisonment on full on strict conditions. You should be ashamed of yourself, Judge Nolan said before he added that it was only because of the womans Christians view that he was not going to prison. Judge Owens said the Maguire brothers had very little in regular income over a long period of time and the sworn affidavits by gardai were well-founded. MOB boss Owen Maguire and his brother Brendan did not turn up to contest a Criminal Assets Bureau case against them in the High Court today. Judge Alex Owens, after considering the evidence against them, found in favour of CAB who wanted two properties, two vehicles, a Rolex watch and 305,000 in cash declared the proceeds of crime/ A receiver has been given the power to sell off the A Class Mercedes Benz, a Ford Transit and the watch worth 16,500. In making the order Judge Owens said they had very little in regular income over a long period of time and the sworn affidavits by gardai were well-founded. The overall situation points very strongly to the proceeds of crime. He said there was nothing in the documents provided to the court to show they could have generated the cash through scrap and car dealing. He added that the way in which 270,000 was found in a concealed hide and wrapped in bundles was consistent with the proceeds of crime. Attempts to cover cash transactions by taking out loans were undermined by the blatantly false documents used to acquire the money and were paid with criminal cash. The case was adjourned to allow CAB to investigate if any of the properties, one in Cavan and the other in Monaghan, are occupied before a receiver is cleared to put them up for sale. The CAB had got clearance last year from the court to deem Owen Maguire as served after he consistently refused to engage with officers who called to his Drogheda home. They were allowed to leave the box of documents at his door after giving evidence they were satisfied the paralysed crime boss was at home. Maguire has been confined to a wheelchair in which he was shot outside by the slain mobster Robbie Lawlor his home in 2018. Crime boss Robbie Lawlor His brother Brendan, who also survived being shot as part of a lethal feud was served his legal papers at his new home in the UK. Owen Maguire is regarded as the joint head of the Price-Maguire Organised Criminal Gang and which has been involved in a lethal gangland feud in Drogheda since 2018. He is described in the CAB papers as a major scale drug dealer supplying drugs in much of the countrys north-east area who survived being shot six times in a murder bid at his home. During todays hearing counsel for CAB said the litany of serious criminal acts contained in the CAB file brings home the extent and seriousness of the criminality they are involved in. Owen Maguire When Owen Maguire was shot in 2018, it sparked the Drogheda feud that has resulted in a number of deaths and dozens of tit-for-tat attacks in the town. Owen Maguire remains reliant on a wheelchair following the shooting while his brother Brendan was also shot and wounded in February 2019. Meanwhile Corelius Price was struck down by limbic encephalitis which left him in a coma and uncommunicative in hospital for several months. In one of the CAB affidavits to the High Court it is also stated that Cornelius Price is an extremely close associate of Owen Maguire and they jointly head the Price-Maguire OCG. Vincent Maher (29), died from injuries sustained in a violent assault in his home in Finglas The mother of a young Dublin man who was fatally assaulted in his apartment nine years ago has expressed dismay that a large number of witnesses failed to show up to give evidence at his inquest. Vincent Maher (29), died from injuries sustained in a violent assault which is believed to have taken place during a party in his home in Springmount Apartments on Wellmount Road, Finglas in the early hours of January 11, 2014. A post-mortem showed he had died as a result of blunt force trauma injuries. Speaking after an inquest into Mr Mahers death at Dublin District Coroners Court was adjourned on Wednesday, the victims mother, Tina Maher, said she was disgusted at the attitude of individuals who had been summonsed to give evidence by their non-attendance at the hearing. Its very disappointing and frustrating that witnesses didnt turn up. Its been nine years. The mentality of some people is disgusting, said Ms Maher. Garda sources at the time of his death said they believed Mr Maher was attacked after he confronted two males about broken furniture in his flat. Gardai also said it was possible that the victim a separated father of one who came originally from Poppintree, Ballymun could have survived if someone had called an ambulance. Mr Mahers body was found lying beside his bed by a landlady who called to the flat at around 11am. A number of males were seen running from the victims home at around 5am. At the outset of the inquest, the coroner, Clare Keane, apologised to the family as she explained that she had issued multiple summonses to witnesses but they had failed to show up in court. Detective Inspector Bronagh OReilly told the coroner that two of the listed witnesses had been physically served with summons to give evidence but had indicated they would not attend the hearing. Det Insp OReilly said another witness was aware they were due to give evidence but had not been issued with a summons. The coroner said she was aware of one witness who is currently in custody who had not been served with a summons. In addition, Dr Keane said there were two other witnesses who could be helpful, although they were not physically present in Mr Mahers home around the time of his death. Dr Keane said it was possible to proceed with the inquest based on depositions and a pathologists report but it would be limited as witnesses were absent and could not be questioned. The coroner also observed that she did not believe the issue of witnesses giving evidence had been fully explored. Dr Keane said it was possible that further information might be available, although she acknowledged she was not too optimistic about that happening. The coroner noted that Mr Mahers death remained an open criminal investigation by gardai and did not want to do anything that could prejudice any possible prosecution in the future. She offered the victims family the choice between proceeding with evidence based on depositions or adjourning the case while fresh summonses would be issued to witnesses. Following a short break, a Garda liaison officer indicated that the victims family supported the suggestion by the coroner to make a second effort at getting witnesses to give evidence. Offering her condolences to Mr Mahers parents and other relatives, Dr Keane said she recognised an adjournment was not what they wanted after already waiting a long time for the inquest to go ahead. The coroner said she believed they had made a good decision and promised she would hold the rescheduled inquest at the earliest opportunity. Under the Coroners (Amendment) Act 2019, a coroner can apply to the High Court for an order directing a person to comply with a summons if they fail to attend an inquest to give evidence without reasonable excuse. The High Court can also issue any order which it deems necessary, including one on costs, to give full effect to the direction to comply with a summons. In December 2019, the victims parents, Tina and Terry Maher made a public appeal on RTEs Crimecall for witnesses to come forward with information about what happened to their son so that they could get peace and justice. On the programme, Ms Maher remarked: So whoever done this to him, I hope to God they give me peace. Thats all I want now is peace, not only for me but for all my family. It is understood that around 15 people had been in Mr Mahers flat at the party. Although five people including two females were arrested in relation to the fatal incident, nobody has ever been charged over his death. Last week the tattooed boozer was confronted by the Sunday World ... MacCullough is confronted by the Sunday World at his home this week This is the bum slapper who sexually assaulted a female air steward after turning an Easyjet to sleazyjet. Sean Martin MacCullough was lucky not to be sent to jail on Tuesday for his mid-air molesting which followed a shocking sexual comment to the cabin crew member who was just doing her job forcing the airline to ban him for 10 years. The 55-year-old had been asked to put his bank card in the hands-free machine to pay for a large round of alcohol and responded by telling the shocked stewardess: I know what Id like to put into you. And as she walked away he compounded his outrageous behaviour by slapping her on her bum. This week the tattooed boozer was confronted by the Sunday World but was reluctant to speak about the incident. MacCullough is confronted by the Sunday World at his home this week Standing at his front door in his dressing gown, MacCullough refused to discuss the issue on his doorstep and insisted we come into his home. Having invited us in he said: Look, Ill tell you what happened, I was really, really drunk and it was really, really stupid. When asked if hed ever done anything like this before, MacCullough then seemed to perform a mid-air U-turn and chucked us out of his house without saying another word. District Judge Oonagh Mullan told MacCullough this week that while his offending merited a prison sentence, his underlying issues would not be addressed by one so what I will do is impose an 18-month probation order. MacCullough, from Drumawillin Park in Ballycastle on the County Antrim coast, had confessed to sexually assaulting a female on October 11 2021 in that he touched a female sexually when she did not consent, and he knew she was not consenting. Antrim Magistrates Court, sitting in Ballymena, heard that he had been on board an EasyJet flight to Faro when he bought a quantity of drinks mid-air. A prosecuting lawyer outlined how the amount was too much to use the contactless facility so when the victim told MacCullough he would have to insert his card into the machine, he gestured her forward and told her I know what I would like to put into you. As the crew member turned and walked away, MacCullough stood up and slapped her bottom, explained the prosecutor. The crew manager spoke to MacCullough and he apologised for his behaviour and when the plane landed, Portuguese police advised the victim to speak to the PSNI when she returned. MacCullough wasnt interviewed by the PSNI until some time later but he claimed he had spent three hours in a Portuguese police cell and had been fined so he thought that was the end of it but police inquiries showed that to be untrue. Defence counsel Alan Stewart said MacCullough had been travelling alone when he fell in with a crowd of younger men and despite being on medication with doctors warning him not to, he stupidly took drink. He is deeply embarrassed and remorseful and ashamed of his behaviour, said the barrister, who revealed that unsurprisingly, EasyJet had hit him with a 10-year travel ban. This was a young woman who was simply carrying out her job and the way you approached her and behaved was totally unacceptable and would have been extremely distressing for her, said District Judge Mullan. In addition to the suspended sentence, MacCullough will have to sign the police sex offenders register for five years. Cabin crew are often subjected to abuse while carrying out their jobs and sexual abuse against employees of airlines is not uncommon. A recent study of 3,500 flight attendants in the US found that 68 per cent of them experienced sexual harassment during their flying careers while 35 per cent experienced verbal sexual harassment from passengers in the last year. Murtagh is an inmate who rubs people up the wrong way and it looks like it finally came back on him, a source said. Evil killer Daniel Murtagh who battered his innocent ex-girlfriend Nadine Lott to death has had his face sliced open in a brutal jailhouse attack. Sources say the vicious killer is likely to be scarred for life after the attack on the B1 landing in the Midlands Prison during which he was sliced open from his temple down to his chin. The incident kicked off on the B1 landing at approximately 5pm today, a source told the Sunday World. Murtagh is an inmate who rubs people up the wrong and it looks like it finally came back on him. The lad who attacked him opened him up from his temple all the way down to his chin. Murtagh was losing a lot of blood by the time staff got to him and he had to be rushed to Portlaoise Hospital. Despite the best efforts of staff, he lost a serious amount of blood and hes still over there under guard tonight. Hell carry the scars of what happened today for the rest of his life. The source said an inmate who carried out the attack was immediately restrained by prison officers. He has been segregated from the other inmates and is now facing stiff disciplinary proceedings known as a P19 behind bars. The matter is also being referred to gardai. A spokesperson for the Irish Prison Service said he could not comment on cases involving individual prisoners. The inmate and another suspect behind the savage attack at the Midlands Prison are two relatively minor criminals with a reputation for violence, it was added. The attack is thought be an attempt by the suspects to establish themselves as top dogs in the prison inmate hierarchy. Kinahan Cartel gunman Gary Thompson, described as a pal of Murtaghs, was also beaten up by the same pair a number of weeks ago, said sources. Nadine Lott Finglas man Thompson is serving 12-and-a-half years for his role in a plot to kill Gerry The Monk Hutchs brother Patrick Patsy Hutch. Both Murtagh and Thompson have been moved to different prisons since starting their sentences. Thompson had previously been moved out of Mountjoy Prison where he was suspected to be exerting control over other inmates and the drugs trade behind bars. In Murtagh's case the moves were made amid threats to his safety from other inmates. Brute Murtagh (36) of Melrose Grove, Bawnogue, Clondalkin is serving a life sentence for the murder of his 30-year-old ex-girlfriend Nadine. The attack happened on December 14th, 2019 at mum-of-one Nadines apartment in St Marys Court, Arklow. He beat the 30-year-old Nadine Lott, mother of his daughter, so badly she was barely recognisable. Nadine died three days later, on December 17, in St Vincents Hospital, Dublin. Murtagh admitted manslaughter but denied murder and last July launched an appeal against his conviction. An eyewitness, Nadines neighbour, told the trial that Murtagh made a growling noise and was vicious with rage as he inflicted blows on his ex-partner in her living room like a wild animal. Amela Kulenovic found the defendant in a crouched position on top of Nadine with his hands around her neck and shoulders. She said he was going ape on his former partner and was totally out of control. Evidence was also given that a garda, one of the first responders on the scene, who phoned ambulance control informed them that Nadine had been beaten to a pulp. Garda Linda Butler said the left side of Nadines face was extremely and grotesquely swollen and when she placed her fingers inside the patients mouth to clear her airways, she noticed some teeth were missing. Nadine Lott killer Daniel Murtagh moved to prison 'protection landing' for fear of attacks from fellow inmates Killer Daniel Murtagh told witness: 'You dont know what Ive done, Ive killed my wife' A paramedic who attended to the mother-of-one in her home testified that the scene he witnessed in Nadines house would haunt him for the rest of his career and was one of the most horrendous he had ever walked into. Ian Clarke said it was like a bulldozer had gone through her apartment and described kneeling on broken glass as he performed CPR on her. An intensive care nurse at the hospital described Nadine as completely unrecognisable and said she had never seen anybody so badly injured. Her mum brought in a photo of her and everyone kept saying who is that and I said: thats her, Leah Grant said. The trial heard Nadine died after suffering traumatic head, neck and chest injuries and her brain was swollen following the sustained and violent attack. Chief State Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan noted that the blunt force injuries were caused by hands, fists or feet and that the use of a blunt weapon could not be ruled out. The court heard there were 64 individual injuries observed all over Nadines body which could not be accounted for through medical intervention. Murtaghs counsel had sought a manslaughter verdict in the case, arguing that the bloodbath would never have happened but for the drink and drugs Murtagh had consumed on the night. Nadine Lott The accused told gardai that before assaulting Ms Lott he smoked a joint, took two pills and drank a shoulder of Captain Morgan rum straight. He also said he had been on methadone for the previous three months. Instead, the jury accepted the States case that Ms Lotts death was a case of murder and nothing short of murder. At Murtaghs sentencing hearing, Nadines mother Claire told the Central Criminal Court that her family are haunted by thoughts of her daughter's terror, fear, panic and cries during the prolonged, evil attack carried out a man she described as a monster. Referring to the two-week trial, Mrs Lott said that her family had been dragged through it, which has added fresh grief and new nightmares to the memories we carry every day. We now have even more detail, evidence and pictures of the extreme gravity of Nadine's suffering. The callous, coldness and unremorseful evil that forced our beautiful Nadine from us, her family, she said. In her statement, Mrs Lott said the staff at St Vincent's Hospital had tried so hard and went above and beyond, with many visibly emotional at what they were seeing and dealing with. For people who witness a lot in their daily roles this was testament to the monstrosity and evil Nadine had endured in her final hours," she added. Nadine died three days later on December 17th, which Mrs Lott described as a nightmare which had no ending. Imposing a life sentence, Mr Justice Michael MacGrath called the murder of Nadine brutal and said that the evidence from gardai and first responders who attended the scene in the aftermath of the attack, some who remain greatly upset, was testament to the terror, evil and brutality that the deceased was subjected to. The 32-year-old was killed in her home on December 18 and was so badly beaten and stabbed, her father struggled to identify her body. Parents of Natalie McNally, Noel and Bernie McNally at home with Natalies dog River on January 9th, 2023 (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The parents of murdered Lurgan woman Natalie McNally fear her killer could have fled over the border. The 32-year-old was killed in her home on December 18 and was so badly beaten and stabbed, her father struggled to identify her body. She was 15 weeks pregnant with a baby boy at the time of her murder. Speaking to Newstalk, Natalies devastated parents Bernadette and Noel said that each day since their daughters death has been a living nightmare. Its like limbo. One day just rolls into the next, Bernadette explained. Natalie McNally. It just gets harder and harder because we havent gotten any answers about why this has happened to her. Shes never coming back. This person should be taken off the streets. He doesnt belong in society like, and it is just a living nightmare. Noel added: Its a continuing nightmare that this person hasnt been caught. I know it wont bring Natalie back, but it would be some comfort if we could take this person off the street. Nobody has been charged with Natalies murder to date. Police have arrested three men, including Natalies devastated and traumatised boyfriend and the father of her unborn child. However, all three were released pending further inquiries. Natalie's family now fear that her killer has fled Northern Ireland. There have been a few arrests, but theyve been outside the Lurgan area. If they can flee from this area, they could flee to any part of Ireland or even over the border, Noel said. Bernadette added: We worry now, you have to say, my God are they going to get away with this? You hear sometimes that does happen. Thats what goes through my mind all the time that this nightmare will never end. I know the nightmare of Natalie dying will never end but the nightmare of him not being caught, were afraid it might go on forever. Speaking directly to the monster who took their daughter from them, the bereaved parents begged Natalies killer to give yourself in. Give yourself up and explain why you have done this to this young girl. Youre breaking our hearts not knowing why youve done this, Noel pleaded. We just beg you to give yourself up to the police. Or if anyone knows who they are, whether it is a family member of a friend they shouldnt be holding loyalty to this person. This is an absolute monster that would do this to an innocent wee girl. People that know this person, they dont know what this person has done to our family and friends. They have devastated so many lives. Natalies three brothers and all her friends and relations are all devastated about this and heartbroken". The Crimestoppers charity is offering a 20,000 reward for information which leads to the arrest and conviction of Natalies killer. Anyone with information can contact the confidential Crimestoppers line on 0800555111. The man is described by police as being in his early 20s and speaking with an Irish accent. Police on patrol after a man "with an Irish accent" tried to steal a dog from a woman in the area. Photo: NWP Anglesea. Welsh police are on the hunt for a man with an Irish accent who set upon a woman in a local woods last weekend and tried to steal her dog. She was walking her pet in a spot known as Dead Mans Woods in Anglesey, North Wales on Saturday afternoon when she was approached by a man wearing a black balaclava. He demanded her dog and left her with minor injuries before fleeing the scene. The man is described by police as being in his early 20s and speaking with an Irish accent. He was wearing black balaclava and dark zip-up top at the time of the attempted robbery and is currently the target of a manhunt. NWP Anglesey took to Facebook to tell locals they are continuing to search for the man and conduct high visibility patrols. We understand that this incident has caused concern in the local community and would like to reassure you that local officers continue to patrol the local area, said Detective Inspector Richard Griffith. "These types of incidents are rare on Anglesey, and we are investigating all opportunities to identify the man involved. If you have any information about the incident or know who the man described might be, get in touch with police. "Further to that, if you were travelling through the area and may have dashcam footage between 12-5pm on Saturday that might have captured something, contact us via our website or by calling 101." A 68-year-old farmer, his wife, a 13-year-old child and two farm workers went missing from the small village of La Bocanda last month. A notorious drug cartel queen has been arrested in Mexico on suspicion of kidnapping five people. A 68-year-old farmer, his wife, a 13-year-old child and two farm workers went missing from the small village of La Bocanda last month. They disappeared on December 30 and have not been heard from since. Mexican authorities believe cartel queen Almilla and her husband carried out the kidnappings. Alma Antonia Calderon Garcia known as Almilla is accused of working for the countrys most dangerous drug trafficking organisation the Jalisco New General Cartel (CJNC). The woman is reportedly already being investigated for a number of cartel-related crimes. She was found by state and federal forces while attempting to transport several packages of ice a form of methamphetamine on Sunday. Almilla is married to mob boss Lucas Fierros Mora who goes by the nickname El Mataguaches. The high-ranking cartel member is accused of bomb attacks, multiple kidnappings and several murders. Local media reports the CJNC has been trying to strengthen its presence in Tierra Caliente through violence and intimidation pushing out a drug gang who previously controlled the area. Mexican outlet Debate says the cartel has contributed to the increase in violence, including homicides, kidnappings, extortion and disappearances in the region. It has been described as the most dangerous drug trafficking organisation in Mexico. Last weekend, armed men were filmed delivering toys to children in the area on behalf of the CJNG. Happy Three Kings Day. To all the boys and girls, today on this day full of Love, Hope, Peace and Joy. Atte. CJNG Senor Mencho, a sign on the side of one truck said. Children were shown lining up to receive their gifts from the men. Medical, dental and hospital records have now indicated that the deceased is Timothy 'Timmy' O'Sullivan Candles at the scene of the boarded-up vacant house on Beecher street, Mallow, Co. Cork where Mr O'Sullivan's body was discovered. (Pic Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision) Flowers left outside the boarded-up vacant house on Beecher Street, Mallow, Co Cork where the body of Mr O'Sullivan was discovered. Photo: Daragh McSweeney The boarded-up vacant house on Beecher street, Mallow, Co. Cork where Mr O'Sullivan's body was discovered (Pic Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision) The body of a man, which lay undiscovered in a long-derelict house in Cork for 20 years, has been identified. Medical, dental and hospital records have now indicated that the deceased is Timothy 'Timmy' O'Sullivan, who had lived in Mallow for a decade but who was originally from Kerry and who had spent most of his working life in the UK. The grim discovery last Friday, made by Cork Co Council staff who had commenced work at the long-derelict house, located just metres from a busy Cork commuter road, a popular pub and a convenience store, shocked the tightknit town of Mallow and left locals with a mixture of horror, disbelief and even guilt. The fact that a post mortem examination has confirmed gardais belief that the death involved was not suspicious has come as cold comfort to a community struggling to comprehend how a person can die in a town centre property and then not be discovered for over two decades. Flowers left outside the boarded-up vacant house on Beecher Street, Mallow, Co Cork where the body of Mr O'Sullivan was discovered. Photo: Daragh McSweeney Mr O'Sullivan, who was in his late 50s or early 60s when he died, had lived for most of his adult years in the UK where he had worked. It is understood he had moved to the UK with his family from Kerry when he was a teenager and had then spent the bulk of his adult life there. However, the Cahersiveen native had moved back to Ireland and settled in Mallow in the early 1990s, buying the small townhouse on Beecher Street. Mr O'Sullivan had also suffered from mental health issues and had received medical assistance in this regard while living in Cork. Locals believed he had moved back to the UK when he suddenly vanished just over two decades ago. Mallow is a proud town and has struggled to comprehend how something like this could happen locally. The new millennium wasnt even two years old when Mr OSullivan apparently died alone in the Beecher Street house. For two decades, cars sped by on the busy road outside used by locals and commuters as a rat run for traffic heading to Cork, Limerick, Killarney and Mallow train station. For 20 years, revellers emptied from the Mouse Trap pub, located just a few doors away, and headed to their homes oblivious to the tragedy behind a locked door only a few metres from them. Today, a small bouquet of flowers was placed outside the front door to reflect local upset at the tragedy. Candles at the scene of the boarded-up vacant house on Beecher street, Mallow, Co. Cork where Mr O'Sullivan's body was discovered. (Pic Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision) Long-serving Cork East TD Sean Sherlock is a Mallow resident. This is such a tragedy that it is beyond our comprehension, he said. It has an enormous effect on the psyche of our community, especially when we have a strong tradition of looking out for each other. The people in Beecher Street are very close knit and are great neighbours. When you speak to people in Beecher Street you get a strong sense that people perceived that the person (involved) had returned to the UK and that the house was unoccupied. It is very sad but it should not reflect poorly on our community where community ties run deep. A Beecher Street resident, who declined to be named, said locals were shocked and upset at the discovery of the mans body. I wasnt living here 20 years ago but, from what Ive heard, everyone thought this man had moved to England, said the resident. Everyone locally thought the house was empty, unoccupied and basically derelict. In fact, I think some people had been campaigning for the council to do something about the house, which had been boarded up since I moved here. You can understand this happening in a big city, but it is very upsetting to see it happening in a town like Mallow. The property belonged to Tim OSullivan. Neighbours believed he had moved overseas, with Mr OSullivan understood to have spent considerable time in the UK in his early life. When he was no longer seen around the area, locals believed he had gone to the UK. Council staff only entered the boarded up property after an inspection was directed following the securing of a Compulsory Purchase Order. Several notices in respect of the CPO process were attached to the front door of the derelict house. The front two windows of the 100-year-old property were boarded up. It is understood that repeated attempts by the council to contact Mr OSullivan, failed. Council workers discovered the skeletal remains in a room minutes after they entered the property to inspect it. Cork County Council offers its deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased, a council spokesperson said. Councillor Liam Madden acknowledged that it was an absolutely extraordinary situation. Of course it is very sad what happened that this person wasnt discovered for such a long period of time, he said. Gardai relied on forensic analysis, medical and dental records to help confirm Mr OSullivans identity. Newspapers and food products in the property while severely degraded indicated that he may have been lying dead in the property since around 2001/2002. Efforts are now ongoing to trace relatives of Mr OSullivan to assist with DNA sampling if required. Detectives have again appealed for anyone with information to help them with their inquiries. While the length of time involved is not unique, there have been similar cases around the country over the years. In 2009, the body of a man was discovered partially mummified in a Cork city flat after he had died almost two months earlier. Last year, gardai dealt with two cases of remains discovered in properties some time after the death of the individuals. A man discovered at a property in Sallynoggin in Dublin is believed to have lain undiscovered for over a year. In Tipperary, an elderly couple were discovered dead in their rural cottage last June, an estimated 18 months. The Taoiseach also defended his trip to the World Economic Forum, even if some people think he is part of a global Government that secretly runs the world A lot of apparently wealthy people are all fur coat and no knickers, the Taoiseach has told the Dail. It came amid calls for the introduction of a new wealth tax. Richard Boyd Barrett, of People Before Profit, had called on the Taoiseach, in the wake of the Oxfam global wealth report to introduce a wealth tax to start to redistribute so much huge wealth which is not being shared equally with the people of the country who generated it. But on the Oxfam report, Mr Varadkar said: We all know from past experience, that some people who are billionaires on paper, or appear to be billionaires, are actually all fur coat and no knickers. "They have a lot of assets on paper. They also have a lot of debts and liabilities, and their actual net wealth is negative or small. Mr Varadkar defended his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, even if some people think he is part of a global Government that secretly runs the world. He was only going for a day and a half, he said, and would stay for the whole thing if he was part of a controlling elite. The reason was because he could avail of many meetings and encounters in the one place that would otherwise take weeks to organise. Mr Boyd Barrett said the Taoiseach was about to travel to Davos, a conference of the richest countries in the world. Sorry to disappoint you. I won't be spending a few days - maybe a day and a half, Mr Varadkar said. I have my responsibilities here and they take precedence. But there is a busy programme of meetings and engagements. There are so many world leaders, so many business leaders, in the one place for two or three days, that would be remiss not to be there. I'll be able to do maybe 10-15 meetings, which would otherwise take weeks to organise. That's the advantage of the meeting. He added: I know there are some people that believe it's part of some form of World Government and we're all going off there to make decisions on behalf of the elites that secretly run the world. He further insisted to Mr Boyd Barrett: We already have wealth taxes in Ireland. Our income tax system is regarded to be one of the most progressive in the world. Fewer than 1pc of people in Ireland pay more than 20pc of income tax (total revenue). With the Local Property Tax, the bigger and more valuable your property, the more property tax you pay. Those who have modest properties pay a modest amount. Those who have no property pay nothing at all. Mr Varadkar also cited Capital Acquisitions Tax. That's a tax on inheritance, for example, a tax on gifts. And Oxfam pointed out in their report that in two-thirds of countries there is no inheritance tax at all. In Ireland it is 33pc. We also have Capital Gains Tax, which is a wealth tax, and the rate there again is 33pc. "The average across the world is only 18pc. So that gives you a good example of the kind of wealth taxes that already exist in our country. A fever, sore throat and cough are common symptoms across all three viruses, with the triple test helping to narrow things down. A new triple antigen test allows people to check if their illness is Covid-19, flu or RSV. The three-in-one test has been rolled out to help put an end to any confusion of symptoms between the viruses. Dubbed a tripledemic of infections, the three viruses have been causing a perfect storm of illness that is contributing to recent hospital overcrowding, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said. Irish pharmacist Sheena Mitchell has urged people to stock up on her tests to help diagnose a sick persons illness especially in youngsters and the elderly. A fever, sore throat and cough are common symptoms across all three ailments, with the triple test helping to narrow things down. "Since the symptoms of the Flu virus are similar to those of RSV and Covid19, particularly in young children, a triple virus antigen test is useful for diagnosis, and to help parents and medical professionals make important health decisions, a spokesperson for Wonderbaba.ie said. "Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to each of these three viruses currently in wide circulation, and both pharmacists and GPs will be able to better advise their patients as to the treatment options when they know which virus they are dealing with. The triple antigen tests are available for 6.75 for a single test and 29.85 for a multipack of five. As we know, viruses do not respond to antibiotics so best practice medical advice will usually be to treat the symptoms and make the patient comfortable, added pharmacist Sheena. "Your local community pharmacist will be able to advise you on the best course of at-home treatment. "However, some viruses like RSV and Influenza have the potential for the development of a secondary bacterial infection following the initial viral infection. "This is where you will need to seek the advice of your local doctor. For the very young and the very old, if you are concerned and cant reach your own doctor or their out of hours service, then a trip to accident and emergency in hospital may be required. The new tests come as HSE chief Stephen Mulvaney has warned that the flu outbreak as not yet peaked. It means struggling hospitals, which have been impacted by the winter explosion in viruses, including flu, Covid and RSV will remain under unprecedented pressure. There is currently no ban on protests outside GP clinics that offer abortion services, allowing the distressing scenes to continue. Protests outside clinics that offer abortion are a threat to the future of the service, a doctor has claimed. There is currently no ban on protests outside GP clinics that offer abortion services, allowing the distressing scenes to continue. Dr Trish Horgan said protests have been cropping up outside maternity hospitals and GP clinics since 2019. "Those protests are distressing and disrespectful, the Cork-based GP told Newstalk Breakfast. "Not just to women attending for abortion services but for all our service users coming to our facilities - having to encounter inappropriate, graphic placards and white coffins and so on. "We know that women coming for abortion care, and their partners, are often stressed and distressed. "They have a right to privacy; they're trying to navigate private life events with their partners and their doctors." She said the government has failed to introduce legislation that would allow safe zones to be set up surrounding the clinics. "I'm one of the GPs who began providing the service at my practice back in 2019... in the context of assurances from Government at the time that Safe Access Zone legislation would be expedited," she said. "So in the absence of those legal protections, I think it's not surprising we've seen many examples of protests outside GP surgeries and at maternity hospitals since 2019." The doctor claimed a fear of anti-abortion protests is creating unequal access to abortion services around the country, especially in rural areas. "A recent review of the Irish abortion services by the WHO found that actually, fear of protest was a significant factor in terms of GPs taking up the service. "So, it perpetuates the stigma, it contributes to provider isolation, and I think it's disproportionality impactful in rural areas where provider numbers are already low. "The protests are actually a threat to the future of the service per se. Adult offenders are to face up to five years in prison for grooming children into a life of crime. Minister for Justice Simon Harris will today seek Cabinet approval for a new Bill to criminalise the grooming of children into underworld activity. The Fagins Law, named after the character from Dickens Oliver Twist who commands a gang of juveniles, already operates in some other countries. Minister Harris will tell ministerial colleagues that the aim is deter and prevent criminal networks from exploiting children to commit crime and breaking the link between gangs and the vulnerable young people they seek to recruit. The move will be a significant contribution to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's new drive to tackle child poverty and disadvantage. The Government is determined to build stronger, safer communities, with official warning that juvenile criminal behaviour and conviction can damage education, employment and travel prospects as people grow up. Minister Harris is determined to protect children and teenagers from being coerced into a life of crime, a source said. The penalty on conviction for exploiting a child and entrapping them into gangland will be a maximum of five year's imprisonment Some children are being deceived by criminal networks into believing crime can bring wealth, bling and a party lifestyle, Mr Harris has previously told party colleagues. But the reality is that it instead brings debts and dread of retribution. The Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 follows initial progress in drafting under Minister Helen McEntee, now on maternity leave. It follows through on her commitment to break the link between gangs and the children they try to recruit into crime. Minister Harris intends to enact the legislation by the summer The legislation will give An Garda Siochana the power to intervene locally to prevent offences taking place, on suspicion of grooming. For the first time there will be specific offences where an adult compels, coerces, induces or invites a child to engage in criminal activity. Minister Harris will give Gardai these additional powers and make grooming a separate, prosecutable offence, on top of the provisions in current law. This includes where an adult who causes or uses a child to commit a crime can generally be found guilty as the principal offender meaning they can be punished as though they committed the crime themselves The new law will specifically recognise the harm done a child by drawing them into a world of criminality, the Irish Independent was told. The Greentown Project currently has two trials underway to reduce and disrupt the influence of criminal networks on children in Ireland. Pilots are taking place in two local areas and to provide supports for the positive development of the children affected. 16/1/2023; Tetiana and her son Matvii, who have recently arrived from the Ukraine play in the snow and ice along the old military road in the Wicklow mountains. Pic credit; Damien Eagers Schools across the country are at risk of closure on Thursday as the icy grip maintains its hold. Met Eireann has extended a status yellow ice warning to all counties, effective from 7pm on Wednesday until 12 noon tomorrow. Forecasters warn of icy stretches leading to hazardous travelling conditions. They say wintry showers will continue, with freezing rain possible in the southwest. They also predict freezing fog patches. While travel in urban areas may not be affected, travel to schools in rural areas could be hit. Decisions are taken locally on whether buses can operate, and whether schools can open. According to Bus Eireann, which operates the school bus scheme, overall, a small proportion of school transport routes didnt run today, but the disruption was more widespread than was the case yesterday. There will be sporadic falls of snow, sleet and rain throughout Wednesday, with snow most likely in the north and west. Isolated hail and thunder is also possible into Wednesday evening. Temperatures are expected to drop to -4 nationally but Met Eireann have warned it is likely to be colder locally in parts of Ulster and the North Midlands. A widespread frost will develop with icy stretches leading to hazardous driving conditions, the forecaster said. Outbreaks of hail and sleet will cover parts of Munster and Connacht overnight and into Thursday morning while patches of freezing fog will also develop. As the day goes on it will become mostly dry and bright, although some patches of mist and fog may linger as winds stay light and variable. Cold with highest temperatures of 1 to 5 degrees. Thursday night is similarly expected to be a bitterly cold night with lows of -4, and colder locally, with rain, sleet and fog all forecast for Connacht, Munster and southern Leinster. Met Eireann have said the outlook is for chilly weather to remain until the weekend but temperatures will rise a few degrees on Saturday. Rain and sleet will persist on Friday but the night will not be as cold as recent nights with lows of -1. Saturday will see temperatures climb to between seven and 11 degrees, with Saturday night not being much colder than the daytime. It will be a dull day with rain and drizzle predominant in most parts of the country. The supermodel seems to have misunderstood what people meant when she was called a wagon in Ireland. Supermodel Kate Moss has unknowingly become the butt of a very Irish joke by revealing her nickname she picked up in Ireland. A clip posted to TikTok by British Vogue to celebrate Moss birthday has gone viral as shocked Irish users spotted the slang word that got lost in translation. We were in Ireland and we got a little bit tipsy at a wedding, and I think in Irish wagon is drunk. So, basically we were all wagons, she told the fashion magazine. "Because during that time we were all doing shows, drinking a lot of champagne and calling each other wagon. Irish Twitter users have been left reeling at the revelation that some of the worlds supermodels mistakenly thought wagon was a pet name. "Come on who called Kate Moss a wagon and told her it was Irish for drunk? one tweeted. I am screaming at some middle-aged woman working a banquet hall calling Kate Moss a wagon and it forever altering the course of history, another quipped. "Love to know who called Kate Moss a wagon to her face and then told her it means something else classic, said another. It seems the supermodels and stars of the 90s became very found of the word, with Madonnas birthday wishes to Moss in 2018 reading: Happy birthday Wagon!!!! The beautiful and mischievous Kate Moss!! Even Naomi Campbell caught on with the nickname, telling the star on Instagram: I love you wagon, through thick and thin!! The supermodel had previously revealed the origins of the nickname for her pal Kate to The Sunday Times. She revealed it was Bonos wife who dubbed them a group of wagons. "Kate was little wagon, Christy [Turlington] was the original wagon and I was black wagon. Naomi said in 2016. When asked if it was because they were constantly falling off them, the star said: No! Its because were wagons. Because were naughty, we enjoy our life, we laugh, just girls having fun. Despite Grazia informing readers the term is slang for an obnoxious, aggressive woman, Naomi has even coined a hashtag: #wagonsforlife. We are met on a great battle-field of war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. These were some of the words by Abraham Lincoln quoted today by Tauranga Deputy Mayor Tina Salisbury during her speech at the Battle of Te Ranga commemoration in Pyes Pa. On June 21, 1864, the little known battle from Taurangas history has probably done more to shape the destiny of this city than any other engagement of the New Zealand Wars. A large crowd of people turned up in the long grass and rain at dawn today to commemorate the battle that took place in what is now a paddock near the corner of Joyce Rd and Pyes Pa Rd. It was very good, probably the biggest crowd weve had since the 2014 commemoration, says Buddy Mikaere from Ngai Tamarawaho. The 150-year commemoration was held in 2014. There were well over 100 people here today. The interesting thing was that there were more Pakeha people here than Maori people which shows how much interest there is. Tina who has lived in the United States for a number of years, her daughters learning about American history in school, reflected on how the battles at Te Ranga and Pukehinahina Gate Pa took place soon after the American Civil war had drawn to a close. Tauranga Deputy Mayor Tina Salisbury speaking at the Battle of Te Ranga commemoration At the Gettysburg battle site, which our family visited, where thousands died, President Abraham Lincoln gave a powerful speech that has echoed down through time, says Salisbury. It was a respectful tribute to those who had died in that place, but at the same time made the point, that from such events, we can draw inspiration and turn the great hurts of war into a plea, that the sacrifice of the dead should not be in vain. I believe those words are so fitting for us this morning, as we stand on this battle ground. The Te Ranga commemoration began with an introductory welcome by Buddy, with Bill Nepia from Ngai Tamarawaho opening with a karakia and mihi. The hymn Whakaaria Mai was sung, later followed by Abide with Me which was also the hymn sung by British officers with Rev. Brown at the Mission House the night before the Battle of Gate pa. Peri Kohu played guitar while his granddaughter Waiari sang Amazing Grace. That was lovely and moving, says Cam Scott, speaking of Waiaris singing. It seemed to me there was an air of deeper reconciliation this time in spite of the fact there has always been much hurt and anger as arising from the tragic events at Te Ranga. Western Bay Mayor Garry Webber also found it encouraging to see the number of people who attended. All ages, says Webber. A very diverse group of people and quite a moving day. The weather wasnt the most ideal, but we had a really good turnout because I think there is a genuine interest in the history of our area." This is a regionally significant commemorative place in the history of our district, and I know the trust that looks after the property has plans for improving it, says Webber. I think thats appropriate given its history to our region. We should make this site as prestigious as we can but make sure its simple and elegant while reflecting the magnitude of the event that took place. The battle that occurred has been described as among the bloodiest of the New Zealand campaigns. In desperate hand-to-hand fighting, British troops exacted terrible vengeance for Gate Pa. The Maori garrison was unable to hold the incomplete defences and slowly withdrew. When Puhirake, the hero of Gate Pa himself was killed, the retreat became a rout. British cavalry gave chase, but could not penetrate the nearby bush. More than 100 Maori, including the chivalrous Henare Taratoa, were killed or mortally wounded at Te Ranga, as were 13 British troops. The visiting iwi also suffered heavy casualties, which contributed to their subsequent enthusiasm for the Pai Marire insurgency. Twenty-seven severely wounded Maori were taken to hospital at Te Papa camp. Fourteen did not long survive the battle and were buried at Mission Cemetery. Among the mortally wounded was Te Tera of Ngai Te Rangi, the only one to be identified in official reports. About 70 Maori defenders including Puhirake were buried in the trenches at Te Ranga, which is now the large grass paddock. Its like the Elms cemetery - incredibly sacred land, says Webber. I think its right to lift the profile of Te Ranga, in keeping with its original character. It was a battle field. Mia Thomas, the Aquinas College student who won the Te Ranga Aquinas College poetry competition read her poem titled He Mate Kohuru A Treacherous Murder from the perspective of Hori Ngatai. The poignant words reflect the despair as the Maori garrison realised they were being ambushed by numbers too great, but continue to fight on. Trevel Gardner-Hano and Nic Scott, also students from Aquinas College read Mo te Hunga - For the Fallen. Pastor Leanne Rolleston reflected on Romans 12:13 which encourages people to share what they have with people in need and to show hospitality. During the wreath laying at the base of the monument, Andrew Graham played a lament on his bagpipes - Flowers of the Forest. I was very pleased all around with today, says Buddy, and its so good to have the local school taking a bigger role in what happens and in the management of the reserve. In discussion with a lot of people, theyre saying the reserve deserves an upgrade and wed like to see something more fitting with what happened here." Students from Aquinas College laying a wreath. Photo: Fiona Sullivan Buddy adds that the Pukehinahina Charitable Trust have had a landscaping plan set aside for the battle field area. I think its time to dust that off and do something with it. Buddy says that this year is a real milestone going forward, a feeling that was also conveyed in Garry Webbers reflection on the day. The significance of today - when you looks at whats happening in the United States right now - its a time of coming together, says Webber, who noted that Aquinas College has incorporated more of the local history into their curriculum and were pleased to be involved in the event. And the more we bring it to peoples attention by promoting the Te Ranga commemoration day, then the better understanding for what were wanting to achieve, support diversity and bridge the gap between the haves and the have nots to make sure it is a better place for all. He contrasted the kiwi way with Mr Trumps way. Our way of building a community is far better than what Mr Trump is intending to do right now. Weve just come through Covid, where this wider community and in fact the whole of New Zealand came together to look after those in need regardless of what their background was. "Today was another example of how we can work together for the betterment of all and how we can make this place better for everyone, says Webber. Tina Salisburys words resonated with many who stood in silent respectful contemplation during the prayers and speeches. I commend Lincolns words to you on this day and in this place. And this is my hope, that as we stand here this morning, on the site where many died, and some still remain, that we too would remember, and honour what they gave their lives for; that we would continue to seek a shared way forward that begins with this foundation, may we now continue to walk this journey towards kotahitanga. Willy Pearson closed the gathering with a karakia, following which a morning tea was hosted by Aquinas College, rather than at Western Bay District Council as originally planned. Aquinas want to host that every year now, says Webber, who is delighted with the increased interest in, and recognition of, the significance of Te Ranga by the college. With the increasing demand in Pyes Pa for housing, the more recent streets have some interesting names: Te Ranga Memorial Drive, Puhirake Crescent, Penetaka Heights, Materawaho Way, and others. The choice of these names reflects the determination to commemorate some of Taurangas most important and tragic history., and acknowledges tangata whenua. Tina Salisburys quotes from Abraham Lincoln: But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced." It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Whakaaria mai Whakaaria mai Tou ripeka ki au Tiaho mai Ra roto i te po Hei kona au Titiro atu ai Ora mate Hei au koe noho ai Mo te Hunga For the Fallen (by Laurence Binyon) E kore ratou e kaumatuatia Penei i a tatou kua mahue nei E kore hoki ratou e ngoikore Ahakoa pehea inga ahuatanga o te wai te hekenga atu o te ra Tae noa kia te aranga mai i te ata Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou (Matou katoa muted) They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them We will remember them (Matou katoa muted) Abide with me Abide with me, fast falls the eventide The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide When other helpers fail and comforts flee Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away Change and decay in all around I see O Thou who changest not, abide with me I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still, if Thou abide with me He Mate Kohuru A Treacherous Murder from the perspective of Hori Ngatai, a poem by Mia Thomas. They tell me to dig, I dig without spirit, This is not where the Pa should be Kari, Kari, Kari I hear the enemy Theyve come early, Our defences are woefully lacking Kari, Kari, Kari Their numbers are too great We are not prepared We must wait for the others Kari, Kari, Kari This is an ambush We lay down our tools and reach for our weapons. Enough! We fight Patu, Patu, Patu The enemy advance Their weapons are mighty They are ready We are not Pako, Pako, Pako We fight with honour We fight with mana We fight with hope Kakari, Kakari, Kakari Our brothers are falling Our comrades are late Victory is impossible Taui, Taui, Taui Puhirake lays lifeless Taratoa has passed on Kua hinga nga totara haemata Taui, Taui, Taui We must retreat if we are to survive Too much loss Too much suffering Kua parekura te hoariri e tatou He Mate Kohuru A treacherous murder. The classic kiwi summer holidays started with a number of preventable mishaps on the water, including collisions, vessels overturning and several incidents where people showed a lack of understanding for the rules. Over the holiday period between Dec 23 to January 9 there were dozens of incidents reported to Maritime NZ. The number of reported incidents only tends to be a snapshot of behaviour. Many more incidents tend to go unreported. The incidents notified to Maritime NZ ranged from minor to quite serious. "The majority of these were preventable, and several people were unable to go home uninjured after a planned day of fun on the water," says recreational craft principal advisor Matt Wood. With plenty of time still left in summer, Maritime NZ doesnt want these trends to continue. "We recommend skippers do not go out on the water if they are not adequately prepared to go out on the vessel they are in charge of. "Overconfidence, can be one of the biggest risk factors on the water. "There are a range of Coastguard courses to help ensure skippers have the skills and knowledge to head out onto the water safely. "It is important for people to remember; if they are in charge of a vessel they are legally responsible for keeping themselves, their passengers and other water users safe," says Matt. "Going out underprepared puts yourself, your passengers and other water users at risk. To put it simply, it is not worth it. "You need to carry two forms of communications, have properly fitted lifejackets for everyone on board and check the marine weather forecast prior to leaving shore." Maritime NZ recommends those planning on heading out check out saferboating.org.nz for information about how to prepare for a day on the water. Matt says anyone who sees unsafe actions on the water can report them via maritimenz.govt.nz. "If you go out on the water thinking shell be right. You could injure yourself, others, and Maritime NZ does prosecute those involved in incidents in the recreational craft space. "Notifying Maritime NZ of an incident isnt being a snitch, it is looking out for your fellow water users, and a tool to help keep people safe." While there were a number of incidents over the two week holiday period, Maritime NZ does want to congratulate the thousands of boaties who were safe on the water over Christmas and New Year. Three children missing with their father for a year may be feeling anxious about being isolated from other family members for so long, a clinical psychologist says. Marokopa father Thomas Phillips and his three children Jayda, Maverick, and Ember have not been seen since December 9, 2021, when they disappeared for a second time. On this day last year they were officially reported missing a second time, after he failed to reappear in the Te Kuiti District Court in relation to their first disappearance the previous September, which had sparked an extensive search. Police say Phillips' disappearance breached a parenting order and there was a warrant out for his arrest after he failed to appear in court. The children are now aged six, eight and nine. Clinical psychologist Dougal Sutherland says much of how the children could be feeling will come down to how their father was coping and what reasons he had given for their isolation. "A lot of it is going to depend on how the father has set this time away in the bush up with the kids. We know that it's not unusual for them to do this, to go off into the bush, but the length of time is one of the key things that's different from the past." Sutherland says it also hinges on what the children's expectations and beliefs are about why they are isolating. "At the very least you would expect them to be curious about why they haven't seen other family members ... and why it's been so long. At worst they might be quite nervous, anxious, worried about being away from those people. They might be worried about dad's well-being, depending on how dad is," he says. "A lot of that is going to come up to how dad has managed to talk to them about it and about what they're doing." The children have likely spent a year without a formal school education and friends to play with. "Children need other children around them to play with, to learn, to just be around and be kids," says Sutherland. "That's something that the children in this family will have been missing, just that opportunity to interact with kids of their own age. "It's a fairly isolated and insular position to be in if it's just you and your siblings and your dad, so they would ... at least be missing out on that contact with other kids and almost definitely around their education and formal learning." When the family are found, he says reintegration to living in a community and possibly attending school will need to be a slow process. "There's a whole lot that's happened in the world that they won't be up to speed with, and there's probably a whole lot of other social skills that they may have got rusty on. "It might even be quite frightening and overwhelming for them to be back in the world again. So doing that gradually and slowly at their pace is probably going to be key to help integrate them back." Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin. Sutherland says the children's wellbeing is a concern. "There's that huge question mark around what has been going on for these kids and this family. How's the dad going? How's his mental state? And those are simply unknown questions, but potentially have big impacts on the kids." Police says they are continually following leads on the family's whereabouts, although multiple reports of sightings across the country had been followed up with no success. They say it's possible Phillips has found shelter and is being supported by other people. The children's family have offered $10,000 for information leading to their safe return. Waikato West area commander Inspector Will Loughrin says they are appealing to Phillips or anyone assisting him to bring this matter to a close. "We have to recognise that Tom and his children lived a very isolated lifestyle and had limited use of social media or mainstream forms of communication. We believe that Tom is being supported by a person or people, and this is allowing him to continue to exist without any electronic trace." -Amy Williams/RNZ. Promoters say the fun police are ruining the concert experience by cracking down on liquor sales and making it harder to run family-friendly events where booze can be sold. It was meant to be a supervised, all-ages gig, a chance for Tauranga fans of popular reggae band L.A.B young and old to enjoy their music over the New Year period, those over 18 buying drinks if they wanted. But problems with the liquor licence meant that the December 30 event had to go R18, leaving hundreds of young fans and their parents furious and disappointed. Promoter Michael Tucker, of Loop, says he ended up refunding $45,000 worth of tickets to under 18s, although the 8000-capacity concert at Wharepai Domain still sold out. He says its symptomatic of the situation nationwide, with district licensing regulators becoming stricter around issuing special liquor licences for concerts at venues such as parks and domains. Its the fun police at it again, Tucker says. If people are running well managed concerts, with heavy security, a good police presence, good bar management why cant ... I take my 14-year-old along? It wasnt the only liquor licence-related snafu to hit the summer concert scene. In Nelson, about 100 under 18s were told on the day of the Summers Day Live concert featuring UB40, Jefferson Starship and Dragon that they couldnt come as the organisers had applied for the wrong type of licence. Alcohol regulation operates at a district level, with district licensing committees (DLCs) deciding whether to grant licences after considering information supplied by the local councils licensing inspector, police and the medical officer of health. Tickets for the L.A.B concert went on sale back in August. It was advertised as a family-friendly event, with people under 18 able to attend as long as they were supervised by a parent or guardian. Tucker says a bar services company acting for Loop applied for a special liquor licence, under the supervised category, and there were two meetings with police and the medical officer of health before the application was lodged with the Tauranga City Council on September 12. He claims the council lost the application for five weeks, and it wasnt until October 21 they were advised that the application would likely be opposed because of concerns about how under 18s would be managed. That meant a hearing would be needed, to be held in late November too close to the date of the concert, Tucker says. Even though they felt they had met all stakeholder requests, Tucker says, they decided to make the show R18, negating the need for a hearing. We would have been selling hundreds more tickets to under 18s and pissed off more fans, so we made the call to refund 40 grand-plus worth of tickets. Nigel McGlone, of the councils compliance and regulatory team, says the application fee for the liquor licence wasnt paid until October 6, and there was confusion because the wrong invoice number was submitted with payment. Yes, there was a delay, but we wouldn't accept that it was our fault, necessarily. McGlone says there were concerns about a lack of information on how organisers would manage under-age people at the event, but he cant say specifically what those concerns were as he hasnt seen the full application. Tucker insists that his team had put all the stops in place to manage alcohol consumption and behaviour. This included three levels of security at the gate (46 people were declined entry at another L.A.B concert for intoxication), security and ID checks at the bar queue and the bar itself, alcohol-free whanau zones and plenty of food and free water. He says Loop has successfully managed concerts in other parts of the country where alcohol was sold and under 18s came with parents or guardians. We are 100 per cent for harm minimisation of alcohol at events, but restricting events to 18 years and over is not the solution, he says. This approach will hinder development of our creative culture and affect our event economy. He says switching the L.A.B concert designation resulted in hundreds of disgruntled mums and dads and young fans. We cant develop culture in this country if we can't make it accessible. Toby Burrows of Trademark Live, promoter of the Nelson Summers Day Live concert, says while the problem with the liquor licence was human error the organisers applied for the wrong type of licence and only realised at the last minute he believes there is a general reticence from liquor regulators for family-friendly shows with alcohol sales. It has become an issue for us in other regions. It was never a show-stopper [in the past] there had to be measures around it and there were questions about how it would be managed, but in the last year, weve just been told, no. Its only for special licences any venue that has a regular licence like the stadiums is fine. We find there is an inconsistency in the licence conditions from city to city some regions allow you to serve energy drinks with alcohol, others dont. Some you can do four serves [per person], some you can only do two. It seems to depend on the public health and police in each region. Michael Swan, of Liquid Events, which provides bar services at greenfield concert sites, says there seems to be a nationwide shift in approach to liquor licensing for such events. Wherever we apply for a licence, the landscape is changing in terms of the conditions that are imposed. But they're not all the same its not like theyre all reading off the same sheet thats come from central government. Swan says the biggest recent change has been a push for a maximum of two drinks per serve, per transaction, down from the standard four. Theyre trying to knock it down to two drinks. All that does is blow out the queues, because people finish those two drinks and go back a second time. All youre doing ... is causing a bad customer experience, and probably youre actually encouraging people to drink faster and harder get the two drinks down them, so they can get back in the queue to get another two. Swan questions whether alcohol harm is a problem at concerts, compared to bars. We have layers and layers of process that mitigates alcohol harm and yet the authorities put the absolute microscope on us and impose conditions that are unreasonable. Another promoter, who asks to remain anonymous for fear of getting offside with liquor regulators, says the two-drink maximum rule only encourages pre-loading and smuggling alcohol into the venue. Its actually working against the object of the [Sale of Liquor] Act its over-reaching. Whats the next step, no alcohol at all? The promoter says hes travelled to overseas events and alcohol sales arent an issue. Here, applications are often only dealt with at the last minute, meaning promoters have no choice but to go along with the conditions presented to them as theres no time for a hearing, he says. Health and police are using the process almost to bully you into agreeing to what they want. No-one from the national police alcohol harm reduction team was available for comment, but police said in a statement their role is to minimise harm. Each application is assessed on its own merits. While we never want to stop people having a good time and enjoying a drink, it is proven that alcohol increases the risk of harm and of people becoming the victims or perpetrators of crime. McGlone, who used to handle liquor matters for police in Tauranga, says when under 18s are attending an event, regulators have to be satisfied there are plans in place to minimise their access to alcohol, although he points out that parents can buy them drinks. You cant have under 18s walking around ... unsupervised. Its up to the organisers ... to make sure they can show ... theyve got those management things in place. He doesnt agree that the two-drink per transaction limit, which is in place in Tauranga, encourages fast drinking or pre-loading. Uawa Civil Defence is expecting Tolaga Bay communities to be cut off again and roads to continue crumbling as another onslaught of wet weather hits this afternoon. A state of emergency remains in Tairawhiti following Cyclone Hale, with MetService forecasting heavy rain north of Tolaga Bay today and Thursday. Heavy rain and strong winds about the far north east of the country. Severe Weather Watches and Warnings for Tairawhiti/Gisborne and the eastern Bay of Plenty. Full details here https://t.co/qHyE5zzql5 pic.twitter.com/HwYN19afpa MetService (@MetService) January 17, 2023 MetService forecasts 70-90mm of rain for Gisborne north of Tolaga Bay from 3pm today until 9am on Thursday. Periods of heavy rain are also forecast for Gisborne and south of Tolaga Bay from 6pm today until tomorrow morning which MetService said may approach warning criteria. Area manager Greg Shelton says residents should be ready to evacuate before access was cut off. "The ground can't take much more, the roads certainly aren't going to take much more, and all the mud and silt - if you get more rain on top of that it just turns to a horrible mess again. "People want to get on with their lives, they want to clear things away but more rain, it just makes it ugly again." The community was well-prepared with stocks of essential supplies - and a plan to deliver them if communities were isolated, says Shelton. Gisborne has already had its 2nd wettest January on record (since records began in 1905) & more is coming on Wednesday-Thursday While it won't as intense as last week's cyclone, areas of 50+ mm could cause surface flooding & slips, particularly in East Cape. pic.twitter.com/e2R1OKsBFE NIWA Weather (@NiwaWeather) January 17, 2023 The forecast doesn't look as bad as last week's battering, he says. Civil Defence staff are monitoring the forecast peak rainfall intensities for the Hikuwai River, which is predicted to reach 5m. Hikuwai River peaked at 13.5m last week after Cyclone Hale passed through the region. Gisborne District Council has 26 roads in the region closed or partially closed due to weather-related issues such as slips and washouts, with another nine only able to be used by four-wheel drive vehicles. -RNZ. The Drug Foundation is urging caution after drug checking services at Rhythm and Vines - RnV - found paper tabs sold as LSD were in fact the potent psychedelic and stimulant, 25B-NBOH. The samples were tested by the Drug Foundations drug-checking team at RnV over the New Year period. Secondary testing by ESR this week determined that the tabs contained 25B-NBOH. The drug was found on tabs of different colours and patterns and had come from more than one region. Drug Foundation Executive Director Sarah Helm says people planning to take LSD, often called acid, which is generally regarded as a lower harm substance, should be aware that 25B-NBOH is circulating on paper tabs that are misrepresented as LSD. Because this is a relatively new drug, there isnt much known about its toxicity, but we can take clues from similar drugs, such as 25I-NBOMe, which has caused hospitalisations and deaths worldwide, says Sarah. 25B-NBOH can be active even at very tiny doses, so its difficult to dose accurately and may increase your risk of overdose. The NZ Drug Foundation checked 748 samples at the Rhythm and Vines festival over the New Year period. KnowYourStuffNZ provided drug checking at several other festivals around the country. Thousands of samples have been tested by drug checking services like KnowYourStuff, ESR, NZNEP and the Drug Foundation this summer. These 25B-NBOH samples prove drug-checkings worth, having clearly prevented serious harm to people who would have otherwise taken them, says Sarah. However, we are very concerned there are likely to still be quantities of this drug in the community. Its one were particularly concerned about so were asking people to proceed with caution if planning to take tabs that theyve bought as LSD. Also identified at Rhythm and Vines were known synthetic canthinones: cyputylone, dimethylpentylone, eutylone and n-ethylpentylone. "One of the perils of drugs being banned rather than regulated is that it acts as an incentive on the illegal market to create new, novel and more potent substances. We encourage people to get their drugs checked, whether they are tabs, powders or crystals," says Sarah. If youre planning on taking LSD, the Drug Foundation recommends: Taking it to a free, legal and confidential drug checking clinic to find out whats really in it. Alternatively, check it at home using an Ehrlichs reagent test, which can be purchased from The Hemp Store or Cosmic Corner. The Level has instructions on how to use Ehrlichs reagent to test your LSD. Remember: If its bitter, its a spitter. LSD generally does not have a bitter taste, however drugs in the NBOMe family can. Start low and go slow. 25B-NBOH and similar drugs can have very different doses to LSD, and the dose may not be distributed evenly over the tab. Take a small amount of the tab and wait at least an hour to see how you feel. Know the signs of an overdose from 25B-NBOH and get help if needed. These may include: Severe agitation, anxiety, or psychosis Vomiting Abnormal heart rate Having a fever Having seizures Passing out. If you or someone around you has taken a tab and experiences any of these symptoms, or other worrying symptoms, call 111 or get medical help as soon as possible. You can report unusual drug effects anonymously to High Alert, New Zealands drug warning system. Current Print Subscribers will be prompted to either login to their current site user account or to create a new one. A confirmation email will be sent when a new user account is created, which must be confirmed within three days in order to provide uninterrupted online access through your Print Subscription. Once the email address is confirmed please provide your Account Number to activate your Print Subscription Service. Press Release January 18, 2023 Tulfo files bill establishing evacuation centers in every city and municipality Senator Idol Raffy Tulfo filed a measure seeking to establish well-equipped evacuation centers in all 1,488 municipalities and 146 cities in the country. In filing Senate Bill (SB) No. 1652, Tulfo underscored the need for evacuation centers that have basic facilities, accessible location and adequate emergency supplies, such as water, medicine and relief goods considering that the Philippines is one of the most typhoon-prone countries in the world. "When disaster and calamities strike, covered courts, gymnasiums, schools, and even churches serve as evacuation areas to shelter affected residents and families," the bill's explanatory note read. "These areas are jam-packed when the situation worsens. Diseases; existing and unforeseen may also spread because these areas do not meet standard measures for a proper and well-ventilated evacuation center," it added. Notably, approximately 19-20 typhoons enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility annually, with 7-9 reaching landfall, according to Climate Change Knowledge Portal for Development Practitioners and Policy Makers. Under SB No. 1652, each location for every evacuation center shall be determined by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), in close coordination with the LGUs concerned. The said location must be centrally located in the community, must be of a safe distance from large trees and structures with hazardous materials, must be near a health facility, must be located on geotechnically stable land, must not be located near military base camps and camps of insurgent groups. Its structure must also be calamity-resilient and built with sturdy materials, and must have the capacity to accommodate a large number of evacuees. The Senator from Isabela and Davao also proposed that under said bill, the LGUs concerned shall be primarily responsible for the operation, supervision, and management of evacuation centers. The local sanggunian, meanwhile, shall promulgate guidelines and procedures for the use and operation of the evacuation center under its jurisdiction. Tulfo sinusulong ang pagtatayo ng evacuation centers sa lahat ng lungsod at munisipalidad sa bansa Naghain si Senator Idol Raffy Tulfo ng panukalang batas na naglalayong maglagay ng evacuation centers sa lahat ng 1,488 na munisipalidad at 146 na lungsod sa bansa. Sa paghahain ng Senate Bill (SB) No. 1652, binigyang-diin ni Tulfo na kailangan ng evacuation centers na mayroong basic facilities, accessible na lokasyon at sapat na emergency supplies, tulad ng tubig, gamot at mga relief goods. Ani Tulfo, ang Pilipinas ang isa sa pinaka typhoon-prone na bansa sa buong mundo. "When disaster and calamities strike, covered courts, gymnasiums, schools, and even churches serve as evacuation areas to shelter affected residents and families," sabi ni Tulfo. "These areas are jam-packed when the situation worsens. Diseases; existing and unforeseen may also spread because these areas do not meet standard measures for a proper and well-ventilated evacuation center," dagdag niya. Humigit-kumulang 19-20 bagyo ang pumapasok sa Philippine Area of Responsibility taun-taon, kung saan umaabot sa pito hanggang siyam na landfall, ayon sa Climate Change Knowledge Portal for Development Practitioners and Policy Makers. Sa ilalim ng SB No. 1652, ang bawat lokasyon sa bawat evacuation center ay dapat tukuyin ng Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), sa pakikipagkoordinasyon sa mga LGUs. Ang nasabing lokasyon ay dapat nasa isang ligtas na distansya mula sa malalaking puno at istruktura na may mga mapanganib na materyales, kailangang malapit sa pasilidad ng kalusugan, at hindi dapat matatagpuan malapit sa mga base camp ng militar at mga kampo ng mga rebeldeng grupo. Iminungkahi din ng Senador mula sa Isabela at Davao na sa ilalim ng nasabing panukalang batas, ang mga LGUs ang pangunahing responsable sa operasyon, pangangasiwa, at pamamahala ng mga evacuation centers. The Mac mini is now available with M2 and M2 Pro chips. (Image Credit: Apple) The Mac mini is now available with M2 and M2 Pro chips. (Image Credit: Apple) New models of the Mac mini desktop and MacBook Pro laptop with an upgrade to Apples M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max chips were announced by the company Tuesday. In addition, Apple has lowered the price of an entry-level mini with an M2 processor to US$599, $499 for the education market. That was one of the more interesting parts of the announcement, observed Ross Rubin, the principal analyst with Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm in New York City. Its not often that you see Apple announce a lower entry price point, Rubin told TechNewsWorld. At $599, the price is designed to bring in new users, but the higher configurations can also go up in price pretty quickly, added Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at IDC, an international market research company. Those higher configurations with the M2 Pro chip start at $1,299, $1,199 for the education market. The muscle that the M2 Pro adds to the mini could potentially cannibalize the market for Apples premium desktop, the Mac Studio, Ubrani told TechNewsWorld. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, he said. The mini can appeal to budding creators or consumers who have started to appreciate the desktop a bit more, especially as desktops saw a bit of an uplift during the pandemic, he added. More Video Editing Muscle The M2 mini features an eight-core CPU four high-performance and four high-efficiency cores and a 10-core GPU. With the new chip, the mini is 50% faster than previous models, according to Apple. The maximum configuration for its unified memory is 24GB with a bandwidth of 100GB per second. The Mac Mini M2 model features two Thunderbolt 4 ports and support for up to two displays. (Image Credit: Apple) With the M2, ProRes acceleration is added to the mini, giving it some real punch for handling video. Apple says the M2 mini can handle tasks like video editing in Final Cut Pro more than twice as fast as previous hardware models and simultaneously play up to two streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps or 12 streams of 4K at 30 fps. Overall, Apple boasts that the M2 mini is five times faster than the bestselling Windows desktop. The M2 Pro brings to the mini a 12-core CPU with eight high-performance and four high-efficiency cores and a GPU with up to 19 cores. The Mac mini M2 Pro model includes four Thunderbolt 4 ports and support for up to three displays. (Image Credit: Apple) Memory in the Pro models can have a maximum of 32GB with a bandwidth of 200GB/s. The M2 Pro also gives the mini more video handling power, allowing it to play five streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps or up to 23 streams of 4K video at 30 fps. Apple stated that the M2 Pro mini is 14 times faster than the fastest Intel-based mini. Undercutting Mac Studio The fact that Apple is allowing these chips in the existing Mac Mini is interesting, observed Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research in San Jose, Calif. It makes the Mac mini a much more formidable content creator solution versus the much higher priced Mac Studio, Vena told TechNewsWorld. Rubin added that getting a more powerful chip into the mini closes the gap between it and the Mac Studio. The mini can do more professional-level workflow, he explained, so it can be a match for people who want to mix and match peripherals but cant justify an expenditure on a Mac Studio. It also provides a way for people still on Intel Macs to get into Apple Silicon and experience its advantages, he said. When he heard Apple was refreshing the mini, David McQueen, a research director at ABI Research, an international technology advisory company, thought the move would be designed to satisfy customers already invested in the Apple ecosystem. But the improvements in performance and drop in price could entice new consumers to the product, he told TechNewsWorld. Boosting Leaders Lead The new MacBook Pro laptop will also offer an M2 Pro model and an M2 Max version. The Max chip has the same 12-core CPU as the M2 Pro but an expanded GPU of up to 38 cores and a larger L2 cache. The chip can also address more unified memory up to 96GB at a faster bandwidth 400GB/s. Prices for the MacBook Pros range from $1,999 for a 14-inch model with the M2 Pro chip to $3,499 for a 16-inch model with the M2 Max chip. The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro feature M2 Pro and M2 Max, Apples next-generation pro silicon. (Image Credit: Apple) Adding the new M2 chips make these new Macs powerful alternatives and, in the laptops, gives them more battery life and additional graphic speeds, Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology advisory firm in San Jose, Calif., told TechNewsWorld. Ubrani maintained that the new chips would advance Apples position in the market. Apples last generation MacBooks were already ahead of many other laptops in the market, as they offered productivity and battery life that very few devices could compete with, he said. The newer generation is likely to widen Apples lead in this perspective, and it further puts pressure on Windows PC makers and silicon makers to up their game, he added. Ready for Prime Time Those competitors, though, have begun to up their game, and this announcement, which seems out of cadence with the typical Apple calendar, could be a sign that the company is looking over its shoulder with some concern. At CES, we saw a lot of announcements by Intel and AMD about laptops and claims that they are catching up to Apple, Rubin noted. With this announcement, Apple is responding to those processor introductions at CES. It will be interesting to see how these M2 chips compete against the likes of AMDs new Ryzen offering, which may offer comparable or even better performance in terms of battery life and processing speed in the Windows space, Vena added. Image Credit: Apple However, Bajarin asserted that the new chips were just too good to keep under wraps until later in the year. The M2 chips are such an improvement over the M1s Apple wanted to get them to the market as soon as possible, he said. That is why the launch is earlier in the year than normal. The new M2s were ready for prime time. Releasing new products when the PC market is in one of the worst declines in its history might give some computer makers pause, but thats not the case with Apple. Apple positions itself differently from its PC competitors, observed Mikako Kitagawa, a director and analyst with Gartner, a research and advisory company based in Stamford, Conn. It is determined to win the market despite the challenging environment, she told TechNewsWorld. Thats the message behind the new product release today. TL;DR: Fresh from announcing a new policy of giving its salaried employees in the US unlimited paid time off, Microsoft is reportedly about to reduce its global workforce by around 10,000 people. The Windows maker has been one of the few tech giants not to implement major job cuts recently, but it looks like that will soon change. Sky News writes that Microsoft is set to announce the layoffs in a few days. It writes that the company's global workforce of more than 221,000 people---122,000 of whom are full-time employees based in the United States---will be reduced by around 5%, or about 10,000 jobs, though the final figure could be even higher. The cuts are reportedly set to take place across a number of engineering divisions. Microsoft has made previous layoffs in the last 12 months, including cuts that impacted fewer than 1,000 employees in October, though they have been on a much smaller scale than those of fellow tech firms, affecting less than 1% of its total workforce. Like other companies, Microsoft increased its hiring during the pandemic to deal with the sudden surge in people working/learning from home and requiring its products. Now that the economy has stalled and consumer demand is waning, these firms are scaling back their workforces. Microsoft's US employees have had a week of ups and downs. The company's chief people officer, Kathleen Hogan, recently announced that all US salaried employees will receive unlimited paid time off, as well as ten corporate holidays, leaves of absence, sick/mental health time off, and time away for jury duty or bereavement. Microsoft is expected to announce the job cuts before its quarterly earnings report on January 24, when the Redmond firm is expected to post its slowest revenue increase since fiscal 2017 Working in tech isn't a very secure profession right now. The first week of this month saw more layoffs across the industry than the whole of December, including confirmation from Amazon that it would be letting go of 18,000 staff. Last year was a difficult one for tech employees; Twitter, HP, Meta, Lyft, Snap, Robinhood, and many more announced they were reducing their workforces. Seattle-based startup for aerial mobility Jetoptera tested its innovative bladeless VTOL aircraft concept to demonstrate its ability to reach speeds of 0.8 Mach or 614 mph. The data was reported through the completed Small Business Innovation Research contract, awarded by the United States Air Force. (Photo : EVA HAMBACH/AFP via Getty Images) Visitors sit inside the Bell Nexus concept vehicle at the Uber Elevate Summit June 12, 2019 in Washington, DC, one of the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles or flying cars that will be part of Ubers fleet for aerial ride sharing. - Uber on June 11 selected Melbourne, Australia, as the first non-US city for its aerial ridesharing service that is expected to launch in 2023, as it unveiled new partners for the ambitious initiative. VTOL Aircraft Concept Jetoptera just concluded its fourth Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract. As per the company's released statement, they experimented with and evaluated its revolutionary concept of bladeless aircraft that vertically takes off and landing (VTOL) and at the same time, configuration with a High-Speed VTOL. The propulsion introduced several fundamental advantages over the legacy of VTOL systems. This emits lower and atonal noise, and milds the temperature as it does not have rotors and propellers. The aircraft remains very reliable despite having low-maintenance turbo compressors that are easy to adapt from existing and current turbines. An Upper Surface Blown Wing (USB) was designed by Jetoptera as they equipped testing for a powered and high lift to integrate the company's Fluidic Propulsive System (FPS). Interesting Engineering reported that the aircraft system will combine gas or electric turbine and fluidic thrust augmentation across the airframe. The company added, "It can be implemented in various geometric shapes, can be embedded with the airframe, and has no propellers or rotating parts. The system is used in all phases of flight." Results for Testing The experiment produced data that informed the company of several concepts critical to the delivery of the conceptual design. The SBIR contract allowed the company to design and build a test for an upper surface blown wing. As per New Atlas, Jetoptera used a high-lift flap system to deliver the maximum amount of lift. This was possible as the company worked with Aerospace Heavyweight Northrop Grumman and Scaled Composites as its subsidiary. To reach the best speeds that an aircraft can offer, the company partnered with Scaled Composites to design the high lift system and test the article. They are also responsible for the conceptual design of the aircraft and static testing. The test demonstrated lift coefficients that exceed 8.0 Mach, which is 40% improved, with lower noise emission and vibrations. This will be faster than any tiltrotor can manage and the Boeing Dreamliner. Also Read: Node Air Partners with JetX to Build a Completely New, Unique Aircraft A sub-scale model of its conceptual design was also built by Jetoptera for the AFWERX HSVTOL program. The company is one out of eleven companies that aims to design a next-generation VTOL military aircraft that offers much higher performance than anything on the market. Related Article: US Air Force to Present B-21 Raider, World's Most Advanced Strike Aircraft With Stealth Technology 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The fifth and latest mission of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy took place on January 15, and it released a batch of spectacular snaps of the event which took place at dusk, just as when the Sun was setting. This nighttime launch from SpaceX captured a majestic view of its recent launch with the US Space Force, with the USSF-67 mission. The Falcon Heavy is currently the most powerful rocket in SpaceX's fleet, as the Super Heavy Booster and Starship combination is not yet fully operational for these kinds of missions. SpaceX Falcon Heavy's Latest Mission: USSF-67 (Photo : SpaceX via Twitter) The USSF-67 mission successfully launched to orbit and the SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the rocket assigned to deliver it to space, already returned its boosters and rocket to its landing location. The United States Space Force commissioned the company and its massive rocket to fulfill this top-secret and classified mission. While it is unknown what payload it delivered to the Earth's geosynchronous orbit, the mission was a success for SpaceX and the US Space Force. Moreover, this is the second launch of the Falcon Heavy with side boosters, with its first mission being the USSF-44, also with the US Space Force. Read Also: WATCH: SpaceX Starship 24 Stacked Atop Super Heavy Booster-Orbital Launch Soon? Photos of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Mission SpaceX's Twitter page provided different updates to the public on this recent mission, from launch to the landing of its boosters and the rocket itself. The space company also released shots of the launch from afar, showing the spectacular looks of the rocket in action, as it propels the payload to orbit. Falcon Heavy launches USSF-67 to orbit pic.twitter.com/htJfgM0tdE SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2023 SpaceX and the Falcon Heavy Back in 2018, the SpaceX first launched the Falcon Heavy which made headlines and massive waves in the commercial space industry because of its capability to deliver massive payloads and reach further lengths. With this launch, there were colossal doors that were opened for the company for future missions of the spacecraft, along with industry partners like NASA and the US Space Force. The company's rocket already secured a future launch for a deep space mission to launch the NASA Roman Telescope in 2026. This mission would have the Falcon Heavy delivering this spacecraft that would study the dark matter in space, as well as exoplanets that are yet to be discovered by astronomers with the telescope. Despite having massive gaps in its launches unlike its smaller and less powerful brother, the Falcon 9, SpaceX still has significant plans for the Falcon Heavy in the future. It will soon deliver important and heavier payloads soon for its partners, to fulfill the missions that SpaceX's other rockets may not achieve or deliver, like its recent client, the US Space Force, with the latest USSF-67 mission. Related Article: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Kicks Off a Classified Mission for US Space Force's USSF-67 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Elon Musk lawsuit regarding his 2018 tweets which talked about the Tesla buyout and taking the company private already selected its jury for its trial this Wednesday, January 18. The stage is now set and is only awaiting the hearing's course of events to take place, one that would determine whether the CEO did what he was alleged of by its investors. Twitter is a powerful social media, and massive claims are also subject to lawsuits and complaints from concerned parties, especially if it is claimed by one of the most powerful people in the world. Elon Musk Lawsuit: Jury Selection Process Done (Photo : JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) AP News reported that the Elon Musk lawsuit already finished selecting its nine-person jury that will sit and hear both sides of the case. It was previously appealed by Musk's team to transfer the hearing to Texas, particularly as he claimed that San Fransisco jurors may have "poisoned minds" due to the Twitter acquisition case. The jurors will play a massive role in this case, as with any other hearings, especially as they would need to evaluate both sides and give their response as citizens of the United States. According to the report, jury selection became a painstaking process as people who were invited over had strong opinions about Musk, and it stems from both positive and negative ones. Read Also: Elon Musk: Twitter is Better than Instagram, Claims Meta App Makes People 'Depressed' Class Action Lawsuit Trial to Start Soon The class action lawsuit was filed against the CEO on behalf of the Tesla investors who held a 10-day stock in 2018 after the infamous tweets were publicized via Twitter. In different tweets, Musk said that he is considering taking Tesla private, and claimed that it will post a $420 stock price for all investors and buyers. Furthermore, the Tesla CEO affirmed this via a blog post and his tweet, saying that it already got the investor support that is crucial to this process, further citing that it is "contingent to shareholder vote." Elon Musk and his Tweets The second top billionaire in the world. (via Forbes' real-time list), Elon Musk has had a few run-ins with government agencies regarding the many tweets he posts via the platform he now owns. Previously, it was about how Musk influences the cryptocurrency industry, with promotion-like tweets regarding Dogecoin which the SEC flagged. The SEC also previously flagged Tesla for its failure to monitor the tech CEO's tweets, especially with his many claims online that center on different information about his companies. This is after the billionaire's previous $40 million settlement about an earlier case which also centers on his tweets that talked about the 2018 claims online. Now, this same case is getting a class action lawsuit from the investors that the CEO allegedly defrauded, especially with his plans on taking Tesla private. The case is set to take place in San Fransisco in the coming day, with everything already in place, to hear what both sides have to present regarding the innocence or crimes of Elon Musk in 2018. Related Article: Elon Musk 'Take Private' Tweet Haunts the Tesla CEO 4 and a Half Years Later 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Google Stadia is soon ending its cloud gaming services for all, but this does not mean that one's purchased Stadia controller/s is going to waste or being unusable. The famed internet company promised last week that it will release a Bluetooth mode update for Stadia controllers, and it is now available for all to install and configure. Google Releases Stadia Controllers' Bluetooth Mode (Photo : INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images) On Stadia controller's website, there already is a button where users may download the Bluetooth mode feature to repurpose their gaming pads to use for other platforms or consoles. There is a requirement for this update, and users need to have Chrome 108 or later to install this update for their controllers and get on with their lives without Stadia. Google fulfilled its claims that it will allow gamers to use the Stadia controller for other platforms, and not just the company's cloud services. Previously, Google allowed the Stadia controllers to connect to its services via a WiFi network, and this update will make the controller Bluetooth-permanent, as the cloud gaming service shuts down this week. The internet company will allow gamers to update their Stadia controllers to Bluetooth until December 31, 2023, only. Read Also: Google 'Grogu' Tracking Device Coming in Late 2023? Here's What it Might Offer How to Use Bluetooth Mode on Stadia Controllers According to 9to5 Google, after installing the Bluetooth mode on the controllers, gamers only need to press the "Y" and the "Stadia" buttons for two seconds to enter pairing mode. The light indicator will turn orange when in pairing mode, and this is the time users may search for it in their devices' Bluetooth settings. After pairing, the light will turn white, and this will be its default color when connecting to its last paired device. Wireless connections will not support the 3.5mm audio jack output, but wired connections via USB-C will allow sounds to come through. Stadia controllers' Bluetooth mode is available to connect on Windows 10 and 11, macOS 13 via Steam, ChromeOS, and Android. Google Stadia and its End of Service The Mountain View-based company envisioned the cloud gaming experience for all when it first launched Stadia in November 2019, and it is one of the earliest platforms where people could play games without installing it first. Stadia promised a streamlined gaming experience for all, particularly with a low-latency, high-framerate cloud integration. However, it met its fate back in October 2022, after less than three years after its run with Google to deliver the famous games available on the platform to the PC and mobile platforms. Ubisoft promised to take the reigns from then on, with some titles on Stadia coming to PC, as fulfilled by the French gaming company amidst its shutdown. Gamers were given four months for the adjustments, alongside the refunds for their purchased titles, and other perks that they were supposed to get from Stadia, now on other platforms. Google promised to bring Bluetooth mode for existing Stadia controllers, as they get repurposed for other platforms, now available for people to download. Related Article: Google Pilots its Own 'Soundbox' in India That Sends Merchants Audio Payment Notifications 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Gaming chat application Discord is set to acquire Gas, a social media application designed for anonymous compliments and positive affirmations. This was created and founded by former Meta Platforms Product Manager Nikita Bier. (Photo : DAMIEN MEYER/AFP via Getty Images) This picture taken on Januray 22, 2021 in Rennes, western France, shows a smartphone screen featuring messaging service applications WhatsApp, Signal, telegram, Viber, Discord and Olvid. Acquiring Teens App 'Gas' Gas is a social media application for teens that are full of positive-centric features like positive affirmations and anonymous compliments. Users will be asked to send compliments by voting in polls for rankings. In short, you have to "gas" up your friends in the app. In an announcement from Discord, the company excitedly shared the news that they will be acquiring Gas in the company. Despite this, the application will continue as its own standalone application. As a part of the deal, the team will be joining Discord to help them with their efforts to continue growing across new audiences. Especially that their "mission has been to enable people to build community through fun experiences and genuine connections," the company stated. Four people (1 ceo, 2 engineers, 1 community manager) Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) October 21, 2022 Discord added that the founders of the application have a proven track record of creating and producing applications that are designed for exciting experiences. Through this deal, both companies will work to take things to the next level. Discord and Gas as One Combining the two applications into one, this acquisition may be more powerful than other partnerships. Bloomberg reported that Discord has 150 million active users who flock to millions of servers to discuss different topics and gaming. Meanwhile, Gas reached 10 million downloads and almost $7 million in consumer spending since its launch in 2022. Last October, Gas was named the hottest application by The Wall Street Journal, including other popular social applications in Apple App Store charts. Gas' Previous Setbacks Despite ending the year 2022 as good as any application in the market by being popular, Gas experienced setbacks during its exit. TechCrunch reported that the app underwent a widespread sex-trafficking rumor that was eventually proven false. This impacted the application's downloads due to concerns from the users. Creator Nikita Bier stated that he and his team received death threats from hundreds of people because of this hoax. Other applications that went viral at the same time as Gas have also been hit with the same hoax including IRL and WalkSafe. Also Read: Netflix Launches Discord Bot: Lets Users Have Watch Parties, Suggests Threads for Spoiler-Free Discussion While Discord clarified that Gas will be a stand-alone application, the company announced just recently that it would integrate some of its applications into its servers. This means that Gas' features might be included in this integration. Discord stated in its announcement, "We're always working to create an inclusive world where no one feels like an outsider and we're excited to welcome Gas to the Discord community as our next step to fulfilling that vision." Related Article: Discord Expands Subscription Services, Allows Creators to Monetize Their Servers 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Toyota Motor Corp. has recently confirmed that it will limit Lexus luxury car orders in Japan due to a component shortage, including in-vehicle semiconductors. According to Nikkei Asia, the shortage is expected to last until 2023. As a result, the company has set a limit on the number of orders assigned to each dealership. This move may result in lost sales opportunities, necessitating the company's rebuilding of its supply network. Japan has established an order limit for all ten Lexus models. Delivery delays caused by part shortages are more severe in luxury vehicles that use many semiconductors. Toyota will also strengthen delivery countermeasures in terms of systems to address this issue. Toyota's Production Concerns Reports tell us that the automaker will install a system this spring to share information on delivery dates up to two years in advance with dealers to ensure consistent order shipments. Toyota has repeatedly reduced its production plan due to parts shortages and the Chinese lockdowns. Toyota's domestic market delivery delays are particularly noticeable, with sales down 13% from January to November 2022 compared to the same period last year. Read Also: Tesla: 2016 Self-Driving Video was Fake, Autopilot Engineer Claims It Was Edited The company cut its March 2023 production plan by 500,000 units in November after initially planning to produce 9.7 million vehicles in May. Each time this occurred, dealers were required to explain the delivery delay to customers. Customers have asked for more information. Toyota, the Japanese auto manufacturer that has long been the industry leader, has recently been pushed to second place. The company, a division of Toyota Motor Company, is still one of the largest in the global automotive industry and operates in various segments, including SUVs and crossovers, trucks, and motorcycles. According to Statista, Tesla overtook Toyota as the world's most valuable car brand in 2022, signaling a significant shift in the automotive industry. Tesla's brand value is estimated to be 75.9 billion US dollars, with Toyota coming in second with a brand value of 63.7 billion US dollars. Mercedes-Benz completes the top three, with a brand value of $56.5 billion. Looking at the Future Toyota plans to increase domestic production from January to March to mitigate the effects of the shortage and shift vehicles destined for export to the domestic market. Furthermore, to avoid further supply issues, the company will look to procure semiconductors under long-term contracts within the group. This will help the company maintain a consistent supply of components and avoid future production disruptions. Latest from Toyota On Wednesday, Jan. 18, Toyota announced its plans to produce approximately 750,000 vehicles globally in February as it recovers from the pandemic's production disruptions. According to Reuters, the Japanese automaker intends to produce approximately 300,000 vehicles domestically and about 450,000 internationally. In addition, the company stated that it would closely monitor the supply of auto parts, including semiconductors, to ensure that production runs smoothly. The company produced 740,996 vehicles globally in February last year, exceeding its target of around 700,000. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: Toyota Partners with Tesla Co-Founder to Recycle Old EV Batteries 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Tanzania government reversed its 15% fee ceiling on e-hailing companies like Uber and Bolt less than a year after making the decision, denying drivers the chance to earn more. In a notification published on December 30, 2022, the Land and Transport Regulatory Authority (LATRA) announced an increase in the charge from 20% to 25%, effective as of last Sunday, Jan. 15. This modification replaced the previous order given in March of last year, TechCrunch reported. LATRA is in charge of establishing and approving pricing for the whole ridesharing industry. Paused Services In April of last year, Uber and its biggest competitor in Europe and Africa, Bolt, suspended several services on the arguments that lowering the commission on partners would reduce their revenues. Drivers, who had previously decried inadequate profits from the apps like their Kenyan counterparts, saw their salaries rise as a result of the reduced fee (from 25% to 15% commission fee). After a little pause, Uber is back up and running in Tanzania. TechCrunch has learned that Uber, temporarily suspended UberX, UberXL, and UberSave services in April 2022, has begun attempts to reinstate full operations as of Monday, Jan. 16. This follows Bolt, whose services were restored in October 2022. Bolt's commission rate was 20%, whereas Uber's was 25%. In their absence, domestic competitors Little (15% commission) and Ping entered the market. According to Uber's East and West Africa head of communications, Lorraine Onduru, they had to make the tough choice to halt their activities in Tanzania. Apparently, the new regulations made it impossible for their company to function in the area. "We have, since the pause, maintained our engagements with LATRA and other regulatory bodies in Tanzania as a show of our commitment to resume full operations in the market, providing drivers with an avenue to earn and riders, an enhanced mobility option," Onduru added. Onduru also mentioned that they applaud the new price order issued by LATRA as they feel it would considerably assist in the growth and development of the ride-hailing business in Tanzania. Also Read: Amazon, Uber Reportedly Lack Fair Labor Conditions for Gig Workers in India Service Restoration Stakeholders, including Uber and Bolt representatives, agitated for a review of the tariffs. In September of last year, Tanzania announced that a compromise had been reached and the companies would restart operations, allowing the e-hailing services to relaunch. A Bolt representative remarked that the main goal was to expand the emerging ride-hailing industry in the market. "Our efforts and engagements were aimed at ensuring an enabling regulatory environment for mobility services in Tanzania among drivers, vehicle owners, passengers, and ride-hailing operators." The firm has resumed full services as of October 13, 2022. Bolt has said that, in response to LATRA's ruling, it would shortly institute new pricing for passenger fares. Following the implementation of new legislation last year, Kenya joined Tanzania in capping the commission at 18%. So far, the ride-hailing industry's efforts to get the new restrictions scrapped have failed. Also Read: Southeast Asian Food Delivery Players Grab, GoTo Face Slump as Spending Growth Slows to Four-Year Low 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The biggest Amazon layoff in the company's history is already happening. (Photo : Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images) The logo of US online retail giant Amazon is seen at the distribution center in Staten Island as workers strike in demand that the facility be shut down and cleaned after one staffer tested positive for the coronavirus on March 30, 2020 in New York. The e-commerce giant's job cuts are expected to affect over 18,000 employees. Although affected employees are just around 1% of Amazon's total workforce, they are still estimated to be around 6% of the retailer's overall corporate employees. Of course, many individuals will be saddened by the mass layoffs. However, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explained that it would help the company in its long-term goals. Biggest Amazon Layoff Begins According to Fox News' latest report, the largest Amazon layoff started on Wednesday, Jan. 18. (Photo : Photo by JONAS ROOSENS/BELGA/AFP via Getty Images) An employee works at the parcel sorting hangar during the inauguration of first Belgian delivery center of US online retail giant Amazon in Antwerp, on November 3, 2022. - Belgium OUT (Photo by JONAS ROOSENS / BELGA / AFP) / Belgium OUT Also Read: Amazon to Lay Off 17,000+ Workers, Higher than Initially Planned The e-commerce giant said that it would start contacting those who will be terminated. "Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so," CEO Andy Jassy told Bloomberg. He added that the layoffs and other changes would help the company achieve long-term opportunities. Amazon is just among the large tech companies that reduce employees as part of cost-cutting efforts. Aside from the e-commerce giant, Meta Platforms Inc., Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Saleforce Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc. are also conducting mass layoffs. Affected Divisions, Offered Assistance, Other Details The latest mass layoffs of Amazon are expected to fall on the company's retail division and human resources. Jassy said in his memo that affected workers will still be assisted before the company completely terminates them. Assistance offered includes transitional health benefits, severance pays, and job placements in other companies. The latest mass layoffs come as Amazon struggles with slowing online sales growth. E-commerce also said that it is preparing for the possible recession that could affect its customers' spending power. If you want more details about the largest Amazon layoff, visit this link. In other news, Amazon employees in India were seen crying in their offices as layoffs continued. We also reported that the e-commerce giant plans to shut down three Amazon facilities in the United Kingdom. For more news updates about Amazon and its other cost-cutting activities, keep your tabs open here at TechTimes. Related Article: Amazon's Robot Fleet is Rising, and Chances are It May Replace Human Workers Soon 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. According to a recent Australian study, infants with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) who receive early diagnosis and treatment can significantly increase their mobility and ability to walk. The findings, which experts reported in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, suggest that all newborns should be screened for SMA. Combatting SMA with Early Diagnosis SMA is a genetic disorder that causes muscle weakness and wasting by compromising the nerve cells in the spinal cord. There are currently no cures for this leading genetic cause of infant mortality. Recent advances in treatment, however, have resulted in significant improvements in the prognosis for affected children. The study, led by researchers from Australia's University of New South Wales, examined the outcomes of 15 infants with type one SMA, the most severe form of the disease. The infants were divided into two groups: those diagnosed and treated within the first six months of life and those diagnosed later after symptoms had already developed. The Australian Study Results The findings were eye-opening. Standard.co.uk tells us that after two years, the results showed that 11 of the 14 children who had been diagnosed were either walking without assistance or independently. Only one participant out of those diagnosed after the onset of symptoms was able to develop the ability to walk. According to the study's findings, those diagnosed with the condition through newborn screening had better average scores on other measures of movement ability and independence in everyday tasks than those diagnosed with the condition based on symptoms. Read Also: Heart Attack Repair Protein Injection Developed by Australian Researchers to Reverse Damages on Muscles During the trial, palliative care was initiated for three of the children; one had been diagnosed as a result of newborn screening, and the other two had been diagnosed as a result of the onset of symptoms. What This Means Eurekalert.org tells us that this is the first study to directly compare the screening of newborns for SMA with more traditional methods of diagnosis and management, and it aims to provide evidence for the clinical effectiveness of newborn screening. The authors advocate for more widespread adoption of newborn screening for SMA, which should be considered. "It's extremely promising that the majority of children diagnosed via newborn screening in our study were able to walk after two years, compared to those children diagnosed through symptoms who were mostly only able to sit unassisted," says lead researcher Dr. Didu Kariyawasam of the University of New South Wales. SMA newborn screening is currently available in the United States, Japan, and Germany. However, in the United Kingdom, the National Screening Committee is now considering whether SMA screening should be included in the newborn blood spot screening program, with pilot studies underway. SMA is also planned to be included in the UK's Newborn Genome Program, a research project to diagnose and treat rare genetic disorders in babies using complete DNA sequences from 100,000 newborns. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: Experimental Gene Therapy Changes the Life of Polish Schoolgirl With Unusual Brain Condition 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Netflix reveals the first look at the upcoming Power Rangers: Once & Always reunion special, which will launch this year. The news that a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers reunion special is coming to Netflix as a tribute to the fans and the iconic band of spirited teenagers that began battling evil virtually on every television in the 1990s. Normally, news of a reunion special would elicit warm, fuzzy feelings of nostalgia. However, the return of the Power Rangers would be a sobering reminder of everything that fans have lost in the years. This includes the lack of Power Rangers franchise veteran Jason David Frank, who famously portrayed Green Ranger then White Ranger Tommy Oliver and recently passed away after committing suicide in November 2022, according to Tech Times. Additionally, the reunion special may not include the late actress Thuy Trang, who famously portrayed Yellow Ranger Trini Kwan before a contract dispute and the tragic car crash that claimed her life in 2001. Power Rangers: Once & Always: Here's What We Know So Far While not much is known about the upcoming reunion special, according to a short teaser uploaded by the Power Rangers Official Youtube channel, fans can see footage of Yost and Jones dressed as Rangers as well as group images that prominently feature the Green Ranger, a role that has only ever been played by the late Jason David Frank. The video leaves the late Frank's cameos up for speculation. Plans to honor both Frank and Trang have yet to be revealed, despite the inclusion of the original members. The young cast that started it all would be haunted by a sense of tragedy long after they left the series, despite how successful Mighty Morphin Power Rangers would become and how it would spawn a mega-franchise that would continuously reinvent itself for 29 seasons. According to the official synopsis, "In the midst of a global crisis, they are called on once again to be the heroes the world needs. Inspired by the legendary mantra from the franchise 'Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger,' Once & Always reminds everyone when you become a Ranger, you are always a part of the Ranger family and always welcome." Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once and Always is scheduled to be released globally on Netflix on April 19, 2023. Here are some of the returning cast members according to Whats-on-Netflix: Johnny Yong Bosch as Adam Park David Yost as Billy Cranston Walter Jones as Zack Taylor Catherine Sutherland as Katherine 'Kat' Hillard Steve Cardenas as Rocky DeSantos Karan Ashley as Aisha Campbell Charlie Kersh as Minh Barbara Goodson as Rita Repulsa Richard Horvitz as Alpha 5 Read Also: Power Rangers Tribute: Top Five Jason David Frank Ranger Personas What to Binge on Netflix Before 'Power Rangers: Once & Always' While waiting for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once and Always this April, fans can binge-watch the Four Power Rangers movies, which are still available on Netflix in the US. Additionally, Power Rangers: Dino Fury is also available on Netflix under the Original brand, which is in seasons 28 and 29. Additionally, you can rewatch Super Ninja Steel (season 25), Beast Morphers (season 26), and four vintage Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers seasons, which are also available on Netflix US. Fans may also look forward to Power Rangers: Cosmic Fury, the 30th season, which premieres on Netflix this year. Related Article: 'Power Rangers' Green Ranger Star Jason David Frank Tragic Cause of Death: Internet Rumors Confirmed? 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Oil titan Shell has acquired EV charging and media firm Volta for $169 million as the automotive industry shifts to battery-powered cars. On Wednesday, Jan. 18, Volta announced that a subsidiary of Shell would acquire the electric vehicle (EV) charging network operator in an all-cash transaction valued at roughly $169 million, Electrek reported. Shell's Volta Buyout Volta has entered into a final merger agreement with Shell USA, according to a news statement issued today on Wednesday. Volta is an EV charging and media firm headquartered out of San Francisco. Its Level 2 charging stations may be found in places like supermarkets, shopping centers, banks, and other commercial and retail establishments. Volta's Interim CEO Vince Cubbage said the deal would benefit shareholders and put the firm on a solid footing for the future. Cubbage said that Shell acknowledges that Volta's market-leading dual charging and media approach provides a public charging option that is cost-effective, dependable, and easily accessible, making the transition to e-mobility inevitable. Although the potential for growth in the EV infrastructure sector is substantial, Volta's ability to seize this opportunity on its own was constrained by competitive market circumstances and ongoing funding shortages. "This transaction creates value for our shareholders and provides our exceptional employees and other stakeholders a clear path forward," Cubbage added. Increased adoption of zero-emission electric cars is bolstered by a major oil firm like Shell purchasing a prominent EV charging provider. Shell will provide Volta financing to see them through the deal's final stages. Moreover, Shell USA will purchase all outstanding Volta Class A common stock shares for $0.86 per share in cash. See Also: Tesla Cybertruck EV Design is Finalized, Chief Designer Reveals - Is Production Starting Soon? Shift to Battery-powered Cars The future of the car industry becomes clearer thanks to the commitment of more manufacturers and countries to electrify vehicles completely. In the midst of this, oil firms are taking steps to secure their continued relevance. In 2022, electric cars made up 10% of worldwide vehicle sales, a key milestone as the industry aimed to increase EV manufacturing. Major oil companies like Shell have been investing heavily in EV charging infrastructure and diversifying away from gas sales via a series of acquisitions and other investments over the last several years. When the oil firm purchased New Motion in 2017, it gained instantaneous access to 30,000 EV charging stations throughout Europe. Since then, Shell has made a number of fresh investments and acquisitions and has formed partnerships with notable companies like Nio and BYD in order to further its network expansion plans. Shell has installed and operated around 90,000 EV charging points in private residences, commercial establishments, and Shell-branded places, with a further 300,000 stations accessible through roaming networks. As part of its plan to adapt to the arrival of the zero-emission electric car era, Shell intends to have more than 500,000 EV charging connections operational by 2025. With this most recent purchase, the business has taken a significant step toward its ultimate objective. See Also: Nevada's Proposed Lithium Mine Receives Conditional $700 Million Loan from DOE 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. "Inspired by the human brain": the specialist spoke about promising areas of application of neural networks "Inhuman cruelty": the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation publishes archival documents on the destruction of people in Nazi concentration camps The restaurant that nobody should miss in Madrid, according to the 'New York Times' 80 euros for eating naked a vegan menu with strangers, the latest in exclusive dinners that arrives in Spain "A person can withstand a lot": cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky - about the modern status of the profession and preparation for flights The FBI launches an alert about 'hacking by load' at mobile charging points at airports, hotels or shopping centers Las Margaritas is called 'food house', but it is much more "Thousands of corpses discovered": FSB published documents about Nazi atrocities in the prisoner of war camp near Stalingrad The Future of Online Casinos and the Technologies That Will Shape It "A deliberate and premeditated act": in Angers, an investigation opened after the ransacking of a church "I need to hear the breath of the hall": Mikhail Shufutinsky celebrates his 75th birthday Notre-Dame: four years after the fire, top start for the reconstruction of the spire Sagamihara City Election Commission: Decided to advance the election of the unsuccessful candidate in the election four years ago Big plans: the US is working on the background of "Game of Thrones" and a new project on "The Big Bang Theory" Support groups gather in front of the Diet against proposed amendments to the Immigration Control Act What is true in the natural Botox used by Kate Middleton, Michelle Obama and Queen Letizia, according to foreign press One hundred years without Sorolla: on the trail of the master of light in Valencia Entering the same river: what can turn out to be the return of Messi to Barcelona Sweden tenth in the team competition at the European Gymnastics Championships secures a place in the World Championships Holger Rune punches the referee straight on the arm: "I got to talk to her" Kylian Mbappe reiterates his wish to continue at PSG and "dreams" of participating in the Paris 2024 Olympics Tennis: the WTA announces the reinstatement of Chinese tournaments, all withdrawn since the Peng Shuai case Survey of pension planning for professionals: Most agree that "retirement should be early" and it is safest to reserve wealth Explosion of 3 times without fees: split payment has increased by 20% in one year The Government launches a decaffeinated pilot for the four-day day with a fifth of the money promised Escriva defends in Washington the withdrawal of tax benefits to Ferrovial: "No one can be surprised by that" Stock price rises slightly, and buy orders gather for stocks of companies that are performing well Three major convenience store companies Domestic business increases sales and profits Factors such as relaxation of restrictions on movement Spain revalidates its position as the country with the highest unemployment in the OECD and the second with the highest youth unemployment Rafael del Pino rules out the sanction of the Treasury and adds a majority in favor of taking the headquarters of Ferrovial to the Netherlands Calvino "respects" the result of the Ferrovial meeting, but Belarra demands "forcefulness" against the company Alberto Garcia Alix: "In La Movida I got into everything, especially opiates. I was in the most destroyer group." In the United States, the justice system preserves access to the abortion pill but with restrictions Equality rejects that the opponent to police in Torrelodones can be examined as a woman The Electoral Board urges the Parliament to decide on the political future of Laura Borras Time magazine included Gershkovich and Greiner in the list of the most influential people of the year Former Pentagon adviser McGregor: Ukraine may disappear as a state by the end of the year Where and when to see the Holy Week processions in Madrid Political scientist Dudchak on Hersh's statement about Zelensky: there are probably a lot of such stories Alessandro Lequio breaks his silence: "It makes me sad that my son is once again the protagonist of today" Mass poisoning on MasterChef 11: "We're sorry. It is an absolutely exceptional case in these 11 years" Naoko, Emma Nogueiro and the other women in Sanchez Drago's life (always younger and with short hair) The sexist murder of an influencer shakes the Dominican Republic: her ex shoots her in the head three days after trying Collapsed building in Marseille: the last two bodies found, bringing the death toll to eight The method of having a child, including surrogacy, does not interfere with their psychological and family development "Pocket the funds allocated by the United States": Hersh announced the misappropriation of at least $ 400 million by Zelensky and his entourage The Future of Online Casinos and the Technologies That Will Shape It Communities 2019 - Privacy The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them. Growing up I was part of a Stuckeys family. When the eight of us traveled, we packed our drinks, sandwiches and snacks. Sometimes we would stop at a Stuckeys. Loved those pecan log rolls and the shakes were scrumptious. Mining giant BHP believes the reopening of Chinas economy following the end of its long-running zero-COVID policy will prop up demand for some of Australias largest commodity exports even as many other nations across the world suffer slowdowns this year. BHP, the biggest Australian mining company, reported on Thursday that it had achieved record half-year production of iron ore after its flagship operations in WAs Pilbara region posted a stronger-than-expected end to 2022. China is by far the largest consumer of Australian iron ore, the key ingredient needed to make steel. Credit: Getty China is by far the largest consumer of Australian iron ore, the key ingredient needed to make steel. Iron ore is BHPs most lucrative commodity and one of Australias single biggest exports. The mining giant told investors it had produced 74.3 million tonnes of iron ore in the December quarter, an increase of 1 per cent from the same time last year and slightly ahead of what most analysts had been expecting. Alvin Chau, Macaus ex-junket king who once had branded Suncity high-roller rooms at Crown in Melbourne and Star in Sydney, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in the gaming hub after being found guilty of charges including criminal association, capping the downfall of the flamboyant former industry tycoon. Chau was found guilty of criminal association, illicit gambling and fraud, local media outlet GGR Asia reported, citing a judgment issued by a Macau court on Wednesday. There was insufficient evidence to prove allegations of money laundering, it said. Alvin Chau has been sentenced to 18 years in jail. Credit: Bloomberg The former chairman of Suncity Group, Macaus largest junket operator, was a leading light in a lucrative industry that brought in high rollers from mainland China and extended credit to them. He was arrested in November 2021 for conducting illegal gaming activities. The focus of authorities investigation centred around under-the-table betting, a system in which gamblers wagered multiples of what they officially bet via a shadow banking system established by Chaus group. Since 2013, Chaus group had handled almost $HK824 billion ($149 billion) in such parallel gambling money, making an illegal profit of $HK21.5 billion, according to prosecutors. That resulted in a $HK8.26 billion loss in tax revenue for the Macau government, GGR reported. The biggest miner had already expanded its dealmaking team in London and was interested in pursuing a transformational deal, Bloomberg reported last year. The company has recently exited oil and gas and vowed to end thermal coal mining by the end of the decade. To replace those businesses, its looking to expand in copper and nickel and grow a fertiliser business. BHP would be interested in the possibility of deals at the right price with companies such as Canadian fertiliser producer Nutrien and US copper giant Freeport-McMoRan, according to some of the people. Nutriens mines and infrastructure surround BHPs Jansen project it has long been seen as a natural fit and the companies held talks about a potential partnership two years ago. Freeport is the worlds largest publicly traded copper producer, at a time when the worlds biggest mining companies are all pushing to expand production. Another large copper producer Canadas Teck Resources is controlled through a dual-class share structure by the Keevil family, but could make an appealing target for one of the big miners if the family were willing to sell or merge part of the business. The renewed focus on dealmaking comes as the miners themselves are receiving increased attention from both governments and investors, after the uncertainties created by Russias invasion of Ukraine helped spur worries about security of supply, driving up commodity prices. Metal markets are tight, with above-ground supplies for several at the tightest in recent history, while Chinas reopening from COVID-19 lockdowns is threatening to jolt global demand. Over the longer term, the global drive to decarbonise will be dependent on an ever-increasing supply of natural resources. Yet the rich valuations, with many miners trading at or near records, could also put a damper on dealmaking unless a wider global recession leads to lower commodity and equity prices. The big producers are also continuing efforts to refine their existing asset portfolios at the same time as they seek growth. A lot of these guys dont have much growth and deals are a way to address that. The size perspective is key though. Its going to be hard to do the mega one. Analyst Ben Davis Most of the major miners are also keen to grow output by expanding existing mines or through exploration and building new ones. The industry has been warning for years that there arent enough copper projects to meet future demand, and big deals often dont bring on new production unless fresh capital can be deployed. A lot of these guys dont have much growth and deals are a way to address that, said Liberum analyst Ben Davis. The size perspective is key though. Its going to be hard to do the mega one. Like BHP, Rio Tinto made a big purchase last year, taking full control of Turquoise Hill Resources in a $US3.2 billion deal. The takeover was messy, with a vote postponed three times as Rio sought to win support from dissident shareholders. However, executives believe it showed investors that Rio can hold its nerve to resist the reckless spending that characterised its past dealmaking. Loading New Chairman Dominic Barton said at a conference in October that he believed the company had missed opportunities in recent years, in part because of concerns about investors reaction because of previous missteps. Rios dealmaking focus has now shifted to lithium. The company has asked the biggest investment banks for pitches on lithium miners and is actively looking for deals. Glencore, for so long the most aggressive dealmaker in the sector, has been quiet in recent years, instead choosing to sell many of its smaller assets. Speaking to investors last month, CEO Gary Nagle emphasised that its focus would be on targets where it had existing relationships or shareholdings, or assets that were nearby its existing operations. These will be ones that are strategic for Glencore, where Glencore has some sort of strategic advantage, whether it be because we are have existing shareholding, whether we have existing partnerships with the current owners, Nagle said. These will be very strategic M&A opportunities and not simple highest bid wins. Loading One area where Glencore sees opportunities is aluminium, which the commodities trader buys and sells for others but does not produce itself. The company has looked in the past at a deal to buy US producer Alcoa. Last year, it held discussions with Noble Group to buy Jamaican alumina refinery Jamalco, but the talks fell apart, people familiar with the matter said. Still, perhaps the most pressing item on Glencores to-do list is to decide the future of its Viterra agriculture business. The companys options are to merge the business with a rival, sell a stake or an initial public offering. Fuel giant Ampols Brisbane oil refinery has benefited from a 4.5 per cent year-on-year boost to its profit margin, which could rise further from next month as European nations impose new bans on Russian oil products. Ampol, the nations largest supplier of petrol, diesel and jet fuel, told investors on Wednesday that margins from processing crude oil into fuels at its Lytton refinery during the December quarter remained above historical averages at $US11.75 ($16.79) a barrel, up from $US11.24 a year ago. Ampols Lytton oil refinery in Brisbane. Credit: Bloomberg However, the result marked a drop from $US15.46 a barrel in the September quarter. Gordon Ramsay, an analyst with the Royal Bank of Canada, said Ampols December quarter margin was 19 per cent below his forecast, largely because Ampol purchased crude oil up to three months ahead of usage and is exposed to a time lag on pricing changes. Passengers on board a Qantas flight from New Zealand were unaware their pilot had issued a mayday call until after the plane had landed safely at Sydney Airport among a throng of emergency services and airline personnel. Flight QF144 from Auckland, a twin-jet Boeing 737-838, landed at Sydney Airport just before 3.30pm on Wednesday after a rare engine failure. Passengers said they felt a slight shudder as the engine stopped over the Tasman Sea and were notified of a slight malfunction, but were not told about the mayday call until the plane landed. We didnt realise it was the whole engine [that had] gone, said passenger Simone Schmidt. If Dark Winter was written by anyone other than epidemiologist Professor Raina MacIntyre, it might read a little paranoid; as if the author had digested one too many Cold War spy thrillers while in lockdown. Instead its written by one of the worlds leading experts on infectious disease epidemics, biosecurity, bioterrorism prevention, vaccines and public health, who is also a professor of global biosecurity at UNSW and head of the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute in Sydney. That makes this book so much scarier because the past, present and possible future of disease outbreaks both natural and unnatural are dissected and analysed by someone who knows very much what theyre talking about. Raina MacIntyres research suggests the possibility of an unnatural pandemic is far greater than of a natural one. Credit: Peter Braig The book is tipped as an insiders guide to pandemics and biosecurity, but that doesnt do justice to the broad reach of MacIntyres commentary. She covers the history of governments experimenting on their own populace with biological agents; some of the major incidents of biological warfare and terrorism in recent times; the recent history of disease outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics; and how ill-prepared so many countries including our own are for a world in which these scenarios are likely to become more common. An interesting, and alarming, theme throughout the book is the failure of the scientific and medical establishment to take seriously the risk or threat of unnatural epidemics and pandemics; those that are triggered deliberately or accidently, whether in an act of biological warfare or a laboratory accident. And using the term failure is being charitable; MacIntyre is scathing in her critique of how the scientific community has frequently closed ranks in the face of questions about the possible culpability of one of their own in an accidental outbreak or biological attack. It was supposed to be Netflixs big pre-Christmas smash but, weeks after setting sail, 1899s number is up. The mind-bending multidimensional thriller has been cancelled with just one season under its belt provoking predictable protests from its small, albeit vocal, fanbase and the inevitable online petition to bring it back. Aneurin Barnard, Emily Beecham and Andreas Pietschmann in 1899, which ratcheted up millions of views. Credit: Netflix The shows failure is a surprise on many levels. It was the brainchild of Netflixs golden team of Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, the German couple behind slow-burn hit Dark. That series racked up millions of views by taking the Stranger Things formula of pesky kids investigating a supernatural conspiracy and swaddling it in Teutonic gloom. If anything, Friese and Odar appeared to be on to an even surer thing with 1899. There was the atmospheric setting of a 19th-century ocean liner, the Kerberos, crewed by a rogues gallery of heroes, villains and sundry malcontents. Plus, a dimension-hopping mystery that, as teased in the trailers, seemingly involved time travel and always a good thing a scary child. On paper, it read like Titanic meets Downton Abbey via J.J. Abramss Lost. With a $60 million budget, it was also the most expensive German TV project of all time and so lavish production values were assured. What could go wrong? Lots, it turns out. Though Odar only recently revealed that 1899 had been cancelled his and Frieses overall deal with Netflix continues Netflix apparently broke the news to the producers in December, four weeks after 1899 launched. For a $60 million punt to be written off after a month feels like an overreaction. Then Netflix has never been a company to stand on ceremony. Australians may have shown their passion for spending on fashion over the past 12 months, but its been a rough year for plus-sized clothing outlet City Chic Collective. The company is one of the most globally focused retailers on the Australian Securities Exchange and has significant ambitions to capture a larger slice of the $180 billion plus-sized womens fashion market, making numerous acquisitions over the past few years. City Chic CEO Phil Ryan says the landscape the business operates in has become more competitive. Credit: Janie Barrett Its share price has cratered from $5.03 at the start of 2022 to 53 this week a decline of 89 per cent and management has been warning investors since last year that the company is caught in volatile trading conditions, particularly overseas. City Chic, which has 90 stores in Australia and New Zealand as well as operating the Avenue fashion business in the US, now generates 56 per cent of its sales in the northern hemisphere. ADF troops head to UK for training to help Ukraine Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later. Dismiss Whitehorse City Council in Melbournes east is the latest to pull out of in-home aged care, with the council voting at a confidential meeting to stop providing the service. The council voted to exit the services from July at an October meeting that was closed to the public. As the meeting was in camera, there was no reference to the decision or explanation of it in the councils minutes of the meeting. Ropeable: Desley Conroy is angry that Whitehorse City Council will stop providing in-home aged care. Credit: Penny Stephens The decision, which affects about 2500 elderly residents and 190 staff, follows Boroondara and Mornington councils outsourcing of in-home aged care services to private providers last year. Those moves left thousands of elderly people without care while private providers worked to take over. Whitehorse residents only found out when they received a letter from the council after the decision was made. Gas producers are questioning whether they can comply with new price caps designed to tame soaring energy bills amid concerns that confusion over the rules could expose them to unintended breaches and huge fines. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released guidance for east coast gas producers on Tuesday, detailing the requirements for wholesale supply deals under new laws imposing unprecedented price caps of $12 a gigajoule for the next 12 months. East coast gas exporters face fines of $50 million if they breach price caps on sales of wholesale gas to Australian buyers. The government imposed the caps to blunt gas bill increases of up to 40 per cent forecast to hit homes and businesses in the next two years as a result of global energy shortages caused by the war in Ukraine. But industry remains anxious about grey areas in the guidance. Two Australians that have been stuck behind bars for years in China have had their sentencing dates delayed, dealing a fresh blow to hopes of their release as relations between China and Australia improve. Australian writer Yang Hengjun and journalist Cheng Lei have had their sentencing dates extended by another three months after several delays following their closed-door hearings on national security charges. Yangs sentencing has now been delayed seven times since he was arrested in January 2019. Cheng has also been faced with multiple extensions since she was detained in August 2020 at the height of diplomatic disputes between Canberra and Beijing. Detained Australians Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei. Credit: The Age Yangs lawyer Mo Shaoping said there was no limit to the number of times the Supreme Court could apply for an extension of sentencing. So we cant say its illegal, he said. Chengs partner Nick Coyle said, the continual delays are disappointing. Hong Kong: DoJ bay area task force convenes The Department of Justices Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) Task Force held its first meeting today to discuss the directions for the work on further enhancing the convenience and benefits for people in the bay area. There were also discussions on facilitating the bay area development and construction. The task force was established earlier this month. Ahead of the meeting, Secretary for Justice Paul Lam briefly met task force members where he highlighted that the body's establishment was one of the initiatives in the 2022 Policy Address to dovetail with the national strategies to create strong impetus for growth. Mr Lam hoped that the task forces work could enhance interactions among the people and businesses in the GBA, and facilitate their better access to legal and dispute resolution services. This in turn, will create more room for development for the sectors in Hong Kong and contribute to the enhancement of the rule of law in the GBA, he added. As the task forces chairperson, Deputy Secretary for Justice Cheung Kwok-kwan then gave a brief introduction on the initial work directions. They involved enhancing the convergence of legal practices, advancing the practice of mutual legal assistance, such as the implementation of the arrangements on mutual legal assistance in civil and commercial matters as well as promoting the development of online dispute resolution and the application of lawtech. Mr Cheung pointed out that the three work directions are aiming to provide further convenience and benefits to people, enabling the GBA to fully capitalise on its unique advantages of one country, two systems and three jurisdictions. The task force will strengthen its communication with stakeholders such as legal professional bodies and relevant sectors. It is also planning to visit other bay area cities to proactively promote the GBAs high value-added development, Mr Cheung added. This story has been published on: 2023-01-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Press Release January 18, 2023 OPENING REMARKS DURING COMMITTEE HEARING ON BILLS AND RESOLUTION ON SALT INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT Committee on Agriculture and Food Senator Recto Room and via Cisco Webex 18 January 2023, Wednesday 10:00 A.M. May I first read the background of the ASIN Law. The Commonwealth Act No.141 Public Land Act of 1936, that was enacted at the time of the administration of Pres. Manuel Roxas, formalized the leasing out of public lands and foreshore areas into fishponds and salt farms. Several fishpond lease agreements were issued by the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the salt industry boomed as new fishponds and salt farms were constructed in Pangasinan, Bulacan, Mindoro Occidental, Cavite, Paranaque, Negros, Cebu and other provinces from the 1950s onwards. Salt producing areas in the Philippines, reached an estimated peak of 5,000 hectares nationally, producing an estimated 240,000 metric tons annually. This boom in growth supported a growing population and the development of the salt industry in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1995, The Act for Salt lodization Nationwide (ASIN LAW), or the Republic Act 8172, An Act Promoting Salt lodization Nationwide and for Related Purposes was approved. The law required the addition of iodine to salt intended for human and animal consumption to eliminate micronutrient malnutrition, particularly the iodine deficiency disorders, in the country. One of the most common effects of Iodine deficiency is the Goiter. The law covered the entire salt industry, including salt producers/manufacturers, importers, traders, and distributors as well as government and non-government agencies involved in salt iodization activities. The law mandated LGUs to support the development and sustainability of the salt industry through the formulation of ordinances and information campaigns promoting the availability and use of iodized salt and the provision of budget for health and nutrition programs. To support the Salt Industry, RA 8172 created the Salt Iodization Advisory Board, composed of-National Nutrition Council DENR; Salt Manufactures, Medical practitioners but in the IRR, the National Nutrition Council created the Salt Iodization Advisory Board composed of the Departments of Agriculture; Health; Social Welfare and Development; Education; Science and Technology; Interior and Local Government; Labor and Employment; Trade and Industry; Budget and Management; the National Economic and Development Authority; its three (3) private sector representatives and a representative each from the DENR, the medical profession and the salt manufacturers, with a total of seventeen (17) members. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources was tasked to identify areas that are suitable for use as salt farms with the purpose of protecting such areas from environmental risks to ensure sustainability of iodized salt production. Pursuant to this they created, DENR Administrative Order No. 98-67, S. 1998, Guidelines for the Identification, Declaration, and Award of Areas Suitable for Salt Production. The ASIN Law provided for sanctions for offenders such that, any person, whether natural or judicial, who violates any of the provisions of this Act or any of the rules and regulations promulgated shall be punished by a fine of not less than One thousand pesos (P1,000.00) to not more than One hundred thousand pesos (P100, 000.00); and the revocation of its business permit and/or ban of its product from the market. The law, instead of promoting, became a deterrent in the development of the local salt industry. It has neglected to develop new areas and invite new investors; it made all salt food grade. In 2021, it was reported that, we only produced seven (7%) percent of our salt requirements and imported ninety three (93%) or 550,000 MT. The Philippines only needs a small percentage of salt for human and animal consumption but it has other nonfood uses. There should be a balance between all these needs such as for the preservation of fish catch and as fertilizer for our coconut industry. Salt is used for over 14,000 uses -- Food (household & processing) Animal feeds Coconut fertilization Water treatment Soap making Chlorine products Among others Salt is a basic commodity. Salt is a dying local industry in the Philippines. The country imports 850,000 metric tons of salt mainly from Australia and China or 93 % of our salt requirement. APSTAI or Association of Salt Producers, Traders and Allied Industries controls 95 % of the Philippine market. The Philippines produces 100,000 MT of local salt. Philippines Imports of salt, pure sodium chloride amounting to 31.1 Million USD in 2020. The top trading partners of Philippines in 2020 are: (1) Australia 72% (20 million US$) (2) China 18.7% (5.41 million US$) (3) Thailand 4.2% (1.21 million US$) (4) New Zealand 2.39% (690 k US$) Data shows that the Philippines only produced less than 60,000 MT of salt from 2,100 hectares occupied by Philippine salt makers. Salt production in the country needs about 12,000 to 13,000 hectares of shoreline and the proper technology. Salt production is very economically and sustainable. Local iodized salt sells at 411 pesos (35 kgs), iodized salt from Australia at 200 pesos (35 kgs), industrial salt at 275 pesos for 50 kgs (.50 x 35 kgs, 17.50 pesos) Today, people are taking salt more than they should have. The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that adults should only consume less than 2,000 milligrams of sodium, or 5 grams of salt per day. Salt aside from table use, is also a requirement in chemical, pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries. The country would need more salt soon because the coconut industry will require 300,000 MT to fertilize 300,000 coconut trees, at 1 kilo a year per tree. The total requirement would eventually be 850,000 tons, worth $42 million. Let this public hearing be the chance for the Senate to listen to the justifications, concerns and recommendations of everyone invited today in relation to these issues. Cheyenne, WY (82001) Today A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by cloudy and windy conditions this afternoon. High 69F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Cloudy. Low 32F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. Batavia, NY (14020) Today Windy with sunshine. High 76F. Winds WSW at 20 to 30 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear. Low around 55F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. 2022 Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Election: After Action Review Campaign signs for competing Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidates Doug Mastriano and Josh Shapiro sit in Mannheim, Pa., on Nov. 7, 2022, on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections. (Branden Eastwood/AFP via Getty Images) Commentary In the U.S. Army, at the conclusion of a deployment, the leadership gathers to conduct an after-action review (AAR). This uses candid discussion to discern what went right and what went wrong and to develop an action plan so that the next effort will go better. To win future critical elections, including the 2023 judicial and 2024 presidential elections, Republicans would benefit from a similar review of the 2022 gubernatorial election, and I also believe voters would benefit from an understanding of the truth. To that end, I candidly submit the following, from my perspective. Overview Democrats identified Pennsylvania as the most significant gubernatorial race in the nation, and they pulled out all the stops for Josh Shapiro. They cleared the primary field and gave him seemingly unlimited resources. Liberal media reported as expected, and Democrats attained a level of unity seldom achieved by Republicans. By contrast, despite decisively winning the Republican gubernatorial nomination, my candidacy wasnt nearly as well supported. We were maligned by Republican leaders, and my campaign was abandoned by Republican organizations that play a key role in electing statewide candidates. Despite this, our movement outperformed every Republican gubernatorial candidate over the past 60 years, surpassing Thornburgh, Ridge, Fisher, Swann, Corbett, Wagner, and others. In all, we earned 2,238,477 votes, which was the second-highest vote total for a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania history. This extraordinary outcome reinforced that our message resonated with voters and that our dedicated grassroots operation was extremely effective. From an AAR standpoint, however, the outcome begs the question: What might have been if we had just a little more help? Understanding the History In primary elections, candidates of the same party run against each other to become their partys nominee, who will go on to face the other partys nominee. But in Pennsylvania, theres a twist. Per the tradition of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania (GOP), the first challenge facing Republican candidates for statewide office is to secure the endorsement of the Pennsylvania GOP. Pennsylvania is one of just a few states in which the Republican Party endorses a candidate to be its nominee before the public has cast a single vote. For the candidate who receives it, this pre-election endorsement results in exclusive access to party resources, the full backing of its members, and a virtual guarantee of winning the primary election and moving on to the general election. Not only is the Pennsylvania GOPs pre-election endorsement unusual, its also extremely problematic. These pre-endorsed candidates go on to lose general elections more than 70 percent of the time. Additionally, the endorsement has been a contentious and divisive practice, which has created two bitterly opposed factions within the Pennsylvania GOP: the duly elected members (Republican state committee members) and a group of self-appointed party bosses that includes donors, elected officials, and wealthy political consultants, commonly referred to as Establishment Republicans. Elected members of the Pennsylvania GOP have long lamented that Establishment Republicans undermine them, by manipulating the process to fix the endorsement for the candidate of their choosing. Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the endorsement is that, since its awarded before the primary, it disenfranchises and demoralizes voters, members, and potential candidates, which stifles our partys efforts across the board. 2022 Primary Election: What Really Happened With a staggering 13 candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor, the 2022 primary election was set to be one of the most contentious in Pennsylvania history. Thankfully, the Pennsylvania GOP voted not to endorse in the 2022 primary election. It was the first time, in nearly 50 years, that the state party let the voters be the sole arbiters of who would represent the Republican Party in the general election. This was the most unity Ive seen among the state committee members, party leaders, Establishment Republicans, and the candidates. It was a rare moment, but it was fleeting. Just when it seemed the Pennsylvania GOP had cleared the way for the gubernatorial candidates to test their merit-based campaigns on the voters, a well-funded state political action committee (PAC) stepped in and endorsed its own gubernatorial candidate. It spent millions of dollars smearing fellow Republicansmostly me. The head of this PAC pledged that, even if I won the primary election, he wouldnt give one red cent to help me defeat Shapiro in the general election. It was a promise he would keep. Nonetheless, my goal for the primary election was to get at least 35 percent (to surpass Wagners and Thornburghs primary victories) of the vote to help solidify the party and establish a mandate. By this time, Establishment Republicans had widely peddled the narrative that this honorably retired Army colonel was too extreme to win the general election. As we neared the May 16 primary election, nine candidates remained, and polling showed that none of them was garnering the support needed to defeat my candidacy. Suddenly, the same party bosses whod engineered the decision to let the voters decide were now sounding alarm bells. Back when they voted not to endorse, theyd been sure I would garner no more than 20 percent of the vote and that one of the well-funded candidates would dwarf my efforts. But now, with the vote split among nine candidates, they feared a mere 20 percent could make me a winner. Panic-driven, and only days away from the election, Establishment Republicans fashioned a last-minute back-room effort to coalesce behind anyone but me and force others out of the race, but the effort went nowhere. Despite these maneuvers, and the $17 million spent attacking us, we defeated eight Republican opponents and won the primary election, with nearly half the vote (45 percent) and the closest Republican opponent trailing 22 points behind us. The voters had clearly issued a mandate and it was time for Republicans, at every level, to unite behind it, but that never happened. Instead, what played out in the general election was a willful fulfillment of the prophecy sowed by Establishment Republicans who, at the end of the day, were more driven to prove they were right than they were to win the 2022 general elections. They threw the future of our commonwealth and our children to the wind to prove their point. Failed Unity and Support Ultimately, my gubernatorial campaign was left to rely almost entirely on volunteers and small-dollar donations from citizens and small businesses across the state. While Pennsylvania state party leadership gave generous field support, Election Day operations, voter outreach, campaign literature, logistics, etc., we received zero support from the national Republican organizations that play critical roles in these elections. We received nothing from the Republican National Committee, nothing from the Republican Governors Association, and nothing from the many conservative PACs across the countryincluding the Pennsylvania PAC that had previously threatened to turn its back. And sadly, throughout the course of the general election, we routinely received reports that Establishment Republicans were actively dissuading donors from contributing to our campaign. Meanwhile, Democrats held nothing back from Shapiro. He received a record $75 million, more than $10 million of which came from the Democrat establishment. The Democratic Governors Association gave Shapiro $7.2 million, and he even received $1.7 million from the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Although Shapiro has a terrible record on crime and his contempt for the Catholic Church is legendary, this didnt matter. For them, he was a Democrat, and winning mattered more than his shortcomings. For this alone, his party was loyal, generous, and unanimous in their support. Meanwhile, my fellow Republicans routinely and publicly detailed my lack of perfection as the reason for withholding their support. Surely, they understood that their lack of support and constant disparagement would drag my campaign down, to the detriment of the entire Republican ticket. Yet, when all was said and done, in one final departure from reality and responsibility, they blamed my campaign for dragging down the ticket. Recommended Action Plan: 4 Action Items The most immediate and critically important shift we can make is to commit to sticking together, for no reason other than we are fellow Republicans and our causes matter more than our differences. Its past time for us to wake up and absorb the reality that our top priority was never to achieve 100 percent agreement within our ranks, but to achieve victory in the name of our causes, for those who rely on us. Ronald Reagan famously said, Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican. The wisdom in these words is clearly not lost on Democrats, and it should never again be lost on Republicans. As Republican leaders, its our duty to give our party, its candidates, and its causes every opportunity to triumph. Its our duty to recognize that win at all costs election tactics are misdirected at our own. These tactics sabotage our candidates, and they ensure Democrat victories. To our party, our families, and our nation, we owe it to put the ultimate interests of these causes above our own. The second important change is to end the Pennsylvania GOP pre-election endorsement process. It isnt working, as evidenced by the abysmal 30 percent success rate. It breeds party bosses, creates warring factions within our party, and richly rewards a class of subpar consultants. Theres no way we can be at perpetual odds with each other and then defeat our real opponents. Change is difficult, but its inevitable because leaving our childrens future in the hands of liberal Democrats is unforgivable. If we fail to do the right thing, history will tell our children the truth about us. The third important and immediate change we must make is to adjust our attitude toward mail-in voting. If we plan on winning statewide offices, we have no choice but to embrace this method of voting. Our Nov. 8 win, among Election Day voters, was wiped away by the hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes Democrats secured before a single vote was cast on Election Day. If we take away anything of value from the pain of 2022, it should be that this is not a time for blame. Our causes demand more of us than that. Its a time to let wide-eyed honesty move us to do what we must so that we can learn to fight together. Finally, give directly to your favorite candidate, not to high-dollar PACs. Im excluding smaller PACs from this discussion as most are accountable to their donors. As to the large PACs, its a mistake to empower organizations or individuals with your hard-earned money, assuming that theyll do what they promised when coming to donors with hat in hand. During a fierce naval battle in 1779, the British called on John Paul Jones to surrender. His answer was, I have not yet begun to fight. Republicans have not yet begun to fight either. Its time for us to roll up our sleeves, get our heads right, put the causes in front of us, and really begin to fight for, not against, each other. Were entrusted to fight for people and causes that matter and so we must never give up, never grow weary in doing good, and press forward until victory is at long last achieved. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 33% of Canadas Cannabis Market Controlled by Illegal Dealers, Says Federal Memo About one-third of Canadas cannabis market is still controlled by illegal dealers despite the federal government legalizing its recreational use in 2018, according to a report. One of the main goals of legalization of cannabis was to reduce criminal activity by keeping profits out of the pockets of criminals. The illicit drug trade provides organized crime with one of its most financially lucrative criminal markets, wrote the Department of Public Safety in an October 2022 briefing note obtained by Blacklocks Reporter. The department added in the note that Canada has a well-regulated legal cannabis industry that is significantly cutting into profits by illegal marijuana dealers. However, it added that legal sales of cannabis across Canada account for just 67 percent of marijuana market shares, meaning that about 33 percent is still controlled by the black market. There continues to be a well entrenched illegal market in place, said the department in the note, which was titled Cannabis Black Market and dated Oct. 17, 2022. Consumers are turning to the illegal market for a variety of reasons, it added, noting that illegal marijuana dealers typically sold cannabis at a 55 percent discount compared to prices at government-licensed retailers, whose prices are also pushed higher by tax rates. The Liberal government legalized the recreational use and sale of cannabis in October 2018, which came with a provision that they review the legislation three years after coming into force. The review was launched over a year behind schedule in September 2022. Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett must present a report to both the House of Commons and the Senate within 18 months of the reviews launch date. Legal And Illegal Sources A Health Canada report published in December 2022 said that in its latest cannabis survey, a greater number of respondents claimed they were purchasing their cannabis from legal sources compared to a previous study conducted in 2021. The report, published Dec. 16, 2022, said legal storefronts continue to be the most common source of marijuana purchases since 2019. A smaller proportion [of respondents] reported illegal storefronts and illegal online sources in 2022 compared to 2019, Health Canada wrote. The survey was conducted between April and June 2022 and collected online answers from about 10,000 respondents aged 16 years old and up from every province and territory. 61% reported they had made a purchase from a legal storefront (an increase from 53% in 2021), said the report. In contrast, 2% reported usually obtaining cannabis from an illegal website [and] only 1% reported usually obtaining cannabis from an illegal storefront. Health Canada also said only 1 percent of respondents said they usually bought cannabis from an illegal dealer, representing a decrease from 2 percent in 2021. The Canadian Press contributed to this report. ABB Chairman Optimistic About Worldwide Chip Shortage Easing Down Soon Memory chips by South Korean semiconductor supplier SK Hynix are seen on a circuit board of a computer in this illustration picture taken on Feb. 25, 2022. (Reuters/Florence Lo/Illustration/File Photo) The chairman of Swedish-Swiss engineering giant ABB is expecting the global semiconductor shortage to ease soon, but believes diversifying the chip supply chain is very important as ChinaTaiwan tensions remain a risk. The semiconductor shortage was really an issue last year, specifically the first two to three quarters, Chairman Peter Voser said in an interview with CNBC on Monday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This was a real shortage on semiconductors, which affected us a lot because clearly when youre in electrification automation and robotics, one of the key components is semiconductors, and we are using quite complex ones, so therefore Taiwan is very important but also Chinese semiconductors. But if I look today at it, I think its now being sorted out. I think global growth slowdown has helped on this as well, and now for the future, Im quite optimistic. COVID-19 in China and disruptions in international trade hit ABB business hard last year. In China, the company was forced to shut down factories during lockdowns. Voser expects a more normal environment in China this year. However, he sees the simmering tensions between Beijing and Taipei as an ongoing risk. Taiwan is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the largest microchip manufacturer in the world. As such, any threat of disruption to the supply of chips from Taiwan is bad news for the various global businesses that depend on TSMC. Having new sources of semiconductors across the world is very important, so you go from one supply source, Taiwan and then China, into multiple source, and thats where some of the investments are really critical, Voser said. Easing Chip Supply Situation In a Jan. 3rd survey (pdf) by professional services firm Accenture, which polled 300 global semiconductor executives, 77 percent of respondents were expecting the supply chain to be free from COVID-19s lingering effects only in 2024. Electronics and automotive industries have been forced to scale down production following persistent chip shortage. New vehicles can contain up to 1,0003,500 chips. The report notes that there are signs that the chip shortage is easing. October 2022s reported lead times were 25.5 weeks, compared with 26.3 weeks in September. The highest lead times of 27.1 weeks was in May, compared with the 24.4 week delay in the previous October, the survey report said. A report (pdf) published by the major accounting firm KPMG in the second quarter of 2022 that surveyed C-level executives from semiconductor firms found that 83 percent of respondents expect chip shortage to end in 2023. Eighteen percent estimate the shortage to end only in 2024. Manufacturing expansions are planned in Europe and elsewhere, and brand-new foundries are being built by several companies in the United States, notably in Arizona, Texas, and Ohio, the report states. However, much of this capacity will not be online until at least 2024 and will require skilled technical talent to operate it, of which there is an ongoing shortage. US Chip Manufacturing The United States has taken the initiative to boost its presence in the chip manufacturing sector. Last year, for example, the Department of Commerce stated that a long-term solution was needed to make sure that the issue of semiconductor supply does not pose an economic and national security risk to the country. In August 2022, the CHIPS Act was passed. Introduced in spring 2020 during the time of the Trump administration, the CHIPS Act is aimed at attracting investment in semiconductor innovation and production. Between May 2020 and December 2022, more than $186 billion worth of semiconductor manufacturing investments spanning a 10-year period have been announced. Collectively, these projects are expected to generate more than 34,000 jobs. Alabama Withdraws From Voter Registration Data-Sharing Group The first official act in office from Alabamas recently elected Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, was to remove the state from a voter registration data-sharing group. Allen, who was sworn in as the states 54th secretary of state on Monday, made the promise to voters to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) on the campaign trail last year. I made a promise to the people of Alabama that ending our states relationship with the ERIC organization would be my first official act as secretary of state, Allen said in a press release. I came into the office after being sworn in yesterday and signed the letter to ERIC notifying them that Alabama is no longer a participant in any of their programs. The relationship between Alabama and ERIC is officially over. The Organization ERIC is a partnership between 32 states, including the District of Columbia, that identifies out-of-date records found by comparing voter registration data between states, to motor vehicle licensing agency data, and to the Social Security Administration master death index list, according to the nonprofit organizations website. ERIC began providing list maintenance data to members in July 2013. Allen campaigned on a vow to end Alabamas participation in the voting system that is run by a nongovernment organization based in Washington, D.C, a press release from his office announcing the move stated. He expressed concern over the private organization having access to the private data of Alabama citizens, including their drivers license numbers, contact information, and the partial social security numbers of minors. Providing the private information of Alabama citizens, including underage minors, to an out-of-state organization is troubling to me and to people that I heard from as I traveled the state for the last 20 months, Allen said. That is no longer a concern because the data uploads of that information from Alabama to ERIC is over. John Merrill, secretary of state of Alabama, speaks to the media in the Capitol building about the possible recount to determine the winner between Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore and his Democratic opponent Doug Jones in Montgomery, Ala., on Dec. 12, 2017. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Former Secretary of State John Merrill said at the time he reached out to Allen about the decision, according to a Huntsville NBC affiliate. I have made overtures to him to try to make sure hes properly educated about ERIC, what the purpose of the Electronic Registration Information Center is, but unfortunately, he has elected not to have those discussions in detail, he said. Merrill said ERIC was used to protect the integrity of Alabamas elections as recently as the midterm elections in 2022. This system has been preventing the state from being exposed to voter fraud, he said, according to the NBC affiliate. Weve identified a number of people who have actually committed voter fraud and just last week, we introduced 12 individuals to the attorney generals office who voted in our state and in another state at the same time. Merrill said on Tuesday, according to CBS News, he trusts Allen has evaluated this situation and is making the decision based on what he believes to be in the best interest of the state of Alabama. Other States Withdraw CBS reported that the issue of participation in ERIC was also raised in Arizonas secretary of state race, with the Republican candidate saying he would also withdraw. Louisianas secretary of state withdrew the state from ERIC in January 2022 (pdf). When Louisiana joined ERIC under my predecessor, we did so under the impression that it would enhance the accuracy of our voter rolls and strengthen Louisianas election integrity, Secretary Kyle Ardoin said. After reading about these allegations and speaking with election attorneys and experts, I have determined that it may no longer be in Louisianas best interests to participate in this organization. According to the organization, the states that currently participate in ERIC are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Alberta Premier Says She Cant Offer Pardons to Those Charged With Violating Pandemic Restrictions Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks at a press conference after the speech from the throne, in Edmonton on Nov. 29, 2022. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press) EDMONTONPremier Danielle Smith said she has looked into offering amnesty to Albertans who were charged with violating pandemic restrictions but is unable to do so within the parameters of Canadas justice system. Smith said she has to let the process play out in the courts without political interference. The premier addressed the issue on Jan. 16, on the Shaun Newman podcast. Because weve been so influenced by the [United States], I think that some people think that the premier has the same power as they do in the States of clemency or offering pardons, she said. Thats not the case in Canada, which has a different criminal justice and legal system, she said. Once things have been handed over for prosecution, politicians have to be hands-off. Supporters rally outside court as James Coates, pastor of Albertas GraceLife Church, attended a bail hearing. Coates was jailed for holding church services as normal during COVID lockdowns. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press) In October 2022, shortly after being elected premier, Smith said those who had not received COVID-19 shots were the most discriminated against group she had seen in her lifetime, and promised to restore the freedoms and constitutional rights that were infringed upon by government restrictions before she took office. The things that come to top of mind for me are people who got arrested as pastors and people given fines for not wearing masks, Smith said last fall. Im going to look into the range of outstanding fines and get some legal advice on which ones we are able to cancel and provide amnesty for. My view has been that these were political decisions that were made and so I think that they can be political decisions to offer a reversal, but I do want to get some legal advice on that first, she added. Smith said this week that she has made changes within her power, and has held the medical profession and the medical professionals involved in pandemic policy-making accountable for flawed advice. Weve got brand new leadership at the chief medical officer of health. We also have new leadership at the helm of Alberta Health Services [AHS], she said, noting the AHS board had been dismantled, and an interim official administrator, Dr. John Cowell, had been appointed in its place. Smith added recruitment efforts are underway for a new chief medical officer of health, and the cabinet leadership had been changed. Those are the things that I can do to give people some confidence that I listened to and heard the things that I have under my power. Im doing everything I can to make sure that we get as an adjustment to an endemic world, said Smith. The Canadian Press contributed to this report. Another Power Substation Damaged by Alleged Gunfire: Officials An electrical substation after winter weather caused electricity blackouts in Houston, Texas, on Feb. 20, 2021. (Go Nakamura/Reuters) Another power substation in North Carolina was damaged due to alleged gunfirethe third such incident in recent weeksofficials have confirmed. EnergyUnited said officials discovered an equipment issue at the Pleasant Hill Substation in Thomasville on Jan. 17. Thomasville is about an hour from Moore County, where two other substations were damaged. When crew members were sent to investigate the matter, they discovered damage to the substation transformer from an apparent gunshot, the firm said. The damage was quickly assessed and contained to mitigate the impact to members in the Pleasant Hill area and law enforcement officials were notified. Customers who are served by the Pleasant Hill Substation didnt experience any power outages due to the damage, EnergyUnited added. The Randolph County Sheriffs Office said that investigators canvassed the station and later said they believe the shooting occurred at around 3 a.m. local time on Jan. 17. The FBI and North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations were notified about the alleged gunfire, the sheriffs office said. Investigations are ongoing. The FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force responded to conduct a parallel investigation, the statement also said. No suspects have been named, and no arrests were made. EnergyUnited continually strives to deliver safe, reliable energy to its members, Steve McCachern, vice president of energy delivery for EnergyUnited, said in a statement. While we are glad that our members did not experience any service interruptions, we take this matter very seriously and are currently investigating the incident. On Dec. 3, 2022, gunshots were fired at two substations in Moore County that left some 45,000 customers without power for several days. In that case, no suspects have been apprehended and no motive has been disclosed. Officials said that a person or persons drove to the Duke Energy-operated substations and opened fire, causing significant damage. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at the time that the Moore County incident raises a new level of threat while adding that federal and state officials are working to harden our infrastructure where thats necessary and work to prevent future damage. Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks said in a news conference last month that damage was done to major equipment. Some of this equipment does take a significant amount of work [to be installed] he said. New substation equipment must be handled carefully and tested before its ready to serve the grid. Workers work on equipment at the West End Substation, at 6910 NC Hwy 211 in West End, N.C., on Dec. 5, 2022, where a serious attack on critical infrastructure has caused a power outage to many around Southern Pines, N.C. (Karl B DeBlaker/AP Photo) Around the same time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning of a heightened threat environment ahead of the Christmas holiday season. Faith-based institutions, government buildings, U.S. infrastructure, schools, and public gatherings could be targeted by groups with a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances, the agency said on Nov. 30, 2022. Nevada Incident Earlier in January, officials in Nevada said a man was facing terrorism-related charges after driving his car to a solar power plant, dousing it with gasoline, and setting it on fire. An employee told local media that the fire caused major damage and estimated it would take two years to receive replacement parts. Mohammed Mesmarian, 34, was identified as the suspect in the case and is facing charges of committing an act of terrorism, first-degree arson, third-degree arson, destroying or injuring real or personal property, and escape by a felony prisoner, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said. Other details about Mesmarians motive were not revealed. Mesmarian clarified he burned the Toyota Camry a couple of days ago, Las Vegas Police said, according to reports. Mesmarian [said] he burned the vehicle at a Tesla solar plant and did it for the future. I burned it, Mesmarian told police detectives during questioning following his arrest on Jan. 5 at a trailer home parked at a campsite near Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas. Mesmarian admitted he knew setting a vehicle on fire could cause damage to the (transformer) unit, but stated he did it for the big message, larger picture, greater good, an arrest report said. He explained the greater good was clean energy. Mesmarian, who told officials he was born in Iran, remains jailed without bail pending mental health evaluations and a court hearing on Feb. 1. He also told police the fire early Jan. 4 that damaged Chicago-based Invenergys Mega Solar Array represented moving forward in the world, the report said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Bail Hearing for Sisters Who Claim Wrongful Conviction Continues in Saskatchewan Odelia Quewezance speaks to media outside the Court of Kings Bench in Yorkton, Sask. on Jan. 17, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Michael Bell) Lawyers for two women who have spent nearly 30 years in prison are to argue today why they should be released on bail while they await the results of a federal conviction review. Odelia and Nerissa Quewezance were convicted of second-degree murder in the 1993 stabbing death of 70-year-old Anthony Dolff. The federal Justice Department started a review last year, saying there may be a reasonable basis to conclude there was a miscarriage of justice. Their lawyers laid out in Court of Kings Bench Tuesday in Yorkton, Sask., how the two women would be supported by family and community if they get bail. The Crown prosecutor told court that the sisters should not be released as theres too much risk and both have a history of breaching conditions. The sisters told court in separate testimonies that the long incarceration has been difficult and contributed to their trauma but they are hopeful about their futures. Today Im a stronger person, Odelia Quewezance told court. The sisters from the Keeseekoose First Nation have always maintained their innocence. Another person, who was a youth at the time, confessed to the killing. Odelia Quewezance was 20 years old and her sister was 18 when the pair was arrested near Kamsack, Sask. Court heard the youth confessed during a preliminary inquiry and trial the following year. The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear their appeal three years later. Odelia Quewezance received day parole last year with strict conditions. She is currently staying at the YWCA in Regina. Nerissa Quewezances parole was denied and she has remained behind bars in Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia. Odelia Quewezance would live with her partner of 26 years and their children in a small Saskatchewan community if released, court heard. Her sister is looking to stay with Congress of Aboriginal Peoples National Vice-Chief Kim Beaudin in his Saskatoon home if she gets conditional release. Beaudin told court that while he has spoken with Nerissa Quewezance many times over the phone, he could only meet her for the first time this week at the bail hearing. You can tell she has a heart, he said. The judge told court that he would reserve his decision for a later date. A criminal conviction review can take years. When it is over, a report and legal advice will be prepared for the federal justice minister. The minister can then order a new trial or appeal, or dismiss the application if he is not convinced there has been a miscarriage of justice. President Joe Bidens home in Delaware has played host to many different guests over the years; now Republican lawmakers are trying to determine exactly who visited the Wilmington residence after multiple potentially classified documents were discovered on the property. On Sunday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to the Biden White House, requesting that he release the visitors logs for his residence from the start of Bidens presidency onward. The Biden White House soon replied that it does not keep visitor logs for the personal residence. Even without full visitor logs, publicly available information has indicated that a number of visitors have been to the Delaware property in recent years. For example, an October 2021 White House press release stated Biden hosted Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) at the property to discuss Bidens political agenda. In his letter to the White House, Comer also said his committee is in possession of evidence that the presidents son, Hunter Biden, listed his fathers Wilmington address on his drivers license as recently as 2018. The 2020 Campaign Bidens Wilmington home served as a location for several key meetings in his 2020 presidential campaign. In their 2021 book Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen described how the 2020 Biden campaign held several campaign meetings in Bidens home. One excerpt from the book described a meeting in January 2019, in which Biden met at his home with his political advisers, including long-time confidante Steve Ricchetti, campaign manager Greg Shultz, and heavyweight money bundler Mark Gilbert. Another excerpt describes a March 12, 2020, meeting in which Biden gathered at his house with his debate prep team, a group that included his sister, Valerie Owens Biden, and his press aide Elizabeth Alexander. Also present at that meeting was the current White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, current Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jen OMalley Dillon, 2020 deputy campaign adviser Kate Bedingfield, 2020 campaign adviser Symone Sanders, and a handful of other advisers. Bob Bauer, the former White House counsel for the Obama administration, also participated in debate prep with Biden in the basement of his Wilmington home, preparing him for the final three debates before the 2020 general election, according to the book. In The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Bidens White House, author Chris Whipple also described how Biden was in the library of his Wilmington home on Jan. 6, 2021, with current White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed when they saw the news that demonstrators had breached the U.S. Capitol. Comer Vows to Keep Pressing for Answers While the Biden administration has said it doesnt keep track of visitors at Bidens personal residence, Comers House Oversight Committee has said it will continue to search for answers on who had access to the property. President Biden promised to have the most transparent administration in history but he refuses to be transparent when it matters most, the official GOP House Oversight Committee account posted on Twitter. Americans need to know who had access to these classified documents. Well continue to press for answers. From NTD News Brian Walshe Googled Ways to Dispose of Body and Best Tool to Dismember, Prosecutor Says Brian Walshe stands during his arraignment in Quincy District Court in Quincy, Mass., on Jan. 9, 2023. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool) Brian Walshe, the husband of a missing Massachusetts woman who is facing murder charges in relation to her disappearance, allegedly searched online for what the best ways are to get rid of human remains and what tools are best to dismember a body, a prosecutor revealed on Wednesday. Walshe, 47, is the husband of Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old mother of three who was last seen on New Years Day and reported missing several days later by her employer in Washington, where the couple has a home from which she often commutes during the week for work at a real estate company. As of Jan. 18, the womans body has not been recovered. Ana Walshe. (Cohasset Police) In the cases latest update, prosecutor Lynn Beland said in a court on Wednesday that investigators found Brian Walshe searched on Google for terms such as how long before a body starts to smell, best ways to dispose of a body, and hacksaw best tool to dismember. Walshe reportedly searched for this information on Jan. 1, and for several days after, which is around the same time he claims his wife left their home early in a ride-hailing service for the airport to go to Washington for work. Investigators have not found any evidence that she took such a ride. Meanwhile, security footage at a Home Depot showed that Walshe purchased $450 worth of cleaning supplies and a hatchet on Jan. 2. A day later, surveillance video obtained by investigators showed a man resembling Walshe throwing away what appears to be trash bags into a dumpster located in Abington. Surveillance shows the defendants Volvo, as well as a man fitting the defendants appearance, exit the car near the dumpster, Beland said. He walks to the dumpster carrying a garbage bag. Hes leaning, and it appears to be heavy, as he has to heft it into the dumpster. The prosecutor also revealed that investigators have made several horrid discoveries at the couples family home. On Jan. 4, when the investigation was still considered a missing person case, police noticed Walshes car had its seats folded down and a plastic liner in the back when they went to the home to perform a well-being check. Officials later found the presence of blood in the car and on a knife in the homes basement. As police continued their investigation, they found trash bags on Jan. 8 at a facility not far from Walshes mothers home. Beland said some of the bags Walshe disposed of have likely been incinerated, but authorities found several bags that contained a hatchet, a hacksaw, towels, a Prada purse, boots belonging to the missing woman, and her COVID-19 vaccination card, among several other items. The prosecutor also noted that the items had what appeared to be human blood on them, and testing determined that both Ana and Brian Walshe were contributors to the DNA on them. Brian Walshe stands during his arraignment in Quincy District Court in Quincy, Mass., on Jan. 9, 2023. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool) On Tuesday, Walshe was ordered to be held without bail in Quincy District Court after prosecutors charged him with his wifes murder. He was initially arrested on Jan. 8 and held on $500,000 bail for misleading police investigating the missing mothers disappearance. Additional details of the investigation and the evidence that supported those [murder] charges are likely to be presented at arraignment, but will not be disclosed at this time, Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said in a video statement on Tuesday. Prior Convictions Walshes prior criminal offenses include wire fraud, interstate transportation for a scheme to defraud, possession of converted goods, and unlawful monetary transaction, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Massachusetts. He pleaded guilty in 2021 to those charges. The case revolved around Walshe allegedly taking two original Andy Warhol paintings from a friend in South Korea and putting them on eBay. He allegedly sold fake copies of the paintings, and he is still awaiting sentencing in that case. Walshe had been on home confinement with some exceptions while awaiting sentencing in the fraud case. The Associated Press contributed to this report. From NTD News Many in the vaccine-injured community have been told their symptomsfrom piercing, constant ringing in their ears to paralysis in their lower bodyis due to anxiety. Brianne Dressen, a former preschool teacher in Utah, was severely injured after participating in AstraZenecas COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial in November 2020. She is the co-chair of React19, the leading non-profit organization aiding those injured by the genetic vaccines. This has happened to tens of thousands of Americans that I know ofits likely far morewhere patients are met with physicians that are doubtful, unbelieving, and in many cases, just outright dismissive to their patients complaints. And that really puts the patient in a very vulnerable situation, especially if you have family members that are doubtful of whats actually happening with you Theres some people that have made the ultimate choice to end their suffering, said Dressen. Dressens organization, run entirely by volunteers, is working with over 20,000 vaccine-injured Americans to help them get the treatment and support they need and connect them to doctors willing to help them. We want the injured to be empowered to be able to make their decisions and take ownership of their healing when everything around themtheir medical teams, their jobs, their governmenthas abandoned them and essentially stripped them of that power. Dressen says the NIH knows a lot more than they let on. After Dressen and her husband repeatedly pled for help, the NIH flew her and others to the NIH to be evaluated, studied, and in some cases, treated. But to this day, the public and the medical community are not being informed about the major neurological injuries that can occur post-vaccinationeven though the NIH knows early intervention is key for such autoimmune dysfunction. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Brianne Dressen, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Brianne Dressen: Thanks for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Its been about a year since you sat down here on American Thought Leaders with Maddie de Garay and Stephanie de Garay and helped introduce me to the realities facing the vaccine injured in America, specifically related to these genetic vaccines. Im really happy to have you back and to figure out what has happened in a year. I know a lot has. What I want is to get your personal story here for the record. What happened to you? Ms. Dressen: My personal story started a long time ago. Its been over two years now. Before my vaccine, I was healthy. I was a mother of two young kids, and a preschool teacher. I was definitely all in. It wasnt a matter of if I was going to get the vaccine, but it was going to be when. As soon as I could get it, I was going to do that. And at the time, I firmly believed that if I got vaccinated, I would not spread the disease to others. I wanted to do everything I could to be part of the solution to take care of those around me. So, I signed up for a clinical trial with AstraZeneca here in the United States and got my shot on November 4th, 2020. Within an hour, I had tingling down the same arm of my shot. Later that night, my vision had become blurry and double. Within two-and-a-half weeks, I had landed in the hospital after four ER visits. Each visit had new symptoms that were very concerning, severe tachycardia, bradycardia, and limb weakness. The paresthesia moved from one arm to the other to all over my body. There was this horrific electric shock all over my body that I still deal with this day. Severe tinnitusI had a freight train sound in one ear, and a high in E in the other. When I landed in the hospital, my legs just gave out. They werent working anymore. I had become incontinent. My sensitivity to light and sound had become so severe that my kids couldnt touch me. They couldnt be in the same room as me. My husband had put towels over the windows to make the room darker. He would come in to check on me, and even just the swishing of his pants was too painful for my ears. The running of water was too painful for my ears. The dog panting was too much for my ears. It was bad enough that I had to be holed up in a room by myself 24/7. I was also removed from my family, and definitely removed from my career and everything else. Even my teeth were too sensitive. I couldnt brush my teeth. Whatever the hypersensitivity was, it was beyond just a few of my sensory inputs. It was a body-wide, systems-wide dysfunction. When I was admitted to the hospital, they werent sure what it was. They didnt run typical tests to rule out GBS or transverse myelitis or any of these other neurological issues that are typical with vaccines, although not common. Instead, they slapped me with the label of anxiety due to the COVID vaccine. And four days later, I was discharged with intensive in-home physical and occupational therapy to rehab my legs and my cognitive deficits due to anxiety due to the COVID vaccine. Mr. Jekielek: It might sound unbelievable to people that the collection of symptoms you describe would be diagnosed as anxiety by anybody. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Its strange because I was the first at that point or one of the first, and so I gave the doctors a lot of leeway, because it was very clear that they had never seen anything like this before. I was like, Well, Im the first. They havent really understood it. Maybe thats why I was gaslit and treated the way I was. But the sad reality is now this has happened to tens of thousands of Americans that I know of. Its most likely far more, where patients are met with physicians that are doubtful, unbelieving, and in many cases just outright dismissive to their patients complaints. That really puts the patient in a very vulnerable situation, especially if you have family members that are doubtful of whats happening with you, or you have a family member thats supportive who takes you to the doctors appointment and the doctor tells youre crazy, and then your family member hears that youre crazy. What you know inside your body is that this is not anxiety. This is not depression. This is not some psychosomatic issue, because your legs are failing, youve got electrical shocks going on, youve got severe tinnitus, you cant see right, and you cant think straight. This isnt just a small moment in time where youre having a mental breakdown. Its an immune system dysfunction. Theres something wrong in the body. But the doctors are being told that its not something wrong with the body, that its all up here. And so, it isolates the people that are suffering with this, and it puts them in a very vulnerable situation. Mr. Jekielek: I want to get into the bigger picture with all these different people that youve been working with now for quite a while. But going back to that time, presumably you reached out to the people involved in the trial, and so how was that? Ms. Dressen: Yes. All the way up until this day, I have yet to speak to a real human at the drug company. I have talked to people at the clinical trial office. Back when we very quickly became financially ruined because of this, we reached out to the drug company and the clinical trial company begging them for help. We had to refinance our house, because they did not own up to their part of our contract. The contract says that they will pay for any and all expenses resulting from injury, and they have not owned up to that. At the beginning I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I was like, Well, maybe they just havent heard me. Theres a breakdown in communication. But looking back at all the emails and the phone calls and the repeated cries for help between my husband and I that we made to the drug company, its very obvious that it was intentional. As soon as I was injured, its very obvious that the effort on the side of the drug company to do nothing was in full effect. They werent going to do anything. There was no effort that was going to be made to help me. They literally left me for dead. The only time that I received compensation from them was because a news story ran locally, and they wired $590 to my account without my consent. We told them it was without our consent, and then we never heard from them again. And then six months later, another news story ran, and the reporter called asking for a statement. While they were on the phone with the reporter, they sent a settlement letter to my email, and they spelled my name wrong. The contract absolved them of any future payments, and were required to make a statement that AstraZeneca did nothing wrong and all kinds of things. We were signing our life away, essentially for $1,200. Mr. Jekielek: Wait, this was sent to you without any communication? Ms. Dressen: Correct. Mr. Jekielek: Like a form letter, what was it? Ms. Dressen: Yes. It was a form letterregarding this matter, everything will be resolved and settled after this. And Im not a person. According to the drug company Im not a human being, Im a number. And sadly, for them, Im inconvenient to them. But they are a company worth ten of billions of dollars. And Im not asking for a whole lot. Im just asking for what my contract is due, for my medical expenses, so I wouldnt have had to refinance my house, and so that my kids could still be in a stable situation financially. Theyre not willing to lift a finger to make that happen. Mr. Jekielek: One thing that strikes me here is that the nature of this first diagnosis seems critical here. Ms. Dressen: Yes. That anxiety diagnosis plagued me for six, seven months until I went to the NIH. It didnt matter how many doctors I saw, what tests I had run, what positive tests I had, it didnt matter. If I showed up in a doctors office and if I cried even a little bit because my life was ruined, then yes, it was all up here. And I believed the doctors, I did. They told me it was anxiety so many times that I was like, Well, theyre the professionals, so they would know. I actually went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist did a full neuropsychological evaluation. He said, Im not sure what this is, but this is not anxiety. Theres something going on in your body. Im not sure what it is, but its not anxiety. He issued statements back to all of my doctors. Even with that, they still didnt change their mind. The NIH reached out to them, and they still did not change their mind. After months of dealing with this, then the NIH finally took pity on me and flew me out to be treated there. Mr. Jekielek: Explain to me how this works. You said seven months down the road, the NIH gets involved. Please explain to me that whole piece of the puzzle. Ms. Dressen: My husband is a chemist, and he realized very early on that the doctors were not going to do anything. The drug company wasnt going to do anything. If something were to be resolved, he was going to be the one to figure it out. He started digging into the studies and reaching out to researchers all over the globe. A lead researcher in Germany got my blood a month after my injury, and my test result came back that I was positive for anti-neuronal autoantibodies, which means that your immune system is attacking your nerves. Its something nobody wants. And even with that, it was still labeled as anxiety. He reached out to Dr. Nath and Dr. Safavi at the NIH on January 11th of 2021 about a month-and-a-half into my injury. They reached out and replied right away. There was another person that was injured by AstraZeneca here in the United States that had a very similar cascade of symptoms after her COVID vaccine from AstraZeneca. We got them in touch with the NIH. So, there were two of us that were complaining about the same thing. We dont know if its directly correlated or not, but 10 days later, AstraZeneca was pulled off the market after we filed those complaints. At that point, NIH started a study. Its on record. They started a study January 11th of 2021 to investigate COVID vaccine injuries that are neurological in nature. From there, they started collecting samples from people all over the country. They started enrolling individuals. They started flying people out. And Im patient number one in that study and my friend Dr. Denise Hertz, an injured gastroenterologist from California, shes patient number two. Its very strange to see chronologically who was in that study. Literally its the people I met in sequence, the full first row of the people that are in that study. So, they studied us. They went so far as to collect samples from someone who had died. The amount of knowledge that the NIH has on whats going on with the COVID vaccine injuries is very intimate. Its very detailed. Yet what the public is being told about this is that the vaccines are safe, period. Theres no asterisk, theres no subtext to that. Theres no, The vaccines are safe. But by the way, weve been flying people out for the last two years, and were finding clues that could probably help these people get better, but were not going to tell you guys what those are. Were just going to keep it secret. Mr. Jekielek: If I recall, Dr. Nath talked about how early intervention is the most valuable thing when these injuries occur. Ms. Dressen: He did. Yes. He said this to me privately, and then he also disclosed this in an article that was published by the American Academy of Neurology. They published this paper in the fall of 2021, six, seven months into the public rollout. But then they already knew that early intervention is key, as with any immune dysfunction in the body. Early intervention is key. But they also know that immunotherapy could be implemented and help stop the severe cascade of the disease. The NIH knows this, and the FDA also knows this. They know that theres this very crucial piece to the puzzle to keeping people from becoming chronic, but theyre not telling or informing medical professionals of the necessity of early intervention. Whats happened is that instead of learning from my case in the clinical trial, learning from Maddie de Gary, learning from Olivia Teseniar who was injured in the Moderna clinical trial, this information has all been hidden, swept under the rug and minimized, instead of taking these cases, investigating them appropriately, collecting the data, and then using that information to help those that are like us and who came after us from becoming as chronic and severe as we are. Mr. Jekielek: Theres something really important here. The NIH treatment actually helped you profoundly as I understand it, right? Ms. Dressen: Yes. Yes. Mr. Jekielek: This treatment does exist. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Thats where its hard for me because, and Ive told him this, hes one of the main reasons why Im still alive. Mr. Jekielek: Dr. Nath? Ms. Dressen: Yes, Dr. Nath. He was one of the very few that validated me and my condition. He was the guy at the NIH that was calling my doctors locally and saying, Look, your patient isnt crazy. Theres something wrong with her. You need to help her. He was the only guy in the country doing that. But then on top of that, hes the guy to do that. If youre going to have someone talking about a novel neuro-infectious issue with your body, hes the guy in the United States. He is the top mind in neuro-infectious disease. Its not like we just had anyone pulling for us. But what blows my mind is that we funneled literally hundreds of patients to the NIH to be studied and evaluated and helped. But it wasnt just for the hundreds. It wasnt just for a select few. The whole reason we were doing that is because we were promised that they would take that information, they would process it, and then they would disclose it to the public. We didnt go for ourselves. We went for the tens of thousands of others like us that needed similar care. So, I have almost a survivors guilt, I do. Because why was I selected? Why was I one of the very few selected to go to get that golden ticket to go to the NIH, to be able to have the opportunity to have my trajectory of recovery essentially changed, when I know tens of thousands of Americans that are really good people that deserve the same treatment? They deserve the same interventions, they deserve the same compassion, and they were not afforded that. They werent afforded that because the people that could do this stayed silent. Mr. Jekielek: Why? Ms. Dressen: Thats a good question. Whats the reason for that? Is it because they dont want to perpetuate vaccine hesitancy? Is it because theyre getting millions of dollars in royalties from Moderna? Is it more nuanced than that? Is it really just because someone told them that they need to shut up? Im not entirely sure why, but I understand that it was not right for the American public to not be informed. Everybody in this country deserves to know the full risks and benefits of the COVID vaccines. Its that simple. Every single American should be able to make a full informed decision, not based on fear, not based on promises, but informed by data. Mr. Jekielek: And not based on information apparently designed to elicit a behavioral response, which is my observation and also of numerous people Ive spoken with. Theres this feeling that youre not being told the truth. Youre being told information that will get you to do something specific that is intended. Ms. Dressen: Right. Obviously, if there was an extreme issue with COVID vaccines it could shift policy. At the time the policy was you get your shot, you sit down, and you shut up. There was no middle ground for understanding what could increase the likelihood of having a severe adverse reaction. And who had to figure that out? We did. We had to figure that out on our own. We went through all of our injured individuals, and we asked them what pre-existing conditions they had. Thats something the government should be doing. Thats something that should be backed by pharmaceutical dollars. We shouldnt be having to figure that out. The taxpayers shouldnt have to be figuring this out. But it also blows my mind that the taxpayers financed the development of this product, taxpayers financed promoting this product, and the taxpayers ultimately are going to have to pay for the aftermath of the failure of this product, because the drug companies are liability free. Its an amazing business model for them to just be able to print money. Mr. Jekielek: How many of the hundred-plus people that you recommended or introduced to the NIH got some help? Ms. Dressen: I want to say most of them did. It was very strange though, because some of the people that reached out to the NIH were told theres nothing going on here. So there was a select few that they would just, I dont know if they were overwhelmed or what, but during that time, they would just be like, Theres nothing going on here. Theres no research going on here. It was very strange. But then if you were one of the lucky ones to actually get them to respond and call your doctor at home, your entire case management with your local doctor would change. It would change everything just to have the NIH say, Yes, this is happening. You need to help your patient. Maddie de Garay was one of those whose doctor was called from the NIH saying, Yes, this persons having a reaction. You probably need to validate them and run testing and heres some possible treatments. Mr. Jekielek: Lets look back at the Maddie de Garay case. It was amazing to have Maddie on a year ago. Again, she was a very brave young girl, lets just say. I dont know what has happened in the past year. I know there were many, many steps before she got validated. What is it about this case that is particularly close to your heart? Of course, its hard not to love Maddie, but theres more to it than that. Ms. Dressen: Maddies a kid. Of all of the cases that weve had come through React 19, the tens of thousands, the treatment that Maddie has got has been by far the worst. Shes gotten the worst medical care. Shes gotten the worst treatment from the drug companies and the government. Shes been exploited to no end from people within her own sphere. That kid deserves better. Shes resilient. Shes incredibly bright. She is hilarious. I dont think people realize the amount of just sheer grit and will that that kid has to make it through every day. And Im going to do everything I can to get that kid out of that wheelchair. Were going to do everything we can. Im not going to stop until shes better. Mr. Jekielek: Very briefly, we do have an interview about a year ago where we talked about her case, so what has shifted? And Ill encourage our viewers to take a look at that. But just very briefly, if you could just summary what happened to her, and then where has things progressed in the past year? Ms. Dressen: She was coded as a stomachache, even though her legs stopped working. She has a form of gastroparesis where her throat muscles wont let her swallow, so she has a feeding tube. She was having several seizures a day early on. She had cognitive issues. Her vision is still messed up. Shes got some fine motor things that are starting to get better. But Im telling you, shes finally able to start getting some of these treatments that its taken us over a year-and-a-half to get these treatment protocols finally in place for her, because all these doctors kept using the fact that shes a minor as an excuse not to help her. Shes a kid, so were not specialized in pediatrics. Mr. Jekielek: But shouldnt it be the opposite? Ms. Dressen: It should be the opposite. It should be. Look, this is a kid, she should be jumped to the front of the line. Clinical trial participants should be jumped to the front of the line. And in reality, what weve learned is that injured clinical trial participants and injured kids, they go to the bottom of the barrel. Her treatment is very expensive, and its very tenuous. Theyve cycled through numerous different trials and options. Its been hard, but her neck is starting to stabilize and shes starting to see a little bit of improvement. Im confident that well get her back to some measure of life. But in reality, that kid has been abandoned, and her case is not uncommon. Thats whats happening to people all over this country. Theyre being abandoned. Theyre being ignored. I understand that people are tired of COVID. Theyre so tired of COVID. It was toxic. It was hard on everybody, and people are ready to move on. Theyre ready to move on to the next step and to put COVID behind us. But we cant. Essentially, were trapped. Were trapped in a COVID nightmare. And its never going to stop because we have permanent physical ailments. We have a government that still continues to insist that we dont exist. Drug companies dont want to admit that this is happening. And why would they? Because the government gave them the free ticket out for liability. They are not liable or obligated to help us in any way, so why would they? This comes back to everyday Americans, and actually everyday people all over the globe. Hopefully, they are going to have the compassion to step back and realize, Look, weve left these people on the battlefield. Its a decision that everyones going to have to make. Do we leave them there on the battlefield or do we pick them up? Do we try to bring them with us to move forward? Mr. Jekielek: I want to explore that a little further. Theres one thing I want to touch on before we go there, which disturbed me quite a bit. You mentioned something about how Maddie was exploited by people. Ms. Dressen: All sides. Mr. Jekielek: Right. What happened? Ms. Dressen: Its sad. This probably will ruffle some feathers but it needs to be said. The injured, largely, have been used for our stories. People come and theyre like, Come tell us the worst part of your life. I dont think people realize its asking a rape victim to come and recount the most horrific experience of their life over and over and over. Its not healing. Its traumatizing. Its like ripping off a band aid all the time, in the guise of trying to further and help people understand and increase awareness. The step beyond just our stories is theres more action that needs to be taken. Theres political action. There are policies that need to be changed to make sure that this doesnt happen again. But whats strange is when you have someone thats in a wheelchair, shes basically the icon for the vaccine failure, and shes turned into that. You would think that we would have people flooding in to help her. But instead, what has happened is shes being used to increase followings, increase notoriety, and line pockets with money. That moneys not coming back to them. Its not. The support that theyve received have been from a very select few of individuals in this sphere who have really seen whats been happening to her and realized, Yes, we cant do this to a kid. We cant just put her out on a stage and then send her home to be alone and suffering by herself. We need to lean in. We need to find her medical interventions. We need to provide some financial support. Its one thing to have a bunch of injured people telling their stories, but thats not what the injured need. Were more than happy to stand there and increase advocacy and raise our voices and push because its the right thing to do. Its most definitely the most important thing we can do to help increase awareness, so people can understand whats happening. But on the back end, theres a whole lot that needs to be done beyond step one. And step one is recognition. But step two is to evaluate the issue and figure out what needs to be done to fix it. Thats where things get really hard and muddy. Mr. Jekielek: Youve described now for all of us a number of the symptoms that you had, and then some of that was alleviated through the treatment you got through the NIH. There are some other people who have gotten this. In your organization, React 19 now, theres 10,000-plus. Id like to know more how that organization grew. Who are the people there? How does it fund itself? You mentioned theres always this financial question hovering in the air. Please tell me where things are at. Ms. Dressen: Essentially, React 19 is a nonprofit that was organized because the government wasnt doing their job. And because the government wasnt doing their job, somebody had to. The injured realized, We got to do it ourselves. If no one is coming to save us, weve got to do it ourselves. So, we started a nonprofit. It was started by the injured for the injured. In one short year we have amassed over 21,000 COVID vaccine injured just here in the United States. That number could be up to 27,000, 30,000 easily. And then, with our international partners, we have close to two dozen international partners across the globe. Our numbers are big. But when it comes down to it, because of the censorship and the all-out oppression, our numbers are still small in comparison to who really is out there. But this organization was created by medical professionals, because they were the first ones that were injured. They are scientists and people that really want to make sure that there is financial, physical, and emotional support for those that are suffering from COVID vaccine adverse events. Our funding is 100 per cent grassroots. We dont have any philanthropists supporting us. Its all just everyday people that are compassionate and they see the issues and they want to help. 100 per cent of the donations go to supporting the injured. We are 100 per cent volunteer, which is something Im very proud of. We want to make sure that we do that and keep it that way, because we see the importance of every single dollar that comes in, and we know that that will make a difference for somebody. Whether its through medical support or any other kind of support, resources need to be built. We have people literally living in cars that have to decide whether theyre going to be able to pay for their gas to go to the food bank to get their food or to go get their prescription. Were able to help them get their prescription, help them get IVIG, and help them get red light therapy. We want the injured to be empowered to make their decisions and take ownership of their healing when everything around them, their medical teams, their jobs, their government has abandoned them and essentially stripped them of that power. Our job now is to give that power back to them, so they can take the initiative to figure out what is going to work in their case. But we have to put those pieces in place. We have to pave the path for them to get better. That takes money, and it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of different programs. We have an advocacy program where an injured is assigned an advocate. Its like a buddy system. They listen to them and figure out what constellation of symptoms they have. They help them find local doctors that are compassionate and willing to stick with them and help them. We have a financial compensation program, and we issue grants for $6,000 to $10,000. Thats strictly for medical expenses for people in need, and that has made a huge difference. Its been incredible to see how many doors can open for people through that program. But that money just doesnt magically fall out of thin air. That money has to come from somewhere. Its hard to keep those coffers full because as soon as that money comes in, theres somebody right in line that needs it. And we know those people. We love those people. We know their names; we know their families. We want to do everything we can to make sure that we can get these people their lives back to stop the progression of their disease, because they have nobody. A lot of these people dont have families that believe them. We all have friends that dont believe us. Big Tech is definitely against us. Hopefully, what were able to build through React 19 is a refuge for these people. In turn, these people will be able to find their voice and find physical strength to come out and push and stand with us and share their voices against the injustice that has happened to help us enact change so this doesnt happen again. And so we can make sure that the injustices that many, many people have faced through the COVID pandemic are not repeated. Mr. Jekielek: I really want to talk about this gaslighting and how that played out. Because for example, for people that chose not to get vaccinated, there was huge stigma associated with that. There was the pandemic of the unvaccinated rhetoric. I know that we already heard from you today how people were treated saying, Its a hysteria that you have. Its some sort of emotional thing. Its a stomachache. What was your reaction when you learned that these genetic vaccines, or at least in the Pfizer case, were never tested for transmission, with the knowledge that theres this expectation in society that this was going to stop transmission? All the rhetoric was built around that, from what I could tell. Ms. Dressen: It didnt surprise me, because by that point, I had gone from all-believing and part of the solution, to my life is ruined. Okay, wait, now Im going to be part of the solution still, but its going to be in a way that I didnt know needed to happen. And by that point, we already knew that it didnt stop transmission. We knew that they werent looking for the things that they should have. They werent evaluating safety appropriately. They werent evaluating transmission appropriately. And the data that they have, theyre not disclosing it to the public. The only way youre able to get that data is through FOIA requests, and mountains of lawyers going after them. It still blows my mind that Americans are okay with very simple data sets being held back, and the government requesting that they be restricted from our view for 75 years. That should be a red flag for anybody. Lets be honest, transparency is so important. If we dont have the raw data, then what do we have? All we have are promises, and thats what we got, and those promises turned out to be lies. Nothing feeds conspiracy quite like having no transparency. And its not a conspiracy theory at this point. If you dont have the data, you dont have the data. Why are they holding onto the data if they have nothing to hide? Because what we heard early on in the pandemic was that the overwhelming data shows that the vaccines are safe and effective. Rochelle Walensky, Janet Woodcock, Fauci, thats what they were saying on all the mainstream media channels about the overwhelming data. We said, Okay, lets see the data. Zach Stieber with the Epoch Times has definitely landed a significant win in the quest for truth and transparency with the FOIA request that was awarded. And he was able to get a recent VAERS review done by the CDC. What they did is they reviewed all the adverse events through the VAERS system to look for safety signals. And what did they find? The CDC found that there are 500 safety signals that are more significant and higher than myocarditis. Mr. Jekielek: Which is one of the few that it has admitted to, or one of the few relationships thats admitted to. Ms. Dressen: Yes. The FDA takes great pride in identifying myocarditis based on six cases. And here we are with a dataset with 700-plus safety signals, and over 500 are stronger safety signals than myocarditis. Yet what about those 500 that are actually disclosed to the public? How many of those? How many people are struggling with those 500 issues, and theyre being told, Its nothing, that its in their head. Oh, it must be COVID. Maybe its too much stress at work. When in actuality, its a pharmaceutical that theyre being told to inject into their arm over and over and over. And many of those diseases are literally landing people in their graves. Tinnitus, its a very simple word, but if you have tinnitus, your life is not lovely. Mr. Jekielek: That was one of the very strong safety signals in that report. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Robert Edmunds, hes an injured scientist. He actually reached out to Tom Shimabukuro whos basically the head of the vaccine program at the CDC. He reached out to him and identified tinnitus as a safety signal. He said, Look, this is a problem. I found the data. He was very objective, very calm and calculated with how he presented the information, and Tom brushed it aside. The CDC didnt want to hear from this individual who was suffering from this issue firsthand and had identified the safety signal. Instead, what they did everything they could to hide him and hide the information that he was bringing. In addition, the CDC went and investigated for tinnitus itself, found a very strong signal, and hid that as well. And thats just one example of the 500. Mr. Jekielek: I cut you off a little bit earlier about Tinnitus. It sounds like something thats not a big deal to people that arent experiencing a severe version of it. But you were going to talk about what impact that can have on people. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Tinnitus is just one example of these life-altering injuries that are not clots. You cant see tinnitus on a test. But its life altering. If you could imagine when youre laying your head down at night to go to sleep and the rooms quiet, or you might hear the fan moving or some sound from outside, imagine instead if you hear a screaming in your head all the time. It doesnt go away, and it doesnt wane. Its always there. So, instead of being met with peace at night and being able to unwind, youre instead met with a screaming, loud screeching in your head. Your peace is robbed of you for the rest of your life. On top of that, theres no one to answer for that. If people cannot rest, if they cannot find peace, if they cannot find a reprieve, if their families have turned their backs on them, if their peers have turned their backs on them, as well as the medical community, it puts that person in a very vulnerable situation. At React, weve been doing everything we can to save lives. Everything. But the sad reality is we havent been able to save everyone. And theres some people that have made the ultimate choice to end their suffering. Tinnitus is a big one. I want to say probably 30, 35 per cent of the people that do end their lives, its because of tinnitus. Mr. Jekielek: This subject, I know weve talked a bit offline about this, its not academic for you. Ms. Dressen: No, its not. No. This one is hard and its personal. Its one of those things nobody wants to talk about. I definitely dont like to talk about it, but its personal. I suffered with the suicidal intention for months. With the vaccine reaction its not like its fleeting. Its not like its a moment in time where youve had a couple of bad days and then its over. When I was in that situation, I hadnt slept for months. I had the raging tinnitus, the electrical sensations all over my body, which I still have to this day, every moment of every day. My brain fog was off the charts. I couldnt eat. You could see every single rib in my body. Id lost so much weight because I just couldnt eat. I was one step away from having a feeding tube. They put me on marijuana. They did everything to try to get me to be able to keep weight on and to be able to consume food. I was not in a good place. I remember waking up every single day, and still to this day, I wake up every single morning to this electrical surging through my body. Thats what greets me every morning. It was hard to cope with that. It was hard to learn to live with that. There was not a time where I could rest. There was no joy for even a minute in my day. That went on for months to the point where it was like, Whats the point? And so, I wanted to be done, and I had a plan. I wrote goodbye letters to my kids. Sorry. Ill never forgive myself for that, for almost destroying their lives. But at the time, I couldnt think it through. I wasnt thinking straight. I wasnt thinking about them. But I hid it. I was ashamed. I didnt tell people about it. I overcame that issue and I learned to accept it, but it was really, really, hard. Its still something that I work on all the time. Look, I have a choice every day when I wake up. I have a choice to accept that my body sucks and it hurts, and all these weird things are going on. And I can accept that. It doesnt mean that Im okay with it, but it means that I can accept it and say, Yes, this is part of my life, but my kids need X, Y, Z, and the injured need A, B, C. And if Im trapped, and if all Im doing is being miserable and suffering inside my head, Im not doing any of them any good. Im also not doing myself any good, because then there goes all my healing energy for myself. It took a long time to evolve from my life is wrecked, it sucks, to what it is now, where I need to fight, I need to stick with it. It doesnt matter how bad this gets, Im going to do everything I can to make sure that my life means something and that Im there for my kids. But I hid that. I hid that whole process because I was so embarrassed. Its humiliating to think that you are brought to your knees to the point where you want nothing more than to just be dead. Nobody wants to admit that they were that vulnerable and that their life was that bad, because its seen as a weakness. But thats not what it is. I had a friend, and this is when I realized that I couldnt hide it anymore. I had a really good friend who was injured. She was a COVID long hauler for a long time. Then, she got vaccinated hoping that would fix the long haul, because that was the promise and the lie that it would fix long haul. Instead, it made her dramatically worse. We talked every day. And she ended up ending her life. Her husband called and told me that she was on life support. Ill never forget that call, because I had just barely come out of that place in my own head. The last words she told me were, Youre so strong. When she said that, I was taken back and embarrassed, because I knew where I just was in my head. I knew where I was, just almost about ready to check out. I didnt say anything to her. I just said, Thank you. But in reality, what I should have told her is just how bad it was. I should have told her the journey that I had just been on myself. I should have told her just how hard it was. Because then maybe that wouldve given her the reason to hang on. Maybe that wouldve given her a little bit of the understanding that, Look, Im not strong. Im just like you. Im just like anyone else. Im just doing my best and yes, it sucks. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you for sharing that here. I cant help but think that in your case, you actually have a very supportive family. And despite that, it was so horrible. I just can hardly imagine what it would be like for people whose family members may not believe them, because theyve been told safe and effective. No chance of this. Its just in your head. Ms. Dressen: When it comes down to it, literally, thats the only reason Im alive is because my husband believed me and validated me, and he stood by me every step of the way. Had I not had that support, I would have been done, no question. Theres no question. My kids would not have had a mom. Their lives would be ruined, the whole thing. We would not be sitting here today. The vast majority of the people that do complete suicide in the COVID vaccine injury world, they do not have supportive family. I think were at 27, 28 now, could be upwards of 30. Theres only two that I know of that were from families that were supportive and watching them. The rest were people that their family members had walked away. There was a woman who was a medical professional with a beautiful family, adult children. Her husband left her because of the burden, because she was trapped in her bed. She wasnt getting better. And so, he left her, and he told the adult kids, You guys are going to be stuck here caring for your mom until she dies, so you better get out. So, the kids left. She went and found a way to do it that was sanctioned by the Canadian government. She went through with it and ended her life. I know that people see that as just a number, but thats a real human being. Thats someone that deserved better, and thats someone that deserved to have some dignity and some respect. She didnt have any choice into what happened to her. Just like a cancer patient. Cancer patients gets their diagnosis, theyre sat down with their family members and their medical teams, and they say, Okay, heres a plan. Family, this is how you can support this person. The opposite is happening here. You get a reaction, and boom, youre done. Theres no help for you. The help that you do get, its going to be from random people you find on the internet that just happen to have the secrets from the NIH. Mr. Jekielek: I hope its okay, but I want to explore this because you mentioned this woman was in Canada where it has one of the most liberal medically assisted suicide regimes, and getting more liberal this year coming up. Im aware of at least one instance where someone was vaccine injured and was offered MAID, as its called, as a solution. Its hard for me to describe the series of thoughts I had when I learned about this. I dont know if you have any thoughts. Ms. Dressen: Obviously, its wrong and its corrupt and its evil. And thats one thing that COVID has done. Really what COVID has done is it has exposed evil. Its brought evil to the surface wherever its been hiding, and this is one of those cases. You have real people that are dealing with a real disease and instead of addressing the issue, because the people responsible, the drug companies, theyre absolved from being being obligated to fix the problems with their drug. Then, the cheapest way to take care of the issue is to dispose of the people, to erase them and erase their voices. The sad thing is weve seen this time and time again with the suicides is once youre gone, theres no one there thats going to step in and be your voice. Once youre gone thats it. No ones going to stand out with a flag with your name on it and wave it to try to bring justice for you. Because most of these people that do this, their families are not on board. If people want justice for themselves, theyve got to bring justice for themselves alive. Theres no one thats going to save them more than themselves. Thats one of the things that the injured can do for each other is to help each other get through that, to get through those moments and get through that place, because you can. I know that because Ive done it myself. There are times in my day where I can have joy now. My body is not a nightmare all the time every day. Im able to spend time with my kids. I was able to go to my sons little school parade, and I hadnt been able to do that for two years. And he wasnt expecting me to go. And I tell you, he was the only 10-year-old kid in the entire school that cared that his mom was there. He just kept looking back at me like, Oh, its you. When he got home, he came straight up and gave me the biggest hug. And the rest of my day sucked. It hurt and it was miserable. But that moment right there made the whole day worth it. Mr. Jekielek: I might endeavor to add here that theres a few other people around who appreciate your work and advocacy. Ms. Dressen: Hopefully. Well, powerful people arent too happy about it. The people that get involved with React 19, whether theyre injured or notwe hear it over and over and we have 65 volunteers at this pointthey say the most gratifying work that theyve ever done in their life has actually been through what theyve been able to do through React 19. These are people that have worked in ICUs. Theyve worked with marginalized populations in the past. They come from all corners of the globe, all shapes and sizes and professions. Theyve been able to find true satisfaction in being able to heal a population and help support a population that nobody else is helping. Thats been the same for me as well. These people are amazing. The injured community are amazing people. Most of them didnt get vaccinated to prove to somebody that what they were doing was right. They were doing it to help other people. They were doing it to help their communities, support their family members or whatever it may be. It wasnt to say, Were right. The vaccines are great. Thats not what people were doing. Now, in their injuries, theyre doing the same. They really just want to help people and they want to help each other. They still want to help especially by providing the truth, so people dont get forced to have these vaccines, especially with incomplete and flawed information. Im going to do everything I can to support these people. They need the support. Mr. Jekielek: A lot of new information has come out, including this recent FOIA information. Its still hard for me to fathom there are 500-plus safety signals. For the benefit of our viewers, that simply means if myocarditis warrants investigation, theres 500-plus other things that warrant serious investigation. Thats what that means to me. Theres a whole plethora of further information which has come out, including the V-safe data that Aaron Siri was able to get. We could go on and on. With React 19 and this advocacy for the vaccine injured, it feels like youre in a very different place in the beginning of 2023 than the beginning of 2022 when we first met. Whats on the horizon? Ms. Dressen: Weve got to get these people better, and weve got to get the truth out. Were going to do everything we can to make sure that investigations happen, and that people are held accountable, and that policies are changed. Our goals are to open care clinics across the country in 2023. We actually have a research grant program that just launched, and its a research match program. Any donation is matched up to $100,000 right now. The reason why thats so important is because, as you know, the federal research dollars are not going to evaluate the COVID vaccine issues. Theyre not. For that research to happen, its going to have to be independently funded. If its not independently funded, its not going to happen. And just like everything else, the data is where the truth lies. Until we generate the data to show exactly whats going on with the COVID vaccines and what adverse events are happening, and then also as a result to see how we can reverse some of these issues, were not going to have the truth. To find the truth, it takes money. But then also were going to continue to build this injured community to involve those that are not just injured, but those that see the injuries and to see if we can figure out how to expand that to more ofas Joel Wallskog, my co-chair at React 19 saysthe moldable middle. These are the people that if youre with them in family functions or whatever, most people dont talk about politics, they dont talk about religion, and they dont talk about vaccines. But the thing is with most people, they know someone thats been injured. I dont think people realize that if youre not supporting someone that you know thats injured, most likely nobody else is either. The goal is to help people take that initiative to provide that support to someone that is injured, and that is suffering. Because sometimes they just need a phone call. Other times they need a little bit more. They may need a meal brought in or someone to come sit with them or take them to the doctor. But we cant do it alone. Its just like with everything else that needs to happen as we reflect on the COVID tyranny, theres a lot of justice that needs to come many peoples way. But the only way that justice is going to happen is if we band together. Separated, were going to fail. But together, were going to succeed. Mr. Jekielek: Its really interesting that youre saying that theres almost anyone out there that could actually provide a helping hand to someone who is suffering from some kind of injury or even a perception of an injury, even some of these people that are injured themselves. And because of this huge multi-billion-dollar information campaign that weve all been subject to, they might themselves not realize their own series of symptoms. They dont realize that the doctors wont diagnose it, yet they could be helped. How do we deal with that? Ms. Dressen: People are going to need to rise to the challenge. This is one of those opportunities for people to really realize that theres some people that have been left behind and look around and see who those people are. It starts with a phone call to just listen and see what they need. Mr. Jekielek: We dont even need to say vaccine injury. Ms. Dressen: Right. Mr. Jekielek: We dont need to say, I think you have that. Theres a lot of people out there that didnt have some really unfortunate collection of symptoms. Ms. Dressen: Checking in with somebody, this is how it goes with any disease. You just check in with them. Because out of sight, out of mind is a real thing. The government and Big Tech have been able to capitalize on that concept. All you have to do is make sure that people dont see it, they dont think about it, and therefore public pressure cannot be applied to get government to do their job. All they have to do is just eliminate that part of the equation and then the problem doesnt exist. But now whats happened is there are everyday people that they need that support. Mr. Jekielek: How is it that myocarditis was acknowledged, theres maybe two or three things? Ms. Dressen: Yes. The FDA proudly acknowledges myocarditis based on six cases. With our meetings with Peter Marks, the head of biologics at the FDA, hes the one that gives the rubber stamp on the licenses for the COVID vaccines, they take great pride in that number. We found myocarditis based on six cases. Well, what about all of these other signals? And just like weve said before, we pounded down those doors to gain access to those officials that were responsible for disclosing reactions to the public. They said, Weve looked and looked and looked. Weve really looked for adverse events and we just cant find them. Then come to find out, Zack Stieber was able to show and access the records that showed that thats not true and that we were all lied to. In fact, they found 500 more safety signals that they should have disclosed to the public, not just a few. In those 500 signals, theres all of the issues that COVID vaccine injuries reflect. Youve got dysautonomia, POTS [Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome], tinnitus, paresthesia, and facial and trigeminal issues. Who would have thought that this could be such a debilitating issue to have these nerves destroyed, but theyre debilitating. The government has not been transparent. They have not disclosed any of this to the public. In reality, in doing so, it has hidden us. It has kept us from public view. The media repeatedly has told us that they cant report on COVID vaccine injuries. We have this on record. If the corporate media is controlled by whoever is controlling them, and the governments controlling the information and the flow of information, and the drug companies can control the flow of information because theyre a private entity, how are we going to win? Were going to win by we the people stepping up and not accepting this situation that were in. We the people have to step forward and demand better from our elected officials, from the pharmaceutical companies and from the media. Until we generate a public outcry from the ground up, policy will not shift. The pressure will not be applied, and they will come back and without question will do the same thing to people again under the sake of emergency. Theyll just wait for the next emergency to appear. Mr. Jekielek: It sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Brianne Dressen, its such a pleasure to have you on again. Ms. Dressen: Thanks for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Brianne Dressen and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. Im your host, Jan Jekielek. AstraZeneca and NIH did not immediately respond to our requests for comment. British Politician Warns That Corporate ESG Policies Are Being Used to Penalise Political Views Richard Tice (R) listens as Nigel Farage speaks during the launch of the Brexit Party at BG Penny & Co, in Coventry, England, on April 12, 2019. (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images) Insurgent parties are warning that banks environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies are being used to penalise certain views such as critiquing net zero policies. The leader of the Reform Party Richard Tice told The Epoch Times that his commercial mortgage was refused last year because of his outspokenness on net zero policies, which went against the lenders environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy. ESG investing is used to screen investments based on corporate policies and to encourage companies to promote sustainable practices. They have been gaining traction in recent years as companies and governments see them as having a positive impact. However, some argue that ESG policies are being used as a cover to restrict the ability of certain groups to access credit, silence dissenting voices, and stifle economic growth. Reform Party Founded by Nigel Farage, Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, is seeing an uptick in memberships, at times polling at 9 percent, higher than the Lib Dems (7 percent) and the Greens (5 percent). Tice has argued that net zero could be the new Brexit and has discussed having a referendum on the matter. Net zero is a UK government policy to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. However, Tice, who is also a real estate businessman, found himself on the wrong side of ESG when his commercial property mortgage application was rejected over his views on net zero. He did not name the financial institution. My business activities are around commercial property, and I was renegotiating my commercial mortgage about half a year ago and the terms agreed new lender was all sorted, Tice told The Epoch Times. He explained said that everything was ready for rubber stamping at their investment committee on Monday afternoon. However, because of what he and Nigel Farage had written about in the press about net zero on Sunday before, the investment committee told him that the terms of the loan were acceptable, but Richard Tice as a customer was not acceptable. He said he was told, we dont want Tice as a customer, because he doesnt comply with our ESG criteria. So that just shows how it is completely embedded in UK corporate life, said Tice. What theyre essentially trying to do is theyre trying to silence that debate. And this is going on across businesses, big businesses all over the country. And there are lots of senior leaders of those businesses who privately admit that its bonkers but who publicly because they want to climb the greasy pole of corporate life, publicly theyre having to admit that they agree with this nonsense, he said. We basically have got to rise up, debate, and prove the absolute nonsense of this ESG Net Zero cult, said Tice. It is a cult. Its a religion. Its incredibly dangerous to the prosperity of our country. And its totally unnecessary, he added. Almost Impossible to Operate British Actor Laurence Fox, who stars as Hunter Biden in the movie My Son Hunter, speaks with EpochTVs American Thought Leaders on Sept. 20, 2022. (The Epoch Times) The leader of the political movement the Reclaim Party and actor Laurence Fox told The Epoch Times that he believed that ESG is the corporate version of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) which he has often heavily criticised. There are things that you are not allowed to talk about without being totally shut down by a political establishment, and it doesnt matter which party is in charge, it looks after itself, he said. Fox said thatwhile not necessarily ESG relatedhis party has had major issues securing a bank account for donations, which has only recently been remedied. Last year, Reclaim and Reform, joined forces to create an electoral pact. The idea of insurgent parties coming along who speak actually for people, who care about things like immigration, for example, our cultural heritage or freedom of speech, they make it almost impossible to operate, he said. Wind turbines adorn the landscape in the Southern Lake District, in Lambrigg, England, on Nov. 25, 2022. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Tim Price, director at the investment management company Price Value Partners, told The Epoch Times that he is a natural-born skeptic of ESG. If you take ESG through the prism of financial markets, through an asset management firm, I would state that ESG is nothing more than a scam whereby the incumbent market leaders attempt to squash small opposition by building up ridiculous requirements and complacent departments that are unfit for purpose, he said. The way I look at the world ESG is hypercritical, irrelevant, nonsensical counter-productive, unscientific, and unwholly arbitrary, he added. Price said he was encouraged by the news that Vanguard, the worlds second-largest fund manager said on Dec. 7, 2022, that it would quit the $66 trillion net-zero coalition Net Zero Initiative in the United States. You are seeing growing pushback against the absurdity against all things green and woke, the early stage of counter-trend, he said. Price noted that the top HSBC executive Stuart Kirk, who was suspended, and later resigned, after criticising central bankers and policymakers for exaggerating the financial risks of climate change, could be seen as a Martin Luther figure. ESG is likely set to continue According to investment management company Charles Stanley, the popularity of ESG is likely set to continue as investors increasingly demand to support environmental and social initiatives as well as secure decent returns. Continued growth is also going to be vital in solving many of the worlds most pressing issues from climate change to inequality, it added. In the UK, the government is currently looking at ways to get involved if a payment service provider refuses to supply a service to a customer over free speech issues. On Nov. 3, Conservative MP Sally-Ann Hart presented, but later withdrew, an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which would have made it illegal for a financial services provider to withhold or withdraw service from a customer if its related to their freedom of expression. Last year, Hart told The Epoch Times she was discussing if Financial Conduct Authority was the right body to adjudicate over matters of freedom of expression and free speech. If we do not progress the issue, I will be bringing the amendment back, said Hart at the time. California Court Halts Fast Food Labor Law FILE PHOTO: A "Now hiring" sign is displayed on the window of an IN-N-OUT fast food restaurant in Encinitas, California, U.S., May 9, 2022. (Mike Blake/Reuters) The Sacramento Superior Court ruled in favor Jan. 13 of a coalition of restaurateurs and small businesses seeking to stop the implementation of the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Actknown as the FAST Actuntil signatures on a petition, which would put the issue before voters to possibly overturn the law, are verified. The law, which was signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Labor Day in 2022 and was to have gone into effect on Jan. 1, establishes a government-run 10-member council including state officials, representatives of franchisors and franchisees, as well as employees and their advocates, appointed by the governor. The council was given the power to set wages for fast food workers in the state, with the goal to give workers more power in negotiating wage increases, hours, benefits, and various other terms of employment. A Sacramento judge had temporarily blocked the law on Dec. 30 ahead of the Jan. 13 hearing. Previously, a group called the Save Local Restaurants Coalition gathered over 1 million signatures from California voters, which, if verified, would seek voter input in 2024 if the law should remain. The California Secretary of State expects to have the signatures verified by Jan. 25. At least 623,000 signatures must be verified. The courts decision protects the rights of over one million California voters who demanded their say on this law before bearing its burden, the Save Local Restaurants Coalition said in a statement to The Epoch Times. We appreciate the Court upholding the states 100-year-old referendum process as well as the well-established legal precedent that ensures California voters are able to consider the laws passed by their legislature. Under the law, franchisors must ensure their restaurants adhere to employment, public health, and safety laws determined by the council and would be collectively liable for penalties for violations in their businesses. This means franchisees would be permitted to file lawsuits against their franchisors should they claim any of the new regulations were breached. The councils regulations would directly impact chains with at least 100 locations nationwide, including big names like McDonalds, In-N-Out, and Burger King, among others. McDonalds USA President Joe Erlinger said in an open letter last August Californias approach targets some workplaces and not others. It imposes higher costs on one type of restaurant while sparing another, he said. Californias Early Release of Convicted Pedophiles Leads to More Victims: Former DA Stock photo of a condemned inmate led out of his east block cell at San Quentin State Prison, in San Quentin, Calif. on March 13, 2019. (Eric Risberg/AP) A former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney who worked in its sex crimes unit is warning early releases of pedophiles from California prisonsdue to a series of recent progressive lawswill lead to more children being victimized and harmed, in part because such criminals are rarely rehabilitated. Samuel Dordulian, who now heads the Dordulian Law Group out of Glendale, California, which specializes in such crimes, made the comments on a recent episode of EpochTVs California Insider. Its terrifying for me as a parent and it should be terrifying for every parent out there of a child, said Dordulian, who worked in the DAs office from 1995 until 2008. During the 30-minute interview, Dordulian said he was surprised such criminals are released so quickly these days. He said he only discovered such when a reporter from the Daily Mail reached out to him last year showing statistics that such criminals in California are, on average, being released in about 1 years and sometimes within only months. Its shocking, he said. Published in November of 2022, the story indicated thousands of child molesters are being let out after just a few months, despite sentencing guidelines. The story reported that more than 7,000 inmates convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age were released from prison the same year they were incarcerated. The Daily Mails analysis was conducted using a databasecreated in 1994 after the federal Megans Law was passedrequiring law enforcement to make public information regarding registered sex offenders. The news organization examined data in California through July of 2019. Everyone should be really upset and frightened by this, Dordulian said. According to Dordulian, child molesters are the least likely of criminals to be rehabilitated and are four times more likely to commit the same crime again. Once theyre out, he said, they are going to re-offend and theres going to be another child that is victimized by these people. According to Dordulian, the early releases are the result of a recent series of California laws, most specifically 2016s Prop. 57, which allows prisoners earlier paroles, reduced time for good behavior, and sentences only for a criminals base crime, meaning additional charges can be ignored. And that is unthinkable, he said. He additionally said the policies of current Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon are a complete 180 from when he served in the DAs office. That is not the way I used to prosecute crimes, he said. Today, he said, the focus is on helping the offender, not protecting the victim. [The] attitude has completely changed, he said. Today, the ethos is doing everything you can to see how you can help this poor criminal who committed this crime. In his day, he said, prosecutors looked for ways to maximize sentences to keep convicts away for as long as possible, in part because of high recidivism rates for child molesters. That included charging them with every lewd touch they made on a child. Each, he said, allowed up to eight years of imprisonment. You would then be able to have [a] significant maximum sentence, he said. All that work we would put in to make sure [a molester] was going to get a high sentence is thrown out the window, now. Part of the reasons for the passage of Prop. 57 were overcrowding in prisons, the cost of over $100,000 a year to house an inmate, and a growing belief such funding could be better used for rehabilitation, he said. But according to Dordulian, a 2018 state audit revealed money spent on rehabilitation has little impact on recidivism. It has little to absolutely no impact on criminals reoffending, he said. Rehabilitation is not working in California. He also said the recent trend since the 2020 death of George Floyd of defunding police and a decline of morale within the ranks, is not helping either. Why is anyone surprised that were having an incredible rise in crime? he said. No one feels safer today than they did several years ago. Today, he said, the state and elected officials are no longer holding criminals accountable for their crimes. Officials have shifted, instead, he said, to blaming society, the economy and racism. Its everyones fault except for the person who is actually committing the offense, he said. Dordulian said he was once honored to work in the DAs office and felt proud to help victims. Today, he said, some are now choosing to hire himat no costto be their voice in criminal court, instead of having their cases prosecuted by the DA. The DA is no longer the voice of the victim, he said. Things can change, he said, if people would tell elected officials enough is enough. If we dont get the pendulum to swing back, he said, its going to be complete lawlessness out there. Canada Provides More Organs From Assisted Suicide Recipients for Transplant Than Any Other Country A "euthanasia kit" available in the 250 Belgian Multipharma's chemist shops for general practitioners who want to practice euthanasia at patients' homes, in Brussels, Belgium, on April 18, 2005. (Etienne Ansotte/AFP via Getty Images) Canadian patients who opt for euthanasia provide more transplant organs than any other country globally that allows physician-assisted suicide, according to the first international review of medical assistance in dying (MAID). Patients in Canada who decide to end their lives with physician help also contributed to almost half of the worlds documented organ transplants occurring after euthanasia. Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, and became a world leader of the practice in 2022, with record numbers of people committing suicide with physician-administered lethal drugs. As of May 2022, eight countries in the world allowed death by intravenous practitioner-administration of lethal substances, the type of MAID compatible with subsequent organ donation. Five years ago, patients had to be facing imminent death in order to avail of the procedure. That is not the case anymore. As of last year, Canadians who wanted help to end their lives did not have to suffer from a terminal condition. Instead, they could qualify for MAID with a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability. The availability for MAID was expanded in 2022, with plans to include mental illness as a qualifying condition by March 17, 2023, which has now been delayed. Altruism Canada has some of the most liberal rules in the world for receiving assisted suicide. The authors of the review noted that clear ethical standards need to be implemented, as there are consent and trust issues to resolve due to potentially influenceable patients. The report noted that altruism could become a motivating factor in ending ones life. There is risk that knowing how many people their organs could help, will prevent the MAID patient from feeling absolute freedom to change their mind, right up until the last time they are asked whether they wish to proceed, just before substance administration, it noted. Euthanasia medication being prepared for consumption. (Go Gentle Australia) Ethical Concerns Organ donation after euthanasia raises some important ethical concerns involving patient autonomy, the link between the request for MAID and the request to donate organs and the increased burden placed on seriously ill MAID patients, said the report. In Canada in 2021, the most commonly cited intolerable physical or psychological suffering reported by patients who wanted assisted suicide was the loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities (86.3 percent), followed closely by the loss of ability to perform activities of daily living (83.4 percent), according to a Health Canada report. In 2016, there were just over 1,000 deaths by euthanasia. That number skyrocketed to 31,644 in total by the end of 2021. In 2021 alone, more than 10,000 people died after euthanasia. The number of people obtaining assisted suicide was up 32.4 percent in 2021 from 2020, according to Health Canada. Just under half of people chose to have their deaths at home in 2021, roughly 44 percent. There were 12,286 written requests for assisted suicide in 2021, up 27.7 percent from 2020. Of those, 81 percent were provided euthanasia. People rally against expansion to medically assisted dying legislation, during a protest in Ottawa on June 1, 2016. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press) MAID at Home Canada is also leading globally in another area, according to the review. There have been eight documented assisted suicides where the patient had MAID in their homes and were then transported by ambulance to have their organs removed. Five of those occurred in Canada. In 2022, Canadians learned that people in severe economic or medical crises had been applying to die by assisted suicide because they could not cope with their challenges or pay their bills. In addition, as many as eight military veterans who contacted the government were offered death without even asking for it, including retired corporal and former Paralympian Christine Gauthier, who wanted help to build a wheelchair ramp at her home. She testified before a parliamentary committee that a government case worker offered her assisted suicide and even offered to supply the equipment. The federal government has said that employee no longer works with the department. It has also said it will delay the plan to expand euthanasia to include people with a mental illness as their only medical condition. The international review notes that four countries allow euthanasia patients to donate organsCanada, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spainand 268 patients who ended their lives with MAID had their organs transplanted in 837 patients, in the years up to and including 2021. One deceased could donate multiple organs to more than one recipient. Organ Donation A total of 2,782 organ transplants were performed in Canada in 2021; 78 percent of transplants used deceased donor organs and 21 percent used living donor organs. Of those organ transplants, 136 came from deceased Canadian donors, making up 6 percent of all transplants in the country, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Organ donation after euthanasia (ODE) began in 2005 globally, and by 2017 was developed for patients obtaining MAID from home. ODE is of increasing importance for donors, representing up to 14 percent of donations after circulatory determination of death, said the report. Organ transplants after euthanasia are an exceptional procedure with legal, ethical, and operational challenges that could erode societys trust, according to a new report. (Shutterstock) The review began in 2021 and the resulting study, Practice and challenges for organ donation after medical assistance in dying: A scoping review including the results of the first international roundtable in 2021, appeared in the December 2022 issue of the American Journal of Transplantation. The review noted that organ donation from assisted-suicide patients raised many unique, ethical and logistical considerations and had multiple stakeholders, including the patient and family, end-of-life care providers, and organ procurement organizations. According to the review, in 2020, there were 17,217 assisted suicide deaths globally, which included those who self-administered MAID drugs. Most of the patients had cancer or neurological conditions, said the report. Trudo Lemmens, professor in health law and policy at the University of Toronto, told CTV News that more than 35 percent of those Canadians who had assisted suicide in 2021 felt they were a burden on family, friends or caregivers according to a Health Canada report. I am concerned that people who struggle with a lack of self-esteem and self-worth may be pushed to see this as an opportunity to mean something, Lemmens told reporters. The author of the review, Dr. Johannes Mulder, who provides MAID in Zwolle, Netherlands, did not reply by press time, but told reporters guidelines are necessary and should also be strict when adding organ donation to assisted suicide. Organ donation after euthanasia is an exceptional procedure, presenting legal, ethical, and operational challenges and requiring dedicated guidance that will gain and retain societys confidence. If protocols are diffuse in their aims or burdened by earlier habits and ways of thinking, quality of care could be compromised and trust lost, stated the report. If a public misperception arises that ODE is aimed at increasing organ procurement, this confidence will be rapidly lost. Canada to Send 200 More Armoured Vehicles to Ukraine: Defence Minister Anita Anand, Minister of National Defence, holds a media availability on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 13, 2022. Defence Minister Anita Anand says the federal government will provide 200 armoured vehicles to the Ukrainian military. Anand announced the contribution during a visit to Kyiv today, where the minister also met her Ukrainian counterpart. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick) Defence Minister Anita Anand today announced Canada would send another 200 armoured vehicles to Ukraine in support of the countrys defence against the Russian invasion. Anand announced this latest round of military aid to Ukraine, worth $90 million, during a surprise visit to Kyiv on Jan. 18. It comes on the heels of the donation of the American-made surface-to-air missile system Anand announced on Jan. 10 at a cost of around $406 million. The Senator model of armoured vehicles is purchased from Roshel, a company based in Mississauga, Ontario. Canada previously sent eight of the same Roshel-made Senator armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine last spring. The Senator APCs are securitytask vehicles, and I have heard repeatedly that Ukrainian troops appreciate their manoeuvrability and their adaptability, Anand told reporters at a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, accompanied by her Ukrainian counterpart, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov. The vehicles also allow for the safe transportation of personnel and equipment and medical evacuations. $5 Billion in Aid This aid is part of the additional $500 million in military aid for Ukraine announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in November 2022, according to a Jan. 18 press release. The federal government has contributed an estimated $5 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian assistance since Russian forces crossed into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Reznikov commended Canada for the over $1 billion in military assistance committed to Ukraine since February 2022, which includes the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) with associated munitions, 39 armoured combat support vehicles, anti-tank weapons, M777 Howitzers and associated ammunition, according to the release. The Ukrainian defence minister said the NASAMS air defence systems were a top priority for his country to defend against Russias continued missile strikes. In addition, Canada and its allies have been debating over whether to send tanks to Ukraine. Germany, in particular, faces pressure to not only send some of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine but also allow other countries that operate the same tanks to do the same. Anand was also asked whether Canada, which has 112 Leopard 2s in several configurations in use by the CAF, would provide them in support of Ukraine. During her meeting with Reznikov, Anand did not confirm whether Canada would contribute some of its Leopard 2 tanks if Germany allowed for their re-export. This is certainly top of mind at the current time, she later told reporters when pressed for an answer, noting that the issue will be raised in an upcoming defence contact group meeting she is scheduled to attend in Germany on Jan. 20. Support for CAF During the Jan. 18 press conference, Anand was also asked about her governments investment in Canadian military forces. We shall continue to invest in our Canadian Armed Forces while providing this necessary support for Ukraine for them to be able to win this important war, Anand said. Anand was responding to a question from reporters on whether Ottawas investment in the Canadian forces will match the spending it provides in military aid to a foreign ally. In response, the minister pointed to Canadas 2017 defence policy, entitled Strong, Secure, Engaged, which she said will ensure an increase in defence spending by 70 percent between 2017 and 2026. Anand also pointed to Ottawas recent decision to purchase a new fleet of 88 F-35 fighter jets over the next nine years. She also noted that the military aid for Ukraine will continue. There is a price to helping Ukraine which includes the weapons and the vehicles. The cost of doing nothing is far greater. What happens here in Ukraine will determine the kind of world in which our children grow up, Anand said. This is a war for democracy in Ukraine, but also for our own freedom, she added. The Canadian Press contributed to this report. A Republican candidate who lost in 2022 claimed the election was rigged. Hes now being arrested for a string of shootings at the homes of local Democrat politicians. President Joe Biden reacts to questions on classified papers. And the White House is getting grilled on past claims that a search for documents was complete. The United States is close to maxing out on its $31 trillion national debt once again. The battle over spending sparks a divided Congress. What do Republicans want to look at cutting, and where do Democrats draw the line? China reported a population decline for the first time since the 1950s. It might no longer be the most populous country in the world. The United States is providing training to Ukrainian troops. Americas head of the joint chiefs of staff visits a training site in Germany. The 2023 tax season is just around the corner. The IRS says its hired thousands of new agents in anticipation. Chicago Inspector General School Report Reveals 1,735 Reported Sexual Misconduct Cases in 4 Years The downtown skyline in Chicago, Ill., on May 20, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had 1,735 reported adult-on-student sexual misconduct cases in the past four years, according to a report by the Chicago Board of Educations Office of Inspector General (OIG). Hundreds of cases couldnt substantiate sex abuse allegations, 302 discovered substantial policy violations, and at least 16 resulted in criminal charges. A backlog of 349 cases remains, the report says. Chicago public school teachers march through the streets near City Hall during a strike in Chicago on Oct. 31, 2019. (Scott Heins/Getty Images) According to the OIG, 2022 saw one sexual misconduct case closed for every 66 CPS teachers. The report also revealed CPS spent 77 percent of its $1.49 billion in pandemic relief funds on boosting employee salaries. However, many of these cases havent resulted in criminal charges, the report stated. The lack of criminal charges doesnt mean accused adults didnt commit sexual abuse, the report said. It just means there wasnt enough evidence to get a conviction. Beyond the higher burden of proof in the criminal justice system, there are several reasons why conduct the SAU [Sexual Allegations Unit] determines to be a criminal violation does not result in criminal charges, the report stated. Allegations of Abuse In one case, the OIG looked into thousands of calls and texts. Investigators concluded that a special education teacher groomed an eighth-grade student and eventually had sex with the child. The student initially denied the encounters, but later admitted details. The teacher pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse. Another student came forward about past abuse after turning 18. The Inspector Generals Office unearthed details in another case but there wasnt enough evidence to get a criminal conviction. A teacher was accused of committing multiple sexual assaults against a female student. The student backed up her allegations with messages in text, Instagram, and Remind, the CPS-sanctioned communications app. The teacher begged the student not to reveal the abuse, according to the report. We r talking about my entire life here Please Im begging u, he told her by text. With Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) looking on, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten speaks at an AFL-CIO event in support of student debt cancellation, in Washington, on June 22, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Another teacher bought a student alcohol and smoked marijuana around her, the report said. He also sexually abused her and threatened murder when she said she would tell others about the abuse. Yet another teacher repeatedly dropped his sweatpants in front of a girl and pulled up the pants when others walked past. When the student told CPS staff, the school didnt take action. Then, a staff member blamed her for wearing provocative clothing, implying that she brought the problem on herself, the report reads. The student only got help when she posted about the harassment on social media. Another teacher systematically groomed female students in his classroom from 2015 to 2020, the report says. He made hundreds of phone calls to students, touched them, and made sexual remarks. And the list of allegations goes on. Many of the incidents covered in the Inspector Generals report involved inappropriate contact between teachers and students through phone use and social media. Watchdog group the Social Media Victims Law Center notes that social media makes it easy for sexual predators to groom children and teens. We Take Seriously Our Responsibility Incidents without enough evidence for criminal prosecution still can result in firing, license removal, permanent employment consequences, and reporting to the police, the OIG said. Chicago Public Schools greatly values our partnership with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and we support the work to investigate all issues of misconduct among our 40,000 team members, Mary Fergus, CPS executive director of media relations, wrote in a statement to the media. As a district, we take seriously our responsibility to serve our families with integrity and to address individuals who breach CPS policies and the publics trust and hold them accountable. CPS will continue to ensure our district policies and procedures support the highest ethical standards to ensure our valued team members act in the best interest of our students. At the start of 2022, Chicago Public Schools had more than 322,000 students enrolled. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images) According to David Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, the sexual abuse problem in schools goes far beyond Chicago. We have a sexualized culture, a pornified culture, Smith told The Epoch Times. It is seeping through every single crevice in our culture. And our children are at risk. Statistics show theres about one case of sexual abuse every week in Chicago public schools, Smith said. Teaching Sexting The revelation of allegations of widespread sexual abuse makes it all the more mind-boggling that Illinois lawmakers have been eager to push non-abstinence sex education programs on children, Smith added. He pointed to a 2018 Chicago Tribune study documenting hundreds of abuse cases over a decade. The study said CPSs Law Department both investigated abuse allegations and drew on the investigative files to defend the alleged abuser from victim lawsuits. Despite major sexual abuse issues, Illinois lawmakers have been eager to provide teachers with more chances to talk about sex with kids, he noted. When our lawmakers in [the capital] Springfield push so-called comprehensive sex education, starting at kindergarten and through 12th grade, one has to sit back in the light of this [Chicago Tribune abuse] study and say, Are they grooming our children to be easier victims of sexual abuse? What is their goal?' Smith said. Smith said hes outraged that Illinois has mandated special courses on sexting for kids from 6th to 12th grade. A sign requesting the wearing of a face mask before entering is displayed at the entrance of the headquarters for Chicago Public Schools in Chicago on Jan. 5, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Sexting means sending another person sexually explicit pictures or descriptions by phone. We dont need to be in our classrooms teaching in sixth grade about sexting. If theyre naive and innocent, why dont we safeguard their purity, for goodness sakes? Smith said. According to Illinois law, the states sex education programs must align with the National Sex Education Standards. The Future of Sex Education (FoSE), a UNESCO group, publishes these standards. The National Sex Education Standards ask children as young as kindergarten to define consent and identify sexually abusive behaviors. Aligning With Standards Children in third, fourth, and fifth grades should be capable of explaining romantic sexual feelings, masturbation, mood swings, [and] timing of pubertal onset, the National Sex Education standards say. Illinois requires its sex education programs to align with these standards. The National Sex Education Standards also say children should also know the potential role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender, and should know about sexually transmitted diseases. Children in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades should know about vaginal, oral, and anal sex and the use of contraception, the same standards say. They should also know factors that are important in deciding whether and when to engage in sexual behaviors. The curriculum receives endorsement from LGBT groups, such as the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the Human Rights Campaign, Gender Spectrum, the Widener University Center for Human Sexuality Studies, and the Women of Color Sexual Health Network (WoCSHN). What Is Their Goal? Smiths advice for parents: Keep children out of public school and educate them in faith to protect them from the culture. He added, the goal of public schools seems to be to replace God with government, and to give government the role of teaching children what is right and good and what is harmful. But families and children will have to confront Americas culture of sexual dysfunction wherever they go, Smith added. If you think this problem is isolated just to Chicago, youre naive, he said. This is a systemic problem through all government schools. I would even say we know from the Catholic Church that this problem is infecting even communities of faith. Money Machine For CPS employees, the pandemic brought profit. According to the OIG report, CPS schools and departments spent $1.1 billion on extra pay for work outside the normal workday. The OIGs investigation discovered a number of recurring problems and a lack of internal controls in how the school paid employees. CPSs 2021 plan to spend $1.79 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds only provided broad categories such as districtwide initiatives to address unfinished learning and programmatic investments in schools, the report added. It noted that the CPS budget for 2023 ESSER fund spending provides more detail. But 55 percent of more than $1 billion in future ESSER funds will go to employee salaries and benefits of 11,312 new and existing employees, the report said. The report observed that extra pay for work outside the normal workday jumped by 74 percent in five years. A sign is seen in a hallway at King Elementary School as schools in Chicago started remote classes because of COVID-19 worries, in Chicago, Ill., on Sept. 8, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) A system to make sure extra pay is fair does not exist, the OIG noted. The OIG noted CPS has a history of cheating for extra pay. Many employees practiced buddy punching schemes where one employee clocked in or out for another person. In one school, missing internal cameras allowed a clerk to get $100,000 in extra pay without confirmation that she clocked herself in or out, the report notes. In another, the clock-out machine was positioned just out of range of a security camera, according to the report. And in some schools where the OIG investigated these issues, paper timesheets mysteriously disappeared. The OIG said in its report that it will continue investigating this spending. China Concealing Real COVID-19 Death Toll to Save Face: Dr. Scott Atlas Patients on stretchers are seen at Tongren hospital in Shanghai on Jan. 3, 2023. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) A former White House adviser said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is covering the truth of the COVID-19 situation in China for fear of its reputation being undermined. According to a Peking University study, the latest COVID-19 outbreak in China is estimated to have affected 900 million Chinese, with approximately 80 percent displaying severe symptoms. Following worldwide pressure for statistics and transparency, Chinese health officials acknowledged on Jan. 14, 2023, that roughly 60,000 COVID-related deaths had occurred in hospitals throughout the country in December 2022. Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and former adviser from the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said we cannot trust the numbers coming out of China. They didnt make sense in the beginning, in an interview with The Epoch Timess sister media, NTD, on Jan. 17, 2023. Atlas cited a widening gap between official figures and the number of reported cremations to prove his point. Even though there were reports of a lot of cremations they implied that there were no death numbers coming out, he said. A worker at Baoxing funeral home in Shanghai told The Epoch Times in December 2022 that they were burning 400 to 500 bodies a day, up from the maximum of 90 before the pandemic restrictions were lifted. Another resident in the nearby city of Suzhou described the crowded condition at Suzhou Funeral Home as akin to the citys most famous shopping street, which is always packed. Its very difficult to figure out whats going on when there is no transparency, and we have a country that apparently prefers to save face rather than tell the truth and cooperate fully with the international community, Atlas said. Chinas Elderly Population Atlas said that Chinas elderly will be hit hard by COVID, citing the situation of the United States as an example. Adults 65 and older account for 16 percent of the U.S. population but account for 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the United States, as reported by Kaiser Family Foundation in 2020. If you look at Chinas population, they have a really very, very dangerous demographic in their country for this illness because they have an enormous population of older people, Atlas said. According to statistics, adults aged 65 and older accounted for 14.9 percent of Chinas population in 2022. Atlas believes with the zero-COVID policies that had been implemented over the past three years, the communist regime failed to protect this high-risk group. They locked everybody down instead of doing a lot of protection, specifically, of the high-risk population, which are the older, frail people, He said. They should have done targeted protection from the beginning, they should have done everything they could to protect the very, very old people, and they should not have destroyed people and locked up their population in a very barbaric level, he added. Its excessive focus on clearing the virus and cases over the past three years has allegedly strained Chinas medical infrastructure. Hospitals in China are overwhelmed and lack intensive care unit beds, ventilators, drug stockpiles, and other health care tools. With the strain on the hospitals and the lack of transparency from China, Atlas predicts a very tragic loss of life in their population because they have so many elderly. Dorothy Li, Jenny Li, and Lynn Xu contributed to this report. China Local Government Debts Grow Faster Than GDP Wealthy provinces are burdened with debt A woman climbs through the hole in the billboard in Evergrande Wuhan culture-oriented travel city in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on Oct. 18, 2021.(Getty Images) The latest data from China shows considerable local government debts have grown faster than GDP. Given the opacity of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) official data, it is likely that local government debt is much worse than reported. Chinas frequent COVID-19 outbreaks in 2022 have led to production stagnation and economic recession. Pillar industries such as real estate continued to decline. And the zero-COVID policy and frequency of COVID-19 nucleic acid testing led to a huge increase in local authorities spending and piled-up debts. According to the latest data from the CCP authorities, outstanding local government debt stood at 35 trillion yuan ($4.9 trillion) at the end of November 2022, up 15 percent from 30.5 trillion yuan ($4.26 trillion) at the end of 2021; Thats up 16 percent from 30.2 trillion yuan ($4.2 trillion) in November 2021, far outpacing the 3 percent GDP growth in 2022. In the first 11 months of 2022, the principal repayment due on the local governments bonds amounted to $2.71 trillion yuan ($378.5 billion), with interest payments exceeding 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion). From January to November 2022, the revenue of many Chinese provinces (municipalities) declined year-on-year, while expenditure increased significantly. As a result, the revenue of local governments far exceeded the expenditure. Public data show that from January to November 2022, local governments general public budget revenue was nearly 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion), down 3 percent year-on-year. Local public budget spending, on the contrary, reached 19.6 trillion yuan ($2.73 trillion), up 6.2 percent. In addition, the budget revenue of local government-managed funds was 5.6 trillion yuan ($782 billion), down 23 percent year-on-year. Yet expenditures related to the budgets of local government-managed funds reached 9.2 trillion yuan ($1.28 trillion), up 3.7 percent. Among local governments major expenditures in 2022, health spending saw the biggest increase, up 15.3 percent year-on-year. It was followed by spending on social security and employment, which rose 7.4 percent. Meanwhile, real estate, the main source of local government finance, continues to decline. Unfinished apartment buildings stand at a residential complex developed by Jiadengbao Real Estate in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang region, China, on Sept. 17, 2022. (Eduardo Baptista/Reuters) In 2022, Chinas property developers showed a low willingness to acquire land, with the total land purchased in the first ten months of 2022 down 53 percent year-on-year. The value of land transactions also fell 47 percent. From January to November 2022, deed taxes, a component of land and property-related taxes, fell by 24 percent year-on-year. Land value-added tax fell by 9 percent. Commercial housing sales have also fallen sharply. From January to October 2022, the total area of commercial properties sold in China decreased by 22 percent year-on-year, and the sales volume decreased by 26 percent. To stay afloat, multiple Chinese provinces have issued bonds. Statistics show that from January to November 2022, China issued a total of 7.28 trillion yuan (about $1 trillion) of local government bonds, including new and refinanced bonds. Among them, 2.2 trillion yuan (US$307.2 billion) were in general bonds, and about 5 trillion yuan (US$700 billion) were in special bonds. The average maturity of bonds is 13.3 years; The average offering rate is 3.02 percent. Wealthy Provinces Saw Revenue Fall In the first three quarters of 2022, general public budget revenue in 26 of Chinas 31 provinces (municipalities), including many economically important ones, fell year-on-year. Among them, Guangdong saw a year-on-year decline of 8.6 percent; Jiangsu Province saw a decline of 11 percent; In Zhejiang Province, revenue fell 5.3 percent; Revenues in Shanghai and Chongqing were down 12 percent, respectively. Shanghai authorities implemented a strict zero-COVID policy in the second quarter of 2022, which affected the production and operation of most enterprises in the city, resulting in a 20 percent year-on-year decrease in fiscal revenue in the first half of 2022. Meanwhile, rounds and rounds of nucleic acid testing for all personnel and strict pandemic prevention measures resulted in Shanghais expenses exceeding revenues in the first half of 2022. In Beijing, the cumulative fiscal deficit of general public budget revenue from January to November of 2022 was 120.2 billion yuan ($16.8 billion). Among them, to implement epidemic prevention and control and regular nucleic acid testing, health expenditure increased by 20 percent year-on-year. In the first eight months of 2022, Zhejiang Province had a fiscal deficit of 162.5 billion yuan ($26.7 billion). Its health spending increased 40 percent year-on-year. For the whole of 2022, Guangdong Provinces annual general public budget expenditure reached 1.85 trillion yuan ($258.4 billion), with a fiscal deficit of 520 billion yuan ($72.6 billion). Is China falling toward second place? India seems on track to surpass the worlds most populous nation after Chinas number fell for the first time in decadesby 850,000 people to 1.41 billion in 2020. But what makes it such a big deal? China is facing an aging population and dwindling workforce. Whats more, COVID-19 is still running rampant through the nation, and Chinas borders are now open for international travel. As experts call out the lack of transparency, how will it impact life in the West? And whats to come for China as its virus death toll grows? Topics in this episode: Chinese Consulate Asked BC to Surrender Chinese Drivers Licences to Vancouver-Based NGO Revelation comes amid heightened awareness of Chinas unofficial overseas police stations The Chinese Consulate in Vancouver asked the province in 2014 to give to a Vancouver-based NGO the drivers licences of Chinese nationals who had surrendered them in exchange for B.C. licences, according to internal government documents. The revelation comes amid heightened scrutiny of Chinas overseas operations after reports emerged that the communist regime is operating unofficial police service stations abroad. In 2012, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) sent a letter to several countries consulates informing them that their nationals were required to surrender the drivers licenses issued by their home country upon receiving a B.C. licence. The letter said ICBC would securely destroy the surrendered licences, but also offered the consulates the option of having the original licences returned to their home licensing authority. In a July 2014 email to a B.C. Intergovernmental Relations Secretariat official, Li Yuewho at the time was head of governmental and media affairs office for the Chinese Consulate in Vancouverasked if the licences could instead be surrendered to SUCCESS, a Vancouver-based NGO that assists new immigrants. Since Chinese nationals here in BC come from different provinces of China, it is difficult to designate one unit to manage those licenses. While SUCCESS is a very well known non-governmental organization which provide [sic] good services to Chinese new immigrants, the email says. The internal government documents, copies of which were seen by The Epoch Times, were obtained as part of a Freedom of Information request by investigative journalist and author Ina Mitchell, who, along with intelligence expert Scott McGregor, is co-authoring a book on Chinas hybrid war on the West, titled The Mosaic Effect. The documents show internal B.C. government discussions on the communication with the consulate, with several parts redacted. Signage for ICBC is seen in Victoria, B.C., in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito) The B.C. government defended the redactions after a challenge by Mitchell, with government lawyers saying that some of the redacted parts could harm the governments relationship with China. Several parts of the governments arguments in defence of the redactions are redacted as well. The withheld information could reasonably be expected to greatly upset the Chinese Government because it shows that [redacted], reads an excerpt of the governments defence of redactions submitted to an inquiry initiated at Mitchells request. Furthermore, the withheld information could reasonably be expected to greatly upset [redacted] because [redacted] There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that [redacted] would be extremely affronted by the fact that ICBC [redacted]. Mitchell says that the information is being withheld for political reasons. Access to information is one of the keys to democracy, she told The Epoch Times. By refusing to disclose information, the B.C. government has caved to political threats that China is increasingly making on political offices. The Epoch Times asked the B.C. Intergovernmental Relations Secretariat whether it referred the issue to any law enforcement or intelligence agencies after receiving the Chinese Consulates request in 2014 asking if ICBC could send the surrendered licences to SUCCESS. The Epoch Times also asked the secretariat to comment on Mitchells criticism of the redactions. A spokesperson said that the secretariat had referred the consulates request to ICBC for response, but didnt comment on the redactions. McGregor, a former Canadian Armed Forces intelligence operator and intelligence adviser to the RCMP, said in an interview that while he is not an expert on government relations, he thinks that as a minimum the B.C. solicitor general and attorney general should have been consulted. Reports released last year by the Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders alleging that China is operating unofficial police stations in countries abroad including in Canadaproviding services such as drivers licence renewal and eyesight and hearing examinationssparked an uproar among politicians and China watchers, with the RCMP subsequently launching an investigation. The activity thats being alleged would be entirely illegal and totally inappropriate, and it would be the subject of very serious representations and follow-up diplomatically, Weldon Epp, a Global Affairs Canada (GAC) official, told MPs at a House of Commons committee meeting on the unofficial police stations on Oct. 4, 2022. The Epoch Times contacted GAC for comment on the Vancouver Chinese Consulates request in 2014, but didnt hear back. An ICBC spokesperson told The Epoch Times by email that the insurance corporation did not give the surrendered Chinese nationals drivers licences to SUCCESS or to any other entity, including any Chinese government organizations. SUCCESS Immigrant-Services Organization Established in 1973, SUCCESS provides help with services such as employment and affordable housing to newcomers to Canada. The organization receives funding from all three levels of governments, including a $22.4 million grant from the federal government in 2019 to provide pre-arrival settlement services to newcomers, including immigrants and refugees The organization is listed as an Overseas Chinese Service Centre (OCSC) by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, which is part of Beijings United Front Work Department. A 2018 report published by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service as part of an academic workshop says that one of the United Fronts main goals is to influence the decision-making of foreign governments and societies in Chinas favour, adding that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organ is involved in co-opting elites, information management, persuasion, as well as accessing strategic information and resources. OCSC chapters are in cities all over the world, including in the Toronto area. Different chapters state different goals. The one in Auckland, New Zealand, says it aims to enhance the communication between NZ and China governments with the aim of improving the well-being of Chinese migrants in NZ. The one in Toronto says it was established by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and helps new immigrants, seniors, visitors, and students. In 2018, the Toronto chapter posted a Chinese New Years greeting from Consul General of China He Wei, who said the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was successfully held, and repeated Chinese leader Xi Jinpings key phrase that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. The Epoch Times contacted the Toronto chapter for comment but didnt hear back. A spokesperson with SUCCESS told The Epoch Times that the organization is not and has never been part of the OCSC. S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is a non-profit multicultural social service agency with a proud fifty year history of serving newcomers, seniors, youth and families. We are a completely non-partisan Canadian organization and we have no affiliations with the Chinese Communist Party, Elaine OConnor, director of strategic communications and partnerships at SUCCESS, said in an email, noting that her response was made after consulting the organizations leadership. When asked about the organizations listing as an OCSC on a Chinese government website, OConnor said SUCCESS has no control over false material written about us years ago on the internet by unknown individuals for their own purposes. Her statement, however, is contradicted by comments the CEO of SUCCESS, Queenie Choo, gave to the National Post in 2019. Choo said the organization was only ever a token recipient of the OCSC designation because she believed it couldnt meet the expectations that came with the designation. We needed to host a lot of functions when the government delegation comes, Choo told the National Post. Referring to Choos comment to the Post, OConnor reiterated that the organization was never an OCSC, adding: While our CEO was quoted in an article back in 2019 that we had been approached to serve as an OCSC, it is clear from that same article that this was a proposal that never materialized. This sits in contrast with Choos comment on being a token recipient. SUCCESS didnt further clarify the claim. The Epoch Times also asked if SUCCESS had asked the Chinese regime to remove its listing as an OCSC, and whether it was consulted by the Chinese Consulate when it requested that the B.C. government surrender drivers licenses to the organization, but didnt get a response. The National Post article notes that after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, SUCCESS joined other community organizations to issue a statement condemning the violence. However, former board members and community members are quoted as lamenting that the organization in recent times hasnt taken stances on issues such as upholding freedoms in China and Hong Kong. The executives of the organization, which has opened an office in Beijing, are often seen in pictures online posing with Chinese consular officials or other CCP officials during various events. The organizations 20172018 annual report features a photo of CEO Choo with Qiu Yuanping, the then-director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council who launched the OCSC program in 2014. The same report shows Choo observing a lion dance performance with Kong Weiwei, deputy consul general of the consulate in Vancouver. Another online photo shows Choo with then-consul-general Tong Xiaoling observing the Chinese New Year parade in Vancouver in 2019, while another shows the two pictured together at a celebration at the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver in 2019. A listing of related websites on the Vancouver Chinese Consulates website only lists the website of SUCCESS under the category of related websites in Vancouver. Overseas Chinese Service Centres According to a report by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, OCSCs are typically pre-existing organizations that were later given an OCSC designation by the CCPs State Council. The United Fronts cultivation of these organizations appears to have paid dividends, if judged by their leaders willingness to associate themselves with CCP political slogans, the report says, citing Toronto and Houston chapters events hosting consulate officials where CCP slogans are repeated. Sheng Xue, a Toronto-area Chinese-Canadian pro-democracy activist, says Beijing has not served the people of China well, so one has to ask why its going so far as to providing such so-called services to Chinese communities abroad in countries like Canada, where she says the local government is already providing good service to residents. So, clearly, the Chinese government is lying. Why does the Chinese government lie? What are they trying to do? The Chinese government lies to deceive the Canadian government and Canadian society, making them think that the Chinese government is helping the Chinese community in Canada, she told The Epoch Times. What the Chinese government is actually doing, in fact, is stretching out its long arm to tightly control the Chinese community here in Canada. At the same time, the Chinese government is further infiltrating and attempting to influence Canadian society, especially in the political arena, through the Chinese in Canada [who are] controlled by them. Peter Dahlin, founder and director of Safeguard Defenders, which investigated the unofficial overseas Chinese police stations, says the United Front organizations vary in their operations from country to country. They dont so openly state that they conduct interference, so its harder to go after them, or raise awareness of their presence, or know exactly what purpose they have for that matter, Dahlin told The Epoch Times. As they are local organizations connected to the United Front Work Department, they vary a lot in what their purpose is. The Jamestown Foundation report points out that OCSCs in South Africa also work as Chinese Community and Police Cooperation Centres established by expatriates in that country. The centres are branded as focusing on protecting the safety and property of Chinese nationals abroad by facilitating cooperation with local police. But in their English statements, neither [the Chinese Consulate nor the centres] mentions that the centres top leader also runs an important United Front Work Department body, one with expressly political aims, and in which capacity he has repeatedly expressed strong public support for CCP General Secretary Xi Jinpings political agenda, says the report. However, the CCP-affiliated centres that have gotten the most attention recently are the unofficial police stations. Hybrid Warfare Safeguard Defenders has documented five unofficial police stations in Canada, and Dahlin says there are likely more. The NGO notes that the stations, called 110 Overseas Stations, in some cases are also involved in forcing individuals sought by the Chinese regime to return to China. Intelligence expert McGregor notes that CCP-affiliated organizations work in very complex ways, which makes them all the harder to track. As soon as you add in the complexity of thousands of organizations that are changing their names, changing their directors, and almost all of this is either done in [Chinese-language characters], it makes it very difficult for anyone to really understand what is exactly happening, he said. It all ties back to hybrid warfare, unrestricted warfare, grey-zone conflict, whatever you want to call it, and how the CCP is undermining and infiltrating and influencing at multiple levels. Andrew Chen contributed to this report. DC Council Overrides Mayors Veto, Approves Lesser Penalties for Violent Crimes A police car patrols at an empty street near the White House in Washington on Nov. 4, 2020. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images) The Council of the District of Columbia on Tuesday overrode the mayors veto to force through a plan to fundamentally change the way the city penalizes crimes including robbery, carjacking, and home invasion burglary. In a decisive 121 vote, the city council overrode Mayor Muriel Bowsers Jan. 4 decision to veto the proposal, known as the Revised Criminal Code Act. The Democrat-dominated council unanimously voted to pass the bill in November 2022. The proposed legislation offers a full rewrite of Washingtons criminal code, which has been untouched since it was first create by Congress in 1901, with changes such as eliminating almost all mandatory minimum sentences, lowering the maximum sentence possible to 45 years in prison, and allow people to demand jury trials for nearly all misdemeanor charges. Its estimated that implementing these changes will cost $50 million, largely for the retraining of police and prosecutors. According to Councilwoman Brooke Pinto, the legislation represents years of work and thorough study with a goal to modernize the criminal code and ultimately make the citys residents safer. The culmination of this work is a revised criminal code that is more equitable and just and that will promote safety by ensuring that the law is clear for prosecutors, defendants, and courts, Pinto wrote in a statement announcing the move to override the mayors veto. The mayor, who is also a Democrat, disagreed that those changes would actually make her city a safer place. A complete overhaul of our criminal code is a once-in-a-century opportunity, Bowser wrote in her veto message. I believe its more important to get this opportunity right than to add policies and weaken penalties into what should be a bill that makes DC safer. Bowser was joined by U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, who warned the council that, among other things, the changes would lead to a dramatic increase of jury trials for an already undermanned court system troubled with backlogs, giving violent criminals more time out on bail while awaiting their cases to go through. Bowser and Graves also argued that penalties for crimes such as robberies and carjacking should be raised, not reduced. The higher penalties are not handed down for many offenders, but they are currently available to judges for repeat violent offenders committing the most heinous versions of these crimes, Bowser wrote. Rising Crime Rates in Nations Capital The councils decision comes as Washington is experiencing more crime in the first weeks of the year compared to the same time period in 2022. According to the latest data from the Metropolitan Police, as of Jan. 18, there had been 11 homicides and six cases of sex abuse in 2023 compared to the first 18 days of 2022, which had six homicides and two cases of sex abuse. Violent crime as a whole decreased by 7 percent, but overall crime increased by 25 percent. Over the past two years, DC has had a skyrocketing crime rate, the DC Police Union said in a statement condemning Tuesdays vote. Homicides are now regularly over 200 per year. There are nearly 500 carjackings, 2,000 robberies, and 800 shootings per year. These numbers are almost double what they were two and three years ago. Only a decade ago the homicide rate was below 100, the police union said. Every resident should be outraged that the Council has weakened the criminal justice system in a way that makes every neighborhood less safe, police union chairman Gregg Pemberton said in the statement. Their actions today are shameful. The bill now heads to Congress, where lawmakers will have 60 days to weigh in on it. Dershowitz Predicts Neither Biden nor Trump Will Be Prosecuted for Classified Documents Attorney Alan Dershowitz talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 29, 2020. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz doesnt believe that either former Republican President Donald Trump or his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden, will be prosecuted as a result of the potentially classified documents either one had in their possession while out of office. In an interview with Fox News, Dershowitz predicted that neither Trump nor Biden would be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents. Dershowitz said that if there was ever a chance that Donald Trump would have been prosecuted for what he did, that opportunity has disappeared, now that potentially classified documents were found in the possession of his 2020 political rival Joe Biden. In August, FBI agents raided Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort and collected documents that he took with him after leaving office in January of 2021. Months later, lawyers for Biden also found documents in an office space Biden used after leaving the office of the vice president in 2017. Bidens lawyers have since found additional documents in the presidents Wilmington, Delaware home. Supporters and critics of Trump and Biden have sought to paint distinctions between the two cases. Trump has insisted that, as president, he had the authority to declassify any documents and did, in fact, declassify any documents he took with him at the end of his presidency. Trump and his supporters have also insisted that while he had declassification authority as the president, Biden would have lacked such authority as the vice president. Former President Donald Trump speaks during an event at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) The Biden administration and its supporters have, by contrast, argued that while Trump had opportunities to turn over the documents in his possession prior to the FBI raid and refused, Bidens team took immediate and appropriate action to hand over the documents he had to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). I think, ultimately, the defense is going to be carelessness, sloppiness, no malevolence, Dershowitz said of Bidens potential defense. Other presidents have done it. What about-ism what about Donald Trump? What about Sandy Berger? What about Hillary Clinton? he said. Were going to see a lot of comparisons, he added. And in the end, we have two special prosecutors. They were appointed because if youre going to appoint one against somebody whos running for president, you should appoint another one for the other person whos running for president. Neither will recommend prosecution. In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to investigate Trump and the documents found in his possession. After Bidens team discovered potentially classified documents in Bidens possession, Garland appointed Robert Hur to investigate Bidens case. In his Fox News interview, Dershowitz predicted that neither Smith nor Hur would recommend prosecution against the subjects of their respective investigations. If either of them does, Garland will overrule them, and there will be no prosecution, Dershowitz said. President Joe Biden at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House in Washington on Jan. 12, 2023. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) Repercussions to Be Political Only Dershowitz also predicted that instead of legal and possibly even criminal repercussions against either Biden or Trump, the primary fallout for either one would be political. I think therell be no repercussions except political, Dershowitz said. Peopleeven the Democrats are now saying, oh, my God, [Biden] said how sloppy Trump was, look how sloppy [Biden] is and how irresponsible he is.' Some Democratic politicians have indeed raised concerns about how Bidens handling of classified documents looks. On Sunday, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told NBC that Bidens documents case is certainly embarrassing after Biden previously criticized Trump on the same issue. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) also called Bidens documents case an embarrassment in an interview with Fox News. Dershowitz also predicted that the classified documents cases involving two consecutive presidents could bring about a change in how NARA handles documents from outgoing administrations. Probably the laws will be changed, and well see now a new process by which the Archive comes to the House and remove everything the day the president leaves the White House. I think were going to see that change, Dershowitz said. From NTD News Drug Trial Starts for Mexicos Former Top Security Official Defense attorney Cesar de Castro (L), Mexico's former top security official Genaro Garcia Luna (C), and a court interpreter appear for an arraignment hearing in Brooklyn federal court in New York on Jan. 3, 2020. (Elizabeth Williams/AP Photo) MEXICO CITYThe man who was once Mexicos top security official and in charge of fighting the drug cartels went on trial Tuesday on charges he accepted millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping the powerful Sinaloa Cartel move drugs and its members avoid capture. Genaro Garcia Luna was best known as the mumbling, tough-looking former security secretary under ex-President Felipe Calderon, who spearheaded the bloody war on cartels between 2006 and 2012. Prosecutors say Garcia Luna was so brazen he accepted tens of millions of dollars, often stuffed in briefcases. The evidence against him includes pay stubs, though whether they are from official jobs, private sector consultancy, cartel payments, or other bribes is unclear. They say he continued to live off his ill-gotten proceeds even after he moved to the United States, where he was arrested in 2019, though the defense says he was a legitimate businessman. Jury selection was scheduled to continue Wednesday in the trial scheduled to unfold over the next eight weeks. In the end, the case could reveal the inner workings of how Mexican cartels have been able to operate so openly for so long: by bribing Mexican police and military right up to the top ranks. For decades, Mexicos political elite, of all parties, has sought by any means to have security ministers, generals, police commanders, interior secretaries and high-ranking officials tried and imprisoned in Mexico All that to avoid them giving information on the ties between the drug cartels and politicians, said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo. Garcia Lunas trial in the United States breaks with that pattern. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has welcomed the trial, which is expected to cast light on corruption in the administration of Calderon. The trial begins just days after U.S. President Joe Biden met with Lopez Obrador in Mexico City. The two governments pledged continued cooperation against the drug cartels, especially against the scourge of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which contributed to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2021. Lopez Obrador scrapped the civilian federal police force that Garcia Luna once led and put the military in charge of much of the countrys security. Garcia Luna has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges and a continuing criminal enterprise. He could face decades in prison if convicted. What he will face in a Brooklyn courtroom is a parade of government witnesses, including high-level cartel members of a kind not seen in Brooklyn since Sinaloa boss Joaquin El Chapo Guzman was convicted there in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison. Some accusations against Garcia Luna surfaced at the Guzman trial. While holding public office, [Garcia Luna] used his official positions to assist the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for multimillion-dollar bribes, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace wrote in a court filing last week. At trial, the government expects that numerous witnesses, including several former high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel, will testify about bribes paid to the defendant in exchange for protection. In exchange for the bribes, Garcia provided the Sinaloa Cartel with safe passage for its drug shipments, sensitive law enforcement information about investigations into the cartel, and information about rival drug cartels, Peace wrote. These payments allowed the cartel at times to receive warnings in advance of law enforcement efforts to apprehend cartel members and to allow cartel members to be released if arrested. Before convicting Guzman in 2019, jurors in his New York trial heard former cartel member Jesus Zambada testify that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to Garcia Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael El Mayo Zambada. The cartel is now believed to be run by Zambada and at least three of Guzmans sons, one of whom was arrested earlier this month on an extradition request from the United States. Garcia Luna isnt the first top Mexican official arrested for involvement with drug traffickers. Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was made Mexicos drug czar by President Ernesto Zedillo in 1996. He was arrested the following year after it was discovered he was living in a luxury apartment owned by the leader of the Juarez cartel, Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Emerson Electric Unveils Hostile $7 Billion Bid for National Instruments Emerson Electric Co. is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York on Jan. 13, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) U.S. engineering and industrial software company Emerson Electric Co. on Tuesday disclosed a nearly $7 billion offer for National Instruments Corp., which it has been trying to buy unsuccessfully for several months. The software firms all-cash bid of $53 per share, which was first submitted to NI on Nov. 3, represents a premium of about 13 percent to NIs close on Friday. Shares of NI hit a record high of $54.69 in early morning trade on Tuesday, while Emerson fell 5 percent. Reuters was first to report on Jan. 13 Emersons acquisition interest in NI, after the latter announced a strategic review and adopted a so-called poison pill. Emerson said it first approached NI in May last year with an offer of $48 per share and is prepared to nominate directors to NIs board before the Jan. 27 deadline. After refusing to work with us toward a premium cash transaction over the past eight months, we are making our interest public for the benefit of all NI shareholders, said Lal Karsanbhai, CEO of Emerson. In November after another round of back-and-forth between the two companies, NI told Emerson that it had created a working group of its board to examine the improved offer and explore options with the help of its advisers. In the more than two months since, NI continued to resist engaging meaningfully with Emerson to work toward an agreement, Emerson said in a statement. Emerson has already bought 2.3 million NI shares and has obtained regulatory clearance to further increase its stake, the company said. In a separate statement, NI said it decided to pursue a comprehensive review that would include interest from other potential buyers, rather than negotiate exclusively with Emerson, which NI believes would be detrimental to shareholder interests. String of Deals Emerson has been involved in a string of deals over the last few years to pivot itself as a provider of automation products and services, and the offer to buy NI is a fresh multi billion-dollar bet in that direction. In October, Emerson sold a majority stake in its climate technologies unit to Blackstone Inc in a deal that valued the business at $14 billion. At the time, Emerson said it would use the proceeds from the deal for strategic M&A to strengthen and diversify its automation portfolio in four targeted adjacent markets. Last year, Emerson also sold its division that makes waste disposal equipment and hot water dispensers to Whirlpool Corp. and merged its software units with smaller rival Aspen Technology. NI, formerly known as National Instruments, specializes in making automated testing and measurement tools to aid in research and validation of new technologies. It serves semiconductor, transportation, aerospace and defense industries. The enterprise value of the offer is $7.6 billion. Emerson said the offer was not subject to any financing conditions. Citi Research wrote in a note on Sunday that NI could be a good strategic fit for Emerson, given it has indicated test and measurement markets as an area of focus. Goldman Sachs and Centerview Partners LLC are serving as financial advisers to Emerson and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Sidley Austin LLP are serving as legal advisers. NI is being advised by BofA Securities and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. By Nathan Gomes, Priyamvada C and David Carnevali World War II's most beloved war correspondent represented the American soldier A monument stands on Ie Shima (now known as Iejima), off the coast of Okinawas main island, honoring a man who fought in World War II with a pen rather than a rifle. His name was Ernie Pyle, a U.S. journalist who found his calling as the preeminent war correspondent of World War II. Pyle was beloved by the troops he wrote about and earned the nickname The G.I.s Buddy. From 1940 until his death in 1945, Pyle riveted the nation with his personal, straight-from-the-heart tales about hometown soldiers fighting in historys greatest conflict. Pyles success was due to his ability to immerse himself in the day-to-day world of an infantryman and write about him better than anyone. Pyles popularity was due to his ability to write from the perspective of the common soldier, explaining how the war affected the man rather than focusing on things such as troop movements. A successful newspaperman and columnist before the war, the one-time Indiana farm boy found his true calling as a combat correspondent during World War II. Pyle was generally in the thick of the fighting, making landings with the troops in North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. Pyle believed that the only way to honestly cover the fighting was to go where it was happening, rather than writing about it from the sidelines. Pyle spent 2 1/2 years writing about the common foot soldier, with whom he felt a special camaraderie. In 1945, he wrote to one of his biggest fans, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower: Ive found that no matter how much we talk, or write, or show pictures, people who have not actually been in war are incapable of having any real conception of it. I dont really blame the people. Some of them try hard to understand. But the world of an infantryman is a world so far removed from anything normal that it can be no more than academic to the average person. Pyles newspaper columns helped make Americans conscious of and sympathetic toward the infantryman. He constantly strived to make people feel what the ordinary soldier endured. It was a goal he never felt he fully achieved; however, many believed that he came closer than any other writer. As the war in Europe drew to a close, Pyle turned to the war in the Pacific. The names of the islands where battles were fought seemed exotic and distant to most Americans, who had never heard of Saipan, Ie Shima, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Peleliu. Pyle was determined to go with the Marines if he was going to write about them. The last big battle he covered was the invasion of Okinawa, code-named Operation Iceberg. He was at the peak of his writing career, with his column appearing in approximately 400 daily publications and nearly 300 weeklies. In 1944, his columns for ScrippsHoward newspapers earned Pyle a Pulitzer Prize, and Hollywood made a movie titled Ernie Pyles Story of G.I. Joe. As a war correspondent, Ernie Pyle was determined to go with the Marines if he was going to write about their experiences. (Public domain) As L-day (landing day) for Operation Iceberg approached, Pyle joined an assault transport ship carrying units of Maj. Gen. Pedro A. del Valles 1st Marine Division and prepared for the worst. The Army and Marines had been briefed that the resistance on Okinawa would likely result in high casualties. Pyle wanted to see the wars end but confided to his friends that he didnt expect to survive. The night before L-Day, Pyle was asked to write something to the men aboard the ship: In a message like this, it is the usual thing for a person to say that hes happy to be aboard. If I said that, I would be a liar for sure. Tomorrow, as you know, is our day. For some of you, this business tomorrow is new, and you are curious. For some of us, it is old stuff. None of us like it. But we have to do it, and wishing doesnt change it. In writing about tomorrow and the days that will follow, Ill try to give the folks back home an honest picture of what happens so that they can understand enough to give you the credit deserve. Ill do the best I can. And so to you on the ship, and you in the boats, and you on the beachesgood luck. And I hope you wish me the same. Ill need it too. Pyle went ashore with the seventh wave, the 5th Marine Division. Surprisingly, there was no resistance by the Japanese. The 5th Division got ashore with only two casualties: a case of heat exhaustion and complications from an injured foot. After a week on Okinawa, Pyle returned to the command ship, Panamint, to write and recuperate from a bad cold. Maj. Gen. Andrew Davis Bruce, commanding the 77th Infantry Division, came aboard the Panamint with news that he had just received orders to seize the outlying island of Ie Shima. The assault was scheduled for April 16, and Pyle decided to go out the following day. The day after the invasion of Ie Shima, Pyle joined Bruces men. The following day, Pyle accompanied Lt. Col. Joseph B. Coolidge with several officers in a jeep in search of a new command post. As they drove along a well-traveled road, a concealed sniper fired on them with a .30 caliber Nambu machine gun. They all bailed out of the vehicle as the sniper fired again. A single bullet struck Pyle in the left temple, killing him instantly. They buried Pyle about 100 yards from where the East China Sea washed onto the shore of Ie Shima. He was buried with his helmet onthe chaplain remarking that a lot of the men thought he looked more natural that way. Soldier and cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin described the effect of Pyles death: The only difference between Ernies death and the death of any other good guy is that the other guy is mourned by his company. Ernie is mourned by the Army. The soldiers who Pyle had grown so close to put it best on a monument placed at the spot he was killed: AT THIS SPOT THE 77TH INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY ERNIE PYLE 18 APRIL 1945 (The author visited the Ernie Pyle monument on Ie Shima when he was on active duty in the U.S. Navy.) Feds Respond to Smiths Remarks That Just Transition Legislation Will Cut 2.7 Million Jobs: Report Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 20, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Patrick Doyle) The federal Department of Natural Resources says the governments proposed just transition legislation wont eliminate jobsas critics has said seemed to be implied by an internal briefing documentbut will instead create more jobs, according to a media report. The federal governments approach to sustainable jobs is about creating jobs, not eliminating them, department press secretary Keean Nembhard told CBC News on Jan. 17. The department was responding to media reports about a briefing note prepared for Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson in June 2022, which said Ottawas planned transition to a low-carbon economy will have an uneven impact across sectors, occupations, and regions, and create significant labour market disruptions. The note referred to five sectors where it said we expect that larger scale transformation will take place. The biggest are the building sector, which employs about 1.4 million workers; and transportation, which has about 642,000 workers. These were followed by the agriculture sector, 292,00o workers; energy, 202,000 workers; and manufacturing, 193,000 workers. According to these figures, in total over 2.7 million Canadian workers would be affected. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said in a Jan. 17 Twitter post that this should concern Albertans, & frankly all Canadians, that [Trudeaus] Just Transition plan will eliminate 2.7 million jobs- according to a Liberal memo. Albertas energy industry & our workers are world-class, she added. However, Natural Resources Canada says that the numbers referenced in the briefing note had been misinterpreted and that they were pointing out the overall workforce sizes of various industries rather than expected job losses. Those industries are identified because global economic shifts could affect them, said Nembhard. New Opportunities The June 2022 briefing note posed a hypothetical question asking, What sectors and regions will be most affected by a transition to a low-carbon economy? One of the responses said that certain regions in Canadaparticularly in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, where communities are more reliant on carbon intensive industrieswill likely be disproportionally affected by the transition to a low carbon economy. The oil and gas sector in particular is a large contributor to the GDP of Alberta and Newfoundland, it said, noting that the sector accounts for over 27 percent of Albertas GDP and more than 36 percent of Newfoundland and Labradors. I want to help workers across Canada by providing them with training and skills development so they can take advantage of new opportunities for economic growth and job creation and fully participate in a low-carbon economy, said one of the answers prepared for Wilkinson. Wilkinson said in early January 2023 that the federal government plans on bringing its just transition legislation forward this year, which will aim to help workers in Canadas oil and gas sector move into green energy jobs. I do not believe that the challenge we are going to face is that there are workers who are displaced that will not find other good-paying jobs, Wilkinson told CBC News at the time. I am actually quite worried that there are so many opportunities we will not have enough workers to fill the jobs. Feds Wont Seek Death Penalty Against El Paso Walmart Shooting Suspect: Court Filing El Paso Walmart accused mass shooter Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old male from Allen, Texas, accused of killing 22 and injuring 25, is arraigned in El Paso, Texas, on Oct. 10, 2019. (Mark Lambie/Pool via Reuters) The accused shooter behind the 2019 massacre at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart will not face death penalty in the federal case, a court filing suggests. In a court document filed Tuesday at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso, federal prosecutors said they will not seek the death penalty against Patrick Crusius, who has yet to stand trial more than three years after the shoot up that left 23 people killed and dozens more wounded. The prosecutors didnt explain in the document why they wont to seek the death penalty against Crusius, although he also faces state charges in Texas, which can result in execution depending on the outcome. Crusius, now 24 years old, is accused of driving 11 hours from his hometown in the Dallas suburb of Allen, Texas, to commit the killings. Prosecutors said he deliberately picked a Mexican-American-majority community and targeted people of Mexican heritage during the attack, citing an manifesto he allegedly posted online describing his actions as a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. According to Tuesdays filing, Crusius is facing a total of 90 counts of federal charges, including 22 counts of hate crime resulting in death, 22 counts of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence, 23 counts of hate crime with involving attempt to kill, and 23 counts of use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. Crusius has pleaded not guilty to both federal and state charges. Yvonne Rosales, the Democratic district attorney who had been leading the state case against Crusius, resigned in November 2022 over accusations of incompetence and misconduct. She was succeeded by Bill Hicks, the first Republican to serve as the attorney for that district, which covers El Paso. In press conference about the future of the Crusius case, Hicks said that the suspect has to be released from federal custody before the states trial can proceed. The defendant is in federal custody, so the state is not able to prosecute the Walmart shooter until he gets out of federal custody and were able to get him back into state custody. Until that happens were not able to go forward with our prosecution, he told local media. The state of Texas will continue to evaluate the situation, the impact of todays decision in the federal government and once we have had the opportunity to evaluate all of the issues that may arise from that then we may have another announcement later on. The federal trial is scheduled for Jan. 8, 2024. Florida Judge Rejects DeSantis Administrations Bid to Toss Lawsuit Over Migrant Flights 'I think we need to just hear out these issues,' the judge said After being flown in from Texas on a flight funded by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, illegal immigrants gather at Edgartown in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., on Sept. 15, 2022. (Vineyard Gazette/Handout via Reuters) A Florida judge has ruled that a legal challenge to Gov. Ron DeSantis program to fly illegal immigrants to other states will go to trial. On Jan. 13, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Democrat state Sen. Jason Pizzo against DeSantis and two individuals with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). Pizzo is suing in his capacity as a private citizen. Cooper set the trial date for Jan. 30. I think we need to just hear out these issues, Cooper said following arguments on Jan. 13, the Florida Phoenix reported. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the governors move to fly illegal aliens from Texas to Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts. As previously reported by The Epoch Times, DeSantis followed through with his promise to send illegal immigrants to Democrat-controlled cities on Sept. 15, 2022, by flying two planes of illegal immigrants from Texas to Marthas Vineyard as part of his relocation program. About 50 Venezuelans who recently crossed the U.S. border illegally are at the Marthas Vineyard Regional High School in Massachusetts on Sept. 14, 2022, after being flown there by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette/Handout via Reuters) DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske told media outlets that states like Massachusetts, New York, and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as sanctuary states and support for the Biden administrations open border policies. The Epoch Times also reported in December 2021 that DeSantis allocated $8 million in his 20222023 Freedom First Budget, which would be used to transport illegal aliens sent to Florida to other states. The governors relocation program was funded by Floridas 20212022 budget, which allocated $12 million to implement a program to facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law. Funds not spent in the fiscal year 20212022 rolled over to 20222023 to be used for the same purpose. The Legislature gave me $12 million, DeSantis said at a news conference on Sept. 13, 2022. Were going to spend every penny of that to make sure that were protecting the people of the state of Florida. The Legal Challenge In September, Pizzo filed an emergency complaint for declaration and injunctive relief in the states 2nd Judicial Circuit in Leon County, Florida (pdf). The casein which Pizzo asserts standing as a citizen and taxpayer of the State of Floridanames FDOT Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, FDOT Secretary Jared Perdue, and DeSantis as defendants. Pizzo alleges a number of legal violations by DeSantis, including that the governor implemented his airlift through language in the annual state budget bill instead of through substantive law, which the Florida Constitution forbids. The complaint asserts that the Florida Constitution provides that [n]o money shall be drawn from the treasury except in pursuance of appropriation made by law. Pizzo contends that using state funds to transport illegal aliens into and out of Florida violates state law. Pizzo also accused Patronis of improperly signing $1.5 million in checks to Florida-based Vertol Systems, which specializes in helicopter and aircraft solutions, to fly nearly 50 illegal immigrants from Texas to Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts, with a stopover in Florida in September. The judge dismissed this part of the complaint. Identifying Ms. Perla In a Sept. 16 letter to Perdue, shared on social media, Florida Democrat Senate Leader Lauren Book asserted that many of the illegal immigrants transported from Texas were not unauthorized aliens but asylum-seekers. In addition, she claimed it is a requisite condition for the use of appropriated funds that FDOT must first develop and implement a program to facilitate the transportation of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with Federal Law. Book also asserted that the illegal immigrants were transported from Texas under the pretense of being provided expedited work permits, by a Ms. Perla.' Book wrote that she wanted to know the date and language of the program that was established pursuant to HB 5001, the authority or legal opinion used to allow state funds to be used in the transport of illegal aliens from Texas, clarification as to whether the unknown Ms. Perla was an FDOT employee, and whether FDOT provided a videographer for the flights. Chapter 908 While Pizzo contends the expenditure of funds appropriated by the legislature to transport aliens from San Antonio, through Florida and on to Marthas Vineyard is contrary to Section 908.111, Nick Meros, deputy general counsel in the executive office of the governor, argued that Chapter 908, Federal Immigration Enforcement, allowed the flights of illegal immigrants. While the law states that a governmental entity may not execute, amend, or renew a contract with a common carrier or contracted carrier if the carrier is willfully providing any service in furtherance of transporting a person into the State of Florida knowing that the person is an unauthorized alien, it also says except to facilitate the detention, removal, or departure of the person from this state or the United States. Allen Zhong contributed to this story. FTX Says $413 Million Worth of Cryptocurrency Was Stolen From Failed Exchange Debtors for the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX have said that around $413 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the company through unauthorized transfers. In a report to creditors on Jan. 17, the company said that FTX debtors have identified approximately $1.6 billion of digital assets associated with FTX.com, of which $323 million of which was subject to unauthorized third-party transfers and $426 million of which was transferred to cold storage under the control of the Securities Commission of The Bahamas. Another $742 million is in cold storage under the control of the FTX debtors, and $121 million of which is pending transfer to cold storage under the control of the FTX debtors. The term cold storage refers to keeping cryptocurrency keys offline and unconnected to a network or the internet in order to improve security. With regards to the FTX US exchange, the debtors identified roughly $181 million of digital assets, $90 million of which was subject to unauthorized third-party transfers post-petition, $88 million of which is in cold storage under the control of the FTX debtors, and $3 million of which is pending transfer to cold storage under the control of the FTX debtors. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan Federal Court after his arraignment and bail hearings in New York, on Dec. 22, 2022. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images) Substantial Shortfall of Digital Assets Overall, the debtors have identified approximately $5.5 billion in liquid assets, including $1.7 billion in cash, $3.5 billion of crypto assets, and $300 million in securities since the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2022. The company stopped short of providing an estimate of total liabilities, but added that based on current estimates of the amount of digital assets associated with the FTX.com and FTX US, there is a substantial shortfall of digital assets at both exchanges. FTX, which was founded in 2019 and once valued at $32 billion, filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11 following a spectacular collapse amid a liquidity crisis after it was revealed that the hedge fund Alameda had been using FTX customer assets to keep itself propped up. A potential rescue deal by larger rival Binance was also pulled, adding further woes to the company as traders quickly raced to pull billions of cryptocurrency from the exchange. According to a court filing, FTX owed its 50 largest creditors almost $3.1 billion while an estimated $8 billion in customer funds disappeared. The firms founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was subsequently arrested on Dec. 17 in the Bahamas, where the company was headquartered, and he was extradited to the United States, where he was released on a $250,000 bail and placed under house arrest at the California home of his parents, who were both law professors at Stanford University. In January, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations, and money laundering. Bankman-Fried Says He Didnt Steal User Funds Bankman-Fried is scheduled to go on trial in October 2023. We are making important progress in our efforts to maximize recoveries, and it has taken a Herculean investigative effort from our team to uncover this preliminary information, said John J. Ray III, the chief executive officer and chief restructuring officer of the FTX debtors. However, Ray stressed that the information is still preliminary and could change. In his first statement since his arrest in the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried vowed to get customers their money back while doubling down on his previous claims that he did not steal users funds. I didnt steal funds, and I certainly didnt stash billions away, the former founder wrote on his Substack blog on Jan. 12. He also claimed that FTX US was fully solvent and should be able to return all customers funds. Its ridiculous that FTX US users havent been made whole and gotten their funds back yet, Bankman-Fried wrote. FTX debtors are also reviewing the roughly $2.1 billion equivalent in cash that cryptocurrency exchange Binance received as part of its exit from FTX in 2021, CNBC reports. Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao brushed off concerns that the exchange may have to hand the money back during an interview with the the media company in December, stating that the firm is financially OK and has a very solid revenue. Funeral Home Data Suggests China is Still Underreporting Death Toll Family members follow an urn containing the ashes of a loved one at a crematorium in Beijing on Dec. 22, 2022. (STF/AFP via Getty Images) For the Chinese communist regime, the real death toll from any disastrous event, be it a man-made or natural disaster, is always treated as a state secret. As China battles the infection surge that followed its lifting of pandemic restrictions in early December, scientists and journalists around the world are looking for clues to the outbreaks real death toll. During the first weeks of the current COVID-19 outbreak, China published daily death tolls in the single digits, despite news reports showing overwhelmed hospitals, morgues, and mortuaries. Finally, on Jan. 14, Chinas Health Commission dramatically revised the numbers, reporting almost 60,000 COVID-19 deaths since early December. However, based on data from funeral homes and crematories, analysts say that number still vastly underrepresents the true death toll. Beijings Babaoshan Funeral House is the citys largest funeral home and crematorium. From Dec. 8, 2022, to Jan. 12, 2023, a conservative estimatebased on publicly available informationsuggests that its volume of business is almost 7 times its average pre-pandemic volume. In addition, there is still a huge backlog of corpses waiting to be cremated. Based on this information, analysts believe the number of COVID-19 deaths is much greater than China is reporting. According to one estimate, it may be at least 10 times the countrys annual death toll before the pandemic. Babaoshan, Beijings Main Crematorium Data from previous years indicates that cremations at Babaoshan Funeral House account for about a quarter of the total number of cremations in Beijing. The massive facility had 19 cremation furnaces in total, based on 2017 data. It is known for having the only specialty cremation furnace in Beijinga wider, longer, and taller oven for tall or obese corpses. Estimates on cremation times vary from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Times vary based on gender, age, weight, cause of death, and the refrigeration time of the corpse. A funeral home employee who identified as Mr. Lin told The Epoch Times on Dec. 14 that there was a weeks backlog in cremations. We are very busy every day, and we had never been so busy, Lin said. There are more people being cremated every day than before, and the appointment calls are too many for us to handle. Many people are queuing up [for our service]. We dont have any rest time here at all. Furnaces Operate Around the Clock The funeral home is normally open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Starting Dec. 15, the crematory began operating 24 hours a day. It added three service hotlines to its existing appointment line. In a Dec. 25 report, Beijing Radio said that there were currently 10 employees answering the phone at Babaoshan Funeral House. In late December, the wait time for cremation was about two weeks, and the freezers for body storage were full, the report said. Estimated Cremation Volume According to a 2019 official report on funeral services, there were 94 cremation furnaces in Beijing, with 101,181 bodies cremated that year. If Babaoshan Funeral House accounts for about a quarter of Beijings total cremations, it can be assumed that in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, the number of cremations performed at Babaoshan in a 36-day period was about 2,495. Assuming the cremation time for one corpse is one hour, and given one corpse per furnace, a conservative estimate suggests that Babaoshan Funeral Housewith 19 furnaces working around the clockis now cremating 456 corpses a day. Based on this estimate, between Dec. 8, 2022, and Jan. 12, 2023, the total number of cremated corpses at the facility would have been about 16,400. That number is almost seven times the estimated average volume of cremations for 2019. It does not include many people who died during the 36-day period but could not be cremated immediately because of the backlog. China affairs analyst Ji Da spoke with The Epoch Times on Jan. 17. Ji said the Babaoshan Funeral House data suggests that Chinas death toll is at least ten times what it was pre-pandemic. This estimate is based on the ten-fold increase in cremation appointments, and the large backlog of corpses to be cremated, Ji said. If this situation continues, the death toll in China will reach 100 million in 2023. Cars Become Temporary Morgues With funeral home freezers packed to capacity, social media reports that some families are storing deceased loved ones in their private vehicles. Mai Jie, a popular blogger on the overseas Chinese news portal Wenxue City, recently published a eulogy in memory of her father, who was hospitalized in Beijing and died from COVID-19. He was cremated on the seventh day after his death. But Dad is still lucky, Mai Jie wrote in her post. I heard from Dads nurse that a patient passed away a few days ago and could not find a funeral home that could accept him. The family had no choice but to put the body in their car. GOP Rep. George Santos Assigned 2 House Committee Seats Amid Calls to Resign Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) was assigned to two separate committees on Jan. 17 despite coming under scrutiny from fellow lawmakers after revealing he fabricated parts of his past, including his education and employment history. The House GOP Steering Committee, a panel of around 30 House leadership members, is responsible for recommending members to serve on the various committees. Their recommendations must first be fully approved by the House Republican Conference. Santos on Tuesday got a seat on the House Committee on Small Business, a committee spokesperson confirmed to Axios, and a seat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters. McCarthy, who leads the GOP Steering Committee, confirmed to CNN earlier on Tuesday that Santos would get a spot on committees. The assignments come as pressure continues to mount for Santos to step down after being sworn into office on Jan. 7, following his defeat of Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the November elections. It later emerged that Santos had fabricated large parts of his resume and personal biography, which was posted on the National Republican Congressional Committee website. Santos Admits He Fabricated Background The biography stated that Santos, the son of Brazilian immigrants, had degrees in finance and economics at Baruch College and New York University, and was an experienced businessman and investor, as well as a seasoned Wall Street financier who had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. The New York lawmaker had also previously said he was a proud American Jew, whose Jewish grandparents had fled Europe during World War II. When asked in November which committees he would like to work on, Santos told Axios, Naturally, with my background, Financial Services. However, a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from both the United States and Brazil found that some of the claims he had made about himself were false, including that he had never worked at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. Santos later admitted to the New York Post in December that he lied about his education and previous employment history while stating that he had never claimed to be Jewish. Santos Refuses to Step Down Despite calls for him to step down, Santos had remained defiant, writing on Twitter on Jan. 11: I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party and politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living. I will NOT resign! After Santos was assigned a seat on the Small Business Committee, its Chairman, Roger Williams (R-Texas), told NBC News: I dont agree with what [Santos] said, did, and all. I dont agree with any of that, OK? Its wrong. But at the same time, hes on the committee. Were gonna have rules to follow. He does represent about a million people in New York and a lot of Main Street issues. Williams added that Santos will only serve as a distraction to his committee for those who want to distract. Were going to have a lot of work to do, and were going to do some good stuff, and hell be a part of it. And if theres questions, well answer the questions. If they think [Santoss controversy] is going to be the main thing that comes out of the committee, theyre going to really miss the boat, he said. Federal and local prosecutors are currently investigating Santos over potential violations of federal campaign finance laws and his lies about his background and work history during his campaign. He has not been charged with any crime. Gov. Youngkin Announces Proposal to Protect Student Achievement Against Merit Withholders Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin at a "Back to School" rally in Annandale, Va., on Aug. 31, 2022. (Courtesy of Spirit of Virginia) Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Wednesday that he had requested Republican state legislators to introduce a new bill to require Virginia schools to inform students and their parents about National Merit Scholarships and other awards. We now know that at least 16 schools across three different school divisions in Northern Virginia withheld notification of accolades from high-performing students in the name of equity. Parents are rightfully upset, and they should be, said Youngkin in a press statement. He had previously called the problem unacceptable. In Virginia, parents matter, and the legislation Ive asked Senator Dunnavant and Delegate Freitas to introduce today will ensure that merit and accolades are celebrated in the Commonwealth. We will not allow our students and their parents to be left uninformed of their hard-earned recognition in what we now know was widespread across more than a dozen schools in multiple school divisions, he added. The bill, introduced on Wednesday, requires all recognition, including those that may affect a students application to a higher education institution, to be transmitted to the pupil and the pupils parent as soon as practicable after receipt of the information. The legislation specifically mentions national merit recognition associated with high Preliminary SAT (PSAT) scores. Such recognition opens doors to special scholarship programs and may differentiate an application from another. Since December 2022, 16 high schools in Fairfax (seven), Loudoun (five), and Prince William (four) Counties in Northern Virginia have reported delays in notifying their students of national merit awards, qualified by students who have PSAT scores among the top 3 percent nationwide. These high schools include the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), currently ranked No. 1 in the country, and Langley High School, ranked No. 2 in Virginia. Both of these schools are located in Fairfax County. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (C) announces investigations on Thomas Jefferson High Schools delay in informing students of national recognitions and the schools admission policies in Alexandria, Va., on Jan. 4, 2023. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times) Civil Rights Probe At Youngkins instruction, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced a civil rights investigation on TJHSST on Jan. 4 and expanded the probe to the entire Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) a few days later, as more schools reported the same problem of withholding students merit awards. Miyares said that if the withholding of merit awards was based on race, national origin, or any other protected status under the Virginia Human Rights Act, it was unlawful. This January, FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid held multiple town hall meetings with parents of affected students. At the meeting at Langley High on Jan. 10, Reid said FCPS was responding to the issue with all hands on deck and had pulled central office staffers to call the college admissions office to inform them of students national merit awards. The school division had also hired a Richmond law firm to conduct its own investigation. The number of affected FCPS students is over 300, and the seven FCPS schools with notification delay findings are about a quarter of the districts total number of high schools. AG Miyares also started an investigation on TJHSST over its admission policy. Using race, national origin, or any other protected class under Virginias Human Rights Act as a factor to determine admission to one of our top high schools is wrong. It is unjust, he said at the press conference on Jan. 4. For two years, a group of FCPS parents fought over the revised TJHSST admission policies that eliminated the magnet high schools entrance exam, allocated admissions for every school in TJHSSTs covered areas, and reduced Asian students from 73 percent to 54 percent in the class of 2025. FCPS has been pushing for equityor equal outcomesin its policies. In November 2022, FCPS spent $455,000 to hire a consultant to develop an equity-centered strategic plan (pdf) that advocated equal outcomes. As a child of an immigrant, I know that education is the doorway to the American Miracle. It is supposed to create equal opportunities for our studentsnot equal outcomes at the expense of others. While my office continues our civil rights investigation into Fairfax County and looks into potential violations at additional school systems, I applaud the governor for introducing legislation that would prevent this from happening again, said AG Miyares in a press statement today. Reid also denied that equity goals lowered standards. Equity is not lowering expectations. Its about maintaining high expectations and providing high support, she told parents at Langley. [E]quity has nothing to do with delaying or not getting [award] certificates on time. Hate Speech Laws Coming Soon to the United States, Democrats Advocating Alongside World Economic Forum Participants Multiple participants at the ongoing annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, suggested instituting free speech limitations as a way to deal with alleged hate speech and the continuing polarization of opinions. While speaking at The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation panel, Vera Jourova, vice president for values and transparency at the European Commission, pushed for containing free speech rights on the continent by citing the need to control hate speech, and predicted the United States would follow suit with similar anti-constitutional speech regulatory measures. We need the people who understand our language and the case law in the country, because what qualifies as hate speech, illegal hate speech, which you will have soon also in the United States, we have a strong reason why we have this in the criminal law, Jourova said. We need the platforms to simply work with the language and identify such cases. The AI would be too dangerous. The WEF panel was discussing how regulators, social media firms, and the public can tackle disinformation. It is unclear how disinformation is defined by the panel. Earlier on the panel, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) also batted for putting restrictions on free speech. This concept of preserving public safety even under the banner of free speech is actually something weve accepted for a long time. You get taught in grade school that, yes, youre allowed free speech, but not crying fire in a crowded theater, he said. The fire in a crowded theater analogy is often used to justify restrictions on free speech. The usage refers to a 1919 opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court which argued that speaking against war during wartime is like shouting fire in a theater and causing panic. However, the court has distanced itself from such reasoning and never declared it as a binding legal principle. A Free Press Problem? Senator Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) sees free press and online discussions as an issue that needs to be tackled. The problem we have is the open press system and basically all the platforms, Manchin said during a panel discussion at the WEF meeting. So if youre able to have five platforms, social platforms, that you can basically personify the extremes as somebody who is extremely right or extremely left, and it seems like that is the majority speaking. Theyre not the majority, but theyre basically driving everybody to make a decision. What side are you on? Are you on this side or this side? Manchins statements attracted criticism from Ned Ryun, CEO of Voter Gravity, a voter contact technology that turns data into votes. In a tweet on Jan. 18, he said that the Democrat lawmaker needs to be run out in 2024. Stephen Miller, the founder of America First Legal and senior advisor to former president Donald Trump, tweeted Manchins statement while warning about the links between American leaders and global elitists. One of the (many) reasons we must focus more on Davos is because our political and financial elite hunger for validation from the global elite. Just as yesterdays Marxist academic theory becomes todays dogma, so too does a Davos panel today become tomorrows regulatory framework, Miller stated in a tweet on Jan. 18. Fragmentation of Opinions At Davos, WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab insisted that differing opinions are creating fragmentation in society. At the beginning of this year, we are confronted with unprecedented and multiple challenges, Schwab said. We need to overcome the most critical fragmentation. The most critical fragmentation is between those who take a constructive attitude, and those who are just bystanders, observers, and even go into the negative, critical, and confrontational attitude. During the B20 meeting in Indonesia in November, Schwab had suggested that the world has to confront a deep systemic and structural restricting. This will take some time and the world might look different after such a transition process, he stated. In an interview with Chinese state-run network CGTN that month, Schwab said that he respects Chinas achievements and that the communist nation is a role model for many countries. House Committee Probing Suspicious Transaction Records Regarding Hunter Bidens Alleged $50,000 Rent Payments at Joe Bidens Home President Joe Biden (L) alongside his son, Hunter Biden, exit Holy Spirit Catholic Church after attending mass in Johns Island, S.C., on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images) The new chair of the House Oversight Committee said on Jan. 17 that the panel is looking into bank records and suspicious activity reports in connection with unconfirmed reports that President Joe Bidens son, Hunter Biden, paid nearly $50,000 per month in rent at the presidents Wilmington, Delaware, home. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, told Sean Hannity of Fox News in a Jan. 17 interview that the panel is investigating financial records in connection with reports that Hunter Biden paid his father about half a million dollars in rent over the course of roughly 11 months. There are reports, based on a document obtained by New York Post reporter Miranda Devinethe authenticity of which hasnt been independently verified by The Epoch Timesthat Hunter Biden allegedly moved into his fathers Wilmington home in March 2017 and moved out in February 2018 and that he paid roughly $49,910 per month in rent during that time. At the same time, the presidents 2017 tax return (pdf) reporting income or loss from the Wilmington property states that it had $19,800 in rents received, while his 2018 tax return (pdf) doesnt list any rents received. The Epoch Times reached out to White House officials and Hunter Bidens attorney with requests for comment but received no reply. The presidents Wilmington home has surged into the spotlight after classified documents were found there and in other places, including a Washington think tank closet. President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 13, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) That Doesnt Make Sense When Hannity asked Comer during the interview about reports that Hunter Biden was allegedly paying what Hannity characterized as an exorbitant sum for renting space in his fathers Wilmington home, the Republican lawmaker replied, That doesnt make sense; were looking into that. Thats one reason weve requested bank documents, bank records; were looking into the suspicious activity reports; were going to be looking at tax records, just like the House Ways and Means Committee did with former President Trump. Were going to continue to look into this and all other areas of revenue from Joe Biden and from the Biden family. House Republicans have vowed to investigate the president for his alleged involvement in his sons foreign business deals, allegations that the White House has repeatedly denied. I am committed to following the Biden family and associates money trailconsisting of many complex, international transactions worth millions of dollars& providing answers to the American people, Comer wrote in a Twitter post on Jan. 17. Is @POTUS compromised? Comer asked, vowing that the committee will eventually uncover the facts. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), then ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, during a hearing in Washington on July 27, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Suspicious Activity Reports Earlier in January, Comer announced a series of new actions in relation to the long-promised investigation into the president, his son Hunter Biden, and social media companies that Comer alleges suppressed negative stories about the Hunter Biden laptop ahead of the 2020 election. Among these actions, Comer asked the U.S. Treasury Department to provide a range of financial records, including so-called suspicious activity reports (SARs), related to the Biden family. U.S. banks are required by law to flag cash transactions exceeding $10,000 per day and automatically file SARs with a Treasury Department agency in an effort to prevent criminal activities, such as money laundering and tax evasion. The Epoch Times reached out to Treasury Department officials with a request for comment on Comers request for the financial records but didnt receive a substantive response. In a Jan. 11 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Comer requested all SARs that may have been generated in relation to Hunter Biden, the presidents brother James Biden, and several Biden family associates and their related companies. Financial institutions file millions of SARs each year, and while theyre not evidence of wrongdoing, some do lead to law enforcement investigations. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating President Bidens involvement in his familys foreign business practices and international influence peddling schemes, Comer said in the letter to the Treasury secretary while noting that during the 117th Congress, the Treasury had refused the panels request for information about the Biden family. The panel is investigating President Bidens knowledge of and role in these schemes to assess whether he has compromised our national security at the expense of the American people, Comer wrote. The committee will consider drafting legislation to bolster federal ethics laws regarding government staff and their family members, he said. Comer noted that the panel will also review federal laws and regulations to make sure financial institutions have proper protocols in place to alert federal agencies of potential money-laundering activity. The president and Hunter Biden have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, while White House spokesman Ian Sams described Comers request for Biden family financial records as a political stunt. GOP Probe Into Biden Family Several months ago, Comer announced that when Republicans took control of the Oversight Committee in the 118th Congress, they would launch the long-promised probe. At the time, Comer claimed that committee Republicans uncovered evidence of federal crimes committed by or to the benefit of the Biden family and released a report (pdf) outlining their findings. The Biden familys business dealings implicate a wide range of criminality from human trafficking to potential violations of the Constitution, Comer said at the time. Such crimes, according to Comer, include conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, tax evasion, money laundering, and violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Citing media reports, Comer said in November 2022 that more than 150 transactions from the Bidens business dealings have been flagged by U.S. banks through suspicious activity report filings. One SAR generated by an American bank to the Treasury Department connects Hunter Biden and his business associates to international human trafficking, among other illegal activities, Comer said at the time. The Republican lawmaker said at the time that the Treasury refused to release the SARs to the panel and that he would renew his efforts to obtain those records in the new Congress, as Republicans now hold subpoena power. Following Comers pledge in November 2022 to pursue the Biden family records, the White House issued a critical statement stating that instead of working with President Biden to address issues important to the American people, like lower costs, congressional Republicans top priority is to go after President Biden with politically motivated attacks chock-full of long-debunked conspiracy theories. Totally Irresponsible Besides looking into the Biden family business dealings, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee has also launched an investigation into the presidents handling of classified records from his time as vice president. Classified documents linked to Biden have been found in several locations, including a closet in a Washington think tank and a storage space next to the garage at the presidents Wilmington home, where he keeps his classic Corvette. Besides being an embarrassment to the president, the document finds have led to the appointment of a special counsel, whos investigating the matter. Republicans are pursuing their own probe. Comer said on Jan. 10 that the House Oversight Committee had launched an investigation into Bidens handling of sensitive materials. The committee is concerned that President Biden has compromised sources and methods with his own mishandling of classified documents, Comer wrote in a Jan. 10 letter to White House Counsel Stuart Delery (pdf), while pointing out that Biden has previously called the mishandling of presidential records totally irresponsible. Comer demanded that the White House and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) provide documents and information related to their handling of Bidens classified document stash. Responding to an inquiry from The Epoch Times, NARA acknowledged receipt of the letter but provided no further comment. Comer later accused NARA of stonewalling his inquiry. House Republicans Introduce Bill to Terminate COVID-19 Health Emergency President Joe Biden signs an executive order in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Feb. 24, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) House Republicans on Tuesday introduced legislation to end the COVID-19 public health emergency, coming about three years after it was implemented nationwide. On Jan. 11, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed that it would again extend the health emergency for another 90 days, according to a declaration issued by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. The emergency has been renewed about a dozen times since it was implemented under the Trump administration in early 2020. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) proposed ending the emergency declaration, again putting more pressure on the Biden administration to rescind the measure. If it passes through Congress, its likely President Joe Biden would attempt to veto the bill. The COVID-19 pandemic is over, Guthrie wrote on Twitter Tuesday. Its long overdue to end the COVID-19 [public health emergency] and for President Biden to relinquish his emergency powers. The bill, titled the Pandemic Is Over Act, stipulates that HHS shall terminate on the date of enactment of this Act. About three months ago, Biden told a 60 Minutes reporter that he believes the pandemic is over, prompting White House officials to scramble to clarify his stance. The COVID-19 pandemic is over, Guthrie said in a statement. Despite President Biden admitting this in September, his administration just authorized the 12th extension of the COVID-19 public health emergency. It is long overdue for President Biden to end the COVID-19 public health emergency and relinquish the emergency powers that he just renewed again. The White House, he said, has engaged in a lack of transparency over the emergency extensions. I introduced the Pandemic Is Over Act to prevent any more delays by forcing the Biden administration to finally release and execute a plan that my House Republican colleagues and I have been repeatedly pressing for to unwind the [public health emergency], the lawmaker said. The bill may see some success in the Senate, where some Democrats joined Republicans in voting to approve a similar piece of legislation in December to end the federal emergency. Biden said he would veto that bill if it reaches his desk. It has now been more than 2 1/2 years since this first-issued proclamation declaring the national emergency concerning declaration and been extended twice by President Biden since the initial declaration, most recently February [2022], Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who sponsored the Senate resolution, said during floor remarks at the time. Emergency Renewed On Jan. 11, Becerra issued a declaration saying that after consultation with public health officials as necessary, the White House decided the renew the emergency. The emergency primarily impacts the U.S. health care system, providing health insurance coverage protection for millions, giving hospitals more resources, and more telehealth services. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joins a panel during the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York City on Sept. 19, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency remains in effect, and as HHS committed to earlier, we will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration, a spokesperson for HHS told media outlets. Based on Becerras declaration and the spokespersons public statements, it is not clear when the emergency will end. However, unnamed Biden administration officials told Politico and other news outlets last week that they are aiming to end the emergency in the spring of 2023. The Epoch Times could not immediately verify those reports, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. About two-dozen Republican governors, meanwhile, called on the Biden administration to rescind (pdf) the COVID-19 emergency in a December letter. The reason why it should end, they argued, is because the emergency places undue financial strain on states due to its expansion of Medicaid coverage. The health emergency, the letter said, is negatively affecting states, primarily by artificially growing our population covered under Medicaid regardless of whether individuals continue to be eligible under the program. States are required to increase our non-federal match to adequately cover all enrollees, they said, and cannot disenroll members from the program unless they do so voluntarily. In mid-December, the White House released its COVID-19 Winter Preparedness Plan that would make more COVID-19 test kits freely available. Administration officials also again recommended Americans get the vaccine and boosters. Compared with the past several winters, COVID-19 cases in December 2022 and January 2023 appear to have sharply declined, according to data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of Jan. 11. In mid-January 2022, CDC data showed that there were more than 5 million weekly COVID-19 cases, but for the week of Jan. 11, 2023, only about 414,000 weekly cases have been reported. LAUSANNE, SwitzerlandFrom Jan. 14 to 17, the city of Lausanne resounded with the sounds of ancient China as the Shen Yun Performing Arts returned to Europe for a new season. Mauro Zanazzi spoke from the heart, with an authenticity that he probably also serves with love in his Italian specialty restaurant in Payerne, not far from Lausanne. Traditional dishes from his native Italy, bringing traditional culture to life with a restaurant named in homage to his mother. Perhaps thats why this restaurant owner passionately understood Shen Yuns mission. What they do, the singing, the dancing with such love! Its incredible, said Mauro Zanazzi, visibly happy and moved. He said he was convinced the artists of New York-based Shen Yun perform with a desire to share what they think, and the Chinese tradition with such a strength of soul and love, that we should imitate them. Everyone, all young people should imitate them to transmit the traditions of each people to the whole world, he said. Via the performance, Mr. Zanazzi felt the desire and the strength that they transmit with the movements, the dances, and the music too. According to Mr. Zanazzi, the perfection of the movements and the dance of Shen Yun came from their desire to transmit 5,000 years of history. I had tears in my eyes because it is a really beautiful emotion! he said. They are young people they are young people who do all this, and the love that they use, that they have to do this, the strength! And always with a high level of professionalism, because they did not learn to do this only yesterday. It is sure that those who taught all this to these young people, learned it from the masters before them from the ancestors who passed it on to them, its beautiful, Mr. Zanazzi said. Classical Chinese dance indeed has a long history, drawing its techniques and movements from several thousand years of culture, enriching itself from the various past dynasties, to become today one of the most complete dance systems in the world. Thats what Im thinking about Not only should China do it in the world, but every country in the world should pass on and make their traditions known, everything thats important and not forget what the ancestors did to get to this point, said Mr. Zanazzi. Its really unique and for me its the first time unique in the world I think! You really have to appreciate it. Its a show that you absolutely have to see! Reporting by NTD. The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006. Inquest Hears Plymouth Gunman Killed 5 Victims in 8 Minutes A gunman who committed Britains worst mass shooting for a decade, murdered all five of his victims in eight minutes and then used his penultimate shotgun cartridge to kill himself. Jake Davison, 22, killed his mother Maxine, 51, and then shot dead four others, including a young child, in the port city of Plymouth before shooting himself on Aug. 12, 2021. The entire incident took only 16 minutes, an inquest heard on Wednesday. The victims were Sophie Martyn, 3, her father Lee Martyn, 43, Stephen Washington, 59, and Kate Shepherd, 66. It was the worst mass shooting in Britain since June 2010 when Derrick Bird, 52, shot dead 12 people in and around Whitehaven in Cumbria before taking his own life. Both Bird and Davison legally owned shotguns. A still from a video released by Devon and Cornwall Police showing Jake Davison moments before he killed himself after killing five people in Plymouth, England, on Aug. 12, 2021. (Devon and Cornwall Police) Davison was granted a firearms licence in January 2018which was valid for five yearsbut it was suspended and his gun seized in 2020 after he assaulted two teenagers in a park. Davisons shotgun and gun licence were returned by Devon and Cornwall Police a few weeks before the murders. Gun Rampage Followed 999 Call by Victims Sister On Wednesday the jury heard a 999 call which Maxine Davisons sister Marlene Hill made on the night of the shooting in which she could be heard saying, Hes locked her in the bedroom and hes threatening, not letting her out. But the inquest heard that Davison had already been killed by the time of the 999 call. The inquest was then shown a CCTV montage, alongside a map, which explained Davisons route on that fateful night. After killing his mother he left his home in Biddick Drive and immediately shot dead Martyn and his daughter, who had just returned from walking their dog in nearby Linear Park on what was a warm summers evening. Davison then walked through Linear Park, and shot dead Washington. Another passerby spotted him in the distance and immediately ran off. The killer then crossed Royal Navy Avenue and shot dead Shepherd, who was returning home from a grocery shopping trip at the local Lidl supermarket. The montage ended moments before Davison killed himself behind the Blush hair salon, yards from where police and paramedics were trying to save Shepherds life. A map showing the places where Jake Davison committed five murders before taking his own life in Keyham, Plymouth, England, on Aug. 12, 2021. (PA) Rebecca Martyn told the inquest her daughter was pushing a scruffy purple buggy with a teddy bear in it when she was killed. Martyn said, From knowledge of previous walks, she would push the buggy for a short while before giving up and one of us would have to carry it home. Since the incident it has emerged Davison was obsessed with the incel (involuntary celibate) culture and was also fixated on guns and the United States in general. Plymouth MP Rails Against Incel Content Online Luke Pollard, the Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, told Parliament on Tuesday night that more needed to be done to tackle incel platforms on the internet. Pollard said the Online Safety Bill did not go far enough and he added: I really want to rid the internet of the disgusting, festering incel culture that is capturing so many of our young people and young men in particular. In particular I want minimum standards to apply to make sure that on big and small platforms where theres a risk, that minimum standard includes recognition of incel content, he added. Pollard said: Because at the moment incel content is festering in the darkest corners of the internet where young men are taught to channel their frustrations into an insidious hatred of women. And taught to think of themselves as brothers in arms in a war against women. This bill doesnt remove incel content online, and therefore doesnt prevent potentially future tragedies, Pollard added. The inquest began on Tuesday when the gunmans brother, Josh Davison, said, We are grappling to understand and manage our own health, emotions, and bereavement following the incident. Even deeper than that, we think we share the feelings of despair, hurt, and loss of the Martyn, Washington, and Shepherd families knowing that it was a member of our family who was responsible for their loss. They added, Our involvement in this inquest is to help prevent this from happening in future; an event like this cannot and should not ever happen again. In September 2021 Tim Jacques, the deputy senior national coordinator for UK counter-terrorism policing, said Davisons attack was not motivated by incel culture. Jacques said: Incel in and of itself is not a terrorist ideology. You become a terrorist when you cross a threshold in terms of your actions and its about what you do or intend to do to further that cause. The attack in Plymouth wasnt driven by an ideology, albeit that individual was engaged in some kind of incel thinking. But that doesnt make him a terrorist. The inquest, which is taking place at Exeter Racecourse, is expected to last for five weeks. Handguns were banned in Britain under legislation introduced following the Dunblane massacre in 1996 when Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 primary school children and their teacher in the Scottish town before committing suicide. But shotguns and sporting rifles can be legally owned as long as the person has a firearms licence issued by the local police force. Mr. Arai Nobuaki, a Ph.D. and patent lawyer, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Niu Bin/The Epoch Times) KAWAGUCHI, JapanIm very satisfied. I obtained great enjoyment, said Mr. Arai Nobuaki, a Ph.D. and patent lawyer, after attending Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17. Mr. Arai said he enjoyed everything that Shen Yun presented, and was amazed by the tumbling techniques the dancers displayed. The spinning in the dances is very unique. Its enchanting. I was so touched, he said. And the synchronization between the dancers and the orchestra is really fantastic. Mr. Arai brought with him a special pair of glasses specially designed for watching shows, and said he could see each movement in detail. Every single one of the female dancers is very beautiful and elegant. Their beauty was breathtaking. I saw all their movements in every detail, including their fingertips, he said. I was surprised by their flexibility They must have received extraordinary training. New York-based Shen Yun is the worlds top classical Chinese dance company, and has a mission to show the beauty and goodness of China before communism. For 5,000 years Chinas civilization was built on values and virtues from the spiritual teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Experience of a Lifetime Mr. Kawamoto Hideki is the president of Japan Medical Communication Company. He said that Shen Yun was like therapy for the soul, and everybody must attend Shen Yun at least once in their life. I was very touched. I was touched by dancers because their skills are beyond humans. I was touched by the beauty of the scenes, he said. Every program has a story behind it. You will be touched even if you didnt know the story in advance. Mr. Kawamoto noticed that Shen Yun has a live orchestra. About 40 musicians play both Western and Eastern instruments for each dance. The experience encompassed a lot more than dance. I think this is why Shen Yun the top of the tops, he said. Mr. Kawamoto Hideki, the president of Japan Medical Communication Company, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Wang Wenliang/The Epoch Times) A Shen Yun performance also includes musical solos, of an erhu (an ancient two-stringed instrument) performance and bel canto vocalists singing Chinese lyrics. Mr. Kawamoto was surprised that he and other theatergoers could hear the soloists very well, without amplification. The vocal soloists are astounding! They didnt use any microphone, but they made it. Mr. Kawamoto said he was uplifted by Shen Yun. In the future, I will live in a pleasant and comfortable aftermath after having seen Shen Yun, to be relaxed and to be furthermore healed. Each Shen Yun performance consists of nearly 20 vignettes, presented through highly-expressive art forms such as classical Chinese dance, original orchestral music performed live, soloists who sing in the bel canto tradition, animated digital backdrops, and more. Watching Shen Yun Like Being in Heaven Mr. Suzuki Kenji, the chairman of Japan Aviation Fuel Company, said Shen Yun is captivating, which attracted him to concentrate on the show from the beginning to the end. Every program caught my heart. I just wanted to keep on watching, he said. Its very beautiful. Mr. Suzuki said he understood from Shen Yun that human beings have a connection with the divine. As human beings, we need to take care of others, respect our country and nation, and we should have loyalty. He said Shen Yuns story-based dances made him feel that he was among the dancers. The feeling is like being in heaven. Mr. Suzuki Kenji, the chairman of Japan Aviation Fuel Company, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia with his wife in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Ren Zihui/The Epoch Times) Mr. Tanaka Sakuji, the former president of Rotary International, also said he felt that he entered another world when attending Shen Yun. I entered another world when the curtain first opened, he said. The stage and backdrop cooperate very well. I felt like I was taken into a dream. Reporting by Epoch Times Staff in Kawaguchi, Japan. The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006. Kirk Cameron Challenges Christians, Conservatives to Fight Woke Ideology One Book at a Time Actor and author Kirk Cameron speaks to a crowd at the Indianapolis Public Library on Dec. 29, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Kirk Cameron PR team) Christians and conservatives must recapture the public square ceded to the woke culture, says actor and author Kirk Cameron. In an interview with The Epoch Times, Cameron challenged parents who are tired of being silenced by social-justice elites, to host a pro-family, Christian story hour at their local public libraries. Cameron hopes his push to read wholesome books at libraries that seem to prefer drag queens over faith will spark a movement nationwide to take the country back to its founding principles. He announced the initiative on Fox News Tucker Carlson Tonight encouraging parents and children to flood libraries with readings on faith-based, patriotic books. Kirk Cameron quiets the crowd at Placentia Library in California on Jan. 14, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Kirk Cameron PR team) Cameron is offering a free copy of his new book As You Growor others from his publisher Brave Booksif people want to read at libraries. He suggested reading the Bible as well. If theyre going to steal the hearts and minds of our children, theyve got to do it over our dead bodies, said Cameron, who became famous playing the role of Mike Seaver in the 1985-92 sitcom Growing Pains. Cameron, who now stars mostly in Christian films, made headlines in December when he attempted to schedule story-hour readings of As You Grow. The book celebrates faith, family, and the Bible. His requests to schedule the events were denied or ignored by 50 woke libraries, many of which had advertised drag queen story hours, he said. Story-hour programs for children connected to new book releases are an activity that many libraries sponsor for their communities. Approach to Libraries So Cameron wrote letters to the directors of the Indianapolis Public Library in Indiana and the Scarsdale Public Library in New York, asking for the same opportunity theyd given drag performers. He just wanted to use a room in their libraries to read his new book to children and their families. The two relented after Cameron said publicly he was ready to go to court to fight for his free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution. Scarsdale Public Library published a statement on Dec. 19, 2022, regarding the Cameron room rental. The Scarsdale Public Library would like to address comments received about an upcoming event booked by Brave Publishing. The event is not a library-sponsored program, but rather a meeting room rental, that cannot be rejected based upon political or religious content under the First Amendment. The Scarsdale Public Library is committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion for all community members. Granting permission to use a room does not constitute an approval or endorsement of any program. Flags representing LGBT social movements wave outside the Stonewall Monument in New York on June 7, 2022. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images) The California father of six said thousands attended the two library events in a show of support. Though some disputed the numbers, Cameron said about 2,500 people attended the event at the Indianapolis Library. In Scarsdale, the crowd exceeded the capacity of the rented space. So Cameron did two readings. In a post on Twitter, Scarsdale said, Our estimated door count during the event is around 750, not 2500. Weve had larger events. We turn 150 years old in 2023. And our auditorium, which our guests chose not to rent, holds 300, not 2000. Of his troubles in holding reading events Cameron said, What Im learning is that these libraries do not represent the values of millions of Americans in the cities. New Yorkers thanked him for not passing over the Empire State, he said. One woman told him that Christian and conservative speakers often skip visiting New York because they think everyone has bought into the woke socialist agenda, he said. Thats not the case, she told him. Cameron said Christians, parents, and patriots are hungry for answers on what they can do to fight back against the social justice movement. He says that trend, followed by many young adults, is based on the tenets of Marxism that deny the existence of God. Freedom Isnt Guaranteed One thing Americans should take to heart is that freedom isnt guaranteed, Cameron said. Every generation must fight for it, or one day, he added, well wake up, and well be Venezuela, China, or North Korea. But theres no more powerful force for good than mothers and fathers who fight for the hearts and minds of their children, he said. Their Spidey senses have been telling them that somethings very wrong in America, and they just dont know what to do, he said. And sometimes its just something as simple as reading stories to children that sparked a movement. Drag performers reading to children have awakened many parents, he said. For decades, people have been too busy working to notice what schools were teaching their children. Cameron believes parents need to take back their childrens education and refuse to hand them over to the government for eight hours a day to indoctrinate them and get them to change their pronouns. They care about drag queens coming to sexualize their 2-year-olds, he said. And if thats where the battle lines have to be drawn, then thats where we need to fight. And people are waking up. At the Scarsdale library event, a grandfather spontaneously burst out singing God Bless America. About 250 people joined in, Cameron said. And as people waited outside, because there was no more space in the library, he saw parents pulling out their books and reading to their children in line. It was this chorus of voicesthey love God, love their family, and love their country, he said. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, M.D., who served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former Pres. Donald Trump, interacts with a child in November 2022 while signing his book Red, White and Blue: Our Flag Matters to Me and You. (Courtesy of the American Cornerstone Institute) Many who attended the readings thanked Cameron, saying they wanted their children to love God and their country. They told him they unequivocally reject a Marxist woke agenda, he said. History has seen good people rise up in America during times of moral decay, spiritual apathy, and political corruption, Cameron said. But salt-of-the-earth Christian believers could win back their community, he said. New Great Awakening I believe that we are we are on the verge of another Great Awakening in our country. Pastors have started holding their own story hours at their local libraries. In Arkansas, a Jan. 14 article in a local paper described Pastor Story Hour, led by Owen Strachan of the Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway at the Faulkner County Library. Meanwhile, across the hall at the same library, the Faulkner County Coalition for Social Justice offered a drag-queen story hour. That event was scheduled after the leader of the pro-LGBT group learned of the church-led event. Camerons publisher, Brave Books, provides tips and resources for people interested in organizing a story hour. The company also offers a pro-American, pro-Christian book series called Freedom Island that is about animals that protect the island from threats, addressing topics such as fake news and border protection. We need a young generation of heroes to rise up and protect Freedom Island. And parents can help make that happen by reading them the stories that inspire those virtues, and that fearless faith and that moral character, he said. If people want to do something to turn back the communist tide rising in America, they can no longer remain silent inside their homes or churches, Cameron said. Hes practicing what he preaches, planning to read in Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Chicago. He was originally scheduled to do a book reading in Los Angeles on Jan. 14 but couldnt meet their requirements in time to book the location. So instead, he read at the Placentia Library in Orange County, California. Take back the public square, he encourages. Dont complain about your communitys culture. Change it! Labor MP Defects, Warns Former Party Will Send State Woke and Broke Member for Bankstown Tania Mihailuk speaks at the Parliament of New South Wales in Sydney, Tuesday, May 12, 2020. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett) Labor Party defector Tania Mihailuk will join One Nation in the upcoming state election, warning that her former partywhich analysts believe stands a good chance of winning powerwill send New South Wales woke and broke. The MP has long warned the Labor Party of straying too far down the left side of politicsadopting policies like gender fluidityand alienating its traditional voter base, including multicultural communities in the west of Sydney, like Mihailuks electorate of Bankstown. On Jan. 17, Mihailuk announced she would join the right-leaning One Nation, partnering with fellow Labor defector and former federal leader Mark Latham. [Current opposition leader] Chris Minns as Premier and a Labor government will see [New South Wales] both woke and broke, she said in a statement on Facebook. I know the true agenda of the people sitting currently sitting on Chris Minns front benchthey are from the extreme left. We simply cannot afford to have Labor controlling both Chambers of Parliament. She said One Nation would focus on issues that matter to families, including the cost of living and education. An education system that focuses on the basics that matter to mums and dads: literacy, numeracy, history and the humanitiesactual common-sense skills that lead to jobs rather than left-wing indoctrination, she said. There are prominent Labor shadow ministers that want drug legalisation and gender fluidity teaching in schools. I totally oppose these policies and will do everything that I can to stop their agenda from passing the Upper House. She also said she was a big believer in freedom of religion, and this ideal was toxic to inner-west left-wing hipsters that set Labor Party agenda on social policy. Current New South Wales One Nation leader Mark Latham has been a staunch critic of the Labor and Liberal-National parties in his state, saying they have done little to address the onset of gender fluidity ideas in the education system. Warnings Against Sliding Left In April 2021, Mihailuk called on her then-party to support expanding anti-discrimination laws so they encompass religious protections. Labor should reject the false dichotomy that it must choose between supporting religious or LGBTIQ communities, she wrote in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph. We should instead return to where Labor has traditionally stood and ledfrom the sensible centre that protects all groups from discrimination and guarantees human rights for all. Member for Bankstown Tania Mihailuk (left) and NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns arrives to address media during a press conference in Sydney, Tuesday, October 5, 2021. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts) In September 2022, under parliamentary privilege, Mihailuk linked Labor candidate Khal Asfour to disgraced former party powerbroker Eddie Obeid. The speech prompted Asfour to deny the allegations. She has used parliamentary privilege to launch a cowardly attack on me and my family, and I call on her to produce evidence of any wrongdoing to the relevant bodies, Asfour said a day after her speech to the New South Wales Parliament. She is citing matters from 2012. This reeks of sour grapes at being overlooked on Labors upper house ticket. While opposition leader Minns made the decision to remove her from the shadow cabinet. Ive spoken to Tania Mihailuk and said that she cannot stay in the shadow cabinet and launch political attacks by parliamentary privilege, he told Radio 2GB. I havent heard back from her so Ive come to the conclusion reluctantly that she cant stay in the shadow cabinet. Mihailuk would subsequently quit the party in the following month to run as an independent before her latest announcement on Jan. 17, 2023. Minns, meanwhile, has said an investigation from the states Independent Commission Against Corruption had looked into her claims finding them baseless. Its not unreasonable that if youre going to call somebody corrupt, then you have to produce information to back up those claims and not use parliamentary privilege to do it, Minns told reporters. Man Gets 30-Year-Sentence in Houston Road Rage Killing HOUSTONA man charged in a fatal road rage shooting of a teenager as he and his family drove home from a Houston Astros game in 2021 has been sentenced to 30 years in prison, authorities announced Tuesday. Gerald Williams had been set to go to trial this week in the killing of 17-year-old David Castro. Authorities have said Castro, his father and brother, were stuck in slow traffic in July 2021 when the teenagers father, Paul Castro, exchanged hand gestures with Williams. Police said Williams was driving aggressively and swerving around vehicles when he got stuck in traffic. Police said Williams, 35, followed the Castro family for several miles on Interstate 10 before shooting at their truck shortly after both vehicles exited the freeway. David was shot in the head. He died at a hospital. His father and brother were not injured. During a court hearing Tuesday, prosecutors said Williams agreed to plead guilty to murder in exchange for a 30-year sentence. After the hearing, Paul Castro, told reporters that his family supported the plea agreement as it meant his family could avoid having to relive the trauma of the shooting during a trial. Castro said he read a victim impact statement to Williams to convey the pain and sadness his family has felt since the shooting. I needed him to know that that night, he caused terror in my two sons and one of them didnt make it. I hope he dreams that every night for the next however many years he lives because every night, I go to bed with that image in my head, he said. Amid the strange fairy chimney stacks of eroded rock that litter the landscape of Cappadocia in central Turkey, little more than an inkling suggests that a sprawling subterranean city lies under the arid ground beneath ones feet. For centuries, the inhabitants of the Anatolian plateau have been carving dwellings, monasteries, and troglodyte villages out of the local soft volcanic rock, conjuring what look like scenes from a Tolkien novel today. Theres plenty enough to stir imaginations aboveground, luring tourists to hike and hot-air balloon in Cappadocia; meanwhile, an underground world with hundreds of miles of chambers and passages rests unseen below. Called Elengubu in ancient times, after its recent rediscovery this cavernous city borrowed the namesake of its overlying district, Derinkuyu, in Nevsehir province. Abandoned centuries ago, the intricate tunnel network of Derinkuyu once offered safety and concealment for those seeking refuge amid persecution. A view of Cappadocia in Turkey. (Murat Tegmen/Shutterstock) A tourist walks through a passage in the Derinkuyu underground city in Turkey. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images) Yet the city wasand still isintertwined with stone structures and dwellings overland. After it was abandoned, and after fading from public knowledge in the early 20th century, Derinkuyus accidental rediscovery in 1963 was credited to a home renovation. According to locals, a Turkish man who was expanding his domicile tore down a wall only to discover an abysmal passageway that seemed to go on forever, which led to the underground citys prompt excavation. This was the first of some 600 entry points found connecting Derinkuyu with structures above. Gargantuan in size, Derinkuyu spans some 275 square miles, descending 279 feet underground with some 18 levels. Once a bustling sub-terrestrial city, Derinkuyu is beset with living quarters for some 20,000 inhabitants, stables for livestock, wine and oil presses, cellars, chapels, schools, wells, and other amenities. This made the underground metropolis a fully self-sustaining community whose inhabitants could sever themselves from an outside world that was often fraught with danger in times of invasion or occupation. One of some 600 entrances leading into Derinkuyu from aboveground. (Aleksandar Todorovic/Shutterstock) Labyrinthine passages connect 18 levels in the cave city of Derinkuyu. (Mitzo/Shutterstock) The corridors of Derinkuyu are carved out of volcanic rock. (Pakhnyushchy/Shutterstock) As for who occupied Derinkuyu over the centuries and who created it, evidence of cave dwellings in Cappadocia dates back to the Upper Paleolithic period. For centuries, the volcanic tuffrock made of solidified deposits of volcanic ashallowed excavations with simple metal tools such as shovels and pickaxes. In its earliest origin, Derinkuyu has been associated with the Hittites in Anatolia, who may have excavated the first few levels in the 15th century B.C. Hittite artifacts discovered inside give weight to that theory. Then, the Phrygians invaded around 1200 B.C. and came to occupy the city; renowned for their architectural prowess in carving stone in the region, they likely went on to build the bulk of the citys infrastructure. The Persians and Seljuks probably made further expansions when they came to occupy the territory. However, Derinkuyu swelled to its largest during the Byzantine age when Christians sought refuge from Muslim Arabs during the ArabByzantine wars, from 780 to 1180. A self-contained network, at its height the sanctuary offered refuge to as many as 20,000 inhabitants and would have allowed them to hold out from invaders for months on end without making contact with the outside world. The upper floors of Derinkuyu consist of large dry food storage areas and stables for livestock that would have reduced unseemly smells and toxic gasses while providing living insulation during the colder months for those dwelling below. A circular stone door between tunnels in Derinkuyu in Turkey. (Maria Studio/Shutterstock) A well shaft provided clean water for those who inhabited the cave city. (Dmytro Gilitukha/Shutterstock) Some of the amenities that furnish Derinkuyu cave city in Cappadocia, Turkey (Pakhnyushchy/Shutterstock) A well that is accessible to the village aboveground descends some 180 feet belowground supplying both ventilation and clean water for the entire city. This could have easily been cut off from below to prevent a potentially fatal poisoning of the citys water supply. Meanwhile, more than 50 ventilation shafts penetrate through to the surface overhead, supplying the city with fresh air from above. The passages were once lit by torches and lamps, and many of the walls and ceilings remain blackened with char today. Access between levels was facilitated by staircases cut into the rock or perilous vertical shafts with handholds and footholds cut into the rock. In case of invasion, the entrances to each of the citys levels feature round stone doors weighing some 1,000 pounds, which could have been rolled shut to block out intruders. These were furnished with a central hole through which defenders could spear their attackers. The structures innovative defenses are also apparent in the narrow, claustrophobia-inducing passages, which force one to crouch while passing through. Its believed this hindrance is by design, for it would have forced an assailant to hunch downassuming a rather vulnerable postureand raiding parties to travel in single file, handing a clear advantage to the defenders. A perilous vertical shaft with a ladder links levels in the cave city. (KadirKARA/Shutterstock) A narrow stair leads through Derinkuyu. (byerenyerli/Shutterstock) A gate with a massive round door inside the cave city. (praphab louilarpprasert/Shutterstock) Besides fortifications, the city accommodated educational and religious activities. A spacious chapel with a barrel-vaulted ceiling on the second level is believed to have been a religious missionary school with adjacent study rooms. Additionally, a series of vertical stairways between the third and fourth levels leads to a cruciform church on the fifth level. Derinkuyu is not the only underground city in Cappadocia, though it is believed to be the largest. There are as many as 200 underground cities on the Anatolian plateau, 40 of which descend three or more levels deep. Moreover, a 5-mile-long tunnel connects Derinkuyu with neighboring underground metropolis Kaymalki. It is conceivable that many of these underground cities are accompanied by interconnecting subterranean highways to facilitate safe travel between distant habitations. Stairways connect different vertical levels of the city. (Travel Turkey/Shutterstock) A chapel with a barrel-vaulted ceiling inside Derinkuyu. (Igor Stramyk/Shutterstock) Although these places gradually fell into disuse, the Cappadocian Greeks continued using them to escape periodic persecution as late as the 20th century. It wasnt until the Turkish government eventually had Derinkuyu evacuated in 1923its inhabitants extradited to Greece en massthat it was finally abandoned. After its serendipitous rediscovery in 1963 and subsequent opening to the public in 1969, it has been spelunked by thousands, thoroughly explored, and in 1985 added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Today, visitors are welcome to explore the ancient metropolis for a meager 50 Turkish liras ($1.70). With eight levels of the city open to the public, visitors may set foot inside and lay eyes on a mere fraction of this once-bustling subterranean world, though they are advised to do so in the company of an experienced guide. McConnell Calls on DOJ to Treat Trump and Biden Documents Exactly the Same Way McCarthy says treating two cases alike 'just does not seem fair' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks about his opposition to S. 1, the "For The People Act" in Washington on June 17, 2021. (Joshua Roberts/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Jan. 17 said the special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) ought to treat President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump equally in their classified documents probes. I think the important thing with regard to documents is that both these guys ought to be treated exactly the same wayexactly the same way, McConnell said on NewsRadio 840 WHAS in Kentucky. The Senate Republican leader said he thinks the attorney general probably did the right thing by appointing separate special counsels in investigating the two classified document cases. Whats good for one candidate for president ought to be good for another one, he added. Related Coverage Timeline of Bidens Classified Document Drama On Jan. 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, a former federal prosecutor in Maryland, as special counsel to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law with classified documents found at the presidents Delaware home and in a Washington office Biden had used. After the appointment, an additional stash of classified documents was found at Bidens residence in Delaware. Discourse on Bidens sensitive material has sparked comparisonsparticularly regarding the treatment and legal consequenceswith the case of Trump, whose Florida home was raided by the FBI last summer resulting in the discovery of classified documents. When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? Trump wrote on his social media platform after news broke of the first batch of Biden-linked document stash. These documents were definitely not declassified. Trump, who said he declassified documents before leaving office, is being investigated by the DOJ. Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel in November to oversee Trumps case. GOP Probe Despite the special counsels probe, Republican lawmakers have vowed to continue their own investigations into the sensitive documents linked to Biden. The House Judiciary Committee has already opened an investigation into Bidens possession of classified materials. We are conducting oversight of the Justice Departments actions with respect to former Vice President Bidens mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C., private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware, residence, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), head of the House panel, and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote in a Jan. 13 letter to Garland. Flanked by House Republicans, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 17, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), head of the House Oversight Committee, on Monday pledged to keep the efforts going after the White House said they dont have visitor logs for the presidents Delaware residence. President Biden promised to have the most transparent administration in history, but he refuses to be transparent when it matters most, Comer told The Epoch Times on Jan. 16. We will continue to press the Biden Administration for answers about who had access to these classified documents and why Biden aides were permitted to rummage through the Wilmington residence after the appointment of a special counsel. White House Response The White House fired back by calling GOPs lawmakers probe a shamelessly hypocritical attempt to attack the democratic president. House Republicans have no credibility, White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement to media outlets on Monday. Their demands should be met with skepticism and they should face questions themselves about why they are politicizing this issue and admitting they actually do not care about the underlying classified material. President Biden is doing the right thing and is cooperating fully with a thorough review, Sams said. Just Does Not Seem Fair Asked about the White Houses comment Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) defended Republicans investigation, saying the treatment of Trump and Biden regarding classified documents just does not seem fair. Referring to the classified document linked to Biden, McCarthy said prior to an election, they kept it secret. At no time did he get raided by the FBI. On Nov. 2, days before the midterm elections, classified materials were found at the Biden Penn Center, a think tank office in Washington that Biden used between 2017 to 2019. Following the discovery of the first trove of documents, White House attorneys searched Bidens residences in Delaware, where additional classified government records from the Obama administration were discovered. But these findings werent disclosed to the public until last week. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in Washington on Jan. 12, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) They put a special prosecutor only after other people raised the issue, McCarthy told reporters. Are the same amount of agents investigating this that are investigating President Trump? Is the same push behind it? It just does not seem fair. This is why the American people get so upset and distrust their government when they see that the law is not applied equally. The House GOP leader said they would oversee the special counsels probes into both cases. Look, the House, we have a constitutional responsibility to oversee the Justice Department, and that also means overseeing special counsels, he added. So we will look into both situations. The Epoch Times has reached out to the DOJ for comment. Moderna CEO Says He Wants to Have mRNA Vaccine Factory on Every Continent Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel speaks at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, on May 23, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images) Moderna chief executive Stephane Bancel said he wants to take his companys mRNA vaccine manufacturing to every continent in the world, Reuters reported. Were talking to a couple more countries, because I would really like on every continent to have mRNA capacity, Bancel said during a panel at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland. Moderna, which has rapidly advanced from a little-known Massachusetts-based clinical stage company to a dominant player in the global vaccine market over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, is planning overseas expansions of its mRNA vaccine-making capacity. In August 2021, Moderna signed a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian government to build a state-of-the-art messenger RNA vaccine-manufacturing facility. The goal, according to the company, is to make sure Canada can activate the site and secure direct access to rapid pandemic response capabilities in the event of a future pandemic. A similar agreement was signed in March 2022 between Moderna and the government of Australia. As part of the partnership, Moderna will build vaccine factories in Melbourne and Victoria to provide Australians with a portfolio of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, seasonal influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and other potential respiratory viruses. In Africa, Moderna tapped Kenya as the country to host its mRNA vaccine site. In March 2022, Moderna announced that its investing up to $500 million to produce in Kenya up to 500 million doses each year for the entire continent. Moderna also eyed on the United Kingdom as the base of its European expansion. A June 2022 agreement with the British government allows Moderna to established an mRNA Innovation and Technology Center in the country. The most recent move in Modernas effort to bring mRNA vaccine production out of Massachusetts came in September 2022, when Bancel traveled to Japan to negotiate a long-term vaccine deal with the Japanese government. He told Japanese newspaper Nikkei that COVID-19 will never completely disappear and that COVID vaccines will ultimately become annual like flu shots. Bancels Japanese trip came a year after after foreign matter was discovered in vials of its COVID-19 vaccine, forcing Takeda, a Japanese pharmaceutical giant and Moderns vaccine distributor in Japan, to suspend the use of more than 1.6 million doses. Its a substance that reacts to magnets It could be metal, a Japanese health official reportedly said, according to Nikkei. Bancel is among more than 2,600 government, business, and academic elites attending the WEF meeting, which runs Jan. 1620. The theme of the 2023 summit is Cooperation in a Fragmented World. According to the U.S. embassy to Switzerland, the U.S. delegation will feature John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, along with National Intelligence director Avril Haines, FBI director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Trade representative Katherine Tai. New Hampshire Democrats Warn Biden 2024 Primary Changes Would Wreak Havoc Then-Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Tom Steyer stand on stage at the start of the Democratic presidential primary debate in the Sullivan Arena at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire on Feb. 7, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) President Joe Biden was warned by New Hampshire Democrats not to replace the state as the first presidential primary, arguing that a recently proposed primary lineup would cause problems in the state. A letter issued to Biden on Tuesday signed by 20 Democrats warned that Biden could see his reelection chances drop if New Hampshire is dropped. Several weeks ago, the Democratic National Committees Rules and Bylaws Committee voted for a different early voting lineup for 2024, removing New Hampshire from its first-in-the-United States slot. You have been coming to New Hampshire since 1980. We appreciate all of the time you have spent here, and the deep friendships you have made. We have long considered you and Jill part of our New Hampshire family, the Democrats wrote in the letter to Biden. While we share your desire to elevate more diverse voices in the process, it added, we believe that the proposed schedule could wreak havoc on Democrats up and down the ticket in New Hampshire and unnecessarily jeopardize four critical electoral votes in your re-election campaign. The letter comes after the Democratic National Committees Rules and Bylaws Committee voted for a new early voting lineup for the 2024 presidential primaries in December, proposing to remove New Hampshire from its No. 1 slot. Democrats recently approved calendar replaces New Hampshire with South Carolina for the first presidential primary. It would then be followed up by Nevada, New Hampshire, and later, Georgia and Michigan. But, according to the letter, the DNCs committee has created a no-win situation for New Hampshire Democrats. First, the DNC has stipulated that New Hampshires Republican Governor, Republican Senate Majority Leader, and Republican House Majority Leader must repeal New Hampshires state law requiring it to hold the presidential primary at least seven days prior to the other earliest contest, they said, adding that GOP leaders told the DNC that it wont happen. They also expressed alarm that the DNC is pushing for no-fault absentee voting in New Hampshire, but Democrats there cannot unilaterally change the law due to New Hampshire Republicans hostility to any changes to our voting laws with every Republican state Senator voting against no-fault absentee voting in 2021. The letter then warned that if the DNC and Bidens campaign provide fewer resources to New Hampshire or wait to build a voter outreach regime until after the primary ends, it will hamper Democrats efforts in the state. We will need every resource at our disposal to help you be successful in 2024 and cannot delay our efforts to build a world-class campaign apparatus, the Democrats wrote to Biden. We also fearif you decline to file in the New Hampshire primarythat you may lose the first presidential primary of 2024, create an unnecessary distraction for your campaign, and diminish your great record over the past two years. They added: Regardless of what the DNC decides, state law ensures that our primary will continue to go first, thereby giving an opportunity for another candidate to file here and capitalize on the growing anger toward national Democrats. Democratic presidential hopeful Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arrives, flanked by his wife Jane OMeara Sanders, to speak at a Primary Night event at the SNHU Field House in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Feb. 11, 2020. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images) Reasons Why Proponents of switching out New Hampshire from its No. 1 primary spot say that the state doesnt represent the U.S. population because of its predominately white population. James Roosevelt Jr., a co-chair of the DNCs rules and bylaws panel, wrote that states like South Carolina, which has a higher black population, more prominence. Data shows that black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats. New Hampshire has done this and done it well for a century or more, but they have always abided by the party rules, Roosevelt said, according to WMUR. This is the first time theyre not doing that. The proposal will be finalized when the Democratic National Committee votes on the final election schedule in February. Republicans already decided to keep Iowa and New Hampshire as the first caucus and primary in the GOPs 2024 schedule. As for Biden, he performed relatively poorly during New Hampshires 2020 Democratic primary in February of that year, finishing fifth. At the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) were neck-in-neck in the Granite State. Biden, however, won South Carolinas 2020 Democratic primary after snagging a key endorsement from then-House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Biden got about 48 percent of the vote, easily beating out Sanders and the rest. Neither Biden nor his campaign have issued a public response to the letter. New York Assembly Republican Whip Karl Brabenec Talks 2023 Legislative Priorities New York State Assemblyman and Minority Whip Karl Brabenec at his district office in Florida, N.Y., on Jan. 12, 2023. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times) As the new minority whip, Karl Brabenec said he would continue to advocate for Republican legislative priorities in the face of a Democratic supermajority in the state assembly. Through the 2022 election, 13 new Republican members made it to Albany, bringing the partys representation on the 150-seat assembly to just under 50. As a result, Republican committee membership increased by about one per committee, Brabenec said. Still, chances to push through Republican-sponsored legislation remain slim in 2023, but by putting reform ideas out there, Democratic colleagues might pick up when the public demands so, he added. We will still fight for the initiatives that we want to see. If we can chip away at the rock and get a diluted bill, it is better than nothing, and we are going to do that, he told The Epoch Times on Jan. 12. It may take a while. But if you are persistent, hopefully, it will happen, he said. New York State Assemblyman and Minority Whip Karl Brabenec at his district office in Florida, N.Y., on Jan. 12, 2023. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times) Brabenecs top priorities are public safety, deregulation, and reducing property taxes. He wants to keep pushing for fixes to the bail reform, with an end goal to repeal the entire law; he will advocate for legislation that will chip away at the regulations to give small business owners and small farmers a fair shot; he also will support bills to reduce the property tax burdens of New York residents, he said. Brabenec said he would continue to advocate for his signature bill to reduce the September school tax bills to zero in five years and replace them with state funding. Im not saying taking the bill as a wholethough Id like to see that. If you take portions of the bill, add to it, and make it work, that way, we are helping the residents, he said. Challenges of One-Party Rule A Republican from the town of Deerpark in Orange County, Brabenec was first elected to represent the 98th district in 2013 after having served in the county government and as a town supervisor. The district encompasses western portions of Orange and Rockland counties, including Port Jervis, Warwick, and parts of Ramapo. At the time, Democrats controlled the governorship and assembly but not the Senate, which was under a Republican majority and served as a meaningful check on Democratic legislative agendas, he said. Then in 2018, Democrats flipped the Senate. In two years, they secured supermajorities at both houses. It became a one-party rule. They push through whatever they want to push through, and there is no accountability, he said. We will tell the majority that here are the problems with the bills, and lets come to a compromise to fix them. But almost 100 percent of the time, they do not listen to us. Most Republican-sponsored bills die in committees and never make it to the floor, he said. Exceptions are bills that have to do with local laws instead of statewide issues. In 2021, Brabenec and former state Sen. Mike Martucci proposed a bill to extend Warwicks community preservation fund for 25 years, which passed near the end of the legislative session. Karl Brabenec points to a picture of him being sworn in as state assemblyman at his district office in Florida, N.Y., on Jan. 12, 2023. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times) Or, on rare occasions, Democrats would pick up Republican ideas to appease voters, he said. A classic example is the 2011 passage of the 2 percent property tax growth cap for local municipalitiesan idea initially supported by Republicans but later gained Democratic support, he said. And a more recent example is the legislative fix to the original bail reform law, he added. After eliminating cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies in 2019, the state legislature passed two fixes to expand bail-eligible crimes. There is a lot of public pressure to change it, and members of the majority knew that they made mistakes, so they kind of watered it down a little bit, Brabenec said. Thats why we present bills in the legislature because we want these ideas to get out. We want people, especially residents, to lobby the majority and the governor for these ideas. Suzanne Edzenga works with State Assemblyman Karl Brabenec as his executive director at his district office in Florida, N.Y., on Jan. 12, 2023. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times) Local Constituent Services Aside from the lawmaking work during the legislative sessions, Brabenecs local office in the village of Florida offers services to district residents throughout the year. Ever since the pandemic, inquiries about unemployment benefits quadrupled and remain high today, according to his executive director Suzanne Edzenga. Other common inquiries are about drivers licenses, social services, and landlord and tenant issues. Often, residents come here after failing to get through the red tape on their own and hope his offices liaison can cut it through. Certainly, you get frustrated when things dont happen in Albany, but when somebody who has a real issue comes to the office, crying and not knowing what to do, and we solve that problem for himthats what it is all about, Brabenec said. The newly drawn district map following the 2020 census encompasses some new areas, including a portion of Goshen. As a result of a prolonged legal dispute over the constitutionality of the new map, the Independent Redistricting Commission is working on another new map for the 2024 state assembly elections. New York Woman Kidnapped and Smuggled Into Quebec in 2020 Testifies About Ordeal James and Sandra Helm of Moira, New York are seen being held captive in Quebec in 2020, in this court handout image received Jan. 17, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Exhibit, Quebec Superior Cour) A woman from Upstate New York who was kidnapped, smuggled into Quebec and held at a cottage for two days told a jury Tuesday she still lives with the consequences of the September 2020 abduction. Sandra Helm was testifying at the trial of Gary Arnold, a Quebec man charged in an alleged conspiracy to abduct Helm and her late husband, James, over a debt owed by their grandson. Arnold, 54, of Godmanchester, Que., faces seven charges, including kidnapping, extortion and conspiracy. The court has heard that the abduction of the couple in their 70s was tied to a botched cocaine deal involving their grandson Mackenzie Helm, who had been arrested six days earlier in Vermont with 50 kilograms of cocaine. Sandra Helm identified Arnold as one of the two men who entered their home in Moira, N.Y., on Sept. 27, 2020. She said her husband had gone to bed on that Sunday night when two men kicked in the door and ordered the couple to get dressed. They were taken from their home and ferried into Quebec through the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne, before being driven to Magog, Que., about 125 kilometres southeast of Montreal. Helm said they were largely kept in the basement of a cottage, with her husband occasionally allowed outside to smoke. She told the court that despite her captors assurances that she and her husband would be taken to a boat to return to New York, she didnt think they would be released. I truthfully didnt think that we were going to ever make it back home . I just cant believe that after seeing them, they were just going to let us go, she said. We saw their faces. As their abductors were moving them to a vehicle, a police tactical unit moved in to free the couple. Helm said she fell in the commotion and was scared, but a heavily armed officer reassured her she was being saved. Even now, more than two years later, Helm said shes afraid to be out after dark and worries about being alone. Im scared all the time that someones going to come into the house again, she said. She said she uses a two-by-four to block the front and back doors so they cant be kicked in and has installed security cameras around her rural home. Later Tuesday, her son Michael Helm, who reported his parents disappearance to New York State Police, told the court about several calls he received from his parents captors. Jurors heard police recordings of the conversations, in which the captors demanded that he hand over either the missing 50 kilograms of cocaine, $3.5 million or his nephew Mackenzie Helm. Michael Helm said his parents had raised Mackenzie since he was an infant but had fallen out with him over drugs and property theft. On Monday, jurors learned that James Helm died in 2021 and they heard a video statement he gave from a hospital in Sherbrooke, Que., to investigators with the Quebec provincial police, the FBI and New York State Police. After presenting 13 witnesses and a wealth of wiretap, text and phone message evidence, the Crown rested its case on Tuesday. The trial resumes on Thursday, when the defence will announce its intentions to the jury. Newsoms Budget Includes 2 Doses of Opioid Overdose Medicine for Every School Every California middle and high school will stock at least two doses of naloxonea nasal spray that treats an opioid overdoseon campus under Gov. Gavin Newsoms proposed 202324 budget released last week. While hundreds of schools in the state have already begun to stock the medication amid rising opioid-related overdoses and deaths, Newsons propsoal of $108.8 billion K12 education budget (pdf) includes a $3.5 million ongoing increase for the doses to be stocked at the campuses. Among the 7,125 opioid-related deaths in California in 2021, 8.5 percent were between the ages of 15 and 19, according to the most recent data from the California Public Health Department. Additionally, the department estimates that 7 percent of the 2,006 Californians who were hospitalized due to opioid overdose were in the same age range. In Los Angeles alone, seven students overdosed last year on the synthetic opioid fentanylincluding a 15-year-old girl who died in September, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. That same month, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced naloxone will be made available at all district K12 schools. Last month, state Assemblyman Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin) introduced two assembly bills aimed at preventing opioid overdoses after the fentanyl-related deaths in his Placer County rose 450 percent since 2019. The pieces of legislation are Assembly Bill 19, requiring schools to always have at least two doses of the spray, and Assembly Bill 18, which would provide written notice to anyone convicted of trafficking fentanyl that they may be convicted of murder if another person dies as a result of taking drugs they sold. Both bills may be heard in committee this month, according to the state Legislature. Patterson said he was glad Newsoms budget addressed opioid overdose prevention. I am pleased that the governor recognizes the importance of my legislation to put [naloxone] in schools to help combat fentanyl poisoning occurring to our youth, he said in a Jan. 10 statement. The governor has included $3.5 million for schools to purchase at least two doses, which is aligned with the goals of my legislation, Assembly Bill 19. The states Legislative Analyst Office will conduct an analysis of the budget before it is sent to the state legislature for hearings. After revisions in May, it is expected to be finalized June 15 and goes into effect July 1. Ten thousand workers at Microsoft are facing layoffs, as the company joins a growing list of tech firms that are cutting jobs and trimming costs. The United States is one day away from reaching its borrowing limit, or debt ceiling. But an expert says that debt is not the true problem. A senator is calling on the DOJ to investigate a government mass surveillance program. He says the scope of the program is far greater than what the government said it was. Apples bringing back its original HomePod smart speakerwith some updates, including smart home tools. Greece prepares for a year full of tourists, but the global economy and the war in Ukraine could hinder the recovery. NYC Mayor Adams Calls for National Czar to Manage Border Crisis, Despite VP Harris Already Holding Role New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks onstage during NYC & Company Foundation Visionaries & Voices Gala at The Plaza Hotel in New York City on Dec. 5, 2022. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for NYC & Company Foundation) New York Mayor Eric Adams has called for the appointment of a national czar to manage the immigration crisis at the U.S.Mexico border, seemingly unaware that Vice President Kamala Harris already holds that role. There must be a national czar, Adams said at a Jan. 17 press conference held at New York City Hall. I think it should be done through FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], he added. We should treat this the same way we treat any major disaster or major crisis. That should be coordinating with the Border Patrol, coordinating with our cities, our states, to make sure that we as a country absorb this national issue. The Democratic mayor recently returned from a weekend tour of the Texan border city of El Paso, which he described on Jan. 17 as a beautiful city thats been overrun by the recent surge of illegal immigrants crossing the border. El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, also a Democrat, has declared a state of emergency in the city because of the overwhelming influx of illegal immigrants. Leeser and Adams have been critical of the Biden administrations approach to the situation, saying that not enough is being done at the federal level to ease the burden on cities and states. Our cities are being undermined, Adams said on Jan. 15 in El Paso. And we dont deserve this. Migrants dont deserve this and the people who live in the cities dont deserve this. We expect more from our national leaders to address this issue in a real way. Despite his previous assertions that there is no room in New York for additional illegal immigrants, Adams said on Jan. 17 that suspending the citys self-professed sanctuary status as a deterrent is not on the agenda at all. I think of, as we celebrated the birth of Jesus, he was faced with a no more room, but there was a place that was found, he said. And thats what we are doing. We have no more room, but we are still finding spaces and accommodating. And we are going to continue to do that. That is our law, that is our obligation, and that is whats morally right. Border Czar In March 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Harris as the official border czar to lead the administrations response to the growing crisis at the southern border. Every month since, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has recorded more than 150,000 encounters with noncitizens at the border, and for fiscal year 2022, encounters totaled more than 2.3 millionthe highest number on record. So far, Harris has made only one visit to the southern border as vice president. That trip took place in June 2021after much public pressureduring which she visited a migrant processing center in Texas. In October 2022, it was thought that Harris might visit the border again, while in Texas for a political fundraiser, but no such tour occurred. I dont understand why the vice president just wont take an hour plane ride to the border and just listen, talk to people, just show up and say, Hey, we are here to help. Just say, The administration hasnt abandoned you something! Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas) said at the time. Meanwhile, the president just took his first tour of the border on Jan. 8 in El Paso, where he met with border personnel, observed how they conduct their work, and visited the border wall and affected areas of the city. They need a lot of resources, Biden said after surveying the situation. Were going to get it for them. Days prior to the visit, Biden announced new measures aimed at securing the border and slowing the flow of illegal immigration, including turning away Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans who arrive illegally at the border, and rejecting illegal aliens who dont seek asylum first in a country they traveled through en route to the United States. At the same time, up to 30,000 people per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela who arrive in the country legally will be allowed to come to the United States for two years and be allowed to work, provided they have a sponsor and pass background checks. For Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the presidents visit was $20 billion too late and two years too late, according to the scathing letter (pdf) hand-delivered by the Republican to Biden upon his arrival. Last year, in protest of what the governor described as the administrations lack of leadership at the border, Abbott bused nearly 16,000 illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities around the country, including Washington, where several busloads of illegal immigrants were dropped off near Harriss residence in September 2022 and on Christmas Eve. Criticizing Biden in his Jan. 8 letter, Abbott asserted: Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings. Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance. Officials at the White House and Adamss office in New York didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. Oil Prices Gain Around 1 Percent on Optimism Over Chinas Recovery A PetroChina worker inspects a pump jack at an oil field in Tacheng, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, on June 27, 2018. (Stringer AT/Reuters) LONDONOil prices rose on Wednesday to their highest since early December on optimism that the lifting of Chinas strict COVID-19 curbs will lead to a fuel demand recovery in the worlds top oil importer. Brent crude futures were up $1.21, or 1.41 percent, to $87.13 a barrel by 0942 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up $1.36, or 1.7 percent, to $81.54. Both were at their highest since early December. Chinas economic growth slowed sharply to 3 percent in 2022, missing the official target of around 5.5 percent and marking its second-worst performance since 1976. But the data still beat analysts forecasts after China started rolling back its zero-COVID policy in early December. Analysts polled by Reuters see 2023 growth rebounding to 4.9 percent. The lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in China is set to boost global oil demand this year to a new record high, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday, while price cap sanctions on Russia could dent supply. The IEA report followed expectations from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that Chinese oil demand would grow by 510,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year after contracting for the first time in years in 2022 due to COVID-19 containment measures. But OPEC kept its 2023 global demand growth forecast unchanged. Further support came from expectations of a drawdown in U.S. crude stocks by around 1.8 million barrels in the week to Jan. 13, according to a Reuters poll. The poll was conducted ahead of reports from the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, due at 4:30 p.m. ET (2130 GMT) on Wednesday. On the supply side, oil output from top shale regions in the United States is due to rise by about 77,300 bpd to a record 9.38 million bpd in February, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday. Ontario Integrity Commissioner, Auditor General to Launch Greenbelt Investigations A hiker starts on a high graded hill climb at the Rouge Urban National Park in Toronto on June 15, 2021. (Giordano Ciampini/The Canadian Press) Ontarios integrity commissioner and auditor general both announced Wednesday that they would conduct separate investigations into the governments decision to open protected Greenbelt lands up to housing development. The integrity commissioner is launching an investigation into Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark based on a complaint from incoming NDP leader Marit Stiles. She sought an investigation into what she calls curious timing of recent purchases of Greenbelt land by powerful landowners with donor and political ties to the Ontario PC Party. Stiles cited media reports that some developers bought that land over the past few years despite Clark and the premier previously publicly saying it wouldnt be developed, with one purchase happening as recently as September two months before Clark announced hed open the lands up. The whole point of this is to shine a light, I think, in some of the dark corners to see whether or not anything has actually been conducted improperly, she said at a press conference Wednesday. These are rich developers, these are donors to the (Progressive) Conservative Party and so we want to make sure that they werent given any kind of special heads-up or that they werent given any special treatment here. Obviously, the result of the governments change of heart is going to benefit and make a lot of money for very few people. Clark announced in November that the government will remove land from 15 different areas of the protected Greenbelt, while adding acres elsewhere so that 50,000 homes can be built. Stiles asked the integrity commissioner to investigate whether Clark broke ethics rules around making a public policy decision to further someones private interests. Clark and Premier Doug Ford have both denied tipping off developers ahead of the public announcement. Clark looks forward to being cleared of any wrongdoing at the conclusion of the investigation, a spokesperson for the minister said in an emailed statement. The integrity commissioner declined to investigate a similar complaint by Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner, saying Stiles request and extensive affidavit and supporting material did provide reasonable and probable grounds to start an investigation. Commissioner J. David Wake wrote that when given a chance to respond to Schreiners complaint, Ford and Clark said the specific Greenbelt lands were selected by development by public servants who were subject to an enhanced confidentiality protocol. Stiles, Schreiner and interim Liberal Leader John Fraser had also jointly written to the auditor general to ask her to conduct a value-for-money audit of financial and environmental implications of the Greenbelt decision. Bonnie Lysyk confirmed in a letter Wednesday to the three leaders that she would investigate. This issue has garnered significant public attention over the past few months and has been repeatedly raised during question periods in the legislature. We have received considerable correspondence on this issue, Lysyk wrote. While requests from individual members of the legislature and the public are assessed and factor into our audit work, a letter requesting us to conduct work in a specific area jointly signed by the leaders of all Opposition parties of the Ontario Legislative Assembly is a request of high significance. The government has assured Lysyk she will have their full co-operation, she said. Audit work is set to start in the next few weeks. A spokesperson for Clark said the developments will see desperately needed affordable and attainable homes built, and that the government pledges to set aside any environmentally sensitive areas to protect them before any construction begins. Schreiner said he is glad the two investigations will go ahead, though he conceded that neither office has particularly strong disciplinary powers. But the court of public opinion is powerful and the people of Ontario need to know the truth, he said at a press conference. There needs to be transparency and accountability around these land deals that do not pass the smell test. Police in Georgia Arrest Suspect in Mall of America Shooting An officer stands inside Nordstrom at Mall of America after a shooting in Bloomington, Minn., on Dec. 23, 2022. (Abbie Parr/AP Photo) BLOOMINGTON, Minn.A suspect wanted in connection with a fatal shooting at the Mall of America in December was arrested in Georgia on Tuesday, police said. Bloomington, Minnesota, Police Chief Booker Hodges said during a news conference Tuesday that the 17-year-old suspect was taken into custody in Decatur, Georgia, by federal and state law enforcement officials. The suspect faces charges of second-degree murder and second-degree assault. The Associated Press typically does not name juvenile criminal defendants. Johntae Hudson, 19, was killed in a Dec. 23 shooting at the Mall of America, the nations largest shopping center located in Bloomington. Hudson was shot eight times and died during an altercation inside the malls Nordstrom store. Witnesses, mall security guards, and first responders tried to save him. Customers scrambled for safety and the nations largest shopping center went into lockdown on one of the final days of the holiday shopping season. The suspect arrested Tuesday in Decatur, an Atlanta suburb, was one of four suspects charged by Minnesota prosecutors in December. They include two other 17-year-olds and 18-year-old Taeshawn Adams Wright. Wright faces counts of second-degree murder and second-degree assault. The two 17-year-olds have been charged with second-degree riot while armed with a dangerous weapon. Hodges said police on Tuesday also arrested the teenage suspects mother in Golden Valley, Minnesota. She was charged with aiding and abetting the suspect for allegedly driving him to Georgia following the shooting. The suspect remains in custody in Georgia pending extradition to Minnesota. The U.S. Marshals Service, Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, the Fulton County Sheriffs Office, and the DeKalb County Sheriffs Office were involved in the arrest Tuesday, WAGA-TV reported. Prominent CNN Doctor Concedes US Has Been Overcounting COVID-19 Deaths Dr. Leana Wen speaks during the funeral services for late U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) at the New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, Md., on Oct. 25, 2019. (Lloyd Fox/Pool/Getty Images) A doctor who appeared prominently in the media during the pandemic acknowledged this week the United States is overcounting COVID-19 deaths and stressed the need for transparent reporting on the real numbers. Leana Wen, a former Planned Parenthood director who now works for CNN and the Washington Post, told the channel that natural immunity and vaccinations have reduced severe COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. Hospitals are still routinely testing everyone whos getting admitted for COVID, Wen, also a former director of the Baltimore City Health Department, said in response to a question about whether her statements could be fodder for conspiracy theorists. Were seeing many people who are hospitalized with COVID, and I think its important to separate out who is being hospitalized because of it, Wen added. Because there are a lot of people who are still very concerned about their risk from COVID and we need to give them the most accurate data possible so that they can better gauge their risks. There are people still not resuming indoor dining or going to the gym or socializing. We have to give them the most accurate reporting as possible. In a Washington Post opinion piece, Wen noted that current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that about 400 people are dying from the virus every day. She then asked a question that many others have asked over the past three years: But are these Americans dying from COVID or with COVID? Two infectious-disease experts I spoke with believe that the number of deaths attributed to COVID is far greater than the actual number of people dying from COVID, she wrote. Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgias chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness. Some patients have several concurrent infections, not just COVID-19. People who have very low white blood cell counts from chemotherapy might be admitted because of bacterial pneumonia or foot gangrene, Dretler was quoted as saying. They may also have COVID, but COVID is not the main reason why theyre so sick. With COVID? But if those patients die, the doctor said that COVID-19 may get added to their death certificatesmeaning, theyre counted as a COVID-19 death. Thats despite COVID-19 not being the primary factor that caused the deaths. Notably, several Northern California counties in mid-2021 changed how they counted COVID-19 deaths. In one county, the death figure dropped by 22 percent, while in another, 400 fewer deaths were reported following the changes. A health care worker wheels in a stretcher in the ER at Oakbend Medical Center in Richmond, Texas, on July 15, 2020. (Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images) Months before that, an article published by the Association of American Medical Colleges noted that counting COVID-19 deaths is complicated and provided an example. An elderly man in Atlanta was stricken with advanced cancer in early 2021, later contracting COVID-19 before ultimately passing away. Given his already fragile state, his condition quickly took a turn for the worse and he later died, a doctor said. Despite having advanced cancer, medical officials listed his death as caused by COVID-19. While he was very weak and frail from his underlying cancer, his death was undoubtedly accelerated and precipitated by COVID-19, Dr. Sara Auld told the association. Following the publication of her Washington Post opinion piece, some conservatives and COVID-19 vaccine skeptics suggested Wen is behind the curve. A year ago, this was a conspiracy theory that would get you censored, wrote prominent vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. on Twitter on Monday. And California-based Epidemiologist Dr. Tracy Hoegn wrote Monday that it is amazing how long it has taken the U.S. to accept this is a problem, noting that Denmark in 2021 changed how they would distinguish those who died with COVID-19 and those who died from the virus. This is not just recently true. Its been true for three years! We truly do not know how many actually died from COVID, which means that not even the [case fatality rate] is accurate, wrote Jeffrey Tucker, the head of the Brownstone Institute and a columnist for The Epoch Times, wrote on Twitter. The Epoch Times first reported on how COVID deaths are counted in April 2020, and in September 2020 on how CDC data showed 94 percent of COVID deaths had contributing health conditions. Qantas Flight Safely Lands in Sydney From Auckland After Issuing Mayday Call An arriving Qantas Airbus A330 aircraft taxis at Auckland international airport in Auckland, New Zealand on Feb. 28, 2022. (David Rowland/AFP via Getty Images) A Qantas plane from Auckland has landed safely in Sydney after issuing a mayday call just over the Tasman Sea. The aeroplane, which landed at its destination at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, experienced engine problems an hour away from Sydney Airport and reported the loss of one of its two engines. Qantas Flight 144, a 737 flying from Auckland to Sydney, experienced an issue with one of its engines about an hour from its destination, Qantas said in a statement. While a mayday was initially issued, this has now been downgraded to a PAN (possible assistance needed). We will share more information about this incident once the aircraft is on the ground and has been assessed by our engineers. While inflight engine shutdowns are rare and concerning for passengers, pilots are trained to manage them safely and aircraft are designed to fly for an extended period on one engine, Qantas said. It said all 145 passengers disembarked the aircraft normally. Passengers onboard were informed about the engine problems when they landed while some reported that they heard a loud bang sound. A passenger, Leslie Spring, told Nine News she wasnt aware of any noticeable issues during the flight and praised the staffs professionalism. [The staff were] brilliant, if they hadnt told us we wouldnt have known, Spring said. [Staff] just said there would be a fire crew just in case, reassuring to know they were on the ball. Passenger Sandika McAuley said, I kind of heard the little bang and then a bit of turbulence, and we just thought okay, this is a bit weird. But we didnt really know anything until we landed, then we got told that there was a mayday call and the engine failed. James Mearon said he didnt realise how serious the situation was until he saw cameras waiting for passengers outside the terminal. Yeah it definitely was scary, he said. Passenger Fiona Dunne told AAP that the dysfunctioning air conditioning was one of the main issues. The aircon was gone so everyone was just frustrated and sweaty, I dont think there was that much panic, she said. Boeing 737s is capable of flying on one engine but any engine loss is considered very serious. A mayday call is an international distress signal used by ships and aircraft to indicate an aircraft is in grave and imminent danger and needs immediate assistance. Once the call is made controllers alert aviation rescue, firefighting and emergency services with details on how to respond. They also provide assistance to pilots. Qantas has never had a passenger lost on a jet aircraft in its history, aviation expert Neil Hansford told Sky News. What you may well find when the aircraft lands is that it may be prudence, rather than an uncontrollable situation. Qantas is rated as one of the worlds safest airlines. The news emerged only 3 days following the Yeti Airlines plane crash in Nepal, which killed at least 68 people, among whom was an Australian man. The cause for the crash remains unknown, with clear weather reported, but the planes black boxes have been located. The accident is the nations deadliest since 1992 when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside, killing 167 people. Since Christmas, the aviation industry has been struggling to meet increased demand for travel due to staff shortages and skyrocketing fuel prices. Workforce shortages have reportedly led to a reduction in the number of flights airlines were willing to offer which contributed to soaring prices and significant delays. AAP contributed to this report. Quebec Public Health Officials Recommend Province End Boosters For Those Under 60 A health worker prepares a syringe with COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic in Montreal on March 15, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson) Quebec public health officials are recommending to Premier Francois Legaults government that people under 60 years of age should not receive boosters, CBC reports. On Jan. 18, Radio-Canada reported that under a new vaccination strategy from the Quebec Immunization Committee, which has not yet been approved by the government, booster doses will continue to be offered free to residents who want them, but would only be recommended for certain groups. CBC quotes a source who took part in the recommendations as saying, We dont really want people under 60 to get a dose every six months. The Health Ministry is considering recommendations to provide COVID-19 boosters six months after receiving a second shot in the series only to those the government deems at risk of complications. They include residents of long-term care facilities, immunocompromised people, dialysis patients, health-care workers, pregnant women and adults living remotely, or individuals who have never had COVID. Under the recommendations, even those who have had COVID could skip a booster dose if theyd already had a course of two doses and one booster. According to provincial statistics, 65.6 percent of adults in Quebec have received three shotstwo doses plus a booster. Ninety-four percent of elderly patients living in long-term care facilities have received three doses, and 85 percent of health-care workers. Among the chronically ill, 81 percent have had three shots. In children aged 511, 43 percent have had three shots, while 78 percent of teens aged 1217 have had the full course. Alain Lamarre, professor and researcher of virology and immunology at the National Institute for Scientific Research, told CBC that the new recommendations are reasonable, and that most people will not require another booster every five or six months as they have already had COVID, and possibly even Omicron, which is similar to a new virus in circulation. He said there is no significant benefit in getting an extra booster for someone who already has two shots and a booster. On Jan. 17, the province had 16 new deaths and 616 hospitalizations connected with COVID, and 30 patients in intensive care. Record 14,507 People Being Held on Remand in England and Wales During Court Backlog, Say MPs Tory MP urges magistrates and judges to consider 'better alternatives' UK Justice Secretary Dominic Raab with a prison officer at the opening of category C prison HMP Five Wells in Wellingborough, United Kingdom, on March 4, 2022. (Joe Giddens/PA) The number of people being held on remand awaiting trial in England and Wales has risen to 14,507, the highest it has been for 50 years and a jump of 44 percent in 18 months, according to a committee of MPs. The backlog of trials caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and last years barristers strike have been blamed for the rise in the number of remand prisoners. The Justice Committees report said: In the first half of the last decade, there was a decline in the remand population. However, recent years have seen a significant increaseas of 30 September 2022, the daily remand population stood at 14,507. This represented a 44% increase from 31 March 2020 when the population was 10,043. The remand prison population is currently the highest it has been for at least 50 years. The new figures also showed 770 people had been held in prison for two years without trial, a jump of 60 percent from December 2021. The report said many of those 770 would be acquitted or would be given sentences shorter than the period they had spent on remand. There are currently 60,000 cases awaiting trial and it is taking an average of 280 days before cases come before crown court trials. Custodial Remand Is a Necessary Tool More than half of those on remand were being held for non-violent offences and Sir Bob Neill, the chair of the Justice Committee, said: Custodial remand is a necessary tool in the justice system for protecting the public from dangerous offenders or ensuring those at risk of absconding are brought to trial. But too often it is being used as an easy option in cases of low-level repeat offending or social problems, with little thought for the lasting consequences this can have on the individual. Neill, who is the Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, said: Depriving someone of their liberty under any circumstances can mean losing employment, accommodation, and familial contact. For this to happen when an individual is yet to be convicted of a crime is a serious measure and should not be taken lightly. Yet those subject to remand are not given adequate support to mitigate these effects. Almost half of prison suicides in England and Wales in recent years have involved inmates on remand. In February 2019, Garry Beadle, 36, committed suicide in Durham prison a few days after being remanded in custody for the first time in his life for a relatively minor offence. In January 2020 Liridon Saliuka, 29, hanged himself in his cell in Belmarsh prison in London. Saliuka had been awaiting trial for a murder he always insisted he was innocent of, and in November 2022 an inquest found there had been significant and multiple failings by the authorities. The inquest heard Saliuka had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in 2018 and suffered from back pain which was exacerbated if he did not have a special mattress. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, told the committee: If someone comes into prison, they are not routinely getting the support on things like finance, benefit, debt, housing, direct debits, and bills that they would have expected to have in the past. I went to places like Belmarsh, for example, where almost overnight the rug had been pulled on many of those services. There was a real concern that prisoners were remanded and spending longer periods of time on remand and the population was growing, but some of the services they might have expected simply were not there. Remand Prisoners Spending Too Much Time Locked in Cells Taylor said: We find too many prisoners spending too much time locked up behind their door. What we often see is that the remand population is last in the pecking order when it comes to things like the allocation of jobs, education, or training, which means that it is the remand population that is likely to be spending longer behind their door every day. Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, told the committee prisons holding remand prisoners were often the ones struggling the most to maintain effective regimes and as a result there was a lack of meaningful activities for those held on remand to engage in. Neill said there were often better alternatives, including electronic tagging or conditional bail. The report said: Conditional bail is a good alternative to remanding defendants to custody while also placing restrictions on the activity of an individual to help ensure they do not commit further crimes while on bail or abscond before their trial. However, there is no point applying bail conditions that are so onerous that it [is] unrealistic that a defendant will be able to comply with them. The report urged the government to engage with the judiciary on how to improve the consistency of bail conditions, for example, by introducing a framework of guidelines on bail conditions to ensure they provide an effective alternative to custodial remand. The Epoch Times has contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar Back on Committee Assignments After Being Stripped of Them in Previous Congress Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) smiles at Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Two Republican House lawmakers landed committee assignments after having been stripped of them in the previous Democrat-controlled Congress on separate occasions in 2021. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) had both been stripped of their committee seats in 2021 over social media posts they had made. Their reinstatement to various committees fulfills a promise by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) who said back in November 2021 they would regain their committee posts for the 118th Congress if Republicans win the House. Both Greene and Gosar are now assigned to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, where Gosar had previously served. Greene is also assigned to the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Gosar will also hold a seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, where he previously served. The Oversight committee is expected to be the forefront of investigating the Biden administration. Most recently, committee Republicans began a probe into President Joe Bidens handling classified documents that were found at his office and Delaware home. The Homeland Security committee makes decisions on laws pertinent to U.S. national security, including on border security, counterterrorism, and cybersecurity, among others. It also conducts Congressional oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Natural Resources committee looks at legislation regarding energy, mineral and water resources, and national parks and public lands. It also conducts Congressional oversight of the Departments of the Interior, Commerce, and Agriculture. Greene Vows to Investigate Federal Government Greene issued statements late Tuesday upon her new assignments. She said the Oversight Committee is arguably the most important committee [in] this Congress. We will return the role of the Oversight Committee to investigating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of the federal government, which is exactly what the American people are fed up with, she wrote. Joe Biden, be prepared. We are going to uncover every corrupt business dealing, every foreign entanglement, every abuse of power, and every check cut for The Big Guy. She added that Republicans will also investigate every bit of government being used to abuse the American people, which includes every three and four letter agency. On her appointment to the Homeland Security Committee, Green highlighted security issues including a surge in illegal immigration across the southern border, Chinese fentanyl entering the United States via Mexican cartels, and cyber attacks. We will investigate the Biden administrations violations of our laws and fund (and defund) programs to defend our border and American sovereignty, Greene said. Gosar, in an interview with The Epoch Times back in January 2021, had said several Democrats should be stripped of their committee assignments if Republicans win the House. At the time, he singled out Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) should be ejected from their committees, citing potential conflicts of interest and other concerns he has with the lawmakers. McCarthy has previously pledged to oust Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) announced on Twitter Tuesday: Speaker McCarthy confirms that Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar are getting kicked off the Intel and Foreign Affairs Committees. Promises made. Promises kept! How Greene, Gosar Were Removed from Committee Seats Greene had been stripped of her committee assignments in February 2021 on a vote of 230199, largely on party linesjust a month after she was sworn into Congress for the first time. At the time, Greene had been assigned to the House Budget Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee. Democrats cited social media posts she made before she entered office as grounds to remove her. At the time, McCarthy had denounced Greenes past comments but called on House Republicans to vote against the Democratic resolution to take away her committee assignments. Of concern were posts where Greene had speculated that the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks were a false flag and alleged that deadly U.S. school shootings were staged, among other theories. Reports also claimed that Greene had liked a Facebook comment suggesting that a bullet to the head of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would be quicker. Hours before the vote to remove her, Greene took time to clarify some of her past comments and actions. She said that her statements about school shootings and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were words of the past and no longer reflect her views. At the time, Republicans argued on the House floor that the way Greene was removed from committees violated her due process. Months later, in November 2021, the Democrat-led House voted 223207 to censure Gosar, stripping him of his committee assignments on the Oversight and Natural Resources committees. Being censured is considered the harshest punishment for a House lawmaker, after expulsion. Gosar was targeted over a video he posted to his Twitter page that showed anime characters, with one whose face was overlaid with his striking down another whose face was overlaid with the face of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) as scenes of contemporary U.S. events play out in the clip. Prior to the House vote on the motion to censure him, Gosar took down the video but did not issue any apology for the content. Jack Phillips contributed to this report. Riverside County Mourns Another Sheriffs Deputy Shot in Line of Duty Riverside County Sheriffs Deputies surrounded by more than 1,500 mourners hold candles in honor of slain Deputy Darnell Calhoun at the sheriffs departments station in Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Jan. 17, 2023. (Brad Jones/The Epoch Times) More than 1,500 mourners gathered outside the Riverside County Sheriffs office in Lake Elsinore on Jan. 17 at a candlelight vigil to honor slain deputy Darnell Calhoun. Calhoun, 30, was one of two sheriffs deputies who were killed in the line of duty in shootings just two weeks apart. He was shot on Jan. 13 while responding to an alleged domestic violence incident in the Lakeland Village community that borders the city of Lake Elsinore, about 55 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. He died in the hospital later that evening. Calhoun is survived by his wife and two sons. He served for two years with the San Diego Police Department before he joined the Riverside County Sheriffs Department in February 2022 and was assigned to the Lake Elsinore station. Sheriff Chad Bianco paid tribute to the fallen deputy and thanked his wife Vanessa for encouraging law enforcement officers to honor her husband by continuing to do the right thing. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco honors slain Deputy Darnell Calhoun at the sheriffs departments station in Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Jan. 17, 2023. (Brad Jones/The Epoch Times) In this undated photo provided by the Riverside County Sheriff, Deputy Darnell Calhoun (R), poses with Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco (L) in Riverside, Calif. (Courtesy Riverside County Sheriff) We put our uniforms on every day. We leave our families, we leave our parents, we leave our wives, we leave our husbands, we leave our kids. And we come to work hoping to make a difference in someone elses life, hoping to console a victim, hoping to bring peace to a victim, protect the victim, Bianco said. Every day, in the back of their minds, deputies know they might not make it home, he said. There are a lot of people that say that we chose this profession. I dont know if I believe that. I think that the profession chooses us. It takes a special kind of person to be able to come to work every day knowing that you could sacrifice your life for someone else and leave your family behind, and Darnell was that kind of man, Bianco said. Calhouns death has compounded the grief of a community and department that is still reeling from the murder of another deputy, Bianco said, referring to Isaiah Cordero, 32, who was shot and killed on Dec. 29 by the driver of a vehicle he had pulled over during a traffic stop. Bianco said an attempt to demonize police in recent years and make people believe law enforcement is the enemy only emboldens criminals and increases the odds of more officers being killed. Sgt. Jesse Waldon (L) and Sgt. Jesse Marquez of the Corona Police Department attend a candlelight vigil for slain Riverside County Sheriffs Deputy Darnell Calhoun in Lake Elsinore, Calif. on Jan. 17, 2023. (Brad Jones/The Epoch Times) And while criminal justice reform sounds great and is needed, many government policies in California arent working, he said. Theres no consequence for criminals. Thefts are increasing, violence is increasing. And our legislators and lawmakers just keep letting people out of prison, letting people out of jail making things not crimes that used to be crimes, and then somehow lying to you again and telling you that its working, he said. Calhoun epitomized service above self, Bianco said. The support that we have been receiving at the sheriffs department from all over the country has been phenomenal. It is refreshing. Lake Elsinore Mayor Natasha Johnson told mourners that Calhouns sacrifice will never be forgotten. Deputy Calhoun was a God-loving, devoted husband, son, brother, father, his wife Vanessa pregnant with her third child, a son, whom he will never be able to see grow up because of this senseless act of violence. His sacrifice reminds us of the ultimate price our law enforcement officers are willing to pay to keep our families and our communities safe, she said. Riverside County Supervisor Karen Spiegel urged those gathered to show support for Calhoun and his family. He was a compassionate man and a leader in community policing who believed in people, she said. Xavier Anaya holds a candle at a vigil for slain Riverside County Sheriffs Deputy Darnell Calhoun at the sheriffs departments station in Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Jan. 17, 2023. (Brad Jones/The Epoch Times) We all need to continue to rally together as a community and wrap our arms around this very special grieving family. Some faiths and cultures teach that those who have passed away are not forgotten because they live on in the hearts of us. We need to talk about Deputy Calhoun. Say his name. Share his memories, she said. Law enforcement officers from other agencies, including San Diego and Corona, turned out for the event. Mourners of all ages lit candles in honor of Calhoun and sang Amazing Grace. Many stayed after the ceremony to thank and hug the sheriff and deputies. David Anaya, who recently moved from Los Angeles to Canyon Lake, a gated community near Lake Elsinore, attended the vigil with his family. He told The Epoch Times that police officers dont get the respect they deserve in Los Angeles. Law enforcement gets vilified so much, he said. People forget theyre here to protect us and this is a harsh reminder of what they do, the ultimate sacrifice that they make. Its sad that it comes to this. Theyre not appreciated enough. John Colvin, a Lake Elsinore resident, said he ventured out last Friday night to find the police procession for Calhoun as several helicopters marked the path. That night, hundreds of people, some waving flags and banners, lined the streets and overpasses along Interstate 215 to pay tribute to the fallen deputy and show respect for police as Calhouns body was moved from a hospital in Wildomar to the county Coroners Bureau in Perris. Colvin, a former U.S. Marine, said he couldnt believe what had happened and is still shocked. His daughter, Johanna, said two deputies killed within two weeks is pretty extreme. Its definitely a big tragedy, especially living in Lake Elsinore, she said. Im still young and just the fact that he was my age is also just crazy. John Colvin and his daughter, Johanna Colvin, attend a vigil in honor of fallen Deputy Darnell Calhoun at the Riverside County Sheriffs Departments station in Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Jan. 17, 2023. (Brad Jones/The Epoch Times) The Riverside Sheriffs Association has set up funds to assist the Calhoun and Cordero families. California Gov. Gavin Newsom paid tribute to Calhoun in a Jan. 14 statement on behalf of himself and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Jennifer and I are heartbroken by the loss of Deputy Calhoun, a dedicated public servant who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and all those he served with at the Riverside County Sheriffs Department, who are mourning the painful loss of another deputy weeks ago. Deputy Calhoun died a hero and his bravery and selfless service will always be remembered. In honor of Calhoun, flags at the State Capitol were flown at half-staff on Saturday. Another remembrance ceremony is planned for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 18 at the Town Square Park and Amphitheater in Murrieta. The fallen sheriffs deputys family owns Calhouns Texas Family Barbeque in Murrieta. 9 San Diego Officials Walk out of Meeting After Votes Overruled The San Diego Association of Governors (SANDAG) use of the weighted vote provision of its bylaws has drawn some criticism, as nine board members walked out of a Jan. 13 meeting in protest of the procedure. Board members on Jan. 13 voted 109 to elect Del Mar Mayor Terry Gaasterland as its second vice chair. But then board member and San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas called for a weighted vote which overruled the majority, and San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera was chosen. Each SANDAG board member has one vote, called a tally vote. However, for a so-called weighted vote, each also has votes based on the percentage of the population they represent. According to the boards bylaws, a tally vote is required to take final action on most items. In those cases, a simple majority of the voting members prevails. However, after such a vote, any two members may call for a weighted vote. The boards weighted vote on Jan. 13 passed by 77 percent, in spite of the nine members walking out in protest. Santee Mayor John Minto, who walked out of the meeting, said in a statement after the decision, Today was an extreme case, because I was told today, you dont count. We dont even want to hear from you, and so I had to say, if you dont want to hear from me, then I have to leave. However, among those who support the weighted vote procedure was newly appointed Elo-Rivera, who said after the walkout, This idea that the only way to achieve fairness is by throwing away the weighted vote is a fiction. Anyone who says that the City of San Diego should put the weighted vote aside is telling me that our residents matter less. This is about proportional representation. San Diego Police Fatally Shoot Armed Man After He Killed Woman CREST, Calif.A 77-year-old armed man was fatally shot by police Jan. 18 during a confrontation in a neighborhood east of El Cajon, authorities reported. The law enforcement shooting in the 800 block of La Cresta Boulevard in Crest occurred shortly before 5 p.m., sheriffs Lt. Chris Steffen said. Paramedics attempted to perform life-saving measure, but the man, whose name was not immediately available, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to authorities. No other injuries were reported. The man was armed during the confrontation, said Steffen, who added it appeared he had a shotgun. Police initially shot the man with a less-lethal bean bag, but it had no effect, according to police. The suspect was located in the rear of his residence after San Diego police officers coordinated with Sheriffs Deputies to check the La Cresta address utilizing a Sheriffs Helicopter, according to police. There were no other suspects in this incident. The Sheriffs Homicide Unit responded and assumed responsibility of the officer-involved shooting investigation. There is body-worn camera footage of the fatal shooting, according to authorities. Events that led to the law enforcement shooting began about 4 p.m., when a 66-year-old woman was fatally stabbed in the 5500 block of Reservoir Drive in the College area, San Diego Police Department public affairs Lt. Adam Sharki said. Officers from the departments Eastern Division were dispatched to the location after receiving a radio call reporting a violent disturbance and upon their arrival found the business locked. The officers entered the pharmacy forcibly and found the woman suffering from multiple stab wounds to her upper body. Paramedics from the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department arrived and took the woman to a hospital where she died at 4:46 p.m., according to police. Sharki said it appears the suspect and victim were either co-owners or employees of the business where this incident occurred. The dead woman was identified; however, her name is not being released at this time pending family notifications. Mr. Kawamoto Hideki, the president of a medical system development company, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Annie Gong/The Epoch Times) KAWAGUCHI, JapanShen Yun Performing Arts World Company kicked off the first of three performances at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17. Attendees expressed their joy and happiness after attending the show. Shen Yun is worth attending again and again! said Mr. Kawamoto Hideki, the president of a medical system development company. Seeing it for yourself is a hundred times better than what you hear from others, he said, adding, Shen Yun has important educational significance for modern people. Mr. Kawamoto said he was captivated by Shen Yun, and Shen Yun is a must-see performance for three reasons. The dancers have extraordinary skills. The costumes are gorgeous. And the dynamic backdrop is unique and creative. Shen Yun combines these three factors perfectly. Its really worth seeing, he said. Mr. Kawamoto emphasized that Shen Yun delivers something of priceless value, which inspired him. He said he appreciated Shen Yuns efforts. History cant be purchased with any money. Its accumulated with the times changing History is the foundation (of a nation), he said. Shen Yun perfectly interprets the 5,000-year history and culture of China in the form of art So I say Shen Yun is a must-see. New York-based Shen Yun is the worlds top classical Chinese dance company. It has a mission to show the beauty and goodness of the 5,000 years of Chinas civilization. Chinese culture was built on values and virtues from the spiritual teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, virtues like loyalty, propriety, wisdom, justice, and benevolencevalues that are universal and shared the world over. I Want to Attend Shen Yun Every Year The classical Chinese dance is awesome. Its very beautiful. No matter the male dancers or female dancers, their skills and techniques are outstanding. They bring you aesthetic feelings, they are fantastic, said Mr. Kawai Minetaka, a department manager of a Japanese bank. Mr. Kawai marveled at Shen Yuns patented dynamic backdrops, which can extend the stage to a broader and wider space. This is the first time I saw a backdrop that can present the scenes of historical stories and legends so vividly. Its very interesting, he said. Mr. Kawai Minetaka, a department manager of a Japanese bank, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Fujino Takeshi/The Epoch Times) Mr. Kawai had worked at a bank in Hong Kong for five years and said he likes traditional Chinese culture. I think the traditional Chinese culture is very nice. Shen Yun uses the art form to save and pass on the Chinese traditions and culture I admire these artists very much, he said. Watching their performance, I have an inexplicable sense of nostalgia. Mr. Kawai said he enjoyed Shen Yun a lot, and he was very happy to know that Shen Yun has an entirely new production every year. From now on, I want to attend Shen Yun every year, he said. Each Shen Yun performance consists of nearly 20 vignettes, presented through highly-expressive art forms such as classical Chinese dance, original orchestral music performed live, soloists who sing in the bel canto tradition, animated digital backdrops, and more. Mr. Tazima Hiro, the president of an insurance company, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Annie Gong/The Epoch Times) Shen Yun Is Enchanting, Theatergoers Say Mr. Tazima Hiro, the president of an insurance company, couldnt contain his happiness when he told The Epoch Times about his experience of attending Shen Yun. The live orchestra is excellent. The music is wonderful. The musicians work very hard, and they did a great job, said Mr. Tazima. I especially like erhu (a two-stringed and bowed instrument). Its sound is very elegant with strong Chinese character. Its mesmerizing. Mr. Tazima said he indulged in Shen Yuns beauty. The costumes and hairstyles are unique. The colors are saturated. I was very touched to see them, he said. I have never seen a dance as good as Shen Yuns. Through Shen Yun, I can feel the power of nature. Its astounding. Mr. Taneie Hisao, the president of a housing rental company, attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Kawaguchi Comprehensive Cultural Center Lilia in Kawaguchi, Japan, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Annie Gong/The Epoch Times) Im very touched! Very touched! said Mr. Taneie Hisao, the president of a housing rental company, after attending Shen Yun. Mr. Taneie said the dancers touched his heart not only because of their rarely seen excellent technique and flawless performance, but also with their pure hearts. Their smiles are not artificial. You can feel that they smile naturally, (which presents their hearts), he said. I enjoyed it a lot. Reporting by Epoch Times Staff in Kawaguchi, Japan. The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006. South Dakotas Noem Comments on Possible 2024 Run South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem commented on the possibility of running for president in 2024, saying shes in no rush to make a decision. Do you not feel a rush, governor, to make a decision on 2024? a reporter asked Noem, a Republican, as she appeared on CBS. I dont at all. No. I think that its important that people focus on governing, rather than going out and making big, broad statements and going out and taking action for their own political futures, Noem, 51, said. The governor said South Dakota has been taking action to defend personal responsibility and freedom and that shed continue down that path. I do believe that the American people are desperate for someone whos not talking politics, who instead is taking action to protect our way of life, she said. Noem, a former congresswoman, has been floated as a possible challenger to former President Donald Trump, the only Republican to formally launch a 2024 bid as of yet. President Trumps policies were very good for South Dakota. I worked with him for over two years on tax reform, which I was passionate about. He cared a lot about keeping America strong, defending us from our enemiesboth here and abroad. So his policies helped my people be successful. And if we could go back to a day where we had those policies in place, we would continue to thrive far into the future, Noem said. The governor acknowledged being in the conversation but said, at this point, shes not certain that she must run for the highest office in the country. Im not convinced that I need to run for president. But I also believe that this country needs somebody to lead us that has a vision, that appreciates the freedoms that this country provides to the people that live here, and really does want to protect them and our constitutional rights going forward, Noem said. I think that as we go through the coming months, and even the next year, year and a half, that leader will emerge. Noem won a second term as governor in the 2022 election with 62 percent of the vote. Trump, who announced his bid just after the midterms, has said that he would be a strong leader if elected to another term. Among his stated aims are to defend the family as the center of American life, protect parental input in public education, and to dismantle the deep state. Trump, 76, won the 2016 election but lost the 2020 race to President Joe Biden, 80. Trump backed Noem in the midterms and Noem said in mid-2022 on a podcast that if Trump runs, Ill support him. But several months later, Noem told the New York Times that Trump does not give Republicans the best chance to win the 2024 race. Nikki Haley, 50, the former South Carolina governor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump presidency, said around the same time that she might launch a 2024 bit despite previously promising she would not do so if Trump ran again. Other potential Republican candidates include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 44; former Vice President Mike Pence, 63; former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, 66; former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), 56; and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), 52. While some Republicans see an opening to beat Trump after he fended off rivals in 2016, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said recently that people should not write off Trumps chances. Trump endures persecution and eludes prosecution like no other public figure, Conway wrote in an op-ed, though she added later that it would also be foolish to assume that Mr. Trumps path to another presidency would be smooth and secure. Southwest Airlines Pilots Set Strike Authorization Vote to Wake Up Company Officials Members of Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) protest company prioritizing stock buybacks over labor contracts outside the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 7, 2022. (SWAPA) Southwest Airlines pilots have set a historic strike-authorization vote following a lack of progress in contract negotiations and a massive operational meltdown. In a Jan. 18 announcement, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) stated that a vote has been scheduled to begin on May 1 and that it will ultimately give pilots the ability to strike. The union, which represents about 10,000 pilots, stated that this will be the first time in the airlines 51-year history that such a vote will be held. SWAPA Vice President Capt. Michael Santoro said in a Facebook post that the union is exasperated. He called the vote a tool we must employ to wake up management. Weve tried everything to get the attention of [CEO] Bob Jordan and [Chief Operating Officer] Andrew Watterson, Santoro said. Weve had leadership meetings, data exchanges, negotiations, informational pickets, and extensive media coverage. Nothing has moved the needle. Capt. Michael Santoro, first vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. (SWAPA.org) Earlier this week, as SWAPA was discussing the potential for such a vote, Southwest Airlines said in an email to The Epoch Times that the unions mention of a strike-authorization vote does not affect Southwests operation or its ability to take care of its customers. In a statement posted to the airlines website, Adam Carlisle, vice president of Southwests labor relations, reacted to the unions decision. We will continue to follow the process outlined in the Railway Labor Act and work, under the assistance of the National Mediation Board, toward reaching an agreement that rewards our pilots and places them competitively in the industry, he wrote. The unions potential vote does not hinder our ongoing efforts at the negotiating table. The next negotiations session is set for Jan. 24. Since October 2022, the National Mediation Board has been assisting. Southwest stated that mediators set the dates, location, and agenda for negotiating sessions and have continued to drive the parties toward closing out certain sections before addressing the more complex items in the contract. The airline emphasized that the proposed vote is not an indication of an impending work stoppage and that the company remains focused on delivering a safe and reliable operation along with its legendary Southwest hospitality. The union said it chose May 1 as the vote date because it will give the union time to prepare and customers time to book elsewhere, so that they can have confidence that their summer vacations, honeymoons, and family outings are assured. The votes will be counted at the end of May, according to SWAPA. During negotiations, the union has been pushing the airline for contract language to address scheduling work rules and information technology, SWAPA stated, which are two of the major factors the union blames for the problems that arose in the airlines operations after a severe winter storm that led to 16,700 canceled flights during the holiday rush of the last 10 days of 2022. In an analysis that included exclusive employee interviews, The Epoch Times detailed events that culminated in the meltdown and described employees concerns for the companys future. Airline Working on Improvements An email from the Texas-based airline states that the company is committed to having the right people and processes in place as we upgrade our existing technology, tools, and automation. The email also notes that two outside firms have been helping the company with those efforts, General Electric Co. and Oliver Wyman. Watterson formerly worked at Oliver Wyman. But SWAPA accused management of allowing a technology deficit to fester. Managements failure to address known issues forced SWAPA along the path afforded to it by the Railway Labor Act, according to the union. The act governs the labor-management relations of airlines. It also spells out a process thats designed to head off a strike. It is not a decision we have taken lightly, but given the trajectory of our current leadership group, we have little faith in the stability and future of our airline, SWAPA President Capt. Casey Murray said. In a Facebook video, Murray told union members: This is not a decision that we take lightly. But the time is now. It is time to let your voice be heard. And its time for you to speak for your career, for your families, and for all pilots. Remember, at the end of the day, Southwest provides you a paycheck, but SWAPA fills in the amount. Capt. Tom Nekouei, SWAPAs second vice president, told members, We are prepared. Several events to engage members are upcoming, including a Feb. 4 picket planned in Baltimore, according to SWAPAs Twitter account. In the coming weeks, SWAPA intends to contact all its members to explain what this means to them, their families, and their careers, Nekouei said. An information booklet is now being produced and will arrive at pilots homes next month, he said. Sunak Calls for Review of London ULEZ Expansion as Mayor Accused of Steering Consultation Result Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday said London Mayor Sadiq Khan should properly reconsider plans to expand the capitals Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). It comes after Khan was accused of manipulating the ULEZ consultation result and making dishonest statements to the London Assembly. Greater London Authority (GLA) Conservatives on Tuesday published around 200 pages of emails and documents obtained through freedom of information requests, which they say prove that interventions by the mayors office and the Transport for London (TfL) have skewed the opposition percentage, likely by between 3 to 6 percent. GLA Conservatives transport spokesperson Nick Rogers submitted a formal complaint to GLA Monitoring Officer, alleging that the Labour mayor had made six false and dishonest statements and ten misleading statements to the Assembly and that his senior staff improperly used GLA resources to interfere with the ULEZ expansion consultation process to skew the results in the mayors favour, most likely under the mayors instruction. Howard Cox, founder of pro-drivers campaign FairFuelUK, which supporters were allegedly excluded from a key part of the consultation, called for an immediate independent public enquiry into the allegations and urged Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to suspend Khan from the party. Khans spokesperson dismissed the allegations as being simply untrue, saying neither Khan nor Transport for London (TfL) had sought to influence the results. Speaking during the Prime Ministers Question on Wednesday, Sunak told Parliament that it is disappointing that Khan, with Starmers backing, is choosing not to listen to the public. I urge the Mayor to properly reconsider and respond to these serious concerns, he said. TfL is a local government body that is run by Interim Commissioner Andrew Lord and chaired by the mayor of London. ULEZ is a zone in which vehicles that do not meet certain emissions standards must pay a daily charge of 12.5 to drive or face fines. Undated photo of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. (Andrew Matthews/PA Media) ULEZ was confirmed during Boris Johnsons mayorship and launched by Khan in 2019. It originally covered the same central London area as the Congestion Charge was extended to the North and South Circular Roads in October 2021. Question 8 After running a ten-week consultation last year, Khan announced in November that the zone will be expanded to cover all London areas from Aug. 29, 2023, despite the fact that the published consultation report said 59 percent of the respondents opposed the expansion. Among those who answered question 8 in the consultation questionnaire, 33 percent said the proposed expansion date is right or should be earlier, 8 percent said it should be delayed, and 59 percent said the expansion shouldnt be implemented at all. Under the so-called Gunning Principles, Khan was not required to abide by the consultation responses, but had to give them conscientious consideration. According to the Evening Standard, Khan told the publication in May 2022 that he would drop the plan if the consultation respondents overwhelmingly rejected it. Targeted Campaign The released emails and documents appeared to show that a YouGov poll and a PR campaign targeting younger groups were launched during the consultation, which GLA Conservatives said had swayed the result. By July 14, the weekly analyses emailed to Mayor for Transport Seb Dance and Deputy Mayor for Environment Shirley Rodrigues showed that around two-thirds of respondents, or between 66 and 67 percent, opposed the ULEZ expansion. According to an agenda for a July 13 meeting between Dance and TfL personnel, the ethnicity ratio of the respondents was comparable to the London baseline while females and people aged 1835 were under-represented. The agenda listed a number of actions that could be taken to encourage equitable participation, such as expanding reach to the younger age group and polling. On July 14, TfLs then-Director of City Planning Alex Williams emailed Dance and Rodrigues an age breakdown of answers to question 8, showing that younger age groups were more likely to support ULEZ. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll of question 8 was carried out between July 15 and July 20, yielding a much more positive result (pdf) for the mayor. Only 27 percent opposed the ULEZ expansion, while 22 percent said they didnt know. However, GLA Conservatives said YouGov survey respondents were less likely to understand what ULEZ is and accused the Mayors office of designing the survey in a way that would skew the result. A parallel YouGov poll (pdf) commissioned by GLA Conservatives, which formulated the question and the options in a different way, had 51 percent of the respondents opposing the ULEZ expansion. A sign at the expanded boundary of Londons ULEZ pollution charge zone for older vehicles on Oct. 25, 2021. (Yui Mok/PA) By July 21, the percentage of consultation participants who opposed the expansion had dropped to 64 percent. Emailing the results to Dance and Rodrigues, Williams said, These campaigns appear to be having a positive impact and there is a slight swing in percentages supporting the scheme but only by 23 [percent] thus far, the documents show. GLA Conservatives said the email showed that the intention of the campaigns was to increase support for the ULEZ consultation in question 8 of the survey rather than to encourage equitable participation. GLA Conservatives said that later weekly updates and Air Quality Implementation Group meetings only tracked the age breakdown of answers to question 8, not other breakdowns. They also noted that no actions were taken to reach more women, who consisted of 30 percent of the respondents by July 14. Excluding Campaign Emails Not all respondents participated in the consultation by filling out the questionnaire. Some, including supporters of some campaigns, sent emails to TfL expressing their views. TfL said they had entered all responses received by other methods to ensure inclusivity. But the final weekly report, which showed 59 percent opposition to the plan, said 5,267 copy and paste campaign emails were not counted as responses to question 8, including 542 supportive messages from Living Streets and 4,725 from Fairfuel.com and British Drivers that started with We oppose the expansion of the ULEZ to cover the outer London Boroughs. If the emails were included, the percentage of opposition would have risen to over 62 percent. A file photograph shows a traffic jam as cars head towards the approach tunnel of Heathrow Airport, west London, Britain, on Nov. 26, 2015. (Peter Nicholls/files/Reuters) The weekly reports started having a section called known campaigns since July 14, listing the names of the campaigners, summarised descriptions of the emails content, the number of responses, and links to the campaigns. Living Streets, which gave its supporters templates voicing support for the ULEZ expansion, were on the list since the beginning while Fairfuel.com and British Drivers only featured in the last two reports. Before the last report, there was no mention of excluding copy and paste campaign emails. The final report said the emails were excluded because no consultation questions were answered and that they did not contain respondent specific information such as postcode, location, frequency of driving in Greater London. GLA Conservatives questioned the fairness and legality of the criteria, saying it was arbitrary at best and most likely intentionally biased. They also pointed to the dates of email and meeting documents that appeared to show Khan and Dance were briefed on the results, saying their later claims of not being briefed in advance were false. Cox: ULEZ Expansion a Cash Grab In an email to The Epoch Times, Cox said the mayor had deceitfully and consciously excluded 5000 supporters of FairFuelUK, and their legitimate responses to the ULEZ consultation because they objected to his uncorroborated expansion plans. The founder of FairfuelUK said Khans plan will beenvironmentally ineffective as already proven by TfLs very own data, labelling it as being purely a cash grab hidden behind a virtual signalling emotive approach to allegedly improving air quality. He called for an immediate independent public enquiry as to his immoral behaviour in the way he has implemented the ULEZ expansion and said he had written to Starmer, asking the Labour leader to suspend Khan. Mayors Office: Real Scandal Is Toxic Air Khans spokesman denied the allegations. The real scandal is that toxic air leads to the deaths of thousands of Londoners every year, which is why the mayor took the difficult decision to expand the Ulez London-wide, he said. The spokesman said Khan considered TfLs report on the TfLs consultation responses, adding that the consultation was not a referendum. TfL takes its responsibility to run robust and legally compliant consultations extremely seriously, with an independent consultancy putting together the final analysis and report, and any suggestion that TfL or the mayor has sought to influence the results of the Ulez consultation is simply untrue, he said. As part of a rigorous consultation process, it was right for TfL to seek responses from as wide a range of Londoners as possible, including young Londonerswhose lives will be affected by air pollution for years to come. Sunak Told Police to Address Failings After Officer Exposed to Be Serial Rapist Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street for his first Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, in London, on Oct. 26, 2022. (Isabel Infantes/Getty Images) The police must address the failings, after a serving Metropolitan Police officer admitted to dozens of counts of rape and other offences, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday. David Carrick, 48, who served alongside rapist and murderer Wayne Couzensthe killer of Sarah Everardadmitted to 47 counts of rape, false imprisonment, and indecent assault, relating 12 women between 2003 and 2020. He met women on dating apps or while out socially, using his job to reassure and then intimidate them. He kept some locked in a tiny cupboard for hours, beat them, and urinated on them. An undated police mugshot of David Carrick, a serving Metropolitan Police officer who admitted the last of 49 serious sexual offences at Southwark Crown Court in London on Jan. 16, 2023. (Hertfordshire Police) Before Carrick was arrested in 2021, he had already had multiple complaints against him. It emerged on Monday, following the dropping of reporting restrictions on the case, that the Met had apologised to Carricks 12 victims. Ministers have backed calls to strip Carricks police pension after his offending was described as one of the worst cases involving a serving police officer that the Crown Prosecution Service has dealt with. Ahead of the Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Sunak said he knows MPs would be as shocked and appalled by Carricks case as he was, adding, The abuse of power is truly sickening, and our thoughts are with his victims. Sunak told MPs he had met with ministers and others over the case and was to have further meetings later on in the day. The police must address the failings in this case, restore public confidence and ensure the safety of women and girls, he said. There will be no place to hide for those who use their position to intimidate women and girls, or for those who fail to act to reprimand and remove people who are unfit for office. The Carrick case will be top of the list of discussions when Sunak meets Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley later on Wednesday, according to Downing Street. The National Police Chiefs Council is to ask all forces to check their officers against national police databases to help identify anyone who has slipped through the net before vetting standards were toughened, in the wake of the Carrick case. Baroness Louise Casey, who is already carrying out a review of the culture in the force, and neighbourhood police officers including new recruits, was also to be present at the Sunaks visit to a London police station. Casey has written to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, requesting to conduct a new inquiry unless Lady Elish Angiolini can extend her current non-statutory inquiry into the abduction, rape, and murder of Everard to include the actions of Carrick. Sarah Everard (Family/PA) Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was walking home in the evening on March 3, 2021, when she was kidnapped by then firearm officer Couzens and subsequently raped and killed. The court previously heard that Everard was made more vulnerable to false imprisonment because she went to a friends house for dinner at the height of the early 2021 lockdown. In a statement to MPs on Tuesday, Braverman said Angiolini had agreed to extend her inquiry to include Carricks case. She has also asked the College of Policing to strengthen the statutory code of practice for police vetting, making the obligations all forces must legally follow stricter and clearer. Home Secretary Suella Braverman making a statement to MPs in the House of Commons, London, on Dec. 14, 2022. (House of Commons/PA Media) David Carricks sickening crimes are a stain on the police and he should never have been allowed to remain as an officer for so long, she said. We are taking immediate steps to ensure predatory individuals are not only rooted out of the force, but that vetting and standards are strengthened to ensure they cannot join the police in the first place, she added. Every day thousands of decent, hard-working police officers perform their duties with the utmost professionalism and I am sure they all share my disgust at his despicable betrayal of everything they stand for. Another watchdog review has been commissioned so His Majestys Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services can check how forces have responded to its recent findings on vetting and corruption within the ranks to make sure chief officers are taking the necessary action to remove those who are not fit to serve. The Home Office has also launched a review of the police disciplinary system to make sure officers who are not fit to serve the public and fall short of the high standards expected of them can be sacked. Officials will examine decision making at misconduct hearings, and the panels tasked with leading them, as well as checking forces have the powers they need to take action against rogue officers. The review is expected to be completed within about four months. More than 1,000 Metropolitan Police officers and staff who have previously been accused of domestic abuse or sexual offences are having their cases reviewed. PA Media contributed to this report. Supreme Court Again Refuses to Halt New York Gun Restrictions New York Attorney General Letitia James presents the findings of an investigation on Aug. 3, 2021, in New York City. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images) The Supreme Court on Jan. 18 turned away an emergency request from firearms dealers to halt a months-old New York law that imposed new restrictions on gun purchases and dealers that the dealers say adversely affected sales and violated their rights. The ruling comes as challenges to gun laws across the nation have escalated since the high court struck down previous New York rules on guns in June 2022. In the same opinion, the court also held that theres a constitutional right to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense, leading states such as New York and Illinois to respond by doubling down on firearms restrictions. The new state law in question, New Yorks sweeping Concealed Carry Improvement Act, has been hotly litigated in the federal courts since it was approved by lawmakers in Albany. Some state law enforcement officials previously condemned the law, which took effect on Sept. 1, 2022, saying it would be difficult to enforce and may be unconstitutional. The New York State Sheriffs Association said the law was a thoughtless, reactionary action. The Supreme Court rejected the application in Gazzola v. Hochul, court file 22A591, in an unsigned order (pdf) on Jan. 18. No justices dissented from the order. The dealers said in court papers (pdf) that the new law treats state licensed dealers in firearms as if they are a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities. The dealers said they were urgently [seeking] a preliminary injunction to keep their doors open, while fighting to restore their civil rights through this lawsuit. Petitioners are risking everything to try to stay in business in support of civil rights under the Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and to keep the doors open and the lights on while they pursue this case, but we cant seem to find a judge in district or circuit court who will back them up, they said in the brief. One of the dealers complaints was that New York was making what they characterized as an unprecedented demand that all federally licensed firearms dealers and New York state-licensed dealers surrender their federal firearms compliance records on pain of incarceration and license revocation. Until now, no federal, state, or municipal government in this country has attempted to grab the federal firearms compliance records of [a federal firearms dealer], they said. The decision came after the Supreme Court similarly declined to block the New York law in an order on Jan. 11 in Antonyuk v. Nigrelli, which was brought by New York residents. Despite turning down the request to stay a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reinstating the law, Justice Samuel Alito issued a statement, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, suggesting this wasnt the high courts final word on the matter. The New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments, Alito wrote (pdf). The justice encouraged the Second Amendment advocates involved in the lawsuit to continue fighting the law. Applicants should not be deterred by todays order from again seeking relief if the Second Circuit does not, within a reasonable time, provide an explanation for its stay order or expedite consideration of the appeal, Alito wrote. Before the Supreme Court acted on Jan. 11, the 2nd Circuit stayed an order by Syracuse-based U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby, who blocked sections of the law on Nov. 7, 2022, in a case brought by Gun Owners of America. The law imposed unprecedented constitutional violations, Suddaby wrote. Suddaby enjoined the new requirement that a carry applicant demonstrate good moral character and produce the names and contact information of spouses and other adults in the applicants home. He blocked the rule forcing applicants to submit social media accounts for review by government officials. Suddaby also enjoined the restrictions on carrying in public parks, zoos, places of worship, locations where alcohol is served, theaters, banquet halls, conferences, airports and buses, and lawful protests and assemblies, as well as the blanket ban on carrying on private property without the consent of the owner. New Yorks Concealed Carry Improvement Act was rushed through the state legislature in the summer of 2022 and signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul after the Supreme Courts decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen invalidated the states requirement that a carry permit applicant demonstrate a special need for self-defense. Hochul denounced the high court ruling at the time, calling it a reckless decision senselessly sending us backward and putting the safety of our residents in jeopardy. The dealers attorney of record, Paloma Appolonia Capanna, didnt respond to a request for comment by press time. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, praised the Supreme Court for its ruling. Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to allow our states gun safety laws to remain in effect. We all see the heart-wrenching news from communities throughout New York state about the lives that are lost to senseless gun violence, James said. We know that gun safety laws help save lives, and keep our state safer. My office will continue to work tirelessly to stand up for New Yorks gun safety laws and we will use every tool at our disposal to protect New Yorkers. Taiwan Opens Military Reservist Training to Women Amid Communist Chinas Provocations Taiwans Defense Ministry stated on Jan. 17 that it will allow women to enroll in military reservist training for the first time as the self-governing island seeks to bolster its forces amid threats posed by the Chinese communist regime. The ministry will allow about 200 discharged female military personnel and 500 male reservists to participate in the voluntary training, which will begin in the second quarter of 2023, Taipei Times reported on Jan. 18. The dual-track training program, which began last year, consists of two weeks of training as opposed to the previous five to seven days. Under the new program, volunteer reservists can choose a one- or two-week training period. Maj. Gen. Yu Wen-cheng, a division head of the ministrys All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency, said it will be the first time that female reservists would be allowed to participate in the training. We will plan the training capacities according to the number of applicants, Yu was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. Currently, the reservist training is only mandatory for male reservists, with participation determined by a lottery draw. Women can join the armed forces voluntarily and serve as soldiers or officers. Local media reported that Taiwan had about 8,915 women listed as reservists as of 2021 and that women make up 15 percent of Taiwans 180,000 active military personnel, citing Taiwans military data. Compulsory Military Service The program follows Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wens announcement on Dec. 27, 2022, that her government would extend the island nations compulsory military service to a year from four months in 2024. The moves come as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ramps up military, diplomatic, and economic pressure on Taiwan to assert its sovereignty claims, including almost daily Chinese air force missions near the island over the past three years. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visits soldiers at a military base in New Taipei City, Taiwan, on Aug. 23, 2022. (Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via Reuters) Tsai said Taiwan wants peace but needs to be able to defend itself. As long as Taiwan is strong enough, it will be the home of democracy and freedom all over the world, and it will not become a battlefield, she told a press conference announcing the decision to extend the conscription period, which she described as incredibly difficult. Tsai noted that the current military system, including training reservists, is inefficient and insufficient to cope with the CCPs rising military threat, especially if it launched a rapid attack on the island. Taiwan wants to tell the world that between democracy and dictatorship, we firmly believe in democracy. Between war and peace, we insist on peace. Let us show the courage and determination to protect our homeland and defend democracy, she said. Conscripts will undergo more intense training, including shooting exercises, combat instruction used by U.S. forces, and operating more powerful weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles, according to Tsai. Soldiers stage an attack during an annual drill at the military base in Hualien, Taiwan, on Jan. 30, 2018. (Mandy Cheng/AFP/Getty Images) Taiwan has been a self-governing democracy since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949. Still, the CCP views Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be united with mainland China by any means necessary. The CCP regularly uses its military to intimidate Taiwan, as seen on Dec. 25, 2022, when it sent 71 planes and seven ships toward the island in its largest show of force since former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan in August 2022. Beijing deployed 57 aircraft and four naval vessels around Taiwan on Jan. 8, with 28 of the warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait median line. The Chinese military said the goal of the drills was to counter what it called provocative actions by Taiwan and external forces. But Taiwans Defense Ministry said the Chinese militarys false accusation and irrational provocation had severely destabilized regional security and reiterated that Taiwan seeks neither escalation nor conflict with the CCP regime. Reuters contributed to this report. Tesla CEO Elon Musk Faces Trial in Shareholder Case Over Tweets in 2018 Elon Musk on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in an illustration on April 28, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) A trial is set to start over a class-action lawsuit regarding whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk knowingly misled investors by claiming that funding was secured to take the company private in 2018. After closing the deal to purchase Twitter in October 2022, the Tesla CEO now has to face his earlier statements on the same social media platform more than four years ago. Jury selection began in January for the case brought by Tesla shareholders, who are seeking billions of dollars in damages in losses after Musk wrote a tweet on Aug. 7, 2018, about a proposal that never materialized. Meanwhile, the electric vehicle companys share price has fallen 64 percent over the past year, as demand for its cars has slowed. Plaintiffs Seek Billions in Damages From Tesla and Its CEO The lawsuit, which will take place at federal court in San Francisco, was filed by multiple shareholders who bought or sold Tesla stock in the days following Musks tweets four years ago. Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured, Musk wrote in the tweet. He then added, Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that its contingent on a shareholder vote, causing the electric car makers stock price to whipsaw. Teslas shares quickly soared by 11 percent on Aug. 7, 2018, before plunging 10 days later on Aug. 17 after The New York Times reported that funding for the privatization bid was far from secure and had fallen through. The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit shortly after, claiming that they lost billions in Tesla shares in reaction to Musks erratic tweets. The investors have yet to specify how much they seek in damages, but they are expected to demand full compensation for the billions lost. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) forced Musk and Tesla to each pay out $20 million via a settlement over the tweets. Musk also was forced to step down as Teslas chairman in a deal with the federal regulator, but allow him to remain as chief executive. In the meantime, Musk is trying to terminate parts of the agreement he reached with the SEC through an appeal to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Musk argued that provisions of the settlement inhibited his ability to make public statements about certain Tesla matters and intruded on his First Amendment rights, The New York Times reported. Musk Claims That His Tweets Were Referring to a Deal With the Saudis The defendants, including seven current and former Tesla directors, in addition to the billionaire CEO, have denied any wrongdoing. Musk argued that his tweets were in fact based upon conversations he had with backers from Saudi Arabias Public Investment Fund. He claimed that he was only describing what he considered a handshake agreement to pull his electric car company off the public markets. Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private, Musk stated in a blog post on Aug. 13, 2018. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction, he added. The Tesla CEO said that he had met Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the managing director of Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund, on multiple occasions, according to a court filing. The filing described how Al-Rumayyan encouraged Musk to take Tesla private, offering up to $60 billion in backing. Musk said that he would seek to introduce new evidence and testimony in court that backs him up and has released a series of tweets in his court filings between himself and the Saudi as proof. Tesla CEOs Attorneys Say Bay Area Jury Pool Is Biased Against Him Musks attorneys have argued that the industrialist is viewed too negatively by more than 80 percent of prospective jurors in San Francisco. They filed a plea to move the upcoming trial out of the state to the Western District of Texas, which includes Austin, where Tesla moved its headquarters in 2021. The legal team claimed in a filing (pdf) on Jan. 6 that undue negative media attention in the Bay Area in the wake of the mass layoffs at Twitter may bias the jury. Prejudice can be presumed in this case, wrote Musks attorneys. Over the past several months, the potential jury pool in the Northern District has been exposed to excessive and adverse pretrial publicity concerning Mr. Musk, which could potentially deprive him of an impartial jury and his constitutional right to a fair trial, the attorneys claim. Two or three of the potential jurors in the selection pool have already admitted that they knew someone at Twitter, the Associated Press reported. Judge Refuses Musks Request, Comparing His Actions to Disgraced Theranos CEO U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen, who is presiding over the trial, denied Teslas bid last week to move the proceedings and ruled that accusations of jury bias were unfounded. Potential jurors were asked before the selection about their personal opinions of Musk and whether they owned a Tesla vehicle, authorities told Reuters. Chen said that he would assemble an unbiased jury similar to the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Theranos, Bloomberg reported. The judge has already ruled that Musks Twitter statements were false and reckless, but said that a jury would decide whether his words mattered to investors and if he willingly attempted to mislead them. However, Chen has given Musk some room to clear his name by forcing the plaintiffs to prove that their stock losses were tied to certain statements made by the Tesla CEO, which were found by the court to be false. Also, if the jury finds that other statements Musk made were true and that they led to movements in Teslas stock, he may still prevail in the case. The defendants, in the meantime, have said that they could solidly prove that Musk had good reason to believe that funding for the privatization deal was not secure. Musk May Be Taking the Stand in His Civil Trial Once a jury of nine people is finally selected, opening arguments will begin in what is expected to be a three-week trial, Reuters reported. Musk may be forced to take the stand, according to court documents, along with Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison and James Murdoch, son of Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. If Musk loses his argument, the jury will have to decide whether to award damages and for which amount. Many of Teslas current stockholders have been concerned that Musk has been devoting less time to his company since his Twitter purchase, as competition from other auto rivals has begun to intensify lately, reported CBS News. Tesla lost 65 percent in stock value over the past year, wiping out more than $700 billion in shareholders assets, far exceeding the $14 billion swings that occurred during the 10-day period covered in the lawsuit. Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Texas Police Department Rejects Gift From Conservative Christian Company, Patriot Mobile A Texas police department rejected a pizza party donated by Patriot Mobile after receiving public backlash on social media for accepting a gift from the conservative Christian company. Patriot Mobile on Tuesday requested that the Grapevine Police Department donate the $1,500 gift to another department in North Texas. If Grapevine continues to reject the donation, Patriot Mobile asks that it be given to another police department in North Texas, the company said on Tuesday in a news release. On Thursday, Patriot Mobile delivered a Cane Rosso restaurant gift card to Grapevine Police Department (GPD) as a gesture of gratitude for their service to the community. The Patriot Mobile team was blessed to visit the Grapevine Police Department to give them a pizza party gift card to Cane Rosso! It was wonderful to meet our local police officers. Were so grateful for the work our law enforcement does every day to keep us safe in our community, Patriot Mobile wrote on social media. At Patriot Mobile, we will always support our law enforcement! it continued, adding the hashtag #backtheblue. The company said it had purchased the $1,500 restaurant gift card at a recent fundraiser benefiting fallen soldiers, adding that it paid $2,575 during an auction at the event. Patriot Mobiles intention, when purchasing the gift certificate at an auction that benefits families of fallen soldiers, was to honor our police officers, Patriot Mobile said in the release. Later the same day, the police department expressed its gratitude in a separate social media post. Sincere thanks to our friends at Patriot Mobile, GPD wrote. We are blessed to have their support and encouragement. Today they presented us with a certificate to host a pizza party for our staff. We are grateful for the opportunity to have a fun and relaxing meal together as a team. A photo of the Grapevine Police Departments Twitter post taken on Jan. 17, 2023, where they thank Patriot Mobile for a $1,500 pizza party donation. (The Epoch Times) The unexpected and very nice thanks was a welcome surprise, Patriot Mobile Chief Communications Officer Leigh Wambsganns told The Epoch Times in an interview. But shortly after the social media post, the police department began receiving backlash for accepting a gift from the cellphone service provider, which describes itself as a Christian conservative company. GPD Reconsiders Gift In an about-face, the GPD deleted its original Facebook post thanking Patriot Mobile and took to social media again. The departments original Twitter post was still active at the time of this publication. This time, in a lengthy post, the GPD rescinded its acceptance of the gift. One of the aspects we value most from our Community is their willingness to speak up and voice their concerns, even when doing so might be difficult. Our Community deserves to be heard, and we want you to know we are listening, GPD wrote on Saturday. This week, we accepted a food donation from a local business, as we often do, and posted a thank you on social media. This is not uncommon, as our Community is very giving and we want to recognize them and thank them. In this case, however, the donation rough out deep emotion, the post said. One of our values, Dignity, ensures that we recognize the inherent worth of all persons and compels us to act toward them within a manner that conveys our understanding of that truth. It is being respectful to ALL. The Relationships we have, and desire, with our Community Members are foundational to growing trust and legitimacy. GPD said it did not intend to create distrust with the community when first accepted the gift from Patriot Mobile. Please know that our actions were not intended to create distrust, and we vow to do better moving forward. We are going to re-evaluate how we receive donations in the future, and will remain open, and transparent in how we do so, the post continued. As for the donation and in the spirit of sharing what we have for others, we are opting to donate the food to a true need. We want something positive to come from the experience and that means giving to a worthy cause. The post ended with a thank you to those who spoke out about the donation, adding that the department is working on changing how it operates. We thank everyone who took the time to voice their thoughts, and we also thank you for allowing us a day to reflect on the situation. We are not merely giving you words today we are working to make a lasting change in how we operate so we can move forward together. We recognize that we are one member of a great community. We will always strive to protect everyone in our community and remain committed to providing the highest quality police service, the post read. Outcry; Not Unexpected The company said the outcry against them by some in the community and others across the country was not unexpected. The response from the far left is not surprising to us, nor is it anything new. We are humbled to serve as a Christian conservative company. Our mission is to defend our God-given Constitutional rights, Patriot Mobile CEO Glenn Story said in a release. We have been called Christian Nationalists by those who want to silence us, to break us, to make us stop, but we embrace the term Christian Nationalist. We love our country and we love the Lord and we strive to be the light in the darkness. Patriot Mobile said it was disappointed with the announcement that the police department had made a decision to reject the donation. The irony in their [GPD] follow-up statement is that it was overtly political, Wambsganns said. I dont know who wrote the statement, but I know it does not represent the views of all police officers in that department. Nor does it represent all citizens of Grapevine. Wambsganns said the company would continue to show its appreciation for all first responder heroes. The Chaos Some Fear After Roe Reversal Is Really Just Freedom Commentary It shouldnt be surprising to anyone that the pro-abortion lobby is seeking to require abortion on demand for any reason until the moment of birth in all 50 states. Whether its through litigation or the Orwellian-named Womens Health Protection Act, attempting to mandate their radically extremist position through federal law confirms what I first encountered in the days following the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization. Seated next to two intelligent, well-credentialed women to discuss an incredibly important topic, I was struck by how different our outlooks on the same issue were. It was almost as if we hadnt all grown up in the same nation. Where I saw an opportunity for America to lead the world in upholding the dignity of women and children, the two women on either side of me saw a country in disarray. We were three of the five witnesses at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committees hearing exploring a post-Roe legal landscape after the Supreme Courts historic decision to overturn that egregious ruling. One of the women was a law professor, and the other was a lieutenant governor; they both repeatedly referred to the chaos that had supposedly resulted since the Supreme Court held that there wasnt a constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to the states. I cannot overstate the level of harm and chaos that the Dobbs decision has already caused, stated UC Berkeley School of Law professor Khiara Bridges. We are in the midst of seeing the kind of chaos that has been created by this decision, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton opined. It is chaotic, and it is something that is causing harm and causes insurmountable challenges, quite frankly, for those who are trying to figure out whats possible. Adding to their commentary was Planned Parenthoods Dr. Colleen McNicholas, who also testified at the hearing: We are already seeing mass chaos among OBGYNs, emergency room physicians, and quite frankly pharmacists. What they were describing as chaotic is nothing more than freedomand the sometimes noisy and inartful business of self-government. Federalism, in a democratic republic, gives a voice to the people. Different states, with different citizens, craft their own policies through their democratic processes. The Dobbs decision simply allows the people of each state to decide their own abortion policy, as they had been accustomed to doing before the Supreme Court wrongly made one policy for all 50 states in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The women beside me said they feared chaos, but maybe their real fear is democracy: people speaking for themselves and actually finding solutions for women and their families instead of unelected judges imposing their preferred one-size-fits-all solution. Or perhaps they fear the prospect of an actual policy debate on abortion in this nation as each state considers how best to protect the lives of the most vulnerable population of Americans: the unborn. For nearly half a century, the pro-abortion lobby has avoided the prospect of crafting a coherent argument in defense of the indefensible. They were politically wise to do so. They know the majority of Americans are nowhere close to agreeing with their extremist position. The results of a Harvard/Harris poll on abortion released in July show that less than 10 percent of the American public agrees with such radical policies as abortion up to the moment of birth. A solid majority oppose taxpayer funding of elective abortion, too. Americans hearts and minds lean pro-life. Americans were never supportive of what Roe mandated, and they are quickly getting to work to ensure that policies more closely match citizens values. Meanwhile, the pro-abortion lobby is working to cut off any future debate on the issue by subjecting all states to a federally dictated agenda. Ignoring the inescapable conclusion that the U.S. Constitution doesnt include a right to an abortion, the outgoing Democrat-controlled Congress passed the Womens Health Protection Act, which would prevent states from protecting life and womens health in accordance with what each states citizens wantlegislation that goes so far as to guarantee a federal right to even sex- and race-based abortions. Congressional Democrats want to completely overrule states interest in protecting human life from abortion. Despite polling that continues to demonstrate that Americans oppose extreme pro-abortion policies, such as taxpayer funding of abortion or abortion through all nine months of pregnancywhich this bill would allowthese members of Congress still insist on catering to the abortion industry instead of listening to the American people. As Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said during the Judiciary Committee hearing at which I testified, Makes me wonder whether those making these scurrilous arguments are simply afraid of the American people, simply afraid that when able to make this decision on their own, free from the judicial oligarchy that has reigned over this area of the law for the last 49 years, that they wont make the same decision that the radical left would make. The Supreme Courts decision in Dobbs was more than an impressive display of judicial humility; it was a victory for the separation of powers, federalism, and self-government. Now the work of good policymaking begins. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Larger than life: Art that inspires us through the ages Since the 13th century, Swedish monarchs have called the Royal Palace in Stockholm home. Baroque architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger designed the current 600-room, Roman-style palace after a fire destroyed the previous structure in 1697. When Tessin died, architect Carl Harleman completed the structure. Tessins Royal Palace design exemplifies the Tessin Gold Baroque style. The Tessin style includes the essentials of the baroque style with its rich ornamentation and symmetrical design elements (particularly s-shaped curves in art and furniture designs) but with French and Italian influences, not seen in Swedens baroque style before. Prior to Tessin, Northern European art and architecture had informed Swedens early-baroque style (Caroline Period). Having studied in Italy and France, Tessin counted some of Frances great artists and architectsCharles Le Brun, Jean Berain, and Andre Le Notre, to name a fewamong his friends. And in Italy, he studied under Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his pupil Carlo Fontana. Their influence on Tessins work can be seen throughout the bricks, mortar, and decorative works of this bastion of Swedish architecture. Nicodemus Tessin the Youngers imposing brick and sandstone Royal Palace in Stockholm blends French, Italian, and Swedish baroque styles, making it a fine example of the Tessin Gold Baroque style. The palaces State Apartment, topped with a balustrade, faces the city, and the smaller living rooms look out onto an inner courtyard that Tessin based on the Louvre Museums courtyard in Paris. (Maykova Galina/Shutterstock) In Tessins time, King Louis XIV and the Palace of Versailless courtly ceremonial style ruled European royal etiquette. Tessin based the Royal Palace on the practical design of Versailles, keeping the royal apartments, the royal chapel, and the buildings of the countrys administration in close proximity. He also copied some of the French palaces interiors, notably mimicking the Hall of Mirrors in his design for Karl XIs Gallery. In the guest apartments, visitors can see the 18th-century decorative style, adorned with Swedish furniture, mostly made in Stockholm during the 18th and 19th centuries. Tessins Royal Palace demonstrates the architects skill of blending several European styles while staying true to the harmony and abundance that defines the baroque style. Architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger ensured that every architectural element of the palaces south facade, which faces the city, conveyed the greatness of Sweden. Elegant Corinthian columns stretch to the heavens, sculptures of great Swedish men stand in the niches, and Swedens coat of arms hangs over the doorway that frames the entrance like an ancient triumphal arch. The doorway leads to the Royal Chapel and the Hall of State, perhaps reminding those who enter that from faith comes good governance. (Per-Boge//Shutterstock) Since the 1200s, devout royals have been able to pray in the palace chapel. The current chapel dates from the mid-1700s, after the fire of 1697. Architect Carl Harleman finished the crisp white and gilded interior decoration based on Nicodemus Tessin the Youngers drawings. (Alexis Daflos/Kungl. Hovstaterna) In the Hall of State, under Swedens coat of arms, Queen Kristinas silver coronation throne takes center stage. Swedens monarchs have been crowned on the throne since 1650. (Hakan Lind/Kungl. Hovstaterna) Symbols of Sweden cover Queen Kristinas silver throne. The silver used on the throne had the same significance as white in the Christian tradition, representing purity, innocence, and perfection. Atop the throne, personifications of justice and wisdom flank two angels holding up a laurel wreath topped with a crown. Each monarch who sits on the throne rests his or her back, and heart, on Swedens national emblem: the three crowns. (Alexis Daflos/Kungl. Hovstaterna) The king still meets with members of the Swedish government in the Cabinet Room of the Royal Palace. Mirrors and rich tapestries line the gilded walls of what was once Gustav IIIs dining room. (Ungvari Attila/Shutterstock) The sumptuous interior of Oskar IIs Writing Room with its parquet floor, harmonious landscape paintings, and sienna furnishings must have inspired the former king who, as a lover of music and literature, composed prose, music, and poetry. His writing won him great acclaim. (Alexis Daflos/Kungl. Hovstaterna) More than 200 sculptures stand among the stone doric columns in Gustav IIIs Museum of Antiquities. The museum opened in 1794 to house the kings impressive collection, and the sculptures are displayed exactly as they were then. (Alexis Daflos/Kungl. Hovstaterna) Trump to Host First 2024 Campaign Event With Graham, McMaster in South Carolina Former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Alon Skuy/AFP via Getty Images) The campaign of former President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Gov. Henry McMaster will join Trump on Jan. 28 as the Republican will make the first public appearance of his 2024 White House run. Last week, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung confirmed with the Associated Press (AP) that Trump will host an event in South Carolina later this month, but no specific details were immediately announced at the time. Trump, 76, hinted at a 2024 run for more than a year and formally announced his presidential bid in a prime-time speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in November 2022. The two well-known South Carolina Republicans will attend the Jan. 28 event at Columbias state capitol building, where the former president will unveil his campaigns state leadership team, according to Tuesdays announcement. A person familiar with the matter speaking to AP on the condition of anonymity said the event will also include members of South Carolinas congressional delegation, as well as state lawmakers. Trump has not hit the campaign trail since he formally announced his presidential run on Nov. 15, 2022. Instead, he made occasional appearances before invited guests at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The event comes as two other South Carolina Republicansformer Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scottare both considered potential challengers for the Republican nomination. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks to guests at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 19, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Haley, who will turn 51 on Jan. 20, said about a week after Trump announced his presidential bid in mid-November that shes considering launching a 2024 presidential bid, reneging on a promise she made in 2021 that she would not run if Trump ran. A lot of people have asked if Im going to run for president now that the midterms are over, Ill look at it in a serious way and Ill have more to say soon, she said during an appearance at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting. Haley was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations while Trump was in office. Scott, recently reelected to what he has said will be his final Senate term, has been making visits in other early-voting states and launched a political action committee that could become a presidential campaign vehicle. In 2016, when South Carolina was the third state after Iowa and New Hampshire, Trumps statewide victory helped solidify his status as the GOP front-runner. Reuters contributed to this report. From NTD News Trump Vows to Ban Chinese Investment in US Farmland if Reelected Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an election night event at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 08, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Former President Donald Trump has promised to ban Chinese nationals from buying U.S. farmland or other critical industries if he retakes the White House. In a nearly three-minute campaign video released on Jan. 18, Trump sounded the alarm that Chinas extensive economic influence in the country risks the United States falling under the communist regimes control. China does not allow American companies to take over their critical infrastructure and America should not allow China to take over our critical infrastructure, he said in a speech recorded from Mar-a-Lago, emphasizing a need for aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership of any vital infrastructure in the United States, including energy, technology, telecommunications, farmland, natural resources, medical supplies, and other strategic national assets. Chinese investors were the largest foreign buyer of U.S. real estate by dollar amount between March 2021 and March 2022, with $6 billion spent over the period, according to the National Association of Realtors. Recent years have seen growing outcry over Chinese land acquisitions to build energy infrastructure or located near U.S. military bases, with opponents saying such purchases may allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the ability to disrupt the countrys critical infrastructure and spy on defense facilities. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential presidential rival for Trump, last week said hes considering a ban on Chinese entities buying property in his state for economic and security reasons because we do not need to have CCP influence in Floridas economy. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a federal panel in charge of screening foreign investments for security risks, in December ruled that it didnt have jurisdiction to review a controversial Chinese corn mill project in North Dakota, located within 15 miles of the Grand Forks Air Force base, which houses sensitive drone, satellite, and surveillance technology. The project has received heavy pushback from Republican lawmakers and locals who say the plant jeopardizes economic and national security. But the focus on land alone is far from enough to combat the threats posed by the Chinese regime, Trump said. The fact is we should be very concerned about all Chinese communist activity in the United States, he said. As Ive long said, economic security is national security. Aside from barring Chinese purchases in essential U.S. industries, Trump believes the United States should begin the process of forcing the Chinese to sell any current holdings that put our national security at risk. If we dont do this, the United States will be owned by China, which would make them very happy. When Im president, I will ensure that Americas future remains firmly in American hands, just as I did when I was president before. Itll happen again and our country will be stronger than ever. During his time in office, Trump broke with previous administrations by adopting a tough-on-China approach, focused on addressing the array of national security threats posed by the CCP. The Trump administration put strict curbs on Chinese telecom giant Huawei over security concerns, which crippled the firms global business, imposed a ban on U.S. investments in Chinese military-linked firms, and sought to ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat social media apps due to data security risks. Some aspects of Trumps approach to China have been adopted by the Biden administration, which has emphasized reducing supply chain reliance on China. Turkish Bank Urges Supreme Court to Halt Prosecution Over Dodging Iran Sanctions Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party (AKP) during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, Turkey, on Nov. 2, 2022. (Murat Cetinmuhurdar/PPO/Handout via Reuters) A bank controlled by Turkey told the Supreme Court on Jan. 17 that it shouldnt be criminally prosecuted in U.S. courts for allegedly helping Iran defy U.S. economic sanctions because it enjoys legal immunity as an arm of the Turkish government. The petitioner in the case of Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States, court file 21-1450, also known as Halkbank, is 75 percent owned by the Turkish Wealth Fund, which, in turn, is owned by the Republic of Turkey. Istanbul-based Halkbank is accused of participating in a criminal conspiracy involving money laundering, bank fraud, and assisting terrorism-sponsoring Iran in evading U.S. economic sanctions. The case has made U.S. relations with Turkey, a NATO ally, difficult at times. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. governments decision to prosecute the bank was ugly and unlawful and has urged that the case be withdrawn. A trial against Halkbank has been put on hold pending the Supreme Courts ruling in the appeal. In 2019, federal prosecutors filed charges against Halkbank saying it helped to launder about $20 billion in proceeds from the sale of Iranian oil and natural gas. Prosecutors said the bank used money servicing outfits and front companies in the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Turkey in defiance of the sanctions regime. The bank argues that its immune to U.S. prosecution under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Specifically, the bank says that U.S. district courts lack the power to entertain criminal prosecutions against foreign sovereigns and their instrumentalities under the act. The act itself restricts the role of the executive branch in lawsuits against foreign governments and their entities by preventing the U.S. Department of State from making determinations regarding state immunity. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected the banks immunity claim, holding that authorities could pursue Halkbank in the courts because the behavior complained of was commercial activity not protected by sovereign immunity. In its petition (pdf), the bank said the prosecution was unprecedented and that the circuit court ruling would erode the principle of sovereign immunity because it green lights future indictments of any sovereign state. The U.S. Department of Justice argues that the FSIA deals only with civil matters, not criminal prosecutions. During oral arguments, Halkbank attorney Lisa Blatt said the United States does not dispute that criminal trials against sovereigns were unthinkable in 1789, would violate international law today, are unprecedented anywhere, and would risk retaliation. But all the same is true for sovereign instrumentalities, which by definition are sovereign, she said. Section 1604 of the FSIA independently bars criminal jurisdiction, providing that foreign states shall be immune from the jurisdiction of federal and state courts. Reading the word civil into that text would mean Congress created special guardrails in civil cases but threw sovereigns to the wolves in criminal cases, Blatt said. The executive branch applauds this result, arguing that it alone makes the common law of criminal immunity. But the executive does not make the law, and an immunity waivable by your prosecutor is no immunity at all. The governments conduct here contradicts every common law benchmark, history, international practice, reciprocity, and the choice already made by Congress to define foreign states to include instrumentalities, she said. U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin said Halkbank was overreaching. The bank is asking for an extraordinary and unprecedented rule under which any foreign government-owned corporation could become a clearinghouse for any federal crime, including interfering in our elections, stealing our nuclear secrets, or something like here, evading our sanctions and funneling billions of dollars to an embargoed nation, using our banks, and lying to our regulators, Feigin said. What theyre trying to do is ask courts, which have modestly recognized [they] are the least capable branch of doing this, to invent a new immunity rule that overrides the policy judgments of the federal government, he said. Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed Blatt. I think its pretty bizarre for this court to tell the president of the United States as a matter of his national security exercise that even though the Constitution doesnt prohibit what youre doing, even though a statute doesnt prohibit what youre doing, this courts going to prohibit your exercise of national security authority, Kavanaugh said. Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, Maybe one reason we dont see these prosecutions is because the executive understands foreign countries to have absolute immunity. In the founding period, the first Congress made it a crime to prosecute a diplomat, Blatt replied. And it seems inconceivable that the first Congress thought that a district court had jurisdiction to convict a foreign country. The United States, Blatt said, has over 90 corporations abroad that foreign governments could retaliate against. We have Voice of America, Export-Import Bank, and one persons freedom fighter is another persons terrorist. Our U.S. instrumentalities do stuff abroad and could be seen to aid and abet terrorism, she said. Kavanaugh shot back, Thats why we have a president whos elected to protect the national security of the United States and consider those issues. What expertise do we have to balance all those considerations? he said. At one point, Blatt expressed frustration as the justices disagreed with her interpretation of a previous legal precedent. I read the opinion, but theres nine of you and one of me and you have all the power, so youre going to read the opinion how you want, the lawyer said. Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested it would be dangerous to allow prosecutions to move forward. If we hold that 1604 doesnt apply to criminal cases, then states would be free to try to bring lawsuits against Mexico for this or that, or perhaps China because of COVID, or who knows what a creative state prosecutor might come up with. Addressing Feigin, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cautioned against giving federal and state prosecutors the right to insult another nation by prosecuting them. The justices are expected to rule on the appeal by June. Ukrainian Interior Minister, Deputy Killed in Helicopter Crash Outside Kyiv Firemen roll up hoses in front of debris as emergency service workers respond at the site of a helicopter crash in Brovary, Ukraine, on Jan. 18, 2023. (Ed Ram/Getty Images) Ukraines interior minister and two other senior ministry officials were among 17 people killed on Jan. 18 when the helicopter on which the officials were traveling crashed near a kindergarten outside the capital of Kyiv, according to local authorities and other officials. Officials said that four children were among the dead. The cause of the crash of the French-made Super Puma was unknown as of press time. At least one nearby building was set ablaze by the crash, which reportedly left another 25 people, including several children, with injuries. Local authorities have since confirmed that Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, appointed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2021, was among those who were killed. Yevhen Yenin, the ministers first deputy, along with the ministrys state secretary, also were killed in the crash, according to national police chief Ihor Klymenko. As a result of the crash in Brovary, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine was killed, Klymenko said, adding that the helicopter had belonged to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. A lawyer by trade, Monastyrskyi, 42, won a seat in Ukraines 2019 parliamentary election for Zelenskyys Servant of the People party. He served as head of the Ukrainian Parliaments Law Enforcement Committee before replacing Arsen Avakov as the interior minister following the latters resignation in July 2021. Speaking on Twitter, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman described Monastyrskyi as a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people during [Russian President Vladimir] Putins illegal invasion. Firemen and emergency service workers respond at the site of a helicopter crash in Brovary, Ukraine, on Jan. 18, 2023. (Ed Ram/Getty Images) Cause Unknown Ukrainian officials have declined to attribute the deadly helicopter crash to a Russian attack. Its too early to talk about causes, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments. The Ukrainian prosecutor generals office has opened an investigation and said all possible causes were being considered. According to the spokesman, a probe could take weeks. While the crash was reported in Russian media, Moscow has so far refrained from issuing a formal statement on the incident. Russian Missile Last week, at least 45 people were killed when a Russian missile struck an apartment building in Ukraines east-central city of Dnipro. While Kyiv and its allies condemned the incident, Russian officials say the missile was downed by Ukrainian air-defense systems deployed in the residential area. A Russian missile that targeted an energy facility was downed by Ukrainian air defense, Vasily Nebenzya, Russias permanent representative to the UN, said on Jan. 17. Since the air-defense launcher was positioned in a residential quarter contrary to the norms of international humanitarian law the missile fell onto a residential building, Nebenzya said at a session of the U.N. Security Council. The Epoch Times was unable to verify the claim. Drone Strikes Since mid-October 2022, Russian forces have carried out frequent drone and artillery strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities across the country, including in and around the capital. Ukrainian officials have said that at least half of Ukraines total energy infrastructure has been damaged by repeated barrages, causing blackouts and widespread energy disruptions. Kyiv and its allies say the Russian strikes are meant to ratchet up pressure on the civilian population and should therefore be viewed as war crimes. Moscow says its forces use high-precision munitions to avoid civilian casualties and that the strikes serve a purely military purpose. In September 2022, Moscow formally incorporated four regions of Ukraine into the Russian Federation after holding controversial referendums. Ukraine and its Western backers staunchly reject the legitimacy of the move, which they say amounts to the illegal annexation of territory by Russia. Encouraged by its powerful allies, Kyiv has vowed to recover the four lost territories, along with the Black Sea region of Crimea, which Russia similarly annexed in 2014. Reuters contributed to this report. University of Kansas Researcher Sentenced to Time Served for Hiding China Ties This undated file photo provided by the University of Kansas shows researcher Franklin Feng Tao. Opening statements begin Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in the trial of Tao, a researcher accused of concealing work he was doing for China while employed at the University of Kansas. (Kelsey Kimberlin/University of Kansas via AP, File) A former University of Kansas researcher was sentenced to time served without fine or restitution for concealing work that he did in China while employed with the university. Feng Franklin Tao was sentenced on Jan. 18 for one count of making a false statement. Tao was arrested in 2019 along with about two dozen other researchers who were accused of concealing their ties to China. He was convicted in April 2022 on the charge of making a false statement, along with three additional counts of wire fraud. The wire fraud charges were dropped by a federal judge in September 2022, however, as there was no evidence that Tao received monetary compensation for work related to the fellowship. Concerning the false statement, jurors found him guilty of not disclosing that he had been named to the Changjiang Professorship, a Chinese talent program, on conflict of interest forms and grant applications for federal funding. Tao traveled to China to set up a laboratory and recruit staff for Fuzhou University as part of that program but told the University of Kansas that he was in Germany instead. Federal prosecutors sought a 2 1/2-year sentence for Tao. They alleged that Taos actions cost the school and federal agencies hundreds of thousands of dollars by defrauding the University of Kansas, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation by lying about work he was doing for Fuzhou University in China. Taos attorneys sought a sentence of time served, saying the case had destroyed his reputation, his familys financial stability, and an otherwise distinguished career. His defense team also noted that he completed the work funded by federal grants. China Initiative Remnants in Shambles The case against Tao was part of the Trump-era China Initiative, a Justice Department program intended to curb espionage efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state. The decision by the judge to not issue a prison sentence for Tao will likely be seen as yet another blow to the legitimacy of the China Initiative and its successor programs, which have been marred by dropped cases and accusations of racism. The case follows several similar incidents over the course of the past year in which federal officers arrested and accused people of spying for China only to suddenly drop the cases without providing clear reasons why. For example, federal prosecutors in New York dropped their case against a New York Police Department officer indicted for allegedly spying on behalf of Chinas communist regime earlier this week. No clear reason was given for the decision. The China Initiative and its alleged failures ultimately led critics to accuse federal officials of racism and racial profiling. The Department of Justice, in turn, carried out an internal investigation, which found no evidence of racial bias. Despite that finding, the department terminated the program, stating that it wanted to avoid the harmful perception of bias and would instead focus on national-level threats. US Government Seeks to Outlaw TikTok but Faces Obstacles If banning Huawei was simple, why is it so difficult for Washington to prohibit TikTok? The TikTok logo is displayed at a TikTok office in Culver City, Calif., on Dec. 20, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) News Analysis President Joe Biden signed legislation in December 2022 banning federal employees from using TikTok on government devices due to national security threats. And more than 25 states have taken measures against the popular app, either by prohibiting its usage on government devices or filing litigation. Some believe that these measures are good, but not enough. They contend that the app should be fully outlawed in the United States due to mounting concerns that it could be used to spy on Americans. For the past two years, the U.S. government has been trying to find ways to address the threat posed by TikTok, the most popular mobile app in the country with roughly 100 million monthly active users. Legal experts argue that the Biden administration is being more careful than its predecessor to avoid legal challenges. Since content shared on TikTok is considered free expression, it enjoys protection under the First Amendment. Arthur Herman, a senior fellow and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative at Hudson Institute, disagrees that legal hurdles are the main problem. Despite the gravity of the threat, Herman told The Epoch Times that the Biden administration has been reluctant to really push on the China front. He cited the actions of the government of India as an example and advised that the United States pursue similar measures. In 2020, following a violent border incident with China, India completely banned TikTok along with hundreds of other Chinese apps. In his final months in office, President Donald Trump attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order; however, numerous federal courts struck his order down. After Biden took office, he revoked Trumps executive order. Biden suggested using an evidence-based approach to find out if TikTok was a real threat to U.S. national security. Herman claimed that due to the administrations reluctance to act in the past two years, Congress and dozens of states had taken matters into their own hands and blocked the app on government devices as a first step. Herman believes, in the next two years, Congress will be the driving force behind a total ban on TikTok. Impasse Within the Administration? The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency government panel, has been negotiating with TikTok for more than two years. The Biden administration has been reportedly looking into ways to divorce the app from its Chinese owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd. However, there are opposing viewpoints within the administration, causing a stalemate, according to a Wall Street Journal article. The departments of Justice and Defense are advocating for a forced sale of TikToks U.S. operations due to national security concerns, the article stated, citing people familiar with the matter. If CFIUS determines that the app poses a national security threat, it might recommend that the president order the apps forced sale by ByteDance. However, the Treasury Department, which chairs the panel, doesnt consider forced sale a viable option as such an order could be overturned again in courts, according to the article. The White House didnt respond to a request for comment. Banning TikTok completely isnt an easy solution, according to James Andrew Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The U.S. government does not have the authority to ban speech. Postings on TikTok are protected by the First Amendment since they are a form of speech, Lewis wrote in a commentary in November 2022. He noted that any attempt to restrict Americans access to TikTok wouldnt withstand a court challenge. However, Fred Cate, a law professor and vice president of research at Indiana University, contends that the U.S. government has vast powers if it believes a company is threatening national security. But it all comes down to gathering sufficient evidence, said Cate, who specializes in information privacy and security law. Huawei Versus TikTok Cate believes that the Biden administration deserves some credit since, following a series of court challenges, it has chosen to follow a traditional process. The judges did not find the evidence compelling enough to justify the violation of the Constitutions First Amendment rights, he told The Epoch Times. President Joe Biden at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House in Washington on Jan. 12, 2023. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) Hence, the administration officials have decided to investigate the matter and gather evidence regarding what TikTok is doing that may be cause for alarm, he said. A lot of people have pointed to the bans on Huawei, the equipment manufacturer, and said, Look, if they can ban Huawei, they can ban TikTok. That, of course, is not true because Huawei makes equipment, and TikTok is primarily in the business of speech. And so, the First Amendment applies to TikTok, it probably doesnt apply to Huawei. The Biden administration cant force a sale, according to Cate, but they can make life difficult for TikTok over the next two years if its U.S business isnt spun off into a separate entity. I think everybody suspects that might be how this resolves itself, he said. Some legal experts say TikToks parent ByteDance can also be listed on the Commerce Departments Entity List, a trade restriction list. But this may not fully address the problem, according to Cate. The U.S. government has the authority to compel Apple and Google to remove the app. However, this step would have no effect on the 100 million Americans who already have the app on their phone, he noted, and it could also be challenged in courts by users or the platforms. Despite the hurdles, Cate is optimistic that Washington will soon find a resolution. I expect a lot of things to be announced soon because I think the Republicans in control of the House are going to push this issue a lot. And I think Biden wants to show that his administrations on top of it, he said. The economic forces are so strongly in favor of finding a resolution that I would fully expect were going to find one and find one soon. Why TikTok is a Threat? The fact that TikToks Chinese owner ByteDance has access to data on millions of Americans is at the heart of the current backlash against the app. TikTok accumulates massive amounts of personal data, and the Chinese regime could force the apps owner into handing over information on American users. A woman walks past the headquarters of ByteDance, the parent company of video sharing app TikTok, in Beijing, China, on Sept. 16, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images) These concerns have been brewing for years, prompting members of Congress and dozens of states to campaign hard to prevent the app from being used on government devices. Theres another dimension to the security threat, Herman says. TikToks algorithm allows it to control its users and is responsible for the apps phenomenal success. Built by engineers at the parent company, the algorithm is incredibly sophisticated, according to Herman. Its a lot more sophisticated than anything American engineers have done in platforms like Facebook, or Twitter, or even Google. But its also very insidious, and thats why it should be banned altogether, he claims. The average American viewer spends 80 minutes per day on TikTok, which is more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram combined, according to a Washington Post article. TikTok can control users in a very subtle way by guiding the preferences of its users in ways that the users themselves may not be aware of whats happening, Herman explained. It can be used to shape the mindset of young Americans about politics, about their own society, and about the world. So, the algorithm is not just simply meeting a viewers preferences, he warned, but also brainwashing. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita urged residents of the state to protect their privacy from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by uninstalling TikTok from their phones. The state announced two separate lawsuits against TikTok in December for making fraudulent claims about the safety of the app. The app is not only full of toxic material, which is highly inappropriate for children, but it also opens us up to foreign threats, Rokita said. In December, Forbes magazine revealed that ByteDance employees used TikToks user data to improperly track American journalists. It is still unclear, though, if this incident would be enough to support a ban on the app by the U.S. government, Cate said. TikTok has long insisted that its service is completely secure and that it will not share any information about its American users with the CCP. However, due to Chinese domestic laws, ByteDance is compelled to provide data to the regime when requested. US Imposes Visa Restrictions Over Opposition Trials in Belarus Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the State Department in Washington on Jan. 4, 2023. (Sarah Silbiger/Reuters) WASHINGTONThe United States imposed visa restrictions Tuesday on 25 people including lawmakers for undermining democracy in Belarus with politically motivated trials such as that of exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. Belarus put Tsikhanouskaya on trial in absentia on treason charges on Tuesday, in what the outspoken critic of veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko said would be a farce and a show. Government officials targeted by Washington include members of the National Assembly of Belarus for their role in passing legislation to authorize the death penalty for people convicted of terrorism, Blinken said, a charge he said Belarus uses to repress opposition. Some have also backed other repressive legislation revoking citizenship from those outside the country charged with extremism and confiscating property for unfriendly actions towards Belarus, he said in a statement. We will not stand by as this regime continues to harass and repress peaceful protesters, the democratic opposition, journalists, unionists, activists, human rights defenders, and everyday Belarusians, Blinken said. Vietnam President Resigns After Being Blamed by Ruling Party for Violations Vietnam's President Nguyen Xuan Phuc arrives to attend APEC Leader's Dialogue with APEC Business Advisory Council during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 18, 2022. (Lillian Suwanrumpha/Pool via Reuters) The president of Vietnam has resigned due to violations and wrongdoings, the Communist Party of Vietnam announced on Tuesday. Nguyen Xuan Phuc, 68, was blamed for violations that were made by officials under his supervision when he was prime minister. Phucs resignation is the first time a member of the Communist Party of Vietnams top leadership has resigned early in the absence of an illness. He is the most senior official targeted by the Vietnamese regimes clampdown campaign. Fully being aware of his responsibilities before the party and people, he submitted an application to resign from his assigned positions, quit his job and retire, the Vietnamese regime said in statement about Phuc, per state Vietnamese News Agency. According to VNA, Phuc had resigned at a session of the Vietnamese Communist Partys Central Committee that was held to consider and give opinions on Comrade Nguyen Xuan Phucs wish to stop holding positions, quit work and retire. The language of the announcement strongly suggested that he was forced to step down. His resignation requires approval from the countrys National Assembly to become effective. A rare extraordinary meeting of the assembly will be held this week. Phuc was prime minister from 2016 to 2021 and it was widely believed that he would succeed the general secretary. As prime minister, Phuc oversaw trade deals with the European Union and Pacific powers, including Japan and Australia. The position of president is mostly ceremonial in Vietnam, which does not have any paramount ruler. Instead, it has four leading positions, or pillars: the Communist Partys general secretary, the president, the prime minister, and the chair of the legislature. The most powerful position, Communist Party general secretary, is currently held by Nguyen Phu Trong, who in 2021 won a rare third five-year term in office. His hallmark has been a long-running clampdown campaign, which in his second term targeted two former Cabinet ministers and Hanois former mayor. Clampdown Campaign The Communist Party of Vietnam is engaged in the clampdown campaign led by Trong. The so-called anti-corruption campaign seems to have intensified after a plethora of investigations and dismissals. In 2022 alone, 539 party members were prosecuted or disciplined for corruption and deliberate wrongdoings, including ministers, top officials, and diplomats, according to the ruling party, while police investigated 453 corruption cases, up 50 percent from 2021. Rumors about an impending resignation by Phuc was widespread after the dismissal of two deputy prime ministers who had served under him. An official statement published in state media praised Phuc for his efforts as prime minister in battling the COVID-19 pandemic. But it said that Phuc is responsible as the countrys top executive for serious scandals involving those under himincluding two deputy prime ministers and three other ministers. The statement noted that the two deputy prime ministers had resigned from their positions and criminal proceedings had been launched against two other ministers and many other officials. Several of the scandals involved corruption related to COVID-19 pandemic control measures. Two scandals that disrupted the handling of the pandemicnotably a bribery scandal linked to flying home Vietnamese citizens who were stranded abroad, and the purchase of COVID-19 test kitsmay be linked to the dismissals, said Carl Thayer, an expert in Vietnams diplomacy at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. The Communist Party of Vietnam last month disciplined Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son over the involvement of several ministry officials and diplomats in a scandal over repatriation flights. In a separate move, police in Vietnam on Jan. 5 arrested a former Vietnamese ambassador to Malaysia, Tran Viet Thai, as it widened its investigation into the scandal. Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. WEF Urges Businesses, Governments to Do More to Track Racial Data World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab delivers a speech on during a session of the WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 17, 2023. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images) In a white paper published on Jan. 17, the World Economic Forum (WEF) stressed the need for standardized and revamped diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and called on corporations and governments to do more to track racial data. The white paper, Prioritizing Racial and Ethnic Equity in Business, was released as part of last weeks summit in Davos, Switzerland. Created by the WEFs Center for the New Economy and Society (CNES), the paper posits that minorities bear the brunt of todays polycrisis, which it defines as the culmination of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and political unrest. The CNES is a branch within the international organization that aims to shape prosperous, resilient, and equitable economies and societies that create opportunity for all. The paper begins by building a case for why corporations should treat equitythe elimination of racial disparitiesas a primary business goal, arguing that equitable work opportunities are the right and fair thing to do regardless of the benefits to a companys financial performance. It goes on to state that many countries and large corporations arent doing enough to solve the problem. Corporate action on racial and ethnic equity must evolve beyond traditional DEI strategies, the report reads, calling for a more holistic approach. At the company level, data on race and ethnicity are a crucial and foundational component to taking stock of progress on closing racial and ethnic equity gaps. The report acknowledges the well-justified concerns associated with race-based data collection, invoking the Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany as two examples in which the practice was used for evil purposes. However, the need for disaggregated race data to help guide policy was highlighted recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the lack of data prevented several countries in Europe from getting a precise understanding of the impact the pandemic had on racially and ethnically marginalized communities, the report reads. According to the report, 20 of the 38 countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)a body comprised of predominantly modernized Western nationsdont collect data on ethnicity, 14 of which are European Union member states. Frances color-blind policyby which financial aid is disbursed solely on geographic and economic basesreceived criticism from the WEF, which suggested that the policy may allow racial struggles to go unnoticed. There is no place in the Republic for race, then-President Francois Hollande said in 2013, also advocating for the removal of the word race from the French constitution. In terms of hate speech, however, French law is stricter than many of its peers, including the United States. Equality of outcome was a major theme of the report. Racial and ethnic equity strategy should ideally focus on the systemic nature of outcome gaps within an organization, it reads. In this vein, the WEF celebrated the uptick in racial equity audits, in which third-party firms analyze a companys business practices to determine if they have an unforeseen discriminatory effect. Author and journalist Douglas Murray is a long-time critic of the concept of equity and thinks that the pathology of race obsession is hindering humanitys collective potential. Get off this farce, Murray said in a 2020 interview. Dont waste a minute more of your life on this, on working out where you are in a hierarchy, on working out when you have a right to speak or think or how privileged you are. We live in an era in history where we could do so much. If youre a smart person anywhere in the worldin the developing world or the developed worldand you have access to YouTube and to Google, you can do miracles that your ancestors collectively could never have done. So why spend our time doing the retribution-privilege game? Racial Guidelines for Businesses The WEF white paper was accompanied by a set of guidelines intended to instruct business owners on how to adopt equitable practices. Called the Global Racial & Ethnic Equity Framework, the paper was published as part of the organizations Racial Justice in Business Initiative, which, according to the WEF, is a global, cross-industry group committed to advancing racial and ethnic equity bringing together 50-plus companies. The framework supports businesses with a suite of options to help identify, measure, and analyze gaps and progress in their journey toward racial and ethnic equity, the WEF wrote in its statement. A police officer stands on the roof of a hotel and monitors the area in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Some serious corporate power is backing the initiative, from Big Tech to Big Pharma to notable financial behemoths. Partners include Google, Deutsche Bank, Coca-Cola, BlackRock, Bloomberg, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, PayPal, and Mastercard. Technological fairness and external stakeholder and social impact are two of the 10 guiding principles highlighted in the WEF framework. A list of 74 questions makes up the bulk of the document. The questions are posed to internal stakeholders (i.e., owners, shareholders, and employees) to self-assess a companys commitment to equity and racial justice. The questions include, Do you design products and create services with a racial and ethnic equity lens? or Do you screen your companys algorithms for the possibility of racial or ethnic bias? The WEF framework then invites companies to score themselves 05 on the list of questions to arrive at their racial and ethnic equity score. While some progress has been made, according to the WEF, new and improved means of advancing equity are warranted. Summarizing the problem in the Jan. 17 white paper, the organization wrote that traditional DEI methods have not always been successful at addressing the lingering effects of systemic racism, a particularly pernicious form of discrimination entrenched in laws, practices, and systems. In a June 2022 video, Jordan Peterson, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toronto, expressed doubt about the feasibility of achieving equity. The equity claim is essentially predicated on the notion of equality of outcome, which is, first of all, impossible to define across all possible variables of outcome and would require something approximating a totalitarian state to ever impose, Peterson said, calling the people perpetuating the DEI movement fundamentally racist. Western Australian Police Critically Understaffed: Union Boss Police are seen on patrol at a COVID-19 drive through clinic in Inglewood where members of the public have been waited over two hours in line on Feb. 1, 2021 in Perth, Australia. (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images) The Western Australian (WA) Police Union has warned the states police force is facing critical shortages after over 500 police resigned or retired last year. The WA Police Unions acting president Paul Gale, on Jan. 16, said that 465 sworn police officers resigned last year, and a further 97 retired, making it the highest number of resignations and retirements in the state police forces 189-year history and more than doubling those leaving in 2021. This means the states police force went from 7,112 to 6,893 in just one year. These figures are horrendous. The total number of sworn officers went backwards, Gale said. Over 220 in the last 12 months. Im disappointed, but Im not surprised. The comments from the police union are in stark contrast to those from the Western Australian government, which said in October 2022 that there were more officers on the beat now than when they came into office. The Western Australian Police Force has already recruited more than 1,000 new officers over the past two years, WA Minister for Police Paul Papalia said. We have more than 480 additional officers on the beat right now, compared with when we took office. There have never been more police on our streets, and the McGowan government is committed to continuing our record police recruitment drive and making WA safer for our community. Gale also alleges that the reason for the huge number of resignations was the states police forces rigid leadership, poor pay and conditions, lack of career opportunities, and cultural groupthink. I received one email after another from police officers saying theyd resigned from the agency and listing the many cultural and organisational issues that caused them to make their decision, he said. Gale is also calling on the Western Australian police force to release the anonymous data from the exit interviews of former police officers and for opposition political parties to hold the McGovern Labor government to account for this negligence. Government Looking to Solve Issue With Overseas Recruitment The WA government has been attempting to address the resignations via an overseas recruitment drive from the UK, Ireland and New Zealand police forces, with a promise of recruiting 950 offices by 2024. However, Gale has warned this is simply a band-aid solution. The union supports the governments overseas recruitment drive. However, this is only a band-aid solution, he said. Its only a matter of time before these new recruits obtain permanent residency and become familiar with the many cultural and organisational issues in WA police. Gale notes that the union would continue to push for an additional two percent pay rise on top of the recent three percent increase and bonus payment. Three percent is not good enough, and thats why well continue to search for the five per cent that we asked for in the first place, he said. He said the states police officers had been patient for five years during a financial restructuring and worked through the COVID-19 pandemic. Weve sat and adhered to what they needed, done our job, gone above and beyond and expect to be recompensed for all that effort, he said. For the McGowan government to do what they have this year and offer what they have is a slap in the face for our members. Greens Call for More Federal Mental Health Support for Police Meanwhile, WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, a former WA police officer, has called for the federal government to provide more mental health support for the organisation. As a former WA police officer, I understand the cultural issues within the organisation, but Ive also experienced the daily challenges, the thankless tasks, and the traumatic incidents of working on the frontline, Cox said. While health services are available to all members of the force, we need to ensure that the wellbeing of police officers is a priority. They need to be physically and mentally fit to perform their crucial role in the community. White House Wont Say If Search for More Biden Classified Documents Is Completed White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday refused to confirm her previous statement that the search for more classified documents tied to President Joe Biden has been completed. During a press briefing on the afternoon of Jan. 12, Jean-Pierre told reporters that the presidents lawyers had looked through locations where additional documents could be stored and that the search was completed. On Jan. 14, however, White House special counsel Richard Sauber said he went to Bidens home in Wilmington, Delaware, and found more classified material. Last week [you said] that we all can assume, the American people could assume that the searches were completed and all the documents have been recovered, the Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller said during Tuesdays press briefing. On Saturday, the White House Counsels Office said that five additional classified documents had been found. Is it safe to assume now that all the documents have been recovered, all the official records, all the classified documents are back in the custody of the National Archives? Miller asked. Or are more searches underway to find out if theres anything out there? Jean-Pierre refused to answer the question, insisting that she will stay prudent by not commenting on the legal process that is now in the hands of the Justice Department. Im not going to comment from here, she told Miller. When it comes to the Department of Justice, when it comes to legal matters, when it comes to legal issues, we have been very clear that were not going to comment. We are not going to politically interfere. At another point of the press conference, Jean-Pierre was asked if Biden himself was physically involved in going through his belongings at his private offices. Jean-Pierre initially laughed off the question, asking him, Are you listening to the question youre asking me? She then reiterated that she would not comment on the investigation or matters related to the investigation. Is he physically joining in the search for these things, rummaging around these boxes in the garage and wherever else? asked AFP reporter Sebastian Smith. I mean, literally. At least three batches of classified documents dating from Bidens vice presidency have so far been discovered. The locations are his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington and his Delaware home. While the Justice Departments probe into Bidens alleged mishandling of classified documents continues, congressional Republicans also started their own investigation. The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee will conduct an oversight of the Justice Departments actions related to the the matter, said Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) in their letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, has also sent a letter to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, asking him to hand over the visitor logs for Bidens Wilmington home and all records related to the search that happened there. Christmas 2022 will be long remembered for the savage winter storm that struck much of the United States. Buffalo, New York, saw four feet of snow and deadly low temperatures. A friend in Minneapolis-St. Paul told me that the weather service there once cheerily reported that the temperature would climb to 6 degrees the following day. Cities and towns around the nation suffered power outages and broken water lines. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, where I spent Christmas with my daughter and her family, the thermometer registered single digits for nearly three days. One morning, coming back into the house, I wondered about the temperatures in the winter of 177778 at Valley Forge, which was less than two hours away. I searched online and found that the troops of George Washington had contended at times with weather nearly as frigid as our own. Now, the 140-year-old house my daughter and her husband rent is a bit drafty on Christmas, but the fireplace with its blower pumped out the heat, and the radiators did their duty. The kitchen held an abundance of food and drink, the showers and sinks ran hot water, the grandkids played with their gifts, and we slept warm and well in the frozen nights. Things were different for Washingtons army. That Dismal Abode In Valley Forge, authors Robert Drury and Tom Clavin paint some vivid pictures of life in that winter encampment, which essentially became the fourth-largest American city of the time. In the snow and subfreezing temperatures, soldiers often lacked blankets, coats, socks, and shoes, so much so that they left a bloody trail on the drill ground. They were quartered in cold, primitive huts with fires that blackened the air with smoke. They frequently subsisted on a mixture of flour and water they called firecakeshard, blackened biscuits. With little beef or pork, the dead maggots and weevils in the flour were often their only protein. Even by the standards of the time, medical care for the sickand there were many sickwas abysmal, and poor sanitation practices felled hundreds of soldiers as well. Of the 12,000 soldiers who occupied that winter camp, nearly 2,000 had died of disease and privation by the time spring arrived. Not all of them stuck it out that long. Desertions that winter were rampant, reaching such numbers that Washington ordered multiple daily roll calls to keep track of his soldiers. But what, I wondered, of the men who remained loyal to the American cause? What caused them to stay the course despite these deplorable conditions? And might we learn some things from their ordeal that could put some steel in our spines in our own battles? Leadership Although his reputation was assailed that winter by his enemies within the army, George Washington receives the lions share of the credit not only for holding his troops together but also for improving their battlefield capabilities. With the help of foreigners such as Marquis de Lafayette and especially Baron von Steuben, who taught these citizen-soldiers the basics of drill and battlefield maneuvers, these patriots emerged from the trials of that winter disciplined and fit for war. In our own troubles of 2023given the events of the previous year, we can guess that the weather will be the least of our worriesour homes and workplaces will also benefit from strong leaders: calm and capable men and women who keep their heads about them, exude a cautious optimism, and instill in those around them the confidence to weather whatever storms may come. Thats Lesson No. 1: In whatever capacity, whether as the parents of small children or the manager of a branch bank, we should seek to inspire hope in those in our charge. Service to Others At Valley Forge, there were roughly 400 women, camp followers of all sorts. Some wives accompanied their husbands to this bleak place. Other women, among them Native Americans and African Americans, both slave and free, sold goods as sutlers, laundered and mended clothes, cooked, and comforted the sick. Fifty-six-year-old Sarah Alexander, the wife of Maj. Gen. William Alexander, even helped put together a production of Cato, a play beloved by Washington, to rouse the morale of the men. Among these gallant females was Martha Washington, George Washingtons wife, who managed his household, arranged important dinners, and most of all lifted the spirits of the officers with her presence and kindness. When bad things happen, from a sudden medical emergency to dire news about the economy, we would do well to emulate these women in their devotion and care for others. A discouraged spouse, an employer struggling to keep his business up and running, an aging parent, or a mixed-up teenall these and more need our presence and attention. Lesson No. 2: When friends or family members are hurting, its time to rally around and bandage their wounds. Comradery Many of those Valley Forge troopers had known one another long before enlisting in the cause of liberty. They were friends and neighbors who now drilled, ate, and slept together as comrades in arms. The boys and men in those bleak circumstances surely found some solace in knowing that their comrades would care for them if they fell sick or would console them on the arrival of bad news from home. In our own times of trouble, we can take from those men a lesson summed up by poet John Donne in this line: No man is an island. A woman I know recently lost her beloved husband. Rallying around her were her siblings, some old friends, and a score of people from her church. That support has helped carry her through her grief. Lesson No. 3: Maintain and strengthen personal relationships. A Cause to Fight For Those soldiers and other patriots of the American Revolution fought for various reasons. For example, some of Washingtons men joined up for the wages offered or for a change in their circumstances. Some fought because the British army was in their backyard, so to speak, and they felt they had little choice other than resistance. But many also believed they were fighting for their liberties and to establish a new country. This vision of a new and vibrant future led them forward, like the pillars of cloud and fire that guided the Hebrews during their desert exodus. They may not recognize themselves as such, but many Americans are freedom fighters. In the face of government regulations and a broken economy, they open new businesses. Confronted by a woke culture, they battle for their childrens rights to a sound education. Mired in a culture of relativism, they work hard, honor their marriage vows, seek the true and reject the false, and live upright, moral lives. Lesson No. 4: Like those winter patriots long ago, weyou and Iare the makers and protectors of our liberties. Stepping Up to Our Challenges Our admiration for those troops at Valley Forge may leave us wondering whether we have the sand to measure up to their heroism. After all, were not living in smoke-clouded huts, food is readily available for most Americans, and none are forced to walk the city sidewalks barefooted and leaving a trail of blood in the snow. Yet we face challenges, tests of character, and circumstances unimaginable to those figures from 250 years ago. Technology, big government, and the reigning philosophy of relativism have broken down the families and communities which comforted our patriot ancestors. A decades-long torrent of federal laws and directives, more restrictive by far than any of those issued by Britains King George III, burden the American people with regulations and taxes. Our current typhoon of drug deaths, illegal immigration, lawlessness, censorship, confused sexual mores, and cultural collapse affects all of us, whether directly or indirectly. So lets not allow our admiration for our ancestors to become a contest of comparisons. Instead, lets look to those devoted patriots as reminders that great odds can be overcome, that failure isnt an option, and that winter itself eventually gives way to spring. Zellers Returns to Canada as Chain Set to Open 25 Stores Nationwide A transport truck is seen outside a Zellers store in Lynn Valley in North Vancouver, B.C., July, 26, 2012. (JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press) The iconic Zellers department store, which had most of its Canadian stores shut down by 2013, is set to make a comeback. On Jan. 18, a news release announced the opening of 25 stores inside Hudsons Bay locations across Canada this year, as well as an online store. Opening in communities across the country, the brick-and-mortar locations will complement the first-ever Zellers.ca ecommerce site, ultimately bringing Zellers to nearly every community in Canada, said Hudsons Bay Company (HBC), which owns Zellers. The Bay first announced in August 2022 that the discount department store would return to Canada sometime in 2023 at a variety of locations, including four stores in British Columbia, four stores in Alberta, one in Winnipeg, one in Saskatoon, nine in Ontario, five in Quebec, and two in Nova Scotia. Zellers and Zellers.ca will deliver a digital-first shopping journey that taps into the nostalgia of the brand Canadians know and love, while introducing a refreshed identity and a unique and exciting product assortment for families at everyday value, said the company last summer. The Zellers section within Hudsons Bays existing stores will be between 8,000 to 10,000 sq ft., depending on location. The Zellers in-store experience and Zellers.ca are planned to launch simultaneously, the company said. More stores could follow, HBC said. The initial opening date has not yet been announced. New Look HBC has said Zellers is returning with a refreshed identity as well as a new in-house private label, that it called a design-led, value driven private brand. The store will sell housewares and home decor, furniture, baby items, small appliances, toys, and pet accessories, plus grow their offerings and include clothing. A new Twitter account for Zellers has the slogan New Year New Us as its branding, and promises to become Canadas go-to for design and value, from lifestyle to home and almost everything in between. Zellers was first conceived in 1931 and HBC bought the discount department store in 1978, operating with the slogan, Where the lowest price is the law. In the 1990s, Zellers had 350 locations. But by 2011, with fierce competition from Walmart and other stores, Zellers was sold to Target. The U.S-based retailer initially opened inside old Zellers stores rebranding as Target, but closed most Canadian stores by 2013. A few locations were kept as outlet stores, but ultimately these last liquidation locations closed by 2020. Mob youths of Kaffin-Koro, Paikoro local government area of Niger State have reportedly burnt down the Police station in protest to the gruesome murder of a Catholic Priest, Rev Father Isaac Achi of St. Peters and Paul Catholic Church by armed bandits, along Daza road, in the area. It was learnt that the youths were angered by the slow response of the police to the cries for help from the people when the gunmen attacked his residence on Sunday morning at about 3am. According to reports, cars and houses including the police outpost were burnt even as some persons sustained various degrees of injuries. Recall that Rev Achis house was set ablaze when the bandits failed to gain entrance into his house, the priest also died in the inferno. Confirming the development in the area, the state Commissioner for Internal Security and Humanitarian Services, Emmanuel Bagna Umar said though, the state government is pained by the incident, nobody has the right to take laws into his or her for whatever reason. The commissioner stated that the state government will not allow any obstruction to law and order as it is doing its best to ensure the security of the lives and property of citizens of the state. He said, Since the incident happened on Sunday, you have seen the commitment of government that is why we are calling on communities to support the government in riding the state of bandits and not to take side by vandalizing government property He insisted, violence has no place in our communities, we understand the times and trend we are leaving in. No man on this land is permitted to take laws into his or her hands. The same way we go after bandits is the same way we will go after whoever takes laws into his or her hands because we have the responsibility to protect the lives of everyone. Umar also added that a security team has already been dispatched to Kaffin-Koro to do an on-the-spot assessment of the situation, especially the remote cause of the violence outbreak by the youths. Similarly, the state Police Public Relations Officer, PRO, DSP Wasiu Abiodun confirmed the burning down of the police station in the area by angry youths, saying it was because of the poor response in rescuing the Catholic Priest. They are angry that the police could come on time to rescue the Rev Father and this is because his house is about one kilometre from the police station. Before they could mobilize and get to his place to engage the assailants, they had already run away from the scene, when they saw the police coming. He added, Another problem was that there was no water close by to quickly put out the fire when the police got there to save the Priest. President Muhammadu Buhari has said the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) reforms is set to increase Nigerias non-oil exports to other African countries by more than 15 per cent. Buhari stated this on monday at the ninth African Shippers Day with the theme: African Continental Free Trade Agreement: A Veritable Platform for African Shippers to Mainstream Into Global Trade held in Lagos. Buhari, who was represented by the Minister of State for Transportation, Ademola Adegoroye, said Nigerias exports would increase significantly to other African sub-regions, outside West Africa, with most impressive expansions to countries such as Botswana, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In Nigeria, we have realised that AfCFTA would be a game changer when it comes to stimulating intra-African trade because the more ambitious the trade liberalisation, the greater the expansion of Nigerian exports to its African partners, he said. Buhari said the global economy is a source of growth that African economies cannot afford to ignore, noting that while African exports have seen their fastest growth in the past decade, the volumes remain low at just three per cent of global trade. He said the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) projected that AfCFTA could boost intra-Africa trade by 52 per cent, with the industrial sector forecast to gain the most. Buhari further noted that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and exports would increase by $44 billion and $56 billion respectively, while AFCFTA could potentially increase jobs and move informal traders into the formal sector. He said following this, African countries should therefore expand and diversify their participation in international trade and global value chains to create wealth, generate employment and reduce poverty on a large scale as well as transform their economies. He said experience during the Covid-19 pandemic and the attendant global lockdown showed the need for a vibrant and successful AfCFTA as it exposed Africas dependence on commodity exports to other parts of the world and import of manufactured goods from them. Deepening regional integration to scale up supply capacity and build regional value chains is essential to the continents economic transformation. The establishment of the AfCFTA presents major opportunities of production and exports, creates employment, and limits the impact of commodity price volatility on the economies of various African countries. AfCFTA is expected to bring about a number of benefits to producers, consumers and countries alike. The hope is that African producers would benefit from cheaper inputs and intermediate goods as well as larger markets for their products while consumers have access to cheaper goods and a broader variety of products, he said. Buhari said African economies should experience gains from trade and further benefit from removing the onerous requirements belonging to multiple and overlapping trade agreements within the continent. He said for AfCFTA to have a positive influence on long-term productive capacities, African governments must develop appropriate supporting policies, build the requisite infrastructure and ensure an educated workforce. An idea consultant and strategist, Bayode Oke, explained that startups should concentrate more on building structures and strategies to survive and grow. Oke stated this at a closed boardroom event tagged Strategic foresighting: A peep into the future of startups in Nigeria. The consultant note the real challenge with start-ups in the country was that excitement usually preceded the needed structure and positioning. He said, Theres so much enthusiasm in trying to birth an idea but we fail to realise that a start-up is still a business. Regardless of the change in the name of start-up, there is a model a business should run. There are feasibility studies; there are predictions of the forecasting of the future that we must engage in to help position properly. So, what we do most times is that we are too enthusiastic than positioned for whatever is to come because by the time ideas come, its really exciting but there are structures that must be in place, there are strategies that must be in place, theres also the funding conversation. The Chief Executive Officer of Advantage Health Africa, Adebola Adebakin, urged the government to draw closer to start-ups for better understanding and cooperation. She said, As an experienced entrepreneur, I knew I needed to get the government on my side and so even before I launched, I went to create attention with the government. But how many people can do that? Im much older, and much more experienced, and I have a bigger network. We have a government full of old people and far away from those who are innovating. There is a disconnect and we need a good mix in government. The Nigeria Governors Forum has summoned the Central Bank of Nigeria, Governor, Godwin Emefiele, over the withdrawal policy and the redesigned naira notes. The Forum's spokesperson, Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, made this known in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the planned meeting would be held on Thursday. CBN introduced the naira redesign policy in October 2022 last year and directed Nigerians to deposit their old notes in banks by January 31, 2023. While referring to the NGFs Director General, Asishana Okauru, the spokesperson noted that the virtual meeting would focus on the latest apex banks withdrawal policy and naira redesign. He said, For the virtual meeting, the agenda is, The Economic and Security implications of naira redesign and withdrawal policy. The discussion promises to foster involvement and dialogue among various stakeholders, including governments and civil society organisations, to devise a solution to the lingering issue. Chatham House in Central London is a place where the best rub minds in a rarefied atmosphere. It has continued to host personalities interested in governing states, where their knowledge about policy and emerging developmental trends are gauged. This is what informs a question session even after a written speech has been delivered. As I contemplate Obis road to Chatham House, I remember an Igbo folk song about a crooked man, who married a crooked wife, beget crooked children and walked along crooked paths, so that everything about him was crooked. Crookedness is what defines the nature of men Obi is contesting against. They represent the jejune Nigeria of the past that Nigerians, young and old, are queuing behind Obi to supplant from the Nigerian political field for their colossal damage to the nation. In their characteristic crookedness, they planned to embarrass Obi in London. Who else read an open letter that was widely circulated on social media platforms? The letter was a warning to Mr. Obi not to visit London, not to talk of Chatham House. Checks proved the authenticity of the contents of the letter. Some people who performed woefully guessed rightly that if allowed, Obi would shine. Steeped in crookedness and mischief, they tried to stop him. However, they failed mournfully because they were dealing with a man whose life is defined by integrity. After all was said and done, Obi was in London at Chatham House on Monday, the 16th of January, 2023. His performance proved that those who wanted to stop him did not have the moral force to do so. As he was being introduced by Dr. Alex Vines, the Director of African Programme, his confidence and looks bespoke a mind serene, erect, and firm. Kingsley Anajemba (Aluta Panorama), who came all the way from Manchester and seated beside me asked a question: I hope our man will bubble with ideas as usual? Now, let us recall Obis performance at Chatham House, where he inhaled cold and exhaled wisdom. His speech was an interesting narrative, not fatiguing and in strange tongues, but a clear and flowing stream, sparkling now and then with substance of governance. He built the speech around the theme of the engagement: Nigerias 2023 Elections: a Vision for Policy Change and Institutional Reforms. He could be relied on to say something whenever he spoke. Obi started with the foundations of the problems of the country by tracing the roots thus: The Nigerian state is captive to an elite gang-up and a rentier political economy that has concentrated political power in the hands of those who came to power and influence mainly through their own contrivances and not through the affirmation of the people, and therefore, do not have the incentive to serve the peoples interest. It is the capture of the State that has led to the problems she faces on all fonts. On the insecurity and economic fronts, he said: We have alarming insecurity that has led to loss of many lives and properties, significant decline in food and economic output, immense trauma that has compromised the mental health of communities, and in some cases, irredentist pressures and disaffection with the Nigerian project. The economy is in crisis with a troubling debt profile worsened by oil theft of proportion once hard to even imagine, two economic recessions in six years and a lamentable power sector that significantly constrains manufacturing and social life. The continued economic decline of Nigeria has led to widespread poverty in the realm. Using statistics, Obi explained to the audience how poor Nigerians are: How did we (Nigeria) plunge into such economic decline that we have overtaken India as home to the biggest pool of the absolute poor in the world? While the poverty rate in India is about 16%, that of Nigeria is about 63% with about 133 million Nigerians classified as multi-dimensionally poor. Peter Obi was evidently appalled by what could be termed the mutation of morals and manners among politicians, when he spoke of the need to maintain ethical standards and introducing positive values into governance by exploiting ones rich upbringing. His words: In many ways, this is at the heart of my remarks today which are deeply rooted in my upbringing, particularly my mothers counsel that I live a life of positive impact and manage both personal and public resources most prudently for sustainable/inclusive growth and development of the society. It is the principle that guided my stewardship as Governor of Anambra State, Nigeria and led to our much-commended performance with some priced awards to show for it. Some of the awards were for outstanding accomplishment in key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) now Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is the same counsel and principle that is guiding and motivating me to offer to serve in a New Nigeria! On what could be regarded as the second part of his speech, Obi introduced his running mate, and an economist respected for his suave resourcefulness, Sen. Datti Ahmed. The business of restoring the glory of Nigeria would be a joint effort. Obi gave a little insight, including the colour of their Cabinet: Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, my running mate, and I are committed to a new politics that starts with the ethics of servant-leaders and anchored on the marriage of clean hearts and skillful hands. Noting what disunity has done to the country, and that the strongest incentive to cohesiveness is internal unity, Obi expressed his commitment: To secure Nigeria, end banditry and insurgency, and unite our dear nation to manage our diversity, such that no one is left behind. On insecurity, he implied that bad times accentuate that phenomenon. The arm ready to strike is always held back by the abundance and watchfulness of the Police. Here, he promises far-reaching reforms. He hopes to achieve it by pursuing a robust reform of the security governance structure with a strong coordinating mechanism that assures that all levels of government Federal, State, and Local (with 3-level policing structure) are aligned with strong collaboration with partners from both the private sector and development groups to provide the required services and deliver results for every Nigerian. Once this is done, it is also important to have a single, clear, coherent, and consistent communication system to keep the government accountable, citizens engaged and involved in the development process. It is important for institutions to be able to provide strong leadership, coordination capability, and partner and engage collaboratively with all relevant stakeholders in an environment that mutually reinforces values. Peter Obi is not happy with Nigerias mono-economy. He laments the criminality of subsidy and oil theft as resting on the fact that as Nigeria is today, only oil flows in her economic arteries. He consequently insists that he will move Nigeria from a country of rent-seekers sharing Oil receipts and consuming conspicuously, to one that produces, based on vast factor endowments whose value-chains can move us towards a high employment economy. He foresees an agricultural revolution too, and dreams of a country in which agriculture shall be given the attention it deserves as one of the pivots around which the shift from consumption to production shall rotate. Hear him: The second plank of my policy thrust is to Shift emphasis from consumption to production by running a production-centered economy that is driven by an agrarian revolution and export-oriented industrialization. With about 70 million hectares of arable land, we will pursue an agricultural revolution through proper segmentation of Nigeria to activate and harness the factor endowments of different parts of the country for both rapid and mechanized agricultural development and as a pillar for Nigerias other sectorial development and industrialization. We will incentivize and invest in agro-cluster and industrial cluster development across our geo-resource zones to take advantage of agglomeration and scale effects particularly in North-West, North-East and North-Central regions of Nigeria. We will dredge both Rivers Niger and Benue, build dams and massively support the planting of economic trees across the country for local usage, poverty elimination, export and revenue generation. Obi is a product of the rule of law. He was the first person to assume office as a State Governor through the court process to retrieve his stolen mandate. It was also through the courts that he returned from impeachment and had his full tenure. His marriage to the rule of law always plays a key part in his political life. As President, he says he would Restructure the polity through effective legal and institutional reforms to entrench the rule of law, aggressively fight corruption, reduce cost of governance, and establish an honest and efficient civil service. Chase out my husband if he fails to deliver after 4 yrs, says Peter Obi hails Emeka Anyaoku as he clocks 90 PDP guber candidate, Uchenna Ikonne is sick, says gov Ikpeazu The world talks in terms of Artificial Intelligence, robotics and all the marvels of the time. Here, the world has left us behind, but the Obi/ Datti presidency will be desirous of catching up. In his words, The fourth plank of our governance priorities is to Leapfrog Nigeria into the 4th Industrial Revolution through the application of scientific and technological innovations to create a digital economy. Building on the gains of the agriculture-led manufacturing and export, we will pursue the development of knowledge and skills to leverage on the emerging disruptive digital technologies, automation, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, block chain technology, biotechnology and data science all of which are at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution. Understanding the effect of transportation and power on economies of the world, and how the comatose state of both militate against economic development in Nigeria, he offered a blueprint: The fifth plank of our governance priorities is to Build expansive infrastructure for efficient power supply, rail, road and air transportation, and pipeline network, through integrated public-private partnerships, and entrepreneurial public sector governance. Our solution to the perennial power problem in Nigeria is a comprehensive one that covers transmission, distribution, generation and financing as detailed in our Manifesto. However, we will immediately complete the $2.3 billion Nigeria-Siemens network improvement deal to achieve 7,000 MW stable capacity by the end of this year (2023), 11,000 megawatts by 2024, and 25,000 megawatts by 2025. We will support local manufacturing capacity of power technologies and encourage and expand local R&D in universities, training centres, and workshops through which many jobs will be created. As the Governor of Anambra State, education was among Obis strongest points. He would replicate what he did in Anambra at higher levels. Here, he did not speak in tongues: Our 6th priority programme is to Enhance the human capital of Nigerian youths for productivity and global competitiveness through investment in education and research, quality healthcare, and entrepreneurship education. The World Banks Human Capital Development Index ranks Nigeria 168 out of 173 countries. To move Nigeria right to the top bracket of the index, we will pursue a Marshall plan-type programme on education that incorporates compulsory technical and vocational skills, sports, entrepreneurship, programming, and digital skills from the primary to the secondary level. In line with this commitment to transform our educational sector, we will prioritize the funding of this critical sector. Our tertiary institutions will be remodeled to serve as hubs or centres for research, development, and commercialisation of ideas for the quick industrialization of Nigeria. Governing a State is quite different from governing a country; as the latter deals with external relations and international diplomacy. It is not as simple as we imagine. Many factors affect this, which prompted one man to say that nations weigh words by counting guns. But Nigeria has to start from the basics, hence Obi said: Finally, our 7th priority is to conduct an Afro-centric diplomacy that protects the rights of Nigerian citizens abroad and advances the economic interests of Nigerians and Nigerian businesses in a changing world. After the speech came question time. I think it was more of a debate as exciting and as fascinating as a tournament. Obis agile intellect grasped the questions hungrily. All the questions asked were expertly answered. He was never at a loss for an illuminating comparison or arresting phrase. The moment they asked him about security and how he would tackle it, it was easy to see how worried the issue has agitated him. This was confirmed by a worried look that darkened and ridged his face around the rubicund nose. Who is not worried about the spate of insecurity in the country? After his own appearance, Obi and his team went into meetings, evaluating what was done and reviewing all questions. He held six meetings with other groups the same day. On the contrary, after his own appearance at Chatham House, the old man of strange tongues entertained his entourage in bibulous hilarity. Watching his dance steps, one would think he had discovered a hidden truth. By such indulgences, he provides raw materials for his abuse as he called it only to turn around and complain about the caricatures of satirists. By his every step, Obi has proved his preparedness for the job. Age being on his side, he would absorb readily, unlike others, the drain the arduous task of governance will make upon his resources of body, mind and will. More than others he understands the country and her problems better. More still, he has never been part of the problem. This is why each time he speaks about Nigeria, he is so plain and truthful that they affect that catharsis of emotion that even set some crying. Many cried at Chatham House. From his speech, all we can do now is to console Nigerians and inform them that with Obi and Datti in the race, promising meteors have entered and are poised to alter the political orbit. Obienyem, Media Aide to Obi, writes from Abuja. China back to normal, says vice-premier DAVOS: China has returned to normal after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, Vice Premier Liu He told the World Economic Forum yesterday (Jan 17) as he invited international friends to visit the country. ChineseCOVID-19politicsVaccinetourism By AFP Wednesday 18 January 2023, 11:07AM Liu He delivers an upbeat pitch at Davos, inviting international friends to visit. Photo: AFP China abruptly dropped its zero-COVID approach last month after three years of enforcing some of the harshest anti-pandemic restrictions in the world. The move led to a wave of infections that packed hospitals and overwhelmed crematoriums, with authorities revealing Saturday that almost 60,000 COVID-related deaths were reported in just over a month. But Liu told the meeting of the global elite in the Swiss Alpine village of Davos that the transition has overall been stable and smooth. The time to reach the peak (of infections) and to return to normal has been relatively fast. In some senses, it has exceeded our expectations, he said. Liu said the food and beverage industry and tourism had started to return to normal, with five billion trips expected during Chinas Lunar New Year holiday that begins this weekend. Things have comprehensively returned to normal, he said. Currently the main difficulty is still the elderly, those with underlying conditions, he said, adding: We are currently striving to tackle this. Millions of the elderly in China are not fully vaccinated, with President Xi Jinpings government criticised for not prioritising immunisation campaigns among the countrys most vulnerable citizens. Liu also encouraged foreigners to visit China after quarantine requirements for overseas arrivals were dropped last week. We very much welcome international friends to come to China. We will provide the best service. Of course, right now, on some issues we need some time to transition, but on the whole, there is already no problem, he said. Population shrink Lius comments came after official data yesterday showed Chinas population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades as the worlds most populous nation faces a looming demographic crisis. The nation of 1.4 billion has seen birth rates plunge to record lows as its workforce ages, in a rapid decline that analysts warn could stymie economic growth and pile pressure on strained public coffers. The population stood at around 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, Beijings National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported yesterday, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year. The number of births was 9.56 million, the NBS said, while the number of deaths was 10.41mn. The last time Chinas population declined was in 1960, as the country battled the worst famine in its modern history, caused by the disastrous Mao Zedong agricultural policy known as the Great Leap Forward. China ended its strict one-child policy - imposed in the 1980s owing to fears of overpopulation - in 2016 and began allowing couples to have three children in 2021. But that has failed to reverse the demographic decline. Many point to the soaring cost of living - as well as a growing number of women in the workforce and seeking higher education - as being behind the slowdown. Chinese people are also getting used to the small family because of the decades-long one-child policy, Xiujian Peng, a researcher at Australias University of Victoria, told AFP. The Chinese government has to find effective policies to encourage birth, otherwise, fertility will slip even lower, she added. Many local authorities have already launched measures to encourage couples to have children. The southern megacity of Shenzhen, for example, now offers a birth bonus and allowances paid until the child is three years old. A couple who has their first baby will automatically receive 3,000 yuan ($444), an amount that rises to 10,000 yuan for their third. In the countrys east, the city of Jinan has since Jan 1 paid a monthly stipend of 600 yuan for couples that have a second child. Independent demographer He Yafu also points to the decline in the number of women of childbearing age, which fell by five million per year between 2016 and 2021 - a consequence of the ageing of the population. A declining and ageing population will be a real concern for China, Peng said. It will have a profound impact on Chinas economy from the present through to 2100. How Wealthy Investors in Thailand Can become Global Citizens with Grenada Citizenship by Investment Also known as the Spice Island due to its nutmeg and mace crops, Grenada is an English-speaking Commonwealth country, with a common law legal system and a stable government. The picturesque Caribbean island has a year-round temperate climate and like Thailand exotic, diverse scenery and breath-taking beaches, making it a home from home. By Advertorial Wednesday 18 January 2023, 05:05PM Interest in obtaining an alternative residence or additional citizenship has spiked over the last few years as affluent investors seek to improve their global mobility, mitigate risk, and secure a plan B. Spoilt for choice with over 35 investment migration programs available, the Grenada Citizenship by Investment Program stands out as a top option for high-net-worth individuals and families in Thailand looking for an efficient, cost-effective way to expand their travel freedom and improve their business opportunities, or find a secluded, safe place to live or retire. Why most global investors are choosing Grenada While several Caribbean island nations have citizenship by investment programs, Grenadas is currently the most popular and sought after. Here are a few reasons why: Travel freedom Grenadian passport holders can travel visa-free or by visa-on-arrival to 146 destinations, including Singapore, the UK, Europes Schengen Area, and China Bring the whole family Your spouse, any children under 30, unmarried siblings over the age of 18, parents, and grandparents can all be included in your application. Leave a legacy Your Grenadian citizenship is transferable to new spouses and future generations. Keep your current nationality Grenada has no restrictions on dual citizenship, so you wont have to renounce your current nationality. Come and go as you please Unlike many other programs, there is no minimum stay required in Grenada to acquire or maintain your citizenship. A quick and easy process Grenadas efficient application process means you can become a citizen in as little as three to four months from the date of submitting your application, and you are not required to visit Grenada to complete the process. Two investment pathways to Grenadian citizenship The Grenada Citizenship by Investment Program offers two investment routes: National Transformation Fund (NTF) make a minimum non-refundable contribution of USD 150,000 for a single applicant or USD 200,000 for a family of up to four members. make a minimum non-refundable contribution of USD 150,000 for a single applicant or USD 200,000 for a family of up to four members. Real Estate Invest a minimum of USD 220,000 in a government-approved real estate project an additional minimum non-refundable contribution of USD 50,000 applies. Due to its highly efficient application process, if you choose the NTF option it is possible to submit an application and receive an answer from the Grenadian government within 90 days. Successful applicants then usually receive their passport within 10 business days. The real estate option offers the additional benefits of an investment that can offer multiple yields. The potential gains over the lifetime of a real estate investment include not only the core value of the asset and rental yields, but also a second home, vacation spot, or retirement option in a stable paradise. Its clear to see why the Grenada Citizenship by Investment Program is the perfect match for wealthy families in Thailand looking to unlock global access and create opportunity while mitigating risk. Illegal hillside excavation ordered to stop again PHUKET: Illegal excavation of a hill in Kathu that ended up with a landslide across the Kathu-Koh Kaew Rd last October has again been ordered to stop following a raid by Phuket officers of the Royal Forest Department (RFD) accompanied by Phuket Provincial Police. constructioncrimeenvironmentnatural-resourcesSafety By The Phuket News Wednesday 18 January 2023, 06:42PM The landslide from the hill last October. Photo: The Phuket News / file A local resident expat whose house was nearly directly affected by the landslide in October told The Phuket News today (Jan 18) that work on the hill began again like crazy about three weeks ago. The local resident reported the illegal excavation to Kathu Municipality, but to no avail. There was a whole new team of officials this time. All the other officials from last time were no longer there, the local resident said. The official the local resident spoke to said that Kathu Municipality had ordered the work to stop, and invited the company conducting the excavation to present themselves to Kathu Municipality in order to correctly apply for a permit to do so. That never happened, but the excavation of the hill continued. Acting on advice from a friend, the local resident filed a complaint through the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion (DEQP), under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE) in Bangkok on Jan 10. The raid on the site occurred at 4:30pm the next day (Jan 11). By last Thursday (Jan 12), the local resident had received written confirmation from the Phuket MNRE office that action had been taken. According to the complaint above, the Phuket Provincial Police joined an inspection of the area, on Kathu-Koh Kaew Rd. The Governor of Phuket had ordered the Kathu District Office, Phuket Forestry Center, Kathu Municipality and the Phuket Provincial Police to inspect the site, which was done on January 11, 2023 at 4:30pm, a Phuket MNRE official reported to the DEQP. Of note, the confirmation of action came less than 24 hours after the complaint was received. The officers conducting the raid arrested the perpetrators and had all machinery removed from the area, the Phuket MNRE officer confirmed The aforementioned case violated the land excavation and landfilling ban order of Kathu Municipality. Currently, Kathu Municipality has ordered to stop the operation and has issued a fine of B30,000, the official said. Kathu Municipality can advise the landowners about how to act according to the law, because it is a steep hillside area, the officer noted. It is within the scope of needing to have a preliminary environmental impact report in accordance with the announcement of the Phuket Environmental Protected Areas. The Kathu District Office has now informed the Governor of Phuket of the infringement, the officer said. No Phuket government offices have publicly acknowledged that the raid, ban on excavation and fine were exercised. However, just two days after the raid, the Phuket MNRE office last Friday issued a notice and a flowchart of how to comply with Environment Impact Assessment requirements. Under Section 51/5 paragraph one of the Enhancement and Conservation of National Environmental Quality Act (No. 2), B.E., offender may be liable to a fine of up to B1 million, the notice explained. Man holding wife hostage at knifepoint arrested PHUKET: Police safely took a man into custody after he reportedly held his wife hostage at knifepoint at their home in Kathu this morning (Jan 18). By Eakkapop Thongtub Wednesday 18 January 2023, 05:23PM Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub Kathu Police were informed of the situation by the 191 emergency call centre at 9:15am. The call centre reported that they had been informed that a man was using a knife to force his wife to remain inside the house, in Soi Ketho Soi 6, Kathu. Kathu Police Chief Pol Col Rungrit Ratanaphakdee ordered officers to respond. In total 15 officers arrived at the home, including officers from Kathu Police Station, patrol officers, members of the Royal Volunteer Spirit 904 group and officials from Kathu Municipality. Officers armed with long-handled prongs called for the man Worawut Thongsuek, 37, originally from Surat Thani, to come out of the house peacefully. His wife opened the door, availing police to rush inside and take Mr Worawut under arrest. Mr Worawut worked as security at the Pruksa Ville Kathu housing estate in Soi Bang Thong, Kathu, police reported. He admitted that was stressed and in a state of anxiety, and had previously used methamphetamines (ya bah) and crystal meth (ya ice), officers said. Mr Worawut was taken for drug testing, police confirmed. At this stage police have not confirmed what charges Mr Worawut will face. Search for missing Romanian expat draws to a close PHUKET: The command centre coordinating the search for missing 46-year-old Romanian national Sebastian Emil Somesan has been closed with all active search efforts to locate him now suspended. marineSafetyaccidents By The Phuket News Wednesday 18 January 2023, 11:29AM Rawai Mayor Aroon Solos announced the end of the search efforts at the command centre at Ya Nui Beach yesterday (Jan 17). The announcement came after nine days of intensive search efforts involving divers, local rescue workers and Navy boats and a search-rescue helicopter scouring the waters across the southern end of Phuket. The search was launched after Mr Somesan was reported missing on Jan 8. He was on a diving trip with a Romanian and a Thai friend. When the trio went to leave the area, they became aware that the boat anchor had caught on a rock on the seabed and Mr Somesan dived down to free the anchor. He failed to resurface. Immediate search efforts focused on the waters around Koh Kaew Noi island, just over two kilometres south of Promthep Cape. Failing to find Mr Somesan, search teams then expanded their search area to include the southwest coast of Phuket and then areas immediately south of Nai Harn. Mobilised to join the search efforts were officers from Rawai Municipality, Marine Police, Tourist Police, Chalong Police, Tourist Assistance Center, Kusoldharm Foundation rescue workers, disaster officials and personnel form the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command based at Cape Panwa. Local foreign divers have also joined the search efforts to locate Mr Somesan, who as a local expat lived in Phuket with his wife and daughter. Mayor Aroon yesterday said the relevant agencies, including Phukets commercial fishing fleet, had been asked to continue to keep watch for any sign of Mr Somesan or his body. The closing of the command centre was marked by a lunch conducted in the form of merit making under the theme Together We Share to express gratitude to all those who took part in the search. Phuket Vice Governor Anupap Rodkwan Yodrabam was present to mark the occasion. Today Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to occasional showers during the afternoon. High near 45F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Tonight Rain and snow showers this evening. Then becoming partly cloudy overnight. Low 28F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precip 30%. Tomorrow A mix of clouds and sun early, then becoming cloudy later in the day. High 47F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph. Carts have been placed well away from the Jean Talon Walmart, on Jean Talon near Mountain Sights, at Burger King at Decarie and Jean Talon and near Wendy's at Jockeys near Decarie. This page requires Javascript. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. SEAN BERGEL, Wheeler, Baseball, Junior; Bergel struck out eight and allowed only five hits as Wheeler defeated Griswold in its season opener. Bergel walked just one batter and allowed two earned runs. CAMI BROWN, Stonington, Softball, Junior; Brown finished 11 for 16 in four games for the Bears. Brown doubled four times, tripled twice and drove in nine runs. CASEY MACERA, Westerly, Girls Lacrosse, Freshman, Macera scored five goals in a Division III win against Rocky Hill. Westerly ended a 15-game losing streak with the victory. ADAM CARPENTER, Chariho, Baseball, Junior; Carpenter pitched a two-hitter in his varsity debut as the Chargers beat East Providence. Carpenter carried a no-hitter into the sixth. He struck out 10 and did not walk a batter. Vote View Results Donald Trump apparently disagrees with many Republicans that the Covid-19 vaccines may be unsafe and says that he is to credit for the saving of 100 million lives. Interviewer David Brody asked Trump if he was willing to acknowledge that the vaccines were not as safe or effective as we were told by the medical community at the time. Trump responded that I was able to get something approved that, you know, that has proven to have saved a lot of lives. Some people say that I saved 100 million lives worldwide, ignoring Brodys question about the safety of the vaccines. Trump touted his administrations Warp Speed program that got the vaccines through clinical trials and approvals in under a year, whereas it would have taken a minimum of five years without those efforts. He also attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for shutting down Florida for a period of time in the early days of the pandemic and claimed that he never supported lockdowns, though the record says otherwise. On March 17, 2020, Trump explicitly told Americans to follow Faucis stay-at-home guidelines, promising to open the country by April 12th, which didnt happen. Trump was then asked again whether he has concerns about the vaccines safety. You have to understand, there are the pros and cons, said Trump. Some reports [say] that its the greatest thing thats ever happened and we saved tens of millions of lives. Then youll read other reports [that] say there were some problems with the vaccinebut relatively small numbers. But you know, you have many reports that say the vaccines save tens of millions of lives, he continued. That without the vaccines you would have had a thingwhere perhaps 100 million people died. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday that House committees will investigate the classified documents cases of both President Biden and former President Trump. The White House is calling out Republicans as hypocrites in terms of the reaction from famous classified documents to Trump. Whats your reaction to that statement? And also, do you see a difference in the two investigations? a reporter asked McCarthy. Look, I see from an aspect of how its treated. And the one thing you always want is fair justice in America, McCarthy replied. So lets just put it on its premise that the past president, President Trump, had documents that he was his lawyers were talking with, the archives knew they were there. They actually asked to put another lock on. So it was behind lock at any time, they could have walked in and grabbed it. No, they had the FBI come and raid Mar-a-Lago, he said. Now we have a current sitting president that had gone on 60 Minutes criticizing President Trump for what hes done, McCarthy continued. We had all the Democrats attacking. They even put a special counsel prosecutor to go after President Trump on this. Before the election, they found out President Biden had these documents not under lock, a simple push of a button that could open a garage door that every American has and knows what happens with how people get robbed, mainly by going through a garage door. It makes it quite easy. Did you have concerns that Trump actually had the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago? another reporter asked. Look, I have concerns. I have concerns when any classified documents are anywhere outside. Look, I deal as a gang of eight inside a skiff, but I dont take documents out of there, presidents are different, McCarthy said. But the one thing I will say here, McCarthy added, is a president who just left office is not the individual whos packing up their boxes, whos not moving them. So how much does he even know in that process and others? And did you have to have an FBI raid it? At any time, the president would have lawyers provided it to them. But its interesting, McCarthy said. In the raid of Mar-a-Lago, did they just go to where they knew the boxes are already were or did they go through the former first ladys clothes? Did they go through his sons area? What have they done? They havent even gone into the garage. He let some attorney do it for Biden. So its not a fair process when you equalize this out. And that is what is wrong with the system. And is it right that Garland should even be in charge of this? Look, the House we have a constitutional responsibility to oversee the Justice Department, and that also means overseeing special counsels. So we will look into both situations, McCarthy concluded. McCarthys comments stand in stark contrast to Rep. James Comer, who said there is no need to investigate Trump. With respect to investigating President Trump, there have been so many investigations of President Trump. I dont feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years, Comer told CNNs Jake Tapper on Sunday. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Dutch authorities arrested a Syrian man on Tuesday who is suspected of having been a security chief for the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra extremist groups during Syrias grinding civil war, prosecutors said. It is suspected that from his position at IS he also contributed to the war crimes that the organization committed in Syria, the National Public Prosecutors Office said in a statement. The 37-year-old man, whose name wasnt released, was detained in the small village of Arkel, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of the port city of Rotterdam, prosecutors said in a statement. The man is suspected of holding a managerial position in the security service of IS from 2015-2018, prosecutors said. For two years prior to that, he allegedly carried out the same work for Jabhat al-Nusra. Prosecutors say he held both functions in and around the Yarmouk refugee camp south of the Syrian capital, Damascus. The suspect applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2019 and later settled in Arkel, prosecutors said. He was scheduled to appear before an examining magistrate in The Hague on Feb. 20. It wasnt the first time Dutch authorities arrested a suspect from the Syrian conflict. Last year, a Dutch court convicted two Syrian brothers of holding senior roles in Jabhat al-Nusra between 2011 and 2014. (AP) A stunning and disturbing situation is unfolding at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where the family of a cognitively impaired Orthodox Jewish patient is being denied bedside access to provide comfort to their agitated, confused, and scared family member, who is currently on a respirator. The disturbing story was revealed in a LinkedIn post by Mayer Tauber, a friend of the family going through this ordeal. The family has pleaded with hospital leadership to allow them access, but have been denied. Included in those the family contacted are David Reich, President of The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens, and Nicole Saylors, the Director of Service Excellence at the hospital. Their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Notably, after tagging the above-mentioned Reich on his post about the story, the hospital president blocked Tauber on LinkedIn. Despite clear New York State Department of Health guidelines, the family has been denied bedside access under the guise of Covid precautions even as the patient remains in extreme emotional torment. Feeling like there was no choice, the family got approval from Cleveland Clinic to initiate a transfer, but the request was reportedly sabotaged by Dr. Adel Bassily-Marcus of the Mt. Sinai Health System. On Saturday, after more than 24 hours of the hospital neglecting to perform the patients desperately needed dialysis session, two young daughters of the patient respectfully implored hospital personnel to help them meet their patients needs. To their shock and dismay, the nurses instead called the police, who dragged the two girls from the hospital building. This is what zero-visitation policies in Mt. Sinai and other hospitals has become: Nothing short of inhumane torture and neglect. YWN has attempted to contact the family for further information that could benefit their loved one, but has not yet been successful in reaching them directly. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Opposition leader Yair Lapid hasnt stopped inciting against the new government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu since its formation, making no differentiation between Israel and Western media outlets, and not shying away from exaggerated statements of the end of democracy and a government of racists. On Tuesday, Walla News reported that Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen (NV), who is currently leading a delegation of US senators on a visit to Israel, requested not to meet National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich. Lapid gleefully linked to the article in a Twitter post, stating: The time has come to recognize the facts: with a government of racists and extremists, the US is no longer Israels closest ally. : . pic.twitter.com/ufQM1ZNxlA Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) January 17, 2023 Kol BRamah reporter Yisrael Cohen wrote in response to Lapids tweet: To see the glee of Lapid from every anti-Israel decision and to understand that the man is simply not fit to be a leader in the state of Israel. His activities and that of the left to condemn and delegitimize Israel prove that Lapid opposes the state and not the coalition. (YWN Israel Desk Jerusalem) Former President Donald Trump railed against religious conservatives his strongest base of support for not supporting his 2024 presidential campaign, accusing them of the gravest of crimes: great disloyalty. Thats a sign of disloyalty. Theres a great disloyalty in the world of politics and thats a sign of disloyalty, Trump told David Brody when asked about evangelical Robert Jeffress declining to get behind his 2024 run. The former president insisted that he didnt care if he gets evangelical endorsements, but that nobody has ever done more for right to life than Donald Trump, and he therefore deserves their endorsement. He also attacked evangelical Christians for not supporting Republicans enough in the 2022 midterms. I thought they couldve fought much harder during the election, the 22 election, he said. A lot of them didnt fight or werent really around to fight, and it did energize the Democrats. But a lot of the people that wanted and fought for years to get it, they sort of they were there protesting and doing what they could have done. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Police in western Germany carried Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and other protesters away Tuesday from the edge of an open coal pit mine where they demonstrated against the ongoing destruction of a village to make way for the mines expansion, German news agency dpa reported. Thunberg was among hundreds of people who resumed anti-mining protests at multiple locations in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia a day after the last two climate activists holed up in a tunnel beneath the village of Luetzerath left the site. The German government reached a deal with energy company RWE last year allowing it to destroy the village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038. Both argue the coal is needed to ensure Germanys energy security thats squeezed by the cut in supply of Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine. But environmentalists say bulldozing Luetzerath will result in vast greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is expected to miss its ambitious climate targets for the second year in a row. Amid the heated coal debate in Germany, the European Union pushed forward on Tuesday with a major clean tech industrial project designed to boost its plans for a greener future as the 27-nation bloc pursues the goal of being climate neutral by 2050. Elsewhere in western Germany, dozens of climate activists glued themselves to a main street in Germanys western city of Cologne and to a state government building in Duesseldorf. Near Rommerskirchen, a group of about 120 activists also occupied the coal railroad tracks to the Neurath power plant, according to police and RWE. Those who refused to leave the tracks were carried away, dpa reported. In addition, several people occupied a giant digger at the coal mine of Inden, while hundreds of other protesters joined a march near Luetzerath. The village itself was evacuated by the police in recent days and is sealed off. Once again, there were a few clashes with the police. Several activists ran over to the Garzweiler open pit mine, according to dpa. They stood at the brink of the open pit, which has a sharp break-off edge. Police said it was dangerous and people were prohibited from staying there. Thunberg had traveled to western Germany to participate in weekend demonstrations against the expanded mine and also took part in Tuesdays protest near Luetzerath. Police in nearby Aachen said a group of around 50 protesters got dangerously close to the rim of the mine and did not want to leave despite being asked to do so. All the people in that group had to be carried away from the edge of the mine and were then temporarily held to determine their identities, police said. Photos from the scene showed Thunberg was one of those whom officers took away. One protester was able to enter the mine, RWE said, calling the move very reckless, dpa said. A police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity as is customary in Germany, said he was not permitted to give out any details on Thunberg or any other individuals who participated in the protest due to privacy rules. Police and RWE started evicting protesters from Luetzerath on Jan. 11, removing roadblocks, chopping down treehouses and bulldozing buildings. Activists have cited the symbolic importance of Luetzerath for years, and thousands of people demonstrated Saturday against the razing of the village by RWE for the expansion of the Garzweiler coal mine. (AP) Two Illinois paramedics face first-degree murder charges, having been accused of strapping a patient facedown on a stretcher while taking him to a hospital last month. Illinois authorities filed the charges against Peggy Finley and Peter Cadigan on Jan. 9, nearly a month after 35-year-old Earl Moore died. Under Illinois law, a first-degree murder charge can be filed when a defendant knows that such acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm. Sangamon County States Attorney Dan Wright announced the charges at a Jan. 10 press conference after an autopsy. The autopsy report listed Moores cause of death as homicide, caused by compressional and positional asphyxia as he lay facedown on the paramedic stretcher with straps tightened across his back. If convicted, Finley and Cadigan could face between 20 and 60 years in prison. They remained in the Sangamon County jail on Tuesday and were being held on a $1 million bond each. A message left Tuesday at their attorneys office was not immediately returned. They are next due in court on Thursday. After announcing the charges, authorities released body camera footage from three Springfield police officers showing Moores encounter with the officers and the paramedics. Wright said Moores family and community groups were consulted before the footage was released. The Springfield police department first responded to Moores home around 2 a.m. on Dec. 18. The police footage shows that a woman inside the home told one of the officers that Moore was in withdrawal from alcohol and hallucinating. The video shows Moore lying on a bed, occasionally speaking incoherently or gasping. At one point he rolls onto the floor. Wright said the officers felt Moore was in medical distress and called paramedics. When Finley arrives, she comes into the bedroom where Moore is still on the floor. Soon after, she yells at him to sit up and asks repeatedly for his birth date. Sit up, she said. You know what, I am not playing. Sit up. Quit acting stupid. Sit up. Sit up now. I am not playing with you tonight. Youre gonna have to walk cause we aint carrying you, she adds as police tell Moore he has to walk outside to get to the hospital. Police then lift Moore to his feet between two officers and slowly move him toward the door. Outside the home, police lift him onto the stretcher. The second paramedic waiting outside the house forcefully puts Moore onto his stomach and the two paramedics are shown tightly strapping Moore to the stretcher in that position. According to a statement from Springfield police, the department later learned that Moore died after arriving at the hospital and Chief Ken Scarlette asked the Illinois State Police to conduct an independent investigation of Moores death. The officers, who are not emergency medical professionals, are not trained nor equipped to provide the necessary medical treatment or to transport patients in this type of situation, Scarlette said in a statement. The officers turned over care of the patient to the licensed, medical professionals at the scene in accordance with Springfield Police Department policy. Douglas Wolfberg, a founding partner of Page, Wolfberg & Wirth a law firm that concentrates on representing emergency medical services, said its immensely rare for a provider to face a murder or homicide charge in connection with patient care and its difficult for prosecutors to make a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. Wolfberg said he was extremely troubled by the video and believes the pair at least provided wholly deficient care from when Finley first interacted with Moore to when the paramedics strapped their patient in the prone position. EMS is a profession of highly trained specialists who provide emergency care in the most difficult and stressful of circumstances and give their best, Wolfberg said. This was a very unfortunate and tragic example of providers who did not give their best. (AP) Israels Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Shas chairman Aryeh Deri cannot legally serve as a minister in Israels government, a ruling that may lead to a major coalition crisis. Ten judges voted to disqualify Deri, with only one judge, Yosef Elron, voting in favor of Deri being allowed to serve as minister. The ruling is in response to petitions against Deris appointment to ministerial positions in the new government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu due to his conviction for tax offenses last year. Deri, who is serving as the Interior and Health Ministers, said on Monday that he wont resign even if the court disqualifies him. The ruling is a threat to the new government as Welfare Minister Yaakov Margi (Shas) told Reshet Bet earlier on Wednesday that the Shas party will not support the government if Netanyahu dismisses Deri from his positions as a result of a Supreme Court ruling. According to a Yisrael Hayom report on Wednesday morning, Netanyahu is not prepared to defy a Supreme Court ruling and will dismiss Deri from his positions but at the same time would use the move to garner support for his governments plans for judicial reforms. Following the ruling, the Shas party issued a statement: The Supreme Court, which claims to take care of minorities, today threw away the voices and votes of 400,000 voters of the Shas movement, which represents the underprivileged in Israel, who went to the polls just two months ago. Shas voters went to the polls knowing everything about Shas chairman, Minister Aryeh Deri. The 400,000 voters, 11 seats, knew about Deris plea bargain and voted for Shas led by Aryeh Deri. Today the court actually ruled that the elections are meaningless. The courts decision is political and tainted by extreme improbability. The scandalous disqualification of the Shas chairman from a ministerial position is not only a personal offense to Deri, but a severe and stinging offense to all Shas voters and supporters. Wide sections of Israeli society today feel excluded by the court. The entire Shas movement is shocked by the arbitrary and unprecedented decision of the Supreme Court, contrary to law and justice, and sees it as a serious violation of the right to choose and be elected, which is the lifeblood of democracy. Shas is studying the ruling and will decide its next steps in accordance with the guidance of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah. (YWN Israel Desk Jerusalem) By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com The pasuk in Mishei (14:1) tells us, Chochmas nashim bansa Baisa it is the wisdom of women that builds her house. Perhaps no one personified this concept more than Rebbitzen Dvorah Esther Spiegel ah, of Cedarhurst, New York. Today marks the shloshim of a remarkable Rebbitzen who served the Five Towns community Rebbitzen Dvorah Esther Spiegel, aleha HaShalom. The Rebbitzen was the daughter of the Pittsburger Rebbe, Rav Avrohom Abba Leifer, a man who truly built Torah in America in the forties and fifties. Rav Mordechai Nadvoner ztl was his great-grandfather. Rav Mordechai Leifer Nadvorna ztl was one of the most famous Rebbes of Nadvorna. He lived a life of poverty and simplicity, as he would donate all the money that came his way to tzedakah. He was known as a Baal Ruach HaKodesh. The Rebbitzen was born in Romania, in 1944, where her parents were hiding out from the Nazis yimach shmam. Her husband yblc, Rav Dovid Spiegel shlita is the moreh dasra of the Shtiebel also known as the Bais Medrash of Cedarhurst. Rav Spiegel shlita was one of the leading students of Rav Avrohom Pam ztl and Rav Aharon Kotler ztl. He was one of the bochurim that would often drive Rav Aharon to where he needed to be and developed a close relationship with his Rebbe. The Rav and his Rebbitzen married in Newark, New Jersey on June 19th, 1962. Rav Mendel Zaks, the Nadvorner Rebbes, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky and many others as well were all present. There were over one thousand people in attendance according to the Newark Evening News. In the beginning of their marriage they lived in a small one bedroom apartment on top of the stores on Fifth Street in Lakewood. She lived there with five of her daughters. They lived across the street from such future luminaries as Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch shlita, (the Rosh Yeshiva of Slabodka in Eretz Yisroel). In 1970, his brother-in-law, Rav Binyomin Kamenetsky ztl suggested to Rabbi Spiegel that he could create a revolution by building a warm shteibel in the Five Towns. In 1970, the Spiegels took up the offer, and soon they started a Torah revolution. The Rebbitzen was the guidance counselor in Rebbitzen Vichna Kaplans Bais Yaakov on 45th Street in Boro Park. She was endowed with a rare wisdom, where she not only guided her young charges, but she helped build hundreds of young ladies. In the 1950s she also attended Rebbitzen Kaplans Bais Yaakov in Williamsburg. She travelled each day from Newark to Williamsburg for an hour and a half. She took three trains each way. Rebbitzen Kaplan, of course, was the primary student of Sara Schnirer ah and Rebbitzen Spiegel imbibed the derech and ruchnius of both Rebbitzen Kaplan and Sara Schnirer. WISE SAYINGS The Rebbitzen had a number of sayings that underscored her remarkable clarity as to what our primary focus and obligations are in life. Chazal tell us that Greater understanding was granted to woman than to man, enabling them to perceive things on a deeper level, and to apply this perception in daily life. Children are people too. But do not forget, they are little people. Sometimes parents will allow the child to make his or her own choices. But, quite often this is not chinuch it is just a shirking of the responsibility of transmitting our Torah values. When it comes to values sometimes the parents must make the decisions. Everything, however, must be done with chochma wisdom. The Rebbitzen would often remark, Every child is a gift. Every child has taught me as much as I have taught them. Sometimes her expressions belied a truly great sense of humor. Behind every successful man stands a smart woman. But behind every unsuccessful man stands a smart woman that wasnt listened to. This last thought was not just humor, she believed very strongly in the kochos and abilities of the nashim tzidkanios of Klal Yisroel. There is a well-known expression that more than the Jews have kept Shabbos Shabbos has kept the Jew. Equally so, the Rebbitzen felt that it is the nashim tzidkanios in Klal Yisroel that have kept and helped fashion what Klal Yisroel is today. BUILDING TORAH And what were her values? She taught everyone that the highest ideal in life is to strive to be a true aim byisroel. She also believed strongly that a woman has the ability to help her husband and children become truly great in Torah and avodas Hashem. She believed strongly in the strength and intelligence of women but she did it without being a feminist. She helped build the Torah observance in the Five Towns. Starting in 1996, the shtiebel hosted the Shabbos Womans Shiur in the community and she spoke every week after the guest speaker spoke. Her words served to shore up the halachic observance of the women in the community. It had a kiyum -and the shiur is still ongoing. In building the shul, she managed to make a kosher mechitzah, and yiddishkeit in general, palatable to the Olam, by making everything beautiful. For example, she arranged that the zip ties that hold the curtains be arranged in a remarkably beautiful way. She even had the zip ties carefully painted in a gold color. She was an innovator. She greeted everyone bsaiver panim yafos with a warm smile and countenance on her face. Her eineklach recall her as a very special Bubby. She paid careful attention to purchasing the exact Chanukah gift that would be best suited for each child. Her children, and grandchildren were her primary passion in life. When the Jewish nation suffered the tragic loss of astronaut Ilan Ramon, someone remarked publicly that the fact that a Jewish astronaut was public about various Jewish customs in space was a remarkable kiddush Hashem. She knew that she had to take a stand. Although everyone is certainly proud of Ilan Ramon, the fact that Chillul Shabbos was involved in the space flight is not something that can be glossed over and ignored. Kiddush Hashem, she remarked. is when we do what Hashem wants us to do. To get up and say that in a time when people were focusing on pride in a Jewish astronaut took a rare strength of character. The Rebbitzen would often comment about the highest ideal that is represented by motherhood. Motherhood, is not as it is viewed. Motherhood is one of the holiest endeavors that exists in that this institution transmits the greatest legacy that exists Toras imecha. And yet, she did not teach, nor did she preach. She inspired by example. May she be a mailitz yosher for the entire community. Chaval al davdin. The author can be reached at [email protected] 'No cash please. Our company is committed to becoming net zero by 2030.' That was a sign on the counter of a cafe from which I was about to buy a coffee. But there was no information provided on why card payments were deemed greener than cash. Diners were just simply expected to swallow it. Cashing out: The push towards card payments accelerated during the pandemic, when we were told contactless was safer and more sanitary - which is complete hokum The cafe is located inside a leisure centre in Chelmsford, Essex. Incidentally, I'd wanted the change to use the swimming pool lockers which require 1 coins no card payments accepted. But cafe staff couldn't help or give me any explanation for their policy other than the words on the sign. Neither could the catering firm (Churchill, based in Suffolk, which had put the sign out) nor industry experts when we put the fairly simple question to them: Which is greener card or cash? Churchill swiftly removed the sign after I got in touch. I'm fed up with these 'card-only' signs popping up left, right and centre in restaurants and retailers. Choice is paramount; we should be able to pay for items how we like, depending on which method suits us best. I'm all for innovation, but it shouldn't come at the expense of convenience. For a large chunk of society, cash is still king and firms should respect that. The push towards card payments accelerated during the pandemic, when we were told contactless was safer and more sanitary which, by the way, is complete hokum. And while card payments can keep queues shorter, often the technology fails or the machines can't connect to the network. Businesses say there are fewer bank branches to deposit money into these days and banks tell us that fewer people are using cash. But if we accept that narrative, cash will soon disappear. That means more power handed over to big financial firms. To beat technology meltdowns, I withdraw 100 in cash every payday. When I was a student working as a barman, we used to get paid cash in little brown envelopes after our shift. It was quite a thrill and, if you were sensible, a useful budgeting tool. The only way to replicate that, I find, is to withdraw a chunk of physical money from a hole in the wall when my salary arrives. I use it as my float money for pints at the pub, magazines, coffees and other purchases I want to keep tabs on. Although I also spend on my card, it just feels like numbers on a screen. So you don't feel the impact until you check your bank statements. Data from Nationwide Building Society shows cash usage was up in 2022 for the first time in 13 years. Link, which has data for 90 per cent of all cash withdrawals, says 4 billion extra was withdrawn last year compared with 2021 despite the number of ATMs falling by 1,294. So let's keep up the fight to save cash. Physical money has been a cornerstone of our society for hundreds of years. If it's allowed to go the way of the dodo and dinosaur we will all be poorer for it. Rory Kinnear stars in the Bank of Dave film which has been released on Netflix this week Hollywood Dave Last week, I was lucky enough to attend a private screening at Netflix HQ in London of the film Bank Of Dave, with Burnley businessman Dave Fishwick, who I know well. It stars Rory Kinnear as Dave and charts his attempts to open a new High Street bank, only to find plenty of barriers in his way. The film, out now, sees his tale given plenty of Hollywood gloss. But, fundamentally, as his story did in the first place, it made me wonder why there aren't more local community banks making local lending decisions. Many of the small building societies that used to do just that disappeared years ago, in most cases swallowed by bigger rivals. But I'd be interested in saving at a local bank with my cash going directly to help local businesses, even if it meant slightly less interest than I'd get elsewhere. Hats off to Dave for trying to shake-up the British banking system not a simple task with huge sums and red tape involved. Who knows, maybe the film will inspire another Dave to rattle the cages of the banking big boys. >> As the Bank of Dave film starring Rory Kinnear is released on Netflix, read the best business advice our star columnist has dished out to readers l.boyce@dailymail.co.uk Britains dreams of being a global leader in greener energy are rapidly evaporating. Successive Tory governments, in spite of all the rhetorical enthusiasm, have so far failed miserably to embrace technology for a more nuclear future. And plans to challenge Germany, China and others by building mega factories to produce battery cells for electric cars have been abruptly halted with Blyth-based Britishvolt going into administration. UK nuclear engineer Newcleo tells the Mail it has decided to give up on government support for its proposed project after endless delays in selecting a suitable site amid the revolving door on Downing Street. Shortfalls: Britain is in desperate need of new nuclear power plants as the existing ageing fleet comes off line Instead, chief executive Stefano Buono plans to build the companys prototype nuclear station in France. There is a friendly attitude towards to nuclear generation in Paris where President Macron has taken Electricite de France (EDF) back into public ownership. In spite of former prime minister Boris Johnsons enthusiastic public backing for new nuclear, just reiterated in the Commons, very little has happened. Before leaving office, former Rolls-Royce chief executive Warren East was critical of the failure of successive Tory governments to get behind the companys proposals for a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs), based on proven turbine technology. Some 200million of support for the research and development phase has been promised but how much funding has been provided is uncertain. In any case, such a level of support for a potential multi-billion project, with huge export possibilities, is hardly representative of the kind of initiative shown by the UK in the past when it became the first country in the world to pioneer a commercial atomic power station at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956. Newcleo and Rolls-Royce are not the first potential nuclear investors to feel let down by the UK authorities. Japans Hitachi believed it had the backing for a new build at Wylfa Newydd on Anglesey but abandoned the project in September 2020 when the Government withdrew backing. The move caused frustration in Tokyo and at Hitachi, which has a record of inward investment in the UK. There is a possibility that Hitachi, in conjunction with US industrial giant GEC, could launch its own new generation of SMRs beating Rolls-Royce to the post. At present, the only new nuclear plant being built is the super reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset by EDF with backing from China. EDF is also the cornerstone investor and developer at the proposed 20billion Sizewell C plant in Suffolk although a final sign-off by the Government is awaited. Britain is in desperate need of new nuclear power plants as the existing ageing fleet comes off line. As the country plots a greener future based on wind, solar and potentially tidal power (still unproven), it needs a reliable base load to keep the lights on when the wind doesnt blow. The collapse of the Britishvolt project and a nuclear stalemate demonstrates how hard it is going to be to achieve Britains goal of creating a carbon-neutral future. Leaky roof Anyone reading the press release of the latest results from Matthew Mouldings online health and beauty pioneer THG might be cajoled into thinking 2022 trading has been an unalloyed success. It highlights record sales of 2.25billion and suggests that expected earnings are in line with market expectations. Maybe. But the reality is rather different. The company disclosed that it now projects earnings for the year to be 80million which is way below the 100million to 130million it forecast a few months ago. If this was in line with market expectations, it is hard to fathom why the companys shares plummeted by 21.4 per cent to 53.84p, one-third of its peak price of 184p over the last 12 months. How great it would be if THG were to become a Manchester-based Amazon. A little more credibility in what it has to say might help. Sweet spot Johnnie Walker spirits champion Diageo is developing a taste for rum after its success with Captain Morgan. Instead of looking to the Caribbean, it is going all the way to the Philippines, paying a cool 342million to snap up cane-based luxury brand Don Papa. From single malts in Texas to gin distillers in California, the world has become newly knighted Ivan Menezes oyster. The boss of Royal Mail has been blasted by MPs over his running of the crisis-hit company as losses head towards 750million. In a bruising appearance before the Commons business committee, Simon Thompson was quizzed about strikes as well as his 140,000 bonus and plans to stop delivering letters on a Saturday. Committee chairman Darren Jones said his answers raised grave concerns over the running of the business. Grilling: Royal Mail boss Simon Thompson (pictured) was quizzed over strikes as well as his 140,000 bonus and plans to ditch Saturday letter deliveries Thompson, chief executive of Royal Mail parent International Distributions Services, was even reminded that misleading Parliament would not be appreciated and warned he could be called in again. The hearing came after a torrid few months for Royal Mail as strikes crippled the company over the crucial Christmas period and a Russian cyber-attack knocked out its overseas delivery operations. Thompson warned that the companys losses of over 1million per day were unsustainable and Royal Mail faced an urgent situation about its future. The 1million figure related to losses of 90million in the first quarter. But analysts now believe losses for the full year to the end of March will hit 745million equivalent to more than 2million a day. Meanwhile, Thompson said Royal Mail was looking to create a viable change to its Universal Service Obligation (USO), a legal requirement for the group to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week. He highlighted an Ofcom user needs review conducted in 2020 that concluded a five-day service would meet the needs of 97 per cent of people. The push to change to USO forms part of his strategy to overhaul Royal Mail. But the plans have angered the Communication Workers Union (CWU). Earlier at the committee hearing, CWU general secretary Dave Ward accused Royal Mail of waging war on its workforce. Diageo has snapped up Filipino rum maker Don Papa in a deal worth up to 388million as its hunt for upmarket brands continues. The Guinness, Ciroc and Smirnoff drinks maker will pay 230million up front for the super premium brand, with the rest of the price based on its performance. Don Papa was launched in 2012 by former Remy Cointreau executive Stephen Carroll and is available in 30 countries, including the UK where a 70cl bottle costs 32. Drinks deal: Diageo will pay 230m up front for super premium Filipino rum maker Don Papa, with the rest of the 388m price based on its performance Diageo said upmarket rum is among the fastest-growing areas in the drinks business, with Don Papa outperforming rivals. Don Papa is the latest business to be snapped up by the drinks giant, which has embarked on a wave of take-overs. In 2017 it bought actor George Clooneys tequila brand Casamigos in a deal valuing it at up to 820million. Last year it bought California-based flavoured tequila firm 21 Seeds and Texas craft distiller Balcones. Boss Ivan Menezes has said Diageo is on the hunt for more takeovers and is focused on top shelf brands. The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Gharibashvili, met with Niclas Martensson, CEO of the Swedish shipping line company Stena Line, one of the largest ferry operators in the world."I had a very good conversation with Niclas Martensson, the general director of the Stena Line company. Through Georgia, the middle corridor connecting East-West is becoming more and more attractive for international logistics shipments. At the meeting, we discussed the prospects of future cooperation to facilitate international sea transportation of goods through the ports of Georgia," Gharibashvili wrote.Irakli Gharibashvili informed Niclas Martensson about the favorable business environment in Georgia. It was noted that the strategic location of Georgia provides an opportunity to connect Europe, the Caspian region, Central Asia and China. According to the Prime Minister, Georgia occupies a leading position in the rankings of a number of influential international analytical organizations.The head of the government invited the executive director of Stena Line to Georgia to familiarize himself with the business environment in the country.Media Advocacy Coalition negatively assessed the decision of the Tbilisi Court of Appeal to reduce the sentence for those convicted of violence against journalists on July 5, 2021. According to their assessment, the said verdict is another step taken against journalists, freedom of expression and democratic processes."It is alarming that, despite publicly available evidence, so far no one has been held accountable for the organization of the group violence... The Media Advocacy Coalition once again calls on the authorities to ensure the effective protection of journalists' rights, including holding accountable the organizers and participants of the group attack on the media on July 5, 2021," the statement reads.The Democracy Research Institute believes that the judgment of the appeal court was an incitement to hate-motivated violence."In both the first and second instance courts, the prosecution's failure to present relevant evidence gave the court the opportunity to reclassify the charges against the defendants from heavy charges to light charges. Judge Tetrauli fully used this opportunity," the organization's statement reads. Britains nuclear power ambitions suffered another setback as a UK company chose France to build its prototype reactor. Newcleo blamed political upheaval in Westminster for its decision. The mini-nuclear power station company said it waited in vain for ministers to give the green light over where to site the project leaving it no option but to take the work over the Channel. Hopes for the mini-nuclear sector were raised by Boris Johnsons plans for a government-backed body called Great British Nuclear to support the development of new sites. The move will cost hundreds of potential UK jobs and casts further doubt on the countrys nuclear future. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Newcleo chief executive Stefano Buono told the Mail: Changing government three times has not helped. We were expecting a decision before, but I understand that when the government changes, its very difficult to take decisions. Britain is scrambling to replace its fleet of six large nuclear plants, five of which are due for closure by 2028 and one, Sizewell B, in 2035. Hopes for the mini-nuclear sector were raised by Boris Johnsons plans for a government-backed body called Great British Nuclear (GBN) to support the development of new sites. Speaking in the Commons yesterday, the former prime minister urged the Government to exploit this countrys technological lead and build a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors as part of our Great British Nuclear programme. Business Secretary Grant Shapps said GBN would be up and running shortly and said small modular reactors would play an important part in boosting nuclear power supplies. The Government wants 25 per cent of power to come from nuclear by 2050. Last year it supplied 15.5 per cent. Privately-owned Newcleo, which is about to launch a 900million funding round, is one of a number of companies planning to build mini-nuclear power stations around the UK. The plants will be much smaller than traditional nuclear reactors, but the idea is that by being quicker and cheaper to assemble they will provide a significant boost to energy supply as the UK tries to wean itself off fossil fuels. Ministers have backed the idea, but have been criticised over a lack of clarity needed to enable companies to invest. Buono said: It has been a setback, a little bit, to our strategy. We wanted to make a prototype in the UK and we have decided to do it in France. Buonos frustration with the Government follow comments to the Mail from Warren East, the outgoing chief executive of Rolls-Royce, which also has plans for its own chain of mini-nuclear stations. East said the Government needed to get on with it and put in place a funding framework for the industry. The Italian added: I founded a company in the UK because I felt that the UK was the best country to develop new reactors. We made a bet on the UK and so far I am very happy.' Microsoft is slashing thousands of jobs in the latest staff cull to hit the tech sector. The US giant is expected to announce plans to cut around 5 per cent of its global workforce, which would equate to around 11,000 staff, although the final figure could end up being even higher. It was unclear where exactly Microsoft would wield the axe, with the group employing around 6,000 staff in the UK. Job cuts: Microsoft plans to cut around 5% of its global workforce, which would equate to around 11,000 staff, although the final figure could end up being even higher Shares in the firm were up 0.5 per cent on Wall Street after the prospective cuts were reported by Sky News. Microsoft is the latest tech titan to draw up plans for job losses. A slew of firms have already announced plans for redundancies as the economy has turned sour. Earlier this month, Amazon said it would aim to slash 18,000 jobs, equivalent to around 6 per cent of its workforce, while Facebook owner Meta intends to cut around 11,000 roles. Meanwhile, social media website Twitter has also moved to eliminate thousands of staff following its takeover by Tesla tycoon Elon Musk. Many of the tech giants hired thousands of people during the pandemic boom, but the recent slowdown has forced many of them to reassess their plans as consumer spending comes under pressure and borrowing costs rise. Microsoft publishes its second-quarter earnings next week, with some analysts warning it could disappoint investors. Microsoft warned in October that its cloud computing business was slowing down as many corporate clients re-evaluated their spending plans. Covid-19 linked disruption in China hit Burberry's sales growth in the quarter to the end of December, newly published results show. Burberry's like-for-like sales growth slowed to 1 per cent to 756million in the quarter, but the luxury retailer did enjoy a stronger performance in Europe. The growth compares with a 7 per cent increase in sales a year earlier and against a forecast jump of 2 per cent. Sales hit: Covid-19 linked disruption in China hit Burberry's sales growth in the quarter to the end of December Revenues in mainland China, Burberry's biggest market, plummeted 23 per cent, while sales in the rest of Asia fell 7 per cent and Americas revenues were down 1 per cent. The group's like-for-like sales in Europe, Middle East, India and Africa grew 19 per cent, but in other regions they fell. The group, known for its black, red and camel check, said it was pleased with its performance overall, and it remained confident it could achieve its medium-term targets despite the tougher macro-economic environment. Chief executive Jonathan Akeroyd said: 'Overall, we are pleased with our performance in the third quarter as double-digit revenue growth outside of Mainland China offset the impact of Covid-19-related disruption there. 'Europe in particular continued to perform well, driven by strong trading over the festive period, and leather goods delivered another quarter of double-digit growth globally. 'We remain confident in our ability to reach our medium-term targets, despite the current macro-economic environment. Variations: Burberry saw stronger sales across Europe in the final quarter of last year 'We are focused on executing our plan to realise Burberry's potential as the modern British luxury brand and we look forward to unveiling Daniel Lee's debut collection for Burberry on our return to London Fashion Week next month.' Burberry's new chief designer Daniel Lee, who was previously creative director at Bottega Veneta, will present his first runway collection for the house next month at London Fashion Week. Burberry shares rose today and were up 2.99 per cent or 67.00p to 2,310.00p this afternoon, having risen over 30 per cent in the past year. Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: 'Concerns will of course persist as the global economic environment remains uncertain, at best. 'By the same token, Burberry seems to be seeing the benefits of its geographical diversification, where the weakness in one area is compensated for elsewhere. 'With the potential return of the Asian tourist, the share price has been quick to react, with a rise of 28 per cent over the last year comparing with a gain of 3.8 per cent for the wider FTSE 100, and with a spike of 41 per cent over the last six months. 'The market consensus of the shares as a hold seems to be a cautionary wait and see approach, until such time as the full benefits of consumer spending can be unleashed in Burberrys direction.' Adam Vettese, an analyst at eToro, said: 'Burberry is expecting high single-digit growth revenue growth in the near and medium-term. Should Chinese consumer spending and economic growth prove resilient, that should be achievable.' Today Money Mail is sending out an urgent message to readers: do NOT renew your home or car cover unless you have seen your new premium drop in price (lucky you) or increase by less than 10 per cent. If your renewal price rise is greater than 10 per cent, contact the insurer and demand a discount. Some will offer one, although its pot luck. If the answer to your challenge is a big fat no, please shop around. Price hikes: Insurance premium increases are being foisted on tens of thousands of customers in excess of 20% - and in some cases as high as 70% Invariably not always you will find a cheaper deal elsewhere, often without compromising the quality of your cover. Its the way the insurance market works. Loyalty does not pay. Not in the past, not now. Although new rules from the regulator are designed to protect existing policyholders from insurers intent on pushing up premiums disproportionately, Money Mail does not believe the regulations are effective. Introduced by the City regulator at the start of last year, they require insurers to charge policyholders the same price as they would offer new customers buying identical cover. But many long-standing policyholders do not have the tools to test whether their premium is fair. The result is that premium increases are being foisted on tens of thousands of customers in excess of 20 per cent and in some cases as high as 70 per cent and many are meekly accepting them. Most are elderly, some vulnerable. The price hikes are not explained in the renewal notices customers receive, although they could be once new consumer duty rules kick in this summer. Nor are they a result of recent claims. In some instances, customers who challenge the increase get a discount. Which begs the question: why isnt the discount offered straightaway? In most cases, policyholders can get cheaper cover by shopping around. In other words, loyalty is still being punished by insurers. Firms cant prove their prices are fair Some insurers are guilty of such poor record-keeping that they cannot prove they are offering the same prices to existing customers and new ones. Thats the damning conclusion of a report by the City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A year ago, the FCA introduced rules stating that insurers must offer a long-standing policyholder the same price as someone buying identical cover as a new customer. But its research last month, seen by Money Mail, says some firms have not appointed senior enough staff to judge whether their businesses are complying. The FCA told Money Mail it had intervened and secured redress for a number of insurance customers. But it insisted most firms were complying with our pricing rules. Money Mail has discovered that early last month, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) quietly published a review into how insurers applied its new rules and whether customers were still being discriminated against on the basis of the number of years they had held their policy. Strangely, the results were not released to the Press as is usual. The report pointed to poor record-keeping by insurers, with some companies unable to prove they are not price differentiating between new and renewing customers. It also said some companies had yet to appoint someone senior enough to judge whether their businesses were complying. The FCA can hold this person as well as the insurer to account if it deems the company guilty of breaking the rules. Yesterday, the regulator also confirmed to Money Mail that in the past year, a small number of companies had accidentally price discriminated against loyal customers. In all cases, offending insurers had put matters right. Yet, for all the talk that loyal customers are no longer being disadvantaged (see box), its not what Money Mail is seeing. From where were standing, it is difficult to get our heads around the increases being demanded by some insurers at renewal. For example, Lynne Poore, an 84 year-old widow from Upminster in Essex, found out earlier this month that the home insurance she has with Liverpool Victoria on her two-bedroom bungalow would be increasing from 259 to 421, a 63 per cent price hike. For the record, she has made no claims and shes had the cover for many years. When she rang LV to contest the premium, she was told the price was non-negotiable. I asked them to explain the increase, she says. It offered none. Thankfully, Lynne, who lost her dear husband Ken in December 2021, was advised by friend Jean to speak to rival Axa. She did, and it immediately offered her cover at 80 less than she had paid last year. She was delighted. But shes still angry with LV. If Aviva could offer such a competitive price for comparable cover, she says, why couldnt LV? Richard Woodward, from Wilnecote in Staffordshire is equally scathing. Richard and his wife Jacqueline had three cars insured under a multi-car policy with Admiral a runaround Fiat 500, a Peugeot 5008 and his pride of joy, a Jaguar XK. Last year, the cars were insured at a combined annual cost of 607. This year, Admiral wanted nearly 836, a 38 per cent increase. Shop around: Policyholders hit with large hikes can usually find cheaper cover elsewhere. In other words, loyalty still does not pay and is still being punished Richard, who spent his early career as an engine driver in the fire service and is a member of IAM RoadSmart, cant understand the price increase. Were another year older, another year more experienced, no claims and no convictions, he says, but were being punished. After ringing Admiral and getting a small discount that reduced his premium to just below 800, Richard decided to shop around. By insuring the three cars with separate companies, he has cut the combined premium to 643, a 6 per cent increase on last year. Admiral has lost my business, says Richard. What is the commercial sense of that? Yet its the vulnerable, the elderly, who he feels most for. Many accept the renewal price they are offered and pay up. Unforgivable, he says. Yesterday, Admiral, ESure and LV were among those at pains to tell Money Mail that they are abiding by the rules. But they refused to reveal the average increase policyholders are paying for 2023. The FCA said: Most firms are complying with our pricing rules, but we know they still need to make improvements to ensure the market is fair for all. Where we have found evidence of firms treating their customers poorly, we have intervened and secured redress, such as through compensation. A start. But theres further to go. So shop around. Sixteen people including Ukraines interior minister and other senior officials were killed on Wednesday when a helicopter crashed in a suburb outside Kyiv, the national police chief said. The helicopter came down near a nursery in the town of Brovary on the capitals eastern outskirts. Two children were among the dead and 10 were in hospital, officials said Officials gave no immediate account of the cause of the crash and there was no immediate comment from Russia, which invaded Ukraine last February. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, responsible for the police and security inside Ukraine, would be the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the war began. National police chief Ihor Klymenko said Monastyrsky had been killed along with his deputy and other senior ministry officials. There were children andstaff in the nursery at the time of this tragedy. Everyone has now been evacuated. There are casualties, Kyiv region governor Oleksiy Kuleba wrote on Telegram. Reuters journalists at the scene saw several dead bodies draped in foil blankets in a courtyard near the building damaged by the crash. Videos shared on social media showed a burning building and people could be heard screaming. Reuters was unable immediately to verify the footage. We are finding out information about casualties and the circumstances, the deputy head of Ukraines presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, wrote on Telegram. Source: Reuters [January 17, 2023] TurboPass Announces Executive Role for Auto Industry Vet Zahid Kassem AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TurboPass, the leading electronic multi-verification solution for credit, fraud, and compliance, is pleased to announce the hiring of Zahid Kassem as Chief Product/Technology Officer. TurboPass has seen explosive growth in 2022, increasing its user base to 3,000 dealerships with plans to expand to over 7,000 users by the end of 2023. This growth has led to the need for additional executive leadership to support the company's success, including plans to expand into further industries outside of the automotive space. Zahid Kassem brings a wealth of experience in fraud management to the team, boasting over 25 years of first and second line of defense experience in the field. Mike Jarman, CEO of TurboPass, praises Zahid as a highly respected and reputable professional in financial services when it comes to fraud management. Prior to joining TurboPass, Zahid held leadership roles at several major companies in the finance and credit industry, including Santander Consumer USA, Ally Financial, and Equifax. At these companies, Zahid played a key role in developing and implementing strategies to detect and prevent fraudulent activity, as well as leading teams of experts in data analytics and risk management. With his wealth of experience and expertise, Zahid is well-equipped to help TurboPass continue its rapid growth and success in the automotive industry. "The use of data and technology in auto has grown tremendously over the past 10 years, but innovation in the verifications space has been limited. Now that so many dealers and lenders are using TurboPass reports to simplify the verification pocess, that has changed," Zahid said. Ken Jarman, COO and co-founder of TurboPass, is thrilled to have Zahid joining the team. "Our team is so excited for the future to add this accomplished and respected industry leader on board. With Zahid, the future will continue to be bright for our company, but more importantly for the dealers, lenders, and car buyers we serve," he said. The team at TurboPass is excited for the future and is looking forward to what 2023 will bring. With the addition of Zahid to the leadership team, TurboPass is well-positioned to continue its success in the automotive industry. TurboPass Corporation is a financial technology software company based in Austin, Texas, focused on automation, Saas, and Cloud-based solutions for automotive dealerships, banks, and Finance Companies across North America. https://www.turbopassreport.com/ Contact Information: Patrick Jarman Director of Marketing [email protected] 512-387-7771 Related Images Image 1: Zahid Kassem This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment Zahid Kassem [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] SEA Electric Partners with MEVCO to Electrify 8,500 Hilux and Landcruiser Models for Mining Industry MELBOURNE, Austalia, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SEA Electric has made the next step in its journey to electrify the world's commercial vehicle fleet, by signing a significant Memorandum of Understanding with MEVCO, a leading systems integrator focused exclusively on electric light commercial vehicles within the mining industry. The partnership will see specialist all-electric Hilux and Landcruiser models made available for the mining industry, with MEVCO making a commitment to order 8,500 units over the next five years. The deal has a total value of close to AU$1 billion. At the time of the launch, over half of the 2023 allocation of the Australian-developed battery-electric vehicles have been pre-sold, with demonstration models available in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. At the heart of the arrangement is SEA Electric's proprietary SEA-Drive power-system, which provides leading all-electric range, driving performance, and environmental credentials, with zero local emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide. Thanks to its mediumvoltage architecture and electronic thermal management, SEA Electric's solution is light, costeffective, and efficient, with the system tested in the field across eight countries with over 2.5 million kilometres of real-world use registered to date. Available in various mining-specific designs for 4x4 and 4x2 configurations, the vehicles can be specified with two SEA-Drive options, namely an 88kWh battery which provides 380km of range, or a 60kWh battery delivering up to 20km of use. Fast DC to DC charging is available for the system, which provides up to 80 per cent battery power in less than one hour, with a five-year factory warranty on the batteries supplied. For users, the switch to EV provides a comfortable work environment, with health and safety considerations including no noise, fumes, heat, or vibrations. MEVCO is a portfolio company of RCF Jolimont the innovation fund of Resource Capital Funds, one of the largest private equity managers in the world focused on mining. "This is a pivotal partnership for the mining industry," said Matt Cahir, MEVCO CEO. "It enables the world's leading EV technology for heavy and light commercial trucks to be commercialized on a scale that makes sense for the bespoke needs of the mining sector. "SEA Electric's unique architecture is perfectly suited for the task, with the system's high-torque characteristics ideally fit for purpose." For SEA Electric, the announcement is the logical next step in the company's expansion in the commercial vehicle space, opening up possibilities for the technology on a global scale for a wide variety of applications. "Across all industries, companies now understand they have a role to play in ensuring they are a part of the solution to the environmental problems we face," said Tony Fairweather, SEA Electric Founder & CEO. "With the SEA-Drive power-system, we have developed technology that is perfectly adaptable to a wide range of commercial vehicle tasks that have typically been the domain of diesel-powered engines. "Through MEVCO, the mining industry will now be able to access cutting-edge technology, which delivers top performance and total cost of ownership prospects, all with sustainability at the forefront. "This deal is a significant step forward in Australia and shows just what is possible when it comes to electrifying the world's fleets." For further details on MEVCO, visit www.mevco.com, with information on SEA Electric, visit www.sea-electric.com/en_au. For technical option specs of the Hilux variant, please see: https://www.mevco.com/_files/ugd/a48edd_f04ab24aa91546679bcf70320d8bbcb2.pdf About SEA Electric SEA Electric is an Australian company with a global reach specializing in the assembly and 100% electrification of commercial vehicles worldwide. Dealing directly with vehicle users and working alongside automotive OEM's, SEA Electric supplies and licences patented technology. SEA Electric was founded in 2012. After four years of product development and testing, SEA Electric launched its commercial operations in early 2017, triggered by the reduction in battery kWh pricing, allowing for commercial feasibility in offering electric drivetrains to the global market. About MEVCO MEVCO is a systems integrator specialising in Battery Electric Light Commercial Vehicles and all associated infrastructure. Their end-to-end service reduces the risk and accelerates the transition to electric mining fleets. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sea-electric-partners-with-mevco-to-electrify-8-500-hilux-and-landcruiser-models-for-mining-industry-301723980.html SOURCE SEA Electric [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] ECOPETROL LAUNCHES TENDER OFFER FOR ITS 5.875% NOTES DUE 2023 UP TO $1,000,000,000 AGGREGATE PRINCIPAL AMOUNT BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Ecopetrol S.A. ("Ecopetrol"), announced today that it has commenced a tender offer for cash (the "Offer") to purchase up to U.S.$1,000,000,000 in aggregate principal amount (the "Maximum Tender Amount") of its outstanding 5.875% Senior Notes due 2023 (CUSIP: 279158 AC3 / ISIN: US279158AC30 (the "Notes").The Offer is being made pursuant to Ecopetrol's Offer to Purchase, dated January 17, 2023 (the "Offer to Purchase"), which sets forth a comprehensive description of the terms of the Offer. The Offer will expire at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on February 13, 2023, unless extended or terminated earlier (the "Expiration Date"). Holders who validly tender and do not validly withdraw Notes on or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on January 30, 2023 (as the same may be extended, the "Early Tender Date"), that are accepted for purchase by Ecopetrol will receive the Total Consideration (as defined below), which includes the "Early Tender Premium" indicated in the table below, with respect to Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) and accepted for purchase subject to the Maximum Tender Amount. Notes validly tendered in the Offer may not be withdrawn after 5:00 p.m., New York City Time, on January 30, 2023 (unless extended by "Withdrawal Date"), except as may be required by applicable law. Holders who validly tender (and do not validly withdraw) Notes after the Early Tender Date but prior to the Expiration Date, which Notes are accepted for purchase will receive the Tender Consideration (as defined below), subject to the Maximum Tender Amount. In addition to the Total Consideration or Tender Consideration (as applicable) for the Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase, Holders will also receive accrued and unpaid interest from, and including, the last interest payment date up to, but excluding, the applicable Settlement Date, which will be paid in cash on the applicable Settlement Date. Tendered Notes may be subject to proration if the aggregate purchase price of Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn in the Offer exceeds the Maximum Tender Amount, subject to disclosure and other requirements under applicable law. All Notes tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Date will have priority over Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date. The following table sets forth certain terms of the Offer: Title of Notes CUSIP / ISIN Nos. Aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding Maximum Tender Amount Reference Security Bloomberg Reference Page Fixed Spread (basis points)(1)(2) Early Tender Premium(3) 5.875% Senior Notes due 2023 CUSIP: 279158 AC3 ISIN: US279158AC30 U.S.$1,800,000,000 U.S.$1,000,000,000 UST 0.125% due September 15, 2023 FIT3 +45 U.S.$30.00 (1) Consideration in the form of cash per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes that are validly tendered, will be calculated in accordance with the formula set forth in Annex 1 to the Offer to Purchase, based on the fixed spread specified in the table above (the "Fixed Spread") for the Notes, plus the yield (the "Reference Yield") based on the bid-side price of the U.S. Treasury reference security specified in the table above (the "Reference Security") as quoted on the Bloomberg reference page specified in the table above (the "Reference Page") as of 11:00 a.m. (New York City time) on January 30, 2023, unless extended by the Company in its sole discretion (such date and time, as the same may be extended with respect thereto, the "Price Determination Date"). (2) The Fixed Spread is inclusive of the Early Tender Premium. (3) The Early Tender Premium will be payable to Holders who validly tender Notes on or prior to the Early Tender Date. "Total Consideration" means for each U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered and accepted by Ecopetrol, a cash payment to be determined in the manner described in the Offer to Purchase by reference to the Fixed Spread plus the Reference Yield of the Reference Security as quoted on the Reference Page at the Price Determination Date. The Total Consideration includes the Early Tender Premium for Notes tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date, subject to the Maximum Tender Amount. The "Tender Consideration" means, for each U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered and accepted by the Ecopetrol, the Total Consideration minus the Early Tender Premium. The applicable Consideration will be payable in U.S. dollars. Ecopetrol reserves the right, but is not obligated, to increase the Maximum Tender Amount in its sole and absolute discretion without extending the Early Tender Date or Withdrawal Date or otherwise reinstating withdrawal or revocation rights, except as required by applicable law. For the Notes validly tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date (and not subsequently validly withdrawn) and accepted by Ecopetrol for purchase pursuant to the Offer, subject to the Maximum Tender Amount and proration, Ecopetrol will have the option for settlement to occur promptly after the Early Tender Date (the "Early Settlement Date"). If, at its option, there is an Early Settlement Date, the Company expects the Early Settlement Date to be on January 31, 2023, which is the first Business Day following the Early Tender Date, unless the Early Tender Date is extended by the Company in its sole discretion. If no Early Settlement Date occurs, then settlement for all Notes that are validly tendered at any time prior to the Expiration Date and that are accepted for purchase will be made on the Final Settlement Date (as defined below). For the Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Date and on or prior to the Expiration Date, and accepted by the Company for purchase pursuant to the Offer, subject to the Maximum Tender Amount and proration, settlement will occur promptly after the Expiration Date (the "Final Settlement Date" and, together with the Early Settlement Date, the "Settlement Date"). The Company expects the Final Settlement Date to be on February 15, 2023, which is the second Business Day following the Expiration Date, unless the Expiration Date is extended by the Company in its sole discretion. The Company expressly reserves the absolute right, in its sole discretion, from time to time to purchase any Notes that remain outstanding after the Expiration Date through open-market or privately negotiated transactions, one or more additional tender or exchange offers or otherwise, on terms and at prices that may or may not be equal to the consideration offered in the Offer, or to exercise any of its rights, including redemption rights, under the Indenture governing the Notes. Ecopetrol reserves the absolute right to amend or terminate the Offer in its sole discretion, subject to disclosure and other requirements as required by applicable law. In the event of termination of the Offer, Notes tendered and not accepted for purchase pursuant to the Offer will be promptly returned to the tendering holders. The complete terms and conditions of the Offer are described in the Offer to Purchase, a copy of which may be obtained from Global Bondholder Services Corporation, the tender agent and information agent (the "Tender and Information Agent") for the Offer, at https://gbsc-usa.com/ecopetrol/ or by telephone at +1 855-654-2014 (Toll-Free) or +1 212-430 3774 (Banks and Brokers). Ecopetrol has engaged Citigroup Global Markets Group Inc. to act as the dealer manager (the "Dealer Manager") in connection with the Offer. Questions regarding the terms of the Offer may be directed to the Dealer Manager at +1 800-558-3745 (Toll-Free) or +1 212-723-6106 (Collect) About Ecopetrol Ecopetrol is a mixed economy company organized under the laws of the Republic of Colombia. Ecopetrol is the largest company in Colombia and one of the most relevant integrated energy companies in Latin America, with a presence primarily in Colombia and activities in the U.S. (U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Permian Basin), Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Bolivia. In Colombia, Ecopetrol is responsible for more than 60% of the hydrocarbon production, transportation, logistics, and hydrocarbon refining systems, and hold a leading position in the petrochemicals and gas distribution segment. Through its subsidiary, Interconexion Electrica S.A. E.S.P., Ecopetrol has a strong position in the electric power transmission business, toll roads and telecommunications sectors throughout Latin America. The Republic of Colombia currently owns 88.49% of Ecopetrol's voting capital stock. No Recommendation None of Ecopetrol, the Dealer Manager, the Tender and Information Agent or the trustee for the Notes, or any of their respective affiliates, is making any recommendation as to whether holders should or should not tender any Notes in response to the Offer or expressing any opinion as to whether the terms of the Offer are fair to any holder. Holders must make their own decision as to whether to tender any of their Notes and, if so, the purchase price of Notes to tender. Please refer to the Offer to Purchase for a description of the offer terms, conditions, disclaimers and other information applicable to the Offer. Disclaimer and Other Important Notices This press release and the Offer to Purchase do not constitute an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell Notes in any jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation would be unlawful. In those jurisdictions where the securities, blue sky or other laws require the Offer to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Offer shall be deemed to be made on behalf of us by the Dealer Manager or one or more registered brokers or dealers licensed under the laws of such jurisdiction. If materials relating to the Offer come into a holder's possession, the holder is required by Ecopetrol to inform itself of and to observe all of these restrictions. The Offer to Purchase has not been filed with or reviewed by the SEC, any state securities commission or any other regulatory authority, nor has any such commission or authority passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Offer to Purchase or any of the accompanying ancillary documents delivered herewith. Any representation to the contrary is unlawful and may be a criminal offense. The Offer to Purchase will not be authorized by the Colombian Superintendency of Finance (Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia or the "SFC" by its acronym in Spanish) and will not be registered under the Colombian National Registry of Securities and Issuers (Registro Nacional de Valores y Emisores) or the Colombian Stock Exchange (Bolsa de Valores de Colombia or the "BVC" by its acronym in Spanish), and, accordingly, the Offer to Purchase may not constitute an offer to persons in Colombia except in circumstances which do not result in a public offering under Colombian law and must be carried out in compliance with Part 4 of Decree 2555 of 2010. This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including those related to the Offer. Forward-looking information involves important risks and uncertainties that could significantly affect anticipated results in the future, and, accordingly, such results may differ from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Ecopetrol is not under any obligation to (and expressly disclaims any such obligation to) update forward- looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Investor Relations Carolina Tovar Aragon Investor Relations Officer Carrera 13 No. 36-24, Bogota, Colombia Telephone (571) 234-5190 e-mail: [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ecopetrol-launches-tender-offer-for-its-5-875-notes-due-2023-up-to-1-000-000-000-aggregate-principal-amount-301723986.html SOURCE Ecopetrol S.A. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] University of Phoenix Master's in Nursing Programs With Concentrations in Administration, Informatics and Education Are Designed to Foster Nursing Leadership University of Phoenix College of Nursing offers concentrations with the Master of Science in Nursing degree program preparing registered nurses (RNs) for advanced practice and clinical nurse leadership in administration, informatics or education. The programs are Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Nursing Administration (MSN/ADM), Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Informatics (MSN/INF), and Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Nurse Education (MSN/NED). The national nursing shortage continues to drive the need for nurse leadership and nursing educators. Nursing leadership is critical at a time when hospitals and health agencies can successfully respond to nursing workforce needs and concerns by engaging and involving nursing leadership. "Nursing leadership is a skill needed to improve and transform every level of health care," states Raelene Brooks, Ph.D., RN, dean of the College of Nursing. "The MSN program concentrations were designed by faculty members who are leaders in their specialty of practice. The different program concentrations respond to the needs of our health care system by providing registered nurses the opportunity to advance their skill set, competency in leadership, and integrate evidence based practice to improve patient outcomes." Each MSN course is mapped to three skills and skills outcomes the students will learn. In developing and updating the programs, College of Nursing faculty ad curriculum specialists worked with labor market researchers to align in-demand skills that ensure students have the opportunity to learn and demonstrate them in coursework. While each of the programs is unique, they share three common skills of leadership, health promotion in population health, and advancing nursing practice. The MSN curriculum is aligned with core competencies and accreditation requirements from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN). The Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Nurse Administration prepares individuals to pursue a future as a hospital, health system or healthcare leader. Students may be eligible to sit for the Nurse Executive Certification Exam and should contact the American Nurses Credentialing Center for eligibility requirements. The Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Informatics prepares individuals to function in nursing informatics leadership roles, specialize in the design and use of electronically stored data to influence quality in care delivery and provide evidence of meeting quality, compliance and regulatory standards and requirements. Graduates may be eligible to sit for Informatics Nursing Certification Exam and should contact the American Nurses Credentialing Center for eligibility requirements. The Master of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Nurse Education prepares registered nurses to become leaders in the field of nursing education and to function as a nurse educator in a variety of practice and educational settings. Graduates may be eligible to sit for the Nurse Educator Certification Exam and should contact the National League for Nursing for eligibility requirements. These MSN degree programs require prerequisites and a total of 34 credit hours to completion. University of Phoenix College of Nursing has established a Nursing Bridge Program. The Nursing Bridge Program is designed for RNs that have a bachelor's degree in an unrelated field, and helps working nurses more quickly earn their MSN by taking three upper-level courses and then choosing the master's path that best suits their needs. The Nursing Bridge Program is available to students interested in one of these three MSN programs but who have a bachelor's in an unrelated field. Learn more here about online master's nursing degree programs at University of Phoenix. About University of Phoenix University of Phoenix is continually innovating to help working adults enhance their careers in a rapidly changing world. Flexible schedules, relevant courses, interactive learning, and Career Services for Life help students more effectively pursue career and personal aspirations while balancing their busy lives. For more information, visit phoenix.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117006143/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] U.S. BANCORP ALERT: Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is Investigating U.S. Bancorp on Behalf of Long-Term Stockholders and Encourages Investors to Contact the Firm Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, is investigating potential claims against U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) on behalf of long-term stockholders following a class action complaint that was filed against U.S. Bancorp on October 25, 2022 with a Class Period from August 1, 2019 to July 28, 2022. Our investigation concerns whether the board of directors of U.S. Bancorp have breached their fiduciary duties to the company. On May 4, 2021, the Company announced an investigation by the CFPB into its sales practices. Upon this news, shares of U.S. Bancorp dropped precipitously. On July 29, 2022, U.S. Bancorp was fined by CFPB for illegally accessing its customers' credit reports and opening checking and savings accounts, credit cards, and lines of credit without customers' permission. On this news, U.S. Bancorp stock fell $0.92 per share, or 2%, to close at $47.2 per share on July 29, 2022. If you are a long-term stckholder of U.S. Bancorp, have information, would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Brandon Walker or Melissa Fortunato by email at [email protected], by telephone at (212) 355-4648, or by filling out this contact form. There is no cost or obligation to you. About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.: Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York and California. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117006026/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] UL Solutions and CATL Join Forces to Advance Battery Energy Storage System and Electric Vehicle Battery Safety and Performance The new collaboration sets the stage to help create the safer, widespread deployment of key renewable, zero-emission energy sources. CATL laboratory kicks off an initiative to achieve UL Solutions Witnessed Test Data Program status for UL 9540A, allowing the company to offer comprehensive battery energy storage system testing. NORTHBROOK, Ill., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science, and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL), a global leader of new energy innovative technologies, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for strategic cooperation to help create the safer deployment and use of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Pursuant to the MoU, UL Solutions is offering insight into the qualification of CATL's battery laboratory to become a UL Solutions Witnessed Test Data Program (WTDP) facility to test to UL 9540A, the Standard for Test Method for Evaluating Thermal Runaway Fire Propagation in Battery Energy Storage Systems. UL Solutions product evaluations typically involve testing product samples. Through this agreement, WTDP tests may be conducted at CATL test facilities under the supervision of UL Solutions personnel, helping to improve efficiency and shorten the time to market for battery product certification and testing. As the first laboratory in China to launch the UL Solutions WTDP initiative for UL 9540A, CATL's energy storage system laboratory offers testing capabilities by UL Solutions through the WTDP designation. It has already been qualified by UL Solutions to test to UL 1973, the Standard for Batteries for Use in Stationary and Motive Auxiliary Power Applications, UL 9540, the Standard for Energy Storage Systems and Equipment and UL 2580, the Standard for Bateries for Use in Electric Vehicles. EnerOne, CATL's flagship outdoor liquid cooling battery system, and EnerC, CATL's containerized liquid-cooling battery system, also received the latest version of UL 9540A test reports, making CATL the first company in China to complete critical cell, module, unit and installation level tests from UL Solutions. Both parties will also leverage their expertise to carry out in-depth cooperation in further exploring lithium-ion battery safety and offer insight into developing BESS and EV battery standards. UL Solutions and CATL will also collaborate to explore carbon footprint reduction and other sustainability efforts. "Battery storage technologies are essential to speeding up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and will play an increasingly pivotal role to help combat climate change and carbon emissions," said Weifang Zhou, executive vice president and president of Testing, Inspection and Certification at UL Solutions. "We are excited about our collaboration with CATL and how we are joining together to advance battery energy storage systems and EV batteries applications as well as their safety and performance potential." "By cooperating with UL Solutions, we look forward to improving the scientificity and integrality of energy storage system safety testing, thus further enhancing our comprehensive testing and validation capabilities for energy storage systems," LiBin Tan, vice president of CATL. "We will further leverage our state-of-the-art battery technologies to facilitate the safe deployment and use of energy storage systems, thus speeding the global energy transition and creating a healthier, promising future for all." About UL Solutions A global leader in applied safety science, UL Solutions transforms safety, security and sustainability challenges into opportunities for customers in more than 100 countries. UL Solutions delivers testing, inspection and certification services, together with software products and advisory offerings, that support our customers' product innovation and business growth. The UL Certification Marks serve as a recognized symbol of trust in our customers' products and reflect an unwavering commitment to advancing our safety mission. We help our customers innovate, launch new products and services, navigate global markets and complex supply chains, and grow sustainably and responsibly into the future. Our science is your advantage. About Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited ("CATL") is a global leader of new energy innovative technologies, committed to providing premier solutions and services for new energy applications worldwide. In June 2018, the company went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In the year 2021, CATL ranked No.1 in terms of EV battery consumption volume in the world for five consecutive years, and it also ranks first in the market share of global energy storage battery production. CATL also enjoys wide recognition by global OEM partners. To achieve the goal of realizing fossil fuel replacement in stationary and mobile energy systems with highly efficient electrical power systems that are generated through advanced batteries and renewable energy, and promote the integrated innovation of market applications with electrification and intelligentization, CATL maintains continuous innovation in four dimensions including material and electrochemistry system, structure system, extreme manufacturing and business model. For more information, please visit https://www.catl.com/en/ PRESS CONTACT: Steven Brewster UL Solutions [email protected] T: +1 (847) 664.8425 SOURCE UL Solutions [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] GENERAC HOLDINGS SHAREHOLDER ALERT: CLAIMSFILER REMINDS INVESTORS WITH LOSSES IN EXCESS OF $100,000 of Lead Plaintiff Deadline in Class Action Lawsuit Against Generac Holdings Inc. - GNRC NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until January 30, 2023 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNRC), if they purchased the Companys shares between April 29, 2021 and November 1, 2022, inclusive (the Class Period). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Get Help Generac investors should visit us at https://claimsfiler.com/cases/nyse-gnrc-1/ or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options. About the Lawsuit Generac and certain of its executives are charged with failing to diclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws. On October 19, 2022, the Company released dismal preliminary financial results for 3Q2022 including a $55 million pre-tax charge relating to its clean energy product warranties and expenses, due to a distributor that had filed for bankruptcy. On this news, shares of Generac fell by $37.44 per share, or 25%. Then on November 2, 2022, the Company released its third quarter earnings and significantly lowered full-year guidance on sales by its solar energy business of approximately 40% due to the loss of a major customer and $37.3 million worth of clean energy product warranty-related issues. On this news, shares of Generac stock fell an additional $8.99 per share, or 8%. The case is County Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association and Oakland County Employees Retirement System v. Generac Holdings Inc., No. 22-cv-1436. About ClaimsFiler ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations. To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] F45 TRAINING SHAREHOLDER ALERT: CLAIMSFILER REMINDS INVESTORS WITH LOSSES IN EXCESS OF $100,000 of Lead Plaintiff Deadline in Class Action Lawsuit Against F45 Training Holdings, Inc. - FXLV NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until February 6, 2023 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against F45 Training Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: FXLV), if they purchased or acquired the Companys shares pursuant and/or traceable to the Companys July 2021 initial public offering (the IPO). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. Get Help F45 investors should visit us at https://claimsfiler.com/cases/nyse-fxlv/ or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options. About the Lawsuit F45 and certain of its executives and others are charged with failing to disclose mateial information in its IPO Registration Statement and Prospectus (collectively, the Offering Documents), violating federal securities laws. On July 26, 2022, the Company disclosed that its CEO had resigned, that about 60% fewer exercise studios would be opening than previously stated, that a $250 million credit line was no longer available, and that it made significant cuts to its financial guidance including decreasing full-year 2022 revenue to just between $120 million and $130 million, compared to the prior guidance of $255 million to $275 million, and full-year Adjusted EBITDA between $25 million and $30 million, compared to the prior guidance of $90 million to $100 million. On this news, shares of F45 plummeted over 60%, from a close of $3.51 on July 26 to close at $1.35 on July 27, 2022, more than a 78% decline from its offering price of $16 per share on July 16, 2021. The case is Kenzie Goer v. F45 Training Holdings, Inc., et al., No. 1:22-cv-01291. About ClaimsFiler ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations. To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] CitiusTech's Software Development Projects Appraised at Maturity Level 5 of CMMI DEV V2.0 Model MUMBAI, India, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CitiusTech, a leader in healthcare technology and consulting services, announced that it was recently appraised at Maturity Level 5 of ISACA's Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) DEV V2.0 for its Software Development Projects following Agile Methodology. The benchmark appraisal was performed by CMMI Appraisal Partner QAI India. CMMI is a proven, outcome-based performance model and the globally accepted standard for improving capability, optimizing business performance, and aligning operations to business goals. CitiusTech's appraisal at Maturity Level 5 indicates that the organization is performing at an 'optimizing' level. At this level, CitiusTech is recognized to continually improve its processes based on a quantitative understanding of its business objectives and performance needs. Atul Soneja, COO, CitiusTech, said, "CitiusTech is committed to building excellence in its software services and products capability to meet the fast-evolving business and technology needs of healthcare organizations. As we continue to support our clients in their digital transformation journey, flawless execution, predictable delivery and uncompromised quality become paramount. This appraisal affirms our strong organizational culture of continuous improvement to our processes and benchmarks to unlock greater value for our customers." Punam Shejale, SVP Process Excellence & Information Risk Management, CitiusTech, said, "With CMMI-DEV V2.0 level 5 appraisal, CitiusTech reaches the top-level maturity recognition for its software development projects following Agile Methodology. The journey with CMMI has helped us deliver high-quality services, set newer goals in our delivery excellence journey, and build a culture of continuous improvement." CitiusTech is a partner o choice to the world's largest healthcare and life sciences organizations and enables them to accelerate digital innovation, drive business transformation and improve care outcomes. With deep healthcare domain experience, specialized frameworks and next-gen accelerators, CitiusTech drives delivery excellence and speed-to-value for its clients across health plans, providers, MedTech and life sciences organizations. About CitiusTech CitiusTech is a leading provider of digital technology and consulting services to payer, provider, medical technology, and life sciences companies. With over 8,000 healthcare technology professionals worldwide, CitiusTech powers healthcare digital innovation, business transformation and industry-wide convergence for over 130 organizations, through next-generation technologies, solutions, and products. Key focus areas include healthcare interoperability, secure data management, quality and performance analytics, value-based care, patient experience, medical imaging, connected health, payer-provider convergence, care coordination and population health management. CitiusTech's cutting-edge technology expertise, deep healthcare domain expertise and a strong focus on digital transformation enables healthcare and life sciences companies to reinvent themselves to deliver better outcomes, accelerate growth, drive efficiencies, and ultimately make a meaningful impact to patients. Follow CitiusTech on Twitter or LinkedIn. About ISACA For more than 50 years, ISACA (www.isaca.org) has advanced the best talent, expertise and learning in technology. ISACA equips individuals with knowledge, credentials, education and community to progress their careers and transform their organizations and enables enterprises to train and build quality teams. ISACA is a global professional association and learning organization that leverages the expertise of its more than 150,000 members who work in information security, governance, assurance, risk, and privacy to drive innovation through technology. It has a presence in 188 countries, including more than 220 chapters worldwide. In 2020, ISACA launched One in Tech, a philanthropic foundation that supports IT education and career pathways for under-resourced, under-represented populations. Contacts: Saviera Barretto +91- 8424917719 [email protected] Sneha Bangera [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/citiustechs-software-development-projects-appraised-at-maturity-level-5-of-cmmi-dev-v2-0-model-301724189.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] UDS acquires majority stake in Athena BPO CHENNAI, India, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Updater Services Limited ('UDS'), Chennai-based business support services firm, today announced that it has acquired a controlling interest in Athena, a BFSI tele sales BPO. This acquisition will add to UDS' competencies in the business services space, and also drive synergies between other portfolio companies of the group. The investment will also enable Athena's geographical expansion and help it turn global in its outlook. Incorporated in 1993, Athena is a BPO service provider across the BFSI segment, and also has a presence in consumer and telecom verticals. The company has demonstrated capabilities in business development across multiple products. Speaking about this investment, Raghunandana Tangirala, [Founder, CEO and Managing Director] of Updater Services, said, "Athena is a growing organization, catering to one of the high growth industries, with its wide range of products, driving results for its clients. We are thrilled to partner with a cedible player in this field. UDS believes in driving growth through strategic partnership and in Athena, we have found a partner that will help us capture the growing tele sales industry potential." Elizabeth Jacob, Founder and MD of Athena, said, "UDS' investment in Athena is a testament to the focused and customer centric company that we have built with our team, service portfolio, client relationships, and ability to generate growth. This also reflects our future and ability to deliver results. We are excited to welcome UDS on board as their experience in scaling companies will be invaluable in our next phase of growth." Altamount Capital was the financial advisor and Phoenix Legal and IC Universal Legal were the legal advisors to the transaction. About Athena Athena is India's tele sales BPO, offering its services to Banks, NBFCs, Insurance companies, consumer durable companies and telecoms. It has a team base of over 4500 employees, who cater to new business development and after sales service requirements. The company has built a customer base of leading Banks and Insurance companies. About UDS UDS is a company that currently caters to clients across industries such as manufacturing and engineering, banking, financial services and insurance ('BFSI'), healthcare, information technology / information technology enabled services sector ('IT / ITeS'), automobiles and ancillaries, logistics and warehouse management, airports, railways and infrastructure. UDS' business support services include sales enablement, mailroom management, employee background verification, audit and assurance, warehousing solutions, airport ground handling services, warehousing management, institutional catering, washroom and feminine hygiene care solutions, monuments management services and general staffing. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1984790/Updater_Services_Limited_Logo.jpg View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/uds-acquires-majority-stake-in-athena-bpo-301723432.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] SpaceDao Product Launch and Partnership Conference was held in Singapore SINGAPORE, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SpaceDao product launch and strategic partnership conference was held in Singapore in the afternoon of January 10, 2023. Bo Chen, the founder and CEO of SpaceDao, presented and introduced the product features and application scenarios of SpaceDao's lightweight metaverse creation engine SpaceU to the guests, and grandly introduced the new metaverse solutions for enterprises. At the conference, SpaceDao respectively held a strategic partnership signing ceremony with a number of companies. Chairman of the Singapore Blockchain Association, Mr. Hock Lai CHIA; CFO of Meta Bank,Mr. Wanghao;Singapore Nanyang Technological University (NTU) tenured professor, Dr. Yiyu Chua; CTO of Huawei Cloud Asia Pacific Ecology Department, Mr. Luik Lu; Founder of Culture Cartel, Mr. JunJie; Chinese Wine Professional Overseas Sales Platform, Ms. Haze; Founder and CEO of GO GLOBAL GEM, Mr. JiaJun He; Technical Director of UKISS, Mr. Ben Chan; CEO of Singapore InnoE, Ms. NiNi Long; Mr. Yu Hao, Co-founder of Singapore Bamboo system technology, Mr. Yu Hao; Founder and CEO of SHOPNSHOP, Mr. RONNIE E H Low; Head of Yun Haus Art Gallery, Mr. Wu Dong; Founder of DeepBrainChain & Deeplink, Mr. He Yong and many other Singapore companies were present as guests to witness the launch and partnership signing conference. SpaceU debuts, leading the businesses enter metaverse At the conference venue, SpaceDao founder and CEO Bo Chen introduced the company and its product SpaceU to the guests by using her own digital avatar in the SpaceU metaverse, and used SpaceU to directly live connect to the Beijing team, all people from multiple locations entered the SpaceU and visited the metaverse at the same time, joining with the guests together in the metaverse, which was the first time for the guests to see the true demonstraton of the metaverse. It is understood that SpaceU is a mobile application for businesses to build metaverse space and organize activities in metaverse. Business can have a unique metaverse digital space in metaverse through SpaceU, as well as a metaverse website with an exclusive domain name. In addition, businesses can build a brand featured metaverse social place in SpaceU through a lightweight metaverse editor and use AI technology to assist them in creating their own digital avatar and digital story script, so that they can provide immersive digital services in the metaverse and operate their own user community and unique brand digital assets. Relying on its self-developed network framework, SpaceU enables more than 10,000 people to be online simultaneously for online communication and activities; with industry-leading AI computer vision capabilities, SpaceU automatically identifies and generates digital avatars and creates digital scripts for customers, enabling users of business to enjoy a truly immersive experience in the metaverse, assisting businesses to innovatively connect virtual space with the real world and explore the infinitely wonderful world of the future. Chairman of the Singapore Blockchain Association, Mr. Hock Lai CHIA; CFO of Meta Bank, Mr. Wang Hao; Singapore Nanyang Technological University (NTU) tenured professor, Dr. Yiyu Chua; CTO of Huawei Cloud Asia Pacific Ecology Department, Mr. Luik Lu; Former founder of Tencent Application and head of Tencent IoT and Voice AI, Mr. Hua Mao; and CEO of Singapore InnoE, Ms. NiNi Long attended the conference and made guest speeches. Strategically cooperate with many businesses to build a metaverse ecosystem together At this conference, SpaceDao also held a strategic partnership signing ceremony. SpaceDao reached strategic cooperation framework with several Singaporean companies in different fields such as online education, culture and art, FMCG, e-commerce, marketing companies etc. The value of the signing will exceed S$200,000 after the subsequent cooperation conducted. A number of Singapore companies across different fields including Singapore Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore Blockchain Association, Bamboo system technology, SHOPNSHOP, Yun Haus, DeepBrainCbain, UKISS, Chinese wine professional platform for overseas sales, GO GLOBAL GEM, SoLoMo, ShopNShop, SIBA, Bamboo, InnoE, etc. will join metaverse with SpaceU together. Heads of contracted companies have said that metaverse is the future. SpaceDao is a pioneer in the field of metaverse, with outstanding technology accumulation and scenario implementation ability, and we are very optimistic about the partner, we are looking forward to the strategic cooperation with SpaceDao. We hope that both parties will give full play to their respective strengths and form a complete and mature metaverse solution to meet the needs of scenarios and help businesses in various industries to meet their brand development demands in the Web3.0. About SpaceDao SpaceDao is a technology led Web3.0 startup company dedicated to building and developing in Web3.0, helping businesses implement their Metaverse in Web3.0, bringing business enter Metaverse instead of just a concept. Bo Chen said, we hope that through our unique technology and resource advantages, we can explore and expand the Metaverse application together with more business partners, create an open, diversified and comprehensive Metaverse ecosystem, drive the development and utilization of Web3.0, enhance the high-quality development of Web3.0 and the Metaverse in Singapore. Contact us: Website:www.SpaceuLabs.com PR: [email protected] SOURCE SpaceDao [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] Silverpush's Cookieless AI Solutions: Saving 1000 Tons of CO2eq in Advertising Campaigns GURUGRAM, India, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite efforts by businesses and governments to address climate change, a significant gap remains between their commitments and actions. Silverpush, a leader in contextual advertising, is taking action to reduce carbon emissions by using its advanced AI technology. The company successfully saved 1000 tons of CO2eq across the web. Digital initiatives, including advertising and content consumption, contribute 3.5% to global greenhouse gas emissions and are increasing by 6% annually, surpassing the aviation industry's 2.5% share. ( Read more ) To better understand the impact, it's important to note that the emissions produced by serving one million ad impressions is equivalent to one metric ton of carbon dioxide, which is the same as the emissions produced by a round-trip flight between Boston and London for one passenger. Targeting specific audiences in digital advertising contributes to a high carbon footprint. Traditional targeting methods may generate high impressions, but they often result in wasted impressions due to random ad placement andtargeting the wrong audience. Contextual targeting allows brands to be more efficient in their campaigns, reducing the number of impressions needed by 20-25% compared to audience targeting, ultimately decreasing the carbon footprint of their ad campaigns without sacrificing reach. Silverpush 's advanced AI technology has been able to deliver over 4 billion relevant impressions for over 4000 campaigns for Fortune 500 brands in the past two years. The use of contextual targeting in these campaigns has resulted in a reduction of 1000 tons of CO2eq emissions. "Silverpush provides precise and detailed targeting options, enabling brands to achieve their business objectives while managing the carbon emissions of their campaigns. By delivering relevant ads, contextual targeting can improve the efficiency of advertising campaigns and decrease the number of ads displayed to users. This also reduces the energy consumption of servers and devices used to deliver ads, ultimately lowering the carbon emissions," said Kartik Mehta , Chief Revenue & Operating Officer at Silverpush. About Silverpush Silverpush is an advertising technology firm providing AI-Powered contextual solutions. The goal is to help brands and agencies target relevant audiences without meddling with their privacy. The company has worked with Unilever, Castrol, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Mondelez, etc. Silverpush operates in 15+ countries across South East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the USA, the UK, and India. LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter SOURCE Silverpush [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 17, 2023] KFintech Drives Digital Transformation and Innovation in the Financial Services Industry with AWS HYDERABAD, India, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- KFin Technologies Limited (KFintech), a leading technology-driven financial services firm, today announced it is using Amazon Web Services (AWS), to help the asset management industry digitally transform and build new products, including interactive dashboards that use AWS machine learning to automatically look for investment patterns, including investor age and income, and identify new revenue streams. Leveraging the depth and breadth of AWS capabilities, KFintech helps their clients digitally transform, providing the best business, program, and portfolio strategies to build the next generation of solutions in the capital market. For example, KFintech built a cloud solution serving initial public offering (IPO) information to investors across India, easily handling more than 100,000 investor requests for IPO information per second. Sreekanth Nadella, MD & CEO, KFintech, said, "With AWS, we can accelerate digital innovation in every part of our business, building transformative technology to serve our clients and communities and provide them the best experience. Having worked with AWS for many years, I am confident that we will prvide more business solutions driven by data and cloud that solve meaningful customer challenges." Puneet Chandok, president of Commercial Business, AWS India & South Asia (Amazon Web Services India Pvt. Ltd.), said, "KFintech leverages AWS to provide business and technology consulting services to its customers, helping them accelerate their cloud journeys. AWS's breadth and depth of cloud services helps KFintech develop new capital market offerings, which support the digital transformation efforts of financial services organizations across India." About KFin Technologies Limited KFin Technologies Limited ("KFintech") is a leading technology driven financial services platform providing comprehensive services and solutions to the capital markets ecosystem including asset managers and corporate issuers across asset classes in India and provide several investor solutions including transaction origination and processing for mutual funds and private retirement schemes to asset managers in Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong. In India, [KFintech is the largest investor solutions provider solutions provider to Indian mutual funds, based on number of AMCs serviced as on January 31, 2022 and the largest issuer solutions provider based on number of clients serviced, as on January 31, 2022. KFintech is the only investor and issuer solutions provider in India that offers services to asset managers such as mutual funds, alternative investment funds, wealth managers and pension as well as corporate issuers and are one of the three operating central record keeping agencies for the National Pension System in India. KFintech is listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Limited and BSE Limited. The Company is majority owned by funds managed by General Atlantic Singapore Pte. Ltd., a leading global private equity investor, is the promoter of the KFintech. For more information, please visit the website: https://kfintech.com/ Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985537/KFin_Technologies_Logo.jpg View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/kfintech-drives-digital-transformation-and-innovation-in-the-financial-services-industry-with-aws-301724248.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Global VC investment falls for the fourth consecutive quarter to a near two-year low - reaching $75.6 billion on 7,641 deals in Q4'22 The latest KPMG Private Enterprise Venture Pulse report shows that global venture capital investment dropped for the fourth consecutive quarter in Q4'2022 - falling from $102.2 billion on 9,767 deals to $75.6 billion on 7,641 deals. Global investment has fallen to its lowest levels since Q2'2019. The decline comes despite large deals in the energy sector, including alternative energy vehicles, battery technologies, and alternative power generation and distribution technologies as governments seek to secure energy independence and meet their climate obligation. The Americas and Asia secured the largest deals during the quarter accounting for the largest share of VC investment globally during Q4'22. The US recorded the largest proportion of investment with Asia second, despite attracting three $500 million + megadeals across the quarter. Top deals from China included GAC Aion ($2.56 billion) and SHEIN ($1 billion) with the largest US deals including Anduril ($1.48 billion) and TerraPower ($830 million). "Overall investment continued to decline this quarter, falling to the lowest levels since Q2'2019. The combination of economic and geopolitical pressures, alongside turbulent capital markets and low IPO activity, have taken their toll on venture capital investment," said Conor Moore Head of KPMG Private Enterprise in the Americas Region & Co-Leader, KPMG Private Enterprise Emerging Giants Network, KPMG International. "However, we continue to see encouraging levels of investment n the new energy and electric vehicle ecosystems, as venture capitalists continue to align with government initiatives and incentives in these areas deemed critical to energy independence." Large rounds by alternative energy companies included US-based nuclear reactor firm TerraPower ($830 million), China-based SPIC Hydrogen Energy ($631 million), Estonia-based renewable energy developer Sunly ($196 million) and Belgium-based hydrogen energy company Tree Energy Solutions ($122 million). Investment in the electric vehicle space dwarfed most other sectors and included large fundraising rounds by Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer GAC Aion ($2.56 billion), US-based battery technology company Form Energy ($450 million), and China-based Voyah Car Technology ($630 million), US-based battery producer Group14 Technologies ($614 million) and Swedish electric vehicle firm Einride ($500 million). Key Highlights - Q4'22 In Q4'22, global VC investment dropped from $102.2 billion across 9,767 deals in Q3'22 to $75.6 billion across 7641 deals in Q4'22. VC investment in the Americas fell from $49.6 billion across 4,022 deals in Q3'22 to $39.2 billion across 3,322 deals in Q4'22, with the US accounting for $36.2 billion invested. VC investment in Asia dropped from $30.4 billion across 3,052 deals in Q3'22 to $22.6 billion across 2,157 deals in Q4'22. Europe's VC investment fell from $21.2 billion across 2,476 deals, compared to $12.9 billion across 1,936 deals in Q4'22. Corporate VC investment declined for the fourth consecutive quarter. Total CVC-affiliated investment fell from $108 billion in Q4'2021 to $36.5 billion in Q4'2022. Exit value fell dramatically year-over-year - from $1.427 trillion on 4,174 exits in 2021 to only $308.8 billion on 2,997 deals in 2022. The fall was most notable in the US, where total exit value declined from $753.2 billion to only $71.4 billion. 'Dry powder' remained at all time highs. Over the course of the year, VC firms raised over $250 billion, the third largest total in the past 10 years. The US led the way, raising a record $162 billion in 2022, albeit on a much smaller volume of funds. Dry powder expected to help keep VC market stable despite growing uncertainty Looking ahead to Q1'23, venture capital investment globally is expected to remain subdued, with consumer-focused businesses seeing the most strain. The IPO window, particularly in the US will likely remain closed well into 2023, with little to suggest it will reopen fully in the first half of the year. As companies run out of cash, there will likely be an increasing number of down rounds and an in increase in M&A activity. "Globally, we continue to see downward pressure on valuations in early 2023, leading many companies to postpone fundraising efforts in hopes of better times ahead," said Jonathan Lavender, Global Head, KPMG Private Enterprise, KPMG International. "However, these companies can only hold off so long and we anticipate an increase in down-rounds during the first half of 2023 as companies begin to exhaust cash reserves." Notes to Editors About KPMG Private Enterprise You know KPMG, you might not know KPMG Private Enterprise. We're dedicated to working with businesses like yours. It's all we do. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a family business, or a fast-growing company, we understand what's important to you. The KPMG Private Enterprise global network for Emerging Giants has extensive knowledge and experience working with the startup ecosystem. From seed to speed, we're here throughout your journey. You gain access to KPMG's global resources through a single point of contact-a trusted adviser to your company. It's a local touch with a global reach. KPMG is a global organization of independent professional services firms providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services. KPMG is the brand under which the member firms of KPMG International Limited ("KPMG International") operate and provide professional services. "KPMG" is used to refer to individual member firms within the KPMG organization or to one or more member firms collectively. KPMG firms operate in 143 countries and territories with more than 265,000 partners and employees working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. Each KPMG member firm is responsible for its own obligations and liabilities. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients. For more detail about our structure, please visit kpmg.com/governance. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117005708/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Report Demonstrates that Pharmacist-Administered Vaccinations Have Increased Since the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic The Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF) today published a new report finding an increase nationwide in people receiving vaccines at pharmacies compared to physician practices in 2020 and 2021. Data show that across all vaccines for adults (regardless of location, gender, or income), a large majority of the administration took place at the pharmacy level, with most COVID-19, shingles, and flu shots administered by pharmacists (as compared to non-pharmacy medical settings), with share of pneumococcal and adult HPV vaccination at pharmacy trending up, as well. This report was commissioned by the Global Healthy Living Foundation and the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science to better understand immunization access improvements following the enactment of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) and subsequent modifications made during the COVID-19 pandemic, which authorized pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to administer Covid-19 (3+), Pediatric (3-18), and Flu vaccines (18+) without a prescriber order. The PREP Act will lapse in 2024 in 25 States where this authority has not yet been made permanent by new state laws. Previously shared Global Healthy Living Foundation studies have shown that pharmacies also have more locations and greater operating hours than physician practices in low-income communities, further highlighting the critical function pharmacies play in expanding vaccination services. "Our research shows that immunization rates improve when pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are authorized to vaccinate adults," said Robert Popovian, PharmD, MS, Chief Science Policy Officer, Global Healthy Living Foundation. "It's time to permanently codify the PREP Act into federal and state law while further expanding authorization to empower pharmacists, pharmacy interns, and pharmacy technicians to administer all Food and Drug (FDA) approved and/or ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) recommended vaccines, like their physician colleagues." Pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals in the U.S. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about 91 percent of the U.S. population lives within 5 miles of a community pharmacy, and approximately the entire U.S. population will walk through a pharmacy in any week. "Broadening vaccination authority in pharmacies will increase immunization rates, reduce overall health care costs, and save lives, laying the groundwork for a better, stronger, and fairer healthcare system for all," added Seth Ginsberg, president and co-founder, Global Healthy Living Foundation. Pharmacy-based vaccination increased nationwide regardless of location, income, or gender The GHLF/IQVIA report, using proprietary IQVIA data to understand the location of administration of several adult and children's vaccines, found an increase in adult vaccines administration at pharmacies as compared to non-pharmacy medical settings in 2020 and in 2021. Most of the adult COVID-19 and shingles vaccine administration took place at pharmacies, and around 60 percent of vaccination during flu season (Quarters 3 and 4) took place at pharmacies. Share of pharmacy administration of other adult vaccinations also trended upwards. For example, while HPV vaccines are generally used in adolescent populations, 20 percent of all HPV vaccine claims are for adults. At the start of 2018, only 5 percent of adult HPV vaccines were administered in pharmacies, but by the end of 2021 around 20 percent of administration happened at pharmacies. Share of Pneumococcal vaccination happening at pharmacies also trended upward and is correlated with the flu season as people may interact more with pharmacists for the flu vaccine and may be informed regarding the pneumococcal vaccine. For children, a large majority of COVID-19 vaccines were administered at pharmacies as compared to non-pharmacy medical settings. Regarding the flu vaccines, there has been a slight increase in pharmacy administration in 2020 and 2021 (12-13 percent during the flu season) compared to 2018 and 19 (7-10 percent during flu season). Pharmacy-based vaccination increased nationwide regardless of location, income, or gender. Specifically, Hispanic and Asian populations receive a larger share of vaccines at pharmacies compared to other race/ethnicity categories. "The COVID pandemic led to unprecedented cooperation and effort to improve immunization rates to stem the immediate threat of illness and bridge gaps in health equity, which in turn spotlighted the role pharmacists play as an essential membe of the health care team," added Dr. Popovian. "Let's continue that momentum by capitalizing on these learnings and ensuring that vaccination continues to be accessible and equitable moving forward." To read "Trends in Vaccine Administration in the United States," visit https://www.iqvia.com/insights/the-iqvia-institute/reports/trends-in-vaccine-administration-in-the-united-states This report was supported by Pfizer and produced independently by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science in partnership with Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF). GHLF's Patient-Focused Economic and Policy Research Division At the Global Healthy Living Foundation, the Patient-Centered Economic and Policy Research Division conducts original research focused on health policy economics and outcomes research to better understand how current and proposed health policies, regulations, and legislation affect patients' financial, healthcare, quality-of-life, and other outcomes. We aim to increase transparency and understanding of the public health policies, regulations, and legislation impacting chronic disease patient communities by sharing our research via publication, our website, social media platforms, and conventional media. Our researchers also address these important topics through opinion editorials, speaking engagements, and our world-class podcast series - Healthcare Matters. Our experts have published extensively on the impact of biopharmaceutical and health policies on costs and clinical outcomes in the most prominent medical sources and media publications. They are sought-after speakers, providing briefings and expert reviews for the U.S. Congress, dozens of state legislatures, and at conferences and medical symposiums around the world. Learn more at https://ghlf.org/our-work/economic-policy-research/ About Global Healthy Living Foundation The Global Healthy Living Foundation is a U.S. based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, international organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life for people with chronic illnesses (such as arthritis, osteoporosis, migraine, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease, and cardiovascular disease) by advocating for improved access to health care and amplifying education and awareness efforts within its social media framework. GHLF is also a staunch advocate for vaccines. The Global Healthy Living Foundation is the parent organization of CreakyJoints, the international, digital community for millions of people living with arthritis and their supporters worldwide who seek education, support, activism, and patient-centered research in English, Spanish, and French. Our ArthritisPower (ArthritisPower.org) patient registry has 40,000 consented patients who participate in best-in-class patient-reported outcomes research. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, GHLF started a Patient Support Program, informed by a patient council made up of people living with a wide range of chronic illnesses, that now serves more than 46,000 subscribers. Via CreakyJoints, GHLF also hosts PainSpot (PainSpot.org), a digital risk-assessment tool for musculoskeletal conditions and injuries, eRheum (eRheum.org), for telehealth and virtual-care support, and a constantly refreshed library of podcasts via the GHLF Podcast Network. Visit ghlf.org for more information. Find us online: Global Healthy Living Foundation: ghlf.org CreakyJoints Canada: CreakyJoints.ca CreakyJoints: CreakyJoints.org CreakyJoints Espanol: CreakyJoints.org.es CreakyJoints Australia: CreakyJoints.org.au Facebook: facebook.com/CreakyJoints & facebook.com/GlobalHealthyLivingFoundation Twitter: @GHLForg, @CreakyJoints, #CreakyChats Instagram: @creaky_joints, @creakyjoints_aus, @creakyjoints_esp TikTok: globalhealthylivingfnd LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/ghlf Global Healthy Living Foundation Podcast Network: https://ghlf.org/patient-education/listen/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117005853/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] ICBC MY CUSTOMERS CAN ENJOY FAST, SECURE & SEAMLESS PAYMENT VIA UNIONPAY QR CODE DURING CNY TRAVEL UnionPay QR Code payment is accepted at over 40 million merchants in 45 markets, including those most popular with MY residents. KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- With the upcoming Chinese New Year (CNY) holidays and border controls lifted, Malaysia residents are expected to travel within the country and to other destinations. When travelling, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Malaysia) Berhad (ICBC Malaysia) customers can enjoy fast, instant, secure and efficient payment by using their ICBC Malaysia Mobile Banking App to scan UnionPay QR Code payment at over 40 million brick-and-mortar retailers in 45 countries and regions. UnionPay QR Code is accepted all over Malaysia at close to 150,000 merchant terminals, and in popular travel destinations nearby like China, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and more. This QR Code payment service is the result of a collaboration between ICBC Malaysia and UnionPay International (UPI) - seamlessly integrating UnionPay's QR Code payment with ICBC Mobile Banking App. This allows ICBC Malaysia customers to use the ICBC Malaysia Mobile Banking App to pay securely at UnionPay QR Code-enabled merchants locally and globally, avoiding the hassle of changing foreign currencies and carrying clunky cash. With border controls now lifted, Malaysian residents can travel to China, which offers abundant tourism resources. UnionPay QR Code is well accepted at millions of merchants in Mainland China, covering a wide range of payment scenarios like retail, dining, public transportation, tourism and more. Whether traveling in Malaysia or out of Malaysia during the upcoming festive season, ICBC Malaysia customers can also use ICBC Mobile Banking to conveniently scan UnionPay QR Code to pay at merchants. The app automatically handles the transction's currency conversion, so consumers simply need to scan and pay in a few steps, as well as, have a peace of mind in currency exchange. "Although there are many mobile wallets in Malaysia, only a select few and the UnionPay-enabled ones are able to perform cross border payments as the UnionPay QR Code is based on global EMVCo standards, accepted at 45 million merchants globally that is enabled with UnionPay QR Code. Hence we are pleased that the ICBC Mobile Banking App is now able to scan UnionPay QR Code for payment, offering ICBC customers a superior and more convenient way to pay when travelling during this festive period, no more worries about safety of carrying cash abroad and fumbling with foreign notes and coins" said Mr. David Chong, Assistant General Manager, UnionPay International South East Asia. Said ICBC Malaysia, "Malaysian residents have been travelling locally, regionally and globally to take advantage of many markets opening up. We are very pleased to be able to offer ICBC Malaysia customers this fast, secure and seamless way to pay when they are travelling during this CNY period, using the ICBC Mobile Banking App to scan and pay with UnionPay QR Code. With Malaysia residents already readily adopting mobile payments as part of their daily living, we are confident that they will find this payment method a boon when travelling." Consumers can enjoy up to 150 MYR instant rebates at Econsave and TF Value-Mart in Malaysia when using the ICBC Mobile Banking App to scan UnionPay QR Code to pay for their travel essentials and more. They will also enjoy more merchant offers and privileges when scanning UnionPay QR Code to pay in Mainland China, Singapore, Thailand, and more destinations. About ICBC Malaysia Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Malaysia (hereinafter referred to as 'ICBC Malaysia'or'the Bank'), a wholly owned subsidiary of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited having its registered office at Level 10, Menara Maxis, Kuala Lumpur City Center, 50088 Kuala Lumpur,was incorporated on 28 January, 2010 and officially commenced its business on 28 April, 2010. As a full banking license financial institution, coupled with the deepening relationship between China and Malaysia, the Bank is actively and will continue to provide high quality financial services at all aspects to its customers, be that of trade, cross-border enterprises/investors, financial institutions and retail. About UnionPay International UnionPay International (UPI) focuses on the international business of UnionPay, a global payment network that serves the world's largest Cardholder base. With over 70 million merchants accepting UnionPay in 181 countries and regions, as well as 40 million merchants in 45 markets globally accepting UnionPay Quick Response (QR) Code, UnionPay is one of the fastest-growing payment networks in the world. As a company with a global acceptance network and a wide range of world-class payment services, UnionPay is committed to providing access to value and secure payment solutions that are tailored to the needs of the local market, to enable choice and ease of payment for consumers and businesses alike. In Southeast Asia, UPI has enabled ATM, POS acceptance, card issuance and e-wallets across all 10 countries. In Malaysia, a range of UnionPay Cards and several apps are enabled to scan UnionPay QR Code, including ICBC Mobile Banking App. For more information on UnionPay Malaysia, visit https://www.unionpayintl.com/my/ . SOURCE UnionPay International [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Xinhua Silk Road: Guotai Junan, Bloomberg forge strategic partnership to serve higher quality opening-up of China's capital market BEIJING, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Guotai Junan Securities and Bloomberg L.P. signed on Monday strategic collaboration pacts to better seize opportunities in the higher quality opening-up of China's capital market. The Chinese securities broker will thoroughly leverage its core capacity and advantages in comprehensive services platforms, digital technology and prudent compliance culture to forge pragmatic, profound and new cooperation modes with Bloomberg. Under the modes, Guotai Junan Securities pledged to dig opportunities in serving sci-tech innovation and people's livelihood, promote its internationalization, practice ESG philosophy and further explore core areas to craft an open secrities ecology in the two-way opening-up of capital market in China. Bloomberg, as an all-around partner for financial institutions in China, will facilitate the securities broker's international drive. Specifically, the two sides vowed to advance cross-industry service-scape integration, data resource sharing and mutual sci-tech capacity complementation, deepen securities broker digital transformation, optimize domestic and outbound investment strategies and procedures, strengthen risk management, ESG study and data cooperation and jointly develop innovative indexes products to present the unique value of China's capital market. On Monday's ceremony, Guotai Junan Securities' board chairman He Qing and Li Bing, head of Bloomberg in Asia Pacific witnessed the signing of the strategic collaboration agreements. Luo Dongyuan, vice president of Guotai Junan Securities and Wang Dahai, head of Greater China at Bloomberg inked the agreements as respective representatives of the two parties, with Yu Feng, chief information officer of the former also taking part in the ceremony. https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/332369.html SOURCE Xinhua Silk Road [January 18, 2023] MiX Telematics Sets Third Quarter Fiscal 2023 Conference Call for January 26, 2023, at 8:00 a.m. ET and 3:00 p.m. SAST MiX Telematics Limited (JSE: MIX) (NYSE: MIXT) ("MiX Telematics" or the "Company"), a leading global SaaS provider of connected fleet management solutions, will hold a conference call on Thursday, January 26, 2023, at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time and 3:00 p.m. South African time to discuss its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2023, which ended December 31, 2022. The results will be reported in a press release prior to the conference call. MiX Telematics management will host the conference call and simultaneous webcast, followed by a question-and-answer period. Date: Thursday, January 26, 2023 Time: 8:00 a.m. Eastern time and 3:00 p.m. South African time U.S. dial-in: 1-877-451-6152 International dial-in: 1-201-389-0879 South Africa dial-in: 0-800-983-831 Conference ID: 13735507 Please call the conference telephone number five minutes prior to the start time. An operator will register your name and organization. If you have any difficulty connecting with the conference call, please contact Gateway Investor Relations at 1-949-574-3860. A lie audio webcast of the conference call will be available in listen-only mode simultaneously and available for replay here and via the investor relations section of the Company's website at www.mixtelematics.com. A telephonic replay of the call will also be available after 11:00 a.m. Eastern time on the same day through Thursday, February 2, 2023. U.S. replay dial-in: 1-844-512-2921 International replay dial-in: 1-412-317-6671 Replay ID: 13735507 About MiX Telematics MiX Telematics is a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions delivered as SaaS to 914,600 global subscribers spanning more than 120 countries. The Company's products and services provide enterprise fleets, small fleets, and consumers with efficiency, safety, compliance, and security solutions. MiX Telematics was founded in 1996 and has offices in South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uganda, Brazil, Australia, Romania and the United Arab Emirates as well as a network of more than 130 fleet partners worldwide. MiX Telematics shares are publicly traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE: MIX) and MiX Telematics American Depositary Shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: MIXT). For more information, visit www.mixtelematics.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005071/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] JA Solar Awarded with the Top Brand PV MENA for the third Consecutive Year BEIJING, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- World Future Energy Summit 2023 (WFES) was held from January 16 to 18 at the ADNEC, Abu Dhabi, where JA Solar, a globally leading manufacturer of high-performance PV products, showcased its DeepBlue 3.0, DeepBlue 3.0 Pro and DeepBlue 4.0 X products at booth 8130, attracting the attention of lots of visitors. In the afternoon of January 16, EuPD Research, an internationally renowned energy research institute, awarded JA Solar the accolade of Top Brand PV MENA 2023. It is the third consecutive year that JA Solar has received the award, which is one of the most prestigious in the global photovoltaic (PV) industry. Middle East (ME) region has the natural advantages of developing solar power due to its abundant sunlight resources, while its natural environments means there are strict requirements on the quality and performance of modules. Integrating high power, high efficiency, high power generation capacity and high reliability, JA Solar's DeepBlue series modules can create more value for customers, with its shipments ranking among the top of the industry in several countries of the ME region. In recent years, JA Solar has been recognized as the "Top Brand PV" by the EuPD Research in several markets in Europe, including Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Netherlands, and Switzerland, and beyond in countries such as Mexico, Chile, Australia, and Vietnam. Its products continue to be well received and praised by users around the world. The awarding of the Top Brand PV MENA 2023 further demonstrates JA Solar's product technology and quality advantages, and confirms JA Solar's long-term leading position in the global PV market. SOURCE JA Solar Technology Co., Ltd. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] flyadeal and Navitaire Renew Partnership flyadeal, Saudi Arabia's newest low-fares airline, has renewed its agreement with Navitaire for the Navitaire Airline Platform, including the New Skies digital retailing system, to help facilitate its growth plans and digital transformation. A subsidiary of Saudia, flyadeal has grown significantly in size and network since its launch in 2017. The airline now serves 26 destinations in six countries and operates a fleet of 27 modern aircraft. With more aircraft on order, the carrier looks to the Navitaire Airline Platform to help facilitate and empower its goals to open new markets. flyadeal's accelerated growth is the result of rising travel interest across the region and its successful market approach. flyadeal offers its customers good value via unbundled fares that let customers choose what they want. The airline is especially popular with young, tech-oriented travelers that prefer a digital-first approach that makes low-fare travel easy to book and offers convenience throughout their journey. The Navitaire Airline Platform provides flyadeal with a flexible, customer-centric reservations and ancillary sales system to help deliver this experience to its customers. "Our growth plans rely on connecting with today's digital-first traveler," said Con Korfiatis, CEO flyadeal. "The Navitaire platform gave us the agility and fast time to market to deliver faster initiatives along with personalized offers, and better serve the new customer fueled by data intelligence." flyadeal also has the distinction of being the first airline to use Navitaire's latest cloud-enabled solutions architected as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Navitaire's systems have been operating in Azure beginning in January 2022, and the latest cloud-native PaaS-based version in use by flyadeal expands the performance advantages that the cloud can offer. Navitaire PaaS solutions leverage a broad suite of cloud-native tools for improved operational support that span development, platform, security, and infrastructure. These investments can enable key cloud benefits such as faster time to market through quicker deployments, geater resiliency, and richer telemetry data. "We have seen the evolution of Navitaire's platform through the years. Having such robust platform for flyadeal reinforces our commitment to grow and deliver more digital solutions to our passengers with high quality and reliability for better customer satisfaction and seamless journey," stated by Mohannad Alsalmi, CIO. "Navitaire's partnership has always been beneficial and futuristic to flyadeal, the latest onboarding of latest cloud-based PaaS version of the system is a testament of confidence in Navitaire and how flyadeal can lead the industry with its extra-large ambition to innovate and grow," says Surya Kuchibotla, Head of eCommerce and Distribution. "Navitaire is pleased to support flyadeal's continuing growth plans as a leading digital-first airline in the region with our cloud-first platform that is open, digital, connected and powered by data," said David P. Evans, Navitaire CEO. "We're equally thrilled to have flyadeal as our launch partner for our latest cloud-native platform that is poised and ready to help flyadeal reach new heights as it delivers even more value to customers." Navitaire is one of the first technology providers to operate its entire airline platform solution in the cloud, offering its carriers dynamic scalability to keep pace with growth and access to leading-edge technology that supports modern offer and order retailing concepts. Its extensive API suite and proven retailing and distribution capabilities gives airlines flexible options to offer bundled or a la carte ancillary services throughout a customer's journey. Navitaire's dynamic distribution, including its cloud-based NDC-enabled and digital channels, enables connections with industry and business partners, ranging from online travel agencies and airlines to travel commerce companies, all using modern technology. About flyadeal flyadeal has been created to meet the growing demand for affordable air travel in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. flyadeal, completed five years of operations on 23rd September 2022 (the Saudi's National Day). The airline now operates a fleet of 27 Airbus A320s - 11 A320 CEOs and 16 A320 NEOs - and has an agreement with Airbus for a firm order and options for more brand new Airbus A320 NEO aircraft. The airline has flown over 18 million passengers since its first flight. flyadeal is owned by the Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation. Fly for Less flyadeal About Navitaire Navitaire (www.navitaire.com), an Amadeus company, delivers industry-leading technology services supporting growth, profitability, and innovation to more than 60 airlines and rail companies worldwide, carrying a total of 819 million annual passengers in 2019, including many of the world's most successful low-cost and hybrid airlines. Navitaire offers a full suite of proven solutions focused on revenue generation and streamlining costs in reservations, ancillary sales, loyalty, revenue accounting, and business intelligence. Navitaire has offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Amadeus Group. Learn more about Navitaire's industry leadership in shaping the world of travel at www.navitaire.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005102/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] eStruxture Data Centers Secures Additional $170 Million Cdn in Financing from Leading Financial Institutions in Order to Accelerate Its Growth Plans MONTREAL, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- eStruxture Data Centers, the largest Canadian-owned, cloud and carrier-neutral data center provider, announced today that it has secured an incremental credit facility of $170 Million Cdn with a group of prominent banks counting Scotiabank, National Bank, BMO Bank of Montreal, and Deutsche Bank. The combined financing will allow eStruxture to accelerate its growth strategy of expanding its existing data center platform. Many of these financial institutions have been investing in eStruxtures growth for many years. Their renewed support is a testament to eStruxtures robust strategy, expert leadership, and unparalleled growth trajectory. The amount will enable eStruxture to execute on strategic capital expansion projects across its Canadian platform, and ultimately deliver enhanced value to its customers. We continue to experience an increased demand in data center capacity across all the markets that we serve and this financing will boost our ability to bring additional capacity online, faster, says Todd Coleman , Founder, President and CEO of eStruxture. Having the unique advantage of being 100% focused on the Canadian market, some of the most prominent technology companies have been turning to us as their trusted advisors. And so, we have gained a deep understanding of customer needs, development plans, and trends, and are able to tactically grow and expand precisely where our customers need us to, adds Coleman. Scotiabank is proud to support he ongoing growth and success of the information and technology industry, and to continue its partnerships with a dynamic, Canadian-owned market leader such as eStruxture, adds Peter Clair, Director and Head, National Accounts, Quebec, Scotiabank BMO Bank of Montreal is a strong supporter of eStruxture and is pleased to contribute to the companys efforts of accelerating growth and delivering exceptional solutions to its clients, says Etienne Julien, Managing Director - Corporate Finance Division, BMO Bank of Montreal Fabian Goehring, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, noted that he is delighted to continue to support eStruxture as they continue to grow and flourish in the Canadian data center market. As the single largest pan-Canadian data center operator with fifteen facilities in all major markets, eStruxture remains dedicated to driving growth in the digital infrastructure sector by expanding their data center platform, as well as growing their network and cloud provider ecosystem. eStruxtures customers enjoy a wide range of colocation and connectivity solutions, as well as the ability to easily grow their footprint. Canada continues to be one of the most active regions for data center growth as more and more companies experience an imperative need for highly scalable and eco-sustainable data center solutions, as well as high power densities. Consequently, eStruxture is determined to continue to focus its investing efforts on Canada as they see tremendous growth opportunity both in the near and long term. About eStruxture eStruxture is the largest Canadian data center provider with locations in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary. Our solutions are designed to give you more: more locations, more capacity, more connections that enable you to run modern, demanding enterprise applications, and offer your business the control to rapidly scale in response to unpredictable changes in business processes. Headquartered in Montreal, eStruxture provides access to an ecosystem of almost 1,200 customers that trust and depend on our infrastructure and customer support, including carriers, cloud providers, media content, financial services, and enterprise customers. eStruxture offers colocation, bandwidth, security and support services to customers across Canada in its carrier and cloud-neutral facilities. For more information, visit www.estruxture.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Media Contact Angela Adam +1 888-369-2209 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] FrontWell Capital Partners Provides US $7.4 Million Senior Secured Credit Facility to Savor Street Foods FrontWell Capital Partners Inc. ("FrontWell") today announced the closing of a US $7.4 million secured credit facility with Savor Street Foods Inc. ("SSF" or the "Company"), a Pennsylvania-based food manufacturer producing an array of health-conscious pretzel snacks. The facility, comprised of a revolver and a term loan, will be used by SSF to refinance its existing debt, as well as to provide improved liquidity to help meet strong customer demand and support the Company's growth initiatives, including new brand and product launches. "We are excited to support Savor Street Foods, the pioneer in health-conscious snacks, as it capitalizes on its large and growing market opportunity," said Patrick Dalton, Chief Executive Officer of FrontWell. "The company has built strong momentum with its customers since inception, and we're thrilled to provide a tailored financing solution to help it reach its next stage of expansion at this pivotal moment in time." "The demand for healthy snack options and brands that give back to the community has soared since the pandemic, and weare pleased to partner with FrontWell to accelerate our business and grow with these strong industry tailwinds," said Scott Carpenter, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Savor Street Foods. "We've found a true partner in the FrontWell team, whose flexible and collaborative approach will help take us to the next level." About FrontWell Capital Partners Headquartered in Toronto, FrontWell Capital Partners provides transitionary senior debt financing to middle-market companies in the United States and Canada. With committed seed capital of more than USD $350 million, FrontWell offers financing solutions, including asset-based (ABL) and cash flow loans, to maximize liquidity support for borrowers that are looking beyond traditional sources of capital. FrontWell's rigorous approach to origination, underwriting and risk management generates current income while prioritizing the preservation of principal over the chase for yield. FrontWell partners with companies across several industries that display balance sheet capacity and require liquidity to support a transition in their business, including turnarounds, restructurings, acquisitions and changes in ownership or control. For more information, please visit frontwellcapital.com. About Savor Street Foods Inc. Savor Street is a family based and mission driven brand. At Savor Street we believe that every ingredient counts and so does every individual. Our mission is to create innovative and delicious snacks that inspire sharing, caring and hope for a world where all people are accepted and included despite their differences. As a part of this mission, our organization employs and empowers adults with autism to live to their fullest potential. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005093/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Alphawave Semi certified as a Great Place to Work for 2022-23 TORONTO and SAN JOSE, Calif, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Alphawave Semi (LSX: AWE), a global leader in high-speed connectivity for the world's technology infrastructure, today announced the company has been certified as a Great Place to Work. Over 80% of Alphawave employees in both Canada and the United States reported a positive work experience and company culture, which is higher compared to the average of 57% in a typical U.S.-based company and meets or exceeds the top 25 employers benchmark. Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention, and increased innovation. The certification was based on employee feedback on workplace culture using the Great Place to Work Trust Index Score. "Great Place to Work Certification isn't something that comes easily it takes ongoing dedication to the employee experience," said Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global recognition at Great Place to Work. "It's the only official recognition determined by employees' real-time reports of their company culture. Earning this designation means that Alphawave Semi is one of the best companies to work for in the country." "Alphawave Semi has seen tremendous growth over the past year - including several acquisitions - and we owe our success to our dedicated teams who continue to strive for excellence," said Tony Pialis, CEO and co-founder of Alphawave Semi. "As the only official recognition determined by employees' reports of their company culture, this is an incredible honor that reflects our people-first culture and steadfast commitment to making Alphawave Semi a highly exciting, engaging, and fulfilling place to work." Alphawave Semi is the leader in connectivity silicon technology, and powers product innovation in the most data-demanding industries today including data centers, networking, storage, artificial intelligence, 5G wireless infrastructure, and many others. Today, Alphawave Semi has offices in the North America, EMEA and APAC regions. This accolade follows its recent recognition as a winner of the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and North American Technology Fast 500 award heralding its rapid growth. According to Great Place to Work research , job seekers are 4.5 times more likely to find a great boss at a Certified great workplace. Additionally, employees at Certified workplaces are 93% more likely to look forward to coming to work, and are twice as likely to be paid fairly, earn a fair share of the company's profits, and have a fair chance at promotion. About Alphawave Semi Alphawave Semi is a global leader in high-speed connectivity for the world's technology infrastructure. Faced with the exponential growth of data, Alphawave Semi's technology services a critical need: enabling data to travel faster, more reliably and with higher performance at lower power. We are a vertically integrated semiconductor company, and our IP, custom silicon, and connectivity products are deployed by global tier-one customers in data centers, compute, networking, AI, 5G, autonomous vehicles, and storage. Founded in 2017 by an expert technical team with a proven track record in licensing semiconductor IP, our mission is to accelerate the critical data infrastructure at the heart of our digital world. To find out more about Alphawave Semi, visit: awavesemi.com Alphawave Semi and the Alphawave Semi logo are trademarks of Alphawave IP Group plc. All rights reserved. About Great Place to Work Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Their employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything they do is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For All. Learn more at greatplacetowork.com and on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook and Instagram . Contact Information: Alphawave IP Group plc, John Lofton Holt, Executive Chairman, Jose Cano, Head of IR, [email protected], +44 (0) 20 7717 5877; Brunswick Group, Simone Selzer, Sarah West, [email protected], +44 (0) 20 7404 5959; Gravitate PR, Lisette Paras, Siddharth Nigam, [email protected], +1 614-787-8850 Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1985434/Alphawave_IP_Group_Plc_Alphawave_Semi_certified_as_a_Great_Place.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/alphawave-semi-certified-as-a-great-place-to-work-for-2022-23-301724388.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Global Energy Security Depends on Geopolitical Stability - Saudi Foreign Minister Tells WEF23 Geopolitical stability is "absolutely key" to global energy security, Saudi's Foreign Minister told the World Economic Forum's 2023 Annual Meeting in Davos on Tuesday. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005430/en/ Geopolitical stability "key" to energy security - HH Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud (Photo: AETOSWire) During a high-level panel titled 'Keeping the Lights amid Geopolitical Fracture', His Highness Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, emphasized the need for near-term stability, espcially in the world's energy markets. "The Kingdom is investing almost $200 billion in renewable energy at home and abroad. Our companies are active in 21 countries, deploying solar and wind energy and other sorts of renewable energy," he said. "In the meantime, we need to maintain a supply of traditional energies that are priced in a way that ensures stability - and we will continue to address this in a responsible way," His Highness Prince Faisal added. Meanwhile, His Excellency Bandar bin Ibrahim Alkhorayef, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, participated in 'The Return of Manufacturing', where he highlighted the need for governments to foster innovation and co-investments in the industrial sector. "You need the right regulatory framework to allow investment flow," he said. Alkhorayef also emphasized the need for the right infrastructure to enable factories of the future, as well as the importance of governments to proactively develop skilled human capital to drive sustainable growth. About the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the World Economic Forum 2023: Saudi Arabia's participation at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 highlights the Kingdom's commitment to engage in meaningful dialogues with other nations to design solutions for some of the world's most pressing challenges. In recognizing the crucial role international cooperation plays in ensuring global stability, Saudi Arabia is stepping up its efforts on the world stage to act as a bridge of near-term stability and long-term transformation. *Source: AETOSWire View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005430/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Wipro opens AWS Launch Pad Center in Toronto, Canada Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading technology services and consulting company, today announced the opening of its newest Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Center in Toronto, Canada. Joining a global network of Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Centers, this new one will enable customers in Canada to accelerate their move to the cloud and build industry leading solutions leveraging Wipro and AWS expertise. "Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Centre will help meet our customers' needs for increased speed and agility while achieving cost optimization," said Kim Watson, Country Head & Managing Director - Canada, Wipro Limited. "The local expertise from Wipro and AWS will help our customers tap into the power of cloud-based solutions and build resilient, future-proof businesses." Toronto serves as a prime location to enable co-creation across industries given the ongoing technology expansion and investments in the city, which is now the third largest tech hub in North America. Fueling the tech innovations already afoot in the region, the Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Center will allow clients to experience the "art of the possible" in digital transformation. Wipro engineers, designers, and consultants in Canada and around the world will work with clients to co-innovate, collaborate, develop, and deliver scalable cloud solutions. "This co-innovation hub will allow us to collaborate with AWS and Wipro to envisage and deliver world class solutions with the goal of continuously improving the customer experience," said, Michael J Brown, Director, IT Programs & Strategy, Greater Toronto Airports Authority. The Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Center will feature demonstrations of enterprise-grade solutions developed by Wipro and AWS. Wipro and AWS experts will work with clients in the areas of application and database migration, application modernization, serverless computing, purpose-built databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). "In today's digital economy, more companies are moving to the cloud for greater speed, agility and innovation," said Eric Gales, Managing Director, AWS Canada Inc. "The Wipro-AWS Launch Pad will demonstrate the truly innovative experiencs that can be developed on AWS, helping companies bring to life their solutions and accelerate their journey to the cloud." From creating cutting-edge solutions to achieving AWS Premier Consulting Partner status in the AWS Partner Network (APN), Wipro has developed deep expertise in AWS to deliver transformational cloud programs. This center further reinforces Wipro's and AWS's shared commitment to delivering innovative solutions and provide exceptional customer service. About Wipro Limited Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading technology services and consulting company focused on building innovative solutions that address clients' most complex digital transformation needs. Leveraging our holistic portfolio of capabilities in consulting, design, engineering, and operations, we help clients realize their boldest ambitions and build future-ready, sustainable businesses. With over 250,000 employees and business partners across 66 countries, we deliver on the promise of helping our customers, colleagues, and communities thrive in an ever-changing world. For additional information, visit us at www.wipro.com. Forward-Looking Statements The forward-looking statements contained herein represent Wipro's beliefs regarding future events, many of which are by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside Wipro's control. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Wipro's growth prospects, its future financial operating results, and its plans, expectations and intentions. Wipro cautions readers that the forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in our earnings, revenue and profits, our ability to generate and manage growth, complete proposed corporate actions, intense competition in IT services, our ability to maintain our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which we make strategic investments, withdrawal of fiscal governmental incentives, political instability, war, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our business and industry. The conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could decrease technology spending, adversely affect demand for our products, affect the rate of customer spending and could adversely affect our customers' ability or willingness to purchase our offerings, delay prospective customers' purchasing decisions, adversely impact our ability to provide on-site consulting services and our inability to deliver our customers or delay the provisioning of our offerings, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. Our operations may also be negatively affected by a range of external factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, Annual Reports on Form 20-F. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. We may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by us or on our behalf. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005523/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Tokens.com Subsidiary Announces Partnership with Splinterlands, a Leading P2E Game Tokens.com Corp. (NEO Exchange Canada: COIN)(Frankfurt Stock Exchange: 76M) (OTCQB US: SMURF) ("Tokens.com" or the "Company"), a publicly-traded company that invests in web3 assets and builds businesses linked to crypto staking, the metaverse, and play-to-earn gaming, is pleased to announce that its subsidiary, Hulk Labs, has acquired a validator node license for the popular play-to-earn (P2E) game Splinterlands and has entered into a broad partnership with the Splinterlands team. Splinterlands is one of the longest running and most active play-to-earn (P2E) games in the web3 space, boasting over 350,000 players and 12 million+ transactions daily. Validator node operators like Hulk earn a share of 3,750,000 Splintershards tokens per month, as well as game VOUCHERS, both of which can be exchanged for on-chain game assets or traded freely on secondary markets. Validator node licenses for Splinterlands originally went on pre-sale in May 2022, selling out the 2,000 licenses available at launch in 11 minutes. The acquisition of a validator node license is aligned with Hulk Labs focus on yield generation within the web3 gaming space, as Splinterlands has shown itself to be a sustainable game - even amid the current bear market. Hulk plans to leverage its validator node to earn in-game assets which will be used to deploy into its growing network of players. In addition to the node license, Hulk Labs has also partnered with NFTy Arcade, to leverage their guild tooling and facilitate the onboarding of new Splinterlands players across the world. Hulk is planning a further expansion into the Splinterlands ecosystem in partnership with NFTy arcade - and is leveraging their Splinterlands experience, player and asset management tools, and rewards tracking allows for a seamless on-ramp for Hulk Labs player network. The current crypto market environment has made it challenging for new games to come to market, but Splinterlands has remained strong. In addition to the main deck-builder based game, Splinterlands is also prepared to release a highly anticipated tower defense game. Pre-sales for tower defense card packs launched on September 20th, and sold out in 12 hours, with over 200,000 of the 250,000 packs available selling in the first 30 minutes. "Hulk Labs continues to grow its platform and revenue generating opportunities," said Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com. "As web3 gaming and P2E continue to grow, Hulk Labs is positioned to be an industry leader in analytics and wallet management software." /p> [email protected] . About Tokens.com Tokens.com Corp is a publicly traded technology company that invests in web3 assets and builds web3 businesses. The Company focuses on three operating segments: i) crypto staking, ii) the metaverse and, iii) play-to-earn crypto gaming. Tokens.com owns digital assets and operating businesses within each of these three segments. Staking operations occur within Tokens.com. Metaverse real estate and ecomm3 solutions operations occur within a subsidiary called Metaverse Group. Crypto gaming operations occur within a subsidiary called Hulk Labs. All three businesses are tied together by the utilization of blockchain technology and are linked to high-growth macro trends within web3. Through sharing resources and infrastructure across these business segments, Tokens.com is able to efficiently incubate these businesses from inception to revenue generation. As a result of each of the three business segments owning digital assets, Tokens.com is required to revalue these assets at every reporting quarter. The Company's financial statements will have non-cash related gains or losses based on the market performance of the digital assets owned from quarter to quarter. These non-cash revaluations of owned digital assets do not impact the operations or growth within our business segments. The digital assets are owned for the purpose of generating revenue within each business segment. In some instances, the Company may choose to dispose of certain assets if they no longer meet our ownership criteria. Visit Tokens.com to learn more. Keep up-to-date on Tokens.com developments and join our online communities on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. About Hulk Labs Hulk Labs is a web3 technology company focused on building tools and systems to generate income from Play-to-Earn (P2E) blockchain games. Hulk Labs builds calculators to evaluate the profit potential and longevity of P2E games. In addition, the company is building a global player network to play games on behalf of asset-holders and is building tools to securely delegate and track in-game NFTs. Hulk Labs is a subsidiary of Tokens.com, a publicly- traded company that invests in web3 assets and businesses. For further information please visit https://hulklabs.com. Forward-Looking Statements This news release includes certain forward-looking statements as well as management's objectives, strategies, beliefs and intentions. Forward looking statements are frequently identified by such words as "may", "will", "plan", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "intend" and similar words referring to future events and results. Forward-looking statements are based on the current opinions and expectations of management. All forward-looking information is inherently uncertain and subject to a variety of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies, as described in more detail in our securities filings available at www.sedar.com. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements and we caution against placing undue reliance thereon. We assume no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005128/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] AI in Agriculture Market To Reach USD 8,308.5 Million by 2030, Says P&S Intelligence NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In 2022, the AI in agriculture market was worth USD 1,254.6 million, and it is expected to advance at a compound annual growth rate of 26.7% during 20222030, to hit USD 8,308.5 million by 2030, as per a report by P&S Intelligence. The growth of the industry can be credited to the booming usage of the internet of things in the agriculture industry, mounting concentration on advanced crop management, rising usage of drones for pesticide spraying, and increasing requirement for a high crop yield. Get the sample pages of this report: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/artificial-intelligence-in-agriculture-market/report-sample Furthermore, the low availability of labor and increase in the labor expenses are contributing to the growth of the market. For example, the decline in crop productivity in the U.S. because of the labor shortage costs around $3.1 billion every year. This has encouraged the utilization of robots and drones in the farming sector for numerous purposes. North America Is Dominating Market North America is dominating the market for AI-driven agricultural solutions, and it is projected to continue its dominance in the future. This is because of the high acceptance of enhanced technologies in the agriculture industry for yielding the maximum output. Moreover, the key players are providing a range of AI-driven solutions to regional customers by collaborating with other players. The adoption of advanced technologies, such as ML and IoT, along with computer vision, in the farming space for numerous applications, including greenhouse management, soil management, livestock management, and precision farming, will help the region produce $4 billion revenue for the market by 2030. The Asia-Pacific region is projected to experience the fastest growth in the years to come. This can be credited to the increasing acceptance of smart agricultural techniques, such as agronomic robots, drone analytics, and precision farming. In the region, China is the key revenue contributor due to the extensive adoption of enhanced techniques in its huge farming sector. Service Category Is Set Grow with Higher Rate The service category is predicted to grow the faster in the coming years. This can be ascribed to the snowballing requirement for managed services by growers for tracking the functioning of sensors and managing large data sets associated with crop health. Browse detailed report on AI in Agriculture Market Trends, Development and Demand Forecast Report 2030 The product category is leading the industry due to the surging requirement for software to control and guide the devices fitted in the agronomical atmosphere, for enabling numerous enhanced farming practices. Key Trend Is Rising Use of Robots The increasing utilization of robots in farming is a key trend being observed around the globe. With the mounting implementation of advanced technology in cultivation, agricultural practices are gradually becoming more efficient and sophisticated. Additionally, with the increasing populace, automation of the farming sector, and lack of availability of farm workers, the usage of farming robots is rising across the world. AI in Agriculture Market Report Coverage By Type Product Hardware Software Service Professional Managed By Technology Machine Learning Computer Vision Predictive Analytics By Application Agricultural Robots Precision Farming Drone Analytics Livestock Monitoring Regional Analysis North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany U.K. France Italy Spain Asia-pacific China Japan India Australia South Korea Latin America Brazil Mexico Middle East and Africa and South Africa Saudi Arabia UAE Browse More Market Research Studies Global AutoML Market Share, Growth, Development and Demand Forecast Report 2030 Global Precision Farming Market Growth, Development and Future Analysis Global Agricultural Drones Market Share, Growth, Development and Forecast Report 2030 About P&S Intelligence P&S Intelligence provides market research and consulting services to a vast array of industries across the world. As an enterprising research and consulting company, P&S believes in providing thorough insights on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness. P&S keeps the interest of its clients at heart, which is why the insights we provide are both honest and accurate. Our long list of satisfied clients includes entry-level firms as well as multi-million-dollar businesses and government agencies. Contact: Prajneesh Kumar P&S Intelligence Phone: +1-347-960-6455 Email: [email protected] Web: https://www.psmarketresearch.com Follow Us: LinkedIn Twitter Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1224988/P_and_S_Intelligence_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/ai-in-agriculture-market-to-reach-usd-8-308-5-million-by-2030--says-ps-intelligence-301724538.html [January 18, 2023] Hinge Bio Expands Senior Management Team to Drive GEM-DIMER Programs to Clinical Development Barry Selick, Ph.D., successful biopharmaceutical scientist, senior executive and entrepreneur, appointed Chief Executive Officer Carin Rollins, Hinge Bio co-founder, becomes Chief Operating Officer Joshua Carle, experienced business development and R&D investment executive, appointed Chief Business Officer BURLINGAME, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hinge Bio, Inc., a privately-held biotechnology company, today announced the expansion of its senior management team, which is expected to drive the Companys GEM-DIMER programs, with an initial focus in oncology, to clinical development. Harold E. Barry Selick, Ph.D., a successful and distinguished biopharmaceutical scientist, senior executive and venture investor, was named as Chief Executive Officer. Carin Rollins, a Company co-founder, becomes Chief Operating Officer. Joshua Carle, an experienced business development executive from both the buy-side and sell-side, joins the Company as Chief Business Officer. We have been making considerable progress demonstrating the advantages and breadth of our novel GEM-DIMER technology and solidifying a strong intellectual property position, said Ms. Rollins, Chief Operating Officer of Hinge Bio. Now is the time to add executives who can accelerate the clinical and business development activities of our powerful GEM-DIMER platform. We are thrilled to have Barry and Josh join Hinge Bio to facilitate these initiatives. Dr. Selick has had a successful and distinguished career in the biopharmaceutical industry, managing growth and development of emerging biopharmaceutical companies as a scientist and executive and helping to fund and start early-stage companies. As a biopharmaceutical executive, he was the CEO of Threshold Pharmaceuticals, a fully integrated oncology drug discovery/clinical development company that he led as CEO from its Series A financing through IPO to its eventual sale in 2017. Dr. Selick co-founded and was CEO and Chairman of Camitro, a California and UK-based drug discovery predictive modeling technology company, which was acquired two years after its founding. Dr. Selick was Vice President of Research, responsible for technology development and drug discovery, at Affymax Research Institute through its acquisition by Glaxo Wellcome, plc. Prior to Affymax, he was at Anergen and Protein Design Labs (PDL), the latter at which he co-invented the technology underlying fully humanized antibody therapeutics and applied that to daclizumab (Zenapax), the first FDA-approved fully humanized antibody therapeutic. Most recently, Dr. Selick was the Vice Chancellor of Business Development, Innovation and Partnerships at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as the head of InnovationVentures, which supports the translation of UCSF innovation from the laboratory to patient and societal benefit. He was also a Venture Partner at Sofinnova Ventures from June 2002 until July 2007. Dr. Selick has been a member of the Boards of Directors of a dozen both early-stage venture capital-backed as well as public biotech companies and Chairman and/or Lead Director of many of those. Dr. Selick earned a B.A. in Biophysics and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and was a Damon Runyan-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund Fellow as well as a Senior Fellow of the American Cancer Society at UCSF. The opportunity to create novel technologies that can be translated into therapeutics that improve patients lives has motivated my entire career, said Dr. Selick. The unique GEM-DIMER platforms wide range of addressable therapeutic indications and its ability to engage multiple target molecules in a novel manner enables broad opportunities in drug development for improved therapies against validated targets as well as first in class options for novel ones. The team has made remarkable progress so far in demonstrating the technical potential of the platform and I am excited to join them as we advance Hinge Bios programs toward product candidate selection and clinical development with an initial focus on therapeutics that will benefit patients living with cancer. Mr. Carle is a cross-functional executive with more than 20 years of strategic transaction and R&D investment experience while in management consulting and biopharma. Mr. Carle has led or advised on more than fifty potential strategic transactions, resulting in the successful execution of greater than $2 billion in disclosed deal value and committed R&D funds. Prior to joining Hinge Bio, Mr. Carle was Vice President, Business Development at Triumvira Immunologics, Inc., an immune-oncology company, where he executed a clinical collaboration for a leading checkpoint inhibitor, in-licensed a novel antibody, and executed multiple agreements with leading global and cell therapy companies. Before joining Triumvira, he was at Pfizer Inc., where he drove BD strategy, commercial assessments, and broad transaction support for licensing/M&A efforts for Pfizer Oncology. Previously, Mr. Carle held roles of increasing responsibility in business development activities at Daiichi Sankyo Inc. and Clearview Projects Inc., a strategic advisory firm focused on licensing/M&A for the BioPharma industry. Mr. Carle earned a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and M.B.A. from the Villanova School of Business. The versatility of the GEM-DIMER platform, due to its multi-target engagement flexibility, ease of manufacture, and applicability to multiple therapeutic areas provides a wide variety of opportunities to execute strategic partnerships with top-tier biopharmaceutical companies, said Mr. Carle. I look forward to working with my colleagues and future industry partners to translate this platform into important medicines. About Hinge Bio Hinge Bio is a privately held biotechnology company leveraging its powerful GEM-DIMER platform to develop therapeutics that address the problems of inadequate efficacy and resistance in diseases including cancer, inflammatory disease, and infectious disease. The GEM-DIMER platform creates multivalent, multispecific antibody-based therapeutics that bind their targets in a novel manner allowing for dramatically enhanced biological activity and unique functionality. The GEM-DIMER technology was invented by Hinge Bios Chief Scientific Officer, Daniel Capon, Ph.D., who previously was the first to clone and express recombinant Factor VIII (Genentech) and invented Fc-fusion proteins (Genentech) as well as chimeric antigen receptors for T cell therapy/CAR-T (Cell Genesys). Dr. Capon also holds patents on the XenoMouse for the production of fully human antibodies (Abgenix) and the PhenoSense drug susceptibility and resistance test (Monogram Biosciences/LabCorp). Learn more at www.hingebio.com. Contacts: Hinge Bio: Carin Rollins Chief Operating Officer [email protected] or [email protected] Media: Selina Husain / Robert Flamm, Ph.D. Burns McClellan, Inc. [email protected] / [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] RAVAN AIR Adopts ProStar's Solution to Enhance Its Operations GRAND JUNCTION, Colo., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ProStar Holdings Inc. ("ProStar" or "the Company") (TSXV: MAPS) (OTCQX: MAPPF) (FSE: 5D00), a world leader in Precision Mapping Solutions, is pleased to announce that Pennsylvania based RAVAN AIR adopts ProStars PointMan solution to enhance its operations. "Precision geospatial technologies will play a critical role in the management and construction of underground infrastructure, and we have always embraced the most advanced technologies," stated Mark Sakach, Director of Operations at RAVAN AIR. "We have been looking for an out-of-the-box and easy-to-use mapping solution to help us enhance our field data collection services, and PointMan checked all of the boxes. RAVAN AIR is an industry leader in providing underground and aerial inspections. The company provides probe, camera, and drone services for the oil and natural gas, landfill, utility, and construction industries. RAVAN AIR offers turnkey Advanced Integrated Services to complete even the most complex projects. The critical infrastructure industry is at the precipice of a digital transformation, and geospatial technologies like PointMan are at the center of the digital transformation, stated Page Tucker CEO of ProStar Geocorp. Geospatial technologies like PointMan are at the center of this digital transformation, and it is great to see PointMan has become both a recognized leader and trusted brand name throughout the industry. ABOUT RAVAN AIR RAVAN AIR is a nationwide underground and aerial inspection company that has mastered several technologies and skills to provide the most current, detailed, and reliable inspection services to a range of industries. Their Advanced Integrative Resources include several tools like probes, cameras, lateral launchers, and a dedicated camera truck for underground utility locating, laser profiling, pipeline inspections, 3D mapping, and cross bore and CCTV pipeline inspections. Detailed reports and notated videos are generated in a multitude of formats based on the clients needs. RAVAN AIR has completed countless aerial inspections using their advanced drones for methane detection, GIS mapping, and thermal imaging for the oil and gas, utility infrastructure, industrial, construction, landfill, government, and telecommunications industries. By seeking out these innovative technologies, RAVAN AIR has committed to providing the most cutting-edge tools for their clients. This allows each client to customize and integrate specific services to complete ther unique project with precision. The RAVAN AIR team holds many safety and industry certifications. To learn more about RAVAN AIR, visit: www.ravanair.com About ProStar: ProStar is a world leader in Precision Mapping Solutions and is creating a digital world by leveraging the most modern GPS, cloud, and mobile technologies. ProStar is a software development company specializing in developing patented cloud and mobile precision mapping solutions focused on the critical infrastructure industry. ProStars flagship product, PointMan, is designed to significantly improve the workflow processes and business practices associated with the lifecycle management of critical infrastructure assets both above and below the Earths surface. ProStars PointMan is offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) and seamlessly connects the field with the office and provides the ability to precisely capture, record, display, and manage critical infrastructure, including roads, railways, pipelines, and utilities. Some of the largest entities in North America have adopted ProStars solutions, including Fortune 500 construction firms, Subsurface Utilities Engineering (SUE) firms, utility owners, and government agencies. ProStar has strategic business partnerships with the worlds leading geospatial technology providers, data collection equipment manufacturers, and dealer networks. The Company has made a significant investment in creating a vast intellectual property portfolio that includes 20 issued patents in the United States and Canada. The patents protect the methods and systems required to digitally capture, record, organize, manage, distribute, and display the precise location of critical infrastructure, including buried utilities and pipelines. ProStars Executive management team has extensive experience in the management of both early-stage and Fortune 500 technology companies in the private and public sectors. For more information about ProStar, please visit www.prostarcorp.com . On behalf of the Company, Page Tucker on sales / corporate news releases, CEO and Director Contact: Joel Sutherland Investor Relations 970-822-4792 [email protected] Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Such information includes, without limitation, information regarding the terms and conditions of the Companys future plans. Although the Company believes that such information is reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking information is 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. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to: the state of the financial markets for the Companys securities; the state of the technology sector; recent market volatility; the COVID-19 pandemic; the Companys ability to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies; and other risks and factors that the Company is unaware of at this time. The reader is referred to the Companys recent Annual Managements Discussion & Analysis filed on SEDAR on April 14, 2022, for a more complete discussion of applicable risk factors and their potential effects, copies of which may be accessed through the Companys issuer page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Stephens Hires Mike Preston as Head of New Investment Banking Site & Incentives Advisory Stephens, an independent financial services firm, today announced the addition of Mike Preston to its Investment Banking division as managing director and head of the firm's new Site & Incentive Advisory practice (SIA). Based in Little Rock, Mr. Preston brings to the position more than 19 years of economic development experience working with public & private businesses and government entities. The new Stephens SIA group will advise businesses on their growth strategies by helping them understand the opportunities and challenges with site selection. This will include navigating complex incentive plans and assistance with negotiations in order to produce optimal solutions for their shareholders. "Mike has built considerable expertise in understanding what is important to a company seeking to expand geographically," said Brad Eichler, Executive Vice President and Head of Investment Banking. "This expertise includes not only site selection but a thorough understanding of the workforce and incentive programs. We blieve this expertise will be beneficial to clients throughout the country. We are excited to have someone of Mike's caliber and reputation join our team, and to offer his skillset for the benefit of our corporate clients." Prior to joining Stephens, Mr. Preston held several positions including Secretary of Commerce for the state of Arkansas, Executive Director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and Vice President of Government Relations with Enterprise Florida, Inc. He also served as Chief of Staff for Senator Steve Oelrich of Florida. Mr. Preston earned his Bachelor of Political Science from the University of Florida in 2005. About Stephens This material has been prepared solely for informative purposes as of its stated date and is not a solicitation, or an offer, to buy or sell any security. It does not purport to be a complete description of the securities, markets or developments referred to in the material. This material is not intended to recommend the purchase or sale of any securities or to provide information on which an investment decision to purchase or sell any securities could be based. Additional information is available upon request. "Stephens" (the company brand name) is a leading family-owned investment firm that includes Stephens Inc. (member NYSE/SIPC), Stephens Investment Management Group, LLC, Stephens Insurance, LLC, Stephens Capital Partners LLC and Stephens Europe Limited (Registered office: 12 Arthur Street, London, EC4R 9AB, Registered number 8817024), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. 2023 Stephens. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005313/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] HawkEye 360 Announces Patrick Zeitouni as Chief Strategy Officer Zeitouni brings defense and intelligence expertise following tenures at Blue Origin, McKinsey & Co., and Northrop Grumman HERNDON, Va., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- HawkEye 360 Inc., the world's leading commercial provider of space-based radio frequency (RF) data and analytics, announced today the addition of Patrick Zeitouni, former head of space mobility at Blue Origin, to its leadership team. As Chief Strategy Officer, Mr. Zeitouni will guide the company through an evolving space and national security landscape, driving company growth and product strategy in a rapidly expanding RF data and analytics market. Leveraging his expertise in strategy, product conception, innovation, and development, as well as his extensive aerospace and defense background, he will accelerate HawkEye 360's growth across commercial and government sectors. "I have known and respected the HawkEye 360 leadership team for several years, and it is an absolute honor to have the opportunity to join the company," said Mr. Zeitouni. "HawkEye 360 is defining the future of national security space technology and disrupting the status quo. I look forward to working alongside this lean and agile team to solve defense and security needs." Mr. Zeitouni comes to HawkEye 360 with a breadth of experience gained over a long and successful career. Most recently, he led Blue Origin's Space Mobility program, creating a new business with 200+ engineers to deliver a game-changing new spacecraft. He also led Blue Origin's Lunar Landing program and won NASA's first phase contract for a human landing on the Moon, nd helped establish and lead Blue's Advanced Development Programs. Mr. Zeitouni was previously a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he drove growth strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and product development for several sectors within aerospace and defense and the U.S. Government, including the Department of Defense and NASA. He also led several advanced satellite efforts as a Project Manager at Northrop Grumman. He holds a MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, a master's in Astronautics and Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. "Patrick Zeitouni will be a tremendous addition to the HawkEye 360 team. He brings an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge of defense and space technologies, and we are delighted to welcome him aboard," said CEO John Serafini. "Patrick's technical expertise and experience leading innovative teams make him a superb fit to propel HawkEye 360 forward. Innovative space technologies such as those deployed by HawkEye 360 have the capacity to revolutionize U.S. national security and the security of our allies, and there is no better person than Patrick to help make this happen." HawkEye 360 operates a growing constellation of satellites which detects, characterizes, and geolocates radio frequency signals from a broad range of emitters used for communication, navigation, and security. By processing and analyzing this RF data, the company delivers actionable insights and a unique knowledge for operations across a range of sectors, including environmental protection and national security. The company is funded to develop and operate 20 clusters that will provide an average global revisit rate of 12-20 minutes. For more information on the HawkEye 360 satellite constellation, please visit https://www.he360.com/ . About HawkEye 360 HawkEye 360 is delivering a revolutionary source of global knowledge based on radio frequency (RF) geospatial insights to those working to make the world a safer place. The company operates the first-of-its-kind commercial satellite constellation to detect, characterize, and geolocate a broad range of RF signals. This unique RF data and analytics equip our global customers with the high-impact insights needed to confidently make decisions. HawkEye 360 is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hawkeye-360-announces-patrick-zeitouni-as-chief-strategy-officer-301724433.html SOURCE HawkEye 360 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Alpha Motor Corporation: Electric Vehicles That Move Humanity IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpha Motor Corporation (Alpha) has just announced its EV campaign for 2023, "Electric Vehicles That Move Humanity." At present, Alpha is actively developing its EVs to enter the mass market and contribute to mass adoption trends. "As fossil fuels dominate our energy sources today, we have been living beyond our ecological means. Since Alpha's introduction in 2020, the demand for our cars has continuously increased because EVs are needed by people around the world. We are committed to bringing our EVs to the market and helping to ensure a sustainable future for humanity," said Alpha Motor Corporation. In a recent announcement by Alpha, the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office granted multiple design patent allowances and an issuance for Alpha's electric vehicle system technology. With its EVs gaining significant popularity, Alpha is well-positioned to achieve mass commercialization. Through its award-winning EVs, Alpha has consistently demonstrated its execution ability. Alpha's team carries decades of OEM experience and supported by an Advisory Board of top executive leaders from automotive and semiconductor industries. Just last year, the company announced its partnership with UHI, to manufacture Alpha's production ready vehicles from its 406,000-acre plant situated in Sterling Heights, Michigan. "Simply put at Alpha, we build EVs because we love seeing people enjoy them, and we are passionate about every step of our process. We look forward to moving humanity together with our supporters," continued Alpha Motor Corporation. As part of Alpha's campaign to raise support for electrification of cars, the company released a set of Limited-Edition Prints of its electric vehicles, now available at https://www.alphamotorinc.com/gallery. ABOUT Alpha Motor Corporation (Alpha) is an American automobile and mobility technology company focused on manufacturing electric vehicles in Utility, Sport, and Adventure categories. Creator of the ACE Coupe Series, JAX Crossover, WOLF Truck Series, SAGA Sedan Series, REX Utility Vehicle Series, and MONTAGE Coupe, Recipient of The 2021 LA Auto Show THE ZEVAS Top EV Award, and featured at The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles - Alpha's vision is to "Move Humanity." Alpha's differentiated go-to-market strategy targets streamlined deployment of EVs by implementing modular vehicle technology, disruptive optimization methods, and sustainable manufacturing practices. Founded in 2020 and based in Irvine, California, Alpha is led by an experienced team of automotive industry professionals and partners from top e-mobility engineering and manufacturing companies in the US. Please contact [email protected] for more information. Related Links https://www.alphamotorinc.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alpha-motor-corporation-electric-vehicles-that-move-humanity-301724751.html SOURCE Alpha Motor Corporation [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] St. Bernards Healthcare Replaces Five Disparate Systems with MEDITECH's Integrated Expanse EHR St. Bernards Healthcare successfully went LIVE with MEDITECH Expanse across their four-hospital network, which includes 440-bed St. Bernards Medical Center, one of the top hospitals in Arkansas ranked by patient volume. The move replaces MEDITECH's legacy acute, as well as three disparate ambulatory systems and a patient portal. According to St. Bernards' VP of Medical Affairs Dr. Kasey Holder the organization now benefits from a single Expanse EHR that spans all care settings- which also include home health and hospice- giving physicians one patient record and patients a singular patient portal for managing all their information across visits. "Whether in the hospital, surgical department, or ambulatory setting, our physicians now have an improved overall patient picture," said Dr. Holder. "The solution's design makes it easy for physicians to access the information needed to perform all necessary tasks. They can easily tap through labs and imaging results while documenting and use widgets to personalize their workflows," added Amirtharaj Dhanaraja, MD, internal medicine specialist. "The shared patient record and integrated messaging also helps physicians share information easily when transitioning patients between care settings." The IT staff at St. Bernards said it also sees benefit to managing a single system versus multiple disparate ones. "Instead of making changes and pulling data from multiple systems to meet regulatory requirements we now can implement changes in one EHR with data readily available for tracking and trending in one solution," said St. Bernards' Chief Technology Officer Josh Melton. To ensure a smooth transition to Expanse, St. Bernards turned to MEDITECH's Professional Services team to manage the project. "Our project manager assisted us in making our Expanse implementation successful," said St. Bernards' CFO Benjamin Barylske. "It was also beneficial to have our project manager and support staff using the same tools throughout the implementation. Use of the same tools reduced confusion and made communication with the various parties easier from the initiation of the project through LIVE and after." St. Bernards also adopted several new MEDITECH applications to capitalize on the benefits o having one integrated EHR. These solutions included the Patient and Consumer Health Portal, Surgical Services, Business and Clinical Analytics, Quality and Surveillance, and Critical Care. "Our critical care team saw their efficiency improve immediately as they transitioned from a laborious paper and scanning system to an integrated EHR that enabled them to share data across care settings," said St. Bernards' Nursing Director of Critical Care Units Megan Morgan. In addition, St. Bernards brought Expanse Ambulatory LIVE at ten of their ambulatory locations and will bring up the remaining locations over the next year. "We are honored that St. Bernards Healthcare once again chose to partner with MEDITECH and extend our presence across their health system with Expanse," said MEDITECH Executive Vice President and COO Helen Waters. "We are excited to see their staff and patients thrive with Expanse and look forward to the continuation of a long and successful partnership." About St. Bernards Healthcare St. Bernards Healthcare, an independent, non-profit, Catholic healthcare system, serves 23 counties in Northeast Arkansas and Southeast Missouri. The corporate parent of a number of healthcare entities, St. Bernards Healthcare includes the largest hospital in the region, St. Bernards Medical Center. As a regional referral hub, St. Bernards Medical Center offers a 440-bed acute care hospital, complete with the region's only Level III Trauma Center and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Founded and now sponsored by the Olivetan Benedictine Sisters in Jonesboro, St. Bernards has provided trusted, comprehensive and compassionate healthcare services for 122 years. For more information, please visit stbernards.info, or call the St. Bernards Healthline at 870.207.7300. About MEDITECH MEDITECH empowers healthcare organizations around the world to expand their vision of what's possible with Expanse, the intuitive EHR setting new standards for usability, efficiency, and personalization. MEDITECH solutions span every care setting, from acute centers and ambulatory practices, to home health and hospice, long-term care and behavioral health facilities, outpatient services, patients' homes and beyond. Visit ehr.meditech.com, listen to MEDITECH Podcasts, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117005043/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Flyhound Takes Off with Patented Missing Person Location Technology and Graduates from NEC X's Venture Studio Program PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NEC X Inc., the innovation incubator and accelerator for NECs emerging technologies, announced today that technology startup Flyhound Corporation has graduated from its Venture Studio Program. The search for missing people and disaster victims can be a time-sensitive task, and with the Flyhound solution, a missing person can be located in just 30 minutes within a 50-meter radius. Flyhound incorporates patented technology, developed by NEC Laboratories Europe, that can be mounted on a drone to triangulate cellular signals from the mobile devices of missing people and disaster victims. It displays their position on a digital map of the search area in real time, reducing the time required for search. With the Flyhound solution, the location of missing people can be determined 100 times faster than with current search and rescue methods.1,2 NEC X is pleased to have worked with Flyhound to incubate and help develop their business from day one, said Shige Ihara, President and CEO, NEC X. Right after matching them with the research team from NEC Laboratories Europe, the Flyhound team formed quickly and did a great job conducting customer discovery and engaging with many different organizations, including public safety agencies, to clearly identify their needs. They then completed several proofs of concept to validate the product-market fit, Ihara added, Public safety and disaster response are resource intensive. First responders are often in need of additional manpower technology that saves time, money and lives will always be in demand. We wish Flyhound great success as a graduate of our program. Corey Hoefling, a firefighter at New Jerseys Carlstadt Fire Department, spoke about the importance of personal cell phones and value-add technology like Flyhounds in rescue situations, Its incredibly valuable from a rescue standpoint to be able to map out where cell phones are in an emergency. Cell phones are something people always carry with them, so if we need to find someone in an emergency, this is a tool that can get us to them faster, and ultimately help save lives. Flyhound technology does not require an active cellular network signal, making it ideal for use in remote or disaster areas where cellular network infrastructure is not available or has been disabled. Unlike existing search and rescue drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras, Flyhound can locate missing people even when the view is obstructed, making it possible to detect people behind trees, foliage, and even inside of structures beyond what any camera can see. Flyhound CEO and Co-Founder Manny Cerniglia said, We are proud to be able to assist public safety agencies in the crucial task of saving lives and have made it our mission to find people fast. Using Flyhound technology, first responders can also identify channel artifacts produced by different propagation environments, like rubble caused by earthquakes, floodwaters, orextreme snowfall. Using this capability, the location of disaster victims or missing people can also be detected. For example, first responders can identify homes or buildings destroyed by natural disasters that still may have survivors in them. Additionally, Flyhound integrates into unmanned aerial vehicle and incident management platforms, making it easy for agencies to deploy the technology rapidly to meet their changing needs. Flyhound has been accepted into Alchemist Accelerator and the TELUS Community Safety and Wellness Program to enhance their business launch. Rachel Chalmers, President and Managing Director, Alchemist Accelerator, said, Its been a privilege to work with Manny and the team as they develop this valuable NEC technology into a commercially viable solution for public safety. Todays launch of Flyhound makes the world a safer place, and as for the companys future, the skys the limit. Flyhound is looking to scale and grow with additional funding and sales. More information about Flyhound can be found at https://www.flyhound.com and inquiries can be directed to [email protected]. Those interested in participating or learning more about NEC Xs Venture Studio Program as entrepreneurs, partners or investors can visit https://nec-x.com or email [email protected]. References: 1 Indicators for Post-Disaster Search and Rescue (Yen-Yu Chiu et al.). Sustainability, Oct. 2020, 12, 8262. 2SARDO: An Automated Search-and-Rescue Drone-based Solution for Victims Localization (A. Albanese, V. Sciancalepore, X. Costa-Perez). NEC Laboratories Europe, IEEE Explore, 2021. About NEC X NEC X Inc. builds on the strength of NECs technologies to accelerate the development of innovative products and services. NEC X provides its Venture Studio Programs to entrepreneurs-in-residence (EIRs) to fast-track the development of technologies and business ideas brought by EIRs or from inside NEC. NEC X has won industry-leading awards such as Best in Biz and BIG Innovation. The company is located in Silicon Valley, enabling fast access to its entrepreneurial ecosystem and strong high-technology market. Learn more at https://nec-x.com or by emailing [email protected] . About Flyhound Corporation Flyhound Corporation is a U.S. technology startup that provides a patented drone solution to locate missing persons rapidly in altered or challenging outdoor environments. Flyhound technology can greatly reduce the time and resources needed by emergency response teams when searching for missing people. It is a recent graduate of NEC Xs Venture Studio and the Alchemist Accelerator programs. For more information about Flyhound, visit https://www.flyhound.com. About NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH researches and develops cutting-edge technology to create innovative social solutions. Located in Heidelberg, Germany, major research areas of NEC Laboratories Europe include artificial intelligence, blockchain security, 5G and 6G networks and IoT platforms. These technologies promote NEC Group solutions for a better society in the fields of digital health, safer cities, public services and communication infrastructure. For more information, visit https://www.neclab.eu. About NEC Europe Ltd. NEC Europe Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a leader in the integration of IT network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. NEC Europe is building upon its heritage and reputation for innovation and quality by providing its expertise, solutions and services to a broad range of customers, from telecom operators to enterprises and the public sector. For additional information, please visit the NEC Europe Ltd. home page at http://uk.nec.com. NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. All rights reserved. Other product or service marks mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. 2023 NEC Corporation. Media Contacts: NEC X Inc. NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH Sandy Fewkes Cameron ODonohue Kiterocket +49 6221 4342-251 +1-408-529-9685 [email protected] [email protected] Flyhound Co. Daniel Selden +1-332-895-1500 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Aware Partners with World Wide Technology to Accelerate New Revenue for Service Providers Aware's collaboration intelligence platform enables organizations to be more connected, collaborative, and secure COLUMBUS, Ohio, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Aware , a leader in collaboration intelligence, security, and employee sentiment analysis, today announced a partnership with World Wide Technology (WWT) to deliver best-in-class collaboration security and people insights. Under the terms of the agreement, Aware is providing WWT customers greater insight into their employees' priorities, behaviors, needs and concerns, as well as the security, governance and compliance controls needed when rolling out collaboration technology. The partnership will further the critical work of empowering employees and ensuring their voices are heard in the digital workplace. Aware's smart sentiment analysis enables business leaders to identify important trends and issues that surface inside of employee communications across multiple channels, cutting through the noise of collaboration to discover what matters mostand take an informed approach to positive change. Aware and WWT will also enable organizations to implement security, governance, and compliance controls within their collaboration environments. These critical features satisfy legal and infosec demands to protect the digital workplace from insider threats, data loss and regulatory noncompliance. With Aware, customers can quickly and effectively perform eDiscovery, implement data holds and centralize retention policies across all channels and messages. Additionally, the partnership will introduce the necessary guardrails to make collaboration more secure and effective. "To create a better customer experience, you don't start with the customer, you start with the employee. Aware is instrumental in reducing people, data and compliance risks across digital conversations, while also generating incredible insights to drive increased business value," said Jeff Schumann, CEO, Aware. "We're thrilled to partner with WWT to help our mutual customers extract these insights, as well as keep these businesses secure and safe from the potential threats that inherently come from human interaction." Communication data presents organizations with an untapped opportunity to better understand employee sentiment and track topics, keywords, and shared content that gives leadership teams the information they need to make more informed decisions with profound, lasting implications 43% of all messages are private and 135% of messages in a private group are more likely to be toxic than messages in a public environment. Furthermore, one out of every 166 messages contains highly sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, passwords, and code, which in turn increases risk. "Thanks to collaboration platforms, the voice of the customer and the employee are both getting louder and easier to measure, which presents a golden opportunity for customers. At the same time, if these channels are not being properly monitored, they can inadvertently cause irreparable harm," said Marlan K. Hardie, Chief Digital Officer, World Wide Technology. "World Wide Technology is pleased to partner with Aware, a cutting-edge leader in collaboration intelligence and security, to provide our customers with deeper insights that will enable them to bolster their businesses and improve employee satisfaction, while making them more secure in the process." To learn more please visit: www.awarehq.com. About Aware Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Aware is a global leader in collaboration intelligence that identifies and reduces risk, maintains compliance, and uncovers new business insights from conversations at scale. Consolidate, enrich, search, and manage data across tools like Slack, WorkJam, Teams and Zoom for immediate visibility across the organization. Aware's comprehensive platform empowers executives with organizational insights, while also helping legal, compliance, information security, and IT professionals to address the modern challenges of enterprise collaboration: archiving, monitoring, DLP, eDiscovery, retention and legal holds. Aware is a strategic platform integration partner to Microsoft, Slack, and Workplace from Meta. AstraZeneca, Memorial Health System, Sun Life Financial, BT Group, Farmers Insurance and Mercado Libre are among the global business leaders that trust Aware for collaboration intelligence. Aware is consistently recognized by Gartner analysts as a market leading vendor, distinguished in 2022 reports: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving; Market Guide for Insider Risk Management Solutions; Market Guide for Voice of the Employee Solutions; Vendor Identification for Data Loss Prevention Toolkit. Learn more at www.awarehq.com. About World Wide Technology World Wide Technology (WWT), a global technology solutions provider with $14.5 billion in annual revenue, combines the power of strategy, execution and partnership to accelerate transformational outcomes for large public and private organizations around the world. Through its Advanced Technology Center, a collaborative ecosystem of the world's most advanced hardware and software solutions, WWT helps customers and partners conceptualize, test and validate innovative technology solutions for the best business outcomes and then deploys them at scale through its 4 million square feet of global warehousing, distribution and integration space. With over 8,000 employees and more than 55 locations around the world, WWT's culture, built on a set of core values and established leadership philosophies, has been recognized 11 years in a row by Fortune and Great Place to Work for its unique blend of determination, innovation and leadership for diversity and inclusion. With this culture at its foundation, WWT bridges the gap between business and technology to make a new world happen for its customers, partners and communities. Connect with WWT:?Twitter?|?Instagram?|?Facebook?|?LinkedIn Media Contact Dex Polizzi Lumina Communications on behalf of Aware [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aware-partners-with-world-wide-technology-to-accelerate-new-revenue-for-service-providers-301724461.html SOURCE Aware [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Cloudinary Embedded Media Experiences (EMX) Makes Game-Changing Media Technology Available to Solution Providers Cloudinary, the media experience cloud that powers many of the world's top brands, today announced Embedded Media Experiences (EMX), developed for companies interested in seamlessly embedding its image and video capabilities into their own platforms and offerings. To date, several companies are already utilizing Cloudinary in this way including Creative Force, inriver, Square, Syndigo and Tata Communications. By embedding Cloudinary's media technology, companies are able to extend the value of what their services provide to users at a fraction of the cost, while also creating new monetization opportunities and improving user acquisition and retention. Enabled by Cloudinary's powerful image and video APIs, technology vendors and deelopment agencies utilizing Cloudinary's technology through EMX are able to provide their customers with industry-leading capabilities for hosting, editing and delivering visual media for websites and apps. Cloudinary's flexible architecture empowers EMX customers to deliver all of its image and video optimization capabilities seamlessly within their platform and user interface. "Partnering with Cloudinary has allowed us to extend the capabilities of our content creation software and bring even more value to e-commerce brands that need to create high-impact content at scale," said Ari Benabou, head of partnerships, Creative Force. "By integrating Cloudinary's industry-leading asset management and delivery capabilities, we can offer our customers an intuitive, cohesive and uninterrupted workflow from point of capture to final asset destination - greatly improving time-to-market and allowing them to refocus on the creative work that differentiates their brand." By participating in the EMX program, companies are making it easy for their customers to deliver images and videos in the optimal format and quality for each user device, browser and connection speed. This increases performance, improves the user experience and accelerates the media asset lifecycle to improve time to market. It enables them to support far more engaging and immersive experiences that leverage cutting-edge media technology. It also allows them to harmonize their digital assets across applications and digital experiences to create consistent, life-like experiences that drive conversions. "Cloudinary EMX is ideal for companies looking to leverage the visual media infrastructure trusted by the world's most influential brands, as well as the development partners they rely on to deliver incredible user experiences," said Gary Ballabio, VP of technology partnerships, Cloudinary. "EMX allows them to strengthen their platforms and differentiate their services by adding the purpose-built image and video capabilities their customers need, without being responsible for building or maintaining such a complex infrastructure. EMX adds business value to their offering, drives incremental revenue and reallocates valuable and scarce IT resources to other business-critical work." For more information, visit Cloudinary's website, read the blog and view the EMX brochure. About Cloudinary Cloudinary's mission is to empower companies to deliver visual experiences that inspire and connect by unleashing the full potential of their media. With 60 billion assets under management and 10,000 customers worldwide, Cloudinary is the industry standard for developers, creators and marketers looking to manage, transform and deliver images and videos online. As a result, leading brands including Atlassian, Bleacher Report, Bombas, Grubhub, Hinge, NBC, Mediavine, Minted, Peloton and Petco are seeing significant business value in using Cloudinary, including faster time to market, higher user satisfaction and increased engagement and conversions. For more information, visit www.cloudinary.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005003/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Chalice Brands Announces New Appointment to Board of Directors PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chalice Brands Ltd. (CSE: CHAL) (OTCQB: CHALF) (the Company or Chalice Brands), a premier consumer-driven cannabis company specializing in retail, production, processing, wholesale, and distribution, is pleased to announce that it has appointed Gary Zipfel to the Companys Board of Directors (the Board), effective immediately. The Company has also appointed William Simpson as an Advisor to the Board of Chalice Brands. Jeff Yapp, CEO of Chalice Brands stated, We are privileged to welcome back major shareholder Gary Zipfel to our Board of Directors and major shareholder William Simpson as an Advisor. We look forward to benefitting from their many contributions to Chalice Brands. We believe Gary and Williams backgrounds with Chalice Brands will serve to accelerate broad recognition of the Companys potential. Mr. Zipfel serves as capital partner and board-level advisor for start-up stage companies, providing business planning, strategic direction, and scenario analysis. Mr. Zipfel has worked with companies from a diverse array of industries including cannabis, vertical green space appliances, mountain-home design and construction, commercial real estate, bicycle parts design and manufacturing, digital advertising, jet engine repair, healthcare notification systems, restaurants and breweries. Prior to becoming a start-up investor, Mr. Zipfel spent 15 years in the global financial markets as a technologist and technology leader. Mr. Simpson founded Chalice Brands, formerly Chalice Farms in 2014, turning the Company into one of the leading cannabis brands and retail dispensary chains in Oregon. Mr. Simpson leveraged his early experience in the medical marijuana industry to develop innovative manufacturing, sales and marketing practice for the Chalice Brands portfolio and retail platforms. Mr. Simpson formerly had the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of Chalice Brands. The Company would also like to announce the resignation of Bob McKnight from its Board of Directors, effective immediately. < align="justify">"On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Bob for his contributions to Chalice Brands over the years," commented John Varghese, Executive Chairman. "We wish him the best in his future endeavors." About Chalice Brands Chalice Brands Ltd. is a premier consumer-driven cannabis company specializing in production, processing, wholesale, distribution and retail, with 15 owned dispensaries in and around Portland, Oregon. Chalice Brands is committed to developing a dynamic portfolio built around the recognized brands of Chalice Brands, including Chalice Farms, Left Coast Connection, Homegrown Oregon and Cannabliss & Co., with a focus on health and wellness. Visit investors.chalicebrandsltd.com/ for regular updates. Investor Relations: John Varghese Executive Chairman Chalice Brands Ltd 971-371-2685 [email protected] The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Disclaimer: This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Companys future business operations, the opinions or beliefs of management and future business goals. 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 to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. These risks include but are not limited to general business, economic and competitive uncertainties, regulatory risks, market risks, risks inherent in manufacturing and retail operations such as unforeseen costs and production shutdowns, difficulties in maintaining brand loyalty, and other risks of the cannabis industry. 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. Forward-looking information is provided herein for the purpose of presenting information about managements current expectations relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purpose. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States, and such securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration or an exemption from registration. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] KSTM Promotes Malissa Osei and Justine Stringer to Partner Krauss Shaknes Tallentire & Messeri LLP announced today that Malissa Osei and Justine Stringer have been promoted to partner, effective January 1, 2023. "We are fortunate to have worked with Malissa and Justine since the early stages of their careers, and we couldn't be prouder of the lawyers they are today," said KSTM founding partner Caroline Krauss. "The depth of their matrimonial and family law expertise, as well as their fierce dedication to their clients, make them both tremendous assets to our firm. We are thrilled to welcome them into the partnership." Malissa concentrates her practice on commercial litigation and matrimonial matters, and has extensive experience litigating complex divorce disputes, negotiating pre-nuptial agreements and separation agreements, an litigating child custody and child support matters in New York's Family, Supreme, and Appellate Courts. Malissa is a skilled trial attorney who was recently named to the National Black Lawyers' Top 40 Under 40, selected for the American Bar Association's prestigious On the Rise - Top 40 Young Lawyers award, recognized by New York Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in Family Law, and named a Woman Worth Watching by Profiles in Diversity Journal. Before joining KSTM, she was an associate at Blank Rome, in one of the nation's largest matrimonial practices. She is a member of the National Urban League Young Professionals, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the New York Women's Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association. She also previously served as an intern for the Legal Resources Centre, a Ghana-based human rights NGO. Malissa received her J.D. from Cornell Law School, where she served as an articles editor for the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Justine represents high-net-worth individuals in complex and often high-conflict matrimonial and family law matters. She has extensive appellate court experience, practicing in the Appellate Divisions and the Court of Appeals. In addition, she has a particular focus on international child custody and international child abduction disputes, and has established herself as a go-to practitioner in the small community of lawyers who specialize in proceedings under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Through this work, she has been given the opportunity to file amicus curiae briefs in cases arising under the Hague Convention to the Supreme Court of the United States of America and to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She has been consistently recognized by New York Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in Family Law and was selected as a Woman Worth Watching by Profiles in Diversity Journal. Justine is a member of the Women's Bar Association's Family Law Committee and the New York State Bar Association. Following her graduation from New York Law School, she worked as a volunteer law clerk for the Honorable New York County Supreme Court Justice Matthew F. Cooper. About Krauss Shaknes Tallentire & Messeri LLP Krauss Shaknes Tallentire & Messeri LLP (kstmlaw.com) provides counsel to clients in the full range of matrimonial and family law matters, including pre- and post-nuptial agreements, divorces, paternity matters, custody, access, and support issues, and other family law matters. We have offices in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005241/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] CyrusOne Buys Land for Future Hyperscale Data Center in Northern Virginia CyrusOne, a leading global data center developer and operator, announces the purchase of a 57.6-acre land parcel in Loudoun County, Virginia. Located near the intersection of the Dulles Greenway toll road and Belmont Ridge Road, the site will be the future location of a state-of-the-art data center complex designed for hyperscale cloud providers and large-scale companies. With this and several recent transactions, CyrusOne has been executing the company's global growth and expansion plans under the leadership of Eric Schwartz, who joined the company as Chief Executive Officer in October 2022. "CyrusOne is excited to expand its investment in Loudoun County where we successfully operate 10 data centers at five campus locations in one of the most important digital gateway markets in the United States," said Schwartz. "With strong demand in the Northern Virginia market, we are positioned to initiate development consistent with the existing zoning on this new site and deliver world-class digital infrastructure that meet the growing needs of our customers." CyrusOne - which was acquired last year by KKR, a global investment firm, and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an infrastructure investment firm - is a recognized leader for innovating and advocating sustainability efforts in the data center industry, recently accelerated its goal to be a carbon neutral company by 2030. The company's recognized sustainability efforts - centered on energy efficiency, water conservation, biodiversity, and circular economy - are detailed in its annual Sustainability Report. "CyrusOne is excited to acquire this new site and looks forward to continuing its partnership and collaboration with local leaders and residents on this strategically important project. CyrusOne is proud of our reputation as a responsible developer, operator, and corporate citizen since we opened our first data center in the area in 2015," said Michael Nudelman, Senior Vice President of Project Development. To learn more about CyrusOne, visit www.cyrusone.com. About CyrusOne CyrusOne is a leading global data center developer and operator specializing in delivering state-of-the-art digital infrastructure solutions across the globe. With more than 50 high-performance mission-critical facilities worldwide, the Company ensures the continued operation of digital infrastructure for nearly 800 customers, including approximately 200 Fortune 1000 companies. CyrusOne's leading global platform of hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud deployments offers customers colocation, hyperscale, and build-to-suit environments, which help enhance the strategic connections of their essential data infrastructures and support the achievement of sustainability goals. CyrusOne data centers offer world-class flexibility, enabling clients to modernize, simplify, and rapidly respond to changing demands. Combining exceptional financial strength, a broad global footprint, and continued investment in key digital gateway markets, CyrusOne provides the world's largest companies with long-term stability and strategic advantage at scale. For more information, please visit cyrusone.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005286/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] AM Best Upgrades Credit Ratings of Marysville Mutual Insurance Company AM Best has upgraded the Financial Strength Rating to A (Excellent) from A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating to "a" (Excellent) from "a-" (Excellent) of Marysville Mutual Insurance Company (Marysville) (Marysville, KS). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) has been revised to stable from positive. The ratings reflect Marysville's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its strong operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). The rating upgrades reflect a strengthening of Marysville's balance sheet fundamentals in recent years, supported by consistently strong operating performance, which has driven policyholder growth. Surplus appreciation has led to consistent improvement in leverage and liquidity measures, and risk-adjusted capitalization, which is expected to help the company weather the current financial market volatility. Marysville's risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), has remained stable at the strongest level. However, as a single-state property insurer with geographic concentration in Kansas, Marysville's limited scale of operations drive its limited business profile assessment. ERM is appropriate due to consistent measurement and monitoring of the company's risks and reinsurance protection to mitigate its exposure to natural catastrophes. This press release relates to Cedit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Performance Assessments, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005640/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Cole-Frieman & Mallon Launches First Cybersecurity Law Practice for Asset Managers With Eye to SEC's Proposed Rules With the Securities & Exchange Commission proposing tighter cybersecurity requirements for hedge funds and other asset managers, Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP, one of the nation's leading boutique law firms serving the investment management industry, has launched a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity law practice. It is the only legal practice dedicated to advising investment managers on their critical and fast-evolving cybersecurity obligations, and to lead it, the firm has welcomed back its former partner and cybersecurity expert John Araneo. He will be based in New York. "We pride ourselves on innovating to serve the needs of our clients," said Karl Cole-Frieman, managing partner of Cole-Frieman & Mallon. "With the clear movement toward more onerous cybersecurity rules for asset managers, our clients need informed legal counsel in this complex and sensitive area. John Araneo is far and away the most qualified attorney to address that need, and we're overjoyed that he will be bringing his innovative practice to Cole-Frieman & Mallon." The firm's move comes as new cybersecurity regulations continue to surge, a trend illustrated by the SEC's proposed Cybersecurity Risk Management Rule, which introduces an entirely new cybersecurity compliance regime that demands: More comprehensive cybersecurity policies, procedures, and controls; Additional continuity between annual cybersecurity assessments; Reporting of significant cybersecurity incidents to the SEC; New investor disclosures; and A new five-year record retention rule. Cole-Frieman & Mallon's cybersecurity law practice is uniquely positioned to advise its clients on these requirements, to design appropriately scaled pre-breach compliance measures, and provide counsel in connection with all of the new post-breach disclosure and reporting requirements. The SEC is targeting April 2023 for a vote on the proposed rule, which is being closely watched by the asset management community. An investment management attorney with more than 20 years of legal experience working with asset managers, Araneo departed Cole-Frieman & Mallon in 2017 to dive deeper into cybersecurity. He co-founded a cyber-focused managed IT services business (MSP) launched at Align Communications, Inc., designed specifically for investment advisors and private funds, which remains a leading MSP in the asset management space today. Widely recognized as a first mover in addressing cybersecurity compliance challenges for investment managers, he has conducted more than 500 operational cybersecurity assessments for investment advisers of every size, investment strategy, and growth stage. He has spent the last five years closely monitoring both evolving IT and cloud-based architectures and changing cybersecurity technologies, standards, and regulations, making him uniquely suited to design optimal cybersecurity systems for investment advisers. "Regulatory change is happening, whether the most recent iteration of the SEC's cyber rule passes or not. Investment managers should begin preparing now, to avoid the anticipated regulatory examinations, cyber sweeps, and enforcement actions, and also to satisfy investors' due diligence focus on cyber," said Araneo, who has liaised directly with the SEC on its proposed regulations. "The heightened reporting, governance, document retention, and transparency obligations in this new cybersecurity regime require specialized counsel that is more commensurate with the risks. Delivering that counsel through a law firm presents an elegant solution for asset managers. I'm thankful but not surprised that Cole-Frieman & Mallon has chosen to invest in this critical resource for its client base, reaffirming its leadership position." In addition to his recent experience building a cyber-focused MSP at Align, Araneo previously worked at national and regional law firms and was the general counsel of an electronic trading firm sold to E*Trade in 2003. About Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP is one of the top investment management law firms in the United States, known for providing top-tier, innovative, and collaborative legal solutions for complex financial services matters. Headquartered in San Francisco, Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP services both start-up investment managers and multi-billion-dollar firms. The firm provides a full suite of legal services to the investment management community, including hedge fund, private equity fund, venture capital fund, mutual fund formation, adviser registration, counterparty documentation, SEC, CFTC, NFA and FINRA matters, seed deals, hedge fund due diligence, employment and compensation matters, and routine business matters. The firm also publishes the prominent Hedge Fund Law Blog, which focuses on legal issues that impact the hedge fund community. For more information, please add us on LinkedIn and visit us at colefrieman.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005543/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] OneMain announces $50 million commitment to support minority depository institutions and veterans OneMain Financial, the leader in offering nonprime customers responsible access to credit, announced today that it has committed $50 million dollars to support minority depository institutions (MDIs) and military veterans. The company's $50 million commitment is managed in equal parts through two J.P. Morgan Asset Management programs. The first $25 million is deposited in the Empower money market share class to benefit two MDIs selected by OneMain: Sunstate Bank, based in Florida, and First Independence Bank, based in Michigan. These banks provide financial services in underserved communities. The other $25 million is deposited in the Academy money market share class - a partnership with Academy Securities, a disabled veteran-owned and operated investment bank - to support training and services to veterans, including job placement and transition services for veterans moving from active duty to civilian life. "OneMain is focuse on aligning our cash management strategy with our mission to improve the financial well-being of hardworking Americans, particularly those in underserved communities. Our recent commitments in support of minority depository institutions and military veterans are designed to help communities become more financially secure and build stronger economic futures," said OneMain Chairman and CEO Doug Shulman. OneMain has a significant presence in the states where Sunstate Bank and First Independence Bank are located, operating 70 branches and employing more than 400 team members in Florida, and operating 25 branches and employing about 150 team members in Michigan. "It is great to see the leadership of OneMain Financial taking proactive steps to demonstrate inclusion. The collaboration between J.P. Morgan's Empower share class with OneMain creates new opportunities for institutions like First Independence Bank. The interdependence in finance is critical to create inclusion that is sustainable," said Kenneth Kelly, Chairman and CEO of First Independence. "As we focus on providing capital and financial services to our community, OneMain's investment in J.P. Morgan's Empower share class will expand our reach in helping underserved populations across the state of Florida," said Lloyd DeVaux, President and CEO of Sunstate Bank. "We continue to focus on making progress on our mission to provide equitable access to resources and are empowered by the support of institutions like J.P. Morgan and OneMain Financial." "Academy Securities has been honored to share our social mission to benefit veteran hiring initiatives with OneMain. Over the years of our partnership, OneMain has consistently set a clear and elevated standard in fostering opportunities for individuals and organizations that represent and evangelize the value of military veterans and their service. As part of OneMain's commitment to social responsibility, Academy serves to deliver impact by reinvesting in our platform and creating frameworks for transitioning veterans to build career equity, post service to nation," said Chance Mims, CEO of Academy Securities. OneMain continues to expand opportunities for underserved borrowers through its impact investment strategy. In 2021, the company issued a $750 million Social Bond to serve credit-disadvantaged communities around the country, with a focus on women and minority customers. OneMain deepened this commitment in 2022 with a $600 million Social ABS Bond, the first of its kind by a U.S. issuer. Loans from the Social ABS serve borrowers residing in rural communities, at least 75% of whom are lower- income borrowers with annual net incomes of less than or equal to $50,000. In addition, OneMain has previously committed $35 million to funds supporting the Thurgood Marshall College Fund for students attending historically black colleges and universities and environmental investments. About OneMain Financial OneMain Financial (NYSE: OMF) is the leader in offering nonprime customers responsible access to credit and is dedicated to improving the financial well-being of hardworking Americans. We empower our customers to solve today's problems and reach a better financial future through personalized solutions available online and in 1,400 locations across 44 states. OneMain is committed to making a positive impact on the people and the communities we serve. For additional information, please visit OneMainFinancial.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005629/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Envoy Technologies Announces Expansion Plan to Double Electric Car Share As An Amenity In The US Envoy leads the way in shared electric vehicles for multifamily housing, hotels and offices buildings in strategic coast to coast expansion. LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Envoy Technologies announced plans to double property partnership providing electric car share as an amenity for multifamily housing, hotels and offices buildings. Envoy is the first company in the US to provide mobility as an amenity. This expansion plan will further accelerate Envoy's growth and provide real estate owners, developers and contractors with the competitive edge to meet occupancy goals including the added bonus of a revenue share program. Envoy provides a seamless turnkey solution for real estate partners looking to attract valuable residents and guests. Envoy's model provides a seamless turnkey solution for real estate partners looking to attract valuable residents and guests while helping to differentiate their property from the competition. Electric cars are booked through the Envoy Mobility app providing valuable use data and revenue projections. Using stratgic real estate partnerships, Envoy launched in 2017 in the multifamily housing and workplace sectors and expanded to include hospitality last year. This includes luxury resorts with a Tesla Model X at The Havens in Snowmass, Colorado and 2 Tesla Model 3s at The Cliffs At Princeville in Kauai through Envoy Hawaii. "Our mission has been clear from day one. We provide an easy, long term solution for the highly competitive real estate market," said Ori Sagie, CEO, Envoy Technologies. "In addition, we fulfill a core value of leading the way with an environmentally responsible mobility solution that will impact generations to come." Envoy electric car fleets are active in over 118 properties across 22 states, including California, Oregon, Nevada, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Illinois, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. And recently added 2 Tesla Model 3s at The Citizen, Birmingham, Alabama. Envoy electric car fleet includes but is not limited to all Tesla models, Rivian, Mercedes, Porsche, Polestar, Nissan plus Chevrolet for economy options.The expansion plan includes increasing market penetration in the South and Midwest with sights set on Texas, Virginia, Minnesota, and Montana. For more information visit, https://www.envoythere.com/evmobility About Envoy Technologies Envoy Technologies, founded by Ori Sagie (CEO) and Aric Ohana (President) is a technology and mobility service company offering shared electric vehicles where people live, work and stay through the Envoy Mobility app. Media contact: Drew Hopkins, [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/envoy-technologies-announces-expansion-plan-to-double-electric-car-share-as-an-amenity-in-the-us-301723726.html SOURCE Envoy Technologies [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Gentex Corporation Settles Lawsuit with Galvion On May 17, 2019, Gentex Corporation filed a lawsuit against Galvion in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, Civil Action No. 1:19-cv-00921-MN involving helmet systems with integrated or standalone mounting rails. Gentex asserted infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,849,517, titled "Mounting System for Accessories on a Safety Helmet" and issued on December 14, 2010 ("the '517 Patent"); U.S. Patent No. 7,908,667, titled "Mounting System for Accessories on a Safety Helmet" and issued on March 22, 2011 ("the '667 Patent"); U.S. Patent No. 9,717,294, titled "Hinged Attachment of Headgear to a Helmet" and issued on August 1, 2017 ("the '294 Patent"); U.S. Patent No. 10,638,807, titled "Helmet Cover Assembly Having at Least One Mounting Device" and issued on May 5, 2020 ("the '807 Patent"); U.S. Design Patent No. D750,846, titled "Helmet Mounted Rail" and issued on March 1, 2016 ("the '846 Patent"); U.S. Design Patent No D750,847, titled "Helmet Mount" and issued on March 1, 2016 ("the '847 Patent"). On June 24, 2022, Gentex and Galvion settled this lawsuit. Among other terms, Galvion obtained a royalty-bearing license to certain Gentex patents for past and future Galvion helmet systems with integrated or standalone mounting rails. About Gentex Corporation With a history of innovation that spans over 125 years, Gentex Corporation is a leading supplier of products that advance personal protection and situational awareness for global defense forces, emergency responders and industrial personnel operating in high-performance environments. Our portfolio includes helmet system platforms, hearing protection and communications products, and capability upgrades for defense and security forces sold under the Gentex and Ops-Core brands, as well as PureFlo industrial respiratory protection systems. Privately held, Gentex is headquartered in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and supports its global customers through a worldwide distributor network and six other facilities in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. Learn more at www.gentexcorp.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230117006084/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] VieCure Aligns with Oncology Care Partners to Accelerate the Adoption of Value-Based Cancer Care VieCure today announced a new strategic partnership with value-based care organization, Oncology Care Partners ("OCP"), which will assist OCP in its provision of world-class care to patients across its growing U.S. network. This collaboration will support OCP's providers in creating personalized treatment plans using VieCure's Halo Intelligence Platform and help OCP to advance its commitment to overall health equity for the patients that they serve. This partnership will be impactful as both companies are dedicated to revolutionizing the way that cancer patients are treated. OCP is committed to a new generation of cancer care, ensuring that patients are treated with "whole-person care," giving them the opportunity to ensure the patient and family will be supported and engaged throughout the entire care process. Currently, OCP has opened its initial practice in Phoenix, Arizona, and is caring for Medicare Advantage patients in the surrounding area. It has also recently acquired an existing practice in Miami, where it will bring its value-based care model to patients in South Florida. OCP is in the process of expanding to deliver world-class, community-based care throughout the country while striving for more efficient and individualized treatment options, and VieCure is proud to power all practices in its growing network. OCP is working to reduce unnecessary services which can in turn lower costs and lower the burden placed on patients. Value-based care will ensure that patients receive the most comprehensive and efficient care, and in turn, improve the overall quality of life for patients and their families. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005642/en/ VieCure and Oncology Care Partners (OCP) form a strategic partnership which will assist OCP in its provision of world-class care to patients across its growing U.S. network (Graphic: Business Wire) "We view VieCure as an important strategic partner, we share a mission: to make cancer care better for patients. As this partnership grows, we have the opportunity to accelerate growth for both companies and, by extnsion, the positive impact on cancer patients," said Joe Pietrzak, Oncology Care Partners CFO, and head of development. VieCure has developed a proprietary artificial intelligence informatics software platform and combined it with a clinical inference engine, a codified content library, a patient mobile app, a physician mobile app, integrated Tele oncology, and a fulsome data and analytics solution. This comprehensive suite, all tethered to the A.I. clinical inference engine, is the market-leading point-of-care clinical decision support system in oncology. VieCure will also codify the New Century Pathways in algorithms for use by clinicians at OCP practices. "VieCure's AI-based decision support platform with its world-leading knowledge library, including standard of care and precision medicine, will enable OCP's clinicians to give their patients the most appropriate, cost-effective care tailored to their unique circumstances," said Dr. Fred Ashbury, VieCure's Chief Scientific Officer. About VieCure VieCure has developed a proprietary artificial intelligence informatics software platform in conjunction with a clinical inference engine and point-of-care decision support system in oncology. The VieCure platform combines the latest in clinical knowledge with patient data to assist clinicians in generating personalized treatment plans and better managing a patient's treatment throughout diagnosis, cancer therapy, and ongoing follow-up care. VieCure was launched in 2015 and has contracted with leading community oncology cancer centers like the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders (Fort Worth, Texas), Alabama Cancer Care (Tuscaloosa, Alabama), Clermont Oncology (Clermont, Florida), and several others including the American Oncology Network. The VieCure contracted cancer center network now includes more than 100 locations in the United States, the Bahamas, and Antigua. Active implementation of the VieCure platform is occurring in network locations across the United States. For more information, please visit viecure.com and connect with VieCure on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. About Oncology Care Partners Oncology Care Partners (OCP) is an oncology provider built solely to provide value-based care serving Medicare Advantage patients. OCP's community-based physicians serve every patient with high-touch, whole-person care that includes more time with a doctor, a dedicated advocate, clear and open communication, and 24/7 connectivity. OCP was launched by Valtruis, a WCAS company that provides a unique platform to transform healthcare through what is truly value-based care, and partners with New Century Health, a national pioneer in oncology and cardiology care management. OCP's innovative model of care reduces unnecessary services, lowers costs, and adds value for patients, doctors, and providers. For more information, visit OncologyCarePartners.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005642/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Oncology Care Partners Launches First Three Locations, Bringing Patient Experience Focus to Cancer Care in Phoenix, Miami Partnership with American Oncology Network and acquisition of United Oncology Medical Associates marks the beginning of OCP's national growth NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Oncology Care Partners, an oncology provider built solely to provide value-based care, today announces the launch of its first two practices across three locations, bringing its transformative care model to cancer patients in Phoenix and Miami in the first steps of a national growth plan. OCP is advancing value-based care in oncology nationwide by bringing high-touch, whole-person care that enhances the patient experience across its medical oncology practices. Accelerating the adoption of value-based care improves the journey to better health and quality of life while reducing unnecessary services and lowering costs. "With cancer costs rising exponentially and care becoming more complex, we see an opportunity to create a better, more focused patient journey in medical oncology care that simultaneously provides value for payors and at-risk primary care groups," said Erich Mounce, OCP CEO. "It's important for us to create world-class practices led by physicians who are committed to our mission, well-respected and trusted in their communities, and our new locations in Phoenix and Miami do exactly that." American Oncology Network Partnership OCP's Arizona launch comes in partnership with the American Oncology Network (AON), an alliance of physicians and health care leaders partnering to ensure the long-term success of community oncology. Representing 107 physicians and 89 nurse practitioners and physician assistants practicing across 18 states, AON brings three decades of oncology practice management experience to its partnership with OCP. The partners share the vision of value-based care as the future of oncology, and teaming with the trusted AON brand supports OCP's mission to bring value-based care to patients nationwide. The practice, based in Surprise, Arizona, delivers highly individualized cancer treatment for all types of cancer and is led by Dr. David Y. Kahn. The board-certified medical oncologist's two decades of experience have taken him all over the country, but the Phoenix native returned in 2010 and has been practicing in the West Valley ever since. He is an expert in evluating, diagnosing, managing, and treating oncologic and hematologic malignancies and is on staff at Banner Del E. Webb and Banner Boswell medical centers. "I'm thrilled to be working with Oncology Care Partners to provide the very best treatment and experience in a comfortable, simplified journey for patients in the Phoenix community," said Dr. David Kahn, MD, MPH. "OCP's value-based care model will allow me to spend more time where I should be with my patients." United Oncology Medical Associates Acquisition To bring its value-based care model to patients in South Florida, OCP has acquired United Oncology Medical Associates, a Miami-based medical group practice specializing in medical oncology. The two Miami locations are led by doctors Myriam Landrin and Francisco E. Belette, both of whom have been practicing in the South Florida community since 1992. The OCP model will introduce a new patient journey and digital tools that enable these trusted community clinicians to spend more time with patients and eliminate barriers to access. VieCure Partnership In conjunction with launches in Miami and Arizona, OCP has also established a partnership with VieCure, an artificial intelligence platform and cancer knowledge base that empowers personalized patient care. VieCure's Halo Intelligence platform will power OCP's oncology practices, improving patient experience and helping OCP bring precision medicine to communities that need it. "We view VieCure as an important strategic partner," said Joe Pietrzak, Oncology Care Partners CFO and head of development. "We share a mission: to make cancer care better for patients. As this partnership grows, we have the opportunity to accelerate growth for both companies and, by extension, the positive impact on cancer patients." About Oncology Care Partners Oncology Care Partners (OCP) is an oncology provider built solely to provide value-based care serving Medicare Advantage patients. OCP's community-based physicians serve every patient with high-touch, whole-person care that includes more time with a doctor, a dedicated advocate, clear and open communication and 24/7 connectivity. OCP was launched by Valtruis , a WCAS company that provides a unique platform to transform healthcare through what is truly value-based care, and partners with New Century Health , a national pioneer in oncology and cardiology care management. OCP's innovative model of care reduces unnecessary services, lowers costs and adds value for patients, doctors and providers. For more information, visit OncologyCarePartners.com. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oncology-care-partners-launches-first-three-locations-bringing-patient-experience-focus-to-cancer-care-in-phoenix-miami-301724825.html SOURCE Oncology Care Partners [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Save A Lot Donates More than 130,000 Bags of Food to Charities Across the Country With the help and generosity of its valued customers, Save A Lot, one of the largest discount grocery chains in the United States, has donated more than 130,000 bags of much-needed, high-quality food to local charities fighting hunger as part of its Bags for a Brighter Holiday effort. Throughout November and December, Save A Lot customers across the country supported their local communities by purchasing pre-assembled bags of food that were donated to local food charities and pantries, such as Feeding Tampa Bay, the Father Fred Foundation and numerous local and regional food banks and pantries. To further amplify the program's impact, Save A Lot matched donation efforts for more than 120 top selling stores with a financial contribution to each store's partner charity. The company also supported No Kid Hungry, a national campaign to end childhood hunger in America, by providing a matching $6 donation for every bag purchased on Giving Tuesday (Nov. 30) to No Kid Hungry. Together these additional tactics generated an additional combined $88,000 in charitable contributions to 116 local charities as well as to No Kid Hungry. In total, more than $780,000 worth of food will feed families in need this season. Each bag was stocked with private label and brand name food items, including pasta, stuffing mix, canned beans, meats and other pantry taples from Save A Lot. A total of 566 Save A Lot stores participated in the food donation program with 16 stores selling more than 1,000 bags, including: Traverse City, MI (1115 S. Garfield Ave.) - 13,523 bags Tampa, FL (2271 E. Bearss Ave.) - 5,715 bags Scottsville, KY (1407 Galletin Rd.) - 2,417 bags Whitwell, TN. (13205 Highway 28) - 2,366 bags Williamsburg, KY. (1645 S. Highway 25 W.) - 2,212 bags Hagerstown, MD (1161 Maryland Ave.) - 2,137 bags Hardinsburg, KY (996 Old Hwy 60 East) - 2,129 bags Jamestown, TN (407 North Main St.) - 1,760 bags Hazard, KY (52 Grand Vue Plaza) - 1,461 bags Sparta, TN (179 Mose Dr.) - 1,419 bags Murphy, NC (1240 Andrews Rd.) - 1,252 bags Blairsville, GA (117 Murphy Hwy) - 1,188 bags Altoona, PA (3415 Pleasant Valley Blvd.) - 1,117 bags Mayfield, KY (1210 State Route 45 North) - 1,116 bags Pickens, SC (529 Hampton Ave Hwy B) - 1,109 bags Danville, WV (124 Mall Rd.) - 1,060 bags "Giving back to families who are struggling to put food on the table is at the heart of our annual Bags for a Brighter Holiday program. I continue to be inspired and humbled by the incredible generosity of our customers, who make space in their own shopping budgets to help each other this time of year," said Mark Kotcher, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Save A Lot. "Save A Lot plays an important role in many of these communities, providing families with access to fresh, high quality food options every day. Seeing each of these stores rally around this program is really special. We also appreciate our partners at No Kid Hungry, who have allowed us to expand our reach even further in working towards ending childhood hunger." For more information about Save A Lot or the Bags for a Brighter Holiday program, please visit www.savealot.com. About Save A Lot Founded in 1977, Save A Lot is one of the largest discount grocery store chains in the U.S., with more than 850 stores in 32 states. Save A Lot remains true to its mission of being a hometown grocer, providing unmatched quality and value to local families. Customers enjoy significant savings compared to traditional grocery stores on great tasting, high quality private label brands, national brand products, USDA-inspected meat, farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, and other non-food items. For more information visit www.SaveALot.com and follow Save A Lot on Facebook (facebook.com/savealot), Twitter (@savealot), and Instagram or TikTok (@SaveALotFoodStores), or for more information on becoming a Save A Lot independent retail operator visit ownasavealot.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005730/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Boeing Awarded NASA Sustainable Flight Demonstrator Contract ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA has selected Boeing [NYSE: BA] and its industry team to lead the development and flight testing of a full-scale Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) demonstrator airplane. The technologies demonstrated and tested as part of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator (SFD) program will inform future designs and could lead to breakthrough aerodynamics and fuel efficiency gains. When combined with expected advancements in propulsion systems, materials and systems architecture, a single-aisle airplane with a TTBW configuration could reduce fuel consumption and emissions up to 30% relative to today's most efficient single-aisle airplanes, epending on the mission. The SFD program aims to advance the civil aviation industry's commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as well as the goals set forth in the White House's U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan. "The SFD program has the potential to make a major contribution toward a sustainable future," said Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief engineer and executive vice president of Engineering, Test & Technology. "It represents an opportunity to design, build and fly a full-scale experimental plane, while solving novel technical problems." Ultrathin wings braced by struts with larger spans and higher-aspect ratios could eventually accommodate advanced propulsion systems that are limited by a lack of underwing space in today's low-wing airplane configurations. For the demonstrator vehicle, Boeing will use elements from existing vehicles and integrate them with all-new components. NASA's funding through the SFD Space Act Agreement totals $425 million. The SFD program will also leverage up to $725 million in funding by Boeing and its industry partners to shape the demonstrator program and meet the resource needs required. Separately, Boeing's previous internal investments for recent phases of sustainable aviation research total $110 million. The TTBW airframe concept is the result of more than a decade of development supported by NASA, Boeing and industry investments. Under previous NASA programs including the agency's Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research program, Boeing conducted extensive wind tunnel testing and digital modeling to advance the design of the TTBW. Early conceptual studies started under NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation program. CONTACT Boeing Media Relations [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boeing-awarded-nasa-sustainable-flight-demonstrator-contract-301724978.html SOURCE Boeing [January 18, 2023] 3Cloud, the Leading Microsoft Azure Services Partner, Acquires Manila-Based PGSI to Extend Global Delivery Capabilities CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- 3Cloud, LLC. ("3Cloud") today announced that it has entered a non-binding letter of intent ("LOI") to acquire People Global Solutions Inc., ("PGSI"). PGSI, headquartered in Makati City, Philippines, operates a Global Delivery Center exclusively for 3Cloud offering Azure consulting services in Application Modernization and Data Platform. With the acquisition of PGSI, 3Cloud will expand its international reach and formalize a partnership that has provided quality global delivery to clients. "With the acquisition of PGSI, 3Cloud will have over 700 full-time Azure experts helping clients migrate their Applications and Data Platforms to Azure," said Mike Rocco, 3Cloud Co-Founder and CEO. "In October 2021, 3Cloud formed a Global Delivery Center in Metro Manila (operated by PGSI) to serve our clients with hybrid teams of US and Philippine-based cloud consultants. Since that launch, we have delivered dozens of successful engagements with our global team, providing an enhanced client experience." "The 3Cloud and PGSI partnership is seamless and desirable to clients," added Kit Claparols, PGSI CEO. "We are thrilled to formally join the 3Cloud family and more aggressively expand the Global Delivery Center's capabilities." 3Cloud expects to announce additional details regarding the acquisition of PGSI when a definitive agreement is executed, which is expected later this month. b>About 3Cloud As the leading Microsoft services partner focused 100% on the Azure platform, 3Cloud (www.3cloudsolutions.com) helps clients build, migrate, modernize and manage their applications, infrastructure, data and analytics in the cloud. Recently 3Cloud, was selected from over 3,900 Microsoft partners, awarded 4 Worldwide and 2 U.S. Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. Founded by Microsoft executives, 3Cloud combines a team of highly experienced cloud architects and technologists with a strong network of Microsoft sales and engineering relationships to deliver the ultimate Azure experience for clients. About People Global Solutions People Global Solutions provides outsourcing services to clients wanting to setup IT offshore operations in the Philippines (peopleglobalsolutions.godaddysites.com). People Global Solutions is headquartered in Makati City, in the heart of the premiere business and financial district. The firm offers cloud consulting services focused on Managed Services, Infrastructure & DevOps, Application Development, and Data & Analytics. About Gryphon Investors Based in San Francisco, Gryphon Investors (www.gryphoninvestors.com) is a leading private equity firm focused on profitably growing and competitively enhancing middle-market companies in partnership with experienced management. The firm has managed over $9 billion of equity investments and capital since 1997. Gryphon targets making equity investments of $50 million to $300 million in portfolio companies with enterprise values ranging from approximately $100 million to $600 million. Gryphon prioritizes investment opportunities where it can form strong partnerships with owners and executives to build leading companies, utilizing Gryphon's capital, specialized professional resources, and operational expertise. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/3cloud-the-leading-microsoft-azure-services-partner-acquires-manila-based-pgsi-to-extend-global-delivery-capabilities-301724981.html SOURCE 3Cloud [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] The Fuse Group Is Now the Pitch Black Company Today, the Pitch Black Company, formerly the Fuse Group, unveiled its new corporate identity and branding. Pitch Black will continue to serve as the parent company for leading visual effects brands FuseFX, FOLKS, Rising Sun Pictures, and El Ranchito, all of which will continue to operate under their existing brands and markets. The new branding and corporate architecture will better allow Pitch Black to serve its strategic mission of operating as a global network of premium visual effects studios that supports its clients worldwide. Pitch Black CEO Sebastien Bergeron said, "We're proud to introduce Pitch Black, which will connect our current and future studios by providing scale, a global footprint, and access to the entire organization's talent, technology, and resources. Together, we will expand, innovate, and support each brand's unique strengths and relationships as we continue to provide a tailored experience for our clients. Our goal is for Pitch Black to become synonymous with creative excellence: a group of premier brands that empower, embolden, and excite filmmakers and storytellers around the world. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us, and Pitch Black is perfectly positioned to capture it." FuseFX Founder and Pitch Black Chairman David Altenau stated, "The creation of Pitch Black as an over-arching structure will provide a space to continue to build the connective tissue betweenour individual brands. It represents the evolution of the original vision to bring together the most excellent and established visual effects studios from across the globe and allow each to maintain their identities, cultures, and strengths. I am thrilled with the team's commitment to create the next generation global visual effects studio, and I look forward to the next chapter of the organization." The company employs over 1,400 personnel across 13 worldwide studio locations led by an executive leadership team across the visual effects brands, including Sebastien Bergeron (Chief Executive Officer, Pitch Black), David Altenau (Chairman, Pitch Black), John Pietrolungo (Chief Financial Officer, Pitch Black), Johnny Fisk (President, FuseFX), Amelie Poitras (President, FOLKS), Jennie Zeiher (President, Rising Sun Pictures), Tony Clark (Co-Founder and Managing Director, Rising Sun Pictures) and Felix Berges Munoz (Co-Founder and Managing Director, El Ranchito). Pitch Black saw incredible growth in 2022, including the acquisition of El Ranchito, the expansion of Rising Sun Pictures and FOLKS into Brisbane and Mumbai, and continued strong performance from FuseFX's four locations across the U.S. and Canada. Pitch Black companies were recently nominated for three 2023 VES Awards, which when combined with previous nominations, brings its total award nominations to 117 and 53 wins, a testament to the creative excellence of all Pitch Black brands. About the Pitch Black Company Pitch Black brings together world-leading visual effects studios FuseFX, FOLKS, Rising Sun Pictures, and El Ranchito. The company employs over 1,400 personnel across 13 worldwide studio locations in Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Atlanta, Montreal, Toronto, Bogota, Saguenay, Mumbai, Adelaide, Brisbane, Madrid, and Barcelona. The Pitch Black Company is a portfolio company of investment funds managed by EagleTree Capital, a New York City-based private equity firm. For more information, visit http://www.pitchblackcompany.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005643/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Trethera Announces Appointment of R. Boyd Quinnell to Board of Directors LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Trethera Corporation (Trethera), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to developing novel drugs targeting nucleotide metabolism for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases, announced today the appointment of Boyd Quinnell, CPA, MBA, to the Trethera Board of Directors as an independent director. A veteran healthcare executive with over 30 years of experience in executive and financial leadership, Mr. Quinnell will also chair the Boards Audit Committee. We are pleased to welcome Boyd to the Trethera Board, said Dr. Ken Schultz, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Trethera. Boyds deep financial expertise in medical technology global businesses with strong regulatory oversight will be invaluable to Trethera as we continue to advance towards first product revenue. His experience commercializing and scaling innovative technologies to improve health outcomes aligns well with our mission, making him an ideal board addition. I am delighted to join the Board at this exciting time in Tretheras growth, said Mr. Quinnell. With promising Phase 1 clinical data in oncology and a strong potential to treat a wide array of autoimmune diseases, Trethera is well positioned to execute its mission and clinically advance its lead drug candidate. Mr. Quinnell, 61, is the former Chief Financial Officer and General Manager for the US division of Biotronik, a medical device company generating over $400M in annual revenue, where he served from 2015 through 2019. Prior to Biotronik, Mr. Quinnell worked for 12 years at increasing levels of responsibility at the worlds largest medical device company, Medtronic, exiting as Controller and Senior Director of Finance. He began his career as a senior consultant at KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms. Mr. Quinell received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in business from the University of Hawaii and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Cornell University. He holds an active certifie public accountant (CPA) license. He has served on non-profit boards for the American Heart Association and the charity Food on Foot. Mr. Quinnell remains active in the Los Angeles community in his efforts to alleviate homelessness. About Trethera Trethera is a clinical stage privately held biopharmaceutical company dedicated to pioneering the development of novel treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancers. Founded by prominent UCLA scientists, Trethera is led by experienced management and board members. Trethera's innovative approach to targeting nucleotide metabolism led to the development of TRE-515, an orally administered capsule twice designated by the FDA as an Orphan Drug. TRE-515 is a first-in-class clinical stage drug that inhibits deoxycytidine kinase (dCK), the rate-limiting enzyme in the nucleoside salvage pathway, one of two biosynthetic pathways that generate DNA precursors. It is believed that some forms of cancer may be preferentially dependent on the salvage pathway to support tumor growth, and certain autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, might also respond to TRE-515 treatment. Trethera is developing TRE-515 for use as a monotherapy or in combination, to precisely target a metabolic vulnerability of cancer or autoimmune diseases that will transform outcomes for patients. For more information, please visit us at trethera.com or e-mail Investor Relations at [email protected]. Note on Forward-Looking Statements All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that Trethera believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements, which may often, but not always, be identified by the use of such words as "may," "might," "will," "will likely result," "would," "should," "estimate," "plan," "project," "forecast," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "seek," "continue," "target" or the negative of such terms or other similar expressions. Although Trethera has a reasonable basis for the forward-looking statements contained herein, Trethera cautions that such statements are based on current expectations about future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties and factors relating to medical and scientific research, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond Tretheras control, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements in this press release. These potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation: the extent to which development of any novel cancer therapies or therapies for autoimmune diseases succeeds; whether Trethera would obtain the necessary regulatory approvals to commence human trials or commercialize TRE-515 or any novel therapies resulting from such research; Trethera successfully implementing its growth strategy, including that relating to its disease therapies; the effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic; changes in economic conditions; competition; and risks and uncertainties applicable to the business of Trethera. The statements in this press release speak only as of the date hereof and Trethera does not undertake any obligation to update, amend or clarify these forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The Company intends that all forward-looking statements be subject to the safe-harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Eureka Security and YL Ventures Jointly Publish Seminal Report Addressing Cloud Data Security in the Multi-Cloud Era TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A seminal report conducted by Eureka Security in conjunction with the Venture Advisory Board of YL Ventures serves as a wake-up call for data security leaders and practitioners. Leading global CISOs in companies spanning various sizes and industries were surveyed on their data security practices. More than 20% of those polled classified upwards of 50% of their data as sensitive and almost 40% reported they experienced a data breach. Data breaches continue to be one of the leading cyberattack vectors of the past several years. Aimed at CISOs, security practitioners, business executives and decision-makers, the reports insights will serve to augment their understanding of how critical data is presently managed, controlled and secured within cloud environments and more important how it should be. There are real-world financial, reputational and logistical consequences to data breaches, said Liat Hayun, co-founder and CEO of Eureka Security. Forty percent of companies have experienced a data breach. This is an unsettling figure that screams to the urgency of prioritizing data security as a leading and critical concern. Ensuring that data can be easily discovered, classified and secured using guardrails and regulations is a crucial cornerstone of a sound data security strategy. Data is increasingly being used by various teams and users within companies, which in turn, makes its attack surface grow rapidly. While data was once commonly segregated within on-prem infrastructure, its presence and growth in the cloud have greatly increased the risk of breaches and theft. Using only one cloud provider has proven to be limiting for business, so companies are rapidly shifting towards a multi-cloud approach, making things even more challenging for security professionals. All of this makes the surveys outcomes even more alarming 22% of survey respondents stated that more than half of their data can be classified as sensitive but 20% of them do not know where this sensitive data is stored within their company. The data breaches of 2022 have shon that access is the key target for attackers as they search for a way in. We were pleased to learn that most CISOs do employ tools and methodologies for limiting access 51% use network policies and 92% use dedicated groups, said Hayun. But these surface-level legacy tools are not specific to data security and leave companies at risk of compliance breaches. Only 30% of CISOs surveyed shared that they use advanced controls to limit and secure access to sensitive data. Implementation of controls and other critical data security processes including identification and classification (only 20% of CISOs indicated that they have a robust data classification process in place), across numerous teams and users, is another significant challenge for CISOs. Eighty percent of CISOs surveyed shared that more than one team within their company is responsible for enforcing data security controls, and 50% of them indicated that this responsibility is split between three or more teams including security, privacy, compliance, DevOps, engineering, CTO, SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) and others. Without clear ownership and specific expertise, enforcement of data security policies will become even more difficult to oversee or manage. Accordingly, access management was the top CISO data security pain point (57%) and the top area they plan to invest their resources in over the next three years. Furthermore, 51% of CISOs stated that visibility, monitoring and alert fatigue are also of increasing importance in their strategy, most probably due to the myriad of point solutions and the lack of comprehensive visibility into the companys security program. Data classification was the third future data security priority that CISOs chose, with 43% of them indicating that current data classification solutions manual, partial and selective are insufficient and require a new approach. The data analyzed and presented in this report should serve security leaders and practitioners, as they strive to make data security a company priority. It is clear from the data that CISOs must contend with gaps, legacy processes and slow discovery times in current data security practices, and these insights can assist them in enhancing their approach to data security and implementing stronger, more streamlined measures to safeguard their companies assets against potential breaches. For more insights, read the full report here. About Eureka Security Eureka Security is the leader in cloud data security posture management. Enterprises increasingly store sensitive data in clouds such as AWS, Azure, GCP and Snowflake. Eurekas Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solution helps security teams understand where data is, the type of data it is, learn who and what can access it and keep it continuously secure. Its SaaS platform is easy-to-deploy and can be spun up in minutes for actionability on day one. About YL Ventures YL Ventures funds and supports brilliant Israeli tech entrepreneurs from seed to lead. Based in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, YL Ventures manages over $800M and specializes in cybersecurity. YL Ventures accelerates the evolution of portfolio companies via strategic advice and US-based operational execution, leveraging a powerful network of CISOs and global industry leaders. The firm's track record includes investment in Israeli cybersecurity unicorns Axonius and Orca Security, as well as successful, high-profile acquisitions by major corporations including Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, CA and Proofpoint. Media Contact: Montner Tech PR Deb Montner and Hannah Sather [email protected]; [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Advisor Chooses Ameriprise Financial for Firm's Large 'Toolbox' of Resources to Serve Clients Financial advisor Russell Smith recently moved his $150-million-dollar practice to the branch channel of Ameriprise Financial, Inc (NYSE: AMP) in Downers Grove, Illinois. Smith switched firms after two decades with Edward Jones for access to more resources and products to serve his high-net-worth client base. Client service associate Sheila Lindsay, who has 20 years of experience in the industry, and Ameriprise complex director Jay Hubbard support Smith's practice. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005828/en/ Financial advisor Russell Smith recently moved his $150-million-dollar practice to the branch channel of Ameriprise Financial, Inc (NYSE: AMP) in Downers Grove, Illinois. Smith switched firms after two decades with Edward Jones for access to more resources and products to serve his high-net-worth client base. (Photo: Business Wire) "I desired a platform that could meet the needs of my high-net-worth clients and accelerate my growth aspirations," said Smith. "After thorough research, I was impressed with Ameriprise's intense focus on championing the advisor-client relationship. The firm has a large toolbox full of intuitive technology and a wide variety of products to support the way I want to work with my clients." Reflecting on the process of moving his business, Smith said, "I worked hard to build my practice, and so it was crucial that my next firm could provide an efficient transition. Ameriprise has extensive experience in facilitating advisor moves, and so my clients were able to make a smooth transition." Bobbie Hageman, Ameriprise Vice President of Advisor Transitions and Acquisition Program Management, and her team worked closely with Smith's team on the transition. "Every advisor's transition to Ameriprise is highly customized. In the case of Russell and his team, we combined our firm's digital transition platform with a dedicated team of transition specialists to support and guide them along the way. This structure allowed Russell to concentrate on what he does best: serving his clients." Smith is deeply involved in his community, including roles with the local Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis Club, Veteran's Memorial, and Village Trustee in Burr Ridge, Illinois Ameriprise has continued to attract experienced, productive financial advisors, with approximately 1,600 joining the firm in the last 5 years.1 Nine out of ten advisors who joined Ameriprise say the firm's technology, financial planning capabilities and ability to acquire clients is better than their previous firm.2 To find out why experienced financial advisors are joining Ameriprise, visit ameriprise.com/why. About Ameriprise Financial At Ameriprise Financial, we have been helping people feel confident about their financial future for more than 125 years. With extensive investment advice, asset management and insurance capabilities and a nationwide network of approximately 10,000 financial advisors3, we have the strength and expertise to serve the full range of individual and institutional investors' financial needs. Ameriprise Financial cannot guarantee future financial results. Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Investment products are not insured by the FDIC, NCUA or any federal agency, are not deposits or obligations of, or guaranteed by any financial institution, and involve investment risks including possible loss of principal and fluctuation in value. Investment advisory products and services are made available through Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC, a registered investment adviser. Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC. Member FINRA and SIPC. 2023 Ameriprise Financial, Inc. All rights reserved. 1 Ameriprise Financial 2021 10-K. 2 Ameriprise asked experienced advisors who moved their book of business to the firm in the last one-to-five years to compare its support, resources, and capabilities to their previous firm and state their satisfaction with their experience. The survey results identified the top ways Ameriprise stands out compared to competitors. 294 advisors responded to the "Ultimate Advisor Partnership" survey, which was conducted in November 2021. 3 Ameriprise Financial Q3 2022 Earnings Release. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005828/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Insperity Honored as One of the Best Places to Work in 2023, a Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award Winner Insperity, Inc. (NYSE: NSP), a leading provider of human resources and business performance solutions for America's best businesses, has been honored with a Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award, recognizing the Best Places to Work in 2023 with the ranking of No. 28. The Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award is based solely on the input of employees, who voluntarily provide anonymous feedback by completing a company review about their job, work environment and employer on Glassdoor. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005635/en/ "This honor is a testament to our long-standing commitment to supporting the needs and desires of our workforce so they can achieve individual and corporate success," Insperity President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Arizpe said. "The Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award further shows the same work we do for our clients to help them create an amazing employee experience while providing a positive and strong company culture." "The past year brought extreme highs and lows for job seekers and employees, but despite an increasingly uncertain job market, Glassdoor data shows there are still companies hyper-focused on creating outstanding employee experiences," Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor CEO, said. "It's encouraging to see companies doubling down on employee mental health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, competitive benefits and flexible work environments as we head into 2023. I sincerely congratulate all the Best Places to Work winners." On Glassdoor, current and former employees voluntarily share anonymous insights and opinions about their work environments by completing company reviews. When sharing a company review on Glassdoor, employees are asked to rate their satisfaction with the company overall, and key workplace factors like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, senior management, diversity and inclusion, and work/life balance. In addition, employees are asked to describe the best reasons to work at their companies as well as any downsides. Glassdoor's Best Places to Work winners were determined using company reviews shared by U.S.-based employees between October 19, 2021, and October 17, 2022. During the year-long eligibility period, employers considered for the list must have received at least 75 ratings for each of Glassdoor's nine workplace attributes (overall company rating, career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, diversity and inclusion, senior management, work-life balance, recommend to a friend and six-month business outlook). The final list is compiled using Glassdoor's proprietary algorithm, led by its Economic Research Team, and considers quantity, quality and consistency of reviews. Complete awards methodology can be found here. With over 4,000 corporate employees nationwide, Insperity is consistently identified as a top workplace throughout the country at the local, state and national levels. Since 2001, when the company began participating in best places to work programs, the company has appeared more than 160 times on respective lists, reflecting Insperity's ongoing commitment to being a preferred employer. About Insperity Since 1986, Insperity's mission has been to help businesses succeed so communities prosper. Offering the most comprehensive suite of scalable HR solutions available in the marketplace, Insperity is defined by an unrivaled breadth and depth of services and level of care. Through an optimal blend of premium HR service and technology, Insperity delivers the administrative relief, reduced liabilities and better benefit solutions that businesses need for sustained growth. With 2021 revenues of $5 billion and more than 90 locations throughout the U.S., Insperity is currently making a difference in thousands of businesses and communities nationwide. For more information, visit http://www.insperity.com . About Glassdoor Glassdoor is revolutionizing how people everywhere find jobs and companies they love by providing deeper workplace transparency. Professionals turn to Glassdoor to research ratings, reviews, salaries and more at millions of employers, and to Fishbowl by Glassdoor to engage in candid workplace conversations. Companies use Glassdoor to post jobs and attract talent through employer branding and employee insights products. Glassdoor is a subsidiary of Recruit Holdings, a leading global technology company, and a part of its fast-growing HR Technology business unit. For more information, visit www.glassdoor.com. "Glassdoor" and logo are proprietary trademarks of Glassdoor, Inc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005635/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] CNR: Yesterday, the National Bureau of Statistics published statistics about Chinas national economic performance in 2022. Foreign media commented that with the adjustment of COVID response measures, Chinas economic growth will notably speed up this year. Do you have any comment? Wang Wenbin: In 2022, despite the recurring and lingering pandemic and sluggish global economic growth, China effectively coordinated COVID response with socioeconomic development, stepped up macro regulation, and effectively handled the impact of factors beyond expectation. We were able to stabilize the overall performance of macroeconomy and continue to expand Chinas economic output both in aggregate and per capita terms. These are hard-won achievements and reflect the Chinese economys strong resilience, ample potential and strong vitality and the fact that the fundamentals sustaining Chinas sound economic growth in the long run stay unchanged. Recently, some international investment institutions have said that with Chinas adapting of COVID response measures, the Chinese economy is expected to pick up rapidly throughout 2023. We are convinced that with Chinas COVID response moving into a new phase and life and work returning to normal at a faster pace, the internal drivers of Chinas economy will gather greater momentum and the dividends of efforts to deepen reform and opening-up will continue to be unleashed. In 2023, Chinas economy will see a significant improvement, make bigger strides and contribute more to world economic recovery. AFP: Do you have any details to share today on a reported visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China? Wang Wenbin: I have nothing to share at the moment. AFP: Weve also seen reports that State Councilor Wang Yi will visit Europe. Can you confirm these reports and share any details? Wang Wenbin: We will keep you posted if anything comes up. China-EU relations enjoy steady development at the moment. In the final months of last year, China hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President of the European Council Charles Michel on their successful visits to China, which once again demonstrated that both China and Europe attach great importance to their relations. China looks to strengthen cooperation with Europe on the basis of mutual respect and make new progress together in advancing the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. Bloomberg: Australia is supposed to take delivery of 40 Black Hawk military helicopters from the US this year. This is part of a growing strengthening of military ties between Australia and the US. Does the foreign ministry have a comment on this? Wang Wenbin: When having defense and security cooperation, countries must always make sure that such cooperation contributes to regional peace and stability and does not target any third party or come at other countries expense. [January 18, 2023] Saudi Fund for Development Expands Operations in the Caribbean Countries With Agreement to Fund Expansion Project of University of the West Indies at Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda The Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) CEO, Mr. Sultan Al-Marshad, and Honorable Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, signed an $80 million financing agreement for the expansion project of the University of the West Indies at Five Islands (UWI) in Antigua and Barbuda. The agreement represents a significant milestone, with Antigua and Barbuda being the 85th state to receive funding for a major development project from SFD. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005742/en/ CEO of SFD and Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda signing the agreement (Photo: AETOSWire) To help reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the Caribbean, the agreement will promote scintific innovation and add additional educational facilities to the university. Honorable Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, expressed his appreciation for the development efforts undertaken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through the Saudi Fund for Development, which will enhance the educational sector in Antigua and Barbuda and its neighboring countries. Aimed at making the university more sustainable, the financing agreement involves constructing seven energy-efficient buildings. The project will cover a total area of nearly 95,160 m, and serve 5,000 students annually. The expansion project will also cater to neighboring Caribbean countries that extend from the southeast of North America and eastern Central America to the north and east of South America. Commenting on the project, the CEO of the SFD, Mr. Sultan Al-Marshad, stated: "Through financing this project, the SFD aims to expand the scope of its operations in the Caribbean, which is in line with the efforts made by the Kingdom's government to build bridges of cooperation for development with the international community. The project will further support international efforts to achieve sustainable development across different social and economic areas." He added: "The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia attaches great importance to supporting development in different countries to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. The UWI expansion project is in line with the Fund's financing policy, which is based on achieving SDGs by providing the necessary support for development projects while also focusing on infrastructure and productivity sectors with humanitarian impacts. The expansion project falls under SDG 4, quality education, which is essential for achieving economic growth." *Source: AETOSWire View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005742/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Buildmedia merges with The Boundary to create global powerhouse LONDON, Jan. 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Buildmedia, the Auckland-based creative studio widely considered to be the world leader in off-the-plan interactive real estate sales and marketing solutions, city-scale digital twins and interactive eCommerce VR experiences, has merged with London and New York based pioneering visualisation studio The Boundary. Founded 20 years ago, Buildmedia are global leaders of interactive real-time solutions across multiple sectors using Epic Games Unreal Engine technology. They have produced numerous groundbreaking experiential solutions including their proprietary interactive display suite solution (Realspace https://buildmedia.com/realspace ), and also developed particular expertise for high-fidelity virtual reality city and country-scale digital twins. The Boundary's reputation as an expert collective of creative technologists, designers, filmmakers and storytellers has been built working on marketing campaigns for prestigious developments such as the Waldorf Astoria (New York), 175 Park Avenue (New York) and The Whiteleys (London) via the creation of hyper-photorealistic CGI visualizations, animated films and virtual reality experiences. This strategic merger brings together best-in-class photorealistic creative CGI and VR expertise from The Boundary ( https://www.the-boundary.com ) with the best-in-class technical capabilities and proprietary IP developed by Buildmedia ( https://buildmedia.com/ ). The combined business, which will move forward under The Boundary brand umbrella, is uniquely positioned to exceed the expectations of high-end real estate developers, destination marketers, and eCommerce focused brands looking to exploit emerging web3/metaverse opportunities via experiential interactive content and applications. Epic Games have been long-standing admirers of the Buildmedia team, having contracted them as one of only two Unreal Authorized Service Partners in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction space. Epic often cites Buildmedia's digital twin of Wellington City as setting the benchmark of what's possible using their technology. With financial backing from private equity firm Mobeus, and the injection of a raft of vastly experienced and impressive executive management team members from Buildmedia, the new look business will be investing in R&D across their VR/web3/metaverse services and applications. The Boundary CEO Tom Wood says "This strategic merger marks the next phase for The Boundary following impressive growth across North America and the EMEA, as we now naturally expand across APAC. We are delighted to welcome the very talented Buildmedia team into the family". With over 100 in-house CGI artists and creative technologists operating at the very top end of the visualisation sector, The Boundary is now uniquely positioned to deliver photorealistic end-to-end client services across the emerging web3/metaverse in the Real Estate, Hospitality, eCommerce and digital twin sectors. Crucially, the enlarged business also provides clients with the assurance of scale and financial stability which are prerequisites for large clients investing significant sums into multi-year metaverse and digital twin projects. Buildmedia founder and CEO, Gareth Ross commented "We have created a market leading real-time solution over the past 20 years, and the idea of joining The Boundary to deliver our proposition globally was an opportunity we couldn't resist". The transfer of employees and complementary knowledge and IP between New Zealand and The Boundary's studios will strengthen the client proposition across both hemispheres, while providing all clients with the benefits of a company operating 24/7. For press enquiries contact: Chris Mitchell, [email protected], + 44 (0)203 026 6270 Images for use in publication: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/khko35i6etddsso/AABgVMK4NxpbjgPqRFcFrRt3a?dl=0 About The Boundary The Boundary is a world leading creative agency which uses computer generated imagery (CGI) to create photorealistic marketing content for developers, destination marketers, and eCommerce brands. www.the-boundary.com About Buildmedia Buildmedia is a creative visualization studio widely considered to be the world leader in city-scale digital twins and off-plan virtual reality interactive real estate sales and marketing solutions using EPIC Games Unreal Engine technology. www.buildmedia.com SOURCE The Boundary [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] DSM - delivery of shares This is a press release by Koninklijke DSM N.V. (Royal DSM), pursuant to the provisions of Sections 13 paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Dutch Decree on Public Takeover Bids (Besluit openbare biedingen Wft) (the Decree) in connection with the public offer by Danube AG (to be renamed DSM-Firmenich AG) for all the issued and outstanding ordinary shares in the capital of DSM (the Exchange Offer). This press release does not constitute an offer, or any solicitation of any offer, to buy or subscribe for any securities. This press release is not for general release, publication or distribution, in whole or in part, in or into, directly or indirectly, the United States or any other jurisdiction where such release, publication or distribution would violate applicable laws or regulations. HEERLEN, Netherlands, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the Offering Circular published on 22 November 2022, Royal DSM is required to announce transactions relating to the ordinary shares in its capital in accordance with the Dutch public offer rules. This includes the delivery of treasury shares to employees in view of settling the vesting of share units or the exercise of stock options. Pursuant to commitments entered into prior to issuing the Offering Circular, DSM has on 18 January 2023, delivered 60 ordinary shares to employees in view of settling the exercise of an equivalent number of stock options granted under the respective DSM Incentive Plan (average exercise price 112.00). On the date hereof, the total number of issued and outstanding DSM ordinary shares is 173,081,100. As a consequence of the delivery included herein, the number of outstanding DSM ordinary shares increased by 0.0000%. DSM Royal DSM is a global, purpose-led company in Health, Nutrition & Bioscience, applying science to improve the health of people, animals and the planet. DSM's purpose is to create brighter lives for all. DSM's products and solutions address some of the world's biggest challenges while simultaneously creating economic, environmental and societal value for all its stakeholders customers, employees, shareholders, and society at large. The company was founded in 1902 and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam. More information can be found at www.dsm.com. Or find us on: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/3108 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DSM Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DSMcompany YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/dsmcompany For more information DSM Media Relations Gareth Mead tel. +31 (0) 45 5782420 email [email protected] DSM Investor Relations Dave Huizing tel. +31 (0) 45 5782864 email [email protected] Forward-looking statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements with respect to DSM's future (financial) performance and position. Such statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections of DSM and information currently available to the company. DSM cautions readers that such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and therefore it should be understood that many factors can cause actual performance and position to differ materially from these statements. DSM has no obligation to update the statements contained in this press release, unless required by law. The English language version of the press release is leading. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/329419/dsm_logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/dsm---delivery-of-shares-301725092.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Berkeley SkyDeck Opens Applications for 16th Cohort of Startups Berkeley SkyDeck, the global hub for entrepreneurship and leading accelerator, today announced that applications are now open for its 16th cohort, with a final deadline of February 17, 2023. Startups can apply here across a variety of specialized tracks such as Bio, Aero-Astro, Blockchain/Crypto, Chip and more. In addition, SkyDeck will continue to look for and select companies with significant potential for further venture capital investment across all industries. SkyDeck is also committed to elevating and selecting startups founded and led by people of color, women, and other underrepresented groups in the venture capital space. "Despite economic headwinds, innovation never slows down, and the current economic conditions mean that the resources offered by Berkeley SkyDeck are more important than ever for startups looking to take the next steps in their journeys," said Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck. "We welcome both UC Berkeley and University of California affiliates, as well as international founders, to apply for this atch and tell us about their moonshot solutions." The highly selective and extensive Berkeley SkyDeck application process results in approximately 20 to 25 startups per cohort for the Berkeley SkyDeck program, and 10 startups for the SkyDeck Europe program, with a startup acceptance rate of just over 1.5%. Each Berkeley SkyDeck cohort company receives $200,000 in funding, $750,000 worth of free and discounted resources and access to SkyDeck's unsurpassed network of UC Berkeley alumni, faculty and advisors. SkyDeck Europe companies receive 145,000, plus the same access to our resources and world-class network. Alumni of Berkeley SkyDeck have collectively raised more than $1.7 billion and enjoyed great success in their respective industries. "We are confident there are strong startups with compelling founders who can benefit from the vast resources that SkyDeck has to offer," said Chon Tang, Founding Partner, Berkeley SkyDeck Fund. "With our global reach, we are able to find ideas and technologies that might otherwise go unnoticed by venture capital, and I am looking forward to seeing what we uncover with these applicants." The $60 million SkyDeck Fund II, which closed in March 2022, actively funds companies representing 30 separate countries to date. Its portfolio currently includes 160 companies. The SkyDeck Fund then shares half of all profits with UC Berkeley, which continue to fuel the university's mission of creating tomorrow's leaders by pushing the boundaries of and expanding access to knowledge. Berkeley SkyDeck will host interviews between March 6 - April 7, 2023. The five-month program will run from May through September 2023. Berkeley SkyDeck will host the cohort's Demo Day for investors on September 19, 2023. Demo Day for SkyDeck Europe will be in October 2023. About Berkeley SkyDeck Berkeley SkyDeck is a leading accelerator and the global hub for entrepreneurship. As UC Berkeley's largest and most prominent accelerator, SkyDeck combines hands-on mentorship with the vast resources of its research university. SkyDeck is the only accelerator of its kind that offers the value of a dedicated investment fund alongside the resources and network of a top university. To date, SkyDeck startups have raised more than $1.7 billion in aggregate. Participating startups have access to SkyDeck's 500 advisors and mentors, 70 industry partners, and a network of more than 510,000 UC Berkeley alumni. For more information, see skydeck.berkeley.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005960/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Israeli Mission to the UN, Israel's National Cyber Directorate and Team8, Host Cyber Security Event at UN The Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, in cooperation with Israel's National Cyber Directorate (INCD) and Team8, hosted a cyber-security event yesterday at the United Nations (UN) to discuss the ways in which countries, governments and the private sector can collaborate to create a cyber-safer world. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005933/en/ From left to right: Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, the INCD's Executive Director of International Cooperation Aviram Atzaba, the Corporate Vice President of Security Business Development at Microsoft Ann Johnson, and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Team8, Nadav Zafrir. (Photo credit: Team8) The event, themed "Stronger Together", was held against the backdrop of increased cyber-attacks around the world against private companies and countries. Speakers at the event included: The United States' Principal Deputy National Cyber Director Kemba Eneas Walden Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Team8, Nadav Zafrir The UN's Chief Informatio Technology Officer Assistant Secretary-General, Bernando Mariano Joaquim Junior The INCD's Executive Director of International Cooperation, Aviram Atzaba Microsoft Corporate Vice President , Ann John son son JupiterOne CISO & Head of Research, Sounil Yu and Former Chief Strategist of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)'s COVID Task Force, Joshua Corman Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said: "As a cyber defense powerhouse, Israel has a deep sense of duty to support others in the field. And by assisting Member States in fortifying their cyber defense abilities, we create a win-win situation for all. A safer future for everyone. "Today, in an age where the battlefield is moving from geographical arenas to the digital-sphere, the key to achieving collective defense is by working as a joint global team. And the UN, the center stage of international diplomacy, is an ideal place to pursue such a crucial mission. "It is here that we share best practices, hold discussions, and learn from one another. And it is here that we can build an iron dome - a defensive shield - against cyber-attacks and digital threats. It is the responsibility of all of us to work side-by-side to ensure the safety of each of us." Nadav Zafrir, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Team8 said: "The internet has become a critical infrastructure. We are at a unique point in the history of technology and global cooperation is key to cyber resilience. "We need to work together to bring all nations above the cyber poverty line. First, we should acknowledge that digital infrastructure is critical infrastructure. We should understand that knowledge sharing is the right thing to do. Then, we should create an environment for world collaboration and build the technologies to do so." Bernardo Mariano Junior, The UN's Chief Information Technology Officer, said that "Collaboration for cyber security requires commitment that goes beyond what we are currently doing. We are lagging behind and we must do better. The digital transformation is already happening and no institution is immune to threats. We all need to be aware that the threat landscape has evolved. We need to reinvent and recreate security concepts at an early stage. My hope is that this event will look at this as a challenge we need to take to the next level to ensure that protection of digital assets is better." Aviram Atzaba, Executive Director International Cooperation, Israel National Cyber Directorate added: "The future is here and we need to work together to develop a digital trustworthy world. This requires teamwork -- working together, government and industry to develop services and solutions. A cyber dome." To watch the full recording of the event: https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1f/k1ft7jy68n View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005933/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 18, 2023] Haivision Announces Haivision Hub for Government, the Only FedRAMP Video Network Service to Securely Stream Live Video Haivision Hub for Government allows agencies to securely share live content between government teams, and safely deliver live broadcasts to teams, facilities, and the public MONTREAL, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Haivision Systems Inc. ("Haivision") (TSX: HAI), a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual collaboration solutions, today announced that Haivision Hub for Government achieved FedRAMP "In Process" designation and is the only video network service available through the FedRAMP Marketplace. The fully managed cloud solution enables public sector government agencies to communicate together with live video content or distribute live broadcast video securely to the public using CDNs, OVPs, EVPs and social media outlets. The Haivision process of obtaining FedRAMP authorization was sponsored by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Today, government agencies are increasingly sharing live video to succeed in their mission. However, traversing networks can open agencies to cyber risks and security challenges. Even organizations with the best security profiles are at risk of evolving cyber exposures. Haivision Hub for Government helps shield public sector organizations from network exposure (their largest risk) when sharing live video streams.? Scalable and easy to use, Haivision Hub for Government is ideal for CIOs looking to implement secure live video streaming in compliance with federal information assurance requirements. FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is a U.S. government program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. The FedRAMP Authorization Act is a codifie part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). FedRAMP is mandatory for all executive agency cloud deployments and service models. "Our FedRAMP milestone is a powerful example of Haivision's longstanding commitment to ensuring the security of our customers' deployments," said Mirko Wicha, President and CEO of Haivision. "In the FedRAMP process, we've worked rigorously to make Haivision Hub for Government an ideal solution to help government agencies stream securely via the cloud. We're very proud to be the first video network service to achieve this important FedRAMP milestone and to be among the few technology companies to achieve this authorization."? Haivision Hub for Government offers a range of features that can help agencies quickly and securely share live video content with internal and external audiences. Key features include:? Real-time live visual content distribution: Share live video in real-time, providing up-to-date information and events and enabling collaboration in real-time on mission-critical common operating pictures. Share live video in real-time, providing up-to-date information and events and enabling collaboration in real-time on mission-critical common operating pictures. Secure: Designed to meet the strict security requirements of government agencies (Achieved FedRAMP supporting Department of Defense Impact Level 2 (DoD IL2)). Designed to meet the strict security requirements of government agencies (Achieved FedRAMP supporting Department of Defense Impact Level 2 (DoD IL2)). Scalability: Scale to serve multiple internal and external audiences. Scale to serve multiple internal and external audiences. Flexibility: Leverage direct high-performance connectivity and cloud delivery options. Leverage direct high-performance connectivity and cloud delivery options. Simplification: Easily overcome network challenges and the technical debt typically encountered when enabling digital transformation. Haivision is committed to providing high-performance video network solutions with the highest levels of security for mission-critical applications. Progressing through rigorous third-party assessments and implementing the appropriate controls in accordance with FedRAMP to protect data and systems of federal customers demonstrates that commitment. For more information about Haivision Hub for Government, visit the FedRAMP Marketplace or the Haivision Hub for Government webpage on the Haivision website.?? About Haivision? Haivision is a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual collaboration solutions. Our connected cloud and intelligent edge technologies enable organizations globally to engage audiences, enhance collaboration, and support decision making. We provide high quality, low latency, secure, and reliable live video at a global scale. Haivision open sourced its award-winning SRT low latency video streaming protocol and founded the SRT Alliance to support its adoption. Awarded four Emmys for Technology and Engineering from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Haivision continues to fuel the future of IP video transformation. Founded in 2004, Haivision is headquartered in Montreal and Chicago with offices, sales, and support located throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, visit Haivision at haivision.com.? View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/haivision-announces-haivision-hub-for-government-the-only-fedramp-video-network-service-to-securely-stream-live-video-301725251.html SOURCE Haivision Systems Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Andrew Palamarchuk is a reporter with Metroland Media Toronto and toronto.com. He has been covering the crime beat since 2002 and has a passion for giving a voice to those affected by tragedy and looking at societal issues that may have contributed to it. A Cambridge resident wants to see faith restored in the election process after a former 2022 municipal election candidate raised questions about its validity. - Metroland file photo It will feature a 500-seat multidisciplinary performance hall and a variety of purpose-built film studios and other arts and culture spaces. GetRentacar.com, the leading online car rental marketplace, is proud to announce a successful year of providing customers with the best car rental deals and revealing the most popular travel destinations among its clients. (TRAVPR.COM) USA - January 18th, 2023 - Thailand and Georgia have shot to the top of GetRentacar.com's car rental booking rankings, according to data from the international marketplace. The two countries saw a significant increase in the number of users renting cars through the service throughout the year. Besides those two destinations, the UAE, Greece, Portugal, and the UK were also the leaders of bookings in 2022. The Toyota Corolla, Toyota Prius and Mitsubishi Outlander are the company's most popular car rentals, renowned for their affordability and reliability. These vehicles are particularly popular in Georgia and Thailand, where they have the highest average daily bookings. For a more luxurious experience, GetRentacar.com also offers high-end vehicles such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, BMW 7 Series, and Lamborghini in popular tourist destinations like Miami and Dubai. Alexander Pershikov, the founder of GetRentacar.com, states It is an honor and responsibility to lead the market. Our goal is to provide mutual benefit for both the client and the car owner. Our clients can access unique offers at competitive prices anywhere in the world, and car owners can maximize their profits by minimizing downtime. To further enhance our services, we use cutting-edge technologies like our tender-based system. We are constantly improving our services and implementing the latest technologies to serve clients across the globe. GetRentacar.com, a global leader in car rental services, is widely popular due to its commitment to sustainability, competitive prices, and a wide range of vehicles available. The company operates in over 100 countries and has a truly global presence. ### The operations of the IAEA missions at all Ukrainian nuclear power plants will allow assessing threats to nuclear safety and contribute to the strengthening of this safety at nuclear facilities amid constant enemy attacks. This was reported by the press service of the Ministry of Energy, Ukrinform saw. On January 16, together with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, acting Head of the State Inspection for Nuclear Regulation Oleh Korikov, President of NAEC Energoatom Petro Kotin, and Minister of Energy German Galushchenko visited the Southern Ukraine NPP and took part in the ceremony of raising the IAEA flag. Read also: IAEA representatives arrive at South Ukraine NPP "We welcome the launch of IAEA missions at the other four nuclear power plants of Ukraine. The direct presence of representatives of the international agency at all Ukrainian nuclear power plants will allow assessing from the inside all the dangers and threats to nuclear and radiation safety that Russia's military actions entail," the minister noted. Galushchenko emphasized that the Russian Federation has been targeting energy facilities in Ukraine for more than three months. One of the Russian strikes led to a system incident, as a result of which all nuclear power plants in Ukraine were simultaneously de-energized. "Due to the Russian shelling, four nuclear power plants simultaneously operated on backup power from diesel generators. And at this time, Russian missiles continued to fly in, and any of them could hit them and lead to unpredictable consequences. We must stop Russias nuclear terrorism," Galushchenko emphasized. As reported, over the next two days (January 1718, - ed.), foreign officials will be present at all nuclear energy facilities of Ukraine, including the Chornobyl NPP, which is an important step in providing assistance to the war-torn country in the face of Russian aggression. In total, the IAEA will have about 11-12 experts permanently deployed in Ukraine. An internally displaced woman living in Jalalabad city in Nangarhar Province works on a garment she is sewing for a customer. She established a tailoring service from her home with support from a UNHCR livelihoods project. UNHCR/Oxygen Film Studio (AFG) On a recent snowy winter morning, with temperatures hovering at -10 degrees Celsius, a group of worried women have gathered at a community centre on the eastern outskirts of Afghanistans capital, Kabul. Many have recently completed a livelihoods training project run by local NGO, Amputee Bicyclists for Rehabilitation and Recreation (AABRAR), a partner of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Under the project, 10 women received training last year on tailoring and sewing, although many other women eager to learn new skills also attended the sessions as volunteers. At the end of the training, the women were provided with sewing machines and other equipment, and linked with local businesses and buyers. It is an important initiative for a community where the landscape is barren and access to services and opportunities are limited. Several hundred displaced families live here as well as around 1,100 families who are "Kuchis", traditionally pastoral nomads who returned to Afghanistan in 2016 after spending decades in Pakistan because of insecurity at home. The village is located in one of 80 areas in Afghanistan where internally displaced people and refugees have most often chosen to return. UNHCR and its partners have designated these Priority Areas of Return and Integration (PARRs) and the livelihoods project is one of several community-based initiatives aimed at improving essential services such as education, health and employment in these parts of the country. "At night, my worry keeps me awake." But the future of the project and the women hangs in the balance. Recent decrees issued by Afghanistans de facto authorities have placed further restrictions on womens movements and participation in public life, including an order in late December barring all female employees with national and international non-governmental organisations from going to work. It remains to be seen if the de facto authorities will amend this decree, following widespread criticism. If it stays in place, projects such as this one, which involves female NGO staff training other women, will be unable to continue. One of the women who received training through the programme holds up a garment she made. UNHCR/Caroline Gluck Eighteen-year-old Sanam* who graduated from the training programme last year, said she cried when she heard about the latest decree. I was so, so sad and disappointed, she said. At night, my worry keeps me awake. Sanam is the only member of her family earning an income since her father died. I was so proud to be able to support my family just like a man. And my family are also very proud of me, that I can support them as a girl, she said. Her monthly income has already fallen by two-thirds since the new restrictions were introduced and existing ones tightened. It's difficult to go to the bazaar. I can't go everyday now, and I also need a Mahram (male guardian, who is a family relative) with me. It means it is harder to buy materials for work and it's harder to sell my products. Before, I could earn about 7,000 Afghanis a month (US$78), but now Im only able to earn about 2,000 ($22). Another woman, Shakoko, nods in agreement. The 26-year-old mother-of-two is also the main breadwinner in her family after her husband went to Pakistan in search of work. I came here so I could learn about tailoring, which gives me some income. The money I earn I use for my medical treatments. If I didn't have any work, what could I do? I wouldn't be able to support my family, she said. "If I didn't have any work, what could I do?" Zinab, a trainer with the project, described it as a lifeline for local women, many of whom are now breadwinners in their families. A widow who learned to sew from her mother and relies on her income as a trainer to support her children, she said the project provides a safe space for women and has also helped them to develop friendships and grow in confidence. Many women in this community are not [formally] educated. They don't have other opportunities to be able to support themselves. Im really afraid about the impact of this for the whole community, she added. If you have no job, you have no money and there will be no support for your family. What will be the future for their children? The project provides a safe space for women and helps them to develop friendships and confidence. UNHCR/Caroline Gluck Since the de facto authorities came to power in August 2021, girls have been excluded from attending secondary schools, and a ban on women attending universities was announced in December. The latest directive preventing women from working for NGOs is expected to have a major impact on the delivery of critical humanitarian aid at a time when half of Afghanistans population is facing acute food insecurity and more than 3 million people remain displaced from their homes. See also: Five things you should know about Afghanistan UNHCR has joined other UN agencies and NGOs in calling for the directive to be reversed. Preventing women from humanitarian work is a grave denial of their humanity, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. It will only result in further suffering and hardship for all Afghans, especially women and children. As the women leave the centre, an elderly male community leader talks to UNHCR staff, urging them to continue the project, despite the new challenges. We are very happy with the project. In the future, we hope UNHCR can train not just 10 women, but 100 women here! he says. *Names have been changed for protection reasons. (@FahadShabbir) BERLIN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) If Germany decides soon to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and immediately places an order, the German industry could supply 10-15 such tanks this year, The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper reported, citing industry sources. Earlier, German defense group Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that his company has 22 Leopard 2 tanks, and also 88 Leopard 1 tanks, but it would take about a year to prepare them for shipment to Kiev. Thus, even if tomorrow it was decided that the concern could send tanks to Ukraine, the delivery would not begin until the beginning of 2024. According to industry sources, Leopard 2 deliveries are possible in October or November 2023, but only if the order is received immediately. "We need a decision today," an industry spokesman was quoted by the newspaper as saying. Should the order be received immediately, the industry would be able to supply one Leopard 2 tank per week, starting from the third quarter of this year. Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in response to calls by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics for protection from Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, and to completely liberate Donbas. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said any cargo that contains weaponry for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :The Coordinator to Federal Tax Ombudsman and Chairman Kyrgyzstan Trade House Meher Kashif Younis Wednesday said that in the prevailing global scenario, industrial robotics, artificial intelligence and manufacturing based economy were pre-requisite for sustainable economic growth and prosperity. It was stated by him here today at a meeting with Chairperson Punjab Higher Education Commission Dr Shahid Munir. President Gold Ring Economic Forum, a strategic think tank, Hasnain Raza was also present. He said over the years, industry-academia collaboration has enhanced knowledge, innovation and played an integral part in the economic growth of developed countries. He said the linkage of academia and industry has a strategic role in developing critical skills required by industry (both production and service sector), generation, acquisition, and adoption of knowledge, and in promoting entrepreneurship (start-ups and spin-offs).Similarly, the expansion of market driven research and innovation at university level can be utilized at industrial level to foster commercialization. He said the interaction between industry and academia has been a key for economic growth in developed world. He said the focus of academia has to be on the current needs and market trends. Unless industry and academia is not on the same page, there will always be a mismatch between the skills and knowledge required at industry and the graduates produced by universities. Meher Kashif Younis said In Pakistan, the industrial academia linkage (IAL) situation is not encouraging and there is vast gap between the knowledge produced and knowledge required by the industry. He said Pakistan's local trade and industry needs effort in competing with international companies.He said Pakistani firms not only need to compete at local level but also to compete at global level. However, there are significant challenges that need to be addressed on priority,he added. Chairperson Dr Shahid Munir said teaching universities requires support of industries in designing their curriculum and support in students/graduates placement. Research based universities requires support of industry to channelize their research activities with respect to local needs and to take advantage from technological advancement. Furthermore, he said the entrepreneurial universities require support of industry in developing business incubation services and in promoting entrepreneurship education. However, university cannot achieve these objectives without support of industry.He said universities create knowledge and unless that knowledge is not based on the industrial need, it is of no use. He said similarly the research and area of research needs to be associated with the current market problems and needs. Thus, without an active role of industry it is not possible. Moreover, therefore, the cooperation and collaboration of academia and industry is crucial for economic growth and sustainability, he added. He said this collaboration can neither sustain nor develop without intercession from the chambers of commerce he concluded. (@ChaudhryMAli88) DAVOS, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 18th Jan, 2023) Crescent Enterprises CEO Badr Jafar, co-hosted with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation a high-level event on Climate and Nature Positive Philanthropy in the presence of Prince Albert II of Monaco during the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting in Davos. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the launching of a global alliance of leading philanthropists and philanthropic organisations with the aim to advance collective efforts in addressing climate, ocean and biodiversity goals, allowing for deeper collaboration and leveraging of resources. The session was attended by Majid Al Suwaidi, Director-General of COP28, who delivered remarks on the UAEs vision for COP28 and the importance of harnessing the potential of all sources of capital, including philanthropic capital, to meet climate and nature objectives. Other attendees included Fady Jameel, Deputy President and Vice Chairman, International; Abdul Latif Jameel; Dr. Tariq Al Gurg, CEO & Vice Chairman of Dubai Cares; Cherie Blair CBE, KC, Founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women; Hussain Sajwani, Chairman of Damac International; Lawrence Di Rita, Greater Washington DC Market President of Bank of America; Johan Eliasch, CEO of HEAD; Jacqueline Poh, Managing Director of Singapore Economic Development Board; Rishad Premji, Executive Chairman of Wipro; Andre Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of Roche; and Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. During his opening remarks, Prince Albert II of Monaco shared his thoughts on the collective role of the attendees, saying, We are here to take action. To try and put an end to this strange situation which means that only a tiny fraction of philanthropic resources is allocated to an issue which undoubtedly has the most consequences on the future of humankind: the preservation of the environment. Lets take action, by persuading philanthropists to redirect and increase their contributions, by creating financial and field-evaluation tools that will enable us to make these resources fully effective, by mobilising our contemporaries, businesses and institutions, and by encouraging multilateral institutions to be more ambitious. The discussion highlighted the role the Global Philanthropy Alliance for Climate and Nature will have to advance collective efforts in addressing the climate crisis, specifically in leveraging resources to protect climate, ocean, and biodiversity. The alliance would aim to forge a coordinated approach to foster effective solutions for long-term impact and create awareness and drive catalytic capital to unlock private finance and multilateral commitments to tackling climate change, with US$100 trillion in funding estimated to be required to achieve an equitable climate and nature transition by 2050. Badr Jafar, CEO, Crescent Enterprises, who is also the Founding Patron of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy based at the University of Cambridge and Strategic Philanthropy Initiative at NYU Abu Dhabi, said, Launching this global alliance of climate-focused philanthropists and philanthropic organisations will also provide a platform for many across the global growth markets, many of which are on the front lines of climate change, to engage and put forward solutions that are best suited to local requirements. This in turn will allow for the co-creation of innovative interventions in support of the COP28 agenda and beyond, and engage in constructive conversations with the private and public sectors to better identify opportunities for blended financing models. Data shows that less than 2 percent of philanthropic capital is directed towards climate-related issues, although philanthropic foundation funding for climate change mitigation more than tripled over the past five years, growing from US$900 million to US$3 billion annually. However, according to a ClimateWorks report, the top regions to receive climate change mitigation funding in 2021 were the United States, Canada, and Europe. And even as funding to Africa increased by 50 percent and doubled in Latin America between 2020 and 2021, the two regions combined represented less than 10 percent of total foundation funding in 2021. During the session, speakers discussed the urgent need to break down climate and nature silos and collaborate to scale up this funding and related impact. They discussed strategies to engage a more diverse group of philanthropists and organisations, especially those from growth markets, to help raise awareness and catalytic capital, which in turn can unlock private finance, necessary government regulation, and multilateral commitments across the climate-nature nexus. The alliance will collaborate closely with the World Economic Forums Giving to Amplify Earth Action (GAEA), a public-private-philanthropy partnership for climate and nature calling for a multi-stakeholder and multi-sector approach to embrace global philanthropy to catalyse climate action. Under the theme Cooperation in a Fragmented World, the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting 2023, taking place throughout the week, brings together more than 2,700 leaders from government, business, civil society, academia, and media to address the worlds most pressing issues with more than 300 sessions that aim to accelerate progress and tackle global challenges. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :-- More than 50 research results on the lunar samples brought back by the Chang'e-5 mission have been published in notable academic journals at home and abroad, pushing China's lunar science research to the international forefront, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). Over 150 scientists and researchers participated in the first Chang'e-5 Lunar Sample Research Results Seminar held by the CNSA on Monday. They discussed topics ranging from the characteristics of Chang'e-5 lunar soil samples, the history of lunar volcanic activities, meteorite impacts on the lunar surface, and space weathering to the new techniques for analyzing extraterrestrial samples, etc. In 2020, China's Chang'e-5 mission retrieved samples from the moon weighing about 1,731 grams, the first lunar samples retrieved in over 40 years. After the first batch was handed over to Chinese scientists on July 12, 2021, 65.1 grams of lunar samples have been distributed to research units in five batches, said the CNSA. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :Research scholar and expert on Zoonotic diseases, Dr. Muhammad Shahid has stressed for creating awareness about the threats posed to public health by Brucellosis disease, a most contagious bacterial infection of livestock that also affects humans, especially those handling animals. "Brucellosis is an occupational disease with those predominantly at risk either having close contact with livestock or handling them," says Dr. Shahid while talking with APP. Dr. Shahid who is serving as Senior Research Officer Microbiology and Biotechnology Center Veterinary Research Institute (VRI) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said in developing countries this disease has public health significance as well as animals and economic implications for communities. In view of the increase in the occurrence of brucellosis infection cases among people even in dwellers of urban localities, it is needed to create awareness about threats posed by this disease and measures for prevention from it, Dr. Shahid suggested. "Brucellosis frequently presents in people who are in direct contact with infected animals and its by-products," he apprised APP. The disease's major source of transmission is the consumption of raw milk or unpasteurized dairy products from infected animals. Dr. Shahid also laid stress on holding research in finding out more causes of brucellosis infection like consumption of meat of an infected animal, and transmission through other pet animals like dogs and cats. In Pakistan, he continued, research has been done only on ruminants including cattle, buffaloes, sheep and goats. There is also a need of holding research on the transmission of this disease from dogs which is a very common pet animal, he reiterated. There are seven to eight species of brucellosis bacteria among them the most common and reported are Brucella abortus and Brucella melitensis. About the symptoms of disease among people, Dr. Shahid said these include severe fever, excessive sweating and joint pains. The mortality due to infection is very low but becomes in case of detection in the stage of severity can also become fatal, he warns. In some cases, the illness also causes miscarriage among females and impotency among males, he continued. In animals also, the major symptom of brucella is miscarriage after which the animal is brought to the veterinary hospital and blood samples lead to the detection of infection. The treatment of animals is also expensive and in most cases, veterinary doctors advised owners for culling of the animal. If preventive measures are taken, people can be saved from the economic losses they face due to the infection of their animals, he observed. In Pakistan, the incidence of brucellosis is increasing day by day, particularly in large dairy herds. This infection has a considerable impact on human and animal health as well as on socioeconomic factors where rural income relies mainly on land cultivation and domestic animal farming and people usually live in very close proximity to their livestock. Sharing details of cases of brucellosis reported in KP during current year, he said the occurrence is around 12.2 percent among males in Peshawar district while in the female it is registered 13.9 percent. Similarly, in Charsadda, 9.3 cases were reported in males and 15.3 in females. In Buner 60 percent in males, 15.3 percent in Swat among males and 11.1 percent in Swabi among males. The blood test of suspected patients is sent to Microbiology and Biotechnology Center from almost all the hospitals of the province which takes two to three days in diagnosis. He said researchers at Veterinary Research Institute are also working on the preparation of a vaccine for brucellosis which is presently imported from abroad. Brucellosis can be controlled by routine screening of domestic livestock and animal vaccination programme, he advised. Dr. Shahid also suggested screening of Afghans visiting Pakistan at border posts for brucellosis tests. The majority of Afghans are engaged in the sheep rearing business and shepherds are mostly prone to contraction of this infection. About public awareness, he suggested dissemination of messages in newspapers, radio channels and on social media regarding infection symptoms, early treatment and preventive measures including disinfection of dairy farms, utilization of boiled meals and fully cooked meat besides regular screening of animals. (@Abdulla99267510) Secretary Ministry of Economic Affairs, Dr Kazim Niaz said that huge potential existed there to benefit from comparative advantage between Pakistan and Russia ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-Jan 18th, 2023) The 8th session of Pakistan-Russia Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was held in Islamabad on Wednesday. This three-day session aimed at reviewing the existing areas of cooperation and finding new opportunities for further deepening the bilateral relations between the two countries. Pakistan is being represented by the Secretary Economic Affairs Division Kazim Niaz and the Russian side by the Deputy Director of Economic Affairs. Speaking on the occasion, Deputy Director of the Department of Ministry of Economic Development of Russian Federation, Israfil Ali-Zade said Russia valued its relations with Pakistan. He said in all sectors of economy, there was a good level of cooperation and Russia aimed to enhance it further. He said there was a great potential between both economies that needed to be explored more. Speaking at the opening session, Secretary Ministry of Economic Affairs, Dr Kazim Niaz said that huge potential existed there to benefit from comparative advantage between Pakistan and Russia. He said Pakistan got a big hit due to devastating floods and appreciated the support extended by international community during such times of crisis. The secretary said enhancing economic trade and investment relations was prime priority of Pakistan. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :Provincial President Muslim League-N and Advisor to the Prime Minister, Engineer Amir Muqam on Wednesday while reacting over the dissolution of the provincial assembly thanked Allah Almighty "for helping people get rid of the incompetent and corrupt rulers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa." In a media statement, Amir Muqam said that in the last ten years, the PTI government and Imran Niazi gave nothing to the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but distress and desperation. Neither 350 dams were constructed nor the economy put on the path of self-sufficiency, he added. He said there were no resources in the province to pay the salaries and pensions of the staff. He said that the PTI failed to initiate any mega project for the welfare of the people when it had the government in the center as well as Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that the excessive cost of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Peshawar was a living example of the corruption of the Imran-led PTI. During the last ten years, the official helicopter of the province was used as a rickshaw by the PTI leadership. Imran Khan caused a loss of Rs 1 billion to the national exchequer through the illegal use of the KP government's official helicopter. Muqam added that the people will dissolve those who dissolved the assemblies and did nothing for the country despite being in power for years. (@FahadShabbir) Students of Burewala campus of Agriculture University Faisalabad staged protest demonstration outside the local press club against the 25 per cent increase in university fees here on Wednesday BUREWALA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :Students of Burewala campus of Agriculture University Faisalabad staged protest demonstration outside the local press club against the 25 per cent increase in university fees here on Wednesday. Students, who were holding placards inscribed with slogans against fee hike, also took out a rally, led by Nazim Islami Jamiat Tulaba Usman Qaisar. Other student leaders including Ameer Hamza Ansari, deputy convener Insaf Students Federation Haroon Kiyani, were also present. Speaking on the occasion, they said that poor students were unable to bear the additional expenses and urged the university authorities to review and withdraw their decision. They said, they would stage protest in front of the Governor House in Lahore if the fee increase was not withdrawn. (@FahadShabbir) Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada said on Wednesday that the Lachin corridor that links the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia was open for traffic MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada said on Wednesday that the Lachin corridor that links the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia was open for traffic. Earlier this month, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan expressed concern that Azerbaijan's blockage of the corridor had caused a deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the region. On Tuesday, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg called on Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin corridor and ensure freedom of movement. "Mr. Minister (Schallenberg), the #Lachin road is open & freedom of movement is ensured. Only between 12 December 2022 & 15 January 2023 644 vehicles of ICRC (the International Committee of the Red Cross), the Russian peacekeeping contingent, & local Armenian residents passed in both directions. Claims about the 'blockade' have no grounds," Hajizada said on Twitter. The Lachin corridor, which runs de jure through the Lachin district of Azerbaijan, has been blocked by a group of people from Azerbaijan since December 12, 2022. Russian peacekeepers have been trying to broker an end to the blockade with Azerbaijan, which is claiming Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh in its entirety. The Kremlin said it was concerned by the situation in the region and would continue talking to both countries to restore freedom of movement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that the issue with the corridor can be resolved soon. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) At least 16 people, including two children, have been killed and another 22 received injuries as a result of a helicopter crashed in Brovary city in Ukraine, the National Police of Ukraine said on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, the head of the Kiev regional military administration Oleksiy Kuleba said that a helicopter crashed in Brovary near a kindergarten and residential buildings. "A total of 16 people are dead, two of them children. Nine of them were on board the helicopter. Another 22 victims are in hospital, 10 of which are children," the police said on Telegram. The police added that Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky and his first deputy Yevgeny Enin were killed in the accident. "This morning, on January 18, a helicopter of the State Emergency Service crashed in Brovary. As a result of the crash, the Minister of Internal Affairs was killed: the minister, the first deputy minister and the Secretary of State," the police said. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Germany offered Kyiv assistance in investigating a helicopter crash near Kyiv on Wednesday that killed Ukraine's interior minister along with over a dozens others, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz offered his condolences Berlin, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :Germany offered Kyiv assistance in investigating a helicopter crash near Kyiv on Wednesday that killed Ukraine's interior minister along with over a dozens others, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz offered his condolences. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement that she had sent her sympathies to the Ukrainian government "and offered Germany's support in identifying the causes of the helicopter crash". Scholz noted later in a tweet that the accident showed the "immense price" Ukraine was paying "in this war". "Our thoughts on this sad day are with the victims' loved ones and the injured," as well as with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "who lost his interior minister today". The helicopter carrying Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky slammed down next to a kindergarten and a residential building in Brovary, a commuter town for the capital Kyiv that was the scene of fierce fighting with Russian forces last year. Officials said 16 people were killed, including one of the minister's deputies and three children. Zelensky described the crash of the helicopter, which was en route to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, as a "terrible tragedy." International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi on Wednesday announced the beginning of the agency's permanent mission at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) to ensure nuclear safety and security MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi on Wednesday announced the beginning of the agency's permanent mission at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) to ensure nuclear safety and security. "@IAEAorg continues to expand its presence in #Ukraine. Today, I launched the IAEA Support and Assistance Mission in Chornobyl (#ISAMICH). Our experts will stay at all Ukrainian NPPs to provide vital nuclear safety & security assistance in these extremely difficult and challenging times," Grossi said on Twitter. The IAEA director general also noted that most of the activities at the NPP have been restored. Earlier this week, the IAEA missions started work at the Rivne NPP and South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant. On Tuesday, Grossi said that the IAEA would soon be permanently present at all Ukrainian NPPs. The Chernobyl NPP found itself in the midst of events that could have resulted in a new radiation disaster on a scale greater than the 1986 incident and Fukushima nuclear disaster. A day after Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24, its airborne forces took control over the Chernobyl NPP. Russian troops and Ukrainian soldiers within the NPP guard battalion later reached an agreement to jointly secure the power units and sarcophagus of the NPP to ensure that no nuclear provocation would take place. In April, Grossi said that Russia had confirmed the withdrawal of its forces from the NPP. In November, Grossi said that Chernobyl NPP had lost contact with external power grids and was using emergency generators amid mutual shelling between Russia and Ukraine. In December, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Grossi agreed to deploy IAEA teams on a continual basis to several Ukrainian nuclear facilities, including the Chernobyl site, to provide technical support and assistance as needed to help maintain a high level of nuclear safety and security. (@ChaudhryMAli88) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) A Latvian court upheld its previous decision on Wednesday to leave Sputnik Lithuania editor Marat Kasem in custody, the appeal was denied. Kasem's lawyers said that they will file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. Kasem is a citizen of Latvia and has been living and working in Moscow for several years in the Rossiya Segodnya media group, which also includes Sputnik Lithuania. On December 30, the journalist arrived in Latvia for family reasons. According to Sputnik Lithuania, he was detained, and on January 5, the Riga court took him into custody, the journalist has already been transferred to the Riga Central Prison. Within the framework of his working visit to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, H.E. Mr. Salem Ould Merzoug, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and Mauritanians Abroad, in Nouakchott, received H.E. Mr. Hissein Brahim Taha, the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday 16 January 2023 Nouakchott (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023) Within the framework of his working visit to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, H.E. Mr. Salem Ould Merzoug, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and Mauritanians Abroad, in Nouakchott, received H.E. Mr. Hissein Brahim Taha, the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday 16 January 2023. During the meeting, H.E. the Secretary-General expressed his appreciation for the continued support of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania to the OIC. The discussions focused on issues of bilateral interest with special emphasis on the preparations for the 49th Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers, scheduled to take place on 16-17 March 2023, in Nouakchott. In this respect, H.E. the Secretary-General expressed his satisfaction at the progress of the preparations for the said Session and paid tribute to the Mauritanian Authorities for their commitment to do their utmost in order to meet the conditions for the success of the event. Furthermore, the two parties exchanged views on the main issues on the agenda of the OIC, notably the Palestinian question and the situation in Afghanistan. They underlined the need to do everything possible to contribute to meeting the challenges faced by some Member States, particularly in the Sahel region and the Lake Chad Basin. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Moldovan leader Maia Sandu and European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer discussed on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos current projects and prospects for cooperation, Moldova's presidential press service said in a statement on Wednesday CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) Moldovan leader Maia Sandu and European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer discussed on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos current projects and prospects for cooperation, Moldova's presidential press service said in a statement on Wednesday. Sandu attended the WEF from January 17-18. Moldova was first invited to the Davos forum in 2019, when the country was represented by its foreign minister. "In Davos, Moldovan President Maia Sandu discussed with EIB President Werner Hoyer the projects that are being financed by the bank and prospects for further cooperation," the press service said. The Moldovan president thanked the EIB for its support for her country's efforts to tackle economic issues and expressed her interest in further partnership with the bank in areas such as transport, energy, healthcare and digitalization of the economy. The EIB has been implementing various projects in Moldova since 2008, with its total financial assistance exceeding $1.2 billion over that period. (@FahadShabbir) Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, who died in a shock helicopter crash outside Kyiv Wednesday, was a deeply respected politician with a readiness to venture near frontlines Kyiv, Ukraine, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ) :Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, who died in a shock helicopter crash outside Kyiv Wednesday, was a deeply respected politician with a readiness to venture near frontlines. The 42-year-old trained lawyer was one of nine people on board a state emergency services helicopter when it crashed near a kindergarten and residential block in a commuter town near the Ukrainian capital. Kyiv's mayor, the former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko, described Monastyrsky as a "young, very creative, good person... always proactive in supporting and defending the lives of our citizens." "He is a big treasure for his family. He's a big treasure for all our country. It's one more tragedy in Ukraine," Klitschko told AFP at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Monastyrsky, who took up his post in 2021, was among an emerging generation of politicians in Ukraine, and is the highest-ranking official to die following Russia's invasion launched in February last year. He was killed alongside his deputy, Yevgeniy Yenin, and other key interior ministry officials in the crash that claimed more than a dozen lives. Interior ministers in Ukraine often draw criticism for systemic corruption and abuse of power, but news of Monastyrsky's death spurred praise for his work, including from his political opponents. "No matter how much we argued in the committee, Denys was always honest and decent, calm and smiling. He would try to help get good things passed," Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of parliament from a rival party said on social media. - 'A chance to change something' - "I was sincerely glad to see him appointed as minister, because for the first time we had a normal interior minister and a chance to change something," she wrote. Monastyrsky was born in the city of Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union. He taught and then practiced law there before turning to politics. He was elected to parliament in 2019 and two years later -- several months before the start of the invasion -- was appointed interior minister replacing his influential but scandal-ridden predecessor Arsen Avakov. Following news of his minister's death, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described Monastyrsky and those killed in his team as "true patriots". The interior minister was involved in September in the largest exchange of prisoners of war with Russia, in which Kyiv recovered 215 servicemen. He helped secure the release of senior military figures who spearheaded the defence of Azovstal, the sprawling steelworks in Mariupol which Russian forces besieged for weeks before capturing. Monastyrsky appeared smiling in images released following the exchange, greeting Ukrainian servicemen in Turkey where they were transferred after long negotiations. Several days before Russian forces flooded over Ukraine's borders, an AFP team was embedded with Monastyrsky in the battle-scarred Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. BELGRADE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) High-ranking Russian and Serbian officials are discussing holding a cross year of culture and tourism, as well as marking the 185th anniversary of diplomatic relations, Russian presidential envoy for intercultural cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoy said. Shvydkoy is on a working visit in Serbia, where he met with First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, Culture Minister Maja Gojkovic, education Minister Branko Ruzic and other officials. According to Shvydkoy, a draft agreement on cooperation in film production between Moscow and Belgrade was discussed. "The emphasis was also placed on the possible holding of a cross year of culture and tourism, which could be organized in 2024. There is the consent of counterparts with whom I spoke and (Serbian) President (Aleksandar) Vucic to this," he said. "I think we could organize a broad program this year... 2023 is the year of the 185th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations," Shvydkoy said at a briefing at the Russian Embassy. He said the support of Russia by nearly 80 percent of Serbian citizens in the current conditions is a sincere and unconditional feeling. (@FahadShabbir) PRETORIA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) South Africa has told the United States that it wants unilateral American sanctions to be reviewed due to their impact on unrelated countries, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told Sputnik. "We always have a problem with unilateral sanctions and their impact on many countries that fall outside a particular conflict, so we have indicated to our friends in the United States that we really want them to relook at this imposition of unilateral sanctions, which is often not very helpful a strategy in resolving problems," she said in an interview. The approach has not worked for Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Cuba, the diplomat argued. She said South Africa might adhere to sanctions where it feels that international or humanitarian law is infringed, "but where we feel that these are merely unilateral impositions and don't have the authority of the United Nations, we do not believe that South Africa is bound by them," she added. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) The Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group (banned in Russia) shelled Syria's Idlib de-escalation zone once over the past 24 hours, Maj. Gen. Oleg Yegorov, deputy head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria, said at a briefing. "One shelling attack from the positions of the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group was registered in the Idlib de-escalation zone over the past day in the province of Latakia," Maj. Gen. Yegorov said. The Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides and Control over the Movement of Refugees in the Syrian Arab Republic was established in February 2016. Its tasks include the signing of agreements on illegal armed groups and individual settlements joining the regime of cessation of hostilities, as well as coordinating the delivery of humanitarian aid. ANKARA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th January, 2023) Turkey did not receive any conditions from Washington on Ankara's planned ground operation in northern Syria, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday. Earlier, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that Ankara was ready for a new military operation in northern Syria, it could begin at any moment. Damascus has repeatedly called the presence of Turkish forces, which carry out operations there against Kurdish formations in the border area of Syria, illegal and called on Ankara to withdraw its troops. "Today we held meetings at various levels. And we did not receive any conditions," Cavusoglu said, answering whether conditions had been set before Turkey for an operation in Syria to satisfy Ankara's offer to sell the F-16 aircraft to it. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said he had "very good and positive signals" that new weapons would be announced for Ukraine at a meeting of the country's Western allies in Germany on Friday Davos, Switzerland, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2023 ):Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said he had "very good and positive signals" that new weapons would be announced for Ukraine at a meeting of the country's Western allies in Germany on Friday. The former heavyweight boxer has been at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week as part of a large Ukrainian delegation that is lobbying for more financial aid and modern weapons. "Let's pay attention in two days," Klitschko told AFP on Wednesday, referring to a meeting of Ukraine's backers at the US-run Ramstein military base in Germany. "I hope it will be very positive for Ukraine. Unofficially, I have very good and positive signals." He added: "We need modern weapons. Ukrainian soldiers are very good, motivated in this war, but motivation is not enough. We need modern weapons to defend our homeland from aggression." Amid rising pressure on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to authorise the export of heavy German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine, Klitschko said they "would be very helpful." Scholz addressed delegates in person in Davos later in the afternoon, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky set to follow via videolink shortly afterwards. Klitschko also paid tribute to Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky who died in a helicopter crash outside Kyiv on Wednesday, calling him a "young, very creative, good person". He said Monastyrsky was flying to the scene of a Russian missile attack on the city of Dnipro on Saturday when his helicopter came down, killing 16 people including three children. "It's a big tragedy... In the next couple of days, we will know exactly the reason why this crash happened," he told AFP. - Financial aid - Elsewhere in Davos on Wednesday, Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska met with CEOs and international financial institutions to discuss reconstruction efforts. "A very clear message that we've heard is that we shouldn't be talking about what we will do when the war ends... We need to start talking about it today because tomorrow will be too late," she told reporters. She also appealed to people to donate money and gifts-in-kind to her foundation which is providing aid to war-hit Ukrainians from generators to sleeping bags, firewood and laptops. Living conditions remain extremely difficult for Ukrainians because of Russia's campaign of "ruining our infrastructure to ensure the country descends into darkness and cold," she said. "In many regions of our country, people are getting electricity only for a few hours a day and in those regions close to the frontlines they are completely cut off from any infrastructure whatsoever," she added. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said it was crucial to help the "Ukrainian people survive this winter", after Russian shelling destroyed critical infrastructure. Emergency repairs are needed for services including heating, water and electricity, the EBRD's chief economist, Beata Javorcik, told AFP in Davos. "It's very difficult to function particularly in winter without access to basic utilities," she said. The EBRD already financed 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) of investment last year to ensure that the country's heat and lights stayed on and trains kept running, Javorcik said. "By making the conditions as bearable as possible for the Ukrainian population, we are preventing another exodus of people and preserving human capital that will be needed during the reconstruction phase," she said. Ukraine's reconstruction needs were estimated at $349 billion by the World Bank in September, but a bank official has said the figure would be revised up this year. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) The US Department of Justice considered but abandoned the idea of involving FBI officers to monitor the process of searching for classified documents in the possessions of US President Joe Biden, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing sources. Instead, the two sides agreed that Biden's personal lawyers will inspect his homes and inform the Justice Department as soon as they find any other potentially classified records and organize their seizure by law enforcement agencies, the report said. The sources were cited as saying that the decision to leave the FBI out was in order to avoid complicating the probe's further stages , as well as due to the fact that Biden's attorneys agreed to cooperation with the investigation and handed over the retrieved classified papers promptly. Last week, US Attorney General Merrick Garland named Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden's mishandling of classified government documents. On January 9, US media reported that the president's personal attorneys discovered 10 classified documents pertaining to Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom at a Biden think-tank's office, prompting a Federal probe into the matter. A second batch of classified documents was discovered in the garage of the Biden residence in Wilmington, Delaware, while another one-page document was found in an adjacent room. Congressman Paul Gosar told Sputnik that Republican lawmakers will investigate the matter as a serious felony, which is punishable with a prison sentence of up to 10 years. USM Alum Vice Earns Key Role with National Credit Union Administration Wed, 01/18/2023 - 03:46pm | By: Van Arnold Describing himself as a servant at heart, University of Southern Mississippi (USM) alum Charles Vice relishes the opportunity to assist others as the Director of Financial and Technology Access for the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). In this new role, Vice will serve as the principal advisor to the NCUA Board on agency policy with respect to fintech, and fintech developments and transformation initiatives in the financial services sector, including cryptocurrency, blockchain, and distributed ledger technology. Initiatives include exploring methods to enhance the virtual examination and supervision process and promoting the development and deployment of technologies and innovations that can expand financial inclusion and equitable and affordable consumer access within the credit union system. Vice, who lives in Lexington, Ky., with his wife, Julia, notes that the NCUA is a leader in promoting the use of financial technology resources to expand access to financial services by members and potential members of the credit union industry. The NCUAs vision is to strengthen communities and protect consumers by ensuring equitable financial inclusion through a robust, safe, sound, and evolving credit union system. My new position gives me the opportunity to work with the NCUA Board, management, and employees to promote the use of technology in the industry to improve operations and ensure fair and equitable access to financial services, said Vice. He further explains that credit unions are unique in the financial services sector, as they are not-for-profit corporations and owned by their members. The industry adheres to an endearing motto: People serving people. This results in an industry that places a high value on its members and focuses on actions that help the members succeed, said Vice. There are some amazing stories of how credit union members were helped during difficult times, when unbanked and underbanked individuals were provided access to financial services, and when credit unions offered services to low and moderate-income communities when other companies moved to different markets. This is why I am so excited to serve the NCUA and the industry in my new position. Born in Anchorage, Ak., Vice refers to Biloxi, Miss., as his hometown. He attended USM from 1987 through 1990, earning a degree in finance and graduating with honors. Vice credits his time at USM for providing the blueprint to a successful career in the financial industry. At USM, I learned to study hard, network, and listen to wiser and more experienced people, said Vice. My professors were a valuable source of knowledge, wisdom, and advice as long as I listened to them. My mentors included the accounting, finance, marketing, computer science, and economic professors. Vice points out that being chosen as USMs Mississippi Young Bankers Convention Scholarship finalist in 1989 helped launch his 18-year career with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Before taking his current position, Vice also spent 14 years as the Commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Financial Institutions. Vice stresses that although time and distance do not allow for frequent visits to his alma mater, the University continues to have a profound impact on his life through close relationships with four notable alumni: Nancy Chandler, his sister, who lives in Vancleave, Miss., and teaches elementary education. Scott Nyary, a friend from high school, who lives Hattiesburg and leads the Lamar County School Districts English Language Institute. Kevin Olsen, another high school friend, who is a former U.S. Air Force pilot and currently serves as a pilot for a major airline. Bret Becton, Dean of USMs College of Business and Economic Development, a fraternity brother and close friend. It is always great to see our alumni doing well, and Charles has long been a leader in his field, said Becton. His ascent to this important leadership role is a fine example of what you can achieve with a Southern Miss Business education, and we are very proud to count Charles as one of our own. Vice explains that his last visit to the USM campus came in 2019 when Becton invited him to address a group of business students. I hope that many more opportunities arise for me to return to campus and engage the students, he said. They are the future of financial technology and are currently working in the field through various financial projects. As the Holy Land Coordination (HLC) holds its annual pilgrimage, Bishops from 11 countries are gathered in Jordan from 14-19 January to meet with and bring their solidarity to the local Christian community. By Lisa Zengarini A delegation of Bishops from eleven European and North American countries is in Jordan this week for the annual solidarity pilgrimage of the Holy Land Coordination (HLC) to the region. The visit runs from January 14 to 19 January. The delegation According to the Catholic Arabic agency Abouna, the delegation includes bishops from England, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, France, Spain, Slovakia, Italy, Germany and Iceland, along with representatives of the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE), the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Anglican Church and of several international ecclesial bodies. The pilgrimage has been held annually in January since the year 2000, with the aim of supporting the Holy Lands Christian communities as they experience the political and socio-economic hardships of living in the region. Leading the group this year is Bishop Nicholas Hudson, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and member of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW), which is entrusted with the organization of the annual event. The theme chosen for the visit is: "The role and importance of the Christian community in Jordan". The bishops kicked off the pilgrimage on Sunday, January 15, by celebrating Mass in several parishes in Amman, and the surrounding towns of Irbid, Ajloun, Jubehia, Fuheis e Sweifieh, where they then met local ecclesial communities. Challenges faced by Christians in Jordan During the meetings they listened to their stories and concerns over the many challenges facing Christians in Jordan, including the economic crisis, ongoing political tensions in the region, fear of Islamic fundamentalism, and declining Christian population. Christians in the country presently account for about 2 per cent of the population, 92 per cent of which is Sunni Muslim. In the past years the country has seen a growing influx of Christian refugees from Iraq and Syria. Although Jordan has a tradition of peaceful religious coexistence, and Christians enjoy freedom, in recent years the political the situation in neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Israel, and economic difficulties have put a strain on the political stability of the Hashemite Kingdom, causing more and more Jordan Christians, especially young people, to emigrate. A parish priest in the Christian stronghold of Fuheis, 20 kilometers North-West of Amman, told the delegation on Sunday that Jordan citizens who used to make up 25 per cent of the local Christian population have dropped to 2 per cent. Moreover, what used to be a secure country, has become more exposed to Islamic fundamentalism, resulting in increased insecurity. This is why the priest explained - the Catholic schools in Jordan give so much importance to educating young people to dialogue and tolerance, so as to prevent religious extremism from taking hold in the country and preserve its pluralistic social fabric. The programme of the HLC pilgrimage Other events scheduled during the HLC visit include meetings with the leaders of the Jordanian Catholic Church and of Caritas Jordan, with young people, and with Christian refugees from Iraq and Syria who are assisted by the local Church trough several programmes supported by the Universal Church. Also in the agenda are meetings with diplomats and Christian Members of Parliament to discuss wider developments across the Holy Land, and visits to the Baptism site on the River Jordan, to Mount Nebo and to the Our Lady of Peace Centre for disabled. At the end of the visit on Thursday the Coordination is expected to release a final statement. Read also 24/05/2022 Holy Land Coordination annual visit underway The Holy Land Coordination (HLC) is holding its annual pilgrimage this week. The visit, which normally takes place in January, and which has been suspended for two years due to ... Prayer, Pilgrimage and Persuasion The Holy Land Coordination was established in the late 1990s at the invitation of the Holy See. Its action is focused on three Ps: Prayer, Pilgrimage and Persuasion. Prayer is the framework of the annual meeting, with daily celebration of the Eucharist, often in different rites. The Pilgrimage to the local Catholic communities is the most important part of the meeting, in which the bishops sometimes also meet local political leaders. Finally, Persuasion refers to their work after they go back to their respective Countries, namely speaking to their own governments, parliamentarians, Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors and the media about a wide range of issues affecting the lives of Christians in the Holy Land. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the pilgrimages were suspended in 2020 and 2021 , and resumed in May last year with a visit to Israel and Palestine. Open Doors releases its annual World Watch List 2023 confirming that one out of every seven Christians in the world suffers high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. By Lisa Zengarini Although numbers havent changed substantially from the previous year, 2022 was the worst year for Christians worldwide, due to an intensifying level of violence discrimination and exclusion, according to the latest World Watch List released by Open Doors, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians. The report, which was presented on Wednesday at the Italian Parliament in Rome, ranks the fifty countries where Christians face the worst persecution. Read also 12/01/2023 Advancing religious freedom despite persecutions on the rise Despite religious persecution surging globally, the Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nury Turkel, talks about ways to combat the phenomenon and ... North Korea first in the list According to the data reported, more than 360 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. Similar numbers were recorded last year. However, the score of the indicators in the fifty countries at risk is growing. North Korea appears again as the most hostile place for Christians to live, due to the new Law against Reactionary Thinking" introduced in 2021, which has led to an increase in arrests. Christians have no freedom of worship, and if discovered practicing their faith, face labour camps, if not death. Even owning a Bible is a serious crime and will be severely punished. Afghanistan in ninth position In the previous report, Pyongyang had been replaced by Afghanistan, following the Talebani takeover in August 2021. The latters ranking has dropped to the ninth place, not because of any improvement, but for the simple reason that most Christians present there have fled the country. Conversion from Islam to another faith is punished with death in Afghanistan. The tiny local Christian community is, therefore, forced to live in clandestinity. North Korea is followed by Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Lybia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Iran, all of which are facing either war or internal strife, or are under authoritarian regimes, as in the case of Eritrea and Iran.. Read also 18/01/2023 Pope calls for prayers for Nigerian priest and suffering Ukrainians Pope Francis is urging everyone to pray for the soul of a Nigerian priest who was murdered last Sunday, and to continue to remember and pray for the suffering people of Ukraine. Nigeria One of the countries of most concern is Nigeria, where Christians are targeted by the Boko Haram insurgency, Muslim Fulani herders, along with bandits, as in the most recent incident in the Diocese of Minna where a priest was burned to death and another injured by unknown assailants. In terms of absolute numbers, Christians killed in 2022 have slightly decreased from 5,621 to 5,898. Also, the number of churches attacked or closed decreased by more than half from over five thousand in 2021 to just over two thousand last year. China has played a major role in this cutback, with one thousand incidents against three thousand in the previous year. Read also 17/01/2023 Pope laments attack on Pentecostal church in DR Congo Pope Francis expresses his condolences for the victims of an attack on a Pentecostal church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Drastic increase in abductions of Christians On the other hand, however, 2022 saw a drastic increase in abductions of Christians, from 3,829 to 5,259. Almost five thousand were concentrated in three countries: Nigeria, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where in recent days Islamists have claimed a bomb attack against a Pentecostal church in the eastern Congolese town of Kasindi, which killed 14 people and injured 39. According to the data, tens of thousands of Christians have been attacked in several countries across the world, and almost 30,000 incidents have been recorded. Read also 14/01/2023 India: Religious leaders gather in solidarity with persecuted Christians The Archdiocese of Delhi hosts an encounter of around 300 religious leaders to show solidarity with Christians in India who are currently being asked to renounce their faith or ... India In India, where Narendra Modis Hindu-nationalist government has curtailed the rights of members of other faiths, a total of 1,750 of Christians were arrested without trial 2022. Open harassment is often accompanied by more subtle pressures, including daily abuses at work-places, at school, in public facilities. Though difficult to quantify, they have a strong impact on communities and contribute to forcing Christians to displace internally and internationally. Myanmar This is particularly evident in the Middle East and in the Sahel region in Africa, due to jihadist insurgency, and also in Iran and Myanmar, where since the military coup in February 2021 the juntas army has been targeting churches. The latest incident occurred on 15 January, when the Tatmadaw burned down an historic Catholic church in the village of Chan Thar, in the Diocese of Mandalay. According to Open Doors, in several countries, displacement is often a deliberate strategy aimed at wiping out the Christian presence there. Religious persecution against women Other heinous but hidden forms of persecution target Christian women: thousands are victims of rape to shame their families and communities, or of forced marriages aimed at forced conversion. The report records only a handful of cases: over 2,000 rapes and 717 forced marriages. However, this is only the top of the iceberg, as for social and cultural reasons most cases are not reported to authorities. This is why Open Doors in recent years has been investigating into gender-specific religious persecution. The Vatican will co-host a two-day symposium from 23-24 January bringing together health and human rights experts to focus on better serving those with leprosy and Neglected Tropical Diseases so no one may be left behind in our societies. By Thaddeus Jones The Vatican will host a two-day symposium focusing on how to achieve the goal of "zero leprosy" in our world and establish societies where no one is left behind due to Hansen's Disease and other NTDs (Neglected Tropical Diseases). Organizers of the 23-24 January meeting include the French Raoul Follereau Fondation, the Italian Association Amici di Raoul Follereau and Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansens Disease) Initiative, in collaboration with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. They will co-host the International Symposium at the Vatican that has as its theme, Leave No One Behind, with meetings taking place at the Augustinianum Patristics Institute. Top experts in the field will be participating, bringing together health and human rights experts, NGOs, religious organizations, persons affected by Hansens disease (commonly known as leprosy) and other NTDs. Among the international speakers are: Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Mr. Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Alice Cruz, UN Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members, as well as representatives of the hosting organizations, including Mr. Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and chairman of The Nippon Foundation. Leprosy is curable with multidrug therapy, but left untreated can result in permanent disability. An estimated 3 to 4 million people are thought to be living with some form of disability as a result of leprosy. Many myths and misunderstandings surround the disease, and even though it is curable, those recovered and even their family members can face discrimination that limtis their opportunities for education, employment and full participation in society. The symposium marks a follow-up to a similar International Symposium held in 2016 titled. In the years leading up to the latest symposium, the Covid pandemic weighed heavily on leprosy services, disrupting monitoring and assuring patients receive proper treatment and disability care. The latest symposium will look at how to recover from these setbacks by assuring people the care they need and showcasing the latest best practices to address their needs, with a special focus on the role religious organizations are playing. The symposium will also feature a launch ceremony for the "Global Appeal 2023 to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy." The annual appeal focuses on leprosy and address the discrimination that can result in order to make more inclusive societies. This years Appeal is being endorsed by the organizers and participants of the symposium and will be read out by Miss World Brazil 2022, Leticia Frota, who has been a great promoter in the fight against Hansens disease in her country. (File photo) Protesters gather around an army vehicle as they demonstrate in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (AFP or licensors) Around 50 women have been kidnapped in Burkina Faso's Sahel region, as insurgents continue to make living conditions unbearable. By Vatican News staff writer At least 50 women have been abducted by suspected insurgents in Burkina Fasos northern Sahel region. The women were said to have been kidnapped between 12-13 January, while searching for fruit a few kilometres away from their village. Rodolphe Sorgho, the Sahel governor, announced the development in a statement on Monday. The Governor of the Sahel region brings to the attention of the public that on January 12 and 13, 2023, about fifty women were respectively kidnapped by terrorist armed groups at about 15 kilometres from Aribinda (village of Liki) and in another locality located next to West of Aribinda, in the province of Soum, the statement reads. While they had gone out in search of wild fruits, these wives, mothers and daughters were unfairly taken by armed men," he said. "As soon as their disappearance was reported, research was undertaken in order to find all of these innocent victims safe and sound. Long-running insurgency Burkina Faso is one of several countries in West Africa battling insurgency. Amid the failure of successive governments to effectively curb insurgency, the country experienced two military coups in 2022, causing political instability. Violence linked to Islamic extremism has resulted in the deaths of thousands of persons, while more than 2.7 million people have been displaced across the Sahel, where the insecurity has affected agriculture and contributed to rising hunger levels. Many parts of the country have been cut off and are controlled by insurgents in recent months, causing acute food shortages, and becoming increasingly dangerous to deliver supplies to citizens. Relatives of the missing women told Reuters that the victims were scouring the surrounding bush for food because there was no longer enough to feed their families in the village. The Sahel region governor expressed his solidarity with the families of the victims, and said the public authorities would stick to their sides in these particularly difficult times and remain committed to implementing a happy outcome of the situation. Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov met with Neila Nouira Gongi, Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy of Tunisia in the UAE, Azernews reports, citing a tweet by the Azerbaijani minister. In the UAE, we discussed the issues arising from our cooperation on the supply of #CrudeOil with Neila Nouira Gongi, Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy of Tunisia. Tunisia is interested in exchanging practices with Azerbaijan regarding #GreenEnergy and #EnergyRegulation, the minister tweeted. Besides, at the meeting, the ministers discussed the cooperation on the supply of crude oil, and the Tunisian minister expressed an interest in exchanging practices with Azerbaijan on green energy and energy regulation. Flowers and toys are placed in a makeshift memorial in front of a residential building in Dnipro (AFP or licensors) Caritas Donetsk is providing support to victims of a Russian missile attack that struck an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Saturday. By Christopher Wells The destruction of a large apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro is a great tragedy, according to Mila Leonova, the communications officer for Caritas Donetsk (Ukraine). More than forty people were killed and scores more were wounded when a Russian missile struck the complex on Saturday part of a larger attack that also targeted the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa. Some twenty people are still missing and presumed dead. A risky operation Caritas volunteers are taking part in a risky operation to provide assistance consisting of both physical aid, such as hot meals, clothing, and housing, as well as psychological support for victims and aid workers. We need to understand how we can help these people, said Ms. Leonova, who noted that volunteers are working day and night to provide relief. She added that many residents of Dnipro know people who lived in the building, which also housed refugees who had evacuated from more dangerous parts of the country. They died in our city, Ms. Leonova said. Its a really great sadness. Focused on helping Asked about how people are responding to the tragedy, Ms. Leonova said residents and volunteers do not have time for thoughts of anger or revenge, but instead are focused on helping. We need to give love [to] these people who were damaged after this tragedy, and this is our main thing. Our main goal is, How can we help you?" she said. "We dont have time or energy to think destructive thoughts or have destructive feelings because we need to give love and support for these people who were destroyed. Dnipro shows its heart In an interview with Vatican News' Svitlana Dukhovych, Ms. Leonova said, Certainly, the whole city Dnipro showed a very big heart, because immediately after the attack almost every resident was there. She explained, The building that was hit is very big; it is in a residential complex, with which many personal stories are connected, because almost every person in Dnipro had relatives there, or friends, acquaintances." And that's why, when we see all these photos, hear the stories of the people who died, they touch our hearts, because these are familiar faces, people we know. And among the victims are many displaced people who fled the war from the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions. In the face of such devastation, Ms. Leonova said, we have no strength left for emotion, the heart simply cannot absorb so much pain and cannot even accept it, that this is a reality, that such a thing is possible in our time. People still cannot accept it. We can only do something to help overcome the consequences of this tragedy, to support these people who are now simply in shock. Need for housing On its Facebook page, Caritas Donetsk noted that in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, mobile aid centres were deployed, allowing victims to keep warm, to eat, and to receive a variety of help. Volunteers offered warm meals and drinking water, and provided psychological support for victims. In the long term, Caritas reported that local authorities have stated the greatest need is restoration and repairs in order to provide housing for victims of the attack. According to data provided by Dnipro authorities, some 236 apartments are beyond repair. E-mobility Seminar Sheds Light on Vietnams EV Market Vietnams emerging electric vehicle (EV) sector holds a lot of promise but also faces a number of challenges. These were discussed in depth at an e-mobility seminar in Ho Chi Minh City by a number of experts in the field. Heres what they had to say. An e-mobility seminar held at the Green Economy Forum and Exhibition 2022, has seen industry insiders confirm Vietnams potential with respect to its EV industry. The seminar compared Vietnam to its regional peers, with guest speaker, Laurent Genet, the CEO of Audi, noting that by 2030 up to 37 percent of the car market in Singapore and 30 percent in India would be electric. However, attendees also heard that in Vietnam there were a number of challenges the EV market would need to overcome before it could reach comparable numbers. Demand for electric vehicles in Vietnam The car market in Vietnam is growing exceptionally fast. For every 1000 people in Vietnam, there are at least 22 cars. Also, according to Statista, in 2022, just over 50 percent of Vietnamese people expressed an intention to purchase or lease a new car. At the same time, transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Vietnam, accounting for 19.3 percent of annual emissions. Furthermore, according to IQAir, by the end of 2021, the concentration of PM2.5 fine dust in Vietnam was 4.9 times higher than the WHOs recommended level. This puts Vietnam at number 36 worldwide in terms of air pollution and creates a burden on Vietnamese peoples health. As a result, Vietnamese consumers are looking for carbon free transport alternatives. In addition, the Vietnamese government has set a goal of building smart cities in 41 localities, in which EVs will fare far better than many other types of automobiles, at meeting technological and environmental standards. But in order for Vietnams EV market to truly come into its own, the industry will need some support. Government support for a EV market development The Vietnamese government has recently taken clear action to improve the penetration of EVs in Vietnams car market, attendees at the seminar heard. For instance, before 2022, EVs that were imported were subject to special consumption taxes ranging from 15 to 70 percent. This, however, was changed on March 1, 2022, when the excise tax rates for EVs were reduced by up to 12 percent. In addition, the Prime Minister has issued a Decree laying out a road map for reducing the registration fees on electric vehicles. Specifically, within three years of the Decree being issued, the registration fee for battery-powered electric cars will be eliminated. Until then, the registration fee will be half that of petrol and diesel cars with the same number of seats. There are, however, further steps that can be taken. Singapore, for instance, has launched a series of initiatives since 2011, led largely by the Land Transport Authority (LTA). These measures include the provision of charging infrastructure, the New Vehicular Emissions Scheme, and rebate schemes for buyers of electric cars. Similarly, in India, to boost demand for EVs as well as motivate manufacturers to invest in EV research and development, the government has launched a number of initiatives. These include a battery swapping policy, establishing special electric mobility zones, and tax incentives. By comparison, Vietnam has been somewhat slower to adjust policy to promote the development of the EV sector, however, it is now pushing forward. Vietnams homegrown electric vehicles Vietnams EV market has welcomed products from major global brands, namely Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Honda, and Peugeot. It has, however, also started producing its own electric vehicles too. In 2021, domestic carmaker VinFast officially handed over its first electric car making it the first Vietnamese-branded electric car company in the country. Since then, VinFast has reported the handover of 4,200 electric cars. This is remarkable growth compared to the 190 registered electric cars in Vietnam in 2019 which were all made overseas. VinFasts participation in the EV market, as a domestic business, has also firmly encouraged the expansion of the EV sector and its supporting industries. Nevertheless, there are still barriers that the EV industry faces. Challenges facing the EV market in Vietnam Customer awareness Electric cars are often seen as inconvenient for traveling long distances and in their early days this was the case. It has, however, changed as technology has advanced, but this perception, in many ways, has not. Developing a public awareness campaign around the current abilities of electric vehicles may be necessary to foster growth in the sector. A lack of variety Electric vehicles that can satisfy the price, capacity, and type of vehicle that Vietnamese consumers are looking for are not widely available. Expanding product lines and extending distribution networks may help to overcome this issue. Charging infrastructure Charging stations are not yet ubiquitous in Vietnam. The current network needs to be extended in line with customer needs and existing power infrastructure. This means they should be placed at regular intervals along popular routes but also near transmission lines with the capacity to meet their electricity needs. A lack of incentives Though the government has created incentives for consumers if they buy an electric car, these are not yet sufficient. Petrol vehicles, for example, are still more convenient and relatively cheap to run. Additional taxes could make these vehicles less attractive and subsequently steer consumers toward electric vehicles. Investing in Vietnams EV market Overall the e-mobility seminar in Ho Chi Minh City saw experts emphasize that technology and infrastructure would need to be at the heart of Vietnams EV revolution. This, however, will require vast investment which presents a unique opportunity for international car markers and financiers. In 2021, Vietnam Briefing, took an in depth look at Vietnams electric vehicle market and the opportunities for investors and many of these claims still ring true. FTAs as well as low production costs are still creating a fertile environment for investment that automotive manufacturers may be able to take full advantage of. For more information see: Why Investors Should Consider Vietnams Electric Vehicle Market Two journalists in Azerbaijan are separately fighting accusations that they believe are unwarranted. Jamil Mammadli, a freelance journalist who works in Khachmaz district, was detained briefly Wednesday on "hooliganism" charges, while in the capital, Baku, chief editor of the independent news outlet Xural TV, Avaz Zeynalli, is experiencing health issues while in pre-trial detention. In Mammadli's case, he says he was detained as a suspect but that police "decided to release [me], while the investigation is pending." As a condition of that release, the journalist has been ordered to remain in his home province. The investigation centers on a physical altercation between Mammadli and another man following a car accident on Dec. 15, 2022. Mammadli said a driver hit the vehicle that he was a passenger in, and that police who were in the area filmed an argument that followed. "I told the person hitting my car to leave. It is seen in the video that he attacked first, he hit us. But they accuse me of intentionally fighting with them, preventing them from leaving, beating them without any motive and then sending [them] away," Mammadli said. While Mammadli acknowledges the disagreement took place, he says he believes the video is being used as an excuse to bring charges against him in retaliation for critical reporting. The journalist, who used to be a regional correspondent for VOA's sister network Radio Liberty, says numerous accusations have been leveled against him since March 2022. At that time, he was sentenced to a year and a half corrective labor during which time the state withholds a percentage of his salary after the head of the Guba region, Ziyaddin Aliyev, accused him of slander. Those charges were related to videos the journalist broadcast on his YouTube channel about the Guba executive branch. Police have confirmed to VOA they are investigating the journalist on charges of "hooliganism." If convicted, he could be jailed for three years. The Ministry of Internal Affairs denied that the case against Mammadli is politically motivated. There is enough complaint and an expert opinion for launching a criminal case," a spokesperson for the ministry's press service told VOA. "Currently, investigative actions are being carried out. As a result of the investigation, it will be proven whether he is guilty or not." The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says that journalists in Azerbaijan risk prison on "absurd pretenses" if they resist pressure. Additionally, media laws are considered increasingly repressive, the watchdog says. Avaz Zeynalli In Zeynalli's case, the Xural TV owner has been held in pre-trial detention since his arrest in September on bribery charges. A Baku court on January 5 extended the journalist's pretrial detention for four months. Many rights activists say the case is an example of authorities using entrapment. The journalist's wife, Melahet Gusuri, says that Zeynalli is in need of urgent medical care related to his diabetes. Gusuri said that she appealed to the head of the State Security Service, as well as the prosecutor general and the ombudsman. In her letter to authorities, Gusuri wrote, "The unjustified tensions that he is experiencing is a serious threat to his health. Even a one-day delay will cause serious complications. I request that you use your power to take the necessary steps to have Avaz Zeynalli undergo an urgent medical examination." Gusuri is not permitted to visit or speak with her husband. A court order on his detention blocks family contact, she said. "Our appeal to remove the ban was not approved. We have repeatedly submitted petitions and they have not been granted," she said. VOA's calls to the State Security public relations department went unanswered. A spokesperson for the Azerbaijan Ombudsman's Office told VOA that the office met with Zeynalli's wife on Tuesday and that her appeal request has been processed. The spokesperson added that on the same day, the ombudsman's National Preventive Group met with Zeynalli in the detention center, and that the journalist's lawyer and family were informed of the meeting. Zeynalli, whose media outlet broadcasts on YouTube, covers human rights abuses and corruption investigations and is often critical of the government. He is accused of extorting money from a businessman who has been jailed, in return for favorable coverage. Zeynalli has denied the charge and in court said he believes he was arrested on a political order. According to him, the accusations are fabricated in order to punish him for his journalistic activities and criticism of the government. His wife believes the extension of his pre-trial detention is the result of unnecessary delays in the case, including the timing of a forensic examination of evidence. "For four months, there was no investigation, and no evidence and/or facts were revealed. It seems that by scheduling this forensic examination, they created the basis for extending his pre-trial detention for another three months," she said. Her husband's renewed pre-trial detention period is in place until April. Editors note: This article has been updated to include comments from the press services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ombudsman's Office, which came after publication. This story originated in VOA's Azeri Service. A French Irish citizen held in Iran since October 2022 and now on a dry hunger strike to protest his detention will survive no more than a few days unless he is freed, his sister said on Wednesday. Bernard Phelan, a Paris-based travel consultant and one of seven French nationals held by Iran, was arrested in October while traveling and is being held in Mashhad in northeastern Iran. The 64-year-old's family has said he started a dry hunger strike on Monday, refusing water. He has been refusing food since the start of the year. His sister Caroline Masse-Phelan told AFP on Wednesday that her brother was an innocent man detained for reasons "beyond our comprehension." She said his health condition meant he had to be released urgently. "It's a matter of days. He's an innocent man caught in the middle of I don't know what. He loves Iran, he is 64, sick, and wants to go home," she said. "He is showing serious signs of physical and psychological exhaustion," said a French diplomatic source, adding he was in a "critical state." The Iranian authorities have refused to release Phelan on medical grounds despite repeated requests from the French and Irish authorities, the source said. "I think he is part of a group of Europeans imprisoned for political reasons ... of which I know nothing," his sister added. "We have nothing to do with this story." Phelan is one of two dozen foreigners held in Iran, according to activists, who describe the detainees as hostages seized to extract concessions from the West. Phelan was traveling through Mashhad during the ongoing protests against Iran's clerical regime when he was arrested. He is being held in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. His sister said he suffers from a heart condition that requires medical treatment. The hunger and thirst strikes are putting his life in danger but "he is doing this because he can't take it anymore," she said. "These are the only weapons," she added, saying that it was on his urging that she had moved to make the case public. Phelan is in contact with the crisis unit of the French foreign ministry, which passes on the messages from his family, but requests for direct communication with the family have been turned down by the Iranian authorities. Phelan received his first French consular visit on January 9, after repeated requests, the diplomatic source added. Activists fear that the current downgrading of contact between Western governments and Iran over the protest crackdown has lessened the prospect of the foreign detainees being released soon. Siamak Namazi, a U.S. citizen of Iranian descent who was arrested in October 2015, this week started a seven-day hunger strike as he implored President Joe Biden to put greater priority on his case. "Today the whole world is witnessing how atrociously this regime can respond to those who dare demand their basic rights," Namazi said. A helicopter crash Wednesday outside of the Ukrainian capital killed at least 14 people, including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi and several senior ministry officials in the aircraft and a child on the ground. Officials said the crash occurred near a kindergarten in Brovary, a suburb east of Kyiv. It was not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to go down on a foggy morning, whether it was an accident or war-related, although no fighting had been reported recently in the capital region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post he had directed authorities to investigate the circumstances surrounding the crash. Zelenskyy, speaking by video to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the crash had a broad connection to the war with Russia, adding: "The war has many dimensions, not just on the battlefields." Zelenskyy called the crash a terrible tragedy. He said the exact number of casualties was still being determined. The pain is unspeakable, Zelenskyy said. U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden expressed their deepest condolences about the crash, saying, We grieve with all those who are mourning this heartbreaking tragedy. They said Monastyrskyi and his aides were deeply involved in the preservation of Ukraines democracyboth its defense against Russian aggression, and the vital work of reforms to strengthen Ukraines institutions through this war and into the future. Monastyrskyi oversaw Ukraine's police and emergency services and is the most senior official to die since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago. Early official reports gave differing numbers of casualties. Later, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said at least 14 people were killed, including nine aboard the helicopter, and a child on the ground. It said 25 people were injured, including 11 children. Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksii Kuleba told Ukrainian television that emergency services were still identifying remains and that the death toll could rise. The Ukraine National Police said the crash killed five Interior Ministry officials, one national police official and three crew members on the helicopter. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called the 42-year-old Monastyrskyi "a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people during [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's illegal invasion." She said she was "struck by his determination, optimism and patriotism." The crash occurred just days after a Russian strike on an apartment building in southeastern Ukraine killed 45 people, including six childrenthe deadliest attack on civilians since last spring. "Another very sad day todaynew losses," said Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, dabbing teary eyes and pinching her nose as she responded to the news while at the World Economic Forum. The forum held a moment of silence after opening the session to honor the Ukrainian officials killed. Putin, speaking to a group of veterans in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, defended last Februarys invasion by offering a variation on arguments he has used previously. He said Moscow's actions were intended to stop a "war" that has raged since 2014 in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists have battled Ukrainian forces. "All what we are doing today as part of the special military operation is an attempt to stop this war. This is the meaning of our operationprotecting people who live on those territories," he said. Ukraine and its Western allies, including the U.S., have rejected Russia's justifications for the war, saying that Kyiv posed no threat to Moscow and the invasion was unprovoked. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. Cameroon's government deployed at least 100 troops Wednesday to Gayama, a village on the border with Nigeria, after clashes between Cameroonian separatists and Nigerian herders left at least 12 people dead. Cameroonian officials say the fighting broke out six days ago, after herders who crossed the border in search of food for their cattle refused to pay taxes the rebels demanded. Abdoulahi Aliou, the highest-ranking government official in Menchum, the administrative unit in charge of Gayama, said the rebels killed two herders immediately upon their refusal to pay. The surviving herders, who are ethnic Fulani from Taraba and Benue states, returned home and organized a counterattack. Aliou said the herders came back in huge numbers, attacked separatist camps, and killed at least four fighters. Six civilians, including the traditional ruler of Munkep village and his son, were also killed in the clashes. Authorities say at least 20 civilians were injured, scores of cattle were killed, and homes were torched. The Roman Catholic Church in Menchum says many civilians fled Gayama and neighboring villages to avoid getting caught in clashes between separatists and the arriving troops. The governor of Cameroon's Northwest region, Deben Tchoffo, said civilians should not fear the military. Speaking by telephone from the region's capital, Bamenda, he said villagers should help the troops by denouncing rebels hiding in their communities. "The future is bright, provided we are united against the agents of chaos that are trying to hijack our youths," Tchoffo said. "The armed forces are bringing themselves close to the population. That is the reason why, compared to last year, things are becoming more and more normal in the Northwest region, even if we still have some hotspots." Tchoffo said Cameroon's military would protect civilians in all border villages. Separatists on social media, including WhatsApp and Facebook, acknowledged they have been battling Nigerian herders, who they say should respect their orders. This is not the first time Cameroon's anglophone separatists have attacked Nigerians along the border. Last June, villagers in western Akwaya town said armed men believed to be rebels carried out a series of attacks that killed at least 30 people, including five Nigerian merchants. The separatists have been fighting since 2017 to carve out an English-speaking state from French-speaking majority Cameroon. The U.N. says the conflict has left more than 3,500 people dead and 750,000 displaced. Ukrainians were used to 24-hour-a-day-seven-day-a-week uninterrupted electricity. It wasnt until Russia began bombing their power plants that the countrys new normal began. Even in the capital, Kyiv, there are daily power outages. Sometimes its on a schedule, and other times, when there is an attack, the lights just go out. But after months of Russian attacks on Ukraines infrastructure, some locals are trying to rebuild their small businesses by way of emergency services power supplies as the violence continues. Outside of central Kyiv, emergency service workers man one of the government tents set up to provide residential neighborhoods with electricity and internet. They cant light the surrounding buildings, but people can sit in one of the tents and work or catch up on their social media using a dedicated internet dish. Nazer Senychak, 29, moves between his home in Lviv, in Ukraines west, and his girlfriends apartment in Kyiv for his job in IT. Like many residents, when describing life in the Ukrainian capital, he oscillates between sanguinity and fear. He said hes gotten used to the bombings and hes certain the war will end this year. He is also concerned that a missile could hit his building. There were a few times when we heard very loud explosions here during the massive rocket attacks in October, the 10th if Im not mistaken, he said. But in general, it feels okay. Russian attacks on Ukraines infrastructure began in October, with massive strikes across the country, killing civilians and knocking out power structures. Since then, the devastation has continued. On Saturday, a strike hit a residential building in the central city of Dnipro, killing more than 40 people, including children. At the Kyiv power center, locals say the daily grind of surviving the war is exhausting. The world needs to know what is happening here, like that attack in Dnipro, said Victoria Kozlova, 51. It is impossible to understand how this could happen in the 21st century. Before the war, Kozlova had a small advertising agency, which quickly went under after Russia invaded in February 2023. Then, after spending months in Western Ukraine and the Czech Republic, she grew tired of being displaced and unemployed, so she returned home to rebuild her business. Now, she is back home in Kyiv, trudging up 12 flights of stairs to her apartment when the power is out. There are air sirens. I can hear explosions, notes Kozlova. And, of course, I feel the lack of electricity. Turkeys F-16 fighter jet request from the United States and the possibility of another operation by Turkish military in northern Syria are expected to top the agenda during talks in Washington when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu meets Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday. Analysts say any F-16 deal would be tied to Turkeys timely support for NATOs expansion and no military action in northern Syria. Turkey made an official request to purchase 40 F-16 jets and nearly 80 modernization kits from the United States in 2021. Biden administration officials have expressed support for the proposed sale, subject to approval by Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the administration is preparing to begin consultations with Congress to seek approval for the $20 billion sale. James Jeffrey, chair of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, argues that any prospective support from Congress would depend on cooperation from NATO member Turkey on two issues: No military incursion into northern Syria and not blocking the admission of Finland and Sweden to NATO. The opposition in the Senate will probably require senior levels of the administration weighing in with security arguments. I'm not so sure if they're ready to go that far, but I cannot imagine them doing a whole lot to help Turkey get F-16s if we dont see a movement on those two issues, he told VOA. Former head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) General Joseph Votel, who oversaw the military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria also known as ISIS or Daesh agrees. Answering VOAs questions in writing, Votel said the United States must tie any F-16 deal to Turkish support for NATO expansion and an agreement to not further de-stabilize northern Syria with military action. Twenty-eight NATO members have already ratified Sweden and Finlands admission to the alliance. Turkey and Hungary have not. Hungary says it will do so in early February, leaving Turkey as the sole holdout. Turkey expects Finland and particularly Sweden to do more to crack down on Kurdish militants and members of the Gulen movement, which Ankara accuses of being behind an attempted coup in 2016. F-35s for Turkeys regional rival Greece According to the WSJ report, the Biden administration is separately planning to seek congressional approval to sell F-35 jets to Turkeys regional rival and NATO ally Greece. Turkey was removed from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program, where it was once a production partner, due to its purchase of S-400 missile defense systems from Russia. U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to comment on the potential sale Friday at the daily press briefing. Senate Foreign Relations Commitee Chairman Bob Menendez welcomed news of the proposed sale of F-35 aircraft to Greece, which he referred to as a trusted NATO ally in a written statement first reported by Reuters and shared with VOA. He underlined that the United States and Greece share principles including collective defense, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Menendez opposes the proposed sale of F-16s jets to Turkey. Until [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan ceases his threats, improves his human rights record at home including by releasing journalists and political opposition and begins to act like a trusted ally should, I will not approve this sale, he said. Syria agenda U.S. military leaders continue to be worried about possible military action by Turkey in northern Syria against the Kurdish YPG, part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla noted that more than two dozen ISIS detention centers are secured by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Anything we can do to de-escalate the situation and prevent that incursion by the Turks would be important, he said last month during a news briefing. Former head of CENTCOM Votel says the chances of some sort of military activity by Turkey are likely, even though it may be limited in scope. He points to previous decisions by Erdogan, saying this generally plays well with his loyalists. Reconciliation efforts between Turkey and the Syrian government are also expected to come up during the talks in Washington. Turkeys Cavusoglu recently said he could meet his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, in February. The United States has already made its position clear, saying it does not support countries upgrading their relationship with the Assad regime in Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reportedly said last week that talks with Turkey should be based on the aims of ending the occupation of Syrian land and halting support for what he called terrorism. The Wilson Centers Jeffrey, who also served as the State Department Special Representative for Syria Engagement until 2020, argues that the Syrian president is unwilling to make any deals and that the talks are being pushed by Russia, with no compromises on the security situation in Syria or on the return of the refugees, which are two important concerns from Turkeys perspective. We shouldn't read anything into this, particularly given the looming election in Turkey. I would rather wait until after the elections to see what the real Turkish policy is, Jeffrey told VOA. Taixing, a city of nearly 1 million people in Jiangsu Province, is richly red in Chinese Communist Party history, landmarks and revolutionary traditions. On Wenchang West Road, there's a noteworthy new marker: the crematorium attached to the Taixing Funeral Parlor. According to local residents, there are at least seven furnaces transforming hundreds of individually labeled corpses into ashes each day. So busy is the Taixing Funeral Parlor that the body of Jun Cheng's uncle, believed to be about 80 years old when he died December 29, remained at home for four days before cremation. Mr. Z, as family asked VOA Mandarin to refer to him as a courtesy, lived only two or three days after contracting COVID-19. "My uncle couldn't breathe well, and he suffocated himself alive, with white lungs," said Cheng. "The local Hongqiao Hospital refused to state that the death was caused by coronavirus disease." White lungs refer to how COVID-19 appears on a scan or an X-ray. The National Health Commission announced on December 25 that it would stop publishing daily numbers of people infected with the virus and numbers of deaths. Instead, Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would release the epidemic data. Authorities now report nearly 60,000 COVID-related deaths since lifting the "zero-COVID" policy. According to the criteria set by Chinese authorities, only pneumonia and respiratory failure caused by the virus are classified as COVID deaths. But when formerly tough-talking China reversed its zero-COVID policy on December 7 after almost three years of lockdowns, involuntary quarantines and travel restrictions, the virus rampaged through the population as Beijing spoke vaguely of "living with" the disease. Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, told VOA Mandarin that the emergence of variants having significantly higher transmissibility than Wuhan-1, particularly delta in 2021 and omicron in 2022, made China's reliance on a "zero-COVID" policy difficult by late 2021 and impossible by late 2022. "Without an effective and comprehensive vaccination program in 2021 and 2022, and with the abandonment of its zero-COVID policy at the end of 2022, China now likely will suffer catastrophic impacts," he said. "China failed expensively and spectacularly." Ebright said that even as other countries in the region such as Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia conducted widespread vaccination campaigns with particular emphasis on vulnerable populations such as the elderly, China insisted on pursuing zero-COVID. The policy was President Xi Jinping's signature public health measure of the pandemic. The number of deaths "can be said to be an eternal mystery," Cheng, a retired businessman, told VOA Mandarin. "They died for no reason, and they are not even statistics now." Although China's National Health Commission disclosed on January 12 that there had been close to 60,000 COVID-related deaths, which dwarfed the previous total of several dozen, experts contend the toll is likely even higher. Airfinity, a U.K.-based predictive health analytics data company, is expecting the toll to peak at 36,000 deaths per day on January 26 and estimates 608,000 cumulative deaths from December 1 through January 17. China's state-run Xinhua news agency said the optimization of China's COVID response policies is science-based, effective and consistent with the country's national realities. At the time of publication, none of the funeral homes and hospitals mentioned here has responded to requests for interviews or questions from VOA Mandarin. A very long line On January 2, Cheng's family members arrived at the crematorium in darkness at 5 a.m. Cheng said that the queue formed an S-shape, and there was no special car to pick up and drop off corpses. When the family joined the queue, they carried Mr. Z's body, and as a group, were assigned number 88. They emerged into sunlight at 9:30 a.m. with Mr. Z's ashes. Cheng said that other people waiting to have a relative cremated told him, "The hospital said, 'We dare not write the cause of death as COVID. If we do, we will be dismissed.'" He told VOA Mandarin, "All Chinese are deceiving themselves and others." According to staffers of Xuanbao Funeral Home in Taixing, their workload has doubled or maybe tripled from what it was before the epidemic. Eleven of them worked from midnight to noon or even 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. for 11 consecutive days, said one who spoke to VOA Mandarin on the condition of anonymity because they wanted to keep their job. 'It doesn't make sense' In Tianjin, a port city of some 16 million people in northeastern China that is celebrated for its fried dough twists known as mahua, Mr. X is bewildered by the strangeness of his days and overcome with grief. Like many people interviewed for this report, he did not want to be identified to avoid attracting official attention. He told VOA Mandarin that on December 5, he learned that everyone in a friend's family in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, found out they were infected. Mr. X wondered aloud to VOA Mandarin, "Why hadn't the outbreak happened earlier? Why all of a sudden, was the entire country, even a small village in a corner, infected? "It doesn't make sense," he added. "The news was opaque. All parties concealed it, resulting in a lot of public speculation and lies." With a sigh, Mr. X said, "I'm just kind of full of grief and anger, thinking that my father is gone and left forever." His father started to have a fever about December 17, and his blood oxygen saturation decreased. He entered Tianjin Hospital for emergency treatment on December 25 and died four days later. 'No way out' In the Central Hospital of Tonghua, Jilin Province, 1,000 kilometers away from Tianjin, 940 kilometers from Beijing, and right across the Tumen River from North Korea, Chinese human rights lawyer Sui Muqing said that the two doctors in charge of his father's ward were both infected with COVID. Sui's father, Shuyan Sui, contracted COVID after being admitted to the hospital in mid-to-late December for an illness unrelated to COVID. "The doctor told us (he had) white lungs, there is no way out," Sui told VOA Mandarin. The elder Sui's life played out against the emergence of modern China. Born during the humiliation of the Sino-Japanese war, he died on Christmas Day, a citizen of a global superpower. Sui said, "My father was very clear-minded and had a strong will to survive. He discussed with us about sending him to the hospital in Changchun, 861 kilometers from Beijing, but the hospital in the big city couldn't admit him. My father told me, 'I'm dying.' I felt so sad. He wished I could save him, but I couldn't." Sui suggested that the Chinese government only considers getting past the peak of the current outbreak so that most people have been infected. "If you have antibodies, you can work soon and save the economy," he told VOA Mandarin. "The prosperity of the funeral industry is a great thing for the country [because it] greatly reduces the financial burden of pensions and feeding [a large elderly population]. It is a very sad thing for each of our families," he said. In Sui's eyes, zero-COVID failed. "It cleared our wallets, freedom, dignity, and our parents, but it didn't clear the virus. We revisited the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution again, making up for the price we didn't pay." An estimated 30 million people died of starvation during the Great Leap Forward from 1960-1962, and between 750,000 and 2 million were killed during the violent social unrest of the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976. 'The tragedy has never stopped' At the end of December, Ms. Wang, who asked VOA Mandarin to use only part of her name to avoid drawing official attention to her, visited hospitals in Wuhan. She said the visits were painful. In some hospitals, there were no beds and no oxygen cylinders for people struggling to breathe. "Three years ago, the cause of death was unclear, and now it is still unclear. Disasters have been repeating themselves, and the tragedy has never stopped." VOA journalists Jiha Ham of the Korean Service and Adrianna Zhang of the Mandarin Service contributed to this report. Walking through the center of the city in the shadow of the looming domes of two state Capitol buildings the old one and the new its hard to miss the signs of history marked throughout Springfield, Illinois, the launching pad of the political careers of U.S. presidents Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama. It is surreal to know that Abraham Lincoln was in the same position as me at one point, said Nabeela Syed while standing in front of a statue of the Great Emancipator at the entrance to the current Illinois state Capitol. While Lincoln made a name for himself at the old Capitol building a few blocks away, history is very much on the mind of Syed as she walks amid the rows of well-polished wooden desks and leather chairs lined up on the floor of the Illinois House of Representatives. Our tour guide said he actually took a picture of Barack Obama in the same exact place that me and my family were posing, Syed told Voice of America. So, to think about the history that exists here in Springfield and the history that were contributing, its an incredible feeling. Making history Syed and her colleague Abdelnasser Rashid are about to make their own history as the 103rd Legislative session in Illinois gets underway. They are the first Muslim American lawmakers ever elected to the Statehouse. I think considering that Illinois has the highest per capita population of Muslims, I do wish it happened sooner, because I know the importance of representation, Syed said. In November, Syed defeated an incumbent Republican to win her suburban Chicago district. Not only am I Democrat, but I am a hijab-wearing Muslim, Indian American woman, said Syed. Our values, the way that we communicate our message, the way we engage our community, went beyond those things that people consider obstacles, and we flipped our district. At 23, Syed is also among the youngest women ever elected in Illinois and begins her term among other notable firsts in the Illinois House of Representatives, led by the first Black speaker, with the first female Republican House leader, and the largest Asian American caucus in the General Assembly. As the first Palestinian elected to the legislature and as one of two Muslims, I also carry the voices of so many people who have been marginalized and have been yearning for representation. And I take that responsibility very seriously, said Rashid, who now represents a suburban Chicago district with a large Latino population. It is not just about adding the number of colored faces, it is more about perspectives and strategies and position. Thats why I think they got the support from the broader community, not only the Muslim population alone, said Kikue Hamayotsu, a political science professor at Northern Illinois University. She credits Rashid and Syeds successful election campaigns to their focus and messaging on the issues concerning voters and not necessarily their identity. The things and policies they talked about are more about imminent important issues such as reproductive health, abortion law. Also gender issues, religious freedom at a time when religious conservatism is rising to influence politics, Hamayotsu said. I think the lesson of my election and Nabeelas election and so many more its not just Muslims, said Rashid. Its folks like Hoan Huynh, a Vietnamese refugee who was elected. People like Sharon Chung, a Korean-American who was elected. The number of people who are in the Illinois legislature is reflective of the diversity of our state. This is something that we should take pride in, and something that we should embrace so that our government continues to reflect the wishes of its people. I think where we have a strong healthy vibrant democracy, well have better outcomes for all of us. 'Our democracy is composed of us' As he reflects on a long, memorable day that included his swearing-in ceremony, Rashid was hopeful about the signal his and Syeds elections send to others with similar backgrounds who may be debating their own political careers. My election gives confidence to people who may have been hesitant to run but now realize that they can. Ive had people come to me and say, I didnt think that you could win, and now my eyes are open, he said. Syed hopes others who also wear the hijab might see her as an example of what is possible instead of what is not. Our democracy is composed of us, she told VOA. And we are contributing to making America amazing. While Illinois is a reliably blue state, Rashid and Syeds election wins helped Democrats increase the partys overall influence in state politics. In the 118-member Illinois House of Representatives, 40 seats are now held by Republicans and 78 by Democrats one of the largest party majorities in state history. Germany will allow German-made tanks to be sent to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia if the United States agrees to send its own tanks, a German government source told Reuters. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stressed the stipulation several times in recent days behind closed doors, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Western allies will meet at a U.S. air base in Germany on Friday to discuss offering more weapons for Ukraine. Attention is focused in particular on Germany, which has veto power over any decision to send its Leopard tanks, fielded by NATO-allied armies across Europe and widely seen as the most suitable for Ukraine. Polish President Andrzej Duda told attendees at an economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday that he was afraid Russia was preparing a new offensive in Ukraine within months and it was therefore crucial to provide additional support to the Kyiv government with modern tanks and missiles. Poland and Finland have said they will send Leopard tanks if Germany approves them. Berlin says a decision will be the first item on the agenda of Boris Pistorius, Germany's new defense minister. Pistorius will host U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday. The United States has committed roughly $24 billion to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian forces. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said President Joe Biden's administration is next expected to approve Stryker armored vehicles for Ukraine but is not poised to send its own tanks, including the M1 Abrams. This week, London turned up the pressure on Berlin by becoming the first Western country to send Western tanks, pledging a squadron of its Challengers, but the Leopards are seen as the best choice to supply Ukraine with a large-scale tank force. The Wall Street Journal, citing senior German officials, first reported Berlin's condition on tanks earlier on Wednesday. The publications Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Bild had similar reports. An elite Bangladesh police unit is engaged in the rampant extortion, harassment and wrongful arrests of the Rohingya refugees it has been tasked with protecting, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The Armed Police Battalion (APBn) operates in camps housing nearly one million members of the stateless minority, most of whom fled neighboring Myanmar after a military crackdown that is now the subject of a U.N. genocide investigation. But refugees and humanitarian workers told the New York-based watchdog that safety had deteriorated after the unit took charge of camp security in 2020, with some Rohingya telling AFP abuses had become "a regular occurrence." "Abuses by police in the Cox's Bazar camps have left Rohingya refugees suffering at the hands of the very forces who are supposed to protect them," said HRW Asia researcher Shayna Bauchner. The rights group said it had spoken to dozens of Rohingya refugees living in the sprawling and overcrowded camp network in the country's southeast, documenting at least 16 cases of serious abuse by APBn officers. Police demanded hefty bribes of refugees under threat of arrest, HRW's report said, adding that families were often forced to sell gold jewelry or borrow money to free unjustly detained relatives. Bauchner called on authorities to investigate the claims and hold responsible officers to account. Battalion commander Syed Harunor Rashid said the report was "questionable." "Criminals are telling them false facts, and [Human Rights Watch] are reporting them. This is like giving comfort to criminals," he told AFP, adding that the unit would investigate if it "receives specific complaints." Police acknowledge that violence has spiked in the camps, which are home to armed groups and are used as staging posts for regional drug trafficking networks. At least 20 refugees, including top community leaders, were murdered by armed groups last year as part of a turf war in the settlement. 'They threatened to take action' Several Rohingya refugees told AFP that police abuses were "rampant". "A few days ago I was returning to the camp with my brother's medical report from a hospital. APBn officers stopped me at the checkpoint, interrogated me and slapped me," said Ali Jaker, 20. Jaker said they stole the equivalent of $50 from him. "Then they took my mobile phone. They threatened to take action against me if I shared the story with anyone," he added. Sitara Bibi, 45, said police extortion was "a regular occurrence." "I had to pay 3,000 taka [$30] to them during my son's marriage. If we didn't pay them, the police would file a drug smuggling case against my son," she added. One Rohingya civic leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that refugees were forced to pay police to travel between camps or to gain entrance to camps late at night. "If anyone protests these abuses, he is arrested," they added. Manhattans Chinatown, one of the oldest Asian enclaves in the United States, is experiencing a rebirth. A new generation of social media-savvy Asian Americans are revitalizing their family businesses and attracting new visitors to the distinctive neighborhood, which in the past two years has borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic along with anti-Asian discrimination. VOAs Tina Trinh reports. For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine. The latest developments in Russias war on Ukraine. All times EST. 9:29 p.m.: Canada will donate 200 armored personnel carriers to Ukrainian forces to meet "a specific Ukrainian request for these vehicles", Canada's defense minister announced Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv, Agence France-Presse reported. "The vehicles offer state-of-the-art best-in-class technology and weapons can easily be mounted on them," said Anita Anand, sitting next to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. The Canadian announcement is part of the $373 million in military aid announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in November. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Canada has committed more than $1 billion in military aid to Kyiv, including armored vehicles, howitzers, winter clothing, drone cameras and ammunition. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted his gratitude for the donation. 8:37 p.m.: Russian crude oil exports to the European Union fell by 270,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 0.9 million bpd in December from the previous month, Reuters reported, citing International Energy Agency data. The EU imposed a ban on maritime Russian crude oil imports starting December 5, and G-7 countries set a price cap on Russian seaborne exports at $60 per barrel. The sanctions follow Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Most of December's EU-destined seaborne shipments, 160,000 bpd out of 230,000 bpd, went to Bulgaria, which has an exemption from the import ban, while one cargo went to Italy and two to the Netherlands, the IEA said in its monthly oil market report on January 18. From January, only Bulgaria can continue seaborne crude imports from Russia out of 27 EU member states, the IEA added. 7:44 p.m.: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov drew a sharp rebuke from the White House on Wednesday for saying the United States had assembled a coalition of European countries to solve "the Russian question" in the same way that Adolf Hitler had sought a "final solution" to eradicate Europe's Jews. "How dare he compare anything to the Holocaust, anything. Let alone a war that they started," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. Lavrov, who caused an international furor last year with remarks about Hitler, said Washington was using the same tactic as Napoleon and the Nazis in trying to subjugate Europe in order to destroy Russia. Using Ukraine as a proxy, he said, "they are waging war against our country with the same task: the 'final solution' of the Russian question." The 'Final Solution' was Hitler's blueprint for the Holocaust, which led to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, as well as members of other minorities. 7 p.m.: Defense leaders from roughly 50 countries will confer on Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the latest in a series of meetings to discuss Ukraine and its military needs. Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, spoke with Tatiana Vorozhko of VOAs Ukrainian Service on Wednesday on several topics, including security assistance and Friday's meeting at Ramstein. Markarova said Ukraine believes the U.S. and NATO will supply more weapons. "Every phase of the battle requires different capabilities," Markarova said. Citing the missile attack on an apartment building on Saturday in Dnipro that killed at least 45 people, she said her country needs more air defenses to shield civilian targets, including its energy infrastructure, schools and hospitals. She called for more firepower for the difficult battles in the east and the south. "So whatever advanced weapons, whatever artillery firepower, armored vehicles and tanks we would be grateful for all of that," she said. 6:10 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has written a letter inviting Chinese leader Xi Jinping for talks, which was handed over in Davos to the Chinese delegation, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, on Wednesday. Zelenskyy has repeatedly sought to make contact with Xi since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February last year in the hope that Beijing will use its influence over Russian leader Vladimir Putin. During a speech on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, Zelenska said she had a letter for Xi but she gave few details during a press conference on Wednesday. China has sought to position itself as neutral in the war, while at the same time deepening ties with Moscow, particularly in the energy sector. 5 p.m.: 4:20 p.m.: The Ukrainian military continues its counteroffensive around the area of Kreminna, a strategic logistics hub in Ukraine's Luhansk region. Russian forces are said to be dug in deep in the area. Western-supplied weapons, including self-propelled howitzers, are helping Ukrainian troops in their efforts to recapture territories occupied by enemy troops. Current Time, a co-production of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and VOA, has this report. 3:35 p.m.: Russian government officials were not invited to this year's Munich Security Conference, the man chairing the annual event that brings together the world's defense and security elite said on Wednesday in an interview, Reuters reported. The conference, known as "Davos for defense," will take place in the southern German city on February 17-19, days before the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "We do not want to offer a stage for those who have stamped over international law," Christoph Heusgen told Reuters. The Kremlin last year chose not to send a representative in the first no-show in years. 2:30 p.m.: President Joe Biden expressed condolences to the families of those killed in a helicopter crash in Ukraine on Wednesday and said the United States would honor the interior minister who was on board with continued commitment to preserving Ukraine's democracy. He praised Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi's efforts to fight Russian aggression and push for reforms to strengthen Ukraine's democracy. "We will continue to honor that legacy through efforts to strengthen Ukraine's institutions, and in our unfailing partnership with the people of Ukraine to keep the flame of freedom bright," Biden said in a statement. 2 p.m.: 1:45 p.m.: The Biden administration is providing $125 million for electrical parts and other supplies to help repair crews in Ukraine keep up with Russian strikes pounding the countrys electrical system, the U.S. international development aid chief said Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to use the money to procure backup power for Kyivs water and district-heating systems. The funding also will help replenish supplies of gas turbines, transformers and other vital power equipment. USAID administrator Samantha Power, who is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, announced the funding in a meeting with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska and others. USAID said in a statement that the money comes from the supplemental Ukraine funding approved by Congress last month. Russian forces since October have intensified strikes on Ukraines electrical grid and other critical infrastructure, repeatedly plunging Ukrainians into darkness and winter cold. Utility workers and others are scrambling during what have been nearly weekly barrages on infrastructure to restore electricity and heating. 1:10 p.m.: During a high-level panel discussion called Restoring Peace and Security held at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines called the war in Ukraine a grinding conflict and not a stalemate, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that Russia is planning new offensives, and Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Ukraine needs more assistance now because the next crucial moments of this war coming in "maybe months, maybe weeks." VOAs national security correspondent Jeff Seldin shared the highlights on Twitter. 12:50 p.m.: After months of Russian attacks on Ukraines infrastructure, some locals try to rebuild their small businesses by way of emergency services power supplies as the violence continues. VOAs Heather Murdock reports from Kyiv in Ukraine. 12:30 p.m.: A court in Russia's western region of Bryansk on January 17 sentenced 23-year-old Kirill Belousov to five years in prison for planning to join Ukraine's armed forces and fight against Russia in the ongoing war in Ukraine, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. The Bryansk regional court said the defendant pleaded guilty. Belousov is the third person in Russia to be handed a prison term for their intention to fight alongside Ukrainian forces since Moscow launched its unprovoked invasion in February 2022. 11:45 a.m.: Ukraines State Emergency Service revised downward the initially reported death toll of the helicopter crash in Brovary, now saying that 14 people died, including one child, according to the Kyiv Independent. Search and rescue operations were completed by late afternoon, it said. Rescuers and officials earlier reported that the total number of deaths was 16 to 18, including three or four children, the media organization reported. The top leadership of the interior ministry, who were in the helicopter, died in the crash. 11:25 a.m.: Ukraine needs a "significant increase" in weapons at a pivotal moment in Russia's invasion and such support is the only way to a negotiated peaceful solution, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Defense leaders from around 50 countries and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will hold talks at Germany's Ramstein Air Base on Friday, the latest in a series of meetings since Russian forces swept into Ukraine nearly 11 months ago. "This is a pivotal moment in the war and the need for a significant increase in support for Ukraine," Stoltenberg told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "If we want a negotiated peaceful solution tomorrow we need to provide more weapons today." 11:10 a.m.: 10:50 a.m.: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz highlighted his countrys and others financial and military support to Ukraine and said that we will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary, The Associated Press reported. In a speech Wednesday to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, he pointed to efforts by Berlin and others to kick off a long-term rebuilding process for Ukraine but said that in order for the war to end, Russias aggression must fail. He listed some of the equipment Germany has pledged to provide including air-defense systems and most recently armored personnel carriers, marking a profound turning point in German foreign and security policy. But he didnt make any new pledges. Germany faces mounting pressure to supply Leopard 2 battle tanks or at least to authorize allies to deliver their own stocks of the German-made vehicles. When asked about sending tanks to Ukraine, Scholz reiterated that Germany was one of the top suppliers of military equipment to the war-torn country, just behind the U.S. and Britain. 10:35 a.m.: 10:20 a.m.: Russian forces kept focusing their offensive efforts on Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donetsk, Ukraine's military has said, as Kyiv again urged its Western allies to speed up approval for the delivery of advanced heavy weaponry including modern tanks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. The Ukrainian military General Staff said in its daily report that Bakhmut and Avdiyivka, where heavy fighting has been going on for months, remained Moscow's main targets in Donetsk, while the settlement of Bilohoryvka in the neighboring Luhansk region had also come under intensified attacks over the past 24 hours. Russian troops carried out six missile strikes over the same interval, three of which hit civilian infrastructure targets in the cities of Kupyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as 14 air strikes and 95 rocket salvos, the General Staff said. It also warned that the threat of Russian air and missile strikes on civilian objects remains high throughout Ukraine. Russia over the past several months has relentlessly targeted civilian settlements and energy infrastructure that plunge millions of Ukrainians into dark and cold in the middle of winter. The latest attacks came after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building that housed around 1,700 people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro killed at least 45 people. More than 9,000 civilians, including 453 children, have been killed since the war began last February, Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on January 17. The United Nations has put the civilian toll at more than 7,000. 10:05 a.m.: When Russia invaded Ukraine, the military and private citizens started using Elon Musks SpaceX Starlink, which eventually became key to Ukraine's resistance. From Kyiv, Myroslava Gongadze tells the story of one Ukrainian engineer who volunteers to support the technology and the soldiers who use it. : VOA correspondent Anna Chernikova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, with some more information on those who were aboard the helicopter that crashed Wednesday morning on the outskirts of the city.There were nine people on board, including six members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and three members of the crew of the State Emergency Service. The list of those on board included Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Denys Monastyrskyi; First Deputy Minister Yevhen Yenin; State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lubkovich; Deputy Head of the Patronage Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Tetiana Shutiak; Head of the Protection Department of the Department of Internal Security of the National Police Mykhailo Pavlushko; the leading inspector of the Department of Communication of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Mykola Anatskyi; the helicopter commander Oleksandr Vasylenko; the pilot, Kostiantyn Kovalenko; and the on-board mechanic Ivan Kasianov.As of late Wednesday, 17 people were reported dead, including one child, while 25 people, including 11 children, were injured and hospitalized, according to local officials. However, casualty figures were expected to change as more information became available.The helicopter was heading to the war zone in the eastern Kharkiv region, according to the government. Eyewitnesses say that the helicopter circled in the air, then caught on fire and flew toward a two-story building before it crashed. The Security Service of Ukraine said it is considering several potential reasons for the helicopter crash, which include a violation of flight rules, or technical malfunction of the helicopter, or deliberate actions to destroy the vehicle. 9:35 a.m.: 9:20 a.m.: Europeans have dialed down their heating this winter, apparently heeding government calls to conserve energy amid the Ukraine crisis, with some delaying switching it on by almost a month and setting the temperature lower, Reuters reported, quoting recent data. The data, from hundreds of thousands of smart thermometers installed in households across the continent by Munich-based company Tado, shows that as temperatures dropped, households responded to dire warnings about higher heating costs. People and businesses across Europe are increasing their use of such smart thermometers to keep an eye on how much gas they are using. These are sometimes linked to an energy provider's tariff structure to smooth demand and reduce peak costs. Germany has made them obligatory in new builds. 9:05 a.m.: 8:45 a.m.: President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia's powerful military-industrial complex was ramping up production and was one of the main reasons why Russia would prevail in Ukraine, Reuters reported. Putin, speaking to workers at a factory in St Petersburg that makes air defense systems, said overall military equipment output was rising even as demand for it was growing because of what he calls Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine. "In terms of achieving the end result and the victory that is inevitable, there are several things ... It is the unity and cohesion of the Russian and multinational Russian people, the courage and heroism of our fighters ... and of course the work of the military-industrial complex and factories like yours and people like you," said Putin. "Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it." Putin said Russian arms companies manufactured about the same number of anti-aircraft missiles as the rest of the world combined, and three times more than the United States. 8:30 a.m.: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the United States was attempting to "contain" both Russia and China with the help of other countries, but they were alert to its "games," Reuters reported. Lavrov told a news conference that the West saw both countries as a threat - Russia right now, and China in the longer term as a systemic rival. He said Washington was not powerful enough to keep in check both countries at once, so was mobilizing Europe, Japan and others to join it. At the same time, he said, the West was trying to drive a wedge between Russia and China. "The West is trying to sow discord in our relations...We and China see all these games," he said. His comments underlined the strategic importance to Moscow of its relationship with China at a time when its army is struggling in Ukraine and its economic links with the West have been wrecked by successive waves of sanctions. 8:05 a.m.: 7:50 a.m.: Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said on Tuesday she did not talk to her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Lubinets in Turkey last week about a possible prisoner exchange, according to Reuters. Turkish ombudsman Seref Malkoc said on Monday that Ukraine conveyed to Russia a list of 800 people and that the Russian ombudsman provided a list of 200 to be swapped. "In my negotiations with Ombudsman of Ukraine Dmytro Lubinets in Ankara there was never any talk of exchanges, and I always emphasize that these issues are within the competence of the Russian Ministry of Defense," Moskalkova said on the Telegram messaging app. "Moreover, I believe that such an unequal exchange cannot be considered fair." A spokesperson for Malkoc later insisted that Russian and Ukrainian ombudsmen exchanged lists in Ankara, but said the Turkish side did not retain any copy of those lists. 7:25 a.m.: 7:10 a.m.: The increasingly prominent head of the Russian private military group Wagner on Wednesday took aim at the Kremlin administration for failing to block the U.S.-owned video sharing platform YouTube, Reuters reports. "YouTube is the information plague of our time," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel, alleging, without evidence, that 40% of the videos on the platform were "politicised and directed against Russia". He said there were two reasons why it had not been banned in Russia, which has clamped down on foreign media since invading Ukraine in February: that it was supposedly indispensable for ordinary citizens and, primarily, the opposition of President Vladimir Putin's administration. "We have a huge number of people on Staraya Square in the Presidential Administration who think only about one thing: if only Russia lost the war as soon as possible, if only the Americans would come and regulate us as soon as possible," Prigozhin said. 6:50 a.m.: 6:35 a.m.: Asked by the President of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Borge Brende, if he thinks there will be an end to the Russian war in Ukraine this year, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he does not see an end to the war in the immediate future, VOAs U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer reported. I do not see a chance at the present moment to have a serious peace negotiation between the two parties, Guterres said. He said the solution needs to be based on international law and the respect of Ukraines territorial integrity, and the conditions for that are not currently ripe. Guterres said in the meantime, the United Nations is focusing its efforts on lessening the impact of the conflict on both the Ukrainian people and the international community. He pointed to successes in extracting civilians earlier in the war from the Azovstal steel plant, the exchange of prisoners of war on both sides, getting international nuclear inspectors into Ukrainian facilities, and facilitating the exports of Ukrainian grain and Russian grain and fertilizer to international markets. So we are trying to address the consequences, the secretary-general said. But for the moment, I dont think that we have a chance to promote or to mediate a serious negotiation to achieve peace in the short term. Of the global situation overall, including the fight against climate change, the 73-year-old U.N. chief was even more bleak. Lets be clear, I think we are in the worst situation I remember in my lifetime. 6:20 a.m.: At the scene of the helicopter crash outside Ukraines capital, which was near a kindergarten, at least four bodies on the ground were covered by reflective sheets. Officials cleared chunks of charred, mangled wreckage, lying against an apartment building and in a playground. Some walls were partly demolished and blackened, The Associated Press reported. It is too early to talk about the reasons, for the crash, the spokesperson for Ukraines Air Forces, Yurii Ihnat, told a television channel. He said an investigation could take some time. The helicopter was a Super Puma supplied by France, he added. A French defense official said the helicopter was sold to Ukraine in 2019 and was not part of equipment that France has provided since the start of the war. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be named, according to ministry policy. The Security Service of Ukraine is conducting an investigation, prosecutor general Andriy Kostin said. For now, we are considering all possible versions of the helicopter crash accident, he said on Telegram. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw Ukraines police and emergency services, is the most senior official to die since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called the 42-year-old Monastyrskyi a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people during Putins illegal invasion. She said she was struck by his determination, optimism and patriotism. 6:10 a.m.: 6 a.m.: Condolence messages following a helicopter crash Wednesday that claimed the lives of at least 18 people poured in on social media. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the crash a terrible tragedy. He said the exact number of casualties was still being determined, but that at the time of his post the dead included at least three children. The pain is unspeakable, Zelenskyy said. He added that Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi and Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin, both killed during the crash, were true Ukrainian patriots. U.N. Resident Coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown said she was "deeply saddened by the tragic deaths. While the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, we stand with the Ukrainian people in this moment of grief and wish those injured a swift recovery. Officials said the crash happened near a kindergarten in Brovary, a suburb east of Kyiv. It was not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to go down. Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post he had directed authorities to investigate the circumstances surrounding the crash. 5:45 a.m.: Russian police have detained four people at an improvised memorial for at least 45 people who were killed by a Russian strike on a residential building in Ukraine's Dnipro, a rights group said Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported. AFP journalists earlier this week saw a handful of people laying flowers and children's toys at a statue of Ukrainian poetess Lesya Ukrainka in the Russian capital. They also placed a photograph of the hollowed-out building in Dnipro, struck at the weekend. The OVD-Info rights group, which monitors arrests in Russia, said two people were detained as they lay flowers at the statue. "Two others who were nearby were also detained," the group said. It said it did not know their names, saying only that one of them was a woman who came with her dog. Ukraine has said 20 more people are missing in Dnipro following the weekend strike that ripped open the side of residential building in the central Ukraine city. Russia has introduced strict laws that effectively ban criticism of its offensive in Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied striking residential areas in Ukraine. 5:20 a.m.: Ukraine's prime minister on Wednesday said the death of Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi and two other senior officials in a helicopter crash near Kyiv was a "great loss" for the war-battered country, according to Agence France-Presse. "A great loss for the government team and the entire state. My sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. I instructed (officials) to immediately create a special group for a detailed investigation of all the circumstances of the tragedy," Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said on Telegram. 5 a.m.: The helicopter that Ukraine's interior minister was travelling on Wednesday when it crashed near a kindergarten outside Kyiv was flying towards frontline regions in eastern Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported the presidency as saying. "The purpose of the helicopter flight was to carry out work in one of the hotspots of our country where hostilities are ongoing. The interior minister was heading there," the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on local television. 4:45 a.m.: The European Union's chairman on Wednesday spoke in favor of the West providing tanks to Ukraine to help it face off against Russia's invasion. "For nearly one year, Russia has pursued a strategy of destruction, a strategy of terror, trying to bomb the Ukrainian people into submission," said European Council President Charles Michel. "But Ukrainians are resisting." "We, the EU, will continue to support them for as long as it takes. The time is now, they urgently need more equipment, and I am personally in favor of supplying tanks to Ukraine." 4:15 a.m.: Reuters updated the number of casualties as a result of a helicopter crash Wednesday morning to 18 people including three children, citing Ukrainian officials. The Associated Press also reported that the death toll has reached at least 18. The helicopter came down close to the nursery and a residential building in Brovary to the northeast of the capital, local officials said. The regional governor said 29 people were also hurt, including 15 children. The national police chief said that Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who was appointed under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2021, was killed. His first deputy, Yevheniy Yenin, and the ministry's state secretary also died, he said. "Unfortunately, this happened with a state emergency service helicopter which was fulfilling its task," Air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Apostrof TV. 4 a.m.: President Tayyip Erdogan is aiming to extend his 20-year rule in elections that will decide, among other things, what role the country may play to ease conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East. In this analysis on the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, which must be held by June, Reuters explores how the political process marks the biggest political challenge yet for Erdogan, who has domestically championed religious piety, military-backed diplomacy, and low interest rates. Should he lose, his opponents promise radical change. In his foreign policy decisions, Erdogan's purchase of Russian air defenses triggered U.S. arms industry sanctions against Ankara, while his closeness to President Vladimir Putin led critics to question Turkey's commitment to the NATO Western defense alliance. Ankara's objections to NATO membership applications from Sweden and Finland have also raised tensions. However, Turkey also brokered a deal for Ukrainian wheat exports, underlining the potential role Erdogan has staked in efforts to end the Ukraine war. It is not clear that a successor would enjoy the same profile he has created on the world stage a point he is likely to stress in the election campaign. 3:25 a.m.: Sixteen people including Ukraine's interior minister and other senior ministry officials were killed in the crash, the national police chief said, according to Reuters. Two children were among the dead and 10 of them were in hospital, officials said. 3 a.m.: According to Reuters, a police spokesperson told the Suspilne public broadcaster that at least five people were hurt and that there were also a number of dead. Reuters could not immediately reach her for comment by phone. Videos shared on social media showed a burning building and people could be heard screaming. Reuters was unable immediately to verify the footage. It was not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to crash. There was no immediate comment from Russia, and Ukrainian officials made no reference to any Russian attack in the area at the time. 2:40 a.m.: Reuters reported that a local governor has confirmed that a helicopter crashed near a nursery and a residential building in the town of Brovary outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday, and that there were casualties. "At the time of the tragedy, children and staff of the institution were in the kindergarten. Everyone has now been evacuated," Kyiv region governor Oleksiy Kuleba wrote on the Telegram messaging app. 2:25 a.m.: An aircraft crashed into a building in the Ukrainian town of Brovary near Kyiv on Wednesday, and emergency services rushed to the scene, Reuters cited a presidential aide as saying. He said checks were being made on casualties. Videos shared on social media showed a burning building and said an object resembling a helicopter or drone had crashed into a nursery building. Reuters was unable immediately to verify the reports. "We are finding out information about casualties and the circumstances," the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. 2 a.m.: Reuters reported Russia's Gazprom said it will ship 32.6 million cubic meters of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Wednesday, a volume in line with recent days, but around 20% lower than daily shipments recorded in the final months of last year. 1:45 a.m.: 1:30 a.m.: Chemicals giant BASF unveiled a 7.3 billion euro ($7.9 billion) non-cash impairment on Wintershall Dea, after the oil and gas exploration joint venture decided to exit Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. "Wintershall Dea will end its Russian activities. Continuing to operate in Russia is not tenable," Wintershall Dea Chief Executive Mario Mehren said. A 72.7%-27.3% joint venture between BASF and Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman's investment firm LetterOne, Wintershall Dea is one of Germany's companies most exposed to Russia and had up until now stopped short of pulling out. "Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine is incompatible with our values and has destroyed cooperation between Russia and Europe," Mehren said in a statement late on Tuesday. BASF's Frankfurt-listed shares were down 3.7% following the news. A local trader said that investors may now fear a "harsh dividend cut." Mehren said limitations the Russian government imposed on local assets owned by Western companies had made it impossible to operate properly "and resulted in an economic expropriation of the joint ventures in Russia." Wintershall Dea's Russian activities include a 35% stake in the Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field, which Gazprom (40%) and Austria's OMV (25%) co-own. Wintershall Dea also co-owns two Achimov natural gas production projects in Siberia, including Achimgaz a 50-50 joint venture with Gazprom and the 25-75 Achim Development venture. Wintershall Dea said its exit from Russia would be in line with local laws and regulation. It also expects a 5.3 billion euro non-cash loss from the deconsolidation of its Russian joint venture and impairments on Russian-related activities, including its 15.5% stake in the damaged Gazprom-led Nord Stream pipeline and the WIGA Transport joint venture with Sefe, formerly known as Gazprom Germania. As a result, BASF, which said the Nord Stream stake had been fully written down, flagged a 1.38 billion euro net loss for 2022, according to preliminary results also published on Tuesday, compared with a 5.52 billion profit in 2021. According to the Vara consensus of estimates the company provided, analysts had on average expected net profit of 4.77 billion euros. BASF's earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) likely declined by 15% in 2022 to 6.55 billion euros, also below the 6.84 billion analyst forecast. Sales for the past year were up 11% at 87.32 billion euros, BASF, which is scheduled to release its annual 2022 results on February 24, citing higher prices and currency effects. 1:05 a.m.: 12:30 a.m.: The training of Ukrainian officers to operate the Patriot advanced long-range air defense system will last 10 weeks, Reuters reported citing Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. The United States, Germany and the Netherlands have pledged to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine to repel a barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks. "There is a decision that our officers will be trained in 10 weeks. Such obligations were undertaken by the American partners," Reznikov said, in remarks published Tuesday on Ukraine's state Military Media Center Telegram messaging app. 12:01 a.m.: Ukraine has taken a step closer to winning approval for German-made modern battle tanks to confront invading Russian forces and has secured a pledge of more Patriot defense missiles as its allies appear ready to rally for the next phase of the war. Ukraine has relied primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tank variants, Reuters reported. Germany's Leopard 2 tank, operated by armies in about 20 countries, is regarded as one of the West's best. The tank weighs more than 60 tons, has a 120-millimeter smoothbore gun and can hit targets at a distance of up to five kilometers. Ukraine says the tanks would give its troops the mobile firepower to drive Russian troops out in decisive battles. Germany has been the West's biggest holdout on pledging tanks, but a cabinet minister said on Tuesday the issue would be the first to be decided by new defense minister Boris Pistorius. He will host U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday ahead of a meeting on Friday of dozens of defense ministers at Ramstein air base in Germany. Western countries have provided a steady supply of weapons to Ukraine since Russia invaded last February 24 in what it calls a "special military operation" to protect its security because its neighbor grew increasingly close to the West. Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to grab territory and to erase the independence of a fellow ex-Soviet republic. Some information in this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. Alvin Chau, who organized the biggest gambling facilitators in Macao, has been convicted on charges of illegal gambling and other charges. The former head of Suncity Group was sentenced to 18 years in prison at a Wednesday hearing. The presiding judge also found Chau guilty of fraud and running a criminal cross-border gambling syndicate, but acquitted him of money laundering. Macao, a special administrative region of China, is the only place in the country where casinos are legal. Gambling facilitators, known as junkets, arrange to bring wealthy Chinese citizens from the mainland to the former Portuguese colony, extending them credit and collecting on their debt on behalf of casino operators. Prosecutors ordered Chaus arrest in 2021 and charged him and several others with running an illicit gambling syndicate that allegedly led to the loss of about $1 billion in tax revenue for Macao over an eight-year period beginning in 2013. The judge ordered Chau and some co-defendants to pay more than $830 million to the Macao government, as well as several million dollars to five casino operators as compensation. Macaos junket sector collapsed in the wake of Chaus arrest, with Suncity closing its VIP (Very Important Person) rooms. Another high-profile junket operator, Levo Chan, is also facing prosecution for running an illegal gambling operation. Malawi's president fired the director of public prosecution, Steven Kayuni, for allegedly abusing his office to avenge what he saw as a personal slight. Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera announced the dismissal during a televised national address Wednesday. Chakwera was reacting to the findings of a commission of inquiry he established last month to investigate the circumstances that led to the arrest of the country's anti-corruption chief, Martha Chizuma. The commission found that Chizuma was arrested a few days after Kanyuni complained to police that he felt criminally injured by statements Chizuma made in January 2022. In audio that was later leaked to social media, Chizuma said that high-ranking officials, including lawyers, a judge and government authorities, were hindering her fight against corruption. Chizuma was arrested on December 6, but detained for only a few hours, following calls from other officials, ordinary Malawians, and the British and U.S. embassies for her release. The report from the commission of inquiry said Kayuni was wrong to file a personal complaint on matters pertaining to his office as director of public prosecutions. The commission asked Chakwera to take appropriate action against Kayuni. "As such, to prevent him from using a public office to settle a personal injury, I have removed Dr. Kayuni from office with immediate effect, and I thank him for his many years of service," Chakwera said. Chakwera appointed Masauko Edwin Chamkakala as Malawi's new director of public prosecutions, and called on all government agencies to support the new government's chief prosecutor. Chakwera rejected recommendations from the commission of inquiry that he should take action against Chizuma for offenses she may have committed in her leaked audio. Chakwera said he already forgave Chizuma last year when some people wanted her fired. "So, I want to make this clear today: I stand by my decision to not fire Ms. Chizuma a year ago, and I stand by my choice of her as my champion against corruption today," Chakwera said. Chakwera called for disciplinary action against two deputy police inspector generals, Happy Mkandawire and Casper Chalera, for insubordination. The two police chiefs are accused of rejecting Chakwera's directive to release Chizuma unconditionally when she was arrested on December 6. Police in Nigeria's central Niger state say a mob angry at the killing of a Catholic priest torched a police station, other buildings, and cars, and threw stones at officers Tuesday. State police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said authorities are responding to the situation and have deployed reinforcements to the Paikoro district where the incident took place. He said the protesters, including youths and women, marched from the slain priest's residence to a divisional police station and set it ablaze. "We have sent reinforcements there, the security men are on ground and investigations have commenced and further developments will be made known to the public," Abiodun told VOA via phone. It is not clear how many people were injured during Tuesday's protests, but eyewitnesses told local media that police officers dispersed the demonstrators forcefully. The protesters blamed police for not responding promptly to distress calls when the armed men attacked the cleric, Father Isaac Achi. On Sunday, armed men burned Achi inside his home in Paikoro after failing to break in. The attackers also shot at another priest fleeing the scene, but he survived. The motive behind Achi's killing remains unknown, but the incident triggered widespread criticism from religious groups including the Christian Association of Nigeria, or CAN. CAN this week said authorities must decisively put an end to attacks on churches. In a separate incident on Sunday, gunmen attacked a church in northwest Katsina state and abducted nine people, including two children. In May, heavily armed men attacked a Catholic church in the southwestern town of Owo and killed 40 worshippers. Insecurity is a major problem bedeviling Africa's most populous nation weeks ahead of general elections scheduled for February 25. Authorities in Pakistan said Wednesday that a militant attack from across the Iranian side of the border between the two countries had killed four soldiers. The attack took place in the remote Panjgur district in southwestern Baluchistan province, the military said in a statement. Terrorists used Iranian soil to target a convoy of security forces patrolling along the border, the statement said. It added that the "Iranian side has been asked to hunt down the terrorists on their side of the more than 900-kilometer border. No group immediately claimed responsibility. The Iranian embassy in Islamabad said on Twitter that Iran strongly condemns (the) terrorist attack on Pakistani troops. Terrorism is the common pain of Iran and Pakistan. Both sides are victims of the ominous phenomenon, the embassy said. For its part, Tehran alleges that anti-Iran Sunni militants use hideouts in the Pakistani province to orchestrate terrorist violence in the Iranian border region known as Sistan-Baluchistan. Separately, the Pakistani military Wednesday raided a suspected terrorist hideout in Baluchistans Hoshab district. The ensuing "heavy exchange of fire killed four militants, according to a military statement. Ethnic Baluch separatists routinely carry out attacks on security forces and say they are fighting for the independence of the province, which is rich in natural resources. Baluchistan also shares a major chunk of the countrys nearly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan. The province is at the center of a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure development project China is funding in Pakistan under Beijings global Belt and Road Initiative. Editor's note: The story has been updated to include a statement from the Iranian embassy in Islamabad. Philippine journalist and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa was acquitted Wednesday of tax evasion charges that she and other critics say were part of an attempt by former President Rodrigo Duterte to stifle freedom of the press. The Court of Tax Appeals ruled that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ressa and the parent company of her news site Rappler failed to pay taxes on an investment made by U.S.-based Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm founded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the founder of the online shopping site eBay. An emotional Ressa told reporters outside the courtroom that facts win, truth wins, justice wins, and that the verdict represents hope. Rappler posted a statement saying the decision was the triumph of facts over politics. Ressa and Rappler still face numerous legal battles, including an appeal of a 2020 conviction of cyber libel over a 2012 story that cited an intelligence report that linked a wealthy businessman to drug dealing and other illegal activities. Rappler is also appealing a separate tax evasion case and an order by the Securities and Exchange Commission to shut down on allegations that it violated the constitutional ban on foreign ownership of Philippine media companies when it accepted the investment from Omidyar Network. The international legal team representing Ressa, and led by Amal Clooney and Caoilfhionn Gallagher, welcomed the court decision as a milestone in the struggle for a free press. Noting that Ressa had the prospect of a 30-year prison sentence hanging over her while the courts heard the case, Clooney said, Today we see justice being done. We see judges drawing a line. Gallagher in the joint statement described the case against her client as a blatant politically motivated attempt to criminalize Ms. Ressa for years of hard-hitting investigative reporting holding the powerful to account. Ressa is a former CNN journalist and one of Time magazines persons of the year in 2018 when it celebrated journalists around the world, including murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. She shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov for their respective fights to maintain their independent news organizations, which the Nobel Committee called a precondition for democracy and lasting peace. Press freedom advocates say the legal cases against Ressa were part of a broader effort by Duterte to quash all forms of dissent and scrutiny of his administration, especially his brutal anti-drug crackdown that left thousands of people dead. Lawmakers loyal to Duterte overwhelmingly voted in 2020 to deny radio and television broadcaster ABS-CBN a renewed 25-year operating license, forcing the nations top broadcaster to shut down. The Hold The Line coalition of rights organizations, which advocates for the defense of press freedom, on Wednesday welcomed the court ruling, and called for the remaining cases against Ressa and Rappler to be dropped. This verdict indicates that it is possible for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to hit reset on his predecessors vast campaign of media repression, the coalition statement read. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. Pope Francis is set travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan at the end of the month a visit the pontiff had earlier been forced to postpone due to health issues. Pope Francis will visit the DRC from January 31 to February 3 and then spend two days in South Sudan before returning to the Vatican. When the Holy See announced the trip, which was called off due to the popes knee ailments last summer, it said the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland would travel with the pope. The pope will first travel to Kinshasa, where he will meet with the countrys authorities, victims of the conflict in the eastern part of the country and representatives of charitable organizations. Then he will fly to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on February 3. Kinshasa, a large and impoverished city of more than 10 million people, is getting a face lift ahead of the papal visit. The apostolic nuncio in the DRC, Ettore Balestrero, said a huge effort is being made to ensure security and public order while the pope is in the country. It is the first time a pope has traveled to the country in 37 years and Balestrero said that for many people Pope Francis arrival is a dream come true. In an interview with Vatican News, the archbishop said the main purpose of the DRC visit is to awaken faith in those who do not have it and to strengthen the joy of those who do. He added that throughout the country there is an anticipation of receiving a word of consolation and also of healing of the wounds that are still bleeding, especially in the east. On Tuesday Pope Francis sent condolences to victims of the bombing of a Pentecostal church in Kasindi in North Kivu province in eastern Congo. Islamic militants claimed responsibility for the attack that killed at least 14 people and injured more than 60. The pope originally planned to visit Goma in North Kivu but as violence continues to ravage parts of the province, that stop was scrapped. Pope Francis has long desired to travel to predominantly Christian South Sudan but the unstable situation in the country had complicated plans for a visit. A peace deal was signed in the country in 2018, putting an end to a five-year civil war that killed 400,000 people but the nation is still reeling from hunger and violence. Speaking at the end of Sunday Angelus prayers in Saint Peters Square in December, the pope made one more appeal for an end to the violence in South Sudan and asked for prayers for reconciliation. Pope Francis expressed concern at the news of violent clashes in South Sudan. He prayed for peace and national reconciliation and an end to attacks. He also called for civilians to be respected. In South Sudan, Pope Francis will meet with internally displaced persons and take part in an ecumenical prayer service at the John Garang Mausoleum in Juba, where he will also celebrate Mass on Sunday before returning to the Vatican. Satellite images of lines of cars and jammed parking lots at crematoriums far from Beijing suggest a much higher death toll than the official count of some 60,000 people that Beijing has acknowledged since it relaxed its "zero-COVID" policy in December. The photos obtained by VOA Korean through the satellite imagery company Planet Labs showed long queues of vehicles in front of some funeral homes in late December. Judging from image databases released by the company and Google Earth Pro, the funeral homes in Guangzhou's Panyu District 2,161 kilometers from Beijing, and Shenyang, Liaoning Province, 686 kilometers from Beijing, have never seen as much traffic in five to 10 years as they did last month. While it's impossible to draw conclusions about overall trends for China's funeral homes from images of overcrowding outside those in provincial cities as captured by satellites, Jennifer Bouey, Tang chair for China policy studies and an epidemiologist at RAND Corporation, told VOA Mandarin, "I am not surprised to see these images at all." Bouey said that the overall death toll in China could be higher than 1.6 million by April. Given that many older people live in rural areas where health systems lack the capacity of those in urban areas, she said the death rate is likely to be higher in the countryside than in urban areas. Some counties lack a single ICU bed, according to the Associated Press quoting experts who said medical resources in China's villages and towns, home to about a third of China's 1.4 billion people, lag far behind those cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Bouey added that omicron caused 6,000 deaths in Hong Kong's 7.4 million population in a few weeks last spring, or about 81 per 100,000 in a month. Using this mortality rate, Beijing with its 21 million residents would see 17,000 deaths in a month compared with the usual 10,000 a month. "This situation will be similar in most of the cities in China," Bouey said. "The morgue will have to deal with almost twice to three times the deaths compared to normal time (even if we don't count excessive deaths due to the healthcare system collapse), and overflow is expected." Until last week, Beijing maintained that just over 5,000 people had died of the virus since it was first detected in humans in Wuhan in late 2019. On January 12 China's National Health Commission disclosed that there had been close to 60,000 COVID-related deaths. China's population was 1.4 billion people in 2022. Nick Hansen, a satellite image analyst and affiliate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, told VOA Mandarin that the images collected show that there have been more vehicles near some funeral homes since early December, and other activities have also increased. "Of note was the white vehicles seen at many of these locations," Hansen said. "They appear to be hearses, buses and cars and are probably used for funerals and taking relatives to and from the burial sites." Christopher Murray, founding director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent research institution at the University of Washington, estimated more than a million people will die from COVID-19 in China in 2023. He cautioned that the exact timing of the outbreak's peak is difficult to assess because officially reported data on cases, hospitalizations and deaths appear to be inaccurate. The World Health Organization on January 4 urged Beijing to be more transparent about the COVID outbreak. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said at a regular press conference the next day that China has always shared relevant information and data in a timely manner and that the epidemic situation in China is under control. According to a search index from Baidu, which is similar to Google, the search volume by Chinese who went online to search for "positive" reached its peak in mid-December, and the search volume for "funeral parlor" and "crematorium" rose a week or two later. Bouey believes that the Chinese government has many life-saving options at hand, including training doctors to treat severe cases of COVID, increasing ICU capacity, improving the accessibility and affordability of Paxlovid or other antiviral drugs, and ensuring the supply of antipyretics and essential medicines. However, "none of these are easy to implement if the Chinese government doesn't intend to." Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist who is chief of the COVID Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institutes said, "Every death is a tsunami in their local social networks, and then we just basically destroy the fabric of society from the inside by allowing so many countless meaningless deaths, preventable deaths." Feigl-Ding believes that China lacks sufficient political will to act quickly, even in the face of an expected wave of deaths during the lunar New Year, saying "I think many deaths going forward in the second wave, from a Chinese lunar New Year onwards, can easily be preventable. Does it have the political will to do it?" Feigl-Ding continued, "China has taken this to the position that 'Oh, you know, the infections are inevitable,' which is not true." He urged the Chinese government to share data more openly and transparently, so that epidemiologists and public health professionals can evaluate the response more quickly; it should also immediately allow the import of new vaccines adapted to omicron by accepting Western donations and aid. "Like all these things can prevent a lot of deaths. But the question is, you know, why aren't they doing it? And I think that's the sad thing." VOAs Jiha Ham of the Korean Service and Adrianna Zhang of the Mandarin Service contributed to this report. People in Somalia are highly traumatized due to political instability, prolonged violence and humanitarian crisis, a new health study said. The joint study by the United Nations, Somalia's health ministry and the countrys national university found that mental disorder is prevalent across the country. It said that cases are about 77%, higher than a previous study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that nearly 40% of the population in Somalia had a mental or psychological disorder. The study further said that the prevalence of mental disorders among the young is significantly higher than previously reported. There is a high prevalence and wide range of the various mental disorders (76.9%), substance abuse disorders (lifetime, 53.3%; current, 50.6%) and poor quality of life in both non-clinical and clinical populations, the study said. Watch related video by Abdulkadir Zubeyr and Harun Maruf: The study obtained by VOA's Somali Service was conducted between October 25 and November 15, 2021. The data was collected from 713 participants in the towns of Baidoa, Kismayo and Dolow. The majority of the participants (68.1%) were younger than 35 years and 58.5% were males. All three towns host internally displaced persons who have been impacted by conflicts, and droughts which forced the pastoral communities to migrate to urban locations in search of food, water, and safety. "Conflicts and clashes have brought about mental illness because we face many of these challenges in our country," a young person in Kismayo who was interviewed for the study told the researchers. "For example, explosions occur, and the witness might live with the shock and trauma that can affect their state of mind and even cause mental illness. Stress caused by joblessness also leads to mental health issues." The study is a collaboration between the WHO, the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Federal Ministry of Health and the Somali National University (SNU). According to the WHO, which led the research, this is the first-ever epidemiological study on mental health in Somalia. "The study findings clearly indicate the prevalence of mental health disorders is higher in the younger population than we initially used to think or assume through various estimates," said Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Country Representative. "Our earlier WHO study suggested that only 40% of the population in Somalia might have a mental or psychological disorder. But what we have seen now is 76%, which is a high prevalence rate," Malik told VOA. Somalia Minister of Health Dr. Ali Haji Adam agrees that mental health situation among the population is very poor. There has been armed conflict, poverty, fear, instability, and unemployment for a long time; this is causing mental wounds, Adam said. They cannot cope with what is happening in front of them; mothers and children are being killed in front of them and that is damaging their mental health. Malik said a worrying finding is that the most common mental health illness among this population is panic disorder and post-traumatic disorder. Panic disorder, 39%, and post-traumatic disorder at 37%. And this is amongst the young age group, Malik said. He said if untreated, this might lead to suicidal tendencies. He said in previous estimates WHO saw the suicide rate among the young population in Somalia as one of the highest in the world, 14 to 15 per 100,000 population. This new study finds that the risk of committing suicide among young people in Somalia is 22 per 100,000. The authors of the study said this is surprising for a community where Islam is the predominant religion, and where teaching prohibits suicide. They urged clinicians to consult with their patients about suicidal thoughts during evaluation, regardless of religious beliefs or practices. Substance abuse The other discovery of the study is the high degree of prevalence of substance abuse among the young population. Adam said that the younger generation who are the most affected by mental health illnesses are turning to drug abuse. "A young person with an ambition, and a future when they cannot realize their ambition and aspiration, cannot find a job they face mental pressure," Adam told VOA. Its likely they turn to drug abuse." Malik agrees that the hopeless situation and lack of sufficient access to mental health facilities are driving the mentally ill to resort to the abuse use of prohibited substances. "These are coping mechanisms, but this is self-destruction, that's the most worrying factor for me," he said. The most common substance used was tobacco, 38%, followed by sedatives which is 37%, and these are not regulated in the country, Malik said. He said Somalia is the only country that has not ratified the WHO's global convention on Tobacco Control. He urged the Somali government to ratify and commit to controlling substance abuse of tobacco and sedatives. "We are actually at risk of losing a whole generation because these young people have no hopes for the future and they comprise 70% of the people in this country," Malik said. "Instead of using them as human assets we are at risk of losing them because there is a high burden of mental health and substance abuse, and this is making them non-productive and they're becoming a huge economic burden." The increased mental illnesses can be seen in mental health care clinics. Dr. Liban Mohamed Omar opened a mental health clinic eight months ago after he returned from Europe. He says his polyclinic and psychiatric center receives dozens of patients every week. "Of the patients I receive, two to three out of every four persons have got mental health issues," Omar told VOA. In addition to the political and social upheavals in the country, women face specific challenges that exacerbate their mental health situation. Women face many [cases of] abuse, such as rape, Omar said. Omar cited a lack of awareness and a shortage of skilled mental health workers and services which forces many to resort to substance abuse and to even contemplate ending their life. Peace building The researchers see improving mental health as an integral part of peace-building in Somalia, a country where there has been civil strife since the collapse of the state in 1991. Malik said in conflict-affected countries the burden of mental health is high. These young people who were carrying a huge burden of mental health can be an easy target for radical forces because these are disillusioned young people, Malik said. Our assumption is if these people can be socially integrated after addressing their mental health condition, social cohesion, and community reconciliation may increase and that can lead to peace-building in a way that these mentally ill young people may not be the targets of radical forces so they can contribute to the society. Malik said only 5 to 10 percent of the primary healthcare centers in Somalia currently can offer mental health services, far less than what is needed. The total number of mental health professionals in Somalia is 82 in a population of over 15 million, Malik said. And if you compare it in terms of mental health professionals, 100,000 population it is less than one. So, the future lies in investing in mental health services at the primary health care level. The study recommended training of frontline health care workers, increased awareness, and routine screening of mental disorders at the primary health care level. South Africa plans to conduct joint military exercises with the Chinese and Russian navies off its east coast next month, despite the Kremlins ongoing war on Ukraine. The opposition Democratic Alliance has slammed the decision, saying it means that contrary to its "neutral" stance on Russias Ukraine war, South Africas ruling African National Congress party has effectively sided with Moscow. The China-Russia-South Africa drills, named Operation Mosi, which means smoke, are to take place off Durban from February 17 to 26. While South Africa has held joint naval exercises with Russia in the past, in 2019, these latest ones overlap with the one-year anniversary of Russias invasion of Ukraine and its ongoing war against Kyiv. Pretoria has officially remained neutral on the conflict, refusing to condemn the Kremlins invasion in a U.N. vote last year. But South Africas main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, says hosting Russian warships shows the ruling African National Congress, or the ANC, has chosen sides. Kobus Marais is the partys shadow defense minister. While our government has claimed to be neutral, this is just another of many incidents where the ANC has clearly exposed their favoritism towards Russia and has in fact done nothing but to showcase and prove [the] governments lack of neutrality in this case, he said. Marais says the South Africa of Nelson Mandela, once a beacon of democracy, risks losing its international standing by siding with what he calls the most despicable autocracies of the world. Moscows invasion, the biggest in Europe since World War II, has been widely condemned internationally. Western governments have hit Russia with diplomatic isolation and heavy sanctions and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend itself. Steven Gruzd, the head of the Russia-Africa program at the South African Institute of International Affairs, says South Africas hosting the drills risks its further isolation from the West while playing into Russias hands. Russia is trying to indicate that its not isolated internationally, that it has international military reach. And South Africa, by agreeing to hold these exercises, or going ahead with them, is feeding into that narrative that Moscows putting out, he said. South Africas African National Congress party has close ideological and historical ties to Russia under the Soviet Union, which backed its anti-apartheid struggle against white minority rule. South Africa and Russia are also members of the BRICS group of leading, emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, and China. While many countries have shunned the Kremlin over its invasion, some nations, including those in BRICS, have not. Ukraines Ambassador to South Africa Liubov Abravitova was clear to VOA in her criticism of the scheduled military drills. And on South Africa, Russia, China military exercises, let me just ask you, what the army that is killing innocent people, the army of rapists and murderers, what can they bring to [the] South African army as added value? she said. Some analysts say the world is in a new cold war, with authoritarian nations China and Russia on one side and Western democracies on the other. This conflict is increasingly playing out in Africa as both sides scramble for influence on the strategically and politically important continent. South Africas Department of Defense spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini tells VOA they will not reconsider the joint drills. Id like to repeat that the exercise will go ahead with the two countries in South Africa in February. In relation to the military-to-military relations between these two countries and many others, which include the United States, where exercises have been held with each of those countries, he said. Despite pressure from Western governments, and visits last year by U.S. officials, Pretoria has continued to improve relations with Moscow. South Africa in December received a sanctioned Russian ship that officials say was delivering ammunition ordered before the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine. South Africas Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor will on Monday host Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In August, South Africa will host the BRICS summit and has invited Russias President Vladimir Putin to attend. China on Tuesday defended its decision to allow the United Nations to designate an anti-India militant leader as a global terrorist, saying the designation would enhance international cooperation against terrorism. Abdul Rehman Makki, 68, who is currently serving an unspecified jail term in Pakistan on terror charges, was added to the U.N. Security Councils sanctions list on Monday. India and the United States jointly proposed the listing last June, but China, a close ally of Pakistan, placed a so-called technical hold on the proposal, which it removed on Monday. Terrorism is a common scourge for humanity, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news conference in Beijing when asked about Chinas reversal. The individual you mentioned has been convicted and sentenced by Pakistan, and this designation is a sign of recognition of Pakistans staunch fight against terrorism, Wang noted. He described the U.N. listing mechanism as conducive to strengthening international cooperation against terrorist threats. Responding Tuesday to Makkis placement on the sanctions list, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said her country was a victim of terrorism and supports" international counterterrorism efforts, including those of the U.N. The listing of Mr. Abdur Rehman Makki is a technical issue undertaken under relevant procedures of the United Nations Security Council. In any case, he has been convicted by a Pakistani court already, Baloch noted. She reiterated Islamabads call for strict compliance with the Security Councils listing rules and procedures to maintain the integrity of the U.N. counterterrorism regime. She did not elaborate. Arindam Bagchi, spokesman for Indias Ministry of External Affairs, welcomed the U.N. listing of Makki, calling the procedure an "effective tool to curb threats from regional terrorist organizations. India remains committed to pursuing a zero-tolerance approach to terrorism, he said. Organizations and individuals added to the Security Councils ISIL (Daesh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions list are subject to assets freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes. The U.N. statement on Monday identified Makki as the deputy chief of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group, also known as Jamat-ud Dawa, blamed for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai. New Delhi accuses the Pakistani militant leader of playing roles in several terrorist attacks in India, including the Mumbai carnage, which killed 166 people. Foreigners were also among the victims. Makki is the brother-in-law of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, who is also serving a prison term in Pakistan on charges of financing anti-India militants. Saeed denies Indias allegations that he masterminded the Mumbai bloodshed. Pakistani authorities arrested Makki in 2019, and a court sentenced him to six months in prison in 2020 on charges of financing terrorist activities. He remains in jail for reasons not immediately known. Makki is also wanted by the U.S. in connection with the Mumbai attack, and Washington has issued a $2 million bounty for his arrest. New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of harboring and funding militant groups blamed for terror attacks on Indian soil and Muslim-majority parts of India-administered Kashmir. Pakistan, which also administers part of Kashmir, denies the allegations as an attempt to divert attention from Indias alleged human rights violations and atrocities against Kashmiris. The nuclear-armed rival nations have fought several wars and limited conflicts, mainly over Kashmir, since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. The dispute remains at the center of bilateral tensions. A top U.N. diplomat held talks with the foreign minister of the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan to convey international concern about restrictions they have placed on women's access to work, education and public life. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, the highest-ranking woman in the world body, arrived overnight in the capital, Kabul, at the head of a high-level U.N. delegation. Her visit comes nearly a month after the Islamist Taliban tightened their already sweeping crackdown on Afghan women, ordering most female NGO staff to stop work until further notice and barring girls from attending universities. The latest curbs sparked global outrage and calls for immediately reversing them. Mohammed told Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in the meeting Wednesday that the purpose of her visit was aimed at "witnessing the situation up close" and delivering the international community's message about women's access to education and work, according to Taliban officials. Muttaqi in turn complained about a lack of cooperation from the international community to address concerns such as granting recognition to his government and removing sanctions on the banking sector and Taliban leaders, saying they were causing problems for ordinary Afghans. "Traders are faced with extreme difficulties and they are unable to transfer funds to even import food items," he said in his remarks at the meeting, captured on camera and released by the Taliban. "If 1 million [girl] students are without education here, but what about those 9 million students, including boys and girls, who are going to schools?" Muttaqi asked. "They are also humans and need assistance to overcome issues facing them." The Taliban have banned teenage girls from attending school beyond grade six. "Women are engaged in educational and health sectors in significant numbers, whereas those who used to work in government offices are paid salaries at home; the number of female inmates has reduced considerably," Taliban foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said in a statement that quoted Muttaqi as telling the U.N. delegation. The foreign minister recounted that his government had established peace in Afghanistan on its own returning to power and "narcotics cultivation has dropped to zero," noting the country used to be the biggest drug producer in the world before the Taliban takeover in August 2021. "Ms. Mohammed pledged to convey the realities as witnessed to the international community, taking firm steps for continued assistance to Afghanistan," Balkhi said. A U.N. report published in November acknowledged that the Taliban had imposed a strict ban on opium production in April 2022 but said the ban had been ineffective and that the world body estimated that opium production increased by 32% last year. Muttaqi was also quoted as telling the U.N. team that the number of drug addicts in Afghanistan had risen to around four million before the Taliban takeover. "They are now being treated in 83 therapy centers" across the country, but these efforts have not been acknowledged by the world nor has there been any assistance in return for these efforts, the foreign minister said. Mohammed also met with U.N. staff, aid groups and Afghan women "to take stock of the situation, convey solidarity, and discuss ways to promote and protect women's and girls rights," deputy U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said in New York. In those talks, Mohammed "stressed the need to uphold human rights, especially for women and girls," and was "encouraged by exemptions" to the ban on female aid workers, Haq said. The exemptions have allowed some work to restart in areas such as health care. Mohammed was in Kabul as part of a series of meetings that had included stops in Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan to discuss the situation in Afghanistan with diplomats, Afghan diaspora and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Taliban have defended the ban on NGOs, claiming female workers were not adhering to Islamic dress codes and other Shariah principles in violation of official directives. The ban has prompted major foreign aid groups to suspend operations in Afghanistan, though some said this week they had resumed health and other programs where the Taliban have allowed women to work. The Taliban seized power 17 months ago when U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after 20 years of war with the then-insurgent Taliban. United States law enforcement officials said on Wednesday that they've arrested the Russian founder of a China-based cryptocurrency exchange, disrupting an online platform used by criminals on the darknet. Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, the majority owner of Hong Kong-registered Bitzlato, was taken into custody in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday evening and charged with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business, officials said at a press conference at the Justice Department. Meanwhile, French authorities working with Europol and other European law enforcement agencies took down Bitzlatos digital infrastructure and seized its cryptocurrency, officials said. Legkodymov was expected to make his first court appearance in Florida on Wednesday. His attorneys did not respond to queries seeking to confirm his arraignment in time for publication. If convicted, he faces a maximum of five years in prison. 'A high-tech axis of cryptocrime' Cybercriminals often operate in the shadows and are rarely caught. Asked why Legkodymov was in Miami at the time of his arrest, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco declined to answer. The charges allege that Legkodymov operated Bitzlato as a high-tech financial hub that, in his own words, catered to known crooks, Monaco said. Bitzlato openly boasted about its lax identification requirements, telling its users that neither selfies nor passports [are] required, the Justice Department said. The companys biggest counterpart in crypto transactions was Hydra Market, a notorious darknet marketplace that sold drugs and stolen financial information before it was shut down by U.S. and German authorities last year. Prosecutors say Bitzlato exchanged more than $700 million in cryptocurrency for users of Hydra Market between 2018 and 2022. Bitzlato is also accused of receiving more than $15 million in ransomware proceeds. Hydra and Bitzlato formed a high-tech axis of cryptocrime, Monaco said. Hydra buyers funded illicit purchases of illegal drugs, stolen financial information, and hacking services from crypto accounts hosted at Bitzlato, and sellers of these illegal goods and services at Hydra sent criminal proceeds to accounts at Bitzlato. A lawyer for Legkodymov did not immediately respond to a VOA request for comment. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said nearly half of all known Bitzlato transactions between 2019 and 2021 involved Russian illicit finance or otherwise risky sources. Darknet marketplaces almost always demand virtual currency, according to the Treasury Department. Bitzlato is particularly active in facilitating illicit activity, but it is ultimately part of a larger ecosystem of cybercriminals that are allowed to operate with impunity in Russia, Adeyemo said. In a rare move, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bitzlato as a primary money laundering concern in connection with Russian illicit funds. Crackdown on crypto The charges come as U.S. authorities have stepped up a crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges used by cybercriminals. Illicit cryptocurrency transactions hit a new high of $20 billion in 2022, up from $18 billion in 2021 and $5 billion in 2017, according to Chainalysis. U.S. officials say Russia in recent years has emerged as a haven for ransomware actors and other cybercriminals, with Moscow sometimes hiring private hacking groups to carry out international cyberattacks. Adeyemo said most ransomware incidents reported to the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in the second half of 2021 were conducted by Russia-related ransomware variants. At a time when Russia is waging a brutal and unjust war in Ukraine, and as it seeks to circumvent sanctions and governance controls to fill its coffers and sustain its violence, we have no tolerance for criminal enterprises enriching Russias malicious interests, Adeyemo said. The United States and Britain said Tuesday they will hold Iran to account for violating the rights of its people, while reiterating condemnation of Irans execution of a British Iranian national. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the execution last week of Ali Reza Akbari fits a pattern of abuse by the Iranian government that includes detentions, torture, forced confessions, unjust executions. We were appalled by the execution of Mr. Akbari, just as weve been appalled by everything weve been seeing on the streets of Iran over the last months since these protests began mass arrests, sham trials, the executions, the use of sexual violence as a tool for protest suppression, Blinken said. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who met with Blinken in Washington on Tuesday, said both Britain and the United States stand with the brave and dignified people of Iran as they demand their rights to live free of terror and oppression. Cleverly said Britain has imposed sanctions on those involved in Akbaris execution, including Irans prosecutor general, and on members of Irans morality police and judiciary involved in a crackdown against protesters. He said the people of Iran are telling the government they are not happy with the current system in the country and that it is up to the government to make changes. The simple message I would put across is that they should change not for our benefit, not because of what we say or do, but because their own people are demanding that they do so, Cleverly said. Ukraine says the West must speed up the delivery of weapons as its troops come under increasing pressure from invading Russian forces, ahead of a key meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group of NATO allies in Ramstein, Germany on Friday. Dozens of civilians have been killed in recent days by Russian missiles. An attack on an apartment block in the city of Dnipro Saturday killed at least 44 people, including several children. What happened in Dnipro, the fact that Russia is preparing a new attempt to seize the initiative in the war, the fact that the nature of hostilities at the front requires new decisions in the defense supply, all this only emphasizes how important it is to coordinate our efforts, the efforts of all members of the coalition to defend Ukraine and freedom, and to speed up decision-making, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday. "A regular meeting in the Ramstein format will be held at the end of the week. We expect fundamental decisions from the coalition of our partners, he added. British tanks The Ukrainian president, meanwhile, praised Britains announcement that it will supply 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv. This is exactly what we need, Zelenskyy said. The Challenger 2 is Britains main battle tank. The squadron of 14 tanks is part of a large package of military aid, which includes AS90 self-propelled artillery, Bulldog armored vehicles, ammunition, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, Starstreak air defense systems and medium-range air defense missiles. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov Tuesday dismissed Britains supply of tanks to Ukraine. The special military operation will continue, these tanks will burn, just like the rest. The goals of the special military operation will be achieved, Peskov told the Reuters news agency. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told lawmakers Monday this was Britains most significant package of combat power provided to Ukraine to date. "We believe that in 2023, increased supplies improve training and strengthening diplomatic resolve will enable Ukraine to be successful against Russia's poorly led and now badly equipped armed forces, Wallace said. Today's package will help accelerate the conclusion of Putin's occupation and all its brutality and ensure that in 2023 and beyond, if necessary, Ukraine retains its momentum, he added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pressure on Germany That momentum depends on other allies also stepping up. Germany is under growing pressure to send Ukraine "Leopard 2 tanks and approve requests from other nations to re-export their German-made tanks. The Leopard 2 tank is seen as the workhorse of many European armies, and analysts say hundreds could be sent to the Ukrainian frontlines with Berlins approval. Ukraine needs hundreds of light and battle tanks to conduct a successful offensive in the spring. So, it seems that the British offer is more of a political signal - that the red line on tanks is actually gone, Liana Fix, a defense analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA. The British political signal might not be enough for Germany to move onto main battle tanks. And Germany is so crucial because the Leopards are really the best and the most numerous tanks available for Ukraine at this point, Fix said. World War III Poland and Finland want to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki offered a warning to Germany. Ukraine's defeat may become a prelude to a World War III. Therefore, today there is no reason to block support for Kyiv, to procrastinate. Thus, I call for decisive actions by the German government on all sorts of weapons to be delivered to Ukraine, Morawiecki said at an event hosted by the German opposition Christian Democratic Union party in Berlin Tuesday. European Union Council President Charles Michel voiced his support Wednesday for sending tanks to Ukraine. The time is now; they urgently need more equipment and I am personally in favor of supplying tanks to Ukraine, Michel told EU lawmakers. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Wednesday he expected an announcement that further main battle tanks would be sent to Ukraine. Definitely, there is momentum. Unfortunately, that the momentum has formed after weve seen, again, horrendous civilian deaths We could do it right now, but we will be waiting for some other imaginary red lines to be crossed, because this is the modus operandi our allies are choosing, Landsbergis told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Divisions Germany is providing Ukraine with Marder armored personnel carriers, a Patriot air defense missile battery, howitzers, anti-aircraft guns and Iris-T surface-to-air missiles. There are, however, divisions within Germanys governing coalition over increasing the supply of weapons. The Green party wants to go further in supplying tanks and other heavy weapons to Kyiv. We are at a different and a new and a next step. And as we have done in the past, we will join forces (with allies) also in the upcoming future, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a member of the Greens, said Tuesday. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appointed Boris Pistorius as his new defense minister Tuesday after the resignation of Christine Lambrecht earlier this week. In the past, Pistorius has spoken out in favor of helping Ukraine defend itself. Speaking after his appointment Wednesday, Pistorius would not be drawn on any decisions over sending Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv. The German army must adapt to a new situation which arose due to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Pistorius told reporters. U.S. lead Germany is looking to Washington to take the lead, says analyst Fix. Its always step-by-step, it takes a long time until decisions are made. And Germany in any case does not assume a leadership role, but it only acts if the United States acts in parallel. And this reflects Germany's concerns about escalation with Russia, Fix said. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is due to host a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group of allies at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday. The participants are expected to coordinate further military aid for Ukraine. The group consists of around 50 allies dedicated to helping Ukraine defend itself. The meeting sends an important signal, says Fix. It also demonstrates that the West is not satisfied with a frozen conflict, with a frozen war, with a preliminary cease-fire but that the Western alliance sees the necessity for Ukraine to make further great gains, Fix told VOA. Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. Vietnams anti-corruption drive is expected to continue following the forced resignation of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc amid public distrust that has emerged with a series of scandals involving his subordinates and their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysts said the legacy-minded general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, or the CPV, Nguyen Phu Trong who is behind the anti-graft campaign known as burning furnace was mindful that corruption was threatening his partys legitimacy. The anti-corruption campaign is being rolled out in a wide scope but its piecemeal and thats going to create more uncertainty, I think. It was intended to provide reassurance, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia. In September, Trong, who is serving a rare third term as general secretary, urged the timely dismissal of ineffective officials and those who had committed violations and wrongdoings. Previous allegations have included foreign ministry officials accused of extorting about $200 million from expatriate Vietnamese attempting to return home during the pandemic. Criminal proceedings have also been launched against more than 100 people tied to a $172 million scandal involving Viet A Technology Company. Officials were allegedly bribed to supply hospitals with massively overpriced COVID-19 test kits. Two deputy prime ministers were dismissed earlier this month. The Vietnamese government said Phuc, 68, bore ultimate responsibility for offenses committed by officials who served under him, including the two deputy prime ministers and three ministers. Fully being aware of his responsibilities before the party and people, he submitted an application to resign from his assigned positions, quit his job and retire, the government said in a statement on Tuesday. Dr. Dinh Duc Long, who has closely watched the governments handling of the pandemic, told VOAs Vietnamese service from Ho Chi Minh City that public opinion no longer supported Phucs leadership. As to whether his offense has criminal signs or something else, we still don't know, he said, adding the CPV Central Committee and the National Assembly had done their job. There are a lot of rumors. Of course, the rumors have not been confirmed to be true or not, but the public is very dissatisfied, very angry, even angry because of that information of course, it has not been verified. And it is the duty of the court, he added in regard to criminal allegations. Vo Van Tao, a former journalist with state-run media and now an independent blogger, told VOAs Vietnamese Service that it is a privilege of the elite within the CPV to save face by playing down the mistakes of its members. Suddenly Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc resigned, in fact it was a removal in short, it was a dismissal, he said. When you make mistakes, when you do something wrong and even when you are found guilty but because of your position, your big role in the party such as the four pillars or in the Politburo so when they conduct disciplinary measures against you, they do it in a softer way, to keep the face of the party. Vietnam has no paramount ruler and is officially led by four pillars, the CPV general secretary, the president, which is largely ceremonial, prime minister and speaker of the house. Thayer said Trong, 78, was expected to retire in January 2021 at the 13th National Congress after serving two five-year terms and nominating Tran Quoc Vuong as his successor in accordance with party rules. But the Central Committee of the CPV vetoed his nomination, which he said was an unexpected development, and that the committee could not agree on a replacement, which was complicated by the worsening pandemic. Theres no power struggle going on in Vietnam and rather than consolidating his power hes preparing his legacy. Hes going to step down, I believe, in 2026 if not before and his job is to find a successor, Thayer told VOA. And the choices are narrowing. In the meantime, Thayer said Trong will quietly canvass members of the Politburo, Secretariat and other senior party officials about his successor. Trong will continue with his burning furnace campaign because he knows that corruption in the party is the major threat to its legitimacy to rule Vietnam, he said. Where is it going to stop? Now the vacancies have got to be filled thats the key there. He said three names had been advanced as potential replacements for Phuc. They included the Defense Minister Gen. Phan Van Giang and the Public Security Minister Gen. To Lam. A third option would be for Trong to occupy the presidency while retaining his post as CPV general secretary until the end of his term in about three years. VOAs Vietnamese Service contributed to this report. The impact of Russias war in Ukraine is being felt as far away as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists see the conflict as contributing to a shortage of migratory birds which make their way each winter from Europe to the wetlands of the Kashmir Valley. Every February, the wildlife protection department conducts a census of migratory birds in Kashmir. The department says that more than 1.1 million birds of 39 species visited the region in 2021. The census estimated 810,000 birds in 2020 and 950,000 in 2019. The department has not yet begun this years count but the wildlife warden of wetlands, Ifshan Dewan, told VOA, I am getting reports from various wetlands on low arrival of migratory birds compared to the last year. Experts believe that the nearly year-old war between Russia and Ukraine could be one reason for the reduced size of this years migratory flocks, both in Kashmir and elsewhere in the region. Irfan Jeelani, founder of the birding club Birds of Kashmir, told VOA that birds from China, Siberia, central Asia and Europe visit Kashmir every winter. Birds from Europe could be affected due to the war and have altered their flyway to reach here; however, weak ones couldnt reach their destinations, Jeelani suggested. A similar pattern has been noted in the neighboring Jammu region, where Parmil Kumar, the head of the department of statistics at the University of Jammu, said the war in Ukraine could have been responsible for some species arriving almost two weeks later than usual. There is also a reduction of about 15% in the number of birds visiting this winter to Jammu region, said Kumar, who is a birder himself. Bird migration expert Andrew Farnsworth agreed that the Ukraine-Russia war could be a factor affecting the number of migratory birds visiting the Kashmir region this winter but noted that birds come to the valley from many regions besides Europe. Maybe slightly, but there are so many other factors and so many more birds arriving from more easterly locations to Kashmir, in addition to ongoing military and industrial activities in and around Kashmir for years, said Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. War can and certainly does affect the movements of birds, whether by habitat destruction, increased hunting pressure during long conflicts, or destruction by military actions. Wildlife experts are looking to see if this years census bears out observations seeming to show significantly reduced populations of bird species that make the trip from Europe, such as the black stork, great white pelican and purple heron. Wildlife experts in Ukraine say there is no doubt that the war is endangering a wide variety of creatures there. The conflict has threatened not only Ukraines population but also biodiversity, including a significant number of rare and globally vulnerable bird species, said a recent article by Oleg Dudkin, CEO of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds and Martin Harper, regional director at BirdLife Europe & Central Asia. Asad R. Rahmani, a member of the governing body of Wetlands International South Asia, said another likely explanation for the declining migratory bird population in Kashmir is the destruction of wetlands that provide a winter home for the birds. Most birds that come to India belong to the Central Asian Flyway and Ukraine does not fall in this flyway, he told VOA. There is always a movement from Europe of some birds. Still, the bulk of the migratory birds come from central Russia, Mongolia, northern China, Tibet, and some countries of central Asia. If adequately protected, Kashmirs wetlands could become a major tourist attraction, he added. Rashid Naqash, the regional wildlife warden for the Kashmir region, said in an interview that his department is trying its best to protect the regions wetlands. His department manages eight main wetlands where migratory birds congregate in huge droves during winter. Regarding the war in Ukraine, Naqash said the migratory birds instinctively avoid places with a lot of activity and instead take safer routes to get to their wintering grounds. But he said, It is hard, dangerous, and stressful for migratory birds to find other ways to get to where they spend the winter. The White House faced a new barrage of criticism Tuesday about the weekend announcement that lawyers found a third tranche of classified documents at the presidents private home. Administration officials emphasized they are being cooperative with investigators and transparent with the public and are drawing a contrast between their behavior and that of former President Donald Trump. However, in a half-hour call with reporters, White House spokesperson Ian Sams declined to offer any details beyond the few the administration already has reported about the unknown number of documents found in private offices and homes used by President Joe Biden. And while White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fielded multiple questions on the issue, she stressed repeatedly that the White House would not provide too many details while an investigation was underway. Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the potential mishandling of classified documents by Biden. While we may be constrained from being able to provide a ton of facts as this investigation is ongoing, we're being very forthright that we're being cooperative with the Justice Department, said Sams, special assistant to the president and senior adviser to the White House counsels office. And that's such a stark contrast. I mean, you listen to these House Republicans they're faking outrage about disclosure and transparency. On Saturday, White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that officials found six pages worth of classified documents in Bidens private library at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. He said those documents were immediately turned over to the Justice Department. The latest discovery adds to a trove found in December in the garage of Bidens Wilmington home, and another set found in November in an office in Washington that he used. Biden said after the first discovery was announced last week that he was surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office. But I dont know whats in the documents, he added. Previously, the Justice Department retrieved about 300 documents at various levels of classification from Trumps Florida home. Unanswered questions In Tuesdays call with reporters, the White House did not give comprehensive responses to questions about why they delayed by days or weeks in announcing the document discoveries, what the parameters were for the searches, whether they are done searching, whats in the documents themselves and how many there are, and whether Biden would sit for an interview with the special counsel if he is asked. Trump, on his social media network, sought to contrast his case with Bidens, saying that he did NOTHING wrong [and] have the right as President to declassify. Trump added that he kept the documents securely and that Mar-a-Lago is a highly secured facility, with Security Cameras all over the place, and watched over by staff & our great Secret Service. I have INFO on everyone! Bidens Republican critics have promised swift action. President Bidens three strikes against transparency will be met with swift congressional oversight, James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said in a statement on Saturday. The White House, the National Archives, and the Justice Department failed to promptly inform Congress and the American people about mishandled classified documents from Joe Bidens time as vice president. When asked if the White House would cooperate with Congress, Sams said, We're reviewing those letters. We'll make a determination about our response in due course. But of course, we're going to call it out when we see rampant hypocrisy that shows a total lack of credibility when it comes to these requests. Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, told VOA via email that while the administration was right to promptly inform Justice Department officials after they found the documents, things might have come out better for the Biden White House if they had done a better job [of]] communicating with the public. At a minimum, they should have been forthcoming with all relevant details when the media first asked about President Bidens retention of the records. "It may be understandable that the administration didnt alert the public immediately when they first discovered the documents, he said, but at some point, they owed the public information. It would have been nice if the administration made an announcement before the media learned that President Biden had discovered classified records in his possession. ... That was a breach of trust with the public. Jean-Pierre questioned whether the public was preoccupied with what is turning out to be a political headache for the Biden administration, which faces stiff opposition in the new Congress. That's for the American people to decide, right? she said. Time and tension The White House said the Biden administration is aware of its responsibility to inform the public, but it noted there are legal considerations. We understand that there's a tension between the need to be cooperative with an ongoing DoJ investigation and rightful demands for additional public information, Sams said. Jordan Strauss, a former Justice Department official and former White House staffer, said that often happens in legal matters. It is not common for the public to learn about investigations at the investigation stage, said Strauss, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk and financial advisory solutions firm. Strauss said the outcome is not inevitable some of the found documents, which date from Bidens time as vice president, might no longer be classified. The one thing that is sure, he said, is that this will take time. Right now, I suspect that the president's lawyers are conducting a very thorough investigation on their own to try to figure out what's happened, and they probably don't want to share information until they've definitively established what happened and what did not, he said. And that's not a short process in almost any criminal case, or civil case. Until this is resolved, questions will continue to hit the White House. You guys can ask me this 100 times, 200 times if you wish, Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday, after fielding several questions on the issue. I'm going to keep saying the same thing. I hear your question. It's been asked. And answered. It's been noted. And we're just going to try to move on here. A helicopter crash Wednesday outside of the Ukrainian capital killed at least 15 people, including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi. Officials said the crash happened near a kindergarten in Brovary, a suburb east of Kyiv, where nine of the dead were on board the helicopter when it went down. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post he had directed authorities to investigate. Zelenskyy called the crash a "terrible tragedy." Officials earlier put the death toll at 18 people. Zelenskyy, in his post, said at least 15 people had died though the exact number of casualties was still being determined. He said at that point the dead included at least three children. "The pain is unspeakable," Zelenskyy said. "Tragedy far from the frontline, in Brovary," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted. "My condolences to relatives of the victims, especially children." Kuleba added that Monastyrskyi and Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin were "true Ukrainian patriots." U.N. Resident Coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown said she was "deeply saddened by the tragic deaths." "I extend, on behalf of the United Nations, my deepest sympathy and condolences to their families, to the Government and to the people of Ukraine," Brown said in a statement. European Council President Charles Michel expressed condolences to the Ukrainian people, calling Monastyrsky "a great friend of the EU." "We join Ukraine in grief following the tragic helicopter accident in Brovary," Michel tweeted. No end in sight Asked by the President of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Borge Brende, if he thinks there will be an end to the Russian war in Ukraine this year, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he does not see an end to the war in the immediate future. "I do not see a chance at the present moment to have a serious peace negotiation between the two parties," Guterres said. He said the solution needs to be based on international law and the respect of Ukraine's territorial integrity, and the conditions for that are not currently ripe. Guterres said in the meantime, the United Nations is focusing its efforts on lessening the impact of the conflict on both the Ukrainian people and the international community. He pointed to successes in extracting civilians earlier in the war from the Azovstal steel plant, the exchange of prisoners of war on both sides, getting international nuclear inspectors into Ukrainian facilities, and facilitating the exports of Ukrainian grain and Russian grain and fertilizer to international markets. "So, we are trying to address the consequences," the secretary-general said. "But for the moment, I don't think that we have a chance to promote or to mediate a serious negotiation to achieve peace in the short term." Of the global situation overall, including the fight against climate change, the 73-year-old U.N. chief was even more bleak. "Let's be clear, I think we are in the worst situation I remember in my lifetime." SEE ALSO: Military aid The United States and other Ukrainian allies are providing Ukraine with more advanced weaponry and training on those systems, and more aid is likely to be announced Friday as they convene the latest meeting of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will lead the talks, which will be attended by dozens of defense ministers, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. On Thursday, Austin stops in Berlin to meet with incoming German defense minister Boris Pistorius as Germany considers approving its Leopard 2 battle tanks for Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he discussed defense cooperation with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier ahead of the Ramstein meeting. Zelenskyy did not mention the German tanks in his nightly address Tuesday. Zelenskyy also thanked the Netherlands for what he said would be the addition of another Patriot missile battery for Ukraine's air defenses. "So, there are now three guaranteed batteries. But this is only the beginning. We are working on new solutions to strengthen our air defense," Zelenskyy said. Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said during a visit to the White House on Tuesday that his country has the intention to join what the United States is doing with Germany "on the Patriot project." Germany and the United States each pledged to send a Patriot battery to Ukraine, and the U.S. Defense Department said Tuesday it had begun training Ukrainian troops to operate the advanced system. Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters the training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma "will last for several months and train upwards of 90 to 100 Ukrainians." VOA U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2023 (American Heart Association News) -- Between his first and second years of medical school, before he was certain about what he'd specialize in, Ralph Sacco landed a job alongside Dr. Philip Wolf. Sacco's role included feeding punch cards into a machine, a tedious but necessary step in the rudimentary days of electronic data collection. The fascinating part was seeing what happened next the way Wolf used the information to save and improve lives, particularly those at risk of stroke. Sacco veered his career down the same path, the combination of neurology and epidemiology. Like his mentor, he did so with great impact on large populations. Yet that was only part of the legacy Sacco forged. He took on major leadership roles, such as becoming the first neurologist to serve as president of the American Heart Association, then later became president of the American Academy of Neurology, both while leading many aspects of brain health at the University of Miami. Through it all, he regularly made time to mentor those who wanted to follow his path. Sacco died Tuesday at his home in Amagansett, New York, with his loving husband, Scott Dutcher, by his side. Sacco had an aggressive brain tumor. He was 65. American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown remembered Sacco as a dear friend and an unparalleled leader whose "warm, generous heart and care transcended his research and clinic to every person fortunate to meet him." "The Association is forever grateful that he chose to share his time and extraordinary talents with us," she said. "We will continue to honor his memory through the work we do to champion health equity and longer, healthier lives for all people." Sacco's many roles at Miami included chairman of the department of neurology, executive director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute and in an example of his leadership more broadly in medicine he was director of the university's Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Sacco also was editor of the AHA's journal Stroke, the premier scientific journal for research in the stroke field. Overseeing the prestigious publication meant a lot to Sacco. Having long championed diversity and equity particularly in his research he declared that no more than half the editorial board would be white males. That was in 2020; by 2022, he'd achieved it. "He saw that as part of his legacy expanding the diversity of vascular neurologists and promoting the careers of the next generation of stroke leadership," said Dr. Mitchell Elkind, one of Sacco's proteges. "And he meant it. It's an example of why so many people in the stroke community adored him." Elkind trained under Sacco at Columbia Presbyterian, then became co-director of the landmark research project that Sacco founded when Sacco went to Miami. He's since become the second neurologist to serve as AHA president and is now the organization's Chief Clinical Science Officer. These various vantage points gave Elkind a deep understanding of his mentor. "He gravitated toward leadership positions because he knew he had something to contribute," Elkind said. "He succeeded because he had that combination of operational brilliance and intellectual capacity all the things that make someone successful as an executive as well as the warmth, compassion and humility of a physician." Early days Sacco was born in Margate City, New Jersey, the oldest of five kids in a family known for selling submarine sandwiches. His grandfather was among several relatives who in 1947 opened White House Sub Shop, now an iconic spot in Atlantic City. In 1969, his father started another shop on the Jersey Shore. He gave it a name that cleverly fits both the business and the family: Sack O' Subs. While many Saccos went from high school into the family business, Ralph went to Cornell University. His analytical, mathematical mind seemed well suited for electrical engineering. Then a few things happened. An aunt who worked in a physician's office convinced him that those traits would work well in medicine. So he got a bachelor's degree in bioelectrical engineering, then went to Boston University School of Medicine. His mother had mental illness, so Sacco was interested in "what makes us tick, what makes us who we are," he said in an October video chat with Elkind. Sacco said he also was interested in studying the brain because the grandfather who'd started the sub shop had a stroke. Although the patriarch survived at a time when that was less common than today this previously active, vibrant man became paralyzed and lost his love of life. "I saw firsthand how much a stroke can affect the person who has it, as well as the whole family," Sacco told his hometown newspaper, The Press of Atlantic City, in 2010. The story also noted that Sacco kept a framed portrait of his grandfather in his office on the Miami campus. In 1981, while at BU med school, Sacco received an American Heart Association Student Scholarship that essentially paid his salary while he worked for a scientist. That's how he joined Wolf's team. Wolf was working on the Framingham Heart Study, a landmark longitudinal study in researching the risk of cardiovascular disease; to this day, it follows generations of people from Framingham, Massachusetts. When hired in 1967, Wolf was the first and only neurologist. He became the overall lead investigator in 1989. Sacco continued working on Framingham data throughout his medical school career "and did not require much supervision," Wolf said. Sacco was the lead author on two publications before he was even an intern, an unusual feat. (Sacco would go on to author more than 1,000 peer-reviewed articles.) After med school, Sacco earned a master's degree in epidemiology from Columbia University. This is where Sacco added another mentor who was as much of a giant in his field as Wolf was in his: J.P. Mohr. The projects they worked on together included contributing to the creation of the national Stroke Data Bank. Forging his own path Mohr often told Sacco to "question everything, take nothing for granted." That attitude connects with Sacco wondering whether the lessons learned from studying the mostly white population in Framingham applied to people of other races and ethnicities. To find out, he launched the Northern Manhattan Study in 1991, studying the many populations of that diverse part of New York City. Like Framingham, NOMAS has both made profound impact and is still going strong. This is the project Sacco continued overseeing with a team in Miami while Elkind oversaw the team in New York. Around the time NOMAS began, Sacco became more involved with the American Heart Association and its division, the American Stroke Association. He quickly realized he'd found an organization that shared his vision and approach toward improving the lives of all Americans. Sacco held many key leadership roles with the AHA, including his presidency in 2010-11. His honors from the organization include the Distinguished National Leadership Award, the Gold Heart Award and the Distinguished Scientist Award. "I was drawn to the organization because of the breadth of the people involved," Sacco said in the video chat with Elkind. Many risk factors for heart diseases are also stroke risk factors. Sacco sought to emphasize that link, while delving deeper into those areas that would benefit both the heart and the brain. The success of his approach was best evidenced by his ascension to the presidency, the top spot for a science volunteer. "It was sort of thinking ahead, evolving and expanding the mission, always looking forward to the next frontier," Sacco told Elkind. His next frontier was becoming president of the American Academy of Neurology, from 2017-19. Sacco took great pride in strengthening the bond between the AHA and the AAN. His final chapter In 2021, Sacco caught COVID-19. Once recovered, he felt tingling in his leg. He thought it might be related to the virus. An MRI traced it to a tumor in his brain. Surgery removed it, but as a brain health expert, Sacco knew he probably had about 18 months to live. "He became very organized about his estate planning, then he went back to work he even wrote a grant application to fund future research after being diagnosed with a brain tumor," Elkind said. "People told him to stop working, travel the world. He said, 'This is who I am, this is what's important to me.'" Away from medicine, Sacco proudly showed off his dance moves at weddings; took coastal vacations to Italy, the Caribbean, Chile and beyond; and especially enjoyed architecture. In addition to studying the work of great architects, he oversaw renovations of homes in Miami and the cottage in the Hamptons where he spent his final days. Sacco's survivors include Dutcher, whom he married in 2014, as well as his father and all four siblings. There's also what he called his "chosen family" of close friends, and his professional family that is, a scientific family tree that traces backward through Mohr to C. Miller Fisher, who is considered the father of vascular neurology, and goes forward to a vast network forged over roughly 40 years mentorship. Looking out for the next generation meant so much to Sacco that when asked by Elkind for a closing comment to their half-hour video chat, he said: "We have to send the message to our mentees to get involved with organizations. "The organization gains and you gain," Sacco said. "And I think it's critical to advocate for the policies that will make a difference and to advocate for the funding that will make a difference for research for cardiovascular disease and stroke. All of us have to be part of the solution." American Heart Association News covers heart and brain health. Not all views expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is owned or held by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved. If you have questions or comments about this story, please email editor@heart.org. By Jaime Aron, American Heart Association News TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Meditation might help a persons gut health but it takes a lot of meditation over a long time. Tibetan Buddhist monks appear to have gut microbes that differ substantially from others living near them, a new study reports. Those differences have previously been linked to a lower risk of anxiety, depression and heart disease, according to the study authors. The findings suggest that regular deep meditation practiced for a number of years appears to regulate the gut microbiome and improve health, the researchers said. The report was published online Jan. 16 in the journal General Psychiatry. Meditation is more frequently being used to help treat mental health problems like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, traumatic stress and eating disorders. It can also help a person deal with chronic pain. To see whether meditation has a deeper effect on human health, the investigators analyzed stool and blood samples from 37 Buddhist monks from three Tibetan temples, as well as 19 people living nearby. These monks use a form of meditation derived from the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda. They have been practicing this meditation at least two hours a day for between three and 30 years, the researchers noted. Stool sample analysis revealed that the monks guts were significantly enriched with a number of bacterial strains. Collectively, several bacteria enriched in the meditation group [have been] associated with the alleviation of mental illness, suggesting that meditation can influence certain bacteria that may have a role in mental health, lead researcher Dr. Jinghong Chen of the Shanghai Mental Health Center in China, and colleagues reported. Analysis indicated that the microbes could be influencing their inflammation levels and metabolism, the study team noted in a journal news release. Further, blood samples revealed that cholesterol markers were significantly lower in the monks than in their neighbors. The researchers said the potential health benefits of meditation should be further researched. These results suggest that long-term deep meditation may have a beneficial effect on gut microbiota, enabling the body to maintain an optimal state of health, the authors concluded. More information The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about meditation. SOURCE: General Psychiatry, news release, Jan. 16, 2023 Funeral Announcements A daily list of current funeral annoucements as heard on KXRA 1490 AM/100.3 FM News Updates The daily news, sports, and events delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Sports Update This current sports headlines delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Upcoming Events This email is the events of the area delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Breaking News The big news. Sent only as it happens. The Russian missile that hit a residential building in the city of Dniepropetrovsk/Dnipro on 14 January - killing 44 people, seriously injuring 75 others and destroying 236 apartments - was shot down by Ukraines air defenses. Ukrainian and NATO media have unabashedly accused Russia of a war crime, which Russia has denied. President Volodymyr Zelenskys special adviser for strategic communications, Oleksii Arestovych, at first claimed that this incident was the result of a miscalculation by Ukrainian air defense, therefore suggesting Moscow had no intention of striking the building. He then retracted his assertion and finally confirmed it. At the request of the integral nationalist MPs, he was immediately relieved of his functions. The Russian Ministry of Defense underscored that it never targets civilian apartment blocks and that its missile was indeed brought down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, which missed its military target thereby destroying a civilian apartment building in Dniepropetrovsk/Dnipro. Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share Indias highest court will hear arguments on whether to legalize same-sex marriage on March 13, a landmark for the country of 1.4 billion people and for the global movement for LGBTQ rights. A ruling that finds gay marriages are allowed under Indias constitution would run counter to the socially conservative sentiment of Prime Minister Narendra Modis Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as well as wide swaths of the countrys Muslim community. But younger Indians tend to be more accepting, and absent any intervention from Parliament, the courts decision will be the law of the land. 1. Whats the legal situation now? In India, marriage is governed by different laws tailored to the countrys religious groups; All limit marriage to male-female couples. But legal rights for LGBTQ people in India have been expanding over the past decade, led almost entirely by the Supreme Court. Advertisement In 2014, it laid the groundwork by giving legal recognition to non-binary or transgender persons as a third gender In 2017, it strengthened the right to privacy, and also recognized sexual orientation as an essential attribute of an individuals privacy and dignity In 2018, it decriminalized homosexual sex overturning a British colonial-era law and expanded constitutional rights for LGBTQ people. Last year, the court instituted protections for what it called atypical families. Its a broad category that includes, for example, single parents, blended families or kinship relationships and same-sex couples. The court said that such non-traditional manifestations of families are equally deserving of benefits under various social welfare legislation. 2. Where does the government stand? Advertisement The ruling party, the BJP, opposed broadening the Hindu Marriage Act to include same-sex marriages in 2020, arguing that such unions are out of step with Indian values and culture. The Supreme Court has asked the government to officially weigh in on the current case; as of mid-January it had yet to do so. Sushil Modi, a BJP lawmaker, told Parliament in December that a question of such social significance shouldnt be left to a couple of judges. He has urged the government to strongly argue against legal sanction for gay marriages. 3. And what about religious leaders? Leaders of Indias most prominent religious groups either dont support LGBTQ rights or avoided commenting. But among the Hindu majority roughly 80% of the country theres been a gradual shift in how religious leaders engage with the community. Advertisement In 2018, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu-nationalist group, agreed with the top court ruling decriminalizing gay sex but maintained that same-sex relationships are neither natural nor desirable. This year, the groups head, Mohan Bhagwat, backed LGBTQ rights, saying such people have always been there and are a part of the society. But he stopped short of advocating for same-sex marriages. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a non-governmental body that works to protect and propagate Muslim personal laws, such as those dealing with family issues, opposes homosexuality, terming it immoral. (About 15% of Indians are Muslim.) Some groups of the much smaller Christian population had argued against legalizing homosexuality in 2018 and said that same-sex marriages would become social experiments with unpredictable outcome. Advertisement 4. For LGBTQ people in India, is it easy to be out? It depends. While they are no longer at the risk of facing criminal prosecution, there are no national anti-discrimination laws covering sexual orientation in employment or housing. The LGBTQ people can take recourse in the Constitution of India though that guarantees right to equality to all. Younger people are more open and willing to talk about sexuality and sexual identity. Most big cities host LGBTQ Pride parades or other events and tend to be much more open than many rural places. Nearly 60% of the urban population is comfortable with LGBTQ persons being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to the Ipsos 2021 LGBTQ+ Pride survey. More people (44%) said they supported same-sex marriage than public displays of affection between LGBTQ people (39%), such as holding hands or kissing. In rural parts of the country though, where roughly two-thirds of the countrys population lives, being gay can still be considered taboo. They still face societal discrimination, being shunned by the community and their family, and harassment or violence, sometimes even at the hands of the police. Theres also the fear of being subjected to corrective treatment. 5. Whats before the court? Advertisement The Supreme Court agreed to hear the petition of two same-sex couples in November. More couples have joined since, and the court has also absorbed similar cases from some states challenging different religious personal statutes. That means the court will address whether gay marriage will be allowed under the Hindu Marriage Act, the Indian Christian Marriage Act, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, and Muslim personal laws (which are largely uncodified) in addition to the secular code Special Marriage Act which governs unions between interfaith couples, non-believers and others. Some legal experts think the court will try to find a way to allow same-sex marriage under the secular laws, without expanding the religious codes. The case is scheduled to be heard on March 13, with no timeline for a decision. The 2018 decriminalization decision was handed down two months after the hearings, but that was seen as surprisingly quick. 6. How does India compare with other countries? At the end of 2022, same-sex marriage was legal in more than 30 countries, mostly in Western Europe and the Americas. In Asia, only one jurisdiction Taiwan allows it, and attitudes and laws elsewhere are split. Hong Kong doesnt allow same-sex marriage at home but will grant dependent visas to same-sex spouses of expatriate workers, for example. Thailand is inching toward recognition for civil unions. Other places have become more restrictive: Indonesia, which doesnt recognize gay marriage, recently banned all extra-marital sex; Singapores parliament passed a law lifting a ban on sex between men but has blocked a path toward marriage equality. If Indias court sanctions same-sex marriage, the country would supplant the US as the biggest democracy with such rights for LGBTQ couples. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com 2023 Bloomberg L.P. GiftOutline Gift Article Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share The 2020s have so far served as something of an advertisement for financial regulation. The litany of travails and transgressions in the realms of crypto, fintech, pension funds and more amounts to a resounding endorsement of the safety and soundness standards that traditional banks must meet. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Its thus strange that some want to weaken one of the financial systems most fundamental safeguards: capital requirements designed to ensure that banks can weather crises. In recent months, bank executives and others have been reviving two arguments against what they describe as regulators ever-increasing capital demands. The first is that the requirements harm the economy by impairing banks capacity to lend. The second is that theyre responsible for the migration of financial activity to less-regulated intermediaries and hence for the systemic threats that such shadow banking entails. Advertisement This reasoning is wrongheaded on many levels. Capital isnt a rainy-day fund that banks must hold or set aside. Its equity from shareholders, money banks can use to take risks and make loans and that, unlike debt, has the advantage of absorbing losses. Independent research has consistently shown that ample capital helps banks keep lending through difficult times, making the economy more resilient and monetary policy more effective. Bank managers, though, often prefer to use less equity and more debt, because such leverage has tax benefits and can boost profitability measures in good times. So how much capital do banks really need? Its hard to say precisely, but its abundantly clear that the biggest ones dont have enough. Even amid the reforms that followed the 2008 financial crisis, one simple measure the ratio of tangible equity to tangible assets peaked at a weighted average of just 8.3% for the six largest US banks. Thats much less than what both academic research and historical experience suggest they should have to act as a source of strength in a severe crisis. Since then, capital levels have declined. Granted, the movement of activity away from regulated banks does present a problem. By one estimate, nonbanks now account for almost 60% of credit provision to the US economy, about double the level of 1980. Various incidents, including the implosion of the FTX crypto exchange and repeated runs on money-market mutual funds, have demonstrated the dangers. The right response, though, isnt to ease up on banks. Instead, officials should monitor and address risks wherever they arise, including by extending leverage limits beyond the banking system. Advertisement Fortunately, the Feds new head of bank supervision, Michael Barr, is well acquainted with the cases for and against higher capital requirements and appears to be solidly in the former camp. He has embarked on what he calls a holistic review of capital standards, with an eye toward bolstering the resilience of the largest banks and incorporating a wider range of risks in stress tests. Most important, he advocates humility: Given that nobody can predict the nature or severity of crises, its prudent to have larger buffers against the unexpected. In 2008, a lack of capital helped turn a financial crisis into a global debacle that threw millions out of work and cost Americans alone an estimated $1.4 trillion. In his efforts to prevent a repeat, Barr will face daunting opposition. He deserves all the support he can get. More From Bloomberg Opinion: Banks Need to Worry About Shadow Banks: Paul J. Davies Bernankes Economics Nobel Should Serve as a Warning: Editorial Credit Suisse Shows Banks Still Need More Capital: Editorial The Editors are members of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion 2023 Bloomberg L.P. GiftOutline Gift Article Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share For the first time since July 2022, the Russian invaders in Ukraine have been able to claim that theyve captured a Ukrainian town Soledar, prewar population 10,000. Even though the Ukrainian military hasnt officially admitted ceding Soledar, plenty of video evidence suggests that Russian forces control most of it. The man responsible for the victory, such as it is, has no military rank and is better known as Putins chef: Hes Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group Private Military Company. In the telling of Western intelligence services and analysts, Prigozhin has been gaining influence as his private force, which has been allowed to recruit convicts in exchange for pardons, has become one of the main driving forces of the invasion. This narrative has been backed up with impressive numbers. The UK government and the US National Security Council estimate the size of the Wagner force at 50,000, 80% of them convicts, and the UK has put the groups monthly outlay at $100 million, suggesting major state funding. Prigozhin, though wealthy from government catering contracts, could never afford to spend on such a scale or even to pay 50,000 soldiers the 240,000 rubles ($3,500) per month plus bonus that Wagner offers volunteers (even if the convicts make less). At the same time, Prigozhin has had the temerity to criticize the official military leadership, even to mock it in the most contemptuous manner. Back in October, his public relations services Telegram channel quoted him as saying: Advertisement Those fighters who are effective today have fought in dozens of wars, while many of those who are part of the so-called cadre have learned nothing except how to click their heels, wear bling and write pretty reports. Prigozhin is always careful not to name names, but the official command of Vladimir Putins special military operation, from Army General Valery Gerasimov on down, appears to know exactly whom he means. The military brass has attempted to put Prigozhin in his place with icy silence. Pro-war Telegram channels had been reporting for months that the only Russian line of attack that remained viable during the invasions disastrous autumn the one against the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk regions was manned predominantly by Wagner mercenaries, or musicians, as they call themselves. But the official Defense Ministry dispatch on the capture of Soledar ascribed the victory to regular units, neglecting to mention Wagners contribution altogether. A Telegram outcry orchestrated by Prigozhin forced the ministry to correct the initial report, acknowledging the courageous and selfless action of Wagner volunteer storm troops. On the face of it, Prigozhins clout his monopoly on freeing prisoners, his license to be relatively outspoken in a country of buttoned-up mouths, his freedom to mount military operations independently of the official command and, of course, his apparently inexhaustible financial resources may even appear like a potential political challenge, or at least a special claim on Putins trust, a precious currency the dictator has never squandered. Yet Putins close circle has long since tightened to a few old friends who share with him an intelligence background or experience in St. Petersburg city management in the 1990s. Prigozhin is not part of that circle, and the freedom the ex-convict caterer enjoys in invasion-era Russia is likely a tribute to Putins decidedly unusual idea of private enterprise, born like many of his notions from what he learned as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the wildest post-Soviet years. Advertisement By night, Russias second city was run by gangs then, and Putin, according to many accounts of that era, was unavoidably in contact with the man known as St. Petersburgs night governor, Vladimir Barsukov, also known as Kumarin (who denies knowing Putin personally despite reports to the contrary). Kumarin, known for his buccaneering ways, ran numerous high-profile businesses and was rumored to have rendered valuable protection services to Putin and his closest friends. He, however, ended up in jail during Putins presidency, with more and more charges surfacing to keep him there: He was sentenced to 23.5 years in prison in 2019. Prigozhin, with two criminal convictions under his belt, started some of St. Petersburgs most exclusive restaurants and casinos back in the 1990s. He was part of a scene Putin knew and understood but didnt quite belong to: In Soviet times, as a KGB officer, he was on the other side of the barricades from the street-smart entrepreneurs. As an official and then as president, he was willing to play with them on his own terms. Their kind of private initiative could be allowed if it served the states interests and he was the state, or at least an increasingly important part of it. The KGB knight was supposed to keep his hands clean, but he needed people who werent bound by those ethics. Since the invasion began, Prigozhin has put on a formidable demonstration of this kind of private initiative and of its advantages over Russias bungling, corrupt state management. As the Defense Ministry published vacuous and demonstrably untrue press releases, claiming the elimination of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and thousands of units of equipment sometimes more than Ukraine actually had Prigozhin has relied on pithy comments, sometimes seasoned with prison-bred humor. Asked if he was one of the leaders of Russias party of war, he was quoted by his Telegram channel as saying, I am not a leader of any war party, but I am a member of the War to the Victorious End Party. I have taken part in eight wars and was on the winning side in six. (An incomplete list of these wars includes the civil conflicts in Syria, Libya, Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic, as well as both of Russias wars in Ukraine.) Advertisement A deliberate show of respect for Ukrainian fighters is part of Prigozhins public discourse, one that is missing from official propaganda narratives. The Ukrainian army is fighting courageously for Bakhmut and Soledar, his Telegram channel quoted him as saying. The Ukrainian armed forces are defending the territory of Soledar with honor. Such rhetoric is part of the soldier of fortune image Prigozhin cultivates for his desperado troops, with whom hes often photographed and filmed close to the front lines. Channels close to Wagner always show well-equipped, well-prepared soldiers who contrast sharply with Russians mobilized into the military without proper gear and training. The bang for the buck is always on display. Mikhail Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, claims Ukrainians have thumped Wagners prisoner troops, with a whopping 77% of the recruited convicts dead, wounded or captured. Be that as it may, Putin doesnt necessarily mind the pruning of Russias prison population thats why Prigozhins promises of pardons have been backed up officially and why Wagners fallen, including the convicts, have reaped a bumper crop of medals. Yet for all his PR efforts, even as Prigozhin appears to be receiving money and unusually heavy administrative support, formal power of any kind is not on offer. He doesnt have a government post, nor does he appear next to Putin at any official functions, despite holding the prestigious Hero of Russia award. He is not exactly deniable but nor is he accepted as part of the Putin establishment. Putins lenience toward his friends and his reluctance to push them away no matter what they do is well known. Prigozhins position, by contrast, is that of a kind of adventurous fellow-traveler, a useful contractor who only survives by generating results. That would explain Wagners dogged efforts to take Soledar and Bakhmut, two towns that are important but not critical to the Ukrainian defense of the Donetsk region: If both fall, the Ukrainian military will only roll back to the next formidable line of defense, again forcing Russians into head-on attacks of the kind that have distinguished Wagner so far. Advertisement The unsophisticated tactics have earned the derision of Igor Strelkov, one of the most eloquent personalities on the nationalist flank of the invasions supporters. Prigozhin is no more a hero to Strelkov and his ilk than are Putins generals: The nationalists have nothing but contempt for business, and Prigozhins operation is nakedly commercial. He is even suspected of having sacrificed all those lives merely to get his hands on the salt deposits around Bahkmut and Soledar, some of the biggest in Europe; mineral concessions have been among the Wagner Groups rewards when it fought in Africa and the Middle East. The position of a useful businessman under Putin, however, is traditionally and transparently insecure, forcing Prigozhin to seek allies among the official elite, if not among the generals. He has taken pains to stress his respect for Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman of Chechnya; the governor of the Kursk region, which borders on Ukraine, recently reported having taken the Wagner training course for fighters. As political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya wrote on her Telegram channel, Prigozhin is a figure without an official status... Essentially, hes a private businessman who is deeply dependent on his relationship with the government. Its a very vulnerable position, so horizontal relationships with specific figures in power are critically important to him. Advertisement As Kumarin put it in a rare interview, Its always worth remembering that glory, honors and respect may run out in a single moment. For Prigozhin, this means an imperative to win even when everyone else is losing: In a Russia built around the state and designed to serve the state, his position as a non-state actor and as someone a little too unsavory for elite status even by late Putin-era standards is shakier than that of other invasion stalwarts. Like a hamster in a blood-smeared wheel, he has to keep running just to stay in place. More From Bloomberg Opinion: For Ukraine to Win the Maneuver War, Germany Must Move First: Andreas Kluth Big Lesson of the Ukraine War: Theres Only One Superpower: Hal Brands Drone Strikes Show Putin His Homeland Isnt Safe: James Stavridis This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinions Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwells 1984 and Franz Kafkas The Trial. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion 2023 Bloomberg L.P. GiftOutline Gift Article Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share When Nicola Sturgeon decries a full frontal attack on Scotlands parliamentary democracy, make no mistake. Thats exactly what the Scottish National Party leader wants. The latest brawl with the UK government is more than a disagreement over Scotlands new law on gender recognition. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight On Tuesday, the UK government became the first to use Section 35 of the 1998 Scotland Act, a provision that allows Westminster to block legislation passed by the Scottish parliament. While a skirmish in the culture wars can sometimes be catnip for the Tory faithful, this isnt necessarily a fight the government wants to have, especially if it alienates support for the union in Scotland. But its not one Westminster can avoid either. Section 35 was created precisely to enable the government to step in if ever a Scottish law clashes with UK-wide law or Britains international obligations. Government lawyers advised that Scotlands new gender law The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Act interferes with the workings of UK equality law, and specifically the 2010 Equality Act. This sets up an almighty legal and political battle that will run for some time. Advertisement The act, passed just before Christmas, allows people as young as 16 to change their legal gender without the requirement of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. It also reduces the amount of time that a person must live in their acquired gender before applying for a gender recognition certificate (GRC) to three months (six months for 16- and 17-year-olds). UK law allows for change of legal gender from the age of 18 with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and only for those who have lived in the gender they wish to be recognized in for at least two years. Sturgeon, of course, saw the clash coming a mile away. In early December, the UK government warned the SNP that the law would create legal chaos and gender tourism. If the SNP leader had been focused solely on a smooth implementation of the legislation, she could have found a way to liberalize Scotlands gender recognition laws without a constitutional wrangle that creates uncertainty. Even now, the government has suggested that amended legislation could avoid the challenge. Instead, Sturgeon much prefers to lean in to these fights. It allows her to press her claim that Scotland is being muffled by Westminster while signaling commitment to a cause popular with younger voters in particular. Advertisement Many Scots have been sympathetic to the idea of gender recognition reform, but the details have been unpopular and controversial, pitting the government against the likes of author J.K. Rowling and Scottish feminists. Nine of Sturgeons own lawmakers voted against the bill at its first reading in a rare show of disunity. Some agreed with Labour leader Keir Starmer that 16 is too young (though Scotlands Labour Party voted in favor of the bill). Others worried about the lack of safeguards. The UNs Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls sent a letter to the UK government warning that Scotlands low bar for gender self-identification opens the door for violent male predators to obtain a certificate in order to prey on vulnerable women and girls in shelters, prisons and other places. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, who set out the governments legal case in parliament on Tuesday, has been careful to separate the principle from the legal issue. Transgender people who are going through the process to change their legal sex deserve our respect, support and understanding. My decision today is about the legislations consequences for the operation of GB-wide equalities protections and other reserved matters. Advertisement The SNP says the bill contains adequate protections. It also argues there is no clash with UK law, since the new law simply modifies the existing process. The Equality and Human Rights Commission seemed to back up the Scottish government view in April, though in December urged the Scottish and UK governments to work together to minimize the risk of uncertainty around the potential cross-border implications. The legal arguments are finely balanced and will likely take the courts to untangle. Sturgeon knows this is awkward and distracting for Sunak, who is fighting crises on multiple fronts and barely holding his own parliamentary party together. The UK government was criticized for ditching its own plans to reform gender recognition laws in 2020, when Liz Truss was equalities minister. The independent review and lawsuit that led to the closing of the famed Tavistock gender identity clinic for children under 17 shows just how difficult it is to get policy right. A little more time to debate and tweak the Scottish law would have been wiser. But the gender reform law cant be separated from the broader political context. The Scottish National Partys overriding purpose is to secure independence for Scotland. That depends on the UK government eventually giving the SNP another referendum (after the once in a generation vote in 2014). In November, the UK Supreme Court shot down a Scottish referendum bill, ruling that the power to hold an independence vote is the preserve of the UK parliament and not a matter for the devolved government in Scotland. Advertisement It hasnt taken Sturgeon long to open up another front in that campaign. But her success also depends on a majority of Scots feeling strongly enough about independence to suspend disbelief about the enormous costs (and the SNPs own failings over the past 15 years) and keep electing politicians who will push the independence boulder up the constitutional mountain. The reality is that most Scots have bigger worries, but having a constitutional fight with the UK government has always been a handy way to change the discussion. More From Bloomberg Opinion: Why Mark Zuckerberg Should Face the Threat of Jail: Parmy Olson Head to Tokyo or Seoul for the Latest Gucci and Louis Vuitton: Andrea Felsted and Anjani Trivedi Henry VIII Powers Wont Resolve the UKs Strikes: Therese Raphael This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering health care and British politics. Previously, she was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion 2023 Bloomberg L.P. GiftOutline Gift Article Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time, a crisis that will affect every industry, every nation, every human life. Yet people seem more curious about the Kardashians. Thats not a criticism or a lament, but a sign climate communicators might have some things to learn from one of the worlds most famous families. As communication consultant and author Solitaire Townsend pointed out in a viral tweet, searches for kardashian have outranked searches for climate change since January 2007 (when Kim Kardashian first rose to fame.) Climate change has only beaten the Kardashians once, on April 22, 2022, otherwise known as Earth Day. Googles doodle to celebrate the event highlighted climate change with gifs of satellite images showing melting glaciers, snow-cover loss, deforestation and coral bleaching. Clicking on the doodle took you to a search-results page for climate change, driving a spike in traffic. This is just one metric of climate engagement, and its not the most scientific. But it gibes with public opinion polls. A 2021 study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that while a majority of Americans say they worry about global warming, only 35% discuss the topic at least occasionally. Given that the crisis is seen as the biggest threat on average by citizens in advanced economies and the high prevalence of climate anxiety in the worlds children, youd think it would crop up in conversation more often. Advertisement So why doesnt it? Its a matter of human psychology. A lot of climate communication, from news headlines to sloganeering, is laden with doom: IPCC issues bleakest warning yet on impacts of climate breakdown Another Step Toward Climate Apocalypse Its Now or Never for Action on Climate Change It also tends to speak in fairly scientific or abstract terms: carbon budgets, mean global temperatures, the 1.5C target. Were learning fear isnt always motivating, and statistics arent always persuasive. Per Espen Stoknes, psychologist and former Norwegian politician, summarizes the psychological defenses humans mount against scary climate news: We distance ourselves geographically and temporally (melting glaciers in the Arctic and the year 2100 are both far away). The perpetual sense of doom leads us to habitual avoidance of the issue. Advertisement Cognitive dissonance between what we do and what we know tempts us to justify our own polluting behavior. We live in a state of denial so we can carry on with life as normal. In other words, fear is paralyzing us. The more we hear about the climate apocalypse, the more we become numbed to its meaning. Heres where the Kardashians come in. Townsend explains: We need to remember human beings are apes, not angels. Our brains are wired for stories. Gossip is literally good for us. Its why weve always been obsessed with celebrity culture; Thomas Busby was highlighting the hollowness of it all in 1786, calling celebs of the era just pretty women with beautiful dresses. The Kardashians are nothing new, but what they do so smartly is capitalize on our innate desire to hear about other people. Advertisement If climate coverage focused less on melting glaciers and wildfires and more on human beings, it might be more engaging. Theres a reason Greta Thunberg kickstarted the climate protest movement: Shes a person, not a statistic. Even better is to showcase people who are altering their behaviors to be more climate-friendly. Scientific studies have shown that seeing action convinces others to take action. Green energy, for instance, is contagious: The biggest predictor of whether or not you have solar panels is whether your neighbor has them. The same ripple effects have been seen with electric vehicles and the rise of plant-based alternatives. Of course, there is a place for scary headlines and numbers, too. Theres no use downplaying the size of the crisis and the speed at which we must address it. But it would also be great if we could get to the business of influencing, rather than just shocking. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion 2023 Bloomberg L.P. GiftOutline Gift Article Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share Jamal Davis wanted to do something when he learned in May that Experience Corps, a tutoring program that links students in Baltimore City schools with adults 50 and older, might have to close its doors due to insufficient funding. Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning. ArrowRight Experience Corps is run by the D.C.-based AARP Foundation, which advocates for adults 50 and older. After AARP announced that it could no longer fund the tutoring program, a group of Baltimore-area tutors launched a campaign to keep it going. When I heard about it, I reached out to [the tutors], and asked if we could meet and just shared something with them, said Davis, who joined Experience Corps in 2014 and has served as a tutor and a site coordinator. He was previously paid $400 per month. I knew about the program and funding sources, and some people out there that might lend an ear to what we were trying to do. Advertisement Elected leaders, including Bill Ferguson (D), president of Marylands State Senate, and Baltimore City Council member Zeke Cohen (District 1), later intervened, according to Davis. Cohen said he contacted AARP officials on behalf of the tutors and warned them that this kind of disinvestment would harm some of the citys most vulnerable neighborhoods. Cohen said that some of the areas he represents would have been affected, though he is unsure which ones. For me, the decision to leave and evacuate Baltimore was unacceptable, and we asked that AARP consider some different form of investment, he said. David Schuhlein, a spokesperson for Ferguson, wrote in an email that among Fergusons efforts to keep the program, he advocated to the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership that they fund an Elev8 proposal for a $38,000 grant to provide stipends to Experience Corps [tutors]. Advertisement In an email sent to Cohen on Dec. 20, Mioshi Moses, vice president of AARP Foundation Experience Corps, wrote that the foundation will relaunch the program and it will partner with the YMCA in Central Maryland and Elev8 Baltimore, a student-focused charity. Alexandria Warrick Adams, executive director of Elev8, said her office will coordinate the tutoring. AARP Foundation has invested $300,000 for each [Elev8 and the YMCA] program over the course of three years, Moses wrote. Moses was unavailable for comment. Its not clear how tutors will be compensated when the program relaunches or how AARP will distribute the additional funds. The goal of Experience Corps is to help students read at their respective grade level by third grade, according to the foundation. The program, which began in Baltimore 12 years ago, at its pre-coronavirus height worked with 233 classrooms in 31 schools and after-school facilities, according to the foundations most recent data. Advertisement Tierra Thompson said two of her children participated in the program while attending the Johnston Square Elementary School. She said the program helped them get better grades in math. As a single mother at the time, Thompson, of East Baltimore, said having access to a program like this demonstrates to her that the teachers care about her children because they identify areas in need of development. Davis, 61, is from Brooklyn, and lives in Govans in North Baltimore. He learned about Experience Corps after undergoing hip replacement surgery in 2014 and was looking for ways to get back into the workforce. Hes disabled and is no longer able to run or engage in other physical activity. Experience Corps gave me an opportunity to see that my life wasnt over just because of this hip being replaced, Davis said. Its been a wonderful experience going into the schools. Advertisement Davis tutors at several schools, including Barclay Elementary/Middle School and Garrett Heights Elementary/Middle School. He said he loves every aspect of being a tutor. For instance, he recalled the time he was able to comfort an Experience Corps crying third grader seven years ago after someone called her stupid. Experience Corps organized a celebration at the Weinberg YMCA in Waverlyto honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about four years after the incident. The student was one of the speakers tasked to recite Kings I Have a Dream speech. He said he cried when he saw her. That to me told me I was doing something right. To remember her in that hallway and four years later she was in a position to be a speaker at a public [space], thats the power of Experience Corps. Baltimore Sun GiftOutline Gift Article A Discord group member shares information on the man behind the leak. (Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Post) THE DISCORD LEAKS | In interviews with a member of the Discord group where intelligence documents were shared, The Post learned details of the alleged leaker. Bushrangers form a prominent yet enigmatic group of historical figures in pre-Federation Australia, likely to have had their imprecisely documented exploits further obscured by the popular myths that began to gather around them during their lifetimes. The more we contemplate big Ned himself, the less, we realise, is known for certain. More elusive than even the most iconic bushrangers are the disparate individuals portrayed in Boundary Crossers, for these are people regarded as anomalous figures who didnt fit in with the archetype of the dashing nomadic outback criminal imposed by the dominant culture. Aboriginal, African American and Chinese men, and an Aboriginal woman were associated with bushranging in their own times, writes Meg Foster, and many explicitly claimed the bushranging tradition for themselves. Jacky Underwood, an associate of Jimmy Governor, in the custody of Dubbo Police after his arrest in 1900. Credit: Foster examines the historical record as it relates to William Douglas (aka Black Douglas), the ex-convict originally from Philadelphia who on the Victorian goldfields, Sam Poo, an alleged cop killer reputed to be the only Chinese bushranger, Indigenous female outlaw Mary Ann Bugg, who was the romantic partner as well as partner in crime of Frederick Ward (aka Captain Thunderbolt), and last, but not least, the Aboriginal bushranger and mass murderer Jimmy Governor. Foster, a Cambridge-based Australian historian whose groundbreaking book is based on a doctoral thesis, seeks to understand and contextualise rather than champion her subjects. Regarding Jimmy Governor, the best-known historical figure here, whose life provided the inspiration for The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally that in turn was adapted for the cinema by Fred Schepisi, Foster is frank about the appalling crimes he committed. At a press conference in February 1974, on the eve of his second Australian tour, Elton John was asked to predict the longevity of his career. You ask an artist that, and they would say forever, Elton replied. I havent got any illusions that Im going to stay at the top forever. Every year, I think this is it. You cant predict it. Well, if youd bet that Elton would still be at the top of his game in January 2023, almost five decades after that exchange, youd be on a winner. The bittersweet footnote? Unlike Cher or Barbra, who turned farewell concerns into annual engagements, Elton is taking his final stroll down Australias yellow brick road. Elton John says goodbye to Melbourne in an emotional stop on his farewell tour. Credit: Rick Clifford In any other scenario, this would be as simple as Australia farewelling a much-loved international artist. From Shirley Bassey to ABBA, Michael Buble to Pink, there is a long list of artists who have been embraced by our fair nation. But Elton John is something different. He may be Middlesex-born, but he is an Australian son. Elton first performed in Australia on October 17, 1971 at Subiaco Oval, Perth. That was the first of 18 tours and more than 200 shows. Outside the UK and the US, Australia has hosted more Elton John concerts than any other country in the world. The Down Under tour followed in 1979. World Tour 2 in 1980. Jump Up Down Under in 1982. Too Low For Zero in 1984. All the way to Farewell Yellow Brick Road, which brought him here first in 2020 and now, finally, in 2023. Brand Australia is championed internationally by Hugh Jackmans wiggling bottom, the solid tail of a Qantas plane and the drone of a didgeridoo not our flag. Unfurl Australias take on the red white and blue to someone north of Cape York or west of Perth, and theres the same level of confusion as trying to distinguish between Margot Robbie and Samara Weaving. Blame the lazy use of colours already honed by the UK, France and the US and the same lack of creativity and originality you experience walking through Zara. Its time to add a touch of fashion and originality to the Australian flag, worn here by teenagers celebrating Australia Day. Credit: James Alcock The purpose of the flag is to represent and unite our country, but with the Union Jack in prime position, Australias looks like a piece from Britains Colonial capsule collection, with New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook Islands and Anguilla included in the diffusion range. Along with the confusing Union Jack, as common as cut-outs on the runway, theres the problematic Southern Cross in this Frankenstein mash-up. The national health regulator has been plagued by reports of widespread bullying, harassment and under-resourcing, creating fears the public is at risk of harm if staff are unable to properly investigate rogue surgeons and doctors. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) hired four external consultants in 2019 after staff raised concerns about a toxic culture causing high turnover within teams responsible for investigating medical misconduct around the country. Leaked documents reveal the national health regulator is dealing with bullying, under-resourcing and a poor corporate culture. Credit: The Age According to a leaked internal presentation circulated in 2020, obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, consultants held focus groups with 317 staff across Tasmania, Darwin, Canberra and Sydney offices and held 302 online surveys and 61 individual interviews. These efforts identified four thematic findings about AHPRAs workplace culture, including widespread inappropriate, uncivil behaviours between leaders, staff and medical boards that may increase the risk of psychological safety of employees. A father has died while trying to save his daughter from the surf on the NSW North Coast in the third such tragedy at unpatrolled beaches this month. Police said a couple were with their three children in shallow water at Seven Mile Beach in Lennox Head about 6.30pm on Wednesday when their 11-year-old daughter was swept out to sea on a bodyboard. The father was attempting to rescue his daughter before he drowned at Seven Mile Beach at Lennox Head. Credit: Natalie Grono The girls parents swam out to try to save her. Police said the woman was able to reach her daughter and bring her back to shore and alert authorities. However, the 45-year-old father, an Irish national, got into difficulty in the surf. The decision for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines has taken on a life of its own, divorced from disciplined considerations such as cost, effectiveness, and alternatives. At best, the decision is ill-considered. At worst, its Treasury-busting lunacy. Former head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Peter Jennings has claimed that Australias purchase of the subs eight in total at an estimated cost of an additional $20 billion per year, out to about 2050 is necessary to deter China. Thats a big call in a number of ways. Illustration Credit: Dionne Gain In particular, what would the submarines deter China from doing? Is it to deter China from attacking Australia? There is no evidence that China even dreams of such a misadventure. Australia is thousands of kilometres from China, and its approaches are characterised by maritime choke points and potential killing zones. Thats thousands of kilometres where its forces would be exposed to attack; thousands of kilometres of stretched supply lines requiring enormous and sophisticated logistics. Moscow: A former commander of Russias Wagner mercenary group who fought in Ukraine said he has fled to Norway and is seeking asylum in fear for his life after witnessing the killing and mistreatment of Russian prisoners brought to front lines. Andrei Medvedev, who joined Wagner on July 6, 2022 on a four-month contract, said in a video posted by the Gulagu.net rights group that he had crossed the northern Arctic border into Norway before being detained by Norwegian police. Andrei Medvedev, a former commander of Russias Wagner mercenary group. Credit: Gulag.net Medvedev, an orphan who joined the Russian army and served time in prison before moving on to Wagner, said he had slipped away from the group after witnessing the killing of captured deserters from Wagner. I am afraid of dying in agony, Medvedev told Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the Gulagu.net rights group, which said it had helped Medvedev leave Russia after he approached the group in fear for his life. Brovary, Ukraine: Ukraines interior minister and a child were among at least 14 people killed when a helicopter crashed into a nursery and set it ablaze in a suburb of the capital Kyiv. Separately, Ukraine reported more fighting along front lines hundreds of kilometres away in the east, where both sides have taken huge losses for scant gain in intense trench warfare over the past two months. Ukrainian officials said it was too early to determine what caused the helicopter crash on Wednesday (Ukraine time). None immediately spoke of any attack by Russia, which invaded Ukraine last February and has been battering Ukrainian cities far from front lines with missiles and drones almost daily since October. Dozens of people were injured including children, many suffering burns, after the French-made Super Puma helicopter went down in the fog in Brovary on the eastern outskirts of Kyiv, plummeting into the nursery grounds. Paris: French nun Sister Andre, the worlds oldest person, has passed away at the age of 118 in the southern French city of Toulon. Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister Andre when she joined a Catholic charitable order in 1944, survived COVID-19 in 2021. Sister Andre, who was born Lucile Randon, has died aged 118. Credit: AP She was born on February 11, 1904, and was the worlds oldest living person according to the Gerontology Research Groups (GRG) World Supercentenarian Rankings List. Her nursing home said she died in her sleep on January 17. Toulon Mayor Hubert Falco announced her death on Twitter, saying she was the doyenne of humanity who had won the hearts of all French people. Albuquerque: A failed Republican candidate paid $US500 ($715) to four men to shoot at the homes of Democratic politicians, but was so unsatisfied with the shooters work that he went along for the final drive-by, his gun jamming as bullets ripped into the bedroom of a sleeping 10-year-old girl, police said. The criminal complaint against Solomon Pena, a 39-year-old felon and self-proclaimed MAGA king, describes how anger over his landslide defeat in November led to attacks at the homes of four Democratic legislators in New Mexicos largest city. A SWAT team arrested him on Monday evening (local time), police said. Solomon Pena, a former Republican candidate for New Mexico House District 14, is taken into custody by Albuquerque police officers, Credit: AP Pena spent nine years behind bars after his arrest in April 2007 for stealing electronics and other goods from several retail stores as part of what authorities described as a burglary crew. He was released from prison in March 2016, and had his voting rights restored after completing five years of probation in April 2021, corrections officials said. He ran unsuccessfully in November against incumbent state representative Miguel Garcia, the longtime Democrat representing House District 14 in the South Valley. Pena got 26 per cent of the vote. Brasilia: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has removed 40 troops guarding the presidential residence after expressing distrust in the military for failing to act against demonstrators that ransacked government buildings on January 8. His decision was published in the governments official gazette and came as Brazils prosecutor general charged 39 people who were among the thousands who stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaros loss in the October election. Protesters, supporters of Brazils former President Jair Bolsonaro, clash with police as they storm the Planalto Palace in Brasilia. Credit: AP Prosecutors have also requested that the defendants who ransacked Congress be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40 million reais ($11.2 million) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages. Most of the troops guarding the Alvorada palace, as the presidential residence is called, are from the army, but some are also members of the Navy, Air Force and a militarised police force. On January 17, Azerbaijani and Russian Foreign Ministers Jeyhun Bayramov and Sergei Lavrov discussed on the phone the current issues on the agenda of bilateral cooperation between Baku and Moscow, as well as the ongoing situation around the Lachin road, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reports. Jeyhun Bayramov stressed that the citizens of Azerbaijan have a legal right to protest against illegal economic activities, including the exploitation of natural resources and the abuse of the Lachin road in the territories of Azerbaijan where the Russian peacekeeping contingent is stationed. In this circumstance, he noted the need to fulfill the legitimate demands of the protesters. The minister stressed that the claims about the alleged closure of the Lachin road by Azerbaijan, the blockade of Armenian residents living in the territory of Azerbaijan, and the creation of a humanitarian crisis are unfounded. In view of this, he emphasized that dozens of vehicles of the peacekeeping contingent, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Armenian ambulances pass daily along the Lachin road, which refutes the unfounded claims of Armenia. At the same time, it was declared unacceptable for persons posing as "representatives" of Armenian residents living in Azerbaijan to prevent the use of the road by the population and thereby artificially try to create the impression of a "blockade" and a "humanitarian crisis". #AHORA Tras la sesion del Consejo de Ministros, el titular de @MininterPeru reitera a la ciudadania que se brindaran garantias a todos quienes se sumen a las movilizaciones de manana, en #Lima, y a quienes no. [via @noticias_tvperu] pic.twitter.com/zQsiAFc81s NWS Weather Alert NOTE: This information is provided by the National Weather Service. Forecast may differ from local information provided by our own 69News Meteorologists ...ELEVATED RISK OF WILDFIRE SPREAD THIS AFTERNOON INTO THIS EVENING... A combination of low relative humidity, westerly breezes, and dry fine fuels will lead to an elevated risk for fire spread with any potential fire starts Thursday afternoon and evening across eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the eastern shores of Maryland. Minimum relative humidity values this afternoon will range from 22 to 26 percent across the region. Winds will be somewhat lighter and not as gusty as the past couple of days. However, this afternoon into early evening west winds will still be sustained 8 to 12 mph, and a brief gust to 20 mph cannot be ruled out. Fine fuels in the form of dry or dead vegetation will be quite dry as well, and conducive to fire starts and fairly quick fire spread. This is particularly true in areas that have not received hardly any rainfall in the last 10 days, across much of Pennsylvania to northern and central New Jersey. Residents are urged to exercise caution if handling any potential ignition source, including machinery, cigarettes, and matches. Be sure to properly discard all smoking materials. Any dry grasses, dead leaves, and other tree litter that ignite will have the potential to spread fire quickly. For more information about wildfire danger, burn restrictions, and wildfire prevention and eduction, please visit your state's forestry or environmental protection website. La presidenta @DinaErcilia, junto a la ministra de Salud, Rosa Gutierrez, visito el Instituto Nacional de Oftalmologia (@INO_Peru), para anunciar el inicio del programa de desembalse quirurgico oftalmologico que se realizara a nivel nacional. pic.twitter.com/IF1eO31ULF READING, Pa. Reading City Council, at its Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday night, heard a request from Reading Fire Chief James Stoudt for funding for three firefighting vehicles. Stoudt said he was making the request to replace three vehicles due to their age and costly maintenance and repairs. Stoudt said he was hoping the city would take the opportunity to designate money for the vehicles from American Rescue Plan Act funds. A 16-year-old rescue truck, a 15-year-old pumper and a 14-year-old aerial ladder truck need to be replaced, Stoudt explained. He cited specific incidents when the vehicles broke down during use at emergency calls. "The apparatus is expensive there's no doubt about it and prices have significantly been going up over the past few years," Stoudt said. "I think it's time, and I think this is a great opportunity for us to replace this apparatus using ARPA funds." Stoudt said he can't name a specific price for the vehicles until they are put out for bid, but he estimated the cost to be around $3.5 million. He also added that the wait time for the vehicles to be delivered would be anywhere from 18 months to two years. Councilman Chris Daubert said he would be very supportive of the request. "I feel very strongly that this is a 100% what we should be looking at using this ARPA money for," Daubert said. "These are things that we would end up paying soon anyway." Council President Donna Reed said it seemed like there was a consensus from council that it would like to move forward with the request as quickly as possible. Managing Director William Heim said in the past fire apparatus had always been purchased with a combination of capital funds and monies from the state's Community Development Block Grant. Heim said that would still be the preferred method in order to not draw too much money from remaining ARPA funds. "Every $100,000 we take away from the remaining funds, it's going to be less fixing up of our own properties, like we had talked about," Heim said. Although Reed asked the administration for a quick recommendation on the funding, Heim said he needs time to get a complete financial picture of from where the monies could come. WOMELSDORF, Pa. Pennsylvania State Police continue their investigation of a robbery at a Womelsdorf bank. Officers were dispatched to the Fulton Bank in the 2400 block of Conrad Weiser Parkway around 3:50 p.m. Tuesday. According to police, the robber brandished a 30-30 lever action rifle in his right hand and held a camouflage backpack in his left. As he approached a bank teller demanding money, investigators say he fired a single shot in the teller's direction. No one was injured. State Police say he's a white male, approximately 5'5", wearing a blue ski jacket and black sweatpants. He was driving a newer model silver Chevy Impala and was last seen traveling on east on Route 422. Anyone with information is asked to call PA State Police at 610-378-4011. HARRISBURG, Pa. - With Lehigh Valley leaders looking on, Josh Shapiro has become the 48th governor of Pennsylvania. He was sworn in Tuesday, along with Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, the first Black lieutenant governor in the state's history. The cold and wet weather didn't dampen the spirits at the ceremony outside the state Capitol. The Democrat and Montgomery County native first thanked his wife and high school sweetheart and their four kids for their sacrifice. He said he'd care for all Pennsylvania kids like they were his own. "Josh is a rare person, when he makes a promise, he keeps it," said inauguration attendee and Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds. He says as attorney general, Shapiro reached out often to the Christmas City asking what it needed. He expects the same generosity from Shapiro when he is governor. "He understands you have to build trust and you do that by listening," Reynolds said. "With my heart open and my eyes on others and fixed ahead, I'm prepared to do my part to move our Commonwealth forward," Shapiro said at the ceremony. That includes inspiring those like Dieruff High School seniors Naheria Pimentel and Eliana Rios. "I've never been to anything like this. It was a great opportunity," Rios said. "What did you think of the inauguration?" I asked Pimentel. "Cold? Yes, very cold," she said, adding it was great to hear what Shapiro had to say. The pair is among nine ASD and three charter school students brought to the event, which included lunch with area state representatives, by Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk. "The Shapiro organization asked us to invite 'Allentonians' that typically don't get invited to these types of things," Tuerk said. Also on the inauguration agenda: an evening celebration in Lancaster County. The work begins Wednesday. Shapiro is set to sign some executive orders, including one getting rid of college degree requirements for state employees, and sign a comprehensive ethics package. He's set to address the legislature for the first time March 7. BETHLEHEM, Pa. Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds provided an update to City Council Tuesday night on the city's effort to beat out a Lehigh University offer to buy three church properties. During council's meeting at city hall, the mayor said the city sent a letter Tuesday to congregants of the merged entity to be known as Blessed Trinity Lutheran Church, urging them to accept the city's counteroffer matching Lehigh's $3.7 million offer to buy their church properties. He said the city would use the land to build affordable housing. The properties consist of St. John's Windish Evangelical Church at 617 E. Fourth St., along with its parking lot at 616 E. Fourth St.; St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church at 474 Vine St.; and Light of Christ Lutheran Church at 202 Worthington Ave. "There is nothing to apologize for when your mission is to help people," Reynolds said of the city's intention. "...A city answers to its citizens in the way a private institution does not. We believe this makes us, as a local government, best suited to lead this open conversation." "We know housing is a top concern of our citizens, and the sale of your properties offers the city and community a rare opportunity to conduct a public process to influence the Southside housing market," Reynolds said. "...We publicly stated we would match Lehigh's current offer as we understood it," he continued. "That is how important this effort is to us, the residents and the future of South Bethlehem, which throughout its history has been threatened by powerful forces that have different goals and priorities for these spaces." "We can't manufacture space; we can't manufacture land," council President Michael Colon said. "...This is really a unique opportunity to do something, and it starts with the acquisition of land," Colon added, in reference to the city's desire to buy the land for affordable housing. "We don't know when we're going to have another opportunity like this." EASTON, Pa. - Easton-based Crayola Experience has been nominated in a USA Today contest. The family attraction is one of 20 venues across the country to be nominated for the Best Children's Museum category as part of the USA Today 2023 10Best Readers' Choice Awards, according to a news release from Crayola. The contest runs through 11:59 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 13. People can vote once per category each day of the contest. USA Today 10Best Readers Choice Awards highlight the best of the best in categories such as destinations, food and drink, hotels, and things to do. Nominees in all categories are chosen editorially by a panel of travel experts and editors. Then it's up to readers to make the final decision. WASHINGTON TWP., Pa. - Crews say a busted water main made fighting a fire very difficult in Lehigh County on Tuesday. The fire broke out at an old row house along Welshtown Road in Washington Township. The call went out to companies to bring tankers full of water to the fire. No word on any injuries, or how the fire started. A boil water alert was issued for Welshtown Road due to the water main break. After the break is repaired, crews will test the water. If the water is clear, the alert will be lifted. 14:46 | Madrid (Spain), Jan. 18. The Peruvian envoy explained that one of the main factors that consolidated this alliance was the entry into force of the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the EU in 2013, which has generated and promoted the development of intense commercial activity. "Spain has established itself as Peru's main trading partner, as well as the largest investing country in the EU (the second-largest in the world) with an approximate value of US$45 billion in the last 30 years," he remarked. In this case, Maurtua reported that bilateral trade reached 1.32 billion in the first half of 2022, while in 2021 it totaled 2.46 billion. Spain, Peru's second-largest foreign investor The Ambassador explained that Spain is Peru's second-largest foreign investor, with operations amounting to 5.25 billion in 2021, mainly in the telecommunications, finance, energy, trade, and industry sectors. The high-ranking official pointed out that said figure has increased by 5.24% over the last five years, contributing to the creation of more than 1.2 million direct and indirect jobs in the country. Optimism On the other hand, Maurtua highlighted that the contribution of the Spain-Peru Council Foundation to inform about the situation in Peru is essential to maintain the flow of trade and investment. "Peru has a privileged position in the tourism industry, which is permanent and transcends situations," he commented. Remarks were made within the framework of Peru's participation at the International Tourism Trade Fair (FITUR) in Madrid, Spain. (END) SDD/RGP/RMB/MVB ALLENTOWN, Pa. Jim Martin looks back at his soon-to-be 25 years as Lehigh County district attorney, as he announced Tuesday that he will not be seeking reelection. "It's been a long, successful, happy run at being district attorney," Martin said. He is the longest-serving DA in the history of Lehigh County a county he also grew up in. "I have been privileged to serve in this office," Martin said. "I am very appreciative of former County Executive Jane S. Baker who supported my appointment and of the Board of Commissioners of Lehigh County who appointed me to the position in January, 1998." Thursday, Jan. 26 will mark the 25th anniversary of Martin becoming the county's DA. "I think it's a great place to live and work, and it's a nice feeling to be able to think that you paid back a little bit," said Martin. Martin has more than 30 years of experience as a prosecutor and more than 49 years as a trial attorney. Before becoming district attorney, he worked part-time as an assistant public defender and was an assistant DA. "I, as a young lawyer, a couple weeks ago, I learned to enjoy the criminal justice system, and I enjoyed that aspect of practice," Martin said. "I practiced privately for 25 years, which I also enjoyed, but my first love is trying cases in criminal court." Martin has a long-running list of accomplishments from the Lehigh County Regional Intelligence and Investigation Center to the Lehigh County Municipal Emergency Response Team. One accomplishment of which he said he is very proud is his office's record of prosecuting homicides nearly 300 of them, with convictions in 289 cases. "We have almost 98% conviction rate in those cases, and they are, I think most people would agree, the most heinous crimes that we have to prosecute," Martin said. Martin thanked the multiple assistant district attorneys and the members of his administrative staff for his office's accomplishments. Martin said he was "particularly grateful" to his secretary of 28 years, Merrily Starkey, who has also served as head of the administrative staff in the DA's office over the last 15 years. He expressed thanks to the law enforcement community, Lehigh County's elected officials and the county's employees. He also thanked the "citizens of Lehigh County for placing their trust in me and electing me to this important office on six different occasions." Martin said he will serve the remainder of his term, which ends the first Monday in January of 2024. Once his term is up, he plans to spend more time with his wife, four children and six grandchildren. He has a message for whoever succeeds him. "Just to continue on doing the things that you know, number one, are most important to people," he said. "I've always felt that my core job was public safety, and I think that's very important." L. SAUCON TWP., Pa. - Residents filed a lawsuit Friday challenging an ordinance in Lower Saucon Township that could allow for a landfill expansion. The residents filed an appeal in the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas challenging the validity of the new Lower Saucon Township zoning ordinance that amends the township's zoning map to convert 275.7 acres from rural agriculture use to light industrial use. After more than three hours of public comment, most of which was vehement opposition, Lower Saucon Township council voted 3-2 to pass the ordinance in late December. The residents allege Lower Saucon failed to strictly comply with the requirements of the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, by publishing an incomplete legal notice in the Express Times, by not filing a complete copy of the ordinance with the Northampton County Law Library, and by not posting the affected real estate parcels. They also allege the rezoning of the 275 acres to light industrial use violates their environmental rights as guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution. Council President Jason Banonis said at the December meeting he was glad council members supported a vote to approve the measure. He said adopting the measure would protect the township from other developers looking for similar changes throughout the township. Township attorney Lincoln Treadwell said in December no plan for expansion has been presented for approval. The Lehigh Valley International Airport bounced back in 2022 to pre-pandemic levels, accommodating more than 900,000 passengers. Traffic reached 912,256 in 2022, just above the 911,970 people who used LVIA in 2019. The Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority (LNAA), which runs the airport, uses 2019 as a benchmark year because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions imposed in March 2020. In the first year of the pandemic, the airport served 390,764 passengers and use in 2021 started to rebound, reaching 752,111. LNAA Executive Director Thomas Stoudt listed six destinations Wednesday that the airport is working on adding: Boston, Denver, Dallas, Las Vegas, Orlando and San Juan. Just probably not this year. During Stoudt's annual update on the airport to Northampton County Council, he said 2023 is a year for airlines to continue recovering from the pandemic. "They don't have the aircraft they need and they don't have the flight crew they need," Stoudt said of the airlines, adding that there will probably be no major route announcements for LVIA in 2023, as of now. Air cargo continues to set records at LVIA, Stoudt said. Last year, 237,945,266 pounds of freight passed through the airport, 2.46% more than in 2021, making the airport a crucial part of the local economy. "We continue to move a lot of valuables and materials and supplies in and out of our community," Stoudt said during his address at the county government center in Easton. The airport's biggest project is on track for completion in five months, Stoudt said. Ground was broken for the $35 million terminal connector and new Transportation Security Administration checkpoint in May 2021. "It's coming along, we're still on target for June," Stoudt said. The project is 72% complete, "on budget and on schedule." More than $18 million in federal and state grants, along with support of Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure and County Council, has helped LVIA progress, he said. Lehigh Valley International is the fourth-largest airport in Pennsylvania, behind Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. The airport authority also operates Queen City Airport in Allentown and Braden Airpark in Forks Township. "Most departments are fully staffed and back to normal staffing levels," Stoudt said when asked about personnel. He said jobs are available and can be viewed on the airport website. S. WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. The Parkland School District Board of Directors on Tuesday night adopted a resolution stipulating the highest amount it can raise property taxes to balance the 2023-24 budget. The mechanism governing property tax increases known as the Act 1 Index is established by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education, and sets the maximum increase allowed by a district each fiscal year. Districts may exceed that amount, but must apply and receive state approval in three "exceptions" categories or gain voter approval. Parkland's Act 1 Index for next year is 4.1%. Tuesday night's resolution calls for the district to stay within the Act 1 Index, if it should decide to raise property taxes for 2023-24. The current 2022-23 budget featured a 1.2% tax increase, but required also a more-than-$5 million fund balance appropriation to balance the $216 million spending plan. Last year, the Act 1 Index was established at 3.4%. The two years previous to that, the district had no property tax increase. In other news, directors approved a deal with Sage Technologies Solutions Inc. for security cameras. The deal is worth $31,017. Tuesday night's meeting was the first featuring Director Robert Bold in his current term serving on the board. He was appointed during a special board meeting Jan. 3 to replace current Pennsylvania Sen. Jarrett Coleman, who resigned officially from the board Dec. 15. Bold who retired from a 30-year teaching career and previously served on the board five times as its president and three times as vice president said he will not seek election. SLATINGTON, Pa. - A water main break is causing issues in northern Lehigh County. A 6-foot piece of pipe broke Tuesday evening when firefighters tried to get water from a hydrant to put out flames at a Washington Township home, said the Slatington borough manager. When firefighters turned the plug on the hydrant, a geyser of water shot into the air. Companies had to bring tankers to the scene on Welshtown Road. Crews weren't able to start repairs on the pipe until Wednesday, so Northern Lehigh School District decided to have students learn from home for the day. The district said it was notified of the break Wednesday morning, so some students had already come to school and were being dismissed. Peters Elementary students are attending school as usual. Crews fixed the pipe before noon Wednesday, but a boil water advisory is in effect for all homes north of Williams Street in Slatington, said the borough manager. The boil water advisory will remain in place for at least two days while crews test the water. Nearly 30% of borough customers, mostly near the high school, had no water, including the school district. "This is what I'll use to cook with for dinner," Slatington's Katja Bender said while holding a gallon of bottled water. When her bottled water is gone it's back to boiling it, as her kitchen table is also Wednesday's classroom for her 10-year-old son Aaron, after the district sent most students home for the day. "Basically, means you argue with your kids all day to do their schoolwork and when they don't understand something it's the parents who have to figure it out," she lamented. With the boil water advisory, the second in a month, now in place, Beverly Benford and Joyce Thompson were forced to make an extra stop on their day out. "We are going to go out and buy a couple of gallons of water," they said. "I'm never sure that the rules are for a boil water advisory. Do I boil before cooking it? Or can I add while cooking, and then sometimes you forget are we still under this?" Bender added. "You seem frustrated?" "Just a little bit," she answered. According to the CDC, if bottled water is not available, bring water to a full rolling boil for 1 minute. After boiling, allow the water to cool before use. A water test was sent out Wednesday, another will be sent out Thursday. The borough hopes to have it lifted late Thursday or Friday. Alarming new details about Bryan Kohberger are coming to light. The man accused of killing four college students in Idaho is now believed to have been in contact with one of the victims prior to the deadly stabbings. Investigators believe Kohberger, who's from the Poconos, sent a series of messages to one of the victims on Instagram just two weeks before the killings. An investigator tells People that an account believed to belong to Kohberger sent a message to one of the female victims, asking how she was. When he didn't get a response, he sent more messages, the report says. It's not clear if the victim ever saw the DMs. What is clear though is investigators say Kohberger knew about the victims before the killings took place. The affidavit revealed the phone associated with Kohberger was in the vicinity of the victims' home multiple times in the months leading up to the stabbings. Also prior to the November killings, Kohberger revealed to a neighbor in the same on-campus housing as him that he took a DNA test. There's now speculation that that test helped in the investigation. The neighbor talked with the Idaho Statesman saying he learned of Kohberger's DNA test in August of last year. That piece of information is backing growing reports that investigators used public genealogy databases to tie Kohberger to the crimes. In the affidavit, investigators said a knife sheath was left behind the night the students were killed. Investigators say they used DNA from the button of the knife sheath as well as trash from Kohberger's family home in the Poconos to have probable cause to arrest him. Now, Kohberger's entire life is under a microscope. Posts that have resurfaced since his arrest describe a man who struggled with mental health and the ability to feel remorse. Specifically, one post obtained by the New York Times wrote that he could do whatever he wanted with "little remorse." Another said he had no emotions. In posts dating back to his teenage years, he wrote that he had no self-worth and had constant thoughts of suicide. The posts were written on a form called Tapatalk, previously known as Yuku. According to the New York Times, Kohberger was tied to the posts through his birthday, his username which matches an email address for Kohberger and the location listed on the account. Kohberger is charged with four counts of murder and one count of felony burglary. He was arrested at his parents' home in Monroe County on Dec. 30, and was taken back to Idaho a few days later. He has maintained his innocence through his lawyer and is expected to be back in court in June. HARRISBURG, Pa. - A federal judge has signed off on a settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Schuylkill County over alleged sexual harassment by a county commissioner. The DOJ had filed a lawsuit against the county, claiming Schuylkill County Commissioner George Halcovage Jr. sexually harassed four female employees, and that those employees were retaliated against for trying to speak out. Under the terms of the agreement, which was reached last week and approved by the court on Tuesday, the county must hire a consultant from a list approved by the DOJ. The consultant will conduct a workplace climate survey, propose improvements to the equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies and develop a new sexual harassment training program, according to the paperwork. The county must also pick an employee to serve as the EEO officer. There are also restrictions on Halcovage, who has refused to resign from his position and can only be removed, under state law, through impeachment in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and conviction in the Pennsylvania Senate. Halcovage is not allowed to have any direct contact with the women, and he has to undergo anti-harassment training, the consent decree says. The agreement does not have an impact on a separate lawsuit filed by the employees against the commissioner. The four employees recently said they turned down an $850,000 settlement so the public can hear all of the facts. HACKETTSTOWN, N.J. - A former mayor of a Warren County, New Jersey city is being accused of sexually assaulting a teenager. Ted Tomaszewski, 53, is charged with sexual assault, luring, and endangering the welfare of a child, according to a news release from the Warren County Prosecutor's Office. Tomaszewski was the mayor of Mansfield Township, which is close to Hackettstown, said County Prosecutor Jim Pfeiffer. On January 2, 2023, Hackettstown Police Department received information that an underage child had been engaging in sexually inappropriate communications with Tomaszewski, according to the news release from the prosecutor's office. Between November 1, 2022 and January 2, 2023, in Hackettstown and Mount Olive Township, Tomaszewski engaged in multiple sexual acts with the victim, the prosecutor's office said. The victim was 15 years old at the time the acts occurred, according to the news release. Tomaszewski faces up to 25 years in prison. Tomaszewski was the mayor of Mansfield Township from 2010 to 2014. He remains in Warren County Jail. His initial first appearance in Warren County Superior Court was held on Jan. 12. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated the transfer of 6 patients from Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) to Armenia for urgent treatment on January 18, the Ministry of Healthcare of Artsakh said in a statement. A pregnant woman is among the 6 patients diagnosed with various diseases. Due to the Azeri blockade of the Lachin Corridor the only road connection between Artsakh and Armenia hospitals in Artsakh are keeping planned surgeries on hold. 10 children are hospitalized in neonatal and intensive care at the Arevik hospital, and another 9 patients 4 of whom are critically ill are hospitalized at the Republican Medical Center in Artsakh. During the ongoing blockade the ICRC facilitated the transfer of a total of 34 patients from Artsakh to Armenia for treatment. A fundraising campaign has been launched for stage star Adam Pearce. Pearce, whose credits include The Prince of Egypt, Urinetown and the WhatsOnStage Award-winning Curve revival of Sunset Boulevard, had been appearing in the world premiere production of Mandela the Musical at the Young Vic. However, after a performance in early December he suffered a stroke backstage at the venue and was rushed to hospital later that night. As explained by Sunset Boulevard co-star Molly Lynch, who set up the campaign, Pearce "had a bleed to the brain causing a stroke. He was left paralysed on his left side and it was discovered that he had had a medium haemorrhage to the right lobar. Adam was admitted to Kings College Hospital and has been in hospital since. "He spent 2 weeks at Kings College Hospital in the Hyper Acute Stroke Unit where they started a small amount of physio with an amazing team to try and get his left side moving. By the time he left KCH, he was able to sit up in a chair and stand up with help." The Young Vic supported Pearce throughout his contract despite his inability to work while also providing his family with accommodation near the hospital. Nevertheless, the incident has meant Pearce's contract for another production has been withdrawn. Lynch continued: "This GoFundMe page is to help the Pearces with outgoings, including mortgage and bills, but to mainly help support them with Adam's recovery, physically and cognitively. Adam's goal is to get back up on stage so we want to be able to supplement any NHS care with special treatment for his voice/breathing/movement and to make sure he is stage ready." Pearce is currently in an intensive programme of physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and is hoping to be able to return home by mid-February if progress continues. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturyan met with the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu over a luncheon during his visit to Estonia. President Khachaturyan welcomed the Estonian Foreign Ministrys statements on the Lachin Corridor blockade and thanked for Estonias clear position on the issue, Khachaturyan's office said in a press release. Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said that Estonia is strongly interested in the establishment of sustainable peace in the region. He underscored that Estonia fully supports the decision to deploy a lasting EU monitoring mission along the border. Issues of intensifying Armenian-Estonian cooperation and effectively utilizing the EU Eastern Partnership platform were discussed. Speaking about the current situation and conflict in South Caucasus, President Khachaturyan emphasized that Armenia has unequivocally adopted an approach to reach sustainable and lasting peace in the region and establish good-neighborly relations with its neighbors. Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu expressed Estonias readiness to contribute all possible efforts to support the peaceful resolution of all existing issues in the region. The Estonian FM also welcomed Armenias readiness on establishing relations with Turkey without preconditions. The Winona City Council approved the BKV Groups proposal to further study up to eight options within the community for a combined public safety building to house the police and fire departments, a stand-alone fire department facility, and/or stand-alone police department facility. The Minneapolis-based architecture firm said the study could arrive approximately three months from now. The eight options BKV will review in its study are: Combined police and fire facilities at the current Central Fire Station A stand-alone fire facility at the current Central Fire Station Combined police and fire facilities at the Central School block between Sixth and Seventh streets and Walnut and Market streets A stand-alone fire facility at Central School block between Sixth and Seventh streets and Walnut and Market streets A stand-alone police facility on the block between Second and Third streets and Washington and Johnson streets Combined police and county sheriff facility on the block between Second and Third streets and Washington and Johnson streets No specific location but a variety of layouts to determine the space needs for a stand-alone police facility A placeholder option in the event of an unknown location is to be explored When talking about the two options at the current Central Fire Station, City Manager Chad Ubl said, We are again looking at Central Fire Station for combined Fire and Police or fire stand-alone with potential for Winona Area Ambulance Service. You may ask, why are we having BKV do this again? The reason well look at this location, in particular, is the combined nature of police and fire. One is the parking, we dont have a solution for public parking or how the street could be used to accommodate parking. The second piece is that we did have BKV, toward the end of their work [last May], look at a stand-alone fire facility. We would want the stand-alone to include space for an ambulance service. Again, the city has been looking at the Central School location with options for a combined police and fire or a fire stand-alone with ambulance service. (Previously) there was no resolution for parking. We would want BKV to look at the possibility of vacation of streets or different parking formulas on surrounding streets obviously excluding Broadway, said Ubl. The other piece in discussion with a private property owner is on the south side of the Central School building. Is there an opportunity for additional parking spaces? Would that even be a consideration if the city were to acquire this parcel? Ubl also said the city has asked BVK to further study the citys Pro-Build Block located between Second and Third streets and Washington and Johnson streets. This area will be looked at for either a stand-alone police facility or potentially a combined Winona Police facility and Winona County Sheriffs facility. Presented to the council also was a letter from Market & Johnson, general building contractors, about the possible expansion of the current Law Enforcement Center located on West Third Street. This letter stated that adding on to the current LEC would not be feasible due to the circumstances of the new jail build, financial commitments, and disruption of the county facilities. The letter from Tyler Schulz, project manager at Market & Johnson, said, With Winona Countys dispatch center now relocated below the area where the 3rd-floor addition was going to be located, this option is highly unachievable and inadvisable due to financial impacts to the County and the City of Winona. This option would risk the functionality of the new dispatch center and compromise the use of the facility. Having to structurally cut new foundations/columns in the existing facility, this would shut down the dispatch center along with the intrusion of dust into the areas where expensive IT equipment would be located. Bruce Schwartzman, from BKV, explained some of the needs of the new LEC saying, The largest pieces of the program that were added were an indoor squad garage. In our cold climate, with the things that are stored in the vehicles, its a better application to store those vehicles inside. So a certain amount of the program is for an indoor, secure squad garage. The other component that led up to that roughly 39,000 [proposed] square feet is training capabilities. The police department currently has no training facilities whatsoever on-site or in the city of Winona. Well learn more, I think, from this study, said council member Jeff Hyma. And that will rule some of the things out and some of the things forward as we gather the information. And eventually, I believe, that if you put some faith into gathering the information, the path will become clearer over time. So I look forward to that. Touring the River Valley: Winona County What do you love most about Winona County? (filmed in 2021) Lakeview Hills Lake and High School Greenery Hills Greenery Structures Water Hills Farm Turbines Farm Farm Welcome to Utica Tractor Farm land Solar panels Crop land Farm equipment Cows Farm land Water Winona County sign Flag Water Whitewater State Park Bridge Greenery Hills Walking path Water Fire tower Garvin Heights Garvin Heights Garvin Heights Sugar Loaf River Bridge Winona County YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. The blockade of the Lachin Corridor and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs statements are directly violating their own international obligations, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said. The Armenian PM said that Aliyevs statements and the blockade of the corridor create new obstacles for the peace process, but didnt rule out that perhaps this is Azerbaijans ultimate goal. The PM made the remarks during parliamentary questions time when asked to comment on Aliyevs recent territorial demands, as well as the international reaction. I think, and our international contacts also show that the international communitys perception on this situation is increasing and growing. And I think that generally these statements have a provocative nature, they seek to create escalation. It is our accurate reaction to these statements that should be a certain factor of stability in the region. Essentially, we are very clearly stating that based on the Prague agreements we are ready to move towards the signing of the peace treaty, PM Pashinyan said. The Armenian PM emphasized that the Azeri presidents statements are first of all contradicting the agreements that have been reached. By saying the perception of international community, the PM said he means that it is becoming obvious in the world that the blockade of the Lachin Corridor and Aliyevs statements itself are a violation of the international obligations assumed by Azerbaijan. The PM said he believes that negotiated and political solutions are the best method to maintain the situation stable in the region. And we are ready to continue the same way we assumed our readiness and responsibility. It is obvious that the international community is recording that the blockade of the Lachin Corridor and Azerbaijans aggressive statements are creating new obstacles for the peace process. But, one question. Who said that this itself isnt what Azerbaijan wants? Who says that this itself isnt Azerbaijans far-reaching goal, to entirely derail the peace process with that kind of provocative statements and by using our possible reactions, the PM said, highlighting the need to maintain the method of attitude from the Armenian side. He said the Armenian sides reaction to the Azeri actions must be asymmetric, i.e. active international diplomacy and further empowerment of domestic institutional capacity and state institutions, maintaining the reforms agenda and the peace agenda. As early as March, Juneau County residents could be able to request a ride through two major rideshare apps with the help of federal dollars. Uber and Lyft services will be government subsidized temporarily within the county; approximately $300,000 of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds will be expended over the course of two years to bring drivers, and passengers, together. A lot of us have apps on our phone that we use in other communities and theyre ready to go. You request a ride and then a driver comes, said Health Officer Amanda Dederich. Now whenever I pull my app up, theres not a driver available in our area because they think the demand isnt there. For every ride begun or completed in Juneau through the Uber or Lyft apps, drivers will receive an extra $5. Residents and visitors could request rides 24/7. A fare will still be paid by the rider to the driver, with the additional compensation made between the county and the driver on top of that cost. The Juneau County Health Department believe that the extra cash will attract more drivers to the area and create new opportunities for residents. Were hoping that by the time this pilot project is over, itll be a sustainable model, Dederich added. The program was proposed by the Transportation Community Action Team, which was formed by the health department in response to a county-wide resident survey. When asked what determines community health, over 12,000 residents identified a strong economy and accessible transportation as top priorities. The health department estimates that up to 30,000 residents could make use of the service per year if enough drivers were attracted by the offer. The county board was presented with research done by the city of Mauston in December that showed 40% of its residents would definitely or probably use Uber or Lyft if it was available. Another 40% would consider using ride-share if they had more information. Mauston discussed creating its own rideshare subsidy, but the city ultimately couldnt afford it with last years budget. Juneau Countys new program isnt unique by any means. Public transportation agencies from New Jersey to Florida have turned to subsidizing Uber rides where bus routes are too costly or difficult to maintain. Rural communities have gotten in on the action, too. In Innisfil, Ontario, a program to subsidize Uber rides was launched in 2017. The cost began as a flat rate between $4 to $6 for passengers in an area serving 36,000. By 2020, the price tag for subsidizing Uber overtook what it would have cost for the municipality to buy and operate its own public buses. Tara Ennis, a supervisor with the health department, stated that while $300,000 might sound like enough money to buy the county a bus or a fleet of taxis, the pay for a driver would only be going toward a handful of individuals. Instead, the pilot project could create a gig employment opportunity for dozens of county residents. Were not just putting money into a private company; were putting the money into our residents as employment opportunities, she said. If we can invest this, and have multiple vehicles available at peak times, were serving more people in the long run. Ennis added that the county is already aware of residents who work for Lyft and Uber but commute to the Wisconsin Dells and other neighboring cities where demand for rideshare is higher. The subsidy program, and assistance from the county to raise awareness for it, could help bring those drivers home. Juneau County Finance Director Lori Chipman noted at the county boards last meeting that the subsidy program will likely dissolve in late 2024 as ARPA funds must be fully obligated in the next two years and spent by 2026. If the program is unsuccessful, the county will find another use for the remaining funds. Best case scenario, the money is eaten up in the first year. That means theres a market for it and its sustainable, stated Dederich, who has since left the health department. The county board has already voted to support the program, but there are still kinks to work out. Initially, only residents with smartphones will be able to access the app to request Uber or Lyft services. Ennis believes that community outreach and education efforts, such as events held at local libraries, could breach the divide. We know that it wont be the program that fixes everything for everyone, Ennis said. But we know that if you arent over 60, have a documented disability or live outside of Mauston, you literally have no access to transport right now. Were hoping this will fill that major gap. A bridge, connecting trails over the Wisconsin River, and connecting Dane and Sauk Counties, is one step closer to realization thanks to $2 million in federal funding. U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, recently celebrated the passage of the Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) omnibus appropriation legislation. Part of that package includes $2 million to go toward the Wisconsin River Recreational Bridge, a joint project between Dane and Sauk Counties that will connect bikers and pedestrians with the Walking Iron trail in Dane County and Sauk Countys Great Sauk State Trail. Today is a great day for Wisconsin, Congressman Pocan said in a released statement. I look forward to seeing the impact on this project in years to come. The bridge has long been discussed. In 2019, the counties announced plans to study the feasibility of a bridge over the Wisconsin River. The bridge, 500 feet long, would be on the site of the 100-year-old Sauk City rail bridge. That bridge was demolished in 2018. It was deemed a safety hazard. Both counties have already committed to giving $2 million investments to the project. The federal dollars add another $2 million. The cost of the bridge is projected to be approximately $10 million. The counties will be working with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to secure additional grants to cover the remainder of the balance. Connecting our two counties opens limitless possibilities for outdoor tourism, creating a true regional recreational destination, noted Dane County Executive Joe Parisi. These are the types of projects that brings communities together and spur new local small business development. Sauk County board chair Tim McCumber agrees, stating that a 2020 economic impact study, done by Sauk County, showed the trail connection bringing in millions of dollars to the area. We want Sauk County to be a place where people can live, work, and play, he said. This trail, and this bridge, will play a major role in our future development. Dane Countys Walking Iron County Park and Wildlife Area is located just west of the Village of Mazomanie. Trails wind through restored prairies and wooded areas. The Great Sauk State Trail, established in 2017, is a multi-use recreational trail that parallels the Wisconsin River through the communities of Sauk Prairie and Prairie du Sac, extending into the Sauk Prairie State Recreation Area. Local outdoor enthusiasts are happy with the steps the government is taking to make the bridge a reality. Jonathan Cody is president of Friends of the Great Sauk State Trail. This allocation will bring us one step closer toward a world class recreational trail with regional connectivity, he said. It is fantastic news. The bridge, Cody believes, will link outdoor recreational opportunities on the Lower Wisconsin Riverway, the Sauk Prairie State Recreation Area, and the Devils Lake State Park area near Baraboo. Gateway to the Driftless, a Dane County non-profit, is equally excited. Peter Antonie, board chairperson for the organization said, We are extremely pleased that Representative Pocan, on behalf of our region, understands the importance of this bridge to the economic impact opportunity for the communities along the planned multi-use trail corridor. The bridge is scheduled for completion in 2026. Its a fantastic journey, McCumber said. When Whitney Parrillo moved to rural Illinois with her husband, she didnt know anyone in the area. Yet, it was there that she would begin a career that has continued to include work at multiple libraries for more than a decade. Parrillo, the new Adult Services Librarian at the Portage Public Library, now lives in Montello with her family. She started her job on Jan. 3 and said the job has been going well. Ive always seen libraries as a comfortable, happy place for everyone, Parrillo said. She said growing up she went to libraries a lot and knew them as welcoming to all people. I emailed the library about volunteer jobs just to meet people, Parrillo recalled. That email led to an interview for her new job. Before she was hired she worked at the Endeavor Public Library. Ive worked for six or seven libraries over 13 years, Parrillo said. I love libraries because they are community centers and accept people of all walks of life. A large part of her job at the Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., is purchasing the printed materials, magazines and video games available for checkout at the library. She also assists Events and Programming Coordinator Patti Fichter at the library with suggestions for adult programming. The library currently holds a number of programs designed for adults in the area, including chair yoga, meditation, Zumba, and the return of a computer basics classes to help seniors learn how to use email, social media and other technologies. Parrillo noted that seniors are the majority of adults who use the library but she would like to change that to include more millennials. We are looking to get these younger adults in the library, she said. Another part of her job is helping people find resources and connect them with the agencies they need, returning the library to a community center. This is something that Library Director Debbie Bird has said in meetings at the city and county level. The library is a source for printed materials, but also is a space in the community for anyone to get resources with the PAWSC. The Portage Area Workforce & Service Connection was started in the last few years at the Portage Library. PAWSC services help people with finding employment, housing and taxes resources by connecting people with county services like Columbia County Health and Human Services. More information on PAWSC can be found at portagelibrary.us/PAWSC. Ive worked in rural Wisconsin and some of these resources are not available readily or people dont know where to find them, Parrillo said. PAWSC is helpful to connect these people with what they need help with, whether its food assistance or help finding housing. All of this is part of Parrillos love for libraries. Its one of the only places in our society without the expectation of spending money, Parrillo said. There is no expectation of payment here. You can just be at the library. She added its a place to nurture your interests, no matter your age. People come to the library and learn more about their interests, Parrillo said. Its a place where you can find your interests and other people. The Baraboo-Dells Airport, now under sole ownership by the Village of Lake Delton, is slated for improvements in the coming years. A six-year plan regarding the facility includes replacing one of the taxiways and repairing another, getting updated snow removal equipment, designing and building a new airport terminal, and working on the airport access road, as well as expanding automobile parking. Village administrator Tim McCumber said that the village has petitioned the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for $5.5 million of state and/or federal funds over the years to cover these improvements. The village will match $259,000. The Automated Weather Observation Station system is also slated to be replaced. A resolution approving the petition for funds unanimously approved by the village board on Jan. 9 shows that, in addition to these improvements, the airport is also set to reconstruct taxi lanes, improve runway safety, and perform maintenance on airfield pavement. New lighting systems will also be installed, as well as replacements of the airport's Precision Approach Path Indicator units. Bank of Wisconsin Dells was also unanimously approved by the village board as the financial institution for the Baraboo-Dells Airport. DELLS DIGITAL BILLBOARDS NEARING APPROVAL Digital billboards are closer to being approved for the Dells after the city's Jan. 16 common council meeting. The council unanimously approved the second reading of a proposed ordinance to add digital billboard signs in designated areas adjacent to Broadway/Wisconsin Highway 13 and U.S. Highway 12/Wisconsin Highway 16. If the ordinance is adopted, the billboards may not exceed 300 square feet on one side of a sign structure and 600 total on both sides. The height of the billboards would not be allowed to be higher than 30 feet above the ground and no more than 45 feet above the adjacent road's center line. MACKESEY CONTRACTOR SELECTED Another step in the remodeling project of the Kay C. Mackesey Administration Building was taken during the Lake Delton village board's Jan. 9 meeting, as the board approved contractors for the electrical, plumbing, and fire protection aspects of the remodel, as well as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Bids for each component were accepted. HVAC and electrical work will be done by Milwaukee-area contractors Illingworth-Kilgust Mechanical and Pieper Electric, respectively. The village chose local businesses for fire protection and plumbing, including Madison-area companies Dave Jones Inc. and Benjamin Plumbing. A nitrogen add-on in the fire protection system will be installed instead of replacing piping in the system because of cost difference. Kraus-Anderson, a Minneapolis-based construction management company, is in charge of the remodel design. The board will make a decision on bids for the carpentry and exterior work in the near future, McCumber stated at the meeting. LOG GABLES ADDS CONDO At the Jan. 16 meeting, the Dells common council also unanimously approved a measure establishing a new lodging/rooming house at a condo in Sunset Cove, a development on River Road in the city. The condo is owned by Anna Hutchison, the owner of Log Gables, a Dells area luxury vacation rentals company. Maximum occupancy of the rooming house is six people. According to the conditional use application, it will carry a required minimum stay of two nights and is meant for daily/weekly vacation use. Daniel Hardman tapped into his law enforcement roots to tab his eventual replacement. Lake Deltons police chief has hired Eric Thunberg, a nearly 30-year former officer for the Chula Vista (California) Police Department whom Hardman worked with for two decades there, as assistant police chief. Thunberg began his tenure with the Lake Delton Police Department on Jan. 3. Hardman is planning to retire at the end of 2023 after 40 years in law enforcement and 25 years of military service (five in the U.S. Army Reserves and 20 in the U.S. Coast Guard) that featured two Middle East deployments and others, such as South Korea. Hardman and Thunberg, who will succeed the current chief, served in similar capacities in the Chula Vista Police Department, including together on patrol for a few years as commanding officers. Thunberg also was a captain during his tenure in California. William Laughlin, a current LDPD lieutenant who served as chief in an interim role from early February through late April of 2022 and was chief of the Lodi Police Department prior to joining Lake Delton, decided not to succeed Hardman in the permanent position and will remain in his lieutenant role under Thunberg. Thunberg said that going from a larger municipality (Chula Vista has more than 275,000 residents) to a small community is largely the same from a law enforcement and public safety perspective. Getting to know the community and making sure that I get to know people and understand the flavor of the community, the people involved, keeping the community safe, understanding the specific concerns and issues that affect this community will be A, a challenge and B, rewarding, said Thunberg. I look forward to getting to know those people and get up to speed. Theres a lot to learn and a lot to do. After visiting Lake Delton and the surrounding area two years ago, Thunberg was impressed, according to Hardman. The chief officially chose to bring in Thunberg last year and introduced him to the village board and other village officials. Hardman and Thunberg have similar law enforcement philosophies, emphasizing evidence collection and forensic analysis as part of more comprehensive criminal investigations. Like Hardman in 2013 when he joined LDPD and later became chief in July of 2014, Thunberg was nearing retirement in Chula Vista and was seeking law enforcement opportunities outside of California that would be a good fit for him and his family. Hardman starts as Lake Delton Police Chief The Lake Delton Police Department has a new leader for the first time in decades. This one kind of came on scene and I was fortunate enough to be able to accept the position, said Thunberg. Im grateful and humbled. Hardman said that he is going to spend 2023, his final year in law enforcement, in an orientation capacity, getting Thunberg acclimated to the methods of LDPD. The chief is also going to finish all of the ins and outs of the recently completed police facility on Miller Drive, which the department moved into in June of last year. With about a month to go before the Feb. 21 Wisconsin Supreme Court primary, fundraising totals from the second half of 2022 suggest emerging leaders in each of the partisan camps. Liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit judge, raised over $750,000 between July and the end of December last year, more than all of the other candidates combined during that period. Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell, the other liberal candidate, raised a little over $115,000. The conservative candidates trail Protasiewicz in gathering money, but they both launched their campaigns well into the reporting period. Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow, who announced her bid in early December, raised almost $307,000 between then and the end of the year. Thats nearly the same amount that former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, who launched his campaign in early September, raised in the last four months of 2022 about $312,000. Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) had nearly $735,000 on hand at the end of the reporting period, also more than all of the other candidates combined. She spent about $185,000 in that time. Mitchell had just over $72,000 at the end of the period after spending just under $72,000 in that period. Dorow had around $283,000 after spending just under $24,000, while Kelly had $276,000 after spending just over $52,000. The two candidates who receive the most votes in February will advance to the April 4 general election. The winning candidate in that election will replace Justice Patience Roggensack, a member of the courts current 4-3 conservative majority. State Supreme Court races are nominally nonpartisan, but they are run in an intensely partisan fashion, with political parties and outside groups spending large sums to back their preferred candidates. Because the spring election is nonpartisan, its not necessarily the case that one candidate from each camp will advance to the April 4 election. Rather, the top two vote-getters in next months primary, no matter what ideology they may embrace, will advance to the general election. With the courts ideological balance up for grabs, the candidate elected in April will likely play a decisive role in upcoming cases, including ones that could address the legality of Wisconsins near-complete 1849 abortion ban, fights over legislative redistricting and the power of the executive branch in administering laws. Close to a dozen Democratic state senators have called on the chambers Republican leader to remove Robert Spindell Jr. from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, citing the Republicans comments praising GOP efforts he said are responsible for depressing minority voter turnout in Milwaukee. The call for Spindells removal from the six-member bipartisan commission follows similar demands for his resignation by Democratic members of the agency. Voces de la Frontera, an advocacy group for immigrants, and Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing for Communities have also condemned the former Milwaukee election officials comments. I just want the Republican Party and Bob Spindell to know that communities of color are not stupid, and we are not desperate, Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, told reporters at a Wednesday press conference. In the famous words of Maya Angelou, When someone shows you who they are, believe them. And I want Republicans to know that communities of color know exactly who they are, and we believe what we see. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, reappointed Spindell to another five-year term on the commission in April 2021. LeMahieus spokesperson, Michael Pyritz, said the majority leader had no comment Wednesday. Spindell, who was one of 10 Republicans to sign official-looking documents in late 2020 seeking to hand the states Electoral College votes to President Donald Trump, wrote in an email, first reported by Urban Milwaukee, that Republicans can be especially proud of lowered turnout in Milwaukee during the 2022 election, with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas. Spindell told The Associated Press last week his email was an attempt to detail positive steps Republicans took to counter the Democratic message in Milwaukee. Spindell said that was a result of a well thought out multi-faceted plan that included recruiting strong Republican candidates and efforts to boost them, and a presence on Black talk radio shows along with Biting Black Radio Negative Commercials. Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, of Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, said the effort referenced by Spindell hearkens back to the darkest days of Jim Crow. She called on LeMahieu to remove Spindell from the commission and replace him with a person of integrity and impartiality who will serve the voters of Wisconsin well. Spindell has also been the subject of several ongoing lawsuits related to his and nine other Republicans decision to falsely attest Donald Trump won Wisconsins 2020 presidential election. In May, a handful of Democrats, represented by Law Forward, filed a lawsuit alleging that the 10 Republicans and the two attorneys who advised them broke several criminal and civil laws including counterfeiting public records, illegally interfering with official procedures, defrauding the public and engaging in conspiracy when they met at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign documents asserting that Trump won the state. The lawsuit seeks more than $2.4 million in damages, including $2,000 fines for the Republicans and their attorneys, and up to $200,000 in punitive damages for each plaintiff. Plaintiffs in the case include lawfully elected Wisconsin electors Khary Penebaker and Mary Arnold, as well as Bonnie Joseph, who is listed in court documents as someone who objects to Defendants unlawful interference in Wisconsins participation in the Electoral College. The meeting of Republicans occurred following advice from attorneys with close ties to Trump. Documents have underscored efforts by those in Trumps inner circle to circumvent the Electoral College process in several states, including Wisconsin, following the 2020 election, despite recounts and court decisions affirming that Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. The Republicans have said the meeting was to preserve their legal options amid litigation surrounding the election. The meeting took place on the same day the states Democratic slate of electors convened, also at the Capitol, to deliver the states 10 electoral votes to Biden. It also occurred after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Biden had won the election and a month after Wisconsin county clerks canvassed the presidential election results. YEREVAN, JANUARY 17, ARMENPRESS. The UN Security Council is an important platform and Armenia will continue working there on the issue of opening the Lachin Corridor, ARMENPRESS reports, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stated during the parliament-Government question and answer session, answering the question of what to expect from the UN Security Council, given that it was not possible to adopt a joint statement on the Lachin Corridor. "On September 13-14, after the invasion of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia and the occupation of a part of our sovereign territory by Azerbaijan, the first discussions took place in the UN Security Council after a break of many years. And now, after the closing of the Lachin Corridor and the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, we made a request again, and on the initiative of France, discussions took place in the UN Security Council on December 20. Also, the members of the UN Security Council expressed public positions. Everyone can learn about the nuances of the specific position of a specific country. the videos are available on the Internet. And a document was circulating, and it was the statement of the country holding the presidency of the UN Security Council, and unfortunately, it was not possible to accept the document due to the positions of individual countries, sometimes also friendly countries, but the work continues. And the UN Security Council is an important platform, and everyone can realize its importance, and we will continue the work there," Mirzoyan emphasized. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. The factions of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh issued a statement about the blockade of Artsakh by Azerbaijan and the deepening humanitarian disaster, calling on the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation, which are parties to the November 9, 2020 declaration, to take urgent measures to unblock Artsakh and prevent a humanitarian disaster, ARMENPRESS was informed from the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh. The statement says, "The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan, grossly violating the norms of international law and the responsibilities assumed by itself by the Trilateral Declaration of November 9, 2020, deepens the policy of blockade of Artsakh since December 12, under the false environmental pretext. In the conditions of the ongoing complete blockade and electricity, the Internet, and since January 17, 2023 also the gas supply disruptions in winter conditions have put the population of the Republic of Artsakh on the brink of a humanitarian disaster. The terrorist actions of "eco-activists" against 19 children who were returning from Goris to Stepanakert accompanied by peacekeepers on the night of January 17-18, and spreading all that in the Azerbaijani press and social networks can be added to the abovementioned. The ongoing creeping war by the Azerbaijani authorities against the population of the Republic of Artsakh is taking place with the almost silent consent of the world. It aims to break the will of Artsakh Armenians and deport tens of thousands of people from their historical homeland through ethnic cleansing. With similar steps, Azerbaijan is also trying to thwart the efforts of international structures and various countries aimed at extinguishing the war hotbeds and settling conflicts in the region. We call on the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation, which are parties to the November 9, 2020 declaration, to take urgent measures to unblock Artsakh and prevent the humanitarian disaster. We urge the international structures and the UN member states to prevent the genocidal actions of Azerbaijan with practical steps, apart from statements and calls. In order to overcome the challenges facing the Republic of Artsakh with dignity, we appeal to all Armenians to take appropriate steps to curb the aggressive actions of Azerbaijan and protect the legal right of Artsakh Armenians to live in their own land. Editor's Note With the care of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and under the leadership of the All-China Women's Federation, the China Children and Teenagers' Fund (CCTF) launched the Spring Bud Project in 1989, to help impoverished girls return to school, and to promote girls' education in disadvantaged areas. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, in 2012, with the attention and concern of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, and with the strong support of Peng Liyuan, special envoy of the Spring Bud Project for promoting girls' education, the project has conducted various activities to care for and support girls, and it has focused on girls' education, safety and health. During the past decade, the project has supported 1.76 million girls, and it has provided one-on-one companionship services and personalized psychological counseling to 133,400 girls. After they receive support from the project, the Spring Bud girls never forget to give back to society. With love and various actions, the girls have demonstrated the Spring Bud spirit of "unremitting self-improvement, striving for excellence, developing stronger virtues and pursuing better lives." Today, we introduce a new section, Spring Bud Blooms, to share stories about Spring Bud girls who have grown up and become contributing members of society, and to encourage society to care for the development of girls. Wang Yunling is one of them. Wang Yunling at work "Spring Bud Project not only helped and supported my life and studies, but also made me feel the care and encouragement from society. I was deeply touched," says Wang Yunling, a beneficiary of the project from Central China's Hubei Province. Wang says the project also provided her with the courage and confidence she needed to address various difficulties, and it helped her recognize the importance of mutual assistance among people. Wang was born in Zaoyang, a county in Hubei, in 1997. She was an excellent student, and she looked forward to being offered placement in a key university. Wang's parents fed their family by doing farm work and odd jobs, but their earnings could not cover both the family's daily needs and Wang's high school fees. Nevertheless, they worked hard, and they did their utmost to support Wang's education. Their commitment to her studies inspired Wang to study hard, so she would not let her parents down. After they learned about her family's economic situation, teachers in her high school helped Wang apply for subsidy from the Spring Bud Project. That was during her first year at the school. Wang recalls how she was excited, and happy, when she received the subsidy from the project. The subsidy was granted to her annually during her three years as a high school student. Wang Yunling gives a work report. Later, she wrote a letter to express her heartfelt thanks to the project, and she shared with other students her gratitude for and stories about the charitable program. With the help of the project, Wang completed her high school education. Wang performed well in the national college-entrance exam, and she was admitted to Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL), in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Wang continued to study hard, and she received scholarships, and scientific and technological research awards, at ZUEL. During her time as a graduate student at ZUEL, she wrote two theses one on the health risks brought about by heavy metals in tobacco, and the other on the assessment of soil pollution and both were published in leading journals. Wang Yunling visits an exhibition. In July this year, after she graduated from ZUEL, Wang became an engineer in a large auto manufacturing firm. She is satisfied with her job, and she looks forward to breaking new ground, with concrete efforts, in the workplace. She says she will strive for excellence, consolidate professional knowledge, and enhance her technical skills in her pursuit of the craftsmanship spirit. Wang says the Spring Bud Project helped her grasp the opportunity to steer her life. "I am very grateful to have met the Spring Bud Project, which allowed me to receive an education and rely on knowledge to change my life," she adds. Throughout the years, Wang has studied hard, acquired knowledge, and participated in various charitable and public-welfare activities. She has endeavored to become an upright person, with a thankful heart. "I cherish my current life now. I will continue to work hard, with a grateful heart, and give back to society with practical actions. No matter what position I am in, I will stand on my own feet, and I will be a contributing member of society," Wang says. Photos Supplied by CCTF (Women of China English Monthly January 2023 issue) Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has embarked on a visit to the Swiss Confederation to attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Azernews reports. On January 17, President Ilham Aliyev met with Chief Executive Officer and shareholder of the Dutch Damen Shipyards Group Arnout Damen in Davos. During the conversation, the head of state`s previous meeting with Arnout Damen was recalled. Arnout Damen said that they have started the implementation of projects in Azerbaijan, and highlighted the work done. President Ilham Aliyev hailed the fact that Damen Shipyards Group has recently started implementing projects in Azerbaijan. The sides emphasized that there are good opportunities for the company to do a wider scope of work in Azerbaijan. Noting that Azerbaijan has become an important transit country, the head of state pointed out that the volume of cargo passing through the territory of the country has increased by 75 percent. President Ilham Aliyev stated that taking into account all this, there is a need to increase the number of new tankers, dry cargo ships, and ferries in Azerbaijan. The head of state underlined that there is also a good potential for cooperation with Damen Shipyards Group in this field. They also discussed the issues related to the possibility of manufacturing various ships for the Azerbaijan Naval Forces. YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. On January 18, Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan participated in the event dedicated to the official launch of the "Resilient Syunik Team Europe Initiative", ARMENPRESS was informed from the Government of Armenia. The event was also attended by Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Armenia, Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin, the delegation led by Head of the Unit for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Eastern Partnership of the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations of the European Commission David Cullen, ambassadors of several EU Member States and representatives of European financial organizations. At the event dedicated to the official launch of the "Resilient Syunik Team Europe Initiative", the Deputy Prime Minister made a speech, in which he specifically said: "Your Excellencies, distinguished ambassadors, Dear Ms. Wiktorin, Dear Colleagues, First of all, I would like to congratulate all of us on the launch of this important initiative and thank the European Union and the EU Member States for all the programs being implemented and efforts made in Syunik in this difficult period full of challenges for Armenia. Syunik is really vital for our country, therefore, any project aimed at sustainable development of the region is in the center of special attention of the Government. Moreover, the current geopolitical developments further emphasize the strategic role of Syunik, including on the path to building sustainable peace in the region. In this context, I consider it necessary to emphasize that our joint efforts aimed at improving the quality of life in the region, in addition to having an important local socio-economic impact, are also of fundamental importance for the sustainable development of our country. I am glad that the importance of the normal development of the region was also acknowledged by the European Union and EU member states within the framework of our cooperation. This is evidenced not only by the initiative starting today, but also by the fact that under the Economic and Investment Plan of the European Union, the increase of Syunik's resilience and the sustainable development of the region is specifically highlighted as one of the independent directions among our five main guidelines. The Government also continues to work intensively with partners on the construction of the southern section of the North-South Highway, which will contribute to our efforts to position Armenia as a regional trade and economic hub. I should also mention with satisfaction the program of establishment of 2 COAF centers in Syunik Province, which will make innovative education available to residents of the region. In conclusion, I would like to thank once again on behalf of the Government and personally myself all involved partners for the great and important work done and planned. My team and I continue to be there for you. Thank you." Due to the siege, 19 children, separated from their parents and family for more than a month, returned home via the Goris-Stepanakert road, Artsakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan said on social media. January 18, 2023, 09:06 In latest display of Armenophobia, masked Azeris blocking Lachin Corridor harass children returning to Artsakh,1 faints STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARTSAKHPRESS: ''The children were accompanied from Goris to Stepanakert by the Russian peacekeeping troops. The car was stopped by Azerbaijanis in the area under Shushi-Karin Tak in the cordoned-off part of the road, where the Azerbaijani government agents pretending to be "eco-activists" and the journalists serving them are stationed. Then, 10-15 Azerbaijanis with face masks on, cameras in hand, and in civilian clothes approached the car. Some of them rushed into the vehicle and filmed the children in the car. As a result of the provocative actions of the Azerbaijanis, there was a commotion in the car, and consequently, one of the children fainted. Due to actions undertaken by Russian peacekeepers, the Azerbaijanis were removed from the car, and the vehicle continued its journey. Then, while passing through the blocked section of the road, Azerbaijanis demonstratively shouted in the direction of the vehicles transporting the children. This impudent behavior of the agents of the Azerbaijani government is an arbitrary and illegal interference in the private life and psychological integrity of children. It is an illegal encroachment on their integrity and reputation. These criminal actions completely reveal their true goals and desires. The ethnic hatred of Azerbaijanis towards Armenians knows no boundaries, targeting even minor children. The Conservative governments draconian anti-strike legislation passed its second reading in parliament yesterday as a few thousand people joined a protest organised by the trade unions outside Downing Street. Protestors against the anti-strike laws outside Downing Street, January 16, 2023 [Photo: WSWS] Moved by Business Secretary Grant Shapps, the Strikes Bill will enforce minimum service levels in the rail, health, education and other sectorsrequiring a set number of workers, individually selected by the employers, to come into work on a strike day. Failure to do so will lead to workers being sacked, unions being fined enormous sums of money and the possibility of being sued for damages. In the debate Monday, former Home Secretary Priti Patel fired the starting pistol on plans to extend these requirements throughout the working class, suggesting ministers should look at widening the list of sectors where minimum service standards are needed. The Bill was opposed by Labour and other opposition parties. Having pledged to repeal the law once in office, Labour speaks for sections of business concerned that the Tories plans will lead to oppositional struggles in the working class breaking free from the control of the trade unions. Labour Party Deputy Leader Angela Rayner told the House, It is the government, not the trade unions, who are acting militantly What I would do is sit around the table and resolve this dispute with the trade unions. That would be better than what the Conservatives have done. The Scottish National Partys Alan Brown argued similarly, Clearly the union asks cannot be too unreasonable, when RMT and ASLEF have agreed deals with ScotRail and the Scottish Government, deals in Wales and deals with Merseyrail. Both have involved major sellouts on pay. In its report, the Financial Times concluded with a warning by head of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation Neil Carberry, who said strike laws should aid to channel and resolve conflicts. Otherwise, he said, they risked leading to wildcat action, poorer service and the emergence of unaffiliated, more problematic groups than trade unions. All parliamentary opposition to the Tory bill is based on such political considerations. Outside the prime ministers official residence, the union bureaucracys demonstration against the Bill was a pitch to the same concerns in ruling circles. Beginning just minutes after the announcement of another series of nurses strikes and new strikes involving 300,000 teachers, the rally was held under the auspices of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union involved in an ongoing dispute. Such actions, and those of millions of other workers, would be effectively shut down by the anti-strike law. But speakers put forward no plans to fight the governments Bill. A day of protests announced by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for February 1 was buttressed by an announced strike that day of teachers in England and Wales, joining 100,000 Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union members. The train drivers union ASLEF; Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (train driver members); and the University and College Union has since also announced strikes for February 1. But strike action was lent nothing more than incidental significance. The central message at the Downing Street rally was that nothing could be done until a Labour government arrives to save the dayunderscored by the presence of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and three MPs from the partys left rump. Zarah Sultana speaking at the Downing Street protest against the anti-strike laws, January 16, 2023 [Photo: WSWS] Zarah Sultana announced that she would be voting against the law and that thankfully a Labour Party thats remembered what Labour stands for will also be voting against this Bill. Taking up this lie, headline speaker RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch appealed to Labours front bench to say, We are with you, we are going to defeat this law, we are going to defeat this government, were going to drive them out of power, were going to support you in your disputes, and were going to guarantee that you win those disputes, and when we win that election were going to repeal all the trade union laws. Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, he went on breathlessly, should come and stand with us stand up for socialism, stand up for workers. Mick Lynch speaking at the Downing Street protest against the anti-strike laws, January 16, 2023 [Photo: WSWS] Returning briefly from this parallel dimension, Lynch felt obliged to say that he would not be waiting for professional politicians, that the future now is in our hands and the working class is back, and were going to fight for our rights.But this is all demagogy. Even the earlier claims by union leaders that the legislation could be legally challenged was effectively ditched by Sultana, who said the Bill would will go to the courts where the struggle will only be held up ever so slightly, adding that it might be the only way to defeat this Bill is politically. The promissory note of a future Labour government is being used to fend off demands by workers for mass action now, even as the trade unions seek to end the ongoing disputes over pay, jobs and conditions. Reports of negotiations in the rail dispute between the RMT and the train operating companies suggest a deal maxing out at a 10 percent pay rise spread over two years based, in Lynchs words, on what can be generated through the savings and efficiencies theyre demanding. According to the Socialist Worker, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) has told Royal Mail that it will not call further strikes of its 100,000-plus members until a new round of negotiations is completed next Friday. The site reports that union leaders feel agreements not to cut certain premium payments and for no compulsory redundancies are a sign that they could soon get a deal. It adds that premium payments are to come from money already allocated, which could mean cuts elsewhere, and wont be offered to new starters. CWU General Secretary Dave Ward sent his apologies to Mondays Downing Street rally because he was in negotiations with the employers! By the time a change of government takes place, the combination of government ruthlessness and the union bureaucracys rank betrayals amid an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis will have produced a social nightmare for the working class. And what should workers realistically expect of a Labour government? In his speech, Corbyn told the crowd We have been here before. The Heath government in 1970 tried the same thing And do you know what happened? Massive strike action all over the country. That government was defeated, and in its place, we [the Labour government of Harold Wilson] defeated that legislation and got instead a fairer system. Jeremy Corbyn speaking at the Downing Street protest against the anti-strike laws, January 16, 2023 [Photo: WSWS] Labour did repeal Heaths 1971 Industrial Relations Act after being brought to power by a wave of strike action. But it replaced it with the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974, maintaining many of the earlier restrictions but with the active collusion of the trade unions. This and other betrayals carried out by the Wilson and James Callaghan governments disoriented the working class and paved the way for the election of the Tories under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Under todays far more advanced conditions of social crisis, the process would be swifter and more brutal. The fight against the anti-strike bill must begin now and must be waged against the Tory government, and the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy seeking to suppress such a struggle. To organise this counter-offensive, rank-and-file committees must be built in every workplace to unify the struggles of the working class in defiance of the new laws and for a general strike to topple their authors. These committees can find political and organisational support in the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, which has led important battles against the union bureaucracy in the United States, exposing the sham elections of the United Auto Workers union and the shutdown of a national strike by the rail unions. The fight against the anti-strike laws must become the foundational struggle not for a Labour government, but for a mass socialist party of the working class, the Socialist Equality Party. On 15 January the Spanish newspaper Economia Digital reported that the Ford Motors general works council headed by Benjamin Gruschka has offered to slash wages in Germany in order to undercut the Ford plant in Almussafes in Valencia, Spain. According to the report, the German union IG Metall has promised wage cuts of 18 percent and additional unpaid overtime amounting to 20 days per year. The offer affects not only the 4,600 workers in Saarlouis, Germany, whose plant is threatened with closure, but also all German Ford factories with a total staff of around 22,000. Workers at Fords main plant in Cologne and its development site in Aachen are also expected to take cuts. The general works council had already announced in December 2021 that everyone would have to make sacrifices, calling the move Solidarity for Saarlouisa future for everyone. The union remained silent, however, about the extent of its offer to the company. Ford workers demonstrate after the announcement of the closure of the Saarlouis plant, June 22, 2022 [Photo: WSWS] When the Ford group announced a few months earlier that its two plants in Saarland and Valencia, Spain, would have to compete against one another for the contract to produce electric vehicles, the respective workforces were shocked and spoke out against this policy of divide and rule on the part of management. Defying the workforces, the works councils and union bureaucrats in Germany and Spain took on the task of organising a competitive bidding process. In January 2022, both works councils submitted their bids, and since then have repeatedly undercut one another. IG Metall and its works councils remained absolutely firm on their offer to management submitted together with the Saarland state government headed by premier Anke Rehlinger (SPD). When Ford first announced in June last year that the groups next electric model would be built in Almussafes and that the site in Saarlouis would be closed, the works council chair in Saarlouis, Markus Thal, expressed his surprise. Since then, Thal has complained about the company's decision, arguing that the IG Metall offer was allegedly 1.4 billion euros better for the company than the one from Almussafes. In Almussafes, the works council led by Jose Luis Parra of the trade union Union General de Trabajadores (UGT) led the bidding competition. The Spanish works councils have now disclosed some information about the offer made in Germany. The Ford plant in Almussafes is due to hold works council elections. In preparation, the social democratic trade union UGT, which has a majority on the works council, assembled 1,200 members at the plant. The UGT works councillors led by Parra had to justify the cuts they had agreed to in the bidding competition and which they are now in the process of implementing. These cuts include freezing wages for the next four years, wage increases of just 1.6 percent from 2026, as well as an extension of daily working times by 15 minutes and the cancellation of some holidays. This adds up to a total of eleven days extra that each worker will have to work each year. In this context, the UGT revealed the IGM offer, which included even more cuts. According to the German offer, the 22,000 workers in Cologne, Aachen and Saarlouis are to receive 18 percent less pay and work an extra 20 days per year. The exact terms of the offer remain unclear; 15 percent of the wage reduction was supposedly to come from cuts in contractually agreed wage components. Currently, Ford employees are paid according to the North Rhine-Westphalian state contract for the metal and electrical industry. Non-contractual wage components have not existed for a long time. Did Gruschka, Thal and IG Metall offer cuts in these wage levels? Or have they offered to forego future increases? The remaining 3 percent of the 18 percent wage cut was apparently to be added by cutting the so-called transformation pay (T-train) first agreed in 2021, which allowed workers to choose between extra pay or up to eight additional days off. In addition, the workforce in Saarlouis was expected to sacrifice 20 days off. At the moment, workers can save up 14 to 15 free shifts per year based on their current daily half-hour of extra work. These 14 free shifts plus another six free dayspresumably subtracted from the T-train agreementwould then add up to the total of 20 days. This massive attack on workers pay and conditions was apparently worked out behind closed doors by a small cabal led by Gruschka, Thal and regional IGM officials. Ford workers must demand that the scandalous offer made by the German works councils and union be fully disclosed. The extraordinary factory meeting on January 23 in Cologne is a good opportunity to do so. At the factory meeting held last December, the workforce at the Cologne main plant were informed that their jobs would also be cut. From the start the Ford Action Committee, in which workers have united against the policy of the works council and IG Metall, demanded that the IGM offer be made public, but Thal and Gruschka have vehemently rejected this. Once again it can be seen that the Ford Action Committee was absolutely right in rejecting the entire bidding process. The committee warned from the beginning that the winner of the bidding competition was a foregone conclusionthe company and the works council leaders. The workforces in Saarlouis, Almussafes and all other sites, on the other hand, only stood to lose out. Now, production in Saarlouis is due to cease in two and a half years at the latest, and several thousand workers will lose their livelihoods. In Almussafes, too, the workforce not only faces wage cuts and extra work, but also job cuts and even the possible closure of the plant. Several Ford models are currently being phased outthe Mondeo already last year, and the S-Max and the Galaxy this April, i.e., earlier than planned. All that remains is production of the Ford Kuga and part of the Transit Connect production. The start of production of the new electric vehicle, for which wages will be reduced and working hours made more flexible, has not yet been scheduled and could only commence in 2030, if at all. At the Spanish plant, workers expect that several hundred will lose their jobs this year. Already 700 workers are on short-time work every day. In 1937, Leon Trotsky wrote that the character of a trade union is expressed by its relation to the distribution of the national income. If the trade union officials defend the income of the bourgeoisie from attacks on the part of the workers, should they conduct a struggle against strikes, against the raising of wages, against help to the unemployed, then we would have an organization of scabs and not a trade union. Today, IG Metall is not only conducting a struggle against wage increases. It is actively advocating and implementing wage cuts and cheap labour in an industry where workers were once among the best paid. It is an anti-worker organisation that enforces the companys attacks on the workforce. There is considerable disquiet amongst the Saarlouis workforce. Workers are asking how they can get rid of this corrupt works council once and for all and defend their jobs. The current calmsickness leave is up to 20 percent in some departments and just a few hundred workers still come to the works meetingsheralds a new wave of open opposition. It is the calm before the storm. The important thing now is to prepare for what is coming. Contact the Ford Action Committee and discuss a common policy for struggle. Contact us and send a Whatsapp message to the following number: +491633378340 The ruling by Berlins state Constitutional Court ordering a rerun of the elections for the House of Representatives (state legislature) on February 12 has been met with fierce opposition in ruling circles and the federal government. Forty-three politicians have applied to the Federal Constitutional Court (Supreme Court) for an interim injunction. They want to ensure that the election, despite the fact that the campaign has already begun, is stopped. Andy Niklaus, SGP candidate and Berlin bus driver, on a picket line with striking teachers [Photo: WSWS] There is far more involved than the fact that politicians, such as those of the Left Party, fear losing their own seats and posts in fresh elections. The Federal Constitutional Courts failure thus far to dismiss the suit, despite the fact that it clearly does not fall within the federal courts jurisdiction, shows that there is broad support in the ruling class for blocking the election. The cancellation of the recall election would be a fundamental attack on the democratic rights of the people. After all, the original ballot in September 2021 in no way met the standards of a free and equal election, as the Berlin Constitutional Court established beyond a shadow of doubt. Thousands of voters had to wait for hours, could not cast their vote at all, or received invalid ballot papers. If this pseudo-election is legitimized by the Federal Constitutional Court and the necessary recall election stopped, it will be tantamount to the abolition of democratic elections. The ruling elite will then be able to sabotage elections at will and push through its hated policies without any regard for the voters. This is exactly what the attempt to stop the recall election in Berlin is all about. Those pulling the strings want to prevent the war policies and social devastation that all parties at the federal and state levels are ruthlessly implementing from being addressed in elections. In the face of the greatest rearmament since Hitler and the growth of explosive class tensions, the right to vote is to be suspended. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) declares war on the establishment party cartel and the attempt to stop elections. We are participating in the Berlin state elections to provide a voice and a socialist perspective to the widespread opposition to right-wing and militarist policies. Our public rallies against the war policy, the thousands of posters we have put up and dozens of information booths we have manned are already meeting with a powerful response. We will mobilize against any attempt to prevent the election from taking place. The efforts to halt the recall election are being made behind the backs of the population. It is a very real conspiracy. The 43 plaintiffs are not appearing openly, and even the Federal Constitutional Court is refusing to name them in public proceedings. What is known, however, is that 26 of them are deputies in either the Berlin House of Representatives (state legislature) or in a Berlin district council. The fact that the law firm Redeker Sellner Dahs has taken on representation of these politicians is evidence that there is support for the suit on the part of the federal government, since this law firm usually represents the federal government in all important legal affairs. For example, it represented the federal Interior Ministry against the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei when the SGP filed a lawsuit against its surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as Germanys domestic intelligence agency is called. The law firms lawyers justified the surveillance on the grounds that the SGP was fighting for a democratic, egalitarian and socialist society. The attempt to prevent the recall election is entirely in line with this anti-democratic pedigree. The law firm is keeping the 250-page brief opposing the Berlin Constitutional Court ruling and the recall election strictly under wraps. Media reports say the document contains serious allegations against the [lower courts] verdict. Rally of the SGP at the Leopoldplatz in Wedding, Berlin [Photo: WSWS] The Federal Constitutional Court is participating in the secrecy, refusing to publish names or pleadings. The court should have rejected the case immediately because it simply does not have jurisdiction. Well-known experts in constitutional lawsuch as Berlin Professor Emeritus Ulli Battis and Cologne lecturer Ulrich Vosgerauhave stated categorically that in Berlin, the Berlin Constitutional Court alone has jurisdiction to decide on new elections at the state level. But the Federal Constitutional Court did not dismiss the lawsuit. After it was filed on December 15, the court instead asked all parties to the proceedings to submit written comments by January 10. Even after this deadline had passed, the Federal Constitutional Court still did not issue a statement. It is clear that fierce disputes are taking place in the background, which are being kept secret from the public. We therefore demand the immediate publication of the names of the plaintiffs and all pleadings on file with the court, as well as the rejection of the lawsuit. The population has a right to know how attempts are being made to deprive it of its right to vote. In addition, the Bundestag (federal parliament) elections in Berlin must also be repeated. They were held at the same time as the Berlin state elections and at the same polling stations, with the same errors occurring. So far, the Bundestag has decidedwith the votes of the traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greensthat the Bundestag elections should be repeated only in 431 of Berlins 2,257 electoral districts. A body that came about through an election that was flawed and in part illegal has decided how, when and to what extent the election is to be repeated. Several court actions have already been filed against this decision by the Bundestag. While the federal government is organizing the return of German militarism, with German tanks once again rolling against Russia and the ruling elite knowingly risking a nuclear world war, the population is to be deprived of the right to vote. The SGP will not accept this. We are conducting an intensive election campaign against the right-wing conspiracy in the Bundestag and the Berlin state legislature. We call on all those who refuse to accept ever worsening social inequality, the destruction of the health and education systems, and, finally, the nuclear destruction of our planet: Support the SGP election campaign! Register now as an active supporter and vote SGP on February 12! Diego Riveras America, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: July 16, 2022January 1, 2023; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas: March 11July 31, 2023 The Flower Carrier (1935) [Photo: SFMOMA] I mean by America, the territory included between the two ice barriers of the two poles. A fig for your barriers of wire and frontier guards. This 1931 comment by the great Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was tucked away in a map showing the geographical expanse of his artistic creations in the first of numerous rooms at the recent San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) exhibition, Diego Riveras America. Rivera is renowned as the 20th century master at making murals, hundreds of which adorn public spaces in Mexico, and several of which were commissioned and remain available to the public in the United States. San Francisco boasts three Rivera murals, one of which is the centerpiece of the recent exhibition, along with 150 additional works that have been loaned to the exhibition or reorganized from the museums own extensive collection. Rivera saw California as the geographical unity of North and South between the two ice barriers, and the exhibitions organizers remind us of Riveras particular fondness for northern California. Pan-American Unity, the imposing mural displayed on the museums ground floor (formally titled by Rivera The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent), illustrates Riveras fig for your barriers and frontier guards, as his title implies. Europe was in the throes of World War II in 1940, the year he created this complex, vibrant ode to the past, present and future of mankinds creativity. Pan-American Unity (1940) [Photo: WSWS] The mural depicts centrally a massive, stylized Aztec goddess of organic sinew, earth and woven snakes, intertwined and blending with a huge stamping machine from Detroits auto industry. She is rooted firmly, surrounded by figures representing the arts and sciences, engineering and the labor required for their creation. This mural was painstakingly planned and then created before a live audience at the 1940 San Francisco Worlds Fairthe Golden Gate International Exposition. While Diego Riveras America exhibition is now over in that city, this monumental work of art will remain at SFMOMA until its rebuilt home at City College of San Francisco has been completed later this year. Riveras murals, the works that made him world famous, contain elements of allegory and concrete realism, and are always complex. The recent SFMOMA exhibition presented several of the murals in nearly life-size projections, with ordinary people going about their business in front of a steady camera, so the viewer appreciates their size and scope. Welcoming the viewer to the exhibitions ten rooms was a projection of the first mural Rivera painted, in 1922, on his return to Mexico from Europe. The works title is Creation. Rivera had spent over a decade in Paris and Italy, studying the works of the masters, and was clearly influenced in this work by the iconography he had seen in his travels, and certainly by Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. Rivera was an avowed atheist, yet portrayed his materialist view of creationart, music, sciencesurrounding the symbol of life, the seeds and soil of the earth, as religious icons. The work was commissioned by the new Ministry of Education, established by the Mexican nationalist government of Alvaro Obregon. Diego Riveras America focuses on works from that time through the 1940s. The works presented include commissioned portraits, drawings and many sketches and preparatory works for his murals. There are some truly remarkable works here, including The Flower Carrier from 1935, originally commissioned by the then San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA, and part of its permanent collection), depicting a peasant woman assisting a man bent over on hands and knees under the weight of an enormous basket of vibrant pink and blue flowers. The forms are simplified, the colors and shapes harmonious. Other well-known canvases include Woman with Calla Lilies (1945) and Nude with Calla Lilies (1944). Recognized as an influential pioneer of modernism and having worked in Europe with the Cubists, Rivera flattens perspective in many of his works, with the foreground images nearly emerging from the picture plane itself. One entire room is filled with some of the most intriguing and vibrant works, all depicting The Market. Riveras deep feeling for Mexico, its color and its people are revealed in these works. The Man, costume design for the ballet H.P." [Photo: SFMOMA] Among the lesser-known of Riveras works are sketches for costumes designed for an avant-garde ballet staged in 1927. SFMOMA commissioned Mexican artist and puppet-maker Toztli Abril de Dios to create life-size figures wearing Riveras designs. They are beautiful and whimsical. There is also a 1930 proposal for the facade of the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, which he planned as a 100-foot-tall mosaic, an art form he considered superior to fresco. But his design was not chosen and the mosaic was never produced. This exhibition, the largest collection of Riveras work since 1999, encompasses a broad range of works, and that may also be its weakness. The exhibition is organized thematically rather than chronologically, and is not intended as a retrospective. However, because Riveras career spanned the most tumultuous years of the 20th century, the thematic emphases of the exhibition avoid the development and change in his world view and his artistic vision. Rivera was possibly the worlds most well-known politically conscious artist of his time, and the mural his best medium. During the period covered by the works at this exhibition he painted images incorporating the Mexican Revolution; the Russian Revolution and its leaders, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky; world war; fascism; Hitler; Stalinism; the Fourth International; the role of labor in society, a theme that appears in most of his murals; the Detroit Industry murals, which are the centerpiece of the Detroit Institute of the Arts; and the famous mural Man at the Crossroads, which was destroyed by the Rockefeller family because Rivera refused to delete an image of Lenin. To fully grasp the most memorable of Riveras works demands of the viewer an engagement with history and Riveras own political trajectory, which was that of a man with a profound artistic and social sensitivityor that encourages such an engagement. His political outlook was shaped by the extraordinary historical period in which he came to maturity. He was 19 in 1905, the year of Einsteins annus mirabilis and the first Russian Revolution. Sent to Europe to study art at the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, he returned to his homeland in 1921 a self-proclaimed committed communist and ardent supporter of the new Mexican revolutionary-nationalist government. In 1927, Rivera was invited to Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. In 1928 he was expelled from Russia for his alleged sympathy for Trotsky. In 1936 he was instrumental in arranging asylum in Mexico for Trotsky and his wife. In 1938, he collaborated with Trotsky and writer Andre Breton in writing the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art. But by the time he sat on the scaffolding in San Francisco creating Pan American Unity, in the summer of 1940, he had broken with Trotsky and was embracing the Stalinist line of class collaboration. This is evident in the mural Pan American Unitys lower middle panel, where an American flag forms the background to the forces fighting against Hitler. Following his experience in Europe, which included close collaboration with the artists of the Paris avant-garde and extensive work in the Cubist and European modernist movements, Rivera rejected any association with art for arts sake, as evidenced by the themes of his murals and the centrality of the oppressed in most of his work. However, he was first and foremost a passionate and brilliant artist. Trotsky, who lived for a time in the house in Coyoacan provided to him by Rivera and Frida Kahlo, was a great admirer of Rivera. It is in this regard that the SFMOMA exhibition dissatisfies. Outside of a general appreciation and cursory explanation of Riveras radicalism and sympathy for the working class, the exhibition organizers appear uninterested (or perhaps merely ignorant) in regard to providing the viewers much historical context or deeper insight into Riveras own ideological development. However, the accompanying catalog includes essays and additional plates of works not included in the exhibition that address these issues in greater detail. The curator, James Oles, characterizes Riveras politically influenced work, including the murals, as social realism. This label is often and mistakenly used interchangeably with Socialist Realism, the official and stultifying school of art approved of and imposed by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. Rivera was hostile to the subordination of artists to state ideology either by Stalinism or fascism. In June 1938, Leon Trotsky wrote a scathing attack on Stalinist Socialist Realism dictates in his essay, Art and Politics in Our Epoch. Trotsky wrote, The style of present-day official Soviet painting is called socialist realism. The name itself has evidently been invented by some high functionary in the department of the arts. This realism consists in the imitation of provincial daguerreotypes of the third quarter of the last century; the socialist character apparently consists in representing, in the manner of pretentious photography, events which never took place. Further, Trotsky explained why Riveras murals were the quintessential example of truly revolutionary art: In the field of painting, the October revolution has found her greatest interpreter not in the USSR but in faraway Mexico, not among the official friends, but in the person of a so-called enemy of the people whom the Fourth International is proud to number in its ranks. Nurtured in the artistic cultures of all peoples, all epochs, Diego Rivera has remained Mexican in the most profound fibres of his genius. That which inspired Rivera in his magnificent frescoes, Trotsky continued, which lifted him up above the artistic tradition, above contemporary art in a certain sense, above himself, is the mighty blast of the proletarian revolution. Without October, his power of creative penetration into the epic of work, oppression and insurrection, would never have attained such breadth and profundity. Do you wish to see with your own eyes the hidden springs of the social revolution? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. Do you wish to know what revolutionary art is like? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. In the Pan American Unity mural, Rivera included a panel depicting the horrors of war and dictatorship. Emphasizing his view that the artist can and must address pressing political issues, the figures of Hitler, Himmler and Joseph Stalin loom in the background, while Edward G. Robinson in Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Charlie Chaplin in scenes from The Great Dictator capture the viewers attention. As with all of Riveras murals, the themes are densely represented, intertwined, as are the images, and not easily explicated. But the powerful imagery of history, labor and art strikes the audience with visceral force. Woman with Calla Lilies (1945) [Photo: SFMOMA] The surprising contradiction in Riveras work is that, unlike the murals, many of his earlier paintings and drawings of people leave one a little cold. He deliberately chose to present his models as types, not as individuals. This reviewer found his studies of children particularly cliched. There are of course, also many exceptions. The more thoughtfully composed images, like The Flower Carrier, or The Embroiderer, convey the subjects experience, not necessarily their feelings, and reach us on that level. Later, during his most turbulent relationship with the Trotskyist movement, and even following his break with Trotsky in 1939, Riveras portraits became more moving and make a deeper emotional connection with the audience. The portrait of his former wife, Lupe Marin, painted in 1938, and his own self-portrait, from 1941, are both striking in their realism and emotional impact. Portrait of Lupe Marin (1938) [Photo: SFMOMA] The exhibition inspires the viewer to learn more about Riveras art and his place in history. The most engaging works in this exhibition are the mural projections, the Pan America Unity mural and the large, preliminary sketches for a number of other works, including the extraordinary, monumental frescoes, Detroit Industry, in the courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The exhibition will open again at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas on March 11, 2023. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated the transfer of 6 patients from Artsakh to Armenia for urgent treatment on January 18, the Ministry of Healthcare of Artsakh said in a statement. January 18, 2023, 10:48 ICRC facilitates transfer of 6 patients from Artsakh to Armenia for urgent treatment STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARTSAKHPRESS: Due to the Azeri blockade of the Lachin Corridor hospitals in Artsakh are keeping planned surgeries on hold. 10 children are hospitalized in neonatal and intensive care at the Arevik hospital, and another 9 patients 4 of whom are critically ill are hospitalized at the Republican Medical Center in Artsakh. During the ongoing blockade the ICRC facilitated the transfer of a total of 34 patients from Artsakh to Armenia for treatment. Four weeks since the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced the ratification of two separate tentative agreements formally ending the strike of 36,000 graduate student workers and student researchers at the University of California (UC), many academic workers have remained aggravated and distrustful of the conclusion of the largest academic strike in US history. The strike began on November 14, with roughly 48,000 graduate student workers, student researchers, postdocs and academic researchers putting forward demands for COLA (cost-of-living adjustment), adequate child care reimbursements and COVID protections on campus. None of the four contracts rammed through by the UAW, met any of the strikers central demands. Hundreds of UC workers have signed petitions appealing the anti-democratic methods used by UAW local 2865 and Student Researchers United (SRU-UAW) to force through the ratifications. Strikers have also filed an appeal that alleges that the locals violated UAW bylaws. The appeal details that the UAW gave insufficient notice to membership about the vote, extensively used union resources to campaign for a yes vote, and denied resources to workers calling for a no vote. The strike coincided with the first direct election for the UAWs national leadership. Will Lehman, a rank-and-file autoworker and UAW presidential candidate, has filed a protest with the UAW monitor detailing voter suppression throughout the election. Only 9 percent of the 1.1 million eligible voters participated in the UAW election. Among the 48,000 UC strikers only 1,200 ballots were cast, or just 2.5 percent. Lehman, who is the only candidate that filed a protest, is demanding that all candidates be allowed to participate in the runoff election, or that new elections be held. The monitor has not responded to the protest, but recently held a debate excluding all candidates except Shawn Fain and incumbent Ray Curry, both lifelong UAW bureaucrats who each received less than 4 percent of the votes from eligible UAW members. A Humanities graduate student at UC Irvine said, I definitely think that both the vote to ratify the contract and the UAW election were heavily influenced by those at the top, and these same people played a role in determining the outcomes of these votes. For example, in the UC vote, resources were blocked from people wanting to mobilize in a vote no campaign. In the UAW leadership election, many UAW members were not sent ballots or were not notified that there was an election going on. Ive been talking with a lot of people since the strike ended. Many were remarking how we brought up the COLA issue because it was such a central demand, and we saw how it was immediately dropped. A lot of people were very dissatisfied and very frustrated with that because that was one of the bigger demands. There were other important demands such as COVID protection, disability protection and things like that that just got dropped quickly. And on top of all that, there was the whole undermining of the democratic process overall. We didnt have access to many of the resources as the people who were for the contract. We didnt have access to the same resources. But when we voted to go on strike, everyone had access. Wills campaign and protest exposed the same sort of things about the UAW. I mean, nobody really even knew there was an election going on. And we had several meetings during the strike with members from the National UAW. They came in to talk to us, and they didnt tell us there was an election going on. Right now with the Fain-Curry debate in the UAW election, they used the word apathy to blame the rank and file for the low turnout even though the bureaucracy deliberately didnt tell the membership about it. We had the same thing with our strike. The numbers on the picket lines started to drop, and then the union dropped the demand for COLA. Then the union was saying the rank and file were apathetic and didnt care about the strike anymore. I dont think we were apathetic at all. If the union leadership was fighting for what was right, there would have been more people picketing. It was a sellout contract. The way our contract was pushed on us and the way the UAW elections happened where there was voter suppression, you can see almost like it was a premeditated outcome. They clearly wanted it to happen that way, obviously. Wills protest exposed how the union manipulated the election by not notifying people that there was an election, and in our case, the union was denying the resources to people who were against the contract and wanting to vote no on it. It shows that there was literally a decision being made before it was even being voted on. I must say, this whole experience of the strike was a very eye-opening experience. I learned that the people in the union are not for us. They know some of the most powerful people in California. Yes, it was definitely very, very eye opening. Mariah, a remote reader at UC Berkeley with two other jobs, said about the strike, At first I was really excited because I saw the potential of what the possibilities were, the great possibilities that could have come from this strike. I was calling people and texting people, encouraging them to withhold labor or participate in the strike. And then I started to notice how inaccessible certain aspects of it were, and a lot of people were being left out. We would have Zoom calls [for bargaining] and only 500 people would be allowed, but thats nowhere near the amount of people who had a voice in it. I was attending bargaining sessions and it was like they were just backing off what people wanted. Important points of bargaining having to do with housing, pay, child care. We really do have the leverage, so it was confusing to me. Then I got an email from Berkeley saying this is the final offer the UC is going to do. Then the union insisted yes, vote yes. There was a lot of advertisement for voting yes. Ive studied social media for awhile and one of the biggest red flags are companies who spend a lot of money on advertisements. Rank and file members were insisting that we can get more if we withhold grading. I dont make most of my income from UC Berkeley, but a lot of people who have children or have disabilities were speaking out. The most vulnerable were insisting that this was a bad contract. After some discussion about Will Lehmans campaign and the connection between voter suppression in the national election and the UC contract one, she responded, I knew about the election, but I wasnt privy to the politics or who to vote for. What you are saying makes sense. Even if you look at the UAWs social media the whole comment section is damning. People are saying you sold us out and you people are evil. It is obvious that something is not how it is supposed to be, and that power is not really given to the people [in the rank-and-file]. Anger has continued to build in California last week, after the UC administration sent out attestation forms. The university is demanding that workers self report on their activity during the strike, in order for the administration to dock pay. Tyler, a graduate student worker at UC Davis, said, The union is saying we are legally obligated to fill out the form, but that we should include a protest saying we oppose this. These forms were never mentioned before, during the strike, and I think more people would have requested strike pay if they knew. A number of workers on social media have shared screenshots showing that the form contains metadata, which indicates the form was originally drafted by a UAW legal adviser. The WSWS encourages all academic workers opposed to the contract and actions of the UAW bureaucracy to join the UC Rank-and-File Strike Committee by contacting ucstrikerfc@gmail.com. A medical official from Chinas National Health Commission (NHC) reported Saturday that China had recorded nearly 60,000 fatalities linked to COVID-19 between December 8 and January 12, the month since the country completely lifted its strict Zero-COVID policy, accelerating an outbreak that is believed to have infected millions of people. The disclosure by Jiao Yahui, head of the NHCs medical affairs department, was the first time the Chinese government provided an official measure of the COVID wave now sweeping the country. By itself, the figure of 60,000 dead in a few weeks is a staggering sum, 30 times greater than the reported COVID-19 deaths for all of China since the start of the pandemic. However, the real death toll is likely to be much higher. Reliable infection and fatality reporting in China has been abandoned over the past several months. Even the figure given by Jiao was broken down between those who died with and from COVID, a false distinction with no scientific medical basis pioneered by the far-right in the United States. This death toll is an indictment of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) abandonment of its Zero-COVID policy, which had proven effective in suppressing the spread of the coronavirus. While most governments adopted a homicidal let it rip approach to the pandemic, resulting in more than 6.7 million reported deaths globally, the 1.4 billion people in China were able to live relatively free from the virus. Now, reports of the virus ripping through workplaces, long lines at hospitals and overwhelmed morgues are spreading through social media. Health officials in Henan Province announced that 90 percent of the region's nearly 100 million residents had been infected as of January 6. With an expected 2.1 billion trips by travelers crisscrossing the country during the Chinese New Year holiday, which begins on January 22, COVID-19 will rip through every neighborhood, city and village. While the CCP bears responsibility for this disaster, the mass infection policy was implemented under the demands of the US and the other imperialist powers. The underlying driving force behind the reopening was on display this week, with Chinas Vice Premier Liu He addressing the gathering of billionaires at the World Economic Forum in Davos, proclaiming the end of Zero-COVID and that China would be fully open for business. China is pursuing common prosperity opening up to entrepreneurs, he reassured his audience. Among the loudest in beating the drum for the abandonment of public health measures was the Washington Post, which published an editorial board statement in early November 2022 demanding that China abandon Zero-COVID, claiming, It isnt working. Small middle-class protests later that month against COVID lockdowns trumpeted by the Western media were seized on by the CCP bureaucracy to do just that. However, having adopted the mass infection policies demanded by global finance capital, the Chinese government is being further attacked and denounced by the US media. If President Xi Jinping and the CCP leadership thought their acquiescence would win them any breathing space, they were wrong. The United States and a number of other countries have responded by placing new testing restrictions on travelers from China, even as they allow the more infectious XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron to spread unimpeded. Dripping with hypocrisy, the same editorial board that demanded China let the virus rip now denounces Beijing for undercounting infections and deaths. The Washington Post wrote on Monday: Dishonesty about the true breadth of the pandemic in China constitutes a threat to public health worldwide. Scientists need to know whether transmission patterns have changed, new variants have emerged or the incidence of long covid has increased. Epidemiologists must be able to assess whether the world should prepare for a new global outbreak. And the people of China deserve to know the true scale of the calamity descending on their country. This entire paragraph would apply with even greater force if references to China were replaced with United States. Under the policy advocated by the Washington Post more than 1.1 million have unnecessarily died. It has resulted in an overwhelmed health care system with burned-out medical workers, bodies piling up in refrigerator trucks and a mass grave on New York Citys Hart Island. The Post complains that Chinas reported death toll under Zero-COVID of 5,200 was absurdly low. However, this low death toll, which was highly accurate until the abandonment of Zero-COVID, was the outcome of the comprehensive measures taken to prevent the population from becoming infected en masse with a deadly virus, something which was never attempted in the US or in much of the world. The editorial board then declares that zero covid could not go on indefinitely, this despite its effectiveness and the policys popularity among the Chinese population. In fact, the Post has played a critical role in promoting the policy of forever COVID pioneered in the US, which is now having such a devastating impact in China. Just three days before their editorial denouncing China, the Post published an article by Dr. Leana Wen, a favorite of the Biden administration who paved the way for the premature reopening of schools and lifting of mask mandates. Wens article called for the US to count fewer deaths and cases, absurdly claiming that cases are being overcounted. In reality, only about 1 in 10 positive rapid test results are confirmed by PCR tests, which is the only way for an infection to be officially counted. Last March, the Post endorsed the call for a new normal promoted by former Biden and Obama advisers, led by eugenics advocate Ezekiel Emanuel. Emanuel called for the dismantling of daily reporting of COVID-19 infections, a proposal that has been implemented over the subsequent year, with nearly all states and the federal government switching to weekly reporting of infections and deaths. Furthermore, the Post has played a key role in promoting the far-right conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus had been developed by scientists at a Wuhan laboratory from which it leaked, despite clear evidence that it first emerged in a food market in that city. The editorial board continues this campaign in its latest statement, darkly declaring that the Chinese government has relied on secrecy, obfuscation, intimidation and fabrication to draw a veil over the origins of the virus. It makes this claim in the face of international scientific investigations which have made clear the virus natural origin. The 60,000 confirmed deaths in China are only the beginning. The policy of mass infection implemented by the CCP and demanded by finance capital has already produced a medical disaster whose real scope will become clearer with time. The infection of billions of people will inevitably produce new strains of COVID-19 which will spread globally. The successful implementation of a Zero-COVID elimination strategy in China for the first three years of the pandemic makes clear that it is possible through widespread masking, testing and contact tracing, the temporary closure of schools and nonessential businesses, and mass vaccination to stop the pandemic in its tracks. However, the abandonment of Zero-COVID by the CCP and the continued spread of the virus underscore that there is no national solution to the pandemic. The world capitalist system and its representatives in every national government stand in the way of humanity confronting the challenge posed by COVID. The main impediment to saving lives is not technological or medical, but political. Only a globally coordinated effort led by a united international working class armed with the information provided by principled scientists and medical professionals will finally eliminate COVID and put an end to the pandemic. Last Monday, more than 3,000 university students from across Sri Lanka protested in Colombo against the state repression unleashed by the government of President Ranil Wickremasinghe. The protest was organised by the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF), which is controlled by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP). University students in Colombo chant slogans and hold placards demanding abolition of Sri Lanka's executive presidency, 16 January 2023. [Photo: WSWS] Protesters raised slogans and displayed placards demanding an end to state repression, the release of IUSF convener Wasantha Mudalige and other political prisoners, and welfare relief for working people. Police attacked the protesters twice with water cannons while they were marching at Colpetty and Nelum Pokuna. Three protesters were arrested. The protest marked 150 days since the arrest of Mudalige. Despite demands for release of the IUSF convener, yesterday the Colombo Chief Magistrate remanded him again until January 31. Mudalige was detained under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) for organising students in mass protests last year against the Rajapakse government. Even before the protest started, a massive police presence, including personnel from the notorious Anti-Riot Unit, had been deployed to Lipton Circus where the protest was originally to be held. Protesters shifted to outside the United Nations office in Colombo and demonstrated there for about half an hour. They displayed placards stating, Withdraw the Prevention of Terrorism Act! Release all political prisoners! Bring down the price of goods, living costs and taxes. The protesters then marched towards Galle Road. After the march started, police including the Anti-Riot Unit, Police Special Task Force and three water cannons massed at Colpetty Junction on Galle Road to block the demonstration. As students confronted the police roadblock, a senior police officer declared that the protest was illegal, citing a clause in the repressive Police Ordinance Act which requires six hours notice of any demonstration. He warned that police had the power to arrest demonstrators and would take measures to stop the march. The police then fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protest. Riot police mobilised to stop marching university students at Colpetty Junction in Colombo on 16 January 2023. [Photo: WSWS] Students continued their march towards the University of the Visual and Performing Arts. When they reached the university, police attacked the students, using water cannons and tear gas for a second time. Dhammika Munasinghe, an FSP member, was arrested. IUSF leaders addressed the protesters gathered outside the university. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its youth and student wing, the International Students For Social Equality (IYSSE), condemn this police crackdown on protesting students and demand the immediate release of all political prisoners, including Mudalige, and the withdrawal of all repressive laws. The SEP/IYSSE makes these demands despite its well-known political differences with the IUSF and the FSP. Their protests are based on the bankrupt perspective of pressuring the government to end its repressive measures. Students wanting to fight state repression and the governments austerity measures are thereby confined to the reactionary framework of bourgeois rule. In a press conference held on Sunday, IUSF acting convener Terenz Rodrigo blamed the government for using institutions funded by the tax money of the public, such as the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID), for their personal interests. These remarks are a graphic exposure of the capitalist politics of the IUSF/FSP and their prostration before the bourgeois state of which the TID is an integral part. The Wickremasinghe government utilises the TID not primarily for personal purposes but above all to defend bourgeois rule by ruthlessly suppressing the opposition of workers, youth and rural toilers to its IMF-dictated austerity agenda. The FSP/IUSF operates within the framework of the political establishment. Rodrigo appealed to the government to end repression and provide relief to people, and then thundered: We are ready, as IUSF members and fighters, to organise people to take forward their struggle to win their rights. These futile appeals, along with the empty threats, will simply fall on deaf ears. By unleashing a police crackdown against the protest, the Wickremasinghe government has once again has demonstrated that it will respond to opposition with repression. Facing an immense economic crisis, the government is desperate to impose the harsh austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in return for emergency loans. University students march against state oppression in Colombo on 16 January 2023. [Photo: WSWS] The ongoing police repression contains serious political lessons for workers, students and youth. Since the arrest of Mudalige last August, police have attacked student protests more than six times. Students cannot defend their rights by appealing to the very powers that are attacking them. The struggle for democratic rights is a political fight against the government and bourgeois rule. Students need to turn towards the working class, the only social force which can lead that fight. At the same time, the SEP/IYSSE calls workers to independently intervene to defend students and youth against state repression. The IUSF and FSP are orienting in a diametrically oppose directionto bourgeois opposition parties like the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and imperialist organisations such as the United Nations and the UN Human Rights Council. The IUSF is in discussion with opposition parties like the SJB under the pretext of ending the repression of the Wickremasinghe government, claiming that this is the only way to win. The SJB and other opposition parties, however, have no fundamental differences with the government over the IMF program. They are seeking to exploit the popular opposition against the government and to come to power in a general election, only to implement the same austerity measures. As their history demonstrates, they would be just as ruthless in unleashing state repression. The FSP/IUSF worked in collaboration with the trade unions to derail last years popular uprising of workers, youths and rural toilers against the Rajapakse government, falsely claiming that an interim government including the opposition parties would address the social disaster facing working people. This only paved the way Wickremasinghe to come to power. The SEP/IYSSE insists that state repression and the worsening social conditions can only be halted by mobilising the independent strength of the working class against Wickremasinghe government. We call for the formation of action committees of workers and the poor in every workplace, factory, plantation, neighbourhood and rural area, independent of all the bourgeois parties, their trade unions and their pseudo-left agents. The SEP has launched a campaign to build a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses, based on those action committees, as the basis for developing the political fight for a government of workers and peasants to implement socialist policies. The SEP/IYSSE calls students to join us in that struggle. The new German Minister of Defence will be the former Interior Minister of the state of Lower Saxony Boris Pistorius (Social Democrats, SPD). He succeeds Christine Lambrecht, who resigned from her post on Monday. According to media reports, Pistorius will be sworn in on Thursday in Berlin. Boris Pistorius [Photo by Wolfgang Wilde / CC BY 3.0 The change at the top of the Ministry of Defense will initiate a massive escalation of German militarism and the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. Before the next meeting of the so-called Ukraine Contact Group in Ramstein on January 20, the NATO powers are preparing, among other things, the delivery of main battle tanks to Ukraine. Pistorius will meet US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Berlin the day before the Contact Group meeting, immediately after his inauguration. On January 6, the German government, together with the United States, announced the delivery of Marder and Bradley armored vehicles to Kiev. The decision appears already to have been taken for Berlin to send Leopard-2 battle tanks. Eighty-two years after the Nazi war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, which killed almost 30 million people, German tanks are again rolling against Russia. As Minister of Defense, Pistorius has the task of enforcing the war and rearmament plans against the enormous opposition in the population. At his announcement of Pistorius appointment, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) stated: Pistorius is an extremely experienced politician who has proven his administrative skills, has been involved in security policy for years and, with his competence, his assertiveness and his big heart, is exactly the right person to lead the Bundeswehr (German army) through this epochal shift. This statement is unambiguous. Already under Lambrecht, the biggest rearmament program since Hitler was launched under the slogan epochal shift and a 100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr was adopted. Lambrecht stated in public speeches that Germany had to become a military leader again due to its size, its geographical location and its economic strength. Ultimately, however, she was not deemed capable of achieving this goal. The task will now be taken over by Pistorius, who, as Interior Minister in Lower Saxony, has distinguished himself above all by an aggressive law and order policy and extreme right-wing agitation against refugees. His demands in the past included the establishment of concentration camps for refugees in Libya, deportations even to war zones, the massive rearmament of the security forces and the deployment of the Bundeswehr domestically. The media is celebrating him as a red general. The ruling class knows that the return of German militarism, as in the past, also requires the return of authoritarianism and dictatorship. Immediately after his appointment, Pistorius openly stated that Germany is a party to the war in Ukrainewhich the German government has always denied. The Ministry of Defense is already a great challenge in civilian times, in peacetime, he said, and in times when one is involved in a war as the Federal Republic of Germany, indirectly, even more so. He promised to make the Bundeswehr strong for the period that lies ahead. This is a tremendous task. The troops can count on me to stand in front of them whenever necessary, he said. The World Socialist Web Site already explained in an article on Lambrecht's resignation how far-reaching the plans currently being worked out behind the backs of the population are. For example, the current Der Spiegel cover story, citing leading military figures, calls for a tripling of the Bundeswehrs special fund to 300 billion, an increase in the annual military budget to 120 billion, the introduction of a general staff and the elimination of civilian control over the Bundeswehr, the strengthening of the armaments industry, an increase in the number of troops and the reactivation of conscription. Other media and representatives of foreign policy think tanks are formulating similar goals and pressing for their rapid implementation. Shortly after Pistorius appointment, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) published a guest contribution by Christian Molling, the deputy director of the DGAP think tank and head of the Center for Security and Defense. His Ten Points for the New Minister of Defense pursues one goal: Germany's transformation into a strong war power. Despite the most threatening situation since the Cuban missile crisis, the Bundeswehr is in a desolate state, Molling complained. The epochal shift was so far little more than lip service on a special mountain of debt. Germany has lost a crucial year to modernize the Bundeswehr, he added. He went on to raise similar demands to Der Spiegel, in order to get the epochal shift moving, to get the Bundeswehr back in shape in the long term and also to support Ukraine. All of this requires the complete militarization of society. Molling wrote: If one considers the defence sector as a picture, it is important to think and describe defence as an ecosystem, not as mechanical pillars. This system is open at its edges and connected to many other areas of security and public life. The more closed the system is, the more it remains a specialised organisation in life. This is the old, deadly spirit of German militarism, articulated in modern think tank German. The military must penetrate all the pores of society. It must not remain a special organization in lifeit is life. It is not merely these concepts that remind one of the darkest times in German history. The entire foreign policy is being conducted along similar lines as in the First and Second World Wars. In the statement No tank deliveries to Ukraine! Stop the threat of a third world war!, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) declared: Since reunification, the ruling class has been systematically working to organize Europe under German leadership in order to advance its geostrategic and economic interests worldwide. Now it is using Russias reactionary invasion of Ukraine as a pretext to launch the biggest rearmament since Hitler and to strike again against Russia. German imperialism is concerned not only with geostrategic interests and Russias vast reserves of raw materials, it is also driven by the desire for retribution for its war defeats in the 20th century. The imperialist offensive increasingly raises the danger of a direct war with a nuclear-armed power, Russia. The Bundeswehr is currently relocating Patriot missile systems to Poland. A total of three squadrons with 600 soldiers will be stationed in the neighbouring country during the course of this week. At the Zamosc freight yard, the Patriots are to protect an important transshipment yard for Ukraine aid, writes Der Spiegel. At the station, located 30 kilometers from the Polish-Ukrainian border, both relief supplies and military equipment will be loaded for Ukraine. The Air Forces task is to protect the station from possible attacks from the air. In other words, the Bundeswehr will ensure that the planned tank deliveries reach the front safely. Germany is thus becoming an increasingly direct war party on the battlefield. The deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to turn Western tanks into rusty scrap metal. He described NATO countries involved in the war as legitimate targets. Nevertheless, Berlin is recklessly driving the escalation. In his inaugural address, Pistorius should explain the consequences of this policy. How many millions of people does the ruling class intend to sacrifice this time to defeat Russia militarily and put their world power plans into action? What is the Federal Governments scenario if the war escalates to a nuclear exchange? It is clear that even in a conventional war with Russia, millions of people across Europe would lose their lives. It is high time to stop the war madness. This requires the building of an international mass movement against war and its cause, the capitalist system. The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is participating in the Berlin election to give a voice and a socialist perspective to the widespread opposition to militarism and war. We call on all workers and young people in Germany to make the election a referendum against war and to register now as an active supporter and vote for the SGP on February 12! And we call on workers and young people all over the world to support the SGPs campaign as part of the fight to build a global movement against war! As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fourth year, the virus continues to take an immense toll on the health of the population across Canada. This state of affairs has been enabled by the capitalist ruling class homicidal forever COVID policy, which has been overseen by the Trudeau Liberal government and enforced by all provincial governments irrespective of their political affiliation. According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University published on the Our World in Data website, the rolling seven day average of COVID-19 fatalities in Canada reached 78 per day on January 12, the highest since February 28, 2022, when the Omicron first wave was cresting. Ontario Premier Doug Ford promoting an end to all remaining anti-COVID public health measures, March 2022 [Photo: CUPE] Provincial government figures show that the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant, which has spread rapidly in the North Eastern region of the United States, particularly New York City, is now showing signs of community transmission across the country. On January 4, Alberta announced that it had identified four cases of the variant, alongside rising viral detection rates in the city of Calgarys wastewater. Quebec announced that 2.4 percent of the infections sequenced for the last week of December were positive for the variant, while Saskatchewan found two cases in its sequencing during the same time period. British Columbia announced on January 13 that the variant now accounted for 5.6 percent of all samples sequenced. At the same time, over 5,500 Canadians continued to be hospitalized per day, a staggeringly high number that has stayed relatively constant over the past year. Health care systems continue to buckle under the weight of this increased burden, with emergency rooms hit especially hard. Figures released by the province of Quebec show that more than a fifth of emergency rooms in the province are currently exceeding 150 percent capacity. The average length of time a patient waited on a stretcher was between 18-20 hours, and over 5 hours in the waiting room. The head of emergency medicine for Halifax, capital city of the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia, recently told the Toronto Star that ER deaths in the province were up 10 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, and that emergency care was in a state of crisis. The comments came in the wake of the death of 37-year-old Allison Holthoff in the emergency room at Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre in Amherst on December 31. Holthoff waited for seven hours in excruciating pain to receive any primary care, according to her husband. Charlene Snow, aged 67, died one day earlier after returning home following a seven-hour wait in the emergency room at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital. Snows tragic death prompted her daughter-in-law, Catherine Snow, to set up a website entitled Nova Scotia Health Care Crisis to gather similar stories. We understand that the staff that work within the health care system are suffering as much as the patients that need to take advantage of it, she told Global News. We in no way want any anger or bad thoughts directed at staff members who are already working under such challenging conditions. As of January 17, Snows website had logged 559 ER deaths and received 1,100 stories about the impact of the health care crisis. Health care workers across the country are expressing increasing concern that the situation could deteriorate rapidly in the event of a surge in COVID cases produced by XBB.1.5 or another variant. Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes, an emergency physician at Hopital Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria, Ontario, stated that there are no preparations in a meaningful way for a renewed surge because the health care system has no remaining capacity to deal with one. We dont have the capacity. Our health care system is starting to look like a set of dominos that youre starting to knock over, she commented to Global News. Its not a question of do we have enough experience with it, its do we have enough personnel. And we dont. We want you to stay healthy and you want to stay healthy. So please dont count on the system. We dont have any magic. Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Disease Centre, also speaking to Global News, explained his growing concern about the danger of a surge in Long COVID cases due to XBB.1.5. It may spread more easily, it may attach to cells more easily, it may not be as susceptible to protection by vaccination as the original Omicron (variant) or as some of the other variants, so we need to keep an eye on this going forward, he said, adding the crucial point that every infection compounds an individuals risk of contracting Long COVID. On January 6, BC Health Minister Adrian Dix announced that he was activating Emergency Operations Meetings protocols at 20 hospitals throughout the province as of January 5. The measure, a tacit admission that the health care system was already reaching over-capacity, aims to discharge patients earlier. In Ontario, hospitals in Ottawa and Kitchener recorded the highest number of emergency room patients in a single day in their history last week. Yvonne Wilson, vice president of patient care at Queensway Carlton Hospital in Ottawa, told the Canadian Press that the main drivers of the increased admissions were influenza, COVID, RSV, mental health issues, and chronic illnesses. Commenting on the daily number of patients, she said, Weve been seeing about 240 to 250 patients coming through our (ER), and pre-pandemic we averaged around 200 to 220. So that makes a big difference, having that extra volume. Despite these grim statistics, provincial and federal public health agencies across the country show no indication that they are considering any mitigation measures whatsoever to slow the continued spread of disease and death. All remaining mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and other substantive public health measures were eliminated last spring when the Trudeau Liberal government and all provincial governments embraced wholesale the demands of the far-right Freedom Convoy. The results were disastrous, with 2022 becoming Canadas deadliest year of the pandemic to date with close to 20,000 official COVID-19 deaths. One of the few remaining reliable indicators of the pandemics impact is the tracking of excess deaths in the country by University of Toronto Medicines Dr. Tara Moriarty. Dr. Moriartys weekly updated tracking of excess deaths nationally shows that they have continued to trend at about 10 percent higher than the pre-pandemic baseline, a number that translates into almost 20,000 more deaths nationwide than we would have seen before the pandemic. The corporate-controlled media and political establishment have tried to pin such discrepancies on absurd pseudo-scientific claims, such as the supposed detrimental effects of lockdowns and immunity debt. But as Dr. Moriarty has noted, the most likely culprits for the rise in excess deaths are an over-burdened health care system and repeated COVID reinfections. Public health agencies across the country speak openly the same language as the demands of the Freedom Convoy. This is not an accident. The convoy movement has been used as a battering ram by influential sections of the ruling class against the implementation of any public health mitigations. Provincial governments of all political stripes, from Danielle Smiths right-wing United Conservative Party government in Alberta, to the Quebec first CAQ Legault government in Quebec, to the social democratic NDP government in BC, all now speak the language of the Freedom Convoy, claiming that the pandemic is over, public health mitigations harm the public and that there is no public support for any new mitigations. The capitalist policy of prioritizing corporate profit over every other social need has produced horrific results in Canada. Government policies have seen between 50,000 and 70,000 people die from a preventable illness. These policies need to be opposed by workers in Canada and internationally on a class basis by taking up the fight for the global elimination of the virus. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Tuesday had a meeting with OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid, in Vienna, the foreign ministry of Armenia informs. January 18, 2023, 10:56 Armenia FM to OSCE Secretary General: Azerbaijan aims to subject Artsakh Armenians to ethnic cleansing STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARTSAKHPRESS: The parties discussed issues of regional importance, and exchanged ideas on the special session of the OSCE Permanent Council held on the same day. The Armenian FM reflected on the current situation in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) as a result of Azerbaijans closure of the Lachin corridorthat links Artsakh to Armenia, stressing that Azerbaijan's goal is to subject the Artsakh Armenians to ethnic cleansing. Mirzoyan emphasized the need for active steps by the international community to unblock the Lachin corridor and restore safe and unhindered communication between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Ensuring the humanitarian access of relevant international organizations to Artsakh was highlighted. During the meeting, ideas were also exchanged regarding the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In this connection, FM Mirzoyan noted that Azerbaijan's continuous provocations, non-respect of the agreements reached, and belligerent rhetoric greatly hinder the efforts of the Armenian side aimed at establishing security and stability in the region. Also, the Armenian side noted that the OSCE, through its organizations, should play a role in the important task of achieving peace and maintaining it. In addition, the Armenian FM presented the latest developments in the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey. During the meeting, the interlocutors discusses as well cooperation programs with Armenia within the framework of the OSCE. There can be no talk of negotiations with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. January 18, 2023, 14:22 Lavrov rules out negotiations with Zelenskyy STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARTSAKHPRESS: "There can be no talk of negotiations with Zelenskyy at least because he has legally forbidden to negotiate with the Russian government," he said during his annual final press conference, news.am informs. April 11, 2023 13:31 ICRC transfers 15 patients from Stepanakert to Yerevan Due to the blocking by Azerbaijan of the only road connecting Artsakh with Armenia,15 patients from the Republican Medical Center the Republic of Artsakh with serious diseases of the oncology as well as pathologies requiring emergency surgical interventions and post- implantation correction have been transported today, to specialized medical institutions of the Republic of Armenia with the mediation and escort of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Healthcare Ministry of Artsakh reported. On 16 January, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh, Sergey Ghazaryan, received members of the Artsakh Humanitarian Support Initiative working group Prof. Ara Babloyan and Health Project Manager of the Armenian Relief Fund Hambardzum Simonyan. January 18, 2023, 16:09 Artsakh Humanitarian Support Initiative seeks to raise global awareness among medical institutions STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARTSAKHPRESS: They discussed challenges in the healthcare system caused by the ongoing Azerbaijani blockade of Artsakh, considered possible mechanisms and steps to address them, the Artsakh foreign ministry said in a readout. As the doctors said, the Artsakh Humanitarian Support Initiative aims to bring together Armenian doctors not only from Armenia, but also from the Diaspora around Artsakh, in order to raise awareness, by all possible means, among the worlds prestigious medical institutions of the humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Armenians of Artsakh, provide support to the healthcare system of Artsakh, which operates in difficult conditions. Prof. Ara Babloyan informed about the launch of the initiative and, that in the near future, Arabkir Medical Complex will allocate AMD 2,500,000 for the needs of Arevik Childrens Medical Association in Stepanakert. The Artsakh Humanitarian Support Initiative also plans to appeal to all Armenian health institutions with a call to support Artsakhs medical institutions. "Artsakhpress" news agency asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh to comment on the statement made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the Russian peacekeeping contingent is authorized by the Trilateral Statement to control movement along the Lachin Corridor. January 18, 2023, 22:15 Lachin Corridor should be under the control and protection of the Russian peacekeeping contingent. Artsakh MFA commentary to ''Artsakhpress'' STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 18, ARTSAKHPRESS: In response to ''Artsakhpress'' question, the Information and Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Artsakh Republic stated that in accordance with the Trilateral statement of 9 November 2020, the Lachin Corridor should be under the control and protection of the Russian peacekeeping contingent. Thus, it is the Russian peacekeeping contingent that is authorized by the Trilateral Statement to control movement along the Lachin Corridor. There is no doubt that the Russian peacekeeping contingent has all the necessary capabilities, including technical, to conduct vehicle checks in order to ensure the safe functioning of the corridor. ''At the same time, it should be noted that, according to the Trilateral statement, Azerbaijan should guarantee the security of movement along the Lachin Corridor of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions without any restrictions,'' reads the statement. Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum Trains and Tennessee go together like biscuits and jam. The Volunteer States history with railways dates back to 1845 when the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad became the states first railroad. During those days, trains were used for just about everythingfrom the transport of goods to the transport of people. Today, we dont depend on railways quite as much as we once did, but our nostalgia for the familiar blow of the whistle or plume of steam dissipating into the sky has only grown stronger with each passing year. If you catch yourself daydreaming about watching the beautiful countryside blur by while youve got your head pressed against the window and not a worry in the world, then it may be time for a Tennessee train trip. So whether you want to take an hour-long scenic ride to clear your head, or if youve always dreamt about an interactive murder mystery train, Tennessee has got you covered. All thats left to do is hop aboard because the trains leaving the station! Courtesy of Tennessee Valley Railroad This museum and operating railway in Chattanooga offers rides for every type of train enthusiast. If you dont have a lot of time, opt for the historic Missionary Ridge Local ride, which takes riders on a 6-mile, 55-minute journey over four bridges along the former Southern Railway tracks. If you have more time, the famous Hiwassee Loop offers breathtaking views of countryside and the Hiwassee River gorge on a 5-hour journey departing from Delano, Tennessee. With an additional 3 hours, you can take the same route and add a ride through Turtletown, Ducktown, and Cooperhill. For special occasions, the Tennessee Valley Railroad also operates a Valentines Day ride with dinner and a special Tea Room ride. Courtesy of Tennessee Wine Train To score all the honey points with your sweetheart, book a romantic ride for two on the Tennessee Wine Train. The one-of-a-kind wine and dine experience takes guests on a 2-hour journey around Chattanooga, while they enjoy a three-course meal in a 1924 dining car. There really is nothing better than dinner with a view and on the Tennessee Wine Train, theres no shortage of delicious food, excellent wine, or lovely views. Story continues Stephen Saks/Getty Images This isnt a train ride in the traditional sense, but the one-mile single track system that takes you straight up the side of Lookout Mountain is a rite of passage for all who visit Chattanooga. The first incline here ran in 1887, and in the 1950s both Teddy Roosevelt and Elizabeth Taylor rode the same tracks. With two new cars installed in 2020, this iconic Tennessee treasure is looking forward to another 100 years in operation. Tennessee Central Railway Museum This nonprofit in Nashville works hard to preserve historic railroad equipment and educate the public about railroad history. The bestand arguably most funway to support them is by booking a seat on a vintage stainless steel passenger car for one of their many excursions now boarding in Nashville. Trips range from 3 to 7.5 hours and carry themes from a Mardi Gras Excursion to a Valentines Moonshine Trip and Fall Foliage Trip. Once November rolls around, youll want to snag your North Pole Express fast before they sell out. Courtesy of Wes Ramey/The Dollywood Company Everything is better when the Queen of CountryNashvilles Iron Butterflygets involved, so a ride on the Dollywood Express is a must. If youve already planned a trip to Dollywood, dont skip out on the train ride. Climb aboard the authentic 110-ton coal-fired steam engine and get ready for an unforgettable ride. The 20-minute mountain excursion takes riders on a 5-mile ride through the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Courtesy of Three Rivers Rambler Train Its not just Chattanooga that gets in on the Tennessee railway tradition. Three Rivers Rambler has been operating train rides in the heart of downtown Knoxville since 2000. The ride takes folks along the Tennessee River passing by historical sites to the Three Rivers Trestle, where the French Broad and Holston Rivers join to form the Tennessee River. Other scenes to look out for are the beautiful farmland all around and Knoxvilles first settlement area. For more Southern Living news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on Southern Living. NEW AMSTERDAM -- "How Can I Help" Episode 513 -- Pictured: (l-r) Nora and Opal Clow as Luna, Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin -- (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC) Ralph Bavaro/NBC This post contains spoilers from Tuesday's series finale of New Amsterdam. Doctor Max Goodwin is officially on to his next adventure. The lasting legacy for Ryan Eggold's beloved New Amsterdam character, however, turned out to be a bit closer to home than Geneva, Switzerland, where Goodwin was set to take on a new role running global health policy for the World Health Organization after leaving the hospital in New York. The final two episodes of New Amsterdam, titled "Right Place" and "How Can I Help?" aired back-to-back on NBC on Jan. 17, and saw all of its doctors off with promising conclusions. For newly divorced doctors Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) and Martin McIntyre (Mike Doyle), a do-over first date of roller skating where the two confessed their fears of trying their relationship (again) only for it to fail (again) ultimately gave way to a happy re-marriage ceremony surrounded by their kids and officiated by Gladys (Megan Byrne). NEW AMSTERDAM -- "How Can I Help" Episode 513 -- Pictured: (l-r) Tyler Labine as Dr. Iggy Frome, Megan Byrne as Gladys Miller, Mike Doyle as Martin McIntyre -- (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC) Ralph Bavaro/NBC For Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery), finding a fixer-up new apartment signaled a new beginning all her own, and a future she was ready to (literally) design for herself. And, as she'd always hoped, she was reunited with her sister Vanessa (Kathryn Prescott) when the latter finally decided to get help for her addiction. RELATED: New Amsterdam's Janet Montgomery Jokes Costar Ryan Eggold Is 'Baby Obsessed' Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) spent all five seasons in search of love and family and realized he may have found what he was looking for in nurse Gabrielle (Toya Turner), even though she was heading off on assignment to Tanzania. But love appeared to win the day for him as well, as a flash forward showed him and Gabrielle at a cheery family dinner full of laughter. NEW AMSTERDAM -- "How Can I Help" Episode 513 -- Pictured: (l-r) Toya Turner as Gabrielle, Jocko Sims as Dr. Floyd Reynolds -- (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC) Ralph Bavaro/NBC As for newly minted couple Goodwin and Dr. Elizabeth Wilder (Sandra Mae Frank)? In the wake of Wilder alerting Goodwin that his brand new cancer cure was a "sham," the pair discovered that Max's ex-fiancee, Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) who departed the series after the fourth season and only appeared very briefly in the final season (and never actually interacted with any characters directly!) had been the one to green-light the trial despite obvious problems with the experiment. Story continues When Sharpe had signed off on the drug, she had hoped at the time that an expedited, if unethical, research plan and non-diverse sample group would quickly yield a cure that might work for Goodwin's cancer, too. RELATED: 'New Amsterdam' Star Freema Agyeman Reveals She Will Not Return for Fifth and Final Season Wilder explained all of this to Goodwin, who was overcome with emotion at the realization. The two concluded that, while Sharpe made her decision out of love, neither of them would do the same for the other. But, maybe, being "doctors first" is what makes them a "perfect match," instead. NEW AMSTERDAM -- "How Can I Help" Episode 513 -- Pictured: (l-r) Matthew Jeffers as Resident Mark Walsh, Janet Montgomery as Dr. Lauren Bloom, Debra Monk as Karen Brantley -- (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC) Ralph Bavaro/NBC As for their happy ending, Wilder first had to prove instrumental in saving the life of a Ukrainian immigrant who came into the emergency room with her son. The woman presented with a horrible, bloody rash and abdominal pain, and after Goodwin nailed the complicated, two-part diagnosis, nearly every surgeon in the hospital including Daniel Dae Kim's Dr. Cassian Shin (from season 3!) joined forces to perform a more than 14-hour surgery to save the woman's life. Meanwhile, a new, seemingly nameless medical director of New Amsterdam made her debut, a little sweaty from her commute, and unable to locate any of her doctors... RELATED: 'New Amsterdam' 's Ryan Eggold and Jocko Sims Honor Frontline Doctors in COVID-19 Vaccination PSA The finale also played heavily on the New Amsterdam rallying cry of "How can I help?" as it showed a flashback for each main character to the moment they realized they wanted to become a doctor. Bloom, who'd clearly become a wealthy star in the finance world, made the decision when a homeless man experienced a medical emergency in front of her, and she didn't know how to help him. Reynolds, ever the talented surgeon, realized he was good at putting things back together again after a fight between his parents left a plate broken and his mom upset. Reynolds repaired the dish and his mom's spirits. For Frome, his older brother reframed his feelings of invisibility when he explained that Iggy was "like a rock," and that's why people felt safe opening up to him and sharing their innermost thoughts. And, in Wilder's case, a group of mean girls on Halloween who bullied her for dressing as a doctor with a stethoscope despite her being deaf only bolstered her commitment to become a doctor for real. NEW AMSTERDAM -- "How Can I Help" Episode 513 -- Pictured: (l-r) Alejandro Hernandez as Casey Acosta, Janet Montgomery as Dr. Lauren Bloom -- (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC) Ralph Bavaro/NBC RELATED: NBC's 'New Amsterdam' to End with a Shortened Fifth Season: 'So Proud of This Series' Back in the operating room, after Reynolds performed surgery on the woman's heart in the final stage of the procedure, all seems to have succeeded that is, until alarms started signaling something had gone terribly wrong. Wilder jumped into action, slicing the woman's chest back open after she'd just been stitched up, ignoring Goodwin's cries to stop. Using a pair of forceps, Wilder extracted the tiniest piece from the woman's organs, stopped the alarm bells, and stitched the woman back up. Thanks to nothing short of a herculean effort from New Amsterdam, the woman survived. Following the surgery, Goodwin and Wilder shared a final moment together, appreciating that what they'd had was "real," but recognizing their careers had set them on separate journeys. Still, Goodwin remained optimistic that their paths would cross again in the future. And then, finally, Goodwin located his daughter, Luna, all dressed up in her mermaid costume with nowhere to go, for her mermaid parade outing with dad had been shelved when Goodwin was, very thematically, called in to help. As the show drew to a close, Goodwin scooped his daughter up, and some of the final scenes were shown through little Luna's eyes, sleepily watching the doctors milling around, as her dad carried her out of New Amsterdam. NEW AMSTERDAM -- "How Can I Help" Episode 513 -- Pictured: (l-r)Nora and Opal Clow as Luna, Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin -- (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC) Ralph Bavaro/NBC And that new medical director arriving for her first day? In a sweet twist, she turns out to be Luna Goodwin herself, all grown up, and ready to carry on her father's legacy. "New Amsterdam didn't take my father away from me. This hospital gave me my father," she told her new team of doctors. "That was the day I realized I wanted to be just like him. That was the day I knew I wanted to be a doctor," she shared, referencing the day she missed the mermaid parade, but watched her father unite the hospital to save a life. Never miss a story sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up to date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The final line of the series felt like coming full-circle, then, as Luna added: "I wanted to start by asking you the same thing my father asked his staff, every hour of every single day: how can I help?" This week on "Intelligence Matters," Michael Morell speaks with former senior CIA officer and Moscow station chief Rolf Mowatt-Larssen about his strategic analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war. He maps out the Russian objectives in the war and the lack of clear Western goals as the war continues. Mowatt-Larssen predicts that Putin will launch an offensive in 2023 but not until he has mobilized a sufficient number of troops, something he failed to do in the past year. He also discusses Putin's "scorched earth" approach and how it has led to the weaponization of energy. HIGHLIGHTS: Putin offensive in 2023? "There are a number of indications that suggest he [Putin] still harbors a, if nothing else, ambition to mount some sort of offensive in 2023. But he can't do it right now. He won't be able to do it, in fact, until he's accomplished a number of things that he hasn't been able to accomplish in the first year of the war. Created a successful process of mobilizing sufficient troops. Training them well enough, equipping them well enough, having good enough leadership on the ground."Western aims: "I think if I were to advise Western leaders in a way to shorten the war, frankly, or at least so that Vladimir Putin will understand our position more clearly. Western leaders, I believe, have to do a better job of explicitly stating what our war aims are and what they're not in terms of what we're willing to settle for in terms of welcoming this aggression."Russia weaponizing energy "A major part of his policy is to target both Ukraine and Europe by weaponizing energy. And the way he's doing it in Ukraine is to turn off the lights. And we all see it. We're watching it every day. And again, it's incredibly difficult for me, and I hope it is for anyone who's following the war, the tragedy of the war on a daily basis. We're almost becoming numb to it and this is an aspect of it, this scorched earth, that is particularly disturbing to watch, because we're helpless to intervene and intercede." Download, rate and subscribe here: iTunes, Spotify and Stitcher. INTELLIGENCE MATTERS WITH ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN PRODUCER: PAULINA SMOLINSKI MICHAEL MORELL: Rolf, welcome back to Intelligence Matters. It is good to have you with us again. And you always provide really interesting and important insights. So welcome back. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Thank you, Michael. It's nice to be here. First part of the new year. Talk about this important subject. MICHAEL MORELL: Absolutely important. We're just a few weeks away from the one year anniversary of the invasion. So I think this is a great time to take stock. I just want to start by noting that you're sharing with us your personal views here. You're not speaking on behalf of any organization. I know you're associated with several, and just want to make that clear to my listeners. I know that's important. Rolf, I want to walk through a note that you sent me about a month ago on the importance of stepping back from the day to day developments on the battlefield. What's going on even in Russia in terms of the war in Ukraine, and rather look at things from a strategic perspective. And I guess I should just tell everybody that you send me multiple notes a day on the war and what's happening. And I read all of them. But this particular note really grabbed my attention because you're stepping back to the strategic level. I'd really love to share some of those perspectives that you shared with me, with my audience. So in the note that you sent, you argued that Vladimir Putin has what you sense to be a five point strategy toward the war. And I want to ask you about each one of those five points and have you elaborate a little bit if that makes sense. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Sure, Michael. That would be great. MICHAEL MORELL: So the first piece of the strategy that you said is Russia's strategic defense. What does that mean and what does that entail? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: He has in the first year of the war started from a position where he was clearly mounting a war of aggression, he would call it a strategic offensive, to take over all of Ukraine. And what we saw in the first years, that wasn't a realistic plan. He underestimated several things, miscalculated a number of things. He is now almost a year into the war in a position of being what I would call a strategic defense. And he's comfortable with it to some extent. If you listen to his New Year's address, he didn't look comfortable at all. It's probably the most uncomfortable I've seen Vladimir Putin talking about the war in 20 years he's been in rule. But he's in a situation where he's buying time by hunkering down in the four oblasts regions that he's seized, trying to ensure, if nothing else, he holds them. Because if he can hold those four oblasts and at some point transition to some form of international acceptance with Ukrainian acquiescence to what he's accomplished militarily, that would be enough of a win for him. So that's what I mean by strategic defense. At the same time, demonstrate to Ukraine that no matter how hard it fights and how much aid it gets from Western nations and the United States, it can't go on this strategic offense to expel Russia from all the territories it's taken in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. So that's where he stands. There are a number of indications, even in the last months since I wrote you that note, that suggest he still harbors a, if nothing else, ambition to mount some sort of offensive in 2023. But he can't do it right now. He won't be able to do it, in fact, until he's accomplished a number of things that he hasn't been able to accomplish in the first year of the war. Created a successful process of mobilizing sufficient troops. Training them well enough, equipping them well enough, having good enough leadership on the ground. One of the reasons why Vladimir Putin relies heavily on the military bloggers and his critics, his own critics, and is tolerant of all the criticism that's been levied against the generals and the minister of defense and even himself in some cases, is because he needs their advice. So that's what I mean by strategic defense. And it remains to be seen at some point when the winter clears and the ground again hardens or it transitions into spring and fall, whether the Russian army is capable of remounting some form of an offensive. MICHAEL MORELL: So what was it about his New Year's speech that made him seem so uncomfortable to you? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: I think it's reading body language. There's nothing really objective in what I'll offer in my reaction to it. He seemed, to me anyway, to lack his characteristic swagger. And he didn't seem to express that confidence, the bitterness that he expressed towards the West, the United States in particular, seemed even more misplaced than it usually does. The blame he placed for the situation he created for his country and for Ukraine and the world. He went out of his way again to try to accept no part of the responsibility for really what's been a disaster and is going to be a disaster I maintain, for Russia. And maybe there's a growing sense he has of this, even if he is reluctant to acknowledge it, that the longer the war lasts, the worse the strategic price is that Russia will pay in the world. He can only ally himself with China or Iran or other countries to some extent. Russia needs partners. They need banking partners. They need Western and global input to the country. He's suffered a tremendous hemorrhaging of talent, of some of the best talent he's got. The younger generation of talented IT workers and others that have left the country. So anyway, I think that the mood I felt was particularly glum and I honestly felt that he seemed a little deflated. MICHAEL MORELL: Interesting. So the second piece of Putin strategy that you see, Rolf, is Moscow's desire, and you use the word to attract, an unconditional ceasefire. And you emphasize that word attract as opposed to seek. So could you talk about that a little bit? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Up until, I actually believe it was over the holidays, Putin had never actually expressed an interest in cease fire and negotiations himself. Then he suddenly did. However, he would much prefer creating a condition on the ground where Ukraine is compelled essentially to supplicating itself, which is not going to happen. I will say on the side, based on what certainly I've learned about the Ukrainian will to fight and will to survive. But that's what he's counting on, that Ukraine will come to him asking for peace because they're forced to. And that's his preference. But it's also important for him politically because it will immediately betray weakness if he expresses an interest in talks based on anything but Russia's firm, what they've already expressed to be position that these four oblasts are now part of Russian territory themselves, that they have become part of Russia since they were, in his mind, legally annexed into the country. So no negotiations can occur without the Ukrainians accepting those facts on the ground. And of course, Ukraine can't do that. That is essentially an unconditional surrender on their part. If they accept the ceasefire negotiation on the basis of Putin's having annexed these territories into Russia. So that's why he's, up to now, not been interested in discussing terms of peace. And again, I think it's a little sign that he's wobbling a bit to actually state that he himself is for some form of negotiation, even though he's made it clear that would only start when Ukraine accepts the facts on the ground. MICHAEL MORELL: Rolf, the cease fire actually makes sense from a military perspective, from a Russian military structure, correct, in terms of giving him the breather he needs to kind of regroup and get ready to fight some more. Is that correct? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Of course. And if a cease fire is predicated on Ukrainian acceptance that Russia is holding the territory like it currently holds, then that's a huge win for him. It basically starts the negotiation on the basis that Ukraine would have to accept a large loss in its territory as well as Russian responsibility for everything it's done to this point. Now, of course, some people would argue that that could be revisited in the actual negotiation. But I guess the question for the people advocating talks, including some world leaders right now as we speak who are moving into this space and trying to create conditions where Zelenskyy and Putin can talk. I guess my question to those leaders will be how does Ukraine do that if Putin doesn't move off his position that those territories belong to Russia? MICHAEL MORELL: Rolf, the third piece of the strategy on your list is what you call a scorched earth policy. What do you mean by that? And what does that entail? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Yeah, Modern warfare. I started out of West Point, of course, as you know, Michael, and I never thought in the 21st century, and it's not just happening, of course, in Ukraine that we'd see the kind of warfare we see where civilians are deliberately targets. It happened in the 20th century too, at a great scale in World War Two and whatnot. But in the 21st century, you'd hope we would have progressed further. And to see Russia now acknowledge something in the beginning of the war, even that Putin and his generals were trying to deny, which is that they were deliberately targeting Ukrainian infrastructure. So a major part of his policy is to target both Ukraine and Europe by weaponizing energy. And the way he's doing it in Ukraine is to turn off the lights. And we all see it. We're watching it every day. And again, it's incredibly difficult for me, and I hope it is for anyone who's following the war, the tragedy of the war on a daily basis. We're almost becoming numb to it and this is an aspect of it, this scorched earth, that is particularly disturbing to watch, because we're helpless to intervene and intercede. That we can give the Ukrainians weapons and money to fight the Russians and expel them since they're clearly the aggressor. But how do you stop the Russians from sending Iranian drones and destroying energy and infrastructure and keeping people in the middle of a bitter winter with no lights and no heat? It's incredibly tragic and sad, but it's a big part of the strategy, again, as I said earlier. His hope would be to force Ukraine to the table by doing these things, by destroying their will to fight. That's the essence of what he's trying to do. And the second part of this, weaponization of energy is, of course, targeted at the Europeans, which seems to have even less effect. Of course, they're not being targeted in the same direct, brutal ways that the Russians are attacking Ukraine. But he's hoping that over a hard winter, if it turns out to be that in Europe, that the Ukrainians might second guess their decision not to turn to Russian energy sources. I don't think that's going to work in either case. In other words, the Ukrainians are going to make it through the winter, I believe, because they have such an incredible will to fight and they're very courageous about it. And I think the Europeans have resolved, by and large, to rid themselves off the downsides of relying on Russian energy. MICHAEL MORELL: We just talked a little bit about the almost daily attacks in Ukraine designed to turn off that heat that you talked about. Big part of that is the drones that Russia is getting from Iran. That's a deepening relationship. It seems to be of growing importance to Moscow's ability to keep up the barrage. One of the things I'm worried about, and just get your reaction to this, is the Iranians, as you know better than anybody, has an enormous arsenal of all sorts of missiles. And if the Iranians started sharing those with the Russians that would be a significant addition to what the Russians have to offer in terms of firepower. Let's get your reaction to that. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: We have seen drones introduced in a way- I have a number of friends and contacts and people that are deeply, intimately involved in the drone business, if you will, both from the military and commercial sides. And I talk to them a lot. It's just incredible how this technology has taken off and is being showcased. I hate to use that word in this war. And the Iranians are getting a lot of free advertisement for their drones, and it's made a big difference. But as we're seeing the situation develop- weapons in general, drones, missiles, HIMARS, anti-aircraft systems like the Gepard and Patriot missiles potentially going now to, I guess the U.S. has reached an agreement to send them to Ukraine. I don't think any introduction of these weapons, including the possibility Iran might introduce ballistic missiles or their missiles to counter the fact the Russians are using theirs at a staggering rate. I don't think that's going to change the balance, Michael, because the essence of the war resolves down to which army can fight and hold territory on the ground and which army will prevail in terms of numbers and ability to fight on the ground. Now, it's not just to dismiss or just say those such conditions aren't significant. We have seen, however, take the drone situation, slowly over weeks and particularly the first few days of this new year, Ukraine fight back much more effectively against them. Shoot a much larger percentage of them out of the sky. We're going to continue to see Ukrainian air defenses strengthen. I think for people I've talked to- who are true military analysts, I'm not, I'm trying to look at more the strategic picture- continually tell me that we're learning so many things about waging war, one of which is the importance of air defense in general. And the time favors Ukraine, I believe, in establishing a more effective air defense system over the country than it does the Russians introducing new and novel forms or numbers of weapons to attack Ukraine. So we're going to see that gradually reach an equilibrium and it's going to again, boil down to who has the best army in a strategic sense. Now, I'll mention one thing specifically on Iran. I haven't followed it very closely, but I think for Iran itself, yes, there's now a closer relationship between Iran and Russia. But from everything I'm hearing, Iran has limits, too, in how far it wants to go in enabling Russia and Ukraine, just like I believe the Chinese do as well, because there are definite downsides to going overboard in arming Russia against a war that I think frankly makes Iran. Of course, they're split like every other country on people who are comfortable and not comfortable giving Russia these weapons. But in the aggregate, no country, China, Iran, others who may be assisting the Russians, I believe, want to go overboard to the point that it creates liabilities for them and what they're trying to achieve in their national security policy. So I think there are limits. I'm not dismissing the possibility the Iranians might become more aggressive as the war rages on, but I think there are limits and the U.S. administration should use all the means at its disposal to try to encourage other countries to not send these weapon systems to Ukraine. MICHAEL MORELL: The fourth part of Putin's strategy from your perspective is maybe the one that's the most chilling. It's to exterminate Ukrainian culture and independence and in the context of this piece of the strategy. I'm hoping you can talk a bit about an issue that I don't think has gotten enough mainstream attention, which is Russia's kidnapping of Ukrainian children. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: I think of all the atrocities and war crimes, even genocide, that we can't forget are occurring every day in Ukraine. The most disturbing thing to me is that there hasn't been the international outcry I would have expected against it. Now, I know there are some serious organizations conducting very diligent war crime investigations into rapes and murders and killing of civilians. Unfortunately, the world has experienced this tragedy so many times there's an actual whole regime set up to investigate war crimes. And I know that work is being done. The abduction and transporting of Ukrainian children to Russia strikes me as particularly heinous and something that much more attention should be focused on. I'll go back to the beginning of the war when we were all weighing in our minds whether Putin would really do this, conduct this invasion a year ago. And one of the reasons I felt so terribly, darkly confident he would was because I know about his own personal feelings and many of his inner circles about Ukraine from the standpoint of wiping Ukraine off the map, which was actually an expressed ambition to wipe Ukrainian culture off the map. It's not something that's a quietly or secretly held view. It's been explicitly stated. And so we see it in the war as far as bombing Ukrainian cultural landmarks, wiping out their history, their identity. So it's broader than culture and independence. It is a disdain for the idea of Ukrainian independence because somehow Ukraine is Russia and Russia is Ukraine. That, of course, that idea that thought goes against everything in the modern world we created since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though somebody might be able to raise a Russian nationalist or writer or Putin himself, old history to support the premise that somehow they're entitled to do what they're doing in Ukraine because Ukraine isn't independent and doesn't have its own identity. So that's why I think it's so important, because it resolves to another question, Michael, that we have to think a lot about- why are we fighting this war? Is this a war against a non-NATO member that we don't stand to defend? Because Ukraine's not part of NATO. They're an independent country that we gave security guarantees to when they became independent, and yet they're suffering this horrific tragedy when there are such strong limits in what the West is able to do to help them defend themselves. So I know I've gone on a bit here, but I think that's probably the most important question you asked from my personal perspective. MICHAEL MORELL: And then specifically, what happens to these children who are taken from Ukraine and sent back to Russia? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: I frankly don't know. There's too little reporting, reliable reporting. I don't want to quote sources. I don't know what's happening to them. I don't know the purpose of all of this. I don't know what the population consists of children that have been subjected to this. But it's something that should be reported on more widely by the international press, so we will know more about it. MICHAEL MORELL: The Institute for the Study of War has continued to focus on this, but it really hasn't gotten out into the mainstream media. Which brings me back to something you said earlier, Rolf, which is we're all getting numb to this. Which plays, I think, into Putin's hands to the extent that we, that our media stops reporting on this, stops its focus on this, puts its focus elsewhere, that plays into Putin's hands. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Yes. I mean, simply put, I agree with you. And I think the problem of not having as Putin has, if you will, an entire body of explanations to justify and explain his own actions and the reasoning behind it. We don't counter that typically. Our president might get up or a world leader might get up and make statements about some support, will give Ukraine money or weapons, but not necessarily discuss, say openly that our objective is to ensure Ukraine maintains its territorial integrity and that Russia does not escape the responsibilities of having waged this war. I think if I were to advise Western leaders in a way to shorten the war, frankly, or at least so that Vladimir Putin will understand our position more clearly. Western leaders, I believe, have to do a better job of explicitly stating what our war aims are and what they're not in terms of what we're willing to settle for in terms of welcoming this aggression. MICHAEL MORELL: You said something earlier which I think is really important. You talked about Putin explicitly saying what his goals were with regard to Ukraine. And I just wanted to make the point to our listeners that our adversaries often tell us exactly what they want and what they're going to do. We both remember the interview that Osama bin Laden gave in early 1998 when he said he was going to wage war on the United States in an interview with ABC. Sometimes you just have to listen. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Yeah. And I think what's uncomfortable, particularly if I were to use an American audience in trying to analyze when President Putin talks about his war against Western values, his war against his disdain for the U.S., what he calls hegemony in the world, he's declaring the reasons this war has happened essentially. We just over the years haven't been listening closely enough to what he's saying. But he's been saying it for years throughout. And there's nothing surprising in many respects in what Putin has done and what he will do tomorrow, because he tells us in advance what he's thinking and why he's doing things. MICHAEL MORELL: And then Rolf, we talked about this a little bit already, but the last of the five pieces on your list of what Putin's trying to do is undermine NATO's solidarity. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Right. If you're looking at the NATO cohesion and state of the NATO alliance or even more broadly, the Western alliance with the European Union and others, it's stronger than it was before the war by all accounts, whether it's the expansion of Nordic countries into NATO perspectively, or the fact that the alliance has held in ways that certainly Vladimir Putin didn't count on before the war. He was counting on being able to work weaknesses, softness within the alliance through people he's known for years in various countries in Europe and the United States, and that didn't happen. So I think one of the areas that he's had to go back and regroup seriously is in calculating what support he can depend on and from whom. And part of the reason he pivoted, I think, so strongly to the Chinese and to some extent to India and certainly to Iran and even to some of the Arab states, is because he had no choices in countries in Europe that might have been previously more inclined to be soft on Russia's activities in Ukraine. So that's a big problem for him. MICHAEL MORELL: Do you see any softness in the EU at the moment? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Well, of course, as you know, everywhere there's the diverse, there's pluralistic views and there's a well-established communities within Europe that the Russians know very well, particularly as they analyze the nationalist component. There are nationalists in Russia. There are nationalists in Ukraine. Those communities all know each other and they know each other in Europe as well. So I think the calculations that have been made based on the strength of that kind of support, a good example would be Italy. The government in Italy, having turned to the right, did not have the consequences that many observers might have thought in terms of being soft on the Italian position towards Ukraine. And soft on Putin- hasn't happened. Sweden, same thing with the government there. So calculations based on having some friends in Europe that would have a stronger influence on European policies in Ukraine has not turned out to be a great benefit to Russia so far and probably will not in my view. MICHAEL MORELL: Rolf, in your note to me, you put an X factor, which was nuclear weapons. The temperature has gone down in terms of rhetoric. Where do you think we are today in terms of the risk of nuclear weapons use by the Russians? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: That's, of course, an area of specialty. I think there are probably most of the things I've tried to cover today. There are a number of people whose views I would find more compelling than mine. But on nuclear, I try to stay up with the people who are out there because I think we've learned since the war began that we have to reassess everything we thought we knew about the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear doctrine and certainly on deterrence. So the way it manifests itself now is we're at a state, I think, where we went up and down. We've encountered the fear of the realization that this man, Vladimir Putin, may well use it if he feels he has to, to avoid being defeated in Ukraine. And I think we're still there. I think there's been some helpful statements from Putin and from others that have say if you will, turned the volume down on those kinds of threats. But the risk is there in a way we didn't imagine. We thought we all still subscribe to the mutual assured destruction I would call psychology certainly mentality where we knew we couldn't fight a war where we used nuclear weapons because it might result in the destruction of the entire world. That idea, that ethic doesn't exist. A shared common sense that we can't do it. It ruled throughout the 20th century, and now we're in a century where we can't count on that shared sensibility that we can't fight with nuclear weapons. And he shattered that, I believe, because it was clear, no matter how you describe the rhetoric and the threats by him and others in the government, that it was a possibility of some sort in their minds if things go bad. So I think we're in a state now, where we fortunately have not had to focus on much in the last few weeks, where I can contemplate how it can come back into the picture. In other words, the use of tactical nuclear weapons under two conditions in this war. The first is if the Ukrainian army were to emerge from the spring with similar ambitions to the Russian army to mount some sort of a strategic offensive and we're able to actually do so. Now I think that's a lower probability than 50/50 to be sure that they have the- we call the forces to do that. But it's not out of the question. They'll try, the Russians might try again at some point in 2023 when the weather gets better. Both sides' ambitions are renewed in the spring air. And at that point, if the Russian army were somehow facing defeat on the battlefield, then I think nuclear weapons again, will be something we're going to be talking about and Putin will be thinking about. So that's my big fear. And the second would be if the war were to reach a point where he is somehow facing strategic failure for other reasons on the war, whether it were problems from within Russia, which I still see no serious signs of dissent or moves against him that would result in his removal. But I think under those circumstances we might also see a desperate move because nuclear weapons, in the final analysis, what makes them even more tragic than they are just are in themselves is because the only way- they can't accomplish anything militarily when you submit their use to a broader analysis, you can't hold ground and take ground with nuclear weapons. You can blow holes in units. You can distract everything with a strategic pause, if you will, freezing the action. But the weapons themselves can't win wars. You ultimately will lose if you resort to using nuclear weapons. That has to be the position of every country who possesses nuclear weapons, including Russia. MICHAEL MORELL: If those are Putin's strategic pursuits, what he's trying to do strategically, how would you sum up from a strategic perspective where we are in the war today? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: I think Russia is losing. It's in denial about this. Russia's losing its ability to win the war on the ground militarily and won't be able to recapture a significant strategic offensive. At the same time, it's hard to see that the Ukrainians can reach the level of forces with support from the West and soldiers and weapons to be able to expel the Russians entirely out of Ukraine. So, meanwhile, the forces on both sides, meaning in Russia and Ukraine and for that matter, a lot of their support going both ways has solidified in a very right wing or one might say nationalist fashion. So those voices are louder. There's less willingness to compromise, as there always is, and war and atrocity and loss of life. And there's bitterness, obviously, and in ways you can't possibly understand if you're not in that war. And it's really conspiring against any kind of a solution. And at the same time, this doesn't look like one of those wars that's going to become a frozen conflict where we're going for years on the ground towards an Afghanistan like humiliating defeat after ten years as they suffered or the Soviet Union suffered. I can't see this. The tempo, the losses, the number of people that are dying going on for that long. You hear very little talk, for example, Michael, about insurgency and guerrilla operations, because this war is still being waged intensely on the ground with our tanks and artillery and now drones and weapons and increasingly lethal numbers of forces with Russia frantically trying to mobilize large numbers of men to join the front. Poorly equipped and badly trained. And Ukraine, you don't hear much about it, but are certainly suffering also similar incredible losses. So at some point, it's hard to imagine something that doesn't happen again and unfortunately, that shocks us all. We're in for some more surprises,Michael. I am sorry I can't enumerate what they are. They wouldn't be surprises. I don't think this will grind to an inch by inch kind of 20th century guerrilla operation or World War one kind of thing. This is going to continue to be very intense and volatile with the possibility of introduction of new weapons and even new tactical nuclear weapons into the war. MICHAEL MORELL: Where do you think Putin is politically at home at the moment? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: I predicted when we went into the winter- the essence of what I would surmise and that's all I'm doing. I don't have any buddy reporting to me from the Kremlin, unfortunately. But I suspect he's got full support. There's not much of a choice beyond Putin. If there was anything, anyone to move against him. I've heard- I won't even grace a lot of the names I hear in the media with being any serious rivals to Putin. The only people who can run Russia are people from the old KGB, FSB, military establishment. That's it, period. They're the only ones that anyone would turn to as as occurred in 1991, in 1993, as I said in a previous podcast. Those coup attempts were mounted by people from what the Russians call the special services and military forces. They're the only people who anyone would rally behind if Putin were to become too much of a liability. I don't see that happening. I see a lot more pain coming from the Russian side than anyone deciding to change leaders, which is why I don't give much credibility to any reports I read, particularly on unsubstantiated reporting of any sort of movement against Putin in Moscow. MICHAEL MORELL: And then last question, Rolf. The West has been slow. I think that's fair. Slow to provide Ukraine with what it needs to be more effective at pushing Russia out. Slow to provide what President Zelinskyy has been asking for. What's your sense of why? And I know I'm asking you to focus on a part of the world that you're not used to focusing on, but what's your sense of why and how do you think about what we should be doing? ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: I have respect, certainly, for how the United States and the West have supported Ukraine to the extent it has from the very beginning and gotten a lot of the problems, the questions right. Answered the questions in the right way for President Biden and for other world leaders by having really good intelligence and anticipating the war's developments I think in a very effective way up to now. So I'm not a critic of either the administration policies or the way the intelligence community is handled. As a matter of fact, I think they're by and large good news stories. My singular point of- it's not really a criticism as much as an observation- is that from the beginning, it's not been clear to me that we know exactly what we're trying to achieve. Are we seeking Putin's defeat? Well, I hear conflicting ideas about that. Fears about what would happen if he were defeated, some of which you can imply from, are implicit from what we've discussed. I also think that our war aims, even in a more tactical sense, have been tempered by a desire not to escalate. So there's a reasonable idea that if you give weapons that escalate the conflict, it could spin out of control. Next thing you know, NATO's in a war and the United States is in a war with U.S. troops on the ground. None of us want that. So the idea was to introduce weapons when we, I hate to use the phrase, felt comfortable that they wouldn't do that. In retrospect, I think a lot of people might agree that we should have introduced things much faster to not prolong the conflict, but shorten the conflict, if you will. And I think that might have been the effect of taking a more bold position earlier on it. It, of course, drives me crazy if our end goal is to help Ukraine win the war. And I know you and I have discussed this, Michael, 'we're introducing this now. Why didn't we introduce HIMARS as a month earlier, or Patriots or whatever the weapon system is. And so, yes, that's frustrating. And I hope the administration constantly, and I have to believe they're doing this, reviewing decision making from the standpoint of anticipating events and being as proactive and I would say aggressive as possible, because people are dying every day. And a lot of people are dying every day. So the shorter somehow that we can work together, the U.S. and its partners in the West and other countries, frankly, even those supporting Russia, to shorten the war and get Russia out of Ukraine, the better those two countries will be, including Russia, by the way, and the world. And I think that should be the overarching objective to everything that's being done, is to try to shorten the war, get the two sides to agree on something where Russia can leave and this war is over. And I don't think we do that by prolonging the arms deliveries and the support we give Ukraine. I think we need to very strongly commit to ending this as soon as possible. MICHAEL MORELL: Rolf, thank you very much for joining us. As always, very insightful. Thank you so much. ROLF MOWATT-LARSESEN: Thank you, Michael. Alec Baldwin faces charges after "Rust" film set fatal shooting Davos | 60 Minutes Archive Nationwide protests sweep France over controversial pension reform proposal Aubrey Plaza reached new levels of notoriety after starring in the second season of The White Lotus. Years before landing on the acclaimed HBO series, Plaza auditioned to be a cast member of Saturday Night Live and recently opened up about the characters she created for that process. The actor made an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon where she talked about not landing the SNL gig. More from Deadline Related Story SNL: Aubrey Plaza & Michael B. Jordan Make Hosting Debuts On First Shows Of The Year Related Story Jennifer Coolidge Thanks 'The White Lotus' Creator Mike White, Others Who Kept Her "Going" During Career Lulls In Highly Bleeped Golden Globes Speech Related Story 'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale Boosts HBO Series Into Nielsen U.S. Streaming Top 10 I didnt make it to the Lorne [Michaels] audition, the famous final audition, but I did a preliminary first-round showcase, she said. Plaza said that for the audition, she performed two characters that were seemingly incredibly quirky. I remember one character I did was like a Puerto Rican news reporter that was always trying to make all of the news stories sexy, even if they were horrific news stories, she revealed. I was just trying to like, sex up the news or something. Her second character was a little more cringe, which Plaza described as a pill-popping housewife. That character had her own talk show called Celebri-Tails, where I would just name celebrities and name what kind of tail they would have if they had a tail. Like I would say, Lindsay Lohan would have a bushy squirrels tail. Or, like, Bill Clinton would have a polar bears nub.' Story continues Despite not landing a spot on the SNL cast, Plaza did intern on the show. Now the Parks & Recreation alum will return to Studio 8H as the host of the sketch show this weekend. Best of Deadline Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Brunswick County Schools Superintendent Jerry Oates has resigned to take a job as deputy state superintendent. Brunswick County Schools Superintendent Jerry Oates will be the next Deputy State Superintendent of North Carolina Public Schools. Oates announced his resignation following a closed session at Brunswick County Board of Education committee meeting on January 17. For the last seven years I have served in several capacities in Brunswick County Schools, Oates said. I was embraced by the school system and the Brunswick County community at large. It is now my home. Lifelong relationships have been forged and I am grateful for every encounter I have had with the people in this wonderful school system. More:Brunswick schools leader named southeastern North Carolina superintendent of the year Oates also expressed his appreciation to the Brunswick County Schools Board of Education, thanking the members for their undying support as they worked together to improve outcomes for the students. Oates was initially hired by Brunswick County Schools to serve as its director of human resources in July 2015 and was promoted to associate superintendent in fall 2017, before being named superintendent in October 2018. As superintendent, Oates was named the regional superintendent of the year in southeastern North Carolina by the Southeast Education Alliance. Prior to accepting employment with Brunswick County Schools, Oates worked as an educator and administrator in New Hanover County Schools. Oates last day with Brunswick County Schools will be Feb. 20, and he will begin his new position with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction the same day. The Brunswick County Schools Board of Education unanimously voted to approve former Brunswick County Schools Superintendent Les Tubb as interim superintendent while the board conducts as search for Oates permanent replacement. The board anticipates the new superintendent to take office on July 1, 2023. STAY CONNECTED: Keep up with the areas latest Brunswick County news by signing up for the Brunswick Today newsletter and following us on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Brunswick County Schools Superintendent resigns to take state position "Dragon's breath" has been popular online for years. (L) Screenshot/TikTok - nitrotreatzuk, (R) Screenshot/TikTok - cindymarie93 A number of children in Indonesia were reportedly injured after eating a liquid nitrogen dessert. The snack, often referred to as "dragon's breath," is something of a spectacle because of its smoke. Foods featuring liquid nitrogen have been popular on the internet for years. A number of children in Indonesia were recently injured after eating liquid nitrogen-covered candies, a street snack often referred to as "dragon's breath" or "ciki ngebul," according to multiple outlets. Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, the Director General of the Indonesian Ministry of Health, told the Guardian that around 25 children were negatively impacted by the food, including two who were hospitalized. The Indonesian digital news outlet Kompas reported that at least 10 cases of people suffering food poisoning from the dessert had been found, appearing to cite the Indonesian Ministry of Health's Director of Environmental Health. The Indonesian outlet Kontan published a timeline with information about multiple individual cases, including one where a child reportedly had to be operated on because the snack made a hole in his stomach. There are multiple health risks to consuming these kinds of liquid nitrogen-fueled snacks, and doctors have warned about them before. The liquid nitrogen is so cold it can burn the skin and body, and it can also cause asphyxiation, Dr. Reed Caldwell, an assistant professor at Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone Health, told Today.com. In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about dragon's breath, noting that injuries had "occurred from handling or eating products prepared by adding liquid nitrogen immediately before consumption, even after the liquid nitrogen has fully evaporated due to the extremely low temperature of the food." Indonesia's Ministry of Health has warned mobile vendors against selling the snacks and advised other precautions be put into place, like informing children in schools, the Guardian reported. The Ministry of Health did not respond to Insider's request for comment. Story continues The food essentially candy (or sometimes cereal) dipped in liquid nitrogen, which gives it a striking visual look as smoke billows out of the dessert has been featured in YouTube videos and tweets for years. It's called "dragon's breath" because it makes smoke flow out of the consumer's mouth and nostrils. Liquid nitrogen-coated candy is also a popular phenomenon on TikTok, with a trend hashtag about it ("dragon's breath") amassing over 200 million cumulative views. However, Insider was only able to find one recently uploaded video of a child indulging in the candy, and it had less than a thousand views. TikTok did not respond to Insider's request for comment about whether the platform has already taken action against clips featuring the candy. Tiktok has often been blamed for dangerous trends that didn't actually originate on the platform, or were similarly widespread on platforms like Facebook or YouTube. A purported trend where kids would place magnets in their mouths to make fake piercings was attributed to TikTok despite the fact that variations of this game have existed for decades, and Insider couldn't find any indication that the craze found traction on the platform. Read the original article on Insider Company Logo Dublin, Dec. 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Research Report on China's Auto Sunroof Export 2023-2032" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. China is one of the major auto parts producers and exporters in the world. Auto sunroof is also one of the important components of China's auto parts exports. In 2021, China exported 897,400 sets of automotive sunroofs (including electric sunroofs and manual sunroofs, the same below), up 36.9% year-on-year, with an export value of US$183 million, up 40.9% year-on-year. In the first three quarters of 2022, China exported 671,000 sets of automotive sunroofs, up 3.0% year-on-year, with an export value of US$157 million, up 14.8% year-on-year. China's exports of automotive sunroofs are mainly electric sunroofs and manual sunroofs. The publisher's analysis, electric sunroofs are China's main export type. In the first three quarters of 2018-2022, the export volume of electric sunroofs accounted for about 90% of the total exports of automotive sunroofs, and the export value was more than 95% of the total exports of automotive sunroofs. In the first three quarters of 2018-2022, the average price of China's automotive sunroof exports continued to grow. The average price of China's automotive sunroof exports increased slightly in 2018-2021, generally remaining in the price range of US$190-210 per set. In the first three quarters of 2022, the average price of China's automotive sunroof exports was US$233.8 per set, up 11.5% year-on-year. The publisher's analysis, China's automotive sunroof export average price growth is mainly driven by the growth of the average export price of electric sunroof. In the first three quarters of 2018-2022, the export price of electric sunroof increased from US$207.3 per set to US$251.6 per set. The export price of manual sunroofs is more volatile, rising and falling. In the first three quarters of 2022, China's average export price of manual sunroofs was US$77.0 per set, down 5.2% year-on-year. In 2021, China exported automotive sunroofs to 83 countries and regions, and the publisher analyzedthat India, the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea were the main export destinations for Chinese automotive sunroofs by export volume. In terms of the export destination of electric sunroofs, these five countries are also the major export destinations of China's electric sunroofs by export volume. Story continues The publisher's analysis shows that India is the largest exporter of electric sunroofs to China. In 2021, China exported 290.0 thousand sets of electric sunroofs to India, accounting for 36.4% of the total export volume of electric sunroofs, and the export value of US$68.4 million, accounting for 38.8% of the total export value of electric sunroofs. The publisher's analysis, Australia, the Russian Federation, Germany, Italy and France are the main export destination of Chinese manual sunroofs, among which, Australia is the largest export volume of Chinese manual sunroofs. In 2021, China exported 28,300 sets of manual sunroofs to Australia, accounting for 33.8% of the total export volume of manual sunroofs, and the export value of US$3.4 million, accounting for 49.6% of the total export value of manual sunroofs. The publisher expects that China's automotive sunroof exports are expected to continue to rise from 2023-2032. On the one hand, auto sunroofs produced by local auto parts manufacturers in China will continue to be exported. On the other hand, the factories set up by Chinese auto parts companies in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries will also export a large number of auto parts, including sunroofs, to various parts of the world. Topics covered: China's Auto Sunroof Export Status and Major Sources in 2018-2022 What is the Impact of COVID-19 on China's Auto Sunroof Export? Which Companies are the Major Players in China's Auto Sunroof Export Market and What are their Competitive Benchmarks? Key Drivers and Market Opportunities in China's Auto Sunroof Export What are the Key Drivers, Challenges, and Opportunities for China's Auto Sunroof Export during 2023-2032? What is the Expected Revenue of China's Auto Sunroof Export during 2023-2032? What are the Strategies Adopted by the Key Players in the Market to Increase Their Market Share in the Industry? What are the Competitive Advantages of the Major Players in China's Auto Sunroof Export Market? Which Segment of China's Auto Sunroof Export is Expected to Dominate the Market in 2032? What are the Major Adverse Factors Facing China's Auto Sunroof Export? Key Topics Covered: 1 2018-2022 China's Auto Sunroof Export Analysis 1.1. China's Auto Sunroof Export Scale 1.1.1. China's Auto Sunroof Export Volume 1.1.2. China's Auto Sunroof Export Value 1.1.3. China's Auto Sunroof Export Price 1.2. China's Main Export Destinations of Auto Sunroofs 1.2.1. By Export Volume 1.2.2. By Export Value 2 2018-2022 China Electric Sunroof Export Analysis 2.1 Electric Sunroof Export Volume 2.2 Electric Sunroof Export Value 2.3 Electric Sunroof Export Price 2.4 Analysis of Electric Sunroof Exports by Type 2.4.1. Export Volume of Various Types of Electric Sunroofs 2.4.2. Export Value of Various Types of Electric Sunroofs 2.4.3. Export Price of Various Types of Electric Sunroofs 2.5 Electric Sunroof Export Destinations 2.5.1. By Export Volume 2.5.2. By Export Value 3 2018-2022 China Manual Sunroof Export Analysis 3.1. Manual Sunroof Export Volume 3.2. Manual Sunroof Export Volume 3.3. Manual Sunroof Export Price 3.4 Analysis of Various Types of Manual Sunroof Exports 3.4.1. Export Volume of all Kinds of Manual Sunroofs 3.4.2. Export Value of All Types of Manual Sunroofs 3.4.3. Export Prices of All Types of Manual Sunroofs 3.5 Manual Sunroof Export Destinations 3.5.1. By Export Volume 3.5.2. By Export Value 4 2018-2022 China Auto Sunroof Main Export Destinations Analysis 4.1 Analysis of Main Export Destinations of Electric Sunroof 4.1.1 India 4.1.2. United States 4.1.3. Brazil 4.1.4. Mexico 4.1.5 Korea 4.1.6. Other Export Destinations 4.2. Manual Sunroof Main Export Destinations Analysis 4.2.1 Australia 4.2.2. Russian Federation 4.2.3 Germany 4.2.4 Italy 4.2.5. France 4.2.6. Other Export Destinations 5 China's Export Outlook for Automotive Sunroofs, 2023-2032 5.1 Factors Affecting China's Auto Sunroof Exports 5.1.1 Favorable Factors 5.1.2. Unfavorable Factors 5.2. China's Auto Sunroof Export Forecast, 2023-2032 5.2.1 Export Volume Forecast 5.2.2. Major Export Destinations Forecast 5.2.3. Major Export Types of Automotive Sunroofs Forecast For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/n3qgk9 CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood,Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./ CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 The city of Amarillo sent out a news release Wednesday on how to help its sister city Dnipro in the wake of the devastation in the region over the weekend. According to the Associated Press, on Saturday, a Russian strike on an apartment building in the southeastern Ukraine community killed at least 45 people, including six children, and at least 79 people were injured. "The City of Amarillo (COA) sends its heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the community of Dnipro, Ukraine after devastating missile strikes hit Amarillos sister city over the weekend," the release says. More:Amarillo agrees to sister city relationship with Ukraine community Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost 11 months ago, many Ukrainians had fled to Dnipro, a city with a prewar population of nearly 1 million located about 301 miles southeast of Kyiv, the Associated Press reported. The nine-story apartment tower had housed about 1,700 residents. As the search and rescue at a destroyed apartment building officially end, people continue to gather at the site to remember some of the 40 victims, including children, on Jan. 17, 2023, in Dnipro, Ukraine. A Russian missile hit the apartment building on Saturday, part of a fresh wave of missiles launched by Russia. The Ukrainian president said his forces shot down 20 of 30 missiles fired by Russia on Saturday. "The City of Amarillo has received many calls asking how citizens can help the people of Dnipro. COA has been informed that the Kind House Ukraine Bakery in Amarillo is accepting donations to assist the community and victims of the missile attacks," the release says. Those who wish to show their support can go online to https://freedonationkiosk.com:9011/kindhouse/donation/new . The Amarillo City Council approved a sister city agreement with Dnipro in December and recently approved a resolution to display Ukrainian artifacts and symbols, including the Ukraine flag, in a show of support. More:Amarillo passes resolution to allow Ukrainian artifact and symbol displays According to a Facebook update from Kind House Ukraine Bakery (KHUB) posted earlier in the week, "KHUB was able to help rescue more than 2,000 people in the last 10 months from the harshest war zones in Ukraine and many were relocated to Dnipro, Ukraine. Then yesterday Dnipro was attacked and more than 30 have died and 30 remain unfound. The alarm and unrest for Ukraine is unreal. Pray for Ukraine please." Another post from KHUB reads: "Theres a beautiful group of Ukrainians that live right here in Amarillo, TX. Theyve been here for quite some time Amarillo is now there current home but it doesnt cut them off from their real home, Ukraine. They feel every single event happening in Ukraine. They long for home. They want the war to stop. Theyve seen almost a year of this. They are our fellow humans and our citizens too." This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo shares how to help sister city Dnipro Ukraine after attack HENRIETTA, Texas A suspension hearing for embattled Clay County Sheriff Jeffrey Lyde was delayed Tuesday by his defense attorney's last-minute motion to have the judge removed. Clay County Sheriff Jeff Lyde exits the courtroom after his suspension hearing is postponed Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. More:In push to boot him from office, Lyde faces suspension hearing Randall D. Moore filed the motion at approximately 12:05 p.m. ahead of the hearing scheduled 1:30 p.m. to determine if Lyde would be suspended from his official duties. Court proceedings didn't begin until about 2:09 p.m. because of another event. The motion to recuse appears to question 97th District Judge Jack McGaughey's impartiality regarding the petition to remove Lyde from elected office. Moore contends the judge has personal knowledge related to the case, is a key witness for it and was a legal advisor to the sheriff. With this motion filed, McGaughey can either voluntarily recuse himself or allow the region's administrative judge to rule on the issue. Judge David Evans presides over the Eighth Administrative Judicial Region. Once the motion is settled, a new hearing date will be set for a judge to consider suspending Lyde, appointing a new sheriff and turning a temporary restraining order into an injunction until the civil case is settled. At the heart of the Moore's push for a new judge is the role McGaughey might have played when Lyde sought information about whether a Clay County Memorial Hospital Board meeting called by another member for Sept. 13 violated open meetings laws. Then president of the CCMH Board, Lyde emailed board members Sept. 13, warning of criminal enforcement if they attended. No quorum formed, and the meeting didn't take place. The petition alleges Lyde's email amounts to official oppression and is among reasons he should be ousted from elected office. According to Moore's motion to remove the judge, McGaughey discussed the meeting at issue with the sheriff on the phone and on Aug. 5, 2022, in person at the judge's office. McGaughey told the sheriff the meeting was unduly called and "clearly a violation" of the law, according to the defense motion. Story continues The sheriff wrote the email warning off members from attending after consulting with McGaughey and Clay County Attorney Seth Slagle, according to the motion for recusal. Ninety-seventh District Judge Jack McGaughey handles matters Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, at the Clay County Courthouse. The sheriff and Slagle also exchanged text messages about the meeting, according to court documents provided by the defense. In one message, Lyde says he spoke with "Jack" the judge who thinks the meeting would be a violation and "would sign the warrants," according to court documents provided by the defense. Check back with www.timesrecordnews.com for more on this developing story. In October, Lyde resigned as president of the CCMH Board, cutting short a hearing on a petition to remove him from that position. During the proceedings for the petition cut short Tuesday, McGaughey said he was extending the restraining order against Lyde through Jan. 31. The restraining order bars the sheriff from firing, demoting, changing staff members' pay, doing anything to affect their law-enforcement credentials or retaliating against them, court records show. Outside of court, Moore said he came into possession of information Monday night that resulted in his filing the motion for recusal Tuesday. The 97th District Courtroom was packed ahead of the hearing Tuesday afternoon. It was standing room only until members of a new grand jury panel were sworn in, briefed on their duties and dismissed by the judge. Both events were inadvertently scheduled at the same time. A petition to remove Lyde from office as sheriff was submitted Jan. 3 in civil court by local attorney and former district judge Frank Douthitt, as well as 97th District Attorney Casey Hall and Slagle. Defense attorney Randall D. Moore of Fort Worth gives a statement after the postponement of Sheriff Jeffrey Lyde's suspension hearing Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, at the Clay County Courthouse. They allege the sheriff is incompetent and has committed official misconduct and official oppression. They point to allegations of sexual harassment, as well as events regarding the hospital board. Lyde's attorney contends Slagle and Hall are disqualified from being part of the petition to dislodge the sheriff from office. Slagle advised the sheriff about the hospital board meeting, and Hall testified before a recent grand jury about the latest allegations against the sheriff, according to court documents filed by the defense. This second petition for Lyde's removal from elected office as sheriff is one of several legal entanglements he faces in civil and criminal court. Lyde was indicted on three charges of official oppression connected to sexual harassment and one charge of official oppression connected to assault for allegedly slapping a female staff member's buttocks, according to allegations in the indictments filed Dec. 29. Official oppression is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Lyde turned himself in for arrest Jan. 2 at the Sheriff's Office and bailed out the same day on $15,000 in bonds, according to court documents and online jail records. His bond conditions prohibit him from being in contact with the women on staff accusing him of sexual harassment, including at the Sheriff's Office. Moore said Tuesday that Lyde has statutory duties as sheriff, and he has been trying to carry them out without getting sideways with the bond conditions. In response to an open records request, a Sheriff's Department official informed the Times Record News there is no mugshot of Lyde from his recent arrest. Allegations against Lyde include two other charges of official oppression in connection with accusations that he intentionally held a man and a woman in jail in July 2021 without obtaining a finding of probable cause from a magistrate. His attorney has said the latest charges are politically motivated. Lyde has maintained his innocence of the 2021 charges. Trish Choate, enterprise watchdog reporter for the Times Record News, covers education, courts, breaking news and more. Contact her with news tips at tchoate@gannett.com. Her Twitter handle is @Trishapedia. This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Lyde's suspension hearing delayed as defense requests new judge Some of the many wines at Dream Dance Steakhouse at Potawatomi Hotel and Casino are showcased beside the bar. The restaurant reopens Jan. 18; it had been closed since the start of the pandemic. Dream Dance Steakhouse, the high-end restaurant at Potawatomi Hotel and Casino, will open for the first time in nearly three years on Wednesday. It's another step in the casino's return to full activity since the pandemic hit Wisconsin. This month, the casino resumed bingo for the first time since shutting down as COVID-19 struck in March 2020. A new restaurant is in the works to replace the Fire Pit, which closed quietly at the start of 2023 (details are to be announced this week). And Potawatomi is in the midst of a $100 million renovation of the casinos third floor. The reopening of Dream Dance Steakhouse has been in the works for six months, said Potawatomi food and beverage director Mike Christensen. It has a new menu and a new chef: Ben Jones, who most recently was chef at the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana. Jones also will be the executive chef overseeing the other restaurants at the casino and hotel, RuYi and Canal Street Cafe. Their menus will be fine-tuned in the coming months, Jones said. Along with the Fire Pit, the Potawatomi restaurant not reopening is Bella Italiana. Its space is part of the renovation at the casino, spokesman Ryan Amundson said. Instead, Potawatomi will have the new Rock & Brews restaurant, a chain founded by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS, on the third level. Rohit Nambiar, certified as a Level 2 sommelier from the Court of Master Sommeliers, is the new general manager of Dream Dance Steakhouse. The restaurant's list of more than 400 wines, including 20 by the glass, will be under his purview. "He said it was a restaurateur's playground," Christensen said. On the menu: pastas, steaks, seafood tower Naturally, the Dream Dance menu will have steaks prime cuts from Allen Brothers of Chicago and it has Italian influences, now that Bella Italiana won't return. More Italian-leaning dishes are expected when the menu changes in late spring, likely including preparations of risotto, Jones said. Story continues Jones said his go-to steak on the menu is the New York strip, dry aged for 45 days, "I have to admit the porterhouse is pretty epic, too, because we torch rosemary at the table," he said. The porterhouse, at 32 ounces and $150, is for two; it arrives, carved, in a cast-iron pan. The restaurant broils steaks at up to 1,200 degrees. Menu items with an Italian inflection include penne pasta with Sunday gravy (marinara simmered with roasted veal bones, shortribs and pork belly for eight hours). Appetizers include calamari breaded in polenta and served with poblano and corn relish and Calabrian chile aioli, and small and large seafood towers, at market price, that include West Coast oysters, shrimp and lobster cocktails, king crab and scallop crudo. Dream Dance Steakhouse also serves poutine as an appetizer, placing cheese curds over potato tots with bacon gravy. And it has chicken tenders, served with two sauces. Those tenders are a nod to the Wynn Las Vegas restaurant Delilah, known for its fried chicken tenders and the customers who order them with Champagne, Christensen said. Dream Dance Steakhouse appetizer prices range from $12 for cheesy garlic bread to $24 for steak tartare. Chilled seafood starts at $18 for six oysters. Entrees are $23 to $42 for pastas and other main dishes such as shortrib, and steaks range from $45 for 10 ounces of prime flat iron to $250 for a 12-ounce Wagyu strip loin. Side dishes are a la carte. A fresh look shortly before COVID Previously, Dream Dance Steakhouse was closed from June 2019 until October 2019 for a $2 million remodeling. It was open for less than six months before having to close because of COVID. The restaurant's name was tweaked at the remodeling from Dream Dance Steak to Dream Dance Steakhouse. The restaurant's roots as a fine-dining restaurant called Dream Dance go back to late 2000; originally upstairs, it moved to its current location on the casino's first floor in 2008. Hours for Dream Dance Steakhouse's dining room are 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday and 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The restaurant's bar will open at 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday and serve a brief menu of appetizers until 5 p.m. "We may or may not have a secret burger," Jones teased. The full menu will be available at the bar after 5. Reservations can be made through the website, paysbig.com/dining/dream-dance-steakhouse. Sign up for our Dish newsletter to get food and dining news delivered to your inbox. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Dream Dance Steakhouse is reopening at Potawatomi casino, Milwaukee The Pentagon has designated stockpiles of its artillery shells in Israel to supply Ukrainian forces engaged in heavy combat with Russia in the Donbas region, a U.S. official confirmed Wednesday to USA TODAY. The two sides have been firing thousands of shells a day at each other, a pace that has forced the U.S and its allies to scour the world for ammunition to feed Ukrainian guns. News of the transfer from Israel was first reported by The New York Times. The official was not publicly authorized to speak about the transfer of U.S. stockpiles from Israel. Israel has been reluctant to provide aid to Ukraine over concern about its relationship with Russia. Russian military forces are operating in neighboring Syria, and Israel conducts missions there as well. The Pentagon has positioned stocks of materiel in strategic locations around the world. This month, a senior military official characterized the artillery duel in eastern Ukrainian as savage. The latest U.S. package in military aid for Ukraine, worth $3 billion and announced earlier this month, included 18 self-propelled 155 mm Paladin howitzers, 36 105 mm howitzers towed by trucks and thousands of rounds of artillery shells. Russian President Vladimir Putin told workers at a manufacturing plant in St. Petersburg on Wednesday that Russia builds as many missiles in a year as the rest of the world combined. He lauded "the work of the military-industrial complex." Military and onlookers stand at the site where a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten outside the capital Kyiv, killing more than a dozen people, on January 18, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. MISSILE ATTACK: Images capture devastation of Ukrainian apartment complex MORE: Netherlands will join US, Germany in providing Patriot help to Ukraine Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi photographed in March 2022 during an interview with The Associated Press in Kyiv. Monastyrskyi was killed Wednesday when a helicopter crashed into a kindergarten in a Kyiv suburb. At least 16 others died. Other developments: Ihor Klymenko, head of the Ukrainian national police force, was appointed interim minister of Internal Affairs. Klymenko succeeds Denys Monastyrskyi, who was killed in Wednesday's helicopter crash. The International Atomic Energy Agency is placing teams of experts at all four of Ukraines nuclear power plants to reduce the risk of severe accidents during the war, agency head Rafael Grossi said Wednesday. Story continues Rolling blackouts are underway in eight regions among them Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia as Russian missile attacks cripple Ukraine's electricity generation, which covers only about 75% of demand, according to power system operator Ukrenergo. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko called Boris Johnson one of us while presenting the former British prime minister an honorary Citizen of Kyiv medal for his support of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. World Food Program chief David Beasley said support from donors like the U.S. and Germany have allowed Horn of Africa countries like Somalia to hold off famine after years of drought, but he stressed that were not out of this yet. Western supporters to discuss Ukraine's request for heavier weapons Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for a quicker worldwide reaction to challenges like climate change, hunger and especially military aggression because the time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill. In a video address to participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zelenskyy underscored the importance of his country receiving the weapons it needs to fend off the Russian invasion, saying, Tragedies are outpacing life; the tyranny is outpacing democracy. His words found a receptive audience in NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said at Davos that Ukraine's Western supporters will explore how to deliver more powerful and sophisticated weapons when they meet Thursday and Friday in Germany. The group of about 50 top defense officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, coordinate military contributions to Ukraine. The U.S. is expected to soon finalize an aid package worth up to $2.6 billion -- including 100 Stryker combat vehicles and at least 50 Bradley armored vehicles -- and announce it at the gathering in Germany. "The main message there will be: more support, more advanced support, heavier weapons and more modern weapons, Stoltenberg said. Also Wednesday, NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana told European military chiefs that Putin's goals in Ukraine haven't changed, So we must be prepared for the long haul. 2023 will be a difficult year and we need to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Senior Ukraine official, child among 14 dead in helicopter crash A helicopter crashed into a kindergarten in a Kyiv suburb Wednesday, killing at least 14 people, including a top government official and a child on the ground, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraines State Emergency Service said 25 people were injured, including 11 children. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw Ukraines police and emergency services, appears to be the most senior Ukrainian official killed since the start of the war. Two of his top deputies, their assistants and the helicopter crew were among the dead, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram. Nine of those killed were aboard the chopper when it crashed in Brovary, an eastern suburb of the Ukrainian capital. Other victims were on the ground. "Unspeakable pain," Zelenskyy said. "Bright memory to everyone whose life was taken by this black morning." Zelenskyy said the national police and security services were working to determine the cause of the crash. There was no initial information indicating the helicopter, which was flying in foggy conditions, was shot down. Images posted on social media from near the scene appear to suggest it crashed close to a residential building after striking the kindergarten. President Joe Biden issued a statement Wednesday saying, "We grieve with all those who are mourning this heartbreaking tragedy.'' He added that Monastyrskyi and his aides "were deeply involved in the preservation of Ukraines democracy.'' At the World Economic Forum session in Davos, Switzerland, Ukraine first lady Olena Zelenska fought back tears, and forum President Borge Brende of Norway requested 15 seconds of silence after opening the session to honor the victims. Russian capture of Soledar puts pressure on defense of Bakhmut Ukrainian troops have most likely pulled out of the town of Soledar in the Donetsk province after a pitched battle with Russian forces and mercenaries from the Kremlin-aligned Wagner Group, the British Defense Ministry said in its latest war assessment. The Russians have their sights on the strategically important city of Bakhmut, 11 miles to the southwest, which has been the subject of intense fighting for weeks. After the Russian victory in Soledar, "One of Ukraine's two main supply routes into Bakhmut is now under increasing pressure,'' the ministry said. Putin says war began in 2014, not with invasion 11 months ago Russia's invasion of Ukraine 11 months ago did not start a war it was intended to stop one that has raged for more than eight years, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. Putin, speaking to veterans in St. Petersburg, said he had no choice but to launch his "special military operation" because Ukrainian authorities refused to negotiate in good faith after Russia-backed separatists began fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region. Putin has for years accused Ukraine of mistreating ethnic Russians in the region. Large-scale combat operations involving heavy weapons, artillery, tanks and aircraft havent stopped in Donbas since 2014, Putin said. All that we are doing today as part of the special military operation is an attempt to stop this war. This is the meaning of our operation protecting people who live on those territories. Contributing: The Associated Press This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine war updates: Deadly helicopter crash kills kids, top official Prince Harry in "Harry & Meghan" on Netflix. Netflix Iran hit back at UK criticism over its execution of a dual UK-Iran citizen. It said Prince Harry's claim to have killed 25 people in Afghanistan showed the UK could not criticize. "Those who turn a blind eye to this war crime, are in no position to preach others on human rights." Iran blasted Prince Harry's claim that he killed more than two dozen people while serving in Afghanistan as it hit back against criticism of its execution of a British-Iranian citizen. Iran's Foreign Ministry tweeted on Tuesday that the "British regime, whose royal family member, sees the killing of 25 innocent people as removal of chess pieces and has no regrets over the issue, and those who turn a blind eye to this war crime, are in no position to preach others on human rights." Harry wrote in his book "Spare" that he killed 25 "enemy combatants" while serving in Afghanistan. "It's not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me," he said. Harry served two tours in Afghanistan: as an air controller between 2007 and 2008 and as an attack helicopter pilot between 2012 and 2013. Iran was responding to criticism from the UK government after it executed UK-Iran dual citizen Alireza Akbari on Saturday, after accusing him of being a spy. His family deny the allegation, and said that Akbari only confessed to it after being tortured, The Guardian reported. The BBC claimed to have obtained an audio recording of Akbari saying he had been tortured and forced to "confess" to crimes he did not commit. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was "appalled" by the execution, adding: "This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people." Iran has executed at least three other people in connection to protests that began in September, when a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody. She was arrested for not properly wearing a hijab, as required under Iran's strict laws. Harry denied bragging about killing 25 people after his comments were taken badly by some members of the British military. Read the original article on Business Insider The post Janes Addiction Announce 2023 US Tour Dates appeared first on Consequence. Janes Addiction have mapped out a brief west coast tour for March, in advance of their performances at three Lollapalooza festivals in South America. The alt-rock legends will hit the road beginning March 4th in Bakersfield, California, and wrap up the five-show stint with a March 12th gig in Reno, Nevada. Afterward, theyll play Lollapalooza Argentina (March 18th), Lollapalooza Chile (March 19th), and Lollapalooza Brazil (March 25th). Tickets for the US shows go on sale to the general public beginning Friday (January 20th) via Ticketmaster, with a presale beginning Thursday (January 19th) at 10 a.m. local time using the code SOUND. Fans can also pick up tickets via StubHub. Last year, Janes Addiction welcomed back original bassist Eric Avery for their tour with the Smashing Pumpkins. However, guitarist Dave Navarros ongoing battle with long COVID kept him off the road, thus preventing a reunion of the bands classic lineup. Queens of the Stone Ages Troy Van Leeuwen filled in on guitar for that tour, and as of now, it is unclear whether Navarro will be back for the March shows. Jane's Addiction Perry Farrell video interview Editor's Pick When Consequence spoke with frontman Perry Farrell last year, he expressed confidence that Janes Addiction would record their first new songs in more than a decade. Subsequently, Farrell was pictured in social media posts with Avery and drummer Stephen Perkins in the studio, offering further hope that new music is on the way. See Janes Addictions tour dates below, followed by our video interview with Perry Farrell. Pick up tickets to the upcoming shows via Ticketmaster or StubHub. Janes Addictions 2023 Tour Dates: 03/05 Bakersfield, CA @ Mechanics Bank Theater 03/07 Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre 03/09 Los Angeles, CA @ The Hollywood Palladium 03/11 Las Vegas, NV @ The Chelsea Theatre at The Cosmopolitan 03/12 Reno, NV @ Grand Sierra Resort 03/18 Buenos Aires, AR @ Lollapalooza Argentina 03/19 Santiago, CL @ Lollapalooza Chile 03/25 Sao Paulo, BR @ Lollapalooza Brazil Story continues Jane's Addiction 2023 Tour poster Janes Addiction Announce 2023 US Tour Dates Spencer Kaufman Popular Posts Subscribe to Consequences email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox. We recently asked parents of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their biggest parenting regrets. Here are the eye-opening results: 1. "I had kids too young. I got married at 22 and got pregnant at 23. My kids are close in age, so I gave birth at 24 and 25. Now at 29, I realized I didnt have a strong sense of self prior to having kids, and becoming a mother has been a disorienting event for me." "Now, Im on a journey to find myself, and the stakes are so high because I have children who depend on me. In hindsight, I wish I had found myself first and didnt feel pressured to have kids right away." 29, Virginia Urbazon / Getty Images 2. "Worrying about breastfeeding. In the UK, it's rammed down your throat, and you're all but shamed for considering anything else. As long as baby is fed and happy, who cares how they are fed? I struggled on and breastfed for 14 months; I was miserable for most of it and unable to leave my child for longer than a few hours. I get there are lots of positives for breastfeeding, but we have to accept there are other reasons someone might not want to." "He's happy and well-adjusted, but I do wish I knew then what I know now. I took time for granted." 33, Scotland Catherine Delahaye / Getty Images 3. "My biggest regret was not being an everyday parent to my first two children from my first marriage. I never intended to be a 'part-time' dad. In fact, I LOVE being a dad. When my first wife asked me for a divorce, and eventually, moved the kids about 30 miles away (despite my best efforts to fight it), I became an every-other-weekend dad, which I know took a toll on my children as they were growing up. Now they're adults, and my oldest struggles with mental health and addiction issues that I blame myself and my ex for, and I'm not as close with them as I yearn to be." "I am happily remarried and have a six-year-old. While I can't fix the past, I am thrilled to be able to give my youngest son the life I wanted for his siblings and have the parenting experience I always intended for myself." Story continues 46, California Lock Stock / Getty Images 4. "I should have distanced myself from my own parents as soon as their behavior became unhealthy for my family. When they found out I was pregnant, their behavior became unreasonable. Instead of bonding with my newborn, I spent my postpartum crying and barraged by harassing emails and texts." "If I had been able to distance myself earlier, my son would have some family, and I wouldnt be fully estranged." 37, Georgia Nickylloyd / Getty Images 5. "Raising my little boy abroad. My husband and I have lived as ex-pats for the entire eight years weve been together, but I never imagined raising my children away from my family. When they say it takes a village, youd better believe it takes that same village to raise children. We want more children, but I honestly dont think my mental health could handle it." "Its taught me that Im so much more capable and stronger than I thought I was, but good lord, it would be nice to have a bit of help from time to time." amylinf1202 Westend61 / Getty Images 6. "I regret not being more intentional with my kids. You tend to raise your kids as you were raised unless you make a conscious effort to be different. My parents focused on their business and really didn't pay much attention to me or my siblings or be active with us. My husband and I would say 'someday we'll go on this vacation,' but life got in the way, and now, our kids are grown, and we regret all of the missed opportunities." "Be active with your kids even if you are exhausted after a long day at work. Go to that park or museum, take that vacation. You only have 18 summer vacations with your kids before they are adults. Your 'someday' plans won't happen without being intentional." 55, Colorado Ippei Naoi / Getty Images 7. "I regret getting married for the second time after being a single mom for several years. I thought it was the best thing I could do for my kids to give them a more stable household and show them what 'real' love looks like. Instead, my kids and their stepdad barely get along, and I'm always stuck choosing between my teenage and preteen kids versus my spouse. Instead of real love, I'm seriously considering divorce." 36, Indiana Carles Navarro Parcerisas / Getty Images 8. "Having my son circumcised. I was a fairly young mom (21) and felt pressured into having it done. I'm now very much pro-body autonomy, and both my kids (my son is 14 and my daughter is seven) are 100% in control of the non-medical decisions regarding their bodies. I would never consider a cosmetic procedure without their consent." "My daughter didn't get her ears pierced until she was six and old enough to ask for them herself. I wish I had waited before making a permanent change to my child's body." 35, New Hampshire Kidstock / Getty Images 9. "My son is autistic. I listened to the experts at his school, and I deeply regret it now. It caused trauma when they held him in the quiet room, and when they wouldnt accommodate his needs. I got better at advocating for him, but I still hate that he was so hurt those years in school. I feel like I let him down so badly." "Parents can and should advocate for their kids in schools. An IEP, individual education plan, is a legal document that schools must follow. You can advocate and get accommodations for your child to make school a success and not traumatic." knightmareshade Marko Geber / Getty Images 10. "I hate that I let my mom and sister have more say with my daughter than her biological dad. Now, shes entitled to the point where it disgusts me. She expects to be waited on and doesnt feel like she has to work for anything. I dont like her as a person at all. I'm trying to teach her how to navigate in the real world because she will be an adult someday, but they already have her too far gone. She's 12 years old." 31, Texas Jgi / Getty Images / Tetra images RF 11. "I wish I had paused and enjoyed the little moments more. I was too preoccupied with trying to make everything perfect, or planning everything to the exact detail, to take a step back and just take in the moment. I wish I had said 'yes' more and scolded less. I wish I hadn't yelled so much. My son is a teenager now, and I would give anything to go back and revisit when he was a baby, a toddler, and a little boy." "He's happy and well-adjusted, but I do wish I knew then what I know now. I took time for granted." 35, Massachusetts Triloks / Getty Images 12. "Discipline and manners will save you years of going back and forth with your kids. It's hard, I know, especially when coming from an abusive childhood. You'll want to coddle them, baby them, and give them everything you never had, but in the end, that'll make for a spoiled mini-me who makes you question whether hiding in the restroom for over an hour to cry out of frustration is considered abandonment. My #1 advice is to definitely communicate and take a break when taking care of your minis starts to feel like a boulder slowly crushing you." "Let them know, 'Hey, there's too much going on right now, and I need a break.' They'll totally understand, and yeah, they'll ask why, but it's a good way to teach them to express their feelings in a healthy way (not yelling or lashing out) and that it's definitely OK to feel overwhelmed and step away from what's causing you to feel that way." 29, Washington Lenblr / Getty Images / iStockphoto 13. "First, the regret: spending more time at work and hobbies than with my kids. The big parenting lesson is: it only takes 45 minutes a week of one-on-one quality time for each child to improve your family's lives. More is better. I read that playing with a dog for 10 minutes a day will keep them from getting depressed. Kids aren't dogs, but they need that play/quality time, too. If your kids are older than the ones who like to play, do something useful with them, like baking, or repairing your home, a car, or one of their possessions. Be interested in what they are interested in. Teenagers pretend to want us around less, but that's not accurate. They want us when they want us, and we should, kinda, be on call." "Remember: listening is an act of love. So, if they don't want to play or work with you on a project, then just be there for them when they need you. Watch them doing something they like, even if it's boring. If you are bored, keep that to yourself. When your kids are nearing adulthood, withhold judgment and offer feedback as an option. If they don't want it, let it slide. Don't be the bad parents you might have had, but be the parents you wish you had. You won't get a parade or a medal for being a present parent, but you will inspire your children to be the best versions of themselves. So, let's spend time with our kids! You won't get that time back." 64, Oregon Edwin Tan / Getty Images 14. "Not taking my mental health seriously. I had severe depression during my pregnancy, and my OB started me on meds and connected me to an amazing therapist. My daughter was born in March 2020, right when lockdowns started. We were completely isolated. That amazing therapist took another job. I was heartbroken and didn't try to find a new therapist. Big mistake. My symptoms got worse, peripartum turned to postpartum, my medications were no longer effective, and new medications were limited by breastfeeding (another choice I was adamant about at the time). I self-medicated with alcohol, which spiraled out of control for six months." "My husband felt helpless and didn't know where to turn. I finally took myself to the ER after writing a suicide note to my husband and nearly intentionally crashing my car (with our daughter in it). After three weeks in psych, missing my daughter's first Christmas, and months of outpatient therapy, I began to get the help I desperately needed. We switched to formula so I could put ME and my mental health first. There is no shame in putting your mental health first and using the formula that works for your child. Depression stole my daughter's first months from me, and I let it but not getting the help I needed. Three years, an amazing therapist, diagnoses, medication, therapy, and quitting drinking later, I'm slowly coming back online. It was a terrible struggle for a long time. My husband had my therapist's number when things got rough, and I refused to do anything. My recommendation for anyone about to have a child: GET A THERAPIST. Give your partner their contact for when they need help supporting you. Don't be afraid to tell your therapist what you're thinking and feeling, no matter how scary. It takes a lot to get involuntarily committed. The hospital is for people to get better; you wouldn't delay going to the ER for a broken bone, your mental health is the same way." 39, Connecticut Maskot / Getty Images/Maskot 15. "Comparing my sons milestones like crawling and walking to other babies I knew. Kids are all different, and there is a range of what is 'healthy.' Also, trying to let him 'cry it out' when he wasnt able to fall asleep on his own. Never again." lunabella85 Joshua Dalsimer / Getty Images 16. "I regret not having kids earlier, in part because of all of the advice and listicles that I encountered. Frequently, all I heard was that 'your life will be bad because you had a kid! You will lose independence! People regret being parents!' Yet, parenthood has really clicked for me. And I don't miss a lot of the childfree things that I no longer do." "Would I like to go to the movies every once in a while? Sure. But did I really go all that often before kids? No, not really. And now I am with a hilarious and fun little dude every day." okayusername Kate_sept2004 / Getty Images 17. "I wish I would have been smarter when choosing my daughter's father. I know a lot of people say that, but now, because of that choice, I have been raising my daughter as a single mom with no support since she was seven months old. I'm an only child, and all of my family lives states away. It's hard but she's worth it. I regret that she'll most likely never get to know who her biological father is as he will likely be behind bars well into her adulthood." "Ladies, when a man shows you who he is when you start dating them, LISTEN. They aren't going to change." 43, Illinois Jgi / Getty Images / Tetra images RF 18. "I regret making my kids the center of my life because it left me with no life of my own once they grew up. I did manage to create a social life for myself, but I now realize it was really an unnecessary and unappreciated sacrifice." 46, USA Chaay_tee / Getty Images / iStockphoto 19. "I regret stressing over everything when my oldest was little. Im a picky eater, and I was so worried they werent eating enough; I let it consume me and was constantly stressed at meal times, especially when it came to vegetables. I didnt realize the stress and insistence could actually create food aversions/issues until my pediatrician assured me that little ones wont starve themselves and to relax and let them eat until they wanted to be done. Once I switched it up, there were literally no major issues at all." "I also stressed over potty training, but alas, once I relaxed and let them lead the way when they were ready, everything worked out, and no one is still in diapers. My experience with raising my second child was easier than my first because I was less wound up and actually able to enjoy the milestones as they came without stress or worry. With my first, I was mostly focused on survival." amandac4d5d17b3f Jose Luis Pelaez Inc / Getty Images 20. "My kids were born at a time when my husband and I were on shaky ground to begin with (in our relationship and financially), and I suffered from pretty severe postpartum depression with both of my boys. As a result, their infancy and toddlerhood were pretty dark times for me." "My kids are older now. and things are much better all around, but I wish like hell that I was in a better mental state when they were babies. I wish I was more present in those days." cgallaghernovember Lwa / Getty Images 21. "With my first child, I was relatively young and naive. I took whatever my pediatrician said as gospel. When my baby vomited all day long every day and wasnt growing, I was told all babies spit up. When he started showing dangerous behavior around the age of three, I was told he was acting out in jealousy over my current pregnancy. I eventually left that pediatrician after being told the office was first and foremost, a business in the interest of making money. I found another pediatrician who let me trust my gut and also trusted my gut. I could take my kids and say, Theres just something off, and shed do a full checkup until she figured out an ear infection or strep throat. My oldest son is in college now. It wasnt until middle school that we found out he had autism. Mainly social cues, sensory issues, etc. We could have started working to help him when he was three years old if the original pediatrician had listened." "Hes in college now, flourishing, but called me from the ER to say he was vomiting blood and in severe pain. Turns out, he has one of the most severe cases of GERD the doctors have seen. He has hernias and ulcers at the age of 19. Looking back at his infancy, it wasnt just spit up, he had acid reflex. Hes been suffering since birth. They wanted to do emergency surgery, but because of his autism, he told them no because he was too busy with finals and marching band. This poor kid cant even swallow food without chasing it down with water. He coughs and chokes in his sleep all things that I could have prevented or helped if I had trusted myself and not the doctor who I trusted to as a highly sought after and recommended practitioner to have my childs best interest at heart. Just because a pediatrician has a cult following does not mean they are the best. Dont always listen to others, meet with multiple doctors, and choose one who makes you feel safe and comfortable someone who trusts you and not just the other way around." kristinasays Jonathan Kirn / Getty Images 22. "Not just chilling out a bit more. I definitely have forced myself to learn how to not be a helicopter parent, and I'm still learning. When you have your first kid, you realize how scary the world is and you just want to keep them safe. You have to find the right balance between keeping them safe and not sheltering them." "There's just too many times looking back that I wished I would have just chilled out a bit." firsttimemomics Rawfile Redux / Getty Images 23. "I wish I had gotten help for my depression (not postnatal depression, major depressive disorder) way, WAY sooner. And then, I wish I had gotten better help. Because of my depression and the need to use all available energy to get through work, by the time I got home and cooked dinner, I was so done. And I was a single mom with a kid who has ADHD and who hated school but needed attention, and I either yelled a lot or I tuned out. There is so much about his life that I wished I had done better." 52, New Jersey Jose Luis Raota / Getty Images 24. "I regret staying with my ex-husband as long as I did. My oldest witnessed way more toxic behavior than I ever should have allowed. and I'll regret it forever. He and I are MUCH better divorced and co-parenting than we ever were married, and now, I'm proud to model what a healthy relationship should look like for my kids." audreyunashamed Juanma Hache / Getty Images 25. "I wish I hadn't strived for perfectionism so much. I used to get stressed out when things weren't clean and/or tidy. My kids are adults now, and when they talk about the best parts of their childhood, they talk about the books we loved reading together or time spent playing or visiting places. They've never once mentioned how clean or tidy the house was." "Time spent with your kids is priceless; they'll never be the age they are again, and you'll never get that time back. Make the most of it now." vee1977 Laurence Monneret / Getty Images And finally... 26. "Wishing for things to be over with to get to the next stage! Like, 'I wish he would be able to walk so I wouldn't have to carry him around all day!' 'I wish he would talk so I could know what he was saying.' 'I wish he could entertain himself for a bit so I could have a breather!' Now, I miss his little crawls and his cute baby babbles! I feel I didn't appreciate the little moments because I wanted to get to the next part." mgoodwin1017 Kohei Hara / Getty Images Police in Gujarat, India arrested two illegal immigration agents in connection with the deaths of four near the US-Canada border last year in January (News9 Live / YouTube Screengrab) Police in India have arrested two men, purported to be illegal immigration agents, in connection with the Indian family of four who froze to death near the US-Canada border last year in January. The four family members were attempting to cross from Manitoba in Canada to the United States on 19 January 2022. Their frozen dead bodies were found lying together in a field in Manitoba just 12 metres away from the United States border. Police in the western Indian state of Gujarat said on Tuesday that besides the illegal immigration agents they have arrested, they are also looking for two other agents based in the US and Canada. The family of four were part of a larger group of people attempting to cross into the United States. While this family of four from Gujarat identified as Jagdish Patel, 39, Vaishaliben, 37, their daughter, Vihangi, 11 and son, Dharmik, 3 froze to death, others were detained by the US authorities after they crossed the border. The city crime branch has registered an offence in a case wherein the accused (agents) had forced 11 people to walk in the snow in a bid to get them illegally cross the US-Canada border, causing the death of four members of a family, Chaitanya Mandlik, a senior police official in Gujarats capital city of Ahmedabad told reporters. The Patels were from Dingucha village in their home state of Gujarat. Indians and Canadians alike were stunned by the news when their frozen bodies were found last year. The family had been trudging through knee-to-waist-deep snow for 11 hours in Emerson, Manitoba where the temperature had dropped to more than 35 degrees Celsius below freezing. The two arrested agents are accused of supplying the family members with paperwork and helping them get to the US. They are facing charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the attempt at culpable homicide, human trafficking and criminal conspiracy, Mr Mandlik said. The victims were taken to Toronto in Canada and later to Vancouver. The agents then dumped them at Winnipeg in Manitoba province leaving them to cross over to the US on their own, Press Trust of India quoted Mr Mandlik as saying. The Canadian Press quoted Manitoba police as saying that there was no evidence to suggest the Patel family travelled to Vancouver. The local law enforcement said that they were working with the international law enforcement partners to advance the investigation into the deaths of four family members near the US border. Illustration by DANI PENDERGAST Phillis Wheatley, the enslaved prodigy poet, has fascinated readers since the 18th century, even before the 1773 publication of her volume, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. David Waldstreichers expansive new biography, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poets Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence, is sure to inspire new generations with the story of the genius child, brought to America on the slave ship Phillis, for which she was named by her mistress, Susanna Wheatley, who soon discovered and helped to nurture her intellectual and literary gifts. Hailed as a marvel, a miracle even, taught to read English by Susanna and her daughter, she soon penned odes and elegies to and for the elite generation that led America to revolution. They responded in turn. George Washington corresponded with her, Benjamin Franklin visited her in London, and Thomas Jefferson wrote a disparaging, white supremacist assessment of her literary capacity. Her name has graced schools and other organizations and institutions in Black communities nationwide. In the centuries following her death, she has been celebrated for her talent, reviled for her seeming capitulation to notions of Africa as unenlightened and pagan, and rescued and reclaimed, especially by Black women writers. Most recently, in The Age of Phillis (2020), the poet and novelist Honoree Fanonne Jeffers provides a beautiful and provocative meditation on and imagining of Wheatleys origins and interior selves. Waldstreicher joins these efforts in giving us a Wheatley who is most significant for our time as the nation once again engages in the process of redefining itself and its relationship to core principles and values. The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is a rich and necessary book that chronicles her remarkable life as a series of journeys from Africa to America, from Boston to London and back, from the American colonies to the new nation, from American slavery to an aspiration toward freedom. While there is much we will never know about the young girl who would become the first African and the third woman in the colonies to publish a book of poems, Waldstreichers detailed research into the history and contexts that produced her raises a number of important questions and reveals possibilities for our consideration. Might the precocious African child have been Muslim and therefore literate prior to her arrival in Boston? Might the markings she wrote on the walls of her masters home have been Arabic script, or were they only the scribblings common of children her age? We are invited to imagine her life before the Wheatleys trained her to be the pious Christian, before they honed her gifts to express gratitude for her enslavement, before her introduction to Christianity and salvation. Such questions underscore that she and the multitude of Africans like her were not blank slates when they arrived on the shores of what would become the United States of America. These multitudes are another gift of Waldstreichers book. While we have come to think of Wheatley as a singular soula Black child in a white household, an enslaved child in a city that gave us many of our ideas about freedomWaldstreicher introduces us to a bevy of named and anonymous, free and enslaved Black people in the city of Boston. Among the most fascinating is the well-educated but enslaved Andrew Wendell, praised by his owner for his character for truth, his integrity, who also wrote poetry. In contrast, there was a group described by John Adams as a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes who affiliated themselves with Irish teagues and other white ruffians. Most importantly, there was Wheatleys lifelong friend and correspondent Obour Tanner of Newport, Rhode Island, who might have first met her on board the Phillis, and John Peters, the free Black man whom she would eventually marry. All of this is to say that while Wheatley was no doubt a special and somewhat elite figure, she was neither singular nor alone. Finally, the Wheatley of these pages is an ambitious young woman, certain of her gifts and of her status as a child of God, desirous of freedom for herself and for her fellow Blacks, confident that she has something to offer as the nation emerges, and actively engaged in trying to shape her own future and that of the nation she would claim as her own. Hers was a short but remarkable life, one that is especially inspiring in our times because of her fervent belief that her voice mattered, that she should be heard, and that she could shape public opinion on concerns of race, freedom, and democracy. You Might Also Like A Russian missile strike over the weekend at an apartment complex in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro exposed a weakness in Ukraines air defenses, just as many fear more brutal Russian attacks are on the horizon. The Dnipro strike killed 45 people, including six children, and injured another 79 people in one of the most devastating attacks on Ukraines civilian population since Moscows invasion nearly a year ago. Russia has targeted critical infrastructure and energy grids in Ukraine with strikes since October, hoping to cow the Ukrainian people into submission after facing numerous setbacks in the war. In the Dnipro strike, however, Ukraine says it was completely unable to stop the missile that hit the apartment complex because it lacked the defense capabilities to intercept it. The deadly incident, just days after the Kremlins appointment of a new commander to oversee the war, is leading to concerns that a more desperate Russia will increasingly carry out such strikes and Ukraine will struggle to defend against them. Gian Gentile, the associate director of the nonprofit Rand Corporations Arroyo Center, predicted Russia will keep up the strikes as it prepares to launch a potential ground offensive in coming months. Gentile said he could not speak with finality on Russian intent, but he believes the Kremlin is at the point now where they are intentionally killing civilians to turn them against the government. They may be moderating between going after infrastructure and power nodes and civilian areas, he added. But they are following a playbook that lots of other countries have taken in war and that is to punish the civilian population. After the strike, a Kremlin spokesperson said Russia does not target residential areas and falsely attributed blame for the attack on Ukrainian air defenses, according to the Kyiv Post. The U.K. Defense Ministry said the Dnipro strike was part of a weekend barrage of missiles targeting power grids and not a direct assault on the multistory apartment complex, noting the Kh-22 missile used in the Jan. 14 attack is notoriously inaccurate. Story continues Ukrainian officials on Monday said they do not possess a defense system capable of downing Russias Kh-22s, a Soviet-era long-range missile designed to strike ships and aircraft. Ukraines Air Force Command said in a Facebook post that Russia has fired more than 210 of the missiles since the war began and Ukraine has shot down none of them. According to analysts, Kyiv is physically capable of shooting the missiles down, but they are extremely hard to track. The Kh-22 can reach more than 3,000 mph once fired from Russias Tu-22M3 bomber planes. The missile type, equipped with a conventional warhead, has been used in past strikes, including one on a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk in June that killed around 20 people. Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraines defense secretary, said Kyiv needs the Patriot missile defense system or a SAMP-T, a defense system co-owned by France and Italy, to effectively take the missiles down. The U.S. and Germany are each providing Ukraine with one Patriot defense system, and American troops are training Ukrainian personnel on the missile system at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. But Sak said Ukraine will undoubtedly need more of the Patriots. Its a question of quantity because Ukraine is a large country, Sak told The Hill. To protect Ukrainian cities, we will need to continue to work with our partners to get more of these systems. Others cautioned that while more air defense systems were good, they can only do so much, arguing Ukraine also has to be effective in responding to the attacks. Konstantin Sonin, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, said there were indications Russia may have modified its missiles or launched the attack from an unclear direction, further stymying Ukraine. In this attack, the air defense was extremely unsuccessful, he said. I think theyre extremely busy trying to figure out how it was done. Russia is reportedly running low on ammunition and inventory, leading to questions regarding if the Kremlin has the ability to continue the strikes. But Sak said Russia is continuing to produce more missiles, and with its existing stockpile, the Kremlin could at any given moment conduct two or three mass strikes. That evidence is also supported by other analysts, who estimate Russia could continue the attacks with the current munitions supply through at least the summer. The Dnipro attack led to an outpouring of grief from Ukraine, even in a country already beleaguered by war and death. Noting the sheer number of civilian deaths, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Monday evening address that Ukraine is doing everything to strengthen our air defense as much as possible. What happened in Dnipro, the fact that Russia is preparing a new attempt to seize the initiative in the war, the fact that the nature of hostilities at the front requires new decisions in the defense supply, he said, all this only emphasizes how important it is to coordinate our efforts efforts of all members of the coalition to defend Ukraine and freedom. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India has picked up a radio signal from the most distant galaxy ever recorded. (NCRA) A huge radio telescope in India has picked up a radio signal from the most distant galaxy ever recorded more than eight billion years ago. Detecting radio signals from distant galaxies is difficult as the signals become weaker the further away a galaxy is from Earth, making it tricky for current radio telescopes to pick up. Researchers from Montreal in Canada and India have captured a radio signal at a specific wavelength known as the 21cm line, allowing astronomers to peer into the secrets of the early universe. Read more: What are fast radio bursts, and why do they look like aliens? Arnab Chakraborty, a post-doctoral researcher at Montreal's McGill University, said: "A galaxy emits different kinds of radio signals. Until now, it's only been possible to capture this particular signal from a galaxy nearby, limiting our knowledge to those galaxies closer to Earth. "But thanks to the help of a naturally occurring phenomenon called gravitational lensing, we can capture a faint signal from a record-breaking distance. "This will help us understand the composition of galaxies at much greater distances from Earth." Image of the radio signal from the galaxy. Credit: Chakraborty & Roy/NCRA-TIFR/GMRT For the first time, researchers were able to detect the signal from a distant star-forming galaxy known as SDSSJ0826+5630 and measure its gas composition. They observed that the atomic mass of the gas content of this particular galaxy was almost twice the mass of the stars visible to us. The signal detected by the team was emitted from this galaxy when the universe was only 4.9 billion years old, enabling the researchers to glimpse into the secrets of the early universe. Chakraborty said: "It's the equivalent to a look-back in time of 8.8 billion years." Read more: Telescope detects 100 mysterious radio signals The signal was captured using 'gravitational lensing' where waves are 'bent' by large objects between the target and our telescopes working like a huge magnifying glass. Story continues Co-author Nirupam Roy, an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Science, said: "Gravitational lensing magnifies the signal coming from a distant object to help us peer into the early universe. "In this specific case, the signal is bent by the presence of another massive body, another galaxy, between the target and the observer. This effectively results in the magnification of the signal by a factor of 30, allowing the telescope to pick it up." The researchers said that these results demonstrated the feasibility of observing faraway galaxies in similar situations with gravitational lensing. It also opens exciting new opportunities for probing the cosmic evolution of stars and galaxies with existing low-frequency radio telescopes. Watch: Hubble Space Telescope watches black hole eat a star Russian President Vladimir Putin talks on the phone as part of a nationwide charity campaign, in Moscow on January 3, 2023. MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images Russia's embassy in Sweden tweeted a map that went against Putin's territorial claims in Ukraine. The map depicted Ukraine with its internationally recognized borders. Putin claims a number of Ukrainian regions as part of Russia. Russia's embassy in Sweden on Tuesday shared a map of Europe that showed Ukraine with its internationally recognized borders, which goes against Russian President Vladimir Putin's unrecognized land claims in the country. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea a peninsula on the Black Sea. The annexation of Crimea prompted outcry across the globe and drove a wedge between Moscow and the West. Last February, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in September, even as the war raged on, Putin illegally annexed four Ukrainian territories Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia following referendums that were decried as a sham by leaders around the world. At the time, Putin announced that there were "four new regions of Russia." Though Putin claims these regions as part of Russia, the territories are not fully controlled or occupied by Russian forces. The map shared by Russia's embassy in Sweden, which claimed to show gas prices in Europe, did not depict these regions as Russian territory. The Kremlin has taken extreme steps to censor information on the war in Ukraine, making it a crime to spread "false information" about the Russian military punishable by up to 15 years in prison. It's unclear if this map violates this law, but critics of the war in Ukraine have ended up behind bars. The Russian embassy in Sweden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. The war in Ukraine has gone poorly for the Russian military, which has suffered heavy casualties and struggled to make gains. Ukraine, paying a heavy toll of its own, has regained control of a significant chunk of the territory Russia occupied in the early days of the fighting, including in the regions Putin now claims as part of Russia. But there is still heavy fighting in the country's east as Russia continues conduct strikes in civilian areas across Ukraine. Read the original article on Business Insider This French nun, Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister Andre in 1944, is Europe's oldest person and was tested positive for coronavirus on 16 January but didn't develop any symptoms Florian Escoffier/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Sister Andre The world's oldest person, French nun Sister Andre, has died. She was 118. Sister Andre, born Lucile Randon on Feb. 11, 1904, died at her retirement home in France, according to Reuters. "There is great sadness, but it was her desire to join her beloved brother," David Tavella, spokesman for the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home in Toulon, told Australia's ABC News. "For her, it's a liberation." Tavella said Sister Andre died in her sleep. Sister Andre assumed the title of the world's oldest person in April 2022, after the death of Japan resident Kane Tanaka at age 119. At the time, Guinness World Records named Sister Andre the oldest living nun, the second-oldest French person, and the second-oldest European person on record. RELATED: 116-Year-Old Nun, World's Second-Oldest Person, Survives COVID: 'I Wasn't Scared' French catholic nun Lucile Randon at the Saint-Catherine-Laboure nursing home where she lives in Toulon, southern France CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP via Getty Images During her life, Sister Andre served as a teacher, governess, and caretaker to children during World War II. After the war, she spent nearly three decades working with older adults and orphans. She worked at Vichy, an Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes-area hospital, for nearly three decades before becoming a Catholic nun, per Guinness World Records. In addition to living through WWII, Sister Andre survived the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic despite testing positive for the virus on Jan. 16, 2021. RELATED: Woman Believed to Be the Oldest Person in the U.S. Dead at 115 Sister Andre was the oldest living survivor of COVID-19, Guinness World Records said. "They get me up at 7 a.m., they give me my breakfast, then they put me at my desk where I stay busy with little things," Sister Andre told Guinness World Records of a normal day in her retirement home. RELATED VIDEO: 70-Year-Old Woman Becomes the Oldest Person to Climb El Capitan Sister Andre spent some of her final days eating chocolates and sweets and drinking wine. "Her glass of wine maintains her and which is perhaps her longevity secret," a staff member from the retirement home told Guinness World Records last year. "I don't know I don't encourage people to drink a glass of wine every day!" Solomon Pena, a former Republican candidate for state office in New Mexico, has been arrested after a string of recent shootings targeting the homes of elected Democratic officials in the state. Pena is suspected of orchestrating the attacks. The incidents in New Mexico came amid other politically motivated violence in the U.S. following the November election, including the assault on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosis (D-Calif.) husband. The shootings and subsequent arrest of Pena reverberated through state and national politics, leaving many to wonder just who Pena is. Pena ran for the state legislature, refused to concede Pena launched a campaign for the New Mexico legislature in the 2022 midterms, challenging Democratic incumbent Rep. Miguel Garcia. Democrats control both chambers of the legislature and the governors mansion in New Mexico. Pena had served nearly seven years in prison after being convicted in 2008 of stealing goods in a smash and grab scheme, according to CNN affiliate KOAT. His opponent Garcia attempted to get Pena removed from the ballot before the election, saying his status as an ex-felon should have prevented him from running in the state. A state court cleared Pena to be able to run in the election, according to KOAT. Pena lost the race handily, receiving just 26 percent of the vote. Pena tweeted after the election that he never conceded his race against Garcia and was researching his options. Pena leaned into the rhetoric of right-wing candidates who have challenged election results since former President Trump and his supporters launched attacks against the results of the 2020 election, calling into question the integrity of the countrys voting systems. Beyond launching a social media campaign claiming that he was not conceding his election to Garcia, Pena took it upon himself to compile and present evidence of what he said was clear election fraud. Allegedly, Pena personally approached local and state officials with claims of election fraud after his defeat and before the shootings. He approached a legislator and county commissioners at their homes with paperwork that he said was evidence of fraud, according to police. Story continues One of the houses where he delivered the paperwork was that of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, which had shots fired at it weeks later. Penas support of Trump and election denialism After Trump formally announced his 2024 bid for the White House, Pena took to Twitter to voice his support for the former presidents third campaign. Posed in a red Make America Great Again sweatshirt, Pena stands next to two Trump flags and says in the tweet: Trump just announced for 2024. I stand with him. Pena latched onto the rhetoric of right-wingers who challenged election results all across the country. In a reply to a tweet from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Pena outlined his belief that New Mexico elections are absolutely rigged. And we will pursue justice, he said. When we finally defeat the rigged NM elections, oh, the hero I will be! MAGA nation 4ever! he said in another tweet on Jan. 9. The four shootings at the homes of state officials Between Dec. 4 and Jan. 4, there were four separate shootings at the homes of four different state and local officials. On top of the shots fired at Barboas home, which happened on Dec. 4, shots were also fired at the home of incoming state House Speaker Javier Martinez (D) on Dec. 8; then-Bernalillo Commissioner Debbie OMalley on Dec. 11; and state Sen. Linda Lopez on Jan. 3, according to police. Pena was arrested in Albuquerque on Monday. After police told reporters that Pena was the believed mastermind behind the shootings, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said the investigation confirmed that the shootings were politically motivated. An arrest warrant for Pena concluded that there was probable cause to believe that after he lost his election in November, he paid four men and provided them with firearms to commit the shootings at the four homes. It also concludes that Pena personally participated in at least one of the shootings. Solomon intended to serious injury (sic) or cause death to occupants inside their homes, the warrant concluded. Pena was arrested on preliminary charges of felon in possession of a firearm; attempted aggravated battery with a deadly weapon; criminal solicitation; and four counts each of shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting at or from a motor vehicle, and conspiracy. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. I spent a month traveling across Southeast Asia last year. Here are my top 7 tips for anyone booking rentals, from Airbnbs to 5-star hotels. I spent more than 30 nights staying in rentals across six countries in Southeast Asia last year. I learned how save money, book efficiently, and receive perks whenever I booked. Tools like Google Street View unexpectedly helped me to choose the right rentals when traveling. Over the course of my time as a travel reporter for Insider, I have spent more than 30 nights staying in rentals across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea. The author at the cheapest hostel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Marielle Descalsota/Insider I've been covering regional travel for Insider for a year, which has meant spending a lot of time in rentals. I've spent nights in luxury resorts in Indonesia, hostels in Singapore and Thailand, a campervan Airbnb in the Philippines, and a shipping container hotel in Malaysia. When I first started making reservations for these rentals, it felt daunting I was unfamiliar with the locations and there weren't many reliable reviews online. But after testing out dozens of accommodations, I've learned how to choose the right accommodation, book efficiently, and save money. Here are seven of my top tips for travelers. 1. Read recent reviews on websites like TripAdvisor and look up vlogs to get a realistic picture of what the rental is like. The view of Genting Highlands from Amber Court. Marielle Descalsota/Insider Travel writers and bloggers can have good tips, but I think it's more helpful to find out what the average person experienced during their stay. Google Reviews and TripAdvisor have both proven to be good places to gut-check the reality of hostels, hotels, and resorts. I suggest filtering reviews to show the most recent ones. If you're staying in an Airbnb or somewhere unique like a glamping tent, vlogs on YouTube and TikTok might be useful. Photos online, especially those posted by the rental's management, can be deceiving, so do your research and look at as many reviews as possible before booking. 2. Look up the rental on Google Street View before you book. Street view around the cabin I stayed at in Mae Rim, Thailand. Google Maps Whenever I travel to remote locations, I take to Google Maps and find satellite views of the rental to see its condition. Story continues I also walk virtually around the neighboring streets of the rental to see what the atmosphere is like, and if I need to make special transport arrangements in case it's located up a mountain or in a rural village. 3. If something about the online listing seems off, give them a call before you book. Wood and Mountain Cabin, Mae Rim, Thailand. Marielle Descalsota/Insider Southeast Asia is known for its unique rentals but they can sometimes be sketchy. Several videos on TikTok have shown tourists mistakenly booking abandoned resorts in places like Bali. I've stayed in remote rentals including a rural mountain cabin in Thailand and a "haunted" hotel in Malaysia. I was initially skeptical of these rentals, so as an additional precaution, I called reservations before booking to make sure the place is still up and running. I also asked for extra information like recent photos of the rental, instructions on how to get there, and who to contact in case I got lost along the way. 4. Avoid listings where guests complain about being "scammed" or you may find yourself paying an additional fee in person. Negative reviews on Google Hotels. Screenshoot/Google Reviews Look out for the words "scammer" and "overcharge" in reviews when doing your research you might just be asked to pay extra upon arrival. During a trip to a budget hotel in Malaysia, I was asked to pay an additional 80 ringgit (around $18.50) upon arrival, despite have already prepaid online. If you're backpacking and are closely watching your budget, it may be best to avoid these rentals altogether despite the cheap advertised rates. 5. Call in advance to request early or late check-in or anything else, really. Inside Garden Pod at Gardens by the Bay. Marielle Descalsota/Insider I have found that most boutique rentals are willing to take special requests like early check-in or late check-out as long as the request is made in advance. The only exception to this are hostels and budget motels, where there is a strict hourly rate. In that case, your best move will be to check if there's a discounted rate for early check-in. 6. Be patient when trying to snag deals sometimes it's worth refreshing the page a couple times to get a lower price. Villa Samadhi's Sarang room. Marielle Descalsota/Insider Flash deals and prices can appear on booking sites without prior notice, so I typically refresh the booking page several times before making my payment. For example, I booked a room with a private plunge pool in a luxury resort in Singapore for under $400 on a third-party website. Although the price listed was closer to $600, a flash sale netted me a substantial discount. 7. If you can, travel in the off-season. The street in Bangkok's Chinatown in July. Marielle Descalsota/Insider If you're traveling in Southeast Asia where the weather is hot and humid all year round, it might be worth making your booking during the monsoon season, when it's likely to a bit rain more. So long as you're not booking a rental in a flood or landslide-prone area, it's perfectly fine to book during a less busy season not only will you save money on accommodation, but tourist attractions are also likely to be less crowded. Read the original article on Insider A Russian victory in Ukraine is assured, president Vladimir Putin has claimed. Addressing workers at a factory in St Petersburg that makes air defence systems, Mr Putin said overall military equipment output was rising even as demand for it was growing because of the war in Ukraine abd that his countrys powerful military-industrial complex was was one of the reasons Moscow was likely to prevail. In terms of achieving the end result and the victory that is inevitable, there are several things ... It is the unity and cohesion of the Russian and multinational Russian people, the courage and heroism of our fighters ... and of course the work of the military-industrial complex and factories like yours and people like you, Mr Putin said. Vladimir Putin meets with workers at the Obukhov State Plant (Getty Images) Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it, he added. He went on to claim that Russian arms companies manufactured about the same number of anti-aircraft missiles as the rest of the world combined, and three times more than the US. Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Putin attended an event with veterans to mark the 80th anniversary of the lifting of the Second World war siege of former Leningrad a protracted military blockade undertaken between September 1941 and January 1944. He told the veterans that Russia was fighting in Ukraine to defend ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, which Moscow says are subject to systematic discrimination in Ukraine. Kyiv rejects the allegation, as do Western nations, and says Moscow is using it as a pretext for a land grab. What were doing today, including with our special operation, is an attempt to stop this war and protect our people who live on these territories, said Mr Putin. Putin attends a wreath laying ceremony marking the anniversary of the siege of Leningrad (Getty Images) Mr Putin laid a wreath at the citys Piskaryov memorial cemetery, where 420,000 civilian victims of the siege and 70,000 Soviet soldiers were buried. He also put flowers in a section where his brother, who died as a child during the siege, was buried in a mass grave. As a Texas grand jury weighs whether to charge an armed civilian in the fatal shooting this month of an alleged robber inside a Texas taqueria, the case has cast a spotlight on people taking the law into their own hands. A combination of a proliferation of guns, "stand your ground'' states, concealed carry permit holders and a growing lack of confidence in police to protect communities appear to be fueling a spike in incidents of U.S. citizens intervening in what they perceive to be crime, law enforcement experts told ABC News. PHOTO: Security video from inside the The Ranchito #4 taqueria in southwest Houston shows a 46-year-old diner fatally shooting an alleged masked robber on Jan. 5, 2023. (KTRK) In addition to the taqueria robbery shooting, the episodes over the past month include a man fatally shot by an alleged car burglar he confronted in New Mexico and a Missouri woman charged with murder for allegedly killing a man she caught riding in her stolen car and shooting two innocent bystanders. A Washington, D.C., homeowner who killed an unarmed 13-year-old boy he suspected of breaking into vehicles has also prompted calls for his arrest by community activists. PHOTO: A customer shot and killed a man who attempted to rob restaurant patrons while armed at a taqueria in southwest Houston on Jan. 5, 2023. (Houston Police Department) "The perception that you cannot rely on law enforcement to prevent crimes, resolve crime, in a way that they used to, I think that does play a big part," T. Markus Funk, a former Illinois federal prosecutor and an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School, told ABC News. Lack of solid data Statistics on such incidents are scarce with no centralized federal or local law enforcement agency keeping track. The lack of solid data makes it difficult to determine if there has been an increase in civilians intervening in crimes, experts said. FBI data shows the number of homicides by civilians classified as justifiable has increased annually from 286 in 2014 to 386 in 2019. The FBI's annual crime statistics, however, lack details of the circumstances involved in each incident other than reporting guns were used in the vast majority of them. "It's hard to really determine whether its going up, whether this as an issue that is actually getting worse or if its being reported more, or if its the result of something like the access to weapons, especially illegal ones," Keith Taylor, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired New York Police Department officer, told ABC News. Story continues Anecdotally, Taylor and Funk said it appears that more civilians are taking matters into their own hands rather than relying on police to solve crimes. In several recent incidents in New Jersey, civilian groups have taken it upon themselves to conduct vigilante sting operations to catch child sex predators by posing as minors in internet chat rooms. Prosecutors said the vigilante groups have recorded YouTube videos of them confronting alleged child predators when they show up at prearranged rendezvous before calling the police, officials said. The Bergen County, New Jersey, Prosecutors Office released a statement in December discouraging such vigilante activity. MORE: Michael Drejka, who invoked 'stand your ground' defense in shooting of unarmed man, guilty of manslaughter "Bergen County law enforcement strongly discourages this activity, which holds the potential for violence and injury to the individuals involved as well as innocent bystanders," the statement reads. "It also jeopardizes the due process rights of potential targets, puts private citizens in danger, and risks involving law enforcement in illegal activity." Gun ownership skyrockets Adding to the dangers of such confrontations is the proliferation of armed civilians, law enforcement experts said. Politicians pandering for votes and gun-rights groups have also helped prompt the surge in gun ownership by fanning the perception that crime nationwide is running rampant and using the Second Amendment to "push this narrative of the necessity of more individual gun ownership," Taylor said. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of concealed handgun permits issued nationwide has skyrocketed to more than 22 million, a 48% increase since 2016, according to studies by the Crime Prevention Research Center. In 2022, concealed gun permit holders grew by about 488,000, up 2.3% from 2021, the studies show. MORE: New York City Council meets on legislation related to limiting concealed guns in Times Square In addition to the jump in concealed handgun permits, the number of states adopting some type of "stand your ground" self-defense laws have increased to 38 in 2023 from 24 in 2012. PHOTO: States with Stand Your Ground Laws (ABC NEWS) "If individuals feel that their local government, their local public safety entities are unable to do the job of sufficiently protecting them, then this idea of taking matters into your own hands becomes more palatable," Taylor said. "The general public may not understand that when an individual decides to take action as a vigilante, the police may think that person is the shooter and kill them." MORE: 'Stand Your Ground' laws under scrutiny again after man gunned down in parking lot In June 2021, a 40-year-old man fatally shot an armed suspect who gunned down a police officer in downtown Arvada, Colorado, according to the Arvada Police Department. A police officer responding to the incident fatally shot the good Samaritan when he saw him holding the cop killer's AR-15 rifle, officials said. String of recent incidents Recent incidents that have ended in either a good Samaritan being killed or ending up charged after intervening in perceived crimes, include: The Jan. 5 shooting at The Ranchito #4 taqueria in southwest Houston, where surveillance video captured a 46-year-old diner shooting an alleged masked robber nine times, killing him. The alleged perpetrator turned out to be carrying a toy gun. The armed diner, who returned the stolen money to victimized patrons before leaving the scene, was later interviewed by police and prosecutors referred the case to a Harris County grand jury to decide if charges should be filed against the diner. The diner's attorney released a statement saying his client "feared for his life" and under Texas law was justified in using lethal force. PHOTO: A customer shot and killed a man who attempted to rob restaurant patrons while armed at a taqueria in southwest Houston late Thursday night. (Houston Police Department) On Jan. 6, a 30-year-old man was shot to death in Las Cruces, New Mexico, after he confronted a 19-year-old man "he had reason to believe ... was burglarizing vehicles earlier that morning at a nearby Walmart Superstore," according to police. The encounter escalated into a physical confrontation that ended with the victim being fatally shot, police said. The suspect was arrested and charged with felony voluntary manslaughter. On Jan. 7, a Washington, D.C., homeowner fatally shot an unarmed 13-year-old boy he suspected of breaking into cars in his neighborhood at 4 a.m. The shooting prompted community activists to call on prosecutors to file homicide charges against the homeowner, who has not been publicly identified. On Dec. 22, a 35-year-old armed woman tracked her stolen car to a gas station in suburban St. Louis and fatally shot a 19-year-old man she found inside the vehicle and a 49-year-old man outside the vehicle, who police said was an innocent bystander. A second innocent bystander was shot in the incident and survived, according to police. The woman was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony assault, police said. Fatal taqueria robber shooting casts scrutiny on armed civilians originally appeared on abcnews.go.com The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Amazon on Wednesday for failing to furnish a place of employment that was free from recognized hazards that were causing serious physical harm to employees. This is the second set of OSHA citations issued after referrals from federal prosecutors in New York who have been investigating workplace complaints. The new citations said employees at three Amazon facilities were exposed to ergonomic hazards, which put them at high risk for lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders. MORE: Amazon cited by OSHA for warehouse injury report failures They resulted from the high frequency with which workers are required to lift packages and other items; the heavy weight of the items; awkward postures, such as twisting, bending, and long reaches while lifting; and long hours required to complete assigned tasks, OSHA said. "Amazon became the nation's largest online retailer thanks, in no small part, to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who work each year in Amazon's massive warehouses. Each of these workers has the right to a place of work free from severe safety hazards," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Wednesday. PHOTO: Workers load packages into Amazon Rivian electric trucks at an Amazon facility in Poway, California, U.S., November 16, 2022. (Sandy Huffaker/Reuters) Amazon told ABC News it intends to appeal. "We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously, and we strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to appeal. We've cooperated fully, and the government's allegations don't reflect the reality of safety at our sites," Kelly Nantel, Amazon spokesperson, told ABC News. "Over the last several months, we've demonstrated the extent to which we work every day to mitigate risk and protect our people, and our publicly available data show we've reduced injury rates nearly 15% between 2019 and 2021. What's more, the vast majority of our employees tell us they feel our workplace is safe." MORE: Amazon worker shot, colleague returns fire killing suspect outside Arizona facility: Police The cited warehouses are located in New Windsor, New York; Waukegan, Illinois, and Deltona, Florida. Additionally, at the Deltona, Florida, warehouse, OSHA also cited Amazon for exposing workers to the hazard of being struck by falling boxes with merchandise. Story continues Amazon faces a total of $60,269 in proposed penalties for these violations, according to OSHA. PHOTO: (FILES) This file photo taken on July 13, 2021 shows the new delivery warehouse of the US e-commerce company Amazon in Rozenburg-Schiphol. (Marco De Swart/ANP/AFP via Getty Images) These citations arise out of workplace safety inspections at six Amazon warehouses across the country that OSHA began conducting in mid-July and early August of last year. OSHA's investigation at three facilities located outside of Albany, New York, Boise, Idaho, and Denver, Colorado is ongoing. "Each of these inspections found work processes that were designed for speed but not safety, and they resulted in serious worker injuries. While Amazon has developed impressive systems to make sure its customers' orders are shipped efficiently and quickly, the company has failed to show the same level of commitment to protecting the safety and well-being of its workers," OSHA Assistant Secretary of Labor Douglas L. Parker said. OSHA cited Amazon in December 2022 for 14 recordkeeping violations as part of the same investigation. OSHA cites Amazon for workplace conditions that were 'failing to keep workers safe' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Experts say the discovery of classified documents at President Joe Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home and at an old Washington office of his at the Penn Biden Center has put Attorney General Merrick Garland in the middle of two "unprecedented" special counsel investigations. The parallel probes of both Biden and Donald Trump are an extraordinary circumstance, legal experts and former prosecutors told ABC News, and will inevitably require Garland and the Department of Justice to walk a tightrope to avoid any appearance of politicization while investigating if crimes were broken by the current or former president. "We're really in uncharted waters here," said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor in California who now leads the firm West Coast Trial Lawyers. Garland announced on Thursday that he was naming former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel in the investigation of Biden's handling of classified material that he apparently kept from his time as vice president. MORE: Who is special counsel Robert Hur, the Trump appointee overseeing DOJ's Biden probe? The attorney general previously appointed special counsel Jack Smith to lead the Department of Justice's probe into the retention of classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Biden's attorneys have cast the discovery of the classified documents at his home and office as an inadvertent "mistake." Trump denies wrongdoing and has said, without evidence, that he allegedly declassified the records at his home. Trump's attorneys have also refused when pressed by the Justice Department to back up his declassification argument in court, where making false claims carries the potential for sanctions or other punishment. Garland stressed Hur's appointment was reflective of the department's "commitment to both independence and accountability, in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions guided only by the facts and the law." PHOTO: US Attorney General Merrick Garland names an independent special counsel to probe President Joe Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents at the US Justice Department in Washington, DC on Jan. 12, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images) While the special counsels will operate with autonomy, it is Garland who will have the final say over whether to charge either Biden or Trump with a crime, such as violation of the Presidential Records Act or statutes that dictate proper handling of classified material. One expert who spoke to ABC News was skeptical of Garland charging one individual and not the other. Story continues "It's an enormous amount of pressure upon the attorney general," said Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor in New York and current defense attorney. "This is really an unprecedented moment, mind-boggling frankly," she added. In both cases, it also remains unclear how the materials at issue could affect national security. Lawmakers in Congress expect to be briefed on their contents and have asked for an intelligence assessment of the documents. Meanwhile, there is technically a third special counsel also at work under Garland: John Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in late 2020 to investigate the origins of the FBI's investigation of the Trump 2016 campaign's ties to Russia. Durham has not formally closed his investigation and is expected to issue a report that Garland could decide to release publicly. Politics at play Trump is already using the revelation about classified documents at Biden's home and office to claim selective prosecution -- that the Democratic Party has "weaponized" federal law enforcement against him. His allies have decried a "double standard" over the handling of Biden's case, though Biden aides highlighted his stated willingness to cooperate in returning the classified material from his vice presidency and in explaining why it was kept. House Republicans, who are now the majority in the chamber, have launched their own investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents while out of office. Many have seized on the fact that his residence was not similarly raided after federal agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. "I mean, there's a two-tier system of justice here with respect to how the former president [is] treated versus the current president," Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis. According to court documents and public statements, Biden and Trump's teams seem to have responded to the government with much different levels of cooperation regarding their classified documents: The National Archives said it negotiated with Trump's team throughout 2021 to retrieve 15 boxes taken from the White House, finally receiving them in January 2022 and alerting the DOJ to investigate that February, resulting in the discovery of further classified materials. The Biden matter, by contrast, was first flagged by his attorneys to the National Archives in November, his lawyers have said. They have stressed how they have readily returned the documents they found over multiple searches. Experts told ABC News that Garland's selection of Hur to be special counsel was likely an attempt to placate concerns of politicization or bias. Hur was appointed by Trump to serve in one of the largest U.S. attorney's offices in the nation, when he was the chief federal law enforcement officer in Maryland. "You want someone like that so there's no appearance that it's not in a truly independent prosecutor conducting the investigation," said Rahmani. The special counsel investigations are likely to play out in the background of the 2024 race. Trump has already announced his candidacy, and Biden has said it's his intention to run for a second term but hasn't made an official decision. Another layer to the situation is the fact that Biden cannot be charged while he is in office, according to longstanding Department of Justice policy, which views impeachment as the only method to hold a president accountable for their actions while in office. But Trump, as a private citizen, can be charged -- though such a move would be unprecedented, too. Will it impact the outcome of the cases? Despite the differences between the two investigations, experts said one question going forward will be whether the Trump case influences the Biden probe and vice versa. "How much does what's happening with President Trump impact this?" Dan Abrams, ABC News' chief legal analyst, said during an appearance on "Good Morning America." "For example, are they going to subpoena the Biden team?" Abrams said. "The Biden team will say, 'Look, we're giving them everything that we have, you don't need to subpoena us.' Do they subpoena them anyway, just to show that they are using the same legal tools that were used in the case of Donald Trump?" Experts noted the biggest distinction between the Trump and Biden matter so far: the apparent level of cooperation with law enforcement. Biden attorneys have said they immediately notified the National Archives when the documents were found, while court documents show the FBI search of Trump's home came after a yearlong effort by the National Archives and Justice Department to get documents back from him. PHOTO: This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 search by the FBI of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. (Department of Justice via AP, FILE) "We're really looking at apples and orange, but to many people this is gonna look like apples and apples. And I'm not sure even with the most successful messaging from the Department of Justice, they're going to be able to overcome that," Krissoff said. Garland has indicated he is well aware of the public scrutiny around both special counsels. Hur, who is investigating the Biden matter, said in a short statement that he intends "to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor." MORE: How does the Biden classified documents matter compare to Trump's? Krissoff said she expects the DOJ to bring forward charges against Trump if they have the evidence, telling ABC News: "If they have a strong case, I expect they will move forward regardless." But Rahmani, who said the classified documents debacle appeared to be the department's strongest criminal case against Trump out of his legal troubles, believes the addition of Biden apparently mishandling classified documents has muddied the picture. "Ultimately, I don't think the Department of Justice, who tries to stay out of these types of political waters, is going to prosecute one individual but not the other," Rahmani said. 'Unprecedented' special counsels for Biden, Trump put 'enormous pressure' on Garland: Experts originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Police said a shooting in a busy area in Virginia Beach that injured one person Tuesday evening was domestic in nature. An off-duty officer witnessed the shooting in the very back of the Target parking lot, far from the store itself and near Village Drive, at the around 7:59 p.m. in the 500 block of First Colonial Road, according to Melissa Johnston, a spokesperson for the department. The officer was able to quickly identify two suspects who were in a vehicle. The two suspects were detained by 8:35 p.m. Both suspects and the victim know each other, Johnston said. The injuries sustained by the victim were not life-threatening, police said. While the shooting took place in a dense business area with Target, Walmart, Starbucks and other chains nearby, police said the shooting was not related to any business in the area. Police filed charges against one suspect for domestic assault, which Johnston said is related to the shooting, and other charges are pending. The victim and suspects names have not been released. Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com A 12-year-old girl in Argentina reportedly died after attempting a "choking" challenge she saw on TikTok. The incident occurred on 13 January in the city of Capitan Bermudez, Argentina. The girl, Milagros Soto, was found dead in her home after allegedly attempting the "blackout challenge," which is also known as the "choking challenge," one of numerous viral "challenges" that circulate on the TikTok social media app, according to local news outlet El Litoral. The girl is thought to have hanged herself. The girls aunt wrote on Facebook that Milagros died doing a TikTok challenge. The viral challenge dares users to choke themselves until they pass out. Milagros reportedly had successfully attempted the challenge twice before, but is believed to have died on her third attempt, according to Jam Press. The girls aunt told Jam Press that the girl had received a WhatsApp message from someone along with a link to the challenge after she had been bullied at school. "I believe someone encouraged her to do it," her aunt told the publication. "She suffered a lot with bullying." Police are investigating the incident. Choking challenges are not a new phenomenon. The CDC noted in 2008 that more than 82 young people had died between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s as a result of participating in "choking games." The report found that the majority of the deaths occurred in people between the ages of 11 and 16, with the average age being 13. In November, a Bloomberg Businessweek story linked the current iteration of the challenge to at least 15 deaths in children 12 and under over the preceding 18 months, and another five deaths in children aged 13 and 14-years-old. The parents of seven children who reportedly died after attempting the challenge have sued TikTok, according to The Verge. While TikTok told The Washington Post that it blocked users from searching for the blackout challenge and replaced the search results with a warning that "some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing, or even fabricated" along with a link for "more resources," two of the parents suing the company maintain the challenge was on their childrens "For You" page. Story continues TikTok spokesperson Mahsau Cullinane offered the following statement addressing the challenge. "This disturbing challenge, which people seem to learn about from sources other than TikTok, long predates our platform and has never been a TikTok trend," she wrote. "We remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety and would immediately remove related content if found. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss." A month before Milagros died, another 12-year-old in Ohio, Tristan Casson, was found dead after allegedly attempting the challenge, according to Michigan Live. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has met with Executive Chairman of Fortescue Future Industries Andrew Forrest in Davos. They noted that the memorandum signed last month between Azerbaijani Energy Ministry and Fortescue Future Industries provided for the implementation of a project on the production of 12,000 megawatts of wind and solar energy in Azerbaijan. They also stressed the importance of the signing of the Agreement on a strategic partnership in the field of green energy development and transmission between the Governments of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary in Bucharest. The sides noted the significance of delivering through this project the green energy produced in Azerbaijan to the European market in the future. During the conversation, they emphasized the importance of cooperation in the implementation of a project on the production of hydrogen, including green hydrogen in Azerbaijan. It was noted that the memorandums of understanding and agreements signed by Azerbaijan with international energy companies will enable the country to produce up to 22,000 megawatts of wind and solar energy. It was underlined that the production of 12,000 megawatts of that energy is planned to be carried out by SOCAR and Fortescue Future Industries. A favorable investment climate in Azerbaijan was highlighted during the conversation. They said that Azerbaijan has rich renewable energy potential, and exchanged views on the prospects for cooperation. Girl Scout Cookie time is recognized nationally January through April, but local timing varies from council to council. Girl Scouts of NYPENN Pathways has slightly delayed its season from a traditional early January to late March timeframe in hopes of helping mitigate last years mid-season challenges due to continued supply chain issues faced by its baker. The 2023 season begins Jan. 31 and runs through April 23, as individuals and troops rally their communities to support the worlds largest entrepreneurial program for girls. The program is also the councils largest annual fundraiser. Locally, cookies remain priced at $5 per package. Proceeds raised across GSNYPENNs 26-county footprint stay local to support its members and operations. The cookie program provides both invaluable business and leadership skill-building and experiences for girls and troops like service projects, troop travel, summer camp, badge work and more. The Girl Scout Cookie Program is the worlds largest entrepreneurial program for girls. Girl Scouts newly updated financial literacy badges offer entrepreneurial playbooks for every age level. From the Cookie Goal Setter badge earned as a Daisy to the Entrepreneur Accelerator for girls in high school, the cookie program teaches girls financial literacy, planning, budgeting, teamwork, innovative thinking and confident decision-making. 2023 GSNYPENN Girl Scout Cookie lineup, produced by Little Brownie Bakers: Samoas: Crisp cookie coated with caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut and striped with dark chocolate Tagalongs: Crispy cookie layered with peanut butter and covered with chocolate Do-si-dos: Crunchy oatmeal sandwich cookie with creamy peanut butter filling Lemon-Ups: Lemon cookie with messages inspired by Girl Scout entrepreneurs like I am a go-getter and I am an innovator," among eight phrases that bring Girl Scouting to life Thin Mints: Crisp wafer cookie covered in chocolate coating made with natural oil of peppermint, vegan, No. 1 selling variety nationwide Toffee-tastic: Gluten-free, rich buttery cookie with crunchy toffee bits Trefoils: Traditional shortbread cookie, and the oldest variety still produced today Girl Scout Smores: Crunchy graham sandwich cookie with creamy chocolate and marshmallow filling Adventurefuls: Brownie-inspired cookie with caramel-flavored creme and a hint of sea salt Raspberry Rally (new!): Thin crispy cookie, sister to beloved Thin Mints, infused with raspberry flavor, dipped in chocolate coating (first cookie exclusively offered for online sale and direct shipment only) This season, the brand-new Raspberry Rally is being offered by Girl Scouts exclusively through digital channels for direct shipment only, further enhancing girls e-commerce sales and entrepreneurial skills. This latest approach will help guide the evolution of the cookie program for the digital future. How to purchase cookies from GSNYPENN Girl Scouts If you know a registered Girl Scout, reach out to her to find out how she's selling cookies (paper order card and/or Digital Cookie ordering link) beginning Jan. 31. Visit GSNYPENNs dedicated cookie page at buygirlscoutcookiesnow.com for ongoing updates on how you can support the program locally. Beginning Feb. 27, cookie lovers can purchase cookies for direct shipment to their homes by entering their zip code in the Cookie Finder on the above page to find local troop ordering links. From April 1 to April 23, they can also use the Cookie Finder to locate booths to purchase cookies in person. Consumers can also donate cookie purchases to assist community partners. This years GSNYPENN Sweet Support Gift of Caring partners are the Food Bank of Central New York and the Food Bank of the Southern Tier. The community may contact the council for assistance connecting to troops selling cookies by calling (315) 698-9400 or (800) 943-4414, emailing info@gsnypenn.org or using the Let's Chat pop-up at gsnypenn.org during business hours. Girl Scouts serves girls in K-12. Annual membership is just $25 and financial assistance is available. To start her adventure, visit gsnypenn.org/join. To become an adult volunteer, learn more at gsnypenn.org/volunteer. To help make Girl Scouting possible for girls in your community, visit gsnypenn.org/donate. Some of the videos went viral on Twitter. Screenshot/Twitter - skiourakic A mass of Andrew Tate fans streamed through Athens earlier this week. They chanted "Free Top G," a term they coined in support of their "top gangster." Tate and his brother were arrested in connection with a human trafficking and rape investigation. A mass of Andrew Tate fans rallied in support of him in Athens earlier this week as he's being investigated in connection to human trafficking and rape allegations. Videos of the protest circulated on social media this week, which amassed millions of views. The clips showed a large group of predominantly young men pumping their fists in the air and chanting, "Free top G! Free top G!" The phrase "top G" shorthand for "top gangster" has been popularized by Tate and his fans for anyone they deem to be respectable. According to The Greek Reporter, protesters streamed through Syntagma Square, a central site in Greece's capital, and along the shopping district Ermou Street. In some videos, people could be seen holding up posters and demanding Tate's release from prison. The protest seems to be in direct response to the Romanian government's ongoing investigation of Tate and his brother Tristan Tate. In December, Romanian authorities arrested the duo on suspicion of human trafficking and rape. The brothers are set to be detained in jail for 30 days during the investigation, as their most recent appeal to be released was denied. Amid the investigation, Tate has continued posting on Twitter to his audience of 4.6 million followers. He's made several conspiratorial and delusional claims that "the Matrix" another term Tate and his fanbase use in reference to the movie franchise is responsible for imprisoning him, and that its "agents" are out to get him. (Tate's lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, has even dismissed these claims.) Story continues The Romanian government's investigation includes Andrew, Tristan, and two others who are accused of constructing an operation that exploited and forced women into making content for an online porn website. A lawyer told Insider that Tate's biggest legal challenge will be his own public statements on rape and exploitation that he's made in the past. In October 2017, Tate went on a Twitter rant about women who came forward with sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein. He said the women could not call themselves victims if they "put [themselves] in a position to be raped." Tate has made countless troubling and misogynistic remarks over the years. Tate's most recent tweet on Wednesday said he was going to give one of his five visitation spots to Adin Ross, a popular streamer who quickly came to Tate's defense after he was arrested. Read the original article on Insider Coinbase has confirmed that it will halt operations in Japan in the next few weeks, citing current market conditions. Due to market conditions, our company has made the difficult decision to halt operations in Japan and to conduct a complete review of our business in the country, the San Francisco-based company said in a blog post. However, we are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for our valued customers. Fiat deposits to the exchange will be stopped this Friday, January 20, and customers can withdraw their cash and crypto holdings until February 16. After this date, any remaining funds will be converted into Japanese Yen and sent to a Guaranty Account at the Legal Affairs Bureau, from where customers will need to retrieve it themselves. Coinbase indicated last week that it was slimming down to a skeleton staff in Japan, where it earned its operating license from the country's Financial Services Agency in June 2021. Coinbase, Kraken exit Japan Coinbases decision to wind down its operations comes after fellow U.S.-based exchange Kraken said it would stop trading in Japan by the end of this month, also blaming current market conditions in Japan as well as a weak crypto market globally. But Binance, the worlds largest crypto trading platform, is making efforts to return to the country, having previously exited the market in 2018. In September, the company sought a license to operate in Japan. It then acquired local exchange Sakura in November. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been seen as a somewhat crypto-friendly leader. His vision for reinvigorating the island nations economy, which he calls new capitalism, includes support for Web3 companies and investing in digital transformation. San Bernardino County Sheriffs officials help catch Missouri sex offender Lonely Nerd who had recently been released from prison for statutory rape. A 46-year-old sex offender may be heading back to prison after multiple agencies nabbed the suspect in an online sting. San Bernardino County sheriffs officials partnered with other law enforcement agencies to arrest James Wessley Rankin, who had recently been released from prison for statutory rape. During the first week of January, the sheriff's Specialized Investigations Division Crimes Against Children Detail and the Los Angeles Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force participated in an undercover chat room operation. During the investigation, Rankin of St. Louis, responded to an online post on an anonymous chat site by an undercover sheriffs detective, the California Department of Justice reported. Rankin, who was arrested on Friday, was charged in U.S. District Court with one count of suspicion of transferring obscene material to a minor. An affidavit filed in support of the complaint stated that Rankin responded to a posting on an anonymous chat site by an undercover detective with the SBC Sheriffs Department. Rankin, using the screen name Lonely Nerd, struck up a conversation with the detective, who was pretending to be a 14-year-old girl. Rankin sent the teen an obscene picture and began making plans to pick her up from her home, the court papers state. Rankin is listed on Missouris sex offender registry after being found guilty in Greene County Circuit Court of first-degree statutory rape, the affidavit says. The DOJ said he was sentenced in March 2021, to five years in prison. He was also found guilty in Christian County Circuit Court of endangering the welfare of a child and domestic assault in 2019 and sentenced to probation and time served. At the time of his arrest, Rankin was living at a locked transition house in St. Louis that allowed him passes to go to work during the day, the affidavit says. Rankin appeared in court Friday and has been ordered to stay behind bars. Charges outlined in the criminal complaint are accusations and do not constitute proof of guilt. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty, the DOJ stated. Story continues The case was investigated by the San Bernadino Sheriffs Department and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson is prosecuting the case. Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact Detective Wendy Winegar of the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Departments Crimes Against Children Detail at 909-890-4904. Detectives believe there may be additional victims and have released Rankins photograph. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may contact the We-Tip Hotline at 800-78-CRIME (27463) or wetip.com. This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Missouri 'Lonely Nerd' sex offender nabbed by San Bernardino County deputies The 5-month-old twin boy who was kidnapped with his brother in Ohio last week is out of the hospital and back home with his loved ones, an advocate for the family told Columbus NBC station WCMH. Its a happy ending after a days-long search for the missing boys that ended across state lines. DaVonte Goins, the advocate for the family of Kason Thomas, said the baby boy is healthy and recovering, according to WCMH. He was found Thursday evening inside his mothers stolen car in a Papa Johns parking lot in Indianapolis, hours after the suspected kidnapper was arrested. Columbus police allege Nalah Jackson, 24, stole the 2010 Honda Accord containing Kason and his twin Kyair Thomas from a Donatos Pizza parking lot along North High Street at 9:45 p.m. on Dec. 19, according to previous Oyxgen.com reporting. The mother of the twins left her car running while she got a DoorDash order, police said, and it was stolen with the babies inside. Employees at Donatos positively identified Nalah Jackson, a homeless woman, and told Columbus police she was in the restaurant and left as the mother walked in. A police handout of Nalah Jackson Nalah Jackson Photo: Columbus Ohio Police At 4:15 a.m. Dec. 20, Columbus police said only Kyair was found safe in the cold in the economy parking lot at the Dayton International Airport, about an hour southwest of Columbus. Two women in Indianapolis are credited with helping police arrest Jackson and miraculously find baby Kason alive before Christmas. Shyann Delmar said she bought toys from a woman who was hanging out at an Indianapolis gas station on Dec. 20, The Indy Star reported. Delmar agreed to give the woman a ride to the store. After dropping her off, Delmar told the Star she shared a video shed taken of the woman with her cousin, Mecka Curry, and the pair thought the woman seemed similar to the kidnapping suspect wanted on an AMBER alert out of Ohio. Delmar and the woman, who called herself Mae, had exchanged phone numbers during their car ride, and on Wednesday, Delmar told the Indy Star she got another call from Mae about purchasing more items. She wasnt sure what to do, but on Thursday Delmar called Mae back, and arranged to meet her at a residence with her cousin, according to the Indy Star. Story continues The cousins called Columbus police, who they say told them to call the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, according to the Indy Star. When they called Indianapolis police, the women said they struggled to get police to believe they knew where Jackson was. They told the Star they got frustrated and hung up with police, and instead took Jackson to several more stores, hoping she would shoplift and draw authorities attention. Delmar and Curry told the Star they continued to call police while driving with Mae and at one point Curry pretended to be talking to a friend and indicated they were driving on I-65 south. The women said police found their car and conducted a traffic stop. But the women said the police officer was skeptical about whether it was Jackson and said the women should take her to a shelter, the Indy Star reported. Curry said she showed police a screenshot of Jacksons mugshot and the officer agreed to take her into custody about 2 p.m. Thursday. But the baby was nowhere to be found. A dangerous winter storm was entering the area, and temperatures in Indiana were about to plummet to wind chills in the negative teens and 20s. The cousins had one cluein the back seat of their car, Mae had left behind a bus schedule, according to the Indy Star. The women decided to trace the bus route and look for vehicles covered in show that would indicate the stolen vehicle, also still missing, hadnt moved in a while. The women said they saw a Papa Johns on Indiana Avenue that had a Honda in the parking lot covered in snow. Curry told the Indy Star she ran to the car and saw baby legs in the backseat, but the car was locked. Delmar told the Star she saw some officers eating inside a Blaze Pizza nearby and ran inside to tell them about the baby. At 9:24 p.m. Thursday, Indianapolis police tweeted a photo of an officer holding Kason, with the caption, A photo is worth a thousand words, thanking the community members who helped to find him. Standing in the background of the photo is Delmar. Kason Thomas Impd Indianapolis Metro Police Sgt. Shawn Anderson holds Kason Thomas after he was rescued from an abandoned car. Photo: Indianapolis Metropolitan Police At that point, we didnt believe we really did this, Curry said to the Indy Star. We really did the unthinkable. Jason Vannort works for Papa Johns and told Indianapolis CW station WISH he had noticed the car sitting in front of the store since Dec. 20. He also said Jackson had come into the store around 8 a.m. on Dec 20 and asked about bus passes and if the store was hiring. The workers believe the baby was likely left alone in the vehicle for two days. Officers Richard El and Shawn Anderson with Indianapolis Police had spent most of the day Thursday searching for the baby. You kind of get this feeling of maybe time might be running out or whatever the case may be, El told Columbus CBS station WBNS. And so, I just feel like it was pretty urgent for us to try to locate him. Just before their shift ended, they did find baby Kason. When we found him, he was cold, right, but he was awake, he was breathing, he was moving around a little bit, Sgt. El said to WBNS. His eyes were open wide and just trying to take everything in. The photos of the moment spread quickly across social media, as many found hope in the Christmas miracle. I could tell that he felt comfort and joy, and felt safe and secure in that moment, in spite of the ordeal that he had been through, so I was amazed at how well he was doing for the amount of time that he was gone, said Anderson in a tweet from Indianapolis police. Holding him was one of the best feelings Ive had in my career. Kason went to the hospital to be checked out, his family told WBNS, and said he was doing as well as could be expected. When we were alerted to where baby Kason was, and was able to actually lay eyes on him, I felt like a miracle happened, Anderson told the Indy Star. Holding baby Kason was like holding one of my own children. It was that meaningful for me. The Thomas family thanked the community for their help in reuniting them with the 5-month-old boy. This is gonna be the best Christmas ever, LaFonda Thomas, Kasons grandmother, told WBNS. Im so excited. Its a miracle. Its just I dont know. Im overwhelmed right now. Jackson first appeared in court on Saturday morning in Marion County, Indiana to face felony battery by bodily waste charges, for allegedly spitting on a deputy while being booked, according to WBNS. Jackson gave the name, "Josphis Hunt" to the magistrate, and when asked if she understood her rights, Jackson responded by saying, "no... yes... no... I'm pleading guilty. Just go ahead and sentence me," WBNS reported. During the remote hearing, the Marion County Magistrate set Jackson's bond at $500, and told Jackson that even if the bond is met, she would not be released due to a hold on the State of Ohio for two counts of kidnapping. WBNS reports Jackson began yelling expletives toward the magistrate, prompting the end of the hearing. The magistrate told her clerk that they technically didn't get through the hearing, and the judge for todays hearing will need to redo the initial hearing. Columbus police said Jackson, who is from Columbus, does have a criminal history and several arrests with their department, according to previous Oxygen.com reporting. Cleveland ABC station WEWS reports court records show Jackson was previously arrested twice for child endangerment, custody interference, domestic violence, assault, and other misdemeanors. Columbus police said there is no indication Jackson knew the mother or the children previously. Vaccination rates for the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine have fallen to the lowest they have been in a decade, according to a new CDC report. (Getty Images) Childhood vaccination rates have fallen for the third year in a row, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report found that 93% of kindergartners received state-required vaccines during the 2021-2022 school year, a drop of two percentage points from the 2019-2020 school year. During the 2020-2021 school year, 94% of kindergarteners received their required vaccinations, showing a gradual downward trend in routine childhood vaccinations. Overall, 2.6% of children had an exemption for vaccines last year, and vaccination coverage for the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is the lowest it has been in a decade. Coverage with the diptheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP), polio and varicella vaccines also fell in most states. "It's so discouraging," Dr. Danelle Fisher, chair of pediatrics at California's Providence Saint John's Health Center, tells Yahoo Life. "We've come a long way with childhood vaccinations, and now people have a fear about vaccines that's getting reawakened." Dr. Juan Salazar, physician in chief at Connecticut Childrens, tells Yahoo Life that this is "really bad news" and "very concerning." There's a lot to unpack around this drop in childhood vaccinations. Here's what you need to know. What is behind the decline in vaccines? Experts say there are a few potential factors at play. "During the first year of the pandemic, well child care visits dropped dramatically, starting this downward trend in immunization rates," Dr. Michael Bauer, a pediatrician and medical director at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, tells Yahoo Life. At the same time, the pandemic became politicized and encouraged "a simultaneous rise in public health policies coming into question and distrust in government decisions leading to an increase in anti-vaccination sentiment," Bauer says. Story continues "That anti-vaccination noise has deterred parents from not only avoiding COVID vaccinations, but other vaccines as well," Dr. Thomas Russo, chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo in New York, tells Yahoo Life. Fisher agrees. "Misinformation about the COVID vaccine has started this distrust of vaccines in general," she says, adding that these routine childhood immunizations are "tried and true vaccines" that have been used for decades. "It's very sad that a segment of the population is buying into this misinformation and not getting their children protected," Fisher says. Along with the distrust, Bauer notes "an increase in the number of states enacting laws allowing parents to refuse to vaccinate their children aside from medical reasons." He adds that "states that have the strictest laws have the highest rates of vaccine compliance." What are the health implications of even a slight drop in vaccine rates? Both the unvaccinated children and those around them can be at risk for getting sick, Salazar says. He cites the recent measles outbreak in Ohio which largely impacted unvaccinated children as an example of what can happen when vaccination rates start to decline. "Even a slight drop in vaccination rates can lead to dramatic increases in these preventable illnesses, as evidenced by recent outbreaks of measles, which is highly preventable," Bauer says. "We know these vaccines work," Salazar says. "You introduce one of these very transmissible viruses to a school or day care and it will spread." Of particular concern, Salazar says, are the youngest children in day cares or little siblings of older children who are too young to be partially or fully vaccinated against certain diseases such as measles, which is very contagious. "These young children can potentially get very sick and die," he says. "Your bad or uninformed choice is going to affect a child whose family was doing everything right but who was not vaccinated yet because of age." What happens if these vaccination rates keep dropping? Childhood vaccination rates have been on a steady decline for years, and doctors say that's concerning. "If this trend continues, we'll have a lot of comeback of certain diseases like measles and perhaps even polio," Russo says. "We will see comebacks of pediatric infections that were virtually nonexistent prior to this. If someone brings in an infection, it will take off." Salazar says he's concerned that "we're going to get back to a time where measles caused outbreaks and death." He says he's also worried that "Chickenpox will come back with complications," noting that "We have to get back to understanding what it means to have pertussis, measles and complicated varicella. People have forgotten, and it's bad." Fisher urges parents to vaccinate their children on time. "It's no joke," she says. "Your child's life depends on it." Wellness, parenting, body image and more: Get to know the who behind the hoo with Yahoo Life's newsletter. Sign up here. A disabled veteran has accused newly elected Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) of fundraising for his service dogs lifesaving surgery and then disappearing with the money, local news site Patch reported Tuesday. Richard Osthoff, a U.S. Navy veteran, told Patch that Santos conned him in 2016 while he was living in a tent on the side of a highway in Howell, New Jersey, with his beloved dog Sapphire. Sapphire was diagnosed with a life-threatening stomach tumor, and Osthoff was quoted $3,000 for the surgery to remove it. According to Osthoff, a veterinary technician told him he knew a guy who could help: Anthony Devolder, who ran Friends of Pets United, a pet charity. Anthony Devolder is one of the names that Santos, whose full name is George Anthony Devolder Santos, used among an array of aliases, including George Devolder and Anthony Zabrovsky. George Santos has resisted calls to resign despite revelations he fabricated large swaths of his resume on the campaign trail. George Santos has resisted calls to resign despite revelations he fabricated large swaths of his resume on the campaign trail. The lawmaker faces multiple federal and local investigations after revelations that he fabricated much of his background, including his education, work experience and heritage. He is also being investigated for campaign finance violations after allegedly misusing campaign funds, lying about how his campaign spent money and hiding the origin of campaign funds. In December, The New York Times reported that, among other discrepancies in the resume Santos pitched to voters, there was little evidence that his charity, Friends of Pets United, was a tax-exempt organization like he claimed. The Internal Revenue Service apparently had no records of a registered charity with that name. Osthoff and another New Jersey veteran, retired police Sgt. Michael Boll, who was helping Osthoff as the situation evolved in 2016, told Patch that Santos set up a GoFundMe for Sapphires surgery. They claimed that when it reached $3,000, he closed it and became increasingly difficult to contact. Story continues In a July 2016 Facebook post, Osthoff thanked supporters for helping him reach his fundraising goal. He shared a link to a since-deleted GoFundMe page. The preview of the link shows that it was created by Anthony Devolder. But, according to Osthoff, when he tried to schedule Sapphires procedure, Santos then insisted Osthoff take Sapphire to another vet clinic that he purportedly had a relationship with which said it couldnt operate on the tumor. Santos then claimed he would take the money raised for Sapphire and use it for other dogs, Osthoff said. In a November 2016 Facebook post, Osthoff told supporters that he had been scammed by Anthony Devolder and that Sapphire was facing euthanasia within months, according to a screenshot published by Patch. Sapphire died the following year. In a statement, a GoFundMe spokesperson said they had received a report of an issue with the fundraiser in question in late 2016 and sought proof of the delivery of funds from the organizer. The organizer failed to respond, which led to the fundraiser being removed and the email associated with that account prohibited from further use on our platform, the statement said. GoFundMe has a zero tolerance policy for misuse of our platform and cooperates with law enforcement investigations of those accused of wrongdoing. One of Santos former roommates, Gregory Morey-Parker, was interviewed several times on CNN this week about Santos, who he said he lived with for a few months in 2020. Morey-Parker said he knew Santos by two names: Anthony Devolder and Anthony Zabrovsky and he had never known him as George Santos. According to Morey-Parker, Santos said he used the name Zabrovsky for his pet charity because he believed the Jews will give more if youre a Jew. A spokesperson for Santos did not immediately return a request for comment. This story has been updated with comment from GoFundMe. Related... Wes Moore put his hand on the Bible that once belonged to abolitionist and fellow Marylander Frederick Douglass and took the oath of office on Wednesday to become the 63rd governor and the first Black person to hold the position in the states history. He started his first speech as governor alluding to Marylands past and pointing the way hopes the state will move forward. He later outlined his plans for the state, including adding jobs, addressing climate change, improving public safety and offering a service year option for high school students. As I stand here today, looking out over Lawyers Mall, at the memorial to Justice Thurgood Marshall, its impossible not to think about our past and our path, said Moore, from the stage erected on the steps of the State House in Annapolis near the spot where Marshall once argued civil rights cases about school desegregation in Maryland. Wes Moore rests his left hand on a Bible once owned by Marylander and famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass while taking the oath of office to become the state's 63rd governor Wednesday in Annapolis. Moore, joined by his wife, Dawn, and children, Mia and James, was sworn in by Maryland Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader, left. Moore is the state's first Black governor, and only the third Black person to be elected a governor in the history of the United States. For more coverage, visit www.heraldmailmedia.com or check out Friday's newspaper. "Maryland, our time is right now," he added later. Historic moment, Marylanders on hand from across the state Marylanders from across the state recognized the implications of the day, where Moore was sworn in as the nations third Black elected governor in United States history and his lieutenant governor, Aruna Miller, a native of India, became the first immigrant to hold that position. Its an historic day, not just here in Annapolis, but in our country, said state Sen. Paul Corderman, Washington, in an interview on Lawyers Mall before the ceremony. Our Union became a little more perfect this day, Tom Perez, a competitor of Moore's in the Democratic primary and a U.S. Labor Secretary during the Obama administration, said in an interview near the gates of the Governors Mansion. One of the inheritors of Marshalls legacy, former NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill, indicated what the day meant to the nation and to Maryland. It is a moment that is woven into the arc of our history, said Ifill, a Baltimore native, It should not be taken lightly. Story continues It is a consequence of hard work and determination of so many people for hundreds of years, marching steadily and also the voters of Maryland who understood the significance. More:Anthony Brown sworn in as attorney general, brings big asks to Annapolis One of those Marylanders on hand was Harriette Lowery, a Talbot County resident, who rode a bus organized by the Moore transition team from Easton. Over 20 buses brought over 1,000 Marylanders to the event from as far away as Flintsone and Hagerstown in Western Maryland to Ocean City and Easton on the Eastern Shore. Lowery had never been to an inauguration previously. I want to represent my family, said Lowery, a former Baltimore City Hall employee, wearing a shirt with an image of Douglass, a Talbot County native. I was standing in the gap for our ancestors. Moore won Talbot County during the primary, his only Eastern Shore county victory, and again during the general election, one of only two of the eight shore counties that he won. Statewide, he received more votes than any Maryland governor had previously. Sen. John Mautz, whose district includes parts of Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester, and Wicomico counties, said Moores campaign promise to leave no one behind reminded him of former Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch, who said, One Maryland. Our job is to make sure the Eastern Shore is also not left behind, said Mautz, a Republican state senator and a Talbot County resident, in an interview before the ceremony. This is a great day of incredible tradition which our state is founded on, and something for everyone to enjoy. JAKE DAY: What's next for Salisbury now that its mayor is off to Annapolis? Several members of the Maryland congressional delegation and at least three former governors of both parties were on hand, as was Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame infielder Cal Ripken Jr. Another celebrity, Oprah Winfrey, introduced Moore. Eastern Shore Del. Jeff Ghrist, left, Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame infielder Cal Ripken Jr., center, and Del. Wayne Hartman, Wicomico and Worcester, stand for a picture prior to the inauguration of Wes Moore as the 63rd Governor of Maryland. Hartman said he'd never seen of the State House dome look better. Jake Day, the outgoing mayor of Salisbury and secretary nominee of the housing department, and Portia Wu, Moores selection to lead the department of labor, stood nearby the gates of the governors mansion. Emily Keller, the former mayor of Hagerstown and the announced special secretary of opioid response, also attended. Moore calls for service opportunities for high school graduates Moore called the state asset-rich and strategy poor in outlining his priorities. "For too long, we have left too many people behind," he said. The new governor started his discussion of the future with the environment before transitioning to schools and concluding with his desire to enact a service year option for every high school graduate in the state. He said paths for Marylands students begin with high quality schools from pre-K to 12th grade, a nod to his aim to make pre-kindergarten classes more accessible. Moore, a combat veteran, concluded his roughly 20-minute remarks by discussing his own years of military service and his desire to grow those opportunities for the states young people. My years of service transformed me, he said. I want every young Marylander, of every background, in every community, to have the opportunity to serve our state. That is why we will offer a service year option for all high school graduates. More:On MLK Day, Moore promotes service year option, readies for governorship He told the thousands on hand to see him in the sunshine and mild winter weather: Youve elected me to serve as your governor, but the work will be done together. He said the challenges the state faces require residents to "answer the call of service." We celebrate today, but we the start the hard work. Dana Bowser, who rode the bus from Easton with Lowery, called the speech inspirational as well as aspirational. In an interview after the speech, Bowser, the director of student retention and success at Chesapeake College in Queen Annes County, called education the key and the great equalizer. Dana Bowser, left, and Harriette Lowery, right, stand with the State House in the background after the inauguration of Wes Moore. Both women came from Talbot County on a bus paid for by the Moore transition team. Frederick Douglass would be proud, she said before boarding the bus back to the Eastern Shore, but added that he would say this is not enough. We celebrate today, said Bowser, but we the start the hard work. Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2. This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Wes Moore sworn-in as Marylands 63rd governor, calls for service On Sept. 30, two days after Hurricane Ian battered Southwest Florida with 150 mph winds and lethal storm surge, police found Katie Baunach's remains at her ex-husbands home in a rural corner of Hendry County. Ian Baunach, a 43-year-old bodybuilder, was arrested and charged with murdering Katie, a 39-year-old nurse and the mother of their two young children. Local law enforcement praised the arrest, saying swift action by sheriffs deputies allowed them to apprehend Ian before he had the chance to destroy evidence. READ THE INVESTIGATION:Katie Baunach's ex-husband killed her, prosecutors say. The justice system let it happen Ian Baunach has pleaded not guilty and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment. But a three-month investigation by USA TODAY Network-Florida into Katie's death found a series of failures to protect her by every layer of state and local law enforcement. In November 2021, Ian allegedly grabbed Katie during a fight and tried to strangle her. She called police. The office of 20th District State Attorney Amira Fox charged Ian with a felony. But Katie forgave him after he told her he had found God and prosecutors dropped the charges, despite the cases lead prosecutor writing in case notes that she would have continued without victim testimony in 90 percent of similar cases. Less than three months later, Ian allegedly kicked Katie in the back and threatened to kill her. Katie reported the alleged attack to the Hendry County Sheriffs Office. But prosecutors did not file charges, despite deputies writing in their reports that they had sent the case to Foxs office and were requesting an arrest warrant. USA TODAY Network-Florida asked the State Attorneys Office about its handling of the March incident and why Katies new allegation did not prompt them to reopen the strangulation case. But the agency would not answer questions about any of the previous allegations against Ian, citing the ongoing murder prosecution. Story continues Six weeks before her death, a Lee County judge denied Katie's request for a restraining order and told her to make peace with Ian, citing concern for the couple's children. The 20th Judicial Circuit declined to answer specific questions about the judge's reasoning, saying the decision-making process of judges is not public information beyond information contained in the court record. Judges can only make the best decision possible based on the law and the limited amount of information that may be before them at that particular moment in time, 20th Judicial Circuit spokesperson Sara Miles wrote in a statement. Without a doubt, the death of Katie Baunach is a true tragedy and a terrible loss for her family and friends. The Florida abuse charges weren't the only ones Ian had faced. Ian's two ex-wives, both Indiana residents, told USA TODAY Network-Florida they had also reported Ian for abuse years earlier but felt authorities there did not take their allegations seriously. Ian was never convicted of a crime, and his cases in Indiana have since been expunged. The Clark County, Indiana prosecutors office would not provide information about its handling of those cases, citing the expungement. Ian is being held without bond ahead of his trial. Carolyn McKinney, Katies mother, said her daughter asked again and again for aid from authorities, but often felt no one was listening. There were so many instances that Katie tried to get help and there was none to be had, McKinney said. They said it was a he-said she-said. Like when he tried to strangle her to death. This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: How FL authorities failed to protect Katie Baunach from ex-husband Ian What could become only the second lithium mine in the US received backing from the Biden administration this week. In an announcement spotted by Bloomberg , the Department of Energy said it would provide mining company Ioneer with a conditional loan valued at up to $700 million to develop the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevadas Esmeralda County. Once operational, the mine is expected to produce enough lithium for about 370,000 electric vehicles annually. Ioneer already has supply agreements with automakers like Ford and Toyota, though the project likely wont start producing lithium until 2026. The Biden administration made the funding available through the Energy Departments Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program . To secure the money, Ioneer must obtain all the necessary permits from relevant state and federal agencies. The Center for Biological Diversity has come out against the project due to the risks it poses to a species of endangered wildflower in the area known as Tiehms buckwheat. The US Interior Department has yet to bless the project for that same reason. The Department of Energy said Ioneer revised its plans for the site to avoid direct impacts on the plant. However, its worth noting lithium mining requires a lot of water to carry out. Still, the mineral is essential to many technologies needed to transition the world to a zero-emissions future. Whats more, lithium supply is expected to fall short of global demand by 2030. That gap will make it difficult for the Biden administration to meet its goal of ensuring half of all cars sold in the US by the end of the decade are electric vehicles. The family of a California public defender who died while celebrating his wedding anniversary in Mexico believes he was the victim of a "brutal crime," their lawyer said Tuesday. Elliot Blair, 33, died Saturday outside his hotel room at Las Rocas Resort and Spa in Rosarito Beach, roughly 32 miles south of San Diego, the lawyer, David Scarsone, said in a statement. The incident occurred in an open-air walkway on the resort's third floor, he said. Blair was found in his underwear and socks and a sleeping T-shirt outside a room where he and his wife and had stayed in the past, the lawyers statement said. Blair's family has not heard about his death directly from local authorities; instead, they learned about what happened from a "liaison" to the local coroner's office, the lawyer's statement said. The liaison, who is not identified in the statement, told the family that Blair died of severe head trauma and that his case had been forwarded to prosecutors for a possible homicide investigation, the statement said. Rosarito Beach Mayor Hilda Araceli Brown Figueredo did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Las Rocas Resort said the hotel has been working closely with local authorities and declined to comment further. In a statement provided Wednesday to NBC News by the resort's public relations firm, the attorney general of Baja California said an investigation showed Blair appeared to have fallen from the third floor shortly before 1 a.m. He had no vital signs when police and medical personnel found him, the statement says. The autopsy showed his injuries were likely from a fall and not an act of violence, the statement says. An investigation found no evidence of violence in the room where Blair and his wife were staying, the statement says. The autopsy found signs of alcohol, the statement says. Scarsone has said Blair was not intoxicated and a toxicology report had not been completed. Story continues Scarsone did not immediately respond to a request Wednesday night for comment about the statement. Mexican authorities had been communicating with American officials who, "from the first day have been given all the all information so that, in turn, through them, efforts can be made to inform and assist relatives of the deceased lawyer," the attorney general's statement says. The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports of the death of a citizen in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. "We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance," the department said in a statement Wednesday. "Out of respect to the family during this difficult time, we have no further comment." Blair's family plans to carry out an independent investigation, hiring a private investigator and a forensic pathologist, Scarsone said. "Elliot was a brilliant attorney with a bright future," the statement said. "Elliots smile was radiant and warmed the hearts of every person he came in contact with. Elliot had an innate ability to connect with people from all walks of life." Orange County Public Defender Martin Schwarz told The Register that Blair had worked for the public defenders office since 2017, the year he passed the bar exam. His wife, Kimberly, also worked for the public defenders office, Schwarz told the newspaper. He said Blair was a devoted husband, terrific person and a fantastic lawyer who dedicated his life to serving his clients and helping the countys most vulnerable." This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Two cannabis businesses have opened in Cayuga County in recent weeks: a self-described consulting and marketing firm in the city of Auburn, and a dispensary in the village of Union Springs. The firm, I'm Stuck, was open as of Friday at 9 E. Genesee St. on East Hill, previously a Metro by T-Mobile store. It is the sixth location of the business, joining the Weed Warehouse on Crane Brook Drive in Aurelius, across from Fingerlakes Mall, and four more in Wayne County. The business is owned and operated by David Tulley, of Lyons. Though I'm Stuck describes itself as a consulting and marketing firm on the sign above its door, the business is widely considered a cannabis dispensary. Tulley told The Citizen in December that products like flower, edibles and vapes are given to customers after "consulting" with them about which ones would meet their needs the most. Among those who consider I'm Stuck a dispensary are the state Office of Cannabis Management, which has sent Tulley cease-and-desist letters for selling cannabis without a license. Though "gray market" businesses like his technically gift cannabis instead of selling it, the office nonetheless declared the practice illegal after New York legalized use and possession of the substance in March 2021. Selling cannabis without a license can result in fines, criminal penalties and the jeopardization of the seller's ability to obtain a license in the future. There cannot be a legal, regulated market operating side by side with an illegal market it undercuts the goals of the states cannabis law to protect public health and build an equitable market that works to undo the harms caused by the disproportionate enforcement of cannabis prohibition, the Office of Cannabis Management has said. For that reason, the city of Auburn also considers I'm Stuck a dispensary. Because it's unlicensed, the city is "pursuing all legal remedies available" to address the business, Assistant Corporation Counsel Nate Garland told The Citizen on Tuesday. When licensing begins, cannabis businesses will be allowed to open in Auburn, as the city did not "opt out" of them. The ability to "opt out," granted to all municipalities by the state's Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, is a source of uncertainty over the dispensary that opened recently in Union Springs. Owned and operated by the Cayuga Nation, Sweet Grass Dispensary is located in a former pizzeria at 121 Cayuga St. The nation moved its cannabis sales there from its Lakeside Trading gas station north on Route 90, near the village border. However, that's exactly what the village board tried to prevent when it passed a local law in July 2021 "opting out" of cannabis businesses everywhere in Union Springs except a new zoning district containing Lakeside Trading. Mayor Bud Shattuck told The Citizen in November the village feels the former pizzeria is an inappropriate location for a cannabis business. "We have a problem when they want to come on Main Street where our children walk to school and there's no parking," he said. Shattuck told The Citizen last week the village is still reviewing its options before taking any potential action against the nation. The Cayuga Nation has not responded to multiple requests for comment by The Citizen on the dispensary. In a statement last year, its governing council asserted its right to sell cannabis. "As a sovereign Indian nation, the Cayuga Nation commerce in the village of Union Springs would not be limited by a local law prohibiting retail marijuana sales," the statement said. The Office of Cannabis Management has affirmed that cannabis sales on federally recognized tribal lands, license or no, is legal. However, the office has not responded to multiple requests for comment by The Citizen on Sweet Grass Dispensary, which is not located on federally recognized tribal land but that of a municipality that has "opted out." The Office of Cannabis Management also did not respond to multiple requests for comment about I'm Stuck in Auburn. One of the remarkable joys of being a member of a group is learning the life stories of the persons within it. Whether that group is a support group, friends group, interest group, civic group, congregation, work colleagues or neighbors, being in community with others is life-sustaining. Great leaders have long understood the value of community and perhaps no one articulated that better than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this weekend. MLK Day:Seeking fun things to do this weekend? Check Top 5 events rockin' Tallahassee In preparation for our worship on Sunday, I have been revisiting Dr. Kings wisdom concerning the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism. I have read the quotes that are among his most famous, including the I Have a Dream speech delivered on Aug. 23, 1963, to more than 260,000 civil rights marchers gathered around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, 60 years ago this year. King and community I have explored his less-quoted words, those that help us understand better his deep passion for justice, his indomitable courage, and his keen sense of humor. But what has captured my heart most this year is his encouragement of community. Beloved community is what he eloquently called it teaching that it is born of a deep understanding that we are one human family: interdependent, interrelated, and interconnected. The term Beloved Community did not originate with Dr. King, as it was first coined in the early days of the 20th century by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. But Rev. Dr. King, who was also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, embraced and popularized the concept. Beloved community can be found in all Dr. Kings writings and speeches from the earliest to the last, always encouraging us to transcend race, tribe, class, and nationality to embrace oneness. One of the members of my congregation, along with his dear belated wife, was deeply involved in the civil rights movement during the mid-to-late 1960s and forward. They had a cross burned in their yard, dealt with attempts to run them off the road by unknown drivers, and heard the comments of those in town who wanted them to leave. Story continues He was the pastor of a Baptist church in Bogalusa, Louisiana, while working on a doctorate in theology degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Already having had a lovely daughter in 1960, they had a precious son in 1964, the year that they moved to Bogalusa. Jerry and his wife, Justine, formed some good friendships in the church and community. They were putting down roots, but life in Bogalusa during the Civil Rights Era in the deep South proved to be problematic for Jerry and for his family. After two years of trying to encourage the congregation to think positively about the pending civil rights legislation that would help resolve racial inequities and many discussions with townspeople that sometimes became heated, Jerry and his wife felt it was in the best interest of all involved if he resigned from the church and allowed them to choose another leader more to their liking, as he describes it. Dr. Chance was deeply inspired by Dr. King and his emphasis on Beloved Community. A somber time Just this week, Jerry, who is now nearing 91 years old, shared with a profound sadness about the difficulty of that decision. He believes that his wife endured the hardest part of life in Bogalusa. She received numerous phone calls from anonymous people and heard many ugly and threatening words. While he was traveling back and forth to the seminary in New Orleans, she was home with her little ones praying to keep them safe physically and emotionally. But as Jerry was telling this story from his life, remnants of the pain of that decision for him were still evident in his eyes. As deeply principled people, Jerry and his wife believed in beloved community. As salt of the earth people, they never felt they were better than anyone else and always loved others freely. They believed that we all are created in the image of God, and it is what they most wanted to encourage in their community those long years ago. And to this day. Jerry, who is one of the most brilliant persons I have ever met, taught in the philosophy and religion departments at FAMU for years as one of only a very few white professors on campus at the time. He was teaching Sunday School teachers the historical background of the coming weeks Sunday School texts at Bethel Baptist Church when they learned the news of Dr. Kings death. Jerry recalls that people were in a somber mood as they all left the church early to go home. The next morning, the mood on FAMUs campus was not so somber. Some were understandably angry and speaking of retribution. A campus Dean saw Jerry coming from his office and suggested it might be best if he did not linger on campus. In kindness, he escorted him to his car and told Jerry to follow him off campus in an abundance of caution for his safety. Reinforcing the community In anticipation of the bicentennial of our nation, then FAMU President, Dr. Benjamin Perry, challenged the various departments to come up with a project to celebrate. Jerry was the chairperson of a small committee at FAMU that decided to invite 11 outstanding academics to present papers on the state of the Black church at a multiday conference held on campus. Jerry worked with another committee to secure and have moved to the then Junior Museum an abandoned old black church building. When he discovered the church at a house moving company on South Monroe Street, it had been structurally altered, with a piece cut out of the front and the floor removed so it could hold a large truck. But it still had pews, pulpit, and bulletins from the last service of worship scattered about the old building giving evidence of what it once was, the second building of the purportedly oldest regularly organized black church in the state of Florida, Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church. He and the committee guided the restoration of this building that visitors to the museum enjoy today, preserving an important part of black history. Jerrys life was touched and inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., who once wrote Jerry a letter in response to a letter Jerry had sent him asking about his perspective on the Black church. Our congregation is inspired not only by Dr. King but by our friend, Jerry, who stood alongside Dr. King as a young white man in ministry and has remained sympathetic to Dr. Kings call for nonviolence and the engagement of the larger white community in helping to create beloved community. I pray that we all, no matter our skin color, can find the will and the passion to love others indiscriminately and well as we celebrate the birth and life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this holiday weekend. The Rev. Candace McKibben The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship. This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s message of 'beloved community' Jan. 14When any person walks into a public office some city hall or school headquarters, for instance they are entitled to see any public record they wish. That person doesn't have to explain, give their name or why they have an interest in that public record. They don't even have to be from that town. That is not only the law, it's just common sense. State law even spells it out, saying a public entity or its representatives "may not ask for the motive or reason for requesting the records or for the identity of the person requesting records." Not everybody sees it that way. A proposal in the North Dakota Legislature seeks to change the law so that a person requesting a public record must give their name and provide personal contact information." It's House Bill 1198 , introduced by Rep. Mike Lefor, R-Dickinson. Our advice to lawmakers: Don't do this. Just wad it up and toss it. Here's why: The more roadblocks that are put on public records, the less they actually become "open" at least in the truest sense. Already, there are fees attached to open records, and sometimes those fees can add up. A person without the money therefore cannot easily access a large number of documents. We understand why there are fees attached it's because public employees must process the requests but when a bill comes in at $100 or more, it certainly can be a deterrent. At times, newspapers in the Forum Communications Co. chain have paid thousands of dollars to access documents. We know of one case where $7,000 was spent. But also, some requesters might be hesitant to attach their name to a request because it could raise flags that ultimately could sway them from seeking the records. What if a person wants documents related to a small-town mayor or sheriff? That could spark a confrontation, and it might sway the requester from going through the trouble. These things happen. We know of a case in South Dakota, in the early 2000s, when a newspaper intern was sent to a local City Hall to request information about the chief of police. That intern was then detained in a separate room and questioned. Story continues Everyone is a member of the public and we all own these records. So why should it matter who is making the request for public documents? And why should anyone have to provide personal information to know what their government is up to? They shouldn't have to. Public entities simply must provide the documents that are requested, without question and without bias. They may have to grit their teeth every now and then, but this is how transparency works. For the sake of openness in North Dakota, we hope HB 1198 dies a quick death. Solomon Pena, a Republican candidate for New Mexico House District 14, is taken into custody by Albuquerque police officers on Monday. Solomon Pena, a Republican candidate for New Mexico House District 14, is taken into custody by Albuquerque police officers on Monday. Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, arrested a former Republican candidate for the state House of Representatives on Monday in connection with multiple shootings at local Democratic politicians homes. Solomon Pena is accused of conspiring with and paying four other men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said. He was arrested after a brief standoff with a police SWAT team. The department has been investigating at least six shootings from Dec. 4 to Jan. 5. Four of those have been linked to Pena, police said, and two others are still under investigation. It is believed that he is the mastermind that was behind this, Medina said at a news conference Monday. On Jan. 3, multiple shots were fired at the home of state Rep. Linda Lopez, including three bullets that went through her 10-year-old daughters bedroom. Police alleged that Pena attempted to fire a rifle at the home himself but that the weapon malfunctioned and a man in the car took over with a handgun. A police traffic stop about an hour after the shooting turned out to be key to the investigation. During the stop, the driver, Jose Trujillo, was found to have an unrelated felony warrant out for his arrest, police said. Two firearms were confiscated from the vehicle, and the ammunition was matched with shell casings found at Lopezs home. The vehicle was registered to Pena, police said. In addition to the firearms records, police used cellphone records and surveillance footage to piece together answers. During one attack on Dec. 11, at least a dozen bullets were fired at the home of a Bernalillo County commissioner, Debbie OMalley, The Albuquerque Journal reported. The home of another Bernalillo County commissioner, Adriann Barboa, became what is believed to be the first target on Dec. 4. Story continues Thank you to our @ABQPOLICE officers and partners in law enforcement who worked tirelessly to make this arrest. This radicalism is a threat to our city, our state, and our nation. We will continue to push back against hate in all forms and stop political violence. https://t.co/OfItWrD8AT Mayor Tim Keller (@MayorKeller) January 17, 2023 Pena launched an unsuccessful bid for New Mexicos 14th House District in 2022, losing by a decisive 47 percentage points to his Democratic opponent, state Rep. Miguel Garcia. He faced criticism during his campaign after Garcia filed a suit to disqualify him from office over a 2008 conviction for stealing in a smash and grab robbery. Pena served seven years in prison, but a judge ruled that laws barring convicted felons from office were unconstitutional. Pena an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump has continued to dispute the results of the race, claiming election fraud, The Albuquerque Journal noted. Fundamentally, at the end of the day, this was about a right-wing radical, an election denier who was arrested today and someone who did the worst imaginable thing you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn that to violence, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, a Democrat, said at the Monday news conference. Disagreements take place. We know we dont always agree with our elected officials. But that should never, ever lead to violence, the mayor said. Related... Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians Tribal Chairman Darrell Mike hugs Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent David A. Smith after signing a stewardship agreement at Spotlight 29 Casino in Coachella, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. The Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians reservation is located adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park, and the park headquarters is located less than a mile from the tribe's original reservation at Oasis of Mara in Twentynine Palms. But no trail currently exists connecting the reservation to the national park. And in the near-century since the park's original founding as a national monument in 1936, there's never been a formal agreement between the tribe and the National Park Service regarding the park's approximately 800,000 acres that include the traditional homelands and cultural sites of the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians and other area tribes. That changed this week, as Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians Tribal Chairman Darrell Mike and Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent David A. Smith held a signing ceremony marking the new co-stewardship agreement on Tuesday. The agreement represents the first formal agreement between Joshua Tree National Park and an associated tribe. The agreement expands upon a 2020 letter of collaboration between the two entities, and will enable the park and the tribe to collaborate on interpretive and educational services, natural and cultural history training, mutual aid for search and rescue and wildland fire operations, and other projects. The park and the tribe also plan on collaborating on a trail connecting the reservation to the park. "This is the first step in acknowledging and agreeing that we'll work together as a government-to-government relationship with Joshua Tree National Park and the tribe," said Mike. Mike said he also envisions other projects like a possible desert tortoise sanctuary and an inter-tribal multicultural museum on the reservation to house tribal artifacts currently housed by the national park. In Joshua Tree National Park, the connection between the homelands of the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians and the national park is demonstrated by the fact that the park's headquarters is located on land that previously served as the tribe's reservation, and the park also manages Oasis of Mara, an important cultural site that also historically served as the last available water before the Colorado River. Story continues "It's a painful reminder to me every day that the place I now call my office was once the reservation that was given to this tribe by the government of the United States. They were removed from that location and placed at the current home of the Tortoise Rock Casino and the reservation site on the side of the hill in Twentynine Palms," said Smith. The agreement is part of the federal government's current push to increase co-stewardship and management of federal public lands with tribes. In November 2021, the Secretaries of the Department of the Interior and Department of Agricultural signed Joint Secretarial Order 3403, with a goal of "ensuring that Tribal governments play an integral role in decision making related to the management of Federal lands and waters through consultation, capacity building, and other means." There are currently around 80 co-stewardship agreements across the U.S. The Joshua Tree National Park co-stewardship agreement comes at a time when some advocates say the federal government should return land to tribes as part of the "land back" movement. Virtually all of the land that the federal government holds as public lands were once Indigenous territory, according to the Department of the Interior. "I would love to have the Oasis of Mara back, and I would love to get it and just leave it as it was intended, just pristine so that others can enjoy how it used to be," said Mike, adding that it's a "big ask" because part of the oasis is currently held by a private landowner. According to Smith, transferring park property to a tribe would require an act of Congress, but absent a transfer, "we will do the second best thing, which is honest collaboration on how best to take care of these places." "I think this agreement is a first step at rebuilding some of the trust that friends and neighbors should have. We have a long and tremendous way to go. But we have a shared mission with the tribe, we believe in these spaces, we believe these cultural resources are all important, and we believe in the landscape of the California desert," said Smith. The Joshua Tree National Park agreement is one of 13 co-stewardship agreements the federal government has entered since the secretarial order was signed in 2021, according to the Department of the Interior's first annual report on tribal co-stewardship, which was produced in November. This includes a June 2022 agreement between the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and the five tribes of the Bears Ears Commission for co-management of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. In California, Redwood National Park and the Yurok Tribe entered a funding agreement in July 2022 for the tribe to continue their existing work on condor restoration, as well as trail repair and maintenance and air-quality monitoring projects. The Yurok Tribe spent the past 12 years leading an effort to return condors to their ancestral homelands for the first time in 130 years. Last year, the first condors were reintroduced at Redwood National Park. This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Joshua Tree National Park, Twenty-Nine Palms tribe to co-steward park By Nate Raymond (Reuters) - A former University of Kansas professor avoided prison on Wednesday for making a false statement related to work he was doing in China in the latest setback for a Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice crackdown on Chinese influence within American academia. Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in Kansas City, Kansas, to sentence Feng "Franklin" Tao to 2-1/2 years in prison, even after she had thrown out most of his trial conviction for concealing work he did in China. Robinson instead sentenced Tao to time served, saying there was no evidence he shared proprietary information with anyone in China and that the chemical engineering professor did research that was "freely shared in the scientific community." "This is not an espionage case," Robinson said. "Maybe that's what the Department of Justice thought what was going on, but that's not what was going on." Peter Zeidenberg, Tao's lawyer, said his client was "immensely relieved by the sentence." He said Tao will appeal his remaining false statement conviction for failing to disclose his affiliation with a Chinese university on a form submitted to the University of Kansas. Tao, who was indicted in 2019, was among about two dozen academics who were charged as part of the "China Initiative," which launched in 2018 during former Republican President Donald Trump's era and aimed to counter suspected Chinese economic espionage and research theft. The Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden in February 2022 ended the China Initiative following several failed prosecutions and criticism that it chilled research and fueled bias against Asians, though it said it would continue pursuing cases over national security threats posed by China. Prosecutors said Tao, who worked on renewable energy projects, concealed his affiliation with Fuzhou University in China from the University of Kansas and two federal agencies that provided grant funding for the professor's research. A jury in April convicted him of four of the eight counts against him. Robinson in September overturned three wire fraud convictions, citing a lack of evidence. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler) Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo wrote in his new memoir that his secret meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in 2018 began with a joke about assassination. This small, sweating, evil man tried to break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer. Mr. Director, he opened, I didnt think youd show up. I know youve been trying to kill me, Pompeos memoir, which Fox News obtained a copy of, reads. My team and I had prepared for this moment, but a joke about assassination was not on the list of things he may say when he greets you. But I was, after all, director of the CIA, so maybe his bon mot made sense, he added. Pompeos memoir, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, is set to be released on Jan. 24 amid speculation that the former Trump Cabinet secretary could announce a 2024 presidential run. Pompeo said last month that he will announce his 2024 plans this spring. In the first chapter, obtained by Fox News, Pompeo writes his meeting with Kim was a complete secret and his goal was to correct the failed efforts of the past that had not eliminated North Koreas nuclear weapons of mass destruction. After the North Korean leader opened with an assassination joke, Pompeo said he responded in kind. I decided to lean in with a little humor of my own: Mr. Chairman, Im still trying kill you. In the picture taken seconds after that exchange, Kim is still smiling. He seemed confident that I was kidding, Pompeo said in the memoir. Pompeo is not the only potential Republican presidential candidate to release a book on his time in the Trump administration. Former Vice President Mike Pence released his memoir, So Help Me God, which detailed his relationship with former President Trump, in November. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is also seen as a strong 2024 contender, is set to publish his own memoir, titled The Courage to Be Free: Floridas Blueprint for Americas Revival, in February. Pompeo was director of the CIA under Trump until the president appointed him as secretary of State in 2018. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. A mortar crew fights on the outskirts of the city on January 13, 2023 in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Photo by Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images Intense fighting between Ukraine and Russia has been taking place around the eastern city of Bakhmut. Putin has been sending troops into some of Ukraine's most heavily defended areas, a former general said. Mick Ryan argues the Russian leader is trying to get a win before the war's one-year anniversary. With the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine just weeks away, Moscow's forces have yet to achieve their aims, despite paying a high cost in battle. Russian President Vladimir Putin is "desperate for a victory of any kind" ahead of the milestone date, and he's sending his troops into some of Ukraine's most heavily defended areas to try to get it, a former Australian general said this week. Fighting between Ukraine and Russia has intensified in recent weeks around Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region. A few miles north of Bakhmut is Soledar, a smaller town where Russian forces and mercenaries belonging to the notorious Wagner Group paramilitary organization have focused their attention. Retired Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan, who served in the Australian military and as a strategist for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote that these urban areas don't have much strategic utility, and the "massive Russian losses suffered for these towns are not justified by the minor gains they present." Additionally, Russia is choosing to assault areas where Ukraine is at its strongest, Ryan said. The Donbas which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is where Ukrainian forces have battled Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Kyiv "has had eight years to prepare multiple, reinforcing defensive lines" there, he said. Ukrainian soldiers shelter in the woods along a road outside of the strategic city of Bakhmut on January 18, 2023 in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Spencer Platt/Getty Images "Attacking areas where the enemy is strongest and best prepared is generally not recommended in war," he said. Ryan noted that Russia's offensive underscores Putin's desperation to notch a victory in any way, as the Russian armed forces have so far been unable to achieve any of Russian leadership's major objectives during this campaign which has been described by top Western officials and leaders as a failure. Story continues "Putin needs something before the one-year anniversary of his Ukraine invasion that he can portray to the Russian people as worthy of its costs," the former general said, noting "Soledar and Bakhmut fit this bill." A senior US military official said last week that fighting around Bakhmut was "really severe and savage," with thousands of rounds of artillery fire exchanged between the two sides. The British defense ministry wrote in a Wednesday intelligence update that Ukrainian forces this week had "highly likely" withdrawn from Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, ceding control to Putin's troops and Wagner fighters. In its daily briefing, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Moscow's main efforts now are focused on "conducting an offensive along the Bakhmut axis." Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) January 18, 2023 The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote in an analysis last week that Russian control of Soledar does not represent an "operationally significant development" that will necessarily lead to the capture of Bakhmut. It said Russia has "overexaggerated" the importance of the town, which is not a worthwhile victory given the costs of fighting. Speaking to defense chiefs in Brussels on Wednesday, NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana warned that Putin is preparing for a "long war," and the military alliance should be prepared "for the long haul." "We need to ramp up our industrial capacity to manufacture weapons and ammunition and work closely with the defense industry to replenish our own stocks," Geoana said, according to a transcript of his speech. "It matters for Ukraine and for our own deterrence and defense." Read the original article on Business Insider (Reuters) - Russia told Azerbaijan on Tuesday that a key road leading into the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh must be quickly cleared of protesters but Baku remained unmoved, according to differing accounts from the two sides. Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but home to a mainly Armenian population. The issue is becoming a major irritant for Russia, which wants to maintain good relations with both Azerbaijan and Armenia, two small former Soviet states in the Caucasus region. For the past month, Azeris claiming to be environmental activists have blocked transport along the Lachin Corridor, the only road linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, in what Yerevan has called a government-endorsed blockade. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to Azeri counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov and "stressed the need for a swift and complete unblocking of traffic through the Lachin Corridor", the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Bayramov dismissed what he called allegations of a roadblock and a humanitarian crisis in the enclave, saying dozens of cars and ambulances used the corridor every day, according to an Azeri statement cited by Russia's Interfax news agency. Baku says the protesters have legitimate concerns over illegal Armenian mining in the area. "In this context, the need to fulfill the just demand of the protesters was noted," said the Azeri statement. Officials in Yerevan have grown increasingly angry at Russia - formally an ally through a mutual self defence treaty - for not doing more to end the blockade, especially since Russian peacekeepers are deployed in the corridor. Russia blamed Armenia last week for a breakdown in bilateral peace talks with Azerbaijan. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Jonathan Oatis) The state has approved the first construction contract for the Interstate 81 project, but work cannot begin due to a lawsuit brought by opponents of the community grid plan. David Smith, regional director of the state Department of Transportation, said Friday that the state comptroller's office signed off on the $296.4 million contract awarded to Salt City Contractors, an entity consisting of three firms L&T Construction (Schoharie County), D.A. Collins Construction (Saratoga County) and Cold Spring Construction (Erie County). Salt City Contractors' work, according to Smith, will focus on rebuilding the I-81 and Interstate 481 interchange into Business Loop 81 and I-81. Parts of I-481 will be expanded to three lanes to the Kirkville Road interchange. While the state could award the contract, it is unknown when construction will begin. A state Supreme Court judge has issued an injunction that prevents the state from proceeding with plans to tear down the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse and replace it with a street-level grid. Renew 81, a group that opposes the community grid plan that has been approved by federal and state regulators, brought the lawsuit against the project. The opponents believe that the viaduct should be replaced or that a "skybridge" should be constructed to allow for high-speed traffic to continue north and south through the city. The state Department of Transportation endorsed the community grid after considering other alternatives, including rebuilding the viaduct. Before opponents of the grid wanted a large bridge, they wanted the state to look at the possibility of a tunnel to maintain traffic flow through the city. The DOT examined a tunnel option but deemed it too expensive it would cost nearly $5 billion to build. (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said late on Monday that British Foreign Minister James Cleverly, who has been sanctioned by Moscow over Ukraine, is yet to answer for his support of Kyiv. Cleverly said on Monday he had been sanctioned by the Russian government and added that if that were the price for supporting Ukraine - he was happy to be sanctioned. "Dear James, you don't understand," Zakharova wrote on her Telegram messaging app. "This is for the anti-Russian course and personal sanctions. But you still have to answer for the support of the Kyiv regime and neo-Nazism." Russia framed its invasion of Ukraine as a battle against Nazism but Kyiv and its allies say this is a lie used to justify an unprovoked, imperialist land grab. Britain said on Saturday it would send 14 of its Challenger 2 main battle tanks as well as other advanced artillery support in the coming weeks in what could be the first shipment of Western-made tanks to Ukraine. (Reporting in Melbourne by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Michael Perry) MADISON, Wis. (AP) A Wisconsin judge on Tuesday dismissed an open records complaint against a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission who served as a fake elector for former President Donald Trump. Allegations that the elections commission violated the state open records law by wrongly withholding documents will go forward, but claims made against Commissioner Robert Spindell were dismissed by Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost. The commission itself, not Spindell, is the legal authority that must maintain the records in question and be the target of any lawsuit seeking them, Frost ruled after oral arguments. Madison-based law firm Law Forward, known for the liberal-leaning cases it takes, filed the lawsuit against the commission and Spindell. Law Forward attorney Scott Thompson said after the hearing that he remained optimistic the records would be turned over even though Spindell is no longer a party to the lawsuit. Spindell's attorney, Mark Maciolek, called the judge's ruling a correct but technical one. It does not relieve anyone in government of their obligations to preserve and produce public records, he said. The lawsuit stems from a complaint filed by Law Forward with the elections commission in 2021. It alleged that Republicans illegally posed as Wisconsin electors in an attempt to convince the U.S. Congress to declare that Trump won the state in 2020, even though he in fact lost to President Joe Biden by about 21,000 votes. Republican attempts to cast electoral college votes for Trump in seven swing states he lost were a focus of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. The Wisconsin Elections Commission last year rejected a complaint about the events, saying that Republicans who attempted to cast the state's 10 electoral college votes for Trump did not break any election laws. Spindell did not recuse himself from considering the complaint, even though he voted as one of the fake GOP electors. Story continues In a closed meeting, the commission voted unanimously to reject the complaint. The Wisconsin Department of Justice concluded that Republicans were legitimately trying to preserve Trumps legal standing as courts were deciding if he or Biden won the election. That is the same argument that Trump allies and the fake electors from Wisconsin have made, including in testimony to the Jan. 6 committee. Law Forward filed two lawsuits after the complaint was rejected. In one pending action, the group alleges that Spindell should have been excluded from considering the complaint before the commission because his actions were at the heart of the matter. The other case, heard Tuesday, alleged that Spindell and the elections commission failed to turn over records that Law Forward requested multiple times under Wisconsin's open records law. The law firm sought documents related to a comment Spindell made during the public portion of a November 2021 commission meeting where he openly discussed his decision not to recuse himself from considering the complaint related to fake electors. The commission had been considering the request in closed session only, which made Spindells comments unusual. Specifically, Law Forward asked for communications surrounding material Spindell appeared to be reading from during the meeting. According to the lawsuit, the elections commission provided a single document that resembled what Spindell read from and said Spindell had no other related records. Frost dismissed claims against Spindell, agreeing with his argument that the commission is the legal authority in charge of the records. Law Forward brought the case on behalf of Paul Sickel, executive director of the Service Employees International Union's Wisconsin State Council. The firm has also filed another lawsuit, currently pending in federal court, against the 10 electors and Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis seeking $2.4 million in damages. That case alleges Trump and his allies conspired to overturn his loss in the battleground state. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect the name of Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost. A previous version listed his first name as Robert Frost. The NCAA window for players to enter the portal this time around will close tomorrow, Jan. 18. Plenty of Alabama players have already entered the portal and in most cases, found new places to call home. Late Tuesday evening, reserve linebacker Demouy Kennedy became the latest member of the Crimson Tide to enter the portal. Kennedy was a four-star prospect that signed with Alabama as a part of the 2020 class. Kennedy missed a large portion of the 2022 season with a knee injury that he suffered against Arkansas while playing on special teams. The Theodore Alabama native will have three years of eligibility remaining. Alabama linebacker Demouy Kennedy has entered the transfer portal. Former top recruit.https://t.co/eVdQABcSl0 Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) January 18, 2023 Contact/Follow us @RollTideWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Alabama news, notes, and opinion. You can also follow Stacey Blackwood on Twitter @Blackwood89. Let us know your thoughts, and comment on this story below. Join the conversation today. List 10 potential candidates to replace Alabama DC Pete Golding Story originally appeared on Roll Tide Wire Police investigating the murder of four Idaho students seized a string of items from suspect Bryan Kohbergers apartment, including possible hair strands, a disposable glove, items with red and brown stains and a computer, according to a newly unsealed search warrant. Investigators stated in the search warrant application that they hoped to find hair strands that could link the suspect to the scene of the horrific November crime in Moscow, Idaho. They said in the application that this could be either through the four victims or through a dog that was at the rental house at the time of the slayings, reported The New York Times. Police said that one of the items found at the suspects apartment at nearby Washington State University was a possible animal hair strand. In the documents, investigators said one item had a collection of dark red spotting, and that a pillow had a reddish/brown stain on it. The application also stated that the murder scene near the University of Idaho campus where the victims were discovered had a large amount of the victims blood including spatter and castoff blood. Investigators also searched the Washington State University office used by the suspect, a graduate student and teaching assistant in criminology, but did not seize any items. They also did not find a knife or any other weapon in the search, with police having already admitted they have not yet found the murder weapon. The bodies of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found at their King Road rental house opposite the University of Idaho in the city of Moscow on 13 November. Police believe that the students were killed in their beds between 4am and 4.25am after a night out in Moscow. The suspect was arrested in Pennsylvania in December after driving across the US with his father and flown back to Idaho charged with the murders. Investigators honed in on the suspect through DNA evidence taken from the scene of the crime and tracking a white Hyundai Elantra car belonging to Mr Kohberger that was spotted near the scene of the crime. drinks getty Canadians are being urged to limit their alcohol consumption to two drinks per week, according to a new national guidance. On Tuesday, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) updated its guidance on alcohol and health, recommending that women should limit consumption to two standard drinks per week and men should limit consumption to six standard drinks per week. The country defines a standard drink as a bottle of beer or cider (12 oz., 5% alcohol), glass of wine (5 oz., 12% alcohol), or a shot glass of spirits (1.5 oz., 40% alcohol). "The main message from this new guidance is that any amount of alcohol is not good for your health," said Erin Hobin, senior scientist with Public Health Ontario and a member of the expert panel that developed the guidelines, per BBC. "And if you drink, less is better." RELATED: Drinking Any Amount of Alcohol Causes Damage to the Brain, New Study Finds Never miss a story sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The updated guidance comes after two years of research, funded by Health Canada, that involved nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed studies and about 1,000 surveys about the impact of alcohol consumption. The previous guidance, which was released in 2011, recommended no more than two drinks per day. The CCSA states now that consuming more than two alcoholic drinks per week increases the risk for a stroke or cancer. Hobin explained that the risk for head and neck cancers increases by 15% at three standard drinks per week. Recent studies also show that no amount of alcohol is safe, and that even low levels of drinking slightly increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, according to The New York Times. "The evidence is clear that every drink counts," Alexander Caudarella, CEO of the CCSA, said in a statement. "It's also clear that it's never too late to make changes. Any reduction in alcohol use can be beneficial. Health professionals can now better determine an individual's risk and collaborate with their patients to improve their health." Child remains have been found by investigators in rural Grady County, Oklahoma, amid the ongoing search for Athena Brownfield, as court documents allege the 4-year-old was punched to death on Christmas Day. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) said in a statement it could not confirm the remains, which were found outside of the town of Rush Springs, were those of Brownfield. "The remains will be transported to the Medical Examiner's Office in Oklahoma City for positive identification," OSBI said. The investigation into the girl's disappearance has been ongoing since Jan. 10 when a mail carrier found Brownfield's 5-year-old sister playing alone on the street. Officials on Monday declared the search for Brownfield a "recovery operation." Athena Brownfield / Credit: Oklahoma Highway Patrol The girls' caretaker, Alysia Adams, 31, had been watching the children for about two years after their biological mother, Jasmin Brownfield, left them in her care, court documents said. Adams is a relative of the two girls, OSBI has said. Neither child had been sent to school nor seen a doctor and they were often left alone, police said. Adams has been arrested and charged with child abuse and neglect for failing to protect the child from her husband, Ivon Adams, who fled. Ivon Adams, 36, was taken into custody Thursday in Arizona and is awaiting extradition to Oklahoma, OSBI said. He faces one count of first-degree murder and one count of child neglect, OSBI said Monday. Alysia Adams confessed that around midnight on Christmas Day, Ivon Adams beat Athena Brownfield and held her up by her arms until she stopped moving, court documents said. Then he punched the toddler three times in the chest and left the house around 1:00 a.m. on Dec. 26, the documents allege. He returned sometime later, telling his wife he buried Athena Brownfield near the fence line near their old residence in Rush Springs, according to the documents. He placed a large broken branch over the burial site, the documents said. Story continues Senators push for access to Biden, Trump classified documents Tyre Nichols arrest video to be released Friday after 5 former officers are charged Tensions rise in Mideast after deadly raid in West Bank Here's your guide to today's 2023 spring primary election in the Sheboygan area. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The candidates who advance in the primary will go on to the general election on Tuesday, April 4. There are lots of resources for voters at myvote.wi.gov. You can: Here's the list of contested races for Sheboygan voters State Supreme Court Justice Candidates are running for the seat that will be vacated by Justice Patience Roggensack, who is not running for re-election. The top two candidates will advance to the general election. Jennifer R. Dorow Daniel Kelly Everett D. Mitchell Janet C. Protasiewicz More:The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race will decide control of the bench. Here's a closer look at the four candidates. More:Wisconsin's Supreme Court election could be the most expensive in history. Here's what's at stake in the closely watched race. Sheboygan Board of Education Three seats; the top six candidates will advance to the general election. Kay Robbins (i) Sarah Ruiz-Harrison (i) Julie Kelly Heidi Boehmer David Ross Haley Stuckmann Lawrence Adams More:February primary will narrow down candidates for Sheboygan school board. Meet the candidates here. This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Sheboygan voters' guide to the 2023 Wisconsin primary election A JetBlue flight at JFK Airport in New York City bumped into another plane just days after a near-collision at the airport sparked an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The most recent incident took place on Wednesday morning, WABC reported. Officials said that Flight 1603 to San Juan, Puerto Rico was set to take off at 6am, but the aircraft was taken back to the gate and out of service after it struck the tail of another plane operated by the same airline. The struck aircraft had no one inside it. The flight took off at 7.50am once all the passengers had boarded another plane. No injuries were recorded, officials said, but the FAA will investigate the incident. The plane came into light contact with a parked unoccupied aircraft during pushback, a spokesperson for JetBlue said, according to NBC New York. The planes were of the same model Airbus A320s. JetBlue said both of them will be taken out of service. JetBlue Flight 1603 struck the tail of a parked JetBlue aircraft while pushing back from the gate around 7am at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York, the FAA said. The flight was going to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Both aircraft were Airbus 320. No injuries were reported, and the FAA will investigate. The news of the collision comes after a tense audio recording captured air traffic controllers panic as two commercial planes nearly collided at the airport on Friday night. The close call, which saw a London-bound American Airlines jet taxi across in front of a Delta aircraft that was taking off, is also under investigation by the FAA. The Delta Boeing 737 came to a stop within 1,000 feet (305 metres) of the taxiing American Airlines Boeing 777 at around 8.45pm on Friday 13 January, the agency said. Air traffic control audio was shared on Twitter by flight watcher @xJonNYC. S**t! Delta 1943 cancel takeoff plans! Delta 1943 cancel takeoff plans! a controller says. Story continues After the disaster was averted, the controller is heard letting out a big sigh. According to the FAA, air traffic controllers noticed another aircraft crossing the runway in front of the departing jetliner. According to a preliminary analysis, Delta Air Lines Flight 1943 stopped its takeoff roll approximately 1,000 feet before reaching the point where American Airlines Flight 106, a Boeing 777, had crossed from an adjacent taxiway, the agency said in a statement. Delta said its 737-900 was heading to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic with 145 passengers and six staff members on board. The airline said the plane had to go back to the gate and couldnt depart because of staff problems. The flight instead took off on Saturday morning after passengers had been provided with hotel accommodations overnight. The safety of our customers and crew is always Deltas number one priority, Delta told CNN. The airline said it will work with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to analyse the problem. Delta will work with and assist the NTSB on a full review of flight 1943 on Jan 13 regarding an aborted takeoff procedure at New York-JFK. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and delay of their travels, the airline added. The NTSB is also involved in the investigation. American Airlines hasnt made a public statement, instead referring queries to the FAA, according to CNN. American Airlines Flight 106 flew took off bound for London Heathrow, landing on schedule the following morning. More follows... Madison Township Fire Chief Kenneth Justus Madison Township Fire Chief Ken Justus says department hiring practices may need to change if the township wants to continue to hire and retain qualified firefighters. Justus also indicated during the township trustees regular meeting on Tuesday that the board may have to consider raising salaries to keep personnel from leaving. The chiefs comments came as the board accepted the resignation of Jody Erickson as a full-time firefighter, effective Jan. 28. Erickson has accepted a full-time position at the Ashland Fire Department but will remain at Madison in a part-time status. Erickson is one of a number of Madison firefighters who have left over the past year to go to Mansfield, Shelby or fire departments in other communities. That prompted township resident Tim Goff to ask during a public comment session if Madisons pay is competitive with firefighter wages in Ashland. Not even close, Justus quickly responded. I am going to do a survey to see, but I think we may be the lowest paid in the county right now. Justus said the issue is not necessarily just pay but a lack of people interested in going into the firefighting profession. He said hes had conversations with people who said that when Mansfield had an opening for a firefighter position, 200 people would apply to take the qualification test. There is a survey done by the state fire marshals office that found out that in the last five years in the state of Ohio we have lost 45% of the fire and EMS providers, Justus said. Theres just not people out there who have the certifications and the training right now, so whats happening is departments are putting out requests for people to work jobs and theres nobody to work. Justus said it is his understanding that Mansfield recently hired seven people who have no paramedic school and no training and will have to be sent to school for everything starting from the bottom up. Compounding the issue, he added, is that basic fire school is seven or eight weeks and paramedic school lasts a full year. Story continues In the past, its been that the people who come and apply for jobs here have to have all that done before theyre hired, Justus said. I think as time goes on were going to have to reinvent ourselves because there are not people out there who are certified. Trustee Cathy Swank said that when she took her firefighter training in 1999-2000, Madison had its own school and charged $3,000 including books and tuition and the fire department paid for it. Now, she said she recently saw that one school is charging $10,000. Justus was asked how the Madison Township Fire Department hires new firefighters under current conditions. He said the department has opened up to lateral hiring from other departments, which means a firefighter is credited with the same years of service at the same pay grade and gets the same vacation time and longevity when they come in. Realistically what were doing is were stealing from each other, Justus said. Shelby took three of ours so were going to take transfers from somewhere else. Thats where we are. Justus also pointed out that its up to the firefighters union and trustees to work out salary issues. Swank noted that full negotiations will not be held until late this year. Fire department seeks grants During his administrative report, Justus said he has contracted for a dashboard software system that allows him to display information such as call information, weather, road cameras, the dispatch system and scheduling software on a digital display board in each station. The cost is $1,378 per year for the subscription, the Google Drive hardware, yearly programming and interfaces with other software and a one-time set up fee of $995. Justus also reported that he recently applied for three grants including: $2,453 from the FM Global Fire Prevention Foundation for fire investment equipment and materials. $10,800 from the state fire marshals office for four sets of turnout gear. $19,855 from the Firehouse Subs Foundation to replace a 35-year-old extraction air bag and purchase rescue struts. Justus notified the trustees that Engine 72 has been taken out of service because it was unable to maintain sufficient air pressure to operate the horn and brakes and has been taken to Ontario for repairs. Following an executive session at the end of their meeting, trustees voted to convert the recent hiring of firefighter Matthew Sandmann to a lateral hire and promoted Rodney Lambert from lieutenant to captain, effective Feb. 11. This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Madison Township Fire Chief Ken Justus dealing with staffing issues U.S. Rep. Brandon Williams has received his first committee assignment, one that some of his predecessors held when they represented the Syracuse or Utica areas in Congress. Williams, R-Sennett, has been named to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The committee has jurisdiction over a wide range of transportation and infrastructure issues. It also oversees the management of federal buildings and the U.S. Coast Guard. The committee is chaired by U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican. Williams is one of three freshmen GOP members from New York U.S. Reps. Anthony D'Esposito and Marc Molinaro are the others who will join the panel. "I look forward to joining my colleagues on (the committee) under Chairman Graves' leadership to improve our nation's infrastructure, address the fight for energy independence and significantly better the day-to-day lives of all Americans," Williams said in a statement. Graves added, "I am excited to welcome Representative Williams to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I am confident he will be a valuable member of our committee as we work to develop solutions to improve our infrastructure, strengthen transportation programs and help alleviate ongoing energy and supply chain problems on behalf of the American people." Williams follows other central New York members of Congress who have served on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Former U.S. Rep. John Katko, who represented the Syracuse area for the last eight years, was on the committee during his four terms in Congress. A few members of Congress whose districts included the Utica area, former U.S. Reps. Michael Arcuri, Sherwood Boehlert and Richard Hanna, also served on the committee. The assignment will allow Williams to play a role on important issues affecting central New York. He will be in a position to advocate for funding to support the Interstate 81 project in the Syracuse area and to address infrastructure needs related to the planned Micron semiconductor chip manufacturing facility in Onondaga County. Williams represents the 22nd Congressional District that includes all of Onondaga, Madison and Oneida counties, along with a small portion of Oswego County. Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann, from right, and Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn attend the Amazon Fulfillment Center grand opening celebrates in Canton Miss., Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022. With more than half of Mississippi's rural hospitals at risk of shutting their doors, a plan to address the crisis is beginning to take shape in the state Senate. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and a group of senators laid out legislation Wednesday that he said would both bring immediate aid to struggling hospitals and pave the way for long-term changes to Mississippi's healthcare landscape. "We have been concerned about rural health and hospitals here in Mississippi for a lengthy period of time," Hosemann said. "During a whole series of discussion with folks, with hospital administrators, with patients, in different parts of the state, we have come to the conclusion that there needs to be significant positive changes." The lieutenant governor, who presides over the Senate, specifically promoted four bills as potential paths forward. In addition to what can be done in the legislature, Hosemann said there have been discussions within the state Division of Medicaid, under Gov. Tate Reeves, to make changes to reimbursement rates that could bring in millions of dollars in additional revenue to hospitals in the state. Hosemann's team is also closely monitoring recent changes taking place at the federal level. The first bill, sponsored by Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, is a grant program for Mississippi hospitals that would distribute about $80 million in funding based on a formula that takes into account bed counts and types of care being provided. The grant would come with the condition that hospitals report certain data, including patient censuses, to the state Department of Health. The state could then use this data for future restructuring of its healthcare system. "That's really important to the long term ... solution for rural healthcare in Mississippi," Hosemann said. The second bill, sponsored by Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, would institute a nurse loan repayment program. Nursing students would be eligible for $6,000 per year for a maximum of three years that they can put toward repayment of student loans. The program would initially be funded through federal American Rescue Plan Act funds but would be open to state funding as well. A similar program is already on the books, but Hosemann said it is necessary to pass a new law. Story continues "The first one they had issues on how it actually was, and so this is the same bill with those issues resolved," Hosemann said. "The one we did last year that came out of the Senate was changed in the House and there were some nuances, it did never, it never worked. So, this one is to correct that." The third bill, sponsored by Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch, would create a roughly $20 million grant program for community college nursing and allied health programs. These funds, also initially coming from ARPA, could be used on equipment, infrastructure and other expenses that would allow programs to increase capacity. Similar legislation passed the Senate last year but did not become law. As part of the same bill, a roughly $5 million grant program would be created to encourage the creation of new residency programs, or the expansion of existing ones, particularly in rural areas. "When I met with our hospitals, they discussed the fact that we don't have enough residency programs," Hosemann said. "If they go and do their residency there the odds are really great, 70 or 80%, that they will actually stay in the community." The last bill, sponsored by Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, is a main long-term bill that Hosemann discussed. It would allow for hospitals to consolidate or partner to make themselves more financially viable. In most cases, unless the legislature has provided a special carveout, hospitals are currently prevented from merging or partnering. Hosemann said, due to population changes, some hospitals have too much capacity while others have too little. "We have discussed this with virtually all of the hospitals around Mississippi, major hospitals particularly and a number of rural hospitals," Hosemann said. Later Wednesday, an amended version of Fillingane's bill gained initial approval when it passed in a unanimous vote of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee. An identical bill has also been filed in the House. Hosemann voiced confidence that those bills would make it out of the Senate and optimism toward their potential fate in the House. "I spoke to the Speaker (of the House) about this yesterday and told him a little bit about what we were going to do, where we're headed," Hosemann said. "I know, having just casual conversations with other members of the House in the hallways and whatnot, they're very concerned about rural health just like all of us are." Hosemann said he does not expect the legislature to consider one proposal that has been floated as a potential source of revenue for hospitals: Medicaid expansion. "I really don't expect that," Hosemann said. "What I foresee is that we're going to address these four or five issues that we've got, the long-term needs the short-term economic needs, we're going to address those. I think we're hopeful that the Medicaid reimbursement model will increase significantly." Hosemann said he does continue to support an extension of post-partum Medicaid coverage, and he expects it to pass the Senate as it has multiple times in recent years, only to face opposition in the House. Hosemann said a balance must be found where hospitals are economically viable, but also able to have the capacity to handle emergencies. Many of the procedures that were once performed in hospitals are now done in out-patient facilities, leading to less revenue for the hospital. That said, a hospital still must be accessible in case there is an emergency at a nearby out-patient facility. Other widespread emergencies also came to Hosemann's mind. "We had COVID, and we ended up setting up tents in the parking lot," Hosemann said. "Also, there are times when we have tornados, like we had in Smithville, where a lot of people get injured. We have to have capacity, so we are trying to balance that with the economic needs. Everything that used to be done in a hospital is matriculating outside so the hospital has emerged into a longer-term care, more sophisticated issues, and you know ICU. And so those are very expensive to maintain." Ultimately, when this process is over, Hosemann said his goal is for hospitals to be economically viable and for no Mississippians to live more than 30 minutes from a hospital, with most people living within 15 minutes of one. This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Rural hospital crisis: Lt. Gov. Hosemann lays out a plan A polar bear mauled and killed a woman and a boy after chasing residents in the remote village of Wales, in western Alaska, on Tuesday afternoon. The animal was shot dead by a resident, ending the terrifying attack, Alaska State Troopers said. The names and ages of the victims werent immediately released. Initial reports indicate that a polar bear had entered the community and had chased multiple residents, troopers said in a dispatch posted on its website. Troopers and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are working to travel to Wales as weather conditions allow, it added. Fatal polar bear attacks in Alaska are extremely rare, the Anchorage Daily News noted in its report on the tragedy. The newspaper recalled one death from a bear attack in 1990 and another serious mauling in 1993. Male polar bears can weigh more than 1,700 pounds and stand up to 10 feet tall, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Current and predicted future declines in sea ice have designated the animals with threatened status and can force them to seek food elsewhere, the department added. Dotdash Meredith and Yahoo Inc. may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Camilla, Queen Consort, Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, receives a bouquet of flowers from (left to right) Elspeth Cameron and Rosa Alexander both aged four from the Rocking Horse Nursey as she leaves after her visit to the university's new Science Teaching Hub to view demonstrations in the University's labs and meet staff and students on January 18, 2023 in Aberdeen, Scotland. Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty Queen Camilla met a pint-sized princess at the University of Aberdeen! On Wednesday morning, the Queen Consort, 75, visited the college in Scotland. Camilla has served as Chancellor of the university since 2013 and came out to tour the new Science Teaching Hub. The royal was welcomed by the campus community and adorably accepted flowers from two young girls who attend the Rocking Horse nursery school on campus. Elspeth Cameron and Rosa Alexander, both 4, presented the Queen Consort with a bright bouquet, and Camilla chatted with one of the girls about her crown. The state-of-the-art Science Teaching Hub, which opened last year, is designed to provide specialized training and support for students in chemistry, medicine, biological science, geoscience and more. Queen Camilla also saw demonstrations in the university labs and connect with students and staff before making a short speech. "Coming to this university, and to this city, has always felt a bit like coming home to me," she began. "Firstly, because my father's family came from this part of Scotland, secondly, because my husband and I are lucky enough to spend precious time each year in Aberdeenshire and finally, because ten years ago, I received the great honor of being installed as Chancellor of this very special University." Voicing her pride in the university's progress "from strength to strength," Camilla said, "Your many achievements include the opening of the new Rowett Institute and this outstanding Science Teaching Hub; receiving two Queen's Anniversary prizes for world-leading healthcare and environmental research; and being named fourth in the United Kingdom for overall student satisfaction." "My achievements as Chancellor over the last decade seem rather modest in comparison. I was told in 2013 that one element of my role was to defend the University so that 'raven wolves do not invade the College and its flock.' Perhaps more by luck than judgement, I believe that not a single raven wolf has, as yet, made its way into any of the Linklater Rooms," she continued. "I do assure you, I have taken the greatest interest in all your work and have sung your praises at every given opportunity." Story continues Top-ranked in the U.K., the University of Aberdeen is known for its leading research in health, energy, food, nutrition, and the sciences, with an undergraduate population of about 14,000. Queen Camilla was installed as Chancellor a decade ago and has since conferred many honorary degrees including one to her sister-in-law Princess Anne in 2020. The Duchess of Cornwall (known as the Duchess of Rothesay while in Scotland) presents an honorary degree to her sister-in-law the Princess Royal at the University of Aberdeen. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images) Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty RELATED: Can Prince Harry Reconcile with Prince William and King Charles Amid Spare Release? Camilla's academic patronage aligns with another cause close to her heart. The royal serves as president of the Royal Osteoporosis Society and has previously toured labs at the University of Aberdeen to learn more about research on arthritis, musculoskeletal health, breast cancer and women's health. ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND - JANUARY 16: Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall, known as the Duchess of Rothesay chats with student Sadaf Ashraf as she is shown a knee joint on a screen in a research lab at the Centre for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Health during a visit to Aberdeen Universitys School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition on January 16, 2019 in Aberdeen, Scotland. The Duchess, who is President of the National Osteoporosis Society, Patron of the Versus Arthritis and Chancellor of the University, met researchers working in arthritis and musculoskeletal heath, breast cancer and womens health. (Photo by Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty Images) Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty RELATED: King Charles and Queen Camilla Attend Church at Balmoral in First Joint Outing Since Spare Release Queen Camilla and King Charles III were first spotted together in Scotland earlier this week, their first public outing following the global release of Prince Harry's revealing memoir, Spare. The King, 74, and Queen Consort drove together to Crathie Kirk church near Balmoral Castle on Sunday. Craithe Kirk is the British royal family's go-to church during stays at Balmoral, and Charles was seen behind the wheel of an Audi on the way there. King Charles III and the Queen Consort arrive at Crathie Kirk, near Balmoral, to attend a Sunday church service PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo Charles and Camilla's relationship is a prominent theme in Spare. In the sweeping text, published on Jan. 10, Prince Harry revealed that he and Prince William asked their father not to marry Camilla, whom Charles had an on-again, off-again relationship with since the 1970s. The romance overlapped with both of their marriages to other people Camilla to Andrew Parker Bowles, and Charles to Princess Diana. In the book, the Duke of Sussex, 38, likened his first meeting with Camilla, who he described as "the other woman," to "getting an injection," and said they probably spoke about a shared passion for horses. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! Prince Harry book PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE The book jacket of Prince Harry's memoir 'Spare' "I recall wondering, right before the tea, if she'd be mean to me. If she'd be like all the wicked stepmothers in the storybooks. But she wasn't. Like Willy, I did feel a real gratitude for that," Harry wrote. Charles and Camilla went on to wed in April 2005, and Camilla received the title of Duchess of Cornwall following their union. After Queen Elizabeth died, Charles became King Charles III and bestowed the title of Queen Consort upon his wife. Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Quarles backed out of an event in Western Kentucky at which a police officer involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor was to discuss the "false, woke storyline" of what happened that night. An invitation to the Tuesday night dinner buffet at the Bowling Green Country Club, hosted by the Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky, circulated online over the weekend. It indicated Quarles and former Louisville Metro Police Officer Jonathan Mattingly both would be featured there. More:New at Louisville's Jefferson Square Park: A memorial for Breonna Taylor and 2020 protests However, Quarles, who is the state's agriculture secretary, said Tuesday he will arrange to appear before the club some other time, sans Mattingly. "I, like other candidates running for governor, have been invited to introduce myself to this group," he said in a written statement to The Courier Journal. "I was invited independently of other speakers and due to the controversial nature of another speaker at this event, we have decided to reschedule to a later date." Mattingly was involved in the March 2020 raid during which police shot and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and emergency room technician, in her Louisville home. He was among the officers who fired a gun in her apartment that night, and he was shot in the leg by Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who said he thought an intruder was breaking in. Louisville Metro later reached a $2 million settlement with Walker after he filed civil lawsuits over the fatal raid. Mattingly was cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal LMPD investigation into policy violations in December 2020, and he retired in June 2021. Four other former officers involved in the incident were indicted on federal charges last August. One of them, Kelly Ann Goodlett, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate Taylor's civil rights for helping falsify an affidavit for the search of Taylor's apartment that ended in her death. Story continues More:FACT CHECK 2.0: Separating the truth from the lies in the Breonna Taylor police shooting The apparent invite to the Republican women's club's Tuesday event that circulated online referred to the search warrant served on Taylor's home as "valid" despite the federal indictments that indicate the warrant was obtained under false pretenses and said Mattingly would speak at the event about the raid and "how the media's narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline." The Courier Journal did not immediately receive a response to an email seeking comment from the women's club Tuesday morning. In a post Monday on Facebook, the club said it invited Mattingly who wrote a book giving his account of the raid to share his experience of the night police shot and killed Taylor. "These events may be controversial however, we believe Sgt. Mattingly has the right to share his experience," the club's statement said. "Other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization as well." Taylor's death at the hands of police attracted international attention and had a big impact on Louisville, where calls for justice became central to historic protests in the city. Reach reporter Morgan Watkins at mwatkins@courierjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter: @morganwatkins26. This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ryan Quarles skips event featuring ex-officer from Breonna Taylor case Pallbearers carry a casket to the graveside service for the Haight and Earl families in La Verkin, Utah (The Salt Lake Tribune) A Utah man who is charged with shooting his entire family in a murder-suicide had been investigated two years prior for child abuse against his daughter, new records show, but local police and prosecutors decided not to criminally charge him after he claimed the girl was being mouthy. The police records released on Tuesday reveal that Michael Haight showed violent behaviour towards his family. In a 2020 interview with authorities, Macie Haight, the familys eldest daughter, detailed multiple assaults, including one where she was choked by her father and was very afraid that he was going to keep her from breathing and kill her. The child abuse investigation was launched after a non-family member reported potential child abuse to the police in August 2020. Macie, then 14, told investigators that her fathers violent behaviour started in 2017. She also spoke of an incident where he grabbed her by the shoulders and banged her into a wooden piece along the back of the couch. In his own interview with an investigator, Haight denied assaulting Macie and called the report a misunderstanding, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. But he reportedly admitted to getting angry at his daughter for being mouthy and said that anger was in part fueled by his fathers death and brothers divorce. Notes from the investigation, obtained by the Union-Tribune, also show Macie reporting that her father often belittled her mother, Tausha Haight. Haight denied doing so but said that he had taken his wifes phone and iPad to surveil her text messages to check if she had spoken negatively about his family, the outlet reported. Investigators said Tausha Haight did not want her husband to face criminal charges but that she hoped the investigation would serve as a wake-up call. The investigator who interviewed Haight described his behaviour as close to assaultive, but ultimately no charges were filed. District Attorney, Chad Dotson said in a statement on Tuesday that his office did not charge Haight in 2020 because there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges likely based on an inability to prove each element of the case beyond a reasonable doubt and/or statute of limitations barriers. Story continues Haight is suspected of carrying out a murder-suicide that left his entire family dead on 4 January in the small town of Enoch. The police said he fatally shot his wife, her mother and their five kids, including Macie, before turning the gun on himself. Police believe Haight, 42, carried out the shootings two weeks after his wife had filed for divorce and just days after her relatives say he took guns from the house. Haight is a businessman who was described in glowing terms in an obituary published in the St George Spectrum last week, calling him a father who made it a point to spend quality time with each and every one of his children. The obituary made no mention of the killings and was taken offline after backlash. Additional reporting by agencies PATRICK T. FALLON - Getty Images GOP state legislators in Wyoming have introduced a bill proposing a state ban on the sale of electric vehicles by 2035. The bill claims Wyoming's power grid isn't set up for EV charging and that disposing of EV batteries will be challenging for municipal landfills, in addition to citing the importance of crude oil and gas to the state economy. Wyoming's state legislature has yet to vote on the proposal, but the bill would also discourage state residents from purchasing EVs prior to 2035, if passed. Bucking the electrification trend growing across the nation, state legislators from Wyoming are threatening to ban electric vehicles. Seriously, a group of six GOP lawmakers led by Senator Jim Anderson, R-Casper, introduced a bill that aims to ban the sale of EVs in Wyoming by 2035, the year that many states are set to ban the sale of internal-combustion vehicles. Known as State Senate Joint Resolution NO. SJ0004, the proposal is in its fledgling stage after being introduced last week. The text of the bill cites the oil and gas industry as being one of the Cowboy State's proudest industries and one that is responsible for a significant revenue stream as well as mass employment for the people of Wyoming. Citing the historic usefulness of gas-powered vehicles in enabling continued growth in the state, these legislators claim that "Wyoming's vast stretches of highway, coupled with a lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, make the widespread use of electric vehicles impracticable for the state." Steve Fecht for General Motors Additionally, the bill cites supply and environmental concerns over the continued production and subsequent disposal of EV batteries, claiming municipal landfill employees will require additional training and equipment to deal with these batteries. Other concerns include the charging infrastructure tax on Wyoming's power grid and a supposed inability to adequately engage in interstate commerce if electric vehicles are introduced en-masse to the state. "The misadventure of electric vehicles," as these legislators call it, will not be allowed to impede trucking routes nor undermine the preservation of the country's critical minerals, at least not under their watch. That is, if the bill is voted on and ratified by Wyoming's Republican-controlled 60-member House of Representatives and 30-person Senate. At that point, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon would have three days to sign the legislation. Even if he doesn't respond, the bill goes into effect, at which point Wyoming consumers will be unable to buy an EV after 2035. In addition, Wyoming residents will be discouraged from buying an electric vehicle prior to the 2035 ban. Lastly, the final resolution states that the passed bill will be distributed to the President of the United States as well as the President of the US Senate, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, and the Governor of California, for reasons we can only assume are spiteful. Justin Sullivan - Getty Images This proposal signals a strong opposition to state-by-state and federal moves toward clean energy and emissions reduction plans that include new-sales bans of internal-combustion vehicles. Following California's lead, a total of 15 other states have introduced plans to phase out new gas-powered vehicles, with phase-out dates ranging from 2030 to 2035. While some states like Massachusetts and California are planning for outright sales bans by 2035, other states like Minnesota and Colorado are simply setting emissions or sales goals but have yet to commit to full bans. At a federal level, President Biden has launched a plan to make half of all new US vehicles electric by 2030, but this target is not legally binding. The messaging is clear. Wyoming is asserting that its needs differ from others across the country, and that it can set a similar but also vastly different precedent in propulsion choice. While the text of this bill may be more of a political stunt, the energy grid of Wyoming isn't exactly set up for optimized clean EV charging, with coal-fired power plants producing about 73% of the state's electricity and 3/5ths of its electricity sent out of state. Do you support sales bans of new ICE vehicles by 2035? Why or why not? Please share your thoughts below? RFA/Health Care Access Reporter Santiago Ochoa is a bilingual journalist covering health care access at the Yakima Herald-Republic in Yakima, Washington. Before joining the Herald, Ochoa reported for Flint Beat in Flint, Michigan, covering the citys Latino populationhealth care, education, community building and more, and winning top honors in the Michigan Press Associations feature category. He served as photographer and later editor for his college newspaper, The Michigan Times. When hes not working, Ochoa enjoys cross-country trips on his motorcycle, going to the movies, reading and skiing. What organizers call "the largest farm equipment show in the Northeast" is returning for its 38th year at the state fairgrounds in Geddes. According to a news release, the New York Farm Show will add 30 new products and 18 new exhibitors to maximize 300,000 square feet across six heated buildings. Over 400 exhibitors will display the latest in farm equipment, tractors, combines and farm implements; seed and crop protection products; farm supplies, dairy and beef productions, woodlot, and related industry supplies. The show, Feb. 23-25, is hosted by American Agriculturist and Northeast Equipment Dealers Association, was established in 1985 and is the sister show to the Farm Progress Show, the largest outdoor farm equipment show in the United States, and Husker Harvest Days, the largest outdoor irrigated farm show in the world, organizers said. This years show highlights include: New products and exhibitors on display including the latest technologies in tractors, planters, sprayers, and other precision-agriculture tools. Stop by the Dairy Building to see new products in robotic milking systems, beef handling equipment and take a picture with Brisket, the larger-than-life blow-up beef steer. Everyones favorite food, the hot beef sundae will be sold daily starting at 11am until sold out. Educational seminars and workshops will include a full line of educational sessions from the New York Beef Producers and New York Forest Owners Association. Solectrac will be displaying its latest compact electric tractors the e25g that help provide a more sustainable agricultural future and still do everything you expect from a 25hp tractor. See their tractors up close in the Horticulture building (space B2) and take one for a ride indoors to get the ultimate hands-on experience. To find out more about Solectrac, visit www.solectrac.com. The Bob Watson New York State FFA Alumni and Supporters Toy Action will take place at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24. Proceeds this year will support a scholarship fund for students pursuing a career in agriculture and agricultural education. For more information on donations or to consign items for sale contact Roger Barkman at Rogerbarkman@yahoo.com. If you would like to support FFA & agriculture education, contact Paulette Schiebel at pschiebel@tds.net. The New York Farm Show is located at the New York State Fairgrounds in Geddes. Admission is free by visiting a Northeast Equipment Dealer by Feb. 15; otherwise, it is $5 at the door and those under 18 are free. Free parking and free shuttle buses run all day to all six farm show buildings. For additional information, visit NewYorkFarmShow.com and follow the New York Farm Show on Facebook. If you are sending a Letter To the Editor, please be sure to follow these rules: Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy. The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party. We will not print form letters, libelous letters, business promotions or personal disputes, poetry, open letters, letters espousing religious views without reference to a current issue, or letters considered in poor taste. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters. Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month. ALBANY In pushing for a major expansion of New York's housing stock, Gov. Kathy Hochul is taking aim at restrictive local zoning policies by proposing a fast-track state approval process that could be used if proposed projects do not conform to existing regulations. "Between full-on bans of multi-family homes, and onerous zoning and approvals processes, they make it difficult, even impossible, to build new homes," Hochul stated in her State of the State speech last week. The Hochul plan to create 800,000 new housing units in New York over the next 10 years also would allow expedited state review of projects snarled at the local government level by waiving environmental reviews, while at the same time exercising "crucial safeguards" aimed at preventing environmental harm and threats to public health. Hochul would also offer communities outside New York City a new tool for encouraging the construction of affordable housing in the form of a $5 million state low-income housing tax credit that would be available for mixed-income projects. What Hochul calls the New York Housing Compact would require all villages, towns and cities to nail down home creation targets on a three-year cycle. "From repurposing underutilized office parks and strip malls to offering new incentives towards multifamily buildings, localities can choose how to tailor their strategies to increase housing supply," the Hochul administration said in explaining the plan. While two major lobby groups for local governments the Association of Towns and the Conference of Mayors have yet to weigh in on her package of housing proposals, the plan has ignited concerns among some upstate advocates that it goes too far in encroaching on local control over zoning matters. Some are also questioning the basis for Hochul's assertion that creating more housing will somehow stem the flow of outward migration of New Yorkers to other states. "A need to increase housing access and options certainly exists," said Assembly Republican Leader Will Barclay, R-Pulaski. "But the premise that a lack of affordable housing is the driver of New Yorks population loss is completely off the mark." Barclay said there is "serious opposition" to the proposals threatening local control over zoning decisions. "Its exactly the kind of unnecessary government overreach that forces people to leave, when the goal is the exact opposite," he said. Shuttered shopping malls that had once cleared environmental reviews and already have sewer and water lines offer the potential for conversion to affordable housing units, if communities along with a developer decide it's a good idea to advance such a project, suggested Assemblyman Angelo Morinello, R-Niagara Falls. But Morinello said respecting local control over zoning matters is vital. "Each municipality, according to the Constitution, has a right to control within its own boundaries," Morinello said. Some details of how Hochul's plan would work are expected to be more fully explained when her administration releases a proposed state budget. Under the governor's plan, each upstate community would be nudged to boost their number of homes by 1% every three years. If the target is not met, the state would be in a position to approve affordable housing developments even if the projects are in conflict with zoning controls. Said Hochul: "Doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility to act in times of crisis." But state policy experts say while it's important for the state to open a dialogue on the need to stimulate housing projects, local governments are likely to push back against any effort perceived as undermining local control over zoning matters. "There is nothing more representative of the unique characteristics of each municipality than the approach it takes to zoning," said Justin Wilcox, executive director of Upstate United, an advocacy group. "This proposal could be seen as an incredible encroachment on the really unique ability of towns to decide their own character." A former town supervisor, Assemblyman Chris Tague, R-Schoharie, said the need for affordable housing varies greatly from one community to another, even among those that are in the same region of the state. "It has to be put in the right place and you can't overdo it because otherwise it will fail," said Tague, contending local officials involved in planning and zoning matters are best equipped to determine the vision that their communities need for "smart growth." Hochul's proposal drew the enthusiastic support of the Real Estate Board of New York. "We applaud the governor for underscoring the critical role the private sector must play in that effort through a workable incentive program, along with the importance of creating policies that encourage rental housing production," the organization said in a statement. With some communities in the growing Hudson Valley region and the New York City metropolitan region gripped by a housing shortage, Peter Warren, director of research for the Empire Center for Public Policy, said undraping proposals that could alleviate the situation should produce an important conversation. But he voiced skepticism as to whether Hochul's proposal would be a remedy to the trend of people moving away from New York to other states. "The reality is that people looking at subsidized housing options are not going to leave the state," said Warren. "They're not leaving the state because there is insufficient low-income housing." The governor suggests local communities should have flexibility in devising strategies for adding to the local housing availability and hitting the state's targets. Today Some clouds this morning will give way to generally sunny skies for the afternoon. High 82F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Tonight Clear skies. Low 52F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Tomorrow A mainly sunny sky. High 79F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. This years Raoul Wallenberg Prize has been handed over to six individuals and a civil organisation that helps disadvantaged people and groups in Hungary. Presenting the prizes at the headquarters of Hungarys Jewish federation Mazsihisz on Tuesday, the Raoul Wallenberg Association recognised Cintia Szajko, a grammar, literature and history teacher, for her work in teaching disadvantaged students in the village of Tallya, in north-eastern Hungary. Janos Orsos, a school founder, received the award for his 20-year pursuit of accessible, fair and equal education for Roma children. Janos Schiffer, a lawyer, received the prize in recognition of his work in the National Association of Victims of Nazi Persecution. Journalist Gyorgy Vamos was recognised for opening a memorial room in honour of Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat who saved tens of thousands of lives during the Holocaust. Reformed Church pastor Gabor Szabo received the award for his role in promoting interfaith dialogue and cooperation between the Reformed and the Jewish communities in Nagykoros, in central Hungary. Laszlo Toth, a teacher at Budapests Apaczai Csere Janos Secondary School, received the prize for organising debate circles for young people, with a focus on acceptance and fighting racism. The prize was also handed over to Szegeds Ethnic Minority Association in recognition of its efforts to promote the cultural values of national minorities. The Raoul Wallenberg Prize, named after the Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was awarded for the 15th time. The aviation regulator DGCA ordered airlines to create and clearly publish on their websites a pet transportation policy on Tuesday. Animals, birds, and reptiles are permitted on aeroplanes travelling to, through, and inside India. Pets are currently allowed onboard at least two Indian airlines, Air India and Aksa Air. Pets may fly domestically in the cargo hold with SpiceJet. A senior official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has not yet issued any Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) or guidelines with regard to carriage of pets in passenger compartment. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has permitted their airlines to have their own respective policies for carriage of pets in cabin. Also read: Meet airlines with the world's largest fleet of aircrafts, owns over 900 aeroplanes The aviation safety regulators worldwide have not issued any specific policy for carriage of pets inside cabin and they have allowed airlines to develop respective procedures for the same. In accordance with existing norms, the official said that airlines are permitted to formulate their own procedures for carriage of pets/live animals in the cabin as the final responsibility of safety of flight is with the Pilot-In-Command of the flight. "All airlines are advised to formulate and prominently display on their websites policy of carriage of pets for better understanding of the passengers," the official added. The advisory is with respect to scheduled passenger flights. In October last year, Akasa Air announced that it will allow domesticated dogs and cats in cabin as well as cargo. With PTI inputs A Vistara flight from Singapore to Mumbai on Wednesday returned to the Changi Airport here after a technical snag was detected in one of the engines of the Airbus A321 aircraft, an airlines official said. "As a precautionary step, the pilots decided to turn back and landed the aircraft safely at Changi Airport," The Straits Times newspaper quoted a Vistara spokesman as saying. He said a technical snag was detected in one of the engines of the aircraft shortly after take-off from here, the spokesman said, adding that the airline was working with partner airlines to offer alternative flight options to the affected passengers. According to the Flightradar website, flight UK106 departed Singapore at about 11 am (local time). It was then seen circling over Malaysia before returning to the airport. Most of the passengers have been transferred to other flights scheduled to take off on the same day, the Singapore daily cited the spokesman as saying. Although Vistara did not say how many passengers were on board, its website states that the Airbus A321 in its fleet can seat 188 passengers. Some passengers were transferred to a Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight slated for departure on Wednesday evening. They were also given meal vouchers, according to media reports. The latest malfunction comes a week after another Vistara flight from Delhi had to return after a snag was detected. On January 9, the flight carrying 140 passengers from the Indian capital to Bhubaneshwar made an emergency landing back in Delhi after it was found to have experienced hydraulic failure. India's aviation watchdog, the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation, has launched an investigation into the incident. Vistara is a joint venture between Tata Sons and SIA. US auto giant Tesla has partnered with Chinese automaker BYD and South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co to finalize a deal to invest in Indonesias electric-vehicle industry, a senior minister informed Bloomberg, saying that many top global carmakers are coming to the country to invest in battery-powered mobility. BYD, Tesla, Hyundai and others are all finalizing deals with Indonesia," said Luhut Panjaitan, coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment. President Joko Widodo has set out a vision of building out an end-to-end electric-vehicle supply chain onshore by offering potential investors access to Indonesias reserves of key battery metals as well as its more than 270 million consumers. Now this plan has started taking shape as global EV and battery producers plan billions of dollars of investment, from Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd.'s $6 billion mining-to-batteries complex to Hyundai's new EV plant. Also Read : China-based BYD threatens to dethrone Tesla as world's largest EV maker Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia's largest economy, expects $30 billion of investments through 2026 to develop its EV battery ecosystem, according to a Tuesday presentation by Panjaitan. The government is also planning to give as much as 80 million rupiah or $5,271 of subsidy for each EV purchase to boost adoption of battery-powered vehicles. The cabinet has reached a decision on EV matters and will make an announcement soon," Panjaitan said. Also check these Cars Find more Cars UPCOMING Tesla Model S 70 Lakhs - 1 Cr* *Expected Price View Details UPCOMING Tesla Model 3 70 - 90 Lakhs* *Expected Price View Details UPCOMING Mercedes-benz Eqe 70 - 90 Lakhs* *Expected Price View Details Mercedes-benz V-class 1950 cc | Diesel | Automatic (Torque Converter) | 16.67 kmpl 71.1 Lakhs - 1.46 Cr* Ex-showroom price Add to compare Check latest offers Mercedes-benz Eqb Not Applicable Cylinders Not Applicable | Not Applicable Valves/Cylinder | Not Applicable cc | Electric | Automatic 74.5 Lakhs* *Ex-showroom price Add to compare Check latest offers In a separate development, Tesla has taken the price cut strategy to retain its dominance in the global electric car market, which is witnessing the rise of several automakers with their respective products. Wall Street estimates that in 2022 alone, Tesla has slashed the pricing of its electric vehicles by as much as 20 per cent in a bid to retain its supremacy in the zero-emission car market. Interestingly, this move marks a 180-degree turnaround from the Ev maker's strategy over the last two years when the new vehicle orders exceeded supply. First Published Date: New Delhi: Returning to the silver screen with a contemporary, relatable and engaging story, Shamita Shetty is gearing up for the theatrical release of her upcoming next 'The Tenant', hitting the theaters on February 10, 2023. The trailer released by the makers today, offers a realistic perspective of a single woman engulfed by the harsh realities of the society. Over the course of her career across mediums and platforms, Shamita Shetty has always opted for 'quality over quantity', delivering performances that have left a mark on the audience. Yet again, choosing an impactful narrative, Shamita Shetty's The Tenant is a social drama written and directed by Sushrut Jain, that traces the story of a single, independent woman who rents out a flat in a conservative housing society, followed by the adolescent crushes to adult lust, the frowns, prejudices and snap judgements, presented her way. Elated with the announcement, Shamita Shetty shares, "The Tenant is a reflection of society from a modern, independent, single woman's perspective, with experiences and learnings every woman in India has been subjected to at some point of her life. The compelling backdrop and sensitive as well as realistic narrative of the film connected with me, prompting me to instantly agree to do the film. I truly believe, every woman and the people around her, would deeply resonate with the story, offering a deeper insight into the disturbing, prevailing realities of the society we live in today ! " The filmmaker is equally gung-ho about the release after receiving overwhelming reactions at festivals abroad. Its a topical subject that has struck a chord across the world. I am pretty sure, my film will find an audience here too, asserts Sushrut Jain. The film has a fantastic ensemble with Swanand Kirkire, Sheeba Chaddha, Atul Srivastava, Rudraksh Jaiswal (seen in Extraction alongside Chris Hemsworth) and Harsh Mayar of Gullak fame, among others. The Tenant is produced by Kanchan Kalra, Daniel Walter and Sushrut Jain, releasing in theaters on February 10, 2023. New Delhi: As many as 4 in 5 Indian professionals are considering job change this year and are keen on switching to roles that offer the right wage, and allow for appreciable work-life balance and flexibility, says a report. According to LinkedIn's economic graph data, the hiring level in India was 23 percent slower in December 2022 as compared to December 2021. "Indian workforce appears resilient in the face of economic uncertainty, with 4 in 5 (80 percent) professionals considering changing jobs in 2023," it said. Consumer research was conducted Censuswide between November 30, 2022, and December 2, 2022, and was based on 2,007 workers aged 18+. As per the report, 88 percent of professionals aged 18-24 are considering a switch, compared to 64 percent of those aged 45-54. (Also Read: Microsoft joins layoffs spree; Company plan to FIRE THOUSANDS of employees-- Read details inside) "Despite tough economic conditions, the Indian workforce is relying on their own abilities to grow and push forward. Since the pandemic, it's clear that professionals have built up a bank of resilience, and we're seeing this in their response to tackling the year ahead," said Nirajita Banerjee, LinkedIn Career Expert and Head of Editorial for LinkedIn India. (Also Read: Samsung Republic Day Sale 2023: Get BUMPER discounts of up to 61% on THESE devices) Banerjee further said professionals are striving for the ideal role that offers the right wage, and allows for appreciable work-life balance and flexibility. The survey further noted that despite uncertain economic times ahead, professionals are taking a long-term view of their careers by investing in their skills and proactively seeking opportunities to progress. "Over three quarters (78 percent) of workers surveyed said if they were to leave their job, they would feel confident finding other roles to apply for," it added. While the future remains dynamic, it is essential for professionals to invest in themselves by building transferable skills that will make their profiles more versatile and adaptable to different roles, Banerjee said. "We have seen a 43 percent year-on-year increase in members adding skills to their LinkedIn profile - 365 million have been added in the last 12 months. This is a smart way to secure a sustainable and successful career," Banerjee added. The rising cost of living pressures and the need for financial security is one of the major factors that is pushing workers to look for new jobs as they want more money. Some professionals are also keen on switching to roles that offer better work-life balance. One in 3 (32 percent) professionals said they also feel more confident in their abilities and think they can find a better role, the survey said. New Delhi: All meat and its products are to be exported as 'halal certified' only if it is produced, processed, and packed under a valid certificate issued by a certification body accredited by a board of the Quality Council of India, according to the commerce ministry's draft guidelines on the subject. With the aim of streamlining the halal certification process for the export of meat and meat products from India, the draft guidelines on halal certification for the export of meat and its products are proposed by the directorate general of foreign trade (DGFT). The guidelines said that the certification bodies would follow the procedure laid down as per the Indian conformity assessment scheme (i-CAS) - halal. It added that the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) would be designated as the overall monitoring agency for this purpose. (Also Read: Samsung Republic Day Sale 2023: Get BUMPER discounts of up to 61% on THESE devices) "All meat and meat products to be exported as 'halal certified' only if it is produced, processed, and packed under a valid certificate issued by a certification body duly accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB), Quality Council of India," the draft guidelines said. (Also Read: 4 in 5 professionals in India considering job change in 2023: Report) These draft guidelines are being circulated for public/industry comments and feedback. The views can be sent by February 17 for compilation and to prepare the final guidelines. With an objective to streamline the certification of meat and meat products as halal from the country, a scheme titled 'India Conformity Assessment Scheme (i-CAS)' has been developed. There is no mandatory halal certification system in India regulated by the government as India does not have a national regulation for the certification. However, certification is undertaken in India through private organisations which have been accredited/recognised by the importing countries. "As the monitoring body for halal meat and meat products, APEDA shall have the mechanism to ensure that the certification and export of halal products have followed the i-CAS requirements," it said. The global halal food market reached a value of USD 1978 billion in 2021. Looking forward, the market is projected to reach USD 3,907.7 billion by 2027. It said that India's large Muslim population represents huge opportunities for halal-based entrepreneurs. However, in India, the country's halal industry is still in its infancy. There are no specific labelling requirements for halal food products imported into India. In India, FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) certification can be seen on almost all processed foods but the government neither mandates halal certification nor does it provide a unifying regulatory law hence it is important to have halal regulations in place in India. Halal certification is given by many private companies in India which marks the food or products permissible. The major halal-certifying organisations in India include Halal India Pvt Ltd and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Halal Trust. New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday said it has raised Rs 9,718 crore through its second infrastructure bond issuance at a coupon rate of 7.70 percent per annum for the 15-year money. This is the second fund-raising since early December when it had mopped up Rs 10,000 crore via infra bonds. The fund proceeds will be utilised for enhancing long-term resources for funding infrastructure and affordable housing, the bank said in a statement. (Also Read: Central Bank of India Q3 profit rises 64% to Rs 458 crore) The issue attracted a good response from investors with bids of Rs 14,805 crore, indicating an oversubscription of 2.96 times from 118 bidders, SBI said, adding investors were mutual funds, provident and pension funds, and insurers. (Also Read: Gold declines Rs 105; silver rises Rs 52) The pricing of 7.70 percent represents a spread of 17 bps over the G-Sec curve. Before this, the bank had raised Rs 10,000 crore through infrastructure bonds on December 6, 2022, at a spread of 17 bps over the corresponding G-Sec curve. This issuance is significant considering this is the first time a domestic bank is issuing a 15-year infrastructure bond, helping it in long-term lending to the infrastructure segment. The Covid-19 pandemic in the last 2-3 years has adversely affected several aspects of people's lives. While it impacted the health of many individuals, in some, wealth was majorly depleted. For few others, both health and wealth went for a toss during the pandemic. Vastu expert Deepa Joshi of All India Institute of Occult Science founded by Gurudev Shrie Kashyap says that it is important to maintain a positive Vastu in our homes now. "Every direction in the house has its own importance - the place where we cook, eat, sit, study, work and sleep, all have their own signficance. They play a very important role and have an impact on us. Just as in the human body, the location of each body part plays an important role, in the same way, Vastu is connected to the different directions and locations of the house." Vastu tips for bagging the dream job While your qualifications and skills are key to the job you get, Vastu plays an important role in how your destiny shapes up, says Vastu experts. Deepa Joshi points out that to get a dream job, one needs to maintain proper Vastu in one's home. "Out of 24 hours, on an average we spend around 14-15 hours in the house. So the positive energy that prevails in our house has a huge impact on our day to day activities and our lifestyle," says Joshi. Below are the tips listed by Vastu expert Deepa Joshi for bagging a dream job: Sit in the North direction as it is the place of Lord Kubera, the king of money and wealth If you are working on a laptop , mobile or any other electronic gadget, the connection of the charging point should be in the south east corner of the room. If you are dreaming to become a successful entrepreneur by selling products, keep the products in the North West corner of the premises. Northwest corner of the house is the place of Lord Vayu. Dont have any windows in the South direction. Sit in the East-South-East (ESE) corner to make better decisions. "Apart from the above tips, have faith in God and blessings of the elders of the house. Do your Karma, definitely, you will see good results," says Deepa Joshi. Also read: These Zodiac Signs are soulmates, check your horoscope compatibility - in Pics (Disclaimer: The article is based on information provided by expert quoted. Zee News does not endorse or confirm this.) New Delhi: Recently, Prime Video dropped the trailer of the Amazon Original series, Cinema Marte Dum Tak. Within no time film fans and audiences expressed their love and excitement on social media for this unique and fresh narrative around the lesser-known filmmaking industry. Among the many names are film personalities like Anurag Kashyap, Anurag Kashyap, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Sikandar Kher and Guneet Monga who have also not held back from showering praises for the trailer. A Vice Studios Production and created by maverick filmmaker, Vasan Bala, the filmmaker Anurag Kashyap who went on to write -"Monica O My Darling ke baad @vasanbala le ke aa rahe hai yeh dhaansu most awaited documentary." While on the other hand actor Chandan Roy Sanyal couldn't resist praising Vadan Bala as he wrote "Crackling @vasanbala." Actor Sikandar Kher also expressed his excitement in witnessing this cinematic wonder, writing - "Can't wait to watch this @vasanbala" " Ahead of it, producer Guneet Monga also seemed truly astonished with the trailer as she wrote - "WHAT A WOW WOW WOW @VASANBALA." So, dont forget to experience the magic and fandom of the Golden era of Indias 90s Pulp cinema with Cinema Marte Dum Tak as it premieres on Jan 20 on Prime Video in India and 240 countries and territories worldwide. A Vice Studios Production, the six-episode docu-series is created by Vasan Bala and co-directed by Disha Rindani, Xulfee and Kulish Kant Thakur. Mumbai: Flying activities will not be allowed under the limits of police stations at Bandra Kurla Complex and nearby areas in Mumbai on Thursday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate and lay foundation stones for several projects, police said. The prime minister is scheduled to attend a function to be held on the MMRDA grounds in the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), an upscale commercial hub. Flying activities ban from 12 pm to 12 am in BKC, Andheri, Meghwadi, and Jogeshwari Flying activities including the use of drones, paragliders, and remote-controlled micro-light aircraft will not be allowed from noon till midnight under the jurisdictions of four police stations, namely BKC, Andheri, Meghwadi, and Jogeshwari on Thursday, the Mumbai Police said in an order on Wednesday. Also Read: 'Refrain from making unnecessary remarks', says PM Modi at key BJP meet amid controversy over SRK's Pathaan Why are flying activities a security concern? Terrorist or Anti-Social elements may attack using drones, paragliders, remote control micro-light aircraft, etc. Hence such flying activities are banned for the day. There is every likelihood of the breach of peace and disturbance of public tranquillity and also there is a grave danger to human life, health, safety, and injury to public property on that account, the order said. Security has been beefed up as a large number of VIPs are expected to attend the BKC for the PM's event, a Mumbai police official said. Few roads closed ahead of PM's visit A few roads have been closed to traffic. On other roads, traffic will be diverted ahead of the prime minister's visit. Meanwhile, top BJP leaders including Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visited the MMRDA ground on Wednesday afternoon along with Special Police Commissioner Deven Bharati, Joint Commissioner (Law and Order) Satyanarayan Chowdhary, and other top police officers to take stock of the preparations. PM Modi to visit Mumbai on Jan 19 PM Modi is scheduled to inaugurate and lay foundation stones for a string of projects worth more than Rs 38,000 crore during his visit. He will dedicate to the nation the Mumbai Metro Rail Lines 2A and 7. New Delhi: Hansraj College principal Rama Sharma Wednesday refused to withdraw an order discontinuing non-veg food in the hostel and canteen despite widespread criticism and asserted the DU constituent college follows Arya Samaj's philosophy. Speaking to PTI, Sharma also claimed that 90 percent of the students are vegetarian and they had earlier protested over non-veg food being served in the hostel. Hansraj College's decision to discontinue serving non-vegetarian food at its canteen and hostel after it reopened following the pandemic in February last year has drawn sharp criticism from several quarters. Though students claimed that no notice was issued in this matter, Sharma clarified that "a notice was issued and the hostel prospectus mentioned that no non-veg food will be served at the hostel". "We are not going to withdraw the notice regarding non-veg food. It is an Arya Samaj college. We have our philosophy and that is why we won't serve non-veg food. We conduct 'havan' regularly. We follow our rules. It is written in the hostel prospectus that non-veg food will not be served in the hostel," she told PTI. "We don't ask St Stephen's (college) to conduct 'havan'. We don't interfere with Khalsa College rules. Then why are we being questioned? We don't say do not eat non-veg food. We just simply ask don't bring non-veg food in college," Sharma added. The principal claimed that non-veg food was never served in the canteen and it has been discontinued in the hostel after informing students. "Earlier, vegetarians and non-vegetarians used to sit separately. Now they can sit together and eat. Students had protested earlier about the canteen serving non-veg. They said the same utensils are being used and some students had apprehensions," she added. Third-year student Alok Sharma, who resides in the hostel, had earlier alleged that the college stopped serving non-vegetarian food abruptly. "We were not informed about any such order. I don't think any order was issued. This is unfair. We are living away from our family and we need proper food," he said. "This is kind of a backward move. There should be freedom in what we want to eat." A group of students affiliated with the Students' Federation of India (SFI) has called for a protest at Hansraj College against the "discontinuation" of non-vegetarian food and termed it an attempt at "saffronising the campus". The SFI's Hansraj College unit, in a statement, said frustration is brewing on campus against the "ban" on non-vegetarian food. The protest will be held outside Hansraj Hostel on January 20, it said. The SFI alleged that there have also been instances where the Hansraj administration confiscated eggs from students who brought them to the hostel. It claimed a survey was conducted within the Hansraj hostel and was found that almost 75 percent of students were non-vegetarians as against the college principal's claim that 90 per cent of students were vegetarians, the SFI added. New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) will today (January 18, 2023) announce the schedule of the General Elections to the Legislative Assemblies of Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Tripura. A team headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar had last week visited the three northeastern states and held a series of meetings with the political parties and state, central security, and civil officials, especially the district-level officials of the three states in the respective state capitals. Currently, Tripura has a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, while in Nagaland, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party is in power. National People's Party, the only party from the Northeast to have national party recognition, runs the government in Meghalaya. Nagaland Assembly election The tenure of the current Nagaland Legislative Assembly is scheduled to end on March 12. Ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections, the BJP had joined hands with the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party. They formed the government after NDPP won 18 seats in the 60-member Assembly, and the saffron party got 12. The Naga People's Front (NPF) had secured 26 seats but had failed to form the government. Meghalaya Assembly Election The tenure of the current Meghalaya Legislative Assembly is scheduled to end on March 15. In the 2018 elections, Congress had won 21 seats in the 60-member Assembly and was the single largest party. It, however, had failed to secure the majority to form a government. BJP, which won only two seats, had then formed an alliance with the Conrad Sangma-led National People's Party (NPP) to form the government. NPP had secured 20 seats. The 2023 Meghalaya Assembly polls will witness a three-way contest as the NPP has announced that it would fight the elections alone. Tripura Assembly Election The tenure of the Tripura Assembly is scheduled to end on March 22. Earlier in 2018, BJP had swept the Assembly polls by winning 35 seats in the 60-member Assembly. However, with the entry of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, the upcoming polls will not be a cakewalk for the saffron camp. New Delhi: The northeastern states of Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland are set to go for Assembly polls this year. The Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday (Jan 18) announced the schedule of the assembly election in Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland. While Tripura will vote on February 16, Meghalaya and Nagaland will vote on February 27. The results for all three northeastern states will be declared on March 2, the Election Commission said. Let's take a look at the main issues faced by the three states which are likely to be significant factors during polling. Meghalaya Meghalaya is grappling with border disputes with neighboring state Assam, with 12 areas along an 884.9 km interstate border in dispute. The two states have agreed to resolve six of these disputes first, but have yet to come to a final agreement. Meghalaya is also facing environmental challenges, with natural resource degradation and pollution of 43% of water bodies in the state. The health sector in Meghalaya is also in need of improvement, with no medical colleges or universities in the state. Also Read: EC announces NE assembly poll dates, Tripura to vote on February 16, Meghalaya, Nagaland on February 27, results on March 2 Nagaland Nagaland is facing an ongoing ethnic conflict, as well as a lack of development due to unresolved Naga political issues. Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio also said that the unresolved Naga political issue is a huge roadblock in the state's development. The state also has a border dispute with Assam, which has been ongoing since Nagaland attained statehood in 1963. Tripura Tripura is facing political violence, with recent incidents of ransacking and torching of CPI(M) party offices. The state is also facing a shortage of food supplies due to flash floods and landslides that have disrupted road and rail connectivity. Additionally, Tripura has a potential for hydrocarbon resources, but illegal migrants entering the state may pose a challenge to its exploration and production. The demand for a separate state called 'Greater Tipraland', which would include the tribal areas of Tripura is likely to be a big political issue for the state. This demand is being made by TIPRA, an organization representing the indigenous people of Tripura. This issue could potentially have an impact on the results in 20 Assembly seats where tribals have significant electoral influence in the 60-member House. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- The California-based electric vehicle startup Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. (FF) today announced that it has signed a non-binding cooperation framework agreement with the municipal government of China's Huanggang city for promoting its U.S.-China dual-home market strategy. Under the framework agreement, the two parties should contribute their respective advantages in investment, scientific and technological innovation, industrial transformation, location, and policy to boost mutual benefit and common development. Photo credit: Faraday Future Huanggang government is expected to assist FF with the industrial deployment in the city and arrangement of relevant resources, while providing supports for FF's local business ventures, including but limited to financial and policy supports. Besides, FF intends to relocate its China headquarters to Huanggang city, which is expected to be jointly funded by the Huanggang Government guide fund, relevant industrial funds, and FF. Meanwhile, its global headquarters in Los Angeles, California will be maintained. The framework agreement was signed in the third quarter of 2022. Huanggang is adjacent to Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, and is a satellite town of the latter. It boasts convenient transportation with three high-speed railway stations and well-developed railroad transportation. It also has the container terminal with direct access to Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, and other overseas regions. Hubei, the province where Huanggang city belongs to, holds a significant place for Chinas automotive industry. It recorded an automobile production volume of 2.1 million units in 2021, accounting for over 8% of Chinas overall volume. FF said it expected to start production of a saleable FF 91 Futurist at the end of March 2023 and see the model come off the assembly line in early April, with deliveries starting before the end of April. Patna: Amid a row over Ramcharitmanas and Ramayana, Bihar cooperative minister Surendra Prasad Yadav made controversial remarks against BJP, claiming that the party stages attacks on the Indian Army to win elections. Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader's remarks come after Union Home Minister Amit Shah's claim that BJP will return to power in 2024 Lok Sabha elections. "BJP will be wiped out. When elections come, BJP attacks the Army. This time, it seems the BJP will attack some country," Surendra Prasad Yadav said. Home Minister Amit Shah expressed confidence that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the chairmanship of JP Nadda, the BJP will win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections with a greater majority than in 2019. Shah said this at the two-day meeting of the BJP's national executive that ended on Tuesday at the convention center of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) in the national capital. Also Read: RJD leader says Ramayana has garbage in it; BJP hits back alleging 'constant chot on Hindu astha' Earlier this month, RJD leader and Bihar minister Chandrashekhar triggered a huge controversary after he said that "Ramcharitmanas spreads hatred in society". The RJD leader made the remarks when he was addressing the 15th convocation ceremony of Nalanda open university. Bihar Governor Phagu Chouhan was also present at the event. #WATCH | BJP will be wiped out. When elections come, BJP attacks the Army. This time, it seems the BJP will attack some country: Bihar Minister Surendra Prasad Yadav on Amit Shah's statement of BJP returning to power in 2024 (17.01) pic.twitter.com/yWeKviGziy ANI (@ANI) January 18, 2023 Another RJD leader Shivanand Tiwari last week said there is a lot of kooda karkat (garbage) in Ramanaya along with diamonds and pearls. He said, "I agree in this way that it (Ramayana) has diamonds and pearls as well as garbage... If you talk like this that Ramayana only spreads hatred, then I personally do not agree with that opinion." Hosapete: Senior Karnataka Congress leader BK Hariprasad stoked a bitter controversy by using derogating remarks against party MLAs who had earlier joined BJP in the southern state. Slamming state minister Anand Singh and other party turncoats for switching sides, Leader of the Opposition in Karnataka Legislative Council Hariprasad allegedly compared them with "prostitutes". Singh quit Congress in 2019 to join the BJP. He was among the 17 MLAs of the then Congress and JD(S)-led coalition government in Karnataka who resigned from the party and crossed over to the BJP. "When you didn`t give a clear mandate, we formed a coalition govt. We call by different names a woman who sells her body for food, we call her a prostitute. I leave it to you what you`ll call MLAs who sold themselves. Teach a lesson to local MLA in polls," Hariprasad said during a public meeting in Hosapete. "You have to teach a lesson to the local MLA who sold everything including his self-respect," he said while referring to Anand Singh. Karnataka Congress leaders are using abusive language against their political opponents. BK Hariprasad & Siddaramaiah are using such language. Even during Gujarat elections, BK Hariprasad used derogatory language against PM's parents: S Prakash, BJP spox pic.twitter.com/bOjm1bm5EJ ANI (@ANI) January 18, 2023 While talking to news agency ANI, BJP leader S Prakash said, "They should not use such low-level words, few days ago, the Congress party compared the CM to a dog, now calling BJP MLAs "prostitutes" shows their culture." Karnataka Congress leaders are using abusive language against their political opponents. BK Hariprasad & Siddaramaiah are using such language. Even during Gujarat elections, BK Hariprasad used derogatory language against PM's parents: S Prakash, BJP spox pic.twitter.com/bOjm1bm5EJ ANI (@ANI) January 18, 2023 "Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is claiming that Congress will share the love. Congress leaders give this kind of statement in Karnataka, so I wonder what Rahul Gandhi will say to this," Prakash added. However, Hariprasad later retracted his statement and apologised. BJP people have twisted and quoted my statement. They are creating unnecessary controversy about sex workers. We have great respect for sex workers. I apologise if they are hurt, B K Hariprasad said. BJP people have twisted and quoted my statement. They are creating unnecessary controversy about sex workers. We have great respect for sex workers. I apologise if they are hurt: LoP in Karnataka Legislative Council, BK Hariprasad https://t.co/lgU1jr1AnR pic.twitter.com/RPlQSaiIM3 ANI (@ANI) January 18, 2023 The Congress is currently taking out a statewide bus tour called 'Praja Dhwani Yatre', jointly led by party state unit president DK Shivakumar and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Siddaramaiah ahead of the state polls. The tour covering 21 districts will see the party sharing its ideas with the people and assuring all-round development of the state while attacking the BJP government with a "charge sheet" it has prepared. As part of the bus yatra, both Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah, who are nursing chief ministerial ambitions in the event of the Congress coming to power, will be sharing the same vehicle until January 29. New Delhi: In an unusual turn of events, a nine-year-old daughter of a wealthy diamond merchant in Gujarat has renounced material comforts and embraced monkhood. Devanshi, the eldest daughter of Dhanesh and Ami Sanghvi, took 'diksha' in the presence of Jain monk Acharya Vijay Kirtiyashsuri and hundreds of other people at a venue in Vesu locality of Surat. Her father is the owner of Sanghvi and Sons, a nearly three-decade-old diamond polishing and export firm in Surat. She will now shun all material comforts, luxury Devanshi's 'diksha' marks her initiation into the ascetic life, and she will now shun all the material comforts and luxury that her family of diamond merchants could have provided her. Also Read: Rinpoche reincarnated as 4-year-old boy, Buddhist monks hold grand celebrations in Shimla According to family friend Nirav Shah, Devanshi has been inclined towards spiritual life since a very young age and had even walked about 700 km with other monks before formally being initiated into monkhood. She is fluent in five languages and has other skills as well. The ceremony began last Saturday, and a day before Devanshi took 'diksha', a religious procession was taken out with fanfare in the city, Mr. Shah tolf PTI. This news has created quite a buzz in the Jain community, especially among diamond traders, who have close business links with Belgium. (With PTI inputs) Shillong: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday hit out at the BJP, dubbing the saffron party as 'double-faced' which says something at the time of elections and does something else after polls. Addressing a public meeting in North Garo Hills district in poll-bound Meghalaya, Banerjee asserted that her Trinamool Congress is the only party that can provide better governance in the northeastern state, as it fulfils the dreams of people. BJP is double-faced, it says something during elections and does something else after that. The BJP government at the Centre only gives money to states ruled by the saffron party, she said, urging people to vote for the TMC. Assembly polls will be held in Meghalaya on February 27, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday. What has this (National People's Party-led) government done in the past five years in the state? We challenge them to show the report card of their performance... Why is it that after so many years electricity hasn't reached homes in Meghalaya? Why is the younger generation not getting employment opportunities?? If you want to change this corrupt and proxy BJP government, then TMC is the only credible alternative. Our party can provide better governance, as it fulfils the dreams of the youth, women, students and farmers. We want a government for the people, by the people and of the people in Meghalaya, Banerjee told the gathering of around 50,000 people. TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who accompanied the party supremo, alleged that education, healthcare, roads and infrastructure are all in shambles in the northeastern state. People of Meghalaya have been misled and let down, he claimed. The TMC has been trying to strengthen its foothold in Meghalaya along with Assam and Tripura in the region. In November 2021, 12 out of the 17 MLAs of the Congress in Meghalaya had joined the TMC, making it the principal opposition party in the 60-member assembly. During her December visit, Banerjee had launched a financial assistance scheme for women in Meghalaya, which has recorded over 3.14 lakh registrations so far, the TMC had said in a statement. New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be on a three-day visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka beginning Wednesday to further expand bilateral engagement with the two key maritime neighbours of India. Jaishankar's first destination will be the Maldives, where he will sign several agreements to bolster bilateral cooperation. His visit to Sri Lanka on Thursday comes at a time when the island nation is battling an economic crisis and is looking forward for debt restructuring from New Delhi. Sri Lanka, which is trying to secure a much-needed USD 2.9 billion bridge loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has been trying to get financial assurances from its major creditors China, Japan and India. The IMF has expressed its unwillingness to release funds till India and China agree to reduce Colombo's debt. Jaishankar is scheduled to call on Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement said. He will also hold discussions with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister M U M Ali Sabry on the entire gamut of close India-Sri Lanka partnership and steps to strengthen it in all spheres, the MEA statement said. Also Read: 'A nation that will not be coerced': Jaishankar emphasises India's response to China on border dispute "Sri Lanka is a close friend and neighbour, and India has stood with the people of Sri Lanka at all times," the statement said. Jaishankar had earlier visited Sri Lanka in January 2021 and March last year. During his visit to the Maldives on Wednesday, Jaishankar would call on President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and hold discussions with Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid. The minister's visit to Male will see signing of agreements related to the bilateral development cooperation, ground-breaking/inauguration/handing-over and launch of a number of key India-supported projects that will contribute to the socio-economic development of the Maldives, the statement said. The MEA statement said that both the Maldives and Sri Lanka are India's key maritime neighbours in the Indian Ocean Region and occupy special place in Prime Minister's vision of 'SAGAR' (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and 'Neighbourhood First'. It said the external affairs minister's visit is testimony to the importance that India attaches to its close and friendly relations with the Maldives and Sri Lanka. NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi on Wednesday issued a clarification that it was "erroneous and far-fetched" to say that he had suggested changing the name of the southern state with his recent comments on "Tamizhagam". In his statement, the Governor claimed that those who made the inference did so "without understanding" the basis of his speech. "An interpretation or inference that it was a suggestion to change the name of Tamil Nadu is erroneous and far-fetched," the Governor said in the statement. In an event at Raj Bhavan on January 4, 2023, to facilitate the volunteers of Kashi-Tamil Sangamam, a recently concluded month-long festival celebrating the age-old cultural connect of Tamil people with Kashi, while dwelling upon the historical cultural connect between the two, I referred to the word 'Tamizhagam'. In those days, there was no Tamil Nadu. Hence, in a historical, cultural context, I referred to the word 'Tamizhagam' as a more appropriate expression, Governor Ravi said. In an event at Raj Bhavan on Jan 4 to felicitate volunteers of Kash-Tamil Sangamam,while dwelling upon historical cultural connect b/w the 2,I referred to 'Tamizhagam'.In those days,there was no 'Tamil Nadu'. Hence, in historical-cultural context,I referred to 'Tamizhagam':TN Gov pic.twitter.com/BJSvxECRRu ANI (@ANI) January 18, 2023 "Without understanding the basis of my speech, arguments that the Governor is against the word Tamil Nadu have become a topic of discussion. Hence, I am giving this clarification to put an end to it," the statement said. While addressing a programme felicitating the organisers and volunteers of the Kashi Tamil Sangamam, held at the Raj Bhavan in Chennai on January 4, Governor RN Ravi allegedly remarked that the word Tamizhagam was a more appropriate term for Tamil Nadu. However, the Governor was later criticised for using a name other than the one approved by the Constitution. Though both words find mentioned in Tamil literature, Tamil Nadu is more widely accepted and Tamizhagam is opposed. Both Tamizhagam and Tamil Nadu roughly mean, 'The land of Tamils.' His comment sparked a bitter political row and saw the state's ruling party - DMK - accusing Ravi of pushing the BJP-RSS agenda. The state assembly too witnessed uproarious scenes after ruling side MLAs shouted "Quit Tamil Nadu" slogans in the House against Ravi and hashtag #GetOutRavi began trending on Twitter. Rajkot: A 14-year-old girl studying in Class 8 at A V Jasani Vidya Mandir in Rajkot, Gujarat, died suddenly on Tuesday after collapsing in her school. According to her family members, the girl, Riya Sagar, died due to cold weather conditions and they claim that the school authorities should have allowed students to use warm clothes of their choice instead of just uniform sweaters. The incident has prompted the district education authorities to direct that the schools in the area be opened an hour later than their normal start time in the morning in view of the prevailing cold weather conditions and also allow flexibility in wearing warm clothes by students. Gujarat school student's death shocks school, family Doctors said that Riya's death appeared to be due to a cardiac arrest, while her family maintains that she did not suffer from any health complications. District Education Officer B S Kaila said that the exact cause of her death will be ascertained after the post-mortem. Also Read: Karnataka: 9-year-old girl allegedly dies after PUNISHMENT in Bengaluru school; family files police complaint "We have instructed schools to start after 8 am and allow students to wear shawls, mufflers, jackets, etc. In view of the issues raised by her (deceased student's) mother. This will be in force till January 21 and it may be extended till January 27," Kaila told the news agency PTI. Deceased's mother says school should have allowed students to wear warm clothes Riya's mother, Janaki Sagar, said that the school should have allowed students to wear warm clothes rather than sticking to uniform sweaters, which are not sufficient to beat the cold. She has appealed to schools to begin their classes a bit later in the morning in view of the prevailing cold weather conditions so that the health of students is not compromised. Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi urged the government to take steps to prevent such incidents and delay the school opening time by an hour so that students do not have to suffer due to cold. Gujarat has witnessed a drop in temperature with cold wave conditions prevailing in parts of Saurashtra and Kutch regions in the last two days. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked BJP members to reach out to every section of society, including minorities such as Bohras, Pasmandas and Sikhs, and work for them without electoral considerations, during his address at the BJP national executive on Tuesday. In his address, which concluded with his remarks, PM Modi noted that nearly 400 days are left for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and asked party members to serve every section with full dedication in a speech described by several participants as his big vision to expand the saffron organisation and lead the country in every aspect. Various party members who were part of the audience said the Prime Minister spoke highly of 'sufism' and also asked them to meet professionals from different walks of life and visit places like universities and churches to connect with them. The Prime Minister said India's best era is coming and the party should dedicate itself to the country's development and turn "amrit kaal", the 25-year period to 2047, into "kartavya kaal" (era of duties). Some glimpses from the 2nd day of the BJP National Executive meeting. pic.twitter.com/m8GkHGg758 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 17, 2023 Sources said he also cautioned the party against any sense of "overconfidence" and cited the example of the BJP's loss in Madhya Pradesh in 1998 despite the unpopularity of then Congress government led by Digvijaya Singh. Modi was then a key minder of the BJP's organisational affairs in the state. Pictures from the National Executive meeting in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/VVfRhm3E1d Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 16, 2023 'Refrain from controversies' Amid controversy over Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan's upcoming film "Pathaan", Prime Minister Narendra Modi also asked his party workers to refrain from making unnecessary remarks on irrelevant issues such as movies. Some party leaders often take a critical stance on movies for "hurting" people's feelings, with Shah Rukh Khan's "Pathaan" being the latest example. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told reporters that PM Modi, in his address to the BJP national executive meet, emphasised on reaching out to all sections of society and said his speech was not of a political leader but of a statesman underlining that kept the nation above the party. BJP no longer merely a political movement The BJP is no longer merely a political movement but a social movement as well that is working to transform socioeconomic conditions," PM Modi told the executive, he said. The Prime Minister said people in 18-25 age group have not witnessed the political history of India and are not aware of "corruption and wrongdoings" that took place under previous governments. "So, they need to be made aware. Let them know about the good governance of the BJP," he said in an apparent swipe at the previous dispensations at the Centre. Fadnavis said PM Modi also advised the party to conduct special programmes of its different 'morchas', especially in border villages so that it can connect with people there more and ensue that the government's developmental schemes reach them. "The prime minister's speech was inspirational. It guided us as well as showed us a new roadmap. He asked us to dedicate every moment of our life to advance the country's development. Only by converting the 'amrit kaal' into 'kartavya kaal', the country can be taken forward," the Maharashtra leader said. Focus on Dharti Bachao Emphasising on environmental conservation, PM Modi instructed party workers that on lines of "Beti Bachao" campaign they have to start "Dharti Bachao" (save earth) campaign, Fadnavis said adding that the Prime Minister underlined the need to reduce dependency on fertilisers. PM Modi referred to the Kashi-Tamil Sangamam, which was recently held in Varanasi, to celebrate ancient spiritual ties between the two regions and asked party members to connect with different cultures. "Only those who take a pledge go on to create history. The BJP has to take a pledge and also to create history," he said. Islamabad: The Pakistan Government has issued a clarification over Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's viral interview with Al Arabiya channel in which he expressed his sincere desire to hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on all pressing problems, including Kashmir. Prime Minister's Office (Pak PMO) issued a statement in which it said that talks with India can only take place after the country reverses its illegal action of August 5, 2019, referring to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the state into two Union Territories- Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh on August 5, 2019. In ref. to PM Shehbaz Sharif's interview to Al Arabiya, the spokesman of the PM Office has said the PM has consistently maintained that Pakistan & India must resolve their bilateral issues, especially the core issue of Jammu & Kashmir, through dialogue and peaceful means. 1/3 Prime Minister's Office (@PakPMO) January 17, 2023 Without Indias revocation of this step, negotiations are not possible, the Pakistan PMO said in a series of tweets. However the Prime Minister has repeatedly stated on record that talks can only take place after India has reversed its illegal action of August 5, 2019. Without India's revocation of this step, negotiations are not possible. 2/3 Prime Minister's Office (@PakPMO) January 17, 2023 The PMO further stated, "the settlement of the Kashmir dispute must be in accordance with the UN resolutions & aspirations of people of Jammu & Kashmir." The settlement of the Kashmir dispute must be in accordance with the UN resolutions & aspirations of people of Jammu & Kashmir. The Spokespman said that the Prime Minister made this position very clear in his interview with Al Arabiya news during his recent visit to the UAE. 3/3 Prime Minister's Office (@PakPMO) January 17, 2023 The clarification from the PMO came hours after Sharif said in the interview that Pakistan has learnt a lesson and wants to live in peace with India. During the interview, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also stated that the two neighbours should not waste their resources on bombs and ammunition. Prime Minister Sharif made these comments during an interview with the Dubai-based Al Arabiya news channel on Monday. "We have three wars with India and it only brought more misery, poverty and unemployment to the people," Sharif said. My message to the Indian leadership and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is that let us sit down on the table and have serious and sincere talks to resolve our burning issues like Kashmir," he said. He said Pakistan and India are neighbours and have to "live with each other." "We have learnt our lesson and we want to live in peace provided we are able to resolve our genuine problems. We want to alleviate poverty, achieve prosperity, and provide education and health facilities and employment to our people and not waste our resources on bombs and ammunition, that is the message I want to give to Prime Minister Modi," Sharif said. It may be recalled that the ties between the two countries nosedived after India abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution, revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the State into two Union Territories on August 5, 2019. India's decision evoked a strong reaction from Pakistan, which downgraded diplomatic ties and expelled the Indian envoy. Trade ties between Pakistan and India have essentially been frozen since then. Meanwhile, India has always maintained that talks and terror cannot go hand in hand. New Delhi in November last year had also lashed out at Islamabad for raking up the issue of Kashmir during a United Nations debate terming it as desperate attempts to peddle falsehoods. Hyderabad: The first public meeting of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) will be held in Khammam on Wednesday (January 18) where Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is likely to unveil the party's national agenda. Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI General Secretary D Raja and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav would attend the BRS meeting today. The meeting assumes political significance as it is the first public meeting after the TRS decided to go national by renaming itself as BRS and also because leaders of different opposition parties -- BRS, Aam Admi Party (AAP), Samajwadi Party and the Left -- would be seen together. With todays rally, KCR may be looking at strengthening the party in Khammam district but also using the platform to address people in Andhra Pradesh. BRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and the visiting leaders would go to the Lord Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple at Yadadri near Hyderabad which has been renovated on a grand scale by the Rao government, before proceeding to Khammam. At Khammam, about 200 km from Hyderabad, they would attend the launch of the second phase of 'Kanti Velugu', the Telangana government's eye screening programme. Speaking after hoisting the pink colour flag of BRS after the Election Commission approved the name change of TRS as BRS in December, 2022, Rao, also known as KCR, exuded confidence that the "pink flag would fly high on the Red Fort one day." Addressing his party leaders then, he gave the slogan of 'Ab ki baar kisan sarkar' (farmers' government this time) and said new economic, environment, water, electricity and women empowerment policies are needed in the country. BRS was formally launched last month by Chandrasekhar Rao with the slogan of 'ab ki baar kisan sarkar'. KCR, as Rao is popularly known, is likely to declare at the Khammam meeting what BRS plans to do for the development of agriculture and welfare of farmers. KCR, who has already promised that if voted to power at the Centre BRS would supply free electricity to farmers across the country, is expected to promise more measures to woo the farming community. BRS announced its entry into Andhra Pradesh on January 2 with former minister Ravela Kishore Babu, former IAS officer Thota Chandrasekhar and former IRS officer Chintala Partha Sarathi joining the party. KCR appointed Chandrasekhar as the BRS state president for Andhra Pradesh. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese battery giant CATL announced via its WeChat account it signed an MoU (memorandum of understanding) on Jan. 17 with UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science, for the strategic cooperation on promoting safer and more reliable applications of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Per the agreement, CATL will kick off the process to achieve UL Solutions WTDP (witness test data program) status, so as to conduct tests under UL 9540A, the Standard for Test Method for Evaluating Thermal Runaway Fire Propagation in Battery Energy Storage Systems. Once receiving WTDP designation by UL Solutions, CATL will be allowed to use its own laboratory facilities to conduct the UL 9540A tests under the supervision of UL Solutions' personnel, in a bid to further improve the testing efficiency, and short the period for battery products going into the market from the laboratory. Photo credit: CATL As China's first company to launch the UL Solutions WTDP initiative for UL 9540A, CATL features diversified testing and verification capabilities, and has been qualified by UL Solutions for the tests under UL1973 (the Standard for Batteries for Use in Stationary and Motive Auxiliary Power Applications), UL 9540 (the Standard for Energy Storage Systems and Equipment), and UL 2580 (the Standard for Batteries for Use in Electric Vehicles), said the company. CATL noted that the EnerOne, its flagship outdoor liquid cooling battery system, and EnerC, its containerized liquid-cooling battery system, have been certified to the UL 9540A standard, making CATL became China's first company to receive test report of such kind in cell, module, unit and installation level by UL Solutions. Moreover, the duo will carry out in-depth cooperation in further exploring lithium-ion battery safety, and offer insights towards the development of BESS and EV battery standards. They will also co-explore carbon footprint reduction and other sustainability endeavors. Kohima: As the assembly election date was announced for Nagaland with no solution to the protracted Naga political issue in sight, civil society organisations and a section of political parties of the northeastern state expressed disappointment. During campaigning for the 2018 assembly polls, the BJP coined the slogan 'election for solution'. Several parties of the state have reminded the saffron party of it recently. While senior leaders of both Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) which have the largest number of MLAs in the all-party government in Nagaland and BJP could not be reached for comments, Congress and NPF said they, though unhappy, will contest the polls. Civil society organisations said the Centre should prove its sincerity in solving the Naga political issue. The Election Commission on Wednesday announced in New Delhi that the assembly poll in the state will be held on February 27 and votes will be counted on March 2. The Naga People's Front (NPF), which has four MLAs in the outgoing assembly, said the top priority of the party is an honourable solution to the Naga political issue. "We will contest the election with our manifesto on good and corruption-free governance, besides working for an honourable and acceptable solution to the Naga political problem," NPF secretary general Achumbemo Kikon said. Congress said the EC could have deferred the election in Nagaland but it went ahead in announcing the poll which "betrayed the aspiration of the people." "The party is not happy with the announcement of election," state Congress president K Therie said. Efforts to get comments from the two major political parties - Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and BJP - went in vain as their spokespersons did not respond to calls and messages. In the 60-member assembly, the NDPP has 41 members, BJP has 12, and NPF has four. There are two Independents while one seat is vacant. The civil society organisations urged the Centre to take steps for finding a solution to the issue. Nagaland Peoples' Action Committee (NPAC) on Naga Political Issue convener Theja Therieh told PTI that despite the announcement of the election date, the central government still has the power to take a decision on bringing about the Naga solution as the notification is not out yet. "The government of India will have to prove its sincerity in bringing about an accord respecting Naga rights and history," Naga Mothers' Association advisor Rosemary Dzuvichu said. A lot depends on political will and the next few weeks will indicate whether the Central government wants peace for the Nagas, she said. "The slogan, election for solution, has become a rhetorical statement. They have forgotten to listen to the voice of the people," said Naga Hoho (organisation) general secretary K Elu Ndang. The Eastern Nagaland Peoples' Organisation comprising seven tribes from six eastern districts earlier declared not to participate in the poll to put pressure on the government to fulfil its demand for a separate 'Frontier Nagaland' state. Its leaders also could not be contacted. Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio told reporters on Tuesday that his government does not want to create a constitutional crisis or let President's Rule be imposed in the state. He was replying to a question on what will happen if civil society organisations remain firm on their stand on not participating in the polls unless there is a solution to the protracted Naga political issue. To find a solution to the decades-old problem, the Centre has been holding separate negotiations with NSCN-IM since 1997 and the Working Committee of Naga National Political Group (NNPG), comprising at least seven groups, since 2017. It inked the Framework Agreement with NSCN-IM in 2015 and Agreed Position with NNPGs in 2017. However, the final solution is yet to be attained with NSCN-IM remaining adamant on its demand for a separate flag and constitution for the Nagas. New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu, has delegated two new powers to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena. Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code, 2020, the Lieutenant Governor can now formulate rules in the areas of the National Capital Territory of Delhi that require it. This was announced in two separate notifications issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on January 16. The notifications state that the Lieutenant Governor will exercise these powers and discharge the functions of the appropriate government or state government under these rules until further order. Similar powers have also been delegated to the administrators and Lieutenant Governors of five other Union Territories, including Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Chandigarh, Puducherry, and Lakshadweep. Also Read: 'Mai chuna hua CM hu, aap kaun hain?': Arvind Kejriwal's latest dig at Delhi LG VK Saxena The notifications further state that in pursuance of Clause (1) of Article 239 of the Constitution, the President directs that the administrator or Lieutenant Governor of these Union Territories shall, subject to the control of the President and until further order, exercise the powers and discharge the functions of the appropriate Government or State Government under these codes to formulate the rules only in the areas where these Union Territories are required to formulate rules either as appropriate Government or State Government. Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the appropriate government may exempt any new industrial establishment or class of establishments from the provisions of the Code in the public interest. Similarly, another notification mentions regarding delegation of powers of state government and appropriate government under the Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code, 2020 to the administrator and Lieutenant Governor of these six Union Territories. Power tussle between Delhi CM and LG The delegation of these two new powers to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi is significant amid his stalemate with the Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal. The recent flashpoint between the two was triggered ahead of the January 23 election of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has accused the Lieutenant Governor of issuing orders on "practically everything" and bypassing the elected government. (With ANI inputs) Mathura: Priests, traders, and local residents on Tuesday intensified their stir against the construction of a proposed corridor around the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan and burnt copies of the proposed designs of the project. They also sent 108 letters written with blood to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath urging them to shelve the project and save the heritage of Vrindavan. Markets near the temple were closed in the second half of Tuesday for the third consecutive day as the protesters staged a dharna. "On one hand, we are seeking redressal from the apex court and on other, the agitation is being intensified," Amit Gautam, President of Banke Bihari Vyapaari Association said. As many as 108 letters written with blood have been sent to the PM and the CM with a request to save the heritage of Vrindavan, he said. "The construction of a corridor will not only ruin the heritage of Vrindavan but we will also become homeless," 85-year-old Shakuntala Devi Goswami, a local resident who participated in the dharna said. "How can we sit idle when efforts are on to ruin us," another local resident, Gyanendra Kishor Goswami, said. Also Read: A look at redeveloped Mahakaleshwar Temple Corridor built for Rs 800 crore; to be inaugurated by PM Modi on October 11 The protest against the corridor, being built on the lines of Kashi Vishwanath Temple Corridor project in Varanasi, began on January 12 and efforts are on to mobilise more support, a resident, Megh Shyam said. According to the protesters, the apex court will hear the matter on January 23. Meanwhile, Congress leader Pradeep Mathur said his party will not remain a mute spectator to the sufferings of people. About 300 families will be made homeless and thousands of traders along with their employees will be jobless because of this project. This is not in the interest of the residents of Vrindavan, Mathur said. After two devotees were killed and half a dozen sustained injuries during a stampede at the temple on Janmashtami celebrations last year, the government had constituted a committee to probe the incident and suggest remedial measures. On December 20, 2022, in a writ petition related to the Banke Bihari Temple, the High Court had ordered the district administration to submit a development plan of the corridor with estimated costs. A survey for the construction of the corridor had begun on January 3. New Delhi: China's reducing population should serve as a clarion call for India, experts have said, asserting that any coercive measure to control population can be counter-productive. China, the most populous country in the world, witnessed a population decline for the first time in decades last year. The country's population was about 1.4 billion at the end of 2022. The National Bureau of Statistics in China reported a drop of 850,000 in population at the end of 2022 and it marked the beginning of what is expected to be a long period of population decline, despite all government efforts to reverse the trend. Comparing China's situation with India which is set to become the world's most populous country by mid-April, the experts said India and its states must learn from the experience of China on the inefficacy of coercive population policies. "The stringent population control measures have landed China in the midst of a population crisis. Today, Sikkim, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Puducherry, Punjab, Ladakh, West Bengal and Lakshadweep also face the challenge of an aging population, labour pool in short supply and an increase in sex-selective practices, given the fertility rate which is well below the replacement level of Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which is defined as the rate at which the population exactly replaces itself," the Population Foundation of India (PFI), an NGO, said in a statement. The reduced TFR will result in an age-structural transformation wherein the states will have a demographic dividend in the initial years, but an aging population in the long run, the PFI said. "This will increase the elderly dependency ratio and increased morbidity levels in terms of non-communicable diseases, in the long run. Going forward, these states will require huge amounts of resources for financial support of the elderly and address their health care needs," the statement said. The linkage between higher development and a decline in TFR is clearly borne out by states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, which provide better access to education and development opportunities, it said. "China's reducing population should serve as a clarion call for India, on not only what to do, but also what not to do. India must put an end to the buzz and noise around the possible introduction of a two-child norm," the PFI said. "In order to leverage our demographic dividend and the wealth of human resources in India, it is critical that development interventions are geared towards education with a focus on gender equity, economic development and access to family planning services," the foundation said. Akhila Sivadas, Executive Director at the Centre for Advocacy and Research, said for India there can be no one standard response with a clear south-north divide on this issue with the latter continuing to have the advantage of a demographic dividend or youth power. "The moot question is whether they can leverage the advantage and as a nation can we address disparate challenges related to the issue from adverse child sex ratio, ageing population as well as the rising youth population," Sivadas said. Chinese population is growing old China has witnessed a declining trend in the proportion of people in the age group of 15-59 years, from 22.9 percentage points in 2000, 16.6 percentage points in 2010 and 9.8 percentage points in 2020. As predicted by demographers, the Chinese population is growing old and the proportion of people aged 60 years and above is 18.7 per cent of the total population in 2020 against 13.3 per cent in 2010. In recent decades, China's focus has largely been on coercive measures to restrict population growth. China introduced the one-child policy in the late 1970s to slow down the rapid population growth, before reversing it in 2016 to allow families to have two children. However, in 2021, China relaxed its childbirth policy to allow each couple to have up to three children. Stricter birth limits have created a rapidly ageing population and shrinking workforce that is straining the country's economy, the experts said. The population control measures have led to a skewed sex ratio and a decline in the number of women of the reproductive age group, which will be hard to reverse, they said. New Delhi: Amid controversy over Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan's upcoming film "Pathaan", Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday (January 17, 2023) asked Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers to refrain from making unnecessary remarks on irrelevant issues such as movies. In his address at the two-day BJP national executive, which concluded with his remarks, PM Modi suggested party workers refrain from making unnecessary remarks on irrelevant issues such as movies as they put the party's development agenda on the back-burner, sources said. Some party leaders often take a critical stance on movies for "hurting" people's feelings, with Shah Rukh Khan's "Pathaan" being the latest example. During his address, Modi also noted that nearly 400 days are left for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and asked party members to serve every section with full dedication. Some glimpses from the 2nd day of the BJP National Executive meeting. pic.twitter.com/m8GkHGg758 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 17, 2023 Sources said he also cautioned the party members against any sense of "overconfidence" and cited the example of the BJP's loss in Madhya Pradesh in 1998 despite the unpopularity of then Congress government led by Digvijaya Singh. Modi was then a key minder of the BJP's organisational affairs in the state. India's best era is coming PM Modi said that India's best era is coming and the party should dedicate itself to the country's development and turn "amrit kaal", the 25 year period to 2047, into "kartavya kaal" (era of duties). Modi referred to the Kashi-Tamil Sangamam, which was recently held in Varanasi, to celebrate ancient spiritual ties between the two regions and asked party members to connect with different cultures. "Only those who take a pledge go on to create history. The BJP has to take a pledge and also to create history," he said. He also said that people in the 18-25 age group have not witnessed the political history of India and are not aware of "corruption and wrongdoings" that took place under previous governments. "So, they need to be made aware. Let them know about the good governance of the BJP," the prime minister said in an apparent swipe at the previous dispensations at the Centre. BJP no longer merely a political movement but a social movement Speaking to reporters after Modi's address, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that the prime minister told the BJP national executive meet to emphasise on reaching out to all sections of society. Fadnavis said that PM's speech was not of a political leader but of a statesman underlining that kept the nation above the party. "The prime minister's speech was inspirational. It guided us as well as showed us a new roadmap. He asked us to dedicate every moment of our lives to advance the country's development. Only by converting the 'amrit kaal' into 'kartavya kaal', the country can be taken forward," Fadnavis said. Shri @Dev_Fadnavis addresses a press conference at NDMC Convention Centre in New Delhi. #BJPNEC2023 https://t.co/rpIY0Hc9uv BJP (@BJP4India) January 17, 2023 The BJP is no longer merely a political movement but a social movement as well that is working to transform socioeconomic conditions, Modi told the executive, the Maharashtra leader said. J&K: The People's Democratic Party today held a protest against the LG administration of Jammu and Kashmir. The protest was held in PDP's Srinagar office at the Sher Kashmir Park. Party members were demanding the rollback of government order regarding the retrieval of state land held by people in the Union territory. The Youth General Secretary of PDP Mohit Bhan was leading the protests and demanding the government to roll back the order. ''The government's directive is against the poor people of Jammu and Kashmir who will be rendered homeless if this order is implemented on the ground. It's totally Inhuman,'' said Mohit Bhan, Youth General Secretary of PDP. Most of the regional Political parties in the Union Territory have spoken against the Government order. Parties like PDP, National Conference and People's Conference have shown disappointment over the government order about land retrieval. This whole idea of retrieving state land in rural settings is dangerous. When will these insane experiments backed by ugly muscularity end. Occupation of state Land in villages by inhabitants of a particular village is a generational practice and an irreversible reality. This practice is prevalent in the rest of the country. A sizable percentage of the population is involved. U cant make them homeless,'' said Sajad Lone, People's Conference. ''The National Conference is very clear that encroachments are not acceptable, but state land belongs to the people. If the government has passed an order, do they have any alternative for these people. SC judgement is two cases recently called for an alternative for the people until such steps are taken. It is totally wrong and harassment of locals of Jammu and Kashmir. Sometimes I wonder if the BJP is going to fight elections in Jammu Kashmir, they have such anti-people approach here. And let's be very clear that this order is going to affect the poor people of the Union territory. The rich might find ways to fight the order, it's the poor who will suffer the most,'' said Ifra Jan, Spokesperson, National Conference. However, the BJP has welcomed the state order of retrieving the Government land. They have called it a step which is pro poor people of the Union Territory. ''Retrieving of land must start from the Nawa e Subh complex, Khidmat Trust, 32 former ministers, and other land sharks. no mercy for looting state land, the government must ensure stern punishment to land grabbers. "It is good that UT administration has asked all the Deputy Commissioners to remove all encroachments from state and community (Kahcharai) lands. It is surprising that most of the land grabbers are those who ruled the state. May it be the National Conference (NC), Congress and People's Democratic Party(PDP). Even senior leaders of these political parties including Chaudhary Zulfikar and Sajad Ahmad Kitchloo are named in the list, '' said Altaf Thakur, Senior BJP leader and party's JK spokesman. Jaipur: Congress leader Sachin Pilot has again attacked the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan on exam paper leaks and targeted the government over the political appointments of retired bureaucrats instead of party workers. This reflects the rift within the Congress in Rajasthan, where CM Gehlot and Pilot are locked in a power tussle. The party had papered over their differences as Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra passed through the state, but the truce appears to be temporary. Pilot's supporters, including a minister, have pitched for his appointment as the chief minister. Also Read: Sachin Pilot targets Ashok Gehlot, says Rajasthan govt should act against 'big sharks' behind paper leaks Pilot demands arrest of 'big sharks' involved in paper leak Pilot has been targeting the Gehlot government over the paper leak incidents for the last two days and had demanded that the "big sharks" involved in the leaks should be arrested. Reacting to Pilot, Gehlot said action was taken against the main accused. Gehlot also refuted BJP leader Kirodi Meena and RLP MP Hanuman Beniwal's allegations that officials and leaders were involved in the paper leaks. Speaking at a rally, Pilot said accountability will have to be fixed when incidents of paper leaks are happening one after the other. He also targeted the Gehlot government over political appointments of retired bureaucrats, saying "party workers have toiled to bring the Congress to power in the state and they should get honour and respect." "In the last four years, several political appointments were made. The officers work for the party in power be it the BJP or Congress. If we have to appoint them (bureaucrats), the proportion should be such that the workers don't feel sidelined," he said as quoted by PTI. "It does not matter whether the worker is my supporter or not... The worker can be anyone's supporter, but if the worker of the Congress party is given an appointment, we all will welcome it," he further said. Addressing scores of farmers and youths, Pilot also reiterated the demand that the center should make a legal framework to guarantee MSP. He passed a resolution in the meeting for the same. He called upon the party workers to spread the message of Rahul Gandhi to every household. Pilot exuded confidence that the party will retain power in the assembly elections after ten months. The proposed induction of helmets for Sikh soldiers serving in the Indian army has left community leaders fuming. Many are even questioning the very need for helmets for Sikh soldiers who have been fighting battles without any headgear. The first to react to the issue is the Jathedar of Akal Takht Giani Harpreet Singh who even indicated a possible conspiracy against Sikhs with the introduction of helmets for Sikhs in the army. A dastar (turban) which is adorned by a Sikh on his head is not just a piece of 5 to 7 meter of cloth but it is a crown given by Gurus which is placed on their heads and is an emblem of their identity, said the Jathedar, in a hard-hitting message while clarifying that any attempt to cover a Sikhs identity with a top would be seen as an attempt to finish the identity of Sikhs. Notably, in the recent past, Veer Helmets have been developed for the wearing of Sikh soldiers over patka with an aim to give better head protection to Sikh soldiers. The proposal of helmets for Sikhs is not new but it had been introduced time and again both in India and other parts of the world. According to Sikh leadership, Turban is an integral part of Sikh attire which is explicitly mentioned in the Sikh Rehat Maryada (Sikh code of religious conduct), and making Sikhs wear any other protective headgear is considered against Rehat Maryada. In past Tough Turban, made of impact-resistant material to protect the head from any impact, was introduced following which the Sikhs in the UK decided to approach the government for exempting them to wear helmets in workplaces, etc. A tough Turban is similar to a normal cloth turban but incorporates impact-resistant materials to protect the riders head. The issue had also come up following a proposal of the Chandigarh administration to make the wearing of helmet mandatory for Sikh women except for turbaned women while driving a two-wheeler. Sikh bodies argue that from the World Wars to the war with China in 1962, with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 to the Kargil conflict, the Sikh soldiers fought at the frontline bravely wearing their turbans and not helmets. Raising a strong objection to the proposed introduction of helmets for Sikh soldiers Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Harjinder Singh Dhami wrote a letter to Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, asking him to withdraw this decision. The decision to implement a special helmet for Sikhs serving in the Indian Army will destroy the unique Sikh identity and Sikh Maryada. The turban is not merely a cloth, but it is also a symbol of Sikh heritage besides having spiritual and temporal significance. The commitment of Sikhs to the turban also reflects Sikh pride and adherence to the Guru's command. Ordering a Sikh soldier to take off his turban and wear a helmet just because it offers better protection to his head, is ignorance to the Sikhs psyche, and his attachment to turban said Dhami. Quoting examples of various battles including the Battle of Saragarhi, the World Wars, and the wars fought by the Indian Army in the past, he said even in the Indian army, the Sikh soldiers serving in The Sikh Regiment, Sikh Light Infantry, and Punjab Regiment were performing their duties diligently to protect the country. The Indian Armys proposed decision to implement a helmet policy for Sikh soldiers was a violation of Sikh Maryada and culture, said Dhami. He appealed to the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to immediately withdraw the new helmet policy being implemented for the Sikh soldiers so that the unique identity of Sikhs in Defence services is maintained. When the Sikhs elsewhere in the world have successfully secured the right to work with their proud turbans in jobs requiring helmets, the BJP government back home has initiated a plan to bring in so-called special helmets for Sikh soldiers in the Indian army, which is completely unacceptable, said Delhi Akali chief Paramjit Singh Sarna said. A close-knit member of the Jathedar Jagtar Singh Hawara Committee Baljinder said that as per Maryada, the Sikhs were forbidden to wear the turban . But Sikh soldiers have bravely fought wars without helmets and have shown exemplary courage he said. J&K: Mehbooba Mufti reacts to Shahbaz Sharifs statement on Talks with India. Mehbooba said the starting point of talks should be restoration of what has been taken from the state. Jammu Kashmir people always believed that we acceded to India as it was the secular state. PDP says that solving Kashmir problem would be within the constitution. The trade should start, roads should be open. There is no way other then talks. Reacting on Land retrieval law she said "The laws are made for the benefit of people. But after 2019 all the laws and rules have been weaponized against the people of the Union territory. The government land on which poor people have built houses for decades is a punishment and tool for the government to use against the people. The government is testing the patience of the people. I am sure the time will come when the people of this place wont be able to tolerate more than what is happening. Talking on Joshi math treasury she said if Shri Amarnath ji cave spot of Katra is also encouraged it can be a disaster One-Day here also "The Sengupta report regarding Amarnath Yatra was to allow 4000 to 5000 pilgrims. What has happened in Joshi Math by playing with the environment should not happen the same way in Kashmir. Our environment is very delicate. Well coming Bharat Jodo Yatra, she said He ( Rahul Gandhi )brings a message of love & peace at a time when the country is being fuelled by hatred. We welcome his efforts to heal these wounds."Congress has had a struggle not only for freedom but also to make this country secular and the BJP is adamant about breaking the secular fabric of this country. The main Motive of this Yatra is to divide the country on religion and JK has to suffer the most of this divisive politics of BJP. We welcome the Yatra and we will participate in it. Bengaluru: Opposition Congress on Tuesday targeted Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya, amid reports that the passenger, who accidentally opened the emergency exit of an IndiGo plane after boarding at Chennai airport last month was the BJP Yuva Morcha chief. It has also questioned as to why the government hid the incident so long. Neither Surya nor his office have reacted to the allegations so far. "Tejasvi Surya is an example of what will happen if children playing games are given the proprietorship. An act of children's mischief by trying to open the emergency exit door of the plane has come to light. Why prank with the lives of passengers?" Karnataka Congress said. It asked as to why the government hid Surya's attempt to open the emergency exit door, by violating the flight safety rules. "What was the MP's intention? What plans were there to create a disaster? Why was he transferred to the back seat after apologising?," the Congress asked, while questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi as to who would have been responsible for the disaster if this "prank" had been carried out after take-off. "Why is this not being investigated?" it further asked. The aircraft, which was on the ground, was subject to mandatory engineering checks before it flew to Tiruchirapalli that day. A senior official at aviation regulator DGCA on Tuesday said the event was duly reported and that no safety was compromised. Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar said, "For a safe take-off and landing, always fly with Congress." AICC general secretary in-charge of Karnataka Randeep Singh Surjewala said, "The BJP VIP Brats ! How dare the airline complain? Is it the norm for the BJP power elite? Did it compromise passenger safety? Ohhh! U can't ask questions about BJP's entitled VIP's !" Questioning whether the MP used his good offices to suppress this news, Congress MLA and KPCC's Communications in-charge Priyank Kharge said, "Why is Indigo so hesitant to name the passenger? Why didn't they report to DGCA? Why is No Comments from the MP? BJP's Tejasvi Surya allegedly opened emergency exit of IndiGo flight, flight delayed by 2 hours." Hyderabad: A case was registered against Telangana BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar's son here on Tuesday for allegedly assaulting a student, police said. Kumar's son, an engineering first-year student was accused of beating up a fellow student on the premises of a private educational institute here recently reportedly for "misbehaving" with the sister of his friend. A video of the incident purportedly showing one person slapping another has gone viral on social media. Based on the complaint given by the Head of the Disciplinary Committee of the institute, an FIR was registered against Kumar's son at Dundigal police station under Sections 323 (causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation) and other relevant provisions of the IPC, a senior police official told. New Delhi: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah has said that the Kashmir problem will not die "unless we talk to our neighbour" and find a real solution to the issue that has been festering for decades. The NC chief also said India will not be able to progress and be strong "unless we are one". The 85-year-old politician was speaking during a book release event. The book, "A Life in the Shadows A Memoir", has been written by former RAW chief A S Dulat who retired from service in 2000. "India is a unique country and it is that because we all think together...We have to return to Gandhi's India...The division has to end if the nation has to progress," Abdullah said. "The country will never be strong unless we are one," he said. The "problem of Kashmir will not die...And I am sorry to say, terrorism will stay unless we talk to our neighbour and find a true solution," Abdullah said without taking the name of Pakistan. Abdullah said he had given the same message of both countries being "united and of building bridges" when former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had sought his opinion before he travelled to Pakistan in 1999. The prime minister (Narendra Modi) of today has "said openly that war is not a solution for anything", he said, adding the Russia-Ukraine war was a case in point. The former CM of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir expressed unhappiness at some of the current developments taking place in the country. "Look at the institutions, Governors, look at the Lt Governor...How they are playing with the Constitution...I could never think of this," he said. Dulat, a retired IPS officer of the 1965 batch, reiterated the same feelings during the event as he said that "terrorism (in J&K) will not go away unless we engage with Pakistan." This (terrorism in J&K) will go on and on and on, the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, said. He, however, added that he would "concede" that the level of militancy has come down due to the "muscular policy" adopted by the current dispensation. But there is a difference, militancy is local while terrorism comes from across the border, Dulat said. When asked what ails the relationship between New Delhi and Kashmir, Dulat said the "disconnect with the people has always been there and there has been a lack of trust". Kolkata: A political row erupted in West Bengal after an image of a Class 10 model question paper, asking students to mark "Azad Kashmir" on a map, went viral on social media, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claiming it to be a "jihadi conspiracy" and the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC terming it a mistake that it doesn't support. West Bengal Board of Secondary Education President Ramanuj Ganguly, when contacted, conceded that the "goof up" has taken place in the test papers published by the autonomous body, and action is being taken against those responsible for the mistake. "We published a compilation of question papers provided by various schools. In one such question paper, this mistake was identified. A probe is being conducted, and stern action will be initiated against editorial team members who were entrusted with the task of proof-reading the papers," Ganguly told PTI. He said the process to issue a corrigendum on the board's website is underway. "Those involved in the mistake will not be spared," he said. In the question paper, issued in an exercise book of a Bengali-medium school for Madhyamik aspirants, the paper setter has asked them to identify several places on the map ? Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (referred to as 'Azad Kashmir' in Pakistan), the place where Gandhiji had first undertaken the Satyagraha movement, and the Chittagong battleground. Zee News could not independently verify the authenticity of the image of the paper circulated on social media. Union minister of state for education Subhas Sarkar, during a press meet on Tuesday, called for a state-level inquiry into the matter. Sarkar told PTI that the central government will also look into the issue. "I urge the state education minister to conduct an inquiry. If the allegations are genuine, appropriate action should be taken against the publisher and the person who has set the paper. The test paper should be immediately withdrawn and the question deleted," he said. Sarkar went on to say that the incident if found to be true, can be attributed to the "appeasement politics of the TMC-run government, which has emboldened some people to insert a question with anti-national overtones in the test paper". The issue snowballed into a major political row, with the BJP quickly blaming the state government for promoting "jihadi thoughts" in the state, and the ruling TMC dubbing the allegations baseless. "A high-level probe must be ordered. This incident proves that the state government promotes jihadi thoughts to appease its vote bank," senior BJP leader Rahul Sinha said. Echoing him, BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh said the TMC government not just "supports jihadi elements but also tries to influence the minds of the schoolchildren". 1.2 This state government is not only supporting militants, but also trying to create anti-India mentality among young students. TMC means Corruption, Lies and Terrorism Dilip Ghosh (@DilipGhoshBJP) January 17, 2023 TMC state spokesperson Kunal Ghosh told PTI his party doesn't support anything that is wrong. "If someone has set such a question, he has done wrong. We don't support such acts. "The TMC is a secular party that does not believe in appeasing any particular community. Sarkar has made a baseless comment against our party," Ghosh stated. New Delhi: Global investment firm Goldman Sachs sacked more than 3,000 employees in disguise of business meetings as early as 7.30 a.m. and the meetings with senior managers were put on Google calendar under "false pretenses", the media reported. The New York Post reported that Goldman Sachs' CEO David Solomon "e-mailed calendar invites that called targeted employees to phony 'business meetings' at its New York headquarters" last week.Once the employees arrived at the conference room -- some as early as 7.30 a.m. -- they were told by their managers that they were being fired."Managers were sorry to do this but their hand was forced and they wished him the best of luck," the report said, citing inside sources.Another employee was told to arrive at 7:30 am for a call with Goldman counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region.The impacted employee "didn't question the early meeting since those with other regions are typically during off-hours".Those sacked were given the choice to leave the office immediately or wait for colleagues to arrive so they could say goodbye.A Goldman Sachs spokesperson said that "this is a difficult time for people leaving the firm"."We're grateful for all our people's contributions, and we're providing support to ease their transitions," the spokesperson said.The layoffs at Goldman Sachs were dubbed as "David's Demolition Day".The layoffs at the global financial services also hit Indian workers hard and some of the impacted IITians and IIM graduates shared their plight on various social media platforms. New Delhi: Bollywood actress and former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been issued a notice over non-payment of tax amounting to Rs 21,960 for 1 hectare of land she has in Adwadi village, Nashik. According to The Indian Express report, the actress has promised to pay the tax by January 18, 2023, a Wednesday. The notice dated January 9, 2023, states that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is yet to pay Rs 21,960 for her land parcel in the Sinnar district of Nashik. The outstanding amount is for one year period and the needs to be paid within 10 days of the time limit, reportedly. Legal advisor of the actress met us today and told us that the tax will be paid by tomorrow. She has invested in a windmill. The land was bought in 2009. She has paid the tax for all these years. Only the tax for this particular assessment year is pending, Sinnar tehsildar Eknath Bangale told The Indian Express. He added , "Our revenue assessment year starts from August. We have sent her demand notice twice but there was no response. Now on January 9, we have again sent a notice to her to pay the tax. We had given her 10 days time, but now her advisor told us that the tax will be paid by tomorrow." No official word has been made by the actress regarding the development as yet. New Delhi: 2023 is expected to be about great content making its way to all the cinema buffs. This year is all set to bring a plethora of OTT shows across platforms and will showcase some of the greatest renditions of our favorite actors. And since several actors and makers leveled up with their content and performance last year, this year too is anticipated to be a year full of great stories, strong deliveries, and exploring creativity. With so many actors gearing up for releases this year on OTT, 2023 is definitely the year to look forward to. Let's have a look at what to expect on OTT by these actors in 2023. Sobhita Dhulipalas Tara in Made In Heaven 2 & Kaveri in Night Manager The first season of Made In Heaven starring Sobhita Dhulipala has raised the flag higher than ever for a modern romantic drama. The audience has showered a ton of love on the first season and has curiously awaited the release of the 2nd. Now with Made In Heaven 2 gearing up for a 2023 release, the audience cannot wait to watch where Tara aka Sobhitas story leads to. And with Night Manager, the film is touted to be a high-octane thriller wrapped in lavish drama and picturesque sights, stars Sobhita Dhulipala who will play to role of Kaveri, will be seen in a never seen before avatar. Rajkummar Rao starrer GUNS & GULAABS Raj and DK, a team of accomplished filmmakers, have another exciting web series scheduled for release in 2023. The forthcoming television series, Guns & Gulaabs, will centre on a bunch of decent misfits who eventually integrate themselves into the criminal underworld. In the upcoming film Guns & Gulaabs, which is set in the 1990s, Rajkummar Rao, Dulquer Salmaan, Adarsh Gourav, and Gulshan Devaiah play pivotal characters. Sohum Shah starrer Dahaad Starring Sohum Shah, Dahaad is a serial killer drama set in a small town, the show follows the investigations of a female inspector into a crime that shakes her core. Dahaad has been making the headlines since the time the web series and the star cast was announced. We have seen Sohum serve great performances in 2022, and now with him coming in Dahaad, the show is expected to deliver some edge of the seat thriller storyline. Saba Azad aka Parvana Irani in Rocket Boys 2 After collecting rave reviews for season one of Rocket Boys, the makers of the Saba Azad starrer are bringing the second season of the successful web series. The success of Rocket Boys has put Saba Azad in a different light and with the second season gearing up for the 2023 release, the audience cannot hold the excitement to watch more of her in the series. Parvana Irani is still fresh in the mind of the audience and fans are looking forward to seeing her in Rocket Boys 2. Jaipur: Bars and clubs in Rajasthan cannot operate beyond midnight, states Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has announced this amid concerns that they are ''mushrooming in every lane and bylane.'' "These bars and clubs run till late, sometimes up to 3 or 4 am. They have mushroomed in every lane and bylane. We will see later how to regulate them. For now, we have decided that these bars should shut latest by 11:30 pm or 12 midnight so that people can go home and be with their families," said CM Gehlot. The Chief Minister also said the Rajasthan cabinet has passed a resolution urging the Centre to make a law in Parliament to give social security to the people of the country. He said the resolution will be sent to the central government. Talking to reporters on the second day of the two-day 'Chintan Shivir' of the state government, Gehlot said the issue of social security should be discussed at the national level. "The time has come when the right to social security act should be made in parliament. One crore people are getting social security in Rajasthan while this number in Uttar Pradesh, which is more populous than Rajasthan, is only 40-50 lakh," he said. The cabinet meeting was held on Monday before the two-day Chintan Shivir began. The chief minister reviewed the performance of all the departments in the shivir. Gehlot expressed displeasure with certain officials not cooperating in executing government schemes and programmes and they should be terminated from service. On bar-clubs remaining open till 3-4 am, Gehlot said he has directed officials to ensure they close by 12 am. The CM said that the opposition has no issue to raise in the state. Referring to National Crime Records Bureau data, Gehlot said the crime rate in Rajasthan has decreased by 5 percent in 2021 compared to 2019. On the performance of ministers, he said they have confidence and a grip on their departments. New Delhi: Popular South actress Amala Paul has alleged that she was denied entry inside the Thiruvairanikulam Mahadeva Temple in Kerala by the officials. The temple entry is reportedly accessible only to Hindus and Amala is a Christian. Reacting to the development, temple officials stated that they were only following the protocol as only Hindus are allowed inside. Thiruvairanikulam Mahadeva Temple Trust Secretary Prasoon Kumar told News18 Malayalam, "It is not said that believers of other religions do not reach the temple. But no one knows that. But when a celebrity comes, it becomes controversial. Intervening in understanding this. According to current customs, there is a bar to admit a non-believer. This was told to Amala Paul." "It is sad and disappointing that religious discrimination still exists in 2023. I couldn't go near the Goddess but could feel the spirit from a distance. I hope there will be a change in religious discrimination soon. The time will come and we all will be treated equally and not on the basis of religion," Amala Paul wrote in the temple visitor's register as per India Today report. The 12-day festival of Goddess Parvati called the Nadathurappu' began at the Thiruvairanikulam Mahadeva Temple on January 16, 2023. The sanctum of Goddess Parvati is open only for twelve days in a year and the Chief deity of the temple is Lord Shiva, who sits facing the east while the Goddess Parvati faces the west. Reportedly, Amala had visited the temple to seek the darshan of Goddess Parvati during Nadathurappu festival'. However, when authorities cited the custom of allowing only Hindus to enter the temple and stopped her then the actress caught a glimpse of the goddess from the road. She took her darshan and prasad outside, reportedly. New Delhi: Google is actively working on a Soundbox for the India market -- similar to the Paytm or PhonePe ones that you see at your neighbourhood shop which gives a sound alert on the digital payment that has been made, media reports said on Tuesday. The search giant is piloting a soundbox of its own in the country to alert sellers of confirmations for Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based payments, reports TechCrunch. The company has branded them as 'Soundpod by Google Pay' and is currently distributing it as a pilot with some shopkeepers in north India, including Delhi. The Soundpods are being built by Amazon-backed ToneTag, the report mentioned. A Google spokesperson told IANS in a statement that "We are experimenting with several different solutions to make digital payments more convenient and intuitive for users and merchants". The 'Soundpod by Google Pay' is accompanied by a QR code of a merchant linked with their Google Pay for business account. Users can use any UPI-based app to make a payment by scanning the code. The UPI, ended 2022 on a high note, as the volume of transactions touched a record 7.82 billion in December, amounting to Rs 12.82 trillion, again a record high. According to data by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the volume of transactions in December was up 7.12 per cent compared to November. Berlin: Police in western Germany carried Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and other protesters away Tuesday from the edge of an open coal pit mine where they demonstrated against the ongoing destruction of a village to make way for the mine's expansion, German news agency dpa reported. She was released by the police later. Thunberg was among hundreds of people who resumed anti-mining protests at multiple locations in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia a day after the last two climate activists holed up in a tunnel beneath the village of Luetzerath left the site. Elsewhere in western Germany, dozens of climate activists glued themselves to a main street in Germany's western city of Cologne and to a state government building in Duesseldorf. Near Rommerskirchen, a group of about 120 activists also occupied the coal railroad tracks to the Neurath power plant, according to police and energy company RWE. Those who refused to leave the tracks were carried away, dpa reported. In addition, several people occupied a giant digger at the coal mine of Inden, while hundreds of other protesters joined a protest march near Luetzerath. The village itself was evacuated by the police in recent days and is sealed off. Once again, there were a few clashes with the police. Also Read: 'I think Greta Thunberg is...', Elon Musk says THIS for teenage environmentalist Several activists ran over to the Garzweiler open pit mine, according to dpa. They stood at the brink of the open pit, which has a sharp break-off edge. Police said it was dangerous and people were prohibited from staying there. Thunberg had traveled to western Germany to participate in weekend demonstrations against the expanded mine and also took part in Tuesday's protest near Luetzerath. Police in nearby Aachen said a group of around 50 protesters got dangerously close to the rim of the mine and did not want to leave despite being asked to do so. All the people in that group had to be carried away from the edge of the mine and were then temporarily held to determine their identities, police said. Photos from the scene showed Thunberg was one of those whom officers took away. "One protester was able to enter the mine, RWE said, calling the move 'very reckless'," dpa said. A police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity as is customary in Germany, said he was not permitted to give out any details on Thunberg or any other individuals who participated in the protest due to privacy rules. Police and RWE started evicting protesters from Luetzerath on Jan. 11, removing roadblocks, chopping down treehouses and bulldozing buildings. Activists have cited the symbolic importance of Luetzerath for years, and thousands of people demonstrated Saturday against the razing of the village by RWE for the expansion of the Garzweiler coal mine. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with Chief Executive Officer of Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) Eric Rondolat in Davos. Eric Rondolat informed the head of state about the progress and prospects of the projects implemented in Azerbaijan, including in the territories liberated from occupation the cities of Shusha and Aghdam. President Ilham Aliyev hailed the activity of Signify in Azerbaijan, and specially noted that the lighting systems of more than 11 cities, including Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja, have already been implemented through smart projects and smart solutions. The head of state described this as one of Azerbaijan`s serious steps towards supporting green energy policy in recent years. It was noted that electricity consumption will be seriously saved as a result of these new technologies. The Chief Executive Officer of Signify pointed out that all these cities will be managed from a single center through an intelligent system, with the servers installed in Azerbaijan. He said that this will create an opportunity for Azerbaijan to save additional energy. Eric Rondolat also informed President Ilham Aliyev of the facade lighting that will be implemented in Baku, the lighting of the TV tower in Shusha, and the projects that will be implemented in the agricultural sector. He underlined that the implementation of projects in the agricultural sector has already started. This will lead to more than a two-fold increase in productivity in greenhouses. Energy consumption will be significantly saved, which is of particular importance in terms of supporting business. Then, the head of state stressed the importance of these projects, and emphasized that it is appropriate to continue the cooperation between Signify and the relevant authorities of Azerbaijan. Dawood Ibrahim an Indian mafia gangster, drug kingpin, and the most wanted terrorist has married again, this time with a Pakistani Pathan woman. He is not divorced from his first wife Zubeena Zareen. The revelation came from Dawoods nephew before the National Investigation Agency(NIA) in September last year. The NIA had registered a case against Dawood Ibrahim and his close aides in the terror funding case and had also arrested some people. The NIA was informed that Dawood Ibrahim is putting up a special team that will attack influential politicians and businessmen in the nation. In large cities, they can spread violence. Alishah Parkar, the son of Dawood Ibrahim's sister Haseena Parkar, provided a statement to the NIA as part of their investigation into this case. Who is Zubeena Zareen? Zubeena Zareen is Dawood Ibrahim's first wife she was born in 1960 in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Zubeen Zareen is also known as Mehjabeen Shaikh. She married Dawood Ibrahim around 1990's and they had two children. There are very few of her photographs in public sphere and most are grainy and old. Her daughter, Mahrukh Ibrahim, married Junaid Miandad (Javed Miandads son), and they had a child together. Mehreen, Zubeena Zareens second daughter, married Ayub (a Pakistani-American citizen) in 2011, and their third daughter, Maria Ibrahim, was born in 2012. According to reports Zubeena visited her birthplace in 2017 where she saw her father, Salim Kashmiri, for the first time. However, there is still no information accessible on her mother and brothers, and sisters. She went to a government-run institution to study. Where does Dawood Ibrahim currently live? Dawood Ibrahim currently lives in Karachi, Pakistan. In 2020 Pakistan listed three addresses in Karachi for Dawood Ibrahim in a government document. "White House, Near Saudi Mosque, Clifton" in Karachi, Pakistan; in addition to "House Nu 37 30th Street defence, Housing Authority, Karachi" and "Palatial bungalow in the hilly area of Noorabad in Karachi". Now accroding to Dawood's nephew he is living behind Abdullah Ghazi Baba Dargah in Defense Colony, Karachi, Pakistan. New Delhi: India and Oman on Wednesday held the 8th strategic dialogue in Delhi which was led by India's Deputy National Security Adviser Vikram Misri & Oman's Secretary General of the National Security Council Major General Idris Abdulrahman Al-Kindi. The last Strategic Dialogue was held in Muscat in January 2020. During the talks, both sides focused on strategic and security cooperation, defense, and counter-terror. On counter-terror, the key focus of the conversation was on expansion of terrorist propaganda, misuse of new and emerging technologies, fundraising, and disinformation, and are keen to work with each other on collective and coordinated response. Another key aspect of the conversation was on preserving maritime safety and security in the region. Oman and India are maritime neighbors, sharing the coastline with the Arabian sea. In the past few years, both countries have cooperated in ensuring maritime security in the Indian Ocean region. As part of the cooperation, the first meeting of the Joint Maritime Committee took place on 23 February 2022 virtually. Major General Idris Abdulrahman Al-Kindi also called on National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. This is the first visit by Al-Kindi to India after his appointment as the Secretary General of the NSC of Oman and was in India from 16-19 January. The 9th Strategic Dialogue between the 2 sides will take place in 2024. The visit of Oman's Secretary General of NSC is part of increased high-level engagement between the 2 sides. Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs V. Muraleedharan visited Oman in October 2022, while Oman's Commerce minister Qais bin Mohammed al Yousef & foreign minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad visited India the same year. New Delhi has extended an invitation to Oman to participate in the G20 Summit and meetings as a guest country during its ongoing presidency of the grouping. People visit Lingnan Flower Market to buy decorations for the coming Spring Festival holiday. [Photo by Zheng Erqi/chinadaily.com.cn] Lingnan Flower Market in the Liwan district of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, is bustling as people plan to decorate their homes with festive flowers to celebrate the coming Spring Festival, which falls on Sunday. People visit Lingnan Flower Market to buy decorations for the coming Spring Festival holiday. [Photo by Zheng Erqi/chinadaily.com.cn] People visit Lingnan Flower Market to buy decorations for the coming Spring Festival holiday. [Photo by Zheng Erqi/chinadaily.com.cn] People visit Lingnan Flower Market to buy decorations for the coming Spring Festival holiday. [Photo by Zheng Erqi/chinadaily.com.cn] The number of cases and hospitalizations because of COVID-19 remained relatively low in Nebraska last week and declined slightly in the nation as a whole, but health officials continue to urge boosting. Regional differences in both cases and hospitalizations continued in the U.S., with COVID cases and hospitalizations remaining elevated in parts of the East and South. Nebraska tallied 1,486 cases for the week ending Jan. 11, close to the 1,420 cases tallied the week before, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was down from a peak above 3,600 in early December. The states per-capita case count remained in the lower third among states. A new subvariant of the coronavirus that has become dominant in the East also gained slightly in Nebraska, according to preliminary data from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. XBB.1.5 made up an estimated 9% of positive samples to undergo genomic sequencing, up slightly from the week before. Nationally, XBB.1.5, which is more transmissible than other recent versions of the virus and can more effectively infect cells, now appears to dominate in the U.S. According to CDC projections, it made up 43% of positive samples to undergo genomic sequencing last week. The subvariant topped 80% of positive samples sequenced in the Northeast. Amid uncertainty about what kind of wave the new subvariant will produce, health officials have urged people to get up to date on vaccines. Specifically, that means getting the updated bivalent booster, which targets the original strains as well as more recent omicron subvariants. Early findings from a study measuring the effectiveness of the bivalent boosters indicate that the shot provides vulnerable people over 65 with significant protection against the worst outcomes. Published by the CDC in late December, the study indicated that people over age 65 who had received the updated bivalent booster were 84% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 compared with unvaccinated people. Bivalent-boosted older adults also were 73% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those who had received monovalent or original vaccines but not the new booster. This pandemic has gone on for a long time, said Dr. Nicholas Mohr, a University of Iowa professor of emergency medicine, anesthesia and epidemiology who participated in the study. Everybody wants this to be done. But we continue to have more variants, the virus continues to evolve and immunity doesnt last forever. One way that we can protect not only ourselves but also our friends and family members, especially those high-risk groups, is to be boosted, he said. And the bivalent vaccine is a really an important tool to improve outcomes in our communities. Uptake of the updated shots has been low, even among seniors. In Nebraska, only 43% of the vulnerable 65-and-over population had received the latest booster as of early January. That was above the U.S. average of 38%. Iowa ranked in the top 10 nationally, with 51% of its 65-and-over population having received the latest booster. Looking at all adults, only 19% in Nebraska, 22% in Iowa and 18% nationally are up to date on all their shots. And booster shots are almost nonexistent among children. Among those 17 and under, only roughly 5% in Nebraska, Iowa or nationally have received the latest booster. The analysis was conducted when other omicron subvariants, namely BA.5, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, were predominant. But lab studies suggest the bivalent booster still is effective against severe disease with XBB.1.5, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. The CDC recommends updated bivalent boosters for everyone 5 and older, if it has been at least two months since their last dose. Children ages 6 months to 4 years who completed the Moderna primary series also can get the booster if it has been at least two months since their last dose. There is no booster recommendation for children 6 months to 4 years who got the Pfizer primary vaccine series. In a bit of good news, both influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, continue to decline in Nebraska as well as in the country as a whole. Nebraskas influenza-like illness activity was high last week, down from the very high category, where it had been for weeks. Nebraska now has tallied more than 558,000 cases of COVID-19. The seven additional deaths reported last week bring the states total count to 4,730. Charts that track COVID-19 variants, vaccination rates and hospitalizations in Nebraska Beatrice residents living on Seventh and Eighth streets attended the City Council meeting on Monday evening asking the council not to change the one-way streets. By the end of the evening, it was decided that Eighth Street will function with two-way traffic as of May 1, however Seventh Street will remain a one-way street. Mayor Bob Morgan introduced the resolution for changing Eighth Street during the meeting, asking for Council and public input only on Eighth Street. I have been contacted by 22 people with three against and 19 for the change, he said. There were a number of other comments, he said. Councilmen Timothy Fralin, Duane Ruh, Dave Eskra, Ted Fairbanks and Rich Kerr noted they had contact with residents within the previous two weeks regarding the issue. Fairbanks said he had worked as a UPS driver for a number of years in Beatrice and said there was not a day that he worked that his truck, club car or him were not almost hit by a car. We havent had a fatal accident on these two streets yet, but lets fix the problem before a tragedy occurs, Fairbanks said. I understand that change is hard. I want to ask each of the 12 people that contacted me and the people here tonight, if you were responsible for public safety, how would you vote? Were not a town hall system and Im asking my fellow councilman to vote for public safety. Councilman Rich Kerr argued that Chief of Police John Hickman said there was not a safety problem on the streets. He noted there would be a cost in making the change. Councilman Duane Ruh said he had done research on the cost and noted it to be approximately $6,550. Janet Byars spoke during the public comment portion of the discussion asking the councilman to vote against the resolution. I have lived at the corner of Eighth and Summit for around 42 years. There would be a safety concern if the street is changed, she said. In 1963 when Eighth Street became a one-way from Monroe to Lincoln. Are there current traffic and speed studies done? I cant remember any accidents on Eighth Street due to one-way traffic. The resolution passed with six in favor and two against. Councilmen Dave Eskra and Rich Kerr voted in opposition. Mayor Bob Morgan introduced the resolution changing traffic on Seventh Street to two-way. Councilman Terry Doyle said he was contacted by 13 people who were against any change on Seventh Street. Councilmen Mike McClain and Tim Fralin echoed the same concerns. Councilman Ted Fairbanks said he was aware there was more opposition for changing this street, but believed it was a safety issue. We all just need to be more aware when were driving, he said. Kent Harlan said he has lived on 822 N. Seventh St. and 820 N. Seventh St. for 30 years. Ive lived in the same 150 people for 30 years. Ive raised my family there and have chosen to live there. Do any of you have any questions for me because Ive done my own traffic study, Harlan said. I just wanted to say thank you and appreciate the thoughtful discussion. He continued in a prepared statement regarding safety including sidewalks, drive-ways and speed. We ask that you not to change Seventh Street. Its not wanted or needed, he said. Several other residents of Seventh Street spoke to the council asking them not to change Seventh Street. Gage County Supervisor Emily Haxby also spoke at the meeting regarding parking at the Courthouse as well as the mailbox and drop box. The resolution failed with a seven vote against and one vote in favor. Ted Fairbanks was the only vote for changing the street. The public in the audience left the meeting after the vote thanking the council for leaving Seventh Street as a one-way. Although they dont call Nebraska home, these fly-by residents have been regular visitors to the central Platte Valley for centuries. The yearly spring migration of 500,000, 4-foot tall, gray-feathered birds with jaunty red caps, who arrive in March and are usually gone by mid-April, has made an impact in both the birds' numbers and in our response to them. Visitors from around the country come to watch them fly from their roost on the river in the morning and stalk the corn stalks during the day from buses and blinds, and all of that is good for the state. The most recent economic study estimates that crane-related tourism in 2009 generated $8.08 million in direct economic impact by visitors in central Nebraska. And a survey done in 2010 showed that more than 70,000 crane watchers spent an average of 1.3 days in the region (75 percent of those who came to see the cranes were planning on spending at least one night). And in the past 30 years, groups have worked to protect and maintain this river-side environment, with more than 10,000 acres of habitat set aside. The Environmental Protection Agency and State Department of Environmental Quality will continue to test for soil and air contamination within the Billings dry cleaning superfund site, representatives told residents Tuesday night. Speaking to roughly 30 people at Broadwater Elementary School, EPA Remedial Project Manager Roger Hoogerheide said they plan to conduct further tests and install monitoring equipment before proceeding with a cleanup plan likely slated for 2024. Once officials identify the extent of the contamination along the plume, they'll put together a plan to remediate the spill, which can begin the cleanup upon approval. Testing results conducted by the EPA and DEQ last spring and summer showed pockets of high chemical-concentration from roughly 8th Street West on Central Avenue up diagonally to 1st Street West on Broadwater Avenue. The solvents come from a chemical plume originating from old dry-cleaning businesses in central and downtown Billings that span across approximately 855 acres from Central Avenue and South Plainview Street on the west to North 19th Street and 1st Avenue North on the east. DEQ and EPA officials spent last spring and summer performing tests on the air and soil in and around the properties above the plume. Indoor air from 50 structures were sampled along with the air underneath another 140 structures, 115 soil samples in the area, 95 samples from utility corridors and groundwater from 120 monitoring wells placed earlier last year. Approximately 2,800 structures sit within the contaminated area and include 2,000 residential homes, four schools, multiple daycares and multi-story buildings. The plan this year is to screen up to 200 structures located in the site using the EPAs Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer. The analyzer uses a 300-foot tube to use throughout an impacted home to locate areas where vapor may be entering homes and along with unrelated areas with higher amounts of solvents found in common items like dry-cleaned clothes, automotive fluids, gun-cleaning solutions and types of glue. There are also plans to install vapor mitigation systems at nine of the most impacted blocks identified in the site. Hoogerheide said the systems act similarly to radon mitigation systems and that additional ones may be installed in structures going forward as they are needed and identified. Once the testing is complete around Fall 2023, the agencies will prepare a feasibility study to address the indoor contamination exposure pathway. For further groundwater testing, DEQ will drill at least 30 additional wells to further delineate the plume and to identify where the ground water is traveling in May and October. EPA will also work with an environmental contractor to begin an investigation and evaluate cleanup alternatives. Following the finalized study, a proposed plan detailing their cleanup approach will be made available to the public for review and comment. Implementation of the plan is expected to begin sometime in 2024. After first being declared as a Superfund site and designated as polluted to the point of needing long-term cleanup by the state in 1992, the Billings plume received federal Superfund status in 2021 with the primary health concern identified as vapor intrusion or contaminated air from groundwater and soil. Increased testing and evaluation by both the DEQ and the EPA found elevated levels of tetrachloroethylene, also known as PCE, in homes and businesses onsite. The solvent, popular stain remover with dry cleaners throughout the 1980s, is linked to liver and kidney health issues and to some cancers, according to the EPA. Employees of businesses near the site complained in the past of feeling sick because of PCE exposure, and the state has advised resident located in the plume to seal basement cracks and improve their homes airflow. The EPA filed a $10 million lawsuit in 2014 against Billings Laundry Co. and its subsidiary Big Sky Linen Supply located within the plume. The two companies settled for $825,000, along with $705,000 related to insurance settlements. The Billings plume is the second federally recognized Superfund site in Yellowstone County. A 580-acre site in Lockwood was added to the list in 2000 after benzene and chlorinated solvents used to clean truck trailers seeped into the groundwater. Cleanup of the soil is still ongoing. Over the past few years, Levi Black Eagle, a political science student at Montana State University Billings, has developed an impressive resume, currently serving as the secretary of the Crow Tribe of Indians and the Crow Tribe representative on the Montana Advisory Council on Indian Education. Raised in Lodge Grass where he attended school, Black Eagle then began to work within the Crow Agency Public School system. His current job was the reason he chose to pursue a degree in political science at MSUB. I found that politics really spoke to me on a primordial level," he said. "I thoroughly enjoy all aspects of politics from the local to the federal level, and if I can completely understand how and why the machine works, then it will help me to better navigate these waters that I find myself in. MSUB was an easy choice for Levi as it is close to home. After graduating, he hopes to earn a masters degree in public service administration while also continuing his current career path. I would like to be involved in politics in some capacity if not as an elected official, then maybe as a consultant or a constituent, just as long as I get to play my part to help facilitate change for the greater good, he said. As the Crow Tribe representative on the MACIE and as secretary of the Crow Tribe, he remains actively involved in his community. MACIE is an organization made up of representatives from the tribes in Montana along with Indian education organizations, and rural and urban native school districts. Prior to representing the Crow Tribe on the MACIE board, Black Eagle worked as an educator at the Crow Agency Public School. Native Americans are the largest minority group in Montana, and at MACIE, we help to ensure that their best interests are being kept in mind regarding education, he said. As for his current role as secretary of the Crow Tribe of Indians, it is a title that he is honored to carry and does so with the highest regard for the office. It is not a job that I take lightly; it comes with great responsibility, he said. Black Eagle ran for office in 2020 and was inaugurated in December 2020. In his role, he oversees the council and district records, facilitates the tribal elections, maintains and updates the voter registration, along with other duties. Black Eagle said that he has an amazing staff that makes the job less stressful. He also attributes much of his success to his amazing wife who helps keep him grounded and cares for their three boys. Black Eagle is an enrolled member of the Crow Tribe, a Greasy Mouth Clan member and a child of the Whistling Water Clan. He and his wife, Brocade, have been married for 15 years. They currently reside in Crow Agency with their three sons, Danger, Rivers, and Crimson, along with their dog, Ewok, and cat, Cheeto. In their free time, Black Eagle and his family enjoy mountain ultra-running. Youth Dynamics, the largest provider of child and family mental health services in Montana, has announced a new partnership with Frontier Psychiatry, the state's leading telehealth practice for psychiatric services. The partnership will make telepsychiatry services available to all children and families served by Youth Dynamics, with Dr. Eric Arzubi, CEO of Frontier Psychiatry, taking on the role of Medical Director for Youth Dynamics. The partnership aims to expand the scope of mental health services for youth throughout the state. Frontier Psychiatry will utilize its team of board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrists and specialty-trained psychiatric nurse practitioners to provide comprehensive diagnostic assessments, support treatment planning for children and families, and administer pharmacotherapy when appropriate. Both Youth Dynamics and Frontier Psychiatry are committed to increasing access to high-quality mental health care for all communities in Montana, particularly those that are underserved and hard to reach. Both organizations are also committed to providing trauma-informed and culturally competent care. "The mental health crisis facing our state's youth is of the utmost importance, and we are proud to partner with Frontier Psychiatry to address it head-on," said Dennis Sulser, Ed.D., CEO of Youth Dynamics. "Together, we will work to ensure that all Montana children and families have access to the care they need." Arzubi said he appreciates being able to collaborate with a health care leader like Sulser. The 2023 Yellowstone County Community Needs Assessment reads like the one from 2013, highlighting poor access to psychiatric care, Arzubi said. Those of us in a position of leadership cannot let the 2033 edition be more of the same. I wish more healthcare organizations were willing to collaborate and put patient care above all else." Most healthcare organizations in Montana are experiencing a lot of physician turnover. This trend certainly hasn't spared psychiatrists in our community, Arzubi added. A robust telehealth strategy allows us to tap a nationwide pool of talent and give our patients more access to high quality, specialty care. This approach may not work for all medical specialties, but we're lucky that it works well for psychiatry." For more information, please visit: Youth Dynamics: www.youthdynamics.org; Frontier Psychiatry: www.frontier.care. Roman Catholicism is in a period of transition. Yes, I know. That sentence has been true of that religious tradition since its founding. But it seems to be in a time of change more noticeable and perhaps more important for its future than in most other periods of transition, including after the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Having just buried a pope emeritus, for instance, the church is beginning to see on the horizon a time when Pope Francis will vacate the position, either by resigning, as did Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, or by dying. A new book that I haven't yet had a chance to read deals with this era of change in Catholicism in what appears to be a scholarly, careful and understandable way. Which is why I'm giving you a link to this thoughtful review of that book in the current issue of The Atlantic. The book is Catholicism: A Global History From the French Revolution to Pope Francis, by John T. McGreevy, who is provost of -- and teaches history at -- the University of Notre Dame. , who reviewed the book for The Atlantic, writes that a couple of recent episodes "point up an incongruous recent development: the Catholic Churchs assertive presence in public life even as Catholic faith and practice recede in families, schools and neighborhoods in America and across Europe." Elie writes that on the one hand, "signs that the Church has lost vitality are abundant. Europe has seen parish closures, shrinking numbers of priests, dwindling attendance at weekly Mass and steady departures from the faith. In the U.S., more than a third of people raised Catholic 'no longer identify as such.' The clerical sexual-abuse scandals have ravaged the Churchs credibility, cost it billions of dollars and put some of its leaders under criminal investigation." And yet. And yet. Elie adds this: "At the same time, a rich variety of evidence suggests that Catholicism isnt on the wane; its just changing. In recent decades, the pope first John Paul II, then Benedict and now Francis has become a ubiquitous global figure, made so through jet travel, mass media and a cult of personality. The view of 'human dignity' framed in the 1930s by the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain and enshrined in a United Nations declaration in 1948 has become a benchmark for international law and human-rights efforts. "Africa, once seen as 'pagan' missionary territory, is now home to a sixth of the worlds Catholics 230 million people and 'high birth rates and high rates of adult conversion,' McGreevy writes, 'mean that African influence within the global church will continue to grow.' In the U.S., the recent arch-Catholic remaking of the high court is likely to shape public policy for decades." One of the points to take away from this is to remember that any oversimplification of almost any trend story is sure to be misleading. Is religion declining in the U.S.? By many measures, yes. But there is no straight-line story here, whether we're talking about Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam or any other tradition. The, uh, devil is in the details. As are the angels. My wife recently bought McGreevy's book (so I've held it in my hands and flipped through it briefly) to give to a good friend. But even without having read much of it, I know that the author's approach to the story of Catholicism he tells -- an approach of seeing the details, the conflicting trends, the complicated nature of the story -- is one that we should keep in mind as we are tempted to pronounce sweeping conclusions about religion (or anything else) that can't bear up under scrutiny. * * * ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS ABOUT RELIGION IN AMERICA Here's another bit of good news about religion in America. Even though religious affiliation has been declining for decades and even though the Covid pandemic has hurt such affiliation further, this Atlantic magazine piece says some things are looking up on the religious front: "(R)ather than asking how many people went to church last Sunday morning, we should ask, 'Where are Americans finding meaning in their lives? How are they marking the passing of sacred time? Where are they building pockets of vibrant communities? And what are they doing to answer the prophetic call, however it is that they hear it?' There have never been more ways to answer these questions, even if fewer and fewer people are stepping into a sanctuary." It's a good read. Have a look. North Dakota oil production in November fell by about 2.1% compared to October, while natural gas production decreased by 4%, the state Department of Mineral Resources reported Tuesday. November oil production was 1.097 million barrels per day, which is a "moderate decline more than likely the result of the November winter weather that we experienced," which included an early blizzard, according to state Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms. He added that he was "happy to report" oil production in November remained almost 10% above the state revenue forecast. The state's oil figures lag two months as officials collect and analyze data from energy companies. New Mexico's production saw a 3.4% decrease in November, totaling 1.568 million barrels per day. New Mexico is the nations second-biggest oil producer, behind Texas, and North Dakota is third. This was the first decline in several months for New Mexico, Helms said, adding that it could be a seasonal observation since the fall and winter of 2021 reflected similar activity. "We'll know when they plateau or begin a slow decline that New Mexico has matured like the Bakken. And so, that's kind of why we keep an eye on it," Helms said. November's average oil price for North Dakota crude was $82.07 per barrel, compared with $83.65 in October. There was strong activity in the drilling permit area which will be a positive indicator for next year, Helms said, adding, "It's going to take strong drilling and completion activity to maintain our million barrels a day or 1.1 million barrels a day." November natural gas production in North Dakota totaled 3.02 billion cubic feet per day, down from 3.14 billion cubic feet per day the previous month. Bakken wells as they age tend to produce more natural gas in relation to the volume of oil. Helms said that a decline in the natural gas-oil ratio has occurred three months in a row. "That is something none of us really expected," he said. "I don't think it changes the long-term trend, but we have seen a migration of drilling activity out of the core into the Tier Two and Tier Three areas... I think it's probably approaching half of our drilling rigs now that are outside the core. We're seeing at least a temporary flattening of that gas-oil ratio curve. So that is an interesting paradigm that we'll keep an eye on." Helms said that the Midwest has a natural gas oversupply. "Storage is pretty full. It's within about 1 to 1.4% of the five-year average. So there's lots of natural gas in storage and we haven't had really severely bitter cold winter weather for extended periods of time. What's interesting is that Europe is probably paying 40 times this amount... for natural liquefied gas to come in," he said. "And so, we've got really a lot of incentive to try to find a way to get North Dakota natural gas out of the Midwest to move toward the Gulf Coast or the West Coast." Producers had a 95% gas capture rate in November, exceeding the state's 91% target. The rest was burned off at well sites in a wasteful process known as flaring, due to a lack of access to pipelines and processing plants. A look ahead December's oil production numbers could be significantly reduced due to the frigid weather and storms that played out, Helms said. "We saw the December blizzards reduce production down to what we think was almost half -- in the 600,000 barrels-a-day range," he said. Oil production has taken a while to increase since December and is still not back into the 1.1 million barrels-a-day range "based on what we're seeing on volumes moving through the pipelines," according to Helms. "So December is going to be a tough, tough month in terms of production," he said. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has met with Chief Executive Officer of Kromatix SA Rafic Hanbali in Davos. During the meeting, the sides touched upon the activities and products of "Kromatix SA", as well as the energy production with the application of new technologies in Azerbaijan. It was noted that the company produces technologies that allow the use of glasses of building facades as solar panels through special technologies and coatings. Taking into account the importance of sustainable energy supply in Azerbaijan, particularly the fact that the territories liberated from occupation have been announced as green energy zone, the sides exchanged views on the use of those technologies in buildings and constructions in the country. Rafic Hanbali informed the head of state about the plans of "Kromatix SA" to establish an enterprise in Azerbaijan, especially in the Alat Free Economic Zone. As a pilot project, the importance of the project planned to be implemented by "Kromatix SA" regarding the cladding of a school building in Jabrayil district was noted. It was emphasized that it is planned to apply this in other schools in the future. Saying that he supports the planned projects of the company in Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev highlighted the opportunities for economic development in the country, as well as the current conditions for access to the domestic market and other markets in the region. During the meeting, it was noted that the foundation of cooperation was laid between Kromatix SA and the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture of Azerbaijan. President Ilham Aliyev invited Rafic Hanbali to visit Azerbaijan, including the territories liberated from occupation. The invitation was accepted with gratitude. An Indiana woman has pleaded not guilty to charges that she used an email fraud scheme to steal tens of thousands of dollars from a Mandan man. Bountouraby Kaba, 30, is scheduled for a March 7 trial, according to court documents. Shes charged with computer fraud and two counts of felony theft. She faces a possible 10-year prison sentence on each of the theft charges. Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kaba allegedly used an altered email address to get the man to wire almost $58,000 to her account. The man was in the process of purchasing property in northwest Mandan and believed the emails, complete with wiring instructions, were from the title company handling his transaction. The alteration to the email address changed a suffix of ".com" to ".cam," according to police. Kaba somehow gained access to the title companys email document format. Its unclear how Kaba might have known the man was working on the land deal or was about to transfer money. The title company confirmed to police that its email account had not been hacked, authorities said. Theres a bill in the Legislature to prohibit the North Dakota Game and Fish Department from banning the baiting of deer in any hunting units. House Bill 1151, introduced by Rep. Paul Thomas, R-Velva, would stop the policy or practice prohibiting the baiting of deer for lawful hunting. Baiting is the tactic of placing food in an area to attract deer. Thomas argues that Game and Fish has no sound proof that baiting increases the spread of disease in deer. He also thinks if young hunters dont have early success and must make repeated trips to a deer stand, they will lose interest in hunting. The Tribune editorial board believes it would be foolish to take an important tool away from Game and Fish, especially at a time when chronic wasting disease is on the verge of being a serious problem in the state. Game and Fish has only so many tools at its disposal to help manage wildlife. The departments efforts to prevent the spread of disease among wild animals is for the benefit of the public, especially hunters and those who fish. The department bans baiting in certain areas to prevent deer from concentrating more closely than normal. When they gather they can spread disease, similar to large groups of people spreading the flu or COVID-19. For the 2023 hunting season, Game and Fish plans baiting restrictions in hunting units within 25 miles of any CWD detections in North Dakota, a neighboring state or a Canadian province. The North Dakota Wildlife Federation and the state chapter of The Wildlife Society asked Game and Fish and the Legislature last year to ban baiting in the entire state. Instead, the department compromised with a policy it says balances disease management with the desire of hunters who enjoy hunting over bait. The Tribune believes the public needs to trust the judgment of Game and Fish. The department has studied these issues for years and also has information gathered by other states and federal departments. This isnt a question of guessing by Game and Fish. Young hunters might be disappointed if they dont get their deer on the first trip. Getting the deer can be a thrill, but its only part of the hunting experience. Hunting involves getting together with family and friends, possibly staying in a cabin, enjoying the outdoors and the challenges weather can pose. Its more than going out and quickly shooting a deer and going home. Young hunters need to realize hunting requires patience, that immediate success isnt guaranteed. Thats there more to the experience than the kill. The Legislature shouldnt take away Game and Fishs ability to protect wildlife and the public. It should reject HB 1151. The end of the Castro regime has not meant an end to severe restrictions on religious freedom in Cuba. New reports detail how bad things are for believers. Six decades after its celebrated communist revolution, Cuba remains a totem for Americas left. Yet the country is imploding into irrelevance. Fidel Castro is dead and Raul Castro is retired, but their successors rule as if 1989 had never occurred. Cuba is economically backward, its residents are poor, the young are desperate, and people are fleeing. Instead of offering a hopeful future, communist apparatchiks enforce the policies of a brutal past. In short, Cuba is one of the worlds least free political systems. As Freedom House observes : Cubas one-party communist state outlaws political pluralism, bans independent media, suppresses dissent, and severely restricts basic civil liberties. The government continues to dominate the economy despite recent reforms that permit some private-sector activity. The regimes undemocratic character has not changed despite a generational transition in political leadership between 2018 and 2021 that included the introduction of a new constitution. Among the liberties denied people is to worship freely. A new analysis from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom details how the regime employs standard tactics of repression, such as surveillance, harassment of religious leaders and laypeople, forced exile, fines, and ill treatment of religious prisoners of conscience, to control believers. Faith in something beyond the material world threatens communist regimes, which treat the state and party as the ultimate authority. Although a majority of the population identifies as Catholic, the Cuban Communist Party seeks to strictly control religious organizations, most notably through the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA) and Ministry of Justice (MOJ). These departments act arbitrarily and without accountability. Per the U.S. Department of State : Religious groups reported the ORA and MOJ continued to deny official registration to certain groups, including to several Apostolic churches, or did not respond to long-pending applications, such as those for the Jehovahs Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Moreover, Havana selectively recognized groups and leaders based on their favorable view of the government. Lack of legal authorization gives authorities another means to restrict peoples religious practices. In practice, the regime wages war against religious believers. According to the Commission on International Religious Freedom: The Cuban government continued to use surveillance, harassment, and ad hoc interpretations of legislation to suppress religious freedom and persecute religious freedom advocates. During 2021, the Cuban governments crackdown on widespread protests severely impacted religious communities. Hundreds of people were detained, including a number of religious leaders. Several remain in prison: These leaders are from unregistered organizations and were previously targeted by the Cuban government before their participation in the protests. When a second demonstration was planned, the regime threatened some religious leaders and placed others under house arrest to block the event. Those still in custody include: Elizabeth Cintra Garcia, Loreto Hernandez Garcia, Donaida Perez Paseiro, Lisdiani Rodriguez Isaac, Lisdani Rodriguez Isaac, Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, Denis Rosabal, Jorge Naranjo, Ibrahim Figueredo Fonseca, Yeremi Blanco Ramirez, and Yarian Sierra Madrigal. The government refuses to make any accommodation for their religious practices. As the State Department reports: Authorities continued to deny prisoners, including political prisoners, pastoral visits and the ability to meet with other prisoners for worship, prayer, and study. Many prisoners also said authorities repeatedly confiscated Bibles, crucifixes, rosary beads, and other religious items, sometimes as punishment and other times for no apparent reason. Although Christians bear the brunt of government restrictions, Santeria practitioners and Rastafarians also have been jailed, and Muslims and other religious groups face discrimination. For instance, the regime blocked leading Muslims from traveling for health and religious reasons. Repression and intimidation are constant. Security agents visit religious services, encouraging self-censorship. House church leaders are threatened with loss of employment and denial of education for their children. COVID rules were used to harass congregations. Importation of religious materials is sometimes difficult. Moreover, according to State: The government used social media to harass and defame religious leaders, including Facebook posts and online editorials publicly targeting religious leaders or groups. Throughout 2022, Cubans were interrogated on returning from or when planning to go to the U.S. In one case, security personnel told a religious activist that they knew of her travel plans and warned her to stop associating with people deemed to be working to subvert the Cuban government or she would not be allowed to enter the country upon her return. Regime agents later placed a large container in her front yard to obscure their frequent visits. A number of religious leaders have been driven abroad. Earlier this year, Pastor Carlos Sebastian Hernandez Armas, secretary-general of the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, fled with his sons after criticizing government repression. Pastor Alain Toledano, long targeted by Cuban security forces, was told to leave the country within 30 days or face imprisonment. Father David Pantaleon, from the Dominican Republic and head of the islands Jesuits, was expelled because of his criticism of the regime. Last January, Berta Soler, head of Ladies in White, and her husband, Angel Moya, announced a campaign seeking the release of all political prisoners from [last years] protests. Subsequently, authorities again subjected Soler and Moya to repeated arbitrary detentions. These detentions often included interrogations at police stations and fines. Reverend Yordanys Diaz Arteaga, who heads the Christian Reformed Church of Cuba, was detained and then put under house arrest in February. That appears to have been retaliation for his churchs leaving the Cuban Council of Churches. Reported Christian Solidarity Worldwide: On 4 January 2021, Maria de los Angeles Perez, who liaises with the CCC on behalf of the Office of Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, which oversees all religious activity on the island, contacted Reverend Diaz Arteaga to express concern about his denominations decision to leave the CCC. Perez openly threatened the pastor, telling him that this decision would have consequences and repercussions for him in his leadership. Two months later, evangelical pastors Mario Jorge Travieso and Velmis Adriana Medina Marino planned a prayer event called Breaking the Chains to focus on the wives and mothers of political prisoners. However, the regime arbitrarily detained the pastors, interrogated them for six hours, and threatened them with imprisonment if they did not cancel the event. The state also threatened to jail Maridilegnis Carballo, whose husband, Reverend Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, was already in custody. Meanwhile, the Cuban authorities continue to enhance their tools of repression. For example, parents already have been threatened with the loss of their children if they continue their religious activism. A highly problematic Family Code was approved in September, allowing the removal of children from their homes if their parents fail to fulfill a list of criteria detailed in Article 138, such as a love of the homeland, respect for its symbols, and respect for the authorities. Cuban authorities often use the alleged crime of disrespect against the regime as a context to detain and imprison citizens. Broader political repression also undermines religious liberty, as the lack of press freedom allows harassment and punishment of independent journalists who cover religious issues. For example, Yoe Suarez faced arrests, confiscation of his property, fines, and two and a half years of travel restrictions. He and his family finally emigrated to America. Cuba has ended up like other communist states: barren both materially and spiritually. Those living on the island see only the decrepit past, trapped by a dilapidated regime unable to support its people or to give the young a better future. No wonder the authorities fear allowing the Cuban people to look to God for hope and answers. After a typhoon tore up Alaska's western coast last fall, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency called for residentsmostly Alaska Native peoplesto file paperwork in order to receive support for property damage repair and other aid. How nice that FEMA thought to provide the instructions for the forms in Alaska Native languages like Yup'ik or Inupiaq but turns out, the phraseswhen translated back to Englishincluded the likes of: "Tomorrow he will go hunting very early, and will (bring) nothing" and "Your husband is a polar bear, skinny." From the Associated Press: One of the region's largest physician groups is opening its fourth regional hub later this year, extending its reach into Niagara County. Buffalo Medical Group said Wednesday it plans to open its new health care facility inside the former First Niagara Financial Group administrative headquarters in the Town of Pendleton. The medical practice will take up 19,000 square feet at 6950 S. Transit Road in the fall of 2023, with space for primary care providers and rotating specialists, as well as laboratory blood draws and plain-film X-ray imaging services. Sign up for the Buffalo Next free newsletter The News' Buffalo Next team covers the changing Buffalo Niagara economy. Get the news in your inbox 5 days a week. As a physician owned and led group, our goal is to deliver a range of care, close to home, in the communities we serve, said Dr. John Notaro, medical director of Buffalo Medical Group. This expansion will allow us to bring a new level of health care through our whole-person approach to care to an up-and-coming community. The expansion marks the second extension of health services to what officials described as an underserved area, after Catholic Health agreed to build a new mini-hospital on South Transit Road that will replace the aging and financially struggling Eastern Niagara Hospital in Lockport. The larger hospital, which is being operated by Catholic Health under a management agreement, will close after the new facility opens, guaranteeing services will continue in the area. The 76,093-square-foot former bank headquarters building was built in 1997 on 7.6 acres on the west side of Transit. It has 440 parking spaces. It was occupied by First Niagara, which maintained its corporate headquarters there until it moved that to Larkinville in 2009. When KeyCorp acquired First Niagara in 2016, the Cleveland-based bank kept the building as an administrative and back-office center. But Key closed the facility last year, sold the building to Benderson Development Co., and consolidated its operations to Benderson's Amherst Commerce Park on Ridge Lea Road. Buffalo Medical Group is working to recruit new providers for the Niagara County site, as well as for its existing and growing operations on Essjay Road in Williamsville, High Street in Buffalo and North Buffalo Road in Orchard Park. It also secured commitments from current doctors to work out of the Pendleton facility. This location provides us with the opportunity to not only addresses the communitys basic health care needs, but also make accessible a variety of specialized care with a rotation of our multi-specialty providers through the office, said CEO Daniel Scully. This is an ideal location with easy access from Lockport and East Amherst and also affords us the opportunity to expand and grow at this site in the future. Buffalo Medical Group handles 850,000 patient visits annually, and has nearly 200 doctors and more than 800 nurses, technologists and other professionals. It has satellite locations in Lockport and Niagara Falls, as well as in Tonawanda and Hamburg. For more than four decades, union groundskeepers dug graves, mowed lawns, pulled weeds and maintained mausoleums at Forest Lawn, the pre-eminent cemetery in Buffalo. Ken Erler of Hamburg was among them for 19 years. He and his fellow groundskeepers earned a decent wage and took pride in their work. But beginning in 2020 they found their union targeted, they say, by top cemetery officials. Erler and the others say Forest Lawn President Joe Dispenza and then-Superintendent of Grounds Craig Wolcott successfully conspired to get rid of the unionized groundskeepers, members of Teamsters Local 449, through a decertification vote. Forest Lawn officials didn't have to look far for their replacements. Wolcott Lawn and Cemetery Services, a Wyoming County company founded by Wolcott in 1990, changed its name to Western New York Cemetery Services when his son Levi and his son's wife, Victoria Wolcott, took over as owners in March 2018, the same month Wolcott began working at Forest Lawn. Forest Lawn paid the company slightly more than $1 million for its work at the cemetery over 2020 and 2021, according to tax forms filed by the cemetery. Forest Lawn advanced the decertification by hiring leadmen groundskeepers with supervisory responsibilities who were part of the bargaining unit and eligible to vote on union matters but could be counted on by management to support its wish for a nonunion workforce, said Eric Williams, a mechanic and groundskeeper who served as the local's shop steward. "The first leadman was Craig's nephew," Williams said. "Then it was friends of Craig's family." One of the new hires, Adam Ivancic, jumped at the chance to work at Forest Lawn after eight years as a groundskeeper at St. Joseph Cemetery in Niagara Falls, calling it his "dream job." "The money was good, I got a take-home vehicle, and in my line of work the chance to go from the minors to the big leagues," Ivancic told The Buffalo News. But he soon sensed another reason why Forest Lawn hired him. "I felt Joe Dispenza and Craig Wolcott brought me in to be a union buster," Ivancic said. "I would never have gone there if I knew what they wanted me for. I didn't want to be a part of that." Ivancic left after a year on the job. By then the union was near its end, two months from a decertification vote. The 8-to-4 vote to remove the union came on Sept. 14, 2021, with the National Labor Relations Board certifying the outcome that November. The four men on the losing end of the vote lost their jobs at the end of that year, including Erler, forced to retire at 64, nine months earlier than he planned. "We all felt we were being forced out, and it turns out we were," Erler said. "In the end, there were only four of us left, and we all got pink slips." Craig Wolcott, now a vice president at Forest Lawn, received $178,849 in compensation in 2021. In addition to what Western New York Cemetery Services was paid, other Wolcott family members have been hired by the nonprofit cemetery, too. B. Wolcott Roofing, owned by Craig's son Beau Wolcott, got $184,652 in work from the cemetery in 2021. Craig Wolcott's son Tyye has worked as a groundskeeper since May 2022. Together, Wolcott and businesses connected to Wolcott family members received over $1.03 million from Forest Lawn in 2021. The union members remain angry over losing their jobs. "What they did felt lousy," Erler said. "I couldn't believe they got away with it." Bid to be more efficient Trustees for the Forest Lawn Group and Dispenza's attorney contend there was nothing improper with the vote to remove the groundskeepers union. "In September 2021, a Forest Lawn union member filed a union decertification petition with the National Labor Relations Board, without any involvement of Forest Lawn," according to a statement from the cemetery to The News. The National Labor Relations Board supervised and tallied the ballots of secret-ballot election for union members, according to the statement. "Joe Dispenza is the proud son of union parents," said attorney Terrence Connors, who represents Dispenza. "The process of decertification of the union at Forest Lawn was begun by 13 union members. The rest of the process was controlled by the attorneys for Forest Lawn and approved by the National Labor Relations Board." Dispenza's radio ads have made him a familiar voice for Forest Lawn since he became president 18 years ago of the bucolic, 269-acre cemetery that opened in 1850, the final resting place for 165,000 people. He has overseen Forest Lawn and a crematory in Buffalo along with four other cemeteries in Williamsville, Hamburg and West Seneca. Dispenza declined to be interviewed, as he faces his own job-related problems. Forest Lawn's trustees placed Dispenza, who earned $308,844 in 2021, on paid administrative leave on June 21, 2022. A statement from the trustees said Dispenza is on leave "pending the results of an independent investigation of internal personnel-related complaints." Wolcott has served as interim president since the trustees put Dispenza on leave. The trustees, in a statement to The News, said Forest Lawn hired Western New York Cemetery Services as part of a strategy to pursue mergers with other cemeteries. In early 2021, the Forest Lawn Group, in a bid to be more efficient and to save on costs, issued a request for proposals for cemetery services that included mowing and trimming, pouring of memorial foundations and the digging of graves. Western New York Cemetery Services was the only one to submit a proposal for all three services, and was the lowest bidder for the mowing and trimming services. The company received $396,845 in compensation in 2020. That amount rose to $666,596 an increase of $269,751 in 2021. "Forest Lawn has realized significant savings from its use of Western New York Cemetery Services, and is pleased with the quality of the services performed to date," the statement said. "Every month, Forest Lawn submits a report of the services performed by Western New York Cemetery Services to the New York State Department of State, Division of Cemeteries, for its review." Wolcott began at Forest Lawn as a superintendent of mergers in March 2018, became superintendent of grounds in April 2019 and rose to vice president of operations and mergers in August 2021. The New York State Division of Cemeteries raised concerns in 2021 about the Wolcott family-owned company repairing broken monuments at three of Forest Lawn Group's cemeteries. The state agency eventually allowed the work to be done, at a cost of $174,698, because only two companies responded with bids, and the bid from Western New York Cemetery Services was the lowest and most thorough. Before the agency permitted the work, Dispenza wrote to the agency in an attempt to alleviate any concerns, clarifying that Wolcott "is not a board member or officer of the Forest Lawn Group." Six months later, Wolcott was named a vice president. The New York State Cemetery Board has initiated an audit of Forest Lawn Group as a result of Wolcott being named interim president, said board spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla. Wolcott declined to be interviewed. A Forest Lawn spokesman provided written statements on behalf of him and the board. Confrontation over pay The catalyst for the union's downfall, the former employees contend, happened in 2020 when Dispenza decided to take away premium Sunday pay. The cemetery, according to Williams, claimed the union contract gave Dispenza the authority to do so in face of the challenges posed by Covid-19. Williams, the local's shop steward, met with Dispenza on April 29 of that year to voice the union's disagreement. The meeting did not go well. "He called me every name in the book and threatened my job," Williams said. The union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the Forest Lawn president of having "threatened and coerced an employee" carrying out union responsibilities. The NLRB substantiated the claim and required Forest Lawn to post a "Notice to Employees" signed by Dispenza. The posting stated union workers had the right to "form, join or assist a union," and management would not "interfere with, restrain, or coerce you in the exercise" of those rights or "threaten you with discharge if you engage in activities on behalf of the union." "Joe was furious about the complaint," said Meghann Surrett, Dispenza's assistant and the board's corporate secretary before leaving in February 2022. "Joe had it out for the union. He felt the older crew were lazy and taking advantage that they were in a union, so he pushed to have other people vote the union out. "Once the decision was made," she said, "everything happened very fast." "There was no doubt in our mind that that was the catalyst for what came later," said George Harrigan, principal officer for Local 449. Surrett, who as corporate secretary attended board meetings, said the trustees were aware of the effort to remove the union and replace them with the company connected to Wolcott's family. The Hodgson Russ law firm also played a role in the union's demise, she said. Joseph Bracchio, a labor relations attorney at Hodgson Russ, was "very involved with the union issue," she said. The law firm has done legal work for the cemetery company "for decades on a variety of matters, including unique and complex issues under the New York Cemetery Law," the trustees said in a statement. Hodgson Russ also has a strong presence on the board. Chairman James Wadsworth, who was paid $55,000 in 2021, is a retired Hodgson Russ partner and Hugh M. Russ III, who was paid $9,000 in 2021, is a partner with the law firm. The company earned $218,807 in legal services from Forest Lawn in 2020 and $171,459 in 2021, with the two trustees recusing themselves before board decisions that involved the law firm. 'They stacked the deck' Soon after he started his job as a leadman at Forest Lawn, it became clear to him that his new bosses had it in for the union groundskeepers, Ivancic said. "There were things going on down there I didn't want to be a part of," he said. Ivancic said it was understood that the leadmen were to treat the groundskeepers poorly as a way to prod them to quit their jobs. Instead, he befriended them. "How was I going to put them out of a job and still consider myself a decent person?" he said. "I couldn't do that." Some of the veteran groundskeepers said they suddenly found themselves whacking weeds for days on end and even weeks. A couple of the men did quit, according to the former groundskeepers. Ivancic said Wolcott was critical of the groundskeepers, recounting Wolcott as often saying, "Be patient soon enough those guys will be out of here." But some of the new, younger hires did not impress Ivancic. "Some of them were kids fresh out of high school, and none had cemetery experience," he said, calling them unqualified. Ivancic quit Forest Lawn, leaving a job that paid twice his previous salary and guaranteed six hours of overtime every week. On Sept. 9, five days before the decertification vote, the union reached an agreement with Forest Lawn requiring the company to pay the Sunday premium rate and make it retroactive for workers who had it taken away. Harrigan said the union's victory over the Sunday premium rate the same week as the vote exposed the decertification vote as a sham election, one that succeeded only because the cemetery hired people who would vote to decertify the union. Local 449 didn't appeal the decertification vote, since the new leadmen were eligible to join the union and vote for its decertification. "Why would our union members petition to decertify from the union, five days after the union secured a pre-arbitration settlement requiring Forest Lawn to pay premium rates for Sunday work at twice the hourly rate?" Harrigan said. "The answer is quite obvious. They wanted to bust the union and put their own family and friends in place, which would be beneficial only to them and cast the long-term union members out in the cold." But a question still nags Erler. "I understand they stacked the deck and union busted and the whole nine yards, but I don't know why they did that to begin with," he said. "I was never late for work and took on assignments because people didn't want to do the job I had." ALBANY Gov. Kathy Hochul's office is in the process of retaining a high-powered litigator ahead of a possible legal battle over her nominee to be New York's top judge, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The move may escalate an already-tense situation between Hochul, who has continued to push Hector LaSalles candidacy despite fierce opposition from her political left, and state Senate Democrats charged with confirming or rejecting him. LaSalle, a state appellate court judge, was selected by Hochul in December to be the chief judge of the state Court of Appeals. Hochul's office is in the process of retaining Caitlin Halligan, a partner at the New York City-based law firm Selendy Gay Elsberg. Halligan served as solicitor general of New York from 2001 to 2007 and is an accomplished appellate attorney. Julie Wood, a Hochul spokeswoman, said a final contract had not yet been signed. In a statement, she suggested that no final decision had been made about whether litigation would be filed by Hochul's office if LaSalle's candidacy fails to be voted upon by the full State Senate. "We have of course been consulting with various experts on the process, but that does not mean we are set on any particular course of action," Wood said. On Wednesday morning in Albany, the state Senate Judiciary, which is controlled by majority Democrats, is hearing testimony from LaSalle, a crucial step in a fight already more adversarial than any chief judge confirmation process in memory. LaSalle's nomination has sparked significant opposition among the Senate Democratic conference, with 14 members already coming out against his confirmation. If his nomination is voted down in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is a significant possibility, Hochul's office may sue the Senate in an attempt to force a vote by the full chamber. Halligan's biography on her law firm's website describes her as "one of the nations leading appellate attorneys," having argued six cases and served as the counsel of record in more than 45 matters before the U.S. Supreme Court, while also handling many cases in the federal appellate courts, the New York Court of Appeals and other state appellate courts. On Tuesday, the former counsel to Gov. George Pataki, James McGuire, sent a lengthy letter to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Brad Hoylman-Sigal, laying out a case that killing LaSalles nomination in the Judiciary Committee would be illegal. The letter was obtained by The Buffalo News. Last week, Hochul argued along similar lines: That the constitution of the State of New York is clear: the New York State Senate has to advise and consent the governor on her appointment. But Hoylman-Sigal, the Judiciary Committee chair, believes that if LaSalle is voted down in that committee, his candidacy would be dead. Hoylman-Sigal and a number of other Senate Democrats believe the body has the power to kill a chief judge nomination in the Judiciary Committee. Events are moving quickly. As the hearing kicked of Wednesday, Hoylman-Sigal said that the Judiciary Committee was expected to take a vote at the hearing's end on whether to advance LaSalle's nomination. On Wednesday morning, the government-reform group Common Cause NY, which is part of a liberal coalition that opposes LaSalle's nomination, slammed the Hochul administration for moving to hire a litigator. "Common Cause/NY is horrified to learn that Governor Hochul is contemplating hiring a litigator at taxpayer expense to violate the constitutionally protected separation of powers," said the group's executive director, Susan Lerner, in a statement. "Make no mistake: doing so would be a total abuse of power, and a brutal attack on a democratically elected institution. It would throw the decision about who sits on the courts to the courts in an unprecedented conflict of interest, as well as setting the disturbing precedent that a Governor can use the courts to bludgeon the Legislature every time she doesn't get her way." A recommendation for a once-in-a-generation chance to rethink the Scajaquada Expressway eagerly awaited by those who decry the road's impact on Delaware Park and surrounding neighborhoods, but met with concern by those fearing longer commutes was unveiled Tuesday. And it suggests big changes. The Scajaquada Expressway would become a realigned, at-grade two-lane parkway. Such a design would offer benefits for Scajaquada Creek and Delaware Park, open the door for SUNY Buffalo State University to become a waterfront campus, remove the tangle of elevated on- and off-ramps at Niagara Street, and return a parkway along Humboldt Parkway from Agassiz Circle to East Delavan Avenue. These are just some of the recommended changes suggested for the 3.6-mile-long road that were announced Tuesday by the Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council, a transportation planning organization. The Scajaquada Expressway, or Route 198, was built in the 1960s. Among the recommendations: The 198 would no longer directly connect to the Kensington Expressway, or Route 33, from the east or to the Niagara Thruway from the west. Such a change would require alternate ways to connect, including new ramps at Kensington and Fillmore avenues. All ramps would be removed along the parkway to free up land for park or creek restoration, with the ramp at Nottingham Terrace becoming a bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists. The recommendations include adding at least one pedestrian crossing from Iroquois Drive, by SUNY Buffalo State, to the north side of the creek, realigning the parkway away from Hoyt Lake to Lincoln Parkway, and removing vehicles from the stone arch bridge at Delaware Park, along with more pedestrian crossings into the park. Agassiz Circle would become a circle again. 'Real options': Public reacts positively to Scajaquada Expressway options Around 200 people attended a public meeting on the future of the Scajaquada Expressway on Wednesday, displaying little of the skepticism or distrust that has so often reared its head in past attempts to arrive at a solution. The plan also calls for restoring Black Rock Harbor and extending Letchworth Street in Black Rock to Tonawanda Street. The new approach to the Scajaquada with a focus on how the roadway interacts with a geographic area dubbed "Region Central" and what the residents who live there want to see occur reflects a sea change in transportation projects that have in the past prioritized the movement of automobiles above all else. The process will next go to the state Department of Transportation for the design stage and completion of a federally required environmental review. "After in-depth technical analysis and outreach, it was abundantly clear that the expressway was outdated," said Hal Morse, executive director of the transportation council, which arrived at its recommendation after about 18 months of analysis and community outreach. Studies found the Scajaquada Expressway, whose speed limit was lowered in recent years to 30 mph out of safety concerns, is used more as a local access road than for regional travel, with alternative routes possible to address transportation needs, Morse said. Among its findings: Since 2016, traffic has been lighter than at any time in the last two decades. Only 8% of westbound vehicles entering from the east travel the full length of the expressway. Just 19% of eastbound travelers entering from the west drive the full length of the expressway. And only 18% of trips are work-related. The expressway is busier in the middle of the day than during morning rush hour. "Old transportation planning was all about infrastructure and the roads," Morse said. "Today, we start with the community. This project provides extensive benefits we never envisioned before." Therese Deutchlander, president of the Elmwood Village Association, said learning new travel patterns could be a hurdle at first, but she thought people would adapt. "I feel that Buffalonians are resourceful and will figure out how to get from Point A to Point B, though initially they may be annoyed at having to figure out different routes," Deutchlander said. State Sen. Sean Ryan said he believes the long-contested project has finally turned the corner. "For over 20 years, the state Department of Transportation have been unsuccessful to get the community on board to a preferred option," Ryan said. "We're there now." Morse and others from the regional transportation organization presented the recommendations, along with a recap of the process and what might happen next, at a public meeting Tuesday at Canisius College Science Hall attended by 150 people plus those watching online. The state Department of Transportation, after failing to reach a community consensus in an on-again, off-again process that lasted nearly two decades, turned to the regional transportation agency to develop a plan after its last attempt failed in 2018. The more holistic approach found creating a pedestrian and bike-friendly parkway with greater access points could reconnect neighborhoods long isolated by the expressway, as well as provide safer travel. The preferred option also tries to anticipate "next generation mobility" like e-bikes and scooters, increases in transit service and mobility hubs. "It is 21st-century planning that integrates transportation infrastructure into the community, and not the other way around," said Jill Jedlicka, executive director of Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper. Realigning the parkway south would also benefit Scajaquada Creek. Pillars from the elevated highway would be removed and the lower section would reconnect to the flood plain. There would be more space to bring back other sections of the creek, including where it passes by Hoyt Lake. "It gives us the potential to restore the creek back to what it was 100 years ago," Jedlicka said. The Scajaquada Corridor Coalition, which includes Waterkeeper and several community organizations, issued statements "unified in their support" for the proposed plans. The group also praised what they considered to be an inclusive, transparent planning process offering extensive public and stakeholder input. "The intensive 18-month planning effort undertaken by the Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council's Region Central initiative has been remarkable, and the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy is exceedingly grateful for the work that has gone into it," said Stephanie Crockatt, the conservancy's executive director. The regional transportation group looked at 20 years of planning in the corridor and surrounding neighborhoods, met with neighborhood groups and held pop-up meetings in an attempt to get diverse views, including those not necessarily represented by the organizations most active in the process, Morse said. The three goals that emerged were built around transportation and access, enhanced equity and inclusive development, replenished parks, parkways, waterways and places, and effective local and regional mobility. Leaving the expressway as it is or removing some or all of it were considered along with the parkway concept. Though the parkway scored highest, some features from the other scenarios were also incorporated into the at-grade approach. Some of the goals were met with changes to the roadway's alignment. Unlike before, the project recommendations this time extended east of Agassiz Circle, including a redesign of the intersection at Main Street. The parkway proposed for Humboldt Parkway, though not necessarily as it was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted before its removal for the highway, could accommodate whatever the state DOT ultimately decides to do with the Kensington Expressway redesign now in progress. Plans for both projects could be melded together at a later date, Morse said. The recommendations also include upgrades to other roads and streets besides the 198, including the use of "real-time" signalization. "Most people weren't around before the expressway and assume the way they know is the only way or the best way to go," Morse said. A full report is expected to be released in mid-February with a cost estimate, though a closer estimate will occur once there is more design detail in the project's next phase, Morse said. There is currently $110 million set aside for the project. Morse said the 18-month process that's now completed should give the DOT confidence to move forward. "This had extensive public outreach and stakeholder involvement, and it seems like they can proceed with some assurance that this is what people will be satisfied with," he said. In New York, Democratic politicians often claim their policies are more progressive than anywhere else. In turn, their Republican rivals criticize them as too expensive. But does New York spend almost as much public money than California, a state with about twice as many residents? New York State Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay said Californias budget is about 20% larger than New Yorks, despite the larger population. He made the remark on the Capitol Connection, a radio show and podcast from WAMC. Capitol Connection host Alan Chartock asked Barclay where the state budget should be cut. You can say right through the whole budget, $220 billion, said Barclay, a Republican who represents Oswego County. How come New York you have a state like California, spends $260 billion, they have twice the population of New York so why is New York such an outlier on our spending? Population The most straightforward part of Barclays statement is that California has twice the population of New York. Census data easily confirms this. Population estimates from July 1, 2021, show California is home to 39.2 million people, compared with 19.8 million people in New York, nearly twice as much. Comparisons between each states spending require more explanation. State budgets Barclays right about the size of New Yorks budget. All-funds spending in the 2022-23 budget, passed last April, is $220.5 billion, according to the Office of the New York State Comptroller. Californias budget calls for $308 billion in spending. We asked experts whether the two state spending plans can be compared. They warned about the lack of uniformity between state budgets. What revenues or expenditures are included, and what is kept in other budgets or falls to cities to fund, for example, vary from state to state. The experts looked at data from several sources and found Californias spending is closer to twice as much as New Yorks. William Glasgall, a budget expert from the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes sound budgeting at all levels of government, called Barclays comparison apples to oranges. Glasgall, the nonprofit groups senior director of public finance, looked at data from the National Organization of State Budget Officers, state budget reports and census data. In all cases, when you compare like-funds across states, New York budget spending is about half of Californias, which roughly mirrors the difference in population, Glasgall said. He looked at several data points from fiscal year 2023 spending in each state. In New York, general fund spending is $96.1 billion, while its $234.4 billion in California. All-funds spending in New York is $222.2 billion, according to the state Division of Budget, which is slightly higher than the comptrollers figure. It is $451.5 billion in California. Census data of state finances also shows California spends just less than twice as much as New York. The most recent data from the U.S. Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, from 2020, shows New Yorks total expenditures reached $227.4 billion, compared with $423.2 billion in California. Another analysis also found Barclays comparison between New York and California missed important context. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, total state-funded expenditures excluding bonded capital projects were $121 billion in New York and $309 billion in California, said E.J. McMahon, a veteran observer of New York State finances and founding senior fellow of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. Barclays spokesperson sent an Associated Press article to back up Barclays claim, which reported that California had approved a $262.6 billion operating budget. The article was published on June 28, 2021. "State budgets are always fluid, and it's not uncommon to see numbers that vary, said Michael Fraser, director of communications for Barclay. The point being made is that New York's level of spending is unacceptably high and aligns far too closely with California's given the huge discrepancy in population." Our ruling Barclay claimed California, with nearly twice the population of New York, spends $260 billion to New Yorks $220 billion. The Golden State does have nearly twice the population of New Yorks. New Yorks latest budget came in at $220 billion, but Californias current budget is $308 billion. Even if the budget numbers completely lined up with Barclays claim, those numbers dont tell the whole story of state spending, because states account for different categories of spending in different ways. Other analyses of state spending, from a national organization of budget officials and from the U.S. Census, show that Californias spending is roughly twice as much as New York, not inconsistent with their populations. We rate this claim Mostly False. Russia will create new commands near Europe as it expands its military to 1.5 million people amid deepening tensions with the U.S. and its allies over the Kremlins invasion of Ukraine. New structures in the regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia on the border with Finland will be created under the program, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told commanders Tuesday, saying the major changes will start this year and continue through 2026. In addition, he said, self-sufficient units will be set up on the Ukrainian territories that Russia has illegally annexed. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the military expansion came in response to the proxy war he claimed the U.S. and its allies are waging against Russia in Ukraine, Interfax reported. Kyiv and its allies are fighting to fend off Russias invasion of its neighbor. Russian President Vladimir Putin last month approved Shoigus plan to boost the size of his military from the current target level of 1.15 million but the Kremlin hasnt said how fast that will take place. Shoigu said the expansion will be spread across all branches of Russias military and will be coordinated with the delivery of new weapons to equip them, the Defense Ministry said in a statement, according to Interfax. Russia will create three new motorized-infantry divisions and two airborne divisions, combining a number of brigades, Shoigu said in comments posted on the ministrys Telegram channel. He also called for special attention to the recruitment of contract soldiers to fill out the ranks of the expanded military. Since ordering the invasion nearly a year ago, Putin has laid plans to reverse years of reductions in the ranks of Russias military. The Kremlin hasnt said how it will recruit all the new troops, but has proposed raising the draft age, which may increase the number of men eligible for conscription. Russia has repeatedly said it plans to boost deployments in the northwest in response to a pending expansion of NATO, where Finland and Sweden are in the process of joining, with their applications ratified by 28 of 30 alliance members. The Nordic countries entry into the military bloc would double its land border with Russia. Stanton Public Policy Center/Purple Sash Revolution Launches National Campaign to Protect Pro-life Medical Clinics and Centers from Being Harassed and Attacked NEWS PROVIDED BY Stanton Public Policy Center/Purple Sash Revolution Jan. 18, 2023 WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /Christian Newswire/ -- The campaign is called #NotFakeToMe and Stanton will discuss their plans at a news conference outside of the office of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday, January 19, at 11:30 a.m. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's office is located in 205 Cannon House Office Building. As part of the #NotFakeToMe Campaign, women and their children who were helped and supported by Stanton Healthcare during an unexpected pregnancy will go into the office of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to share their personal stories and invite her to visit Stanton's flagship medical clinic in Meridian, Idaho. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, pro-life centers have been subjected to violent physical attacks and threatening messages. Some members of Congress have condemned pregnancy medical clinics and resource centers, referred to them as 'fake clinics' and have called for their regulation or closure. #NotFakeToMe is organized by Stanton Public Policy Center/Purple Sash Revolution which is a women's advocacy and educational group that works on issues of human rights and justice which empower and inspire women. It is affiliated with Stanton Healthcare which has life-affirming women's health clinics in America and internationally. Brandi Swindell, CEO and Founder of Stanton Public Policy Center/Purple Sash Revolution, comments: "Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, pro-life centers have been subjected to violent physical attacks and some members of Congress have condemned pregnancy medical clinics and resource centers, called them 'fake clinics' and are calling for their regulation or closure. "Stanton is launching our #NotFakeToMe campaign to ensure our centers, and thousands around the country, are protected against violent physical attacks and also from intimidation and harassment from members of Congress. "It is important for Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to hear the personal stories of our mothers and children, so she can fully understand our commitment to women and the incredible services and care we provide. "Stanton is inviting Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to tour our fully accredited medical clinic so she can see firsthand how we serve women with unexpected pregnancies by providing professional medical care, practical and emotional support, women's wellness care and an outreach to refugee and marginalized communities. "Stanton's hope is that we can find areas of unity to help empower more women in our communities when they face an unexpected pregnancy." For more information or interviews call: Rev. Patrick Mahoney at 540.538.4741 SOURCE Stanton Public Policy Center/Purple Sash Revolution CONTACT: Rev. Patrick Mahoney, 540-538-4741 Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met Aliza Bin Noun, political director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Azernews reports. "Thank you very much, H.E. Foreign Minister Bayramov, for your kind hospitality. Our delegation appreciates the fruitful meeting with you which is another expression of the friendly and strategic relations between our countries," Aliza Bin Noun tweeted. During the meeting on January 17, the sides discussed various aspects of bilateral and multilateral relations, as well as the prospects for cooperation between the two countries in economic, security, education, high technology, and other spheres. Noting his satisfaction with the level of development of diplomatic relations, Bayramov stressed that the history of the coexistence of the two nations is calculated in centuries. The official pointed out that the activities of the Azerbaijani tourism bureau, the trade mission, and the newly-established Azerbaijani embassy in Israel will greatly contribute to the further development of ties. Moreover, the Israeli side was briefed about the aggressive policy of Armenia towards Azerbaijan, the almost 30-year-long Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands, the initiatives taken by Azerbaijan to normalize relations with Armenia, as well as the peace process after the 44-day Second Karabakh War. In turn, Noun expressed satisfaction with her visit to Azerbaijan and noted that the meeting of Israeli ambassadors in Eurasia in Baku showcases the importance Israel attaches to relations with Azerbaijan. She underlined that the Jewish community living in Azerbaijan plays the role of a bridge connecting the two countries. the Israeli official also noted that Jerusalem is interested in stepping up efforts to further develop the existing cooperation between the two states in bilateral and multilateral formats. Besides, the parties eyed the importance of dialogue and high-level visits. Azerbaijan and Israel have been expanding bilateral cooperation over years. Cooperation between the two countries is based not only on economic partnership but also on traditional historical and cultural roots, as well as mutual respect and trust. During the 44-day Second Karabakh War, Israel was among the first countries to express support for Azerbaijan's just position and territorial integrity. In addition, Israeli companies are involved in the restoration and reconstruction process in Azerbaijan's liberated territories. In 2021, the two countries' trade turnover totaled $928.4 million. Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@captimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less. Senate Republicans approved two referendums Tuesday that are likely to appear before voters on the April 4 ballot: one, an advisory question asking whether adults should have to actively seek work to continue receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, and the other an amendment to the state Constitution changing the basis for how judges set cash bail in the state. Voting along party lines, the GOP-controlled Senate also rejected a proposal by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and legislative Democrats to substitute the welfare question with one asking voters if the states near-complete abortion ban should be repealed. The benefits and bail measures next go to the Republican-led Assembly, which is scheduled to vote on the measures Thursday. If approved by both houses, the proposals would appear on the April 4 ballot. Results of advisory referendums, like the work-requirement one, are nonbinding. Results of the constitutional measure would be binding. The GOP proposal about welfare benefits, which passed with all Republicans and Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, voting in favor, would ask voters: Shall able-bodied child-less adults be required to look for work in order to receive taxpayer-funded welfare benefits? The question would appear on the ballot alongside a high-stakes race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will decide the ideological balance of the states high court. The court currently has a 4-3 conservative majority. The winner is expected to play a decisive role in several upcoming cases, including the legality of Wisconsins near-complete 1849 abortion ban. Work search State law already requires those receiving unemployment benefits to conduct at least four work-search actions each week in order to receive benefits. Wisconsin Works, the states primary Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, also requires participants to work or take part in activities to help you get ready to work. But Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, on Tuesday singled out the lack of a work or job-search requirement for Medicaid. Former President Donald Trumps administration in 2018 required Medicaid recipients to spend 80 hours a month working, in job training, engaging in community service or participating in a work program. That requirement was revoked by President Joe Bidens administration in Wisconsin in 2021. Their resolution, simply put, attacks low-income people in the state of Wisconsin, said Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard, D-Madison. Theyre trying to gin up their voters. Evers last year vetoed several GOP proposals that would have reduced benefit programs in Wisconsin proposals that Republicans said would have helped put more Wisconsinites back into the workforce as employers statewide deal with labor shortages. Abortion The amendment offered by Evers and legislative Democrats Tuesday sought to replace the language in the GOP-authored welfare resolution with an unrelated question: Shall Wisconsins 1849 abortion law be repealed and the constitutional rights guaranteed under Roe v. Wade be restored? Evers argued his proposal to add the abortion question to the April ballot was not intended to boost Democratic voter turnout, but rather to further confirm that the majority of voters support abortion rights. The Marquette Law Schools November poll found that 84% of respondents including 73% of Republicans think abortion should be legal for victims of rape or incest. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they oppose the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to overturn Roe. Evers proposal marks the latest effort by Democrats to challenge the states more than 170-year-old law, which hasnt been enforced since the Roe v. Wade precedent established abortion as a constitutional right nationally. Last fall, the governor asked Republicans to approve a process whereby voters could propose and repeal state laws, like the abortion ban. But Republicans quickly shot that down, as they did his latest proposal. Cash bail The Senate also approved a constitutional amendment requiring judges, when setting bail, to consider the criminal histories of people charged with violent crimes and whether they present a risk to public safety. The measure, which passed 23-9, heads to the Assembly on Thursday. Two Democrats Pfaff and Bob Wirch, of Somers joined all Republicans in voting in favor of the measure. Under the Constitution, judges may only use bail to ensure defendants appear in court, not to keep defendants from engaging in criminal activity by keeping them locked up. Judges may, however, add conditions to a persons bail that seek to address public safety concerns. The Constitution also states defendants shall be eligible for release under reasonable conditions aimed at protecting community members from serious bodily harm. The proposal changes that standard to serious harm. The measure, SJR 2, passed both chambers with bipartisan support last year. State law requires the Legislature to approve proposed constitutional amendments in two consecutive sessions before Wisconsinites can vote on them. The governor cannot veto a proposed constitutional amendment. Calling Wisconsins current bail system broken, proposal author Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said judges need the ability to look at the whole picture when considering bail for people accused of violent crimes. Nothing else can happen until we pass and ratify this amendment, Wanggaard said. This is the first step, and this has to be the first step. Opposing views Criminal defense attorneys and other opponents of the amendment have argued the changes will result in more people presumed to be innocent held behind bars longer because they cant make bail while awaiting trial. This is wasteful, Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee. Its likely unconstitutional. Opponents have argued that if the proposal results in keeping people in jail for long periods before trial it could violate the U.S. Constitutions due process clause, which states nobody may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Supporters said thats not realistic since the proposal was modeled on other states bail systems. Opponents have also said the proposed amendment could violate the excessive bail prohibition under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Wanggaard said the measure would not change the excessive bail prohibition, noting that judges would have to put on the record why they believe bail amounts are appropriate. Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, criticized the proposed switch from serious bodily harm to serious harm, saying there was no clear definition of the latter. The amendment wouldnt have much practical effect, according to Michael OHear, a professor of criminal law at Marquette Law School. Thats because violent crime already constitutes a small percentage of criminal cases, OHear said. Additionally, factors that make a defendant a public safety risk tend to be the same kinds of factors judges consider when determining whether a defendant is a flight risk, he said. But even the small number of cases affected by the bail changes could worsen jail crowding, he said, because some defendants would be unable to pay significantly higher bail amounts under the new system. Keeping people in jail longer before trial could also raise constitutional issues, he said. Cybersecurity is a must in todays workforce environment. Security leaders and IT professionals continue to roll out innovative solutions to keep enterprises safe from cyberattacks, but those innovations only go so far when more than two-thirds of organizations say there is a talent shortage, which creates more risks, according to Fortinet. Because of the talent shortage and skills gap, organizations need to rethink their cybersecurity strategy. Technology can only do so much to keep enterprises safe from increasing cyber threats. It needs a bit of assistance from a human firewall. Cybersecurity and digital skills training provider ThriveDX understands what enterprises must do and that is reduce the human factor risk. To do that, ThriveDX is in a partnership with Exclusive Networks to deliver human-factor security solutions to Exclusive Networks ecosystem of more than 25,000 partners and to address the cybersecurity talent shortage, skills gap and lack of diversity and inclusion in the industry. ThriveDX provides a 360-degree approach to human-factor security with employee education, training and simulations that goes beyond traditional security awareness programs. Taking this approach offers relevant cyber training for every position in the organization, including application security for developers and engineers, beyond awareness training for non-technical roles, specialized executive training as well as cybersecurity boot camps and talent solutions. ThriveDX is the only company providing a 360-degree approach to solving the human risk factor, going beyond awareness with effective solutions to address the lack of skills, said Roy Zur, CEO of ThriveDX. Zur is launching the full suite of human-factor security solutions to Exclusive Networks' European ecosystem, specifically in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and additional countries. Exclusive Networks is a cybersecurity specialist for digital infrastructure. The company helps to drive the transition to a totally trusted digital future for people and organizations through a cybersecurity approach that gives partners more opportunity and more customer relevance. Zur says working with Exclusive Networks allows ThriveDX to create a human firewall within organizations in various European countries. Edited by Alex Passett A shortage of needed meter radio units is resulting in a number of City of Columbus water customers having estimated bills. Public Works Director Chuck Sliva gave an update on the problem during the Columbus City Councils regular meeting held Jan. 16. Almost three years ago, Sliva said, the city started changing out its equipment for a new meter radio system. The radio units transmit readings to the billing software. At that time, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Global semiconductor shortage is the main reason where we're at with this; demand has outpaced the supplies, Sliva said. Theres been an increased demand due to projects canceled from COVID being put back on the books and entities receiving COVID dollars needing materials for projects, he said. Manufacturing plants had also been shut down. Sliva said the vendor considered different options for manufacturing but it didnt turn out feasible. That company has added a new production line. So they feel they can fulfill the demands and the needs of this coming year's orders, Sliva said. Things are starting to look up. According to a memo, it is estimated that statewide, the back order log is as high as 15,000 units. It put us behind the curve on repairs, replacements and upgrades of the radio unit, Sliva said. Where we're at today, that puts us with having to estimate a certain amount of meters. We're getting maybe 20 to 30, if we're lucky, radios a month out of our orders. For those whose meter is not reading correctly, their water usage is being estimated. In an estimate, it will go back and take your last three year readings for that certain month that we're reading and average that reading, Sliva said. You could be spot on, you could be a little bit high, you could be low but eventually when your radio gets replaced that meter has a true reading locked into it. Water customers can find out if their water usage is estimated by looking at the meter information, located on the left side of their bill. If the read type is an A, that means the meter is reading and transmitting correctly. If the read type is an E, that signals water usage is estimated due to an issue in the meter. Most often, Sliva said, the problem lies in the meters battery going bad and the city being unable to get the materials to replace it. Once the unit is replaced, it can access what the persons actual water usage had been. Those whose water usage was estimated too high could see a lower bill once the meter is reading correctly while those whose usage was estimated too low could see a higher bill. Sliva said a notice of the problem was attached to the backside of the last water billings. He added they are working on email notifications for those who opt to have their billings emailed. Roughly 1,100 to 1,200 accounts are estimated, he said, and city staff have been pulling meters from places that no longer use them. Sliva added the meters from city-owned billings have been pulled as well since staff can simply walk into those places to get a direct reading. For new construction, Sliva added, they chose which buildings will receive the new equipment. Buildings that arent easily accessible receive them while with commercial facilities, staff can walk in and get a reading once a month. City Administrator Tara Vasicek said the new meter radio units had been a large capital project and were planned to be replaced at the same time in the same fiscal year. Moving forward, Vasicek said, replacing units will be staggered so its not all done at the same time. In other business, Mayor Jim Bulkley gave his State of the City address in which he talked about the citys progress. Bulkley pointed to the nearing completion of the Columbus Community Building, renovations to the Charlie Louis Fire Station, continuation of the city-wide trail system, expansion of a fiber optic network, the new lighting on the 33rd Avenue viaduct, the reopening of Quail Run and improvements to the citys parks. He also mentioned struggles in Columbus, including housing and child care. Bulkley said the city needs to continue its partnerships with other agencies and state funding has allowed the city to help with new facilities that are addressing the child care need. Gov. (Jim) Pillen reminded us in his inaugural speech that there is no place like Nebraska. And I take that one step further and tell you, there is no place better in Nebraska than Columbus, Bulkley said. Bulkleys full State of the City address will be published as his monthly column in the Jan. 28 edition of The Columbus Telegram. More Columbus City Council coverage will be featured in the Telegram at a later date. I had the opportunity this week to appoint Nebraskas next U.S. Senator, former Gov. Pete Ricketts. Only five times in our states history has a governor had this privilege. The process was not one that I took lightly. More than 110 applications were received, and nine candidates interviewed all individuals who are accomplished and respected by Nebraskans across our state. I appointed Senator-designate Ricketts because he is a hard-working, positive leader who advocates for the Christian conservative values of Nebraskans. At the federal level, he will fight for the things Nebraskans value most reduced spending, opportunities for our children, less government, agricultural growth and keeping our nation safe. Additionally, I wanted someone who could hit the ground running and win the seat in 2024 and again, in 2026. Senator-designate Ricketts has a track record of support from Nebraskans that will enable him to quickly fit into his new role, while also running for reelection. He has personally promised me that he will commit to at least 10 years. That was important in my decision as I believe seniority in the Senate means our state is better represented. I look forward to working with Senator-designate Ricketts and bettering the lives of Nebraskans, day by day. Coincheck Owner Is Interested in FTX Japan as Bidding Deadline Nears Source: piter2121/Adobe The Japanese securities giant Monex Group the owner of the Coincheck crypto exchange has suggested that it may move to buy FTX Japan. The status of the Japanese arm of FTX has been up in the air since its parent company FTX filed for bankruptcy last year. Strict Japanese laws governing the management of assets may have ensured that the Japanese platform has not been directly exposed to the FTX-related fallout. However, FTXs bankruptcy proceedings saw wallets on FTX Japan frozen last year. FTX Japan has previously announced that it is working on a solution that will allow customers to withdraw crypto and fiat next month via the Liquid exchange. But Monex indicated that it could make a move for FTX Japan. Bloomberg Japan quoted Oki Matsumoto, Monexs CEO, as stating that it would be better if the Japanese crypto exchange sector were an oligopoly, rather than a flood of exchanges as is currently the case. Coincheck 14-day trading volumes. (Source: CoinGecko) The Monex chief refused to comment on whether his firm would enter an official bid for FTX Japan, but stated that he was naturally interested in FTX Japan in general terms. He further noted that it was important for Monex affiliates to become one of a select few options in Japan, but declined to comment further on a possible bid. FTX Japan Under the Hammer Will Coincheck Owner Make a Bid? A bankruptcy court in the United States last week granted FTX the right to sell off its assets to pay off its creditors, paving the way for an outright FTX Japan sale. The court ruled that potential buyers must submit non-binding preliminary bids for FTX Japan by February 1 and that concrete bids for the platform would need to be lodged by mid-March. An M&A move from a domestic player is highly likely. The Japanese crypto exchange scene is populated almost exclusively by tech startups and larger securities firms, such as Monex and its rival SBI. Both have made bullish M&A moves in the past, with SBI snapping up the former Yahoo Japan-owned Taotao crypto trading platform in 2020. Monex, meanwhile, has prior form in this regard. It bought the exchange Coincheck exchange in 2018, after the latter was the subject of a crippling hack worth some $500 million. The company also has US-based crypto interests, and has expressed a wish to expand into new markets. A teachers aide and assistant manager for a high school track team pleaded guilty to charges of child pornography possession and furnishing alcohol to minors, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney Generals Office. Acting Attorney General Michelle Henry on Wednesday announced the guilty plea from Peyton Harris of Mifflintown. Henry said Harris was employed as a teachers aide at Newport High School and Juniata High School, and he also served as Juniatas assistant track team manager during the 2021-22 school year. Henry said Harris hosted a party at his home where he gave alcohol to minors, and during the party, he took photographs and video of minors engaged in sexual activity. Parents and students trusted Mr. Harris to be a positive influence and empower the young people in their community, Henry said. He violated that trust when he exploited minors and put them at risk. Todays guilty plea is a reminder that this office will continue to work to protect young people and hold accountable those who hurt them. HARRISBURG The speaker of the Pennsylvania House said Tuesday that the first meeting of a bipartisan work group he assembled got off to a good start and that hes hopeful they will help bridge the chambers partisan divide. Speaker Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, held the first meeting with the group of three Democratic and three Republican state representatives shortly before a new governor was sworn in at noon. Rozzi has said little in public since he was chosen Jan. 3 to serve as speaker. As he walked from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiros inaugural event to his Capitol offices, he said the work group is developing proposed rules for the chamber and considering how to make progress on a measure Rozzi has long sought to allow some victims of child sexual abuse to file otherwise outdated lawsuits. Since Rozzi became speaker two weeks ago, the House has not adopted rules, announced committee membership or held any votes. I think we just want to show that Democrats and Republicans can work together and not only find a pathway forward for the statute of limitations, but what can we do together? What other legislation can we pass that we can come to a compromise on? Rozzi said. He said the working group is going to see where it goes. I think theyre willing to sit down and talk about how we move forward right now. Rozzi, who has vowed to serve as an independent speaker, on Thursday announced six lawmakers he chose to serve as what hes calling the Speakers Workgroup to Move Pennsylvania Forward. Any rules they develop will have to be approved by a majority in the House to take effect. Republican leaders and a few other GOP members joined with all Democrats to elect Rozzi speaker after a close November election and three Democratic vacancies resulted in a temporary 101-99 Republican margin. Democrats had been in the minority for 12 years. Rozzi, who has spoken of his own abuse at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest, has long advocated for a two-year window during which child sexual abuse survivors can sue. A constitutional amendment to create the two-year window needs to pass both legislative chambers any time over the next two years to go before voters for final approval in referendum form. Democrats are hopeful they will reach a 102-100 majority once three House special elections are held in Democratic-leaning seats in the Pittsburgh area on Feb. 7, along with a Senate special election Jan. 31 in which an incumbent Republican House member is running. JEFFERSON CITY After years of Republican resistance, Missouri is set to finally launch a statewide prescription drug monitoring program. According to a contract inked earlier this month, the state will pay a medical technology company $1.4 million to operate the program, which is designed to curb opioid addiction. Kentucky-based Bamboo Health, which was already overseeing a county-level program operated by St. Louis County, won the contract, which was put out for bids last year following legislative approval of the plan. Bamboo Health will seamlessly transition the St. Louis County system to the Missouri statewide system without the need for a complicated data migration project, Bamboo said in a statement to Gov. Mike Parsons administration. The program is supposed to curtail so-called doctor-shopping in order to obtain multiple prescriptions for painkillers. Sen. Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, championed the measure for a decade in response to her own family members who have struggled with opioid addiction, which continues to plague the state. The concept, however, was largely blocked by former Sen. Rob Schaaf, a Republican from northwest Missouri who expressed ongoing concerns about patient privacy when companies collect medical information. When efforts to establish Missouris statewide monitoring program stalled, St. Louis County established one in 2017 that 75 local jurisdictions agreed to participate in, covering 85% of the state. Health officials said opioid prescriptions decreased dramatically once the county established the monitoring program. In 2016, Missouri averaged 80.4 opioid prescriptions per 100 people; in 2019, it was down to 58.3 prescriptions, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet, the overall drug overdose death rate in Missouri has steadily increased since 2016. The City of St. Louis Medical Examiners office confirmed nearly 900 accidental fatal overdoses over a two-year period between 2020 and 2022. St. Louis County has recorded about 700 overdose deaths during the same period. Missouri had an average annual rank of 16th among states from 2010 through 2019, as the country descended into an opioid epidemic, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of CDC data compiled by Kaiser Family Foundation. Gov. Mike Parson signed the law into effect in June 2021. Under the plan, pharmacists who dispense controlled substances will be required to enter prescriptions into the database, which would then be made accessible to doctors. In making its bid offer to the state, Bamboo officials said a similar program in Louisiana has seen a massive increase in usage since the company took over. In 2019, for example, it recorded 800,000 searches by doctors. In January 2022, that number increased to more than 2.7 million searches. In Kansas, where the program has operated for about seven years, opioid prescriptions decreased 21% from 2018 to 2022. Rates of prescriptions from multiple doctors decreased by 86% from 10.9 per 100,000 in 2018 to 1.5 per 100,000 in 2022. By Azernews Sabina Mammadli First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff of the Azerbaijan Army Col-Gen Karim Valiyev, Commander of the Land Forces Lt-Gen Anvar Afandiyev, and other military officers inspected commando and military units on the border with Armenia, Azernews reports. The officials inspected the admission process of military personnel, their participation in an initial basic training course, and comprehensive provision in the unit. Valiyev instructed officers on the military-patriotic upbringing of young soldiers, strict compliance with the requirements of legislation and military regulations, as well as paying special attention to the organization and conduct of intensive combat training. Karim Valiyev and other high-ranking officers watched the intensive mountain drills of the military personnel. During the training held in the daylight and at nighttime, tactical and fire drills in mountainous conditions, the ability to cross mountain paths, passes, and high grounds, as well as issues of interoperability with other units, were examined. Furthermore, special attention was paid to the improvement of the military personnels skills in overcoming natural obstacles in mountainous areas, the effective use of standard weapons, including drones, as well as the ability to conduct the battle in any weather conditions at any time of day. Karim Valiyev instructed the servicemen to focus on methods and tactics for conducting the battle during the practice drills. He also guided relevant officials on improving the level of servicemens professional training, as well as increasing the intensity and quality of the military exercises and training. Police have identified the victim after a vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian crossing Route 29 last Friday in Albemarle County just north of Charlottesville. Harry Steven Allen, 53, of Charlottesville died at the scene Friday evening after attempting to cross the highway where it intersects with Rio Road, Albemarle County police reported on Wednesday. Allen was crossing the street in a group of three, police said. They were not in the crosswalk, county police spokeswoman Abbey Stumpf told The Daily Progress. Allen was the only pedestrian to die. A second pedestrian was struck and sustained injuries. County police said they were being treated at the University of Virginia Medical Center. A third pedestrian was not struck. County police did not disclose the names of the two traveling with Allen. The driver of the vehicle is not facing charges at this time, according to police. The motorist remained at the scene with Allen and is cooperating with the police department while an investigation is ongoing. Allens death occurred less than 24 hours after a cyclist in the city of Charlottesville was struck and killed by another motorist around 11 p.m. Thursday night while traveling down Ivy Road near Alderman Road. Police said the unnamed victim in that collision was wearing dark clothes and no helmet while riding a bicycle without illumination in the rain. No charges have been announced in that case either. City police spokesman Kyle Ervin has not returned multiple requests for comment from The Daily Progress. The two incidents have raised concerns over pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure in the area. Everyone should able to bike, walk, and move safely, regardless of time of day, weather, or their appearance, reads a statement from Livable Cville, a local group which advocates for better urban planning and infrastructure. Virginia law requires pedestrians cross, wherever possible, only at intersections or marked crosswalks. The state also requires that every bicycle, or its rider, shall be equipped with a taillight on the rear emitting a red light plainly visible in clear weather from a distance of at least 500 feet to the rear when in use between sunset and sunrise and operating on any highway with a speed limit of 35 mph or greater. A Senate subcommittee has defeated an initiative supported by Gov. Glenn Youngkin calling for Virginia colleges to report the salaries of employees working toward diversity, equity and inclusion. The committee voted down Senate Bill 1197, which called for public colleges to publish the number of DEI officers they employ and their wages. Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania, who sponsored the bill, said the combined salaries could pay for more than 1,000 full scholarships for students. "The bottom line is, there are some things not being disclosed," Reeves said. According to a group called the Virginia Association of Scholars, DEI officers at the state's public colleges earned a combined $15 million in 2020. Conservatives argue DEI initiatives limit free speech on campus and prevent merit-based achievement. The University of Virginia spent the most, employing 38 officers who collectively earned $4 million. The university's vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion and community partnerships made $340,000. James Madison University spent more than $2 million employing 31 DEI administrators. Both UVa and JMU spent more in 2021 than they did in 2020. Virginia Commonwealth University was not included in the report because its data was not available, the authors said. Two schools had no DEI officers in 2020, according to the report Virginia State University and Virginia Military Institute. VMI later hired a chief diversity officer in 2021. The bill had the support of the governor's administration, Reeves said, and highlights items Youngkin believes colleges should disclose. Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, questioned why colleges should be required to publish this information, which is already publicly available. Petersen called the bill "overly confrontational." The report from the Virginia Association of Scholars said it's impossible to tell how much a college really spends on diversity, equity and inclusion , because not every employee who works on the issues has DEI in their job title. The bill also called for universities to report the percentage of their expenditures on DEI, government relations, lobbying and compensation for presidents. More than two years after a mob of Donald Trump supporters temporarily took over the U.S. Capitol, a Roanoke woman has been charged with joining the riots. Casey Jane Tryon-Castro appeared in federal court Tuesday afternoon for an initial appearance on six charges that include resisting law enforcement and stealing a police riot shield during the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Magistrate Judge Robert Ballou set a $15,000 unsecured bond and ordered Tryon-Castro to appear by video conference in Washington, D.C.s federal court, where she will stand trial, for a Jan. 24 hearing. Tryon-Castro is charged with participating in a civil disorder, theft of government property, entering a restricted area of the U.S. Capitol, disorderly conduct, engaging in physical violence and impeding passage through government grounds. Footage from police body cameras, surveillance cameras and public videos showed Tryon-Castro with an unruly crowd that had gathered near an entrance to the Capitol on its Lower West Terrace, according to a criminal complaint. Tryon-Castro, whose age was not available Tuesday, can be seen standing face-to-face with law enforcement just after pepper spray was used in an effort to turn the mob back. She then made her way to the front line of police and joined other rioters in pushing against the officers, court records state. She is accused of then grabbing a police riot shield and passed it to other people in the crowd. Angry about what Trump has called a stolen election, thousands stormed the Capitol where lawmakers were meeting to certify an election won by President Joe Biden after the now-former president urged them at a rally earlier in the day to fight like hell. At first, authorities were unable to identify Tryon-Castro after she appeared on a You Tube video posted by an account named The Black Conservative Preacher. She was given the label 060-AFO, which stands for one of the people suspected of assaulting a federal officer. The suspect was also seen on Twitter posts, standing on the steps of the Capitol at about 2:45 p.m. as the crowd moved toward a tunnel leading into the building. As 060-AFO made her way forward in the crowd, a wooden pole is visible in her right hand, states an affidavit from an FBI agent that is included with the 18-page criminal complaint. After being pushed out of the tunnel, a woman later identified at Tryon-Castro reappeared about one minute later. Video taken from a fellow rioter then shows her joining a mass that pushed against a line of police officers and pulled a riot shield from one of them, according to the complaint. We gotta get the shields to the front, yall!, she allegedly yelled. Im pushing! At about 3:18 p.m., police were able to clear the tunnel of rioters. Later, authorities determined though law enforcement databases and tipsters that 060-AFO might actually be Tryon-Castro. They visited her Roanoke home on Jan. 25, 2021. In a voluntary statement, Tryon-Castro said she had traveled to Washington, D.C. with a family member and other individuals, according to court documents. She also identified herself as the woman pictured in a variety of photographs and videos, federal authorities say. It was not clear Tuesday why nearly a year passed before Tryon-Castro was charged and taken into custody. Federal authorities continue to make arrests in the Jan. 6 uprising. Nearly 950 people from across the country have been charged, included six others from Western Virginia. A Roanoke woman has been charged with resisting police and stealing a riot shield during the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Casey Jane Tryon-Castro was scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge Tuesday afternoon in the federal court in Roanoke. She is charged with participating in a civil disorder, theft of government property, entering a restricted area of the U.S. Capitol, disorderly conduct, engaging in physical violence and impeding passage through the government grounds. Footage from police body cameras, surveillance cameras and public videos showed Tryon-Castro with an unruly crowd of Donald Trump supporters near an entrance to the Capitol on its Lower West Terrace, according to a criminal complaint. Tryon-Castro can be seen standing face-to-face with law enforcement just after pepper spray was used in an effort to turn the mob back. She then made her way to the front line of police and joined other rioters in pushing against the officers and later grabbed a riot shield and passed it to other people in the crowd, court records state. Federal authorities continue to make arrests in the Jan. 6 uprising. Nearly 950 people from across the country have been charged, included six others from Western Virginia. The start of the spring semester at the University of Virginia is typically a time for students to return to Grounds, return to their studies and return to old friends, with the slate of the last semester wiped clear. But many of the students who are starting classes Wednesday are struggling to make a new start after the shooting that took the lives of three fellow students in November. My break was much-needed after all the things that took place last semester, Tyler, a third-year student who preferred to use only his first name, told The Daily Progress. I just needed space to get away from everything. The Nov. 13 shooting that left student athletes Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and DSean Perry dead and two others injured still looms over Grounds. And while the incident was more than two months ago, it could still be producing a range of responses among the student body, according to Dr. Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist specializing in trauma at Wayne State University. Students could be struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety as well as drug and alcohol abuse, Javanbakht told The Daily Progress. Trauma changes their worldview, it changes their view of how safe and protected we can be, Javanbakht said. When something traumatic happens in a place people believe is safe such as a university it can be fundamentally destabilizing, he said. Coming back to campus could be akin to the anniversary of a traumatic event for some people, and it could stir up memories and anxieties all over again, Javanbakht said. Tyler said he appreciated the most recent recess and the additional time to get out of the space and go somewhere comfortable with family, not only as a respite from the end-of-semester workload but also the stress left in the wake of the November tragedy. Second-year student Nate Welz told The Daily Progress the most recent holiday at home was easier than the one over the Thanksgiving recess. I got a lot of questions about the shooting over Thanksgiving break, which was a lot harder to deal with, Welz said. I had professors who had some of the students, and that made it really hard to think and talk about. I didnt get too many questions from friends and family over winter break. Although the break offered time for students to reset before the semester ahead, Tyler said jumping back into classes Wednesday still feels abrupt. He said he would have preferred classes to begin at the start of the week in order to establish a realistic routine but added that he is committed to doing his best in this first half-week back on Grounds. Tyler, like many students, said the shooting in November complicated the finals season at the end of the fall semester. That said, its been a while since students have had an uncomplicated finals season. This finals season was definitely a little different, Tyler said. Finals season has been different every year. First, we had COVID. In my second year, we were kind of back to normal but still not yet. And again now, the shooting. The university and individual professors have offered some assistance to students who may be struggling. Before the winter break, UVa Provost Ian Baucom introduced three new course credit options for students to apply to the classes they took during the fall semester. This month, students will decide to keep a letter grade or opt for credit, general credit or no credit options that will not affect their GPAs. A couple of classes made adjustments, Welz said. I had one class where the [final] paper was cut down from 10 pages to five, which is a really big difference. I had another class with a presentation that was also cut short. Another class with a presentation that was scheduled to have a presentation a week before finals were slightly altered and gave an extension. Welz said he appreciated the support. It was just empathetic professors that knew that we had a lot on our plate and, because of the emotional weight of what happened, but also they knew that a lot of work in classes got pushed later so they adjusted their finals to make that a little easier, Welz said. But extended deadlines and new credit options only go so far, Tyler said. Students have to find other ways to look after their physical and mental health. Javanbakht at Wayne State University agreed. Javanbakht said it is essential that students have access to mental health support through counselors and social workers. Theres no need to pressure them to discuss their negative feelings that are the memories they have. But if someone wants to talk, it would be good to have the opportunity, Javanbakht said, though he stressed it was important not to glorify the shooting. Counseling and psychological services are offered at UVa, both through in-person and virtual sessions. Heading into the spring semester, Welz said he is excited to start applying to UVas several colleges so he can declare his major at the end of the school year. With his eyes set on healing and the community, Tyler said he is looking forward to spending some quality time with his friends in the graduating class of 2023. From northwest to northwest: Caves, 308 SW Third St. in Corvallis, specializes in Northwestern European food made with Northwestern U.S. ingredients. Block 15 Brewing owners Nick and Kristen Arzner opened Caves in 2011. Inspired by their recent trip to Belgium, they wanted to bring some of that European bistro charm to Corvallis. Caves temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic due to patron restrictions and the difficulty of spacing people apart in a small restaurant. General Manager Alicia Allen said the team took that time to reimagine the space and make some changes. We took time to really focus on our concept and remodel the space, she said. We wanted to keep a lot of the old elements like the high ceiling but just kind of brighten the space up and keep the coziness. The restaurant is filled with nods to the owners European trip; a brick wall resembles Cave Dupont and the dark, classy interior transports diners to the other Northwest, the one across the Atlantic Ocean. Allen said the team has put a lot of focus into their beverage programs. The wine program has expanded since reopening with a focus on low intervention and biodynamic wine. It goes back to the roots of making wine without interfering whatsoever without adding or subtracting anything or picking up different characteristics from barrels. It's really expressing the terroir where the grapes were grown. The 15 beers on tap do not often rotate, although they offer four seasonals. Caves offers world-class examples of many different styles of beer, Allen said, but there will always be classics including an IPA, a hazy IPA, a stout and a red amber. We also try to get as many European drafts as we can, she said. Caves logo is a black corked bottle with steps leading down to the bottom. The steps represent spirits, wine, beer and nonalcoholic beverages, leading all the way down to the cellar, where the barrels are located. All of the barrels are located right underneath our feet, which is a classic way of aging beer, Allen said. While the drinks are definitely a draw, the small plates and entrees at Caves are popular as well. Diners have several options from which to choose, including bone marrow, smoked oysters, osso buco and more. With the food on a seasonal rotation, Allen said the restaurant is just now moving into its winter menu. Caves recently started a Gather Hour, which is a happy hour from 4 to 5:30 p.m. each day dinner service is offered. There are $5 small plates, burger sliders and $1 off draft beer and wine glasses. Brunch is offered 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. Caves is open 4 to 9 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays. Allen has worked at both Block 15 locations for nine years, and in July became the general manager of Caves. Im ready for something new, she said, and Im really excited to use creativity behind the bar. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Corvallis Gazette-Times. The Linn County Cultural Coalition is accepting proposals for grants to fund projects involving the arts, the humanities and heritage activities in Linn County. The grants are available to nonprofit organizations with tax-exempt status. An organization or individual sponsored by a qualifying nonprofit may also apply. Full guidelines for applying are available at linnculture.org. The LCCC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization affiliated with the Oregon State Cultural Trust, a statewide entity established to promote and strengthen cultural activities in Oregon. Through local coalitions such as Linn Countys, the trust distributes funding to all 36 Oregon counties and nine federally recognized tribes. Grants typically range between $250 and $2,500. Applicants may be awarded less than the full amount requested. The grant application form is available at linnculture.org. Applications can be submitted online or sent by mail to the Linn County Cultural Coalition, PO Box 69, Albany, OR 97321. The deadline for completed grant applications is Feb. 23. The coalition board will review the applications and decide on awards within a few weeks of that date. For further information, call Rebecca Bond at 541-928-0911 or Linda Ziedrich at 503-707-1539. Actor Ben Masters died Jan. 11, 2023, at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs, California, at 75. Masters battled dementia for several years and succumbed to COVID-19. Born May 6, 1947, in Corvallis to Beryl and Mary Masters, Ben graduated from Corvallis High School in 1965 and the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater in 1969. With a passion for theater, film and television from a young age, Masters soon moved to New York City, where he starred in several productions both on and off Broadway, including Captain Brassbounds Conversion with Ingrid Bergman, The Cherry Orchard with Meryl Streep and The Boys in the Band. He segued into film, starring in Bob Fosses All That Jazz with Roy Schneider, Key Exchange with Brooke Adams and Danny Aiello, Making Mr. Right with John Malkovich and Dream Lover with Kristy McNichol. Throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Masters starred in many TV mini-series, including Noble House with Pierce Brosnan and Celebrity with Ned Beatty and Tess Harper. He guest-starred in numerous television series, including Kojak, Petrocelli, Touched by an Angel, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Barnaby Jones, Murder, She Wrote, Heartbeat, Walker, Texas Ranger, Diagnosis Murder, Sisters and Pensacola: Wings of Gold. Masters last role was in the pop-culture phenomenon daytime drama Passions, in which he portrayed the rich and powerful Julian Crane from 1999 to 2008. Masters is survived by his sister, Cheryl Lerner; nieces Hannah and Clea Lerner of Los Angeles; and numerous friends and colleagues by whom he was loved and respected. At his request, there will be no memorial service or funeral. His publicist, Eva Basler, said Masters was proud of being born and raised in Corvallis, and started all his interviews with that information. By Azernews Fatima Hasanova On January 17, a grenade launcher was found in Azerbaijan's Goranboy District, Azernews reports, citing the Interior Ministry. An RPG-7V2 grenade launcher was discovered near the village of Yenikand, Goranboy District, following operational-search activities by officers of the Khojaly District police department, the ministry said. To recap, during operations carried out in the liberated territories in recent months, 1,373 anti-personnel and 461 anti-tank mines, as well as 2,301 unexploded ordnances, were detected and neutralized in Tartar, Agdam, Khojavand, Fuzuli, Shusha, Gubadli, Jabrayil, and Zangilan districts. A classic Native American artwork market is returning to Denver after experiencing the effects of the pandemic for the last two years, and losing its longtime home at the Denver Mart. The Colorado Indian Market & Southwest Art Fest suffered a two-year hiatus from Denver, where it has been held for almost all of its 41 years. The market, which traditionally has coincided with the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo, offers a place for painters, sculptors, photographers, jewelers and other artists to showcase their work. The pandemic and the closure of The Denver Mart led to a cancelation of the 2021 market. Last year, festival promoters chose to hold the event in Colorado Springs. Reopening in Denver from Friday to Sunday at the Colorado Convention Center, the event will hold a juried selection of 150 artists and craftsmen with a variety of traditional and contemporary Native American, Southwestern and Western arts. Our jewelry, I guess you could say, is the creme de la creme of how the authentic way of how Navajo, our family, our people have been making since the introduction of silver to the Navajos, Reggie Mitchell, co-owner of Dark Horse Navajo Jewelry, said. The sixth-generation business specializes in the old style of tufa, which is volcanic ash. Sign Up For Free: Denver Gazette Business Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. In addition to artwork and items for sale, there will be live performances including Native American Music Awards winner Shelley Morningsong and flute-centric group Inka Gold. Dancer Larry Yazzie and electric violinist Sage Cornelius will also preform, in addition to local and regional tribes dance performances. Traci Rabbit, a Cherokee Native American artist, has participated in the Indian Market for 36 years. While changes have been made over those three decades, she said the one thing that has stayed the same is the quality of work. What I will say that has stayed the same is the high quality of art that people who come visit the show will see, Rabbit said. This is the fourth year Liz King with Dash Events will run the market. She was also the creator of the Cheesman Park Art Fest. We are really excited to be back in Denver in our old stomping grounds, King said in an email. We really hope the community will rally and support this event so its special traditions can continue for years to come. The market will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 20 and Saturday, Jan. 21. On Sunday, Jan. 22, the market will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The entire three-day market will be held at the Colorado Convention Centers Mile High Ballroom, 700 14th St., Denver. Tickets cost $15 for one day or $20 for all three days, which can be purchased online or at the door. Kids under the age of 12 enjoy free admission. Hundreds of decommissioned or soon-to-be-shut-down coal-fired power plants including at least five in Colorado can be saved by converting them to nuclear power with small modular nuclear reactors. That's according to a report from the U.S Department of Energy, which also notes installing small modular nuclear reactors in place of the coal-fired boilers could save millions of dollars worth of infrastructure costs and cut power bills for consumers. The DOE examined 394 operating and decommissioned coal plant sites nationwide to identify suitable locations where the coal boilers could potentially be replaced with nuclear reactors. A full 80% of the 370 operational and retired sites evaluated are amenable to AR (Advanced Reactor) siting, according to the report. The DOE declined to specifically identify the five locations in Colorado. Sponsored by the Department of Energys Office of Nuclear Energy, the study was conducted by the Argonne, Idaho, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories and released last September. The report studied these primary questions: Are coal plants suitable for conversion where they are located; why the sites are appropriate for transition; what might drive economic investment in switching to nuclear; and how transitioning would impact local communities. The researchers looked at existing facilities, environmental impacts and economic conditions and created a representative model of a converted coal plant to analyze the economic, physical, and social justice aspects of converting coal to nuclear. The report says conversion to run on advance small reactors can save 28%-35% of construction costs compared with building a new nuclear plant, and offer a 9%-28% reduction in the levelized cost of energy. The U.S. has 92 nuclear power reactors at 53 plants in 28 states that provide 18.5% of the nations electricity and nearly 50% of its carbon-free energy. By replacing coal with nuclear, regional economic activity could increase by as much as $275 million and add 650 new, permanent jobs distributed across the plant itself, according to the report. The supply chain supporting the plant, and the community surrounding the plant, including an estimated contribution to local schools could amount to more than $7 million annually. Repurposing coal plants to use nuclear energy is also much faster than building new nuclear plants. The report says completing the conversion can take five-to-six years. Sign Up For Free: Denver Gazette Business Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Green America, a national non-profit membership organization founded in 1982, disagrees and says nuclear power is not the answer to combating climate change. The group says modular reactors are not ready for construction, their safety systems are not foolproof, and they will need substantial government subsidies. The group also points to the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima as inherent risks of nuclear power and says uranium mining is a concern. On their website, the group cites an incident at the Church Rock mines north of Gallup, New Mexico in 1979. The EPA says a breach in the mine's tailings pond released more than 1,100 tons of radioactive mill waste and 93 millions of gallons of water contaminated with uranium. The spill affected 80 miles of the Puerco River and continues to affect members of the Navajo Nation 40 years later, according to Green America. Former Colorado Sen. Dennis Hisey offered amendments to House Bill 22-1394 last session that would have required the office to begin studying small modular reactors, but all were defeated. The bill, which is now law, is titled "Fund Just Transition Community And Worker Supports: concerning funding for just transition programs to assist communities with economic transitions." A state law exists requiring the Colorado Energy Office work with communities, utilities, private and public organizations, and individuals to promote cleaner energy sources such as biogas, biomass, and nuclear. All I wanted was a study that said does this work? What do we need to make it happen, said Hisey in a prior interview. Green energy's not going get us there one hundred percent. Everybody agrees with that. Somehow you have to have that on-demand, dispatchable energy and small nuclear reactors absolutely fit that niche nicely. The Colorado Energy Office is developing a technology agnostic study that will include all energy options that could play a role in getting to 100% clean energy, Director of Climate Communications Josh Chetwynd said in a statement Tuesday. We let the free market decide the government isnt in the business of picking winners and losers. To date there is no mention of nuclear energy in Gov. Jared Polis Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap or on the energy office's website. A large snowstorm rolled through metro Denver and northern Colorado has causing several school closures Wednesday across the state and canceled over 290 Denver International Airport flights. Snowfall ended in Denver around 3 p.m., and brought 2 to 4 additional inches of new snow, according to the National Weather Service. -Click or tap here for statewide traffic conditions Live updates 6:10 a.m.: The following highways are still closed due to adverse conditions or crashes: I-70 both directions from Denver to Kansas I-76 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 6 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US-36 both directions from Airpark Road (Mile 76) to Kansas US 40/US 287 both directions from Limon to Kansas US 385 both directions from Julesburg to Nebraska CO 11 both directions from CO 138 to Nebraska CO 23 both directions from US-385 to Nebraska CO 55 both direction from CO 138 to mile post 5.5 CO 59 both directions from I-76 to Yuma CO 61 both directions from Otis to Sterling CO 71 both directions from Last Chance to Brush CO 86 both directions from Elizabeth to I-70 CO 113 both directions from CO 138 to Nebraska US 138 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska Mountains and Southwest Colorado Closures US 550 Silverton to Ouray (Red Mountain pass) CO 139 Douglas Pass (MP 30-39) Flightaware is reporting 64 flight delays with 12 cancelations at Denver International Airport. It is advised to call your airline for information on possible delays or cancelations before departing for DIA Thursday morning. 3:30 p.m. Heavy traffic reported on Interstate 70 eastbound between CO 9 (Silverthorne) and C-470 (1 mile west of Golden), according to CDOT. Travel impacts are possible and drivers should expect up to 90 minutes of travel time. 3:15 p.m. The city of Denver has opened a warming and overnight shelter, according to a new release. Those in need of a warm place to stay are encouraged to go to the McNichols Civic Center Building located at 144 W. Colfax Avenue. It will be open 24-hours a day until 8 a.m. Friday, Jan. 20. For families experiencing homelessness that need a warm place to stay, call 303-356-3377 for additional sheltering options. The public can also access all operating Denver rec centers during normal business hours on Thursday, Jan. 19. Each center will have an open area with access to drinking water and places to sit. 2:20 p.m. 390 flights were delayed and 297 flights were canceled to and from Denver International Airport, according to FlightAware. I-70 from Airpark to Kansas is closed in both directions due to a crash involving nine semis and 12 passenger vehicles, according to Colorado State Patrol. No injuries have been reported. 12 p.m.: The right lane of I-70 westbound is closed between Exit 259: Golden and Exit 256: Lookout Mountain due to a crash. No traffic-related serious injuries or fatalities have been reported to CDOT as of noon Wednesday, CDOT spokesperson Matthew Inzeo said. CDOT has reported: 12 significant lane blockage incidents, meaning lanes were blocked for over 30 minutes, in the Denver metro area Two major incidents involving commercial vehicles at I-25 and US 34 One jackknifed semi at I-25 and Larkspur 103 minor incidents, including spinouts, stuck vehicles and crashes, with motor assist and calls for safety patrol Excessive speed throughout the morning commute 11:20 a.m.: I-70 eastbound is closed between Exit 176: Vail and Exit 180: East Vail due to a crash. 10:50 a.m.: I-25 southbound is closed at US 34 due to a crash. COtrip is reporting an expected 11-minute delay. US 36 is reopened at Cherryvale Road. 10 a.m.: The right lane is closed on I-25 northbound between Exit 221: 104th Avenue and Exit 223: 120th Avenue due to a crash. The left lane is closed on US 36 westbound at Cherryvale Road due to a crash. 8:50 a.m.: I-70 westbound between Exit 216: Loveland Pass and Exit 205: Silverthorne has been reopened to traffic. 8:30 a.m.: I-25 southbound between Exit 207A: Lincoln Street and Exit 206: Downing Street (Denver) at Mile Point 205.9 Lane(s) have reopened to traffic. 8:23 a.m.: I-25 southbound has reopened at Exit 173: Spruce Mountain Road (8 miles south of the Castle Rock exit) at Mile Point 172.35. 8:20 a.m.: Arapahoe County offices will operate on a delayed start schedule Wednesday, Jan. 18 with offices opening at 10 a.m. due to heavy snow in the area. 7:55 a.m.: I-25 southbound remains closed at Exit 173: Spruce Mountain Road (8 miles south of the Castle Rock exit) at Mile Point 172.35. Road closed expect delays due to safety concerns. 7:15 a.m.: As of 6 a.m., Wednesday, 262 flights were canceled at DIA and 36 flights were delayed on Wednesday at DIA, according to FlightAware. DIA advises all passengers to contact their airline to check their flight status before going to the airport, and to plan extra time for traveling to the airport. 6:24 a.m.: The following highways are closed due to adverse conditions: I-76 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 385 both directions from Julesburg to Nebraska US 138 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 6 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska CO 11 From CO 138 to Nebraska CO 59 both directions from I-76 to Yuma CO 52 both directions from New Raymer to Fort Morgan CO 23 both directions from US-385 to Nebraska CO 14 both directions from Ault to Sterling US 550 Purgatory to Ouray (Red Mountain, Molas and Coal Bank passes) US 160 Wolf Creek Pass All Southbound lanes of I-25 are blocked due to a jackknifed tractor-trailer at US 34. All traffic exiting US-34. Seek alternate route. 11:30 p.m.: State offices throughout Colorado will be closed Wednesday due to extreme weather conditions, according to a release from the office of Gov. Jared Polis. 11 p.m.: Drivers should anticipate difficult driving conditions tonight going into Wednesday. Travel between midnight to 6 a.m. Wednesday will be majorly impacted around Denver Metro, Fort Collins, Northeast Plains and Palmer Divide, according to the weather service. Drivers should use caution, slow down and prep for emergencies by packing a winter survival kit in their vehicle. 10:30 p.m.: Over 200 flights in and out of DIA have been delayed. According to Flightaware, 238 flights have been delayed and 179 flights have been canceled. There are already 259 flight cancellations for Wednesday and 32 delays. 9:30 p.m.: Jefferson County School District announced schools will be closed Wednesday. Westbound I-70 reopened just before 6 p.m. in Glenwood Canyon after multi-vehicle crash. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday: Several school districts have announced closures in the Metro Denver-area. Here are the latest closings: Denver Public Schools: Closed Douglas County School District: Closed, no preschool or BASE programs Cherry Creek School District: Closed, all before and after programs canceled Aurora Public Schools: Closed, Pickens Technical College closed. No day or evening activities Adams 12: Closed, all scheduled activities canceled. Adams 14: Closed 27J: Closed Littleton Public Schools: Closed Jefferson Public Schools: Closed Greeley-Evans School District 6: Closed Denver Christian School: Closed Boulder Valley School Districts: Closed Colorado High School Charter: Closed Englewood School: Closed Westminster Public Schools: Closed 6:30 p.m. Tuesday: According to the weather service, Denver is expected to get between 6.5 to 11.5 inches of snow through Wednesday evening. Boulder could get 6.1 to 11.9 inches of snow. Here are more snowfall forecasts across northern and western Colorado: Denver: 6.5 to 11.5 inches Boulder: 6.1 to 11.9 inches Fort Collins: 5.7 to 11.7 inches Greeley: 6.4 to 11.6 inches Estes Park: 2.2 to 9.2 inches Fort Morgan: 6.6 to 13 inches Vail: 3.8 to 11 inches Breckenridge: 2.6 to 7.9 inches Aspen: 2.1 to 10.1 inches Walden: 0.9 to 4.5 inches 5 p.m. Tuesday: The number of canceled and delayed flights at DIA has increased. There are now 178 canceled flights and 140 delayed flights at DIA. 4:30 p.m. Tuesday: Latest snowfall reports across Colorado, according to the National Weather Service: Wolf Creek Pass: 36 inches Coal Bank Pass: 18 inches Rockwood: 15.2 inches Molas Pass: 12 inches Red Mountain Pass: 8 inches Mount Crested Butte: 8 inches Pagosa Springs: 7 inches Ouray: 6.8 inches Monarch Pass: 6 inches Durango: 4.9 inches Telluride: 4.5 inches 3:24 p.m. Tuesday: Over 120 flights are delayed at Denver International Airport. Just before 3:30 p.m., DIA delayed 126 flights and canceled another 178. 16 percent of Southwest Airlines flights have been canceled and 29% of Frontier flights. 1:48 p.m. Tuesday: Westbound Interstate 70 is closed in Glenwood Canyon after a multi-vehicle crash. The closure is expected to last until at least Tuesday evening. 10:50 a.m. Tuesday: Colorado State Patrol is asking the public across the state to avoid travel Wednesday in wake of snow expected Tuesday night. If travel is unavoidable on Wednesday, CSP has provided some helpful tips to ensure your vehicle is properly equipped for the storm. . Ensure tires are up to the task with a minimum tread depth of 3/16 . Refill washer fluid . Check windshield wipers, and replace if needed . Check to ensure all vehicles systems are functioning properly . Hybrid and electric cars should be charged over night as colder temperatures drain the battery . Drive slowly . Scrape all windows of ice and remove all snow from your vehicle . Check weather throughout your route and be prepared for changing conditions CSP troopers suggest travelers to take necessary precautions in cases of being stranded. . Stay with your stranded vehicle, and place bright markers on the vehicles windshield or antenna . Bring extra warm clothing, snow boots, and blankets, along with food and water in the event you are stranded for a significant period . Carry a portable charger and charging bank to ensure ability to call for help If traveling Wednesday, stay alert for first responders working in these adverse conditions, along with stranded motorist, CSP said in a press release. Telecoms vendor Nokia has announced a new collaboration with UNICEF, the United Nations Childrens Fund, to bridge the digital divide by helping to improve digital education and training in schools in parts of Senegal. The project, with UNICEF Finland and UNICEF Senegal, will involve teachers as well as students in underserved areas in Senegal. The focus will be on digital education and training activities so students can develop their digital skills, including coding. The principal beneficiaries are more than 100 teachers, as well as more than 10,000 middle school students in underserved areas. The scope of work includes specific sessions on digital skills, as well as upgrading equipment and connectivity. This activity is in line with Nokias enhanced environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy, announced in October 2022, as well as Nokias commitment to advance digital skills. The ESG strategy builds on five strategic focus areas: environment, focusing on both climate and circularity; industrial digitalization; security and privacy; bridging the digital divide; and responsible business. Silvia Danailov, UNICEF Representative in Senegal, says: UNICEF works to ensure that no child or young person is left behind in the digital revolution. This catalytic partnership with Nokia is a major step in furthering quality education through innovative technology for children in Senegal. UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to protect the rights of every child. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has met with Lithuanian President Gitanas Naus?da in Davos. During the meeting, Lithuanian President Gitanas Naus?da recalled with pleasure his visit to Azerbaijan last year, noting that during the visit they held broad discussions with President Ilham Aliyev on the development of bilateral relations between the two countries. President Gitanas Naus?da invited President Ilham Aliyev to visit Lithuania. President Ilham Aliyev accepted the invitation with pleasure and emphasized the importance of the Lithuanian Presidents visit to Azerbaijan. During the conversation, the sides exchanged views on regional issues, the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, negotiations on a peace agreement, as well as the developments taking place on the Lachin-Khankandi road. The head of state noted that Armenia is engaged in manipulation over the events on the Lachin road in order to mislead the international community and is alleging - based on false information - that the road is closed. President Ilham Aliyev said that the road is open for the passage of civilians and civilian goods, as well as the free movement of humanitarian goods is being ensured via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). President Ilham Aliyev stressed the importance of putting an end to the illegal exploitation of Azerbaijan's natural resources in the territories of the country, where the Russian peacekeeping contingent is temporarily deployed, and withdrawal of criminal elements from the area. The Azerbaijani President noted that Armenia has been using the Lachin road for the transportation of mines, ammunition and personnel over more than past two years. During the meeting, the sides also exchanged views on the relations between Azerbaijan and the European Union. They underlined the importance of the European Union-Azerbaijan-Armenia trilateral format organized with the support of President of the European Council Charles Michel in terms of advancing the peace agenda between Azerbaijan and Armenia. During the conversation, the sides highlighted the important role of Azerbaijan in energy security of Europe. In this regard, they noted the importance of the Agreement in the field of green energy development and transmission between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary signed in Bucharest in December of last year. A journalist uses the new Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone at a press event in London, Britain February 20, 2019. Photo by Reuters/Henry Nicholls Samsung Vietnam exported $65 billion worth of products last year, down 0.8% from 2021. The companys exports accounted for nearly 9% of Vietnams total trade turnover of $700 billion last year, Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai said during a recent meeting with Park Hark Kyu, president of Samsung Electronics. Khai also praised the companys launch of its R&D center in Hanoi last month, which is Samsungs biggest such facility in Southeast Asia. Park said that he has traveled to Vietnam more than 20 times to look for investment opportunities. "For the last 10 years, every time I look back, I think that investing in a factory in Thai Nguyen Province was a wise choice," said Park, referring to the northern locality where Samsung placed its key smartphone manufacturing plant. Samsung has invested $18.2 billion in Vietnam to date and plans to increase the figure to $20 billion. Half of Samsungs smartphones are produced in Vietnam. A teenage girl died after the storage of a Circle K store in HCMC's District 4 crumbled down from the first floor Wednesday morning. Police and rescuers arrive at a Circle K store in HCMC's District 4 after its first-floor storage collapsed on January 18, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Dinh Van The accident happened at around 9 a.m. at the 40-sq.m Circle K store on Vinh Hoi Street of Ward 4 when there were nine employees and customers on the ground floor. They were trapped under goods, bricks and steel frames. The girl, a ninth grader, was extricated from under the debris at 9:45 a.m. She was unconscious and rushed to District 4 Hospital, but succumbed to injuries later, the hospital director said. Le Van Chien, District 4 chairman, said that besides the teenage girl, others suffered scratches. Major Hung Nguyen Thuan from the Fire Prevention and Rescue Unit of the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department, who directed the rescue effort at the site, said the rescue work was difficult as big chunks of goods blocked entrances. Thuan said the storage on the first floor was overloaded with goods for Tet demand. Colonel Huynh Quang Tam, head of the Fire Prevention and Rescue Unit of the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department, said that forces had to pump oxygen in, dismantle steel structures, and unload goods to take the victims out. Rescuers look for people trapped amid goods and collapsing steel frames at a Circle K store in HCMC's District 4, January 18, 2023. Photo by VnExpress The store uses its the first floor as a warehouse and also a space for dining, with portable tables and chairs. Huong, a woman who lives nearby, said: "I was in my house when I heard a big bang. Many screamed for help but the front door of the store was blocked by goods and no one could get in." Locals said the store was recently under repair and has just been reopened for several days. Steel sheet piles are placed around the concrete pillar where a boy was trapped inside, Dong Thap Province, January 15, 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Khanh Seventeen days after a 10-year-old boy fell into a 35-meter-deep concrete pillar in southern Vietnam, where he was trapped and died, rescue workers have managed to pull the pillar up by just 12m. Rescuers are pulling the concrete pillar up section by section. Nam and three other children who are his neighbors went to the bridge construction site in Dong Thap Province on December 31 to gather pieces of iron for the purpose of selling them to scrap vendors to earn some money. The boy, who weighed merely 20kg, was walking when he fell into the hollow concrete pillar, which is just 25cm across. No one knows for sure where the boy is located in the pillar. Witnesses said he screamed for help for 10 minutes after falling in but that there had been no response from the boy after that. Dong Thap authorities announced Nam dead on January 4. Provincial Deputy Chairman Doan Tan Buu said then that a team of medical and forensics experts and local authorities concluded that the boy had died based on various factors, including the location of the accident, the depth of the pillar, the length of time the rescue attempt had gone on, and possible injuries the boy was believed to have suffered. The rescue workers explained that the concrete pillar is buried deep in the ground, and that as its diameter is too narrow, the rescue mission had faced several challenges. The provincial government acknowledged that a lack of experience and limited machinery and human resources made the rescue effort difficult and prolonged. Furthermore, in the past two weeks southern Vietnam has been hit several heavy rain storms. The current method being applied used at the site includes a series of jobs: place steel sheet piles around the concrete pillar and then place a steel pillar, which has a diameter of 2m and 24m deep, around the concrete pillar. After that, soil is removed from the space between the concrete pillar and the steel pillar to reduce frictions. Then, two more steel sheet piles are buried into the ground and attached to the concrete pillar before a crane pulls it up. By Monday, a 12-m section of the pillar had been excavated. A 12-meter section of the concrete pillar is pulled up early on January 16, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Khanh A firefighter in HCMC, whose unit has rescued people from hundreds of meters below ground, said this case is "very complicated" since the boy is stuck in a pillar that is too narrow for rescuers to climb into. "The only solution is to pull the pillar up," he said. The director of a company that produces concrete products said that pulling a pillar up is many times more difficult than burying it. He said that putting a pillar into the ground requires a force of around 50 tons, but that the force to pull it up must be four-five times bigger. So far, no one has created specialized equipment to pull up such a pillar at construction sites because it is extremely uncommon for contractors to do this, he said. 4.1 million people in the region need assistance, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Of these, 3.3 million are scrambling to secure sufficient food. Bab al-Hawa is the only border crossing between Turkey and Northern Syria still open for UN aid deliveries to Syrias north-western region. For years, the United Nations Security Council annually voted to re-authorize the delivery of aid through several crossing points. In 2021, however, Russia cut back deliveries to a single crossing point. In 2022, Russia further limited the mandate, insisting it be renewed every six months. On January 9, one day before the mandate expired, the United Nations Security Council voted to keep the Bab al-Hawa open. The United States welcomes the unanimous adoption of this resolution on the cross-border humanitarian assistance delivery mechanism, said Linda Thomas Greenfield, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In extending the cross-border mechanism, we have ensured that food, water, shelter, and other critical humanitarian assistance will continue to reach the Syrian people, she said. We have ensured that shipments of medical equipment and treatments will not be cut off from a country facing a horrific cholera outbreak. And we have ensured that the humanitarian workers will continue to do their heroic work. But while this lifeline will continue to operate, so much more could have been done, said Ambassador Thomas Greenfield. Renewing this resolution should never have been a subject of debate. The debate we need to have is how to strengthen the mechanism to reach more people with more assistance. We must show the Syrian people that we will continue to put their humanity first; that we will do everything in our power to increase predictable access to those in need, she said. Because right now, needs across all of Syria, from the northwest to the northeast, in all 14 governorates of Syria, are greater than they have ever been. Even as humanitarian needs around the world have spiked, [The United States] commitment to the Syrian people is unwavering, said Ambassador Thomas Greenfield. We have long called on the international community to provide generous support to the Syrian humanitarian appeal for the Syrian people... We once again urge the Assad regime to do what is necessary after so many years and after so much violence to end this brutal war and work towards a just and sustainable peace. The United States is deeply concerned by the security, humanitarian, and political crises occurring in the Sahel. These crises are causing a dramatic increase in the strength and influence of violent extremism that is spreading into parts of Coastal West Africa, said Ambassador Richard Mills, U.S. Deputy Representative to the United Nations: Violent extremism thrives when state authorities are absent; when the delivery of services is weak; when democracy is fragile or fleeting; when justice is inaccessible; and when economic and political exclusion prevail. For the United States, instability in the Sahel is clearly a security problem with a democratic governance solution. In addition, the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group is interfering in African countries internal affairs, robbing them of their resources, committing human rights abuses, and endangering the safety and security of peacekeepers and UN personnel, declared Ambassador Mills. Its presence and operations are not only failing to address the immediate violent extremist threat, but actually increasing the likelihood violent extremism will grow. The United States is also gravely concerned about democratic backsliding across the region and urges the return of democratically elected, civilian-led governments. We applaud the continued efforts of UNOWAS to support democratic processes and to advise transitional governments on how to return to full civilian-led democracy, said Ambassador Mills. The United States strongly condemns the killing of 28 people in northern Burkina Faso in late December and will continue to engage with the transitional government to strengthen protections for human rights and civil liberties. Ambassador Mills expressed concerns regarding the departure of the UN resident coordinator in Burkina Faso and about reports that the French Ambassador to Burkina Faso has been asked to leave the country. Ambassador Mills called on the government of Mali to eliminate all restrictions against MINUSMA so that it can carry out its UN mandate, which includes protecting civilians, promoting human rights, and advancing peace and stability in Mali. We must reinvigorate our collective action and support our African partners in addressing the problems that cross borders, said Ambassador Mills. The U.S. applauds the UN, the [African Union], G5 Sahel, and ECOWAS for doing just that. ELKO The Most Wanted suspect announced Tuesday by the Elko County Sheriffs Office has been taken into custody. John T. Falvey, 62, was arrested at a residence in Wells on Tuesday evening, a few hours after an article was posted on elkodaily.com. According to court documents, Falvey is accused of stripping naked and running through sprinklers at a gas station in Wells on the night of Sept. 29, 2021. Indecent exposure suspect on 'most wanted' list A man accused of stripping naked on a September night and running through sprinklers in Wells has made the Elko County Sheriffs Most Wanted list A criminal complaint was filed in February 2022 charging him with failure to register as a sex offender, and the complaint was amended in June to include a gross misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure. Falvey, however, is not listed on the national internet sex offender database or on databases in Nevada or in California, where he was originally charged with indecent exposure in June 2001. Falvey was charged with failure to register in Elko County and convicted in October 2018. He was given a suspended sentence by District Judge Nancy Porter. He then appealed his case but the conviction was upheld by the Nevada Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals also ruled that the district court erred at sentencing by ordering him to submit to lifetime supervision pursuant to Nevada law. Falvey was booked into Elko County Jail on a charge of failure to appear after bail on a felony crime. His bail was listed at $30,000. ELKO A man accused of stripping naked on a September night and running through sprinklers in Wells has made the Elko County Sheriffs Most Wanted list. Deputies were called to a gas station around 11 p.m. Sept. 29, 2021, on a report of a man in the bed of an older blue Dodge truck undressing in the parking lot. A woman reported seeing him run naked through sprinklers between the station and a motel, according to court records. When deputies arrived about 10 minutes later they located the pickup truck on the Interstate 80 westbound on-ramp, and arrested John T. Falvey, who is now 62. A criminal complaint was filed in February 2022 charging him with failure to register as a sex offender, and the complaint was amended in June to include a charge of indecent exposure. Falvey, however, is not listed on the national internet sex offender database or on databases in Nevada or in California, where he was originally charged with indecent exposure in June 2001. Falvey was charged with failure to register in Elko County and convicted in October 2018. He was given a suspended sentence by District Judge Nancy Porter. He then appealed his case and it was upheld by the Nevada Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals, however, also ruled that the district court erred at sentencing by ordering him to submit to lifetime supervision pursuant to Nevada law. In November 2019 the court issued an order that stated Therefore, we reverse the imposition of the special sentence of lifetime supervision, and we remand for the district court to enter an amended judgment of conviction that removes the special sentence of lifetime supervision. Falvey was placed on the sheriffs Most Wanted list Monday morning. His last know residence was Deeth, and a $30,000 warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to show up in court on the charges. By Azernews Sabina Mammadli Special Representative of the NATO Secretary-General for the Caucasus and Central Asia Javier Colomina will visit Baku and Yerevan this week, Azernews reports. The visit will take place within the framework of regular political consultations with colleagues from NATO partner countries, the report elaborates. During the visit, Colomina plans to exchange views with senior officials on security issues in the region, and NATO's partnerships with both countries. Relations with NATO started in 1992 when Azerbaijan joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. This forum for dialogue was succeeded in 1997 by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which brings together all allies and partner countries in the Euro-Atlantic area. Bilateral cooperation began when Azerbaijan joined the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in 1994. Thanks to regular participation in PfP activities, Azerbaijan has been able to contribute actively to Euro-Atlantic security by supporting NATO-led peace-support operations. Azerbaijans participation in the PfP Planning and Review Process (PARP) since 1997 has allowed NATO and individual allies to assist Azerbaijan in developing selected units to improve interoperability with those of the allies. NATO and Azerbaijan started work on a jointly agreed Defense Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP) in 2008 to integrate NATO standards into the teaching methodologies and curricula of the countrys Professional Military Education (PME) institutions. In 2018, Azerbaijan asked NATO to also involve the Military High School, a pre-commissioning school, in DEEP. ELKO A champion show dog that got loose in Wells on Jan. 6 has been found after wandering the high desert for a week and a half in cold, stormy weather. Bumble, a 3-year-old Berger Picard, has an injured hip and is being cared for at a veterinary clinic in Elko, according to co-owner Donna Beadle of Elko, Minnesota. The Elko Daily Free Press ran a front-page article about the missing dog on Friday, Jan. 13, a week after he got loose at a truck stop in Wells while being transported from Minnesota to California. Later that day Beadle said she got a call from the daughter of a ranch hand near Wells. Bumble had been spotted by Juan Solis, who works on the Hooper Ranch just west of Wells near the Beverly Hills exit off Interstate 80. Thats where the dogs tracks were last seen on Jan. 8. Beadle, Solis and Jamie Lough of Ladies and the Trap in Boise began setting up traps at a pasture on the ranch but, as with earlier sightings, Bumble evaded his searchers. Rescued at last: Champion show dog found in sagebrush Donna Beadle of Elko, Minnesota, holds a tired and injured champion show dog on Jan. 17, 2023, after an 11-day search effort. Beadle wore a borrowed pair of snowshoes and Solis used binoculars to search as they followed Bumbles tracks through snow and across streams. On Tuesday, Jan. 17, they were searching a spot where animals appeared to have bedded down. Thats when Beadle saw her dog sitting under a sagebrush. He growled at me at first, Beadle said, because I think he was so disoriented. So I kind of just put my hand out to him and let him smell me. She knew it was now or never, I didnt want him to bolt and run off, so she grabbed his beard and put a leash around him. Beadle carried him to safety as Solis drove his truck to the site. Hes a hero, Beadle said, and will receive the reward that was offered. It was honestly Juans persistence and a lot of luck that I stumbled upon him, she wrote on her Eclipse Kennels Berger Picards Facebook page. Bumble was very dehydrated and hypoglycemic. I dont think he wouldve had much longer, Beadle told the Elko Daily. Rescued at last: Champion show dog found in sagebrush Ranch hand Juan Solis was credited with finding a lost champion show dog west of Wells and helping bring him to safety. She also thanked others involved in the 11-day search effort, including Nicky Higgins and Christy Shamblin in Wells, Melany Aten from Winnemucca, and co-owner Grace Thomas in California. Im eternally grateful to them and all of you for the incredible support and praying! she wrote. Bumble is an AKC champion and was the number one owner-handled dog last year in AKC, Beadle said earlier. Initial search efforts included a tracker who used a drone at the Wells airport where he was seen before heading west along I-80. On Wednesday morning Beadle was awaiting an update on his condition from the veterinary clinic. If needed, she said Bumble may be taken for further care at the University of California, Davis. "We will accelerate the development of the digital economy, further integrate it with the real economy, and build internationally competitive digital industry clusters," General Secretary Xi Jinping remarked in the report delivered to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. In the new development stage, digital transformation has been listed among Henan's top 10 development strategies. Starting on January 11, we are launching the "Wonderful HenanHere We Are (Digital Henan)" series to show you the measures Henan will take during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25) to advance the building of national big data comprehensive pilot zones and accelerate the development of digital economy. The following is the 2nd story of the series: Building a digital society. 111 Click on the video above NB: This is not a word-for-word transcript Building a Digital Society We will further promote the extensive application of digital technologies in urban governance, rural revitalization and life services, and ensure that the fruits of digital development are shared at a higher level and more widely. The new venue of Henan Science and Technology Museum. [Photo provided to dahe.cn] Accelerating the development of new smart cities We will promote the development of new smart cities according to different classifications, carry out the building of pilot and demonstration smart cities, promote the integrated application of spatial geographic information and 5G, and explore the development of basic platforms for urban information models. We will accelerate the development of the "urban brain" central platform mainly under the jurisdiction of provincial governments, integrate information systems and data resources in public security, municipal management, transportation, emergency management, health & care, spatial geography and other fields, implement the "one map" overall digital management of city buildings, public spaces and underground pipe networks, and realize the design of running the whole city with one integrated network system. We will carry forward the building of standardized smart communities, improve smart service circles for the convenience and benefit of the people, and build smart communities that enjoy the integration of integrated community services and management functions. 5G Staff members are busy working in an electronic information industry park in Xuchang. [Photo provided to dahe.cn] Promoting the building of the digital countryside We will carry out the provincial-level demonstration and upgrading project to bring information to villages and households, accelerate the extension of high-speed fiber-optic broadband networks, narrowband IOT and 5G networks to rural areas, and promote the integration of agricultural and rural information service platforms and application systems, implement the project to sell agricultural products into cities with the help of the internet, and build a number of smart logistics distribution centers. We will push forward digital rural governance, build a comprehensive village-level service platform guided by Party building, and make comprehensive social governance in rural areas more refined and intelligent, develop rural network culture and further digitalize public cultural products and services in rural areas. 5G+ A technician is busy assembling a hydrogen motor in Luoyang. [Photo provided to dahe.cn] Offering new services for the digital life Conforming to the new trend of online consumption, we will accelerate the integrated development of online and offline consumer services, cultivate a city that serves as a model for offering new digital life services, build an open platform for provincial smart tourism, promote service modes such as cloud scenic spots and cloud venues, and create a number of diamond-grade smart tourism scenic spots. We will normalize business mode innovation in fields such as shared travel, catering take-out, online group buying and the experience economy, encourage cloud transformation of living service places such as large supermarkets and chain stores, and develop contactless services such as smart stores, smart delivery and self-assist terminals. We will promote the inclusive application of digital services, and push forth digitization of public service resources in schools, hospitals, theaters, stadiums and nursing homes. We will help the public to improve their digital skills, and intensify the training for rural talents of practical skills in information technology and e-commerce, so as to achieve full coverage of information services. A special thanks goes to the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Henan Provincial Committee and the School of International Studies of Zhengzhou University for their support to the "Wonderful HenanHere We Are (Digital Henan)" bilingual series. Related stories Wonderful HenanHere We Are (Digital Henan)|A stronger digital economy | Wonderful HenanHere We Are (Digital Henan)|Building a digital government | Wonderful HenanHere We Are (Digital Henan)|Major projects to develop digital economy | Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son speaks at the meeting. (Photo: baoquocte.vn) Prominent among the participants was former Vice President and former Foreign Minister Nguyen Thi Binh, who was head of the negotiation delegation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam at the Paris Conference. The Paris Agreement was the result of the longest and most difficult struggle in the history of Vietnam's diplomacy, with over 202 public meetings held over four years, eight months and 14 days. In his remarks, Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son recalled the negotiations and signing of the accord five decades ago, which together with previous ones like the Geneva Agreement in 1954, created a premise for the Vietnamese people to realise their aspirations for peace, national independence, national reunification and prosperous development. Stressing the strategic significance of the Paris Agreement, the minister said the victory was the result of the indomitable struggle and the great sacrifice of the Vietnamese army and people on the political, military and diplomatic fronts under the sound leadership of the Party and President Ho Chi Minh. Lessons drawn from the Paris Agreement negotiations, signing and implementation have maintained their values, even in the Party and the States foreign policy during the present cause of reform, national development and defence, he continued. The diplomatic sector, under the Party leadership, is resolved to grow in a more professional, comprehensive and modern fashion, contributing to realising the aspirations, visions and targets of development set at the 13th National Party Congress. Speaking at the meeting, Binh called the Paris Agreement a victory decisive to the path towards the liberation of South Vietnam and national reunification, saying it was the result of the nearly 20-year struggle. She also highlighted the solidarity and strong support from the international community, which, she said, gave strengths to Vietnam both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Expressing her pride of the nation and the Party, Binh said she believes that under the sound leadership of the Party and good national traditions, Vietnam will develop more strongly and sustainably. Helene Luc, Honorary Senator and Honorary President of the France-Vietnam Friendship Association, affirmed that her sentiments and happiness in the signing day have remained intact./. PM Pham Minh Chinh (R) and Speaker of the RoKs National Assembly Kim Jin-pyo in Hanoi on January 17 (Photo: VNA) Both host and guest noted with satisfaction that the two countries relations have been developing unceasingly in all aspects over 30 years since bilateral diplomatic relations were set up. At present, the RoK is ranking first among foreign investors in Vietnam with total capital reaching 80.5 billion USD; second in terms of development cooperation, tourism, and labour; and third in terms of trade with revenue hitting 88 billion USD in 2022. About 8,000 Korean enterprises are operating in Vietnam. Meanwhile, some 200,000 citizens of each country are living in the other country, including about 80,000 multicultural families. PM Chinh congratulated the RoK on its national development achievements and thanked the countrys State, NA, and people for their precious, practical, and effective assistance for Vietnam in the recent past. Congratulating Vietnam on fast and steady economic growth amid difficulties, Speaker Kim appreciated the Vietnamese Governments attention to the development of the Korean business community. He called on the Government of Vietnam to support his countrys hosting of World Expo 2023 in Busan; continue facilitating Korean firms operations in Vietnam; help Korean banks open branches; facilitate RoK citizens' travel, work, and life in Vietnam; and back the expansion of the RoKs educational establishments in the Southeast Asian nation. PM Chinh pledged to consider his guests proposals. To achieve the goals of the Vietnam - RoK comprehensive strategic partnership, he asked Kim and the RoKs parliament to continue promoting substantive, efficient, and effective cooperation; increase all-level delegation exchanges and meetings between the countries Parties, Governments, and NAs; intensify cooperation in security and defence, especially the defence industry; and help Vietnam improve the capacity of its law enforcement forces at sea. As economic ties remain an important pillar of bilateral cooperation, Chinh asked the two sides to work together to fruitfully implement the Vietnam - RoK Free Trade Agreement (VKFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to raise bilateral trade to 100 billion USD in 2023 and 150 billion USD by 2030 in a balanced and sustainable manner. Vietnam welcomes Korean enterprises' expansion of investment, especially in high technology, science - technology, innovation, green economy, digital economy, digital transformation, clean energy, smart city, and eco-city development, the PM noted, calling on them to create conditions for Vietnamese businesses to take part in supply chains to help Vietnam soon become a centre of regional and global value chains. He expressed his hope for the RoKs continuation of ODA cooperation mechanisms and assistance for Vietnamese people in the RoK. He also pledged support for Korean investors and citizens in Vietnam. At the meeting, PM Chinh also affirmed that Vietnam always pays attention to and is ready to actively contribute to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and that it advocates efforts to maintain peace in the Northeast Asian region via dialogue and by peaceful means. For his part, Speaker Kim said the RoK supports and shares the common vision on the safeguarding of security, safety, and freedom of navigation and overflight in the East Sea; the maintenance of peace, stability, and legal order; the peaceful settlement of sea disputes; and the ensuring of countries rights and legitimate interests in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)./. NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue (R) and Speaker of the RoK's NA Kim Jin-pyo. (Photo: VNA) Welcoming the speaker to Vietnam on the first days of 2023, Hue expressed his belief that this visit will contribute to strengthening the relations of the two countries, including the two parliaments. The two leaders agreed to continue consolidating political trust, especially in the context of complicated devleopments in international and regional situation. The Vietnamese top legislator emphasized that strengthening political and diplomatic trust will be the foundation to promote cooperation in other fields such as economics, trade, investment, and people-to-people exchanges. On the basis of the recent upgrade of the bilateral relations to a "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership" status, the two leaders agreed to expand collaboration in technology transfer, human resources training, and defence technology. Hue proposed the RoK continue assisting Vietnam in overcoming post-war consequences, including the project on the Vietnam-Republic of Korea peace village for the 2022- 2026 period. They reached a consensus on soon achieving the goal of raising two-way trade to 100 billion USD by 2023 and 150 billion USD by 2030 in a more sustainable and balanced manner on the basis of making the most of existing bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. According to Chairman Hue, digital transformation and energy transition bring both opportunities and challenges. On the basis of good political relations, the two countries need to strengthen cooperation to address issues in energy transition, especially to ensure the harmony of benefits and costs during the transition process to ensure fairness on global, regional and national scales. The Vietnamese legislature is willing to organise exchange forums within the parliamentary framework to create legal frameworks for the formation of an equitable and sustainable digital transformation and energy transition ecosystem. Speaker Kim agreed with his Vietnamese counterparts proposals on the increase in the number of Vietnamese workers in the RoK such as skilled labourers, nurses, and information technology engineers. They also agreed on the promotion of vocational training for Vietnamese workers to meet the needs of Korean enterprises. He added that his country has completed domestic procedures for a bilateral agreement on social insurance between the two countries, hoping that Vietnam will complete its procedures to allow the agreement to be implemented soon. The two sides also agreed to regularly exchange information to remove problems related to visas and work permits in order to create the most favourable conditions for the two peoples. Hue expressed hope that Kim and the Korean NA will continue paying attention to and protecting the legitimate interests of the Vietnamese community living and working in the country. Vietnam supports the RoK playing a greater role and contributing to peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region, and continues to consider the RoK an important and long-term strategic partner, he said. He stressed that Vietnam will work closely with the RoK to successfully implement its role as the coordinator for the ASEAN-RoK relations in the 2021-2024 tenure. Vietnam always pays attention to and is willing to contribute to the denuclearisation process on the Korean Peninsula, and support efforts to maintain peace in Northeast Asia through dialogue, and by peaceful means, Hue stressed. The Korean top legislator backs Vietnams stance on ensuring security, safety and freedom of navigation and aviation in the East Sea in accordance with international law. The two sides were unanimous in maintaining coordination in effectively implementing the cooperation agreements signed by the two NAs in 2013. They are considering the supplementation or signing of a new document to conform to the comprehensive strategic partnership and the current international situation. The two National Assemblies will continue strengthening coordination and mutual support at regional and international inter-parliamentary forums, making active contributions to maintaining peace, security and stability in the region and the world, they said. The two sides will maintain the exchange of delegations at all levels, promote the sharing of experience in law making, supervision and making decisions on important maters, and listen to the business communities and people of both countries with a view to creating a favourable legal environment for economic cooperation, cultural exchange and citizen protection. Earlier the same day, Speaker Kim, his spouse and the RoK delegation laid a wreath in tribute to late President Ho Chi Minh at his Mausoleum. In the evening, Chairman Hue is scheduled to chair a banquet for the RoK NA Speaker and his entourage./. Ambassador Luong Thanh Nghi and representatives of the Executive Committee of the Association of Vietnamese Experts and Intellectuals in Denmark (Photo: VNA) At the congress, delegates elected the Executive Committee for the first term of the association. The congress elected Dr. Le Quy Vang as the Chairman, and Vice Chairmen and professional committees of the association. The Association of Vietnamese Experts and Intellectuals in Denmark was established to gather, unite and connect Vietnamese experts, intellectuals, scientists as well as Vietnamese students and researchers working and studying at institutes, research institutions and universities of Denmark; help experts and intellectuals support each other in research, work and life; promote the ability and intelligence of each individual, as well as that of Vietnamese experts and intellectuals in Denmark; contributing to the construction of the homeland, the country, and contributing to the development of Vietnam. In addition, the association's activities are aimed at strengthening cooperation in science and technology between Vietnam and Denmark, contributing to consolidating and tightening the friendship between the two countries. Speaking at the event, Ambassador Luong Thanh Nghi emphasized that the community of Vietnamese experts, intellectuals and scientists, studying and working abroad, including the community of Vietnamese experts and intellectuals in Denmark, is a great resource and a valuable asset for the cause of national construction and development. The Ambassador affirmed that the Party and State always pay attention to and create good conditions for Vietnamese experts and intellectuals to confidently contribute to the development of the country, regardless of position and working environment. He praised and highly appreciated the contribution of the team of Vietnamese experts and scientists in Denmark to the country over the past time, especially the extremely practical and timely contributions in the period the whole country focused on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ambassador Nghi affirmed that the Vietnamese Embassy in Denmark will always accompany, support and work closely with the association to create the most favorable conditions and maximize the talents, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Vietnamese experts and intellectuals in Denmark for the development of Vietnam and to promote Vietnam-Denmark relations. On behalf of the Association of Vietnamese Experts and Intellectuals in Denmark, Dr. Le Quy Vang, Chairman of the association, gratefully thanked the Vietnamese Embassy in Denmark for its support of the establishment and the organizations of activities of the association in the coming time. He pledged that the association would have practical, specific, methodical and long-lasting activities, contributing to the development of the country as well as Vietnam-Denmark relations./. Photo for illustration Specifically, the Republic of Korea accounted for 37% of the total number of Asian visitors; while Southeast Asian visitors made up 34.7%, mainly from Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia. In December 2022 alone, Vietnam welcomed more than 707,000 international visitors, an increase of 18.5% from the previous month, the highest number in 2022. The number of visitors is forecast to increase in January 2023, when many foreign visitors want to come to Vietnam to experience the traditional Tet. Some countries that continue to be potential markets of Vietnams tourism in 2023 are the Republic of Korea, the US and India. Especially, when the largest tourism market, China, reopened its borders, the number of international visitors to Vietnam is expected to increase sharply in the near future./. Ranked 3rd on the list, Phu Quoc was rated as the new star of Vietnam. Tourists snorkeling in Phu Quoc (Photo: NDO) According to Travel+Leisure, the better air connection helps foreign tourists, especially Indian tourists, have the opportunity to explore more destinations in Vietnam, not only Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi or Ha Long Bay. The magazine reviews that Phu Quoc is an enchanting place with white sand beaches, jade-colored forests dotted with waterfalls, rock pools and caves. Known as the pearl island, more than half of Phu Quocs area is preserved as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Phu Quoc is named among the top 10 most wonderful islands in Asia in 2022, voted by readers of the famous magazine Conde Nast Traveler (USA). (Photo: ShutterStock) Luxury resorts on the island are geared towards sustainability, making it a heaven for responsible travelers. The best souvenir is the islands famous fish sauce. Buy this fish sauce at a traditional fishing village like Ham Ninh, and don't forget to enjoy fresh seafood here, suggests Travel+Leisure. This list includes other famous destinations with unspoiled ecosystems, scenic beauty or rich cuisine such as Alberta (Canada), AlUla (Saudi Arabia), Fukuoka (Japan) and Malta./. Data from the Vietnam Trade Office in Australia shows that many key exports of Vietnam continue to post high growth amid various challenges. (Photo: vneconomy.vn) Vietnams export turnover to Australia last year expanded 26.18% year-on-year to 5.55 billion USD while its imports were valued at 10.14 billion USD, an increase of 27.31%. Data from the office shows that many key exports of Vietnam continue to post high growth amid various challenges, including machinery, equipment, tools, and other spare parts (62.1%); footwear (41.3%); textiles (26.3%); aquatic products (37.3%); iron and steel (102.9%); handbags, suitcases and umbrellas (24.8%); coffee (62.53%); and electric wires and cables (81.2%). Meanwhile, Australia continued to be an important supplier of raw materials for Vietnams production of coal, cotton, ores and other minerals, and wheat. Australian consumers choose fresh litchi imported from Vietnam.(Photo: VNA) Head of the trade office Nguyen Phu Hoa said that the industry structure of Vietnam and Australia are complementary to each other, helping the two economies enhance their advantages instead of competing. Last year, the bilateral trade goals were achieved quickly, he said, adding that Vietnam has become Australia's 10th largest trade partner for the first time, while Australia is now Vietnam's 7th largest trade partner. Economic experts say that there is a great room for Vietnam and Australia to promote trade growth. The implementation of free trade agreements, including the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANFTA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), offer opportunities for further cooperation between the two countries. This year, the Vietnam Trade Office in Australia plans to implement promotion programmes for industries with large turnover and follows the directions of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in expanding the Vietnamese imports and exports./. By Azernews Fatima Hasanova The State Border Service (SBS) summarized the results of service and combat activities in 2022, Azernews reports via the press service of the SBS. State Border Service chief Col-Gen Elchin Guliyev in a report summed up the developments in the past year, reviewed the performance of structural units and military formations and outlined the tasks and assignments for the service in 2023. "After the restoration of the country's territorial integrity under the command of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, the tasks assigned to the State Border Service have been completed at a high level," Guliyev told the meeting. He also recalled Azerbaijan's response to the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on September 12-13, 2022. In response to the large-scale provocations of the Armenian armed forces, units of the Azerbaijani army inflicted crushing blows on the enemy in the area of the state border passing through the territory of Zangilan District on September 12-13, 2022, Guliyev said, noting that enemy forces were forced to retreat after suffering numerous losses. Guliyev added that during the battles, two S-300 divisions, two Zhitel electronic warfare systems, 18 posts, an R-18 radar station, an S-125 ZRK launcher, an S-125 ZRK fire support system, two S-300 divisions, and personnel of the enemy were destroyed. To recap, units of the Armenian armed forces carried out large-scale provocations along the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border on the night of September 12 leading to 13. The Armenian sabotage groups mined land and supply roads, linking the positions of the Azerbaijani army units in different directions, taking advantage of the area's steep topography and existing ravine gaps. All military facilities constructed by the Armenian armed forces in the directions of Lachin, Kalbajar and Zangilan that posed a threat to the security of Azerbaijan were destroyed as a result of the response actions taken by the Azerbaijani army against Armenian provocation. *China's economy grew 3 percent year on year to a record high of 121.0207 trillion yuan (about 18 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022. Compared with major economies across the world, the growth rate is relatively fast. *The economy is bound to recover as the fundamentals of the Chinese economy -- its strong resilience, enormous potential, great vitality and long-term sustainability -- remain unchanged. *Shoring up confidence is crucial for economic recovery. In 2023, the worsening global economic situation needs China's steady growth as a stabilizer. BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's economy posted steady growth in 2022 despite pressures including epidemic resurgences and a complicated external environment, with its gross domestic product (GDP) reaching a new level. The economy grew 3 percent year on year to a record high of 121.0207 trillion yuan (about 18 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday. Workers are on duty at the construction site of the Huafu mega bridge at the Sichuan-Chongqing section of the Chongqing-Kunming high-speed railway in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Nov. 28, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao) This marks a new and higher level in terms of economic aggregate, after the Chinese economy topped the thresholds of 100 trillion yuan and 110 trillion yuan in 2020 and 2021, respectively -- maintaining its position well as the world's second-largest economy, Kang Yi, head of the NBS, told a press conference. But this is "still a small step forward," Kang said. The country needs to more than double the current per capita GDP of about 12,700 U.S. dollars to reach its goal that its per capita GDP will be on par with that of mid-level developed countries in 2035. Compared with major economies across the world, however, the 3-percent growth rate is relatively fast, he said, attributing the economy's rebound from stronger-than-expected shocks to the timely support of pro-growth policies. OVERCOMING CHALLENGES When asked to comment on the overall performance of the Chinese economy in 2022, Dominik Peschel, head of the Economics Unit of the Asian Development Bank Resident Mission in China, noted several headwinds the country had to deal with, including COVID-19, a property market downturn and softening export growth. To stabilize economic growth, the Chinese government mobilized additional funds for infrastructure investment and gradually loosened monetary policy. Infrastructure investment supported economic growth, as did solid growth in manufacturing investment. As a result, industry grew faster than services, while household consumption was weak, he noted. In breakdown, China's industrial output went up 3.6 percent year on year in 2022, while fixed-asset investment rose 5.1 percent year on year. Retail sales contracted 0.2 percent year on year in 2022. A total of 12.06 million new urban jobs were created last year, exceeding the annual target of 11 million. The Chinese people became more affluent in 2022, with per capita disposable income reaching 36,883 yuan, up 5 percent year on year in nominal terms. China's consumer prices posted a mild growth of 2 percent in 2022, in sharp contrast to the global spike. Tourists visit Nanqiang Street in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Oct. 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) So far, China has built the world's largest and most technologically advanced network infrastructure, and the industrial Internet has been widely integrated into 45 national economic categories. Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that innovation has been a bright spot in China's economy in recent years, despite headwinds due to COVID-19. New energy and digital industries have helped stabilize overall economic development. "The national economy continued to develop despite downward pressure, economic output reached a higher level, employment levels and prices were generally stable, people's lives had been continuously improved, new achievements were secured in high-quality development, while overall economic and social development was stable and healthy," said Kang. HOPES AHEAD When asked about China's economic outlook in 2023, Kang said the economy is bound to recover as the fundamentals of the Chinese economy -- its strong resilience, enormous potential, great vitality and long-term sustainability -- remained unchanged. Robots conduct welding work at the workshop of an automobile manufacturing factory in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Jan. 14, 2023. (Photo by Zhang Jingang/Xinhua) Citing a solid material foundation, vast market potential, strengthened new drivers of growth, the release of dividends of reform and opening-up, as well as rich experience in macro regulation, Kang said the Chinese economy is certain to see an overall improvement this year. Given the country's optimized epidemic response, Kang believed that consumption will revive this year. Final consumption contributed 32.8 percent to the GDP expansion in 2022. As for the property industry, Kang said it will have less drag on the economy in 2023 than in 2022. There is still room for China's property sector to grow, as the country's urbanization rate reached 65.22 percent in 2022 -- still much lower than the 80 percent found in developed countries, he said, while also pledging measures to support the demand of urban residents for home ownership and improved housing conditions. However, Kang also warned of possible risks in 2023, as the foundation of domestic economic recovery is not yet solid, while the domestic triple pressures of demand contraction, supply shock and weakening expectations, are still concerns. China will make economic stability its top priority and pursue progress, while ensuring stability this year, he said. "Shoring up confidence is crucial for economic recovery. In 2023, the worsening global economic situation needs China's steady growth as a stabilizer," Zhang Yansheng noted. (Video reporters: Sun Qing, You Zhixin, Jiang Tingting, Wei Yukun, Cheng Yunjie; Video editors: Zhou Yang, Zhang Yuhong, Wang Haiyan, Liu Ruoshi) Editor: WXY A koala is seen at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Breeders pose for a group photo with koalas from a family with seven generations at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Breeders pose for a group photo with koalas from a family with seven generations at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Koalas are seen at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) A breeder (C) holds baby koala "Baobao", the newborn seventh generation in a koala family, and its mother at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Breeders pose for a group photo with koalas from a family with seven generations at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Jan. 17, 2023. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) This photo taken on Jan. 17, 2023 shows koala "Taotao", a member of the first generation in a koala family at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The total of 66 koalas from a family in seven generations living at the park made a public appearance to greet their fans before the Spring Festival. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei) Editor: WXY A customs officer verifies the health tracking code of a passenger taking flight CZ309 from Beijing to Hong Kong at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. Among more than 100 passengers onboard the flight, a father returned to Hong Kong for a reunion with his children for the first time in three years. There was also a family of three who said they made travel plans via Hong Kong. "Finally, I can resume meeting with international business partners," said Sun Han working in the field of international finance, also a passenger on the flight. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. From Tuesday, several airline companies, including China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Capital Airlines, and Himalaya Airlines, resumed passenger flights on international routes via the Daxing airport. Also on Tuesday, the Daxing airport resumed the international flight transit service and the 144-hour transit visa-free policy in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, effectively promoting tourism and business activities in the city cluster. Kong Yue, deputy general manager of the Daxing airport, expected the country's civil aviation market to usher in a new season from March with the opening of more and more long-distance international air routes. The two major airports in Beijing expected the number of incoming and outgoing flights to surge 44 percent during the Spring Festival travel rush compared with the same period a year ago. China's Spring Festival travel rush kicked off on Jan. 7 this year after the country adjusted its COVID-19 response. Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on Jan. 22 this year. It is estimated that 62,000 flights will arrive at or depart from the Beijing Capital International Airport and the Beijing Daxing International Airport during the 40-day-long travel rush, according to the North China Regional Administration of the Civil Aviation Administration of China. China has eased COVID-related quarantine regulations and lifted restrictions on international flights. The Pudong International Airport on Jan. 8 saw the first international inbound flight after China adjusted the epidemic controls. A customs officer verifies the health tracking code of a passenger taking flight CZ309 from Beijing to Hong Kong at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) A passenger (R) is offered to pick small gifts before taking flight CZ309 at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) A passenger taking CZ309 flight from Beijing to Hong Kong goes through security check at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Photo by Liao Yulin/Xinhua) China Southern Airlines flight CZ309 bound for south China's Hong Kong takes off at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong) Passengers taking flight CZ309 from Beijing to Hong Kong check in at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) This photo taken on Jan. 17, 2023 shows an interior view of the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) Passengers taking flight CZ309 from Beijing to Hong Kong check in at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) This photo taken with a mobile phone shows passengers boarding flight CZ309 at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Pang Yuanyuan) China Southern Airlines flight CZ309 bound for south China's Hong Kong takes off at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong) Passengers taking flight CZ309 from Beijing to Hong Kong check in at the Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 17, 2023. With the take-off of the CZ309 flight to Hong Kong, the Beijing Daxing International Airport on Tuesday resumed the operation of international passenger flights after China continuously optimized COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control policies. As Beijing's newest airport, the Beijing Daxing International Airport became operational on September 25, 2019. From March 14, 2020, the airport's international flights were transferred to the Beijing Capital International Airport until the resumption, which was among Beijing's unified deployment of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Ren Chao) Editor: WXY Lingnan Flower Market in the Liwan district of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, is bustling as people plan to decorate their homes with festive flowers to celebrate the coming Spring Festival, which falls on Sunday. Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's, GMW.cn makes no representations as to accuracy, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information. Employees of a grain company dry corn at a facility in Heihe, Heilongjiang province. [Photo/Xinhua] The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences signed agreements with 19 global partners to share their germplasm knowledge last year as part of a broader effort to bolster international collaboration in agricultural science and technology, CAAS President Wu Kongming said on Monday. Wu said at the academy's annual work conference in Beijing that it had reached deals with the partners to advance exchanges in the field of G2P, or genome to phenome studies, which helps researchers predict and improve traits of important food strains. A total of 121 international cooperation projects were finalized last year on that front, a 50 percent increase year-on-year, and 16 of them were listed among the country's key intergovernmental research and development programs, he said. The increase in the sharing of the genetics of food species is part of a national effort to seek breakthroughs in germplasm to improve China's food security. Germplasm are genetic resources such as plant seeds or animal tissue that can be used to aid in the breeding of crops or livestock. "CAAS has worked to ramp up scientific and technological cooperation more openly and actively over the past year," Wu said. Last year also saw the creation of the CAAS-Food and Agriculture Organization Innovation Platform, which Wu said was one of the major moves made by the Chinese government to implement the Global Development Initiative proposed in 2021. The Global Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Alliance championed by the academy, which is still undergoing a deliberation process by the China Association for Science and Technology, has received applications from 34 domestic and 21 foreign institutions looking to participate, Wu said. Last year, CAAS also laid the groundwork for establishing the China-Africa Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Alliance and advanced the construction of joint laboratories in Kazakhstan, Romania and Uruguay, all participants in the Belt and Road Initiative. China has in recent years promoted the sharing of agricultural technologies to bolster world food security. At the sixth International Agricultural Research Conference held in December, Wu called on nations to share agricultural technologies to boost global food supply hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and regional conflicts. He added that some of China's quality species, such as hybrid rice, should be introduced to other countries to strengthen the world's food security. Speaking on Monday, Wu said CAAS's global influence has seen notable progress. As many as 116 CAAS researchers hold positions in international organizations or agencies, and 358 researchers serve as editors at influential global academic journals. CAAS has championed China's drive to bolster breakthroughs in agricultural science and technology as the nation grapples with limited arable land and water resources and an aging farming population. Data provided by CAAS showed that the number of academic papers written by its researchers jumped 30 percent over the last decade, while patents increased 92 percent over that period. Wu said the contribution rate of science and technology to agricultural production grew from 54.5 percent in 2012 to 61.5 in 2021, and the mechanization rate in crop planting and harvesting rose from 57 percent to 72 over the same period. "The overall strength of Chinese agricultural science and technology has reached a world-class level, and the number of highly cited agricultural papers and patent applications by China is the highest in the world," he said. At the annual central rural work conference in December, central authorities called for efforts to vigorously accelerate and promote the modernization of agriculture and rural areas. Wu said CAAS will be guided by the goal to promote high-level agricultural science and technology self-reliance, make all-out efforts to improve the overall efficiency of scientific and technological innovation, and strive to write a new chapter in the development of agricultural science. Editor: JYZ Oleksiy Chernyshov, head of NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine, announced active progress in negotiations on restructuring with holders of the company's eurobonds maturing in 2022 and 2026, which defaulted last year under the previous management. "We expect that in the coming weeks we will reach the so-called consent solicitation and restructure eurobonds 2022 and eurobonds 2026, and we will move forward," he told Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday in Davos on the sidelines of Ukraine House Davos organized by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Western NIS Enterprise Fund and Horizon Capital. Chernyshov, who took over the company early November, said the eurobond restructuring was among his three short-term goals, along with gas reserves for the winter and the selection and appointment of a new supervisory board, "which is also expected to be appointed by the end of January." After the opening of a permanent mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at Pivdennoukrainsk NPP, such missions began their work at Rivne NPP and in the Chornobyl NPP zone, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said. "IAEA continues to expand its presence in Ukraine. Today, I launched the IAEA Support and Assistance Mission in Chornobyl. Our experts will stay at all Ukrainian NPPs to provide vital nuclear safety and security assistance in these extremely difficult and challenging times," he said on Twitter. Earlier, the IAEA director general announced the opening of a mission at Rivne NPP. For its part, Rivne NPP said on Facebook that two IAEA experts on nuclear safety and security remain at the plant site for a permanent mission. "Their goal will be to continuously monitor and control the nuclear and radiation safety of the power plant. The members of the mission will report on any threats that military operations may pose, as well as liaise with the agency about the needs of the plant," the report explains. Rivne NPP Director General Pavlo Kovtoniuk expressed hope that permanent IAEA missions at NPP sites would not allow the aggressor country to violate the state of safety and physical protection of power plants. "Experts will also see the work of our personnel and equipment during possible attacks on the energy infrastructure. Our close relationship with the IAEA will emphasize the importance of safety issues for nuclear power plants by international institutions and the UN," commented Kovtoniuk. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is confident that after the World Economic Forum in Davos, the world will become more influential supporters of the creation of a tribunal for Russian aggression. "The work of the annual forum in Davos, a traditionally powerful global political and economic platform, began today. The world hears Ukraine in Davos, they know what Russia has done with Dnipro, they know what terrorists are doing with Kherson, Kharkiv, with our Donbas and other territories, on which Russia has brought death," he said in a video statement on Tuesday. "We are lobbying for increased global pressure on the terrorist state. I am sure that the result of this week in the world will be more active and influential supporters of the creation of a tribunal for Russian aggression and a special mechanism to compensate for losses from According to him, "the first lady of Ukraine presented the war at the expense of Russian assets," Zelensky said.today in Davos all the elements of our formula for peace, including the fundamental point on justice, and this includes the full responsibility of Russian terrorists for everything they have done." "And the world's support for our diplomatic initiative is very much felt. We are doing everything to make this support truly global and to ensure that all influential participants in international relations take steps to end Russian aggression and restore security," the president said. Kyiv administration's head: Number of people killed in helicopter crash in Brovary rises to 18, of which three are children Head of Kyiv Regional Military Administration Oleksiy Kuleba said that as of 10:30 on Wednesday, the number of people killed in the crash of the State Emergency Service helicopter in Brovary had increased to 18 people, three of whom were children. "As of 10:30, there are 18 dead, including three children. It is known about 29 wounded, including 15 children. All necessary assistance is being provided to the victims," the administration's head. Kuleba said operational services continue to work at the site of the helicopter crash. Employees of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine continue clearing debris at the site of the crash of the State Emergency Service helicopter on a kindergarten in Brovary, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. "Now the State Emergency Service continues its work on clearing the rubble. God forbid, of course, that there are no children or adults there, but still we are working quickly in order to get to the ceilings that fell in the kindergarten in one of the sections," Tymoshenko said during a conversation with reporters in Brovary on Wednesday. He said at the moment it is known about 18 dead, including three children, as well as more than 20 injured, some of whom are now in intensive care. The helicopter, according to Tymoshenko, flew on a business trip to one of the "hot spots." All nine people on board died, the rest of the dead were children and adults who were in kindergarten. By Yusif Abbaszada A popular maxim - a friend in need is a friend indeed - accurately renders the spirit and essence of the relations between the two time-tested old friends - Azerbaijan and Israel. In a recent remark on developing day-by-day ties between Baku and Tel Aviv, Azerbaijani MP Rufat Guliyev was upbeat about the further prospects for the augmenting of bilateral relations, expressing gratitude to both Israel and its citizens. The parliamentarian underscored that most of the people he knows speak positively about Israel as a country and appreciate the existing level of synergy. As is the case, Azerbaijan is a multicultural country with a large Jewish community, where, the year 2016 was recognized as the year of multiculturalism. It is beyond any doubt that the policy being pursued by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has turned out to be victorious and it is namely multiculturalism that opens up new doors of diplomacy for the country to expand the circle of friends internationally. The Jews are familiar with the centuries-old existence of the Jewish community in Azerbaijan: they are aware of the good attitude towards Jews in Azerbaijan and the latter, in its turn, is familiar with the way Azerbaijanis are treated in Israel. As a whole, the number of Jews in Azerbaijan totals 16,000 people: of 11,000 Mountain Jews, about 6,000 live in Baku, 4,000 - in Guba and Krasnaya Sloboda, and about 1,000 - in other cities. Moreover, there are 4,300 Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom live in Baku and Sumgayit, and around 700 Georgian Jews. Azerbaijan purchases state-of-the-art weapons from Israel, which always supports Azerbaijan at all platforms. Being in various countries of the world, I have always felt the strong support of the Jewish diaspora abroad. And I believe that our countries still have very large reserves and resources for building up bilateral cooperation particularly in the economic sphere, and in investments. Azerbaijan is interested in Israeli investments, new technologies, especially in the areas of agriculture and manufacturing. We see that there is a wide range of activities and we need to strengthen our relations further. I wish our new embassy, the ??distinguished ambassador, successes in developing relations with Israel. We must also be said that some of our unscrupulous neighbors inadequately perceived the intention of the Azerbaijani government to open an embassy in Israel. Azerbaijan and Israel are sovereign, independent, and self-sufficient nations. And we have the right to develop relations in any areas we wish. I hope that after the opening of the embassy, Azerbaijani-Israeli relations will continue to further expand. Azerbaijan and Israel have a past, a present, and a brilliant future, the MP said. It is a well-known secret that Azerbaijan's relations with Armenia remain tense with no sign of a peace deal on the horizon. The country needs faithful allies and friends with proven records. Today, Armenia is pursuing a clumsy policy of making enemies out of friends, which cannot be said about Azerbaijan, driven by the desire of strengthening diplomatic and friendly relations with its neighbors. As the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan said in one of his interviews, the relations between Baku and Tel Aviv are a vivid example of the depth and width of the ties at the grassroots level. I can tell you that one of the funny and most touching moments I had in my post in Azerbaijan was when I met a lady who told me that she had a baby born two years ago, after the second Karabakh war and she named her son Harop. So, that was an interesting moment that I did not expect. But naturally, Azerbaijan and Israel are strategic partners, so we take it seriously. We do not use the word `strategic' in vain, we do not use it for any country, when we say it we mean it. And in that respect, our partnership is deep and it crosses various fields. One of them is security and our position also with regard to the issue of Karabakh has been very clear that we support the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan full stop. And we also understand that Azerbaijan lives in a tough neighborhood, with neighbors who do not shy away from making threats, and neighbors who make public or implied threats to Azerbaijan's independence or territorial integrity, and as friends, our partnership will do everything to empower Azerbaijan to prevent any forces from that. That is as much as I can say about partnerships in the security field, the ambassador emphasized. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian people for a new package of defense assistance 200 Senator armored vehicles. On this difficult day for Ukraine, our friends continue to support us. Thank you Justin Trudeau and Canadian people for another defense aid package announced today in Kyiv by Minister of National Defence Anita Anand, Zelensky said on his Twitter Wednesday. Today the Ukrainian army needs 200 Senator APCs more than ever. Together we are moving towards victory! the president said. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand is paying a visit to Kyiv, during which she announced that Canada will transfer 200 Senator armored vehicles to Ukraine. Latvian Defense Minister Inara Murniece has paid a working visit to Kyiv this week, where she met with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, the heads of departments discussed the planned supplies of military support to Ukraine in the near future. "During the conversation with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, I confirmed the firm support of the government and the population of Latvia to Ukraine in this terrible war. In the near future, we will send new shipments of military support to Ukraine - Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, helicopters, machine guns with ammunition and drones. Latvia will continue training soldiers of different levels of the Armed Forces of Ukraine this year. The plans are to increase the intensity of training and train at least twice as many Ukrainians as in 2022, the press service of the Latvian Defense Ministry quoted Murniece as saying. She also stressed that the whole world admires the courage and dedication of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and civilians. During the visit, Murniece also met with representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in various formats, and also visited the Academy of the Land Forces of Ukraine in Lviv. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky believes that the helicopter crash in Brovary, which killed people, is a consequence of the war. "I think it's because of the experience of war that our society and I have today: It's not an accident, it's a war. The war is simply not only on the battlefield. The war has several directions. There are no more accidents, all this is the result of the war," he said on Wednesday, answering questions after his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "All these steps, everything that happens Missiles hitting our people at the civilian population. What happens when children die in kindergartens, schools. Who can spread the information that we were not aiming at the civilian population, but we wanted to hit the energy infrastructure, but it turned out that way or something else. These are just superfluous words. All this: every person and every death is the outcome of the war," Zelensky said. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba declared the unacceptability of lifting sanctions against Vladimir Putin's associates and called for making the tenth package of sanctions stronger and more effective. Hungary's proposals to lift sanctions against nine Putin associates are unacceptable. Instead, the 10th EU sanctions package should hit Russia and its war chest harder: severe sanctions on missile/drone industry, individuals, energy, banks, media and ICT, plus new sanctions on Iran, Kuleba said on Twitter Wednesday. The introduction of the tenth package of EU sanctions against Russia was announced on January 17 by head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. According to her, the tenth package will mainly focus on closing loopholes, ending circumventions [of sanctions] and have huge consequences for those who circumvent EU sanctions. Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, states that the decision to deprive Russia of the status of an IAEA member state does not depend on the will of the agency's director General. "The issue does not concern the capabilities and power of the Director General of the IAEA. In many bodies, which, like the IAEA, consist of many participants or members, political decisions are made when discussing, evaluating and accepting all member countries," he said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Kyiv on Wednesday, answering the question of the Interfax-Ukraine agency why Russia is still not deprived of the status of a member state of the IAEA and under what conditions it is possible. Grossi stressed that such a decision does not depend on his will. Duda urges allies to strengthen military support for Ukraine: Decisive moment of war will come soon Polish President Andrzej Duda calls on Ukraine's partners and allies to continue to strengthen military assistance to Ukraine, noting that within "a few months or weeks" there will be a decisive moment in the war. "I am afraid that now, maybe in a few months, maybe weeks, there will be a decisive moment of this war. And this moment is the answer to the question: if Ukraine will survive or not," Duda said at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) on Wednesday. He stressed that the weapons provided to Ukraine are still not enough, as the Russian army continues to accumulate forces, and are probably preparing for a new offensive. In particular, Duda stressed the need to provide the Ukrainian army with modern tanks and missiles. "Therefore, it is critically important to send additional military support now," the Polish head of state urged. The President added that he knows and understands Ukraine well, which "wants to become part of the Western community, part of the Western security zone." "They want to be members of the EU, members of NATO, but above all, they want to survive," he said. Duda stressed that "we need to help them." On Thursday, January 19, at 14.00, the press centre of the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency will host a press conference titled "Why Ukraine needs Union of Architects. Who wants to destroy it and why?" Participants include Chairman of the National Union of Architects of Ukraine Oleksandr Chyzhevsky; Deputy Chairman of the Architectural Chamber of the National Union of Architects of Ukraine Hanna Kyriy; lawyer Yaroslav Yatsenko; human rights activist of the National Union of Architects of Ukraine Ihor Hets (8/5a Reitarska Street). The event will be streamed on the Interfax-Ukraine YouTube channel. Admission of journalists requires registration on the spot. Details by phone: (050) 351 5277. Egypt's Public Prosecution ordered an autopsy on the body of a 42-year-old bank manager who died on Sunday nearly six weeks after being attacked by his neighbour's Pit Bull to determine the direct cause of death. Egypt has accused Ethiopia of attempting to "buy time" to continue filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam unilaterally without reaching a deal, while also emphasising that Addis Ababas continued claim of Egyptian "politicisation" of the GERD issue is an attempt to "evade legal responsibility." Representatives from nine Arab countries will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Friday to discuss their stance and moves to end the decade-long isolation of President Bashar Al-Assad, Arab diplomats said Tuesday. Newly-appointed Director of the United Airports of Georgia Irakli Karkashadze said that the development of Kutaisi International Airport in the countrys west would be a main priority of the body under his leadership, Azertnews reports per Georgian media. During his meeting with the employees of the airport and representatives of the contractor company and partner organizations operating at the airport, the director introduced his future plans for the development of the facility. In his comments, he also said the airport, which serves the western hub city, had great potential and future, and explained plans to transform it into a regional leader. Karkashadze also named strengthening the UAG regulatory body, which he said was moving into a new stage of development, and turning Georgian airline industry into a commercially profitable business among priorities. The director also said the airline sector should become one of the leading branches of the country's economic strengthening and development. Saudi Arabia on Monday denied a report that oil producers were discussing a production increase for their next meeting, saying a cut approved last month would stay in place until the end of 2023. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Monday that Saudi Arabia, which co-leads the OPEC+ cartel along with Russia, and other members were considering an "increase of up to 500,000 barrels a day". But the official Saudi Press Agency said on Monday night that energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman "categorically denies" the report. "It is well known, and no secret, that OPEC+ does not discuss any decisions ahead of its meetings," SPA quoted Prince Abdulaziz as saying. The next OPEC+ meeting is scheduled for December 4. An increase in production would partially reverse the cut of two million barrels per day announced by the bloc in October. That move heightened tensions between Riyadh and Washington, its longtime ally, which derided it as akin to "aligning with Russia" in the Ukraine war. More oil output would also come when prices are already falling. World oil prices plunged more than five percent on Monday, reaching the lowest levels since January, on forecasts of a hit to Chinese demand. Saudi officials have vigorously defended the recent production cut in the face of criticism from Washington, saying it was driven purely by market conditions and could change as the market changed. Prince Abdulaziz reiterated that position on Monday. "The current cut of 2 million barrels per day by OPEC+ continues until the end of 2023 and if there is a need to take further measures by reducing production to balance supply and demand, we always remain ready to intervene," he said. Search Keywords: Short link: President Vladimir Putin on Monday slammed Kyiv's "destructive" policies and growing Western arms supplies to Ukraine in a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Kremlin said. Putin said Kyiv was pursuing "a destructive line" and that it had "bet on the intensification of hostilities with the support of Western sponsors, who are ramping up supplies of weapons and military equipment," the Kremlin said. He also accused Kyiv of rejecting his offer to halt fighting on Christmas Day which is marked on January 7 in Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine at the time dismissed the halt as a Russian ploy to gain time to regroup forces. Britain this weekend pledged 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, which would make it the first Western country to supply heavy tanks following pleas from Kyiv. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meanwhile said this weekend that Ukraine could expect more heavy weapons following Kyiv's requests. The Turkish presidency for its part said that "President Erdogan reiterated that Turkey is ready to facilitate and mediate the establishment of a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine." The Kremlin also said Putin and Erdogan discussed an exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war, including wounded soldiers. Search Keywords: Short link: Ukrainian soldiers have arrived in the United States to learn how to use the Patriot air defense system in hopes of protecting against Russian missile strikes like one that just killed 40 people in the city of Dnipro. The Ukrainian personnel arrived Sunday evening at Fort Sill in the state of Oklahoma for training at the US Army Air Defense Artillery School, Colonel Curtis King of that facility said in a video posted on Twitter. Washington promised a Patriot battery, it fires missiles to take out missiles -- to Ukraine late last year to help counter relentless aerial attacks by Moscow. This was a significant victory for Kyiv, which had repeatedly pushed the United States for the system as the war launched by Moscow almost a year ago grinds on. King did not say how many Ukrainian troops are in Oklahoma, but the Pentagon said earlier this month that 90 to 100 would come to America to learn how to operate and maintain the Patriot system in a course lasting several months. Air defenses have played a key role in protecting Ukraine from strikes and preventing Moscow's forces from gaining control of the skies. But as Russia faced increasing setbacks on the ground, it began systematically targeting critical infrastructure in Ukraine in attacks that have disrupted electricity, water and heat to millions of people. It has also hit purely civilian structures. A Russian missile strike Sunday on an apartment building in Dnipro in central Ukraine killed at least 40 people. Russia denied it was responsible for one of the deadliest single attacks since the war began. Made by Raytheon, the MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile system initially developed to intercept high-flying aircraft. It was modified in the 1980s to focus on the new threat of tactical ballistic missiles, and was used in combat against Iraq's Russian-made Scud missiles in the first Gulf War. The Patriot has been proven effective in Saudi Arabia against Iranian-designed ballistic missiles fired from Yemen. Raytheon says the system has intercepted more than 150 ballistic missiles in combat since 2015. Search Keywords: Short link: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday his war-torn country had received the first instalment of an 18-billion-euro loan from the European Union to get through 2023. Russia's invasion has devastated Ukraine's economy, with the former Soviet country relying on Western donors to shore up the economy. "Ukraine received the 1st EUR3 billion from the new EUR18 billion macro-financial program," Zelensky said on Twitter. He thanked the European Union and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for their "strong support". He said preserving Ukraine's financial stability "is vital for our joint victory over the aggressor." The EU voted in mid-December in favour of the new economic support package after bitter discussions between member states. Under the plan, the bloc will send Kyiv 1.5 billion euros per month in the form of 35-year loans, with interest payments covered by the European Union, to support Ukraine's government in the face of the Russian invasion. Under the terms of the loan, Ukraine, which hopes to join the EU, is required to continue anti-corruption and judicial reforms. According to the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian think tank, the total amount of Western military and financial support for Kyiv could total $100 billion in 2023, including more than $40 billion for its armed forces. Search Keywords: Short link: During their trilateral summit in Cairo on Tuesday, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and King of Jordan Abdullah II stressed that all Israeli illegitimate unilateral actions that undermine the two-state solution and the chances of achieving fair and comprehensive peace must stop. These actions include settlement, confiscation of Palestinian land, demolition of homes, the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the ongoing Israeli incursions into Palestinian cities, according to the Egyptian Presidency Spokesman. The three leaders called on the International community to protect the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights. They urged all relevant parties to intensify the efforts to relaunch peace negotiations between the Israelis and palestenians to resolve the Palestinian issue based on the two-state solution. Sisi, Abu Mazen and King Abdullah II agreed on the necessity to safeguard legitimate Palestinian rights and to establish an independent Palestinian state on 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in line with international laws, related United Nations Security Council resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. They warned of the continuing absence of a political solution to the Palestinian issue and the repercussions such absence has on security and stability. Jerusalem status The constant violations of the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its holy sites were among the main issues discussed in the summit meeting in Cairo. The three leaders stressed the need to preserve the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian holy sites in a way that guarantees the designation of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, Al-Haram Al-Sharif, and its entire area of 144 dunums (144,000 square metres) as an exclusively Muslim place of worship. The Jordanian Ministry of Endowment and Islamic affairs and Holy Places must also be designated as the only place that manages the Mosques affairs and regulates access to it. Earlier on Tuesday, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry summoned the Israeli ambassador to Amman to protest a move by the Israeli police to block the Jordanian ambassador to Israel, Ghassan Majali, from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound earlier. This is the second time Jordan has summoned the Israeli ambassador to Amman since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-wing and religiously conservative government took power. Earlier this month, Israel's minister of national security, the ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir, violated international law by entering the Jerusalem holy site; a move which angered the Palestinians and set off a cascade of condemnations from across the Arab world. Abdullah and Abu Mazen also praised Egyptian efforts to keep the truce in the Gaza strip and to continue its reconstruction. They also praised Egypt's affirmation of the responsibility of international donors towards reconstruction efforts in Gaza as well as the support Egypt provides for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in aiding palestinian refugees. According to the Egyptian Presidency, both El-Sisi and Abu Mazen reaffirmed the importance of the historical Hashemite sole custodianship over Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and its role in protecting these holy sites and their Arab, Islamic and Christian identity. They also stressed the importance of unifying Palestinian factions and ending any division that might undermine their efforts in defending their cause. Search Keywords: Short link: The Arab leaders made the remarks on Wednesday during a summit in Abu Dhabi under the title Prosperity and Stability in the Region, a statement by the official Bahrain News Agency (BNA) read. El-Sisi, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, Jordans King Abdullah II, Omans Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, Bahrains King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and Qatars Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani partook in the meeting. Saudi Arabia, the host of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC+3) summit in July last year, and Kuwait did not attend the meeting. During the summit, the leaders said Arab cooperation and building developmental and economic partnerships is the main entry for achieving development and creating a better future for the Arab peoples. They also stressed the importance of adhering to the rules of good neighbourliness and respect of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region. The leaders also discussed a number of regional and international issues and developments of mutual concern as well as the political, security, and economic challenges in the region. The summit aimed at consolidating and deepening cooperation between the six countries in the fields that serve development, prosperity and stability in the region through further joint work, cooperation, and regional integration, BNA said. The meeting came a day after a summit that brought together El-Sisi and King Abdullah of Jordan with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo. The leaders of Egypt, the UAE, and Jordan have intensified meetings over the past year to discuss cooperation and economic integration amid the ongoing global challenges. The three countries, together with Bahrain, are also bound by an industrial partnership initiative, concerned with implementing joint multi-billion investments in many key sectors. The summit also came amid failure to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, which would help curb Irans nuclear ambitions. In a tweet this week, Bahrains king warned of a possible Israeli attack against Iranian targets that may destabilise the region in the event of failure to revive the nuclear deal. The Abu Dhabi summit also comes amid Israeli escalation in the West Bank under the new extreme-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu and proposed Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley, a step that will certainly draw Arab and international rejection. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has issued a decree pardoning some inmates on the occasion of the January 25 Revolution and the national Police Day anniversary. The decree was published in the official gazette on Wednesday. No further details have been released about the number or identity of the pardoned inmates. Egypt has released thousands of inmates by presidential pardon in recent years on different national and religious occasions. Wednesday 25 January marks the twelfth anniversary of the 2011 revolution that ousted late president Hosni Mubarak. It also marks Police Day, which commemorates resistance by Egyptian police against British occupation forces in Ismailia in 1952. The presidential pardons on national and religious occasions are separate from the activity of the Presidential Pardon Committee. Formed in 2016, the Presidential Pardon Committee is mandated to review the cases of those imprisoned for political crimes and others who meet certain conditions, such as families who have more than one relative in jail. El-Sisi announced the revival of the committee during the annual Egyptian Family Iftar Banquet in April 2022, while also calling for holding a national dialogue between political forces without discrimination or exception. More than 1,000 pretrial detainees have been released and 12 convicts have been pardoned since the re-activation of the Presidential Pardon Committee. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt has appointed or transferred 125 municipal officials across 25 governorates in the country's annual municipal reshuffle, Minister of Local Development Hisham Amna announced on Wednesday. The reshuffle included 58 new appointments and 67 transfers of mayors, the ministry said in a statement. The reshuffle is part of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi's directives to overhaul municipal services and includes the first-ever woman secretary-general among eight newly appointed secretary-generals. In a press conference announcing the reshuffle, Amna instructed the officials to clear obstacles in the way of implementing the Decent Life initiative, which, according to the presidency, aims to "provide a decent life for the most vulnerable groups nationwide." The minister also said the officials should address building violations, garbage collection and transgressions on state property. The minister stressed that municipal officials should be present to respond the people's demands and hold weekly meetings with constituents. Municipal services have seen significant investments, the most recent of which was EGP 12.3 billion spent on overhauling municipal services in 2022, according to official statements. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly has designated Thursday 26 January a paid day off for the anniversary of the 25 January Revolution as well as Egypt's Police Day. This marks the twelfth anniversary of the 2011 revolution that ousted late president Hosni Mubarak. It also marks Police Day which commemorates the massacre of 50 Egyptian policemen by British occupation forces in Ismailia in 1952. Egypt recently made Thursday an alternative day off for official holidays that fall midweek in order to give citizens a longer weekend. The decision, which was first introduced on the seventh anniversary of the 30 June revolution in 2020, applies to all national holidays except for Eid Al-Fitr, Eid Al-Adha, and Christmas. The day off applies to employees in ministries, government institutions, public authorities, local administration units, public sector companies and public business sector companies. Search Keywords: Short link: Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and Swiss President Alain Berset discussed the close cooperation and friendly relations between the two countries both in bilateral and multilateral formats, Azernews reports per Georgian media. The meeting discussed the importance of Switzerlands long-term contribution to the development of various directions of Georgias ambitious reform agenda. Notably, the meeting was hosted at the ongoing World Economic Forum in Davos, with the sides expressing readiness for further deepening of bilateral trade and economic cooperation between the countries, the Government Administration said. Garibashvili hailed the fact that several Swiss companies have been successfully operating in Georgia for many years and stressed the importance of making trade and investment cooperation between the countries even more attractive for Swiss entrepreneurs. New York-based Columbia university announced on Wednesday that Egyptian-born figure Minouche Shafik would become its first-woman president next summer. Nemat {Minouche} Shafik, a leading economist whose career has focused on public policy and academia, will become the next president of Columbia University on July 1, 2023, Columbia University said adding that her election by the board of trustees as the Universitys 20th president concluded a wide-ranging and intensive search launched after the University's Current President Lee C. Bollinger announced that he would step down at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year. Shafik will become the 20th president of the famous American educational institution. Minouche Shafik was appointed director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in September 2017. She also served as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England prior to her appointment as LSE Director in 2017. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeths Birthday Honours list in 2015, and in July 2020 was created a baroness, becoming a crossbench peer in the UKs House of Lords. Shafiks successful portfolio includes leading roles such as Vice President of the World Bank, where she became the youngest VP in the history of the bank, and Permanent Secretary of the UK Department for International Development and Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Born in Alexandriam her childhood in Egypt was brief though, as she left the country for the US when she was four. She later returned to the country briefly as a teenager, according to interviews. She holds a BSc in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and an MSc in economics at LSE before completing a PhD in economics at St Antonys College at the University of Oxford. Her doctorate thesis was on the role of the private sector and the public sector in Egypt. Search Keywords: Short link: Foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid has expressed Egypts condolences to Ukraine over the death of the country's interior minister and a number of other top officials in a helicopter crash on Wednesday. Abu Zeid expressed Egypts sympathy to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to those injured in the crash. The helicopter crash in a Kyiv suburb killed 18 people, including three children, Ukrainian authorities said. There is no immediate word on whether the crash was an accident or a result of the war with Russia, according to AFP. No fighting has been reported recently in the Kyiv area. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yurii Lubkovych were among those killed, according to Ihor Klymenko, chief of Ukraine's National Police. Monastyrskyi, who was in charge of the Ukrainian police and other emergency services, is the most senior Ukrainian official to have died since the start of the war with Russia almost 11 months ago. Nine of those killed were aboard the emergency services helicopter that crashed in Brovary, an eastern suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Klymenko said. Search Keywords: Short link: Mass graves containing the bodies of 49 civilians have been discovered in northeastern Congo after a series of weekend attacks blamed on a local militia, the United Nations said Wednesday. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York that the graves had been uncovered in two villages in Ituri province, about (19 miles) 30 kilometers east of the town of Bunia. A total of 42 victims, including six children, had been discovered in a mass grave in the village of Nyamamba, while the bodies of seven other men were found in another village, Mbogi, Haq added. "Peacekeepers launched a patrol to the area immediately after receiving reports of attacks on civilians by the CODECO militias over the weekend. This is when they made the gruesome discoveries,'' Haq said in New York. Local authorities have said that CODECO _ Cooperative for the Development of Congo _ militants also abducted a number of women during the attacks on the villages. Last June, seven CODECO factions announced an end to violence against civilians in Ituri, mainly in the Djugu territory where they were very active. Yet they have gradually resumed with attacks in the area. At least 195 people have been killed since December in a series of attacks blamed on the CODECO militia and other armed groups, the U.N. said. More than 1.5 million people in Ituri province have been displaced by fighting. Search Keywords: Short link: A helicopter crash in a Kyiv suburb Wednesday killed 18 people, including Ukraine's interior minister and three children, Ukrainian authorities said. There was no immediate word on whether the crash was an accident or a result of the war with Russia. No fighting has been reported recently in the Kyiv area. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yurii Lubkovych were among those killed, according to Ihor Klymenko, chief of Ukraine's National Police. Monastyrskyi, who was in charge of the Ukrainian police and other emergency services, is the most senior Ukrainian official to have died since the start of the war with Russia almost 11 months ago. Nine of those killed were aboard the emergency services helicopter that crashed in Brovary, an eastern suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Klymenko said. Kyiv Regional Governor Oleksii Kuleba said three children were also killed. Earlier, officials and media reports said the helicopter crashed near a kindergarten. A total of 29 people were injured, including 15 children, the regional governor said. ``For now, we are considering all possible versions of the helicopter crash accident,'' Ukraine's prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said on Telegram. The Security Service of Ukraine is carrying out the investigation, he said. Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska dabbed teary eyes before attending a World Economic Forum session in Davos, Switzerland, as she heard the news that a helicopter carrying Ukraine's interior minister and other officials crashed in Ukraine. Forum President Borge Brende requested 15 seconds of silence Wednesday to honor the 18 people killed in the crash, including Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi and other officials, before the opening session. Zelenska said it was ``another very sad day today. New losses.`` She told those attending the session: ``I think you understand my emotions. Perhaps they're a little bit out of place in the political and economic dialogue, but I am sure that just as the war has changed the whole world, it has also changed all of our dialogue. We can also change this negative situation for the better.'' Her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is scheduled to speak via video later in the day as the Ukrainian delegation pushes for more weapons from international allies. Search Keywords: Short link: The new head of the International Committee of the Red Cross will visit Moscow this week, following a visit last month to conflict-ravaged Ukraine, the organisation said Wednesday. "ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric is visiting Moscow this week to discuss urgent humanitarian concerns", including the sensitive subject of ensuring regular visits to prisoners of war, it said in a statement. "The ICRC also stands ready to play a neutral intermediary role for the exchange of prisoners and for any other humanitarian initiative, at the request of the parties," it said. During the visit on Thursday and Friday, Spoljaric, who took the ICRC reins in October, is scheduled to meet with government officials and the Russian Red Cross. Contacted by AFP, spokeswoman Jennifer Sparks refrained from providing details on which government officials Spoljaric would meet, and would not say if President Vladimir Putin was on the list. The visit will follow her mission to Ukraine in December, "where she met with government officials, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, associations of families of prisoners of war (POW) and interned civilians, and communities that are suffering from the international armed conflict," ICRC said. The organisation stressed that "a critical priority for president Spoljaric is to ensure that prisoners of war on both sides receive regular visits from the ICRC and are treated humanely in line with international humanitarian law." "Unimpeded and regular access" Visiting POWs is core to the ICRC's mission enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, which define the laws of war. The ICRC has been repeatedly criticised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the ultra-sensitive subject of POW visits. He has accused the organisation of not pushing hard enough to gain access to Ukrainian troops captured by Russian forces. Speaking to reporters last month, Spoljaric stressed the difficulty of the task and the dangers facing ICRC teams on the ground when visiting prisoners. "If the ICRC doesn't come, it is not a choice," she insisted. "We have to receive adequate guarantees and competent reassurances that our convoys will not be hit while trying to get to these facilities." The ICRC has long complained that it lacks sufficient access to those held by the warring parties. In Wednesday's statement, the organisation said it had "been visiting prisoners of war on both sides, but is urgently seeking full, unimpeded, and regular access to all, wherever they are held." "These visits enable ICRC teams to monitor conditions of detention and treatment of the prisoners, share much-awaited news with their families and provide items such as blankets, warm clothes, personal hygiene items, and books," it pointed out. Beyond Russia's war in Ukraine, Spoljaric will also discuss other situations of concern during her visit, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Syria and the Sahel region, ICRC said. Search Keywords: Short link: The costs of reconciliation with the Al-Assad regime without a reformed Syria will weigh on the region for generations. When the series of anti-government uprisings swept the Arab world toppling despots like dominoes reached Syria, the rule of Bashar Al-Assad and his authoritarian Baath Party seemed to be coming to a close. Twelve years on, however, Al-Assad has defied predictions of his fall and has survived international isolation and the temporary loss of two-thirds of Syrias territory to claw his way back into the spotlight and reinforce his hold on power. A debate is even now raging on whether Al-Assad should be given the chance of re-integrating his regime with the rest of the region and whether normalisation with Damascus can continue despite the continuing plight of the Syrian people. The debate has drawn global and regional attention, with stakeholders from many spheres, ranging from Al-Assads friends and supporters in Iran and Russia to sceptical Arab powerhouses in the region, trying to weigh in on the outcome of any possible reconciliation in their respective domains. Anti-Assad factions in Syria are united in their opposition to rehabilitating the regime, with some instead girding themselves for long-term resistance amid fears that the move could risk reviving the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Syria. News has been circulating in recent weeks that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking a rapprochement with Al-Assad as part of his bid to give Turkeys zero problems strategy another go, while jettisoning his own ambitions to play a leadership role in the region. Erdogan is working closely with Russia, which has been a dominant military force in Syria since 2015 and has been helping to maintain the Assad regime in power. The war in Ukraine has pushed Turkey closer to Russia, and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February the countries have increased their political and economic cooperation. The Turkish, Syrian, and Russian foreign ministers were widely reported to be meeting this week in the highest-level talks between Ankara and Damascus since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 and signalling a further thaw in ties. Erdogan has also floated the idea of a meeting being in the works with Al-Assad after talks between the Syrian and Turkish defence ministers and chiefs of intelligence on 28 December in Moscow. We will come together as leaders according to the developments that take place, Erdogan said. Turkey has been the main backer of the opposition groups in Syria for more than a decade, and its recent move to publicly recognise his rule over Syria and work to rebuild diplomatic, security, and trade ties with Damascus marks a strategic shift in Ankaras regional policies. In return, Erdogan is setting preconditions for a deal with Al-Assad that will prioritise Turkeys security and contribute to gaining the best possible negotiating position for the country, thus boosting Erdogans position before the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey that are slated to take place possibly in May. Among Erdogans key demands are security arrangements for the Kurdish-controlled north of Syria that Turkey claims is being used by the Kurdish separatist group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to launch attacks against security forces inside Turkey. Erdogan wants to secure a promise from Al-Assad to dismantle the de facto Kurdish autonomous administration in northern and eastern Syria, especially its military wing the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), and allow Turkey to establish a 30 km security zone along the border inside the enclave. Ankara also favours Syrian government forces taking control of another area that is currently under the control of Turkey-backed opposition factions and other rebels, including an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group, as part of any future peace agreement in Syria. Erdogan has repeatedly warned of a Turkish ground offensive in northern Syria aimed at pushing back the YPG, something which threatens to escalate tensions in a region where US troops are present to support, arm, and train US-friendly Syrians in fighting IS. Another key demand is to send back millions of Syrians who took refuge in Turkey following the crackdown on the 2011 uprising that has now killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions, and drawn in regional and world powers. Erdogans overture is receiving clear support from Russian President Vladimir Putin and also the nod from the Iranian leadership that wants to see Assads relations with the rest of the region repaired. In addition, Al-Assads rehabilitation is backed by the UAE, which is boosting its regional partnerships through active diplomacy. Nevertheless, Ankaras outreach to Assad has given rise to many objections, reservations, and doubts, calling into question Erdogans attempt to overcome Turkeys problems with its neighbours before its domestic elections. Syrian opposition groups, most of them based in Turkey, have reacted cautiously to Erdogans gestures, but mass demonstrations also erupted in the rebel-held northwest of Syria after Turkish officials unveiled plans to reconnect with the Al-Assad regime. Leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group that dominates the regions rebel groups Abu Mohamed Al-Julani dismissed the Turkish move as a dangerous deviation and has said that his group is prepared for a long battle against Syrian government forces. Significantly, the US has also announced that it is not supportive of countries re-establishing ties with Al-Assad. We have made clear that we will not normalise and we do not support other countries normalising with the Al-Assad regime, said US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price last Thursday. The US, which severed relations with the Syrian government following the 2011 uprising, has authorised broad penalties against anyone, Syrian or foreign, who provides support for the regimes military operations or knowingly does business with the Syrian government. The Kurdish media outlet Basnews reported on Friday that Washington has been bolstering its cooperation with Assads opponents in areas of Syria under the control of its Kurdish allies. It said the US has increased its supply of weapons and logistical supplies to Arab tribes in the Kurdish enclave in Syria in order to encourage them to join the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Apart from the UAE, most Arab countries that endorsed an Arab League resolution to suspend Syrias membership of the 22-member group in 2011 remain opposed to the Al-Assad regimes rehabilitation. Attempts to invite Al-Assad to an Arab League summit meeting in Algiers in November last year were torpedoed by several Arab countries that have been among the fiercest critics of the Syrian regime and fear that Assads rehabilitation will strengthen Irans hand in Syria. Two regional heavyweights, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have called for a political solution to the Syrian crisis in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2245, which calls for support for a Syrian-led political resolution, and renewed support for the UN special representative for Syria. In a joint statement on Thursday following a meeting of a joint policy coordinating committee, the two countries stressed the need for maintaining Syrias independence and its territorial integrity and the return of Syrian refugees and displaced persons to their homes. But while Erdogan seems to be desperate to change the course of his faltering policy in Syria, Al-Assad has showed signs of outmanoeuvring a Turkish leader who once called him a terrorist who had killed close to a million of his own citizens, adding that it would be impossible to make peace efforts with him. In his first publicly reported remarks on the suggested meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Al-Assad said any talks should be based on the aim of ending the occupation of Syrian territory and halting support for what he called terrorism, a reference to Turkeys presence in northern Syria and its support for the opposition. The comments resonated in Ankara, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quick to respond on Thursday that a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad was not scheduled for this week as had previously been reported but could take place early in February. Much uncertainty remains regarding a quick fix to the Syrian-Turkish breakup and a possible collective normalisation with the Al-Assad regime. The current situation in Syria serves to confirm the apparent impossibility of the country reconnecting with the world without Assad offering meaningful concessions. While the horrors of the brutal crackdown by the Al-Assad regime on protesters, such as torture, rape, extrajudicial killing, the dropping of barrel bombs, and the deaths of up to half a million people, still haunt Syria, Al-Assad has showed no signs of introducing reasonable political reforms or engaging in serious dialogue with his opponents. With millions of Syrians still living in exile or displaced internally, the political and armed opposition to Al-Assad is still showing its resilience in mobilising against the regime. Significant areas are under opposition control in northern Syria, and winning them back will be a huge challenge for the regime. In many parts of Syria, the regime has failed to win the hearts and minds of the local population, especially among the countrys Sunni Arab majority who have no illusions about the ability of the regime to change and remain opposed to the rule of Assads Alawite minority group. Even the Druze, Syrias fourth-largest religious and ethnic minority, are seeing their constituencies in eastern Syria witnessing declines in security and sometimes also a lack of a government presence. The Syrian Kurds, an ethnic minority of about three million people who succeeded in establishing an autonomous enclave in northern Syria after the uprising began, are determined to enjoy federal rule in their areas as part of any future political settlement in Syria, something which the regime has rejected thus far. Among the main hurdles to readmitting the Al-Assad regime into the regional system is Irans military and security presence and political influence in Syria. Irans increasing role in Syria has broken the regional order, and the main Arab powers and Israel will continue to press for decoupling Damascus from Tehran prior to any rehabilitation. Erdogan aims by opening up to Al-Assad to manage his own domestic problems in Turkey, but such a policy shift without the broad support of the Syrian people and a common regional strategy amounts to appeasement of Al-Assad, and it will inevitably create more problems than it solves. *A version of this article appears in print in the 19 January, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly. Search Keywords: Short link: "We believe Mr Vandecasteele has been arbitrarily deprived of his liberty and is a victim of enforced disappearance for periods of detention," a group of eight independent experts said in a statement. The experts, including the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in Iran, and members of the working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances, warned that the aid worker's "right to a fair trial before an independent and impartial tribunal has been violated". "These are flagrant violations of Iran's obligations under international law," they said. Vandecasteele, 41, was last week handed multiple sentences totalling 40 years on a range of charges, including "espionage", but with the sentences to run concurrently he will serve 12 and a half years in jail, the judiciary's Mizan Online website reported. He was also sentenced to 74 lashes. Iran arrested Vandecasteele in February 2022, and he has since been held in conditions that Belgium's government has described as "inhumane". Supporters of Vandecasteele and rights groups contend he is being held as part of Iran's "hostage diplomacy", an effort by Tehran to get Belgium to release an Iranian diplomat incarcerated for terrorism. In Tuesday's statement, the experts, who are appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the world body, maintained that Vandecasteele had suffered ill-treatment in detention, warning that his health condition was "critical". They also said he had been denied access to a lawyer, was not permitted to communicate regularly with his family and also only had limited access to Belgian consular services. Last November, 10 months after his arrest, he launched a two-week hunger strike. Citing reports, the experts said the Belgian had lost 15 kilograms (33 pounds) and "suffers from serious health problems". "We are gravely concerned over the mental and physical health of Mr. Vandecasteele and call on the Iranian authorities to release him and guarantee his physical and psychological wellbeing," they said. As of last October, at least 21 foreign and dual nationals were detained in Iran, primarily on espionage charges, they said. Among them was British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, whose execution last Saturday, sparked international outrage. The experts said they were "appalled by Akbari's execution", pointing out that he was reportedly tortured and "forced to make false confessions." They also called on Tehran to "end the institutionalised practice of hostage-taking and to release the many foreign and dual nationals who remain arbitrarily detained." Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc resigned Tuesday, becoming the most senior member of the government to step down after a series of high-profile corruption scandals for which he was held responsible. The state Vietnam News Agency reported that he had resigned at a session of the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee that was held "to consider and give opinions on Comrade Nguyen Xuan Phuc's wish to stop holding positions, quit work and retire." The language of the announcement strongly suggested that he was forced to step down. Phuc, 68, began serving in government at the provincial level in 1979 and took his first position in national government in 2006. He joined the Politburo, the highest-ranking party body, in 2011, and was prime minister from 2016 to 2021, when he was elected president by the National Assembly. The post of president in Vietnam is largely ceremonial. The most powerful position, Communist Party general secretary, is currently held by Nguyen Phu Trong, who in 2021 won a rare third five-year term in office. His hallmark has been a long-running anti-corruption campaign, which in his second term targeted two former Cabinet ministers and Hanoi's former mayor. Many Koreans are heading overseas for the Lunar New Year holiday as travel demand gradually recovers from the stupor of the coronavirus pandemic. At travel agency Hana Tour, around 15,000 people booked tickets for a holiday abroad from Jan. 20 to 24, about half the level of the Lunar New Year 2020 just before the pandemic began and up around 5.7 times from the last locked-down Chuseok in September A Hana Tour staffer said, "This is the first time that I sense a full-fledged recovery of overseas travel demand since the pandemic." At rival Mode Tour 13,000 people booked overseas tickets for the period, a 90-fold increase from a year ago. "Demand could return this year to levels seen before the pandemic," a staffer said. Turkiye and Iran support Syria's territorial integrity and political unity, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavushoglu said at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian in Ankara on Tuesday, Azernews reports citing Daily Sabah. The two foreign ministers touched upon the recent contacts between the two neighbors, as Cavu?o?lu said they are planning a meeting at the foreign ministry level. Although no date or place has been decided yet, Turkiye, Syria and Russia hope to organize a meeting between their foreign ministers this month. Powerful NATO member Turkiye has played a major part in the conflict, backing Bashar Assad's opponents and sending troops into the north. Moscow is Assad's main ally and Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged reconciliation with Ankara. For his part, Amirabdollahian said Iran is very pleased by the thaw in Ankara's ties with Syria. Meanwhile, Cavusho?lu criticized Sweden's failure to take action against Erdogan effigy incident by PKK/YPG terrorists, calling it "absurd." "This is terrorist propaganda," he said, adding that if Sweden thinks it is wasting Turkiye's time through wordplays, they should know that they're deceiving themselves. He continued by saying that the terrorist propaganda by the YPG/PKK included hate speech and racism, and that Turkiye would proceed by taking into consideration the trilateral memorandum signed with Sweden and Finland. Samsung on Tuesday introduced its latest 200-megapixel image sensor, the Isocell HP2, which will be embedded in its newest flagship smartphones to provide the ultimate high-resolution experience. The sensor will be a key component in the camera of the Galaxy S23 smartphone set to be unveiled next month. Each pixel of the sensor can utilize more light than its predecessor, allowing rich color reproduction and clear photos even in low-light environments, according to the company. Korea's homegrown KF-21 Boramae fighter jet succeeded in its first supersonic flight on Tuesday, six months after its maiden flight. Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup called it a historic feat, saying, "We now have our first supersonic aircraft we've developed with our own technology." The KF-21 has been Korea's biggest-ever defense project and cost W18 trillion (US$1=W1,241). The prototype reached a speed of Mach 1 or about 1,224 km/h around 3:15 p.m. after taking off from the Air Force's 3rd Flying Training Wing in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province at 2:58 p.m., according to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration. It broke the sound barrier three times at an altitude of 12,200 m over the South Sea before landing at 3:54 p.m. KYODO NEWS - Jan 18, 2023 - 21:54 | All, Japan An appeals court on Wednesday upheld an acquittal of three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. who were accused of failing to prevent the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan. The Tokyo High Court decision followed a Tokyo District Court ruling in 2019 that found former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 82, along with Ichiro Takekuro, 76, and Sakae Muto, 72, both former vice presidents, could not have predicted the massive tsunami that crippled the power plant and led to core meltdowns. The ruling cleared the defendants of professional negligence resulting in deaths and injuries. "There was no foreseeability that tsunamis higher than 10-meters would strike," Presiding Judge Keisuke Hosoda said. "The district court's ruling, which did not recognize that duty of care should be given, is appropriate." The trial focused on whether the former executives should have foreseen the massive tsunami and prevented the accident, given that a TEPCO unit had estimated in 2008 that tsunami waves of up to 15.7 meters could strike the Fukushima plant based on the government's earlier long-term evaluation of quake risks released in 2002. The high court ruling admitted that the government estimate "carried weight that could not be overlooked." But it pointed out that some experts disputed its reliability. It is utterly unacceptable, court-appointed lawyers acting as prosecutors said during a press conference in the capital, adding that they may consider appealing the decision. The verdict was met with anger and disbelief from a crowd of people, including those affected by the disaster, who had been waiting outside the courthouse for the ruling. "A not guilty decision is unthinkable. If we don't clarify who is responsible, it's likely to affect the future," said Yoshiko Furukawa, who had evacuated from Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, to Yokohama. The 59-year-old said she had observed the trial and was under the impression that the executives had been aware of the potential danger of a nuclear accident. The three former TEPCO executives were indicted in 2016 for allegedly failing to implement tsunami countermeasures, resulting in the deaths of 44 people -- including patients at a hospital in Fukushima Prefecture -- after they were forced to endure long-term evacuations. Prosecutors had decided not to pursue criminal charges against the three, but that decision was ultimately superseded by a committee for the inquest of prosecution made up of members of the general public who reviewed the case and called for indictments. The court-appointed lawyers acting as prosecutors demanded each of the three men be given a five-year prison sentence, while the defendants denied any wrongdoing. In September 2019, the Tokyo District Court found the three not guilty. It denied the credibility of the government's long-term evaluation, saying the former executives "could not have logically predicted tsunami waves over 10 meters tall." Although prosecutors alleged the defendants failed to implement the construction of a seawall and flood prevention work to core facilities, the lower court ruled that a temporary shutdown was the only guaranteed way to avoid an accident. There have also been civil cases focusing on whether a tsunami could have been anticipated, with courts coming to different decisions. In June last year, the Supreme Court's Second Petty Bench absolved the government of responsibility for the Fukushima crisis in a lawsuit filed by evacuees, saying it would not have been able to prevent an accident. Meanwhile, in a shareholder lawsuit, the Tokyo District Court in July last year ordered four former company executives, including Katsumata, Takekuro and Muto, to pay 13.3 trillion yen ($103 billion) in damages for failing to prevent the crisis. In appeal trials, the high court was required to make a decision based on similar testimony and evidence submitted to the lower court. On March 11, 2011, the six-reactor plant on the Pacific coast was flooded by tsunami waves exceeding 10 meters triggered by the magnitude 9.0 quake, causing the reactor cooling systems to lose their power supply. The Nos. 1 to 3 reactors subsequently suffered core meltdowns, while hydrogen explosions damaged the building housing the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 units. Related coverage: Japan's top court rules state not liable for Fukushima disaster Court orders TEPCO to pay 73.5 million yen over Fukushima crisis Japan's top court orders TEPCO to pay damages over Fukushima nuclear crisis KYODO NEWS - Jan 17, 2023 - 19:45 | All, Japan, World Renault SA is in the final-stage of talks with Nissan Motor Co. to lower its stake in its Japanese partner to 15 percent from the current 43 percent, sources close to the matter said Tuesday, in a major overhaul of their decades-old capital alliance. Renault Chief Executive Officer Luca de Meo plans to meet with Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida in Japan as early as Jan. 26, aiming to reach an agreement on the review of their capital alliance dating back to 1999, the sources said. The two automakers plan to reshape their alliance structure to bring their reciprocal stakes to an equal level at 15 percent, according to the sources. Nissan, which has a 15 percent stake without voting rights in the smaller French partner, has been seeking a more balanced capital relationship for years. Nissan has been considering taking a stake in Renault's electric vehicle business Ampere. U.S. chip giant Qualcomm Technologies Inc. said in November it would invest in Ampere, while Google LLC said it would team up with the EV company. Negotiations on reforming the capital structure between Renault and Nissan have made scant progress, as the Japanese carmaker has been concerned that its intellectual property related to EV technology could be shared with others outside the alliance through Ampere. But Renault apparently offered some concessions to Nissan, clearing the way for an agreement on the overhaul of their capital tie-up. When French President Emmanuel Macron met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week in Paris, the president said the French government, largest shareholder of Renault, supports the review talks on capital partnership, helping advance the discussions, the sources said. Renault became the top shareholder of Nissan in 1999 when the Japanese firm was on the cusp of bankruptcy, sending Carlos Ghosn to lead the overhaul. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. joined the alliance after Nissan acquired a 34 percent stake in it in 2016. Related coverage: Nissan, Mitsubishi mull stakes in Renault EV unit amid alliance talks Renault in talks to reduce stake in Nissan to 15%: source KYODO NEWS - Jan 18, 2023 - 07:26 | All, World U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will visit South Korea and the Philippines within a few weeks to step up cooperation with the two countries, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Austin will meet with senior government and military officials during the trip, which will be a "reaffirmation of our deep commitment to working in concert with allies and partners to chart our shared vision to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific," according to Pat Ryder, press secretary of the Defense Department. The announcement made during a press briefing comes after the top foreign and defense officials of the United States and Japan held a meeting last week in Washington. During the so-called two-plus-two meeting, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with their Japanese counterparts Yasukazu Hamada and Yoshimasa Hayashi agreed to bolster deterrence against China, North Korea and Russia. Such U.S. efforts to reinforce deterrence with its key allies in the Indo-Pacific region will also likely be discussed in South Korea and the Philippines. Related coverage: Defense chiefs agree to discuss future Japan-U.S. role allocation U.S., Australia to seek more engagement with Japan in military areas Pentagon chief warns China against destabilizing actions on Taiwan KYODO NEWS - Jan 18, 2023 - 19:28 | All, Coronavirus, Japan Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and some members of his Cabinet will discuss later in the week whether to reclassify the novel coronavirus to the same category as common infectious diseases such as seasonal influenza, government sources said Wednesday. By downgrading the disease's category to Class 5 from the current Class 2, the government could relax restrictive measures and reduce medical expense support. Other government sources have said the government is leaning toward reclassifying the coronavirus to Class 5 in spring as COVID-19 has become less deadly and calls are growing to further spur economic activities. Even if COVID-19 is reclassified to Class 5, the government will continue to shoulder medical expenses for treating the disease and vaccination costs as a transitional measure, the sources said. The government may drop its recommendation to wear face masks indoors if the virus is reclassified to the lower category, the sources added. The government no longer asks people to wear face masks outdoors, but the majority of the Japanese public continues to wear them in outdoor areas. The country is currently witnessing its eighth wave of infections and a record number of daily deaths from COVID-19. An expert panel under the health ministry urged the government last week to take a "gradual" approach to a downgrade of COVID-19's category while sustaining robust coronavirus measures. KYODO NEWS - Jan 19, 2023 - 00:41 | All, Japan A Japanese patrol ship ran aground off Niigata Prefecture on Wednesday morning and became unable to sail, the coast guard said, adding that no crew members were injured but spilled oil was observed in the area. While the coast guard is investigating the cause of the incident, which occurred around 6:30 a.m. off Kashiwazaki, its local office said there may have been a human error in the maneuvering of the 3,100-ton Echigo. Yusuke Ono, head of the Niigata Coast Guard Office, told a press conference that the accident occurred when the 105-meter-long ship was approaching a lighthouse to check that its lighting system was working properly. Sea water came into some parts of the hull, but there was no concern that the vessel may sink, it said. Weather conditions were rainy with a wind speed of nearly 40 kilometers per hour at the time of the incident. Japan Coast Guard Commandant Shohei Ishii offered an apology, saying, "It's regrettable that a patrol ship caused an accident even though it was supposed to ensure safety in the sea." A similar grounding accident involving a Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel off Yamaguchi Prefecture made headlines last week. KYODO NEWS - Jan 18, 2023 - 21:44 | All, Japan An ex-boyfriend was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of fatally stabbing a woman on a street in the southwestern Japanese city of Fukuoka earlier this week, police said. The attack occurred despite police issuing an order last year for the man, Susumu Terauchi, to stop stalking Miki Kawano after she broke up with him. He has confessed to the crime, the police said. Terauchi, a 31-year-old restaurant worker, allegedly stabbed Kawano, 38, more than 10 times around 6:15 p.m. Monday near JR Hakata Station. The police found Terauchi's fingerprints at the scene, investigative sources said. Kawano had consulted with police multiple times since October, claiming she was accosted and followed by Terauchi. The police issued a warning against him the same month and banned him from approaching her based on the stalker regulation law the following month. The police located the suspect on a street in the city Wednesday morning, escorting him to a nearby police station on a voluntary basis, said the sources. Footage of security cameras near the crime scene showed Kawano leaving her nearby office and later quarreling with Terauchi on a road, according to the police. He then stabbed her with what appears to be a kitchen knife before leaving the site with the weapon put into a bag. Related coverage: Woman stabbed in Fukuoka told police she had issues with ex-boyfriend Woman fatally stabbed on Fukuoka street, armed suspect still at large KYODO NEWS - Jan 18, 2023 - 22:00 | All, World, Japan The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News. ---------- Foreign visitors to Japan in 2022 up 15-fold to 3.83 mil. TOKYO - The number of foreign visitors to Japan in 2022 sharply recovered and grew 15-fold from the previous year to 3.83 million after the easing of border controls imposed to counter the coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Wednesday. The number was still 88 percent lower than the record high of 31.88 million in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, the Japan Tourism Agency said. ---------- BOJ makes no policy change despite market pressure, bond yields drop TOKYO - The Bank of Japan on Wednesday left its ultralow rate policy unchanged and Governor Haruhiko Kuroda shot down the prospect of changing its cap on long-term bond yields again, sending the yen and yields plunging. Despite forecasting inflation to reach 3 percent, above its 2 percent target, the BOJ stuck to its yield curve control program at the end of a two-day policy meeting. The scheme is designed to keep short-term and long-term interest rates at rock-bottom levels to support the economy. ---------- Ex-boyfriend arrested after fatal stabbing of woman in Fukuoka FUKUOKA - An ex-boyfriend was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of fatally stabbing a woman on a street in the southwestern Japanese city of Fukuoka earlier this week, police said. The attack occurred despite police issuing an order last year for the man, Susumu Terauchi, to stop stalking Miki Kawano after she broke up with him. He has confessed to the crime, the police said. ---------- Tennis: Japan's Yoshihito Nishioka advances to Australian Open 3rd round MELBOURNE - Japan's Yoshihito Nishioka advanced to the Australian Open's third round with a straight-sets victory over qualifier Dalibor Svrcina on Wednesday. The 27-year-old Nishioka, the 31st seed at the year's first Grand Slam tournament, beat the 20-year-old Czech Svrcina, ranked 219th in the world, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 in 1 hour, 47 minutes. ---------- Acquittal upheld for ex-TEPCO execs over Fukushima nuclear crisis TOKYO - An appeals court on Wednesday upheld an acquittal of three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. who were accused of failing to prevent the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan. The Tokyo High Court decision followed a Tokyo District Court ruling in 2019 that found former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 82, along with Ichiro Takekuro, 76, and Sakae Muto, 72, both former vice presidents, could not have predicted the massive tsunami that crippled the power plant and led to core meltdowns. ---------- Japan gov't to discuss downgrading COVID-19 classification TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and some members of his Cabinet will discuss later in the week whether to reclassify the novel coronavirus to the same category as common infectious diseases such as seasonal influenza, government sources said Wednesday. By downgrading the disease's category to Class 5 from the current Class 2, the government could relax restrictive measures and reduce medical expense support. ---------- Japan, U.S. ink deal on open communications network amid China threat TOKYO - Japan and the United States have signed an agreement to develop and promote a new communications network that does not rely on specific companies' infrastructure, the government said Wednesday, amid China's increasing presence in the sector. The memorandum concerns Open Radio Access Network technology that enables interoperability between multiple vendors' equipment for cellular wireless networks. Under the agreement, the two countries will share data and cooperate in spreading the technology internationally. ---------- Japan's emperor hopes COVID-disrupted lives return to normal in poem TOKYO - Japanese Emperor Naruhito, in a poem recited at the annual Imperial New Year's Poetry Reading on Wednesday, expressed hope that people's lives disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic will return to normal, touching on the friendship between young brass band members with whom he spoke. The ceremony at the Imperial Palace was also attended by Empress Masako, and Crown Prince Fumihito and his wife Princess Kiko, with the number of attendees from the general public limited in consideration of the coronavirus pandemic. ---------- U.S. defense chief to visit S. Korea, Philippines within weeks WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will visit South Korea and the Philippines within a few weeks to step up cooperation with the two countries, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Austin will meet with senior government and military officials during the trip, which will be a "reaffirmation of our deep commitment to working in concert with allies and partners to chart our shared vision to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific," according to Pat Ryder, press secretary of the Defense Department. ---------- Baseball: Fujinami ready for Oakland venture, relishes Ohtani rivalry OAKLAND, California - Shintaro Fujinami spoke of his delight at joining the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday as the hard-throwing right-hander also welcomed the chance to renew his rivalry with two-way star Shohei Ohtani. The 28-year-old Fujinami signed a one-year contract, reported by American media outlets to be worth $3.25 million in salary, after he was posted by the Hanshin Tigers of Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. ---------- Video: Building struck by a missile in Ukraine's Dnipro ---------- JINAN, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The agricultural exports of east China's Shandong Province hit a record high in 2022, ranking first in the country for 24 consecutive years, local authorities said. In 2022, Shandong's agricultural exports reached 139.4 billion yuan (about 20.62 billion U.S. dollars), up 12.6 percent from the previous year. It accounts for 21.3 percent of the total value of China's agricultural exports, according to data from Qingdao Customs and Jinan Customs. Last year, the agricultural products in Shandong were mainly exported to Japan, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the European Union. The export value of aquatic products, vegetables, and edible fungi accounted for 45.5 percent of the total export value of agricultural products in Shandong. Data showed that the value of Shandong's foreign trade reached 3.33 trillion yuan in 2022, another record high, with a year-on-year growth of 13.8 percent. World-renowned Islamic figures and scholars visit NW China's Xinjiang People's Daily) 17:18, January 13, 2023 "This is my second visit to Xinjiang, and it feels like I'm back home," said Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the World Muslim Communities Council, who recently led a delegation to northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region at the invitation of the local government. The delegation, which consisted of more than 30 world-renowned Islamic figures and scholars from 14 countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Tunisia, arrived in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, on Jan. 8. A delegation of world-renowned Islamic figures and scholars enjoy performances of the Twelve Muqams, a traditional art form known as the "Mother of Uygur Music". (Photo/Xinjiang Daily) The delegation visited a thematic exhibition on Xinjiang's fight against terrorism and extremism at the Xinjiang International Convention and Exhibition Center in Urumqi, where they saw physical exhibits and learned about cases of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization in Xinjiang, and gained a better understanding of the current situation of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization in the region. Many members of the delegation expressed support and high recognition for Xinjiang's efforts and achievements in counter-terrorism and de-radicalization. Osama al-Azhari, Egyptian Presidential Adviser for Religious Affairs, said that China's counter-terrorism policies have been very successful and helped people of various ethnic groups live together in peace. China's experience in fighting terrorism bears great significance for the efforts of various countries to effectively combat terrorism, he noted. At the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum in Urumqi, members of the delegation stayed for a long time in front of exhibition boards showing information about the ancient Silk Road. They reviewed the several thousand years of history of exchanges between their own countries and China and talked freely about the prospects for cooperation with China. A delegation of world-renowned Islamic figures and scholars take a photo with local residents at the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar, one of the most famous landmarks in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. (Photo/Xinjiang Daily) China is a major country with global influence and has been contributing to global economic recovery in recent years, said Mustafa Ceric, former Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, adding that he hopes that China will continue sharing development opportunities with the rest of the world. Members of the delegation showed great interest in the Twelve Muqams, a traditional art form known as the "Mother of Uygur Music". They used their mobile phones to record the melodious tunes and wonderful dances while enjoying performances of the Twelve Muqams, which has been listed among the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage items in China. The Chinese government has made tremendous efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage of Xinjiang and has promoted it globally, which is of great significance to the diversity of civilization, pointed out Mauritanian writer Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah. At Yanghang Mosque in Tianshan district of Urumqi, members of the delegation joined local Muslims of various ethnic groups in performing the Salat al Asr (afternoon prayer). The delegation also visited Xinjiang Islamic Institute in Urumqi, where members of the delegation talked about the principles of Islam with students and teachers of the school. A delegation of world-renowned Islamic figures and scholars learn about the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative at the Urumqi International Land Port Area in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. (Photo/Xinjiang Daily) Before the visit to Xinjiang, Serbian Mufti Mevlud ef. Dudic had only seen China on TV and in newspapers, according to the mufti, who said that he has finally seen with his own eyes how his fellow Muslims live in peace and happiness in Xinjiang. During their visit to the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar, one of the most famous landmarks in Urumqi, members of the delegation were fascinated by various kinds of dried fruits, Atlas silk, a time-honored type of cloth used by Uygur women for centuries, and other specialties of the autonomous region. They talked cordially and took photos with people at the bazaar, while shop assistants were busy packing the tourist souvenirs and local specialties they bought from the shops in the bazaar before sending them to their countries. While visiting the Urumqi International Land Port Area in Urumqi, members of the delegation observed the operations of the China-Europe freight trains and ports in Xinjiang, including the Alashankou port and the Horgos port, through real-time video link, and gasped with admiration at the rich fruits Xinjiang has achieved in pushing forward with the opening-up and high-quality construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). With sound infrastructure, human resources, as well as other conditions for economic development, Xinjiang can play an important role in making the trade between China and countries along the routes of the BRI smoother, more convenient, and faster, said Sara Falaknaz, a member of the Federal National Council of the UAE. (Web editor: Chang Sha, Du Mingming) A total of 354 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Azerbaijan, Azernews reports per Operational Headquarters under the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers. The first dose of the vaccine was injected into 152 citizens, the second dose 66 citizens, while the third dose and the next doses were received by 109 citizens. As many as 27 citizens were vaccinated with a booster dose after a positive test result for COVID-19. Totally, up until now, 13,938,596 vaccine doses were administered, 5,400,467 citizens received the first dose of the vaccine, 4,876,427 people the second dose, 3,396,705 people the third dose, and the next doses. Besides, 264,997 citizens were vaccinated with a booster dose after a positive test result for COVID-19. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China targets high-caliber soldiers for building a world-class military, according to a teleconference on conscription held in Beijing on Wednesday. China will conduct two rounds of military recruitment in 2023, during which the guiding principles of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China should be fully implemented, the meeting noted. College students and graduates remain the focus of this year's work, and priority is given to students majoring in science and engineering, and those with skills needed for combat readiness. Targeted-recruitment and pre-recruitment are encouraged, as well as enhanced information platform construction. Rules and regulations for clean enlistment shall be implemented strictly, said the meeting. Recruitment for the first half of 2023 will last from Feb. 15 until March 31, while that for the second half of the year will run from Aug. 15 to Sept. 30, according to the conference. Tourists visit the Angkor Wat in the Angkor Archaeological Park in Siem Reap province, Cambodia on Dec. 17, 2022. (Photo by Van Pov/Xinhua) "China's resumption of outbound tourism is very beneficial not only to Cambodia, but also to the whole world," a Cambodian official said. "We hope that Cambodia will attract at least 1 million Chinese tourists in 2023." PHNOM PENH, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia is projected to receive 4 million international tourists in 2023 after China's optimization of its COVID-19 strategy early this month, a tourism official said. Kong Sopheareak, director of Tourism Statistics Department at the Ministry of Tourism, said on Tuesday that China is the most important outbound tourism market for the world, and China's optimization of its COVID-19 strategy is a boon not only for Cambodia, but also for global tourism. Aerial photo taken on Sept. 9, 2021 shows the China-funded Morodok Techo National Stadium in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Photo by Chen Gang/Xinhua) "We hope that more Chinese tourists, business people and investors will come to Cambodia, given close relationship between our two countries and peoples," he told Xinhua. "The presence of Chinese tourists is vital to help boost our tourism and economy," he added. According to Sopheareak, the Southeast Asian nation welcomed 2.28 million international tourists in 2022. Of them, 106,875 were Chinese tourists. Cambodia's Tourism Minister Thong Khon told Xinhua last week that Cambodia is ready to welcome the return of Chinese people, tourists, business people and investors. "China's resumption of outbound tourism is very beneficial not only to Cambodia, but also to the whole world," he said. "We hope that Cambodia will attract at least 1 million Chinese tourists in 2023." Photo taken on April 5, 2022 shows the Angkor Wat Temple in the Angkor Archeological Park in Siem Reap province, Cambodia. (Photo by Van Pov/Xinhua) Tourism is one of the four major pillars supporting Cambodia's economy. In the pre-pandemic era, the kingdom registered 6.6 million international tourists in 2019, generating 4.92 billion U.S. dollars in revenue that contributed 12.1 percent to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The kingdom is famous for its three world heritage sites, namely the Angkor Archaeological Park, the Preah Vihear Temple, and the Sambor Prei Kuk Archaeological Site. Besides, it has a 450-km pristine coastline stretching across four southwestern provinces. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday stressed the importance of stable energy supply and price ahead of the Spring Festival. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when he held virtual talks with the general public from across the country. "Energy security concerns the overall economic and social development of our country. It is one of the most important security issues," Xi told employees of the Tarim oilfield in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Noting that winter is the peak season for energy use in China, Xi said that no efforts should be spared to ensure the supply of coal, electricity, petroleum and natural gas, and to keep their prices stable. He stressed the importance of being fully prepared to deal with possible extreme cold waves, guaranteeing energy supply and ensuring people stay warm this winter. Noting the important role of state-owned enterprises directly under the central government, Xi asked them to make all-out efforts to increase output and ensure supply to meet the energy consumption needs of economic and social development. Located in the Taklimakan Desert, Xinjiang, the Tarim oilfield of the China National Petroleum Corporation is a major natural gas source for the country's West-to-East gas pipelines. It provides natural gas for residents in southern Xinjiang and provinces, regions and municipalities along the pipelines. Aerial photo taken on June 22, 2022 shows a view of Karot Hydropower Plant in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. (CTG/Handout via Xinhua) The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is linked with the long-lasting economic benefits and sustainable development for the people of Pakistan, Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said. ISLAMABAD, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said Tuesday that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has unfolded substantial opportunities for Pakistan, promising a prosperous and peaceful future for the Pakistani people. CPEC, a flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is linked with the long-lasting economic benefits and sustainable development for the people of Pakistan, the speaker said at the launching ceremony of Sustainable Development Report 2022 of the All-Pakistan Chinese Enterprises' Association. He said CPEC has played a significant role in promoting the in-depth development of the Pakistan-China all-weather strategic cooperative partnership and the high-quality development of the BRI, which has grabbed attention in Pakistan and around the world. "It meets the people's aspirations, wins the people's hearts and benefits the people's livelihoods. With the joint efforts of the two governments, enterprises and all sectors of society, CPEC cooperation has achieved fruitful results and made great contributions to Pakistan's national construction and regional interconnections," Ashraf said. The speaker emphasized that despite numerous obstacles, Pakistan has witnessed economic development in the region as projects under CPEC made major progress over the past few years. "CPEC has shown strong resilience against the challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic ... The staff and workers of the two countries working on CPEC projects have worked dedicatedly hand-in-hand to overcome the difficulties and written a new moving story of Pakistan-China friendship," he said. An Orange Line metro train pulls into the terminal station in Lahore, Pakistan, Dec. 29, 2021. (Photo by Jamil Ahmed/Xinhua) Ashraf believed that the high-quality development of CPEC would certainly provide significant opportunities for the development of Pakistan and countries along the BRI route, helping them implement the global goals for regional prosperity. The speaker also reaffirmed the National Assembly of Pakistan and the parliamentarians' role and commitment to ensuring the smooth advancement of projects under the framework of CPEC. Launched in 2013, CPEC is a corridor linking Pakistan's Gwadar Port with Kashgar in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which highlights energy, transport and industrial cooperation. Speaking on the same occasion, Minister of State for Finance and Revenue Aisha Ghaus Pasha said that CPEC projects have unleashed opportunities for socio-economic development for the people of Pakistan. "CPEC will supplement Pakistan's socio-economic development as the tremendous human capital of the region is its biggest asset. CPEC has resolved issues and helped Pakistan prosper," she added. DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for bridging the divides plaguing the world and restoring trust in his address at the World Economic (WEF) Annual Meeting 2023 here. The world faces interlinked challenges and "the gravest levels of geopolitical division and mistrust in generations," he said, noting that "we need to bridge all these divides and restore trust." According to Guterres, "our world is plagued by a perfect storm on a number of fronts." The challenges include the slowdown of global economic growth, the cost-of-living crisis, supply chain disruptions, the energy crunch, geopolitical conflicts, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis. The theme of the WEF Annual Meeting -- "Cooperation in a Fragmented World" -- "perfectly sets out the dilemma: we need cooperation, yet we face fragmentation," he said. He also urged the world to reform and build fairness into the global financial system. "Developing countries need access to finance to reduce poverty and hunger and advance the Sustainable Development Goals," he said. "Bridging divides and restoring trust means meaningful climate actions ... We must act together to close the emissions gap, to phase out coal and supercharge the renewable revolution," he said. Developed countries must provide financial and technical assistance to help major emerging economies accelerate their renewable energy transition, he said. The UN chief called for efforts to advance the Sustainable Development Goals. He also urged the expansion of economic opportunities for women, greater engagement and cooperation for vaccine equity, and the achievement of global food security. "Now, more than ever, it's time to forge the pathways to cooperation in our fragmented world. The world can't wait," he said. The WEF Annual Meeting lasts until Jan. 20. Israeli security forces gather at the site of a shooting attack in the town of Halhul, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Jan. 17, 2023. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Hamdi Abu Daiya, 40, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the town of Halhul. (Photo by Mamoun Wazwaz/Xinhua) RAMALLAH, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian official said on Tuesday that Israeli measures restrict the Palestinian government activities in the West Bank, mainly in Area C which is under Israeli security control. Majdi Al-Salleh, the Palestinian minister of local affairs, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah that the Israeli authorities carry out daily measures in the area, mainly demolishing homes, confiscating land, and destroying infrastructure. "The Palestinian government is determined to support and strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian population in Area C, which represents 60 percent of the West Bank," he said. The Palestinian government provides the residents of Area C with all the necessary infrastructure by building roads and connecting electricity and water networks, Al-Salleh added. "There is a need for the European Union, its member states, and the World Bank to play their role in those areas targeted by the Israeli authorities and implement projects related to the water, electricity, health, and education sectors," the minister said. On Jan. 6, the Israeli government approved a series of punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority for its approach to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, including the deduction of 39.6 million U.S. dollars from Palestinian tax dues. Palestinian officials have warned of the Israeli escalation of killing Palestinians, mainly after the formation of the new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is the most right-wing one in Israel's history. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Hamdi Abu Daiya, 40, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the town of Halhul, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron. Local sources and eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers opened fire at Abu Daiya, a member of the Palestinian security forces, adding the Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching him. Israeli media outlets reported that a Palestinian opened fire at a military force near Halhul without causing any injuries, before the force returned fire and killed the Palestinian. About 15 Palestinians have been killed and dozens injured by Israeli soldiers since Jan. 1, as the tension between Israelis and Palestinians has been flaring, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Israeli security forces gather at the site of a shooting attack in the town of Halhul, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Jan. 17, 2023. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Hamdi Abu Daiya, 40, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the town of Halhul. (Photo by Mamoun Wazwaz/Xinhua) Fishermen catch fish along the Mekong River on the outskirts of Vientiane, Laos, on Oct. 2, 2021. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua) KUNMING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Two Chinese law enforcement vessels returned to Jingha Port in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Wednesday, concluding the 125th joint Mekong River patrol by China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Four vessels from the four countries traveled 622 km for four days and three nights, focusing on tackling cross-border crimes to ensure safety and stability along the river, according to the Yunnan provincial public security department. The Mekong River, known as the Lancang River in China, is a vital waterway for cross-border shipping. China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand have been conducting joint patrols of the river since December 2011. by Keren Setton JERUSALEM, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has begun a process of widespread reform in the country's judicial system, stirring up heated debates in the country. The plan includes legislation that will allow Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to override supreme court decisions by a simple majority. In addition, Knesset members will be given greater representation in the committee that appoints supreme court judges. And legal advisors to ministries, which have been civil servants until now, will be allowed to be political appointments. Those in favor of the reform say the Israeli judicial system, mainly the supreme court, has become too powerful and often intervenes in political issues outside its jurisdiction. "What we are seeking to do will restore the balance between the authorities," said Netanyahu at the opening of a cabinet meeting earlier this week. "We will make the necessary changes in the judicial system, prudently and responsibly. We are going to change the system, to save it and not destroy it." Opponents say the reforms will neutralize the supreme court and undermine Israeli democracy. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the government plan. Many of the opponents recognize the need for changes, but do not agree with the blanket reforms they say "will leave the country without judicial review or supervision and lead to a regime change." "The main implication of the reform is giving the coalition majority absolute power without taking minorities, human rights, and the rule of law into consideration," said Dr. Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. "In addition, the rights of the LGBTQ community, women and asylum seekers will be threatened. These, and other minorities, are the populations the supreme court has defended throughout the years," said Fuchs. Opponents believe the motivation behind the plan is "Netanyahu's wish to extricate himself from his legal troubles." Netanyahu is under trial on several charges of corruption, which he denied. One of the reforms involves the appointment of an attorney general appointed by the government, Fuchs noted that "I would not be surprised if that attorney would cancel Netanyahu's trial." Before the allegations surfaced, Netanyahu was a vociferous advocate of the Israeli judicial system. "In the past, Netanyahu was against such reforms realizing they are destructive," said Yaniv Roznai, vice-dean of Harry Radzyner Law School and co-director of the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges at Reichman University. "He is being dragged by the extremist elements in his coalition because of his legal situation, leaving him with little choices," added Roznai. "The executive branch and the government will have almost unlimited power to act while weakening any checks and balances, including the courts and the legal advisors," Roznai told Xinhua. Israeli President Isaac Herzog has mediated between the sides in order to find a middle ground. Earlier this week, he met separately with Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Supreme Court President Esther Hayut to hear their positions. "The proposal is so extreme and the opposition to it is so fierce. There is no option other than to reach a compromise, but the government doesn't look to be in that direction," said Roznai. The Netanyahu government has a solid majority in the Knesset which allows it to legislate rather freely. All members of the coalition appear to be on board with all the changes being proposed. "We are in the grips of a profound disagreement that is tearing our nation apart. This conflict worries me deeply," read a statement by Herzog on Sunday. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (L), also chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, holds talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Zurich, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023. (Xinhua/Lian Yi) ZURICH, Switzerland, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, also chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, held talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen here on Wednesday. Focusing on the implementation of the important consensus reached by the two heads of state during their meeting in Bali, the two senior officials had professional, in-depth, candid and practical exchanges on the macroeconomic and financial situation of the two countries and the whole world as well as on addressing common global challenges. The talks were constructive. The two sides agreed that the world's economic recovery is at a critical stage and it is in the interest of both countries as well as the whole world for China and the United States to strengthen macro-policy communication and coordination and jointly address challenges in the economic and financial fields. The two sides discussed issues related to deepening cooperation in macroeconomic and financial fields. The two sides recognized the importance of sustainable financial cooperation and agreed to strengthen cooperation within bilateral and multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations, the Group of 20 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Both sides agreed to continue to support emerging markets and developing countries in green and low-carbon development and economic transformation. The Chinese side also expressed concern over the U.S. economic, trade and technological policies toward China, and hoped that the United States will pay attention to the impact of these policies on both sides. Yellen is welcome to visit China at an appropriate time this year, Liu said. Both sides agreed to maintain communication and exchanges between their economic and trade teams at various levels. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (3rd L), also chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, holds talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (3rd R) in Zurich, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2023. (Xinhua/Lian Yi) BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday talked about the country's COVID-19 response, saying the light of hope is right ahead. "We have now entered a new phase of COVID-19 response. Tough challenges remain, but the light of hope is right in front of us. Perseverance means victory," he said. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when he talked via video link with medical workers and an elderly patient at the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province ahead of the Spring Festival. The country had made "the right choice" to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic with strict measures over the past nearly three years, Xi said, adding that China has thus withstood several rounds of outbreaks of virus mutations. China has lowered the proportion of severe cases and the case fatality rate to the greatest extent possible, protected people's lives and health, and bought precious time for the later moves to optimize response and downgrade the management of COVID-19, Xi said. The focus of the current COVID-19 response has shifted from infection prevention to medical treatment, with protecting people's health and preventing severe cases being the priority, said Xi, noting that hospitals are now undertaking more arduous tasks. Xi demanded efforts to increase medical resources and the supply of medical services and drugs, and to prepare for medical treatment of severe cases in particular. While talking via video link with older people and staffers at a welfare home in Fuzhou, capital of east China's Fujian Province, on the same day, Xi said stricter epidemic prevention and health management measures should be taken at nursing homes and welfare facilities to prevent clusters of infection, as older people are the top priority in the current COVID-19 response stage. Chatting with villagers in Mianyang, southwest China's Sichuan Province, via video link, Xi said he was primarily concerned about rural areas and rural residents after the country adjusted its COVID-19 response measures. Xi stressed efforts to improve medical care for those most vulnerable to the virus in rural areas, and ensure the health of rural residents and their normal running of work and life to the maximum extent possible. Benefit, Bahrains innovator and leading company in fintech, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Jordanian Payment and Clearing Systems Company (JoPACC) to foster fintech collaboration. The key focus of the MoU is to explore collaborative initiatives and participate in the programmes that are part of the Jordan Innovation Fintech Incubator JOIN Fincubator; the first fintech innovation incubator of its kind in Jordan, which was launched last year at the Mena ICT Forum. Both companies will pool their resources to create and deliver digital financial services, leveraging their expertise and technological capabilities. It will also involve the formation of a steering committee composed of team members nominated by both parties that will work to discuss topics of cooperation in the areas of financial technology innovation. JOIN Fincubator The Central Bank of Jordan and JoPACC recently announced the establishment of the Jordan Innovation FinTech Incubator JOIN Fincubator, in line with their commitment to address financial stability, foster an advanced financial infrastructure, and increase digital financial inclusion. Dr Adel Al-Sharkas, Chairman of JoPACC, commended Bahrain and its innovative businesses, specifically Benefit, for their success in establishing partnership ties to promote financial technology innovations across the Kingdom, empowering the transfer of knowledge across the region, and strengthening the future of both our economies, and the region at large. Abdulwahed AlJanahi, CE of Benefit, commented: In line with broadening the horizons of collaboration and knowledge exchange between financial institutions and fintech companies, it is an honour to have this MoU and we look forward to engaging with JoPACC in various aspects, leveraging on the companys successes. Several milestones He further added: This is in accordance with our key focus to foster collaboration, share our expertise and collaborate with like-minded institutions to solidify Mena's presence and position when it comes to the fintech industry. This partnership will achieve several milestones in the region and unlock vast opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators. We look forward to working with JoPACC in boosting cooperation in various aspects and strengthening the relations between the two brotherly countries. JoPACC is a private shareholding company and a domestic payment system operator that manages and develops several payment systems, introduces innovative digital financial solutions that directly benefit end-users, and produces and disseminates knowledge about digital financial services in Jordan.-- TradeArabia News Service This photo taken on July 11, 2022 shows a scene of the welcome ceremony for the 10,000th trip made by the China-Europe freight train operated by the China-Europe Railway Express (Chongqing) in Duisburg, Germany. (Xinhua/Ren Pengfei) China achieved a 7.7-percent rise in foreign trade in 2022, topping the world for the sixth year in a row. This represents "an unprecedented economic accomplishment by all means at the worldwide level," said Moatasem Rashed, a veteran economic consultant for the Egyptian Federation of Investors Associations. by Mahmoud Fouly CAIRO, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's increased foreign trade in 2022 reflects the country's economic strength despite domestic and international challenges, said an Egyptian economist in a recent interview with Xinhua. China achieved a 7.7-percent rise in foreign trade in 2022, topping the world for the sixth year in a row. This represents "an unprecedented economic accomplishment by all means at the worldwide level," said Moatasem Rashed, a veteran economic consultant for the Egyptian Federation of Investors Associations. China's annual foreign trade value hit a record high again in 2022, as total goods trade reached 42.07 trillion yuan (6.21 trillion U.S. dollars), up 7.7 percent year on year, according to a recent report from China's General Administration of Customs (GAC). It is the first time for China's annual foreign trade to exceed 40 trillion yuan (5.9 trillion dollars), said the GAC. Meanwhile, Chinese exports rose by 10.5 percent to 23.97 trillion yuan (3.54 trillion dollars) and imports went up 4.3 percent to 18.1 trillion yuan (2.67 trillion dollars) in 2022. "These data show the ability and insight of the Chinese administration in terms of running the economy," Rashed said, hailing China for achieving such economic progress despite Western campaigns, the repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the GAC, China's imports and exports with ASEAN, the European Union, and the United States gained 15 percent, 5.6 percent, and 3.7 percent, respectively. Trade with Belt and Road countries also climbed 19.4 percent to account for 32.9 percent of China's total foreign trade. The Egyptian expert said China's growing regional and international trade reflects its dedication to the principle of a "win-win partnership." China deals with other countries as "partners" and seeks to achieve mutual, rather than unilateral interests, unlike Western countries, particularly the United States, he said. China's economic growth is based on productivity, sustainability, and diversity. "It is not just a matter of achieving a growth rate but it is a matter of sustainability," he emphasized. "China's foreign trade is an unprecedented model in the world, and the greatness of China's growth rate is its sustainability." He added that China's advancement in the field of technology has greatly contributed to its economic growth. "China today is sprinting and striding, not just running, to advance in the field of technology. There are areas where China is more advanced than all countries in the world," Rashed said. "I invite other countries to study what China has achieved and how to develop their systems and learn from the Chinese experience, which has made today's Chinese miracle," the Egyptian economist concluded. Staff members of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine work at the crash site of a helicopter in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) KIEV, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. The crash in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, also killed Monastyrsky's deputy Yevhen Yenin while injuring 30 others, said the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. Monastyrsky, Yenin, State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lubkovych, and six other people were on board the crashed helicopter, it said. Staff members of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine work at the crash site of a helicopter in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) This photo taken on Jan. 18, 2023 shows the crash site of a helicopter in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) The remains of the crashed helicopter are seen at its crash site in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) Staff members of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine work at the crash site of a helicopter in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) Staff members of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine work at the crash site of a helicopter in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) Rescuers work at the crash site of a helicopter in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) The remains of the crashed helicopter are seen at its crash site in Brovary, a town in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2023. A helicopter crashed near Kiev on Wednesday morning, killing at least 16 people, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. Earlier, officials gave an initial death toll of 18. (Photo by Roman Petushkov/Xinhua) A dragon boat race was held in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires on Sunday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival. Produced by Xinhua Global Service UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Csaba Korosi (at the podium and on the screen) speaks at the informal briefing on the president's priorities for the resumed 77th session at the UN headquarters in New York Jan. 17, 2023. Csaba Korosi on Tuesday urged the international community to make the UN Charter "our guiding light" and advance the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (Loey Felipe/UN Photo/Handout via Xinhua) UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Csaba Korosi on Tuesday called on the international community to make the UN Charter "our guiding light" and advance the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "We shall anchor all our efforts in the Charter, in respect for international law -- and, urgently, around the Sustainable Development Goals," the UNGA president told the informal briefing on the president's priorities for the resumed 77th session. Speaking of the status quo of SDGs, the UNGA president said that "our priority is to prepare for the SDG Summit in September -- the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda." "In spite of so many woes, I still believe that 2023 is off to an auspicious start," Korosi said. "We gather in a chamber literally designed to inspire the 'realization of the great human dream.'" "In our world of torn trust and massive breakdowns, I am asking you to aim for breakthrough," he urged. "By September, we will need honest accounts of what has been achieved and what has not, so we can close the gap between reported national successes and visible global failures," the UNGA president added. "To get there, we will need a clear vision of what is at stake, what are the timeframes and political responsibilities for making progress," he said, noting that one of the UNGA priorities for this year is water action. The assembly will hold the UN Water Conference in March -- the first since 1977, "that I hope will bring a new 'Paris moment,'" Korosi said. He noted that efforts will be made "to go beyond the traditional debate on the difficulties of water cooperation by establishing a global water information system to support regional and local predictability and resilience." Turning to transformation, the PGA said that a core priority will be "to advance discussions on a methodology for measuring sustainability transformation in a way that integrates human well-being, natural capital and sustainable economic development." "We call this the 'Beyond GDP' initiative, foreseen already in the 2030 Agenda but not fully developed yet," he stressed. Korosi also called for efforts to "reform our whole economic thinking," adding that "it is on us to design the future of the UN -- to agree on solutions that will reinvigorate multilateralism, restore trust and renew the agenda of peace." ZURICH, Switzerland, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday expressed concern over the U.S. economic, trade and technological policies toward China During talks with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He also hoped that the United States will pay attention to the impact of these policies on both sides. by Mahmoud Fouly CAIRO, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's increased foreign trade in 2022 reflects the country's economic strength despite domestic and international challenges, said an Egyptian economist in a recent interview with Xinhua. China achieved a 7.7-percent rise in foreign trade in 2022, topping the world for the sixth year in a row. This represents "an unprecedented economic accomplishment by all means at the worldwide level," said Moatasem Rashed, a veteran economic consultant for the Egyptian Federation of Investors Associations. China's annual foreign trade value hit a record high again in 2022, as total goods trade reached 42.07 trillion yuan (6.21 trillion U.S. dollars), up 7.7 percent year on year, according to a recent report from China's General Administration of Customs (GAC). It is the first time for China's annual foreign trade to exceed 40 trillion yuan (5.9 trillion dollars), said the GAC. Meanwhile, Chinese exports rose by 10.5 percent to 23.97 trillion yuan (3.54 trillion dollars) and imports went up 4.3 percent to 18.1 trillion yuan (2.67 trillion dollars) in 2022. "These data show the ability and insight of the Chinese administration in terms of running the economy," Rashed said, hailing China for achieving such economic progress despite Western campaigns, the repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the GAC, China's imports and exports with ASEAN, the European Union, and the United States gained 15 percent, 5.6 percent, and 3.7 percent, respectively. Trade with Belt and Road countries also climbed 19.4 percent to account for 32.9 percent of China's total foreign trade. The Egyptian expert said China's growing regional and international trade reflects its dedication to the principle of a "win-win partnership." China deals with other countries as "partners" and seeks to achieve mutual, rather than unilateral interests, unlike Western countries, particularly the United States, he said. China's economic growth is based on productivity, sustainability, and diversity. "It is not just a matter of achieving a growth rate but it is a matter of sustainability," he emphasized. "China's foreign trade is an unprecedented model in the world, and the greatness of China's growth rate is its sustainability." He added that China's advancement in the field of technology has greatly contributed to its economic growth. "China today is sprinting and striding, not just running, to advance in the field of technology. There are areas where China is more advanced than all countries in the world," Rashed said. "I invite other countries to study what China has achieved and how to develop their systems and learn from the Chinese experience, which has made today's Chinese miracle," the Egyptian economist concluded. UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called for investing in people and prioritizing education in his message for the International Day of Education, to be observed on Jan. 24. "Investment is critical to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4," and education is "the bedrock of societies, economies and every person's potential," said the top UN official. Guterres urged all countries to translate their commitments made at last year's Transforming Education Summit into concrete actions to create supportive and inclusive learning environments for all students. "Now is also the time to end all discriminatory laws and practices that hinder access to education," he said. "I also encourage countries to place education at the heart of preparations for the Sustainable Development Goals Summit in 2023 and the Summit of the Future in 2024. Most of all, I urge civil society and youth to continue calling for more and better investment in quality education," the secretary-general noted. This year marks the mid-point since the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for people, planet and prosperity, with a set of 17 interlocked goals that will come up for review at the Sustainable Development Goals Summit in September on the theme of investing in people. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Thirteen Taiwan Province deputies, eight men and five women, were elected to the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), the national legislature, on Wednesday via secret ballot. All 13 deputies elected are mainland residents of Taiwan origin. Among them are Party and government officials, experts and academics who have made outstanding contributions, and entrepreneurs. They were elected from 16 candidates at a conference for consultative election, which opened on Monday. Their qualifications will be reviewed and confirmed by the NPC Standing Committee. This photo taken on Jan. 12, 2023 shows the snow scenery in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. (Photo by Georgy Namazov/Xinhua) The two sides also signed agreements on trade and economic cooperation. TASHKENT, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan and Singapore have agreed to enhance cooperation in the education, transport and healthcare sectors, and in training Uzbek civil servants, the state news agency UzA said on Tuesday. The agreements were reached during a one-day state visit of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Singapore on Tuesday. The two sides also signed agreements on trade and economic cooperation, and establishment of an Uzbek-Singaporean investment fund with an authorized capital of 500 million U.S. dollars, the report said. According to UzA, a Uzbek-Singaporean joint design and engineering center will be established in Uzbekistan to improve urban infrastructure and communications, construction and landscaping. A set of four stamps marking the Year of the Rabbit, with the inspiration from Chinese paper-cutting, is pictured at the China Cultural Center in Fiji in Suva Jan. 18, 2023. The China Cultural Center in Fiji and Post Fiji jointly launched the Year of the Rabbit stamps on Wednesday in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22. (Xinhua/Zhang Yongxing) SUVA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The China Cultural Center in Fiji and Post Fiji jointly launched the Year of the Rabbit stamps on Wednesday in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Speaking at the launching ceremony in the China Cultural Center in Fiji, Wang Xuguang, charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Fiji, said that rabbit represents hope and vitality in Chinese cultural tradition. Not long ago, the Chinese government optimized its COVID-19 strategy to facilitate the exchange between Chinese and foreign people, Wang said, adding that more Chinese people will travel abroad in the new year. He also expressed the hope that the cultural exchanges between China and Fiji will be more colorful in the Year of the Rabbit, so as to provide a stronger impetus for the friendly relations between the two countries. For his part, Collin Yabaki, director of the Department of Culture, Heritage and Arts, said that the relations between China and Fiji have been strengthened over the past year. The cultural exchanges have benefited the two countries in many ways, and the unveiling of the Year of the Rabbit stamps will further promote the cultural exchange and cooperation between the two countries, Yabaki said. Han Xiaoyan, director of the China Cultural Center in Fiji, said that cultural exchange and cooperation is a bridge which will strengthen the friendship and mutual understanding between the two peoples. As longstanding business partners over the past years, the China Cultural Center in Fiji and Post Fiji have worked together to issue the Chinese Zodiac stamps since 2016, which is a true testimony of friendship between the two countries, Han said. According to Han, the stamps have been designed mainly by Guo Zhiyi, a famous stamp designer from the China Post. With the inspiration from Chinese paper-cutting, the stamps depict four propitious rabbits by combining the Chinese culture of zodiac with traditional Fijian culture. Guests pose for a group photo during the launching ceremony of the Year of the Rabbit stamps at the China Cultural Center in Fiji in Suva Jan. 18, 2023. The China Cultural Center in Fiji and Post Fiji jointly launched the Year of the Rabbit stamps on Wednesday in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22. (Xinhua/Zhang Yongxing) People shop during the launching ceremony of the Year of the Rabbit stamps at the China Cultural Center in Fiji in Suva Jan. 18, 2023. The China Cultural Center in Fiji and Post Fiji jointly launched the Year of the Rabbit stamps on Wednesday in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22. (Xinhua/Zhang Yongxing) Collin Yabaki (L), director of the Department of Culture, Heritage and Arts of Fiji, and Wang Xuguang, charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Fiji, pose for a photo during the launching ceremony of the Year of the Rabbit stamps at the China Cultural Center in Fiji in Suva Jan. 18, 2023. The China Cultural Center in Fiji and Post Fiji jointly launched the Year of the Rabbit stamps on Wednesday in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22. (Xinhua/Zhang Yongxing) Abu Dhabi's Masdar City has partnered with Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence and Catalyst, the regions first clean technology startup accelerator, in a bid to set up a new AI and clean energy innovation unit and a new accelerator programme for AI start-ups. This comes as part of Masdar City's efforts to nurture clean energy and drive the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), clean tech and smart city technology, including autonomous transportation, across the region. According to Masdar City, the partnership will support exploration of several new initiatives, including the learning and business opportunities for students and graduates of MBZUAI, enhanced support for AI and clean energy startups, and using advanced data analytics and AI to improve the performance of its buildings. The three entities will also explore the development of a new accelerator programme focused on AI to encourage more MBZUAI graduates to start successful businesses, it added. Mohamed Al Breiki, the executive director of sustainable real estate development of Masdar City, signed the MoU with Sultan Al Hajji, the Vice President of Public Affairs and Alumni Relations at MBZUAI; and Stephen Severance, the director of growth of Masdar City for the Catalyst. "This agreement will help strengthen Masdar Citys position as a hub for clean tech, AI, and autonomous transport startups. It will also build on the already strong connections between these industries and help harness the power of youth and startup enterprises to make meaningful change," remarked Al Breiki at the signing ceremony held on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2023. "One of the most critical predictors for successful entrepreneurship is access to industry talent, and the partnership between Catalyst, Masdar City, and MBZUAI creates a platform to attract and retain some of the leading authorities in AI to Abu Dhabi," he stated. As part of the agreement, MBZUAI graduates may be eligible for special packages to fast-track their startup enterprises within Masdar City, while current students may be able to participate in paid internships with various companies in the Masdar City Free Zone. Al Hajji said: "From AI incubation to research capabilities in clean energy and a focus on mentorship for emerging businesses and AI professionals, this collaboration can significantly advance the UAEs status as a global destination for AI." Severance said The Catalyst was looking to empower startups who want to change the world through sustainable, clean tech and AI. "This agreement will give us access to even more top-tier talent, and provide more opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop groundbreaking tech. Were looking forward to working together," he added. -TradeArabia News Service Pakistani President Arif Alvi (1st R) speaks during an interview with Chinese media in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, Jan. 10, 2023. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal) ISLAMABAD, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Enhanced cooperation between Pakistan and China under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is crucial for regional peace, development and prosperity, Pakistani President Arif Alvi has said. The bilateral relationship is "a very different kind of relationship based on mutual trust and win-win cooperation rather than vested interest," he said here during a recent interview with Chinese media. Pakistan and China enjoy a unique, close and mutually beneficial relationship, which is built on the strength of economic achievements and has been thriving with each passing day and year, said the president. As the year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the BRI, as well as the 10th year of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of the BRI launched in 2013, Alvi said the initiative has been promoting socio-economic development in Pakistan and improving people's livelihood. Highlighting the major achievements under CPEC over the past 10 years, the president noted that the construction of the economic corridor has promoted energy and transportation infrastructure critical for Pakistan's economic development, and helped develop Pakistan's Gwadar Port to boost trade and regional connectivity. Noting that thousands of megawatts of electricity has been added to the national grid through various power projects including water, solar and coal, he said that as CPEC moved to the second phase of high-quality development, the Pakistani government is looking forward to further enhancing cooperation with China in the fields of agriculture, science and technology, and poverty alleviation. "Pakistan has a lot to learn from China's experience in development fields, and the second phase of CPEC is geared towards improving Pakistan's health and education sector, reducing poverty, and social development to make the country prosperous and flourishing," Alvi said. Regarding China's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, "China has played a vital role in preventing and controlling the COVID-19 pandemic at home and abroad by sharing timely information, knowledge and data with the world besides cooperating with countries around the globe including Pakistan." Being an iron-clad friend of Pakistan, China has assisted Pakistan and enhanced its COVID-19 response by supporting with vaccines and medical supplies, and sending teams of medical experts, he added. Thanking China for its substantial assistance to Pakistan during the recent climate-induced catastrophic floods, the president said that among all aids the international community has offered to help handle the crisis, China's assistance has been the biggest. On the challenging issue of climate change, Alvi said, "China has especially helped Pakistan and cooperated in the provision of solar energy to the country." "Pakistan and China have long-lasting cooperation in this area," the president said, adding that a number of important initiatives proposed by China including the Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative have a global perspective and are of great significance to the international community in addressing climate change, pandemic prevention and control, and peaceful development. As the Lunar Year of the Rabbit is approaching, Alvi, on behalf of the Pakistani people, extended his greetings and best wishes to the Chinese people. "Happy Chinese New Year, and a happy Year of the Rabbit!" SHANGHAI, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Those who claim that "China's economic slide is dragging down the global economy" should retract their rumors. Faced with the impacts of multiple unexpected factors, China's economy withstood the pressure and maintained overall stability. China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 3 percent year on year to a record high of 121.0207 trillion yuan (about 17.95 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday. This economic performance was hard won, given the scale of the world's second-largest economy, which surpassed 100 trillion yuan and 110 trillion yuan in 2020 and 2021, respectively, as well as headwinds from COVID-19 and downward pressure in the global economy. The Chinese economy is integrating with the world more closely and strongly. In U.S. dollar terms, foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Chinese mainland, in actual use, increased 8 percent year on year to 189.13 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. The country's goods trade totaled 42.07 trillion yuan, up 7.7 percent year on year, ranking first globally for a sixth consecutive year, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). The figure exceeded 40 trillion yuan for the first time, the GAC said. In 2022, China strived to balance its epidemic response with economic and social development, steadily improved the quality of development, made substantial achievements in scientific and technological innovation, deepened reform and opening-up in a comprehensive way, and stabilized employment and prices. The 3 percent growth rate, a relatively high rate among the world's major economies in 2022, highlights the strong resilience, tremendous potential and great vitality of the Chinese economy, and the effective coordination of epidemic response with economic and social development. With China now in a new phase of its epidemic response, analysts predict the accelerated growth of the Chinese economy in 2023 despite various challenges. The international community generally believes that although China's economic growth slowed in 2022 due to the epidemic and other factors, China's economic and social vitality will be released further as COVID-19 prevention and control work enters a new stage, and it will continue to be the "stabilizer" of world economic recovery and the "engine" of growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that China will achieve stable economic growth in 2023, and become the largest positive factor in the global economy. Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, said recently that China's optimization of its COVID-19 response will lead to stronger and more prosperous growth and contribute to global growth. The current international situation is still complex and China's economic growth is still faced with the triple pressure of decreasing demand, supply shocks and weaker expectations. In 2023, China will focus on boosting domestic demand by prioritizing the expansion of consumption, increasing personal income through multiple channels, and encouraging more private capital to participate in the construction of key national projects, according to the annual central economic work conference last month. "This year's Spring Festival holiday is expected to achieve the best results in the past three years," said Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy. The Spring Festival travel rush is one of the signs that life and production are returning to normal across the country. In contrast to those who advocate a decoupling from China, there is a growing awareness of the opportunities China presents to the world. China's economy is expected to show strong growth, with its momentum strengthened considerably, said Liang Guoyong, a senior economist for the United Nations (UN) Conference on Trade and Development. "This will provide an important impetus for the growth of the world economy and contribute to its overall stability," Liang said. Representatives of overseas Chinese nationals pose for a group photo during a Spring Festival kits distribution ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Hari Maharjan/Xinhua) KATHMANDU, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in Nepal hosted a Spring Festival kits distribution ceremony on Tuesday for overseas Chinese ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Chen Song handed out Spring Festival kits to representatives of overseas Chinese nationals and students in Kathmandu, which contain local and Chinese foods, as well as Spring Festival couplets, and the Chinese character "Fu" meaning "Good Fortune" or "Blessing." Addressing the ceremony, Ambassador Chen said the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government have always kept in mind the security and well-being of overseas Chinese, and the embassy has been distributing Spring Festival kits since 2021. The party and the government have shown their care and love for overseas Chinese through the distribution of the kits in the past years, when Chinese nationals in Nepal had gone through an extraordinary journey of fighting COVID-19 with solidarity and cooperation. Jin Xiaodong, president of the Overseas Chinese Association of Nepal, said the Spring Festival kits embodied the care and love extended by the party and government to overseas Chinese, while Xin Lugao, director of the Confucius Institute at Nepal's Tribhuvan University, said it was "heart-warming" to receive the kits. The Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, falls on Sunday this year. LHASA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- As of Wednesday night, eight people have been confirmed dead after an avalanche took place on Tuesday in the city of Nyingchi in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. At approximately 7: 50 p.m. on Tuesday, the public security bureau in Nyingchi's Medog County received calls about an avalanche at an exit of a tunnel on the highway connecting Medog with Pad Township in Nyingchi's Mainling County, trapping people and vehicles, Nyingchi municipal authorities said on Wednesday. A search and rescue operation for the missing is underway. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Wednesday extended festive greetings to all Chinese people when he held virtual talks with the general public from across the country ahead of the Spring Festival. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, spoke with medical workers in a hospital, senior citizens at a welfare home, workers at an outlying oilfield, travelers and staff members at a high-speed railway station, vendors and customers at a wholesale market, and people in an ethnic minority village via video link. Xi wished Chinese people of all ethnic groups healthy and happy lives in the Year of the Rabbit and expressed his hope that the country will enjoy prosperity. This year's Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year, falls on Jan. 22. Related Xi on COVID-19 response: light of hope right ahead Xi stresses safe Spring Festival travel Xi stresses stable food supply for Spring Festival Xi calls for more achievements in rural revitalization Xi stresses stable energy supply, price ahead of Spring Festival BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday stressed efforts to ensure a stable food supply during the Spring Festival holiday. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when he held virtual talks with the general public from across the country ahead of the Spring Festival. Through video link, Xi extended his holiday greetings to vendors and customers at the Xinfadi wholesale market, a major fresh-produce marketplace in Beijing. To his delight, Xi heard that the food price was stable and the provision of various produce was sufficient. Xi stressed redoubled efforts to ensure sound production, sale, and supply of essential commodities such as grain, edible oil, meat, eggs, milk, fruits, and vegetables. A smooth delivery, sufficient and diversified provisions, and the stable market price of these commodities should be guaranteed during the holiday so that people can have a happy and sound Chinese New Year, Xi said. Northeast China's Jilin Province is famous for its ice and snow resources. The province is celebrating the upcoming Chinese New Year with ice and snow-themed activities. Produced by Xinhua Global Service Chinese agriculture expert Chen Taihua (L) talks to Godfrey Kityo, a fish breeding technician, at the Aquaculture Research and Development Centre in Kajjansi, Wakiso District, Uganda, Dec. 21, 2022. (Photo by Hajarah Nalwadda/Xinhua) Uganda on Tuesday hailed China for the support it continues to give to countries under the South-South cooperation framework. KAMPALA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Uganda on Tuesday hailed China for the support it continues to give to countries under the South-South cooperation framework. While speaking at the opening of the second Africa High-Level Forum of South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development held in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, Ugandan Vice President Jessica Alupo said China has supported African countries including Uganda in road and energy infrastructure development programs. China financed the construction of two major hydropower plants -- Karuma and Isimba power plants -- in Uganda. Alupo said through the Food and Agriculture Organization-China South-South Cooperation (SSC) Program Trust Fund, the wellbeing of many Ugandans has improved through increased agricultural productivity. Chinese agriculture expert Chen Taihua (L) talks to Zhang Xiaoqiang, head of the Chinese agriculture team for the third phase under the framework of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-China South-South Program, at the Aquaculture Research and Development Centre in Kajjansi, Wakiso District, Uganda, Dec. 21, 2022. (Photo by Hajarah Nalwadda/Xinhua) "In one of the project areas, for example, there was a four-fold increase in rice production per hectare, while in other areas, daily milk production increased from two liters to seven liters per indigenous cow," she said. "Also, there has been (the) production of high-quality and low-cost fish feed techniques, improved technologies of foxtail millet, maize, grapes, apples and cherry tomatoes, and animal reproduction including goats, pigs and sheep." The experts are meeting under the theme, "Building National Capacities for South-South and Triangular Cooperation Ecosystem in Africa and Forging Horizontal Partnership for Sustainable and Resilient Societies." Alupo said more countries are sharing knowledge, skills and technology, sometimes with or without support from the more developed countries of the North. She said some of the technologies and knowledge opportunities among fellow Southern States may be cheaper and more appropriate for local conditions. "Overall, the technical cooperation is aimed at creating capacity and self-reliance among developing countries to solve their development challenges based on their own aspirations, values and specific needs," Alupo told the three-day meeting. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) plans to launch more than 200 spacecraft with over 60 space missions in 2023, according to a company report released Wednesday. The CASC report unveiled plans for the country's space science and technology activities in 2023. It said that the Tianzhou-6 cargo craft, the Shenzhou-16 and the Shenzhou-17 flight missions would take place within the year to improve China's capability of entering, using and exploring space. The BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System will witness the launches of three backup satellites, according to the CASC. It added that the construction of a new-generation commercial remote-sensing satellite system will be accelerated this year. The corporation also pledged to release information on surplus rocket-carrying capacities and provide launch opportunities to commercial users. In 2023, the CASC will comprehensively push forward the fourth phase of lunar exploration and planetary exploration, and develop the lunar probe Chang'e-7, Mars probe Tianwen-2, as well as stationary orbit-microwave detection satellite. The carrier rocket Long March-6C will make its maiden flight in 2023, while the Long March carrier rocket series are expected to exceed 500 launches in aggregate, said the CASC report. Zhang Pihe (R) teaches traditional tie-dyeing technique of the ethnic Bai group to a villager in Sangzhi County, central China's Hunan Province, Sept. 8, 2022.(Xinhua/Zhang Ge) by Xinhua writers Sun Yi and Zhang Ge CHANGSHA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Crowds gathered around Zhang Pihe, watching how the Bai woman deftly folded and rolled the fabric and then wrapped it, stitch by stitch -- an important step in the traditional tie-dyeing technique of the ethnic Bai group in China. Hequn Village, in Furongqiao Bai Township of Sangzhi County, in central China's Hunan Province, has attracted many tourists recently with its rich Bai culture. But Zhang, who was introducing visitors to Bai culture, is not a native of the village, her hometown is more than 1,000 km away in Dali, home to most of the country's Bai population, in the southwestern border province of Yunnan. Over 700 years ago, an army of Bai people from Dali came to Hunan to set down roots in Sangzhi. In the 1980s, after a series of visits and investigational studies, authorities recognized that the Bai people of Sangzhi and those of Dali were of the same origin. However, Sangzhi was once an impoverished county in Hunan Province, and the residents of Hequn Village were once too poverty-stricken and too busy making a living away from home to learn Bai culture. The Bai-style dance, for example, has more than 80 types of moves that are on the verge of being lost in Sangzhi. Having been brought up and deeply influenced by the Bai culture, Zhang has studied Bai music, dance, tie-dyeing, and other traditional culture. "We are all from a Bai village, so I hope we can work together to pass on and promote our culture," said Zhang. With such conviction in mind, Zhang left her hometown of Yunnan and moved to Sangzhi County. "I hope to take advantage of the traditional cultural resources of the Bai ethnic group to boost the development of our villages," said Zhang. As soon as Zhang arrived in Hequn Village, she set up the Bai tie-dyeing room, purchased needles, thread, cotton cloth, brushes, and other tools from Yunnan, and began training villagers in tie-dyeing techniques. She started with the Bai-styled octagonal drum and gave local Bai women a systematic lecture on the historical heritage of the music and dance of the Bai ethnic group, teaching each syllable and movement. As a cultural advisor to the Bai cultural projects that will soon be implemented in the village, Zhang and the villagers committee developed a cultural heritage curriculum for the villagers. Wang Yan, a girl from Hequn Village, said that the more she learns about the Bai culture, the more she loves it. "Ms. Zhang teaches us Bai music, dance, tea art, and handicrafts. As a member of the Bai ethnic group, I will keep these skills passed on!" "The heritage of culture cannot be destroyed," said Zhong Baiyu, Party secretary of Hequn Village. Now that more and more people are returning to their hometowns, the Bai culture becomes even more of a "soft power" for revitalizing the area. "Nowadays, the atmosphere of our Bai culture is getting stronger and stronger, and I have more confidence in passing on our Bai culture," said Wang. Zhang Pihe shows traditional tie-dyeing technique of the ethnic Bai group in Sangzhi County, central China's Hunan Province, Sept. 8, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Ge) The Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) has signed a $80 million financing agreement with Antigua and Barbuda government towards funding the expansion project at the University of the West Indies at Five Islands (UWI) in the Caribbean nation. Aimed at making the university more sustainable, the financing agreement involves constructing seven energy-efficient buildings. The project will cover a total area of nearly 95,160 sq m, and serve 5,000 students annually. The expansion project will also cater to neighbouring Caribbean countries that extend from the southeast of North America and eastern Central America to the north and east of South America. The agreement represents a significant milestone, with Antigua and Barbuda being the 85th state to receive funding for a major development project from SFD, stated the Fund. To help reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the Caribbean, the agreement will promote scientific innovation and add additional educational facilities to the university, it added. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, expressed his appreciation for the development efforts undertaken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through SFD, which will enhance the educational sector in Antigua and Barbuda and its neighboring countries. He was speaking after signing the agreement with Saudi Fund for Development CEO Sultan Al Marshad in the presence of senior government officials. Al Marshad said: "Through financing this project, the SFD aims to expand the scope of its operations in the Caribbean, which is in line with the efforts made by the Kingdom's government to build bridges of cooperation for development with the international community." "The project will further support international efforts to achieve sustainable development across different social and economic areas," he noted. According to him, KSA attaches great importance to supporting development in different countries to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. "The UWI expansion project is in line with the Fund's financing policy, which is based on achieving SDGs by providing the necessary support for development projects while also focusing on infrastructure and productivity sectors with humanitarian impacts. The expansion project falls under SDG 4, quality education, which is essential for achieving economic growth," he added.-TradeArabia News Service MACAO, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The founder of Macao's Suncity Group Alvin Chau Cheok Wa was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Wednesday over illegally operating gambling activities, running a mafia-style organization, and fraud, according to the Court of First Instance of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR). Several other co-defendants in the case were also sentenced to years in prison. According to the court ruling, Chau is also sentenced to pay the Macao SAR government 6.52 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 833.3 million U.S. dollars) in civil compensation. In November 2021, Macao police detained Chau and other suspects for being involved in illegally running gambling businesses or money laundering, and referred the case to procurators. BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) announced its decision to arrest Zhang Wufeng, former director of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, for suspected bribe-taking. The National Commission of Supervision has completed an investigation into Zhang's case and handed it over to prosecutors, the SPP said. Further handling of the case is underway. ADEN, Yemen, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A military officer and three soldiers from Yemen's government forces were killed by a roadside bomb in the country's southern turbulent province of Abyan on Wednesday, a government official said. The bomb, which was planted by al-Qaida terrorists, detonated near a vehicle in the Mudiyah district of Abyan, killing a military officer, three soldiers and wounding two others onboard, the local government official said on condition of anonymity. The government soldiers were carrying out an operation to hunt down al-Qaida militants in a rugged area, the official said. In November 2022, military units of the Southern Transitional Council, which is a part of the Yemeni government, announced they were launching "a qualitative anti-terror operation and succeeded in raiding a key hideout of al-Qaida in Abyan." Al-Qaida militants hiding out in rocky terrains and mountainous areas of Abyan and other neighboring provinces frequently use hit-and-run tactics against Yemeni government forces. The Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula network has exploited years of deadly conflict between the Yemeni government and the Houthi militia to expand its presence in the war-ravaged Arab country. It has carried out many high-profile attacks against the security forces in the country's southern provinces. Chief of Staff at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Sweta Saxena speaks during an opening event of the exhibition themed Happy Chinese New Year and an Extraordinary Decade of China in the New Era, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- With distinctive Chinese New Year songs and cultural performances along with aromatic Chinese tea and cuisines, a special ceremony, held Tuesday at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, marked the approaching Chinese Lunar New Year. With the Year of the Rabbit right around the corner, the event marked the start of an exhibition featuring Chinese art performances, history, and cuisines, which runs through Jan. 24, inside the premises of the UNECA. Hosted by the Chinese Mission to the African Union (AU) and the UNECA, the exhibition brought together members of the diplomatic community from China and other African countries, and the UN family in Ethiopia, among others. Chief of Staff at the UNECA Sweta Saxena said during the opening event that the ever-growing cultural exchange activities between China and Africa foster socioeconomic ties between the two sides. "In Chinese culture, rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity," she said. "I hope it will usher us into an era of a long friendship between China and Africa that brings peace and prosperity." Saxena said exchanges between China and Africa have expanded and deepened in culture, media and communication, science and technology, think-thanks, and facilitated dialogues among youth and women. Rakeb Million, one of the visitors, said she was deeply enchanted by the performances. "Personally, it is my first-ever experience celebrating the Chinese New Year and I feel very happy to be here. I have seen different cultural practices today and I really like all their cultural activities, especially tea making ceremony -- very neat, simple, and exquisite," she said. "What amazed me the most is their sense of togetherness and closeness. They (Chinese people) look very beautiful as they celebrate the new year together." The exhibition, in particular, created synergy between Chinese and African cultures as students from the Confucius Institute at Addis Ababa University (AAU) presented a combination of both Chinese and African cultural performances and dances. Heran Adane, a Chinese language student at the AAU Confucius Institute, was one of the performers at the event. "Today, we have presented different performances, which include singing Chinese songs, performing Ethiopian cultural dances and songs, martial arts, and different other activities," she said. "The Chinese New Year is such a unique event and we are enjoying it." Hu Changchun, head of the Chinese Mission to the AU, said the Year of the Rabbit will bring warmth, peace, happiness and hope to the people of Africa, China and beyond. "In the new year, the Chinese side stands ready to work with the UNECA, all African friends and partners to make positive contributions to building an even closer community with a shared future for China and Africa," he said. The Year of the Rabbit falls on Sunday, Jan. 22, this year. Hu Changchun (Rear), head of the Chinese Mission to the African Union (AU), speaks during an opening event of the exhibition themed Happy Chinese New Year and an Extraordinary Decade of China in the New Era, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) A Chinese language teacher of the Confucius Institute at Addis Ababa University (AAU) performs a tea ceremony during a special ceremony of the exhibition themed Happy Chinese New Year and an Extraordinary Decade of China in the New Era, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) A Chinese language student from the Confucius Institute at Addis Ababa University (AAU) performs a traditional Ethiopian dance during a special ceremony of the exhibition themed Happy Chinese New Year and an Extraordinary Decade of China in the New Era, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Jan. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) DAR ES SALAAM, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango on Wednesday ordered defense and security agencies to hunt down and arrest dishonest police officials who are colluding with citizens to vandalize the standard gauge railway (SGR) project. "Some police officials are colluding with citizens to vandalize infrastructure of the SGR project. They must be arrested and prosecuted," said Mpango. Mpango made the order when he launched the construction of the 165 km Tabora-Isaka SGR at Isaka railway station in the Shinyanga region, northern Tanzania. Of late, police have arrested scores of people in connection with vandalizing the infrastructure of the SGR project, including stealing fuel, cement and iron bars. Mpango said the vandals included drivers and machine operators in the project and people living close to the project areas, who are protected by dishonest police officials. "Vandalizing the project is economic sabotage. This malpractice must be stopped forthwith," said Mpango. Tanzania has signed agreements with construction companies from various countries, to construct a total of 2,102 km of SGR from the Dar es Salaam port linking with Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a view to making the East African nation a business and transportation hub. BANGKOK, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of an oil tanker explosion in central Thailand's Samut Songkhram province rose to eight as more bodies of victims were recovered from the wreckage, local authorities said Wednesday. One Thai national and seven Myanmar nationals were killed in the incident, Samut Songkhram governor Somnuk Phromkeaw told reporters after the end of the rescue. The explosion occurred Tuesday at around 9:15 a.m. local time when the tanker docked at a shipyard on the Mae Klong River in Muang district exploded and caused a fire. Four injured were sent to a local hospital Tuesday, and one was later discharged, Somun said. At least 97 households in two sub-districts were affected by the blast, he said, adding that those impacted areas were declared a public emergency. In a statement issued by the marine department Tuesday, the authorities suspected that the tanker, with a capacity of 2,998 deadweight tonnes, was not thoroughly cleaned and emptied of fuel before entering the shipyard, leading to the explosion. The tanker still had 30,000 liters of fuel oil onboard at the time of the explosion, according to the marine department of the Transport Ministry. An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway, and preliminary findings will be announced within 10 days. The shipyard has been ordered a temporary closure. A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit drives past the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) A tram decorated with paintings themed on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is seen in Rome, Italy, Jan. 17, 2023. A tram featuring the Year of the Rabbit was unveiled here on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Xinhua/Jin Mamengni) OTTAWA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Canada will donate 200 Senator Armoured Personnel Carriers to Ukraine as a new package of military assistance, Defence Minister Anita Anand announced Wednesday. According to a press release issued by the Defence Ministry, Anand made the announcement during her visit to Kyiv and these vehicles, which are being purchased from Roshel, a Canadian company based in Ontario, are valued at over 90 million Canadian dollars (72 million U.S. dollars). The armoured personnel carriers, which are easily maneuverable and adaptable, are security task vehicles and offer state-of-the-art, best-in-class technology, and weapons can easily be mounted on them. The vehicles allow for the safe transport of personnel and equipment, and medical evacuations, the release said. Canada's military assistance committed to Ukraine since February 2022 includes a National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System with associated munitions, 39 armoured combat support vehicles, anti-tank weapons, M777 Howitzers and associated ammunition, according to the release. Approximately 230 Canadian Armed Forces personnel are currently deployed on Operation UNIFIER, Canada's training mission for Ukrainian personnel, which has trained over 35,000 Ukrainian security forces personnel since its launch in 2015, the release said. Pakistani film Joyland is receiving praise from all over. Various celebrities are showing their support for the film. However, initially, Pakistan Government tries to Ban this film even after the movie was selected for Oscar 2023. Joyland is the first ever movie to be shortlisted for the Oscars from Pakistan. One of the renowned actresses in Bollywood and Hollywood Priyanka Chopra also took to social media to shower her love on the film . Sharing a video from the film, Priyanka tweeted, "Joyland is truly a joy to watch. Bravo to the entire team for bringing this story to life. It's a must-watch." As soon as her appreciation post caught the eyes of cast and crew. They started reacting to it. One user wrote, "Thank you, Priyanka Chopra." Director Saim Sadiq, , "Thanks a lot." Actor Sania Saeed wrote, "OMG guys!" Actor Rasti Farooq, "Thanks Priyanka Chopra, I am really proud that our film has spoken to many audiences across the world and that it humanizes Pakistanis in its own spectacular way. Joyland is nominated for the Oscar 2023, and Pakistani authorities initially tries to ban it because of its "highly objectionable material." The film follows the story of the youngest son in a traditional Pakistani family, who gets a job as a backup dancer in a Bollywood-style burlesque act. He falls in love with Biba, a transgender woman who runs the show. Joyland is written and directed by Saim Sadiq. It stars Sania Saeed, Ali Junejo, Alina Khan, Sarwat Gilani, Rasti Farooq, Salmaan Peerzada, and Sohail Sameer in important roles. It was screened at several film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival and the Busan International Film Festival. From Pathaan to Brahmastra, Bollywood movies that are called for Boycott Government Notice to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan due to this reason, Have to pay huge amount Video!!, Naukari Se Nikal Dena Chaihiye, Jaya Bachchan again lashes out at people for clicking her photos in Indore Brasilia: Brazil's prosecutor-office general has filed the first charges against some of the thousands of people who authorities say stormed government buildings in an attempt to reverse the election defeat of former President Jair Bolsonaro in October. Had given. Prosecutors in the newly formed Anti-Democracy Acts group have also requested that the 39 defendants who sabotaged Congress be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40 million ($40 million) of their assets be forfeited to help cover the damage. 7.7 million) to be confiscated. The defendants are charged with armed criminal association, violent attempt to subvert the democratic rule of law, coup d'etat and damage to public property, according to a written statement released Monday night by the prosecutor general's office. His identity has not been revealed yet. Also Read: Blinken says the execution of a British-Iranian national has left the US 'appalled' Over a thousand people were arrested during the day of the January 8 riots, which was similar to the riots at the United States Congress on January 6, 2021, by a mob demanding the reversal of former President Donald Trump's election loss. Also Read: Ressa, the Philippines' Nobel laureate, has been cleared of tax evasion and calls the verdict a victory for justice Rioters stormed the Brazilian Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court in Brasilia, calling on the armed forces to intervene and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to reverse Bolsonaro's defeat. The rioters "attempted, with violence and grave danger, to subvert the democratic rule of law, prevent or restrict the exercise of constitutional powers," According to a statement cited by the allegations. "The ultimate goal of the attack ... was the establishment of a separate government regime." Also Read: Qantas plane lands safely after issuing mayday over ocean The attackers were not charged with terrorism because such a charge requires xenophobia or prejudice based on race, ethnicity or religion under Brazilian law. After the President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, provided a list of those accused of rampaging through Congress last week, the Prosecutor-General's Office forwarded his allegations to the Supreme Court. More rioters are expected to face charges. Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the UAE, has signed a ground-breaking contrail management contract with Satavia, a leading UK-based green aerospace firm. This is the worlds first multi-year commercial production contract to integrate contrail management within routine operations. The agreement will expand the scope for Satavia technology to prevent warming aircraft contrails in day-to-day commercial aviation, while also enabling collaboration on the generation of future carbon credits. Future carbon credits The partnership will build on a previous proof-of-concept engagement to expand the scope for contrail management within day-to-day flight operations. The partnership also incorporates an agreement to collaborate on the generation of future carbon credits from contrail management activity. The contract was signed by Etihads Head of Sustainability and Excellence, Mariam Al Qubaisi and Satavia CEO Dr Adam Durant at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) at Adnec, Abu Dhabi. Once in force, the new agreement will see Etihad scaling Satavia contrail prevention across daily flight schedules, accelerating the airlines progress towards climate neutral operations. Aircraft-generated condensation trails, or contrails, cause surface warming responsible for up to two-thirds of aviations climate impact, significantly outweighing direct CO2 emissions from aircraft engines. Satavias contrail management platform, DECISIONX:NETZERO, optimises commercial flight plans for greener operations, implementing small routing changes on a minority of flights to avoid the formation of persistent warming contrails. Credible sustainability Al Qubaisi said: Our collaboration with Satavia illustrates the possibility of credible sustainability advances in day-to-day commercial operations. In 2022 alone, Satavia technology has enabled us to eliminate thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent climate impact. We are delighted to sign this pioneering contract with Satavia at WFES, signalling our intent to tackle aviations non-CO2 impacts with cutting-edge science and ground-breaking technical innovation. In addition to enabling contrail management in day-to-day flight operations, Satavia conducts climate impact analysis for conversion into future carbon credits to be shared with Etihad. Minimal changes Dr Durant said: By implementing minimal changes to a small percentage of flights, eco-conscious operators like Etihad can eliminate most of their non-CO2 climate footprint with little to no impact on day-to-day operations and on shorter timescales than other green aviation interventions. We are excited to expand our partnership with Etihad, applying best-in-class science to tackle aviations significant non-CO2 climate impacts. By implementing contrail management across their flight schedules, Etihad will once again blaze a trail for sustainable flight operations. The British Ambassador to the UAE, Patrick Moody, said: Satavias ground-breaking software helps reduce jet contrails - a major part of aviations climate impact. This is a great example from Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week of the shared innovation and commitment by UK and UAE companies to tackle climate change.-- TradeArabia News Service United States: The International Space Station (ISS) was to perform three collision avoidance maneuvers (CAM) in 2022. The space station in orbit fires its engines to get away from oncoming space objects during collision avoidance maneuvers. Since its launch in 1999, the orbiting space lab has performed 29 debris avoidance maneuvers through May 2021. The ISS orbits the Earth at an average altitude of 402 kilometers per hour, completing one orbit every 90 minutes. Because the orbital station is docked in space, it is constantly threatened by space debris, which can be a cosmic object of any size. Fortunately, there are monitoring systems that help the station avoid such hazards. NASA's Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris Dr. Jer Chi Liu said at an event in India that NASA had planned or assisted in the execution of 18 CAMs in 2022. Also Read: 91 tech giants laid off around 24,000 employees within 15 days He also said that the US Space Force was monitoring more than 47,000 pieces of space debris (each larger than 10 cm) and tracking their orbital paths for any imminent collision risk. Millions of smaller pieces of space debris also pose a threat, but they cannot be tracked. Dr. Liu said that the International Space Station (ISS) is protected by 500 different shields known as Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris (MMOD) impact protection shields. While the US module on the International Space Station has shields to protect against debris 1 cm and smaller, the other modules are not as protected. Also Read: IT Ministry creating consolidated view on skill games for all states But why are space debris of various sizes a concern? According to NASA, the average impact speed of orbital debris with another space object is about 10km/s and can reach up to 15km/s. For comparison, this is ten times the speed of a bullet, and one can imagine the effect of such a collision. Also Read: A23 and Galaxy A14 5G from Samsung are released in India According to NASA's official blog, the space station must avoid space debris on average about once a year. The space agency explained, "If another object is predicted to come within a few kilometers of the International Space Station (ISS), the ISS will normally move away from the object if the probability of a collision exceeds 1 in 10,000." Is." Benghazi: A small boat carrying more than 230 potential migrants, most of them Syrians, capsized and began to sink after leaving Lebanon's northern coast on New Year's Eve. Since the collapse of Lebanon's economy in 2019, an increasing number of individuals, mostly Syrian and Palestinian refugees, but also Lebanese citizens, have attempted to leave the country and travel to Europe by sea. Many times, the attempts end in death. This time, rescuers from the Lebanese Navy and UN peacekeepers stationed on the border with Israel were able to save everyone except two passengers a Syrian woman and a drowning child. However, for many survivors the respite was only temporary. Also Read: Israeli raids at night against Palestinian children have been condemned According to some of the survivors and human rights observers, the Lebanese army loaded about 200 rescued Syrians into trucks and crossed an informal border crossing in the far northeastern Lebanese region of Wadi Khalid to bring them back to the coast. Dropped on the side the port of Tripoli, where they recovered overnight. Although the order of the deportations was still unknown, the incident marks an increase in the Lebanese military's deportations of Syrians at a time when the rhetoric against refugees in the small, crisis-hit country has become more strident. Requests for comment from representatives of the military and General Security, organizations typically overseeing immigration matters, went unanswered. The boat survivors were stopped after crossing the border and taken into a large plastic greenhouse by men dressed in Syrian army uniforms. He was imprisoned there until family members paid for his release so that he could be taken back to Lebanon by smugglers. "It was a case of people buying and selling, buying and selling," said Yassin al-Yassin, a 32-year-old Syrian refugee who has lived in Lebanon since 2012. Al-Yassin claimed that he paid his brother $600 to return to Lebanon, with the money being split between the Syrian military and smugglers. Syrian officials did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations. Mahmoud al-Dayoub, a 43-year-old refugee from Syria's Homs region who was also on the boat, claimed to have heard his captors haggling over the price of each captor. Dayab, who has been registered as a refugee in Lebanon since 2012, said, "I don't know if it was the Syrian army or smugglers. We had 30 people with guns, and we had no idea what was happening." " , the man claimed. My only concern was to avoid being sent to Syria because if I had been, I might not have come back. Also Read: Erdogan aide: Turkish offensive in Syria "possible at any time" Dayub claimed that despite his family not paying a ransom for him, he was able to escape and return across the border. Lebanon's ongoing campaign to persuade Syrian refugees to return home has taken a disturbing new turn in the case of boat survivors, human rights watchdogs claim. The world's largest concentration of refugees per capita is found in Lebanon, which is home to some 815,000 Syrian refugees who have registered as such and possibly hundreds of thousands more. However, Lebanese authorities have lamented the mass exodus of Syrians since the country's economic crisis began three years ago. Lebanon's General Security Agency has made weak attempts to persuade refugees to return home voluntarily. In some cases, the agency has returned individuals to Syria under a 2019 rule that allows for the deportation of unauthorized refugees who entered Lebanon after April of that year. Human rights organizations have documented incidents of detained and returning refugees being tortured; The Lebanese government denies these claims. Until recently, deportations were generally carried out in small numbers and according to formal procedures, allowing the United Nations and human rights organizations to become involved and, in some cases, prevent them. According to Lebanese human rights lawyer Mohamed Sablouh, what happened to the boat survivors "violates human rights, Lebanese laws and international treaties." Lisa Abu Khaled, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Lebanon, said the organization was "following up with the relevant authorities" on the matter. "All people who have survived at sea and who may fear their country of origin (return) should be given a chance to seek protection," she said. Syrians who have crossed illegally are often turned back by the Lebanese army. Jimmy Jabbour, a member of parliament for the northern Akkar district, which includes Wadi Khaled, claimed that rather than formally deporting would-be migrants who crossed into Lebanon via smuggler routes, army patrols frequently round them up and throw them across the border in no man's land. Jabbour added that he had complained to the army about the practise. After being deported, the individuals simply pay smugglers to bring them back in. It's not the army's responsibility to provide smugglers with employment opportunities, he asserted. "The army's responsibility is to turn them over to General Security... and General Security is in charge of delivering them to Syrian authorities. Also Read: Palestinians claim Israeli soldiers killed a man in the West Bank The New Year's Eve boat survivors included refugees who had been living in Lebanon for more than ten years and were registered with the UN, in contrast to the recently arrived migrants. One of them, a Syrian woman from Idlib who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation, claimed she was held at the border for two nights before her family paid $300 to have her released and allowed to return to Lebanon. "I can't go back" (to Syria). She uttered, "I would rather die and dive into the sea. Many refugees take to the sea to avoid deportation, according to Jasmin Lilian Diab, director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University. The number of migrant boats leaving Lebanon increased, according to Diab's institute, in the latter part of 2022. Some individuals informed her research team that the rhetoric against refugees was the reason they left. According to Diab, they were concerned that they would be "deported and sent back to Syria." Therefore, they believed that it was their only opportunity to leave the area. Washington: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Tuesday that his country intends to "join" the United States and Germany in training and arming Ukraine with advanced Patriot defence systems. At the start of a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House, Rutte signalled the Netherlands' intentions. It is unclear whether the Dutch will eventually send Patriot systems, participate in training, or provide other assistance with Patriot deployment. According to the Dutch defence ministry, Ukraine has requested that the Netherlands provide "Patriot capacity." "We intend to join your efforts with Germany on the Patriot project," Rutte told Biden. "I believe it is critical that we participate in that." Also Read: Blinken says the execution of a British-Iranian national has left the US 'appalled' In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Netherlands had agreed to send Ukraine a Patriot battery. "There are now three batteries that are guaranteed. However, this is only the beginning. "We are developing new solutions to strengthen our air defence," Zelensky explained. Rutte, who said he discussed the potential assistance with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday, was more vague in his public comments. He told Dutch broadcaster NOS that his government is discussing how it can help. According to the defence ministry, the Dutch military has four Patriot systems, one of which is not in service. "The plan is to provide not only training but also equipment," Rutte told NOS. He went on to say that the Dutch military is currently reviewing "what we have and how we can ensure that it works well with the American and German systems." Also Read: Ressa, the Philippines' Nobel laureate, has been cleared of tax evasion and calls the verdict a victory for justice Rutte made the remarks as Ukrainian troops arrived at Oklahoma's Fort Sill Army base to begin training on how to operate and maintain the Patriot missile defence system. The Patriot is the most advanced surface-to-air missile system provided by the West to Ukraine to aid in repelling Russian aerial attacks. "Training has started," said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. "As previously stated, that training will last several months and will train up to 90 to 100 Ukrainians on the use of the Patriot missile system." Biden also used the meeting on Tuesday to discuss the United States' efforts to further limit China's access to advanced semiconductors through export restrictions. Since the US Commerce Department announced new export controls aimed at China in October, the administration has been attempting to get the Netherlands on board. The restrictions are intended to limit China's access to advanced computing chips, supercomputer development and maintenance, and advanced semiconductor manufacturing. "Together, we're working on how to keep a free and open Indo Pacific, as well as, frankly, China's challenges," Biden said at the start of the meeting. The export restrictions, according to administration officials, are necessary because China can use semiconductors to develop advanced military systems, including weapons of mass destruction, commit human rights violations, and improve the speed and accuracy of its military decision making, planning, and logistics. Slowing Beijing's access, on the other hand, will require a lot of help from allies for the US export controls to have the greatest impact. ASML, based in the Netherlands, is a major manufacturer of lithography machines used in the design and production of semiconductors. China is one of ASML's most important customers. Soon after the administration unveiled the US export control regulations last fall, CEO Peter Wennink downplayed their significance. ASML predicted last year that company-wide sales in 2022 would be around 21 billion euros. Also Read: Qantas plane lands safely after issuing mayday over ocean The US has also been negotiating tougher export restrictions with Japan in order to limit the sale of semiconductor manufacturing technology to China. Rutte's visit follows Biden's meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week. Following the meeting, the US and Japan issued a joint statement in which they agreed to "sharpen our shared edge on economic security, including the protection and promotion of critical and emerging technologies." Last week, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, urged Japan and the Netherlands to resist US pressure. "We hope that the relevant countries will do the right thing and work together to protect the multilateral trade regime and the global industrial and supply chains," he said. "This will also serve to safeguard their long-term interests." Biden praised the Netherlands as one of the US's "strongest" allies, saying it has been "very, very stalwart" in its support for Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February. This year, the Netherlands has committed approximately $2.7 billion (2.5 billion euros) in aid to Ukraine. The funds will be used to purchase military equipment as well as humanitarian and diplomatic efforts. The Netherlands providing Patriot assistance to Ukraine, whether in the form of weapons systems, missiles, or training, would be a significant step for the NATO ally. The training of Ukraine forces currently underway in Oklahoma will include instruction on how to maintain the battery that will be sent to Ukraine once training is completed. Each system has multiple components, including a phased array radar, a control station, computers, and generators, and typically requires about 90 soldiers to operate and maintain; however, the Army claims that only three soldiers are required to fire it. Once the Patriot is on the battlefield, some of the ongoing maintenance will be done remotely, according to Ryder. The Dutch prime minister praised Biden for leading the international effort to support Ukraine. "I am convinced that if the United States had not stepped up like you did, things would have turned out very differently," Rutte said. The two leaders also discussed plans for the Summit for Democracy, which they will co-host in late March with Costa Rica, South Korea, and Zambia. In December 2021, Biden will host the first Democracy Summit. The administration billed it as the start of a global conversation about how to best halt democracy's slide. Germany will greenlight Leopards for Ukraine if US provides Abrams tanks 18 January, 11:18 PM Olaf Scholz (Photo:REUTERS/Michele Tantussi) German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will allow shipments of German-made Leopard main battle tanks to Ukraine if the United States decides to make Abrams tanks available to Kyiv, German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung reported on Jan. 18. According to the report, during his conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden, Scholz made it clear that Germany will agree to supply Ukraine with tanks only if the United States does the same. The German leader has long since maintained that Berlin will only act in concert with its allies when it comes to Ukraine military aid. Video of day Suddeutsche Zeitung writes that the chancellor is under increasing pressure from EU allies and even his SPD party to finally greenlight shipments of Leopard main battle tanks to Ukraine. Earlier, Claudia Major, an analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told The New York Times that even a single Abrams (tank) will be enough for Scholz to act. The United States is preparing another package of security assistance to Ukraine, which will include Stryker armored vehicles and GLSDB rockets but no Abrams tanks, Politico reported on Jan. 18, citing U.S. officials. On Jan. 17, Reuters reported that at Davos, Germany's partners increased pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to allow the transfer of Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda was the first to announce the transfer of 14 Leopard tanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On Jan. 16, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed that the UK would transfer 14 Challenger-2 tanks to Ukraine. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google News (Adds quotes, context) By John Irish DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Ukraine needs a "significant increase" in weapons at a pivotal moment in Russia's invasion and such support is the only way to a negotiated peaceful solution, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. Defence leaders from around 50 countries and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will hold talks at Germany's Ramstein Air Base on Friday, the latest in a series of meetings since Russian forces swept into Ukraine nearly 11 months ago. "This is a pivotal moment in the war and the need for a significant increase in support for Ukraine," Stoltenberg told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "If we want a negotiated peaceful solution tomorrow we need to provide more weapons today." The focus in Ramstein is expected to be not on what the United States will provide but on whether Germany will lift its opposition to sending its Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine or at least approve their transfer from allied countries. Stoltenberg remained cautious on the subject, saying consultations were continuing, although he welcomed a British decision to dispatch Challenger tanks to Kyiv. This week, Britain raised the pressure on Berlin by becoming the first Western country to send Western tanks, pledging a squadron of 14 Challengers, but the Leopards are seen as the best choice to supply Ukraine with a large-scale tank force. Kyiv says it hopes new Western weapons will give it fresh military momentum this year, especially heavy tanks which would provide its troops more mobility and protection to push through Russian lines in the east and south of the country. Beyond tanks, Stoltenberg said Ukraine needed more air defence systems and armour but also ammunition, spare parts and maintenance capabilities to ensure that its existing weapons continued to function. He said the situation along battlefronts had stabilised over the past weeks, but that the protracted fierce fighting in the eastern city of Bakhmut demonstrated the importance of providing more weapons to support Ukraine. Russia has focused on Bakhmut in recent weeks, claiming last week to have taken the mining town of Soledar on the city's northern outskirts. "(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin has shown no sign of preparing for peace and therefore he must realise he cannot win on the battlefield," Stoltenberg added. (Reporting by John Irish; editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Mark Heinrich) Company Logo Global Canned Food Market Global Canned Food Market Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Canned Food Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global canned food market reached a value of US$ 93.37 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach a value of US$ 114.38 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 3.44% 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. Canning is a process of preserving food products, such as seafood, meats, fruits, vegetables, sweets and desserts, soups and sauces, beans, lentils, and pasta, by increasing their overall shelf life. It relies on processing food, sealing processed food into cans, and heating cans to kill harmful bacteria. It preserves nutrients of food products and prevents decomposition due to external factors like sunlight and air. At present, there is a rise in the consumption of canned food products across the globe due to the busy lifestyle of individuals. Canned Food Market Trends: The growing demand for canned food among consumers represents one of the key factors driving the market. Moreover, there is a rise in the number of working individuals, which is increasing the consumption of ready-to-eat (RTE) and convenient food items. This, along with the escalating demand for healthy food that is rich in proteins, functional fibers, vitamins, and omega-3 fatty acids, is propelling the growth of the market across the globe. In addition, there is a surge in the number of large retail formats, such as hypermarkets and supermarkets around the world. This, coupled with the wide availability of canned food through online stores, is offering lucrative growth opportunities to end-users and industry investors. Besides this, key market players are focusing on offering organic canned food products due to rising health concerns among people. Story continues In line with this, they are providing product variants with high quality, taste, and nutritional value, which is positively influencing the market. Additionally, the increasing demand for canned fish products among fitness-conscious individuals due to several health benefits of fish and seafood is strengthening the market growth. Competitive Landscape: The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Ayam Sarl, Bonduelle, Campbell Soup Company, CHB Group, Danish Crown AmbA, Del Monte Foods Inc., JBS S.A., Nestle S.A, Princes Foods (Mitsubishi Corporation), Thai Union Group PCL, The Bolton Group and The Kraft Heinz Company. Key Questions Answered in This Report: How has the global canned food market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global canned food 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 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 canned food 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 Canned Food 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 Canned Meat and Seafood 6.1.1 Market Trends 6.1.2 Market Forecast 6.2 Canned Fruit and Vegetables 6.2.1 Market Trends 6.2.2 Market Forecast 6.3 Canned Ready Meals 6.3.1 Market Trends 6.3.2 Market Forecast 6.4 Others 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 Convenience Stores 8.2.1 Market Trends 8.2.2 Market Forecast 8.3 E-commerce 8.3.1 Market Trends 8.3.2 Market Forecast 8.4 Others 8.4.1 Market Trends 8.4.2 Market Forecast 9 Market Breakup by Region 10 SWOT Analysis 11 Value Chain Analysis 12 Porters Five Forces Analysis 13 Price Analysis 14 Competitive Landscape 14.1 Market Structure 14.2 Key Players 14.3 Profiles of Key Players 14.3.1 Ayam Sarl 14.3.1.1 Company Overview 14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.2 Bonduelle 14.3.2.1 Company Overview 14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.3 Campbell Soup Company 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 CHB Group 14.3.4.1 Company Overview 14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.5 Danish Crown AmbA 14.3.5.1 Company Overview 14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.6 Del Monte Foods Inc. 14.3.6.1 Company Overview 14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.7 JBS S.A. 14.3.7.1 Company Overview 14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.7.3 Financials 14.3.8 Nestle S.A 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 Princes Foods (Mitsubishi Corporation) 14.3.9.1 Company Overview 14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.10 Thai Union Group PCL 14.3.10.1 Company Overview 14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.10.3 Financials 14.3.11 The Bolton Group 14.3.11.1 Company Overview 14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio 14.3.12 The Kraft Heinz Company 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/2z538u Attachment CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood,Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./ CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 Future Market Insights Global and Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Global IoT Connections Paving the Way for 5G Infrastructure Solutions, Aiding Growth of the Market: Recording a CAGR of 48.3% through the forecast period. North America is a sizable market for 5G technology, with the US contributing 51.1% of total sales. The 5G technology industry in the US is anticipated to reach a sizeable value of US$ 385.1 billion. Plans for 5G offer a comprehensive approach to network technologies DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global 5G technology market demand is subjected to record a CAGR of 48.3%. The market revenue is likely to be valued at US$ 19.3 billion in 2023 and exhibit a revenue growth of US$ 994.8 billion by 2033. A key aspect driving the demand for 5G technology is its capacity to offer new services with ultra-reliable, available, low-latency connectivity, such as remote control of key infrastructure, automobiles, and medical procedures, which can alter industries. The advancement of digital transformation has significantly assisted industries in updating their present operations and, as a consequence, expanding their profits throughout the years. Technological concepts like the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), and others are predicted to aid in the growth of the global 5G technology market in the coming years. To Get Sample Copy of Report Visit @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-9011 According to The GSM Association's Mobile Economy Report 2019, the number of global IoT connections is expected to quadruple to 25 billion between 2018 and 2025, with IoT income reaching US$ 1.2 trillion., The research stated that over 700 million people were expected to enroll in mobile services by 2025, with 5G technology accounting for only 20% of the technical mix. Certain key players see a 5G future in which remote monitoring ensures clean water, reduces food shortages, and enhances public safety by providing early warnings of floods, earthquakes, and mudslides. Story continues Network slicing is an important tool for service providers to satisfy the various needs of businesses. The technology enables the provider to construct a dedicated virtual network based on the use case or customer service requirements. For example, the network requirements for healthcare providers are likely to be considerably different from those for smart agriculture. It increases the security of mission-critical services. When network slices are designated for certain services, they improve dependability and simplify operations. During the IMT-2020 (5G) promotion group's 5G trial in January 2020, a market player in China conducted 5G New Radio testing utilizing a 2.6 GHz spectrum. The company's leading position in test completion, as well as the newly obtained findings, are likely to aid in the formation of a set of uniform global standards, allowing China to successfully complete the second phase of 5G testing. Vendors are vying for the implementation of 5G networks, particularly in North America. The growth of 5G technology is projected to drive market suppliers to build wireless test equipment capable of properly supporting the technology. The Indian government is also trying to establish a fund for the development of 5G technology, which is expected to fuel market growth over the forecast period. However, small cell installations face onerous regulatory, financial, and administrative requirements in many parts of the world, which is expected to delay the rollout of 5G technology. The high installation cost of tiny cell networks and the lack of security for distantly located outdoor power systems may impede the 5G technology market growth. Request Methodology @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/request-report-methodology/rep-gb-9011 Key Takeaways: Throughout the forecast period, the United States is predicted to have a sizable share of the global 5G technology market. This is because 5G plans offer a comprehensive approach to network technologies. It is achieved by using the ability to innovate and invest while also developing government policies to support and complement those strengths. The 5G technology market in Asia Pacific is expected to be significant throughout the forecast period, led by China and Japan. This is attributed to major parties continuing to push for the creation of a 5G plus gigabit fiber network, as well as improving multi-frequency collaboration, co-construction, and sharing. Owing to the vital role of 5G technology in assisting governments and public organizations in making cities smart, the "smart cities" application type is expected to hold considerable revenue throughout the forecast period. As it contributes to spectral efficiency by reducing signal loss and radio interference, the "5G RAN" technology type and is the most innovative category for key businesses and accounts for a significant percentage. Competitive Landscape: The global 5G technology industry is fragmented owing to the presence of both international and domestic competitors. Numerous corporations have a substantial market share in their respective industries. Well-known firms frequently appreciate organic developments such as product approvals and the benefits of C-RAN. These elements are likely to propel the global 5G technology market forward. Key Players: Ericsson Deutsche Telekom AG Nokia Networks AT&T Inc. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Orange S.A. China Mobile Limited K.T. Corporation Qualcomm Inc. Verizon Communications Inc. Recent Developments: In October 2022, HFCL Limited introduced the Radio Unit 5G 8T8R, a next-generation R.U. with a small form factor that offers digital beamforming, increased energy efficiency, and zero-touch provisioning. In January 2021, AT&T launched its 5G+ services in many notable Tampa areas and events, including Channel District and Raymond James Stadium in the United States. Ask An Analyst @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-9011 Key Segments Profiled in the 5G Technology Market By Technology Type: 5G RAN 5G NG Core NFVI Routing Backhaul Optical Backhaul Others By Application: Virtual & Augmented Reality Connected Automotive Smart Manufacturing Connected Energy Wireless eHealth Connected Drones Smart Cities Others By Vertical: Manufacturing Automotive Energy & Utilities Transportation & Logistics Public Safety Healthcare Agriculture Others By Region: North America Latin America Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa Europe Table of Content 1. Executive Summary 1.1. Global Market Outlook 1.2. Demand-side Trends 1.3. Supply-side Trends 1.4. Technology Roadmap Analysis 1.5. Analysis and Recommendations 2. Market Overview 2.1. Market Coverage / Taxonomy 2.2. Market Definition / Scope / Limitations Read Full Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/5g-technology-market Explore FMIs Extensive Coverage On Technology Domain: Customer Experience Platforms Market Size: According to Future Market Insights, the customer experience platforms market will generate $7,753.9 million in sales in 2021. (FMI). The market for customer experience platforms as a whole is anticipated to develop at a CAGR of 13.9% from 2022 to 2028, reaching approximately US$ 18,972.7 Mn. Industrial Transceivers Market Analysis: Demand for industrial transceivers is likely to grow at a CAGR of 6.7% through 2032. Long-reach network infrastructure needed to accelerate development of smart cities and facilitate a wide area network. Optical Emission Spectroscopy Market Growth: Optical Emission Spectroscopy Market is expected to reach a valuation of just under US$ 576 Million in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 19.96% from 2020 to 2027. Consent management Market Share: The consent management market is valued at US$ 988 Mn in 2021. It is set to grow at 9% CAGR through 2028. Mobile CRM Market Demand: Global mobile CRM market revenue currently stands at US$ 26.2 Bn, and is predicted to exhibit progression at an impressive CAGR of 10.4% to reach a market valuation of US$ 52.4 Bn by the end of 2029. About Future Market Insights, Inc. Future Market Insights, Inc. is an ESOMAR-certified business consulting & market research firm, a member of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce and is headquartered in Delaware, USA. A recipient of Clutch Leaders Award 2022 on account of high client score (4.9/5), we have been collaborating with global enterprises in their business transformation journey and helping them deliver on their business ambitions. 80% of the largest Forbes 1000 enterprises are our clients. We serve global clients across all leading & niche market segments across all major industries. Contact Us: Future Market Insights, Inc. 1602-6 Jumeirah Bay X2 Tower, Plot No: JLT-PH2-X2A, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates LinkedIn | Twitter | Blogs | YouTube For Sales Enquiries: sales@futuremarketinsights.com GENOA, Italy, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ASG Superconductors (ASG) and Siemens Healthineers signed a partnership agreement to synergistically develop UHF MRI systems of unprecedented dependability for ground-breaking brain research. ASG SUPERCONDUCTORS AND SIEMENS HEALTHINEERS JOIN FORCES TO DELIVER 10.5T ULTRA HIGH FIELD MRI SYSTEMS FOR GROUND-BREAKING BRAIN RESEARCH First project under the partnership shall be the delivery of a 10.5T MRI system to a University in China. The magnet will be built and comprehensively tested at ASG's premises in Genova. Upon its arrival in Hefei, Siemens Healthineers is responsible for the integration and installation of the system. "In the past, customers looking for a system above 7T had to order the magnet and the electrical integration separately" says Arthur Kaindl, Head of Magnetic Resonance at Siemens Healthineers. "With the new partnership, we are happy to offer these UHF systems on a turnkey basis for the first time. This will lead to a tremendous improvement in project execution for our customers and take a decisive step towards pushing the limits of MRI beyond 7T." Based on their relevant legacy of technical and scientific successes and undisputed reputation of loyalty to the customer, Siemens Healthineers and ASG join competences in order to deliver to the UHF MRI market imaging systems, with field strengths above 7T, that are thoroughly tested and delivered with clear operative prescriptions and an overarching warranty to match. The reduced complexity of realizing an MRI project beyond 7T will help customers take the step toward extremely high field MRI and to enable new discoveries. Sergio Frattini ASG Superconductor Chief Executive Officer declares "We're very proud to have signed this agreement with Siemens Healthineers. Superconducting technologies and magnet systems of very high performances are increasingly finding application in medical diagnostics and therapies. Capitalizing on skills and experiences derived from research and industrial collaborations, ASG is constantly improving its superconducting competences and is able to design a complete range of magnets for medical diagnostics with magnetic field strengths ranging from fractions of one Tesla up to UHF. We therefore think that this partnership will help us make the most of our technology for the good of our customers". Story continues ASG Superconductors is a leading superconducting company and usually works in partnership with clients in definition and development of products, through assistance in designing, prototyping and optimizing magnetic system, shortening time to market and improving overall system competitiveness. ASG provides standard, preventative and emergency maintenance activities. www.asgsuperconductors.com ASG Logo SOURCE ASG Superconductors S.p.A Blockstation Valley Cottage, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Valley Cottage, New York - Retail Investors must demonstrate knowledge of digital assets prior to opening a trading account with participating broker-dealers New York, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica, January 18, 2023 The Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) e-Campus is deploying a new investor-focused certification course, developed by Blockstation, on blockchain technology and digital asset trading. The course is a key part of the JSEs activities to prepare for the launch of its new Digital Asset Platform later this year. Blockstation provides training to regulators and market operators around the world and created the course to satisfy Financial Services Commission (FSC) requirements that investors be knowledgeable in digital assets prior to trading through authorized broker-dealers. The new Introduction to Blockchain and Digital Assets course joins the e-Campus, which delivers educational programs recognized and accredited by the UCJ, CPD and FSC. Certificates of completion will be accepted by JSE broker-dealers as satisfying FSC requirements for investors to open a digital asset trading account. Investors finally have a pathway to participate in digital assets with the protection of financial regulations and they have the JSE, FSC, and JSE e-Campus to thank, says Michael Spiar, Communications and Education Manager at Blockstation. Developing the material for this course makes a safe and compliant digital asset marketplace possible, and the fully digital nature of this course will make trading on the JSE more accessible to more investors everywhere. Blockstation leveraged its technological and regulatory expertise to build a curriculum that covers essential concepts such as blockchain, digital currencies, tokenized securities and Security Token Offerings (STOs), and what trading digital assets through the JSE versus unregulated crypto exchanges means for investors. What excites me most about this course is that it will provide investors with the knowledge and understanding of blockchain technology they need to make informed investment decisions, adds Kevin Powell, Principal of the JSE e-Campus. That its our first-ever fully digital, entirely self-guided educational resource a modern approach to education for a modern digital asset market, makes it better still. Story continues The course is available at an introductory price of $50 USD and Investors can sign in and work through at their own pace and in their own time, making it the most flexible course in e-Campus history. To sign up, jseecampus@jamstockex.com or call at 876-967-3271. About Jamaica Stock Exchange The Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) is an associate member of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) and in 2015 was, according to Bloomberg, based on its performance, the number one stock exchange in the world. The JSE offers an electronic, efficient, secure market with world-class regulation, trading and clearing systems, settlement assurance and risk management. https://ecampus.jamstockex.com JSE Media Contact: Mrs. Marlene Street Forrest | C.D., JP, Managing Director, Jamaica Stock Exchange e | Marlene.street-forrest@jamstockex.com w | https://ecampus.jamstockex.com/ t | (876) 967-3271 X2236 l | LinkedIn i | Instagram ### For more information about Blockstation, contact the company here: Blockstation Karen Lourdes 1-800-599-7180x3 media@blockstation.com 217 Route 303 Valley Cottage, New York 10989 CONTACT: Karen Lourdes SACRAMENTO, January 18, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The California Homebuilding Foundation today announced its 2023 Hall of Fame honorees, comprising of homebuilding professionals who have exemplified the Foundations mission of forging a bright future for the next generation of homebuilders. "The Foundation is proud to place five honorees into our Hall of Fame in 2023, each of whom represent a gold standard in the homebuilding industry for innovation, leadership and philanthropy," said Terri Brunson, Executive Director of the California Homebuilding Foundation. "We are excited to honor these individuals, whose names and work will be added to our esteemed list of California homebuilding professionals in our Hall of Fame." Since 1985, the Foundation has annually honored outstanding individuals in the homebuilding industry through its Hall of Fame. Inductees are selected for their notable work and dedication to bettering the building industry for the workforce of the next generation. The 2023 Hall of Fame honorees are Adrian Foley (Brookfield Properties), Michael Maples and Gregg Nelson (Trumark Homes), Leonard Miller (BrightSky Residential) and John Shea (J.F. Shea Co. Inc.). They will be inducted at the Foundations 38th Hall of Fame gala, taking place on May 23 in Anaheim. California Homebuilding Foundation 2023 Hall of Fame Honorees Adrian Foley: Adrian Foley is President and Chief Executive Officer of Brookfield Properties' development group, responsible for the organization's Land & Housing and Development portfolios. He joined Brookfield Homes in 1996, and in 2011 began leading Brookfield Residentials California operations. Since then, he has held several leadership roles, including President & COO of Brookfield Residential one of North Americas largest land developers with horizontal and vertical assets in over 35 markets. Adrian was born and raised in England and is a graduate of the University of Greenwich, London, U.K. Story continues Michael Maples, Gregg Nelson: Michael Maples and Gregg Nelson are a Managing Member and Co-CEO of Trumark Companies, respectively. Maples and Nelson co-founded Trumark Companies in 1988. The company has developed over 3,000 homes, including master-planned communities. Maples is a graduate of San Jose State University (BA) and the Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Nelson is also a graduate of San Jose State University (BA) and Santa Clara University (MBA). Leonard Miller: Leonard Miller is the Chief Executive Officer of BrightSky Residential, LLC, a Resmark Company. Miller joined the Resmark Company in January 2022, after serving as Chief Operating Officer and later President/Chief Executive Officer for The New Home Company between 2017 and 2021. Miller also previously worked at Richmond American Homes, where he had regional and divisional responsibility for several markets in the western United States. He has served on numerous boards in leadership roles, including the Building Industry Associations of Southern California and Riverside. He is an alumni of both the University of Southern California (BS) and San Diego State University (MBA). John Shea: John Shea was the Chief Executive Officer of J.F. Shea Co. Inc. for 47 years (1958-2005). He assumed the role of company Chairman, a position he held until he passed away in late 2022. Together with his cousins Edmund and Peter Shea, John reorganized the Shea family construction business, renowned for its work on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam. The Sheas built their family company into one of the largest privately held businesses in the United States. Johns companies included Shea Homes, J.F. Shea Construction and Shea Properties. During his career, John and his wife, Dorothy, provided tens of thousands of scholarships to disadvantaged students and funded over 1,000 school renovations on more than 500 different campuses in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and across the United States. To register for the event and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Terri Brunson at tbrunson@mychf.org. For full biographies of 2023 inductees and past honorees, visit mychf.org. About the California Homebuilding Foundation: The California Homebuilding Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to fostering the scholastic success of the states next generation of builders. The Foundations mission is to lead, advance and support the California homebuilding industry, one new builder at a time. Through the distribution of scholarships, the publishing of key industry research findings and innovative educational programs, the Foundation offers opportunities for all to professionally flourish, while building a stronger foundation for Californias future together. To learn more, visit www.mychf.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005013/en/ Contacts Media Contact: Terri Brunson (916) 340-3340 tbrunson@mychf.org UAEs Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has put forward the One Health approach to identify zoonotic diseases. This was done at a training workshop in partnership with the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. The workshop, which targeted healthcare, environmental health, and animal health sector workers, focused on One Health as an approach that requires collaboration between multiple sectors to combat zoonotic diseases. A zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen that can jump from a non-human (usually a vertebrate) to a human and vice versa. Optimal health It also discussed how best to achieve optimal health for humans and animals, in addition to preserving the environment, by identifying and evaluating the risks related to these diseases to reduce their impact and combat them. The event comes in line with the ministrys ongoing efforts to address diseases and pandemics, strengthen community health, and improve the efficiency of the health system. Dr Fatima Al Attar, Director of the International Health Regulations Office; Fatima Hussein, Director of the Epidemiology and Surveillance Department, and Nada Hassan Al Marzouqi, Director of Public Health, and Prevention Department, MoHAP, attended the meeting, attended the workshop, which was held at the ministry's headquarters. Practical steps Event participants were introduced to the practical steps to be taken in the process of identifying priority zoonotic diseases, including the mechanisms for assessing the risks of these diseases, methods for their prevention and control, and guidelines for collective action in this regard. The workshop emphasised the significance of identifying and assessing priority zoonotic diseases using the One Health approach. This approach involves collaboration among experts in human health, animal health, and environmental protection to effectively control and reduce the impact of these diseases. The data and technical knowledge obtained through this process can be used to develop plans to address zoonotic diseases. Dr Hussain Abdul Rahman Al Rand, Assistant Undersecretary for the Public Health Sector, emphasised that the training workshop was organised to support the Ministry's integrated efforts aimed at establishing a methodology that enhances the capabilities of workers in the healthcare, environmental health, and animal health sectors to work collectively to prevent health threats associated with zoonotic diseases. Effective communication "Identifying and evaluating priority zoonotic diseases is very important to reduce their impact and control them effectively. This requires coordination and cooperation between all parties involved in human, animal, and environmental health," Al Rand said, adding that effective communication and the sharing of information between authorities are crucial in preparing for the potential risks posed by these diseases. Fatima Hussein said that training stakeholders on this process and incorporating it into the national health system is necessary for efficiently identifying zoonotic diseases and developing national plans for preparedness, surveillance, and response to health threats. One Health is a health approach that recognises the interdependence between human, animal, and environmental health. It emphasises the importance of considering the connections between these three areas to effectively address public health issues.-- TradeArabia News Service TSX. V: COCO VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - Coast Copper Corp. ("Coast Copper" or the "Company") (TSXV: COCO) is pleased to announce that since completion of its drill program in 2022 on the optioned Empire Mine property (the "Property"), focus has been on utilizing all recent and historical data available to develop a new geological model that incorporates the structural and lithological controls observed on surface, underground and in drill core. Our new model highlights the potential down dip continuation of near surface, stacked thrust horizons that are associated with copper-gold-iron mineralization observed at the historical Merry Widow Pit approximately 1 kilometer ("km") east northeast to the Benson Lake Mine. Surface geological observations and mapping, ore mineral occurrences, underground workings and drillhole data also indicate that these thrust horizons and associated mineralization occur along strike over a 5 km northerly trend. NR2023-01 Figure 2_Empire Mine Property (CNW Group/Coast Copper Corp.) Adam Travis, Coast Copper's CEO comments: "Acquiring and compiling 100 years of historical data, completing and integrating new and historical geophysical and geochemical data, conducting our initial drill programs that confirm and expand known mineralization and having Dr. Jim Oliver complete a geological overview has been a long and ongoing process, but this has all led to the most significant advancement in geological understanding of the project in its 100-year history. We have now taken Dr. Oliver's observations and conclusions, reviewed them in the context of both our data and the historical data and have developed a multiple, stacked thrust geological model that explains the known mineralization and more importantly provides many new target areas for us to explore. We look forward to getting back on the property this year to drill test our new model." Story continues Recently completed field work, led by Dr. Jim Oliver, identified the significance of regional scale planar features to the current resource block, and to other mineral occurrences across the Property. The new model highlights the potential for significant copper-gold-iron mineralization to continue adjacent to, and up to 500 metres ("m") in elevation below the Merry Widow Pit mineralization, as well as continuing along the trend of these regional features and down dip towards Benson Lake Mine. Figures 1 and 2 outline these larger planar surfaces; the enhancement of mineralized zones can be associated with the intersection of smaller faults and the contacts of discordant dykes. The stacked thrust model is consistent with both local and regional observations and correlates well with copper-gold-iron mineralization recorded in drill core and historical observations from underground. The model indicates potential for multiple, near-surface targets between the Merry Widow open pit and the Benson Lake underground. Our understanding of these controls and their relationship with intersecting structures will prove invaluable in guiding future drill programs. Coast Copper will be in booth 904 at the AME Roundup Conference in Vancouver from January 23-26, 2023 and encourages all attending to come by to discuss our new and exciting geological models. The Company also reminds shareholders of the upcoming Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") being to be held in Vancouver at its office on January 26, 2023 at 9:00 am. Due to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic, it is highly recommended that all shareholders vote ahead of the Meeting and attend via teleconference using the number provided in the Management Information Circular. The Company's current 10% rolling long-term incentive plan ("LTIP") was approved by its shareholders at the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders held on March 28, 2022. As of the record date, which was February 12, 2022, the number of listed shares issuable under the LTIP was 5,529,669. The LTIP replaced the Company's previous 10% rolling stock option plan pursuant to changes to the TSX Venture Exchange's Policy 4.4 which became effective November 24, 2021. Qualified Persons The technical information contained in this news release has been prepared, reviewed and approved by Wade Barnes, P.Geo. (BC), Coast Copper's geological consultant and a Qualified Person within the context of Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101; Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. About Coast Copper Corp. Coast Copper's exploration focus is the optioned Empire Mine property, located on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, which covers three historical open pit mines and two past-producing underground mines that yielded iron, copper, gold and silver. Coast Copper's other properties include its 100% owned Knob Hill NW Property located on northern Vancouver Island, its Home Brew and Shovelnose South Properties in central B.C., and its Scottie West Property located in the "Golden Triangle" of northern B.C. Coast Copper's management team continues to review precious and base metals opportunities in western North America. On Behalf of the Board of Directors: "Adam Travis" Adam Travis, Chief Executive Officer and Director Cautionary Notes Related to this news release and/or maps NI 43-101 Technical Report: Giroux, G.H., & Raven, W. (November 30, 2008). Technical Report on the Copper Gold Resources for the Merry Widow Property. Filed on SEDAR January 22, 2009. The 2008 Grand Portage resource estimate was completed by Gary H. Giroux, P.Eng, MASc, of Giroux Consulting Ltd. in Vancouver, B.C. The estimate was based on a 3D geological model integrating 4,448 metres of diamond drilling of 43 drill holes, 2,290 assays, with 104 down-hole surveys collected between June and December 2006. The resource was reported utilizing gold cut-off grades ranging from 0.10 g/t to 3.00 g/t gold, as more particularly set out in the report. A complete copy of the report is available on Grand Portage's public filings on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). A gold cut-off grade of 0.50 g/t gold was selected as representing one possible mining scenario. For the purposes of the calculations, lognormal cumulative frequency plots were used to assess grade distribution to see if capping of high values was required and if so at what levels. For all elements, capping levels were established based on the individual grade distributions as follows: Gold -- a total of 18 gold assays were capped at 32.0 g/t gold, Silver --a total of 9 silver assays were capped at 165 g/t silver, Copper -- a total of 7 assays were capped at 11.7% copper, Cobalt -- a total of 5 assays were capped at 0.48% cobalt, Iron -- all iron assays were capped at 50% iron (the analytical detection limit). Cominco Resources, Drill Section Maps "Plan of Cominco's Benson Lake Operations on Empire Claims Showing Ore Reserves & Proposed Exploration Program", 1970, Private Files. While Coast Copper notes that Cominco's historical results are not NI 43-101 compliant and have not been verified by the Company's QP, these combined historical resources total nearly 3.154 million tonnes and will help guide Coast Copper's exploration programs Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION Certain information contained or incorporated by reference in this press release, including any information regarding the proposed Transaction, private placement, board and management changes, as to our strategy, projects, plans or future financial or operating performance, constitutes "forward-looking statements." All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Coast Copper, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, geological and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Although Coast Copper believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include but are not limited to: fluctuations in market prices, exploration and exploitation successes, continued availability of capital and financing, changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls, regulations, expropriation or nationalization of property and general political, economic, market or business conditions. Many of these uncertainties and contingencies can affect our actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, us. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release, or incorporated by reference, are qualified by these cautionary statements. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. NR2023-01 Figure 1_Empire Mine Property (CNW Group/Coast Copper Corp.) SOURCE Coast Copper Corp. Cision View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2023/18/c1943.html NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Technavio, the global coaxial cables market size is estimated to grow by USD 2,855.62 million from 2022 to 2027. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 4.68% during the forecast period. APAC held the largest share of the global market in 2022, and the market in the region is estimated to witness an incremental growth of 44%. For more Insights on market size, Request a sample report Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Coaxial Cables Market 2023-2027 Coaxial cables market - Five Forces The global cloud data warehouse market is fragmented, and the five forces analysis covers Bargaining Power of Buyers The threat of New Entrants Threat of Rivalry Bargaining Power of Suppliers Threat of Substitutes Interpretation of porter's five models helps to strategize the business, for entire details buy the report! Coaxial cables market Customer Landscape The report includes the market's adoption lifecycle, from the innovator's stage to the laggard's stage. It focuses on adoption rates in different regions based on penetration. Furthermore, the report also includes key purchase criteria and drivers of price sensitivity to help companies evaluate and develop their growth strategies. Coaxial cables market - Segmentation Assessment Segment Overview Technavio has segmented the market based on end-user (telecommunication, transportation and military, CATV providers, and others), application (video distribution, internet data transfer, and radio frequency transfer), and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America). The market share growth by the telecommunication segment will be significant during the forecast period. The growth in the number of consumers using mobile and wireless devices and the development of next-generation technologies have increased the demand for telecommunication services. Hence, telecom operators are investing heavily in expanding the reach of their networks across all geographic areas. This is increasing the demand for coaxial cables in the telecommunications industry. Story continues Geography Overview By geography, the global coaxial cables market is segmented into APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America. The report provides actionable insights and estimates the contribution of all regions to the growth of the global coaxial cables market. APAC will account for 44% of the market's growth during the forecast period. The growth of the regional market can be attributed to factors such as the digitization of CATV networks, the growth of mobile telecommunication networks, and the replacement of slow DSL Internet with high-speed cable networks. Download a Sample Report Coaxial cables market Market Dynamics Key factor driving market growth The market is driven by the digitization of television networks in developing countries. Developing countries across the world are introducing initiatives to encourage the digitization of TV networks. This is leading to the phasing out of analog services. For instance, China has implemented the Next Generation Broadband Initiative (NGB). The implementation of NGB will be followed by a gradual shutdown of analog services across the country. This will give the subscribers access to high-definition multimedia content and two-way transmission of data over a single coaxial cable network. Similarly, in 2012, the Government of India passed a mandate which forced cable operators to use set-top boxes at consumer premises. The move enabled high-quality content delivery to the subscribers while reducing the cost of cable service and allowing broadcasters to monitor content consumption patterns. Such developments are creating huge growth opportunities for vendors operating in the market. Leading trends influencing the market One of the key trends identified in the market is the regulations on the development of cable TV infrastructure. Governments across the world are introducing various regulations to improve transparency and provide more options to consumers. For instance, in 2018, the Conference of Belgian Telecom Regulators introduced a new fiber access regulation for the retail broadband and broadcasting market in Belgium. The new regulation was aimed at increasing the customer base of cable TV by offering a large number of choices at reduced prices. Similarly, in 2018, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced a new tariff regime for broadcasters. The new tariff regime was focused on improving the transparency between Pay-TV operators and broadcasters. The introduction of such regulations has been crucial in expanding the consumer base of cable TV, which is driving the growth of the market. Major challenges hindering market growth Increasing competition from wireless and fiber optic standards is the key challenge in the market. Conventional TV networks have their entire systems connected by coaxial cables. These cables have certain limitations in carrying data. The theoretical limit for at-home coaxial cable is 10 Gbps. With ever-increasing data loads, users are switching to either fiber or wireless mediums as they provide higher utility at lower costs. This is leading to the replacement of traditional TV networks with hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC), all-optical fiber to the home (FTTH), and, more recently, optical-wireless hybrid systems. This will reduce the growth potential in the market. Driver, Trend, and Challenges are the factors of market dynamics that state about consequences & sustainability of the businesses, find some insights from a sample report! What are the key data covered in this coaxial cables market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the coaxial cables market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the coaxial cables market size and its contribution to the market in focus on the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the coaxial cables market industry across APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of coaxial cables market vendors Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports: The cables and accessories market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.46% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 43.66 billion. The rising adoption of smart grid technology is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the volatility in raw material prices may impede the market growth. The submarine fiber cable market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 4852.77 million. The rapid developments in telecommunication networks are notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the fiber damage caused by human activities and fish attacks may impede the market growth. Coaxial Cables Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 178 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 4.68% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 2855.62 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 4.26 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 44% Key countries US, China, Japan, South Korea, and Germany Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled Alpha Wire Inc., Amphenol Corp., Belden Inc., Coleman Wires and Cables, CommScope Holding Co. Inc., Habia Cable AB, Hengxin Technology Ltd., HUBER SUHNER AG, Infinite Electronics Inc., Infinite Electronics International Inc., Kingsignal Technology Co. Ltd., Leoni AG, LS Cable and System Ltd., Prysmian Spa, Southwire Co. LLC, Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., TE Connectivity Ltd., Trigiant Group Ltd., W. L. Gore and Associates Inc., and Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. 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, and 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. 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 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global coaxial cables market 2017 - 2021 4.2 End-user Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.3 Application Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.4 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.5 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers 5.4 Threat of new entrants 5.5 Threat of substitutes 5.6 Threat of rivalry 5.7 Market condition 6 Market Segmentation by End-user 6.1 Market segments 6.2 Comparison by End-user 6.3 Telecommunication - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 6.4 Transportation and military - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 6.5 CATV providers - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 6.6 Others - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 6.7 Market opportunity by End-user 7 Market Segmentation by Application 7.1 Market segments 7.2 Comparison by Application 7.3 Video distribution - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 7.4 Internet data transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 7.5 Radio frequency transfer - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 7.6 Market opportunity by Application 8 Customer Landscape 8.1 Customer landscape overview 9 Geographic Landscape 9.1 Geographic segmentation 9.2 Geographic comparison 9.3 APAC - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.5 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.6 Middle East and Africa - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.7 South America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.8 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.9 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.10 Japan - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.11 Germany - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.12 South Korea - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 9.13 Market opportunity by geography 10 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10.1 Market drivers 10.2 Market challenges 10.3 Impact of drivers and challenges 10.4 Market trends 11 Vendor Landscape 11.1 Overview 11.2 Vendor landscape 11.3 Landscape disruption 11.4 Industry risks 12 Vendor Analysis 12.1 Vendors covered 12.2 Market positioning of vendors 12.3 Amphenol Corp. 12.4 Belden Inc. 12.5 Coleman Wires and Cables 12.6 CommScope Holding Co. Inc. 12.7 Habia Cable AB 12.8 Hengxin Technology Ltd. 12.9 HUBER SUHNER AG 12.10 Infinite Electronics Inc. 12.11 Infinite Electronics International Inc. 12.12 Leoni AG 12.13 LS Cable and System Ltd. 12.14 Prysmian Spa 12.15 Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. 12.16 Trigiant Group Ltd. 12.17 Zhuhai Hansen Technology Co. Ltd. 13 Appendix 13.1 Scope of the report 13.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist 13.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ 13.4 Research methodology 13.5 List of abbreviations About Us Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Global Coaxial Cables Market 2023-2027 Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coaxial-cables-market-2023-2027-a-descriptive-analysis-of-the-five-forces-model-market-dynamics-and-segmentation---technavio-301722177.html SOURCE Technavio Markets N Research Global Drinking Water Treatments Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Technology Type (Extended Aeration, Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor, Membrane Bioreactor, Sequential Batch Reactor, Reverse Osmosis, and Other Technologies), and Regional Forecasts, 2023-2030 Chicago, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Markets N Research has recently released expansive research on Global Drinking Water Treatments Market with 100+ market data Tables, Pie Chart, and Graphs & Figures spread through Pages and easy to understand detailed analysis. The report endows with wide-ranging statistical analysis of the markets continuous developments, capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and import/export. This market report provides best solutions for strategy development and implementation depending on clients needs to extract tangible results. This market research report serves the clients by providing data and information on their business scenario with which they can stay ahead of the competition in today's rapidly changing business environment. As per the report titled "Drinking Water Treatments Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Technology Type (Extended Aeration, Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor, Membrane Bioreactor, Sequential Batch Reactor, Reverse Osmosis, and Other Technologies) and Regional Forecasts, 2023-2030" observes that the market size in 2022 stood at USD 5.1 billion and USD 10.3 billion in 2030. The market is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 10.60% during the forecast period. Get a Sample PDF of Drinking Water Treatments Market Research Report: https://marketsnresearch.com/sample/1618 Drinking Water Treatments Market Analysis: As levels of water contamination rise, so will the need for drinking water treatments. In addition, small towns, cities, and educational institutions frequently use drinking water treatments. It is projected that rising market value will be driven by growing public awareness of the advantages of clean water. Additionally, as education, literacy, and wealth levels have increased worldwide, people's awareness of the importance of clean water in preventing sickness and preserving good health has grown. Awareness has grown in developing nations, including China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Additionally, market participants would benefit from growing country spending on drinking water treatment during the projected period. Story continues Report Scope: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2023-2030 Forecast Period 2023 to 2030 CAGR 10.60 % 2030 Value Projection 10.3 billion Base Year 2022 Market Size in 2022 5.1 billion Historical Data for 2016 - 2021 Segments covered By Technology Type and By Geography Regional Scope North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South & Central America List Of Key Companies Profiled: Veolia Water Technologies Corix Water Systems Westech Engineering Inc. GE Water & Process Technologies Napier-Reid Ltd. CST Wastewater Solutions Inc. Smith & Loveless Inc. WPL International Enviroquip RWL Water Fluence Corporation Limited has signed an exclusive agreement to promote Smart Packaged Aspiral MABR with Aquatec Maxcon In June 2020, Fluence Corporation Limited and Aquatec Maxcon, a prominent Australian provider of water and wastewater solutions, inked an exclusive agreement to market and distribute Smart Packaged Aspiral MABR-based systems in Australia. Major Players Develop Acquisition Plans to Boost Brand Image The leading businesses in the drinking water treatment market plan acquisitions to improve their brand recognition globally. For instance, in July 2018, the water treatment system IonPRO LX, developed by Veolia, is very dependable and requires little operator intervention. Its small size and use of stainless steel extend its lifespan. This product may attract more interest from pharmaceutical and general manufacturers because it complies with all FDA and MHRA regulations. Make an Enquiry before Buying @ https://marketsnresearch.com/buying-request/1618 Our Free Sample Report Consists of the following: Introduction, Overview, and in-depth industry analysis are all included in the 2023 updated report. The COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak Impact Analysis is included in the package About 220+ Pages Research Report (Including Recent Research) Provide detailed chapter-by-chapter guidance on the Request Updated Regional Analysis with a Graphical Representation of Size, Share, and Trends for the Year 2022 Includes Tables and figures have been updated The most recent version of the report includes the Top Market Players, their Business Strategies, Sales Volume, and Revenue Analysis MNR research methodology Driving Factors: Market Technological Advancements to Support its Expansion Due to the dramatic increase in world population, the market is poised for global expansion. A high degree of technological advancement is seen in the drinking water treatment sector, improving the rate of expansion. Additionally, the major worldwide regions have just recently begun to experience industrialization, which is projected to increase the number of prospects for market growth and development during the projection period. The market is expected to grow at a fantastic rate over the projected period due to rising water usage, pollution, and contamination levels, as well as rising concerns among a growing global population. Rising Awareness for Clean Water amongst Consumers to Drive the Market A growing public understanding of the benefits of clean water is anticipated to increase the market value. As a result of advancements in the world's affluence, literacy, and education levels, people are also becoming more conscious of the significance of clean water in preventing diseases and maintaining good health. Developing countries like China, India, Brazil, and South Africa have all shown signs of increased awareness. Additionally, the numerous advantageous traits of drinking water treatment, such as operational readiness, small size, cost savings, and hassle-free operation, will further accelerate the market's growth rate. Restraining Factors: Heavy Investment and Increased Operating Costs will Impede Market Expansion The market for packaged water treatment systems will have challenges as a result of their high price. Treating water is costly and requires ongoing maintenance and correct sludge disposal or further stabilization after the process. Additionally, the complexity of operations requires a lot of labor-intensive work, which raises operational costs and competition levels, reduces profit margins, and requires significant investments to construct manufacturing facilities. It is projected that these factors will impede market expansion in the upcoming years. Challenging Factors: Government Regulations are too Strict and are Preventing Market Expansion Population growth has resulted in problems like the depletion of natural resources like water. In order to stop this, governments worldwide are establishing courts and adhering to stringent environmental regulations regulating water disposal in developing nations like India and China, which are a part of the APAC area. Thus, the market for drinking water treatments was restrained throughout the projection period. A challenge for the sector is fluctuating business and economic conditions that lead to less investment in packaged water treatment systems by organizations and governments. A barrier to the market's growth is a lack of experienced labor for operating technologically complex packaged water treatment system systems. To Gain More Insights into the Market Analysis, Browse Summary of the Drinking Water Treatments Market Report @ https://marketsnresearch.com/report/1618/global-drinking-water-treatments-market Global Drinking Water Treatments Market Segmentations: Global Drinking Water Treatments Market By Technology Type: Extended Aeration Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor Membrane Bioreactor Sequential Batch Reactor Reverse Osmosis Other Technologies Drinking Water Treatments Market By Technology Type Global Drinking Water Treatments Market Regional Insights: The Asia Pacific is projected to hold the largest share of the drinking water treatment market over the forecast period due to the region's increasing need for clean water supplies, population expansion, and increased government expenditure on water purification. Due to the increase in education, literacy, and economic levels worldwide, people in this region are now more aware of the significance of having access to clean drinking water for preventing sickness and maintaining good health. Additionally, awareness has grown in developing nations like China, India, and South Korea. Another significant factor influencing the market for drinking water treatments is the growing world population, which has put pressure on water resources. Drinking Water Treatments Market By Region Further Report Findings The market in the Asia Pacific is expected to gain a huge portion of the global drinking water treatments market share in the coming years due to rising urbanization; governments from many countries are taking more steps to improve water purification systems and construct well-maintained drainage systems throughout the region's expanding economy. Leading nations in drinking water treatment include China, India, Japan, and South Korea. In North America, the growth in this region is primarily driven by a sizable number of significant key actors and the growing investment made by various private and public enterprises to improve the region's water quality. Access Full Report @ https://marketsnresearch.com/checkout/1618/1ecda5z5e4 Key questions answered in this report: What is the size of the Drinking Water Treatments market and what is its expected growth rate? What are the primary driving factors that push the Drinking Water Treatments market forward? What are the Drinking Water Treatments Industry's top companies? What are the different categories that the Drinking Water Treatments Market caters to? What will be the fastest-growing segment or region? In the value chain, what role do essential players play? What is the procedure for getting a free copy of the Drinking Water Treatments market sample report and company profiles? Key Offerings: Market Share, Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20232030 Market Dynamics Growth Drivers, Restraints, Investment Opportunities, and Leading Trends Market Segmentation A detailed analysis By Technology Type and By Geography Competitive Landscape Top Key Vendors and Other Prominent Vendors Table of Content Chapter 1: Preface Chapter 2: Report Summary Chapter 3: COVID 19 Impact Analysis Chapter 4: Global Drinking Water Treatments Market, By Technology Type Segment Analysis Chapter 5: Drinking Water Treatments Market Regional Analysis, 2022 2030 Chapter 6: Drinking Water Treatments Market Industry Analysis Chapter 7: Competitive Landscape Chapter 8: Company Profiles Chapter 9: Research Methodology Chapter 10: Questionnaire Chapter 11: Related Reports Customize this Report @ https://marketsnresearch.com/customization-request/1618 Key Insights from Primary Research/Key Insights & Findings from the report: As per the analysis shared by our primary respondents, the Drinking Water Treatments market is expected to grow annually at a CAGR of around 10.60%. Through primary research, it was established that the Drinking Water Treatments market was valued at around USD 5.1 billion in 2022. The Drinking Water Treatments market is segmented based on technology: extended aeration, moving bed biofilm reactor, membrane bioreactor, sequential batch reactor, reverse osmosis, and other technologies. The extended aeration category was predicted to show maximum market share in the year 2022. The Asia Pacific region will lead the global Drinking Water Treatments market during the forecast period 2022 to 2030. Spectacular Deals Comprehensive coverage Maximum number of market tables and figures Subscription-based option offered Best price guarantee Free 35% or 60 hours of customization. Free post-sale service assistance. 25% discount on your next purchase. Service guarantees are available. Personalized market brief by author. 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Markets N Research is the leading research company offering both tactical and strategic support to all our customers. Customer satisfaction is our goal and that is why, we have a team of skilled and experienced specialist with the ability to do data mining, information management, and revenue enhancement solutions to ensure that our clients make informed decisions when coming to investing in the market. Markets N Research team is comprised of well skilled and equipped personnel ready to concur any upcoming challenges in the market sector for both individual people and organization around the world. We know time is money, and therefore we ensure we solve your problem within the shortest time possible to prevent delays or missing any opportunities. We use globally accepted techniques with a little innovation from our staff in solving all your market research related challenges. Contact Us: Markets N Research US: +1-773-649-1529 Email:- sales@marketsnresearch.com Website: https://marketsnresearch.com/ Follow on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/markets-n-research Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketsnr Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Markets-N-Research-108839598639025 RUNGIS, France, January 18, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News: ESI Group (ISIN Code: FR0004110310, Symbol: ESI), a global simulation and virtual prototyping software partner for the industry, has signed the United Nations Women's Empowerment Principles (WEP). The Group reaffirms its commitment to an inclusive corporate culture, guaranteeing equality between women and men: diversity at the service of the company's performance. "By becoming a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles, ESI Group is committed to taking bold steps to advance gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and within the community. The Group will focus on non-discrimination, public reporting of progress toward gender equality, and on providing equal opportunities for education, training, and professional development. Diversity is key to accelerating a company's performance, enriching its culture, and employee well-being. At ESI, the workforce is multicultural, international, and comes from different areas of expertise. Women make up 43% of the Board of Directors and 50% of the management team, yet women are still underrepresented everywhere else. I am convinced that we can do better in this area and that rapidly improving the ratio of women to men in all teams will help our company to progress, satisfy employees and clients, and establish long-term performance," declares Cristel de Rouvray, CEO at ESI Group. A priority objective for the Group ESI Group is already committed to gender equality, notably through actions taken to promote the recruitment of women and their professional development within the industry. In May 2022, the Group set up its Women@ESI network, which strives towards strengthening internal collaboration between employees and creating a communication channel to share ideas that promote the representation of women. ESI Group confirms its intention to continue to move further. Among the various actions in progress and to come, ESI Group will continue its policy of compensation promoting equality between women and men, based on objective market data that takes into account the position held and the level of seniority without gender consideration. ESI plans to reach 25% of women in the company by 2024 and 33% by 2028. The Group will strengthen the inclusiveness of its job offers and recruitment processes, by systematically presenting a selection of candidates composed of women and men. Furthermore, in order to materialize a safe and inclusive Group culture, ESI is committed to developing, in addition to its ethical charter, a charter further strengthening its commitment to preventing harassment. The Group will also provide a specific training on the subject of harassment to all staff. Finally, ESI Group wishes to implement a global parental leave policy for women and men by 2028. Story continues Established by UN Global Compact and UN Women in 2010, the Women's Empowerment Principles, are informed by international labor and human rights standards and grounded in the recognition that businesses have a stake in, and a responsibility for, gender equality and womens empowerment. There are a set of seven principles offering guidance to business on how to promote gender equality and womens empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community: - 1: Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality, - 2: Treat all women and men fairly at work respect and support human rights and non-discrimination, - 3: Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers, - 4: Promote education, training and professional development for women, - 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women, - 6: Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy, - 7: Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality. About ESI Group Founded in 1973, ESI Group envisions a world where Industry commits to bold outcomes, addressing high stakes concerns - environmental impact, safety & comfort for consumers and workers, adaptable and sustainable business models. ESI provides reliable and customized solutions anchored on predictive physics modeling and virtual prototyping expertise to allow industries to make the right decisions at the right time, while managing their complexity. Acting principally in automotive & land transportation, aerospace, defense & naval and heavy industry, ESI is present in more than 20 countries, employs 1100 people around the world and reported 2021 sales of 136.6 million. ESI is headquartered in France and is listed on compartment B of Euronext Paris. For further information, go to www.esi-group.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005552/en/ Contacts ESI Group Florence Barre press@esi-group.com +33 1 49 78 28 28 Aline Besselievre aline.besselievre@gmail.com +33 6 61 85 10 05 LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The gap between Germany and Italy's 10-year government bond yields narrowed to the lowest level since April 2022 on Wednesday. The spread, which is closely watched as a gauge of investor confidence in the more highly indebted countries of the euro zone, fell to a low of 174 basis points. Falling energy prices have caused traders to hope that inflation will cool faster than expected in the euro zone, and that any recession will be shallow. "This has boosted risk appetite and Italy has benefited being a higher risk bond market than Germany," said Antoine Bouvet, senior rates strategist at ING. Germany's 10-year bond yield was last down 8 bps to 2.011% on Wednesday, while Italy's was 12 bps lower at 3.772%. (Reporting by Harry Robertson, editing by Stefano Rebaudo) Yofiit and Bentilia have completed their initial launch in the United States and Canada successfully securing a number of new customers, initial purchases and listing commitments TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - Global Food and Ingredients Ltd. (TSXV: PEAS) (OTCQX: PEASF) ("GFI" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that its Yofiit and Bentilia brands have successfully completed their initial US market expansion through the onboarding of new customers, achievement of a significant number of commitments from future customers and ongoing discussions with several potential partners across the United States and Canada. GFI Logo (CNW Group/Global Food and Ingredients) Recent Milestones: Bentilia have added more than 160 doors of distribution in the United States since their launch with Kehe in November, including both their Bentilia10 ziti and Bentilia red lentil pasta cuts. Yofiit has received commitments in the United States for its innovative chickpea-based milk alternative, including access to ~400 doors at one of the largest and fastest growing specialty retailers of fresh, natural and organic foods in the United States. In Canada, Yofiit has received commitments from two of the largest supermarket chains and specialty retailers for its milk products. Yofiit's healthy, better-for-you bars and granola and have received an initial commitment that will expand its offerings into the gas & convenience channel. Both Yofiit and Bentilia have signed on and listed with KeHe Distributors, the largest pure-play distributor of natural and organic specialty, and fresh products in North America, for wholesale distribution of their respective product lines. In addition, GFI's brands work with the largest wholesale distributor of health and specialty foods in North America which further broadens their footprint and access to customers. Collectively these distributors service over 60,000 natural food stores, supermarket chains, independent grocery stores, online retailers, retail pharmacies, convenience stores, foodservice providers and specialty retailers across North America. Story continues GFI is in active discussion with major specialty grocers and regional retailers across the United States and Canada that would additionally open up over 3,000 points of distribution. "We are thrilled to see the response from our new partners in the United States and Canada following the rebranding of both our Yofiit and Bentilia brands," said David Hanna, CEO. "We have had positive discussions with our target partners and expect rapid expansion of both product lines. Our products use base ingredients that are regenerative to the earth, making them not only a healthier option for consumers, but also a better option for the environment. Our recent commitments speak to the high-quality, unique product portfolio of offerings that GFI bolsters and we are exciting about expanding our footprint with our current and future partners across North America." About GFI GFI is a fast-growing Canadian plant-based food and ingredients company, connecting the local farm to the global supply chain for peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas and other high protein specialty crops. GFI is organized into four primary business lines: Pea Protein Inputs, Plant-Based Ingredients, Plant-Based Pet Food Ingredients and Plant-Based Consumer Packaged Goods. Headquartered in Toronto, GFI buys directly from its extensive network of farmers, processes its products locally at its four wholly-owned processing facilities in Western Canada and ships to 37 countries across the world. GFI's vision is to become a vertically integrated farm-to-fork plant-based company providing traceable, locally sourced, healthy and sustainable food and ingredients. Through recent acquisition and development activities, GFI now offers a full suite of Plant-Based Consumer Packaged goods with over 20 SKUs under the Yofiit, Bentilia and Five Peas in Love brands. W: www.gfiglobalfood.com S: https://linktr.ee/gfi.globalfood SOURCE Global Food and Ingredients Cision View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2023/18/c7611.html Vantage Market Research, The North Star for the Working World WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Colorants Market is valued at USD 34.5 Billion in 2021 and is projected to reach a value of USD 47.5 Billion by 2028 at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 5.5% over the forecast period 2022-2028. Market Overview According to Vantage Market Research, some of the key factors anticipated accelerating the colorants market growth over the forecast period. The primary factor driving the colorants market growth rate is the rise in colorant demand from the automotive industry. The market's growth rate will be directly and favorably impacted by expanding colorant application areas and the growth and expansion of numerous end-user verticals, particularly in developing economies, such as the printing and textile industries. We forecast that the pigments category in colorants market sales will account for more than 34% of total sales by 2028. One of the key elements that will contribute to increased demand for colorants in the next years is increased investment in technologies that are utilized in producing various colorants. Get Access to the In-depth Free Sample Report @ https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/colorants-market-1968/request-sample Market Dynamics Market Growth will be Driven by Rising Consumer Demand for Natural Food Colorants To create goods that meet consumer demand, market vendors have been doing research and development (R and D) efforts. For instance, Divi Laboratories Ltd., a producer of vitamin and carotenoid ingredients used in food and beverage, introduced its new product, CaroNat, in September 2021. Beta-carotene is present in the concentrated carrot juice used to make CaroNat. Some of the largest food corporations have pledged to use fewer artificial food colorings. Market will be Driven by its Various Properties Offered by but Products Compared to other color-imparting materials like pigments, dyes have a high selective absorptivity for liquids and substrates. When applied to substrates, colors' excellent absorption qualities cause them to lose their structural and physical characteristics. In the coming years, the consumption of dyes is anticipated to increase significantly due to the development of economies like those in China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Story continues Top Players in the Global Colorants Market Clariant AG, (Switzerland) LANXESS AG, (Germany) Cabot Corporation, (US) du Pont de Nemours & Company, (US) Flint Group, (Europe) PolyOne Corporation, (US) Sun Chemical Corporation, (US) BASF SE, (Germany) DIC Corporation, (Japan) Huntsman Corporation, (US) For Additional Information on Colorants Market Players and Detail List, Download a Report PDF Brochure Top Trends in Global Colorants Market One trend that Vantage Market Research (VMR) expects to see in the colorants industry is a rise in adoption in the food and beverage industry. In the food sector, colorants enhance the appearance of baked goods and confections. The production of baked products uses colorants sold in an edible form on the market. Utilizing these edible hues more frequently will make food products more appealing and increase sales. Another trend that VMR predicts will continue in the colorants industry is growing in popularity in cosmetics and personal care. These colorants are used in the production of many manufacturers' reasonably priced hair dyes and hair colors, and the market for them is anticipated to expand strongly over the course of the forecast period. Top Report Findings Based on application, most of the colorants market's revenue is controlled by the preservatives category. Textile colorants typically impart color to a textile material more permanently, which causes them to get physically trapped inside the textile material or chemically bound to it. Based on color, most of the colorants market's revenue is controlled by the natural category. Natural colorants are simple and in harmony with the environment. They come from sustainable sources, and there is very little chance of chemical reactions during preparation. Based on composition, most of the colorants market's revenue is controlled by the organic category due to a rise in the popularity of natural products. Based on form, most of the colorants market's revenue is controlled by the pigments category. Paint, ink, plastic, food, and other materials are colored using pigments. In manufacturing, pigments predominate, and designs are created using dry colorants that are typically ground into a fine powder. Limited Time Offer | Buy this Premium Research Report with Exclusive Discount and Immediate Delivery@ https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/buy-now/colorants-market-1968/0 Recent Developments in the Global Colorants Market In 2021, Ampacet provided a palette of translucent colours in four different tones; these colours would be helpful in the manufacture of cleared PP and packaging. Those four hues are yellow, red glow, orange oxygen, and green energy, and they were all introduced by the firm word fuelled. In July of 2021, DIC Corporation and Debut Biotechnology, Inc., a California-based biotech firm, announced that they had entered into a joint research development agreement. DIC's goal is to create and market novel sustainable, high value-added bio-based colourants, pigments, and nutritious foods by combining Debut's expertise in enzyme reactions and process design with DIC's scale-up technology, quality control, and product development skills. Textile Category in Colorants Market to Generate Over 26% Revenue Colorants are an expensive investment. To comprehend the industry's present situation and possible drivers of future expansion, Vantage Market Research has conducted an analysis of the colorants market. For better understanding, based on the application, the colorants market is divided into textile, automobiles, food & beverages, paper & printing and building & construction. During the forecast period, the market for colorants is anticipated to experience the highest CAGR for the textile category. The rising consumer spending on clothes and apparel is anticipated to drive market expansion. Additionally, the textile industry uses dyes more frequently, which has increased sales of coloring agents in general. This is due to consumers' growing trend toward purchasing eco-friendly products. On the other hand, the food & beverages category is anticipated to grow significantly over the forecast period. The demand for the product, estimated to be worth over 250 kilotonnes in 2025, is expected to increase as colors are increasingly used in beverages and sugar-based goods, including candies, chocolates, and ice creams. Due to their carmine, caramel, eco-friendliness, and annatto are becoming increasingly popular in food & beverage applications, which is predicted to create new opportunities for market growth. Browse market data Tables and Figures spread through 142 Pages and in-depth TOC on Colorants Market Forecast Report (2022-2028). North America Region in Colorants Market to Generate More 29% Revenue North America dominates the market for colorants, and this trend of dominance will continue throughout the projection period. In the coming eight years, it is projected that demand for printing inks and architectural coatings will increase in North America. Over 550 kilotons of dyes and pigments were consumed, and the demand for these products is anticipated to expand at the fastest rate during the projection period. Global Colorants Market Segmentation By Application Textile Automobiles Food and Beverages Paper and Printing Building and Construction By Color Natural Synthetic By Composition Organic Inorganic By Form Dyes Pigments Color concentrates Masterbatches By Region North America United States Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK France Italy Spain Rest of Europe Asia Pacific China Japan India South Korea South-East Asia Rest of Asia Pacific Latin America Brazil Argentina Rest of Latin America Middle East & Africa GCC Countries South Africa Rest of MEA Read Full Report@ https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/industry-report/colorants-market-1968 Scope of the Report: Report Attributes Details Market Size in 2021 USD 34.5 Billion Revenue Forecast by 2028 USD 47.5 Billion CAGR 5.5% from 2022 to 2028 Base Year 2021 Forecast Year 2022 to 2028 Key Players Clariant AG, LANXESS AG, Cabot Corporation, du Pont de Nemours & Company, Flint Group, PolyOne Corporation, Sun Chemical Corporation, BASF SE, DIC Corporation, Huntsman Corporation Customization Options Customized purchase options are available to meet any research needs. Explore customized purchase options Browse More Reports from Vantage Library: About Vantage Market Research: We, at Vantage Market Research, provide quantified B2B high quality research on more than 20,000 emerging markets, in turn, helping our clients map out constellation of opportunities for their businesses. We, as a competitive intelligence market research and consulting firm provide end to end solutions to our client enterprises to meet their crucial business objectives. Our clientele base spans across 70% of Global Fortune 500 companies. Follow Us on: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook Contact us Eric Kunz 6218 Georgia Avenue NW Ste 1 - 564 Washington DC 20011-5125 United States Tel: +1 202 380 9727 Email: sales@vantagemarketresearch.com Website: https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/ Latest Vantage Market Research Press Releases Latest Vantage Market Research Blog Vantage Market Research All Reports Blog: Company Logo Global Event Management Software Market Global Event Management Software Market Dublin, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Event Management Software Global Market Report 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report provides strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global event management software market. This report focuses on event management software market which is experiencing strong growth. The report gives a guide to the event management software market which will be shaping and changing our lives over the next ten years and beyond, including the markets response to the challenge of the global pandemic. The global event management software market is expected to grow from $5.78 billion in 2021 to $6.56 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.4%. The event management software market is expected to grow to $11.75 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 15.7%. Reasons to Purchase Gain a truly global perspective with the most comprehensive report available on this market covering 12+ geographies. Understand how the market is being affected by the coronavirus and how it is likely to emerge and grow as the impact of the virus abates. Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis. Identify growth segments for investment. Outperform competitors using forecast data and the drivers and trends shaping the market. Understand customers based on the latest market research findings. Benchmark performance against key competitors. Utilize the relationships between key data sets for superior strategizing. Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis Major players in the event management software market are Active Network, Arlo, Attendify, Aventri, Bizzabo, Certain Inc., Cvent Inc., EMS Software LLC, Eventbrite, EventMobi, Gather Technologies, RainFocus, SignUpGenius, Eventzilla, Bitrix24, Tripleseat, Circa, Accelevents, Glue-Up, Event Espresso, Hubb LLC, Hubilo Inc., and RegPack Inc. The event management software market consists of sales of the event management software by entities (organizations, sole traders, and partnerships), which are used to manage the events and activities in a company from the beginning to the end. This platform consists of an online back-office and a user interface for attendees, which is frequently a mobile app. The event management software assists the event planner throughout the event's lifespan. The benefit of employing it is that it provides a one-of-a-kind solution that assists at every step of the event. The main types of event management software are software and service. The total set of programs, operations, and routines related to the operation of a computer system is referred to as software. The software segment includes the flow of data from application programs to local or remote devices. Story continues The deployment type is used in developing the software on-premise or in the cloud. The organizational size consists of small medium and large organizations developing and using the software. Furthermore, the end-users consist of corporate, government, third party planners, education, and other end-users. North America was the largest region in the event management software market in 2021. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the forecast period. The regions covered in the event management software market report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East, and Africa. The increasing preference for hosting virtual events is significantly contributing to the growth of the event management software market. Virtual events are completely hosted and run online with the potential for attendees to view or participate from anywhere in the world with an agenda of single or multiple-track presentation sessions or collaborative sessions. These sessions are streamed online through virtual conferences, webinars, internal hybrid events, and external hybrid events. For instance, according to The State of Virtual Events 2021, Zoom had the most respondents accounting for 50.3%, followed by Microsoft Teams with 12% usage and Facebook Live with 9.4%. This rise in usage of virtual platforms for hosting events is contributing to the growth of the market. The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology are shaping the event management software market. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer, or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. It is mostly used in event management due to its ease and affordability. In July 2021, Bevy, a US-based technology start-up, acquired Eventtus for an undisclosed amount. Through this acquisition, Bevy focuses on building several mobile application capabilities for hybrid events such as networking, virtual booths, interactive tools for live streaming, integrated ticketing, and a registration system. Eventtus is an Egypt-based event management software company that manages events, sell tickets and build an interactive event app in few minutes.. The countries covered in the event management software market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA. Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 175 Forecast Period 2022 - 2026 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2022 $6.56 billion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2026 $11.75 billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 15.7% Regions Covered Global Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Event Management Software Market Characteristics 3. Event Management Software Market Trends And Strategies 4. Impact Of COVID-19 On Event Management Software 5. Event Management Software Market Size And Growth 5.1. Global Event Management Software Historic Market, 2016-2021, $ Billion 5.1.1. Drivers Of The Market 5.1.2. Restraints On The Market 5.2. Global Event Management Software Forecast Market, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion 5.2.1. Drivers Of The Market 5.2.2. Restraints On the Market 6. Event Management Software Market Segmentation 6.1. Global Event Management Software Market, Segmentation By Component, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion Software Services 6.2. Global Event Management Software Market, Segmentation By Deployment Type, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion On Premise Cloud 6.3. Global Event Management Software Market, Segmentation By Organization Size, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion Small Medium Large 6.4. Global Event Management Software Market, Segmentation By End-User, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion Corporate Government Third-Party Planners Education Others End-Users 7. Event Management Software Market Regional And Country Analysis 7.1. Global Event Management Software Market, Split By Region, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion 7.2. Global Event Management Software Market, Split By Country, Historic and Forecast, 2016-2021, 2021-2026F, 2031F, $ Billion For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/6we2a5 Attachment CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood,Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./ CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2023 / Gold Terra Resource Corp. (TSXV:YGT)(Frankfurt:TX0)(OTCQX:YGTFF) ("Gold Terra" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the start of an 8,000-metre winter drilling program on the Con Mine Option ("CMO") Property in Yellowknife, NWT. The CMO property is under option from subsidiaries of Newmont Corporation and is acquirable by the Company upon fulfillment of certain conditions set out in the CMO agreement, as reported in the Company's news release dated November 22, 2021. The initial drilling program will consist of 20 holes drilled from surface to a depth of -600 metres over a 2-kilometre stretch with the objective of expanding the September 2022 initial Mineral Resource Estimate ("MRE") (see September 7, 2022 press release) along the Campbell Shear south of the Con Mine. In addition, preparations are underway to move in a second drill which is capable of drilling 2,500 metre holes to test the depth extension of mineralization below the former Con Mine. Chairman and CEO, Gerald Panneton, commented, "This winter drilling program will continue to focus on expanding the current near surface mineral resources on the CMO on where the initial MRE was based on. At the same time, we are planning, to drill the down plunge extension of the Con Mine deposit below -1,900 metres as we strongly believe there is significant additional high-grade potential. The current MRE remains open in all directions along the prolific 6-kilometre-long Campbell Shear structure from which the Con Mine produced more than 5 million ounces of high-grade gold (16 g/t Au) on 2 kilometres of strike length alone. Our goal is to advance the project towards an economic study and bring further value to our shareholders." Drilling Program on the Yellorex North, Yellorex and Kam Point deposits The focus of the winter drilling program is to expand the current mineral resource estimate with targets being shown in Figure 1 below. Story continues All these targets are located along the Campbell Shear structure between surface and -500 meters depth with the exception of one hole which will test the depth of the Yellorex Main deposit where most of the initial MRE is located. The drilling program will start on the Yellorex North target this week, with the first seven (7) holes drilled near surface representing the best underexplored target of the area. The target area is very close to existing underground mining infrastructure and tested only by one hole in 2022 (GTCM22-039). Gold Terra Resource Corp, Tuesday, January 17, 2023, Press release picture Figure 1 - Drilling areas Deep Drilling Program below the Con Mine The objective is to drill two holes targeting high-grade gold shoots beneath the Con Mine workings as shown in Figure 2: Gold Terra Resource Corp, Tuesday, January 17, 2023, Press release picture Figure 2 - Deep drilling target on Con Mine 2022 Key Achievements The Company announced an initial MRE of an underground Indicated 0.82 million tonnes averaging 7.55 g/t for 109,000 ounces of contained gold and an underground Inferred of 2.0 million tonnes averaging 6.74 g/t for 432,000 ounces of contained gold (See Sept 7, 2022 press release for full details). The October 21, 2022 technical report, titled "Initial Mineral Resource Estimate for the CMO Property, Yellowknife City Gold Project, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada" with an effective date of September 2, 2022 can be found on the Company's website at https://www.goldterracorp.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The initial CMO mineral resources was delineated at a discovery cost of $12 per oumce. On November 21, 2022, the Company completed a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $3.8 million. This financing is allowing the Company to have a substantial winter drilling program on the CMO Property. Qualified Persons Joe Campbell, P. Geo., Senior Geological Advisorfor Gold Terra is a Qualified Person within the meaning of NI 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release. About Gold Terra The YCG project encompasses 800 sq. km of contiguous land immediately north, south and east of the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Through a series of acquisitions, Gold Terra controls one of the six major high-grade gold camps in Canada. Being within 10 kilometers of the City of Yellowknife, the YCG is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power, and skilled tradespeople. Gold Terra is currently focusing its drilling on the prolific Campbell Shear, where 14 Moz of gold has been produced, and most recently on the Con Mine Option claims immediately south of the past producing Con Mine (1938-2003). The YCG and CMO property lie on the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering nearly 70 kilometers of strike length along the main mineralized shear system that host the former-producing high-grade Con and Giant gold mines. The Company's exploration programs have successfully identified significant zones of gold mineralization and multiple targets that remain to be tested which reinforces the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada. Visit our website at www.goldterracorp.com. For more information, please contact: Gerald Panneton, Chairman & CEO gpanneton@goldterracorp.com Mara Strazdins, Manager of Investor Relations Phone: 1-778-897-1590 | 604-689-1749 ext 102 strazdins@goldterracorp.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. Information Concerning Estimates of Mineral Resources Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Therefore, investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an Inferred Mineral Resource could ever be mined economically. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of "Measured Mineral Resources," "Indicated Mineral Resources," or "Inferred Mineral Resources" will ever be upgraded to a higher category. The Mineral Resource estimates contained herein may be subject to legal, political, environmental or other risks that could materially affect the potential development of such mineral resources. Refer to the Technical Report, once filed, for more information with respect to the key assumptions, parameters, methods and risks of determination associated with the foregoing. Cautionary Note to United States Investors The Company prepares its disclosure in accordance with the requirements of securities laws in effect in Canada, which differ from the requirements of U.S. securities laws. Terms relating to Mineral Resources in this news release are defined in accordance with NI 43-101 under the guidelines set out in CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Council on May 19, 2014, as amended ("CIM Standards"). The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") has adopted amendments effective February 25, 2019 (the "SEC Modernization Rules") to its disclosure rules to modernize the mineral property disclosure requirements for issuers whose securities are registered with the SEC under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. As a result of the adoption of the SEC Modernization Rules, the SEC will now recognize estimates of "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources", which are defined in substantially similar terms to the corresponding CIM Standards. In addition, the SEC has amended its definitions of "Proven Mineral Reserves" and "Probable Mineral Reserves" to be substantially similar to the corresponding CIM Standards. U.S. investors are cautioned that while the foregoing terms are "substantially similar" to corresponding definitions under the CIM Standards, there are differences in the definitions under the SEC Modernization Rules and the CIM Standards. Accordingly, there is no assurance any Mineral Resources that the Company may report as "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources" under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the Mineral Resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules. In accordance with Canadian securities laws, estimates of "Inferred Mineral Resources" cannot form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies, except in limited circumstances where permitted under NI 43-101. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements made and information contained in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation ("forward-looking information"). Generally, this forward-looking information can, but not always, be identified by 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, conditions or results "will", "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotations thereof. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that 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. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information regarding the current drilling on the Campbell Shear, potentially adding ounces to the Company's current YCG mineral resource, and the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as the Company's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in the Company's most recent MD&A and annual information form available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that would 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. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on information available to the Company as of the date of this news release. 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. All of the forward-looking information contained in this news release is qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Except as required under applicable securities legislation and regulations applicable to the Company, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update this forward-looking information. SOURCE: Gold Terra Resource Corp View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/735647/Gold-Terra-Starts-Winter-Drilling-Program-on-Con-Mine-Option-Property-to-Expand-Current-Mineral-Resources Repairing the Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt will improve visitor experience, increase resiliency to flooding, and help protect nearby fish habitat. RADIUM HOT SPRINGS, BC, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - The network of protected areas administered by Parks Canada is a gateway to nature, history, and 450 000 km of memories from coast to coast to coast. Investing in these locations helps support the protection of natural and built heritage, increases climate resiliency and creates jobs in local communities, while providing visitors with high-quality, safe and meaningful experiences across the country. Radium Cool Pool Facility, Kootenay National Park. Credit: Parks Canada (CNW Group/Parks Canada) Today, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, announced approximately $13 million for the restoration of the Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt in Kootenay National Park, a Classified Federal Heritage Building. Through this investment, Parks Canada will conserve the heritage value of this popular cultural resource, ensure high quality, meaningful visitor experiences and contribute to the country's world-class tourism offer. This project is part of the Government of Canada's recently announced funding of $557 million over three years to ensure the continuation of infrastructure projects and maintenance work for Parks Canada's assets, supporting the critical function they provide to Canadians and visitors. The cool pool and foundations of the building at Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt will be repaired to improve visitor experience and increase the site's resiliency to flooding by installing culverts under the building to direct water flow and protect the foundation, in addition to other upgrades. This project will also aid in Parks Canada's conservation efforts by adding erosion protection to safeguard nearby fish habitats. As well, the cool pool will be improved for visitor and staff safety and accessibility through a number of improvements. These include: installation of a surface level gutter system to allow visitors to easily enter and exit the pool, allow lifeguards to safely execute rescues, and to provide a smoother, faster swim experience for users; renovation of hand rails for improved stability when entering and exiting the pool; and, installation of a new lift for improved accessibility. Story continues Parks Canada's wide-ranging infrastructure portfolio includes more than 18,500 built assets such as highways, bridges, dams and other marine infrastructure, historic buildings and fortifications, water and wastewater treatment facilities, campgrounds, visitor centres and operational buildings and compounds. Since 2015, the federal infrastructure investment program has enabled Parks Canada to improve the condition of approximately 5,000 assets across the country. These upgrades help ensure public safety, quality and reliability in visitor offers, incorporate green technologies and climate resilience, while connecting Canadians with nature and history. Quote "The Government of Canada is committed to investing in Parks Canada places to ensure the sustainability of these treasured assets. Critical infrastructure upgrades to the Radium Hot Springs Aquacourt, a Classified Federal Heritage Building, will improve service quality and accessibility, resulting in tangible benefits for visitors, local communities and businesses and the nation's tourism industry, while including conservation efforts that safeguard nearby fish habitats." Steven Guilbeault Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada Quick Facts The Aquacourt at Radium Hot Springs in Kootenay National Park was one of the first major post-war building projects in the western national parks and opened to the public in 1951. The Aquacourt is a Classified Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations and architectural and environmental values. Kootenay National Park was established with the signing of an agreement to build the Banff-Windermere Highway (Highway 93 South) connecting British Columbia and Alberta on April 21, 1920. When the road opened in 1923, more than 4500 vehicles travelled the highway that year. Today, more than 500,000 people visit Kootenay National Park every year. Highway 93 South has wildlife mitigations including 15 km of wildlife exclusion fencing and nine underpasses. From January 30 to February 13, 2023, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, is inviting Canadians to participate in the 2023 Minister's Round Table on Parks Canada's national historic sites, national parks, and national marine conservation areas. An online engagement portal will be available and will welcome input from the general public at letstalkparkscanada.ca. Related Product Related Links SOURCE Parks Canada Cision View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2023/18/c9198.html The Abu Dhabi Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT) is teaming up with two Korean entities to promote the research and development of low-carbon hydrogen public transportation. For this DMT signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoU), one with Changwon City and one with the Korea Transport Institute (KOTI). The two MoUs were signed on the sidelines of the UAE South Korea Business forum held in Abu Dhabi. Representing Abu Dhabi Government, the MoU with Changwon City was signed by Falah Al Ahbabi, Member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Chairman of DMT, and Hong Nam-pyo, Mayor of Changwon City, Na Seung-sil, President of Korea Automotive Technology Institute, and Kwon Whan-ju, CEO of Kwangshin Machinery Company while the MoU with KOTI was signed between Al Ahbabi and Jaehak Oh, President of KOTI. Ambitious plans The MoUs are part of Abu Dhabis ambitious plans to strengthen its leading position in clean and sustainable energy. It is also in line with DMT and the Integrated Transport Centre's efforts to reduce the carbon footprint and improve the quality of life in the emirate of Abu Dhabi by establishing an environment-friendly transportation system and sustainable infrastructure. With the MoU, Abu Dhabi and Changwon City aim to enhance bilateral exchanges by organising workshops, seminars, pilot projects, and meetings that share experiences and ideas. As part of the MoU, both parties will design action plans for collaboration, establish hydrogen charging infrastructure, operate hydrogen buses, and facilitate visits and professional exchanges. Furthermore, the two cities will cooperate on the design and specification of hydrogen plants, hydrogen refuelling stations, and hydrogen buses, as well as their operation and maintenance in Abu Dhabi. The MoU with KOTI aims to collaborate on research and development of integrated development strategies and policies, sharing information and expertise on Korean regulations for establishing hydrogen charging stations, and conducting joint workshops and training courses for mutual benefit. The MoU also includes an Expert Exchange Programme for sharing human resources and other materials such as publications and research facilities. Low-carbon mobility Al Ahbabi said: As part of its mission, the department strives to promote flexible, smart, low-carbon mobility and provide environment-friendly transportation choices. By signing these strategic MoUs, we aim to strengthen cooperation frameworks with the Republic of Korea in a way that contributes to enabling joint public transportation solutions as part of Abu Dhabi's climate neutrality strategy and enhances the emirate's pioneering position in the field of green hydrogen and clean energy. "We will continue to build partnerships with international partners regarding renewable energy, infrastructure, and transportation. As part of the energy transition and advanced technologies that curb climate change and drive sustainable growth in Abu Dhabi, we will also capitalise on the economic opportunities." Hydrogen city Mayor Nam-pyo said: "Changwon City formed Team Changwon with Korea's competent institution and company to cooperate with Abu Dhabi DMT for Abu Dhabi's hydrogen mobility policy, which aims to transform Abu Dhabi into a hydrogen city. Changwon City is the only local government that participated in the UAE-Korea Business Forum during the Korean President's state visit to the UAE. Through this MoU, Changwon City will collaborate with Abu Dhabi DMT to grow together as one of the world's best hydrogen cities, not just in the Middle East. Changwon City will actively support and cooperate with Abu Dhabi on behalf of the Republic of Korea." Dr Jaehak Oh said: Korea Transport Institute, a leading and representative research institution of Republic of Korea with the objective to contribute to the advancement of national transport, has been establishing cooperative relationship with DMT to cooperate in the area of transport, especially eco-friendly public transport system and mobility using hydrogen energy. I believe that through signing MoU today, the two parties have prepared a solid foundation to make a greater step for achieving their goals successfully in the near future. Taking this opportunity, I deeply appreciate DMT.-- TradeArabia News Service Haivision Hub for Government allows agencies to securely share live content between government teams, and safely deliver live broadcasts to teams, facilities, and the public MONTREAL, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Haivision Systems Inc. ("Haivision") (TSX: HAI), a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual collaboration solutions, today announced that Haivision Hub for Government achieved FedRAMP "In Process" designation and is the only video network service available through the FedRAMP Marketplace. The fully managed cloud solution enables public sector government agencies to communicate together with live video content or distribute live broadcast video securely to the public using CDNs, OVPs, EVPs and social media outlets. The Haivision process of obtaining FedRAMP authorization was sponsored by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Haivision Logo (CNW Group/Haivision Systems Inc.) Today, government agencies are increasingly sharing live video to succeed in their mission. However, traversing networks can open agencies to cyber risks and security challenges. Even organizations with the best security profiles are at risk of evolving cyber exposures. Haivision Hub for Government helps shield public sector organizations from network exposure (their largest risk) when sharing live video streams. Scalable and easy to use, Haivision Hub for Government is ideal for CIOs looking to implement secure live video streaming in compliance with federal information assurance requirements. FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is a U.S. government program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. The FedRAMP Authorization Act is a codified part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). FedRAMP is mandatory for all executive agency cloud deployments and service models. "Our FedRAMP milestone is a powerful example of Haivision's longstanding commitment to ensuring the security of our customers' deployments," said Mirko Wicha, President and CEO of Haivision. "In the FedRAMP process, we've worked rigorously to make Haivision Hub for Government an ideal solution to help government agencies stream securely via the cloud. We're very proud to be the first video network service to achieve this important FedRAMP milestone and to be among the few technology companies to achieve this authorization." Story continues Haivision Hub for Government offers a range of features that can help agencies quickly and securely share live video content with internal and external audiences. Key features include: Real-time live visual content distribution: Share live video in real-time, providing up-to-date information and events and enabling collaboration in real-time on mission-critical common operating pictures. Secure: Designed to meet the strict security requirements of government agencies (Achieved FedRAMP supporting Department of Defense Impact Level 2 (DoD IL2)). Scalability: Scale to serve multiple internal and external audiences. Flexibility: Leverage direct high-performance connectivity and cloud delivery options. Simplification: Easily overcome network challenges and the technical debt typically encountered when enabling digital transformation. Haivision is committed to providing high-performance video network solutions with the highest levels of security for mission-critical applications. Progressing through rigorous third-party assessments and implementing the appropriate controls in accordance with FedRAMP to protect data and systems of federal customers demonstrates that commitment. For more information about Haivision Hub for Government, visit the FedRAMP Marketplace or the Haivision Hub for Government webpage on the Haivision website. About Haivision Haivision is a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual collaboration solutions. Our connected cloud and intelligent edge technologies enable organizations globally to engage audiences, enhance collaboration, and support decision making. We provide high quality, low latency, secure, and reliable live video at a global scale. Haivision open sourced its award-winning SRT low latency video streaming protocol and founded the SRT Alliance to support its adoption. Awarded four Emmys for Technology and Engineering from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Haivision continues to fuel the future of IP video transformation. Founded in 2004, Haivision is headquartered in Montreal and Chicago with offices, sales, and support located throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, visit Haivision at haivision.com. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/haivision-announces-haivision-hub-for-government-the-only-fedramp-video-network-service-to-securely-stream-live-video-301725251.html SOURCE Haivision Systems Inc. Complaint Asserts Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten Unlawfully Retained Control of Private Assets and Orchestrated the Sale to Notorious Money-Launderer Tied to Central Bank Official LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Nina Ansary, an internationally recognized women's rights advocate and award-winning Iranian American author and historian today filed a complaint against the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten for its illegal expropriation of her equity stake in Parman International B.V. (PIBV) a Curacao company owned by U.S. investors. According to the complaint, since seizing control of PIBV's insurance subsidiaries and related businesses in 2018 under the guise of an "emergency restructuring" allegedly necessary to bring the insurance subsidiaries into regulatory compliance, the Central Bank has been engaged in a scheme to systematically loot the assets of the enterprise for the economic and political benefit of its officials, including orchestrating the unnecessary sale at a steep discount of Banco di Caribe to an internationally known money-launderer and crony of the former head of the Central Bank. Now, buoyed by its success, the Central Bank has put plans in place to seize 160 acres of prime real estate in Sint Maarten held by PIBV, even after numerous public attestations by Central Bank officials to the restored fiscal health of the enterprise. "Long after determining that there is no longer any fiscal 'emergency' or danger of insolvency, the Central Bank of Curacao continues to loot the assets of American investors. It's abundantly clear that this ongoing seizure is not about the health of the enterprise or accountability to policyholders, but only about greed and opportunism by officials at the Central Bank," said Dennis Hranitzky of Quinn Emanuel, Urquhart and Sullivan, an attorney for Dr. Ansary. Mr. Hranitzky continued, "The thuggish behavior by officials of the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten toward Dr. Ansary, an internationally known author and women's rights activist, goes far beyond the theft of her personal investments and includes an audacious campaign of legal and personal intimidation that extends to targeting even her primary residence for seizure. While such behavior is unsurprising given Curacao's reputation as an infamous haven for money-laundering and criminal activity, it is in clear violation of existing treaties between the United States and the Netherlands as well as Dr. Ansary's human rights." Story continues The U.S. State Department categorizes Curacao as a country/jurisdiction of Primary Concern with respect to money-laundering and financial crimes. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/internationally-renowned-womens-rights-advocate-files-suit-against-central-bank-of-curacao-and-sint-maarten-for-theft-of-property-301723995.html SOURCE Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP By Kevin Buckland TOKYO, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Japanese government bond yields eased back from the Bank of Japan's 0.5% policy ceiling and the yen weakened from near seven-month highs on Wednesday, ahead of one of the most highly anticipated monetary policy decisions globally in years. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and his colleagues have investors on tenterhooks, and anticipation has been sky high for some additional policy change later in the day, from further tweaks to yield curve controls (YCC) to even their full abandonment. Although it has been only a month since Japan's central bank shocked markets by doubling the allowable band for the 10-year JGB yield to 50 basis points either side of the 0% policy rate - ostensibly to improve market function - the change emboldened speculators to test the BOJ's resolve. The time of the decision is not set but is expected between 0300 GMT and 0500 GMT. The 10-year yield breached the BOJ's ceiling for three straight sessions to Tuesday, including a tumultuous Friday, when it spiked to a 7-1/2-year peak of 0.545%, although it closed each day back at the 0.5% limit. The benchmark yield eased 1.5 basis points to 0.485% as of 0037 GMT, after starting the day flat at 0.5%. Ten-year JGB futures edged up to 145.04. They had dipped as low as 144.15 on Friday for the first time since March 2014. "The trade-off for the BOJ here is shocking the market and creating some volatility event versus sort of digging yourself deeper into the hole," said James Athey, investment director at Abrdn. Athey, who has a short position on JGBs, said the best course of action for the central bank would be to get rid of YCC. "Now is the time, because a lot of investors are short," he said. Taming yields has come at a cost, with the central bank splashing an unprecedented 10 trillion yen ($78 billion) on bond buying operations over Friday and Monday, calling into question the sustainability of the programme. Story continues Also, signs of a need to end ultra-easy monetary policy are coming from consumer inflation, which in the most recent data was double the 2% target in Tokyo, and the possibility that stubbornly slow-to-rise salaries may also take off after Uniqlo's parent company said it would raise wages by up to 40%. The yen strengthened as far as 127.215 per dollar on Friday, the highest since May, amid bets that stimulus was on the way out - if not immediately, then at least after Kuroda retires at the start of April and a new governor comes in. The currency last traded at 128.65, weakening some 0.4% compared with the previous session. Japan's Nikkei share average was 0.35% higher in early trading. ($1 = 128.2200 yen) (Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee; Editing by Bradley Perrett) OTTAWA, ON, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - Members of the media are invited to Rideau Hall to cover a presentation of credentials of five new heads of mission to Canada. During the ceremony, the following new heads of mission will present their credentials to the Governor General: Her Excellency Adriana Solano Lacle Ambassador-designate of the Republic of Costa Rica His Excellency Purmanund Jhugroo High Commissioner-designate of the Republic of Mauritius His Excellency Joaquim do Espirito Santo Ambassador-designate of the Republic of Angola His Excellency Sisavath Inphachanh Ambassador-designate of the Lao People's Democratic Republic His Excellency Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Pa'olelei Luteru High Commissioner-designate of the Independent State of Samoa Date: Friday, January 20, 2023 Time: 10:00 a.m. Location: Rideau Hall Ballroom Notes for media: To guarantee your access to the ceremony, we ask that you please confirm your attendance with the Rideau Hall Press Office at media@gg.ca. Media are asked to arrive at the Princess Anne Entrance no later than 9:45 a.m. on the day of the ceremony. Please note masks are mandatory. Photos of the ceremony taken by the Governor General's official photographer will be made available upon request. Stay connected: Follow GovernorGeneralCanada on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and YouTube . SOURCE Governor General of Canada Cision View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2023/18/c6207.html Most Chinese provinces set growth targets of above 5% in 2023 FILE PHOTO: People walk along Nanjing Pedestrian Road during the Labour Day holiday in Shanghai BEIJING (Reuters) - Most Chinese provinces aim for economic growth of above 5% this year, pledging to focus on boosting consumption following a lifting of stringent COVID curbs, according to local government work reports. China's two biggest provincial economies - Guangdong in the south and Jiangsu in the east - aim to achieve more than 5% and around 5% gross domestic product growth (GDP) in 2023 respectively, their government work reports showed. Commercial hub Shanghai, which was locked down for about two months last spring, targeted growth above 5.5% this year and pledged to prioritise consumption recovery. Pudong New Area, home to Shanghai's largest airport and the main financial district, expected to drive up nearly 20 billion yuan ($2.95 billion) in consumption in the first quarter. Zhejiang province, which is a "demonstration zone" for China's common prosperity campaign, has set a more than 5% growth target this year, after missing its "around 6%" goal by half in 2022. Only the capital Beijing and its neighbouring municipality of Tianjin aimed for lower growths of "more than 4.5%" and "around 4%" respectively. The two cities had regular mass COVID tests, adopted strict anti-virus curbs and suffered rounds of virus outbreaks in 2022. China's sudden relaxation of stringent anti-virus measures has boosted expectations of an economic revival this year, but businesses are feeling some short-term pains from rising COVID cases after the COVID policy U-turn last month. The world's second-largest economy grew 3% in 2022 from a year earlier, badly missing the official target of around 5.5% and hitting one of its worst rates in nearly half a century. Growth is expected to rebound to 4.9% in 2023, according to a Reuters poll. China is likely to aim for economic growth of at least 5% in 2023 to keep a lid on unemployment, policy insiders said. The tropical southern province of Hainan set an ambitious target of around 9.5% for 2023 growth, after the island's main tourist hub, Sanya, locked in tens of thousands of tourists last August. Story continues Local economies are ramping up efforts to revive the COVID-hit services sector as frequent and stringent lockdowns and restrictions kept shoppers at home and disrupted consumption activity. Northern Hebei province vowed to expand domestic demand "by all means" and step up support to catering, accommodation and retail sectors, while the eastern province of Fujian said it would expand consumption of autos and home appliances. As exports are seen weakening well into 2023 as the global economy teeters on the brink of recession, economists say policymakers had to rely on boosting domestic demand as the key driver for the economy this year. ($1 = 6.7735 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Ellen Zhang and Kevin Yao; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise) The Dubai opening follows the California-based artisan coffee leader's growth in China EMERYVILLE, Calif., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Peet's Coffee , the company that started the craft coffee revolution in the U.S., today announced the opening of the first Peet's location in the Middle East, with a flagship coffeebar in Dubai, UAE, in partnership with Americana Restaurants. The new coffeebar is officially now open and is located on Fashion Avenue at The Dubai Mall, one of the UAE's premier shopping destinations for locals and visitors and the most visited mall in the world. (PRNewsfoto/Peet's Coffee Inc.) This market debut is a collaboration between Peet's Coffee and Americana Restaurants, the leading food and beverage platform and one of the largest multi-brand restaurant operators in the Middle East & North Africa ("MENA") region. The companies inked an exclusive master franchise agreement in 2022. "The international coffee market is strong and growing as a new generation of coffee drinkers demands superior beans, technique and ingredients," said Eric Lauterbach, president of Peet's Coffee. "This trusted, strategic partnership with Americana will bring better coffee to the fast-growing GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region." "We are delighted to launch Peet's in the GCC where the love of coffee is shared by millions of consumers," Amarpal Sandhu, CEO of Americana Restaurants. "Peet's devotion to the art and science of brewing the most flavorful cup of coffee is exceptional, and we are excited to expand the brand to new GCC markets this year." From its birthplace in California, Peet's revolutionized the U.S. coffee industry, pioneering the specialty coffee movement in 1966. Since then, Peet's has become known for its bold rich flavor and commitment to quality. Peet's chooses the highest quality beans from around the world; then it expertly roasts them in California to exacting standards. All Peet's coffee is verified as 100 percent responsibly sourced, per Enveritas standards. In 2017, Peet's expanded to China and now operates more than 370 coffeebars across the U.S. and China. Story continues Since its founding, Peet's has put coffee and coffee lovers first. Features of the Dubai coffeebar include: A Discovery Bar that invites patrons to take a personalized coffee journey through custom cups, tasting flights, and full sensory, experiential courses led by Peet's roasters and baristas. An eclectic regional dessert menu including a delectable Tiramisu served with Peet's Baridi Blend Cold Brew, luscious Saffron and Pistachio Milk Cakes, and freshly baked pastries. About Peet's Coffee: Peet's Coffee, part of JDE Peet's (JDEP.AS) the world's largest pure play coffee and tea company by revenue, is a U.S. specialty coffee company founded in 1966 in Berkeley, California, by Alfred Peet. Peet pioneered the craft coffee movement in the U.S and his legacy lives on today in every cup whether ordered online, selected at a grocery store, or served in any one of more than 370 Peet's Coffee locations in the U.S. and China. Peet's Coffee is verified as 100 percent responsibly sourced, per Enveritas standards. About Americana Restaurants A master franchisee known for opening and scaling iconic global brands such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee's, Krispy Kreme, Baskin Robbins, Wimpy and TGI Friday's, Americana Restaurants is the region's leading restaurant platform with a diverse network of quick and full-service restaurants across MENA and Kazakhstan. Images available here SOURCE Peet's Coffee Inc. Finance software startup Quartr signs an API deal with Lightyear, an online broker based in London, serving customers in 20 countries across Europe. Lightyear will, through this integration, get access to Quartr's database of earnings calls, accompanying documents, reports, and slide decks. This partnership also means that public companies get a completely new distribution channel for their information. STOCKHOLM and NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Quartr (www.quartr.com) continues to move forward on its mission to bring the financial community closer together by signing an API deal with Lightyear, an online broker based in London with customers in 20 countries all across Europe. The integration enables Lightyear's customers to find crucial information such as earnings calls, accompanying documents, reports, and slide decks directly through its online brokerage platform, which gives investors a strong foundation to make informed investment decisions. "We are very pleased to announce this Europe-focused partnership with Lightyear just a week after signing a deal with Sweden's largest online broker. We are convinced that our API will create a lot of value for both investors and online brokers worldwide, and not least for public companies as this enables them to get their equity stories told to a much wider audience", comments Sami Osman, CEO & Co-founder of Quartr. "Easy access to stock market data is crucial for new and experienced investors alike to build out their investment strategies and successfully carry them out over the years. Historically, earnings calls and the discussions within them have not been easily accessible for retail investors; yet keeping up with companies' quarterly results is a key part of staying up to date with your portfolio performance. We are excited to partner with Quartr and bring earnings calls, as well as reports and transcripts into the Lightyear app, for our customers all across Europe", comments Mihkel Aamer, CTO & Co-founder of Lightyear. Story continues Sami Osman, Co-founder & CEO at Quartr sami@quartr.se +46 7029 70248 Tessa Bryant, Head of Communications at Lightyear tessa@golightyear.com +44 7899 840237 The following files are available for download: https://news.cision.com/quartr---investor-relations-made-accessible/i/1156x708-quartr-lightyear,c3134808 1156x708 Quartr Lightyear https://news.cision.com/quartr---investor-relations-made-accessible/i/1156x1156-quartr-lightyear,c3134809 1156x1156 Quartr Lightyear https://mb.cision.com/Public/21895/3699233/978a0e4c646f1ac8.pdf Press Release Quartr Lightyear Cision View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/quartr-and-lightyear-partners-to-bring-free-and-easy-to-access-company-information-for-investors-across-europe-301724420.html Fortune Business Insights The robotic vacuum cleaner market size was valued USD 9.77 billion in 2020 and USD 11.97 billion in 2021 respectively. The global market size for robotic vacuum cleaner is predicted to grow significantly, reaching USD 50.65 billion by 2028, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.2% over the forecast period of 2022 to 2028. Pune, India, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global robotic vacuum cleaner market size to grow from USD 11.97 billion in 2021 in 2021 to USD 50.65 billion by 2028, growing at CAGR of 27.2% during forecast period. Factors such as increase in demand for automation and smart home technology. Robotics technology has advanced significantly, making robotic vacuums more efficient, effective, and user-friendly also boosting the growth of robotic vacuum cleaner market globally. According to analysts, the growing trend of smart homes and IoT has led to an increase in demand for automated cleaning solutions. Increase in adoption in robotic vacuum cleaner commercial spaces also contributing to growth of market. Request a PDF of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/robotic-vacuum-cleaners-market-100645 List of Key Players in the Global Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Dyson Ltd. (Malmesbury, U.K.) Ecovacs (Suzhou, China) iRobot Corporation (Massachusetts, U.S) LG Electronics (Seoul, South Korea) Samsung Corporation (Seoul, South Korea) Proscenic (Zhengzhou, China) Matsutek Enterprises Co. Ltd. (Taipei, Taiwan) Neato Robotics (Newark, California) Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Robert Bosch GmbH (Gerlingen, Germany) Panasonic Corporation (Osaka, Japan) Bissell Inc. (Grand Rapids, Michigan) Miele & Cie. KG (Gutersloh, Germany) Sharp Corporation (Osaka, Japan) Report Scope and Segmentation: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 Forecast Period 2021 to 2028 CAGR 27.2% 2028 Value Projection USD 50.65 billion Base Year 2020 Market Size in 2020 USD 9.77 billion Historical Data for 2017 to 2019 No. of Pages 160 Segments covered Type, Application, Operation Mode, Distribution Channel, Price and Region Growth Drivers Adoption of Automated Products across the Residential Sectors to Uplift Products Demand COVID-19 Impact- The market has experienced a limited impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The shutdowns of production plants and manufacturing facilities due to stringent lockdowns and curfews imposed by governments of nations across the globe have hindered the market growth. However, technology-based robotic vacuum cleaners have gained immense popularity during the pandemic due to the need for sterilization and sanitation to avoid the contraction of coronavirus. The market came to a halt during the initial phases of the pandemic. However, the market is currently progressing and is likely to exhibit astonishing growth in the forthcoming years. Story continues Market Segmentation- On the basis of type, the market is trifurcated into pool vacuum cleaners, window vacuum cleaners, and floor vacuum cleaners. On the basis of application, the market is bifurcated into commercial and household. On the basis of operation mode, the market is fragmented into the remote control and self-drive. On the basis of distribution channels, the market is segmented into offline and online. On the basis of price, the market is categorized into above USD 500, USD 300 500, USD 150 300, and below USD 150. Geographically, the market is classified into North America, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Europe. To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market, please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/robotic-vacuum-cleaners-market-100645 Report Coverage- The report covers the markets competitive landscape and profiles key market players accordingly. The report highlights the challenges and restraints to market growth and suggests strategies to overcome them. The report showcases the impact of the coronavirus outbreak and its effect on markets growth. The report provides information on the key market trends and latest industry developments. Drivers & Restraints- Rising Adoption of Smart and Innovative Systems to Boost Market Growth Residential robotic vacuum cleaners are generally used for UV sterilization, mopping, and security cameras for safety from fire or intruders. Major manufacturers are launching products incorporated with voice recognition abilities to interpret voice commands. The rising adoption of smart and innovative automated systems is projected to prevail as a key trend fostering the global robotic vacuum cleaner market growth. Additionally, the growing adoption of automated products is anticipated to bolster market growth in the coming years. The rising inclination towards smart home technologies is likely to fuel market growth. The rising adoption of smart and innovative automated systems is also projected to foster market growth. Manufacturers are incorporating voice recognition abilities to interpret voice commands, which is likely to stimulate the market growth further However, high costs of maintenance may hinder the market growth of these high-tech automated products and systems. Have Any Query? Ask Our Experts: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/robotic-vacuum-cleaners-market-100645 Regional Insights- Decreased Price Unit in China to Fuel Growth in Asia Pacific Asia Pacific is poised to hold the largest global robotic vacuum cleaner market share in the coming years. The decreased unit price in China is likely to be a key factor driving the regions market growth. The presence of several robotic vacuum cleaner manufacturers in China is anticipated to boost the growth of the regions market. Additionally, the exceptional growth observed in Japan due to innovative, advanced product launches is expected to complement the regions market growth. North America is expected to hold the second-largest market share. The development of technologically advanced automated cleaners in the U.S. is likely to boost the regions market growth. Europe is anticipated to exhibit stellar growth due to the high demand for automated vacuum cleaners. The high carpet usage and larger household spaces across Europe augment the demand for automated robotic vacuum cleaners, which is likely to be a key factor driving the regions market growth. Competitive Landscape- Key Players New Products to Capture Growth The market is fairly fragmented and comprises several key players operating internationally and domestically. Amongst the top market players, Ecovacs and iRobot Corporation holds a substantial revenue share in the market. The key players emphasize extensive research and development activities to manufacture technologically advanced products. For instance, Ecovacs launched a new floor and wall robotic vacuum cleaner, DEEBOT Ozmo 920, in December 2019. Industry Developments- March 2020: Ecovacs launched a new TrueMapping technology equipped modern AI-driven floor cleaning robotic vacuum cleaner. Request for Customization- https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/robotic-vacuum-cleaners-market-100645 Table of Content- Introduction Definition, By Segment Research Approach Sources Executive Summary Market Dynamics Macro and Micro Economic Indicators Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities and Trends Impact of COVID-19 Short-term Impact Long-term Impact Competition Landscape Business Strategies Adopted by Key Players Consolidated SWOT Analysis of Key Players Porters Five Force Analysis Global Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market Share Analysis and Matrix, 2020 Continued... Get a Quote- https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/get-a-quote/robotic-vacuum-cleaners-market-100645 About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them to address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. US: +1 424 253 0390 UK: +44 2071 939123 APAC: +91 744 740 1245 Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com An overwhelming majority (96%) of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India expect their profits to increase in 2023, according to a business confidence study conducted nationwide by MSME-focused digital lender Neo-Growth Credit Findings. The Indian MSME sector is a nursery of entrepreneurship driven by individual creativity and innovation, says MSME Business Forum, which is hosting the upcoming 'Opportunity Network 2023' on January 20, 2023, in New Delhi and inviting MSMEs to leverage promising business segments offered via global investors. The upcoming event in New Delhi will receive dignitaries from different genres to unleash the potential amongst the MSMEs. Businesses supporting leasing, EV, solar and building warehouses are expected to be the focus areas of discussions at the event, a statement said. Growth drivers The Prime Minister of India recently launched growth accelerator schemes like 'Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance' (RAMP), Capacity Building of First-Time Exporters (CBFTE) and new features of the Prime Minister Employment Generating Programme (PMEGP), giving impetus to growth. Following the adoption of the revised definition of MSMEs based on investments in plant and machinery and equipment and turnover, 10 million online registrations have been received on the Udyam Registration Portal towards 'Ease of Doing Business'. The recently concluded India International Trade Fair 22 witnessed the encouraging participation of 73% of women entrepreneurs. An all-inclusive MSME Champions Scheme formulated with categories, namely MSME Sustainable, MSME Competitive, and MSME Innovative, is setting the aspirations of India's small and medium businesses to be on the global roadmap. "Handholding MSME entrepreneurs to leverage their expertise and translate it to a wider audience empowers the business to leverage their true potential," says Rachana Chowdhary, CEO of MVW-MSME Development Centre, the Editor & Publisher at IndiaTechnologyNews.in, an MSME focused magazine. In addition to the traditional financing schemes, an increasing community of family offices is looking to extend their support to MSMEs with promising solutions. Sunrise sector: Electric Vehicles According to the Fortune Business Insights Report, the Indian electric vehicle industry is estimated to grow to $113.9 billion by 2029. With a substantial shift in focus, India is shaping the next big dream of transforming with EVs. Sunrise sector: Warehouse Business The CBRE report for 2022 states over 32-34 million sq ft of new warehouse spaces are expected to become operational. Investors are increasingly interested in warehousing and logistics, with logistics accounting for 20 per cent of the deal volume. Industrial and warehousing space leasing is spread across eight major tier-I and tier-II cities spanning the booming ecommerce market. Ravi Nandan Sinha, Director of Development and MSME Business Forum India, said: "The increasing contribution of the MSME sector towards creating India as a global business hub is genuinely remarkable. With Industry 4.0 knowledge and technology penetration, more MSME owners are fast-forwarding their digital evolution. With an actively increasing membership base, MSME Business Forum India is enabling its members with opportunities to progress and communicate. Dr Sindhu Bhaskar, Investor & New Age Technology Evangelist, Finance and Technology Expert, US, said: "For MSMEs to achieve high growth, the two most significant interventions required are related to credit assistance and technology upgradation. Banks and financial institutions should be more willing to discern genuine exporters and demand less collateral." Every community across Canada is at heightened risk of natural catastrophes TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2023 /CNW/ - Severe weather across Canada continues to highlight the financial costs of a changing climate to insurers, governments and taxpayers. Nationally, insured damage for severe weather events reached $3.1 billion last year, according to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ). 2022 now ranks as the 3rd worst year for insured losses in Canadian history. While the $3.1 billion figure is alarming, no single catastrophic event nor any particular region accounted for the majority of losses. Unlike 2016, the highest loss year on record, where the Fort McMurray, Alberta, wildfire accounted for about 75% of national losses, 2022 saw disasters from nearly every part of the country. Noteworthy severe weather events last year include Hurricane Fiona, the Ontario and Quebec derecho, the Eastern Canada late-winter storm, the Western Canada summer storms and the Eastern Canada bomb cyclone. Insured Damage for Severe Weather Events in 2022 February 1719 Eastern Canada late-winter storm $140 million April 2225 Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario flooding $60 million May 21 Ontario and Quebec derecho $1 billion June 1617 Ontario and Quebec severe storms $50 million JulyAugust Western Canada summer storms $300 million September 2324 Hurricane Fiona $800 million December 2226 Eastern Canada bomb cyclone $180 million December 2327 BC winter storm and king tide $80 million Canada: Insured Catastrophic Losses in 2022 (CNW Group/Insurance Bureau of Canada) Canada's Top 10 Highest Insured Loss Years on Record (loss and adjusted expenses in 2022 dollars) Rank Year Total loss ($ billion) Notable severe weather event 1 2016 5.96 Fort McMurray, Alberta, fire 2 2013 3.87 Alberta floods; Greater Toronto Area (GTA) floods, December GTA Ice Storm 3 2022 3.12 Multiple events 4 1998 2.83 Quebec ice storm 5 2021 2.48 Calgary hailstorm; British Columbia floods 6 2020 2.46 Fort McMurray, Alberta, flood; Calgary hailstorm 7 2018 2.40 Multiple events: Ontario and Quebec rainstorms and windstorms 8 2011 1.97 Slave Lake, Alberta, fire and windstorm 9 2012 1.65 Calgary rainstorm 10 2019 1.56 Multiple events Sources 19832007: IBC, PCS Canada, Swiss Re, Deloitte. 20082021: CatIQ. Story continues "Canada is increasingly a riskier place to live, work and insure," said Craig Stewart, Vice-President, Climate Change and Federal Issues, Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). "Governments have spent far too little attention to adaptation in the discourse over climate policy. This spring, the federal government needs to lead the way in finalizing a National Adaptation Strategy and boldly funding both community-level infrastructure and property-level retrofits that increase resilience to floods, windstorms, heat events and wildfires. "In particular, we're seeing early signs that property insurance may become less affordable or even unavailable as global reinsurers shift capacity away from riskier countries," continues Stewart. "Now is the time for Canadian insurers and governments to partner on a National Flood Insurance Program to ensure Canadian homeowners remain financially resilient in the face of these growing number and severity of events." IBC continues in-depth discussions with the federal and provincial governments on ways to improve the resilience of communities and better manage the costs of flooding for high-risk residential properties in Canada. Federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous governments collaborated with insurers to finalize the "Task Force Report on Flood Insurance and Relocation" in August 2022. The federal government is now examining options to create a national residential flood insurance program that will offer affordable insurance to all residents at high risk of overland flooding, including storm surge, through a public-private partnership. Most G7 countries already have such a program in place. In today's world of extreme weather events, insured catastrophic losses in Canada now routinely exceed $2 billion annually, most of it due to water-related damage. In the decade before 2008, Canadian insurers averaged only $456 million a year in severe weather-related losses. CatIQ Connect Insured damage trends, including 2022's towering total, will feature prominently at CatIQ Connect Canada's premiere catastrophe conference. CatIQ Connect hosts a content-driven discussion to foster collaboration before, during and after catastrophic events. Stakeholders from industry, government and academia delve into detailed overviews of catastrophes, discuss strategies in catastrophe management and explore sector perspectives. Overall themes are preparedness, resiliency, available tools and cross-sector collaboration as we work together for the greater good of all Canadians. About Insurance Bureau of Canada Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, auto and business insurers. Its member companies make up the vast majority of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. For more than 50 years, IBC has worked with governments across the country to help make affordable home, auto and business insurance available for all Canadians. IBC supports the vision of consumers and governments trusting, valuing and supporting the private P&C insurance industry. It champions key issues and helps educate consumers on how best to protect their homes, cars, businesses and properties. For media releases and more information, visit IBC's Media Centre at www.ibc.ca. Follow us on Twitter @InsuranceBureau and like us on Facebook. If you have a question about home, auto or business insurance, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC. About Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. Toronto-based CatIQ is a subsidiary of Zurich-based PERILS AG and delivers detailed analytical and meteorological information on Canadian natural and human-made catastrophes. Through its online subscription-based platform, CatIQ combines comprehensive insured loss and exposure indices and other related information to better serve the needs of the insurance / reinsurance / ILS industries, public sector and other stakeholders. CatIQ was established in 2014 with the support of the overwhelming majority of the Canadian insurance and reinsurance industry and is widely recognized as the most reliable source of catastrophe loss information in Canada. For more information, please visit https://public.catiq.com/. IBC Bilingual Logo (CNW Group/Insurance Bureau of Canada) SOURCE Insurance Bureau of Canada Cision View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2023/18/c2893.html SINGAPORE, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- eazy Pte Ltd, a leading broker for insurance services, has announced an exclusive partnership with luxury sports car manufacturer Porsche in Singapore. (PRNewsfoto/eazy Pte Ltd) Under this strategic partnership, eazy will be providing automotive insurance and curated benefits for Porsche owners in Singapore. With its long history of serving Porsche clients since 2013, eazy has garnered over 70% market share of local Porsche-related insurance, and this partnership is a testament to eazy's outstanding track record and affinity with the brand. "We are acutely aware of how discerning Porsche owners and drivers are. By their choice of car, they have come to expect exceptional standards of quality, performance and service. We will continue to deliver excellence in all our touchpoints and are very excited about the road ahead with Porsche." said Douglas Chia, CEO of eazy. "This partnership is testament to how far we have come as a Singapore-founded company and how our ambitions are very much aligned with Porsche's as well." "With our ambition of becoming Singapore's leading insurtech company, we are committed to harnessing technology innovation to create a simple, transparent and 'eazy' platform that allows Porsche owners to review, consider and purchase the right insurance products for their automotive and lifestyle needs. The end result is to create a seamless customer journey and the ultimate goal of enabling individuals in Singapore to fulfil their dream of owning a Porsche." "This is just the beginning of what we envision to be a long and successful partnership ahead with Porsche. In the near future, we will be looking at bringing even more bespoke offerings to the table. With customers becoming more digitally savvy, connected and demanding, we see these challenges as areas of opportunity to solidify our position in the luxury automotive and lifestyle insurance market. In the words of our partner, Porsche epitomises freedom and independence; and we will endeavour to create customer experiences that deliver on that promise." said Chia. Story continues About eazy As a digital-led financial disruptor, eazy believes in harnessing the power of technology to make the process of buying insurance simpler, faster and more transparent for its customers. Backed by 47 years of success as one of Singapore's leading insurance brokers, eazy is changing the way insurance is considered and bought. To learn more, visit eazy.com.sg. Contact: Nicholas Wong Content Strategist E: nicholas.wong@eazy.com.sg M: +65 97294545 SOURCE eazy Pte Ltd BOSTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Skyword , the leading content creation software and services company, today announced it has appointed Mindel Klein , former head of Integrated Marketing Communications, Brand Experience, and Digital for Colgate-Palmolive North America, to its Board of Directors. Skyword (PRNewsfoto/SKYWORD) Skyword Appoints Digital Marketing Trailblazer Mindel Klein to Its Board of Directors As a career marketer, Klein brings a deep understanding of brand building, digital marketing, capability development, and organizational transformation to the role. "We are honored to have Mindel Klein join our Board of Directors. As we head into 2023 with many technological advancements and new buyer engagement behaviors to embrace, we are confident that her extensive experience leading and growing Fortune 500 brands will bring great value to our team," says Andrew Wheeler, CEO of Skyword. "Mindel knows us well, as she was a Skyword client for many years, going back to 2016 when she led Global Digital Marketing for Colgate. She was an incredible partner as our teams worked together to establish the #1 branded online oral health destination," Wheeler adds. Mindel joins Skyword's Board of Directors at a time of exciting new growth at the organization. Skyword recently introduced Content Atomization to its Skyword360 content marketing platform, which uses generative AI to adapt and personalize original, human-generated content for different digital channels and audience personas. The new feature offers an efficient and cost-effective way to boost the capabilities and reach of Skyword's elite community of content creators and marketing professionals. "I'm thrilled to be joining the Skyword Board of Directors. As a customer of Skyword for many years, I saw first-hand the power of content marketing to strengthen brands and the valuable role that Skyword played in helping us drive our marketing objectives," says Klein. "As content marketing advances, I look forward to joining the Board to help and advise the team on how to further build their business to meet evolving customer needs." Story continues Skyword's content marketing platform, managed services offerings, and network of content creators are unmatched among competitors. In 2022, Skyword was the only content marketing platform provider named a content marketing Leader by G2 , a Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice vendor, and a two-time Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms. Background on Mindel Klein Klein is a global brand-building and digital marketing trailblazer with decades of experience in marketing. She spent 27 years at Colgate-Palmolive in leading roles such as Director of Integrated Marketing Communications covering North America; Worldwide Director of Global Digital Marketing; and General Manager, Integrated Marketing Communications, Brand Experience, and Digital for North America. In her most recent role, Klein was responsible for leading in-house and agency teams across the company's oral care, personal care, and home care categories. As a Digital marketing innovator, Klein has been at the forefront of driving the evolution of marketing through every iteration of web technology. She has a strong pulse on the challenges and opportunities facing today's CMOs and has been a key customer of marketing technology services for most of her career. She is passionate about all aspects of digital marketing as a critical enabler in building brands and driving business. About Skyword Founded in 2010, Skyword helps enterprise brands deploy and manage strategic content programs that establish lasting customer growth. Skyword's content creation technology, elite creator network of storytellers and subject matter experts, and managed services help brands influence customers more effectively across their entire digital experience. A private company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Skyword has helped industry-leading brands create and publish more than one million original pieces of content designed to build loyal audiences and drive business growth for their brands. To learn more, visit skyword.com or email learnmore@skyword.com . Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/skyword-appoints-digital-marketing-trailblazer-mindel-klein-to-its-board-of-directors-301723993.html SOURCE SKYWORD Future Market Insights Global and Consulting Pvt. Ltd. The North America sneaker market is projected to contribute a share of ~35% CAGR over the forecast period. With the world of fashion increasingly finding its way into everyday life, adults everywhere are discovering their inner sneaker heads. The adult sneaker market has boomed in recent years, becoming the largest segment within this trendy industry. NEWARK, Del, Jan. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As per newly released data by Future Market Insights (FMI), the Sneakers Market is estimated at USD 72,232 million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 1, 39,876 million by 2032, at a CAGR of ~6.8% from 2022 to 2032. One of the key factors fuelling the growth of the sneakers market is the spread of e-commerce sites around the world. Every age group is becoming more inclined toward stylish, branded, and high-fashion footwear, and the rise in disposable income is driving up demand for more inventive and comfortable footwear, which is accelerating market growth. Increased consumer preference for online media due to its flexibility and population-wide rise in health and wellness concerns are other factors that are influencing the market. Additionally, the market for sneakers is benefited by population growth, swift fashion trends, internet and smartphone penetration, and people's bettering lifestyles. Additionally, the ease with which customised and cutting-edge features may be added to footwear creates lucrative prospects for market participants over the projection period of 2022 to 2032. On the other side, it is anticipated that the accessibility of locally produced, duplicated, or fake items will restrain market expansion. The COVID-19 epidemic is expected to complicate the raw material supply chain, which will pose a problem for the sneakers market. Request a sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-16329 Key Takeaways from the Sneaker Market Study In terms of sales channel, offline retailing is likely to dominate over the forecast period. Whereas, consumer tastes are evolving, and instead of shopping offline, customers are turning to online retailing, which is prompting manufacturers to expand their online presence in the market. One of the major factors driving the growth of the online sales channel is the availability of a wide range of sneakers online. Womens sneakers are in great demand and are rapidly increasing. Major footwear companies are targeting womens sneakers, and the market is being bolstered through distinct advertising and branding. In the case of regional analysis of regions like the North America and Asia is expected to gain traction in the sneaker market. Story continues The demand for sneakers is rising in almost every part of the world. This type of footwear is preferred by people from every age group and is expected to grow at a rapid pace in the forecast period. Says an FMI Analyst. Impact of COVID-19 on the Market The COVID-19 epidemic wreaked havoc on a multitude of industries throughout the world, including the footwear sector. Due to the discretionary nature of footwear, it was one of the most severely impacted businesses by the pandemic, as a consequence of the combined effect of outlet closures and austerity with regard to rapidly deteriorating economic conditions. Due to the accessibility of online commerce and doorstep delivery, the shoe industry has recovered, with a rise in demand in post-covid conditions. Who is winning? Leading players operating in the sneaker market Adidas Group, Nike Inc., New Balance, ASICS, PUMA SE, Under Armour, Inc., Li Ning Company Ltd., ECCO, China Dongxiang (Group) Co., Ltd., 361 Degrees International Limited., Vans, and Converseamong others. Ask an Analyst@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-16329 Get More Valuable Insights Future Market Insights, in its new offering, provides an unbiased analysis of the sneaker market, presenting historical demand data (2017-2021) and forecast statistics for the period from 2022-2032. The study divulges compelling insights on the Sneakers Market by Product Type (Adult Sneakers, Children Sneakers) By Application (Sports, Lifestyle, Competition) By Consumer Orientation (Men, Women) By Sales Channel (Multi-brand Stores, Independent Small Stores, Online Retailers and Other Sales Channel) & Region - Forecast to 2022-2032. Sneakers Market by Category By Product Type, Sneakers Market is segmented as: Adult Sneakers Children Sneakers By Application, Sneakers Market is segmented as: Sports Lifestyle Competition By Consumer Orientation, Sneakers Market is segmented as: Men Women By Sales Channel, Sneakers Market is segmented as: Multi-brand Stores Independent Small Stores Online Retailers Other Sales Channel By Region, Sneakers Market is segmented as: North America Latin America Europe East Asia South Asia Oceania MEA Ask For Customization@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/customization-available/rep-gb-16329 Table of Content 1. Executive Summary 1.1. Global Market Outlook 1.2. Summary of Key Findings 1.3. Summary of Key statistics 1.4. FMI Analysis and Recommendations 2. Market Overview 2.1. Market Taxonomy 2.2. Market Definition 3. Key Market Trends 3.1. Key Trends Impacting the Market 3.1.1. Millennials are Driving Force 3.1.2. Rapid Emergence of the Start-ups in the Market Complete TOC with Report Preview: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sneakers-market Have a Look at Related Research Reports on Consumer Product Cosmetic Pigments Market Forecast: The cosmetic pigments market size is estimated to be US$ 12.98 Bn in 2023 and is expected to reach roughly US$ 24.24 Bn by 2033, registering at a CAGR of 6.45% from 2023 to 2033. Hair Dryer Market Demand: The global hair dryer demand is expected to register at a CAGR of 6.26%. The market revenue is likely to be valued at US$ 10.20 Bn in 2023, and exhibit a revenue growth of US$ 18.72 Bn by 2033. Designer Sneaker Market Outlook: The Designer Sneaker Market is estimated at USD 182.9 Million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 289.5 Million by 2032, at a CAGR of ~4.9% from 2022 to 2032. Training Shoes Market Growth: The Training shoes market is estimated at USD 243.2 million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 356.6 million by 2032, at a CAGR of ~3.9% from 2022 to 2032. Women Sneakers Market Size: The Women Sneaker Market is estimated at US$ 27031.9 Million in 2022 and is projected to reach US$ 51703.5 Million by 2032, at a CAGR of 6.70 % from 2022 to 2032. About Future Market Insights, Inc. Future Market Insights, Inc. is an ESOMAR-certified business consulting & market research firm, a member of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce and is headquartered in Delaware, USA. A recipient of Clutch Leaders Award 2022 on account of high client score (4.9/5), we have been collaborating with global enterprises in their business transformation journey and helping them deliver on their business ambitions. 80% of the largest Forbes 1000 enterprises are our clients. We serve global clients across all leading & niche market segments across all major industries. Contact Us: Future Market Insights Inc. Christiana Corporate, 200 Continental Drive, Suite 401, Newark, Delaware - 19713, USA T: +1-845-579-5705 LinkedIn| Twitter| Blogs | YouTube For Sales Enquiries: sales@futuremarketinsights.com (Shows Castillo de Caldelas, Al Deebel, Maran Gas Agamemnon are docked, removes Nikolay Zubov after it leaves port) Jan 17 (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 (). Those likely to perform ship-to-ship transfers are indicated with (STS). Tankers that have docked are indicated with (A). Floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) terminals are added to the table when they near deployment. As of Dec. 27 2022, this includes the Eemshaven terminal in the Netherlands, the Wilhelmshaven and Lubmin terminals in Germany. For the Reuters LNG guide, click here: LNG TANKER CAPACITY in EXPECTED ARRIVAL FROM PORT cubic metres BRITAIN Soyo 158,000 Jan. 17 Angola Isle of Grain LNG Enterprise 174,000 Jan. 17 (A) United States South Hook SM Albatross 171,000 Jan. 17 United States Dragon Castillo de Caldelas 178,000 Jan. 17 (A) United States South Hook LNG Sakura 177,000 Jan. 18 United States South Hook Fuwairit 138,000 Jan. 18 Qatar Milford Haven Mol Hestia 177,000 Jan. 19 United States South Hook Minerva Chios 173,000 Jan. 19 United States Dragon Flex Aurora 174,000 Jan. 20 United States South Hook Megara 173,000 Jan. 21 Peru Dragon Magdala 173,000 Jan. 21 United States Dragon Seapeak Bahrain 170,000 Jan. 22 United States Isle of Grain BW Paris 159,000 Jan. 23 United States South Hook British Achiever 174,000 Jan. 25 United States South Hook SM Bluebird 170,000 Jan. 25 Peru Isle of Grain Global Sealine 170,000 Jan. 27 United States Milford Haven BW Pavilion Aranda 171,000 Jan. 28 United States Isle of Grain Stena Crystal Sky 173,000 Jan. 28 United States Isle of Grain Ribero Duero Knutsen 173,000 Jan. 31 United States Isle of Grain Minerva Amorgos 170,000 Feb. 3 United States South Hook Santander Knutsen 170,000 Feb. 13 Peru Milford Haven BELGIUM Al Deebel 143,000 Jan. 17 (A) Qatar Zeebrugge Fuji LNG 145,000 Jan. 19 Qatar Zeebrugge LNG Merak 174,000 Jan. 20 (L) N/A Zeebrugge Georgiy Brusilov 173,000 Jan. 20 (STS) (L) Russia Zeebrugge Al Daayen 150,000 Jan. 22 Qatar Zeebrugge Georgiy Ushakov 172,000 Jan. 23 Russia Zeebrugge Flex Rainbow 174,000 Jan. 24 (L) N/A Zeebrugge Yari LNG 158,000 Jan. 26 (L) N/A Zeebrugge Al Zubarah 138,000 Jan. 27 Qatar Zeebrugge Rudolf Samoylovich 170,000 Jan. 28 N/A Zeebrugge Adamastos 174,000 Jan. 31 United States Zeebrugge NETHERLANDS Transgas Force 174,000 Jan. 15 (A) United States Gate Maran Gas Agamemnon 172,000 Jan. 17 (A) United States Gate Magdala 173,000 Jan. 18 United States Eemshaven La Mancha Knutsen 174,000 Jan. 24 United States Gate LNG Rosenrot 177,000 Jan. 27 United States Gate GERMANY Maran Gas Ithaca 170,000 Jan. 15 (A) United States Wilhelmshaven Melanje 161,000 Jan. 30 Angola Wilhelmshaven Sources: Ports, AIS Live ship tracking, Refinitiv Eikon data. (^) Partial unload (*) Arrival date estimated based on flows data (Reporting by Nora Buli) Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission has issued regulations for crypto custody providers to establish a digital wallet-management system to ensure the safety of customers' assets, according to a press release on Tuesday. The regulations, which took effect on Monday, offer policies and guidelines for overseeing the management of digital wallets and keys plus procedures for designing digital wallets. The regulation also says custodians need to have a contingency plan in case an event occurs that could affect the management system of digital wallets and keys. Thailand's financial regulator has been clamping down on the crypto industry lately. In September, it banned crypto firms from offering staking and lending services and established stricter crypto advertising rules. Regulators around the word have been toughening up their crypto stance following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX which filed for bankruptcy in November. CHICAGO, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Producers of the Chicago Auto Show have partnered once again with the Chicago Area Runners Association (CARA) to host Miles Per Hour, an indoor run that guides participants through a 2.4-mile loop during the 2023 Chicago Auto Show on Sunday, Feb. 12. Sponsored by Toyota, Miles Per Hour appropriately describes the premise of the run: participants will cover as much distance as possible within a one-hour timeframe. After the race, runners will gather in the South Hall's Toyota display for awards, photos and refreshments. 2023 Chicago Auto Show Returns to McCormick Place Feb. 11-20 (PRNewsfoto/Chicago Auto Show) Runners will compete on a 2.4-mile loop through the show & receive early access to the Chicago Auto Show that morning. The inaugural Miles Per Hour run was held during the 2020 Chicago Auto Show and attracted hundreds of participants. Organizers hope to increase the participation this year and along with increasing interest in the show. "We're thrilled to bring Miles Per Hour back indoors at the Chicago Auto Show and partner again with CARA to reach the vast Chicago runner community who may not already be thinking about attending," said Chicago Auto Show Co-General Manager David Sloan. "This is a great opportunity for us to tap into a new audience, and we're confident once they see all the show has to offer, they will become loyal fans." "Miles Per Hour provides a unique way to break a sweat before watching the Big Game later in the day, when not-so-healthy food and beverages tend to be consumed! It's a fun way to start the day," continued Sloan. Held on the opening Sunday of the show, Feb. 12, runners will compete on a 2.4-mile loop through the halls of McCormick Place where they will receive special early access to the Chicago Auto Show that morning. Participants will have first-rate views of the city skyline as they cross over the Grand Concourse bridge and access to wide glimpses of Lake Michigan through the Lakeside Center's expansive window walls. The loop will include a variety of long straightaways, some zig-zags and even an incline as runners ascend the indoor the bridge over Lake Shore Drive. Story continues "The Toyota Miles Per Hour Run provides one of the most unique running experiences in the country," said CARA Executive Director Tim Bradley. "Running indoors during the winter and finding out how many miles you can run in an hour, is a fun and exciting fitness challenge for runners of all ability levels. The amazing Chicago Auto Show displays make the hour fly by!" Registration includes a race entry, a ticket to the Chicago Auto Show with early access on race day, a participant t-shirt, a finisher medal, free digital photo downloads, discounted early access tickets for friends and family, a goodie bag and gear check. For more information or to register for the Toyota Miles Per Hour, visit https://www.milesperhourrun.com/. For more information on the 2023 Chicago Auto Show, visit http://www.ChicagoAutoShow.com. Media can visit http://www.ChicagoAutoShow.com/media for more information or to register for media credentials. About the Chicago Auto Show First staged in 1901, the Chicago Auto Show is the nation's longest running auto exposition in North America. The show is produced by the Chicagoland's new-car dealer association, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, which has staged the show since 1935. The 2023 public show is Feb. 11-20 at McCormick Place. For more information and the latest updates, visit ChicagoAutoShow.com or Facebook.com/ChicagoAutoShow.com. About the Chicago Automobile Trade Association Founded in 1904 and located in Oakbrook Terrace, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association is comprised of more than 400 franchised new-car dealers and an additional 150 allied members. The group's dealer members employ about 19,000 people in the metropolitan area. The association has produced the world famous Chicago Auto Show since 1935. For more information, please visit www.CATA.info. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/toyota-miles-per-hour-heats-up-the-2023-chicago-auto-show-with-indoor-run-on-feb-12-301725032.html SOURCE Chicago Auto Show NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ultrasonic Aspirator Market by Product, End-user, Application, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2023-2027 report has been published by Technavio. Market size is forecast to grow by USD 153.86 million between 2022 and 2027 at a CAGR of 5.73%. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of growth opportunities at regional levels, new product launches, the latest trends, and the post-pandemic recovery of the global market. Download A PDF Sample Report Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Ultrasonic Aspirator Market 2023-2027 Regional Analysis By region, the global ultrasonic aspirator market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of World. North America is estimated to contribute 29% to the growth of the global market over the forecast period. The growth in medical tourism in Mexico, the increasing prevalence of cancer, and the increasing prevalence of neurological and related disorders are driving the growth of the ultrasonic aspirator market in North America. Buy the report Company Profiles The ultrasonic aspirator market report includes information on the key products and recent developments of leading vendors, including: B. Braun SE - The company offers ultrasonic aspirator namely, Xperius. BioMedicon Pvt. Ltd. - The company offers ultrasonic aspirator such as Cavitron Ultrasonic Surgical Aspirator. Cybersonics Inc - The company offers neurological ultrasonic aspirators. Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp. - The company offers ultrasonic aspirator such as CUSA Clarity. Market Dynamics The market is driven by factors such as the increase in the number of patients with neurological disorders, the growing focus on minimal invasive neurosurgeries, and improved infrastructure in the healthcare system. However, product recalls are hindering market growth. Competitive Analysis The competitive scenario categorizes companies based on various performance indicators. Some of the factors considered include the financial performance of companies over the past few years, growth strategies, product innovations, new product launches, investments, and growth in market share among others. Request a Sample Story continues Market Segmentation By product, the market is segmented into integrated ultrasonic aspirators and stand-alone ultrasonic aspirators. The integrated ultrasonic aspirators segment accounted for the largest share of the market in 2022. By geography, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of World. North America held the largest share of the market in 2022. Related Reports: The healthcare equipment leasing market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.82% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 25,026.35 million. The growing demand for equipment leasing from low-budget healthcare facilities is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as the growing popularity of refurbished equipment may impede the market growth. The epinephrine autoinjector market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 9.68% between 2022 and 2027. The size of the market is forecast to increase by USD 2,014.33 million. The increasing prevalence of allergies is notably driving the market growth, although factors such as product recalls and regulatory issues may impede the market growth. Technavio's library includes over 17,000+ reports, covering more than 2,000 emerging technologies. Subscribe to our "Basic Plan" at just USD 5,000 and get lifetime access to Technavio Insights What are the key data covered in this ultrasonic aspirator market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period. Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the ultrasonic aspirator market and its contribution to the parent market. Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior. Growth of the market across North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of World. A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors. Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of Ultrasonic aspirator market vendors. Ultrasonic Aspirator Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 168 Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.73% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 153.86 million Market structure Concentrated YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 5.37 Regional analysis North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of World (ROW) Performing market contribution North America at 29% Key countries US, Brazil, UK, France, and China Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks Key companies profiled B. Braun SE, BioMedicon Pvt. Ltd., Bioventus Inc., Cybersonics Inc, Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp., Kamcon Bio Technology Systems Pvt. Ltd., META Dynamic Inc, Olympus Corp., Soering GmbH, Stryker Corp., and XcelLance Medical Technologies Pvt. 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, and 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 2 Market Landscape 2.1 Market ecosystem 3 Market Sizing 3.1 Market definition 3.2 Market segment analysis 3.3 Market size 2022 3.4 Market outlook: Forecast for 2022-2027 4 Historic Market Size 4.1 Global ultrasonic aspirator market 2017 - 2021 4.2 Product Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.3 End-User Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.4 Application Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.5 Geography Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 4.6 Country Segment Analysis 2017 - 2021 5 Five Forces Analysis 5.1 Five forces summary 5.2 Bargaining power of buyers 5.3 Bargaining power of suppliers 5.4 Threat of new entrants 5.5 Threat of substitutes 5.6 Threat of rivalry 5.7 Market condition 6 Market Segmentation by Product 6.1 Market segments 6.2 Comparison by Product 6.3 Integrated ultrasonic aspirators - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 6.4 Stand-alone ultrasonic aspirators - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 6.5 Market opportunity by Product 7 Market Segmentation by End-user 7.1 Market segments 7.2 Comparison by End-user 7.3 Hospitals - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 7.4 Ambulatory surgical centers - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 7.5 Clinics - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 7.6 Market opportunity by End-user 8 Market Segmentation by Application 8.1 Market segments 8.2 Comparison by Application 8.3 Neurosurgery - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 8.4 Gynecological surgery - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 8.5 Others - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 8.6 Market opportunity by Application 9 Customer Landscape 9.1 Customer landscape overview 10 Geographic Landscape 10.1 Geographic segmentation 10.2 Geographic comparison 10.3 North America - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.4 Europe - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.5 Asia - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.6 Rest of World (ROW) - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.7 US - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.8 China - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.9 UK - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.10 France - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.11 Brazil - Market size and forecast 2022-2027 10.12 Market opportunity by geography 11 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 11.1 Market drivers 11.2 Market challenges 11.3 Impact of drivers and challenges 11.4 Market trends 12 Vendor Landscape 12.1 Overview 12.2 Vendor landscape 12.3 Landscape disruption 12.4 Industry risks 13 Vendor Analysis 13.1 Vendors covered 13.2 Market positioning of vendors 13.3 B. Braun SE 13.4 BioMedicon Pvt. Ltd. 13.5 Bioventus Inc. 13.6 Cybersonics Inc 13.7 Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp. 13.8 Kamcon Bio Technology Systems Pvt. Ltd. 13.9 META Dynamic Inc 13.10 Olympus Corp. 13.11 Soering GmbH 13.12 Stryker Corp. 13.13 XcelLance Medical Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 14 Appendix 14.1 Scope of the report 14.2 Inclusions and exclusions checklist 14.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ 14.4 Research methodology 14.5 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: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Global Ultrasonic Aspirator Market 2023-2027 Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ultrasonic-aspirator-market-size-to-increase-by-usd-153-86-million-north-america-to-contribute-29-of-market-growth---technavio-301722242.html SOURCE Technavio WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- VentureCount Services, LLC; Boost Holdings, LLC; and affiliated entities ( " VentureCount") today announced a strategic partnership with Govcon Accountants, LLC and affiliated entities ( " Govcon" and collectively with VentureCount, the " Company"). The Company provides full-spectrum finance and accounting services to clients nationwide from its East and West Coast bases. We are excited to add Govcon's industry expertise as we expand our capabilities nationwide Based in the Washington, D.C. area, and led by Mark Vieno, Govcon provides DCAA-compliant outsourced accounting and consulting services to government contractors nationwide. Govcon helps government contractors maximize their resources and streamline financial operations in a cost-efficient manner, while ensuring DCAA compliance. Govcon also assists with contract pricing, provisional billing rates, and incurred cost submissions to allow its clients to bid on and win more government contracts. Govcon offers a highly customized approach to achieving financial efficiency, cash flow, strategic growth, and long-term stability. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., VentureCount Services, LLC provides outsourced finance and accounting services to emerging growth clients nationwide, including bookkeeping, payroll, financial forecasting, and analysis, as well as other strategic Chief Financial Officer services. With teams in Washington, D.C., and Bangalore, India, the Company offers high-caliber talent and around-the-clock customer service capabilities. Based in Roseville, California, Boost Holdings, LLC (along with its subsidiaries, RTA Group, LLC, and United Tates Tax Service, LLC d/b/a California Business Solutions) offers strategic Chief Financial Officer services, merger and acquisition ("M&A") advisory services, bookkeeping, tax, payroll, and other accounting services. "We are excited to add Mark and his team's industry expertise as we expand our capabilities and grow the business nationwide," said Alex Diaz-Asper, Co-Founder and Partner of VentureCount. Boost Holdings, LLC Partner Mario Curci added: "The partnership with Govcon adds an attractive new end market while continuing to broaden our service offering and geographic coverage." Mark Vieno, Founder and CEO of Govcon, noted: "We are thrilled to partner with VentureCount to accelerate the growth of our core business and benefit from the scale of VentureCount's operations." Story continues "Mark and his team's top-tier service and DCAA experience will support continued growth toward a more scaled outsourced finance and accounting services platform," said Evan Horton, Managing Partner at Everlane Equity Partners ("Everlane"). Harry Banks, Operating Partner at Everlane, added: "We are fortunate to bring additional financial expertise and successful entrepreneurs to our growing platform, offering a full-service solution for clients." About Govcon: Govcon provides DCAA-compliant outsourced bookkeeping and consulting services to government contractors nationwide. Serving clients since 2010, Govcon is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Govcon's services help government contractors solve financial management and DCAA compliance issues by providing unique industry-specific guidance, including assistance with developing government contract pricing and provisional billing rates, indirect rate budgeting, and incurred cost submissions. About Everlane: Everlane is a Boston-based private capital provider focused on equity investments in high-quality companies that are well-positioned for future growth. Everlane utilizes its fully committed capital base and experience investing in small capitalization and middle market companies to accelerate value creation alongside management teams that have meaningful go-forward financial participation in their businesses. Everlane is flexible in its approach, structuring both majority and minority partnerships across primarily services industries such as business, consumer, financial, healthcare, industrial, and IT services. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/venturecount-announces-partnership-with-washington-dc-area-outsourced-accounting--compliance-services-provider-for-government-contractors-301725036.html SOURCE Everlane Equity Partners I, LP A Stafford County man was arrested late Sunday after he allegedly brandished a gun in a restaurant parking lot before leading police on a brief chase, police said. Sheriffs Maj. Shawn Kimmitz said deputies went to Buffalo Mos on Wicomico Drive in North Stafford at 11:08 p.m. in response to a reported incident involving a gun. Employees reported that the suspect was pointing the gun and had racked back the slide. It was unclear what started the dispute. Deputies C.T. Richardson and S. Waheed arrived less than a minute later and tried to stop the suspect, who had gotten into a Dodge Durango by then. He sped away east on Greenspring Drive, police said, before stopping on Barksdale Place less than a half-mile away. He was taken into custody without further incident. Kimmitz said the driver tossed a gun out of the window during the brief pursuit, but the Taurus .40-caliber weapon was recovered. Christian A. Islas, 33, was charged with offenses that include possessing a firearm as a felon, brandishing, DUI (second offense), felony eluding, obstructing justice and reckless driving. He was still in the Rappahannock Regional Jail as of Tuesday. Rockwell Automation, a global company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, today announced that it has helped Falcon Group to boost its machine utilisation by 162.5% using the ThingWorx IIoT platform, part of the FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, powered by PTC. Headquartered in Dubai, Falcon Group comprises five industrial operations. One of these is a specialist precision engineering and fabrication company that caters for the demanding needs of customers in the aerospace, automotive, marine, healthcare, defense, oil & gas, and steel industries. At the heart of its operations are 16 CNC machines, all of which are essential to the companys machining capabilities. Before support from Rockwell Automation, Falcon Group was considering purchasing additional CNC machinery to keep pace with customer demand and to support maintenance downtime for critical machines. When at peak capacity, to meet order dates, the company had subcontracted work to competitors. But before signing off on additional machinery, the company decided to assess its current asset utilisation. Prabhu Badrinathen, CEO at Falcon Group said: We are always looking for ways to do things better and deliver even greater levels of service to our customers. We knew we had room to grow our machine utilisation, but it was not until we got the real-time, machine-level insights from the ThingWorx platform that we realised where inefficiencies were and where the changes needed to be made. We have grown our utilisation from 16% to 42% and have set an ambitious future target of 75% a growth of more than 365%, Badrinathen said. ThingWorx has this incredible capability to bring operational data together in such a way that it offers immediate value in the form of actionable intelligence. According to Mohamed Elnakib, head of information solutions sales, Middle East, Turkey and Africa for Rockwell Automation: Falcon Groups CEO is very digital savvy and understood that digital transformation could deliver huge benefits to his people, his assets, and his processes. Using ThingWorx, part of FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, connected to PLCs and sensors throughout the plant, we were able to ascertain that machine utilisation was sitting at only 16%. Rejin Jose Kurian, managing director at Falcon Group, said the increase in machine utilisation and the new business opportunities created demonstrates the companys commitment to continuous improvement and innovation. We were always a very successful company, but we also knew we could do more, Kurian said. We challenged the team to think about what was possible and how we can grow the business. Sebastien Grau, regional vice president, Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Rockwell Automation, said: Falcon management perfectly embraces the potential of industrial software and the benefits they have seen are a great example of a successful digital transformation. With a pragmatic step-by-step approach, Falcon delivers tremendous process and cost improvements but even more, Falcon is opening new doors for additional business by becoming a Rockwell Automation software system integrator and sharing their expertise and knowledge.--TradeArabia News Service It may well have been worth it for Burt Countys Board of Supervisors to seek new bids for roads repairs. The board opened bids Jan. 11 for five projects that essentially are combined into one job. The list included mill and overlay work on County Road 21 heading south out of Craig, County Road H running west from Craig to Highway 77, County Road L running west out of Oakland, the county road that runs past Summit Lake and patching on Lake Street heading east from Tekamah. Lincoln-based contractor Constructors, Inc. offered a bid of $4,691,622.91. Knife River, from Sioux City put up a bid of $4,634,629.67 while Western Engineering, from Harlan, Iowa, came in at $4,718890.36. Contractors also could submit a bid to perform patch work only on the blacktop west of Craig. Bids on patching and overlay on that stretch of road came in at just over $2.5 million. Bids to do just the patching ranged from $285,000 to $380,000. In July, bids for the first four projects came in at more than 40 percent over original projections, ranging as high as $5.64 million. Jeff Wagner, whose engineering firm prepared the bid specifications, said he didnt know if he had ever seen three bids so close considering the size of the project. As close as these are, Id like to go through the numbers and make sure everything is right, he said. He suggested the board delay accepting a bid until its Jan. 27 meeting. District 7 Supervisor Carl Pearson, whose district includes Craig, said patching may not be the most cost-effective decision. Its the worse of the two, but how much extra will it cost in a couple of years when we have to come back and do it again? he said. Wagner said simply patching Road H was not a long-term solution. if you dont overlay it, you will at last have to come back and armor coat it in a couple of years. That work was estimated at $500,000. If we cant do both, lets at least push Craig South back and do both of them right, Pearson said. The soonest any of the three contractors could start was April. Another proposed a May start while the third wouldnt start until August. Considering the time frames, Pearson suggested splitting the payment over two budget cycles. The board is expected to make a final decision Jan. 27. In other business during its Jan. 11 meeting, the county board: During its annual reorganization, re-elected Dave Schold to another term as board chairman. Ted Connealy was re-elected as vice chairman. Committee assignments also remained essentially the same. New District 1 Supervisor Sam Titus replaces his predecessor, Kevin Tobin, as the countys representative on the North Star and Region IV Services boards and on the Northeast Nebraska Waste Coalition Advisory and Governing Board. New District 5 Supervisor Jeff Kutchera replaces his predecessor, Dale Webster, on Region 4, the Heartland of Nebraska Board and on the Burt County Road Committee. In other annual moves, the board designated the countys Web site as an official means of publication; appointed Ann Chytka and highway superintendent for 2023 and designated the countys three banks as official repositories of county funds. Welcomed Cindy Chatt as the new executive director for the Burt County Economic Development Corp. The board also reappointed supervisors Gary Swanson and Connealy as its representatives on the BCED board and reappointed Jennifer Hinman as an at-large representative. Chatt also told the board she didnt necessarily need the office space BCED uses in the courthouse, as long as she has space she can use when shes in the courthouse. Notified the countys department heads of a new plan that will have each of them give a brief report on their offices to the board twice a year. County Assessor Katie Hart and Veterans Service Officer Penny Warren will give reports in February. A schedule for the remainder of the offices was being developed. Its not that we dont trust anybody, we just want more communication, Schold said. Were all Burt County. Approved a five percent cost of living increase for appointed department heads and hourly wage earners. Department heads and those on salary received an increase through a resolution passed last year. The first significant snow storm of 2023 is predicted to wallop Fremont, Dodge County and Eastern Nebraska starting in the early morning of Wednesday, Jan. 18, with an estimated 6 to 10 inches of snow expected. National Weather Service Meteorologist Brian Barjenbruch, based in the Valley office, said a winter storm warning is set to begin at 6 a.m., Jan. 18, and end sometime on Thursday, Jan. 19. It looks like it is going to be a mess, Barjenbruch said of the storm. Mostly, it looks like a lot of snow, and well have some blowing and drifting of snow. Barjenbruch said the high for Wednesday is predicted to be 32 degrees Fahrenheit, with a low temperature of 22 degrees Fahrenheit. There is also likely to be sleet and worse conditions farther south of Fremont in Saunders County and along the Interstate 80 corridor. For the Fremont area, were looking at 6 to 10 inches of snow. It could be a little more or a little less. It all depends on the sleet, he explained. Sleet eats away at the snow (depth). It is denser and packs (snow) in tighter. The snow should be over and done with by sunrise Thursday. According to officials with the Nebraska Department of Transportation, the heavy snowfall is, expected across much of the state, with the potential for a foot of snow along a line from southwest to northeast Nebraska. Colonel John Bolduc, superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol, stated in a press release that drivers must use caution in the inclement weather. This storm will have a major impact on travel in Nebraska throughout Wednesday and into Thursday, Bolduc stated. The latest projections from the National Weather Service show all of Interstate 80 in Nebraska receiving at least three to four inches of snow, with a 300-mile range from Kimball to Grand Island seeing upwards of seven inches. Drivers can check on road conditions at the Nebraska 511 Advanced Traveler System at 511.Nebraska.Gov. And, officials stated in the press release, motorists who become stranded or need assistance can call *55 or 800-525-5555 to reach the NSP Highway Helpline and speak directly with an NSP dispatcher. Barjenbruch said the accumulated snow is expected to remain on the ground through the weekend, as predicted temperatures are not believed to rise high enough to melt the white powder. It wont be super cold, he said of temperatures from Thursday through Sunday, but (the snow) will stick around. The commute Wednesday night will be a mess. The impending inclement weather caused the closure of local schools, with Archbishop Bergan Catholic School announcing its closure for Jan. 18 on Facebook. Due to inclement weather, school will be cancelled at Archbishop Bergan Catholic School on Wednesday Jan. 18. Bergan Early Childhood Education Center will be closed also, officials stated in their Facebook post. Hope Pierce, coordinator for communications for Fremont Public Schools, confirmed late Tuesday that there will be no classes at any FPS schools on Jan. 18. We are not having school (Wednesday), Pierce said in an email. To cope with wintry weather and slick roads, the City of Fremont has five road graders and eight plow trucks that distribute a salt and sand mix as well as liquid calcium to keep ice from forming on Fremont streets. There is also a city pickup truck equipped with a plow for harder to navigate smaller thoroughfares. LINCOLN In one of his first policy moves in office, Gov. Jim Pillen put his support behind three education funding bills that would, among other things, establish a $1 billion education fund. Pillen announced the priority bills Tuesday at a press conference alongside 10 GOP state senators, including the three lawmakers introducing each bill. None of the bills would do away with the states current school funding formula, as Pillen previously had pushed for, but he called the legislation a good compromise. I think this is a step that makes sense, Pillen said. Legislative Bill 583, introduced by State Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue, would provide $1,500 in foundational aid added to the existing funding formula for every public student in the state. This would amount to nearly $113 million in additional state aid, according to a press release. The bill would also add a statutory provision requiring that 80% of special education funding be covered through federal and state dollars. That would require nearly $160 million in additional state support for special education. Sanders said the additional foundation aid primarily will benefit school districts that currently do not receive equalization aid under the state funding formula, which for the 2022-23 school year amounted to 158 of Nebraskas 244 school districts. She estimated about 180 districts would see an increase in funding under the proposal. Equalization aid was criticized by Pillen during his gubernatorial campaign, as it makes up the lions share of state education funding but is distributed to a minority of districts. Sen. Tom Briese of Albion said it was fairly pathetic how little equalization aid goes to rural school districts. An OpenSky Policy Institute report from October noted that although equalization aid goes to only 86 districts, those districts serve 78% of Nebraskas students. The additional funding in Sanders proposal would be covered under a separate bill proposed by Sen. Robert Clements of Elmwood, which he has yet to introduce. The measure would establish a $1 billion Education Future Fund as part of the states general fund. The states current education funding stands at about $1.07 billion. Following the creation of the fund, Clements said the state would add an additional $250 million to the fund each year until it reaches $2.5 billion. Pillen said some of the states excessive cash reserve projected to hit a record high $2.3 billion by the end of fiscal year 2025 would be used to support the fund. Democratic Sen. Lynne Walz of Fremont, the former Education Committee chair, last year proposed an education trust fund as a sustainable school funding source. To ensure the previous two bills lead to property relief, Briese announced a separate bill, LB 589, which he described as a property tax asking cap. The bill would cap property tax revenue increases for school districts at 3% per year. Briese said the limit would be a soft cap that school districts could override through a supermajority vote of 75% of school board members or 60% of the districts registered voters. Pillen did not have an estimate of how much property tax relief the three bills would bring. It wont be enough, but its a heck of a good start, Pillen said. State lawmakers from both parties have agreed that increasing state education funding was the best way to reduce property taxes, as most school districts heavily rely on property taxes for funding over state dollars. OpenSky Executive Director Rebecca Firestone echoed this sentiment in an email statement Tuesday. We appreciate the governors interest in increasing state aid to public education and investing more in our states children, Firestone said in the email. We have long noted that the best way to address property taxes in Nebraska is to increase the share of state support for public K-12 education. Though Pillen campaigned as a fiscal conservative, he said he didnt see the legislation as an increase in spending, but rather an increase in investment. These are investments into the future of our kids, Pillen said. And these are investments that will also allow us to have a great impact on cutting property taxes across the state. Photos: 2023 Nebraska legislative session KYIV, Ukraine Alina Kapatsyna often dreams about getting a phone call from her mother. In those visions, her mother tells her shes coming home. Men in military uniforms took 45-year-old Vita Hannych away from her house in eastern Ukraine in April. She never returned. Her family later learned that Hannych, who has long suffered from seizures because of a brain cyst, is in custody in the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region. Kapatsyna said it remains unclear why her mother a peaceful, civilian and sick person who has never held a weapon was detained. Hannych is one of hundreds and perhaps thousands of Ukrainian noncombatants believed to be held by Russian forces for months following their invasion. Some are deemed to be prisoners of war, even though they never took part in the fighting. Others are in a sort of legal limbo not facing any criminal charges or considered to be POWs. Hannych was wearing only a sweatsuit and slippers when she was seized by Russian forces occupying her village of Volodymyrivka several weeks into the Feb. 24 invasion. It is still under Moscows control. Her family initially thought she would come home shortly. Russian forces were known to detain people for two or three days for filtration and then release them, Kapatsyna said, and Hannych had no military or law enforcement connections. When she wasn't released, Kapatsyna and her 70-year-old grandmother started a search. At first, letters and visits to various Russian-installed officials and government bodies in the Donetsk region yielded no results. The answers from everywhere were the same: We did not take her away. Who took her then, if no one took her? said Kapatsyna, who left the village in March for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Dnipro. Then, they finally got some clarity: Hannych was jailed in Olenivka, another Russian-controlled city, according to a letter from the Moscow-installed prosecutors office in the Donetsk region. The jail staff told Kapatsynas grandmother that Hannych was a sniper, allegations her family deems absurd, given her condition. Medical records seen by the AP confirmed that she had a brain cyst, as well as residual encephalopathy and general convulsive attacks. Anna Vorosheva, who spent 100 days in the same facility as Hannych, recounted squalid, inhumane conditions: putrid drinking water, no heat or showers, having to sleep in shifts and hearing new prisoners screaming from being beaten. Vorosheva, 46, said she wasn't told why she was detained, aside from smirks and jokes about Nazis a reference to Russias false claims that what it calls its special military operation was a campaign to denazify Ukraine. She also said the staff told her: Be happy we're not beating you. Donetsk authorities labeled Hannych a POW and recently told the family she is imprisoned in the occupied city of Mariupol. It remains unclear when, if at all, she could be released. Ukraines top human rights organization, Center for Civil Liberties, has requests concerning around 900 civilians captured by Russia since the war began, with more than half still in custody. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraines human rights envoy, put the number even higher and said Friday that his office received inquiries concerning more than 20,000 civilian hostages detained by Russia. Russian lawyer Leonid Solovyov told the AP he has amassed more than 100 requests concerning Ukrainian civilians. He said he was able to help 30-40 confirm the person they looked for was in Russian custody without any legal status just like his client, Mykyta Shkriabin. The student from northeastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region was detained by Russia's military in March and has been held ever since without charges or any legal proceedings. Shkriabin, then 19, was sheltering from the fighting in a basement with his family, according to his mother, Tetiana. During a break, he went out for supplies and never returned. Tetiana Shkriabina said she learned from witnesses that Russian soldiers seized him. Months later, Solovyov got confirmation from Russias Defense Ministry that Shkriabin was detained for resisting the special military operation. There is no such offense on the books in Russia, Solovyov said, and even if there was, Shkriabin would have been formally charged and investigated, but that hasnt happened. The ministry refused to disclose his whereabouts. Moreover, when Solovyov filed a complaint to Russia's Investigative Committee contesting the detention, it confirmed that there are no criminal probes opened against Shkriabin, that he is neither a suspect, nor an accused. Shkriabin, who turned 20 in captivity, hasnt been labeled a POW, the lawyer said, adding: His legal status is simply a hostage. Russias Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry didn't respond to requests for comment. Photos: Scenes from Kyiv helicopter crash that killed 18 Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a company involved with providing an unlicensed security guard to 9News who fatally shot a man at a 2020 rally, has reapplied for a license in Denver to employ private guards. The company's application in December comes after a district court judge overturned the revocation of the company's license in June 2022. Denver judge overturns revocation of Pinkerton's security employer license tied to fatal rally shooting In October 2020, following a pair of dueling political rallies in Denvers Civic Center, 49-year-old Lee Keltner was fatally shot by Matthew Dolloff following a confrontation. Dolloff was working as private security for 9News, Denver Gazette's news partner, but he did not have a license to work as a security guard in Denver. There is no state license required to work as a security guard. Pinkerton subcontracted with Isborn Security Services, which provided Dolloff. Denvers Department of Excise and Licenses found that Isborns liability for directing or permitting an unlicensed person to perform security services also passed to Pinkerton. The city's department of Excise and Licenses revoked Pinkerton's license in June 2021. Sign up for free: News Alerts Stay in the know on the stories that affect you the most. Sign Up For Free View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Proposed settlement between Pinkerton and city attorney's office rejected But a Denver judge overturned the revocation, agreeing with Pinkerton's argument that the Department of Excise and Licenses misinterpreted a city ordinance. Pinkerton had argued that because the part of the city code that holds employers accountable in the context of license sanctions for actions of people that work for them refers to acts during his or her employment, it refers to liability for the actions of an actual person not another company. The Denver Gazette reached out to Pinkerton for comment. Pinkerton's new application, dated Dec. 6, states the company will authorize guards to carry guns, batons, pepper spray and tasers. The company has also submitted a request for a weapons endorsement, one of the required steps in Denver for guards to be armed. Denver's city code does not require a hearing for Pinkerton's license to be approved, according to a spokesperson. Dolloff's criminal case, in which he was charged with second-degree murder, went on for more than a year until Denvers District Attorney Beth McCann dropped the charge last March. She said Dolloff shot Keltner in self-defense. Editor's note: This July, as Colorado Springs gears up for its 150th birthday on the 31st, The Gazette has prepared a series of articles on the history of our city. Check back for fascinating glimpses into the people and events that have shaped Colorado Springs into the landmark it is today. The mid-20th century was a difficult time for Black citizens who wanted to pack their families into their automobiles and travel the American countryside. The shadow of Jim Crow the term for a set of state or local laws that legalized racial segregation still hung over much of the country, and racial violence was not an uncommon occurrence. Pockets of racism known as Sundown towns where Black people were banned after dark dotted the American landscape. A Black person in an unfamiliar town, trying to fill their gas tank or grab a drink in a bar, could be arrested or worse simply because of their skin color. If you were Black and you went to certain places, you could get roughed up, said Jamal Ratchford, a Colorado College history professor who teaches courses on race and ethnicity. You could be arrested. You could be killed. Weary of the racial discrimination Black people often faced when they ventured outside their neighborhoods, a New York postal carrier named Victor Hugo Green began collecting information on places where Black people could find safe places to sleep, eat, get a haircut, buy a drink or pump gas. Green organized a list of these establishments into the Negro Motorist Green Book, which was first published in 1936 and ran annually with publication suspended during World War II until 1966, two years after the Civil Rights Act outlawed racial segregation in the U.S. Colorado was home to more than two dozen Green Book safe havens, according to a 1940 edition of the guide. Black travelers looking for a safe, friendly place to sleep could find one in Trinidad, Pueblo, La Junta, Greeley, Denver or Colorado Springs. The Green Book addresses in Colorado Springs "were in parts of the city where a lot of Black neighborhoods were at the time, said Candice McKnight, a third-generation native who runs the African-American Historical and Genealogical Society of Colorado Springs and the city's first Black History Museum. So Black travelers would have felt safer and more welcome there." The three Colorado Springs addresses in the Green Book were listed as tourist homes private residences that offered lodging at a time when the city had few Black-friendly hotels. Black people couldnt stay at The Broadmoor, Ratchford said. They couldnt stay at The Antlers. There were a lot of places that were just off-limits to us. A two-story home at 717 N. Corona St., owned by Mrs. Nicke Hamilton, is listed in the 1940 edition of the Green Book. McKnight remembers it as a boarding house during her youth. A cousin of mine lived there for a while, she said. The Hamilton residence, north of East Willamette Avenue, was a few houses down from the home of legendary Cotton Club owner Fannie Mae Duncan. Duncan often housed musicians and entertainers in her large home at 615 N. Corona St. Dr. I. Moore operated a four-bedroom tourist home at 738 Spruce St., according to the Green Book. A search of the 1940s and 1950s city directories did not find Moores name, but McKnight said the occupant of the home would have almost certainly been Black in the 1940s. Mrs. G. Roberts offered shelter to Black travelers at their home at 418 E. Cucharras St., according to the Green Book. The city directory shows Mamie and George Roberts lived at that address during the 1940s. The Hamilton and Moore homes are occupied by families, but the land that once housed the Roberts Cucharras St. residence is now a vacant lot. Thats a shame, McKnight said. So much history in that house. And now its gone. When Green died in 1960, his wife, Alma, took over as editor of the book. By then, what began as a small pamphlet had grown into a must-have guidebook for Black travelers, selling about 15,000 copies each year at the height of its popularity. Green did not live long enough to see the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but the introduction in the 1948 edition of the Green Book suggests he foresaw a time when the book would be obsolete. There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published, the author wrote. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. Cross-country skiers in western Colorado are celebrating a new place to play. They were at a ribbon-cutting this month for a Nordic trail system spanning 8-plus miles through pine and aspen outside Montrose. That was after the U.S. Forest Service authorized the network situated near 9,000 feet on the Uncompahgre Plateau. The trails offer a much-needed recreation opportunity to experience the forest during the winter months, Ouray district ranger Dana Gardunio said in a news release. The Uncompahgre Nordic Trails will expand the connection between the national forest and the Montrose community. Gardunio credited the agencys relationship with the Uncompahgre Nordic Association, a grassroots group of volunteers whove been busy grooming the trails while seeking nonprofit status. The groups Facebook page has provided regular updates on conditions and includes a link to a GoFundMe page seeking funds to continue the effort. Donations exceed $4,000. The trail network is near the intersection of Dave Wood and Divide roads, about 20 miles southwest of Montrose. For more information, go to the Uncompahgre Nordic Associations Facebook page or email UNAxski@gmail.com. A 13-year-old Colorado teenager and her 11-year-old passenger were taken into custody following a high-speed car chase with Nebraska state troopers. At about 9:35 p.m. the suspect vehicle was spotted traveling along Interstate 80 at 35 mph when Nebraska State Patrol attempted to make a traffic stop at mile marker 276 near Kearney. The vehicle fled at a high speed and the state patrol initiated a chase, according to the department's press release. The vehicle proceeded east on I-80 at speeds of up to 100 mph. A second trooper was able to deploy stop sticks at mile marker 288 to slow the vehicle. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. The teens' vehicle exited I-80 at the Shelton interchange and began traveling north at a slower speed. A trooper soon was able to perform a tactical intervention and brought the vehicle to a stop. The driver was identified as a female and the passenger a male, both from Colorado. Authorities found a firearm in the vehicle, along with a small amount of marijuana. Both suspects were taken into protective custody, the state patrol said. The pursuit lasted about 16 minutes. Both the Buffalo County Sheriffs Office and the Shelton Police Department assisted in apprehending the vehicle. Developers, manufacturers and users of paints and coatings, sealants, construction chemicals and adhesives will exchange their professional experience and present the latest materials at the European Coatings Show (ECS), the leading platform for paints and coatings, from March 28 to 30, 2023 in Nuremberg. Product requirements keep increasing: durability, esthetics, sustainability, functionality, and maximum process reliability are the priority for the expert team of the Bodo Moller Chemie Group. In the sector, the Offenbach-based company is considered to be the leading distributor with extensive application expertise that provides numerous services for its customers to ensure the optimal product selection for specific applications. In addition to the wide range of raw materials and products, the Bodo Moller Chemie Group also provides substantial support for formulators of paints, coatings, and printing inks. To this end, technical and business consulting as well as an own laboratory are available. Long-standing partnerships in the industry For the team of the Bodo Moller Chemie Group, available at booth 2-122 of hall 2, the focus will be on resins, additives, pigments, and surface solutions. The long-standing partners of Bodo Moller Chemie include leading companies like BASF, Imerys, Dow, Huntsman, Merck, Organik Kimya, Songwon, Henkel, and many more product specialists. The demands on paints, varnishes and coatings are subject to constant changes. Sustainability, resource- and environmental protection are currently paramount, apart from the general transition happening in the automotive industry, for example. In this context, the exchange of experience at the ECS is a trend indicator so the movements of the coming years can be optimally supported, explains Frank Haug, Chairman of the Board at the Bodo Moller Chemie Group. The company looks back at more than 45 years of experience in the supply and consulting of specialty chemicals, its special expertise concentrated here on the applications of the CASE (coatings, adhesives, sealants, and elastomers) industry. Development and supply partner Nowadays, more than ever before, the team of the Bodo Moller Chemie Group is also the customers development partner. Thus, the Coatings Competence Center takes over the essential testing and experimental studies to ensure optimal product selection. Customer proximity and future challenges are an important mission for us. Thanks to our 30 international locations, we can also supply in more than 60 countries using our own logistics network. We view distribution as an extended arm of the development departments and later of production, says Volker Oehl, Director of Global Business Development at the Bodo Moller Chemie Group. At the trade fair, the company will present materials for paints and coatings, such as water-based systems for wall and facade paints, printing inks, wood, and corrosion protection as well as raw materials for adhesives and sealants used in the construction industry, and supplementary cleaning/pretreatment solutions for all industries and many other CASE products.--TradeArabia News Service Almost 10 years to the day after Denver police shot at Michael Valdez 19 times while he lay on the ground in surrender, lawyers for the city were back in court seeking to throw out his excessive force lawsuit. This time, Valdez was armed with a jury's verdict finding Denver liable for failing to train its officers on a specific category of deadly force, along with $2.5 million in damages jurors awarded him in 2021. But the city claimed the trial judge so mishandled the case that Valdez's allegations never should have gone before a jury in the first place. During oral arguments on Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, the city argued the single incident Valdez used to illustrate Denver's failure to train its officers his own January 2013 shooting was not a viable constitutional violation. "Its undisputed that Denver trains on the constitutional limits of the use of lethal force," said Katherine Field of the Denver City Attorney's Office. "And that alone should foreclose any single-incident municipal liability claim." In Valdez's case, Sgt. Robert Motyka Jr. shot him repeatedly after a vehicle chase in which Motyka himself was shot. The question for Valdez's jurors was whether his injuries were a product of Denver failing to train its officers that deadly force should not be used "out of adrenaline, or anger, after heaving been shot at or struck," or as a means of retaliation. Some members of the 10th Circuit panel were unsure that question could be resolved solely by looking at the law, and required asking a jury to sort out what actually happened. "Here you have the officers been shot, right? Chasing the truck, getting shot at, getting shot," said Judge Scott M. Matheson Jr. "And officers get involved in chasing fleeing felons at least maybe not every day, but its not an unusual circumstance. So why wouldnt it be obvious that if you have an officer who's involved in a chase, he gets shot, he needs some guidance on what to do next?" On Jan. 16, 2013, Valdez accepted a ride in a pickup truck with acquaintances, not knowing police were looking for the truck in connection with multiple reports of violence in the Denver area. An officer spotted the vehicle after it picked up Valdez and a chase ensued. Other occupants of the truck, but not Valdez, shot at officers, hitting one of them in the shoulder. The wounded officer Motyka continued with the pursuit until the truck crashed near 39th Ave. and Osage St. In Valdez's telling, he exited the truck, immediately got on the ground and held his hands above his head. It was undisputed that Motyka began shooting Valdez, joined by Lt. John Macdonald, who shot because he saw Motyka shooting. One bullet destroyed Valdez's finger and another seriously damaged his bowel and spine. Motyka subsequently received an award for his actions, and Denver's then-manager of safety said Motyka "acted appropriately and reasonably to stop the imminent threat posed by Michael Valdez." In 2015, Valdez sued multiple officers and the city for constitutional violations. Eventually, his claims were pared down to Motyka's use of excessive force and Denver's failure to train its officers. At that point, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martinez took over the case. In the city's telling, he made a series of questionable decisions that benefitted Valdez. For example, Martinez permitted Valdez to pitch new theories for holding the city liable, not raised in the original lawsuit. Of those, Martinez green-lit one for trial: Denver's failure to train officers that retaliatory shootings were wrong. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. "In other words, a reasonable jury could conclude, through common experience and common-sense," wrote Martinez, "that some police officers, once shot at, will believe that the shooter is inviting a gunfight and is therefore fair game for deadly force no matter what happens next, such that failure to train police officers in this regard 'could properly be characterized as deliberate indifference to constitutional rights.'" The city contended that Martinez was wrong to deny Denver's request for summary judgment, which a judge may grant when the key facts are undisputed and the law allows one party to prevail. It also argued Martinez allowed Valdez to repeatedly change his theory for holding Denver liable, and had failed to properly instruct the jury. Adam Mueller, the attorney representing Valdez, told the 10th Circuit that it was highly unusual for Denver, in its post-trial appeal, to not rely on the evidence introduced at trial. He defended Martinez's decision allowing Valdez to hold the city liable for its inadequate training on anger-based shootings, even if there was no pattern of similar incidents. "There is a category of cases where the need for training is so obvious that the failure to give that training is substantially certain to lead to a deprivation of constitutional rights," Mueller said. "The jury was instructed on that theory. And it is a question of fact whether something is so obvious that the city should have known." "There have to be some limits on when the jury is allowed to determine this is obvious, even though it hadnt happened before," responded Judge Harris L Hartz. "Human nature is, 'Once its happened, its obvious. If it happened, it can happen.'" He elaborated that a similar situation arises in lawsuits seeking to hold jail officials liable for detainee suicides. One such instance arose last year, when Hartz joined a decision granting immunity to Jefferson County sheriff's employees. At the time, he reasoned the deputies may have been negligent in allowing a mentally-troubled woman to remain alone in a room with implements to hang herself, but their conduct was not a constitutional violation. "In retrospect its pretty obvious you dont leave a rope in a cell or a sheet in a chair," Hartz told Mueller. "But you have so many cases where summary judgment for a defendant, a law enforcement agency, is granted because of evidence that they hadnt experienced this before. Why is that not enough to say the verdict here cant stand?" Yet, the panel also acknowledged Martinez's belief that a jury could find the lack of training to be obvious at the time, not just in hindsight. "There was no guidance on what to do if youve been shot," Matheson said. At the same time the city appealed Martinez's handling of the case, Valdez also asked the 10th Circuit to reinstate his claim against Macdonald, the other officer who shot him. The original trial judge, Richard P. Matsch, found in 2019 that Macdonald's conduct did not clearly violate Valdez's constitutional rights. Weeks later, Matsch died and Martinez took over the case. As the final component of the appeal, Denver, now joined by Motyka, challenged Martinez's award of attorney fees to Valdez. The case is Valdez v. City and County of Denver et al. A former Colorado Springs Bible study teacher, Carlton Ranquist, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a child on Tuesday afternoon. Ranquist was accused of using a position of trust with the victim's family to sexually assault a child under the age of 15. Judge Marcus Henson said the abuse potentially ranged between the years of 2015 to 2019. On Tuesday, Ranquist accepted a plea deal that saw him plead guilty to just one of the nine charges he initially faced, sexual assault against a child under the age of 15 as a pattern of abuse by a person of trust. The remaining eight charges will all be dismissed as part of the plea deal. Ranquist admitted his guilt to the court on Tuesday stating he was guilty of "having sexual conduct" with a girl under the age of 15 for several months during the year 2017. For pleading guilty, Ranquist is now facing a mandatory indeterminate sentence in the Department of Corrections to be decided by Judge Henson at a sentencing date in April. Henson stated that Ranquist faces the possibility of being given a sentence of life in prison. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Ranquist was arrested in Maine on suspicion of sexual assault against a minor in June 2022, and extradited back to El Paso County. Previous reporting from The Gazette details how Ranquist moved from Colorado Springs to Maine in 2020, and that he volunteered as a Bible study teacher in 2013 at Colorado Springs Central Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Police said at the time of the arrest that another victim may have been harmed by Ranquist in Colorado Springs between the years of 2008 and 2010. Five charges Ranquist faced prior to accepting the plea deal have an offense date listed between 2006 and 2012, but all five of those charges have been dismissed as part of the plea deal. Ranquist currently resides in El Paso County jail on a $25,000 bond. He will return to court on April 11, for his sentencing hearing. An Evergreen man faces federal charges after allegedly making shooting threats against Denvers FBI building and Homeland Security office, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado. He also allegedly made mass shooting threats against a Colorado performing arts group. Kyle William Staebell, 33, allegedly made one threat directly to the FBIs online national threat tip line shortly after 3 a.m. Monday. He made others via Twitter and email, according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors charged Staebell with threats to commit mass violence, according to the release. The criminal complaint shows he faces a charge of transmission of threats in interstate commerce. He made his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday. According to the criminal complaint against Staebell, he claimed he had automatic weapons and explosives to carry out a mass shooting at Denvers FBI office and he claimed to be the leader of a terrorist cell. A search of Staebells Evergreen address turned up a suspected Molotov cocktail and handwritten notes that appeared to brainstorm the threats he made. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Tweets from an account allegedly associated with Staebell accused the FBI and Department of Homeland Security of ruining his life and career, and doing nothing when Nazis tried to kill (him). In an interview with law enforcement Monday, Staebell reportedly claimed his girlfriend was responsible for any threats sent from his accounts. He claimed he had just broken up with her and she must be angry. Staebell allegedly admitted going backstage in the performing arts groups building in December and wanted to conduct an orchestra with a Harry Potter wand he said he found, according to the complaint. The document does not mention whether Staebell had other previous relationship to the performing arts group. The U.S. Attorneys Office takes very seriously any threat to commit mass violence, said U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan. We commend our law enforcement partners for taking swift action to investigate this case. We specifically want to thank the FBI, the Denver Police Department, the Lakewood Police Department, and the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office. The fact that a deadly dose of fentanyl killed 18-year-old Max Osterman of Broomfield was no mystery, but how he got the little blue pills confounded investigators until they dug deep into his cellphone. A trail of Snapchat messages led narcotics detectives to the alleged dealer who sold him the drugs. I have screenshots he saved from his last two deals, Kim Osterman, his mother, said. Normally, Snapchat messages disappear within 24 hours or after being read unless theyre saved by the user. On Jan. 27, 2022, a week before Max died of fentanyl-involved poisoning, he snapped his address to a man identified as Sergio G. January 31 showed another saved snap to a person identified as Sergio G. 17.5 grams. Target, Reed Street, Westminster, CO. In a second message sent the same day Max changed the location and the amount. 14 grams and 11 30s 12167 Sheridan Boulevard, Broomfield, Co. 80020. These messages were like gold to investigators who needed proof that the drug deal happened. The first was a Snap message to meet at a nearby Target for 17 grams of cocaine, investigators believed. In the next Snap, Max redirected Sergio G to a nearby King Soopers parking lot, but this time, he wanted 14 grams of what investigators believed was cocaine and 11 30s, slang for the little blue pills which are marked as oxycodone but can contain varying and sometimes deadly amounts of fentanyl. Snapchat is known for deleting texts within 24 hours of the time they are written, but for some reason, Max saved what would be his last drug buy on his phone. I find it so interesting that Max saved those chats. Its evidence and something he wouldnt normally do, Kim Osterman said. Osterman and twenty-seven other families of children aged 15-22 have filed an unlawful death lawsuit against Snap Inc. The families are located in 15 different states and other Colorado parents are may join the effort. The complaint alleges that Snap Inc. fails to provide a warning to minors and parents about the dangers of using the platform. It alleges that the Snapchat app is a widely used conduit for drug dealers to promote the sale of fentanyl-contaminated drugs to vulnerable minors and young adults, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by The Social Media Victims Law Center. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Attorney Matthew Bergman told The Denver Gazette that Snap Inc. knows that Snapchat is the go-to app for drug dealers and that Snapchat is the only app used for drug sales in all of his cases which at this time numbers 30 in all. We want Snap Inc. to stop turning a blind eye to this carnage happening on their platforms, he said. Bergman wouldnt say how much the families are suing for, but acknowledged that the sum is in the millions of dollars. This was not an accident, a coincidence. We have never had a case where drugs were purchased on any app other than Snapchat, he said. Snapchats disappearing messages, combined with a geo-locating feature, allows the user to find a dealer through GPS coordinates and provides a haven for drug dealers, Bergman said. The geo-location allows the user to merely tap a button to locate the nearest stash and have it delivered to the doorstep in minutes. Snap Inc. appears to be well-aware that the app is used to foster drug deals. In a statement, a Snap Inc. spokesman said that the company is eliminating drug traffic using cutting edge technology to proactively find and shut down drug dealers accounts. The statement added that the site blocks search results for drug-related terms, redirecting the audience to resources from experts about the dangers of fentanyl. The spokesperson said that Snapchat cooperates with law enforcement investigations. In Maxs criminal case, police reports indicate that it took from February 2021 until November before Broomfield narcotics detectives were able to obtain a usable cellphone report from Snap Inc. to use in its investigation. Even then, the 17th Judicial District Attorney never took Maxs fentanyl-involved death case to trial, telling Kim Osterman that they didnt have enough evidence to prosecute anyone. Osterman believes the investigation into her sons death was riddled with mistakes and said she wont stop fighting for justice for her son. She wants to see accountability through changes in Snapchat's policy and she would like to see her son's alleged dealer pay for selling the drugs that ultimately led to his early death. On a desk in Ostermans home is a smiling photo of the former wrestler who was well-loved by his friends and even chosen for Broomfield High School's prom court. A silver heart placed nearby contains his ashes. Do I blame Max for his choices? Yes I do. My son was not an angel, she said. "But the dealer and Snapchat were the deadly catalysts." Denver spent nearly $500,000 in December on 1,900 Greyhound bus tickets to send immigrants to 35 states and Washington, D.C., documents obtained by The Gazette show. The majority of immigrants were bused to New York and Illinois. The costs do not include how much the city spent on busing immigrants to other states in January or state expenditures for its charter buses. Nearly 4,300 immigrants mostly from South and Central America have arrived in Denver seeking shelter since Dec. 9. City officials anticipate Denver will spend about $3 million to respond to the humanitarian crisis. Mayor Michael Hancock has said the crisis put a financial strain on the city. It has also strained relations with the Democratic mayors of New York City and Chicago, who have complained publicly about the transfers to their cities which also have experienced an influx of immigrants. On Jan. 10, The Gazette requested a breakdown of the citys spending on the immigrant response. Denvers Joint Information Center provided the records Monday. Here is a breakdown of the costs: Shelter: $81,797 Food: $190,384 Transportation: $492,208 Personnel: $1,782,610 After nearly 100 immigrants were dropped off at Union Station downtown in the first week of December without warning, the city set up an emergency shelter at one of its recreation centers. With immigrants continuing to pour into Denver, the city set up a second emergency shelter. Hancock said he hopes to shutter the emergency shelters soon, but has not yet provided a timeline. For weeks, state and city officials as well as immigration advocates have said Denver was not the final destination for most of those coming to the Mile High City. Officials surmised the major eastwest interstate corridor that connects Denver to Baltimore is what drew immigrants to the city. As many as 70% are believed to be stopping in Denver on their way to somewhere else. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. City records indicate the most popular states for immigrants were New York (374 tickets), Illinois (401) and Florida (247). Georgia (134) and Texas (90) rounded out the top five. These newly arrived immigrants chose more than 100 U.S. cities as their final destination, after making a treacherous journey through South and Central America that in many instances took four months, according to immigrants The Denver Gazette spoke to. Many of them arriving in Denver were unprepared for the frigid weather, often wearing little more than sweatshirts. Their preference appears to be larger metropolitan areas. Immigrants top city choices were: Chicago (399 tickets), New York City (345), Atlanta (122), Miami (95) and Orlando, Fla. (95). Emails obtained in a separate public records request show Denver did not coordinate with, or warn, other city officials before busing immigrants to them. Its unclear how much advance notice Gov. Jared Polis administration provided. Earlier this month, Polis stepped in to help Denver with charter buses after subzero temperatures stymied local efforts to transport immigrants out of Denver to their desired destination, creating a backlog. The move provoked a national controversy akin to when Gov. Ron DeSantis last year transported immigrants to Marthas Vineyard, which is not typically a destination city. Many described the move by the Florida governor as a political message meant for Northeast Democrats. The reaction to Polis intervention was swift. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York City Mayor Eric Adams complained publicly about the busing and urged the governor in a Jan. 7 letter to halt the practice. The Polis administration ceased busing immigrants days later. The number of new arrivals has significantly tapered off since the beginning of the new year. In the final two weeks of 2022, Denver averaged 153 overnight arrivals every day. Over the past two weeks, the city has averaged fewer than 50 new immigrants each night. On Monday, Denver saw the fewest number of new arrivals 19 since the city began tracking the number of immigrants arriving in Denver. Hundreds of decommissioned or soon-to-be-shut-down coal-fired power plants including at least five in Colorado can be saved by converting them to nuclear power with small modular nuclear reactors. Thats according to a report from the U.S Department of Energy, which also notes installing small modular nuclear reactors in place of the coal-fired boilers could save millions of dollars worth of infrastructure costs and cut power bills for consumers. The DOE examined 394 operating and decommissioned coal plant sites nationwide to identify suitable locations where the coal boilers could potentially be replaced with nuclear reactors. A full 80% of the 370 operational and retired sites evaluated are amenable to AR (Advanced Reactor) siting, according to the report. The DOE declined to specifically identify the five locations in Colorado. Sponsored by the Department of Energys Office of Nuclear Energy, the study was conducted by the Argonne, Idaho, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories and released last September. The report studied these primary questions: Are coal plants suitable for conversion where they are located; why the sites are appropriate for transition; what might drive economic investment in switching to nuclear; and how transitioning would impact local communities. The researchers looked at existing facilities, environmental impacts and economic conditions and created a representative model of a converted coal plant to analyze the economic, physical, and social justice aspects of converting coal to nuclear. The report says conversion to run on advance small reactors can save 28%-35% of construction costs compared with building a new nuclear plant, and offer a 9%-28% reduction in the levelized cost of energy. The U.S. has 92 nuclear power reactors at 53 plants in 28 states that provide 18.5% of the nations electricity and nearly 50% of its carbon-free energy. By replacing coal with nuclear, regional economic activity could increase by as much as $275 million and add 650 new, permanent jobs distributed across the plant itself, according to the report. The supply chain supporting the plant, and the community surrounding the plant, including an estimated contribution to local schools could amount to more than $7 million annually. Repurposing coal plants to use nuclear energy is also much faster than building new nuclear plants. The report says completing the conversion can take five-to-six years. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Green America, a national non-profit membership organization founded in 1982, disagrees and says nuclear power is not the answer to combating climate change. The group says modular reactors are not ready for construction, their safety systems are not foolproof, and they will need substantial government subsidies. The group also points to the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima as inherent risks of nuclear power and says uranium mining is a concern. On their website, the group cites an incident at the Church Rock mines north of Gallup, New Mexico in 1979. The EPA says a breach in the mines tailings pond released more than 1,100 tons of radioactive mill waste and 93 millions of gallons of water contaminated with uranium. The spill affected 80 miles of the Puerco River and continues to affect members of the Navajo Nation 40 years later, according to Green America. Former Colorado Sen. Dennis Hisey offered amendments to House Bill 22-1394 last session that would have required the office to begin studying small modular reactors, but all were defeated. The bill, which is now law, is titled Fund Just Transition Community And Worker Supports: concerning funding for just transition programs to assist communities with economic transitions. A state law exists requiring the Colorado Energy Office work with communities, utilities, private and public organizations, and individuals to promote cleaner energy sources such as biogas, biomass, and nuclear. All I wanted was a study that said does this work? What do we need to make it happen, said Hisey in a prior interview. Green energys not going get us there one hundred percent. Everybody agrees with that. Somehow you have to have that on-demand, dispatchable energy and small nuclear reactors absolutely fit that niche nicely. The Colorado Energy Office is developing a technology agnostic study that will include all energy options that could play a role in getting to 100% clean energy, Director of Climate Communications Josh Chetwynd said in a statement Tuesday. We let the free market decide the government isnt in the business of picking winners and losers. To date there is no mention of nuclear energy in Gov. Jared Polis Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap or on the energy offices website. State government offices across Colorado are closed tomorrow following another snowstorm that could dump more than 2 feet of snow in some areas before the week is over. State facilities necessary to maintain and secure public health and safety will maintain regular operating schedules, and essential personnel will still report to work at normal times, Gov. Jared Polis' office said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals will delay opening to 10 a.m. Several judicial districts, however, will be closed. In the 17th Judicial District, courts and probation offices in Adams and Broomfield counties will be closed. In the 18th Judicial District, the same is true for Elbert County Combined Courts and probation office. In the 20th Judicial District, courts and probation offices in Boulder County will also be closed. U.S. COVID surge a "big risk": report Xinhua) 16:08, January 17, 2023 LONDON, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 is spreading again across the United States, driven by factors including the recent holidays and fewer precautions, British newspaper The Guardian has reported. Vaccine booster uptake has been "pitiful," Neil Sehgal, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, was quoted as saying in the report published on Sunday. Antiviral uptake has been low, and few mandates on masking, vaccination and testing have resumed in the face of the winter surge, which is once again putting pressure on health systems, said the report. New COVID hospital admissions in the United States are now at the fourth-highest rate of the pandemic, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Hospitals are at maximum capacity," Brendan Williams, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, was quoted as saying while speaking of his region's current rates. "I'm not sure what the trajectory of this thing's going to be, but I am worried," he said. In the past week, COVID-19 deaths in the United States rose by 44 percent, from 2,705 in the week ending Jan. 4 to 3,907 in the week ending Jan. 11. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Sheng Chuyi) In an effort to promote business relations between India and the UAE, the International Business Linkage Forum (IBLF) together with Dubai Chambers will host the India UAE Partnership Summit on from January 23 to 25 in Dubai. Jointly organised by IBLF and Dubai International Chamber, one of the three chambers operating under Dubai Chambers, the summit follows a rise in business interest between the two countries on the back of the CEPA agreement and the announcement of Golden visas in the UAE. It is also in line with the chambers priority of attracting foreign companies into the emirate and helping Dubai businesses expand internationally. India is the worlds fifth largest economy and the second biggest trading partner to the UAE in 2021. Being the first country to sign a bilateral trade agreement with the UAE, India is integral to the countrys economy and is home to 3.5 million Indian citizens, making up 30% of the UAEs population. Pertinent topics The summit will discuss pertinent topics including trade opportunities between India and the UAE with a deep dive into a number of sectors such as manufacturing, startups, healthcare and food processing, as well as UAEs Golden visa scheme and its prospects for entrepreneurs and investors alike. It will also present success stories from businesses that have set up and thrived in Dubai. The India UAE Partnership Summit will feature a number of keynotes and panel discussions and bring together leading business and government speakers from the public and private sectors of both countries to discuss strategic issues as well as trends influencing the future of trade and economy. It is set to propel ties between the two countries to new heights, strengthen existing business relationships and unlock untapped opportunities in key sectors for both countries. Inaugurated in 2018, Dubai International Chambers international office in Mumbai continuously engages with businesses in the UAE and India to share market intelligence and promote opportunity sectors for both sides to grow their international presence. The office supports the Dubai and India business communities by way of B2B meetings, trade missions, networking events, buyer-seller meetings and brainstorming with businesses on their plans for both markets.-- TradeArabia News Service Snow that began falling Tuesday night will gradually end Wednesday afternoon in Colorado, according to the National Weather Service in Boulder. A cold front that moved into Colorado on Tuesday brought several inches of snow to the Denver metro area, mountains and eastern plains. As of 6:30 a.m., Wednesday, Denver's official snow reporting station at Denver International Airport reported 7.7 inches of snowfall. But further southwest, Wolf Creek Pass, in the San Juan Mountains, has reported 36 inches of new snow. Here are some other snow totals from around the state: EV Metals Group, a global battery materials and technology company, has announced that its regional unit, EVM Arabia, will be setting up a new battery chemicals complex on a 1.27-million-sq-m area at Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, at an investment of SR3.4 billion ($905 million). EVM Arabia said it has already signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia's Royal Commission for Yanbu for the leasing of industrial land for the project as well as with the Saudi Ministry of Energy for allocation of gas and power. The complex will see staged development and expansion of a lithium chemicals plant and a nickel chemicals plant, said the company in a statement. The work on the first integrated battery chemicals complex of EVM, will begin in Q3 this year, it stated. EVM Arabia said the commissioning of the first two trains of lithium hydroxide monohydrate (LHM) will begin in 2026 and gradually the annual production capacity will be ramped up to 50,000 tpa. This will be followed by an additional four trains, taking total production of the lithium chemicals plant three-fold to 150,000 tpa of LHM, it stated. The complex will process intermediate feedstock of critical raw materials from Western Australia to produce high purity chemicals containing lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and other metals for downstream production of Cathode Active Materials (CAM), it added. It will see the production of chemicals required for active materials in the cathode that can be recharged for lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. This comes as part of the SR43 billion ($11.4 billion) worth of agreements, signed by the Royal Commission for on the sidelines of the International Mining Conference held at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, for the establishment of key industrial projects in the cities of Ras Al Khair and Yanbu. EVM Arabia said it has received a gas and power allocation equivalent to a daily standard amount of 6.24 million cu ft which will be used for the first two processing trains in the Lithium Chemicals Plant to produce high purity lithium hydroxide monohydrate. On the new complex, Managing Director and CEO Mohammad Bajba said the provision of land and permit to construct, as well as the gas and power allocation, are major milestones for EVM Arabia in the kingdom, and vital to its operations in advancing the progress of the complex. "These developments highlight support for projects that are strategically aligned with Vision 2030 and the aspirations of the kingdom for a clean energy future. This is a great start to the year for EVM in the kingdom," he added. On the new complex, Michael Naylor, the Chairman of EVM Arabia and Managing Director and CEO of EVM Group, said it is strategically located to serve demand for high purity chemicals from electric vehicle and battery cell manufacturers both locally, and from target markets in Europe and North America looking for stable and transparent supply chains. As structural deficits emerge in the second half of this decade, our complex will emerge as a global midstream hub for the production of high purity chemicals and battery materials as the kingdom transforms its economy to become a global leader in the energy transition. EVM is privileged to be delivering directly into Vision 2030," stated Naylor. "We commend the guidance and enablement of the National Industrial Development Centre (NIDC) under the agreement between NIDC and EVM in December 2020 for the development of the complex and Saudi supply chain," he added. This year, EVM Group will accelerate exploration of critical minerals in the kingdom through its subsidiary Riwaq Al Mawarid for Mining to develop a localised supply chain for the new complex. Riwaq has been granted 11 exploration licences covering 1,093 sq km and has 142 applications for exploration licences with an area of 11,350 sq km in process, which have identified or potential for critical minerals containing lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, platinum group metals and rare earth elements.-TradeArabia News Service Legislators convened at 11 a.m. today at the state Capitol in Denver for the first State of the State address of Gov. Jared Polis' second term in office. The governor has already delivered one speech so far this year, kicking off his second term by pledging to "lead the Colorado way" amid growing concerns around affordable housing, public safety, rising cost of living and a state budget with little room for additional spending in the upcoming fiscal year. This brand new legislature will need to resolve or at least try some of the biggest problems facing Colorado. And by and large, it will be woman leading to charge to tackle those problems. Winter weather hit the Pikes Peak region Tuesday evening and its impact continues to be felt into Thursday morning. The freezing temperatures have caused hazardous driving conditions for morning commuters and some areas are still feeling the cold sting. Several El Paso County school districts have announced 2-hours delays for Thursday morning as the cold weather lingers. Read the latest Colorado winter storm updates below: -Click or tap here for closures and delays -Click or tap here for traffic conditions around Colorado Springs -Click or tap here for statewide traffic conditions -Click or tap here for Colorado Springs Airport flight status updates -Click or tap here for Denver International Airport flight status updates, including cancellations that started rolling in Wednesday afternoon 8:02 a.m.: Two crashes are causing delays for commuters on I-25. Vehicles have been moved to the shoulder after a crash on northbound I-25 at mile marker 136 (just north of the S. Academy exit). A rollover crash is causing slowing on the Briargate entrance ramp to the highway. WEDNESDAY UPDATES 9:30 p.m. More schools announce delays Big Sandy SD - 2 Hours Late CEC Colorado Springs - 2 Hours Late CIVA Charter High School - 2 Hours Late Orton Academy - Closed for in-person instruction Pima Medical Institute - 10am start 8:30 p.m. US 24 reopened to traffic Highway 24 between Woodmen Road and Kanuch Road (Calhan) is reopen to traffic following an hourslong closure due to safety concerns and poor weather conditions. 7:45 p.m. School districts announce delays Multiple school districts in the Colorado Springs area have announced delays for Thursday. The list includes: Academy District 20: 2 Hours Late District 49 - 2 Hours Late, No AM preschool Elbert School District 200 - 2 Hours Late Elizabeth Sch. Dist. - 2 Hours Late Lewis-Palmer Dist. 38 - 2 Hours Late Peyton 23JT - 2 Hours Late Pikes Peak BOCES East (Calhan) - 2 Hours Late Banning Lewis Academy - 2 Hours Late Colorado Military Academy - 2 Hours Late New Summit Charter Academy - 2 Hours Late, No AM preschool Pikes Peak School of Exped. Learning - 2 Hours Late, No AM preschool St. Gabriel Classical Academy - 2 Hours Late 4:15 p.m. Traffic updates: Highway 24 between Calhan and Falcon is closed due to wind snow and ice, according to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. The highway closure may last several hours. Eastbound Interstate 70 is closed between E-470 (3 miles west of Watkins) and the Kansas Border (10 miles east of Burlington) due to a multivehicle crash involving nine semitrucks and 12 passengers, according to Colorado State Patrol and CDOT. Drivers should expect delays due to safety concerns. US 40 westbound between Count Road 60 (6 miles east of Arapahoe) and County Road 23 (11 miles west of Hugo) due to adverse safety concerns. Driver should expect delays. Heavy traffic reported on I-70 eastbound between CO 9 (Silverthorne) and C-470 (1 mile west of Golden), according to CDOT. Travel impacts are possible and drivers should expect up to 90 minutes of travel time. 9:15 a.m. Pueblo Chemical Depot has announced a two-hour delay for non-mission-essential staff. 8:30 a.m. I-25 southbound between Exit 207A: Lincoln Street and Exit 206: Downing Street (Denver) at Mile Point 205.9 Lane(s) have reopened to traffic. 8:23 a.m.I-25 southbound has reopened at Exit 173: Spruce Mountain Road (8 miles south of the Castle Rock exit) at Mile Point 172.35. 8:07 a.m.: Wolf Creek pass has reported 36 inches of fresh snow from this storm, the largest snowfall in the state. Click or tap here for the latest snow total. 7:46 a.m.: All Southbound lanes of I-25 are blocked due to a jackknifed tractor-trailer at US 34. All traffic exiting US-34. Seek alternate route. 7:45 a.m.: Two departing flights have been canceled and another two delayed at Colorado Springs Airport Wednesday morning. Five incoming flights have been canceled. Click or tap here for the latest status for flights in and out of the airport. 7:15 a.m.: As of 6 a.m., Wednesday, 262 flights were canceled at DIA and 36 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware. DIA advises all passengers to contact their airline to check their flight status before going to the airport, and to plan extra time for traveling to the airport. 6:24 a.m.: The following highways are closed due to adverse conditions: I-76 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 385 both directions from Julesburg to Nebraska US 138 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 6 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska CO 11 From CO 138 to Nebraska CO 59 both directions from I-76 to Yuma CO 52 both directions from New Raymer to Fort Morgan CO 23 both directions from US-385 to Nebraska CO 14 both directions from Ault to Sterling US 550 Purgatory to Ouray (Red Mountain, Molas and Coal Bank passes) US 160 Wolf Creek Pass TUESDAY EVENING UPDATES 10 p.m. First Presbyterian will open at 10 a.m. Wednesday. There will be no No AM kindergarten and preschool; all morning activities are canceled. 9:45 p.m. Academy District 20 has announced a 2-hour delay. CPCD Head Start programs will also be on 2-hour delay Wednesday. 9:30 p.m Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. More 2-hour delays have been announced for Colorado Springs District 11, Fountain-Ft. Carson District 8, Manitou Springs SD 14, Harrison District 2, and Widefield District 3. The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind, The Vanguard School and Thomas MacLaren School have announced closures for Wednesday. The Colorado Springs Housing Authority will open at 9 a.m. for non-essential staff. 8:10 p.m. Edison 54JT will be on a 2-hour delay; no preschool, AM/PM Buses are on snow routes. See the full list of delays and closures here. 7:55 p.m. State offices closed State offices throughout Colorado will be closed Wednesday due to extreme weather conditions, according to a release from the office of Gov. Jared Polis. "State facilities essential to public health and safety will maintain regular operating schedules and 'essential personnel' must report to work at their normal scheduled time," the release said. More districts announce delays and closures: Lewis-Palmer Dist. 38 will closed Wednesday due to inclement weather; Pikes Peak BOCES East (Calhan) and Woodland Park Re-2 both announced 2-hour delays for Wednesday. Fort Carson adjusts reporting times Soldiers will report between 9 and 10 a.m. See more information here. 6:10 p.m. District 49 will be closed Wednesday Miami-Yoder School District JT-60 is have a 2-hour delay CIVA Charter High School will be closed. 5:45 p.m.: James Irwin Charter Schools will have a two-hour delay. 4:45 p.m.: Peterson Space Force Base reporting will be delayed by two hours. Latest snowfall reports across Colorado, according to the National Weather Service: Wolf Creek Pass: 36 inches Coal Bank Pass: 18 inches Rockwood: 15.2 inches Molas Pass: 12 inches Red Mountain Pass: 8 inches Mount Crested Butte: 8 inches Pagosa Springs: 7 inches Ouray: 6.8 inches Monarch Pass: 6 inches Durango: 4.9 inches Telluride: 4.5 inches 4:13 p.m.: Elbert School District 200 will be closed on Wednesday. Cripple Creek-Victor and Miami-Yoder schools will be on a 2-hour delay. Click or tap here for an updated list of closures and delays. 1:48 p.m.: Westbound Interstate 70 is closed in Glenwood Canyon after a multi-vehicle crash. The closure is expected to last until at least Tuesday evening. 10:51 a.m.: Colorado State Patrol is asking the public across the state to avoid travel Wednesday in wake of snow expected Tuesday night. If travel is unavoidable on Wednesday, CSP has provided some helpful tips to ensure your vehicle is properly equipped for the storm. . Ensure tires are up to the task with a minimum tread depth of 3/16 . Refill washer fluid . Check windshield wipers, and replace if needed . Check to ensure all vehicles systems are functioning properly . Hybrid and electric cars should be charged over night as colder temperatures drain the battery . Drive slowly . Scrape all windows of ice and remove all snow from your vehicle . Check weather throughout your route and be prepared for changing conditions CSP troopers suggest travelers to take necessary precautions in cases of being stranded. . Stay with your stranded vehicle, and place bright markers on the vehicles windshield or antenna . Bring extra warm clothing, snow boots, and blankets, along with food and water in the event you are stranded for a significant period . Carry a portable charger and charging bank to ensure ability to call for help If traveling Wednesday, stay alert for first responders working in these adverse conditions, along with stranded motorist, CSP said in a press release. Our roads are deadly Eighty people died in traffic crashes in El Paso County in 2022, while 56 of those people died in Colorado Springs, robbing families of parents, children, sisters, brothers, husbands and wives. Hundreds suffered serious injuries, forever changing their lives. In July, officer Nicholas Hamakers police cruiser was hit head-on, causing career-ending injuries. Dangerous roads have made our city the most deadly place in Colorado (per capita) to get around, reducing the quality of life in our amazing city. Before 2020, congestion was the only thing preventing the deaths we see today. Drivers simply cant drive as dangerously when traffic prevents them from doing so. During the pandemic, while people were driving less, the lack of congestion revealed the serious design flaws of our wide and fast roads; they are deadly. The editorial printed in last Mondays Gazette, Driving in Colorado is dead serious, only proposed one solution: personal responsibility. Please know that personal responsibility alone has not and will not solve our growing problem with people dying on our roads. Roadway deaths are not a problem we can enforce or self-police our way out of either. We, as a city and as a nation, need to change our culture to realize that driving is an inherently dangerous activity, especially for those outside a vehicle. Our roads and streets have been designed since the 1950s to prioritize speed. This has led to the traffic fatality epidemic that were in today. We need to design our roads in ways that make it easier to drive safely. When an airplane crashes, does the National Transportation Safety Board simply blame the pilot? When a train crashes, does the NTSB simply blame the operator? No, in these cases the agencies involved investigate the system and implement solutions addressing the problems that lead to the crash. We must apply the same scrutiny to investigate the systems that make our roads so deadly. The driver who severely injured officer Hamaker was on drugs, specifically meth. Our policies expect intoxicated drivers to get behind the wheel as little to no other options exist, depending on location and the time of day. Instead of forcing people to drive when they shouldnt, public transit needs to be made convenient and frequent so driving isnt the only option. Other countries have had this same problem and have designed safer streets to address them. The technology and knowledge exists to address systems making our streets deadly, but without the political will to implement the solutions nothing will change. Cully Radvillas Colorado Springs The outcome is the same Donald Trump is a civilian with no experience handling classified documents so screw-ups should have been anticipated. Joe Biden has no such excuse as a career government employee. Regardless, the outcome is the same. Both should lose their security clearance and access to classified documents. This puts both on the Not Available list for holding high public office. With that settled, both parties can get to work finding a representative to lead our country that has leading our country as their daily mantra! I would suggest younger people, more attuned with the world in which most of us live. Michael S. Welsh Colorado Springs A Fi Sign up for free: Gazette Opinion Receive updates from our editorial staff, guest columnists, and letters from Gazette readers. Sent to your inbox 12:00 PM. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. First World problem Just had a chat with my best friend that went like this: Are we just going to let everybody determine their own gender identity and how they want to be addressed? What about my choices? Because Im feeling like my right to free speech is being curtailed here, with zero consequences. I value our friendship, but adjusting to your preferred pronouns is forcing me into a box that feels awkward, unnatural and untrue to my authentic self. And I would never do that do you. And with that, my friend stared into space for a minute. Then walked away. Meantime, a pen pal in Kenya calls this pronoun request thing a First World problem. Hes not being nice. Hoerschel Hoffman Colorado Springs State of the country So here we are, a country which is fine with people in office who lie about everything about themselves, where they went to school, who they worked for, and any other piece of information about themselves they put out into the airwaves. A country which is, in some populations, OK with a president who has been impeached twice and who has tried to overthrow his country, and furthermore has been show to have committed fraud on the government, running for president again. Our suicide rate is outrageous, gun violence is out of control and uncivilized behavior reigns. Arent we proud. Why are we allowing our country to go to hell? Sally Alberts Colorado Springs Take care of the criminals Why are we always going after the weapons when its the shooter who commits the crime. If we had quick and efficient punishment for these mass murders ... including the death penalty we would have less crime! No one fears punishment in our country. Bleeding hearts care more about the treatment of the murderer than they do about the victims. We forget the victims and only concentrate on the poor criminal and his past. I dont care about their past they committed the crime and should get swift punishment. Its not the guns committing these crimes its the creep that conducts these murders. So ... quit trying to ban weapons and take care of the criminals. Paul Garcia Colorado Springs Saudi Arabias Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar bin Ibrahim Alkhorayef has highlighted the need for governments to foster innovation and co-investments in the industrial sector. Participating in a session titled The Return of Manufacturing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said: You need the right regulatory framework to allow investment flow. Alkhorayef also emphasised the need for the right infrastructure to enable factories of the future, as well as the importance of governments to proactively develop skilled human capital to drive sustainable growth. - TradeArabia News Service Some members of the federal appeals court based in Denver appeared skeptical on Tuesday that a Colorado Springs police officer committed a constitutional violation when he used a stun gun on a man for refusing to hand over a cellphone that contained suspected evidence of child abuse. Last year, a trial judge allowed Carl Andersen Jr. to take his excessive force claim against Officer Vito DelCore to a jury trial, finding DelCore had instigated the physical confrontation in a Colorado Springs hospital room when no apparent threat existed. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard DelCore's appeal this week, with at least one member seeming reluctant to deem DelCore's force unreasonable in light of Andersen's repeated resistance to handing over the cellphone. "It's where you're entitled to something as an officer and the person wont do that," said Judge Harris L. Hartz. "At some point, officers have the right to use force to make the person do that." But instead of using a stun gun someone, countered Andersen's attorney, Reid Allison, "the proper course of action is to say, 'Put your hands behind your back. Youre under arrest.'" "I totally agree that would be better police practice," Hartz acknowledged. "Thats not what were to decide here. Its whats constitutionally permitted." The case of Andersen's Taser use centered on qualified immunity, the judicial doctrine that shields government employees from civil liability unless they violate a person's clearly established legal rights. Typically, there needs to be a prior court decision putting officers on notice that their conduct is unreasonable. The trial judge acknowledged there was no case similar to Andersen's, but denied qualified immunity to DelCore because he "created the need to use force." In April 2019, Andersen's fiancee accidentally struck their 19-month-old daughter while backing out of the driveway. A helicopter flew the child to UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs, where the rest of her family joined them. However, the Andersen family would not cooperate with nurses seeking more information about the incident. The nurses called the police, suspecting child abuse. The family similarly rebuffed responding officers, but they did learn from another family member about the possibility of a vehicle strike in Teller County, where the child lived. Sheriff's Detective Anthony Matarazzo then traveled to the hospital from Teller County. He learned Andersen's fiancee was reportedly texting others about the accident. The fiancee denied sending the texts and Andersen took her phone for safekeeping. Matarazzo then asked DelCore, Officer Todd Eckert and Sgt. Carlos Sandoval, who were in the hallway, to assist with obtaining the cellphone to prevent the destruction of evidence. Body camera footage showed the men entering the hospital room of Andersen's daughter, where DelCore immediately moved to grab the phone from Andersen's pocket. "Excuse me, you do not grab anything from my pockets," Andersen snapped. DelCore responded that Andersen was "gonna hit the ground real hard." He also brandished his Taser. Sign up for free: News Alerts Stay in the know on the stories that affect you the most. Sign Up For Free View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. After the officers attempted to persuade Andersen to relinquish the phone, DelCore moved behind Andersen because "I dont want anybody behind you getting hurt." He grabbed Andersen's arm, warned he would stun Andersen and ordered Andersen out of the room. DelCore then hit Andersen twice with the stun gun. Andersen fell to the ground and a struggle ensued with the other officers. DelCore also threatened to use the Taser on Andersen's father, former Republican congressional candidate Carl Andersen Sr., who was also in the room. Prosecutors eventually dismissed charges of obstruction and resisting arrest that were filed against Andersen. In March 2022, U.S. District Court Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson sided with most of the officers on Andersen's excessive force claim, concluding they acted reasonably in intervening to help DelCore subdue Andersen. But Jackson used a "broader lens" to look at DelCore's actions, finding DelCore's response to someone who was not physically resisting and was suspected of, at most, misdemeanor obstruction was unreasonable. DelCore "created the need to use force by escalating the interaction at every turn," Jackson wrote. "Officer DelCore encircled plaintiff, Taser drawn, in order to initiate a physical altercation. Plaintiff barely had time to process, let alone respond." DelCore then appealed to the 10th Circuit. He claimed the "danger creation" rationale was "murky," and faulted Andersen for not identifying a court decision putting DelCore on notice his actions were unconstitutional. "Isnt Fourth Amendment excessive force dependent upon the totality of the circumstances?" asked Judge Scott M. Matheson Jr. Gordon L. Vaughan, DelCore's attorney, responded that the officer's actions before the use of force a "seizure" under the Fourth Amendment were irrelevant. "Im asking you to adopt a rule of several circuits that say you do not look to the pre-seizure conduct. That you look to what is occurring at the time of the incident," Vaughan said. Hartz observed that using a Taser on Andersen fit a pattern with other recent appeals in the 10th Circuit. "Wed had several cases in the last few months involving this other situation," he said, "when an officer requests or demands a citizen to do something and the citizen refused to honor that lawful request. Officers dont just have to say, 'OK, too bad. You wont do it so we cant use force to make you do it.' I think thats not the law." Hartz asked whether the officers' suspicion of child abuse could justify the use of force against Andersen. "That is not what Judge Jackson found," responded Allison. A federal judge has found a Garfield County sheriff's deputy did not violate the constitutional rights of a sleeping detainee by allegedly tossing a pack of playing cards at him and injuring his testicle. According to Juan A. Carrazco's lawsuit, he had asked Deputy Amber Morrison to wake him in the morning so he could take his medicine, but Morrison was unable to rouse him verbally. She then threw a nearly-empty toilet paper roll at him, and followed it up with the semi-full pack of cards. Although Morrison maintained the cards hit Carrazco in the thigh, he alleged the blow was to his groin. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang sided with Morrison, finding the deputy did not violate Carrazco's right as a pretrial detainee to be free from excessive force. No jury, she wrote, "could find that defendants act of underhanding a pack of cards in plaintiffs direction in an attempt to wake him up for med pass, after a number of other unsuccessful attempts to wake him up, was objectively unreasonable." On May 10, 2019, Carrazco was in the Garfield County jail for charges that prosecutors would later dismiss. He asked Morrison to wake him up early the next morning so he could take his medicine, known as "med pass" or "medline." Accordingly, around 3:30 a.m., Morrison arrived at Carrazco's cell, which did not have a door. Pursuant to her training, she could not go inside. Instead, she tried to wake him up verbally, but Carrazco did not respond. She then lightly tossed the toilet paper roll, also unsuccessfully. Morrison "underhanded" the playing cards in Carrazco's direction, which did succeed in waking him up. According to Morrison, Carrazco did not act injured, but Carrazco testified he "hunched over" and asked Morrison to call a nurse. Colorado Politics reviewed the surveillance video, which did not show the location of impact but did depict Carrazco reacting physically. Carrazco then sued Morrison in her official government capacity, meaning he would need to show Morrison violated his constitutional rights and an official policy was behind the violation. Carrazco pointed to Morrison's training, prohibiting her from entering the cell, as the responsible policy. Sign up for free: News Alerts Stay in the know on the stories that affect you the most. Sign Up For Free View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. "Plaintiff specifically asked defendant to wake him for Medline by tapping on his shoulder or on the bunk as he wears earplugs to help him sleep. Other deputies had previously woken him up for Medline by tapping his shoulder or bunk," wrote attorney Ryan T. Earl for Carrazco. "Defendant hardly made an attempt to wake up plaintiff by other, non-forceful means before resorting to throwing an object at him that caused injury." Morrison argued she was entitled to qualified immunity, which shields government officials from civil liability unless they violate a person's clearly-established legal rights. Although qualified immunity is not available to defendants in their official government capacities, Morrison believed Carrazco's claims were against her personally, and not as a means of suing the government for its policies. Wang, in a Jan. 13 order, analyzed the lawsuit under Carrazco's framing. She also viewed the jailhouse video, which depicted the playing card toss. Even though an ultrasound showed no damage to Carrazco's testicles, she acknowledged there was some evidence Carrazco was in pain at the time. Wang did not reach the question of whether Morrison's training was responsible for a constitutional violation, finding instead that Carrazco's rights were not violated in the first place. "Most important to the courts conclusion is the amount of force used, which was minimal," she wrote. "It is undisputed that defendant 'underhanded' the deck of cards in plaintiffs direction." Other factors for determining whether the force was excessive included the extent of Carrazco's injury and the safety threat to Morrison. Wang agreed Morrison had limited her force all along, balancing Carrazco's request to wake him up with the jail's own prohibition on her entering the cell. The case is Carrazco v. Morrison. Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday challenged Colorado's legislators to pass tougher penalties on car theft, noting the crime has directly affected both policymakers and members of the public alike. The governor's plea to the legislature came less than two years after signing legislation that lowered the penalty for some car theft offenses. Polis in 2021 approved legislation that overhauled Colorado's misdemeanor laws, whose provisions included making it a Class 1 misdemeanor to steal a car if its value is less than $2,000. While he didn't specifically cite this provision during his state of the state address, the governor had it in mind when he urged lawmakers to crack down on auto theft, a reversal of the animating spirit behind the 2021 law. "This is an issue that has affected some of you in this room and so many of our fellow Coloradans, and I look forward to working with all of you to find an effective solution," the governor said in his state address before the General Assembly. Polis noted that he had called on the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to "get tough on auto theft sentencing." Last week, he added, the commissions sentencing task force "moved that recommendation forward overwhelmingly." "I look forward to seeing the General Assembly take up this important recommendation," he said. The governor's stance on car theft stands in sharp contrast to the prevailing sentiment among Democrats, who, broadly speaking, favor scaling back criminal penalties in favor of strategies that help people convicted of crime rejoin society. Colorado is among the worst in the nation when it comes to car theft. Car theft in Denver, for example, is second-highest in America, while three other Colorado cities rank in the Top 10, according to a study by the Common Sense Institute. Car thefts are on track to exceed 48,000 in 2022, while arson, robbery and vandalism also continue to spike, said the study, which cited FBI statistics. Law enforcement leaders, policymakers and criminologists remain divided on the causes of the spike in car theft and they also diverge on the right prescription to it. Some argue that people steal cars over and over again because pretrial-release practices and state penalties for car thefts are too lenient. Others counter that penalties themselves don't act as a deterrent and insist the COVID-19 pandemic created a perfect storm of circumstances that made a ripe incubator for car thefts. By calling for tougher penalties, Polis has effectively planted himself on the side that believes current car theft penalties are too lenient. During his state address, Polis touted the work by local officials he acknowledged the attendance of Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, and Acting Mayor Laura Aldrete, who showed on behalf of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock in tackling crime. Sign up for free: News Alerts Stay in the know on the stories that affect you the most. Sign Up For Free View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. The mayors, he said, have helped to identify tools to successfully fight crime in their communities and "together we want the state to step up and be a more constructive partner in this work." Aurora, for one, approved what may be the strictest penalties in the state for car theft penalties that include a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 60 days, going up to 120 days for repeat offenses. The city also adopted tougher penalties for stealing essential vehicle parts, including catalytic converters, of up to 364 days in jail and a maximum $2,650 fine. State law caps jail sentence for violating municipal ordinances at 364 days. The legislature, in fact, has moved to roll back some of the elements of the 2021 law. For example, the 2021 law narrowed down from hundreds the number of felony offenses under which a person, if convicted of that prior crime, would face additional penalties for possessing a gun to only charges identified in the Colorados Victim Rights Act. The latter includes about 50 of the most heinous and violent crimes, such as murder and rape. House Bill 22-1257, which the legislature passed and the governor signed last April, added about 60 felony offenses notably sexual exploitation of a child on the internet or operating a child prostitution ring; arson; and, human smuggling back to the list of convictions that make it illegal for a person to own a gun. Polis has called auto theft a "devastating property crime" and "frequently a precursor crime" used to commit violence and other offenses. In his letter to the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice last year, Polis said he wants the body to examine changes to auto theft sentencing "so that the repeat offenders and the most egregious perpetrators cannot easily return to communities to further inflict harm on the people of Colorado." "Auto theft is devastating property crime for those affected, who often lose their only way to get to work or get to the store. In addition, it is frequently a precursor crime that is often used in the furtherance of violence and other crimes. Enhancing the penalties associated with auto theft, regardless of the value of the vehicle stolen, has the potential to make us safer and improve the quality of life in Colorado," he said. Polis told the commission it should "especially revisit" the criminal classification of auto theft based on the monetary value of a stolen vehicle. The severity of the crime should be based, he said, on prior offenses, specifically targeting "prolific auto thieves." "This is a top priority of mine, and even if the commission does not come forward with recommendations this year, I will look to work with the legislature to enact reforms in this area in the upcoming session," he said. Colorado Springs is bracing for several rounds of snowfall this week that could lead to as much as 4 inches of snow. The first and strongest snow of the week is expected to fall Tuesday afternoon and continue into Wednesday before picking back up on Friday, according to the National Weather Service in Pueblo. The local snowfall joins a flurry of storms across the state that forecasters say could dump more than 2 feet of snow in some areas before the week is through. CDOT web cam indicates heavy snow, poor visibility and snow packed roads along Colorado Highway 17 near Cumbres Pass. Expect difficult travel to persist for the remainder of the day and into tonight as snow continues. #cowx pic.twitter.com/U6Wd0z0ngk NWS Pueblo (@NWSPueblo) January 17, 2023 The mountains, they tend to get snow from almost any level system that comes by. This ones just a little better, so itll give them some higher amounts of snow totals, said National Weather Service meteorologist Cameron Simcoe. With Springs, it really is a difficult area because of the terrain. The system moving through Colorado will leave a heavy trail of snowfall in its wake as it blows north up the Palmer Divide, or the ridge separating the mountains from the plains. Given these northerly winds and Colorado Springs location on the southern end of the divide, the city will see less snowfall than others, according to the weather service. Weather doesnt like sinking air. If you go on the southern part there of the Palmer Divide, youve got sinking air, Simcoe said. Sign Up for Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Chances of snow begin after 1 p.m. Tuesday with a 50% chance of precipitation in Colorado Springs, accumulating less than a half inch. Snow showers will pick back up at night with a 70% chance of precipitation resulting in 2 to 4 inches of snow. Wednesday will see patchier snowfall throughout the day before calming down around 9 p.m., according to the weather service. Theres a 50% chance snow will pick back up on Friday. Northeast portions of the state considered to be in a moderate to extreme drought by the U.S. Drought Monitor, and portions in the southwest considered abnormally dry, are among those expecting the highest accumulations of half an inch to several feet. Simcoe said the expected moisture is more of a short-term coincidence than a sign of good fortune ahead. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center is also warning of a moderate danger level stretching west from Cheyenne Mountain to Mount Pisgah, encapsulating Cripple Creek and Victor within its boundaries. Avalanches are possible whenever you find snow on a slope steeper than about 30 degrees. Watch for signs of unstable snow such as recent avalanches, cracking in the snow, and audible collapsing, according to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources website. Avoid traveling on or under similar slopes. A winter weather storm warning is in effect for much of northern El Paso County. No warning or advisory has been issued for the immediate Colorado Springs area, although Simcoe said that could change since systems sometimes overperform. Thats that shadow effect, Simcoe said. Winter weather hit the Pikes Peak region Tuesday evening and its impact continues to be felt into Thursday morning. The freezing temperatures have caused hazardous driving conditions for morning commuters and some areas are still feeling the cold sting. Several El Paso County school districts have announced 2-hours delays for Thursday morning as the cold weather lingers. Read the latest Colorado winter storm updates below: -Click or tap here for closures and delays -Click or tap here for traffic conditions around Colorado Springs -Click or tap here for statewide traffic conditions -Click or tap here for Colorado Springs Airport flight status updates -Click or tap here for Denver International Airport flight status updates, including cancellations that started rolling in Wednesday afternoon 8:02 a.m.: Two crashes are causing delays for commuters on I-25. Vehicles have been moved to the shoulder after a crash on northbound I-25 at mile marker 136 (just north of the S. Academy exit). A rollover crash is causing slowing on the Briargate entrance ramp to the highway. WEDNESDAY UPDATES 9:30 p.m. More schools announce delays Big Sandy SD - 2 Hours Late CEC Colorado Springs - 2 Hours Late CIVA Charter High School - 2 Hours Late Orton Academy - Closed for in-person instruction Pima Medical Institute - 10am start 8:30 p.m. US 24 reopened to traffic Highway 24 between Woodmen Road and Kanuch Road (Calhan) is reopen to traffic following an hourslong closure due to safety concerns and poor weather conditions. 7:45 p.m. School districts announce delays Multiple school districts in the Colorado Springs area have announced delays for Thursday. The list includes: Academy District 20: 2 Hours Late District 49 - 2 Hours Late, No AM preschool Elbert School District 200 - 2 Hours Late Elizabeth Sch. Dist. - 2 Hours Late Lewis-Palmer Dist. 38 - 2 Hours Late Peyton 23JT - 2 Hours Late Pikes Peak BOCES East (Calhan) - 2 Hours Late Banning Lewis Academy - 2 Hours Late Colorado Military Academy - 2 Hours Late New Summit Charter Academy - 2 Hours Late, No AM preschool Pikes Peak School of Exped. Learning - 2 Hours Late, No AM preschool St. Gabriel Classical Academy - 2 Hours Late 4:15 p.m. Traffic updates: Highway 24 between Calhan and Falcon is closed due to wind snow and ice, according to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. The highway closure may last several hours. Eastbound Interstate 70 is closed between E-470 (3 miles west of Watkins) and the Kansas Border (10 miles east of Burlington) due to a multivehicle crash involving nine semitrucks and 12 passengers, according to Colorado State Patrol and CDOT. Drivers should expect delays due to safety concerns. US 40 westbound between Count Road 60 (6 miles east of Arapahoe) and County Road 23 (11 miles west of Hugo) due to adverse safety concerns. Driver should expect delays. Heavy traffic reported on I-70 eastbound between CO 9 (Silverthorne) and C-470 (1 mile west of Golden), according to CDOT. Travel impacts are possible and drivers should expect up to 90 minutes of travel time. 9:15 a.m. Pueblo Chemical Depot has announced a two-hour delay for non-mission-essential staff. 8:30 a.m. I-25 southbound between Exit 207A: Lincoln Street and Exit 206: Downing Street (Denver) at Mile Point 205.9 Lane(s) have reopened to traffic. 8:23 a.m.I-25 southbound has reopened at Exit 173: Spruce Mountain Road (8 miles south of the Castle Rock exit) at Mile Point 172.35. 8:07 a.m.: Wolf Creek pass has reported 36 inches of fresh snow from this storm, the largest snowfall in the state. Click or tap here for the latest snow total. 7:46 a.m.: All Southbound lanes of I-25 are blocked due to a jackknifed tractor-trailer at US 34. All traffic exiting US-34. Seek alternate route. 7:45 a.m.: Two departing flights have been canceled and another two delayed at Colorado Springs Airport Wednesday morning. Five incoming flights have been canceled. Click or tap here for the latest status for flights in and out of the airport. 7:15 a.m.: As of 6 a.m., Wednesday, 262 flights were canceled at DIA and 36 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware. DIA advises all passengers to contact their airline to check their flight status before going to the airport, and to plan extra time for traveling to the airport. 6:24 a.m.: The following highways are closed due to adverse conditions: I-76 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 385 both directions from Julesburg to Nebraska US 138 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska US 6 both directions from Sterling to Nebraska CO 11 From CO 138 to Nebraska CO 59 both directions from I-76 to Yuma CO 52 both directions from New Raymer to Fort Morgan CO 23 both directions from US-385 to Nebraska CO 14 both directions from Ault to Sterling US 550 Purgatory to Ouray (Red Mountain, Molas and Coal Bank passes) US 160 Wolf Creek Pass TUESDAY EVENING UPDATES 10 p.m. First Presbyterian will open at 10 a.m. Wednesday. There will be no No AM kindergarten and preschool; all morning activities are canceled. 9:45 p.m. Academy District 20 has announced a 2-hour delay. CPCD Head Start programs will also be on 2-hour delay Wednesday. 9:30 p.m Sign Up for Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. More 2-hour delays have been announced for Colorado Springs District 11, Fountain-Ft. Carson District 8, Manitou Springs SD 14, Harrison District 2, and Widefield District 3. The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind, The Vanguard School and Thomas MacLaren School have announced closures for Wednesday. The Colorado Springs Housing Authority will open at 9 a.m. for non-essential staff. 8:10 p.m. Edison 54JT will be on a 2-hour delay; no preschool, AM/PM Buses are on snow routes. See the full list of delays and closures here. 7:55 p.m. State offices closed State offices throughout Colorado will be closed Wednesday due to extreme weather conditions, according to a release from the office of Gov. Jared Polis. "State facilities essential to public health and safety will maintain regular operating schedules and 'essential personnel' must report to work at their normal scheduled time," the release said. More districts announce delays and closures: Lewis-Palmer Dist. 38 will closed Wednesday due to inclement weather; Pikes Peak BOCES East (Calhan) and Woodland Park Re-2 both announced 2-hour delays for Wednesday. Fort Carson adjusts reporting times Soldiers will report between 9 and 10 a.m. See more information here. 6:10 p.m. District 49 will be closed Wednesday Miami-Yoder School District JT-60 is have a 2-hour delay CIVA Charter High School will be closed. 5:45 p.m.: James Irwin Charter Schools will have a two-hour delay. 4:45 p.m.: Peterson Space Force Base reporting will be delayed by two hours. Latest snowfall reports across Colorado, according to the National Weather Service: Wolf Creek Pass: 36 inches Coal Bank Pass: 18 inches Rockwood: 15.2 inches Molas Pass: 12 inches Red Mountain Pass: 8 inches Mount Crested Butte: 8 inches Pagosa Springs: 7 inches Ouray: 6.8 inches Monarch Pass: 6 inches Durango: 4.9 inches Telluride: 4.5 inches 4:13 p.m.: Elbert School District 200 will be closed on Wednesday. Cripple Creek-Victor and Miami-Yoder schools will be on a 2-hour delay. Click or tap here for an updated list of closures and delays. 1:48 p.m.: Westbound Interstate 70 is closed in Glenwood Canyon after a multi-vehicle crash. The closure is expected to last until at least Tuesday evening. 10:51 a.m.: Colorado State Patrol is asking the public across the state to avoid travel Wednesday in wake of snow expected Tuesday night. If travel is unavoidable on Wednesday, CSP has provided some helpful tips to ensure your vehicle is properly equipped for the storm. . Ensure tires are up to the task with a minimum tread depth of 3/16 . Refill washer fluid . Check windshield wipers, and replace if needed . Check to ensure all vehicles systems are functioning properly . Hybrid and electric cars should be charged over night as colder temperatures drain the battery . Drive slowly . Scrape all windows of ice and remove all snow from your vehicle . Check weather throughout your route and be prepared for changing conditions CSP troopers suggest travelers to take necessary precautions in cases of being stranded. . Stay with your stranded vehicle, and place bright markers on the vehicles windshield or antenna . Bring extra warm clothing, snow boots, and blankets, along with food and water in the event you are stranded for a significant period . Carry a portable charger and charging bank to ensure ability to call for help If traveling Wednesday, stay alert for first responders working in these adverse conditions, along with stranded motorist, CSP said in a press release. The importance of placing sustainability at the forefront of economic and policy agendas was highlighted by Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade during keynote speeches and ministerial meetings at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW). During his visit to ADSW, Dr Al Zeyoudi was the keynote speaker for the Youth4Sustainability Forum. In his speech, he aimed to inspire the next generation of sustainability leaders to innovate new clean energy solutions to help shape the future of the UAE. Dr Al Zeyoudi was also the keynote speaker for the Arctic Circle Abu Dhabi Forum, outlining the UAEs continued support for knowledge-sharing, research and collaborative policy-making to climate-mitigation efforts in the Himalayan region. He said Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week is a key event to promote research and knowledge sharing around balancing economic growth with environmental action. While the UAE is reinforcing our status as a global trade hub, it is imperative that we continue our growth in a sustainable manner to align with our nations development goals. We recognize the need to achieve sustainable development and develop integrated measures to fulfil economic, social and environmental objectives. The Ministrys participation at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week affirms our commitment to focusing its efforts to effectively implement its sustainable development strategies by leveraging all possible mechanisms to make sure that our policies are met. On the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, Dr Al Zeyoudi conducted ministerial meetings with Lee Young, South Korea Minister of SME & Startups, Sarah Ryglewski, Member of the German Bundestag, Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor, Luis Alberto Castiglioni, Minister of Industry and Commerce of the Republic of Paraguay, Ville Skinnari, Minister of Development and Foreign Trade, Finland and former President Olafur Grimson accompanied by Benedikt Gislason, CEO of Iceland Arion Bank, and Hugh Short, Pt Capital in Alaska. The meetings discussed how the UAE can grow its non-oil trade with the nations for the remainder of 2023 and the years to come. UAEs non-oil trade with South Korea totaled $4 billion in the first nine months of 2022, growing by 19% compared to the same period in 2021. Germany is the UAEs second largest EU trade partner with a share of 17%, with non-oil trade reaching $7 billion in the first nine months of 2022. Non-oil trade between the UAE and Paraguay grew by 57% for the first nine months of 2022 from $26.2 million to $41 million. The UAE and Icelands non-oil trade reached $1.8 million during the first nine months of 2022. Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week took place under the theme United on Climate Action Toward Cop28 bringing together global communities for a series of impactful dialogues on the transition towards a net-zero future.--TradeArabia News Service Dan River Region Democrats blasted Gov. Glenn Youngkins decision to shut Ford Motor Co. out of opening a battery-making plant that would have brought $3.5 billion in investment and 2,500 jobs to the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill. This area has voted heavily and consistently Republican and voted for Youngkin, and to have that happen is disgraceful, said Roy Ford, chairman of the Pittsylvania County Democratic Committee. Youngkins actions appear to be purely political and reflect presidential ambitions on the governors part, Ford said. Danville and Pittsylvania County Republican leaders did not return calls Tuesday from the Danville Register & Bee seeking comment. If Ford Motor Co. finalized the project, the plant would have gone in the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Danville Register & Bee reported Monday. More than $200 million has been spent over 15 years to make Berry Hill a premier site and the largest publicly owned site in the Southeast. The plant would have built lithium iron phosphate batteries for Fords electric vehicles. Youngkin put a stop to the automakers plans for Virginia in December because of its partnership with the Chinese company, Contemporary Amperex Technology. Its a shame that he would put the interest of his presidential ambition in front of whats good for the people of Southside Virginia, said Joshua Norris, vice chairman of the Danville Democratic Committee. The project would have provided thousands of jobs to an economically depressed part of the state. Politics should not cost anyone their livelihood, Norris said. I hate to see hot-button presidential issues hurt the area that I love and raise my family in, he said. Virginia House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore said Tuesday it is important to bring the right jobs to the Danville area and other parts of Virginia. Kilgore cited a Bloomberg report in December that Ford Motor Co. was planning to run this proposed electric vehicle plant through a conglomerate that coordinates closely with the Chinese Community Party. He said Ford planned to seek millions in tax credits for domestic clean technology manufacturing facilities, but that Ford was not qualified to do so because the plant would have been operated by the Chinese. So yes, Governor Youngkin was right, Kilgore said. We dont want to go back into what happened in Appomattox, he said, referring to deal with a Chinese firm that fell apart during Gov. Terry McAuliffes administration. One former Danville city councilman who spoke to the Danville Register would not comment on the situation. I dont want to get involved in what could still be an ongoing process, said Fred Shanks, who also used to serve on the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority. RIFA, a joint entity that includes members of Danville City Council and the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors, owns the 3,500-acre industrial mega park. Shanks did say, however, I do understand the governors concerns for the issues [surrounding] China and the Communist Party and their activity in the United States. Tim Barber, a former county supervisor who represented the Tunstall District where the park is located in southwestern Pittsylvania County, recalled meeting with the late Westover Supervisor Coy Harville and then-county administrator Dan Sleeper to discuss forming the park for the first time. They met in Sleepers office in Chatham around 2007 or 2008, Barber recalled. I remember the first conversation, Barber said. We were there in the very beginning. We had to piece it [the land] together and then make it a regional park project. Talk of forming a mega park among local officials had started after Toyota wanted to build a new plant. We didnt have anything to offer, Barber said. The fact that Ford had its sights on the mega park means were getting really close to bringing a major manufacturer to the site, Barber said. As for whether Youngkins rejection of Ford could jeopardize future efforts to bring in another industry, Barber would not say. Im not in politics any more, Barber said. Virginias early voting law, with one of the nations longest periods for voters to cast ballots, would be cut sharply under a bill that moved from a House of Delegates subcommittee Tuesday. The bill would cut early voting from the 45 days before Election Day to 14 days. (The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, led by Democrats, on Tuesday defeated two bills to curtail absentee voting, as well as bills to ban drop boxes and require photo ID at the polls.) The move to 14 days would be an important savings for local governments, said Del. Phil Scott, R-Spotsylvania, who sponsored the measure. Localities concerns are so widespread that three separate, similar bills were filed this year, he said. Democrats on the House Privileges and Elections subcommittee said the bills would reverse their efforts in 2020 and 2021, when they had majorities in both the House and state Senate, to make voting easier. If you want less voting, just say so, said Del. Schuyler T. VanValkenburg, D-Henrico. Del. Tara Durant, R-Fredericksburg, who filed a similar bill, said the aim was not to discourage voting, but to avoid the confusion that could result if ballots changed sometime during the 45-day period, if candidates dropped out, for instance. The subcommittees Democrats pressed for data about how many people voted between 45 and 14 days before Election Day, but sponsors said they didnt have any. Although campaigners to restrict absentee or early voting have previously said the aim is to reduce voter fraud, the backers of the Virginia bills did not make that argument this year. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have said defending Virginias voting access laws is a top priority in the 2023 General Assembly session. Democrats have a four-seat edge in the Senate while Republicans have a four-seat edge in the House. A high-level delegation from Saudi Arabia yesterday (January 17) took part in a multilateral meeting with the World Economic Forums leadership at WEFs 2023 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The delegation comprising Prince Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, Ambassador to US, Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Bandar bin Ibrahim Alkhorayef, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, and Faisal F. Alibrahim, Minister of Economy and Planning, met WEF Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab and President Brge Brende to explore areas of mutual interest. During the meeting, the delegates highlighted Saudi Arabias role as a pioneering partner in the WEF's Global Collaboration Village, which will leverage the metaverse to serve the global community. Also a Letter of Intent (LoI) was signed by Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha, Chairman of the Board of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and Chairman of the Board of The Research, Development and Innovation Authority (RDIA), with Brende to establish a new accelerator program to help ignite innovation in the kingdom. Under the LoI, KACST will work alongside WEF to connect experts and knowledge partners from the public and private sector to identify and unlock new promising markets as part of the ongoing work to transform Saudis economy. "Saudi Arabia aims to build a house in the village opening a door to opportunities, investment, and collaboration between various national stakeholders and international entities. It will be used as a tool for attending events, interacting with people, sharing knowledge and making announcements," said a senior delegate. It was highlighted in the meeting that Saudi Aramco, as one of Saudis leading private sector entities, is the first company to build a house in the Global Collaboration Village. The meeting also covered investment in green technologies, as well as female and youth empowerment as a vital enabler in effective climate action. The meeting provided updates on the progress of projects launched at WEFs 2022 Annual Meeting. In addition, delegates addressed the future of the mining industry in Saudi Arabia and its untapped opportunities, especially considering the increasing demand for minerals and the importance of leveraging the Fourth Industrial Revolution and green technologies.-TradeArabia News Service COVID-19 cases are dropping in Virginia, suggesting Virginia might avoid a January surge. COVID has surged in each of the past two Januarys, and this time last year, Virginia was engulfed by omicron variant, which led to the highest number of COVID hospitalizations since the pandemic began. But in each of the past eight days, hospitalizations have dropped, reversing a seven-week trend of rising numbers. It's good news, but Dr. Elaine Perry, director of health in Richmond and Henrico County, said it's too early to know if the downward trend will continue. "It's too soon to know if this will be a steady decrease or not," Perry said. For the past two weeks, COVID metrics have showed good signs across the state. The percentage of emergency room visits with COVID-like illness has dropped from 20% the final week of December to 14% last week. The number of reported cases in the same time frame fell from 16,000 to 9,000. The number of COVID-associated deaths, which remains low, hasn't begun to drop yet. Deaths are typically a lagging indicator, and in the past three weeks, deaths have been steady, averaging 13 deaths per week. Those figures are much less than in August, when were more than 100 deaths per week. Sometimes death numbers aren't updated until weeks after the death occurs. Several COVID variants have spread through Virginia in recent weeks. Sequencing conducted by the state health department showed the XBB.1.5 represented almost 40% of cases, followed by BQ.1.1, which accounted more than 30% of cases in the state. The prevalence of XBB.1.5 in Virginia mirrors a national trend. The variant likely isn't more virulent than earlier strains, the University of Virginia's Biocomplexity Institute reported. But it can infect those with prior immunity. That's why the Biocomplexity Institute recommends residents receive bivalent booster shots, which are designed to stop new COVID variants. About 1.3 million Virginia residents have received a bivalent booster. The majority of recipients are over the age of 65. Charts that track COVID-19 variants, vaccination rates and hospitalizations in Virginia REIDSVILLE Local civil rights leader Rochelle Tucker led a crowd of nearly 100 on Monday afternoon in a tribute to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tucker, dressed in a vibrant purple traditional African dashiki ensemble, reminded the crowd that King knew the work of building harmony between the races would take time. He knew that this would take several generations to become a reality, Tucker said. America today is a far different place from the country that saw ... King killed from a assassins bullet, she said. Tucker said she imagined King would be elated if he knew Black Americans had now attained the highest offices in the land and that children could now attend nearly any university they choose. King would also see the work thats yet to be done, Tucker pointed out. Problems with racial injustice, health and income inequities, police militarism and other issues must still be addressed through constructive activism. Dr. King firmly believed in the power of hope, Tucker said and quoted King: Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of Gods children. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. She called for leaders to speak out against injustice. Today, too many of us are silent on too many issues, Tucker said. Show up and stand up and speak up and make sure our voice is heard. Never be afraid to be heard and make good trouble, she said. To succeed in achieving unity and equity, people of color must continue to educate, organize and vote to win justice, Tucker said. The nonviolent movement remains the leg of Dr. King, Tucker said. Peaceful and persistent resistance to injustice is the best way forward. We owe it to him to remain faithful to the cause. GREENSBORO The woman who set a 2002 fire near UNCG that killed four young adults two decades ago at the time, the deadliest fire in the city is a step closer to walking out of prison. There were cars melted in the parking lot, investigators said of the estimated 1,000-degree heat. People jumped from windows to survive. Janet Danahey, sentenced to life in prison by a Guilford County Superior Court judge for what she said had been a prank, became eligible for parole on Jan. 1 after Gov Roy Cooper commuted her prison sentence in December. The N.C. Post Release Supervision and Parole Commission, which reviews cases after the eligibility date has been reached, must give final approval. Attorney Don Vaughan, who presented Danaheys plea to the governor, met Tuesday morning with a parole commission officer to provide details on where she would live, work and steps the now 44-year-old is taking to become a productive member of society. Accompanying him was the father of one of the victims and Danaheys sister, a Methodist pastor. Vaughan says the commission must consider that information and that it could take weeks or months for a decision. Robert Harris, the father of UNCG music major Beth Harris, said during the hearing that he believed it was a college prank that went bad. He misses his child deeply, he said, but forgave Danahey decades ago. Forgiveness isnt that our hearts arent breaking, Harris told the News & Record once the proceeding was over. In addition to the 20-year-old Harris, also killed were sisters and Page High School graduates Rachel Llewellyn, 21, a UNCG honor student who aspired to be a nurse and Donna Llewellyn, 24, who worked in Greensboro Colleges financial aid office. Ryan Bek, 25, who had been a womens studies major at Guilford College and was Llewellyns boyfriend perished as well. Danahey was charged with arson and four counts of first-degree murder. Some people, including legal scholars, argued that her sentence didnt fit the crime and the District Attorneys office was overreaching in not considering lesser charges such as manslaughter. Others argued that Danahey could never serve enough time for what she had done. It was a prank, Vaughan said. It was a thoughtless act. But she did not mean for this to happen. And shes lived with it every day of her life. Over the years, Danahey has accumulated well-known supporters, including former Greensboro Mayor Jim Melvin, businessman Mike Weaver, former N.C. Supreme Court Justice James Exum and Tom Ross, a former president of the UNC System. Danahey, a former Olympic torchbearer who was 23 at the time of the tragedy, was accused of setting fire to Christmas decorations on a couch just outside the Campus Walk apartment of Thad Johnston, an ex-boyfriend who had recently broken up with her. Had the case gone to trial and a jury found her guilty, she could have been sentenced to death under the felony murder rule. That means a person who causes someone elses death intentionally or not while committing another felony, such as arson, can be given the death penalty. While she is deeply remorseful for what she did, Danaheys sister said there is an untold side of the story. Police had earlier said that Danahey had been with two friends who left before she set the fire. No one else was ever charged. Danahey had been accused of callously walking away from the burning couch. But Emily Danahey Kroeger recalls her sister saying that wasnt the case. Danahey didnt leave with the couch burning. She said that when she looked at (the couch) nothing happened, Kroeger said. There was nothing to put out. In explaining the reasoning behind Danaheys release, Coopers office noted she had participated in a number of educational programs. In a News & Record interview after her sentence, Danahey said one of the reasons she pleaded guilty was because of the pain she caused, even though it meant she might spend the rest of her life in prison. Once behind bars, Danahey said she had forgiven herself. What I did was stupid and horrible, but I know I didnt intend to hurt anyone. Kroeger said that if released, her sister wants a normal life but plans to speak to young people so that they might avoid the impulsive choice she made 20 years ago. Danahey also wants to honor those who died with her work moving forward. We are grateful, Kroeger said, the state provides a lawful way for sentences to be revisited. RALEIGH Attorney General Josh Stein will run for governor in 2024, he announced Wednesday morning. The news confirms widespread speculation that hed seek to replace Gov. Roy Cooper, a fellow Democrat, who is term-limited and cant run again. In a video, Stein lays the groundwork for what led to his decision. The video starts with a story about his father, a civil rights attorney whose law firm was fire-bombed in 1971, during a legal battle over racial segregation in North Carolina public schools. Today, theres a different set of bomb throwers who threaten our freedoms and our future while some politicians spark division, ignite hate and fan the flames of bigotry, Stein said. Stein worked as a top deputy in the attorney generals office under Cooper in the early 2000s, and the two have remained close. He also served several terms as a state senator representing Cary, before succeeding Cooper as attorney general in the 2016 elections. He is the first major candidate for the governors race. His announcement could start a stream of other candidates also announcing their plans to run. Its likely that both Democrats and Republicans will have competitive primaries for governor in 2024 since the seat will be open, with no incumbent running, for the first time since 2012. Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of Greensboro has publicly considered a run for governor without making an official announcement. Steins campaign is treating him as a likely opponent, however, even using Wednesdays announcement video to feature clips of Robinson pushing abortion restrictions and calling gay people filth. Robinson wants to tell you who you can marry, when youll be pregnant and who you should hate, Stein said. Im running for governor because I believe in a very different North Carolina. One rooted in our shared values of freedom, justice and opportunity for everyone. Robinson made history in 2020 as the first Black lieutenant governor and the first Black Republican to win any major political office since Reconstruction. A political newcomer, Robinson gained viral online fame for a gun-rights speech in his hometown of Greensboro. Hes known for his energetic speaking style and far-right views. Stein made history himself in 2016 as the first Jewish person to ever win a statewide election in North Carolina. He is among the most prominent Democrats in the state and in recent years has attracted national attention for some of his work as attorney general. His numerous lawsuits against drug companies have brought roughly $1 billion into North Carolina to fight the opioid epidemic. Other consumer protection actions targeting robocalls and the e-cigarette company Juul have also made waves. At the same time, Stein has also faced criticism from Republicans. They say he politicized the attorney generals office and they have used their power in the legislature to slash his budget by millions of dollars. Stein had North Carolina sue the Trump administration multiple times over policies ranging from immigration to health care and the environment. Hes also embroiled in a more personal legal battle, over his 2020 campaign for attorney general. His Republican opponent in that election, Jim ONeill, accused him of breaking an obscure law from the 1930s that makes it a crime to lie about politicians by claiming that an ad Steins campaign ran against ONeill was false. He has so far won that argument in court, but the lawsuit isnt over yet and could drag on for months or even years. The Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brand Yoga Bar is owned by Sproutlife Foods Pvt Ltd (SFPL), which was acquired by the diversified conglomerate ITC. According to a release, ITC has signed a legally binding term sheet to buy all the shares of SFPL over a three- to four-year period. By March 31, 2025, it will first buy a 47.5 percent share in SFPL in tranches. The remaining stake will then be bought based on pre-established valuation standards, subject to other terms outlined in the contractual contracts.An "initial investment of Rs 175 crore will be made through primary subscription and secondary purchases for the acquisition of 39.4 percent of the paid-up share capital?, which is expected to be completed by February 15, 2023," said ITC in a regulatory filing. Further, a cash infusion of Rs 80 crore will be made through primary subscription, in one or more tranches, by March 31, 2025, it added.The purchase of the balance 52.5 percent shares taking the shareholding to 100 percent would be determined based on pre-agreed valuation criteria and subject to fulfillment of various terms and conditions, it added.According to ITC, it is "fortifying its presence in the Rs 45,000-crore, fast-growing, nutrition-led healthy foods space" with the proposed strategic investment in SFPL. In FY22 SFPL, the startup engaged in the manufacturing and sale of products catering to health-conscious consumers under the new-age digital-first brand Yoga Bar, had a turnover of Rs 68 crore.According to ITC, this acquisition is "in line with the strategy to augment the company's future-ready portfolio, the proposed acquisition will strengthen and expand its reach with innovative food products for health-conscious consumers." The acquisition will enable ITC to augment its future-ready portfolio and enhance market presence in the 'good for you' space which currently includes Aashirvaad Multi-Grain Atta, Aashirvaad Nature's Super Foods, Farmlite range of biscuits, Sunfeast Protein Shake, B Natural Nutrilite ABC Beverage, among others."Yoga Bar is expected to be rapidly scaled up, leveraging ITC's enterprise strengths in areas such as sales & distribution, sourcing, product development, and digital," it added. ITC divisional chief executive, Foods Division, Hemant Malik said: "We look forward to scaling the Yoga Bar brand offering superior and healthy consumer choices. Within a short span of time, Yoga Bar has established itself as a leading brand in the healthy foods space, driven by impactful market positioning and a range of innovative products."Suhasini Sampath Kumar and Anindita Sampath Kumar, co-founders, said: "We are confident that this partnership will add to Yoga Bar's competitive advantage and take it to the next level from the current annualized run rate of over Rs 100 crore." The health and wellbeing segment is a fast-evolving category in India and several FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) companies are entering the space.Last week, FMCG major Hindustan Unilever Ltd announced the completion of the acquisition of a 51 percent stake in Zywie Ventures, a wellness company that owns the OZiva brand, for a consideration of Rs 264.28 crore. Besides, HUL has also announced the acquisition of a 19.8 percent stake in Nutritionalab Pvt Ltd (Wellbeing Nutrition) for a cash consideration of Rs 70 crore. Helena elementary schools are harvesting new experiences and knowledge each month thanks to the local Harvest of the Month program. Its really tying everything about tasting new foods and knowing that they come from our state and teaching the kids about sustainability, how were trying to sustain our land with good farming practices and sustain our community by supporting our farmers and ranchers, said Joan Leik, culinary arts teacher at Helena High School. The kids really like that part of it. Theyre really interested in how it all comes together. Montana Harvest of the Month is through Montana State Universitys Farm to School program, with the goal to showcase Montana-grown foods in Montana communities. The program is open to K-12 schools, afterschool programs, Summer Food Service Programs, early care and education facilities, businesses, health care institutions and more. The way it works is MSU sends resource packets, learning objectives, outlines and more for the school year to each participating program. From there, the local programs help determine what local Montana foods fit the criteria outlined for the year. Here in Helena, the Harvest of the Month program has been running for about 10 years and is growing a little each year school by school. Its mainly managed by Harvest of the Month coordinator at St. Peters Health Kim Lloyd and Leik and her culinary students. Just this year, Carroll College associate professor of health sciences Dr. Gerald Schafer and his students from his public health and nutrition course joined the program. I thought it would be a great chance for my students to get some actual experience working in the community, said Schafer. ... Its going to be ongoing, so each semester, my students will have the chance to do that outreach in the community and get that experience as health educators. In Helena, Helena High culinary students and Carroll students develop a lesson based on the monthly food. Then, they go into classrooms and teach about it. Helena High culinary students teach two classrooms, and Carroll students teach eight classrooms. The rest of the classrooms, a Head Start classroom and St. Peters Health's day care, are taught by Lloyd. Helena High culinary students do most of the food prep by creating a snack or meal using the food of the month to bring to both their classrooms and the classrooms Carroll students teach in. Harvest of the Month is taught at 10 of the 11 elementary schools in Helena in fourth grade and Montessori classes; its not taught at Jim Darcy yet. The goal in the end was to have someone teach the high school kids, and they go out and teach the elementary kids, and to really be able to keep that sustainable. We dont want it to be something we just do for two years, said Leik. Januarys Harvest of the Month food was dairy, so KJn Ranch and Sheep Mountain Creamery, located on Birdseye Road in Helena, was contacted and supplied sheep cheese to the classrooms. Tony Napoletanos upper Montessori classroom at Central Elementary School is one of the participating classrooms in Harvest of the Month. Usually, students from Carroll College would be presenting and leading the lesson in Napoletanos class, but Carroll was still on winter break as of Jan. 12. So, Napoletano showed an educational tour video Lloyd had made when she went to Sheep Mountain Creamery. In the video, Kim Ashmore, who runs the ranch with her husband Jim, explains that the dairy sheep need to be milked twice a day, like cows, and that they currently have around 170 dairy sheep. Ashmore speaks on the process of pasteurization they use at their ranch before they make their cheese and shows the various cheese molds used. Some soft cheeses made at Sheep Mountain Creamery are Ewe Squeaky Cheese and Bryndza Cheese. Some of their aged cheeses are Black Tail with Caraway Seeds, Black Rock, Brewer Hill, Midnight Hill, Painted Hill, Green Mountain, Timber Hill and Sunrise Hill. A few of these aged cheeses are infused with beer from Lewis and Clark Brewing. After the video, the students got to sample blocks of Ewe Squeaky Cheese, which is a salted curd with the same firmness as cheese. It can be used as a snack or in salads, casserole, pizza and more. One student proclaimed Im scared before trying the sheep cheese, yet they bravely persevered. Afterward, students voted on whether they tried it, liked it or loved it. Three students said they liked it, three students said they loved it and 14 students voted that they tried it. These results are then sent to Lloyd, who keeps track of them for Helenas Harvest of the Month. Coming from St. Petes, I get asked a lot about why is St. Petes supporting this program, but we see it as an upstream approach to health, like if were teaching our kids young about healthy foods, maybe they wont have to go to the hospital as much, said Lloyd. Next months Harvest of the Month in classrooms is beets, March is grains, April is chickpeas and May is beef or bison. For more information on Harvest of the Month in Helena, go to https://bit.ly/helenaharvest. Each year, were thankful that weve been able to do what we have done, said Leik. Wed like Harvest of the Month in every grade level. Shodair Childrens Hospital is hosting open houses this week to give the public, various community groups, health care partners, employees and their families the chance to tour its new $66 million state-of-the-art facility as it readies to officially open its main campus in Helena later this month. This is a project for Montana and a facility that Montana kids and our employees deserve," CEO Craig Aasved said in a news release. Shodair is a psychiatric facility for children. Services include the child and adolescent acute psychiatric inpatient program, child and adolescent residential treatment programs, a fully accredited school that operates year-round, outpatient services and school-based services. There will be a community open house event for the public 4-7 p.m. Thursday. The public is invited to take a tour, enjoy refreshments and talk to mental health professionals as Shodair Childrens Hospital wraps up construction to its new facility at 2755 Colonial Drive. Parking for the new building and for events is no longer at its previous location and can be accessed by driving down Shodair Drive and parking in the southeast corner of the property. Parking attendants will be along Colonial Drive to help people. The new 134,000-square-foot hospital will have 82 individual patient rooms with private bathrooms. Officials said 87% of the new space is devoted to patient care and no new space is for administrative services, and the building replaces a facility that was 99,000 square feet. The groundbreaking was held in October 2020. The new hospital will have an education wing for the accredited school including space for occupational and speech therapies as well as a life skills classroom where patients learn about daily living skills. It will feature a full-court gymnasium and weight room and a public cafe and coffee bar called the Hope Cafe. It will also have amenities such as a smudge room and sensory hallway, a special care area on the acute inpatient floor. Two-thirds of the existing hospital will be demolished for parking once the new medical office building across the campus is completed later this spring. Shodair broke ground in April on the new $10 million medical office building at the corner of Saddle and Shodair drives. The 25,000-square-foot office will be the home to psychiatric outpatient services as well as Montanas medical genetics program, which Shodair has operated for nearly 50 years. Its the states only medical genetics program and provides services to patients at the Helena campus and through clinics statewide. Shodair is Montanas only Childrens Miracle Network Hospital. The network raises funds for 170 member hospitals that provide 32 million treatments each year to children in the United States and Canada. Shodair says 99% of its patients are from Montana. While 75% of patients are from economically disadvantaged families, Shodair accepts all insurances and private pay with in-house financial assistance for those eligible. Shodair officials said they secured $52 million in bonds for the new hospital and are raising funds for the remaining $14 million, with less than $2 million remaining. An open house for emergency responders was 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday and a career fair was 3-6 p.m. Tuesday. What better time to hold a career fair than when we have an incredible new hospital to share, Desiree Navaro, chief human resource officer, said in a news release. She said the new building sends a powerful message that Shodair is dedicated to creating a safe and flexible space to care for childrens mental health and to be an employer of choice as the premiere childrens psychiatric hospital in the region and beyond. Other open houses are: From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday there will be a health care partner event. From 4-7 p.m. Wednesday there will be an employee and families event. From 7-8 a.m. Thursday Hometown Helena will tour the new facility. There will be a community open house event for the public 4-7 p.m. Thursday. For more information call the main reception desk at 406-444-7500. Shodair Childrens Hospital began as a home for orphaned and abandoned children in 1896. It became the first facility in the state to treat children with polio and the first with a chemical dependency unit dedicated to adolescents. Shodair is a nonprofit organization overseen by a board of community members. On March 28, 1937, the Helena Independent Daily reported that former Butte resident Louis William Shodair, who had moved to Los Angeles, had donated $200,000 to be used to start a hospital devoted exclusively to the treatment of children with physical handicaps. At the time, it was the largest single gift in the history of philanthropy in Helena. It was to be known as the Louis William Shodair Home for Crippled Children and was to be operated as a unit of the Montana Childrens Home and Hospital. The newspaper reported that Shodair was good friends with childrens home board member Mrs. H.S. Hepner, and it was through her efforts that Shodair chose the childrens home for his gift. He returned to Butte as a businessman, and it was his Butte property he deeded to the childrens home for the Shodair hospital, the newspaper reported. "Montana" was written in Butte in 1910 by Joseph E. Howard and Chas. C. Cohan. It was adopted as the state song that same year by Gov. Edwin L. Norris. In 1941, Howard gave the copyright to the Montana Children's Home & Hospital/Shodair. It was officially adopted as the state song in 1945 by the Montana Legislature, according to the website Helena As She Was. The UAE and Japan have signed several agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoU) to help accelerate the energy transition and the adoption of technology in industry. Dr Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and UAE Special Envoy to Japan, met with Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) 2023, to discuss the countries strong bilateral relations, reported Emirates News Agency WAM. The ministers discussed ways to further strengthen the UAEs and Japans relationship under the umbrella of their comprehensive economic partnership. They explored the hydrogen sector as a key component of a just energy transition. They also discussed the importance of accelerating progress towards carbon neutrality and opportunities for collaboration ahead of COP28, which will be held later this year. Dr Al Jaber said: The UAE and Japan have a long-standing and strong relationship that has developed into a comprehensive economic partnership, underpinned by our leaderships commitment to enhance cooperation with strategic partners. We seek to build on this long-term partnership by exploring new opportunities for cooperation and investment that contribute to mutually beneficial sustainable economic growth and diversification. During the meeting, several agreements and MoUs were signed, which included a MoU between the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology and Japans Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. It concerns collaboration in the field of industry and advanced technology and aims to enhance partnerships between Emirati and Japanese companies as well as explore joint investment opportunities. It also aims to boost collaboration to accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies in support of both countries industrial goals and carbon reduction targets. The MoU was signed by Dr. Al Jaber and Yasutoshi Nishimura. Dr Al Jaber also witnessed the signing of a joint study agreement between Adnoc and Tsubame BHB. The agreement explores opportunities for cooperation in the field of research and development with the aim of finding new solutions for manufacturing ammonia. This agreement falls under the Japanese-Emirati partnership for advanced technology. This initiative supports Japanese technology startups and helps to connect them with Emirati investors to facilitate their expansion. Dr Al Jaber also witnessed the signing of an MoU between the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and the Japanese company JERA. This MoU covers the fields of green hydrogen and renewable energy. The signing of these agreements and MoUs falls within the framework of the comprehensive economic partnership signed by the two countries in September 2022. The volume of non-oil trade exchange between the two countries in 2021 amounted to more than AED49 billion ($13.3 billion). Additionally, the volume of non-oil trade exchange between the two countries grew by 4.3 percent during the first nine months of 2022, year-on-year. A bill amending Montanas approach to managing grizzly bears post-delisting from the Endangered Species Act saw a mix of support and opposition on Tuesday. Senate Bill 85 brought by Sen. Mike Lang, R-Malta, would add language to state law stating that should grizzlies fall under state management, the bears would be managed at levels necessary to avoid relisting and that all mortalities would count toward population assessments. That would include bears killed under a potential hunting season or bears transplanted from one area to another. The bill comes as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering multiple petitions from states to delist the bears, including in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide regions. Grizzlies have twice been delisted near Yellowstone, but returned to their threatened status under ruling from federal judges. Lang told the Senate Fish and Game Committee Tuesday the bill does not change current management practices by the state, but reinforces the states commitment to having mechanisms in place for long-term management. SB 85 saw support from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks as well as some hunting and agriculture groups. This isnt a conversation about a change of approach, but an effort in transparency and putting in law a threshold for the states management, said FWP chief of staff Quentin Kujala. The agency currently has an open comment period on its draft grizzly management plan, he said. Supporters echoed Lang in framing the bill as a commitment from the state. We believe this is intended and will create a pathway to delisting, said Mac Minard with the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association. The Montana Wildlife Federation supported the bill, but requested additional language be added to state use of nonlethal and preventative methods to avoid conflicts with grizzlies. Opponents to SB 85 felt the bill fell short of what is necessary to delist grizzlies and that the Legislature and Gianforte administrations approach to both grizzlies and wolves shows a dim view of large predators. In 2021 a number of bills aimed at reducing the states wolf population were signed into law, as well as bills restricting the states involvement in relocating bears that get into conflicts outside of federal recovery zones and expanding when bears could be killed under state management to include threatening livestock. Pointing to a federal judges decision to overrule an attempt to delist bears near Yellowstone in 2017, Nick Gevock with the Endangered Species Coalition told the committee that grizzly recovery is more than population numbers, but must include the ability for large populations to connect. That isnt the case today, its getting close, he said. Opponents also zeroed in on the lack of language concerning non-lethal, preventative and educational measures. Lisa Upson with the group People and Carnivores advocates for non-lethal measures and urged the committee to consider those methods in the broader context of grizzly management. Prevention is pro-active, not waiting around for a problem to occur, she said. Under questioning from lawmakers, Kujala said the draft plan is looking at genetic exchange, whether naturally or through moving animals from one area to another. The committee did not take immediate action on the bill. The 1999 state Supreme Court decision that found the Montana Constitution's right to privacy ensures access to abortions is in the sights of some Republican lawmakers, along with a package of other bills to limit access to the procedure. Democrats have their own slate of legislation that will attempt to put the right to abortion in state law, along with a series of other bills focused on elevating the discussion around reproductive health. They're optimistic, but also realistic, about how the bills might fare given a GOP supermajority that has in the past aimed to curtail access to the procedure in Montana. Abortion up until the point of viability of a fetus is legal in Montana, as clarified by the Armstrong decision nearly a quarter century ago. When the federal protections for abortion fell last summer when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision with its Dobbs order, Armstrong is what ensured continued access in Montana. That's made reversing the ruling a key target for those opposed to abortion. On Tuesday there was a hearing for Republican Sen. Keith Regiers Senate Bill 154 to define to state law that the individual right to privacy in the state Constitution does not include the right to access an abortion. If the hour-and-a-half long and at-times contentious proceeding was any indication, the debate over abortion will again be a major issue this session. When lawmakers gathered in Helena two years ago they had a GOP majority along with the first Republican in the governors office in 16 years and passed a group of bills that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks gestational age; required a woman to be informed of the option to view an ultrasound before an abortion; and required informed consent before a drug-induced abortion. Those bills are on hold as a legal challenge plays out, but lawmakers will attempt to codify at least one of them again this session. In presenting his bill Tuesday, Regier said he believed the Supreme Court erred nearly a quarter of a century ago when they mistakenly left out the word individual in deciding the right to privacy ensured the access to a pre-viability abortion. His bill would not change access to abortion or the Constitution, but would aim to get at the Armstrong roadblock through state law. Several who testified against it anticipated litigation. An abortion is not an individual act, Regier said. It involves different DNA. It involves another set of fingerprints. It involves another individual. A right to privacy should not apply to an abortion any more than a right to privacy applying to child abuse or abusing a spouse. Those acts include another person and are not acts of individual privacy." But opponents to Regiers bill said it doesn't fall to the Legislature to decide how the state Constitution should be interpreted and that the document itself gives that job to the judiciary. This language in the bill is likely unconstitutional. It's not for the Legislature to say what is or not meant by the Constitution. That is the role of the judicial branch in our state government, said Martha Fuller, the head of Planned Parenthood of Montana. Ultimately, if this bill were to become law, that is likely where a decision would be made. Litigating bills like these is a waste of both time and the taxpayer money. Regier in his opening statement acknowledged the courts ruling, but said that both medical technology has changed since then and that the state Supreme Court should take into account the Dobbs decision and re-consider Armstrong. I know that some courts have determined that a right to privacy means a right to abortion and you may hear from opponents today that the Armstrong decision settles this issue and this bill is unnecessary. Courts have made wrong decisions in the past, Regier said. In addition to Regiers bill, both Gov. Greg Gianforte and Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen have asked Montanas Supreme Court to reconsider Armstrong. Jeff Laszloffy, the head of the Montana Family Foundation, a group that works to oppose access to abortion, told lawmakers that it was entirely appropriate and within your purview to decide about access to abortion, following the framework Dobbs gave to state Legislatures. Mike Meloy, a longtime lawyer in Helena who told the committee he has taught constitutional law, disputed that. It doesnt take an expert in constitutional law to know that this bill is patently unconstitutional, Meloy said. A high school civics student could tell you that. Meloy continued by saying the Legislature does not have the authority to construe the Constitution. The committee did not take immediate action on Regiers bill. Those who spoke for and against it made arguments about constitutionality, as well as raised concerns on either side of the debate more broadly about access to abortion. The hearing was marked by sharp exchanges between Sen. Barry Usher, who chaired the committee while the usual chair Regier presented his bill, and Meloy, who served as a lawyer on a lawsuit against Usher from last session. It also included disputes between Usher and several people who testified over Ushers interpretation of the focus of the bill. Usher said he wanted to limit testimony to only discussion about the right to privacy, but several of those testifying both for and against the bill veered into the morality or necessity of abortions. Usher said he was equal in how he limited testimony from both proponents and opponents, but after the hearing Sen. Jen Gross said she disagreed. Other GOP bills this session One of the laws still under litigation that passed last session would require pregnant women be given the opportunity to view an active ultrasound and listen to a fetal heart tone before having an abortion. This session Rep. Amy Regier, R-Kalispell, is bringing the same bill. The bill last time was great health care policy, Rep. Amy Regier said. Informed consent is good health care policy. Regier reiterated the bill does not require a person to view an abortion or hear a heartbeat, only that theyre given the opportunity. The courts, Regier said, have proved theyre taking an activist position on laws like abortion legislation. They say that they are independent but each branch is intertwined a little bit, and I would say we have that purview within the Legislature to act upon the constitutional duties we've been given, Regier said. There are several other GOP bills in draft form that don't have much detail yet, including several on hold. Most are coming from the House. Speaker Matt Regier, a Kalispell Republican, said in an interview last week that the caucus has broad ideas about abortion legislation. "There's a lot of Republicans in our caucus that are pro-life. It does change a little bit on where exactly you draw that line (for things like) rape and incest (and the) life of a mother," Regier said. Matt and Amy Regier are Keith Regier's children. He predicted legislation about how Medicaid covers abortion care, something the state health department is already proposing to limit through administrative rule. Regier also said he expected a resolution from the House to define that the Constitutional right to privacy does not mean the right to an abortion. While resolutions do not have much teeth, Regier said sometimes courts take into consideration is legislative intent and he said a resolution would clarify that. Regier said while the supermajority could bring a bill to put before voters a constitutional change to address the Armstrong decision, he hasn't seen one yet and doesn't know if one is coming. "We could," Regier said, adding that Republicans have varying views on how far limits on abortion should go. "No matter what we do in the Legislature, it's going to go back to the people especially in a constitutional amendment. It's going to be the people of Montana (that) are going to weigh in," Regier said. He added that Republicans are currently deciding if now is the time to ask Montanans to weigh in or if they look at making other changes in state law instead. Democratic priorities On the other side of the aisle, Democrats in the House and Senate are also bringing a slate of bills focused on abortion and reproductive health care. They said in recent interviews that they intend to introduce a spectrum of proposals all the way from trying to codify Armstrong to making menstrual products more accessible in an effort to generate a lot of conversation around reproductive health care. Sen. Ryan Lynch, D-Butte, is carrying a bill that intends to put Armstrong into state law. (The) status quo has been working for Montana and Montanans expect a right to privacy, Lynch said earlier this month. Given the political landscape with a Republican supermajority and how abortion legislation has fared in the Legislature before, Lynch said he would plan to make an appeal to fellow lawmakers and the public on his bills focused on the protection of rights. One of the things Republicans ran on was not drastically changing personal lives. And here we are, in this day and time, and the status quo is working for Montana. It's well defined in the Constitution. People expect the right to privacy and so we don't need to be responsive to national politics, Lynch said. Rep. Marilyn Marler, D-Missoula, will bring a bill to prevent people from being attacked on their way into a reproductive clinic, where oftentimes other types of care besides abortion are provided. Her primary care physician works at a location that also provides abortion care and was firebombed in the '90s. People have a right to privacy in their medical care and they shouldn't feel afraid to go to their doctor's office, Marler said earlier this month. Even if people do not believe in reproductive freedom, I think everybody should be able to get on board with not harassing people on their way to the doctor's office. Marler said she felt cautiously optimistic about the bills fate. Rep. Alice Buckley is taking another attempt at a bill that failed previously to allow for dispensing 12 months of birth control, up from the six-month limit. When we talk about allowing people to have the autonomy and freedom to make decisions about their own body, birth control is one of the components of that, Buckley said, adding that the bill meets a real, practical need. She said after conversations with Republicans about the idea, she feels optimistic. They've been like, Yeah, we should allow people to get access to adequate long-term birth control. No one wants an abortion. I think we're all trying to mitigate that as as an option. To give people the tools and the ability and the autonomy they need to to prevent that seems like a bipartisan issue," Buckley said. With a bit of an outlier bill, Rep. Emma Kerr-Carpenter, D-Billings, has legislation to make menstrual products freely available in at schools, shelters and other places. Im cautiously optimistic as well, Kerr-Carpenter said. This is one of those pretty common-sense things. This is about addressing the full spectrum of health care for folks, starting with periods and then all the way to disease and preventing pregnancy. Recently when trying to buy menstrual products, Kerr-Carpenter was carded. Apparently this is a conversation we need to be having. I was shocked. I had no idea what was going on, Kerr-Carpenter said. I would hate to be that kid who just got their first period and got carded buying menstrual products and how embarrassing that would be. Finally, a bill from Rep. Laurie Bishop, D-Livingston, would allow for patients with sexually transmitted infections to get medication for themselves and their partner in one visit. Democrats see the results from Legislative Referendum 131, which would have created a born-alive act, as an encouraging sign of where Montanans stand on the issue of abortion. Though the ballot measure was not about abortion access, much of the messaging was frequently associated with it. "Republicans keep talking about the mandate that they have with the supermajority; I guess they need to be reminded on the same day, that on the very same ballot, the voters upheld democratic values with regards to LR-131," Lynch said. Rep. Matt Regier last week said he didn't think LR-131, which he carried in the 2021 session, was a clean measure of where people are on the issue. "It was about (protecting) infants born alive from the procedure of abortion, but it was not the abortion debate. It was about what do we do with babies that are alive and viable," Regier said. He said when considering where Montanans are on the issue in light of a lack of quality public polling, he asks what his caucus hears from their constituents. "What is the temperature of the legislators here on the House floor? Because they are the ones that are at the doors and they're the ones that are hearing the issues directly from the people," Regier said. MONTICELLO A Springfield man has been found guilty of the 2021 murder of a Hammond man. According to an Illinois State Police news release, the judgement against Jerome Schmidt, 19, was handed down Tuesday in Piatt County Circuit Court by Judge Dana Rhoads. Schmidt waived his right to a jury trial, choosing instead to have Rhoades weigh the evidence against him during a bench trial. Schmidt was convicted of the Jan. 26, 2021, death of Michael Brown, 64, in his Hammond home. "They located a 64-year-old male victim with multiple gunshot wounds," the the news release stated. "The victim succumbed to his injuries at the residence." After a state police investigation, three suspects, including Schmidt, were identified and taken into custody. Sentencing has been set for Feb. 23. Updated mugshots from the Herald & Review Phillip Gehrken Laurel A. Szekely Charles M. McClain Joshua Fairchild Joshua C. Grant Marcus Pocrnich Emmanuel White James T. Johnson Raymond D. Graham Tony J. Pettis Colby J. Park Marcus D. Boykin Tyreco S. Garry Jessica A. Logan Travis C. Childress Derek M. Leonard Keith M. Lowe Dessica N. Jackson Andy R. McCulley Jr. Andy R. McCulley III Angela M. Schmitt Deandre M. Smith Eldon L.K. Borders Shawn L. Eubanks Jarquez A. Hobbs Velma L. Copeland Octavius R. Howse Matthew Anderson Jr. Jon A. Merli Matthew R. Anderson Scott L. Minix Delahn L. Amos Chancellor C. Embry Chelsea Brown Kevin Brown Shawanda Apholone Joseph Luckee Vincent Williams Jamie L. Golladay Derondi C. Warnsley Levron K. Hines Avery E. Drake Daniel R. Blazich Dessica N. Jackson Phillip M. E. Diggs Blake E. Merli Jason C. Herendeen Jeremiah D. Collins Deonte D. Smith Deoane A. Stone Carl E. Harvey II Ashley N. Jobe Lori J. Kramer Talmel T. Wilson, Jr. Dana E. Bond, Jr. Bryant K. Bunch Christopher L. Bailey Jennifer E. Bishop Anthony J Dickey Tevin C.S. Bradford Paul M. Folks Malik O. Lewis Demetric J. Dixon Leeandre M. Honorable Seth D. Maxwell Michelle R. Batman Shane A. Lewis Eric D. Currie Elijah K. Jones Felipe K. Woodley-Underwood Jessica E. Bartimus Aric L. Corsby Dylan R. Bunch Jr. Randall R. Burrus Tyler D. Jeffrey Timothy W. Smith Justin D. Tate Courtney Williams Clarence A. Ballard Seth M. Nashland Tracy T. Cunningham Colby J. Park Charles E. Gardner Jacquez L. Jones Terrence L. Calhoun Theater sets casino night DECATUR Lincoln Square Theater will host a Casino Night at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, at the theater. Doors open at 6 p.m. Set in the roaring 1920s style, the event will have a casino setting and atmosphere which will include poker, craps, spin-to-win and Roulette tables with professional dealers. Adults 21 years of age and older are invited. Reservations are recommended for this limited event. Tickets are $50 each and available at www.lincolnsquaretheater.com. For more information, contact 217-454-4583 or 217-433-7508. Mardi Gras fundraiser set DECATUR Decatur Catholic Charities will host its annual Mardi Gras fundraiser on Saturday, Feb. 18. The fundraiser will be from 6 to 11 p.m. at The Hall, 520 E. North St. in Decatur. Food from Macs Pigskin Diner will be served starting at 6:30 p.m., and live music from the Sushi Roll will start at 8 p.m. Tickets are $70 each or 10 for $700 and can be purchased online at https://cc.dio.org/events/decatur-mardi-gras-2023-fundraiser. We are looking forward to 2023 by developing new partnerships, providing optimal services, and continuing to serve a community that has generously supported our efforts to provide help and hope to those in need, said Amanda Honn, the new area director of Decatur Catholic Charities, in an early January news release. Decatur Catholic Charities offers a number of outreach programs including a food pantry, retail shop, medical assistance and legal services, Meals on Wheels and more. Residents can donate or find volunteer opportunities by contacting Honn via phone at 217-428-3458 or email at honn_dec@cc.dio.org. Class to teach photography DECATUR Rock Springs Center will offer a series of nature photography classes in February. Introduction to Digital Photography for Wildlife and Nature will be 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 1, 8, 14 and 22 and is free of charge. Decatur Camera Club member Joe Norton will be the instructor. Participants will learn how to use digital cameras with hands-on instruction and some cameras will be available for students to use if they don't have their own. For best results, plan to attend all four sessions. Register by noon the day before the first class at MaconCountyConservation.org. Youth service grants offered DECATUR Young Leaders in Action is offering grant applications for nonprofits, schools and churches to fund activities and programs to impact the mental health of youths in Macon County. Grant applications will be open until Feb. 28. To apply, visit the YLIA Facebook page or The Community Foundation of Macon County website at www.maconcountygives.org/YLIA. In order to qualify for this grant, an organization or group must have a project targeted toward mental health for students in grades K-12. Macon County nonprofit organizations, churches, and schools are qualified to apply. Youth-led groups are also eligible to apply for this grant. Contact YLIA Facilitator Temethia Joyner at tjoyner@maconcountygives.org. All applications must include the following details: Name and description of group or organization applying Contact phone number, email and address Demographic served by the organization Project name, description and purpose Requested amount of funding Timeframe necessary to start and complete the project Description and number of Macon County youth that will be impacted Proof of 501(c)3 status Applications must be submitted through email at tjoyner@maconcountygives.org in pdf format. Applications will be accepted up until midnight on Feb. 28. Utility offers scholarships PETERSBURG Menard Electric Cooperative is offering three scholarships. One is for $2,000 to a four-year college or university; one is $1,500 to a community college; and one is $1,500 to an accredited technical school. One applicant will be awarded a trip to the Youth to Washington Tour in June. Applications are online at wwww.menard.com/scholarships and are due by March 1. To apply, you should be a high school senior or equivalent who will graduate in 2023. The applicant's parent/guardian must be a member of and have their primary residence or business served by the Menard Cooperative. The cooperative serves communities in Cass, Logan, Macon, Mason, Menard, Morgan, Sangamon and Tazewell counties. DECATUR Decatur Catholic Charities will host its annual Mardis Gras fundraiser on Saturday, Feb. 18. The fundraiser will be held at The Hall, located at 520 E. North St. in Decatur, from 6 to 11 p.m. Food from Macs Pigskin Diner will be served starting at 6:30 p.m., and live music from the Sushi Roll will start at 8 p.m. Tickets are $70 each and can be purchased online at cc.dio.org/events/decatur-mardi-gras-2023-fundraiser. We are looking forward to 2023 by developing new partnerships, providing optimal services, and continuing to serve a community that has generously supported our efforts to provide help and hope to those in need, said Amanda Honn, the new area director of Decatur Catholic Charities. Decatur Catholic Charities offers a number of outreach programs including a food pantry, retail shop, medical assistance and legal services, Meals on Wheels and more. History of Mardi Gras History of Mardi Gras A medieval party Mardi Gras arrives in America Students on parade The Krewes come together A color palette forms The first queen of Mardi Gras Electric floats First African American king and queen of Mardi Gras The first televised Mardi Gras COVID-19 halts Mardi Gras DECATUR Dana Ray has returned to the Decatur City Council at least for a few months. Ray, the medical director of Crossing Recovery Services who served on the council from 2009 to 2019, was the choice of the six incumbent council members to replace former Councilman Bill Faber, who resigned earlier this month. She was unanimously appointed at the beginning of Tuesday's council meeting. There are just three-and-a-half months remaining in the term. Ray's appointment is temporary as she is not among the four candidates vying for three council seats in the April 4 election. "I don't have an agenda, but I'm not just want to be a placeholder either," Ray told Herald & Review after being sworn in. "And so I'm going to ask questions, I'm going to make sure that I'm doing what is in the best interests for the city of Decatur and for its residents. So this is a wonderful opportunity." Decatur Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe hinted earlier this month that her preference was to appoint someone with previous council experience due to the short turnaround, reasoning that there would be less of a learning curve. Moore Wolfe compiled a list of former council members dating back to the 1970s. Some had conflicts and others had moved away. Eventually, Moore Wolfe said Ray became the logical choice for the appointment. "She, quite honestly, is one of the best council people we have ever had in this community, in my opinion," Moore Wolfe said. "So, she'll be a great representative, even if it's just for a short time." Ray said following the meeting that "it didn't seem like I missed a beat" despite the three-year hiatus. Asked if she ever intends to run for public office again, Ray did not hesitate in answering "no." "This is just my opportunity to give back one last time ... in the form of city council," Ray said. Candidates in the April election include incumbent council members Dennis Cooper and Lisa Gregory, Macon County Board member Karl Coleman and former Councilman Pat McDaniel. Faber, who was not seeking reelection, cited his frustration with institutional barriers, such as the requirement that any item get four votes to be placed on the council agenda, as well as his lame duck status, as reasons for leaving. Ray had until recently been Crossing Healthcare's top doctor until transitioning to her new role at the federally qualified health center. She was recently appointed to the Illinois State Medical Board, which reviews complaints against doctors for violations of the state's Medical Practice Act and may recommend probation, suspension, revocation or other action of a medical license. DECATUR The former Woodrow Wilson Junior High School building is one step closer to meeting the wrecking ball. The Decatur City Council approved on Tuesday an intergovernmental agreement with the Decatur school board that will eventually result in the district obtaining ownership of the site from the city. The agreement allows the city to handle demolition of the former school building and sell the vacant property to the school district for half the cost of demolition. The council also approved a related item authorizing a $375,000 agreement with Blue Island-based M&O Environmental for asbestos abatement at the school site. The asbestos removal process is expected to take about 40 days with the city anticipating that the site will be ready for demolition in March. Bids are being solicited. Both items were approved unanimously. Council approval comes three weeks after the school board voted 5-1 to green light the intergovernmental agreement. The district will assume ownership from the city upon completion of demolition. "I think this agreement is a great step forward towards neighborhood revitalization and helping that area of our community," said Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe. "We are fortunate that we're able to work with this school board and their administration so that we're splitting the costs on this." The former Woodrow Wilson school was built in the 1930s and closed as a school in 1979. The building has been vacant for decades. The city of Decatur purchased the property at 1140 W. Sunset Ave. for $813 from the Macon County trustee in October. For most of the previous 16 years, the property had been owned by a New York-based limited liability corporation. The county recently possessed the building after its owners failed to pay property taxes for multiple years. Between asbestos abatement and demolition, city officials say the overall cost to be split between the city and school district could be around $1 million. Though some hoped the historic structure could be saved, council members indicated that it had simply fallen into too much disrepair. School district officials have also indicated that the building as-is would not meet their needs. School board president Andrew Taylor told the Herald & Review in December that the district has tentative plans for the site but did not offer more details. Taylor said on Wednesday that a provision in the agreement with the city provides the district "a safeguard" in case the cost of demolition, and the school district's half of that cost, is too high. Adding that provision is the reason the board declined to vote on the original agreement and instead held a special meeting to approve it on Dec. 27, after that had been added. "The agreement doesn't execute until demolition," Taylor said, though he added that once the city council approves a contract, the deal will move forward if it meets the criteria in the agreement. Because the asbestos abatement and demolition will likely take several months to complete, it's likely a new school board will be seated by the time the work is complete and the site is transferred to Decatur Public Schools. Taylor is not running for re-election and previous board member Regan Lewis resigned on Dec. 27. At this point, Taylor said, the district has not made a decision on a use for the property because it is still in the city's hands. "The ball's in the city's court," he said. Also at council: Food truck ordinance updated Less than a year after liberalizing the city's food truck ordinance, the council voted to significantly slash permitting fees for mobile vendors. The annual license fee previously set at $500 or $250 for vendors that operate an existing brick-and-mortar restaurant has been reduced to $50. Licenses issued after Aug. 15 will only be $25. Council members also opted to scrap completely a requirement that vendors provide access to restroom facilities within 300 feet during hours of operation. The changes come after food truck vendors expressed concerns about the relatively high fees to operate within city limits. Most large Central Illinois cities charge about $250 annually. Last May, the council approved an overhaul of the city's food truck ordinance that allowed mobile vendors to operate year-round with extended hours. The ordinance also loosened restrictions in downtown Decatur, where food trucks previously were only permitted during special events, festivals and celebrations. Video gaming moratorium The council approved a six-month moratorium on the issuance of new video gaming licenses. This pause, according to city officials, is a placeholder as staff works on more comprehensive ordinances to close loopholes in the city's alcoholic beverage code that are being abused by some business owners to add video gaming. According to the Illinois Gaming Board, there were 93 Decatur establishments fourth-most in the state with 542 video gaming terminals second-most in the state as of November. The moratorium does not apply to two applicants that submitted paperwork prior to Jan. 1. Staff writer Valerie Wells contributed to this story. 7 Decatur buildings that are no longer here Powers Grand Opera House Roach School Washington School Webster Hall Dante's Italian Village Stephen Decatur High School Decatur Public Library BLOOMINGTON A giant guitar made its way through Central Illinois on Monday, stopping in a number of communities on its journey to the under-construction Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66. The aptly named Gigantar, created by artist Shannon MacDonald, stretches 24 feet high and weighs about 1,600 pounds, according to Ron Romero, founder and executive director of the Joliet museum, which is slated to open later this year. The gargantuan instrument traveled there from its origin in New Jersey. Along the way, it made stops at various Route 66 communities, including Lincoln, Atlanta, Bloomington, Normal, Lexington and Pontiac. We want people to know that it exists, our museum exists, and we want to be inclusive of all of Route 66 that we can, Romero said. ... Theres a lot of great music history here in Illinois, throughout the whole state, and nobody has really recognized that yet, so we just got lucky. We came around at the right time. Romero described the museum as a grassroots, volunteer-driven effort. Its leaders formed a nonprofit in 2017, purchased a three-story building in downtown Joliet in 2019 and have been remodeling since then. They hope to open the first floor this spring. Where does one get the money for such an undertaking? Anywhere we can get it, really, Romero said, including grants, private donations and over 700 charter members from 33 states and three countries. And there is some hope that the massive guitar, fashioned after the museums logo, might help attract even more support. Weve been doing a lot of work on the inside, and we get thousands of cars that go by every day, but nobody knows whats happening inside, Romero said. Putting something like this in the front of the building will get peoples attention to stop by, look in, and hopefully donate and get involved. A celebratory Gigantar lighting ceremony is planned for 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 20, at the museum, 9 W. Cass St., Joliet. Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick is among the musicians expected to attend. For more information about the museum, visit roadtorock.org. Last Name Address 3517 Peach Tree Dr City State IL Zip Code 62711 Daytime Phone (217) 412-0375 LETTER Type Your Letter Illinois Democrat-led legislature is at it again. The House just passed a bill to ban the sale of assault weapons. Ugh. Additionally, the bill will require gun owners with weapons on the list to register them with the Illinois State Police. This horrible bill will likely be passed by the Senate and then signed into law by the governor. This bill is sold as something that will keep our neighborhoods safe. Really? How? I would like, no, demand our politicians to clearly explain how reducing the ability of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves improves safety. Criminals do not follow laws; hence, they are criminals. Exactly how many laws, and restrictions on our rights, need to be in place before a criminal complies? The answer is there will never be enough because, again, criminals do not follow laws. Bad people exist in the world. Bad people will always find ways, and means, to commit horrible violence. The answer is to prosecute them and not further step on the necks of the lawful citizen. If this bill gets signed into law, I believe it is incumbent on our leaders to publish statistics on how many criminals have registered their weapons with the Illinois State Police. How about statistics on how many gun shop owners lose their businesses and livelihoods? Maybe some statistics on how many criminals have now decided to stop committing violence with a gun. Well, Im not holding my breath. I hope the people of Illinois truly see what is being perpetrated by our lawmakers and continue to try voting them out of office! Remember, the only thing this bill accomplishes is to further restrict our gun rights as protected under the Second Amendment and nothing else. Listen closely and you can hear the slow suffocation of this right. Jim Gould, Springfield Those who honor or publicly express their admiration for former President George W. Bush or others in his administration who lied us into the Iraq war, are no better than those who continued to support Trump after he incited the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. I didnt spend years protesting the war from the very beginning to remain silent while war criminal sympathizers try to whitewash it now. And no one wants to admit they were wrong when so many of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis were killed or injured, but anyone who has yet to admit they were wrong to have supported the war needs to do so. My Iraq war letters and the ads I placed in the Herald & Review can easily be found in the digital archives. Just enter the date, page number, and then look for the title. You can find the most recent letters by clicking on the blue symbol at the top, left side of the main page, click on letters in the drop-down menu and scroll down to the title. There, youll also be able to read my comments. My ads warning you about being misled into the Iraq war are on Sept. 7, and Sept. 14, 2002, pages 12 and 15. Look for The Church of Social Justice. Here're 6 of 26 letters. Ill post the others in my comments. Dec. 7,2022, Dont honor war criminal Bush page A9 Oct. 20, 2021, Highlights from new documentary - page A4 April 27, 2021, G.W. Bush shouldnt be praised A4 Nov. 25, 2020, Another president will go unpunished - page A4 Sept. 6, 2018, Clarifying the record of John McCain page A5 Aug. 13, 2015, Many reasons to vote Democratic in 2016 - page A5 Ron Adams, Decatur Saudi Arabia, a leading global supplier of oil, is investing almost $200 billion in renewable energy at home and abroad, Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister told the World Economic Forums 2023 Annual Meeting in Davos on Tuesday. Our companies are active in 21 countries, deploying solar and wind energy and other sorts of renewable energy, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said. During a high-level panel titled Keeping the Lights amid Geopolitical Fracture, Prince Faisal emphasised the need for near-term stability, especially in the worlds energy markets. Geopolitical stability is "absolutely key" to global energy security, he said. In the meantime, we need to maintain a supply of traditional energies that are priced in a way that ensures stability and we will continue to address this in a responsible way, Prince Faisal added. Meanwhile, Bandar bin Ibrahim Alkhorayef, Saudi Arabias Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, participated in The Return of Manufacturing, where he highlighted the need for governments to foster innovation and co-investments in the industrial sector. You need the right regulatory framework to allow investment flow, he said. Alkhorayef also emphasised the need for the right infrastructure to enable factories of the future, as well as the importance of governments to proactively develop skilled human capital to drive sustainable growth. - TradeArabia News Service Its 6:20 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022, and I am watching history repeat itself. Just as Winston Churchill addressed Congress the day after Christmas in 1941, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is speaking before Congress in a time of crisis four days before Christmas in 2022. In 1941, it was a crisis caused by Adolf Hitler. Todays threat to democracy is the result of Putins invasion of Ukraine. By attacking Kiev, Putin is making the same mistake Hitler made when he bombed London instead of RAF airfields. It is now 6:37 p.m. and Zelensky is receiving a long, standing ovation just as Churchill did in December 1941. Churchill spent the Christmas holidays with FDR, unlike Zelenskyy, who flew back to Ukraine four days before Christmas. The people of Ukraine have proven they are just as brave as the British were during WWII. Furthermore the citizens of Ukraine now have their own Churchill, Zelenskyy. It is now 7:02 p.m. and the Speaker of the House and the Vice-President are displaying a Ukrainian flag from the speakers rostrum in the House of Representatives. Yes, history repeats itself. Robert Pickett, Decatur Vote now until noon on April 20th to support the businesses that you think are the best in the New Braunfels area. GRUNDY, Va. A man and woman from Southside Virginia are wanted by authorities in Buchanan County, following a series of events on New Years Day. Arrest warrants have been issued for Isiah Matthew Fuller, 38, of South Boston, Virginia and Mildred Virginia Odell Pacheco, 47, of Danville, Virginia, according to a written statement from the Buchanan County Sheriffs Office. Fuller has warrants charging him with four felony counts of solicitation, one count each of eluding law enforcement and leaving the scene of an accident both felonies plus four misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and one count of obscene sexual act in public. Pachecos warrants charge her with felony attempted malicious wounding and misdemeanor charges including four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and one count of obscene sexual act in public. The charges stem from events at the Double Kwik convenience store in Grundy on Jan. 1, where deputies with the Buchanan County Sheriffs Office responded to a fight call. The investigation discovered several cell phone videos of an obscene sexual act in the parking lot of the convenience store between a male and female were recorded by bystanders, some of whom were juveniles under 18 years of age. In turn, the two suspects were involved in an attempted altercation with bystanders. While responding to the scene, deputies passed a vehicle matching the description of a vehicle that had left the store and was involved in the altercation, police said. They attempted to conduct a traffic stop, according to the statement. Suspects attempted to elude the deputies request to pull over, according to the statement. A short pursuit ended with the crash of the suspected vehicle and the occupants ran from the crash scene. A search of the area was unsuccessful. Evidence was collected including, surveillance footage, cell phone video, eyewitness statements and items found during a search of the suspects vehicle. The Buchanan County Sheriffs Office is working with other jurisdictions to locate and apprehend the pair, according to the statement said. Fuller is also wanted in Halifax County, Virginia, for assault and battery and violation of protective order, according to the statement. HICKORY The Catawba Valley Wood Carvers Club will meet from 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, at the Klingspor Woodworking Shop at 856 21st Street Drive SE (Sweetwater Road) Hickory. Meetings are open to the public and to anyone interested in wood carving. Youths younger than 18 must be accompted by an adult. Minimum age is 14. The meeting will follow COVID protocols, and members and guests are encouraged to wear masks. The topic will be carving a Valentines Day heart pendant. For Januarys project, participants will carve a heart pendant from basswood. Carvers will need a knife and a half-inch (12 mm) no. 7 gouge and perhaps a no 2 if you have one. Carvers can make the carving as simple or as complicated that they want. This is designed to be completed during the meeting and any further embellishments can be done later. Bring your gloves and carving tools. Club business session will discuss upcoming events including the Charlotte Woodcarvers Showcase. Annual dues are due. Bring your check for $24. Members and visitors are encouraged to bring completed woodcarving projects to present in the show-and-tell portion of the program. Members are encouraged to donate items such as tools and wood for raffle prizes at the meeting. The club consists of about 40 Hickory-area woodcarvers of all skill levels, from hobbyist to professionals. The club meets on the third Saturday of each month at the Klingspor Woodworking Shop. Tangela Parker pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting death of a coworker. Parker appeared in Catawba County Superior Court on Wednesday to be formally arraigned for first-degree murder. Parker is charged in the shooting death of 51-year-old Michelle Marlow. During the arraignment, defense attorney Victoria Jayne told the court that Parker would be pleading not guilty. Parkers trial is scheduled for Sept. 11. Marlow was shot and killed at TCS Designs in Hickory on Jan. 13, 2021. Marlow, Parker and her husband, Eric Parker, were all TCS Designs employees. The Parkers were arrested in Arizona six months after the shooting in July 2021, according to police reports. Eric Parker is charged with accessory after the fact. Jayne filed a motion for additional discovery regarding the autopsy of Marlows body. The defense and prosecution agreed to an order for the complete autopsy file from the N.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The file includes photos, X-rays and medical tests that may have been taken during the autopsy, Jayne said while addressing Superior Court Judge Gregory Hayes. Jayne said the order will be modified. She said the original request was to have the autopsy records sent directly to her office. The modification will have the requested documents sent to the district attorneys office for the prosecution to provide to the defense. Marlows husband, Justin Marlow, was present in the courtroom. He was accompanied by Michelle Marlows father, Terry Bowman; her stepmother, Teressia Bowman; and other family members and friends. Michelles family could be seen crying during and after the hearing. Justin Marlow said he hopes Parker is found guilty and never sees daylight again. Terry Bowman sad the family will be in court every time Parker appears. Its going to be a long process, Justin Marlow said. Eric Parker Eric Parker was in court on Wednesday, as well. His case was continued per a request by the prosecution. He is scheduled to be back in court on May 1. This story was updated at 3 p.m. North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore announced committee assignments for the upcoming session, including several for the two representatives from Catawba County. Rep. Mitchell Setzer will be co-chair of the Finance and Insurance committees and serve as vice chair of the Ethics committee. He will serve as a member on the Energy and Public Utilities, Health, Local Government, University of North Carolina Board of Governors Nominations and Unemployment Insurance committees. I look forward to getting the peoples business done and if I can be of any help, people just need to reach out and Ill do the very best I can, Setzer said. Jay Adams, the other representative from Catawba County, will serve as co-chair of the Wildlife Resources Committee and vice chair of the Transportation Committee. He will be a member of the Appropriations, Transportation Appropriations, Commerce, Community Colleges and Local Government Land Use and Planning committees. Adams said he is pleased with his committee assignments. Regarding his position on the Transportation Committee, Adams said he is interested in looking into the factors that created delays and cost increases in the recently completed expansion of N.C. 16. I think that we could learn a lot from the delays and the overruns on that project and we could possibly take action to prevent that from happening on other projects, Adams said. He added: For me its a priority but its a pretty good-sized committee and theres a lot of things going on. Ill just make myself heard and well see if I can get some energy (behind it). Thats the way it all works. Women are disproportionately affected by the adverse effects of climate change," Cameron says. "In addition, mental health is often overlooked as a consequence of this environmental crisis. My research looks at anxiety, depression and trauma, that can result from climate change, especially in relation to water scarcity." Cameron is the principal investigator for a team that plans to build an entirely new theoretical framework that focuses on this area. "Studies show that violence against women increases following natural disasters, particularly human trafficking and sexual violence," she says. "Resource scarcity increases during floods, droughts, hurricanes, and extensive heat fluctuations, Cameron says. Pregnant women need water to nurse their children and for basic sanitary reasons, especially during birth and menstruation. The prevalence of malaria, HIV and other diseases also goes up. We want to understand how all of this is affecting women's mental health." Cameron has had a varied life experience. She has lived in more than 10 countries including Kenya, Ghana, Portugal and Morocco. Before starting her work in psychology, Cameron was a first-generation university student who earned degrees in biology and chemistry. Among her many careers, she taught high school science, worked as a professor at a university in Kenya and conducted whale research in the North Sea. It's no wonder that her perspective and concern are on a global scale. Cameron's studies have also garnered national attention. She has been invited to speak at the Stanford University Global Health Research Convening 2023 in January. The Feminist Africa Research Award is based at the University of Ghana. Cameron is in the first cohort to receive the award. It will fund several trips to Africa including field work in Namibia, Ghana and Zambia. "They had so many applicants," she says. "I'm the only climate researcher among them. I'm very honored to be chosen." Visit Camerons website to learn more about her diverse research and other work. Ann Street United Methodist Church 335 Ann St., Concord. Pastor: Rev. Randy L. Wall. In person and Facebook Live worship at 11 a.m. at Ann Street Church. Sermon: Lessons in Prayer: Moses. Scripture: Exodus 33:7-23. Bethpage United Methodist Church 109 Fellowship Ave. at West C Street, Kannapolis. Pastor: Rev. Gary McDonald. Christian education at 9 a.m. Worship at 10 a.m. As an act of caring for yourselves and others, you may choose to wear a mask during indoor worship; however, at this time, mask wearing is not required. Sermon: Raising the Barn (Second in a Series of Three). Scripture: Ephesians 4:7-16. Bogers Chapel United Methodist Church 1775 Flowes Store Road E., Concord. Pastor: Eric Shaver. Sunday school at 9 a.m. Worship in-person or on Facebook at 10 a.m. Opening Scripture: Psalm 27:1-9. Sermon: Team Building. Scripture: I Corinthians 1:10-18. Calvary Lutheran Church 950 Bradley St., Concord. Pastor: Rev. Debbie Frye. In-person worship at 8:30 a.m. (casual worship) and 11 a.m. (traditional worship with childrens church). Childrens area and nursery available. All services livestreamed and available anytime on the Calvary Lutheran Concord YouTube channel with easy access through the website at http://www.clconcord.org. Also on Sundays at 9:45 a.m. is Sunday school. All are welcome. Sermon: Rest in Me. Center United Methodist Church 1119 Union St. S., Concord. Pastor: Rev. Tony Allen. Sunday school for In Betweens and young adults at 9 a.m. Worship at 10 a.m. Nursery is provided during the worship service. Website is www.centerumcconcord.org. Join us for our service! Sermon Topic: Guess Where We Are Going? Scripture: Matthew 4:12-23. Crossroads Church 220 George W. Liles Parkway, Concord. Pastor: Lowell McNaney. Live worship streamed on Facebook, Crossroads Concord Church app or mycrossroads.co website at 9:30 a.m. and 11:11 a.m. Crown Pointe Baptist Church 703 Tennessee St., Kannapolis. Pastor: Rev. Doug Crawley. Sunday school at 9 a.m. Worship at 10 a.m. in the sanctuary, or view online at our Facebook page. Series: Rooted. Sermon: Prune. Scripture: John 15:1-5 ESV. Eastside Missionary Baptist Church 199 Elgin Drive, Concord. Pastor: Rev. Stephen Burrow. In-person services: Sunday school at 9:30 a.m. Worship services at 10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Recorded worship services and other information at EastsideMissionaryBaptist.org. You will be welcomed. Practice social distancing. Epworth United Methodist Church 1030 Burrage Road NE, Concord. Pastor: Rev. Bill Roberts. Sunday school at 9 a.m., followed by worship at 10 a.m. We welcome all to join us in person, or you can livestream or watch the recorded service on the church website at www.epworthnc.com. Sermon: The Power of God. Scripture: I Corinthians 1:10-18. Forest Hill United Methodist Church 265 Union St. N., Concord. Senior pastor: Rev. Mandy Jones. Associate pastor: Rev. Wes Judy. We are open for in-person worship. Contemporary worship is at 9 a.m. Sunday school/small groups is at 10 a.m. Traditional worship is at 11 a.m. Both the contemporary and the traditional worship services will also be livestreamed at foresthillumc.org or facebook.com/foresthillumc, in case you don't feel like being here in person. Harmony United Methodist Church 101 White St. NW, Concord. Pastor: Rev. Thad Brown. Sunday school is at 10 a.m. followed by our worship service in the sanctuary at 11 a.m. Sermon: Talking About Jesus #3, The Perfect Priest and Covenant. Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 14:26; Hebrews 7:23-28; Hebrews 8:1-6. We welcome you to join us in worship! Service is live on Facebook.com/HarmonyUnitedMethodistChurch. We welcome all who are unable to join us in person to worship with us online. For more information, call the pastor at 704-791-2883 or the church at 704-782-8237. Jackson Park United Methodist Church 715 Mable Ave., Kannapolis. Pastor: Laurie Knoespel. Adult Sunday school is at 9:30 a.m. Worship is at 10:30 a.m. Nursery will be provided during worship service. Kirkwood Presbyterian Church 900 Klondale Ave., Kannapolis. Pastor: Rev. Dennis B. Craft. Worship at 11 a.m. in church sanctuary on Sundays. No mask restrictions. Sermon: The Tech Train Wreck. McGill Baptist Church 5300 Poplar Tent Road, Concord, in-person services. Pastor: Rev. Steve Ayers. If you have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine, wear a mask. McGill will stream a worship service Sunday at 10 a.m. on www.facebook.com/mcgillbaptistchurch/ and on YouTube. The services will be live and also available on recording afterward. Third Sunday after the Epiphany. Sermon: Follow Me. Scripture: Psalm 27:1, 4-9; I Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23. Midway United Methodist Church 108 Bethpage Road, Kannapolis. Pastor: Rev. Craig Allen. Come join us on Sunday morning at 9 a.m. for Sunday school and 10:30 a.m. for worship. Our service is also livestreamed on the web at midwayunitedmethodistchurch.org or facebook.com/midwayUMC. Sermon: Changing the Choice. First Reading: Psalm 27:1, 4-9. Second Reading: Matthew 4:12-23. Suggested Hymns: TFWS 2074, Shout to the Lord; UMH 344, Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore. Mt. Mitchell United Methodist Church 6001 Old Salisbury-Concord Road, Kannapolis. Pastor: Joel Locklear. Sunday school is at 10 a.m. (adult and children classes). Worship is at 11 a.m. in person or on Facebook. Masks are optional and social distancing is recommended. If you have not taken the COVID vaccine, wear a mask. Sermon: Let Your Light Shine. Scripture: Mathew 5:13-20. Multiply Church Concord 150 Warren C. Coleman Blvd. N., Concord. Pastor: Rev. Douglas Witherup. 8:30 a.m. service held at 280 Concord Parkway S., Suite 15, Concord. Services at 150 Warren C. Coleman Blvd. N., are worship and sermon at 9:30 a.m. and worship and sermon at 11:15 a.m. New Gilead Reformed Church, ECO 2400 Old Salisbury-Concord Road. 9:40 a.m. is adult Bible study. 10 a.m. is Sunday school. 11 a.m. is worship in the sanctuary, also live on Facebook. Oak Grove Baptist Church 200 Sims Parkway, Harrisburg. Pastor: Rev. Franklin D. Watkins. 10 a.m. is in-person worship service and Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Sermon: Living Up in a Down World. Scripture: Psalm 73:15-28. Second Presbyterian Church 1578 Dale Earnhardt Blvd., Kannapolis. Pastor Sue Black, minister. Rev. Aaron Price, assistant pastor. Worship is at 11 a.m. in the sanctuary and on Facebook Live. Sermon: Trust in His Goodness. Scripture: Matthew 2:13-23. On Saturday, Jan. 21, Feeding Kannapolis Hunger begins at 9:30 a.m. in the church parking lot. It is drive-thru, with no questions asked. St. Johns Reformed Church 901 N. Main St., Kannapolis. Pastor: Rev. Chris King. Sunday school for all ages is at 9:30 a.m. Worship service is at 10:30 a.m. Website: www.ourstjohns.org. Email/phone: ourstjohns@gmail.com / 704-932-3656. Sermon: Biblical Requirements for Corporate Worship Part One. Scripture: Various Scripture texts. Wednesday, January 18 The Cabarrus Senior Center Photo Club is alive and clicking away. If you like taking photos, come join the members on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 1:30-3 p.m. at the Cabarrus Senior Center, 331 Corban Ave. SE, Concord, and share your photographic creativity. Whether you are a seasoned photographer or strictly amateur, all are welcome. Thursday, January 19 Epworth UMCs famous hot dogs and taco soup, 9:30 a.m. -2 p.m. 1030 Burrage Road NE, Concord. For free delivery call 704-786-5500. Friday, January 20 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846. Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, January 21 The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products. Monday, January 23 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Tuesday, January 24 TOPS #437 (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meets every Tuesday at 10 a.m. (weigh-in begins at 9:30 a.m.) at Lakeview Baptist Church, 2532 Lane St. Kannapolis. Visitors are welcome. A Red Cross blood drive will be held at Rocky River Presbyterian Church, 7940 Rocky River Road, 2 to 6:30 p.m. To book a time to give, visit RedCrossBlood.org, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, or call 1-800-RED CROSS. The Salvation Army Women's Auxiliary holds its General Meeting at The Salvation Army of Cabarrus County headquarters at 216 Patterson Ave SE, Concord, NC 28025. Socializing and refreshments begin at 9:30 a.m. prior to the meeting at 10.. The speaker will be Tanya Sumerel, owner/manager of "Honeysuckle Hill Bee Farm" in Concord. There will be pre-owned books available for sale, with proceeds to be used to buy new books for the Christmas Angel Tree project. Please plan to wear a mask. Wednesday, January 25 A Red Cross blood drive will be held at Elevation Church - Concord, 545 Concord Pkwy. N, Noon to 4:30 p.m. To book a time to give, visit RedCrossBlood.org, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, or call 1-800-RED CROSS. Thursday, January 26 Epworth UMCs famous hot dogs and taco soup, 9:30 a.m. -2 p.m. 1030 Burrage Road NE, Concord. For free delivery call 704-786-5500. Friday, January 27 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846. Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A Red Cross blood drive will be held at Unity United Methodist Church - Kannapolis, 8605 Unity Church Road, 2 to 6:30 p.m. To book a time to give, visit RedCrossBlood.org, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, or call 1-800-RED CROSS. Saturday, January 28 The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products. Hot Dogs at Center United Methodist Church at 1119 Union Street S, are offered on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Dine in and take out. Call in orders are welcomed. 704-782-1785. Monday, January 30 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Tuesday, January 31 TOPS #437 (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meets every Tuesday at 10 a.m. (weigh-in begins at 9:30 a.m.) at Lakeview Baptist Church, 2532 Lane St. Kannapolis. Visitors are welcome. A Red Cross blood drive will be held at Lowe's of Concord-#2981, 8670 Concord Mills Blvd., 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. To book a time to give, visit RedCrossBlood.org, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, or call 1-800-RED CROSS. Wednesday, February 1 The Cabarrus Senior Center Photo Club is alive and clicking away. If you like taking photos, come join the members on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 1:30-3 p.m. at the Cabarrus Senior Center, 331 Corban Ave. SE, Concord, and share your photographic creativity. Whether you are a seasoned photographer or strictly amateur, all are welcome. Thursday, February 2 Epworth UMCs famous hot dogs and taco soup, 9:30 a.m. -2 p.m. 1030 Burrage Road NE, Concord. For free delivery call 704-786-5500. Friday, February 3 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846. Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, February 4 The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products. Monday, February 6 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Tuesday, February 7 TOPS #437 (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meets every Tuesday at 10 a.m. (weigh-in begins at 9:30 a.m.) at Lakeview Baptist Church, 2532 Lane St. Kannapolis. Visitors are welcome. Thursday, February 9 Epworth UMCs famous hot dogs and taco soup, 9:30 a.m. -2 p.m. 1030 Burrage Road NE, Concord. For free delivery call 704-786-5500. Friday, February 10 The Concord Duplicate Bridge face-to-face games through Concord Parks and Recreation at Hartsell Recreation Center, 60 Hartsell School Road, at noon. Cost is $5 per player. You must have a partner and provide proof of vaccination. Heavenly Hot Dogs at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, 301 Mount Olivet Road, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free delivery for orders of more than $15, and takeout is available. Homemade desserts and chicken noodle soup are available. For more information, visit www.mtochurch.com or call 704-782-8846. Hot dogs at McGill Baptist Church, 5300 Poplar Tent Road, will be sold along with fried bologna and barbecue sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, February 11 The Piedmont Farmers Market is open from 9 a.m. to noon at 518 Winecoff School Road. It features lots of local produce, meat, flowers and other products. Got news or events? Does your community group or nonprofit agency have an upcoming event that would be of interest to the public? Email it to mplemmons@independenttribune.com. include_once "/home/jwreview/public_html/$theme/includes/sidebar.php"; ?> According to news reports, the 6-year-old accused of shooting a teacher at a Newport News, Virginia, elementary school is unlikely to be charged with a crime. That decision highlights something that's long been true: We just don't know what to do about violence by small children. The existence of violence by children, though rare, inverts the simplest fact of life: We adults are here to protect children. We are not supposed to have to protect people from children. Every act of violence committed by a small child is part tragedy, part horror. And looking at other incidents involving children under the age of 10, criminal prosecution has almost always been judged inappropriate. (One note: In what follows, I am discussing only child killers whose victims died, unlike the teacher shot in Newport News, who is reported to be recovering.) Let's begin in 1866, when British papers reported the "sad case" of a 5 1/2-year-old British boy named Samuel Case whose sister died after he struck her head with a brick. No charges were filed. The authorities deferred instead to the common-law principle holding that a child under 7 cannot be criminally responsible. Sometimes, when a very young child commits a violent act, we hold one of the adults around him responsible. In 1993, 6-year-old Dedrick Owens of Morris Township, Michigan, shot and killed a classmate. Although Michigan, like Virginia, specifies no minimum age of criminal responsibility, Owens was not charged. The uncle who owned the gun pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to prison. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. As far as I've been able to determine, only one child as young as the accused Newport News shooter has ever been actually tried for murder. In May of 1929, 6-year-old Carl Newton Mahan of Paintsville, Kentucky, used his father's gun to shoot and kill a playmate after an argument reportedly over a bit of iron both boys hoped to sell to a junk dealer. Within days of the crime, a local jury convicted the child of manslaughter. The nation was horrified. When the judge sentenced Mahan to 15 years in the reformatory (to "discipline" his "vicious tendencies"), an outcry ensued. Critics argued that the parents, not the child, should be on trial. Clarence Darrow declared: "They'll be trying cats, dogs and pigs next." Others compared the outcome to earlier eras when small children had been hanged. The boy's sentence was swiftly overturned on appeal. Mahan's case, like nearly every one on record, involves a child who kills another: a sibling, a classmate, a friend. But sometimes the victims are adults. The most notorious recent example is the case of Christian Romero, the 8-year-old Arizona boy who in 2008 was accused of using a .22-caliber rifle to kill his father and another man, a family friend. In exchange for the prosecution's promise to drop the charge of murdering his father, the boy pleaded guilty to negligent homicide for killing the second man. After a long debate over what should be done with the boy, he was left in the custody of his mother under "intense probation and psychiatric care." For very young killers, treatment has long been seen as preferable to imprisonment. In 1925, 7-year-old Alsa Thompson confessed to having poisoned several people, including her nanny (who'd died the year before) and her sisters. Psychiatrists who examined the child determined that although some of the stories were fabrications, others were likely true. One expert testified that Alsa was "a menace to society." Eventually she was placed "under the supervision of persons versed in the nursing of weakening minds back to health." What's clear in sifting through these reports is that in addition to not knowing how to respond to such events, we've also long struggled to know how to prevent them. Let's circle back to Carl Mahan, the 6-year-old convicted of manslaughter in Kentucky in 1929. Across the country, editors wondered what would make a child do such a thing. As if in answer, The Associated Press reported grimly that the boy's family did not go to church. Or was there some malign outside influence? Even back then, people blamed growing delinquency on Hollywood, but the boy's father assured reporters that Carl had never attended the "picture shows." include_once "/home/jwreview/public_html/templates/double_ads.asp"; ?> Nowadays, our response to such crimes often tends to align with our policy preferences. The problem is too many guns. No, it's the collapse of the nuclear family. No, it's violent music and video games. No, it's in the genes. I don't know what the answer is. But as we struggle to find one, let's remember that the horror of Newport News is nothing new and although they almost always create a huge media firestorm, such events are quite rare. Such cases captivate us and disturb us. We're horrified that a small child can kill, yet also repulsed by the idea that a small child would face trial not to mention imprisonment. I'm certainly not trying to suggest that violence by children is a phenomenon we have no choice but to accept. But let's recognize that we've been seeking an answer for a long, long time. Hertz and Uber have announced a European expansion to their North American partnership through which Hertz will make up to 25,000 electric vehicles (EVs) available to Uber drivers in European capital cities by 2025. A wide range of suitable EVs will be on offer, including vehicles from Tesla and Polestar. The partnership is a key element of Hertzs strategy to build one of the largest fleets of rental EVs in the world and Ubers industry-leading commitment to become a zero emissions platform in Europe and North America by 2030. The partnership in North America has already benefited tens of thousands of drivers on the Uber platform. To date, nearly 50,000 drivers have rented a Tesla through this program, completing more than 24 million fully-electric trips and over 260 million electric miles. The European expansion of the partnership will begin in Hertz Europes London base in January 2023 and aims to expand to other European capitals, such as Paris and Amsterdam, throughout the year and beyond. Further details will be announced in due course. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO, said: As the largest mobility platform in the world, we know that our impact goes beyond our technology. Climate change is the most urgent global challenge which we must all tackle together now is the time to accelerate. Expanding our partnership with Hertz into Europe will significantly boost our transition to zero-emissions, helping drivers reduce running costs and cleaning up urban transport. We aim to become a 100% electric platform across Europe by 2030. Stephen Scherr, Chief Executive Officer at Hertz, said: Hertz continues to accelerate the drive toward sustainability and our partnership with Uber significantly advances that goal. By making EVs available to rideshare drivers, we will not only contribute to reducing emissions in European cities but also expand opportunities for people to experience the benefits of electrification. As Hertz invests to create one of the largest EV fleets globally, our Uber partnership will ensure that we continue to lead in the rapidly-changing mobility landscape across Europe. TradeArabia News Service include_once "/home/jwreview/public_html/$theme/includes/sidebar.php"; ?> In the house where I grew up, President Richard Nixon was a villain. My parents voted against him every opportunity they got, and we all cheered when he resigned during his second term, flying off in ignominy from the White House lawn to a life outside the public eye. That he was a criminal, a warmonger, a bigot, a vicious redbaiter, a threat to the Constitution these were unquestionable truths. So for me, a recent visit to the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, was a head-turning, mind-bending experience that challenged my assumptions and forced me to test my long-hardened opinions against a very different narrative. Some people don't like having their assumptions challenged. I decided to embrace it. I didn't go to the museum because of this month's historic anniversaries. But for the record, January 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords that led Nixon to withdraw American troops from Vietnam, and the 50th anniversary of the trial of the Watergate burglars before U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica. Vietnam and Watergate were central issues of my political formation. I was young in the Nixon years only 16 when he resigned in 1974 but I marched against the war and followed the Watergate hearings on television, with appropriate revulsion. At the museum, I knew I'd be entering an alternate universe. One in which the same facts are presented but somehow seem different, where the story has subtly shifted so you're caught off guard and forced to scramble to find the truth. Like watching Fox News after years in front of MSNBC. The Nixon presented by the museum is one who needs to be judged "on nothing less than his entire life and career," as President Bill Clinton put it at Nixon's funeral in 1994. The museum's Nixon is not innocent or blameless, yet the portrait painted is fundamentally warm, admiring and forgiving. This Nixon is complex, a man of vision, a tragic hero brought down by his own flaws. I wandered through the exhibits, learning about his days in the Navy, and about his courtship of his future wife, Pat. He seemed downright human. But I couldn't help wondering: Was I being played? Surely they were right about Nixon's successes: He made an extraordinary, historic visit to China in 1972 that laid the groundwork for normalized relations between the U.S. and that country after more than 25 years. It was so unexpected and transformative that it spawned a metaphor: the "Nixon-to-China moment." Later that year he met in Moscow with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, setting the stage for arms control agreements and a new era of detente in the midst of the Cold War. Remarkably, it was Nixon a Republican who created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Endangered Species Act. He signed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration into existence. Frankly, it is difficult to imagine Republicans today working across the aisle on such important projects. And given today's vituperative, self-destructive politics, it's hard not to be swayed by his words at his first inauguration: "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another." God knows President Donald Trump never said anything so thoughtful. But each step I took through the museum was a process of confronting and testing my own beliefs and prejudices, pitting the facts as I understood them against those being presented. Yes, Nixon inherited the Vietnam War from his Democratic predecessors and eventually ended it. But he also bombed urban areas, mined harbors and presided over a cross-border troop incursion into Cambodia. It shouldn't have taken him five years to end the war. Nixon was recorded on the famous White House tapes saying Washington "is full of Jews," and "most Jews are disloyal" and "you can't trust the bastards." But if those recordings were mentioned at the museum, I missed them. Instead, in the exhibit on the tapes, I was able to listen to him congratulating the Pittsburgh Pirates on their 1971 World Series victory. I couldn't help but think about Nixon's cheerleading role in the McCarthy era a period of blacklists, loyalty oaths, the naming of names and the persecution of people for their political beliefs. What about the Republicans' cynical "Southern strategy" to win over white voters in the South using coded language to play on racial fears? And finally, Watergate. In the run-up to the 1972 campaign, Nixon's cronies burgled the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, engaged in "dirty tricks" and campaign finance abuses. They targeted political enemies, including weaponizing the IRS against adversaries. The museum, to its credit, had a relatively thorough exhibit on that mind-boggling scandal and the president's disgraceful role in the cover-up. In the end I didn't find my core beliefs upended or my view of the world shattered. Nixon is still a villain in my mind. But I came away with a more nuanced view and a better understanding of how others might see the man differently. I could recognize his successes. And I was served a well-needed reminder that people (even those as polarizing as Nixon) are rarely entirely good or bad. Which brings me back to my main point, which is not to pick a fight about Nixon's failures and virtues. My point is that, for me at least, it is important to remain open to argument, to challenge my own preconceptions and to listen to alternative views with an open mind. Sometimes it helps me ratify what I already believe. Sometimes it doesn't. I usually enjoy it, but sometimes it's disconcerting. But of this I'm sure: Talking only to people within our bubbles, allowing ourselves to be governed by polarization, siloization, demonization and confirmation bias that's intellectually lazy. Hate Nixon by all means, if that's where the facts lead you. Or don't, if you think his accomplishments are commensurate with his failures. But hear each other out. (COMMENT, BELOW) Nicholas Goldberg Los Angeles Times/(TNS) Nicholas Goldberg is an associate editor and op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. include_once "/home/jwreview/public_html/$theme/includes/sidebar.php"; ?> This week, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: "While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement." This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as "equity," widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies which deserve redress with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure, to be cured with social engineering. This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It's bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It's bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government. SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY JWR UPDATE. IT'S FREE. Just click here. Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco's reparations committee simply cutting checks has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? include_once "/home/jwreview/public_html/templates/double_ads.asp"; ?> Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder. And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor's degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black. It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won't fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one. (COMMENT, BELOW) Ben Shapiro, bestselling author and syndicated columnist, first went into syndication after appearing in JWR. This column has written previously about the fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. When confronted with more than 2 million illegal border crossers overwhelming U.S. authorities on the border last year and 250,000 more crossers last month indicates the figure will be even higher this year Republicans want to find a way to stop, or dramatically reduce, the flow. Democrats want to accommodate it. That is not an exaggeration, and it is not an oversimplification. Just read what President Joe Biden said last week in Mexico City after his summit with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "We cannot wall ourselves off from shared problems," Biden said, taking a veiled swipe at the infinitely more effective border policies of his predecessor, President Donald Trump. "People ... have to make it through jungles and a long journey to the border. And many are victimized, not only in terms of what they have to pay but victimized physically in other ways. And so, we're trying to make it easier for people to get here, opening up the capacity to get here, but not have them go through that godawful process." "We're trying to make it easier for people to get here." Could the president have made his position any clearer? Indeed, Biden's appointees at the Department of Homeland Security have created a new way, an app called "CBP One," in which would-be illegal crossers can make an appointment to cross into the United States and have U.S. officials waiting to wave them through. "We're trying to ... incentivize a safe and orderly way" to cross into the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said recently, "and cut out the smuggling organizations." SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY JWR UPDATE. IT'S FREE. Just click here. Biden spoke after a four-hour visit to El Paso for which federal and local officials cleaned up the city's streets, where thousands of illegal crossers have slept in freezing temperatures, so the president would not have to witness the unpleasant results of his policy. But a week or so after Biden came through, another top Democratic official, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, visited El Paso and got a look at what is going on every day. Adams met with a group of illegal border crossers and said he wants the government to make work permits more quickly available to them. On the other hand, he made it clear he did not want them to work in New York. "There is no room in New York," Adams said. "New York cannot take more. We can't. No city deserves what is happening." To date, New York has received about 40,000 immigrants, coming in buses mostly from Texas and Colorado, where Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) have adopted policies of sending some immigrants elsewhere in the country. Oscar Leeser, El Paso's Democratic mayor and Adams's host, has also sent immigrants to New York. Adams's statement that "there is no room in New York" stood in stark contrast to the city's policy as a sanctuary for immigrants, illegal or legal. The city prides itself on welcoming and providing support to immigrants without regard to their legal status. During the Trump presidency, in particular, New York officials sometimes heaped praise upon themselves for defying Trump's efforts to enforce the nation's immigration laws. Adams was part of that. In April 2019, when he was the borough president of Brooklyn, he tweeted: "Make no mistake, New York City will ALWAYS stand up to Donald Trump and call out his cynical plots to divide our country. To anyone in the world fleeing hatred and oppression, the ultimate city of immigrants wants you to remember: you're ALWAYS welcome here." That was then. Now, after bearing a tiny fraction of the burden illegal border crossers impose on border cities and towns, Mayor Adams says, "There is no room in New York. New York cannot take more." What about all those noble-sounding words about sanctuary, about New York serving as a beacon to immigrants? It appears the arrival of 40,000 illegal border crossers has done some serious damage to those deeply held principles. Reality can do that sometimes. (COMMENT, BELOW) While many of us will remember the last year as a time when superstar authors published highly anticipated follow-ups think Michelle Obama, Jennifer Egan and Hanya Yanagihara it was also a banner year for emerging voices. Bay Area authors of color, led by Oaklands Leila Mottley, whose powerful first novel is being translated into 15 languages, made splashy debuts were still talking about. Here are four Bay Area authors to watch. Leila Mottley, 'Nightcrawling' Nightcrawling, Leila Mottleys book about a Black girl in East Oakland who gets caught in a storm of poverty, sex trafficking and corrupt cops, blew the literary world away when it came out in June 2022. Dave Eggers called it an electrifying debut. Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club, making it an instant bestseller. And the book was long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize, making Mottley the youngest author ever to receive the honor. Making Oprahs Book Club was the shock of a lifetime, says the 20-year-old Oakland native. It took months for the reality to set in. Despite the media frenzy, which included appearances on late night talk shows with Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers, the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate remains grounded in the day to day of her real life. Most young adults her age are working or going to college. She writes. Its really not different than any other passion or pursuit, she says. Before becoming a famous novelist, Mottley worked as a preschool substitute teacher. After graduating from high school, she spent the summer of 2019 writing Nightcrawling. Following a 13-way bidding war, the book was sold at auction to Knopf. Mottley was 18, midway through her second semester at Smith College, when she inked the deal. The book follows Kiara, a 17-year-old high school dropout who falls into sex work while struggling to pay rising rent for herself and her older brother, who clings to visions of rap stardom. Their father is dead; their mother, absent. The book is inspired by Mottleys research into police sexual violence, including a 2015 high-profile sex abuse case, in which members of the Oakland Police Department were charged with sexually exploiting a minor. Mottley was 13 when the case broke and remembers how the coverage was focused on the officers and not on the implications for the young girl. I wanted the story to touch on vulnerability within Black girlhood and link that closely to what it means to be harmed by those who are supposed to protect us, she says. Nightcrawling will be released in paperback this spring. Mottley is currently working on her second novel and will be publishing her first collection of poetry, also from Knopf, in the next year. Jane Kuo, 'In The Beautiful Country' In San Carlos, California author Jane Kuos novel, In the Beautiful Country, (Quill Tree, $17), a lyrical, moving debut written in verse about family, struggle and belonging, the narrator is a 10-year-old Taiwanese immigrant named Anna. And shes experiencing a beautiful country the Chinese name for America that is difficult, to say the least, and nothing like she dreamed. I experienced a lot of the stuff she experienced in school, says Kuo, who immigrated with her parents to northeastern Los Angeles in 1979. I was subjected to racist taunts, bullied for wearing high-water pants and teased for my lunch. The book, which came out in June, mirrors parts of Kuos life. Anna lives in a one-bedroom apartment with her parents and spends her days after school helping out at the flailing fast-food restaurant they poured their savings into. The novel is set in the small town of Duarte in Los Angeles County, where Kuos own family settled. Like them, Annas family endures overt racism, vandalism and feelings of alienation within their own Asian American community. A career nurse, Kuo started writing the middle grade novel in 2016 at the height of the deep racial tensions that surfaced during the presidential election. As an Asian American, I remember asking myself, Do I feel welcome here?' Kuo says. From a cultural context, the book is really a family story with a lot of nostalgia. A fan of adult memoirs, Kuo didnt set out to write a middle grade novel in verse. But once she found Annas voice vulnerable, insightful and courageous the 20,000 words flowed seamlessly from one poetic chapter to the next. At times heartbreaking and desperate Id like to have friends/but Ill settle/for being left alone the book is ultimately about hope and finding advocates, such as Terry, a grocery store clerk who embraces the family. Its about making a home. There really was a Terry and (her husband) Don, and they really did take me to Disneyland, she says. What motivated these people to be so kind to us? Find out this summer, when Kuos follow-up, Land of Broken Promises, is released. It takes place a year later, when a more confident and stable Anna heads to sixth grade. Joanna Ho, 'The Silence that Binds Us' Palo Alto, Californias Joanna Ho has always been driven by a passion for equity and representation. The Taiwanese-Chinese American writer spent years in education, first as an English teacher and later as vice principal of East Palo Alto Academy, a high school where 85% of the students are Latinx. Shes developed holistic, alternative-to-prison programs that fuse education with residential living. Even her journey as a childrens book author started from a place of inclusivity. I was looking for holiday books with diverse characters for my newborn and couldnt find anything, so I decided to write one, recalls Ho, the author of three childrens books, including the New York Times bestselling Eyes That Kiss in the Corners, a tender story about self-acceptance. I believe all kids need to see themselves and others in books. So its no surprise that Hos debut young adult novel is a poignant call to action. Released in June, The Silence That Binds Us (Harper Teen, $18) is about a grief-stricken Asian American teen named May who loses her Princeton-accepted brother to suicide. In the aftermath, she contends with racist accusations hurled against her parents for putting too much pressure on him. The Silence That Binds Us was inspired by Hos experiences as an educator and her research into the high rate of suicide amid Palo Alto teens, as well as interactions in the community, once at a dinner party of predominantly white guests and another time in a ride-sharing car. Both times, people said the same thing: that because Asian families put too much pressure on their kids, it makes it too difficult for other students to compete. Im literally so invisible, people dont see me as theyre saying these things, she says. The book is timely in the public perspective, but the racism and invisibility is something Asian Americans have been dealing with for a long time. Ho is hopeful that change is possible. She is inspired by the insightful, hopeful, observant youth around her, similar to May, who goes against her parents advice to keep her head down amid the hate and instead publishes her opinions about these stereotypes and ultimately mobilizes support and solidarity against the racist accusations. She takes back the narrative, and thats very powerful, she says. Ho, who is now a librarian at East Palo Alto Academy, has nine books coming out in the next three years, including her first middle-grade novel and One Day, a picture book about a mothers hope of positive masculinity for her baby boy. One Day is due out in March. Lio Min, 'Beating Heart Baby' In the young adult novel, Beating Heart Baby (Flatiron Books, $18), Oakland music journalist and author Lio Min cleverly weaves the worlds of anime and music into a coming-of-age story about queer teen love. The novel, Mins first, centers around two Los Angeles boys who find a sense of belonging in their high school marching band. Theres Santi, the artist and new kid who is navigating a world without his internet best friend. And Suwa, the prickly prodigy who is trans and working through a tumultuous relationship with his dad. Both Asian boys are trying to find themselves when they find each other, and it is a shared history they didnt know they had that provides the biggest, sweetest reward for readers of this lush, page-turning debut. Along the way, the novel explores issues of grief, abandonment and emotional abuse with hope and tenderness. Its early seeds go back to a summer Min spent working as a camp counselor in Oakland and the illuminating interactions they had with kids as young as 5. Min, who identifies as trans and uses the pronouns they/them, says they wrote the book for all youth, not just those living in marginalized identities. I want all kids to live in a world that is a little more tender and accepting than the one we live in right now, they say. You can only push yourself to the future, if you can imagine there is a place for you in there. In the novel, which is set up as an album, with track numbers as chapters with an A-side and a B-side, Santi and Suwa find their places among the Sunshower marching band community, which, like the entire book, is filled with a diverse cast. There are trans, biracial and pansexual characters as well as Black female role models, like Santis loving guardian, Aya. Min developed the characters and overall book as a novelization of shonen anime their second love, after music but with an element of inclusivity that they felt has long been missing from the genre, which is marketed to adolescent males. BOOK TALK: Bookmarks will present the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer on tour for his new book, The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 20 at Calvary Moravian Church at 600 Holly Avenue Northwest in Winston-Salem. This is a free event. A book ticket option is available that includes attendance to the book talk, a hardcover copy of The Nazi Conspiracy and a front-of-the-line signing pass. For tickets, visit bookmarksnc.org/BradMeltzer. Bojangles is getting into the alcohol business but not at its restaurants. Bojangles and Appalachian Mountain Brewery (AMB) have announced a partnership to produce Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea to be distributed through retail supermarkets and convenience stores. AMB is a craft brewery established in 2013 and based in Boone. Bojangles, based in Charlotte, now has about 800 restaurants known for its fried chicken, biscuits and sweet tea. This collaboration is something sweet, said Jackie Woodward, the chief brand and marketing officer for Bojangles. Partnering with AMB to craft our Legendary Iced Tea into a hard tea for fans of legal drinking age was a natural fit, and the team poured passion into the entire process. We cant wait for fans to try it! The hard tea is expected in stores in March. It will be sold in individual 16-ounce cans and in 12-packs of 12-ounce cans. Participating retailers will include Circle K, QT, Sheetz, Spinx, Harris Teeter, Ingles, Lowes, Walmart, Food Lion and others in North and South Carolina. AMB couldnt be more excited to collaborate with such an iconic Carolina company, said Nathan Kelischek, AMBs founder and brewmaster. Bojangles sweet tea is a staple across the South and has earned its legendary title. AMB has always been dedicated to making the highest quality craft beer and cider, and the same can be said for this authentic Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea. We are excited to continue to share our craft in innovative, new ways. Annie Brown Kennedy, the first Black woman to serve in the N.C. General Assembly and a prominent local attorney, died Tuesday of natural causes at her Winston-Salem home, a family member said. Kennedy was 98. She was a wonderful mother, said Harvey Kennedy, one of her sons. She was a trailblazer. Harold Kennedy pointed to his mothers legislative career and other achievements. Annie Kennedy was the second African American female attorney in North Carolina and the second female attorney to practice law in Forsyth County, Harold Kennedy said. A native of Atlanta, Annie Brown Kennedy received a bachelors degree in economics from Spelman College and a law degree from Howard University School of Law, according to her biography. In 1954, Annie Kennedy passed the N.C. Bar Examination, and she began practicing law as a sole practitioner, according to her biography. Annie Kennedy was licensed to practice law in Georgia and North Carolina as well as in many federal district and circuit courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1955, her husband, Harold Kennedy Jr. joined her in the practice of law, forming one of the first husband and wife partnerships in the state. Annie Kennedy was a partner in the Winston-Salem law firm of Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy and Kennedy, where she practiced law with two of their three sons, Harold Kennedy III and Harvey Kennedy. The Kennedys law firm specialized in family law and civil litigation. The firm handled many civil rights cases, including racial and sexual discrimination and sexual harassment cases, according to Annie Kennedys biography. Annie Kennedy served as the first African-American female presidential elector in 1976 for North Carolina, the year that Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president, Harvey Kennedy said. Three years later, Gov. Jim Hunt appointed Annie Kennedy to the N.C. House, District 29, replacing Judson D. DeRamus Jr., who became a Superior Court judge. I remember her well, Hunt said of Kennedy on Tuesday. I was very proud to appoint her because I had seen the work she had done in Winston-Salem. Hunt described Annie Kennedy as a real pioneer in terms of African American leadership in one of the major cities in North Carolina. The former four-term governor said he appreciated Kennedys focus on education, children and equal opportunity. She was a real scrapper when it came to getting opportunities for people, Hunt said. She made no bones about that. I was real proud to have an opportunity to appoint her. Annie Kennedy was sworn into state office in November 1979. We are going to continue to work to break down barriers, the Winston-Salem Journal reported at the time, quoting her at her swearing-in ceremony. Were doing a little better, but how long will it be before we dont have to say that this person is the first or the second or what have you? In 1980, Annie Kennedy ran unsuccessfully to keep her seat in the N.C. House, according to her biography. Two years later, Kennedy was elected to N.C. House, representing the 66th district, which included part of Forsyth County. As a legislator, Annie Kennedy worked for passage of paid family leave and she successfully prevented other legislators from shutting down the nursing program at Winston-Salem State University, her son said. Just think about how many nursing students graduated from Winston-Salem State since the 1980s to the present time, Harvey Kennedy said. Think about the impact that she had. Annie Kennedy also worked to draw the district designed to elect Black candidates to Congress, the N.C. General Assembly, the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners and the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education, the Journal previously reported. Annie Brown Kennedy was quite the mentor to me, and I cherished the opportunity to work with her, said U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, D-12th. She took me aside when I first came to the state House, and was the only other Black woman there at the time. She helped guide me, and I admired her because she was a brilliant woman, a brilliant attorney and the consummate stateswoman, Adams said. She was always genuine, kind and supportive. She wasnt loud in her speaking, but always spoke with strength. She leaves a tremendous legacy, not only as a giant in Winston-Salem and North Carolina politics but also as the greatest mentor a new legislator could have, Adams said. My prayers and thoughts are with her sons and her family. In the N.C. House, Annie Kennedy served as the chairwoman of the House Judiciary I Committee and the Economic Expansion/Labor Relations and Employment Committee, her biography says. At age 69, Kennedy decided to step down from her legislative seat after serving 13 years in the General Assembly, Harvey Kennedy said. Annie Kennedy also received numerous awards and honors, including being a 2002 recipient of the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement. The American Bar Association presented Kennedy with that award. Retired Judge Denise Hartsfield of Winston-Salem praised Annie Kennedy for her achievements, pointing to her work as a legislator. There were very few women down there (the General Assembly) at that time, Hartsfield said. There were even fewer African American women down there. Just being a woman in the General Assembly was monumental. Hartsfield, a Spelman College graduate, said Annie Kennedy wrote a reference letter for her when she applied to Spelman. The Spelman graduates in the area are saddened by her death, Hartsfield said. We really appreciate all of the things she did. Happy Wednesday. If youre eyeballing a new whip, as the saying goes, get one made today; the slide toward the weekend begins at the shift change. Speaking of sticker shock, a recent trip through an unnamed grocery - which chain doesnt matter, it could be any of them - shocked the system. Wed heard all the chirping about the skyrocketing price of eggs and seen plenty of semi-funny memes. My favorite came from a (Grateful) Dead-head in which a would-be concert goer was offering to swap eggs for tickets. Dont lowball me, man. I know what I got here, reads the caption over a dozen Grade As. That said, physically seeing the prices caused a near spit take. The low end, weirdly, was $4.59 for organic larges; the high end was $8.55 for free-range brown eggs. The shock wasnt due to infrequent grocery runs. Rather, it was because we have access to a secret stash: a family friend who keeps hens that typically lay more eggs than two people can eat. Thats right: suburb-fresh brown eggs, for free, straight from the coop to the frying pan. (Not to be indelicate, but unlike the waxed, bleached and polished grocery variety, these require a thorough washing by hand. For obvious reasons.) Anyhow, the delight of opening the door to find fresh eggs caused us to wonder about the rules for setting up your own coops. Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem each allow residents to keep chickens - with certain rules and regulations, naturally, about set-backs, the size of coops and the number of birds. And all specify hens only; roosters - not unlike human men - are dirtier, louder and prone to fighting. Greensboro, for example, has more or less always shown leeway. The city, per its ordinances, allows residents to keep chickens and other poultry on residential property. (The guess here is that ducks are OK, turkeys might require a quick call to city staff.) Winston-Salem, however, has been more persnickety, only moving in 2022 to loosen regulations that really werent much of a hassle anyhow. I see chickens roaming the street, said Councilwoman D.D. Addams during that debate. But I dont think the number one priority in this city is chickens. Amen. That said, there can still be issues providing protein for the family. Exhibit A was found just over the county line in Bermuda Run, where a homeowners tidy backyard coop caused one cowardly neighbor to squawk loudly on Next Door - the electronic gathering place for Karen and her ilk. The guess here is that the whiner(s) didnt know a hen from a gamecock and was worried about extracting the maximum price for a house. Further, a large majority of other residents retorted rather loudly: Mind Your Own Business. And as it turns out, the suburban farmers new neighbors turned out to be a young couple with small children who love watching the chickens in their well-appointed run with doors. The moral of the story is this: If you just cant bear forking over $5 or $6 for a dozen eggs, grow your own. Or sidle up to a neighbor who does. Now, Two (other) Things for your morning. Slow-speed chase BOONE - As long as were talking about farm-stuff, did you catch the goings-on in Watauga County? According to the Boone Police Department, a man on a stolen tractor - yes, tractor - led officers on a slow-speed chase through town. 911 calls about a man on a tractor attempting to hit pedestrians and other vehicles came in. Police found the man, who had indeed struck a vehicle, a Dumpster and a church. Chief Andy LeBeau reported that officers attempted to use stop-sticks - pronged devices laid across the roadway that puncture tires - that were not terribly effective on a tractor. Officers who were concerned about a security at a nearby elementary school, with the chiefs say-so, shot out the tractors tires. The man, identified as Ronnie Hicks, pulled a knife but was subdued with the aid of a taser. There was a police chase this morning in Boone involving a John Deere tractor that lasted for more than an hour and topped out at 20 mph and YES THERE IS VIDEO https://t.co/IFZxSZNR2i pic.twitter.com/GAIlzEkfvP Jeremy Markovich (@deftlyinane) January 17, 2023 It just doesnt seem like this should be happening in Boone, Le Beau wrote on Facebook. Additional details can be found here: https://www.townofboone.net/206/Police Help wanted GREENSBORO - In a sign of the times, the Guilford County Schools are moving to hire a cadre of mental-health counselors over the next five years. The school system recently received a $15 million grant to bolster its thin ranks of psychologists and counselors, officials said, and hope to hire enough to provide faster for all its schools. Recent surveys have indicated that suicidal thoughts, even among children, have increased. Its no wonder with the ever-present specter of gun violence on campus. And no one asked, but heres hoping that prosecutors in Virginia throw the entire statute book at the parent whose careless handling of a legally purchased firearm led to a 6-year-old shooting a teacher. Counsel that child, and make an example out of that parent. Atrium Health and Wake Forest University School of Medicine broke ground Tuesday on a planned $1.5 billion Charlotte innovation district that has a 20-acre medical campus as an anchor. Construction within the 40-acre district is slated to begin shortly, with a planned 2024 opening. The medical school campus is expected to begin classes on the new campus in 2025. There are plans to start the first class with 48 students, with a goal of up to 100 students in future classes. The ceremony occurred on Dr. L. Ebony Boulwares first official day as dean of the Wake Forest medical school. Boulware succeeded Dr. Julie Ann Freischlag, who had served as medical school dean since July 2017. Freischlag announced in October she would step down to concentrate on her remaining duties as chief executive of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and chief academic officer of Atrium. Boulware also is serving as vice chief academic officer and chief science officer of Atrium. She is the first Black dean of the medical school. The district is branded as The Pearl by Atrium. The name was chosen in large part to pay homage to a park in the midtown Charlotte area formerly known as Brooklyn, which served as a city within a city for the African-American community until urban development projects overtook the area in the 1950s and 1960s. The campus will be at the corner of Baxter and South McDowell streets adjacent to Interstate 277. It will be about a 10-minute walk from the main Atrium Health hospital campus in Charlotte. The ceremony comes about six weeks after Atrium, parent of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, completed on Dec. 2 its mega-merger with Advocate Aurora to form the nations fifth-largest healthcare system with 67 hospitals and 150,000 employees in six states. The combined corporate entity is named Advocate Health and based in Charlotte, with each system continuing to use its name in local markets. Advocate Auroras primary markets are in the Chicago area and Milwaukee. Not only will The Pearl serve as a major engine of economic opportunity, but it will also house game-changing academic programs for learners of all degree levels and set the stage for innovative health science businesses to grow into the core companies of Charlottes future, Advocate co-chief executive Eugene Woods said. Latest development The second Wake Forest medical school campus is serving as the academic medical research arm of Advocate. Atrium formed a partnership with Baptist in November 2019 with the intent of establishing a Charlotte medical school. That collaboration proved to be the catalyst that led to Atrium acquiring Baptist on Oct. 9, 2020. Charlotte is the nations largest city without a four-year medical school. However, Freischlag indicated Tuesday that discussions about a Charlotte medical school campus predated the partnership by at least two years. This is a moment many of us have eagerly anticipated for a long time, Freischlag said. Ive been here six years and I know many of you have been waiting longer. I can just feel the energy and excitement as we get ready to break ground on our new medical school campus. The opportunities that lie ahead of us are just incredible. Atrium has not disclosed how much it will spend on the medical school, but Woods said in March 2021 that the total cost is evolving as we look at other partners who want to plant a flag here. Woods noted Atriums $3.4 billion investment commitment to Wake Forest Baptist over a 10-year period, as well as an announced $2 billion commitment to Carolinas Medical Center and the Charlotte area. It will be at least that level of investment, if not more, Woods said. It will be one of the most significant investments that this state has ever seen. Atrium has released illustrations of the planned medical school campus, which is to feature a seven-story main building, a large tower and a fountain area. The Levine Center for Education will be the primary academic building for the medical school. It is named after business leader and philanthropist Howard Levine. Levine is the retired chairman and chief executive of the Family Dollar retail chain, which was founded by his father, Leon. Levines foundation has agreed to provide a $25 million gift to the Atrium foundation for the medical school. The center also will include the Wake Forest University School of Business, Wake Forest School for Professional Studies and Carolinas College of Health Sciences. Carolinas College of Health Sciences, based in Charlotte, is a public non-profit college owned by Atrium. The college currently offers associate degrees, certificate programs and several bachelors degrees in a variety of both online and on-campus healthcare programs, such as clinical laboratory sciences, diagnostic and imaging sciences, health sciences and general education, and nursing. New medical dean As medical school dean and chief science officer, Boulware will lead all aspects of the medical school, including programs to advance the clinical, research, education, innovation and community engagement missions. Woods said the medical school could have 1,600 educators and a diverse mix of 3,200 learners. Freischlag said Wake Forest medical school students already are benefiting from the future Charlotte presence. She cited as an example that the medical school had the highest number of applicants this year more than 11,000 for 145 slots. By offering our amazing students multiple locations where they can learn and train, each with distinct advantages, well create one of the most unique medical school experiences in the country, Freischlag said. Boulware said the second campus will help the medical school to even greater heights, to allow us to train a new generation of compassionate, diverse medical professionals who will help improve health across a greater region of our state, the Southeast and beyond. Local concerns In Winston-Salem, concerns have cropped up that the Charlotte medical school could draw resources from the local campus or even lure the medical school itself from Winston-Salem. Freischlag said on April 10, 2019, that she and the majority of the existing medical school faculty would remain in Winston-Salem, and the Atrium hospitals will provide much of the Charlotte campus facility. Freischlag said the Charlotte campus will provide our students the perfect mix of expertise. With the latest technology, whether students are learning in Winston-Salem or this new, second campus, their immersive experience will be second to none. In addition to having the opportunity to learn from some of the finest minds in academia and take part in life-changing research, Wake Forest School of Medicine students and residents will have easy access to the renowned experts practicing at our combined world-class service lines across multiple specialties. Wake Forest Baptists physical infrastructure in Winston-Salem is expected to remain mostly unchanged, and the combined Atrium is projected to expand in the downtown Innovation Quarter. The officials have emphasized that some research, business and nonprofit groups will chose to have a presence in both districts, while Wexford Science & Technology LLC and other development officials will help steer those groups to where they best fit within the collaboration. There is for the first time in North America a common university and school of medicine partner ... a common clinical partner ... common programming, common entrepreneurial resources in two cities, said Thomas Osha, executive vice president for Wexford. That collaboration can allow research to go to scale in Charlotte and in Winston-Salem, acting as a super corridor of activity and engagement. We believe there will be a complementary set of companies in Charlotte to what is happening in Winston-Salem. NEW YORK (AP) Snoop Dogg, Gloria Estefan, Sade, Jeff Lynne, Glen Ballard, Teddy Riley and Liz Rose have been chosen to join the Songwriters Hall of Fame, a class that includes the writers of such varied hits as Man In the Mirror, Drop It Like Its Hot and Rhythm Is Gonna Get You. The seven songwriters from the class of 2023 will be inducted at a gala June 15 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Snoop Dogg, whose hits include Drop It Like Its Hot and "Gin & Juice," will be joining such rappers as Missy Elliott and Jay-Z in the hall. Estefan is credited for popularizing Latin rhythms with such crossover smashes as Rhythm Is Gonna Get You and Lets Get Loud. The inductees include soul-jazz vocalist Sade, whose 1980s soft rock hits include Smooth Operator and The Sweetest Taboo, and Lynne, of ELO, who penned Mr. Blue Sky and Evil Woman. Im very excited about this honor. Songwriting has always been my passion. This means so much to me, Lynne tweeted Wednesday. Estefan took to Instagram to thank all the incredible fans that, by listening to my music, have made it possible for me to receive this incredible honor! Read more about the 2023 class here: 25 musicians with rich acting careers 25 musicians with rich acting careers Beyonce Mary J. Blige David Bowie Cher Harry Connick Jr. Bing Crosby Ice Cube Snoop Dogg Ice-T Kris Kristofferson Lady Gaga Jennifer Hudson LL Cool J Lyle Lovett Madonna Tim McGraw Bette Midler Mandy Moore Mos Def Willie Nelson Dolly Parton Elvis Presley Frank Sinatra Justin Timberlake Tom Waits VisitBritain, the British tourist authority, is set to welcome more than 120 international travel trade buyers for a series of educational visits across Britain. The educational trade visits, under way from January 28, are a mix of three-to-five-day itineraries to destinations across England, Wales and Scotland, showcasing the latest tourism products to international buyers and that Britain is packed full of fresh and exciting experiences for visitors to come and enjoy right now. Buyers from 16 international markets are taking part in the educational visits including representatives from the UKs three largest inbound markets the US, France and Germany, as well as from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, the GCC countries, India, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, South Korea and Spain. VisitBritain CEO Patricia Yates said: We are delighted to be showcasing Britain to international buyers to drive bookings. From the beauty of our coast and countryside to the exciting variety of our cultural attractions to our world class dining and accommodation, buyers will experience first-hand the warmest of British welcomes and the outstanding and varied tourism products on offer. Working with the international travel trade is crucial to ensuring they are ready to sell Britain, as well as to broadening travel itineraries, encouraging visitors to explore further and stay longer. VisitBritains in-country teams have worked in partnership with destination management organisations and destination management companies across England, Scotland and Wales to develop itineraries tailored to each market. All itineraries include London before the buyers embark on visits to destinations including Manchester, Liverpool and the Lake District; Bath, Bristol and the Cotswolds; Newcastle and Northumberland; Cambridge; Somerset; the West Midlands; the English Wine Region; Edinburgh; Cardiff and other regions of Scotland and Wales. The hosted visits are part of the national tourism agencys Showcase Britain event, which gets underway with a networking event for the international buyers and travel media at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on January 26. The buyers will be officially welcomed by VisitBritain Chairman Nick de Bois CBE followed by updates from the agencys trade teams as well as from London & Partners, VisitScotland and Visit Wales on the latest products, experiences, hospitality and accommodation. The educational visits come as VisitBritain also gears up to host its flagship global trade event ExploreGB Virtual from February 27 to March 2. VisitBritain is also set to launch a new GREAT Britain marketing campaign in February to drive bookings, inviting visitors to See Things Differently, showcasing Britain as a dynamic, exciting and inclusive destination. The campaign is also capturing major events in 2023 including the Coronation of King Charles III in May, with an additional Bank Holiday announced, and Liverpool hosting the Eurovision Song Contest, on behalf of Ukraine, also in May, timely and valuable opportunities to promote Britains welcome, creativity and ability to host events of the highest calibre. VisitBritains latest forecast for 2023 estimates 35.1 million inbound visits to the UK, 86% of 2019 levels and 18% higher than levels seen in 2022. Its forecast for overseas visitor spending in the UK this year is 29.5 billion, a projected record high for annual inbound visitor spend. -TradeArabia News Service The Daily Minute is the Journal Star's morning news briefing where you can get the latest news in about a minute each weekday. Previous Daily Minute videos are archived here. Welcome to the Daily Minute, the Journal Star's morning news briefing where you can get the latest news in about a minute each weekday. Here are this morning's top stories: Preliminary property valuations released Many Lancaster County residents received a jolt this weekend when the Lancaster County Assessors Office released preliminary property valuations for 2023. The valuations are intended to reflect the current market value of property in Lancaster County. Many homeowners saw a dramatic increase ranging from 10%-30% since the last county-wide revaluation two years ago. Property valuations werent the only cause for sticker shock in recent days. Many in Lincoln also saw a sharp increase on their latest gas bill. The price Black Hills Energy charged for natural gas this month and last month is more than 50% higher than a year ago. Gov. Pillen outlines education agenda Governor Jim Pillen outlined his education agenda for the legislative session on Tuesday, including changes to the states school aid formula. Under the governor's plan, schools would receive $1,500 in foundation aid per student, an increase in special education funding, and the state would create a trust fund to make the program sustainable over time. Sen. Tom Briese of Albion also sponsored a bill that would provide a soft cap on school budget growth, with exceptions for fast-growing districts. New NU volleyball player earns national honor And an incoming freshman on the Nebraska volleyball team was named the top high school player in the country by Gatorade on Tuesday. Harper Murray became the fifth Husker player to earn the national player of the year honor. The Michigan native had 726 kills and 409 digs in her senior season at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor. Murray will join the Huskers when spring semester classes begin. Well also be tracking a winter storm expected to move into the Lincoln area on Wednesday. Stay in the know with Lincolns longest-standing news source at JournalStar.com and well see you back here tomorrow. Top Journal Star photos for January 2023 TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Could losing your hearing as you age be a harbinger of dementia? Maybe, suggests new research that found that older people who had trouble hearing were more likely to develop dementia down the road. But there's good news with the bad: Hearing aids which are now available over-the-counter at much lower prices may reduce this risk. There is evidence that hearing loss causes structural brain changes, said study author Nicholas Reed, an audiologist at the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in Baltimore. You are not getting input to keep your brain robust, so you may develop atrophy in areas, leading to dementia. In addition, the constant struggle to hear can make your brain work even harder, causing fatigue and laying groundwork for trouble with thinking and memory, he said. Another potential link? People with hearing loss may withdraw from social events, and staying engaged in the world is known to help stave off dementia, Reed added. The findings matter to millions: Close to one in three Americans aged 65 to 74 and half of those who are older have hearing loss that is severe enough to affect their quality of life, according to the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Yet, the majority of these folks don't use hearing aids. In this study of more than 2,400 seniors, half of whom were over 80, there was a clear link between hearing loss severity and dementia. Specifically, people with moderate-to-severe hearing loss had a 61% higher risk of developing dementia than those with normal hearing. However, hearing aid use mitigated this risk. People with moderate-to-severe hearing loss who used hearing aids to amplify sound had a 32% lower risk for dementia than their peers who didn't use a hearing aid. While earlier studies have shown similar links, the new study included a nationally representative sample of people, including the oldest old and Black Americans, suggesting that the findings are generalizable, Reed said. Still, more research is needed to draw any firm conclusions, he said. Reed and his colleagues are now conducting a three-year trial that should answer any remaining questions about hearing loss, its link to dementia and the potential role that hearing aids can play. Theres lots older people can do today to stave off dementia and improve their hearing, Reed advised. Staying socially engaged and active is super important. On the hearing side, lets make the assumption that hearing aids are protective, he said. We know they improve quality of life, so addressing hearing loss is worthwhile as you age." Luckily, addressing hearing loss recently got a lot cheaper: As of August 2022, hearing aids are now available over-the-counter for people with mild and moderate hearing loss, which is the vast majority of age-related hearing loss, he said. This is the biggest change in the hearing care field in decades, Reed noted. The findings were published Jan. 10 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Some people with advanced hearing loss can benefit from a cochlear implant instead of hearing aids, said Dr. J. Thomas Roland Jr., chair of the department of otolaryngologyhead and neck surgery at NYU Langone Health in New York City. We can rehabilitate hearing loss with a cochlear implant, and this may stave off dementia by a couple of years, said Roland, who had no ties to the new study. Hearing aids amplify sound, but past a certain point of hearing loss, volume doesnt help, he explained. This is where cochlear implants come in. These devices bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve, said Roland, who just placed a cochlear implant in a 93-year-old. If you have trouble hearing in noisy backgrounds or on the phone, get tested to see if you would benefit from hearing aids or a cochlear implant, Roland suggested. "You don't hear well, so you shy away from social events such as going to restaurants, movies, theaters or family events," he said. Dont wait too long, as it can become a slippery slope, he noted. More information Learn more about hearing aids at the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. SOURCES: Nicholas Reed, audiologist, Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore; J. Thomas Roland, Jr., MD, chair, department of otolaryngologyhead and neck surgery, NYU Langone Health, New York City; Journal of the American Medical Association, Jan. 10, 2023 This is simply one mans perspective from the early 21st century (first written in 2010). I had to make a decision about crimes that occurred at locations that are inside the city today, but were outside our corporate limits at the time they occurred. I chose the latter. Before beginning, though, I have to deal with three crimes that stand apart: the murders of three police officers in Lincoln. Im not quite sure how to place them in a list. They all had huge impacts on the community, and on the police department in particular. Because these are my colleagues, I deal with them separately and in chronological order. Patrolman Marion Francis Marshall Shot in the shadow of the new Nebraska State Capital, Gov. Charles Bryan came to his aid and summoned additional help. Lt. Frank Soukup Marion Marshall was technically not a Lincoln police officer, so Lt. Soukup was actually the first Lincoln police officer killed on duty. One of his colleagues who was present at the motel and involved in the gunbattle, Paul Jacobsen, went on to enjoy a long career and command rank at LPD, influencing many young charges (like me) and leaving his mark on the culture of the agency. Lt. Paul Whitehead In the space of a few months, three LPD officers died in the line of duty. Frank Soukup had been murdered, and George Welter had died in a motorcycle crash. Paul Whitehead's partner, Paul Merritt, went on to command rank, and like Paul Jacobsen left an indelible mark at LPD and the community. Lincoln Public Schools called off classes on Wednesday, when a winter storm is expected to drop wet, heavy snow across the region. Its the third snow day of the year for LPS students. The district canceled school on the last two days of the first semester in December. A winter storm warning is posted for the Lincoln area on Wednesday, when 3-5 inches of snow could fall on top of sidewalks and streets slickened by freezing rain and sleet. The snow is expected to fall through Wednesday evening before skies clear Thursday. LPS still has a solid bank of instructional hours to lean on for future snow days this school year, although the amount differs per grade level, according to Matt Larson, associate superintendent of instruction. Elementary schools have roughly five days left, middle schools have a whopping 14 and high schools have about three, Larson said. Middle schools have more hours to work with since they dont have plan days like elementary schools. And unlike high schools, which release students early each Tuesday for professional learning, middle schools only get out early once a month. PhotoFiles: The blizzard of 1948-49 in Nebraska Operation Snowbound Only way out Ghost Town Delivering Milk Pattern in the snow Providing Aid Cattle Graze Finding the chicken coop Lending a hand Stranded Locomotives Snow covered windmill A little more than a month after the South Beltway opened, state senators have sponsored legislation to begin paving the way for the East Beltway. Sen. Beau Ballard and six other Lincoln-area lawmakers co-sponsored a bill (LB721) appropriating $25 million in general fund tax dollars to begin planning for the next section of roadway. If appropriated, the funds would be used to conduct an environmental impact study, design the expressway system and to begin purchasing right-of-way in order to build it, Ballard said. I think its critical for Lincoln to continue this conversation, he said. The South Beltway has been an incredible asset to this community and the East Beltway would do the same. Work on the South Beltway, an 11-mile stretch of highway running between U.S. 77 and 120th Street along Saltillo Road south of Lincoln, began in 2020 as a way to pull commercial truck traffic off of the former Nebraska 2 route through the Capital City. The $352 million project completed by Hawkins Construction employed 300 people and was opened six months ahead of schedule in mid-December. Work is ongoing on two interchanges along the route. Ballard, who was appointed to represent District 21 in the Legislature following former state Sen. Mike Hilgers election as attorney general, said he hopes to continue moving the East Beltway project to fruition. I would love to spearhead those efforts to move the beltway forward, he said. The 13-mile project, part of a concept dating back to the 1960s, would run along a north-south corridor between Nebraska 2 east of Lincoln and Interstate 80 near Waverly and has long been identified as a priority by city and county officials. It would complete an expressway loop around the city that includes I-80 on the north and U.S. 77 on the west. Lincoln Sens. Danielle Conrad, George Dungan, Suzanne Geist and Anna Wishart also signed onto the bill. Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth and Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, both of whom represent parts of southern Lancaster County, were also co-signers. There were 190 bills and resolutions introduced on Wednesday, the final day lawmakers could sponsor legislation for the 2023 session, including: PAROLE BOARD: Omaha Sen. Terrell McKinneys bill (LB631) would change the membership and quorum requirements of the Board of Parole. Members could not be absent more than three times in one year, and four of five members must be present in order for the board to conduct business. CANNABIS: McKinney also introduced a measure (LB634) legalizing and regulating cannabis in Nebraska for individuals over the age of 21, while those convicted of crimes involving marijuana, with the exception of violent felonies and other crimes, would have their slates wiped clean. COVID VACCINATION: Members of the Nebraska National Guard who were discharged for refusing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine would be asked to re-enlist, or have their status changed to honorably discharged under a bill (LB642) from Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon. PUBLIC RECORDS: Omaha Sen. Mike McDonnell wants records relating to state and local government cybersecurity capabilities withheld from the public under his bill (LB650). VOTER ID: Sen. Jen Day of Gretna introduced a bill (LB675) outlining a wide range of photo identification cards that could be shown at the polling place before voting. Acceptable cards include: drivers licenses, state ID cards, student IDs, passports, a government employee ID, tribal ID, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid card, citizenship certificate, hunting, fishing or concealed carry license and more. HIGHWAY BONDS: Sen. Mike Moser of Columbus brought a bill (LB706) for Nebraska to issue $450 million in bonds for construction of a state expressway system and other surface transportation projects. The bonds would need to be paid off by June 30, 2042. RENTAL ASSISTANCE: Omaha Sen. John Cavanaughs bill (LB715) would require the governor to apply for emergency rental assistance under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and disburse the funds to eligible recipients. RATEPAYER FUNDS: Public power districts or electrical cooperatives would be prohibited from using ratepayer funds to campaign for or against candidates for office or a ballot question, under a bill (LB725) from Lincoln Sen. George Dungan. INVESTMENTS: Managers of public investment funds would only be able to consider financial factors and would be prohibited from divesting from companies based on political, social, or ideological reasons under a bill (LB743) from Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Millard. GUNS AT CAPITOL: Omaha Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh introduced legislation (LB749) prohibiting anyone other than law enforcement or military personnel from carrying a deadly weapon on the state Capitol grounds. WINNER TAKES ALL: Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City introduced a bill (LB764) to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state in the Electoral College. NURSING SCHOLARSHIPS: A proposal (LB794) from Omaha Sen. Justin Wayne would provide benefits to nonresident nursing students attending a postsecondary institution in Nebraska if they agree to work in Nebraska for three years upon graduation. SUPERINTENDENT PAY: Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil sponsored a bill (LB800) capping superintendent and educational service unit director pay at five times the amount of a beginning teacher in the same district. ONE LICENSE PLATE: Registered vehicles in Nebraska would only need to display one license plate under a proposed change (LB807) from Sen. Brad von Gillern of Elkhorn. HAND COUNT BALLOTS: Candidates for legislative office who lose by less than 1% of the winners vote total could request a hand recount under a bill (LB808) from Sen. Steve Halloran of Hastings. STUDENT RESTRAINT: Murman also sponsored a bill (LB811) allowing teachers to use "reasonable physical intervention" to restrain students if they are posing a threat to another person. Schools would also be required to conduct annual behavioral awareness and intervention training. EDUCATION BOARD: A constitutional amendment (LR28C) from Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn would change the State Board of Education from eight members to seven who would be appointed by the governor to six-year terms. Photos, videos: Building the South Beltway South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway Ceremony South Beltway South Beltway South Beltway DRONE South Beltway DRONE Beltway map: U.S. 77 interchange South Beltway DRONE South Beltway DRONE South Beltway DRONE South Beltway12.2 South Beltway12.2 South Beltway12.2 South Beltway12.2 South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update South Beltway update Progress - South Beltway, 2.14 Progress - South Beltway, 2.14 gr21051313.jpg South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 South Beltway 68th Street, 7.21 Saltillo Road bridge Saltillo Road bridge Girder movement, 5.18 Girder movement, 5.18 South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event Lincoln South Beltway event South Beltway Aerials South Beltway Aerials South Beltway Aerials South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway Tour, 9.2 South Beltway construction South Beltway construction Lincoln South Beltway South Beltway South Beltway construction South Beltway construction South Beltway construction Progress South Beltway Majors Cafe Lincoln South Beltway opening ceremony Driving on the new South Beltway flyover bridge See the new Lincoln South Beltway as Journal Star photographers travel the 11-mile route Breakdown of Lincoln South Beltway #32 Lincoln South Beltway November 2022 Update! Watch now: Check out progress on the South Beltway construction project Watch now: Check out South Beltway construction from April Watch now: Take a tour of the South Beltway construction Watch Now: South Beltway October update #17 Lincoln South Beltway August 2021 Update! Watch now: South Beltway bridge girders roll down 27th Street South Beltway Ramping up for Spring | March 2021 #13 Lincoln South Beltway April 2021 Update! Watch: February flyover of Lincoln South Beltway Watch: South Beltway January 2021 update Watch: Early work continues on South Beltway Gov. Jim Pillen and several state senators announced sweeping legislation on Tuesday that would change how the state funds public education in Nebraska. The legislative package, announced at a news conference in the Governors Hearing Room, would provide school districts $1,500 for every student they enrolled, boost special education funding and create a special fund to make those programs sustainable into the future. The suite of bills also included a measure that would limit school districts revenue growth from property taxes. The bills, which in all reflect a $2.5 billion investment in public education through the end of the decade, emerged from a trio of meetings conducted by the School Finance Reform Committee convened by Pillen after he won the governors seat last November. Pillen, who called the state's existing Tax Equity and Educational Opportunities Support Act outdated and unfair, said the group included senators, school administrators, school board members and representatives of farm advocacy groups. At its most basic, the existing state aid formula considers a districts needs against its resources. Schools where the needs exceed the resources that can be generated through local property taxes receive additional funding from the state known as equalization aid. Only about 90 of the states 244 school districts currently receive equalization aid, with those districts typically being the largest in terms of student enrollment: Omaha, Lincoln, Millard and Grand Island. That has drawn criticism from Republicans and rural lawmakers, who allege the state aid formula is unfair, and has led to legislation seeking to provide state aid to smaller schools in order to reduce their reliance on local property taxes. On Tuesday, Pillen said bills put forward on his behalf would accomplish both goals. Im really excited about the package of bills everybody has been working on, Pillen said. Were addressing the needs of kids and property taxes which was promised over three decades ago. This is what will deliver it. Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue introduced the main component (LB583) of the package which provides $1,500 in per-student aid known more commonly as foundation aid to school districts each year from the Education Future Fund. The $113 million in foundation aid would be considered a local resource as part of the school funding formula, meaning it would reduce the amount of state aid equalized school districts now receive, but it would boost the amount of state funding to 180 districts across the state. Both Sanders and Pillen said no school districts would receive less state aid than they do now. Pillen said the bill includes a hold harmless provision which would prevent school districts from sliding backward in state aid funding. Sanders bill also boosts the amount of funding for special education services to Nebraska schools, bringing the total amount funded by the state and federal governments up to 80% -- an investment of $157 million. We heard there was a desire to lift all boats, Sanders said. The policy will help both equalized schools and un-equalized schools. To pay for the increase in state money to public schools, Sen. Rob Clements of Elmwood will introduce the Education Future Fund, which will be the subject of a $1 billion appropriation in 2023-24, and $250 million in each of the next six years following. The proposed $2.5 billion fund, in addition to providing more state aid per student and to special education services, could be used for teacher retention programs or to establish mentorship opportunities in schools. Clements, the Appropriations Committee chairman, said the fund will provide dollar-for-dollar property tax relief to Nebraskans: Thats why I was willing to spend $1 billion as being one of the more conservative senators. The final piece of the package, (LB589) from Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, would limit the total amount in additional property taxes schools could request to 3% based on their total revenue. Briese referred to it as a soft cap that would fluctuate based on a schools needs. It really is critical to the success of what were trying to do here, he added. Its imperative we put some sort of a cap or mechanism in place to ensure that occurs. Fast-growing school districts, or those with large special education or English language learner populations could ask for more in property taxes with a supermajority vote of a school board, or of a school districts voters, Briese said. Pillen and members of the working group he put together to come up with the education finance proposals said they were optimistic the bills could navigate the legislative process and end up on the governors desk this year. Senators and other groups outside of the governors committee said they looked forward to studying the proposals and their anticipated outcomes. We have funds to set aside for this now, which, we didnt have all the revenue for that in the past, said Sen. Mike Moser of Columbus, who appeared alongside nine other lawmakers at Pillens news conference. I think the formula looks like everyones going to wind up whole when its all said and done. Sen. Lynne Walz of Fremont, who introduced a bill last year that would have created an education trust fund, said she wanted to see modeling for how much state aid each school district would receive under the proposal before throwing her support behind the bill. Walz added she generally supports establishing a trust fund for public education, calling it a good idea to protect schools against future economic downturns. If we dont have some type of reserve that we can rely on in a down time, were just going to be going back to the property taxpayers and asking them to increase their property tax, Walz said. Ive always felt a trust fund is a good, solid idea for Nebraska. Other groups said they were also waiting to hear more details about the project. Lincoln Public Schools Superintendent Paul Gausman said the district supported Pillens announced desire to increase support for public education, including special education, mentoring and recruiting and retaining teachers. We are still analyzing how the proposed bills released today will impact Lincoln Public Schools and the community of Lincoln, Gausman said in a statement. We look forward to the continued collaboration with Gov. Pillen and state senators. The OpenSky Policy Institute said it planned to explore the impact of the proposals, adding it believed the best way to address property taxes in Nebraska was to boost state support for K-12 education. We look forward to modeling the components of his plan to better understand its long-term sustainability, as well as what impact the proposed revenue cap would have on public schools and the students they educate, Executive Director Rebecca Firestone said in an email. Pillen, who campaigned for governor as a fiscal conservative, said he viewed the bill with a billion dollar price tag as a long-term investment in Nebraska. Theres a big difference between spending and an investment, Pillen said. These are investments into the future of our kids. These are investments that will also allow us to have a great impact on cutting property taxes across the state. A Lincoln state senator introduced a bill Tuesday requesting federal funding to begin developing a second source of water for the Capital City. Sen. Eliot Bostar introduced the bill (LB506) a day after Lincolns Water Source Advisory Council issued a recommendation that Lincoln look at building a new municipal wellfield along the Missouri River between Omaha and Nebraska City. Securing a new source of water Lincoln currently pipes its water from wellfields along the Platte River near Ashland would support future population growth up to 400,000 people and sustain the city's needs through 2075, the advisory group said in its recommendation. The cost of hooking Lincoln up to groundwater near the Missouri River some 50 miles away is estimated to cost nearly $1.4 billion and could take between 15 and 20 years to complete. Bostars bill, which is similar to a previous bill introduced by the Lincoln senator that launched the study conducted by the advisory council, would appropriate $200 million in federal Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Fund dollars to get the project started. Under the bill, the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources would be required to award a grant to Lincoln before Sept. 30 to pay for a water treatment plant, transmission pipes, land acquisition, wellfields and related activities. Bostar, who was a co-chair of Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Bairds 27-member Water 2.0 Project, said if Lincoln is unable to complete the project, the city could eventually exercise its right to water on the Platte River, which would affect upstream irrigators. The future of Lincolns water isnt just a city issue, but a state issue, the first-term senator said in an interview before the legislative session. LB506 also appropriates $20 million for grants to small and rural communities to install reverse osmosis systems to treat high levels of nitrates in their community water systems. Communities with nitrates higher than 10 parts per million the standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency as the limit in which drinking water is safe to consume could apply for grants. Bostar's was among 163 new bills introduced on Tuesday, including: VOTER ID: Sen. Julie Slama of Dunbar's bill (LB535) outlines the requirements for a photo identification Nebraska voters must show before casting a ballot. A proper ID must list a voter's name and show their picture. Military or Native tribal IDs would also qualify. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: Lincoln Sen. Anna Wishart introduced a bill (LB588) authorizing the cultivation, process and use of marijuana for medical purposes, including strict guidelines for how much an individual can possess and how it can be used. ABORTION: Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston sponsored a bill (LB626) banning abortions if cardiac activity is detected in a fetus, which typically happens around six weeks after fertilization. Abortions are currently legal in Nebraska up to 20 weeks. Albrecht previewed the bill at a news conference last week. Meet the Nebraska state senators making laws in 2023 OMAHA -- Prosecutors knew they were in for a tough fight when they went up against Omaha defense attorney J. William Bill Gallup. Bill was always battling for his clients, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said Tuesday. When you went into court against him, you knew you were in for a fight. He was a no-nonsense guy, who was very good at what he did. Gallup, 87, died Friday in his Omaha home after a lengthy illness, said Paula Gallup, his wife of 59 years. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, 6116 Dodge St. Kleine said Gallup was a man of his word. He was known for saying what he thought and meaning what he said. He was so well-prepared every time that he went into court, Kleine said. You could trust what he said and you knew that he always had his clients best interests. Gallup came up with the epitaph, The Defense Rests, that is written on his tombstone, his wife said. Getting him to rest, even as his health failed, was nearly impossible, she said. He had his brains about him until the very end, Paula said. He loved the law, and it was very hard for him not to be in the courtroom and office. You could set your clock by Bill Gallup going to work and coming home every day. Gallup was born in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada, and moved with his family to western Nebraska and then Omaha. He graduated from Omaha Benson High School in 1953 and a received a bachelors degree from Omaha University in 1957, followed by a masters degree from the school in 1959. A naturalized American citizen, Gallup served two years in the U.S. Army before enrolling in Creighton University Law School, graduating in 1964. He met his wife while attending law school. We were both at a law fraternity party with other people, Paula said. We were introduced and that was it. Bill always said that he (left Creighton) with his degree in one hand and his wife in the other. Upon graduation, Gallup worked as an assistant prosecutor for the City of Omaha and then the Douglas County Attorneys Office. He later worked for the U.S. attorney for Nebraska before entering private practice. Gallup often said he was proud to be the only Nebraska attorney he knew to walk a client from death row to freedom. His diligence led to the overturning of the conviction and death sentence for Jeremy Sheets in connection with the 1992 abduction and slaying of a North High School student. Adam Barnett told authorities that he and Sheets had kidnapped a girl at knifepoint. Barnett hanged himself in jail before he could testify at Sheets trial. The Nebraska Supreme Court agreed with Gallups argument that the trial court judge should not have allowed prosecutors to play Barnetts statement because Sheets was not able to confront his accuser. Outside the courtroom, Gallup enjoyed reading and wrote numerous articles for legal magazines. He accepted an invitation to join the American Board of Criminal Lawyers and served as its president from 1982 to 1983. A daughter, Bridget Gordman of Omaha, said her fathers sensitive side was most evident around his 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He loved his grandchildren and all kids, really, Gordman said. People, I think, were surprised by how soft and patient he would be with them. He was very loving. Other survivors include daughter Pamela Conrad of Malibu, California; sons Sean of Denver and John Jr. of Omaha; and sister, Djel Ann Brown of Omaha. The Lincoln Journal Star's top photos from 2022 Police said the three accused were arrested for selling and distributing suspicious books and pamphlets during Magh Mela (an annual Hindu fair) in an attempt to motivate people to get converted to Islam. TCN Staff Reporter Support TwoCircles PRAYAGRAJ (UTTAR PRADESH): Prayagraj police on Tuesday arrested three persons for allegedly running a religious conversion racket during Magh Mela in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Magh Mela is an annual Hindu fair held on the vast sands of Sangam (confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati) in Prayagraj. The three accused were arrested for selling and distributing suspicious books and pamphlets in an attempt to motivate people to get converted to Islam, police said. The arrested persons were identified as Mehmood Hasan Gazi (a Madrasa teacher), Mohd Monish a.k.a Ashish Kumar Gupta and Sameer a.k.a Naresh Kumar Saroj. Two accused were arrested from the Mela area while they were distributing books and pamphlets allegedly containing objectionable comments against the Hindu religion at the behest of a Madrasa teacher who was arrested from his home in the Kareli area, police officials said. Police said suspicious Islamic books, pamphlets, and identification documents were found in the possession of the three accused, two of whom had converted to Islam two years ago and were members of the Student Islamic Organisation (SIO). The alleged racket came to light after some persons raised objections to the distribution of objectionable material and informed police about the two youths who were distributing books and pamphlets in the Mela area at a kiosk on Monday (January 16). UP: Mehmood Hasan Gazi, Mohd Monish and Sameer arrested for spreading ill information about Hindu texts and propagating conversion at Magh Mela in Prayagraj. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/sIk2k1mBqM Megh Updates ? (@MeghUpdates) January 18, 2023 The two youths were detained on Tuesday night and police initiated an investigation following the complaint. On Tuesday, police presented three accused at a press conference at Prayagraj Police Lines and claimed that they were involved in a conversion racket and were receiving foreign funding for the purpose. A case has been registered against the accused under sections 153 A (promoting disharmony, enmity or feelings of hatred between different groups on the grounds of religion, race etc and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 295 A (deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings), 419(cheating by personation), 420 (fraud), 467(forgery), 468( forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (fraudulently using a genuine document), 505 (2) (offence at a place of worship or religious assembly) of IPC and 3/5 Unlawful Religious Conversion Prohibition Act 2021. Addressing media persons at a press conference on Wednesday, Additional Commissioner of Police (ADCP Crime) Satish Chandra said those arrested were Mehmood Hasan Ghazi (aged around 55 years), a native of Matinpur village in Husainganj area of Fatehpur district (presently residing in A-Block Kareli of Prayagraj), Mohd Monish aka Ashish Kumar Gupta of village Sudnipur, Hanumanganj in Sarai Inayat area and Sameer aka Naresh Kumar Saroj of Pipri area of Kaushambi district. At least 204 suspicious religious books, three mobile phones, 4 Aadhar cards (two in the name of Monish and Sameer), a suspicious diary, some cash and a kiosk on which they used to distribute books were recovered, he said. The prime accused Mehmood Hasan Ghazi is a teacher at Madrasa Himdadia Islamia in the Mariadih area on the outskirts of Prayagraj. He is also the president of the organisation Bazm-e-Paigam-e- Behdaniyat. The books being distributed by Monish and Sameer in the Mela area on the behest of Mehmood Hasan Gazi contained objectionable remarks against the Hindu religion which may hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus. Some of the Vedic hymns and shlokas have wrong interpretations in the books and their meaning was misrepresented. The books were distributed at Hindu religious places including at Hanuman Mandir in Prayagraj, Kashi Vishwanath Temple and Assi Ghat in Varanasi etc along with some Hindu religious meetings and assemblies. The motive behind the distribution of such books was to encourage religious conversion of persons who belong to financially weaker sections of the Hindu community ADCP Crime told TwoCircles.net. The police official further said Mehmood Hasan Gazi used to give Rs 5000 to the youths for distributing books and pamphlets. Monish and Sameer used to take photographs, mobile numbers and other details of the persons to whom they used to give the books and later send them to Mehmood. These details were forwarded to a person based in Abu Dhabi, he added. Interrogation till now has revealed that Mehmood was getting foreign funding for propagating Islam via e-wallets. He confessed to sending photographs and details of persons who were targeted for religious conversion to a person in Abu Dhabi. Police and intelligence agencies are carrying out further investigations to learn more about their network and the amount of foreign funding received by the accused till now, Special Operation Group in-charge sub-inspector Rajesh Upadhyay told TwoCircles.net. Most of the books recovered from the accused were printed locally while some were also printed in Delhi. None of the books contains ISBNs and has no authenticity of the writers. Mehmood Hasan confessed to having written four books himself. The material in the books is aimed at propagating the Islamic faith but contains objectionable comments against the Hindu religion, SI Upadhyay said. When questioned about the allegations at the press conference Mehmood Hasan Gazi admitted to his involvement in the distribution of Islamic books and literature. I have no malicious intent behind the distribution of books. We are also active in social works and helping weaker sections and the poor, Mehmood claimed. Police officials further informed that Mohd Monish aka Ashish Gupta converted to Islam two years ago under the influence of his uncle Saeed Ahmad who is also a convert. Monish is the eastern zonal secretary of the Student Islamic Organisation (SIO). He learnt Urdu and took religious education at a madrasa in Azamgarh for a year and then joined SIO. Sameer aka Naresh converted to Islam around 12 years ago and married a woman from the Muslim community. He was working as a tailor before joining SIO, officials said. Fave 5: Reporter Kimberly Wethal shares her favorite stories of 2022 In the weeks before I joined the Wisconsin State Journal in September, I was told this: Remember that a higher education institution is like their own city. It has its own character and struggles, defined by the students who learn there and the faculty who teach them. I have seen this over and over again, and it was particularly clear when I visited UW-Platteville at Richland a week after the University of Wisconsin System ordered degree-fulfilling classes to cease because of low enrollment. During my visit, I found many of the devastated students to be emotionally invested in their campus community and committed to saving it. It's why Richland Center grieving the loss of its once-vibrant campus is my top story of 2022. UW-Madison has its own slate of issues. There, a growing population is pitted against on- and off-campus housing availability. I wrote about the tactics used to clear returning students out of the dorms to make room for freshmen, and the frenzy that ensued as students put their lives on hold to secure housing for next fall. At Madison Area Technical College, a key issue is how to alleviate barriers their students face just to get into the classroom. Finding adequate child care is one of them I wrote about the efforts to expand future access at the Goodman South Campus and its four rural campuses. Much of my beat is hard news, but some of my favorite stories are features of students who make up the character of campus. I wrote about Kirstan Gimse, the student commencement speaker who's achieving her dream of being a scientist that she saw as unattainable. I'm looking forward to diving deeper into the beat in 2023 and am so grateful for the support of State Journal subscribers that allows me to be one of the few reporters in the state dedicated solely to covering higher education. 1. Yes. Having a community member interview panel is an excellent opportunity for input. 2. Yes. Its good that the city will allow residents to meet the finalist at a reception. 3. No. The city should have conducted a public survey early in the process, as KISD is doing. 4. No. Residents should be able to meet candidates before a lone finalist is chosen. 5. Unsure. Its hard to know how to gauge the proper level of public involvement. Vote View Results Intangible cultural heritage inheritor in China makes adorable rabbit dough figurines to greet Chinese Lunar New Year People's Daily Online) 18:43, January 17, 2023 Sun Liandong, an inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of dough figurine making in Ganyu district, Lianyungang City, east China's Jiangsu Province, demonstrates dough figurine making techniques to children. (Photo/Shao Shixin) Sun Liandong, an inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of dough figurine making in Ganyu district, Lianyungang City, east China's Jiangsu Province, has spent two weeks creating a batch of dough rabbit figurines to welcome the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Du Mingming) ELM CREEK Troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol have arrested a Colorado man after reports of a road rage incident on Interstate 80 near Elm Creek. The incident occurred at approximately 2 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, when Buffalo County Communications notified NSP dispatchers they had received a report of a driver brandishing a handgun towards another driver. A trooper was able to locate the suspect vehicle, a Ford Fusion, as it was traveling westbound. The trooper performed a traffic stop at the Lexington interchange, at mile marker 237. The driver, identified as Jose Rolison, 40, of Denver, Colorado, was found to be in possession of a stolen handgun. He was arrested for possession of a stolen firearm, terroristic threats, use of a firearm to commit a felony, possession of a concealed weapon and possession of marijuana less than one ounce. He was lodged in Dawson County Jail. NSP reminds all motorists to report suspected road rage incidents by calling 911. Nativity scenes have a special place in Linda Thies heart. The rural Westby woman has an extensive collection of Nativity scenes from all over the world, and they are made from a wide variety of materials ranging from glass and wood to sea glass and beeswax. For several years, Thies decorated the North Coon Prairie Lutheran Church fellowship hall with just a few of her Nativity scenes. During the 2022 Christmas season, Nativity scenes filled up about 17 tables. I dont remember exactly when I started to collect Nativity scenes, Thies said. The collection includes the Nativity scene she remembers from her childhood her grandmothers from the late 1950s. The figurines are chalk ware, which means they are made out of plaster and painted. They are chipped and have been glued together. When she and her brother were little, Thies recalls they were allowed to handle them. As the years passed, Thies started to get interested in Nativity scenes from other countries. Each one is unique in their own way, she said. I probably started getting a few Nativity scenes and saw how different they were and started to look for more and it grew from there. For many of the Nativity scenes, Thies has photos of the people who made them, descriptions of how they were made and how important it was to the creator to make them. Thies said she has no idea how many Nativity scenes she has. A few years ago a church member counted around 100. Id say its considerably more. This isnt all of them; this is what I got out. The Nativity scenes are stored in an unused Sunday school room at the church, which is located along Hwy. 27 between Westby and Cashton. Its more convenient. It would take a room at home. She said its interesting to see what part of the world each Nativity scene comes from. I have a set from China, which is not exactly a Christian country and three from Ukraine. One of the sets from Ukraine is made of beeswax. A lot of these Nativities have stories to tell, Thies said. One Nativity from Mexico has the figure of the devil. You dont find Nativities with the devil. The artist is Jose Juan Garcia Aguilar. The artists statement displayed with the scene notes the following: A question often asked is why is the devil in the nativity Satan in the nativity is the representation of the doubt and disbelief in Gods goodness. After all, Satan is only a fallen angel and incapable of any true power because he is not God. The devils presence in these nativity scenes and images shouldnt be scary or unsettling, but serve as a reminder of the power of God and His infinite mercy to be made man so that He could die for our sins. Thies favorite Nativity scene is a Henning set hand carved in Norway. It has red and blue, which are Norwegian colors. Thies said sometimes people think Nativity scenes should look traditional. There are all different kinds with different kinds of expressions. I like to look at the expressions. She also enjoys looking at the gifts the three Wise Men are carrying, as the gifts reflect the culture of the artists country. One of the sets in the collection features dragons. People use their imaginations with Nativities. The meaning is the same you have the Christ Child, Thies said. A set from Australia features stars hanging from the stables roof representing the Australian Southern Cross. Kookaburras with swag hats represent the shepherds tending to their echidnas (instead of sheep). An emu (instead of a camel used as transportation) is part of the scene. The three Wise Men in akubra hats are represented by a wombat, platypus and kangaroo carrying their gifts of Aussie bush oils. Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus are a koala family. Another set has Joseph holding Baby Jesus, which, Thies said, isnt common. The latest addition to Thies collection is a Peanuts-themed scene she received as a Christmas present from her son and daughter-in-law in 2022. Thies purchases the scenes from a variety of places, including Fair Trade organizations such as NOVICA and The Silk Road Fair Trade Market. She has also purchased them from a man in Maine who operates World Nativity. I go on Etsy and EBay to find a lot, too. IN PHOTOS: Rotary Lights 2022 Betty L. Brown, 93, of Buffalo City, WI, passed away peacefully surrounded by family on Dec. 26, 2022. Betty was born July 3, 1929, to Frank and Lillian (Klose) Sass. Betty grew up on a dairy farm in Pepin, WI. After graduating from Pepin High School she moved to Winona, MN where she met Robert "Bob" Brown. They married Nov. 30, 1949 and moved to Buffalo City, WI in 1960. As a loving mother she enjoyed sewing dresses for her daughters, making baked goods every Friday, and could often be seen riding her bike around town with her dog Kippy in a basket. In 1970 she took a job as Deputy Clerk of Circuit Court of Buffalo County before being elected as Clerk of Circuit Court and retiring from her position in 1994. After her and Bob retired, they wintered in Arizona, traveled through Europe, took family cruises, and bus trips to MN and WI casinos. Much of their time was spent with their children and grandchildren. A 30-year-old La Crosse woman is being held in the La Crosse County Jail on a $1,000 cash bond after she was accused of stealing a handgun from an unlocked vehicle. Angela M. Martinez was charged Tuesday in La Crosse County Circuit Court with felony counts of theft, possession of methamphetamine, possession of narcotic drugs and bail jumping and a misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia. According to the criminal complaint, police responded to a report of a stolen firearm at an apartment complex on Gillette Street in La Crosse. A man told police he came out to his vehicle on the morning of Jan. 13 and noticed the drivers side door partially ajar. He said it appeared someone rummaged through the vehicle and that a black 9 mm handgun was missing. The man told police he purchased the gun in 2021 from a sporting goods store in Iowa. He said he didnt know the make or model and probably no longer had the guns paperwork. Police obtained security video which reportedly shows a man and a woman in the parking lot around 1 a.m. The video shows the female, later identified as Martinez, opening several car doors while pulling a collapsible wagon behind her. The male disappears for a short time before he and Martinez left the parking lot together. The complaint says the vehicle containing the firearm wasnt directly covered by camera footage. Martinez and the man were seen walking together in La Crosse roughly 12 hours after the theft and were arrested by police. The man said he knew Martinez was looking in cars for loose change but denied being part of any theft. He had not been charged in connection with the case as of Wednesday. The complaint says Martinez admitted to being present in the area and that she was coin shopping. Police recovered $4.52 in change but didnt recover a firearm. Police searched Martinez and reportedly found 10.3 grams of methamphetamine, used syringes and cotton balls. The complaint says jail staff found 9.2 grams of heroin on her person as she was being booked. The next court date for Martinez is a Jan. 23 preliminary hearing. Throwback from Tribune files: Life in the La Crosse area in the 1950s 1951: La Crosse Central High School 1951: YMCA at Seventh and Main streets 1954: Triangle Cafe 1954: Estell Tall Fashions 1954: Howards Clothes 1954: Crescent Jewelers 1954: Tom's Speedometer Shop 1954: YMCA basketball 1954: 5 and 10-cent Store fire 1955: La Crosse Beauty School 1956: Christmas shoppers in downtown La Crosse 1956: Central High School Memorial Day assembly 1957: Kroger 1957: Jackson Plaza 1957: Old Style newspaper advertisement 1958: 1st National Bank 1958: State Bank of La Crosse 1958: Heat exchanger plant 1958: American Legion parade Historic architecture, urban centers and important educational institutions are just some of the many similarities between La Crosse and Junglinster, Luxembourg. On Wednesday, the Luxembourg city officially became La Crosses eighth Sister City. La Crosse Mayor Mitch Reynolds and Junglinsters Mayor Romain Reitz were joined by U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg Thomas Barrett for the signing the Friendship document. This was the first Sister City signing to be done virtually. Becoming a sister city is a bit like joining the family. Today, when this bond is documented, we convey to each other a significant mutual communal bond for long into the future, Reynolds said. And we commit to today as a stepping off point for ways to continually draw our cities together. Luxembourg is a small European country that is flanked by France, Belgium and Germany. The population of Junglinster is around 8,000. Junglinster balances the urban city with the natural life that surrounds it. Its known for having two of the most powerful long wave transmitters which were used by Radio Luxembourg to gain iconic status with audiences in Britain and Ireland in the 1930s. La Crosses connection to Luxembourg dates back to the mid-1800s when immigrants from the county first arrived. In 2007, the Luxembourg American Descendents Society of La Crosse was formed to celebrate the immigrant history and form bonds with the people and places of Luxembourg. Most recently in 2020, Aquinas High School formed a virtual exchange program with the Lenster Lycee International School in Junglinster. The first exchange was so successful that it is now an annual program and has expanded to include Central High School as well. This summer, 25 students from Lenster Lycee International School will travel to La Crosse with their teachers for several weeks of educational experience and exploration. Additionally, both Viterbo University and UW-La Crosse have established educational exchange agreements for students and faculty with the University of Luxembourg. The strength of these partnerships and new opportunities are the foundation for the new Sister City Friendship between the City of La Crosse and Junglinster, the city said in its press release. La Crosse has seven other sister city relationships across the world. These cities include Bantry, Ireland; Dubna, Russia; Epinal, France; Frde, Norway; Friedberg, Germany; Luoyang, China; and the Republic of Cameroon, Kumbo, West Africa. A sister city relationship is a broad-based, long-term partnership between two communities in two countries. Each sister city relationship is independent and pursues the activities and thematic areas that are important to their community, which could include municipal, business, trade, educational and cultural projects with their sister city. IN PHOTOS: Rotary Lights 2022 Jordan Anchondo was among those killed in El Paso, Anchondo's sister said, and she apparently died while protecting her 2-month-old son from the hail of bullets. Leta Jamrowski of El Paso spoke to The Associated Press as she paced a waiting room at the University Medical Center of El Paso, where her 2-month-old nephew was being treated for broken bones the result of his mother's fall. "From the baby's injuries, they said that more than likely my sister was trying to shield him," she said. "So when she got shot she was holding him and she fell on him, so that's why he broke some of his bones. So he pretty much lived because she gave her life." Jordan, a mother of three, and Andre Anchondo had dropped off her 5-year old daughter at cheerleading practice before going to shop for school supplies on Saturday at a Walmart in El Paso. They never returned. Almost seven months after the case was filed, Attorney General Josh Kauls challenge to the states near-complete abortion ban remains unresolved, with defendants trying to dismiss the lawsuit and Democrats aiming to keep it going. On Tuesday, Kaul asked a Dane County judge not to dismiss the lawsuit after the three defendants each asked for the opposite. Kauls lawsuit alleges that a 1985 abortion law which prohibits abortions after fetal viability but includes an exception to protect the mothers life or health conflicts with the earlier, near-complete prohibition. Kaul also alleges that the 1849 prohibition, which bans all abortions except those required to save the mothers life, isnt in effect because of desuetude, a principle that laws may become unenforceable after a considerable period of disuse. The three district attorneys named in Kauls lawsuit, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, in December asked a Dane County judge to reject the lawsuit, alleging that Kaul does not have standing to bring the matter against the elected prosecutors. The prosecutors also said Kauls lawsuit improperly seeks to limit their prosecutorial discretion and Kaul cant sue on the merits of the case because he has not been personally harmed by the 1849 abortion ban. In a brief filed Tuesday, Kaul wrote that Wisconsin precedent shows that government officers, including the attorney general, have standing when an issue is of vital concern ... to the entire public. Kaul added that to succeed on his motion to dismiss, Urmanski must prove theres no way the lawsuit challenging the ban could succeed. He comes nowhere close, Kaul wrote. Kaul also wrote that Urmanski disputed his assertions of historical fact in his December response. Urmanski cannot prevail at the motion-to-dismiss stage by disputing Plaintiffs assertions of historical facts and presenting his own, Kaul wrote. His disputes instead demonstrate that his motion must be denied and Plaintiffs disuse claim must proceed. The final say on abortion rights in Wisconsin is expected to come from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 conservative majority. The court majority could flip next year with an April election to fill the seat currently held by retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. Four candidates two liberals and two conservatives have so far announced they are running for the seat. A new study says scientists at the oil company Exxon Mobile made accurate predictions about global warming starting in the 1970s. The study, in the journal Science, examined research by Exxon scientists. The oil company used more than 12 computer models that predicted increasing temperatures as well as, or better than, government and university scientists. The study said that Exxons predictions that the atmosphere would warm about 0.2 degrees Celsius every 10 years were correct. Naomi Oreskes is a history of science professor at Harvard University in Massachusetts. Oreskes was a co-writer of the study. She said Exxon paid for research that was actually astonishing in its precision and accuracy. Geoffrey Supran is the lead writer of the study and an environmental science professor at the University of Miami. He said this study is different from what earlier studies have found in documents from the oil industry. He said the data gives strong evidence that Exxon predicted that world temperatures would rise. But, he said, the company publicly attacked other scientific efforts that made similar predictions. The study quoted then-Exxon chief Lee Raymond. In 1999, Raymond said climate research was based on completely unproven climate models, or mostly guessing about the future. However, Exxon spokesperson Todd Spitler said some people are not correctly showing Exxons position on climate science. He said there was a debate within the company about climate science instead of a plan to give false information to the public. Exxon has faced several legal cases claiming that the company knew about the damage oil and gas would cause but still gave misleading information to the public. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey compared Exxons public statements to those of the tobacco industry. For years, the tobacco industry denied the dangerous effects of tobacco use even when it knew about the dangers. Healy brought a legal case for the state of Massachusetts against Exxon in 2019 claiming that the company misled the public. Oreskes and Supran, the writers of the study, said they had previously worked for or received money from organizations that support legal actions against Exxon. Donald Wuebbles is a retired professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois. He told The Associated Press that in the 1980s he worked with scientists who received money to support their research from Exxon. He said he was not surprised by the companys findings. Wuebbles said: It was clear that Exxon Mobile knew what was going on. He added: The problem is at the same time they were paying people to put out misinformation. Thats the big issue. InfluenceMap is a non-profit group jointly based in the U.S. and Britain, which studies how companies are affecting the worlds climate. InfluenceMap said Exxons overall communication efforts oppose the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. It also said Exxon is currently having a negative effect on efforts to fight climate change. Faye Holder is the program manager for InfluenceMap. She said all her companys research suggests that Exxon aims to continue its business and to thwart policies called for by supporters of climate change. The messages of denial and delay may look different, but the intention is the same, she said. Im Andrew Smith. Seth Borenstein wrote this story for the Associated Press. Andrew Smith adapted it for VOA Learning English. ___________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story accurate adj. free from mistakes or errors journal n. a magazine that reports on things of interest to a particular group such as professors or doctors astonishing adj. very surprising, shocking precision n. the quality of being very exact and correct misleading adj. causing someone to believe something that is not true thwart v. to prevent someone from doing something intention n. what someone aims to do ___________________________________________________________________ We want to hear from you. We have a new comment system. Here is how it works: Write your comment in the box. Under the box, you can see four images for social media accounts. They are for Disqus, Facebook, Twitter and Google. Click on one image and a box appears. Enter the login for your social media account. Or you may create one on the Disqus system. It is the blue circle with D on it. It is free. Each time you return to comment on the Learning English site, you can use your account and see your comments and replies to them. Our comment policy is here. The President of Vietnam Nguyen Xuan Phuc resigned Tuesday as an anti-corruption campaign spreads in the national government. The state-controlled Vietnam News agency reported the resignation took place during a meeting of the ruling Communist Party Central Committee. The agency said the meeting was held to consider and give opinions on Comrade Nguyen Xuan Phucs wish to stop holding positions, quit work and retire. The language of the announcement suggested that he was forced to resign. Phuc also resigned from membership in the Politburo, the executive committee of the Central Committee and as chairman of the National Defense and Security Council. The 68-year-old Phuc started as a local politician in 1979. He joined national government service in 2006. He became part of the powerful Politburo in 2011. Phuc served as prime minister from 2016 to 2021. The National Assembly then elected him president. As prime minister, Phuc led Vietnam as it increased links to the international economic system. The country reported seven percent economic growth until the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Vietnam was one of the few countries to report any economic growth. Vietnam established lockdown measures early in the pandemic and saw low numbers of infections during the first year. But, in 2021, more communicable versions of the virus began spreading around the world. By the middle of the year, COVID cases in the country were quickly rising. The most powerful position is considered to be the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party. Nguyen Phu Trong holds that position. In 2021, he was appointed to a third term. He is known for his campaign against corruption. During his second term, he targeted two former cabinet ministers and Hanois former mayor. State media released an official statement praising Phuc for his efforts to fight COVID-19 as prime minister. But, the statement said, as the countrys top executive, he was responsible for wrongdoing involving people under him. That included two deputy prime ministers and three other ministers. State media noted that the two deputy prime ministers have resigned, and several other officials face criminal charges. In some of the cases, the government is investigating wrongdoing linked to COVID-19 control measures. Im Mario Ritter, Jr. Grant Peck reported this story for The Associated Press. Mario Ritter, Jr. adapted it for VOA Learning English. __________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story quit v. to give up employment executive n. belonging to the branch of government that is charged with such powers as diplomatic representation, superintendence of the execution of the laws, and appointment of officials and that usually has some power over legislation (as through veto) lockdown n. an emergency measure or condition in which people are temporarily prevented from entering or leaving a restricted area or building (such as a school) during a threat of danger deputy n. a second in command or assistant who usually takes charge when his or her superior is absent ___________________________________________________________________ We want to hear from you. We have a new comment system. Here is how it works: Write your comment in the box. Under the box, you can see four images for social media accounts. They are for Disqus, Facebook, Twitter and Google. Click on one image and a box appears. Enter the login for your social media account. Or you may create one on the Disqus system. It is the blue circle with D on it. It is free. Each time you return to comment on the Learning English site, you can use your account and see your comments and replies to them. Our comment policy is here. Ask the new artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT to write about the cause of the American Civil War and you can watch it produce a school report in just a few seconds. The technology is so good that it can write sentences like ones written by a human. And it is also free. The tool has been in use since November. But it is already raising tough questions about the future of AI in education, the tech industry, and a number of professions. New York City school officials recently started blocking the writing tool on school devices and networks. The decision by the largest school system in the United States could affect how other school systems deal with the technology. Teachers are now trying to find out how to prevent students using the AI tool for cheating. And the creators of ChatGPT also say they are looking for ways to detect misuse. What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT launched last November as part of a larger set of technologies developed by the San Francisco-based company OpenAI. It is part of a new generation of AI systems that can have a discussion and create written work. It can even produce new images and video based on what it has learned from a large database of digital books, online writings and other media. But unlike previous AI tools known as large language models, ChatGPT is available for free to anyone on the internet. It is also designed to be more user-friendly. It works like a written conversation between the AI system and the person asking it questions. Millions of people have played with the tool over the past month. They used it to write poems or songs. Some tried to trick it into making mistakes. Others used it to write email. All of those requests are helping it to get smarter. What are the possible issues? Like similar systems, ChatGPT can produce strong writing. But that does not mean what it says is factual or makes sense. Its launch came with little guidance for how to use it. But the program will admit when it is wrong. It will also question incorrect premises and reject requests meant to bring about offensive answers. Its popularity has led its creators to try to lower some people's expectations. Sam Altman is the head of OpenAI. He said on Twitter in December that ChatGPT is very limited, but good enough at some things to make people think it is great. He added that it should not be used for anything important right now. Many school systems in the U.S. are still deciding how to set policies on the use of AI programs and how they can be used. The New York City education department said it is restricting use of ChatGPT because it is worried about negative impacts on student learning, as well as concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content. But there is no stopping a student from using ChatGPT from home or on a personal device. Human or AI? Jenna Lyle is a spokesperson for New York schools. She said the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions. But she told The Associated Press: it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success. When VOA asked ChatGPT whether the program could be used to write school papers, it said that using it for writing papers is cheating and does not help the students. ChatGPT then provided a very similar answer to Lyles saying, using such a tool doesn't build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills which are essential for academic and lifelong success. The Associated Press asked ChatGPT how to know if something was written by a human or AI. The program said, To determine if something was written by a human or AI, you can look for the absence of personal experiences or emotions. It noted that AI writings could also contain unnecessary words or repeated sentences. In a human-written statement, OpenAI told the AP that it plans to work with educators as it learns how people are experimenting with ChatGPT in the real world. We dont want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so were already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system, the company said. I'm Dan Novak. Dan Novak adapted this story for VOA Learning English based on reporting by The Associated Press. Quiz- Why US Schools Are Blocking ChatGPT Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz _________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story premise n. a statement or idea that is accepted as being true and that is used as the basis of an argument benefit n. a good or helpful result or effect essential adj. extremely important and necessary academic adj. of or relating to schools and education mislead v. to cause to believe something that is not true mitigate v. to make less severe, harmful, or painful NEBRASKA The Nebraska State Patrol and Nebraska Department of Transportation urge Nebraskans to be ready for significant travel impacts from the upcoming winter storm. Heavy snowfall is expected across much of the state, with the potential for a foot of snow along a line from southwest to northeast Nebraska. This storm will have a major impact on travel in Nebraska throughout Wednesday and into Thursday, said Colonel John Bolduc, Superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol, The latest projections from the National Weather Service show all of Interstate 80 in Nebraska receiving at least three to four inches of snow, with a 300-mile range from Kimball to Grand Island seeing upwards of seven inches. All Nebraskans are urged to stay up to date on the latest weather conditions and forecasts from local media. If travel is necessary, check the Nebraska 511 Advanced Traveler System at 511.Nebraska.Gov. Any motorists who become stranded or need assistance can call *55 or 800-525-5555 to reach the NSP Highway Helpline and speak directly with an NSP Dispatcher. With yet another statewide winter storm, its important for travelers to be as safe and informed as possible before choosing to travel, said interim NDOT director, Moe Jamshidi. This means checking the 511 app before leaving home or work and if you dont have to travel, consider adjusting your plans to accommodate that. Remember to never pass plows and give them plenty of space. As NDOT and local crews work to clear the roads during and after the storm, give them room to work and dont crowd the plow. Motorists are urged to check conditions before traveling, reduce speed, increase following distance, and always wear a seat belt. Here's a little known fact: A dozen counties in Nebraska currently have no practicing attorneys. Zip from the towns of Bartlett, Hyannis or Stapleton. Zero from Arthur, Springview or Spencer. Zilch from Harrisburg or Hayes Center. And by 2027, four more counties are projected to join them, according to the Nebraska State Bar Association. In fact, by then half of the state's counties are expected to have three or fewer attorneys unless something changes. At the Judicial Resources Commission's annual meeting in December, Nebraska Supreme Court Justice Stephanie Stacy went over the current numbers and the projections, illustrated by brightly colored maps. A stripe of 16 counties crossed the center of the state, mostly north of the Platte River and hugging South Dakota's border. Another 32 counties in pockets across the state were highlighted in a lighter shade. A visual legal desert. "This trend, if you will, will probably make courtroom technology and remote appearances a more critical need in our county courts," Stacy said, speaking in a hearing room at the Capitol with members across the state watching by video. Of the 5,547 attorneys with active law licenses living in Nebraska, the vast majority (83%) live in large urban areas, with 11% in small urban communities. "And only 7% of Nebraska's lawyers live in the rural communities," she said. Unlike the Lincoln and Omaha areas, where millennials (those born in the early 80s to mid-90s) now account for the largest category of practicing attorneys, in rural areas most are baby boomers getting closer to retirement. Stacy said there are several programs actively working to retain and recruit lawyers to the state's rural communities. In 2013, the Nebraska State Bar Association started a rural practice initiative to connect law firms that were hiring with law students or new associates looking for jobs in Greater Nebraska. "We hope to see a difference from that," Stacy said. And the state's law colleges have partnered with Chadron State College, the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Wayne State College to create a Rural Law Opportunities Program to encourage the practice of law in the state's rural areas. "So there's work being done," Stacy told the group. "But it is a phenomenon that I wanted the resources commission to be aware of, because it impacts our courts." Last week, Liz Neeley, executive director of the Nebraska State Bar Association, said they did the forecast to take a closer look at attorneys reaching retirement age and what the map could look like if they aren't replaced. "It's, I think, eye-opening," she said. "A lot of the lawyers in rural Nebraska are older, and so we're hoping to kind of cast a light on the importance of this issue for our state." Neeley said the bar association started to look closer at the issue 10 years ago after hearing anecdotes about pockets of the state where there used to be 15 or 20 lawyers and the numbers had dwindled. And after hearing from members who wanted to retire but felt like they couldn't because there was no one to hand the practice to. "At that time we really started looking at the distribution of lawyers across the state to find out if there were areas that were underserved or that we should be concerned about," she said. Soon after that, it began rising as a national issue, Neeley said. "Nebraska's not the only state that has this problem," she said. There are a lot of states with what's referred to as "legal deserts," Neeley said. And there are a lot of strategies to try to help with recruiting and retaining lawyers in underserved areas. Like the rural legal program, which was modeled after the Rural Health Opportunities Program started years ago to encourage medical health professionals to practice in shortage areas. Students at UNK, Chadron or Wayne State would work toward their undergraduate degree for free and automatically be admitted into the Nebraska College of Law if they meet a certain law school aptitude test score. The idea is to build the pipeline of rural lawyers in the state, Neeley said. And they hope to see results similar to the Rural Health Opportunities Program, where around 65% of the students return to rural parts of the state to practice health professions, she said. She said a recent survey of lawyers in rural Nebraska within the first five years of practice found that more than 70% grew up in a rural area. Which tends to show merit in the idea. Though lawyers from urban areas sometimes go to work in rural areas of Nebraska, too, Neeley said. On one hand, she said, the shortage is a rural economic development issue. Lawyers do a lot of things, like help families with wills and adoptions, with sales of homes and businesses. But there's also an access-to-justice concern, she said. As a legal profession, Neeley said, the bar association wants there to be equality before the law, and the concern is that there's becoming a geographic barrier to accessing legal services. Technology can be used to bridge that gap and help people access legal services or the court system remotely, she said. "I think there's progress being made on those fronts," Neeley said. "But this conversation is really a part of how do we recruit and retain legal talent across the state of Nebraska." If the number of rural attorneys continues to decline, finding applicants for open judgeships could become a problem. Or finding lawyers to handle court appointments in criminal and juvenile cases, where travel time would cost the counties more, could be challenging. "The pool of lawyers available for court appointments in certain areas of our state is really at a crisis level," she said. "There's just not a lot of lawyers to appoint, or you're appointing lawyers who have to drive 75 to 100 miles to get to their court appointment." Jeff Jarecki, a partner at Jarecki Sharp & Petersen P.C. in Albion, is currently is one of five attorneys in Boone County. Wheeler County to the west has none. Greeley County has one. He said all Nebraskans face legal issues, whether personal or business related. "And it is vital that legal services remain accessible to all citizens of the state of Nebraska no matter their location," he said. In an email, Jarecki and Tana Fye, who has a practice in Holdrege, said there is increasing concern regarding the need for more attorneys in rural Nebraska, especially as the baby-boom generation transitions to retirement. Also, as the need for more attorneys grows in the urban areas, it becomes more challenging for rural areas to recruit attorneys, they said. While these challenges will continue, they said, adjustments during the pandemic led to more conference calls and court appearances by video. "While technology will be utilized to ensure access to legal services for all Nebraska residents, the goal of the Nebraska State Bar Association is to maintain a strong physical presence of attorneys in rural Nebraska," Jarecki said. John Bernard Quigley (Ohio State University (OSU) - Michael E. Moritz College of Law) has posted Legality of Military Action by Egypt and Syria in October 1973 (The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts and the Remaking of International Law (University of Michigan Press)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the early 1970s, the United States faced delicate issues on use of force for its military action in Vietnam. The United States exited Vietnam early in 1973 only to confront new use of force issues a few months later in the Middle East. Israel in 1967 had invaded Egypt, then, almost immediately, Jordan and Syria. The United States, which regarded Israel as a virtual ally, had kept the Security Council of the United Nations from condemning Israel in 1967 despite credible claims of aggression by the three Arab countries. In the Autumn of 1973, within months of the US departure from Vietnam, Egypt and Syria sought to regain their territory, an action that raised an issue of the legality of use of force. Having just extracted itself from a military action that brought considerable international condemnation upon itself, the United States found itself protecting Israel in the face of international sentiment that favored Egypt and Syria. With the hostilities in both Vietnam and the Middle East, serious discussion of the legalities in the Security Council never took place. The United States, using its position as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, was able to orient discussion away from legalities. In both situations whether in regard to its own actions in Vietnam, or Israels actions in the Middle East the United States was on thin ice from the standpoint of international legality. Both situations involved protection of national territory from outside military action. The United States had inserted itself military in Vietnam into what was widely regarded as a domestic civil war. Israel had occupied territory of Egypt and Syria under questionable circumstances, and the two Arab nations were seeking to recapture their territory. For the United States a common element was that it sought to forestall difficulties with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had scored major Cold War points against the United States with scathing condemnation of the United States for aggression against Vietnam. Israels occupation of Egyptian and Syrian territory in 1967 had similarly brought a charge of aggression by the Soviet Union against Israel. Israels continuing occupation of Egyptian and Syrian territory was similarly the target of a Soviet charge of aggression. The international context of the era was unfavorable to the United States. New states emerging from colonialism were changing the composition of the United Nations, putting the United States on the defensive with respect both to Vietnam and to the Middle East. This essay focuses on the 1973 Middle East episode on the actions of Syria and Egypt to regain their territory, and on diplomatic efforts by the United States to deflect criticism of Israel and to manage its own relations with the Soviet Union. Wisconsins child care industry continues to face a critical staffing crisis one that is expected to get worse if federal COVID relief funding isnt replaced once it runs out. Thats according to a recent national survey of early childhood educators, which found 63.3% of Wisconsin centers are experiencing staffing shortages and that 79.8% of workers are facing burnout and exhaustion. The survey, conducted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, included responses from 1,173 Wisconsin child care providers. The survey, the results of which were released last month through the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, also indicated that 32.1% of child care center owners would consider leaving their job or closing their program in the future if economic conditions dont improve. Dane County child care providers echoed the sentiments expressed in the survey and said the money they receive from the state is merely keeping their businesses afloat. The U.S. economy loses more than $50 billion per year in revenue, wages and productivity due to persistent child care problems, according to a 2021 Brookings Institution report. Fueling the states child care staffing crisis are wages that havent kept up with the rising cost of living, as well as financial burdens and closures brought on by COVID-19, WECA said. The state was already seeing child care deserts before the pandemic, or regions where a center cant be found for miles despite major need. The average wage that child care workers make in the state is $7.50 to $13 an hour, which for a 40-hour work week puts a family of four at or below the 2022 federal poverty rate. We need to start understanding that child care is a public good, said Ruth Schmidt, WECA executive director, adding that the reports results were striking but not surprising. Moreover, 45.6% of Wisconsin survey respondents said they are serving fewer children than they would like, with 51.5% reporting longer waitlists of parents needing their facilities. Government funding The backlogs are a consequence of staffing shortages, respondents said. Meanwhile, 27.1% of state providers said their program would close without current financial supports. More than $700 million in federal pandemic relief funding has been given to providers by the state since the start of the health crisis, but it expires in 2024, Schmidt said. In Wisconsin, a majority of that funding has supported the Child Care Counts program, which provides payments to child care facilities to increase wages and offset other operating costs. WECA said it is advocating for a $300 million investment to continue the program in the states 2023-25 biennial budget. That money would keep the status quo, Schmidt said, adding that much more is needed from both the public and private sectors to help child care providers flourish, not just remain stable. It will keep (the child care industry) from further receding in our state, she said. There are some glimmers of hope: Efforts within the last year to financially stabilize the beleaguered child care industry have come from other state organizations, too, as awareness of the problem has grown. The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families in 2022 implemented a program called Project Growth, which included $10 million to help businesses purchase slots for employees at regulated child care facilities, as well as $8.1 million to encourage communities across the state to address local child care workforce and resource needs over the next few years. Madison Area Technical College received a $2.9 million grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to help build capacity for child care on Madisons South Side and near other MATC campuses in the region. Ongoing struggles Brenda Fritz, owner and administrator of Academy of Little Vikings, a child care center in Mount Horeb, said she hasnt seen a resume come across her desk in months. The business opened in 2013 and has about 42 employees, Fritz said, and shes looking to hire at least five more. And because of a waitlist of 75 children and growing, Fritz said the center is eyeing an expansion. But thats not economically viable right now, she said, because of her staffing shortage. The academys waitlist extends into 2024 and includes babies that havent even been born yet, she said. The center currently cares for 165 children ages 0-12. The academy has been a recipient of Child Care Counts funding of $25,000 a month since May 2021, of which $15,000 boosts employee wages which average between $15 and $17 an hour by $500 a month. The center also gets a separate monthly Child Care Counts stipend of $10,000 to go toward operational costs, and Fritz said that money has been a good retention and stabilization tool. Fritz said she tells her staff to think of the grant money as bonuses rather than wage increases to drive home the fact that the money may soon go away. Without the grants, she said, she would have to raise tuition for families that use her center. A lot of lip service Jen Bailey, executive director of child care program Reach Dane, also receives Child Care Counts funding roughly $112,000 a month since spring 2021. The program serves 1,000 children ages 0-5 from mostly low-income families across several Dane County locations, and has 280 employees. It needs to hire 40 more, Bailey said. Currently, we have 10 classrooms that are closed due to lack of staff, Bailey said. Both providers said theyve also helped their employees get child care with Project Growth money. We pay a lot of lip service, but we dont put our money where our mouth is, Bailey said. We need to treat it like the profession it is. We are asking people to care for (children) that are in this critical development stage. NONFICTION: In his third memoir, Henry Marsh moves from being a doctor to becoming a patient. It's a difficult transition. "And Finally" by Henry Marsh; St. Martin's Press (240 pages, $27.99) When neurosurgeon Henry Marsh's third memoir opens, he has volunteered to take part in a study that requires a scan of his brain. "It seemed a bit of a joke at the time," he writes in "And Finally." But weeks later, when the scan arrives in the mail, he puts off looking at it. Now 70 and retired, he understands that his brain might not appear as fresh and healthy as he would like to believe it is. Given his age, he knows, "My brain is starting to rot." Looking at proof of that "is just too frightening." This is one of the many compelling themes of this serious and wise book how powerful denial is in the human brain, and how all of us, even physicians, can ignore uncomfortable truths. As it turns out, Marsh's brain was not what he needed to be worried about. An array of dire symptoms, disregarded for years, eventually leads to a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. By ignoring the signs, "I thought I was being stoical when in reality I was being a coward," he says. "I simply couldn't believe the diagnosis at first, so deeply ingrained was my denial." For people in his profession, Marsh notes, the world is divided into two camps: doctors and patients. Moving from one camp to the other is painful the doctors no longer treat him as a peer and he's reduced to googling his symptoms just like the rest of us. The hospital feels different, more intimidating and impersonal, and as he heads to the radiotherapy department, "I could feel myself lose height as I walked along the corridor." In his 2017 memoir, "Admissions," a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award, Marsh wrote about life on the cusp of retirement. He had bought an old cottage in Oxford that he was fixing up in hopes of moving there from London. But in "And Finally," he notes that his repairs were substandard, the house needs more work than he could manage, and, "I wasted too much time and energy in my determination to do everything myself, and too many of the roofs I have built leak when it rains." It is impossible not to read this as a metaphor for his life. And yet there is nothing depressing about this book. Marsh's tone is measured, clear, sometimes wryly humorous, as he looks at himself, his foibles, his mistakes and decisions. He is unflinching when he describes the changes that cancer and its treatment cause in his body the occasional incontinence, the "chemical castration" that shrinks his tumors but also causes him to fatten up and lose his hair, giving him a lifelong runner, who cycles everywhere "the plump and hairless body of a eunuch." Marsh also deftly weaves in other issues his love of nature, his grandchildren and his unending fascination with the mysteries of the human brain. What is consciousness? How do billions of nerves make us us, with thoughts, desires, personalities? "Answering one question just opens the door to a room with yet more doors." And though Marsh also makes a case for assisted dying (he has a suicide kit, but doubts he will use it), this book is firmly an ode to life. "I so long not to die!" he says. "The wish to keep living remains as intense as ever." I wish Marsh all the best with his cancer treatments. But rest assured, this book, written with passion and curiosity, makes clear that there's absolutely nothing wrong with his brain. NONFICTION: The fascinating story of Ana Belen Montes, an American bureaucrat and spy for Cuba. "Code Name Blue Wren" by Jim Popkin; Hanover Square Press (351 pages, $27.99) By the time you read this, Ana Belen Montes will have left the Admin Unit at Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, her release scheduled for Jan. 8. The prison has been home to some of the nation's most dangerous women, including Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a Charles Manson follower who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, and Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. So how did this former federal government employee end up serving a 25-year sentence in "the world's worst sorority house"? She was caught spying for Cuba while working as a senior analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. Montes is "sometimes called the most important spy you've never heard of," Jim Popkin writes in "Code Name Blue Wren," his account of how the "Queen of Cuba" was exposed. Even though her double-dealing ranks with "the two worst traitors in modern American history Aldrich 'Rick' Ames at the CIA and Robert Hanssen at the FBI," her arrest in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 went virtually unnoticed. "Code Name Blue Wren" corrects that. Even though Popkin was unable to interview Montes she was barred from speaking to reporters and authors as a requirement of her plea bargain a portrait emerges of a complicated, narcissistic, tightly wound woman who excelled at her day job, earning accolades as she became one of the top experts on Cuba, and was equally successful at her side hustle, giving the Castro regime information that "poisoned nearly every secret plan that American intelligence officials hatched in Cuba." Although Montes' voice is missed, details from hundreds of interviews, court records, a classified CIA behavioral analysis and exclusive access to her letters and her parents' unpublished autobiographies flesh out Montes' days leading up to and including the 17 years she spent as a secret agent. The actual work of spying is a grind, as it turns out. Montes spent long hours memorizing documents early on she eschewed handing over paper records and she had no one to talk to. Her handlers often "would go completely dark when they sensed danger"; co-workers were off-limits, for obvious reasons; and most of her siblings worked for the FBI. Her days were mainly work, working out and spying. Such a buttoned-down subject could have proved boring, but the ins and outs of spycraft amateur radio operators still search for numeric broadcasts that give spies their orders, a relic from the Cold War still in use and the interagency fighting that surrounded the Montes espionage case are fascinating and sometimes humorous reading. "The world of counterintelligence is very weird, and nobody trusts anybody," a National Security Agency employee notes, an understatement if there ever was one as counterintelligence officials refer to one another as "morons" and "dweebs" and an element of farce prolongs the rooting out of Montes. It's a miracle she was ever caught. But she was, and Popkin keeps the reader hooked until the handcuffs are slapped on, and beyond. Almost seven months after the case was filed, Attorney General Josh Kauls challenge to the states near-complete abortion ban remains unresolved, with defendants trying to dismiss the lawsuit and Democrats aiming to keep it going. On Tuesday, Kaul asked a Dane County judge not to dismiss the lawsuit after the three defendants each asked for the opposite. Kauls lawsuit alleges that a 1985 abortion law which prohibits abortions after fetal viability but includes an exception to protect the mothers life or health conflicts with the earlier, near-complete prohibition. Kaul also alleges that the 1849 prohibition, which bans all abortions except those required to save the mothers life, isnt in effect because of desuetude, a principle that laws may become unenforceable after a considerable period of disuse. The three district attorneys named in Kauls lawsuit, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, in December asked a Dane County judge to reject the lawsuit, alleging that Kaul does not have standing to bring the matter against the elected prosecutors. The prosecutors also said Kauls lawsuit improperly seeks to limit their prosecutorial discretion and Kaul cant sue on the merits of the case because he has not been personally harmed by the 1849 abortion ban. In a brief filed Tuesday, Kaul wrote that Wisconsin precedent shows that government officers, including the attorney general, have standing when an issue is of vital concern ... to the entire public. Kaul added that to succeed on his motion to dismiss, Urmanski must prove theres no way the lawsuit challenging the ban could succeed. He comes nowhere close, Kaul wrote. Kaul also wrote that Urmanski disputed his assertions of historical fact in his December response. Urmanski cannot prevail at the motion-to-dismiss stage by disputing Plaintiffs assertions of historical facts and presenting his own, Kaul wrote. His disputes instead demonstrate that his motion must be denied and Plaintiffs disuse claim must proceed. The Senate on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment to toughen the state's bail system by requiring courts to consider the criminal histories of people charged with violent crimes and whether they present a risk to public safety if released. The measure, which passed 23-9, heads to the Assembly on Thursday. If approved there, it will go before voters April 4, when a Wisconsin Supreme Court race and local races and referendums will also be on the ballot. Two Democrats Sen. Brad Pfaff, of Onalaska, and Sen. Bob Wirch, of Somers joined all Republicans in voting in favor of the measure. Under the state Constitution, judges can't impose cash bail to keep defendants from engaging in criminal activity by keeping them locked up. It can only be used to ensure defendants appear in court. Judges may, however, add conditions to a person's bail that seek to address public safety concerns. The Constitution also states defendants shall be eligible for release under reasonable conditions aimed at protecting community members from "serious bodily harm." The proposal changes that standard to "serious harm." The measure, SJR 2, passed both chambers with bipartisan support last year. State law requires the Legislature to approve proposed constitutional amendments in two consecutive sessions before Wisconsinites can vote on them. The governor cannot veto a proposed constitutional amendment. Calling Wisconsin's current bail system broken, proposal author Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said Tuesday that the measure would give judges the ability to look at the whole picture when considering bail for people accused of violent crimes. "Nothing else can happen until we pass and ratify this amendment," Wanggaard said. "This is the first step, and this has to be the first step." Criminal defense attorneys and other opponents of the amendment have argued the changes will result in more people presumed to be innocent held behind bars longer because they can't make bail while awaiting trial. "This is wasteful," Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, said about the proposal. "It's likely unconstitutional." Opponents have argued that if the proposal results in keeping people in jail for long periods of time before trial, it could violate the U.S. Constitution's due process clause, which states nobody may be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." Supporters say that's not realistic since the proposal was modeled on other states' bail systems. Opponents have also said the proposed amendment could violate the excessive bail prohibition under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Wanggaard said the measure would not change the excessive bail prohibition, noting that judges would have to put on the record why they believe bail amounts are appropriate. Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, criticized the proposed switch from "serious bodily harm" to "serious harm," saying there was no clear definition of the latter. The amendment wouldn't have much practical effect, according to Michael O'Hear, a professor of criminal law at Marquette Law School. That's because violent crime already constitutes a small percentage of criminal cases, O'Hear said. Additionally, factors that make a defendant a public safety risk tend to be the same kinds of factors judges consider when determining whether a defendant is a flight risk, he said. But even the small number of case affected by the bail changes could worsen jail overcrowding, he said, because some defendants would be unable to pay significantly higher bail amounts under the new system. A Dane County judge has removed Wisconsin Elections Commission member Robert Spindell from a lawsuit seeking public records related to the 10 Republicans, including Spindell, who falsely attested Donald Trump won Wisconsins 2020 presidential election in an effort to hand the states 10 electoral votes to the former president. Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost on Tuesday said the elections commission, not Spindell, is the legal custodian of the requested documents. Frost allowed the case to continue against the commission. The case relates to a complaint Law Forward filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission in 2021 against the slate of 10 Republicans who signed the official-looking documents. The commission unanimously denied the complaint seeking sanctions against the 10 Republicans, including Spindell. Law Forward later sued the commission seeking public records related to the commissions consideration of that complaint, alleging that both the agency and Spindell did not produce all responsive records. The law firm has also sued the commission alleging that Spindell should have recused himself from discussion on the complaint, as he was one of the 10 individuals to sign the documents. In May, a handful of Democrats, represented by Law Forward, filed a lawsuit alleging that the 10 Republicans and the two attorneys who advised them broke several criminal and civil laws including counterfeiting public records, illegally interfering with official procedures, defrauding the public and engaging in conspiracy when they met at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign documents asserting that Trump won the state. The lawsuit seeks more than $2.4 million in damages, including $2,000 fines for the Republicans and their attorneys, and up to $200,000 in punitive damages for each plaintiff. Plaintiffs in the case include lawfully elected Wisconsin electors Khary Penebaker and Mary Arnold, as well as Bonnie Joseph, who is listed in court documents as someone who objects to Defendants unlawful interference in Wisconsins participation in the Electoral College. The meeting of Republicans occurred following advice from attorneys with close ties to Trump. Documents have underscored efforts by those in Trumps inner circle to circumvent the Electoral College process in several states, including Wisconsin, following the 2020 election, despite recounts and court decisions affirming that Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. The Republicans have said the meeting was to preserve their legal options amid litigation surrounding the election. The meeting took place on the same day the states Democratic slate of electors convened, also at the Capitol, to deliver the states 10 electoral votes to Biden. It also occurred after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Biden had won the election and a month after Wisconsin county clerks canvassed the presidential election results. 5 takeaways from the Jan. 6 report 5. Record for history 1. Eight chapters 2. New details, pressures 4. Safeguarding democracy 3. Behind the scenes The lone Democratic candidate running to fill a Republican-leaning state Senate seat has so far outraised her GOP challengers leading up to an April special election that could give Republicans a veto-proof majority in the 33-member chamber. Jodi Habush Sinykin, of Whitefish Bay, will run unopposed in the Feb. 21 Democratic primary for the 8th Senate District, which was previously held by longtime Republican Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills. Habush Sinykin raised just over $40,000 between Dec. 7, when she announced her candidacy, and the end of last month. Of that, just shy of $30,000 came from individual donations, while the remainder came from committees, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission. Several Republicans are also running for the seat. They will meet in the Feb. 21 spring primary, with the winner likely facing Habush Sinykin on the April 4 ballot, which also includes several local elections and a high-stakes race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court that will determine whether conservatives or liberals hold a crucial majority on the high court. State Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, raised more than $9,000 in individual donations between Oct. 25 and Dec. 31. He also raised about $13,000 from committee transfers and put $10,000 of his own funds into his campaign. Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, raised about $8,700 from individuals and another $3,000 in committee transfers between Oct. 25 and the end of December. Thiensville Village President Van Mobley is also on the ballot. Despite the fundraising advantage, Habush Sinykin faces some historical challenges in the upcoming election. A Democrat has not held the seat since 1992, when Darling won the district, but several communities encompassing Milwaukee, including those in the 8th Senate District, have seen their GOP margins trending downward over the years. The 8th Senate District is located north of Milwaukee and includes portions of Whitefish Bay, Brown Deer, Cedarburg, Grafton, Menomonee Falls and Germantown. Knodl has served in the Assembly since 2009. He launched his campaign on Dec. 1, about a week after Darling announced her plans to retire. Brandtjen joined the race weeks after Assembly Republicans voted in a closed meeting to bar Brandtjen from participating in the chambers GOP closed caucus. Brandtjen later lost her position as chair of the Assembly Elections Committee after using her position as committee chair for the past year to provide a platform to conspiracy theorists and deniers of the results of Wisconsins 2020 presidential election, despite multiple reviews, recounts and court decisions affirming that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the state by about 21,000 votes. Brandtjen was first elected to the Assembly in 2014 and spent eight years as a Waukesha County supervisor. If a Republican wins the 8th Senate District seat, the GOP would secure a two-thirds majority in the chamber. Republicans are two seats short of a two-thirds majority in the state Assembly. Both chambers need supermajorities in order to successfully override a governors veto. Elections 101: Video series explains how elections are carried out in Wisconsin The Wisconsin Elections Commission put together the following series of instructional videos and accompanying lesson plans for use in high school civics classes and the general public. Elections overview An overview of elections administration in Wisconsin. Voting Security Let's take a look at how we maintain security and integrity with all of our elections. Nuts and bolts The ins-and-outs of voter processes like registering to vote and requesting a ballot to vote absentee. A Day at the Polls See what it is like to go to the polls and vote. The race for campaign cash in the three-way Madison mayoral race has begun in earnest, with Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway starting with the most, taking in and spending the most, and having a slight edge in cash on hand as of the end of last year. The mayor, elected in April 2019, announced her reelection bid in November. She began the latest six-month finance reporting period with $10,545, received $35,204, spent $28,819 and had $16,929 on hand at the end of December. She also had $1,873 in loans. Gloria Reyes, a former deputy mayor, Madison School Board president and city police officer, also announced her candidacy in November. She began the reporting period with nothing, raised $18,734, spent $2,902 and had $15,832 on hand at the end of December. Scott Kerr, a technician with the city Traffic Engineering Division, is filing as exempt for the reporting period a designation under state campaign finance law that means a candidate does not intend to spend or take in more than $2,500 in a calendar year. The new campaign finance reports, which cover activity from July 1 through Dec. 31, were due at the end of the day Tuesday. Primaries for the mayors race and eight of 20 City Council races is Feb. 21. The general election is set for April 4. In these initial reports, were seeing that Mayor Satya is in a strong position as the front-runner in Madisons mayoral race nearly doubling the amount raised by her next closest opponent, Rhodes-Conways campaign manager Alec Piefer said. Mayor Satya only announced her candidacy in November and before that, she was focused on managing the city through a global pandemic and supporting candidates in statewide races during the midterms. Reyes was also upbeat. My supporters know how much I care about our Madison, and I am incredibly humbled by the support Ive received to date, she said. Over the past few months, I have met with residents, businesses and community leaders to learn about the issues they care about and how we can work together to solve them. Kerr said hes not fundraising, not accepting donations and doesnt intend to spend much more than the $53 for his website. Money should not play a role in the mayoral election or any election, he said. Everyone claims they want to get money out of politics. If I cant do it at the local level, how will we ever get the money out at the national level? In 2019, Rhodes-Conway defeated the citys longest-serving mayor, Paul Soglin. Shes running for reelection on her handling of public emergencies, such as COVID-19; expanding the Community Alternative Response Emergency Services program, or CARES, which responds to 911 calls for some behavioral health emergencies; big investments in transportation and housing; the response to homelessness; and traffic safety. She is the citys first openly gay mayor. Kerr said hes disappointed with how the mayors office is managing the city, creating harm that will take decades to correct. He is campaigning on common-sense solutions rather than throwing money at problems. He said he supports fiscal responsibility and wants better communication with residents. Reyes is vowing strong leadership and collaboration, and she is touting her local roots and experience in an array of community roles. She is centering her campaign on public safety, economic development, education, housing, homelessness and the environment. If elected, she would be the citys first Hispanic mayor. In the past six months, Rhodes-Conway received at least 17 contributions of $500 or more, including $5,000 apiece from Joseph and Nicholas Alexander of Madison and Monona; $3,000 from Alexander Conway of New York City; $2,000 from Ald. Erik Paulson; and $3,000 from Madison Metro Transit General Manager Justin Stuehrenberg. In that period, her largest expenses were for consulting, campaign software and media emails. Were anticipating our fundraising to be strong throughout the campaign, Piefer said. Over the last four years, Mayor Satya has made real, tangible change that will benefit Madison for years to come, and the fact that shes significantly out-raised her opponents shows that people support that change. Reyes, who reported no contributions before Nov. 8, got at least 12 gifts of $500 or more, including $2,500 from Chad Lawler of Nekoosa, $2,500 from Amy Vincent of Madison, and $1,000 from Jamie Custer and $700 from Betty Custer, both of Madison. She also transferred in $857 from her school board campaign committee. Her biggest expense was $1,544 for website services. I look forward to continuing the conversation around building attainable housing, quality jobs and public safety that serves every Madisonian over the coming months, Reyes said. Some local historic districts will be subject to new zoning changes that could allow higher-density housing to more easily move in with the blessing of the Madison City Council Tuesday night. The council voted 14-5 to create a "Transit Oriented Development Overlay District" within a quarter-mile of bus rapid transit routes, a move that will boost housing near the upcoming revamp of the city's public transportation. With a redesign of the city's bus routes coming in the summer, passing the overlay district is crucial before that "major transit investment takes place, said Heather Stouder, the city's planning division director. Apart from its aim to put more people closer to more transit, the overlay district would effectively make it easier to erect duplexes in parts of neighborhoods mostly made up of single-family homes. Because of that, the overlay district has seen pushback from some residents in single-family neighborhoods like University Hill Farms, who claim more duplexes would remake the neighborhood's aesthetic. Despite the pushback, some residents of Hill Farms told the council Tuesday night that those fears are a veiled effort to keep renters, especially the poor and people of color, out of the city's wealthy, white enclaves. "The pattern of single-family zoning that dominates many of the historic districts is also linked to a history of exclusion," said resident Liz Jesse. "For example, residents of Hill Farms who live in high-density apartment buildings are allowed to pay dues but they are not allowed to be voting members of our association." Ald. Keith Furman, 19th District, pushed back on opposition from Hill Farms residents, saying it amounted to people satisfied that "they've got theirs and they're not interested in changing the character of their neighborhoods because they're good." "Let's be realistic folks we're in a housing crisis," Furman said. "Density does not change the character of a neighborhood." Alds. Brian Benford, Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Charles Myadze, Bill Tishler and Nasra Wehelie voted against the overlay district. The overly district excludes Downtown and UW-Madison's campus, which extends to the Mansion Hill and First Settlement local historic districts. The city's local historic districts that have land in the overlay district include University Heights, Third Lake Ridge and Marquette Bungalows. But just because the overlay district encompasses historic areas does not mean new development can easily breeze through approval. Those areas are still subject to the city's Preservation Ordinance, which allows oversight over any changes and new structures. But nine National Register Historic Districts not subject to the same protections have land within the overlay district. The original vision overlay district excluded the historic districts, but an alternative proposal was introduced by the citys Transportation Policy and Planning Board to include the districts, and the alternative was recommended by the Plan Commission. Furman said he introduced the change to include all historic districts because local historic districts already have those ample protections while national ones don't have any and it wasn't prudent for the city to start adding them. The core changes of the overlay district include: Allowing more residential units as a permitted use in residential, mixed-use and certain employment zoning districts. Allowing additional building height as a permitted use in some residential and mixed-use districts. Removing usable open space requirements for residential units. Removing minimum vehicle parking requirements and adding tighter maximum parking limits. A minimum two-story building height, with some exceptions, in multifamily residential, mixed-use and employment districts. Additional site design and layout rules to ensure buildings are near and easily accessible from public sidewalks. In a failed bid at "compromise," Ald. Tag Evers, 13th District, offered a change to the overlay district ordinance that would require any new duplexes to be owner-occupied, saying it would prevent real estate investors from flipping homes in historic districts. That change to the ordinance ultimately lost, with opponents saying it undermined the purpose of the overlay district and didn't fix the general issue of absent landlords at duplexes throughout the city. Election grants are back In other business, council members signed off on rezoning the site of St. John's Lutheran Church for future development and receipt of $1.5 million in election grants from a nonprofit that saw controversy for its role in the 2020 election. The money from the Center for Tech & Civic Life (CTCL) would give the city $500,000 this year and $1 million in 2024 for planning and operating safe and secure elections, which can go toward equipment, staff training and technology. CTCL has fallen into the crosshairs of conservatives, particular the 2020 election probe of former Supreme Court Michael Gableman, for grants it doled out to more than 200 cities. Conservatives have unsuccessfully tried to challenge CTCL's grants in courts and Republicans in the state Legislature are trying to get a constitutional amendment on the April 4 ballot that would ban such grants. The nearly $36 million redevelopment plans for St. John's located at 322 E. Washington Ave., will replace the church with a 10-story structure with a sanctuary, community space and 130 mostly low-cost apartment units with below-ground parking. With major turnover coming after April's election, the council also signed off Tuesday on the appointment of Barbara Vedder to serve out the term of Syed Abbas, who resigned from his post representing the 12th District last year. Vedder was a City Council member from 1995 to 2001 and a member of the County Board from 2006 to 2010. Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is a true crime podcast that pairs dramatic readings of articles with interviews conducted with journalists who covered the stories. For this set of episodes we're looking at a multi-part series from the Buffalo News Watchdog Team of Lou Michel, Dan Herbeck, and Mike McAndrew that launches Friday, Jan. 20, about a decades old murder of a Catholic Priest. The homicide went unsolved amid vague rumors of a cover-up. Before that series kicks off, though, we want to set the stage with Dan Herbeck's article from 2018 which acts as something of a primer for the series: We certainly encourage you to subscribe to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles wherever you get your podcasts to catch all our upcoming coverage of the series as well as keep an eye on Buffalo News for the articles as they publish starting this weekend. "Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles" is a product of Lee Enterprises. It is produced and edited by Chris Lay, with interviews produced and recorded by Nat Cardona. Previous episodes in this series Get caught up on this series through the story links below. (Note: Tap here if the links are not loading on your device.) The suspect in a vehicle pursuit and subsequent officer-involved shooting near the Great Lakes Dragaway in the town of Paris Monday has died, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation. The incident, which remains under investigation, began just after 3:30 p.m. Monday, when a sheriffs deputy initiated a vehicle pursuit in Racine County, according to information released on the state department's website. The vehicle crossed into Kenosha County, and the pursuit continued with State Patrol and Kenosha County sheriffs deputies involved. The vehicle eventually crashed in the 18000 block of First Street in the Town of Paris. According to the state department, the driver exited the vehicle, fled and was eventually located in a nearby field. Deputies from Kenosha County Sheriffs Department, Racine County Sheriffs Office and troopers from the State Patrol approached the individual and gave commands to drop a firearm in the individuals possession, according to the release issued late Monday night. Law enforcement discharged their weapons, striking the suspect. State authorities said first aid was rendered at the scene. The suspect was transported to a local hospital "where they later died," the release stated. The individual who died has not yet been identified by investigators. No law enforcement personnel were injured during the incident. The involved deputies from the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department, Racine County Sheriffs Office and troopers from Wisconsin State Patrol have been placed on administrative assignment, per department policy. The Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation is leading the investigation and is being assisted by the Kenosha Police Department, Wisconsin State Patrol and DCI Crime Response Specialist. The state agency is continuing to review evidence and determine the facts of the incident and will turn over investigative reports to the Racine County district attorney when the investigation concludes, according to a DOJ release. The incident is the second such officer-involved shooting in the Kenosha area in less than one month. At 8:19 p.m., on Dec. 19, officers with the Kenosha Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department responded to a call of an active shooter in the 1300 block of 56th Street. Upon arrival, police were fired upon by Matthew C. Lopez, age 32, and officers returned gunfire with Lopez, who died at the scene, according to an update of the states investigation into the incident earlier this month. Preliminary evidence indicated Lopez shot at other bystanders who were injured and transported to area hospitals. Two of those individuals have since been treated and released; one remained hospitalized, the department said. No law enforcement personnel were injured during the Dec. 19 incident. Nomination from counselor Olivia Sturgill has shown great leadership skills, academic achievement, and a willingness to serve others. Olivia has a 4.0 and is currently valedictorian at Kimberly High School. She will also earn an associates degree in health science from the College of Southern Idaho before she graduates from high school. More about Sturgill Olivia is involved with several humanitarian projects throughout the world. She traveled to the Philippines to help rebuild homes and schools after a typhoon. Later, she was able to go back on a dental trip to the Philippines. She traveled to Tanzania, Africa to build dormitories and classrooms for children. Locally, Olivia was involved with Ukraine Relief Aid where she organized a team of people to assemble pallets of goods to send to Ukraine. She is involved with Types of Wood Charities providing hundreds of hours of service work. After graduating from KHS and CSI, she plans to attend Utah State University to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She is interested in working in the NICU or geriatric units. Extracurricular achievements Olivia has been a member of KHS Business Professionals of America (BPA) qualifying for state and national competitions in several events. She is currently serving as BPA president. Olivia has been a member of the National Honors Society for the past two years and is currently serving as NHS president. Olivia swam on the KHS swim team for 4 years and served as co-captain this past season. She also plays water polo where she has earned Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player. Olivia is also active in her church, has participated in piano competitions, is a Key Club member, and served in student government at KHS. The Magic Valley Chaplains, an organization of 65 volunteer chaplains that serves incarcerated persons in seven facilities throughout southern Idaho, has honored two chaplains for their work to glorify God. Kay Wolverton, an inmate chaplain for 40 years who has served at the Twin Falls County Jail since it opened in 1988, and Dutch Zuiderveld, who began serving God after accepting Jesus Christ as his savior in 1980, are inspirations to everyone they meet, the Magic Valley Chaplains said in a news release. In addition to her work in Twin Falls, Wolverton provides womens inmate chaplain services on Sundays in the Jerome County Jail, according to the release. She has also served in Boise at the Idaho State Correctional Institution and at Womens Reentry Center, and shes an active member of other prayer groups, including at the College of Southern Idaho. While serving time as an inmate in California, Zuiderveld began a Bible study with other inmates that led to his calling, the release said. He and his wife, Jamie, later moved to Idaho and helped establish Calvary Chapel Hagerman. He also worked as chaplain at the Gooding County Jail, where he established a ministry 19 years ago. During the holiday season, Wolverton, Zuiderveld and their fellow Magic Valley Chaplains partnered with area churches and schools to provide more than 700 Christmas cards to inmates. The cards were colored with a note of encouragement that shared Christs message of love and hope, according to a news release. Its a difficult time for the incarcerated during the holidays and the cards show they are remembered, Barry Knoblich, president of the Magic Valley Chaplains, said in the release. We want to thank the children and teachers from the Twin Falls Reformed Church, Amazing Grace Fellowship, St. Edwards School, Believers Church, Lighthouse and the Twin Falls Christian Academy for the work on these beautiful cards. In the release, Sgt. Sheena Bingham, volunteer coordinator from the Twin Falls County Sheriffs Department, thanked the volunteers for spreading the Christmas spirit. It really made the day for the inmates to get those and they were so very thankful and happy! Bingham said. Examples of the Christmas cards are shared on the Magic Valley Chaplains website at www.mvchaplains.com. TWIN FALLS Police are asking for help locating a local woman who has been missing since Jan. 9. Angela Dawn Gwin, 40, of Twin Falls, is 5-foot-6 and 160 pounds, has brown hair and hazel eyes. She has glasses but sometimes goes without them. A relative said Gwin is a vulnerable adult and may be under the influence or experiencing a mental health crisis. Twin Falls Police Lt. Craig Stotts said officers are pursuing the matter. Gwins case number is 23000213. Anyone with information on Gwins whereabouts is encouraged to call the Idaho State Police at 208-324-6000 or Twin Falls Police Department at 208-735-4357. TODAYS WORD is leminiscate. Example: Carla got a tattoo in the shape of a leminiscate. TUESDAYS WORD was petrichor. It means a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. Example: When Lindsay woke up and went outside for her morning run, she knew it had rained overnight from the smell of petrichor in the air. Bucharest Pocahontas Bassett Baptist Church Pastor Susan Spangenberg and her husband are headed to Romania. The Baptist General Association of Virginia has invited her to join a group of BGAV pastors going to Romania Feb. 5-10 to see and take part in the Ukrainian refugee relief ministries at the BGAV center there in Bucharest. The Bulletin has asked her to take plenty of pictures because the folks back home are going to want to see and hear about that once-in-a-lifetime trip, after they return. New books Youve been hearing all about Prince Harrys new tell-all book Spare, and now you can read the book if youre first in line or on the reserve list, at least, while its hot. Spare became available at the Blue Ridge Regional Library on Thursday. Other new books available at local branches of the library system are: The House of Wolves by James Patterson and Mike Lupica Something Old, Something New by Amy Clipston Dark of Night: an Annie Pederson Novel by Colleen Coble The Rose and the Thistle by Laura Frantz Wicked Dreams by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush Blue Moon Haven by Janet Dailey Light to the Hills by Bonnie Blaylock Tick Tock by Fern Michaels Sleep No More by Jayne Ann Krentz The Villa by Rachel Hawkins Code 6 by James Grippando Without a Trace by Danielle Steel Her Hearts Desire by Shelley Shepard Gray The following books are being processed for circulation now and will be ready to be checked out on Thursday: The Cabinet of Dr. Leng: a Pendergast Novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child The Devil You Know: a Mystery by P.J. Tracy Serving tips To keep soda from fizzing up over the top of a glass, just rinse the ice cubes first for a few seconds in water. Then you can pour soda over them without the fizzing. Of course many children consider the fizzing of soda to be great fun. To compensate for them losing that little joy, give them a treat by cutting their sandwiches into fun shapes using those tall metal cookie cutters. TUESDAYS TRIVIA ANSWER: Carmine is a red dye dating back to the 1500s that was used by the Aztecs. It is made from the cochineal beetles which are native to South America and Mexico and can be found on cactus plants. The dye is used to color a variety of things, such as food, pharmaceuticals, textiles, personal care products and cosmetic products. TODAYS TRIVIA QUESTION: What is a traditional ingredient in ranch dressing that gives it a bright white color? DANVILLE Dan River Region Democrats blasted Gov. Glenn Youngkins decision to shut Ford Motor Co. out of opening a battery-making plant that would have brought $3.5 billion in investment and 2,500 jobs to the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill. This area has voted heavily and consistently Republican and voted for Youngkin, and to have that happen is disgraceful, said Roy Ford, chairman of the Pittsylvania County Democratic Committee. Youngkins actions appear to be purely political and reflect presidential ambitions on the governors part, Ford said. Danville and Pittsylvania County Republican leaders did not return calls Tuesday from the Danville Register & Bee seeking comment. If Ford Motor Co. finalized the project, the plant would have gone in the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Danville Register & Bee reported Monday. More than $200 million has been spent over 15 years to make Berry Hill a premier site and the largest publicly owned site in the Southeast. The plant would have built lithium iron phosphate batteries for Fords electric vehicles. Youngkin put a stop to the automakers plans for Virginia in December because of its partnership with the Chinese company, Contemporary Amperex Technology. Its a shame that he would put the interest of his presidential ambition in front of whats good for the people of Southside Virginia, said Joshua Norris, vice chairman of the Danville Democratic Committee. The project would have provided thousands of jobs to an economically depressed part of the state. Politics should not cost anyone their livelihood, Norris said. I hate to see hot-button presidential issues hurt the area that I love and raise my family in, he said. Virginia House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore said Tuesday it is important to bring the right jobs to the Danville area and other parts of Virginia. Kilgore cited a Bloomberg report in December that Ford Motor Co. was planning to run this proposed electric vehicle plant through a conglomerate that coordinates closely with the Chinese Community Party. He said Ford planned to seek millions in tax credits for domestic clean technology manufacturing facilities, but that Ford was not qualified to do so because the plant would have been operated by the Chinese. So yes, Governor Youngkin was right, Kilgore said. We dont want to go back into what happened in Appomattox, he said, referring to deal with a Chinese firm that fell apart during Gov. Terry McAuliffes administration. One former Danville city councilman who spoke to the Danville Register would not comment on the situation. I dont want to get involved in what could still be an ongoing process, said Fred Shanks, who also used to serve on the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority. RIFA, a joint entity that includes members of Danville City Council and the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors, owns the 3,500-acre industrial mega park. Shanks did say, however, I do understand the governors concerns for the issues [surrounding] China and the Communist Party and their activity in the United States. When I moved to Elizabeth City to take over management of our family-owned radio station, one of my first initiatives was to hire a full-time local newsperson. The rookie newsman attended the local school board meeting his first week. The morning after the meeting, the superintendent of schools called to ask why our newsperson was there. I told him we were starting local daily newscasts and wanted to report on school board meetings. Somewhat surprised, the superintendent asked why we couldnt just report them the same way the local newspaper did. The morning after each meeting, I call Bessie at the Daily Advance and tell her what happened. I responded I was certain his call was detailed and accurate, but we thought it better to be there in person, to be sure we reported the who, what, when, where, how and why, the five pillars of journalism. The next month, Bessie showed up at the board meeting in person. Do you know what transpired at the last county commissioners meeting? How about the last school board meeting? Or with the chamber, civic clubs or churches? We are less informed today than we were 10 years ago, and the main reason for it is because our local news sources are drying up. Specifically, our local newspapers and radio. The Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism released a study in June reporting that two newspapers are shutting down every week in the United States. More than 2,500 have gone dark in the past two decades. Why? Three primary explanations help explain the obituaries. First, there have been decades of intense and deliberate efforts to discredit the news media, especially by conservatives who constantly shout that papers are liberally biased. They dont think they can get coverage, so their best option is to discredit papers altogether. The loud and persistent attack against news credibility has caused a drop in readership and subscriptions. There has been and is now some bias in news reporting, generally more slanted to the left. But not everything and not all news reporting is biased. It is our right to sometimes criticize, but lets not throw out the baby with the bath water. In legitimate news outlets, some editor vetted (researched) a story and approved it before it went to press. Theres far more value than bias in reputable news outlets. The second explanation is the meteoric increase in viewership on the internet and social media. Nowadays, anyone with a laptop is a wannabe journalist, Michael Smerconish recently remarked on CNN. However, what you read or hear on social media is not just biased, a large portion is just plain untrue. What confounds me is the number of friends who regularly cite as gospel stuff they saw online. They doubt their local newspaper, which is subject to libel, slander and wrongful reporting laws, but willingly accept stuff from people they dont know citing facts they dont substantiate. Advertisers know what their potential customers are following. Ad dollars to newspapers have plummeted because so many have migrated to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and other platforms. The vacuum of revenues has affected all papers, often diminishing the revenues needed to pay reporters to cover local news. You and I suffer when newsrooms are deserted. And if you think we are better for the loss of credible local news sources, let me respectfully disagree. Again, quoting the Medill report, Most of the communities that have lost newspapers do not get a print or digital replacement, leaving 70 million residents, or one-fifth of the countrys population either living in an area with no local news organization, or one at risk. How are we to get reputable (even if sometimes a bit biased) news? I am encouraged by some nonprofit groups like The Assembly, Carolina Public Press, NC Local, Free Press or the consortium of 22 for-profit newspapers funding philanthropic partnerships like NC Watchdog Reporting Network and The North Carolina News Collaborative (NCNC); they understand the importance of local news and are trying to fill the huge vacuum. They are worthy of your financial support. Heres my spin: Thomas Jefferson reportedly said that an informed electorate is the cornerstone of a democracy. Without trustworthy information, we cannot make good decisions as consumers, as citizens, professionals and most especially at the ballot box. You may not agree with all you read or hear from your local news outlet, but you are better off with reputable news reporting as opposed to the talking entertainers on cable outlets posing as news people or the obviously slanted social media and partisan sponsored sites. Legitimate sources put their opinions on editorial pages, not as opinions posing as news articles. Being informed means it is up to you and me to read, discern and verify legitimate news sources from posers. We face big issues, and we cannot and will not solve them just by depending on politicians, managers, social media or politically sponsored partisan outlets to inform us. The Washington Post is spot on: Democracy dies in darkness. The USA has plans to construct a military industrial base in Morocco, in view of the North African Kingdoms leading role in combating terrorism, and its integration into the international military equation. The plan is also meant to counter Russias strong support to the Algerian regime militarily and politically, and Moscows influence in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Sahel-Sahara countries. In this connection, US President Joe Biden has instructed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to prepare an emergency plan to establish the military industrial base in the Kingdom of Morocco, the New York Daily News has reported. According to the media, the plan was proposed during a high-level meeting at the end of December when Biden and Austin discussed Americas new global military strategy. Biden has told Austin to push the Pentagon to facilitate the logistical and legal aspects of US defense industry investments in the North African Kingdom. The base is meant to strengthen Rabats leading role in combating terrorism, as well as its integration into the international military equation, through developing the Kingdoms technical military capabilities. According to media sources in the US, before his meeting with Austin, Biden received a detailed report from CIA Director William Burns on the expansion of Russias influence in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Algeria and the Sahel-Sahara countries. The CIA report said that Russia not only strongly supports the Algerian regime militarily and politically, but is also discussing the establishment of a large logistical base that would give it an important outlet to countries located south of the Sahara Desert. The CIA warned that this move will threaten the interests of Washington and its allies there, the New York Daily News said. The Guinean government, through the Ministry of Finance, invited the former Chief of Staff of the Guinean Navy, Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, currently imprisoned in connection with the February 1, 2022 case, to vacate the house where he lives. In the letter, dated January 6 of this year and signed by the Minister of Finance, Ilidio Vieira Te, the government says it notes that the property belonging to the State, has not been used for the purposes intended and has been deteriorating sharply. Thus, as the manager of state property the minister invites Bubo Na Tchuto to proceed, within 90 days, the delivery and return of the property occupied by him in the neighborhood of the Ministers, in high bandim, to thus allow the Government to carry out the works of rehabilitation and recovery that is required. Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, currently in the cells of the second police station in Bissau, has been accused by the President of the Republic, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, in his public speeches, of being the main responsible for the attack on the Government Palace on February 1, 2022 in the middle of the Council of Ministers meeting. The Mozambican government on Tuesday approved the definitive remuneration amounts for state employees under the Single Wage Scale (TSU), establishing the value of 8,758 meticais (127 euros) as the minimum wage in public service. With this approval, the minimum wage of the civil service will increase from 4,689 meticais (68 euros) to 8,758 meticais, registering a positive evolution of 87 percent, Inocencio Impissa, deputy minister of State Administration and Civil Service, told the media after a Council of Ministers meeting in Maputo. In addition to the minimum wage, which corresponds to auxiliaries, agents and workers, in the new salary scale for the Mozambican civil service a specialist will go from the current 24,882 meticals (361 euros) to 60,758 meticais (882 euros), while a senior technician (N1) will go from 17,539 meticais (254 euros) to 37,758 meticais (548 euros). Higher technicians (N2) and professional technicians go from 13.565 meticais (196 euros) to 24.358 meticais (353 euros) and 8.531 meticais (123 euros) to 17.758 meticais (257 euros), respectively. The average technician will go from 7.443 meticais (108 euros) to 14.758 meticais (214 euros), while the assistant technician will earn 10.758 meticais (156 euros), against the 5.531 meticais (80 euros) of the previous table. These remunerations refer to entry levels, which means that state employees and agents with more time in service will certainly notice slightly higher remunerations due to time, explained the deputy minister of State Administration and Civil Service. The implementation of the new TSU, adopted in the last months of last year, was strongly contested due to non-conformities presented by several professional classes in Mozambique, namely judges, teachers and doctors, and they even organized a strike to demand the revision of the process. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain There is a stark contrast between the U.S. and Canada in how each regulates cannabis. Most notably, the government of Canada legalized the drug at the federal level several years ago. In the U.S., however, cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, even as 37 states now have legalized it for medical and/or recreational use. When it comes to policies regulating cannabis advertising and marketing, the two countries are even further apart, according to the findings of a new University at Buffalo study that compared cannabis marketing policies in Canada and among U.S. states. In fact, most states do not address many of the cannabis advertising activities that are prohibited in Canada, the study, published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, found. There are 11 illegal advertising tacticssuch as glamorization and testimonialsin Canada's policy that are not specifically addressed in any of the state policies in the U.S. "The United States has inconsistencies compared to Canada when it comes to cannabis marketing and advertising regulations. While Canada has a federal Cannabis Act that provides structured guidance for those in the cannabis industry to communicate about the product in a way that protects vulnerable populations, many states in the U.S. tend to be vaguer in their policies," says Natasha C. Allard, the paper's lead author and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior in UB's School of Public Health and Health Professions. "This lack of guidance makes things confusing for advertisers and also opens up the potential for public health harms, such as youth being targeted with messaging or the spread of misinformation and false claims," adds Allard, whose research focuses on health communication and young adult cancer prevention. Allard's co-authors are Jessica Kruger, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor, and Daniel Kruger, Ph.D., research associate professor, both in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior at UB. Daniel Kruger is also affiliated with the Population Studies Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Canada's cannabis marketing laws certainly aren't perfect, the researchers point out, but they are significantly better than the policies that exist in various states, where inconsistencies and a lack of guidance on prohibited advertising tactics leave young people and other vulnerable populations open to being exposed to cannabis advertising. That's a problem because previous research on alcohol, cigarettes and e-cigarettes has shown that kids who are exposed to marketing messaging about these substances are more likely to take them up or increase their use. "Responsible cannabis advertising policies should ensure that marketing messages do not reach a younger demographic," says Jessica Kruger. To see how the two countries' policies differ, researchers reviewed Health Canada's 2018 Cannabis Act and 2019 Cannabis Regulations. Then, they compared those guidelines with the 36 U.S. states where cannabis was legal for medical and/or adult use at the time of the research. Because there's no federal policy, cannabis advertising regulations vary greatly across the U.S., with some states prohibiting advertising altogether and others putting forth minimal documented regulations. Among the 31 states that did allow some form of cannabis advertising, 74% explicitly prohibit targeting or appealing to minors, and 68% prohibit making false or misleading claims. Just over half the states have restrictions on where advertisements can be placed, and 42% have restrictions on building signage. State cannabis regulations should more strongly ban false claims, especially given the increasing frequency with which cannabis is touted as a "wonder drug," Allard says. The researchers also recommend that states should consider requiring the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve any health benefit claims made in cannabis advertising, and advertisements should be monitored and regulated to avert false and misleading claims. Canada, however, is much stricter in its approach. For example, its policy extensively and comprehensively outlines and prohibits 18 marketing strategies at a national level, including targeting/appealing to minors, offering coupons and giveaways, promoting health or cosmetic benefits, endorsements and testimonials, false claims, and association with alcohol or tobacco products. When it comes to television and radio commercials, the United States' 30% rulewhereby an ad can't be aired on a show if minors account for 30% or more of the audiencedoesn't adequately protect young people because 30% could still mean that millions of children will see the ad if it is on a popular channel or show. In contrast, in Canada, all forms of communication must be information only and on a channel that is geared only to adults of legal age. Moreover, the researchers say, the U.S. could benefit from having nationwide consistency for digital ad requirements, such as age-gating websites (which require visitors to check a box indicating they are 21 or older). Most states also often overlook laws and policies around cannabis advertising, instead implementing such regulations after legalization has occurred. "Many states could benefit from thinking through cannabis marketing and advertising activities and structuring these in a clear way for those in the cannabis industry as legalization spreads," Allard says. More information: Natasha C. Allard et al, Cannabis Advertising Policies in the United States: State-Level Variation and Comparison with Canada, Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research (2022). DOI: 10.1089/can.2022.0068 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Over the weekend, Peking University released a study that estimated 900 million Chinese had been infected with COVID up until January 11, representing 64% of the population. This compares with 43% of Australians testing positive, although antibody studies indicate a much higher proportion is likely. With Lunar New Year approaching, what will this massive wave mean for China and the rest of the world, including Australia? Numbers are not the whole story The Chinese government says there have been almost 60,000 deaths of people with COVID in hospitals in the past five weeks. However, under China's narrow definition of COVID deaths, the government claims COVID caused only 5,500 of these deaths because they died of respiratory failure. Since early December, media reports have revealed a major surge of cases is overwhelming hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums. Yet throughout December the government reported fewer than 10,000 daily cases and single-digit daily deaths. There have been no official reports since January 12. This lack of transparency led the director-general of the World Health Organization to plead for more timely information in order to make a thorough risk assessment of the situation on the ground. Do these new data help us understand the situation? Not really. The figure of 900 million cases compares to the official tally of 503,000a huge gap that could only be resolved by a systematic collection of COVID infection data from all provinces. The reported deaths all occurred in hospitals. There is no indication of how many people have died at home or in aged care facilities. Most cities and counties in China have a routine death certification system and this information should be available to the National Health Commission. If we accept both the Peking University case data and the government report on deaths (adding the previous 5,300 reported deaths), the cumulative case fatality ratio is 0.07 per 1,000 cases. This compares with 1.5 per 1,000 in Australia, which arguably has a better hospital system. So, the Chinese figure is not plausible; either cases have been overestimated or deaths have been underestimated. Even if China has not yet reached 900 million cases, lessons from other countries with similarly abandoned public health measures say it soon will. Why has this surge happened? The surge has coincided with the abandonment of China's Zero COVID policy and the removal of almost all preventive measures. But the underlying reason is low population immunity due to both a previous low rate of infections and a relatively low vaccination rate. While around 90% of the population has received two doses of the vaccine, only 58% have received a third dose booster. Vaccination rates among elderly Chinese are much lower. The government recently announced that around 30% of people aged 60 and overroughly 80 million peoplewere not vaccinated and boosted. Among those 80 or older, it was closer to 60%. Vaccine hesitancy is very common among the elderly in China and Hong Kong. While two doses of the main Chinese vaccinesSinopharm and Sinovachave proved effective, they are far less effective as boosters than mRNA vaccines, which China refuses to import. Shortage of antivirals may increase death toll Given the vaccination rate is so low among the elderly, ready access to antiviral drugs is essential. However, the government did not stock up on these drugs and they are almost impossible to get except on the black market where a five-day course of Paxlovid costs at least US$2,300 (A$3,300). Negotiations with Pfizer, the manufacturer of Paxlovid, and Merck, which makes Lagevrio, have broken down because of China's insistence on a lower price. Implications for the rest of the world, including Australia With international travel to and from China resuming, it's inevitable the virus will spread to other countries. Many countries, including Australia, insist on travelers having a negative COVID test within 48 hours of departure. Others like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Italy also require tests on arrival. South Korea has reported 23% of travelers from China tested COVID-positive. In Taiwan it was 21%. The world may not see the full impact of the surge in China for another month or so. During the Lunar New Year period, an expected 2 billion trips will be made within China. This will transmit the virus to remote rural villages where there is minimal health care and no genomic sequencing facilities. So, the virus could infect an immunocompromised individual who may harbor the virus for months. This could result in a mutation that emerges as a more transmissible variant. So, the Australian policy of pre-departure testing makes sense but should also include the routine testing of wastewater from planes arriving from China. That said, a new variant originating in China may not arrive directly but via countries, such as Indonesia, that do not require pre-departure testing. Random testing of wastewater on all arriving international flights would be helpful. Most importantly, Australia needs to be prepared for a change in the dynamics of the pandemic either due to a new variant from China or the XBB.1.5 subvariant raging through the United States. And we are not coping well as it is. We need to improve our vaccination booster rate, make a serious investment in clean indoor air, use high-quality masks in poorly ventilated settings and provide easy access to COVID testing. Currently, because of our misplaced comfort with widespread transmission, these measures are flagging or absent. That's at our peril. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Infants nutrition during their first 12 months. Credit: International Breastfeeding Journal (2023). DOI: 10.1186/s13006-023-00544-6 The earlier infants begin to taste small samples of solid food, the earlier they eat more food and stop breastfeeding. This is shown in a new study from Uppsala University and Sophiahemmet University, in which the mothers of 1,251 infants from all over Sweden participated. Almost half of the infants received tastings at the age of four months. "Existing research does not support the idea that the introduction of early tastings has health benefits for the child or the mother," says Eva-Lotta Funkquist, Senior Lecturer and midwife, one of the researchers behind the article. "On the other hand, we know that breastfeeding has many health benefits for both the child and the mother. For example, the child is protected against infections while breastfeeding, and both mother and child have a reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases." Since 2011, the Swedish National Food Agency has advised parents that they can introduce tiny tastings for infants from four months of age. The World Health Organization (WHO), in contrast, recommends breastfeeding exclusively for six months and continued breastfeeding for at least two years or longer. These recommendations apply to all the world's countries, including Sweden, one reason being that breastfeeding has been scientifically confirmed to have major positive impacts on both women's and children's health. Breast milk contains substances that protect the child from infections such as pneumonia and urinary tract infections for the duration of breastfeeding. Breast milk also reduces the risk of the child being affected by cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes later in life. Women who breastfeed have a lower risk of being affected by cardiovascular diseases, ovarian cancer, breast cancer and type 2 diabetes. A new study made by researchers at Uppsala University and Sophiahemmet University, published in the International Breastfeeding Journal, involved 1,251 infants from all over Sweden and their mothers. When the mothers answered questions about the child's food during the first year of life by completing questionnaires, it emerged that around half of the children in the study, 48 percent, received tastings as early as the fourth month. The earlier the infants started with tiny tastings, the earlier they ate larger quantities of solid food. This in turn led to an earlier end to breastfeeding and to a shorter duration of breastfeeding for these children. Previous studies have shown that nearly all women say they want to breastfeed their child. Conflicting advice from the WHO and the Swedish National Food Agency, and recommendations unsupported by evidence, such as tiny tastings, make it more difficult for mothers who want to breastfeed to find support for doing so, and only 10 percent of children in Sweden are fully breastfed for six months. The United Nations (UN) states that breastfeeding ensures that the child can be fed safely in the event of war or crises, such as a failure of the energy supply or shortage of baby food. Previous research shows that more women's lives than infants' lives would be saved in western countries by following the recommendation of full breastfeeding for six months. "For this reason, it is vitally important that public authorities in Sweden have recommendations that promote breastfeeding and are in line with the WHO recommendations. The risk otherwise is that mothers will stop breastfeeding earlier and that both the mother and the child will be at greater risk of adverse health consequences," says Funkquist. More information: Jenny Stern et al, The association between early introduction of tiny tastings of solid foods and duration of breastfeeding, International Breastfeeding Journal (2023). DOI: 10.1186/s13006-023-00544-6 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain New research from the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine has identified 45 genes whose gene expression is associated with body mass index (BMI), many of which have not been previously explored in obesity research, after the researchers conducted a study using a multiethnic cohort. Their study, "Gene Expression Associations With Body Mass Index in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis," published in the International Journal of Obesity, points to potential new biomarkers for obesity. The team accomplished this by tapping into data from a large, diverse cohort that was originally gathered in 2000. "Until now, few genetic studies of BMI have been conducted in ancestrally diverse cohorts," lead author Luciana Vargas explains. "The novelty of our study is the use of directly measured gene expression data." Vargas, a CU School of Medicine Ph.D. student with an interest in personalized medicine, says these known and novel gene associations can provide insights into the biology of obesity, potential biomarkers, and therapeutic targets. For their study, researchers in the DBMI labs of Ethan Lange, Ph.D., and Leslie Lange, Ph.D., leveraged data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). When it was launched, MESA enrolled over 6,000 people, recruited from six field centers across the country, to research risk factors and the early characteristics of cardiovascular disease. Participants continue to report to field centers periodically for collection of health data. Because of the large, ethnically diverse study population, and the amount of health information collected, researchers have used its data for a multitude of studies. The Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) consortium, which launched in 2014, began gathering gene expression and other omics data on a subset of MESA participants, as well as participants from many other cohorts. "We used the MESA cohort because it's really difficult to find a well-defined cohort with a lot of good clinical measurements, get the funding, and maintain the contact with study participants to collect blood and do these studies over time," says Iain Konigsberg, Ph.D., a biomedical informatics research instructor who works with Vargas in the DBMI Lange Lab. The researchers analyzed RNA sequencing data from four self-identified race and ethnic groups in the MESA cohortAfrican American, Chinese American, Hispanic, and whiteto assess the association of expression of each gene for an effect on BMI. Many of the characteristics related to cardiovascular risk are also relevant to obesity, making the MESA cohort ideal for obesity research. The 45 genes they identified had expressions associated with BMI across all four groups. While a small number of these genes have been identified through genetic association studies, the CU authors reported many novel associations. Konigsberg says their work points to the need for more diversity in obesity research and expects the results of this study to inform additional downstream studies. He expects to continue research using MESA and additional human cohorts. It's been a valuable lesson in collaborative research for Vargas, who began her studies at CU Anschutz in Fall 2021 as a Ph.D. student in the Human Medical Genetics and Genomics Program. This is her first paper as a graduate student and member of the Leslie Lange Lab. "Getting involved with the TOPMed consortium that had enrolled thousands of people across the U.S. opened up new opportunities for research," she says. "I really appreciate the power of collaboration." More information: Luciana B. Vargas et al, Gene expression associations with body mass index in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, International Journal of Obesity (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41366-022-01240-x Journal information: International Journal of Obesity This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Summary of concordant and discordant lectin and genotype results for (A) deceased donors and (B) living donors. (C) A2 genotype sequences as determined by NGS and respective lectin strength. (D) ABO PCR genotype prevalence by lectin titers. The percentages and sample numbers in parentheses for each grouping are given below each respective graph. Credit: American Journal of Transplantation (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.ajt.2022.12.017 ABO blood-type compatibility between organ donors and recipients is crucial for safe transplantations. Across the different ABO blood groups, longer wait-times for a kidney transplant are often experienced by patients who have type B blood because it is a less common ABO blood type, resulting in fewer donors. Type B blood is more prevalent among Black and Asians individuals. Black African Americans are more likely to require kidney transplants than other groups, making the limited number of type B kidney donors a contributor to health inequities. Fortunately, research has shown that individuals with type B blood can safely receive kidney transplants from a subgroup of type A individuals (the A 2 subgroup) who have reduced levels of the A antigen compared to other A individuals. While current routine tests are not able to identify all A 2 individuals, investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and other collaborators have reported that genetic analysis can be used to identify up to 65 percent more A 2 donors, thereby increasing the potential number of kidney transplantations for recipient candidates with blood type B each year. Results are published in American Journal of Transplantation. "ABO blood type incompatibility between patient and organ donor is still the third largest contributor to transplant inequity among minorities," said corresponding author William Lane, MD, Ph.D., of the Department of Pathology. "By introducing genotyping technology, we can better serve the type B individuals in the transplant system and reduce wait-list times." Currently, A subtyping is largely performed with a lectin assay, a test that uses a plant-derived protein to determine how much A antigen an individual produces. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Southwest Immunodiagnostics analyzed over 750 samples from type A kidney donors at the two centers, sub-typed with both lectin tests and genetic tests. In collaboration with researchers from the New York Blood Center, an additional 124 samples with inconclusive lectin testing were incorporated into the study to further examine discrepancies between lectin testing and genotyping. Samples were also reviewed by co-authors at Lund University Hospital to further confirm and refine subtyping. Overall, findings from this multi-center study suggest that current lectin typing may under-report the actual number of A 2 individuals among type A kidney donors. In particular, the researchers found that deceased donors are not identified as A 2 individuals as frequently as living donors because some of these individuals have received blood transfusions from type A 1 (non-A 2 ) individuals. Because the A 2 subtype is determined by one genetic change in 98 percent of cases, genotyping can be a more precise way of identifying A 2 individuals who have variability in A-antigen levels. Work is currently underway to show that type B recipients can safely and effectively receive kidney transplants from A 2 -genotyped individuals. Although genotyping is not yet widely available, the authors believe that genotyping can supplement existing testing whenever a donor has been transfused or lectin testing is inconclusive, and with demonstrated efficacy may eventually be approved as the test of record for subtyping. "Genotyping is a more specific assay for overcoming limitations with current testing," Lane said. "Transplantations are always a balancing act of resources, but by using this technology, we may be able to shift more donors toward an underserved area of candidates waiting for transplants." More information: Abigail Joseph et al, ABO Genotyping Finds More A2 to B Kidney Transplant Opportunities Than Lectin Based Subtyping, American Journal of Transplantation (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.ajt.2022.12.017 Journal information: American Journal of Transplantation This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: As colds, flu and COVID continue to circulate this winter, a new U.S. government study finds that young children infected with COVID plus a second virus tend to become sicker. While severe COVID is rare among children, kids can and do fall ill enough to end up in the hospital. During the pandemic's first two years, young U.S. children who were hospitalized with COVID tended to be more severely ill if they also tested positive for a second respiratory virus, according to the new study, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Usually, those coinfections were with one of the many viruses that cause the common coldincluding rhinoviruses, enteroviruses and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). RSV, which can cause more serious lung infections in babies, practically vanished early in the pandemic due to social distancing, mask-wearing and other COVID-controlling measures. The virus then came roaring back in the spring and summer of 2021well outside of its normal peak in wintertimeas COVID restrictions eased. The CDC study found that when children younger than 5 were hospitalized with COVID, they were twice as likely to become severely ill if they also tested positive for one of those other respiratory viruses. "Severe" meant they were admitted to the intensive care unit or required machines to help them breathe. Experts in pediatric infectious disease said the findings align with their experience during the first two years of the pandemic. But things are somewhat different now, they said. For one, the flu has staged a comeback this seasonafter all but disappearing at the pandemic's outset, and then laying low in 2021 as well. So while COVID/flu coinfections were rare during the study period, that's no longer the case. "It has definitely been an evolving picture," said Dr. Vandana Madhavan, clinical director of pediatric infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She said the hospital is still seeing kids with RSV, sometimes in combination with COVID, but the flu and other virusesas well as bacterial infectionsare taking center stage, too. In general, it's breathing problems that prompt parents to rush their child to the ER, according to Madhavan, who is also a spokeswoman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. As far as testing for the culprit, she said, "we start with the heavy hittersCOVID, the flu and RSV." If a child is sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, more extensive testing may be done, Madhavan said. That's, in part, for infection controlto keep children with, say, the flu away from other kids without it. There may be cases where having a second infection along with COVID affects a child's treatment. Madhavan said. But often, it does not change thingsas symptom control and keeping kids hydrated and breathing well are the priorities. The CDC studypublished Jan. 18 in Pediatrics is based on data from hospitals in 14 U.S. states. From March 2020 through February 2022, 4,372 children were hospitalized with COVID. More than 60% were also tested for other respiratory viruses, with 21% testing positive. Kids with coinfections were more likely to need a CPAP or BiPAP machine to help them breathe (10% did, versus 6% of other children), and more often needed to be admitted to the ICU (38%, versus 27%). When the researchers looked at the data by age, they found that multiple infections raised the risk of severe illness only among children younger than 5. When youngsters have more than one infection, it's hard to know what's "driving" their symptoms, said Dr. William Muller, an infectious disease specialist at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. He also noted that severely ill kids are probably more often tested for multiple bugs. But to Muller, the bottom line is straightforward: "We need to vaccinate more," he said. That means both COVID vaccination and the yearly flu shot, Muller said. Both can be given to children age 6 months or older, and both slash the risk of severe illness. Both doctors stressed that the point is not to alarm parents: The vast majority of children with COVID or the flu do not land in the hospital. At the same time, there are ways to lower those odds. And even in mid-January, both doctors said, it's not too late for children to get the flu shot. Flu season can extend into April or even May, and often peaks in February. Some simple measures can also limit the spread of respiratory bugs, Madhavan notedlike delaying that play date if your child has a runny nose or cough. More information: The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on COVID in children. Journal information: Pediatrics Copyright 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: During the Covid-19 pandemic, users sought health-related information and shared emotional messages with the chatbot, indicating the potential use of chatbots to provide accurate health information and emotional support. Credit: Institute for Basic Science The COVID-19 pandemic has increased people's reliance on digital platforms, such as social media, to obtain information and communicate their thoughts and emotions with their peers. The sudden shift from offline to online interactions due to the COVID-19 pandemic has fueled the popularity of chatbots in many fields, including the medical domain. The World Health Organization (WHO) has even used a chatbot to fight against false information, and they are still looking into how this new technology can help them prepare for future pandemics. A new study has shown the potential of AI chatbots to relieve users' anxiety and quickly deliver information during major social upheavals. Led by Chief Investigator Cha Meeyoung of the Data Science Group within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and Dr. Cha Chiyoung from Ewha Woman's University's College of Nursing, the researchers analyzed nearly 20,000 conversations between online users and a chatbot called SimSimi. This commercial chatbot has served over 400 million users worldwide in 81 languages. The joint research team investigated how users from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Malaysia, and the Philippines used the chatbot during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is one of the first to analyze large-scale data on conversations related to COVID-19 between chatbots and humans. Dr. Chin Hyojin, the lead author of the study said, "Chatbots are a promising tool to fulfill people's informational needs in challenging times. While health institutions such as the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization (WHO) have used chatbots to provide the most up-to-date information on the spread and symptoms of COVID-19 to billions of people, it was unclear how users interacted with such systems in times of crisis." The average percentage of positive and negative-related words in COVID-19related conversations by country according to the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count dictionary. Credit: Institute for Basic Science The researchers employed natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify a series of topics discussed by online users when talking to the chatbot. The results show that users use the chatbot to ask questions about the disease and have a small talk during periods of social isolation due to the pandemic. During the pandemic's lockdowns, the chatbot frequently served as a conversation companion for obtaining information and expressing emotions. The researchers found 18 COVID-19-related topics that people conversed with the chatbot using topic modeling, a machine learning technique that discovers conversation topics from large-scale text data, and classified them into overarching themes. Some of these themes included the outbreak of COVID-19, preventative behaviors, the physical and psychological impact of COVID-19, people and life in the pandemic, and questions about COVID-19. This showed that many users sought information and queried the chatbot about the pandemic, even though the particular chatbot under study was not designed to deliver specific information on COVID-19. Topics discussed by users with the chatbot identified by the Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic model and their prevalence. Credit: Institute for Basic Science In terms of how people felt, the team employed computational tools to compare how each of these themes made them feel. Although some topics, such as masks, lockdowns, and disease dread elicited negative emotions, it was discovered that daily chatter with the chatbot mostly led to positive emotions. There were also regional differences based on geographics. For example, U.S.-based users were found to more frequently use negative keywords in comparison to users from Asia. Chief Investigator Cha said, "This study is unique because it is the first to use commercial chatbot conversations that are not dedicated to mental support during the pandemic. Because individuals are sharing their concerns and seeking assistance from social chatbots, they can be an essential tool for health care during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. The next stage is understanding individuals' intentions and utilizing the knowledge to create systems that better respond to user demands during difficult times." The study was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) as part of a series called "Chatbots and COVID-19," which was organized by the WHO. More information: Hyojin Chin et al, User-Chatbot Conversations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study Based on Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis (Preprint), Journal of Medical Internet Research (2023). DOI: 10.2196/40922 Journal information: Journal of Medical Internet Research This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The same devices used to take selfies and type out tweets are being repurposed and commercialized for quick access to information needed for monitoring a patient's health. A fingertip pressed against a phone's camera lens can measure a heart rate. The microphone, kept by the bedside, can screen for sleep apnea. Even the speaker is being tapped, to monitor breathing using sonar technology. In the best of this new world, the data is conveyed remotely to a medical professional for the convenience and comfort of the patient or, in some cases, to support a clinician without the need for costly hardware. But using smartphones as diagnostic tools is a work in progress, experts say. Although doctors and their patients have found some real-world success in deploying the phone as a medical device, the overall potential remains unfulfilled and uncertain. Smartphones come packed with sensors capable of monitoring a patient's vital signs. They can help assess people for concussions, watch for atrial fibrillation, and conduct mental health wellness checks, to name the uses of a few nascent applications. Companies and researchers eager to find medical applications for smartphone technology are tapping into modern phones' built-in cameras and light sensors; microphones; accelerometers, which detect body movements; gyroscopes; and even speakers. The apps then use artificial intelligence software to analyze the collected sights and sounds to create an easy connection between patients and physicians. Earning potential and marketability are evidenced by the more than 350,000 digital health products available in app stores, according to a Grand View Research report. "It's very hard to put devices into the patient home or in the hospital, but everybody is just walking around with a cellphone that has a network connection," said Dr. Andrew Gostine, CEO of the sensor network company Artisight. Most Americans own a smartphone, including more than 60% of people 65 and over, an increase from just 13% a decade ago, according the Pew Research Center. The COVID-19 pandemic has also pushed people to become more comfortable with virtual care. Some of these products have sought FDA clearance to be marketed as a medical device. That way, if patients must pay to use the software, health insurers are more likely to cover at least part of the cost. Other products are designated as exempt from this regulatory process, placed in the same clinical classification as a Band-Aid. But how the agency handles AI and machine learning-based medical devices is still being adjusted to reflect software's adaptive nature. Ensuring accuracy and clinical validation is crucial to securing buy-in from health care providers. And many tools still need fine-tuning, said Dr. Eugene Yang, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Currently, Yang is testing contactless measurement of blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen saturation gleaned remotely via Zoom camera footage of a patient's face. Judging these new technologies is difficult because they rely on algorithms built by machine learning and artificial intelligence to collect data, rather than the physical tools typically used in hospitals. So researchers cannot "compare apples to apples" with medical industry standards, Yang said. Failure to build in such assurances undermines the technology's ultimate goals of easing costs and access because a doctor still must verify results. "False positives and false negatives lead to more testing and more cost to the health care system," he said. Big tech companies like Google have heavily invested in researching this kind of technology, catering to clinicians and in-home caregivers, as well as consumers. Currently, in the Google Fit app, users can check their heart rate by placing their finger on the rear-facing camera lens or track their breathing rate using the front-facing camera. "If you took the sensor out of the phone and out of a clinical device, they are probably the same thing," said Shwetak Patel, director of health technologies at Google and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington. Google's research uses machine learning and computer vision, a field within AI based on information from visual inputs like videos or images. So instead of using a blood pressure cuff, for example, the algorithm can interpret slight visual changes to the body that serve as proxies and biosignals for a patient's blood pressure, Patel said. Google is also investigating the effectiveness of the built-in microphone for detecting heartbeats and murmurs and using the camera to preserve eyesight by screening for diabetic eye disease, according to information the company published last year. The tech giant recently purchased Sound Life Sciences, a Seattle startup with an FDA-cleared sonar technology app. It uses a smart device's speaker to bounce inaudible pulses off a patient's body to identify movement and monitor breathing. Binah.ai, based in Israel, is another company using the smartphone camera to calculate vital signs. Its software looks at the region around the eyes, where the skin is a bit thinner, and analyzes the light reflecting off blood vessels back to the lens. The company is wrapping up a U.S. clinical trial and marketing its wellness app directly to insurers and other health companies, said company spokesperson Mona Popilian-Yona. The applications even reach into disciplines such as optometry and mental health: With the microphone, Canary Speech uses the same underlying technology as Amazon's Alexa to analyze patients' voices for mental health conditions. The software can integrate with telemedicine appointments and allow clinicians to screen for anxiety and depression using a library of vocal biomarkers and predictive analytics, said Henry O'Connell, the company's CEO. Australia-based ResApp Health got FDA clearance last year for its iPhone app that screens for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea by listening to breathing and snoring. SleepCheckRx, which will require a prescription, is minimally invasive compared with sleep studies currently used to diagnose sleep apnea. Those can cost thousands of dollars and require an array of tests. Brightlamp's Reflex app is a clinical decision support tool for helping manage concussions and vision rehabilitation, among other things. Using an iPad's or iPhone's camera, the mobile app measures how a person's pupils react to changes in light. Through machine learning analysis, the imagery gives practitioners data points for evaluating patients. Brightlamp sells directly to health care providers and is being used in more than 230 clinics. Clinicians pay a $400 standard annual fee per account, which is currently not covered by insurance. The Department of Defense has an ongoing clinical trial using Reflex. In some cases, such as with the Reflex app, the data is processed directly on the phonerather than in the cloud, Brightlamp CEO Kurtis Sluss said. By processing everything on the device, the app avoids running into privacy issues, as streaming data elsewhere requires patient consent. But algorithms need to be trained and tested by collecting reams of data, and that is an ongoing process. Researchers, for example, have found that some computer vision applications, like heart rate or blood pressure monitoring, can be less accurate for darker skin. Studies are underway to find better solutions. Small algorithm glitches can also produce false alarms and frighten patients enough to keep widespread adoption out of reach. For example, Apple's new car-crash detection feature, available on both the latest iPhone and Apple Watch, was set off when people were riding roller coasters and automatically dialed 911. "We're not there yet," Yang said. "That's the bottom line." 2023 Kaiser Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A donor cornea is pictured at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank. Credit: CU Anschutz Medical Campus A newer technique for preparing corneal tissue for transplantation has been shown to be safe and effective, while providing a faster and smoother process than the traditional technique, according to researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at University of Colorado School of Medicine. Cornea transplantation has long been an option for patients with vision impairments stemming from cornea problems. In recent years, partial-thickness corneal transplantation, or Descemet's membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK), has emerged as an effective treatment for patients with Fuchs' dystrophy, a condition in which endothelial cellswhich line the inner layer of the corneadie off. During DMEK surgery, the surgeon only removes and replaces the damaged inner layer of the cornea, which decreases risks of transplant rejection and offers potential for excellent vision. "It's a great procedure because it has wonderful visual outcomes and a much lower risk of transplant problems down the road compared with older transplant techniques," says Karen Christopher, MD, assistant professor of ophthalmology in the CU School of Medicine and lead author for the study recently published in the journal Cornea. "It can really restore vision-related quality of life for patients who suffer from symptoms of Fuchs' dystrophy, and our research shows we can do this more successfully now than ever before." Christopher notes that it can be a challenge to prepare and transport the corneal transplant tissue, which is as thin as a sheet of plastic wrap, and endothelial cells may die in the process. The procedure has been refined since its advent in 2006, with new tools developed specifically for tissue removal and transport. Cornea tissue for DMEK has long been prepared using a "modified Jones tube" (left) until the EndoGlide (right) was developed specifically for the procedure. CU researchers compared both techniques in a recent study. Credit: CU Anschutz Medical Campus Christopher led the CU research team comparing different approaches to preparing cornea tissue for DMEK transplantationone using a relatively new tool called the DMEK EndoGlide and one using a tool called a Jones tube, modified from a glass tube that had been used in tear drainage surgery. The research was conducted at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, which partners with about 120 hospitals in Colorado and Wyoming to recover donated eye tissue for use in transplants, research, and training. The eye bank prepared and then gathered data for 30 DMEK grafts used in the study. "Most people don't realize that besides facilitating ocular donation for research and transplant, the eye bank also prepares the grafts for specific transplant procedures, such as DMEK, for the surgeons prior to surgery," says John Lohmeier, executive director of the eye bank. "The study results confirm that our preparation practices are cutting edge and effective." The EndoGlide technique preserves the tissue in a tiny capsule and forceps are later used to pull the tissue into the eye during surgery; it performed comparably to the modified Jones tube technique, which has been used for DMEK surgery for many years. Christopher says this is the first direct comparison of Jones tube with the EndoGlide technique, which she says provides more control for the surgeon during the transplantation, leading to faster and more regulated tissue implantationand likely better long-term outcomes. She credits the team at Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, located at the Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Eye Center, for its role in the research. "We have a great partnership with the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank," Christopher says. "Not only do they provide us with excellent quality cornea tissue and meticulously prepare it for DMEK transplantation, they also are on the forefront of developing new techniques such as this one. Without them our surgical successes would not be possible." In 2021, the eye bank facilitated the donation of tissue from 2,450 donors, from which 316 corneas were used in DMEK procedures. In its 40-plus year history, this nonprofit organization has facilitated the recovery of more than 58,000 eye tissues for transplant and 15,000 eye tissues for research, training, and education. More information: Karen L. Christopher et al, Comparison of the Modified Jones Tube Technique and the DMEK EndoGlide Technique With and Without Viscoelastic Material for DMEK Tissue Preparation, Cornea (2022). DOI: 10.1097/ICO.0000000000003178 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Institutions in Wallonia that provide services to French citizens, known under the French acronym SAFAE, receive financing by Frances social-security system. Credit: AViQ/OpenStreetMap Like other European countries, France boasts a strong welfare state, which academics in migration studies tend to view as a "pull factor" for potential residents. However, we often pay less attention to the system's limits. In fact, in recent years, holes in the French care system have led some citizens to seek care in other European countries. A "competitor" to France that may not come immediately to mind is Wallonia, a Francophone region in southern Belgium. It is estimated that about 8,233 French citizens with disabilities live in institutions located there. While this cross-border presence has a long history national media has focused on what is commonly described as a form of exile, including documented cases of abusive practices occurring in some Belgian institutions. To better understand the causes and impacts of this migration, we conducted 23 interviews with parents of French citizens who moved to Belgian institutions, NGO representatives, and institution directors as part of the MiTSoPro research project . The move from France to Belgium concerns different types of disability, above all intellectual, psychic and autism spectrum disorders. In our research, the majority of the interviews with families were carried out with parents of autistic people. Pushed out of France For many French parents, placing their children in a Belgian institution is not so much a choice as the only alternative they have. The limited number of structures able to provide care to children and adults with disabilities was mentioned by virtually all interviewees. As one parent explained: "[A Belgian institution] was not our first goal. This was a choice that was imposed, really [] the real problem was the lack of solutions." The situation is particularly severe in the Ile-de-France region, which surrounds the French capital. For example, in 2019 the Seine-Saint-Denis department (which is part of Ile-de-France) documented 1,000 adults and 400 children without a care solution. People with multiple or severe forms of disability are particularly likely to be left out by the system. But French parents also turn to Belgium because of the superior quality and range of support on offer. Belgian schools are often perceived as providing services that better adapted to the individual development of persons with disability. A common perception among the parents is that the Belgian system for children places greater emphasis on the educational aspects while the French system focuses more on the medical dimension and is therefore less efficient when it comes to stimulating children's autonomy. Growing cross-border infrastructure Belgian institutions supporting French citizens are de facto financed by the French welfare system, which shoulders the costs for such services. Combined with high demand and cheaper legal requirements, the state funding has led to the proliferation of institutions on the Belgian side of the border, both nonprofits (associations) and profit-oriented (private companies). The Belgian government refers to the latter as "services approved and financed by a foreign authority" (in French, SAFAE) and institutions providing them have a legal status distinct from similar Belgian structures. Patients are not the only ones to move across bordersprofessionals also do as some of them regularly visit or exchange with institutions from both sides of the border. Over time, this course of events has been strengthened by formal and informal cross-border networks of professionals, who keep in touch and exchange expertise between the two countries. Indeed, many parents met during our research were directed toward Belgium by French professionals such as social workers, healthcare professional or directors of french institutions. Different families, different realities How the families experience this arrangement depends on variables such as their geographic proximity to Belgium, access to transportation, disposable income and, not to forget, their own fitness. For relatively well-off residents of Ile-de-France region, placing their child in a Belgian institution might be a feasible solution, while for more modest households in the South of France, it would be a much more difficult choice. Moreover, to many the COVID-19 pandemic and its intra-EU travel bans brought home the border's hard reality. While most of the parents we met were relatively satisfied with the care provided in Belgium, some parents still emphasize how distance impacts their ability to maintain a family life with their child abroad. This is how the mother of an adult living in a Belgian institution describes the situation: "Apparently [my son] is doing well where he is. The problem is that we're getting older. Unfortunately, my husband has become visually impaired, so I do the trips to Belgium alone. [] If [our son] was closer, I'm sure it would be easier for everybody. Even for him, he would be able to participate a bit more to all the family events. He would feel less isolated." The bitter fruits of freedom of movement The presence of French citizens living with disabilities in Belgium can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, it can be viewedand is sometimes experienced by parents in this wayas an expression of the principle of freedom of movement within the EU. On the other hand, it can also be read as an exclusion from one's community, which is contrary to Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While this example is specific to France and Belgium, it goes to show just how much national welfare policies can impact migration in the EU. It also reveals what bitter undertones freedom of movement can sometimes carry. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In a world first international study led by Monash University researchers in Australia, the genetic markers for people with diabetes at risk of developing kidney disease have been identified. The study opens the way for the development of a test that could predict those adults with Type 1 diabetes at risk of kidney disease before symptoms appear, allowing for doctors to introduce early-stage interventions. There are more than 500 million adults living with diabetes and approximately 1 in 4 adults will develop kidney disease. More than 80% of cases of end-stage renal disease are caused by diabetes which is also a risk for hypertension. The total number of people living with diabetes is projected to rise to 643 million by 2030 and 783 million by 2045. The findings are from the largest-ever international study on type 1 diabetes, led by Professor Sam El-Osta, from Central Clinical School, Human Epigenetics team at the Department of Diabetes at Monash University and published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study tested the genes in 1017 Scandinavian and Asian diabetes cohorts, looking at the process called methylation, which is when a small molecule called a methyl group gets added to DNA. According to Professor El-Osta, the findings revealed "important clues that reduced DNA methylation is closely associated with the increased risk of diabetes relate kidney disease," he said. "These discoveries will influence how we screen patients with diabetes and improve risk stratification, disease prediction and diagnosis." Currently standard assays used in the clinic rely on assessing kidney function and the level of damage to the kidney caused by diabeteshowever the early stages of the disease are typically without symptoms. "We have developed a reliable method that improves predictive risk and diagnostic accuracy," said the study's first author Dr. Ishant Khurana, also from Monash University. According to Professor El-Osta, despite the tremendous advances in genetic testing, no risk genes for diabetic kidney disease (DKD) have been identified. "The team at Monash University's Central Clinical School using innovative sequencing techniques developed gene methylation risk scores that are tightly associated with early detection and the development of diabetic kidney disease," he said. "Scientists searching for blood-based biomarkers in diabetes cohorts originating from Finland, Denmark, Hong Kong and Thailand, found surprising commonality in gene methylation risk scores. They note that the innovative sequencing technologies developed using the internal collaboration revealed missing methylation data that was ultimately used to develop a predictive test for diabetic kidney disease." The researchers hope that routine gene methylation testing for diabetic complications such as kidney disease will soon be a standard part of the treatment plan, as it is for more common cancers. "As far as technological advancements in methods are concerned, epigenetic testing is going to be the new standard for early detection and DKD care," said Dr. El-Osta. "Renal biopsies are difficult to procure and the novel blood-based test means the test can be readily available and used in remote areas with the added advantage of being more stable than methods measuring other biological indices." This study was conducted by an international consortium comprising scientists at Monash University and collaborative partners in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Hong Kong and Bangkok. More information: Ishant Khurana et al, Reduced methylation corresponds with diabetic nephropathy risk in type 1 diabetes reduced methylation corresponds with diabetic nephropathy risk, Journal of Clinical Investigation (2023). DOI: 10.1172/JCI160959 Journal information: Journal of Clinical Investigation Fish caught in the fresh waters of the nation's streams and rivers and the Great Lakes contain dangerously high levels of PFOS, short for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, a known synthetic toxin phased out by the federal government, according to a study of data from the US Environmental Protection Agency. The chemicals called PFOS are part of a family of manufactured additives known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, widely used since the 1950s to make consumer products nonstick and resistant to stains, water and grease damage. Called "forever chemicals" because they fail to break down easily in the environment, PFAS have leached into the nation's drinking water via public water systems and private wells. The chemicals then accumulate in the bodies of fish, shellfish, livestock, dairy and game animals that people eat, experts say. "The levels of PFOS found in freshwater fish often exceeded an astounding 8,000 parts per trillion," said study coauthor David Andrews, a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit environmental health organization that analyzed the data. The report was published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research. In comparison, the EPA has allowed only 70 parts per trillion of PFOS in the nation's drinking water. Due to growing health concerns, in 2022 the EPA recommended the allowable level of PFOS in drinking water be lowered from 70 to 0.02 parts per trillion. "You'd have to drink an incredible amount of water we estimate a month of contaminated water to get the same exposure as you would from a single serving of freshwater fish," Andrews said. "Consuming even a single (locally caught freshwater) fish per year can measurably and significantly change the levels of PFOS in your blood," Andrews said. Chemicals in the PFAS family are linked to high cholesterol, cancer and various chronic diseases, as well as a limited antibody response to vaccines in both adults and children, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. "This is an important paper," said toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program. "To find this level of contamination in fish across the country, even in areas not close to industry where you might expect heavy contamination, is very concerning. These chemicals are everywhere," she said. It's nearly impossible to avoid PFAS, experts say. Manufacturers add the chemicals to thousands of products, including nonstick cookware, mobile phones, carpeting, clothing, makeup, furniture and food packaging. A 2021 study found PFAS in 52% of tested cosmetics, with the highest levels in waterproof mascara (82%), foundations (63%) and long-lasting lipstick (62%). Polytetrafluoroethylene, the coating on nonstick pans, was the most common additive. In fact, PFAS chemicals have been found in the blood serum of 98% of Americans, according to a 2019 report using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. "These chemicals are ubiquitous in the American environment. More than 2,800 communities in the U.S., including all 50 states and two territories, have documented PFAS contamination," Dr. Ned Calonge, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and chair of the Academies committee that wrote the report, told CNN previously. Scientists at the Environmental Working Group used data from the EPA's own monitoring programs the National Rivers and Streams Assessment, which has been periodically testing stream conditions since 2008, and the Great Lakes Human Health Fish Fillet Tissue Study, which tests lake water every five years. "The analysis focused on EPA wild-caught fish in rivers, streams and throughout the Great Lakes from 2013 to 2015 as that was the latest data available," Andrews said. The contamination was widespread, impacting "nearly every fish across the country," he said. "I believe there was one sample without detected levels of PFOS." The Environmental Working Group created an interactive map of the results with details for each state. Fish caught near urban areas contained nearly three times more PFOS and overall PFAS than those caught in nonurban locations, the study found. The highest levels were found in fish from the Great Lakes. The analysis showed PFOS accounted for an average 74% of the contamination in the fish. The remaining 25% was a mixture of other PFAS known to be equally damaging to human health, Andrews said. 50 record-breaking fish caught in the US 50 record-breaking fish caught in the US #50. Channel catfish: 58 pounds #49. Pallid sturgeon: 60 pounds #48. Lake trout: 63 pounds, 1.92 ounces #47. Muskellunge: 69 pounds, 15 ounces #46. White amur (Grass Carp): 70 pounds #45. Grass carp: 73 pounds #44. Bigmouth buffalo: 73 pounds, 2 ounces #43. Carp: 74 pounds #42. Longfin albacore: 74 pounds, 10.5 ounces #41. Red drum: 75 pounds #40. Channel bass: 75 pounds #39. Spearfish: 76 pounds, 12.8 ounces #38. Great barracuda: 77 pounds #37. Dolphin: 77 pounds, 8 ounces #36. Striped bass: 78 pounds, 8 ounces #35. Moray eel: 81 pounds #34. Atlantic sturgeon: 82 pounds #33. Dorado: 82 pounds #32. Greater amberjack: 85 pounds #31. Ling cod: 85 pounds #30. Smallmouth buffalo: 88 pounds #29. Albacore tuna: 90 pounds #28. Bighead carp: 90 pounds #27. Black buffalo: 92 pounds, 8 ounces #26. White sturgeon: 96 pounds #25. Chinook (King) Salmon: 97 pounds, 4 ounces #24. Atlantic cod: 98 pounds, 12 ounces #23. Black drum: 115 pounds #22. Sailfish: 119 pounds #21. Flathead catfish: 123 pounds #20. Big skate: 130 pounds #19. White marlin: 137 pounds, 8 ounces #18. Blue catfish: 143 pounds #17. Paddlefish: 144 pounds #16. Amberjack: 151 pounds, 8 ounces #15. Giant trevally: 191 pounds #14. Alligator gar: 279 pounds #13. Pacific halibut: 288 pounds #12. Warsaw grouper: 310 pounds #11. Tuna: 322 pounds #10. Yellowfin tuna: 325 pounds #9. Striped marlin: 339 pounds #8. Bigeye tuna: 375 pounds, 8 ounces #7. Halibut: 459 pounds #6. Sturgeon: 468 pounds #5. Swordfish: 530 pounds #4. Giant seabass: 563 pounds #3. Bluefin tuna: 1,152 pounds #2. Black marlin: 1,205 pounds #1. Blue marlin: 1,805 pounds A bill to extend and expand Montanas Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force came before the Legislature Wednesday. Rep. Tyson Running Wolf, D-Browning, introduced the bill by request of the State-Tribal Relations Committee. The Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force was created by the Legislature in 2019. It consists of representatives from all tribal nations in Montana, as well as representatives from law enforcement, the Department of Justice, FBI and other entities. The task force aims to reduce the number of missing Indigenous people, and by law, it must be renewed every two years. The task force is set to terminate June 30. The disproportionate number of missing or murdered Indigenous people is a nationwide crisis, and experts say Montana is an epicenter. Native Americans comprise 6.7% of the states population, yet they account for, on average, 26% of Montanas missing persons population. House Bill 163 would extend the term of the task force and the grant program it administers to tribal colleges. It also adds a representative from the Office of Public Instruction to the task force; authorizes the task force to make recommendations to federal, state and local entities; and provides an appropriation. The bill would cost the General Fund $102,581 each year. In his address to the House Judiciary Committee, Running Wolf spoke of the task forces work, citing its database, reporting portal and grants to tribal colleges. He called the work a shining star, as it serves as a model for states across the country. Blackfeet Community College in 2020 was awarded $25,000 through a grant offered through the task force. With the funds, the tribal college created a website, mmipmt.com, where people can safely report people missing. Running Wolf, who is Blackfeet, concluded on a personal note. I can only imagine how it would be if I had to visit this website and lost one of my five girls or two boys and I was desperate, he said. As an elder once told me before, he said, Were not fighting hard enough for our women and children. But this is what it means to be fighting for our women and children and our loved and missing people. Support for the bill Patrick Yawakie-Peltier, representing the Blackfeet Nation, spoke in support of the bill, saying it helps the states government to government relationship with the tribes. Dana Toole, special services bureau chief at the Department of Justice, said while the task force has worked toward its goals, establishing a mission and vision, theres a lot of work left to be done. Policy Director for the ACLU Montana Keegan Medrano emphasized the need for a representative from the Office of Public Instruction to be on the task force. He spoke of Elijah Anenakew, a 13-year-old boy who has been missing for six days from Great Falls. Medrano said Elijah also went missing four months ago. A Montana Department of Justice report found that in 2021, more than 80% of missing Indigenous people were under the age of 18, and Medrano said adding a representative from the Office of Public Instruction to the task force would provide a needed perspective on school policy and other things pertaining to missing youth. Ellie Bundy, presiding officer of the task force, said the entity brings everyone to the table with voices from every reservation. Theres still so much more (work) ahead, she said. This task force is an acknowledgment that we care and that we are still seeking answers and working towards solutions. Please know that the work we are able to do on task forces such as this is critical to help keep hope alive. Why renew the task force every two years? The task force is set to terminate every two years. It was created in 2019 and the Legislature voted to extend the task force during the 2021 session. House Bill 163 would again extend the task force to 2025, but some who spoke in the hearing raised concerns about the constant need for renewal. Jade Bahr, who is Northern Cheyenne and a state-tribal policy analyst for the Montana Budget and Policy Center, supported the bill and said it might be worth reassessing the need for it to be reauthorized every two years. This is not an issue that can be solved in just two more years, she said. It can be exhausting for Native families to feel like they need to keep coming back every session to fight for this funding when they fought so much longer just to get it on the books. Members of Montanas American Indian Caucus have in the past noted that bills that include funding for Indian Country often must be renewed every session. Medrano said that while his support does not hinge on the two-year renewal aspect of the bill, he said, I would support not needing to come here every session to support this. Alan Doane, legislative liaison for Montana Office of the Attorney General, advocated for keeping termination at two years, saying the renewal process keeps the crisis, which often goes uncovered, in the news. Running Wolf said the caucus has discussed whether to advocate for a longer extension but called the process a total juggling act. In a perfect world, this is extended out for 12 years and theyre funded annually at $5 million, and were totally eliminating the missing Indigenous person (crisis), he said, adding that he doesnt think that is realistic. Running Wolf closed by saying that the task force is a critical piece in ending the crisis were facing. No one spoke in opposition of the bill, and the committee has yet to take executive action on it. A Montana State University student filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against some university administrators after she was barred from participating in a sororitys activities for questioning its use of preferred pronouns when referring to members. The suit and request for preliminary injunction filed on Friday names Montanas Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian, MSU President Waded Cruzado and Kyleen Breslin, director of MSUs Office of Institutional Equity, as defendants. Daria Danley, the plaintiff in the suit, started as a student at MSU in fall 2020 and began the process of becoming a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. Another student was initiated around the same time as Danley and routinely made inappropriate sexual comments in the presence of other (sorority) members, and asked Danley to hang out repeatedly, which made her uncomfortable, according to court documents. Danley reported her concerns to the chapters leadership. Danley also reportedly challenged the groups use of preferred pronouns when identifying themselves. In September 2021, chapter leadership called Danley regarding alleged comments you made during polish week about our members in the LGBTQ+ community that could be defined as hate speech, according to court documents. When asked by Danley to identify the alleged hate speech, sorority leadership replied that Danley made remarks that it was stupid and dumb to be in a sorority and use alternative pronouns. Later that month, Danley was dismissed from the chapter and MSUs Office of Institutional Equity informed her that an interim mutual no-contact order had been issued against her and the other sorority student who allegedly made unwanted advances toward her. Danley was evicted from the sorority house in Bozeman as a result of the no-contact order. In October, Breslin signed an administrative complaint stating that Danleys actions were discriminatory and an investigation by the university ensued. With the conclusion of the investigation, Danley was informed that the complaint would be dismissed if she agreed to a resolution that included sensitivity training, which she declined. The complaint against Danley was dismissed in February 2022 but the no-contact order remained in place as it was independent of the investigation. The next month, Danley applied for reinstatement through the sororitys national headquarters and was approved in September. I still care greatly for Alpha Gamma Delta as a whole and I know it does so much good for women, I just happened to get into a bad chapter, Danley is quoted as saying in the court documents. In Spring 2022, the AGD chapter at MSU dissolved and the no-contact order remained in effect. Although the chapter dissolved, the members still in the community continued to organize events in Bozeman and around the country. Danley cannot participate in these events due to the no-contact order, despite having her membership restored by the sororitys headquarters. MSU has rejected repeated requests by the victim to rescind the order and has never explained why the order remains necessary or elaborated on why it was imposed in the first place, the complaint reads. Nor has MSU ever given the victim a hearing to challenge the order. The suit claims this incident violated Danleys constitutional and statutory rights, and undermines her future education and professional prospects. A request for preliminary injunction was also filed in court. Danley is represented by Matthew Monforton of Monforton Law Offices PLLC. Plaintiffs complaints, by their nature, present only one side of an issue, said Mike Becker, MSUs news director, in response to the allegations in the suit against two of its administrators. We will now let the courts processes follow their due course. The Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education agreed with MSUs statement and has no further comments to offer at this time. A new report released Tuesday shows that Native American people are incarcerated at rates up to seven times higher than white people in the United States. The report, Over-incarceration of Native Americans: Roots, Inequities, and Solutions was released through the MacArthur Foundation and highlights the alarming incarceration disparities can be based on race and ethnicity. Further, American Indians and Alaska Natives are overrepresented in the prison population in 19 states and are sentenced more harshly compared to White, African American and Hispanic people. The report was written by Ciara Hansen, Shawnee and Cherokee, Desiree Fox, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and Ann Miller, an attorney with the Tribal Defenders Office of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The report both highlights the inequality of the American justice system, but also highlights the progress that tribes are making to address the issue. Hansen said it was important to publish the report and it is a great step at addressing and examining the issue of over-incarceration of Native people. I hope that not only do we increase awareness about the uniqueness of Native populations, which means the unique barriers, but also the unique resiliency factors, she said. I hope that what can be gleaned from the report is that there's lots of resilience within Native communities and if we are to move forward in addressing kind of this mass incarceration problem as a nation, and as tribal communities, I hope that the message is that we already have a lot of resilience and we're already doing a lot of things right. Fox echoed those sentiments, adding that she hopes the report also shines a light on practices some tribes have already implemented in its respective communities. What we're trying to communicate with this though, and I think a continuation of that is just highlighting the over reliance on a punitive system that we know doesn't work, Fox said. We know putting people in jail and fining people who don't have money to begin with, like none of that actually works. And I think most people agree with that. Bria Gillum, a senior program officer at MacArthur, said in the press release from the foundation that the report highlights the painful and unacceptable treatment of Native people in the criminal justice system. It is our hope that the report contributes to the growing conversation about racial disparities in this broken system, sparks deeper collaboration between state and tribal agencies, and leads to investments in diversion services that can end this devastating cycle, Gillum said. The press release highlighted key findings, including: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 45 percent of people incarcerated in tribal jails were being held pretrial, and pretrial detention rose by at least by 80 percent since 1999. The average length of stay doubled from 2002 to 2018. The number of jails in Indian Country has increased by 25 percent since 2000, which has led to filling them with more people charged and held with petty crimes for longer periods of time. The 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics report showed tribal jail incarceration rates steadily increased by 60 percent since 2000. The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, however, has shown a significant reduction of incarceration in tribal jails during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the most serious offense for 16 percent of people held in tribal jails was public intoxication and 15 percent were held for drug related or DUI charges, the report states. Native youth are more likely to face conviction in adult court, especially for drug-related crimes. While writing the report, Hansen said the trio of authors struggled to nail down what they thought the audience needed to hear and that they needed to provide historical context to help people understand the nuances of federal Indian law along with tribal and federal jurisdiction. That part is so integral to understanding this kind of modern issue, Hansen said. One of the reasons why people aren't more active in advocating for this change is because it's so difficult to understand. Among the tribes listed in the report which are providing innovative approaches to criminal justice systems include the Kanaitze Indian Tribe in Alaska, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians in Michigan and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation In Oklahoma, among others. For example, the latter has an intensive reintegration program where services begin pre-release and address all aspects of reentry including financial assistance, career development, culturally relevant programming, supervision, and legal counsel, the report states. Hill has been practicing law for more than 25 years and while she unfortunately wasnt surprised by the reports findings, one of her main takeaways is that tribes are coming up with solutions that best serve their populations. We saw anything from tribal systems that were trying to divert people from state court to offer services and do a diversionary court to victim services in Indian Country, Hill said. The other main takeaway was to talk about offering services to people is really the best way to try to address that cycle into the criminal justice system. Moving forward, all three authors hope the report continues or for some start the discussion on this issue. In particular, Hill says the federal government takes a deeper look at funding tribes to enhance tribal court systems and funding public defense systems particularly. I think if you're looking at improving criminal justice outcomes, that really having an in-house public defender for tribal systems is a good first step to that, Hill said. I hope that that's one of the main takeaways, one that we're unique, Hansen said. We have a unique history with the U.S. government and that we have a lot of resiliency that we can build from. A bill providing tax exemptions for tribal members who own fee land and are in the process of converting that land to trust went before the Legislature on Tuesday. Sen. Susan Webber, D-Browning, called Senate Bill 119 a clean-up bill, slightly revising a law passed last session, which said that property owned in fee by a tribe is temporarily exempt from taxation when that land is being transferred to trust, and under certain other conditions. Thats all this bill does is to include the tribal member, Webber explained to the Senate Taxation Committee. Fee vs. trust land Webbers bill concerns fee land, which refers to property that an individual owns outright. Trust land refers to property held in trust by the U.S. government for the benefit of Native American tribes or for the benefit of individual tribal members. Fee land is taxed and can be sold to anyone, where trust land is not taxed and can only be sold to a tribe or tribal member. Whats this bill about? In her address to the Senate Taxation Committee, Webber explained that there are tribal members who have fee land and want to put it into trust. She noted that the process of transferring fee land to trust can take years, as it must go through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Interior. As the law is currently written, tribal members must pay taxes on fee land even as they are waiting for that land to become trust. But, Webber explained, SB 119 will change that by adding tax exemptions for individual tribal members entering this process. Sen. Jeremy Trebas, R-Great Falls, asked Webber whether its better for tribal members to have land in fee or trust, and Webber said its often best to have a combination of the two. She said she herself owns fee land and has relatives who put trust land into fee so they could expand their ranches and grow their cattle herds. First of all, as an Indian, its very hard for me to go into a bank, Webber explained, adding that reservations have historically been redlined and Native people have been excluded from financial systems. The reason my husband and I put our land into fee was to get a house, Webber continued. Otherwise, we could not get a house, buy our own home. (Tribes) set aside fee property for the same purpose to get loans, to support their functions. Otherwise, they prefer (land) in trust status. But we use a combination of both of them. What do people think about it? Patrick Yawakie-Peltier, who is representing the Blackfeet Nation during the session, called the bill an important step forward in the state-tribal government-to-government relationship. The Blackfeet Tribe and tribal members, like many other tribal nations, are in the process of acquiring lands lost during the Dawes Act and the property tax exemption provides temporary relief during the process, he said. The General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act, authorized the president to allot portions of reservation land to individual tribal members. Individual allotments were to remain in trust for 25 years, and after that, the land would become fee, which is taxed. The law also authorized the Interior Secretary to negotiate with tribes to dispossess all excess land remaining after allotments for the purpose of non-Native settlement. The government ultimately sold more than 90 million acres of tribal land to non-Native citizens. Many who spoke in support of the bill alluded to the devastation of the Allotment Era and argued that SB 119 would help tribes and tribal members who are working to reclaim their land. Mark Baker, who spoke on behalf of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, called the bill a welcome piece of legislation. Keegan Medrano, policy director for the ACLU Montana, said SB 119 will empower tribal nations. We are still here, Medrano said. Our nations are still here, left to pick up the pieces of this failed big government policy. SB 119 could begin to restore the land in our communities We can empower our nations as we stitch ourselves back together from the damage of the federal governments policy. Jade Bahr, a state-tribal policy analyst with the Montana Budget and Policy Center, advocated for the bill to pass and said that land in trust not only helps restore tribal sovereignty but it can also open access to federal programs and services, like housing, economic development and cultural resource protection. No one spoke in opposition of the bill. Webber concluded by saying she hoped she educated the committee. The committee did not yet take executive action on the bill. The Taliban and supporters of the Afghanistan rulers have been buying up blue-check verifications on Twitter, according to a report. BBC News found that Hedayatullah Hedayat, who heads the groups access to information department and Abdul Haq Hammad, the top media official at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, both had the check marks on their profiles. Between them, they have hundreds of thousands of followers. Twitter Blue: Endorsed by the Taliban lol, U.S. journalist Chris Taylor wrote on Twitter, linking to the BBC News story. Interestingly, Taliban praises Elon Musk for verifying their accounts and even they say Elon is originally Afghan, from Logar province. Congratulations Elon! wrote Tajuden Soroush, an Afghan journalist who lives in London. Government officials and similar accounts have grey check marks and businesses have gold ones. According to The Guardian, the check marks were removed after the BBC investigation was published and social media outrage ensued. However, its unclear if Twitter removed the check marks itself or if the users did. Twitter has long been used by the Taliban but the groups accounts were never previously verified. The new feature is part of Twitter Blue, a subscription service that comes with a blue check mark on a profile that was previously only available to active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest that Twitter itself verified. Subscribers also appear higher up in search results and replies to other users. The new features were introduced shortly after Musk took control of the company. Former Republican U.S. senator and two-time presidential candidate Rick Santorum was on hand at the Montana Capitol Wednesday, stumping for a proposal to call a national convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Senate Joint Resolution 2 takes aim at federal spending and regulations, and would make Montana the latest Republican-leaning state to endorse the state-led avenue to amending the Constitution under Article V, often referred to as a convention of states. You have been given the power in the Constitution, under Article V, to control the federal government, Santorum told the Senate Business, Labor and Economic Development Committee. ... And if you dont use it and this country fails, thats on you. Calling a convention to propose constitutional amendments would require two-thirds, or 34 states, to do the same. Three-fourths of the states would need to ratify any proposed amendments that come out of that process. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, seeks to call a convention specifically to propose constitutional amendments that would require Congress to balance its budget, to enact term limits for federal representatives and to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. Members, Ill be a bit hard on Congress today, McGillvray told the committee, offering some levity to what would sprawl into a three-hour bill hearing. It was an understatement. They are destroying the economic foundations of America, Congress has taken on imperial powers and they are encouraging and abetting the destruction of this great nation, he added a few minutes later. No such convention has been called since the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and all 27 amendments added afterwards have originated in Congress. The proposals detractors, including members of the right-wing John Birch Society, said that theres no way to ensure that such a convention would be limited to just those goals outlined in the states matching resolutions. Instead, once called, delegates or Congress could expand the purpose of the convention, they say, up to and including rewriting the entire document. Congress takes over and calls the convention, not the states, said Ed Regan, chair of the Broadwater County Republican Central Committee. Congress would be acting under its legitimate powers, with total control of the process once the gavel drops. Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, also argued that if a convention of states were called, there is no indication that delegates to that convention would be apportioned by population. In an exchange between the two, Santorum argued that past, smaller-scale conventions of state delegates, including two to divvy up water rights among several southwestern states, apportioned one vote to each state. Curdy disagreed, noting that the states had never called a convention to amend the Constitution, and that the 1787 Constitutional Convention had proportional representation. Patrick Yawakie, testifying on behalf of the Blackfeet Tribe, also argued against the resolution. He said it could compromise the treaties and agreements established between the federal government and tribes across the U.S. So far, 19 state legislatures have passed identical resolutions to call a convention of states, according to the conservative organization Citizens for Self-Governance, the main funder of the national Convention of States effort. Six other states have passed the resolution through one, but not both, chambers of their legislatures. Its McGillvrays second attempt to get the resolution approved by the Legislature. In 2021, it came within two votes of passage in the Senate, with five Republican Senators joining with all 19 Democrats to vote it down. This session, Democrats control three fewer Senate seats and several of those GOP defectors are no longer in office. This legislative session, Montana has an opportunity to significantly strengthen our healthcare delivery system, particularly for people most in need of healthcare. Last session, the Montana Legislature commissioned a provider rate study to study the rates at which Medicaid providers are reimbursed. The study focused on services primarily used by people on Medicaid, including addictive and mental disorders, developmental services, childrens mental health, and senior and long-term care. The study, conducted by an outside consulting firm, recommended that the state invest $27.7 million more into its Medicaid program. Because Medicaid is funded with both state and federal funds, increasing provider rates would bring in roughly $54 million in federal funds. During a time when our health care system has been stretched to its limit, bringing funding up to adequate levels is key to making sure everyone has the care they need. After investing years, listening to stakeholders input, and spending $2.7 million on the study, Gov. Gianfortes office has proposed to fund only a fraction of what the study recommended. The governors budget proposes funding 10 percent of the recommended increase in 2024. In 2025, the governors budget calls for funding 36 percent of the recommendations in the study. While the budget also contains a $25 million unrestricted pool of money, purportedly to be used for a temporary boost in provider rate increases, these funds are for one year only. In 2025, providers will receive less in reimbursements than they had the year before and left facing the same crisis they are now. Provider rates are not simply in-the-weeds Medicaid policy. When reimbursement rates for Medicaid are too low, it limits access to health care and risks poor health for tens thousands of Montanans. Children in need of residential psychiatric treatment , for example, are routinely sent out of state due to low provider reimbursement rates in Montana. Closing the gap between Medicaid reimbursements and private pay insurance would also reduce disparities in access among adults and eliminate access disparities for children . Provider rates are a racial justice issue, as well. Fundamentally, adequate provider rates determine Montanans access to health care. Sufficient provider rates are also an investment in the Medicaid system, by allowing for community-based care rather than high-cost hospitalizations down the road. Appropriate reimbursement rates will also help stabilize Montanas healthcare workforce at a time where there is a shortage of healthcare workers across the state. Montana is sitting on a $1.9 billion surplus. The state can and should invest in the health of Montanans as well as our healthcare workforce. Instead, the Governors budget is calling for large tax cuts for the wealthy. After spending two years studying the pay Medicaid providers receive, the Legislature and the governor fully understand the gaps in our healthcare system. Medicaid provider rates influence access to healthcare, our economy, and how we prioritize spending in our state budget. We ask the Legislature to fully fund the provider rate study. Butte police reports Chase ends in arrest On Saturday night, officers arrested Alexander Michael Bailey, 26, of Butte for felony criminal endangerment and the misdemeanor offenses of partner or family member assault, resisting arrest, obstructing a peace officer and unauthorized use of a vehicle. Bailey allegedly caused a disturbance at a home in the 700 block of Indiana Street, broke a window and took a relatives truck. A man jumped into the bed of the truck to stop him, but reportedly fell out. After leaving the area, Bailey was allegedly driving the truck on some railroad tracks. According to the police report, at some point he abandoned the truck and then jumped over a fence. An officer told him to stop, but he allegedly refused to cooperate, but was soon in handcuffs. Felony DUI Ronald Gerald Johnson, 64, of Butte was booked into the jail just after midnight Saturday near Galena and Idaho streets. According to the police report, Johnson ran a stop sign at Mercury and Idaho streets and when stopped, appeared to be intoxicated and failed on-site sobriety maneuvers. Johnson was arrested for felony driving under the influence (fourth or subsequent offense), and the misdemeanor stop sign violation. He also had a misdemeanor criminal contempt warrant out for his arrest. Other DUIs Desirae Stark, 43, of Butte allegedly ran a stop sign around 1 a.m. Friday near the intersection of Utah and Cobban. She was stopped by an officer and reportedly appeared to be intoxicated and was arrested for misdemeanor driving under the influence. It is alleged that Zachary Frank Helpenstill, 18, of Kalispell was intoxicated when he drove his car into a tree around 3 a.m. Saturday in the 900 block of West Park Street. Helpenstill was taken to the Butte Detention Center where he took a Breathalyzer and reportedly blew twice over the legal limit. He was jailed for misdemeanor aggravated driving under the influence (first offense). Suspicious men A call came in early Sunday night about two suspicious men in the 2100 block of Grand Avenue. While officers were investigating, they came across a man who matched one of the descriptions given. Zechariah Lee English, 40, of Butte first gave the officers a different name. English was arrested for the misdemeanor offenses of obstructing a peace officer and possession of drug paraphernalia. Combative patient Officers arrived at the emergency room of St. James Healthcare at 5 p.m. Sunday to investigate a report of a man causing a disturbance. Roger Lee Kurtz, 54, of Butte allegedly got combative with security and staff. Officers told Kurtz he needed to calm down, but he reportedly then began calling officers a variety of names. Because Kurtz was not cooperating and had alcohol in his room, he was arrested for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He also had a misdemeanor warrant out for his arrest out of Gallatin County. Felony warrants A call came in about 3:30 p.m. Sunday that a man was sleeping on the north side of the Tamarack Square, 3703 Harrison Ave. The man was Robert Lindell Stone, 52, of Butte, who felony warrants out for his arrest. He was jailed on a $50,000 bond. Suspected meth Anthony Theodore Worth, 43, of Butte was arrested late Saturday night in the 600 block of West Park Street for the felony offenses of possession of dangerous drugs and probation violation, and two misdemeanor criminal contempt offenses. At the jail, Worth reportedly had in the waistband of his pants a baggie of suspected methamphetamine. Detained, arrested On Saturday morning, Lamont Anderson, 61, of Butte was detained by Adult Probation & Parole at a residence in the 800 block of Maryland Avenue. Anderson was arrested for felony probation violation and a felony warrant out of Gallatin County. Criminal contempt On Friday night, an officer stopped to question Jacob Terry Booth, 52, of Butte, who had a flashlight and was looking inside a vehicle on Curtis Street. Turns out Booth had a felony criminal contempt warrant out for arrest. He was jailed on a $25,000 bond. Illegal entry David William Ritter, 32, of Butte attempted to enter a patrol car Friday night that was parked in front of the jail. An officer stopped to question Ritter, who was then jailed for misdemeanor criminal trespass to vehicle. Asleep in laundromat Dustin Francis Henry Walker, 40, of Butte was caught around 4 a.m. Tuesday sleeping on the couch inside the Front Street Laundry, 1000 E. Front St. He was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant out of Lake County. Unwanted man A call came in Friday night about an unwanted man at a residence in the 2100 block of Grand Avenue. The unwanted man, Camron John Hunt, 27, of Butte was later located in the 2300 block of Locust Street. He had warrants out for his arrest for felony criminal contempt and misdemeanor criminal trespass to a vehicle. Sunday report Near the intersection of Curtis and Ohio streets Sunday night, Larry Michael Morris, 37, of Butte was arrested on a $10,000 felony warrant out of Anaconda-Deer Lodge County. Felony robbery Late Monday afternoon, Missoula County Detention Center officials brought Joseph Patrick Brian Jr., 45, of Butte to the jail on a felony robbery warrant. Additional reports A bicycle trailer was stolen while parked at a home in the 2900 block of Silver Bow Boulevard. A backpack was stolen from a vehicle parked in the 500 block of West Galena Street. Two women got into a fight at the Butte Detention Center, 155 W. Quartz St. A man reportedly packing a pistol was in the Acoma, 60 E. Broadway St., over the weekend and his demeanor got him kicked out. He later returned, without the pistol, but his bad behavior was still intact. The police got involved and the man left. Three juveniles were attempting to kick down a fence near the intersection of Emmett and Gold streets and the police were called. When officers arrived, the fence kickers had left the area. One post had been damaged. A 1993 white Ford F-150 with a topper was stolen from Montana Techs Prospector Hall. Someone deliberately scratched a 2010 Cadillac DTS with a metal object while it was parked in the 1600 block of Grand Avenue. The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, in conjunction with Montana Resources, has awarded a total of $200,000 to support the Montana Folk Festival in 2023. This year, $100,000 will be awarded to the Montana Folk Festival, which must be matched by contributions from other Montana businesses. "If the Montana Folk Festival organizers meet this challenge and raise a matching amount of $100,000, the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation will then disperse another $100,000, making the total contribution $200,000 for this year, said George Everett, festival director. Thanks in large part to this major support, the 2023 Montana Folk Festival will return to Butte July 14-16 after a successful return in 2022. According to Everett, the Foundation has been a major contributor to the success of this festival since 2008, and has become Montanas largest free admission summer event. This grant is offered as a challenge to Montana businesses to join in helping to make the festival a self-sustaining event that will continue to bring thousands of attendees to Butte and throughout Montana, said Everett. Since its inception, the festival has attracted thousands of visitors from across the nation and resulted in an economic, social and cultural impact on Butte and Montana. We want to see this event continue for the long term and that is why we are doubling our support for this signature event, said Mike Halligan, executive director of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation. We also want to continue to support Butte and surrounding communities in an effort to help broaden the impact and reach of the arts and cultural aspect of the festival in Montanas K-12 and post-secondary education systems. Currently, the festivals executive committee is seeking corporate sponsorships to match this grant. "Contributions made in the coming weeks and months will have an amplified impact thanks to this critical challenge grant, said Everett. The skill and hard work of our 390 employees helps make it possible for the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation to be a major contributor to the Montana Folk Festival, said Jack Standa, Montana Resources president. We hope that corporate citizens throughout the region will see the benefits to their communities and help meet this challenge. To learn more about sponsorships, go to the festival website at www.montanafolkfestival.com/folkFestival-forms-sponsor.php, or call 406-565-2249. I was sad to hear of the deaths of Raymond Monroy Sr. (110 years old and seemingly forever young) and of winemaker Michael Martini (73 years old and much too young to leave us). My condolences to their families and to all who are in mourning right now. *** My thanks to author John McCormick for paying a long-overdue tribute to the Chinese laborers who were the backbone of the Napa Valley in the late 19th century. Find out what he learned and grab a copy of his book, Chinese in Napa Valley, when he speaks at the Heritage Center Museum at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25. Hes sure to address St. Helenas own Chinatown, so bring your questions about that sadly vanished piece of our towns history. *** Those of us ladies of (or past) a certain age will surely find something to appreciate in Christina Julians one-act play Growing Old without Grace. St. Helenans will have two chances to see it, first at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, at the library; and then at 3 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, at Rianda House. Both performances are free. *** Local herbalist Charlotte Powell will discuss Tea as the First Medicine at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, at the St. Helena Public Library. According to the library, the talk will examine the fascinating history of tea as medicine dive into who, what, where and why some plants became more popular and others faded away. And yes, there will be free samples. A hot mug of Earl Grey is waiting for me as soon as I finish this column! *** The UpValley Family Centers are looking for volunteers for their free tax preparation service. If youd like to help and if the sight of a 1040 doesnt make your heart race out of anxiety contact Karen Garcia at 707-965-5010 or kgarcia@upvalleyfamilycenters.org. *** Napa County Public Defender Ronald H. Abernethy will discuss Realignment of the Pretrial Process at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, at the Napa County Library, 580 Coombs St. in Napa. I know its in Napa, but its sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Napa County, which does great work throughout the valley, so I wanted to bring it to your attention. *** Of course I cant close my column without mentioning this recent weather. Former Star editor Dave Stoneberg writes: Its been raining nearly every day since Jan. 1, and a few days at the end of December as well. From Dec. 29 through midday Sunday, weve had 15.49 inches of rain, according to my unofficial rain gauge next to my house in Hidden Valley Lake. The majority of that rain was from Jan. 2 to 11, when we had 10.35 inches of rain. Interestingly enough, that may have seemed like a lot of rain, but do you remember just seven years ago, at the beginning of 2016, when we had 13.38 inches of rain from Jan. 3 to 11? That year we had a season total of 45.9 inches of rain from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. Lets hope we can repeat that performance this season. (Currently, were at 26.58 inches of rain.) On July 6, 1885, the first article in Steads expose was published. Stead revealed how thousands of girls, most of whom were between 13 and 15 years old, were bought for sex by prominent London men, including a well-known member of Parliament, a cabinet minister, a doctor and a clergyman who obtained a 12-year old virgin for 20. As soon as it hit Londons newsstands, the story went viral. Stead already had a reputation as a fearless editor who advocated Government by Journalism and didnt shy from sensationalism. The Gazettes reporting was front-page news in the U.S., with The New York Times covering the scandal and the reaction by English authorities. Instead of working to swiftly shut down the illicit sex trade and identify those involved, Londons city solicitor ordered police to seize copies of the Gazette and to arrest vendors for selling copies of the paper. Despite or because of the attempted censorship, copies sold well above their cover price. Thousands waited outside newspaper offices for their chance to buy each new installment. Those who could get their hands on a copy learned about how women recruited young girls, and how the authorities who knew about it failed to intervene. Stead interviewed women who explained how they enticed girls to enter the homes of wealthy men with promises of meals, money and jobs. Looking out for pretty girls who are poor, brothel keepers and professional procurers recruited orphans, shop girls, servants and nursemaids to visit gentlemen. The police knew all about them long ago, Stead added, noting that officers were discouraged from pursuing leads, while prosecutors intimidated potential witnesses. Stead interviewed some of the men who paid for the girls. They assured him that the maidens willingly sometimes eagerly consented. As the member of Parliament told Stead, I doubt the unwillingness of these virgins it is nonsense to say it is rape. The victimized girls told a different story: They were lured with the promise of a better life. They had no idea that the employment agencies they used were actually fronts for prostitution. Once the girls consented to go into the gentlemans house, there was no going back. According to Stead, those who resisted were told that they could choose either to be raped and paid, or raped and then turned into the streets without a penny. Raymond Monroy Sr., a beloved family man who was believed to be the oldest person in Napa County and the oldest World War II veteran in the U.S., died Jan. 7 at his St. Helena home at the age of 110. Monroy is survived by six of his seven children who ensured that he was able to spend his final years in the same house he built in 1949 as well as 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register. The house was the site of increasingly jubilant birthday parties as family members gathered annually to celebrate one milestone birthday after another. Monroy enjoyed greeting well-wishers with a handshake that never lost its crushing firmness. You up for another? he joked to a reporter on his 109th birthday. His 110th birthday last May was marked by a parade of vehicles from the St. Helena fire and police departments, as well as a line of hot rods. Uniformed service members from Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield also paid a birthday visit to Monroy, who was listed as Americas oldest veteran of the Second World War by the longevity-tracking website gerontology.fandom.com. Monroys physical health began to decline about a week after his 110th birthday, and he was bedridden during his final months, according to William Monroy, his third oldest child. His spirits remained high, however, as one would expect from a man whose motto was Happy always. He was still joking around a lot with us and his caregivers, William Monroy said. Toward the end his mind was still active but his body was giving out. Born in Arizona on May 11, 1912, Raymond Monroy had lived in St. Helena since 1933. He worked for Beringer Brothers Winery and at the Mare Island shipyards before enlisting in the military when World War II broke out. Shot down over a small island in the South Pacific, Monroy was questioned for two days and (gave) up nothing but name, rank, and serial number until U.S. Marines retook the island, according to his obituary. The rudders were shot off and we went down but we were rescued me, the co-pilot and the pilot and the gunners, all kids, Monroy told the St. Helena Stars Carolyn Younger in 2006, shortly after turning 94. They were good kids. I was sorry that I saw a lot of them go. They didnt come home. Monroy went on to a career as a flight engineer at what is now Travis Air Force Base. He also taught English as a Second Language at St. Helena High School. William Monroy said his father raised his seven children to be frugal, kind and honest. Each of them had successful careers; three served in law enforcement, two owned businesses, one worked for the federal government, and one worked for United Airlines. Honesty is the best policy, he would always tell us growing up, said William Monroy, who served with the St. Helena Police Department. Raymond Monroy Sr. will be laid to rest in St. Helena next to his wife of 70 years, Maria, following services at Holy Cross Cemetery Chapel at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31. Secrets to longevity from some of the world's oldest people Eat eggs and cookies Be kind George Burns Eat delicious things Follow the Ten Commandments No gossip, junk food Bacon! Honey, bee pollen Magic potion? Most Californians would be banned from owning or purchasing body armor, such as a bullet-proof vest, under a bill now being considered by state lawmakers. Assembly Bill 92, introduced by Assemblyman Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, comes as a response to many high-profile mass shootings where the shooter wore body armor. That includes the 2015 massacre in San Bernardino, where two people wearing tactical gear killed 14 people at a holiday gathering. State and federal law already prohibit people convicted of a violent felony from possessing body armor. AB 92 would make it a misdemeanor for anyone outside of a specified profession to own body armor. In its current form, the bill exempts law enforcement officers and members of the military, armored car guards and security guards, firefighters and paramedics, firearms dealers and body armor salespeople, building safety inspectors and code enforcement officers. The bill also makes it a felony to commit violence with a firearm while wearing body armor. Simply put, the widespread availability of military-grade body armor helps mass shooters and criminals kill more people, Connolly said in a statement. It is clear that the sale of body armor has empowered violent criminals, including mass shooters, to harm, kill, and prolong their rampages. This ongoing and unnecessary epidemic of violence must be stopped and AB 92 will help protect innocent bystanders and our peace officers. While body armor is expensive and rarely used by criminals in most crimes, according to NPR, there has been an uptick in mass shooters wearing it during their attacks. At least 21 mass shooters have worn some form of body armor over the last 40 years, according to The Violence Project, which studies gun violence. The majority of those cases were in the last decade. AB 92 likely will be heard in committee later this spring. California state workers could be banned from installing certain social media apps like TikTok on their state-issued smartphones under two proposed laws that highlight potential cyber security threats. Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, introduced Senate Bill 74 last week and in a news release cited recent FBI warnings about TikTok, the social media app owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance. The U.S. military in 2019 banned TikTok from government-issued devices. Social media apps are ubiquitous in our daily lives, but there is growing concern about information theft and data collection that comes with their use, Dodd said in a written statement. Prohibiting these apps on state phones and other devices is a commonsense way to prevent exposure of our sensitive material and the possible tracking or data breaches. Clearly, there are bad actors out there, and we cant afford to let them in. Assembly Bill 227, by Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, R-Temecula, applies to social media apps owned by companies that are headquartered in, or otherwise based out of, a country of concern. The bill specifies that those countries of concern are Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, China, Cuba and Russia. The bill specifically calls out Beijing-based ByteDance, which owns TikTok, as one such company whose products would be banned if it were to become law. If passed by lawmakers, and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California would join 26 other states that have taken action against TikTok, according to the website Government Technology, a list of states that includes Texas and Florida. In December, President Joe Biden signed a spending bill into law that banned most federal employees from having TikTok on their government-issued smartphones, with exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes, according to NBC News. Security experts and conservative politicians have voiced concerns about TikTok, calling it a security risk for government employees to possess it. In 2020, former President Donald Trump pressured ByteDance to sell the app to American companies. A deal fell apart after Bidens inauguration. TikTok has acknowledged that its employees have used the app to track the movement of certain journalists, as reported by Forbes in December. I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation and Im sure you feel the same, ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang wrote in an internal email shared with Forbes. The public trust that we have spent huge efforts building is going to be significantly undermined by the misconduct of a few individuals. I believe this situation will serve as a lesson to us all. How to take a break from social media Be easy on yourself and ask for help about social media use Helpful exercise to remind you what you're missing by scrolling Use your phone's screen-time tracking feature and limit social media use Physically distance yourself from your phone and apps Benefits of taking a social media break Reevaluate what you want out of social media Two and a half hours. SACRAMENTO Crouching low among rocky tidepools nearly completely covered with sharp-shelled mussels, California State Parks interpretive manager Robyn Chase gave out a sharp cry. I found one! she yelled excitedly over to another State Parks interpreter accompanying her on a visit to Estero Bluffs State Park just north of Cayucos on Dec. 22. Chase pointed to a huge, dinner plate-sized purple ochre sea star nestled inconspicuously in a small pool of water. Oh, hes eating well, she said, noting how the sea star was surrounded by the jet-black mussels, its preferred meal. The ochre sea star was the first of roughly 15 sea stars found that day by Chase and her small team. It took more than an hour to locate the colorful echinoderms within the expansive tidepools at Estero Bluffs. State Parks hosted a total of four sea star search parties at tidepool locations along San Luis Obispo Countys coast the week of Dec. 19 including two in Montana de Oro State Park near Los Osos and another at Hearst San Simeon State Park. Members of the public joined State Parks interpreters as they scrounged the rocky shores for the colorful sea stars. Some snapped photos and sent them to iNaturalist, a community science social network used by scientists as a helpful database of biodiversity around the world. At Corallina Cove in Montana de Oro, interpreters and community members found about 14 sea stars on Dec. 20, while at Hazard Reef just up the shore, they found 144 after scouring the entire tidepool area on Dec. 21. While the State Parks interpreters were excited to stumble upon those caches of sea stars, they expressed concerns about the state of the local population. Its honestly very different now, Chase said. Sea star population devastated by disease Sea stars across the West Coast have struggled since 2013 to recover from sea star wasting syndrome, which causes the invertebrates to deteriorate and lose limbs before dying. Before 2013, scientists could count more than 50 ochre sea stars at the Estero Bluffs in an area no bigger than three semi trucks stacked next to each other. Scientists could count more than 100 in a similarly small spot at Hazard Cove within the tidepool area Over the past decade, wasting syndrome has nearly wiped out five-armed ochre sea stars in the state and devastated their leggier cousins, sunflower sea stars. Sunflower sea stars are now considered regionally extinct in California, although a few persist along the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan shorelines. Scientists are still struggling to find answers to the devastation caused by the mysterious disease. Melissa Douglas, an intertidal associate research specialist at UC Santa Cruz, has worked with a team of scientists to monitor the sea stars along the West Coast. Their data, gathered over more than two decades across dozens of tidepool sites along the coast, have all shown essentially the same pattern: abundant populations of sea stars that plummet to near-extinction after the sea star wasting syndrome took hold. This is coming up on 10 years, so this is the biggest event of sea star wasting weve ever seen, Douglas said. Douglas said its still difficult to determine what exactly caused the disease to take such a vicious hold on the sea stars but a few theories floating around surmise that ocean heatwaves and greater amounts of organic material in tidepools had some impact. Douglass research through the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network, or MARINe, for short is focused on monitoring the population of sea stars and the impacts of their demise. Unfortunately, her research has found that the ochre and sunflower sea stars simply havent been able to repopulate. The population of ochre sea stars along the Central Coast appears to have pretty much flatlined since the 2013 sea star wasting syndrome event, according to MARINes data. I dont want to say theres no hope, but its not looking very good, Douglas said. Theyre definitely not headed to recovery right now. Why sea stars are important marine species Sea stars are considered keystone species. In other words, without them, ecosystems are thrown out of balance and species diversity can change drastically. Along the Central Coast, that is particularly obvious in the mussel population along the rocky shores. The surge in the mussel population could shove other intertidal species out, such as algae, barnacles, limpets, sponges and sea slugs, Douglas said. Sunflower sea stars were also vitally important to keeping sea urchin populations in check. Without sunflower sea stars, the urchins have completely mowed down kelp forests in some areas, Douglas said. Kelp forests provide important feeding grounds and shelter for various marine species, including sea otters, fish and birds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Community can help with sea star research Keeping tabs on the sea stars to learn how their population continues to evolve is vitally important, Douglas said, and the community can help. Dennis Krueger recently retired from owning Kayak Horizons in Morro Bay but still loves paddling in the Morro Bay estuary. About once a month, Krueger paddles out to the T Pier in the bay to look for sea stars, count and measure them. He sends the data to Douglas and the team at MARINe. I just thought, well, heck, Im out on the bay all the time and Id love to help in any way I can, Krueger said. Now Im gathering data for people to make big decisions with. Over the 23 years hes lived in Morro Bay, Krueger said hes noticed a change in the sea star population. The species struggle has become more apparent since he started sending data to MARINe about four years ago, he said. I used to be able to see 15 to 20 sea stars when Id take the kids out to paddle, he said. Were now seeing fewer and its becoming more common to not see any at all. Sending data to MARINe is pretty easy, said Krueger, who underwent simple training from scientists on how to properly identify and measure the sea stars. Anyone interested in doing similar monitoring work can contact the MARINe team at seastarwasting.org. But even without training, community members can contribute to monitoring the sea star population along the Central Coast, Douglas said. If theres a good low tide and you can head out to the tidepools to search for sea stars, she said. Dont forget a camera. How to submit sea star observations Find a sea star while exploring the San Luis Obispo County shoreline? Simply snap a picture and either send it to the MARINe team at marinedb.ucsc.edu/ssd/public/observation-log/create or submit it to iNaturalist. Youll want to know the GPS coordinates of where you found the sea star and what kind of sea star it is. iNaturalist has a good guide on its website at inaturalist.org/guides/7857. Your observation might just help scientists better determine how the sea star population is faring against sea star wasting syndrome in your area. If theres any silver lining out of all of this, its been really heartwarming to see how many people are interested in sea stars and becoming involved in the research, Douglas said. Photos: Scientists alarmed at animal die-offs in North Pacific, Arctic